Sam & Shaan Bet $500, Ozy Media Scam, Why Google is Dying, and More | My First Million #223

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I'm gonna do this I'm gonna hire a santa I'm gonna find

Shaan Puri

a foot traffic area and I'm gonna make like $10 in a day

Sam Parr

No way! There's no way you're going to be able to pull this off. I bet you $500.

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Shaan Puri

I think we should be doing something like this. Right now, we just roll into the conversation. Should we have a format where it's like, "This is the My First Million podcast where we do XYZ"? Because if you're a new person coming on, the podcast starts with you being like, "We good? Okay, so I'm gonna tell you a story. I bought a car, and the car has a transmission. You know what a transmission is? So check this out..." and then you go into the story. So, should we be educating people on what this is, or do you think that's trying too hard? Just... forget it?

Sam Parr

No, I think we should... We did the intros at the end for a while, where we recorded them and put them in front. But how do you... I don't even know how to describe this podcast. When I meet someone and they ask me what I do for a living, I say, "Oh, I do this thing. I also host this podcast called *My First Million*," and I'm always embarrassed to say the name. But then, how do you explain what the podcast is?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I would say, for people who are kind of like business nerds or idea junkies, they're always scheming or wondering, "What's the business behind this? How much money does this make? How much money does this person have?" Those types of questions that you're not allowed to say out loud. This is the place where we talk about those things out loud. That's kind of my off-the-top-of-my-head description. So, we brainstorm. If you want to sit here while we brainstorm business ideas and break down the economics behind businesses that you've heard of or never heard of, this is the podcast for you. Great!

Sam Parr

well there's our intro

Shaan Puri

Another way I'd put it is: every other podcast you can listen to, if you go into iTunes, is going to be about the past or about the future. We tell you something about the present right now. So, the past is all interviews about things you've done. The future is, you know, guessing about what the world's going to look like in 20 years. What we do is talk about business opportunities that exist today that you should be looking at—either building, investing in, or just knowing about.

Sam Parr

But it's not just business. For example, I get messages sometimes where we talk about health-related stuff or just things we're doing with our lives. I received messages saying people love it. For example, right now I'm staying at my friend's house in Hawaii, and I posted a video on my Twitter. Did you see that video?

Shaan Puri

looks sick I saw it

Sam Parr

Okay, it looks sick, but there's something interesting about this house and what my friend does that I think is amazing. He only has one really big living room. He's got a huge living room with a very small couch. The rest of the seating consists of pads, like pillows on the floor. It's a floor-sitting scheme or layout, and I love it! Have you ever been to a house where people sit on the floor?

Shaan Puri

So, my sister did this unintentionally. I think I've mentioned her before. I should probably talk about her businesses because they're pretty cool.

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

But she basically does something called in-home daycare or preschool. So she does both. She took over my apartment. My parents had a house, and attached to the house was a two-bedroom condo. I was living in that right when I moved to San Francisco. I lived in that place for about a year, and then I got notice that I was getting evicted by my parents. I was like, "What? What's going on?" It's like, "Oh yeah, your sister needs the space. She's starting a business in here, so you gotta get the heck out." She's going to take over this space. Where we had the living room, she basically ran a preschool out of that space. And so, just by the way...

Sam Parr

you told me the numbers it was a really good business

Shaan Puri

oh it's still a great business so she has 3 of these now they're all different so she's got an outdoor so even better right so the first genius move was instead of going and renting a commercial space she's like oh I'll just use like an in home I'll do in home and okay why is that good well you're already paying the mortgage and what happens is from you know 8 am to 4 pm during the day a part of your home will be used for your preschool your daycare and now if you're a student so you would think okay yeah that seems pretty small like you've got what 10 kids in there no big deal well every kid pays $3,000 so that's $30 a month of income coming in now you have teachers so you've got maybe 3 teachers there it ends up being about 40% I want to say profit I might be wrong off the top of my head but it's about 40% profit there's another hidden benefit which is you can write off pretty much everything about your house and your in home life because your business runs out of your home so you basically pay no taxes or sorry all your life expenses are also business expenses in a way because that couch that you got or that mat that play mat you bought that's all for the school right all the toys you bought that your kids also get to play with they're for the school and she also sent her kids to the school so her own what she would normally be paying for daycare now she was getting you know for free because she had her own school and so and then she started she created an even better one which was an outdoor only program so what's better than using your in home for for your space no space at all use the public parks and this was great because a whole bunch of parents didn't want their kids indoors all day and like sitting you know kind of like sitting inside well you're gonna do that at home anyways why don't you get out there like a good kid and go play go go play with nature and so she created nature kids which is this program in san francisco and it's actually awesome it has like the highest reviews and there's I went to the class and basically all the other parents were there and I was just kinda talking to the parents it's like oh yeah this guy he started kiva this guy is ex paypal this guy is it's like all these like billionaires of san francisco basically sending their kids to this outdoor program

Sam Parr

wait so you have 3 of them now

Shaan Puri

so she has yeah she has 3 total programs

Sam Parr

so this could be like a like a 7 figure a year business

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it is. So, she has teachers who run the day-to-day operations. She's on a walkie-talkie with them throughout the day, and she has Nest cameras in the place so she can keep an eye on things. But she's not day-to-day involved anymore, which is great. At the beginning, it was her and my mom making the food for the kids, like making tacos and stuff. Now, it's all done much better.

Sam Parr

and and and their home their their floor sitters

Shaan Puri

So, okay, yeah, back to the floor sitting thing. Sorry. Because of that, whenever I would go to my sister's place, her living room had no furniture, no TV, nothing like a normal living room would have. She had done like what you did with your home gym; she had just turned the whole floor into play mats. Even better than just the floor sitting, because it's just play mats, all the walls had kind of like kids' games and decals and stuff like that. But then she had these little swings for kids, you know, like a rope swing, like Tarzan, just hanging from the middle of the room. So, there were things that would occupy the kids. But then when I would go hang out there, I'm floor sitting, just stretching while we're hanging out.

Sam Parr

other people that's exactly what I'm doing

Shaan Puri

So, I was getting so limber just hanging out with my sister because... why wouldn't I just be stretching and rolling and just getting [work] done on my body a little bit? And then there's a swing there, so now I'm kinda like practicing rope climbs like a fireman and shit. I was like, "Dude, this is... I don't know what... it's like an ergonomic lifestyle." It's like, you know, there's this whole... my lifestyle just changed into this like mobile Tarzan. You know, one with nature and one with my body. That's exactly what he's saying, couch [coach?].

Sam Parr

Every time I'm here, he has this hammock swing coming down from the ceiling. You have to sit in a particular way where you're stretching. Then, he's got these cushions that are only 8 inches above the ground. Yeah, and you just sit there. It takes a minute to get used to it. It is so much better than sitting on a couch. It's so much better! It's the best. I watched this YouTube video recently, and this guy had this whole theory. It's kind of like a TED Talk. This guy got this video, and it's all about how sitting is crushing us. Basically, his whole thing is that you should stand most of the time, and you should stand in a very particular way where you squeeze your butt. So, it's like your hips are directly underneath you. He's got this whole talk, and he looks at these people who don't sit in normal 90-degree chairs. He shows what their butt looks like, and it's like... whatever. He has all these visuals. Anyway, I've been floor sitting, and it is awesome! I'm 100% going to stick with this, or at least I'm going to try to.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's a total hack. I should do that. Like, I do love me some couch time, but I definitely want to have a room that's just pure mats. Then when I hang out there, work there, just roll around there... it's just like a different vibe. And with kids, it's perfect because that's what they naturally want anyway. So I'm just going to do that with my giant playroom.

Sam Parr

do you want to talk about ozzy this is amazing

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I've got a bunch of topics. I'm going to save half of them for next time, but we'll do half today, Ozzy.

Sam Parr

is an amazing amazing story

Shaan Puri

The story came out about Ozzy Media. If you missed it, I'm going to give you the rundown, and then I want Sam, I want you to react to it.

Sam Parr

yeah I know all about it

Shaan Puri

Okay, so here's what I know, and you fill in the gaps: I heard about this because the story breaks in *The New York Times*, and they basically say... and they talk about Aussie Media, a company that I never really heard of.

Sam Parr

most people have no idea what it is

Shaan Puri

red flag number 1 so they go it's a company that's raised $150,000,000 and they were on this call with goldman sachs and goldman sachs is ready to invest $40,000,000 in the company and they're just sort of doing their final kind of like diligence / get to know you calls and one of the selling points that ozy was telling goldman sachs about like how it's defensible and how we're like this next gen media company was they were like our youtube videos which you see you know some of our youtube videos get millions of views which is good for news and media company you know youtube loves us the data shows that you know youtube sees that you know gen z or millennials like love our content so they're big fans of our content we're gonna be doing much more with youtube so you know your investment now you're investing in this like next gen video company as well and so they get on a call they're like why don't we do a call with us the founders of ozy goldman and the executive over at youtube who runs youtube originals and so they get on the call and they're on a conference call and they're waiting for the the youtube guy emails and says hey I'm running a few minutes late sorry so they're on this video call and then the youtube guy says hey guys I'm you know I'm sorry I'm still stuck in traffic can't do video can we just switch to a a phone call conference call sorry for the inconvenience and everyone's like no problem we switch over to the phone call and he calls in and he says hey I'm so and so let's call him jeff I don't know what his name is I'm jeff from youtube yeah ozzie is amazing our data shows that it just crushes other media companies they're really innovative we plan to feature them and do a whole lot more it's so great and the goldman guys they're like wow that sounds good but you know they sort of noticed like his voice sounded a little funny almost like he was like a like a voice changer and they're like ah it's probably nothing but you know like just a case let's go ahead and just like double check-in our diligence here let's just let's just email the guy from youtube and just just make sure you know it's all all good and they were like oh you know he had emailed us from a gmail which is kinda weird you know like the official jeff@gmail.com like let's just email let's just go to youtube themselves and just email him directly and so they email and that guy of course is like what the hell I've never heard of aussie media no I was not on a phone call what are you talking about and so goldman's like what the fuck is going on and so this basically was and then they they they go back to the company and the company's like oh my god yes we're so sorry a lapse in judgment we had that was my cofounder on the call you know like we're embarrassed sorry that was just a bad bad decision I don't know I don't even know how they could with a straight face back out of that but they you know they back out of it and goldman says okay look we're not gonna invest because obviously shady as fuck but you know we're not gonna make a big deal out of it so you know what up so they back out and this company if you look into aussie they had made some pretty big claims so some other big claims so 50,000,000 monthly uniques they said their email newsletter had 20,000,000 monthly subscribers which is like you know as somebody who had that's

Sam Parr

like the biggest thing ever yeah 20,000,000 that would be unheard of

Shaan Puri

I think the public numbers Morning Brew has said they had 3,000,000 [subscribers]. I think you guys are right around that same number. So to do, you know, 10 times more than that would be like, "Wow, that's pretty substantial." That's interesting. And oh, you have 50,000,000 uniques like on your website? How would I go there? It looks like you have less than 1,000,000 according to this [data].

Sam Parr

50,000,000 monthly uniques is also like a top 100 or top 200 website. I mean, it's huge.

Shaan Puri

So, people start looking into it and they begin to investigate all their claims. They claim, "We are Amazon Prime's first talk show." Then you look into it and find out it wasn't like Amazon Prime commissioned and paid them for a talk show. They used something called "direct upload," which just lets anybody upload their content into the library. They claimed that they were the first and used Amazon's name in all their billboards and ads, saying it was Amazon's first. Amazon sent them a cease and desist, stating, "Take our name off your stuff." The response was, "I stand by our claims, but of course, we'll take your name off this." Then they claimed that they are the fastest-growing talk show on YouTube. The journalist asked, "So how do you know that?" They responded, "We talked to Social Blade; they measure this kind of thing, and they said you're pretty average." The reply was, "Well, you know, we're the fastest-growing premium talk show that's YouTube-centric," which is a category they made up. We looked and couldn't find a faster-growing one, so they said, "You are the vessel." If you look at their YouTube videos, they'll have like a million views but less than a hundred comments. So, you know, it's a little fishy... a little fishy. What's going on here? By the way, they had pretty legit investors: Axel Springer, Mark Lasry, who owns the Milwaukee Bucks, Steve Jobs' wife, and David Drummond, who's a long-time Google exec. They still have pretty legit investors. The funny thing is, after Goldman Sachs walked away and all this happened...

Sam Parr

still raised money

Shaan Puri

still raised another round and so what's your what did I miss and what's your reaction

Sam Parr

To this, yeah, so the takeaway here is twofold. The first is we actually talked about this a few weeks, a week or two ago. We said that you can raise a fair amount of money and pretty much lie, and most people will not check in on you, right?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. We said the following: I'm surprised more people aren't lying because it would be so easy and quite lucrative to do so when it comes to this thing. We said most people, us included, don't do a ton of diligence. Even if you do, it's very easy to get away with the basic diligence, and we're...

Sam Parr

nobodys right we're

Shaan Puri

and we're nobodys and then you take these larger funds larger names and

Sam Parr

they still don't do it

Shaan Puri

They all got dupes too, you know what I mean? So, let's like... there is a systemic problem. In a way, it's a feature and a problem. The feature is that this industry runs on trust. The reason you and I can do deals on a handshake is because we trust each other. There are a lot of founders out there who, the majority of people, are not duplicitous, lying, or committing fraud. That's why Silicon Valley can move at a fast pace. We don't have to take 3 to 6 months to diligence every single deal we do. That's why we can move at a fast pace. But the flip side of that is it does create an opportunity for fraudsters to lie, and that's why...

Sam Parr

Which doesn't happen often, but basically, I believe the founder's name is Carlos Watson. Carlos Watson is a very charismatic guy. I think he was a host or head of a TV show or something like that on both PBS and CNN, if I remember correctly. They started about a year or two before us, and I remember I recruited people from there. I had one woman who worked there and worked for us. I would ask her about them, and basically, they caught my eye because I would use SimilarWeb and I would notice that they had very little traffic. If you go to their website now, The Hustle probably actually gets more traffic than they do, and we don't even...

Shaan Puri

I compared you guys have about 10% more traffic according to that than them

Sam Parr

Yeah, we don't even try to get traffic. That's not our business; our business is not web traffic. But their business is web traffic. Additionally, their website is horrible. It's one of those sites that looks pretty, but when you go to it, you're like, "How the hell do you work this thing?" It's impossible to figure out what they're doing. As a marketer and entrepreneur, I can go to a website and look at it and say, "Oh, the goal is to drive me to this thing." When I see their site, I'm like, "What are they trying to get me to do?" I've always had a red flag about this company because they claimed these huge valuations and a massive reach, yet I don't know anyone who consumes it. When I was in New York, I used to see buses with their logos on them. They're buying all these ads, and media companies don't buy ads; they sell ads. You're not buying a bus ad of all ads. I used to see this and knew that something weird was happening because it didn't make sense how they made money. They constantly had to raise money, so this was always full of it to me. I'm a little surprised Axel Springer invested in it because they're pretty legit, but I'm not surprised that Steve Jobs' wife invested in it because she invests in a lot of nonprofit-making stuff. So I'm like, "Well, she just gives money to anyone." But yeah, this company, I think, is nonsense. They also claim that they have these huge festivals, and I've never heard of anyone who went to one of their festivals. So I've always thought that this company was full of it, and now there's some proof.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yeah. Funny. I mean, it's crazy how this stuff goes down, and then you see people who are so... There's one, I think Mark Lasry is on the board, and I think he was... I think they released a statement like: > "Oh, you know, we... a lapse in judgment. We stand by this kind of temporary or momentary... kind of like lapse in judgment. You know, they are making the right steps to correct this." I don't even think the co-founders got fired. I think he... I think he's still there, if I'm correct.

Sam Parr

Dude, it's a weird-ass company. They also claim that they're based out of Palo Alto. You and I have lived here for 10 to 15 years.

Shaan Puri

Never heard of them. Never met a single employee. Never met anybody who reads them or shared an article from them. Also, Palo Alto is not where you would start a media company. So, you know, just strange all around.

Sam Parr

Yeah, so that's weird. Do you want... can I tell you about a... can I do one real quick? Okay, so have I ever told you about Newspapers.com?

Shaan Puri

You told me about this. I remember going to it and being like, "Oh, I've never been to it." Like that sounds like a very common word, and I remember going to it. You said it was something cool, but... say it again for me because I don't remember any other details.

Sam Parr

So, I believe it was owned by Ancestry.com. Ancestry.com is a website where you can do two things: you can enter your DNA, or you can enter your last name. You give them your DNA, and they tell you who you're related to. Or, you just enter your name, and you can track, like, you know, if you came into Ellis Island and who your great-grandparents were based off of Civil War records and all this weird stuff. They bought this archive called Newspapers.com, which scans every newspaper they could possibly get a hold of. You can search it, and I use it for research all the time. If you scroll down on our document, Sean, I actually gave you an example. So, Dan Gilbert started this company called Quicken Loans. He owns the Cleveland Cavaliers, is that what he owns? Yeah, and he's like a big shot in Detroit or whatever. He seems like a nice guy, and I was curious about his background. So, I used Newspapers.com to learn about his company. Quicken Loans originally was called Rock Financial. I sent you three examples of why Newspapers.com is incredibly fascinating. The first is that you can read profiles about people. Quicken Loans went public, I think, in 1997. I found an article from 1996, and you could read that article. It's a profile on Dan, and it explains that Dan Gilbert's office is really funny; he's got toys everywhere. He'll say, "What I'm trying to do is build this fun workplace," you know, whatever. You see firsthand knowledge as they are building about how their philosophy on business is, and that's incredibly fascinating. He'll also say, "Yeah, you know, we started the business with $5,000 of savings, and then we scaled to this much revenue." So, you could actually see in real time how they're describing the business and where they came from. The second thing that you can do, and I do this all the time, is find their ads in classified newspapers where they list jobs. I actually listed one of their job ads.

Shaan Puri

So, how would you do this? Let's say you're wanting to find this. Can you search like everywhere ROC Financial's mentioned, or do you have to literally go, "Just let me check this Sunday and check the job section and see if they're there"?

Sam Parr

No, so what I did was I typed in "ROC Financial." I typed in "show me all the newspapers within a radius of Detroit" because I knew that's where they're based out of. Then I said, "make it between 1995 and 1996."

Shaan Puri

and then pay for newspaper paper dot com this is a paid service

Sam Parr

$10 a month. When I search, I can see which newspaper it's from, which section of the newspaper, and who the author is. This allows me to quickly determine if it's a profile, if it's just Dan Gilbert giving a quote on the economy, or if it's a job ad. I read the job ads; they are actually amazing. If you ever want to see what a company is launching, even today, go to their website and click on jobs. If you see, "Oh wow, YouTube is hiring," or "I don't know, I'm making this up, Apple is hiring people who have experience in cars," that's amazing! They're clearly going into that area. So, that's like a no-brainer, but it's cool to see. Also, on a lot of job boards or websites, they'll say, "We’re Aussie Media. We reach 20 million people a month. We cover this stuff." You see, it'll actually tell you a lot of stats about the companies.

Shaan Puri

They have to sell themselves, right? If you're recruiting people... and by the way, here's a super sneaky move: go interview at a competitor's company to find out their data. During the interview process, you'll find out a lot about the company's strategy, about their numbers, things like that. That's one way to get competitive intel that I've heard some people do.

Sam Parr

or you can recruit the people who are there knowing that you're not gonna hire them that's another one

Shaan Puri

Well, that one is a little bit harder because you recruit somebody and you put them in a position... Some people get really [uncomfortable], some people are like, "Oh yeah, happy to share." Nothing that was confidential, but just, you know, "Here's my point of view and what I think they care about, and what's roughly the size of this part of their business." But then some people are like, "I can't believe you're asking me to divulge information about my previous employer!" Sure.

Sam Parr

Yeah, you have to be respectful. You’ve got to go about it in a certain way. So anyway, I use newspaper.com to look at job ads. I can see how they describe their company back then and what they were recruiting for. Sometimes, you could see salary, and it actually adds a lot of context around it. Then finally, I look at ads that they use to get customers. You could see how they describe themselves and how they got customers, things like that. If you look at job ads, you could see how they're structuring their business. It's actually an amazing tool. The difference is that when you read biographies, they'll tell you a third-person view on analyzing it. When I do it this way, I'm like, "Well, here's exactly how they describe themselves."

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's different because it's a moment in time versus hindsight, right? Biography is always hindsight. Now that we've seen it all play out, we can connect the dots in this way. But when you just go back to the source material at that time, when it went to print, this is how it was seen in the moment. This is really useful because, like, I've done this with tech companies. You can go read when Twitter launched on TechCrunch, and it's a small blurb.

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

It's like, "Oh, this goofy thing called Twitter launched." It was kind of buzzy at this party, but it had no... I'm keeping an eye on it, blah blah blah. It was a pretty inconspicuous launch for something that became as influential as Twitter. You can go see their original landing pages and their original launch press. You can read original launch announcements on Hacker News for Dropbox and other things. You can also watch the 5-minute video that Drew Houston put up demoing Dropbox, along with the comments of people being like, "Dude, no one needs this." And you know, here we are, a $20 billion building later.

Sam Parr

And for the modern stuff, like Dropbox and Twitter, there are two ways to do that. The first is when you search on Google. Right underneath the text bar, you go all the way to the right and click on "Search Tools." You can change the date. So, if, let's say, Twitter launched in 2009, you type in "Twitter," take out the "e" because that's how you remember they spelled it, and set the date range from 2005 to 2010. I forget when they first launched, but you can actually see it. Alternatively, you can go to webarchive.com or waybackmachine.com. I forget which one, but just Google one of those, and you can actually see the early landing page. So anyway, that's a cool hack that I wanted to show you about. It's pretty amazing.

Shaan Puri

By the way, this print ad I just want to read... I just put it in my swipe file. But this ad for them, it says: **"Everybody's talking Mortgage First"** And then there's a quote from a customer that says: > "We found out that the bank's preapproval is just a piece of paper. With Mortgage First, we got a firm commitment, locked in a low rate. There's no easier way to shop for a home." That's like the print ad headline, and it's just cool to see the copywriting of these types of products, you know? It's not the sexiest type of product to sell... a mortgage.

Sam Parr

and that's exactly my. You did

Shaan Puri

a great job

Sam Parr

So here's the thing. When you're starting something, you say to yourself, "I want to be like Quicken Loans," or if you have a clothing company, "I want to be like Louis Vuitton," or "I want to be like Gucci." You might even think, "I want to be like Steve Jobs at Apple." You have to remember that, 9 out of 10 times, it's not glamorous early on. You can go and look at early Apple products and think, "Oh wow, they're not great, just like I am." They were still trying to figure things out; they weren't that great. What they said back then is hard to connect with. It's difficult to imagine that this early ad or this early profile could lead to what it eventually became. I never would have guessed that. Therefore, it kind of...

Shaan Puri

You go to RocketMortgage.com now, and it's like, you know, this diverse crew of white, black, and Asian people sitting on beautiful couches. It says, "Rocket Mortgage is the home loan experience designed for you. You're one of a kind; your mortgage should be too. Start an application to see what's possible." Right? Like, a very different type of ad. So if you wanted to be the next them, don't copy what they say now. Now that they have a ton of brand equity, and that they have a sales force and all these other things, go copy what they did at the beginning when they had zero brand awareness. They had to explain what they do quickly to people in a more literal sense rather than these kind of fancy marketing brochures.

Sam Parr

Exactly, that's exactly my point. I think this is an incredibly helpful tool, both intellectually because you can get ideas, but also emotionally. You can see that, like, "Oh wow, they weren't always like kick-ass. They sucked like me," or, "You know, they were only okay." I never would have predicted that they ended where they did based off where they started.

Shaan Puri

right okay I got I got one for you can we switch

Sam Parr

yeah which one are you gonna do you got a lot of really good ones

Shaan Puri

I'm gonna give you my blue collar side hustle

Sam Parr

okay great

Shaan Puri

So, this is the **blue collar side hustle** segment for this week. It's basically a way you can make money—not a ton, but like $1,000 or tens of thousands of dollars, maybe even $100,000—with just a little bit of sweat and creativity. That's the blue collar side hustle. So, what is it? We're about to start October, and this last quarter of the year is the holiday season. It's the biggest shopping season of the year. People are ready to spend. Coming into the holidays, there's one little side hustle that I always thought was interesting, and I started looking into it. It's this business of **mall Santas**. Have you ever done this? You don't have a little kid, so you may not have ever done this. But for the last two years, since my daughter was born, you know, come Christmas season, she always wants to go see Santa and have us take a family photo with him for the memories. Our baby sits in Santa's lap, and we take a photo.

Sam Parr

Dude, what? Which is, when you think about it, fucking weird. That is so weird. Like, why does this young couple, who like, if you're an immigrant or you're, like, in your case, you're Indian, just believe...?

Shaan Puri

that you

Sam Parr

gotta get those picture with this fat old white dude

Shaan Puri

Who, by the way, barely looks like Santa, right? So the one I'm going to... and also, the kid cries 100% of the time, right? Because you put him in a stranger's lap - a stranger who looks like a monster - surrounded by dwarves. Surrounded by dwarves and other strangers looking at you.

Sam Parr

yeah that's sweet

Shaan Puri

And then you're like, "Give me a smile," and they're like, "Nah, I'm crying here." So, okay, let's talk about this little business. What is this? I'm going to just tell you how the current system works and then what you can do. A mall Santa will make between $10,000 and $25,000 in about a 5-week sprint. All they do is buy the outfit for about $300 and then get hired by these photo companies. There's this one company called Iconic. What they do is hire all these mall Santas and they have 300 malls in America that they're partnered with, and then like 100 Babies "R" Us locations. They'll be like, "Hey, I need a Santa in Charleston. You're going to make, you know, $20,000 over the next 5 to 6 years."

Sam Parr

a model agency for fat white guys

Shaan Puri

Exactly. So then they dispatch you, and you just go sit there on a chair for like 6 hours straight. A kid gets in your lap, you say, "Oh ho ho! What do you want for Christmas?" Take a picture, see you later, and you just do that. It's exhausting.

Sam Parr

what do they use then for the rest of the year it's like a diabetes commercial like what do you gotta do with these guys

Shaan Puri

So, let me tell you about this. That's the first part. They have about 6,000 Santas that they hire themselves. They showed that they get into the malls and secure prime real estate because they demonstrated to the malls that having a Santa there will drive about $1,000,000 in incremental revenue. This is because you get increased foot traffic into the mall. Families like us come to the mall to get photos taken with Santa, and you're paying like $50 per photo. You're doing a photo every, I don't know, minute. So, you can just add up the revenue per hour that the iconic Santa or the person hosting this is generating. I thought this was kind of cool. Then I was curious about where these people come from. Basically, there's a spin-off cottage industry of Santa training and Santa costume businesses.

Sam Parr

my god

Shaan Puri

There are Santa costume businesses, little e-commerce pop-ups, like Halloween pop-ups, where they're just selling for a certain part of the year. They sell the boots, glasses, beards, hats, robes, and all that good stuff. You'll end up spending hundreds of dollars just to have one of these outfits. I own one of these outfits because we wanted our at-home photos to also have me in the Santa outfit. So, you know, Brown Santa sitting next to the tree... I have a bunch of photos like that from last year.

Sam Parr

dude your wife is is amazing

Shaan Puri

this is all

Sam Parr

her idea she's

Shaan Puri

Like an Instagram mom, basically, without the followers. So, we do all the work of being an Instagram mom without any of the influencer money that we should be getting out of it. She really cares about photos; she wants her memories and she wants cute photos. So, I have to do all this... So, okay, what happens next? There are these schools that will charge you up to $1,000 for Santa training. What does that mean? It tells you what to say, how to groom your beard and your hair to look like Nick, and then helps you get a job as a Santa somewhere. That's like a whole little cottage industry now. What do I think you could do with this? I think this could be done in a whole bunch of different ways. You could kind of independently do this in your neighborhood. We've talked about how to do door-to-door in neighborhoods. I think you could go door-to-door in any neighborhood and say, "Hey, tomorrow Santa's gonna be here. If you want a Christmas photo, just come to the front of the neighborhood by that tree."

Sam Parr

dude you're like

Shaan Puri

icing up the throne

Sam Parr

This is like a pedophile's dream... like Santa meets the ice cream man. This is weird.

Shaan Puri

This is not just the kid that goes with the parents to the event. This is incredibly safe—safer than a lemonade stand, my friend. So, this is the lemonade stand we do in the winter: you do a pop-up Santa photo event. If you were going door to door, you could go dressed as elves, saying that Santa's coming. Alright, so that's one way of doing this. The other is you could partner with really any place that has foot traffic. Whether it's a mall, an outdoor eating area, or a farmer's market, you just need to find foot traffic. If you plop yourself down, my estimate is that you're going to be able to make $50 per minute doing this. That might be a little high, so let's just say $30 per minute because people don't always opt for the big photo pack. So, $30 a minute.

Sam Parr

at an hourly rate bro

Shaan Puri

Okay, so hourly, that's $1,800 an hour. You're going to be there for, let's say, 6 hours. That's $10 a day you can print doing this thing. All your costs are, you know, paying Santa for... hopefully that's somebody that's you or someone you know that you can get to do it. You buy the app for $400, another $1,000 for props and decorations, and the chair and all that stuff. The photographer might cost you, let's call it, $1,000 for the day. So that's sort of your cost structure going into this. I think the rest of it is pretty much free because who's going to really kick out Santa?

Sam Parr

who who's iconic

Shaan Puri

Iconic is the company that does photo experiences and stuff like that.

Sam Parr

are they big

Shaan Puri

I think they're big because this isn't their main business. So, I think this is like, you know, part of their business.

Sam Parr

if someone okay so I agree with you that someone could pull this off I would be

Shaan Puri

I'm just saying you want to make $20 for the holiday season that's nice a lot of people want $20

Sam Parr

I would be amazed if someone is willing. You have to have so much courage in order to pull something like that off. That scares me. This scares me.

Shaan Puri

why what scares you about this

Sam Parr

So, it's kind of like whenever I think of business ideas, I'm like anything that involves eating something, I'm like, "Ugh, that's all? That's all you got?" It's like a big burden, right? It's like a big burden if your product is going to be eaten.

Shaan Puri

oh you mean selling something other people are going to eat

Sam Parr

Yeah, I'm like, "Well, you can't bullshit that, right? You got to nail that right away." And then, like a teardown, I'm like, "Well, anything involving children, I'm like, oh my god, you gotta nail that too. You can't have anything weird going on."

Shaan Puri

Dude, there's no risk here. It's literally a Santa with the parents standing right there next to you, and you sit on their knee for one second to take a photo. It's so low risk. It's not like a daycare or something like that.

Sam Parr

Daycare is up there too. I mean, I would be very curious if anyone's going to pull this off. This isn't like you're just going to the street and breakdancing. You're going into the street and having a kid sit on your knee. I just think that...

Shaan Puri

I'm going to do this for my... you know, we were talking about our YouTube channel doing some little business stunts. I'm going to do this as one of them this holiday season.

Ad Roll

I'm gonna do this I'm gonna hire a santa

Shaan Puri

I'm gonna find a foot traffic area I'm going to make like $10 in a day

Sam Parr

No way! There's no way you're going to be able to pull this off. I bet you $500. There, $500.

Shaan Puri

Okay, what part? You got it? Okay, maybe the $10 a day is the ambitious part. No, maybe it's high.

Sam Parr

okay I'll be very curious to see if you could pull this off this would be amazing

Shaan Puri

what do you think is gonna happen what do you think all the risk is there's no risk

Sam Parr

I don't think there's that much risk. I just think there's a huge amount of fear that I have about doing this—anything involving it.

Shaan Puri

The risk is Sean gets lazy and decides not to do it. That's the only risk. That's the only thing preventing me from successfully doing this.

Sam Parr

well let's see

Shaan Puri

Dude, if I was you, if I was white, I would be saving myself the $1,000 I'm gonna have to pay some Santa here to do this. Because nobody... I... nobody wants me to be the Santa, you know? I'm already working from a disadvantage.

Sam Parr

Dude, are there ever Black Santas? That is kind of interesting. We gotta... woah, are there ever? I've never seen a non-white Santa at a mall.

Shaan Puri

I'm sure, I'm sure there is, but yeah... maybe that's the underserved market that I need to go for. I think people want the classics. I think with holidays, people throw all the equality out the window and they want the classics. Wait, do you type that in?

Sam Parr

do you celebrate what religion are you are you anything

Shaan Puri

I'm not religious but I do celebrate fun days like christmas

Sam Parr

Yeah, I didn't, but you're not... I know you're not religious, like in terms of a god, but like a culture. You know, I'm Catholic; I was raised Catholic, but do...

Shaan Puri

you do

Sam Parr

you do anything

Shaan Puri

No, I celebrate all the fun holidays. If you... any... Oh, *Día de los Muertos* sounds great! I'm, you know, Hispanic for the day. Well, let's do that! Like, I'm... any culture that has a fun holiday, I'll play. Why not? I'm looking for more days to celebrate.

Sam Parr

Yeah, we got a... once I started meeting my Jewish friends, I started celebrating Shabbat. So we could pick some more holidays.

Ad Roll

yeah shabbat's great dude

Sam Parr

I love shabbat

Shaan Puri

give me some more schabbat

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's really good. What do you want to do with this royalty-free music? I think this is amazing!

Shaan Puri

Okay, so here's the idea. I saw this on Product Hunt, but I kind of forgot the name. There was basically a product that launched yesterday or today, and it's an AI-generated royalty-free music service. For anybody who's ever had to make a commercial or create a video, or if you're an agency or a freelancer, music makes your video like ten times better. But it sucks to have all the music you know is copyright protected. If you put it up on YouTube, it'll get muted or taken down, or you'll receive a DMCA notice. If you want to use it to sell products or promote your company, you really can't do it. It's illegal to use copyrighted music because you don't have the permissions. So, there's this whole genre of royalty-free music out there, and there are all these big websites like Pond5 that exist to provide you with royalty-free stock footage, stock photos, or stock music. This whole stock industry is pretty big. What I thought was cool here is to take a business like Pond5. I don't know if you've ever used Pond5. Do you know Pond5?

Sam Parr

no no no no no I've never used that

Shaan Puri

So many times in my life, it's great. It's like the best place to go if you want stock music for a thing.

Sam Parr

is it free how does it work no

Shaan Puri

You pay, and you end up buying the music you like while you're listening to the sample. It'll be like the really good music, and it'll be like Pond5 in the background, just as a watermark every 2 seconds so that you can't steal the thing—you have to buy it. So here's how I know this company crushes: they raised one round of funding in 2014. It was a $60,000,000 round, which means they already had a bunch of traction before then. Since 2014, they haven't reported any other rounds of funding, and I know they're still going super strong. So that's like, you can sniff that and be like, "What's the opposite of Aussie Media?" It's this. It's a company that raises $1 million in a round and doesn't raise again for the next 7 years. That probably means it's super profitable, just spitting off cash.

Sam Parr

And they probably sold... Who did they raise $61,000,000 from? They probably just sold a bunch of their shares.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's probably to get some liquidity because I think they started in 2005 or 2008 or something like that. So it was like many years into the business that they did a round. NerdWallet, same thing, right? They started, they ended up raising $100 million, never touched the $100 million. Like their bank account's never been less than $100 million since then. It's like these are companies that are lean, mean, and just super profitable.

Sam Parr

We should talk about NerdWallet. Do you have intel on NerdWallet? I see you probably have more.

Shaan Puri

you're buddies with the guy so I

Sam Parr

don't have much but we

Shaan Puri

Should have him on. I was talking to his partner, and he was saying, "Oh yeah, you should have him on." I thought that was a good idea.

Sam Parr

Well, I heard they were considering going public or something like that. He couldn't talk too much, but I don't know if that's the case anymore or not. You know, when you're about to go public, you can't say too much, and so it's hard to get good interviews.

Shaan Puri

Well, I can tell one anecdote I heard, which is just on how they kind of got chartered and how they made it work so early on with NerdWallet. What NerdWallet does is it's a blog for personal finance. It provides you with the information you need to know about managing your own finances. Their moneymaker is that they rank really high for credit card suggestions. So, if you say, "What credit card should I get?" NerdWallet is at the top of the list. Then, they'll break it down in a pretty objective way. Here's the best credit cards depending on your goals and who you are. Pick this one.

Sam Parr

Pick this one. It's basically **nerdwallet.com/bestcreditcard**. That page, I think, likely makes like 80% of the revenue. The entire company exists to make sure that page shows up number one on Google when you search for "best credit card."

Shaan Puri

Right, exactly. And I think when we say 80% of the revenue, I don't know the revenue. If I was guessing, I would guess that the revenue is **$100,000,000 or more**, plus or minus 50%.

Sam Parr

definitely not - 50%

Shaan Puri

Okay, so maybe **50%**. That's pretty impressive, right? Because when somebody clicks that link to go buy it, they get an affiliate kickback. They'll get, I don't know what it is, like **$2,000**. It's very lucrative to refer a credit card—**$2,500** or something like that for a credit card referral. So, they make a lot per customer that hits that page. Early on, because that incentive is so big, every website in the early web days was just like, "Who's gonna give me the highest kickback?" Fantastic! You are my recommended card. So, it was kind of like it wasn't objective, right? They were just in the pocket of the credit card companies, and they were just printing, you know, **shitty content** to try to get you to click that link to go through this.

Sam Parr

So, credit card stock comes up. Red Ventures started. Red Ventures is a company that makes over $1,000,000,000 a year. They basically started doing that with both credit cards and Dish TV.

Shaan Puri

Right, right. Yeah, satellite TV. So, with these high-margin, high-subscription products, you know, they'll pay a lot for affiliate marketing. What NerdWallet was doing was they were just two dudes sitting in their room, and they would write blogs—like high-quality blogs. They said, "We're going to write higher quality stuff," because these other ones are just kind of content farms trying to generate clicks. Year after year, they were just writing these things, and it really wasn't going very far. It was not that impressive. Now, you tell me if I'm wrong on any of this; it wasn't really taking off.

Sam Parr

It took... it took. But they just basically, in the first two years, there was... I don't think there was a month where they got more than 1,000 people visiting their website. If you Google "NerdWallet" at HustleCon, you'll see a talk where he shows their traffic. It was like, you know, it was... it was horrible.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, multiple years of staying the course, even when the evidence all said, "This doesn't work," because they trusted their gut and their belief system. They believed that if we put the highest quality content out there, eventually we would get the traffic. If we build it, they will come, and it actually worked. So, like, you know, there is a counterpoint to every piece of advice. If they were a startup doing this right now, I'd be like, "Guys, look, 2 years, no traffic, less than $10 a month. You're making... how long have you been in this apartment? When's the last time you left this building?" Guys, look at this company. They're just shelling out low-quality content and getting way more traffic, paying for it, and just trying to arbitrage. Like, do that! That's going to work. That's working. So, my advice would have been horrible here because this was a tortoise and the hare startup story that actually worked. Finally, there's a Google update. Google updates its search engine and punishes the low-quality blogs that were out there. NerdWallet jumps in the rankings, and all of a sudden, they go from making, you know, $0 a day to like $7 a day in revenue, and that's from the traffic that's coming here. Then, a few months later, there's another update, and it goes to like $70 a day. They sort of never looked back. They've always been kind of near the top or at the top for this kind of thing since then. I thought that was pretty remarkable. You know, I could have had that same idea, but I would have never stuck to it the way that those guys did, and they deserve every dollar they make off this.

Sam Parr

yeah it's a it's a pretty monster company but what about pon5

Shaan Puri

okay so back to pond5 so pond5 my research tells you this is quite a big company at one. They reported 60,000,000 a year in revenue that was like 10 years ago so wait really sure that yeah so I'm pretty sure that they're doing $100,000,000 or north of $100,000,000 off this most stock websites will do you know $100,000,000 + but they get consolidated so like you know istockphoto and all those things they all get owned by the same company so anyways what's the idea here well pawn 5 they have their value because they have a big library so that when you're searching for upbeat energetic music for my commercial that's 60 seconds long that doesn't sound cheesy I gotta find that that that thing on your website and so how do they get this library well they don't make it themselves they let any creator just like a stock photo site you upload your content and then if someone buys your thing you get a rev share you get 50% rev share well here's the cool thing about what's hap like there's been a change where ai has gotten a lot better and you can auto generate music now and so what this product was doing was you put your video in and it knows okay your video is 1 minute and 23 seconds long so that's how much music you need and it can even look at you know in the future it can even look at you can mark maybe key markers on your video you say this is where the climax happens or where my product reveal happens like I need a beat to like I need an uptick here right and then it will auto generate an infinite number of music amount of music for that that's custom fitted to your video track and you can just say I want it to be playful I want it to be energetic I want it to be serious I want it to be foreboding I want it to be mysterious and and then you just hit generate and it will give you one you say next next next just like tinder you can swipe through and they're going to keep 100% of the revenue so whatever whoever does this I think they're going to have the biggest library pretty much from day 10 because their neural net will have generated such a vast amount of stock footage or stock music or stock photos so I think they're going to crush the existing stock sites because they're going to have 100 times more content and they're going to crush it in terms of economics because they're not going to have to share any of it with any content creator and they're going to keep 100% of it so I would love to invest in one of these companies that's doing this that's got the right marketing mojo to get this out there because the fundamentals tell me that however big istockphoto and those guys are the ai version of it is gonna be you know maybe 4 or 5 times bigger and those today are like multibillion dollar companies

Sam Parr

I'd imagine, though, the key to this business is not the AI-generated music part. I would imagine the difficult part here is getting customers. The stock photos, stock video, and stock music in terms of search traffic are impossibly challenging. It's like... I bet you it's almost as hard as credit cards, like "best credit card." So that would be the hard part: how to get customers. A business is basically like three things. It's like convincing people to work, or I guess there are four things: convincing people to work, convincing someone to give you money, figuring out how to get capital to do it, making the product, and then getting the sale. This one falls into that fourth bucket, where that's the hard part. I would imagine it's getting people to go to your website consistently for at least...

Shaan Puri

Cheap enough. Yeah, I would simplify it. I think business is about getting customers, charging them enough to keep some profit, and retaining those customers. So, you’ve got to do those three things. Yes, getting customers is usually the hardest one, and it's the hardest one in this case. That's why I said the founders that have the right marketing mojo—that was the key part of what I said—because you have to have a way to get traffic for this. Over time, I think they will outcompete their old-school alternatives because they're outdated now. So, here's my other app... and because...

Sam Parr

that that 50% that goes to creators you could maybe spend on acquiring customers

Shaan Puri

Exactly. You can give away a lot of the content for free initially, right? Because of that, here's my hack for this. This is also a hustle; this is maybe my big co-side hustle. So, you're a PM at Google or you're a product manager at DuckDuckGo and you're a search engine. Well, the search engines have one way that they cheat, which is when you search for something, they can just give you their result as the top result always. That's like Google with their one box thing. If you just say, "Hey, what's the best holiday?" they surface the best results in a box, so you don't even need to click and go to a website. Or if you go to Google Images and you search for "icon of this" or "stock photo" or "royalty-free," they could just serve you the Google results for this. They have all the AI talent in the world to do this, and this could become a product line that generates, you know, nine figures a year for these companies. So, if you want to, you know, if you're inside one of these big companies, that's another pitch you can make to your boss. You could say, "Hey boss, how does this sound? We use our AI talent on something that we're already getting millions of searches for a year, and it will generate, you know, $100,000,000+ in revenue within three years. Can I work on that project?" Then the answer will be, "Yes! Why haven't I promoted you already?"

Sam Parr

Dude, I went to a conference and I have two stories to share. I met this woman who was part of the crew that managed this. So basically, Google makes 95% of its revenue from one thing, but they're constantly trying to launch all this other stuff. They've probably done things that you don't even know exist. They’ll buy stuff and try to run it and make it bigger. One example is Zagat. Do you remember Zagat?

Shaan Puri

yeah the restaurant reviews is that right

Sam Parr

Yeah, Google owned it. A lot of people don't even know that, but Google owned it. I talked to this woman whose job it was to help manage the CEOs of the projects and decide what's interesting and what's not. She told me that they have some products that would scale to $100,000,000 in revenue in only a couple of years, and they would kill it. I was like, "Why'd you kill it?" They said, "Well, two reasons. 1. The people who we get to run them are oftentimes paid so much money that they don't give a shit. If you're just running your own startup, you're like, 'This has to work because this is where 95% of my net worth is. I would be screwed.' Whereas the people who work at Google are like, 'Dude, I make so much money each year. I don't really want this to succeed that much. I have to work more and still get paid some.' 2. Google is so big that even though a product makes $100,000,000+ in revenue over the course of a few years, which could be worth a couple of billion dollars, it's just not worth it to us. We just have so much better ways to spend our time." I was flabbergasted. I knew this other woman who ran something that was doing over $100,000,000 in revenue, and they killed it because they were like, "This just isn't big or interesting enough." It's just pretty wild to think about that.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's insane, actually. I did this when we got acquired by Twitch. In one of the meetings I had with Emmett, who is the CEO, I was talking about how, "Oh yeah, if we do this, we could actually make this much." I noticed he didn't react in any way. When I say something that I think is going to get someone excited, and they don't get excited, I'm like, "Hey, I thought you would. I thought that would register for you." It looks like it didn't. So I asked him why that didn't resonate, and he was basically like, "Look, we make this much revenue over here. To move the needle on revenue, you have to be like the size of the price has to be X. Trying to make revenue brings in all this legal complexity, business ops complexity, and potentially stands in the way of user growth. So we either want something that hits this threshold on revenue or make it free and just optimize for user growth." I was like, "Oh, okay." So, they were not interested in, you know, this kind of 8 figures plus, you know, of revenue a year. It's like, "No." I was like, "Good to know." I didn't take it negatively; I was like, "Thank you for teaching me that." Because, yeah, that makes sense. My startup brain was wired where that's a big number, but now that I'm at a big company, I need to rewire it as a small number.

Sam Parr

Dude, when we sold to HubSpot, we sold in, I forget, like mid to late January. So, we went into the year 2021 with many, many millions of dollars in advertising revenue booked and contracts signed and everything. This year, we would have made many eight figures in revenue. When we sold, they said, "Look, we make this much money." I think HubSpot makes about $1,200,000,000 a year in revenue, and it's growing quickly. They said, "Your little $20,000,000 doesn't really matter to us. We'd rather you not focus on that." So, we gave all the money back. We had to call them and say, "Hey, this company, I know that you booked like $500,000 in advertising, but sorry, we can't do it anymore." I was heartbroken. I was like, "Oh, you're killing me!" But they were right. I mean, it's smart, but it was crazy to think about that.

Shaan Puri

Dude, go! Okay, I want you to just... don't type. Hands up, hands in the air. Guess Google's revenue last quarter.

Sam Parr

I would imagine that they do, I don't know, **$30 to $40 billion** a year.

Shaan Puri

Okay, $30 to $40 billion a year. So let's divide by 4 and let's just say, round number, $10 billion a quarter. Good guess! That's actually what I would've guessed. They did $61 billion last quarter.

Sam Parr

so 4 times that is what a 24 240

Shaan Puri

we don't do public math yes dude what

Sam Parr

that's what

Shaan Puri

I'm also looking at something that's wrong, but I'm looking on Statista right now. It came up in my first Google search, and I was like, "No, that can't be right. That's annual, not quarterly." Then I looked at another place, and it says its Q2 revenue of 2021 was **$61,000,000,000**. Okay, now how long have you felt like Google is a juggernaut? Like an absolute juggernaut that's already peaked. It's already at the peak of its power.

Sam Parr

since the beginning of the year yeah

Shaan Puri

How many years ago did you feel that way? Like, let's just say, at what point in time, if I was like, "Hey, Google's revenue is already absolutely monstrous, not too much upside left," like 5 years ago, would you have said that?

Sam Parr

Yeah, so like in 2015, which was 6 years ago now, if you told me just to invest all my money into Google, I'd be like, "Why would you? Why would you ever want something that's already so big? It's not going to grow that much."

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so since that date - that same quarter in 2015 - this quarter was 3.5 times more revenue. So it went from $17 billion to $61 billion in that 5-year span.

Sam Parr

When I think of that, I used to be all about Facebook. I actually think that, if you told me this could be crazy wrong in 10 years, if Facebook and Google are not... I think they'll exist, but if they're not like the big shots, I would actually be surprised if they're still the big shots. Would you agree?

Shaan Puri

So that can mean many things. Is it like there's the "big shot"? Microsoft is still a big shot, but it was always a big shot. However, Facebook and Google kind of took all their shine for like a decade-plus, you know? As Microsoft was either flat or kind of declining, it was still big, but: - It didn't have the talent - It wasn't growing as fast - Stock's not appreciating as fast So is it that where it kind of stagnates, or are you like, "It's actually gonna go down"?

Sam Parr

I think it's gonna go down, and here's why. Have you ever met anyone that worked at Google or Facebook? Yes, like they currently work there?

Shaan Puri

yes

Sam Parr

I think that Google is interesting. One reason is that it kind of succeeds in spite of itself. They basically invented this one thing that hasn't changed significantly, and it's always been amazing. So, they kind of have that going, which is good. But the second thing they have is that people, I don't think, particularly like working there. It's not cool to say you work at Google; it's like five years ago saying you worked at Goldman. It's not really that particularly interesting. I also think that the people who work there, unlike Goldman, where Goldman will explicitly say, "We're going to work you down to the bone. You're going to grind, and most of you aren't going to work here in five years," Google is the opposite. They say, "We care about you. We do this, we do that."

Shaan Puri

Right, and can I fold your laundry? Would you like a foot massage while you program this code right now?

Sam Parr

And because they do that, they create entitled babies who protest and get angry when anything bad happens. For example, I think last year there was this big event, and I don't actually know what happened. I don't know the reason; it could have been justified, who knows? But they had a walkout. A lot of the employees just walked out for the day. When I saw that, I was like, "Oh, this is like the beginning of the end." Because if you think about Google, do they do things that maybe you could describe as evil or that you don't agree with? Definitely, yes. But as an employee, are they overwhelmingly like a soft place to work where you get paid significant amounts of money, barely have to show up, and they pretty much are like, "Oh yes, honey, do you need anything?" Of course they are. And if people are willing to protest that and walk out, then they're soft, and they're going to die soon. That's why I think that.

Shaan Puri

they're gonna die soon rants gone wrong

Sam Parr

There's like a phrase: "Difficult times make strong men. Strong men make easy times. Easy times make soft men." That's like what's going on right now at Google. So, I wouldn't be surprised if they don't exist.

Shaan Puri

I had a friend who worked at Facebook, and they would send me screenshots from an internal Facebook group for employees. It's basically just a **bitch session** where they vent about everything happening inside the company. He would send me screenshots of the topics, and they would be the most petty, trivial things. For example, one topic was, "Hey, I noticed that the orange juice has moved in the cafeteria." You know, I like to eat salads, and when it was by the salad bar, it really complemented my healthy lifestyle. Now that it's over by the meat, I feel like I've been vegan for two years, and it's like a microaggression against my veganism. It's like, dude, these people were complaining about the dumbest stuff! They would have hundreds of comments, which means hours wasted fighting in the Facebook comments among Facebook employees. It was everything from the parking garage layout to the milk choices to the wording in the email that was sent out.

Sam Parr

to listen to the

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softness of the soft

Sam Parr

So, for the longest time—and I think he still does it—but when my wife worked there, he was definitely doing it. Zuck and Sheryl Sandberg, but I think for sure Zuck. It was either every Friday or one Friday a month; I forget. Zuck would do an all-hands meeting, and you could show up in person and ask them a question. It was mostly empty. You know, Facebook at the time had 15,000 employees, and like a hundred people would be there. To me, that's crazy! Imagine going back years and getting to ask Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller, or Henry Ford any question. That's pretty amazing! I'd be there every Friday, and I used to tell my wife, "Man, if you keep asking interesting questions, he's going to get to know you. He's going to be like, 'You know, Sarah, that's a great idea. Come and talk to me.'" I was like, "You gotta just be there every time." One time, I heard the story about this person who raised his hand, and they were like, "Yeah, what's your question?" He goes, "Look, we have a huge problem at Facebook. We don't have tampons in the men's restroom, and it's discriminatory." Zuck was like, "Is this really what you want to spend your time discussing, or can we discuss this after?" And they're like, "Look, we have to talk about it." He was like, "Alright, head of HR, please come up here today and address this." I swear, I heard the story of that someone asked that during their time with Zuck. Is that crazy?

Shaan Puri

I feel like we should end on this

Sam Parr

just like I imagine like is that really what minutes

Shaan Puri

of silence for like where everything's at in the world just it's like

Sam Parr

is that really what you wanna spend your time having a conversation about

Shaan Puri

"Ex-Google" is a better look than "current Google" of late. Totally! Isn't that amazing? It's such a stronger signal that you're ex-Google than current Google.

Sam Parr

I completely agree do you agree with me do you think that they're gonna go down

Shaan Puri

No, I think they're kind of juggernauts, but I do think they become less and less relevant over time. I think Facebook, particularly, has done an amazing job fighting off irrelevancy, like tooth and nail. I think Zuck knows this, and therefore he goes to war for it. However, there’s the natural decline over time; father time is undefeated, or whatever. Basically, there’s a natural decline and then a talent drop-off for people who are going to work there versus those who will go work at new, exciting, high-upside things. Then there's the anti-big tech company backlash. Now, if there's a new social network that takes off, like Instagram did or like WhatsApp was doing, Facebook can't buy it anymore. Because of antitrust regulations, the next one that takes off, Facebook can't acquire. This will lead to them losing their stranglehold, as that was their previous way of extending their lifespan—by acquiring the next best social thing and bringing it in-house. So, that's gone for all the tech companies; they can't do that anymore.

Sam Parr

I typically hate discussing big company stuff like Google and Facebook. I find it to be incredibly boring, and I'm like, "Who the fuck cares? This doesn't actually impact me at all." I think that takes place, or that exists, for a lot of our listeners. I'll be very curious to hear if they even remotely cared about this discussion. So, let's see what they have to say.

Shaan Puri

yeah tweet at us alright I'm out of here we're done