2.13.2020 My First Million ft. Furqan Rydhan

AR, VR, Drones, and $1B AppLovin Story - February 14, 2020 (about 5 years ago) • 53:03

This My First Million podcast episode features Shaan Puri and Sam Parr interviewing Furqan Rydhan, Shaan's former co-founder and CTO. Furqan shares his unique journey from programming at 15 to co-founding a successful ad tech company, AppLovin, and his current passion for exploring new technologies and business ideas. The conversation revolves around Furqan's entrepreneurial experiences, focusing on idea generation and the importance of identifying product-market fit.

Early Career and Entrepreneurial Spirit: Furqan recounts working at a dot-com at 15, then building a million-dollar e-commerce business for computer parts while still in high school.
AppLovin's Success Story: He discusses the journey of AppLovin, highlighting the initial struggles with various ideas before finding success with an app recommendation ad network. He emphasizes the importance of persistence and recognizing true product-market fit.
AR/VR Opportunities: Furqan shares his fascination with AR/VR, proposing an idea for a real-life Mario Kart experience using AR goggles and go-karts. He also suggests a drone-based version for at-home entertainment.
Meeting Technology Enhancements: He discusses the need for better meeting technology, particularly for remote teams, proposing a digital whiteboard system utilizing iPads and Apple Pencils.
AirPods and New Capabilities: Furqan explores potential applications for AirPods, including seamless communication and hands-free recipe guidance in the kitchen.
Lucid Drone Investment and Drone Applications: He highlights his investment in Lucid Drone, a company using drones for window washing, and suggests similar applications for car washing and other tasks.
Importance of Execution and Clarity: Reflecting on his experience with AppLovin, Furqan emphasizes the importance of clear communication, decisive execution, and a bias for action.

Transcript:

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:00	Shaan Puri	Alright, we're here. We're back, as we do. We got a guest, Furkan, in the house.
00:05	Furqan Rydhan	how's it going guys
00:06	Sam Parr	what's up
00:07	Shaan Puri	So, background: Who's Furkan? Furkan is my co-founder and CTO at Beboe. Before we sold, we've been working together for, I don't know, 5 or 6 years now—maybe 6 or 7 years.
00:17	Furqan Rydhan	yeah it's getting towards 7 I think
00:18	Shaan Puri	it's one of those things where you just keep saying 5 years you know no matter how long it's been
00:22	Sam Parr	but he has an interesting background before that
00:24	Shaan Puri	very good background you wanna give us like the give the highlights alright
00:28	Furqan Rydhan	The highlights: I grew up here in the Bay Area. I got started just programming as a kid, and so I had a unique experience where I worked at a dotcom when I was 15. That was kind of like...
00:40	Shaan Puri	were you going to high school at the time or did you drop out
00:42	Furqan Rydhan	I was going to high school. I had just finished my sophomore year and I was really into computers. My dad was like, "Hey, I know this guy. They need to hire some people. They're looking to make like a website." At the time, they had a router for hotel rooms. It was like hotels wanted to put in DSL and kind of like good internet. They're like, "Oh, you gotta... we need this interface." Like the, you know, Linksys interface for your router now.
01:03	Shaan Puri	just the html side of things
01:05	Furqan Rydhan	Yeah, and HTML at the time was really nothing. It was like you could put some stuff together. I showed my dad how to make a menu, and he was like, "Wow, this is groundbreaking!" There was no JavaScript.
01:13	Shaan Puri	how much were you gonna pay that 15 to do this
01:16	Furqan Rydhan	if I had worked the whole year it would have been about a 120 k wow pretty pretty ridiculous
01:20	Shaan Puri	so this is dotcomboom
01:21	Furqan Rydhan	dotcomboom probably because they're hiring 15 year olds but you know
01:26	Shaan Puri	and then that happens then you did a e commerce thing
01:29	Furqan Rydhan	yeah and so that company didn't work out obviously you know spending money
01:32	Shaan Puri	paying 15 year olds a 120 k
01:34	Furqan Rydhan	Exactly. So, I kind of went back to high school, and then I got bored. I was really into computers and gaming, and I had this idea: people like to trick out their cars. They like to put lights and fun things in their cars. So, I thought, "Why don't people do this with computers?" People are really passionate about it. I looked it up and found some forums online where people were doing this. The problem was, there was nowhere to buy things or do things, especially here in the U.S. So, I started an e-commerce store kind of accidentally. I thought, "Oh, these things are really expensive. If I buy them in bulk, I can get them cheaper." I figured I could sell some off and have some extra cash on the side. I think we started with $800 worth of stuff in the corner of my garage, and then within the first year, we did $1,000,000 in revenue.
02:15	Sam Parr	wow
02:16	Furqan Rydhan	and it was like pretty how
02:17	Sam Parr	old were you
02:17	Furqan Rydhan	I was 17
02:18	Sam Parr	so holy shit
02:19	Furqan Rydhan	In high school at the time, and so that was pretty crazy because it went from, you know, one corner of the garage to a full 3-car garage to living room, family room... like there were boxes everywhere. My parents were super supportive of this, obviously, but... and so that was kinda the early days, I would say.
02:35	Shaan Puri	And then we'll fast forward because there's a lot more to the story, but we'll do the highlights. So, if I'm listening to this, you know, when I ever ask people about their background, really what I'm trying to say is give people a sense of who you are. It's also kind of just like credibility. It's like, "Why should you be interested in what I have?"
02:48	Furqan Rydhan	to do you're trying
02:49	Sam Parr	to make you're trying to impress people
02:50	Shaan Puri	Yeah, it's like this is the time to basically brag. So I'll brag for you because you're a pretty humble guy; you don't brag a lot. The other interesting part is that you took a couple of years off and played poker professionally in Europe, traveling around. That was fun. When you came back, you did your own startup, which failed. But then the next startup, which you started with Adam and a couple of other guys, you all tried and failed on a bunch of ideas. I think probably nine ideas.
03:12	Furqan Rydhan	Yeah, it was about 9 ideas across 2 or 3 years that we tried. One idea, I would say, was really serious - we tried that for about 9 months. And then you're going through like 3-month chunks of... really bad ideas and attempts. And then...
03:24	Shaan Puri	And my favorite anecdote of this whole time, because I think this is very real and you don't hear people talk about this, was sometimes when you guys were in between ideas or it just wasn't working. What did you do? You'd come to the office and do what?
03:36	Furqan Rydhan	we would just play fifa all day day I mean literally
03:38	Sam Parr	that's what you guys did at monkey inferno yeah yeah
03:41	Shaan Puri	we would we would do it for like an hour these guys were just like that was the day
03:44	Furqan Rydhan	yeah it was like 8 hours of fifa oh man that was a tough day let me get back home and kinda get back to it
03:49	Shaan Puri	But did you think that was weird? Like, Adam and those guys had success, so part of you was probably like, "Look, if these successful guys think this is alright, this can't be too bad." But I would be anxious if we were doing that.
04:00	Furqan Rydhan	There was some anxiety, but they were super calm and collected. So that kind of made me wonder, "Why am I worried?"
04:07	Sam Parr	like well so adam was pretty wealthy
04:09	Furqan Rydhan	Yeah, he previously worked on a couple of ad tech companies, and they had grown to be pretty big. I would say like, you know, one was worth maybe $50 million, and the one before that might have been in that range too. So he had done some stuff. John, who is the other co-founder there, had worked at VMware early on, and he had worked on ad products that got bought by [other companies].
04:26	Sam Parr	and they were self funding the company
04:28	Furqan Rydhan	yeah they were self funding and so
04:29	Sam Parr	I cannot believe how I would be like, "No, we're getting to work. You're self-funding my money!"
04:35	Furqan Rydhan	and I think we were apart I mean the cool thing was you sat around you talked about things you guys
04:39	Sam Parr	how many people
04:40	Furqan Rydhan	ideas we were probably like 5 or 6 people at
04:42	Sam Parr	the time
04:43	Furqan Rydhan	So it was pretty small. It wasn't... I mean, we had a good office in Palo Alto, bigger than we needed, but you could tell they're not worried. I shouldn't be worried. You sit around for a week, you get some ideas, then you go and work on them. It all felt pretty natural at that [point].
04:55	Sam Parr	And the outcome of this was what
04:56	Shaan Puri	yeah so you cracked the nut finally
04:58	Furqan Rydhan	Yeah, so we had... you know, they had a previous background in ad tech. We had made this product called AppLovin that was an app where you could see what apps your friends were using. So it was like a social network where if you're playing Candy Crush, it says, "Hey, Sam is playing Candy Crush and you should play too!" We're like, "Wow, this is pretty interesting. People really convert with this. This should just be an ad product." And then that kind of drove it and we said, "Wait, we should just make a real network out of this." Then we sat down, we built that for a couple months, and then it kind of skyrocketed after that.
05:26	Sam Parr	and how big how big is it now
05:29	Furqan Rydhan	They're really massive now. It's been a while since I've been over there, but you know, a couple years back they had a big liquidity event over $1,400,000,000. So, I think they've probably grown in multiple since then.
05:41	Sam Parr	yeah I mean I heard that it sold like only 3 years after it started
05:45	Furqan Rydhan	yeah it was really fast
05:46	Sam Parr	and it was doing like 6 or 700,000,000 in revenue like some crazy number
05:50	Furqan Rydhan	Yeah, it was magical to see what product-market fit really looks like. I always thought, "Oh, these things are working." No, they weren't working, and this is what working looked like. It was probably one of the best versions of it, so maybe my view is a little skewed on that. But the first month, it was like, "Man, we just jumped up to like $10,000+ in revenue a day," and then you just kind of keep skyrocketing up from that. It's pretty crazy as an engineer too because now your servers are being hammered. You're running around all night, pulling all-nighters just because money's flowing, and you gotta kind of keep it up. So that was kind of crazy but fun.
06:23	Shaan Puri	So, the Applovin story is $4,000,000 in self-funding initially. Then, they raised a small strategic round. I don't know exactly what the total is, but it's about $5,000,000 in total funding.
06:33	Furqan Rydhan	yeah I think that's exactly what it was
06:34	Shaan Puri	And then the first liquidity event, they sold a portion of the company to a Chinese company for over $1,400,000,000. So that's like massive capital efficiency. You were the CTO and kind of a co-founder there. We met after that, started working together, and became really good friends. We've built a bunch of stuff together. What I like about you, which is why I wanted you to own the podcast, is not necessarily that we're going to talk too much about AppLovin. That's just to establish who you are. You are, like me, an idea guy. You always have a bunch of ideas and see interesting stuff. But you're also deeply technical and understand the business side and the product side too. There are very few people who do that.
07:10	Sam Parr	I'm definitely going to ask about Applovin in a little bit. Okay, before we even get to the ideas, let me tell you something real quick because this is related. My best friend started Vungle, which was Applovin's competitor. They raised $16,000,000, and when they got acquired, they had $100,000,000 in cash. What did it sell for? $750 million—half of what you guys sold for. Very successful. Yesterday, Jack, this was after you left. Okay, so we have to apologize a little bit. Yesterday, Lance Armstrong popped in, and our episode got kind of ruined.
07:40	Shaan Puri	or or made or made
07:42	Sam Parr	Or made whatever it was hectic. We did this thing; it was cool. Sean, you left. Yeah, Jack was here. It was me, Lance, Adam, and Jack just chilling right here. Jack's kind of like Cervantes; he's really smart but doesn't pay attention to a lot of things. We were talking about the podcast, and I asked Lance, "How big is your podcast?" He said, "It's like, whatever, 100,000 listeners." He goes, "It took me a long time to build that up, you know, after I got cut off." Jack was like, "What? Cut off? What do you mean? Did Apple shut you down or something?" He goes, "No, you know, like from the incident that happened seven years ago. Everything dropped off." Jack was like, "What do you need?" And Lance looked at...
08:26	Shaan Puri	explain it
08:27	Sam Parr	Lance looked at me and he goes, "Is this guy serious?" I'm like, "Yeah, dude. He's like a business savant." That's what happens; he doesn't know. He goes, "This is awesome, Sam! You gotta bring more people like this around me." Then Lance goes, "Jack, I basically went from hero to zero overnight. I lost everything." And Jack was like, "Oh, okay."
08:47	Furqan Rydhan	from
08:47	Sam Parr	and and like did he's like from from you know like it was hilarious
08:51	Shaan Puri	that's amazing
08:52	Furqan Rydhan	that's awesome
08:53	Shaan Puri	And if you Jack did a whole episode, you can kind of tell he's like... and the stuff he cares about, he's so deep in the wings.
08:59	Sam Parr	rain man
09:00	Shaan Puri	and then other stuff he's completely oblivious to which is awesome
09:03	Sam Parr	Yeah, it was so funny. Jack started your guys' company, or maybe their first... I don't know, but your competitors. It reminded me of that. So, what do you want to do?
09:16	Shaan Puri	I wanna hear some ideas you said you have a story was that the story or you no
09:19	Sam Parr	I'll tell it tomorrow
09:20	Shaan Puri	Okay, cool. So we want to have guests that come in and bring their ideas—stuff they find interesting. So either little phenomena they've observed, ideas they've been cooking up, or something off their list they have on their phone, whatever it is. So, do you have stuff like that? Do you have a list of ideas, or no?
09:36	Furqan Rydhan	I wrote down some ideas for this. Oh yeah, I usually just keep them up here and, you know, the important ones make their way out.
09:42	Shaan Puri	let's talk about the process where do you get a lot of like where do when do ideas come to you
09:47	Furqan Rydhan	usually when I'm not trying to come up with an idea
09:49	Shaan Puri	like in the shower
09:50	Furqan Rydhan	Or whatever... shower, driving, just kind of around not really thinking about anything, and then something pops up. The second one, I would say, is like when I'm reading online. If you read something interesting, you're like, "Wait, that's cool, but it would be cooler if it was..." and then that's kind of where my mind wanders, right?
10:04	Sam Parr	I think that the best idea is you just steal
10:07	Furqan Rydhan	oh yeah
10:07	Sam Parr	So, it's like... it's kind of like that. You're like, "Oh, but what if you applied it?" Like, the way this restaurant industry is working, they should actually apply that to Indian food, and it would be way bigger, right?
10:18	Furqan Rydhan	Yeah, it's like remixing, right? It's like I want to sample some ideas real quick and then I want to turn it into my own idea.
10:24	Shaan Puri	so what you got what's interesting to you
10:26	Furqan Rydhan	Okay, so I'll start with one: we went go-karting a couple weeks back. I'm really into VR/AR... I mean, you know this. I gave you an Oculus just so you can, you know, feel my flow.
10:36	Sam Parr	you gave him 1
10:37	Furqan Rydhan	yeah I gave him an oculus gift right
10:39	Sam Parr	that's awesome yeah
10:40	Furqan Rydhan	I was like john you gotta do this you're never gonna buy one on your own you're gonna be a skeptic forever
10:44	Sam Parr	here you go are you using it
10:45	Shaan Puri	Yeah, because he was telling me, "There's this one thing you're going to love." I was skeptical; I was like, "Is there any good games? What am I gonna do with this?" And he's like, "Dude, you gotta try this PokerStars thing." I was like, "Okay, what about VR poker? Why do I need that?" It is fucking amazing! Have you tried this thing? Have you seen it?
11:03	Sam Parr	well I've done boxing I played all the games but I didn't
11:05	Shaan Puri	have the the poker one it's incredible
11:07	Sam Parr	I I'm gonna go buy an inoculus just to play
11:09	Furqan Rydhan	yeah seriously you should they're sold out so it's gonna be tough but you know maybe we can get you one too
11:13	Sam Parr	you really can't buy 1
11:14	Furqan Rydhan	Right now, they're out, dude. They're totally sold out from Christmas. They just completely sold out and haven't been able to refill it. They said it was January, then February, and now it's March. They're talking about all these delays from China.
11:25	Shaan Puri	that's a good sign for vr
11:26	Furqan Rydhan	Yeah, I mean, they totally... it's the first device where I looked at it and I said, "I can give it to somebody that's not a VR junkie, and they would actually get excited about it." I think the poker one is great because people want to build these really immersive experiences, like boxing. But actually, you don't really want entertainment like that all the time. I actually want more "sit on the couch" experiences. So, you know, some of the things I've been thinking about in VR is: what can I build while I'm on the couch? Yeah, and so this idea I had is not about that, but that was the 10th in VR. We went go-karting, and you know when you go go-karting, it's really about how quickly you make these turns. How fast are you? How good of a driver are you? You know, how aggressive are you? Things like that. Afterwards, we were just kind of talking about some ideas, and I was like, "Dude, it would be cool if we could go to a go-karting place, but it's like Mario Kart instead." You have these AR goggles over your head, and it's not about quick turns. It's like a longer track where you can kind of have some space. But I, you know, would digitally go over this box, and now I have a weapon that I could shoot at your car. If I hit you successfully, your car kind of shuts down for a second, and you're stuck.
12:28	Sam Parr	so it'd be
12:28	Furqan Rydhan	like the real life mario kart go
12:30	Sam Parr	is this like the sandbox thing
12:31	Shaan Puri	So, this would be like a sandbox or the Museum of Ice Cream. It'd be a place you go, put on this thing, and play with a bunch of friends.
12:38	Sam Parr	I'm big on sandbox
12:40	Shaan Puri	like laser tag it's like modern day laser tag exactly
12:42	Furqan Rydhan	do you
12:42	Sam Parr	think that sandbox is a big business
12:44	Furqan Rydhan	I think Sandbox is fantastic. I mean, it's hard to see if it's going to be successful or not because retail has all these problems, and having space has all these problems. But that's not retail... Well, yes, it's not retail, but they kind of have retail spaces, right? Like they want to be...
12:59	Shaan Puri	brick and mortar right
13:00	Furqan Rydhan	yeah they wanna be like in a spot where there's a lot of
13:02	Sam Parr	people involved it's it's just an activity it's just like escape room or something it's
13:05	Shaan Puri	like escape room but it escape room and I know I know guys who own like 200 escape rooms
13:10	Sam Parr	are they awesome
13:10	Shaan Puri	it's an amazing business because escape rooms are super lightweight you don't
13:13	Sam Parr	do anything you just have a
13:15	Shaan Puri	If one person buys the kit, you can just keep reassembling the room. You have these very small footages.
13:21	Sam Parr	big is that company
13:23	Shaan Puri	well it's not one company but it's it's like like you can just own a different franchise
13:27	Sam Parr	yeah but like you can own a mcdonald's franchise they still report revenues as one
13:31	Furqan Rydhan	yeah have you seen this as
13:33	Shaan Puri	a movie or private
13:34	Sam Parr	I've never been in an escape room, and I will never go to one. That's my fear. I don't want to. Is that claustrophobic? Because I'm really claustrophobic. I don't like flying. No, I will never go.
13:42	Furqan Rydhan	In general, VR or AR experiences are going to be, I think, fantastic. You could see theme parks going to this. Like, I heard about a theme park that has a roller coaster ride in VR where they give you goggles. You're in this kind of mechanical thing, but then you're actually in a dungeon and there's lava... it's a totally immersed experience. I think that people are going to experience it first like that, and I could totally see you coming up with all kinds of different content types, whether it's Mario Kart or escape room or [other similar experiences].
14:09	Sam Parr	that's a great? So here here's
14:10	Shaan Puri	a cool model of this
14:11	Sam Parr	I
14:11	Shaan Puri	I have a buddy who worked at this company called 2 Bit Circus. Have you ever heard of them? No? So, the guy, the founder, his dad started Chuck E. Cheese. His name is Nolan, whatever the guy's name is.
14:22	Sam Parr	atari guy
14:23	Shaan Puri	Yeah, he started Atari and Chuck E. Cheese. Now his son has started this thing called 2 Bit Circus, and I love the concept. I think the son, kind of... I don't know the guy, but my read on the situation is that he just wants to do a million things, not really executing on this business as he should. But the concept is amazing. They go city to city, like a traveling circus, similar to Cirque du Soleil or wherever, and they pop up this thing. It's like a weekend event where parents bring their kids, and all the attractions are like digital wonders. So it's like a VR thing.
14:53	Sam Parr	how big is that
14:54	Shaan Puri	A hologram thing, and they were doing really well. Every city they were going to, they were selling out like crazy. But he was also getting distracted. They were doing things like a company would be like, "Hey, we'll give you half a million dollars to do our company retreat."
15:05	Sam Parr	yeah
15:05	Shaan Puri	And then, boom! The whole company... The CEO comes in and says, "Hey, we had to go do this corporate retreat." The company is just like, "Dude, we need like one direction." But can you do the same in context?
15:14	Sam Parr	Henry, can you look up Dave and Buster's revenue? Also, look up Chuck E. Cheese's. I bet Chuck E. Cheese is owned by private equity.
15:21	Furqan Rydhan	chuck e cheese probably makes a killing
15:23	Shaan Puri	and if you've gone to
15:24	Sam Parr	A Chuck E. Cheese? There's a way... yeah, they went right on that. Well, where I'm from in Missouri, where they were probably popular, it's like where trashy, poor people go. I mean, it's pretty... yeah, wack. Like, I wouldn't go there because it was famous for the parents getting drunk and fighting.
15:42	Shaan Puri	did you go get divorced
15:44	Sam Parr	Yeah, like Chuck E. Cheese. It was like peewee hockey and Chuck E. Cheese. That's like where parents get drunk and fight. What's the number?
15:51	Shaan Puri	and by the way does it pick up henry when he says this stuff
15:54	Sam Parr	No, they wait for... Repeat it. Yeah, repeat what he said: $332,000,000 for Dave and Buster's and $896,000,000 for Chuck E. Cheese.
16:02	Shaan Puri	Annual revenue for Dave and Buster's is $330,000,000. Chuck E. Cheese has almost $1,000,000,000 in annual revenue. However, these businesses are definitely ripe for doing something new because they are stale.
16:11	Sam Parr	is chuck e cheese public did you say it's a public company if like trying
16:16	Shaan Puri	to buy stock
16:16	Furqan Rydhan	well I
16:17	Sam Parr	wanna see what the income is
16:18	Furqan Rydhan	trying to buy chuck e cheese you know
16:20	Sam Parr	No, I'm into this. I think that these things are cool. I think I'm terribly into it. When I tried Oculus, I was like, "I'm gonna quit my company and only do this."
16:28	Shaan Puri	By the way, random story... I found this YouTube channel once that was talking about all these old brands that are just gone to shit, like Chuck E. Cheese. And he was like, this guy just shorts stocks, and he was like, "My short pick of the year is Tootsie Roll." And he was like, "You ever met anyone who likes Tootsie Roll?"
16:45	Sam Parr	I love him
16:45	Shaan Puri	He said, "People who like Tootsie Rolls are all 35 and up." He's like, "No kid wants Tootsie Rolls. They go out for Halloween."
16:50	Sam Parr	they're a public
16:51	Shaan Puri	Company Tootsie Roll? They throw that shit away. He goes, "Tootsie Roll has no other products. It's just Tootsie Roll, and their population [of customers] is dying." Secondly, the owner is like some 76-year-old woman who will never sell the company. So nobody can turn it around, nobody can change it. That company is just going to...
17:06	Sam Parr	tootsie rolls a is is its own company company and so
17:09	Shaan Puri	He was like, "You should short the stock." So, I watched this 2-minute YouTube video, and I was like, "I took out a short position." I did great! It's been awesome.
17:16	Sam Parr	that's badass is it public
17:18	Furqan Rydhan	link over here
17:19	Shaan Puri	yeah this guy
17:19	Sam Parr	No, they tried to go public and it collapsed. Another thing that I would do... I love this! Six Flags has had a hell of a turnaround, a positive turn. So, there's this guy named Bob Pittman. He was one of the inspirations for me starting The Hustle because Bob Pittman created MTV when he was in his twenties. Then he went and started something called The Pilot Group, which launched loads of different email newsletters, including Thrillist, which is like a huge thing—it's like a $1,000,000,000 media company. Anyway, Bob Pittman is now the CEO of iHeartMedia and was formerly also the CEO of Six Flags. He turned it around, and it's really good. It's been around forever, you know? It ebbs and flows, but it's good.
18:06	Furqan Rydhan	Yeah, I think entertainment can always level up. When you're leaving the house to go do something, the more immersed and exciting it is, that's what you want. I can get all the rest of the stuff at home, but that's why I think Sandbox is fantastic. The only negative I've heard is, "Hey, I've gone to it twice, and it was similar content." But yeah, they're gonna work that out. They're gonna keep growing it. I think it's gonna be amazing.
18:26	Sam Parr	I love this
18:27	Furqan Rydhan	The spin-off of this idea for the lazy people that I have is, I was like, "Okay, you gotta go to this place and go go-karting." I'm like, "Alright, what's the other reason?"
18:34	Shaan Puri	yeah why can't I stay at home correct
18:35	Furqan Rydhan	So if you replace the carts with drones and you let people sit at home on a controller and control these drones... Real-life drones are flying around this warehouse and I'm fighting you. Again, same thing, it's all digital so I can hit something, shoot you, your drone just flies and breaks. You gotta go, let's start over again.
18:52	Shaan Puri	so there's a pit of people who just go pick up the drone
18:54	Sam Parr	Yes, alright. I can add to this. There's this guy I know. I don't know if they're public, so I won't talk about them yet. But anyway, what they did was in Vegas or in Nevada, where it's really cheap, they bought something like 100 or 1,000... a significant amount of claw machines, you know, claw machines.
19:14	Shaan Puri	like for arcade machines yeah
19:16	Sam Parr	And you download the app, and you pay a certain amount of money. You can control the claw machine remotely. It's fantastic! It picks up the item and drops it down to the thing.
19:25	Furqan Rydhan	and then
19:25	Sam Parr	you just get
19:26	Shaan Puri	huge in japan
19:27	Sam Parr	you just get emailed like a gift card
19:28	Shaan Puri	they mail you a gift card yeah
19:30	Sam Parr	I don't know what the mailing system is. I don't know if you actually get mailed that thing or if it's a gift card that you get sent, but...
19:37	Shaan Puri	I saw my friend doing this on his phone. I was like, "What are you playing? What game is that?" He goes, "Oh, there's an arcade in Japan and I'm controlling the claw."
19:44	Sam Parr	so this is like what yeah
19:46	Shaan Puri	this is crazy we
19:47	Furqan Rydhan	had talked about it at some.
19:48	Sam Parr	Okay, but here's how my buddy's building this business. He's building it to be like... he's building it to where it's gonna take off, and they're gonna capture all the value. Then, it's just gonna slowly die.
19:58	Shaan Puri	I guess he's a known fad basically is what you're saying like he knows it's a fad
20:01	Sam Parr	yeah which I love I like that those things right I've but that's how he's building it
20:05	Furqan Rydhan	do it on like wish products because they're so cheap that you could kinda like have
20:08	Shaan Puri	some subscription
20:09	Furqan Rydhan	thing where it's like hey you have to get one random wish product but
20:12	Shaan Puri	That's what Wish should do. You're browsing Wish, and after 2 minutes, it's like, "Enter bonus round!" You have the claw in our support, our warehouse, pick something up.
20:20	Sam Parr	I I'm into this I think it's cool
20:22	Shaan Puri	alright what else you got
20:23	Furqan Rydhan	okay so have you guys used
20:26	Sam Parr	the wait hold on here's what we'll do actually in the next couple days I'll come prepared with some 6 flags and chuck e cheese numbers
20:31	Furqan Rydhan	okay excellent
20:31	Sam Parr	I'm interested in this I wanna
20:32	Furqan Rydhan	hear these numbers too so I
20:33	Sam Parr	wanna know what the start up costs are for sandbox vr
20:37	Shaan Puri	And I'm curious, tweet at us if you like because we nerd out on things like, "I wonder how that business does." We go look up the numbers and figure out who this guy is, who's Bob Pittman, and how much income they make. I don't know if we're unique in that, but if you like that stuff, either in the Facebook group "Just My First Million" or on Twitter, tell us if that's something you want more of or less of. Just be honest!
20:57	Furqan Rydhan	yeah that's great you know you're gonna get your listeners to tell you what what they love
21:00	Sam Parr	what happens yeah
21:01	Shaan Puri	because that's the weird thing with podcasts you don't know what they want yeah
21:04	Sam Parr	what else
21:05	Furqan Rydhan	So, in general, I look at themes. It's like, okay, Apple releases a bunch of random devices. So I'll call them AirPods. Not really random, but this Apple Pencil... I don't know if you guys have seen this, but I have one.
21:15	Sam Parr	it's a yeah it's what's a $125
21:17	Furqan Rydhan	It's expensive. And like the iPad Pro, it's expensive, but then I'm like, "Great, this new capability is there." What product exists for it? So, you know, recently I've been kind of playing around a lot with the iPad, and I'll kind of try to show you guys this.
21:29	Shaan Puri	I can hold the mic or
21:30	Sam Parr	Do you use... are you one of those people who get rid of their computer and only use an iPad? I'm all... I think that's weird. I think it's fucking weird.
21:39	Furqan Rydhan	It’s... I like this in certain cases. Like when I’m traveling, it’s a lot better than me lugging around my laptop.
21:45	Sam Parr	did work pay for that
21:46	Furqan Rydhan	no this is mine
21:48	Shaan Puri	so I just forgot doesn't like to submit expenses oh
21:51	Furqan Rydhan	yeah
21:51	Shaan Puri	like reimbursement
21:52	Furqan Rydhan	really bad with stuff like that
21:53	Shaan Puri	When we sold Bebo, how many unreimbursed things did you have? I bet it's like in the tens of thousands of dollars.
21:59	Furqan Rydhan	yeah yeah it's it's definitely in the 5 digit range I should be better at that but you know what
22:03	Sam Parr	adam did that I had to pay him $5 because he didn't like submit shit
22:07	Furqan Rydhan	Life has been good to me, so I'm not really going to be wasting anything. You know, let me pull this up.
22:16	Shaan Puri	so the general theme is like new hardware comes out what can I do with this
22:20	Furqan Rydhan	Yeah, that's the general theme. So one of the things I've been playing with is this app called Flow. It's basically like this kind of whiteboard app, right? And so it's kind of hard to show obviously, but the idea for me was... You know how you sit in a meeting room, right? And you love the whiteboard, you love getting up and moving.
22:36	Sam Parr	yeah he does that shit all the time
22:37	Furqan Rydhan	whiteboard but they don't like you like getting up I like
22:40	Shaan Puri	to get I like to get my steve jobs on
22:41	Sam Parr	well he always has like analogies over shit he's like we're trying to build a race car but let's start with the bicycle
22:45	Furqan Rydhan	Yeah, that's the analogy that we go with. So the idea was, okay, you take this kind of experience with the iPad and pencil, but this whiteboard over here should just be digital, right? So if I want to show you something, I just start drawing here and it just shows up there. You're like, "No, no," and you want to kind of feed off of it. And like, we could just have our own... okay?
23:02	Shaan Puri	So, for those who can't see what he's saying... Your Space is saying you've got a little iPad in front of you, [or] little tablet. You're in a big meeting room. If you... you should be able to quickly sketch something or write something or draw something, and it just uses the whiteboard as a display. Like it's a TV, basically.
23:14	Furqan Rydhan	and then it's remote friendly so everybody can get the same whiteboard experience because I mean what happens if you're remote
23:19	Shaan Puri	That happened to me yesterday. I was remote conferencing in, and the guy gets up. He's like, "Here's what this really means." He drew something on a whiteboard that I couldn't see, and everyone in the meeting was like, "Oh yeah, that makes total sense."
23:29	Furqan Rydhan	and you're like
23:30	Shaan Puri	I'm just the you'll live in our video conference I talked to
23:32	Sam Parr	A bunch of people. So, do you know this guy named Wayne? I forget his last name. He sold something to Twitter.
23:39	Shaan Puri	yeah they're doing digits now
23:40	Sam Parr	ma or is it ma
23:42	Shaan Puri	I think it's ma or
23:43	Sam Parr	Anyway, I was talking to him, and he said they're 100% remote. I was like, "How do you do that?" because we're struggling with this whole whiteboard thing. He was like, "Man, there's this one app that they never update, and that's kind of what we've hacked together to use." This is a problem that...
23:55	Furqan Rydhan	Yeah, I think people are going to remote work for two main reasons: 1. There's really good talent elsewhere. You might find a perfect fit for a role, but they're not local. That's not a good enough reason to pass on them anymore. 2. Cost considerations. If you're in the city, people don't really like... you know, they don't want to pay that much for their housing or rent. These factors are driving the shift towards remote work opportunities.
24:09	Sam Parr	or food just basically making the whiteboard work for remote workers
24:13	Furqan Rydhan	Yeah, and also, or even if you're here... Yeah, yeah, like I still want a big view of it. If I'm here, like if we're all here, we want to get that. That's badass.
24:20	Sam Parr	I'm into it
24:21	Furqan Rydhan	And so, the pencil and the iPad, I think, is a good combination. People will have that around, and I think it'll become more common. Now, you can kind of connect all these groups together.
24:29	Shaan Puri	So, last podcast, I was talking about meeting tech—stuff that makes meetings more effective and efficient. Because, you know, so many billions of dollars are spent on people's time in meetings.
24:39	Sam Parr	Do you know how cheap it is? I mean, it would cost way less than anything to make this. You know that, right? Okay, this is a screen. This is a 55-inch. I think out there we have a 65-inch TCL, 4K... or no, we didn't get the 4K, it's 1080p. You know how much that cost?
24:54	Furqan Rydhan	it's like 3.99 now it's
24:56	Sam Parr	pretty cheap no no no it was like 2.50 or 1.80 it's like
24:59	Furqan Rydhan	it's probably cheaper than this whiteboard
25:01	Shaan Puri	that's the retail price
25:02	Sam Parr	Yeah, like on Amazon, I bought it for I think for sure less than $300, maybe less than $200.
25:08	Furqan Rydhan	Yeah, I believe it. Screens are really cheap, so where else can you put screens? I think you can actually enhance meetings if somebody puts up slides. I want to write over the slides... I think you unlock more capability than just supplementing what you have today. And I think that's where this will become superior to us going to the whiteboard with, you know, those Expo pens and kind of writing there.
25:27	Shaan Puri	right so
25:27	Sam Parr	meeting tech yeah meeting tech I didn't get it yesterday I mean I was but
25:31	Shaan Puri	now you're getting it
25:32	Sam Parr	you you you didn't have you
25:33	Shaan Puri	I didn't have a good example
25:34	Sam Parr	set a meeting in a box
25:36	Shaan Puri	yeah it was it was bad it was bad
25:38	Furqan Rydhan	I like your other idea of
25:39	Sam Parr	the meeting
25:40	Furqan Rydhan	you know the ar I
25:40	Shaan Puri	I was trying to get to that, but then I fumbled the initial thing I said: "meeting in a box." It sounded stupid to me before.
25:45	Sam Parr	and then lance armstrong showed up
25:47	Shaan Puri	yeah lance armstrong showed up but I felt like a chump
25:51	Furqan Rydhan	so the only it's a meeting in a box
25:54	Sam Parr	that was
25:55	Shaan Puri	fucking stupid that guy
25:57	Furqan Rydhan	The other one I like is... so everyone has AirPods on now, right? And I think AirPods did one thing, like Apple does really well, is nobody wanted to walk around with a Bluetooth headset. Right? We think... we all agree you didn't look cool. You look like too much.
26:09	Shaan Puri	it was a known douchebag thing
26:11	Furqan Rydhan	yeah yeah
26:12	Sam Parr	it was like having the cell phone on your belt yeah
26:15	Furqan Rydhan	"Great analogy, perfect!" And so I was like, "Great, people have AirPods now, so what else can you build with this?" Again, Apple's unlocking capabilities and hardware, so what software can you build? There are two ideas: one's mine, one's somebody else's, but I'll take credit for both.
26:27	Shaan Puri	yeah exactly whoever says it it's theirs yeah
26:29	Furqan Rydhan	exactly
26:30	Sam Parr	by the way apple or airpods what it how much
26:33	Shaan Puri	10,000,000 units yeah it's a crazy x amount of time
26:37	Sam Parr	so what's that 10 bill is that 10,000,000,000 in sales
26:40	Shaan Puri	yeah just multiply by let's say a 100 it's a 100 it's just really really
26:43	Furqan Rydhan	+ in sales right
26:44	Sam Parr	yeah yeah it would be a fortune 5 100 company yeah
26:46	Furqan Rydhan	I agree, it's fantastic. So one of the things I was thinking about was: "Great, if I have these on all day, can I just have this connected to like my wife or somebody?" Right? And so whether you do it for work or for personal, you always have it on. There's no audio flowing, but then if I'm like, "Hey Sean, what's up?" it knows. Do you have your AirPods on? If it doesn't, it tells me, "Hey, he's not there, but you can record a message. You'll get it later."
27:09	Sam Parr	right
27:09	Furqan Rydhan	But if you're there, you'll just hear my audio and you still aren't on yet. You kind of opt in again to be like, "Yo, what's up man?" It's like... how do you take the phone call away from that? And you're like, "I'm not gonna give this capability to everybody." There's a couple of close people in my life, like my wife, that I'm gonna be like, "Great, I just wanna have this on and this capability that's there." And so...
27:27	Sam Parr	it's like in the office they do this in the tv show office
27:32	Shaan Puri	yeah jim and pam
27:33	Sam Parr	have their
27:33	Shaan Puri	thing just constantly
27:34	Sam Parr	yeah the headset
27:35	Shaan Puri	This is good because it's not on when you don't want it on. So, let's say I have my AirPods in, you have yours in, and I'm walking around at lunch. I have this idea for the podcast. I basically just say, "Yo Sam, what we should do is we should do this." Then you basically receive it, but you're not sending back unless you say whatever the keyword is, like how Alexa works.
27:56	Furqan Rydhan	right like it's like sean or whatever it is
27:58	Shaan Puri	And that's way more lightweight than me picking up my phone and starting to type or make a phone call. Like, who wants to do that, right?
28:04	Furqan Rydhan	so phone calls feel weird a 100% right now
28:08	Sam Parr	yeah I I I'm I'm less bullish on that than the first two
28:13	Furqan Rydhan	Okay, okay, we'll do that. The second version of this idea with AirPods was, you know, Forza, right?
28:18	Shaan Puri	yep so he
28:18	Sam Parr	what is it guys were over oh your homie
28:20	Furqan Rydhan	Yeah, one of our friends and I are doing a small hackathon at the house. He's coming up with this idea again for AirPods.
28:25	Sam Parr	wait wait wait wait wait you're doing a hackathon at your home like for fun
28:29	Furqan Rydhan	yeah just for fun
28:30	Sam Parr	damn ebby you do
28:31	Shaan Puri	this like every week right or like 2 weeks
28:32	Sam Parr	like so what do you guys do
28:34	Shaan Puri	like jake's here jake you did you go to the last one
28:37	Furqan Rydhan	Yeah, we just kind of sit around a table. We're on our laptops, we're talking about ideas, we come up with something and we just kind of try to make it. Usually, you don't end up finishing on the first one, but then the second one you try again, the third one you try again.
28:47	Sam Parr	and it kinda fucking nerds of
28:48	Furqan Rydhan	the last
28:48	Shaan Puri	jake what what'd you build what'd you build at the last one
28:52	Furqan Rydhan	You want me to talk about it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Jake was making this thing where he was like, "It'd be cool if you could test your website from locations around the world, but it would video record what it looked like and how it loaded." So not only do you get this technical data, but you also get a visual representation. And then you could show people, "This is how crappy our website looks like from some random country" or in the US, and what it looks like for other people.
29:14	Sam Parr	that's awesome
29:15	Shaan Puri	yeah that's really awesome
29:16	Furqan Rydhan	everyone's kinda testing numbers but I mean we're a visual
29:19	Shaan Puri	visual care about is oh look how long that took to load look how shitty this looks
29:22	Sam Parr	Have you heard of UserTest? Is it UserVoice or UserTesting? Yeah, you know UserTesting. That's like a $150 million a year business.
29:30	Shaan Puri	shout out to my mom works at user testing really
29:31	Sam Parr	oh there you go it's it's that
29:33	Shaan Puri	It's huge, right? It's big. They're trying to go public, you know? So that means they're at that scale.
29:39	Sam Parr	Where they're doing a $100,000,000+ deal, and all they do is there's someone in the Midwest who's cheap who screen records.
29:44	Furqan Rydhan	alright well
29:45	Sam Parr	let me look at your website okay I'm scrolling down I don't really know
29:47	Shaan Puri	what this means confusion this is more about performance
29:51	Sam Parr	right but they but they but they there's you
29:53	Shaan Puri	get both
29:54	Sam Parr	they're similar there's similar issues
29:56	Furqan Rydhan	Yeah, and I think, you know, today he's looking at it like a performance tool. Like, how do you kind of make it load well? But I think you could totally look at it and apply some machine learning to it where it's like, "This doesn't seem to work well. It's below the fold on these devices." Right? Like, some of those things when you design it and then you put it together, you're not thinking, "Oh, what does it look like on the iPad?"
30:14	Shaan Puri	right
30:14	Furqan Rydhan	And then you kind of just show it like that, and then you have a video. But also, it could detect and say, "Man, this is like your main button. That's awesome!" showing up down here. And you know, you could offer... what are...
30:22	Sam Parr	you gonna do with this
30:23	Shaan Puri	Good job, Jake! I like that project. Okay, so before you send this, what was the other project?
30:28	Furqan Rydhan	So this idea was around cooking. You're in a kitchen and you're like, "Oh, I want to hear these recipes and things like that." And so again, your hands are dirty in the kitchen. What do you do? You pull out your phone, your laptop? It doesn't make sense, right? The idea was you have your AirPods on, and it kind of walks you through the steps. You can go next, go back, and it's like a little recipe thing. I forgot the name that you came up with for it, but I think you could come up with a better name for it.
30:52	Shaan Puri	kitchen in a box
30:53	Furqan Rydhan	yeah kitchen in a box there you go
30:55	Shaan Puri	I
30:55	Furqan Rydhan	think you call it like kitchen pods or something and I was like oh that
30:58	Sam Parr	Doesn't, right? That's how I have you. Okay, so this guy named Andrew Mason, you know that name? Yep. He started Groupon. A few years ago, in his second act, he started this thing called Detour. There it is. They shut it down, and he pivoted to Descript, a podcast thing.
31:16	Shaan Puri	look at us
31:17	Furqan Rydhan	look at us yeah
31:17	Shaan Puri	there we go
31:19	Sam Parr	And anyway, what was the first one? Detour. It was awesome! It was so cool, and this was before AirPods.
31:26	Shaan Puri	so explain what did you do one
31:27	Sam Parr	oh I used to do them all the time but I understand how it wouldn't be huge but I was a power
31:31	Shaan Puri	cool product not a great business
31:32	Sam Parr	Yeah, and so what it was is, you know how when you go to a museum and you have a guided tour that says, "Alright, when you get to this, press this thing"? And then you press the button.
31:41	Shaan Puri	you're like alright
31:41	Sam Parr	I'll tell you about it. You see this painting? You see there's a small little smudge that you'll see up left. That happened when he got angry; he did whatever. So what they do is this, but they do it for cities. It's guided walking tours.
31:51	Furqan Rydhan	that's really interesting
31:52	Sam Parr	But you know, "This American Life" is a really highly produced podcast where you can hear noises. They did that, but it was GPS-based. What they would do is say, "Alright, walk past the street, past Bush Street, keep walking," and then they would play music. It would tell you when you got there and say, "Now look down to your right. You see that hole? That was there from this time." It's awesome; it's so cool! But he shut it down. Anyway, what you're describing is almost like the cooking version of that.
32:23	Furqan Rydhan	right the
32:23	Shaan Puri	utility version of that
32:24	Sam Parr	Which would be significantly larger than the detour version. The detour, because you cook all the time. The detour version I would do it on, like, when my wife was out of town, I ended up doing it.
32:32	Shaan Puri	It does suck to have your hands covered in food and then be like, "Oh, let me go to my iPad or my phone" and try to scroll, click, and zoom to figure out this recipe. How many tablespoons was this supposed to be?
32:42	Sam Parr	has there ever been a big business built around recipes other than an ad based media company
32:48	Shaan Puri	I'm
32:48	Furqan Rydhan	I'm not sure there's a problem with a lot of these ideas. You start thinking too far ahead, you're like, "I don't wanna go do this thing because what does it turn into?" But I think generally the concept, if you took guided tours... like that concept, and you said, "What else in my life could be guided?"
33:01	Sam Parr	that's interesting
33:02	Furqan Rydhan	I think there's a couple of very interesting businesses there or at least interesting products right
33:06	Sam Parr	totally interesting products maybe interesting businesses too totally interesting products
33:10	Shaan Puri	The workout version of this is doing alright. It's like you go to the gym and it's in your ears. It's music plus telling you what to do.
33:16	Sam Parr	I use it all the time aptiv you know what that is
33:18	Furqan Rydhan	no I haven't seen it
33:20	Sam Parr	It's similar. I use it on a regular basis. I pay $100 a year for it. Ethan spoke at HustleCon, tens of millions in subscription revenue. It's what you're describing, but it's for working out.
33:30	Furqan Rydhan	So, I think if you have a great product in a space where a lot of people are doing it, you can come up with a business plan like a $100 a year that matches some.
33:38	Sam Parr	I agree with you
33:39	Furqan Rydhan	so people cook people go to the gym like what else are they doing day to day like I think guided meditation is another one that like
33:44	Sam Parr	oh yeah
33:44	Furqan Rydhan	Really shows the same, right? So, there's probably five others in that space. But I think AirPods made it different than Bluetooth headsets and headphones, you know? Like, so...
33:53	Sam Parr	here's here's a little guide on the
33:54	Shaan Puri	Fire one. Yeah, I know that's why we really... that's why he gets the seat for guided meditation. A lot of people don't like to sit and meditate; it just doesn't do it for them. Their mind races, all this stuff. And like the answer right now is like, "No, that's the... do it." And like sure, that might be true, but for a lot of people, what it means is like, "Fuck this, I'm gonna do something else." So, there are all these other types of meditation, like Transcendental Meditation or whatever, where you're chanting. It's a little more active. There are all kinds of meditation. Hiking is meditation. Exercise is meditation because you're controlling your breathing in a certain way, you're clearing your mind space, and you're freeing your mind. So, I'm curious if somebody can do this sort of detour version that's about walking. You know, it's basically guided meditation, but it's active—not sitting down on a pillow and doing nothing for 30 minutes or whatever it is.
34:47	Sam Parr	yeah like when I would do those detours you did them right
34:49	Shaan Puri	I never did one because well
34:50	Sam Parr	We did one where I went to the Castro, and it was all about the AIDS epidemic. You got to know Harvey Milk, the gay activist who was murdered. He was a gay activist during the eighties when the whole AIDS crisis was going on. The guy talking said, "Now this is the last time that I hugged Harvey before he died." Then he pointed out, "Now this house up here, these guys lived here, and on top, these guys lived here. They all died." I was so emotionally affected by that.
35:23	Shaan Puri	Okay, that gets me thinking. You know, I don't think this would work, but like, you know, yesterday you and Lance Armstrong were both saying, "The podcasts I like best are these true crime ones." What if you did a true crime version of the detour thing where it's a murder mystery? It kind of creeps you the fuck out as you walk around.
35:39	Sam Parr	that's cool
35:40	Shaan Puri	real crimes from your city
35:41	Sam Parr	Yeah, or you have to... So, we did a report on trends. These apps... What are those called again? You know what I'm talking about.
35:50	Furqan Rydhan	the internet transfer give me a
35:51	Sam Parr	Real, no. Like these serialized video apps that... the lady who started it, she sold her thing to Songify. Man, I gotta remember what it was. Anyway, you get it. It's like a choose your own adventure app, okay, for thriller novels.
36:09	Shaan Puri	you're watching things
36:10	Furqan Rydhan	okay interesting
36:11	Sam Parr	Basically, we did a report on it. Our hypothesis was that actually, the erotic novels and romance novels are the biggest segment. Oh, you're talking about "Hooked."
36:19	Furqan Rydhan	hooked yeah
36:20	Sam Parr	Yeah, hooked right. Anyway, I think it's a... I don't know if it's a great business, but it's an okay one.
36:25	Shaan Puri	they scaled up revenue hooked was doing I think 20,000,000 + in revenue if I
36:28	Sam Parr	remember correctly I think churn was stupidly high
36:30	Shaan Puri	yeah
36:31	Sam Parr	anyway also going
36:32	Shaan Puri	for teens
36:32	Sam Parr	What we're describing is that when we did the report, it was romance novels and thrillers that had the highest quality.
36:40	Shaan Puri	General principle though: Hooked is the modern-day Goosebumps. When we were growing up, we would read Goosebumps books, and that was what hooked us as kids. You loved to read, and Hooked said, "Well, now every kid's got a phone. What if we delivered this through this kind of SMS format?" But it's these scary stories, Goosebumps style. And what you were talking about earlier with, you know, Chuck E. Cheese—if you're trying to brainstorm ideas, this is one format to think about: What did I love as a kid? What's the modern-day version of that? Because people...
37:08	Sam Parr	a great framework
37:09	Shaan Puri	People's desires tend to stay the same. Yeah, it's the tools and technology that update and open up new opportunities.
37:14	Sam Parr	that's a good framework yeah can can I ask you about applovin'
37:17	Furqan Rydhan	yeah I got one more idea
37:19	Sam Parr	oh go for it go for it
37:19	Furqan Rydhan	So I'll kind of plug a company I invested in. I invested in this company called Lucid Drone. I think I told you about it. They have... they basically created a drone that can window wash big buildings. So instead of sending like a 5-person crew and a scaffold and whatnot, it's...
37:33	Sam Parr	where did you find that
37:34	Furqan Rydhan	They were a YC company, so you know, YC still produces fantastic companies. I like these guys because it was like, "We got this." You know, it's not just drone tech, and then it's... God, out of nowhere, but it's like...
37:44	Shaan Puri	that is awesome specific application
37:46	Furqan Rydhan	Yeah, specific application. And then you think about it, you're like, "Yeah, five people hanging from a building or one guy working the drone from the bottom and watching it."
37:53	Sam Parr	are those legal
37:55	Furqan Rydhan	Yeah, and so they're out there in a couple of cities. I think there are going to be some small regulations they will have to go through, but this makes sense. It's a lot safer and a lot better overall.
38:03	Sam Parr	they go come out of washington
38:04	Shaan Puri	It saves you money if you're the building owner. It's safer than having humans up there trying to wash windows. Sad way.
38:09	Sam Parr	to lose a life what a bold idea
38:11	Shaan Puri	great idea
38:12	Furqan Rydhan	And what they did is they actually stopped. They tried to go to the building owners and they were like, "Oh man." The building owners responded, "Well, we have a service... it's too complicated." So they went to the guys who were servicing the building. They said, "Hey, I can make your business more efficient. Instead of sending 5 guys out per job, you could do 5 more jobs. Instead of renting this crazy scaffold, you just lease our drone." It's like you make their business more valuable. You're not taking their business, and then you don't have to go do all the building-to-building sales.
38:37	Sam Parr	oh my god I love this
38:38	Shaan Puri	One way of looking at it was, "Oh, we're going to put those guys out of business." Instead, I said, "No, you're my customer. We make you more efficient."
38:44	Furqan Rydhan	Exactly. I think that's some of the best tech I see: it's not about replacing the whole workflow. It's like, "How do we make these people more efficient? How do we allow them to have more capabilities?" And then they can do more; they can do a better job. That's kind of what I look for in emerging tech especially.
38:58	Sam Parr	lucid drones
38:59	Furqan Rydhan	lucid drones
38:59	Shaan Puri	The other genius thing about that is if you wanted to do this, you would either have to go sell every building, and that's a lot of sales. Or, if you go to the company, like you said, the company that already does the window washing, they might have already 50 clients. So now, one sale gets you 50.
39:14	Sam Parr	Man, that's badass! I'm a big fan of boring things like window washing. I think that would be right up my alley. To add this thing to it would be neat. If you told me that someone had that idea, I'd be like, "What?"
39:27	Furqan Rydhan	No, it's really interesting. So my spin-off, the remix of their idea was... probably... You guys, I don't know if you have a car, right? "Yeah, I have a car." Great, you guys both have cars. So I thought maybe none of you guys would have cars out here in the city, but I never wash my car. I never go to a car wash.
39:42	Shaan Puri	me neither you know if
39:42	Furqan Rydhan	I could just have a little drone that sits in my garage that can come up and wash my car for me every so often. Or if you're in a place where it snows, how do I pour some water on the windshield so I don't have to go do that and I can get into the car? That's what I want.
39:54	Sam Parr	oh that's how you you I like that you know this was like a huge failure cherry
39:58	Shaan Puri	but that was humans
39:59	Sam Parr	yeah so that that drones
40:01	Shaan Puri	that this is a roomba yeah
40:02	Sam Parr	I know I'm not
40:03	Shaan Puri	saying that washes your car
40:04	Sam Parr	totally exactly that that failed
40:06	Furqan Rydhan	your car
40:06	Sam Parr	But I looked at the background of why I was like, "That's so stupid. Who on earth would think that was a good idea?" It's a big thing in a lot of different countries. And check this out: bringing gas.
40:16	Shaan Puri	to car yeah
40:18	Sam Parr	bring gas to you
40:19	Shaan Puri	in foreign markets that's like the way that gas works
40:22	Sam Parr	So, car washes... I say "wash" funny. I always have to tell people I say it funny. Get prepared for car washing.
40:29	Shaan Puri	can you not say wash
40:30	Sam Parr	I can't say it's a midwestern thing wash
40:32	Shaan Puri	I can't I was like it's easy it's easier to car washing than giving the disclaimer
40:37	Sam Parr	No, I can't say... I can't say "car." No, you just can't do it. My mouth does... it's like "L's."
40:43	Shaan Puri	now you have your inner
40:44	Furqan Rydhan	impressions cleaning you know
40:45	Shaan Puri	Car cleaning. If somebody says, "What's your greatest weakness?" it's like I can't say why... [expletive] that just makes its way into my words.
40:53	Sam Parr	It's a Midwestern thing. A lot of people say it. Anyway, that's interesting, but I never would have thought. That's kind of cool. But how on earth could you build a machine that does it?
41:04	Furqan Rydhan	I mean that's the thing
41:05	Shaan Puri	does the drone need to be pretty smart to do that or no
41:08	Furqan Rydhan	You know, I think the thing I like about this technology space right now is a lot of the research work is done. People have made drones that can fly and follow you. Like, there's literally Skydio [a drone company].
41:18	Sam Parr	yep
41:18	Furqan Rydhan	it's a $1,000 the you go running in the woods that's their like demo video and it follows you
41:23	Shaan Puri	if you haven't seen this demo video search skydio
41:25	Sam Parr	is that bullshit though
41:26	Shaan Puri	it's amazing how it works you literally go you like throw the camera
41:29	Sam Parr	in the the
41:30	Shaan Puri	that one the other one failed
41:32	Sam Parr	yeah
41:32	Shaan Puri	these guys say they can do it
41:33	Furqan Rydhan	How about this: go on YouTube and look up the users who are doing this. They're recreating it, and you could see it works.
41:39	Sam Parr	okay
41:39	Furqan Rydhan	and so
41:40	Sam Parr	for like snowboarding and skiing and stuff
41:42	Furqan Rydhan	Yeah, snowboarding is another one. I mean, GoPro was like one step up, but now if you have this drone, you can kind of play around.
41:48	Sam Parr	this shit man drones and vr just
41:52	Shaan Puri	We need a drone filming this. It just turns to whoever is talking and does the cut. It just picks.
41:57	Furqan Rydhan	up the right mic and the right person
41:59	Sam Parr	I had one of the first DGI drones, and it fell out of the sky at 1,000 feet. Oh yeah, it ruined it.
42:04	Furqan Rydhan	That happens, but a lot of this technology has seen so much research work done that it has moved it forward. I think it's at the point now where it needs application engineers. You don't need to be a PhD with a computer science background and all these math degrees to create this technology. You can take the work that has been built and established, and then apply it to these things. For example, flying a drone is trivial now. Building a drone is trivial now, and the software to program a drone to fly, as well as object recognition and computer vision, is easy now. So, you combine these two, let's call them easier technologies, because of all the research work that has been done, and you can create a product from it. I built these small drones; they're like these little 4-inch drones, and they're able to fly around.
42:49	Sam Parr	you have
42:49	Furqan Rydhan	Yeah, I programmed my own flight controller. That one didn't work as well. I used a pre-programmed flight controller that worked a lot better. But I get really excited about these technologies when I, without a college degree, without deep technical expertise, can go and learn about it. I really just use Google... that's my source for everything.
43:07	Sam Parr	how old are you
43:08	Furqan Rydhan	I'm 35
43:09	Sam Parr	you're one of the more interesting people I've ever met
43:11	Furqan Rydhan	okay great I'll take it wow you met lance armstrong yesterday
43:14	Shaan Puri	so he's blushing look at that
43:15	Sam Parr	he's not interesting he's cool I mean he's interesting but he's well
43:19	Furqan Rydhan	he's make it
43:20	Shaan Puri	he's bad and what's interesting to
43:21	Sam Parr	He just... my interests align with yours, but he's more intelligent and more technically savvy.
43:28	Furqan Rydhan	and he could actually
43:29	Sam Parr	make the things that I think I wish I could make
43:32	Shaan Puri	yeah
43:33	Sam Parr	Can you talk about App 11? Because you said something... So the other day, I was talking to someone about businesses, and I'm like, "When it's working, do you know it's working? What's that feel like?" You made a comment earlier, like, "It's the first time I've ever seen where just..."
43:48	Shaan Puri	this is what working feels like
43:50	Furqan Rydhan	yeah
43:50	Sam Parr	right what what what what was that like
43:52	Furqan Rydhan	It's the feeling of when you're slamming on your brakes in the car, and the car is kind of doing its own thing. You're like, "I'm not controlling the car; it is just flowing on its own." It's that feeling where you build all these products. Even at Appelo, we did nine ideas before that. I've done this for a long time, trying idea after idea, trying to get people to use it. You're looking for all these good signals, trying to spot them. Then, when it's really working, it's not about spotting it; it's so obvious that there's no question that it's working. All the charts are flying up, but then every day, you're not even like, "Man, is it working? Is it not?" It's so obvious. I have to do X, Y, and Z to solve these problems that are coming up day in and day out. It's definitely a feeling where the pull from the market is so strong that there's no middle ground. I always thought it was like, "Oh, I'm going to realize when I'm close to it," but it's actually very binary. It's like you're here, and it's not working, and you're trying to push into the market, which you need to do. But when it happens, it just kind of takes off. I don't have really good analogies for it yet, except for that it's like the loss of control. The market is in control almost, and you're just trying to catch up and get into that mindset of, "Okay, great, this is working. We're going to keep pushing whatever we need to do to support this case."
45:13	Sam Parr	What was the revenue growth? I mean, you guys were at $0, and then was it like one month it could have been $20, and the next month it was like $1,000,000? I mean, was it that substantial?
45:22	Furqan Rydhan	It wasn't that crazy, but I think the interesting thing that I learned was... there were a lot of players in the market where you'd go to this weather app, right? And the weather app would do... you know, you never realize the scale of some of these apps even at that time. It's like, "Man, this thing is doing 200,000,000 impressions per day." And I'm like, "A weather app? Really? Why is it so big?" And then you're like, "Great, if we get this customer, these things can happen." So I think the...
45:51	Sam Parr	way weather the weather app is how many impressions
45:54	Furqan Rydhan	I think I forgot which weather app it was, whether it was Weather Bug or the Weather app, but it had like 200,000,000 impressions a day. I was really surprised at the scale of some of these apps. Yes, we had the best ad platform. Yes, we made all these small tweaks to the product to make it work better. We made our server scale and did all these things. But I think the fascinating thing was that there were all these major players, and you didn't actually realize how big some of these opportunities were. Working at Apple, I was like, "Wait, I want to go do this." When I left there, it was like I'm not a huge fan of ad products; naturally, that's not the product that excites me. I love money, so I think, "Great, it's a fantastic business." I was like, "Oh, I'm going to go make these apps and games that are going to do this." That's actually how I ran into Sean. I think he had checked out one of my games after I connected to AngelList. Was that right?
46:43	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I saw him on AngelList and I was like, "Something doesn't add up." Either this guy's full of shit because who would leave a company that's crushing it? Most people, when they finally hit a grand slam, want to do the victory lap. They stay for seven years and then write this cheesy letter about how great the journey has been, saying they're finally ready for their next chapter. He basically left after three years. You weren't even fully vested, right?
47:04	Furqan Rydhan	yeah left a little bit on the table which again I'm not complaining because everything's been fantastic and
47:08	Shaan Puri	But it was something counterintuitive. I was like, "Why would this guy leave? Either he got kicked out, he got fired, he's not good, blah blah blah." I was like, "Or this guy's amazing. He really just does love..." His story was like, "I just love startups. I want to build something that consumers use, not really an ad tech platform." He was like, "I was interested in mobile because I saw how big these mobile apps were on our ad network." So, he locked himself in his bedroom and said, "I'm gonna learn mobile in the next 6 months." He just built a bunch of Android games. Then, I saw him on Twitter tweeting back with people who played his game. I was like, "Dude, none of my developers, all the developers I have in my company that are great, none of them would ever go tweet at a customer and be like, 'Hey, you know, I'm gonna fix that bug. I can make this better. Hey, what do you think about this?'" So, I was like, "There's something different about this guy."
47:51	Sam Parr	What apps were you shocked at, that how big they were? A weather app is $200.
47:56	Furqan Rydhan	the casino game apps I mean
47:58	Sam Parr	that's not shocking is it
48:00	Furqan Rydhan	The size of it was definitely shocking. Just because you always assume they're big and they're addictive. But then that, and then Candy Crush, and their initial rise was the first time in the industry where I heard, "Man, like this thing is a money printing machine." It's like, you know, they would... and not all this was at Applovin. It's like once you're in ad tech, you're learning about the industry, you're meeting other people, and you're like, "Hey, these guys are willing to just blanket pay $8 for a user in the U.S." I'm like, "Okay, well that seems pretty expensive. Why are they doing that? And how much do they make on the other side?"
48:32	Sam Parr	dollars is what they're spending
48:33	Furqan Rydhan	Yeah, I think at that time it was like, "Hey, for a male, you know, 18 to 35, it might be $8 or something like that." Then on the other side, I talked to somebody over there, and I'm like, "Yeah dude, we make like $20 on them in like 7 days." And I'm like, maybe those numbers are slightly off, but they were making a multiple to where you were like, "Wait, so you just have this machine where you just press this button, and you put in money, and 7 days later, 3 times more money comes out?" And I'm like, "Wow, how do I get that? How do I empty my bank account every single day to go do that?"
49:04	Sam Parr	well you guys had that a little bit with applovin
49:06	Furqan Rydhan	yeah applovin had that I mean I didn't have that right
49:08	Sam Parr	like I
49:09	Furqan Rydhan	Don't have the same mechanic, obviously. You're at this company, you're vested, you have a shared interest in the long run. But you know, me being me, I was like, "I want that." I want the ability to have that and then the freedom to work on things that I'm really excited about. So I tried that. Obviously, it's a lot harder... harder than just, you know, one person in their bedroom doing it, but...
49:26	Sam Parr	What did Adam from AppLovin say? Was he like, "We had no idea," or was he methodical enough to see?
49:33	Furqan Rydhan	Adam is so fantastic at execution that it's just like... he's like a machine. It's like, you know, when... The thing I really loved about him and the things I learned the most from him were like when you wanted to go do something. You know, sometimes you're like, "Oh man, this situation isn't working."
49:48	Sam Parr	and adam's the ceo of applovin
49:50	Furqan Rydhan	Yeah, he's the CEO of Applovin. You know, you have these situations where it's like, "I gotta go do X," or you really feel like you have to make this move. This deal is bad, maybe this hire was bad, or this hire was good, or something like that. A lot of people kind of wait on it a little bit after deciding, and it creates some time. What's a good time to do it? For him, it was like, "Okay, we'll just go do this now. What's stopping us?" Then, you know, the other things were that I started there as kind of an engineer, and then very quickly he was like, "Oh, you could run this team. You could manage the whole team." I was like, "Great!" We talked, and that kind of always been my experience—that never really gets communicated. Then it feels like, "Cool, I'm the manager," but I think a lot of people end up in that situation, especially in companies. The next morning, there's a meeting with the whole team. He puts the org chart up, and every time we changed it, the same situation happened. He was so clear and effective with his communication and execution that I was like, "I really need to be like that." That's what I think a + execution looks and feels like day in and day out. It's not emotional; it's very logical, it's very quick. I think speed in these situations helps create clarity because when you...
50:57	Sam Parr	or the other way around clarity help create speed
50:59	Furqan Rydhan	Yeah, or both, right? Like, you know, I think clarity is important. If you delay it, your team becomes unclear, and then it gets a little muddy. You might find yourself wondering, "Wait, what's going on here? Why is this guy acting like that and that person not?" I think just being very fast and quick in that execution, once you decide to go, is crucial. That's the thing I learned: how quickly can you do that and how effectively can you do that? Whether it's an email... I'm really not good at this. It's kind of one of the reasons I struggle with it because I see myself thinking, "Oh, I'll wait on this a little bit or send this email tomorrow." I don't want to open up this can of worms right now. But actually, that's the exact opposite trait. It's about having a bias for action and just going for it. From him, I learned an amazing amount about how to operate at this level. Since I've left, they've grown so much that it feels like I was only at 1% of it. I feel like I don't know 90% or 99% of the story anymore because they've expanded into other areas. They're really big now, both from the revenue side and in terms of their marketplace. They're very well known. I kind of get all the benefits from being there a long time ago, which is great for me, but I'm sure there are more learnings that I missed along the way.
52:13	Sam Parr	This whole monologue on app loving... that's gonna be our clip. Nice! That was a good one. Cool.
52:18	Shaan Puri	we should wrap for today
52:20	Sam Parr	that was awesome man
52:20	Shaan Puri	awesome man for kind of worse for me across the street so anytime we wanna do this again we can do
52:25	Sam Parr	it now so we'll have people
52:28	Shaan Puri	We'll put your Twitter handle in the notes of this, so people can follow you, tweet at you, or whatever after this as well.
52:35	Sam Parr	And we don't know... I'm so uncertain as to how many listeners we have. But I do know that last time I asked for reviews, we got a few hundred of them in a handful of hours—24 to 48 hours. So if you like this one, tweet at him. You could say, "You're on a second," and then let us know. We'll figure out what to do next.
52:53	Furqan Rydhan	Yep, yeah, my handle's Furkan R on Twitter. That's F U R Q A N R.
53:00	Sam Parr	awesome thank you

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2.13.2020 My First Million ft. Furqan Rydhan

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