6 Retro Business Ideas That Could Be As Big As LEGO ($11.8B)

Shaan Puri 0:00 All right, this is a fun episode. Sam started doing LEGOs, and that sent us down this rabbit hole where he discovered two businesses that I'd never heard of. I guarantee you never heard of it. They're awesome businesses in the LEGO niche of all things. And then we brainstormed other things that people could do around these passionate niche audiences that most people overlook. Love it. This is a MFM classic, MFM special. If you like this podcast, you're gonna love this one. Uh, and I also had, like, an epiphany about 45 minutes in that kinda changed the way I think about this podcast. So that's, that's what I got out of this episode. Sam, what did you get?

Sam Parr 0:29 So while researching this stuff, there was a ton of twists and turns to the story, the background story of how these companies started. I want you guys to listen to them. It doesn't happen... It's the second story involving LEGO. You'll know exactly what I'm talking about when we get there. It's about two-thirds of the way into the episode. I got emotional researching this, and I actually want you guys to, like, listen to the topics and the companies that we brought up. I want you to go to their websites and see what I'm talking about. You'll know exactly what I'm talking about when you get to the, the part of the episode. And let us know in the YouTube comments if this actually got to you like it got to me. I dug it. It was tons of, like, weird parts of the stories that I did not expect to happen. Anyway, check it out, and let us know in the YouTube comments if you actually dug this, because I think you will, and which parts of the stories you liked best. [upbeat music]

Shaan Puri 1:18 What is up? Shaan here with Sam, your boys who are stuck at 399,000 YouTube subscribers. They said we'd never get to 400. In fact, they're still saying we'd never get to 400. [laughs] Sam, did you see this tweet that went viral that goes, "T- All my haters said I wouldn't make it. I didn't make it. They were right. Honestly, good call by the haters." [laughs]

Sam Parr 1:40 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:42 It's like a legendary tweet. [laughs]

Sam Parr 1:44 I love that stuff. Um, yeah, we're at 399. The... I, I read every YouTube comment. Do you?

Shaan Puri 1:51 Read and reply, bro. Not to everyone, but I, I reply, like... It's like, uh, I'm in line at a coffee shop. I'll just go through and go through a whole episode and try to reply as many as I can.

Sam Parr 2:01 Yeah. So, uh, if you're listening and you're not on YouTube, do, do your boys a favor and just click subscribe. It means a lot to us. It costs you nothing. And, uh, we've got a good episode today. We have... We... Last time we talked, we both had the same topic written down, and we did it again. It happened again this time. Uh, before we get into the episode, I gotta tell you something. How big is your house, square footage?

Shaan Puri 2:24 Uh, 5,600.

Sam Parr 2:26 I'm in a house right now, um, visiting family, so I rented an Airbnb

Sam Parr 2:30 for two weeks. My home, my normal home m- in Austin, is, uh, just a little over 2,000 square feet. It's not big. It's nice, but it's not big. I'm currently renting a 7,500 sf house. I am losing so much stuff.

Shaan Puri 2:45 [laughs]

Sam Parr 2:45 This is such a big house. I think that even 55 would be too big for me. Do you like having a big house like that?

Shaan Puri 2:52 Yeah, it's great. What's not to love?

Sam Parr 2:54 I'll tell you. One, the utility bill here, if I had to guess, it's like 2,000 a month. W- what's your utility bill? Well, you're in California, so you don't really use too much electricity.

Shaan Puri 3:02 I don't even check it. Uh, I don't, I don't look. Uh, but it's, everything's on auto-pay, and I don't even wanna look. I'd say it's probably, like, $1,200, $1,500 I guess.

Sam Parr 3:10 Wow, okay. So that's expensive, but whatever. Uh, but the other thing, things break all the time. Like, there's seven bathrooms here, and, like, one of the... The guy has, like, a jacuzzi thing in one of his bathrooms. It's not working. I don't... And I haven't even gone in-

Shaan Puri 3:23 Are you going and using all seven bathrooms? That's... You, you don't use half the sh- the shit. That's the trick.

Sam Parr 3:28 That's how it breaks. That's how it breaks-

Shaan Puri 3:30 [laughs]

Sam Parr 3:30 ... is you just don't use it. And so anyway, I, I wanted to buy a big home eventually, and I'm happy I'm testing this out. It's such a big house. I understand the downsides to it of just, like, fixing things. It's a pain in the butt.

Shaan Puri 3:43 Well, here's my, here's my, my rule: number of humans plus two. That's how many beds... That's how many bedrooms I want in my house, number of humans plus two bedrooms. And one of those bedrooms turns into a man cave, like where I have the studio here right now. This is one of the bedrooms just converted, and the other one's a guest room. Uh, now my kids are small right now, so they're, like, all sleeping in the same bed and stuff like that. It doesn't really help. But as they get older, that rule is gonna come into effect.

Sam Parr 4:10 Yeah. And I think maybe my needs will change, but I just wanted to test out a big house. I'm shocked by how much I dislike it so far.

Shaan Puri 4:17 I like-

Sam Parr 4:17 So just a public-

Shaan Puri 4:17 I like how much you test-

Sam Parr 4:18 Public service announcement

Shaan Puri 4:18 ... lifestyle things. Most people don't do this at all, and you do it a lot, which is, where do I wanna live? How do I wanna live? Do I wanna live in a city? Do I wanna live in the suburbs? Do I wanna live in a big house, small house, near water? You know, what matters to me? Uh, 'cause I think a lot of people have these predefined ideas that are completely based on nothing, no evidence. And, uh, I really take a lot of inspiration from the way you test out lifestyles. You prototype, like, how you wanna live, and, uh, more people should do that, for sure.

Sam Parr 4:48 I, I do it all the time, and the reason I do it is because if you think about it, so renting a really fancy Airbnb for a week, it could be expensive. Let's just say it's $1,000 a night or more. So let's just say, let's round up and say it's 10 grand for a week. That's expensive. But you know what's more expensive? Buying a home that you only see for 24 hours and, or through a one-hour tour and being like, "Cool. This is my place now for the next 10 or 20 years." That's way more expensive.

Shaan Puri 5:11 And you're disappointed. And you're... Honestly, you start to lose a little trust in yourself. It's like, "Oh, I thought this would make me happy. It turns out I don't even like this," right? Uh, "I'm not listening to that guy anymore." And by the way, you don't have to be rich to do this lifestyle testing. Like, I was doing this when I had, uh, you know, no, no money because... Well, I didn't have... It's all relative to where you're at, right? So it's-

Sam Parr 5:31 Right

Shaan Puri 5:31 ... where do I wanna live? I would move to... Like, I would do a road trip where we would drive to another place, live on a friend's couch, but we would live there for two weeks and just kinda see, okay, what's it like in this place? Like, where... I tried it in Chicago, then I tried it in Colorado, and then, you know, I just tested out different places in order to see where do I wanna be. And, um, I think that's a very smart way to, to go about things.

Sam Parr 5:51 You wanna talk about LEGOs, my man? Let's talk about LEGOs.

Shaan Puri 5:54 [laughs] Can I introduce this category th- with... which is the following. You text me and you go, "Dude, I'm playing a

Shaan Puri 6:00 ton of LEGOs." "What?" [laughs] It's like, "Yeah, every night I'm playing LEGOs. Do you do this?" And I was like, "No, I don't do this." But I know a bunch of other people that do, and it caught my attention because I'm not sure if you know this, but this is kinda becoming this, like, uh- ... trendy thing. So there's a bunch of, like, NBA players that kinda came out of the closet saying, "Yeah, this is what I do at night."

Sam Parr 6:19 [laughs] Came out of the closet.

Shaan Puri 6:20 Yeah, like, you know the reputation for NBA players. We're all out at the strip club after games and whatever. And there's, like, this guy Miles Turner, he's like, "I'm building, like, replica Star Wars, like, you know, Death Stars [laughs] with, with my LEGOs at night, four or five hours a night." And I got kinda interested, so I looked at it.

Sam Parr 6:35 By the way, in college, I, I lived with the basketball team in college. They were the biggest nerds of all the athletes.

Shaan Puri 6:40 [laughs]

Sam Parr 6:42 Like, they, they didn't go out a l-

Shaan Puri 6:43 They're just giving him wedgies. Six, seven wedgies. [laughs]

Sam Parr 6:45 Well, like, like a Friday night was playing video games. Like, it, it was like n-

Shaan Puri 6:49 Yeah

Sam Parr 6:49 ... they were the least party animal of all the athletes. All right, everyone, a quick break to tell you about HubSpot, and this one's easy because I'm gonna show you an example of how I'm doing this at my company. When I say I, I mean not my team, I mean I'm the one who actually made this. So I've got this company called Hampton. You can check it out, joinhampton.com. It's a community for founders. And one of the ways that we've grown is we've created these surveys where we'll ask our members certain questions that a lot of people, a lot of times people are afraid to ask. So things like what their net worth is, how their assets are allocated, all these, like, interesting questions, and then we'll put it in a survey. And I went and made a landing page. So you can check it out at joinhampton.com/wealth. You can actually see the landing page that I made. And the hard part with this is with Hampton we are appealing to a sort of a, a higher end customer, sort of like, like a Louis Vuitton or a Ferrari. So I needed the landing page to look a very particular way. HubSpot has templates. That's what we used. We just changed the colors a little bit to match our brand. Very easy. They have this drag and drop version of their landing page builder, and it's super simple. I'm not technical, and I'm the one who actually made it. And once it's made, I then shared it on social media, and we had thousands of people see it and thousands of people who gave us their information. And I can then see over the next handful of weeks this is how much revenue came in from this wealth survey that I did. This is where the revenue came from. So it came from Twitter, it came from LinkedIn. Whatever it came from, I can actually go and look at it and I can say, "Oh, well, that worked, that didn't work. Do more of that, do less of that." And if you're interested in making landing pages like this, I highly suggest it. Look, I'm actually doing it. But you can check it out. Go to the link in the description of YouTube and get started. All right, now back to MFM.

Shaan Puri 8:22 So do you know what this category is called?

Sam Parr 8:26 Is it called the... Is it the acronym that starts with an A?

Shaan Puri 8:30 No, no, no. They call them, they call people like you kidults. The toy industry, they call you guys kidults, and kidults or elder-tainment is the name of this group of people that are adults buying kids toys. And that sounds like a pretty fringe thing, but it actually makes up 25% of all toy sales, [laughs] so billions and billions of dollars. A f- one, one of, one out of every four people that go buy, you know, let's say a set of LEGOs, is gonna be an, a, a, you know, a, a older teenager or adult. And it's also-

Sam Parr 9:00 But do you know what they call it for LEGOs, for specifically for LEGOs? It, it's called a, I don't, it's one of those words that I see, but I don't know if you're supposed to, how you're supposed to say it, but AFOL, adult fan of LEGOs. That's what, they're, you're self-identified-

Shaan Puri 9:12 [laughs]

Sam Parr 9:12 ... as an AFOL.

Shaan Puri 9:13 [laughs] Actual fucking old LEGO maker. [laughs]

Sam Parr 9:18 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 9:21 So, so this, uh, this category, uh, like it's based up all the growth in the toy industry. So toy industry, if you look at how fast it's growing, 60% of all the growth is just coming from this one segment. So it's like this, like, kinda this segment that's growing really fast. At first I didn't understand it, but then they did some surveys, right? 'Cause all the toy companies were like, "What's going on here? We, this is not what we planned for." So several years ago they s- commissioned a bunch of studies, and they w- they went and asked, "Why are you doing this?" And I'm, I'm curious if you're gonna say the same thing, 'cause 90% of the adults all said the same three reasons that they do it. What are your reasons, Sam?

Sam Parr 9:55 Bonding with my family. Well, and my family, it's my wife. Um-

Shaan Puri 9:58 Okay

Sam Parr 9:58 ... no s- no screens, and we can just sit-

Shaan Puri 10:01 Yeah

Sam Parr 10:01 ... at the table and do it together while we're just talking. And maybe there'll be TV on in the backgro- background, but it's basically bonding without screens, sitting at the table. And it reminds me of my childhood.

Shaan Puri 10:12 That's exactly right. The, uh, the three were nostalgia, which you just said, um, anti-loneliness, so bonding with, with whoever you're, you're doing it with, and detoxing from, from phone, as well as kind of like a anti-anxiety angle to it, like as a re- a relaxing, a relaxing activity.

Sam Parr 10:27 Because I'm following directions. I'm, I, I'm just following the directions. I'm not making any decisions. I'm doing what I'm told.

Shaan Puri 10:33 That's interesting. Oh, okay. I thought it was kind of the hands part of it. But you're saying as an adult, I'm constantly having to make decisions and think, and it's so nice to not make decisions and just be told, "Put this blue thing over here."

Sam Parr 10:46 Yeah, it's like a, it's like a, a, a PG-rated dominatrix, you know?

Shaan Puri 10:50 [laughs]

Sam Parr 10:50 Like, instead of spitting in my mouth-

Shaan Puri 10:51 It's IKEA

Sam Parr 10:52 ... it's telling me to, like, connect these, these two pieces. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 10:56 [laughs] Yeah. Some people li- you're into that stuff. All right. [laughs] To each his own.

Sam Parr 11:00 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 11:02 And so this is fascinating to me. So I want you to tell me f- I have some more ideas around w- like more exa- I have a bunch of examples around this trend and some ideas of what I think people could do. But before we do that, I just wanna know, what are you, what are you actually doing? So you're buying LEGO kits. Like, which ones?

Sam Parr 11:19 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 11:19 And what do you, what do you do?

Sam Parr 11:21 So LEGO is this huge company, so they, I think they do about $10 billion a year in sales. Uh, it was started in, like, the '20s by just an engineer. And now they have got, they've got movies, characters. It's like a, it's like a Marvel almost. It's a, like a, a whole franchise. I particularly like the line called Technics. And Technics is cool because it's basically you'll build cars or tractors or, uh, a bridge, and there's gears within the machine. And so I'm learning how, like... You know, like, in the snow when, um, old cars, when you spin your tires, only one tire would spin sometime? That's because of a rear, uh, differential. That's, like, a mechanical piece. And so I'm, like, building that, and I'm understanding how a transmission works. I'm building, I built a Land Rover that has six, a six-speed transmission, and I see how, how gears work. And so it's really fascinating to me to see these moving parts. So I build Technics. I've probably spent $1,500 on them so far. Each one is between 150 and 350. And I buy only the Technics ones. That, that's my thing.

Shaan Puri 12:22 And you're, uh, you finish them in one sitting or are these are, like, multi-week projects?

Sam Parr 12:25 No, no. I, I, one a week. So, uh, but it'll take... I'll sit for two hours, and if my wife's not with me, I'll listen to a podcast or something, and I'll just sit there for two hours assembling it from, like, 9:00 to 11:00.

Shaan Puri 12:37 Just you and the voice of Scott Galloway?

Sam Parr 12:39 Yeah, I'm just like-

Shaan Puri 12:40 [laughs]

Sam Parr 12:41 ... I'm listening to, like, some war story. So it's, like, hi-

Shaan Puri 12:44 [laughs]

Sam Parr 12:45 Just, like, me and Beni-

Shaan Puri 12:46 It's cool [laughs]

Sam Parr 12:46 Me and Benito Mussolini as I build this Land Rover. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 12:49 Like, this, like, six-inch tractor. [laughs]

Sam Parr 12:52 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 12:54 I love, by the way, how you're like, "Yeah, I built a six, you know, a six-speed transmission." [laughs] It's like, no, no, no, you didn't. You really didn't.

Sam Parr 13:01 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 13:02 I feel like you got a lot of confidence from this, that, like, "I could. If it came down to it, I now could."

Sam Parr 13:07 [laughs] Yeah.

Shaan Puri 13:07 And, uh, I don't think you could, man.

Sam Parr 13:09 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 13:10 So, all right, so you're doing this. Is this a fad, or you think this is, like, a lifelong hobby for you? What are you, what are you thinking?

Sam Parr 13:17 Lifelong. I could see it being lifelong.

Shaan Puri 13:19 Oh, wow.

Sam Parr 13:20 Yeah, I could, I could see it being-

Shaan Puri 13:20 And what do you do with it when you're done? You finished the, the six-speed tractor or whatever. What are you gonna do with this?

Sam Parr 13:25 So one of the companies that I'm gonna bring up, but basically you can tell this company that I'll, I'll break down and explain what sets you have, and you destroy them, and you rebuild them using different plans. And so you can make alternative items out of them, and so that's what I intend to do.

Shaan Puri 13:40 Ah, okay. All right. Was I wrong?

Sam Parr 13:41 They're not gonna sit on a shelf. I'm not gonna be like the 40-year-old virgin and have, uh-

Shaan Puri 13:44 Yeah, I was gonna say [laughs]

Sam Parr 13:45 ... like, dolls in packages still [laughs] unused.

Shaan Puri 13:48 [laughs]

Sam Parr 13:48 No. I, it, it really is a enjoy the journey type of thing. So once I'm done with it, I'm like, "I don't care about it."

Shaan Puri 13:55 Okay. Good. Um, so I wanted to bring up a couple other examples 'cause I,

Shaan Puri 14:00 I saw this and I was like, "Huh, that's weird. That's interesting about LEGOs." Then I was like, no, there's something to this, like, kidult behavior, right? Where adults buying and doing kid things that is, you know, anti-phone, anti-loneliness, and, uh, and nostalgic. And, um, I'm gonna give you some examples of, of trends that are like this. So the first is Calm. Um, we're both friends with the, the founders of Calm, Alex and Michael, and I don't know if you remember this, but back in the day, Calm was really struggling. Today, Calm is, like, kind of very popular. It's a multi-billion dollar company. But back when we were living in San Francisco and hanging out with Alex, uh, Calm was, like, small. It was a slow grower. It was not sexy. Nobody wanted to invest in it.

Sam Parr 14:43 Well, it was kind of a joke, like, a meditation app? Are you kidding me?

Shaan Puri 14:46 And Alex is very jokey, and the other things he built, like Million Dollar Homepage, were all jokes. So i- it's kind of like, "Oh, cool."

Sam Parr 14:52 And the other guy built, like, a stuffed animal business before that.

Shaan Puri 14:56 [laughs] Yeah, so they, they were definitely, like, non-serious serious entrepreneurs. Um-

Sam Parr 15:02 Right

Shaan Puri 15:02 ... they... But I remember one time talking to Michael. So Michael came to visit from London, and he's like... I was like, "So what do you do with Calm? 'Cause you're not even here full time. Alex is sitting in his apartment grinding away at this thing that's not really going too fast, growing too fast. What are you doing?" And he's like, "Oh, I'm work- I work on new products." And I'm like, dude, this is not, like, uh... You know, he looks at Richard Branson, but I was like, "This is not Virgin Atlantic. What new products?" He's like, "No, no, I got a great one." He goes, "Uh, I wanna do, um, bedtime stories for adults." And I was like, "What?" [laughs] He's like, "No, no, no." I, I was like, "That's... Okay, whatever. Marketing stunt, I guess?" And he's like, "No, no, no, I think this is gonna be a thing." He goes, "Pe- people are gonna..." Like, he's like, "A lot of adults, they listen to things before they sleep to help them relax and help them actually, like, fall asleep, but they're not done very well."

Sam Parr 15:48 Do you?

Shaan Puri 15:49 Uh, yeah, I do sometimes. I have, like, uh, I have, like, a version of white noise that I sometimes listen to, or I'll just listen to podcasts and fall asleep, which is not the same thing. But, uh, there's, like, a relax... People want a rela- a relaxation thing. In fact, I think one of the top podcasts in the world is just, like, 18 hours of sleep sounds. [laughs] And it's, like, I'll put it on and I'll listen.

Sam Parr 16:08 Dude, I listen to a, I listen to Family Guy when I go to bed, and I just hear, like, "Peter."

Shaan Puri 16:11 [laughs]

Sam Parr 16:12 Like, I just hear that while I'm going to sleep. Yeah, I'm a Family Guy-

Shaan Puri 16:14 You're just chuckling to sleep. Exactly. [laughs]

Sam Parr 16:16 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 16:16 And so he's like, "I'm gonna do this thing." They ended up being sleep stories, and sleep stories were one of the things that really let Calm take off. It, like, exploded after sleep stories. In fact, I would say that Calm is... It's less about meditation, and it is more about the state of being calm, and in really the number one product is the sleep stories. And he, they got Matthew McConaughey to narrate this, like, bedtime story, and he was hosting... I don't know if you remember this in San Francisco. He would, before, to prototype this, he was hosting parties in San Francisco where you would go to this woman's house, and you would lay down on her carpet. And you would have, like, a pillow, and they would, like, set the mood, and then she would just talk and put you to sleep. And then everybody would go to sleep, and, um, it was the most San Francisco thing ever. And these were-

Sam Parr 16:58 It's weird

Shaan Puri 16:58 ... that was like a party. It was like, it was like a networking event. [laughs] It was like... It was amazing. And so that-

Sam Parr 17:03 But you think Calm is gonna h- have toy? Or you're saying the, the toy is the, the bedtime story?

Shaan Puri 17:06 No, I'm saying this is part of the same thing. Like, adults using, adults using kid product, basically. So bedtime stories for adults. That's another version of-

Sam Parr 17:14 Yeah

Shaan Puri 17:14 ... you know, adults using LEGOs.

Sam Parr 17:16 My family member... I have family members, I won't even say who they are, they might be embarrassed, who go to sleep to Calm bedtime stories.

Shaan Puri 17:22 And what's embarrassing about that? That's awesome.

Sam Parr 17:23 I don't know. I don't know.

Shaan Puri 17:25 [laughs]

Sam Parr 17:25 You, you never know. I'm not gonna out someone. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 17:27 [laughs] So, so there's also, like, Moon Pals and Squishmallows. Have you seen these?

Sam Parr 17:33 Yeah. I know Moon Pals.

Shaan Puri 17:34 They're, like-

Sam Parr 17:35 Yeah

Shaan Puri 17:35 ... basically giant stuffed animals, but they're geared more towards adults than they are for kids. And you see, like, you know, 24-year-old girls in the Bronx who, like, have, like, a, you know, like, a Moon Pal that they carry around as their little-

Sam Parr 17:46 Or, uh-

Shaan Puri 17:47 ... like, safety blanket

Sam Parr 17:47 ... Funko Pop. Is that, was that what it's called? What's the Funko?

Shaan Puri 17:51 Funko. Funko's a publicly traded company, you know that?

Sam Parr 17:54 No.

Shaan Puri 17:54 [laughs] They, they're, they're like a, uh, $400 million, uh, market cap company. During the, during COVID when everybody was stuck at home and people started just spending money collecting or buying crypto or doing whatever, Funko was, like, over a billion dollars 'cause they were selling-

Sam Parr 18:07 And it's just, like-

Shaan Puri 18:07 ... so many of these figurine doll things

Sam Parr 18:09 ... figurine, like, dolls? That's all it is?

Shaan Puri 18:11 Yeah, it's just, like, a little, a little toy-

Sam Parr 18:13 Got it

Shaan Puri 18:13 ... um, toy figure, action figure. No action, I guess. Just a toy figurine that, uh, has an oversized head.

Sam Parr 18:20 And we ta- [laughs] That's funny. Uh, we had talked about mini brands as well, like the company Mini Brands that makes miniature, I don't even... Like, Coke cans.

Shaan Puri 18:31 Yep

Sam Parr 18:32 Uh, th- those are insane too.

Shaan Puri 18:33 Another one. B- have you ever been to Build-A-Bear?

Sam Parr 18:37 Dude, they, they kill it, yeah. I've taken a nephew there.

Shaan Puri 18:40 So Build-A-Bear is, like, this thing in the mall where you go and build a teddy bear. It's usually, like, you know, it's for kids. You know that 40% of their revenue now comes from adults?

Sam Parr 18:49 That's insane.

Shaan Puri 18:50 That's insane.

Sam Parr 18:50 That's absolutely-

Shaan Puri 18:51 And they call it Build-A-Bear After Dark. They basically, like, open up at late hours and let adults come in and basically, like, you know, uh, do it as a date night activity and stuff like that. It's crazy. Um, there's more. So there's, like-

Sam Parr 19:02 Same with, uh, a- a- American Doll. Uh, you know, I don't know if you... You had a sister, so you would know American Doll, but I bet Arie knows American Doll or had an American Doll. American Doll still crush it. Uh, do you know what American Doll is?

Shaan Puri 19:13 No. Is that not Barbie? That something else?

Sam Parr 19:16 It's different. It's a doll that's maybe three foot tall. It, back then they would cost $150, so it was a big deal. And there, it was sort of like G.I. Joe, but for girls, and there was, like, an American Doll student, and so it looked like a little girl who was going to Harvard, or American Doll-

Shaan Puri 19:32 [laughs]

Sam Parr 19:32 ... astronaut or something like that. It was, like, themed, but they were supposed to be more high-end than a Barbie and more collectible I think.

Shaan Puri 19:40 American Doll OnlyFans creator. Oh, they have, like, new, new genres. That's great. So they, um-

Sam Parr 19:45 That's great. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 19:46 [laughs] So, uh, there's, there's just, like, the... Like, even Barbie, by the way, do you know the Bar- you know how the Barbie movie came about?

Sam Parr 19:53 No.

Shaan Puri 19:53 'Cause, like, the Barbie movie is not k- not geared towards kids, right? Like, if you've seen it, it's a, it's not a, it's not a kid's movie really. It's an adult... It's, like, geared towards adults, and that, this is the reason why. They actu- Bar- Barbie the company actually created an internal movie production company to create this movie geared towards adults to help sell more dolls into this Kidult, uh, like, uh, segment. And so this, that was a marketing stunt for that, which is kinda crazy when you think about it.

Sam Parr 20:22 That's insane.

Shaan Puri 20:22 I didn't realize that about the Barbie movie. Um, but, like, there's also tabletop gaming. So you know those guys from Chernin? They've made it, like, big bets on tabletop gaming, which is basically board games that adults play. They have, like, Exploding Kittens, and they have some other ones, but that's another genre. Even McDonald's came out with an adult Happy Meal. I don't know if you saw this last year.

Sam Parr 20:41 No.

Shaan Puri 20:41 Just a hilarious, like, they made a bigger box with full-sized fries and an adult toy, and they did this last year, and it was, like, this viral marketing stunt that went crazy because everyone's like, "Oh, dude, I wanna go get one," and, uh, it, like, went viral on TikTok and stuff like that. Brands are really capitalizing on this. So I have a few ideas I wanna pitch, pitch you. I want you to tell

Shaan Puri 21:00 me... You can just give me a, uh, genius or idiot on these. This is sort of like a mini Drunk Ideas episode for you.

Sam Parr 21:06 All right.

Shaan Puri 21:06 All right. First one. You know how you've seen the stats how millennials are just, like, not getting married and not having babies?

Sam Parr 21:16 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 21:16 Like, it's, like, a lower rate than ever before.

Sam Parr 21:18 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 21:19 Tamagotchis for babies. So basically [laughs] you give, you give that 28-year-old who's single and whatever, you give him a Tamagotchi that's a baby that they gotta keep, they gotta raise, and they gotta take care of. Like, Tamagotchis I think were pets. Screw it. We're just doing an actual human baby. You gotta take care of this thing, and it literally is the same level of, uh, like, same s- same, like, hourly needs as a baby, and let's see what you got. [laughs] So Tamagotchi for babies, that's my first one.

Sam Parr 21:49 So the problem with these ideas is if you would've told me about the things that are successful now, that they... Like, this is, this is gonna work, I would've said those are all horrible ideas.

Shaan Puri 21:58 Correct.

Sam Parr 21:58 So this is, like, a really challenging category to-

Shaan Puri 22:01 That's why I prepped you by telling you all the ones that worked before I told you my bad ideas just to kind of, like, frame you, like, prime you for, like, "Hey, I don't know, man, anything's possible."

Sam Parr 22:09 So do I think Tama- Yes. I think, I think there, there'd be legs for Tamagotchi. What, what happened to the company?

Shaan Puri 22:16 Uh, dude, I have no idea. What's Tamagotchi?

Sam Parr 22:18 It's a, it's a Japanese business. Yeah, it's a, it's based in Japan. Yeah, I, I, I'd believe that a Tamagotchi for babies could work.

Shaan Puri 22:24 It's a, it's a standalone device that's gonna replicate having a baby. All right, that's number one. Number two, do you ever use K'nex?

Sam Parr 22:31 Yeah, love K'nex. You ever build a big Ferris wheel?

Shaan Puri 22:34 No, 'cause K'nex were hard, and I had a cousin. I have a cousin who's the same age as me, looks like me, last name Puri, and this guy's way smarter than me. And I th- I'm pretty sure the reason he's way smarter than me is that his dad bought him K'nex when he was a little kid, and he was just making K'nex all day, every day after school. I was playing Dreamcast, and he was building K'nex. Guess what he does now? I have a podcast. He builds, like, self-driving cars. This guy's a genius. [laughs]

Sam Parr 23:00 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 23:01 So, like, I'm pretty sure K'nex is the, uh, you know, the, the number one contributing factor to this guy being a genius.

Sam Parr 23:06 Dude, listen to this. K'nex was sold in 2018 for only 28, $21 million.

Shaan Puri 23:11 I know, I know. Crazy. What, out of, what happened-

Sam Parr 23:13 Crazy

Shaan Puri 23:13 ... how is LEGO, like, a $50 billion company and K'nex sold for $21 million? Like, what happened here? And when you were describing the LEGO Technics, it's very similar. So K'nex, the difference was that it was more kinda like a STEM kid thing where it's, like, science-y and math-y where it's, like, you cr- you know, you have these, like, m- li- little, like, rotating wheels and mo- it's almost like a motor that you're creating. It's like a high-functioning version of LEGOs.

Sam Parr 23:37 That's how I describe you, by the way. You're, you're, you're [laughs] you're a high-functioning version of a LEGO.

Shaan Puri 23:41 [laughs] Exactly.

Sam Parr 23:41 That's basically you. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 23:44 I take that as a compliment.

Sam Parr 23:45 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 23:46 And so I think K'nex should just, like, somebody should just reboot K'nex, targeted at, as a, for adults that wanna do LEGOs basically. Uh, the guys like you. Th- literally K'nex for Sam Parr. That's my next idea. Go ahead.

Sam Parr 24:00 Yeah, I'm in. That's a, that's a no-brainer. I'm in. So K'nex was acquired in 2019, and they're basically not that existent anymore-

Shaan Puri 24:08 Dead

Sam Parr 24:08 ... because of, because of a bunch of tariffs, uh, something, like, where they couldn't import them. But, uh, yeah, I'm in. I think K'nex is awesome.

Shaan Puri 24:15 And I think they sold a bunch through, like, Toys "R" Us, and then Toys "R" Us went bankrupt, and I think they lost a bunch of revenue there. So I think it's just, hey, little bad luck, you know, unfortunate bounce of the ball there, and I, I feel like K'nex still is a good opportunity. All right, here's my next one.

Sam Parr 24:28 All right, what else?

Shaan Puri 24:30 ... easier Rubik’s cube.

Sam Parr 24:31 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 24:33 Can you do a Rubik’s cube?

Sam Parr 24:34 No, I can’t. I cannot. Can you?

Shaan Puri 24:36 Do you kinda wish you could?

Sam Parr 24:37 Uh, yeah, yeah. I mean, what we used to do is just take the stickers off.

Shaan Puri 24:40 [laughs]

Sam Parr 24:42 [laughs] You, you take the stickers off and it, and then you put them all back in the right place, and you can brag that you did it.

Shaan Puri 24:47 [laughs] Oh, okay, gotcha. You can also buy it new and it’s done. So, um, what’s the easiest party trick you could do? Like, I can juggle. Can you do anything like that?

Sam Parr 24:58 Yeah, um, if I smoke a cigarette, I can blow smoke out my ear.

Shaan Puri 25:00 [laughs]

Sam Parr 25:03 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 25:03 Really?

Sam Parr 25:04 I swear to God, yeah. I’ve had all these-

Shaan Puri 25:06 Out your ear?

Sam Parr 25:07 I’ve had all these surgeries in my ear, and so, like, some pipes got rerouted, and I used to be able to blow smoke-

Shaan Puri 25:11 [laughs]

Sam Parr 25:11 ... out my ear. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 25:14 Dude, how do we not start every podcast with that?

Sam Parr 25:17 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 25:17 Come on. You're always sandbagging us. We, we would be at 400,000 subscribers. [laughs]

Sam Parr 25:23 But dude, solving a Rubik’s cu- cube is a close second, though.

Shaan Puri 25:27 All right, r- easier Rubik’s cube. So I think Rubik’s cube, fun little idea. It’s kinda like a fidget spinner anyways, the way that the Rubik’s cube feels. However, too hard. Way too hard. And we get it. If you can do a Rubik’s cube, that’s fantastic. That’s chess. Where’s checkers? I need a checkers of Rubik’s cubes. And so, um, here’s what I’m thinking. Letters on the outside, and it’s kinda like Wordle. Wordle is a very fun game, simple game. You play every day. You could build a daily habit. I think somebody needs to take the concept of Wordle but put it in the form factor of a Rubik’s cube, where every day you get a notification on your phone or there’s a website that posts the starting letter combination, and then you gotta rotate it to make the word. And it should take, like, five minutes. It’s like, you know... Do you play The New York Times Mini Crossword?

Sam Parr 26:12 No, do you?

Shaan Puri 26:13 Every day. This thing’s amazing. It’s such a fun... It’s 60 s- it’s literally like a 60-second break. It’s a game. It’s a crossword. Crosswords are kinda fun, but a real crosswo- crossword puzzle is pretty hard and time-consuming. And the, when New York Times made this mini, it, that thing drives, like, millions of dollars. Like, it’s like,

Shaan Puri 26:30 I don’t know, 10% of New York Times’s revenue comes from this little game app, and it’s mostly The New York Times Mini Crossword. This thing is a, a, a, a absolute hit product. All right, l- I have two more. Candle pouring kits. So another thing that is highly tactile, highly satisfying, leaves you with a result, a candle. Um, candle pouring is something I see a lot on TikTok. I don’t know exactly how it goes or how it works, but I’m pretty sure this could be another, like, adult cra- arts and crafts relaxation thing that, that is accessible to many and results in you actually having something that’s not just clutter and junk in your house, 'cause you could just light the candle, use it, melt it down, and then you’re done. So I think a candle pouring kit, uh, company could do pretty well.

Sam Parr 27:13 Dude, I’m in on that one because you’d wanna buy one. You, you’d wanna continually buy them if you got into it, right? Um.

Shaan Puri 27:19 Yeah, and candles make a ton of money. Like, go look at the candle MLMs. Uh, if you wanna know of what products work, go look at what MLMs work and, uh, work backwards from there. So there are several multi-level marketing schemes that are based around candles, which tells me there’s a, a giant market for candles.

Sam Parr 27:35 Tell me one more, and then I wanna blow your mind with a LEGO story.

Shaan Puri 27:39 Okay. Um, I’m now seeing what I wrote here, and I have no idea what this means, so I’m gonna just take this as a, uh, as a blank canvas for myself. Relaxation puddle. [laughs] I don’t know what I meant when I wrote this. This was late last night. Um, I think what I... Oh, I think what this is, is like, my kids, uh, one of the things you do with kids is you give them something called, like, sensory play. So you buy this, like, box, and you put in, like, Orbeez, or you put in these, like, gel circle things, and you put your hand in. It’s got this cool sensation. It’s like, it’s, like, very cold. You, they're, like, these, like, balls that you can kind of, like, you know, um, you, you can touch and feel. But they're not, like, uh... It's like slime. You know, slime's really popular for kids. There's, like, all, all these things that are very tactile. Play-Doh. And so you... I think what I was thinking here is it's very relaxing if you put your hands in this thing. What if you could put your whole body in this thing, I think is what I was thinking. It's more like those, uh, those, uh, sensory deprivation tanks that people like to do in San Francisco, uh, and maybe other places as well. I'm not sure. [smacks lips] But something you could just go lay in, and it's like a super nap is really where my head was going.

Sam Parr 28:44 I'm trying to yes, and you, but it's really hard when the premise is a relaxation puddle. So [laughs] yeah.

Shaan Puri 28:52 Dude, the word puddle is so underrated, actually. Sounds great. Uh, has all kinds of jokes and connotations. Very meme-able word, and I think that's what you want with any of these. You want the idea to be so stupid that you get memed into popularity. You understand what I'm saying here?

Sam Parr 29:09 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Shaan Puri 29:09 You're gonna... Here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna do it. It's gonna sound ridiculous, and 95% of America wants to make fun of you. But then that, those articles go out, those memes go out, and then 5% of people are like, "I don't know. I'd try it." Right? Like, you remember when that thing happened that, like, guys were laying on their back and they were, like, suntanning their butthole?

Sam Parr 29:29 [laughs] Yeah.

Shaan Puri 29:30 And they're like, "Yeah, that's the new thing."

Sam Parr 29:31 [laughs] Dude.

Shaan Puri 29:32 I don't even think that was a thing.

Sam Parr 29:34 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 29:34 But I think there was someone behind that that was like, "You know what? We'll get ripped up everywhere automatically overnight if I say that this is a thing."

Sam Parr 29:41 I've got this friend, Chris, who would send me [laughs] so many photos of, you just see his legs, like, as if he's halfway clothed with his legs in the air, and he's like [laughs] just like-

Shaan Puri 29:50 Yeah, say his last name. He deserves it for doing that.

Sam Parr 29:52 [laughs] Just being healthy. [laughs] Uh, let me tell you-

Shaan Puri 29:55 Yeah, but the, like, Crocs are like this, right? They're intentionally ugly. They're intentionally so ugly

Shaan Puri 30:00 you have to talk about them, and the design, like, stands out in a not so good way, but the result of it is that, uh, you know, it gets talked about.

Sam Parr 30:08 Yeah, like, you just gotta figure out what the fuck a relaxation puddle is first. [laughs] You're just starting with the word. Let me tell you two crazy stories. The second one is in particularly crazy, and I think you're actually gonna dig it 'cause it, it's gonna revolve around your world. So I'm a LEGO fan. I, I like doing LEGOs now. It's my new thing. There's this website called Rebrickable. So Rebrickable is this amazing website. It was clearly started by an engineer. I think his name is I actually don't know what the guy's name is who started it. Uh, Nathan, I think his name's Nathan. So Nathan was, uh, a, just an engineer at some company, normal job in Australia. He started this website that he... It's actually quite complicated, and what you do, there, there's tens of thousands of LEGO kits, you know, and it's been around for 100 years, so there's probably hundreds of thousands of different types of LEGO kicks, kits. You tell it what type of LEGO sets you have, and then other designers, so people who are LEGO fans, have created directions on how to build their own creations. It's called an MOC, My Own Creation, and it's a whole community of people who build MOCs. And he has roughly 30,000 people who have uploaded a variety of MOCs that you can buy, from $10 probably all the way up to $100. And what's interesting about this guy, th- there's so many crazy business implications here, but what's interesting about this guy is, A, he's an engineer, and the, the, the people who listen to this podcast, there's a bunch of engineers out there, there's a huge overlap, a Venn diagram, of LEGO enthusiasts, and this guy adds a third circle to that Venn diagram of businesspeople. And so basically, it had... He reveals all of his stats online, and you can go to his blog and you can see it. He started this company, I think, in 2010, and it was just a project. I looked at his LinkedIn. He worked as a full-time per- uh, had a full-time job since 2000, uh, until 2020. And he reveals every year how much page views the, the website has had, how many registered users it's had, how many people are selling products on there. So it's basically a marketplace. And so in 2023, he had 11 million users create an account on his website, which is-

Shaan Puri 32:11 Wow

Sam Parr 32:12 ... which is huge. And so if you account for, let's say, 3% of people buy something, that's 330,000 people, or sales, who bought an MOC, so someone's directions on building something. Say the average sale's about 15 bucks, that's about $5 million in revenue that he's, uh, collected. And of course, he gives a lot to, most of it, to the designer. But there's people who have whole, like, stores on the website, and it's really fascinating. And his page views last year, 2023, were around 160 million page views. And if you look at his website, he blogs every year and he says what his stats are, how many page views he's ha- he has, and it's a very interesting blog to read because, A, he's being transparent about the business, and B, you can see how to build, like, a rabid community. So on his blog, on... And it's clearly a self-built blog. He's not even using WordPress. He built everything from scratch. You'll see the comments saying, "I love this community. I'm so into, uh, Rebrickable," like, "Nathan, you're the man." Like, people are, are, are rabid about this, uh, niche. It's incredibly fascinating. And this type of guy, I'm just gonna stereotype him, he's not a business-savvy person, or at least he doesn't want to be. Like, he's not out there trying to milk this dry and make as much money as possible. But this type of business that he has, once you get users to a passionate following like this to your website, you can sell them anything. And so what Andrew Wilkinson calls this is an airport business. So once you're there, "Well, while you're here, we can sell you this, we can sell you that." It's, people are here to learn and they're ready to buy. And the reason why this is fascinating is because with LEGOs, you know, they cost hundreds of dollars sometimes, and you wanna buy a new one every month, every couple months, and so the market is actually quite big to build a big business. This is like a, a type of company that if you wanted to be a PE guy, which I don't think you should, because this is like a work of art to me, but if you wanted to be a PE guy and buy a business that you could milk for tons of profit, and you don't actually have to do that much innovation, this is one of those websites.

Shaan Puri 34:03 Dude, what a great find. This is such a cool, cool business. Yeah, 10 million users. And by the way, look at this. I looked, I went to top designers. We gotta put this on the screen so that our 399,000 YouTube subscribers can see this. The Chinese restaurant.

Sam Parr 34:18 It's the best, right?

Shaan Puri 34:19 This thing is insane. [laughs] This is insane. Who, who made this up? This is so crazy, this v- I, this is insane.

Sam Parr 34:25 And the technology to build this stuff is amazing because, A, you could just buy, uh, an MOC from someone and they'll tell you what parts or kits that you need, and they c- they'll sell them. Or you could, there's this, like, crazy algorithm that they have where you upload hundreds of different kits that you have, and then you click, like, submit, and then you see, like, a wheels turning, and it takes, like, 60 seconds, as if it's, like, doing heavy, like, calculations. And then it'll give you a huge list of hundreds or thousands of different MOCs that others have uploaded that you can create with the parts that you have. And it'll say, "You have 100% of the parts needed for this," or, "You have 50% of the parts. Here's the other 50% that you have. You can buy them here." It's really fascinating, and it's quite complicated, I would imagine, to build that.

Shaan Puri 35:08 You found, like, dork Mecca. This is great. [laughs]

Sam Parr 35:11 It's, it's the best.

Shaan Puri 35:12 It's not only adults doing LEGOs, adults doing LEGOs who need custom, custom-made LEGO, like, designs. This is insane. Uh, yeah, this is cool. Uh, and by the way, this Chinese restaurant, three thou- like, 2,000 pieces, 10 bucks for the, for the MOC. What a steal.

Sam Parr 35:30 It's, it's amazing, and they, they, there's people, uh, like, there's people in the forums saying that they're close to making a full-time living selling their MOCs. And so when you have a rabid base like this, it's crazy fascinating to see what types of businesses you can build. Now, this particular model is very unique to LEGO, but you could look at what the sneakerheads have done with shoes. You know? Like, that was, like, considered silly a few years ago. There was a small group of people-

Shaan Puri 35:54 Right

Sam Parr 35:55 ... and they created marketplaces for it. And but this is a perfect example of how this is executed well, of these niche followings and going all in on them, and building them for the community. And what's interesting is, check this out. So in year one, he had, uh, a million people come to the website. So in year one. So, um, so that's 80,000 people a month. That's pretty good, but it's, that's not crazy. That's pretty good. His page views were 11 million, and he started that in, I think, in 2015. I said most recently, in 2023, he had, so he 11X'd it. So he had 11 million users and 160 million page views, and you can see how slowly th- these types of businesses build.

Sam Parr 36:30 And it would be very hard to break this company down. This is, they have a true moat.

Shaan Puri 36:34 Yeah, 100%. Shall we help them with, like, a marketing slogan maybe?

Sam Parr 36:38 Dude, this guy-

Shaan Puri 36:39 [laughs]

Sam Parr 36:40 This guy's, this, this guy's killing it, man. The... Whatever he's doing, I wanna be part of it. But let me tell you about an even cra-

Shaan Puri 36:46 [laughs]

Sam Parr 36:46 Let me tell you an even crazier story. This actually should be a movie. So there's a website called BrickLink. BrickLink was started in two, in the year 2000. So one of the f- you know, early, early, early first website businesses. First internet companies. So BrickLink, it originally started as Brick Bay- Brick Bay. The guy who started it, his name is Dan Jezek. So you pr- you spell that last name J-E-Z-E-K. Do me a favor and type in Dan Jezek, uh, on your, on your, uh, Chrome, and go to his personal website.

Shaan Puri 37:21 Yep, got it.

Sam Parr 37:21 You see his personal website? It looks like a GeoCities, uh, website.

Shaan Puri 37:25 Is he dead? Why... Is this like a tribute?

Sam Parr 37:27 He's dead. He's dead.

Shaan Puri 37:28 Okay.

Sam Parr 37:28 So let me tell you this story. So Dan started... He, Dan was a, wa- he... They didn't explicitly say this, but it sort of sounded like he was a hacker type of guy. And so he was kind of like a, a little bit gray hat, where he was the type of guy who probably, like, would break into, like, different websites and things like that. That's, that's the vibe that I got from him. But he was fascinat- fascinated with LEGOs, and so he built this website called Brick Bay. It was called Brick Bay at the time because he lived in Hawaii on a bay. Eventually, he got sued by eBay. They're like, "You can't use bay," so he changed it to BrickLink. And he was kind of like, reading about him, I kind of got vibes of Ross Ulbricht, the guy who started Silk Road.

Shaan Puri 38:06 Yeah.

Sam Parr 38:06 It was one guy, he was anonymous, and he would blog about all the changes he was making to the website, but it was under the name Admin. He never used his real name. And it was just him, and he had a handful of volunteer admins who helped him run the site, and he ran it like a community. And what Bri- BrickLink does is you can buy and sell different types of LEGOs. And so the thing about LEGOs is if you build the thing, you don't have any more joy for it sometimes, so you can pack it up in the boxes and you could sell it, uh, and just get a little bit of your money back and then keep going, or buy rare or interesting pieces. And so he ran this for 10 years, and it became a good business. However, he died tragically. No one online actually says how he died. We don't know. A lot of people suspected a drug overdose, but we don't know. But he was working on this website full time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It was like a full-time gig. When he died, his mother... Imagine, like, a cute old lady who, like, bakes cookies. That's what his mom looks like. And when he died, his mom loved, you know, she loved her son, and she was so passionate about the community that, that he made that she was like, "Well, I can't let this community go away." And so her and her husband, uh, Dan's stepdad, took over the website. But because it was just one guy running it, they didn't even have the passwords, they didn't even know how it was run. And so they eventually called the web hosting site, or the web hosting service, and they're like, "Hey, here's what happened. Can you help us?" They gave them the passwords, and they just spent three years figuring this out and trying to make the community thrive again. And it did. And the community stepped up, and they were like, "We gotta do this for Dan. This community is too good. We can't let Brick, uh, BrickLink go away, 'cause we love buying and selling L- LEGOs here." And so they run this business for three years, and it becomes a good business. Now, Dan dies, they're running it. Three years later, a billionaire named Jay Kim bought it. Have you ever heard of Jay Kim?

Shaan Puri 39:46 No.

Sam Parr 39:47 So Jay Kim, if you click his Wikipedia, obviously J- Jay Kim's not his real name, it's, uh, Jim Kim Jung-ju. Jay Kim was basically kind of like the Marcus Pin- Mark Pincus of Korea. So he, in the '90s, he was early in the internet and he created games, and he became the biggest gaming company in Korea. Then he was a billionaire, so he starts this family holding company where he buys a bunch of interesting companies, and BrickLink was one of the companies that he loved. Another one, now this is where it kind of comes into your, your world. He-

Shaan Puri 40:16 By the way, it says at the time of his death, he was the third wealthiest person in all of Korea.

Sam Parr 40:21 Yeah, he's a big deal. He's a big deal. But Jay Kim, he was, like, a steward for this website, so they bas- they didn't change much. But one of the reasons why he bought it, and one of the things that makes this interesting, and I'll read this excerpt from, uh, from, uh, basically, uh, Dan, the original BrickLink owner's mom, wrote this beautiful tribute. So if you go to danjezek.com, wrote this amazing tribute where they show pictures of Dan and h- him growing up and working on BrickLink. So she wrote this amazing thing, and I'll read part of it. And she said, "Not long before he died, he developed an international monetary exchange engine called BrickLink that allowed sellers almost anywhere in the world to sell in their own currency, and their customers could buy in their own currency as well." And every two hours, this system that he, that Dan built, it would update, and so you can buy cross-country and, uh, or across the world, and your currency would automatically be updated, and so everyone was getting a fair shake. He built that in 2010, which is pretty fascinating. And Jay Kim also owns Bitstamp. Have you heard of Bitstamp?

Shaan Puri 41:20 Yeah. Crypto, crypto, uh, exchange, right?

Sam Parr 41:23 One of the largest crypto exchanges in the world.

Shaan Puri 41:25 Yeah.

Sam Parr 41:25 And so the reason why this guy Dan and this whole story is fascinating is there's actually some weird crypto implications here.

Shaan Puri 41:33 [laughs]

Sam Parr 41:33 Where you see this overlap of, like, wow, what this guy Dan was doing is actually, like, in the same world of this, this whole crypto thing, and he was pretty early to it. And these LEGO fans, and if you go to, uh, BrickLink and see the comments, they're all similar. It's all a similar type of people. And this business-

Shaan Puri 41:51 Right

Sam Parr 41:51 ... BrickLink, it's fascinating. And oddly, Jay Kim also died under mysterious circumstances in his 50s in Hawaii, where Dan died. And so there's a bunch of, like, weird things going on with this story.

Shaan Puri 42:02 Wow.

Sam Parr 42:02 But BrickLink is a very fascinating company. And most recently, Jay Kim, after he died, LEGO, the company, bought the website. And they openly said, "We bought this website because we wanna carry on this tradition. We don't want anyone messing with it. We don't intend to do too much with it. We just wanna keep it going, 'cause this is for the people."

Shaan Puri 42:19 Wow. That's pretty cool.

Sam Parr 42:21 Very fascinating.

Shaan Puri 42:22 On, on this guy's website, on this guy's website, it says, uh, here's a quote from him about what he wants to do after he... Uh, uh, there's a subject, there's a post on the forum that said, uh, it was called Afterlife, question mark.

Sam Parr 42:34 Who, Jay Kim or, or Dan?

Shaan Puri 42:36 Uh, Dan, Dan. He goes, "After I die here and go to heaven, this is how I imagine it to be: A place where there's infinite amount of bricks and an infinite amount of time to build them with. Um, to build with them. Uh, there would be all kinds of bricks for all themes so that I could get-" So that when I got bored of building a castle, I could move on to a town or a pirate ship- ship. There would be lots and lots of other LEGO maniacs to share ideas and build with. Isn't that-

Sam Parr 43:00 It's, it's fascinating, right?

Shaan Puri 43:01 ... awesome. This is so great. [laughs]

Sam Parr 43:02 And if you read this guy, Dan-

Shaan Puri 43:03 This is great

Sam Parr 43:03 ... if, if both Dan and Nathan from the other website, they use these just like, uh, what, what was his name? Dread Pirates. What, what's the Silk Road guy?

Shaan Puri 43:12 Yeah.

Sam Parr 43:13 Whatever. They, they, it's a marketplace, but it's a weird movement, and it's a weird diary, and it's like a cult, and there's a very particular leader, and he's leading the charge. It's a really-

Shaan Puri 43:23 And nobody knew his name. His, he was just called Admin on Brick Link.

Sam Parr 43:26 Admin.

Shaan Puri 43:26 Yeah.

Sam Parr 43:26 He was just Admin.

Shaan Puri 43:27 Yeah.

Sam Parr 43:27 No one... They, they kinda knew it was Dan, but he never, like, revealed his name, and it was just, "Oh, Admin's doing this," and it's just this weird, like... It all stems from, like, you know, remember, like, the phone phreaks? Like, people who would, like, hack into, um, uh-

Shaan Puri 43:39 Right

Sam Parr 43:39 ... payphones, and then there was, uh, the internet, and they were doing things like that. Now there's crypto. Like, it's this weird chain where it's actually all quite similar. It's this weird underground community. And so as a business person, I see these, I see these things and I'm like, "What other products cost a lot of money, have a passionate, nerdy following, and where you can build a large audience, and then eventually sell them ev- everything?" And LEGO fits that perfectly. I think there's a few others. You, you've named a few, but it's, it's, it was actually challenging for me to find other things that were at, like this. But, like, sneakerheads are kinda one of 'em, but there's... It's just really fascinating how, how big I think these businesses can be even though they appear quite niche.

Shaan Puri 44:19 Oh, dude, I forgot. Thrill of the shill. So first of all, the thrill of the shill is one of the chef's kiss best inventions we've had. [laughs] Uh, th- and unlike the gentleman's agreement, which we kinda stole from somebody else, the thrill of the shill is actually an original. But I have a different thing I wanna try today. Are you down for it?

Sam Parr 44:37 Yes. The thrill of the shill, by the way, came up literally 30 seconds before we hit record a few weeks ago, and we said, "How do we promote interesting stuff?" And you were like, "Well, we gotta tell them valuable content, and then hopefully they'll buy whatever we're selling. Just call it the thrill of the shill." So congratulations. Let's hear it.

Shaan Puri 44:52 Yeah, so that, so that was good. But now I wanna try something different. Have you ever read this thing that is, um, like this He- the, the famous Hemingway story? I'm sure you have 'cause you're a copywriter guy. Which is the six-word story. Do you know this?

Sam Parr 45:03 Uh, about the guy outside holding the, the poster board? Like the beggar?

Shaan Puri 45:07 Uh, I don't know if it's that exactly, but basically there was a challenge which was tell... It was a six-word story contest. So it was how do you tell a story in six wo- only s- on- you only have six words? And the, the, the lore is that they told this to Ernest Hemingway, and he came up with the six-word story and he won, um, which was, "For sale: Baby shoes, never worn."

Sam Parr 45:29 Ah.

Shaan Puri 45:30 Six words. Tells a, tells a deep story. Hits you in the emotions.

Sam Parr 45:33 There's another-

Shaan Puri 45:34 All right, I'm no Hemingway

Sam Parr 45:34 ... story like that where there's a homeless guy sitting outside and he says, uh, like, "I'm blind. Please help." And a co- a famous copywriter writes. He goes, "Let me help you." And he goes, uh, "It's spring outside," or, "It's springtime." And then, "I'm blind. Please help."

Shaan Puri 45:49 And so I have a six-word challenge, six-word thrill of the shill that I'm, I'm gonna hit you with, all right? So I'm gonna do my Hemingway. I'm gonna do this whole ad in six words. Here we go.

Sam Parr 46:00 Okay.

Shaan Puri 46:00 "Business for sale: Owner never hired." And it's about this bus- It's a story about a business that failed, and it's up for sale now. And then why? 'Cause the owner never hired. He tried to do it all himself, and he just never made the key hires that he needed to scale the business 'cause he didn't go to supportshepherd.com and find amazing talent overseas to hire at a low cost, five times less than the United States. Boom! How was my story?

Sam Parr 46:24 That was beautiful. That was beautiful.

Shaan Puri 46:26 [laughs]

Sam Parr 46:26 Dude, the Hemingway one was quite good, too. That, I'm still thinking about that one.

Shaan Puri 46:30 [laughs]

Sam Parr 46:30 What is it? Uh, what? "Business for sale-"

Shaan Puri 46:32 Maybe I shouldn't have put Hemingway before my one that I made up one minute ago. [laughs]

Sam Parr 46:36 Well-

Shaan Puri 46:36 Maybe I should have done the all-time best against mine. [laughs]

Sam Parr 46:40 What was it g- what was the line? Uh, "Business for sale. Owner never hired"?

Shaan Puri 46:43 "Business for sale," just like the shoes for sale. "Business for sale. Owner never hired." [laughs]

Sam Parr 46:49 I thought it was good. Supportshepherd.com, that's the, that's the shill. The thrill was a beautiful line.

Shaan Puri 46:55 There we go. Back to the episode. You know the other one that's most like this is

Shaan Puri 47:00 fanfiction. So Wattpad reminds me a lot of this where, uh, Wattpad, and there's also another one that's like, uh, some wiki. It's like a wiki. It's like a Wikipedia but for-

Sam Parr 47:10 Fandom

Shaan Puri 47:10 ... fan- Uh, uh, yeah, I think Fandom, like, bought them or something like that, but there's another one that's just straight the Wikipedia part of it. Um, but fanfiction. So, and people get super, super, super passionate about Harry Potter and about, you know, different, um, books. And then they kinda spin out their own, their own world, right? Like, uh, I remember Mugglenet, which was started by that guy Emerson Spartz and, uh, you know... Or Spatz. I dunno. I dunno how you say his last name. Um, they built such a huge, huge website just around fans of Harry Potter. It was very much like, you know, BrickLink or whatever. And on that, I remember I used to go on there and read people because we'd be waiting for the last book to come out, and people would write their own versions of that last book. And, uh, they would... You, you know, you would just read, like, a full-length book that somebody just wrote in their spare time for fun, and that led to some big things. Like, you know, Fifty Shades of Grey came out of a fanfiction post, uh, just like that. Like, it was written originally as a fanfiction post around Twilight. And so fanfiction and, uh, a few people who were surprised that Wattpad was getting, like, hundreds of millions of visitors every month, like one of the most popular websites in the world.

Sam Parr 48:18 I think they sold for $600 million to a Korean company recently. Two years ago maybe.

Shaan Puri 48:23 Yeah, and they weren't making any money, but, like, they weren't making much money, but c- but the, the passion and the, the usage was there, and it was off the charts. And then, you know, you don't have to do, uh, much marketing because the people who are passionate about it are just gonna search the internet for every nook and cranny to find, you know, other people, like, who are as fanatical about it as them.

Sam Parr 48:41 So there's a few attributes here that I, I, I'm just thinking about off the top of my head. So attribute number one is they seem like jokes at first. So, like, it's kinda silly, like, almost embarrassing. Like, "What do you do for a living?" "Oh, I run a LEGO blog." Like, it seems silly when you talk about it, uh, at first But if there's enough people, it's, it could be pretty great. The second thing is, I actually think, I think these types of companies, you shouldn't build quickly. These are slow bird businesses where you don't wanna get too big too fast, otherwise the nerds, the passionate ones will be like, "Oh, this is lame. This is too big, too mainstream."

Shaan Puri 49:16 Yeah, it's getting commercial. Yeah.

Sam Parr 49:17 But number three is, if you do it right, they have huge moats and they're very, very hard to kill. People get very loyal to them. But just like actually New York Times Cooking actually had this a few years ago. So New York Times Cooking is a similar community like this, passionate fans. They had a revolt because, uh, in their Facebook group, someone made a change, an admin made a change, and they revolted. I don't know if you remember this, about two or three years ago, uh, they had 60,000 people in The New York Times Cooking. They changed something where, like, you had to get your posts approved at oppo- as opposed to posting on your own. A change like that, people revolted. And so these communities, you're basically a steward of the people. You're not a, you're not a, you're not all the time a dictator. You have to be very, you have-

Shaan Puri 50:04 Right

Sam Parr 50:05 ... your, your fans are temperamental. Um, and so there's pros and cons to these types of companies. But I do think they're very, very valuable because of how hard they can be to ruin.

Shaan Puri 50:15 The, um, do you think, uh, uh, not, not to be self-serving, but just a real, real discussion. Do you think we can kinda do this? Like I, I kind of think that we have the makings of doing something like this, but we also might F it up by trying to-

Sam Parr 50:30 Yes

Shaan Puri 50:30 ... grow it too fast. So, for example, one of the best tests... I, I remember talking to Ben once, and, uh, one of the best tests for will somebody like MFM is this experience. Do you ever go to a restaurant and then you can't help it, but your brain is, like, trying to calculate the, like, how much is this restaurant making? Like, you basically start counting the tables, and then you count, you know, you just, you just count the tables. You figure, oh, this many meals per hour. What's our bill? Our bill's this much. Okay, average ticket is this. And you end up with, like, what's the EBITDA of this restaurant? And that, if you're like that, you're probably gonna like this podcast. So it's a very high, like, you know, overlap. But being like that is weird, right? That's not a normal way that people are. Most people just go to the restaurant, they look at the menu, they order the food.

Sam Parr 51:09 And if you're sitting down with four other people, no one else at that table is gonna nerd out with you. Like, "Look how packed this place is." Like, "Wow, how much do you think one of these servers is per hour?"

Shaan Puri 51:17 Right.

Sam Parr 51:18 "And look how much the meal..." Like, you know what I mean? No one... You're gonna dork out with that, but no one's gonna be like, "Dude, shut the fuck up and just eat your chicken parm."

Shaan Puri 51:24 Exactly. And so in the same way that most of the LEGO people, if they went to school, could not find somebody as, or they go to, in this adult one, you go to work, you're not gonna find people who are trying to build the, this, uh, 2,000-piece Chinese restaurant that they bought the blueprint for for $10. Like, you're not gonna find your people there. And so you find your people elsewhere. You find it on Brick, BrickLink, you find it on Rebrickable or whatever. Um, I think for us, uh, it's the same thing. That person who's at that dinner, the six people they're at the dinner with, your, your family, your friends, they might not wanna dork out about it. But you find us and the community of people that like this, and you're like, "These are all people who wanna know the EBITDA of the restaurant."

Shaan Puri 52:00 And so it becomes this, like, glue, and you find your people. And I think I've been tempted in the past to try to grow this faster, and the things you do to grow it faster are sort of like dilutive. You actually-

Sam Parr 52:12 Yeah, a little, like, sell out a little

Shaan Puri 52:13 ... you sell out a little, right? Like it's the cringey YouTube thumbnail face. It's the, um, you know, it's the talking about a topic that might not be the thing you would actually ner- wanna dork out about. Like, I like that this episode is basically 90% us dorking out about these, like, niche LEGO websites versus things that might be more mainstream. You know, talking about the Super Bowl next week or whatever. But it will attract the right people.

Sam Parr 52:39 I, I thought the Super Bowl was in November. I didn't even know that.

Shaan Puri 52:42 [laughs]

Sam Parr 52:44 Yeah, I, uh, that's news to me.

Shaan Puri 52:46 [laughs] So, uh, okay, that's one thing. The second is, like, a business principle I saw. So somebody said this that I thought was really good. They go, "If you wanna build, like, a, a, a truly, a truly strong business, build, like, a reverse funnel." And I was like, "Oh, that's interesting." So, like, I always think of every business as a funnel, but I always think about it from top to bottom.

Sam Parr 53:06 What do you mean? Audience first?

Shaan Puri 53:08 Yeah. Top of the funnel is people who don't know you. They, they, they come to your website for the first time. They hear your podcast for the first time. They hear about your p- product for the first time, and that's like, you know, they become aware of you, and then they might get interested, then they might actually sign up as a user, then they might sign up for the paid account, and the paid account is always at the bottom. And I always just thought of a funnel as top to bottom. And what this person was saying was they go, "Yeah, you actually want the reverse. You wanna build as a reverse funnel." Meaning, you wanna find, like, the 10 people who are most interested and passionate about what you're doing to where, you know, you, these are your extreme hardcore users who absolutely love that you're doing this, and they will use it every day and give you feedback, and they'll annoy you with their feedback. They'll tell all their friends. Their friends won't even listen. It doesn't matter. And they're your power, power users. And then you sort of go one rung up, and you go to, like, the next 100 people who care a lot for sure, but less than those 10 who are, like, really nuts. And then you go to 1,000 people, 10,000 people, 100,000, and you, you stack the funnel from the bottoms up is a way to think about building an enduring product because you're really gonna find the people who need it the most, who love it the most. They're gonna give you the best feedback to give you, to get the product to be, uh, you know, better. And you're gonna find, you know, the people who love it versus everybody else who's kinda like, "Oh, that's cool." Um, and, and I thought, "Oh, that's actually a good principle too when it comes to how to build something." I don't know, when you built Hampton, did you, did you do that?

Sam Parr 54:22 Yeah, for sure. Uh, yes.

Shaan Puri 54:24 How did you think about who the fir- first, let's say, 10 to 20 people should be? How did you decide that?

Sam Parr 54:29 So at first I was like, "Let me figure out who wants this most." But then I, uh, I... And I had ideas as to who that would be, and then what I found was I was like, "Wow, there's a lot of entrepreneurs in Tennessee, Iowa, Idaho, Delaware, some of these forgotten areas that aren't on the coast, and I'm shocked at how lonely they are and how much they need this. Let's go get more of those people." And so that's what we did, is I didn't... I thought it was gonna be, like, cool New York or San Francisco people, and turns out it was cool Kentucky guys too. But, like, I just didn't even-

Shaan Puri 55:00 [laughs]

Sam Parr 55:00 They weren't even part of my, like, they weren't even part of my vernacular. I wouldn't even have thought about them, and so that's what we did. I think, um- With this podcast, I think it's good that you and I have other businesses that, A, pay us money, and B, can grow faster, because there's been very... There's been... It's been very tempting to try to do things that are inauthentic, but we know they will get more views. And actually, we've done a good job of sticking to, like, being authentic, but this is the... This is a very... That was a really good point of yours, that this podcast, as well as a handful of other ones, they're like these nerdy things that a small group of people are really passionate about. Like, for example, did you see the meetups that people were doing for MFM?

Shaan Puri 55:41 I was just about to bring that up. That's, that's the-

Sam Parr 55:43 That's an example

Shaan Puri 55:43 ... that's the test.

Sam Parr 55:44 Dude, do you know they're still meeting? Like, they're, they're still meeting.

Shaan Puri 55:47 Yeah, that, that's exactly right. So we thought, I guess, uh, the first mind-blowing thing was, oh, if me and Sam say we're gonna go to some place to do a live show, wow, we could fill, like, you know, 1,000 to 2,000 people in a, in a, uh, whatever, a theater to, to come watch us.

Sam Parr 56:01 And it's a ton of work.

Shaan Puri 56:02 What's that? It's a ton of work. And we're both just like, "All right, let's not really do this."

Sam Parr 56:05 Yeah, I don't wanna fly to Toronto.

Shaan Puri 56:06 "This is a lot of work, a lot of pressure." And, uh, uh, and, you know, we... Cool, we had the moment where it was c- felt good, but, like, I don't know if that's what we wanna do on an ongoing basis. And then somebody came to us, uh, uh, forgetting her name off the top of my head. Rachel, I think.

Sam Parr 56:17 Rachel River, uh-

Shaan Puri 56:18 From River. And she's like, "Hey, our product does this." She's like, "Ah, our product is for creators who have a community. Let your community meet up without you." And I was like, [snaps fingers] "Key word, without you. Love it." Um, and I was like, I... Actually, that kinda makes sense, 'cause again, it, you know, while it feels good to maybe be, like, you know, the center of attention, doesn't really feel good. And also, that's not actually what makes something really valuable. What, what we'd rather do is use our content as the magnet, as a honeypot, to bring in the cool guy from Kentucky and the cool girl from Illinois who they all do the restaurant thing, where they start calculating restaurant revenues when they walk into a restaurant. And get them together, 'cause they're gonna hit it off, but it'd be hard for them to find each other. And so if all we serve as is basically the finding function for those people to meet, and what's cool is that they did the first meetup, but then now they've just been meeting on a monthly basis, that tells me that we did something right. I don't know, we didn't intend to do that, to be very clear. Like, that was not... None of this was intentional, but that, that means something went right.

Sam Parr 57:17 I FaceTimed a few of them. Like, they was like, "Hey, we're doing this thing." I was like, "All right, cool. I'll FaceTime and just say hi." And there was people... And by the way, we, we have... Like, there's no, like, monetary thing. I think it's f- completely free. If you Google MFM and then River Meetup, you'll see, like, the landing page. I talked to people, they were like, "Yeah, I drove six hours to come to this one because I'm looking for a husband or a wife. Like, I wanna meet someone who has these similar values that for some reason MFM is a proxy for." Uh, and so I thought that was, like, super fascinating, and they told me, they go, "Oh, we're still actually doing monthly meetings 'cause we just wanna hang out with other dorks like us." And I thought that was awesome.

Shaan Puri 57:51 Yeah. By the way, our, our c- what I... My tagline for people that will like this is just business nerds with a sense of humor. That's the whole thing. If you're a business nerd, like, meaning, like, you do business, but you also, in addition to the business you run, you actually kinda nerd out about more business stuff, and you can't, can't really get enough, it doesn't feel like work to you to think about business or to read about businesses or learn more business stuff, and then with a sense of humor. 'Cause there's probably people that are, you know, more experienced than us, that share more tactical stuff, that are, um, you know, whatever. They're smarter, better. They're more to the point. But I think the one thing we do is we try to ha- we have a lot of fun while we do this, and that, that rubs off. And so that's the, the capture of, like, who is the audience for us.

Sam Parr 58:29 So we just dorked out on, like, niche, niche, passionate things. I think that, um, this LEGO shit is crazy fascinating. Um, you'll have to go to the Dan Jezek site, danjezek.com, just to look at this, and maybe you guys will dork out over, uh, over this like I did. And by the way, if you made it this far into the pod, you're definitely one of these nerds. Just go ahead... This is my one sellout. Go ahead and click subscribe on the YouTube page, 'cause you made it this far, and you could actually make fun of us in the comments or let us know what you think about this niche stuff.

Shaan Puri 58:59 I have one more quick one

Shaan Puri 59:00 that's, like, kind of in the theme of kid stuff-

Sam Parr 59:02 What?

Shaan Puri 59:02 ... games, toys. Have you seen this thing called Palworld? I know you're not a gamer, but do, do you know about this?

Sam Parr 59:07 No, what is Palworld?

Shaan Puri 59:09 Palworld is currently, like, the most popular PC game in the world-

Sam Parr 59:13 So it's on Steam?

Shaan Puri 59:13 ... and it came out of nowhere.

Sam Parr 59:14 Tell me what Steam... I still don't under- I don't understand exactly what Steam is. Steam is like an app store, but for computers?

Shaan Puri 59:20 The company that makes Counter-Strike, they cr- in order to let people come download the new version of Counter-Strike and buy it, they created Steam. It's like a store to sell Counter-S- you know, sell Counter-Strike, but it also sold all the other games, right? So now anybody can list their thing there.

Sam Parr 59:33 But I can't do it on Apple?

Shaan Puri 59:34 Well, no, 'cause you're playing on a, you know, a, a Razer PC or something like that.

Sam Parr 59:39 Got it. Okay.

Shaan Puri 59:39 So what do you need the Apple App Store for, right? That's not gonna work. Um, so it's the Apple App Store, but for computer games. Um, and huge, by the way. Like, a multi-billion dollar product. So the number one game on Steam right now is Palworld. Palworld, in, like, seven days, has done 200 million in revenue.

Sam Parr 59:57 What?

Shaan Puri 59:57 When games hit, they hit like none other. And by the way, this thing was made, like, on a $10,000 budget, so it was, like, a very, very low-cost game. What's interesting about this, right, so the game is basically, um, uh, uh, the game to me, the reason I wanted to bring this up, not 'cause... I, I don't know. I'm not even playing the game. I, uh, it's not like you play games, so we don't have a lot to talk about here. But I do think it's an example of the midwit meme strikes again. And this is basically that the best ideas, the absolute best ideas are simple. And they're not just simple, they're simple to the point of sounding dumb, okay? So simple to the point of sounding dumb. What does that mean? So, uh, to me, this is, uh, let's see. Simple to the point of sounding dumb is Snapchat, the next big social app. It wasn't started as this, like, grand intellectual theory on the future of, of communication. It was like, "What if you could send someone a picture that would, like, disappear in 10 seconds?"

Sam Parr 1:00:53 Yeah, nudes.

Shaan Puri 1:00:53 It's like-

Sam Parr 1:00:54 College nudes

Shaan Puri 1:00:54 ... right? And, and people are like, "What would you do with that?" I don't know. Stupid shit. W- why stupid shit? 'Cause it's gonna disappear in 10 seconds, so I have no, no filter, right? And then after the fact, it becomes this thing that people intellectualize and they're like, "Well, see, the thing is that-"

Sam Parr 1:01:07 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:01:08 "... um, you know, impermanence is actually the greatest form of permanence." It's like, what? What are you talking about? And, uh, [coughs] and people start to get intellectual about it, but that's not where the best ideas come from. The best ideas come from really, really simple things that can be described in just a couple words, words. Palworld, if you go look at this game, it's like, oh, what's the game? The game is Pokemon with guns.

Sam Parr 1:01:28 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:01:29 It's like, what? It's like, yes. And then literally the CEO, he, he says this. He goes, "I'm not a visionary. I, I don't know how to do that. Um, I just try to make whatever people want. And I knew that, uh, Pokemon..." You know, or he didn't say Pokemon 'cause he didn't wanna get sued, but he's like, "Yeah, I had this idea of like, you know, you could run around and capture these little monsters, but then we added guns because, you know, Americans love to shoot things."

Sam Parr 1:01:50 That's insane.

Shaan Puri 1:01:51 [laughs] And that was, like, the, the core idea. And he was like... They're like, "So why do... You know, what was the decision to do this art style?" He's like, "Oh, I didn't even wanna do that, actually. I wanted to do, like, the cool 3D thing, but I didn't even know that to do that you have to have, like, an animation rig and all this stuff." He's like, "So I made one, and I was like, 'God, that was hard. I... Uh, there's no way we could do this with, like, 10,000 characters. Like, impossible.'" Um, he's like, "So we had this artist that we had rejected, and then we, like, hired her later." And they're like, "Oh, oh." They're like, "Wow. Oh, you know, what did you tell her to do?" He's like, "I don't know. Like, whatever our programmer could make, like, that was her mandate." They're like, "What was her budget?" He's like, "I don't know. We had, like, $10,000, but, um, we didn't really set a budget." He's like, "You know, I guess if we needed more, I would've probably just gone and borrowed some more." [laughs] And they're like, "Tell us about the developers on your team." He's like, "One of my developers is a guy I met, like, at a convenience store, this kid. He's, like, a teenager, but, like, he told me he could code, so I told him to come by, and, you know, he, uh, he works on the game. Uh, he's pretty critical for, [laughs] for the game."

Sam Parr 1:02:47 So the founder has written this, like, really amazing blog post where he, like, explains everything that you're talking about. And he's like... He's kinda... He's like a shithead in the best possible way. And he's like... He basically says, he goes, "This game shouldn't even exist. Uh, it's the antithesis of proper game development." And he says, um, he goes, "We had no budget. Uh, no sane company would ever start developing a game without a budget. But Pocketpair," which is the developer, "is not a sane company." And he just talks about... So I start asking myself, what's the budget? When the balance of our bank account reached zero, we could always just borrow money or release money just before the company went bankrupt. We had about two years of runway, and I decided just to keep working without stressing about budget, because all I was worried about was getting the game done as fast as possible. And he's, like, quite not like a corporate CE- CEO. Uh, this is, like, pretty awesome. He, he's in Japan. Is this a Japanese guy?

Shaan Puri 1:03:39 Uh, yeah. It's a Japanese game. He basically made some money in crypto and then took the crypto money and was like, "All right. I'm gonna start a game studio with this," even though he kinda wasn't, like, you know, equipped to do that. Um, like, right now on Steam, it's the number one game that... Right now as we're recording this, there is over one million people concurrently playing the game.

Sam Parr 1:03:57 That's insane.

Shaan Puri 1:03:57 Right now, this second. Um, like, the highest was

Shaan Puri 1:04:00 two million at a time were playing the game just concurrently. It's the number one, more than Dota, more than Counter-Strike, more than PUBG, more than all of them.

Sam Parr 1:04:07 He was like, uh, "This one lady applied, but I didn't think her designs were that good, so I rejected her. But then she ke- three months later, she sent me a DM, DM, and I was so amazed that she was bold enough after I rejected her to keep messaging me, so we hired her." Uh, like, [laughs] like, he just has, like-

Shaan Puri 1:04:23 Yeah. [laughs]

Sam Parr 1:04:23 ... story after story of, like, that doesn't make sense, so let's do it. Uh-

Shaan Puri 1:04:26 But that, the meme, the Midwit meme where it's like, you know, the idiot and the Jedi kinda think the same thing, right? Like, just m- like, just make the game as fast as possible, right? [laughs] Or, like, you know, if you run out of money, just try to get some more. Um, you know, [laughs] what should you make it? What if Pokemon had guns? That'd be cool. Right? It's like, versus people who are, like, you know, trying to over- overly intellectualize and overanalyze everything. And, um, I just see this trend over and over and over again. I, I truly believe... Did I tell you about the Midwit thing I'm trying to do?

Sam Parr 1:04:58 No, what?

Shaan Puri 1:04:59 I, I truly believe this Midwit meme explains so much of my own life, and, like, I wanna see it every day as a reminder to don't overthink it. Just keep it simple, and just what's the obvious answer? What's the obvious answer is, like, it's always there, but it gets fogged up by my own stupidity trying to overly o- overarchitect things.

Sam Parr 1:05:19 Or, like, wanna be an intellectual.

Shaan Puri 1:05:21 And so George Mack, our friend, uh... Do you, do you know George? He's awesome.

Sam Parr 1:05:24 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:05:25 He's a great dude, very interesting thinker. And so he had this idea for a, like, to do a super glossy, like, coffee table book, high-end, but of just, like, 100 Midwit memes. And I heard this idea, and I was like, "That's genius. I can't wait." And so I messaged him, and then, like, months later I was like, "Dude, what happened to the book?" And he's like, "Oh, well, I didn't wanna do it because, you know, um, you know, I was gonna have to do 365..." Uh, his original thing was 365, like one a day, 365 Midwit memes. He's like, "I didn't know if I can get to 365," and I thought, well, the, you know, the cost of this might be a little high. I'm not sure if I'm gonna be able to make my money back. But then, you know, he's like, and really, a bestselling book is something that has these attributes. And I went and studied all the bestselling books, and I, I learned all these commonalities between Atomic Habits and this and this and this. And I just sent him the Midwit meme back after his, like, thousand-word, like, WhatsApp message. And I was like, "Make the book. It'll be fun," right? Like, it's obvious. Like, just make the... Just do it. It'll be fun. Who cares? Like, you don't have to do all these things. You might lose a little bit of money. It's okay, right? Like, but people who will buy... Something cool will come of this. It's, it's no big deal. And so I'm trying to convince him to do this, uh, to, to do this book with me. I'm like, "Let's just make this book. It'll take us, like, two weeks, and it'll be fun." And, like, anybody who actually buys this thing is gonna be the exact type of person I want in my life.

Sam Parr 1:06:39 Just do it. Do it on your own.

Shaan Puri 1:06:42 Uh, I'm looking for an excuse to do a project with George 'cause I really like him, and also this was his idea. So I don't wanna steal his idea. I wanna convince him to do this with me. If he, if he really refuses, I'm gonna say, "All right. Can I just do this myself?" And, uh-

Sam Parr 1:06:52 He, uh-

Shaan Puri 1:06:52 ... I'll do it myself

Sam Parr 1:06:53 ... it's Monday. I think this episode goes live on Wednesday. I forget when, but whenever it goes live, give him... He has seven days. If this doesn't get him to do it-

Shaan Puri 1:07:02 Yeah, actually-

Sam Parr 1:07:02 ... he got seven days

Shaan Puri 1:07:02 ... just tweet at George Mack, his, uh, his, his Twitter handle.

Sam Parr 1:07:06 George_Mack.

Shaan Puri 1:07:07 George_Mack. Just tweet at him at... Just say, "Do it." And he, he, he's gonna have to figure out why everybody's tweeting, "Do it," at him. And he- I'm sure he will eventually put two and two together and know this is what I'm... This is why he needs to do it.

Sam Parr 1:07:19 I, uh, I enjoyed this episode. What do you think?

Shaan Puri 1:07:22 Yeah, this was fun.

Sam Parr 1:07:23 I enjoyed dorking out over this stuff. I had a great time. Do we wrap here? Is that the pod?

Shaan Puri 1:07:29 That's the pod. I feel like I learned something today.

Sam Parr 1:07:31 Yeah, and I had a great time. That's the Midwit, [laughs] that's the Midwit meme of preparing for these things. I'm like, uh, what gets views? What, what, uh, what will, what will make more money, uh, what will be more fun? Um, all right.

Shaan Puri 1:07:42 Yeah.

Sam Parr 1:07:42 That's the pod. [upbeat music]