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My First MillionThis App Entrepreneur Made $10,000,000 By Cloning A Viral Game
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65 min read · 12,954 words- 0:00 – 23:00
Wordle copycats
- BLBen Levy
[upbeat music] Yeah, so got a crazy story for you guys. So you might have seen the app Wordle recently. Have you guys seen it?
- SPSam Parr
Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
I've been playing it, yeah.
- SPSam Parr
New York Times just bought it.
- SPShaan Puri
You play?
- BLBen Levy
Yeah. So New York Times just bought it, but about two weeks ago, one of my friends, he's a great mobile app developer, a bootstrapper, he basically was like, "Oh, Wordle is going viral, and there's no mobile app that everyone's using." So like the Wordle guy had put out this crazy stor- he put out this story about how he was pure, he didn't wanna monetize it. It was just a toy for his girlfriend. It went viral out of nowhere, which I don't know if I believe 'cause he works at Mischief, and like I'm not sure I totally buy that story. Uh, but that was his story to the media. So my friend was like, "Holy shit. There's a huge opportunity for someone to build the mobile app." Uh, this guy doesn't own the trademark of the name. Uh, it's kind of like riffed off an old game show. So my friend built an app over the weekend, called it Wordle the App. Uh, went viral. So basically like over the weekend got like 30,000 organic downloads, was top of the app store. And my friend's one of these guys who likes to build in public, so he tweets everything. He always has. He used to like put his portfolio up so you could see everything he's doing and-
- SPShaan Puri
Sam, by the way, this is, this is gonna support your build-in-public thesis, uh, by the way. This is like the perfect case study of w- of how you feel about build in public, which is I like it in theory. It's like the face tattoo thing, right? I like that other people do it. I don't wanna do it, and here's why. Here's the cautionary tale, like when, you know, when the DARE officer brings like, you know, someone [laughs] who's like been in jail for drugs to the classroom to tell the story.
- SPSam Parr
Like it's like a, this is like a before and after of meth. Uh-
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah [laughs] exactly.
- SPSam Parr
Like it's like they're wrecking. But Shaan, explain what Wordle is because all I know, I don't play word games.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah.
- SPSam Parr
I play real sports. And so, uh- [laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
I'm not, I'm not trying, I don't waste my time with that.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
So when, when people are... What, what is this game?
- SPShaan Puri
It's a game. Okay, so this, it's a simple game. You, you literally, if you just, the way I get to it, you just Google Wordle. First link, you click it, and it's just five, um, empty like letters, like five squares where you gotta guess, guess a word. There's no clues. It's not like a crossword. It's literally just like guess a, guess a word. So you type in a word. You might type in, like I always start with irate 'cause Dharmesh from HubSpot t- said the word irate has three vowels plus the letter T plus the letter R, so you're getting a lot of common-
- SPSam Parr
Yeah
- SPShaan Puri
... letters there. So it's a great start word. So you type that, that word in, and then it'll tell you, either it'll either show up gray, which means the letter's not in the word; yellow, which means it's in the word but you got it in the wrong spot; or green, which is this is the right letter in the right spot. And then you have, I think, five or six guesses to be able to, um, to get the word in the end. And then the, and the beauty of it is at the end it's like you got it. You feel s- the sense of accomplishment. The whole thing takes you like two minutes to play the game, so it's like really easy to play in that sense. And then i- if you get it right, it lets you share that you got it right, but it doesn't share what the word was. It shares like the... Like imagine what you're looking at now, which is like the word and all these colors, but take the letters off. It just shows the colors. So it'll show somebody else, oh man, I started off not having any of the letters. Then I got the T at the, and then I got one letter at the end-
- SPSam Parr
So that's what that score is
- SPShaan Puri
... and then like on the fourth one I got it right.
- SPSam Parr
Okay.
- SPShaan Puri
So that's why you see that grid of green, uh, squares posted on Twitter, and it started going viral on Twitter. So that's the game.
- SPSam Parr
And, and, and what, what's like the score? Okay, so I'm s- I'm-
- SPShaan Puri
Ben just got it. Moist.
- SPSam Parr
Ugh.
- SPShaan Puri
Ben, did you really just play that or are you watching a video?
- SPSam Parr
I think he's playing it.
- SPSpeaker
I already did it this morning. I was trying to just do like an illustration, you know? Just trying to get some accurate B-roll.
- SPSam Parr
All right.
- 23:00 – 34:30
The many businesses of Pomp
- SPSam Parr
want me to tell you about an in- interesting company?
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah. Actually, the, uh, one plug there, so while Ben's here. So we, uh, uh, I don't know when we're gonna talk about The Milk Road. I wanna talk about my new, new, new project that me and Ben have launched, a new company. Uh, but there is a version of this which is the, the one we were like, "All right. This is a great idea, but there's one drawback, which is you have to write this email every day." And it's the same thing. It's a prison. It's like... And we c- we were very conscious about it. It's like, Ben, you wanna sign up for this? This is the prison we're gonna choose, uh, to be in. Like, if, if this is, if this is what we choose, fine. But let's not get here and be surprised because, uh, 'cause that's the commitment we gotta make. We are every night, and so Ben at, you know, midnight after the babies are asleep or whatever, it's like, you know, he's like, "Hey, here's the draft for tomorrow morning's email." And then I, I was up till 2:00 AM last night editing the thing. And so there's definitely a pain in the ass component to it that's, uh, you know, that I, I'm experiencing, which is one-tenth of what Pomp does, but it's more than enough for me.
- SPSam Parr
Dude-
- SPShaan Puri
And you did the same thing with The Hustle
- SPSam Parr
... it's hard, man. It's hard. I, like, I loved it. I mean, it, to me it, it's, like, I think I told you, it's almost like running a marathon or, like, being in a fight or something. It's like you're scared to do it, you do it, and you get in the thick of it, and you, like, kind of enjoy it, and then you get, you get to a point where you can take a break and you're like, "This is horrible. I never wanna do this again."
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Which is how I felt like last year. And then you get, like, six months out and you're like- Fuck, I, I missed the, I missed the action. I need to get, I need to get into it
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
And so it's really hard to, to write a newsletter every single day. To do any type of content creation every single day for more than a year is very, very, very hard.
- SPShaan Puri
Re- really tough. Uh, and we're only, what, less than a month into it. Ben, what's the, uh ... Where are you at in the grind? Like, I think we're, we're giving it a year for, like, how long you c- you could tolerate this and, and sustain this pace. Where are you at right now? You're only in month one.
- BLBen Levy
I'm at the still exciting, still fun to research and write, but I am at the holy shit, Shaan's a way better writer than I am point. Uh-
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- BLBen Levy
But I'm still, it's still fun.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah. Sometimes I wa- I, I go into edit, I'm like, "Oh, let me just to- touch up this little wordsmith," and then, like, I overhaul the whole thing 'cause I'm like, "Ah, no, I think this could be better." And I'm like, "Actually, it was fine before," but, like, I just can't help myself. Like, la- last night ... Actually, this is an interesting point to talk about at S&M, actually. So, uh, so we should say two things. What, what ... We'll talk about what this company is and why we started it. Basically, every year, me and Ben have started one company. Um, last year's company was the e-commerce company, and we grew that from zero to about 10 million in revenue profitably. Uh, and we ... And to do that, like, never had done a physical product before. Never, like, ne- never knew how to get things manufactured and all that. Never had been spending, like, you know, $200,000 a month on Facebook ads and being responsible for that return and making sure you don't grow broke. So, uh, so that was the adventure last year. This year, we were like, "What do we wanna do?" And we basically were like, "Whatever it is, it's gotta be in either crypto or, like, kinda like teaching/audience building." That's the stuff I like to do. Crypto's, like, the topic me and Ben are obsessed with, and that's why we came up with this thing called The Milk Road, which is basically, it's an email you get every day. And we just say, it's kinda like, um, it's the way I got, it's the way I got good at crypto, which was my buddy Furqan, who's way smarter than me. Um, he was like, he, you know, he bought Ethereum in the crowd sale. He bought B- B- ... He was mining Bitcoin back in the day. Like, this guy's just been ahead of the curve on stuff. He's a, he's an engineer. And every day he basically just sends me, like, three links. He's like, "Yo, check this out. You seen this?" I'm always like, "No, I haven't seen it." And then I'm always like, "Wait, what is this? Why is this interesting?" And he's like, "Oh, so the reason this is cool is because A, B, C," and he just breaks it down super simple for, like, a dumbass like me. And I was like, dude, if I could just take that idea and provide that, like, as a newsletter. Like, Furqan doesn't care. He's never gonna create a Substack or a newsletter. He's, like, too smart and too cool for all that shit. But I was like, if I could take that idea of, like, a smart friend just showing you one or two cool things a day that's going on in crypto and explaining it in simple plain Jane English, I think that that would actually be useful. And, uh-
- SPSam Parr
How many subscribers do you guys have?
- SPShaan Puri
So we've been doing it for, I think, three weeks now, and we're at 16 and a half thousand as of today. So it's grown. Like, last week we were at 10,000, so this week alone we've grown about 50% in the last seven days.
- SPSam Parr
What? What was the cause?
- SPShaan Puri
Two things. We turned on, uh, paid ads, and so you referred, or you, you have, you know a guy who, uh, is good with this stuff. He's been helping us out. He's really good, actually. Like, way ... I've tried, like, five agencies for Facebook ads. This guy's, like, better than all of them so far.
- SPSam Parr
How much are you spending to acquire an email?
- SPShaan Puri
Um, right ... I don't wanna say that right now, but it's in the good range. Remember when you were like-
- SPSam Parr
Yeah
- SPShaan Puri
... "Dude, back in the day it used to be X, now it's Y"? We're getting it for X still. But we also are, aren't spending a ton, so maybe as we spend more, that's gonna go down. Um, but honestly, there's such a big appetite for learning crypto, 'cause people know. People kinda know, all right, this seems like the next big wave. Like, you know, there was the internet, there was mobile phones, there was iPhone, and now, like, crypto seems to be the big wave. Super hard to keep up with, and I know there's money to be made. So I think the appetite is there, where I think we're gonna keep getting subscribers for pretty cheap because the appetite ... I've never seen an appetite for content like this in my, in my life. 'Cause I've been trying to make content that people want, and I'm always talking about shit I'm into. And, like, you know, it's often, like, lukewarm.
- SPSam Parr
I think the name is good. I think the name's pretty good. And you're using that platform Beehive. Is that any good?
- SPShaan Puri
Beehive's pretty good. It's pretty new, so, like, there's a lot of features we need where we're like, "Yo, we need to be able to..." For example, if I, um, do a partnership with somebody or what- or somebody plugs us in their newsletter and we may ... Or let's say Facebook ads. We pay for Facebook ads. I need to know if that subscriber, like, worth the same as an organic sub- Like, are they still opening it 20 days later? You know, I need to know, like, based on where they came from, are they still opening it to know where I should put my energy spreading the word. And so they don't have features like that yet, but we're kinda working with them to be like, "Yo, help us." Like-
- SPSam Parr
Good
- SPShaan Puri
... "We need X. Can you build it? We'll be your best customer if you can kinda, like, help us, uh, get what we need."
- SPSam Parr
Sick. I think it's, I, I think it's gonna work. It just, um ... I think that you'll start seeing ... Well, you're already seeing progress. After one year, you're gonna see a lot of progress. And then if you continue to do it for three years, then shit really starts to accumulate. The media really does compound. I, I didn't believe that it did compound because I'm like, "Well, it's not like subscription revenue necessarily." But then I realized, I'm like, yeah, but if I, like, just continue doing this and I get known, you like s- It, it, it becomes-
- SPShaan Puri
Right
- SPSam Parr
... it compounds in terms of cultural relevance, and that usually translates to revenue.
- SPShaan Puri
That's a good point. And I've always said this, uh, and I've always fucked this up. Th- that's the reason I keep saying it, is as, mostly as a reminder to myself. Like, the best advice I give them, the advice I give the most to others is the advice that I've had, is the lesson I've had to relearn five times, 'cause I just can't, like, get it through my thick head. Uh, and that's that what you work on and who you work with matters way more than how hard you work. And to put that another way is the most important decision you make is what project to work on. And so, like, I'll, I'll tell you, like, I've worked on some really shitty projects. Like, uh, we did a hackathon and we built this app called Beer Hunt, and it was like every time you drink a beer, you, like, take a picture of it, you check it in, you get points and shit.
- 34:30 – 41:15
Why what you do and who you do it with is more important than how hard you work
- SPSam Parr
the, the point I'm trying to make is when you're thinking about what gives you energy, it doesn't have to be... You said it, but I don't actually think you meant this this way. You said, "I think this is a big deal." And I don't think that's why it excites you. It excites you just because the, the, I don't know why it excites you, but like the, um, literally just like it's a new money. That's kind of in- interesting. I don't think it would matter if like everyone's talking about it or not. Like I, I, I don't know if you, if that's what excites you. What excites you is like literally the tiny minute details for some reason. It's, it, it just, it, it, the maybe the math. Maybe like you're overfl- overthrowing the system. Something about that is really interesting to you, right? And so for me, I was like, "I just love moving these fucking boxes and moving into a new apartment."
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
I don't know why I love doing that, but like I love going out on the street and hunting for places and talking to the guy at the bar like, "What do you think about this neighborhood? Are all the hipsters-
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah
- SPSam Parr
... moving here?" Like I love it. I get obsessed with it. And like I, what I was trying to do, what sh- I should do next is I was thinking about what do I just get so much energy of. And I remember I cannot sleep the day before I've got to move 'cause I'm so excited.
- SPShaan Puri
That's so funny, but, uh, uh, I think most people hate that. But you love it, which is why it's even more valuable. Uh, when y- when the thing you get energy from is things that drain other people's energy, like bingo, you're gonna out-compete everybody. Because for them it's gonna be working. For you it's gonna be play. Like, uh, my coworker, this guy Paul Gebheim, told me this once. He goes, he was like, um, I hadn't really thought about this. I, I was really young at the time. I was like maybe 24, 24 or 25. And he goes, um, he goes, "Yeah, so you should, um, you should go talk at this event." And I was like, "Uh, why? Is it gonna like give growth to the b- to our app or like are we gonna recruit people?" He's like, "No, you should go talk 'cause you love talking," right? Like he's like, "Talking gives you energy, so you're gonna love it." And I go, "What?" And he goes, he goes, "Yeah, it's like, um, you know, for most people if they had to go give a talk in front of a bunch of people, they would like, they'd be drained by the time they even get up on the stage. And then afterwards, they'd just be like, 'Finally some relief from the anxiety I've been feeling.'" He's like, "You're the opposite." And he's like, "I noticed that." He goes, he goes, "Yeah, it's li-" He says, he goes, he goes, "It's like going to the gym. You know, you go to the gym and like if you just look at the math, it's like well, there's a lot of energy expended working out." But how do you feel after you work out? You feel, yeah, you feel physically a bit tired, but you feel, like your actual spirit feels energized. Um, like you go give energy and somehow you get energy in that moment. And he's like, "So you know, there's some stuff that's energy drains, even though it's not that taxing." It's like just thinking about your t- go think about filing your taxes for like the next 20 minutes. Watch, you'll feel fucking awful by the end of it. You'll go need a nap or a drink. Um, and it's like on the other hand, if you do stuff that gives you energy, you know, blah, blah, blah. And so, you know, you can audit your calendar and say, "I'm gonna highlight in green the things that I do that give me energy, and put in red the things that, that suck my soul. And, um, and you know, if I wanna have a better life, I should probably just do more of the green shit."
- SPSam Parr
I think that's, that's great. I think that-
- SPShaan Puri
My, my-
- SPSam Parr
I, I'm talking to a ton of people right now who are method, they're like, "You know, I've, I've made a little bit of a name for myself and my-"
- SPShaan Puri
What should I do? Yeah
- SPSam Parr
... and by my career, but like, I don't even like it. What the fuck do I do? And I'm like, "Ah, yeah, it's tough, but you gotta find where, where... You have to find what gives you energy." That doesn't necessarily mean what makes you happy, by the way.
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- SPSam Parr
But what gives you energy.
- SPShaan Puri
Totally, 'cause it can be really challenging and frustrating at times. And, you know, uh, y- it'll have highs and lows. In fact, I, I a- I add this channel to every Slack that I do, so like I just put it in our e-commerce one. 'Cause we just had like a big low where we got effed over by this like crazy unforeseen circumstance. It's like, "Oh, well, here's another one." And so, you know, my team, they get so bogged down by these highs and lows, and I was like, "Guys, remember, like we s- we stood in line to get on a rollercoaster. Why are we surprised when there's highs and lows? That's what a rollercoaster does. Like, if you didn't want the thrill, like, you know, we can go sit in the grass over there. We don't have to be on a rollercoaster." But-
- SPSam Parr
That's such a good line. I'm stealing that
- SPShaan Puri
... a- and it's like, you know, so I create a Slack channel called highs and lows, and I say, "Well, now we have a place to put it," which is in itself like therapy. It's like, ah, dude, this g- gonna be an epic low that I put in there. And we went and we wrote the low, and then we started writing some highs that we've had. And like, it just, it's what you should expect. Don't be surprised when the rollercoaster goes up and down. When you s- you stood in line to get on the rollercoaster-
- SPSam Parr
Right
- SPShaan Puri
... you were excited about going on this rollercoaster. Um, you know, that's, that's what you wanted. You wanted the adventure. And so, um, and so, you know, that's how, that, I think that's like a good tip for really any business.
- SPSam Parr
That's a great line.
- SPShaan Puri
With the Milk Road, which Milk Road's the name of the, the, the crypto email that me and Ben send out every day. Um, and like you, you go to Milk, MilkRoad.com. I bought the domain, by the way, for $2,000. I think it was a pretty good, pretty good buy, right?
- SPSam Parr
That's good. That's a good buy.
- SPShaan Puri
Two grand for MilkRoad.com?
- SPSam Parr
Two grand, that's a great buy. You, I'm, I, I would, I would have thought you had to get the .co.
- SPShaan Puri
We had, we had MilkRoad.xyz, and it was like just-
- SPSam Parr
No
- SPShaan Puri
... such bullshit. Like, people couldn't even, like, the thing wouldn't even load. I don't know why, but like MilkRoad.com. So when we started writing this, I was like, all right, I found my thing. Now, I found my thing when I was probably like 32 or something like that, right? So took me 12 years maybe to figure out what's the thing that gives me energy, and mine was I just wanna get paid to be curious. And it's like, what does that mean? It's like, I don't know. Like ev- like, every day I hear about different stuff, or I'm reading about things, or I'm talking to people. Wouldn't it be great if just like going and learning that thing was somehow how I got rich and fa- rich or famous? Like, wouldn't that be dope? And like the podcast does that. It lets me just be curious. I can be like, oh, someone's making a bunch of money selling turnkey tailgates to universities? How does the economics of that work, right? Like, that shouldn't be something I'm, I get to, I get the license to go spend three hours figuring out, but the podcast gives me that license and cool. It, it gives me money and fame for, for doing it. I get power and influence, great, uh, as a byproduct. Then the second thing, the, the e-commerce one, for example, does not give me this, and that's why I don't think long, long term-
- SPSam Parr
Right
- SPShaan Puri
... it's for me, because it's not me being professionally curious. It's like more of an opportunistic thing. Milk Road is that because every day I'm like, I like, for example, yesterday this guy came out with this thing that I think you'll find interesting. So most of the time people talk about the prices, people tell, spend a lot of time talking about price of crypto, which is kind of annoying once you stay in it for a while. But like let's say the price of Ethereum right now is about $2,600 per, per Eth. And, um, and people come out and like-
- SPSam Parr
Was that the thing where it says it should be 5,000?
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah. People, people come out and they should be, they're like, "Oh, like E- Eth is going to 5,000. Eth is going to 10,000. Eth to the moon." And like nine times out of 10 this is, you know, either hopes and dreams, [laughs] or it's like just clickbait. Like, if I say I think Bitcoin's going to five million a coin, guess what? That's gonna get covered by a bunch of people bec- and like a bunch of people are gonna share it 'cause it's outlandish. Uh, and hey, you know, please don't hold me to it. [laughs] Like what are you gonna do? I'm just making some far-fetched prediction about the future. Um, and the last one is they are like using some weak-ass logic, like, like people do this with Bitcoin all the time. They're like, "There are 55 million millionaires in the world, and there's only 21 million Bitcoin.
- 41:15 – 54:14
Focusing on the things that give you energy
- SPShaan Puri
There's not enough Bitcoin for the millionaires to all have one, so price is gonna go way, way up." And it's like, okay, like I understand the general idea of what you're saying, but like that's so unsophisticated compared to, and this is why, like, Warren Buffett comes out and says, "Bitcoin is rat poison," [laughs] or, "It's pure speculation. There's no fundamentals." That was like the, that's the common narrative. So what I thought was kinda cool was, um, was that, um, by the way, [laughs] Ben just linked a, an article in the chat where I did the clickbait thing, where I said, "I'm putting 25% of my net worth into Bitcoin." This is like, you know, a year and a half ago or something like that. And I was like, "Because there's a, there's a wave of institutional capital coming in. I'm gonna front-run the wave." And it just sounds great, and guess what? Like, you know, these, these n- news, news websites, you know, look at this, like cringey picture of my face with a Bitcoin.
- SPSam Parr
So wait, so what, what, what was the thing that happened?
- SPShaan Puri
All right, so this guy came out. He's a cr- he's like a, kind of like a crypto quant, uh, investor. He's got like his own fund or whatever. And he said, "You know, I actually think that there's a way to value Ethereum like you would value any stock, uh, any stock of a company." He goes, "So how do you value a company? You value a company based on its cash flows. Well, guess what? Ethereum has revenue." So what's the revenue of Ethereum? Ethereum has revenue because there's transaction fees. And, um, you know, pe- this is not new, but there's something new of, like, Ethereum changed what it does with the transaction fees, so now you can value it. So for example, Bitcoin has transaction fees, but the transaction fees get paid to miners. So as a Bitcoin holder, you don't get that revenue, and the miners all have different expenses. One guy's in Greenland. His expenses are low 'cause the electricity's cheap there, whatever. So you could never really get the profits, the net profits of Bitcoin transactions or the Bitcoin network 'cause it really wasn't... That's not a n- it, it wasn't, it was apples to oranges. But Ethereum has changed what it does with the fees, which now lets you create a valuation model. So what happens? All right, a Ethereum transaction happens. Let's say it's $100 for the transaction fee. Um, 70% of that is called the base fee, and do you know what they do with the base fee? You know where that goes?
- SPSam Parr
No, I don't know anything what you're talking about, to be honest.
- SPShaan Puri
Okay. So you... Okay. Well, I'll, I'll ex- I'll explain in the most simple terms. When there's an Ethereum tra- when there's a transaction in Ethereum, there's a fee, right? That's cool. Visa, MasterCard, everybody has a fee when you do a transaction. The Ethereum fee gets broken into two parts. There's the base fee, which is just burned. So they take 70% of the transaction fee and they just get rid of it. W- why would you do that? Well, this is like when a s- when a company buys back stock, it's a share ba- buyback. They basically buy stock on the open market and just get rid of it. What does that do? It makes le- it, it shrinks the supply of the stock, which makes the price go up, right? There's less supply, but there's the same demand, so price goes up. So the, so Ethereum started doing this thing last year where it takes the fee and it just buys back Ethereum and gets rid of it, which drives the price of... It, it drives the supply down, price up. Okay, cool. That's the first bit. The second bit is there's, like, a tip. That's 30% of the fee. Uh, today that goes to miners, but there's a pr- like, the way Ethereum... There's, like, Ethereum 2.0 coming out. When it does that, that's gonna go to the holders of Ethereum, to the long-term holders of Ethereum, so that's like a dividend being issued out. So now you have, now Ethereum has revenue, which last month that was 1.3 billion in fees, so real significant revenue, and we know that that g- that accrues, the value accrues to the, to holders of Ethereum.
- SPSam Parr
So what price target did, did he put on it?
- SPShaan Puri
So he does a model, and he does a discounted cash flow model, and he basically says, "Based on this revenue, based on this multiple, and based on the dis- this discount rate, the price target for Ethereum right now, right now, the present value of Ethereum according to, according to this model, is $10,000 per Eth." Eth is trading at 2.6 thousand, uh, you know, 2, 2.6K. If you believe this guy's model, Eth is undervalued currently by about 4X. And he put the model out there, so anybody can go change it. You could say-
- SPSam Parr
What's his name?
- SPShaan Puri
Uh, his name is, uh, his name Ryan-
- SPSam Parr
What do I Google to read it?
- SPShaan Puri
What, what's the name?
- BLBen Levy
Ryan Allis.
- SPShaan Puri
Ryan Allis.
- BLBen Levy
A-L-I-S.
- SPShaan Puri
And, um, and so you could say, okay, maybe he's got really, like, aggressive assumptions in his model. Um, well, actually, he just used the average price to earnings multiple of the S&P 500, um, and he assumed 25% annual growth, uh, for the Ethereum Network-
- SPSam Parr
That's interesting
- SPShaan Puri
... over the next 20 years, which is not, like, super aggressive, right? It grew, like, 1000% last year, 400% this year. Like, you know, it's growing much faster than that right now, so he used pretty conservative estimates. Now, there's always risks, right? Any... I, I have this phrase I put in my, in my, I put in the, the newsletter this morning, which is that, you know, more fiction gets written in Excel [laughs] than in, than in books.
- SPSam Parr
Right.
- SPShaan Puri
Um, you know, because, uh, you c- you can make a Excel model dance and l- make it look great just by tweaking two little variables. So you always have to be careful with this stuff. You gotta do your own homework. But I found this to be really interesting because the common narrative is, "Oh, it's all speculation. It's got no intrinsic value. There's no fundamentals. There's no analysis you can do on it. Uh, you're just guessing what the next guy's gonna buy." And that actually is true for most coins, and it was true for Ethereum until now, and one of the best things you can do as an investor is spot when something, you know, common narrative is now no longer true. Uh, those are usually pretty big opportunities. So anyways, I was... I'm up till 3:00 AM last night 'cause I'm learning what this guy's model looked like. I'm kind of checking it for myself, does this make sense to me, and I'm putting that in the newsletter as like, "Hey, let me make this simple for you to understand. Like, this is kinda cool." Um, and so even though that's a lot of work, that's a prison of my own making that I'm happy to do because I, I would rather be doing nothing else.
- SPSam Parr
I have a feeling you're gonna be into this, though, for years. I think you will be. Um-
- SPShaan Puri
That's the big TBD.
- SPSam Parr
But that's the, that's the, I think you will be.
- SPShaan Puri
So for now, I'm into it. I'm providing a fuck ton of value. Nine months from now, 28 months from now, am I gonna feel the same? I don't know.
- SPSam Parr
I think what-
- SPShaan Puri
But hopefully we can hire a writer who doesn't feel the same
- SPSam Parr
... I think with most people, even the shit they love, it does get boring sometimes, and then what you do is you walk away or you chill, and then you, you fall in love again. I mean, I have to imagine-
- SPShaan Puri
Right
- SPSam Parr
... that even Stele- Steven Spielberg is like, "I don't wanna make a movie this year."
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- SPSam Parr
You know what I mean? Uh, I, I think. Is that how they feel? I wonder what, like, Nadal or, or Nov- what's, what's the tennis player or the, uh, um-
Episode duration: 54:14
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Transcript of episode 8m69oef7UJ8
