The 2021 Milly Awards

Dude, that's crazy. That, that, that mistake. That's a $10 million mistake.

Yeah.

Andrew, what's going on, dude? Are you pumped to do this?

I'm really— yeah, I'm excited. I worked out this morning and feel, feel good. It's a nice sunny day. We had a big dump of snow here, which is actually incredibly rare. Usually it like never goes below freezing. So, uh, yeah, it's nice.

What'd you do?

Play?

Uh, no, I actually went on my treadmill. I started, I, it's weird. I was kind of feeling like a little low energy over Christmas and I realized I just hadn't worked out. And so I was like, oh, I'll take, you know, am I eating the right thing? Am I doing the right routines? Am I doing my gratitude journal?

Sam can't relate.

He's never had that thing. What supplements am I taking?

He's never had the—

and then I just worked out.

Yeah.

I just, I just realized like working out is all you need to do.

There's a, there's a great quote. It's in, um, this book I was reading called The Body, and it basically said, like, if we could put in pill form all the benefits that exercise gives you, you— it'll be the— it would be the most successful medicine of all time, right? And the whole point of the book was, um, it was called The Body by Bill Burson.

I love that book.

And, uh, he's just— he's like, basically, like, sleep and exercise are the cure to most everything.

Yeah, it's crazy. I love his writing. He's, uh, he's great.

Um, do we want to get into this, Sean?

Yeah, let's do it. Um, we did this last year and, uh, I think it was probably my favorite episode last year. We called it the Millie Awards. We did an awards ceremony at the end of the year. Andrew came on and we did it in 2020 at the end of the year. And I actually went back and I listened to it, which is, you know, it's cringy to listen to your own voice recorded, but it was a really entertaining episode. And we made a bunch of predictions. I actually even kind of noted some of them down. I don't know if you guys saw that, like some of the, um, yeah, some of the things that we had said last year. And, uh, and so we're going to do it again and we're going to try to make this an annual tradition. We'll see how it goes. And, uh, all right. So without further ado, here we are, the 2021 Millie Awards. We are back and we got a bunch— the way it works, we've got a bunch of different categories. The three of us did our research, did our thinking about who we think is the winner for each. We did not tell each other, did not show each other. So if we have the same answer, it's just coincidence. Um, great minds think alike., and we're gonna react to kind of how each one goes. And I have a little side game here, which I'm gonna play. I have this little notepad. I'm just gonna kind of take notes of who I think wins each category in terms of their answer. So we'll see, we'll see who brings the heat, uh, during this thing. I got Sam, I got Sean, I got Andrew, and I'll put a little tally for— and I'm the only judge, or you guys can chime in on that, but I'm just going to keep note of how we do for, for this whole episode. All right, so Did I miss anything, Sam? Are we good to go?

Yeah. And we, what I'm, I, all right. So I have a, I have two documents. I have one document with like my answers and then I've got the other document that have last year's answers. And so I think what we should do is you can lead and you could say like the, the category and then you could say, here's what last year's are.

Right. Okay. So we'll, all right. So we'll start with, uh, we'll start with, uh, breakout company. So. Uh, this is the 2021 breakout company. It's a company that kind of like exploded.

Wait, no, Billy of the Year is first, Sean.

Okay, you want to go in the actual— all right, we can go to the actual order. All right, so Billy of the Year is number 1. Then we do Billy of the Week sometimes on the pod. So this is Billy of the Year. It doesn't have to be somebody who's a new billionaire, but it's just a billionaire who had a hell of a year. Last year, Sam said Chuck Feeney, who is, um, Who's Chuck Feeney? He's the guy from Blockbuster and all that stuff, or that's somebody else?

No, he's just a— he was like, he started a business where they sell shit at airports, but he gave away like free— yeah, duty-free, but he gave away all of it. Gave away—

he gave away all as well.

$10 billion.

Andrew had Mark Leonard, who's I think the CEO of Constellation Software. Is that right? Who's, you know, maybe, uh, yeah, you know, somebody you respect who runs a similar playbook to you, buys great companies, owns them for a long time, very stealthy, secretive guy, and you shared a bunch of cool stories about how he keeps a low profile. And then I had Eric Yuan, who was the CEO of Zoom, because I thought Zoom sort of saved the world during the pandemic and let the world continue to run. And, um, and so I had Eric, Eric Yuan. So who do we have for this year? We'll start with Sam. Billy of the Year, who you got?

Dharmesh, the CTO and co-founder of HubSpot. He came on our pod and just sucking up to your boss. Well, yeah, I mean, I guess, but he just had the ideal outlook on life and I think he had an amazing job. He basically said no one reports to him and he doesn't report to anyone. I think he— I don't know, what's he worth? Like $2 billion, whatever HubSpot stock is worth. I thought he was pretty amazing. He had a good outlook on life.

And what was the outlook that you liked?

I thought the most interesting thing about Dharmesh is exactly what you said, that instead of— I think so many entrepreneurs are like, okay, I'm either all in or I'm all out. And he kind of said, you know what, I'm just going to do this stuff I like. And he's kind of a floater, like he just kind of floats around within the company. And I thought that was really cool.

And he was nice. The thing about Dharmesh is that he's nice and he's friendly and he's calm. And I really enjoy that about him. He's not a Type A, or he is Type A in that he's competitive, but he's not like trying to out-alpha people. He's very comfortable in his—

uh, all right, Andrew, who you got? Billy of the Year.

and sold— By the way, in America, we like make fun of people who drink. Like, it's like a joke.

Like Mike's Harder.

Totally.

Well, the idea they had was like, men are too embarrassed to drink coolers. So like, let's make a cooler they can kind of not be too embarrassed to drink. But anyway, he ended up building that into a massive business. He ended up also starting White Claw a couple of years ago, which is like the same idea, but healthy. And now they do $1.4— or sorry, $4 billion of revenue last year in 2020. Uh, and the craziest thing about this guy is he owns, I believe, 100% of the business and he has no debt because he'd been almost in bankruptcy multiple times. So it was just totally crazy local entrepreneur who just knocked it out of the park. And I'm obsessed with these guys who have just like taken a risk. They've done it 100% themselves. They didn't have VCs, they didn't have investors. Uh, so just an amazing story.

Wow. That's a good one.

That's a good one. I didn't realize that the Mike's Hard The company has Mike's Heart also does White Claw, which is amazing. It's basically a reboot of the similar concept. Um, totally.

Okay, all right, what about you?

But what was the second one?

that guy's amazing.

It's really cool.

That guy and the Sam Bankman guy are some— probably the two most interesting people, I think, in the world at the moment.

Yeah. The cool thing about this, for those who don't remember the Sam Bankman-Fried guy, he's currently the wealthiest person from crypto, um, uh, wealthiest known person from crypto. So, you know, nobody knows who Satoshi is, but Sam Bankman-Fried is the next one. He's got like $15 or $20 billion net worth from crypto. Including the exchange he created. And, um, he, if you talk, if you listen to interviews, he's like, not like any other crypto zealot. He just is like, uh, he's like, yeah, I don't care about crypto. Like, I don't, I don't, I don't, I believe in it, not believe in it. People want this. So I made a product and like, that's his whole mindset. And he also is like, uh, obsessed with this idea of like, I forgot what it's called. There's some like a philanthropic thing he's really into. Like, uh, Sam, do you remember the name of this? It's like charitable ambition or some shit like that.

It's like, yeah, he basically, oh, He was basically, uh, basically the idea is like, I'm just going to get as wealthy as possible and give it all away to different stuff. And it's okay for me to be incredibly ambitious and do this thing, these things I don't really care about because I'm just giving it away anyway.

And he's giving it away like during his lifetime.

Said last year's. All right. Breakout company. You go first. All right.

Breakout company. I have, um, I have OpenSea. So just to give you a sense of OpenSea's crazy growth.

I had that too, by the way.

Started in 2017 and the, the bear market hit like pretty much immediately. And I know people who were building like their competitors and they ended up folding because it was just like there was no interest. And these guys were like, you know, the cockroaches that just stayed alive. And in 20, uh, basically they in 2020, so last year, they did $24 million in GMV. Pretty small overall.

Um, and they get, uh, 10% of that.

Uh, they have, I don't know what their take rate is, something like, I think it's even lower than that. I think it's 5% or something.

But in that range, so it was very small, $24 million in gross sales across the platform. That's not their sales, that's what people buying from each other. So they just get a small take. This year, $15 billion. So going from $24 million to $15 billion in one year, that's 650x. To me, that's a, that's a breakout company. I know we've talked about 'em before, so it's not a big surprise, but I, I had to give it to 'em.

So I had that as well, but I came with the backup cuz I actually thought that you were gonna pick that. So I had OpenSea as well. I think it's amazing that they basically just kind of created a market and I think that's pretty badass. Um, or at least they're part of a market that is, was nonexistent a couple years ago. All right. So my second one is someone who we talked about. I'm gonna botch his first name, but his last name is Lovells. What's his first name?

Peter Lovells. Peter.

Is it Peter? Yeah. Is it just Peter? I thought, okay.

I think it's Peter.

I thought it was a, a weird pronunciation.

Let's call him Pieter just to bother you. I thought it was Pieter to be honest, but I'm gonna call Peter.

All right. So this guy is Peter, like theater. That's how we're going to go.

Yeah, I think like that guy kind of has my dream life, which is funny that I say that because I do own similar businesses, but I've always, I've always like fetishized the idea of being a one-person entrepreneur and being able to do that level of revenue. I just kind of got ahead of myself. And it's so interesting. I think I have a lot of respect for him because I think he still shares his numbers. Most of the guys that get to this scale, they almost always stop sharing because everyone realizes how much money they're making.

I have a story of a guy who's going to come on the pod soon, and he— I've been talking to him, and he made $10 million a year in profit in the early 2000s from a lyric website that was around for years. So I have a one-person—

is it Maloon? Maloon Tesavic?

No, but he is, uh, similar, similar story. He's a, he's a Russian Jewish guy. Is that guy a Russian Jewish guy?

Didn't that guy also make like a drink?

I don't know.

He's not a drink.

Eastern European.

Oh, my guy? No.

Okay. That guy Miloon, didn't he do something else that's really remarkable now? Like he did the lyrics thing and isn't he doing some other interesting stuff?

He works at Expo, right? He's a partner at Expo.

Gotcha. Uh, all right, Andrew, who do you have? Uh, Sam has this like weird indie breakout company. That's not a company.

It's just, bro, I chose OpenSea. That's, that's the most obvious one. I love it.

I love it.

I chose that one too, so I had to get you.

So far I'm Mr. Obvious, Sam's Mr. Suck Up, and let's see if Andrew's got something good here.

So I wasn't trying to be better, I was just trying to be different.

So, so if there's one thing I really, really don't like, it's middlemen, realtors, investment bankers, that kind of stuff. So I love this company MicroAcquire. For a long time, if you wanted to buy a tech business, you were going to these crappy listing websites with really low, like really sketchy sites with really low quality businesses. Uh, and this guy Andrew basically came along and started this company called MicroAcquire, and it's for, uh, generally like profitable SaaS businesses, uh, on the web. And he's just done a really, really nice job of doing it. I'd say it's kind of like Zillow for buying a tech business. Um, and I, I, you know, he kind of replaced Flippa and all these other kind of crappy websites. So, uh, I'm a big fan of what he's doing.

Any pick and fight?

Just raised like $10 million or something like that.

We're all investors, I think, right?

I am. I didn't invest, but, but, uh, I think it's a good one.

Well, I invested a small, a very small amount, like $5,000 or $1,000 or something like tiny. But he, uh, he's picking fights with people online too. He's kind of making himself to be a kind of a villain to a certain group of people, which we'll see if that ends up being a good idea.

Who's he going after?

I forget.

The funny thing is I think he's going after like, uh, he's basically saying like he went after two groups. So he's like, first like bootstrappers. Need like some love. Like, you know, if you're a profitable company, like why is that getting no attention? And then the second thing is he's going after TechCrunch because they don't cover those types of companies. They just, they basically work for the VCs. It's kind of like his angle.

Mm-hmm.

I think it's a good angle. He created a, a rival publication, I think called The Bootstrappers to just take a shot at TechCrunch. Um, of like, I'll cover these companies if you guys aren't going to. But then the only, uh, the hypocrisy is that he's raising a bunch of venture capital. So I think, you know, that part, you know, breaks down a little bit. Uh, but I think he's doing a good job of picking a fight. And there's this general Twitter strategy, which is if you like totally sell out to your mission, which is like both a good and a bad thing, you could just like, there's a guy who, um, uh, I was friendly with, uh, Chris Herd. He created a company that's around remote work and they help basically like manage companies like laptops and desks, their desk setup. When you work from home, they'll help you as a company manage your workers' desk setups. And, uh, so he just— every tweet is just about how remote work is taking over and how everything else is gonna die. And it'll just be— he's just— that's the propaganda machine. And you just keep beating that drum every day. Every day he just keeps talking about how the office is dead, remote work is going up, but he cannot be wrong. And yeah, and it's just like, you know, a total like brainwashing of content. But, you know, it's, it's pretty effective when people do do that. I, I can't really bring myself to do that exactly, but It works.

Okay. So who, um, I would give it to OpenSea.

Oh, I'm getting it. Okay, great. I love it. Uh, right. Yeah.

Great. Microacquire is cool, but OpenSea is just, there's levels.

And microacquire, honestly, I, I would do yours, man. I think, um, yours is the most unique, right? I think OpenSea had a big win, but it's like, you know, I think venture-backed kind of like of the moment crypto stuff. Mine, I think everyone knows about, but I think I think what Peter's doing is very unique. Um, and it's just, when you think about lifestyle, I think he has the best possible lifestyle of any of the people.

Andrew, what's that story where a guy goes to a party hosted by whoever, like, you know, some Rockefeller type. It's like, you know, and his friend is saying, this guy's the richest man in the world. He's got everything. He's got this, he's got that. He's got cars, he's got servants, he's got everything. And then the guy who's the guest goes, uh, yeah, but I have something he'll never have. Enough.

Enough.

And, um, yeah, that's the Kurt Vonnegut.

Yeah, it was Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Teller, I think, right?

So that's the, the version of, you know, Andrew, you had Peter levels, but you, you didn't have enough, and so you kept going, and there's a part of you that envies that lifestyle still. Uh, all right, we're giving it to Sam.

Once you start, once you start, once you get an office, once you have employees, you have this beast to feed, whereas Peter could just check out, right?

I, one of these days we should do a story of someone who has done that, who went one way and they just said, ah, fuck it, we're gonna go the opposite. And went back. I love those stories. All right, I get this one. Uh, all right, so, uh, the unsexy simple business that you saw this year. I'll go first. We talked about it. This guy named Quinn, I think his name is Quinn Emmett.

Is that the guy's name? Snyder, right?

I love that. By the way, Quinn Snyder is a basketball coach, so definitely, definitely not Quinn Snyder. He's something else.

I think it was Emmett Quinn.

Emmett. Andrew, who you got for best unsexy or simple business that you saw this year? I feel like you see a ton of these, so this is probably the easiest category for you.

What was it called?

Uh, it's LA Private Jet Studio. It's on Peerspace, which is like a, um, a photo, photo, uh, shoot, like a studio listing.

That's awesome, guys. That is so—

that's a great one. Um, all right, I have one. I'm gonna steal this from our friend of the pod, Cody Sanchez. Uh, Sam, you sent this link earlier, and I think this is a great one.

Did you take the one that I sent you? Because she has a bunch of good ones.

That's what I'm taking. It was better than the one I had, so I was like, oh, this is— we'll use this one instead. So she By the way, her TikTok has blown up. So she's always on my feed. I know.

She's crazy, dude. Her last one just got 10 million views.

And according to Cody, 70% profit.

Yes, exactly. Somewhere 60, 70% profit margins. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know much about it because again, my research was watching this TikTok 5 minutes before this pod. But what a beautiful business and what a, you know, what a great reminder that like You know, you, you read about Elon Musk and you're like, oh, I have to like send rockets to Mars. And then you read about the girl who's like, I draw straight white lines and I can make millions of dollars a year. And it just reminds you, you know, you can win the game any, any way. So she's my pick.

I love that.

I, um, I'd vote for that one.

Okay, I'm gonna take that in honor of Cody. So we are at 1-1-1 right now. So we're one each. By the way, I have a little honorable mention here. An unsexy business that's done extremely well. Have you guys looked at Crocs stock?

Yeah, crushing it. Thanks to Post Malone.

Dude, 2020, when the pandemic happened, so March 2020, you could, you could have bought a pair of Crocs for— I don't know how much Crocs go for, let's call it $100, maybe there's a little less, uh, you could buy a pair of Crocs and you could buy the stock for $10 a share. It's now up 13x in one year just during the pandemic. Was good to Crocs. And, uh, I just thought that was like an amazing winner, uh, out of this like pandemic Is it Post Malone? Is that who's driving it?

He was— he kind of hopped on that trend really early, and then they created this new thing called like Crocs. I forget what they're called, but they're like charms that you put on your Crocs. And if you drive around the Midwest or in the South, like, how do we make it uglier?

What could we do? Ah, let's dangle charms off of them.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

Like, my wife is obsessed with these and she buys them for our kids and puts them on their Crocs.

Yeah, it's like, like a you get like a soccer ball, like pin or like a football pin or like some cartoon. And the kids are obsessed with it and they're crushing it right now. Post Malone started making them popular and a lot of country music people like Luke Combs, who you probably have no idea who that is, started wearing camouflage Crocs.

Gotcha. Yeah. Who knew? Who knew? By the way, Sam, I got another real quick pop quiz for you. Hands up. So I see you're not— you're not looking it up. I want you to guess the monthly visitors to OnlyFans.com.

20 million a month.

Okay, you're close. It's 250 million. You're off by 10x in order of magnitude.

Is it really?

That'd be one of the top websites in the world.

Then there's another one called ChatterBait. That's, you know, a broke man's version of OnlyFans. I think it's 300 million. Oh my God, it's insane. So, you know, but didn't—

didn't OnlyFans— did they say that they're no longer allowing nudity?

They did for a second and then they reversed course on that. Stupid.

They're like Pornhub saying like no more porn.

Yeah, Facebook's like no more photos. You know, it doesn't work. So stupid. Um, by the way, average visit duration, 4 minutes. Uh, all right, we'll go to the next category. Your best investment. Okay, so what was your best investment of 2021? Uh, let's kick it off with Andrew.

So, um, I would, uh, the boring answer is AeroPress, I think, but I've already talked about that on the pod. Um, we, we bought that maybe 4 or 5 months ago and that's been awesome so far, but that story hasn't played out yet. So the one, and we haven't really done that much in the last year. So the best one, um, thing that I've been buying myself, um, is actually a company called Pershing Square Holdings. I don't think I've talked about it. So I have about 95% of my net worth in Tiny and our kind of core businesses, but I've been quietly building kind of a backup forever rich retirement portfolio of stocks, real estate, brick and mortar businesses. We own a chain of restaurants, we own a hotel. Wait, what restaurants do you own? A bunch of conventional stuff. I just own a bunch of restaurants in Victoria. I know, what does that mean? And we own a hotel in St. Louis.

Oh. With Marshall.

Yeah, yeah, with Marshall.

Exactly. Is the hotel business cool?

It's amazing. Basically, we bought this, uh, that we bought like an apartment building and converted it into all Airbnb, and we took it from— we bought it super cheap and now it's yielding.

Are you a billionaire? Maybe you're my Billy of the Year.

Uh, I don't think— not yet. Working on it.

It sounds like, uh, sounds like you had to think about it. That means you might be rounding up to it.

No, I know, I don't think I am. Um, I don't really, I don't really have like a good picture on that stuff.

That's a good answer though.

I do businesses.

If the answer is I don't think I am, then the answer, then that's a good sign.

Yeah. What's that people say?

I don't, I don't spend a lot of, I don't spend a lot of time on that stuff because, you know, a lot of people who are billionaires on paper, like, you know, it doesn't really matter, right? You could invest in some startup, it could get valued $20 billion, you can own 1%, whatever. Like, I just don't, I don't spend too much time on that. So anyway, I've been thinking about this and I go, if everything goes pear-shaped, I want to still be rich and I want to have enough money to live a great life.

And so that's by that guy you like, right?

Bill Ackman.

That, that crazy trade that he made last year, the COVID trade, was that out of these vehicles or that was out of a separate vehicle?

Yeah, that was in this vehicle. And anyone could have bought that.

You did the Universal Music deal last year, stuff like that.

Yeah, you've talked about this.

You like— um, okay, great. So that's a good one. Uh, Sam, what you got? Your best investment?

Um, I bought a, I bought a, a big lot in Austin. Kind of boring, but I bought a big lot in Austin. I used, um an asset-backed loan. So I used cash to buy it. Like I told them I bought it in cash. In reality, it was a loan at a 1% interest rate. And I, it's not the story again, hasn't played out, but it's already appreciated because I've gotten offers on it, but I'll make about $500,000 in tax-free profit with very little work. And the work that I've been doing on it is fun. I'm learning a skill. I'm learning how to develop a home profitably. Um, so, uh, that, that's going to be my, it's probably not my best, just like investing in the S&P 500, that's up 30%. That, I mean, that's, but that's not much of an investment. I didn't do anything. And so the, uh, my, my Austin real estate project will be the most like actively thing, active thing that I'm managing and make the most.

That's a good one. Uh, by the way, the YouTube video on your personal YouTube channel, the, uh, is it Sampar or The Sampar?

Yeah, just my name.

You, you show the, the lot, the, the kind of like the rundown shack that's there today. It's great.

Uh, it's fun, right?

It may be, it's way more inter— watch that and what you just said will be way more entertaining. It's great.

But I also, I feel like you might make $500 grand, but if you'd made $5 million passively, it wouldn't feel as good as—

exactly. That's why I'm saying you've done it. It's my bet. It's better because it's fun. Like it's, I'm basically developing a skill, uh, and, and it's been quite fun and the tax implications are quite nice.

Yeah. That's great. Um, okay, good. My, my best investment, I'm going to go with this startup that I invested in. So last year, I think it was last year.

Yeah.

Last year I created a rolling fund. And it's basically said, hey, if anybody wants to invest in startups alongside me, you know, uh, you don't have to have the network, you don't have to have the knowledge, uh, all you got to have is the cash, you can do this. And I was like, okay, um, I wanted to start it. I was like, I want to start this off, I want to make it enticing for somebody to join, because you could invest in a number of people who are professional full-time investors who've been doing this for a decade. So I was kind of thinking like, why would somebody invest in me? And so I said, let me juice it up a little bit. Let me put 3 of my personal angel investments into this deal, into this like fund. And so they'll be able to say, look, I get to sort of like grant— I get grandfathered into these deals that you've already done.

That's very kind of you and stupid.

It was self-serving. Like I wanted my fund to get subscribers quickly. So I was like, how do I provide more value? Here, here's, here's some free value. Now looking back, it actually has turned out to be very kind because The very first deal that I put in is a company called Deel, D-E-E-L. And what Deel does is it's the easiest way to hire a contractor. Um, so like I was paying, I wanted to hire this guy in Australia, the guy who actually first was editing our podcast. I was like, how do I pay this podcast editor in Australia? And so I was like, oh, um, you know, do I need to go get a lawyer to make a contract? And how do I pay them in his local currency? And then what are the compliance rules around that? How much taxes do I need to pay? Like, I don't, I don't understand all this. So I went to Deal and literally in 5 minutes I was like, uh, here's the guy's name, here's his email address, here's where he lives. It's like, here's a contract. It's like, would you like to add a confidentiality clause? Yeah, yeah, toss that in. It's like guac on my burrito. Like, you know, I'll, I'll go for that. And then it was like, great, it's sent for signature and the payments will come outta your bank account and it'll pay him in Australian dollars automatically every month. And I was like, wow, that was like kind of magical. It basically replaced, you know, what a bunch of humans would have to do. So I loved it. So I ended up chasing down the founder and I was like, yo, your product is amazing. Um, how do I invest in this? And he was like, oh, you know, I'd love to have you. Uh, and I didn't invest right then. And, or then, you know, when I followed up, he was like, oh dude, we just closed a thing. Sorry, I forgot. Like, you know, you didn't follow up. So, so I missed the first round and then I almost missed the second round.

What was the valuation of the first one?

Uh, you know, so if if not including dilution, which is a big factor here. So take that for what it's worth. So $12 million into $5.5 billion is $458 million. So your $25,000 in that 12-round would've been worth over $11 million.

Yes, exactly. And my buddy did that. My buddy Ryan, uh, did that deal at that, at that round and, uh, reminded me as such about like the crazy markup. And so, you know, the $25K has turned into half a million, but man, that, that's the difference between half a million and $12 million was following up.

Oh my God.

All right, you win. So wait, is this my best investment or worst investment? Maybe this is my worst investment actually.

I mean, $25K to half a million's good, by the way.

Well, it would've been good and then I put it in the, the rolling fund. So now, you know, most of the economics went to my investors too.

So dude, that's crazy that, that, that mistake, that's a $10 million mistake.

Yeah. And it was, uh, by the way, this was a period of like, I don't know, less than a year between the fall, between like when, when one round happened and the next round happened. So, you know, could have, uh, Could, uh, yeah, coulda, woulda, shoulda. All right, so who are we giving this round to? Best investment, me. Okay, for my sob story, at least I have, at least I have this to lean back on. All right, let's go to worst investment. What was your worst investment of 2021?

I'll go first, mine's easy. Zillow. I bought—

I'm with you on that one.

Yeah, I, I, I only bought 3 stocks, individual stocks this year. One was Playboy. And Playboy kind of makes sense because only a billion dollar valuation, $200 million in revenue. And I thought the brand was easily worth that. I'm actually thinking about buying Aston Martin stock. Aston Martin is only valued at like $1 or $2 billion. It's like the cheapest car maker, but I think they're going to have a resurgence. So I'm thinking about doing that. But I bought Playboy thinking that was my logic and I was wrong. But then Zillow was way wrong. Zillow was wrong because I bought at its most expensive point.

But tell people why we bought this stock.

We bought it because we're in this chat group and our friend Nikita and Austin Reef were like, Zillow's the greatest thing ever. And so I bought like $25,000 or $50,000 worth of Zillow and I agreed with them. I thought, yeah, you know, you're right. Like whenever I go to a fancy neighborhood, I just pull up Zillow and I like browse it all the time. It's kind of a category definer, like defining company. Like I'm on board with Zillow. I thought, well, how much were they worth when we bought? Like $15,000 or $20,000?

I don't know. It's down 56%. So I bought $100K and now my $100K is $44K, uh, left.

It made sense. Like I don't regret it. I like, I'm on board with it, but the problem was is that it went down just because like we were wrong. Then it went down because they fucked it up with buying all those houses and it went down even more. Yeah. So we were wrong like twice.

And by the way, they, they, they lost 56% of their value in a year where the housing market went like bananas. So, you know, it's not like there was something out of their control and there's industry that was doing poorly, you know.

Didn't, didn't Rich Barton come back or something? Was he the guy? He's the original founder and a really great investor.

Yeah. Great entrepreneur.

Yeah, and, and he came back and he tried to do the house buying stuff. I would still— I, I would honestly maybe double down on that because I think he'll probably, he'll probably pull a rabbit out of this.

I think it's a great company. It's awesome. I think basically what happened was a bunch of bad stuff happened, including one TikTok went really viral explaining how like they're evil because they're like big corporations buying hundreds of homes, and that totally fucked them. If anyone's— TikTok is the winner here.

The fact that they haven't disintermediated realtors though, like the fact you can't, or maybe you can and I'm just not aware, but I just want to be able to list my house on Zillow and then have an open outcry auction one day. Like where you say like on this day, I want to have an auction, everyone's going to bid and then we'll get the maximum price and they do all the paperwork.

Like that would be amazing. I invested in a company that does that. They were called Rumor. It's kind of a silly name, but they rechanged it to also a silly name. It's called Dorsey. So yeah, it's, I gotta copy these.

Dorsey's not bad. I like Dorsey.

So Dorsey's fine. It's like the word door and then S-E-Y. And, uh, it's a live home auction and, uh, it's started by the guy who started Hello Alfred. Kind of a cool company. I just sent it to you in the chat.

Yeah. So Zillow was your worst investment.

Hey, just before we jump, I want to know about Playboy. So what's the, what's the thesis there? Like they still have the magazine. Obviously it's kind of a, you know, there's a lot of legacy brands. It's over a million from boys. But what are they doing with it?

It can't be the magazine. Like, where's the money coming from?

Yeah, merchandise basically. And so they own the, they own the Playboy Mansion, which is worth, uh, 9 figures, I believe. And they recently did a SPAC in 2020. And so they reported $200 million in revenue in 2021, or that's what the forecast is going to be. When I invested, I think their market cap was just a hair above, uh, $1 billion. And, um, basically my, my logic right now, it's $1 exactly $1 billion. My logic was basically like, I'm pretty sure that brand is worth more than that. Like, if they just like put their logo on stuff, I was like, I know young people don't really care about it as much, but I think that brand's pretty valuable. And I couldn't put a value on it, but I thought it was above what they were trading for. So it was kind of— I kind of just made a kind of a gut call, but it's down half, wasn't it?

It was a guy. The guy who bought that was the guy who bought Twinkies. Or hostess or something random like, yeah, yeah, like, um, yeah, he was the guy who bought Twinkies, made a ton of money on it, then he bought PBR. I think it is a— I mean, it's a very iconic, it's a really iconic brand.

Yeah, and I know that like they tried— I had a friend that tried, that almost bought, uh, this guy, the guys at The Chive almost sold to Playboy, and they told me about going to the mansion, and they told me that Playboy was thinking about selling the mansion, and they told me like how much it was worth. Worth, and it was— it's like a crazy high number. And I thought, well, fuck, just with this stuff, like, this is worth more than the—

if you're OnlyFans, why would you not just buy Playboy?

I think it's really interesting.

You don't need it.

That brand— I mean, what's it worth that, you know, I don't know, 500 million people know your name and associate it? Like, that's got to be worth to a company that has a money printer. It's kind of like, you know, if you are a money printer, what, what does it take to accelerate your brand like that? That—

I don't know, that's Well, let's be, let's be real. I mean, Tai Lopez is going to buy it and turn it into some sort of crypto thing.

Tai Lopez.

All right. Where are you? What's yours, Andrew?

Yeah. So mine, I can't say what it is. We didn't actually announce the business, but so the mistake we made is we bought an ember. What I mean by that is it's like this little tiny ember and it could turn into a bonfire if you blow on it a lot, but you have to be very attentive., and we're not set up to be attentive. We're kind of management by neglect. We buy these businesses, we plug in CEOs, and then they go on to do great. And the problem is when you have this little tiny startup, this is a business, it was a real business with real revenue and profits, but it was very small and we liked what we saw. But the problem is we couldn't attract someone great to run it. And so the business, the ember just kind of burnt out over time and we ended up spending like a million bucks. So it was just a total money bonfire and pointless and unsatisfying. And so the lesson for us is just board a cruise ship. You know, don't, don't try and build your own boat.

That's a good analogy. Ember and cruise ship.

Um, all right. My worst investment. Uh, I'm going to give you the fast answer because I think we're going to run short on time. All right. Mine is holding COVID winners for too long. So I had this amazing run-up on Zoom. Stock, Fastly, which is a like, uh, edge, you know, like a cloud, uh, or what's it called, a CDN, um, and Agora, which does like, you know, voice and video, um, SDKs. So they power Clubhouse and things like that. And I own these stocks. They ran up like crazy, you know, 2x, 3x, or whatever in like a very short amount of time. And then they've all come crashing back down to earth, um, you know, in the last 6 months or so. And so I lost money just by holding on to the COVID winners for for too long. Even when, like, for example, with Agora, I got in because I knew Clubhouse was growing, but then I was the one who kind of almost like famously called that Clubhouse is going to fail and it's going to, going to tank. And yet I still held my Agora. I forgot to sell my Agora stock and it's cut in half, um, you know, so that, that sort of thing. So I would say my, uh, I lost a nice chunk of change holding my COVID winners for too long.

How awesome would it be if you could short private companies? Like, imagine if you saw Clubhouse and you could go and short it. And maybe, maybe there is a way to do it. If anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them.

But, um, crypto way to do stuff like that's quite obvious, uh, that, that if you have ever used Polymarket, it's basically like a crypto betting, it's like a, like a bookie basically. But you could bet on anything. You could bet on sports games, you could bet will Joe Biden get COVID, uh, you could bet whatever. And it's only a yes or no, so there's So the, and the market sets the line. So basically if everybody thinks yes, then proportionately no will be rewarded. Like if you bet no, but two-thirds of people bet yes, you're gonna get a payout more than 1-to-1 on your money because you're taking the underdog side of things. And, um, and so there's a, so this idea of prediction markets works really well in, in crypto. And, uh, and so there's, there's a few of these that are out there. Um, I love betting on PolyMarket.

Dude, we should do, we should do an annual, uh, betting episode where we all make predictions and bets and then we to put it on Polymarket and we have to put our own money up. That'd be awesome.

Do you still stand by that? Is Club— what's the update on Clubhouse? Are you going to be right?

Yeah. Uh, well, it looks like it, like in the charts, all, you know, it's a, it looks like Mount Everest, right? So it goes up and then it goes straight down.

There's not a world where like, it's just like maybe not growing a ton, but they still have like a million people a day using it or something like that.

Uh, well, look, you never count out an entrepreneur. Those guys are really talented entrepreneurs. They can always pivot. Uh, it's that, you know, the product as it is today did not become what people bet on it to become, right? Andreessen put a $4 billion price tag on it, basically betting that it's going to become like a Twitter, it's going to become a Facebook or a Snap. And, uh, it's not happening. Uh, that has— that hasn't happened. The one good thing is that they, they have the same kind of like hype cycle— or not hype, I shouldn't say that— but like, uh, trend fad cycle in different countries. So like in India, they'll get like— happen in America, they got got super popular and then usage faded. It wasn't super sticky. And then the same thing will happen in India. It'll get super popular and then it'll start to fade in popularity. And so the overall numbers aren't like totally zero, but it's— the problem is if you're a leaky bucket, you're a leaky bucket. It's just a matter of time till the water's gone. And, uh, that's— I know, I think, I think I'm right, but I don't honestly— I don't pay too much attention to it. But people will often tweet at me charts of their downloads going down to be like, you were right. Right? So that's all I know is basically people cherry-picking evidence.

Andrew, Andrew Chen's gonna come on the pod, you know that, right?

Oh, is he? Yeah. Will he be able to talk to me or am I blocked from the pod too?

We'll see.

He'll block you.

He'll mute you. All right. Uh, who's the winner on that one?

Um, I'm gonna go—

I like—

I think Andrew had a good lesson in there.

Uh, all right, we'll go with that.

Oh, that's— we're gonna go Andrew there.

All right, let me, um, I'm gonna, uh, I'm gonna, uh, combine the next one. Can I do that?

Yeah.

Okay. So I'm going to combine it with favorite digital tool, favorite physical tool, and best product under $100 and above $1,000. And I'll go first. So favorite digital is Truebill. Andrew, you should use Truebill. You said that you forget subscriptions. Truebill is awesome. Like just today, I didn't realize that me and my wife both had an Amazon Prime membership. Truebill, I paid like $50 or no, or $10. It's like really cheap. Cheap. And it's a sick app that syncs your bank account and tells you the subscriptions that you have, and it makes it easy to cancel it. Have you heard of that?

Sweet.

They just got acquired.

I don't, I don't know if it works in Canada, but it just got acquired for $1.3 billion by Rocket Mortgages, your guy Dan Gilbert.

Um, so pretty awesome. Favorite physical tool is— this is kind of physical— is a $50 app called Camo that lets you use your iPhone phone for, uh, like high-def, uh, video calls. Pretty amazing. And then favorite product that was above, uh, that was under $100 was Lockabox. It's a $38 box that I keep in my pantry that my wife knows the code of, and she puts things that I don't want to have, that I don't have self-control. So she'll put like, uh, sweets in there. And sometimes if I wanna lock my phone for the weekend, she'll put it in there. There. So that's awesome. And then above $1,000, I bought a fancy car, a Mercedes, that, uh, AMG station wagon that I love.

Dude, that was great. Okay, uh, Andrew, so, so we're doing digital product, physical product, or kind of like a cheap or expensive thing you liked?

Okay, so, um, digital product, uh, consumerlab.com. So it's like $49 a year, and it's basically Wirecutter but for food and supplements. So everything from like vitamin D to seaweed seaweed snacks to baby food. They buy every single brand, they test it, and it's pretty shocking. Like, I just today learned that the seaweed snacks that I've been giving my kids, you know, have like a bunch of arsenic in them, right? So it's just crazy stuff that could affect your life. Um, my favorite physical tool is this amazing thing that my wife, uh, gifted for me randomly that I never thought I would use. It's basically this game called the Loser Game, and you play it with friends,. And you basically all draw a card and on each card is a really kind of fucked up deep question. So, um, for example, um, how have you blamed someone for an issue that was, if you're truly honest, largely your fault, or name a surprising basic embarrassing gap in your knowledge, or anyway, you go around in a circle, you answer this. I did this on a, uh, retreat with a couple friends that I did, and these were all guys I know I know really, really well, and I left going, holy shit, there's just so many cool stories and interesting facts that we don't know about one another, and this game kind of elicits it. So that's been awesome. And then physical thing that I bought this year, I bought a house up at the lake about 40 minutes out of town here, and it's been the best thing I could ever do. Just great place to go and hang out with family and check out of work. And even though it's close, it feels like a whole other world away.

Yeah, that's awesome. And I've seen the house. It's awesome.

But I got a quick story on that thing you just said. Uh, my first business, I started with my two best friends from college, and, uh, this is the sushi business or whatever. We, we met the chef, and the chef goes, all right, he goes, he goes, you guys are— he goes, man, I love your guys's kind of like vibe. Like, you guys are— I can tell you guys really like each other. He goes, how long you guys known each other? Like, did you just meet or for a while? We're like, no, we've—

we were—

and we were just saying, no, we're thick as thieves. We've known each other for years. And he goes, he goes, so you know, you guys know each other pretty well, huh? And we're like, yeah, like why, why? He goes, he goes, uh, Sean, what's, uh, what's the hardest thing Trevor's ever been through? I was like, uh, I have no idea. He's like, you know, like just name something maybe. And I was like, I honestly have no clue. And we did it. And all three of us had no idea of just what's the hardest thing that your, your best friend has been through. And, um, and he's like, oh, he goes, he goes, he goes, yeah, I kind of noticed this. He goes, Y'all talk, but you don't have conversations. Oh. And I was like, oh shit, mic drop. And he goes, he goes, so, you know, you don't need to do this now, but he's like, but try it. Like, go, go a little deeper. Um, just ask yourself these questions. And we did it that night. We kind of asked each other that question. And then by the end we're all like, dude, I didn't know that about you. Like, I feel like I knew you way better. You know, like I really, I really know you now. Um, and so that was a, a great reminder of like sometimes these questions can, can take you, you know, further with your sense.

Totally. It's a superpower. One of the questions I ask people when I have lunch, I'll have like a small talk, you know, first time lunch with someone and I'll just randomly try and ask them, are you happy? Or are you happy with where your life is right now? And it's weird. They will just go down a rabbit trail and tell you all sorts of crazy stuff you wouldn't normally tell somebody.

Oh yeah. Just mindfucking people throughout Victoria. Uh, all right.

So I'll, it will, it just builds, builds connection, right?

Uh, I'll do mine.

Okay.

So favorite digital thing, uh, this app called Othership. OtherShip. It's a breathwork app. I do it every morning. I love it. It wakes me up. It makes me feel good. It's— it slows me down and it speeds me up at the same time. It slows me down from just rushing into my day feeling behind, and then it speeds me up because when I come out of it, I'm like, I feel just like electric. I feel like I'm on fire. I could do whatever I want now. So OtherShip is the name of that app. I love that app. Favorite— what is it?

Favorite physical Okay.

My favorite physical tool is, um, this is gonna sound stupid.

All right.

So I grew out my hair and, um, you know, I grow out my hair just to like do it just to kind of have a, like, I don't know, just have a change, do, do something different. Uh, but I don't know anything about how to take care of hair. And, uh, I'm like a really messy, disorganized person who doesn't like, you know, I don't look in the mirror till 7:00 PM that night. I'm like, oh, I didn't even, haven't even looked at myself today. And that doesn't really work when you got long hair, like high maintenance hair. So I went to a stylist and I was like, you know, can I get a little trim? And she was like, what do you want? I was like, I have no idea. I have no idea what I want. And also what I really want is like, can you just like cut the haircut like half an hour short and just tell me what I should be doing like with my hair? And she's like, what do you mean? I was like, I was like, so like I get in the shower, if I want to do shampoo, like here's how I do it. You tell me if that's correct. And I went through like these ultra basics with her. And, uh, she was like, what do you mean? And then she was laughing. But then through that conversation, she's like, oh, like, no, no, no. When you shampoo, like, don't be doing it on the roots because you're gonna end up stripping away all your natural oils. Like, just do your conditioner and shampoo, like, from the middle to the end. And like, oh, you're sleep— you know, your hair is really frizzy and you probably don't know why, but like, do you sleep on a cotton pillowcase? And I was like, yeah, of course. And she's like, you need to switch that for silk. Cause imagine you're spending 8 hours a night rubbing your hair into this thing. So she gave me these like 3 little things, like a silk pillowcase, this like, uh, curling cream. She's like, just use this because your hair won't look like—

this lady, black or white?

White.

Dude, we have silk things in our, in our house all over. Well, yeah, because if you throw the black girl thing—

yeah, you know, it is— there's like this whole thing, the curly girl method and shit like that. So anyways, I learned so much about hair in like half an hour. It was amazing. And I felt so relieved. I was like Ah, this is like this class of life school I just missed. And like, I'm too embarrassed or too like kind of busy to like think about it. But like taking the time to think about it was awesome. And so, you know, the little silk pillow and a couple other things were great little wins for me.

When, when you go to restaurants, what I do all the time is I just say, they'll say, what do you want? And I'll say, I just want meat and vegetables. Give me whatever's popular or whatever's best. Do you ever do that?

No. Well, I'll often ask what's best, or I'll say the best question is, uh, you know, what, like, what do you eat after work? Like, what's the best thing that you like to eat?

And it makes them so uncomfortable, though. I ask that all the— whenever I order, I almost always do that. It makes them very uncomfortable and they freak out just like you did with— like, when I get a haircut, I'm like, what do you want? I'm like, just make me look sexy, you know? Just like, maybe like hot. Yeah, whatever.

Chef's choice is a hella underrated way to live life.

So is— but it makes them so uncomfortable.

Not— you might, you might be putting them on this— put too much pressure on them. I tell them, I say, look, this is where I am. It can't get worse than this. Don't worry, I trust you. And then I tell every haircut, I said, don't worry what you do, my hair grows fast. I take a lot of pressure off them. Same thing with the food, you know, tell me what you eat after work. Uh, by the way, I'm not picky and I'm already in a good mood, so I'm gonna love whatever you give me.

And then, you know, take the pressure off. That's a good one. I'm gonna say that. All right. And then your last, uh, your, your over 100 and under 100.

The, uh, what's, let's see the over 100. Uh, oh, I hired a chef. So I don't know why more people don't do this.

Like, dude, that's such a conceited thing to say.

No, no. Yeah, cancel me and be like, yeah, because I can't afford it. No, what I mean is, if you can buy a nice car, or, you know, like, I would never buy a nice car before a chef. Like, my order of operations would be—

you drive a BMW.

No, no, no, I, I don't even think that's the right comparison. I think it's a lot of people who are middle class or upper middle class have a cleaner. A chef is just slightly more expensive than that. It's not crazy expensive.

And above, uh, below $1,000, uh, oh, Jambies.

I think I've talked about this before. Oh my God, I love these things. You don't like it? You don't like Jambies?

They're just boxers with pockets.

Very soft boxers with pockets and no hole.

Uh, do you wear them? Do you wear them though day to day or only when you're at home?

Well, I'm at home every day.

What do you Well, I mean, if there's no— if there's no hole and you put them on under jeans, it's just a shitty version of boxers.

Replacement for shorts. So I like to just walk around in my boxers all day. That's like when I'm most comfortable. So this is the socially acceptable, more comfortable. They're like a little longer, so you're not showing too much thigh. There's no hole. They got pockets so you can carry your phone around. So it's like the best way to just wear your boxers at home.

So you're saying like— you're saying like your mother-in-law— your mother-in-law is wearing You're going to wear boxers around the house. Cause if you just wear shorts, they're just as comfortable and you'd look—

in Sean's defense, he's been talking about these things for like 3 years now.

I've worn them. They're very, very comfortable. I have a pair. I like them, but I wouldn't wear them.

Like if there are people in my house, I wouldn't— Lululemon shorts instead that have like the underwear in the, as the liner.

They're so comfortable.

We're not all trillionaires, so we can't all get Lululemon. We can get jammies.

Right. All right. Can I, can I batch the next one again? Yeah. All right. So check this out.

So, um, by the way, I'm giving that round to Sam.

All right. I, I'll take that. Uh, thing you, uh, thing you learned about yourself this year and best relationship hack. I'll go first cuz mine are gonna be really fast. Uh, best relationship hack this year. I do weekly meetings with my wife using this Best Self journal and it's just like a prompt. It's an hour-long prompt of questions and you get to know each other better. Exactly what you talked about with your buddy. It's been awesome. That's the best hack I've had. And the one thing I learned this year, I'll say two things.

One, I don't ask you a question about the relationship one. Yeah. Are you both equally into it or is one of you like more into doing it than the other?

We're both equally into it.

Okay.

I think that's— and so like I've always been a fan of therapy. Like I've gone to therapy like regardless if I'm healthy or unhealthy, it's just like going to the gym. And so I was like, we should do couples counseling even though everything's great. And but I didn't really— we didn't jive with anyone. And so I thought this one is actually better.

Better. It works.

Yeah. And it's like $25 for one time.

And then, so Sean, I mean, I totally relate to what you said though.

Like, I'm projecting.

She's not into it. And I tried to do this with my wife, do like a, you almost want to do like a weekly board meeting. Like, hey, let's talk about our relationship. My wife's not down with any of that.

Well, it's not run like a business meeting exactly, but like, it just has like, like, like, you know, like the Five Languages of Love. Like, that's like one, that's like a one conversation. That's like, you'll have that one week and the next conversation will be, uh, Uh, tell me about your childhood.

Right. I think, I think someone needs to build like an operating system, kind of like how you would have board meetings and all this stuff for marriage and family. Like, what does our family stand for? Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

That's a great idea.

And then one thing I learned about myself, which is I actually don't like owning as fancy stuff. It kind of stresses me out. So I like bought a fancy watch and I was like, oh my God, this is horrible. It's freaking me out. And, but. What I learned this year is I had a number of net worth in my head and I was like, if I hit this number, I'm never going to worry again. And I'm not going to chase money. I hit that number. I still worry and I still chase. It's never enough.

Yeah.

And now it, now it's always 2x, you know, and there's a, the New Yorker did an, uh, did a study where they like asked a bunch of wealthy people and like, it doesn't matter if the person had, uh, $1 million, $100,000, or $50 million, they always said they'd be more comfortable if they had 2x.

Yeah.

All right, you want to go, Sean?

Uh, yeah, okay. So best relationship hack, uh, uh, I literally just wrote this. As soon as I read it, I go, shut the fuck up. Uh, I learned this year how to really just shut the fuck up in a relationship, meaning like not everything needs to be talked about, not everything needs to be said, not every like, you know, pot needs to be stirred, not every issue needs to be discussed. Not every like worry needs to be a thing. Like, just shut up and, uh, like just shut up and enjoy it. Just shut up and listen more. Um, and just shut up and like don't complain. Don't, don't talk about like constantly improving and changing it. Like, just shut up a little bit. And so that was my relationship hack, which there's many times where you've got— you probably know this because you know me pretty well, Sam. I'm kind of a pot stirrer. Um, and I like to like I don't feel alive till somebody's like, you know, laughing or angry or whatever in a conversation. I'm like, yeah, now we're doing it. That's true. It's not how everybody is, but your intentions are mostly always good, which most—

your intentions are mostly always good. If it's— if you just want to call shit, it's just because you feel like laughing.

Yeah, so I'm trying to amuse myself.

The difference is, are your— were your parents debaters and that was kind of how your family functioned? Because in my household, my dad's a pot stirrer, so my dad would say some outlandish thing, we start yelling, and is like almost his love language. And my problem is I've applied that into all my relationships and most people find that horrible.

Yeah.

You just said it perfectly. So that was the lesson. That was my relationship hack this year was the lesson learned was, was what if I didn't try that? What if I did something different? Um, the thing I learned about myself, I'm gonna do one that's not, um, not good. So, you know, there's a lot of lessons that were like, ah yeah, I learned this and now I'm better for it. This is one that like I just learned was kind of like a shitty thing about me. So, I've now had several friends that, um, I've considered to be my close friends, or like they worked for me or whatever, like I kind of mentored them in some way, and then they go on to do like really great things. But like, you know, they called everybody except for me to like kind of like share the wins that they were having, or, or let them on board to invest in it, or like, you know, just I wasn't in the loop beyond once our, once our kind of relationship, once our like once the transaction was done, like once we stopped working together, in my head I'm like, oh yeah, we're super tight. And in their head they're like, they had a different opinion. Because I had lunch with a buddy and I said, he was telling me about like this crazy journey he's been on. I'm like, dude, can I ask you something kind of weird? I was like, I've noticed this happening a bunch of times. Like you had this crazy journey and I feel like I thought we were super close and we're just now talking about it. Like I wasn't in, I wasn't in the loop. Like you didn't let me know. Like, You know, you didn't share these awesome things that were happening or the crazy bad things. And like, you took other investors. I feel like I could have been like your first check into your thing. Like, I was like, is there something I do that makes you feel that way? And he's like, yeah.

Can I guess what he said?

Yeah, go ahead.

I just thought that you were too busy.

Yeah, that, but like, uh, a less generous version of that is you, uh, you blew me off basically. It's like, it's like, yeah, like I messaged you a bunch of times and like you didn't really respond in a big way. So I just figured like, okay. He's like, like, he said it perfectly. He goes, I, he goes, I felt like I figured out what I am to you. And like, I thought we were close and you thought we were close. You're saying you thought we were close, but like, you made me feel like we're not that close. And like, once our engagement was over, you know, it seemed like you put me in some place that like, you know, you didn't want to engage as much as I wanted to. And I was like, why? What are you talking about? Not me. Good old Sean, no way. I, you know, this is whatever. And, um, and then sure enough, I scrolled back in our DMs and it's like, him saying something, him saying something, him saying something, me saying one line, him saying something and like asking something and me never respond.

You can never get back to him. How do you combat that? Because like you've gotten very popular.

If it makes you feel better, Sean, I perceive you as a person who's in the loop of everything though.

Yeah. I don't know. I basically, I realized my self-perception of kind of where these relationships were at and how, uh, good of a friend I was being back, I realized like, oh no, I'm actually— I'm kind of a shitty friend back. Uh, I put— I, I can make people feel bad when— without really realizing it. Um, and, and also that, that costs me, like, that I don't get to share in the wins and, and know the stories and be kind of friends and, and get these opportunities that, like, you know, would otherwise have come from this. And so that's— once I have it like 5 times, I'm like, okay, the problem is me. I'm the common denominator here.

What, one of the habits that I've realized, there's two things. One, one is like using a smiley when you say something, takes the edge off just immediately. Even if it's a one-liner, it takes the edge off. The other thing is a friend of mine does this. He's very, very busy, super spread thin, uh, big personality, lots of friends. And he will just every once in a while text me and say, hey man, I was just thinking of you. Uh, or, you know, or, you know, let's say it's New Year's. He'll say, hey, thanks for your friendship this year. Here's something I really appreciated or took from you.. And it comes across as very authentic. And I've looked at that and gone, okay, I need to really learn how to do that because I'm like you exactly. Like, as you're saying this, I'm just nodding along. I think I come across as distant and cold and too busy, and I don't want to, and I just wanna make everyone happy. It's so sad.

So you're, you know, bracket first name. I was really thinking about you.

Yeah.

That's what's gonna come out from, from, from us this year.

Uh, yeah. Someone go listen after this. Andrew.

Relationships and, um, learning about yourself. Learnings.

Yeah. Okay. So, um, my biggest relationship hack, honestly, my wife, her love language is acts of service. And it's really interesting, like often she'll start picking at me about some other thing I'm doing that pisses her off and we'll have a fight about something. And it ultimately came down to the fact that I left towels on the floor or I left the kitchen dirty. And so now I'm just trying to, whenever I have that moment where I'm like, I see the kitchen's dirty, I'm just unloading the dishwasher and trying to enjoy it and get it done. The other thing, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not a slob, but I always say to her, I'm like, what's the point of making money if you use your time doing things you don't want to do? Right? Whereas my wife is much more like, I don't want our kids to grow up without them seeing us work and, you know, doing stuff. So, so we don't really have any help. Help around the house. We have a nanny, but, um, you know, we have a cleaner who does all this stuff we don't want to do.

It's all us.

No, we don't, we don't, we don't have any of that. We don't have— we're not fancy like you. Um, and then the School of Life, uh, which they make that card game I mentioned before. I love that so much that I bought this one called the Connect card game, and it's for couples. And my wife and I have been doing it, and it's basically 5 stacks, and each stack is like You know, one is sex, one is like general relationship, one is personal, whatever. And so you roll a dice and you go through these questions. And again, it's just this great way to penetrate through, you know, you might be in a bad spot, but when you answer these questions, it kind of unlocks everything and, uh, builds connection between the two of you. And that's been really, really good for us because my wife doesn't like doing the meetings or couples counseling even a lot of the time, but that's been a great thing for us.

That's baller. Yeah, me and you, we have the same thing, dude.

I totally— I really— that's cool you said that about the people thinking you're a dick or checked out, because I have that exact thing. And you said it really nicely.

Yeah, it's kind of—

it's hard. It's hard. And, you know, I've even experienced that with you, and I've probably done it to you as well. But it's like, you know, you and I, we've texted and we've had these long exchanges. And then there's other times where you text me and I'm like one line. Yeah. Or vice versa. And it's, it's crazy.

I think it's kind of those things where like, I would, I, uh, maybe I do take offense. I don't know. But like in my head it's like, I'm so, I have so much faith in the, in the relationship that I'm like, there's not like, it's not gonna like affect my score, you know, in a way. Um, and also like, I hate the kind of excuse of I'm busy. 'Cause basically to me, when the phrase I'm busy means I'm poor, it's like, if I think wealth is freedom of time and to be able to spend it how you want, then saying I don't have time means I'm poor. And so I'm like, I don't want to accept that that's also reality. So, you know, I'm trying to figure it out.

Well, it's also, there's two— I've, what I've noticed is when I don't work with somebody, I text them differently when, when we do work together. When we work together, it's like there's total filter. I'm not going to be nice. I'm just going to be super blunt and we're just going to grind it out. And that's just business and whatever. And not, I'm not being an asshole. I'm just being very to the point. But I think that can come across the wrong way. And I think people sense a shift. They start working with me and I suddenly become this like like super blunt person.

They're like, what happened? Um, all right, Sam's back. Okay, so I got, uh, I got the categories here. Okay, so let's keep rolling. We have, I think, 3 big buckets left. All right, so we're gonna do these together. So book of the year and/or— and then that's the first one. And then the second one to do is, you know, a podcast, newsletter, or person you started following, you start subscribing to. So a book and something you started subscribing to that you really love. Let's do Andrew first.

OK, so I read this really great book that, Sam, I think you'd love called Clash of the Titans. It's from the late '90s. It's two parallel stories. One is Ted Turner and one is Rupert Murdoch, right from the beginning. The stories are kind of interwoven, and at various times they clash and try and buy the same businesses and stuff. But it's two different wacko billionaires.. So these guys are both insane in their own ways. You know, Murdoch is like quiet, calculating, 100% focused on profit, but very slick and smooth. Ted Turner's like insane, unpredictable, emotional, all about building a brand name and making an impact. But it's really about him.

Only 5 stars, only 5 reviews on Amazon.

It— yeah, it's like totally weird.

Weird.

I had to buy it in print, although I found it on Audible. But anyway, it was a really, really great read. I didn't know that much about Rupert Murdoch before this, and I got to say, he's obviously evil, but really amazing billionaire businessperson. And he's been going since 1957, and he's somehow only— now this is a huge number— he's only, to us, he's only worth $8 billion. And you see these other people who are worth like $30 billion who have been going for like 5 years. Um, so it's, it's, uh, it's pretty wild. But anyway, great, great book.

I met Rupert Murdoch once. Have you met him, Andrew?

Yeah, you told this story. You went to some symposium or something.

It was sharp, right? Amazing. Basically what he does is they own all these properties. They own like whatever, Wall Street Journal, Fox, and like a whole bunch of other things. I don't know what they own exactly, but it's like a bunch of huge media publications. And, uh, there are all these different businesses. They're all spread around the world. And he, um, he gets everybody together once a year and he rented out the top floor or top 2 floors of the Wynn in Vegas. And he puts all of the CEOs of all the execs of basically all the, all of his different properties, puts 'em all up. It was during CES, but they didn't attend CES. They were not down at the conference floor shaking hands or anything like that. They were in his room, which is like the presidential suite or whatever. And, um, they would just start at 8:00 AM and they would go from 8:00 AM to like 6 PM or something like that. And it would be back-to-back talks, 30-minute talks. They would just bring in some, some, somebody from some other field to give us, uh, to give a talk. And they would grill them with questions and they'd be like, thank you so much for coming next. And it would be like, um, you know, the, the number 2 guy at Facebook would go.

Yeah. You went with like the skim.

The scheme was they, then they have like 3 or 4 startups as well. Cause it's like before, before us, or, you know, it was like CEO of Slack, Stewart Butterfield, went and gave his talk. And by the way, talk is like, you know, there's 30 people in the room or something like that. So it's not like a presentation. It's like just someone kind of spitballing about what they're, what they do and their view of the world. And, um, and then they get asked a bunch of questions. And so this goes like 8 or 9 hours straight. And if you look around the room, 'cause I, I, I, I got there early and I just stayed. We were talking at the end, but I just sat in and sat in on the whole thing. It was amazing. And, uh, I looked around the room and people, you know, oh, there's the president of Fox, and he's, his attention's drifting. And this person's, you know, they own the New York Post and they're, they're on their phone. And Rupert Murdoch is like the star pupil. He's front, he's in the first row. He's, you know, sitting in the first row. He's, uh, doesn't look at his phone. He's attentive the whole time. He's taking notes. He asked the best questions and he had the most energy. Like this guy went 8 hours straight and he's, he was like 87 years old at the time. He's 90 now, I think. And, um, He's the oldest guy. No bathroom breaks. This guy, I don't know what this guy's got.

Have you seen Succession?

I've seen season 1, and it's so, you know, loosely, it's like, it's amazing, kind of.

Yeah.

And they like, this old guy in Succession, he grinds, man. He's there, they're like working like 24 hours a day. That's always serious shit. And very, and Rupert is just like that. And when I hear that, I'm like, this seems miserable. How are they on all the time? They have so much energy.

Right.

Well, not only that, but Rupert Murdoch, he's brought all of his kids. The reason Succession's based on him is that he's brought all of his kids into the business, and then his kids have one by one failed to become the heir apparent and fought each other, and they all hate each other and leak stuff to the press. And it's really horrible. I think Rupert Murdoch is a great, uh, He's a great way to invert, you know, what do we not want? I don't want to become Rupert Murdoch because it doesn't seem like fun to me. Although maybe his personality, uh, maybe that works out.

I really respect him. Uh, okay. So then your, uh, thing you subscribe to, Andrew, so, uh, podcast, newsletter, whatever.

So, uh, yeah, and there's not really, I kind of got off Twitter, although I've been kind of getting back into it a little bit. Um, and I haven't subscribed to any newsletters at all this year. I've just, I OD'd last year. The person I really have been enjoying their tweets is your friend Nikita, Nikita Bhaiya. He had a really great tweet recently where— so, you know, all these people, they do acquihires to Facebook, and Facebook basically just buys companies to shut them down, right? They find promising social networks that might compete with them. They go buy them for tens of millions of dollars before they turn into anything. And they bought his company, and it's kind of like a prison for entrepreneurs. They make you sit around for 3 to 5 years and vest your stock. And a lot of people hate it. And he had this great tweet where he says, oh, I'm leaving Facebook after 3 years. Here's a thread of everything I learned, points down. And there's just nothing there. I thought that was awesome.

You know, he was sitting on that one for 4 years as he vested out. He's like, here's how I'm going to go out. Um, okay, great. Sam, what you got? Book and podcast, newsletter, whatever.

Book, uh, I'm gonna go with Endurance. It's a story about a shipwreck. And then I'll also go with Empire of the Summer Moon. It's about the Comanche Indians. They're just— and, and the Texas Rangers and how they fought, and they're all just fucking savages. The rate— dude, Endurance is so good. And by the way, when I said savages, I mean the Native Americans and also the Texas Rangers. They're all— they treat each other horribly. Endurance is amazing. It makes me feel like my life is meaningless and soft. Um, and then things that I followed this year. Um, okay. The first, Laird Hamilton. I learned all about him this year. That guy has the ideal life in my opinion. He's surfer, businessman, pretty amazing. Cool dude. The second is How to Take Over the World, Ben Wilson's podcast. One of the best things I've subscribed to, and I'm gonna suck up even further, Sean, the, the 5 Bullet for, or the, uh, 5 Tweet Tuesday, baby. That's freaking awesome. I like that too. So those are the things I started following this year.

All right, love it. Uh, okay, so mine, uh, book. Okay, I just started reading this book, so this is gonna sound a little silly because I'm 10 pages in.

Do you read?

Thank you.

Do you read?

Uh, I, I dabble. I basically have like, you know, I'll buy 50 books in a year and I'll read, you know, 10 to 30% of 10 to 30% of them. So it's like I read one book and at the end of the year, um, So this one I've read 10 pages so far, and in the first 10 pages, this book has more wisdom than anything I've ever read. And I'm not saying I read a bunch of wisdom, so that's the caveat. But, uh, it's this book called Think on These Things. It's by this philosopher guy named Krishnamurti. And, um, I don't know where, I think Naval maybe mentioned this guy's name as Krishnamurti, and I just went and bought this book. I sat on my couch for like, you know, a year. I didn't look at it. And then I just picked it up one day and 10 pages in, I literally, I've reread the first 10 pages 3 times and I like, I just don't even want to go on. I'm like, oh, this one principle, these 2 principles that are in this first 10 pages are so good that if I internalize these, you know, my life changes and it's just amazing.

I just, I'm looking at it now.

Sounds awesome.

I just, you just bought it?

Yeah. I mean, I sold it pretty hard though. Yeah.

All right.

So that's, that's the first book. Uh, second, uh, this, the thing I subscribe to, this is kind of a, again, a little bit of an expected one, but I listen to the All In podcast. Podcast. Uh, I don't know if you guys listen. Sam, I don't think you like it, right? Or you don't listen?

I don't listen to any business podcasts.

Andrew, do you listen? I feel like this might be up your alley.

Yeah, I find— I, I love— I love All In, but I found it was like, um, it's too stressful. The time I listen to podcasts in the evening, and the last thing I want to do is get pumped up on deals and what's going on in tech.

So yeah, I listen to it, and specifically I would actually say David Friedberg on the podcast. I actually find and, uh, the rest of them to be very smart and very entertaining, but very obnoxious to me personally. Yeah. Um, like, you know, like I'm sure these are, they're obviously successful. They're obviously, you know, probably, you know, fun to hang out with and things like that. Well, David's like the real nerd, but he's the real nerd and he's the only one I feel like is never, is never presenting a face. He's never virtue signaling or like building their brand by saying certain shit. Like I think Chamath is amazing, but also I think he virtue signals a bunch. Um, you know, I think that, uh, you know, Jason kind of says he's a man of the people, but, uh, like, I think he kind of likes being high class and likes hanging out with high class people and doing high class shit.

Um, but that's what, that's what makes it good, is they're all, they're all, they're all like best friends, but they're horrible to each other, and they're all like around one another, and they're all, they're all very, they're very complicated personalities, every single one of them. And I think that's exactly—

it's like a great team. TV show where the characters have flaws. Um, and, uh, yeah, David Sacks is super smart but then like super fucking political and to an extent, and is always just looking for some story that like supports his point of view. Uh, and usually that point of view is that everybody else is biased, but like, you know, clearly just constantly searching for information about how other people are biased. Um, so anyways, I think that there's— I love the show, I enjoy the show a lot and those characters, but I think David Friedberg is actually the one who, uh, is kind of like a star discovery for me this year of like super smart, gives great information about science and stuff like that, is very balanced and fair in his like POV, um, while still being saying interesting things. And is— I feel like he's not trying to build his personal brand and popularity through the, through the show. So, um, you know, to the extent that everybody is when you create content, like I think he does a good job of not Um, and one of the reasons, by the way, I criticize those other guys for doing that sometimes is I do it, right? You spot it because you got it. It's like I sometimes will say something that like I know makes me look good or, you know, presents me in a certain— myself in a certain way. So, you know, I see it when other people do it too. Um, so anyways, All In is like, you know, maybe the thing I, I've enjoyed— new thing, a new show I've enjoyed subscribing to.

That's great. All right, do we want to— what was the last one?

Was—

okay, I got, I got two more. So there's— this is a quick one. MFM Guest of the Year. So who was the best guest that came on the pod? And then your Person of the Year, somebody you really enjoyed getting to know, hanging out with.

What about industry and company?

That's going to be the last one.

All right. I'll go first. Rob Dyrdek and Ariel Hawane for Guest of the Year. Rob Dyrdek blew my mind. Ariel, he was the biggest fan. I'm the biggest fan. That was like, I'm the biggest fan of his, of everyone we did. And then what was the second question?

Someone, Person of the Year, just your Person of the Year, Sam's Person of the Year.

Who did you— I'm going to suck up again.

I got to say Ben and Sean.

I've been— I'm like, so we just crossed like 2 million, uh, listens per 30 days. Um, I think we hit 2.1 or something like that. Um, I'm very, very— this is the thing I'm most proud of that we've done. And, uh, so I would say, uh, and, and with Ben, I think we found the perfect third man.

So shout out to the—

were you tearing up just a little bit there? It seemed like you—

I've been very kind to Sean and, uh, like all the people involved in this podcast where they're like, why are you being so nice? I'm just really proud of what we've done. It's something I've been very proud of.

Dude, when we went to Miami for the live show, so the other Ben, the Ben that works with me, my partner, he, uh, he came with and he's like, oh, I'm finally getting to meet Sam. Like I've heard him on the pod for hours and hours. I've never met him. And I was like, yeah, he's great. And I was like, you know, but like, hey, if Sam like gets like impatient with you or like anything like that, don't take it personally. Like, you know, You know, it's just kind of his style. Like, you know, when he— we're doing a live show, he's gonna want it to go well. It might be high, you know, high pressure. And I've seen him kind of like go off on people sometimes if like, you know, whatever. And we get there and Sam was Zen Sam. He was so kind, so thoughtful, so nice, so happy. And Ben was like, what the fuck were you talking about, dude? I was like, I don't know where this came from, this 100% happy Sam, but like, this is amazing. And I feel like the— I don't know if it's the acquisition or, you know, Whatever the working out, I don't know what you're doing, but dude, you've been so much happier this year. It's amazing.

It's part acquisition and, and we're getting the results. We're finally getting where we're finally becoming as popular as I thought we should.

You're, you're not, you're not, um, threatened anymore, right? Like before, if the hustle failed or anything went bad, that directly hurts you and you're, that's your entire nest egg, right? So you're not, you're like a dog. You're like a dog. You have ample food now.

You don't need to bite. And it's just like, it's, it's been 2 years. It hasn't been that long since we've been doing this, maybe 2 and a half years, I forget. And it's finally like coming to fruition and it's the hardest thing growing up. Growing the Hustle wasn't that hard. Growing this has been very hard.

Dude, I just want to say I'm so, I'm so happy for you because I thought you were going to sell to HubSpot and be out of there in like 3 months, be bitter, upset you sold your baby. And it's so cool to see the podcast going so well, the Hustle going so well, Trends going so well. All the people still there, and you actually like the guy you sold to.

Yeah, I mean, I think I undersold, so I definitely have some regrets, but I don't regret it at all. And I'm happy. I intend to do this podcast for a very long time.

Vesting is a hell of a drug.

Wait, did I go off script? Do you— the thing you paid me to say earlier about—

all right, Andrew, guest of the year, and you're just your favorite person you got to hang out and interact back with?

So my favorite guest was, um, Steph Smith is always amazing. Like I, I tweeted this out, but I think it's like she just drops $1,000 bills on the ground for amazing entrepreneurs to pick up. There's just so many great ideas. Uh, and I think for you guys, the best format is a shitload of quick hits and ideas. And I think she really always delivers on that. I don't really always love it when you guys just interview someone about what they're doing. Um, the other one I loved was Huberman. For that exact same reason.

Just like, you know, I got him on your thread, right? He tweeted that you love him and I also like him. And I just said, hey, Andrew, DM me, come on the pod. It was on your thread. Yeah.

No way. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah, he's, he's amazing. He's been my— actually, I should have said before, he's probably my favorite podcast subscription. I just love his stuff. It's so in-depth. Um, and then what was the other question?

Person in your life, your favorite person of the year, non-family.

How much do you think better could've been more?

Uh, and the guy's It was just freaking awesome. I don't know. I mean, we were already profitable. I think we could have made a couple hundred thousand dollars of profit in the first year. I told him, I was like, "Look, I think we should hold this." But for him, it was the first time he was ever going to have a good run like that. And you can't undervalue— He's working at Ramp. And you just can't undervalue getting a couple million bucks into your jeans. Uh, I think it's still—

I think that's a great— I think that's a—

I think they've rolled it in.

Someone should just copy that.

Yeah, yeah, it says right here. Yeah, they've like integrated it into Ramp. Buyer.com, or no, buyer.

Someone should just do that again. I thought that that one had legs.

Uh, if anyone's listening and wants to restart that business with me, because like I don't think Ramp would care, like we would even say like we won't do SaaS or something. But just, I want someone to negotiate a car or a lease or, you know, these big ticket things.

All right. Um, go on. Your, your turn. Mine. Okay. So guest of the year, I had, uh, uh, Hasan Minhaj. I thought he brought it. And, uh, what I loved about it was I thought the episode was good, but I love that he genuinely listens to the pod. And, uh, like it was a conversation. It wasn't an interview. Almost every guest is like, they show up cold. They usually they've never, they've heard about the show, but they never listened to it or listened to one episode just to prep for it. And, um, and the ones who do, like Dharmesh, he listens to every episode. When he came on, guess what? He's fire, right? Steph listens to the episode, so she knows the vibe. This was the same. Now he's not like a business idea machine, but, um, man, the feedback I got from that episode of people just being like, dude, that conversation, it literally felt like I was in the room. I thought that was something cool. That was something very, something very cool.

Are you guys like homies now?

Yeah, we text all the time.

And isn't that funny?

What's the— what's this story? So he listened and then messaged you, or how did you guys connect?

The dot story, actually. So there's another guy who's a comedy writer for a TV show. His name's Azhar, and he writes the show Remy on Hulu. Um, and so he listens to the show. I don't know how he discovered it. He listens and he was like, dude, this is great. Now his network is people in kind of like Hollywood and like specifically maybe like brown Hollywood.. And so he tipped a few people off to it and, and I took like a random meeting with him. You know, I have this one block every week just for random spontaneous meetings with cool people that are like in my orbit. And so I took this meeting with him. We had great vibes, we connected great. And, uh, I think he then told Hasan, you dude, you gotta listen to this show. And so then he started listening from there and then he reached out, he DM'd and was like, are, uh, my, a couple of my Twitter threads went viral, like the Clubhouse one and then this other one. The metaverse one. And after each one, he would reach out and be like, dude, that was like, that was so good. And one time he just called me and at the end of that I was like, dude, he's like, we, he's like, we gotta meet. He's like, I'm doing a show in San Francisco, let's come. And I go, great, can you, uh, stay an extra day and let's record the pod? Oh, you know, really? So that's what he, that's what he did. He's like, yeah. He's like, as long as it's in person, I'll do it. I said, great, can you extend your trip one day? And that's what he did. He did 8 shows over a weekend and he stayed an extra Monday and then we recorded it. It.

God, that's pretty badass. Isn't that awesome? That's one of the greatest parts about this.

Another example. See, this is, this is why I don't understand why anyone does public speaking. Like, you look, you look at this and you're literally reaching millions of people and it's all these random people you'd never expect to meet.

Yeah. When this episode is over, I'm gonna like click close and then I'm gonna go like feed my daughter lunch and like, you know, not have to be on a flight somewhere, you know, Albuquerque to, cuz I gave a Well, one of the things I thought was weird, so you talked about this on one of the episodes where you said, you know, you brainstormed with him business ideas or whatever.

Why would you, if he doesn't like touring, like you were like, oh yeah, you could tour and make all this money. But dude, like I think that seems miserable flying from city to city to city, staying in hotels.

Yeah, well, I would say that it's a good and bad. 'Cause I talked to him about it, he's like, well, obviously the feeling of like a live crowd is a thrill and exhilaration. Like musicians, comedians, athletes are really the only ones who get that like, yeah, insane love from thousands of people while you perform your best work. Like, that's a pretty good feeling. So that's addictive.

It is definitely cool when you're single too.

And the other upside is you make a shit ton of money off of it. So touring is a great business model. It's basically the music industry makes all its money off touring now, live shows. So touring is where you can make substantial amount of money compared to do online stuff. The, the bad, the downside is he just had, you know, his second kid and you're out of the home for like a significant period of time. And, you know, you bring on the road can get really tiring and your health, blah, blah, blah.

Well, it's also linear, you know, you're limited to the number of people that can fit in the same.

So I don't know if you, did you hear the idea I gave him, which was to create, you know, Hamilton for brown people.

Yeah. The Hamilton. I, I like that. That's great.

This is a winner.

All right. Let's do the last two, right?

Last two. So last two is company to watch and, and/or like a prediction, uh, you know, crazy prediction for 2022. So company to watch for 2022 or crazy prediction and/or—

no, so then it's— sorry, you, you're missing one. So it's company to watch, industry you got your eye on next year, and then prediction.

Yeah, something like that. Yeah, do those three.

All right, let me go first. Prediction: I think San Francisco is going to be cool again.

By the way, can I read out our predictions from last year? Yeah, um, because I think we got some wrong. So our prediction for last year, you said San Francisco will bounce back, continue to be the center of tech for decades. I said that? Yeah, you said that. You go, uh, you said, uh, and then your second one was that Pornhub and large companies will— it'll be normal to pay subscriptions for porn. Uh, okay, I think San Francisco went down the drain this year so far, and, uh, I don't know anybody paying for porn really except for, I guess, OnlyFans. OnlyFans, uh, you got that part right. That's huge.

Yeah, OnlyFans, that's literally true.

So you got that one, um, just not pornhub.

Then San Francisco's still gonna come back. I still believe it.

Andrew, you said, you said, uh, no one's gonna give a shit about COVID in a year, or it's gonna bounce back much faster than people think and they're gonna forget about it. And I was like, yeah, me too, I agree with you, Andrew. That was mine as well.

I think you're wrong.

We were both— that's— I, I think it's true. If you go to the States right now, I mean, no, it's like everything's open, nobody cares about it, it's totally normal.

Not this week.

The fact that we've done an entire episode We're living in a pandemic and nobody's mentioned anything about it in an hour and a half, right? I think it's totally—

the argument could be made both, both way, both ways. And then what was the other one?

Uh, that was it. So mine was, mine was a cop.

All right, so Andrews, I said my prediction. All right, company to watch, this YouTuber named Meet Kevin. I've been watching this guy, he has a $51 million portfolio and he reveals the whole thing, and now his business is making $30 million a year with 4 employees. I think that Sean said one day there's going to be a billionaire YouTuber. I think Meet Kevin is the guy who potentially could do it. And then industry that I got my eye on, at-home diagnostics. I'm incredibly fascinated with at-home diagnostics. I've been, I've tried all of them. I think a lot of them are really cool and I think it's going to continue to boom and I think it should, uh, continue to boom because we need it.

Okay, great. Andrew, what are yours? Uh, company to watch, um, Crazy prediction. And what was the other one? What industry to watch?

Yeah, industry.

Yeah.

So company to watch. I mean, it's exciting to talk about all these new, new businesses, but what I'm actually interested in is all these companies that were incredibly hot like 3 or 4 years ago that raised a ton of money and they've been kind of quietly building. So for example, Superhuman, you know, everyone was talking about it 2 years ago. I haven't heard anyone talking about it, but I know they're doing very well. I can't wait to see what they do with all that money. And then same thing with Pitch. Pitch was like, you know, huge 2 years ago, and I think they're in a building phase. So I'm excited to see what they do when they come out of that. Pitch, pitch.com. It's basically replacing PowerPoint. It's like a good version.

What was the URL?

The first one? It's awesome. Oh, superhuman.com and Pitch. And crazy—

any predictions for 2022? Yeah, bold predictions.

Uh, well, you guys put down prediction or opinion. Oh, oh, this is prediction. Oh yeah, here we go. Um, I think that, uh, this high salary inflation is not here to stay. I think what's happened is all these companies down in San Francisco are going, oh, crazy, we can hire cheap people in Canada, but they're not yet going, oh hey, we can hire people in India and the Philippines. One of the things I've realized is that people in India and the Philippines are obviously just as smart, but they're far more motivated, and the cost is like a fifth or a sixth of what a North American employee is. They really want the job and they care. So you can either pay an entitled millennial $150,000 or you can pay someone $30,000 in India and they'll do a better job and the money means more to them. Um, so I think over time, I think, uh, the work will be democratized across the world and that salaries will come back.

I agree with you. I just don't think it's gonna happen next year.

By the way, I forgot one, one category. That's a great one. Which I mean, overrated thing, thing you are betting against that other people seem to be into. Do you guys have one there?

Mine was the creator economy and NFTs. I had NFTs in the creator economy.

That's right.

And, and, and Web3.

Image, image.

Give us your quick why NFTs, why you're saying it's the, the one you think is overrated, most overrated trend right now.

Well, I think, um, it's, it's obviously the technology is fascinating, right? So that's amazing. Um, but I think it's kind of like digital Beanie Babies that are easily replicated, replicatable. At least a Beanie Baby is kind of hard to replicate. These are just like images that you can download that anyone can use. And I think that over the long term, they'll be really cool once there's a standard. So if every metaverse or every app uses one API and everyone agrees that this is the way to access images or whatever, and it's verifiable, I think that'll be incredibly cool and powerful. And I love the idea of like Taylor Swift saying like, hey, I'm selling, you know, my song rights to my, my fans. And whenever anyone transacts, I get 10%, or whatever. That's amazing. Um, but I just, I just think right now it's all half-baked and all the protocols are all made up and won't exist in 5 years. And I think I'm going to win our bet.

Okay. Remind me what we're betting.

It was 10 years, right? 5 years or 10 years?

What was the exact bet? Yeah.

We have a bet. I believe you chose a piece of digital art and you said it would be worth more in the future and I said it'd be less.

Yes.

Great.

Okay. So I have our company to watch. Uh, I have a company called, um, uh, Terra, which is Terraform Labs. They've created something called Luna. So one of the biggest challenges in crypto is that people are like, oh, Bitcoin, it's cool, but like it can't be used as a currency because it's too volatile. And the solution that the crypto community came up with was something called stablecoins. And so stablecoins are super important. They're, you know, billions and billions of dollars are transacted every day. Um, you know, whatever, I don't know about day, maybe it's month, uh, using stablecoins with significant volume. And there's a stablecoin called Luna that I think is, um, the stablecoin's called UST, uh, but Luna is the, the token that backs it. And I think Luna has been on this tear. It started the year at, you know, maybe a dollar. It's at currently, you know, $100. So it's about 100x in a year. Uh, it's been a great investment for me, and I continue to believe that, that it's going to work. Interestingly, it's actually being used in the real world, which is one of the other criticisms of crypto. So in Korea, in Mongolia, in a bunch of different places, um, people use, uh, the stablecoin without even knowing that they use it. So they just use their mobile app to pay. They don't realize that in the background it's being done on these, uh, crypto rails. And so there's an app in Korea called Chai, I think it is, that has like a few million users, payments app that uses, um, uses this stablecoin, uh, as the, as the thing underneath it. So it's It's the company to watch, I think, in the next year. Because if you can actually crack the stablecoin use case, uh, you know, Bitcoin cracked the store of value use case, became, you know, $50,000 a coin right now and going up. Ethereum is the, uh, you know, programmable network. Uh, it's the, it's the compute layer. It cracked that. And, uh, you know, $4,000 a token last year, it was at like $200. So that's been an amazing investment. And Luna is the the number one contender right now, I think, for stablecoins. And so I'm keeping an eye on that.

Okay. And what are the others?

Uh, industry I got my eye on is actually VR. So, uh, most people think VR is just dead or doesn't work, but I don't know if you guys know this, but Oculus outsold Xbox this year. Um, so Oculus sold 10 million units, which is about $4 billion in revenue for Facebook, uh, on just the hardware, forgetting the games and the App Store that they have., uh, now Xbox had some production shortages, so probably would have been more, but like just to round it up, Oculus did about 10 billion, uh, sorry, 10 million units, and PlayStation did 14 million. So it's like, it's not that far behind.

Um, do you, do you remember when, um, Oculus— or sorry, when Xbox had that like weird little bar that you could put over your TV and you could like move your hands? Kinect, right? That was a huge bestseller, right? But it was still a gimmick. Like I bought one, everyone thought it was cool, And the exact same— I remember I played it for like a day and then I was like, whatever, this isn't ready. And I did the same thing. I've bought an Oculus every single year for the last 3 or 4 years, and every single time I feel sick and uncomfortable.

No, every time I use it, it's cool, and then every time I use it, every time I use it, I say to myself, it's not there yet, but I, I, I buy it. I buy into it.

I think Apple— I think Apple's gonna dominate. I think Apple is secretly working on VR.

There's a couple signs I think are really promising. One is that over 60 games made over $1 million on the platform, which I think is pretty impressive, and 6 games made over $10 million. So I think that's also pretty impressive, uh, growth there. So I think VR is just something that most people are thinking is, it's not happening, and it's, it's growing like rapidly. Uh, so I thought that was pretty good. And then, um, let's see, what's it? Crazy predictions. Uh, okay, my craziest prediction is that the Winklevii, uh, the Winklevoss end up richer than Zuck. So here's the case of how the Winklevoss get their revenge in the end. Oh my God, they own about 1% of all Bitcoin in circulation. They also own Gemini, an exchange that's probably valued at somewhere between $20 and $30 billion.

They own 1% of Bitcoin?

That'd be hilarious.

All right, that's good.

And then, oh, my overrated trend, by the way, like, my overrated trend is SPACs. So, uh, you know, the last 10 years, 10 years before, you know, the SPAC trend, there was like, I don't know, I think it was like $40 billion, $45 billion of SPACs total in like 10 years. Then last year there was $80 billion, so doubled, it doubled. And this year there was $160 billion, so doubled again. And if you just look at SPAC performance, like, um, just if you just take Chamath's SPACs, Chamath, who I think, you know, really started this trend, year to date, I think his average is he's down 30% year to date.

And did he make money off that?

Yes, he made, yeah, a ton of money.

Yeah, that's people here guaranteed money. This is why it's messed up. They all— you make, you make the money no matter what.

There's a, you know, heads I win, tails you lose, uh, setup. Uh, I don't really like it. And that's what happened here is that the sponsor, the promoter, makes money either way. And, uh, you know, his stocks are down— his, his SPACs are all down 30%, and the, the overall S&P 500 is up, up 30%. So, you know, it's a massive, you know, massive delta there. So I think that's, you know, I think SPACs are the overrated trend or the thing to— the bandwagon I don't want to be on. If you're not the promoter, I don't think it's a great place to be right now.

How does that make you feel, Andrew, as a SPACer?

Well, I'm not a SPACer.

I don't know. Wait, WooCommerce wasn't a SPAC?

No, no, no. Bloomberg misreported us as a SPAC. We did something called a reverse takeover, which is kind of like a a SPAC, but instead of having a SPAC where the sponsor gets 20%, they're getting like 0.01% of your business. There's just these little shell companies. So no, we're not—

uh, we don't have a promoter make on a typical SPAC. Uh, it's like $100 million, right?

20%. 20% of whatever they raise. Yeah. So I— or no, 20% of the future company. So if you have a billion-dollar company, you're literally saying, I'll give you $200 million to take me public. Public. And the math on it is, with a SPAC, you can show projections, which is really, really valuable for a growth company. And it's a little more flexible, and the timing is a little shorter.

You don't do projections, you only do historicals. With a SPAC, you get to show your fancy projections about whatever you think the future looks like. And you— I think you only have to buy in for 2 or 3%, but you get 20%. So that's your spread as the promoter. You pay 2% of the price and you get 20%. I don't know how SPACs work exactly, but something like that.

All right. This is a good episode, I think. Ben, what do we think? This is— it was a long one, but I think it's going to end up being a hit. Was last year's a hit?

Yeah, last year's was a hit.

Yeah, I wasn't here for last year, but I thought this was really great. What was that? You mentioned this really cool podcast, and what was that one called again? How to Take Over the World, Baby.

How to Take Over the World.

If anything, it's the best intro music I've ever heard. Yeah, there you go. Um, no, it was a great episode. Um, my first time attending it, but Andrew brought the fire and, uh, the predictions were like a little, a little predictable. I will say that. Um, but other than that, but the recommendations, the companies, the products were all good.