How To Build A Viral App & Make Millions From It (#379)

Sam Parr

And so, Nikkita said something in the group message. He said, "I think it'd be an interesting idea to ask myself or to figure out how..."

Shaan Puri

I deal that you're making it too soft. I remember exactly how he said it. It's like, "Oh, so what are you doing? What are you up to nowadays?" "Oh, Sam, you sold the hustle. What are you doing?" "Sean, you sold people. What are you doing?" "Nikita, you're sitting at Facebook. What are you doing?" And he basically just said it straight up. He goes, "I'm just thinking about how I can make $10,000,000 in 3 months." We're like, "What?" And he's like, "Yeah, I want to make an app that generates like $10,000,000 in 90 days."

Sam Parr

What's going on? We have a good episode! We talk about an app that's going viral. This app, Roll, is getting written about in a bunch of publications. We actually have the inside story because we kind of saw what was happening behind the scenes early on. So, we talk about this guy named Nikita who launched this app that has made **$1,000,000** in like two weeks or something crazy like that. We tell you the inside story behind it. What else do we have?

Shaan Puri

And he called his shot, which you know we love here. We also talk about a ransom note that we received through email and why this ransom note was one of the best emails we've ever gotten. Sam and I live brainstorm and negotiate how we are going to deal with this ransom note. So if you want to see that, it's at the end of the episode. We also discuss the Mailchimp CEO getting canceled and provide a little debrief on Palmer Luckey. That's it! Enjoy this episode. Alright, we’re live! Sam Parr, what's up?

Sam Parr

nothing how's it going

Shaan Puri

You know, just the usual. I woke up and decided, "Okay, no small boy stuff today." I got going immediately, started considering some small boy stuff, and then I remembered there will be absolutely none of that today.

Sam Parr

what were the what what what was it

Shaan Puri

I woke up and thought, "I'm a little sore." So, I woke up with a complaint on one of the greatest days I've ever had. Wow, this is not how I'm going to start my day.

Sam Parr

wait why was it one of your greatest days

Shaan Puri

just like that's just like a general general attitude I have

Sam Parr

Do you want to start off by recapping Palmer Luckey? Because after talking to him, I feel like he's kind of the greatest guy I've ever talked to.

Shaan Puri

kind of the man yeah

Sam Parr

right is that how you feel

Shaan Puri

I thought he was awesome. Okay, let me just say a word that describes Palmer Luckey: I would say he is **independent-minded**. I really respected that he is independently minded. I felt like all his opinions were his own. You know, people write that stuff in their Twitter bio, like "opinions are mine, not my employer." His opinions are really his.

Sam Parr

Also, when people write "contrarian thinker," it's kind of like if you have to say that you're a contrarian thinker, you're maybe not the most contrarian thinker. Do you?

Shaan Puri

Know what I mean? Right? It's like the "no offense, I'm not racist, but..."

Sam Parr

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's exactly what it is. So, anyway, I thought that he was an independent thinker. I also thought that he was incredibly enthusiastic, which I liked. Yeah, very enthusiastic.

Shaan Puri

Dead on the inside. Like, we have said no to a bunch of guests simply because their intelligence is cranked up to level 10, their success is cranked up to level 12, but their charisma and ability to convey any sort of enthusiasm about themselves, about the world, about their story is so low. They make for terrible podcast guests. But for him, it felt like not only did he have the charisma to tell stories about the past, he seemed really pumped about what he was doing, what the future looked like, and why it mattered. I just felt like this guy springs out of bed every day.

Sam Parr

Me too, that's exactly how I felt. I felt like he was incredibly enthusiastic about life. Yes, that's a great way to explain it. But he, dude, he was so fascinating. He was one of those guys that I like because I don't have a great word to explain it, other than "prolific." But also, almost like this... I don't think this is over-explaining it or over-grandizing it, but almost like a "Renaissance man." He would say comments like, "Yeah, I bought this marina because there are going to be new laws about..." I don't even understand what he was explaining about his marina, but he said something about his marina and seaport access and how it's changing. Then he made another comment.

Shaan Puri

About, he was like, "I was gonna do this." Well, I mean, seasteading is off the table for now. I was just like, I don't even really know what seasteading is exactly. And you just said it like, "Well, we all know seasteading now is not the time." I was like, what are you talking about? What the hell is seasteading?

Sam Parr

yeah he also he also and and like he'll make another comment

Shaan Puri

he was like yeah at this house we marketed we

Sam Parr

Had a workshop one weekend where I was building a jet engine for the water. We actually discovered that we should make biodegradable food, or what did he say? We should make oil-based foods. It's kind of like building a Diet Coke for every food. I was just like, we could take this over lots of different paths. But it's just so interesting to me that you have that ability.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it was like a bunch of candy being waved at us. He's just like, "You know, I have one of the largest samurai sword collections in the world." That just got me thinking. It's like, wait, what? He didn't say that, by the way, but there's at least a 50% chance he has one of the top 10 samurai sword collections in the world. 100% the guy.

Sam Parr

owns swords like yeah he definitely owns swords

Shaan Puri

alright so where do you wanna go next

Sam Parr

you can drive alright so check this out

Shaan Puri

I forwarded you an email. Did you see the email I sent about Sara's list? Or maybe she sent this to you too?

Sam Parr

what was it

Shaan Puri

So, a woman named Kristen sends an email. I'm just going to read it to you. We'll show it on the screen, you know, for those on YouTube because it's kind of amazing looking.

Sam Parr

oh my gosh

Shaan Puri

You open up the email and it says, "I am holding SarahsList.com hostage." And she goes, "You don't know me, but I obviously know you. I purchased SarahsList.com and I've turned it into a bomb-ass website. I am willing to sell it to you for $20,000. This is a steal, as I purchased it for $30,000. I'm essentially giving you $10,000. You're welcome if you'd ever like to see SarahsList.com again." And then she turned this font small or for the first time, you know, replied to this message, "I'm looking forward to hearing from you, Kristen." And I was just like, "This is amazing! Who are you?"

Sam Parr

who who is she

Shaan Puri

so so she's this is this is woman kristen kent

Sam Parr

so she sends me

Shaan Puri

Her story after that goes, "I've been in tech for 12 years. You know, regrettably, I chose companies off Kristen's list, which was not as lucrative as if I had chosen companies off Sarah's list." For those who don't know, Sarah's list is a concept that we should explain. We did a full episode about it. Basically, Sam's wife, Sarah, is a self-made millionaire and did not do any of the heroic entrepreneurial things you hear about in the media. She just did one really good thing: she picked companies whose equity was going to, like, whose valuation was going to go up 4 or 5 times in four years. So, she worked at Facebook—not early at Facebook, not like she was employee number 4 at Facebook—but she was among the 1,000 employees who joined as a middle manager type. I say this not as disparagement because of how amazing it is. So, she didn't do the things that you think you have to do to become a self-made millionaire. She joined Airbnb again as employee, I don't know, something like 100. What was it? Maybe like 300 or 400.

Sam Parr

no a 1000

Shaan Puri

Oh, $1,000. Okay, great. And Airbnb goes public at evaluations of 4 or 5 times. So, you know, if you're receiving a stock grant for, let's call it $60,000 a year, you know, on top of your base compensation. I'm just going to use fake numbers. Base compensation, let's say, is $150,000. Then they give you $50,000 of stock a year for over 4 years. That's $200,000 of stock. But now the stock price is 4 or 5 times higher. You made $1,000,000 during that time. And you were safe. You didn't have to work 90-hour weeks. You got to work at a fun, growing company that was going to win this category. You didn't have to have this amazing, lightning-in-a-bottle genius idea in order to do it. So, she had done that a few times. We said, "Oh, this was actually intentional." You and Sarah sat down, you guys were...

Sam Parr

Pretty thoughtful. We made lists, like what's a 500-person company that has good maternity leave? You know, these are all the telltale signs that it's an interesting startup. You're in the top quartile of pay just for base salary. You have interesting benefits, good healthcare, and all this stuff that a lot of early startups don't have, but big companies do. Yet, they can still 5 or 10x. So yeah, we made that list.

Shaan Puri

So, we made the list, and we put 12 companies on that list. This was like a year, year and a half ago now. Twelve companies on that list, and I think we did the recap. I don't remember the exact numbers, but I think in the year, year and a half since then, the average company value is up like 2.5x or something crazy like that. And 11 out of the 12 companies raised a significant up round since then. So, we had a very high hit rate. If you got in, whatever your stock value would have been at that time, I think on average it's something like 2.5x. I could be wrong; I don't remember the math, but...

Sam Parr

And so, this lady sits aside. By the way, I'm looking at it and thinking this is amazing. Her email is... she DM'd me on Twitter. Whenever people DM me on Twitter, I either ignore them or just click the heart emoji to say thank you. I recognize you, but I don't want to talk. That's what I did with her. I just replied and said, "I'm an idiot. You're actually different. This is a really good one."

Shaan Puri

So, okay, here’s what I want to do. You go to the website, it’s just **sarahalos.com**. It says, “12 stars that can make you a millionaire.” It has a picture of Richie Rich, which is hilarious. Then it goes into “Who is Sarah? Who are we? And why do we have any business sharing a list like this?” It tells the story about Sarah and about us. The selection criteria we use is that it’s a company that’s already valued over **$250,000,000**. This means it has a low risk profile, meaning it’s likely not going to go to zero. It offers a stable work environment, a high salary, and great benefits, but it can still make you a millionaire because the equity has the potential to **5 to 10x**. Then it has our list, which includes companies like **Flexport**, **Uniswap**, **Anduril**, **Replit**, **Airtable**, and **Figma**. For example, Figma got acquired for whatever, **$20,000,000,000** or something like that, you know, after we mentioned it on this list. That’s like a **10x** from where we mentioned it. So, anyway, then it says, “Find a friend a job.” You go to the job board, and it says, “These are placeholder jobs. You guys should consider syncing this up to one of these websites.” But those cost money, which is why in the last job post it says, “I’m not doing it.”

Sam Parr

And the tagline at the bottom says, "Sarah's List: Get Rich in 5 to 10 Years, Over 50% Guaranteed."

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. So, hilarious. Then I started thinking, "Okay, let's brainstorm this live here on the podcast. Should we do this deal?" And no... okay, so your opinion is no. Give me why.

Sam Parr

No, here's why. It's just a website that would take me 5 minutes... or no, it would take me 3 hours to copy and a domain name. So for that reason, it's not that valuable. But what's more valuable is this lady, Kristen, who's making it. Her emails are beautiful, her copy's beautiful. I just looked at her Twitter, and this woman, Kristen, is the exact type of person that I like to be around. She also works at Expa, which is basically a company founded by the founder of Uber, Garrett... I think it's Garrett Camp? Yeah. They basically are a startup studio that launches companies. I don't actually know any of the companies that they've launched, but I imagine a lot of them are really successful. But she works there, which is also a really good indicator that she's onto something. Do I think that we should buy this? Absolutely not. Do I think that I want this woman in my life and would love to work with her in some capacity? 100%.

Shaan Puri

Agreed, the real value here is not the domain, it's not the website, it's **Kristin Kent**. Okay, so here's my proposal to Kristin Kent. Here's my counteroffer, my public podcast counteroffer to you, Kristin: I'll give you **$20,000**. In fact, I'll give you the **$30,000** that you paid for this domain, if you really paid that much for it. I mean, that's kind of crazy. But it comes with this catch: we're going to work together on this project. You're going to do the work on the company side, and I'm going to do the work on the promotional side, the distribution side. Here's what we're going to do with **Sara's List**: we're going to turn Sara's List into a half a million dollar a year passive income stream. Passive-ish, I should say. Passive for me, that's a little active for you.

Sam Parr

by the way by the

Shaan Puri

way sean when you say we

Sam Parr

We gotta... let's remember this is Sara's list, of which I am 50% of Sara's list. So, whatever.

Shaan Puri

you say is is on the side right now sam said no

Sam Parr

no no no no

Shaan Puri

No, no, no, no, no. I said no a moment ago, and he's not a part of the counter offer. Sarah herself will get a 1% royalty as we use her name. Not a chance.

Sam Parr

Wait, here's what we gotta do. What percentage of the dividends would you give, or would you want Kristen to have?

Shaan Puri

kristen deserves 50% she deserves 50%

Sam Parr

I agree the the other 50% split you and I split and we won't

Shaan Puri

90/10, you got it, sir. So, we have to share the royalty with Sarah. Here's what we're going to do. Actually, I don't know if I even want to say this. This deal, now that we're having this intense negotiation, I want to give out my great idea. Okay, I'll give up my great idea. So, here's the great idea: here's how we're going to make this work. Normally, a job is monetized as a job board, right? It would be a list of companies that we are curating, saying these companies are great. Let's say we might take it to 24 or 25 companies rather than the 12 we have today. On a job board, you typically pay like $500 per job posting. So, we would need to reach out to those companies to get them to post. The other thing is, hey, this is maybe premium. It's a curated job board. Maybe we could charge more—maybe $1,000 or even $2,000 to post your jobs here. If we can get people to do that, let's say $2,000 a month for 24 companies. If half of them actually do it, that's like $24,000 a month—not bad. But I think we're going to be in this kind of constant sales outreach.

Shaan Puri

So, let me put out a different idea. Here's a different idea: we're going to take these companies and host a demo day once a quarter. What's going to happen at the demo day? We're going to feature one of these companies each week. We're going to create an email list, spin off our current email list, and say we're going to feature one of these companies. We'll do a deep dive into why this company is a good place to work for. Interested people, you know, high-quality people in tech, might need that.

Sam Parr

To be an upsell, that needs to be an upsell. It's where it's like for $25,000, you get a deep dive.

Shaan Puri

As a minority owner, I'm not sure you have a say here. I can barely hear your voice; it was so faint, like your equity ownership in this. So, here's what we're...

Sam Parr

if we're in the same room do you think I would have hit you already

Shaan Puri

or or or or

Sam Parr

will that be coming in the next will that be coming in the next 10 minutes or would it have already have happened

Shaan Puri

So, you know the way you promoted HustleCon? You used to write these kinds of blog posts once a week. I think you would feature the speaker of HustleCon and tell their story in this awesome infographic. Then you would say, "Do you like stories like this? You should come to HustleCon! We're going to have 25 badass entrepreneurs, including this person speaking there, and you should attend." You did that for like 25 weeks and sold out about 500 tickets to this event. What we're going to do is establish a similar once-a-week cadence about these companies. We'll do a little deep dive—that's the email—and it’s going to get people to attend the hiring day. Hiring day is where the founders of those companies will come and give a little 5-minute flash presentation on their company. It's going to be a cure, and applicants can apply to join. You’ve got to be good to join; that's why we need to keep the quality high on both the company side and the applicant side. We're not charging for a job posting; we take the recruiter fee. When a recruiter places a candidate at one of these companies, they take $20,000 or $30,000 right away. So, if we can place like 25 candidates in a year at $20,000 a pop, you're talking about half a million dollars in revenue. Basically, all we have to do is hire a writer. We're going to hire a ghostwriter who's just going to write these company deep dives on the companies that we...

Sam Parr

Have you heard of "The Daily"? It was called "The Daily Muse," but now it's just called "The Muse." TheMuse.com. Have you ever heard of that company?

Shaan Puri

The Muse.com? No, I don't think so. Was that... oh, it was like a women's hiring thing? Was that the Muse you thought?

Sam Parr

It’s called TheMuse.com. It’s been around now for 10 years. The woman who started it, I’ve been actually DMing, but we wanted her to come on here.

Shaan Puri

yeah she went to duke too

Sam Parr

Oh dude, Catherine, I think her name is. Yeah, and so she went to Y Combinator (YC). I actually originally thought this was a great idea, but they screwed it up by raising a lot of money. I think they've raised $20 million, $30 million, $40 million, $50 million... I don't know the exact number. But basically, what they would do is conduct these deep dives on companies and charge the company a fairly big fee to do so. They somehow got tons of traffic. Now, they're still getting 8 million people a month coming to their website, or 6 million, something like that. They had tons of people coming to their website from search, which is incredibly valuable. I thought they were just chugging along but not doing that great because I hadn't heard about them. I have a feeling they actually might be killing it because they've raised a lot of money and they are starting to buy other companies. They do these deep dives on companies, and another guy who does this is Patty McCormick. I have no idea what he charges for this anymore, but when the economy was booming, I think he was charging $25,000 to $50,000 or more per deep dive.

Shaan Puri

I think it was how much

Sam Parr

do you think

Shaan Puri

It was a little more. I remember he was making **$100,000** a month, if I recall correctly, off his deep dive. I think he might have been doing **1 or 2** a month. Wow!

Sam Parr

that that's pretty amazing and so I think you could do something like

Shaan Puri

That here with the Milk Road. By the way, we do a deep dive thing and it's like... I don't know, I forgot what it would cost. I think it's something between $25,000 and $40,000, depending on the total promotion.

Sam Parr

and who do you hire to do that

Shaan Puri

I wrote the first few. One of our writers wrote it, and I kind of changed it big time. But now we are hiring a writer just to do the deep dives.

Sam Parr

how much would you pay a writer to do that

Shaan Puri

a couple grand a month like 2 grand a month no

Sam Parr

wait a month really

Shaan Puri

Just for a deep dive, like I'll pay you $2,000 for just one article. This is where the value is not in the writing; the value is in that we have a huge list. If we promote something to this huge list, you're going to get a bunch of traction, or you're going to get usage, or you're going to get candidates, or whatever it is. So, the writer is not bringing the value. The writer just needs to deliver value, but the list size is why you can charge that much.

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's pretty fascinating. I think this is a really interesting business. I've always... I mean, I'm the one who even turned you on to job boards, aren't I? So, like, you know.

Shaan Puri

you're welcome and

Sam Parr

yeah I don't even

Shaan Puri

I wouldn't have even met Sarah. Yeah, so actually, I should have been 100%.

Sam Parr

I have introduced you to Liz and Sarah. Before me, you weren't even into communications, so you're welcome. I think kudos to Kristen; I think she's onto something. Well, I think we're onto something, but she also seems pretty special.

Shaan Puri

Like I said, if you want a side hustle that'll make, I don't know, $250,000 a year for you, it's there for the taking.

Sam Parr

I think that's understandable

Shaan Puri

gotta do is all the work that's

Sam Parr

Awesome! Yeah, but we'll promote it here. This is an interesting thing. I don't think this is an event venture-sized business, which is, I guess, why Expa isn't going after it. But it maybe could be.

Shaan Puri

it it may be business back in the day that went through yc called developer auction do you remember this

Sam Parr

no but that sounds a little weird that's not a great name

Shaan Puri

in a great way so basically what they did was they were like

Sam Parr

no dude that's not in a good auctioning humans doesn't exactly have the best branding

Shaan Puri

that's why it was great guy is a head turner and and you know when you're a small company you need to be a head turner and so so these guys basically they they realized they were like wait the power dynamic is off why is it all about applying to jobs when actually like the developer is like the most valuable like developer was like gold in silicon valley and so they said why don't we just curate like the top developers so like who are these quote 10 x engineers and then let's just have them almost like a beauty pageant they walk down the stage and then and the companies are like raising their paddle I guess that's not what happened in a beauty pageant but like an auction where the the companies were raising the paddle be like I'll give him 300,000 I'll give him 400,000 I'll do his laundry and then someone's like you know all suckers poop and it's like you know that basically like the companies were like just falling over themselves trying to get this talent and so they did 1 and it was amazing it was like you know 50 engineers or whatever and all the engineers got this huge pay jump from these top companies and they're like oh shit that's awesome and then it it built this little flywheel where they're like the next batch of really great developers are like yeah yeah do you're gonna do all the work for me to like get me my next job offers awesome all I gotta do is just go and explain how like yeah I helped scale netflix's like video infrastructure so that you know we got this latency and this blah blah blah so they would just go explain what they did and then the companies would bid and it was kind of a great idea I thought they eventually but the problem is it wasn't gonna scale up it was like too almost boutique and so in order to scale up they changed the model and then ended up pivoting into something else altogether but like if you just kept it boutique which again you you can't do this if you raise a bunch of venture money because then your expectation is to go huge but if you're like if you like making you know a $1,000,000 a year of like passive income you could do that with a boutique model like this just by basically creating a demo day but instead of startups pitching investors you have companies pitching to to top talent and so you could just if you're good at curating right if you're a good curator right we we did a good job curating on the company side now you just gotta do a good job curating on the talent side you could actually create a pretty solid side hustle here

Sam Parr

Do you enjoy working with your wife? No, I... so there.

Shaan Puri

Are enjoyable things, but there are also some very unenjoyable things. I tell her this about everything. If we have to assemble some IKEA furniture, I'm like, "I hate doing projects with you." We're both too stubborn; we both want our way. I'm like, "Why don't you just listen?" And she's like, "Why don't you just listen?" I'm like, "Because I don't want to listen." And she's like, "Well, neither do you."

Sam Parr

I've been coming out... I'm going to do the ideation boot camp again. I was trying to convince Sarah to quit her job and do this, but it isn't happening. We did a few test trials and... yo.

Shaan Puri

we cooked dinner together and

Sam Parr

Yeah, it didn't work out. Talking to her like we're coworkers just doesn't work.

Shaan Puri

Yes, that's exactly the problem. I talk to her like I would talk to somebody who's, you know, on my team at my startup. And she's just like, "Why are you speaking to me like this?" I'm like, "Well, but I'm not in husband mode right now."

Sam Parr

I'm in like in start mode

Shaan Puri

in a start mode there's modes yeah it's just like

Sam Parr

I would be like, "Look, you're not stupid, but this is stupid." And she'd be like, "Why are you talking to me like this?" I'm like, "What do you mean? I'm trying to encourage you! Don't you want to climb up this organization's ladder? Don't you want to be great and achieve greatness?" She's like, she just wants to punch me in the stomach.

Shaan Puri

and knock the wind out of me I'm like

Sam Parr

Yeah, I don't know if this is going to work. I wanted this to work, but I don't think that's going to happen. I don't know how the couples do it, but it wasn't working for us.

Shaan Puri

There are many great examples, like the founders of Eventbrite. That's a husband and wife couple. The founders of Bebo back in the day, Zosia and Michael Burst, are also a husband and wife couple. They work together just great. But I think it needs that complementary personalities where one... and also, like, I don't have the best bedside manner. You know, shocker! I'm pretty direct and pretty blunt about stuff. I don't have that thing that some people have going for them. I think you have this quality where you can just be hella blunt, and it's like, "It's just Sam being Sam." You know, he's got to play by his own rules because that's just the way he is. I have too much finesse in my game. If you have no finesse, people are like, "He's got no finesse. It's fine. He's just being blunt; don't take it seriously." But if you have any finesse, then it's like, "Oh, he could have said that differently, but he chose to say it the wrong way." You don't get that pass to just say things the wrong way.

Sam Parr

Way earlier in the episode, we said you would describe Palmer Luckey in one word. I think we both said different things. If I had to describe this last 60-minute episode in one word, I would say **exhausting**. This was an exhausting episode.

Shaan Puri

I I feel like

Sam Parr

I just went on like a journey with you, and I need to go rest my eyes. Is that how you feel? I know.

Shaan Puri

this one I'm just getting stronger by the minute

Sam Parr

dude that

Shaan Puri

that I believe that's called antifragile

Sam Parr

you and I are not the same I'm not

Shaan Puri

the same

Sam Parr

yeah you and I are absolutely not the same where do we go from here do do we end it here or do we keep going

Shaan Puri

I wanna do 2 little things 1

Sam Parr

alright

Shaan Puri

I just wanna have a moment of silence for the mailchimp ceo

Sam Parr

what happened he got wait the mailchimp ceo or the founder ben

Shaan Puri

ben who was the ceo I think right

Sam Parr

he was I think he quit when they sold it so I I don't know exactly

Shaan Puri

ben chestnut

Sam Parr

ben chestnut who I love you

Shaan Puri

So, okay, Mailchimp was this like darling. They were bootstrapped; I think they were bootstrapped forever. Then they sold to Intuit for many billions of dollars. They did it for like 20 years and they did it out of Atlanta. So they were like this indie success story, right? There are like hundreds of indie hackers right now on IndieHackers.com that, you know...

Sam Parr

You said "Atlanta" in a very funny way. It's kind of like how I usually say "Detroit." You just said "Atlanta" with a hard "t" on that. I like that—"Atlanta."

Shaan Puri

okay well

Sam Parr

you know it's like deep detroit detroit atlanta

Shaan Puri

But go ahead. So this guy, he had to step down. So he goes, "Did you see what he did or what happened?" He sent an email or something like that. Where is it? Let me pull it up.

Sam Parr

I see it. Yeah, he basically just said—Chestnut said he identified a dangerous trend in his workforce: new hires introducing themselves using their preferred pronouns. This is completely unnecessary for a woman who is clearly a woman to tell us her pronouns as "she/her," and a man who is clearly a man to tell us that his pronouns are "he/him." He wrote this in an email to a small group of employees. Instead, Chestnut said he understood the practice of promoting kindness but added that in the long run, this approach does more harm than good. It forces people to behave in certain ways that are the opposite of inclusion. Okay, sounds not horrible, but that's a dangerous, dangerous path to go down.

Shaan Puri

By the way, my recommendation to all of us is to just not comment on this. I think we should just read what happened and then have a moment of silence for this guy for getting fired—basically fired. Oh, he stepped down coincidentally right after this. But, you know, whether you agree with him or disagree with him, I kind of feel like having to step down is a pretty severe penalty for having a point of view on this stuff. But maybe that's a lot more severe than I think. I don't know.

Sam Parr

Well, what's great, I think, is that when you look at these things, words aren't just words. You have to look at intentions, right? His intention—if we don't even have to read it—is not to say that his intentions are good. I think his intentions are rooted in wanting to make everyone feel included and wanting to be productive. I'm just reading this email a little bit live, and it doesn't seem like a negative email.

Shaan Puri

Here's the part where I think it got dicey for him. So, he goes in the email, "First, there is a tiny number of peeps at Mailchimp." Strange to use "peeps." Maybe that's what they call themselves.

Sam Parr

is that like a chip word

Shaan Puri

Yeah, there's a very tiny number of people at Mailchimp who consider themselves transgender. They are forcing either with orders or through guilt the approximately 1,300 other people to adopt a new communication paradigm that humanity has never had to use in our 300,000 years of existence and under 150,000 years of spoken language. In order to make things slightly more comfortable for an extremely small group of people, this is completely illogical. He says that if you're forced to do something illogical, eventually you will believe and do anything, even if it's vicious. So, okay, that's like a little... like he says nowadays everything is incredibly politicized. I'm finding that people are no longer motivated by meaningful work; they're motivated to make political statements. They're using company time and company resources to win a game against their opponents in a game that is raging in their minds and on social media. Understanding and respecting that people can have different views is part of being American and part of being mature adults. People of all different political leanings are free to vote the way they want, blah blah blah, but it's not for the workplace. So that's what he said. I'll leave it to anybody to agree or disagree. My personal opinion is I understand what he's trying to say, but I think he said it in a pretty stupid way; it's a little too aggressive.

Sam Parr

And using the word "peeps" when you're talking about these things is also... I agree with the sentiment here, but I think that if it were a hot-button issue, I wouldn't use slang.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, you can't be like to the homies that had to use the product. I guess internally, they must just always use that. Like, you know, Facebook had like what? Like now has like "metamates" or whatever. Like, dude, it's custom to use a pronoun as "unmetamate."

Sam Parr

There are two words that I hate using in a serious argument or discussion. For example, if I'm talking to Sarah, my wife, or someone else about something like, "Look, they said this in their tweets." If it's ever like the word "tweets" in an argument, like, "Did well, I..."

Shaan Puri

tweeted that did you see their tweet did you see their tweets you know what I mean

Sam Parr

Like, I don't... well, he tweeted it. I don't want to use that word or text. That was text. Yeah, like when I'm having a serious conversation, I want to talk about something. And I gotta use, "Well, he tweeted that." You see his tweets?

Shaan Puri

yeah because it's too much like I tweeted at him and it's like yeah it doesn't sound I'm

Sam Parr

Not a fan. Stronger? Yeah, I mean, I'm going to add people to that list. So, yeah, rip Ben. I like Ben. I don't know him; I'm acting like I do. I've cold emailed him a ton of times, and he's never replied to me. But we kind of know each other. So...

Shaan Puri

just sounds like so karma

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

I guess he's just one of those people who doesn't reply to my emails. You can tell him what happens to those people.

Sam Parr

Yeah, he's... him and $6,000,000,000 can go off and be unhappy by themselves. But you know, whatever. I like Ben Chestnut. I love Mailchimp. I think it's a great company.

Shaan Puri

yeah me too I think mailchimp is a is a cool really cool success story

Hubspot

this data is wrong every freaking time

Hubspot

Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated.

Hubspot

Woah! I can see the client's whole history: calls, support tickets, emails. And here's a task from three days ago that I totally missed.

Shaan Puri

hubspot grow better

Sam Parr

do you do you wanna talk about nikkita

Shaan Puri

yeah we kinda did but it seemed like you wanted

Sam Parr

To do that before I go over it, I think so. Okay, at the end of a podcast a few days ago, the Sean Story 1, we talked about this guy, Nikita Bier, who you and I are both friends with. We discussed it at the end of like an hour session, and I realized this is actually really amazing and deserves significantly more time. So, I'll kind of give a background. Nikita Bier, he's our good friend. We're in a group text message with him; that's actually how I got to know him. Everything I'm going to explain is mostly public information, so this is through articles and his Twitter feed. I'm not going to say anything that is confidential. Basically, he started an app called TBH. He went to school in Berkeley, California, and started this app, which was basically some type of viral high school app where you could answer questions about your peers. It wasn't incredibly significant as an app, but it went viral and got millions of users very quickly after him spending over two years trying to create viral apps. We kind of felt like he honed in on what works and, more importantly, what doesn't work. Facebook eventually bought the app for tens of millions of dollars. Originally, it was said to be around $100 million, but I think in a recent article they mentioned it was actually around $40 million, which is still a great outcome. That was about five years ago. Nikita said something in the group message, which he said, "I think it'd be an interesting idea to ask myself or to figure out how..."

Shaan Puri

Can I do... you're making it too soft. I remember exactly how he said it. It's like, "Oh, so what are you doing? What are you up to nowadays?" "Oh, Sam, you sold the hustle. What are you doing?" "Sean, you sold. What are you gonna do?" "Nikita, you're sitting at Facebook. What are you doing?" And he basically just said it straight up. He goes, "I'm just thinking about how I can make $10,000,000 in 3 months." And we're like, "What?" And he's like, "Yeah, I want to make an app that generates like $10,000,000 in 90 days."

Sam Parr

And we talked about that. Like, that's just crazy. That's outlandish. We brought it up on this podcast, but it was really interesting. We just thought of it as an interesting thought exercise. Like, oh, that's actually really...

Shaan Puri

Back from that dream. Okay, if that's... is that possible? Yeah, it is possible. I guess it is possible. So then, alright, I'm a smart guy. Let me find out a way to do it. It's obviously very challenging.

Sam Parr

And so I guess he must have had... I don't actually know if this is true or not, but I imagine when you sell a company to Facebook, you have some type of non-compete. Well, typically non-competes are anywhere from 2 to 5 years. The other day, a few months ago, it was the end of the 5 years(?) since selling TBH, and so I imagine that was the point where he was like, "Great, I can do that." And so he launches this app about 3 months ago where basically you...

Shaan Puri

It's the same app as TBH. So, what was TBH? TBH was an anonymous polling app or compliments app. I don't know if you remember, but in high school, they would always pass this thing around at the end of the year—the superlatives test. It would be like, "Who is most likely to become famous in Hollywood?" or "This person in our school is most likely to end up with 10 kids," or whatever, right? You just come up with these future-looking things. "Who's got the best smile?" This person wins best smile. So, TBH was that because it was playing on this thing where people are very interested in themselves and in the people around them. You're like, "Alright, if I go through and answer this quiz..." It sounds very simple, but under the hood, it's got to be pretty smart, right? It's got to surface in your contacts and show the right 4 or 5 names that you actually know. So, you could pick your friends, and then it would send them a text message saying, "Hey Sam, somebody said that you have the best smile in your school. Download the app to find out who said it." You're like, "100% I'm going to go find out who said I have the best smile," or "Who said I'm most likely to," or "Who said they have the biggest crush on me?" That taps into something pretty deep in a teenager. So, that's what TBH was. It got acquired, and by the way, that same idea had been done many, many times. Our buddy Sully, who was the first episode of the podcast, had built that same superlatives idea as a Facebook app when the Facebook app platform launched back in like 2007 or something.

Sam Parr

like that it it also went viral

Shaan Puri

It also went crazy viral. This is just an idea that goes viral, and you could switch. He did it on the Facebook app platform; Nikita did it on the mobile platform where you would send SMS invites based off of this. So, it's the same. That was what he did, then it got acquired, and it pretty much immediately got shut down. There wasn't really much retention in it. So, it was like, "Oh, that's a cool idea. It gets people engaged; it goes viral for a short period of time, but there's no engagement." Oh, I'm sorry, there's no long-term retention, it seems like.

Sam Parr

It gave him this persona of "I am a wunderkind. I know how to make things go viral." This is partially true, and Nikkita kind of has this aura about him - who knows if it's on purpose or not - where he: - Is mysterious - Somewhat silent - Only makes sarcastic jokes - Everything comes easy to him That's like his cool kid demeanor.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he definitely tries to be a cool kid. Alright, so then it's an app. You open it up, and it says, "Who do you have a crush on? Who's got the best smile? Who's most likely to be whatever? Who would you trust to bail you out of jail?" You answer, and they're all supposed to be, you know, sort of like more positive questions. They're not mean; it's not supposed to be bullying. And again, it starts to go viral. So we sat there in this group chat as it was happening. So describe kind of how it played out from your perspective.

Sam Parr

He says things like, "Alright, now we're adding 1,000 people an hour," and I kind of brush that off because I'm thinking maybe these are just bots... like this isn't actually serious.

Shaan Puri

Well, there's one little difference. He launches it and we're like, "Cool man, how do we download the app?" He's like, "It's geofenced to these three high schools in Georgia." And we're like, "What?" Then he would post a graph saying it's going viral, but it's got like 200 people. We're like, "Only 200?" He's like, "There's only like 2,000 people in the school. This is gonna take over."

Sam Parr

All people like right away, but he uses academic language. Like, it has a K factor of blank, but we're seeing that user retention stagnates at this thing. The turn happens at 3%. Like, it was the...

Shaan Puri

The density of competition is... blah blah blah. We're like, "Whoa, okay, that's cool." Then he goes, "Then I'm supposed to chart," and we're like, "Oh sick! How come I don't see it when I go to my app store chart, like, you know, social free apps?" He's like, "We put it in the games category under puzzles." He says, "That way we're going to stay away from competition until we flip the switch." We're like, "Whoa, like damn! This guy is like... if you want *Game of Thrones* and they're talking about, you know, how to invade King's Landing. It's like these guys standing at this giant table, moving these chess pieces around, talking about conquering." That's him, but the chess pieces are like high schools, and he's moving the ball.

Sam Parr

It was like the James Bond villain of high school, you know? Quizzes, if that's such a bad idea.

Shaan Puri

There's one key twist to the whole thing. It's, to be honest (TBH), again, but he's like, "This time we're not trying to be the next Snapchat. We don't care about the retention. We're just going to put an in-app purchase that says, 'Pay to see who voted for you.'" He's like, "They're gonna pay." And we're like, "Well, would they pay?" He's like, "They're gonna pay." The thing is, it's a freaking $6.99 weekly subscription. So this is basically $28 a month. This is double the price of Netflix to see who voted for you. And he's like, "Yep." So if we're converting, you know, whatever, 4% of people and we take over the state of Georgia—Georgia has this many high schools, and this high school has this many students—yeah, $1,800,000 a month. Okay, good. Yeah, let's go. That's basically like my reenactment of how they're thinking about this.

Sam Parr

And at this, to be honest, he had raised a little bit of money. He had raised money from Founders Fund and Greylock. When you do that, it says, "You know, I've got to build the next Snapchat this way with this new company." He just basically says, "Dude, I'm self-funded. I've got four engineers living in my LA house right now. We're just trying to make it big, make it fast." And what do they say on South Park? "Scale up, no startup, get big, cash out, bro." You know, like that's exactly what he's trying to do. He's trying to just get in, get the bag, and get out.

Shaan Puri

maybe pretend

Sam Parr

Here's an idea for you... Not, and so anyway, about 10 days after it launches (I'm just making these numbers up, but it's around a week, maybe 2 weeks), he starts saying: > "Oh man, people are starting to spread these rumors that this app is being used for human trafficking." And we'd laugh that off, and he goes, "So I changed it to..."

Shaan Puri

No, he was like, "Yeah, it's annoying as hell. We're getting a bunch of deletions." Okay, so it's gonna die. And we were like, "What?" The thing is, you called your shot. You're like, "I'm gonna build an app that goes viral. It's gonna make $10,000,000 in like 90 days." That's a ludicrous thing to say. You spend like two years plotting. He went through a bunch of different ideas to think about what it could be. He decides, "You know what? It's TBH with a paywall." He launches it, spends, you know, has these seven engineers living in his living room. The place smells like ramen and Old Spice. He's like, "Alright, we build the app." After a few months, we launch this thing in these pockets of Georgia. It goes viral. But then this hoax starts saying, "This is for... I don't even know what... the sex trafficking, human sex trafficking..."

Sam Parr

sex even understand but I didn't even understand but he

Shaan Puri

You keep saying those words. YouTube's going to like deprioritize this algorithm. We're out of the algorithm now because I said that out loud.

Sam Parr

And he says that he's like, "Well, it's actually just a couple of reviews, but I have a feeling that these couple of reviews are gonna spread." Someone already made a video on TikTok. This is just how things work. So I'm like, "It's whatever." I don't understand that entirely; that sounds like you're just being neurotic, but sounds good. So he changes the name to **Crush**, right?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so the app starts getting deleted or it gets taken down in the app store. Apple takes it down or something like that. He's like, "Oh, we're going to petition, blah blah blah. We're going to re-upload as Crush." And he sends us, "Hey guys, like new brand," and it looks...

Sam Parr

Exactly! Like, yeah, exactly! Like, crush the soda. Like, the grape-flavored soda.

Shaan Puri

he sends it in the text and I I got so thirsty like you know like the pavlovian dog response I saw that and I was like I need orange soda on my tongue right now and I haven't had orange soda in like a decade and when I saw that thing I was like I need that relaunches again in like you know alabama this time he's like okay we're going south and they attack alabama with their 4 high school launch strategy they do they have this like thing set to a tee and by the way like he had wrote a memo inside facebook once about how tbh was launching high schools effectively he's like we created basically his theory is basically for a social app the most valuable thing you can have is a reliable way to test your app so like can you get this into a a small network like like a high school where most people know each other or know of each other of a 1000 people quickly because if you could do that you could test it in 1 high school see what the data says and then you could tweak the app launch it in another high school do it again it's like that reliable like petri dish to test in is the most valuable thing so they had come up with a strategy which was this memo got leaked when he was at facebook which was like they would create instagram accounts like you know crush you know you know archipelago high you know and it's like they they they take the high school name and they take the the brand name of the thing and they would make the account private and they would go follow every kid who had like you know class of whatever 2022 in that high school they would follow all of them so then the kid would see who followed me it has my high school name in it they click it it's private to to find to see the profile you gotta follow back so they would they would request to follow so a whole bunch of people request to follow he's like but we would not accept anyone and it's like this is like the you know the dentist system on all of a study he's like you know first we demonstrate value then we take it away and he's like then at 4 pm on the day before launch which the day of the launch when everybody gets out of school you know we have a guy in a truck watching people leave the school as soon as they do we hit accept request we accept everybody's request everybody gets a notification at the same time and then they go to it the bio basically says download the app see who likes you you download the app and then he's like we would instantly go viral in a high school so he had this like launch strategy which was I thought pretty pretty great pretty tactical so he's doing that again now with crush crush gonna go it's gonna launch like that and it starts to work and we're like wow dude you did it again like the first one wasn't a fluke you did it again all of a sudden like it totally attracted a different demographic because of this like stupid orange soda logo and the name crush and so he's like oh god you know cut alright let's move the scene around change the name again and he comes back for act 3 and this time it's called gas

Sam Parr

And by the way, this whole thing... He'd been working on this for many months, maybe more than a year. I don't know. But this whole thing that we're describing takes place over 2 to 3 weeks. It gets to the point where he starts making up phrases like, "We are acquiring new users at this rate per hour." You know, a lot of times we talk about saying like ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue). What a lot of companies will do is take their monthly run rate and multiply that by 12 to say, "This is what they're doing." He was basically doing that on a per-hour basis. So he's like, "Oh, we're acquiring 1,000 users per hour, which means our rate of new users is like 365,000,000," whatever.

Shaan Puri

And yeah, he's like, "If you look dawn day over day, it's like, dude, you're just measuring the... of like the sunrise day over day. What's your numbers? That's insane!"

Sam Parr

And so, gas starts taking off, similar to the original one, but this time even more. In a matter of about 7 days, I believe he starts tweeting out the results and letting us know. Basically, within around 7 days—give or take 5 days—I don't know exactly, it was doing 1,000,000 daily users. It was adding 30,000 new users an hour. Users were answering 3,200,000 polls per hour. In around 10 days, I believe he hit $1,000,000 in sales. Also, around 10 days in, it was number 1 in the App Store. He had been telling us it was going to be number 1 in the next handful of days, and he totally called it. We're talking number 1, like above TikTok, above Instagram, above Facebook.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, totally, this is all true. He tweets out, "Ladies and gentlemen, after a 5-year hiatus, I'm no longer a one-hit wonder. Introducing Gas, the number one app in the App Store." And this is...

Sam Parr

When it turns to a point where it's incredibly hard for us to compliment him and to root for him, it's clear that this guy has a chip on his shoulder. Clearly, for the last five years, he was mad that he sold too soon or didn't become huge, or didn't become wealthier, or didn't achieve whatever his target was. It felt like he fell short. Now, he is proving that he is the man. Here's what starts happening: he gets hilariously cocky about it, which I love.

Shaan Puri

I love

Sam Parr

I love it! It makes me like him even more. Here's an example: a really popular VC tweets out. His name's Josh Ellman. He says, "Momentum growth is a powerful feeling, and it could also go away really quickly." I have been surprised—surprised by how many things with seemingly unstoppable momentum have slow crawled this past year. Zooming out, growth without deep user adoption and habits doesn't count. Nikita replies, "Just @ me." So basically, he just starts going around anyone online on Twitter who's a big shot and starts talking about high growth stuff. Nikita just pops in and says, "What are you talking about, me?" It's hilarious! It is so funny. Around this time, though, the rumors start happening again about human trafficking. He starts tweeting and sharing the craziest stuff. This gets so big that Ashton Kutcher is retweeting it. Who is Ashton Kutcher? I didn't entirely know this, but his whole philanthropy focus is on human trafficking. So these rumors of human trafficking start happening again, and Ashton Kutcher retweets Nikita and says something like that.

Shaan Puri

Nikkita sends us a screenshot. It's Ashton Kutcher DMing him, and he's just screenshotting these big-shot people that are DMing him. They're using a wink face instead of even saying hi. It's like, is this how this guy slides into DMs? That's interesting that that wasn't Ashton Kutcher, but like then...

Sam Parr

he just came retweeted it

Shaan Puri

I'd love to meet you. I'd love to help you know this thing is a hoax because basically what Nikita is saying is, "This thing is taking off like you wouldn't believe. It's going viral. The K factor is 2." When the K factor is 2, what that means is for every person who joins virally, they invite 2 more. So, you know, you thought COVID spread fast? Watch how fast the Gas app is going to spread. It's got an incredibly high viral coefficient. That just basically means, for free, it's going to take over whatever demographic it is until that coefficient starts to go down, either because it's saturated or it hits a new market where it's less viral. So, it's going viral. Ask Kuchar, "I'll help you try to fight these hoax rumors." Because on TikTok and Snapchat, you just see story after story of somebody saying, "Guys, delete this Gas app. It's sus as hell. I downloaded it, and a white van started following me around my neighborhood." People are like, "Oh my god, oh my god, share, share! Just keep our school safe!" And it's like, "Girls, do not download the Gas app!" Like, have you ever seen the show *You* on Netflix? Say no more. It's like people are just spreading this thing, and so it's like, "What the hell? Where is this coming from?" He doesn't know, and he's like, "It's gotta be a competitor." We're like, "Okay, what? I mean, you've just launched like 2 weeks ago. How are they doing this coordinated social psyops attack on you and your user base?" And he's like, "We've located the source of the hoax, or it originated in China."

Sam Parr

Well, here's what he says. It's the most official tweet ever. It's so funny. He goes, "After an investigation, our team found several indications that the gas app human trafficking hoax was planted by an entity or person originating in China. Our data shows users connecting from China when the app first began growing, and the first fake reviews were posted that same day." So basically, he's accusing something or someone in China who started this.

Shaan Puri

he's accusing just the country

Sam Parr

Yeah, and so this has just taken off from "I wanna make $10,000." I wanna get in and get out. China is trying to actively bring me down.

Shaan Puri

He just tweeted out, "Dude, I am calling for a total and complete ban of Chinese goods entering the United [States]." No, I'm just joking. But I told him, I was like, "Dude, you need to lean in way more." What he's doing in his PR push is like the hoax where a false narrative is being spread about gas app human trafficking, blah blah blah. I'm like, "Bro, you need to go full Trump. You need to be like, 'The China virus is trying to take down this American success.' Gas app, you know? TikTok is not only stealing your data; they're trying to take us down because we are the number one app for teens. China is doing this. This is anti-China. I was like, you should be leaning in way more to this. I was like, I don't know if it's true or not, but this is your only hope. You should stop saying your app's name with the words, you know, human trafficking, and you should start saying, "Why is China trying to spread fake news about this?" That is my official recommendation to you.

Sam Parr

And it's totally working. So this entire story that we just spent 30 minutes on, we're talking like 20 days. This is the roller coaster that we’ve been in, and he would say the...

Shaan Puri

he's on fox news today did you see that

Sam Parr

That's my... He says these things in this group chat, and when it's on your phone, when it's just on this small thing, you think this is just limited to us six guys in this thing. This is just no big deal. But then you turn on Fox Business News, or Fox News Business, and he's on there. You go to the Wall Street Journal, and he's on there. You go to Business Insider, Bloomberg, all these places, and it's real. I go to TikTok, and I open up, and there's a video about this app. And basically, as much as I don't like saying this because I like Nikita, he is so smug. He has 100% called his shot, and he hit it. He nailed it. This is one of the most epic stories that I've seen behind the scenes in real time in a very long time. It's been quite amazing to watch this entire thing play out in just 20 days.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he's smug as hell, but I find him entertaining for the same reason I find Conor McGregor very entertaining in the UFC. Right? This cocky guy who tries to call his shots and then tries to pull it off. I'm thoroughly entertained, and I'm here for the entertainment. Good for him; he made it happen. This matters to him. He got really pumped about this, and he made it happen. I feel like, you know, Bane when he sees other people. I felt like Nikita for like four years would see other people try to build social apps, and he would just shit on them. Or he would be like, you know, people building apps would say, "If your app doesn't let you flirt with somebody, it's never gonna work." He'd be like, "Unless you built the number one app in the App Store, don't talk to me," type of attitude. I find it pretty awesome that, like Bane when he's like, "You trained in the dark; I was born in the dark," that's him with these teen viral apps. He's like, "Oh, you're trying to make a social app? I was born to make social apps." The fact that he just relaunched the Safe app is hilarious to me in so many ways.

Sam Parr

he probably had just like a countdown timer to like when the noncompete ends

Shaan Puri

And it just didn't get that because I talked to him in between. He was considering all these other ideas. He's considering this one real estate idea, and he's considering this other idea. Then it was just like, you know, it's sort of all like Harry Potter: "The wand chooses the wizard." It's like it's just pulling me back in. Just when I think about it, I gotta go do this app again. Like, are you really going to let me just do this again? And then he did it again.

Sam Parr

Yeah, this is pretty amazing. It also goes to show a few things. It kind of breaks a lot of narratives, which I actually like. You don't really need a mission, you know, all the time. And I think that, like, with us, he's...

Shaan Puri

A little nervous... Noble mission. The mission will be $10,000,000 in 3 months. That's a great mission.

Sam Parr

And I do actually think that maybe there is something where, like, "Oh, it makes teens feel good" or whatever. Maybe that's there, but I think what's really there above all else is "get big fast" because that's exciting. It's just like playing a puzzle. It's just a puzzle, and I think that's kind of the dominating factor behind what's driving him. And I think that's the...

Shaan Puri

Funny thing, he goes on Fox News and he's doing the interview. You know, they have the person talking and then in the background, they're showing screenshots of the app. So he's saying, "Well, the thing we wanted to do was bring positivity to teens. You know, teens feel really bad from whatever, like Instagram." He continues, "We wanted to create an app where there's, you know, it's anonymous, but there's no bullying. There's no sort of negativity." And then the screenshot shows a poll question that says, "Want to steal them from their boyfriend?" It's like, "Steal from their boyfriend?" He's like, "You know, we just want to..." He adds, "I get messages every day from teens saying, 'You know, I was gonna do something bad to myself, but this app came out and now, you know, I'm running around in a field full of flowers.'" It's just hilarious! The whole thing is like a straight Silicon Valley HBO show. It's so funny to me.

Sam Parr

It is so funny and it's so exciting! Another thing is that basically, when you're building these apps, the really good folks are just maniacal about these little small numbers. They are obsessed with tweaking them. Most people are worried about design, branding, or the logo—just these things that don't matter. It's like, "Dude, all I care about is making this K-factor greater than 1." When it's not, when it's 0.99, we're screwed! We have to totally review this. I just thought that it's a really interesting story. This has been like a roller coaster, and one of the coolest things that's happened in a long time. I just love following along with this.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, props to him! Great, great job. Thank you for the entertainment. Alright, do you want to do any more, or should we save it for the next one?

Sam Parr

thought you had one more

Shaan Puri

I do have one more but

Sam Parr

we should save that one it sounds too interesting

Shaan Puri

okay let's save it same for the next one that's it we're out of here