My First Million - Business Breakdown Duel & The Story of Nike's Sonny Vaccaro

Episode Date: June 1, 2023

Shaan's Free Workshop --> http://bit.ly/3INb6EV Episode 461: Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) engage in a business breakdown duel where they dive deep into some interesting businesses. Vote for the winner of the duel in the comments. Plus, the story of Nike's Sonny Vaccaro. Want to see more MFM? Subscribe to the MFM YouTube channel here. Check Out Shaan's Stuff: * Power Writing Course * Daily Newsletter Check Out Sam's Stuff: * Hampton * Ideation Bootcamp * Copy That ----- Show Notes: (00:32) - Biz Breakdown Duel (01:30) - Petex (19:05) - T-shirt company (21:40) - Hims (41:15) - Zuck does The Murph (52:20) - Sonny Vaccaro story ------ Links: * Petex * Andrew Lynch - Net Income * Sacra * Hims * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. ------ Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto * #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

I'm going to blow your mind, ready? So Scotland. You know Scotland. You've heard of that country, Scotland, right? You've heard of that place. Familiar. Land of kilts and sheeps. But also...

Redheads, but okay. And redheads. But it's also home to one of the coolest SaaS businesses that I've ever heard of. So it's called Petroleum Exports. It's known as Pet Tax. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off.

Let's jump in. We got a bunch of stuff today. We're going to do what's called a business breakdown duel. Sean and I, is that what we're calling it? Is that a Western duel, I guess? We both did a business breakdown, and we didn't know that the other one was going to do it.

And so now we're going to compare. I'm going to go first, which gives you the advantage, because the person who goes last always usually wins in rad battles. It's always like when you, you know, like, when they do, You know where they do the applause? They're like, person A, person B, and person B always wins.

I get to hear you say your thing and then I can make fun of what you said. Yeah. So anyway, you're going to, you get the advantage, but that's okay. So I'll go first. Okay. But before I go first,

I've got to give a shout out to Andrew Lynch from net income. It's a substack. It's where I found this particular business and I'm stealing a lot of his numbers. but I'm going to blow your mind, ready? So Scotland. You know Scotland.

You've heard of that country, Scotland, right? You've heard of that place. Familiar. Land of kilts and sheeps. But also, I think there's sheep there. I don't actually know. That's how little I know about Scotland. But also...

Redheads, but okay. And redheads. But it's also home to one of the coolest SaaS businesses that I've ever heard of. So it's called Petroleum Exports. It's known as PetTax. Pad Tax. It's a challenging name, I know.

And it's a high. highly technical specialist software crucial for oil and gas operations. You can go to P-E-T-E-X.com to check it out. So pull that up, but PetTex. It's a highly technical specialist software. That's the backbone of some of the most important operations in the oil and gas industry. And it sounds boring, and that's because it is. However, last year, they made 78 million pounds in revenue, which is about $100 million, USD. On that $100 million in revenue, about $67 million of it was profit. And of that profit, they basically took out all the money.

So they paid a dividend of 41 million pounds, which is about $60 million. And that was paid to the owner. And it wasn't even retained to the company, which means for every dollar they took, about $52 went directly to the, or $52 went directly to the owner's pocket. Now, here's the cool part. None of this is rumors. This isn't hearsay. I'm not like telling you I heard a story because in the UK, if you're a privately held company that hits a certain threshold in revenue, you have to submit your reports and you could just log in. It's called Company's House. You can just go there and you can log in and you can see all this information. And so I went and looked at many, many, many years of their data. And I'm going to tell you a story about how this company came to be. So it was started by this guy named. We're going to call him Abe. His name's Abe. His name, he's a Muslim guy. It was very, very, very, very challenging first and last name. Can you see his name? Can you tell me how to pronounce that? Do you know how to pronounce that? Abdul Hamid is the first name and the last name. It's very challenging. There's a D and there's a

J together. That's a very challenging. So you are calling him Abe or he goes by Abe. I'm calling him Abe. His last name is, if you look at it. I haven't met many Muslim abes, but we're going to call him Abe. His last name has a D and a J next to each other. I don't even know how to pronounce that sound. So I'm sorry, Abe. He's a. It's a very challenging name to pronounce. So he started the company in 1990. It was based in Aberdeen, Scotland, which is basically like a hub for oil industry. It's kind of like similar to what Houston in America is.

And the company originally served as a petroleum consultant for, and consultants to the petroleum industry as well as retailers. And they would create these mathematical models to help people in the oil and gas industry manage their projects. And so today, they've kind of pivoted from consulting to providing software. They only have 420 customers, and their core product is composed of complex products, which are complex features that with descriptions like a multi-phase network modeling and optimization and thorough dynamics fluid characterization package.

So pretty complicated stuff. So as I said, they started as a consulting business, and they have done 78 million pounds in revenue last year, which is about 100 million USD, 58 million USD in profit and 50 million in dividends, meaning the company doesn't require much capital X. So they made all this profit and most all of it, 58 million in profit, 50 million came out of the business and went directly to the owner's pockets. And he's been doing this for years and years and years. Their biggest expense is employees. So because they're based in the UK, they pay UK Software Engineer salaries, which are lower than the US, making their average

all in cost per each employee, of which they have 86 of them. only 101,000 pounds per year, which means that they are doing 911 pounds, 911,000 pounds in revenue per employee. So 9x. 9x basically ROI per person that they hired. So, yeah, this company absolutely kills it. And I want to tell you when I was analyzing this company, and if you look up Andrew Lynch, his substack, he does a really good job of explaining the technical details of the company. I want to explain some of the entrepreneurial takeaways that I had.

So if you go to the top link, Sean, in our doc, right at the beginning of the story, you'll see the substack where you can, it's his, Andrew Lynch has a thing called net incomes, and that's where I discovered this. So I want to tell you some of my takeaways. Takeaway one, focus plus time. That's what this guy did. So everyone talks about focus, but what does focus means? You basically, in my opinion, need to focus enough to turn your idea into a machine.

And then after that, I think you can deviate some attention away from that if you want. But the company needs focus, and that focus takes time. So I went back and I looked at a lot of their revenue and so did Andrew. So if you scroll down, Sean, you'll see a graph of the revenue. And what you'll notice is that it took them 15 years to get to $10 million in revenue, 10 million pounds. I'm going to call it dollars. 10 million dollars in revenue. And I know a lot of people, I think maybe you have done this with one of your businesses,

got close to 10 million in revenue in like 1.5 or 2 years actually. And so 15 years, particularly in like the tech internet space, it feels horribly long. But I think that's okay. That's the right feeling. And so what I try to do, something I've been thinking about for a while, is I ask myself, in 10 or 20 years, will I be happy if I started this today?

And that's a really good quote. But that answer is incredibly murky more often than not. Sometimes it's like a, I think yes. It's a very murky thing. And there's this famous story about Jeff Bezos when he started Amazon. He has this thing called the Regret Minimalization Framework where he says this story about he was like, well, even though I had this good job, I decided to start Amazon because in 80 years, when I'm 80 years old, well, I'd be proud that I started it today.

The answer was yes. But in that same story, he also said that he thought at most Amazon could make is $100 million a year. So it sounds like he had the full picture. So it was like, yeah, I think this can work. And so I went and talked to Darmesh, who's the founder, Darmesh shot, the founder of HubSpot. I also talked to Kip, who is the CMO. And Kip joined HubSpot in year five.

I asked Kip, how big do you think HubSpot could be when he joined? You know, how big did he think? So HubSpot today is worth $25 billion. When I asked him, he said, I thought it could hit a billion dollars in valuation. There's a little bit of a stretch, but I thought we could do a billion dollars in valuation, meaning like, what's that? 80 million in revenue. I don't know how that. Something like that.

And then I asked Darmesh, I go, how big do you think he could get? He goes, really, I didn't have any idea, but I knew that all I wanted was a thousand customers who would each pay $250, which, by the way, this is only $3 million a year in revenue. And I thought that would be a pretty cool milestone. And so the reason isn't always, or the outcome isn't always clear of, is this worth it? Now, the reason this is important is because the biggest pain in business is not just failing,

but it's failing slowly and spending like a decade working on something and wasting the most non-renewable resource there is, time, wasting that time. And, I mean, it's significantly worse, I think, than losing millions of dollars a year and one or two years and quitting. And so that's where it's kind of an art, it's a skill, it's an intuition, it's talent, that's where all this stuff comes in place. So tactically, what does this mean? Ben Franklin said, a small leak will sink a great ship.

Warren Buffett said, so you find yourself in a chronically leaky boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks. So the point being, only work on shit as long as your boat ain't leaking. As long as you don't

got any holes in that boat. But here's the thing. Every early safe company, everything's leaky at first. So I went back to Darmesh and back to Kit. And I go, guys,

tell me about this. HubSpot right now, your guys is net revenue retention. I don't know what it is exactly, but I think it's like 105%. Meaning for every dollar that someone spends at HubSpot now, the next year they're going to spend

$1.5 cents. And he said, and Chip, And Kip, they said a few things, so I'm going to mix it up a little bit. Or I'm going to kind of interchange with what they said. But I believe it was Kip who said, our churn at first was terrible. It was beyond bad. At one point, we were losing 30% of customers on an annual basis.

On an annual basis. I then asked Darmash, I go, was your guys a churn really that bad? He goes, yeah, it was definitely really bad. It took about five years in order to get it to where it was a good place. And I said, well, what did you do to fix that? And he said, our goal was not to make customers happy. It was to make happy customers, meaning everything from our branding, pitch, marketing, sales, service, everything should be thought out in a process where the outcome was a happy customer. And that meant it was everyone's job.

Marketing needs to be reaching better fit customers who are less likely to churn. Sales need to not, sales shouldn't oversell and make sure they only qualify that these customers will likely succeed, which helps reduce its churn. Products need to make sure they don't just build new features, but build a feature that reduces churns. And they have to make these features, make sure these features get adopted. And churn is, turn reduction is a team sport. You also have to remember there's a power law, which is 90% of stickiness will be driven by 10% of the product and company features and not to add 100 features.

And instead, just find ones at work and double down on those. So the point being, all ships are leaky at first. But hopefully you can figure out a way to do it. And last but not least, my takeaway, $10 a month, it's rarely going to feed a bunch of hungry mouths. So our listeners, including you and I sometimes, I do this as well. I had a $25 a month product.

A lot of times what we do is we look for arbitrages or we look for like small little hacks. That's neat. That's all cool and every once in a while. It gives you that dopamine hit. But this company, the reason I like it is you know how much they charge per year? $300,000 a year for a license to their company.

They only have 450 clients. And Andrew in his substack article, he says something great. He goes, imagine you're running an oil rig that extracts hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil per day. Brent Crude is currently trading at $75 per barrel. So every hundred barrel is $75, $700 in revenue. Your IT guy comes up to you and says, boss, Patex just raised their prices by 10%. I think we could save $3,000 annual if we switch software providers to another thorough dynamic fluid characterization package instead. You tell them to piss off. Don't touch a thing. Just make sure nothing. breaks. It meansly $3,000. There's nothing in the grand scheme of a huge capital-intense business.

So they put their price up 10% and everyone moves on and goes on before because, look, it helps them solve their business. So, or it helps them solve problems in their business. It makes their business better. So this is my breakdown of this company. I love it. I love this company. I love these Scottish guys. Jonathan's giving me a clap. What do you think about this one? Yeah, Jonathan, you like that one? Yeah, that was, you kind of touched it all. You got the overall. You got the opening story, it with impact,

and then the three big takeaways at the end, and that, like, Q&A with Kiv and Darmesh was a nice touch. Yeah, that was a good touch. I like how you brought that in.

The, um, there was a bit of a spelling and pronunciation challenge at the beginning, but you overcame that, and I'm proud of you for doing that. You know what I say? So I went to a speech class

when I was a kid, by the way, and I always tell people, I just got big tongue. My tongue's real thick. I got a thick tongue. Some people like, it's hard for me.

I'm big tonged. Yeah, I got fat thug, a pet. See, I gave me say a fat tongue. It's like a, it's like a snail in there. It's like a slug. I got a slug of a tongue.

I got molasses in my mouth. I don't know what to say. It's hard for me to say some words sometimes. It's like the further away from St. Louis, a person gets or a company gets, like, the harder it is to explain them. That's interesting. You know, I guess two things on the mind. Right now, I bet there's an opportunity to create like another PetEx, basically, which is with machine learning. in AI, you could go into these kind of like old school big dollar type companies and be like,

hey, look, we have the ability to process your data or to give you insights. That's going to save you money. Like 10% efficiency gain, 20% efficiency gains. And I bet that these opportunities, you know, have existed, but the more powerful ML and AI get, the more of those opportunities open up. And the bottleneck is people who even understand what problems exist inside of, you know, some shale gas company or inside of ExxonMobil and then being able to go sell into them. There was a guy who I met very early on.

When I was doing my startup, I didn't really know any other entrepreneurs, but there was one guy who also went to Duke. And I wonder what happened to him. I haven't kept in touch, but I think his name was Evan Anderson. And he was building a company that was selling to, it was called Osberg. Yeah, this is exactly right. Let's see what happened with this company. So we were selling to companies that were.

were in Oklahoma. So I was like, well, you moved to Oklahoma and he was like, yeah, this is where my customers are. And I was like, who's your customers? And it was like all the oil and gas companies that are in America. And what he was doing at that time was basically, quote, unquote, big data, big data for oil and gas. And I was like, that's a great idea. I'm looking at it now. He's still there as CEO 14 years later. So I've got this company has been pretty successful. And I was like, I would check in with him and be like, you know, what's the challenge. At this time, I'm working on a sushi restaurant chain. And he's like, you know, I'll spend six months just courting the right guy, the right suit at this, at this company.

I got to take him to, you know, a football game. I got to invite his family over. We got to get to know him. We got to get them comfortable with this, you know, the software. But once I get, once I close that deal, these deals are going to be worth millions and millions of dollars over time. They're never going to rip us out once we get in. And so I'm curious how this companies doing today, but I know that 15 years ago, I was like, this is a great idea. And I just, I intuitively knew it because I was like, the same effort it's taking me to do this silly sushi restaurant thing, he's spending the same amount of time. He's just working for a much bigger prize with much more defensibility and a much clearer value

where he's going into an industry that's like never had, doesn't have this sort of software capability, he's like, I will sit here until I understand your problems and then I will build solutions for this. And I just love that approach. I think that's a, like, if people are willing to kind of eat shit and go outside of their like kind of comfort zone of problem areas they understand, there's pretty big opportunities. Yeah, and it's cool. Did you see this graph from Andrew Lynch of this company's revenue? Yeah, this is like a perfect hockey stick, but over a long period of time. Over a really long period of time. I mean, that's the thing you talk about like this 15 years to get to 10 million.

You know, respect for continuing and making it all work. That's not for me. What's the Moy's quote? Why does everyone make fun of getting rich quick? That's the best way to get rich. And I'm going to tell you about a company in a second here that said in their first week, they did a million dollars of sales and never went less than that from their law. And you think that that's not true, correct?

I think it's a lie. I love a good lie. I love a good lie. Tell me about this. Give me a good lie. People underestimate how much of startup stories are just lies. Okay, so here's my business breakdown. I see your duel and I raise you.

In my head, by the way, we were doing an old-fashioned Western duel, but now I decided it's American gladiators and you're laser and on blazer and we're going at it on the joust. So this morning I was thinking about who's lying out there? Who's lying? Men's problems. Let's let's funny about that. way. Okay, so most people have heard. Wait, you got a little, you got a little situation. Is that the issue?

You got a little situation? No, no, no, no. That's not how we got. Actually, here's the actual train of thought. I was thinking about these t-shirt company, a little segue here to tell you how my brain works. So I think about these t-shirt companies. I don't know if you've seen this, but basically, in the last kind of like four years, there's been a bunch of companies started that succeeded that did the most obvious thing. And I've seen this happen again and again. There's these windows of time where big ideas are just hidden in plain sight. And so basically in the last four years, a bunch of companies have started that do such a simple thing. They just sell basic plain men's t-shirts. And these were the big D to C ideas. So like anybody who wanted to do e-commerce or drop shipping or D to C build a brand, the opportunity

was sitting right in front of everybody. It was just men's t-shirts. So you have cuts, fresh clean teas, true classic teas, built basics, all of these companies that in the last sort of four year window have built $100 million plus companies. So some of them do about $50 million a year in sales. Some of them do $100 or $150 million a year in sales. So this kind of range. But to go in like a three-year period to get to $150 million in sales,

that's what True Classic T's did, is just bananas, to be honest. And so I'll tell you the numbers for True Classics. So year one, let's see, what are they going? So I think go. Okay, you're one, 15 million. You're two, 90 million. You're three, 150 million in top line revenue. And they did it all through Facebook ads selling plain, you know, white, black, blue men's t-shirts.

And that's the same thing. I think fresh clean teas is somewhere like 50 million, north of 50 million in revenue. I think cuts is over 100 million. it's crazy that these companies all scaled so fast doing this such an obvious thing. There was no massive innovation. And so I was thinking about this. I was like, man, there's these windows of time.

And then I thought about, what are other windows that I've seen like this? And I stayed in the e-commerce world. And I thought about, oh, back in 2017, both Roman and Hems launched doing basically the same thing. And they launched within like a couple months of each other. Basically, people had the same idea at the same time. and both of them became billion-dollar-plus companies

doing the same thing. What they did was, you know, I guess the summary is they took advantage of a, what do you call it? An inflection. Uh,

Sam Lowe's this regulation. Infliction in this case, it was a regulation inflection. This was a regulatory inflection. And so what happened was, um, there was proven market demand for drugs like Viagra, uh,

or propitia or rogane. And so hair loss or erectile dysfunction, there was a proven, like business there. And they started like in the early 90s. And so by 2017, the patents expired. And when the patents expired, have you ever taken a Viagra or anything like that? Haven't. Have you? No. But if someone told me it's awesome, I would. But I've never, it's awesome. It's awesome. Go. So, so the patents expired. And basically now there was like generic versions of these. And so what, and at the same time, there's another regulatory inflection,

which was that telemedicine was becoming more and more things were getting opened up for telemedicine, meaning you could prescribe drugs without going to the doctor. So drugs without a doctor was a key kind of like just, you know, framework for this type of business. And so they both launch. And the Hymns guy says, this guy, Andrew Dudum, he goes, we launched and in our first week,

we did a million dollars of sales, and we've never done less than a million since then. I was like, wow, that is incredible. And it is true that him scaled really quickly. So their revenue in a month. So he said they never did, he said they never did less than a million a week after watching. Yes.

Oh. And I was like, that's insane. I was thinking about that because I was like, I've launched many things. The first week is, you're talking about patching holes on a boat. That's how the first week is. It's like,

you don't even have inventory. You don't have a million dollars of inventory. You don't have like to do a million dollars. How much are you spending an ad? Did you just blast? like half a million dollars of ads in your first week, Facebook ads doesn't even let you ramp up that quickly. So I was a little bit suspicious of this.

And the revenue did ramp quickly. So they launched the very end of 2017. 2018, the full year, they did $27 million in revenue with $27 million in ad spend. So they spent 100% of revenue on ads. So they burned a bunch of money. 2019, they went from $27 million to $83 million. And they spent $50 million on ads. 2020, they were forecasting about $140 million,

and then I have the actual. So check out this revenue growth. It's pretty insane. 2021, they did 270. 2022, they did $5.40. 2023, they're projecting to finish at $800 million in revenue. So this is a pretty crazy run in, what, six years to ramp up to $800 million in revenue.

So they could get to a billion in revenue in seven years. Exactly. They're burning money this whole time, even now, even at $500 million last year. they only have 2% EBITA margin. And that's the adjusted EBTA. The real, they actually burn 10 million, but the adjusted is that they,

you know, they made a small 2% margin. And so super capital intensive. They raised like 200 something million dollars before going public and then in going public another two, three hundred million dollars went into the business, I think. And so it's taken them a lot of capital to get here.

So I would say three things. Amazing story just in general. Like props to them for pulling this off. They built this out of an incubator. I ran an incubator for six years. It couldn't get one thing to even $10 million in revenue. And this was like a big hit that came out of a incubator, which is very, very rare. Roman, which now rebranded a row also came out of an incubator at the same time.

So the two biggest incubator hits were sort of these two companies that did the same thing essentially. One did it for hair. So I think Hymns did it for hair loss. And Roe did it for ED. And then they both just added the other product as they were. went. So impressive in that way. The revenue growth impressive. The ad spend and the money burned incredible. I now question, is this even a good business? So like they basically showed that their their cack, so their cost to acquire customers is really high. Like their cost to acquire customers

is basically, what do I have it here? It's like a hundred plus dollars to acquire a customer. Let me grab it. I think it's like $150 on average to acquire a customer. The lowest it's been is like $100 to acquire a customer. And they basically think they think they three X their money in three years, which is actually not very good for e-com. Like my e-com business, which is nowhere near the scale of this, is way more efficient than this. Like they're trying to pay back essentially, you know, a little over a year.

We try to pay back in two months. And so like, you know, it's amazing. what just pure aggression they approached this business with. They were just like, yeah, we're going to scale this thing and we're going to pour a bunch of money in. We're going to burn a bunch of money, but we're going to ramp up and like, we're going to try to thread the needle to get this business to work when it's at the billions in scale. And they kind of pulled it off because they went public with V.S.PAC and they got liquid before the business really worked. This week, I had to chop down a tree at my farm and I didn't have an axe. So I just used a sludge hammer instead.

And so my wife was like, oh, you chop down that tree. I was like, I kind of smashed it down. And I just sludged hammered it down. And that's kind of what these guys did. They just kind of sludge hammered their way into the market. Have you seen this guy that's on TikTok that just chops the tree and all like it gets like a million views? And it's all, there's like hundreds of thousands of women commenting like, like just like gasp. Like I need him.

Is he hot? Is he shirtless? No, is he shirtless and hot? He's shirtless and he just chops this tree perfectly. Like, it's like, it takes him like 10 strokes to crack down this giant tree. Is that like an innuendo for sex or something? Literally like, I'm watching this thing and I'm like, I don't even know why I'm watching this. This is like just from a purely objective level, this is very attractive.

I'm just going to say this. This is very attractive. He has a backwards hat. suspenders. He looks like a lumberjack, but he's like GQed out. So he's like a groomed lumberjack that's super like with a crossfit body that chops down trees instead of going to the gym. He's incredible.

So you're kind of like that. You're like that. But like, you know. Not. I'm like store brand that. Yeah. You're like in the in the zip code of that. So that's basically what these guys said.

They got to brew force. way, but why don't you think this is a good business? Well, I think that the, I mean, just the amount of capital it took to get to this business value. So it's worth $1.8 billion on paper. And they've taken $500 million to get here. So like, if you just zoom out, it's like, we three and a half extra money. Like, that's not the most impressive thing. But like when you frame it the other way, which is like, we're going to hit a billion dollars in sales and we've done this in seven years. And like, you know, we've built the largest telemedicine health company for men.

and women and you could frame it one way or you can just kind of look at it in other. It's like, now, here's a business where if I have to pay $150 to acquire a customer and it takes two years to pay it back. If that, we'll see how it all projects out. It's super sensitive to like, you know, they pour so much money into marketing and what if, you know,

Facebook costs change. Like, you know, how's that going to affect them? Like, there's all these factors. I'm not saying it's a bad business, but like compared to that PEDX company that does $100 million in sales and dividends out $50 million to the owner, I know which business I would. would want to own, right?

The business that didn't need a SPAC to succeed is the business I would want to own. The one that's divinating out like a mega yacht every year to this guy, like, that's sick. And it has like, you know, one, one millionth of the notoriety of a brand like it. Some other you say about the, yeah, tell me the other interesting thing. So other cool things. So there's some notable things for the research. I want to put these on the screen. So I put the images on screen on YouTube.

If you're listening to the podcast, just pause, go to YouTube, because you got to see these. So if you go back through their history, first, take a look at this thing I have on page, what is this, page like three or something of this, the P&L. Do you see this P&L? This was in their S1 to go public. It's literally, it just says revenue 27, gross profit, eight, adjusted EBITA minus 68. That's the P&L they shared in their investor presentation. I was like, what kind of kindergarten level of detail is this?

What kind of prey on P&L are you doing? Like, this is fucking ridiculous. And I was like, this is why SPACs, this is why SPACs went to shit because it's like, half the P&L is just projections, what you can't do if you go public the traditional way, but in SPACs, you can do these like forward-looking projections. And that's how all these guys got away with it. It's like, we've got a shitty business now, but like five years from now, we're crushing.

And that's like, you know, they were able to tell that story, whereas you can't make forward-looking statements in the traditional way of going public. And then I was like, this is some. absolute basic beginner looking thing. I was just stunned at this. This is like on the SEC website. That's an embarrassment. Okay, second thing,

you can go to their website and you can find in the web archive their landing page from the beginning. So check this out. This was their first landing page. This is like the month that they launched. It just said, Guy, against staggering odds, two things happen. One, the universe.

Two, you. Let's walk at our full height, honor our forebearers, have a smile, and for God's sakes, floss. shop now. And it just scrolls down and it just says sex. This is simple. You need erections when you want them and not when it's convenient for your penis. And there's an eggplant emoji

and says shop sex. And there was another one for hair. That was like the same. It was like, she needs to run her fingers through your hair. And then it just says our bestsellers and there's just a very basic bottle that says finasteride. And that's like the generic name for propitia or like for like the hair male pattern baldness like drug or whatever. And they were just selling it for $28. And then there was,

they only had two skews, fanasteride and vitamins. Not even like vitamin C. But here's some vitamins. So incredible to go see. I love, love, love looking at successful businesses early landing pages just to see like how did they get their business out the door? One thing that's interesting is from the beginning,

they actually had a pretty strong like branding and brand identity. So if you go do this with like Snapchat, or Uber, the first websites are just absolutely fugly. Like, I have this blog post on the internet that's called like, you just search Sean Puri, early startup landing pages, medium. 10 throw, okay, it's called 10 throwback startup homepages. When did you write that article? I wrote this in 2015.

So this was- What month? What month? June. Oh, you beat me. In October 12th, 2015, I wrote an article that said, proof that your favorite startup started out awful. And it's a list of 10 landing pages.

Yeah, you copy. Your favorite startup. I think we knew each other then. So you can go look at Airbnb's. It's like literally plain black and white. And it just says, forget hotels. Stay with a local. Uber.

It looks like a, you know, janky thing. Everyone's private driver, but it looks like an old school car service. Snapchat, it's got one of these like yellow bubbles. That's like the like, buy now. You know, like, you know,

buy two, get one. And it just says free download inside. And it says, introducing Snapchat, real-time picture chatting for iPhone. And it's two girls in their bikinis. And it just says seven seconds on the screen and like, you know, a self-destructing photo. So you can see what early startup landing pages look like. What's interesting that was unique in the Hymns case is that they actually had their branding from day one, which I think was a smart move by them.

And they specifically branded it. The opposite colors is every other male wellness products. So every other meal wellness product is essentially blue. And they were like, no, we'll go all neutral color scheme, lowercase, like, lowercase font for the brand name. And we're going to make it subtle because there's a stigma and a taboo around this is not something you want to brag about. We don't want bold. We want to be able to give you this package in a discrete way. And you know and I know and that's all who needs to know.

And I thought that was like a smart thing for them to get right from day one. All their models are like, it's usually like a cool looking black dude or like an racially ambiguous guy. It's like, oh, I can see myself in you. I'm a young, cool guy. I wear like cool jeans as well. Were your parents all of the Power Rangers? Why are you all to let this happen here? It's usually like a pretty racially ambiguous, good-looking guy with nice teeth.

Yeah, the tea throw is on point. Versus like a Viagra is always like Brett Farr looking guy. And then this was one of their early ads. So it's just, it just says, get hard or get your. money back. And it's just a guy holding a tiny pill. And what ethnicity is that guy? Oh, dude, his hand is like a gradient in Photoshop.

It's like all colors. You see here. So it says, eggplant emoji rise to the occasion for less. So one thing that they did really well was they figured out how do you advertise on Facebook with a taboo product. So they would do stuff like they would show a picture of a cactus that was limp. And then it would be like with him so you don't have this problem.

So like how do you? And so they were very clever with their marketing. They also did stuff where they would create ad inventory. So they would go to like stadiums and they'd be like, all right, a bunch of guys who are in our demographic are at the stadium. We could either spend like $400,000 to get on the Jumbotron and along with like BMW and a bunch of other big brands. Or they went to the stadium facility manager and they were like, hey, how much for the urinal space? They're like, what? They're like, yeah, we want to put a little ad on the urinal.

And we'll give you guys like, you know, X price to be in every urinal. And they're like, yeah, dude, we got like 30 seconds of guys focused time while they're touching their thing. Like, you know, looking at our ad. This is actually kind of perfect. And so they would create new ad inventory that didn't even exist before, just trying to figure out how do we spend $100 million in a way that's going to be as efficient as possible. So they're, you know, really just like very, they're like a very advanced marketing agency, essentially. And another thing that they did, and I did a big breakdown on this one time was, So if you Google Viagra alternative or cheap Viagra or buy Viagra online, they show up number one.

And what they did was they actually sponsored a ton of Twitch people. And somehow that got their links out there. And they got tons and tons of backlinks really early on. So hymns.com ranked quite high. So they were able to get like it was, I think if you, I think it's Viagra alternative might be like their word. I forget which was one of those pages. and that's where they got most of the revenue early on. Oh, wow, that's interesting.

You know, there's another cool thing. I'll put this graphic on the stream. It's this graphic from, have you ever read Sacra, by the way? I don't even know if that's how you say it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the research thing. I like it. Yeah, they're pretty cool. I don't think people know about them, but they put out, like, really good research.

S-A-C-R-A. Yeah, so they had done a thing, and they had this great graphic, which was basically, they were like, telemedicine was, like, this, like, there's a lot of opportunity in telemedicine right now, and they just showed this picture of like a guy and a girl, and it's a diagram. And basically it's like, you can look from like head to toe, literally from head to toe, and you just go down the body, you're like, okay, hair, there's hymns, there's keeps, there's Roman. Okay, then you go down to like eyes.

And it's like there's prescription contact Hubble, you know, it was a D to C startup doing prescription contacts through a phone app instead of going to the doctor. Then you go to their bicep. It's like TRT. there's a bunch of TRT companies like hone health and others and then you're like and then you go to

their abs it's like weight loss you go to the crotch it's like here's the erectile dysfunction then you go down to the toes it's like here's toe fungus then he's got a little pet next and it's like

hey here's pop it's insurance for your pet so you have like instead of going to the vet for everything you can use pop and so it's like and then they do the same thing for women and you could just literally see

like if you've seen those diagrams that were like there was a big opportunity to unbundle Craigslist, and they took Craigslist homepage, and they showed out every little section of Craigslist became its own billion-dollar startup. They did the same thing to your body.

Every part of your body became a billion-dollar startup, essentially from one D-to-C wellness company, or multiple in some areas. So from skincare... And all of their logos look exactly the same. Lowercase font, pastel colors. Hymns. I think it's...

Oh, by the way, One other little observation, a lot of these DDC successes came from a certain type of founder, not all of them, but many, from MBA founders who went to like business schools, which is funny because like in the startup world, business schools kind of like are an easy punching bag because you're like punching up at the institution. It's easy to make fun of them. They're like, bro, you don't learn business to school. You learn business by doing business.

And that's how I feel, to be honest with you. So I'm like, that's true. But there is something interesting that a lot of DDC companies blew Apron, Birch box, Stitch Fix, Warby Parker, Rent the Runway, Hello, Fresh, and then this, you know, this guy who did Hymns, he went to Wharton as well. So it's like a lot of these big, I think there was something about the type of person who would do well in a business school and the types of things you learn in business school where you like do this market landscape, you like figure out the opportunities. You're like, okay, good. I just need to be like good at marketing and

then good at operations in order to like put cash in here and get thing out. It's not like very software base. You don't have to be the innovator who's like, you know, the one inventor of something. I think it landed itself to that type of entrepreneur, which I found pretty interesting too. Well, here's what our listeners need to do.

They need to either, probably in the YouTube comments. They need to let us know. Who won the duel? I actually want them to know if they think him's is a good business. But also, who won the duel? So you'll have to vote by saying, our names. We'll include a Spotify poll

as well, so you can just vote in the app. And we'll do a Spotify poll as well. Some guy in the YouTube channel said, who's this blonde host, and why is he so annoying? So just over the record, the blonde annoying guy, that's what someone said in the comment.

The blonde annoying guy, that was Sam. I went first, and Sean is the brown less annoying guy. He went second for him. So let us know, who's the winner here of the of this duel. I'm very eager to hear what people are going to say. I know which one I would rather own,

but I think they're both quite interesting. For sure, for sure. You saw this post by Mark Zuckerberg that he did the MRF? I tweeted out the picture of it and it got like five million views. It kind of took off. And I don't know, so do you know what the MRF is?

I had never heard of the MRF until I saw this. And then I was like, I must do the MRF. It's named after Lieutenant Murphy. I believe context clues leads me to believe that he died in the military. And his favorite workout, I believe it's one mile run, 300 squats, 100 pushups, and 100 pull-ups, and then on one-mile run, all while wearing a 20-pound weighted vest. Is that the workout? That's exactly right. Run a mile, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 squats, run another mile while wearing a, while wearing a 20-pound weighted vest.

20 pound vest. And Zuck basically takes a bro gym shot. I got to use the Blackberry for this. He's got the phone down here, not smiling, got the mouth open, and just snaps it with himself, drenched in sweat,

and he's like, just did the mirth. He's like, me and my daughter's that he's got a picture of his daughters doing like push-ups. And he goes, this year I got it done in 39 minutes and 58 seconds. And I was like, I read that and I was like, hmm, that sounds like really fast.

If he had just said, I did 100 pull-ups today, I would have been like, man, what a day. Fantastic. Forget all the rest. I was already impressed by 100 pull-ups. To say he got that done in weighted pull-ups, to say you got that done in 39 minutes, I was like, that sounds ridiculously fast. And sure enough, all the comments were like, that's an insane time for the MRF. Have you ever done this workout?

I haven't, but the world record holder of the MRF is this guy named Hunter McIntyre who's DM'd me on Twitter and Instagram and I've talked to because I like him a lot or I followed him and I feel like I like him. Is that what fit guys do? They just DM each other? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like a club, you know? Like once you can see the sixth app, you start following each other.

Yeah, I'm one of us. Good to see you. And he DM me, he listens to the pod. He's the world record holder. And I think his world record is like 34 minutes. and Zuck's time was 39 minutes, which means he would have gotten like 10th or 15th place at, there's like a MIRF games or something like that.

I mean, I had so many thoughts rushed through my head by I saw it. First, I saw 39 minutes and I thought, I've taken shits longer than that. Like, that's a crazy fast time. Then I thought,

I don't think I could even do a MIRF in an infinite amount of time. I don't think in my life, I have done a total of two miles running 100 pull-ups, 200 pushups and 300 air squats with a 20-pound vest. I have just never done it, period. So my time is currently 35 years. Then I thought,

this mother, this guy has he decided, yo, you know what? I'll just become one of the richest people in the world, one of the most powerful people in the world, and one of the fittest guys in the world. Like he's basically, wholesome. Top 1%

wealth, top point 1% intelligence. Top point 1% intelligence. Top point 1% percent power. And now he's top point point top 1.1% Chad also. I am blown away.

All before the age of 40. Yeah, exactly. And he's got two kids or something like that. I'm like, I mean, David Goggins should go to sleep listening to Mark Zuckerberg videos for motivation. This guy's incredible.

I bought more stock and I bought a plain gray, you know, cookie cutter t-shirt in his honor. I was like, I'm going to retire this in the Raft of my office. I'm going to hang a gray shirt just to honor this man.

He gets so much shit. And man, he's really turned his like public persona around. Like, do you remember he was, he was the biggest dork? Like, not just like,

oh, when he was young. Like, recently he was the biggest dork is that he tried to do something cool. Like he would do, when he did that like hydrofoiling thing and he painted his face white like a gasea and like,

it's like, man, this guy's like, and hit American fight. It was just like, oh man, like, you know what? Keep all your money. I don't want to be you. And now he's like, you know, just got off work, did a quick jihitsu tournament, came back, you know, fucking deleted Snapchat off the earth.

I'm like, wow, this guy's just, this guy's making power moves all day. He's incredible. He's a very inspirational dude. He's done it scandal free. So Zuck is only 37 now, you know, probably fifth or six. Is he only 37? something like that. I mean, he's still in his 30s. How old is he? 39. 39. So he, so basically, he, uh, been married to the same woman, been with her since

college, has two kids. Seems like his family life on, on the, on paper seems awesome. There was a time where in like the most scandalous thing that he did was he had a video where he talked about smoking meats. And every year he sets, you remember that? Because every year he has goals. No, no. That's not the most scandalous. thing. That was just like hilarious that he was a robot trying to be like, Hello, humans. I am doing a barbecue with, I have flesh on a grill with fire. And it was like, this is the robots. The most scandalous thing he did was when he was in college. And the, his aim messages got leaked. That was like, you know, a real wonderful day in my

household as I like was like, hey, cancel Netflix. I have my entertainment for the week. I'm reading all of Mark Zuckerberg's A messages for the next week. And it wasn't even that big of a deal. what he said was pretty on par with an 18 year old, 19 year old person. Well, maybe. One part was a little bit like, is this what we want? Like this is the guy running Facebook where he was like, he's like, yeah, he's like, he's like, yeah, just tell me if you want anyone's like, you know, name, do the date of birth, address, whatever.

He's like, these dumb fucks just trust me. They just put everything in the system. That sounds like something a 19 year old kid who invented this stuff would say. Yeah, I would say that was the last time I was relatable with Mark Zuckerberg. Ever since then, he's created a gap. And he's outpaced me from there. Every year he sets these goals. One year it was he only wants to eat food that he killed or grew.

And I think he did it. And then another year, he was like, I'm going to learn Mandarin because I want Facebook to come to China. And I think his wife is Chinese. And he was like, I'm going to learn Mandarin. And then he goes and he gives a talk. I think he gives a talk to a Chinese university. He gave me an interview. They fly him out there.

They're like, thank you so much, Mark Zuckerberg for coming. We are so happy to have you. And he's like, he's like, you know, well, Mitchell, and he just starts speaking Chinese and they're like, hallowed away. It's like really great, man, where he's basically fluent. And so the guy kills it, man. He does great.

And like when he did the e-foil, so he got into e-foiling, which is basically surfboarding without a wave. And he is doing it with an American flag. and he has too much sunscreen on his face. That's my guy. A guy whose biggest, like, flaw is that he's goofy. It's not the kind of my guy. And then now that I...

Oh, you're zagging the other way. You're saying, Zuck, bad move, unrelatable. Too good. No vulnerability. No, no relatability now. He's no longer girl next door hot. Now he's just supermodel hot. Zuck's the best, man.

He just, you know, our friend Nikita Beer has this joke where he says something like, I forget why he says this, but he says he never, ever, ever bet against Zuck, how he's just a complete killer and he is wrong sometimes, but not in the grand scheme. And this is for the proof. Well, the funny thing is people will hate this segment because I think it's popular to really hate Mark Zuckerberg

because they hate Facebook, I think, because they're like my data or like the Russians hacked the election. I'm not even sure what the exact reason is for hating Zuckerberg at this point. I just got to say like, this is, I mean, he is inspiring and that he is excellent. And if you appreciate excellence, that is kind of inspiring. It's kind of like people who hate LeBron. It's like, okay, I get it. You don't have to like the guy.

But, I mean, you've got to respect. You got to put some respect on this guy's name. LeBron doesn't do anything wrong either, by the way. But did people play sometimes? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, he switched teams when he was a free agent. My real estate agent told me the story that she was driving by. She's like, that's Mark Zuckerberg's house in the mission, kind of like near Dolores Park

type of area. And I was like, he lives here. And I was like, that's not like, I thought he lived in some private gated community. And she was like, well, I mean, he has like many houses, but this is one. This is one. And this is like, and he made it private. I was like, what do you mean? I don't see any fence.

And she's like, no, he bought the houses next door. Like he just bought all the houses in the area. so that like, you know, whatever. And so he knocked on someone's door himself. So somebody opened the door and it was Mark Zuckerberg outside. And he's like, hey, you know, I love this house and I, would you sell it to me? And they're like, no, I mean, it's not for sale. We love this house.

They're so close to the park. You know, my commute's only seven miles. He's like, I'll give you $10 million. They were like, okay, here's the keys. Basically, they bought the house for $10 million. It was probably a $2 million house. and the house next, like the house is nearby him, two and a half, three million dollars

and he paid ten and just got the house right away. Dude, that person who sold their house to him would be the best dinner guest. Imagine that story. We would like to have you on air. If that's you, we would like to have you come tell that story because obviously I'm reenacting what I was told by a real

estate agent. I don't know if that's true or that's bullshit. So yeah, Zach, amazing. Let's wrap up with this last thing, this Nike thing. Did you watch this movie air? Yeah, I did. I thought it was awesome.

It was pretty sweet, right? Like, not the best movie, but like just a solid base hit on a Thursday night, a Friday night. You know, you just need something that's, I don't want to sit here and browse Netflix for the perfect thing. All right, I'm just going to go on, I think it's on Amazon, and I'm just going to go watch air. And like just watch the story of how Nike signed Michael Jordan. They made Phil Knight look like a doofus. Yeah, why did they do that? I didn't understand that.

Well, he does, like, appearance-wise, look like a duvus, but they also made him act like a dufus. Yeah, which I don't think he was like that. When I read Shudog, I didn't get that idea. He's more, I think, they made him look like when he wrote his own memoir. He made himself sound cool. Well, I've read a lot about him. They just kind of made him look like a ditsy person.

Like an idiot. Yeah, he's not an idiot. But the guy they feature, so a couple of things. So first, anything stand out out from the movie Air, but then I want to go deep on this guy, Sunny Vaccaro, because I think he's actually more interesting. Who, was that the main character? I don't even remember his name. That's the main

character. So that's Matt Damon. Matt Damon in the movie, in the air movie, I thought one interesting thing I didn't know was they were talking about Just Do It, which is the, just do it's the slogan that, you know, everybody knows. It's the Nike kind of like iconic slogan. And they were talking about, like, at the time, even people internally were like, just

do it? Like, they got that from the ad agency Wyden Kennedy. And they're like, I don't know, what does that mean? Do you like it? I don't know. It's okay, I guess. They weren't like, yes, this is, this is going to be this like marketing masterpiece. And they go, what does that even mean? And they go, dude, it's from an

inmate on death row who was about to be assassinated, about to be executed. And they were like, any last words? And he goes, just do it. And so that became the Nike slogan, which is honestly kind of genius. So I want to talk about this guy, Sonny Vaccaro, because he's kind of a gangster that I've seen for many, many years in the basketball scene.

And the movie was about him. And this guy's pretty fascinating. So in the movie, he's famous because he's working at Nike. At the time, Nike is the last player. It's just a running shoe company. And they're the smaller shoe company. Adidas is this global brand that's crushing it. They own most of the sneaker market.

I believe it's pronounced. Adidas. Yeah, Adidas, which has its own interesting story. Then Reebok is like number two. And Nike's like a distant three, but they were doing like 27 million a year in sales through their running shoe. So good, but not like nowhere near

the kind of top tier of shoe companies. And so Sunny meets Phil Knight, and he's like, hey, I got an idea for a basketball shoe. I want to create like a basketball division. Like you guys are all running shoes, we should create basketball shoes. And he's like, okay, like, come on in.

you get this little basketball department, like go ahead, try to make it work. And the movie is all about like one breakthrough thing he did, which was they had a tiny budget. And in the 1984 draft, they decided to sponsor Michael Jordan. And Michael Jordan was not interested in Nike. He was going to go with,

I think Adidas or somebody like that. And he was known as a hot prospect. He's like the number three pick. And they were like, well, we still want. And Sonny was convinced we need Michael Jordan. And so the movie's about them trying to go get Michael Jordan on board and what ended up, what they, what the pitch was was basically they put their entire budget on one guy instead of spreading across multiple players. He relentlessly pursued Jordan and like met his mom and like just like drove out there to North Carolina to meet them and try to build a relationship. And then they didn't even show Jordan's face in the movie, which actually was pretty cool.

It was basically the whole relationship was how do I impress his mom? Because I know his mom will have my back. She's making the decisions. And so they were like, well, um, We're going to pitch him on his own signature shoe from day one. And we're going to name it after him. So it'll be the Air Jordan. It'll be a whole product line named after him.

And he ended up negotiating a royalty on every pair of Jordan sold. And that's how Michael Jordan became a billionaire, not through basketball, but through his shoes. So that's the movie part. Okay, cool. This guy, Sonny actually did a bunch of other interesting things that I thought were pretty cool. So as a marketer, I just respect this guy's hustle. So here's some of the things he did to make Nike win. He created, so he was like, all right.

We got to create like a kid strategy. It's like how do we get them while they're young? And so he created a high school All-American game. So he was like, he called it the Dapper Dan Roundball Classic. He goes throughout the country. He's like, I'm inviting you to participate. You're going to compete against, you know, the 12 best players, or whatever, 20 best players in the country.

You're invited to come do this thing in Pittsburgh or Philadelphia or some shit like that. And it was like, and so he flies them out. there and he puts this thing together. Now he's got the players. So then he goes and tells all the college coaches, hey, if you're scouting, you need to come to this round ball class. You can see all the best high school players at once. And so then college coaches start coming. So now players are like, oh, if I want to get seen by college coaches, I got to get

to the high school all-American game. So he just like created through brute force like a conference essentially that would bring together the kind of the core supply and demand. And then he could find at that age the best young players. And so that's how he found Kobe Bryant. That's how he found LeBron James. They were part of his high school, All-American things and his camp.

So the second thing he does is he created a summer camp for only the best players called ABCD. And this is when he was with Adidas. So this guy worked for Nike. Then he worked for Adidas. Then he worked for Reebok. So he just, this guy was just a hired assassin

that went from company to company and would just try to get them to win in their market using whatever advantages they had. And so when Nike needed something, he was like, all right, you need to get them all they're young. We're going to do this camp. But also what we're going to do is,

is we need to get college players wearing our stuff. They all wear Adidas. Because it's the most popular brand, so that's just what they choose by default or they choose converse. And so he's like, you know, why don't we,

you can't pay college athletes, but nobody's saying anything about coaches. And so he just started, he would go to the coaches and he'd be like, hey, I'm going to give you 10 grand and here's 26 pairs of shoes. Give them out,

oh, they happen to be the sizes of like most of your guys. They don't have to wear them. You get the 10 grand either way, but we sure do hope you would, you would, you would go ahead and encourage them to wear these shoes.

And so he went to Jim Beehive and he went to all the top college coaches and he basically bribed them. And it was like in this gray area where it was allowed. And in one year he just traveled. Like he would just fly city to city and he would go to the campus.

He would make the coach an offer. And at the time, they were buying this equipment for their program. They're like, our kids need equipment. So we got to buy the stuff. So he turned a cost into revenue for them and gave them free stuff.

And sure enough, all of the solder. started wearing Nike's for free. So all of a sudden, now Nike's being worn by all the best college players, and it's on TV. And in one year, he just did a land grab across the country before the other companies could react. He got all of them.

And I thought this was just like a genius, genius strategy. He started doing a amazing. How far you can go with brute force? This was a sledgehammer. This was a sledgehammer. And you can get pretty far with the sledgehammer. Then he did another thing.

He sued the NCAA. So he went to this guy, Edoban, and he was like, hey, we should sue the NCAA. They're using your name, your face, you're like this to market the tournament and all the stuff, and you're getting nothing from it. And now college players can get paid through this NIL rule, this name and likeness thing. And it's because he won the case with that lawsuit against the NCAA. That was like, you know, it happened.

The lawsuit happened the last, I don't know, five years or so. And then the rule came into effect like a year ago or something. And so I thought that was. awesome. There was some great quotes about him. Some guy goes, when Sonny dies, he's going to sneak his way into heaven. And

when he gets through, the first thing he's going to do is he going to look for a 6-9 kid to make a deal with. And the other thing they said is, there's only one man on earth who could tell you who the best 6th grade basketball player in the country is, and it's Sonny Vaccaro. And I just love that this guy just owned his niche and just

absolutely like when balls to the wall and really built like, I don't know, tens of billions of value at least inside of Nike plus Adidas plus Reebok with these athletes. And he would have also got, so he signed Jordan. He signed, he got, he poached Kobe away from Adidas. And then he would have got LeBron to when he was at Adidas and LeBron was ready to sign. He goes, we need to offer him 10 million a year for 10 years, a hundred million dollar contract to this 18 year old kid. And Robon's ready to sign. And then Adidas gave them the 10 million, but they changed the structure last minute. They got a little

cold feet and they're like, well, we don't know if this kid's going to work out. Why don't we make it part of an incentive base? And so they offered them $7 million guaranteed and $3 million a year of incentives. And LeBron turned it down, ends up going Nike, never looked back. And like, just a huge blunder. Like basically this guy's whole life, he was fighting bureaucracy inside companies and then doing like black market and gray hat shit in the like, you know, in the streets.

And every NBA player is like no sunny, their parents no sunny because this guy was just working the streets. And like, there are certain companies that have. had this. Tinder kind of had this with, what's her name, the Whitney Wolf who started Bumble. She was kind of doing this from college campus to college campus, like going into the sorority houses and the frat houses and just brute force onboarding all the guys and girls in one campus so that Tinder was useful. And then throwing parties and doing stuff like that. And like, you need these people. These are like game-changing people for your company. I remember when

Coinbase went public, Brian Armstrong did this long thread. he did something you never see somebody do, which was company goes public. They usually just say generic stuff. He actually talked about what led Coinbase to be successful, and he called out one guy by name that wasn't his co-founder, wasn't his main investor.

It was just an employee. This guy, Dan Romero. And he's like, and basically special thanks to Dan Romero who like just kind of like brute force built our relationships with banks. And he basically got them their relationships with banking partners

and like I think maybe some stuff overseas. And it was just kind of like one of those things like, dude, I don't know how we're going to do this. I don't know. Dan, that's your mission. Send him on a mission to go do that. And Dan basically joined Coinbase as an employee. Ended up making like $100 million plus through this process. And I knew this guy.

I met him in college. He was in my class. Yeah. Didn't he, didn't you like used to make fun of him and call him a dweeb? I didn't make fun of him. But in my head, I did. He was, we took a class called computers. Again, I was going through campus looking for the easiest sounding classes.

I took getting rich. I was one class. I took another guy called computers. And in computers, they were talking about like, that's like a class person class. It's computers. And they were just talking about like the internet and like internet. I remember like they talked about net neutrality a ton. And I was like,

I don't know what the hell these guys are talking about. Like I couldn't give less of a shit about this. And there was one guy that every class had like strong opinions. Was super informed. I was like, man, who is this like teacher's pet that's just like, is he trying to impress him? I was like, no, I don't even think he's trying to impress him. I think he actually is just nerdy about.

this stuff. He just listened. Motherfucker just loves the internet. This guy wants to make out with the internet. I was just over sitting in the back of class. I was like, thank you for talking so much, Dan Romero, because I don't have to say a word in this class. And it's sort of like, revenge of the nerds in a way.

It's like jokes on you. Like this guy's passionate and enthusiasm about the internet technology is what led him early into crypto, was let him to pick Coinbase and ended up, you know, like his passion for that, let him to be a key person there. This guy made hundreds of millions of dollars probably. is retired and got to do what he loved the whole time.

And so, like, you know, I used to make fun of people who were like, you know, overly enthusiastic. And now I preach that you need, like, enthusiasm is massively underrated and more people. Dude, and he's got a super handsome headshot now on LinkedIn. Dan Romero does. You can afford a whole, you know, glow up if you get that Coinbase IPO and early Bitcoin money.

He's got great hair. This guy definitely takes him. He's a good looking guy. power hymns user and he just bought a $13 million worth of a $13 million property in Venice and another one in Park City

Dan won Yeah Dan won for sure And you can tell that he's ripped too This guy's definitely has abs Dan one Good job Dan I'm just like you just Google him and see his face You know this guy's fit

I should DM him I'll be add you to the groom jack Say no more I've seen enough to the pick Yeah you can tell by his jawline This guy's got one of those like Vs that goes down There's like junk No NFTs

Just lift up your shirt six inches I'll tell you He's qualified So Dude this guy's sunny Sounds awesome I did see the movie And they made him look like a guy

who could just put up with a whole lot of pain. That's what they made them look like. They made them look like a guy who, like, he would just get shit on constantly, and he always pulled through. That's what they made them look like. And they also made them look exhausted and they're terribly unhealthy,

which is the price to pay. That's kind of true, yeah. They made him look horrible. And if you look up photos of him, granted, he looks like he's, he was born in 1938, I think. So, like, you know, you are what you are at that point. But, like,

He definitely looks like he smoked a lot of cigarettes. 1938? That sounds very old. I looked him up on Wikipedia. I think it's 38. He's old. Wow. He's 83.

Wow. Sonny. Yeah. So he, you know, he's alive and so that's good enough. The guy's name is actually John Paul Vincent Vicaro. Quote,

he changes sunny. God damn. I, like, you have to have a nickname that everybody in your town knows you buy. That's like, to me, that's like one of the great honors of life. It's like, yeah, his name's Sean, but everybody called him sunny.

The whole life, everybody called him sunny. It's like, that's just like such a cool. I wish I had a calling card like that. That's an Italian thing. That's like I feel like all the, there's always a Sunny in the mafia movies that I watch. Yeah, he operates like a monster for sure. I like this. This is a good fine.

I saw that movie and I thought I don't want that guy's job. it sounded like an exhausting, exhausted existence. It sounded very challenging. But I did like the movie. They made Phil Knight look a little goofy, which I'm a big Phil Knight fan, so it kind of hurt my feelings. But, no, I thought it was a good movie,

and this is a good find. All right, that's it. That's the pod. Let us know who won this, the duel, the annoying blonde hair guy who went first, or the less annoying brown guy who went second. That's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.