The Startup Ideas Podcast - Reinventing Home Ownership and Concierge Businesses With Sam Parr

Episode Date: December 3, 2021

Could listening to a podcast help you fund a business? In this episode of Where It Happens, co-host Sahil Bloom (@sahilbloom) makes an offer you might not be able to refuse. Guest Sam Parr (@samparr), the founder of The Hustle, joins the show and he’s bullish on the business of Picasso, while Greg (@gregisenberg) and Sahil are not so sure and are willing to make a bet. Other topics discussed include the future of concierge services, the reverse test framework, and the opportunities of owning a home and moving.Want more community? Learn more here: http://trwih.comSPECIAL THANKS TO OUR SPONSORSMERCURYhttps://mercury.com/partner/rwihIf you’re a founder, Mercury is the banking product you need.Mercury offers FDIC-insured bank accounts, virtual & physical debit cards, international & domestic wires that are free to send, 3-click payment flows, and more. We personally use Mercury for our business banking with the podcast and Sahil is an investor.Get started in minutes from anywhere.CAPCHASEhttps://www.capchase.com/roomToday’s show is sponsored by Capchase.Capchase is a new financing option for fast-growing startups. They are offering Where It Happens listeners .25% off their first draw, preferred onboarding, and more. Their main product Capchase Grow lets you tap into your future revenue today, meaning you can reinvest in your business faster. We love what they are offering to business owners.To learn more go to capchase.com/room

Self out, find your phone sway. I'm still trying to get it like every day. Humbleness is hard when you start receiving praise guard. But some words can never be taken away. Got to be here, dude. It is good to be here. Dude, I've been thinking about all this stuff going on with Squid Games. Do you seen this show?

I mean, who hasn't? Well, I haven't seen it. Why haven't you seen it? I cannot do the whole thing with subtitles. Why? All of these freaking. international shows that come out that everyone goes crazy for. They're amazing.

I'm sure they're great. Parasite, like two years ago. I can't watch them. Can't do it. But why? I can't, for me, TV, movies, all this stuff, it's like the ultimate relax activity. End of the day, I want to be able to unwind. I cannot watch it while having to read.

It just doesn't work. It doesn't work for me. So you're one of those people that you basically, you, like, watch the office before bed, and you just want to turn on. Family guy. Family guy? Yeah, yeah, yeah. As crazy as that sounds, no one watches Family Guy anymore.

Family Guy's amazing. That's like the best unwined thing. I can't do it with all of these shows. I'm actually shocked, to be honest, because I feel like you're a content guy. Well, I feel uncultured because of it. Because everybody is doing Squid Games right now. It's like Netflix just announced $900 million of value was created from it. The budget was like a couple million bucks.

It's insane. Totally nuts. I haven't watched it. And I don't think I ever will watch it. But you don't find that you're like behind the world, like behind everyone's watching it. And you're just... Yes, for sure. But dude, the water.

The water cooler doesn't exist anymore. It's not like, you know, back in the day you had to have watched this stuff so that you could go to the water cooler and have the conversations with people. We're not in the office. I mean, what do you mean? The water cooler is Twitter. That's true. The water cooler is Twitter.

I do feel bad. I'll go read stuff about all these shows and everyone getting hyped about them and I literally have no context. I just know it's like Hunger Games in South Korea. It's the whole premise of it. So how do you get your content? I don't know, man. I just watch, I like read stuff, watch things, but like TV, international TV, it's just not

my thing. Okay. Not my vibe. I dig it. Capchase is the financing solution for fast-growing startups. Their main product, Capchase Grow, allows you to tap into future revenue today so that you can reinvest in your business and scale more quickly. There's no dilution ever, and setting up is as easy as filling out a couple pieces of paper.

It's quick, easy, and they've made the whole process seamless. It grows with you so you can draw on money when you need it, and you only pay the interest when you're actually using the money. It's a total game changer for fast-growing businesses. To get started, go to capchase.com slash room today. I hate banking. Most banking products suck. So when I was starting all these new businesses

and going on this new adventure, I turned to Mercury. Mercury is banking for founders by founders. They make everything so easy in a beautiful, elegant design. There's free wires, virtual and physical debit cards. They even have a,

raising platform where they will connect you with other investors out in the ecosystem. Have you tried Mercury? I have and let's be honest. When you log into traditional banking websites and apps, it's hideous. When I go into Mercury it's like a walk in the park. So I love using it. It feels fresh and I can't use anything else. You should definitely check it out at mercury.com. It will completely change the game for your banking experience. I guarantee it. Dude, so let's dive into it, man. I know we don't have that much time.

What are we drinking? Yeah, what are we drinking? Ah, all right. Well, it is 10 a.m. So I feel like a little bit of a degenerate here. We've got a Hibicki Japanese whiskey today. Are you a Japanese whiskey guy? I love Japanese whiskey.

I'm going to pour you a little bit. It's 10 a minute. I'm going to pour myself a stiffer pour. Okay. So you're saying that you get the stiffer pour and I'm a lighter. Exactly. Look at you, man. You're 6-9-135.

Cheers. Well, I'll drink to that. I'll drink to that. That's good. It's pretty good. It's a light. It's a good 10.30 a. It's smoky.

It's very smoky. Yeah. Yeah. It's good. So I've got an idea. I want to run by you today. Okay. What do you got?

It's related to this whole thing that's happening in the world that's changing with the home economy. Okay. You know, like Airbnb happened. I don't know. I honestly had no idea when Airbnb started 10 years ago. It's $100 billion company now. Massive business. Everybody's like doing the whole home sharing thing.

It became this reality. Now you have COVID happens. All of these people leaving the cities, buying new houses, especially young people. So this whole new generation of homeowners, like, you know, 24 to 30-year-olds going and buying new houses. Interest rates at the floor. So it's almost free to go buy a house, have all these new homeowners. But there's a huge issue that's happening with it. What's the issue?

So if you're like me, you have no freaking idea what it takes to actually manage a home. You have a house. I do have a house. I just got a new house. My biggest issue with the entire process, it's not like buying the house, it's not mortgage,

like all of that. I get it. It's kind of a pain in the ass. But the reality of it is like the gutters. What the hell do I do with gutters in my house? I don't know when they have to get cleaned. I don't know like air filters, all of this random stuff that is around the house

that I'm supposed to know how to fix as an adult. like our generation, we never learned that stuff. It wasn't like we sat in schools or our parents taught us these things. Like I knew how to mow the lawn and do some basic stuff around the house. But the reality is most of these things, our generation has no clue how to manage. I mean, I live in Miami, and I just found out that you have to change your AC filter once a month. Literally once a month. AC filters, I don't even know where they are.

I do not know. I had a house in California. owned it for 18 months. Never changed the AC filter once. And when we moved out, it was one of the things when the buyer was buying the house of how often have you changed the AC filters.

And I had no clue what to say. Dude, I was literally on YouTube like how to change an AC filter. And I'm watching like these YouTube videos. I don't know when. You know, I'm like embarrassed. I'm like embarrassed to call my parents and be like, how do you change an AC filter?

So yeah, so tell me what's the idea. What do you think? Okay, so first off, there's two ideas that one just, that you sparked for me. Someone needs to do like some sort of paid newsletter or YouTube something that just like teaches you how to be an adult because I have no clue how to be an adult and we don't learn anymore. Like there's all this random stuff that happens. But okay, here's my idea and I want to pitch you on it.

I want you to tell me if it's stupid too. Okay. Because like I'm super high on it and I want someone to start it if it's not me and I'm going to go fund it. So all these young people moving out buying houses. When you're young and you live in a city, we're in New York right now. If you have an apartment in the city and you're living in an apartment, when something goes wrong, there's just a portal. There's like a website you log into for the building

and you go type in what your issue is. You have ants. Say you find ants. You go type in, hey, I got ants. The next day you go to work, someone has shown up and fixed this for you. You literally just had someone that came in

and while you're gone, an exterminator showed up and fixed it because the building has some provider and they deal with it and there's a portal. And you have like your owner, your home manager that basically just does that through this portal. That does not exist for home ownership. And I've looked into it.

I've tried to find it for my self. literally doesn't exist. There's no central body, central authority where you can just have someone that runs all of these things for you. So break down to me like how it would work, like how much money would it cost? What would you get out of it? So here's my thought. Walk me through it. Yeah. So what I want is a home manager. Like I literally want a concierge who runs my entire household. And I don't, I mean it in terms of like both the proactive stuff. Like we talk about AC filters, gutter cleaning, I don't know, like lawn landscaping, if you end up having a pool, like pool person.

All these things are proactive that you know you have to do once every three months. You just have to go do them. I need that done. I also want reactive. If I have ants, if I found cockroaches in my house, I need someone to show up ASAP. I'm not, I mean, my wife's not messing around with that kind of thing. Neither am I actually. I'm actually more scared of bugs than she is.

But if I have something like that, I need someone to show up right then. and I don't want to have to spend all the like energy and stress figuring out in my new town who is the best aunt guy that's not going to overcharge me or like a sewage backup. Who's the best plumber that's going to show up and do this? So you need both the proactive and the reactive. And I think what you do is you set up a business where you basically say we're going to charge like, it's like an Amazon prime model, charge you making up a number, 500 bucks a month. And that is just to have access to this service.

And then basically you get access to via this service. all of their primary providers that get you, all of these things. So you have someone that's automatically coming and cleaning your gutters, doing the filters, doing the like monthly or quarterly checkups that you need done. And then also, if something ever goes wrong and you need the like reactive ASAP, Sunday night, sewage backup emergency, you can plug it into the portal and you have your single point of contact, your concierge, that just shows up and they will go get the person for you. Do you know big Angie's list as a business?

Massard. It's like it's billions, right? Yeah. Is it owned by IAC or is that a separate business? I don't know. All I know is it's big. It's insane. It's old school.

Are you talking about like basically a modern day Angie's list that, you know, is more curated? You know what I mean? I haven't thought about Angie's list. It's an interesting one to point out. So I've experienced Angie's list. My experience with it is that it sucks. My experience with it is that you go, like I was trying to find someone to clean our house. And I went and plugged in information on the house, whatever.

And basically what happened was I got a bunch of spam calls. calls because they just, I don't know if they sell out your data or if they just farm you out for quotes, but basically you end up with a hundred people contacting you, sending you quotes, doing all this stuff and the quality of it is just not controlled. You might have the reviews on the site and stuff, but it's not the concierge experience that I think young people want. I just think our generation, what makes me so excited about this idea is that our generation is used to curated concierge-like experiences and we're willing to pay for it in general.

I think you could just like price tier something out depending on where it was and depending on the level of the offering where people would pay. I mean, I would gladly pay for just a single person that I knew I could contact to handle anything. Is this a rich person's problem? Like is this one of those business ideas that are, is this going to be for wealthy people and not for regular people? The first time I thought of it, it's a good question. I think it's a fair question. I think it would crush it in really wealthy markets. Like if you went to the Hamptons and you said,

I'm going to do this and I'm going to charge $2,000 a month for people and it's like their second homes. That probably exists. If I were to guess, I would guess that the second home version of this exists and there's people in the Hamptons that do this. I think the most interesting thing and the most interesting way to pursue this would actually just be to go to like home builders and do it in the mass markets where you have a home builder like a Richmond American or like a Toll Brothers and they're building 500 houses in one area. you go to them as a sales strategy and say, hey, you offer this for free for one year. You pay us, but you offer it for free as a sales incentive for one year. And all of your customers are going to be on it.

They're going to love it. They're going to value it at some amount where it looks like you're giving them something. And now I get a ton of customers. I'm super happy. Your people that just bought your houses are super happy because they're getting this amazing service really quickly. I think it's really cool. Dude, I have an idea.

Okay. What if? you cut in the home builders into the deal. Yeah. That's the idea, right? Yeah. So you give them, like, I don't know, 10 points on it for a year, two years, three years. It's basically, what you're saying is basically like HOA, like homeowners.

What's that? Homeowners Association. I think that's it. Right? Homeowners Association. For, you know, homes, right? So it's like that $500, $1,000 a month. Yeah.

And then you're just like, okay, home builder, you're about to, you know, build this whole community of 500 homes. a thousand homes, give them some incentive. Yeah. And it's just like additional revenue for them. I totally do. I like that piece to it. Yeah.

I think it's just like the idea that people will pay so much money to not have stress. When you think about like as a business and you're launching a business, you're trying to solve a customer problem fundamentally. It's like, what problem am I solving and what are people willing to pay to have that problem solve for them? The problem here is stress. I don't want to have to think about all these things on a weekly basis. And right now I do.

Right now if someone comes to. to me and says like, oh, your gutters, whatever, there's something wrong. We had a sewage backup. Brand new house. We got this brand new house. And there's sewage backup on a Sunday night at 6 p.m. And that is the worst headache you possibly have. You're about to go into the week and there's some, there's stinky water all over the

basement. Like, it's a terrible experience. And I don't know who to call. I'm like Google searching, how to find a plumber right now. It's a pain. And so to just have someone that you know you can text or call. And it could be like a fake portal, but it's literally a SaaS business that I think you just have services tied onto.

And so if you, like, really went down the rabbit hole on it, I think what you do as the company is, you have this $500 a month or whatever it is, a pure profit coming into the system, you take that and you go to all these service providers in the different regions and you say, we're going to pay you 20% above what you get on a market rate because we have all this profit comes from. We're going to pay you way more, but you have to be on call for us. And so if you get a call from whatever this company is called, you're turning down everything else and coming straight to our place because then you effectively guarantee you.

capacity within a region, which is so critical to this model. Like, I need it to be the case that I'm paying this 500 a month. That person shows up right now when I go and call. Okay, so let's just say you wanted to do this idea. Yeah. Like, how do you get it done? Like, where do you start? You know, like, what's your thinking?

Like, so that, yeah, there's two approaches to this type of thing. I think you could go to like VC-backed extravaganza. You go and try to raise a ton of money and go blow it out now. I think the more interesting way to do something like this candidly is to go ultra-regional and say I'm gonna start this in Westchester County making up a place could be wherever it could be Marin and California it could be I'd probably start in an area that either had a lot of home builder density or it had a lot of affluent affluent people and basically say okay I'm gonna start there I'm gonna build out

because the key thing with this it's like it's an operations challenge you have to build out the provider capacity really really quickly and sign them up to these type of deals because without that, like you can build the whole portal, you can have it look nice, it looks fancy, it's sexy, it's great, but if it doesn't work with actually getting the providers out when you need them out there, it just doesn't function. But I think it's like an operations challenge. I think you really just need to get these pockets of regional density and you can expand pretty quickly because it's profitable from day one. So would you do the VC model or do you think you'd sort of bootstrap it? Yeah. Get one city. Like to me it feels like this is one of those businesses that

I read on like tech crunch that like raises you know goes from like zero it goes from zero to you know billions really quickly yeah so if it's a billion dollar business I should not be here right now and I should go start this I think so I would probably go with start regional do one region prove it out because I think it's cash flow positive from day one I think you could go sign up if you went talk to 10 providers in that area and then went and signed up 100 households paying $500 a month. I mean, it's immediately profitable business where you're making a bunch of cash

that's coming in day one because it's a monthly thing. And by the way, like, the way I would do it is that 500 is just the cost of doing business as a customer. You're not actually, you still have to pay if a plumber shows up or you still have to pay if someone shows up. You're just paying, it's like Amazon Prime. You're paying for the right to have this single point of contact.

This to me sounds like an idea potentially that's really good on paper, but is really, really hard to execute. Why do you think it's hard to execute? Dude, like, you have to call, you have to have, like, minimal, viable service providers, right? So you have to have an exterminator.

You have to have a pool person. You have to have, like, you have to go to each vertical and just, like, sign these people up. And I'm wondering, like, if I was trying to start this, because I actually think it's a good idea. But if I was trying to start this, I would just maybe just focus on, like, You don't want to have mice or ants in your house.

Like pay $300 a month, $200 a month, $200 a month, whatever it is, and we'll take care of it. Like, why don't you prioritize, like, this is my product hat here. I'm like, okay, what are the two, three, four, five things that people need the most? Yeah. Like the big, you know, you call it the stressors, right? Like, what's the big stresses that people have as homeowners in Westchester that you can basically bundle to, $500 a month program. So you would cut down the atomic unit to being like sitting within the actual product level

with a single vertical of type of people. Yeah. Sorry, not a type of people, a single vertical of service that's being provided. Yeah. Extermination or extermination sounds like a bad way of saying that. You know what I mean. Getting rid of ants. Right, extermination.

Extermination of the rodents or whatever you have in your house. Okay, so you would cut it down to that level. See, because I would just, I think you have to go broad-based with it. Well, I think a lot of people have ideas. And this is like one of those ideas that like, yeah, it makes complete sense. But it's then like sitting down, executing. It's an ops problem. It's an off-problem.

No doubt. Yeah. I think if you found an amazing ops person to go do this, you could go do it. I'm pretty, and I'm pretty sure it could be a profitable business within a single region. And you could run it as like a few million dollar a year business in a small region and be in a great spot. How does this idea fail? If you fail on the ops piece of it, if you fail to find a good person to actually consolidate and manage the relationships with the providers, so it's not actually a good experience for the customer, then I think you completely fail. I flip it on its head, though.

Like I go with this whole idea of the reverse test. I saw this framework recently. It's like the reverse test, which basically says if something were to start working in this way, would you ever go back to the prior way that you did this? And for me, this totally passes the reverse test. I think if I had this and I could pay $500 a month and someone just took all of my headaches of home ownership away because I had a single point of contact, would I ever go back to the prior way of doing it for free? Absolutely not. Actually, I think, first of all, I love that. Yeah, it's a great framework.

It's a great framework. The other thing is the other framework that you kind of were talking about, which is like how to come up with startup ideas is one way to do it is you put this lens as to what are people's stressors in everyday life, right? And you start with an archetype. So you're like the 30-year-old New Yorker who lives in Westchester, like what are the stressors that they have today? And how do I come up with ideas to like deal with that? Yeah. Like, that's like, I feel like people don't do that enough. It's one of the best ways of coming up with startup ideas is like talk to your Uber

driver. Right. About what stresses them out? What part of running your business as an Uber driver stresses you out? Is it getting cash quickly? Well, all these businesses started literally to fix that because people were getting money every other week and so there were businesses that started around. You can go on Reddit and just like look up things endlessly for what's stressing people

out. It's a really, really cool way of figuring out ideas. I feel like people, like people don't go into Uber's enough. and just like, dude, I take a, you should take an Uber every day and just like ask them questions. It's like, mark your research. You spend 10 bucks on an Uber and be like, hey, like, what's stressing you out? Like, what's going on? It's one of the best ways of learning is just talking to random people that you meet on a daily basis.

It's like the ultimate intellectual curiosity to me is actually just going and talking to these people and seeing what you end up learning about their lives, how they run their life, how they run their business, etc. It's pretty amazing. Cool. So what are you thinking about this business? You know, you doing it or? I think it's sick

I'm not going to lie I mean I've been riffing on this for like three months and I either want to fund someone to go do it so if there's someone in our community that has an interest in pursuing this I seriously think I would be interested

in funding it especially if you have a good ops guy to run it I'm all in on this if not I might go do something like this I don't know how much time it would take and you'd have to find a good ops person but I think it's pretty interesting

I'll tell you what I like about it. I'll tell you what I don't like about it. What I like about it, it's like that Uber model, right? Like start in one city, start with like, you know, Uber, I'm sure you know, like it started Black Car, San Francisco, right? Then they're like, okay, UberX. Then they're like, okay, Uber pool. Then they're like, okay, food delivery. And then they're like, New York, you know, let's go to New York. Let's go to London. Let's go, you know, I love that. You're stealing my whole roadmap right now. I'm sorry, you know. But I think that's what it is. It's the Uber playbook, right? You're You're basically saying, I want to do the Uber Playbook, but for home sharing.

And I love that, because VCs love that. VCs see that? And they're like, okay, scalable, I'm in. And so I love that piece about it. What I don't like about it is I feel like, I hate to put you on the hotspot, man. But I feel like you haven't, like, you haven't picked your community. You haven't picked your vertical. You have to start, like, maybe, like, your homework should be, like,

like, should I focus on Westchester? Right? Like, I feel like if Uber would have started in Paris or London as Uber X, it wouldn't have worked. Yeah. So like the starting point in product building is so key. Yeah. So I love this idea. I think it's really interesting.

I like your pushbacks. I think we should bring someone in to hammer us on it a little bit more. All right. Let's bring in Sam to jam on this. We've got our friend Sam Parr. joining us. Sam is a bunch of things. He started a multi-million dollar media company that you sold. You're the co-host of one of the most popular podcasts on the air, My First Million, also a property owner and someone who's experienced a lot of the troubles that I'm talking about here. So Sam, just to bring you up to speed really

quickly, what we're talking about is this idea I have for a home concierge business. So it's basically this idea that young people have no idea how to manage anything in their house. We weren't raised to understand any of the things about being an adult. So I would much rather pay someone $500 a month to handle all of it for me, have a portal where they deal with all sorts of air conditioning, gutter, whatever, but also someone that I can immediately call to fix ant problems, sewage backups, whatever it is that's going on. So we want to get your take on this as someone who has dealt with a lot of things within homeownership, et cetera. Let's just jam on it. There was this company that was doing that for offices that I used to use. Was it called Alfred?

Oh, right. Yeah. Hello, Alfred. Yeah. Basically, if I remember correctly, I used it for my office when we owned offices in San Francisco and Austin. And it was basically like a platform where you logged in and all your vendors were on there. And I could really easily organize who that is. And I could, like, hire them to come to do stuff. I think you could do that for your home.

One thing that I've always thought was interesting was basically, have you guys ever had, what's it called, an inspection? So when you get in, when you buy a house, you get this inspection. Like, have you been in your house? house and there's like this weird switch where you're like, I have no idea what the switch does. Dude, I literally have 500 of those switches in my house. Yeah, you're like, I don't know what the switch does. Or you have, like, when you have to change your air filters in your AC, you're like, all right, I change these two.

But then like, six months down the line, you're like, oh, whoa, there's a filter right there. I had no idea that was even there. Like, so that's stuff to happen. And when you, I always thought it was odd. When you get your home inspection, I'm like, why did they not give this to me in like a Wikipedia-style thing that I could just type in, like, what the hell does this do? Where is this thing?

And basically, my home inspection, I think I paid $350 for it. I ended up getting a PDF, and it was okay. I mean, it's a PDF that was like 80 pages. It was so long. And I, me and my wife will, like, scroll through that sometimes and we're like, wait, what is this, like, this window apparently needs to be changed every certain amount of time. Something that has to change. And I've always wished that I had, like, reminders and things like that.

And that's a little bit related to this, because there are a lot of things that break and you're like, I have no idea what the hell this does. And so there's this company called Inspectify that was, I was curious about. They're doing okay. But basically, they help you find home inspectors, but I've always wanted more of a digital component for my home inspection. And then I was like, because I thought about this idea a lot. And then I'm like, I wish I had this Alfred, hello Alfred component where I could very quickly hire ex vendors to just come and fix this shit. Because I already know that every six months I need to replace blank, blank, blank. I just have to dig through this 80 page PDF to figure out what it is. It's literally like Shazam.

for your home. Pick up stuff on video. Yeah, that would be step one. Immediately give you exactly what it is, what you need to do with it, when you need to maintain it, whatever. It's kind of cool. What do you think, Craig?

So I have a crazy inspection story. Okay. So a year ago, I ended up buying this house in Canada. I told you about it. Yeah. And it's in a small town. I don't know anyone.

And I somehow find this inspector. to inspect it. I inspect it and he says the words were like it's perfect. It's saying Belle Batisse. That's, you know, it's a, it's an in French it means like it's a beautiful building like there's nothing wrong with it. It sends me the PDF all in French, whatever I would have preferred in English, but whatever I get it and it's like 10 on 10. Fast forward, you know, house closes. A week later, um, I see this note on the fridge and it's a says this guy named Hector. So I call, and he's the handyman.

So I call this like handyman. And I'm like, hey, can you help me with, you know, with some stuff? He was like, oh, by the way, did they fix like all the rot in the house? And I was like, what are you talking about, man? He's like, I literally painted over everything. And the house is rotting. Like, it's going to fall, literally the house is going to fall apart any moment. and I call back the inspector, La Belle Batiste guy.

And he was like, oh, I'm sorry, like, you're on your own. And I had to literally gut the house, build the frame in peak COVID, buy lumber at literally the peak, and redo this 3,500 square foot house because my inspector couldn't inspect, you know, anything. Well, there's no standardization within the inspection market. So to Sam's point on that inspection idea, it's brilliant. I think the inspection idea... There's no standard is... I didn't know that. No, there's no... It's some random person that comes out and has to, like, check different things, but if they see something and they want to call it out as a big flag, or they don't, it doesn't matter.

I also think, by the way, that inspection companies are, like, in bed with the lenders and the banks, because the banks want to be in a good spot in terms of their loan to value. And so they have an incentive when they're the ones actually paying for the inspection in the process to have it be under appraised. And like when you come in and have an inspection and have an appraiser coming in. There's types of businesses out there where you only use once every five or ten years. And so like the service doesn't matter that much. And I've always been fascinated by those because I don't think it's that hard to provide a little bit better service to be a little bit nicer. So for example, have you guys ever moved cross-country?

I know you have. Yes. I just did it. Just did it a couple months ago. Okay. And so the cross-country move business is incredibly interesting because if you go on and at reviews, it's like unanimously, like bad. Like if, like, it's always bad and you don't know who's a scam. And interestingly, often if you hire one guy, let's see you're moving from Chicago to New York,

you call a Chicago, you probably call a New York company. That company's actually based in like, you know, Boston, but they're going to, they're going to actually send that lead to someone else in Chicago or New York. And so you don't actually know who has your shit. They don't give a shit if it's actually good or not, because they're like, dude, you're not going to use this ever again. Just give us the money. And so I've always been fascinated by business like that, of which inspections is one of them. And I like to think of things like, what's something that you actually used one time? But, like, I do think if you just improve the service just a little bit,

it actually can be significantly better. And I love those types of mom-and-pop things. Those type of businesses, too. I mean, the way those businesses operate is generally that they try to sync up with big companies that have executives and people doing cross-country moves. And then they provide, like, quote-unquote, preferred rates to the big company for people to do reloads. And they know it's a crazy business because basically what happened to us was like, my wife was getting a relocation bonus for her work to move from San Francisco to New York,

and they had preferred providers that we were supposed to use. When we went and got quotes from those preferred providers, it was literally like $25,000 to move cross-country. We went and got an outside quote, not a preferred provider, and it was like 10. And so literally those people are just providing these massive marked-up rates because they know your price insensitive because it's someone else's money that's paying for it. How much stuff did you ship? Dude, I had a whole gym, man.

I had probably like 2,000 pounds of weights. Golly. You know the drill. I try owning not a lot of stuff because the headache of owning stuff, I cannot stand it. It was a lot. Dude, so I want to ask you about,

I know you're in the kind of home rental market. I know you own a few homes and you've done this. I keep seeing this new model that's come up recently. And Greg and I were talking about this earlier. Like this whole idea of like timeshare 2.0. There's this business. I've seen it all over the place recently. It's called Picasso.

They raised, like, three months after launching, they became a unicorn. They raised, like 70. Well, it was started by the Zillow founder. Oh, really? Exactly. Right? Sam something. I forget his name.

I think. I think it started by the Zillow founder and someone else who worked there. So, like, I presumably, they have some type of, like, domain expertise. But then they got that, like, sweet, sweet Masa Son money, marked up massively, like, three months later. I think seriously, in a year and a half, they're valued at, like, a billion and a half dollars. Insane.

raised a bunch of money. Like, what do you think of this whole idea of timeshare 2.0? Like, are young people looking to flex on one-eighth homeownership of vacation homes? Flex? No, but can I tell you what I do? So I spend about, I live in New York for about four or five months a year, and I rent out. So I bought my, the house that I'm in right now, I bought it in Texas, and I furnished it and I like emotionally got, like, I didn't get attached to it because what I do is I rent it out. So I rent out my home in Texas to a long-term renter, typically for $8,000 to $9,000 a month. And my fixed payment, including taxes, is like $4,000 a month.

And so I profit $5,000 a month. And I use that money to rent Airbnb in New York. I'm currently trying to buy a place in New York that I can do the same thing so I could ideally live cheap, although the economics in New York make it incredibly challenging. And so I am looking at some of these timeshare things. I don't know if it will, if it can work out. in a busy city like New York because I think there's like crazy amounts of restrictions. But timeshare businesses typically are great.

And I think that you're thinking about it a little bit in the wrong way. I don't know if you are in the demographic. I think that the demographic is people who they just want like a really nice two-week vacation. I mean, most people like just they want to live their life and have a few kids and take two weeks vacation a year and have a nice, easy life. and don't have the ability to go somewhere for four or five months out of time or something like that. So in a way, I do think timeshare, it's not a horrible idea. My in-laws had a place in like fucking Aruba that they used to do this, and they loved it. It's so expensive, though.

So, like, I agree with you. I think that Timeshare 1.0, like the idea that you could have a place in Aspen that used for two weeks out of the year and it's reasonably priced. I get that. I totally understand the demographic for that. I know there's a market for it because that model has existed forever. But this Picasso thing, when I look at it and you go look at the homes on the site, like pull it up. I mean, it's like you're paying $300,000 for a 1-8th ownership

or a 1-16th ownership of one of these places. It's crazy expensive houses. And so to me it looks like the type of model where you're like counting on people wanting to status signal, like the whole idea that we're all status signaling monkeys, which I actually agree with. I think we're all sitting around trying to status signal different things. But so you own a... Is there any other argument?

I mean, obviously you agree with that. Like, that's like me saying it's daytime. But my point. But my point is, like, I don't think you can actually flex on owning one-eighth of a house. And so I don't understand it. Like, why do you go pay one-eighth for this place instead of just getting an Airbnb in this place? I think it feels good to, like, quote-unquote, own a second house. But you can't decorate it.

Like, you're removing the fun of a house. Well, but there's also, like, this utility. I mean, like, have you ever stayed, like, on Airbnb's for a while? It's a pain in the ass, man. And finding places that have the good enough internet, finding places that you know are going to meet your standards, it's a huge pain in the ass. Yeah, but you can't. We just talked about that, right?

We just talked about how, like, stress, right? Like, we try to avoid stress. Like, going on Airbnb, like, finding, going through reviews, and it's like, who can I trust? Who can I not trust? Yeah, but with one of these houses, you can't guarantee when you're getting it to use it. So, like, you're sharing it with eight other people or 16 other people. Do you know the other people?

No, you know. It's in a pool with an LLC. They create an LLC. It's kind of a brilliant model in and of itself. Like, they create an LLC, they put some debt capital into it so they can get a levered return on the actual acquisition of the house. You come in with eight other owners that they've vetted to make sure you're legit. You go in and buy it, and then you basically, like, fight with these other eight people

for the best weekends. And you're only guaranteed one holiday per year every other year or something. So you're basically, like, fighting for when you can use this house. But that, like, I just don't, honestly, I don't get it. Like, I think the fun of homeownership is that you get to decorate it. it gets to be yours. You get to put your own touch on it. This just feels like a glorified Airbnb.

But then it's like an investment class, and they're trying to spin it as, like, part of this new way of... I'll bet you money that this company is wildly successful. You want to make a bet on it? I mean, they already are on paper. Like, I would... On paper? No, like, we can agree to some, like, realistic metric.

The guy who started it, his name Spencer, do you know what he's done? No, what's his background? Okay, so he worked at... What's the big PE company called? TPG. Yeah, TPG. Yeah. Okay, we're at TPG. Then he started a company called HotWire, which he sold for, which was basically, I believe, hot wires for travel, right? Yep.

Sold that for $700 million to IAC. Then led Expedia, which was like the largest travel company in the world. Then started Zillow, which was, I don't know, $50 billion, $20 billion, whatever, some huge real estate company. Now he's starting this. So whenever I, like, invest or look at what's going to be successful, I look at like signals, this is not a horse I would bet against. I'm going to bet on this guy. I imagine he has some type of intel. Also, dude, Sahil, you live, where are you from? Are you from California? I grew up in Boston.

Come on, don't hit me with that California thing, man. I'm not a California. He had Dunkin' Donuts this morning. Yeah, I'm a Duncan guy. I'm in Northeast. I grew up in Missouri, okay? I don't think my, maybe our perspectives aren't entirely that different, but if I just had a stereotype you as this, like, grew up in, like, Palo,

this isn't true. But for some reason in my head, I thought, like, you grew up in Palo Alto. It's okay. He's got big Palo Alto energy for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you do. And you got that big Palo Alto Energy, Energy Hardcore. I think that you have to get out of your bubble and go and hang out with my family in St. Louis, Missouri, or my family in Kansas. Like, not everyone has a beautiful $150 haircut like you have right now.

First off, Picasso is the epitome of that. They're selling $6 million homes. It's not a, for now. This isn't a time share. I agree with you. If this was a time share business, and I actually think the more interesting model is going to be the ones that come in below market on Picasso

and do this at a lower price point and say, like, we're going to create a much more effective, interesting timeshare experience. I actually would go along that type of thing. I just don't think there are enough people who sit within the band where they can afford to shell out 200K in cash

for a one-eighth ownership of a house and are fine not being able to actually flex on it with their friends because they own one-eighth. I try not to do public math, but so one-eightheth of a, a one-eighth is what percentage of a year? This? Well, like...

We've had whiskey. So is one-eighth is one-a-month? Like, I honestly don't think there are enough people that are willing to do this. Are you, would you do this? Would you own one-eighth of a really sick house in Cabo? In Cabo? No. I don't want to spend...

Like, what band of wealth is the person that does this? But, but, but, but, but if I could do this, so I am, I, my family, my in-laws live in New York, so I spend a lot of the year there. If I could do this in New York, so let's say one-eighth is, what's that, six weeks a year, something like that. So to rent a place in New York, I had, it's terribly expensive. I spent 10 grand a month to rent a place in New York, and it wasn't that nice of a place, but it was okay. So 10 grand a month is roughly $300 a night, $320 a night. That's how much like a hotel cost in New York, unfortunately.

And so if I had to do that for five years, I'm looking at 15,000 times five. I mean, that's a lot of money I'm going to spend. You're thinking of it as like you're converting rent into equity. And I think that's a fair way to think about it actually. It's like, okay, I could pay this rent as like the Airbnb and it's just dollars out the door or I could just make an equity investment into something. But it kind of goes to the broader point of like all of these ridiculous assets that people are investing in now.

And I know Sam and I are kindred spirits on this. But like young people right now and especially in a 10 plus year bull market are investing in the wildest things. Everything has become an investment class. And so it's just like I think this all. falls into that same bucket. I don't views is that. So I, I do not view your primary home that you don't cash flow on. I do not view that as an investment. I view that as the same as a car. A lot of people get pissed off when I say this because they don't agree with me, but I think like I don't understand

how anyone can disagree. But your, the math suggests that in most cases, homeownership that is non-cash flowing is not an investment. That is a consumable. I mean, that is something that you use. If you make money off of it, I think you're lucky. But I believe the trailing 100 years, homes have grown something like 3.5% a year. So they barely keep up with inflation. So I think homes are a wonderful place to store value that keep up with inflation and they cause forced savings. But it's not a wonderful way to generate cash flow. If you want to generate cash, if you want to generate income, you should invest typically in public equities,

which is like 7.5, 8% a year. You should not invest in a home unless it is. cash flowing. Now, whenever I say that, people are like, oh, so you don't think real estate is a good investment? No, I think it's a fucking awesome investment. If you are, if, if you are making money off of it via tenants paying you money every single month. Yeah, I think, uh, home ownership is actually just good as like a forced checkings account. It's basically a checkings account, right? It's a forced savings, right? It's like every month I have to like put aside for the majority of people. Every month I have to put aside, you know, $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 into this mortgage.

So I know I need to like say that's, that's why homeownership's great. It's not like, I'm looking at buying a place in Miami right now. I'm buying it because like I need a place to live. Additionally, there's that second big factor that people forget. Like, why did I have a $30 or $40 steak last night? Because it made me happy and I wanted it. So I'm a $30 state? Because I fucking want it. I want to live this place. I want to decorate it and I want to feel nice about it. And that's a wonderful, that's a wonderful excuse why you should buy a house. And for some reason, people will rarely acknowledge that. And I'm like, not everything has to make dollars and cents. So if I want to buy this place in Cabo, why? Because I want to. Why do I want this fancy car?

I just want it. So anyway, I think that's a good enough reason. Utility. If you're enjoying it and it makes you happy, do it. So I feel like we're on the same page. So what we're saying here is, we're saying is here, if we want to make money, you know, well, I think what we're saying is it's awesome to have a place that's our own and like have our artwork and have our vibe in it. Which is anti-Picaso. Which is anti-Picaso.

Sahel, I'm saying I think you need to get out of your element a little bit and think beyond. He keeps coming to me with this Palo Alto energy point. I'm not from Palo Alto first. Well, I just don't think that you have to just everything with like, is this a good asset class? Like, nine out of ten people, you're going to say asset class and they're like, what the fuck does that phrase mean?

What are you talking about? Yeah. Like, I'm just doing this because I like it. To remix this idea a little bit, I would actually buy a house with you, Sam, and you Sahoe. Like, I don't want to be in an LLC with a bunch of random, quote-unquote, vetted people. I agree with that. I would actually do this with a bunch of friends.

See, that would be a little cooler to that. That's cooler. Because then the full, like, if it was the three of us and, like, we have our group text thread, if the group of us all said we were going to put some money into an LLC, go get a loan, go buy a place, and we would all collectively decorate it. And it could be kind of our own. we wouldn't care if other people were there when we went because we're all friends. That's kind of cool.

If you create a pooled buying model rather than it's just randos that you're buying a place with. I wouldn't be against, like, walking into the house and seeing, like, a big photo of, you know, an oil painting of Sean Puri and his wife just, like, over there. We could have Sam's NFT portfolio. There's, like, there's, like, ranches outside of Austin, and I've wanted a ranch, but I don't want to live on a ranch. But, you know, I don't want to, but I would like to spend four weeks. there. And so we've thought about collectively, like, teaming up with our friends. The problem is, is that I have, like, a rule. I generally, generally try not to do business with buddies

because I'd rather have the relationship over, like, the outcome of whatever that is. So I actually prefer strangers because it's easier to, like, tell them I don't like what they're doing. But I understand why people enjoy this. And if they were the, they were the right type of friends, I would be interested in doing it. My father has been asking me to buy a farm with them for a long time and I'm like I don't know man I don't know if I want to if I want to get into that can I tell you guys let me tell you a quick real estate story really quick yeah not real estate but kind of related this is just a story for the people listening really quick so Sahel and greger in this room right now filming with these guys who I know Adam and Jordan they used to host this conference

one time I went to the conference it was held this particular one they always hold it at the four seasons one time I went to the four seasons at their conference and I go to check into my hotel this was in veil. I go to check into my hotel and the guy at the front desk, I said something like, oh, yeah, my name's Sam Parr. I'm checking in. Is the room nice? And he goes, yeah, I think you're going to like it. And I was like, okay, and he kind of had a smug look on his face. So I was like, I don't know what I'm getting into. But I get up in the room and I walk in and there's like a kitchen and there's four bedrooms. There's a fireplace. There's a 16 person dining table, a movie theater. And I start walking around the room and I call him. I go, hey, who else like stays here? Like,

where, like, who am I rooming with? And they're like, what do you mean? I'm like, well, like, who stays in this room besides me? And they're like, sir, that's your room. And I was like, wait, I don't understand. And they go, yeah, it's your whole place. And so it's the presidential suite at the four seasons in Vail. It's 4,000 square feet, this hotel room.

I swear to God, you can look it up, bail and Aspen, wait, was it Aspen, whatever it was, something like that. And I was like, how much does this cost a night? And they go, it's like 10 grand a night during, like, in season. and I stayed in this fancy hotel so it was like I was like how the hell did I get here I guess they did I think they when they rented out the hotel

they must have gotten like a huge block of room and for some reason I was dealt this like room I guess when they're and I think this guy he must have I was only 27 or something he must have thought that I was like a Mark Zuckerberg or something like that and he like gave me this room and he had this mug face

and so Palo Alto Energy not me bro I was so redneck I called about it and I go like who's my roommates It had a full kitchen and a movie theater. It had a movie theater and it had two fireplaces. So if you're listening, go Google that room. That was like the craziest thing I've done in a long time. Until next time, man.

We are signing off from the room where it happens. We need you back in the room, Sam. So we had a pretty media episode. Let's hit some takeaways here. What do you got? It's takeaway time. You first. So I've got a few.

So number one, home concierge business. I know you think I've got some homework to do. I think it's a really interesting idea. I think if you nail the ops, you find a good ops person to roll with something like this and you start regionally, I think there's a really interesting business to build around it. One of my biggest takeaways is that if anyone in the community

wants to go start this thing, seriously, hit me up. I do want to discuss it. I'm very serious about it. And then with Picasso, I just disagree with you guys on this. I just don't think there's a big enough market of people that are willing to shell out this amount of money to own one-eighth or one-sixth. of the house. I just don't think it exists.

Yeah, I would say my takeaways, first of all, I like your idea. I like the idea. I just think that a lot of people have these startup ideas that are everything to everyone, and you kind of have to start with the archetype, and then verticalize. So, for example, start with that

Westchester, New York, or 30-something, and build a product for them. So that's probably number one. And on the Picasso idea, I'd say, I actually really like the idea around like building something for friends. And I think there's something there. Like building products for group chats.

Yeah. Like we all are part of group chats and let's build something for them. Yeah. I think that's it for today. Good vibes all around. Really enjoyed the discussion. Had a great chat with Sam. So until next time, cheers, man.

What are we cheers into? Good times. To big Palo Alto energy. I hate that so much. I hate that so much, dude. I can't even tell you how much. I hate that. It might not make it.

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