The Iced Coffee Hour - Meet The Unemployed Investor Making $10 Million Dollars

Episode Date: October 13, 2021

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Welcome back to the 69th ever episode of the Ice Coffee Podcast. My name is Ask Sebi, and the podcast has made $109,000 and $500. That's great. What an intro! We're going to go with it. Welcome to the iced coffee hour. We're really excited to have you on here. I don't believe you do too many podcasts, do you?

No, not at all. Is this your first one? First podcast. Is there a reason why you don't do so many podcasts? What are you hiding? I don't know. I just don't think I've been invited to podcasts because people don't. I'm not that interesting.

You know what? The surprising thing I think with you is that I knew you from your credit card videos in YouTube. But then once I started talking to you, I realized, like, wow, this is just the tip of the iceberg of what you do. Like the credit card thing, I think if we have a big, like, bubble, basically, the credit card stuff is like one little bit. And then you get into all the intricacies of, like, what you do on the side. I think all of your side businesses and the side investments that you're doing are way more interesting than credit cards. stuff like tenfold. It's actually pretty unique. I would love for you to introduce yourself to the audience for those that don't know you. Like, where did this start? Give us a bit of like an

overview of what you say you do. Some of the startups you're involved in, the businesses that you run. And we got to have a good hook. 20 seconds. What's the hook? So I used to work in finance, ended up moving into the startup world, started a company that raised money died, started another company that raised money got acquired, jumped around a few different startups. started angel investing. And before angel investing started YouTube actually, mostly because I figured that content creation will be the future for a lot of people and the whole creator economy idea.

So by working in finance, what exactly did you do? So a lot of it was transaction services. So like M&A stuff for tax, not the most interesting thing for a podcast. I think people are going to click off this if they, if I keep talking. Well,

how about this? How was the money working in finance doing stuff like that? Money is good, obviously, but it's not as much as you would think if you compare it to like content creation and just a lot of other things where you can control your own hours. Like imagine working 100 hours a week. Yes, you might get maybe like $100,000, but there's so many better ways to make that level of money, I think. So you were working 100 hours a week? Yeah, I think you work pretty aggressively. Was this?

Was this like right out of school that you did? Really? Yeah. How much of that is networking? though, instead of grades. Because I would imagine a lot of people have great grades, but if they don't have the networking skills, they just never get in in the first place. Yeah, I think that's a very major thing, especially for Asian students, because people just

assume that you're like not social and you can't network and that you're not fun to work with. So there are a lot of people who have like really good grades, 4.0, but it's, they don't get interviewed as much as they should because there is that merit side and then there's the like social side of it. Got it. Okay. So what made you leave that industry of working like 100 hours a week?

How long did you do that for as well? Two years. Initially, I think I got dissuaded from working in the industry. And I was like, oh, let me work in tech. And I think it's a pretty common thing for people where they're like, okay, let me reinvent myself. Let me work in a different industry that's better that either pays more competitively or that I can find my passion in.

So that made a bit more sense to me. but I mean you're kind of trading 100 hours a week getting paid very well to working 100 hours a week not getting paid very well especially if you're trying to start growing company got it so you saved up some money from doing that for two years then decided to do something you're more passionate about and I'm sure you had some sort of savings that you were able to live off of while doing this first startup yeah so I pretty much cut my spend down to crazy crazy levels just to make sure my runway would be as long as possible I think Graham would be pretty impressed let's hear it So I was spending about $500 a month in Boston.

Wow. That's including housing? I was including housing food. What about health insurance? Oh, we do. You don't eat that. It's called the gym. It's called Planet Fitness.

What? Certain things, yeah. Maybe you should have paid for it, but you skipped. I didn't, listen, I didn't pay for health insurance for how many years. You told me about this. Yeah. Because I figured, like, I looked at the statistic. I was going to the gym every day.

I didn't drink. I didn't smoke. I don't, like, well, I guess I have car insurance, obviously. But health insurance, I had, like, no existing conditions. And when I got a quote for myself, I think it was like 25, 26. Whenever you fall off your parents' plan, whatever that is, I looked into it. It was like, 300 bucks a month. And I'm thinking to myself, that's a lease payment.

That's a lease payment. And I never go to, well, I should, I should go to the doctor. But I never go to the doctor. And I was like, why? Like, I'm just going to take the chances. And if something happens, I'll find a way to pay for it. pocket but yeah didn't need it and then they issued the penalty when i think it was like one percent of your salary is a penalty and then and then it was like oh crap now i have to do it because it's

cheaper so you survived without it and then they instituted this penalty and then that's when you decided yes didn't you pay the penalty for a year though i did yeah i think the first year i was just so against it because i felt like it was a waste of money and uh yeah the first year i paid the penalty and then the penalty went from one percent to two percent i was like i i hate i hate the penalty but uh you know what it is what it is now i have insurance which I have never used. The two times I've actually gone to a doctor. I've decided to pay out of pocket

because I don't want to deal with the insurance companies. And my deductible is so high, it doesn't make sense. Anyway, $500 a month is impressive. What was your living situation? Like, how do you get away with 500 bucks with... Yeah, so we were living a bit farther away, but we could bike. So I had like a bike pass.

That was like an unlimited bike pass thing. I had a co-working space that was only $70 a month. And they would throw a lot of free events where you could get free food. So a lot of startups are like, hey, we're doing this launch event. We're doing whatever. Here's free pizza. So I got a way of doing that quite a bit for probably like four months.

And then we ended up getting into an accelerator program down in Rhode Island where they gave you money to invest in you. And yeah, that got a bit better afterwards. What was the first business? You said the first one failed. Yes. What was that? So that was trying to help companies hire based off Myers-Brigg, which is kind of flawed and not the best. The Myers break for anybody who's not aware, that's like the introvert, extrovert, like, right?

That they give the four letters. It basically details your personality on a sheet of paper. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like just depending on your mood that day, it could swing. Like you could be an introvert one day and extrovert the next. You could fake it really well as an introvert. Yeah.

And then also you could argue it's like, well, is there any hiring efficacy? Like, is it better, is certain things actually better or not? But I think the idea was that it was another data set that you would have as a hiring person that just more data is always better when you're trying to hire. Could I ever say that you discriminated against me because I'm an introvert? No. No, you can't do that? Ironically not.

I think it would be like, oh, engineers generally prefer working with other introverts versus extroverts because they don't like getting distracted. They don't want to, yeah. I feel like there's some way to that. You know, like if you are hiring a salesperson, it might make sense. You probably do want someone more extroverted. But I think we got a lot of pushback from companies that say, oh, like, how valid is this? And there's also a lot of like crappy science behind Myers-Briggs as well and everything else.

And that was your idea? I was working on it with two other co-founders. All right. At what point did you realize it failed that you're just like, this isn't working? We got to pull the plug on it. We pretty much got not too many. We didn't get that many companies paying for it. And then we got a lot of pushback.

So it didn't really make sense. We ended up doing a quick pivot to a marketing automation tool that allowed you to automate a lot. of your interactions online. So imagine if someone tweeted something specifically to you on Twitter, it would respond with a very specific thing. But then Twitter does not really like people developing on their API. So that got shut down pretty quickly too. And then after that, it was pretty much, okay, let's wind down to company. Got it. And then what was the second business? Second business was peer to peer lending to people attending coding boot camps. So in San Francisco and just pretty much everywhere. There's a lot of coding boot camps that have popped up. The idea being that it's

$20,000, $30,000 in order to go through the program, but they're helping you increase your income dramatically. So people making maybe $40,000 to $60,000 are now making $90,000 to $150,000 a year. So how do you get more people into these programs? Because you're empowering them, but a lot of the times they don't have $20,000. And even if they do, like, is this a good investment? So can you lens based off the idea that if they go through this program, that they're going to be very safe and like riskless comparably. Got it. What do you take as collateral, if anything?

Like what's to say that you lend them 30K? They get a day before graduating. They just like, you know what? I'm over it. Or they don't apply themselves after it. They don't get a job. Is it the same as like a credit card where it's like it's an unsecured loan, then you have to go after them?

Yeah, it was unsecured. I think that was another part of the problem where you, it's really hard to underwrite people. who are unsecured with any other assets. And even if you do chase them, even if you can, it's not the best look that a company is trying to chase down students. See, I would do that. I'd chase them down. I would not.

Every night, they'd get a phone call from me. What's my money? Hey, wait, what's up? What's up, guys? It's Graham here. You owe me money. So that one ended up getting Aqua hired by a firm, which is the lending company,

Max Levchin's a firm. A firm? Affirm? A-F-F-I-R-M. But it was an aqua-hire. So one... Affirm-A-Firm, the stock-affirmed. Yes.

It's been doing really well. Yes. Wow. I see. So when you say aquahire, what is that... So aquahire basically means... So one trick when you look at acquisitions is if there's no number assigned to it, then it's generally something super tiny where either investors get paid back or just maybe you get a bit of money,

but not a lot. So like if you see an acquisition and say, oh, they were acquired but nothing versus oh they required for 250 million or something so what are we talking here so well no my my assumption then it sounds like whatever money you had in to pay it out the investors so you generally it's kind of but then you continued to work for the company um no one none of the founders did so they just bought they basically bought uh the users that we had on the platform and the marketing collateral that we had imagine a firm buy now pay later for uh like tuition Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one.

For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habaniero? More like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. Imagine it. I think they tried that space for quite a bit, but it got really tough. And it just, the other problem was that there was another startup that popped up called Lambda School, which was doing it internally. So what they did was they would have you go through their own program. And instead of lending you money, it was income, it was a income share agreement.

So they would take a certain percentage of their money until it hit $30,000 for the next two years. So it's like, well, you don't need to lend the money. There's no risk. Why would you take on any risk at all when you can do an income share agreement? Got it. I like that better. Okay. So that got acquired.

Then what was next? Next, I pretty much hopped around a few different startups that I was interested in and just helping out as an early employee. Okay. When did you make the YouTube channel? YouTube channel was when the Chase Sapphire Reserve came out. Wow. That was what? 2016, I believe.

Yeah. 2016, I was very hesitant until I think I saw Beat the Bush had like an audience. Yeah. And then maybe you mentioned this too at some point. that like beat the bush was why you considered starting that there was an audience yeah yeah speaking of which beat the bush is coming this uh upcoming set not yeah a week from tomorrow really excited beat the bush i've been watching his channel since probably 2016 he's one of the first channels to talk about financial independence retire early and i remember his

his videos would get like 10 000 views a video that he would talk about fire i was like wow there's 10 000 people out there and uh yeah he was a great example that you could make a video about that and that there's an audience for it. Yeah, I was surprised because I think when I thought of YouTube, it's entertainment. It's more like comedy skits or music versus, yeah, education. So yeah, the Chase FI Reserve, that was the card for me that really got me like gung-ho about credit cards. Prior to that, for me, it was the MX Gold. And I loved that card because I think it got 35,000 points, I think, when I signed up. And then I used 25,000 of those points for a round-trip plane ticket to go and visit family in Canada.

And then I realized, wow, this is so cool. So then I'd like refer family and friends to get the car to. I get 5,000 points to referral. We basically load those up and get free free trips. So ever since I think it was like 2013, never paid for a plane ticket. I've always just used points. Wow. I have no idea.

Yeah. But you don't travel that much. But I haven't traveled ever. So I've never paid for a plane ticket. But no, the Chase FI reserve for me, was the card that came out that I felt like I had finally made it because it was metal. And I remember getting that card. It was one of the first people to get it as soon as it came out.

And it was a metal credit card. And I was blown away. I got 100,000 points for signing up to this card. And I was just ecstatic. What was your limit on that card? Do you remember? $30,000, I think. $32,000.

How old were you? How old were you? I would have been $25, I think. Wait, it came out in 2016. Yeah. 25 or 26. You know, it came out just after I turned 26. A lot of people started off like 15 to like 35K.

Is that like? It's pretty common. Jeez, I did not know that the limit was that high. Yeah. We got like 3,000 on my card. Which card? On my cards. I don't have the...

So the difference though is that something like the Chase Sapphire Reserve. The minimum starting limit is $10,000. So like if they're uncomfortable giving you $10,000, they're going to be like, sorry, please go over there. Got it. Okay. Yeah. That's crazy.

Let's go with the Discover It Secured card. Yeah. Now, but that card for me was, it got me so excited about cards. That really got me interested in the doctor of credit. I got really into the point sky, like all of those people, through the Chase Sapphire Reserve. And I actually applied at the same time as the Chase Sapphire Reserve. I also applied for the Chase Sapphire Preferred.

And then I think there was one or two other cards I got at the exact same time because it was right in the middle of a renovation. And the contractor asked if I wanted to put it. the materials on the card or just lump that in with his payment. I'm like, now we're going to put it on the card. So I basically got like three or four credit cards charged like four grand,

four grand, four grand, I just max them all out. Well, not max it, but for the sign-up bonus. And then I got hundreds of thousands of points. That's a way to do it.

Yeah. But that's what I recommend, like half the time. It's like if you're doing a deck renovation or anything where you spend a large amount of money, weddings are another big one where, hey,

I'm dropping $30,000. And if you, If you're going to do that anyways, and like, let's say you're significant other wants that, then why not get the honeymoon for free or highly, highly subsidized? So what are your thoughts on how much to spend on a wedding? You told me 30 grand. I'm like, $30,000. Yeah, I don't think I would spend that much.

I think, I don't know, for me, it would be $5,000 or $10,000 would be fine. I would rather save that money and either travel with it or like invest it or do anything else versus putting on a show for a bunch of people, is my view. Is there any way that you can say that an event to all like the vendors is not a wedding? Because I know for a fact, once you tell the vendors that you're having a wedding, they immediately charge like a 100% premium on their services. So if you just say, oh yeah, it's just like a business party with all my friends. And then boom, there's a bride in the groom.

Did you do that? You probably could get away of it. Well, I used to own a wedding company, Jack. Oh. And that happened to me once. How did it make you feel as a vendor? I hated those people. But you gave them a fair rate, right, for your service?

We put in so much more attention to detail for weddings. I mean, the planning is just crazy. But Alex said it is true. So I read an entire thread on Reddit about this where someone was asked like, how do I save money on a wedding? And everyone was giving their tips and tricks. And the first thing for the DJ was,

don't tell them it's a wedding. And they'll quote half the price. Same with catering. Don't tell them it's a wedding. And the one guy who commented was a first. photographer and said he's walked away from events like that where they've told them it's like we're just hosting an event just take pictures uh because like Alex said the the attention to detail for a wedding is significantly more important than like like you know you're just drinking with your

butts you know to get those shots and to have that such a like a one-time occasion you can't mess up and so not that they're going to mess up anyway but it's like instead of taking pictures of you I was just thinking for the venue and maybe for the food services. I think the photographer is very important that they do know. It's a wedding. Yes. Yeah, people have said for the venue. Don't know what's a wedding.

But I think they would, it's basically really frowned upon. Got it. But I agree. Listen, I agree with that. How much do you think you're going to, you should spend on a wedding? 10,000. 10, sounds reasonable. Listen.

What about on a ring? Here's the thing. Well, if I think of it, if it were my choice, like if we're, if we're, doing like my choice here i i think like 5 000 bucks like in my mind just just like rent right though yeah but like i would say like rent out a warehouse space or something like that like like a cool warehouse uh had you know you could get a lot of this stuff like the dj just get that sponsored or whatever uh i think that's the food you could just have people over the house it's like you know something like that potluck would you do a youtube wedding uh probably not probably not no i just want to stress of that yeah i doubt it

But, no, I don't know. It just seems like, I don't know, just throw a party. Five grand. Yeah, like five grand. I honestly think five grand throw a party. Right. You could rent a mansion for probably like $3,000. Yeah.

That's it. Just, yeah, exactly. Get the food cater. So all you need to do is just get food delivered. Right. Invite people. And that's it. Right.

Domino's delivery. Domino's. That's easy. But there's something like that. You know, I don't get the theatrics. I, but I just, that's. The main issue is a lot of people feel. that that's the absolute peak

and best point of their life. That's why they want it to be amazing. But then that's kind of sad and depressing. I think about that. The rest of your life is downhill from here. Yeah. I also think there's like very diminishing returns

once you're at like 20,000 versus 30,000. Or even like up to 200K, right? It's like how much nice is. How much more are you enjoying? Then it's usually for the family. Then it's really like, but I don't know. I can't help but feel like a lot of that seems very superficial

of just like let's impress everybody. Yeah. Is it really? I think it's flexing for a, certain demographic. Yeah. Like some people do luxury watches and cars and other people to fancy weddings. That's true.

It's just another flex. Listen, if people are spending 300 grand on an NFT just to be like, well, that's true. Yeah. Just to put that. Yeah.

But here's the thing, even in an NFT, it'll still retain its value. I feel like, it's hard to, well, then you get, you know,

then you get into like, what's the memory worth of it? Sure. I don't know. Like, I look at some of these things. Like, like people are spending like $15,000 a bottle service.

And I'm like, well, I'll have the best. better memory, just going and watching, you know, some documentary on YouTube and just relaxing it. Like, that's a, that's a great night for me. I have a great memory from that. Or just going to super sushi. Right.

Yeah. That's a great memory. I, like, so my memory to price ratio is very low. So what do you think? You said $10,000 is a proper amount to spend in a wedding. I mean, I, that's for me. And that's what I would be comfortable with. But I would probably do a different thing than you.

I'd probably just fly immediately. get family out to like Hawaii or something and then try to use points to subsidize other stuff. See, that's a good wedding. Yeah, versus like throwing a party for maybe a lot of people and some of them I don't actually care about. Yeah. Yeah. I like that idea.

I know this is kind of a tangent, but you said like material things such as like watches or fancy cars. Are you a person that likes stuff like that? Um, I have. Ironically, we ordered a Snoopy 50th additional mega watch last year that we were supposed to get this year. So it's like a collectible watch. Um, it was $10,000.

but like the secondary market for it is like $50,000 to like $70,000. Yeah. For a Snoopy watch. Ooh, so you bought it for 10 and now it's worth 50 to 70? You haven't gotten it yet, have you? I haven't gotten it yet. I haven't gone any of it.

I'm not a VIP. That's why I see. That's why I'm down the list. So how did you get it immediately though? I didn't get it immediately. I just put my name. I kept, every time I came to Vegas, I would go to the shop and ask to put my name on the list.

And every time they'd be like, we don't have a list. That watch does not exist. Right. And then one time they're like, we do have that list. and we're taking deposits. And it's like if you pay in full, then you're on top of the list. You will get it, though. Yes, eventually.

So the question is, how long? I don't like that eventually, because by the time you get it, it's going to be, everyone else is going to get theirs. That's the main issue. Exactly. I've heard, I don't want to say names. I've heard bad things about going to the watch places on the strip because they don't take you serious because they just see you as like in and out.

Yeah. Oh, that's another one of these guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They want the locals to go in there Because those are repeat business A lot of people who go to the strip Rarely come back or not that often So I've heard not so good things about it.

You want to go to someone local Yeah. On that. Or Federico talks watches. He's good. He's great. Yeah. Yeah.

What would you say is your most lavish expenditure? I think travel. Travel. Yeah. So even though I have a lot of credit card points and stuff, there's a lot of trips I don't use points for because the value's not there. Got it.

Yeah. We could also mention why you're in town, right? Can't we? I think we should first talk about your YouTube channel. So you started the YouTube channel, 2016 Chase Saffire Reserve. Did you do that to make money? Or was that just you were excited about talking about credit cards? So I could not shut up about credit cards is what happened.

I think once you get into the rabbit hole, you're like, guys, why is no one else signing up for this? It's 100,000 points. It's literally free money. And people are like, nah, let me think about it. So I was trying to convince a few friends to sign up for the card. And back then there wasn't even a referral link. So it's like, just sign up.

It makes you money. And then I had to repeat it so many times that I'm like, let me just film a video. You can watch it as many times as you want because they kept asking me the same questions. And that kind of started everything. And initially, I wasn't really sure if I even could make money on YouTube. I don't think most people come in to a thinking about that. A lot of it is just educating other people and I don't know, just talking shop about something you're interested in. That's interesting.

So you still work in a full-time job at that point. making you to, how many videos are you posting in the beginning? Beginning, I think we did like one a month. And then at some point, the startup that I was working at ended up shutting down pretty much, so running out of money. And then I started doing dailies in 2017, I think starting in March. And was that seen as a replacement to your job? I'm not even sure if we were monetized yet.

I think I was just like, let's see what happens and do this and see where it goes. Got it. Now, you obviously had the savings, right, to get yourself through this in the beginning. Yeah. At what point did you realize that YouTube is now a career or that you wanted to do that full time? I think towards the fall of 2017, when we were starting to make more money and I get monetized for a lot of stuff. Yeah.

So could you break down a few of the income sources? Obviously, you have ad revenue, credit card affiliates. Could you break us down? I would say I would say YouTube AdSense is probably only about like 10 to 20%

sponsorships are probably about 20% and then affiliate is the rest. That's fantastic to have affiliate that much. Could you tell us any? Just generally speaking, what are you bringing in per month?

It's like high, it's like mid to high. five figures? Per month? Yeah. So about a million a year. Give or take, plus or minus, depending if the IRS is watching or not, right?

Yes. Okay. That's fantastic. And has that been pretty consistent? No, it's highly cyclical depending on the cards that come out and everything else. So with 2020, we pretty much had like six months of like terribleness because all the issue was were pulling back and they were not either had. having bonuses or they were not paying out.

And yeah, everything related to that side was terrible. Yeah, I remember, I got worried that it was the last month of March. I think I got, not like worried, worried, but my ad revenue went down. I think it was 80, 70, 80% almost overnight when everything was going down, 80% was gone, like the next day. And then I had sponsorships that were kind of in the works, like they kind of thought of it. Everyone was like, all right, we're holding off for a little bit. And so for that month, it was like, oh, crap, is this going to be like the new normal?

It's just like 80% was gone. Views were really down to at that time. I don't know why. And then everything a month later just went crazy. It was nuts. Well, that's great. I think that you're like dependent on credit cards. Like, although that sounds kind of like a negative thing.

Yes. We, like the content you make Graham is basically just upon like investing principles, which don't change over time. So it's pretty tough to create content. But for you, you have like a recurring thing that you can continue to make content on. It's always good content. You probably have a really good formula for each video. So I'm sure that's probably quite nice. Kind of like the Doug DeMiro of credit cards, right?

Yeah, yeah. I think with yours, it's really easy to get a lot of views and get a lot of ad sense because it's like, oh, the market's turning. And it works out really well because you can do general news now. I think for me, my total addressable market is substantially smaller. Even when I talk about general finance stuff, it actually doesn't do well. for my channel. No. Because my audience

is so trained to only expect credit card stuff. I always thought it was kind of funny that you and the credit Shifu were always neck

and neck with subscribers. We're still pretty much neck and neck. I've seen you like you gain a thousand, he gains a thousand. He gains a thousand. He gains a thousand.

What's the relationship like between you two? Friendly. He's cool. Is there any rivalry that goes on? Like you see him make a video and you're like,

oh, he got to that video first. Sometimes. I think he's really, good about getting stuff out fast because he used to be like a news reporter person. So he's like really good on camera. I'm a bit more shaky because as you could see with the intro, I end up repeating parts a lot until I like find the one that I like. But he's like, he's kind of like Kevin in that sense where he can just do it in one take. Got it. Yeah, I repeat myself. So most of my video is me saying the same thing 10 times and then I'll pick that last one. That's exactly what I do,

which is the worst. And I need to get better of that. Yeah. Yeah. So when did you get into startup investing because that's what I find the most interesting. Yeah, so I think in 2020 when everything was slowing down and actually let's rewind. So in 2019, we traveled once a month every month and we were expecting to do that in 2020 as well. I actually considered being a digital nomad in 2020, which obviously didn't work out. And once we started staying in the Bay Area more just hanging out of more friends that we knew who were doing startups and say, hey, this is pretty cool. I have some disposable investments. I didn't really know where I want to put it. And startup investing seems interesting. And it seemed a lot more affordable than I thought. And a lot of people come into

startup investing thinking that they need to put in like $100,000 or like even $50,000 in the deals. But a lot of companies will happily take you if you can add value. Now, if an investment doesn't do well, what do you, what do you, like, what's the definition if it, if it, how do you know if it does well or not. So you can kind of tell by whether first off they tell you it's kind of they're out of money and it's like hey do you want to put in more money and that's always a concern. Secondly, if they don't raise any additional rounds in let's say a year, that's generally a big sign because most startups raise with the expectation that they have to raise again in six to 18 months. How many startups have you invested in? Probably 85ish. No way. A lot of small

checks too. Like some of the bigger ones, I just put like a $2,500 check in. Well, in some of the smaller ones. Yeah. Some, uh, no, some of the bigger ones. Bigger companies that don't want funds. Uh, yeah, exactly. So, like, there are some companies that are in like the hundred or $200 million valuation range. And, like, I know that the upside there is lower. Therefore, I just put in less money, but I think it's still going to do well. Like, I think it can 10 next, but. What's the point, though, of a $2,500 investment? Well, it's just like investing like pre-IPO, right? Yeah. So, so,

the idea is that you can still 10x to 50x and if you look at the S&P or like any of these other exchanges look at how much value is within tech companies compared to everything else so like if you look at like Facebook Microsoft Google Amazon and I think Netflix represent 20% of the S&P so assuming assuming that you are very bullish on tech why not get into it earlier and if you look at these hedge funds and these other investment vehicles they're actually looking more early stage now. So traditionally they never touched venture capital stuff because that wasn't their business, but they're looking for alpha. They're looking for income and how to make more money. So startups is that next stage to me. Yeah, but why 2,500? Why not 10K? 15K? Why 2500?

I think a lot of it is diversification and start up investing you want to diversify. And then sometimes it's just building a relationship with founders. So even if you're not necessarily, super duper bullish, but you think they'll do okay. You might still want to invest to have that relationship because you think their next startup is going to be the banger. Got it. And what do you look for in a startup specifically? So generally there's like three things you want to consider. You want to consider the team, traction, and then the product. As long as you have two of those three things are pretty good to go. So you want to see if that they have a competitive advantage and can beat out other people. The problem is that I've seen so many startups that either

you've given me or that other people have given me in the network. And I think there's stupid ideas. I hear them and I think that is like an idiot would have to do that. And then a year later, I see that they have 10xed in value. I'm like, why? How? It doesn't make any sense. There was a startup that me and Kevin both listened through.

This in my, I'm not going to say what it is. It was the equivalent of like a college presentation. I thought it was so bad. And these are just like adults doing this thing. It's a stupid idea. And like five X. But now, but here's the thing.

You can't really cash out. It's not like it'd be like sell right now. Like you have to see it through completion, you know. But why? It doesn't make sense. If I'm passing on some of these ideas. So the question, though, is, is your background conducive to understanding what the future is, right?

Yes. Yeah. I'm not going to name it, but that was something I was directly involved in. Okay. No, but I mean, do you, basically, do you think you're the Oracle of the future? Like, do you, is your, yes. What? Is your review set in.

You're saying that on record? Listen, there's, there's this idea. Well, it's, I'll have to say it's in real estate. It's a real estate company. Oh, wait. Is this the one you told me about? No. Oh.

No, that was another one. But I like that one. That one was good. Yeah, it was good. But no, the real estate one, I can't see how this would, I couldn't see it. Yeah. Just as someone who's been in the business. Yeah.

So you're the Oracle of real estate in the future. For that idea, yeah. I mean, to be fair, there was another one that you presented to me that 10x. Which one? The credit card one. The pay your rent with your credit card. Did you invest in that? I did not.

Did you? You did, right? This is for a spot. Yeah. So that's a next. Let me tell you. Let me tell you what happened. It's a lesson to everybody.

Okay. Did you learn about this from? What? Who did you learn about this investment from? Kevin O'Leary. And why? And you didn't trust him? I did.

Oh. All right, all right. You're speaking as though I, you know what I'm going to say, but you don't. I thought you were going to say that you brought him the deal. That's why you were looking at him. No, no, no, no, no. Kevin O'Leary introduced me. I'm not going to say it.

Kevin O'Leary introduced me to a company that I liked. And they were good. So I put money into this and got it all signed through Angel Invest. And I got an email. I said, congratulations. Your deposit has been received. All this starts a great stuff. Fine.

they sent me an email a follow-up to finalize like they wanted me to sign something. I miss the email. I don't know. They emailed me again a few weeks later. I miss the email. And I get like hundreds of emails a day. So it's like, you know, sometimes I sit through

or sometimes I'll even see something like, oh, I need to get to that. And then by the time like I just, the day is gone by. I forget about it. Then he, the founder sends me a text. And it was like in the middle, I must have been filming or something. Sometimes I'll open up the text and just, like I'll get to it later. I forget about it.

And gosh, almost a year later now, got back to me and said, hey, Graham, like I want to let you know we're raising another round like $400 million,

like some absurd amount. And he asked me if I wanted to get in. I say, well, you know, my initial investment, and he always says, like,

it's too bad we weren't able to get you in in the first round. And I was like, wait, what? No, and I showed him the email.

It's like, I submitted it. I'm in there. I signed everything. It's like, no, you miss. this one email and we weren't able to get you through that round.

And he's like, we've been trying to, and sure enough, I looked back and he was telling the truth. Like, sure enough, they said that they were trying to reach out. It was, that was on me. But my investment would have gone up like 15 times. Yep. Had I had that investment gone through it. It was, you know, not like six figures or anything like that.

But it was, it was an amount that like, just, that's tough. Yeah. So they wanted to do. and make good, and we're still trying to work that out at that value, you know, at the original valuation, if I could do something, add some value there. But still, yeah, but you didn't invest in that. Yes. Why? I skipped that one because I was not, it was something that I did not feel comfortable pushing on my channel. So I think a lot of my investments aren't necessarily only fintech, but it's what do I feel comfortable recommending to a friend?

And at that point, from what I heard, at least, it didn't seem like it was that thing. And that's why I was like, oh, it probably will do super well. But if either I can't help them or if I don't feel comfortable recommending it, do I really want to invest in it? Yeah, was it you that explained to me, by the way, that their valuation is the likelihood that they're going to reach a billion dollars? Was that you that told me that?

I probably think I did. Yeah. Because I was asking Sabba. So, like, how do they come up with these values? It seems like very arbitrary numbers. Like, big number, like 100 million, $100 million. And it must have been you that explained, if they're raising it $100 million,

that means investors think there's a 10% chance that they're going to hit a billion. If they're raising at $500 million, there's a 50% chance they're going to hit a billion. That's kind of the metrics now in terms of that. The valuations have actually shifted more. I would say the starting valuations went from something like maybe 5 mil to 8 mil,

to 15 to like 30 mil is pretty standard now for even pre-product. So it just depends on your team and everything. Are you worried about that? Because the credit card, I think that was a 15 to $30 million evaluation without a product. Imagine this, Jack. Imagine not even having a product and your companies are $30 million. It doesn't make sense. How does this happen?

You're betting on the team, though. You're betting on the fact that they have the right relationships to make it work. long term so that they're either well connected enough or that they have the smart people in the room to make the right decisions. But why even raise it that? Like I feel a lot of these things shouldn't they be more self-financed. Self-funded. Like it seems to me like it's an easy way to come up with these, you know, we came up with this idea. It's $100 million. Maybe it's actually worth $10. But let's say it's $100 million. We're going to raise all this capital. We're going to barely give it anything. But now we got like all this money. A lot of it is

on basically showing that other people believe in you. So even if you can self-finance it, if people don't believe in you, then it's a bit tougher. And then another part of it is relationship building. So by having someone as an investor, then they're more likely to talk about you and connect you with the right people. Wow.

So you're saying if I self-funded something and I got it to a business, let's say it's making like $3 million a year in profit, let's say it's worth 15, that it would be more difficult for me to raise capital than at the very beginning, just having people on my side? Not necessarily, but I'm just saying the case for you selling some of that equity early on is that you might be getting more people on your team to help you.

So maybe instead of just going from 3 mil, maybe by having that extra capital, you maybe get to 9 mil. So it's like reinvesting in your set or your filming equipment or anything else like that. So the question then becomes, you're investing in a lot of these. You have the connections. Why don't you do it? Why don't I do the startup instead? Why don't you do a startup instead?

Ironically, we actually are... Oh, okay, sorry? So ironically, we actually are doing a startup right now, Mandy and I. Can we hear about it? So what we're doing is we're creating a platform that allows content creators to get equity in startups for early stage deals. So when you think of the Robin Hood of the world, when they first started, when they were, were substantially less. They weren't paying out as much because they couldn't afford it because we're just a startup and we can't pay you that much. But if you got equity, even $5 in equity at that point,

that probably would be worth $500 to maybe $1,000 per share. And yes, they're starting to pay you more now, but that's not really what's happening. Yeah. So this guy sent me an email pre-IPO investing partner opportunity. That sounds shady already. Sorry. Yeah. Okay. So he says, I have a new partnership opportunity that may be of interest to you link to. They allow accredited investors to invest in pre-IPO shares

of a variety of companies in the past they allowed investors to get in an early company like SOFI, Robin Hood, and Coinbase at $35 a share. And currently now for investments in companies like Cracken, Ripple, Varo,

Impossible Foods, and Zipline, a logistics company, for referrals to complete the full sign-up process, the program will pay you $360. So is that basically... No, so that's more you investing money, this is more so

pretty much what we did with the other fintech startup. Wow. So this we're talking about social capital. Yes. Wow. So okay. That's it. So tell us more. So yeah. Basically how do you help these early stage companies who don't have the war chest of Robin Hood? And instead of

giving you cash, like the $5, maybe doesn't move the needle, but what about $5 in equity? Because it could be worth substantially more. Yeah. The one issue that I want to say, because I've really, yeah, ever since about a year and a half ago, I just wanted equity. And so every time a company would reach out to me, not every time, but a lot of the time when I really, really, really like the company, it's like, can you just give me equity

instead? You can give me less money, but I just want the equity. And almost all of them said no, because, first of all, it didn't seem like, you they had an issue getting people just like, hey, we're just going to pay you and that that's good. But the bigger thing when I spoke with some of the larger companies was that they don't want to give up their equity. It's so highly like guarded that they want to keep all of it for themselves. And not only that, but then it's getting that approved through everybody else. And they're like, well, if we do it through you, then we have to go through everybody. So it seems, so why, why is that?

And it seems also like, then once I started saying that all the great companies don't want to give up equity, then I'm skeptical of the companies who do. Because then I'm like, well, if they believed in it that much, then why wouldn't they just keep it for themselves? They must not believe it. It must not be that good if they're giving me equity. Yeah. So a lot of the companies that you're probably asking for equity from are way too late. So if they're worth more than 100 mil, it's very unlikely that they're going to do that because they'd rather just raise more money. Because capital is so cheap at that point. Going from 10 mil to 100 million is a lot harder than going from $100 million to $1 billion.

So for them, there's so many people who want to hand the money. But in that early stage, that's where we can add the most value generally and also where they might benefit the most from actually us shutting it out or us helping them with any user acquisition. So let's say bring me on. What's the expectation of me? Is it like I mentioned them so many times a month? Do I have an out on that?

Like what's the... Let's say there's a company on there that you don't like. You can skip it and you can focus on the ones that you do like. And the idea is that you can select and you can see what the valuations are. And you in your head can see if it's worth it for you to do it. And there's three different models that we have. So it allows you to do it based off conversions. So pretty much like any other affiliate link, you'd be able to just shout it out any point you want.

Any sponsor segments. So instead of $10,000 in cash or $5,000 in cash, it's $5,000 in equity. because for them that's maybe more affordable. And then advisory, if they really want to sit down a few and maybe pick your brain once a week or something. Got it. I'm worried that it seems like a lot of these companies, let's say they're valued at 10, right? And it seems like for the influencer, you're almost working against yourself because now you shouted it out. And now that 10 goes to 20 very quickly.

And then it's like, well, now if I do this shout out again, now I'm getting like diluted. I'm getting less value than I did the first time when it was. How do you overcome that? And also, how do you overcome the fact that a lot of these companies, since they believe they're going up in value, instead of paying like 20,000 upfront cash, they'll be like, we'll just give you 5K of equity. But it's going to be worth 10 times that very soon.

Yeah, I think that's always going to be tough. So you're looking for people who believe in the company long term. But I think that is the trend that we're going towards. And if you look at the really big influencers, if you look at the Casey Knight's stats, the Good Mythical Morning guys, a lot of them actually have funds that invest in startups. And for a lot of the people in the middle, let's say 100,000 to 1 million subscribers, you make a good amount of money, but you don't make

enough that you have a fund or that you're investing as much as you would want. So how do you turn your capital, your social capital, into actual ownership? When is this going live? It actually already is live if you want to sign up, if you're a creator. Why don't we do that with the iced coffee hour? Can we do that as the iced coffee hour? Yeah. Can we do it with this to family? It doesn't have 100,000 subscribers.

Okay, I'll reach back out to you later. We don't need 100,000 subscribers and no. I trust you. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Why don't we do that? All right, let's do it. Yeah.

I think it's a great idea. And the idea, too, is that if you don't have a sponsor segment, then why not have an affiliate? It's pretty much exactly the same as Webel, in that you can completely. plug it in however you want. Do we have a sponsor? Not for this one, but guys, sign up for the thing in the description. Whatever the thing is, it's really good. Check it out.

We love it. It's amazing. Okay, no, seriously, whatever it is, this is the company that Jack and I have gone through. We've been working on it for a long time. Very long time. No, no, so we'll go through the list. We'll pick, like, one or two that we really like, and that'll be down below in the description.

But we've got to get on. This episode's posting on Sunday. So the time is a ticking. Right. We got it. We got to get on this job. Limited to 100 people. 24 hours.

Okay, how about this? We're going to take the link down in 24 hours. So if you don't do it now. Yeah, I like the idea. Yeah, signing up. How many startups have you exited, like cashed out of so far? None of them. So right now it's all paper money.

So even if, yeah, even if I have like, oh, $2 million or $5 million and like net worth, it's all paper money. Can you tell us the aggregate value? let's say of the worth of the startups right now. Just draw us a number. So Mandy and I put about a million into startups. I put like four or something. I would say it's about like 10x. A lot of it's like paper money, right?

Okay, so about 10 million. Yeah, like there's one startup I put 5K in that 20 something X. So it's worth like, yeah. Can you tell us what startup that is? No. So the one thing that a lot of people hate about startup stuff is, that it's so private because it's not my choice. Because if I do it, then I'm going to get canceled by the founder.

And because they're like, hey, don't like don't explain this. Don't explain validation. Don't do a press release. So oftentimes when people do talk about them investing in something, everyone does it on the same exact day. And people are like, oh, is this a scam that the YouTubers are doing because they're all announcing their investors? It's like, no, because that was the day it's publicized.

I think that's old, that's a stupid old school rule. I mean, I don't get it. Just talk about it when you want to talk. about it. Yeah, I think it's, it's the old and the new balancing it. Got it. That's 10 mil. So are you nervous that there's a chance that many of these won't pan out? Or like, what, what are the chances that something reaches $100 million and it fails? 10%, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think it can still obviously happen. I think to me, 10 mil is the, 100 mil is the range where it gets a lot easier to raise capital because your fundamentals are there.

Now it's just based off your numbers and your performance. But let's just say it's 100 mil. Is there ever a chance that they're just like, hey, we're done? 100%. And no one buys them out? Because wouldn't they at least, wouldn't they always have some sort of worth given their, like, couldn't they always be like, all right, guys, like we're selling back, we're selling it 20 million now?

Yeah. So assuming it is not a scam and there's no legal issues in the background, oftentimes you'll probably have someone buying them at pennies under dollar or at least enough for investors to get their money back. So we've seen that a lot where like a company might raise 100 mil at 800 million valuation, but then they get bought for like 200 mil. So it's like the investors get paid back. The employees get a bit and the founders get a bit.

And the idea is that they lock you in. So that team has to work for that company for like four years. Otherwise you don't get your money. Got it. So since we're talking about startups, I want to ask you about this. Okay. So as we know, very good friends with Jeremy Financial Education. He's seen the future as creating his own app.

Because right now, you know, we're relying on all these other websites for our information. His idea was we have the audience. Why don't we create our own product? Why are we investing in all these other things when we could just do it ourselves and create something that's very to us? What were you about to say? I feel like a lot of people have tried that and it makes sense, but it's so tough to port your audience somewhere else.

If you look at people's view, like how often do you use certain apps, it's all in the mainstream apps. But it's just really tough to get people off of TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. Okay. Let me tell you about this app. I need brutal honesty with you, okay? Brutal.

Okay. The app is called The Hungry Bowl. Down below in the description, if you want to try it out and follow along with us. But the goal of it originally was that we were big fans in Morning Brew, like big fans.

But we knew we could never compete with Morning Brew with an email. They've got the email down. Everyone who does that now is a copycat. So immediately we're off of that. We came up with the idea of doing it in an app. Because that way, once someone downloads an app, they're never going to delete that app. I have apps on my phone that I've had for years.

I'll just never delete it. The other thing that's really good with an app, unlike emails that you can control who gets notifications. I know with email, sometimes it gets lost, it gets in spam, sometimes it don't get sent, whatever it is. With an app, you download it, you get a notification. So we've created our newsletter on that app that'll send you a notification.

And then we realized, well, we're not just going to make an app with the newsletter. So we also integrated stock charts, earnings reports, SEC reports, everything in one place. So basically just aggregates all the information from around the internet that you just click a few buttons and everything is there. And then it became, well, we would love for it to end up. integrate all of your stock. So like let's say you have like five shares of Tesla on Weebel, five shares in public, five shares on Robin Hood. It can aggregate all of that and show on the Hungry Bowl, you have 15 shares. Because it always bothered me that you had to like look like, you know, tend to and admit does it horribly. So we want to integrate that and like do like paper trading and

just a few other things in the app. It's very expensive. And hearing about, first of all, how long it takes and how much it costs to build something like that. out. It's extremely expensive. I don't think people realize, including integration. If you want to raise money. Yes. So I want to show you the app. And then I want your honest advice. The color scheme looks a bit tacky to me. I'd probably use like some flat colors or just, yeah, different colors, but it's fine. It just feels like there's not really much to do. Like, it kind of feels like a watered down weeple or like any of those other things. where they have this as a feature.

And then long term, the other question is, well, how are you actually monetizing this? Like with Weble, it's because they have all these other things that this is a service that they're adding on top to add value. But like if this is the core thing, it's like, are you charging people to use this app? Are you selling the information? Are you just aggregating it?

So I think that's a big question. The plan was sponsorships within the newsletter or affiliates. Personally, I don't think the affiliates will convert. And Morning Brew does really, really, really well with their sponsors, but they also have millions of people. Yeah. On a daily basis. Yeah.

And then I think, I mean, I think it's okay. It's just convincing people to sign up for another app. But if you have creators doing it, then it simplifies it a lot more. I don't know. I just don't think there's any, I don't think I would download this. Or I think I would download it. I'd be like, oh, it's cool, but I would never go back to it. And I get like a lot of notifications on my phone about stuff and I just ignore it.

Or sometimes like if it gets very annoying, I'll just turn off notifications. Got it. But yeah, I won't uninstall the app. Got it. So on average, what has it been? Two years you've been investing in startups? Did you say? Yeah, I would say about two years.

Two years. And you've got about 100% return. No, 10x. Oh, sorry, a thousand percent return. Yeah. Yeah, but it's all paper returns. That's the tough thing, right? So like it either could be zero or it could keep going up.

Right. I don't really know. So how much do you have invested? in public companies. Public companies, I've lowered my coverage pretty substantially. I don't know. I just, and again, this is probably a bad opinion, but I'm not sure how much higher it can go. So I would say like 200,000.

You sound like all of the people who comment on my video, oh, we're at the peak now and then have another 20% and then it keeps going up. I'm not shorting the market. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But doesn't it worry you a little bit that evaluations are crazy, that it seems like for tech. And I've spoken with a few people who are in there. And they're like, yeah, no, we're raising capital because it's so easy right now and we're getting crazy.

And so like we'd be stupid not to raise capital. Doesn't that concern you that like these conditions are just how much higher could go? So like, as you say that about the stock market, I say that about tech. Like how much higher could go if interest rates go off? how is that going to impact all these companies? Yeah, definitely. So I think what I would look into is actually where some of the other smart money is going. So if you look at hedge funds, a lot of them have started doing early stage investing or at least like midstage startup investing. So in the $100 million range because that's where they see the returns. And ironically, that's actually

what's pushing the valuations up because there's new capital that didn't play in this arena before that is starting to do it. And that's those are the people who are pretty, much doing a deal every two days. You know what I'm wondering. If people look at the stock market and they're like, yeah, stocks are kind of high, we're going to make more money and they're looking at startups and be like, wait a second, everyone's getting a 10x return there in two years. Let me just go and do that.

And then that's now it's self-fulfilling because I'm seeing you do that and I'm like, I want some of that. And then Sevi sees me doing that. I'd be like, I want some of that. And then everyone else is doing that. I think it's definitely a risk. one thing a lot of people compare it to is like the dot-com bubble and it's like oh how do we know it's not that again one thing to consider is back then there were i think 400 billion people who had

internet access and now it's closer to something like five billion people so it's like 10 times as many people and i don't know i'm i'm pretty old now compared to jack i feel like we're in the same age group where i remember like having aOL floppy disks and CDs to get free internet and now everyone has everything on their phone. Like you have instant access to any information you want. Yeah. To me it always seems like the most obscure ideas, though, are the ones that do the best.

I was telling Jack about this earlier, that it was always the things that were never intended to make money that just grew organically. Like I think Morning Brew, they started that in college as just creating a newsletter for fun, that they would just work on this on the side and would grow it. It seems like those businesses always tend to do the best because you're never set out to do anything

and they just completely grow on their own. Yeah, I think it happens a lot to of other social apps where monetization is not really the focus early on. It's like how do you grow as fast as possible and then figure out monetization afterwards. Yeah. What was the one app that you were telling me to get the guy? Remember we went on a run and Jack,

he told me about this idea, this guy that reached out to you with a web browser extension that I wanted to do that. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. How was it? Honey.

No, no, no. And it turned into honey. No, it was this kid that was like in Texas or something, studying at university. And he had developed an app with his friends that it kind of like, like you'd put in a product, I think, and then they find the cheapest place you could buy that product. So it's kind of like honey where like, you know,

they give you the coupon code. But instead, it's kind of like going in reverse image searching, something you want to buy. And that's what it did. So you'd put in the product. And then I think that it would reverse. image search and obviously it had like a database after many people have done that and then they'd show you where you could buy it for the cheapest it was a genius idea because I remember when I was

buying furniture for the duplex a while ago every piece of furniture I would reverse image search it find the same thing for half the cost and I go through that website in almost every single item could reverse image shirts it and find it somewhere else for cheaper because they all use the same stock image it's so silly but yeah this extension I don't know if it's still up or or not But yeah, this extension would, you could turn it on and it would automatically, whatever you want to buy, reverse image search that image and then find it cheaper. So long term, you can see the path to revenue because they can just take a cut of that transaction. Short term, it's like, can they figure out distribution?

And even if it's a great product, if no one knows about it, then it doesn't really help. Yeah. It sounds like a pretty good product. Yeah. I love the idea. But I don't think he wanted an investor in that. I think he just wanted to share his idea. So there you go.

Now you got your idea shared. But I liked that one a lot. So speaking about all this lifestyle stuff, do you own a house? No. So we rent for now because San Francisco is prohibitively expensive. And also, I don't think I want to put all my capital into one thing. I'd rather diversify into a bunch of things. I think there's more like money to be made, more alpha.

So why I live in California? Yeah, why not move to Nevada or Texas or Florida? I think we've considered it, but for what we're trying to do with our startup and also angel investing, it's a lot easier to network when you're in San Francisco because you can just go out and grab a coffee of people. Like it's a lot more convenient versus having to fly over there. And I think when you do talk to people, it's kind of stupid, but when you tell them that you're from San Francisco that you've worked in tech, they understand that you understand them. Like, you've been in the same position.

So you have that relationship camaraderie already versus someone like, oh, I'm in Dallas or something. I don't know what tech is. I'm a dentist, but I want to angel invest because I heard it on Graham's podcast. Then they're going to be like, I don't think I want to waste my time talking to you. I don't know how much value you can add. Yeah. Got it.

But now the other thing you have to consider, too, let's say you have, let's say your 10 mill grows to 50. And if you cash out of those in California, there goes 13%. Couldn't you move out, as some of those might be approaching, like years in advance, you kind of get ahead of it in a little bit? I think in the future it's probably something we'll reevaluate. Right now we're still growing the pie versus worrying about like how to maximize how much I take.

But that's why a lot of people have moved to Miami and that's been more of a tech hub recently because of Californians going over there. How many people in the tech industry would you say have actually left? It's hard to say because I think there's a lot of vocal people and it seems like it's like 10 to 20%, but I think if you look at the stats,

it's closer to like 1 to 5%. A lot of influential people left. So a lot of the billionaires who have made that money who've had like five IPOs this year left. Do you think California would ever do a wealth tax or an exit tax? I think it's been proposed.

I don't know if, I think it would scare too many people. I think it would actually potentially destroy the state if they passed that because then everyone would, in the short term, it looks very good for them, but long term, innovation's not going to happen. Like a lot of people who might be very successful, one of big companies, why build it here? Why not build it in like Austin or anywhere else? Now that you actually, I realize you kind of have the same outfit very often.

Why? I think I have like 20 of these shirts. First off, they're very comfortable. Number two, I just don't want to waste decisions every day. Oh, wow. So you're like Steve Jobs or whatever. Sure. Zuckerberg does the same thing.

Oh, Zuckerberg. Yeah. I think it's just like I don't really care how I look and I know that I look fine in this. Like maybe there is something that I look more fashionable in. But like I'm not trying to impress anyone so it doesn't really matter. And like most of my pants are from blue lemon because they're comfortable. Yeah. So pretty boring.

Do you think it helps or hurts you to have a simple outfit in the Bay Area? I feel like when you walk around the Bay Area, everyone's wearing Patagonia or like North Face and just joggers. Like no one's really dressed up. Like if you compare it to L.A., I would say it's the polar opposite. So, Sabie, they mentioned that you were here for something. What are you here for? We never found out.

We're here for the Pokemon event. What is that? Explain that. What is the Pokemon? I just got... It's a million dollar box breaking. It's a million dollar box breaking of a Pokemon original first edition set.

Yeah. So the proceeds are going to, I believe, the Aoki Foundation and to help raise awareness for autism. So Chris Camelo, I think, donated one of his boxes, or actually donated like two of his boxes that are worth like three to $500,000 each,

just donated them. And they're going to be open tomorrow. So it's going to be a really exciting event. and I think we're going to be vlogging it. So it's going to be incredible. You guys got to check out the family vlog because we're going to post the whole thing there. But it's going to be an incredible event.

So what's rent like in San Francisco? What are you guys paying? If you can find a two-bedroom rent-controlled for $3,000 to $3,500, which isn't too bad. If you want to do super expensive, obviously there's like two bedrooms that are like $7 or $8,000,

a month as well, but yeah, it just depends on you. What do you guys? What do you guys live in? Like, 3,300, 300? Wow. That's not bad. Yeah, that's not bad at all. It seems like you're probably saving like 80% of your income, right?

Yeah, most of it. And then the rest of it's just startups. Yeah, startup investing, some JPEGs. NFT, you're doing NFTs? Are you making money? No. You're losing money in NFTs? Losing a lot of money on Netflix.

Oh, no. I expected you to be like, I expected you to be buying like, what is it, like angry apes or something? Yeah, yeah. So what's going on? Nuclear apes. I bought a lot of, I bought like 100K of top shot or 120k of NBA top shot, which is dapper's thing. That one's down like 20%. Yeah, the other ones are, yeah.

Other ones are kind of, it's hard to get a vibe on stuff too. And then like I'm trying to be like very careful that I'm not accidentally like. perceived to be pumping stuff. That's another thing. Like where like, oh, like I might be doing something, but it's like, don't necessarily just copy what I do. But yeah.

Right. It seems like they're all big pump and dumps, a lot of them. Because it's, I have, there, there's some people out there who always seem to be like, on the inn,

like, buy this. It's about to, it's about to blow up. And they, because they, they'll show it on just like, on these stories on Instagram,

but just for friends. and they'd be like, buy this, buy this, but now I've never gotten into NFTs, but, uh, I'm bullish on certain ones that are community based. So board apes art club, which I don't have. Board apes,

I'm very bullish on. Um, and then, yeah, any of the original ones that have very strong communities. So Steph Curry and a lot of other NBA players bought board apes because the idea is that they're going to make like these locations in different cities where you can go.

So if you don't have one of these apes, you either can't get in or you have to, be a guest of someone else. So they're making these exclusive Soho Club like places. I didn't know that. That's incredible. That's a main idea.

And then a lot of it is the fact that there's a discord. So you don't have access to that discord unless you have one of these. Yes. Okay. So that was one of the things I found really interesting. So I follow Alex Becker on Facebook. I have to say Alex Becker is the best source of information, I think for NFTs. You might, maybe be able to disagree with me.

I read every single one of his posts. And he says, that when people criticize him for buying some of these really expensive ones that are hundreds of thousands of dollars, he said the Discord group alone pays for that because here's the thing. Imagine you spend like 500 grand on an NFT and abort it

and now you get access to a Discord group. You're not in a Discord group with people who have a million dollar net worth. The people who buy those things, $100 million, billion net worths. And now you're in a Discord group in the same community because of an NFT.

It's like having an in to talk to these people and network. That's what it seems like a lot of the value is. And there's no other way for you to likely talk to someone like Steph Curry. Like even if like people know you, but certain people at that level don't have a clue who you are. Right. So if this can get you access to those people, then that makes sense. Ironically, I was doing the opposite of him. So I was buying the T's one and I realized that those Tudu ones are not worth anything because it's,

It's like, yeah, it's not going to go anywhere. But I would actually invest in the super expensive good ones because those are the ones that have value. So you think the ones with a community or being used as a token are going to be worth something? I think, yes, very highly dependent on how good the community is. What do you think of Cryptopunks? Cryptopunks, a lot of the perks is the fact that there is that secret community. So in effect, they're kind of trying to be like the Illuminati of Tech. And I'm pretty bullish on that one.

I think I have like fractional ownership of one. Like one like thousand for some tiny amount of one. So I think that one's pretty good. And I think that I can go pretty far. A lot of people I know who are in Web 3 who are bullish on NFTs see the floor for it being like 10 mil in like five to 10 years. Per Cryptopunk. Yeah. I talked to somebody else and they were convinced that each Cryptopunk.

minimum is going to be worth a million dollars. And that's like the worst case scenario is a million dollar crypto punk. Yeah. I think I've heard five to 10 mil pretty easily. It's just focusing on the blue chip ones versus the ones that people are trying to show on Twitter. So why don't you buy a crypto punk? I think it's too much money into one asset. That's the main thing, right?

Like if it's 500K into one. Yeah. Yeah, but it doesn't matter. If the floor is going to be a mill to $10 million, let's just say. I think a million I think is reasonable, honestly. Why not just do it?

Because you can always sell it. I think it's just figuring out where your, where the, where, I think it's just figuring out where it's best to put your money. So for me, I'd rather just put a lot into a lot of startups because that builds relationships,

which helps of other things and helps of our startup that we're trying to do. So yeah, maybe in the future I probably will try to buy one or at least a fractional ownership of one. But even over, I think FinkCon, over one of the other events that we did in the last two weeks,

we were talking about, like, hey, why don't, like, 10 of us just put in, like, 50K each to, like, buy 10% of one each or something? Yeah. I'd do that. No. I would do that. Yeah.

I think some of these communities, that's where it's out, I'm just so worried, it's hypey. Yeah. And just like these communities are good now, who's to say that, you know, the billionaire gets bored after a while? I'm, yeah. Now all the PLEBs bought in.

It's not good anymore. And that's the risk of it too. That's why it's like, well, would you really put 500K into something like that? Right. And then also if anything happens to the cryptocurrency market and like something crashes,

a lot of those, if Bitcoin falls like 30, 40%, those NFTs will probably fall 80%. It'll probably be double whatever Bitcoin might fall. So thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. And for all of you watching, before you leave,

Just make sure to leave a like on the video. That's it. Alex works so hard behind the scenes to make this possible. Jack has to sit here the entire time. The least you could do. Give us a like. Give us a subscribe. We have our link in the description on the stuff that we spent a lot of time looking through.

That'll be down below in the description. Thank you guys so much for watching. And until next time. Cool. 69. Nice. Cool.