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My First Million

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghB3Yi-I4h0

How To Grow & Monetize A $10,000,000+ Podcast Business (#440)

Episode 440: Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) are joined by the Acquired podcast (https://twitter.com/AcquiredFM) hosts, Ben Gilbert (https://twitter.com/gilbert) David Rosenthal (https://twitter.com/djrosent) to talk about scaling to a large podcast, the company they would like to own, the CEO's you don't want to compete against, and the 100+ year history of Nintendo. Plus, a YouTube Premium subscription giveaway! Vote for MFM to win a Webby: https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2023/podcasts/general-series/business Click here to sign up for our event in Austin, TX: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/my-first-million-live-in-austin-tx-tickets-598580499387 Check Out Sam's Stuff: * Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ * Ideation Bootcamp - https://ideationbootcamp.co * Copy That - https://copythat.com/ Check Out Shaan's Stuff: * Power Writing Course - https://maven.com/generalist/writing * Daily Newsletter - https://www.shaanpuri.com/ ----- Links: *Acquired podcast - https://www.acquired.fm *Wait But Why - https://waitbutwhy.com/homepage *Marques Brownlee - https://www.youtube.com/user/marquesbrownlee *Nintendo - https://www.nintendo.com *NVIDIA - https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/ 📧: Sign up for The Hustle Daily Newsletter: https://mfmpod.link/xon 🎙️: Download Our Podcast: https://link.chtbl.com/Xq6lWi3m A podcast where we brainstorm new business ideas based on trends & opportunities we see in the market. Sometimes we have famous guests, and they do it with us. ------ Show Notes: (00:00) - Intro (01:07) - Intro to Acquired (02:25) - What to do when your schtick runs out (07:05) - How to scale to a big podcast (14:07) - How big do you have to be to be at the top of the business category? (22:46) - What commonalities are there between weird companies? (27:12) - How to tell a real from a fake contrarian (34:40) - Nintendo (38:15) - Which company would you most want to own? (42:12) - Who would you least want to compete against? (52:42) - Business ideas (58:17) - Will you ever sell Acquired? (01:07:24) - Best ways to make money as a podcast ----- For more quality videos subscribe here ➡https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyaN6mg5u8Cjy2ZI4ikWaug?sub_confirmation=1 🔔 Turn on notifications to stay updated with new uploads #shorts #youtubeshorts Like || Share || Subscribe

What could you get for it you think I would not be interested in having any conversations for you know less than Hey on the order of like what you got like the hustle or Morning brew or you know stuff like that 10s of millions yeah, yeah, yeah I mean, I just think like the value of what we've built both as a business and revenue and our audience and our durability is you know Is in that category? All right? What's up? We got a crossover episode call me Tim Hardaway We got the guys from acquired. Yeah, you like that. You like that That's good. That's good. Maybe yeah, that's for the the 5% of listeners who know about basketball so we got the guys from acquired are here We're doing kind of a joint episode a The old Alabama wedding as I like to call it, you know, just we're just getting we're getting cousins together here Because you guys got a podcast that is pretty awesome I remember when I was working at a at our previous startup a guy came to me was like there's a podcast you're gonna love It's called acquired and I go what is he goes? It's like the back stories of these like of all great tech acquisitions Like how it all went down they go into like all the nerdy details and then I binged you guys for like six days straight And so that was that's how I kind of first got into it a couple years ago So welcome to the show David and Ben. Thank you. We did a super fun crossover with you a couple years ago now But it was just was Sean Sam you were off travel in the world doing amazing things Well, that's what he said. He was like you're probably do something amazing. I was like probably just like a doctor's appointment Yeah, you guys have totally come up since then the I mean you were big back then, but that was like within the first couple months I think of you starting this and it's just been awesome to watch how far you've come That was kind of an R even though it was your four or five for us That was kind of our early days too because Sean you're right that we were mostly about acquisitions at that point And we talked about the Bibo acquisition as part of the episode and now we do these like three four hour entire You know history and strategy of a company regardless of whether there was a transaction, but Yeah, that that feels like I don't know the funny thing about exponential growth is it feels like a lifetime ago all the time I always think about that like when you pick a niche and then you kind of are gonna run out But the niche can get you somewhere So for example, I was thinking about this with coffees illa the YouTube guy who Exposes people scams and I'm like and then he did one the other day that was like He DMed a celebrity to promote some NFT thing like hey, we'll pay you to promote the cent of teething and like the white paper Said like this shit to scam or whatever, but he didn't read it obviously just promoted it He's like ah scamer and I'm like, but you kind of entrapment like you You're running out of people to like to cover here you have to not create scammers like I don't think that like I'll be Back in the day exactly, but like that wasn't his original stick, but I was like yeah, you're not gonna like you're trying to be on this YouTube once a week treadmill and There's not once a week gonna be a giant Logan Paul like celebrity name did this bad thing and I'm gonna be the exposure It's like what are you gonna do next Tuesday? There's not like this isn't that that current But you guys did a good job of switching it up people said that to us Sean like oh, you're gonna run ideas And I was like yeah, we might but then it's just kind of like morphed into like us saying a lot of like it's like people are When I someone yesterday was like what's your podcast about I was like well the name's pretty bad It's definitely a lot about business, but we also make a lot of horrible jokes too so people kind of like it for that reason Yeah, I've been thinking about this a lot your niche earns you the right to exist, but it's in media, but it's your You're sort of demeanor and you're the way that you look at the world that then gives you license to expand from there So like David my friend It's your friend. There we go I just think if David and I started with like we're a podcast that talks about businesses It's like cool next, but if you like pitch people on really specifically what they're what you like the job to be done of your show and their life is Then you can sort of like expand and explore from there, right like Ben Ben should have been producer Ben should have been like you know You know more men's taking over the world started with the Mormon community then expanded from there I remember talking to the guys from wait but why that great blog yeah, and This guy wait guys is there a team is it's not just him. It's Tim and then it's his childhood friend Andrew who does like the back end all the business stuff They have a really interesting business. They like acquire Companies that are completely unrelated to wait but why like that's how they make their money and then they They really like fun like that's kind of the the model, but I was asking about content Because I was like you know, I admire wait but why so tell me about this and I was like you know I'm trying to figure this out. I kind of like to talk about this and I kind of like to talk about this and he's like You need your like your flagship franchise and you do your franchise and then people will love that franchise But they'll also love you and they'll you'll earn the right to talk to them about like oh you want to talk about like mindset stuff Cool, but unless you think mindset is the right place to start Wait earn the the trust on the business side and then say by the way Here's my mindset stuff and then you'll get some percentage of people to cross over and then a new audience there too You just keep launching new franchises after that. It's so it's also like the we even you guys you know You started several years after us, but like I think you still were and I think when did you guys start? Three years ago, honey Night September of 2019 I think or Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we were 2015 but even in 29 like it was still kind of early Usch enough days in podcasting that like the medium was the mainstream portion of podcasting meeting was still Early enough that people were looking for new stuff and like that I think has changed now in a pretty big way The way that it started was basically like I was in Austin or somewhere as living in San Francisco at time and Shawn texted me and he was like hey, I have an idea for a podcast. Here's the pilot. Do you guys want it? Does hustle want to be the publisher and I listened to it and I like I just listened to the intro and I was like Yeah, we're in let's just air this exact one next week and we'll start by the way that that was a little bit of a fib I basically told you I was like hey, you know Why don't you do podcasts and say I was like like I got to hire somebody to do it. I don't know We focus on this email thing. I was like well. I got a podcast. I'm gonna do a podcast Will you be the publishers like and I was like I'm already I knew that To seal the deal I needed to send him a file, but I hadn't recorded yet So I go I already did the first episode You want to like take a listen to it and then I like just go sit on messenger for 24 hours So I could go record the episode then came back was like oh my bad here's the file So there really wasn't a first message you but I was like I got the vibe that if this is good if I get like a good first 35 seconds This is done and so that's what I went and did yeah, and we were like we're in and then he did it his way It was called my first million because it was like first million users revenue whatever and it was great It was great as it was but like there was one time like three months in where a guest didn't show up and he was like I booked the space You just want to come and like talk and I was like I guess and we did that and then it kind of like did well But like our the first episode he did by himself it got 65,000 downloads and we were like do podcasting Podcasts easy. This is gonna be awesome And then over the next 12 months it basically went down to like as low as like maybe 10 or 15,000 and then since then It's basically just been a slow grind now we're anywhere from a hundred to 200,000 per episode if you include the YouTube our YouTube is it's pretty weak. It's like 20 to 50,000 20 to 100,000 and then the RSS feed which is like iTunes and all that stuff that's Maybe a hundred or something like that What where you guys at because like no one talks about this stuff like whenever you Google I remember we are googling like how do we get to a hundred thousand downloads but Everyone out there was like here's how you get your first thousand first 10,000 I was like okay, but like how do we get bigger? We're we're almost the exact same scale with a very different journey I mean every journey is unique on this stuff. So our Episodes get about 200,000 downloads listens whatever you want to call it Which is interesting because Spotify has become so much more of the market now per episode but Unlike you guys we do like one episode a month you know one to two episodes a month and they're really really long so we Have with a few exceptions that we can talk about we've never had like kind of big spike viral, you know break out moments It's been a you know eight year journey from like zero up to that We don't really have spikes like there's spiky stuff, but it's not like a true like virality moment and interesting So one thing that's interesting about content and media is everybody measures the number nobody measures the quality because the quality is way harder to Understand, but clearly there's a difference between 200,000 people listening to an episode of acquired Versus 200,000 views on a TikTok. Okay, we get that because it's kind of short verse long But even if it was a podcast about sports versus a podcast about business acquisitions the type of people that are going to listen to your thing Or just inherently more valuable Have you guys thought about that seen that do you guys? I feel like I mean that's the whole that is the whole business not that we started or do this for the business side Although it's become a great business that is the whole business side and also on the content side too like we made we started doing this For us to learn and then we're like well who you know would also want to learn for the people like us and That's kind of who we make it for like so we struggle with YouTube with TikTok with Twitter Like we're not good on any of those other platforms even though we do atomize content and do it now Because like we don't it's just not kind of how we designed it the show and to ground it 40% of acquired listeners are C level or VP level executives 23% are currently founders 12% were previously founders and if you break down by job 17% are engineers 15% are actively CEOs today and 12% are product managers and so like the whole Business for us and David's point it didn't start as a business, but where we are today is like I Don't really want millions of listeners. I want acquired to like kind of slow its growth But saturate the niche that we're in because I think it's the most valuable audience in the world And I don't know exactly what that leads to but like all the conversations David and I get to have with our listeners Because of who they are are like super fascinating Well, what will it lead to so like you know you do you you can probably make a great living off of just the advertising But I'm looking at your site. You don't sell anything What's it gonna lead to well? We do have merch This is my kez is hoodie. Yeah with David email who's on our kez's team is a Become a good friend and is an acquired listener and he hooked me up with this this hoodie rocks Yeah, I said to picture to our merch purse. I screenshot it And I had that moment where I was like you know that thing we're on a zoom call I don't know if you guys do this, but you screenshot and it's like makes the really loud-ass sound of like a Screenshot has been taken and then you got to like address it like it was a fart during the during the call I'm really worried that when I say I'm doing that thing on every slide of my This is a total digression and we'll come back to it, but fourth wall Makes there so my kez is an investor in fourth wall Walker Williams the founder. He was the founder of T-spring Awesome guy. We've got the know him. We're talking to them now. I think yeah, yeah, yeah They are great and they made this fully custom for my kez and it's it's the best being what's his name brownlee? Is that a same KBHD? Yeah, the the you I mean you said it's first name like he's Oprah like you know I'll take a basic I think he's that guy. Well, he has like 20 million YouTube subscribe I mean, I just know him as like the guy who interviews reviews Tech but he also like has interviewed Tesla He'll Elon and all these like great guys. I mean, he's cool. Let's they've come on this podcast There I don't know them that there's podcast The show into in my mind. He's also the craziest thing is like as if it wasn't enough to operate this like Pretty large-scale TV production studio at this point as a as a youtuber He's also like one of the best ultimate frisbee players in the world. Oh really? Yeah, he's a professional ultimate frisbee player as well I can see that I can see that that's a that's a very obvious crossover Do you know so like when we'll just talk real insider baseball for a second and then we'll move on but with podcasting a lot of people Ask us how to start it and stuff like that and I'm like I don't know how to grow it It's quite challenging, but what I've really enjoyed getting to know is like Andrew Huberman I'm you know I'm acquaintances been our friends friends with him really but like we'll chat everyone's while and he's like I like on spot We see each other with our shirts off, but we I mean I wouldn't call each other friends, but We've sonnet together. This is a say of you like oh, I was probably at a doctor's appointment for like your life is just like I listen to you guys I'm like wow No, bro, I like he was he was on our he was on our pod so like I know I'm like an hour plus like five text messages exchange So like that's at the extent that I know him But he I think there if you look at Spotify when he releases an episode It's typically the most popular on the charts and I think they're in the million mark million per episode which is how we like to measure it is there anyone else in the business category that's in the 200 five I mean all in's probably 400 maybe 500,000 Do you know like how big do you have to be be some of the biggest of course there's Dave Ramsey He's he's in a whole different category. Yeah, it's funny. It depends because like business kind of gets lumped in with all these other like personal finance type categories But I think in our ilk Yeah, they should make it separate the best I'm not getting category and move Dave Ramsey's ass over there. Yeah, yeah You know and it's it's all into like has been an amazing breakout. They've become more of a mainstream news and political show I mean they still talk tech and business, but That I think is a lot of their audience and they're huge now, but yeah our category. I would say like Invest like the best probably is most directly comparable in terms of size and audience makeup also founders and David Sennra Who's he's part of the colossus network with Patrick? Well Jason's other show this we can start up that we go on all the time But Logan Bartlett has a much smaller audience because he's much newer, but like a plus gas and really I mean I think he's he's got the most valuable niche of niche in terms of the people who listen to his show why because of VCs It's like Silicon Valley insiders for lack of a better. I mean that's VCs its founders, but I think like his interviews I was feeling like he pulls out valuable Small boy stuff right there. Let me say let me ask you a different question that I've actually never so so you so David That's something to say I can go which is kind of like the paraphrase would be we made the podcast for people like us or we made the podcast that we would want to listen to is that fair to kind of Summarize your position David 100% and I feel like that with this podcast I Started the milk road that way, but it quickly transformed into like crypto news, which is actually not what I actually People know this I've said I don't read or consume the news. So it's really funny that we made a news Like thing I got it big and then sold it but like truthfully it didn't end up becoming the thing that like I made this for me for people like me out there Sam do you Subscribe to that like I guess like in theory You could say the best thing to do is to scratch your own itch to build the product you want be you know Make it for people like you then you're not guessing But then in practice sometimes you know the mass market is not where you're at and you go for that So what say I'm what you're taking on that? I think we it started MFM started that way and is mostly that way Every once in a while, you know Sean will be like we need more views. Let's like get this guest and Sometimes we give into it sometimes we don't the hustle started out because I liked the news and then about a two years in I was like I don't care about the news anymore, but this is my job. So I'm gonna keep doing it I Don't I don't I listen to zero business podcasts now I basically only listen to like crime and fiction and things like that And so I don't listen to business podcasts anymore, but I think this podcast has mostly stayed of which like who what do I want to do What is Sean what do we want to talk about? Yeah, it's mostly stayed that way But we do like have to fight like I was messaging Sean like this This last night and I was like dude we need to be stricter about our guests because we've had like a bunch of people Like who asked to come on and we're like yeah, they're huge and I'm like well Yeah, I don't give a shit about this person. I don't like I don't I wouldn't want to have like if this person invited me over for dinner I wouldn't be excited and so we definitely have to fight that I would assume you know this is We're realizing that it's the case for so though it's different because we tell stories, but um for you guys I would like the reason your audience is here is for you, right? Like it's not for you guess right? Yeah, I think sometimes though the the guests you know I basically told Sam I said there's three three or four types of guests for the here's the four that I think There's the people that are like us and they're just bringing a different like flavor or new fresh ideas so like for example When you guys first came on you guys you got the stick you knew what we do on this podcast I remember you guys came with a bunch of business ideas. You're like oh this Airbnb Wi-Fi network That's like you know my god. You remember even the idea. Yeah, so this is our face that idea came back to me Right, I got like this some people have photographic memory. I have an idea memory. I can remember any idea So that was like you guys got the stick so you came on you brought ideas, which is great because the audience loves that Steph Smith is a great example of this she comes on she brings ideas people like her even though she's not the big name You know famous OC of X. She does an amazing job. So that's like number one number two is basically like they are the big name So somebody who a bunch of people are gonna click on it might bring new audience like your legit famous in some way You had a pump on recently. Yeah, well how he would be three which is internet famous. It was like legit famous It's like you know they're they've that kind of like outside my pairs Hilton or something Yeah, like they don't have a podcast or they don't have a newsletter. They don't have like an internet community They're just like famous famous then there's your internet famous and the last one is Personal like we want to nerd out with them. And so that would be like like Ariel Hohani Yeah, we had Ariel Hohani on like I don't know how much of our audience cared about that But I cared I wanted to have that conversation and we've had you know Sam was like oh this guy can write out is awesome He's like this 50-year-old like marathon record breaker butt guy like I just want to talk to him and it's like great Let's do that. So it's kind of like we are gonna be so into the conversation and we are sure that this person is interesting to us It'll be interesting to some portion of the audience and so it's like to us those are the four and I think the one you get tripped up on the most is Just the the legit famous person because they they don't actually listen to God They may not bring bring the juice and it's almost like the expectations are high and you almost disappoint because it's like oh All right, well, that was kind of a lame conversation with that person And they don't have any of their own distribution the nice thing about internet famous is at least they can help distribute the content But real regular famous people it's like unless they're getting put in people magazine or cast in the latest movie They actually have no way to reach an audience directly. Yeah, you know who does that for us is darmash the founder of HubSpot Every time he comes on he get his episodes get really popular and he's always doing he is popular and his content is great And also he always does some internet marketing stuff where he kills it. He kills it for us every time That's that's the best kind of guest that'll come on and promote right and he pays the bills too So he's the sponsor that receives the guest he drives the girl. Yeah It's a mess come on acquired the crazy thing we notice about guests recently just looking at our analytics and the the two things and both of them are true 100% of the time without fail one Every single time we set a new episode record It is an episode that is like just David and I doing Nintendo LVMH Berkshire Hathaway like our canonical three-hour format and And two every single time we have a guest on it is Less listened to than our previous episode. Yeah, right. Just saying Just last question is how do you guys prepare for that? You just like both read the same book and take notes and then just tell story We mostly read different stuff, but we've kind of architected. I mean this is our like our Differentiation as a show which is so anti all the rules of podcasting But I think is what makes us special is we have carved out that like we can take a month in our lives and Do you know it's kind of like if you're writing a term paper in college like we can do the research Independently each of us on a company on a topic and then we come together and it's like a I don't know It's like a thesis defense or something that we do and the goal is like between the two of us to have basically consumed every Piece of content on the company like every other podcast that's ever been done all the big books That have been written all the talks given by the founder try and find a bunch of weird stuff like talks given at industry conferences That have low view counts on YouTube Obviously read all the sources of all of the Wikipedia page for the companies It's basically like no one should be able to DM us after the episode and be like oh did you did you see this? Important piece of information on the company. We want to always be like defensively No, we have consumed everything about this company and I think like I think the magic is that like if we If the output of that were a term paper it would be really boring and nobody would read it But because the output of that is Ben and I is really good friends like talking about it like that kind of makes it magical Yeah, the phrase we've been noodling on is conversational audiobooks. Oh, that's cool to describe what it is Are there any odd commonalities that you've seen amongst like the savages that you've done stories on? So for example bed Wilson has you know, he does How to think over the world and it's historical figures and he's like you know We are John Rockefeller Edison not and Napoleon a bunch of these other people They ate really lightly like they didn't eat a ton of food because they said that when they over ate They felt brain fog and about for a bunch of different reasons. Are there any strange commonalities that you've found amongst like these Conquerors of the world Well, we talk more about companies than we do about people like Ben and David center over at Founders or companies. Yeah, or companies I mean, it's the classic like being contrarian and right and you have to be both contrarian and right But the people that were studying in the companies that were studying are such extreme outliers like there's such the There forced interdivisions from the mean in terms of like how did a company do and so they Were there sort of like an end of one like there's one TSMC in the world There's one LVMH who owns all the most valuable luxury brands except Hermes and It sort of happens in a unique way every time and so I guess the the biggest takeaway for me is like It usually is the founder doing something that like literally everybody else had left for dead And when I say that I mean like Bernard Arnog going and buying Christian Dior from the French government out of bankruptcy in when was that the 80s David? 80s. Yeah, or like literally no one else was bidding on this like dead asset or The example for starting TSMC is like Zero other people thought that you should be starting a foundry when you have no chip IP to make other people's chip designs Like that was there was zero other people that thought that was a big one like there is no There is no formula every story is unique, but a big big category is like something that has been left for dead But like sometimes it's inventing something new whole cloth, but like really big category is like oh this thing is over and David Nintendo yeah, Nintendo Google The game crash of of 1983 like the market for video games in the United States went from three billion dollars to 100 million dollars over the course of two years Everybody was running screaming from the industry and they thought oh video games were a fad and it's over And then you have Nintendo that comes in launches the NES and then within five years has 95% market share And has grown the industry back to a three billion dollar industry. It's these like nut job bets Has that like given you guys any confidence to succeed? You think like because I talked to all these awesome people and like we'll talk to there There are a handful of people and I said this a bunch. There's a handful of people who we talk to and we say oh You're definitely like significantly smarter than we are Or you're you're a significant you have this part that's more significant than us And then there's other people who will talk to that are worth hundreds of millions or billions of dollars and it's like well You're not like 20 times smarter than us even though you're 20 times richer But like you might be a little bit or sometimes a little bit less and that's given us confidence at least me for sure Because I'm like oh you definitely are insecure you Question yourself you duck yourself, but you still went through with it. It's a good question Like I know how to be contrarian. I'm not sure I know how to be right. Yeah We're halfway there baby We know how to make everyone tells you you should make short podcasts that release every single week And you should have guests on to help build your audience and we do basically none of those things And everything that has worked for us is doing the exact opposite of those And so does that mean keep doing the opposite of every piece of advice everyone gives you because that's the path of success I don't think so But if we overfit to the data that we've observed so far That is what it would look like and so I'm hesitant to like keep being contrarian for the sense of being contrarian But I think that the important part that comes with this is like having a Interative feedback loop with your customers or in our case with our listeners to understand like What makes you love this and how do we lean harder into that and and sort of shut out General advice and pay more attention to like The things our customers are expressing by the way. I picked up a little poker tell on People who are on contract. How do you tell a real contrarian versus a wannabe contrarian? This is a little hotel. I picked up over time. Which is yeah, yeah In the tech world, I think because of Peter teal There's a like kind of like real sex appeal to that is to say should be contrarian and you put it your Twitter bio You're probably not exactly same with polymath. Yeah polymaths another one of them As being more visionary as being as being Sam have joked about like or like if you're an engineer being like slightly on the spectrum It's like oh, yeah, that's another indicator of success. It's like here we go So the one that is I think a tell when it comes to being contrarian is how excited are you that you have this contrarian idea because That shows people who are contrarian for the sake of being contrarian meaning that they're really excited to tell you How they think everybody else thinks a but it's actually be Whereas the real people I've seen that are contrarian they just see a And they're almost like I'm confused why people don't think a a is clearly right um They're they don't spend time trying to like convince the whole world of it like you know If they're asked they tell the truth and then when people react in a big way like oh man I can't believe you think that they're like I can't believe you don't think that It just seems like the truth to them and so that's what I've noticed is like if you if you watch old videos of like You know Peter teal talking or like I think biology is somebody who's like this today They sp they they're happy to Explain their point of view and they explain it like this is just what's gonna happen or this is what I believe to be true but they don't um Get high on the idea of Of being contrarian is a subtle difference as much people I've met in real life that that I kind of I've noticed this on It's hard to explain, but you'll see next time you kind of run into somebody who's over eager and over excited About the fact that they have this contrarian opinion. It's they're kind of just performing socially versus they actually believe that It reminds me a lot of um, it's like we all know this guy or girl who likes the idea of a relationship more than they like their current relationship And they're they're very excited to like have this particular lifestyle and you can sort of tell you're into that New lifestyle you have more than the person you're actually with right So did you want a boyfriend or did you want that right like do who did you actually want here? Uh, yeah, let me tell a story interesting though like oh Hey, go as you can tell one on the thing sam you talked about like what are the interesting success patterns um It reminded me of an experience I had Uh, while back I went to China When I was maybe 21 years old and got to go to the alibaba like alibaba flew out of entrepreneurs to go like meet with It was supposed to be jack mob, but we ended up meeting with this guy David way who's like their jack mob's right hand man He was the guy who was running alibaba at the time and I didn't even know what alibaba was like alibaba was a big deal Like now I'm now I'm like now I would have taken that really seriously I had no idea who they were at the time and we get there and Somebody asked him this question they raise her hand they go what do you think is the most important things for success Uh for the success of a company you alibaba is a multi-billion dollar company um, you know what what made it successful and he goes um He goes models for success are misleading they cannot be copied due to the like unique combination of luck Timing all these other things, but he goes, but what you can ask me is a better question Which is what are the common keys to failure and he goes they're always the same And he goes we study the the things that lead to failure and just tried to avoid those so he goes uh So you know, I leaned in I was like, well, please blow my mind sir go ahead. Yeah, and he's like um He goes there's three things that lead to failure money plans of technology He goes so our plan was no money no plans no technology I go what and like this crazy because like a tech company worth like 40 billion dollars like what are you talking about? And he goes hey, so he goes all right here we go money money makes people stupid And when problems come up their first instinct becomes throw money at it rather than attacking it with creativity So basically way back when google was uh Google was like dominating with ad words And so they're the people at alibaba like we need to make our version of ad words And he goes you know, this is no ordinance like you know building this type of ad network is not like super simple Um he goes to jack ma cut a check for $250,000 to build this project and let team like laugh like You're you're missing three zeros on the back of this like what are you talking about 240k And he goes that's how much money it took me to start alibaba Um like I had less than that starting the whole company So if you need more than that for a feature we're doing it wrong And he's like they're like well, how are we supposed to do this he goes do exactly what I did with alibaba He's like see moved 19 people into his apartment where he had started all the music that's your office. Yep. You're gonna work there He's like you need uh servers to run the ad servers Cool go find some like go get some used junk servers and like re rig them get them refurbished them and make them work And they go but there's no redundancy he goes if you're building Within where you need redundancy like we've we've done this wrong right like uh, you know This is you need to build build this so that it works without redundancy first And um, and so he did that for that was that was the no money then he's like no technology. He's like Everybody wants to call us a tech company. No, we are a service company We're here to serve our users if you don't think of yourself like you're in the service industry You're in the wrong industry and then his last one was planned and it's like all right well, dude. How'd you do this like? Why no plans why are plans bad he goes Um, he goes well, you know you guys are 50 young entrepreneurs who got flown out here to do this I assume in America you guys have done something good. Otherwise, why would we have picked you he goes How many of you are doing what you initially planned to do? And like nobody's hand went up and he's like exactly and he goes uh plan as all plans are fine But they always change this the only thing we know about plans the mission never waivers Sometimes you'll need a plan to get others to believe But remember you should not believe that plan you should follow your gut and adapt constantly to the circumstances Don't follow the plan you wrote when you started follow your mission follow your vision follow the why If you do that you will be successful and I was like Did you did you did you right all this down? Yeah, I'm like you really know, so So many years ago after that after that event I wrote I tried to write a book in like two weeks and I wrote half of it and so this was one of my chapters in that book Uh, and I just found the PDF on my computer when you were talking about Awesome. That's hilarious. That's amazing that you did that because that was a year ago What a great story. It's so applicable. I love that that's applicable to Ali Baba Uh, just as much as like I'm thinking about you guys and us and like how we started the conversation like yeah We had no money. We had I guess we had technology in that like podcasting and the internet is inherent But one of us were like we're building a tech company or we're building a product. It was like no It's like exactly We know play Like it's funny like I We see a lot. I'm sure you guys do too People come to us like oh, how do I start a podcast? I was our successful podcast We see like big companies come the like offline celebrities that want to start podcasts. It's like they come with money technology and a play I didn't like It's not how it's good to work that it's gonna. So you guys probably see this with your episodes like how many of them started doing What they're doing like I don't know I haven't listened to all the recent ones, but like I don't know Was Nintendo what we think of Nintendo today or did it start? Nintendo was making wait wait real quick. Do either of you know the origin story of Nintendo or have a guess at how old Nintendo is I think it's really I remember reading it once I don't I don't remember I'll talk my head But it was is it like Sony over there like selling rice or something and then that now they're who they are It's even better. Yeah, it's a hundred and thirty-year-old company Yeah started in about 1890 and 89 I think yeah and their original business was making Hana Fuda cards Which is the Japanese version of US playing cards but US playing cards were illegal to import like because people from the US could It was not legal to be in the country and David I think you at this point they literally would execute you Yeah, well I didn't take it to start just right after this But before the matey restoration like Japan went through this multi-hundred-year period of strict isolationism where like You would be executed if you were a foreigner and you entered the country Likewise, if you were a Japanese person and you left the country and came back you would also be executed But like playing cards are this thing that like has product market fits there like how do we know? They like playing cards universal human need So it literally started making Hana Fuda cards and their distribution channel was through the Yakuza to illegal casinos Yeah, Yakuza being like the mafia The Japanese mafia yeah, yeah, they started making these playing cards and like a very small part of the market was like Oh, you have a pack of playing cards in your house, but just like Everywhere else in the world the market is casinos because you use a fresh deck for each hand so that there's no cheating And yeah, so Nintendo is like deeply embedded with the Yakuza And for like 60 years this was their business before they started making toys Wow, and then what some like visionary within the company was like Hey, there's this new thing is cool. Crazy Family like really tragedy of like this cycle of death and Just like terrible parenting in the past down to forge generations of the same family And actually not the same family because they had no sons and they needed sons So they were marrying their daughters off to people who could take over the business. Yeah, exactly And uh one of these guys was basically just like so pissed off it like the family legacy That uh, this is Roshi Yamaguchi who started the modern Nintendo Uh, he was like I didn't want to diversify the business. I want to get out of this and he did a partnership with Disney In 1959. Yeah, 1959. He Nintendo brought Disney and Disney IP into Japan post-World War II Uh, I literally have the cards toys Some acquired fans sent them to me. Oh wow started words Yeah, and then they brought toys and then they started making their own toys Because they had like lock on the retail distributors Uh, yeah, so started his cards and they were like then they went to all these uh Retailers, they were like oh you want the Disney products. You're gonna take our products too Jiminy cricket as the Joker Jiminy cricket as the Joker and Mickey Mouse golfing on this old school card deck. That's amazing That's like you got to wear that with you got to wear gloves if you're gonna touch that or something. It's like a seriously ancient artifact This data is wrong every freaking time Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated. Whoa. I can see the client's whole history calls support tickets emails And here's a test from three days ago. I totally missed HubSpot grow better Can I ask you guys a couple rapid fire questions? About some of the companies that you've you've discussed number one Which company of all of everyone that you Went over would you want to own like which which what's the one that you envy? Well, that way those are two different questions Which would you want to like own the stock of and which do you want or which do you want to like uh Be an investor in or actually own the company. Yeah. Yeah the second actually own and which one do you envy most? Actually own I think is the NFL Yeah, I think that has the most Like durable franchise and own is always a funny question because what's your entry price like do I have to buy stuff at today's prices or But if I think about sort of like durability of the asset and I sort of ignore Um where things are trading and what market values today The NFL is Seven layers of entrenched in our society and to be an American at this point means to have the NFL in your life and They also David you pointed this out on our episode everyone thinks it's really cute to like stack rank all the the media franchises Marvel's worth this and you know all the way at the top of the charts Pokemon's worth this but like the NFL is worth so much more than any of those The NFL TV contract alone is $12 billion a year the most recent set of rights. They personaled up was like I always knew uh now it's like 18 or 19 billion a year I think Something insane, but then they recently signed a 10-year deal. So it's like a 150 billion dollar deal just for the TV NFL has all the franchises, but is there basically like this like top level hold co that owns like the media rights and the franchise It's communist capitalism. They all own it all together, but the NFL unlike any of the other leagues out there Is this there's starting to be a few little cracks in this, but like they negotiate with the TV contracts and now all the streaming and everything unified as a league So there's no like you know like how the Yankees have the yes network like their own tv network None of that in the NFL. It's all together and it's all equal revenue shit. Have you guys done an episode on MLBAM? Yes, we did way back What's actually the first investment before the acquisition? These guys can tell you that this the full version their accurate version. I'll give you the dumb version which is The major league baseball had created a tech like a tech Team basically a tech company inside of major league baseball co-owned by like the teams And the good job was like hey like people are trying to listen to this on the radio We need to like do digital streaming on the e-t-ro because when e-t-ro came over from Japan They needed to stream over that guy's am each ro Suzuki the guy who played on the mariners Yeah, it was like a phenomenon and so people in Japan wanted to watch or lit it watch wasn't even an option I think it was listened to the games So they needed digital internet streaming audio and so they built this thing They started offering it and then each team would use it. So it was like oh each team Co-funded it so they would like cut a check and then that developed technology for all of them But then they ended up spinning it out as a multi-billion dollar company because they're the best at video streaming now Like they stream if you want to watch a game of thrones. It's MLB AM's video tech That streams game of thrones so that when whatever 10 million people click play as soon as the episode drops That like the thing doesn't crash which is kind of an you know, it's an amazing thing And so that like spin out like who would have ever thought like one of the big tech companies You know unicorn tech companies came out of like this baseball co-op co-funded thing is that kind of a insane story And it was in like 2004 or something that they started working on it They had a five-year head start on having the insight that this infrastructure was going to be important over Netflix Like everyone thinks like oh Netflix, you know is in with the ISPs and it's the best in the world that this like BAM tech was doing that five years earlier Yeah, and then I'm getting acquired by Disney and like is a huge part of Yes-BN streaming like all the Yes-BN plus plus Disney plus like it's it's crazy the history is there is there a certain founder CEO leader who you would rank as The the person you'd least want to compete against Whether they're whether historical or modern Here's another one phrasing that I heard that like there's somebody signed with the NFL draft and there's like four QBs That we're competing and they're like wow this guy's got good arm. This guy's good at running This guy's a great leader right up blah blah And then this guy asked this question. I love to go's let's say they all went on vacation and they rented a car and they're walking out to the to the Jeep Who do they throw the keys to to drive this car is like who's the leader who's the alpha amongst alphas It amongst these QB so so who's that in the CEO? I think we got to say Jensen Jensen along from Nvidia like he's such a bad ass So like I don't know anything about Nvidia because I just know it's a killer stock So Nvidia makes the chips that are in computers and and does it involves display like you get like a Nvidia Yeah, is that right? Yeah, yeah Is is in their sort of third major actor company? Yeah, but loosely defined as like they popularized the idea of a GPU in addition to the CPU and originally the use case was for video games in the 90s And you know, I think everyone who ever built PCs remembers like oh man I got to get this hot new GPU to slide in the card because it's better than integrated graphics thing from Intel um, and so that was sort of their market for a while and uh it was all about gaming PCs but then Like again five six seven years before the rest of the market Jensen basically made this bet Where he saw researchers using the the GPUs the gaming graphics They're like going to best by and buying a bunch of Nvidia graphics cards to do AI research And he was like I think we should lean really heavily into this and so he spent billions of of dollars and thousands of headcount For five years to build up this like whole software stack called kuda That if AI and ML was going to become a thing then people were going to use kuda to develop Exclusively on Nvidia's hardware And so by the time it did become a thing like five years ago And video had this enormous moat around it as being the platform to develop AI on and it just so happened that The technology this like super heavy parallel processing matrix math technology that makes gaming graphics chips work is the very same math that powers What ML is all based on but other than so in video for the listener It's I just like it up. It's a six certain fifty billion dollar company. So one of the I don't know top 20 30 biggest business in the world But other than him being correct What makes this person like a savage or That they're just like there's so many points in history like he is a 19 wives Let me know he actually he's a total family man. He's been married to the same person he met in college of two kids like he's But like he's got a giant tattoo of the company's logo on his shoulder Uh, he wears leather jackets. He drives really fast cars. He's like He's basically like Elon Except not like Like right like he's right and like leads with kindness and uh, but like he I mean there like in each phase of the company the absolute rational thing to do was like Basically shut it down and like you know like talk about being left for dead like this company was left for dead Multiple times and he's built like just single handedly this dude Created the AI revolution that we are in today like Nvidia and kuda is essentially like you can think about it as like the android plus iOS of AI Like no Nvidia and no kuda no decision by Jensen to do this. We are not living in the world. We're living in today Which I'm gonna give you a different answer for the thing you're actually looking for which is like who is the most savage Person to compete against that answer is Bernard Arno from LVMH. So rich man the world today Uh, and he got there not by being the founder of a business that happened to have product market fit and appreciated wildly It's because of his deal prowess and The way that he was able to effectively outsmart the rest of the market to Hoover up 70 of the the Histories most important and trusted brands into one umbrella and then find leverage in every single thing He does to expand the empire Is there anyone who you think is Overrated who's on a pedestal and you think I don't think that person's that great. I think uh it worked out I think they're overrated Very unacquired question Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Daven higher nice people. We are. We don't um well big a debt what would I like to talk about Uh damn person Uh are you gonna pick anyone, but somebody was like no, I think one that I like to talk about here is um I don't know the overrated is right, but like, I think a lot about it investing about There's this great about an quote not one of his most well-known ones, but um but it's something like you want to own a business that either even an idiot could run because someday someone will, you know? And I think about to me what that means is like you want to own a business, you want to invest in a business that like literally you cannot kill it. There's nothing you can do to stop this juggernaut. And to me that's Airbnb. And we talked about this a lot on that episode we did on Airbnb, but like it's just like the most amazing global network effect of all time. And literally like I don't, you know, this is my opinion, but I don't think there's anything that any manager could do to change the like to inflect the trajectory of that ship, you know? So my, I, I like, there's a long story. I don't feel like telling it, but I had a job at Airbnb when I was like 22 and I like dropped in school and moved out and then I got denied whatever. And so I didn't end up working there. And I got to interview with the founders and then years later my wife ended up working there and during work from home for COVID, Brian would give these talks every Thursday and we lived in a small apartment. So I like, and never would hear it. I think that I agree with you. It's a mark, once you have a marketplace that's working, it's hard to screw it up. eBay is doing a good job though, but I, you know, if it works like it's a good, it's a great thing. It's quite durable, but I would listen to Brian Chessie give these 30 minute like Thursday talks. That guy is bad to the bone. I read a little bit. I read the Walsh, the Walt Disney biography and he reminded me exactly of him. He is a, you know, like I think someone said there's a difference between a missionary and a mercenary. Mercenaries are hired guns who are ruthless, but missionaries, they, they really care about what they're doing. I sense that with him. That guy I think is, is, is a bit killer. I think that he's, people think of him as this nice guy of which I think he is. I think he's way, way more of a killer than people can credit for it and he's very wise. That he's a really good leader. But that's cool. I like Airbnb and I think it's cool that I agree that it probably would be hard to kill. And last question, which person who you covered would you would kick your ass physically? And you'd least want to have a physical confrontation with. I mean, actually, Jensen. Yeah. You think, you think you think so? Well, he's getting up here in age, but like, yeah, no, he like, he lifts. He's just like such a character. Well, I certainly, I mean, we're coming right off of Nintendo, but like, Hiroshi Yamuji back in the day, not because he was physically intimidating, but like, literally, like that man was in bed with the Yakuza. Oh, they, you're too not cross him. Oh, Doug Leoni. Yeah. I like we sat Dave and I walked in to interview Doug Leoni. It's a great story. And Doug Leoni's the founder of Sequoia. Yeah. Not a long time managing partner. Yeah, got it. One of a headhound show at one point of one of the best venture capital firms ever through Google and, you know, the true heyday of Sequoia, which yeah, or you could argue that was recently, but amazing era of Sequoia. And so we a lot of times like with guests, we'll get to like spend some time beforehand and get to know them and go out to dinner afterwards and build real relationship. And we like email or text and you guys know the drill. And so with Doug, we didn't communicate with him at all beforehand. It was all with some other lovely people at Sequoia. And we walk in, and we set up and someone walks in the room and then they go, okay, are you ready? And we were like, yep, and they were like, great, we'll go get Doug. Doug walks in. He sits down. He says, hello. Are we starting? And we're like, uh, yeah. So we hit record and we feel like so we did a whole episode. We finished recording. Doug goes, Doug just goes, great. Thank you so much. And he walks gets up and leaves the room. So every word that I've ever spoken with Doug Lee only except for like two or three is on the record in the episode that you can listen to in our podcast feed. And later his EA did come in and say, hey, Doug wanted to know if you guys had any feedback. He's always looking to get better and sort of like came in and chat it with us. But I was like, wow, that is a, that's a great business. I wanted to say she thank you. Um, he doesn't waste breath. So I was the assistant. The assistant just punched in the arm and gave you a rat rate that that's from Doug. He also had, uh, he has I think still to this day, the best well done acquired that was not uttered by Ben or me quoting somebody else from history. But the best live quote on acquired he was talking about, um, after the dot com crash when, uh, Sequoia was like kind of made this vow that no LP would lose money. Like they wouldn't take them all again fun. They would like work the portfolio companies. They don't take hours. Make sure that they have positive returns. And he said, uh, he's like Mike Moritz and I linked arms. All right. I wasn't, I think it was linked. I said, Mike Moritz and I decided that like, we would stay on there and we wouldn't flinch and you could burn cigarettes on our arms. And we would, we wouldn't take a molligan on these funds. They're like, damn. He also has kind of an accent, right? Like he's, uh, doesn't he? Yeah, he's got this Italian new. Five. Yeah, that's cool. Are there, are there any more of these like tough guys or tough women like that are out there now? I mean, when I hear that, it's, I always like, oh, that was a different generation. Uh, do they like, I don't like the only only nowadays. Yeah. You got it. You got like, now, yeah, well, Elon's tough. He ain't like tough, tough like Travis Frank. I think Frank Slutman is still like this. Yeah. And he's a giant breed though. Like, we do. He's more like, right? Yeah. Frank, my, my badge is not working to get into the office. He's still got teeth. Don't share. He's like, when you read that guy's book, you're like, all right. Yeah. This would be a pretty hardcore Boston work under. Yeah. It's totally a lost art though. Like, um, yeah, I don't, I don't think they make them like that anymore. Unfortunately. Yeah. Um, that's crazy. Before we go, do you guys have, uh, have any half-baked business ideas you wanted to share with the, uh, the My first million audience because that's what they love. Uh, yeah. Well, I loved this. So I have one that, uh, I was, we were actually kicking around, uh, together, bending me for a while. Um, but that we're not going to do, which is, I think, uh, you could actually start a corporate podcast agency. So an agency for companies to make their own podcast or external. Either one, uh, and my thesis on this is that, uh, for companies, uh, there is tremendous value to having a podcast, even if nobody listens. If people listen, like upside, but even if you, basically, you should just assume no one will listen because we have like, uh, there's so many great options. Why would I listen to a, a company's podcast, right? But it is an excuse to have relationship building conversations with customers and sales and business that basically, yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's sales enablement. Like once you have a conversation, you ever recorded, you publish it publicly, even if there's no organic audience, you can still link to that and you can send it to customers as like a lead nurturing thing of, oh, somebody else was in this position too. And they talked about why our product made their life better. Right. Yeah. Like, what do you have? It's own, uh, it's on some podcast. Yeah. Yeah. What do they charge for that? What are people charged for that? I know Ben, uh, Ben are Ben Ben Wilson. You used to look work at a, uh, is it mission.org band or no, it was Caspian, Caspian studios. And I think they do that for like, this idea, right? Like, how does, does this idea work or not really? What's the verdict on this one? Yes, it works. Yes. The customers are extremely price insensitive. So it's good. The margins are super high. Uh, we actually, like, combining the two things we just talked about, we made snowflakes podcast and Frank Sluitman was on it all the time. Oh, perfect. So it's, uh, it's a really good business. The one bad thing about it that's coming into effect right now is when recessions hit, it's the first thing to go, right? It's just like the margins are super good when times are good, but then when times are not. The ability of being like, Hey, can you send me the last 38 downloads numbers? And you're like, delete, delete the whole podcast. They're asking the question. Exactly. Like that. Yes. Yeah. What else you got? What else interests you at the moment? Ben, you got any, uh, or at least what deals are you seeing? Because you guys are investing. Are there any interesting deals that you're seeing or categories that you're seeing that you really like that don't start with the word AI? I mean, actually no. Like, and, and I think that's the, I think that is correct. Like I am one of these people that believes that, uh, you, yeah, saying AI, we invest in AI is a little bit of a silly thing these days because it's the same thing as 20 years ago saying we invest in software. As a VC, it's like, yeah, no shit. Like I think it's just going to be so quickly ubiquitous that like if companies aren't using AI in some capacity or starting to get a little bit like, what's a cool AI use case for company that you've, that you've seen invested in or run invested in whatever. Well, I'm by the way, I think Sean met with James Kerrier recently. And I think it was James on Twitter or maybe Sean used to hold us. You go, I've been pitched by 200 AI companies in the last quarter and I've invested in none because they're all weak or something like that. I did. So I am. It's interesting. I haven't invested in any either. Or I haven't invested. I'm lots of companies I've invested and have added AI stuff to their products. But I haven't invested in some like net new AI company. In part because I don't think AI is going to be the differentiation. And I don't think it's going to be defensible for the vast majority of companies. I think the value is going to come from and the moat is going to come from the same thing that always creates value and moats, which is like network effects with your customers or like a data moat where someone's already fully locked into your thing. And so they don't want to migrate because that would suck. And they have processes around using your thing. And so I sort of like I believe that an enormous amount of the value from AI will accrue to these foundational models. But you actually do have to be using the foundational models in your thing in order to be like table stakes in the next few years because everybody's going to expect all software to just behave magically. Right. Do you think and this will be the last question for me. Do you think that there's a world where you're going to sell acquired or do one of these Spotify deals or anything like that? Have you been approached? Good question. Yes, but not in like a not in not recently and not in a way that like not since we've become a real business. What could you get for it? You think like you know, I think we're trying to give him five million bucks what they said now. Oh wow. We would say that we would for sure say no to that. I don't like if we can talk about like I don't I would not be interested in having any conversations for you know less than in the order of like what you got like the hustle or morning brew or you know stuff like that. Yeah. 10s of millions. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I just think like the value of what we've built both as a business and revenue and our audience and our durability is you know, is in that category. I think it's very much an open question. Like it's gotten so much bigger than we ever imagined. How much farther can it go? Right. I'm curious how these things work. What would we trust our own underwriting more than an acquirer's underwriting because what has happened for us is it has doubled every single year for eight years basically no matter what we do. Like we can't make it grow faster or slower than that. We've got it. It's running business here. It's still done. Right. Yeah. It's it's cash generative. What have you guys built any businesses off the back of it? So that's yes. Well, you figured glow, David. No, I'm thinking kindergarten. So I have a fund on Angelist. I managed about 30 million dollars of capital on Angelist between two funds and four or five SPVs. And while I used to be a professional VC before going full-time on acquired and that certainly helps, all of that's because of acquired. And do you so you did that you did that fund anything else that you guys have done that you've launched off the back of it? Because what we found was that a podcast, like you said, it's very hard to make it grow faster than it's kind of like natural word of mouth, virality, interest, and like kind of the tam of that market. Like that Andrew Heberman's are rare. Normally it's a grind. Yeah. And even him, I don't think you could make it grow much faster or slower. Just like good execution is obviously the only thing you control. But like a lot of people can do good execution and their growth rate will be easier. You know, somewhat linear. You know, it's not going to like get much fat. The slope doesn't change that much. Do you, but the thing that I think what we found was that you could build businesses off the back of this audience, whether it's a fund or other products or services that can be more valuable than the ad revenue of the business of the podcast itself. Do you guys do that or think about that? Like Sean, well, Sean mentioned a company and they're like, oh, we just did a million in revenue. And he's like, oh, I gave a company a plug that I invested in. I was like, hey, I use it for this reason. Well, I was like, you know, an ad basically, but it wasn't meant to be an ad. I was just explaining how I use this thing. And they booked a million dollars of AR off of off of that, which was I'm pretty crazy. Yeah. So that happens to us all the time, which is why all of our sponsor deals are these like six figure very meaningful. And long term, we do these six month sponsorships. And most of our sponsors are now, you know, three, four, five seasons and like it works. And so the question is, is it more, is the right mode for us to operate in keep doing these big, deep sponsorship deals with companies for cash? Or do we try to start companies or find some company that's at an inflection point and say, you know, let's trade equity or I think we're pretty early in the thinking there because we're like, you know, we would have to, it would have to be really the right type of company that is a high LTV B2B SaaS business that's reaching founders and, and you know, CEOs and technical founders. And that would have to be the audience. Like, I don't think we're going to launch an energy drink brand and have that makes have that kind of pencil. But I don't know, we're open to the possibility. I think this also for us. I'm curious how you guys think about it because you are getting into this game. I at least, I don't want to speak for Ben. I don't want to run a company. I want to make tell stories and invest. So I don't really want to build products or manage teams. So I think it's likely that we'll continue going that route. I don't know. Ben has experience actually building things. So he may be a different. But this, this lets us benefit from the upside of companies using acquired as channel without us have to be involved in the muck of building that company. And maybe at some point that our desire will change there. But how do you guys have built companies? You guys are building products. Like, how you think about this? I've thought about it both ways. Like, I, I'm like you a little bit where I have the most fun when I get to just tell, you know, tell stories nerd out about stuff. Go learn new things and then come back with like go. I want to go down rabbit holes and then take that most interesting, you know, 1% of things that I found and shared on this podcast or on my newsletter. And that's that's what I like to do. That's sort of the highest enjoyment. But I also love money. And so I'm like, okay, cool. And I also like the thing I study is about how people make money and business and create wealth. And so I can't help myself but like apply some of the things that I learn, right? Like it's very hard to resist the urge to apply the things that you know once you know them. Yeah. And um, but then you got to go recruit to tea. Yeah. You got to play with every form you could do. So I invest both in startups as well as like cash flowing businesses like I'll buy, you know, 20, 30% of a cash flowing business that I think I can help through the audience or just through like, you know, being an entrepreneur for 15 years and like learning about stuff. The second thing would be starting a business. So I started the milk road off of the podcast. I think the podcast helped us get the ball rolling there. And then you know, I've launched the courses or things like that that just are ways to take the curiosity is like, oh, I learned a bunch of stuff. Could I teach it? And then and also thought about, you know, you know, so buying businesses, investing in startups, uh, doing, uh, building a startup alone or not doing any of them not being operational at all. Like I've played with kind of all of them over the past three years in different ways. Like we sold the milk road in part because okay, that business is working and we've got a great offer. But the best part of the offer was, oh, I don't have to operate any business anymore. If I do this, um, that's appealing to me. Whereas Sam just launched Hampton last week or I think was last week. We can. I saw congratulations. Thank you. I feel like you don't have to do sales for the next year based off of like, you know, the, the, the blitz that you were able to, to, to drum up across the pod, Twitter, everywhere that you tried to do, right? Like I mean, you could talk a little more about that. But seems like, yeah. So you crushed your demand side. Yeah. So basically in 2022 and 21, I was inspired by Sean. I was like, all right, fine. I'll invest a little while. And so I gave it like a six to 12 month try. And I was like, I hate investing. Um, I totally dislike it. I think maybe I could be pretty good at it. But I, it's not for me. I don't like taking a minority interest in things. That's, um, I personally like owning all of something and I think of myself a little bit as an artist sometimes with these companies. Like it's like my, I like to be creative. And that's kind of how I like to express myself. So I prefer that with. And so that's why I launched tampton was because I was like, this fits my interests. There, I have a competitive advantage here. And so when I announced it on the pod, we now have 5,000 people who applied. And we're like, and it, that's, it's cost $8,500 a year to join in. We're being very meticulous and very slow about who are adding. But that's very likely going to be a very, very large company, I think. We have a CEO, Jordan, who's amazing. But like we're not taking any outside capital. And I prefer, Sean likes to do lots of things. And I know a lot of people like to do that. Lots of things. And I know a lot of people who succeed really nicely with that. Me personally, I prefer, uh, focus in just doing one thing at a time because I, I don't, I just, my brain, it's really challenging for me to jump from thing to thing, like an investor needs to. And so I prefer like spending five, 10 years on something. And so I intend to start a company, maybe another one in the handful of years. I'm not sure rather than investing. I actually think that Sean's way of like doing cash flow businesses and owning a portion of them, that's actually the easier way I think to make wealth. I, I just don't find enjoyment on it. I'm a dopamine fiend and like seeing sales come in and like making decisions. I get like it's, it's my alcohol. I like it and drunk off that. How do you think about the business of the pod of my first million? So the podcast is owned by HubSpot and we get paid, if we get paid strictly of performance fee. And so when it kicks ass, which it has, we get paid good money as if we have had advertisers. And so, but HubSpot's been great. Like not one time have they ever censored us or said, Hey, you made a bad joke. Don't say that. And so it's been pretty good. It is there's definitely I wouldn't say complicated, but it's a new relationship that we're definitely trying to figure out of like what to do because frankly HubSpot's an awesome partner. But at the same time, if Sean and I bounce, they don't have shit. Right. So I think we're both both sides of that of that are trying to understand what we can do and how far we can push things. And we're definitely figuring that out. There are you have some and they're probably potentially more monetization options for the pod, right? Like how does that revenue get split up? Like YouTube ads. We just don't we turned off YouTube ads. We can't like if somebody wants a sponsor it, we don't write. So like we leave a lot of money on the table in that regard. But you get other benefits, right? So you got to like kind of write us out over time and be like, right? So yeah, like the benefit, the benefits that we have are basically we don't do any of the work. So we record and then it goes on the internet. That's a pro and a con because if we don't like how it's done, then it's like shit, we don't like that. Let's fix it. But as long as it's working well, it's awesome. We get paid without having to have any expenses. But then the flip side is shit, we have all these this advertiser interests and we know it works really well. Let's take more deals. And so I think there's a there's a world where we do come actually come to a compromise and we have more ads. But that's like it's a it's a conversation. Yeah. Is there is there a tension at all with you guys wanting to use the pod to do stuff that generates value for yourself that doesn't accrue back to the MFM pod like you launching businesses off it or is that no? They're great. They're great with that. And any revenue outside of the pod is 100% ours events, merch, whatever. But like, let's say let's say that they're like we're hiring a producer now because Ben's going to go full time on his new thing. Let's say let's yeah, congratulations, Ben. Let's say that they're moving slow. It's like, Hey guys, HubSpot hurry the hell up. You know, you're going way too slow. I got five friends right now who get higher. And so like there's tension there for things like that. Yeah. Well, probably all all the business active, all the stuff you guys are launching outside of the pod just brings attention back to the pod. Right. So like it's great. It's a way because how many yeah, people do you see on YouTube or TikTok or Twitter, wherever that are like, you know, basically these bit like business gurus or like, you know, advice guys. Right. And you hear the advice guys and you like click their bio and you're like, so what are you doing? What do you do? Oh, your career is giving advice. Okay. But where did you get that first hand knowledge? Do you have any battle scars? Like, oh, no, you're, you know, you're the bald barber. Oh, great. Like, you know, I'm not sure that I want and that's sort of I want that, right? So, so I think that's also helpful, right? Because like bald barber, by the way, chef's kiss. Thank you. Good job. I'm fast as my improv on the fly. I decided to take a few more risks of like, oh, tee up that I'm going to make the joke and see if my brain in that point five seconds could come up with something. And if I if I fall flat, you know, two out of three times, it's okay. That's still one one that I got even a blind squirrel finds it not my friend. So yeah, basically, I think it gets credibility, right? Like during the pod, you know, I built the milk road and sold it during like while the pod was live. So that adds some credibility during the pod. Sam launches Hampton. It's clearly going to be successful or already already off to a successful start. It gives the pod credibility. And I think that's why like, why does all of it work really well? Like, obviously, the good banter, they have good things to say. But I think a big part of it is like they bring a certain gravity to the room. They're participating in the story as it's on. Yeah, like the easiest way I swear to you is all in his billionaires talking about billionaire shit. And my first million, my first million is millionaires talking about me. And I've heard people like college kids come out be like, we're broke guys talking about broke guys shit. And that's like, all right, that's that's that's the way to go. But I think it adds credibility because there's a lot of people out there who will create content tell you about the next big thing. But they don't invest. They don't have skin in the game. They don't know actually what's going on. They'll tell you, you know, how to be successful and they're, you know, broken depressed. It's like, you got to be careful with who you listen to. It's like, I'd rather listen to somebody who's done it before than somebody who hasn't. It's just as simple as that. Yep. Yep. Which that I think is the whole unlock of podcasting that like is a problem with the traditional media industry. Like one of the, it wasn't explicitly in my mind when we started acquired, but like I'd gone to business school. I went to Stanford. I did my MBA there. It was a great experience. But like the classroom experience, like the professors, not the guests who had come in who had done stuff, but like the professors who were full-time academics. And then the cases that we would do just be like, you guys didn't do this shit. Like, why are you telling me about this? Like I want to hear from the people who did it. And so the journalists that cover the tech industry, it's like how many people go from being successful founders to entering the journalism industry and writing for a paper. Like, I see Michael, Michael Morowitz, by the way, Michael Morowitz, you know, Doug Leoni's partner. Yeah. Merit, yeah. Sorry, Moritz. He, uh, journalist turned billionaire. Yeah. And like those, those, those always middle there. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Those, uh, you know, journalist to VC. Once I went, but the reverse pipeline doesn't exist. So like, yeah, I always have to remind myself of this when I'm reading tech coverage. I'm like, okay, the very best ones of these people have immersed themselves in the operator founder communities to be able to like pick up the genus a qua and read between the lines of what certain things mean. Like Dan Primack is one of these types of people. But, you know, a, a junior journalist coming out of journalism school writing and picking up this beat, it's like, it's hard to say that that's a better way to learn what's going on than listening to people who are industry participants talking about what's going on. I remember once I went to a, um, journalist, uh, somebody who worked at TechCrunch, I went to their apartment in San Francisco. And I just like walked in and I looked around and I was like, this is the same apartment as like everybody I know right out of college has. And I was like, and then they have this pen and then they write on TechCrunch and then it looks like very different. But like, this is a person who's just a normal, they're a normal person who this is kind of like their first gig and they're covering something that they barely like really true. Honestly, they barely understand that doesn't mean they're not smart. It doesn't mean they don't have good intentions. But like, it's that thing where I forget the name of it. But it's like, if you read an article about a topic you actually know about in the newspaper, you're like, oh, this is, oh, okay, I see the limitations of how much stock I put into this. But when you read about a topic, you don't know, you're like, this is the truth. Oh, the New York Times is an expert. It's like, there is a, probably also an expert or something. It's like what it's called. Do you guys remember a few years ago when one of the, I think her name was Jen or something like that, one of the founders of Away Travel. Like, there was all these headlines saying like this woman created a toxic workplace that's horrible. You gotta get it. I was like, oh, this is a juicy story. Let's dig in. Where's the fraud? I love this. And you read the, you read the slack messages that they're publishing. And you know what it is. Yes, she's trying to start up. So someone like packed, like she like opened up a package and it was horribly done. And she said, if this keeps, or what did she say? She goes, I'm just going to have to pack these boxes myself because whoever's running this must be brain dead. And I was like, okay, cool. Let's scroll. Where's the good stuff? And they're like, that's the thing. She said the word brain dead. I'm like, that's the toxic work environment. Like, come on. Give me a break. That, that, that, that ain't nice. But that's not New York Times headline. Shit. Give me a break. Like, I want to see. So I'm fine for that. Right. Something like that. She bounced because of that. Like, that's why it's a brain. It's the other woman. Not, yeah, forget what her name was. But like, I read that article. I'm like, there's no fraud. Like, she didn't, you know, like, there's no alcohol and bile. What's going on? Give me something good. I want cocaine and hookers. I don't want brain dead. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? At least like, this is why there's so much value to like what you guys are doing that you're building businesses and talking about them that like, we're investing Benzipoll time VC. I used to be like, we know what's going on in a way that if you're just a journalist, like, you can't. It's structurally impossible. Well, podcasts actually have more people from the field that come in and do it because the podcast is easier. You're talking. You're not writing. No barrier. You don't have to like edit and like, you know, make a cool fancy TikTok thing. You don't have to like layer in filters or stuff. It's just, you sit on your talk. That's why you see like read Hoffman. Oh, the straight up audio medium. Yeah. Just like straight audio. Or even audio with the webcam. Like, you know, now I think that's getting a little bit easier. But basically the podcast format, I think there's a reason why you see somebody like ex-athletes do this where you know, the same thing. Like you have Skip Bayless who will just go say how this person is they don't have the clutch gene. It's like brother's not a gene. You know, they, they know, you know, and he'll just like make fun of people and then you have JJ Reddick who's an ex-player. So good. So good. So good. He's phenomenal at content. His and his point of view is so much better than then there's and that's why his stock is going like his views are just going up into the right because he's good at this. He pulls real guests. When he pulls real guests, they talk like they don't talk like they're talking to a reporter because they played with JJ or they played against him. So they actually open up about stuff. But he's also not trying to trap him in these gotcha questions. So there's like some mutual trust there. And then he'll just share like, you know, when you're a player on the road like, you know, this is the situation. Fans think you're practicing blah blah blah. But actually, here's what happens when you go in and he's just saying what's what's really going on. And so to me, when you see that and again, it's because podcasting is a lot easier. If you told him, hey, I need you to write like beautiful, well written blog posts every other day. It'd be very hard to do. But for him to just oh, something happened, get on the microphone, give my point of view, they could do it. So like you get more credible experts in a podcast and then I think on any other like medium. This is probably actually a good use of AI is being able to turn the ramblings of people who are industry participants. You run that transcript through and you say, write this as if it was a New York Times article with a strong lead and you know, this many words like it is amazing how I feel like I've transformed in my use of GPT over the last month where I was using it to try to answer questions, which it's fine at. But of course, that's the first thing you're going to do with a prompt. But my use case recently has been take lots of stuff and feed it in as the prompt and then ask it to make it better. So like I wrote a LinkedIn post about our most recent acquired episode and I fed it. I've just pasted the whole thing into chat GPT. I was like, can you make this like more exciting and can you make this more likely to go viral and like that literally all you said, you basically copy and paste it 500 words. You said, here's a LinkedIn post I wrote, make it more exciting. Let me see exactly what the prompt was. So I don't BS on the pod here. Okay, no one can check it. Say I can you please act as my editor and modify this to make it more likely to go viral as a LinkedIn post. That's so funny. And it indexed way in the other direction. Like it went it full of emojis. I feel like you'll like, you'll like, you'll open it up. Capital letters discover the secrets like a lot of like. And so I had to tone it down, but I totally use that to and I and it helped me rephrase a lot of things where I had like awkward phrasing that didn't flow well. It's a very good rewriter. Yeah. That's awesome. I'm going to start doing that. Well, guys, you're awesome. And thank you for coming on. If you're listening to our pod, go check out acquired. If you're listening on acquired, do as we call it. We teach of the gentleman's agreement Sam. Yeah, yeah. I feel like the gentleman's agreement and the ladies understanding has become like, you know, in wrestling when the rock would take the microphone, he'd raise the people's eyebrow and you know, he's going to hit him with like the expected thing. But for some reason, you get excited just to hear him say it. Sam, that's how I hear it. And that's how you feel now with your, this is your catchphrase. Go ahead. This is the gentleman's agreement. And so basically the way it works is, look, you're going to 7-11. You're going to go buy gas whenever you are and at the top when you're about to pay, you see a little jar and it's for muscle gistens free. And there's all that money in there. And of course, you don't take that money. You leave a dollar there. No one's going to stop you by the way if you took that money. But and that's basically what this podcast is. This podcast is free. Us four, we just dedicated hours of our of our day to do this. But unlike every other podcast, this one's not free. Just like that jar, you got to leave a dollar with meaning you got to go and subscribe to acquired podcasts on Spotify as well as iTunes and do the same with my first million on our YouTube page and you click, you click subscribe. It's called the gentleman's agreement because we're not there. All right, we're just shaking our hands. Ladies, what is it called the ladies understanding the gentleman's agreement? We're not there to help you guys out. It's just honesty. So everyone's doing it. Don't be left out. You have to do this. That's our that's our agreement. We create the content. You click subscribe. I love it. You guys are innovative. And there's real value. Like it's not, you know, for our audience, if you go and subscribe to my first million, you're going to get smarter. You're going to get more ideas like this benefits you. So it's not, you know, you're not just pulling money out of your wallet here. You're doing something that's going to make your life more fun. And that's the gentleman's agreement. And that's the ladies understanding. David, do you want to you want to take us home? What are you saying? Oh, I was going to ask I could keep jamming with you guys for another hour. I was going to ask you said Spotify. Do you like where do you like people to subscribe? Spotify YouTube. You said that. Well, you said earlier that Spotify is your main thing. So once we started doing the gentleman's agreement, our YouTube channel went through the roof. So we went from like 150,000 subscribers to close to 200 in like a month or eight weeks or something like that. We should do a every pod giveaway of YouTube premium to someone in the comments. So go go to our YouTube, go to this episode on YouTube and just and just type in premium. And we will pick somebody we will pay for your YouTube premium so that you can listen to this pod ad ad free in the background. You can lock your phone and walk around and you can enjoy that sweet, sweet 1499 a month that we're going to be paying for you for the year. So one year of YouTube premium in every episode call it it now. Oh, I love it. That is really a reminder to go comment because I am a YouTube premium subscriber, but I want you guys for the bill. Yeah. Well, thanks for doing this guys. We appreciate you and we'll have you back on and thank you for everything. See you guys. Catch you guys next time.

[{"start": 0.0, "end": 6.82, "text": " What could you get for it you think I would not be interested in having any conversations for you know less than"}, {"start": 7.86, "end": 10.58, "text": " Hey on the order of like what you got like the hustle or"}, {"start": 11.82, "end": 13.82, "text": " Morning brew or you know stuff like that"}, {"start": 14.22, "end": 16.22, "text": " 10s of millions yeah, yeah, yeah"}, {"start": 16.72, "end": 23.7, "text": " I mean, I just think like the value of what we've built both as a business and revenue and our audience and our durability is you know"}, {"start": 23.7, "end": 39.7, "text": " Is in that category? All right? What's up? We got a crossover episode call me Tim Hardaway"}, {"start": 39.7, "end": 43.739999999999995, "text": " We got the guys from acquired. Yeah, you like that. You like that"}, {"start": 43.74, "end": 54.06, "text": " That's good. That's good. Maybe yeah, that's for the the 5% of listeners who know about basketball so we got the guys from acquired are here"}, {"start": 54.06, "end": 57.06, "text": " We're doing kind of a joint episode a"}, {"start": 57.940000000000005, "end": 63.34, "text": " The old Alabama wedding as I like to call it, you know, just we're just getting we're getting cousins together here"}, {"start": 63.74, "end": 67.58, "text": " Because you guys got a podcast that is pretty awesome"}, {"start": 67.58, "end": 72.56, "text": " I remember when I was working at a at our previous startup a guy came to me was like there's a podcast you're gonna love"}, {"start": 72.56, "end": 78.74000000000001, "text": " It's called acquired and I go what is he goes? It's like the back stories of these like of all great tech acquisitions"}, {"start": 78.74000000000001, "end": 84.06, "text": " Like how it all went down they go into like all the nerdy details and then I binged you guys for like six days straight"}, {"start": 84.78, "end": 87.98, "text": " And so that was that's how I kind of first got into it a couple years ago"}, {"start": 87.98, "end": 95.08, "text": " So welcome to the show David and Ben. Thank you. We did a super fun crossover with you a couple years ago now"}, {"start": 95.26, "end": 100.38, "text": " But it was just was Sean Sam you were off travel in the world doing amazing things"}, {"start": 100.38, "end": 104.8, "text": " Well, that's what he said. He was like you're probably do something amazing. I was like probably just like a doctor's appointment"}, {"start": 107.82, "end": 114.66, "text": " Yeah, you guys have totally come up since then the I mean you were big back then, but that was like within the first couple months"}, {"start": 114.66, "end": 119.06, "text": " I think of you starting this and it's just been awesome to watch how far you've come"}, {"start": 119.53999999999999, "end": 122.86, "text": " That was kind of an R even though it was your four or five for us"}, {"start": 122.86, "end": 128.14, "text": " That was kind of our early days too because Sean you're right that we were mostly about acquisitions at that point"}, {"start": 128.14, "end": 134.38, "text": " And we talked about the Bibo acquisition as part of the episode and now we do these like three four hour entire"}, {"start": 134.61999999999998, "end": 138.7, "text": " You know history and strategy of a company regardless of whether there was a transaction, but"}, {"start": 139.38, "end": 145.42, "text": " Yeah, that that feels like I don't know the funny thing about exponential growth is it feels like a lifetime ago all the time"}, {"start": 145.42, "end": 149.73999999999998, "text": " I always think about that like when you pick a niche and then you kind of are gonna run out"}, {"start": 149.73999999999998, "end": 151.44, "text": " But the niche can get you somewhere"}, {"start": 151.44, "end": 154.33999999999997, "text": " So for example, I was thinking about this with coffees illa the YouTube guy who"}, {"start": 154.34, "end": 158.82, "text": " Exposes people scams and I'm like and then he did one the other day that was like"}, {"start": 159.42000000000002, "end": 165.18, "text": " He DMed a celebrity to promote some NFT thing like hey, we'll pay you to promote the cent of teething and like the white paper"}, {"start": 165.94, "end": 169.78, "text": " Said like this shit to scam or whatever, but he didn't read it obviously just promoted it"}, {"start": 169.78, "end": 174.1, "text": " He's like ah scamer and I'm like, but you kind of entrapment like you"}, {"start": 174.78, "end": 180.26, "text": " You're running out of people to like to cover here you have to not create scammers like I don't think that like I'll be"}, {"start": 180.26, "end": 186.34, "text": " Back in the day exactly, but like that wasn't his original stick, but I was like yeah, you're not gonna like you're trying to be on this"}, {"start": 186.34, "end": 188.34, "text": " YouTube once a week treadmill and"}, {"start": 188.94, "end": 195.57999999999998, "text": " There's not once a week gonna be a giant Logan Paul like celebrity name did this bad thing and I'm gonna be the exposure"}, {"start": 195.57999999999998, "end": 198.38, "text": " It's like what are you gonna do next Tuesday?"}, {"start": 198.62, "end": 201.57999999999998, "text": " There's not like this isn't that that current"}, {"start": 201.82, "end": 206.57999999999998, "text": " But you guys did a good job of switching it up people said that to us Sean like oh, you're gonna run ideas"}, {"start": 206.58, "end": 212.3, "text": " And I was like yeah, we might but then it's just kind of like morphed into like us saying a lot of like it's like people are"}, {"start": 212.3, "end": 216.46, "text": " When I someone yesterday was like what's your podcast about I was like well the name's pretty bad"}, {"start": 216.46, "end": 222.34, "text": " It's definitely a lot about business, but we also make a lot of horrible jokes too so people kind of like it for that reason"}, {"start": 222.9, "end": 229.54000000000002, "text": " Yeah, I've been thinking about this a lot your niche earns you the right to exist, but it's in media, but it's your"}, {"start": 229.54, "end": 237.1, "text": " You're sort of demeanor and you're the way that you look at the world that then gives you license to expand from there"}, {"start": 237.1, "end": 239.1, "text": " So like David my friend"}, {"start": 239.1, "end": 240.1, "text": " It's your friend. There we go"}, {"start": 240.1, "end": 244.73999999999998, "text": " I just think if David and I started with like we're a podcast that talks about businesses"}, {"start": 244.73999999999998, "end": 252.94, "text": " It's like cool next, but if you like pitch people on really specifically what they're what you like the job to be done of your show and their life is"}, {"start": 252.94, "end": 257.58, "text": " Then you can sort of like expand and explore from there, right like Ben"}, {"start": 257.58, "end": 260.53999999999996, "text": " Ben should have been producer Ben should have been like you know"}, {"start": 261.26, "end": 266.3, "text": " You know more men's taking over the world started with the Mormon community then expanded from there"}, {"start": 266.3, "end": 271.94, "text": " I remember talking to the guys from wait but why that great blog yeah, and"}, {"start": 273.06, "end": 281.53999999999996, "text": " This guy wait guys is there a team is it's not just him. It's Tim and then it's his childhood friend Andrew who does like the back end all the business stuff"}, {"start": 281.78, "end": 283.97999999999996, "text": " They have a really interesting business. They like acquire"}, {"start": 283.98, "end": 289.5, "text": " Companies that are completely unrelated to wait but why like that's how they make their money and then they"}, {"start": 289.5, "end": 294.54, "text": " They really like fun like that's kind of the the model, but I was asking about content"}, {"start": 295.02000000000004, "end": 298.66, "text": " Because I was like you know, I admire wait but why so tell me about this and I was like you know"}, {"start": 298.66, "end": 303.54, "text": " I'm trying to figure this out. I kind of like to talk about this and I kind of like to talk about this and he's like"}, {"start": 303.98, "end": 310.94, "text": " You need your like your flagship franchise and you do your franchise and then people will love that franchise"}, {"start": 310.94, "end": 316.86, "text": " But they'll also love you and they'll you'll earn the right to talk to them about like oh you want to talk about like mindset stuff"}, {"start": 316.94, "end": 319.3, "text": " Cool, but unless you think mindset is the right place to start"}, {"start": 319.7, "end": 323.26, "text": " Wait earn the the trust on the business side and then say by the way"}, {"start": 323.74, "end": 327.98, "text": " Here's my mindset stuff and then you'll get some percentage of people to cross over and then a new audience there too"}, {"start": 327.98, "end": 334.65999999999997, "text": " You just keep launching new franchises after that. It's so it's also like the we even you guys you know"}, {"start": 334.65999999999997, "end": 339.18, "text": " You started several years after us, but like I think you still were and I think when did you guys start?"}, {"start": 339.18, "end": 341.18, "text": " Three years ago, honey"}, {"start": 341.18, "end": 344.78000000000003, "text": " Night September of 2019 I think or"}, {"start": 345.3, "end": 350.54, "text": " Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we were 2015 but even in 29 like it was still kind of early"}, {"start": 350.54, "end": 356.46000000000004, "text": " Usch enough days in podcasting that like the medium was the mainstream portion of podcasting meeting was still"}, {"start": 356.78000000000003, "end": 363.02, "text": " Early enough that people were looking for new stuff and like that I think has changed now in a pretty big way"}, {"start": 363.26, "end": 368.62, "text": " The way that it started was basically like I was in Austin or somewhere as living in San Francisco at time and Shawn"}, {"start": 368.62, "end": 373.74, "text": " texted me and he was like hey, I have an idea for a podcast. Here's the pilot. Do you guys want it?"}, {"start": 373.74, "end": 378.3, "text": " Does hustle want to be the publisher and I listened to it and I like I just listened to the intro and I was like"}, {"start": 378.3, "end": 383.7, "text": " Yeah, we're in let's just air this exact one next week and we'll start by the way that that was a little bit of a fib"}, {"start": 383.7, "end": 386.46, "text": " I basically told you I was like hey, you know"}, {"start": 386.46, "end": 391.3, "text": " Why don't you do podcasts and say I was like like I got to hire somebody to do it. I don't know"}, {"start": 391.3, "end": 396.06, "text": " We focus on this email thing. I was like well. I got a podcast. I'm gonna do a podcast"}, {"start": 396.06, "end": 399.7, "text": " Will you be the publishers like and I was like I'm already I knew that"}, {"start": 400.46, "end": 403.38, "text": " To seal the deal I needed to send him a file, but I hadn't recorded yet"}, {"start": 403.38, "end": 405.38, "text": " So I go I already did the first episode"}, {"start": 406.5, "end": 410.98, "text": " You want to like take a listen to it and then I like just go sit on messenger for 24 hours"}, {"start": 410.98, "end": 414.82, "text": " So I could go record the episode then came back was like oh my bad here's the file"}, {"start": 415.5, "end": 422.42, "text": " So there really wasn't a first message you but I was like I got the vibe that if this is good if I get like a good first 35 seconds"}, {"start": 422.42, "end": 429.18, "text": " This is done and so that's what I went and did yeah, and we were like we're in and then he did it his way"}, {"start": 429.18, "end": 433.38, "text": " It was called my first million because it was like first million users revenue whatever and it was great"}, {"start": 433.38, "end": 440.06, "text": " It was great as it was but like there was one time like three months in where a guest didn't show up and he was like"}, {"start": 440.38, "end": 441.58000000000004, "text": " I booked the space"}, {"start": 441.58000000000004, "end": 447.14, "text": " You just want to come and like talk and I was like I guess and we did that and then it kind of like did well"}, {"start": 447.14, "end": 453.21999999999997, "text": " But like our the first episode he did by himself it got 65,000 downloads and we were like do podcasting"}, {"start": 453.41999999999996, "end": 455.38, "text": " Podcasts easy. This is gonna be awesome"}, {"start": 455.38, "end": 463.26, "text": " And then over the next 12 months it basically went down to like as low as like maybe 10 or 15,000 and then since then"}, {"start": 463.26, "end": 468.78, "text": " It's basically just been a slow grind now we're anywhere from a hundred to 200,000 per"}, {"start": 469.21999999999997, "end": 474.06, "text": " episode if you include the YouTube our YouTube is it's pretty weak. It's like 20 to"}, {"start": 474.06, "end": 479.22, "text": " 50,000 20 to 100,000 and then the RSS feed which is like iTunes and all that stuff that's"}, {"start": 480.1, "end": 482.3, "text": " Maybe a hundred or something like that"}, {"start": 482.3, "end": 487.14, "text": " What where you guys at because like no one talks about this stuff like whenever you Google"}, {"start": 487.14, "end": 490.66, "text": " I remember we are googling like how do we get to a hundred thousand downloads but"}, {"start": 491.18, "end": 496.46, "text": " Everyone out there was like here's how you get your first thousand first 10,000 I was like okay, but like how do we get bigger?"}, {"start": 496.74, "end": 501.82, "text": " We're we're almost the exact same scale with a very different journey"}, {"start": 501.82, "end": 505.02, "text": " I mean every journey is unique on this stuff. So our"}, {"start": 505.86, "end": 510.26, "text": " Episodes get about 200,000 downloads listens whatever you want to call it"}, {"start": 511.34, "end": 514.38, "text": " Which is interesting because Spotify has become so much more of the market now"}, {"start": 515.54, "end": 517.38, "text": " per episode"}, {"start": 517.38, "end": 518.66, "text": " but"}, {"start": 518.66, "end": 526.02, "text": " Unlike you guys we do like one episode a month you know one to two episodes a month and they're really really long"}, {"start": 526.98, "end": 528.34, "text": " so"}, {"start": 528.34, "end": 529.62, "text": " we"}, {"start": 529.62, "end": 537.26, "text": " Have with a few exceptions that we can talk about we've never had like kind of big spike viral, you know break out moments"}, {"start": 537.26, "end": 541.86, "text": " It's been a you know eight year journey from like zero up to that"}, {"start": 543.0600000000001, "end": 549.18, "text": " We don't really have spikes like there's spiky stuff, but it's not like a true like virality moment and interesting"}, {"start": 549.18, "end": 556.38, "text": " So one thing that's interesting about content and media is everybody measures the number nobody measures the quality because the quality is way harder to"}, {"start": 556.38, "end": 563.5, "text": " Understand, but clearly there's a difference between 200,000 people listening to an episode of acquired"}, {"start": 564.06, "end": 568.3, "text": " Versus 200,000 views on a TikTok. Okay, we get that because it's kind of short verse long"}, {"start": 568.54, "end": 575.9399999999999, "text": " But even if it was a podcast about sports versus a podcast about business acquisitions the type of people that are going to listen to your thing"}, {"start": 575.9399999999999, "end": 577.9399999999999, "text": " Or just inherently more valuable"}, {"start": 578.22, "end": 581.62, "text": " Have you guys thought about that seen that do you guys?"}, {"start": 581.62, "end": 588.54, "text": " I feel like I mean that's the whole that is the whole business not that we started or do this for the business side"}, {"start": 588.54, "end": 595.14, "text": " Although it's become a great business that is the whole business side and also on the content side too like we made we started doing this"}, {"start": 595.46, "end": 602.78, "text": " For us to learn and then we're like well who you know would also want to learn for the people like us and"}, {"start": 603.26, "end": 609.22, "text": " That's kind of who we make it for like so we struggle with YouTube with TikTok with Twitter"}, {"start": 609.22, "end": 614.22, "text": " Like we're not good on any of those other platforms even though we do atomize content and do it now"}, {"start": 614.86, "end": 620.62, "text": " Because like we don't it's just not kind of how we designed it the show and to ground it"}, {"start": 621.5, "end": 625.34, "text": " 40% of acquired listeners are C level or VP level executives"}, {"start": 626.14, "end": 631.98, "text": " 23% are currently founders 12% were previously founders and if you break down by job"}, {"start": 631.98, "end": 641.66, "text": " 17% are engineers 15% are actively CEOs today and 12% are product managers and so like the whole"}, {"start": 642.3000000000001, "end": 647.38, "text": " Business for us and David's point it didn't start as a business, but where we are today is like I"}, {"start": 647.94, "end": 653.58, "text": " Don't really want millions of listeners. I want acquired to like kind of slow its growth"}, {"start": 653.58, "end": 659.38, "text": " But saturate the niche that we're in because I think it's the most valuable audience in the world"}, {"start": 659.38, "end": 665.7, "text": " And I don't know exactly what that leads to but like all the conversations David and I get to have with our listeners"}, {"start": 666.3, "end": 669.1, "text": " Because of who they are are like super fascinating"}, {"start": 669.58, "end": 676.42, "text": " Well, what will it lead to so like you know you do you you can probably make a great living off of just the advertising"}, {"start": 676.42, "end": 678.66, "text": " But I'm looking at your site. You don't sell anything"}, {"start": 679.1, "end": 681.9, "text": " What's it gonna lead to well? We do have merch"}, {"start": 685.42, "end": 687.42, "text": " This is my kez is hoodie. Yeah"}, {"start": 687.42, "end": 689.42, "text": " with"}, {"start": 689.6999999999999, "end": 691.6999999999999, "text": " David email who's on our kez's team is a"}, {"start": 693.18, "end": 697.9, "text": " Become a good friend and is an acquired listener and he hooked me up with this this hoodie rocks"}, {"start": 697.9, "end": 701.74, "text": " Yeah, I said to picture to our merch purse. I screenshot it"}, {"start": 702.14, "end": 705.18, "text": " And I had that moment where I was like you know that thing we're on a zoom call"}, {"start": 705.18, "end": 709.74, "text": " I don't know if you guys do this, but you screenshot and it's like makes the really loud-ass sound of like a"}, {"start": 710.06, "end": 715.14, "text": " Screenshot has been taken and then you got to like address it like it was a fart during the during the call"}, {"start": 715.14, "end": 719.64, "text": " I'm really worried that when I say I'm doing that thing on every slide of my"}, {"start": 719.64, "end": 723.6999999999999, "text": " This is a total digression and we'll come back to it, but fourth wall"}, {"start": 724.3, "end": 729.06, "text": " Makes there so my kez is an investor in fourth wall Walker Williams the founder. He was the founder of T-spring"}, {"start": 729.86, "end": 734.8199999999999, "text": " Awesome guy. We've got the know him. We're talking to them now. I think yeah, yeah, yeah"}, {"start": 734.8199999999999, "end": 743.18, "text": " They are great and they made this fully custom for my kez and it's it's the best being what's his name brownlee?"}, {"start": 743.18, "end": 749.02, "text": " Is that a same KBHD? Yeah, the the you I mean you said it's first name like he's Oprah like you know"}, {"start": 749.02, "end": 750.54, "text": " I'll take a basic"}, {"start": 750.54, "end": 754.54, "text": " I think he's that guy. Well, he has like 20 million YouTube subscribe"}, {"start": 754.54, "end": 757.42, "text": " I mean, I just know him as like the guy who interviews reviews"}, {"start": 758.2199999999999, "end": 760.06, "text": " Tech but he also like has interviewed Tesla"}, {"start": 760.06, "end": 764.02, "text": " He'll Elon and all these like great guys. I mean, he's cool. Let's they've come on this podcast"}, {"start": 764.02, "end": 766.5, "text": " There I don't know them that there's podcast"}, {"start": 766.5, "end": 774.02, "text": " The show into in my mind. He's also the craziest thing is like as if it wasn't enough to operate this like"}, {"start": 774.58, "end": 779.3, "text": " Pretty large-scale TV production studio at this point as a as a youtuber"}, {"start": 780.18, "end": 786.02, "text": " He's also like one of the best ultimate frisbee players in the world. Oh really? Yeah, he's a professional ultimate frisbee player as well"}, {"start": 786.02, "end": 789.38, "text": " I can see that I can see that that's a that's a very obvious crossover"}, {"start": 789.38, "end": 797.02, "text": " Do you know so like when we'll just talk real insider baseball for a second and then we'll move on but with podcasting a lot of people"}, {"start": 797.02, "end": 800.66, "text": " Ask us how to start it and stuff like that and I'm like I don't know how to grow it"}, {"start": 800.66, "end": 804.58, "text": " It's quite challenging, but what I've really enjoyed getting to know is like Andrew Huberman"}, {"start": 804.58, "end": 805.54, "text": " I'm you know"}, {"start": 805.54, "end": 811.34, "text": " I'm acquaintances been our friends friends with him really but like we'll chat everyone's while and he's like I like on spot"}, {"start": 811.34, "end": 814.54, "text": " We see each other with our shirts off, but we I mean I wouldn't call each other friends, but"}, {"start": 814.54, "end": 824.02, "text": " We've sonnet together. This is a say of you like oh, I was probably at a doctor's appointment for like your life is just like I listen to you guys"}, {"start": 824.02, "end": 825.02, "text": " I'm like wow"}, {"start": 825.02, "end": 832.3399999999999, "text": " No, bro, I like he was he was on our he was on our pod so like I know I'm like an hour plus like five text messages exchange"}, {"start": 832.3399999999999, "end": 834.3399999999999, "text": " So like that's at the extent that I know him"}, {"start": 834.5799999999999, "end": 838.5799999999999, "text": " But he I think there if you look at Spotify when he releases an episode"}, {"start": 838.5799999999999, "end": 844.3, "text": " It's typically the most popular on the charts and I think they're in the million mark million"}, {"start": 844.3, "end": 850.78, "text": " per episode which is how we like to measure it is there anyone else in the business category that's in the"}, {"start": 850.78, "end": 854.9, "text": " 200 five I mean all in's probably 400 maybe 500,000"}, {"start": 854.9, "end": 858.5799999999999, "text": " Do you know like how big do you have to be be some of the biggest of course there's Dave Ramsey"}, {"start": 858.5799999999999, "end": 866.3399999999999, "text": " He's he's in a whole different category. Yeah, it's funny. It depends because like business kind of gets lumped in with all these other like personal finance type categories"}, {"start": 866.3399999999999, "end": 868.3399999999999, "text": " But I think in our ilk"}, {"start": 868.66, "end": 870.26, "text": " Yeah, they should make it separate the best"}, {"start": 870.26, "end": 874.26, "text": " I'm not getting category and move Dave Ramsey's ass over there. Yeah, yeah"}, {"start": 876.5, "end": 882.86, "text": " You know and it's it's all into like has been an amazing breakout. They've become more of a mainstream news and political show"}, {"start": 882.86, "end": 884.7, "text": " I mean they still talk tech and business, but"}, {"start": 885.26, "end": 890.46, "text": " That I think is a lot of their audience and they're huge now, but yeah our category. I would say like"}, {"start": 890.46, "end": 899.46, "text": " Invest like the best probably is most directly comparable in terms of size and audience makeup also founders and David Sennra"}, {"start": 900.46, "end": 903.1800000000001, "text": " Who's he's part of the colossus network with Patrick?"}, {"start": 904.5400000000001, "end": 906.22, "text": " Well"}, {"start": 906.22, "end": 910.14, "text": " Jason's other show this we can start up that we go on all the time"}, {"start": 910.6600000000001, "end": 917.62, "text": " But Logan Bartlett has a much smaller audience because he's much newer, but like a plus gas and really I mean"}, {"start": 917.62, "end": 925.26, "text": " I think he's he's got the most valuable niche of niche in terms of the people who listen to his show why because of VCs"}, {"start": 926.98, "end": 928.98, "text": " It's like"}, {"start": 928.98, "end": 935.7, "text": " Silicon Valley insiders for lack of a better. I mean that's VCs its founders, but I think like his interviews"}, {"start": 935.7, "end": 937.7, "text": " I was feeling like he pulls out"}, {"start": 938.46, "end": 940.46, "text": " valuable"}, {"start": 941.46, "end": 947.58, "text": " Small boy stuff right there. Let me say let me ask you a different question that I've actually never so so you so David"}, {"start": 947.58, "end": 956.94, "text": " That's something to say I can go which is kind of like the paraphrase would be we made the podcast for people like us or we made the podcast that we would want to listen to is that fair to kind of"}, {"start": 957.5, "end": 962.26, "text": " Summarize your position David 100% and I feel like that with this podcast I"}, {"start": 963.3000000000001, "end": 970.38, "text": " Started the milk road that way, but it quickly transformed into like crypto news, which is actually not what I actually"}, {"start": 970.38, "end": 974.7800000000001, "text": " People know this I've said I don't read or consume the news. So it's really funny that we made a news"}, {"start": 974.78, "end": 982.9, "text": " Like thing I got it big and then sold it but like truthfully it didn't end up becoming the thing that like I made this for me for people like me out there"}, {"start": 983.3, "end": 984.8199999999999, "text": " Sam do you"}, {"start": 984.8199999999999, "end": 987.5799999999999, "text": " Subscribe to that like I guess like in theory"}, {"start": 987.9399999999999, "end": 992.22, "text": " You could say the best thing to do is to scratch your own itch to build the product you want be you know"}, {"start": 992.22, "end": 994.22, "text": " Make it for people like you then you're not guessing"}, {"start": 994.22, "end": 999.18, "text": " But then in practice sometimes you know the mass market is not where you're at and you go for that"}, {"start": 999.18, "end": 1004.5, "text": " So what say I'm what you're taking on that? I think we it started MFM started that way and is mostly that way"}, {"start": 1004.5, "end": 1009.14, "text": " Every once in a while, you know Sean will be like we need more views. Let's like get this guest and"}, {"start": 1009.94, "end": 1016.66, "text": " Sometimes we give into it sometimes we don't the hustle started out because I liked the news and then about a two years in"}, {"start": 1016.66, "end": 1020.62, "text": " I was like I don't care about the news anymore, but this is my job. So I'm gonna keep doing it"}, {"start": 1020.62, "end": 1021.82, "text": " I"}, {"start": 1021.82, "end": 1025.1, "text": " Don't I don't I listen to zero business podcasts now"}, {"start": 1025.1, "end": 1029.26, "text": " I basically only listen to like crime and fiction and things like that"}, {"start": 1029.26, "end": 1035.9, "text": " And so I don't listen to business podcasts anymore, but I think this podcast has mostly stayed of which like who what do I want to do"}, {"start": 1035.9, "end": 1039.5, "text": " What is Sean what do we want to talk about? Yeah, it's mostly stayed that way"}, {"start": 1039.5, "end": 1042.66, "text": " But we do like have to fight like I was messaging Sean like this"}, {"start": 1043.18, "end": 1048.34, "text": " This last night and I was like dude we need to be stricter about our guests because we've had like a bunch of people"}, {"start": 1048.5, "end": 1052.66, "text": " Like who asked to come on and we're like yeah, they're huge and I'm like well"}, {"start": 1052.66, "end": 1057.06, "text": " Yeah, I don't give a shit about this person. I don't like I don't I wouldn't want to have like if this person invited me over for dinner"}, {"start": 1057.06, "end": 1061.3, "text": " I wouldn't be excited and so we definitely have to fight that I would assume you know this is"}, {"start": 1062.06, "end": 1067.6599999999999, "text": " We're realizing that it's the case for so though it's different because we tell stories, but um for you guys"}, {"start": 1067.6599999999999, "end": 1073.5, "text": " I would like the reason your audience is here is for you, right? Like it's not for you guess right?"}, {"start": 1073.86, "end": 1077.22, "text": " Yeah, I think sometimes though the the guests you know"}, {"start": 1077.22, "end": 1081.54, "text": " I basically told Sam I said there's three three or four types of guests for the here's the four that I think"}, {"start": 1081.54, "end": 1087.42, "text": " There's the people that are like us and they're just bringing a different like flavor or new fresh ideas so like for example"}, {"start": 1087.42, "end": 1091.98, "text": " When you guys first came on you guys you got the stick you knew what we do on this podcast"}, {"start": 1091.98, "end": 1096.56, "text": " I remember you guys came with a bunch of business ideas. You're like oh this Airbnb Wi-Fi network"}, {"start": 1096.56, "end": 1101.62, "text": " That's like you know my god. You remember even the idea. Yeah, so this is our face that idea came back to me"}, {"start": 1101.62, "end": 1106.26, "text": " Right, I got like this some people have photographic memory. I have an idea memory. I can remember any idea"}, {"start": 1106.26, "end": 1112.18, "text": " So that was like you guys got the stick so you came on you brought ideas, which is great because the audience loves that"}, {"start": 1112.18, "end": 1117.82, "text": " Steph Smith is a great example of this she comes on she brings ideas people like her even though she's not the big name"}, {"start": 1117.82, "end": 1125.78, "text": " You know famous OC of X. She does an amazing job. So that's like number one number two is basically like they are the big name"}, {"start": 1125.78, "end": 1131.5, "text": " So somebody who a bunch of people are gonna click on it might bring new audience like your legit famous in some way"}, {"start": 1131.5, "end": 1136.62, "text": " You had a pump on recently. Yeah, well how he would be three which is internet famous. It was like legit famous"}, {"start": 1136.62, "end": 1141.46, "text": " It's like you know they're they've that kind of like outside my pairs Hilton or something"}, {"start": 1141.46, "end": 1145.46, "text": " Yeah, like they don't have a podcast or they don't have a newsletter. They don't have like an internet community"}, {"start": 1145.46, "end": 1149.1, "text": " They're just like famous famous then there's your internet famous and the last one is"}, {"start": 1149.7, "end": 1154.14, "text": " Personal like we want to nerd out with them. And so that would be like like Ariel Hohani"}, {"start": 1154.14, "end": 1157.78, "text": " Yeah, we had Ariel Hohani on like I don't know how much of our audience cared about that"}, {"start": 1157.78, "end": 1163.58, "text": " But I cared I wanted to have that conversation and we've had you know Sam was like oh this guy can write out is awesome"}, {"start": 1163.58, "end": 1168.62, "text": " He's like this 50-year-old like marathon record breaker butt guy like I just want to talk to him and it's like great"}, {"start": 1168.62, "end": 1175.18, "text": " Let's do that. So it's kind of like we are gonna be so into the conversation and we are sure that this person is interesting to us"}, {"start": 1175.18, "end": 1181.58, "text": " It'll be interesting to some portion of the audience and so it's like to us those are the four and I think the one you get tripped up on the most is"}, {"start": 1182.22, "end": 1186.18, "text": " Just the the legit famous person because they they don't actually listen to God"}, {"start": 1186.18, "end": 1192.5, "text": " They may not bring bring the juice and it's almost like the expectations are high and you almost disappoint because it's like oh"}, {"start": 1193.0600000000002, "end": 1195.66, "text": " All right, well, that was kind of a lame conversation with that person"}, {"start": 1195.66, "end": 1201.78, "text": " And they don't have any of their own distribution the nice thing about internet famous is at least they can help distribute the content"}, {"start": 1201.78, "end": 1206.74, "text": " But real regular famous people it's like unless they're getting put in people magazine or cast in the latest movie"}, {"start": 1206.74, "end": 1212.8200000000002, "text": " They actually have no way to reach an audience directly. Yeah, you know who does that for us is darmash the founder of HubSpot"}, {"start": 1212.82, "end": 1220.74, "text": " Every time he comes on he get his episodes get really popular and he's always doing he is popular and his content is great"}, {"start": 1220.74, "end": 1226.62, "text": " And also he always does some internet marketing stuff where he kills it. He kills it for us every time"}, {"start": 1226.62, "end": 1232.3799999999999, "text": " That's that's the best kind of guest that'll come on and promote right and he pays the bills too"}, {"start": 1232.3799999999999, "end": 1236.1, "text": " So he's the sponsor that receives the guest he drives the girl. Yeah"}, {"start": 1236.1, "end": 1246.58, "text": " It's a mess come on acquired the crazy thing we notice about guests recently just looking at our analytics and the the two things and both of them are true"}, {"start": 1246.58, "end": 1250.1, "text": " 100% of the time without fail one"}, {"start": 1251.1399999999999, "end": 1253.3799999999999, "text": " Every single time we set a new episode record"}, {"start": 1253.3799999999999, "end": 1257.6999999999998, "text": " It is an episode that is like just David and I doing Nintendo LVMH"}, {"start": 1257.86, "end": 1261.86, "text": " Berkshire Hathaway like our canonical three-hour format and"}, {"start": 1261.86, "end": 1266.2199999999998, "text": " And two every single time we have a guest on it is"}, {"start": 1267.02, "end": 1271.3799999999999, "text": " Less listened to than our previous episode. Yeah, right. Just saying"}, {"start": 1271.9399999999998, "end": 1274.4199999999998, "text": " Just last question is how do you guys prepare for that?"}, {"start": 1274.4199999999998, "end": 1278.26, "text": " You just like both read the same book and take notes and then just tell story"}, {"start": 1278.82, "end": 1284.4599999999998, "text": " We mostly read different stuff, but we've kind of architected. I mean this is our like our"}, {"start": 1285.6599999999999, "end": 1290.34, "text": " Differentiation as a show which is so anti all the rules of podcasting"}, {"start": 1290.34, "end": 1296.6599999999999, "text": " But I think is what makes us special is we have carved out that like we can take a month in our lives and"}, {"start": 1297.9399999999998, "end": 1303.3, "text": " Do you know it's kind of like if you're writing a term paper in college like we can do the research"}, {"start": 1304.1, "end": 1310.02, "text": " Independently each of us on a company on a topic and then we come together and it's like a I don't know"}, {"start": 1310.02, "end": 1316.34, "text": " It's like a thesis defense or something that we do and the goal is like between the two of us to have basically consumed every"}, {"start": 1316.34, "end": 1320.6599999999999, "text": " Piece of content on the company like every other podcast that's ever been done all the big books"}, {"start": 1320.6599999999999, "end": 1326.82, "text": " That have been written all the talks given by the founder try and find a bunch of weird stuff like talks given at industry conferences"}, {"start": 1326.82, "end": 1328.5, "text": " That have low view counts on YouTube"}, {"start": 1328.5, "end": 1331.86, "text": " Obviously read all the sources of all of the Wikipedia page for the companies"}, {"start": 1331.86, "end": 1338.34, "text": " It's basically like no one should be able to DM us after the episode and be like oh did you did you see this?"}, {"start": 1338.74, "end": 1343.22, "text": " Important piece of information on the company. We want to always be like defensively"}, {"start": 1343.22, "end": 1348.34, "text": " No, we have consumed everything about this company and I think like I think the magic is that like if we"}, {"start": 1349.14, "end": 1353.78, "text": " If the output of that were a term paper it would be really boring and nobody would read it"}, {"start": 1354.18, "end": 1360.42, "text": " But because the output of that is Ben and I is really good friends like talking about it like that kind of makes it magical"}, {"start": 1360.42, "end": 1366.02, "text": " Yeah, the phrase we've been noodling on is conversational audiobooks. Oh, that's cool to describe what it is"}, {"start": 1366.58, "end": 1372.02, "text": " Are there any odd commonalities that you've seen amongst like the savages that you've done stories on?"}, {"start": 1372.02, "end": 1374.5, "text": " So for example bed Wilson has you know, he does"}, {"start": 1374.98, "end": 1378.5, "text": " How to think over the world and it's historical figures and he's like you know"}, {"start": 1378.74, "end": 1382.42, "text": " We are John Rockefeller Edison not and Napoleon a bunch of these other people"}, {"start": 1382.74, "end": 1387.86, "text": " They ate really lightly like they didn't eat a ton of food because they said that when they over ate"}, {"start": 1388.02, "end": 1395.06, "text": " They felt brain fog and about for a bunch of different reasons. Are there any strange commonalities that you've found amongst like these"}, {"start": 1395.46, "end": 1397.3, "text": " Conquerors of the world"}, {"start": 1397.3, "end": 1405.3, "text": " Well, we talk more about companies than we do about people like Ben and David center over at Founders or companies. Yeah, or companies"}, {"start": 1406.6599999999999, "end": 1412.26, "text": " I mean, it's the classic like being contrarian and right and you have to be both contrarian and right"}, {"start": 1412.4199999999998, "end": 1418.26, "text": " But the people that were studying in the companies that were studying are such extreme outliers like there's such the"}, {"start": 1418.6599999999999, "end": 1423.3, "text": " There forced interdivisions from the mean in terms of like how did a company do and so"}, {"start": 1424.6599999999999, "end": 1425.86, "text": " they"}, {"start": 1425.86, "end": 1430.4199999999998, "text": " Were there sort of like an end of one like there's one TSMC in the world"}, {"start": 1430.5, "end": 1434.82, "text": " There's one LVMH who owns all the most valuable luxury brands except Hermes"}, {"start": 1435.6999999999998, "end": 1437.4599999999998, "text": " and"}, {"start": 1437.4599999999998, "end": 1442.82, "text": " It sort of happens in a unique way every time and so I guess the the biggest takeaway for me is like"}, {"start": 1444.02, "end": 1450.1799999999998, "text": " It usually is the founder doing something that like literally everybody else had left for dead"}, {"start": 1450.74, "end": 1453.6999999999998, "text": " And when I say that I mean like Bernard Arnog going and buying"}, {"start": 1453.7, "end": 1459.94, "text": " Christian Dior from the French government out of bankruptcy in when was that the 80s David?"}, {"start": 1460.1000000000001, "end": 1465.6200000000001, "text": " 80s. Yeah, or like literally no one else was bidding on this like dead asset or"}, {"start": 1466.74, "end": 1469.6200000000001, "text": " The example for starting TSMC is like"}, {"start": 1470.1000000000001, "end": 1478.5, "text": " Zero other people thought that you should be starting a foundry when you have no chip IP to make other people's chip designs"}, {"start": 1478.5800000000002, "end": 1482.3400000000001, "text": " Like that was there was zero other people that thought that was a big one like there is no"}, {"start": 1482.34, "end": 1489.06, "text": " There is no formula every story is unique, but a big big category is like something that has been left for dead"}, {"start": 1489.54, "end": 1496.5, "text": " But like sometimes it's inventing something new whole cloth, but like really big category is like oh this thing is over and"}, {"start": 1496.8999999999999, "end": 1499.22, "text": " David Nintendo yeah, Nintendo Google"}, {"start": 1499.3799999999999, "end": 1505.78, "text": " The game crash of of 1983 like the market for video games in the United States went from three billion dollars to"}, {"start": 1506.1, "end": 1508.34, "text": " 100 million dollars over the course of two years"}, {"start": 1508.34, "end": 1512.6599999999999, "text": " Everybody was running screaming from the industry and they thought oh video games were a fad and it's over"}, {"start": 1513.06, "end": 1519.4599999999998, "text": " And then you have Nintendo that comes in launches the NES and then within five years has 95% market share"}, {"start": 1519.4599999999998, "end": 1522.8999999999999, "text": " And has grown the industry back to a three billion dollar industry. It's these like"}, {"start": 1523.86, "end": 1525.86, "text": " nut job bets"}, {"start": 1526.6599999999999, "end": 1530.1, "text": " Has that like given you guys any confidence to succeed?"}, {"start": 1530.1, "end": 1534.82, "text": " You think like because I talked to all these awesome people and like we'll talk to there"}, {"start": 1534.82, "end": 1540.26, "text": " There are a handful of people and I said this a bunch. There's a handful of people who we talk to and we say oh"}, {"start": 1540.26, "end": 1542.98, "text": " You're definitely like significantly smarter than we are"}, {"start": 1543.46, "end": 1547.78, "text": " Or you're you're a significant you have this part that's more significant than us"}, {"start": 1548.02, "end": 1552.58, "text": " And then there's other people who will talk to that are worth hundreds of millions or billions of dollars and it's like well"}, {"start": 1553.3, "end": 1557.22, "text": " You're not like 20 times smarter than us even though you're 20 times richer"}, {"start": 1557.22, "end": 1562.26, "text": " But like you might be a little bit or sometimes a little bit less and that's given us confidence at least me for sure"}, {"start": 1562.26, "end": 1565.06, "text": " Because I'm like oh you definitely are insecure you"}, {"start": 1565.78, "end": 1569.22, "text": " Question yourself you duck yourself, but you still went through with it. It's a good question"}, {"start": 1569.22, "end": 1571.78, "text": " Like I know how to be contrarian. I'm not sure I know how to be right. Yeah"}, {"start": 1574.42, "end": 1576.42, "text": " We're halfway there baby"}, {"start": 1579.46, "end": 1583.78, "text": " We know how to make everyone tells you you should make short podcasts that release every single week"}, {"start": 1583.78, "end": 1587.7, "text": " And you should have guests on to help build your audience and we do basically none of those things"}, {"start": 1587.7, "end": 1590.58, "text": " And everything that has worked for us is doing the exact opposite of those"}, {"start": 1590.58, "end": 1596.34, "text": " And so does that mean keep doing the opposite of every piece of advice everyone gives you because that's the path of success"}, {"start": 1596.4199999999998, "end": 1597.54, "text": " I don't think so"}, {"start": 1597.54, "end": 1600.1799999999998, "text": " But if we overfit to the data that we've observed so far"}, {"start": 1600.5, "end": 1605.6999999999998, "text": " That is what it would look like and so I'm hesitant to like keep being contrarian for the sense of being contrarian"}, {"start": 1606.02, "end": 1610.1799999999998, "text": " But I think that the important part that comes with this is like having a"}, {"start": 1610.8999999999999, "end": 1615.62, "text": " Interative feedback loop with your customers or in our case with our listeners to understand like"}, {"start": 1615.62, "end": 1621.54, "text": " What makes you love this and how do we lean harder into that and and sort of shut out"}, {"start": 1622.1, "end": 1624.34, "text": " General advice and pay more attention to like"}, {"start": 1625.2199999999998, "end": 1629.4599999999998, "text": " The things our customers are expressing by the way. I picked up a little poker tell on"}, {"start": 1630.5, "end": 1635.62, "text": " People who are on contract. How do you tell a real contrarian versus a wannabe contrarian?"}, {"start": 1635.62, "end": 1638.26, "text": " This is a little hotel. I picked up over time. Which is yeah, yeah"}, {"start": 1639.2199999999998, "end": 1641.62, "text": " In the tech world, I think because of Peter teal"}, {"start": 1641.62, "end": 1648.82, "text": " There's a like kind of like real sex appeal to that is to say should be contrarian and you put it your Twitter bio"}, {"start": 1649.06, "end": 1654.1799999999998, "text": " You're probably not exactly same with polymath. Yeah polymaths another one of them"}, {"start": 1655.3799999999999, "end": 1662.7399999999998, "text": " As being more visionary as being as being Sam have joked about like or like if you're an engineer being like slightly on the spectrum"}, {"start": 1662.7399999999998, "end": 1665.78, "text": " It's like oh, yeah, that's another indicator of success. It's like here we go"}, {"start": 1665.78, "end": 1674.26, "text": " So the one that is I think a tell when it comes to being contrarian is how excited are you that you have this contrarian idea because"}, {"start": 1674.74, "end": 1680.26, "text": " That shows people who are contrarian for the sake of being contrarian meaning that they're really excited to tell you"}, {"start": 1680.82, "end": 1684.82, "text": " How they think everybody else thinks a but it's actually be"}, {"start": 1685.78, "end": 1689.1399999999999, "text": " Whereas the real people I've seen that are contrarian they just see a"}, {"start": 1689.86, "end": 1694.34, "text": " And they're almost like I'm confused why people don't think a a is clearly right"}, {"start": 1694.34, "end": 1696.34, "text": " um"}, {"start": 1696.8999999999999, "end": 1700.1, "text": " They're they don't spend time trying to like convince the whole world of it like you know"}, {"start": 1700.34, "end": 1704.34, "text": " If they're asked they tell the truth and then when people react in a big way like oh man"}, {"start": 1704.34, "end": 1707.06, "text": " I can't believe you think that they're like I can't believe you don't think that"}, {"start": 1707.78, "end": 1713.6999999999998, "text": " It just seems like the truth to them and so that's what I've noticed is like if you if you watch old videos of like"}, {"start": 1713.6999999999998, "end": 1717.1399999999999, "text": " You know Peter teal talking or like I think biology is somebody who's like this today"}, {"start": 1718.1799999999998, "end": 1720.34, "text": " They sp they they're happy to"}, {"start": 1720.34, "end": 1726.58, "text": " Explain their point of view and they explain it like this is just what's gonna happen or this is what I believe to be true"}, {"start": 1727.06, "end": 1729.06, "text": " but they don't um"}, {"start": 1729.22, "end": 1731.22, "text": " Get high on the idea of"}, {"start": 1731.54, "end": 1736.58, "text": " Of being contrarian is a subtle difference as much people I've met in real life that that I kind of I've noticed this on"}, {"start": 1736.6599999999999, "end": 1741.54, "text": " It's hard to explain, but you'll see next time you kind of run into somebody who's over eager and over excited"}, {"start": 1741.9399999999998, "end": 1747.86, "text": " About the fact that they have this contrarian opinion. It's they're kind of just performing socially versus they actually believe that"}, {"start": 1747.86, "end": 1755.86, "text": " It reminds me a lot of um, it's like we all know this guy or girl who likes the idea of a relationship more than they like their current relationship"}, {"start": 1756.82, "end": 1762.34, "text": " And they're they're very excited to like have this particular lifestyle and you can sort of tell you're into that"}, {"start": 1762.82, "end": 1765.62, "text": " New lifestyle you have more than the person you're actually with right"}, {"start": 1766.1, "end": 1770.34, "text": " So did you want a boyfriend or did you want that right like do who did you actually want here?"}, {"start": 1771.06, "end": 1773.54, "text": " Uh, yeah, let me tell a story interesting though like oh"}, {"start": 1773.54, "end": 1777.94, "text": " Hey, go as you can tell one on the thing sam you talked about like what are the interesting success patterns"}, {"start": 1778.5, "end": 1779.22, "text": " um"}, {"start": 1779.22, "end": 1780.98, "text": " It reminded me of an experience I had"}, {"start": 1781.46, "end": 1783.46, "text": " Uh, while back I went to China"}, {"start": 1783.94, "end": 1790.74, "text": " When I was maybe 21 years old and got to go to the alibaba like alibaba flew out of entrepreneurs to go like meet with"}, {"start": 1790.82, "end": 1795.3799999999999, "text": " It was supposed to be jack mob, but we ended up meeting with this guy David way who's like their jack mob's right hand man"}, {"start": 1795.3799999999999, "end": 1800.5, "text": " He was the guy who was running alibaba at the time and I didn't even know what alibaba was like alibaba was a big deal"}, {"start": 1800.5, "end": 1803.62, "text": " Like now I'm now I'm like now I would have taken that really seriously"}, {"start": 1803.7, "end": 1807.22, "text": " I had no idea who they were at the time and we get there and"}, {"start": 1807.94, "end": 1812.9, "text": " Somebody asked him this question they raise her hand they go what do you think is the most important things for success"}, {"start": 1813.7, "end": 1816.9, "text": " Uh for the success of a company you alibaba is a multi-billion dollar company"}, {"start": 1817.14, "end": 1820.26, "text": " um, you know what what made it successful and he goes"}, {"start": 1821.46, "end": 1823.06, "text": " um"}, {"start": 1823.06, "end": 1828.74, "text": " He goes models for success are misleading they cannot be copied due to the like unique combination of luck"}, {"start": 1828.74, "end": 1832.74, "text": " Timing all these other things, but he goes, but what you can ask me is a better question"}, {"start": 1832.74, "end": 1836.66, "text": " Which is what are the common keys to failure and he goes they're always the same"}, {"start": 1837.14, "end": 1841.54, "text": " And he goes we study the the things that lead to failure and just tried to avoid those so he goes uh"}, {"start": 1842.1, "end": 1846.58, "text": " So you know, I leaned in I was like, well, please blow my mind sir go ahead. Yeah, and he's like um"}, {"start": 1847.06, "end": 1850.82, "text": " He goes there's three things that lead to failure money plans of technology"}, {"start": 1851.3, "end": 1855.46, "text": " He goes so our plan was no money no plans no technology"}, {"start": 1855.46, "end": 1860.82, "text": " I go what and like this crazy because like a tech company worth like 40 billion dollars like what are you talking about?"}, {"start": 1861.38, "end": 1865.6200000000001, "text": " And he goes hey, so he goes all right here we go money money makes people stupid"}, {"start": 1865.94, "end": 1871.06, "text": " And when problems come up their first instinct becomes throw money at it rather than attacking it with creativity"}, {"start": 1871.46, "end": 1874.9, "text": " So basically way back when google was uh"}, {"start": 1875.06, "end": 1877.06, "text": " Google was like dominating with ad words"}, {"start": 1877.06, "end": 1880.5, "text": " And so they're the people at alibaba like we need to make our version of ad words"}, {"start": 1880.5, "end": 1885.38, "text": " And he goes you know, this is no ordinance like you know building this type of ad network is not like super simple"}, {"start": 1886.34, "end": 1892.18, "text": " Um he goes to jack ma cut a check for $250,000 to build this project and let team like laugh like"}, {"start": 1892.66, "end": 1896.5, "text": " You're you're missing three zeros on the back of this like what are you talking about 240k"}, {"start": 1897.14, "end": 1900.18, "text": " And he goes that's how much money it took me to start alibaba"}, {"start": 1900.74, "end": 1903.54, "text": " Um like I had less than that starting the whole company"}, {"start": 1903.62, "end": 1906.18, "text": " So if you need more than that for a feature we're doing it wrong"}, {"start": 1906.18, "end": 1910.1000000000001, "text": " And he's like they're like well, how are we supposed to do this he goes do exactly what I did with alibaba"}, {"start": 1910.18, "end": 1912.9, "text": " He's like see moved 19 people into his"}, {"start": 1913.38, "end": 1916.98, "text": " apartment where he had started all the music that's your office. Yep. You're gonna work there"}, {"start": 1917.54, "end": 1920.5, "text": " He's like you need uh servers to run the ad servers"}, {"start": 1920.98, "end": 1927.46, "text": " Cool go find some like go get some used junk servers and like re rig them get them refurbished them and make them work"}, {"start": 1927.8600000000001, "end": 1930.8200000000002, "text": " And they go but there's no redundancy he goes if you're building"}, {"start": 1931.3, "end": 1935.7, "text": " Within where you need redundancy like we've we've done this wrong right like uh, you know"}, {"start": 1935.7, "end": 1939.14, "text": " This is you need to build build this so that it works without redundancy first"}, {"start": 1939.8600000000001, "end": 1944.5, "text": " And um, and so he did that for that was that was the no money then he's like no technology. He's like"}, {"start": 1945.06, "end": 1948.18, "text": " Everybody wants to call us a tech company. No, we are a service company"}, {"start": 1948.42, "end": 1952.18, "text": " We're here to serve our users if you don't think of yourself like you're in the service industry"}, {"start": 1952.18, "end": 1957.22, "text": " You're in the wrong industry and then his last one was planned and it's like all right well, dude. How'd you do this like?"}, {"start": 1957.54, "end": 1959.54, "text": " Why no plans why are plans bad he goes"}, {"start": 1959.54, "end": 1966.02, "text": " Um, he goes well, you know you guys are 50 young entrepreneurs who got flown out here to do this"}, {"start": 1966.34, "end": 1970.98, "text": " I assume in America you guys have done something good. Otherwise, why would we have picked you he goes"}, {"start": 1971.3799999999999, "end": 1973.78, "text": " How many of you are doing what you initially planned to do?"}, {"start": 1974.6599999999999, "end": 1980.34, "text": " And like nobody's hand went up and he's like exactly and he goes uh plan as all plans are fine"}, {"start": 1980.34, "end": 1984.58, "text": " But they always change this the only thing we know about plans the mission never waivers"}, {"start": 1984.82, "end": 1986.98, "text": " Sometimes you'll need a plan to get others to believe"}, {"start": 1986.98, "end": 1992.26, "text": " But remember you should not believe that plan you should follow your gut and adapt constantly to the circumstances"}, {"start": 1992.74, "end": 1996.58, "text": " Don't follow the plan you wrote when you started follow your mission follow your vision follow the why"}, {"start": 1996.9, "end": 1998.9, "text": " If you do that you will be successful and I was like"}, {"start": 1999.78, "end": 2003.6200000000001, "text": " Did you did you did you right all this down? Yeah, I'm like you really know, so"}, {"start": 2004.02, "end": 2007.06, "text": " So many years ago after that after that event I wrote"}, {"start": 2007.7, "end": 2013.3, "text": " I tried to write a book in like two weeks and I wrote half of it and so this was one of my chapters in that book"}, {"start": 2013.3, "end": 2016.4199999999998, "text": " Uh, and I just found the PDF on my computer when you were talking about"}, {"start": 2016.98, "end": 2020.4199999999998, "text": " Awesome. That's hilarious. That's amazing that you did that because that was a year ago"}, {"start": 2020.74, "end": 2025.3, "text": " What a great story. It's so applicable. I love that that's applicable to Ali Baba"}, {"start": 2025.94, "end": 2031.3799999999999, "text": " Uh, just as much as like I'm thinking about you guys and us and like how we started the conversation like yeah"}, {"start": 2031.3799999999999, "end": 2037.22, "text": " We had no money. We had I guess we had technology in that like podcasting and the internet is inherent"}, {"start": 2037.78, "end": 2041.86, "text": " But one of us were like we're building a tech company or we're building a product. It was like no"}, {"start": 2041.86, "end": 2043.86, "text": " It's like exactly"}, {"start": 2043.86, "end": 2045.86, "text": " We know play"}, {"start": 2046.6599999999999, "end": 2048.66, "text": " Like it's funny like I"}, {"start": 2048.66, "end": 2051.2999999999997, "text": " We see a lot. I'm sure you guys do too"}, {"start": 2051.8599999999997, "end": 2055.14, "text": " People come to us like oh, how do I start a podcast? I was our successful podcast"}, {"start": 2055.14, "end": 2063.38, "text": " We see like big companies come the like offline celebrities that want to start podcasts. It's like they come with money technology and a play"}, {"start": 2063.38, "end": 2064.9, "text": " I didn't like"}, {"start": 2064.9, "end": 2071.54, "text": " It's not how it's good to work that it's gonna. So you guys probably see this with your episodes like how many of them started doing"}, {"start": 2071.54, "end": 2074.74, "text": " What they're doing like I don't know I haven't listened to all the recent ones, but like I don't know"}, {"start": 2074.74, "end": 2077.7, "text": " Was Nintendo what we think of Nintendo today or did it start?"}, {"start": 2077.7, "end": 2085.22, "text": " Nintendo was making wait wait real quick. Do either of you know the origin story of Nintendo or have a guess at how old"}, {"start": 2085.22, "end": 2087.86, "text": " Nintendo is I think it's really I remember reading it once"}, {"start": 2087.86, "end": 2089.46, "text": " I don't I don't remember I'll talk my head"}, {"start": 2089.46, "end": 2093.46, "text": " But it was is it like Sony over there like selling rice or something and then that now they're who they are"}, {"start": 2093.62, "end": 2096.42, "text": " It's even better. Yeah, it's a hundred and thirty-year-old company"}, {"start": 2096.42, "end": 2100.98, "text": " Yeah started in about 1890 and 89 I think yeah"}, {"start": 2100.98, "end": 2102.42, "text": " and"}, {"start": 2102.42, "end": 2103.94, "text": " their original business"}, {"start": 2103.94, "end": 2106.98, "text": " was making Hana Fuda cards"}, {"start": 2106.98, "end": 2116.1800000000003, "text": " Which is the Japanese version of US playing cards but US playing cards were illegal to import like because people from the US could"}, {"start": 2116.1800000000003, "end": 2122.9, "text": " It was not legal to be in the country and David I think you at this point they literally would execute you"}, {"start": 2122.9, "end": 2125.14, "text": " Yeah, well I didn't take it to start just right after this"}, {"start": 2125.14, "end": 2132.2599999999998, "text": " But before the matey restoration like Japan went through this multi-hundred-year period of strict isolationism where like"}, {"start": 2132.2599999999998, "end": 2135.54, "text": " You would be executed if you were a foreigner and you entered the country"}, {"start": 2136.1, "end": 2140.66, "text": " Likewise, if you were a Japanese person and you left the country and came back you would also be executed"}, {"start": 2142.58, "end": 2146.5, "text": " But like playing cards are this thing that like has product market fits there like how do we know?"}, {"start": 2146.5, "end": 2148.74, "text": " They like playing cards universal human need"}, {"start": 2149.2999999999997, "end": 2154.42, "text": " So it literally started making Hana Fuda cards and their distribution channel was through the Yakuza"}, {"start": 2154.42, "end": 2156.42, "text": " to illegal casinos"}, {"start": 2156.42, "end": 2158.34, "text": " Yeah, Yakuza being like the mafia"}, {"start": 2158.34, "end": 2163.14, "text": " The Japanese mafia yeah, yeah, they started making these playing cards and like a very small part of the market was like"}, {"start": 2163.14, "end": 2165.78, "text": " Oh, you have a pack of playing cards in your house, but just like"}, {"start": 2166.26, "end": 2173.14, "text": " Everywhere else in the world the market is casinos because you use a fresh deck for each hand so that there's no cheating"}, {"start": 2173.62, "end": 2177.38, "text": " And yeah, so Nintendo is like deeply embedded with the Yakuza"}, {"start": 2177.38, "end": 2181.06, "text": " And for like 60 years this was their business before they started making toys"}, {"start": 2181.06, "end": 2184.42, "text": " Wow, and then what some like visionary within the company was like"}, {"start": 2185.06, "end": 2187.22, "text": " Hey, there's this new thing is cool. Crazy"}, {"start": 2187.7799999999997, "end": 2192.1, "text": " Family like really tragedy of like this cycle of"}, {"start": 2193.38, "end": 2194.9, "text": " death and"}, {"start": 2194.9, "end": 2199.06, "text": " Just like terrible parenting in the past down to forge generations of the same family"}, {"start": 2199.2999999999997, "end": 2202.1, "text": " And actually not the same family because they had no sons and they needed sons"}, {"start": 2202.1, "end": 2206.42, "text": " So they were marrying their daughters off to people who could take over the business. Yeah, exactly"}, {"start": 2206.42, "end": 2212.26, "text": " And uh one of these guys was basically just like so pissed off it like the family legacy"}, {"start": 2212.7400000000002, "end": 2216.02, "text": " That uh, this is Roshi Yamaguchi who started the modern Nintendo"}, {"start": 2216.58, "end": 2221.78, "text": " Uh, he was like I didn't want to diversify the business. I want to get out of this and he did a partnership with Disney"}, {"start": 2222.66, "end": 2225.62, "text": " In 1959. Yeah, 1959. He"}, {"start": 2226.34, "end": 2231.3, "text": " Nintendo brought Disney and Disney IP into Japan post-World War II"}, {"start": 2231.86, "end": 2234.1, "text": " Uh, I literally have the cards toys"}, {"start": 2234.1, "end": 2237.7, "text": " Some acquired fans sent them to me. Oh wow started words"}, {"start": 2238.42, "end": 2241.94, "text": " Yeah, and then they brought toys and then they started making their own toys"}, {"start": 2241.94, "end": 2244.58, "text": " Because they had like lock on the retail distributors"}, {"start": 2245.14, "end": 2249.54, "text": " Uh, yeah, so started his cards and they were like then they went to all these uh"}, {"start": 2250.3399999999997, "end": 2253.2999999999997, "text": " Retailers, they were like oh you want the Disney products. You're gonna take our products too"}, {"start": 2253.7799999999997, "end": 2255.7799999999997, "text": " Jiminy cricket as the Joker"}, {"start": 2256.2599999999998, "end": 2261.54, "text": " Jiminy cricket as the Joker and Mickey Mouse golfing on this old school card deck. That's amazing"}, {"start": 2261.54, "end": 2266.66, "text": " That's like you got to wear that with you got to wear gloves if you're gonna touch that or something. It's like a seriously ancient artifact"}, {"start": 2268.9, "end": 2270.9, "text": " This data is wrong every freaking time"}, {"start": 2271.86, "end": 2273.86, "text": " Have you heard of HubSpot?"}, {"start": 2274.02, "end": 2280.98, "text": " HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated. Whoa. I can see the client's whole history calls support tickets emails"}, {"start": 2281.22, "end": 2284.9, "text": " And here's a test from three days ago. I totally missed"}, {"start": 2286.1, "end": 2288.1, "text": " HubSpot grow better"}, {"start": 2288.1, "end": 2292.2599999999998, "text": " Can I ask you guys a couple rapid fire questions?"}, {"start": 2292.9, "end": 2296.2599999999998, "text": " About some of the companies that you've you've discussed number one"}, {"start": 2296.74, "end": 2298.9, "text": " Which company of all of everyone that you"}, {"start": 2299.94, "end": 2304.9, "text": " Went over would you want to own like which which what's the one that you envy?"}, {"start": 2305.54, "end": 2307.38, "text": " Well, that way those are two different questions"}, {"start": 2307.38, "end": 2312.1, "text": " Which would you want to like own the stock of and which do you want or which do you want to like uh"}, {"start": 2312.1, "end": 2318.02, "text": " Be an investor in or actually own the company. Yeah. Yeah the second actually own and which one do you envy most?"}, {"start": 2319.14, "end": 2321.94, "text": " Actually own I think is the NFL"}, {"start": 2323.7799999999997, "end": 2326.58, "text": " Yeah, I think that has the most"}, {"start": 2327.38, "end": 2333.54, "text": " Like durable franchise and own is always a funny question because what's your entry price like do I have to buy stuff at today's prices or"}, {"start": 2333.54, "end": 2337.62, "text": " But if I think about sort of like durability of the asset and I sort of ignore"}, {"start": 2337.62, "end": 2341.54, "text": " Um where things are trading and what market values today"}, {"start": 2342.58, "end": 2344.58, "text": " The NFL is"}, {"start": 2344.98, "end": 2352.66, "text": " Seven layers of entrenched in our society and to be an American at this point means to have the NFL in your life and"}, {"start": 2353.62, "end": 2360.66, "text": " They also David you pointed this out on our episode everyone thinks it's really cute to like stack rank all the the media franchises"}, {"start": 2360.66, "end": 2363.62, "text": " Marvel's worth this and you know all the way at the top of the charts"}, {"start": 2363.62, "end": 2368.66, "text": " Pokemon's worth this but like the NFL is worth so much more than any of those"}, {"start": 2368.74, "end": 2374.66, "text": " The NFL TV contract alone is $12 billion a year the most recent set of rights. They personaled up was like"}, {"start": 2375.06, "end": 2378.74, "text": " I always knew uh now it's like 18 or 19 billion a year I think"}, {"start": 2379.38, "end": 2382.8199999999997, "text": " Something insane, but then they recently signed a 10-year deal. So it's like a"}, {"start": 2383.2999999999997, "end": 2386.1, "text": " 150 billion dollar deal just for the TV"}, {"start": 2386.5, "end": 2392.3399999999997, "text": " NFL has all the franchises, but is there basically like this like top level hold co that owns like the media rights and the franchise"}, {"start": 2392.34, "end": 2398.26, "text": " It's communist capitalism. They all own it all together, but the NFL unlike any of the other leagues out there"}, {"start": 2398.98, "end": 2404.34, "text": " Is this there's starting to be a few little cracks in this, but like they negotiate with the"}, {"start": 2404.82, "end": 2408.6600000000003, "text": " TV contracts and now all the streaming and everything unified as a league"}, {"start": 2408.9, "end": 2412.5, "text": " So there's no like you know like how the Yankees have the yes network like their own tv network"}, {"start": 2412.7400000000002, "end": 2417.7000000000003, "text": " None of that in the NFL. It's all together and it's all equal revenue shit. Have you guys done an episode on MLBAM?"}, {"start": 2418.42, "end": 2420.42, "text": " Yes, we did way back"}, {"start": 2420.42, "end": 2422.82, "text": " What's actually the first investment before the acquisition?"}, {"start": 2422.82, "end": 2427.3, "text": " These guys can tell you that this the full version their accurate version. I'll give you the dumb version which is"}, {"start": 2427.94, "end": 2432.42, "text": " The major league baseball had created a tech like a tech"}, {"start": 2433.14, "end": 2437.3, "text": " Team basically a tech company inside of major league baseball co-owned by like the teams"}, {"start": 2437.94, "end": 2441.78, "text": " And the good job was like hey like people are trying to listen to this on the radio"}, {"start": 2442.34, "end": 2447.38, "text": " We need to like do digital streaming on the e-t-ro because when e-t-ro came over from Japan"}, {"start": 2447.38, "end": 2450.82, "text": " They needed to stream over that guy's am each ro Suzuki the guy who played on the mariners"}, {"start": 2451.06, "end": 2455.2200000000003, "text": " Yeah, it was like a phenomenon and so people in Japan wanted to watch or lit it watch wasn't even an option"}, {"start": 2455.2200000000003, "end": 2456.82, "text": " I think it was listened to the games"}, {"start": 2456.82, "end": 2461.3, "text": " So they needed digital internet streaming audio and so they built this thing"}, {"start": 2461.3, "end": 2464.98, "text": " They started offering it and then each team would use it. So it was like oh each team"}, {"start": 2465.46, "end": 2470.1, "text": " Co-funded it so they would like cut a check and then that developed technology for all of them"}, {"start": 2470.1, "end": 2475.78, "text": " But then they ended up spinning it out as a multi-billion dollar company because they're the best at video streaming now"}, {"start": 2475.78, "end": 2480.02, "text": " Like they stream if you want to watch a game of thrones. It's MLB AM's video tech"}, {"start": 2480.5, "end": 2485.86, "text": " That streams game of thrones so that when whatever 10 million people click play as soon as the episode drops"}, {"start": 2486.26, "end": 2489.78, "text": " That like the thing doesn't crash which is kind of an you know, it's an amazing thing"}, {"start": 2489.78, "end": 2495.2200000000003, "text": " And so that like spin out like who would have ever thought like one of the big tech companies"}, {"start": 2495.7000000000003, "end": 2502.02, "text": " You know unicorn tech companies came out of like this baseball co-op co-funded thing is that kind of a insane story"}, {"start": 2502.02, "end": 2506.1, "text": " And it was in like 2004 or something that they started working on it"}, {"start": 2506.1, "end": 2512.1, "text": " They had a five-year head start on having the insight that this infrastructure was going to be important over Netflix"}, {"start": 2512.66, "end": 2517.22, "text": " Like everyone thinks like oh Netflix, you know is in with the ISPs and it's the best in the world that this like"}, {"start": 2517.46, "end": 2520.18, "text": " BAM tech was doing that five years earlier"}, {"start": 2520.9, "end": 2524.9, "text": " Yeah, and then I'm getting acquired by Disney and like is a huge part of"}, {"start": 2525.38, "end": 2527.38, "text": " Yes-BN streaming like all the"}, {"start": 2527.38, "end": 2537.54, "text": " Yes-BN plus plus Disney plus like it's it's crazy the history is there is there a certain founder CEO leader who you would rank as"}, {"start": 2538.1800000000003, "end": 2541.2200000000003, "text": " The the person you'd least want to compete against"}, {"start": 2541.7000000000003, "end": 2544.26, "text": " Whether they're whether historical or modern"}, {"start": 2544.82, "end": 2549.3, "text": " Here's another one phrasing that I heard that like there's somebody signed with the NFL draft and there's like four QBs"}, {"start": 2549.3, "end": 2552.6600000000003, "text": " That we're competing and they're like wow this guy's got good arm. This guy's good at running"}, {"start": 2552.6600000000003, "end": 2554.1800000000003, "text": " This guy's a great leader right up blah blah"}, {"start": 2554.18, "end": 2561.06, "text": " And then this guy asked this question. I love to go's let's say they all went on vacation and they rented a car and they're walking out to the to the Jeep"}, {"start": 2561.8599999999997, "end": 2566.3399999999997, "text": " Who do they throw the keys to to drive this car is like who's the leader who's the alpha amongst alphas"}, {"start": 2566.8999999999996, "end": 2571.14, "text": " It amongst these QB so so who's that in the CEO? I think we got to say Jensen"}, {"start": 2571.7799999999997, "end": 2574.8999999999996, "text": " Jensen along from Nvidia like he's such a bad ass"}, {"start": 2575.22, "end": 2578.8999999999996, "text": " So like I don't know anything about Nvidia because I just know it's a killer stock"}, {"start": 2578.9, "end": 2585.3, "text": " So Nvidia makes the chips that are in computers and and does it involves display like you get like a Nvidia"}, {"start": 2586.1, "end": 2588.1, "text": " Yeah, is that right? Yeah, yeah"}, {"start": 2589.38, "end": 2596.58, "text": " Is is in their sort of third major actor company? Yeah, but loosely defined as like they"}, {"start": 2598.1, "end": 2606.98, "text": " popularized the idea of a GPU in addition to the CPU and originally the use case was for video games in the 90s"}, {"start": 2606.98, "end": 2611.78, "text": " And you know, I think everyone who ever built PCs remembers like oh man"}, {"start": 2611.78, "end": 2617.54, "text": " I got to get this hot new GPU to slide in the card because it's better than integrated graphics thing from Intel"}, {"start": 2618.1, "end": 2623.78, "text": " um, and so that was sort of their market for a while and uh it was all about gaming PCs"}, {"start": 2624.26, "end": 2625.54, "text": " but then"}, {"start": 2625.54, "end": 2630.5, "text": " Like again five six seven years before the rest of the market Jensen basically made this bet"}, {"start": 2631.3, "end": 2636.18, "text": " Where he saw researchers using the the GPUs the gaming graphics"}, {"start": 2636.18, "end": 2641.54, "text": " They're like going to best by and buying a bunch of Nvidia graphics cards to do AI research"}, {"start": 2641.8599999999997, "end": 2648.74, "text": " And he was like I think we should lean really heavily into this and so he spent billions of of dollars and thousands of headcount"}, {"start": 2648.8199999999997, "end": 2653.8599999999997, "text": " For five years to build up this like whole software stack called kuda"}, {"start": 2654.4199999999996, "end": 2660.2599999999998, "text": " That if AI and ML was going to become a thing then people were going to use kuda to develop"}, {"start": 2660.66, "end": 2662.8199999999997, "text": " Exclusively on Nvidia's hardware"}, {"start": 2662.82, "end": 2666.26, "text": " And so by the time it did become a thing like five years ago"}, {"start": 2666.5800000000004, "end": 2673.38, "text": " And video had this enormous moat around it as being the platform to develop AI on and it just so happened that"}, {"start": 2673.54, "end": 2684.1000000000004, "text": " The technology this like super heavy parallel processing matrix math technology that makes gaming graphics chips work is the very same math that powers"}, {"start": 2684.9, "end": 2688.82, "text": " What ML is all based on but other than so in video for the listener"}, {"start": 2688.82, "end": 2694.1000000000004, "text": " It's I just like it up. It's a six certain fifty billion dollar company. So one of the I don't know top 20 30 biggest business in the world"}, {"start": 2694.34, "end": 2696.34, "text": " But other than him being correct"}, {"start": 2696.82, "end": 2699.54, "text": " What makes this person like a savage or"}, {"start": 2700.9, "end": 2705.54, "text": " That they're just like there's so many points in history like he is a 19 wives"}, {"start": 2706.26, "end": 2712.34, "text": " Let me know he actually he's a total family man. He's been married to the same person he met in college of two kids like he's"}, {"start": 2713.06, "end": 2717.1400000000003, "text": " But like he's got a giant tattoo of the company's logo on his shoulder"}, {"start": 2717.14, "end": 2722.02, "text": " Uh, he wears leather jackets. He drives really fast cars. He's like"}, {"start": 2722.9, "end": 2724.9, "text": " He's basically like Elon"}, {"start": 2725.3799999999997, "end": 2727.3799999999997, "text": " Except not like"}, {"start": 2727.62, "end": 2734.18, "text": " Like right like he's right and like leads with kindness and uh, but like he"}, {"start": 2734.98, "end": 2741.14, "text": " I mean there like in each phase of the company the absolute rational thing to do was like"}, {"start": 2741.7799999999997, "end": 2746.8199999999997, "text": " Basically shut it down and like you know like talk about being left for dead like this company was left for dead"}, {"start": 2746.82, "end": 2750.98, "text": " Multiple times and he's built like just single handedly this dude"}, {"start": 2751.7000000000003, "end": 2754.9, "text": " Created the AI revolution that we are in today like"}, {"start": 2755.54, "end": 2761.6200000000003, "text": " Nvidia and kuda is essentially like you can think about it as like the android plus iOS of AI"}, {"start": 2762.1000000000004, "end": 2767.38, "text": " Like no Nvidia and no kuda no decision by Jensen to do this. We are not living in the world. We're living in today"}, {"start": 2767.86, "end": 2774.26, "text": " Which I'm gonna give you a different answer for the thing you're actually looking for which is like who is the most savage"}, {"start": 2774.26, "end": 2780.0200000000004, "text": " Person to compete against that answer is Bernard Arno from LVMH. So rich man the world today"}, {"start": 2780.5800000000004, "end": 2787.78, "text": " Uh, and he got there not by being the founder of a business that happened to have product market fit and appreciated wildly"}, {"start": 2788.1000000000004, "end": 2790.82, "text": " It's because of his deal prowess and"}, {"start": 2791.78, "end": 2797.0600000000004, "text": " The way that he was able to effectively outsmart the rest of the market to Hoover up"}, {"start": 2797.86, "end": 2799.78, "text": " 70 of the the"}, {"start": 2799.78, "end": 2806.7400000000002, "text": " Histories most important and trusted brands into one umbrella and then find leverage in every single thing"}, {"start": 2806.7400000000002, "end": 2808.7400000000002, "text": " He does to expand the empire"}, {"start": 2809.38, "end": 2811.38, "text": " Is there anyone who you think is"}, {"start": 2812.26, "end": 2818.02, "text": " Overrated who's on a pedestal and you think I don't think that person's that great. I think uh it worked out"}, {"start": 2818.5800000000004, "end": 2820.5800000000004, "text": " I think they're overrated"}, {"start": 2820.5800000000004, "end": 2822.5800000000004, "text": " Very unacquired question"}, {"start": 2822.58, "end": 2827.7799999999997, "text": " Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Daven higher nice people. We are. We don't um well"}, {"start": 2828.42, "end": 2831.54, "text": " big a debt what would I like to talk about"}, {"start": 2834.74, "end": 2836.74, "text": " Uh damn person"}, {"start": 2836.8199999999997, "end": 2840.98, "text": " Uh are you gonna pick anyone, but somebody was like no, I think one that I like to talk about here is um"}, {"start": 2842.02, "end": 2846.42, "text": " I don't know the overrated is right, but like, I think a lot about it investing about"}, {"start": 2847.54, "end": 2850.58, "text": " There's this great about an quote not one of his most well-known ones, but um"}, {"start": 2850.58, "end": 2858.8199999999997, "text": " but it's something like you want to own a business that either even an idiot could run because someday"}, {"start": 2858.8199999999997, "end": 2866.5, "text": " someone will, you know? And I think about to me what that means is like you want to own a business,"}, {"start": 2866.5, "end": 2872.02, "text": " you want to invest in a business that like literally you cannot kill it. There's nothing you can do"}, {"start": 2872.02, "end": 2877.2999999999997, "text": " to stop this juggernaut. And to me that's Airbnb. And we talked about this a lot on that"}, {"start": 2877.3, "end": 2884.02, "text": " episode we did on Airbnb, but like it's just like the most amazing global network effect of all"}, {"start": 2884.02, "end": 2889.2200000000003, "text": " time. And literally like I don't, you know, this is my opinion, but I don't think there's anything"}, {"start": 2889.2200000000003, "end": 2896.1800000000003, "text": " that any manager could do to change the like to inflect the trajectory of that ship, you know?"}, {"start": 2896.1800000000003, "end": 2904.34, "text": " So my, I, I like, there's a long story. I don't feel like telling it, but I had a job at Airbnb when"}, {"start": 2904.34, "end": 2909.2200000000003, "text": " I was like 22 and I like dropped in school and moved out and then I got denied whatever. And so I"}, {"start": 2909.2200000000003, "end": 2912.7400000000002, "text": " didn't end up working there. And I got to interview with the founders and then years later my wife"}, {"start": 2912.7400000000002, "end": 2917.86, "text": " ended up working there and during work from home for COVID, Brian would give these talks every"}, {"start": 2917.86, "end": 2922.1800000000003, "text": " Thursday and we lived in a small apartment. So I like, and never would hear it. I think that I"}, {"start": 2922.1800000000003, "end": 2926.1800000000003, "text": " agree with you. It's a mark, once you have a marketplace that's working, it's hard to screw it up."}, {"start": 2926.1800000000003, "end": 2932.1000000000004, "text": " eBay is doing a good job though, but I, you know, if it works like it's a good, it's a great thing."}, {"start": 2932.1, "end": 2937.7, "text": " It's quite durable, but I would listen to Brian Chessie give these 30 minute like Thursday talks."}, {"start": 2937.7, "end": 2944.1, "text": " That guy is bad to the bone. I read a little bit. I read the Walsh, the Walt Disney biography and he"}, {"start": 2944.1, "end": 2948.9, "text": " reminded me exactly of him. He is a, you know, like I think someone said there's a difference between a"}, {"start": 2948.9, "end": 2953.14, "text": " missionary and a mercenary. Mercenaries are hired guns who are ruthless, but missionaries, they,"}, {"start": 2953.14, "end": 2959.86, "text": " they really care about what they're doing. I sense that with him. That guy I think is, is, is a bit killer."}, {"start": 2959.86, "end": 2964.98, "text": " I think that he's, people think of him as this nice guy of which I think he is. I think he's way,"}, {"start": 2964.98, "end": 2970.1800000000003, "text": " way more of a killer than people can credit for it and he's very wise. That he's a really good leader."}, {"start": 2971.06, "end": 2976.7400000000002, "text": " But that's cool. I like Airbnb and I think it's cool that I agree that it probably would be hard"}, {"start": 2976.7400000000002, "end": 2980.58, "text": " to kill. And last question, which person who you covered would you would kick your ass physically?"}, {"start": 2980.58, "end": 2985.7000000000003, "text": " And you'd least want to have a physical confrontation with. I mean, actually, Jensen. Yeah. You think,"}, {"start": 2985.7, "end": 2990.8199999999997, "text": " you think you think so? Well, he's getting up here in age, but like, yeah, no, he like, he lifts."}, {"start": 2992.74, "end": 2994.2599999999998, "text": " He's just like such a character."}, {"start": 2998.74, "end": 3001.7799999999997, "text": " Well, I certainly, I mean, we're coming right off of Nintendo, but like,"}, {"start": 3003.46, "end": 3007.8599999999997, "text": " Hiroshi Yamuji back in the day, not because he was physically intimidating, but like, literally,"}, {"start": 3007.8599999999997, "end": 3014.3399999999997, "text": " like that man was in bed with the Yakuza. Oh, they, you're too not cross him. Oh,"}, {"start": 3014.34, "end": 3018.6600000000003, "text": " Doug Leoni. Yeah. I like we sat Dave and I walked in to interview Doug Leoni. It's a great story."}, {"start": 3018.6600000000003, "end": 3024.6600000000003, "text": " And Doug Leoni's the founder of Sequoia. Yeah. Not a long time managing partner. Yeah, got it."}, {"start": 3024.6600000000003, "end": 3030.98, "text": " One of a headhound show at one point of one of the best venture capital firms ever through Google"}, {"start": 3030.98, "end": 3036.1000000000004, "text": " and, you know, the true heyday of Sequoia, which yeah, or you could argue that was recently,"}, {"start": 3036.1000000000004, "end": 3042.1800000000003, "text": " but amazing era of Sequoia. And so we a lot of times like with guests, we'll get to like spend"}, {"start": 3042.18, "end": 3047.14, "text": " some time beforehand and get to know them and go out to dinner afterwards and build real relationship."}, {"start": 3047.14, "end": 3053.7, "text": " And we like email or text and you guys know the drill. And so with Doug, we didn't communicate"}, {"start": 3053.7, "end": 3058.98, "text": " with him at all beforehand. It was all with some other lovely people at Sequoia. And we walk in,"}, {"start": 3058.98, "end": 3063.62, "text": " and we set up and someone walks in the room and then they go, okay, are you ready? And we were like,"}, {"start": 3063.62, "end": 3067.8599999999997, "text": " yep, and they were like, great, we'll go get Doug. Doug walks in. He sits down. He says, hello."}, {"start": 3067.86, "end": 3075.46, "text": " Are we starting? And we're like, uh, yeah. So we hit record and we feel like so we did a whole"}, {"start": 3075.46, "end": 3082.7400000000002, "text": " episode. We finished recording. Doug goes, Doug just goes, great. Thank you so much. And he"}, {"start": 3082.7400000000002, "end": 3088.6600000000003, "text": " walks gets up and leaves the room. So every word that I've ever spoken with Doug Lee only except for"}, {"start": 3088.6600000000003, "end": 3093.2200000000003, "text": " like two or three is on the record in the episode that you can listen to in our podcast feed."}, {"start": 3093.22, "end": 3098.1, "text": " And later his EA did come in and say, hey, Doug wanted to know if you guys had any feedback."}, {"start": 3098.1, "end": 3102.98, "text": " He's always looking to get better and sort of like came in and chat it with us. But I was like, wow,"}, {"start": 3102.98, "end": 3106.5, "text": " that is a, that's a great business. I wanted to say she thank you."}, {"start": 3106.5, "end": 3106.98, "text": " Um,"}, {"start": 3106.98, "end": 3115.7799999999997, "text": " he doesn't waste breath. So I was the assistant. The assistant just punched in the arm and gave you a"}, {"start": 3115.7799999999997, "end": 3122.2599999999998, "text": " rat rate that that's from Doug. He also had, uh, he has I think still to this day, the best"}, {"start": 3122.26, "end": 3127.3, "text": " well done acquired that was not uttered by Ben or me quoting somebody else from history."}, {"start": 3127.78, "end": 3133.86, "text": " But the best live quote on acquired he was talking about, um, after the dot com crash when, uh,"}, {"start": 3133.86, "end": 3137.94, "text": " Sequoia was like kind of made this vow that no LP would lose money. Like they wouldn't take"}, {"start": 3137.94, "end": 3142.34, "text": " them all again fun. They would like work the portfolio companies. They don't take hours. Make"}, {"start": 3142.34, "end": 3147.46, "text": " sure that they have positive returns. And he said, uh, he's like Mike Moritz and I linked arms."}, {"start": 3147.46, "end": 3151.2200000000003, "text": " All right. I wasn't, I think it was linked. I said, Mike Moritz and I decided that like, we would"}, {"start": 3151.22, "end": 3156.18, "text": " stay on there and we wouldn't flinch and you could burn cigarettes on our arms. And we would,"}, {"start": 3156.98, "end": 3162.4199999999996, "text": " we wouldn't take a molligan on these funds. They're like, damn. He also has kind of an accent,"}, {"start": 3162.4199999999996, "end": 3167.62, "text": " right? Like he's, uh, doesn't he? Yeah, he's got this Italian new. Five. Yeah, that's cool."}, {"start": 3167.62, "end": 3172.74, "text": " Are there, are there any more of these like tough guys or tough women like that are out there now?"}, {"start": 3172.74, "end": 3176.18, "text": " I mean, when I hear that, it's, I always like, oh, that was a different generation."}, {"start": 3176.18, "end": 3183.22, "text": " Uh, do they like, I don't like the only only nowadays. Yeah. You got it. You got like,"}, {"start": 3183.22, "end": 3188.58, "text": " now, yeah, well, Elon's tough. He ain't like tough, tough like Travis Frank. I think Frank"}, {"start": 3188.58, "end": 3195.3799999999997, "text": " Slutman is still like this. Yeah. And he's a giant breed though. Like, we do. He's more like,"}, {"start": 3195.3799999999997, "end": 3201.2999999999997, "text": " right? Yeah. Frank, my, my badge is not working to get into the office. He's still got teeth. Don't"}, {"start": 3201.3, "end": 3208.42, "text": " share. He's like, when you read that guy's book, you're like, all right. Yeah. This would be"}, {"start": 3208.42, "end": 3215.78, "text": " a pretty hardcore Boston work under. Yeah. It's totally a lost art though. Like, um, yeah, I don't,"}, {"start": 3215.78, "end": 3220.98, "text": " I don't think they make them like that anymore. Unfortunately. Yeah. Um, that's crazy. Before we go,"}, {"start": 3220.98, "end": 3225.6200000000003, "text": " do you guys have, uh, have any half-baked business ideas you wanted to share with the, uh,"}, {"start": 3225.6200000000003, "end": 3228.02, "text": " the My first million audience because that's what they love."}, {"start": 3228.02, "end": 3236.02, "text": " Uh, yeah. Well, I loved this. So I have one that, uh, I was, we were actually kicking around,"}, {"start": 3236.02, "end": 3242.18, "text": " uh, together, bending me for a while. Um, but that we're not going to do, which is, I think, uh,"}, {"start": 3242.82, "end": 3250.34, "text": " you could actually start a corporate podcast agency. So an agency for companies to make their own"}, {"start": 3250.34, "end": 3257.06, "text": " podcast or external. Either one, uh, and my thesis on this is that,"}, {"start": 3257.06, "end": 3264.18, "text": " uh, for companies, uh, there is tremendous value to having a podcast, even if nobody listens."}, {"start": 3264.18, "end": 3268.74, "text": " If people listen, like upside, but even if you, basically, you should just assume no one will"}, {"start": 3268.74, "end": 3272.66, "text": " listen because we have like, uh, there's so many great options. Why would I listen to a,"}, {"start": 3272.66, "end": 3279.86, "text": " a company's podcast, right? But it is an excuse to have relationship building conversations"}, {"start": 3279.86, "end": 3285.22, "text": " with customers and sales and business that basically, yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's sales enablement."}, {"start": 3285.22, "end": 3290.1, "text": " Like once you have a conversation, you ever recorded, you publish it publicly, even if there's no"}, {"start": 3290.1, "end": 3294.3399999999997, "text": " organic audience, you can still link to that and you can send it to customers as like a lead nurturing"}, {"start": 3294.3399999999997, "end": 3297.8599999999997, "text": " thing of, oh, somebody else was in this position too. And they talked about why our product made"}, {"start": 3297.8599999999997, "end": 3303.2999999999997, "text": " their life better. Right. Yeah. Like, what do you have? It's own, uh, it's on some podcast."}, {"start": 3303.9399999999996, "end": 3308.18, "text": " Yeah. Yeah. What do they charge for that? What are people charged for that? I know Ben, uh, Ben"}, {"start": 3308.18, "end": 3313.7799999999997, "text": " are Ben Ben Wilson. You used to look work at a, uh, is it mission.org band or no, it was"}, {"start": 3313.78, "end": 3318.34, "text": " Caspian, Caspian studios. And I think they do that for like, this idea, right? Like, how does,"}, {"start": 3318.34, "end": 3323.5400000000004, "text": " does this idea work or not really? What's the verdict on this one? Yes, it works. Yes."}, {"start": 3323.5400000000004, "end": 3329.2200000000003, "text": " The customers are extremely price insensitive. So it's good. The margins are super high. Uh, we actually,"}, {"start": 3329.2200000000003, "end": 3334.82, "text": " like, combining the two things we just talked about, we made snowflakes podcast and Frank Sluitman"}, {"start": 3334.82, "end": 3340.9, "text": " was on it all the time. Oh, perfect. So it's, uh, it's a really good business. The one bad thing about"}, {"start": 3340.9, "end": 3345.7000000000003, "text": " it that's coming into effect right now is when recessions hit, it's the first thing to go, right?"}, {"start": 3345.7000000000003, "end": 3350.34, "text": " It's just like the margins are super good when times are good, but then when times are not. The"}, {"start": 3350.34, "end": 3354.1800000000003, "text": " ability of being like, Hey, can you send me the last 38 downloads numbers? And you're like, delete,"}, {"start": 3354.1800000000003, "end": 3363.38, "text": " delete the whole podcast. They're asking the question. Exactly. Like that. Yes. Yeah. What else you"}, {"start": 3363.38, "end": 3368.58, "text": " got? What else interests you at the moment? Ben, you got any, uh, or at least what deals are you"}, {"start": 3368.58, "end": 3372.18, "text": " seeing? Because you guys are investing. Are there any interesting deals that you're seeing or"}, {"start": 3372.18, "end": 3376.02, "text": " categories that you're seeing that you really like that don't start with the word AI?"}, {"start": 3377.86, "end": 3383.54, "text": " I mean, actually no. Like, and, and I think that's the, I think that is correct. Like I am one of"}, {"start": 3383.54, "end": 3391.86, "text": " these people that believes that, uh, you, yeah, saying AI, we invest in AI is a little bit of a"}, {"start": 3391.86, "end": 3397.14, "text": " silly thing these days because it's the same thing as 20 years ago saying we invest in software."}, {"start": 3397.14, "end": 3403.54, "text": " As a VC, it's like, yeah, no shit. Like I think it's just going to be so quickly ubiquitous that like"}, {"start": 3403.54, "end": 3409.7799999999997, "text": " if companies aren't using AI in some capacity or starting to get a little bit like, what's a cool"}, {"start": 3409.7799999999997, "end": 3415.54, "text": " AI use case for company that you've, that you've seen invested in or run invested in whatever."}, {"start": 3415.54, "end": 3419.2999999999997, "text": " Well, I'm by the way, I think Sean met with James Kerrier recently. And I think it was James"}, {"start": 3419.2999999999997, "end": 3424.58, "text": " on Twitter or maybe Sean used to hold us. You go, I've been pitched by 200 AI companies in the"}, {"start": 3424.58, "end": 3428.74, "text": " last quarter and I've invested in none because they're all weak or something like that."}, {"start": 3428.74, "end": 3434.18, "text": " I did. So I am. It's interesting. I haven't invested in any either. Or I haven't invested."}, {"start": 3434.18, "end": 3437.7, "text": " I'm lots of companies I've invested and have added AI stuff to their products. But I haven't"}, {"start": 3437.7, "end": 3445.54, "text": " invested in some like net new AI company. In part because I don't think AI is going to be the"}, {"start": 3445.54, "end": 3450.1, "text": " differentiation. And I don't think it's going to be defensible for the vast majority of companies."}, {"start": 3450.1, "end": 3457.22, "text": " I think the value is going to come from and the moat is going to come from the same thing that"}, {"start": 3457.22, "end": 3464.3399999999997, "text": " always creates value and moats, which is like network effects with your customers or like a"}, {"start": 3464.3399999999997, "end": 3468.58, "text": " data moat where someone's already fully locked into your thing. And so they don't want to migrate"}, {"start": 3468.58, "end": 3473.62, "text": " because that would suck. And they have processes around using your thing. And so I sort of"}, {"start": 3473.62, "end": 3482.2599999999998, "text": " like I believe that an enormous amount of the value from AI will accrue to these foundational"}, {"start": 3482.2599999999998, "end": 3488.02, "text": " models. But you actually do have to be using the foundational models in your thing in order to be"}, {"start": 3489.06, "end": 3494.8199999999997, "text": " like table stakes in the next few years because everybody's going to expect all software to"}, {"start": 3494.8199999999997, "end": 3500.74, "text": " just behave magically. Right. Do you think and this will be the last question for me. Do you think"}, {"start": 3500.74, "end": 3505.14, "text": " that there's a world where you're going to sell acquired or do one of these Spotify deals or"}, {"start": 3505.14, "end": 3515.2999999999997, "text": " anything like that? Have you been approached? Good question. Yes, but not in like a"}, {"start": 3516.58, "end": 3521.9399999999996, "text": " not in not recently and not in a way that like not since we've become a real business. What could"}, {"start": 3521.9399999999996, "end": 3526.74, "text": " you get for it? You think like you know, I think we're trying to give him five million bucks what they"}, {"start": 3526.74, "end": 3540.4199999999996, "text": " said now. Oh wow. We would say that we would for sure say no to that. I don't like if we can talk"}, {"start": 3540.4199999999996, "end": 3548.2599999999998, "text": " about like I don't I would not be interested in having any conversations for you know less than"}, {"start": 3549.62, "end": 3555.06, "text": " in the order of like what you got like the hustle or morning brew or you know stuff like that."}, {"start": 3555.06, "end": 3560.18, "text": " Yeah. 10s of millions. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I just think like the value of what we've"}, {"start": 3560.18, "end": 3566.66, "text": " built both as a business and revenue and our audience and our durability is you know, is in that"}, {"start": 3566.66, "end": 3572.2599999999998, "text": " category. I think it's very much an open question. Like it's gotten so much bigger than we ever imagined."}, {"start": 3573.06, "end": 3579.2999999999997, "text": " How much farther can it go? Right. I'm curious how these things work. What would we trust our own"}, {"start": 3579.2999999999997, "end": 3584.5, "text": " underwriting more than an acquirer's underwriting because what has happened for us is it has doubled"}, {"start": 3584.5, "end": 3589.54, "text": " every single year for eight years basically no matter what we do. Like we can't make it grow faster"}, {"start": 3589.54, "end": 3595.78, "text": " or slower than that. We've got it. It's running business here. It's still done. Right. Yeah."}, {"start": 3595.78, "end": 3599.78, "text": " It's it's cash generative. What have you guys built any businesses off the back of it?"}, {"start": 3601.54, "end": 3607.86, "text": " So that's yes. Well, you figured glow, David. No, I'm thinking kindergarten. So I have a"}, {"start": 3607.86, "end": 3613.86, "text": " fund on Angelist. I managed about 30 million dollars of capital on Angelist between two funds and"}, {"start": 3613.86, "end": 3620.58, "text": " four or five SPVs. And while I used to be a professional VC before going full-time on acquired"}, {"start": 3620.58, "end": 3628.6600000000003, "text": " and that certainly helps, all of that's because of acquired. And do you so you did that you did"}, {"start": 3628.6600000000003, "end": 3633.1400000000003, "text": " that fund anything else that you guys have done that you've launched off the back of it? Because"}, {"start": 3633.1400000000003, "end": 3638.82, "text": " what we found was that a podcast, like you said, it's very hard to make it grow faster than it's"}, {"start": 3638.82, "end": 3646.02, "text": " kind of like natural word of mouth, virality, interest, and like kind of the tam of that market."}, {"start": 3646.98, "end": 3651.78, "text": " Like that Andrew Heberman's are rare. Normally it's a grind. Yeah. And even him, I don't think"}, {"start": 3651.78, "end": 3655.7000000000003, "text": " you could make it grow much faster or slower. Just like good execution is obviously the only thing"}, {"start": 3655.7000000000003, "end": 3660.02, "text": " you control. But like a lot of people can do good execution and their growth rate will be easier."}, {"start": 3660.02, "end": 3665.3, "text": " You know, somewhat linear. You know, it's not going to like get much fat. The slope doesn't change"}, {"start": 3665.3, "end": 3670.9, "text": " that much. Do you, but the thing that I think what we found was that you could build businesses off"}, {"start": 3670.9, "end": 3677.2200000000003, "text": " the back of this audience, whether it's a fund or other products or services that can be more"}, {"start": 3677.2200000000003, "end": 3681.94, "text": " valuable than the ad revenue of the business of the podcast itself. Do you guys do that or think"}, {"start": 3681.94, "end": 3686.26, "text": " about that? Like Sean, well, Sean mentioned a company and they're like, oh, we just did a million"}, {"start": 3686.26, "end": 3692.02, "text": " in revenue. And he's like, oh, I gave a company a plug that I invested in. I was like, hey, I use it"}, {"start": 3692.02, "end": 3695.94, "text": " for this reason. Well, I was like, you know, an ad basically, but it wasn't meant to be an ad. I was"}, {"start": 3695.94, "end": 3701.78, "text": " just explaining how I use this thing. And they booked a million dollars of AR off of off of that,"}, {"start": 3701.78, "end": 3708.02, "text": " which was I'm pretty crazy. Yeah. So that happens to us all the time, which is why all of our sponsor"}, {"start": 3708.02, "end": 3714.1, "text": " deals are these like six figure very meaningful. And long term, we do these six month sponsorships."}, {"start": 3715.3, "end": 3719.94, "text": " And most of our sponsors are now, you know, three, four, five seasons and like it works."}, {"start": 3719.94, "end": 3727.94, "text": " And so the question is, is it more, is the right mode for us to operate in keep doing these big,"}, {"start": 3728.5, "end": 3737.3, "text": " deep sponsorship deals with companies for cash? Or do we try to start companies or find some"}, {"start": 3737.3, "end": 3742.58, "text": " company that's at an inflection point and say, you know, let's trade equity or I think we're"}, {"start": 3742.58, "end": 3747.86, "text": " pretty early in the thinking there because we're like, you know, we would have to, it would have to"}, {"start": 3747.86, "end": 3755.1400000000003, "text": " be really the right type of company that is a high LTV B2B SaaS business that's reaching founders"}, {"start": 3755.1400000000003, "end": 3760.9, "text": " and, and you know, CEOs and technical founders. And that would have to be the audience. Like,"}, {"start": 3760.9, "end": 3764.1, "text": " I don't think we're going to launch an energy drink brand and have that makes have that kind of"}, {"start": 3764.1, "end": 3770.1, "text": " pencil. But I don't know, we're open to the possibility. I think this also for us. I'm curious"}, {"start": 3770.1, "end": 3775.06, "text": " how you guys think about it because you are getting into this game. I at least, I don't want to speak"}, {"start": 3775.06, "end": 3785.14, "text": " for Ben. I don't want to run a company. I want to make tell stories and invest. So I don't really"}, {"start": 3785.14, "end": 3791.46, "text": " want to build products or manage teams. So I think it's likely that we'll continue going that route."}, {"start": 3791.46, "end": 3795.62, "text": " I don't know. Ben has experience actually building things. So he may be a different. But this,"}, {"start": 3795.62, "end": 3800.42, "text": " this lets us benefit from the upside of companies using acquired as channel without us have to be"}, {"start": 3800.42, "end": 3805.62, "text": " involved in the muck of building that company. And maybe at some point that our desire will change"}, {"start": 3805.62, "end": 3809.46, "text": " there. But how do you guys have built companies? You guys are building products. Like, how you think"}, {"start": 3809.46, "end": 3814.34, "text": " about this? I've thought about it both ways. Like, I, I'm like you a little bit where I have the"}, {"start": 3814.34, "end": 3819.7000000000003, "text": " most fun when I get to just tell, you know, tell stories nerd out about stuff. Go learn new things"}, {"start": 3819.7000000000003, "end": 3824.1800000000003, "text": " and then come back with like go. I want to go down rabbit holes and then take that most interesting,"}, {"start": 3824.1800000000003, "end": 3829.62, "text": " you know, 1% of things that I found and shared on this podcast or on my newsletter. And that's"}, {"start": 3829.62, "end": 3834.66, "text": " that's what I like to do. That's sort of the highest enjoyment. But I also love money. And so I'm"}, {"start": 3834.66, "end": 3839.22, "text": " like, okay, cool. And I also like the thing I study is about how people make money and business"}, {"start": 3839.22, "end": 3844.1, "text": " and create wealth. And so I can't help myself but like apply some of the things that I learn,"}, {"start": 3844.1, "end": 3848.9, "text": " right? Like it's very hard to resist the urge to apply the things that you know once you know them."}, {"start": 3848.9, "end": 3853.8599999999997, "text": " Yeah. And um, but then you got to go recruit to tea. Yeah. You got to play with every form you could"}, {"start": 3853.86, "end": 3859.94, "text": " do. So I invest both in startups as well as like cash flowing businesses like I'll buy, you know,"}, {"start": 3859.94, "end": 3866.58, "text": " 20, 30% of a cash flowing business that I think I can help through the audience or just through"}, {"start": 3866.58, "end": 3871.78, "text": " like, you know, being an entrepreneur for 15 years and like learning about stuff. The second thing"}, {"start": 3871.78, "end": 3875.46, "text": " would be starting a business. So I started the milk road off of the podcast. I think the podcast"}, {"start": 3875.46, "end": 3880.7400000000002, "text": " helped us get the ball rolling there. And then you know, I've launched the courses or things"}, {"start": 3880.74, "end": 3884.9799999999996, "text": " like that that just are ways to take the curiosity is like, oh, I learned a bunch of stuff."}, {"start": 3884.9799999999996, "end": 3891.22, "text": " Could I teach it? And then and also thought about, you know, you know, so buying businesses,"}, {"start": 3891.22, "end": 3896.58, "text": " investing in startups, uh, doing, uh, building a startup alone or not doing any of them not being"}, {"start": 3896.58, "end": 3900.58, "text": " operational at all. Like I've played with kind of all of them over the past three years in different"}, {"start": 3900.58, "end": 3905.8599999999997, "text": " ways. Like we sold the milk road in part because okay, that business is working and we've got a"}, {"start": 3905.86, "end": 3911.1400000000003, "text": " great offer. But the best part of the offer was, oh, I don't have to operate any business anymore."}, {"start": 3911.1400000000003, "end": 3917.1400000000003, "text": " If I do this, um, that's appealing to me. Whereas Sam just launched Hampton last week or I think"}, {"start": 3917.1400000000003, "end": 3922.1800000000003, "text": " was last week. We can. I saw congratulations. Thank you. I feel like you don't have to do sales for"}, {"start": 3922.1800000000003, "end": 3927.2200000000003, "text": " the next year based off of like, you know, the, the, the blitz that you were able to, to, to drum up"}, {"start": 3927.2200000000003, "end": 3931.2200000000003, "text": " across the pod, Twitter, everywhere that you tried to do, right? Like I mean, you could talk a"}, {"start": 3931.22, "end": 3936.66, "text": " little more about that. But seems like, yeah. So you crushed your demand side. Yeah. So basically in"}, {"start": 3936.66, "end": 3942.4199999999996, "text": " 2022 and 21, I was inspired by Sean. I was like, all right, fine. I'll invest a little while. And so"}, {"start": 3942.4199999999996, "end": 3948.5, "text": " I gave it like a six to 12 month try. And I was like, I hate investing. Um, I totally dislike it."}, {"start": 3949.14, "end": 3954.66, "text": " I think maybe I could be pretty good at it. But I, it's not for me. I don't like taking a minority"}, {"start": 3954.66, "end": 3960.2599999999998, "text": " interest in things. That's, um, I personally like owning all of something and I think of myself"}, {"start": 3960.26, "end": 3963.94, "text": " a little bit as an artist sometimes with these companies. Like it's like my, I like to be creative."}, {"start": 3963.94, "end": 3968.6600000000003, "text": " And that's kind of how I like to express myself. So I prefer that with. And so that's why I launched"}, {"start": 3968.6600000000003, "end": 3973.1400000000003, "text": " tampton was because I was like, this fits my interests. There, I have a competitive advantage here."}, {"start": 3973.1400000000003, "end": 3981.5400000000004, "text": " And so when I announced it on the pod, we now have 5,000 people who applied. And we're like, and it,"}, {"start": 3981.5400000000004, "end": 3986.7400000000002, "text": " that's, it's cost $8,500 a year to join in. We're being very meticulous and very slow about who"}, {"start": 3986.74, "end": 3992.02, "text": " are adding. But that's very likely going to be a very, very large company, I think. We have a CEO,"}, {"start": 3992.02, "end": 3997.9399999999996, "text": " Jordan, who's amazing. But like we're not taking any outside capital. And I prefer, Sean likes to"}, {"start": 3997.9399999999996, "end": 4001.06, "text": " do lots of things. And I know a lot of people like to do that. Lots of things. And I know a lot of"}, {"start": 4001.06, "end": 4008.02, "text": " people who succeed really nicely with that. Me personally, I prefer, uh, focus in just doing one"}, {"start": 4008.02, "end": 4012.8199999999997, "text": " thing at a time because I, I don't, I just, my brain, it's really challenging for me to jump from"}, {"start": 4012.82, "end": 4018.5, "text": " thing to thing, like an investor needs to. And so I prefer like spending five, 10 years on something."}, {"start": 4018.5, "end": 4024.7400000000002, "text": " And so I intend to start a company, maybe another one in the handful of years. I'm not sure"}, {"start": 4024.7400000000002, "end": 4030.42, "text": " rather than investing. I actually think that Sean's way of like doing cash flow businesses and"}, {"start": 4030.42, "end": 4036.1000000000004, "text": " owning a portion of them, that's actually the easier way I think to make wealth. I, I just don't"}, {"start": 4036.1000000000004, "end": 4041.54, "text": " find enjoyment on it. I'm a dopamine fiend and like seeing sales come in and like making decisions."}, {"start": 4041.54, "end": 4046.1, "text": " I get like it's, it's my alcohol. I like it and drunk off that. How do you think about the"}, {"start": 4046.1, "end": 4052.34, "text": " business of the pod of my first million? So the podcast is owned by HubSpot and we get paid,"}, {"start": 4052.34, "end": 4057.7799999999997, "text": " if we get paid strictly of performance fee. And so when it kicks ass, which it has, we get paid"}, {"start": 4057.7799999999997, "end": 4064.82, "text": " good money as if we have had advertisers. And so, but HubSpot's been great. Like not one time"}, {"start": 4064.82, "end": 4069.7799999999997, "text": " have they ever censored us or said, Hey, you made a bad joke. Don't say that. And so it's been"}, {"start": 4069.78, "end": 4075.86, "text": " pretty good. It is there's definitely I wouldn't say complicated, but it's a new relationship that"}, {"start": 4075.86, "end": 4080.82, "text": " we're definitely trying to figure out of like what to do because frankly HubSpot's an awesome partner."}, {"start": 4080.82, "end": 4087.1400000000003, "text": " But at the same time, if Sean and I bounce, they don't have shit. Right. So I think we're both"}, {"start": 4087.1400000000003, "end": 4093.1400000000003, "text": " both sides of that of that are trying to understand what we can do and how far we can push things."}, {"start": 4093.78, "end": 4097.9400000000005, "text": " And we're definitely figuring that out. There are you have some and they're probably"}, {"start": 4097.94, "end": 4103.86, "text": " potentially more monetization options for the pod, right? Like how does that revenue get split up?"}, {"start": 4104.9, "end": 4111.78, "text": " Like YouTube ads. We just don't we turned off YouTube ads. We can't like if somebody wants"}, {"start": 4111.78, "end": 4115.379999999999, "text": " a sponsor it, we don't write. So like we leave a lot of money on the table in that regard."}, {"start": 4116.58, "end": 4120.5, "text": " But you get other benefits, right? So you got to like kind of write us out over time and be like,"}, {"start": 4120.5, "end": 4126.0199999999995, "text": " right? So yeah, like the benefit, the benefits that we have are basically we don't do any of the"}, {"start": 4126.02, "end": 4130.900000000001, "text": " work. So we record and then it goes on the internet. That's a pro and a con because if we don't like"}, {"start": 4130.900000000001, "end": 4135.3, "text": " how it's done, then it's like shit, we don't like that. Let's fix it. But as long as it's working well,"}, {"start": 4135.3, "end": 4141.22, "text": " it's awesome. We get paid without having to have any expenses. But then the flip side is shit,"}, {"start": 4141.22, "end": 4145.9400000000005, "text": " we have all these this advertiser interests and we know it works really well. Let's take more deals."}, {"start": 4145.9400000000005, "end": 4150.660000000001, "text": " And so I think there's a there's a world where we do come actually come to a compromise and we have"}, {"start": 4150.66, "end": 4156.82, "text": " more ads. But that's like it's a it's a conversation. Yeah. Is there is there a tension at all with"}, {"start": 4156.82, "end": 4163.7, "text": " you guys wanting to use the pod to do stuff that generates value for yourself that doesn't accrue"}, {"start": 4163.7, "end": 4170.099999999999, "text": " back to the MFM pod like you launching businesses off it or is that no? They're great. They're great"}, {"start": 4170.099999999999, "end": 4175.38, "text": " with that. And any revenue outside of the pod is 100% ours events, merch, whatever. But like,"}, {"start": 4175.38, "end": 4179.54, "text": " let's say let's say that they're like we're hiring a producer now because Ben's going to go full"}, {"start": 4179.54, "end": 4185.7, "text": " time on his new thing. Let's say let's yeah, congratulations, Ben. Let's say that they're moving"}, {"start": 4185.7, "end": 4190.1, "text": " slow. It's like, Hey guys, HubSpot hurry the hell up. You know, you're going way too slow. I got five"}, {"start": 4190.1, "end": 4193.7, "text": " friends right now who get higher. And so like there's tension there for things like that."}, {"start": 4194.5, "end": 4199.86, "text": " Yeah. Well, probably all all the business active, all the stuff you guys are launching outside of"}, {"start": 4199.86, "end": 4205.38, "text": " the pod just brings attention back to the pod. Right. So like it's great. It's a way because how many"}, {"start": 4205.38, "end": 4210.82, "text": " yeah, people do you see on YouTube or TikTok or Twitter, wherever that are like, you know,"}, {"start": 4210.82, "end": 4215.38, "text": " basically these bit like business gurus or like, you know, advice guys. Right. And you hear"}, {"start": 4215.38, "end": 4219.78, "text": " the advice guys and you like click their bio and you're like, so what are you doing? What do you do?"}, {"start": 4219.78, "end": 4224.9800000000005, "text": " Oh, your career is giving advice. Okay. But where did you get that first hand knowledge? Do you"}, {"start": 4224.9800000000005, "end": 4229.86, "text": " have any battle scars? Like, oh, no, you're, you know, you're the bald barber. Oh, great. Like,"}, {"start": 4229.86, "end": 4234.34, "text": " you know, I'm not sure that I want and that's sort of I want that, right? So, so I think that's"}, {"start": 4234.34, "end": 4240.5, "text": " also helpful, right? Because like bald barber, by the way, chef's kiss. Thank you. Good job."}, {"start": 4240.5, "end": 4244.900000000001, "text": " I'm fast as my improv on the fly. I decided to take a few more risks of like, oh,"}, {"start": 4245.62, "end": 4249.7, "text": " tee up that I'm going to make the joke and see if my brain in that point five seconds could come up"}, {"start": 4249.7, "end": 4254.42, "text": " with something. And if I if I fall flat, you know, two out of three times, it's okay. That's still one"}, {"start": 4254.42, "end": 4262.1, "text": " one that I got even a blind squirrel finds it not my friend. So yeah, basically, I think it"}, {"start": 4262.1, "end": 4269.3, "text": " gets credibility, right? Like during the pod, you know, I built the milk road and sold it during"}, {"start": 4269.3, "end": 4273.46, "text": " like while the pod was live. So that adds some credibility during the pod. Sam launches Hampton."}, {"start": 4273.46, "end": 4278.26, "text": " It's clearly going to be successful or already already off to a successful start. It gives"}, {"start": 4278.26, "end": 4282.42, "text": " the pod credibility. And I think that's why like, why does all of it work really well? Like, obviously,"}, {"start": 4282.42, "end": 4287.3, "text": " the good banter, they have good things to say. But I think a big part of it is like they bring a"}, {"start": 4287.3, "end": 4294.34, "text": " certain gravity to the room. They're participating in the story as it's on. Yeah, like the easiest way"}, {"start": 4294.34, "end": 4297.860000000001, "text": " I swear to you is all in his billionaires talking about billionaire shit. And my first million,"}, {"start": 4297.860000000001, "end": 4303.38, "text": " my first million is millionaires talking about me. And I've heard people like college kids come out"}, {"start": 4303.38, "end": 4308.18, "text": " be like, we're broke guys talking about broke guys shit. And that's like, all right, that's that's"}, {"start": 4308.18, "end": 4312.900000000001, "text": " that's the way to go. But I think it adds credibility because there's a lot of people out there who"}, {"start": 4312.900000000001, "end": 4316.820000000001, "text": " will create content tell you about the next big thing. But they don't invest. They don't have skin"}, {"start": 4316.82, "end": 4320.259999999999, "text": " in the game. They don't know actually what's going on. They'll tell you, you know, how to be"}, {"start": 4320.259999999999, "end": 4325.0599999999995, "text": " successful and they're, you know, broken depressed. It's like, you got to be careful with who you"}, {"start": 4325.0599999999995, "end": 4328.259999999999, "text": " listen to. It's like, I'd rather listen to somebody who's done it before than somebody who hasn't."}, {"start": 4328.259999999999, "end": 4334.82, "text": " It's just as simple as that. Yep. Yep. Which that I think is the whole unlock of podcasting that like"}, {"start": 4334.82, "end": 4342.5, "text": " is a problem with the traditional media industry. Like one of the, it wasn't explicitly in my"}, {"start": 4342.5, "end": 4347.7, "text": " mind when we started acquired, but like I'd gone to business school. I went to Stanford. I did"}, {"start": 4347.7, "end": 4352.82, "text": " my MBA there. It was a great experience. But like the classroom experience, like the professors,"}, {"start": 4352.82, "end": 4356.98, "text": " not the guests who had come in who had done stuff, but like the professors who were full-time"}, {"start": 4356.98, "end": 4363.06, "text": " academics. And then the cases that we would do just be like, you guys didn't do this shit. Like,"}, {"start": 4363.06, "end": 4366.42, "text": " why are you telling me about this? Like I want to hear from the people who did it."}, {"start": 4366.42, "end": 4370.98, "text": " And so the journalists that cover the tech industry, it's like how many people go from being"}, {"start": 4370.98, "end": 4376.66, "text": " successful founders to entering the journalism industry and writing for a paper. Like,"}, {"start": 4376.66, "end": 4381.86, "text": " I see Michael, Michael Morowitz, by the way, Michael Morowitz, you know, Doug Leoni's partner."}, {"start": 4381.86, "end": 4387.54, "text": " Yeah. Merit, yeah. Sorry, Moritz. He, uh, journalist turned billionaire. Yeah. And like those,"}, {"start": 4387.54, "end": 4393.78, "text": " those, those always middle there. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Those, uh, you know, journalist to VC."}, {"start": 4393.78, "end": 4398.58, "text": " Once I went, but the reverse pipeline doesn't exist. So like, yeah, I always have to remind myself of"}, {"start": 4398.58, "end": 4402.82, "text": " this when I'm reading tech coverage. I'm like, okay, the very best ones of these people have"}, {"start": 4402.82, "end": 4408.42, "text": " immersed themselves in the operator founder communities to be able to like pick up the genus"}, {"start": 4408.42, "end": 4412.74, "text": " a qua and read between the lines of what certain things mean. Like Dan Primack is one of these types"}, {"start": 4412.74, "end": 4419.7, "text": " of people. But, you know, a, a junior journalist coming out of journalism school writing and picking"}, {"start": 4419.7, "end": 4426.74, "text": " up this beat, it's like, it's hard to say that that's a better way to learn what's going on than"}, {"start": 4426.74, "end": 4431.7, "text": " listening to people who are industry participants talking about what's going on. I remember once I"}, {"start": 4431.7, "end": 4437.86, "text": " went to a, um, journalist, uh, somebody who worked at TechCrunch, I went to their apartment in San"}, {"start": 4437.86, "end": 4443.94, "text": " Francisco. And I just like walked in and I looked around and I was like, this is the same"}, {"start": 4443.94, "end": 4450.5, "text": " apartment as like everybody I know right out of college has. And I was like, and then they have"}, {"start": 4450.5, "end": 4456.42, "text": " this pen and then they write on TechCrunch and then it looks like very different. But like,"}, {"start": 4456.42, "end": 4461.14, "text": " this is a person who's just a normal, they're a normal person who this is kind of like their first"}, {"start": 4461.14, "end": 4466.1, "text": " gig and they're covering something that they barely like really true. Honestly, they barely"}, {"start": 4466.1, "end": 4468.66, "text": " understand that doesn't mean they're not smart. It doesn't mean they don't have good intentions. But"}, {"start": 4468.66, "end": 4473.86, "text": " like, it's that thing where I forget the name of it. But it's like, if you read an article about a"}, {"start": 4473.86, "end": 4480.66, "text": " topic you actually know about in the newspaper, you're like, oh, this is, oh, okay, I see the limitations"}, {"start": 4480.66, "end": 4484.9, "text": " of how much stock I put into this. But when you read about a topic, you don't know, you're like,"}, {"start": 4484.9, "end": 4489.62, "text": " this is the truth. Oh, the New York Times is an expert. It's like, there is a, probably"}, {"start": 4489.62, "end": 4494.98, "text": " also an expert or something. It's like what it's called. Do you guys remember a few years ago when"}, {"start": 4494.98, "end": 4499.54, "text": " one of the, I think her name was Jen or something like that, one of the founders of Away Travel."}, {"start": 4499.54, "end": 4504.42, "text": " Like, there was all these headlines saying like this woman created a toxic workplace that's horrible."}, {"start": 4504.42, "end": 4508.66, "text": " You gotta get it. I was like, oh, this is a juicy story. Let's dig in. Where's the fraud? I love this."}, {"start": 4508.66, "end": 4512.58, "text": " And you read the, you read the slack messages that they're publishing. And you know what it is."}, {"start": 4512.58, "end": 4518.1, "text": " Yes, she's trying to start up. So someone like packed, like she like opened up a package and it was"}, {"start": 4518.1, "end": 4523.14, "text": " horribly done. And she said, if this keeps, or what did she say? She goes, I'm just going to have to"}, {"start": 4523.14, "end": 4528.1, "text": " pack these boxes myself because whoever's running this must be brain dead. And I was like, okay, cool."}, {"start": 4528.1, "end": 4532.82, "text": " Let's scroll. Where's the good stuff? And they're like, that's the thing. She said the word brain dead."}, {"start": 4532.82, "end": 4539.22, "text": " I'm like, that's the toxic work environment. Like, come on. Give me a break. That, that, that, that ain't"}, {"start": 4539.22, "end": 4543.38, "text": " nice. But that's not New York Times headline. Shit. Give me a break. Like, I want to see."}, {"start": 4543.38, "end": 4548.820000000001, "text": " So I'm fine for that. Right. Something like that. She bounced because of that. Like, that's"}, {"start": 4548.820000000001, "end": 4554.1, "text": " why it's a brain. It's the other woman. Not, yeah, forget what her name was. But like, I read that"}, {"start": 4554.1, "end": 4558.02, "text": " article. I'm like, there's no fraud. Like, she didn't, you know, like, there's no alcohol and"}, {"start": 4558.02, "end": 4562.18, "text": " bile. What's going on? Give me something good. I want cocaine and hookers. I don't want brain dead."}, {"start": 4562.18, "end": 4566.820000000001, "text": " Yeah. You know what I'm saying? At least like, this is why there's so much value to like what you"}, {"start": 4566.82, "end": 4571.0599999999995, "text": " guys are doing that you're building businesses and talking about them that like, we're investing"}, {"start": 4571.0599999999995, "end": 4576.98, "text": " Benzipoll time VC. I used to be like, we know what's going on in a way that if you're just a journalist,"}, {"start": 4576.98, "end": 4581.7, "text": " like, you can't. It's structurally impossible. Well, podcasts actually have more people from the"}, {"start": 4581.7, "end": 4585.38, "text": " field that come in and do it because the podcast is easier. You're talking. You're not writing."}, {"start": 4585.38, "end": 4590.34, "text": " No barrier. You don't have to like edit and like, you know, make a cool fancy TikTok thing."}, {"start": 4590.34, "end": 4594.0199999999995, "text": " You don't have to like layer in filters or stuff. It's just, you sit on your talk. That's why you"}, {"start": 4594.02, "end": 4597.780000000001, "text": " see like read Hoffman. Oh, the straight up audio medium. Yeah. Just like straight audio."}, {"start": 4598.5, "end": 4601.620000000001, "text": " Or even audio with the webcam. Like, you know, now I think that's getting a little bit easier."}, {"start": 4601.620000000001, "end": 4606.660000000001, "text": " But basically the podcast format, I think there's a reason why you see somebody like ex-athletes"}, {"start": 4606.660000000001, "end": 4611.38, "text": " do this where you know, the same thing. Like you have Skip Bayless who will just go say how this"}, {"start": 4611.38, "end": 4615.860000000001, "text": " person is they don't have the clutch gene. It's like brother's not a gene. You know, they,"}, {"start": 4615.860000000001, "end": 4619.9400000000005, "text": " they know, you know, and he'll just like make fun of people and then you have JJ Reddick who's an"}, {"start": 4619.94, "end": 4625.86, "text": " ex-player. So good. So good. So good. He's phenomenal at content. His and his point of view is so"}, {"start": 4625.86, "end": 4630.66, "text": " much better than then there's and that's why his stock is going like his views are just going"}, {"start": 4630.66, "end": 4635.94, "text": " up into the right because he's good at this. He pulls real guests. When he pulls real guests,"}, {"start": 4635.94, "end": 4639.299999999999, "text": " they talk like they don't talk like they're talking to a reporter because they played with JJ or"}, {"start": 4639.299999999999, "end": 4643.299999999999, "text": " they played against him. So they actually open up about stuff. But he's also not trying to trap"}, {"start": 4643.299999999999, "end": 4647.54, "text": " him in these gotcha questions. So there's like some mutual trust there. And then he'll just share"}, {"start": 4647.54, "end": 4652.1, "text": " like, you know, when you're a player on the road like, you know, this is the situation. Fans think"}, {"start": 4652.1, "end": 4656.18, "text": " you're practicing blah blah blah. But actually, here's what happens when you go in and he's just"}, {"start": 4656.18, "end": 4660.98, "text": " saying what's what's really going on. And so to me, when you see that and again, it's because"}, {"start": 4660.98, "end": 4666.42, "text": " podcasting is a lot easier. If you told him, hey, I need you to write like beautiful, well written"}, {"start": 4666.42, "end": 4671.86, "text": " blog posts every other day. It'd be very hard to do. But for him to just oh, something happened,"}, {"start": 4671.86, "end": 4675.54, "text": " get on the microphone, give my point of view, they could do it. So like you get more credible"}, {"start": 4675.54, "end": 4680.74, "text": " experts in a podcast and then I think on any other like medium. This is probably actually a good"}, {"start": 4680.74, "end": 4687.62, "text": " use of AI is being able to turn the ramblings of people who are industry participants. You run"}, {"start": 4687.62, "end": 4691.78, "text": " that transcript through and you say, write this as if it was a New York Times article with a strong"}, {"start": 4691.78, "end": 4698.5, "text": " lead and you know, this many words like it is amazing how I feel like I've transformed in my use"}, {"start": 4698.5, "end": 4703.46, "text": " of GPT over the last month where I was using it to try to answer questions, which it's fine at."}, {"start": 4703.46, "end": 4707.46, "text": " But of course, that's the first thing you're going to do with a prompt. But my use case recently has"}, {"start": 4707.46, "end": 4714.02, "text": " been take lots of stuff and feed it in as the prompt and then ask it to make it better. So like I"}, {"start": 4714.02, "end": 4718.42, "text": " wrote a LinkedIn post about our most recent acquired episode and I fed it. I've just pasted the whole"}, {"start": 4718.42, "end": 4722.9800000000005, "text": " thing into chat GPT. I was like, can you make this like more exciting and can you make this more"}, {"start": 4722.9800000000005, "end": 4728.18, "text": " likely to go viral and like that literally all you said, you basically copy and paste it 500 words."}, {"start": 4728.18, "end": 4733.3, "text": " You said, here's a LinkedIn post I wrote, make it more exciting. Let me see exactly what"}, {"start": 4733.3, "end": 4740.9800000000005, "text": " the prompt was. So I don't BS on the pod here. Okay, no one can check it. Say I can you please act"}, {"start": 4740.9800000000005, "end": 4746.66, "text": " as my editor and modify this to make it more likely to go viral as a LinkedIn post. That's so funny."}, {"start": 4746.66, "end": 4751.3, "text": " And it indexed way in the other direction. Like it went it full of emojis."}, {"start": 4751.3, "end": 4753.46, "text": " I feel like you'll like, you'll like, you'll open it up."}, {"start": 4753.46, "end": 4759.860000000001, "text": " Capital letters discover the secrets like a lot of like. And so I had to tone it down, but I totally"}, {"start": 4759.86, "end": 4764.74, "text": " use that to and I and it helped me rephrase a lot of things where I had like awkward phrasing"}, {"start": 4764.74, "end": 4771.38, "text": " that didn't flow well. It's a very good rewriter. Yeah. That's awesome. I'm going to start doing that."}, {"start": 4771.38, "end": 4777.139999999999, "text": " Well, guys, you're awesome. And thank you for coming on. If you're listening to our pod,"}, {"start": 4777.139999999999, "end": 4782.74, "text": " go check out acquired. If you're listening on acquired, do as we call it. We teach"}, {"start": 4782.74, "end": 4788.0199999999995, "text": " of the gentleman's agreement Sam. Yeah, yeah. I feel like the gentleman's agreement and the"}, {"start": 4788.02, "end": 4792.1, "text": " ladies understanding has become like, you know, in wrestling when the rock would take the microphone,"}, {"start": 4792.1, "end": 4796.26, "text": " he'd raise the people's eyebrow and you know, he's going to hit him with like the expected thing."}, {"start": 4796.26, "end": 4799.540000000001, "text": " But for some reason, you get excited just to hear him say it. Sam, that's how I hear it."}, {"start": 4799.540000000001, "end": 4802.5, "text": " And that's how you feel now with your, this is your catchphrase. Go ahead."}, {"start": 4804.02, "end": 4808.9800000000005, "text": " This is the gentleman's agreement. And so basically the way it works is, look, you're going to 7-11."}, {"start": 4808.9800000000005, "end": 4813.780000000001, "text": " You're going to go buy gas whenever you are and at the top when you're about to pay, you see a"}, {"start": 4813.78, "end": 4818.259999999999, "text": " little jar and it's for muscle gistens free. And there's all that money in there. And of course,"}, {"start": 4818.259999999999, "end": 4822.179999999999, "text": " you don't take that money. You leave a dollar there. No one's going to stop you by the way if you"}, {"start": 4822.179999999999, "end": 4827.62, "text": " took that money. But and that's basically what this podcast is. This podcast is free. Us four,"}, {"start": 4827.62, "end": 4833.139999999999, "text": " we just dedicated hours of our of our day to do this. But unlike every other podcast, this one's"}, {"start": 4833.139999999999, "end": 4837.46, "text": " not free. Just like that jar, you got to leave a dollar with meaning you got to go and subscribe"}, {"start": 4837.46, "end": 4843.139999999999, "text": " to acquired podcasts on Spotify as well as iTunes and do the same with my first million on our YouTube"}, {"start": 4843.14, "end": 4846.820000000001, "text": " page and you click, you click subscribe. It's called the gentleman's agreement because we're not"}, {"start": 4846.820000000001, "end": 4851.46, "text": " there. All right, we're just shaking our hands. Ladies, what is it called the ladies understanding"}, {"start": 4851.46, "end": 4855.54, "text": " the gentleman's agreement? We're not there to help you guys out. It's just honesty. So everyone's"}, {"start": 4855.54, "end": 4859.46, "text": " doing it. Don't be left out. You have to do this. That's our that's our agreement. We create the"}, {"start": 4859.46, "end": 4865.38, "text": " content. You click subscribe. I love it. You guys are innovative. And there's real value. Like it's"}, {"start": 4865.38, "end": 4870.1, "text": " not, you know, for our audience, if you go and subscribe to my first million, you're going to get"}, {"start": 4870.1, "end": 4874.34, "text": " smarter. You're going to get more ideas like this benefits you. So it's not, you know, you're not"}, {"start": 4874.34, "end": 4878.660000000001, "text": " just pulling money out of your wallet here. You're doing something that's going to make your life"}, {"start": 4878.660000000001, "end": 4882.740000000001, "text": " more fun. And that's the gentleman's agreement. And that's the ladies understanding. David,"}, {"start": 4882.740000000001, "end": 4887.780000000001, "text": " do you want to you want to take us home? What are you saying? Oh, I was going to ask I could keep"}, {"start": 4887.780000000001, "end": 4890.660000000001, "text": " jamming with you guys for another hour. I was going to ask you said Spotify. Do you like"}, {"start": 4890.660000000001, "end": 4895.54, "text": " where do you like people to subscribe? Spotify YouTube. You said that. Well, you said earlier that"}, {"start": 4895.54, "end": 4900.0199999999995, "text": " Spotify is your main thing. So once we started doing the gentleman's agreement, our YouTube channel"}, {"start": 4900.0199999999995, "end": 4906.98, "text": " went through the roof. So we went from like 150,000 subscribers to close to 200 in like a month or"}, {"start": 4906.98, "end": 4913.14, "text": " eight weeks or something like that. We should do a every pod giveaway of YouTube premium to someone"}, {"start": 4913.14, "end": 4919.3, "text": " in the comments. So go go to our YouTube, go to this episode on YouTube and just and just type in"}, {"start": 4919.3, "end": 4925.78, "text": " premium. And we will pick somebody we will pay for your YouTube premium so that you can listen to"}, {"start": 4925.78, "end": 4931.14, "text": " this pod ad ad free in the background. You can lock your phone and walk around and you can enjoy"}, {"start": 4931.14, "end": 4935.860000000001, "text": " that sweet, sweet 1499 a month that we're going to be paying for you for the year. So one year of"}, {"start": 4935.860000000001, "end": 4942.58, "text": " YouTube premium in every episode call it it now. Oh, I love it. That is really a reminder to go"}, {"start": 4942.58, "end": 4946.26, "text": " comment because I am a YouTube premium subscriber, but I want you guys for the bill."}, {"start": 4946.26, "end": 4951.7, "text": " Yeah. Well, thanks for doing this guys. We appreciate you and we'll have you back on and thank"}, {"start": 4951.7, "end": 4981.62, "text": " you for everything. See you guys. Catch you guys next time."}]