My First Million - Just found out my neighbor’s business sold for $450M

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

Get our Business Monetization Playbook: Episode 668: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk about the story behind Muscle Milk, Scott Galloway's bet against FTX, and how Bill Ackman spent $460M in 4 hours.  — Show Notes:  (0:00) The untold Muscle Milk story (16:41) Timelines of your heroes (19:43) Having a social agenda (22:29) Shaan pitches Sam a business (38:58) Scott Galloway buys FTX claims (47:17) The value of having a too hard pile (55:18) Bill Ackman spends $460M in 4 hours — Links: • Muscle Milk - https://www.musclemilk.com/  • Flavor Insights - https://flavorinsights.com/  • Hormel - https://www.hormel.com/  • Arfur Rock - https://x.com/ArfurRock  — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com  • Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents. • Mercury - Need a bank for your company? Go check out Mercury (mercury.com). Shaan uses it for all of his companies! Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth • Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/ My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

I'm talking about barber, and he tells me this story that's pretty crazy about muscle mill. 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. He's got my hair. And he knows I have the podcast. Every time I go in for a haircut, he just gives me research. And it's great.

Dude, my handyman knows I have the podcast. And he always asked me what stocks he should buy. And I'm like, that's not the point, bro. He thinks for Jim Kramer. Yeah, he's like, so what stocks should I buy? I'm like, I don't know. I don't know. Don't ask me that.

Just change the lightball, please. If he asked you, like, you know, what's the best way to increase my testosterone right now using an illicit drug? I feel like that is what he should be asking you. Clearly, he's not a listener. What can I buy from a forum that will make my tendons stronger? Sam has answers to those types of questions. Yeah, I'm like, do you want to know some really cool subredits or an illegal place to download books? I got you, bro.

All right. Go ahead. I'm talking to my barber and he's like, dude, you know whose hair I was cutting? He goes, he's your neighbor. I'm my neighbor. And he goes, yeah, the guy lives just down the street from you. It's the family that started muscle milk. So they started back in 1998.

And it actually started because he bought a subbrand called Sidomax from his employer. It's not what ended up working, but I think it's a hilarious starting point. Yeah. It's sort of like how SpaceX started because he wanted a set. send like a small plant to Mars. And now he's like, you know, build like a trillion dollar company doing this. You know, what's the colostrum? I get so many ads on, on. Colostrum, good stuff. Dude, and I don't, is it like from a animal or a human? It's from a cow, yeah. Damn, so I'm like depriving some newborn cow from, you know, like her fresh milk. Well, that's how

all, have you ever seen how milk is made? It's pretty insane. No. No, no. I don't, I don't, made, is messed up. Is it just tons of devices that hook onto you like an alien? All right, this is, this is my wife's vegan, so she's forced me to, like, go down this road to, like, acknowledge what goes on. Here's how a lot of milk is made. I can't say all, but I think this is, like, the mainstream way. They impregnate a cow artificially. Literally, a dude sticks his hand and then, like, artificially inseminates a cow.

Gets the cow pregnant. Cow has a baby. Baby is then ripped away from the cow, but placed nearby so that the mom could hear. the crying and will produce more milk and then they take the milk. Yeah, I mean, that's sad. Fucked up. I hate that. What kind of podcast is this?

Yeah, I literally drink a sad-ass vegan podcast is this? I drink a glass of whole milk just last night. And now I regret it. Back to muscle milk. Yeah. Okay, so muscle milk, not actual milk, it's a supplement. And it starts out as powder. You put in a drink.

And he's like, cool. I think bodybuilders are into this. they're willing to drink this kind of chalky, nasty drink. And he buys in, and basically it's a family business. So it's Greg Pickett and his kids are involved with it. And what's cool about this business is years later, Muscle Milk becomes a household brand. They end up selling the thing for $450 million. I'll make almost half a billion dollars off this muscle milk thing.

The guy lives down the street. They basically started this as a cul-de-sac company, meaning he lives in one house. the son lives in another house, the sister, his daughter lives in another house, and they all just live in one cul-de-sac. Sounds awesome. The kids play together,

and then they just built this behemoth that way. Like, isn't this insane? That is badass. That is badass. That was, like, inspiring to me. It's just like a family, like you've heard of a family business, but dude, just imagine the cul-de-sac business.

I'm kind of inspired by this very much in the vein of thinking of, find the people you love and do life with them. Like, so how did it win? Wait, really quick. Have you seen Landman, the oil show? Hell yeah, I've seen Landman. I might have wore a cowboy hat yesterday, just feeling a little Billy Bob Thornton myself. I haven't seen it, but this clip I just saw makes me want to watch it. But basically Jerry Jones comes on and Jerry Jones gives this like amazing acting performance where he talks about the importance of working with this family and how he's proud of his wealth and his real estate. He's part of his, the cowboys. But you know what? He's proud of most. is that I got to spend time with my kids and we work together.

And that's why they're here at my deathbed because they loved me and we got to spend a whole bunch of time together. And I heard that speech and I was all in. For one, I was all in. And two, Jerry Jones, who would have thought? He, like, had tears in his eyes. I'd not think he could act like that. Somebody was saying they're like,

I think this is such a good performance because he's not acting. I think all of this is just true for him and he just said the truth, which is great. By the landman, fantastic show. Yeah, it was such a good scene. All right. So tell me about milking muscles. Milken muscles.

All right. So they start the business pretty humble plan. They bought this, like, kind of supplement. It's powder. You mix into drinks. And they were like, look, if bodybuilding enthusiasts drink this, this would be great. We think we can make this more mainstream. But we don't really know how.

We just kind of are believers in the general idea. And they were like, look, if this thing ever got to like, 18 million in sales, that would be, like, imagine that. That would be crazy. And that was like at the dinner table talk. By the time they sell, this thing is doing over 200 million in revenue and about 60 million a year in profit before they sold. So they had built like a really successful company. How do they do it? They eventually, and what I love about these stories is you hear about the story and you're like, you nod your head. You're like, yeah, that makes sense how that happened. but then you look at the timeline and sometimes I'll force myself to literally draw out the timeline.

So it'd be like, all right, 9, 10, 98, they start the company. And then I'll draw 99, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004. It's like 2004 is when they actually made the product that hit, which is the ready to drink like we've all seen, you know, the muscle milk carton. And so you, when you hear that, you're like, okay, cool, 2004, then it really took off and you just sort of read the numbers and the revenue ramp and it looks good. But then you think you zoom in and you force your stuff. to look at that like five or six year time period and you're like there's not they don't even talk about what they were doing during that time because it's just like the forgotten the forgotten grinding out years of trying to make shit happen and staying in the game long enough to get lucky and what were

they doing they were just selling they were just trying to sell and they were selling to like really small niches but ever expanding out of that niche and eventually he has an insight the dad has an insight. And the inside is basically like, hey, you know what? Flavor matters. And he's like, if more people are going to drink this, it's going to be because I, can't I get this to taste like dessert? And he realized that the initial market they were looking at, which was bodybuilders, they took pride in drinking nasty shit. And so anytime you try to make like a fruity, better tasting thing, sweeter thing, they almost kind of rejected it because it felt less hardcore and they were super hardcore. And that's who the market was. You know, there's a lot of people

who take testosterone or steroids or ozempic, and a lot of doctors will offer you a pill, a cream, or a syringe. And I've asked the doctors, and they go, they all want the syringe because it feels more like this works better. It's going through my veins. Like, feel it. Right. So exactly. And I think that's true for the early markets, the hardcore markets. You know, Ben is like this. Ben is an early adopter of every product. As soon as a product gets popular, his interest completely drops in it. Right? Because the fun part was doing the hard thing, getting the edge, being ahead. And so same thing for bodybuilders. So the genius of the business is that they saw that, hey, okay, the market we see today,

the people who are buying it today actually is different. If we want to reach this other market, we got to ignore all the signals we're seeing today. So he goes in the lab and he starts doing small batch production. And everybody else was so big that they could only test flavors in basically bigger batches. And so that meant slower. cycles. It meant kind of like getting less like tight feedback loops. So what he did was he goes to LA and he starts testing flavors in like 15 gallon increments. And he pours it and he gives it to people and they're like, ah, too chalky. And he gives them another one. They're like too sweet.

He gives another one and he finally makes this vanilla flavor that they're like, this tastes like dessert. I love this. And so he brings those flavors into the ready to drink beverage and it just takes off. It goes nuts. And eventually like Walmart. starts knocking and Walmart's like, hey, we want to carry this. He's like, dude, we can't even fulfill Walmart. He's like all the specialty stores, the G&Cs, it's flying off the shelves. And for like the first year, they're like so inventory constrained because he nailed the flavors.

So what my barber was telling me, which is fascinating, what caught my attention about this? He goes, so this dude down the street, they created muscle milk, sold it for like $500 million. But the cool part is, he goes, he didn't sell the flavors. I go, what do you mean? He goes, yeah, there's some story. He goes, it's not out there. But the guy, he's like, cut my hair.

I'm cutting his hair. He's telling me the story. You put this barber on blast. It's not like insider trading. He's just telling me. It's a really cool story. But he's like, you know, when you go into research, it's not, this part's not as reported. So maybe he got some of the details wrong.

That's my caveat. But here's what we explained, which was basically the, when they did the sale, they sell the brand muscle milk. They sell the operating business. They sell the distribution. And then the buyer was like, cool. and the flavors, and they're like, actually, we have our own separate company that does flavors, and we're not going to sell you that company.

And they're like, well, we need the flavors. Like, cool, yeah, we'll do a licensing deal. Like, well, we could provide flavors, but we won't sell the flavor company. And again, this is where the details are not reported. So either that's what happened or right after they sold, they started a new flavor company, because now this is what the family does.

They have this flavor house that they created. And they were like, we're not going to do any brands anymore, but we will do flavoring as like that's our that's what made muscle milk successful and that's what we're going to do now as a service and now they've got a bunch of customers for this flavor brand that this flavor house that they've created and if you look at their facility it's like this insane like you know huge facility with like a fucking vacuum sealed room and they're like oh we do this technology like spray flavoring where you can add flavor to things that doesn't add any calories and they're basically it's all about flavor tech and I'm just like fast.

by flavor houses and flavor technology. It's called flavor insights. It looks awesome. And I see they have a video with the father and his son. And on the about page, it's the whole family. This is my dream, by the way. This is how business should be. So can I tell you why this is even more your dream?

While he's building muscle milk, he's got a hobby. And I know that you love a man with a real hobby. And his hobby is racing cars. And he has his own racing team that he created. And then he himself races. and I don't know shit about racing, but is it Le Mans? Lamon.

Yeah, it's like a famous, I guess, Lulamon. Track, but it's like a, the famous thing is like, it's a 24-hour race. And so, like, Ford versus Ferrari and all these things. I think he, like, won the race where he performed really well. How impressive is that?

Is this like just rich guys doing it? Or is he competing against, like, real racers? I'm not a real race enthusiast, so I could be wrong. But yeah, it's like, dude, like the story Ford versus Ferrari, it was about the time that Ford beat Ferrari at Lamont. Like, it's like a big deal. Yeah, it's like a movie worthy deal. You know, like Rudy style movie off an underdog winning Lamont. Right. So, yeah. DHS, the guy,

the Jason Freed's co-founder. He competes it. Did he, I don't think he won, did he? He won. Yeah, he won. I think he won the race, and he said he's competed in it 11 times. Yeah, it's sort of like, and oftentimes, like, the company that wins, they win for some innovative reason, and then like 10 years down the line, that car part that helped them win becomes like the norm. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. So that's like a big deal. Isn't this a, it's a total like life goals story. Build a

killer brand. You stuck with the thing. You built it with your family. You do it in the cul-de-sac. I just think it's amazing. Sell the thing for $100 million. None of his kids are yoked. Right? Like, these guys, they don't look very yoked. I'm looking at the family now.

Well, as their public defender, here's what I have to say about that. One of the things they talked about with muscle milk is they go, we wanted to build a product that everybody would look at it and see a different thing. So they go, women see it as a weight loss product. Men see it as a muscle building product. Some people see it as a snack. Some people see it as a meal replacement. Our goal was to build a product that would basically solve multiple problems for different

people at once. I'm just saying that I want to see some bigger buys and tries. on this family photo. They look great. They look very healthy. More importantly, they look happy. The founder's teeth are beautiful. He's got a really nice smile. I just think that we should see a little thicker neck. Can I tell you one other thing? So this company that bought them originally, so now they're owned by Pepsi. Pepsi owns it now. But before that, it was bought by something called Hormel Foods. It's one of these companies that you'd never heard of. This company does $12 billion dollars in revenue. They do like a billion and a half dollars of profit a year. And if you're

If you go to their website, the headline, like, the tagline for them is like, we sell more pepperonies than anyone on Earth. And they're this like food holding company. They own Skippy peanut butter. They own planters. They own spam. They own spam. And then they sell just a shit ton of ronies, dude. They just sell pepperonies worldwide.

They own Applegate. They own Justin's. They own planters. Skippy. Chee cheese. I don't know. Chee cheese is. I don't know.

Is it black label bacon? They own a lot of shit. I mean, literally spam is like on their homepage as like their pride and joy. Like the way my parents pin like pictures of me up on the fridge. That's what this company does with spam. Which is like it's pretty good. Horrible for you. But oh, dude, yeah, Hormel pepperoni.

I know them. That's one of my snacks. One of my snacks is like ate pepperoni with a little bit of mozzarella cheese on it, microwave. It's a pizza without the pizza? Yeah, I just call it like redneck. A pizza hold the dough? Just pepperoni and mozzarella. Redneck fitness food.

Dude, this should be your brand. A line of not that bad for you, redneck snacks. It's like it'll make you farm strong. Yeah, or do you know like PB dip? I call it dip. But you know peeb powder. The powder, yeah. Yeah, you get a spoon of that.

Straight. And you chuck it up on the top of your roof of your mouth and you suck on that thing for 60 minutes. I call it like fitness dip. So like instead of like having like a fat. liper in, you just have a PB dip. You're just in your tongue, just rub it against that, the, that dehydrated nut. Ooh, boy. Oh, boy, you want to have a good time?

Put a little PB dip on the roof of your mouth. All right, we got our cold open for the episode. By the way, let me show you one thing. You said something that I do religiously. I've just sent Ari a document that I, I just sent her one of the tabs. I have dozens of tabs on this. All right, can you share your screen? So, whenever I read a book, I have this Google Doc that I've used since the year, like, 2010.

All right, so check this out. Whenever I read a book, I do a few things. One, I make, whenever there's like a year and a money term or some type of milestone, I write it down in a sheet. And the reason why I write it in a sheet is because a lot of times when you're building a company or doing anything that's, like, really challenging. you'll read about someone else and you're like, that was easy. And so I like to do timelines and you'll see like, oh, okay, like they went four years with nothing happening.

So for those listening, I have got a timeline of Coke Industries, which is like the largest privately held company in America. I read the biography of their family. And I like did a timeline where everything major happened in their life. And then I converted the dollar amount into 2019 dollars, which is when I made this particular one. And it's really fun to do because you could see that things took, like, in this case, like 30 years. Right. And so if you, like, if you just go all the way to the left,

I did this with Kirk Cicorian, another one of a guy who I love. And every biography I read, I create one of these. Just another man you love. Can I just point out a couple things about this, what we're screen chair here that are just fantastic. It's just a peek into the mind. First of all, it's a Google sheet that's just called sheet, which is just a great title.

Okay. Scroll over, Aran. Here's some of the milestones that Sam wrote down. All right. So he starts for Coke Industries. 1900. Fred Coke, born. 1924, so 24 year gap.

Big break, finds mentor. Okay, so then it goes, 1927, just a quick update. Still broke. Then it goes 1929. C success. 1931. Big success with two Gs. Just a big double G success right here.

It's amazing. And then 1940, he buys a company, and that company, he buys it for $4 million. You also should just have pictures on here where it's them and the calves, and it's just your calves, just for reference, and you're just comparing calves. Because I feel like, tell me that's not part of your research process

is looking at photos and judging their looks. Yeah, particularly the Koch brothers, because they're like these tall waspy guys, and I definitely am sizing myself up to them. Yeah. the total picture of success includes a picture, for sure. Yeah, it's like tennis sweaters. It's like, oh, they're into tennis sweaters, therefore I will wear tennis sweaters.

But yeah, I definitely, like two guys that are both six-two from the Midwest with blonde hair, blue eyes. Like, there's definitely like a, there can only be one of us in this room. Dude, there's this girl who keeps going viral on Twitter, and it's the same tweet she does every time. And she just goes, my dad goes to. a bar with his friends every Friday, and he makes a list of topics to discuss. Yes. And then she has a photo of him holding a printed out agenda, and I'll just read you one of them. Ted Perry's fun, capital story shown on Fox News 6.

Next one. What's going on with the bucks? Question mark. NFL overtime rules. Take ball first or second, question mark. Bahama breezes. How close is too close to an alligator? Do you think people that throw garbage out of their car window are the same people that don't

pick up their dog poop when walking through my subdivision. And then it read at the bottom and goes, please be on time. As you can see, we have another week of a packed agenda. And it goes super viral every time. It's like, 100,000 likes. And I think everybody who sees this is like, yeah, that's part of the winning life. I'd like to go to the bar with my friends every Thursday and have like an agenda that we print out and we talk about it while wearing our new balances. Do you know who does this?

And he's not joking. I already know because you're talking about a legend, a social legend. And I know it has to be Nick Gray. Tell me I'm wrong. Is it not Nick Ray? The second time I hung out with Nick Ray, who went to a bar called Lazarus, Sarah and I came,

and he goes, hey guys, I would love to hang out. This is our second time hanging out. I thought it would be nice to have an agenda so we could stay on track. And there was a 13 point agenda list where it was like,

asked Sarah about her job, figure out how that's going on, explain my dating life and get opinions from it. Like it was a, and we stuck to that agenda, and he took notes. Was it thrilling? because I think I'm going to absolutely start doing this.

It was thrilling. You know how like, you know how like it. Was it the agenda that was great or the fact that he had an agenda that was great? Which of the two was greater? The second one, here's why. So look, in a world, everyone wants to be a tough guy. It feels good to be a leader, but you want to know something. Everyone likes getting led.

And like, we like the assertive person. I'm just a leader who loves being led. Yeah. That's me. That's on my LinkedIn. I like leading some stuff. But then there's other times where it's like, just tell me what to do. And small talk is one of those things that no one just tells you what to do. And when there's an assigned leader who has something outlined for small talk, I'm just like, yes, sir, I'll do whatever you like me to do.

And thank you, may I have another, sir. It's like the best way to go about doing stuff. And that's what Nick Gray does. Okay. By the way, that's how we do this podcast, actually. We both bring some agenda items and then we discuss in bullet point form. Yeah, I think it's good. He's done that for years, and it's awesome. All right, we're going to normalize having conversational hangouts with an agenda. I have a business that's pretty cool. Can I tell you about it?

Here's my opening for this business. Sam, I found the business that you should have started instead of wasting your goddamn time with the hustle. Okay, I like that. So you built the hustle. And if you recall, one time you came to me, hat in hand, absolutely begging for an investment. you needed the money and you got that on your knees and you said please sir

invest in my company and I looked at it I flipped through the business plan like it was a flip book and I just said no thanks and if you remember why you said you said

look Sam you're coming to a knife fight with a knife I don't even want you to come to this knife fight with a gun I want you to come to this knife fight with a magic fucking wand and that

clearly turned away on my heel with a dramatic spin, and I left the room. And then you tried to pull the door to open, but it was really a push door. Yeah, exactly. Totally blew it at the end. Did not stick the landing. Like, you clearly had just read that on a, whatever the equivalent was of Twitter, and you're like, that is now my line.

Yeah, exactly. Back when I was like, I had it written on the inside of my palm, and I was like, Peter Thiel says this magic wand, they say that to somebody totally owns them, no matter what they're doing. But the reality was, I looked at the business and you were like, here's what I'm doing. I'm creating a media company. So every day we're going to write the news. So every day you had to recreate your product.

Yeah, it sucks. Oh, that sucks. It's like, do you get any, is there any benefit of all the work you did in the last three months? It's like, ah, not really. We got to recreate it again. We've got to bake that cake every morning. Okay, sounds good. And then you said, and then I was like, cool.

So then people pay you certainly for the service that you're doing. You go, no, it's free. Oh, okay. But then the advertiser, then we have to do a separate business, basically, to a separate customer, selling advertisers. I was like, okay,

but certainly they're on retainer and it's going to be recurring revenue that's going to stack up. You're like, no, no, no. They're just going to, if they feel like advertising, they will. If they don't, they don't,

every month, we're going to start back at zero. Yep. And I thought, damn, this is a tough business to win. And that's when I hit you with the knife and the knife fight and blah, blah, which it is tough-ish to do well. Yeah.

And by the way, the best punch on the whole thing is five years later after you successfully sold the business and got rich doing it, I then copied your business model and did the same thing for crypto and was like, came back to basically be like, what was the business plan again? How do you do this? So that's the end of that story. Now, here's a better business that somebody created five years ago that has the following profile. They don't recreate the product every day. People pay them for the product on a subscription. It's in a hobby that you love doing. and it's a thing you were doing anyways for free,

so I think you would have been great at it. And also it uses your gift, which is making things simple, summarizing things, making them easier to understand, saving somebody time, doing it. And this person has bootstrapped this business to 200 million in revenue

with 30% profit margins. I have no idea. What is this? It's called Headway app, and it is a book summary app. So this guy in the Ukraine created this company where he takes part

popular books, and he summarizes them. And the promise is basically, instead of reading the book, I already read it, I summarized that I could tell you main point one, I could tell you main point two, I can tell you the main point three. And in under 15 minutes, you can get the gist of what's in this book. You'll get, you know, the big ideas and you'll get them explained to. You could either read it or we have AI that turns it into audio and you can just listen to like a 15 minute summary of this book. And we've done it for 1,500 of the most popular books. And we've done it. And people pay a simple 12, 13 bucks a month for this. And this has become an absolute juggernaut. So I did not think that these book summary apps could get this big. But damn, if that's impressive,

$200 million in ARR, 30% profit, built this thing out of the Ukraine. They just raised funding out of $2.3 billion valuation. Right, right. Holy crap. So like, you could have done that instead. And I think you would have been great at this. By the way, you know, here's why. I said that this, like you could have done this, because when I went and looked at their ads, right, the way this business grows, they run ads on TikTok, on Facebook, whatever.

And the hook of their ads, tell me if this sounds familiar. My boss thinks I'm a genius, and thinks I read 150 books a year, but actually I just use Headway. That's their ad? It's not word for word. I just wanted to really bait you with that one,

but it's basically the, it's basically the gist of their ads. I invented that ad. I invented that ad. I stole it from someone else and I invented that ad. That's my ad. That's my ad that's my ad that I took. Yes, I stole that from the scam and I invented that ad.

Their ad is a little bit more like it'll be the average CEO reads 52 books a year. How many do you read? Right. So they're basically making you feel like a shitty CEO or it'll say, everyone thinks I went to Harvard with the amount of books that I know but actually I just use Headway or it'll be meet the app

that all the intellectuals are using stuff like that and so those are the sort of hooks that they use to get people to do this where they're not saying here's a book summary they're basically saying be a smarter person

and be seen as a smart person because you seem so well read and here's your hack to seeming so well read so what's interesting is thrive thrive We should do this for the podcast.

It's like, my boss thinks I'm kind of retarded, but know a lot about business. The secret is, I just listen to my first million. But I still sound a little retarded. My boss is so impressed that I know all these numbers. But then he wonders. But then he facts checks me. My boss is wondering why I have pepperoni in my mouth. This is ridiculous.

These guys, so they raise money from Thrive, which Thrive is a big VC investor in ChatGBT. Are they not worried that ChatGPT just does all this? Well, they are themselves using AI for a bunch of stuff. Like, if you go look at a bunch of their ads, they're all like AI-generated ads. I think, you know, businesses like this that are like super laser-focused on one thing,

you know, even if you can use Chat-G-GPT to generate a summary, that's not the same thing. And I think, you know, they're not even old. They started in 2019. I know, right? Super impressive. They also have done this other app.

So there's this one ad that was like so frustratingly good. It made me piss that I didn't think of this. It's this simple looking puzzle. Tell me if you've seen this. I don't know how much you use these. It's like in a lot of games. This ad pops up or TikTok. It's this like, it's like a maze.

Imagine a maze. And it's like you're, you start on this dot, you have to get across without picking up your pen. And it just shows somebody trying to do it and they're messing up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like, see if you can solve this. Only 5% of people can solve this, but 50% of fifth graders can do it or whatever. And you're like, ah, I got to see if I can do this.

You download the app. By the way, that puzzle is actually impossible. If there is no solution to it, they just put it in, they put a thing that looks simple, but you can't figure it out. You can't figure it out because it is actually an optical illusion. It's actually impossible. But they use it. game.

Yeah, they have this other app called Impulse that's done like 70 million downloads and it's a brain training app. And the framing of that is basically keep your brain sharp with these little like mini, mini mind games.

And like, you know, my mom likes a lot of these things because she feels like, oh, I'm getting older. I should have these little things on my phone that keep me sharp. So she plays Sudoku and Crossword and she downloads apps like this. So their skill set, they're just like crazy good intermarketers.

internet marketers and really good creating apps that retain. Apps that first and foremost get you to convert and become a subscriber and then yeah, obviously the retention helps. And this guy talks about it. He frames it as microlearning. He's like,

micro learning is this, how do you get somebody to spend five to 15 minutes a day getting smarter? What if you use your phones to get smarter instead of just to waste your time? And so he makes it sound like this grand noble mission. And at the same time on the back end, It's just this ruthless funnel that is like run ads.

By now, by now, by now. Get the download, convert, convert, convert, convert, and like that's the game. That's what you got to be. We talked about, was it, remember the period app or flow? Were they Ukrainian as well? Yeah, so we did this. These guys all have like a crew. There's like these Eastern European app makers where they have these family of apps

and you go look at their website and they're like no, raise no funding and then they'll have like 300 employees and then their apps will do like, you know, 100 million downloads a year. And it's like based out of Kiev or whatever, right? Like this just seems to be a pattern. I think there's like a just a very high density of talent that knows how to build this specific type of company. Yeah, they're just like all homies and they all have this like, I don't know, this idea of like it feels fun to get one over on someone. But then they're like, all right, if we're going to have that attitude, we should also like provide value.

So we stick around for a long time, which is like when every internet. marketer ever has, they're like, I'm going to do something shady and they win. And they're like, oh, but it'd be a lot cooler if the customers came back to us or if we didn't have to refund people constantly. So let's just like do the shady stuff, but do it for something. Like if I could tell my mom what I do without shame, which is like what every internet marketer ever has done. But this is badass. How did you find this? How did I find this? Actually, that's another good story. Have you seen this Twitter account, Arthur Rock? I know that Arthur Rock was. It's like a parody account.

It's Arfer Rock is his account. Have you not seen this? This thing is amazing. I spell Arfer. Bro, just you try to spell Arthur and naturally and just see what happens. You'll land exactly at the right thing. It's A-R-F-U-R. Got it.

Arfer rock. Okay. So it's this guy who's this like anonymous, he's like this anonymous VC. And what he did is he just created this Twitter account where he just tweets out numbers from companies that. that are raising money or trying to sell. And he's just like leaks information. And so he's just this giant leak.

And so he tweeted out the numbers for Headway app. But if you just look at his feed, his feed is like pure signal. Because it'll literally just be like, it'll be like post hog, 13 million in ARR, growing 2X year over year. They're currently raising. It's crazy.

It'll be like, or like somebody will be like, you know, the founder will be like, we're pleased to announce that we've raised our series C from Excel. It's a huge milestone and we feel so validated. And then he'll just tweet out, he'll quote tweet it. Just go, 50 million error as of November, up 1.8X year to date. Congrats.

Or there's like another one that like they raised that $400 million post. They did $6 million in 2024. Congrats. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Like how amazing is this? This is like the best Twitter account, right? This is really good.

And you know what's funny? And we've seen this again and again and again. these meme people, anonymous meme jokers, are like right a lot. You know what I mean? It's sort of like how Esquire, or what was it called, American, what was the tabloid that like is in the grocery store? Enquirer, National Enquirer. Yeah, the National Acre. Like, they say a lot of bullshit, but they also like predicted the Bill Clinton scam or Bill Clinton stuff before everyone or like the John Edwards affair. And so, like, I do love following these Anon's accounts.

This guy's great. Dude, he says, hollow, a Catholic prayer app, doing 60 million ARR growing 3.5X a year. Yeah. Like, he did, and he'll also post updates. So in May, he'll be like, Suno, the AI music app, just closed around.

15 million ARR in the first year. Lightspeed invested at 500 million post. Congrats. And then he'll, then, you know, that was May and then in October, right? So, like, you know, five months later, he just wrote, 40 million ARR now.

This guy's just providing, I don't know, you're not as big of a basketball fan, but like in basketball, there's these two guys who were like famous on Twitter for just, like,

they just has sources everywhere. So it'd be like Shams and it'd be Woge. And they would just always have intel. And there's all their entire Twitter feed is literally just inside info. And be like, you know, sources say Jimmy Butler wants trade,

his list of teams that he wants to go to are these four. Or it'd be like, like during the NBA draft, like, you know, 45 seconds before every pick, they just say, they're taking this guy. And it would just spoil the draft. If I'm one of these Ukrainian guys,

like, I don't have the skill set to do this. I'm not technical. But I wonder if you, like, do you ever wonder, why aren't there more people just copying fast-growing companies? Like, we'll just... There are.

That happens a lot. It doesn't... But I think your answer is actually pretty good, which is, why aren't there more? So actually, I think I answered your question wrong. I was like, no, some people do do that. And I think your question is actually correct,

which is, why I remember more people doing this? Because I don't want to do this because I kind of have a reputation and I don't really want to do it. But if I was a little bit younger and if I had the skill set, which I don't,

like if I see a company that's going at like 400X a year, which this guy does. He's like, here's some app that was only doing $5 million in revenue, but they're set to grow 4X. I'm like, yeah,

just go to their website and copy that. Yeah, I mean, it's not so easy, right? Like, you could copy a product that doesn't get you to the customers. And so you have to not only copy the product, you have to figure out how they grow and be as good at growth as them. But you can figure that out. You can use all the technology. Like, here's what their ads say. I'm just going to do that exact same ad.

You can. But most people who have that ability, if you're, if you're that good, you're also able to create new things from scratch. And I think also what ends up happening is that a lot of things look similar. But they're, you know, they're 80% the same and they're 20% different. But that 20% difference is actually a huge difference, right? It's like if you've ever looked at, we were talking about flavors earlier, it's like the difference between two flavors is like a point one percent change in a certain, you know, certain chemical, but it'll change, you know, from vanilla. That's the difference between, you know, vanilla and, you know, orange soda or whatever, right? It's like there's, it's not that big of a difference on the, on the whole, right? You're doing 80%

the same, but it's 20% that's different. And so, you know, I actually advised that. this and talk a lot about this, which is if you see something that's working, not a company maybe, but like, let's say a trend or a business model, like, you know, let's say e-commerce or whatever, try to figure out what's working better or worse in a category. And then, you know, if you're going to go into that category, you're probably going to end up, even if you're trying to be super original, you're probably going to end up with 80% of the things the same because that's how business is. You're not 100% different. But the key is to figure out what is your 20% difference going to be and how well can you execute on that 20% innovation?

And I think that's a more humble, honest way of going about things versus I think most people believe they're doing everything 100% original and unique. And that's just not true. Right. Like even this is also for content or wisdom, right? Like how many truly original wise things, you know, I love Naval. But how many of Naval's things are 100% homegrown, not inspired by anything, not similar to anything else that was out there? It's very rare, right? Like that's not how anybody does things.

Tony Robbins talks about this. He's like, yeah, I'm. I learned under Jim Rohn and Jim learned under Zig Ziglar or whatever. And like, it's the same school of thought, but like me putting my twist on it is what makes all the difference. Then you have people like Rocket Internet, which are literally like pixel for pixel clones. But even they operate in different markets. So they'll be like, cool, we're building Amazon and Thailand for Brazil or Thailand or whatever. And turns out once you try to do that, you're going to like over time and a lot of things are going to end up different.

All right, let me tell you a story really quick about some investment thing that I heard about that I would never do. You would do. But it's a thrilling story. Okay. Let me guess. It's obscure, overly complicated. Doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. Too much risk. And we'll end up netting less than the S&P 500 in the long run. No. This one, he came out on top, actually. So the story is this. First of all, like, I was just listening to Scott. Galway's podcast while I was driving somewhere. I think it was like over Christmas break. And something happened at the very end of the podcast and I was with Sarah and I literally pulled over to the side of the highway. And I was like, are you listening to this? And she's like, shut up. No. But I'm like, all right, but this is actually amazing. Can we get an instant replay on YouTube of your wheel diagram? You just did. How big is your wheel? Did you're like literally

driving a school bus? What was that? It's like a ship. It's a ship. Armfully outwise like a tractor that you're driving. It's a ship. I pulled the ship over, and I literally had to sit down because she yells at me when I used my phone, and I had to type this out. So I had this note and remembered it. But Scott Galloway had Michael Lewis on. So Scott Galloway is an investor and podcasters. Michael Lewis is an amazing author, wrote about FTX's downfall, and he was with Sam Bickman-Fareed when this all happened. And so he has a unique perspective. In the 45-minute part of this like 50 or 55-minute episode, Scott Galloway just mentioned something

where he's like, yeah, I bought some of the bankruptcy claims against FTX. And Michael Lewis started talking about something else. Then Michael Lewis goes, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What? You made a good investment where you bought the FTX claims? What was that about? And Scott, like, just casually throws this out there.

But the story is actually pretty amazing. So the background is this. So in 2022, FTCX goes bankrupt because, or sorry, FTCX goes bankrupt because SBFs, Sam Bankman-Fried, he's over-leveraged and he spent all the money and whatever. It didn't work out because of a bunch of different reasons. And because of that, $10 billion in customer funds are lost. You know, they're just gone.

And people are distraught. They're freaking out. But when a bankruptcy happens, one major thing happens, which is the person who had the money in FTX. So let's say I stored $1 million in FTC. I now am going to have a claim against that company for $1 million. So it's going to go to court and we're going to figure out how do I get my money back somehow. And in a lot of cases, you get no money back.

And so what happens is these kind of vultures, I mean, I don't know what you want to call them, but they come along and they go, hey, FTX owes you a million dollars. You're probably not going to get that back. You might get that back. But I'll tell you what, you have a million dollar claim. I will buy that claim from you for 100 grand. So you get the 100 grand today, whereas the other outcomes are potentially you eventually get nothing, or maybe you'll get a little bit more, like 100 grand, 200,000, 300,000, but it's

going to be in like four or five years, and you don't even know for sure. So just let me buy your claim. And so, sure, you could do that. So it creates a market when that happens. But Scott Galloway, he's kind of a, he's kind of a strange guy. And he had this quote on this podcast where he's like, when I see fire, I run towards it. Because when, because I've known enough seeing a lot of bankruptcies, that when a bankruptcy happens, there's opportunity. And so Scott Galloway, he reads the paperwork about the claim or about the bankruptcy. And what he notices is that Sam Bankman-Fried, unlike a lot of different Ponzi schemes, a lot of times with Ponzi schemes, that are spending this money on Coke, hookers, planes, like party shit. SBF maybe did a little

bit of that, but you want to know what he was a real degenerate about venture investing. He I loved investing in companies. And one of the companies, he invested in a few, and I think a lot of them didn't work, but one of the big ones that he invested in was he invested in Anthropic, which is like the number two or the number three best AI company. And Scott looks at the numbers, and they don't actually say what the valuation was of what the, they don't say the valuation of Anthropic when Sam Beckman Free invest in them. But what they say is that he invested five.

million dollars and Scott does a little math and he's like I think the valuation was around five billion dollars meaning SBF owns 10% of this company and this was happening two years ago he's like I think Anthropic is going to raise money at a 10 billion dollar evaluation and then eventually one day at a 60 billion dollar valuation which by the way as of today there are rumors that that's happening and because of that I think I can buy a claim for 20% so a million dollar claim for $200,000. And if you do all the math, I think I could actually triple or quadruple my money based just off this venture return, let alone if we ever are going to claw back any of the crypto that was lost. Well, it turns out a few things happened. One, Bitcoin exploded.

And because of that, well, not because of that, but they were able to recap or claw back a lot of the money and Bitcoin exploded. And so a lot of these people are going to be getting back a lot more money than they actually had in there because the money, you know, the Bitcoin was just sitting there growing. And also, Sam Bankman's freed investments, one of them killed it, knocked it out the park. And so I think now the people who lost money, they're getting something like 125% of their money back, which is not bad for a Ponzi scheme that you were a victim of. Scott said the numbers. He goes, I bought $250,000 worth and I sold, I bought a $1 million claim for $250, and I sold it for 90% of the million.

So he like tripled his money. And Scott like goes through the story and he explains like his reasoning on this podcast. And it was amazing to be honest. Like how on earth you could find value in this way. Yeah. That's that's super impressive. I actually happened to hear this segment two and had the same. I wasn't driving a bus, but I had the same sort of like next snap reaction where I was like, what?

what's funny is you said a couple of things but I don't think you saw a couple of things but I think we have to correct a couple of things one it wasn't a Ponzi scheme no I meant like a lot he stole customer funds

I guess I wasn't mean that this was a Ponzi scheme but it's in that category of like schemes where you know a lot of people are like how do I get my money back scammed you lost your money yeah exactly

the other thing is that he was saying you know I valued FTC's estate in Anthropic at $4 billion but that's not really what happened So they sold their stake for $800 million. So they put in $400 or $500 million, and they sold it for $800 or $900 million in the liquidation. And so it wasn't the anthropic investment that really paid off.

He was using the anthropic investment as a downside protection, where he was like doing the math, where he was like, all right, that gets me, that gets my investment up just a little bit to like a safe zone. But then what else can there be? Yeah, exactly. So I think his math was wrong. So he said in the thing, he goes,

I valued the anthropic, based on the anthropic stake, I thought it was worth $4 billion. The total claims were $9 billion. So I thought Anthropic was giving me $0.44 cents on the dollar for every dollar of claims that I would buy. Claims were selling for $0.22 on the dollar. So he says, to me, there's the easiest trade I ever made. But the reality is that the anthropic stake ended up being worth less than $1 billion, right? So he got it right, even though his logic was wrong. And we had Scheel on the other day.

And he basically said his two best investments, kind of worked out the same way. He's like, I bought Nvidia in 2017 because I thought that crypto mining was going to take off. And Nvidia took off, but not because of crypto mining at all. It turned out it was AI. And I kind of like, I was wrong, but I got massively right. He goes, same thing with Bitcoin. He's like, I bought Bitcoin early on because I thought it was going to be this fast

peer-to-peer transfer thing. Turns out that was all wrong. But Bitcoin went up anyways because of this other store value, gold. digital gold use case. And so I think what ended up happening is that he made a great investment, but I think his underwriting was wrong. I think that's one of the hard things

about doing this like, what up, you know, the smart money investing is that when you're right, you feel like such a goddamn genius. And when you're wrong, you chalk it up to, you know, whatever, you sort of either mentally block it out.

You either say you were wrong or you think maybe one of your assumptions got a little off. But there's also this weird state where you can end up right, even though your underwriting was wrong. and you can flate kind of like luck and skill. And I guess the question is, I guess that's one of my observations I've had in this process of like,

as I do my own investing and get something's right, get something wrong, I talk to other people. It's very humbling to realize how much of this, even your wins aren't yours. They're not your wins because you got so much of it wrong. Well, and there's another learning that I had, which is finding value and crap. like this story

like this was the worst like this was the worst asset the worst company like you don't want to touch this because A it's like a scam so like there's a no go there and B it's like a reputational ruiner like who wants to be involved in this guy and then it's like I have so much better things to do why would I waste my time with this pile of shit

and what was interesting was seeing Scott walk through his reasoning on how he can still capture value from a horrible situation. And I thought that that was really intriguing, because that is not how I tend to do things. Like what did they say, trying to catch a falling knife, like when something's bad, it's just going to get worse and just stay away. But that's not always the case. Dude, when I went to Monish Prabri's house and we've recorded that podcast together, we did the podcast, and then at the end, he's kind of just like touring me around and I go to his desk where he works. I like seeing like literally where you sit when you work. I think the environment

kind of tells a lot. And he has this placard on his desk, like the way you would have a, like if you walk into a bank or whatever, it would be like the name tag of the bank manager or something like that. But instead of a name on it, it just said, trouble is opportunity. And literally he was reminding him, he wanted this on his desk, because in those moments where there's panic, where there's trouble, he wanted the reminder that trouble is opportunity. And not all trouble is opportunity, right? Like one of his isms that he took from Charlie Munger and Buffett is he puts things in what he calls the too hard pile. So he's like, yeah, you know, I look at 100 opportunities. I could probably tell you the three obviously good ones and I could tell you the 10 obviously

terrible ones. But then the other, whatever, 77, I'm, I just put in the two hard pile. And I'm sure some of them are really good. But I just throw things in the too hard pile when they're too hard. And so, for example, I was asking, like, what's your thoughts on crypto? And he was like, well, I think there's a case for. I think there's a case against. He's like, but I just don't do anything because I put it in the too hard pile. So I don't need to win in that.

It's too hard for me to figure out, so I'm not going to bother. And I think the concept of the too hard pile is so valuable because I used to be very black and white about everything. Like either it's good or it's bad. And if I thought it could be good, I would smash my head against the wall trying to like make it work. and if it was bad, it had to like stand out as bad for me to like to throw it away. So you said 100 ideas.

The story is this. He's at the, he's at lunch with Warren Buffett. And he goes, Warren, I think one of your great gifts is you're a great judge of people. And he was talking about like, you know, Warren Buffett hired that guy Ajit who like runs their insurance business. He's like, I just think you're a great reader of people, judge of people. How do you do it? What's your secret? And he goes, I don't think I'm a great reader of people.

And he's like, but I'm not trying to be humble. He goes, I just approach it differently. He goes, it pays to be a harsh grader when it comes to people, meaning the cost of being optimistic about somebody who turns out to not be great, to let them into your circle of friends or to do business with somebody who turns out to not be great is so costly that I just rule a bunch of people out. He goes, if you put me in a cocktail party and you have five minutes with 100 people, in that five minutes, I could probably tell you the five people who are really outstanding.

I could tell you the five people who are really lousy, and I just don't want anything to do with them. They just obviously came off super bad in a five-minute interaction. But then there's 90 people that I just can't make a judgment on in five minutes. And he goes, so I just put them all in the bad pile. They're all in the too hard-to-know pile. And so I just rule them out because it's not worth the brain damage

to try to figure it out on a case-by-case basis just so you don't miss a good one. Because the cost of a bad thing is worth way, cost me much more than missing out on a good thing, because there are more good things that I could just filter for and I'll find those good things like over time. They'll be obviously good. I'll just focus on the obviously good things.

And he does this with investing. He does this with people. And it's just a very useful heuristic because I think most of us try to be, if there's 100, we try to be accurate at the 100 level. It's like, I want to have an accurate grade on all 100. And I'll spend all my time on the hard to judge things and I'll get a lot of them wrong. But I'm trying to get them right and therefore I'm taking too much risk.

Whereas his take is, don't take too much risk. Take the obviously good and act on it. Obviously bad. Throw them away. And everybody else put them in the too hard pile and ignore it. Can I dumb this down? Let me explain why I'm a genius. When I go to a restaurant, there's like two columns of entrees. I start at the top and I skim down.

And the first one that I see, that's a seven out of ten, I go, oh, that's it. Menu over. I don't look at the menu for the rest of the meal. I don't second guess it. I just say the first one, that's a seven. that's that that's done and I'm able to do that right away is this is this apply to everything is this marriage advice is this uh what other things does this apply to where does this not apply

I mean yeah I think like it could apply to marriage like the idea of like settling is like good like you settle for something that's pretty good and you can like make it great I don't know like is there any like data on like Indian couples who have been uh yeah like a range marriages have like the same quote quote success rate as like American marriages which are like involved dating and selection and courtship and then eventually, you know, engagement and then marriage versus like the way that Indian couples do it is very much the menu. You scan the listings. That'll do. Engineer, good family, full set of teeth. Seven out of ten, let's go. I will see you at the altar for the

first time. Yeah. Yeah. And then you high five. No, I, I just think that's how I order. Like, I've done that for years. It's just, I just don't want, I want less choice. And I think what Warren Buffett is actually saying similar, which is like, I know for certain that these three are fine enough. Therefore, I don't care about the rest. Yeah, you know that book, the Mark Manson book, Settle Art of Not Giving NF? Like, I think that book, it got so popular that it sort of got written off. You know what I mean? Like, do you ever hear a smart person being like, man, I learned so much from this book, the subtle art of rocket?

Like, it's not like a cool intellectual thing to reference because it's pop. It's like pop. So popular. It's mainstream. It's like if I'm like, oh, I really like Justin Bieber's music.

It's like, okay, what? That's like a low status thing to sort of say. But there is, you know, he brings up one good point

in the book. The book is basically around one point, which is, life is not about caring about everything or not caring about everything. It's about choosing,

you know, assume you have a limited set of, you know, F's to give in your pocket. Like you got five to give. Choose wisely. Choose the things you're going to care about.

So like, you know, the menu, you just, don't have to care to get that right. And that's kind of like the Warren Buffett. Like, you can just throw a bunch of things that there's too hard pile and ignore them.

And then, like, there may be a few decisions where actually getting it right really, really matters. And then you have enough bandwidth to actually care about those things because you're not caring about everything. Yeah, I think that's good shit. What do you want to do now? I want to give you one other story. Have you heard this Bill Ackman's story of his running into the fire

when everybody else was running out story? his four-hour investment decision. Do you know this one? Oh, man. I thought it was like literally a fire. Well, kind of. It was the 08 crisis, which I think to people on Wall Street

felt like, you know, the giant fire. Oh, you mean Bill Ackman, the famous Twitter influencer? He invests? Wait, he's an investor? Bill, we're joking. I hope you're still coming on later.

All right, so he tells the story. It's 08. The financial crisis happens. banks are failing. The Bear Stearns fails, and then this other bank is going to fail. People don't know what's going to happen. Wachovia was on the brink. And basically what he did was he did a four, he's like, I had four hours.

I spent four hours just looking at the business of Wachovia and came to a decision in four hours that the panic was overblown and that Wachovia would be saved and that Wells Fargo, which ended up buying Wachovia was far healthier than the market believed in that moment of panic. And so he made a huge investment. And it was like one of his most lucrative investments ever. It was a four-hour decision. And it was made at a time of extreme panic when trouble was opportunity. And when everybody else was just running out, you know, screaming, he was calm and basically looked at the situation and assess the risk return differently.

It was just sort of like what you were talking about with the Scott Galloway when, when FTA. just feels taboo in every way, and it feels like, you know, the worst possible situation. And he's like, cool, it's the worst possible situation at a price.

And there's a price for everything. And the price, you know, for him to buy those claims at 22 cents on the dollar turned out to be the right price. Dude, Bill Ackman's also like 6-4,

I think. Yeah. Which is pretty cool. We should create an index for CEOs above 6-2. And I bet it'd be, I bet it'd do all right. All right.

All right. So he bought, let's see, 178 million shares at $3.15 a share. So he spent $560 million after four hours of thinking. And his estimate was that it was going to be worth more than double that. And the next week, Wachovia bought it at about $7 a share. So he basically doubled $500 million in a week. That's insane. All right.

Well, that's cool. Bill Ackman's great. All right. Great story. Great story. All right. I think that's a pretty good podcast. What do you say? I think that was all right. All right. 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 a road, let's travel, never looking back.