Business Brainstorm: Failed Churches, Ozempic Hotline & Klout 2.0 (#492)

Shaan Puri 0:00 You could turn off Wi-Fi and do this idea.

Sam Parr 0:02 I like that.

Shaan Puri 0:03 So what if I told you that in San Francisco I discovered a business that does $31 million in revenue locally here in San Francisco. On the 31 million in revenue, it does about 11 million in profit. And-

Sam Parr 0:14 And it's brick, it's brick and mortar?

Shaan Puri 0:15 Brick and mortar.

Sam Parr 0:16 Wow.

Shaan Puri 0:17 And it has $100 million of assets on the balance sheet. You wanna take a guess at what kind of business this is?

Sam Parr 0:23 Well, it's one of the things you've had listed-

Shaan Puri 0:25 [laughs]

Sam Parr 0:25 ... but does it re- involve religion?

Shaan Puri 0:29 It does not, no.

Sam Parr 0:31 Oh, what is it?

Shaan Puri 0:31 It is a... [upbeat music]

Sam Parr 0:41 All right, we're live. Happy Labor Day. We are celebrating by laboring.

Shaan Puri 0:45 [laughs] Yes.

Sam Parr 0:48 Right?

Shaan Puri 0:48 Join me in this labor, Sam. Let's do a labor of love-

Sam Parr 0:52 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 0:52 ... because-

Sam Parr 0:53 It is a day of labor

Shaan Puri 0:54 ... today's episode is all about ideas, business ideas and opportunities.

Sam Parr 1:00 Did you like preparing for this?

Shaan Puri 1:01 I loved preparing for this. I bet you did not.

Sam Parr 1:03 This is not my favorite thing to prepare for.

Shaan Puri 1:05 [laughs]

Sam Parr 1:05 It feels like a book report, whereas my favorite episodes are when I just find cool shit throughout the week and I just go, "Have you seen this? This is cool." Versus this one, I was like, "Oh, I gotta to like, go and like, find things that, uh... Like, I gotta seek them out a little bit more."

Shaan Puri 1:20 To me, this is like, you know in a relationship where you... It's like, "Oh, our relationship is just us doing things together, right? Like, ah, let's... I gotta go to the grocery store. Come with me to the grocery store. That's, that's our date." But you forget that you gotta do a date night once in a while. You gotta, you gotta break out the rose petals. You gotta figure out a way to, to m- to keep it spicy. To me, that's what these i- these episodes are, where when we started this podcast, it was very much like we... What, what are ideas, business opportunities for people? And that's how we got that initial momentum, because no one else was doing that. And then over time, it's like, well listen, we're doing two episodes a week. We can't be having like, 20 good ideas a week. That's not [laughs] really how it works. So we started blending in just cool businesses we discovered, interesting things that are going on in our companies, whatever.

Sam Parr 2:08 That's like the, that's like the Costco pizza date night. You know what I'm saying?

Shaan Puri 2:12 [laughs]

Sam Parr 2:12 Like, "Oh, let's go to Costco and get some toilet paper and, and we'll get a pizza."

Shaan Puri 2:15 Right, right. [laughs] That counts, right?

Sam Parr 2:18 Which is, which is great.

Shaan Puri 2:20 [laughs] So this is a throwback. This is, uh, we, uh, we sprayed some cologne. We f- we, we got a little hair gel, and uh, putting on pants for the first time in, in a while, and here we go. This is date night for MFM. Um, where do you wanna start?

Sam Parr 2:36 So I'm actually h- very happy that we have one overlapping thing. That makes me pumped. Um, b- and also a bunch of our things are big, which also makes me pumped. I do not like the small time stuff.

Shaan Puri 2:51 [laughs] Yeah, we're gonna have a range though. There's gonna be a couple that are like,

Shaan Puri 2:55 simple, um, what I'll call like, more like, simple side hustle. It's like, here's a way that you could replace a job. You're not really gonna get rich doing it per se, but you could definitely get to, I don't know, 10K a month, h- 20K a month doing this. Um, and then we have a bunch of big ideas. So I, I tried to stay away from like, complete moonshot ideas in this, in this one.

Sam Parr 3:19 I, I, I have a few big ones. What, what... Do you wanna... Can we actually start with the, I think, one that interests you and I that is a big one. Do you wanna talk about that one or do you wanna s- start small first? All right.

Shaan Puri 3:31 Yeah, let's go.

Sam Parr 3:32 Last episode we gave a preview. There was one company... We, I don't know if we've ever talked about it, but I can just read your mind and know that you thought this was cool. But in about 2012 or so, I think it started in 2008 but it got popular in like, 2012, there was a company called Klout. It was Klout with a K. K-L-O-U-T. And I remember I was just getting started like, on the internet, and I only had like, I had like, 4,000 Facebook friends, and that was like, considered big. And y- this company called Klout came out, and basically what you could do is log in with your Facebook, your LinkedIn, your Twitter... I don't even know if Instagram existed in that way back then, uh, or I guess it maybe did whenever it switched to Facebook. But it was really fascinating because what they would do is they would give you a Klout score, and with that Klout score what you would do is it would, it would range between one and 100. I think there was a time when I had like, a 75 or something. Obama was like, a 92, like, so-

Shaan Puri 4:28 [laughs]

Sam Parr 4:28 ... to give you perspective. And what would happen is it was a platform for companies like McDonald's, or at least that's who I got. I got like, $5 McDonald gift cards-

Shaan Puri 4:37 [laughs]

Sam Parr 4:37 ... for like, their new promotions. They would basically find out like, information about your background, so what you're interested in, what you're posting, and then how popular you are, and they would give you free stuff in hopes that you would go out and like the experience and share it. That company was acquired. Uh, they raised like $40 million. They were acquired in 2014 for 200 million bucks, but I don't think that was a very successful exit. I think that they probably just sold for the amount of money that they raised at. However, I've been thinking about this idea constantly and I think it's really, really, really cool. So the way it got started was in 2017 the, uh, guy who started it, his name is Joe Fernandez, he had some surgery, uh, on his jaw. Something was wrong with his jaw so his jaw was wired shut for three months. And so he was like, in this hospital bed laying around and he didn't have anything to do. And so he said he, he, he, he just got obsessed with can word of mouth be measurable? And so he created this API, or he created this program where you could pull from Twitter's API and give a score out of 100 based off of how influential the person was. And he got obsessed with this and he started going around deeper and deeper and deeper on this, and eventually it turned into a company where by like, 2011 it was pretty pos- popular. And this one person, um, said something amazing where they were trying to hate on Klout and they said something like, uh, they took the... "Klout took the entire spectrum of human in- interaction and condensed it into a two number, a two-digit number that you could use to bludgeon anyone who failed to adhere to its score." Uh, it basically just said it's tacky, it's basic, it's cheap. And they're like, "You, you, you can't just put someone's... Like, give someone a score and that be their self-worth." And in my head, I'm like, "Well, that's actually awesome. That's a really cool service." And so the company got quite popular. It was bought in, whatever I said, 2014, by Lithium, which I don't even know what that is, and it doesn't exist anymore. And I was curious about it, and I said, "Joe," I- we DM'd him. I go, "Do you think that this could still exist today?" He goes, "This is something I'll never get over. In so many ways, we were just way too early. The world still needs something like this, uh, like Klout more than ever. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if it's possible to pull out- uh, to pull it off and get all the data." However, the idea of Klout for anyone in the, in our era, like, just getting started in the 2010, 2014 range, this was awesome. And I think a business like this 100% should still exist because when I'm- we're sponsoring influencers and stuff for different companies, it's really hard to know what's legit and what isn't. So what do you think about Klout? What did you remember about it?

Shaan Puri 7:05 I remember back then I thought it was such a smart idea. I was like, "Oh, this is great." Yeah, like everybody... You know, across all social, you have followers, but fol- we all kinda know followers ain't exactly it. And, um, to layer on, on just another number that even if you thought it was stupid, you didn't wanna be at the bottom. And I was like, "Ooh, that's a-

Sam Parr 7:25 You did not wanna be at the bottom

Shaan Puri 7:25 ... that's a powerful draw," right? It's just like any other ratings or reviews, but I was like this is great because it doesn't require people to have ratings and reviews. It could just basically crawl the data or just take the connected data and give you a score based off of it. So I really liked that. On the other side, it was unclear to me exactly how this was gonna be used. So for, for example, you're saying when we're figuring out whether to pay infl- you know, how, who, which influencer to sponsor or how to pay them, uh, you know, something like this is useful. I think that's the problem with this, that it was more compelling to the Klout user who wanted their score, uh, to know their score and for it to go up, than it was for the brands who needed to find influencers. And so I think it really had half of the problem. I think the second half, like, it wasn't a, a must-have. 'Cause for example, you can... Y- you know, you kinda kn- like, if you're a brand, you kinda know who influencers are. Even if you don't know, you could s- look at the followers, you can look at their rough engagement and say, "Okay, how many likes to followers?" You get a very quick proxy for this. You could use Klout, but I'm not gonna pay Klout, like, 30 grand a year for that type of information. So the question is what type of information? What, what, what would be the, the right way to use that Klout score? How could they... What could they do with that Klout score? And I, I, I don't know what that answer is, but I think that's where you would have to start if you wanted to restart this idea. What do you think, what do you think people could do with this? Or, or do you agree with me that it's hard to charge a brand a lot of money for what's somewhat obvious, which is, uh, you know, which influencers have, have pull?

Sam Parr 8:57 I think you're thinking like a small-medium sized business owner and not McDonald's, and not-

Shaan Puri 9:02 Sick burn

Sam Parr 9:03 ... uh, like a huge co-

Shaan Puri 9:04 [laughs]

Sam Parr 9:06 [laughs] Well-

Shaan Puri 9:07 Dude, there's a s- I gotta tell you a story

Sam Parr 9:09 ... like, you're thinking like a $50 billion a year business, not a billion. Uh, what were you gonna say?

Shaan Puri 9:12 I have a really funny story. I, uh, so I had... I did an interview with Emmett, or I did a pod with Emmett, uh, the other day. So Emmett is the C- CEO founder of Twitch, and Twitch had bought my company. And so anyways, I, uh... It, it went well overall. It's gonna come out in a couple days, but there was one really funny part where he just burned me so bad, and I was just so shook by it, I couldn't even... Like, it took me like five minutes mentally to recover from this. I was so embarrassed by it.

Sam Parr 9:36 Well, you texted me. You said, uh, "He said something to me that stuck in my head, and it almost ruined the interview 'cause I couldn't-" [laughs]

Shaan Puri 9:41 It just connected so hard. So like, I was trying to set him up for like, "Dude, uh, I learned so much from you." I was like, "I learned so much from you, and, uh, one of the things you taught me was this cool little model during our first one-on-one. You were like, 'Oh, hey, here's a, here's a good way to use, uh... Like, the... Here's a good way to, like, format these conversations. Here's, like, a way to plug it. Like, here's a w- here's a way to use me. If I was a piece of machinery, here's a manual on how to use it.'" And he's like, uh, "You can come in and you can say one of three things. You can be like, 'Hey, I'm doing this, FYI.' Uh, you know, 'Here's my decision, FYI.' Here's what I s-... The second one is, 'Here's my deci- here's what I think we should do. Do I have your approval?'" Right? Maybe it's t- very risky, it takes a lot of money to do it. Third one, "I don't know what to do. Can you help me?" And fourth one is, "Last time we talked about this, and here's where I'm at now." And like, the, that's the update. And I was like, "That was really useful. Do... Is that something that you figured out? Like, uh, where'd you learn that?" I was trying to get a sense for it. And he was like, he's like, "Yeah, that's really good for, like, mid-level managers." And I was like, "Oh, man."

Sam Parr 10:43 Oh. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 10:43 He's like, uh, he's like, "If you're a super seasoned exec, I g- I guess I would do it differently, but that's really good for... You're not junior, but you're not, like, a super seasoned exec." And I was like, "It's abso- absolutely true, I'm not a super seasoned corporate executive. I've never-"

Sam Parr 10:57 I think that's where the word, where, where the word mid has come from.

Shaan Puri 11:00 Yeah, but I was like-

Sam Parr 11:00 The, the m-

Shaan Puri 11:00 ... I don't wanna be mid-level anything.

Sam Parr 11:02 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 11:03 Like, y- you could be like, [laughs] "Hey, what floor are you staying on?" I'm like, "I'm in the eight- 19th floor." They're like, "I thought you're... He'll tell... He said ninth." I was like, "No, no, no, I don't stay in the mid-level of nothing. I'm not... Don't ever put me there."

Sam Parr 11:14 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 11:14 And so he burned me, and I was like, uh... He didn't even r- he wasn't trying to burn me. He was trying to be totally nice, but in my head, I was like, "Oh, my God, I just got burned." And then for the next five minutes, I don't even know what he said, and then I came back to the interview after that. [laughs]

Sam Parr 11:26 Well, you should have brought that up. You'd be like, "Look, I can't get this out of my head."

Shaan Puri 11:29 I should have.

Sam Parr 11:29 "Did you just..." [laughs]

Shaan Puri 11:30 Which is... You know when you have that, like, compounding social awkwardness where it's like the thing hap- you know, uh, I'm checking into my flight. They say, "Have a nice flight," and I say, "You too."

Sam Parr 11:41 "You too," yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 11:43 And then, and then I'm like, "Oh, man, I screwed up."

Sam Parr 11:43 Or you tell somebody you love them. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 11:45 And then you're like, "What I should just do is laugh it off right now like a smooth guy." And instead, you just pause, you eat it, and now it's like, oh, now it's been too long. And then you kind of, you're in your own head about it.

Sam Parr 11:57 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 11:57 So that's, that's what I did, uh, at least.

Sam Parr 12:00 You, you, you accidentally called Emmett Mom.

Shaan Puri 12:02 [laughs] Yeah.

Sam Parr 12:02 You had one of those moments. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 12:05 I... Like, what I should've done is, like, 55 minutes later been like, "Uh, just circling back to that mid-level thing. I know you didn't mean that, right? Can you say that differently in a way that feels better to me?" [laughs]

Sam Parr 12:16 Is he like genius? Is, is, is he like one of those guys-

Shaan Puri 12:18 Yeah

Sam Parr 12:18 ... like Chamath A-

Shaan Puri 12:18 He definitely is. He definitely is. That's the other problem too. You can't even be like, "Ah, this idiot doesn't know what he's talking about." It's like, no, this genius knows exactly what he's talking about. [laughs]

Sam Parr 12:27 Is he working at Twitch still?

Shaan Puri 12:28 No, he retired.

Sam Parr 12:30 That's sick. All right. Well, maybe Emmett will be the new CEO of Twitch or, uh, Klout or something like that.

Shaan Puri 12:35 [laughs]

Sam Parr 12:35 I don't know. What's, what's he gonna do now? Like go to Mars? I mean, he's like pretty wealthy now, right?

Shaan Puri 12:38 Yeah, I think he's gonna do like, uh, you know, other stuff in life. We, we talked about it a little bit on the pod. But I think he's gonna like... He wants to write a lot, like essays and stuff like that. Like he, he was in the first YC batch. I think he looks up to Paul Graham, who's sort of a mentor for him, and, and then he really likes other people who have kinda like really contributed to like the intellectual discourse of the world, and I think that's what he wants to do w- for the next little period of his life,

Shaan Puri 13:00 not go back and operate another company. He did that for 17 years, which is pretty intense.

Sam Parr 13:04 And Paul Graham lives, I think, like as ideal life as one can. Like he just like go... Yeah, I think he lives in England now with his family, and he just writes an essay once a month, and everyone just does what he says.

Shaan Puri 13:15 [laughs]

Sam Parr 13:16 Uh, you know what I mean? Like the whole... The, the, the YC Illuminati. They just, "Yes, sir." Uh, so it works out well. Um, all right. So Klout I think is a cool idea, but what do you got?

Shaan Puri 13:26 So restarting Klout. Okay, I think that's good. I, I think I got a different version of, uh, of an idea that, that was sim- uh, like similar. Sort of professional services. Okay. So we've had Andrew Wilkinson on the podcast a bunch, and Andrew is a fan favorite. And people, I think like us, really respect what he's done with Tiny. It's like, oh, Tiny. We buy businesses. We buy wonderful businesses. Beautiful businesses, right? It's a great little shtick, and he's got a portfolio of, I don't know, 30 companies now at this point. And, uh, the whole thing is worth... I don't know. What's the stock worth today? Maybe $700 million or something like that.

Sam Parr 14:01 Six to 800 on any da- on, on give, given week.

Shaan Puri 14:04 Am- amazing. So amazing sort of bootstrapped, um, venture. And he bootstrapped it because two of the businesses out of the 30 are the real crown jewels. Metalab, which is his design agency, and the other one is Dribbble. And Dribbble is a business that's very, very simple, which was it is based on a simple insight. Every career needs its online resume, right? Every job that you're gonna do needs a, a way to, for you to show what you're all about and get more jobs. And so for most jobs, we have like the catchall, the generic, which is LinkedIn. So LinkedIn is gonna say, um, "Hey, just put a, put a resume up here. Just say what you've done and, and hopefully that's good enough." But for some jobs, you need something more special. So for example, if you're a designer, LinkedIn doesn't really help you stand out that much. But now Dribbble would let you go and post designs. So design shots. So like, just like screenshots or, or, or images of what you're designing as your portfolio, and it became a portfolio site. And so Dribbble itself is probably worth $250 million I wanna say. Um, [smacks lips] that's my-

Sam Parr 15:09 So I'm trying to find-

Shaan Puri 15:09 ... my best guess

Sam Parr 15:09 ... the financials. I'm trying to find the financials, but it looks like in 2022 Dribbble did 8 million in profit, but I'm pretty sure that, uh, uh-

Shaan Puri 15:18 It's like eight-

Sam Parr 15:18 Here it is. Uh, it did, uh, 60... So in 2022 it did 62 million in revenue with 8 million in earnings. And because it's a network, that could definitely sell for four or five times revenue depending on its growth rate. Um-

Shaan Puri 15:33 Yeah, exactly

Sam Parr 15:33 ... so it's pretty valuable.

Shaan Puri 15:34 So I think $200, $250 million probably what Dribbble is worth. Now, uh, another friend of the pod, Scott Belsky, did the same thing with Behance. He created Behance, which is a place for designers to post their work, to... It was a sort of a community for those designers to comment on each other's work. But the business model was if you wanna go hire a creative, come to Behance. And so Dribbble and Behance both did the same thing. I think he sold Behance for what? 100 million, something like that?

Sam Parr 15:56 No. I think it was 175, of which he owned 60% or 70% of it.

Shaan Puri 16:02 Amazing. So where does that take me now? Okay. So where can you apply this Dribbble or Behance model that needs it today? So Zuck I think seven years ago said something. He goes, "Video is a megatrend." And he go... I was like, "What? What's a megatrend?" Is that... Like he's not... Zuck- Zuckerberg is not the type to just say like flowery words. Like when he says something, he's, he's part of the, uh, words mean things team. Um, and so what's a megatrend?

Sam Parr 16:30 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 16:30 He's like, "A mobile is a megatrend. The internet was a megatrend, and now video is a megatrend." And he's like, "Basically video, e- everything is going-"

Sam Parr 16:38 Who else is on that team? [laughs] Who, who, who's also-

Shaan Puri 16:40 I stole that from Emmett actually

Sam Parr 16:41 ... who else is on that words mean things?

Shaan Puri 16:42 E- Emmett calls it words mean things. And I saw him in many, many meetings derail the entire meeting because he was stuck. Like, "You said this word. What do... Like what does that word mean?" And they're like, "Uh, s- I don't know. We all know kind of, right?" And he's like, "No, no, no. Does it mean this or this?" And then he's like, "Paint the mid..." He's like, "No, because words mean things to me. And so if we're gonna use words, they're gonna mean things, and we're gonna all agree on what those th- words mean so that we can have a productive conversation." And I was like, "Wow."

Sam Parr 17:09 Well, it's a words means t- uh, words mean things teams, otherwise known as serious people.

Shaan Puri 17:13 [laughs]

Sam Parr 17:14 You know? Like, oh, he's, he's a, he's a serious p- he's, he's serious people. Like when they say a handful of words, you're like, I, I know he or she specifically chose that word. I love those types of people.

Shaan Puri 17:24 He calls it, uh, words mean things versus team alliances. And I don't know what team alliances means. There's, there's a longer, uh, there's a longer explanation to that. But, um, he's like, you know, there's sort of like two... The way people think is in two, two teams, and one is like, "Oh, let's not get lost in semantics," and the other is like, "Semantics is everything. That's how we're, what, that's how we sh- are gonna communicate. Um, let's, let's not be weak about that. Let's... Words mean things. Let's agree on that." Um, anyways. So Zuck said this me- megatrend thing. And if you look at it, everything has shifted to video. So entertainment, Netflix, streaming, all that obviously gone to video. News is h- highly video. Education has become driven a lot by video. E-commerce is driven by, let's say, video ads and, uh, how you're gonna display your product. Um, communication-

Sam Parr 18:14 This stupid podcast

Shaan Puri 18:15 ... with Zoom.

Sam Parr 18:15 We've, we, we, we-

Shaan Puri 18:16 Our podcast. Au- audio has become video

Sam Parr 18:18 ... we now have to-

Shaan Puri 18:18 [laughs]

Sam Parr 18:19 ... we now have to go to YouTube, and I have to wear like a nice shirt sometimes now.

Shaan Puri 18:22 Yeah. I did, I wet my hair like, you know, I used to do in school-

Sam Parr 18:25 [laughs] Yes

Shaan Puri 18:25 ... in the water fountain. I wet my hair before the pod.

Sam Parr 18:27 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 18:27 Just a quick little spruce up. So video's this megatrend. But- Where do you hire people that specialize in working in video? So where do you hi- hire people that are video editors or, um, or even like the auxiliary things like thumbnail artists or, uh, video strategists. Where is their Behance? Where is their Dribbble? Where can I go see portfolios or like a newsfeed of people who did really cool animations or, um, cool edits, um, to a video and then be able to hire those people? As somebody who's hiring a lot of video people, I don't find this site. I think if somebody created Behance for video, I think that that is a, uh, that is a big idea. Dribbble for video, I think that is a big idea.

Sam Parr 19:09 I completely agree. I 100% agree, and, uh, I'll explain why. So I actually [laughs] had a very similar topic that I was gonna bring up. I was gonna call it LinkedIn for X, and the reason being is h- I think, I think you told me about this. It's called, uh, Dox- Do- Doxy- I- is it Doximity?

Shaan Puri 19:26 Dox- Doximity.

Sam Parr 19:27 Doximity. Uh, so basically it's LinkedIn for doctors. You told me about it, so I didn't realize it. It's publicly traded. It has a $4 or $5 billion valuation. It's a great business. So it's basically-

Shaan Puri 19:37 Which by the way-

Sam Parr 19:38 ... LinkedIn for doctors

Shaan Puri 19:38 ... let's, let's put that into context. It has, I think, two million doctors. LinkedIn probably has, I don't know, 300 million people or something like that, hundreds of millions of users.

Sam Parr 19:46 Yeah, fractions.

Shaan Puri 19:47 And LinkedIn sold for 20 billion. Doximity you said is at four billion, so it's-

Sam Parr 19:52 No, five. 4.8

Shaan Puri 19:54 ... five. Okay. So it's only four times less valuable than LinkedIn with 100x less customers, right? Because the value per customer is so much higher.

Sam Parr 20:01 Yeah, and, and so I was reading about it and they had this term that I loved. They go, "We... We're, we're... We launched this because we are always looking for digitally, digitally under-indexed industries." And I thought that was a beautiful word.

Shaan Puri 20:15 Ooh. Ooh, what's that?

Sam Parr 20:15 Digitally under-indexed.

Shaan Puri 20:16 Give me some of that.

Sam Parr 20:17 And so what that means is basically communities of professionals who just aren't, aren't being catered to in a digital format. So y- you could say lawyers, you could say, um... Well, I actually don't n- even know what else. I mean, th- [laughs] there's a lot of them.

Shaan Puri 20:30 [laughs]

Sam Parr 20:30 You could... There's one, there's one for blue collar workers called Jobcase. And the reason why this interests me is at Hampton what I'm noticing is that even though we didn't mean to do this, we're sort of becoming a little bit of a network. Not quite a social network, but I'm seeing, I'm like, if we wanted to, which I don't really want to, we could make this like a... Have you heard of Raya? Do you know what Raya is?

Shaan Puri 20:52 Yeah, the dating app for hot people.

Sam Parr 20:54 Y- yeah. It's like, well, [laughs] I think they call it like elites or something, but it's like a paid dating app for like elites. So like the-

Shaan Puri 21:00 For, for the facially elite [laughs]

Sam Parr 21:01 ... yeah, or, or, or the, the, the, the, uh, bank elite, you know? Like if you have, depending on what-

Shaan Puri 21:07 That's what I'm actually gonna start saying

Sam Parr 21:08 ... these tiers.

Shaan Puri 21:08 Instead of, uh, socioeconomic underprivileged, I'm facially underprivileged and, uh, [laughs]

Sam Parr 21:14 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 21:15 I've been able to overcome this-

Sam Parr 21:16 The-

Shaan Puri 21:17 ... this adversity. [laughs]

Sam Parr 21:18 Yeah. [laughs] Well, and this shit has got me really interesting because I think that what you can do, which basically what... How do you call it? Doc- Doxity?

Shaan Puri 21:27 Doximity.

Sam Parr 21:27 That's fucking... Doximity. What does that mean? That's some... See, you, you have to know how to say the word in order to even get in. Sounds like a drug.

Shaan Puri 21:33 [laughs] Forget words mean things.

Sam Parr 21:35 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 21:35 Sounds don't even mean things. [laughs]

Sam Parr 21:37 Yeah. [laughs] Uh, but this company, dude, so they're growing quickly. They're doing like 400 million in revenue, 150 million in income, so they've been profitable for years and they've built this LinkedIn for doctors, and I think it's a really good business. And what I've been really fascinated in, uh, fascinated about is what type of niches can you build professional networks, uh, that are somewhat ignored? Because do you go on, do you go onto LinkedIn?

Shaan Puri 22:01 Yeah, I, I use LinkedIn.

Sam Parr 22:03 What does your inbox on LinkedIn look like right now?

Shaan Puri 22:05 Oh, I just ignore the inbox mostly.

Sam Parr 22:07 Exactly. Why do you do that?

Shaan Puri 22:09 Uh, it's mostly s- mostly junk and, uh-

Sam Parr 22:11 It's spam

Shaan Puri 22:12 ... it's too much. Yeah, so it's like-

Sam Parr 22:13 It's crap. It's crap. The inbox of LinkedIn is horrible. No networking is happening there, and like people mostly use it for resume tracking and things like that. But there's a bunch of jobs out there like lawyers, like doctors, where it's a relatively small community. Two million people, three million people. I think there's two and a half million lawyers in America. There's 2.1 million doctors in America. These are relatively small, where you could have small i- like circles that know 80% of the population on the network. 'Cause I'm friends with you, who's friends with you, and then now I'm connected to you, and like it's small enough. And so I've been really fascinating, very similar to the Dribbble thing. Dribbble is a little bit more resume and showing off portfolio work. Uh, this is a little bit more networking and, but it's also resume. I've been very fascinated by these businesses that do this, and the hard part I think with this, with any social network is it's like what's the chicken and the egg problem, which is like, you know, it's not good unless we have users, but we don't have any users and we need users.

Shaan Puri 23:11 Yeah.

Sam Parr 23:11 Um, but what I've noticed is that there's so many people on, young-ish people on TikTok who are professionals that are crushing it. So there's, uh, like a bunch of dentists and or- orthodontist people, tons and tons of chiropractors. Like are... There's lots of like professional services that are going viral on TikTok. And if I'm in this position, which I guess I kinda am, am, where I'm thinking like, what else can we do Hampton for? I was like, man, I could totally partner with some of these like, and create a Hampton for doctors. But to do a social network, I was like, I, I'm, I'm, that's not in my skillset, so I'm not good enough to do that. But I bet if I could like convince some crazy person like Nikita Bier or someone who knows about networking or networks, network effects, I think you could actually build a substantial sized business for niche professional communities, whether they're paying a small fee to be part of it or you build an ad network on it. Um, but I'm very fascinated by these like niche communities for professional services that are more than communities but like, uh, like LinkedIn style.

Shaan Puri 24:07 Yeah, I think these are super hard and, um, when you do them they're obviously very, very valuable. Any network is really, really valuable once you create it, but I think these are very, very difficult. It's really hard to have one idea, which is why, like I don't think there's like 10 ideas like this. I think like right now there might be one or two ideas of this that might work, which is why for the video one I got excited because I think that it's clear that there's-

Sam Parr 24:30 It's not a winner take all

Shaan Puri 24:31 ... it's, well, it's clear that there's an industry where you need this and that showing how good I am as a video editor through my paper resume is bad. So you need like- You need a paper resume to not tell the story, then you need for there to be a lot of people in that industry and a lot of people hiring for that industry. That's the combo you need, and I...

Shaan Puri 24:50 That's why I think that this, uh, sort of Dribbble for video editors is a multi-hundred million dollar idea if somebody would, uh, would pull it off.

Sam Parr 24:57 All right, we kinda tag-teamed that one a little bit. What, you wanna go next?

Shaan Puri 25:01 Here's a different kind of idea. So here's an idea that I think would be, um... It's not, doesn't require the internet. You could turn off Wi-Fi and do this idea.

Sam Parr 25:11 I like that.

Shaan Puri 25:12 It's not easy, but it's also not really impossible either. Uh, i- i- so it's somewhere in the middle. Um, and also on the, on the upside, I think it's also, like, on the low end you make millions of dollars a year. On the high end, you make tens of millions of dollars a year. So what if I told you that in San Francisco I discovered a business that does $31 million in revenue locally here in San Francisco? No, no, no revenue outside of San Francisco. Uh, on the 31 million in revenue, it does about 11 million in profit. And-

Sam Parr 25:46 And it's brick, it's brick and mortar?

Shaan Puri 25:47 Brick and mortar.

Sam Parr 25:48 Wow.

Shaan Puri 25:49 And it has $100 million of assets on the balance sheet. You wanna take a guess on what kind of business this is?

Sam Parr 25:56 Well, it's one of the things you've had listed.

Shaan Puri 25:59 [laughs]

Sam Parr 25:59 But does it re- involve religion?

Shaan Puri 26:02 It does not, no.

Sam Parr 26:04 Oh, what is it?

Shaan Puri 26:05 It is a private elementary school. So, um-

Sam Parr 26:08 No way

Shaan Puri 26:08 ... there are private elementary schools in San Francisco. So the, so one of 'em... I looked at a bunch of them. Uh, the one, the, the one I think that does the best, or the one that I found that does the best, is one called, uh, The Hamlin School, and it's based in San Francisco. It's a nonprofit, so you can see all the financials online, but you can see this for, for many of them. And, um-

Sam Parr 26:28 It's just for girls?

Shaan Puri 26:29 It's a, it's a girls only school, K through eight, I think, and, uh, o- only 450 kids. So 450 girls go to this school. You pay basically a college-level tuition. So parents pay $40,000 a year to send their kid to kindergarten or first grade, or second grade.

Sam Parr 26:46 Goddamn. 40 grand? Are you gonna do that?

Shaan Puri 26:48 Uh, I'm not gonna do that. I'm out of the city now. But, um, the... There's a lot of people that do because they have a wait list and a hardcore admissions process. If you want your kindergartner to get into school, you have to dress up, go to the interview, prep them, be like, "Hey, don't make a fool out of us. We've been preparing you for four years for this. Come on. Perform."

Sam Parr 27:07 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 27:08 "Do the thing." And, uh, you send them in, and they do an interview with them. Your f- your four-year-old does an interview with them.

Sam Parr 27:13 Oh, I know this school. I used to play basketball, and they have a sick basketball hoop, uh, overlooking the city.

Shaan Puri 27:18 [laughs] Yeah, yeah. It's at the top of Pac Heights. And, um-

Sam Parr 27:22 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Shaan Puri 27:22 ... and so there's a wait list of parents dying to get in. And they own the buildings. They own the real estate that they are, that they operate out of, which is why they have so much, uh, like, so many, so much value and assets on the balance sheet, 'cause they own, like, huge properties in the prime spots of San Francisco. Um, so a- and I looked at a bunch of these. There's another one, Burkes, and another one. There, uh, there's a whole bunch of these that, that exist, and they range from, like... You could see, okay, 2020 t- 2021, how much revenue they do. Okay, they did 15 million or 20 million in revenue. Some are more profitable than others. So Hamlin is particularly profitable. But the other ones would be, like, 15 to 20 million in revenue and two million in profit. Um, still not bad, not bad at all. And they, and they would have 25 million in assets on the, on the books. And you could see who goes there because they have to list who donates, so you could see the donations from different families. Oh, that's the Facebook executive, and this person is a, a famous author and famous movie producer and whatever, right? So there's a whole list-

Sam Parr 28:21 How much do they donate? Like, what, what's a big donation for this?

Shaan Puri 28:23 Their top donations are, like, low seven figures right now.

Sam Parr 28:26 Oh my God.

Shaan Puri 28:26 And I think, you know, like, they did, like, a, "We're gonna renovate the school," and they raised $50 million to renovate the school, and that's donations outside of the tuition. So that's just, "Just please give us money so we can have a better building, and you get to, we'll name the library after you" type of thing. Pretty insane. Um, so there's a huge number of people, uh, 'cause the public school system in San Francisco i- is not very good, uh, or considered to be not very good. I, I have no idea what it actually is, but that's the reputation it has. Um, so I think there's an opportunity to do the following. So, so the good for them. Now what's the opportunity? The opportunity is if you were ambitious enough, you could look at a invalid-

Sam Parr 29:03 Dan, if you cared about this topic, if you cared about this topic, you, you really gotta care about this shit, 'cause this is gonna be a headache.

Shaan Puri 29:07 Eh, I don't know. Debatable. I think you have to care enough. Um, I don't think you have to, like, uh, be born to educate. I don't think you're, you know, you have to be whatever, Miss Doubtfire here. Like, you, I think you have to be a smart person who is gonna hold a standard, just like you would for any other business. And-

Sam Parr 29:24 A man dressed as an el- elderly woman. You, you, you definitely don't have to be that.

Shaan Puri 29:28 [laughs] That's not, that's not required. [laughs]

Sam Parr 29:29 In fact, in fact, you can't be that probably. You, you probably can't be that.

Shaan Puri 29:32 When I think about what the most ideal teacher is, it's Miss Doubtfire.

Sam Parr 29:35 [laughs] Yeah.

Shaan Puri 29:36 So, um-

Sam Parr 29:37 A 40-year-old recently divorced man

Shaan Puri 29:40 ... she'll protect you, and she'll take care, she'll take care of you both at the same time.

Sam Parr 29:43 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 29:44 So, um, so there's all these comm- so commercial real estate is at, like, an all-time low in San Francisco. There's empty buildings everywhere. Why? Because remote work, it was too expensive, and now these companies are basically just trying to get out of their leases. So on one hand, you have huge office buildings that are going vacant, and on the other side-

Sam Parr 30:02 Is it totally dead down there right now?

Shaan Puri 30:04 Um, no, it's not totally dead, but it's the lowest it's ever been. So, you know, buy low. If that's your strategy, this is a good time to do it. So I think you could buy one of these commercial or industrial buildings and convert it into a private elementary school. Now, we're gonna need a couple things. We're gonna need a name and a differentiator. On the name side, I got a few to throw at you. You tell me which, which one you like.

Sam Parr 30:25 Well, let's just go look at a bunch of old shipwrecks that sank.

Shaan Puri 30:28 Bougie-est names I found. Here we go.

Sam Parr 30:29 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 30:30 Would you like your child to attend Windsor Oaks?

Sam Parr 30:34 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 30:35 Would you like your-

Sam Parr 30:35 You can

Shaan Puri 30:35 ... child to attend the prestigious Carrington School?

Sam Parr 30:38 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 30:39 That one's nice. And the other one is, oh, yeah, yeah, our daughter got into Thatcher Derby.

Sam Parr 30:45 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 30:45 And, uh, if your daughter gets into Thatcher Derby, you feel pretty good right now. So-

Sam Parr 30:49 Well, are these just famous, like, streets in England?

Shaan Puri 30:51 I just looked up expensive ass last names. That was my Google search.

Sam Parr 30:54 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 30:54 And then I found a list of 100.

Sam Parr 30:56 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 30:56 And then I started pairing two together, like Windsor Oakley and, and, and Thatcher Darby, uh-

Sam Parr 31:02 Yeah

Shaan Puri 31:02 ... together. So I think I got some, some solid leads there. The other thing is we need to differentiate. And when I talk... So I have some friends who, who have kids that go to these schools, and I asked them, I said, "What, what would you wish was different?" And they're like... 'Cause I was like, "You're paying a crazy price." I thought they would say something like price or teacher-student ratios, and they s- they were like, "No, no, no. Look, these are all gonna be expensive. And in fact, I'm fortunate I did well. The number one thing I wanna spend on is my kids' education. If I... You know, if there was a cheaper school, I don't think we would switch because we would feel like, well, are we really gonna try to go for l- like a, a lesser education? I don't know. Th- this school has a wait list. It's... The price is not the problem." And I said, "Uh, teacher-student ratio?" They said, "No, it's six teachers for every one kid." So on the 450 k- kids, they have 75 teachers to, to run this school that does $30 million a year.

Sam Parr 31:49 Y- y- you did it the wrong way. Six students per one teacher?

Shaan Puri 31:52 Correct. Correct.

Sam Parr 31:53 Got it.

Shaan Puri 31:53 Yeah, six teachers for one student would be insane. Um, [laughs]

Sam Parr 31:56 Yeah, it'd be weird.

Shaan Puri 31:56 [laughs] It'd be a little bit weird.

Sam Parr 31:58 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 31:59 We're surrounded.

Sam Parr 31:59 That'd be weird. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 32:00 [laughs] So, um, the, the... I said, "What's the biggest pain point?" They go, "You know what? I hate to say this. Uh, I, I consider myself a, a, a liberal person, live and let live, but there's, like, an agenda in these schools, and the agenda is, like, very woke. So you know, like, our kids in elementary school have, like... They're being taught, um, you know, that there are, like, you know, w- what is gender, eh? You could be a boy, but you're a girl." They're like, "I just don't want my, like, s- first grader to be thinking, oh, I could... I'm a girl, but I could be a boy." Like, they, they don't really want that.

Sam Parr 32:32 And this is at public schools, right? This is at public schools.

Shaan Puri 32:33 This is at private schools.

Sam Parr 32:35 Oh.

Shaan Puri 32:35 And so they're like, you know, and, uh, you know, there's, like, just su- such a heavy in, in- influence. They, they said, you know, "It's crazy. In our elementary school there is, um, there are, like, uh, clubs that are, you know... It sounds like what you would have at, like, maybe a, a, a very liberal college," but it's like, "Yeah, I don't, I don't feel like that has a place in elementary school. Just let kids be kids." So the differentiator is gonna be, hey, what happened to schools teaching math and science? Let's do that, right? That's what we're gonna teach. We're not gonna teach political stuff. We're not gonna teach all these social issues. Like, they're kids. Let them be kids. We're gonna be a hardcore math, science, STEM education school. We're the best at that.

Sam Parr 33:11 That's what this one is?

Shaan Puri 33:12 No, no, that's what this is... That's what Thatcher Darby's gonna be. Um-

Sam Parr 33:16 I love it

Shaan Puri 33:16 ... hardcore math, science, and we don't subscribe to all... We keep the, the, the politics out of the school. That's the, that's our only promise. You're here to learn, and we're gonna learn these topics, and, uh, we're not trying to shape your kids socially or politically in any way.

Sam Parr 33:32 You and I have a friend who's got a... Well, he's just turned... He just became a teenager, 13, and I said, "Hey, uh, hey Brian. How, how's school going? Uh, you know, it's about that age. You're, you're, you're liking girls I bet. Uh, you, you... Anyone you'll have a crush on?" "Uh, no, it's not really working out." "Well, why not?" He goes, "They're all non-binary."

Shaan Puri 33:52 [laughs]

Sam Parr 33:52 And, uh, [laughs] I was like, "What?"

Shaan Puri 33:54 What?

Sam Parr 33:54 He goes, "Yeah, there's only one that's heterosexual, uh, and is cis or something like that, but the rest are non-binary, and the girl I like is non-binary so she said she can't be with me." And I was like, "All right. Well, that is a pain in the ass."

Shaan Puri 34:07 [laughs]

Sam Parr 34:07 "I don't know what to say to that one." [laughs]

Shaan Puri 34:08 Yeah, no advice. I have no idea what you're talking about.

Sam Parr 34:10 [laughs] Yeah, yeah. So what do you want to have for lunch? Like, it, it was, it, like, it, it, it, it, it sounds really challenging, honestly. D- y- most of the times generations will say, like, "Oh, you have it so easy. I had it so much harder when I was your age."

Shaan Puri 34:24 Right.

Sam Parr 34:25 Not true here. Uh, I do not envy a 12 or 15-year-old in, in, in that, at that age. Like, it, it-

Shaan Puri 34:30 Well, it's just different, right? And, and I, I don't know if it's better or worse, I'm not really saying that, but I do think there should be options in the market for what you want. Some, some people real- re- really do want their kid to be, um, exposed to a whole bunch of different issues and be a w- a well-rounded human being and well-versed in a bunch of different issues. And other people are like, "You know, I don't really want my kid thinking about that. I just really want them to have a good education learning about math, science, you know, reading, writing, those things, and I'd like the school to do that, and I will handle the kind of like the outside of, of, of those, that curriculum type of education."

Sam Parr 35:05 Well-

Shaan Puri 35:05 So I, I'm not saying one's better or worse-

Sam Parr 35:06 Well, what would your phrase it'll be? Like-

Shaan Puri 35:07 ... I think it's be different

Sam Parr 35:08 ... well, where well-roundedness goes to die.

Shaan Puri 35:11 [laughs]

Sam Parr 35:12 Or something like that. Is that, [laughs] is that...

Shaan Puri 35:14 Hardcore science machines-

Sam Parr 35:17 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 35:17 ... [laughs] what we create.

Sam Parr 35:18 [laughs]

Sam Parr 35:21 We don't like, uh, standardized testing.

Shaan Puri 35:23 Yeah.

Sam Parr 35:23 We love it.

Shaan Puri 35:25 Yeah.

Sam Parr 35:25 Uh, so yeah.

Shaan Puri 35:25 Yeah.

Sam Parr 35:26 You, you've got something here.

Shaan Puri 35:27 Diversity here is JavaScript. [laughs]

Sam Parr 35:30 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 35:31 Something like that.

Sam Parr 35:31 Um, all right. That's cool, but that's crazy that that b- school makes that much money.

Shaan Puri 35:35 Yeah.

Sam Parr 35:35 Um-

Shaan Puri 35:35 Who, who would've thought? I didn't really think about, like, ever like, oh, could you, you could create a school. That, that school if it's doing, you know, you know, any of those schools, those are basically like somewhere between 50 and $200 million assets if you were to sell them. Maybe more if they, one of them has $100 million in assets on the, on this balance sheet. Like, um, these are, these are very big businesses that are just one location, brick and mortar schools with 400 customers. That's kind of amazing.

Sam Parr 36:03 Did I ever tell you about the time I was a telemarketer?

Shaan Puri 36:05 [laughs] No.

Sam Parr 36:08 So at my high school, y- if you needed some money, the best job was to be a telemarketer. And what were we selling?

Shaan Puri 36:17 At your high school? For what?

Sam Parr 36:18 Yeah. What were we selling you ask? We were begging for money. And so what they would do-

Shaan Puri 36:23 [laughs]

Sam Parr 36:24 ... is you would get paid $10 an hour, but you'd get a commission and you'd get pizza.

Shaan Puri 36:28 [laughs]

Sam Parr 36:29 And I worked that job for a year, three nights a week, and what they would do is every time you'd sit down at your desk-

Shaan Puri 36:35 Sam goes home-

Sam Parr 36:35 ... in the evening-

Shaan Puri 36:36 ... they, they pay commission, salary and pizza. Dear diary.

Sam Parr 36:40 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 36:40 Jackpot.

Sam Parr 36:41 That was the thing.

Shaan Puri 36:41 [laughs]

Sam Parr 36:42 It was like, you know, I was 16. That was the thing. We had dinner. It was... They had soda and pizza. And you'd sit down at your desk. I'd work, I worked there from, like, 3:00 PM to, like, 8:00 PM. You sit down at your desk and you have a phone, and then you just have a box of note cards. And on the note cards it says how much the person donated previously ... what their resume is, so where they worked, and what their age is. And what you would do after, this is a little, uh, trick of the trade, you find the oldest person there who's got the best career or who has previously donated the most amount of money, and you line those up, and you just start calling them. And you say, you know, "Hey, Mr., uh, h- hey, hey, Mr. Smith. This is, uh, Sam at SLU, your alma mater. I know you graduated here in 1956. Um, but look, things are going great here, but we need some money in order to build this thing or that thing."

Shaan Puri 37:27 [laughs]

Sam Parr 37:27 "Can I count you down for a $5,000 donation? You did $3,000 two years ago, but times have changed, my friend. We gotta step it up."

Shaan Puri 37:34 [laughs]

Sam Parr 37:34 "Like, do you wanna be a man for others or not? Now is the time." And like, we would like, we had these scripts that we had to like sell these guys on giving us money to build something. And I would bring in, I don't remember the exact numbers, but like tens of thousands of dollars a month in donations from these alumni, and that was my job, was just to call these guys constantly. And we would do, I don't know, maybe 100 calls or something like that a night-

Shaan Puri 37:56 [laughs]

Sam Parr 37:57 ... just trying to get this money, and you would get like, if you brought in five grand, boom, you got $100. Like, that's what we did, and it was the greatest racket-

Shaan Puri 38:04 That's it. [laughs]

Sam Parr 38:04 ... on earth. I don't remember exact- no, we weren't making... 'Cause the money had to go to the school.

Shaan Puri 38:08 Was this legal-

Sam Parr 38:09 And this-

Shaan Puri 38:09 ... or was, like, you know, was there a janitor-

Sam Parr 38:11 Of course

Shaan Puri 38:11 ... overseeing you?

Sam Parr 38:12 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 38:12 What was going on here? How, who was running this program? I can't believe they did this.

Sam Parr 38:14 The history teacher. [laughs] Who do you... Uh, yeah, it was the history teacher. That was, that was like his side job. His side hustle was running the boiler room. [laughs] You know? He was the Jordan Belfort, and I was like the little, uh, the little scrum, or the little scrub just like, you know, smiling and dialing. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 38:30 He's like, "You guys want some crackers? Yeah, yeah, b- crackers are for closers." [laughs]

Sam Parr 38:35 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 38:35 Get your ass on the phone, Sam. Get your ass on the phone, Parr. [laughs]

Sam Parr 38:38 Yeah, he'd like walk behind you like, "Sam, is that a work call? Could you please, uh, could you please hang that up and..." [laughs]

Shaan Puri 38:44 Your finger's broken, why aren't you dialing, Parr? [laughs]

Sam Parr 38:47 [laughs] But that's what I did. It was awesome. It, d- I mean, don't you have that? Doesn't Duke people call you? And usually what they do is, now what they do is once you get old enough, they hire your friends to be the person. So like if we went to Duke together, I'm gonna call Y- Shaan and be like, "Hey, Shaan, you know, in a minute."

Shaan Puri 39:02 How do they do that? [laughs] What?

Sam Parr 39:04 Y-

Shaan Puri 39:05 That's insane.

Sam Parr 39:05 Yeah, so like my high school now, I'll get texts from people who I was acquaint- acquainted with and I'm friends with. And here's the kicker. The- they'll say shit like, "Hey, I know y- I follow you on social. I know you're doing real well."

Shaan Puri 39:16 Oh, gotcha.

Sam Parr 39:16 "How about we count you down for 5,000?" And I'm like-

Shaan Puri 39:18 Heard you got a baby on the way, you know? That, that may be... [laughs]

Sam Parr 39:20 Yeah, like, so it's like do I flex right now? Like, 'cause-

Shaan Puri 39:24 [laughs]

Sam Parr 39:25 ... I'm entirely driven by making my high school friends or my high school classmates, like I wanna be a big shot to them. That's-

Shaan Puri 39:31 Right

Sam Parr 39:31 ... 'cause, you know, I got made fun of. I, that's all I, that's all I care about is, is, is bringing it back to them. But I gotta give five grand to this fucking school.

Shaan Puri 39:38 [laughs]

Sam Parr 39:39 They get me all the time. It's been working so effectively. But that's how these telemarketing things work. You don't get calls from Duke asking to give money?

Shaan Puri 39:46 Ring, ring. "Hey, it's Duke." "Lose my number." [laughs]

Sam Parr 39:49 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 39:50 "Barking up the wrong tree. Never happening. Can't believe I gave you the money I gave you in the first place." Click. [laughs]

Sam Parr 39:56 Yeah, man. It, it's like a pretty funny, uh, thing, but that's how I-

Shaan Puri 39:59 I mean, if you have a multi-billion dollar endowment, you gotta lose my number. You're not calling me for money.

Sam Parr 40:04 It's bullshit, right?

Shaan Puri 40:04 That's not gonna happen. If my high school-

Sam Parr 40:06 Yeah

Shaan Puri 40:06 ... or something called me, all right, maybe. I hope they don't, but you know, I, I, I wouldn't really feel as aggressively upset as I do if Duke calls.

Sam Parr 40:16 If your number could also be a country's GDP, your, if your endowment-

Shaan Puri 40:20 [laughs]

Sam Parr 40:21 ... could be confused with like a Caribbean country's GDP-

Shaan Puri 40:23 If Haiti is jealous. [laughs]

Sam Parr 40:25 Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're out. Like, you should not call me. [laughs] Yeah. [laughs] Uh, that's too funny.

Shaan Puri 40:33 [laughs]

Sam Parr 40:33 All right, you wanna do, wanna do a couple more? What do you got?

Shaan Puri 40:35 Yeah, I got some, I got some o- good ones. All right, let me give you a quick-

Sam Parr 40:37 Wait, what, what do, what, by the way, what is Duke's, uh, endowment?

Shaan Puri 40:40 It's in the bill- I don't know. Multi-billions. Duke endowment size. 12 billion.

Sam Parr 40:47 Is it really 12 billion? And Duke's not even like a top, probably top 20.

Shaan Puri 40:51 Don't you dare say mid-level. Don't you dare say mid-level Ivy. [laughs]

Sam Parr 40:54 [laughs] It's a mid-major. It's definitely a mid-major. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 40:57 It's not even a good school. [laughs]

Sam Parr 41:00 I mean, is Duke top 20? It's top 20 for sure, right?

Shaan Puri 41:02 Yeah, it is. Yeah.

Sam Parr 41:03 I- is it, but is it top 20 you think in terms of endowment?

Shaan Puri 41:06 Yeah, I think so. I think so.

Sam Parr 41:08 That is insane. Billions of enda- billions of dollars in endowment. They could basically just run the school off the, uh, investment income.

Shaan Puri 41:16 Oh yeah, totally. Uh, I'm surprised that, um, more people... I'm surprised that anyone gives to these k- to these schools. I don't understand at all. All right, so the top, yeah, it's in the top 20. So Harvard, number one, is 40 billion, Yale two at 30, Texas 30, Stanford 27, and then at the bottom of the top 20 is Cornell with seven million.

Sam Parr 41:38 That's insane. That is insane.

Shaan Puri 41:40 Seven billion, sorry.

Sam Parr 41:40 That's, that's, that's ridiculous. Yeah, I don't know why those guys would be calling you, but I bet they do. They need your $50. [upbeat music]

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Shaan Puri 42:06 Well, did I tell you about one of the really smart ideas was this thing called, uh, I forgot the name of the parent company. Ben, see if you can find it. It's, uh, they made this thing called Towerview Ventures. So one of the big streets at Duke campus is Towerview, and it's like the name of some magazine there or something like that. It's like a, it's like a reference to something we remember from, from school, and it's basically Towerview Ventures. We're raising money for, uh, w- for a venture fund to invest in alumni from Duke. It's like, oh yeah, Duke has really smart people. Um, so you know, we are gonna invest in those companies. They've had these winners before, Cameo, and blah, blah, blah, and blah, blah, blah. And they basically do this for, they spin this up for every single top school. It's called, I think, Alumni Ventures. And they just spin up small funds for every single school and, um, and then they just run ads and call you to try to get you to dona- uh, try to get you to invest in their fund. And they're like, "Cool. We're just gonna have like, like, like Towerview Ventures." They have, uh, I guess it started in 2019 There's, uh... You know, it's on fund five now for, for the Duke one. And, like, I don't know how big these funds are, but, like, even if they're like $10 million, $10 million funds or $20 million funds, you take 2% every year of management fees and 20% of carry across this times 50 other schools. It's like a pretty genius way to, like, pull on the hard strings of-

Sam Parr 43:24 Oh

Shaan Puri 43:24 ... And they're not affiliated with the school.

Sam Parr 43:24 So it's a real business. But there's [laughs] are, are they... Does the f- the school give them permission to use their name?

Shaan Puri 43:31 Well, they don't use the name. They say, "We're Towerview Ventures and we're investing in Duke alumni." So they're not saying-

Sam Parr 43:36 Oh, my God

Shaan Puri 43:37 ... "We're Duke's venture fund." But it ma- they very much make it feel like that.

Sam Parr 43:39 Dude, that's shady though.

Shaan Puri 43:40 The, all the colors match.

Sam Parr 43:42 I wouldn't invest.

Shaan Puri 43:42 It's like, here's all your school colors. Ev- everything is like, uh, uh, you know, based off that.

Sam Parr 43:49 That's a scheme. That's a, that's a hardcore scheme, right?

Shaan Puri 43:51 You could do that for Belmont [laughs] .

Sam Parr 43:52 Well, I mean, like, like a, a $50,000 fund ain't gonna go far, right? Like-

Shaan Puri 43:57 Do you think you're Belmont's most successful alumni from your year?

Sam Parr 44:02 Yeah. Yeah. Uh, no. I got beat. You know who it was?

Shaan Puri 44:05 Who?

Sam Parr 44:06 F- Florida Georgia Line.

Shaan Puri 44:07 What?

Sam Parr 44:08 You know that Florida Georgia Line, that band?

Shaan Puri 44:10 No [laughs] .

Sam Parr 44:11 You've never heard of Florida Georgia Line?

Shaan Puri 44:13 Sounds like a territory that was annexed [laughs] .

Sam Parr 44:15 Dude [laughs] the, the Florida Geo- Florida Georgia Line is, like... If you go to just your Spotify right now and, like, you look in the top 100 songs, I bet most years they have one or two songs in your top 20.

Shaan Puri 44:26 They were in your year?

Sam Parr 44:28 Yeah. You know that song Cruise? Like, even Nelly made an appearance.

Shaan Puri 44:31 I mean, you're just gonna-

Sam Parr 44:32 Dude, do you know who Nelly is?

Shaan Puri 44:34 Would you like to pants me right now in front of everybody? [laughs] No, I don't know who any of these people are. No, I know Nelly, but... Yeah, it's like Mike Posner was in my year and, uh, you know, a few other people.

Sam Parr 44:42 No, Florida... Do you know Morgan Wallen? Do you know who that is?

Shaan Puri 44:44 Oh, yeah. He's the shit. Love that guy.

Sam Parr 44:46 They're more famous than Morgan Wallen.

Shaan Puri 44:47 Oh, wow.

Sam Parr 44:48 So... Not, not, not, not to you.

Shaan Puri 44:49 [laughs]

Sam Parr 44:49 But they put, they helped put Morgan Wallen on the map 'cause Morgan Wallen appeared on one of their songs. Anyway, it... They're like a Morgan Wallen famous band.

Shaan Puri 44:56 Cool.

Sam Parr 44:56 So they might be number one. I think I might be number two. But you know what?

Sam Parr 45:00 They never fucking call me. I got mad at them because here's... Let me explain why I got mad at them. My mom was gonna come and watch me graduate, but I didn't finish school on time. And I asked, like, the teachers or whatever. I was like, "Can you guys just give me like a fake diploma and just let me come on stage and not tell her, and I'll finish it at another point?"

Shaan Puri 45:15 [laughs]

Sam Parr 45:15 And they're like, "No, it's a tradition. You have to... We have to literally hand you your diploma there." I'm like, "Just give me an empty folder. I don't, I don't... Just, I literally just wanna be there on stage. Just let me have that empty folder." And they wouldn't let me do it. And so forever I'll-

Shaan Puri 45:27 Wow

Sam Parr 45:27 ... uh, I hate Belmont because they wouldn't let me just walk on the stage and just let me shake that guy's hand and turn the fucking stupid beret thing to the side.

Shaan Puri 45:34 [laughs]

Sam Parr 45:35 And they wouldn't do it. So I, I will always be mad at Belmont for that reason.

Shaan Puri 45:39 Wow. What a, what a L for them. All right. I got, I got a couple more. So, um, let me see where I wanna go. Okay, can I, can I just rapid fire for you some ideas?

Sam Parr 45:47 Go.

Shaan Puri 45:48 We don't even have to discuss them. Okay. Uh, exporting and, and my... You, you know my import-export framework. My import framework and export framework is, uh, if you're at a company and you wish so- you're like, "Dude, we would totally pay for this," that's a business idea you would wanna import. You're better off going and starting that business 'cause there's probably 100 other businesses like you that would pay for that. Where export is, we, we built this for ourselves and it's so useful. You're better off leaving the company and then rebuilding that on the outside of the walls and selling it to other companies. So here's an ex-

Sam Parr 46:19 Which is what Slack did.

Shaan Puri 46:21 Um, yeah, exactly. Slack is a good example of this. Um, uh, so Paul Graham tweeted this out the other day that, like, YC has its own directory internally about investors, where any startup founder can go look up any investor and h- read their reviews or kinda like, what's the scoop on this person? Have they done anything effed up? Are they really helpful? What's their... You know, what do, what do we know about this person? And he's like, "This is one of the best products that YC has." And I'm like, "Why is that a product only YC has?"

Shaan Puri 46:50 Um, this should be a product that anybody has. So I think somebody should export this out and it's like Yelp for investors where, um, investors have a reputation on this, uh, in this app and it's on- you can only write about them if you had, you know, like, uh, let's say a, a, a verified interaction with them or something like that.

Sam Parr 47:09 Dude, that, that's great. I think I, I wish I could have that for a variety of vendors. The things that people ask for most at Hampton is like, "Hey, who's a good lawyer? Who's a good accountant? Who's this?"

Shaan Puri 47:16 Right.

Sam Parr 47:16 "Who's that?" It's incredibly challenging to find reviews on vendors, including investors.

Shaan Puri 47:21 It's super hard to start these types of businesses, but I think the w- uh, the startup community is so insulated that you could actually overcome the chicken and egg problem through brute force. 'Cause there's not that many investors, and you could find... You can quickly see who's worked with them just by looking at their portfolio, and you could cold email them and be like, "Give me the scoop." And I think you could manually collect the data to get this going. Um, all right, here's another one. Teacher's Pet is what I'm calling this. So this is, uh, my first AI idea for you here. So, um, you're aware of Teachers Pay Teachers, which is a marketplace. It's like Etsy, but instead of buying and selling handcrafted goods, you buy and sell lesson plans, quizzes. It's so- things that teachers need.

Sam Parr 48:00 What's that called?

Shaan Puri 48:00 Teachers Pay Teachers. Have you ever heard of this?

Sam Parr 48:02 We talked about it a while, we talked about it a while ago.

Shaan Puri 48:04 Yeah.

Sam Parr 48:04 Right?

Shaan Puri 48:04 It's a big business. So it, it was doing, like, $80 million a year in revenue. That's like their take, not the GMV. That's their, their take. And it gets, like, 20 million visits a month during school years. Um, 300 teachers on this network have made a million dollars or more, um, by selling lessons or selling quizzes or selling r- classroom materials to other teachers. So-

Sam Parr 48:26 And, like, their new profile picture is like, "Fuck them kids."

Shaan Puri 48:28 [laughs]

Sam Parr 48:29 Like, "I'm, I'm a, I'm a creator." [laughs]

Shaan Puri 48:31 [laughs] So, like, these marketplaces are big. And marketplaces for mo- for the most part are pretty unassailable. It's very hard to go compete with something that has a network effect. But I think AI is one of these things that might be able to crack some network effects, and I think AI could crack this one. So I think you could train AI to crawl and learn from all of the materials on this network. You can just go buy all the materials on this for probably, like, less than $500,000. Um, and then you could use that as your training data, and you could train AI to basically become ChatGPT for teachers. So you... So any teacher should be able to come to this and instead of going through and finding what's a good geography lesson

Shaan Puri 49:10 plan and then going and buying it for $14- You just go ask this thing, "Hey, I need a geography lesson plan for fourth grade. Um, make it fun and interesting." And it should just create one for you. So I think if you-

Sam Parr 49:21 That's cool

Shaan Puri 49:21 ... created this, you could have a $20 a month subscription just for teachers to create lesson plans using AI, um, or quizzes, or teaching materials-

Sam Parr 49:29 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 49:29 ... or whatever.

Sam Parr 49:30 Teacher's Pet.

Shaan Puri 49:30 Teacher's Pet.

Sam Parr 49:31 That's a good name, too. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 49:33 Yeah.

Sam Parr 49:34 All right, you wanna do... You have one more?

Shaan Puri 49:35 I'm big on providing a name with some, with these ideas. Uh, I think that-

Sam Parr 49:38 [laughs] Yeah

Shaan Puri 49:38 ... that really turns it from, like, a, a, I don't know, to, like, "Where's the application form for Thatcher Derby?"

Sam Parr 49:44 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 49:44 Like, how do I get in?

Sam Parr 49:46 What, what's this... [laughs] You just have this funny phrase that's for some reason funny to me. You call it an Ozempic on-ramp and then an Ozempic off-ramp.

Shaan Puri 49:55 Yeah, so these aren't fully baked ideas, but I'll just-

Sam Parr 49:57 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 49:57 ... spitball them with you. All right. So when I was thinking about this, you know, um, you wanna surf on waves if you're starting a business. So what's a wave you could surf right now? Ozempic. I think Ozempic is, like... If video's a mega trend, guess what? Fat loss is a mega trend. [laughs] Obesity-

Sam Parr 50:14 Yeah [laughs]

Shaan Puri 50:14 ... is a mega trend too, Doug.

Sam Parr 50:16 Have you tried it yet?

Shaan Puri 50:17 No. [laughs] No, I haven't tried it.

Sam Parr 50:18 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 50:18 But, um, I know a lot of people that wanna be on it, or get off of it, or are on it. They're like-

Sam Parr 50:24 I got a guy if it... I got a guy. I could refer him.

Shaan Puri 50:27 No, no.

Sam Parr 50:28 It's expensive, though. It's expensive.

Shaan Puri 50:30 Yeah, I'm not interested, but I know a lot of people are. So I guess the question is, um, what could you build around this Ozempic mega trend? So, um, my brain goes to on-ramps and off-ramps. How do you sell something to people that makes it easier to get it, or help people get off of it? So for, for getting it, uh, if you go Google just, like, um, I don't know, like, "How do I take Ozempic?" Or, like, "Getting Ozempic near me," you get a bunch of, like, kinda like, uh, sponsored links for, like, telehealth services that are gonna try to, like, uh, you know, sign up for this... Here's the pills, basically. But what I think somebody should do-

Sam Parr 51:04 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 51:04 ... is I think somebody should go old school with it. I think somebody needs to create a Ozempic hotline. And what's the Ozempic hotline? So the Ozempic hotline is old school infomercial shit. So you're gonna run ads on linear TV, on Fox News. You're gonna be the MyPillow guy. You're just gonna be everywhere-

Sam Parr 51:20 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 51:20 ... that, like, people who are, like, you know, 40 to 60 are, are clicking and, uh, or watching. And you're just gonna show people's transformations and Ozempic, and be like, "Call in now to f- you know, get a free consultation. Are you eligible? What are the upsides? What are the downsides? How much does it cost? Where can you find it? W- So confusing. We are gonna make it easy. We're gonna give you a free consult." And you basically just become a lead gen provider for people who are trying to buy Ozempic. But I think you gotta do, like, 1-800-like-got-abs or something like that, right? Like, 1-800-

Sam Parr 51:56 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 51:56 ... you know.

Sam Parr 51:56 But that goes against all your principles since you hate...

Shaan Puri 51:59 Which principles? [laughs]

Sam Parr 52:01 Uh. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 52:03 As I like to say, what values?

Sam Parr 52:04 Well, we could find them somewhere deep in that closet.

Shaan Puri 52:07 [laughs]

Sam Parr 52:07 Uh, but I, I believe one or two of those principles be- besides, which is... Coming out of left field, the fact that you said that you don't wanna kill animals to eat that, that, that's, that's such a, uh, curveball coming from you.

Shaan Puri 52:19 [laughs]

Sam Parr 52:19 But I think the other one was I think you hate pharmaceuticals, no?

Shaan Puri 52:23 Uh, no, I don't hate pharmaceutical. I don't personally take... I don't personally, uh, try to take a lot of stuff. I try not to be dependent on anything, um, you know, as a general rule. Like caffeine, I don't drink coffee. I don't do, I don't do a lot of stuff like that. Um, a l- you know, people take, like, you know, uh... I don't know. You, you love stuff. You're like, "Oh, um, I need nicotine."

Sam Parr 52:42 Fucking-

Shaan Puri 52:42 "I need this."

Sam Parr 52:43 ... Zin

Shaan Puri 52:43 "I need that."

Sam Parr 52:43 I love carbonated water, Zin, Diet Coke.

Shaan Puri 52:46 [laughs]

Sam Parr 52:46 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 52:47 So I'm... I, I try not to be on any of that stuff. But, um, but people are. This is a business opportunity. I'm not doing this. I'm saying somebody could create a phone-based way to educate people and help onboard people. Or, on the other side, you could figure out an off-ramp. So h- so a lot of people wanna stop this. Either it's too expensive, or they're having side effects, or, or they just feel like they got the weight, weight loss they had, they don't wanna keep taking this forever. How do you off-ramp? And, uh, I don't know the answer to that, but that's a-

Sam Parr 53:16 Well, I'll tell you the answer

Shaan Puri 53:16 ... it's a place to go look. What's the answer?

Sam Parr 53:19 You just don't take it. Noth- nothing bad happens. You just don't take it.

Shaan Puri 53:22 Yeah, but, uh-

Sam Parr 53:22 I, I, I tried it

Shaan Puri 53:22 ... don't, don't a lot of people regain a bunch of weight right away, or have, like, any sort of, like, I don't know... Noth- nothing that's this effective has no cost when you stop. I, I don't believe that.

Sam Parr 53:32 Yeah. So basically the, the... When the, the study that they did was they took 2,000 or 3,000 people, they had them do it for six months, and then after six months they had half the people quit taking it. And what they found was, uh, at the end of the 12-month study, uh, the people who took it the whole time lost, um, something like a third of their body weight. So, like, a 300-pound person was 200 pounds. And then the people who quit taking it, they went from 200 pounds back up to, like, 230 or something like that. So they

Sam Parr 54:00 gained weight back, but they weren't nearly as fat as they were when they started, so they... but they did gain weight. But, so yeah, an off-ramp is fine. But I don't think you have, like, uh, withdrawals. Like, that's not gonna kill you. You're just gonna, like, be like, "Oh, I'm hungry." Like, "I wanna eat again."

Shaan Puri 54:13 Yeah.

Sam Parr 54:13 Uh, so-

Shaan Puri 54:13 And maybe it's just, like, peer groups or something. I don't know. The, the... Is there something you could provide to this large group of people that all have now, like, one... They're going through this one new experience, and I don't know. There's gotta be auxiliary things around it. That's, so that's a, that's a place I would look for business ideas. Um, all right. I got a, I got another one for you. I heard something the other day that just really caught my attention. I think it's a cool idea, but it's being done in the wrong way. So I was listening to some podcast, um, and the guy who was talking in it was like, "Yeah, I did Mind Sport," and blah, blah, blah. And he started talking about Mind Sport, and I was like, "Mind Sport? What a, what a great name. What is that?" And he was a really smart guy, and he was talking about game theory and blah, blah, blah. And I looked it up, and Mind Sport is essentially the nerd Olympics. So Mind Sport is a place that you go if you're uber smart, and, um, you compete with people in those games. And so those games can range from chess, to poker, to Settlers of Catan, or Go, or whatever.

Sam Parr 55:13 Or, like, Rubik's Cube?

Shaan Puri 55:15 Yeah. Like, you know, if I was... Like, let's just put it this way. Sam, if I was to tell you, um, you know- That this, I could solve this cube in the next, you know, 90 seconds. You might not think I'm a genius, but you probably don't think I'm an idiot. Would that be fair? [laughs]

Sam Parr 55:32 Are, are you gonna solve that right now? Is that gonna be part of the show? 'Cause that would be great.

Shaan Puri 55:36 I wish I could solve this.

Sam Parr 55:37 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 55:37 I have never even gotten close. I don't know what the hell you're supposed to do with this thing.

Sam Parr 55:41 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 55:42 I treat it like a fidget spinner. [laughs] I just move it and I'm like, "Ooh, that's cool. I got two blues and three yellows. That's awesome. Good for me."

Sam Parr 55:49 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 55:50 I pat myself on the back and I move on. [laughs]

Sam Parr 55:52 [laughs] You're, this, so there's the Mind Sports Olympiad. The, uh, you're in the, [laughs] you're in the special Mind Sports Olympiad. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 56:00 Exactly. [laughs] I'm in the mind jog. [laughs]

Sam Parr 56:03 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 56:03 We're not... The mind's not moving that fast. Um, so, so basically you go to this thing and you compete in all these games, or you compete in your game, but you can also compete in the Pentamind Championship, which is where you're gonna play five of these games. And I'm like, "Oh my God."

Sam Parr 56:17 [laughs] I'm not even smart enough-

Shaan Puri 56:19 The mega nerd-

Sam Parr 56:19 ... to know what pentamind means

Shaan Puri 56:20 ... the, you know, Coachella for nerds. And I was like, "This is amazing." Um, and I just, I cannot tell you, Sam Parr, how all in I am on the Mind Sport Olympiad.

Sam Parr 56:29 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 56:31 I wanna go. I wanna watch it live like I watch the spelling bee live on ESPN. I wanna watch the Hard Knocks documentary about like, you know, following five of these people behind the scenes and watching them stress out about this. I wanna adopt one of the kids in this and just have them be like, you know, my 17-year-old child. Um, and most of all, I wanna hire all these kids.

Sam Parr 56:52 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 56:53 This is so awesome. I, I-

Sam Parr 56:54 You're grooming them

Shaan Puri 56:55 ... I think they have the-

Sam Parr 56:56 [laughs] Shaan's a groomer. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 56:58 ... complete wrong business model. This is not a tournament with prize money and thanks to our sponsors, Wendy's. No, no, no, no, no.

Sam Parr 57:07 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 57:07 You've got this all wrong. This is a recruiting event for the elite minds under 25 years old. And I was like, this is bait to bring together the smartest nerds. In five years, these kids are not gonna be playing professional Settlers of Catan. They're gonna be starting companies or working inside companies, and guess where I want them to work? My companies.

Sam Parr 57:26 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 57:26 And so I think that you should take this idea, create a version of this.

Sam Parr 57:31 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 57:32 But it needs to be a elite recruiting service/job fair/demo day for nerds. And you need to basically, when they attend, they need to basically somehow like sign over the rights for you to like send them job offers for the next five years or like, you know, get to invest in them or something like that. Because I can't think of a m- more valuable talent pool than the Mind Sport Olympics.

Sam Parr 57:55 Dude, I have to check this out.

Shaan Puri 57:56 And I, I actually think you could do this for gamers in general. I love investing. One of my secrets of investing is I invest in former competitive gamers. Um, you know, people who were elite level at, you know, StarCraft or things like that. Those people just tend to do really, really well at whatever next game you throw in front, in front of them. And once you throw the money game in front of them, guess what? They solve it. They figure it out.

Sam Parr 58:16 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 58:17 Um, and so-

Sam Parr 58:18 So there's this-

Shaan Puri 58:19 Yeah

Sam Parr 58:19 ... listen, there's this thing called the World Memory Championships.

Shaan Puri 58:22 Mm-hmm.

Sam Parr 58:22 Have you heard of this?

Shaan Puri 58:23 No. [laughs] Sign me up.

Sam Parr 58:25 And if... Yeah, and so they've been doing this since 1990, 1991. And there's different games. So basically we're gonna g- you... We're, we're just gonna give you thousands of numbers, and you have five minutes, and you have to tell us, like, in order the numbers. And the record for that is 600 numbers, and they only had five minutes to do it. The one-hour number is the same thing except you have one hour to do it. And, and the guy who won that did 4,600 numbers in a row. He remembered that. And so they do these 10 different games. And in the same way that the UFC used to be like this like, a bunch of thugs fighting, like, it was like barbarians. But now it's like the, it's like s- it's half WWE and WWF where it's like, you know, "You slept with my wife. Now I'm gonna beat you up."

Shaan Puri 59:09 Right.

Sam Parr 59:09 But it's other half, like-

Shaan Puri 59:10 Martial arts

Sam Parr 59:10 ... your movement.

Shaan Puri 59:11 Yeah. [laughs]

Sam Parr 59:11 It's, yeah, your, your movement is magical. Look at his movement, so smooth. This is peak-

Shaan Puri 59:16 Right

Sam Parr 59:16 ... physical performance. We need, uh, we need Dana White, you know, or a physique man to buy the World Memory Championships.

Shaan Puri 59:23 [laughs]

Sam Parr 59:23 And we gotta make that great because I'm looking up the guy who won it, Alex Mullen. He's a, he's a kid. Or no, he's, or I guess when he won it he was 28. And you know what he does for work now? He's an x-ray person at a hospital.

Shaan Puri 59:35 [laughs] X-ray tech?

Sam Parr 59:36 [laughs] X-ray tech.

Shaan Puri 59:38 Just memorizing all the x-rays. [laughs]

Sam Parr 59:40 It's not bad, dude. Whoa, what, why is this guy not working for, like-

Shaan Puri 59:42 This guy's brain is HIPAA compliant. What are we talking about here? [laughs]

Sam Parr 59:44 [laughs] Yeah, yeah. Why is this guy not working for, like, you know, BlackRock or Blackstone, just like Rain Man in his way to, like-

Shaan Puri 59:50 Yeah

Sam Parr 59:50 ... you know, corporate buyouts?

Shaan Puri 59:51 That's what I'm saying, baby. Undervalued assets. These are, these are hidden gems. Uh, I'm not all in on memory, 'cause I think memory is, like, the pleb version of the, the Olympiad. Like, these other guys are, like, strategists.

Sam Parr 1:00:03 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:00:03 But, like, memory is, you know, any rube can do memory really. Um, you know.

Sam Parr 1:00:09 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:00:09 But, but who, but if you're-

Sam Parr 1:00:10 Dude, I can't even remember seven numbers let alone 600.

Shaan Puri 1:00:13 [laughs] I can remember two-thirds of any phone number. [laughs] That's all I got.

Sam Parr 1:00:17 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:00:19 Um, all right.

Shaan Puri 1:00:20 Uh, yeah, so that's, that's one idea. Um, okay, I got a couple other for you. Um, let me hit you with, with one more maybe, but we were out of time here. But I'm gonna, I'm gonna go into overtime here and give you one more. Um, let's do one around churches. Okay, so-

Sam Parr 1:00:35 Something you know a lot about.

Shaan Puri 1:00:36 S- [laughs] another area that I'm completely un- [laughs] un- unversed in.

Sam Parr 1:00:39 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:00:40 But I know that other people do it. Um, Michael Gurdly tweeted this out the other day. He said, uh, "3,500 churches are closing every year." I said, "Huh, well, what's, what's that about? What, what is that?" It's a big number. And, um, it's not exactly right actually. Like, what happens is 4,000 churches closed last year, but, like, another 3,000 open or 2,000 opened or something like that. It's like a net change of 1,500 churches, uh, but, but towards the negative. And there is a bunch of, there are a bunch of stats about this. So, um, in the cr- you know, in, in traditional churches, so the Chris- Christian churches, attendance is down 65% in the last 20 years. 65%. Um, and what happens is when the pews are empty, there's less donations, so then these churches end up having to close down. And, uh, there's a trend. Basically, they, they call them, like, "Are you, are you Christian? Are you Jewish? Are you Muslim? What, what are you?" And there's a, there's a group called the Nones. They're just none. I don't know why they're calling them Nones instead of, like, sort of like Atheists or whatever, like, you know.

Sam Parr 1:01:38 Wait, Nones like N-U-N or-

Shaan Puri 1:01:40 N-O-N-E

Sam Parr 1:01:40 ... N-O-N-E.

Shaan Puri 1:01:41 Yeah.

Sam Parr 1:01:42 That's, that's, that's also confusing. When you said Nones, I was like, a bunch of ladies in, like, habits.

Shaan Puri 1:01:46 Agreed. Honestly-

Sam Parr 1:01:47 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:01:47 ... big slip-up on their part.

Sam Parr 1:01:49 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:01:49 But-

Sam Parr 1:01:49 They could be the Zeroes

Shaan Puri 1:01:50 ... th- they did-

Sam Parr 1:01:51 That'd be a little better

Shaan Puri 1:01:51 ... they did survey this, and for Gen Z, I guess 45% would count as, as none of the above, essentially, for, for, for religion. And this guy who, um, studies churches or whatever said that of the three, 350,000 Christian congregations in the United States, one-third are, like, vulnerable, on the brink of collapse, basically. Like, one-third are, like, in the red zone and over the next 10 years will likely close. That's a huge number. And what are the opportunities? So I think that there's... I think you could approach this from multiple angles. So again, not a specific idea, but I do think you could look at this... When you hear a stat like that, that's just an, that's just one that gets your attention. Like, when Jeff Bezos heard the stat that, like, you know, the internet is growing at 12,000% a year, he's like, "Ah, I better go start Amazon." And basically, I think you could do that around, around stats like this. So how are these churches gonna close down? Um, that in itself, the, the sort of the vulture business or the cleanup at the funeral business for churches I think is kinda interesting. How are the, how-

Sam Parr 1:02:52 Dude [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:02:53 Forget saving them.

Sam Parr 1:02:53 In my-

Shaan Puri 1:02:54 Help them-

Sam Parr 1:02:54 In my-

Shaan Puri 1:02:54 ... help them die with grace.

Sam Parr 1:02:56 [laughs] In my neighborhood, uh, one block from my house in St. Louis, they turned a church into a condo.

Shaan Puri 1:03:02 Right. Yeah, exactly.

Sam Parr 1:03:02 So [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:03:03 So th- then I found there's this group called Niagra Consulting Group, and they're basically like, "We help you restructure your church." What do they mean by that? It's basically, "Look, there's a lot of developers that are chomping at the bit to turn this into luxury condos. Like, we help you try to succeed, but if you don't, we'll get you an offer from one of these developers to turn this into luxury condos." And I was like, "Oh, interesting." But in a lot of places they can't even do that, because it's like, you know, like, l- low, uh, low income areas that there's not real- They just sit there empty. Um, so I think there's a lot of opportunity to figure out how to deal with this. I think there's opportunity. If I'm a company like Calm, could I take $50 million and just buy physical locations across the country in one year through these churches and just have a weekly service for meditation and whatever, like, um, even to have like, like, you know, just local chapters, basically franchisees that, that are gonna run them. Um, so I think there's, there's something to be done here, whether it's trying to save them, trying to help them fail gracefully, figuring out, uh, what's a, what's a pivot you could do for a lot of these. I saw you just put a Zillow link in here. What you got?

Sam Parr 1:04:08 So that's, uh, that's 10 doors down from my childhood home where my mom and dad still live. Um-

Shaan Puri 1:04:13 Beautiful church

Sam Parr 1:04:13 ... it's a church that they turned into a 7, uh, 8,000 square foot house. And as a house-

Shaan Puri 1:04:20 Oh, my God. [laughs]

Sam Parr 1:04:21 ... it, it doesn't look that cool.

Shaan Puri 1:04:23 [laughs]

Sam Parr 1:04:23 But as, like, a meditation area, like, it does-

Shaan Puri 1:04:26 Right

Sam Parr 1:04:26 ... look cool.

Shaan Puri 1:04:27 As an Airbnb, fantastic, you know. [laughs]

Sam Parr 1:04:30 Yeah. But look, it's $1.2 million and it's a 8,000 square foot... I mean, it's in St. Louis, Missouri where I'm from, which isn't that nice, but they [laughs] this company renovated this church into, like-

Shaan Puri 1:04:40 Right

Sam Parr 1:04:40 ... a livable house. And then I met these other guys who turned one into a skate park. They turned an old church into a skate park. Um, and so it's like it is pretty fascinating, 'cause a lot of these buildings are kinda cool, but to have like the Church of Calm, that's kinda dope.

Shaan Puri 1:04:56 Right. And then if you're gonna help them, I think this is gonna be a side hustle. So, like, the church near us, they actually have, like, awesome events all the time, and I love to take our kids to it, 'cause it's like they just put on great events, wholesome, fun events for, for families and kids. But it's so hard to even know what the hell... Like, literally the only way I know is if I drive by, they have a little sign they put, like, in the front, like a for sale sign, but it'll be like, "We're doing something this Saturday. It's gonna have popcorn and bouncy house." I'm like, "Oh, I'm in." But I only catch it driving by. I'm like, these guys just don't know social media. And, um, I had to call them to be like, "Hey, if I'm, like, an Indian dude who's not a member of the church-

Sam Parr 1:05:30 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:05:30 ... can I still come get the free popcorn? Like, you know, what's the deal around this? Is this, are you like, are your doors open?"

Sam Parr 1:05:36 Yeah. Are they gonna have, like, a color swatch-

Shaan Puri 1:05:37 Yeah, like-

Sam Parr 1:05:37 ... and if you come in, be like, "Eh, uh, you're not white enough"

Shaan Puri 1:05:41 Exactly, like-

Sam Parr 1:05:41 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:05:42 ... do you need to have recognized me? Uh, you know, like-

Sam Parr 1:05:44 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:05:44 ... how does this work? And so I couldn't even get a hold of them, 'cause I was like, they're, they just have, they have, like, one old Facebook page with, like, s- you know, an event from 2014. And I'm like, dude, churches need better social media. And I was like, I think you could just create, like, done f- d- done for you social media services for churches. If you wanted to get, like, a 10 to $20,000 a, a month side hustle, I think you could just do that just by going to every single church, just walk in and be like, "Hey, your social media's not very good. I can make it look like this." And then you basically go on Shepherd, you hire somebody for $800 a month, and that person's gonna manage 20 churches' social medias for you, because all the churches do... Hey, it's the same schedule. It's every Sunday. Um, same templates. You just need their color, their name, and you need to know, like, what's going on for them. Like, you know, just manage all of their Instagram and, um, you know, like, social media accounts for them. So I think that's one that, like, it's not that nobody's doing that, but there's plenty of churches that are not on board with that, and if you just wanted to go sign up a bunch of clients for 300 to $400 a month, you could do that.

Sam Parr 1:06:49 Did you [laughs] do you remember this? So have you heard of Hillsong?

Shaan Puri 1:06:53 Love Hillsong.

Sam Parr 1:06:53 Like, when I, uh, uh... It's, like, Hillsong Church.

Shaan Puri 1:06:56 Yeah.

Sam Parr 1:06:56 Um, when I was living in Tennessee, I've been an atheist forever, but I was just like, a lot of cute girls are going to this. I guess, I guess [laughs] that's the price to be, that's the price I gotta pay. So I'll go to this thing. So I went to this thing to, like, meet some people, and, uh, that's how I kinda learned about it. But for in the later 2000s, there was this guy who somehow infiltrated Justin Bieber's camp, and he, like, became Justin Bieber's-

Shaan Puri 1:07:22 Carl Lentz

Sam Parr 1:07:22 ... like, mentor, uh, Carl Lentz, and there's a new Netflix show about him.

Shaan Puri 1:07:26 Oh, nice.

Sam Parr 1:07:26 But basically, he's like-

Shaan Puri 1:07:27 I have to see, I have to watch that

Sam Parr 1:07:28 ... he's like- He's like a, a smoking hot guy. Like, you know, he looks basically like Justin Bieber in his 40s. Like, he looked great. And he made it-

Shaan Puri 1:07:35 I don't describe most men as babes, but he's a babe. [laughs]

Sam Parr 1:07:38 Well, he's a babe. I mean, like-

Shaan Puri 1:07:40 Let's be honest

Sam Parr 1:07:40 ... objectively. Like, you know? Like, y- y- you're either seven foot tall or you're not. Like, he's seven feet tall. He's tall.

Shaan Puri 1:07:45 I, I, I think I, uh, messaged you once about him, and you were like, "Dude, he's got the thing." Like, you know, like the, the diagonal lines that just point to your crotch.

Sam Parr 1:07:52 Uh, yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:07:52 It's like, it's like an ab line that you only have if you're super ripped. He's got those. What kind of pastor has those? [laughs]

Sam Parr 1:07:58 Yeah. [laughs] Yeah, if you're a pastor and you have that V, it's bad news. And as, as one could just look at his V and guess, he did some, uh... I don't know if he did any illegal things. I don't e- I, I didn't... Frankly, I didn't watch the documentary. I don't know. I don't think it was rape. I think it was just-

Shaan Puri 1:08:13 No, he just cheated on his wife and-

Sam Parr 1:08:15 Yeah, I think he just had sex with just everyone. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:08:17 [laughs]

Sam Parr 1:08:17 So-

Shaan Puri 1:08:18 The guy freaked out

Sam Parr 1:08:19 ... as one, [laughs] as one with all the power and the V might do.

Shaan Puri 1:08:23 He, he's also super charismatic, super good-looking, um, has like, uh, you know, a huge following from being on stage in front of 10,000 people every week or whatever. You know, it... He's a mega celebrity. He was.

Sam Parr 1:08:35 Yeah, he's a mega celebrity, but he made Hillsong cool. Like, I even went to one of those things, uh, because this girl I was trying to date was like, "Come to this thing." You know? I was like-

Shaan Puri 1:08:43 Dude, I loved the music. Their music's great

Sam Parr 1:08:45 ... Uh, yeah, so I went, I went to that thing just to be with this girl, and it wasn't worth it. It didn't work out.

Shaan Puri 1:08:51 [laughs]

Sam Parr 1:08:51 But, uh, [laughs] but yeah, that's how I learned about some of this religion stuff.

Shaan Puri 1:08:58 Well-

Sam Parr 1:08:58 Dude, and where I'm from in St. Louis, all the Catholic churches are dying, man. The, like, the, all the Catholic schools are, are, are going by the wayside. Uh, it ain't working.

Shaan Puri 1:09:05 One, one of the more useful things that I learned when I moved to Silicon Valley was a, a new way of looking at businesses that I hadn't really ever heard before outside of Silicon Valley, which is you... A l- most products are actually a bundle, not a product. Most things are a bundle. And once you can identify what's in the bundle, you could figure out how to unbundle that service and make something better. So for example, uh, Peter Thiel went on a spree where he was talking about how universities are a bubble, how the university system is, is overrated. He was gonna launch the Thiel Fellowship, which would pay you $200,000 to drop out of school and do something useful with your life. And that's where Figma came from, and that's where Oyo Rooms came from. That's where, you know, Vitalik, the creator of Ethereum, was at. He was a Thiel Fellow.

Sam Parr 1:09:47 I think there's been $10 billion companies so far have come from it.

Shaan Puri 1:09:51 Re- uh, actually a very impressive track record. And so one of the things he said was that... They're like, "How can you..." You know, it was, it was sort of, like, taboo to say, like... Y- s- you know, who says, like, anything against school, right? Like, everybody's mes- message is basically, "Stay in school, kids," and he's saying, "Drop out of school, kids." And so they're like-

Sam Parr 1:10:08 [laughs] "I'll give you money"

Shaan Puri 1:10:08 ... "How da- how dare you?"

Sam Parr 1:10:09 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:10:10 And he's like, "Well, the university is a bundle." He's like, "It's partially, um, education." So there are, there is education. "It's partially, um, socialization." So, you know, you go there to learn how to, like, party and be with other kids and date and get drunk and all that stuff. "It's partly, um, babysitting." So it's basically, my kid's not old enough. They're not mature enough to go to the real world yet, so, like, four years over here. Let, let them simmer a little bit, then they'll be ready. He's like, "It's partly insurance," which is like a societal insurance. Like, uh, look, I don't care what you do. Just get a degree. Get a college degree, 'cause that label, that stamp is gonna be whatever. He's like, "It's partly a- um, accreditation." So, like, I don't care if you're the top student at Harvard, but if you got into Harvard, that's a signal. It's strong enough for me as an employer to know that you're smart, right? Like, if I, if I know you went to Harvard, it's a signaling thing. So he's like, you're actually buying all of these things when you buy into university, when you pay the crazy cost of university. And we have to ask ourselves what part of that bundle is actually important and what part of the bundle is failing. Is this actually a weak part of the bundle that could be unbundled? And so what he did was he switched the accreditation one. He's like, "Cool. What if I created something? I have a brand. Peter Thiel, I invest in Facebook. I created PayPal. What if I handpicked, you know, 40 of the most promising college kids and paid them 200 grand to leave school?" Now I've, instead of having just, like, some normal school badge, which is good, you get the Thiel handpicked badge, which is even more elite. So I'm gonna, like, unbundle the university, give you a more elite badge, um, and then I'm gonna get rid of all the rest. I don't care about the socialization. I don't care about the rest. I'm gonna be 10X better at this badge. And, uh, you know, like YC is 10X better at university in certain things than in others. And so-

Sam Parr 1:11:57 That's brilliant, yeah

Shaan Puri 1:11:58 ... so the question is what is the church bundle? The church bundle is a combination of lecture for learning, community, a place to gather and congregate every week. It's just a peaceful place. Like, I liked going to church. I used to go to church not for, like... Like, I kinda liked the sermon, but I just loved the feeling of being inside of a church. The aura of inside of a church was just very peaceful and grounding to me. Um, so it's a peaceful place. It's also therapy/confession, uh, so a place to get things off your chest. Um, and a- and kind of with that is, like, being absolved of your sins, like just getting a clean slate. Like, oh, okay, I feel less guilty, um, you know. There's music, so some people go for the music vibe. Some people go for the food. Like, Indian temples all have, like, free food. I don't know if churches have that or not, but, like, Indian temples, like, a lot of people I know go because they, like, they actually, like, love the meal. Uh, but it's plus a good thing. Um, you show your loyalty to God. And so if you take this bundle of a bunch of things... Uh, also dating. I, I put, I put this on there. Like, I know a bunch of people that, like, they kinda wanna meet someone who has maybe their values or is like-

Sam Parr 1:12:59 Right

Shaan Puri 1:13:00 ... you know, like-

Sam Parr 1:13:00 Culture

Shaan Puri 1:13:01 ... yeah, is, is, like, matches in some way. And they're like, "Oh, this is better than going and trying to approach someone in a bar where it's noisy and I'm getting rejected. Like, ah, what if I, like... This is a new sort of, like, social scene where I can go approach somebody." All right. So I think one big... Uh, uh, so the small version of this idea is, like, social media for churches. The medium version of this is, like, restructure these churches into condos or figure out some lead gen where you, maybe you, you help them as they wind down to sell off assets or something. The big version of this idea is figure out how you're gonna replace the value that churches gave people but could do it in a new way. And so, like, for example, could you create a new brand in these same venues that's around, I don't know, like manifestation or some shit like that, or meditation or, um, yoga. Like could you create a yoga franchise that only operates out of churches and is some blend of like-

Sam Parr 1:13:49 That's cool

Shaan Puri 1:13:49 ... religion and churches, right? Uh, sorry, religion and yoga. And like I think those are the big ideas, which is replace the function, uh, one of the, or like be 10X better on one of those bundles. Like 10X better on food or music or the sermon or, um, absolving you of your sins. Like, you know, do, do try to be better at 10X better for one of those, and then use the physical locations of churches to like build that new franchise.

Sam Parr 1:14:14 That's a very, y- that was a good, that was a good speech. You did good on that one.

Shaan Puri 1:14:18 Thank you.

Sam Parr 1:14:19 We're gonna now-

Shaan Puri 1:14:19 Bless you. [laughs]

Sam Parr 1:14:19 Now we're gonna have a bunch of s- you, [laughs] we're gonna have a bunch of SoulCycles, uh, on the altar.

Shaan Puri 1:14:24 Yeah, [laughs] exactly.

Sam Parr 1:14:25 Uh, which g- [laughs] which is a lot cooler than how it is now. But that was a good, you, that was a very compelling argument.

Shaan Puri 1:14:31 Thank you. I sort of ventured into drunk ideas territory there, but I-

Sam Parr 1:14:35 No. No, no, no

Shaan Puri 1:14:35 ... feel like I grounded it, you know, a little bit.

Sam Parr 1:14:37 Yeah, that was a good one.

Shaan Puri 1:14:38 [laughs]

Sam Parr 1:14:39 That was a good one. Uh, I'll let you, that's, that's the winner or Dribbble, j- the Dribbble shit is the, is the winner.

Shaan Puri 1:14:45 All right, there we go. That's it. That's the Idea episode. Uh, you know what to do. Do they just get all these ideas for free, Sam?

Sam Parr 1:14:52 Well, they don't have to pay money.

Shaan Puri 1:14:54 Oh.

Sam Parr 1:14:54 But it's not for free. What, so they don't have to pull out their wallet, but what do they have to do?

Shaan Puri 1:14:58 Well, I think what they gotta do is go to YouTube, go to your podcast app, search My First Million, and you gotta click subscribe. You gotta click that button for us, 'cause we're out here churning out million dollar ideas, billion dollar ideas, side hustle ideas for you all-

Sam Parr 1:15:15 On a Labor Day no less

Shaan Puri 1:15:16 ... on a, I mean, there's only one right move. There's only one way to pay us back, and that's what it is. Go subscribe to the channel. That is called the gentleman's agreement. We're not gonna go check. We're not gonna, we're not gonna verify this, all right? It's honor code. This is a gentleman's agreement. We did it. We did our part. Now you do yours. That's all.

Sam Parr 1:15:33 All right. Thank you. That's the pod. [upbeat music]