My First Million - The AI App Doing $6M With 1 Employee

Episode Date: April 30, 2024

Episode 579: Sam Parr ( https://twitter.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://twitter.com/ShaanVP ) talk about 3 niche trends they’ve found that are guaranteed to make $1M+. Want to see Sam and Shaan’s smiling faces? Head to the MFM YouTube Channel and subscribe - http://tinyurl.com/5n7ftsy5 — Show Notes: (0:00) Shaan gets his hotness score (2:30) Reddit trend leads to $6M ARR beauty app for men (10:12) Male nail care influencers (12:42) Sam upstages Shaan's beauty score (14:00) Spin-off businesses: Med Spas (16:00) Aging influencers and modern male grooming products (20:27) The story of Teflon and Dupont's billion dollar problem (22:49) Forever chemicals are in our water (26:14) Pfas free products (29:12) A regulatory inflection point is here (33:16) Trend: Assassins with water guns (34:32) $0 - $250K MRR app (35:22) Playground virality (38:00) Trading expertise for social vouching (49:10) Exporting a profitable internal tool — Links: • Umax - https://tinyurl.com/mezh49ac • Acqua Pana - https://www.acquapanna.com • MAMAVATION - https://www.mamavation.com • Splashin - https://www.splashin.app • Splashin TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/discover/splashin-app — 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 — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it’s called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd 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 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. — Other 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

And I'm like, yeah, I can see how this would work. If this is working on secure, married, you know, two kids or the third on the way, 36-year-old me, dude, 17-year-old me would be like, this app is now my life. And I think that's what's happening. So the general trend here is basically that. 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.

Sam, I noticed anything different about me today? You're wearing a collared shirt? Do you know what that's called nowadays, Sam? No. It's called look maxing. Have you ever heard this term? I've seen a genius CEO use the phrase look maxing. Yes.

Okay. So I want to talk to you about look maxing because I saw this app called UMax. And so I download it. It says, are you male or female? I say, okay, male. It says one million, one million people have done this on UMax. Are you ready? And I'm like, yeah, I'm ready.

And so then it says, take a picture of your face right now. And I'm going to score you on how ugly you are. So your boy takes a bed selfie. Then it's like, hey, you want your score? Pay $3.99. And I'm like, gladly, sir, take my money. Apple pay $3.99. And I'm a 69 overall, Sam.

I just found that out this morning. It's something I've been wondering my whole life, really, is where am I? and I am a 69 overall. I am better looking than 49% of the people, which means the majority of people are better looking than me. And then what's interesting about this, so... Wait, that math doesn't work out. You're not better.

49%? Was there 110% of people? No, I'm better than 49. 51 or better than me. Well, why are you a 69 then? Shouldn't you be a 51%? No, I don't know. Yeah, that doesn't make it.

69 overall. Okay, so I got a 69. but my potential is in 83. I'm intrigued. Tell me more app. And so the app basically then rates me on my jawline, masculinity, my grooming, my skin quality, my hair. That's from that one selfie of you in bed?

It's AI. It's a two. You take a side profile and then you take a front profile. What do they say about your jawline? You got a good jawline? Oh, dude. Jawline 69, skin quality 68. Masculinity 82.

Nice. Your boy's a man. Yeah. You know you're a man when you have to use an app to tell you you are a man. So what's amazing about this app? This app, I saw it on Twitter.

Somebody tweeted an interview with the founder and he's hanging out on the subreddits. And I don't know if you've seen, but on Reddit, these, like here's, if you go to the beauty and grooming category.

So like there can be a bunch of reddits in here. Number three and number five are both, this. Number three is look maxing advice and number five is male grooming with 744,000 members. And so these are three of the top five subredits. So he's hanging out in these and basically what people do is they would go post What's male grooming? Just pictures of pubs?

No, it's your hair, your beard, your face. It's your your, your mustache, all that. Got it. Yes. And so you would post a photo of yourself and he would say, hey, give me some advice. How can I look better? strangers of Reddit. You know, my family,

they all just tell me, oh, you're beautiful, honey, don't worry. At school, I'm too embarrassed to ask. You know, I don't want to look like a loser. But on Reddit, we're all losers here. It's all good. And so they post a photo and they say,

what can I do better? People give advice. So what this guy did was he turned that into an app. He's like, let me sprinkle a little AI on this, turn this into app. The app does three and a half million downloads. He's making six million an ARR on this app right now. Six million an error run rate.

The app costs $3.99 a week when you unlock your things. So I think it's like one of these, like you pay to unlock because, oh, my God, I really want to know. And then you forget to unsubscribe. It's, you know, probably the reality. But you're supposed to do a daily update as you take the steps they recommend. So for example, now this part, the first part was me doing it for science. The second part was me being like, well, you know, it's got a point here. So I click in and it's like, hey, you know, your first, he says, your glow up routine. And it says, first priority is skincare. How are you going to make your skin care better? So I click it. And it says, easiest way to improve your skin is limit your processed foods,

opt for meats and natural produce, work out five times a week, and wash your face with warm water in the morning and evening. That's the easy mode. It says the best mode is you should clean your face in the shower, moisturize after the shower, exfoliate two or three times a week. And it says products for you. And then there's like some skincare product. And I went and I immediately was like, oh, I'll buy this shit.

So I bought this $20 thing. And it's not like their product. It's like just a link to Amazon of Saravé's. like, moisturizer after showers and like that. And I'm like, yeah, I can see how this would work. If this is working on secure, married, you know, two kids or the third on the way, 36-year-old me, dude, 17-year-old me would be like, this app is now my life. And I think that's what's happening.

So the general trend here is basically that guys who are, you know, guys, it's like acceptable to be like, how do I look better? And normally the answer was just we go to the gym. That was like the societal norm was you can become a gym bro and you're not seen as doing anything weird or lame or whatever. It's like acceptable. And now guys are like, cool, but what about from the neck up? What am I going to do about that? And honestly, Sam, this is my greatest fear come true.

And the greatest fear is for years, decades, centuries and millennia, men have had a truce. And the truth is this. Beauty is all relative. And if you don't try, I won't try. And while women had to put on makeup and wear heels and do lip fillers, and then it became a beauty contest and they all had to continue to keep up with whatever the norms were. Guys were like,

look, I'm not doing shit to my face. It's like, yeah, me neither, bro. I'm not doing nothing. It is what it is. I take it or leave it as is condition.

And now, as soon as people really start doing this, it's going to become an arms race. Everybody's going to have to do it. Do you do anything for your face? Nothing. Dude, no lotion, no moisturizer, no skincare routine. I've never applied a cream in my life.

I'm not even really sure what you would do if you put it on. Like, what are you supposed to do? I have no idea. Yeah, I've never done it either. But since I married a black woman, I now have tons of like lotions and all this crap like in my house. And I'm slowly starting to like learn a little bit about it. You're a muggle.

That's for wizards. It doesn't work. No, I've been my eyes have been open to the Korean skincare routine. I'm like slowly understanding what all this stuff means that I want to use it. But I've never really gotten into it until recently where I started seeing some wrinkles. And I'm like, all right. I think I can learn now. And the problem is, is that when you see issues, like, you know, you should have done something like five years ago.

But this is amazing that this guy's doing it. It's one guy. I don't know how many other people. But yeah, one guy basically saw the trend on Reddit and decided to productize what he saw people were doing on Reddit, which I think is just a great, like, you know, one common way to do a business is that. is you observe an organic trend and you say, cool, could I use tech to make this more efficient

and to actually ramp this up? When did you launch it? This thing is pretty new, dude. This is like, yeah, it's not that, not that old. I don't know exactly when you launched it, but it looks pretty fresh. It's also such a simple app.

Like, when you download this, you know that this is built by like a growth person, not a skincare person, not an engineer's engineer. This is built by somebody who was like trying to solve a problem. And it was like, cool, big blue buttons, one button per screen, can't get lost.

All right. I'm going to take a picture. I'll give you a number. All right. And then I'm going to tell you how to make the number go high. And I'm also going to give you your potential number, which is higher. And I'm going to sell your product to fill that gap. And they also have like a chat GPT.

So it's like your coach. So it's like, you know, you can go on here and be like, how do I lose more body fat? And then it just, you don't even type the question. You just select from one of the pre-sect questions. And then it types out some advice for you from there. Then you can ask it more questions. and it's basically like a custom, you know, chat GPT type of interface for you from there. And the idea is that this is like an overall trend.

So there's some more thoughts on it, but I don't stop there. People shared this in my work Slack and they were like, you know, trying to get us to use it. And I was like, this is like asking me to step on the scale a few days after Thanksgiving. Like, I'm just not going to happen. Ignorance is bliss. I don't want to know. I don't want to know the reality. But this is awesome. I guess I'll use it. Are you paying $3.99?

Oh, yeah, $3.99. Honestly, I would have been happy to go to $7.99. I'm just saying that out loud. So I asked a friend, I said, under the anonymity, I said, I know he knows about this kind of the trend, the space. He's younger. He's more into TikTok and stuff like that. I was like, can you give me your honest reaction? What are your thoughts on this?

And he said, well, to most older guys, this movement just seems completely bewildering. Like, what are young guys doing nowadays? But it makes sense. He goes, it's a response to men generally being rejected and cast aside. We can now take ownership and pride in how we look. Can you max out your natural genetics and ultimately become a more desirable person? Societyally, men caring about their looks has been viewed negatively, narcissistically, seen as lame or even gay. But now the view of the narrative is shifting where they just frustrated and they want to be able to be their most attractive self.

I can see this trend continuing to grow. It's already big in Korea with the Korean beauty trend. basically like in Korea, I think men's beauty products are like, you know, on par or close to on par with women's beauty products. And he also pointed out like an interesting thing, which is that I don't know if you're not a big sports guy, but two of the most famous college athletes, not named Caitlin Clark. The two most famous male college athletes are, there was this guy named Caleb Williams. He was the quarterback at USC. So like imagine like the most alpha male position in the country. You are the quarterback of USC, you know, in LA, you're the guy.

And he's this big athletic guy, but he would paint his nails. And he would get, he got criticized for it. And people were like, oh, man, I don't want to draft, like, because he's in the draft right now. But I don't want my team drafting a quarterback who cares about that stuff. And I want a tough guy. And other people are like, what are you talking about? Why are you overreacting? The guy paints his nails, so what?

And then there's a guard at Duke. So, you know, Duke's probably the number one basketball program. in the country. And this guy, Jared McCain, built a huge following on TikTok by doing goofy TikTok dances where he's laughing and happy. Even if they would lose a game, you know, a day later, he would still do this. And he paints his nails. And like, the opposing teams would harass him in the crowd every game, calling them all sorts of names. But he was like, dude, I'm just doing me. I'm having fun. He's like, oh, yeah, it's a superstitious thing. I did it once. I had a good game. So I decided to keep doing it. And he's like, I don't know, I like it. It's fun. What's the big

deal. And at first, he got like a lot of negative backlash, but then over time over the course of the year on TikTok, this guy had massed like one or two million TikTok followers. I think he was one of the highest paid, because you know, college athletes can get paid now. So he's one of the highest paid NIL athletes because he was getting sponsorships from beauty companies. Like the nail polish companies are sponsoring him, you know, paying this guy, you know, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars just to post a simple 10 second TikTok. And so in the end, he had the last laugh. And he, you know, for someone like me, I became a huge fan of this guy just because he was so

unafraid to be himself. And that was obviously a very, that's a very attractive trait in general. Dude, this is amazing. By the way, when I was in my boxing phase, my boxing instructor who was like a tough guy and would kick my ass all the time, he wore nail polish all the time. And I was like, why are you

doing that? And he was 25. And he was like, it's a thing. It's cool. It's what people do. And I was amazed by that. I remember as a kid, you would paint like a fingernail black as a punk rock but now it's like it's mainstream I think I think it's cool by the way I just downloaded UMax

and I just took my pictures I just clicked the button that says give me the results I love I know I know I didn't even want to do this it's not real this isn't real this isn't real this is not real your jawline's fantastic I could tell you that right now and 89 oh my God

you are maxed sir wait what my masculinity is in 93 my skin quality no it's just good lighting it gave me a 94 my skin quality is not that good and I'm frankly I should be in the six doing that thing that women do where you're like no no this little thing I bought oh no this was on sale

at tar you're immediately going into that mode that's hilarious it said I classic hot guy thing to do I dude if I'm hot I mean that's just not the reality overall 89

potential is 95 masculinity 93, jawline, 90, cheekbones, 87. I got some work to do. What are you going to do? Shave them? Yeah, what do you do? I don't know with your eyebrows.

I guess it's getting plucked. I don't know. This is a good app. I'm going to have to take pictures without good lighting and actually get a realistic rating. I just paid my $3.99. I'm into it. Kudos to this guy. I have a few spin-off business ideas for this.

So I think that, I don't know if you've seen, but you know what med spas are? These things are booming. No, what's a medspot? Med spas are absolutely booming. If you don't know about them, we should do a separate segment all together about them. But basically, it's like microblading, you know, you get your Botox, you get your lip filler. I don't know what doesn't happen there, but it's stuff like that. Basically, the optional aesthetic glow-up type of stuff that you can do that's beyond manicure, pedicure and like, you know, hair blow dryer or whatever.

Has your wife, by the way, Sean? Has your wife ever said that she wants to get Botox? And if she has, what has your reaction been? she has said it she's like oh yeah I want to do it someday and I'm like are you just float she's like floats it out

there's a little trial balloon just to see how it feels I feel and I'm like what no you don't need that and I just go into that mode but like genuinely like I have always told her

I prefer her completely without makeup I think she looks way better that way and so I've been telling her that for like you know a decade but she's like I'm not doing it for you idiot

I know you like she's like this has nothing to do with you every man every man has had that same response. My wife will say too, and I go, no, just age normally. You look great. Just be normal.

And so I think every man has said the exact same thing about women in Botox. It's very funny. They get this Botox. And I think most every man that I've spoke to, they're like, I don't give a shit. Just age. Also, it goes, like, it's not even just like, oh, you're fine without it. It's like, actually,

don't get Simon Cowell face. Have you seen Simon Cowell? Yes. They all look like cats, like Sheshire Cats. It's weird, man. They all look the same. It's like they go to the Madame Tussau Wax Factory and at some point it's like you look fine, you look good. Oh, you look better. Oh my God. You look like non-human and then they never recover from then. So there's some stuff there that's like a little scary to me. They all look like the ladies on the desperate housewife or whatever it's called like the housewife reality shows. I don't like that look. And I think most men do not like that look. So that's a PSA for the women listening. And what was the okay, med spas. That's cool. Okay. I think influencer content on this niche is going to become really big. So. I think that anytime you have a new generation, anytime there's a learning curve and there's like a trust gap and there's, you know,

it's a new norm that's being established. You need your, you need your shepherds that are going to guide you. You need your Sherpas that'll take you up the mountain. And so I think that anybody who goes all in on this like in terms of their social content, you know, there's going to be some, you know,

21 year old dude who all the, you know, 15 to 19 year old dudes look up to or even actually 15 to 24 year old dudes look up to because he's going to show his before and out. after. And I think that there's going to be room for, and I'm sure this already exists. I don't even open up Instagram, so I'm probably out of the loop on this. But I think there's going to be some really big influences I can go into this space because they're going to hold the keys. Whatever products they recommend, whatever procedures they

recommend, whatever brands they recommend, that's where the masses are going to go because you're in a low trust environment. You don't know anything. And so you're going to need that. So I think that's an opportunity here. More AI-driven apps. So I think another person could create UMax right now and get the same exact result. I agree. I think this app can be cloned in seven days, and I think you could just blitz the marketing on it, and you will also have a six million error. That's the unfortunate side of it.

I think that male nail polish and male makeup brands, it's obviously coming. But even as a gateway, I think that somebody could recreate Old Spice. So what's the deodorant for guys who care about their, like, guys who are like in gym culture and maybe now even in kind of like hair and grooming culture? who is speaking to them. I don't think Procter and Gamble knows how to speak to them. I don't think they have the right influencer strategy. I don't think they have the right brand and content strategy.

And I think somebody could do what Native deodorant did for like, you know, the natural movement. And, you know, Native basically built a product that would ride on the wave of natural, chemical-free, aluminum-free products. And that was where Native got built. I think somebody can create the Axe or Old Spice of today right now and get bought by Procter & Gamble or Unilever, whoever, for $200 million, $300 million, if you just build a great brand. This is insane.

And in Hampton, we have this company that's called For Them. And their name is Kylo. And they have a company that makes clothing that are like unisex. And they're killing it. And if you would have told me that this company was going to take off five years ago, I would have been like, you're insane. They are killing it. And they are kind of pouncing on this exact same niche of men who are in terms of. Androgynous, you know what I'm saying?

Like this Timothy Shalomain. My wife said she likes Timothy Shalomain. And I'm like, what? Really? Timothy Shalamein, that guy? Like, it's these feminine men are kind of having their moment at the moment, which I guess they always have, right? Like Mick Jagger is basically that.

Prince is that. You know, feminine men have always kind of killed it in the game. But this brand is one of those brands that I didn't think would be a thing. and it is. And so I'm on board with what you're saying. So I'm Luke maxing now, all right? I'm in on the train. I'm going to ride this. I'm going to relate to my fellow 17-year-olds. And I'm going to see what happens. This is great.

Dude, good find. I can't believe this UMax thing is as big as it is. I had coworkers share it with me today. You brought it up. It must be like going everywhere then. Well, someone did an interview with the founder and did a good Twitter summary of it. So I think it was just like a tweet that like a lot of people saw today. God bless them. God bless America. God bless capitalism, right? I would have thought that this was like some Chinese app.

Because wasn't there a Chinese app recently that was like, here's what you look like if you were better looking? Well, yeah, when I first downloaded, I thought it was going to be like Face Tune. I thought it was going to be you take a picture, it makes your picture look better. This is like, no, no, no, no. The real face.

We're going to try to make your real face look better. By the way, we should shout out the person who did it. A.T. Pie, I think is that 80 Pi. I don't know how you say here the name of the person who did the podcast interview. But shout out to them. That was a good, fine, good interview. By the way, the tagline for this app is Become Hot. It just says UMax Dash, Become Hot.

These guys are just digging right at every insecurity we have. I love it. All right. Let me tell you about a trend that's happening as well. So this will be like the Trends episode. UMax is happening right now. I want to tell you about a trend that's happening as we speak. Before we get to the trend, and this is recent, some news just happened.

But before we get to that trend, I need to tell you the background. So have you heard of this company called DuPont? It's a large chemical company. So in the 1940s, they were tasked by the government of coming up with a sealant for atomic bombs. So basically, atomic bombs needed some type of like sealant for gaskets. Gaskets are the parts that put two pipes together, so nothing leaks. Talk about a job you don't want to fuck up. Yeah, a job you do not want to fuck up.

And a job that requires a chemical that is very, very, very, very strong. The chemical they eventually created, it was one, it's one of the strongest bonds in chemistry. It's a very strong chemical. and this chemical, it's resistant to heat and it's super strong. And so the war ended and they were like, we have this great chemical. What do we do with it? And they start testing new things with it. And they go, we got a great idea.

Let's make a pan out of this. If we make a pan out of this, nothing will stick to the pan, even if it's burnt food. And so they run all these commercials. They go, we got this new thing called Teflon. They trademark it. And they go, this chemical, you can burn food on this pan and you can still just wipe it off. It's the easiest to clean thing. And it takes off.

chemical. We're going to call it Teflon, but it's a long chemical name, but it takes off. And they trademark it and they make it a huge thing and it's a massive hit, starting in the 40s all the way up until today, it's a big hit. Well, what they noticed was that there's this subset of chemicals that when you make Teflon called P-FAS. And P-FAS is basically a broad term that describes like 9,000 different chemicals that are kind of traded when you create Teflon. But what they noticed is that some of their workers working on the line were getting sick. And so they go, we should probably like look into this and test this a little bit. So they started giving it to rats and the rats started getting enlarged kidneys, which is a bad sign.

Then they go, well, fuck, let's give us to monkeys and see what happens with these monkeys. It killed the monkeys. And then eventually after 20 years of making this chemical, we're getting to the 70s now. And some of the ladies that are working on this, in this factory, they're having kids that are being born with weird defects. Like some kids were born with one-nine. or like they had eye issues. Like it was a massive problem and they tested these kids and they found that they had PFS in their spines. And so it was like being passed down from mother to son or mother to child.

And they're like, all right, this is really weird now. This is actually becoming a big deal. For some reason, the FDA doesn't call them out on it. They're still able to produce this. Now we know Teflon is incredibly popular. Nonstick fans are are incredibly popular. But here's a problem with this chemical because it is made for a test. atomic bombs, essentially, it lasts forever. This chemical doesn't get broken down. And now we're

calling them forever chemicals. Instead of P-FAS, a lot of times in the media, they'll just call it a forever chemical. And what they're noticing now is that basically 100% of Americans have P-FAS in their body because it gets in our water. And so it's in all the water in America. Not only is it in all of our water, it's in everything else. So, for example, all your cook wear, your non-stick pants, that's an easy one. However, it's in all of your, it's in a lot of your clothing. So any clothing that kind of feels like plastic, like a, like a rain jacket or like sports pants or like workout shirts, that has P-FAS in them. And it gets even worse. It's actually in all of your food packaging. And so in order to, for your pizza box, in order for the grease

not to seek through and go through the cardboard, it has P-FAS in it. This can of soda, I believe, has P-FAS in it because it helps make it a little bit more resistant to liquids. Well, this has been a big deal. And so recently, I think last year, DuPont lost a billion-dollar class action lawsuit where it says that they basically can't be doing what they're doing. They can't put this in people's water anymore because they were just dumping it in water or dumping it in the environment and it was getting in our water because the forever chemicals don't go away. Well, last week or two weeks ago, I believe, the EPA, which is the Environmental Protection Agency, basically just said that this is a big deal and that they're banning

a lot of these companies, so DuPont, Gore, and a few other companies, 3M, from putting this into water and that they're going to demand that local water companies, your city water, is going to have to start testing for this and getting this out of the water somehow. And so that was like a landmark case. And so, in my opinion, this is a trend that's happening right now. And I think that amongst my hippie friends, do you have any hippie friends who refuse to use non-stick pans? Yes. And I never understood it. Until now. I never understood it either.

They just said it's bad. And if you look at your nonstick pans, what you're going to notice is that there's chips in it. There's like little chips from where you like put your fork or a knife on it and it like chipped that little piece of Teflon and it like went into your food. You're basically consuming this stuff. But it's in plastic water bottles. It's into everything.

And you actually hung out with Joe Gebia recently, the founder of Airbnb. And he said that he only drinks a certain type of water. And I looked up that water company. What was it called? Aquapana. Aquapana was one of the few water companies that did not, They did not detect PFS in the water.

And the implications of this are quite big. So have you heard about men having like really low sperm counts right now and that's impacting fertility? Well, one of the hypothesis is that if your mother consume this stuff, the studies have shown that the men are likely to have lower sperm counts later in life. And so there's all these implications where people are getting cancer right now at super high rates and there's rumblings that maybe this is called from PFS. And so the reason I'm bringing this out,

obviously this is a big deal, and it freaked me out as a consumer, because, by the way, the takeaway of this is basically, you can't avoid it and you're screwed. That's basically... Oh, God. That's kind of the...

I mean, it's in everything. It's in floss. It's in everything. And once it's there, it's there. And so our generation might just be screwed. But the reason why this interests me is there's a common theme of hippie or, like,

French people being interested in something and it becoming mainstream and popular. in the next 10, 15 years. HIPPs are just innovators. They really are innovators. Yeah. Like, Birkenstocks are cool now. I mean, like, they starts up early.

My opinion is right now is a wonderful time to get into this business. And I was Googling which products are PFS free. I couldn't find a decent website. There's one website called mamavation.com. This lady's been blogging about this since 2009. And she does like crazy tests on like, different products. So it'll be like, which Ziploc bags are PFS free?

And she basically does all this analysis where she sends these plastic bags to the lab. And then her conclusion is none. None are PFS free. I don't have any good recommendations for this product. Mom of patient. Shout out to her. How long has you been doing this? 2009. This is amazing. And she has a rabid fan base. Ferremer chemicals in contact lenses. Damn it.

It's in everything. It's in everything. And then she'll do like bottle water. And she'll like, measure, she sends us off to a lab and she, like, measures all the bottled water and she'll say, these are, this is the order of least likely to have PFAS or she'll do a variety of products like jackets or clothing, things like that. And in my opinion, the same way that cold plunge is popular right now, the same way that, I don't know, whatever trends are popular, I think PFAS free or forever chemical free products are going to absolutely take off and they're going to be a thing. In a few years, we're going to see, do you remember Thrive Market?

Thrive Market was like an online marketplace for organic food. We're going to see Thrive Market for Forever Chemical Free Products. I think this is going to be a very popular thing because all of the brands that you and I probably use are really, really heavy in this. So, for example, like, you know, 10,000 shorts. Have you heard of that brand 10,000? No. It's just like an Instagram brand of workout shorts. That's basically, what their product is. It's like this plastic liner that are in your shorts. They're in everything.

They're in everything. Not to call it 10,000, but they're in everything. It's in your food packaging, everything. And so the EPA actually just announced that food packaging, starting I think next year, can no longer have this. So everything that you order from DoorDash, your Chinese food cartons, everything, this has that shit in it. But starting in 25, it's supposed to not have any of that crap in it.

Of course, there's a huge issue here, which is, the FDA has kind of like sat on this for like 50 years and the damage kind of has been done and there's new chemicals that you can kind of get around this stuff that are probably just as bad for you. But I still think that this is actually a turning point to make this trend mainstream. We've talked about inflections on this podcast. Now is what I call a regulatory inflection just like when COVID happened, you could do online therapy and you saw better help and much of other businesses like that take off. This is a thing that's going to actually get quite popular the next five and ten years.

Wow. This is, this is wild, dude. It's frightening. Not only was this a good segment, you might have saved my life and many people's lives by bringing this. What a story. I had heard of PFAS because I tried to buy a,

like a kid's bed. And I was like, how come a checkout's not working? I guess at first. I was like, why is it not like purchasing? It's like, oh, I contact help. It's like, oh, you're in California. We can't ship PFS, uh, like anything. contains PFAS to California.

And I was like, oh, God, how annoying. What is that? What do you mean? We can't take it, you can't ship it to California. I didn't realize what I was, what I was angry at, I should have been happy about. And why are these in, you know, I guess why are these in beds? Why do beds need these? Why do I sleep in these forever chemicals? Most of the paint you have in your home have it as well.

And so it's like a, it's a sealant is what it is. We need to clip this because I think in two, three years, it's going to be, we're going to see that, look, I'm looking at these categories, like, so, for example, example, she's testing, you know, contact lenses, makeup, dental floss, toilet paper, tampons, wrappers, oils, pans, active wear, all these different categories. You know, that's just like a mind field of opportunity to go through and build PFS free, you know, alternatives and popularize this story. The story that you told at the beginning is the story that needs to be told more, right?

I think it's one thing to say has PFS. It's another thing to say, do you know what that is? Do you know how bad this is? do you want your kid to be born with one nostril? How many nostrils you want your kid to have? Right? Like, that's all somebody used to say. And if you tell that story well, that's going to be incredibly powerful.

Well, this is why when I read this, I was like, obviously, this is bad. But the business side of my brain was like, this is advertising gold. Like, I'm like an HVAC guy during a heat wave. I'm like, this is, this is gold. Is that our version of a kid in a candy store? Yeah. I'm like an HVAC operator during. Yeah.

Like, it was gold when I read this stuff. And the reason being is forever chemicals, awesome branding. They're already branding it for us. That's a great brand. I feel like that almost sounds like, I don't know, it's like a slight positive twist. Is that good? It'll last forever. Diamonds are forever.

Oh, great. I kind of want it to be a little more dangerous, right? Like a little more off-putting. Well, I just think that, so there's a lot of research, but I think a lot of A lot of people actually, when I was reading the research, there's some debate over it. And I don't know why there's too much debate over it. I wasn't able to read all the research, but there's some debate as to how dangerous they are and in which setting. But I still think you can, this sounds manipulative, but you can use fear to be like, just don't have any of it.

And so, for example, I remember I was pretty nervous about this shit. And so I was looking just for cotton-only clothing. So clothing that is just plain cotton. But you look at what your clothing is, like Lulu Lemon, I mean, I mean, it all has PFS in it. And so it's been quite challenging. And if you Google PFAS free products, you're basically just going to come across a bunch of subredits. And so it's still quite niche and grassrootsy.

There's not like a good website that refers you to different products. There's this momavation website, but like it's still kind of a messy website and kind of confusing and hard to read. They're not just telling me what to buy and how to live my life. They're kind of telling the science behind it a little bit. but I think that there's going to be a lot of interesting brands that pop up on this trend. I know Patagonia is doing it right now. They've said that 95% of their clothing is PSA free or P-PAS-free.

I know that IKEA has been on this since 2009, and they've tried to say that their furniture doesn't have it, and a lot of people are committed to not having it by 2025. But very interesting movement, I think. All right, I got another trend for you. So this is a cool story, And I would say this is an example of niches and riches, which is a phrase we've said many times. And if there's anything more niche than this, I'd love to hear it.

So here's the story. There's a guy named Josh. And Josh Dunning, his wife is a high school teacher. And when he's talking to her and he goes, maybe picks her up from school, he notices kids are doing something outrageous in schools, which is that they're coming into schools and they're just blasting each other with water guns. And he's like, what is going on? She's like, oh, my God, I know these kids are obsessed with this game. And what's the game? The game, I don't know if you ever played this when you were in school, but it's the game

Assassins. And the game Assassin is the way it works really simply is you can play this one-on-one or like free-for-all or teams or whatever. But basically one person is the target and other people have to find them and you have to basically get the target first. So you want to shoot the target with the water gun first. And then after you've got them, you get points because you were the assassin who got them, and then the target moves.

And so, first of all, that sounds awesome. I wish I could have played that game. That sounds great. I can't even believe this is allowed, right? Water guns, you imagine the mess? This is ridiculous. But somehow, rather than being annoyed, he sees opportunity. And so he goes, how are they playing this game?

Like, how do you know who's it? And they're like, oh, we have this sheet, this paper. And then we have to like keep track of this, keep track of the points. He's like, huh. So he goes home and he builds an app and he builds an app called Splashing. And the Splashin app is just a way to run your Assassin's game.

And so he messages, I don't know how Ben found this guy, but he's messaging Ben and he starts explaining. He's like, yeah, I built this app and I just turned the game into something that would just keep track of this. Like replace pen and paper for this. He's like, it's good because he keeps track of the points

and it tells you who's it and all this stuff. But it's like a very simple app. and super, super niche. So he would not think this is how somebody gets wealthy. So he starts texting Ben, his revenue numbers. And he's like, week one, pretty small, week two. And he's like, week three, he's like 40K. What?

I was like, wow, you get $40,000 on this thing? Next week, we're like, how's it going? Did you stay at 40K or did it kind of fizzle out? He goes, yeah, yeah, 93K. We're like, what? 167,000 the next week. This week, $250,000. It is just like week over week.

This thing has gone viral. And so he's getting 5,000 signups per day right now. And so in a four week span, they basically went from no revenue to $250,000 a month in revenue on this. It's called Splashing. Splashing. Let me show you that. But you can go to their TikTok.

Every TikTok they post, they post three or four times a day. Each one gets, you know, 10,000 views or so. And then people are posting this. And it's also inherently viral. So not only did they do well with TikTok organic, but like this has something that,

that Michael Birch, one of my mentors taught me, which was playground virality, which is when Bebo went viral, I asked Michael, like, how did it grow? He goes, it had playground virality.

It means, like, literally on a school playground, one kid would be talking about it, and all the other kids who were out of the loop, had to go home and figure out what the heck this thing was. And similarly, like, if one group of people are playing splashing in your school,

you're going to have to go get the app to, like, play or you're left out. And so this thing goes super viral on high school and college camp. right now and their content is really good because they'll start with someone running after somebody, the video starts first three seconds, somebody's running after somebody else, spring them with water and the other person's like, oh, no. And then they're like laughing and it's like, what app is this? What game are they playing is the hook?

It says if you've seen random people running around water guns, splashing each other at this compilation of someone splashing someone in a car, someone diving under the bleachers, somebody like running, jumping through a window. The trick is to have these videos that, From a marketing perspective, you watch these. And in the first three seconds, it shows somebody chasing somebody else and splashing them with water. And it says, what game are they playing?

And then it says, if you've seen people all over your feed who are spraying each other with water, and it's just a compilation of crazy people diving through windows, being sprayed with water, it says they're playing a game called splashing. And the way it works is you're assigned to target. You see them on a map. Somebody's targeting you and then blah, blah, blah. And so that's the game. And pretty amazing.

to see this thing going viral. And like, this also falls into a category of apps that is not sustainable necessarily. But who cares? But who the hell cares? Yeah, it's a summer fling. And it's a great summer fling. Dude,

you were kind of glossed over the fact that this guy just messaged Ben and he just bends just like, what are your sales? Tell me your revenue. And he tells them every week. Dude, that happens to Ben like 10 times a day. It's like in Parks and Rec where they find,

out that one of the main characters is a nurse and they start sending her dick picks to like diagnose so they could get diagnosed with an STD. And she's just like, dude, my inbox is just full of like men's penises asking if they have herpes. I guess that's just Ben's inbox.

It's just all these guys sending. Because he's useful, dude. Like people tell him what's going on. And then he's like, oh, you should talk to this person. They will solve that one problem you're having. And then they're like, wow, love this guy. And then he does it again. And like, you know, because I'll be like

two people that don't know each other that we know are talking. I'm like, oh, wow, how'd they meet? He's like, oh, yeah, I introduced them. I'm like, how did you even think to introduce him? He's like, well, every week, he tells me, like, how it's going. And then he said he was having this problem. And so I told him about this other guy who solves that specific niche problem. And now it's like, you're like a router.

He's like a switchboard operator who's able to just like, once he knows what you need and he knows what somebody else has to offer, he makes connections and he asks for nothing in return. And that like, you know, just works out. Have you seen Boardwalk Empire, the show? No. So the main character, amongst other things, he's basically a mafia guy. He's in the mob, and he connects Al Capone with this one distiller who can make Al Capone's whiskey or whatever.

And whenever he does that, he goes, all right, where's my cut? And he, that's how he makes a living and gets rich off that by just making connections. Or he'll introduce Al Capone to a politician who's going to help hide his whatever. That's what Ben needs to do. Ben needs, we need to change because it's so. Silicon Valley people make these introductions and they don't ask for anything, Ben should ask for something. He goes, where's my points?

He just needs to start asking for points. No, no, that ruins it. That's why guys like you and me don't have what he has. He just, he's just happy to be useful. And then value just comes back. Dude, there is a business karma. Value does come back. A few of these people will be like, hey, let me cut you a check.

Or, hey, if there's more like that, I'm happy to like incentivize you to give me more like that. And he's like, sure. I didn't ask for it, but people come to him with that because they're like, give me more of where that came from. And so he's created a lot of value. And I think that in general, you want to be like ultra free or ultra premium. So it's basically like don't make money on every transaction.

Don't be a gatekeeper who stands in the way of the traffic flowing. And it's like, let 99% of the cars go through completely free. But then on the one where, you know, there's a bigger opportunity or something like that, we get to invest or we get to be a part of it in some way. And it pays off for the 99 free things that he did. And I think he's got the right method. How old is this guy, Josh Dunning? I just looked him up.

He looks like a really young guy. I mean, that's pretty impressive. These basically kids, like coming up with these things that are making very, very meaningful traction as one or two people operations. Well, it's also the magic of software, right? Like software is so different than a services agency or an e-commerce prelay. We have a physical product, right? Like these software things, they build it once. runs forever.

They can have this UMax guy, three and a half million customers can use his thing. This guy's signing up 5,000 people a day because software scales. Software is magic. That's not the magical part. The magical part, I think is the psychology behind it. And I think,

we have a friend Nikita who, frankly, I don't know what's reality versus the story. But like, there's all these people who he claims are coming to him for advice on how to make my app viral. And he like says like, he doesn't say it,

but the story. that I kind of glean from it is like, beep-bop, boop, you just do this, this, this, you change this thing to this thing to this thing, and boom, done. Like, where's my money? And I don't know if that's the reality, but he's like, hey, look,

three of the apps that I advise are now in the top 100 of most downloaded apps in the Apple Store. And it's just like is amazing how there's a little bit of a pattern. And I don't entirely understand the patterns because I'm not just describing expertise, right? Yeah, but it just, seems like more than ever before, it's becoming like a playbook. And it just is ridiculous how

like I do think that you could take some of these, this knowledge and apply it to five or 10 other things. And it works almost as well. All right. Hey, I want to take quick break to congratulate our friend Tim Ferriss. Tim's podcast has crossed one billion downloads. Billion. That is insane. Especially for a guy who said when he started the pod, hey, I'm going to do six episodes. Just give this a try. See if I like it. If I don't, it'll just be six, but if I do, maybe I'll keep going. And he, sure enough, kept going. Tim is amazing at the pod.

He's a big inspiration for me. In fact, when I started this podcast, I still remember the day. I had sold my company. I was walking around San Francisco. I did a four-hour walk with my buddy. We walked ourselves into a frenzy and he goes, well, what do you want? What do you really want to do next? And I said, I think I want to beat Tim Ferriss.

I don't want to beat Tim Ferriss. I want to have the impact Tim Ferrars had. I said, you know, I have listened to so many of his episodes, like the Jamie Fox one. I remember was epic. The ones with Naval or All Killer, his ones with Arnold Schwarzenegger were really good. You know, he's done so many episodes that really stood out to me and shifted my perspective, changed my lens, gave me some inspiration. He was there when I was doing just boring commutes.

And I want to thank him for doing the show. The world would be a worst place if he did not do the Tim Ferriss podcast. And he's done, now this is his 10-year anniversary. So happy birthday, Tim, for the 10-year anniversary of your pod. a billion downloads. That is incredible. He is still to this day, I think one of the best question askers on the planet, which you probably didn't even think was a skill. But it is, of course. And his quote about questions has always inspired me. He says that questions are like the pickaxe of the brain. You can use a question to just unlock information. That's what he does.

He breaks down world-class performers by asking them amazing questions. So Tim, congrats on the 10 years. If anybody's out there, you're listening to this podcast. Just hit pause and go listen to Tim instead. You know what? I don't mind. It is a great move by you. You can find the Tim Ferriss show wherever you get your podcast. He's also got a newsletter called Five Bullet Friday with two million weekly subscribers. You can find that at tim.Blog. And you can find the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. So I'm going to tell a story. I don't know if I can use the guy's name just because I didn't ask him if I was going to tell the story. But I could tell a version of the story. So met a guy recently really awesome guy. Became friends with them. And he is like a growth expert. Not like the, you know, Twitter, YouTuber, you know, I'm a growth expert,

hire me for $500 an hour and I'll be your growth guy. Like this guy actually like, the big name Silicon Valley products, he was like running the growth team there. And so like, you know, like in the same way that,

you know, Chimath or Javier grew fit. You know, they were the lead guy on the Facebook growth team. And they like, they fought those wars. Or Josh Elman did this at different companies. There's another guy who did this at other companies.

And so he was describing me. He's like, yeah, he's like, I went for a, walk with them in Silicon Valley, like the real Silicon Valley, meaning he was walking. He's like, that's Steve Jobs's house. That's Larry Page's house. That's Mark Zuckerberg's house. And they're like, I don't know if you've ever been here, by the way, in Palo Alto.

These are like completely unassuming houses, by the way. They're not like mega McMansions. They're just like small cottage houses in a cool little neighborhood that's open in Palo Alto. And he's like, yeah, and he was like, I was like, how did you get connected with somebody he knew? I go, how did you get connected with these people? And he goes, well, I had built an expertise around SEO. He's like, I just understood SEO. I had done it at two of my companies. I just really, I feel like I knew SEO better than most people.

And somebody introduced me to, to the guy from Cora, Adam D'Angelo, who was like, you know, co-founder of Facebook now was doing Cora. And Cora had a SEO problem. They were heavily dependent on SEO traffic. And then like some Google update happened and their SEO traffic was dying. or was having trouble for whatever reason. And I did a call with him.

And he's like, I, he's like, on that one call, I told him, I was like, oh, it's this.

You are getting penalized by Google for this. You need to change that. And it'll fix it. And it fixed it. And like the growth, you know, went up. And then I told them one other thing after that.

They did one more call. I did one other thing. And like, basically like the core growth curve was like, you know, really impressive afterwards. And Adam, you know,

called him. And was like, hey, dude, like, can you, can I, will you come work here? can I hire you as a consultant?

I'll pay you any number to hire you as a consultant. And he's like, also, how did you do that? Because that was like my team's working on this for months. And like you just pointed at the thing. You're like, this is it. And he's like, well, it looks like there was just one thing. He's like, but actually the skill is that there's a thousand, you know, needles. There's a thousand straws in a haystack.

And the trick is just to find the one straw that matters. And it looks like, oh, man, you only had to move one straw. But it's like, because I knew the 99 other things. percent of things to ignore. I knew which ones were not the answer, which told me it's got to be one of these two things. And then I pulled that out. He's like, that's what expertise looks like when it's done well, is not that

it's not that you come up with more ideas than anyone else. You can quickly eliminate the 99 waste of time and try to find a one or two that matter. So I love that principle. Then he said another thing. He goes, so when he offered me that, I was like, so did you go work there? Did you take the consulting gig? That'd be awesome. I bet they could have paid you a ton or whatever. He goes, I had a better deal.

I told him, I'm going to do this for free, you. But when the time comes, I know you're super connected to Silicon Valley and I just moved here. I would love for some introductions. Like, you know, if I do come up with something, I'd love for you to make an introduction. And at the time, Adam's like, done, easy. That's the price. Amazing. I got a steal here. He's like, but actually, I got way more value out of that trade. He's like, because then when I cashed in that chip, he's like, people would say, he's like, I could get an intro to anybody. And the intro would come like with extreme vouch of this guy's like the magic man. and he's like, and Adam doesn't make many intros.

So as soon as that they would enter me, the person would say, not only did Adam vouch for you, Adam never makes any intros. This is the first intro he's ever made, because he knows, like, to the intro meet is like, you know,

kind of a high bar, so you must be really something. And that was kind of that business karma, you know, coming back. And he's like, I didn't do it in a manipulative way. I just thought that that was a better ask.

And I was like, wow, that's a great, great story. That's awesome. That is a really good story. I want to get him on. I think he's got some,

he's got some good growth story. some growth advice. So I'm going to try to get them on. I'll ask for his permission. I think today was a 10 out of 10. I feel hyped. I want to go and learn about some of the stuff. I want to look up splashing. I want to play splashing. First, I need like friends that are immature enough to play a water gun game with me. We need adults splashing throughout Austin. I guess I'm not going to go buy a water gun. In Texas, you guys just play with real guns. Yeah, we're going to call bleedin instead of splashing. That's great. That's great. is that the pod?

Well, we have one more thing. One more thing about expertise, and this is also the thrill of the show. I was watching one of the podcasts that I recorded it when I went to Austin, and the guy said something. He goes, this is a guy who's Joe Lonsill, his claim to fame.

I think the title of podcast is going to be the guy who's created more billion dollar companies than anyone else. Great title. Which is just an incredible claim to fame and an incredible title. And so he goes, he was saying something. He goes, he almost paused me, while I was saying something, he goes, oh, by the way, that's always a good idea. I was like, what is he talking about?

And what he's saying was, he goes, anytime a company that was successful doing one thing had to build internally their own tool, that's not their product, but they like hired engineers, that engineers working on something. And they were like, that's the tool, like some internal homebrew tool that they used. It was like part of their secret sauce for their success, but it wasn't their main product. He goes, that's always a good idea, which is basically. to, I call this the export framework, you export something that was built internally and you make a product that's available to all. And so he was talking about this, for example, with Palantir.

He started Palantir, now a $50 billion company. Palantir, the genesis of it was he was an intern at PayPal fighting fraud. And so at the time, PayPal, because PayPal was getting popular, basically what he said would happen. He goes, somebody would, you know, some cashier at a gas station is having a bad day would kind of steal your credit card number, and they could go sell, you know, 50 of these on the black market to the Russians. Russians would pay $100 a pop for these credit cards, stolen credit cards. And then they would go charge up this thing. And then the customer would be like, I didn't buy any of this stuff. And so they would charge it back. Is like, and PayPal was left holding the bag of that charge back. And that to the tune of like millions

of dollars, like it would have put us out of business. It put out, most of our competitors went out of business for this one reason. And so fighting fraud was like a really important thing. and we had to build a set of tools to be able to do like data detection, fraud detection, and like fight the bad guys. He's like, and then when I started Palantira,

I was like, what if we took all that fight the bad guys stuff? And we made it available to the government to be able to fight the bad guys for counterterrorism and stuff because this was after 9-11. And so he was given that example of like, anytime you see the homebrew tool that spins out becomes a product, that's a successful business.

Well, today's sponsor is exactly that. And that is Beehive. So Beehive was basically the origin. Great plug. Great plug. The show. I guarantee you that nobody does ad reads like I do ad reads, right?

I'm going to teach you something, tell you a story. And then I'm going to give you the value too. That's a great thrill. And I'll give you the show. Now, the show part is these guys were inside of Morning Brew, which is probably, would you say it's probably the most successful newsletter business outside of Agora, right? Like the most successful mainstream newsletter business? Nearly $100 million a year business.

$100 million business grew really fast. And both of us have tried building newsletter businesses. And these guys built like grew it faster than both of us. We were successful. they were even more successful. They grew their newsletter about 5 million subscribers. And the secret sauce of how they grew their newsletter, their growth engine was this internal tool that they built,

which let them write a newsletter easily, like format it, get it all ready to go, baked in the growth stuff. So like a referral's and, you know, like recommendation things at the bottom of an email, when it's like, hey, send this to a friend and you can get a free sticker or a free mug or free t-shirt or whatever. All of those little tools that they built internally,

this guy, Tyler, basically spun out, and created Beehive to do that independently. So now anybody like me, when I built the Milk Road, I didn't have to build any of that shit. Morning Brew has like, you know, I don't know how many hundreds of employees. We didn't need any of that shit. Literally it was me, Ben, and one other guy.

And like the three of us built a newsletter that we sold for millions of dollars because we could just use Beehive off the shelf. And so if you're looking to build a newsletter either personally or you want to start a newsletter business like me and Sam did, Beehive is the way to go. They basically took all the secret sauce that was inside Morning Brew. Turn it into a product that you can use off the shelf on day one. 10 out of 10.

I was thrilled. I just imagine Joe Lonsdale just holding up his finger to your lips and saying, just shut up, just shut the fuck up. Beehive. It's hilarious too because I'm trying to connect with Joe. He's like this billionaire who's created like, you know, spy technology for the government, $50 billion company, you know, tools that all the asset and wealth managers use,

at a par, $3 billion company. OpenGov, which sold to governments and basically sold for $1.8 billion. He's got a weapons company that builds like EMP pulses that will, you know, knock drones out of the sky, war tools. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, me too, man. I'm an entrepreneur too, just like you, me and you, same, same. Yeah, I built the newsletter company. Yeah, I did it like kind of part time for a year and then sold it.

Not for a billion dollars, just like a few million. It was great, though. Yeah. And then what else do we got? I got podcast. Talk to my buddy Sam a couple times a week. That's pretty dope. I'm working hard out here, man.

All while you were wearing camouflage sweatpants. You and I are the same. This is while we were at a cold plunge together. And I was just like also hyperventilating and being like, how long do guys like this stay in the cold plunge? I think it's longer than I'm used to. But I cannot. I cannot get out of this plunge until he does.

I die an icicle or I live, you know, with all the glory of this. And you're like, oh, you did a multi, multiple, billion dollar companies. I got a 69 on U-Hot. So what'd you get? So are you with the look maxing? No? I didn't think so. I just

curious if that was a priority for you. That's a typical 49% or answer, bro. So check it out. Beehive. That's what two eyes, by the way. B-E-E-H-I-I-V. Yeah, that's weird. By the way, they give up, they post their revenue.

I don't know what. Dude, Tyler, the CEO, for the next time we give the shout out, we'll focus on Tyler. Tyler's a great CEO. I thought he was a loose cannon. And I think he sort of is. No, he's just good looking. That's what you thought. You were like, yeah, nobody does good looking and cool is going to be a good operator.

He actually is. He's just, he, I thought he was just too loose of a cannon. And then I realized that his aggressiveness is actually awesome. And I, I did not invest in them. And it's one of the things that I'm like, oh, I should have done that. I almost didn't invest. So I did end up investing. Actually, I think I passed the first time.

And so what I did was I passed the first time because I was like, I don't know how big this can get. And then we started using it for the milk road. And I used it for my personal newsletter. So I became a customer first. And then I would just see like anytime we'd have a problem, they were so fast to fix it. And they kept releasing stuff. I was like, oh, okay. I called him back.

I was like, I want to invest. He's like, well, you change your mind. You think the market's bigger. I was like, no, actually, I think the market's the same size. but you guys are like relentlessly shipping. And I'd rather just bet on somebody like that than not bet on them. And like, you know, I'm often wrong about market size. Markets can trick you.

Markets can look small and be bigger. But founders or teams that operate like this, that's like always a good signal. And so I'm like, let me just bet on the known versus not bet because of this hypothetical unknown thing. But what I almost didn't because when I did the call, he had a surfboard behind him. And I was like, ain't a way I'm going to invest in a C. who surfs regularly enough with the surfboards behind him in his room. But I was wrong. Next time we talk about him,

we have like four or five more stories about Tyler. Tyler's an interesting guy. And I respect the hell out of him. He's a good entrepreneur. I want to see what their revenues at right now. So they, he tweeted on February 1st. 12 million in it.

Dude, look at this graph. We got to put this up here. $7 million in ARR was February 1st, so two months ago. And this graph is literally like shaped like this. It's pretty crazy. And he goes, this doesn't include some of some revenue.

from the ad network. Oh, no. March 19th, quickly approaching 10 million ARR. So they're probably just under 10 million to ARR now. Yeah, it's an amazing company. They've taken off. Is it just Behive.com or is it like a Behive.com slash? No, it's just Behive.com. Go there if you want to start a newsletter. All right. Is that the pod? That's the pod. 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. Looking back.