The 5 Most Interesting Billionaires Alive...

Shaan Puri 0:00 Okay. These are the five most interesting businessmen alive. These are gonna be eccentric billionaires, people who not only have a crazy business life and have just done a variety of wild shit. These are people that they should be making movies about, so we got a list. [upbeat music] Can I start it off with number five? We're gonna go five to one, one being who we crown as the, uh, the most interesting man alive. The criteria for this, by the way, is they gotta be interesting, so not just rich, not just successful, but fascinating, interesting. Um, that can be good and bad. They have to be men. We have a- a separate list coming for women. And they have to be alive, so nobody who is, uh, you know, some dead, historical figure. Fair enough?

Sam Parr 0:50 Yeah. You gonna kick it off?

Shaan Puri 0:52 Yeah, I'll kick it off. Okay. So number five is a guy who won the game twice, and on his way out the second time is just flipping the bird to everybody. And this is a guy named Pavel Durov. I call this guy James Bond with Wi-Fi. [laughs]

Sam Parr 1:08 Okay.

Shaan Puri 1:08 If you see this guy's Instagram, you'll know why I said it. He looks like James Bond. He travels around the world. He's a m- international man of mystery. But he, he built his, his claim to fame as, uh, you know, using his laptop, using Wi-Fi. So this guy's basically the Russian Mark Zuckerberg. He... It's even more impressive than Zuck. So when he was young, he built, um, the Facebook of Russia, and it was called VK. And what's cool about this is, is two things. Number one, he actually beat Facebook. So there were many countries in the world where somebody built the Facebook of Brazil, the Facebook of Africa, the Facebook of Europe. We... There's been tons of these, and in every single one of them, the end game was no, no, no, Facebook is the Facebook of Brazil, Facebook is the Facebook of India, and Facebook dominated everywhere. The one place they couldn't dominate was Russia. And in an interview, Zuck was talking to Sam Altman, and he even said, he's like, "God, the only ones we could never beat were the Russians." He was like, "It was insane." He's like, "We would make a change, and literally, like, 12 minutes later, they would have that update on their, uh, on their side. Like, if we moved a pixel, they moved that pixel." And he's like, "These guys were just the most prolific copiers we've ever seen, and we just could not figure out how are we ever gonna overtake them if they're the world's smartest mathematicians and programmers who have dedicated, who are dedicated 24/7 to beating us or cloning us and doing exactly what we do if, if they can't get, come up with a better idea." And he, and so he gave them a, you know, a hat tip. So he creates VK. It becomes the Facebook of Russia. He won. But he had to sell it because one day, the Russian government approaches him and says, "Pavel, we need some information." He's like, "Cool. What do you need to know?" They're like, "We need some information about all your users and what they're saying." And he's like, "Uh, what? Why?"

Sam Parr 2:52 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 2:52 And then they're like, "Well, they've been s- you know, there's been some users who are saying some anti-government things. As you know, that's not how we do shit around here. So give us some names, and, uh, we'll make sure that they get quiet." And he's like, "No, no."

Sam Parr 3:04 And while you're at it, drop your pants and bend over and cough.

Shaan Puri 3:06 [laughs] So he doesn't wanna do it. And so what Pavel does... And by the way, this is not like, um, you know, this is not just a business move. This is not a lawyer sending you a cease and desist. When the refer- Russian government comes knocking, this is a pretty, uh, seri- there's serious consequences for what you decide to do after that. You comply, great. Uh, if you don't comply, there's not only consequences for those people they were after. Now there's consequences for you. And so what he does is he not only doesn't comply, he flips the bird. So he goes and he posts on VK the government request, the memo that they, the secret, like, kind of letter that they sent him telling him what they needed, and he said, "They're asking for your data. I'll never do it. And here's my official re- they asked, you know, here's my official response." And he posted a picture of a dog wearing a hoodie.

Sam Parr 3:56 Oh my God.

Shaan Puri 3:56 It has this famous picture of a dog in a hoodie that he posts. He's like, "Here's what I have to say about this" and he just [laughs] posts a dog with a hoodie. And so immediately, he's now in trouble. Uh, you know, the, they, they raid his apartment. He ends up losing this company, has to flee the country, never allowed back in Russia, you know, costs him basically everything. His entire life gets completely uprooted, and his l- he, it's not like he was just like, you know, a guy. He had something to lose here. And so at the end of all this, he says, "And I would do it all again without hesitation." And I love that. I love this guy. And so what he does, he now gets kicked out of Russia. He loses his company. He does get $300 million 'cause he sells it on the way out to some other guy who is gonna comply. So I d- I don't know fully if I, uh, if I, you know, what happened to your principles. I'm not sure, sure what happened after that. But, uh, whatever. He gets $300 million. And he, he st- uh, he hasn't fully left Russia yet, uh, but he's, like, kind of, like, figuring out his way out. But he's like, "Dude, I can't even message my brother who, to tell him, like, what, you know, what we're gonna do because they'll just see these messages. Like, the, the, they wanna see my, our messages. They're gonna see all these messages." So his brother, who is a double PhD in math, is like, "You know what? Let's make a encrypted protocol, encrypted messaging protocol so that we can communicate. Like, this is bullshit that they can just read all our goddamn messages." And this becomes the, the precursor to Telegram, which is now one of the biggest messaging apps in the world. So this guy not only invented Facebook, he then got kicked out... It's like if the Winklevosses had beat up Mark in the locker room, took Facebook from him, kicked him off Harvard campus, and then he goes and creates WhatsApp, 'cause that's basically what he did.

Sam Parr 5:36 How, how big is, is Telegram? I, I know it's huge, but I don't use it. Do you use it?

Shaan Puri 5:40 I use it. I love it. It's m- probably my favorite messaging app of all messaging apps. It's an incredible product. It's got a billion users, dude. Like [laughs]

Sam Parr 5:46 What's so good about it other than the encryption thing, which is huge?

Shaan Puri 5:49 I mean, the encryption thing is huge. Um, it's just, like, really well made. Like, the app is really fast. Works really well. It's got a ton of features like, you know, you can do a broadcast channel where it's like Twitter and you're broadcasting to a bunch of followers. You can just message each other. You can do huge groups. You can have admins. You can send, like, stickers and memes and, like, you can send a ton of different types of messages. It's a, it's a really well-made app

Sam Parr 6:09 And has a billion people using it?

Shaan Puri 6:11 Yeah, about a billion users now. Last I think I heard was like 800 million, but like I think recently he said something like, "We have about a billion users." Never runs ads. He's refused to sell any equity in the company. He took about a billion dollars of debt, but he never sells any equity. It's just him and his brother own the whole thing. He's got 30 full-time employees. So he's got 30 employees running a service that a billion people use all around the world, and every government attacks them and tries to like break their encryption or ban them because no government wants this. No bloody government wants the citizens to be able to speak freely. He is the sole director, equity holder, and he's the sole product manager. He works directly with every engineer and designer himself. He has no HR. He only recruits people through something called contests.com, which is a contest platform where he puts up engineering challenges, and the people who are the best at cracking his engineering challenges get hired. They get an offer to come work at Telegram.

Sam Parr 7:01 Is it a Russian company?

Shaan Puri 7:02 No. He's like, "It's crazy. Everyone calls us a Russian company. We have no office in Russia, we have no employees in Russia, we have no servers in Russia." But the media just will be like, "Oh, Russian founder," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He's like, "Dude, I've..." He basically for a while, he just moved around the world every three months living in different Airbnbs. Um, and then finally he now settled in Dubai. This guy's worth about $15 billion.

Sam Parr 7:24 Oh my God.

Shaan Puri 7:24 So he's the richest expat in Dubai. He's one of the, you know, top 150 richest men in the world. And then you go look at his Instagram. You're gonna love this dude. The guy's ripped. He's absolutely ripped. And every photo, there's never another human being in any photo with him. Every photo is him alone with his shirt off doing something manly as hell. [laughs] And it's hilarious. It l- all the photos look AI-generated. It's like if I said, "Hey, generate a, um, rich billionaire living in Dubai who, uh, is on the Brian Johnson protocol [laughs] and wants to become Instagram famous," this is what DALL-E would give me.

Sam Parr 8:03 He's literally on a pirate ship on some of these photos.

Shaan Puri 8:06 [laughs] Yeah, I have a bunch. Um, another quote I love from him. So yeah, he says, uh, they're like, "You know, you're a billionaire, billionaire, billionaire." He's like, "Dude, this billionaire thing's like a little overplayed." He's like, he's like, "Yes, it's true. I've had a few hundred million dollars of both, uh, dollars and Bitcoin in a bank account for 10 years and I've never touched it." He goes, "Yeah, that's true," but he's like, "But I don't own any jets or yachts or mega mansions. Like, I don't do any of that shit. I would rather make decisions that would influence how a billion people are gonna communicate rather than sitting there choosing the color of the seats in my house that only me and my relatives are ever gonna see."

Sam Parr 8:41 That's amazing.

Shaan Puri 8:42 I love it. [laughs]

Sam Parr 8:42 I read an, I read another interview with him where he goes, "I went to San Francisco to see if I wanted to open an office there, and I met with Jack Dorsey and it was great. And I went to the Twitter office," which the Twitter office is in the epicenter of kind of bad stuff or, uh, crime is happening in San Francisco. I used to live down the block from it. And he said, "After the meeting, I was walking around and three guys tried to mug me." And the interviewer was like, "Well, how'd it go?" He goes, "Blood was spilled."

Shaan Puri 9:06 [laughs]

Sam Parr 9:06 But he doesn't, that, that... He doesn't say like whose blood. He just said there, there was blood. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 9:11 Well, he, he, he was like, "Yeah, three, three guys tried to steal my phone. I fought off the robbers." And then he posted it on Twitter. He's like, "I..." He's like, "My goal was I was trying to tweet out, 'I just hung out with Jack Dorsey,'" 'cause Jack Dorsey made Twitter. He's like, "That's what I was trying to do on my phone when they did this." So he posts a pic- a picture of his bloody knuckles reaching for a book, which is just a hilarious thing. He goes... And this is the tweet. He goes, "Just got into a fight with guys who tried to grab my phone near Mission 980. Scary neighborhood?" Not for a Russian. First time." [laughs]

Sam Parr 9:42 [laughs] Yeah, this guy's pretty badass. And, uh-

Shaan Puri 9:45 I like the idea that San Francisco is like the nice quaint neighborhood in Russia. [laughs] It's the nice clean s- family, family area of Russia. [laughs]

Sam Parr 9:54 Yeah, I read that and it, it was so funny. Yeah, he, he's clearly, uh, manicuring his social presence, but I think I believe it.

Shaan Puri 10:02 Yeah. The guy's amazing, and he just flexes on everybody. His Instagram is just a pure flex.

Sam Parr 10:07 Yeah. I mean, he's awesome. This guy's a good one.

Shaan Puri 10:08 Hey, real quick, you know, one of the cool parts about what we're doing is that people have reached out and told me that they've built actual million-dollar businesses, made their first million off an idea they heard on the show. That is crazy. That's wild. That's why we wanna do the show, and we wanna see more of that. One of the questions we get asked over and over again is, is there some kind of idea database or spreadsheet where we list out all the different business ideas that we've talked about? Well, the answer is finally yes. The fine folks at HubSpot have dug through the archive and pulled out 50-plus business ideas and put them into a business idea database. It's totally free. You can click the link in the description below and get the database for you. All right, now back to the show.

Sam Parr 10:44 How does, uh, Telegram make money, or do they?

Shaan Puri 10:47 They, uh, they basically don't make money. They've made... I, I read somewhere... I don't know if this is 100% true. I was trying to find it, but like, um, two things. One, they take donations, and so I read something that they've had over a billion dollars in donations from users, and that's been part of what keeps it going. And like, you know, it's 30 people, and then it's the, the, the server costs, right? So it's like, you know, there, there's burn, but it's not like he's running a 3,000-person or 30,000-person company. Um, in addition to that, he raised a billion dollar b- uh, debt bond, uh, which is basically like a pre-IPO coupon. So he was basically like, "We're gonna make money someday, and we need money now to get there." He had offers to sell 10% at a $30 billion valuation.

Sam Parr 11:28 Oh my God.

Shaan Puri 11:28 He turned it down, so he turned down 3 billion. Then they came back and said, "We'll buy 10% at a $40 billion valuation," so $4 billion. He turned it down, and he said, "I don't wanna sell any equity. I'm scared of what an investor will do for this." He did a, uh, crypto token back when crypto was really hot, and he raised over a billion dollars for, um, their crypto coin. But then the SEC came after him and was like, "This was basically like you were selling sh- equity. Like you called it a token-

Sam Parr 11:53 Yeah

Shaan Puri 11:53 ... and as a utility, but like this is equity." So he had to return a bunch of money, and that, that, that token project never got off the ground 'cause he had raised... And I think the minimum at the time, 'cause I was looking into investing in it, is you had to buy in chunks of mi- minimum 20 million tranches.

Sam Parr 12:07 Oh my God.

Shaan Puri 12:08 So basically people were forming syndicates, and it was like, "Oh, you wanna come in for 500K? All right, cool. We're trying to get to 20 million so we could buy some, some of the Telegram token," because you had-

Shaan Puri 12:16 An app that actually had a ton of usage. The most brilliant, uh, you know, like engineering team probably that exists on Earth, or, you know, one of the top 20 engineering teams on Earth. And, um, and now they were gonna do a token to try to make money, and, um, you know, figure out like basically you'd be able to, to use the token to, to do things inside the app. So anyways, that's kind of some of the things they've tried. But, you know, he, he has, you know, quote-unquote, some plan of how they're gonna make money that doesn't involve you selling user data.

Sam Parr 12:42 This guy's really cool. All right, that's a good one.

Shaan Puri 12:44 Yeah. Who's number four? Who do you got?

Sam Parr 12:46 All right. So my goal with this was to pick people who you have no idea who they are, and hopefully most of our audience has no idea who they are either. And so we did not talk before this, so it's just a coincidence that my guy is also Russian.

Shaan Puri 13:01 [laughs]

Sam Parr 13:02 I call him the Russian Richard Branson. His name is Oleg Tinkov. So he grew up as a, in a mining family, so very like humble beginnings. But he goes to the city because he wants to experience freedom, and he gets into cycling. For some reason he's into cycling, and he goes abroad for a bike race, and he sees someone wearing blue jeans. And this is in the '80s, in the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union's about to, uh, crumble and become Russia. And he starts bringing home these blue jeans and selling them, and he's like, "All right. It looks like people in Russia really want this like Western fashion." And so he opens up a chain of stores where he starts selling blue jeans, but then everything else: perfume, VCRs, electronics. This is right in '89, '90, where the, the Soviet Union's crashing and these people actually wanna be able to buy stuff from, from Western countries. And he kills it. And so in his early 20s, he sells that business and he makes something like $7 million. And then he does something that you'd expect him to do. He starts a ravioli business.

Shaan Puri 14:02 [laughs] Is this guy just watching commercials in the States? He's like, "Levi's, got it. Uh, okay, [laughs] next, next one, ravioli. Cool. We'll, we'll do that, too."

Sam Parr 14:10 Well, what he does is he goes to America every once in a while, and he like, he like, he says he goes every five years to learn what's popular in America, like different advertising, whatever, and he like basically brings that to Russia. Have you ever heard of the phrase, a, a ba- it's a, it's a word, baba- baba- babushka. I can't even say it right. It's means Russia... It's like a Russian grandmother. It's like when you think of like Fiddler on the Roof.

Shaan Puri 14:30 Babushka.

Sam Parr 14:31 It's like a... Babushka, yeah. Babushka. It's like a Russian grandmother with like a scarf over her head. So typically, raviolis, they have a different winer- uh, word for 'em in Russia, but the raviolis were made by that type of person, and it was like a comfort food. And so he gets the idea where he's like, "We're gonna do something sexy. We're gonna make this like really stand out." And so he buys this huge ad, and it's just a woman's bare ass, and it says something like, uh, "Raviolis not made by your grandmother." It's like a woman's bare ass with flour on it. Uh, as if I guess-

Shaan Puri 15:01 [laughs]

Sam Parr 15:02 ... this woman's ass is pounding out the flour. I don't know. Which is kinda weird when you think about it. I don't want ravioli like that. But-

Shaan Puri 15:07 Like, I don't understand, but I'm hungry. [laughs]

Sam Parr 15:10 Yeah. [laughs] But it takes off. It works. This business works. He eventually sells it for $21 million. So his next thing is that he's in, uh, California, and he actually meets with Dan Gordon from Gordon Biersch. That's interesting to you and I, because Gordon Biersch was a microbrewery, uh, outside of San Francisco. One of the co-founders, or at the time CEOs, was actually, uh, Lorenzo Fertitta from UFC. And he starts seeing this trend in the '90s where these microbreweries are quite popular. And so he opens up a microbrewery in Russia, and he calls it Tinkoff breweries, and it, it's kinda like Sam Adams beer, where at the time beer in Russia was like not that good tasting. And he goes, "We're gonna actually gonna charge four or five times the price of normal beer, and we're gonna make this thing, uh, very Americanized." And he says, like he's got this fa- famous phrase where he says, "Beer and freedom go great together." And he's all into like freedom and like not in line with what Russia wants him to do. And so he starts this brewery. It takes off. So they start it in 1997, but by 2003 it's doing 35 million in sales. Two years later, 2005, it's doing $200 million in sales, and that year he sells it for $200 million, which is a huge sum. He owns most of the company. So he's just sold, sells his company. He's immediately in Nectar, Necker Island with Richard Branson, and Oleg is talking to Richard. He goes, "Richard, I was in America recently. I moved there for just like a few months, and I was able to get a credit card. It was so amazing how easy I got a credit card. We need this in Russia." And Richard's like, "You should start it." And so that's exactly what he does. Like six months after selling his beer company, he starts this credit card company. It's called, uh, Tinkoff Bank, I guess is how it translate, but it... Or Bank of Tinkov. And he for some reason names everything after himself, because he's great at marketing and his name is popular. And so he starts this, uh, bank with $70 million of his own money, and he actually buys a bank. And the reason why this guy is interesting is because, or this bank is interesting, is we know what Mercury is. We know what a bunch of these neobanks are. He beat all of 'em. He started this in 2005. And it gets huge, to the point where Goldman invest into it. Uh, he invests $70 million of his own money. A bunch of people invest in it, and it becomes massive. And so the business takes off. It's up until recently, 2021, it was the second largest issuer of credit cards in Russia. It was the largest digital bank in the world, and the idea being like we don't need branches, we don't need any of that. It's just all gonna be online, and we'll send you your card. And so it goes public, and his stake in it is worth $10 billion. And here's where the story gets kind of crazy. Just like Pavel, Russia does not like Oleg. He talks a ton of shit. Uh, basically at one point when they, uh, i- invade the Ukraine, he's very anti the war. He says, he just says, "Putin, you're full of shit. All these oligarchs in Russia, you're all full of shit." He tweets this out. He goes, "The generals, they wake up with a hangover and realize they have a shitty army. How can the army be any good when our, when the rest of our country is also shit?" Like, he says these things on-

Shaan Puri 18:11 [laughs]

Sam Parr 18:12 He, he tweets this out. He says all this crazy stuff. And eventually they de-list Tinkoff Bank, so it's no longer public, and he loses most all of his money. And so at this point he's worth, I think he s- he was able to like force sell some of his shares and he walked away with like $200 million. And He's, now he has leukemia and he's dying. He's gonna die soon. And he basically is still talking mad shit. He says like, "They wanted to punish me for this. And to that I say fuck off. I wanna die with good karma and for people to remember me for being strong and fair." And so he's paid the price for being outspoken, and he's still being outspoken. And he's been completely screwed, but he's doing a good job of kinda still sticking it to the man. The other thing that he's done, he's always done, he's done really well at challenging the status quo. The reason I have found this guy is he owned a very successful cycling team. Cycling's not a very popular sport. I'm one of the few guys that watches it. But he did a great job of like getting into the cycling game and he like criticized the Tour de France for tons of stuff. They eventually changed tons of rules. And finally, he's a shithead in the best possible way. So there's this famous story where for his microbreweries, he wanted to name the street that the brewery was on Tinkoff. He wanted it to, to have the same name of his restaurant. And so what he did was he got a, basically a version of an encyclopedia, and he made a fake encyclopedia that said, years ago in the 1700s, there was a brewery on this street named Tinkoff. And so we need to do it justice by naming the street at it, after it, because this is a historical thing. And so they named the street after it. Years later, he admits he made the p-

Shaan Puri 19:51 [laughs]

Sam Parr 19:52 He, he made one page in an encyclopedia and just put it in there. And they totally went for it. And so he's done tons of things like this, and he's gonna die soon. They, he says that he's, he's, he basically has said he's gonna die soon, and he's donated what's left of his big fortune, it's now a small fortune, to leukemia. Uh, and so he's young, and if you look him up, he, uh, he's famous for dyeing his hair. He kinda, he looks like Richard Branson, actually.

Shaan Puri 20:17 Yeah.

Sam Parr 20:17 And so he's very R- Richard Branson-esque. He dyes his hair purple because that's the color for his cycling team. He's pretty eccentric, very unique guy. Uh, he also wrote a book, but the book's hard to read because it's, uh, it was translated, but he's a columnist and he, and he writes a lot, so you can read a lot of his work. Speaking of which, this is my cue for you.

Shaan Puri 20:38 [laughs] You know, books are cool, but books are a little, little heavy for me. If any of these people wanted to, to put their thoughts out there, they would have great newsletters. And if they wanted a great newsletter, they would use a great newsletter platform like Beehiiv. And that is our thrill of the show this week, the most interesting men in the world, if they were ever gonna write a newsletter, they would write it on Beehiiv. Back to the show. [laughs]

Sam Parr 21:01 Um, anyway, so what do you think of Oleg? He's an interesting guy. You've never heard of him I think, right?

Shaan Puri 21:04 Dude, fascinating. Never heard of him. Well done. You, you got me with that one. I like that. Um, yeah, this is, this is super cool. And I also like just the idea, the, the move of I'm just gonna export Western culture. I feel like this is a common blueprint for coming up with, you know, really, uh, really big businesses, which is you go to Japan, you observe Japanese culture, you find the most interesting bits of it, and then you export that culture to a different country that doesn't quite yet have it, but you b- But you know, most humans are pretty similar. And, um, and you can sort of create the demand, especially when some cultures just tend to be ne- net exporters. Like I think the US is a net exporter in, you know, movies and entertainment and, you know, has certain strong values like freedom and whatever else. So you can like use those in bringing that to a place that's sort of, uh, you know, deficient in those areas. Um, and so I think that's a, that's just a cool model is exporting culture from one, one place to another.

Sam Parr 21:59 And that's what he did. He went and studied business for some classes at Berkeley, and he would just see what's going on in San Francisco, in the Bay Area, what's interesting, what's neat, and he was inspired by that. And he said, "Every five years I go to America to learn these things, and I do wanna bring them back."

Shaan Puri 22:15 Right.

Sam Parr 22:15 But huge coincidence that we both chose Russian, Russian guys, Russian expats sorta. Uh, I guess that kinda tells our stance on sticking it to the man, sticking it to Putin.

Shaan Puri 22:24 [laughs] All right. My next, uh, I think I'm gonna do a back-to-back here 'cause I have, uh, one extra one to do. So number three for me, I call him the walking middle finger. Number three is Sean Parker. And Sean Parker is, um, a fascinating guy. So a lot of people know him because in The Social Network movie, Justin Timberlake is supposed to be Sean Parker, and he's this like super charismatic, kinda

Shaan Puri 22:48 know-it-all guy that, um, you know, tells them to, "Hey, drop, drop the the in the Facebook. Just make it just Facebook. It's cleaner, right?"

Sam Parr 22:56 Do you think that's real?

Shaan Puri 22:57 Yeah, so that is real. Um, but a lot of that role is not how Sean Parker actually is. Like he, he's like, "I'm a..." He- They were like, "What do you think the movie got right?" He's like, "Well, they got some, some of the stuff right." But m- the most of the character he's like, "I'm not like Justin Timberlake." He's like, "I'm not cool and smooth." He's like, "I'm weird and insecure. I'm..." He's like, "I'm a lot more eccentric." Like they made him seem like cool and normal. "I'm not cool and normal." [laughs] He's like, "I might be cool, but I'm, I'm definitely not normal." And I wanna just tell you a little bit about this guy. So one of the commonalities I had when I was searching for, for people like this, and you'll see the next guy I have has the same story, is that when he was in his teens, hack- was a hacker. Hacked into something and got arrested. So I don't know if you know this, but basically when he was a kid, he was 16 years old, and he basically got tracked down by the FBI because he hacked into like a Fortune 500 company's network. And they were like, "Hey," he, he got offered, he eventually got offered a job with, like, I think the CIA. He turned it down. He was like, "No, no, no. I'm like, you know, I'm on the rebel side. You guys are the, are the authority. I'm, I'm rebel." And so he creates, of course, Napster. And Napster is just like one of the coolest slash like biggest middle finger companies that I, I think has ever existed. Um, you know, obviously n- if, people today prob- there's probably some, a generation of people today who don't even know what Napster is. But Napster was like the first place before Spotify, the fir- first place where you could just go and you could just like get access to all of the world's music, and then movies and other things too, but like really music was the main thing. And it was illegal. [laughs] You could upload the songs you had. Other people could download those songs. And it was music file sharing. And it got mega, mega popular, and then it got sued out of existence

Sam Parr 24:38 And to, like, let the young people know, this was game-changing. I think you and I must have been in grade school, like 12 and 11 and 14 when this came out. This was such a big deal. It got to the point where artists would even release fake music that were auto... W- remember that when they were scrambled, after 10 seconds they'd get scrambled 'cause they want the fake song to go viral?

Shaan Puri 24:58 Yep. Yep, exactly. Or, like, uh, comedians. I remember a friend, who it was, it was like Dane Cook.

Sam Parr 25:03 Yeah, Dane Cook.

Shaan Puri 25:04 Basically be like, "Chris Rock comedy special featuring Dane Cook." And, like, people just read Chris Rock comedy special, and the first three minutes were Chris Rock doing comedy, then it's like, "And now Dane Cook." And Dane Cook got mega, mega popular by g- basically it's a growth hack, a, a genius growth hack, which is to say, oh, how do I basically, like, hijack the SEO, the search intent of Chris Rock in order to distribute my own, you know, comedy virus to, to everybody else? So Napster was super cool. It gets sued out of existence. But the thing I like about Sean Parker is that, um, there's this phrase that, uh, Kevin VanTrump said once, and, and we're gonna have him on the pod. Uh, he's, he's the guy who, um, f- what's his newsletter called? The Farmer Newsletter? But I forgot what it's called. But he basically writes the biggest newsletter for farmers in the, in the country, and he has FarmCon and a bunch of different things. But he said something to us once. He goes, "You know, the, the train always comes back a second time." And we're like, "What do you mean?" He's like, "For all of the best possible deals, investments, trends, opportunities, you overlook it the first time, very common, and you think you totally missed it. Oh, I missed the boat." He's like, "But I..." He's like, "I just see it over and over again. The train comes back around. You know, maybe, um, y- you know, you, you didn't invest in Facebook, but then the stock tanks for a couple months. That's your time to get back on." He's like, "It's not always gonna be the same price as it was the first time. But for the truly great things, the train has such a long runway, it's so much upside, that even if you just get on the second time, you still get filthy rich." And he's like, "The same thing happened with Bitcoin. The people who just kicked themselves for not buying Bitcoin the first time they heard it at $150, instead of just buying it at 500, they just kept telling the story about how they missed it at 150, and then they missed it at 600, 700, 800, 1,000, and now it's at 60,000. They're still missing it." He's like, "But the smart people are like, well, the train came back around. Let me hop, let me hop on. I do... I now recognize the value in this thing." And I feel like Sean Parker did that with his career. So for a period of time, Sean Parker was seen as this kinda like bad boy, but, like, kind of untouchable. Like, you couldn't invest in Sean Parker. He's too rebellious. He's getting sued out of existence. The big companies hate him. The government's after him. He was like an untouchable. And then later it was like, oh, Sean Parker, this guy was the... You know, he, he led the round into Facebook, and he, um, was a early huge investor in Spotify, and he was, did, did this and that, and he became the guy who could do no wrong. But those weren't his companies. But he recognized that those companies were winners, and actually made his fortune not on the thing he did, Napster, but in recognizing the brilliance of the next Sean Parker. And that was, you know, Daniel Ek for Spotify, or it was-

Sam Parr 27:41 Yeah, when he was like-

Shaan Puri 27:42 ... Mark Zuckerberg for Facebook

Sam Parr 27:42 ... he, he did this when he was like, he was the elder at 25.

Shaan Puri 27:46 Yeah, yeah [laughs] and e- and every hacker looked up to him 'cause he's, this guy's an icon. And he used the reputation, but not necessarily the money, to make all his money. Usually, you use your money to make money. He used his reputation to make money. So couple of things that this guy did that was, that's pretty fascinating. So first, I'm gonna give you some lifestyle things, and then I'm gonna give you the career story. So crazy lifestyle things. So I met somebody who went to his wedding. Have you ever heard about his wedding?

Sam Parr 28:07 Yeah, man. He got a ton of shit for it in, like, the heyday of San, uh, Silicon Valley.

Shaan Puri 28:11 So this guy basically spent, uh, somewhere between $5 and $10 million on his wedding, and he was like [laughs] ... And so the interesting thing here is just, like, weird people are not just, like, n- they're not just, like, crazy in their business and super chill in their normal life. Most of them. All... If you're, if you're wired a certain way, you just apply that to everything that comes your way. So for example, when it came to time to get married, he's like, "All right. The budget, no budget. Let's just do the sickest thing we can imagine." So they're like, "We're gonna go to a forest in the Big Sur, and it's not just gonna be a wedding, it's gonna be, like, a, like an immersive theater experience." Like, I know people who were there, and they're like, "It was crazy. You walk in, and, like, you could see the stars above you, but it was daytime." It's like, how the hell are there stars? And, like, there was rabbits running around, like wild rabbits that were just, like, you know, there 'cause we're in the forest. And they're like, but it was all planned. They had the, the costume designer from Lord of the Rings made everybody's outfits. Um, you know, he ended up paying, like, $2 or $3 million-

Sam Parr 29:04 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 29:04 ... in fines because you're just, you're not allowed to just use, like, the most beautiful public, like, forest for your own wedding. But he's like, "Fuck it. I'm doing it." Um, to propose, he-

Sam Parr 29:13 Uh, Sean, are you sure? [laughs]

Shaan Puri 29:15 [laughs] They're like, "Uh, is there a permit?" And he's like, [laughs] "Put on your f- put on your costume and get in here." Um, to propose, he baked his wedding ring into an onion, [laughs] gave it to his wife. She's like, "What? I don't know what this is."

Sam Parr 29:29 Dude, it's like being-

Shaan Puri 29:29 His couch-

Sam Parr 29:30 It's like being mad at a UFC fighter for getting, like, drunk in a fight in the streets. Like, yeah-

Shaan Puri 29:34 Right

Sam Parr 29:34 ... he's an animal. What do you expect? [laughs] Like...

Shaan Puri 29:37 Right. The guy who gets caged up in his underwear and fights another man to the death, like, he, he wasn't super chill outside the octagon?

Sam Parr 29:45 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 29:45 Nah, that's weird. Um, he bought this $55 million house in LA from Ellen DeGeneres, and then, like, tricked it out. Um, and he's just got... Like, his houses are crazy. Like, it's worth a 30-minute dive just to go look at his houses. But even in his other stuff, like, you know, rich people do philanthropy, but, like, how you do it is also interesting. So for him, he's like, "I wanna bet on..." He's like, "I'm gonna take a venture capital approach to philanthropy." So he's like, "I'm not just gonna donate to the Red Cross or whatever." He's like, "I'm gonna find the people that are trying to cure cancer in the most interesting ways, and then nobody will fund them because it's too crazy. It's too unproven. They have to, like... They'd have to convince the whole world that their crazy approach is gonna work." He's like, "But that's what..." That's, like, in the startup world, that's exactly what happens. Some crazy kid has a crazy approach that, like, you know, most likely will not work, but if it does, it's gonna change the game, and that's what VCs do. They bet on that. He's like, "I'm gonna do that in, uh, in, you know, for curing cancer." And so he's poured in tons and tons of money into unorthodox cancer treatments.

Sam Parr 30:42 How wealthy is he?

Shaan Puri 30:43 He's very wealthy. So when he identified Facebook as, like, a thing, and he was like, um, "You know what? I wanna, you know, invest in this, be a part of this," Mark really liked him. He's the one who connected Mark to Peter Thiel to make... to get the investment, um, the first 500K investment. He's the one who convinced them, I think, to move to Palo Alto and leave Boston, which then let them, you know, recruit the best talent, which let them, you know, succeed when other social networks like Friendster and Myspace were failing. Um, so Sean ended up owning 4% of Facebook, which is just... Like, became worth, like, I don't know, $4 or $5 billion, uh, just on his Facebook stock. Then there's an interesting story of how he invested in Spotify. Have you ever read this email that Sean Parker sent to the Spotify founder?

Sam Parr 31:30 Wasn't it something like, "This is Napster, but done legally"?

Shaan Puri 31:34 Exactly. So he just cold emails them in 2009. Spotify launched in tr- like, kinda like '06, '07 range. Spotify launched in Europe. So, so Daniel, I think, lived in Sweden, and then on top of that, uh, you know, they only launched in Europe because the rules allowed them to do it in Europe, but he, he knew he had to build up enough critical mass before entering the United States market. It's like one of the, the weird reasons that Spotify worked and all the other music sharing services never worked, 'cause they all tried to start in the U- United States, and all of the music labels were so ready to just sue the shit out of everybody from Napster that, like, you couldn't have done that. That was not... Y- y- y- it w- they would come after you when you were just a, a baby, an infant. So he writes them this email, and it's just subject line, "Thoughts." And he's like, "D- Daniel and Shak," he goes, "I've been playing around with Spotify. You've built an amazing experience. As you saw, Zuck really likes it too. I've been trying to get him to understand your model, and I think he just needed to try it to see it for himself." Then he talks a little about Facebook, and he's like, "You know, we should partner because we can integrate, like, you know, Spotify's music stuff with Facebook's social graph," all that. But then he's, he just compliments. He's like, "Your, your design is clean, elegant, tight, and fast. It's clearly lacking some important features, like the social stuff, but I think you've done a great job sequencing. You've nailed the core experience," blah, blah, blah. "Ever since Napster, I've dreamt of building a product similar to Spotify. I might have tried had I not been, quote, 'sidetracked' with Facebook, Founders Fund," and [laughs] like, you know, like, this dope shit that I've been doing. And he's like, "To be fair, um, I also was, like, you know, pretty scarred from the record labels." Um, he's like... A- and he's like, you know, "So I've adopted a wat- watch-and-wait thing to try to, A, when the labels would come to their senses and realize that they need something to distribute music, and two, until a product that would come in that would fix all the things we got wrong with Napster." And he's like, "You have done that." And then he just goes on and he articulates from a product point of view what they have done right and what they need to change, and he's like, "I can help you do this shit." And he ends up leading a $15 million investment into Spotify.

Sam Parr 33:29 Wow.

Shaan Puri 33:29 Um, which is, like, you know, a, a- an amazing investment. I wanna read you one other Sean Parker story. So the guy's pretty magnetic, and actually, this story comes from you. A long time ago, you posted on The Hustle a blog post about the, the, this famous story of the painter who took stock in Facebook. Uh, I guess he was, like, supposed to get paid 60 grand, and instead of taking the 60 grand for the painting he did on Facebook's office wall, he took stock, and the stock ended up becoming worth $200 million.

Sam Parr 33:56 I almost, uh, chose him for this segment, uh, because he... David Choe, I think. He's a crazy man.

Shaan Puri 34:01 He's a crazy man, and he did this interview on Howard Stern. And what... That's cool about it... So I knew the story. I think everybody kinda knows the story of the painter. What I didn't know is why he took the stock, and the answer to why he took the stock is that motherfucker Sean Parker. [laughs] He's like, that guy... He... And so he's like, "Dude," uh, th- and so Howard Stern's like, "Why did you pick the stock? Like, you know, were they offering not a lot of money?" And he's like, "No, they were r- I told them the price is 60,000. They said yes." He's like, "That's a lot of money." He's like, "Yeah, I just, I decided that's what it was gonna be worth." And I think he was, like, coming out of jail or something at the time. And Sean Parker loved this artist and was like, "No, no, no, this artist has to be the guy." And he had tried to get him to do something for Plaxo, his other company, but they didn't have any money. He's like, finally he hit him up. He's like, "Yo, we finally have money. I'm at this new thing called Facebook. Uh, we've... I think we have enough money. Come on. I want y- only you can do this painting." So he comes over and he's like, "Cool, it'll be 60 grand." "You want me to paint this whole building?" "It'll be 60 grand."

Sam Parr 34:52 Uh, by the way, if you, if y- I've been to the Facebook office and they've redone it, but, like, parts of the ceiling, they used the same drywall, so you could actually still see the painting.

Shaan Puri 35:01 Right. And so Howard Stern's like, "What happened? Like, they, they didn't have the cash?" He's like, "No, no, they had the cash." He's like, "So why'd you take the stock? Did you re- did you believe in this? You, you, are you, like, an investor? Did you believe in this?" He's like, [laughs] "Dude, I never invested in anything in my life." He's like, "They f-" He's like, "I asked Sean. I was like, 'What's this company?'" He starts describing, uh, you know, what Facebook is, a social network for college kids. And I was like, "Dude, that's lame as shit." [laughs] And he's like, he's like, "I wasn't on Friendster. I wasn't on Myspace. I hate that shit." He goes, um, "And this is for college students? Oh, even worse. I hate education. I hate college. I never went."

Sam Parr 35:33 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 35:33 "I don't even like college students." [laughs] And he's like... "So you hate, you know, social networking. You hate college." He's like, "Yeah, I dropped out of school. I hate everything about school." And he's like, "And it's only starting on Ha- Harvard and Stanford campus? Oh, man, like, I hate Harvard. I hate Stanford. I'm, like, a anti, anti- all, all those things that they stand for." He's like, "So why'd you do it?" He's like, "'Cause every time I'd hang out with Sean Parker, he would just tell me, like, 'Yo, I'm gonna make some shit happen.'" He's like, "Before he went and met with Peter Thiel," he says, " 'Oh, I gotta go. I gotta raise money for Facebook.' " And he goes, " 'I'ma bend these fuckers' minds.'" He's like, "And then he came back."

Sam Parr 36:04 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 36:04 And he's like, and he's like, "Yeah, the rich..." He's like, "Those fuckers ended up being, like, the richest men in America, like, you know, like, uh, Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel." And he's like, "Dude, this little nerd, this scrawny nerd, he's got a lot of swag and confidence." And he's like, "He's just..." And he came back and he had raised the money from them. And he's like, "Okay, interesting." And he's like, "So, uh..." He's like, "You want the cash or you want stock?" And he's like, "You're, you're in this?" He's like, "Yeah." He's like, "All right." Uh, he's like, "I sized him up and I'm like, 'This guy's going somewhere.'" He's like, "So that, that's why I took the stock."

Sam Parr 36:34 That's awesome. That is so awesome. And it ended up being worth hundreds of millions of dollars. I don't know what he sold and when he sold it, but that's insane.

Shaan Puri 36:43 And that's what, you know... These people are... They have a sort of magnetic- A magnetic trait to them, uh, that I think is, is pretty common. Um, and that was a good example of it.

Sam Parr 36:51 Were you gonna talk about his career, or is that the career part? 'Cause-

Shaan Puri 36:55 That's mostly the career part right now. Career-

Sam Parr 36:56 Well, you know that he's done a few other things that are-

Shaan Puri 36:57 He had a bunch of things that failed. So he had Plaxo, he had Air- Airtime, he had, uh, you know, a bunch of things like that. Then he was a managing partner at Founders Fund. That's all I know. What, what else is there?

Sam Parr 37:06 Have you heard of opportunity zones for real estate?

Shaan Puri 37:09 Mm-hmm.

Sam Parr 37:10 You know, I believe he invented that. So basically-

Shaan Puri 37:13 Really?

Sam Parr 37:13 I'm, I, I, I read this a long time ago. I'm going off the cuff. But basically, opportunity zones, if I remember correctly, they're zones designated by the government that show these places are impoverished or they're like warehouse spaces and we want to incentivize investors to open up, I believe, residential, uh, build, build stuff there. And I think it was his idea, and he l- And he lobbied the, he lobbied the government, and he turned it into a reality.

Shaan Puri 37:39 Opportunity zones are the brainchild of Sean Parker. He, um, in, in the early 2000s, he was Facebook's first president, and he wanted to minimize his capital gains on his tech stock fortune. So he lobbied the government to create this idea of opportunity zones [laughs] so that investors would be incentivized to invest in areas that, you know, were, were not receiving enough investment. And, uh, and he did it. That's pretty, that's pretty fascinating.

Sam Parr 38:01 Yeah, he convinced the, the Obama administration, I think it was, to make this a reality, and now it's a thing where billions and billions and billions of dollars go to this, and it was his idea. And he didn't just come up with the idea, he, he lobbied the government and he changed the law, uh, which is really fascinating that he did that. So he's done a bunch of interesting stuff. And I think, in fact, I think he also played a hand in Obama getting elected a little bit or something like that. I mean, he's a political guy. Uh-

Shaan Puri 38:26 Right

Sam Parr 38:26 ... so he's, he's done a bunch of interesting stuff.

Shaan Puri 38:28 All right, let me do number two, then you do number one.

Sam Parr 38:30 All right.

Shaan Puri 38:30 So, um, number two is Tom Anderson, AKA Tom from MySpace, and I call him the guy who won the game and simply stopped playing, which is really critical. Almost all these guys, like you talked

Shaan Puri 38:46 about Oleg, it's like he did this, and then he went bigger, and then he went bigger, and I think that's a common thing. But Tom had one thing those guys will never have. He had enough, and he was able to walk away, and so Tom's story's pretty wild. I didn't, I didn't know the backstory. So s- also, age 14, hacks Chase Bank.

Sam Parr 39:05 That's awesome.

Shaan Puri 39:05 Gets root access into Chase Bank, all of the names, the bank accounts, the, the, um, the, the, the amounts in them. He could have wired as much money as he wanted out of it. He did not. Uh, he knew their mortgages. He knew everything. And he was basically the leader of a hacking crew, and his nickname was Lord Flathead. And so Lord Flathead gets root access, and he leaves a message in, in Chase Bank, and he says, um, "Basically you need to let me keep my access [laughs] , um, or I will, you know, expose all this information. I will leak all this blah, blah, blah. Like, you need to give me, give me full access, even, even, m- uh, you know, just, uh, acknowledge that I won and give me access to this thing." And he starts bragging about it, so he tells 40 of his friends. He shows them exactly how he did it, how he hacked Chase Bank at age 14. And this is why the FBI conducted one of the biggest raids they've ever done, a simultaneous raid of 40 different people all happening at 7:00 PM all in one area. 'Cause they didn't know who was the, the, kind of the r- the mastermind behind it, but they knew who all had, you know, had seen it or had access to it or was talking about it. And so they raid everybody at 7:00 PM. They steal his computer. They take all his stuff, but they leave him alone 'cause they're like, "The guy's 14. What are we gonna do? We can't charge him." And so he gets off, and he agrees, "Okay, I'm not gonna hack stuff anymore." That's his origin story. So now he ends up creating MySpace. MySpace obviously was one of the biggest social networks in the world, and, uh, MySpace was dope for a bunch of reasons that don't even exist anymore. So, you know, if the... There's n- He's on our top five, but he was in everybody's top eight on MySpace, which was like, you know, my top eight friends, and he was the first friend to everybody on MySpace. He has the iconic picture of him turning away from a whiteboard wearing his white shirt. Everybody knows that photo, everybody who's our age at least that grew up on MySpace. And MySpace, like, was kind of a culture shifter. Um, like, something that Facebook never really actually captured was that MySpace actually was cool for bands and getting, you know, discovery for music and talent and art. And, um, and MySpace was kind of amazing, and he sells MySpace for $580 million, and he peaces out. He bounces. He, he, he has a quote where he's like, "Yeah, before the acquisition, I could do whatever I wanted. It was pretty fun." He's like, "Now I have..." It takes all this time to get anybody to agree on things 'cause they sold to News Corp, I think. And he says, um, you know, "There's, like, a budget review and a process for everything. It's a pain, so I'm out." So he, he peaces out, and he's, I think, 38 years old or something when this happens, and he's pretty young. And instead of doing what almost every other business guy does, which is like, "Cool, and now I shall, you know, change cancer, free speech. I'll take rockets to Mars," Tom's like, "Nah, I'm gonna travel the world and, uh, and just take a bunch of pictures." [laughs] He's like, "I'm just gonna go have fun." So I'm gonna read you what I admire about this guy. A, his Twitter bio is not, it doesn't say, "I'm Tom. I invented MySpace. I exited to News Corp for $580 million. Currently a VC and, you know, professional dad, uh, you know, husband of two, uh, you know, [laughs] husband of one, father of two." You know, he doesn't do all that shit, the virtue signaling. He just says, "Enjoying the good life. My new hobbies are surfing, architecture, photography, and golf." And what he does is, you know, basically he's like, "I'm not gonna waste my time just debating politics or, like, trying to be the next big, you know, venture capitalist or whatever." He's like, "I'm too biddy- busy. Like, you know, my eyes are too busy blinded by the, by the reflection from the Maldive Sea. I can't, I can't be bothered with all that bullshit. I'm just gonna go travel the world, do awesome things, and take awesome pictures." And so he becomes, if you go to his Instagram, he becomes, like, a world famous photographer.

Sam Parr 42:41 Dude, he has se- almost 700,000 followers.

Shaan Puri 42:44 And he takes beautiful pictures. Like, his f- his Instagram is amazing, and it's just pictures from his life traveling the world. And he, even he's surprised. He's like, "I, I didn't have a big background in this." He's like, "But I took a few photos while I was traveling," and he's like, "I couldn't believe what was coming out of the camera." He's like, "I couldn't believe that this was coming out of my camera." So he's like, "You know, I decided I, I'm gonna post this stuff." And so, you know, he starts posting. It gets popular. So his second act was, was, was as this. The reason I put him on this list is because I was on AirChat the other night and somebody shared a story about him. They go, "You know the b-" They go, "Tom is a hero of mine. Of all the tech heroes, he's one of the biggest 'cause he was able to win the game and then bounce." And they go, "Not only did he win the tech game, but he won the photography game, and then he bounced from that too." 'Cause so if you go to his Instagram, his last photo that he posted was like 300 weeks ago.

Sam Parr 43:31 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 43:31 So you go like, "What happened? Where'd he go? Why did he stop?" And why did he stop was 'cause Tom has the ability to have enough. And what happened was this guy goes, "I, I ran into Tom, and I was like, 'Tom, why aren't you posting pictures anymore?'" He goes, "Oh dude, I was traveling one time. I was in, uh, wherever, Thailand, and I was..." Um, he's like, "I, I keep all my camera stuff in my locker, and my locker got jacked" And he's like, "Somebody stole all my cameras." So I was like, "All right."

Sam Parr 43:53 That hobby's done.

Shaan Puri 43:54 Moving on. [laughs] Can you imagine, like, not only winning the business game, then you win the social media game and you're super popular and e- everything you post you get the dopamine rush of hundreds of thousands of likes and comments saying how beautiful it is, how they're so jealous of your life, and then someone steals your camera? And of course you could afford another one, but you're like, "Eh, maybe it's a sign. Time for the next adventure." And he just moved on to the next adventure.

Sam Parr 44:18 So what's he doing now?

Shaan Puri 44:19 So, uh, the last thing I could find, 'cause I was like, I needed to know this answer, and I went into, um-

Sam Parr 44:24 By the way, he does reply to some tweets. I did, I did remember that he replied to one of mine, and if you go to his replies... Or maybe he didn't, but I, I somehow he came up on my feed.

Shaan Puri 44:32 He, he did reply recently, and it was, like, the last time somebody had heard from him, and he just replied, like, with emojis, um, to somebody and people were like, "Oh, Tom, he's back." And somebody on Reddit was like, "I bumped into him in Hawaii." He's like, "And I basically got the sense that this guy is literally just, like, swimming, taking pictures, do-" Like, kind of like, um, you know, he's just, like, swimming, hanging out. Um, he's like [laughs] they're like, "I think he's just, like, you know, hooking up with, like, smoking hot, uh, women, and I think he's just having a great time and he's, like, not bothered by anything." They're like, "That's the vibe I got from him from my, uh, 30-second encounter." And that was the last information I could find about Tom. Look at this picture I just posted. Tom's on that longevity protocol. This guy's in his 50s now, and, uh, look at him. He is-

Sam Parr 45:11 He looks great

Shaan Puri 45:12 ... he's young. He looks fresh. He looks happy.

Sam Parr 45:15 He- but he looks like he's in his 30s. He looks really good.

Shaan Puri 45:17 Yeah, without, uh, you know, l- life hacking every, every... You know, bio-optimizing and taking 96 pills a day and, like, cold plunging for 10 minutes m- every morning, like, he's just like, "Cool, I'll just live a stress-free, happy life and get a lot of sun and hang out and eat good food and meet cool people."

Sam Parr 45:32 Dude, w- when I think of hackers at 14, I don't think guys who look like Sean Parker or, or Tom. So God bless these guys.

Shaan Puri 45:40 [laughs] What do you think they look like? [laughs]

Sam Parr 45:43 Hairier, rounder. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 45:46 [laughs]

Sam Parr 45:46 Like, for sure hairier and for sure rounder. These guys aren't that hairy or round. They look great. So they've won.

Shaan Puri 45:53 Yeah, that's part of why we put them on this list, 'cause they're awesome in more ways than just, uh, just their, uh, you know, the net worth.

Sam Parr 45:59 All right, I'll, I'll bring it home. Uh, like I said, I tried to pick people who you or the listeners would not have any idea who they are. There's a 5% chance that you've had a run-in with this guy, though. And I only put maybe 10%, because I think he would have ran in the circles of Michael Burch. But basically his name is, uh, Vivi Nevo. So V-I-V-I

Sam Parr 46:20 space N-E-V-O. Google this guy for me really quick. Tell me who you think he looks like. You probably don't know pop culture enough, so I'm actually gonna say it. He looks exactly like Sting.

Shaan Puri 46:30 [laughs] Okay.

Sam Parr 46:33 So-

Shaan Puri 46:33 He definitely looks like a rock and roll icon or, like, you know, what I think the guy who invented Zara should look like. [laughs]

Sam Parr 46:39 Yes, exactly. Exactly. That's a great... Which by the way, Google the guy who looks like, who Goo- who started Zara. Doesn't look like that.

Shaan Puri 46:46 Yeah, exactly.

Sam Parr 46:46 Looks like what I think a hacker looks like. Uh, [laughs] so I call this guy the Israeli Great Gatsby. And so I need to tell you this guy's story because he's incredibly mysterious. So this guy, he's famous for being an investor. He claims to be, and many people including The New York Times claim that he was the largest shareholder in Time Warner. He was a very large shareholder in Goldman Sachs, so he, like, runs in all these amazing circles. He's the godparent of some of Rupert Murdoch's kids and he's, like, incredibly well-connected. The reason I f- heard about him was, do you know how, uh, there's that famous, like, Bohemian Grove, like who's who of, of the world conference called Allen & Co.? Like, the Sun Valley Allen & Co. conference where everyone walks out in their vests. You know what I'm talking about? And they have those high-def photos.

Shaan Puri 47:34 Every photo on Google Images is him at the Allen & Co. conference.

Sam Parr 47:39 He sticks out. He's a really good-looking guy, and he does not look... He looks like a rock star, and I thought it was Sting at first, and they said his name was V- uh, Vivi Nevo, and I was like, "Who the hell is this guy?" So I started researching him. So here's his backstory. He, uh, was born in Romania, eventually moves to Is- Israel, and his parents die when he's in his 20s. And his parents were very successful. They owned a chemical company. And they leave him something like $3 million. And he was obsessed with Hollywood, and so he moves to LA and he's like, "Uh, somehow I wanna make it into the entertainment business." And so the story is, is that he got some type of low-paying, like, uh, not low-paying, but he got, he convinced some guy who he met at a gym to hire him at this man's investment bank 'cause Vivi was like, "Look, I like investing. I know a thing or two about it. I've been investing my parents' money. Hire me." And so this guy eventually goes on record. His last name's Burke, and he goes, "Somehow he j- this guy just starts showing up at my office, and he was incredibly engaging. However, he didn't do anything." And that was his whole point, is that he did nothing. He was kind of a gofer and he didn't really do anything, and all the traders and money management guys were like, "What the hell does this guy even do? He doesn't keep a schedule. He can't h- he, he's like a hummingbird. He's so ADD, he just jumps around from thing to thing." And I didn't even know what he was doing, but he just showed up at my office, until suddenly he quit showing up. And I don't see this guy for years. I went to his apartment to see if he's okay. He moved out of his apartment. I couldn't find any records for him. I just, I was looking all over the place in Yellow Pages. I couldn't find this guy. He comes back into my life like three years later, and he's totally different. He dresses fancy, he starts hanging out with celebrities, and we have no idea what, what he did in those two, three, four, five years. And so the rumors about this guy, and there's all these articles about what the hell does this guy do for a living? None of us can figure out because he basically has said that he's one of the largest shareholders of Time Warner, which was eventually sold for tens of billions of dollars. Like I said, he was one of the largest shareholders of Goldman. And he's hanging out with all of these celebrities. And so he's, like I said, he's friends with, uh, R- Rupert Murdoch. Uh, Vivi, he owns homes in New York City. He owns home in Beverly Hills. He owns these mansions in Malibu. And Lenny Kravitz eventually lives in one of his guest homes. That's how fancy it is. And a reporter goes to, like, check out his house because it's like this amazing piece of architecture, and they're like, "What do you do for a living?" And he won't tell anyone what he has done for a living. It even comes out that he, uh, is engaged to the actress from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. This woman is like one of the top five most famous women in China, and he's engaged to her. And everyone's like, "Dude, what the hell has this guy done?" Like, we have no idea what he's done for a living. And it turns out he's also one of the larger investors of Twitter, one of the larger investors in Square. And if you Google him, you'll see there's all types of photos of him with Leonardo DiCaprio, with all these like young, amazing, attractive women, even though he's like 65 now. He hangs out with all these celebrities, the who's who of everyone. And these reporters are like, "I have no idea how this guy is everywhere. He is always at the biggest events. I don't know what he does for work. I can't figure anything out about this guy." And he's a prolific investor now in startups. He's, uh... That's how I thought you would've known him. And he owns homes that are worth tens of millions of dollars, many of them. You know, he's got one in, I think, Beverly Hills that he tried selling recently for like 50... or, sorry, that he bought recently for $48 million. The homes are filled with the most amazing art, you know, these things by Basquiat, Keith Haring, like tens of millions of dollars worth of artwork, and he claims to be a startup investor. He claims to be a public equities investor. Uh, have you ever heard of this guy?

Shaan Puri 51:24 [laughs] I've never heard of this guy. And also, I'm still unclear. Are you saying you don't think he is those things? 'Cause you're kinda like, "He claims to be this. He claims to be that," but, like, the story doesn't fully add up. So what's the... what, what's your take here?

Sam Parr 51:40 The story doesn't fully add up because if you own more than 5% of a publicly traded company, you have to be listed as that.

Shaan Puri 51:46 Yeah.

Sam Parr 51:46 And, uh, and, uh, New York Times have asked Time Warner and a bunch of his g- people, uh, they go, "He is a shareholder." That's just all they'll say. They'll say, "He is, in fact, a shareholder." And he's in the ears of the CEOs, and the CEOs of Time Warner will be like, "Hey, Vi- Vivi is really important to our operation. He's been a big deal." Now, a lot of people think there's rumors that he's part of the Mossad, which is basically like the Israeli, like, secret service, because no one actually understands what he does. And you'll see him with all these interesting celebrities. He looks super fit, and they all say the same thing about the guy. They go, "He's the most charismatic person we have ever met." And, like, story after story after story, it's billionaire after billionaire after billionaire saying, "Oh, Vivi? He's one of my best friends." And they'll say, "Well, do you know what he does for a living?" "You know, we don't really talk about that, but he's the most engaging guy we will ever, you'll ever talk to. He's the least boring person." And they go, "We're best friends because just like this person, this person, and this person who will say the same thing, he came up one day and he sat next to me and I couldn't stop listening to what he had to say 'cause he was so interesting to talk to." And so my theory is that he is, in fact, very wealthy, and he's wealthy because he made connections to a bunch of different people, and he connected them and would get little bits of equity into the variety of businesses. And he's fascinating to me is because he's completely kind of made up this fake persona that has become a reality. And, you know, if you read that book, 48 Laws of Power, one of the rules is to change your image constantly. And he basically disappeared in his 30s, and he came back with a new persona, and he became that person.

Shaan Puri 53:19 [laughs]

Sam Parr 53:19 And many, like, Hollywood people have been like, "This guy needs a movie. If you guys would know-"

Shaan Puri 53:23 Like, this man had the greatest New Year's resolution of all time. [laughs] He's like, "All right. New year, new me," literally.

Sam Parr 53:30 Literally.

Shaan Puri 53:31 Everything. Now I'm the most charismatic, interesting, well-connected, romantic, and richest person in the world. Fantastic. [laughs]

Sam Parr 53:37 You've never had run-ins with him?

Shaan Puri 53:39 No, I've never, I've never bumped into this guy. Have you, um... And I'm glad too 'cause it sounds like, uh, you know... Have you ever seen Eric Weinstein talk about Jeffrey Epstein, like the first time he met him?

Sam Parr 53:49 What did he say, that he was charismatic?

Shaan Puri 53:51 Well, no, he's like, "The hair on my neck stood up immediately." He's like-

Sam Parr 53:54 Got

Shaan Puri 53:54 ... "It didn't add up." Like, uh, you know, where did this guy, uh... you know, how have I never heard of this guy? Where did he get his wealth? How did he create this hedge fund? W- how is he splashing cash around like this? How does it... why does nobody know him from, like, before a certain time? And he's like, he's, he's like, "E- Jeffrey Epstein was a government construct." Like, he was basically a, a government, you know, created, uh, entity that was meant to, you know, u- ultimately like get, you know, compromi- like, you know, blackmail on a whole bunch of rich, successful people. And that's what he goes around talking about on podcasts. Um, I don't know this guy at all, but it just reminded me of, uh, of, of that, like the ma- the mystery of, like, who is this person? How, how does this all add up? Like, where... Okay, you, your mom left you 10 million bucks, but then how did you become such a big shareholder in all these things? Like, that's not a, a big starting amount of capital to be able to, um, to accumulate big stakes in things. It's also interesting that, like, you know, he, he was one way, then he came back [laughs] years later as, like, a totally different guy with a totally different personality and a, and a different persona.

Sam Parr 54:55 Dude, The New York Times said he's the single largest shareholder of Time Warner, which, uh, is a big deal. That's, that's billions of dollars. And it's amazing that in today's age that you can't find out this guy's background. No one really knows. No one talks about it.

Shaan Puri 55:10 Dude, look at this picture I put into, uh, the doc. It's him at the Allen & Co. Conference. ... riding a bike while the two people he's talking to are walking

Sam Parr 55:21 Yeah, and he's, like, dictating to them

Shaan Puri 55:22 That's not even possible, dude. How are you gonna ride a bike and then how are people gonna walk and talk next to you? You can't even... I've tried that. You can't ride slow enough where they could do that, and they can't walk fast enough for you to do this. This just added to the allure to me in a way that nobody else will really understand. This is impossible. [laughs]

Sam Parr 55:39 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 55:39 He is defying physics to be able to socialize like this

Sam Parr 55:42 Well, and you see him with literally the most powerful people on Earth, and he is always talking with his hands flailing. And-

Shaan Puri 55:49 Yeah, he's gesturing like crazy in all these pictures [laughs]

Sam Parr 55:52 And the, and the people who are the most powerful people on Earth are, are leaning in, listening.

Shaan Puri 55:57 [laughs]

Sam Parr 55:57 There's a pi- photo of Tim Cook stroking his chin, leaning in like, "Oh, what's your opinion on this?"

Shaan Puri 56:03 [laughs]

Sam Parr 56:03 And he's just engaged them wildly. And so this guy, like, he is, like, somehow in the ear of the most powerful people on Earth, but no one knows who he is.

Shaan Puri 56:13 I think it's hilarious that we ended this list with a guy that we basically know nothing about, no one knows anything about, may not actually be an interesting guy [laughs] and we are also massively reading into these signals of, like, from these, like, random photos [laughs] where we're like, "Look at the way that lean is happening. Ooh, he must be charismatic." Or, like, I'm like, "Look at this bike. Look at how he's biking while other people are walking. How can he even do that? Wow, this guy is, is fantastic." [laughs] Like, we have so little to go on. We are grasping for straws on this guy.

Sam Parr 56:40 We are not grasping.

Shaan Puri 56:41 But I think-

Sam Parr 56:41 He's-

Shaan Puri 56:41 I'm grasping.

Sam Parr 56:42 The, the-

Shaan Puri 56:42 You're grasping too

Sam Parr 56:43 ... there's something here about, uh, there's something here about this person. I need someone to message me information about him. Surely people in our audience know who this person is.

Shaan Puri 56:51 [laughs] I need that on a T-shirt, by the way. I'm not grasping, you're grasping. [laughs]

Sam Parr 56:57 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 56:57 That's our version of, like, you can't triple stamp a double stamp. Um-

Sam Parr 57:00 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 57:02 All right. Well, that's, that's the list. I think the real list, uh, here is basically that these are the most interesting billionaires you've never heard of-

Sam Parr 57:11 That's right

Shaan Puri 57:11 ... is where we've landed.

Sam Parr 57:12 I agree, I agree with that. Um, all right, that's the pod. [upbeat music]