Framework
Billboarding: your customers wear your logo for free
Julian defines 'billboarding,' a subtype of product-led growth anyone can use even without software. The OG examples are the Hotmail email signature and 'Sent from my iPhone'; every customer action quietly broadcasts your brand to others and keeps you top of mind for free.
“And billboarding is a subtype of product-led growth that is my favorite because anyone can do it. You don't have to be a software company. And I'll give you the OG example of billboarding. If I sign up for Hotmail and I send an email, and you know where I'm going with this, which is there's that Hotmail signature in the email, right? Or if I send with my iPhone, there's that sent from iPhone in the email signature, right?”
Steal thisEmbed your logo or a referral line into the artifact customers naturally share, so every use becomes a free impression.
Number
SF vacant office space tripled to 10M sq ft; rents cut to $20
Shaan cites a CNBC article: sub-leasable San Francisco office space jumped from 3M sq ft in 2019 to 10M in 2021, with ~$200M of real estate impairments (nearly $1B with lease write-downs across Salesforce, Dropbox, Uber, PayPal, Zendesk). Space that cost $90/sq ft is going for $20.
$200M
SF office real estate impairments since COVID · USD
“So like, here's some of the numbers. Um, let me, so there's $200 million of real estate impairments in the past year since COVID It's almost a billion if you add in the lease-related write-downs from large companies like Salesforce, Dropbox, Uber, PayPal, Zendesk, just getting rid of their, their real estate. And so Dropbox itself has $400 million of impaired real estate right now.”
Number
Honey sold to PayPal for ~$4B with 17M users
Shaan cites Honey — a coupon-finding Chrome extension that auto-surfaces discounts at checkout — as having around 17 million users when PayPal acquired it for roughly $4 billion.
$4000M
Acquisition price (Honey by PayPal) · USD
“so the two famous ones that everybody kind of has heard about is Honey, because Honey sold to PayPal for several billion, $4 billion. So Honey had, I think, 17 million users when they sold.”
Prediction
Hit
More companies will move treasury into Bitcoin within a year
Shaan predicts that beyond Square, PayPal, and Tesla's $1.5B buy, more companies will take 6 months to a year to move a portion of their treasury reserves into Bitcoin as long-term holders, letting retail investors front-run the institutions.
“It's likely that there are more companies out there, and it'll take them 6 months to a year to make this move, but they will take a portion of their treasury reserves and they'll move it into Bitcoin. And these are long-term holders. These are not retail day traders”
Idea
Human-in-the-loop opportunity: replace people who move cash
Dave points to cash logistics as an unsolved human-in-the-loop opportunity. In the age of Venmo, PayPal, and Apple Pay, companies still make $100M/year with a 'cash' line of business where people risk their lives moving paper money around.
“There are still companies that make $100 million a year and they have a line of business called cash. In the age of Venmo and in the age of PayPal and in the age of Apple Money and Facebook Money and every type of virtual currency in the world, there's still people getting paid money to put their lives in danger to go move pieces of paper around.”
Story
Peter Thiel's $500K Facebook bet grew tax-deferred in a retirement account
Sam recounts that Thiel invested his early $500K Facebook stake through a retirement account (later clarified as a self-directed IRA), so the enormous gains grew tax-deferred. Erb explains assets inside a retirement plan aren't taxed until withdrawn, and people now do this with crypto, gold, art, and real estate.
“He was the former founder of PayPal. And that his investment— he put $500K into Facebook and he put it in through like an IRA or something like that. Like he's been investing out of a retirement account so that his gains in Facebook were tax-free, essentially.”
Steal thisHold rapidly appreciating assets inside a self-directed IRA so growth compounds tax-deferred until withdrawal.
Idea
Tokens as a bootstrapping mechanism for network effects
Shaan frames the prize: a good bootstrapping mechanism is worth its weight in gold. Like PayPal's $5 referral that exploded growth, front-loading tokens to early adopters could be the new way to break into markets owned by entrenched networks.
“I was like, holy shit, this could be the new bootstrapping mechanism. And if you can think of a good bootstrapping mechanism, that's like worth its weight in gold. It's like when PayPal realized, hey, when we do this thing where you get, you know, you get $5 and you if you give $5 to your friend to invite them to PayPal, like growth exploded.”
Steal thisDesign an early-adopter incentive (tokens, equity, referral cash) that disproportionately rewards the first users to crack network effects.