The Man Who Owns 1% Of ALL Bitcoin

Shaan Puri 0:00 So I can borrow $900 million at, like, 0.1% interest and put it into Bitcoin, which averages 100% annual appreciation for the last 10 years. Okay. Well, uh, what's... Yeah, why not?

Anthony Pompliano 0:14 Yes.

Shaan Puri 0:14 [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 0:14 But, but there's another detail to it. [upbeat music]

Shaan Puri 0:24 [laughs] So

Shaan Puri 0:25 Pomp, dude, welcome. Uh, last time you were here, I just went and looked it up, four months ago, the Bitcoin price was 37,000. Today, what is the Bitcoin price today? Today, Bitcoin price is sitting at 69,000. Um-

Anthony Pompliano 0:40 Nice

Shaan Puri 0:41 ... in four months. That's kind of amazing. And my question to you, to start it off, why is the Bitcoin price going up?

Anthony Pompliano 0:48 Well, prices go up because more people wanna buy than sell, so, uh, that's, like, the simplest example, uh, or explanation. But i- if you think about what's happened in those four months, um, probably the biggest thing is the Bitcoin spot ETFs got approved, and in those ETFs, it basically just gives a ton of people access to the asset that previously didn't have it. And so historically, we've seen these ETFs for certain asset classes get approved, lots of money comes in, the price goes up over a long period of time. I think people are surprised at how quickly assets have come in. There's over $10 billion that have flowed into these assets. Um, and then also how quickly the price of Bitcoin has gone up and set a new all-time high, you know, within two months of the ETF.

Shaan Puri 1:27 S- Sam, have you followed this? Have you been watching this, uh, like the ETF stuff?

Sam Parr 1:31 I know that when I tracked my, um, like, net worth, which I look at, like, every six months, it, it changed.

Shaan Puri 1:37 Hours.

Sam Parr 1:38 Yeah. [laughs] It changed. And I, and I, and I saw that it went up, and I had no idea why. Like, and I saw-

Shaan Puri 1:44 Fair, be honest. When the net worth goes up, do you strut a little differently around the house?

Sam Parr 1:49 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:49 Do you look at Sarah a little differently? [laughs]

Sam Parr 1:52 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:52 Do you expect her to look at you a little differently? Tell me the truth.

Sam Parr 1:56 Baby, we done it. We made it, baby.

Shaan Puri 1:58 [laughs] Pomp was right. [laughs]

Sam Parr 2:02 It's red panty night. We made it. We done it, baby. That's what we say. [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 2:07 I'm surprised you only check, uh, every six months. Like, I, I check on a weekly basis and track it, like, pretty religiously, and I feel like, uh, things you measure, move. And so if you want it to move, then you gotta measure it. Like, often.

Sam Parr 2:18 I track, I track income. I don't track, uh, net worth, 'cause there's nothing I could do about that, right? It's, I've, I've... I'm not like you guys. I've done a set it and forget it. But now that Bitcli- Bitcoin and, uh, uh, Ether is close to an all-time high, Bitcoin is, I think, uh, should I just, should I just sell it all and get out?

Anthony Pompliano 2:36 Uh, the number one rule of Bitcoin is you don't wanna sell your Bitcoin, obviously.

Sam Parr 2:40 [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 2:40 Um, no, I mean, look, i- the, the, I think the long-term kinda, like, thesis around Bitcoin is, uh, no different than it's always been, which is you have a scarce supply, uh, asset. There's lots of people who want it. That number of people who want it is increasing. Now the people who are banging on the door aren't, like, retail investors on the internet with $10. It's large institutions that have billions of dollars. Uh, they're obviously allocating to it. Um, and probably the most exciting part over, you know, call it the next 12 months or so, is that at the same time that all this demand is coming in, uh, the Bitcoin halving is coming. And that's just when the daily incoming supply, the number of Bitcoin that get created each day, is gonna get cut in half, from 900 Bitcoin to 450. So, like, I always joke, if you went to Economics 101 class, supply and demand, if supply goes down and demand goes up at the same time, then the price has to go up to accommodate everyone. And, uh, we've seen this happen before, and it'll probably happen again.

Sam Parr 3:30 Is most of your net worth in, in crypto stuff now, Pomp's? I mean, I know, I know it was. You still, you, you're still holding strong?

Anthony Pompliano 3:36 Yeah. I, I haven't sold anything. Um, I fi- I bought more crypto stuff, but also, uh, uh, we've built another, a, a number of other businesses and, and done a bunch of different things that, um, it's not the same percentages, but it's still, you know, definitely over 50%.

Sam Parr 3:48 Do you remember about three years ago, Shaan made a tweet that's... I forget what the tweet said, but, like, some Indian newspaper picked it up. What was it? It said, like, "Entrepreneur Shaan Puri puts all net worth into crypto." What was it?

Shaan Puri 4:02 [laughs] I love how you can tell a story and get all parts of it wrong.

Anthony Pompliano 4:05 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 4:05 But still the story's kinda right. [laughs]

Sam Parr 4:08 [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 4:08 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 4:08 Not an Indian newspaper, not all my net worth. [laughs] Basically, when I, uh, when we got bought by Twitch, I had a bunch of cash come in, and I was like, "You know what? I'm moving..." I put tw- I was like, "I'm gonna..." I tweeted out, "I'm g- I'm putting 25% of my net worth into Bitcoin." I just, that was it. That was the tweet. And then a bunch of blogs, like bitcoin.com and stuff like that, not necessarily Indian newspaper, but they all were like, "Twitch executive says he..." Or then, then someone was like, "Amazon executive..." 'Cause Amazon owns Twitch. [laughs] They're like, "Amazon executive, Twitch executive, says he's moving 25% of his net worth into Bitcoin in a stunning move." And it's like, uh, you know, my net worth is, like, uh, it, it's like we're talking about, like, oh, I, I put quarters in the vending machine here, [laughs] like, these are not huge sums of money that is moving. Like, like, it should not make news when I do something. Uh, but yeah, that was the, that was the story. And honestly, one of the better moves I ever did. That was in 2019. So, uh, so that was a, a good bet.

Anthony Pompliano 5:10 I've always thought that the media, if they wanted really to get the clickbait, instead of, like, Amazon executive or whatever, they should just label everyone future billionaire, right? Like, you never know.

Shaan Puri 5:19 [laughs]

Sam Parr 5:19 [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 5:20 Like, you can't-

Shaan Puri 5:20 Aspiring billionaire.

Anthony Pompliano 5:21 Yeah. Like, you can't disprove that, right? They just, everyone will click on every article. [laughs]

Sam Parr 5:26 So we had, uh, Michael Saylor on, like, a year, two, uh, maybe two years ago now. He got m- we, we gotten a little, at the end, a little tizzy. He got, he got angry at me, I remember. That's, that's about the only thing that I truly remember from that podcast.

Anthony Pompliano 5:39 Why?

Sam Parr 5:39 'Cause he goes... I go, "Michael, what's the downside of this, of this bet you're taking?" And he's like, "There is no downside." And I was like, "Well, that's, that's dishonest, because with every decision, there's upside and downside, and even if the downside is minimal, there is also downside." And he's like, "No, there is no downside." And I remember, I, I think I said, uh, "Well, I don't trust you then, because if you're not ad- admitting that there's downside to this decision, you're just being dishonest. What else are you lying about?" And it kinda got weird. Um, and I still feel that way. [laughs] I still feel that way. But on here, we're, on what you wanted to talk about, you were talking about, uh, Shaan, I think, asked if this is the craziest bet of all time.

Shaan Puri 6:14 Well-

Sam Parr 6:14 It appears as though it's working, right?

Shaan Puri 6:16 I want you to do two things. I want you to explain the, like just explain like I'm five years old what did Michael Saylor do, and then after you've explained kinda like just the mechanics of like what is the bet that this guy has been placing, like kind of like from the start of it to, till, to now, 'cause he's kind of e- evolved it. And then I want you to tell me if you think this is sort of on the sp- on the spectrum of idiotic to genius, where does this fall for you in terms of, of a bet? 'Cause it is a colossal, colossal bet. So expl- explain what he's done.

Anthony Pompliano 6:45 Yeah, he, he has definitely bet the company and burned the boats, for sure. And the way to think about, um, you know, kinda how it started was he had a bunch of cash, I think he had like $500 million of cash, give or take.

Sam Parr 6:56 Because he owned a, he owned a, a, a publicly traded software company.

Anthony Pompliano 6:59 Yes.

Shaan Puri 7:00 MicroStrategy, which is like a 20-year-old company at that point, and they did something completely unrelated to crypto like, uh-

Anthony Pompliano 7:06 They, they do, uh, b- business analytics, right? So they do business-

Shaan Puri 7:08 Yeah

Anthony Pompliano 7:08 ... analytics. The $500 million was sitting on the company's balance sheet. Um, he personally started to get interested in Bitcoin. He bought some, uh, personally, I think he bought like $250 million of Bitcoin. He disclosed that, and then the company said, "Hey, well, maybe we should buy, uh, Bitcoin as well." And I think that there's like two different types of people who buy Bitcoin, especially for a company. Some are like, "I'm gonna go day trade the balance sheet," which is a horrible idea and will end in, you know, sorrow. And then there's another idea, which is like, "I want to have an asset on my balance sheet that I have confidence in over the long run." And what he basically came to the conclusion along with the board of directors and, and some of the shareholders was, wait a second, the dollars are being devalued. Inflation is really high, and so we're like losing purchasing power. The number of dollars are staying the same, but the inflation is eating away at our purchasing power. And so he said, "Let's go try to buy something else." And they supposedly did this entire analysis. They looked at, like real estate, stocks, Bitcoin, gold, you know, all these different assets. They came to the conclusion Bitcoin was the thing that they should buy. And so he was the first public company that wasn't like a crypto miner or something like that to go and say, "I'm gonna put like 85% of my balance sheet into Bitcoin." Now, if he had like $10 million, no one would care, but this was a company that was like a billion-dollar company, $500 million of cash. He made this big bet. And if the story just ended there, I think a lot of people would be like, "Wow, that's kinda crazy." But then he, like, doubled, tripled, quadrupled down on it, and he began to raise a bunch of money via, uh, debt offerings. So he would, like, sell bonds and get really good terms, get that cash, buy more Bitcoin. Then he was, like, selling equity at one point. Whenever the value of the company, like, was higher than what he thought it was actually worth, he would sell equity, uh, use that cash to buy more Bitcoin. And he went from owning zero Bitcoin in July of 2020 to today he has more than 210,000 Bitcoin, which is more than 1% of the Bitcoin network. Um, and it's worth, you know, I don't know, something more than like $10 billion. Uh, and so yeah, it's an insane bet, but if it works, then we'll call it a genius bet. And so, like, history is written by the victors. Let's see what happens.

Sam Parr 9:11 All right, everyone, a quick break to tell you about HubSpot, and this one's easy because I'm gonna show you an example of how I'm doing this at my company. When I say I, I mean not my team, I mean I'm the one who actually made it. So I've got this company called Hampton. You can check it out, joinhampton.com. It's a community for founders. And one of the ways that we've grown is we've created these surveys where we'll ask our members certain questions that a lot of people, a lot of times people are afraid to ask. So things like what their net worth is, how their assets are allocated, all these, like, interesting questions, and then we'll put it in a survey. And I went and made a landing page. So you can check it out at joinhampton.com/wealth. You can actually see the landing page that I made. And the hard part with this is with Hampton, we are appealing to a sort of a, a higher-end customer, sort of like, like a Louis Vuitton or a Ferrari. So I needed the landing page to look a very particular way. HubSpot has templates. That's what we used. We just changed the colors a little bit to match our brand. Very easy. They have this drag-and-drop version of their landing page builder, and it's super simple. I'm not technical, and I'm the one who actually made it. And once it's made, I then shared it on social media, and we had thousands of people see it and thousands of people who gave us their information, and I can then see over the next handful of weeks, this is how much revenue came in from this wealth survey that I did. This is where the revenue came from. So it came from Twitter, it came from LinkedIn. Whatever it came from, I can actually go and look at it and I can say, "Oh, well, that worked, that didn't work. Do more of that, do less of that." And if you're interested in making landing pages like this, I highly suggest it. Look, I'm actually doing it. But you can check it out. Go to the link in the description of YouTube and get started. All right, now back to MFM.

Shaan Puri 10:41 So he, he currently has $14.96 billion of Bitcoin, uh, in, in MicroStrategy [clears throat] and it's up 97% all time. So he's put in 7.3 billion, and now it's sitting on, uh, uh, 15 billion of, uh, of assets. Now, I think there's one other piece to be honest about, which is it wasn't just that he was like, "Hmm, we have 500 million on the balance sheet. What can we invest in?" I think the truth was, and this is what we were trying, in our original interview with him, this is what kinda started to come out, and I was like, "This makes more sense to me," and I kinda wish he was a little bit more upfront about it, which was his stock was flat or going down for a long time. Like, I think if you look at the MicroStrategy chart, for like since, I don't know, 2002 to, you know, 2020, the stock, the stock was basically flat from 2007 to 2020 before he started making his bet, and that's a long time, right? That's 2007 to 2020. That's a, that's a 13-year period. And so what ended up, what he realized was, he's like, "Why are they not giving us any credit? Like, we're basically, we're basically valued at the amount of cash we have. Um, they're not valuing the business really at anything, and, and the business is gonna produce more cash, but they don't believe that we can invest this well or that we can in, reinvest our cash well to grow the enterprise value of the company. So we have two choices. We either dividend out all the cash- Or we gotta do something with it that's gonna get our stock price to go up. And I think the reality was he was stuck between a little bit of a rock and a hard place, where he had this business that was too successful to, to not continue, but his share price would not move because investors just simply did not believe any of the stories about what they could do with the cash. And so he kinda had to do something. But I think that's the part that, that's a little bit left out is, like-

Anthony Pompliano 12:27 Oh, I completely agree.

Sam Parr 12:28 And he was very loud about it on purpose, which I don't blame him for being.

Anthony Pompliano 12:31 I, I also think that, uh, like, and maybe an extension of this is whenever you have a company that has cash on their balance sheet and it's, like, accumulating cash, uh, it's usually because they don't know what to do with it. Like, there's not a clear, how do I reinvest in my business and, like, drive more cash in the future? And so historically what those companies have done is they've either dividended out or they've bought back their shares. But if your shares are flat and there's not a lot of volatility to it, there's not a lot of opportunity to buy back the shares for less than what, like, the company's worth. And so, uh, this is definitely... Like, that's why I say it's like a bet-the-company, burn-the-boats situation, where he went all in on this strategy. Now, w- what I think is very interesting about it is, uh, he essentially has pioneered this, like, I have a business that does software analytics and kinda business analytics and, uh, that's supposed to throw off cash, and then I have, like, a treasury strategy. But if you really think about, um, you know, maybe companies in other countries, like, this is not foreign to them, right? If you're in a country where, like, the currency is very volatile or, or it could lose value very quickly, a lot of times you're managing foreign currency risk and you're trying to get into dollars or, or something that's more stable. It's just that no one in the US ever thinks about this or worries about it, and so now he's doing it with Bitcoin. Now, I actually think one of the most interesting parts of this story is that no one's followed him. Like, there, there hasn't been a second MicroStrategy. Um, I've talked to a lot of people, and I'm like, "You know, one company is a data point, two would begin the trend." And so I actually don't have a good answer as to, like, if this guy has made basically $7 billion off of this bet, why has no one followed? Usually in public markets, like, somebody does something, you know, back, like, uh, 2017, 2018, like, companies were start changing their names to blockchain.

Shaan Puri 14:06 [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 14:07 Long Island Iced Tea changes to, like, Long Island Blockchain, right? [laughs] And they just start doing anything they possibly can. Right now, AI, like, everyone goes and puts .ai at the end of their name to try to, you know, get some sort of a, a boost in their stock price. But no one's following Saylor, which, like, the omission of everyone else may actually be a data point that we should pay attention to as well.

Sam Parr 14:25 Well, it's a, it's a very scary bet. I mean, in order to do this, uh, I don't know if you have to be a public company, but you, you have to be large enough to be in that ballpark. And I ha- I don't know how much... He must own the majority of the company because there's been, like, board... There's been so many times where, like, it could've been justifiable to fire him over all this, right?

Anthony Pompliano 14:43 I think he has voting control but not, uh, majority ownership, but he's got voting control.

Shaan Puri 14:47 He has about, I think he has about 50% ownership of the stock. And so you have the unique combination of cash cow business, been around forever, founder, CEO, publicly listed already, so he's able to do these bonds. 'Cause h- when you listen to him talk, he's like, "So I can borrow $900 million at, like, .1% interest and put it into Bitcoin, which averages 100% annual appreciation for the last 10 years." Okay. Well, uh, what's... Yeah. Why not?

Anthony Pompliano 15:14 Yes.

Shaan Puri 15:15 [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 15:15 But, but there's another detail to it. A- and I'm definitely not an expert on, like, convertible bond offerings in the public market. Uh, but these are convertible bonds, and they convert at a premium to the current price. So without getting into all the intricacies, it's basically, like, people can get paid back or they could convert to equity at maybe, let's say, 50% higher. So if the company's worth, you know, $10 billion today, it'll convert at 15 billion. So if the company goes up a lot, like, you'll obviously convert rather than get paid back. And so it's not exactly the cheapest capital if, uh, you know, you're basically selling equity, uh, but you are selling it at a 50% premium, so it, it's still attractive

Anthony Pompliano 15:48 to do.

Shaan Puri 15:48 And so do you, when you look at this, are you like, "Wow, this is genius. This is terrible. This is, uh, ex- this is riskier than it appears"? What's the Pomp takeaway? 'Cause you've talked to this guy multiple times, right? We did an interview-

Anthony Pompliano 15:59 Yeah

Shaan Puri 15:59 ... with him years ago and haven't really paid too much attention since. Um, you live in this space, you know, day to day, and you, you know this guy a lot better than us. What, what's your honest takeaway of this?

Anthony Pompliano 16:09 I think it is riskier for a company to sit with $500 million in US dollar cash on their balance sheet than $500 million worth of Bitcoin. Um, and the reason being that, um, or, or maybe the one clarifier is if you have a long-term oriented posture and you don't need that cash for day-to-day operations right now, Bitcoin will definitely do better from protecting your purchasing power over the next 10, 15, 20 years than the dollars will. Um, and so it, it's a unique aspect to be able to not only have the cash, but also not need it to run your business. Um, and so yeah, I think that he's actually taking less risk than most of the public companies. And, and my expectation is actually that shareholders, um, at some point will start turning on some of these public companies that have tons of cash and saying, like, "Hey, if we're sitting there with, you know..." I mean, Warren Buffett's sitting with $100 billion of cash. Like, how much money is he losing for the business by leaving it in cash? Um, and it's unclear what else he could do.

Sam Parr 17:07 Dude, do you know what's crazy is, like, uh, you know, there's... Have you guys read the book The Outsiders?

Anthony Pompliano 17:12 Yeah.

Sam Parr 17:12 It's about nine different CEOs, and the whole thing is, like, they've gone from CEO to capital allocator, and that phrase gets thrown around a lot. But that's actually a, a really har- So for a person who starts and builds a company from scratch, typically their skill set is, like, they're a little bit of a wild card. They're probably good at product. They're probably decent at hiring, and oftentimes that means that they're not the best at managing. And I have found amongst my friend group, oftentimes that doesn't necessarily mean they're gonna be a good investor. And so it's pretty interesting to watch someone go from being, like, whatever you are when you start something, a tinkerer, uh, to a proper capital allocator. That transition is pretty rare, I think. Uh, I think typically the people who are good at being investors, they kind of start as an investor, and they either buy a company just so they can get the cash flow to invest. But those skill sets, to see someone, like, transfer those skill sets or, or evolve as a, as an operator, that's actually really fascinating to see that.

Shaan Puri 18:10 The way I call it is

Shaan Puri 18:12 you go from product manager to people manager to money manager. That's the transition, right? That is the, the levels of the game in business-

Anthony Pompliano 18:19 But that's rare

Shaan Puri 18:19 ... jump those three. Yeah, very, very rare. Very hard. Warren Buffett has a great quote. He says, he goes, "I'm a better investor because I was a businessman. I'm a better businessman because I'm an investor." And for those who have the disposition to do both, they can become very good at one because they were very good at the other. But you're right, most people aren't able to do, have both gears.

Anthony Pompliano 18:40 Like Shaan, you and I, I think, are quite good at, uh, and I'm sure you are too, Pomp, but I, I know Shaan more intimately. Like, we're pretty good, I think, at going zero to one. Do you think that... And you've also invested. Do you think that you are better at starting versus investing? And how has that evolution been so far?

Shaan Puri 18:56 Definitely not better at investing than I am at building, because I spent 15 years building and then probably four years seriously investing, right? So just in the learning curve, I'm more of a white belt, right? But I can see what Warren Buffett says, which is that when you have built and run companies, you are better at analyzing companies versus somebody who's only ever analyzed a company from a sort of spreadsheet arm's length away. They, um, you know, they, they take everything at sort of face value, right? W- there's a skepticism that gets built up, a healthy skepticism, when you've actually seen how hard it is to do some things. Or, um, you know, for example, a lot of times in the stock market, people react to the news. It's like Google puts out a, you know, a overly woke AI thing, and people are like, "Oh, Google's dead. Google's out." And it's like, do you know how hard it is to compete with these companies? Do you know how durable, do you know how, how strong these businesses are? You know how hard it is to create one of these? And so the, you know, Mr. Market goes up and down in its mood, right? It gets euphoric and it gets depressed, but a business builder has trained themselves to not have that same s- swing of psychology. To go from peak euphoria, everything is, is amazing and gonna go up, and oh my God, it'll never recover again. A builder kind of has been through that themselves, and therefore when they're an investor, they don't get caught up in that kind of herd psychology that, uh, the worst investors do. What do you think, Pomp?

Anthony Pompliano 20:20 I, I think that's dead on. Um, you see this not only in the public markets, you also are starting to see it in the private markets. Like, uh, how many of the great angel investors today are really just running companies or, or building things themselves, and then they kinda angel invest on the side, or vice versa. Um, and so, like, Founders Fund maybe is, like, the best example, where they're really, you know, putting a flag in the ground and they're like, "Look, we wanna be operators and we want to invest. By operating day-to-day, we learn, which makes us a better investor," and vice versa. Um, I, I just think of, like, to win in the dynamic world we're headed into, you have to be a ballplayer. And I always go back to the, uh, like, you remember when you're 12 years old, you play, like, Little League baseball, and there's like, "Okay, hey kid, today you're the pitcher. Tomorrow, like, you're gonna play shortstop. Tomorrow you're gonna be, like, the catcher. Oh, now you're, like, the designated hitter." Like, you just have to be able to do all the different positions, and there's not really, like, this specialization that you get maybe when you get into high school, college, or, or definitely at Major League Baseball. And so, like, that in entrepreneurship is, like, the most coveted position to be able to stand in, is, like, if you're a ballplayer, you can build things, you can invest, you can hire, you can manage, you can fire. You can do all these different things. Um, but it takes practice and, and, and it's difficult to do, just like anything. Um, and, and so, like, being the ballplayer is really what Warren Buffett figured out, what Jeff Bezos figured out, what Elon Musk figured out. And that involves not only building things, but also capital markets and, and it looks like Michael Saylor's figured out a way to tap the capital markets in a unique way.

Shaan Puri 21:43 It's a good transition, 'cause you went from Pomp Bitcoin crypto guy as, like, main brand, and then, you know, it's like, oh, Pomp's doing this real estate conference. Pomp's buying these, uh, you know, these sweaty businesses. Uh, you've showed some range, I guess, in the last few years, um, I don't know if as a hedge or just where your curiosity went or whatever, but talk

Shaan Puri 22:05 to us about what, what are some of the non-crypto weird stuff that you've been looking at? I know you were looking at some, uh, like, what was the, the line painting business? Talk about that. Talk about some of the weird stuff you're doing and why you do it.

Anthony Pompliano 22:15 So, um, I, I've always been doing this stuff, I just never talked about it publicly. You know, if you go all the way back to, uh, when I was a kid, like, we always had some business we were trying to do. I, I, I, um, built two companies right out of college and, uh, in between those companies, I remember that, like, I taught myself how to do, like, WordPress websites, and I would go around to small businesses and be like, "Hey, pay me five grand and I'll, like, build you a website," right? And, like, that wasn't gonna be, like, some big thing, but it was just, like, a way to figure out, like, could you gain a skill? Could you solve a problem? Could you make money, right? Do it over and over again. And so over the last couple of years, we, we've been doing, uh, quite a bit of work and building companies or, or trying to buy these businesses, but crypto definitely was the thing that I think, uh, most people weren't talking about online that we felt like we had a unique, uh, kind of narrative or perspective. Uh, the line business is a perfect example. So I was reading, uh, the biography on Elon Musk and, uh, in it, every Sunday he would have the Tesla team bring him a car, and they would take him for a test drive of the self-driving, uh, Tesla. And so there was this one area on the highway where it was kind of like a, a really hard turn, and the car kept messing up. A human had to intervene and grab the steering wheel because the car wouldn't recognize that this turn was there. And so what the engineers figured out was that the road, the painting on the road, was actually degraded down. And so they were like, "Well, we're tired of Elon yelling at us every Sunday." So they called the Department of Transportation and were like, "Hey, get out here and, like, repaint this road so that the car stops messing up." And so they fixed the road, not the car. [laughs] Then the car can drive correctly, Elon stops yelling. So, like, they just solved kind of their, like, local problem, but it made me think. I was like, wait a second. These, like, line striping or line painting businesses are going to be exponentially more valuable in the future. Because as self-driving becomes prevalent on the road, governments are going to mandate that the roads are painted more often so that the cars, from a safety perspective, can actually drive correctly. And so you probably can go buy these line striping businesses right now for, like, three times EBITDA, and you start to scale them. And then as the government mandates them paint the road more often, like, revenue will go up, there'll be multiple expansion. And there's kind of this thesis of, like, um, you have smart cars on dumb roads. But like everyone wants to go compete with, like, the smart cars. But maybe actually the best way to make money is, like, go figure out how to take the dumb roads and just make them smart and interact with the tech. Uh, if we really wanna dig into, like, the nitty-gritty details, like, one of the hardest parts for people coming from the tech industry in doing deals with people who are not in the tech industry is there is a drastic, uh, asymmetric information advantage that tech people have. And what I mean by that is, like, let's say that you guys start a company tomorrow and you're like, "Hey, I'm gonna raise a million dollars on a safe note." We pretty much, like, you can pitch me, we can have a conversation back and forth, we can come up with the terms. The safe document is already pre-drafted, and we can have that done in like two or three days. Like, tech has basically s- figured out these long-term oriented people, reputation's really important. There's some baseline shared knowledge, and so deals get done very quickly and there's not a lot of friction. And then because it's a power law game, investors are incentivized to invest in tons of companies, and founders understand that, like, there's tons of capital available. When you go into these, like, blue-collar kind of industrial manufacturing businesses, like sometimes these people have been building the company, like the line striping business, they've been building it for 20 years. This is, like, their life. And when we were having the negotiations with them, like, we were starting out with, like, what's the point of the board of directors, right? Like, like, there's an education that goes into it, and so it makes getting deals done very, very hard because of that friction, uh, that exists. And so it's almost easier to do deals with people who have done lots of deals than it is to do s- deals with somebody who's done their first deal, like, this is the big one. Um, and, and so, like, we're still trying to figure out how to solve that problem, but it's just something that we've noticed that, you know, doesn't get talked a lot about online.

Sam Parr 25:54 What were the numbers be- uh, of this company?

Anthony Pompliano 25:57 I don't wanna say because, uh, th- th- they're, they're super great guys. Um, but, uh, these businesses, um, they're bigger than you think. I, I've, I've looked at a bunch of these businesses. So there's, like, line striping. Another one is, um, like, traffic cones and barricades. And so if you think of that business, like every construction site, you have to have, uh, these things there from a safety standpoint. It's, it's legally mandated, and it's like the greatest real estate business in the world. They can buy like a, a hip height, you know, like four-foot wide barricade. They buy those for like 400 bucks, and then they rent them out for like five to $8 a day. And once you're on site, you're not allowed to leave the site with, like, the equipment can't leave until the s- job's done. So like LaGuardia, that was under construction for like 10 years, right? [laughs] So, like, somebody was just renting them cones, paying-

Sam Parr 26:42 [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 26:42 ... getting paid five, six, $7 a day for 10 years. And so, like, those businesses are really interesting. What ends up happening is, uh, my, my buddy Brent Beshore's got this, uh, quote. He says, "Small businesses don't stay small on purpose." So a lot of times what happens is they'll dominate, like, a local area, but they have very hard time kinda scaling. And so you can expect kind of revenue is, like, mid seven figures. Usually, they can get to, like, about a million, a million and a half dollars in EBITDA. Uh, and then the owners are taking quite a bit of compensation for themselves. Like, you know, if you're taking $500,000 and you live in kind of like a, a rural area or, or not a major metro, uh, like you're rich, right? And so it's a pretty good job, uh, to have, uh, especially with the freedom it comes with and, and do that for a decade. Like, you know, you got paid 5 million bucks and, and, uh, probably living pretty good.

Sam Parr 27:26 There's also, like, a generational thing. So, uh, my father is a small business owner. My father-in-law is a small business owner. My father owns a, a produce brokerage, meaning buys fruit from a farmer and sells it to Walmart. My father-in-law owns a moving company, and I'm, I've, like, asked them questions like, um, like, "Do you, do you have managers? Like, how does that work?" And they're like, "What do you, what do you mean? I only have 18 employees. Like, we don't, like, there aren't really meetings. Like, I don't do one-on-ones." And, or they'll be like, "Well, how do you... Do you just, like, do everything?" Like, "Yeah, everything goes up through me." Or it's like, "Well, how do you hire?" It's like, "Well, usually just one of the people who work there might have a buddy who hopefully, like, uh, could do okay." You know what I mean? Like, there's not a, um... The mindset is when, when you come from, I think, a different generation and also you come from poverty and it's blue collar, you're like, "Dude, I make 800 grand a year. I'm rich. Like, why, what do you mean? Why would I do anything else?" Do you know what I mean?

Anthony Pompliano 28:22 I also think that there's this element of, like, ambition can kill companies, um, if you're in the wrong business. And so, like, we all get excited 'cause, like, Elon's like, "We're going to Mars," right? Like, "I'm gonna put a chip in someone's brain." We're like, "That's awesome." But I, I have one friend, um, he's got a retail store. Uh, he's got three locations in the United States. One of them is in New York, and I was talking to him recently, and he's like, "Yeah, all of our profit comes from the New York store. Like, actually, I might be better off if I shut down the other two stores," right? And so it's like h- when you're in business, everyone wants you to expand, get bigger, like do all these things, and he started down that path. But he realized like, "Wait a second, like, maybe actually the value of this business is that, like, I know one market really well, uh, I picked a great location, like it's a great business, and if I become ambitious, I will suck all the profits out of this business and try to reinvest it and end up just like blowing up." And so, again, if you're running a tech company, like, you have to be ambitious. The whole point is the power law. But if you're running some of these other businesses, like, yeah, maybe you don't wanna make more than $800,000 because in order to do that, you've got to double the team size, your profit margin goes down, your stress level explodes, and, like, the odds of success don't actually line up with how much money you could make. And so I do think a lot about, like, there's like an ambition, product, and market fit where it only pays to be ambitious in the right market with the right product.

Sam Parr 29:37 Dude, my father, when he travels, my parents now, once they got older, they go to Florida for six weeks every winter. He travels, I swear to God, with a file cabinet, a phone that you could plug into the wall, and a fax machine. And he's like, "Well, I have to have my work equipment. Like, I, I can't work without this stuff."

Anthony Pompliano 29:54 [laughs]

Sam Parr 29:54 And, like, I'll get, I'll, [laughs] I'll get texts from him and I'm like, "Dude, are you trying to post on Facebook right now? Like, I, I... This is a Facebook post, isn't it?" He's like, "Ah, isn't that what I just did?" Like, and so, like, the idea of, like, evolving to some of these tools, it's like, dude, I'm like, I don't give a shit about growing this. I'm just gonna, like, bail and it's gonna die. Like, there is no, there is no exit. What are you talking about? The exit's when I die.

Anthony Pompliano 30:18 I, I also think that small businesses, like,

Anthony Pompliano 30:21 if people don't understand what goes into running these small businesses, like, you just are like, "Oh, of course the business just runs. It's somewhere like a tech company." But, um- Small businesses make up 50% of jobs in America, and the country is literally built off the backs of these small businesses, right, in terms of GDP growth and all this stuff. And we all probably know stories, you know, similar to this where, like, they're r- going around with their equipment. Um, I know somebody who's an extended family member. Uh, he has a business where, uh, it- it's like a chemical business, and he, like, mixes things in order to create the product, and he won't fly anywhere. He will only drive, because when he can drive, he can put all of the materials in his car, and then he'll, like, show up. So, like, when I was living in Florida, he showed up, and he's like, "Can I just, like, take over the garage?" And I walked in there, and I was like, "This looks like a, like a science lab." Like he's just, like, mixing things.

Shaan Puri 31:07 Like a meth lab. [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 31:08 Yeah, and then he, like, makes the product, and he goes to the post office every day and, like, drops the product off so they can ship it and, like, all this stuff. And you're just like, like, "Man, this is incredible what goes into building these companies," compared to, like, the tech world. We're just like, oh, like, somebody, like, wrote some code, and it just, like, operates 24/7, 365. Money keeps coming into my account 'cause Stripe's awesome.

Shaan Puri 31:27 [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 31:28 Uh, it's just a whole different way to kind of, like, play the game of business.

Shaan Puri 31:31 Dude, uh, there's a great quote in venture capital of, like, you, you can't put rocket fuel into a car. Like, rocket fuel's great, but if you put it into a car, the car explodes, and that's what your, your ambition thing is, is like that. You ... Ambition placed into the wrong vehicle will often just result in pain, not growth. And, um, I'd heard, a- another interesting thing. Uh, I was talking to a guy who's one of the, probably one of the most successful, uh, VCs in the last, I don't know, 20 years. And he, he was talking about AI, and he went and he met with a guy who was, like, a mega billionaire private equity type of dude. And he goes to this guy, this guy's, like, 80 years old or something. And he goes to him and he says, "Hey, uh, you know, I'm here. I wanna get your advice, your wisdom on what I should be investing in. You know, I feel like the whole world is changing. AI is super exciting. I wanna be in the game. I wanna be investing in the right AI projects, but I'm not sure. Like, OpenAI could kill any project at any given moment if they just release a new feature. Uh, the valuations are a little bit crazy. What should I do?" And the, the 80-year-old PE guy goes, "I think you should buy railroads." And he goes, "What?"

Sam Parr 32:32 No shit.

Shaan Puri 32:33 And he goes, well, when ... Y- you know, uh, Buffett has this great quote, which is that, um, change is the enemy of the investor in, in, in their style of, of compounding, right? Because you, if you want something that's durable, that's gonna compound over 20 years, you don't want to be in an industry of rapid change, where the l- leader one year could be gone in, in year three. That's not ... It's great on the way up, but it's terrible on the way down, right? And so he was like, "It sounds like everything is changing so much." He's like, "My approach is go find the things that are not gonna change. They're probably have less people interested in them right now. They're probably undervalued." A- and what I like about your line striping business, Pomp, is that it's a mix of both. So it's, like, a AI-proof type of business because it's painting lines on roads. But it's also gonna benefit from all the advances in AI. Like, one of the big advances is self-driving cars. And so you would be the beneficiary without the competition, versus if you said, "I'm gonna go create a better LIDAR system or a, you know, simulation system for, for self-driving cars." Okay, cool, but you're competing against the smartest people on Earth in the most competitive field ever, where technology's gonna, like, make everything obsolete every three years. And, uh, that, that's just a very hard way to win. Somebody's gonna win for sure, but, but it's a very hard way to win versus what you're talking about with the line striping business.

Anthony Pompliano 33:48 If somebody's listening to this and they have a line striping business, I know how to grow this nationally. Like, please get in touch with me. I will help you.

Sam Parr 33:53 [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 33:53 [laughs] Like, 100%. A- a- another thing that, like, kind of-

Shaan Puri 33:57 No, no, no. Don't sell to that suit. Dude-

Sam Parr 33:58 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 33:59 ... come to me and Sam. Y- you know, you're relatable. You're relatable guys. Uh, you know-

Anthony Pompliano 34:03 Me?

Shaan Puri 34:03 ... I got a cool baseball hat.

Anthony Pompliano 34:05 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 34:05 Sam's got his, like, denim collection over there. You don't want Pomp the Suit. This guy's on TV. He's too busy for you.

Sam Parr 34:11 Shaan-

Anthony Pompliano 34:11 Well-

Sam Parr 34:12 ... have you ever been inside a, a Home Depot your entire life?

Shaan Puri 34:14 [laughs] Yeah, dude. I go in there all the time for advice. I'm like, "I'm looking for some men. Can some boys come fix some things at my house?"

Anthony Pompliano 34:20 [laughs]

Sam Parr 34:21 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 34:22 So, well, here, here's the keys to my car. Go.

Anthony Pompliano 34:25 One, one or the other, like, maybe an extension of this is not only, like, what's gonna change and what's not gonna change, but, like, can you bring fresh ideas to old industries? So, uh, there's this new podcast that I've been listening to that's fantastic. It's called Rainmakers. Uh, and it's this guy out in LA, and basically he's, like, trying to find investors that no one's ever heard of before. Um, and so he went and found them, like ... And I think it's not, like, no one's heard of, but just, like, the new generation hasn't heard of.

Shaan Puri 34:48 Right.

Anthony Pompliano 34:48 And so one of the guys that he profiled was, uh, Philip Anschutz, who, uh, he owned a bunch of real estate. He had a bunch of, like, oil and gas, uh, bought railroads. And there's, like, a tie through of this guy's career where he basically tried to find, like, value no one understood. So he would buy up railroad companies, not for the railroads, but he'd buy because there was oil underneath the ground, right? Or he bought up, like, a bunch of local sports teams because he figured out a playbook of how he could get the stadiums for free, right? And then he'd have a bunch of real estate. But the one I loved was, um, he bought Regal Cinema, the movie theater chain, when all of the movie theaters were crashing, and everyone was like, "Oh, this is a horrible business. Like, you can't make money on tickets and food." And what he realized in his, like, aha moment was for 20 minutes before the movie starts, you have a captured audience. They're just sitting there looking at the screen. And so he started to sell ads, and he made the movie theater an ad business. And then all of a sudden, he completely changed the unit economics and, uh, was able to, like, save Regal Cinema, became this huge thing, sold it, et cetera. And so, like, one, okay, like, that's awesome, but also, like, part of being a ballplayer and, like, understanding this, I listened to that podcast episode, and we had a conference coming up. And I was like, "Oh my God, I have the same thing as the movie theater. All these people are gonna be sitting there." And so then we went to advertisers, we're like, "Does anyone have a TV commercial that they've already made? Pay us, and we will just, like, play the commercial in the middle of the conference."

Shaan Puri 36:03 [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 36:04 And, and we did it. And so you, like, start to realize that not only are you taking new ideas to these old industries, but then once you, like, see it, you can bring this across all sorts of different applications. And I really think, like, that is the beauty of what you guys do on My First Million, but also, like, these podcasts and, and Twitter, et cetera, is it's just, like, find the ideas and then, like, capture them and apply them into your situation. And this has been going on for a long time, but now all these ideas are just much more readily available.

Sam Parr 36:36 Dude, this guy Philip Anschutz, uh, have you... Do you know who this is, Shaan?

Shaan Puri 36:39 No, I've never heard of him.

Anthony Pompliano 36:40 Savage.

Sam Parr 36:41 Dude, he's a savage. He's super low-key. Uh, but yeah, he- it started real- real estate and oil. Um, but then now he owns AEG. Do you know what that is?

Shaan Puri 36:50 The entertainment thing?

Sam Parr 36:52 Yes, [chuckles] the entertainment thing. It's basically, I think it's the second-largest ticketing service provider behind Live Nation. AEG owns music events like Coachella. So this old guy, he owns Coachella. He also... You know, AEG, you buy tickets through there. Uh, he owns, uh, all types of sports magazines. He owns, uh, a couple sports teams. He owns r- uh, entertainment parks. The- he's, he's, like, prolific. This guy's super prolific. And you guys wanna know something else about him? Pomp, you probably didn't realize this. I was reading... I read a lot of history. I bought this book about the American West. This fucking guy is the author.

Shaan Puri 37:26 [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 37:27 [laughs]

Sam Parr 37:27 He wrote the, he wrote the book on, like, a- um, America expanding into the West. This guy's super prolific. This guy Phil, uh, um... How do you say his name? Philip, uh, Anschutz?

Anthony Pompliano 37:36 Ph- Philip An- Anschutz. AEG is literally Anschutz Entertainment Group. Right? Is the AEG. Uh, he- he's super legit.

Sam Parr 37:44 He's amazing. This guy's amazing. I- I've- I've been fascinated by him, but he's, uh, pretty low-key. Like, there's not... I don't, I don't think you could find a biography on him. Uh, uh, the, he's very under the radar. This guy's super fascinating.

Shaan Puri 37:55 That's cool. Okay, I like it. I'm sold. The, the, he wrote the book was a great twist, by the way. [laughs] That is not what I thought you were gonna say at all.

Sam Parr 38:04 Very fascinating guy.

Sam Parr 38:05 Um, can we talk about Pomps List? Uh, so we have this segment. Shaan, we have to do, like, a redo on this segment. So it started out-

Shaan Puri 38:12 Right

Sam Parr 38:12 ... with, uh, like, years ago when my mo- wife wanted to go work somewhere. I was like, "Where is a company where you can own the stock and it could, like, 10X potentially, but it's, like, a really safe place to work where it's got 500-ish employees, you can get good maternity leave?"

Shaan Puri 38:27 Well, well, it's cool. I, I think it's worth saying. What, how old were you guys at this time, roughly?

Sam Parr 38:32 Uh, this was, uh, I, I was 27, so she must have been 24.

Shaan Puri 38:37 So she's 24 years old. Most people when they think about a job, they're just like, "Uh, I want a job." What kind of job? "A good job." [laughs] Right? Like, what, what do you want? You don't even know what you... You don't even really know what you're looking for. Whereas Sam, you, you went all capital allocator on her. You're like, "Look, this is not a job. This is an investment."

Anthony Pompliano 38:53 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 38:53 You are trading your time for restricted stock units. We're gonna pick the best RSU package that's out there, and you're gonna think about this as one concentrated bet where you're gonna basically get... I don't know, let's say a lot of these companies would give you maybe 40, 50K a year of stock in addition to, let's just use round numbers, like, I don't know, 150K a year of salary. And so you're gonna get, over a four-year period you're gonna get $200,000 of stock. And what you were saying was, like, how do you become a millionaire, right?

Anthony Pompliano 39:23 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 39:23 How do you take that 200,000 of stock over that four years, how do you become a millionaire without having a great idea, without becoming an entrepreneur, without becoming a great investor, without d- without doing anything, right? No capital, no expertise. You're gonna join as a, as employee number, I don't know, not even in the top hundred, right? Uh, at one of these companies.

Sam Parr 39:40 1,500.

Shaan Puri 39:40 1,500.

Sam Parr 39:40 15.

Shaan Puri 39:41 Right?

Sam Parr 39:41 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 39:42 At a company that we all know about. We can touch and feel the product, so we're not betting on thin air here. And that fascinated me. You told me about this, and then we created a whole thing around it called Sarah's List, around her name, which was what are the 10 companies or so that we think fit this criteria today? And we did this, and then we, we did, like, a round of it, and they all turned out to be... Or, you know, we hit, like, 7 out of 10 that would've hit the criteria that we had, we had touched on. Pomp, we asked you to do your version of this, Pomps List. Um, do you have any... I don't... We didn't, we just told you about the prompt. We didn't hear anything you had to say.

Anthony Pompliano 40:13 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 40:13 What are the companies today that you think fit this criteria? We could, you could go be, I don't know, employee 500 or employee 1,000, get 200K of stock, and might become a millionaire just off of the company continuing to grow and chug along. These sort of later stage private company, or public or private companies.

Anthony Pompliano 40:28 So I broke it up into three different buckets. The first two are, like, 10X reputation. So I don't think there's 10X left in the stock necessarily, but I do think that if you go and join now, they're still, like, kind of seen as cool and new and fast-growing, and so your reputation, uh, and kind of your resume with 10X. Uh, those two are, like, pretty simple. OpenAI and Anduril I think are both at this point where, uh, if you go and you join, like, you may be able to make a couple hundred thousand dollars a year, and, like, there's probably some upside. But OpenAI at, like, $85 billion, basically you have to build a trillion dollar company to get, you know, 10 to 12X. And so, uh, I think that is, like, you can make a really nice salary. You can probably get some upside. Maybe, you know, two to 5X is, like, a kind of base case. But really why you would join one of those companies is because the reputation and kind of resume 10X, uh, i- is kind of the, the value that you're getting there.

Sam Parr 41:19 Anduril was on our original list, my friend. We've, we've one-upped you on that one. I don't even think OpenAI really existed, uh, the, the, the first time.

Shaan Puri 41:27 No, it, it probably existed as, like, a research lab at the time we did [laughs] that episode and it was not on our radar. We, we missed on that one.

Anthony Pompliano 41:33 Yeah. Well, well, and I, I think that, um, you know, these companies, that's how they should mature, right? They should be, like, 10X economic opportunities and then 10X reputation. It never works the other way. Like, there's no company that there's a 10X reputation opportunity first and then there's a 10X economic opportunity.

Shaan Puri 41:50 Right.

Anthony Pompliano 41:51 Like, the economics have to be captured to some degree, and people will be like, "Oh, that company is successful." And then that's where the reputation kind of follows. So let me-

Shaan Puri 41:58 Let, let me ask you. You, you worked at Facebook and Snap, two, you know, p- blue chip logo type of things, but also at one, you know, at different times have been incredible, you know, financial things too. When you joined those, did you think about them from a, a logo collector first mentality or a stock collector first mentality? What w- w- in your calculus, I'm sure both were, were beneficial, but which one was more beneficial i- in your case?

Anthony Pompliano 42:21 Yeah, I mean, Facebook's probably the best example. Um, I'd built and sold, uh, this company. It was kind of, like, in social media analytics. We used a bunch of the APIs. I'd gotten to know some people at Facebook. Uh, when we sold the company, I, like, made enough money to, like, make more money than my friends who had jobs, but not enough to, like, retire or anything like that. Uh, and the guys at Facebook were like, "What are you gonna do now?" And like, for whatever reason, I never even thought that like Facebook has like, you know, a building with like hundreds of employees or like any of this. Like, it was just kinda like this thing I use and I talk to a guy over email. And, um, so why don't you come out here and like interview for a job? And I was like, "Cool. What job?" They're like, "Product manager." I had no clue what a product manager was. So on the way there, on my Kindle, I bought The Art of Product Management, which is a book about product management.

Shaan Puri 43:01 [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 43:02 I read it, I went into the interview, and I just regurgitated everything I remembered from the book.

Shaan Puri 43:07 [laughs]

Sam Parr 43:07 The king of, king of bullshit.

Shaan Puri 43:09 [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 43:10 But I was just like, I mean, like, that's kinda what a product manager does, right? Is like they kinda just like get enough information-

Shaan Puri 43:15 [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 43:16 ... and then just like say some-

Sam Parr 43:18 Regurgitate

Anthony Pompliano 43:18 ... you know, buzzwords, right? And like get the product out the door. Um, and so like definitely huge imposter syndrome when I started working there. Um, a- and I remember the last interview actually was with, uh, Sam Lessin, uh, who now is like, you know, very well-known, et cetera. Uh, and Sam got on, and I didn't know what to expect 'cause they were kinda like, "Hey, like this is like the boss guy, right? So like, you know, be on your A game." And he got on and he was like, "Let's talk about beacons." And I was like, "What?" And like the be-

Sam Parr 43:46 [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 43:46 ... Facebook Beacons had just come out, like kinda like RFID stuff, and he just wanted to brainstorm. And I was like, "Oh, this place is different," right? Like, like that's not like a normal interview. Um, and so the reason I took the job was not the money. Like, it was, it was a good salary, but it wasn't anything crazy. This was at the beginning of 2014. The stock was probably like 50 bucks. Um-

Sam Parr 44:02 Oh, you got a 10Xer then.

Anthony Pompliano 44:04 Well, I sold it. Uh-

Sam Parr 44:06 Yeah

Anthony Pompliano 44:06 ... and bought Bitcoin way better.

Shaan Puri 44:07 But were you about to say the reason you joined was kind of the people and the culture was different? 'Cause-

Anthony Pompliano 44:12 I, the first two companies-

Shaan Puri 44:12 That, that's cool

Anthony Pompliano 44:13 ... I built, I couldn't get them to grow past a certain point, and so I pretty much came to this like fork in the road. I was like, I can go to business school and like pay to try to get this education, or I can just go join the people who seem to be like the best in the world at growing things, which was the Facebook growth folks, uh, and they'll pay me. And like that literally was the evaluation. And so I went to Facebook, and they blew away my expectations. Like, sure, you get some, you know, resume, uh, benefit and all that kind of stuff, uh, but what I found in my career, it's kinda like college. Like, no one actually cares where you went to college after like maybe the first like three to five years of your business career. Working at a place like Facebook, unless you're one of the first maybe like 2 to 500 employees, um, it kinda just is like, all right, you're like kinda legit. You know, you worked at a place that has some sort of high bar. But now there's, uh, 80,000 people that worked at Facebook as of like the end of last year. So it's kinda like 80,000 people got in, right? You know, does it have the same, you know, kinda cachet as it did, uh, a decade ago? Unclear.

Shaan Puri 45:07 Dude, Sam, did I ever tell you when I interviewed at Facebook?

Sam Parr 45:10 You, no, I did not know that.

Shaan Puri 45:11 [laughs] So when we were going through the acquisition process, Facebook, it was gonna go, we were gonna sell to Facebook, not, not, uh, not Twitch. Um, they had the higher offer, the better offer, and they flew us out to, to Seattle, I guess, is where we went. And, um, they were like, "Oh, you know, as a formality, like your whole team has to go through this like kinda like leveling thing. So you, you interview. You're all in, but like you have to get leveled. And, uh, you got, you gotta do it too." And I was like, "Okay, great. I'm excited. I, I've always wanted to know what this process is like." But then a part of me was like, "Shit, I better not blow this one," right? Like, the emperor has no clothes. Let, let, let me make sure I don't blow this whole deal here by, uh, by, by going in wrong. So I do the interview process. During the interview, I was kinda like you, Pomp. I was just making up, like I was literally just making things up every single question they asked.

Sam Parr 45:55 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 45:56 I had no, I had no, I had no idea what the answer should be. And, um, you know, this is completely out in the, in the blue. 'Cause I had done the interview process with the other people who were looking at buying us, right? And in theirs it was like, "Tell me about a time where you showed resilience." And I was like, "Oh, you know, whatever. You know, you know, my, this girl rejected me in seventh grade, but I didn't give up. Eighth grade I got her," right? Like, whatever. [laughs] It was like some stupid like character type of tell me a story, tell me about a time you disagreed with somebody but you found resolution. Facebook was different. They go, "Okay, let's pretend that you just released a feature and, um, you know, you come in the next day and the chart of the usage looks like this." And he showed this curve which like, you know, it was like normal and then it like drops off a cliff. And he's like, "But it's not around the feature you released, but this is this adjacent feature. Here's what the usage looks like. Walk me through like, all right, how would you approach that? What would you do next?" And I was like... And I, I'm so dumb, but I was like, "Well, I'd go, um, I'd go ask the guy who works on that. I'd be like, 'Hey, do you know, uh, what's going on with this feature?'" [laughs] And then they're like, "Okay, I like that. And then what would you do?" [laughs] And I was like, "Well, then I'd see what he says, and then based on what he says, that'd lead to my next question. If he doesn't know, then I would do this."

Sam Parr 47:09 What a stupid interview.

Shaan Puri 47:11 No, it was a, it was honestly, it was a great interview. It was the best-

Sam Parr 47:14 Yeah

Shaan Puri 47:14 ... interview I'd ever done. All of the questions were like this, where they were real, real scenarios where they got you to basically... It wasn't a riddle, like some abstract riddle about like how many toilet seats are there in the Bay Area, and it wasn't canned, um, you know, pre-prepped like character questions where you just cherry-pick one example that makes you look good versus the, you know, reality. I was like, oh, they're, this is a problem-solving job and they're trying to see how I problem solve. And they were all different variations of try to solve this problem, but it's like a real problem, not like a very arbitrary problem that like doesn't even, is not even relevant to what's going on.

Sam Parr 47:47 What level did you get?

Shaan Puri 47:49 Now, what, what was it last, last, last pod? I don't mean to toot my own horn, but beep beep. The guy told me that it was the highest, it was the, it was of all M&A that they had done, it was the highest, um, like feedback rating they'd ever got. Now, when he said that, I knew I had been pretty much bullshitting the whole time during the interview, so I was like, I respected them even more. I'm like, these guys just wanna win the deal. Like, that's clearly what they want. They don't actually care about my interview. They know that they didn't just flatter me and that this is gonna totally work as it is working right now. I can feel myself blushing. I was like, wow, these guys are really smart. They, they threw out the actual interview results and they just told me what I wanted to hear to get me to pick them 'cause they already had decided before the interview that they wanted to buy our company. Um, anyways, the last thing I was gonna say, Pomp, the, there were so many people that were at Facebook that you've never heard of. 'Cause there's people you know of at Facebook. There's Zuck, there's Sheryl, then there's like the Chamath level, then there's even like Sam Lessin. The guys I had ta- uh, that interviewed with us I guarantee you guys have never heard of him. Do you know this guy Vijay Raji? Do you know this guy Vivek? You probably never heard of these guys, right? They were so impressive. These guys were so impressive, and not just impressive, like, in the interview. Then their track record was impressive. I was like, "So what have you been working on here at Facebook? I've never, you know, heard of you guys." They're like, "Well, we built the, uh, games, like the HTML games inside of messaging." And I was like, "Okay. How, how'd that go? Like, do some people use that?" They're like, "Well, honestly it kind of failed in this way, but there was this one part of it that was actually pretty successful. And it brings in like [laughs] whatever. It's like it brings in 500 million a year now." And they're like, "You know, that was like kind of like an okay hit, but our big hit was working on this." And then he's like, "Yeah, this guy Vivek..." He's like, "You know how Office went from like, Microsoft Office went from something you down- buy a disk and you download and you, like, type in the key, you pay $30 once, to like this thing in the cloud, Office 365, that you pay every month for?" He goes, "Yeah, he created that." Like, he was at Microsoft. He, like, created that at his desk. Nobody kind of believed that that's the direction they should, they should go. He did it anyways on his own nights and weekends, and then kinda like powered that through and got that approved, and now that's, like, the way that Microsoft works. And I was like, "You guys are the no-names at Facebook. Holy shit. Uh, the level of talent at this place is insane."

Sam Parr 49:53 Dude, it is insane. I remember taking tours there, uh, cu- when my wife worked at Facebook, and I would just walk around the campus and I would just see some of the conversations and hear some of the conversations. And I was just starting The Hustle, which is just a daily newsletter, and I was pumped that I had 100,000 people a day reading it. And I just remember walking around and I'm like, "I'm, I'm a piece of shit. I'm nothing. Like, I am nobody. Give me one of these Facebook vests. I want one of these. I'm in."

Shaan Puri 50:19 Did you see the vending machine where they have, like, MacBook chargers that you could just, like, push A3 and a, just a giant tr- like, brick charger will drop out for you?

Sam Parr 50:26 Yeah. I'm like, "Dude, I just bought four computers on Craigslist for $800 a piece-

Shaan Puri 50:30 [laughs]

Sam Parr 50:30 ... and that was a big deal for me. And, like, I'm out here and you guys have a vending machine with mouse and Dr. Dre headphones in it. Like, what the fuck?

Shaan Puri 50:37 [laughs]

Sam Parr 50:37 Get... Sign me up. I'm in.

Anthony Pompliano 50:40 The thing that Shaan was talking about with the interview, um, so there's three different tracks in the interviews when I was there. Um, and I w- I didn't believe I was a good interviewer. Like, I didn't know how to pick talent, basically. And so one of the things that you can do is you can, like, volunteer to do the interviews more often. Um, as a product manager, like, they don't have, like, oh, that's the person who does all the hiring. But the current product managers hire the prospective new product managers. And so, like, the current team kind of, like, does the interviews, right? And so of these three tracks, the one that Shaan talked about was the favorite one that I liked to do, 'cause it was, like, the most practical. And so the example I used to give is, like, you launch something, 50% of your traffic is down. Uh, you come in Monday morning, what do you do? I probably did over 100 interviews in, like, an 18-month period. And so you hear all these answers, and there's only one time ever somebody said something to me, and I immediately was like, "Hire." Like, h- strong hire. He goes, um, "I would immediately alert the entire team we have a problem." Like, everyone else would jump to solve the problem, but it was so obvious, like, this guy's worked on teams before. He understands, like, what happens in these scenarios. Like, communication is key. Like, everything that was wrapped in this, like, one single sentence. And I remember just being like, man, you can tell the greats from, like, the pretty goods in, you know, a 30-minute conversation just walking through a practical example, because all of the, uh, lessons learned show up. Um, and, and so I do think that's one of the strongest things that Facebook does in, in terms of, like, talent, uh, filtering.

Sam Parr 52:02 What, uh, what are the other companies that you like?

Anthony Pompliano 52:05 All right. So, uh, there's a, a b- bunch of companies that I'm gonna put in, like, the middle bucket, which are, like, the 10X potentials. Uh, Eight Sleep I think is a huge business.

Sam Parr 52:14 Really? I think they're huge. You think it's 10X, though, to go?

Shaan Puri 52:17 You're like, "It's huge, but not a business." [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 52:19 No, no. [laughs]

Sam Parr 52:20 [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 52:21 Yeah. I, I, I think Eight Sleep. So, like, you know, look, I, I, I'm very, uh, good friends with a lot of folks there. Uh, I think that they are probably one of the best operators, uh, like, team of operators. Uh, they do a lot of revenue. They have only, like, a 80 or 85 employees. Uh, I believe that they've publicly said that the company's been profitable. And they're selling a hardware product plus all of the software. Um, and some of the things that they're building now are just, like, really cool. And I think a lot about, like, 10X economic opportunity, uh, is not just, like, "Hey, can we make more money?" But you also have to have really, really strong mission. And so their whole idea of, like, for eight hours a day, no one tends to a human. Can they compress that? Can they make it healthier? Can they, you know, do things like body scans, et cetera? Like, all these kinda cool things. Um, I think that's a huge opportunity for someone. The second is Varda. Uh, the whole idea of, like, let's go to space is not new, but let's go to space to help us back here on Earth is huge. And so what Varda does is they've created, uh, space manufacturing facilities. They launch them up into space. They're right now manufacturing drugs in zero gravity, and then they're bringing it back to Earth. And so I think that, that's a pretty big one. Um-

Shaan Puri 53:29 Wait, wait. Explain that. W- w- I forgot. What's the reason to do the manufacturing in space?

Anthony Pompliano 53:34 It, it's a little unclear as to, like, what all-

Sam Parr 53:36 [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 53:36 ... of the reasons are gonna be so far, but two quick ones are, like, there are some drugs that, uh, it's either very difficult or not possible to, uh, currently manufacture, you know, with gravity. So, like, zero gravity is a huge component of it. And then the second thing is if they're able to do this correctly, it actually may be cheaper to do some of this in space than it is on Earth. And so it's like their big macro bet is just, like, use space for the benefit of Earth rather than everyone else who wants to go to space to, like, conquer Mars or, you know, the moon or, or, or whatever else.

Shaan Puri 54:05 But dude, how does that make sense? How could it be cheaper to do in something in space?

Sam Parr 54:08 [laughs] Yeah.

Shaan Puri 54:08 You have to get to space in a rocket, and you have to have labor in space. [laughs] Like, how can it possibly only be cheaper, dude?

Anthony Pompliano 54:15 No, there's, there's no labor. So that's the thing is they've built this, like, automated manufacturing, like, box, basically. And so you don't need any labor. And then now, like, the other thing you have to remember is, like, rocket launches are super cheap, uh, compared to what they historically were. And then it's not like SpaceX is, like, getting a rocket just for Varda, right? They're, like, bringing tons of things up there all at once, and so now you have, like, shared cost of an already, you know, 10X or more cheaper rocket. And so the math ends up working, uh, i- in a really interesting way.

Shaan Puri 54:44 We got, we gotta get that guy. What's his name? Dillian? We gotta get him on the pod to explain this.

Anthony Pompliano 54:47 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 54:47 I'm gonna be like, "And I'm not gonna let him do no hand-wavy shit."

Anthony Pompliano 54:50 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 54:50 I'm gonna be like, "No, no, no, no, no. Oh, the box manufactures it in space, and it's cheaper than renting a place in Lexington? Like, all right."

Anthony Pompliano 54:58 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 54:58 "Walk me through that line by line. There's no way, right? Like, this is crazy."

Anthony Pompliano 55:02 You guys bring him on, and we'll see what he says.

Shaan Puri 55:04 Uh, he's obviously right. Like, he's, he's, he's not wrong. I just don't get it, and I want somebody to explain it to me. 'Cause there's gotta be other people out there that are like, "Uh, how does this work exactly?" [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 55:14 [laughs]

Sam Parr 55:15 All right, everyone. Quick break, 'cause I've got a thrill of the shill. I've got something to shill. So here's the deal. About eight weeks ago, I released this new podcast called MoneyWise where we break down different people's financials, meaning we look at what their income is, we look at how much money they spend, and they break down their portfolio, and then we'll dive deep on a certain topic that's a little psychological like what, what do you spend on that makes you happy, things like that. Well, I said I was only gonna make more episodes if you people begged me to make more because they're really hard to make, and you did, so I made more. So we have a season of seven episodes. The first one's released today. Right now it's live. In this first episode, it's with a guy who spends roughly $250,000 a month, and we broke down exactly what he spends his money on, his net worth, his portfolio, everything. It's pretty surprising that people give out this information, and so I'm really proud of this podcast, so you can check it out. The first episode is live now. Look up MoneyWise. You can find it on YouTube, but, uh, right now it's not video. It's only audio, but the audio's on YouTube and then Spotify, iTunes, wherever you get your podcasts. Check it out, and then tweet at me, theSamParr. Let me know what you guys think because I'll make more after th- these next seven, but again, only if you love 'em, and I need to know if you actually do. So it's called MoneyWise. It's a podcast by Hampton, my company, joinhampton.com, and let me know what you guys think. theSamParr is my Twitter. All right, back to the pod.

Anthony Pompliano 56:31 So the-

Sam Parr 56:32 What? [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 56:32 ... the third one I, I'm shy to share this one 'cause Sam's head's gonna explode, but, uh, Figure.ai, uh, definitely I think is one. Um, so for those that don't understand what they're doing, um, you know, human labor is becoming a huge problem where there's just not enough people to do all the jobs. People get sick, they're tired, they only work so many hours, all that kind of stuff. And so this rise of, like, robotics, but not just, like, Boston Dynamic, like, dog robots. Actual, like, what they call humanoid robots. Um, so these are, like, human-looking things that walk around a warehouse. They can pick things up. They can pack things. They can kind of do all the things a human could do. Um, and one of the best things, I, I texted Shaan this, like one of the best ways to evaluate a company is, like, what enemies they pick. And so, uh, here the guy, uh, Brett, who runs Figure.ai, he basically picked Elon Musk as, like, his competitor. And so-

Shaan Puri 57:23 [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 57:23 ... like, you gotta be a little crazy. You gotta be a little ambitious. You gotta raise a lot of money. This guy's raised, you know, I think over a billion dollars now, um, to go after this opportunity. But the other thing that's really interesting is, like, as an investor, historically people paid attention to demographics, how old a population was, you know, how fast it was growing, all that. Now you're gonna have to actually pay attention to robotics, and Balaji Srinivasan's talked a lot about this, where, uh, if you don't have enough people in society, you're gonna have to replace them with robots. And so measuring, like, how many robots are coming off the production line may be a better sense of, like, where you should be investing versus the human demographics. Um, but I think that's a big one.

Sam Parr 58:00 Once they raised their first round at $300 million, I went and toured their, like, factory or whatever, and I went back, I go, "Sarah, let's move there. You're gonna get a job there. We gotta..." And she's like, "Uh, I don't know anything about robotics." I'm like, "I already bought the books. You got some reading tonight." [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 58:16 [laughs]

Sam Parr 58:16 "Uh, we're gonna get you to work, honey. It's gonna be okay. We're gonna get you caught up." [laughs] It's like I'm the tiger mom. Uh [laughs]

Shaan Puri 58:23 Yeah. [laughs]

Sam Parr 58:24 It's like, "Don't worry."

Shaan Puri 58:26 We- we enrolled you in Kumon. Y- you'll be ready in three weeks. [laughs]

Sam Parr 58:29 Yeah. [laughs] The coffee's brewing. It's gonna be a late night, so, uh, come on. Chop, chop, let's get to work. [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 58:37 The, um, I've got three more for you, is, uh, Traba. I don't know if you guys have heard of, uh, of this company. It's one of the fastest company, uh, growing companies in Founders Fund's portfolio. What they figured out is, uh, similar to, like, Uber, where you press a button and a car shows up, all of these light industrial manufacturing facilities, they need tons of labor, so kind of the other side of the problem that Figure's going after. So that what they do is they go to these, like, temp, uh, work providers, but the problem is that the temp work providers, you'll be like, "Hey, I need a, I need 50 people tomorrow." And they'll be like, "Cool. We'll send you 30," 'cause that's all they have. And then of the 30 that they're supposed to send you, like 20 of them show up, and five of them are, like, hungover from the night before, right? So it's just like, it's a horrible experience. It's super expensive, all this stuff.

Sam Parr 59:16 And this is the company where, like, the investors brag about the n- uh, like on their About page, they're like, "We're a 996 company," right?

Anthony Pompliano 59:23 Savages. I, I met the founders, and they were like, "We have an Olympian's work ethic." And I was like, "I'm in." [laughs] Like, "We're just gonna outwork everyone." [laughs]

Shaan Puri 59:31 You know the truth about this company. So I, um, I should've invested in this company. I had a chance to invest and see. I was like... I, and then before I even heard the pitch, I said, "I'm in," because I heard something very similar to what you just said, Pomp. Not the Olympian's work ethic, the spelling bee champion's work ethic. The guy who started the company went to Duke, and I know his brother, and they both, the brothers, were, like, ESP- on the ESPN spelling bee, like, you know, one of them won it, and then the, the guy who started Traba, he's the guy who fainted mid-word. Do you remember that clip of the guy who starts spelling the word, he passes out, stands up, and finishes the word? [laughs] It's the most incredible clip-

Anthony Pompliano 1:00:08 I did not know that

Shaan Puri 1:00:09 ... in ESPN history. Forget LeBron. Forget Michael Jordan. This kid, starting to spell a word, passes out, gets up, says nothing about passing out, and just finishes spelling the word flawlessly-

Sam Parr 1:00:20 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:00:20 ... was absolutely incredible. He's the founder of Traba. When I heard that, I'm like, "I'm in. Just send me... Tell me where to wire the detail, uh, wire the money." And then unfortunately got too smart. I asked my partner, who knows a lot about staffing. He's like, "Well, it could be hard for all these reasons." And I was like, "I guess you know more than I do. I'm just basing this off the spelling bee performance."

Anthony Pompliano 1:00:37 Sadly.

Shaan Puri 1:00:38 Turns out I should've just trusted my gut.

Anthony Pompliano 1:00:39 [laughs]

Sam Parr 1:00:40 Turns out he's done all right.

Shaan Puri 1:00:43 I've met him... I, I met his brother at a party, and he had won the t- the script s- spelling bee, right? I've seen him on ESPN. I see him at a party. I recognize this kid from ESPN. I'm like, "You, I've seen you before." I was like, "You're the spelling kid." He's like, "Uh, yeah, how'd, how'd you know? That's, that was years ago." And I go, "Dude." And this is annoying drunk Shaan.

Sam Parr 1:01:01 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:01:01 "Dude, dude, everybody, wait. Dude."

Sam Parr 1:01:03 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:01:04 "Spell my name."

Sam Parr 1:01:05 [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 1:01:05 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:01:06 And he goes, and he goes, "I du- I don't know your name."

Anthony Pompliano 1:01:08 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:01:09 I go, "It's Shaan." And he goes, "Uh, I don't know, S-H-A-W-N?" I go, "No, I beat him. I beat him."

Anthony Pompliano 1:01:15 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:01:15 As if I spelled something, as if he, him spelling my name S-H-A-A-N meant anything. And that was the only time I ever interacted with this guy. The next day I was mortified.

Anthony Pompliano 1:01:23 [laughs] What a-

Shaan Puri 1:01:23 I was like, "Dude, what a absolute douche I was last night."

Anthony Pompliano 1:01:27 [laughs]

Sam Parr 1:01:27 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:01:27 And I've been hoping to meet this guy again so I can apologize for this 15 years ago of like, "Bro, sorry I made you spell your name at that party."

Anthony Pompliano 1:01:33 Now, now we know why he didn't send you the wire details. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:01:35 No, that was his brother. Yeah, that was his brother. Two different guys. He became... But his brother became, like, a, a very successful poker player, and then, and did a bunch of interesting things that way. Both-

Anthony Pompliano 1:01:43 Yeah

Shaan Puri 1:01:43 ... I think spelling bee is, like, one of those hotbeds of, of, like, if you can get obsessed, and, about this, um, like, a intellectual pursuit, you know, it means two things. Your parents are incredibly overbearing, and you're incredibly smart. And so, you know, that usually will lead to, to success.

Anthony Pompliano 1:01:59 100%. Um, next one is, uh, Placer.ai. Uh, so I'm, I, I've invested in most of these companies. The only one, uh, OpenAI, Anduril, and Figure.ai I, I wish that I had. Um, but, uh, Placer, they basically, uh, it's this Israeli guy, and he was like, "Hey, I'm gonna use, like, cell phones to create better mobile analytics." Not like what you're doing on the phone, but, like, where you are. So originally, his, like, pitch was like, "Hey, I'm gonna, like, be able to tell people when you drive into the parking lot, and then, like, what aisles you walk through in the store, and we're gonna sell all this analytics." Like really, really granular, uh, kind of location data. They just publicly announced that they're doing $100 million in annual revenue. Um, and so when you look at that, again, like-

Shaan Puri 1:02:39 It's for real estate, right?

Anthony Pompliano 1:02:41 That, that's where they've seen a lot of people buy. But like, I think also, like, some hedge funds and a couple of other folks, uh, buy the data as well. Um, you know, $100 million is pretty much de-risked it, and this is like if you wanna have a career in, like, B2B, you know, software or analytics, like, obviously you're not gonna go to, like, an Anduril, right? That's kind of, like, off-brand o- o- off industry. But I think Placer's, like, still got probably a 10X, uh, potential upside.

Sam Parr 1:03:03 What's their, uh, valuation in their latest round?

Anthony Pompliano 1:03:06 I think the latest public one is, like, a billion dollars, so kind of like 10 times revenue. Um, so it's not-

Sam Parr 1:03:11 Oh, wow

Anthony Pompliano 1:03:11 ... hard to see a business that, you know, already doing $100 million in annual revenue, uh, growing pretty quickly, um, you know, so it's got some upside to it.

Shaan Puri 1:03:19 This is probably my favorite one of yours so far. Do you got any other ones? You had one more maybe?

Anthony Pompliano 1:03:22 Uh, I, I've got two more that are kinda related. So, um, e- everyone's all excited about, like, the deep tech stuff. Uh, I, I invested in this company called Rainmaker, and so Rainmaker makes it rain. They're flying precision drones into clouds.

Sam Parr 1:03:37 [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 1:03:37 And they're dropping chemicals in the clouds to make it rain. Um, and so, like, that's kinda crazy. That is probably the riskiest one.

Shaan Puri 1:03:46 Wow.

Anthony Pompliano 1:03:47 And then, um, kinda simultaneous to that, uh, if you look at, like, what's, like, the cybersecurity version of all these deep tech companies, there's this guy, Joshua Steinman, who left, uh... I think he was on the National Security Council, uh, in the Trump administration, and he, like, realized, "Wait a minute, like, there's no companies that protect all of our public infrastructure." So, like, the example he gave me was, uh, imagine what happens if someone can hack, like, the water treatment plants and change the pH levels of the water and have, like, massive, you know, carnage or, like, you know, really, really screw with a, like, a local area by simply hacking this, like, one facility that's public infrastructure and doing something nefarious. And so he's creating a company called Galvanick. Uh, again, it's super small, probably, you know, on the higher end of the risk, uh, spectrum, but just, like, a really cool mission of, um, if you're able to protect public infrastructure, there's, like, unlimited demand for this type of service. Uh, and you can see how these businesses could get quite big, uh, given, you know, all the concerns with our adversaries and people kinda getting better at cyber warfare, et cetera.

Shaan Puri 1:04:50 Dude, dude, I, I love that idea. That's a great idea.

Sam Parr 1:04:52 That's great. And what, and what was that called?

Anthony Pompliano 1:04:55 Galvanick, G-A-L-V-A-N-I-C-K.

Sam Parr 1:05:00 Wow. That one and this make rain thing are, are pretty wild.

Anthony Pompliano 1:05:05 Yeah. The, the Rainmaker one, like, um, people have been doing... It's called cloud seeding. People have been doing that for a while. Uh, and they're specifically doing it in, like, China and the Middle East and stuff. But, uh, there's a world where, like, not only can they make it rain, but also if you can change the weather pattern, like, you may be able to, like, prevent, uh, hurricanes from hitting land and, you know, doing stuff like that. Now, of course, you get into this weird world that, like, the second someone's like, "Hey, I can, like, change the weather," people are like-

Shaan Puri 1:05:33 Right

Anthony Pompliano 1:05:33 ... "No."

Shaan Puri 1:05:34 Play God.

Anthony Pompliano 1:05:34 [laughs] Like, yeah, you're trying to play God. Whatever. Um, but, but I think that, uh, where they're starting in terms of, like, going to farmers and being like, "Hey, you know, get what is basically precipitation in the s- in the clouds just to fall," um, you know, it's a worthwhile mission and, and, uh, the founder's awesome. He's got a mullet. He, he works out. He squ- He has a squat rack in the office.

Sam Parr 1:05:52 [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 1:05:53 And he's just like, "We are going to be successful." So, you know, let's see what happens.

Shaan Puri 1:05:58 D- dude, maybe I should do that for all my portfolio companies, just gift them a squat rack.

Anthony Pompliano 1:06:02 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:06:03 Just increase returns in my portfolio 20%. [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 1:06:06 I mean, there, there is definitely, uh, gotta be some sort of study that, like, one, people who just are in better shape, like, you have more energy, you think clearer, you know, all that kinda stuff.

Shaan Puri 1:06:15 Dude, we gotta ask you about two things. This Solana bet you did. W- explain this. This was, uh, this was baller. W- Sam, do you know about this?

Sam Parr 1:06:22 No, what happened?

Anthony Pompliano 1:06:24 So, um, I had a bunch of, uh, ETH, uh, Ethereum, uh, back from when I was mining it. Um, and it was just kinda, like, sitting there. It'd gone up a lot. And, uh, at, towards the end of last year, uh, I was sitting there and I was just like, "Why am I holding this?" Like, deciding to hold an asset is an active decision every day. So I'm basically, like, saying I should go long Ethereum every day that I don't sell this. And I'd been scared about, uh, like triggering taxes and like all, like, the normal lies you tell yourself as to, like, why not to make a decision. And I just said to myself, like, "Okay, if I am gonna sell this and not buy more Bitcoin, what else would I buy?" And so I, like, went through a bunch of the cryptocurrencies, and I was just like, "I think Solana is going to go up a lot. It's gonna go up a lot more than Bitcoin. I think it's gonna go up a lot more than Ethereum, uh, in this specific bull market 'cause of the smaller market cap. There's a lot of energy and excitement around it, and, and, and all that." And so, um, over the years, I've learned how to kinda, like, put positions on, which I think is also, like, a very under-discussed thing. I didn't, like, sell everything and then just buy this asset. Instead, what I did is, uh, I bought a little bit of Solana at $48. It started to go up a little bit more. And usually when that happens, people are like, "Oh, cool, I was right." Instead, I doubled the bet at 55. Like, the position is going in your favor, and so I doubled down because it's sh- telling me, like, the market's telling me I'm right. It kept going up. Uh, I then sold 100% of the Ethereum, and I bought Solana at $73, I think it was. And so it gave me, like, a, a blended price around, like, 65 bucks. And so Solana just went on a tear, went to $120. And I was like, "Oh, wow, that was awesome." Like, "Hopefully it keeps going." And that was it. I was, like, done. But then the price started to fall, and as it fell, it fell from, like, 120 to 110 to 100, and I woke up one day and it was at $80. And over the years, I've just learned, like, nothing's changed with the thesis. I got no more Ethereum to sell to, like, you know, convert over. So I'm like, "I'm going into the bank account." And I just went and got more cash and bought it at 80, which happened to be about a 30% drawdown, which historically in crypto has been, like, a pretty good spot. And then it's ripped all the way up to, like, 190-ish. Um, and so it's been a great trade, but also it is, uh... I'm only able to do it because I've been doing this long enough and, like, learned how to put the positions on, how to think about, like, when the position goes in your favor to add, not, like, sell and take profits. Um, but you also have to know what you own. And, like, I don't think I'll own Solana, like, five or 10 years from now. It's very much, like, for the next year, I'm very bullish on this. Um, and then, like, we'll see what happens. Whereas Bitcoin, like, I'll hold forever and don't think that I'll ever sell it.

Shaan Puri 1:09:03 First of all, I mean, kind of very, uh, you know, good trade. So first of all, the, uh, very, very well done. Not h- not easy to do what you just described. The psychology around what you just described is, I think, more important than, than the why. But I do wanna ask you, you said the word thesis on Solana. So I have a buddy who has a insane amount of Solana. He owns, like, $40 or $50 million of Solana. And I think this guy's nuts for doing it. He's a very smart guy in general, but I'm, I asked him, I'm like, "Why, why do you own this absurd amount of Solana? This isn't, like, what do you know that I don't know? Please tell me so I can go buy it if you have some, like, incredible thesis." And he's like, "I just, I li- I think it's gonna go up." That number go up-

Anthony Pompliano 1:09:45 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:09:46 ... thesis. And he's like, "Well, I think it's gonna be a bull market. In a bull market, it's usually these kind of, like, second, third, third, fourth, fifth coins that, like, get the highest run-up. Um, I see a lot of energy in the ecos-" The people like these, like, all of a sudden it starts to sound a lot like, I don't know, like, uh, you know, we're talking, like, horoscope-type language for me. And so I'm like, br- and I've been telling him, I'm like, "Dude, please just sell this thing." And then he's like, "Oh, I just feel like the energy. I feel like I see it a lot on Twitter." It's like, oh my God, dude, are you sure that this is the reason to have $40 or $50 million of Solana? That is an absurd amount of this thing.

Anthony Pompliano 1:10:21 Yeah. On, on one hand, it sounds crazy. You're like, "Oh, it's like the energy," whatever. On the other hand, like, i- in this person's defense, what I would say is, um, when I first started investing, somebody told me, like, follow the developers. Like, that's, like, a great investing strategy. And so there is, like, a lot of development activity that's shifting. The other thing is, there is a pretty, like, well-thought-out investment strategy of, like, I wanna buy the things that everyone's gonna buy tomorrow, today. Rather, like, I, like, if everyone else is gonna build a thesis around something, then I wanna buy it, uh, before they do. Like, be contrarian, that becomes consensus. And I love the George Soros quote. He's like, "When I see a bubble, I rush in." Right? [laughs] Like, like the whole point is that bubbles-

Shaan Puri 1:10:59 [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 1:10:59 ... kinda, like, go bigger and further than you think that they can. Um, and so let's just say that, like, Solana is a bubble. Selling an asset at the beginning of a bull market is usually in, in crypto, like, a pretty bad strategy. Um, but also, uh, as assets get bigger, the returns go down. And so I don't think it's crazy to say, like, "Oh, there's a lot of activity around this. There's a really strong narrative or meme. Um, there's tons of coins and, and things that are being launched on this." And Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana probably all go up, but if you had to pick one of the three that goes up the most, well, it's probably the smaller market cap asset that likely will outperform. And, and so I don't think it's, like, the craziest, uh, theory. The question is, what is your thesis on when to sell? And that's what people in crypto, including myself over the years, like, we have messed that up over and over and over again because timing markets is nearly impossible. And when an asset goes up hundreds of percent, you're like, "Well, of course it's gonna double from here." And then next thing you know, it's down 50%,

Anthony Pompliano 1:11:58 you're like, "Shit."

Shaan Puri 1:11:58 So what are you thinking with the Solana one? What are you gonna do?

Anthony Pompliano 1:12:01 My theory in crypto now is, uh, selling is less to do with price levels. Like, like in, um, the public markets, people will hold a stock and they're like, "Okay, if this ever gets overvalued, I'm selling. I'm trimming the position." In crypto, it's much more cyclical, and so I actually think that selling is more about w- what, where are we in the cycle, like time, than it is, like, value, right? 'Cause there, it's hard to, like, what is the value versus price, and is this overpriced or underpriced? Like, it, it, it's very difficult to do for these assets. So I think about it a lot more as, like, is it the end of this coming year? Is it, you know, the beginning of next year? Is it the summer of 2025? Like, there's some timeframe that I'll come up with, and I'm like, I don't care what the valuations are. Like, I'm just selling because it seems like the right time in the cycle, more so than I have a price target for any one of these assets.

Sam Parr 1:12:49 What was the second thing you were gonna ask him about, uh, Shaan?

Shaan Puri 1:12:52 Andrew Tate. Uh, Pomp interviewed Andrew Tate before he was Tate. You, you, you were on Tate before Tate. Uh, what's the guy like? You, you met him in person, right?

Anthony Pompliano 1:13:01 Um, I did meet him in person. He, uh, uh, did an interview together in Miami. Um-

Shaan Puri 1:13:07 Why'd you interview him at that time? Was he kinda big? Is that... Uh, was he, like, kind of interesting person, or what, what was the context?

Anthony Pompliano 1:13:13 I, I don't really think that he had s- maybe he'd said a couple of crazy things online. Like, crazy in the sense that, you know, like, people were like, "Oh, whatever," like, reacting to it. But, um, you know, he's a four-time world champion kickboxer. Uh, we had, like, DM'd a couple of times. Um, I, I actually thought that he was just, like, an interesting person from the perspective of, like, he had a lot of, uh, uh, commentary about things that people either weren't willing to say or, um, like, made me think, and didn't mean I agreed with everything. It just, like, when you w- when you find those people, you kinda are like, "Hey, tell me all your world views, and then, like, I'll sift through the bullshit and figure out, like, what I agree with and what I don't." Um, and so I interviewed him, and he definitely said some, like, things that I was like, "Oh, I, I can't release this interview." Like, you know, "This is kinda, like, a little, uh, little spicy." Um, and so what was interesting is I w- was like, "Hey, I don't know if we're gonna, like, actually ever release this thing. Like, let's just kinda put it on ice, and, and we'll go from there." And then a year later, like, society had changed. Culture had changed. And he was started to, like, become much bigger. He went on a couple of podcasts. He said a lot of the exact same things, and people didn't have a problem with it. So, like, it, it's interesting. Like, he was saying the same thing for, like, a year or two years, but actually culture became, like, a little bit more acceptable of some of the commentary, and including things around, like, you know, uh, um, the vaccine and, like, that type of stuff. And, and, like, I think people just had more information to kind of evaluate these situations. And so I was like, "All right. It's still a little spicy, but, like, let's release it." And one of the, like, final points to deciding whether we were gonna release it or not was I didn't really care so much about the, like, really hardcore, uh, perspectives as much as, like, who are you as a person? Like, how do you make money? Like, kinda like, you know, the business and the person behind these thoughts.

Sam Parr 1:14:54 What was his business at the time? Hustler University, like his course?

Anthony Pompliano 1:14:58 He, he had a bunch of them. They were, like, online businesses. Uh, he, you know, he described them a- actually, it was the first time that ever a podcast episode I had done was, like, cited in articles where people were, like, writing hit pieces or, like, you know, critiquing him, and then they were, like, referencing things on the podcast. So I'd get, like, a Google Alert notification, like, "Oh," like, "you've been mentioned in, like, The New Yorker," or whatever. And I'm like, "Oh, must be awesome." Like, obviously, I'm a cool guy. And then you go and you're like, "Oh, I'm in an article where they're, like, you know, talking about misogyny and, like, all these things." I'm like, "Oh, okay."

Shaan Puri 1:15:29 [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 1:15:30 Um, and so, uh, at the end of that interview, he, he asked me, he's like, "What's the one thing you disagree with me today?" And what I say to him in the interview is I said to him, I said, "Every single thing that you're saying has, like, this, like, kernel of truth, but then you, like, extract it and have this, like, bombastic wrapper that basically is gonna go viral online." And he kinda, like, cracks a little bit and breaks character, and he's just like, "Ah, you're a smart man." He, like, shakes my hand. And I think, like, that was the biggest takeaway was people don't become viral and successful without being highly intelligent, and he very well understood the human psychology and the way the internet worked. Um, and so he had a message. He wanted to get that message out to people. He was able to communicate in a very effective way. Um, and so people might not agree with everything he said, but if you look at his tactics, they have pretty much become standard in a lot of people's, like, marketing today. And so people kinda, like, saw this guy be successful on the internet, get a message out, and now you have a bunch of companies and individuals that are trying to replicate it. And maybe it's not the same message, but, like, that structure was pioneering. And so you've gotta be able to, like, evaluate people and say, "Hey, I understand you for who you are. I agree with some things you say. I disagree with other things you say." And then, like, "Can I learn something from you?" And to me, the learning was, uh, he really, really understood marketing and communicating on the internet in a way that I don't think a lot of people did before they kinda saw what he did.

Sam Parr 1:16:58 Yeah, and he kind of paid the, paid the fucking price for it, too. I-

Anthony Pompliano 1:17:03 Well, in hindsight, like, that's the second, you know, lesson is, like, don't become the main character.

Shaan Puri 1:17:07 [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 1:17:08 Right? Is like-

Sam Parr 1:17:09 Yeah, or, or if you are, you better be ready to pay that price. [laughs]

Anthony Pompliano 1:17:12 Yeah. A- a- and it's just, you know, I, I ask myself a lot. Look, I, I have a number of very successful friends who, um, nobody's ever heard of before, right? And I'm sometimes like, "Man, that's an amazing life." Like, y- like, you figured it out. You figured out how to be super successful, and also no one knows who you are. Um, there's a lot of other people who, like, they enjoy talking to folks, right? You know, uh, Patrick Bet-David, I saw a clip of him recently, and he was talking about the fact when he sold his insurance company, he was like, "I wanted to do something for the rest of my life that I enjoyed, and talking to people and learning from them was, like, the thing." And so he went and he did all this media stuff and, and whatever. And so I think you just gotta, like, know who you are as a person. Like, what are you trying to accomplish professionally? What i- what is your, uh, comfort level with, like, privacy and, like, personal, you know, kind of notoriety? Um, and it's different for everybody. And so, yeah, if you wanna become the main character, then definitely you gotta be ready for, you know, everything that comes with that, good or bad.

Shaan Puri 1:18:04 Well, dude, you're dressed as the main character today.

Sam Parr 1:18:07 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:18:07 You came on here.

Sam Parr 1:18:08 You're looking good.

Shaan Puri 1:18:09 Best dressed award for 2024 is in your hands.

Anthony Pompliano 1:18:12 Nice.

Shaan Puri 1:18:12 Somebody has to come take that belt out of your hands for My First Million. Thanks for coming on, dude. It's always fun to talk to you.

Anthony Pompliano 1:18:17 Thanks for having me.

Sam Parr 1:18:19 All right. That's the pod. [upbeat music]