5 under-the-radar trends (+ our business ideas)

Steph Smith 0:00 We all run into these stats throughout our lives, and most of us are just like, "Oh, that's cool." But I think there are some where it's like, maybe you should actually examine this a little more closely. And so I compiled 100 plus of these, and we can talk about some of them today. [upbeat music]

Sam Parr 0:20 Steph Smith, this is your 10th time on MFM. Is that right?

Steph Smith 0:24 Ninth. Ninth.

Sam Parr 0:25 This is your ninth time.

Steph Smith 0:25 Not quite the tenor.

Sam Parr 0:27 And Steph Smith, the background, if you're just now listening for the first time, she used to work with me at The Hustle, where she ran this thing called Trends, trends.co. And then she went and joined a16z, one of the most prominent, uh, venture capital firms. And your whole thing right now is finding up-and-coming trends, but you do it by looking at the data. Is that right?

Steph Smith 0:48 I try to. I try to, but yeah. I, I guess now after Trends, I run this thing called Internet Pipes, and that was kind of like Trends in the way that you wanna surface things that other people don't know about, but it's also about how do you show people how to catch their own fish, if that makes sense.

Sam Parr 1:05 A- and you come on every once in a while, and you just basically have all of this data that you rattle off a story behind the number, a story behind the data, and you explain why it's an interesting trend, and sometimes you'll say, like, how different people are pouncing on this trend. Is that right?

Steph Smith 1:22 Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Lately, I... Or recently I compiled this digits database. I call it digits. You guys call them, like, one-chart businesses, but basically these generation-defining stats, like we've all talked or heard about when Bezos saw the internet was growing at some crazy rate, and he was like, "What does that mean? Well, it means that people will be buying stuff online in the future. Let me go create this crazy thing called Amazon." And so we all run into these stats throughout our lives, and most of us are just like, "Oh, that's cool." But I think there are some where it's like, okay, maybe you should actually examine this a little more closely. And so I compiled 100 plus of these, and we can talk about some of them today.

Sam Parr 2:02 And the guy who... One of the two guys who started your firm, uh, Marc Andreessen, he, um, he has this famous quote or this famous story where s- you know, people are like, "You know, Marc, what's most important? Is it having a good team? Is it having a good product, or is it picking the right market?" And he goes, uh, "It's picking the right market." That's easily the most important thing because if you pi- pick the right market, you can have a bad team and a bad product, and it... You, you still... Like, the market pulls the, the, the success out of you. So for example, you could have the world's greatest team who are brilliant, who are smart, uh, and they come up with this amazing product. But if it's in a tiny market that people just don't want, then you're gonna lose. But if you are Coinbase in 2014, and crypto's all the rage, which is what happened, coinbase.com crashed all the time. It wasn't that good of a website, but people were begging for it. And so they put up with it, and they used it, and they pulled the company into fruition and made it a success. And so you are gonna show us potentially some of these markets.

Steph Smith 3:01 Yeah, maybe. Maybe. But I mean, I think that's the perfect setup because if you think about it, a bunch of other people saw that exact same data point, and he was like, "Oh, well, I should go create this company called Coinbase." And a bunch of other people were like, "Oh, I'm just gonna go for a run. I'm gonna, like, you know, go to my 9:00 to 5:00 and ignore that same thing." So let's start with one that you, I think, know pretty well: hearing loss. So the stat or the digit is that nearly 2.5 billion people by 2050 are expected to experience hearing loss, with over 700 million requiring h- rehabilitation. And then I saw this interesting quote that kind of was just like an, a frame to take away, um, which is that some project that hearing aids are about to become as common as reading glasses. So you think about just, like, how normalized reading glasses are. People wear them all the time. You have all these optometrists. Like, it's a very normal thing, even if you think about the benefits that companies offer, right? Vision is often part of that. And then if you think about where hearing is in that equation, it's nowhere near that on the same trajectory yet. But if it's true that billions of people are going to require hearing loss, and you even think about some of the other signals, like the fact that today we have AirPods in our ears, or many people at least in our circle, how many hours a day?

Sam Parr 4:21 Like eight.

Steph Smith 4:21 Like-

Sam Parr 4:22 Yeah

Steph Smith 4:22 ... exactly. That was not true 10 years ago, right?

Sam Parr 4:26 Wait, so why... First of all, I wear a hearing aid. I wear a hearing... I've had probably 10 or 12 surgeries on my ears. I was born with bad ears, and I fought putting a hearing aid in because I didn't wanna look old. And a lot of times on this podcast, people see me where I'll do this, uh, and I do it instinctively 'cause I'm always leaning in with my good ear. Um, and so I wear a hearing aid, and it was, uh... It's... They all suck, but w-

Steph Smith 4:51 Mm-hmm

Sam Parr 4:51 ... why are more people needing a hearing aid? Is it because something's going on, or is this a normal number, and there's just more people?

Steph Smith 4:58 No, I mean, I think the technologies that we use are influencing a greater number of people who experience hearing loss. Like, if you think about even, as you said, there's a cultural element to it too. Like, I go to SoulCycle. The first year I went, no one's putting in the earplugs. Like, it's so uncool to put in the earplugs. And then as, you know, I've been doing it for a few years, now it's, like, maybe 10, 20% of the class is putting in the earplugs.

Sam Parr 5:25 People put earplugs in because the class is too loud?

Steph Smith 5:27 The class is way too loud. And by the way, even think about the technologies that we have that now signal to us some of this stuff. Like, your Apple Watch will tell you when you're in a SoulCycle class, this is damaging your ears. Like, if you do this for more than 10 minutes, you will impair your ears in a permanent way. And so the point around the cultural side is interesting because I don't know if you experienced the same thing, but I grew up in the '90s. Like, glasses were not cool. And then now you see, like, some people and you're like, "Man, you look so much cooler 'cause of your, the glasses you wear." Like, I wish... [laughs] I almost wish that I needed glasses.

Sam Parr 6:01 That's how I used to feel, like, when I was in third grade about braces If you had braces, you were cool. It's like, I need braces

Steph Smith 6:08 [laughs] I don't know if I ever felt that way about braces.

Sam Parr 6:12 Well, that's probably why I didn't have a girlfriend until I was 21 years old. Um, are there any interesting, um, companies in the hearing aid space that you've seen? 'Cause when I was trying to get a hearing aid, there was all types of, like, promises of, like, this will listen to the words that people are saying, and it's gonna repeat it in your hearing aid, and it, it was stupid. And, and honestly, I, I think I paid two grand for a hearing aid. They're really expensive, and the app-

Steph Smith 6:34 Mm-hmm

Sam Parr 6:34 ... is horrible. Like, it's... The- These are not good products. One time, in fact, my hearing aid broke and got stuck in my ear, and I had to go to the hospital just to get part of it out. So I've had-

Steph Smith 6:44 Really?

Sam Parr 6:44 ... all types of... Yes, it was horrible. I've been-

Steph Smith 6:46 Oh my God, you should, you should found a company in this space-

Sam Parr 6:48 Ugh

Steph Smith 6:48 ... 'cause you know of all the problems. But I don't know the hearing aid space as well. Um, I have been seeing a lot of people who have been getting... Have you heard of Loop, the-

Sam Parr 6:57 What's that?

Steph Smith 6:57 ... earplug company?

Sam Parr 6:59 No.

Steph Smith 6:59 It's just these kind of, like, nifty-looking earplugs, which again, you go to something like a, a workout class, and they give you these disposable, like, bright yellow earplugs that you can't even get into your ear.

Sam Parr 7:12 Oh, wow.

Steph Smith 7:12 And so I do think there's going to be, like, again, on the cultural side, how do you create products that not only, to your point, are solving the problem, like they have utility, but they also shift in this direction of, "Oh, I look cool, I feel cool, I want to wear this thing."

Sam Parr 7:29 Dude, this company Loop is going to kill it. They sell $50 earplugs. Oh my God. This is gonna be-

Steph Smith 7:36 Yeah, and it's super smart marketing. Like, if you go... If you just search Loop earplugs, like, they've got a page, and they're like, "Earplugs for events." Because again, they're not, they're not marketing to, like, oh, the everyday user necessarily for this stuff. Um, it's like, "Oh, you're going to a concert. You're going to the Super Bowl. It's gonna be really loud, and these look really cool." People don't even realize they're earplugs. [upbeat music]

Sam Parr 7:59 All right, my friends. So a lot of you guys who listen to the show, you listen because you wanna start a company, but you're not sure what idea to choose, or you may not even have an idea, and you like our podcast, My First Million, because we've done a lot of the work for you on researching all these business ideas. Well, my friends, we've made life a lot easier for you because HubSpot, they just put together an entire list of all the resources that you can use to find a market opportunity to validate for your next business idea. So if you're looking for a market size calculator or tools to identify market trends or a huge list of ideas to get started. So if you're interested, there's a link below. Click it, and you could have access to the whole thing. It's completely free. Now back to the show. [upbeat music] All right, let's move on from hearing stuff, but one last fact. Did you know, this is one of the reasons why I succumbed and got the hearing aid, is if you have a hearing loss and you don't address it, the increase of getting dementia jumps significantly.

Steph Smith 8:57 Yeah.

Sam Parr 8:57 Like four or five times. And I believe there are two reasons. One, that part of your brain that hears stuff, because it's not working, it begins to atrophy, and that's correlated with dementia. But also the second reason, and I find myself doing this all the time, is when I'm at a restaurant or something, I cannot hear the difference between someone talking to me and the background noise, and so I usually just zone out. And-

Steph Smith 9:19 Yep

Sam Parr 9:19 ... [laughs] if you zone out all the time, like, you're, you're c- gonna be, like, mentally, like... Or, uh, permanently kind of zoned out. Uh, I believe those are the two theories as to why that happens, but, uh... So yeah, getting your hearing fixed is, is a big deal. What's another one you wanna do?

Steph Smith 9:32 Okay, so rounding out the hearing loss thing, by the way, um, something we didn't quite touch on there is the fact that they went over the counter in 2022, which means, like, you don't need to get a prescription, and that also I think is, you know, opening the aperture. And you guys often talk about these, like, policy or legislation related shifts or unlocks.

Sam Parr 9:53 Yeah, we call them, um... I call them regulation inflections. So-

Steph Smith 9:56 There you go

Sam Parr 9:56 ... something changes drastically. So for example, uh, one negative inflection is, like, New York bans Airbnb. So there's, like, an inflection where, like, short-term rentals are just gonna go to zero, versus if they were to-

Steph Smith 10:08 Exactly

Sam Parr 10:08 ... there would be an inflection where they now say it's allowed. There's a, a massive change.

Steph Smith 10:13 Yeah, exactly. So one of them is the FAA, um, has made a few changes recently, and I wanna call out two, and one of them is around drones. So consumer drones have existed for quite a while. I have a DJI drone. People use them for anything from, like, just filming your neighborhood. Real estate agents use them to, like, capture better, um, imagery of their assets. But recently, the FAA changed regulation for some companies where they can fly drones beyond line of sight, and that doesn't sound like a big change. But if you can f- fly a drone beyond your f- like, visual aperture to actually see what it's doing, well, it enables things like drone delivery. There are companies like Zipline. I'm sure you've heard of Amazon playing around in this space. That changes the game. Another change that the FAA made recently is they started approving these electric vertical takeoff and landing companies, the eVTOL companies, and again, that was in the news, but what wasn't covered as much was the fact that this was the first new category of aircraft in nearly 80 years. And the one just before this was, um, called light-sport aircraft. You know what light-sport aircraft is?

Sam Parr 11:29 No.

Steph Smith 11:30 It's helicopters. It's small business jets.

Steph Smith 11:33 These are things that, like, each individual is a massive industry, and if you think about, like, how, um... You know, if you take, like, super wealthy people who take helicopters, who take these business jets, like, that's meaningfully changed their life, and each one of those is a vertical. Um, eVTOL, again, this is the first new category of aircraft in 80 years. You can only imagine, like, we're in the early stages of it.

Sam Parr 11:59 What's it called? How do you say that word?

Steph Smith 12:00 eVTOL. So again, it's, like, electric vertical takeoff and landing. So there's some companies who are playing in this space, obviously. Like, I think Joby Aviation is one. Um-

Sam Parr 12:09 Archer's another one. Um, we had Brett-

Steph Smith 12:11 Exactly

Sam Parr 12:11 ... we had Brett Adcock on the pod, and he started a thing called Archer, which is publicly traded, and they've, uh... I think they have some huge deals with United. Um, things like that.

Steph Smith 12:21 Yeah. So I mean, if you think about- This is, like, thinking more long term, but these are designed specifically to be m- you know, operating within cities, taking people from, like, one end of New York to the other, airport trips. If you think about, like, what that kind of is a parallel to is not the, like, mega, you know, Boeing air jets. It's actually more like cars, right? And if you think about how cities have been oriented around cars, what businesses have been drawn up from there, I think, again, these are two legislative changes that are, uh, in the long term, going to meaningfully sha- reshape the way that we all engage.

Sam Parr 13:04 One of our friends, um, I th- or Nikita, who a lot of people know, uh, who he is, he was telling us... I have to get it right, but I believe he told me that he invested in a company where if you are in LA and you call 911, the police will take however long to get there, let's say 20 minutes or something, because LA is really big, 30 minutes, uh, or even just 10 minutes, but they send out a drone right away-

Steph Smith 13:31 Yeah

Sam Parr 13:32 ... to go and see what's going on. Have you seen that?

Steph Smith 13:34 Yeah. We, at a16z, invested in a few of these companies, so they get there more quickly, but they also have a safety angle from the perspective of, you know, if someone calls 911, they're telling you something. Um, sometimes they're just reporting like, "Hey, I think there's a scary person, like, on the highway doing X," or, "I think there's a sup- someone in this alley, and they have a gun." And the ability for these drones to not only get there more quickly, but to validate the statement and say-

Sam Parr 14:01 Uh-huh

Steph Smith 14:01 ... "Oh, actually, like, that's not a gun. That's a poster in a, you know, in a tube or something." Like, that's, it- that changes their ability to actually react to the situation more safely as well.

Sam Parr 14:10 Yeah, you just got a guy, like, wanting to show off, like, his Lamborghini poster from, like, the Scholastic Book Fair instead-

Steph Smith 14:15 [laughs]

Sam Parr 14:15 ... of, like, a gun. Yeah. That makes sense.

Steph Smith 14:18 Happens all the time. Yeah, no.

Sam Parr 14:19 Yeah.

Steph Smith 14:19 I-

Sam Parr 14:19 Been there. Been there. What are some other ways people could pounce on this?

Steph Smith 14:25 Well, I, I think the thing that I'm trying to drive home here is, like, these are obviously going to take years, if not decades, to influence us in major ways. But it's for people to ask questions like, for example, if there is drone delivery at scale, think about even the ways that we package goods, and the fact that you package a good to sit in a truck to travel across the country, and it needs to have certain levels of padding of, you know, to make it unbreakable. All of those things potentially change if we're able to, you know, pick something up and drop it off a mile away, right? So I think it's just encouraging people to ask about, you know, if this is true, what are those second, third order effects? If it's true that there's gonna be a lot more autonomy, like, how quickly does that ramp up? You take, like, Waymo, which is... a lot of people think of as in, like, Phoenix or San Francisco. I just read an article the other day saying that Waymos are already taking up 20% of Uber rides in Austin, and so this stuff can, like, move pretty quickly.

Sam Parr 15:28 I had a... I don't, I don't smoke weed anymore or do anything like that, but I had, like, this thought the other day 'cause I had to send someone a letter in California. Isn't it insane that for... What's a stamp cost? 40 cents, 50 cents? That I can send a letter 3,500 miles, and it will reliably get to pretty much any house I want to in a matter of, like, four or five days.

Steph Smith 15:52 Yes.

Sam Parr 15:52 I think that is insane. That is, uh, uh, that is so crazy, and to think that, like... So there's that type of delivery that I think of all the time, and I'm like, the post office, USPS, uh, UPS, FedEx, these companies are wild. That's got the biggest moat ever. To build that, that is so freaking hard. But then there's the last mile component, and that's this whole other thing. And to think that drones, that- that's what's gonna be happening, is that drones are gonna be flying everywhere, it's pretty wild to, like, imagine, like, the moat that a company in this space has. It, it, it is, it's, it's, it's, it's hard to, like, comprehend because if you think 50 years ago to try to explain to someone, "No, you're not gonna go to Walmart any- You're not gonna go anywhere. Everything's gonna come to your door," it, it, to think how is that gonna change in the next 20 or 50 years, it's hard to comprehend.

Steph Smith 16:41 Totally, and I think to your point, it's like, are people on this podcast gonna go create, like, the next Waymo or the next Zipline, these companies that have been working on these problems for years and years and years? Maybe not, but okay, if all the... or if a significant number of cars on the road are autonomous, who's cleaning those cars, right? Who is creating the lidar that goes into the cars to- so that they can actually drive safely? Who is, you know, actually coordinating the cleaning and the use of these cars, the degradation of them? Who's the person that gets called if there's an issue in a Waymo? Like, all of these are new businesses, the same way that, like, when Airbnb was big, the answer wasn't go create another Airbnb. It was like, go create the cleaning companies and the, and the operations companies to run an Airbnb, right? Like, there's, there's still, I think, a lot of opportunity on, you know, on the edges of these major trends.

Sam Parr 17:42 All right. Let's do, uh, another one. Let's go to the psychedelics thing.

Steph Smith 17:46 So this one is just, is pretty simple. Like, psilocybin has been illegal for a long time in the United States and elsewhere, and it was decriminalized in the first state, which was Oregon, in 2020, and has subsequently become decriminalized in a host of other states and cities with, you know, lots of legislation pending. And this is another one where we're talking, like, what's gonna happen not in the next year, but several years, if not decades, but people are already jumping on this. Some people are doing psychedelic retreats. You know, again, a policy change that we're seeing.

Sam Parr 18:17 I think we have a few Hampton members that have these psychedelic retreats, and I've seen some of these. Did I ever tell you that I tried to go to one? I think it was in 2018 or something like that, like, right when this stuff was getting popular. I knew this person It was a friend of a friend. Jack introduced me to this person, my friend Jack, who was, like, hosting d- he said it was a shaman. And I was thinking it's gonna be some brown dude-

Steph Smith 18:40 [laughs]

Sam Parr 18:41 ... in like, a, like a, like a, like a sheet. Like, he's gonna say, like, namaste as I walk into their house and take off my shoes. And they ask us to go to this meeting in advance to see if it was a good fit. So I go to the meeting, and it's just this, like, normal-looking white lady, uh, in San Francisco in a, uh, in a condo, a fancy condo building. And we sit down for, um, for dinner, and, uh, so she can get to know us to see if it's a good fit, if we actually wanna go through with this, like, psychedelic experience with her. And she, like, does a few things, but she's like, "So where are you from?" And she was like... I, I was like, "Oh, Missouri." And she's like, "Oh, flyover country." And I was like, "Bitch, what the fuck? Are you insulting me right now?"

Steph Smith 19:20 [laughs]

Sam Parr 19:21 And she said, like, three more things making fun of, like, where I was from and, like, mocking me. And she was like, "What do you do, uh, for a living?" And she... I was like, "Oh, I, I, like, kinda work in, like, technology and the internet." And she's like, "Ugh, capitalism really bothers me." And I looked at her LinkedIn in advance. She worked at Lehman Brothers. That's where she worked at.

Steph Smith 19:40 [laughs]

Sam Parr 19:40 She worked at Lehman Brothers before she became a shaman.

Steph Smith 19:42 That is why she is now doing psychedelic retreats. [laughs]

Sam Parr 19:44 I go, "Lady, you worked at Lehman Brothers. You were literally a venture capitalist. What are you talking about?" And then, uh, at the end, she was like, uh, "By the way, it's gonna be $2,000." I'm like, "Lady, you just said you hated capitalism. All right? What the hell is going on?" Uh, and so I got asked that night not to come back, and I was disinvited from my psychedelic experience, which probably shows that I need this more than anything, but yeah.

Steph Smith 20:08 Well, I was gonna say, you definitely, like... Those are some pretty bad vibes, and you definitely do not wanna be on psychedelics, you know, with that, [laughs] with that introduction.

Sam Parr 20:18 Yeah. I got, I got kicked out of my psychedelic group, so that was my only experience. I wanted to... I forget what it was, like ketamine or MDMA. I don't know. But everyone said it was dope, and I was like, "Let's see what this is about." I got kicked out of the group. But, um, I have seen a bunch of these, like, retreats. I do think it's cool. I have friends that are, like... I've got a couple vet buddies who have done it, and it's, like, changed their life. And we had Scott Galloway on here, and he says that it's been really helpful. So I'm on board with them. I'm just not on board with it for me, you know? It's kinda like I say cornrows, you know, it's cool for other people, but not for me. Cornrows and face tattoos.

Steph Smith 20:51 [laughs] And psychedelic retreats. [laughs]

Sam Parr 20:54 Yeah. Uh, any, uh, any other interesting opportunities with the psychedelics?

Steph Smith 20:59 I mean, I think maybe the marketer in me, not that I'm trying to, like, push psychedelics, [laughs] but I think a lot of people think of them as either you do it if you're, like, just a druggie and you just, you know, you do these all the time, or you do it if you're in a, an impaired mental state and you need to, like, get past something. Like, let's say you were a vet and you had some terrible experiences. Like, there's a lot of ketamine ass- assisted therapy that's popping up, psilocybin as well. But again, it's, it's often to solve some kind of negative experience in your life and get past that. If this does become more normalized, I think some of this at, like, a much lower dose, um, you could imagine being very helpful in smaller life decisions. Or for example, you're starting a new job. You're trying to decide if you wanna join one company versus another. You're trying to decide if you wanna quit. You're trying to decide if you wanna have a child. Those are not things, um, that, like, have any direct relationship to psychedelics but are things that people have a really hard time understanding their perspective, understanding how they relate to, you know, let's say their partner or their family, and I think that could be a future scenario. Like, imagine if you had someone guiding you through a psychedelic experience specifically related to your career, specifically related to, again, like, the difficult and very meaningful decision of having kids. I think there's something interesting there.

Sam Parr 22:27 I completely agree. That's actually a really cool idea, where, like, for example, if you, like, are in a certain social class, like, you don't have the same problems as someone who, um, who's not in that class. So, like, when I quit drinking, I went to basically, like, a mental clinic in South, like in, in Soma, and it was, like, me and, like, everyone else was homeless. And I was like, "What am I doing here?" But the reason I went was because I didn't have any income 'cause I had just started my company, and I was like, saw it on Yelp. And I went to this place, and I stuck to the same doctor for like 10 years. She was amazing. And then there was at one point where I remember telling her, like, certain problems that I had, and this woman had never worked with anyone else that had similar types of problems because she wasn't used to a client like mine. And I was desperately seeking, like, a therapist who had, like, people who were at, like, maybe a higher, higher tier on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And it was so hard to find, like, a person who could serve that need. You know what I'm saying? And so that is very interesting to have, like, a different genre of psychedelic guides or whatever the hell they call them. You know what I'm saying?

Steph Smith 23:33 Yeah. Yeah, I mean, 'cause to your point, even within therapy, for a long time people thought therapy was only for when you're kind of about to divorce, right? They're like, [laughs] "We only provide therapy for when there is a clear issue." And then now therapy has expanded a lot, right? Like, people do it preventatively. People do it because they just like their therapist and just need someone to talk to. Like, there are many different reasons now that people do therapy. And I think obviously in the... You know, people on their own do psychedelics for many different reasons, but you could imagine that if this is going to be something that is no longer illegal, people are building businesses around, that they can build those businesses for kind of these, these other needs. It doesn't, there doesn't need to be a problem.

Sam Parr 24:16 Is this gonna become, like, a whole therapy session for me? I'm telling you about these doctors that I used to go-

Steph Smith 24:20 [laughs]

Sam Parr 24:20 ... like when I was homeless or, like, uh, about my psychedelic getting kicked out and how I'm deaf. Oh

Sam Parr 24:26 my gosh. Every time you come on here, man. Uh, can you talk about this job stuff? I find this-

Steph Smith 24:32 Sure

Sam Parr 24:33 ... the most, the most interesting.

Steph Smith 24:35 Okay, so a few things. I think the most, you know, relevant thing to the listeners would be that AI is here. A bunch of people are freaking out about jobs. They're wondering, you know, "Do I still have a job? Are my skills still relevant?" And so I think it's just interesting to discuss, number one, like, what are the new jobs that are on the horizon? What are the existing jobs that are gonna become more important? Um, and then I have some other, you know, some other ideas that we can talk about. But, like, first, did you know that the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports all the time, every year, or I think more frequently, what the, um, fastest growing jobs are? And do you know what they are?

Sam Parr 25:22 The fastest growing jobs?

Steph Smith 25:23 Yeah.

Sam Parr 25:25 Uh, the white collar stuff, so like in, uh, computer engineers, graphic designers, anything involving computers.

Steph Smith 25:33 Yeah. So there's like, of the top five, there is data scientists, there's security analysts, but there's also wind turbine service technicians. There's solar panel installers. Nurses are also on there. Further down the list, I think some of the interesting ones are certainly in the, like, again, climate installation, um, operation space. Like, one interesting thing that I didn't realize, 'cause I've never owned a house with solar panels, is that you don't only need to install them, but in order for them to be efficiently used, they need to be cleaned. And some, you know, if you wanna get the max efficiency out of them, they need to be cleaned, like, every six to 12 months. So it's like, who's cleaning those solar panels? Like, that's an opportunity on its own. Other things on the list, I'm just scrolling down it, physician assistants, actuaries. But over the last two decades, some of the fastest growing jobs were manicurists, HR managers, event planners, massage therapists, and compliance officers, which is also interesting.

Sam Parr 26:35 I have a, uh, I have a, this small website called Sam's List where, uh, you can... It's like Yelp for accountants. And, you know, we, it's a tiny website, but I think we have 3 or 400 accountants on the website. And the woman who runs it, Kimmie, has talked to, like, all 400 of them, and the common complaint that they all have, and it's, like, horrible for my business because Sam's List, like, the way it makes money is a user who needs an accountant for their business or for their personal life, they go on, and they can submit their information. And then also, we allow other accountants to pay us money to go and, like, b- basically, like, bid on that client's... Like, you know, you, this person is looking for this. Can we also pay money for them to, for us to be shown or introduced to them? And it's a horrible business for me because what we've noticed talking to 400 accountants is that they don't need more business. They, they go-

Steph Smith 27:29 [laughs]

Sam Parr 27:29 ... "We have enough business. What we need is more accountants." They're like, "I can't hire fast enough." Like, it's, no one wants to be an accountant, and we just simply do not have people who want to work here.

Steph Smith 27:41 Yeah. And by the way, those are exactly the industries that people should be looking at for building AI products, right? If you think about even just the selling motion that you need to do for any new product, if you're going to a company and they have ample demand, and there's, like, a very, very liquid market for talent, while that means that they can probably get talent for cheaper, they have to worry about, like, oh, am I gonna bring in this AI tool and then fire or lay off a bunch of my existing staff? Like, those are all considerations. But in the world of accounting where, let's say, like you said, there's a firm, and that firm is, is like, "I can't hire fast enough. I literally don't have people. I have clients who wanna pay me, and I don't have, you know, the, the staff to actually facilitate that, that project," well, then it's an easy, um, sell, right? To be like, "I can support you in this way." Um, so I think that's just like, uh, AI's obviously being applied to a lot of the obvious areas, but a lot of these industries where there is not enough talent, there is an... You know, that is, in my opinion, where, where folks should be looking.

Sam Parr 28:47 There was two different members in Hampton who had companies, uh... So in nursing, there's a huge shortage of nurses in America. Um, and it's a great job. It pays really well, and you get good benefits oftentimes. I mean, there's, the downside is, like, you're obviously working with sick people, and it's probably, it's a tragic, uh, it can be tragic sometimes. But there's a huge need, and you have relatively secure, you know, you will always be able to work. They have these things, um, called travel nurses. So a lot of hospitals are lacking nurses, and so they'll pay, you know, extra money to have someone come and stay there for three months or to stay there Monday to Friday or whatever, like, you know, the five-day block or a three-month block. And there's this, there's a bunch, I think Trusted Health is one of them, where they build, uh, these massive businesses all around facilitating getting a travel nurse to the hospital in need.

Steph Smith 29:42 Mm-hmm.

Sam Parr 29:42 And I believe, uh, Trusted Health, I, I have no connection with these guys. I just saw them online. I believe that they are a, uh, a unicorn. I, I think they, they've raised funding ar- in the billion dollar plus range.

Steph Smith 29:55 I mean, I've heard that that's a huge industry and, and the fact that, like, again, we talked about it last time, silver tsunami, a lot of, a lot more nurses are needed, and the concentration of that talent is not always where it needs to be, and so it makes sense.

Sam Parr 30:09 All right, let's do one or two more. What else? What, tell me some other interesting ones.

Steph Smith 30:13 Well, one note about the, just the world of, of jobs, um, I wanna get your take on this, is we've talked before about pay transparency, and there are, I think, over a dozen states that have also, you know, put pay transparency law in action, and that's why it's, like, California's one of them. You go to a website, you see a new job posting, and you see, um, how much that job makes. One super simple, um- ... opportunity for folks that I haven't seen, but I, I'm sure someone's building this, is basically just the Glassdoor for open salaries. Like, there's levels.fyi of kind of a more aggregate level, but if you take what Glassdoor did, Glassdoor basically became the... They had a bunch of other features, but, like, why did people go to Glassdoor? One, they wanted to see if a company had, like, good or bad reviews, TBD on if that was actually useful, but then they also mostly wanted to see, "How much am I gonna make at this company? Like, if I'm negotiating, what should I ask for?" And that relied on people who worked at that company to submit their salary, right, to Glassdoor, and then they built up this database and that was their moat. Today, all of that is online, right? All, every time a company is posting a job posting, they are saying how much they pay, and I have not seen anyone aggregate this information in a meaningful way where if I'm, again, if I'm trying to join a new company or if I'm trying to negotiate, I'm still going to Glassdoor, which is crazy to me. Because even Glassdoor has really limited data, in my opinion. And so someone should just go and, again, like you would need to build this up over a little bit of time, but someone should be scraping these salaries off of different website or different companies and building up this database, completely usurping, again, the, like, requirement of people, uh, needing to submit their salary themself.

Sam Parr 32:00 Is that... Like, is the range huge? Like, so for example, a16z, the, I, I assume they're California-based. Uh-

Steph Smith 32:07 Yep

Sam Parr 32:07 ... so, like, would they list the sal- Let's see. Do they list their salaries there?

Steph Smith 32:13 They do, and lots of other companies do, too. And people only notice this when they are in the job process, and so they have a snippet of time, and often jobs that are not the same as the one that they're applying to, right?

Sam Parr 32:26 Wow. Sorry. So I just went to Andreessen Horowitz. I clicked a fund assistant controller. I assume that that is, uh, related to accounting. They're gonna work closely with assistant controllers and fun- uh, so it's a finance accounting job. It says the expected pay for this position is between $216,000 and $252,000, but the actual starting pay may vary based on a range of factors which include experience, skill-

Steph Smith 32:54 And they have to say that. They always say that. Yeah.

Sam Parr 32:57 Interesting. So wow. That is very intriguing. I did not think... But would it say, uh, like f- in order to be, like, a legit partner at a16z or something, like, will they even list, like, the jobs that, uh, are paid potentially millions of dollars?

Steph Smith 33:16 They have to. But the thing that is worth calling out is that they are only required, as in through law, to my understanding, is to put base pay. So obviously, a lot of these jobs, not just at a16z, have other mechanisms for rewarding people. And so that, this is only one part of the story, but also if you've ever gone to Glassdoor, Glassdoor has been terrible at capturing that other segment in any case. And so at the very least, again, a lot of this information is out there, and I think you take this, like, age-old company... Well, actually, I don't know. When was Glassdoor even founded? Let's see.

Sam Parr 33:50 It's not that old. It's not age old.

Steph Smith 33:52 2007.

Sam Parr 33:52 Age old.

Steph Smith 33:53 Well, it is... I would say, I would say it's internet 1.0.

Sam Parr 33:55 What does age old mean? It's as old as age?

Steph Smith 33:58 [laughs] It's, uh, it's in my opinion... You know, it was great for the first version of the internet, and now again, like, there are, there's a change in legislation here, uh, fitting with our theme, but also it's like the technology exists i- in a way for us, for someone to be able to scrape this really easily and aggregate this information across, you know, not a few companies, but many, many companies. What else do you wanna cover here?

Sam Parr 34:23 I, uh, I read a book that you suggested because of this whole animal thing. It was called, like, The Five Senses, or what's the, the, the animal one called?

Steph Smith 34:30 It's called An Immense World. And-

Sam Parr 34:32 An Immense World

Steph Smith 34:32 ... you have heard me give this spiel so many times, but I... Okay, so there's this book An, An Immense World. It's by this guy called Ed Yong, and whenever I explain it, it sounds really obvious, but, you know, obviously does not do the book justice. But it's about the fact that we as humans are familiar with five senses, like this is how we interpret the world. Even within those five senses, though, they are not equal. We talked about hearing, for example, but sight for sure is the, the sense that not only humans tend to use the most to interpret the world, but also if you benchmark that versus other species, other than birds, we have the most precise vision, um, of, you know, again, the, the animal kingdom. We have really s- strong vision and again, that drives the way that we see the world. I say that because this book is about recognizing that, yes, this is how humans see the world, but every animal, again, this is not surprising, is uniquely tuned to their environment, their prey, you know, how they survive. Um, and for many it's, you know, sight is not the most important way that they interpret the world, but there are senses that we don't have that they use, again, to engage. And then again, within the five that we're familiar with, it's just, it's worth acknowledging that, for example, the way that, you know, the spectrum of light that we see or the spectrum of temperatures that we're comfortable in are just simply not the way that, you know, other animals exist. If you take an arctic squirrel or if you take a camel and you put them on hot plates, uh, they will not move at temperatures that we think are crazy and uncomfortable because they are comfortable, for example. Or if you take, um, UV light, which we can't really interpret, other animals or creatures will react to that. So that's my spiel about, like, what the book is about and it obviously does a better job of making that interesting. But- This is My First Million, and the reason that I'm bringing this up is because there is this, this, I think, converging world of nature and technology, which has always existed to an extent. But at the same time, I think for a long time people thought that technology was kind of adversarial to nature, 'cause it's like humans, we're like moving forward, and we're progressing, and we're leaving nature behind, and sometimes even destroying, you know, that natural world. But I think there are tons of examples, whether it's, whether it's Velcro being, you know, modeled off of burdock burs, whether it's bullet trains being inspired by the kingfisher's beak, whether it's NASA learning how to design airplane wings, uh, to be more like birds. Like, we not only learn a lot from nature in the way that we build technology, and I think that's an interesting thread we can pull, but also there's a really interesting space of how technology's actually getting us closer to understanding the animal kingdom and communicating with it. So we can pull any of those threads, but that, [laughs] that's my Nature technology rant.

Sam Parr 37:44 Keep going. Uh, I'm fascinated. Keep, just keep talking. What were you... Now, you on, on this document, you were talking about a trip you took, but does that weave into this?

Steph Smith 37:54 Yeah. So I just came back from the Galápagos Islands. Have you ever been there?

Sam Parr 38:00 No. I, and I'm super ignorant. Um, I, if I'm being honest, I don't even know where it is. Uh-

Steph Smith 38:05 [laughs]

Sam Parr 38:06 But I know it's related to Darwin. The, I mean, I'm, I'm incredibly ignorant of Galápagos.

Steph Smith 38:11 Yeah. So, okay. The Galápagos are, um, c- I think it's 600 miles west of Ecuador. Um, so they're in the, in the Pacific. They're this set of islands that a lot of people-

Sam Parr 38:23 So South America, right? I mean, I, I-

Steph Smith 38:25 South America, but yeah. So over-

Sam Parr 38:26 I, I'm not, I'm not the biggest, uh-

Steph Smith 38:28 [laughs]

Sam Parr 38:28 ... South America, Central America expert. I don't even know-

Steph Smith 38:30 In your defense-

Sam Parr 38:30 I don't know too much about it

Steph Smith 38:31 ... Ecuador is on, you know, the north end of South America.

Sam Parr 38:35 Okay.

Steph Smith 38:36 Um, so basically they're part of Ecuador, but a lot of people know them, again, because of, like you said, Darwin. They are this, at least from my perspective, and I've been to 50 or so countries, the most kind of, uh, nature scape trip I've ever done, where you actually feel like you're entering their world versus the opposite, right? Um, and so the reason, uh, it fits into Darwin's story is when you have a bunch of islands, uh, the way that these different species evolve across the different islands, especially land, um, bearing or land, uh, creatures who can't make their way acro- you know, from one island to another, they end up evolving differently due to the unique fauna, due to the n- unique environment, set of predators, et cetera, on that particular island. And so he was like, "Wait a minute. Why are there, for example, blue-footed boobies," which are a type of birds, "and red-footed boobies on two different islands?" Um, and that was him witnessing some of these. He did a lot with finches, and I think some of the giant tortoises. Like, he ig- he noticed these things and then that was his kind of like aha to understanding evolution.

Sam Parr 39:56 I have never heard-

Steph Smith 39:57 So that's why it's, like, in all the textbooks and stuff

Sam Parr 39:58 ... this story. Like, I, I, I knew nothing about Darwin. This is actually the first time that I've ever, like, heard, like, the... I'm sure there's a lot more to the, uh, you know, the aha moment story, but I have never heard that before.

Steph Smith 40:10 Yeah. And he, uh, he did a lot of his research there, and I think in particular with the finches, I think there's like 17 kinds of finches. And the interesting part is, like, when does an animal become a separate species, right? So you take these two finches, they exist on different islands, and then, like, they're evolving. At what point do they become a new species? It's when they no longer mate with each other, right? So one interesting thing, fun fact, is just they had these, you know, one example is lava lizards. And these lava lizards would do, um, these mating dances, but in the case, uh, for them, they're doing these pushups, at least that's how humans, like, describe this mating dance. But because they're different species that have evolved on their unique islands, it's like one lizard might do, like, three pushups, another one might do five, another one might do it, like, a little bigger, uh, or funkier than the others. Um, but what's crazy is that, like, they will not mate with each other. Like, if you take one lava lizard from one island, and the other one's doing, you know, the male's doing the pushups for the females, just slight differences in how it's being done, it's like, "Nope, sorry, like, we no longer mate." And one interesting takeaway for me, and this is just me, again, like this is nothing to do with business, it's just that's never happened to humans. Now, there are some, like, bad historical examples of, like, segregation and stuff. But for the most part, like, we've existed on different continents, evolved, right? And over long, long, long periods of time, like, you still, like someone from Australia will still mate from some, with someone from North America, which, who will still mate with someone from Europe, et cetera, right? Like, I just thought that was, that was an interesting, like, I wonder why that is.

Sam Parr 41:54 I've heard of a bunch of friends of mine doing pushups to impress some lot lizards, but never lava lizards.

Steph Smith 42:00 [laughs]

Sam Parr 42:02 Steph, do you know what a lot lizard is?

Steph Smith 42:04 I don't. Is that embarrassing?

Sam Parr 42:07 No. It's, it means you're-

Steph Smith 42:08 [laughs]

Sam Parr 42:09 It means you're much more sophisticated than me. A lot lizard is a prostitute that serves truck drivers.

Steph Smith 42:15 Oh, that makes sense.

Sam Parr 42:15 [laughs]

Steph Smith 42:19 [laughs]

Sam Parr 42:19 I feel like if you know what a lot lizard is, that sort of says what part of the tracks you're from. You know what I'm saying?

Steph Smith 42:27 I hear you. [laughs]

Sam Parr 42:30 [laughs] So you're talking about Galápagos Islands, and Darwin, and, you know- The eight senses that animals have, but if ... I know a few people that know a few things about lot lizards, if you wanna talk about that.

Steph Smith 42:44 [laughs]

Sam Parr 42:46 Uh, just saying.

Steph Smith 42:47 Uh, yeah.

Sam Parr 42:47 What's this, um, Ask Nature thing?

Steph Smith 42:50 So if people want to go down the rabbit hole of exploring kind of not just, like, let me go look at pictures of animals, but understanding, like, how do animals produce color? What are the examples of technology being inspired by natural design? For example, like a search algorithm that was inspired by ants.

Sam Parr 43:12 This is so fascinating. So Ask Nature has this, um, they have this like... There's all stuff you can click on. So there's one about the African darter. Apparently, that's a type of bird, and it has a very special feather that is incredibly water-resistant. And then it tells you, like, different applications that this potential feather or, like, inspiration of this feather could have. And it talks about, like, the strategy of how it works, and, like, the potential for copying this feather. This is amazing. How did you find this website? This is really cool.

Steph Smith 43:49 So someone shared it within Internet Pipes. We have this survey whenever people join, which just asks, like, what's your favorite tool? A lot of it ends up being what you expect, ChatGPT, Ahrefs, et cetera, but there are a bunch of gems that come through like this.

Sam Parr 44:02 And so, by the way, is Internet Pipes, it's literally just tons of different resources for finding these things?

Steph Smith 44:09 So what the product started as, it was... I hate the term course, but it was a course that existed to say, "Okay-"

Sam Parr 44:16 It's called a book. It was a book.

Steph Smith 44:18 It was a book. It exists in Notion, and there's videos and there's text, and now there's a community, and now there's things, databases like the digits database. But the origin was, okay, the most common question I get asked is, "You find all this cool stuff online. How do you find it?" Um, and so Internet Pipes was showing people how to find this information through a series of tools, and that's why it's called Pipes, right? It's like, use this tool to make sense of all of, all of the purchas- purchases that are happening on Amazon, all of the pages that exist on Wikipedia, all of the searches that are happening on Google, and, you know, you go down the line. This data exists, and by the way, we're at a unique period where, like, it didn't quite exist 15 years ago, and 15 years from now, probably everyone will know it exists. And so it's like this... Internet Pipes is a course, a book, whatever you wanna call it, to learn how to do that.

Sam Parr 45:11 And you've made a lot of money off of it so far, haven't you?

Steph Smith 45:14 Yes.

Sam Parr 45:15 That's pretty dope. When you answer just yes, that means I'm not gonna ask how much.

Steph Smith 45:19 [laughs]

Sam Parr 45:19 But that's pretty awesome.

Steph Smith 45:20 It's six figures. There's a pretty wide range of... you know.

Sam Parr 45:23 Does the six figure include the .00? So it could really be, like, 1,000.00 dollars.

Steph Smith 45:29 It's eight figures now. [laughs]

Sam Parr 45:31 Got it. [laughs] Um, this is a really, really cool website. I could spend hours just looking at this. Like, there's an article about, like, camels' fur-

Steph Smith 45:41 Yeah

Sam Parr 45:41 ... uh, and how, uh, it keeps people cool, or it keeps camels cool in the desert, but also warm at night, and why that particular type of fur is special for this. Like, it's so-

Steph Smith 45:51 I mean-

Sam Parr 45:52 And the reason it's kind of interesting is, like, the, the two that I've named are, are clothing related, but, like, if you had a clothing related brand, like some type of... Like, it's stealing the story for you. Like, it's... Like, or not stealing. It's giving you the hook. Do you know what I mean?

Steph Smith 46:04 Exactly. Exactly. And by the way, like, people in our world, in business tech, are always talking about the, like, Lindy-ness of something. How long has something existed for? And it's like you are learning from millions of years of evolution, right? Um, of these, these animals that have become purely optimized for this purpose. And to your point, I think, like, the marketer in both of us is like, "What could, you know... What products could you make off of this?"

Sam Parr 46:32 Like, there's one of, like, otters, where it's like it keeps, it keeps heat in and cold water out, so otters. And I'm sure every single wetsuit company has, like, stolen this marketing for their branding or whatever, but, like... So it's, like, really fascinating. Sorry, go ahead.

Steph Smith 46:46 Well, did you ever see... You know Mischief, right? Mischief the brand.

Sam Parr 46:49 Uh, Mischief is, uh, the company that-

Steph Smith 46:52 They're always doing those stunts

Sam Parr 46:52 ... like, weird projects. Like, they did, like, a, a blood shoe for, with Lil Nas X or something like that.

Steph Smith 47:00 Yeah. Yeah. So they've, they've done a ton of shoe collabs. They did one, I think it was... I don't remember if it was with Jimmy Kimmel or they just announced it, but it was called the Gobstopper. Did you ever see this?

Sam Parr 47:11 No.

Steph Smith 47:12 I thought they were kind of cool. They basically, the bottom of the sneaker comes gray at first, and then as you wear it more, basically, like, as your shoe wears away, it looks like a Gobstopper. And it was just, like-

Sam Parr 47:27 Which is the candy that you suck on, and each shell, layer of shell, it turns colors. Okay, cool.

Steph Smith 47:32 Yeah, exactly. And so my, like, you might think this is the silliest idea ever, but when I went to the Galapagos and I saw these red-footed and these blue-footed boobies... And by the way, fun fact for the listeners, the reason that these birds have different colored feet is because of what they eat, which I just thought was, like, so strange and interesting. Basically, like, the two different birds on different islands eat different things, and that ends up, um, impacting the pigment in their feet. But imagine a sneaker brand that was... Again, stick with me here. This might be a really awful idea that's related to health in some way. So, like, let's say you're wearing a CGM, and on your shoes, your shoes change color in some way based on h- like, if you're in range or some other metric that you care about. But basically, you're able to signal something in a way that changes through your feet.

Sam Parr 48:30 Like the f-

Steph Smith 48:30 Awful idea.

Sam Parr 48:32 Well, it could be like if, you know, we could, we could, we could show you're fertile or something. It'd help with the whole lot lizard thing.

Steph Smith 48:37 [laughs]

Sam Parr 48:39 Have... I- I don't know. Uh-

Steph Smith 48:40 It's like those parties, right, where you wear, like... W- what are they called, the stoplight parties, where you wear red?

Sam Parr 48:44 Yeah, yellow, red, or green.

Steph Smith 48:45 Yellow or green.

Sam Parr 48:46 That's pretty funny.

Steph Smith 48:47 So s- we could... Stoplight shoes. Maybe that's a better version of the idea.

Sam Parr 48:50 We just put all of our, um, uh, blood work on our, you know, like, "I don't have a thyroid issue. I'm good."

Steph Smith 48:57 [laughs] Yeah, your, like, your function health results show up in your, in, like, a pendant around your neck or...

Sam Parr 49:05 Let's, let's, let's end here. I think we got a ton of stuff. Steph Smith, um, thank you very much. Internet Pipes, stephsmith.io. Is that your website?

Steph Smith 49:14 Technically, yes. I, I haven't updated it in a while. But yeah, if people are interested in Internet Pipes, I think we dropped a code last time, MFM, if people wanna use. And they can get that, that digits database of 100 stats. We talk about shipbuilding, disaster insurance, you know, tech literacy, nomad visas, all that good stuff.

Sam Parr 49:32 All right. God bless America. We're done.

Steph Smith 49:34 [laughs]

Sam Parr 49:34 That's it. That's the pod.

Steph Smith 49:35 Thanks, Sam. [upbeat music]