My First Million - The Wildest Stories of Corporate Espionage We’ve Ever Heard

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

💰 Get the [free] Episode 689: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) break down the craziest stories of corporate espionage in history.  — Show Notes:  (0:00) Rippling vs Deel (10:21) The British East India Company (17:11) Oracle vs Microsoft (21:28) Coke vs. Pepsi (24:14) Uber vs. Waymo (26:03) U.S. Intellectual piracy (28:10) Wiz sells for $32B (39:40) A case for Glassdoor (45:54) Marc Lore's new thing (51:52) Money, Status, Power — Links: • Errol Musk interview - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5WyTw0oXDs • Gili Ranaan interview - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG0SiUtBSh0&t=187s&ab_channel=MetisStrategy  — 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 HubSpot Media // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

All right, a sentence that has never been said before, B2B Enterprise HR Software Space is the most riveting, the most compelling espionage story you'll ever hear. I feel like this episode is going to have to start with the Netflix, like, da-dun, because this is a Netflix original level drama. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off.

On the road, let's travel, never look at back. right, we got to do this story. Parker Conrad, who is the CEO of a company called Ripling, they do like payroll as well as other kind of back office stuff for startups. tweeted, came out two days ago and said, Ripling sued Deal today. Our lawsuit alleges that deal cultivated a spy at Ripling and orchestrated a long-running trade secret theft. The spy searched deal in our system 23 times a day on average, letting him spy on deal's own customers. who were considering switching to Rippling

and then he post screenshots of the lawsuit. Did you read this? Yes. And we should preface this saying, I think you have friends at Deal. I'm an investor in Deal. So I invested in Deal many years ago. It's one of best investments.

I really like Alex. I don't know. I'm super well. Like we're not like Buddy Buddy, but like Alex, the founder of Deal, I think is awesome. And I use Deal.

I think deal is a great product. And so that's kind of my bias and context coming in is I like deal and I invested in deal. And when I talk to you, Everything here, it's allegedly, and it's also, this is just what the lawsuit says. And also, it's just comedy for me. Like, I don't know about any of this. And I am just like everybody else on Twitter, this is for entertainment for me.

So please don't take this too seriously. What's the baseline story? Okay, so basically the story is, Rippling notices. He's saying we noticed somebody was looking up deal a lot in our systems. So then this is where it gets good. He's like, so we created a honeypot. The best. The story behind this is basically, like, I don't, I wouldn't even be smart enough to come up with the idea of this.

This is amazing. So the way it worked was, I think I read that it was Rippling's founder and their legal team and maybe one other executive were in a room one night saying themselves, do deal is spying on us? What is going on? How do we catch them? And they said, let's, how did they know they were spying? I don't know. That they just noticed on the log

because this guy was searching deal a lot. That sounds so crazy. Yeah. So there's always, you know, no matter how fit of pancake, there's always two sides. That's what my dad always tells me. So I don't know.

We only, that's a good one, right? Yeah. We only know this side. So this side is that they had a suspicion and then they're sitting there one night and they go, I got it.

Let's make a screenshot or let's actually make a fake Slack channel that no one at the company knows about. And we're going to call it deal defectors, meaning all of Deals' ex-employees who now work at Rippling, they're talking trash about deal and they're spilling the beans. Turns out that was a channel that no one at the Rippling was a part of, but they emailed the deal team and they go,

this exists and you would love to see it. And then the next day after setting the letter, they noticed someone tried to log in to this deal defectors Slack channel. And that seems strange since the only people who know about this are Deals, three people on their executive team, and Rippling's three-person executive team. And it wasn't us Rippling. Therefore, it had to be one of the deal executives

who knew about this espionage and spying situation and had access to the back end of Rippling's login. Is that right? I think that's right. So that's allegedly what happens. So they go to the local authorities, because I think this has happening in Ireland, by the way, like he's working at the Ireland, the Dublin office.

And they go to local authorities. They get like whatever, the ability to kind of like subpoena his phone. So I guess what happens? happened is person comes in, says, hey, you've been served, you need to hand over your phone right now. And he says, oh, it's upstairs in my bag. Like, all right, let's go get it. So they go up, they look in the bag, just a laptop, and there, no phone. And they're like, okay, where's the phone? He's like, I got to go to the bathroom. So it goes to the bathroom, locks himself in the bathroom real quick. And then the story goes, the person heard him doing something, quote,

doing something on his phone. And he's knocking on the door, basically shouting at him like, hey, if you delete anything on that phone, you're in violation of the law. The story goes, that the spy goes, that's a risk I have to take. He said that? That's a risk I'm willing to take. He said that? That's what they wrote at this thing.

And then they hear a flush. They hear a flush. And then the guy flees the premises. They don't get the phone. And then Rippling orders somebody to go check the plumbing of the building to see if he flushed a phone. Couldn't find a phone in there. No phone. And so that's where the story stands today.

And then that's why they came out publicly and tried to like, you know, win this in the court of public opinion instead. Can I give three little bits of advice to anyone listening if you're ever going to get in trouble? One, don't say shit. Do not say that's a risk I'm only to say. Don't say anything. Just say, yeah, I don't want to talk or give me a lawyer. The second thing, don't write down anything that you'd be afraid to be found in discovery. And three, do not delete messages when you think you're in trouble.

That's against the law. Dude, I don't know if any of this is true. There's a whole bunch of back and forth. So here's a bit of the other side of the story. So I think someone from Deal came out and here's what a deal spokesperson said. Weeks after Rippling is accused of violating sanctions. law in Russia and ceding falsehoods about deal, Rippling is trying to shift the narrative with these sensationalized claims. We deny all legal wrongdoing and look forward to asserting our counterclaims.

All right. I too look forward to them asserting their counterclaims. You know what's funny is I lived in San Francisco and I was a, so the guy who started Rippling, I was a customer. His name is Parker Conrad. Parker previously started Zenefits. And back in 13 or 14 or 15, that era, I, I think Zenefits was the fastest growing company ever. I think it grew to like $100 million in revenue, something insane. And Parker, from what I remember, he got fired by the board because Zenefits was like a payroll and benefits company, which means you need to be pretty uptight.

And I think that he was accused of being a little loosey-goosey. Like it was like people were, if I remember correctly, the articles were like people at the parties were like having sex in the hallways or something insane like that. I don't think that was the, well, maybe that was happening, but I don't think that was the issue that got him in trouble. No, that was it, but that was like a canary in the call. It was like, dude, this guy, like he does it. Like, not everyone has their health benefits license, license like that you need to sell benefits. I guess in order to like be a broker, a license broker, you had to have it in like every state that you were operating in. That's what it was. There's a bunch of compliance things. And what he would, what had happened was either some people didn't have it or there was another thing, which was he had created a macro, like a piece of soft. that would just take the tests for you.

Yeah, that's what it was. So you could speed through this and get your license way faster to keep up with the growth and like kind of like you didn't actually do it yourself. And I think that's when he got in a lot of trouble. And he's got, again, in this case, you know, like basically he got ashamed. He got kicked out of the company. David Sacks took over. David Sacks, who was his COO and big investor.

I think Sacks had put in like $10 or $20 million of his own money into the company and then came in a CEO because it was like the next big hot startup. And then this came out. and then Sacks basically threw Conrad under the bus. But they use like these guys are partying, they're banging in the hallways. Yeah, just made it look like the whole thing was a mess, whatever. Yeah. And then, and he said, took over and he got basically the shaft.

And then Rippling was sort of his revenge company. But yeah, this guy finds himself in some drama, I guess. Parker likes a party. Parker's putting the PA at party. I mean, he likes to get down. And now I'm hearing about, I didn't know about this Russia stuff. So Parker lives life on the edge. And, you know, he's kind of the bad boy, the HR SaaS industry.

What can, you know, what can you say? He needs to go Jensen leather jacket. Just pure snake skin. Oh, the bad boy of HR SaaS is here. I like Parker. Parker parties, man. Like, he just gets down. He always finds himself in a sticky situation.

Sign me up. Parker should come on to MFM and we should go hang out. but this guy likes to party, you know? All right. So, all right. A lot of uninformed speculation here. I feel like we're going to get hit with a lawsuit.

What's he going to say that he doesn't party? Is that slander? Parker's ring doorbell has shown him to be home before 8 p.m. Every night. Does Parker, does the man in the polo of jeans not like to get down? We deny these allegations. All right.

So, okay. whatever. So there's the deal, Ripling thing. There's a bunch of funny tweets about this. It's just good comedy. I have actually a different angle here. I don't know if you have anything else you want to say on this, but I have a different angle, which was got me thinking, what are some other great examples of corporate espionage in history? And I have some for you, Sam.

Oh, okay. Cool. I like that. All right. So check this out. I went down a little rabbit hole. And I tried to find, you know, examples of great corporate espionage cases that have happened in the past. I want to start with the British East India Company. Okay, are you prepared for this? So basically back of the day, we're talking about like the 1800s, the British East India Company. Basically, it was a trading company between the UK and India. Okay. And they did two notable things. One, which is unrelated to corporate espionage, did you know they had their own corporate army?

Well, I know that they were like the ballers of the earth. They like started. in like 1600s and like basically like help shape global trade. So they were so prolific that like other parts of Europe like basically they were attacked on their trade routes and there was like a lot of security concerns. So they formed their own corporate military, which is pretty badass. And I think, you know, if I'm perplexity or something like that, if I'm like the third or fourth tier AI company right now might just spin up a corporate military just to put some shine on me and what I'm doing make it seem like I got some trade secrets that I need to

protect, just armed guards going through Soma, it'd be amazing. Yeah, I think that every company needs like a fake enemy or a fake emergency to prepare for. I think it's good for them. It's like when I used to be in college and we would go out and, you know, I'd be at the bar and just a lot of strikeouts was going on, you know, pretty low batting average, pretty low slugging percentage. Take it a lot of else. What was you're called the pro chobit? What was like cold and gross out? Okay, here we go. Ready?

Sam, Just turn around. I'll be the girl. And now you're just going to feel my body. Yeah, so I was hanging out on this guy. Wait, hold on. What is this? Oh, you didn't want to grind?

Oh, shit. No. Okay, my bad. Totally thought you wanted to grind. That was it. The mistake grind with the immediate apology stick. That was, if it was on the dance floor. All right, if we're not on the dance floor, if we're at the bar, ready?

Yeah, so I'm just turned around. I'm looking over here. I'm just hanging out. Hey. Yeah? Do they do drinks here? Question. Just a question.

That was it. Mine used to be, uh, hey, Selvabat. How many oceans are there? Five or seven? Oh, wow. That's great. This was, I'm talking about pre-reading the book, the game. Once I read the book the game, then it was, uh,

Hey, you guys got to settle an argument here. And I just literally ripped the line from the book where it's like, my roommate's girlfriend is making him throw away all the pictures of his ex-girlfriend in his apartment. Is that crazy? Or is she, we think she's crazy. Is that crazy? And they're like, no, you got to get rid of that. And it's like, oh, do you want to be my girlfriend?

No? Okay, never mind. Do you know what the worst line is is when I would steal all of the lines from the game? and then one out of ten times, a woman would reply and say, yeah, I read the game too, you douche. And it was just like, you go home so sad. That was the worst. I would have thought that worked. We have so much in common. We love the same books. I didn't have that turned shit into gold type of persona back then. You know, I was still just... There's a reason I was single for, like, not just all four years of college, but even two years after college. Like, it was a long, it was a long drought.

I felt like the British East India Company just marching through the drought. That's not exactly a drought because the drought implies that that's not normal. Yeah, exactly. I guess it's just a desert. Yes. What are some other ones? Wait, by the way, have you ever done this with a company? What?

Corporate espionage? You think I'm cool enough to do that? Like my extent of it was like having a friend at Facebook and them like telling me like what my competitors are doing. I've been there, done that a few times. Yeah, yeah. No, I've never done anything this cool, I don't think. But, you know, I'll tell you this British East India company story.

All right, so back in the day, China had like a monopoly on tea production. And this was a big problem. Tea was super popular. China made all the tea. And nobody could figure out how to make the tea. Nobody had the, like, the seeds. Nobody had any of the stuff you needed to, like, try to break that. So they were all trading with China to get tea, but they didn't have anything to trade back with China.

So there was these huge trade imbalances. And so basically Britain, I think, was trading like opium into China as this only thing I could get into China. And China didn't like that. And it created what was called the first opium war. And so there's literally a war broke out because of this trade imbalance with the tea. And so what happens is the British decide to do something about this. And so let me tell you this story real quick. So the East India Company, the British East Indian Company, hire this guy named Robert Fortune.

He's a Scottish botanist and adventurer. And they paid him, they were like, you are going to infiltrate China. And you were going to steal the tea industry secrets of China. And by the way, Google a picture of this guy because I don't know how he pulled this off. He looks like a Scottish man, but he disguised himself as a Chinese merchant and went underground. He was wearing Chinese clothing, Chinese hairstyle. He traveled deep into China's tea region. which is actually off limits to foreigners,

and he was able to get access in, and he studied tea production step by step, everything for planting, harvesting, drying, packaging, all of it. He didn't just observe. He was able to collect thousands of tea plants, seeds, equipment. This guy was supposed to be Chinese? This guy was supposed to be Chinese. I don't know how he did it, but...

He looks like me. Exactly. He's you with sideburns. Yeah. Sick chops. Wow. Not only that, then he started recruiting, like turning other people.

So he started recruiting Chinese tea growers, hiring them and persuading them to leave China secretly and relocate to India. And basically, he pulled it off. He goes and he steals the trade secrets. He hires the tea growers. He smuggles them out of the country. He brings the seeds, the tools, the knowledge,

the trade secrets. He gets to India and they start growing tea. And soon after that, India surpassed China in terms of its tea production, broke the Chinese monopoly on tea, and prevented future war. actually de-escalated the conflict because now there wasn't this huge trade imbalance and opium problem. That's insane that this guy pulled this off. How long was he in China for?

I think this was like a multi-year thing. How exciting. That's a life worth living. Let me give you some other ones. All right. So now let me give you a more modern example. Oracle versus Microsoft. Have you heard this story? No. All right. So two giants, two successful companies. Microsoft, if you remember in the 90s, was doing antitrust cases. And Bill Gates, there's videos of this on YouTube. He's like in depositions. And they just were getting hauled in front of the antitrust committees. And they had to defend themselves.

So he was being accused of a monopoly. Monopolyistic behaviors. And this really was a problem for Microsoft. It slowed them down. I think it's called like the lost decade where basically like for a long period of time, Microsoft couldn't acquire companies. They couldn't like, if something got hot, they couldn't release a competitor and kind of use their distribution to win because they had just gone through this like, you know, antitrust

problem. They had to lay low. They had to lay low, exactly. And so Microsoft, while it's in this situation, Oracle hires all these private investigators to go and dig up dirt on Microsoft during this period of time. And it gets found out. But what they were doing was pretty smart. Instead of digging up dirt on Microsoft, they were going to all these other companies

that were supposed to be independent, like they were kind of coming out and providing like testimonials or testimony in support of Microsoft. And it was like, oh, this independent council, like the independent institute, the national taxpayers union, they're coming out in support of Microsoft here. And Larry Ellison from Oracle's like, nah, no way. And so Oracle hires these private investors to go dumpster diving. And so they're digging through the trash of these independent organizations finding links where they got paid by Microsoft. And they get caught. They get caught doing this.

But they also caught that Microsoft funded these organizations. So they go to Larry Ellison. He's like, look, I had nothing to do with this. I wasn't made aware of it until the end. And I agree this was a bit unsavory. But he goes, he goes, corporate espionage. This is a public service. We're doing our civic duty here.

We are taking hidden information about how Microsoft is funding these supposed independent orgs and we are making it public. We're doing, we're doing God's work out here. And just calling it public service and is doing his civic duty, I thought was an incredible spin. the other day an Elon Musk interview in an Elon Musk interview someone asked him

I think it was like Ted Cruz was like who do you you know you're a lot of people think you're smart who do you consider smart and the first person he said was Larry Ellison you don't said that? Yeah he goes Larry Elson he goes I think Larry Olson

is one of the smarter people I work with he said uh you remember from Forrest Gump where he says stupid is as stupid does Elon goes smart is as smart does so he took the invoice of that line, which I thought was pretty funny.

I think smart is as smart does. And I think Larry Ellison might be the smartest person I know. And so it's pretty funny that I didn't, up until Larry kind of got a little bit more front facing with some of these things, I didn't, I regarded him as like just a guy who he kind of just started early and became the best. I didn't realize how sharky, not necessarily a bad way, that he actually was, though. Yeah, how elite he is.

Wow, that's amazing. Elon, I think, took some of his spin. Remember when he, like, he impregnated that woman who works with him, and he was just like, underpopulation is the biggest crisis we face. And I turned it into I'm saving the planet. Yeah. And I was like, whoa. Playa.

Playa with no heart at the end, man. That is incredible. Can you imagine having the balls to just come out and not just defend it, not deny it, but to claim that you're doing good. That's incredible. At high school, when you're hanging out with your buddies smoking weed late at night and you're just riffing and saying the dumb shit you're going to do in the next morning when you're sober, like, we're going to go, dude, we're changing it out.

We're going to get up and we're going to start working out first thing in the morning. That's like a thing that Elon would say. It's crazy. It's like, hey, don't you think it's kind of inappropriate? You know, she works with you. She's an executive company. Maybe there's an imbalance of power here. Like, are you concerned about this?

at all. He's like, I'm concerned about underpopulation. Like, wow. Holy shit. Nick Cannon, just like writing notes out there. All right. Here's some other ones. Coke first Pepsi. Dude, did Nick Cannon just catch a straight bullet on that one? Yeah. He's like the icon for too many kids, dude.

Dude, it's A-Dade-So, not Nick Cannon. So, 2006, Coke versus Pepsi. Another, you know, deal rippling, Microsoft Oracle, Coke Pepsi. These are all just like the legendary rivalries. So, an EA at Coke who's disgruntled, this woman Joya Williams, decides, you know what,

screw it. She leaves her post as a EA and she steals basically some trade secrets. She takes a new, a can of their new product that's unreleased. And she writes a letter to Pepsi and she says, I have the formula for Coke. Do you want the secret formula? And I have a new unreleased product. She sends a letter and she says, I'll give you the formula for a price. Guess what her price was?

A hundred grand, a million, I don't know. $1.5 million. And what year? 2006. All right. So about $3 million today. Pepsi, being the good guy that it is, says, you know what? Not doing it.

They tell Coke. They say, hey, you have this woman. She's trying to sell your formula. We don't want it. Let's meet you and the FBI. Let's take this woman down. And what they do is they set up a sting operation. And so she comes out.

and she's ready to sell the formula. They do a test payment for $4,000 to show that they're legit. They record her saying what she has and that she's doing this trade. And then they lock her up. They arrest her. And she goes to prison for eight years. Wow. Isn't that crazy?

Wow. That's a lot. Maybe like a few. Yeah. Maybe like a few months. Pepsi, you guys suck. Maybe promote her. I don't know.

Eight years in prison seems like it was a lot for that. So, yeah, she got made an example out of. That's crazy. This was like a recent story. 2006. So it looks like her boyfriend was like also in on it. Like they, like this was like a, this was like a legit scheme. Yeah, that sucks.

I like, when I hear Joya, I think of like an old woman who's like, oh, Coke, you didn't give me a raise. I'm going to get back. You know what I mean? Like, I think that there was more to it. All right. Also, what do you think about Pepsi? turning down the secret formula and the trade secrets and deciding to take her down.

Because what are you going to do with that? Pepsi's like, what am I supposed to do? Make my shit taste like Coke. We know. It's just sugar and water. Yeah. Like I don't know what you expect me to do with that with that. Because like the secret or the whole thing with Coke is that like only like a few people have access to it. I don't, who the fuck knows? There's no way that's true, by the way. Let me give you a couple other quick ones. Uber and Waymo. Do you remember this one? You probably remember. remember this? Yeah, the main character of Waymo stole a bunch of stuff from Google and Uber was going to use it and now Uber got sued. Yeah, so exactly. So basically, Anthony Lewandowski was this guy

who worked at Waymo and Travis Clannick recruits him to Uber, wants him to set up the autonomous driving stuff at Uber. He comes from, he was at Waymo, which is the autonomous driving thing inside at Google. He apparently downloaded 14,000 confidential files on the way out. Maybe a bit much, maybe a little too many, too many files and could have got away with a little less. They have the info. He ends up getting fired from Uber. Uber has to settle. Uber settles for 0.34% of Uber that Google owned, which is about $250 million of stock back in 2018, which I think is closer to a billion dollars now of Uber stock. and he had to go to prison for 18 months.

But then Trump parted him. Trump parted him early. And so he got out. Why? He didn't want him to serve all 18 months, I guess. Well, I understand that's why a part of it exists. He's like, Anthony's a big football fan. I don't want him to miss the Super Bowl.

It's only once you hear. Let's get him out. So where's he now? That's a good question. Like, I wonder, is he like damaged goods or is surely not? Like some VC was like, dude, I don't care. that you're like Martha Stewart, you're now cooler. He's the CEO of PaulinMobil, has been for three years.

Okay. I don't know what that is. Okay, these are great stories. I'm in on it. Do you want to hear something that's related to security and also I think is almost equally exciting? Yeah, wait, wait, before we finish, I just have one more little tidbit. The U.S., this is actually baked into the DNA of the United States.

What, espionage? Espionage. Corporate espionage. And so America's family. founding father and first U.S. Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, decided that basically realized that Europe was ahead of the U.S. and actually decided to encourage intellectual piracy. Doesn't all crime sound better when you just give it like a longer, like more letters,

make it sound better? And so what he said was he advocated to reward those who would bring improvements and secrets of extraordinary value into the United States, which may, which was instrumental in making the U.S. a safe haven for industrial spies. And they did. This guy, Samuel Slater. My boy, I love Samuel Slater. What are the greatest stories of all the time? What's the story? So he brought British textile technology to the U.S.? What does that mean? Is he like, kind of denim? They claim he was like, had a photographic memory. This is like the story that you're told as a kid, like in history class, which is that he had a

photographic memory. But basically he was from England and he memorized and partially wrote down how factories in England worked. He came to America and he helped reinvent a, American factories, which spurred the industrial revolution, which arguably made America what it is. Are we pro espionage? I think I might be. So, by the way, this guy's nickname, top five nickname, do you know Samuel Slater's nickname? No. Slater the traitor? Yes, that's awesome. That's what they called him in the UK. Yes, but he was like, welcome with open arms here. We loved him. So yes, Samuel Slater is sort of an American hero. That's crazy. At the age of 21, so he literally prison break.

it. He photographically memorized all these trade secrets and then came to America and gave him to us and spurred the Industrial Revolution and made America great again. Well, not again. Not again. For the first time. Yeah, for the first time. Yeah. The inaugural Make America. Make America great for once. Yeah. Yeah. Those hats are out of style. That's actually pretty funny. Yeah, he made America great. I have another story. So last year, there's two parts of the story. Last year, we talked about this company, Wiz. WIS is a cybersecurity company. To most of our listeners, we mostly talk about small business stuff. These guys are

not that. They're enterprise cybersecurity company. But it has two amazing components. So one part of the story that you talked about, and by the way, these guys, Wiz, remember when we did Sarah's List? They were on Sarah's List. So we kind of, we didn't exactly nail it because it was a little pat on the I don't know if the mic picket that one up. Because they were already, like, kicking ass, and I don't know what the multiple was on when we named them, but it was at least double. But there's two amazing stories about this. The first is how fast they grew. I want to, like, show you how fast they grew.

But before we talk about how fast they grew, we got to talk about how they started. And you talked about this. Wait, you buried the leap. They're getting bought for $32 billion. Oh, yeah. They got bought for $32 billion. Sorry. So this company, Wiz, is getting bought for $32 billion.

The story of how they started is amazing. The story of how fast they grew, also amazing. It just happened the other day. But listen to this. So you, I think, are the one who brought this up. Were you the one who talked about this guy, Gilly? Yes. So Gilly is an Israeli cybersecurity veteran.

So he's exited a few companies in the cybersecurity space. And he was also part of this elite group of cybersecurity specialists in the Israeli military called 8200, I believe it's called. he invented CAPTC. He invented like a certain type of firewall. He invented a lot of shit. He's an OG. Like the OG's OG in cybersecurity. And so he has this thing. I believe it's called Cyber Starts. You can call it an incubator or a VC firm. But here's how it works. So he teams up with a lot of young ex-military 8200. I think that's 8200 is the name of the part of the military where it's the cybersecurity specialist. So you leave that after you, you, you you finish your compulsory service, and you go to Gilly, you go Gilly, sign me up, I want to start a company. And so what Gilly has done is he has this fund. And in the fund is dozens or even hundreds, I believe, of cybersecurity officers at large companies, not just Israeli companies, but America companies. And what they do, these cybersecurity officers is, yes, they say, here's the, here's the problems I need solved, Gilly. So go have your young founders create products.

to solve these problems, and I will be your first customer. And Gilly goes to these founders and goes, guys, I'm going to invest in your company. Here's the idea to get you started. I guarantee you $2 million in revenue in the first year. And that's amazing because these companies will sell or get, they can raise their next round of funding at 20 times $2 million in revenue. So with $2 million in revenue the first year, they can raise money at $40 million valuation.

That's a no-brainer. Now, what's pretty controversial is these CISOs, these chief information officers at these companies are, what's the C-Sos? Chief information and security officer. Information. They own pieces of Gillies fund. And anytime one of these startups does well and succeeds, they get paid out. And so it's this very insular group of a lot of Israeli guys.

So they have that bond over that. They have the bond over being Jewish. And they have the bond that they probably all came from a very similar part of the Israeli army. So there's those like bond after bond after bond. And they're like, yeah, look, we'll help you. We'll get you off the ground. And then we're going to get the money. just flows around nicely.

And so that's what he did with these guys, Wiz. And isn't that a crazy setup? It's amazing. So I'm going to read you this. The numbers from his CyberStarts Fund are phenomenal. This was about six, seven years old now. It only has 22 companies, but the 22 companies combined value was $35 billion at the time.

Now, Wiz just sold for $32 billion itself. So it says five of the 22 are unicorns. So that's an extremely high hit rate. So, you know, a normal VC-F. fund. I think between one and three percent of the companies will become unicorns. YC, which is, you know, the best accelerator in the world ever, I think their numbers between 6 and 10 percent. And so this guy's like double YC, right? So five of the 22 are unicorns. Four of them sold in the last 12 months for a total of 1.5 billion. And then it says in all three of his

funds, he shows an IRS, so his internal rate return of more than 100%, which is obviously fantastic. Not a single company in the portfolio has closed to date. And he basically beats every VC fund in terms of his performance. His first fund, he turned $54 million into $1 billion. That was his stake. Yeah. Crazy, right? You describe the model well. So basically he's got this network of CSOs and they're called the cyber starts cyber cyber starts like CSO group and they basically all talk.

They say what problems they have, but they also get pitched solutions. And it's like kind of the handpicked solution. They all start using it. They all have a share in the in the fund. So if those companies take off, they win. It's this kind of like,

I mean, there's definitely a conflict of interest with this. Let's be clear. But it's, wow, what a powerful network. And what a powerful way to use a network. You know, like James Currier came on the podcast. I just did an interview with him. I don't think it's out yet. But he's got this whole thing.

His fund is called Network Effects. And his blog post called Your Life on Network, your life on Network Effects or your life is a network effect. And it's basically like everything you do from the college you choose. You're not just choosing a school. You're picking a network to join. Like I joined the Duke Alumni Network when I picked Duke. Right.

When you move to San Francisco, you're picking a network of people to join. When you pick a company, you're picking a network of people to join, and those are going to be the co-workers and future opportunities that open up for you. And so once you realize, like, your life is dictated by networks, you know, the church, the religion you're in, that's a network. The language you speak, that's a network. The country you live in, that's a network. And so similarly here, this is like such a powerful example of this guy having this network dating back to the Israeli kind of like security intelligence groups to the network. to the network of Fortune 500 CSOs, how valuable that is,

that network turned out to be worth tens of billions of dollars. And it's pretty amazing. He's so precise about this. So look at the first YouTube link that I posted in our MDB doc. So basically, there's this video that has 400 or 800 views, less than 1,000.

It has 528 views. Do you see that 528 view video? In this video, he breaks down where he says, he goes, I've done this 35 times. I have a nine to 18 month journey that I use to achieve product market fit before building any cybersecurity company. And he goes through the key phases, which is basically like exploring different pain points and how to find them. You spend seven months developing the right solution that mere mortals can use. And then here are the questions that you need to ask prospects. Here's how you find prospects.

This is great. What a great fine. Only 500 views on this guy who's given out like a billion dollar playbook. And he goes, he talks about how he's going to, you want to accelerate the timeline and what the benchmarks is. He gives this whole playbook that he uses. And he goes, I've done this 35 times and we've turned this into billions of dollars. It's incredible.

Now, here we are with WIS. So WIS was founded by a guy named, what is his first name? Asaf. Is it, Asaf? or his last name's Rappapur. But he basically had a company that he had previously sold for something like $350 million, and he did it when he was like a kid still. So when you think what someone does that, does that, well, why on earth are you going to join this thing?

Well, he did join this thing. And he left Microsoft and he even explains. He's like, he sold this company Microsoft and he left and he's like, I'm afraid to leave Microsoft. I'm not sure what to do. So he joins this thing. And listen to the timeline that Whiz went through. So Wiz was founded in roughly. When you say he joined this thing, he joined what?

Gilly's Cyber Starts, sorry. Oh, he joined Cyber Starts. He joined Cyberstarts, Gillies thing. And he starts the company in January of 2020. And because he's already successful and he was part of this Gilly crew, right out the bat, they raised $21 million in funding and they're able to hire a team of 10 to 20 people. By December of that first year, they raised $100 million. So fast forward one year to March.

So we're still in winter of 2021. That's one year after founding. They're only at 40 employees, but they are at roughly $100 million of AR. Is that crazy? That's breakneck speed, right? This is, by the way, there's a lot of we do this, but there's a lot of people who are like, dude, venture money. Don't raise too much money.

You know, growth, growth, growth. It's a problem. You know, you've got a bootstrap. You got to, you know, people, there's different ways to win. This is a great example of like, no, raise a bunch of money out the gate. Blitz scale this thing and keep raising money and just go for the huge prize. And I have like a takeaway on that. But two years after starting the company, we are now in winter of 2021, they raised $250 million

at a $6 billion valuation. This is a handful of months after they've already reached 100 million in revenue with 40 people 18 months in. Now, we're in the year 2022. This is the second year of business. They are at, I believe that, yeah, second year of business, they're at 100 employees. And by the end of that year, they're at 400 employees. Now we're going to fast forward each year. Here's how fast they grew their revenue after 100 million in revenue.

By year three, they're at 200 million in revenue. By year four, they're at 500 million in revenue. and by that same year, they sell for $32 billion. Is that insane? How on earth, can you imagine going zero to five years in and you're creating between $500 and a billion in revenue with only like five or $600 employees? I was watching a clip of their CRO talking,

and he was like, we were growing so fast that the only reliable benchmark we could use for how much to grow our headcount on our sales team was just, he's like, they were like, did you use, you know, like pipeline, leads, kind of like, how did you do market analysis, market studies? He goes, we just looked at how full the calendars were. And he's basically like, for every product line and every category, we just looked at how, like, the calendar density of all of our sales reps. And in areas of the calendar density was high, we knew that area is working, hire more people, just hire more people based on the density.

And we measured our calendar density of sales reps. for booked calls for people looking for demos. And that's how they knew. That was the only reliable leading indicator they could figure out for growth. And if you look at their Glass Door review, the CEO has, like, people rave about them. And like you could say, well, I don't know. Is Glass Door even accurate? I'm not sure.

Dude, you're the only dude who looks at Glass Door. They have one web visitor a month and it's you. Man, I'm telling you, you can get so much insight. So if you go to Glass Door, you sort by negative and you look at the negative reviews. and then you look at the positive reviews, and the truth is in the middle. And I'm telling you, you can learn so much information

about what people are complaining about. Did you, were you ever on Glassdoor with any of your companies? Like, was the Hustle on Glass Door? Yeah, and I didn't look because the only people that left reviews were the people I fired. Correct.

And do you think that they had an accurate view of like the company? Well, it's an accurate view of the people who disliked me. Like so, but there's like, so like, I don't even want to read it, but what's it say? I'm trying to go.

I don't know if we have one anymore because we haven't been in business for, like, independently for years. They could have shut it down. But like it was probably like the management is good, but the CEO like moves too fast and like is not communicating well, which is like probably true. Too handsome, too ripped, moves too fast. Well, like I would like make decisions like,

I'm like, intimidatingly smart. I would like make decisions quickly and I would say this is what we're doing now and I just wouldn't like communicate with my managers. I would just say this is it. I just can't believe you like reading the reviews of whiny employees of other companies. I just, like, what do you really get out of it? Like, it reveals so much truth. Like, it could say, like, that thing you said is true about, like, every company, you know, like,

yeah, but like, the CEO likes to move fast. It could be, like, let's say there's this new startup. And it says, like, you know, the market, like, like, we were, we were going to do, like, a better up. You know what Better Up is. It's like a coaching platform for before Hampton, we were thinking about getting into that. And I read the reviews of Better Up and the reviews were like, business boomed during COVID, but now we can't get anyone to sign up for online coaching. So that's like an interesting like macro insight into the market of coaching. Like it boomed during COVID. I like that. And so you'll see that on like four different coaching platforms class door reviews.

Or like, you know, our valuation, if you see this in like five different ones, is way too high. I have no idea how we're ever going to grow in this. that's not something that you want to see on four different glass doors of companies in the same industry. So you get like insights like that or it could be like CEO's amazing at press. Don't believe everything you see. And if you see a bunch of those and I think to myself, I've been like basing a lot of my insights off of public articles. I don't know if I should actually do that. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I just I personally wouldn't do like, you know, I personally wouldn't trust it because I think you're going to get a lot of basically false negatives in this. That would.

spook you. So, for example, did you ever work at a company that had blind? I didn't work at a company when that existed. No. Or like I used to read it. Probably had one. You probably just didn't join it. But like, blind is basically a private social network. So let's say you work at a big company. There's an app called blind. You log in. You have to use your, I think you have to show that you have a work email there. So like only people who work at the company can see it and can post there. And it still exists. But it's all anonymous. Yes, it still exists. And it's all anonymous.

And it's basically just like a back channel for people to bitch and moan and complain. And then the upside would be that they, you know, there's kind of like a whistleblowery type of thing where you can you could call out hard truths that you're not going to call out. But the reality is that it was all just complaints. And the problem was it was misguided complaints. So like, for example, at Twitch, it's like I was on the exec team. So I knew I knew all the numbers of the company. I knew what was going on. I knew the strategy.

I knew who was smart. I knew who wasn't because I'm sitting with these people every day. And then you read a review on blind or like a post on blind from someone who's like a, you know, just like a mid-level employee, you know, some engineering manager somewhere. They would often be like, oh, you know, there was no way we're going to hit our numbers. I'm like, dude, we're hitting our numbers. What are you talking about? I could see the numbers. You don't have access to the numbers.

So you're just like, you know, just talking out your ass basically. But and the loudest most sort of extreme voices would get the, get the most play. right? They would get the most attention. And so it's the same way like when Dropbox launches on Hacker News and the top comment is like, no one's ever going to use this. And he can give you an highly intelligent breakdown of why nobody's ever going to use Dropbox. And the Dropbox becomes like so big. Right.

So I think like a lot of these message board, anonymous message board type things are too biased towards negativity from people who don't have real information and are too prone to false negatives to be trusted. So like for every example, you could find. where you get signal, you're going to find counter signal, which means to me, I can't use this, because I can't differentiate signal and counter signal properly. Only in hindsight, you know? No, I think if you read enough of them, I think you can start it. Like, for example, if you're trying to understand like a macro trend or industry analysis, I think you can see trends in the glass or reviews. And I think that it could help paint a picture, but not be, it's not a fact. It's just like a, is this like, does this jive with other sources that I'm

learning about. So that's why I'm on board with it. By the way, I agree to disagree. Like, I think you're right. I think you're right. I don't think you're wrong. I think there's some problems with it, but there's some utility. You're the only guy I know who uses it, which I find funny. Well, like, I wanted to learn about the CEO. And I'm like, what makes a CEO so great? And I read an article about him. And it was like, don't mistake this guy's gentleness for ruthlessness. It said, don't mistake a soft's gentleness for someone who is willing to play by the rules. Yeah. And I was like, that's like an interesting title. So this guy's like, must be like a really guy, but he's ruthless and he's kind of a killer. That's like an interesting trait. Like,

is there like, is there, like, anything I can learn from his personality? And I went and read his Glass Door reviews. And he had glowing reviews as a CEO where people are like, nice guy, but total hard ass. And I just thought, like, that is a, that, that, that mix, those mixes of those two traits when you mix, like, beat your, you could be polite and like hardcore. I respect that. I like that. Is this a person I want to learn for? Learn from. That was kind of like my insight from looking at the glass of reviews and also reading interviews, things like that. Right, right. And so I just thought it's fascinating. But we had Mark Loria in the pod. Mark started diapers.com, which he grew like during like the dot com and he sold for hundreds of millions of dollars. Then he did the same with Jet.com,

sold that for billions of dollars. Now he's got a new thing. Have you seen this new thing? It's called, I think, wonder. Wonder, yeah. And he had this thing when he came on the pod. By the way, when he came in the pod, we could tell that he didn't have a laptop. And we were like, are you calling from your iPhone? And he was like, yeah, I don't, I don't use laptops. And we were like, is that like a billionaire thing? And he was like, he was awesome, by the way. I love that guy's energy. Like, he was super positive, super energetic, super optimistic. He was great, charismatic. He was a fun. He was a fun guest to have on the best. I would love to have him on. We got to get him back on. Well, on the pod, we asked him how he did it. And he had one phrase that has always stuck with me because it was almost like saying,

I'll explain why it stuck with me, but it was called vision, capital, and people. He goes, those are the three things I care about. He goes, I find a really big idea and a big opportunity. I raise a ton of money. And then I go and hired the best people and I pay them all of that money that I raised. And I sort of get out of the way and let them do the work. And I have a bootstrap company. You have only done bootstrap, mostly done bootstrap companies. It's really hard to do that because you don't have a lot of money to pay people, so you're doing the work, so it feels like a grind. And this company, Wiz, is sort of a good example of the founders. They raised, they found amazing opportunity. They raise shitloads of money. And this is a perfect example of how it's done when you

have a really big idea and you have a really big opportunity and you have a ton of money. and I think it's as hard as a bootstrapped startup. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's that they're of equal challenging and stressfulness. Equal? I don't know. This scaling at breakneck speed seems a lot more challenging to me. I think if you had a small bootstrap startup that was growing quickly,

you would feel a similar amount of stress, but there is no... That's true. But there is no chance that you would have a $32 billion exit in five years. One of the funny things about life is that if you decide to start a business, you're going to spend, let's just call it, 10 hours a day, maybe 12 early on, just obsessed. Your mind is just obsessed with this company, 10 hours a day, 12 hours a day, every single day. It doesn't matter if that's a taco truck. It doesn't matter if it's WIS selling for $32 billion. It's still going to take 10 to 12 hours a day of your time and mind share. It's still going to stress you out pretty much equally if you are doing a thing. that's, you know, one million in ARR, and you're trying to pay the bills and you're trying to pay yourself and you're trying to grow

and you're trying to do all those things. Guess what? These guys are also trying to pay the bills, trying to grow, trying to do all that stuff. So you're right. Like the stress levels are more based on you as a person than the company that you're doing. And the time is equal whether you have,

it doesn't matter how many zeros are at the end of the size of the business. This was probably one of the most important lessons my dad taught me. He was like, my first business was in the restaurant industry. And my dad worked. an oil and gas his whole life. He worked for BP. And so he was like, yeah, the energy industry is just like the restaurant industry. You're going to spend the same 10 hours a day, except in this one, there's three extra zeros on the end of every project. And so would you rather spend that same time on a small project or a bigger project? Like, that's what you're deciding between here.

And I was like, which is sort of hard to hear, right? Like, you're like, I'm dedicating my life to this thing. You're dedicating your life to this thing, but your prize is so much bigger. I didn't think it was hard to hear. I was like, oh, that's a lot. the truth. Okay, cool. Thank you. Like, okay, what do I do? And then I pretty much immediately switched and went and did a biotech thing with him in Australia. Like, you know, I was like, I was pretty ready to hear the truth. I think that most people, you're right, don't like to hear the truth. I like to hear the truth because I realize that basically the truth, while short-term painful, is actually long-term less painful. And I think most people don't like the short-term pain.

They're willing to have long-term pain. Have you been following these guys, like getting acquired Was there anything that you liked about the story or that stuck out to you? Well, remember when we first brought this up? We first brought this up because Wiz was rumored to be selling for $23 billion. And then something happened where it was like, no, that's just a rumor or Google couldn't do it because of antitrust. For some reason, the deal wasn't going to happen. And if you remember, Asaf came out and he tweeted this kind of like badass memo where it was like, first they leaked the deal.

First, deal information got leaked. They're in rumors about an acquisition for 23. billion. Then he releases this thing and he's like, we're not looking to get acquired. Let me be, I think he said, like, let me cut to the chase. Our next milestones are a billion in ARR and an IPO. And everyone was like, yeah, that's it. That's the guy's a killer. And most of us were like, most of us on the side of that are like, a nice negotiating. Like pretty sure it's going to sell for, I don't know, 25, 30 billion in the next 12 months. And that's exactly what happened. It's sold for 30 billion, 32 billion in the next 12 months.

It like came exactly true what a lot of people noticed, which was like. What was the first offer? The first offer was like 20 or 18? So we got $10 billion, $10 extra billion. And I don't even know that the $23 billion was on the table. Maybe the $23 billion was what he wanted at the time. And they continued to grow. And this is all part of the negotiation, right? It's not this didn't, I don't think this leaked because somebody really just wanted the world to know.

You know, this is part of a public negotiation. it's a price setting, it's an anchoring, it's getting the second bider to up their bid. There's a whole bunch of stuff happening there. And when a CEO's like, we want to be independent. And it's like, yeah, you do. But if the price is right, you know, we'll see. We'll see what happens. And almost always, once the price is right, they do it.

I love hearing about this story. I'm very excited. The time that we've worked on this podcast, this guy has built and sold a $32 billion company. Well, when you put it like that. Yeah, but does he have 650,000 subscribers on YouTube? Probably not. And now he will try to. I bet you this guy's going to get into podcasting.

That was the funniest tweet I saw the other day. It goes, even kings and billionaires want to be podcasters. And I was like, it's true, dude. Like you see, you know, whether it's billionaires on the all-in podcast or, you know, Bill Gurley in his podcast. have. Dude, Bill Gohuffman and his podcast. Elon is tweeting and like crazy and trying to be trying to get his word out there.

You see Gavin Newsom starting the new, his new podcast. They want they all want what we got, Sam. They all want what we got. And we'll sell it to them for $32 billion. It's always been this way. You know, you look at a like who has bought Time magazine and with Washington Post and Bezos, you know, king or once you've, once you're rich, you always want to be king. And to be king oftentimes is to own a media company for some reason.

It's been that way for hundreds of years. Yeah. It's basically just like there's three buckets. If you're rich but lack status, you're going to chase status. If you're high status, but no money, you're going to chase money. And if you have rich and status, you're going to chase power. Those are the three. You will fill those up.

Like somebody, I have a friend who knows Elon, and he was telling me, he's like, Elon gets all this criticism right now for backing Trump and Doge and all this stuff. And the thing people say is like, you know, he's doing this to make, like, he's doing this to like give Tesla or whatever, an unfair event. He's doing this to enrich himself. And he's like, are you an idiot? He's like, he's not doing this to enrich himself. He wants status. Like, like not that, oh, he's doing this altruistically, but he wants status.

That's of course what people want when they're, when they have the money, they want the status. And when they have the status, they want the power. Those are the three things that draw people to do crazy stuff. Yeah, he wants something, but it's not money. Yeah, he's got, I think at this point when you have that much money, more money is probably boring. His father did a good thing on DJ Vlad, where he was talking about how he was like, Elon, I knew after he sold Zip 2, that he wouldn't stop until he was number one, the richest person in the world. He's like, I knew that. Yeah, he goes, I knew that was, that's what he wanted to do.

and he would never stop until he was number one. I could tell he was like that since he was a kid. Wait, so Elon's dad did an interview with Vlad TV? Yeah, didn't we talk about this? Yeah, there was a dude. What else was in this? This is incredible. So Vlad TV, part of Black YouTube, one of my favorite niches of YouTube.

He had, what's Elon's dad's name? I don't know. Emerald or something like that? I forget his name. He had his dad on the other day. and DJ Vlad is weird. He never just releases the whole episode. Errol Musk.

He releases like clips. And he's been releasing clips over the past month of this interview. And he talks about what Elon was like as a kid and how like are the rumors true that you are rich. And it sounds like this guy and Elon are exactly the same where he made some money. And then he's like, we're going to spend it all buying this farm and turn this farm into a thing. And it went broke. And he's like, well, I'm going to come with some other people to give me money. We're going to start this new thing.

And that worked. And he went rich and busts, like constantly. And he was like, I loaned Elon money to start zip two. And that turned into $30 million. And I knew when he made that money, he was never going to stop until he was number one. And he just tells these crazy stories along the way. Do we need to do a whole React video. Was they interview good?

It's pretty good. It's shocking that like if my father said any of this shit publicly, it's weird, dude. It's very, like they talk exactly the same, the way they're. Their tone of voices. Yeah, all the comments are like, his laugh is a DNA test in itself. Or they're timestamping and it says, I swear this is Elon. The face mimics it. The way he laughs, the way he rolls his eyes, I could see Elon here.

This is this laugh is a paternity test. Like the spacing and words, you know how Elon talks slow. He has like a very like unique structure, how he talks. It's exactly the same. And his dad is insane, by the way. Like there's like some crazy story about how he is now married to his stepdaughter. Like he does some wacky-ass shit. He's married to his stepdaughter?

Something weird like that. Yeah, he has a kid with a stepdaughter. Yeah. And there's a, and there's like, just when he's talking, you see, I understand why the children who you raised, why they're insane and why they're ultra, like, in order to be ultra successful, you have to have some type of, like, weird, like, daddy issue. And I see him. And I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I get why you have a daddy issue because you're insane. Like, he reveals stuff.

Like, he'll be like, yeah, Elon, like, was crying to me when he was, like, 23. and I thought, how weak. Like he will tell a story where he's like disrespecting his son in front of everyone. And I'm like, oh, you're an asshole. That's why your son behaves this way sometimes. It's like a very interesting interview. And it has been totally under-talked about. Yeah, this is crazy.

This is a two-and-a-half-hour interview. Oh, did he release the whole thing finally? When did that get released? A month ago. He normally does like clips. Like he releases clips. It's a two-and-a-half-hour interview, or at least a month ago. How many views does it have?

171,000. That's it? Yeah. Just to put that into perspective here. DJ Vlad's most popular interview is with, let's see, who's he got here. Boosie. Boosie has 6.6.5 million views. Cardi B. 5.7 million.

Boosie's a good, a good listen. It's a great interview. Da baby, 5 million. So we're going to have to like watch the whole thing. But there's like crazy good insight into all this. And like my takeaway from all this is like it's not worth being successful if you and your father are behave this way to one another. Like it's very strange to see. Like you don't have to be a psychologist to like watch us and be like, I understand why this family's screwed up.

Yeah, messed up family. Okay. Wow. That's amazing. All right. Corporate espionage. stories, you got what you wanted. Remember, everything on this podcast is allegedly, and this is a comedy podcast. Thank you very much. Don't come after us. All right, that's it. That's a pod.