Moiz Ali On Selling His Natural Deodorant To P&G For $100M, Investing In Manscaped, & Holding Cash

Shaan Puri

Alright, so Moises here. I guess what people don't know is that you started a couple of businesses. People mostly know you from Native. You created The Grove, which has the popular deodorant brand. You sold it to Procter & Gamble for a reported $100,000,000, which I think is one of the better D2C exits because you only raised like $4,000,000—I want to say even less than that.

Moiz Ali

we raised $500,000 actually

Shaan Puri

Oh my God! Okay, so you raised $500,000. By the way, I don't know if you know this, but I remember I was in a mastermind group with your brother. He was kind of floating in between things because he had already sold his company. I asked him, "Why don't you show up to the mastermind if you don't really have a business that you're working on?" I think he was kind of fishing for ideas. He mentioned, "You know, my brother's got this interesting business." I was like, "Oh, you know, I didn't even know him very well."

Moiz Ali

well at

Shaan Puri

the time

Moiz Ali

I was

Shaan Puri

Like, I didn't know you had a brother. He's like, "I was ready for this big tech idea," and he's like, "Yeah, he's selling this natural deodorant." He made it sound like he was sitting at home packing the deodorant containers by hand. He was kind of underplaying it, saying, "It's really cool, you know? It's paraben-free." I didn't know what a paraben was, and he's like, "It's aluminum-free or whatever." Then he said, "Yeah, it's doing pretty well," and when he started to say the numbers, I was like, "Whoa, that's actually really good." I asked, "So how much has he raised?" and he said, "I don't know if he's... he's raised like nothing." That's when you got on my radar. I feel like you operate very quietly. You're kind of like me; when you're doing something that's working, you shut the hell up. But when you're not, when you're just thinking about ideas, you're super loud, bouncing them around off people. Is that your strategy?

Moiz Ali

That's exactly right. In fact, we had done no PR for Native until after we sold the business. I remember all these news publications reaching out to us. I took one interview with, I think it was like Retail Dive or somebody, and they were like, "We want to talk about this deodorant company because we haven't heard of that." You know, they were like, "Who are you guys? What are you doing?" We sort of talked about the business, and they wrote an article. After that, I was like, "I'm never talking about the business again." When we went to go fundraise, we talked to a few people. We talked to Simon Equity Partners, which is basically the family office of the Simon Property Group, which owns a bunch of malls across the United States. We opened up our books to them and were like, "Here's our business." They said, "Our job is to find businesses like you. You're down the street from us; you're based in San Francisco, your headquarters is three blocks away from ours. We've never heard of this business, and we should have heard of it by now. How come?" We were like, "You know, we're not talking about our business." No one walked around with Native t-shirts until after we made an exit. Then I was like, "Okay, now the brand can exist, and we can be loud and public about it."

Shaan Puri

Is that what... is that paranoia? Is it just focus? Is it strategy? What... why do it that way?

Moiz Ali

Yeah, I think it's two things. I think one is **fear**, which is like the fear of embarrassment. Okay, my business failed, and I was super public about it. Now it crashed, and everybody's going to think of me as a failure. So I was like, "We're not going to fail publicly. If we fail, it'll be really quietly." And then, two was like...

Shaan Puri

we failed the we failed the indian way so it's certainly a personal shame

Moiz Ali

Yeah, that's right. No one will be able to Google me and be like, "Okay, Moizelli is a failure." The other thing was, things were working so well. We were like, "Okay, we don't know how this is working so well or why this is working so well, but we better not go around thumping our chest saying this is working really well." One, I believe it'll jinx us, and I believe in jinxes. Two, other people will just start copying us and doing exactly what we're doing. You know, in November 2017, we had a competitor sell their business in December 2017, just a month after us. Then, in 2018 and 2019, 60 competitors in the natural deodorant space popped up. Every brand that didn't have a natural deodorant was like, "We should create a natural deodorant." Then, 60 brands were like, "Hey, we want to create a natural deodorant as our flagship or our hero product." So, by not thumping our chest and not talking about our business, we were able to keep the category a little bit quieter before we came out and said, "Hey, this is a massive category and it's really working."

Shaan Puri

Right, and I appreciate that about you guys. I've actually learned a little bit in that regard in that I don't talk about my e-commerce business on here ever. Or I'll reference it, but I'll never say the name or the brand or whatever.

Moiz Ali

yeah so what do you mean that someone takes that

Shaan Puri

I also have a business partner. Yeah, I have a business partner, and they don't want me to talk about it. So I'm also like, "Okay, cool. Yeah, you know, I'll honor that wish." But I kind of came up with this term because you and your brother are the same in that normally, you guys are all the info flows one way. This podcast is like the rare exception where I get to ask you questions. Normally, whenever I've seen your brother or you in any social setting, it's a technique I call "Ollie Boarding." It's like wall boarding but just with questions, where you just dump someone's head into a vat of your nonstop flow of questions. By the end, they're like, "Wait, so what's your name and what do you do?" And you're like, "By then, I have your P&L and your whole family's backstory." It's not like in an evil way; it's like genuine curiosity, I think, is what I've come to see. But it's also very effective. A: Is that true? Do you believe that? Am I characterizing it right? And then B: Is that like conscious? Did you ever develop that as a skill, or was that a choice you made, or is it just natural?

Moiz Ali

Yeah, I think it’s partially right. It’s more true with Solomon, my brother, than it is with me. He does that to me as well, where I’ll tell him about a meeting I had or a deal that I’m looking at, and he’ll ask me ridiculous questions. He’ll be like, “What did the founder have for lunch on Saturday three months ago?” I’m like, “I didn’t get into that level of detail. You gotta stop asking those types of questions.” But I do think we have a genuine curiosity about what’s making other businesses work and what isn’t. I remember we went to the Super Bowl, you know, four years ago or something like that in Atlanta. We were at the Super Bowl party the night before the game, and there were these two old Daisy uncles that were there as well. They were there because they owned Marriott hotels, and Marriott had invited them to the game in their private suite. They were probably in their fifties, and we asked them so many questions. I was like, “You know, how much do you have to pay Marriott?” They also owned Hilton hotels, so I asked, “How much do you have to pay Hilton per year? Do you have debt on the building? What’s your debt like? How often do you have to renovate? How much do renovations cost? What does your average occupancy look like?” They answered all these questions. They didn’t seem excited to answer them, but they didn’t seem cautious either. At the end of all these questions, where we literally did have their P&L, they were just like, “Okay, well, great meeting you guys.” We were like, “Alright, I now understand the hotel business from two operators that have eight businesses around the Dallas-Fort Worth area.” They didn’t want to know anything about us. They didn’t ask a single question like, “Why were we at the Super Bowl party? How did we get here? How did we make our money?” They didn’t ask a single question. So, I think there is a genuine curiosity that we have that sometimes is lost on other people.

Shaan Puri

That’s exactly how it goes. I’ve seen it. Also, you had a brunch. I saw you tweet out, “Oh, I’ve been inviting some D2C friends over. Who wants to have a brunch of D2C people?” I was like, “Oh, what a nice guy, just being social or whatever.” I had a friend who went to your brunch, and he said, “Yeah, the brunch is basically moist. It’s at the head of the table, and he’s like, ‘Alright, what’s your CAC? What’s your role?’” You were asking a bunch of questions, and I was like, “That sounds about right.” I learned this from your brother. I watched him one time, and I was like, when I talk to your brother now, it’s like a duel. He doesn’t know this, but in my head, I’m like, “I’m going to ask whatever number of questions you ask, plus one will be asked back to you.”

Moiz Ali

you

Shaan Puri

You know, because I will not be out-questioned because I know the technique. But I started watching him when he talked to other people, and I was like, "How does he get them to divulge so much information?" And again, not in a bad way, but just... what gets people in the flow of talking? I'm like, okay, so first: - He's genuinely curious - He's super engaged - He's not looking around

Moiz Ali

he's not

Shaan Puri

Looking at his phone, he's actually looking them in the eye. He's asking a bunch of questions. I've noticed he does two things: when they're saying something he likes or something smart, he gives them tons of nodding, saying, "Yep, that makes total sense. Got it. Love it." Then, when they say something really stupid or weird, or they tell him something that makes no sense, I noticed that when somebody does that to me, I kind of start judging them a little bit. They can tell that I'm judging them, and that makes them clam up. Whereas he'll just laugh and say, "Amazing." He uses the word "amazing" and then moves on. "Amazing" really means, "Wow, it's amazing you're so stupid," or, "It's amazing you just think that," or, "It's amazing that you don't even know that." But he never makes them feel bad. He'll just say, "Amazing," and then go on to the next question. I realized that this is how he keeps the constant flow going. So, I'm studying this "Ollie boarding" technique, and I think I'm going to be pretty good at it. I'm going to be like, you know, a franchisee of your questions.

Moiz Ali

I love that! Yeah, first we have to charge you per question. But really, I think the other thing that he does really well is that he asks, "How do you think about something?" He never asks, "What's your CAC?" Instead, he'll say, "How do you think about growth when it comes to social ads? Can you spend more there?" The question is really open-ended, but he's aiming for something. He really wants a response, and people subconsciously get to it. I've started asking, "How do you think about that?" all the time now because it really gets people to open up and tell me about how they view their business, not just a standard number. I really like that question, and I've also franchised that from him.

Shaan Puri

When I started my business, the e-commerce one, I told him about it. He had some good questions, and then, you know, the way y'all's brains work, it's just nonstop. So, I think at like 2 in the morning that same night, he just sent—actually, it was like 5 nights later—completely unrelated. It was like 5 nights later at 2 in the morning, and I get this email. It's one line from him, and he just says, "With our business, I knew we just needed to do this one thing, and it would work." He explained the competitive positioning and what we were going to do differently that was going to cause it to work. It was going to be X but with Y difference. What's that going to be for your business? That sent me into like a 3-week spiral of being like, "Oh my God, I need to know this answer." That is the important question. As I'm starting this business, I really do need to have a very strong understanding of it.

Shaan Puri

Of view on what's going to be the one thing that we're going to do that's going to make this business work better than all the others that are out there? Or better than, you know, how can we compete given that we're years late to the party and whatever else? But it was such an important question, and I was like, "Man." I ended up bringing him on as kind of like an adviser. I was like, "Man, this is the value of an adviser." It's not the answer, but the question. The question that's going to make you think about your business in a way or reveal a shortcoming in your own thinking that you then get to go fill in that gap for yourself.

Moiz Ali

Yeah, I think there's a lot of truth to that. The one thing I would say is that, you know, I've started an e-commerce business. If someone asked me about Native when I launched the business, I'd say, "I've got no idea." We're aluminum-free. There are a bunch of aluminum-free deodorants right now that we're selling online. Is that better than selling in-store? I've got no clue. I think those questions are really helpful, but I think the fear that some of those questions can cause—like people feeling they need to figure out the answer before they can do X or Y, before they can launch their product or start spending marketing dollars—is misplaced. You can figure out that answer well after your business is launched. For Native, that really changed. We were an aluminum-free deodorant selling on the internet, and I thought, "That's going to be our competitive advantage." Then it became a little bit about scents, you know, like fragrances. We have a strategy of launching new fragrances frequently, and those fragrances are different. People are going to pantry-load and buy a bunch of deodorants. So it's not just buying one until you run out, but I've got seven because this is going to be your fragrance rather than your perfume or cologne. Then it was about different marketing ideas, bundling products, and launching new categories. There are very few brands that can expand from deodorant to body wash to toothpaste. You know, Old Spice could never make a toothpaste. We're like, "We're going to create a brand that can do all of those," and it stands for better-for-you ingredients rather than just one single thing. I think that question—the answer to that question—evolved and changed. I think that question is great, and people should think about that in the back of their minds, but it shouldn't prevent them from actually taking the first step to launching their business.

Shaan Puri

Totally, I totally agree. Also, about the progressive iteration of that question and the answer. I also learned what a good answer to that is. A good answer is not, "We're doing this magical thing that nobody's doing," because usually that just doesn't exist. Realistically, that's probably a signal that it's a bad idea, not that it's a great idea. It's also not about, "We are going to jump through these 14 really hard hoops." Like, "I'm going to crack, I'm going to be viral all the time." It's like, oh god, that seems like a bad strategy to back. Instead, it was like, actually, there's a category that people want. What we're going to do is address something that people don't like about the main competitor. We're going to do that one thing differently. It's just common sense. I'm just going to obsess over Facebook ads in a way that they're not, or just in a way that will work. Facebook ads are just working for businesses like these. So, I'm going to do Facebook ads. It's like almost the stupider the answer, the better. But the clearer the answer, the better too. Do you even know what you're betting on? What do you think is going to work here? Can you back that up as to why you think that's going to work? You don't want it to be a genius, magical silver bullet solution that nobody has ever thought of or pulled off, because that's usually just a sign of weakness in the plan.

Moiz Ali

Especially if you talk about partnerships or collaborations, where people are like, "I'm betting my future on the ability to get other people to do X, Y, and Z," that's never gonna work. I couldn't agree more. It could be, "Look, we're gonna create a digital-first brand that looks better. We're gonna have a better user interface, and we're gonna have better colors. It's gonna look better on your countertop, like Native Deodorant, or your bathroom shelf." That was it. That's an entire plan, and that's perfectly fine.

Shaan Puri

one thing I really here yeah

Moiz Ali

go ahead no go ahead

Shaan Puri

Okay, so the idea is an example of doing that. Most people who've listened to this are probably not familiar with Brown or Daisy's; they don't know this brand. But if you've ever been to an Indian grocer, which there are many around the country, you might have seen a bunch of ethnic foods. There's this brand called Haldi Ram, which basically makes this super addictive, salty little snack. It's like fried; it's our equivalent of chips. It's fried, salty, and kind of spicy. You just buy this thing; it's like a trail mix, basically, that's salty. Haldi Ram has been around forever. They do about $500 million a year in sales. They're like a juggernaut of a consumer packaged goods brand. They're super profitable, don't do any advertising, and they're just massive. So, I think one idea is Haldi Ram but with packaging that's just different. Maybe it's slightly better for you, like baked instead of fried. That's the whole business plan. I don't need to know more to start than just that. I think that's a plan somebody could take today and go start. So then, what are you going to do for this? I don't know, or the same as everybody else. You can say "I don't know" or "the same as everybody else" for all other questions as long as you just have that one thing: these guys do $500 million in sales and they sell mostly through Indian grocers. I'm going to do that but with better packaging because their packaging looks like my mom's packaging. I'm just going to make it look like my packaging, you know, the stuff I'm used to buying.

Moiz Ali

Yeah, and I can cater to Caucasians as a result of that. Like, you know, it's packaging that the entire world is going to understand. It's not available only at ethnic grocers. That's our business model: locking their product in a better bag.

Shaan Puri

And, or like, two-thirds of Indians have diabetes. I'm just going to make mine better for people with diabetes. I'm just going to be like, "It's baked, not fried," and like, "It's better for you because of that."

Moiz Ali

Yeah, you know the guys who started NatureBox? It's this company based in San Francisco that sold you snacks, like trail mix basically, and shipped it either to your home or your office. Their original business model was, "Were you gonna go buy this at Whole Foods, put it in different size packaging, and just ship it to your house?" Like, what's the difference between this and Whole Foods trail mix? Literally, no packaging difference, no ingredient difference. They literally go and buy it and, you know, ship it to your house. And then Instacart started and they were like, "What are we gonna do? You have a grocery list, you just email it to us, and we're gonna go shopping for it." Like, really simple ideas that were not groundbreaking by any stretch of the imagination, but they built huge businesses.

Shaan Puri

and you invested in manscaped pretty early on I think right

Moiz Ali

yeah yeah I invested in manscaped probably 3 or 4 years ago now

Shaan Puri

And so, you invested in Manscaped, and it's been one of your, I think you tweeted out, it's been one of your best performing investments. What did they do? Like, what's their version of this? Like, the stupid simple plan that just makes sense. It doesn't have to be rocket science, but like a simple plan executed well. What was their version of that?

Moiz Ali

Yeah, I think there are two things. First, they created a product specifically for your balls. Even though the razor that works on your face also works on your... you know, if you've got an electric trimmer for your face, it works on your balls as well. It's not like it's different hair; possibly more coarse, but that trimmer is going to work there. So they're like, "Look, we've created an electric trimmer specifically for your balls." That might appeal to people who don't have electric trimmers for their face, like I imagine you do. It's hard to keep these beards trimmed well. But if you've got it for your face, you can probably use the same thing for your balls if you're comfortable with that. They're like, "Hey, you're using a Gillette razor blade because you're clean-shaven. We've got something specific for your balls." I think that was really smart. They said, "Hey, use this product for a category that you probably aren't using it for." The second thing is branding and name. They got the name right; they got the trademark right. I think those were probably really hard for them to get, although I'm not involved enough to know that. They've done a good job with unique and differentiated branding. They had a barge sail up and down South Beach in Miami, and they had a big billboard on it that said, "Got bush? Use Manscaped." They've done really unique things to get their name out there in a way that I think a lot of other direct-to-consumer businesses have failed. For example, Native would run billboards saying, "Here's an aluminum-free deodorant, please come buy it." It really didn't get your attention. These guys have done a good job of that. Today, they posted about a billboard in New York City right now. Instead of the heart emoji, it's an upside-down heart emoji, so it looks like a... you know, a testicle sack. That's really clever branding and really clever thinking. So they're fantastic at that. What's really difficult is that this stuff doesn't scale. It's not like if there are two guys thinking about this kind of stuff and they retire, you're not going to be able to hire or teach that skill to somebody else. You've got to find two rock stars that are able to pull that off. Otherwise, I think that's going to be difficult for them. But so far, they're just knocking it out of the park.

Shaan Puri

And you see a ton of brands, a ton of DTC (direct-to-consumer) brands. You're probably like, you know, when somebody has a DTC company, you're probably one of the most, I don't know, desired investor-adviser type dudes. That's your authority, right? People want to do what you've done. And then you've also invested in so many that now you have that portfolio and experience as well. But you also see a bunch of DTC brands do stupid things. So, what are some of the... kind of like, give me your rant on the things you see DTC brands doing wrong? What are some of the common mistakes you see that drive you nuts? Because I know that both you and your brother, it's like operational excellence is what turns you on, and operational ignorance or whatever is what drives you nuts. So, give me some of the things you see DTC brands doing wrong or stupidly.

Moiz Ali

yeah overhiring and like spending money on dumb things like you know native was doing probably we were at a 50,000,000 run rate or close to a $50,000,000 run rate when we sold the business and we had 8 people at the time and when I left you know it was certainly doing north of a 100,000,000 a year and you know we probably had 30 or 30 or so people on the team like there were not that many people for a brand that was doing a lot of revenue you know I walked into offices where people have 20 peep you know there'll be 20 people doing $2,000,000 or $4,000,000 in revenue I'm like what are all of these human beings doing like if they're if you have this many people here send them to the subway handing out free like coupon cards to people who are getting off the subway this is too many people inside your office to be working out a $4,000,000 a year brand and so I think that's a that's a real like you're burning way too much money if you have that many people you know goldman sachs had the standard of like we wanna do 1,000,000 in revenue per employee that we have that should be something that's rather easy to do for for direct to consumer businesses I sit on the board of a company called brumate which makes like like you know drinkware think like you know like hydration kits or or can coolers for slim cans they had one employee and they were doing $30,000,000 a year like only the founder dylan was at the company and he was doing $30,000,000 a year now he had some outsourced agencies that he was working with to help him run to help him run facebook ads and to help him do customer service stuff but like he had one guy and one guy in the payroll so he could easily flex up and down with those agencies depending on how the business was going so I think hiring overhiring is a real problem the other thing I think is like another way to spend money poorly is like a beautiful office I remember walking into some direct to consumer founders businesses when I was running native and I was like wow this brand is super successful look at how nice this office is they have a big they have a logo on their you know on the wall right when you walk in after we sold our business the first time p and g came to our office because you know we've been doing it off-site so as not to tell everyone you know if if 13 people from procter and gamble walk into our office with 8 people people are gonna be like hey what's going on here so we kept meeting off-site and finally when they walked in they you know there was a sticker on the door that said native like it was a it was a sheet of paper I had written out native by with a sharpie marker and taped it on the door and that was our office it was like you know done with 1penny and they were like is this seriously your office I was like yeah of course this is our office and they're like this is the cheapest office I could possibly have imagined and I was like hey we care about dollars and so you know I used to be afraid of being frugal and I'd be like wow I'm so embarrassed and now I'm like it's a real batch of butter we're running a fiscally cons like you know we're fiscally conservative when it comes to this business and we care about dollars and they're my dollars and I wanna spend them well so I think that's the second thing and I think the third thing is really poor marketing a lot of founder like if I get if I ask a founder hey what is your cac last month and you don't know that is a terrible sign if you're doing under $40,000,000 a year in revenue and you don't know what your cac was last month that's crazy if you you don't know what your cac was yesterday that's okay but like you should know what it you probably should know and like you know you you know if I ask you at 10 am and you don't know that's okay if I ask you at 2 pm and you still got all your cac yesterday that's a real problem you're just not involved in the numbers enough like this is how you grow these businesses it's paid ads or some sort some sort of advertising spend versus a return on that investment and if you're not familiar with those numbers you're you know being grossly negligent with your business

Shaan Puri

And you used to do a bunch of hands-on, unscalable stuff like this. So, I think you... I don't know to this day, but I showed you what we do. This morning, we were talking, and I showed you what we do as far as like every day in Excel. We handwrite, "Here's how much we spent."

Moiz Ali

I love it

Shaan Puri

Here's the... yeah, here's the new customers we got. Here's the blended ROAS, here's the CAC, and here's how much from an email. We write that every single day into this spreadsheet. I'm sure there are more automated ways to do it, but it's not perfect. The practice of doing it by hand makes you think about each of these numbers. You're like, "Why is this number always 52?" I need to get this number to not be 52. I'm tired of writing effing 52 on this spreadsheet. Sure, if this number was 42, we would be making so much more money. Okay, that becomes my daily focus. What are some... and I've seen you tweet out about people going to Target. They watch the aisles themselves to see how people are buying their brand or what they're doing when they choose the brands. What are some of those unscalable things you've done yourself? Or what are your favorite... kind of give me some scrappy stories of stuff that you did as an operator or your favorite operators have done?

Moiz Ali

sure you know I used to email every single customer at native and I was like hey what you know you bought our deodorant do you like it or do you not like it if you like it leave a review and if you don't like it email me back and tell me why you don't like this and you know we were doing $550,000 in revenue before we hired our 1st customer service rep like I was looking at every single one of those emails being like what's working here and what isn't and that's how we got our product better we listened to consumer feedback and you know we sent out you we were doing 500 600 orders a day probably more than that so we're getting a lot of customer service responses to that type of inquiry but literally every single customer who ever purchased from us I would wait like you know 5 days until it was too late for you to return the product because if you emailed us and you're like I hate this thing I I can I return it I want to be like no you're we're past the return deadline you can't do that any longer so I literally had it scheduled for like you know at at 8:30 you can return a product for 30 days I had it scheduled to go at day 40 because I was like you know it's gonna take 5 days in shipping and so day 40 we would email you and be like tell us what you like and what you don't like and you know we're gonna go and try and fix these things we once had we invited a bunch of consumers to a location and then started grilling them with questions hey you you know there were consumers that have purchased from us a bunch they lived in san francisco and we're like why do you like native deodorant why do you think it works better than other deodorants in the market because you know people would be like it has probiotics that's why it works better than than other deodorants and I was like what makes it like it does have probiotics but you have no idea whether that's effective or not but I was like no matter what we do with our formula we have to keep some level of probiotic in there because people think probiotic means efficacy whether it does or not and so those are the types of things that were really interesting and fun and you know non scalable you know I also you you were talking about solomon was talking about my business and how I pack boxes I did pack boxes I packed boxes until we were probably doing about $80,000 in revenue a month like you know monday wednesday and friday I would go home after working put on star trek and start packing boxes and you know I was like okay I I knew how much a box weighed I knew how much filler paper to put in there I knew how much a box weighed when like you know with deodorant without deodorant I knew how to optimize those price I I knew when we were creating custom boxes I was like I want our box to weigh 1 ounce and not 1.3 ounces because at 1.3 ounces it tips us over this level and at 1 ounce it doesn't I'd go to our contract manufacturer all the time and be like hey we're seeing these types of fuck ups what's going on here and so I was like intimately familiar with the formula I knew the steps to how to pour the formula what what temperature we poured it out at and like native was being hand poured we were making 20,000 units of native a deal run a day and we were hand pouring each single bar so there was there were about a 100 people working in austin texas hand pouring deodorants and you know the best person could hand pour about a 1,000 deodorants a day and a new person could hand pour about 75 deodorants a day and we had to train these people to go from 75 to a couple 100 or 500 and that was really interesting as well and so there was a and I mean that's not scalable certainly hand pouring deodorants isn't scalable but we went from 500 units of deodorant a week to 21,000 a day still hand pouring so it was more scalable than I thought it was gonna be

Shaan Puri

And how much of that is you being a maniac versus good strategy? Right, so like if somebody in my company was doing that, I'd be like, "Why are you doing this? You need to hire somebody so you could do something higher leverage." But clearly, it kind of worked for you to be like a maniac and do all the things yourself. So, you know, what's the line? What's the right way to think about that?

Moiz Ali

yeah that's a great question I think if you're completely divorced from customer feedback you're setting yourself up for disaster unless you've created you know a flywheel that you know exactly how it works like you know when native was doing a $100,000,000 of sales a year I probably wasn't in customer service any longer but when it was doing 50,000,000 in sales a year I was in you know I was probably the number 1 if not the number 2 customer service agents and so like you know you need that feedback to understand what's working and what's not where are their problems in my business and where they're not and so look I don't know what the right line is but divorcing yourself from customer feedback at under $25,000,000 a year is bananas to me you're not gonna know what people love about your product and what they don't love and you're not gonna know like you know we'd have operational issues that I wasn't aware of we'd be like shipping is taking an extra 3 days when it go when it's going to california what's going on here like is there a problem in california is there a problem with our shipping company sometimes we'd run out of things and no one would know until a customer emailed us being like hey I'm waiting 4 days and we're like we're out of this we're out of coconut and vanilla I don't believe and then we check our inventory and we're like how did we run out like we did such a not only did we do a poor job in inventory forecasting we weren't even aware that we ran out when we ran out and so those were a couple of the ridiculous things that would happen but like you know because you're intimately involved you're able to like you know understand the business at a deeper level and I think like really being engaged at you know what does my shipping look like you know how can I make shipping faster so I can reduce costs is the weight of the box or the weight of the filler or the size different there was a company that I knew that I I I was friends with a ceo in san francisco his he was shipping through amazon and his box that he was shipping in was about a half inch too large and it went from being extra like it went from being like an a large box to a custom large box and so his shipping rate went up like $70 a box because of this half inch he had and like you know when people discovered it or when he discovered it he's like I can't believe we've been shipping like this for so long you know if you're intimately involved you're probably gonna catch those things a little bit earlier

Shaan Puri

Right, and so let's zoom out. You've seen D2C change, and you also invest in the stock market. You've seen Shopify, Amazon, and Facebook. Give me your lay of the land on each of those three stocks. What do you think has happened, and where do you think they are going? Are they trending? Are they rightly priced, underpriced, or overpriced? Let's do Shopify first, then we'll do Facebook, and then Amazon.

Moiz Ali

Sure, okay. For context, I've lost **$1,000,000** in Shopify stock in the last 6 months. I wrote this Twitter thread about it as well. I mentioned that Shopify's motto is to "arm the rebels." I said they keep giving us muskets in a war that's being fought with nuclear weapons.

Shaan Puri

And you, when you put out tweets like this and you basically say, "Hey, here's what I think you should do with your strategy" or "If I was CEO, here's what I'd be doing" or "As somebody who's lost a million dollars on your stock, here's some things that I think could help," do you ever hear back? Is it crickets? Do you get other interesting inbound? What happens after you put that out there? Because I've done that a few times and I've gotten very interesting situations occur from my tweets like that. What's happened for you?

Moiz Ali

Definitely interesting situations. Toby, who's the CEO of Shopify, responded, and he's like, "These are great points." So did Harvey, who's the president. They definitely had some more interesting calls. I'm not sure if that Twitter thread, which was a couple of months ago now, informed them and helped them create this lookalike audience system that they're developing in Shopify. But that's wonderful! I don't want any credit; just go do it so that we can acquire customers at a cheaper rate and build better businesses. You know, go build out these products and make the platform fantastic. A bunch of people pay Klaviyo more than they pay Shopify. A bunch of people pay Recharge more than they pay Shopify. Look, these are Shopify apps that provide you with a small segment of what Shopify enables you to do. Provide some of these services at cheaper costs or build in some of these services to make the platform better. Like, you know, Triple Whale is doing a fantastic job at analytics. Why doesn't Shopify build their own subscription platform instead of outsourcing it to Recharge, which everybody hates and which charges a fortune? What's going on there? You've been publicly traded for years. This is arming us; this is arming the rebels.

Shaan Puri

And so, let's shift away from D to C. Let's discuss other types of investing. You do real estate, you've tried to buy pieces of sports teams, and you've tried a bunch of different things. So, let's just start with the big picture. Give me a pie chart percentage-wise of what you do with your money. So, you...

Moiz Ali

yeah

Shaan Puri

You came into a bunch of money. What's in cash? What's in real estate? What's in stocks? What do you do percentage-wise, roughly, for those?

Moiz Ali

Great question! Great question. I think the answer is I should know the ins... I know my CAC from yesterday.

Shaan Puri

so I should know

Moiz Ali

Your CAC... yeah, this is me not knowing my CAC, which is embarrassing. I have probably around **$10,000,000** in private equity and probably around **$40,000,000** or **$50,000,000** in cash, which is a lot. And not like cash cash, where I'm literally holding it in cash, but like really short-term bonds, waiting for bond prices to go up. Now, I'm starting to leg into positions where I feel like interest rates are getting more exciting, so I'll put my money there. I've been investing in really short-term bonds that aren't really subject to much interest rate risk because they've got **6-month maturities** and not **5-year** bonds that are more subject to interest rate risk. Since interest rates have gone up over the last **4 months**, I've started to deploy more capital in that respect. I have a lot of cash—probably **$25,000,000** to **$30,000,000** in real estate that my family owns and we're operating ourselves. Then, probably another **$10,000,000** in real estate as a limited partner somewhere here or there. I don't know how much money that is, but then there's like... you know, probably another **$10,000,000** in startup investments. So maybe more than **$10,000,000** in startup investments. Good question! Probably around **$10,000,000** in the stock market, maybe a little bit less now that Shopify and Facebook have gotten cremated. So maybe less than that now, but I'm not exactly sure what the amount is there.

Shaan Puri

And why such a big cash issue? Is that to be conservative? Is it just "I'm so busy I haven't figured out how I'm gonna deploy all this"? Or is it like intentional, like "No, I want to have, let's say, 40-50% cash and kind of bonds"?

Moiz Ali

it's more reactive than it is proactive like I'd love to be more invested and part of it was actually like you know proactive in terms of waiting for interest rates for to go up again because you know if you invested 2 years ago or 3 years ago you've barely gotten any return on your dollars so I was like we can sit on cash and not be subject to so much interest rate risk now I'm getting more excited about that but a lot of it is you know when you get to a certain scale of wealth you hire professionals who are like private wealth managers to help you deploy your capital in a way that's really intelligent in a way that's unique and you know supposedly gives you a competitive edge because you have more capital to deploy so you're able to hire smarter people to deploy that and you know earn a greater return that's the shtick that they sell you I'm not sure that shtick is real at all like private wealth managers have been really disappointing like no one is doing anything unique in this industry you know if you ask 2 private wealth managers what's the difference between you and this other person they'll just shit on the other person and you'll be like what are you going to get me like what are you going to invest me in that this person isn't like what's your competitive advantage do you have access to deals that this person doesn't have access to they're like no we're both managing the same amount of money we've been around the same amount of time and they're like you know have you heard of elliott I'm like yeah I've heard of elliott it's the wall street journal every fucking day I'm pretty sure everyone could get me in there like you know their fund is $20,000,000,000 I'm sure anyone could get me in there and they're like yeah anyone could get you in there but we know them really well and I'm like okay I don't know what that means and so like I guess where I've been disappointed and where I've lost in this world is how do I deploy my capital in a really effective way and you know every like you know if I tweet something about this I tweet tweeted like hey if you've got $300,000 if you're earning $300,000 a year it's really hard to know what to do with your money you're not rich enough for the private wealth manager and you're too rich for the bank of america person who sits at the retail branch and you know I got a bunch of people who are like I do this for 300 people who earn about $300,000 a year I didn't bet any of them but like they were aggressive and like you know these private wealth managers if you sell a business they just reach out to you and they're like help us let us manage your money and you're like what are you gonna put me in and literally none of them say anything unique none of them add their own things they're just like we're gonna invest you in this other guy's fund and every private wealth manager can get you in there for instance with public equities they all tell you go invest with parametric they do tax loss harvesting so you will get an extra 0.25% to 0.5% return over the s and p 500 if you invest with parametric as opposed to doing this as opposed to just investing in a vanguard etf but they all tell you to do that why would like you know why use goldman sachs instead of first republic instead of a smaller boutique fund if you're all just gonna invest with this dollars with parametric you're all the same at that?

Moiz Ali

It's like, you know, buying an airline ticket from Kayak or Expedia but riding on American Airlines and getting the exact same seat. Ultimately, you're getting the same product. So, I haven't been smart enough and spent enough time figuring this stuff out.

Shaan Puri

Gotcha. And then what about crypto? You don't do anything crypto? Is there like a strong opinion, like "Oh, it's all fugazi," or... or you just haven't had time?

Moiz Ali

Very little with crypto. I'm like an investor in a couple of funds of funds that have made a fortune in crypto. These funds have returned a significant amount, and it wasn't in their sort of like fund charter to go invest in crypto, but they did it anyway. They're like, "Look, we're up, you know, 10,000%," so you can't complain. They're like, "Look, we turned your dollar into $10,000. You can't be an asshole LP and be like, 'What the fuck? You can't do this.'" They're like, "Here's $10,000, shut the fuck up." So, you know, they can do it. Generally, I just don't understand the value yet, and so I've been hesitant to get in there. I'm not opposed to it. You know, everyone says invest 5% of your net wealth in it. I wouldn't invest 5% of my net wealth in it. It's hard because the Sam Par's of the world are like, "Voice, you're not investing in crypto? What the fuck are you doing?" And the Warren Buffetts of the world are like, "If you offered me all the crypto in the world for $20, I would not buy it." So I guess I've just been sitting on the sidelines. I don't know if it's good or bad, but if someone has a strong opinion and can convince me, please do so.

Shaan Puri

Okay, I'm going to resist the urge to do that now because people have heard me rant too many times on it. Alright, so I guess let's do a little bit of a touch on real estate, then we'll do the personal stuff. So, real estate... yeah, you've been deploying, but now it feels like the landscape has changed. I think you kind of have an opinion on what's changed. Give me your current take on what you see and what you are doing.

Moiz Ali

yeah so I left a native in february 2020 and right when covid was gonna hit like I was like I'm gonna go to europe I'm gonna I'm gonna go to france I'm gonna try and drink all of the wine they produced in 2019 in february 2020 in france and then covid hit and instead I was stuck with my parents like you know all day and it was a very different experience than I suspected it was gonna be and so I started buying real estate and so from like january from february 2020 to probably the end of 2021 I bought about 50 or so units generally single family homes some duplexes some fourplexes 2 units in you know and and aside from those 50 units 2 units in like california where they're like old apartment buildings that are really small and we're renovating and then as an lp in a bunch of different funds you know everyone who bought in 2019 you look like a fucking genius like people are like wow you're such a savvy real estate investor I was like I I started buying because I had nothing else to do you know if they were gonna return money they're gonna return 5% they're returning 12 14% now and that's fantastic but I'm not sure I was very savvy about it I I haven't used leverage which is really stupid of me and you know it's really stupid today because if I borrowed you know a year ago I would have gotten 2 and a half% interest I could have just invested on 10 year bond and made money I just haven't used leverage in part because I'm too lazy to try and get it and in part because I'm like you know I've got enough capital to deploy already and the returns have been fantastic you know I I bought homes and I was underwriting for 6% returns that are 12 14% returns they're crazy I bought a 4plex for $600,000 I thought each unit would rent out for like $800 they're each renting out for about $1400 now so it's I'm making a fortune people are struggling with rents and so state governments are often stepping in and providing rents to landlords like you know we get a call being like hey john can't pay his rent we're gonna cover the rent for the next 18 months and you know they'll cut you a check for 18 months of rent and late fees which is bananas and so it's been a fantastic investment but yeah I am slowing down now

Shaan Puri

And do you think, where do you think this goes? Are you slowing down? But is you slowing down because you sort of are like, "Okay, I'm allocated how much I want to be allocated," or are you slowing down because you're like, "Wait, these prices no longer make sense?"

Moiz Ali

It's not even that the prices don't make any sense any longer. This is the one asset class where I have a really long-term view. You know, stocks... I've been in Shopify and never sold a share. Facebook, I've been in and I've never sold a share. I've had them both for 5 years, if not longer. Microsoft, I've been in for more than a decade. I remember buying it while I was in my admin law class in law school, and I've still held every one of those shares. So look, generally, I think I'm a pretty good long-term investor. In real estate, I think of myself as someone who will never sell any unit. My children will inherit this, or, you know, natural disasters will take these things into the ocean. I'm okay with either of those, but I will not sell one under any circumstance. So I'm not really worried about prices in terms of cap rates long-term, but I do think there will be a small market correction. I guess I've slowed down my purchasing. I'm still under contract to buy 2 or 3 units in the next couple of months, but I'm not like before. I was trying to buy, you know, a unit a week or 2 units a month. Now I'm sort of like, "Let me buy a unit a month or less," just to see what happens to the market as interest rates go up. I think these prices will come down a little bit, but I like... you know, a lot of my cash is in real estate—around $25 to $30 million. I'm not scared. If the market crashes, no one will be more excited than me. I will deploy all of the cash I'm sitting on for this. I have no problem if that $30 million goes down to $5 million. I will not get scared. This is the one asset class where I will not get scared. I will double, triple, or quadruple down, as opposed to being like, "Oh my god, I gotta sell what I've got."

Shaan Puri

And that's just because you're like, "This is concrete assets. There's limited supply, and there's always going to be demand."

Moiz Ali

It's such a **dancy mentality**, you know? It's like my parents' mentality of big cash flows. It's immune to Facebook ad prices and the stock market. It's generally real diversification for my e-commerce and startup investments. These things will exist; they're primarily in the South, with the exception of a few in California and a few in Colorado. They're places where people are moving to and not moving from. So, I'm excited about them. And yeah, I would never... I have no desire to sell them. I get emails and calls all the time, but there's no excitement whatsoever to sell. I love holding this stuff, and it generates a ton of cash. You know, the other way I think about it, and this is also a pretty **dacy mentality**, is like, okay, I've got all these expenses per year and no job. I need something to make up for that. I don't want to dip into capital; I don't believe in dipping into all of me.

Shaan Puri

never goes down and the balance goes up

Moiz Ali

That's right. I'm terrified of the balance going down, and so I'm like, "I need something to afford my lifestyle." This real estate helps me afford my lifestyle. How do you think about that?

Shaan Puri

That's... I don't know if I'm just too dumb or too lazy, but it's one of the two. I basically picked two lanes to think about, and I was like, I don't really have the mindshare to be able to think about. If I go into real estate today, I'm the dumbest guy in the room. Okay, well, it doesn't take a genius to do real estate, so that's okay. I think if I put my mind to it, I could do that. But that's now my mental cycles that are not going towards my business or the stuff I'm more interested in, where I think I can have a bigger edge. I think I can be more like the top 1% rather than like the 60, you know, 60 percentile or whatever.

Moiz Ali

sure

Shaan Puri

And so, that's the first part: do I want to try to learn this game from scratch? If I'm going to do anything direct, or even if I'm going to invest in funds, I have to have some ability to vet these funds to pick. Yeah, but okay, they're all pretty safe. You can get your 5-6% return without it being totally variable. The other thing is, in direct investing, I'm just like, who is going to have the time to manage all this? I did one transaction buying my house that I was going to live in, in San Francisco. There was the process of dealing with the bank to get the loan, then closing the escrow, and then the inspections. It was like I couldn't do anything else. I was paralyzed from actually doing stuff I liked because I was constantly having to nurse this project. I can't imagine buying 50 units in a year or 20 units in a year and the amount of transactional logistics that I would have to go through. It's such a turn-off for what is basically the same average return as the stock market in the long term. Okay, like, diversification is not that important to me. The mental cycles and the physical energy it would take to do the transactions and then manage them... you know, my tenant calls, my property manager calls me about the tenant that's calling me about whatever. I don't actually even know what goes into it, but I know it's not nothing. Right now, my tolerance is nothing for like... for like headache.

Moiz Ali

Yeah, and this isn't like, you know, someone calls you on a Monday saying, "My AC is broken and it's in San Antonio, Texas." You can't be like, "Okay, I'm going to get back to you Thursday." You know it's 110 degrees outside. You need to get that fixed in the next 12 hours. So you're right, there is a lot of pain there when I was purchasing.

Shaan Puri

Manager, I rent the current place that I live in. I called him and said, "Hey, there's a weird smell." I have kids, you know? That's the card I played. I told him, "You gotta send somebody now to figure out this mystery." Then the guy comes over and asks, "Where's the crawl space?" I'm like, "I don't know! It's not my house. Go ask this guy in Arizona who owns this house and is 90 years old. Go ask him where the crawl space is because it's his problem to fix this for me." And I think about what it's like to be on the other side of that. I'm like, is that worth the $500 net that he's making per month on my rent? It's probably not for me.

Moiz Ali

Definitely not. Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right about that. And what was in the crawl space? It was like a... I don't know.

Shaan Puri

We never found it yet. The guy didn't get back to me, and now I'm pissed. We have no idea where it is. The guy sealed up one hole, so he's like, "Maybe this will help the smell go away." That was it. I was like, "Okay, well, we still don't know what's causing the smell. You just bottled it up, like whatever's in the wall that's dead or whatever's going on."

Moiz Ali

here yeah sure

Shaan Puri

Is like, you know, he’s like... the guy came over. Now, on Google Translate, he typed out, “If the smell's still here tomorrow, I'll come undo the whole wall thing I just did and I'll go find what's in there.” I was like, “Bro, can't you just do that now? Can we not go into the wall now? Why do we gotta do that?”

Moiz Ali

Google translate that's hilarious

Shaan Puri

yeah

Moiz Ali

A bunch of the real estate I bought is at auction. When you walk in, there are very few options for inspection and no financing ability. You bid on an auction, you wire the money the next day, and then you open the house and think, "What did I just get into?" Sometimes you'll walk in and find surprising things. For example, there was one house I purchased where the owner had passed away—not in the house—but everything was still inside. Forks, knives, spoons, and his cards were in the garage. There was even a safe in there. We had to empty the entire house out before we could rent it out. That was a mediocre situation because everything was still in okay shape; he used to live there. There was another house I got that was in perfect shape. You couldn't see inside at all. It was the only house I've been to where I couldn't see anything through the blinds. After I bought it, I opened the lock, and it was in perfect condition. However, there have been houses that I bought where I walked in and thought, "I'm going to have to spend $40,000 that I didn't underwrite for replacing the roof, changing the tile, or putting in a new kitchen." So, it is a lot of rolling the dice, at least with the way that I purchase, and sort of using the law of large numbers to say, "This is going to make sense at some point."

Moiz Ali

And sometimes it does, and sometimes you get screwed. You know, you just eat the ones that got screwed. Like, there have been two that I've purchased two years ago that are still not rented because I haven't done the work to go and fix the houses to make them habitable. That's a lot of capital that was deployed, and nothing's happening with it right now.

Shaan Puri

That, yeah, you need to just like get some YouTuber who does content about renovating homes. Be like, "Hey, you can use my home and you get, you know, X% and you get to use all the content. This is your home, sir. Go ahead and make it. I would love that and flip this thing."

Moiz Ali

definitely yeah that'd be great

Shaan Puri

You and your brother both do this, which I think is that you treat business like... like business is your fun, like your adventure. I feel the same way. I asked him because he gave me money and he was like, "I'm gonna advise your company." I was like, "Cool, but just so you know, why are you doing this? I want you to do this, but as your friend, I'm like, why are you doing this? This is a waste of your time. This is never gonna make enough money to move the needle. Your share of this is never gonna make enough money to justify the time and energy. It's not gonna move the needle for you, so really, this makes no sense. Why are you doing this?" And he goes... he said something. He goes...

Moiz Ali

he goes like I

Shaan Puri

I am not happy unless I am entrapped in a business. And he's like, "As long as I get to create, I want to live in a prison of my own making." As long as I get to choose, I'm good. But like, I'm also not content and fulfilled unless I'm locked into a raging battle with some business thing. I was like, "Wow, that's crazy," but it also makes sense to me. You're the same way when you're like, "How do I do real estate on hard mode?" You could just LP a bunch of funds, and you're like, "No, I'm going to go buy stuff." I'm not just going to buy good stuff; I'm going to buy stuff at auctions. I'm going to have to take a 2x4, break off a lock, and then walk in to see what I got. Then, I'll figure out how to turn this into $1,400 a month in rent.

Moiz Ali

and you're like yes that's right

Shaan Puri

Sign me up! Whereas I'm like, that's what you do to get to your spot. You got there and then went back to the beginning. I'm now gonna call you... I don't even know this analogy, but I always heard my engineers talk about servers that run on "bare metal." I don't know enough about servers to know what the heck that means, but it was always like, "What's the most hardcore way this server can run?" It's optimized for performance. Just the term "bare metal" told me everything I needed to know about what the hell they were talking about. It's like this kind of waste of time, hard mode way of doing something that does yield the best return and satisfaction of optimizing speed. It's like squeezing the juice out of the fruit. To me, it's like, "Moise, you like to operate on bare metal." It's like you're choosing to play this game on hard mode. You're like, "How do I handwrite my UTM parameters on my ads? How do I stock my deodorant sticks myself? How do I answer every customer service question? How do I buy real estate at a foreclosed auction with no financing and no diligence, and then figure out how to make that work?" You're bare metal.

Moiz Ali

you know there is like first the the I learned how to break into houses like I learned how to pick locks because of real estate like I can walk into a house now and like open it up pretty much because and like I I carry tools with me when I'm traveling to these houses to be able to like open up homes so that I can go inside which is a little bit crazy and and back I saw my parents my parents are you know 2 like an older indian couple obviously they're like infirm and you know my mom will be like my knee hurts if she walks with a limp and then when she's trying to break into a house with me she'll turn into like yoda where itchy can do spin she's like what if I climb up to the top of the ceiling and like go you know jimmy down the chimney I think I can get us in there and I'm like I thought you knee hurt but now now you're perfectly fine you can like climb this wall and like you know go up the go up the into the chimney and she's like yeah I got it for this but I think that really I think there's a lot of in my family there's just a lot of interest in business and so being an lp is a ton of fun and I'm an lp in a bunch of these real estate funds and I'm like looking at the numbers and some are making good money and some aren't but like you know there's no sexiness to it it's a it's a paper money like you know bring me to sexy problems like oh your toilet is broken what the fuck are you doing here why is your toilet break every day oh the government is gonna write me a check for 18 months this is crazy the government is gonna pay me late fees the government is gonna call me and be like hey moiz you got a house here this guy can't pay his rent we're going to pay you 18 months of future rent and the last 2 months and late fees for the last 2 months tell me why you're doing this how did you get to this who thought this was a good idea you know does greg abbott think this is a good idea because that's a lot of money you're going to give me and so you know business is great and making money is great but it's a lot more fun to be an active participant rather than a sidelines participant like I don't wanna I don't wanna read what's in the wall street journal and be like okay that's great I wanna be like a part of that system that's going on there's a great like analogy where this guy who's a partner at a big law firm his name was joe flom he worked at skadden arps this was back in like the eighties nineties where there were all these mergers happening he's he was like 80 years old and he slipped and fell in his bathroom and his head was bleeding and he walked into this board meeting because he was part of this board that needed to fend off a hospital acquirer and he had paper towels on his head because he was bleeding and he was 80 years old and people were like what the fuck is going on you're bleeding profusely and you're eighties like I slipped in film they're like go to the hospital and he's like no I wanna be here and they're like what what's going on he's like I don't care if I'm you know acquiring a company or fighting off an acquirer I just wanna be in the game and nothing is gonna stop me and this guy was 80 and bleeding and had paper towels on his head but he wanted to be in the game and I really respect that like I wanna be in the game that's the where there's a lot of fun in life

Shaan Puri

you you watch basketball right

Moiz Ali

yeah

Shaan Puri

Do you have an athlete, or in any sport, that you admire? It doesn't matter which athlete. Is there someone whose way of doing things is how you do your thing or how you want to do your thing?

Moiz Ali

Tom Brady... Tom Brady for two. I remember he won a Super Bowl, and there was a 60 Minutes interview with him at 27. This was not his, you know, seventh Super Bowl; this was his second. They asked him, "So, what do you think? You're a Super Bowl champion, NFL MVP." And he said, "Is this all there is to life?" That's what he said at the end. He was like, "Is this all there is?" Then he retired after two weeks. He said, "I gotta get back in the game. I had two weeks off; this is boring. I need to be back in the game." He's just like an ultimate competitor, and I really admire that about him. But I'm sorry, that was the answer to the question.

Shaan Puri

that's that's great I don't know do you have 5 5 more minutes I wanna do yeah

Moiz Ali

yeah I've got 5 minutes

Shaan Puri

the personal stuff alright so so

Moiz Ali

what were you gonna ask about the athlete stuff no I didn't mean to interrupt you

Shaan Puri

no that's what I was asking I just wanna know who you'd

Moiz Ali

I can't find this client info

Hubspot

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Shaan Puri

You mentioned we had a little document where I asked you to put down some bullet points. I said, "You don't have to explain what they mean, but give me some nuggets that we could go off of." In it, you had a section of personal stuff, and you have two that are really interesting to me. You wrote, "I don't know how to spend money." What does that mean?

Moiz Ali

Yeah, you know, I'm living in Airbnbs that are like $5 a month. I don't have a car, I don't have a house; I live out of a suitcase. When expensive things are nice, I'm like, "Can I afford this?" I still do the math, thinking, "This seems too expensive for the value I'm getting." Even though, at this point, $1,000 probably has no value to me. Not like no value, but it's not going to materially change my life. I'm still so cautious when I'm spending $20. I don't know how to get this out of my system.

Shaan Puri

do you know how

Moiz Ali

to get it out of your system

Shaan Puri

I don't know how to get it out of my system. I have no problem spending money and that.

Moiz Ali

I spend

Shaan Puri

so too much money but like I've seen this and I think you know the one of the main things is I see my dad and my dad has done really well right like for he's got the same immigrant story that like everybody has which is you come to the country he had I think $91 that was starting. Right so that's the before and then like you know he's made good money in his lifetime nothing like you know crazy to write home about but like especially from a $91 starting. Like they're they my parents have enough money to do whatever they want they really don't need a penny pinch but like you know if we go to starbucks and it's like you know would you like the he's like kind of the small they're like okay it's called tall he's like no but what's a smaller than tall because I feel like the tall is gonna be overpriced he's like you know this is $3 like I I can make this it's mostly water like and he'll be talking to the people about it right I'm just like oh my god like not at least this is embarrassing but like it's embarrassing in the moment because he'll just be like let me clarify you're saying the thing that's mostly water is $3.80 like hold on hold on stop the lie what's what's going on here or like you know you know he'll pack 7 people into a hotel room because like you know we can make it work it's like yeah but do we have to like we're on vacation here why does it have to be a struggle and like and so you know I just saw he could never get it out of his system like those those the scarcity mindset was just so like ingrained in him because and that's like I alright I get it like he had no safety net he had $91 like every dollar counted and like it wasn't about spending it was about like saving to get to build a safety net because you're in this new you're in a foreign country your parents can't help you nobody can help you like and so I get that but I saw that like oh wow you know actually the money come it wasn't logical like once the money was there that didn't change the mindset didn't change so it's like I had to separate out there's a mindset around money and then there's like the logical like situation about the money and like there's actually like they're unrelated you would think once the logical situation change the mindset will change and it's like no it doesn't so it's like an active thing and so then I just started to like one of the reasons I asked you who you admire and you're like I admire this guy who's got like a bloody head going into the board meeting because he wants to do business that bad I would view that as a failure and you view that as a success and like because I have this belief which is you become what you admire right like fundamentally yeah if you admire something you're gonna strive to it so it makes a lot of sense to really pick and choose what you admire like I'll give you an example a lot of people admire elon musk and I think elon musk is obviously super incredible in a couple of ways like he is one of the greatest inventor and businessman of our time and like you know the greatest since steve jobs I would say but like you know I think he's like an edison of our time great sure but he's also had I think like you know I don't know 4 failed marriages and like that's not something I want for myself so like I gotta be careful to admire the like the the all encompassing person because I don't want the all the full result of that like the you know and so you kinda gotta like so I got I got really specific about what I admired and once I admired certain things then I started to live life like those people I was like well this guy's really really happy and like wow he's like pretty generous and he's not generous based off of having this like huge amount of wealth he's generous because like he doesn't feel super scarce about money he doesn't feel this lack of money and so he's like willing to give and like he's willing to give freely and he doesn't think twice about it and then he doesn't pat himself on the back about it either like oh wow I really admire that about him like I wanna be more like that and so to me the only thing that got me to change my mindset was knowing that it's not gonna change based on how much money is in the bank and b like I have to change who I admire if I'm gonna like change who I become right because like I will naturally start to follow those blueprints and observe people doing those things and be like oh downloaded that like I will I will make that I will make that happen like I'll give you a little small win for me on this front like I was just on vacation I was in hawaii last week and like my parent my dad is like I said like a horrible tipper and like so my whole life I basically saw my mom being like tip them and my dad being like you don't have to and like you don't have to or like I did and I'm like he handed them like a one like one one was his tip and like the absolute minimum and I just saw the look in the valet guy's face or whatever like it it wasn't even valet like you wouldn't do valet it's like the face of the guy who you're mandatory you he's standing there you gotta give him something the bellhop right and it's like so this time we get to the place the bellhop takes up our bags you know to the hotel room or whatever and I felt all those same urges of like my upbringing which was like we can just take the bags ourself it's like yeah but like that's this guy's job and like it's not about being lazy it's like that's how this economy works that's how this ecosystem works if I don't like you gotta feed the whole food chain otherwise somebody's not gonna eat right so it's like yeah okay I'm gonna let them do that then we got to the room it's like we have no cash because I don't carry any dollar bills like I only have cards and so I've been in this situation like 5 times before I'm not I'm not proud of it but like I would just be like dude sorry I don't like I don't have anything I don't have any cash we just got here I didn't bring cash or I would like you know let the guy leave it at the door and then I'd be like you know not there to like tip the guy and and this time I was like I was like hey man like I'm so sorry I don't have any cash on me what's your name and then like I made sure I went and got him later and it was like again whatever $10 but those $10 meant a lot to to me and like yeah okay that's a step in the direction of the guy who's not like has this lack mindset or scarce mindset about money and is looking to like hold on tightly to everything or like avoid paying things it's like no no no like you know make it happen I actually had like a a pretty comical series of events where on the even on this trip where I like my kid is 2a half but it but I don't know if you know kids fly free under 2

Moiz Ali

yeah

Shaan Puri

And so, I bought first-class tickets because I'm trying to be a baller shot caller. But then I did the lap... I lied about her age to make sure she's under 2. In that moment, I knew it felt wrong, but the logic was like, "Well, it's a couple thousand dollars to buy this 2-year-old kid a seat." I thought, "Are you really gonna do that?" Then, everybody told me they don't check, so I thought, "I'm gonna get away with it." But I got penalized so badly for this cheapness that it was just karma teaching me a wonderful lesson. We get to the plane, and they're like, "Oh, you guys can't sit. Sorry, you can't board the plane." I'm like, "What do you mean? Not only can I not board the plane, I'm in first class, and I get to board first!" They said, "No, actually, you have 2 lap infants because you have 2 little babies. There's only a certain number of masks in the top compartment, and there are 3 masks and 4 of you. We can't let you board this plane. We're gonna have to ask if somebody wants to switch seats with you for you to get on this plane." I was like, "What?" Nobody's gonna want to switch seats with the people with the baby and have us sit next to them. Sure enough, they go on, and nobody wants to switch. I said, "Alright, we'll buy another seat." They replied, "It's too late, sir. The flight's full." I said, "Alright, we'll go to coach." They said, "Coach is full." I asked, "What's the next flight?" They said, "It's tomorrow." I thought, "Oh, fuck." I knew this little cheap move of lying about my kid's age would come back to bite me, and it did. My wife and I had this horrible flight where my wife was in the last row of the plane with a baby in the middle row between 2 people because some guy was like, "I'll give up my middle seat in the back." Now, I'm sitting next to this dude. Instead of having this awesome family experience, we were having a terrible one because I cheaped out. I started to pay attention to all the ways that saving money was costing me money and costing me joy rather than how much it was saving me.

Moiz Ali

and so then who do you admire then is it is it somebody who's made that mind like who is that

Shaan Puri

yeah like my trainer so like I talk about him a lot it's probably like eye roll at this? But like the happiest person I know and not happy in like a cheesy way like but in a damn I've never seen this dude not in a good mood and like I've seen him stuck in traffic for 3 hours I've been late super fucking late and inconsiderate and like you know like but he greets me like he's he's just been having a party he's like dude where you been because his life is a traveling party and so I saw that and I was like man on every conventional metric that like I was raised like you you came from brown family it's like he's I think he's like 41 42 years old he's not married that's a that's a like household disaster if you're like a a brown person it's like you know we're having interventions you know if that happens you know he does well for himself as a personal trainer but he's not like the most successful guy I know like I I'm surrounded by people with more quote unquote success than him in terms of financial success you know so like you know just in terms of like the kind of conventional metrics the things I thought were most important you know his scoreboard it wasn't like wow this guy I admire him because he's successful it's like he's successful at the game of life because this dude's never in a bad mood and like because of that everybody wants to be around him he's the most loved guy I know because of that he has these like magical experiences like you go to a coffee shop with this guy and like you're gonna have like something if you just hang out with him for 3 hours like something awesome is gonna happen because his mood he's gonna make a joke and then that person's gonna say this thing and then they're gonna take us to the back room and hook us up because they just liked our vibe and like I tell the story like he goes to the dmv and like he you know he goes to the dmv like dmv is like the classic like worst place on earth to be and like he went in being like nah dude he looked up the dmv on yelp it had 2 stars and he's like I'm gonna have a 5 star experience because I'm gonna be a 5 star dmv participant you know and just watch what happens so he like walked in with a little pep in his step he's smiling and he makes a joke to somebody and he realize and somebody's like oh you could I'll just help you out over here and everybody else is grumbling in line like why is this guy getting to go up front she's like don't mind them and then she flirts with him and like she she hooks and he's supposed to take the test and she's like you know what like it's fine you've been driving for a long time and she just gives him the thing and he's like walks out he's like damn if I could do it at the dmv I could do it anywhere right like he's like I wasn't always this way he's like dude I was depressed for a while my dad died and I used to be bitter about him for x y z and he's like he's like you know I used to be the guy like I didn't wanna come out from the covers because I just wasn't looking forward to my day like you know you do if you looked at me you'd just see like a blanket and 2 eyeballs because I just didn't wanna get out of bed and he's not saying this as a motivational talk because he doesn't he's not a motivational speaker he's just like he's my personal trainer I just happen to hear these stories so when I heard this I was like okay this dude is winning the reason I want this money this family this all these things because I wanna feel good this dude just feels good on auto like he feels good no matter what situation you put him in so that's like an invincibility right like he is unconditionally feeling good so that's the guy I started to admire and then I started to pattern myself after things that he was any time I noticed he did something different than me or my friends or the people around me I like took special note of that and like would lean into trying that out as a new experience to see you know is that part of what makes him him

Moiz Ali

That's really interesting and a great story. You know, for a long time, I feel like everyone I've admired, I've just been... it's almost like sex. I'm just automatically attracted to that person, and it's not even conscious. I just get an erection when I hear about Tom Brady because I'm like, "Wow, that guy is awesome and really good at what he does." He's this ultimate competitor and wants to win. I never really thought that you could choose who you admire. I just assumed it was like, you know, your sexuality, where you're like, "Are you attracted to this person?" That comes from here and not here.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, actually, maybe that is true. I think there's some truth to what you said. But, like, in the same way that we don't all go try to marry porn stars, there's a certain point where you're like, "Yeah, what really matters? What do I actually want?" It's like, yeah, there's this initial thing—this physical attraction—which is important. But then, I now know it feels really good to have somebody who's caring and thoughtful, and like, whatever, someone I can trust. The things that are slightly below the surface, that you're like, "Oh, I actually, now that I know about it, now that I felt it," I'm like, those are super important. I just, you know, it's just less primal than the physical attraction, I guess.

Moiz Ali

Yeah, that's great. I've not done a good job of admiring people that I know really well. I only admire people that I just hear about, their competitiveness and their instinct to win. I'm going to think about that and try to do a better job of it.

Shaan Puri

Your brother's like this. Your brother's another person I chose to admire because I was like, he's also in a good mood pretty much all the time. I've never seen him in low energy; I've never seen him just kind of on autopilot, like that switch is off. I've also never seen him defeated either. So, you know, when I've seen him, I'm like, when your brother walks into the room, he unconsciously goes, "Alright," and it's like that's...

Moiz Ali

good yeah

Shaan Puri

He's expecting the parade to start, and I'm like, "Bro, this is just a bakery." But he's like, "Alright, what are you doing? What are you eating?" I was like, "Good, alright." It's not that he's Mr. Smooth socially, but his will to have a good time or to experience things to the fullest actually imposes its will on everybody else. Everybody has to participate in that. They're like, "Yeah, it's a croissant. You wanna try it? Oh, you know what you should actually do this." He forces a good time out of the average because he just literally walks in and says, "Alright, what are we doing?" Or he'll be like, "Let's win." And I'm like, "Let's win? What? We're not even playing anything." I go, "Okay, I have to rise to your level, or I have to stop being friends with you." That's just the way you're approaching things. It's either I'm out, or I gotta figure out how to be in. Being in kind of means being on and not just being "ho-hum" about life, you know?

Moiz Ali

Yeah, I've chosen to stop being friends with him as a result of that. In reality, I actually am a roommate as well. We were in Texas for Mother's Day, and it was my father's birthday two weeks ago. Someone had gone to Costco; I think my sister had gone and bought some cases of water and watermelons. I got home, and she said, "Hey Moiz, can you get this stuff out of the car? It's heavy, and I don't want to do it." I was like, "Why don't you guys ask him? He's been at home all day." She replied, "He never does anything! He will not lift a finger for this kind of stuff." I realized this is why this guy's always in a good mood. No one asks him to do anything that isn't enjoyable because they know he's already said no to it so often that it's not something that's asked or expected of him any longer. That's why he's always in a good mood. But it is a lot of fun to hang out with him. I've hung out with him often enough to see both sides of that. When he's excited, the energy comes, and it certainly lifts me up. There are times when he's more analytical, like, "Let's look into this. Does this make sense?" I remember one time when TinyCo was struggling. I was in San Francisco, and he said, "We have a new strategy for the whole business. Instead of creating our own iPhone games, we're going to license the intellectual property of others. What do you think of this? This is like a bet-the-company move." I had no idea; I was a lawyer, 22, and didn't know anything. But I could sense that it wasn't just pure optimism. There was a sense of reality there, and that helped me understand him a lot more too.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he said something about you that I thought was a baller line that I've reused many times. It was when you went into the deodorant business. Somebody was like, "Hey, Mois, do you even know anything about the deodorant business or about deodorant?" And you were like, "No, I know nothing about deodorant, but in six months, I'm gonna know everything there is to know about deodorant." And like, that's enough for me to go, "I can start this." I don't need to think of myself as some expert. I've used that so many times. Is that a true story?

Moiz Ali

Yeah, that's true. That was definitely true. I remember who it was too. Actually, it was the husband of one of my close friends who said, "You don't know anything." I was like, "I use it, and I'll be an expert in 6 months. Give me 6 months." And like, what is really...?

Shaan Puri

That's an amazing attitude to have about anything. It's like, "Yeah, of course, I don't know anything." And like, give me 6 months, I could be pretty much an expert at anything if you give me 6 months of obsession.

Moiz Ali

think that's true with everyone sorry go ahead

Shaan Puri

your brother had some that were like this because I started writing down these traits I was like there's a what I call is like you know sometimes you have a speaker system you turn it up to level 10 and you're like oh that's pretty loud it's bumping and then you like get in someone's car and it's almost like they got they theirs goes to 14 you're like god I can't hear anything I'm deaf out of 2 I got in my right ear because like why is your shit so loud but you're like okay at least I know what loud is now I have experienced loud even if I don't ever want my speaker to be this intense like I now know the level of intensity that exists because I just thought 10 was the max before and like that's what your brother did like we invested in a company together and they were kind of fucking up and I was like dude can you I've been trying to help these guys can you help me help them like he's like yeah great let's like alright let's win and he gets on the call he does his clap and he's like and they're you know they're kinda defeated and he's like okay so well let's raise all this money you're trying to raise money let's raise the money like let's look at the deck and they like put out the deck and it was like awful and he's like okay so this is bad but let's fix it like okay so he he he rattled off he's like slide 3 and he was like super detailed right it's not just like general rah rah he's like slide 3 that chart it makes me think this you need to flip the numbers to be like visualize it this way like this example here on Google images and he did that for like this super detailed thing right away and I was like woah and then he was like alright they're like wow thank you so much this feedback's been so helpful he's like great how long do you think it'll take you to to do this like to make these changes and they're like I don't know hope I'm gonna work on it today like you know I know it's super important so I'm gonna work on it today he's like great it's to noon now let's talk at 5 and then hey keith he's like send me a standing calendar invite for 5 pm every day for the next 7 days until this deck is amazing and he's like let's just keep doing this right like you said it was super helpful right so let's just keep doing this and I was like dude I wouldn't have had the balls to tell any company I invested in like let's meet again in 3 hours and it wasn't like forced it like I can't even now when I'm saying it it's not coming out the same way where it was like great let's do this and like let's just shorten the time span right like let's just cut all the fluff okay so you'll make these changes it'll take a couple hours let's meet again and I was like I've never done 2 meetings with the same person in one day so then I do I was like oh shit I just found out my knob wasn't even at 10 it was at 7 and like this is what 12 feels like and he we did it every day for 5 days straight until the deck was amazing we would meet twice a day with these people by the end of it they hated us but like the deck was so much like the whole pitch was like the whole business was different basically by the end it was like usually when a pitch is bad it's like actually the business is kinda bad and and so once I saw that I was like woah the ollie brothers they function at like a different like they have a different level 12 that like I like to see and I'm sharing this on the pod because there's people out there who the all the people around them they've never seen like what 12 looks like and I think you guys do this that's like my favorite thing about you guys

Moiz Ali

that's awesome I'm glad that that worked out and yeah he like he has this insane ability to get the most out of people and like without them feeling like it's an ex like without the without him forcing it upon you like he would do this when I was running native he'd be like how can you make this deal run better than dove and secret and I'm like this guy's an $8,000,000,000 r and d budget I've got $80 I can't do this and he's like here are 5 things that you can do that are like you know and he'll just even though the like 3 of those things will be outrageous he'll be like go and find a new ingredient that'll work and I'm like what am I supposed to you know dig and find a new element in the periodic table of elements but like 2 of those things will open up my mind in a way to be like you know what I'm not trying I'm not focusing on the right problem here and I gotta stop thinking about retention and customer service and all this other stuff that matters but will matter later on more right now this is my problem and forget everything else and it's really humbling to be around that like whenever I'm around them I'm always more jazzed about business and my business and like you know I think we've seen enough where we understand what the problems are right away like I'm in some of these board meetings and I'm like why are we talking about like you know I was in a board meeting a couple weeks ago all we did was talk about fundraising and I'm like this is a waste of my time and your time either you're gonna get this check or you're not gonna get this check from this one guy stop begging him like move on why don't we talk about the business and see hey what's working and what's not make a better business and the dollars will follow stop wasting time here and and that's what like so much of this is experience and I had no idea that it would be experience and I think about this all the time I remember when I was at when I was at p&g my boss who ran deodorants quit and I was like oh he's quitting I hope he does better and I didn't realize all of the things that would happen to me that you know now we're super clear like he had made all of these promises about keeping native independent and amazing and then you know not not like forcing his will upon the company and he protected me from p&g the next guy never made any of those promises and so he didn't really feel like he had to do any of those things and I completely respect that but I didn't even understand what was gonna happen when the guy told me he was quitting and now I'm like okay when you know headcount changes this is what's gonna happen a new sheriff is gonna come into town he's gonna bring in his own minions to work in the places that he likes and either fall into line or fall out like you know leave the group and I didn't understand that and so much of this is experience and once you go through those go through these things it's super helpful and you know he's had thought he's had so much more experience than I have and he's been he's a little bit older than me and so he's had it earlier than I have and so he's been this great sounding board for this kind of stuff

Shaan Puri

You tweeted something out that was great. You were like, "Here's my project status. Here's my sell sheet I use for all my real estate deals." It was just the status of it. It's like, you know, I don't remember what it was exactly, but it was like: sent, reply received, waiting for paperwork, follow-up needed, and then there was one that was just like, "I'm unsure. I don't know what the hell is going on."

Moiz Ali

like I don't know what the fuck

Shaan Puri

I don't know what's going on. I don't know where it's at. I don't know why it's not moving. I was like, "That's the status that I've needed in every project I've ever done." I always have a tracker for anything I'm doing. I'm like, "Alright, it's either: I sent it, I'm waiting for a reply, I got the reply, now I need to reply to them, I need to analyze it, I need to sign, I need to wire the money, I need to do whatever." But so often, after like 24 hours, whatever status it was in is now slipping towards the black hole of "I don't know what's holding it back from just finishing." I think that's what you guys do really well. Any initiative in any project is like, "Alright, we're trying to get more profitable." We have this big plan and we're doing it, but then, slowly but surely, a month in, it's like, "What happened to that whole profitability thing? Are we doing it or are we not?" Everything has slipped into "I'm unsure what the heck's going on," and I need this piercing clarity back. I think that was an amazing little tidbit in there: I need that status because most things are actually in that bucket. I need to get them the hell out of that bucket, but I had to name it that to acknowledge what was going on. The second example is another instance of the relentlessness thing—level 12, level 14 on the volume scale. I showed your brother this deal that I wanted to invest in, and he was like, "Oh, this looks great! Let's do it." I was like, "Okay, cool." Then every day, he would text me, "What's going on with that deal?" I was like, "Oh yeah, no change. I emailed the guy; he said he's finalizing stuff and will get back to me by Friday." It was like Tuesday. On Wednesday, he was like, "Yo, what's up with the deal?" I said, "I think it's still the Friday thing. I haven't emailed him again. You think I should?" He was like, "Yeah, let's email him again and tell him we love this and we want to be involved." I was like, "Oh, is that like a thing people do? Let's just fluff him up." He said, "Yeah, let's just keep it hot." I was like, "Okay, cool." Then Wednesday, Thursday, he was like, "I just feel like we need to do something." Eventually, it got to the...

Shaan Puri

Where he's like what's the guy's bank let's just wire him $1,000,000 and I was like we haven't signed anything he's like well once we wire him the money he's not gonna wire wire it back so like we're gonna secure our allocation in this deal just like let's just send him a $1,000,000 and then he'll kinda be forced to like finalize things with us rather than keep us in this like limbo stage and maybe in the end you'll say hey I can't do the full amount you can only do a quarter of the amount because I got all this other investor interest because we know that's what's going on here and again I was like woah didn't know that's an option of like you can just wire the guy the money I guess that kinda makes sense and like these are very very valuable little tidbits of like to add like another example somebody gave us they were like it was like what's your open rate on your push notifications for your app I was like oh it's like 30% I think it's pretty good it was like 20% I think that's really good industry average is like 8 we're at 20 I was patting myself on the back I was feeling happy and he's like what do you think the theoretical max is I was like what he's like what do you think like theoretically okay he's like it's not literally a 100 you're not gonna get a 100% people because some people have uninstalled your app and they have notifications off like what do you think is like and I was like I don't know what you mean he's like I think I could get 50% of people to open a push notification let me just like see so he sent a push for his app and his app was like had it was like a social app like you post photos and he just sent a post notification that said your uber is arriving outside like please like open this to to meet it at the door like whatever and he like said the thing that was like your uber is arriving with your package swipe to like open it up he saw like 55% of people open that thing he's like okay that's like the juiciest I have to know what's in this push notification he's like that's now the max is it anything you wanna use now we know so actually our 20% is not on a 100 it's on like 55% is it and so everything we do is from here I remember thinking wow some people in silicon valley are like maniacs like they will push the boundaries in ways that I just really haven't thought of and every time I saw someone break like an invisible wall that I had just had up I'm like oh fuck the game is so much more interesting than I realized and like these people play without these walls oh this is awesome like what what else can I do

Moiz Ali

It's so refreshing to see that kind of stuff when you're like, "I don't know why I thought this wall existed." Now that it doesn't, it makes so much sense that it doesn't exist. It just required some genius to break through it, and now that he's done it, it seems so obvious. Whenever Salma and I look at deals, or if one of our investments is raising a new round, we're always like, "We want to either buy the business, I want to buy the whole business, run the business, or sell all of my shares." I want some action! So I can't... these are the three options: I'll buy the whole thing, I'll run the business, or I'll take all my shares and get out of here. But I don't want nothing; I can't do nothing here. It's a lot of fun to be involved and have that action, but you know, it makes it so that you admire a certain group of people, certainly.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly, for better or worse. By the way, this is a good example. I admire that Uber push notification. Some people are like, "How unethical and weird," and like, "Why would you do that?" I've told my designer, "Hey, let's try this," and he looks at me like I'm Bernie Madoff saying, "Let's take all their money and run away." They think I'm evil when I'm actually just running an... to me, this is like an awesome experiment. It's because I admire people who did some of these different growth hacky things that are just unusual thought experiments. I'm like, "Oh, the way you think is how I want to think." But not everybody wants it or even thinks it's good. They think it's bad, which is like... but knowing that is also where you figure out your lane. You're like, "Oh, that's my lane." These things I think are easy, fun, and good. Other people think are hard, boring, or like evil. I'm like, "Oh, okay, cool. I now know what differentiates me versus anybody else."

Moiz Ali

There was this one great story when I was at Native. We had bought these end caps for Target, which are basically shelving that sits at the end of an aisle. They come filled with all the deodorant. We ship them, and all they have to do is take the box off, and it's filled. So, we sent them to Target, and nobody could find them. There were a bunch of Targets that were like, "We don't have this." We were like, "Okay, what should we do?" Some P&G person said, "Okay, what we have to do is call up the P&G Target team in Minneapolis. They're going to call Target, Target's going to call their distribution facility, and then we're going to go all the way back around to find out where they are because we've already shipped them." Someone on our team was like, "This doesn't make any sense. This is 15 phone calls. This is what you guys would normally do." They were like, "This is the only way to do it." So, we Googled "Target distribution facility" in New England, found their phone number randomly, and cold-called them. We said, "Hey, we work at Native. I think you've got a bunch of these end caps. A bunch of stores don't have them. We shipped them to you. Do you know where they are?" They said, "Give us 20 minutes to look in the facility." They called us back and said, "Yeah, we got them. We're going to ship them out in the next truck." That's how we solved the problem. To the P&Gers, it had never occurred to them to directly call the facility and Google for that number. They thought, "We have to make 15 phone calls and place a secretary on the way back." Their minds were blown. For us, we were like, "This is the most obvious thing to do: call the person where the problem lies." It's crazy to see where those walls are, and it's so amazing to break through them and be like, "This is the way things should be done moving forward."

Shaan Puri

can I give you one of those as well when I was when we

Moiz Ali

got hired

Shaan Puri

Like Twitch... Twitch is an Amazon-owned company. So, you had the Twitch bureaucracy plus the Amazon bureaucracy. There are layers, you know? It wasn't all bad, but there were certain things you'd run into. It's like this pocket where you think, "Oh no, I'm stuck in molasses." What is that? Where did I step that got me stuck? One of them was for a period of time, I believe there was something with performance marketing. It was like, "So how much are we spending on getting installs?" And they're like, "You know, this amount." I said, "Cool, what's the cost?" They replied, "Well, we don't really have the tracking." I'm like, "We don't have tracking? That's, you know, the basic." They said, "Well, we don't want to install the Facebook pixel because Amazon doesn't really want that. We have to get approval before using Facebook because when the Facebook pixel is in your app, they have your data. They're kind of a competitor to Twitch and to Amazon, so there's some sensitivity there." You have to get that done. So, we just spend, and we don't know anything. We don't have the pixel installed. I don't even know how you can run an ad without the pixel. And, you know, like, yeah.

Moiz Ali

and I

Shaan Puri

was like how long is it they're like yeah it's been on legal's desk for like a year and I was like oh my god and so I was like oh wow so I was like we can't and so my job was at that time I was like oh dude we're getting our ass kicked in brazil and like nobody in the company is even paying attention like we need to we need to like win in brazil and like what happened we used to be number 1 and we're slipping because like mobile gaming took off and we don't do mobile gaming so I was like we need to win and and so we built a scraper first to like see how fast the competitors were growing because nobody in the company would do anything unless you had a case for how like much how big the market was so I was like well look at the competitors they're like yeah but like we don't know and I'm like alright we'll we'll build a scraper which is like startups do this all the time but in a big company it wasn't like super super kosher to do that but I was like alright whatever we'll do it till they tell us to stop and the second thing was I was like oh we don't have this pixel till we can't like run these ads so I was talking I just went on a phone call with this guy who was the number one streamer in brazil that we had just like paid a bunch of money to like come onto our platform and I was like how would you get a bunch of people to download our app if I can't do facebook I can't do marketing like paid ads and he was like he's like oh easy boss and he's saying this the translator's like he's saying it's easy boss you know here's what you need to do he's like give me 10 iphones I was like what he's like buy me 10 iphones I was like what for I you know like I don't know how to do that he's like I'm gonna give away iphones iphones are like gold bars in brazil if I just say I'm giving away iphones on my twitch stream everybody download twitch and you know sure enough I get the I just like kinda like bootleg away to get the guy gift cards so he could buy iphones and he buys 10 iphones he does a streamer he's like I'm giving my iphones he's like I'm not giving away the first one until we have a like we have 10,000 people watching my stream go share this text your cousin text your mom tell them to get on this I'm not giving it away until then and then and he drum he had he brought he like had he was the number one streamer on twitch that day he brought in himself like 100 of thousands of downloads like the biggest download spike that we had had just by giving away like you know we ended up giving away like 5 iphones and it's like so for 5 grand basically we did like more installs in a proven way because they were all coming directly off his link to his channel and I was like and people and that's when I knew like twitch might not be the place because like I told the story and I'm like I feel like I slayed the dragon and I'm dragging his carcass into the boardroom like the in the 9th floor the top floor the the mega boardroom where all the the execs sit I feel like I'm dragging this carcass in being like you know are you not entertained you know and people were like oh like you know that's interesting and then it sort of moved on and I was like wait we just discovered this like incredible growth hack to like get a bunch of downloads if we did this thing out of the ordinary like you know can we get a little love here and when I got no love I was like okay this is not the place for me because if this was my company and somebody did this I'd be like look I don't know if this is good strategy long term or a bad one it's really irrelevant the fact that you did this we need to tell every team in the company that like something like this is possible in your department like don't get stuck in the molasses like find something and try something that works and like these guys have tried 9 things that failed tell tell them tell them about all 9 and then tell them the one that worked and like I would have gone on a roadshow for that and that's how I knew like okay what type of company do I need to be at is one that like sure celebrates that type of thing

Moiz Ali

That's a pretty amazing story. It's really incredible that this guy who's in Brazil knows how to get downloads from the street by giving away iPhones and getting people to download it. That's brilliant of him! It's also brilliant that you found it, harnessed it, and said, "Forget all this red tape, I'm going to figure it out." That's awesome! What an incredible story.

Shaan Puri

that's a finally I'm getting finally I'm getting the love I needed

Moiz Ali

yeah I've

Shaan Puri

I've been waiting two years to just get the "Daddy, I'm proud of you, son. I'm proud of you" moment. But I got it now. Alright, man, sorry I took you so far over the time. Of course, thank you for coming on.

Moiz Ali

yeah appreciate it and thanks so much for having me

Shaan Puri

like a champ

Moiz Ali

yeah

Shaan Puri

where should people find you your twitter is probably the best spot right

Moiz Ali

yeah twitter I'm at moiz ali

Shaan Puri

at moiz ali alright perfect thanks man

Moiz Ali

perfect thanks john talk to you soon