My First Million - Drunk Business Ideas That Could Make You Millions

Episode Date: March 8, 2022

Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) share some "drunk business ideas." Ideas that sound ridiculous... but might actually work. ----- * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. ----- Show Notes: (02:25) - Very long distance girlfriend (10:00) - Extremely large beds (17:10) - HOA Court (25:30) - Business Olympics ----- 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 got my drunk ideas. Should we do some drunk ideas? Yeah, let's do it. All right. So again, to frame this, these are ideas that I had that I don't think are good, but I still want to say them. So I call it drunk ideas,

even though I didn't have them while I was drunk. I was stone cold sober, but that's my cover story. All right, so drunk idea number one is called, and you got every, you got to tell me, I think I did this before. And by the way,

one gem came out of it, which was my Lucky Water brand that I do intend to create. So, you know, some gems do come out of this. So Ben, you're a participant in this one. I need you both to give me your idea, your reaction.

What should the scale be on the reaction? Is it like, you know, you know, on a scale of sober to piss drunk or like on a scale of like, you know, horrible to good idea.

How do you want to rate these? Let's do one at ten. One to ten. All right. First idea is called very long distance girlfriend. Okay. So I had this idea

because I realized like I'm sitting there and me and my wife, we like to watch all these dating shows, right? So we watch all of is blind, we watch The Bachelor. And you watch these shows and it's sort of like, it's like the honeymoon period. And I, like, I would say most people's homes are like ours. It's like the scene is this. On screen, you see like two usually beautiful people living some kind of fairy tale date. And then like one person's kind of like, you know, there's some drama.

One person's being dramatic or one person's unsure and the other person's really good or whatever. And then if you, if you zoomed out on. the TV, you'd see a couch with usually a couple sitting like six feet apart from each other because they're so sick of each other. You know, there's like, you know, in their sweats, not dressed up with their, you know, double chin eating their popcorn and Cheetos and being like pointing at the screen and be like, oh, she's not even that hot or like, you know, oh, he's, you know, he's such a jerk and it's like judging these relationships, right?

But like there's something to this of why we like it, right? We like seeing these other relationships. But I also think it's like when we do that, we do that with you. FC, like, oh, he shouldn't have tapped out. Yeah, dude, he's such a pussy. He's so weak. He looks scared. Yeah.

Dude, he's so scared. That's why I don't like him because he's scared. It's like, yeah, it's not confident. Oh my God, there's a spider in my room. You're like, so, so yeah, there's definitely like a judgey. There's a fun in judging it. But I would also say there's a fun in the sort of fairy tale. Like I think everybody, when you're watching these shows, you sort of put yourself

in the shoes of either the person pursuing or the person being pursued, you know, you're the damsel or you're, you're the damsel or you're, you're, the prince, whatever it is. So the idea behind very long distance girlfriend is as follows. It's a service or app. I think it's just a service. I think it's just a text message. This is a phone number you put in your address book. And we give you the perfect boyfriend or girlfriend. You're never going to meet with this person. It's not even the intention. It's just somebody who's going to treat you perfectly because they're paid to do it. And so so it's like prostitution. It's like what's a prostitute? A prostitute is somebody who's paid to love.

to love you, right, to make love to you. But that's a lot. I don't want to cross that line. That's a lot of work. So this is like, you know how Tinder made dating easier because you don't have to like go date everybody? You just sort of swipe left and right easily on your phone. It kind of gave you this like flirting hit, but you didn't have to go out, put in a lot of effort. So here's what you would get if you, if you sign up for very long, very long distance girlfriend.

There's going to be a person that pretends to be your girlfriend. They're going to text you. They're going to ask how you're doing. They're going to be emotionally there for you. They're going to text you maybe photos of them. themselves. They're going to say that they want you. You're going to be like, oh, my God, this person wants me. They're never going to nag you. They're never going to get mad at you. They're never going to get jealous. They're never going to do any of the things that real human beings do that are the

downsides of relationships. Only the upside. None of the downside. So for girls, you're going to get Prince Charming on the other side. He's going to be complimentary. He's going to be thoughtful. He's going to be there for you. And for guys, you're going to get sort of what you want as the perfect girlfriend. and we're just going to hire call centers of just dudes, and they're going to behave as your very long-distance boyfriend or girlfriend. All right. Give me your ratings. I'm going to start with Sam.

I give that a 10. I think that's great, to be honest. I think that surely, like, if we went to adult friendfinder.com or something like that, is that what they do? What is adult friend finder? Is that like webcam or? You're asking the wrong guy. I don't fall for these trick questions.

I have no idea. Yeah, I mean, this is brilliant. How many friends do you have who you've only met via texting? And you've, like, I've got like a bunch of friends who I've only ever texted. Yeah, exactly. Now most of my life is people I only text with. Maybe I knew them before. There's a bunch of people that are like, I don't know, just through Twitter or through, you know, the podcast or through friends or through friends.

We get into a group chat together. I know their personality. They're cool. Like, that's my actual friend, even though I never met them. So why not? Or even heard their voice or talk to them like through voice. And in fact, I have no desire to really meet. them. Like, I don't want to go out of my way to go, like, say, hang out with them. I'm getting all the

benefits that I want out of just the texts. Yeah, so anyway, I have a lot of friends like that, and I consider them there to be really close friends. I can't tell you how tall they are or what their voice sounds like, but I love them. And so because of that, I'm in. What do you think, Ben? I give it a one. It sounds diabolical. It sounds a one zero or a one, a big slow roll for a 10. there's this genre of idea of Sean business idea that essentially is I went and watched an episode of Black Mirror and said actually that's a good idea and this is one of those

but that's a great idea though are good ideas yeah that's actually where do you think they're getting their ideas they go to the great idea pile and then they take a great idea and they say okay let's put this to its logical extreme where it actually turns bad like have you remember that remember that TV show in Disney called Smart Home

where it's like a smart home. It's like Alexa, basically. Yeah. Yeah. It's a great idea. And the smart home ended up being the mom and the wife. So it kind of is like what we're describing now. So I think that like-

Yeah, I haven't watched her. I think her is something like this. It's like a voice assistant that he kind of falls in love with. I haven't seen that. But again, it's not even a fall in love. It's just, dude, it's fun to get certain types of text messages. Right. It's fun to get a funny chat text from a friend.

It's fun to get something interesting texted to you. That's kind of what the hustle does. The hustle just sends me some interesting stuff every morning. The Milk Road tries to do that. Here's some interesting crypto stuff, right? Where you're your friend, but I'm not really your friend. I'm just sending you some cool stuff. You like getting that message.

But that's for the work part of our life. What about the personal side? Ben, are you telling me you would, I mean, I know what you're going to say. You're going to say no. But let me just put it out there anyways. You're telling me you would not want to be getting texts from a woman who's so into you. And it's not cheating. You're never going to do anything.

It's not even a real person. You're never going to see him. Nothing like that. Especially if you're single, right? Like, I'm not talking about, like, we're all, I think we're all married Ben, right? So it's not for us. This is for 25-year-old me, not 30, I don't know how old I am, 34-year-old me. Yeah.

I, obviously, we're not the target demographic, all of us, because we're all married. Yeah. But having said that, like, even if it was just like as a friend type of thing, I, like, I already have actual friends that I don't text back. The last thing I need is another thing that's literally just a person to not text back. I don't need another one of those in my life. But- Fair enough. Maybe it's a bad idea.

But no, no, no. As a business idea, of course it's a good idea. Of course it's like this has money-making potential. As a thing that is good for humans, you know, that's why I gave it a one. I'm not in the good for humans. I just felt like I had to be the conscience here. I had that one person had to be like, John, you know this is, okay, okay. It's good.

You know, I'm the devil. you're the angel on the shoulders. We have to be there, yin and yang. That's how it works. That's good. Yeah, you know,

if you want good things, you should, you know, go eat your vegetables, work out, you know, wake up and pray, do all the things,

right? Like, that's cool. Don't invest in Russian companies. Yeah, don't invest in Russian companies. Don't have the very long distance girlfriend's service for 1999 a month. Don't,

um, you know, don't use TikTok. Don't do any of the things that you do, probably. All right. Next idea. It sounds related, but it's not.

It's the huge beds company. You kind of alluded to this earlier. I've been thinking about the luxuries of life that I care about. We all know what I do. Private chef, personal trainer at my house. I live like a king. The one thing I don't live like a king with is my bed is only king-sized. But a true king would not have a king-sized bed.

True kings have what's called a emperor-sized bed. Have you ever heard of these? No. So athletes have these. I saw these because there's a woman who has this business. It's already a great business. There's a woman who makes beds for NBA athletes. And so Shaq has a 24 foot bed, I believe, of like 24 foot like in diameter.

And, you know, a whole bunch of ambulance players do this. They have 12 foot diameter beds, 18 foot, things like that. The room, it's like, it looks ridiculous. But the whole family can sleep on there and still have their space. Like, you know, just to get to your spot on the bed, you kind of have to crawl there like a small child just to your pillow like because you there was such a long runway and so I've always saw these and I thought these look super comfortable and I've decided I want a very huge bed and I realized I wouldn't know where to go buy it so my idea is a ddc brand called huge beds

name tbd we need a we need a better name no no no keep it it's like it's like the it's like the company big ass fans yeah it should be big ass beds okay that's the name as beds big ass beds for bad people. Marketing slogan included with my drunk ideas. All right. So big ass beds. And basically it's just a D to C brand that sells you this, right? Like these are very expensive.

So these run for like $20,000 on average, I think is like the cost of these like humongous oversized beds. And that's why athletes buy them because they're a NBA players are already very tall. Plus they got a lot of money. So it's like the sweet spot for them. And this woman who they buy it from is one woman and she just sells it all through her Instagram, basically. It's like some player posts a picture of his bed, tags the woman, people go look at hers. She has like an Instagram full of huge beds. People go buy from her.

So I think that's just like a niche that somebody could go own big ass beds. And I think, you know, okay, athletes is one, but we need to find a new niche. We may need to go into a new sport or maybe it's business nerds who are trying to optimize their sleep. And it's like, you know, you make up some molo jumbo about this. Having a big bed is not going to make you sleep better unless you're like eight feet tall. Have you tried it? Well, have you been in a...

Maybe it's like a free-range chicken. Maybe when you're not confined by this, you know, like maybe you have anxiety all night because you might fall off the bed, right? Maybe just being able to stretch out is nice, right? Maybe not being so cramped is nice. I don't know. Seems like there's some benefits. There definitely maybe is, but definitely probably isn't. I mean, haven't you been in a California king-sized bed before by yourself?

I have a California king-size bed before by yourself. California King size bed, yeah. You have a California King and it's not big enough for you? A California King is like the same size as a King. It's just longer instead of wider. It's the same overall size. It's just longer. So it's not the same overall size, but yeah.

No, no, it's the same size, but it's like less wide, more long. Are the other ones more wide less long? You have a California King. Lengths with, baby. That's a huge bed if you ask me. I think that's big. Is it just you and your wife in the bed or do your kids stay there sometimes? My kids stay there and my dog.

So it's like, you know, we got a full house in the bed most nights. I think that likely there's another thing that should be addressed than making a bed bigger. Yeah, like, don't let it. I would call it. How about we call it? I thought we create a little kid bed company or a dog bed. Yeah, or we'll call it a crib or we can make like a dog bed business. Also a good idea.

I think maybe those are the solutions to your problem instead of. making a 20 by 20, a 400 square foot bed. Ben, what do you got here? It seems like you might be on my side. Sam is so wrong on this. I have a king-sized bed. It is a good size. But is good enough for you?

No. I don't want to be anywhere near my wife when I sleep. I want to have to shout for here to hear me. There's always just some little toe poking me in the middle of the night. And if you could just offer me, I never have to worry about that A. B, you're right, Sam. Is it going to actually give me better sleep? Probably not.

Is it going to be an amazing experience to just like crawl onto this massive piece of luxury that is 20 feet long? Yes, it sounds like an amazing experience. And I want it. I want to feel that. And you spent a third of your day on this bed, right? You spend an eight hours on this bed. Why not? The second that you said, like a 20 foot wide bed, I just knew I wanted it.

My heart knows that I want that experience. When you see the pictures, when you see the picture, you're like, oh, this looks lavish as fuck. All right. So do you guys, one question, do you guys sleep with a pillow in between your legs? Of course. I sleep with a maternity pillow. Same.

So I have a body, I have a body pillow. And so I like basically spoon the pillow because I need my, my knees to be, I can't have my knees to touch it. Well, that's just straight ergonomics. That's just like, that's proven. That's not even like us being weird. That's us being scientists. So the reason I use my wife's pregnancy pillow is science.

Do you really, you use her? What does she use? I bought two. So I bought her. I bought her one because my buddy, my buddy told me this. My buddy goes, congrats. You guys are pregnant. Fantastic.

So happy for you. Hey, get your phone out and go to this website. You're going to buy this Swedish pillow. It's $200, but trust me, best pillow ever. And I was like, oh my God, like never been so intrigued by a sales pitch. Took out my phone, ordered it right there. I'll never forget where I was. I was in an Uber in Las Vegas when this happened.

And I thought, All right. And it says like five weeks to ship. I was like, oh, my God. This must be fantastic if it's like such a shitty experience. And so it arrives. It's amazing. My wife uses it. She's like, it's good.

And I was like, only good. He really built it up. Let me try it out. I try it for a nap. So good. I order myself one. And now she never just uses any of them. I use both of them actually.

And I, it's fantastic. What's it called? I'll have to look it up. It's like some Swedish name that. I don't really know. Yeah, I'm a big fan of those. I'll buy one. I just had like a really long pillow that I just kind of spoon, but maybe I should buy one of these.

It is called, oh, here it is, B, B, B, Bugme, dot com. So the two letters, BB, then hug me.com. B, B, B, hug me. And it's designed in Scandinavia. So not sweet, a Scandinavian. And just look at it. It just looks like it's going to be good. And then it is good.

It's really great, really great pillow. All right. I'm going to buy one of these. Wow. This looks huge. Yeah, it's not that big, but it's like kind of like, it's like got like beads inside or whatever. So it's sort of like forms to your body. It's great.

All right. I'm on board with this. I bet these guys crush it, by the way. Yeah, I can imagine. The thing's really, I think it's pretty expensive. It's like $200 for one pillow, which is great sight. A lot. All right.

So here's my next drunk idea. I got two more for you. HOA court. Okay. So do you guys have an HOA where you live? No, I'm, no. one time if I remember correctly Sean you had an HOA just for a duplex didn't you yeah yeah me and me and our other person we had a HOA with an HOA fee but we both as soon as we bought the place

we were like yeah we're not going to put $400 into this every every day right like and we're both just agreeing we're not putting $400 a month into this you have an HOA Ben yeah and I kind of hate it so my HOA has been harassing me lately I've been getting letters so I rent I rent my current place. And we live in this neighborhood. And there's some Karen in this neighborhood that just hates me. And she's like, oh, I don't like that you, you know, leave the trash bins out a little, you know, an extra day. I don't like that you work out on the like street and the driveway. Like you, no exercise. No exercise equipment is allowed. I'm like, what? Is that? Are you exaggerating? Really? No, no. There's three complaints. There's that. There's that. And then there's another one,

which is, we get like water delivered, like, you know, like the kind of like a water dispenser. So you get these jugs, just five-gallon jugs. And so they're like, kind of like, they're like, the guy delivers it to our door, but he tucks it behind this pillar. So if you're looking at our house, you can't even see it. You'd have to like walk up to our, like, walk halfway up our thing to go see the thing. And so somebody just keeps complaining to, and our landlord's like, dude, what's going on? Is it look?

And he lives in another state. So he's like, what is this? Like, can you just, are you like fucking up things? I'm like, no, I don't do anything wrong. Okay, the trash I do leave out a little bit. But, you know, besides that, it's not a big deal. Like when you're working out the street, is it like, just you and your trainer and what are you just throwing a medicine ball or something? No, we're doing

lunges. It's like, dude, I can lunge in the street. There's nothing. Or like, we have a battle rope that we'll put on a, you know, art, but that's my driveway. Dude, I can do what I want in my driveway. And so in my neighborhood's like mostly really old people that like don't really do it do much. So, you know, I get it. But I'm not disruptive. Anyway, so, so this H-OA thing. And so I first was like, I was like, okay, I have two choices. I can either just quietly resolve the issues, just listen, just move the trash cans in, put the battle rope inside the garage, only move it out when I want, and water jugs. I guess I could pull them inside the door.

It kind of takes up space, but, you know, no harm done. No, you cannot do those. No, no, no, no. No, number one is not happening. Right, right. This is war. And so I went to war. So I was like, you know what?

I'm going to waste my time and energy fighting this HOA. Who is this HOA after all? I demanded names. I demanded to speak to somebody. I said they can call me direct next time they have a problem. I said, here's my number. I put it out there. I started to, I said, I started to go take photos of other houses.

I said, I'd like to file some complaints myself. Oh, what does this children swing at the front yard? This person has. Violation. Why is this person's garbage cans outside? Violation. Why is this person riding their bicycle exercise equipment on the street? Violation.

And so I started fighting back. And I started saying, is it because I'm the only brown guy in the neighborhood? I'm just curious. I was waiting for the race thing. You had to do that. I can only wonder what's so different because again, I see violations all around me now. And so I'm, I am based, but there's no, my complaints are falling on deaf ears and I'm wasting a bunch of time.

I need HOA court. It's a Judge Judy like show streamed onto Netflix and or YouTube where I can go present my case and it's a place for petty people to do their thing. And that's my pitch. It's actually a show. It's a TV show, HOA court. Or petty court? Petty. Yeah, maybe Petty Court. Maybe Petty is the right way to do it.

I think that's beautiful. But isn't this, do HOA people not have a, what's that called where before you go to court, you can hire an arbitration. Mediation. Mediation, yeah. Is there, what do you do with HOA? How do you know who wins? You can't win. That's the problem. H.O.A is this like, you know, ambiguous force that just controls you, even though you, you, you know, you pay your hard-earned American money. to live in this place, to buy this land, to live free, but the freedom's not there. And that's why we need petty court to bring back our freedoms and to put these petty people back in their place. Do you just like reply all to an email? Well, no, it's like they use these agents like cowards. There's like a random HOA email address with like one person behind it.

It's like, no, who's complained? Is the majority of the neighborhood complaining? maybe it's a democracy. Maybe we need 51% complaints for me to change the way I do things. Why does one person get to change my way of living? Right? That sounds a little crazy to me. So I just feel like there's no justice. And then when there's no justice, I can't sleep. And that's my idea. So I want to think deeper on this because I actually think that it's totally not worth your time to fight this. This is a fight. This fight. Oh, it's certainly not worth my time. No, it is definitely. These fights are worth our, this is what living is for. I love doing this stuff.

I love fighting with neighbors and like trying to win and like rub their face in it like a dog who pees inside. I love this. And so is there a way? I don't believe that's considered the best practice anymore, by the way, for dogs. For dog training. I can deal with HOA. I don't want PETA coming after us. Is there is there a way that you can set a trap and figure out who it is?

Hmm. I don't know how I would do that. Oh, I know. I put a unique letter under the doorstep of everybody in the neighborhood. I say, listen, I heard about the complaint and I understand. In fact, I'm sorry that I did what I did. You know, I would just love to make it up to you. What's your favorite flavor?

Chocolate or vanilla. I'll send you a treat because you were right and I was wrong. And I just need you to know that you were so right with your HOA complaint. So just shoot me your, hey, just text me your favorite flavor. Honeypot. Gotcha. That's actually pretty brilliant. And you could do one of two things.

You could either say this person's a flavor. This person, it's a what size t-shirt you are. Or you could just get a bunch of different Google numbers and see which one. Oh, no. Even better. Google, I say, hey, have you guys seen this asshole who lives over here? Guy keeps putting his, he keeps doing lunges in the street. Am I right?

Like violence in our neighborhood. I think we should escalate this. he's not listening. I believe it was you who made the complaint, but maybe I have that wrong. If it was you, I'd like to discuss steps of how we might escalate this issue to make sure that jerk goes down.

Bring them in. Bring them close before I put them away. I would love for you to do this. How many people live in the neighborhood do you think? How many people are part of an HOA? No, it's the neighborhood. It's every defaulted to the end. It's probably, I don't know, like 100, maybe 60 houses.

100 house or something like that. It's a lot of time and energy. You may have to like shut down one of my businesses just to do this. You don't think you know who's doing this? I have no idea. Really? It hurts me because I know there's somebody who walks by smiling at me while I'm working out in my garage. I just work out in my garage with the door open.

Just have some air, right? Like, there's no big deal. I'm allowed to do that in my home gym. You can't change your behavior. You have to continue doing it. Well, I've already bent, but, you know, I've brought the water bottles inside and I move the trash hands. You should buy lawn chairs and put them in your front lawn and just hang out there without a shirt consistently. I think that's what the move has to be.

That's a gift to the neighborhood. All right. Last idea. Last idea. All right. The NBA All-Star game just happened. And every sport has this and baseball has the home run derby. Football has the Pro Bowl.

NBA has the dunk contest and the All-Star game. Why does this exist for business? Is that a thought that's ever crossed your mind? Why don't we have the tech all-star game? Why don't we have the business all-stars? I feel like there's an opportunity here to bring together the who's-who. I'm just going to use tech for now. So bring together the who's-who-of-tech, just the all-stars, honor them,

get them to compete for our entertainment, and just make a weekend out of it, right? Why are we treating this like the sport that it is? So here's how this might work. Tech All-Star game is basically a hackathon. And I get Zuck and I get Larry Page and Sergey, and I go get founders of different mega companies. And they're going to perform. It's going to be live streamed onto YouTube. And they're going to have to build something.

They get 24 hours to build something. So you have an all-star designer. You got Johnny Ive working with Mark Zuckerberg all of a sudden. You got Brian Chesky working with, you know, whoever, you know, Sundar or whatever. You get pair of these guys up into random combinations. And they're going to have to do a hackathon. they're going to have to build something and demo it and somebody wins the trophy for building something cool. Because you've seen that like Darmesh loves to hack and build little projects.

I remember when COVID happened, Kevin Sistram, the guy from Instagram, he built this dashboard that was measuring the viral coefficient and the spread because he's like, hey, these politicians are just like making statements and we have no source of truth, no dashboard that tells us how this thing's spreading and how it's not per city. And that's what we need to look at. And so he built this dashboard there. And I just thought, huh, I wonder what would happen if you unleashed these types of brains, the All-Stars in a little competition of their own, a little hackathon of their own. What do you think of this idea? I think if you can, if it's, if the idea is like an award thing, then I think that's the worst idea you've ever had. I think that's a horrible idea. If you think if it's like a hackathon, no one will ever do that.

But I think it's an interesting exercise. And here's my question to you. If you took, let's say, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, the Google guys. and the CEO and you had them do a hackathon, do you think any of them are actually still capable of making anything? Like making it. But it wouldn't be them on their own.

So you'd pair them with like, every team is an all-star engineer, so an all-star technology person, an all-star designer, and then an all-star CEO product visionary person. No, that's bullshit. You want one-on-one. It's just that, like for example,

I feel so. Like Bezos can't probably build anything. He might, you know, he's going to go, like a blog. Well, like if it was, if it was like you and me, it's like you guys like you got to go make like a business in the next like a week. I'm very confident that just me on my own, I could build something that makes money.

Do you think that what are the Google guys, Sergey and Larry Page? Do you think that they're capable of actually making anything? Maybe. Like I know Zuck can. So Zuck, when Snapchat came out, I remember that he recognized the threat that was Snapchat so early on and created Facebook poke. He literally wrote code into the Facebook poke. Like they're their competitor that they,

I think they released it in nine days or like 19 days or something ridiculous. And he was one of the lead engineers actually writing code in the project. Now he doesn't normally do that, but that was like the story at least. Do you think? I think he could. I think very few others could. I remember.

So Mike, Mike Birch, who built Bebo, he was a programmer, right? He's a programmer's programmer. He built four or five startups that were all interesting and successful.

And we did a happy. week and I invited Michael. I was like, Michael, come hang out. Don't just be Mr. Investor, you know, far away. Like, come hang with us. Live in our, like, we're staying in your cabin. So like, just come hang with us. And he came and I was like, you want to, you want to build something? We're all building these little like, you know, apps. And he's like, well, um, don't exactly know JavaScript. Like the languages I know aren't really used anymore. And I don't really remember a lot of it. And I haven't coded in years. My machine is not even set up to do it. So, you know, I don't even know what I could build at this point.

And so he cooked us dinner instead. And then later he got back into programming. He's like, oh, yeah, like, okay, now I got my machine set up. I'm using Python. I'm learning the new languages instead of the old stuff. But he, like, ramped up over time. And now he loves to code. He codes all the time.

But I think when I put him on the spot when he hasn't been doing it, no, he was, it was tough for him to just like go build something, even though he's an engineer. Let me tell you something really quick. This isn't that shocking because I didn't exactly own a tech company. But I owned a company that made tens of millions of dollars on the internet. when you use words like Python and JavaScript or whatever you said, I have literally no idea what those are. Like for real, I don't know how programming works.

Try to guess. What is Python? Well, it's like a language, but I don't know, like, I don't know what you use it for. I don't know what it does. When people talk about like Ruby on Rails, I'm like, so there's like a Java on Rails? Like how, like is there like, I literally don't know what the word means.

What are these rails you speak of? Yeah. Or they'll be like, well, this is CSS and this is HTML. And this is, I'm like, I don't know, like, is one of those, like, the outdoor sighting of the home? And like, like, I do like an analogy. I still, to this day, I have no idea what they mean. This is like when I told you, I go into home improvement. They're like, okay, so is it a dry wall or?

And I'm like, it's not wet. Like, what do you mean? Like, can you give me four or five types of walls with some photos and I can tell you which one it looks most like? Can we do like a prison lineup here? And I'll point to the wall that looks most like my wall. Like when people talk about the stuff, so the way that we worked at my company was I would sit with the engineer and I would just draw. I'm like the website, it probably should look something like this and I'll write the words that it should say. And once you click this button, let me draw the second thing that you should see.

And I would give it to them and it would work somehow. And to this day, I have no idea how any of those things work. Yeah. And who needs to. I used to be like, oh, I wish I knew how to code. I'd be so much better if I knew how to code. and I would love to learn how to code. I'm still, actually, I'm still like kind of at night.

I'm taking this like, you know, Udeme course on Python or something like that. And then our buddy Suli was like, he's like, yeah, people say that. And he's like, I used to know how to code. He's like, he's like, dumbest thing ever. Who cares how to code? He's like, you could pay somebody here.

Here's a guy in India, he can code. Whatever you want, you just tell him, he'll do it. And he's like, why are you so obsessed with knowing why? I actually totally disagree with him. I think that the key is at least you knew how to do it. So then, and if you don't want to do it anymore, that's fine. But I actually think that when there's been times where I've talked to my developer and in my head, I'm like, well, you just got to click this button and you see this. And they're like, well, you don't even have to click the button, you know, like, this technology. The way it works is you can, I'm like, that works. That's a possibility. Like, I don't even know how to code. I wish I knew how to code. So I knew what because as someone who doesn't know how to code, I'm like, how do you, how did you, I don't even know that's possible. Like, you know what to mean? It's like asking someone in 1800 to like explain to them how text messages work. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

what the hell is a phone, let alone. You know what I mean? And that's how I feel sometimes when we're talking about coding. So I think that's true. I actually agree and disagree with what he said. So I agree in the sense that I used to think, I used to have this story in my head that if I knew that, then I'd be able to do so much more.

And I don't believe that that's true. I think that anything I wanted to do I could do by just, you know, hiring one of many, many programmers out there or using a no code tool. It is actually not holding me back. And I can get the same result, whether I do it or not. The part I disagree with is I think it's really awesome to be able to have an idea in your head and be able to make it happen yourself because there's a huge lossiness in trying to explain to something else. Explain something that's in your head that's kind of fuzzy to somebody else.

Having them download your fuzzy picture, then they output it in an even fuzzier way. It's like I came a telephone and it comes out very different. A lot of times like when I write something or like if somebody says, all right, can you help me with this email? I'm like, yeah, but you've got to give me the keyboard. And they're like, well, no, like I'll type it. And I'm like, no, you don't understand. Like, I don't just think of the email. I write the email.

And while I'm writing it, I think of what to say. Like, I can't create content in my head. I create it while I'm doing it. And I think most great things that get created are like that. You're building it. And while you're building it, you're sort of like figuring out what you want to build and like playing with the idea live. And that's what gets separated when you're not the builder yourself.

And so I, I am jealous that I don't get to do that when it comes to building apps. And let me ask you one more question. So let's just say that we took. some of the big folks. I actually, I won't use Elon because he's proven it. But like you take the guy who started Snapchat, Evan, I think. Evan Spiegel, yeah. Zuck, the Google folks, Bezos.

Maybe not Bezos because he's also proven it. But you take them and you strip away like what they've done. And they're the same age, but, you know, they've just been like an insurance agent their whole life. Do you think, in one scenario, do you think that they could see? accomplish something great. And then on the other side, let's just say that they decided at the same time when they were young, 19s starting Facebook, let's just say that like, you know, instead of Facebook, I'm going to focus on like music or, or this like music app, like still tech, but just like a slightly different version. Do you think that they would be even remotely as big

and successful as they as they are? So the second question I think is much easier to answer, which is I think all of those people would be very successful by any like kind of objective measure, but would they be people that we know their name, we talk about them and their, you know, 100 billionaire, you know, status? No, you know, I do not think that's true. I think luck plays a part in the magnitude of the success, but not the probability of success. So I think all of them, the probability of success for them is all 90 plus percent. They would all be good at what they do, positive impact, you know, make millions of success. of dollars over their career and be like considered top of their field and whatever field they

go to. The magnitude of success, the fact that they end, you know, Basis ends up being worth hundreds of billions of dollars, that I think is much more luck of the bounce on which opportunity you took versus others. So yeah. So that's kind of my answer to the second. What would you say? I agree.

I think that, so for example, there's this guy named David Karp. You know who David Karp is? He's the Tumblr guy, right? he invented Tumblr and Tumblr basically sold to Yahoo I think for a billion was it was it a billion it's sold for a lot of money but he's totally then they shut it down tumbler's totally not existent anymore and he uh he doesn't I don't even know what he does he just he's not relevant and I think that a guy like him who I've seen talk and I've heard and I've read his writing he's pretty brilliant and I'm like man if tumbler had not sold or if you were working at something else I think you could

have been way better. Another one is the guy who created Meetup. Scott, I think his name is. He is amazing, too. But Meetup is not that big of a, it wasn't that big. It wasn't that interesting. I think if that guy would have worked on something else, it actually would have been significantly more successful. And some of these guys, it's kind of like they're Lance Armstrong and they're riding the two to France in a mountain bike or with a flat tire. It's like, man, that was needlessly hard. You could have been way better if you just picked a different thing. That's the level 10. hustle level 10 skill level six opportunity right meet up to me is like a level six opportunity it was just like a really hard space to go into he did the best of anybody who went into that space we all

know the name because of that reason but meetup just wasn't as big as not meeting your friends in real life and only talking to them online through facebook right like facebook was just a far larger opportunity and i don't think it was that zuck knew that so i don't think it's that they're so kind of like um big brain that they just they filter out bad idea of it is a lot Like best idea. I think, you know, like there's a lot of text messages that get leaked from Zuck early on. And he was, he thought Wirehog was going to be the real thing. He was like, you know, still debating.

I don't know if I should do Facebook when Facebook was like already a thing and working. And he's like, he's like, I think, you know, this stuff that we're doing right now is going to really help us when we do Wirehog, which is like a file transfer protocol that he just thought might be bigger. And, you know, obviously at some point he recognized, no, this is the opportunity. Let me do this. but like it's not like up front. He just said, I analyzed 100 opportunities and I've identified the one that's going to be this app that has like billions of users. I don't believe that that's true at all. I think you sort of look into the size of the opportunity and the era that you were born.

You know, these guys, if they were born before the tech wave, they might have just been the best blacksmith in town and not had like any of the tools that let you become a hundred billionaire because there was no leverage available to you, you know, 100 years ago or whatever. Yeah. I uh by the way Michael Chandler and Justin Geichi they uh they fought like three months ago these are two UFC guys and they're both known for us for kind of being like big meatheads who just stand in the middle and bang and hit each other really hard and they don't they're just they're just kind of crazy and Justin Geichie at the end said something amazing he goes I love the he had just suffered this like three round war where they're banging each other in the head as hard as I can and you feel sad because you're like this guy is going to brain damage and at the end he goes

what just happened, I love it. He goes, I feel like I was born in the wrong era. I should have been a Roman gladiator because I would have loved to fight to the death in front of all you people. And I heard that. It gave me chills. I was like, I believe you. You and I are not the same. You're crazy. Like, you are built to be a warrior. And sometimes I think about that. I'm like, who today, like, I think like, who was like Alexander the Great? If we put him in like today's era, like would he just be like too brutish and we'd be like, dude, you're an idiot. bounce. Like, get out of here, you dumb idiot. Or like, if Napoleon came into play nowadays, like, would we just kind of like a dating app? Yeah, like what would like, what would like the gladiators of then be working on now? Like, would they just like, well, let's ask our historian,

Ben, you study these guys. What do you think? If you transplanted Alexander the Great or Napoleon into this era or Edison, would he be like, what are you, a dating app? Really? That's so stupid. Or would he think that that's the coolest thing ever. And he goes, I wish I could have done this. I doubt Edison would be into dating apps. But I like, I was, On my Alexander the Great episode, one of the points I made is I was just reading this book about Alexander the Great. And it talked about a contract that he negotiated with one of his contractors, one of his suppliers to move their baggage train from one area to another. And I was just like, oh, this is like not that different. Like he had contracts that he had to negotiate and he had suppliers who provided his weapons and like logistics.

And he just contracted them out. and he had people in charge of the contracts and had basically kind of the same organization that CEOs have. So I think like, yeah. So Alexander the Great, I think he'd be a, his personality, he'd probably be like a CEO. Edison would be like an entrepreneur, kind of technical, but moves out of it like a Zuck. Like, yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. I think about that all the time about like what like the, you know, people who dominate

from hundreds of years ago, what would they be like today? And vice versa. I'm like, dude, if Zuck didn't learn how to use a computer, like, would that guy have just been a dork like in the 1800s? Like, could he even have survived the plague? Like, you know what I mean? And so I think about that all the time. Cool. Guys, I got to run. All right. End the episode.