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My First MillionThis Man Got Richer Than Jeff Bezos With A Boring Business (#361)
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70 min read · 13,977 words- 0:00 – 1:29
Intro
- SPShaan Puri
Do you know about a certain man named Gautam Adani? Have you ever heard this name before?
- SPSam Parr
I don't remember.
- SPShaan Puri
Okay.
- SPSam Parr
What, what's his shtick? What's, what's he, what's he known for?
- SPShaan Puri
So Adani just became, this guy just became the third richest man in the world. And so you have-
- SPSam Parr
Yes, the Indian guy from, uh, uh... He's kinda like a b- a- and he owns, like, the huge mansion in down- in downtown, like, Mumbai, where, like, it, it's like a skyscraper.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah. So he, um, so he... Elon Musk, number one, Jeff Bezos, number two, and now Adani, number three. And so people, they watch this list and they're like, "Who's, who is Adani?" [upbeat music] All right. In this episode, we're talking about the third richest man in the world, somebody who you've never heard of.
- SPSam Parr
We talked about Team Zuck. So basically Zuckerberg has this new video of him doing MMA, and we did a little recap on how we feel about it. But also, we kinda looked at how he makes his decisions and what our perspective is on him, and I actually think it's quite interesting.
- SPShaan Puri
We broke down one of MrBeast, to me, the most interesting business that MrBeast has that nobody else is really talking about, and I think is low-key a star business.
- SPSam Parr
So that's the episode. Give it a listen. Let us know what you think.
- SPShaan Puri
And write in the comments. Go on YouTube. Write in the comments. I'll be replying to every single comment that's in here with something that's either smart or funny, I guarantee it. Go to the comments and leave one, and I'll reply.
- SPSam Parr
All right. I have a, a f- fun one. This will get us in the mood. So Kanye West, uh, uh, pop culture-y. Uh, do you follow Kanye?
- SPShaan Puri
Of course.
- 1:29 – 6:31
Kanye vs Addidas
- SPSam Parr
I don't really pay attention to Kanye West really. Uh, it's not really on my, uh, radar. But he did something kinda funny, and we talked about him yesterday, and it's business related. But basically, you know, he's having this, like, tizzy with Adidas. Do you know about that?
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs] No, and nice use of tizzy.
- SPSam Parr
You like that? Uh, well, and I... Frankly, I don't entirely know about it, so I'm just gonna kinda, like, summarize. But basically, you know, Kanye worked with Adidas to launch Yeezys, his line of shoes. Um, it's collectively made, like... Or not collectively, but in 2020, Yeezy sales were $1.17 billion in revenue. He made around $200 million from that, so he made a lotta money. And basically he's having a fight with them. I don't actually know what the fight is about, but the backstory is that he's accused them of stealing his designs and leaving him out of meetings for their Yeezy shoe collaborations. Sean, uh, Combs, you know, Diddy, said he's gonna boycott because of this. And Kanye has said, "I'm gonna make things unbearable for you guys until you comply." So I don't exactly know what comply means, but what's h- kinda... It's both sad because, like, it looks like he's going through some stuff. And it is funny and he's tr- kinda trying to be funny, and it's working. But he basically said, "I've got no chill. It's gonna cost you guys billions to keep me. It's gonna cost you billions to let me go, Adidas. You stole my design among moth- o- other things, and I'll give you till Tuesday. Not until the seven months that I told you originally I was gonna give you. Today's the day." Like, he, like, went-
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
... like, he's going crazy. And on his Twitter, which he's got, like, s- I don't know how many followers. Seven, tens of millions I would imagine. He's posting each person's picture who's on the board of directors, as well as a couple other boards, like they have a board of advisories, uh, of Adidas' people. And so he posted this one woman who's also... And he's like, and he'll say stuff about them. Like, sometimes it's funny, but sometimes it's like, uh, "This woman's on the board of, uh, Adidas. She's also a chairman and investment banker at JP Morgan. I went to JP Morgan in order to raise money for my buyout and they wouldn't do it." Like, he's going kinda bananas and I, and I thought that that was wild. And then I saw another thing, that he's, he's having another tizzy with, uh, his wife Kim, or ex-wife, about a school. And I went and looked at their school. Have you heard about this?
- SPShaan Puri
So he has his own school, right? Like, he has his own academy or something like that?
- SPSam Parr
Yeah. So he's trying to start this thing called Donda, so donda.org. If you go there, it actually looks weird but interesting and f- kind of fun. Like, it looks cool. And if you go to about, uh, on to how we learn, you'll see, like-
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
... they describe the curriculum and it's like-
- SPShaan Puri
Weird
- SPSam Parr
... it kinda makes sense. But then you see, like, weird things. Like, if you look at what the daily schedule, it says after school parkour.
- SPShaan Puri
Well, [laughs] first of all, I went to the site.
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
Donda.org. It's just, like, who we are, how we learn, admissions, and choir. [laughs] Those are the top four links. It's just choir... You know, which of these does not belong? I don't know why choir is up here. [laughs] Secondly, there's just, like, a white, I don't even know what ki- it, it looks like a white pigeon to be honest with you, just flapping-
- SPSam Parr
It's a dove
- SPShaan Puri
... its wings-
- SPSam Parr
It's a dove
- SPShaan Puri
... in slow-mo. Okay. It's a, it's like a fat dove though. It's not li- it's not like a-
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
... a sleek, graceful dove. It's like a chu- chunky dove.
- SPSam Parr
Like a guinea pig, yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs] Yeah, it's a guinea pig with wings that's just flying up in slow motion, and that's the website. I'm gonna click how we learn, 'cause I can't not. Um, okay, they got less than 12 students per, per class. Rule number one, should be, students should be confident in forming, or forming ideas. If not, their writing will suffer. Okay. So their daily schedule, full school worship. Okay, that's a good way to start the day. How we s- similar to how we start the pod. Um-
- SPSam Parr
Yeah. [laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
Core classes, lunch and recess, enrichment classes including [laughs] film, choir, and you're right, parkour. [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
A bunk- bunch of singing ninjas out here just singing and flipping around. [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
[laughs] So I thought this was interesting because, uh, it, you know, even though he's... I, I don't like laughing at a, a guy if he's going kinda insane, but he's trying to be funny with this Instagram thing, and it kind of is hilarious. Uh, like, he posted, like, the, a guy, I think the CEO of SA- SAP, uh, or i- is it SAP? Yeah. The, like, the HR software that nobody actually understands what they do. He, like, tweeted out or, uh, Instagrammed his, this guy's face and goes, "You are a sap." That's what he said, and [laughs] it just-
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
[laughs] It just, you sh- [laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
All right. That's enough.
- 6:31 – 19:31
Billy of the Week / Gautum Adani
- SPShaan Puri
So the first one is gonna be my Billy of the Week. [upbeat music]
- SPSpeaker
A million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? A billion dollars.
- SPShaan Puri
Do you know about a certain man named Gautam Adani? Have you ever heard this name before?
- SPSam Parr
Uh, mm, I don't remember.
- SPShaan Puri
Okay.
- SPSam Parr
What, what's his shtick? What's A- Adani known for?
- SPShaan Puri
So Adani just became... This guy just became the third richest man in the world. And so you have-
- SPSam Parr
Yes, the Indian guy from, uh, uh... He's kinda like a, a... And he owns, like, the huge mansion in down- in downtown, like, Mumbai, where, like, it, it's, like, a skyscraper.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah. So he, um, so he... Elon Musk, number one, Jeff Bezos, number two, and now Adani, number three. And so people, they watch this list and they're like, "Who's, who is Adani?" And I actually... I don't know if I've met him, but we definitely pitched him. My... I think my dad pitched him, uh, a business thing many years ago. My dad always kept saying, "Oh, we just need to get Adani on board, Adani, Adani, Adani." And so I'd heard about this guy before, and I didn't... You know, and his net worth has just skyrocketed because his stock is up, like, 13X in the last, I don't know-
- SPSam Parr
Is this Reliance Industries?
- SPShaan Puri
No. So Reliance w- it was the top kind of, like, company there, and the guy who runs it, Mukesh Ambani, was the... I think he wa-... He was the richest man in India, and now Adani has passed him up in the last year-
- SPSam Parr
Got it
- SPShaan Puri
... 'cause his stock went up 13X. So, so who is this guy and what does he do? Okay, so, um, what he does, you'll, you'll appreciate this. Is he a software guy? Is he a Mark Zuckerberg? No, no, he's not. Is he Elon Musk? Is he trying to create the future of, uh, you know, space travel and, you know, like, brain computer interfaces? No. This guy operates in a place that Sam likes, power. So he does coal-
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
... ports, plastics, you know, shit like that.
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
So basically, this guy's like... They do, they do, like, industrial work, and so he owns... When... So when he was a, he was a kid, he was in school, he went to go visit this port, and it was the largest port in the country at the time, a port, you know, where literally, like, ships come in and out. And, um, he's, like, inspired by it, and was like, "One day I'm gonna own the biggest port ever, uh, the biggest port in India." And now he's, sure enough, he owns the biggest port in India. He owns the most ports in India, too. Um, when... With, with the deal we were trying to do with him, we were trying to get Adani to come to Australia to build a port for our, our startup that was based in Australia because these guys were the kings of ports. But his story is pretty cool. He's a, he's a college dropout. So 18, drops out. He becomes a diamond sorter. I don't even know what that means, but he became a diamond sorter. He got an inter- interest in the diamond business. And after a couple years of sorting diamonds, he then goes and he starts his own diamond brokerage, and he's like, "I will trade. I will basically..." Age of 20 as a diamond broker. Brother calls him up. Brother says, "Hey, brother, I have a, uh, a small plastic factory here that I, I, I own now, I've, I, I bought or I run." And so he helps him go scale up the plastic factory. And then as he's doing that, he's like, "Oh, let's start importing the, like, the, the materials that come up, you know, upstream of plastics." And so he starts doing... He creates, like, a, an export company. And so he just keeps creating these companies. So now he has seven publicly listed companies. He's got the Adani Group, which is, like, the, the mega one, and then they'll start, like, Adani Power, Adani, um, you know, like, Trading, Adani, um, Real Estate, or whatever, and they'll start all these different companies, and they'll take them all public. And what's interesting about it is that-
- SPSam Parr
And he's got a beautiful mustache, by the way.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah.
- SPSam Parr
Just a great stash.
- SPShaan Puri
He looks like... You know the meme account Dr. Park Patel? He looks like the meme account's photo, actually [laughs] . So I don't know if it's a- if it's him or it just looks a lot like him, but that's-
- SPSam Parr
He looks like a, like an Indian Mario.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
You know, like Mario and Luigi? He looks like an Indian Mario, like, you know?
- SPShaan Puri
He look- he does. He do- it, it... l- You know when Mario does that little squat, like, right... You know, when you wanna, you wanna do that trick where you go behind the thing you're standing on, and you run, and you get the magic fruit?
- SPSam Parr
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
He's, like, squatting. He's a little squatty, squatty version of, of Indian Mario. So anyways, this guy has now become, you know, whatever, the third richest man. He's got these crazy stories. He was... I don't know if you know, there was, like, this, um, sort of like an Indian 9/11 thing where there's, like, a terrorist attack on a hotel. He was in that hotel un-... He was, like, in the hostage group that was there.
- SPSam Parr
Wow.
- SPShaan Puri
He was also kidnapped at one point in time and taken ransom for $2 million. They paid it and got free. And so this guy has just lived this, like, kind of crazy life. And even now, he's doing really well. The group's doing really well. He's third richest man on Earth. There is a set of people who are very, very skeptical about what these guys are doing because they have so much debt in their companies. Like, he is basically constantly trying to acquire companies. Like, they just bought the largest cement producer in India. But they buy these companies using debt, and he's got this intricate, like, set of companies. And so there's a big question of, like, is this all a house of cards that's gonna fall over, and you're gonna see a guy go from the number three richest to, like, you know, falling off the list completely? Or is he actually gonna pull this off? Because what they'll do is they'll say, "Okay, the, the parent company has some profits. We'll take a loan on that." And then they take, like, one of the new companies public, like, oh, Adani Green Power, and they'll take the green company public. Because it's got the Adani name, stock price goes up. And then he'll invest in it from the parent company, and then he'll sell those shares, and then he'll borrow against the s- the s- the stock, and then he'll issue a bond. And he's got, like, all these different debt instruments. And so they have, I think, more debt than, like, any other company in India. And now there's a question of is this all gonna fall over or is it all gonna work? It's pretty fascinating.
- SPSam Parr
Dude, when, do, do you ever feel... I feel self-conscious when I hear about these things because my, like, my thing with business is, like, just the very simple of buy low, sell high. You know? Like, I purchase a widget for, you know, $1 and I put some type of value, or I just buy tons of them and I, so I get a discount, and then I sell them for, like, $1.50. That 50 cent's my profit. I use a quarter doll- a quarter of that to pay myself, a quarter to go buy more.
- 19:31 – 26:45
MrBeast's Translation Business
- SPShaan Puri
Another creative titan that we talked about, MrBeast. So we hung out with MrBeast. I don't know if you guys have... are sick of us talking about that yet, but, you know, uh, producer Ben is literally sitting here in a MrBeast, uh, T-shirt, so, you know, he's a fan. Uh, by the way, that's good, Ben, because, you know, when, when we were sitting in that meeting and they brought in the swag, uh, Jimmy, who, who, who is MrBeast, he go, uh, he goes, "Oh, man, they're not like kids, dude. They don't need, they don't need the stuff." Like, you know? "Well, they- they're not gonna be..." [laughs] 'Cause the guy came in and was like, "Guys, I got treats for you." [laughs] And he's, like, had a bunch of swag, and nobody moved. And Mr- Jimmy was just like, "Ah, no, they, they don't care about this stuff, man. They're, they're, they're adults." And then, like, all of us were like, "The fuck are you talking about, dude?"
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
And, like, we- we're just like... I just, like, I literally rolled my chair over to him, like, you know, like a kid, I'm like, "Whee."
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
I, like, just like rolled my rolling chair over to that part of the table-
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
... 'cause it was like a long boardroom. And I was just like, "I'm going to get some swag."
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
And I went and got it. And the other guy's like, "I got kids, man. I got... [laughs] They're gonna need... Like, if I don't bring back swag, they're gonna be pissed."
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
And so... And now Ben is wearing his. [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Damn, I... W- Jimmy drove me, like, when we were going to the... I took a ride with him, and I found that shirt that you're wearing, Ben, in the back of his car. And I just go, "I'm fucking taking this."
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
He's got tons of them. So I stole mine from him. I, I, we-
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
I didn't know that we had the opportunity to take it, like, ethically. [laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs] Never considered that. [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Yeah. [laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
Um, so Jimmy... Okay, so w- I wanted to bring something up that he had talked about that we didn't mention on the podcast, which to me is the most interesting business that this guy has. You might be thinking is the most interesting business his YouTube channel? No. Is it his chocolate company Feast- named Feastables? No. Is it his drop shipping burger company, his cloud kitchen called MrBeast Burger? No. Do you know which one I'm gonna talk about? Do either of you guys know? Give me a, a... Sam, do you know which one I'm gonna talk about?
- SPSam Parr
I think.
- SPShaan Puri
Ben, do you have any idea which one I, I might be referring to?
- SPSam Parr
Uh, well, uh, no, but are you gonna talk about his burger? Did you guys see his restaurant just open? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
Let-
- SPSam Parr
But let's talk about this other thing first.
- SPShaan Puri
Okay, okay.
- SPSam Parr
Sorry.
- SPShaan Puri
No, no, I don't know you know about it.
- SPSam Parr
I'm... Uh, like, I wrote down what I think it is, and then you, you say it, and I'll say if I got it right.
- SPShaan Puri
All right, I'm gonna say it. It's his t- like, kinda translation internationalization company. Translation. Sam got it.
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- 26:45 – 42:54
Turning a cost center into a profit center
- SPShaan Puri
Um, and so he's doing this, and it is just another example of turning a cost center into a profit center. And I actually wanna talk about some examples of those. So basically, things where y- this would normally just be a cost to him to run this, to have all these people on staff. But once he turns it into a service for other YouTubers, now it becomes a profit center. And so there are-
- SPSam Parr
Which, which-
- SPShaan Puri
... a bunch of examples of this
- SPSam Parr
... which I think w- this would make way more money than the chocolate bars. Like, I remember I ate the chocolate, the chocolate that he had, and I was like, "Well, you know, like, A, it's good, but I don't... It's not, like, that different than any other chocolate that I've had. And B, it kinda sucks that I've gotta feel bad about myself if I consume a lot of your product. And C, it's only, like, 40, it was $40, I think, for a box. Like, that's hard to build a big business $40 a pop. You know what I'm saying?
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- SPSam Parr
At least when you're not, if you're... You gotta be in Walmart or something.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, which I'm sure he could do also. Like, uh-
- SPSam Parr
For sure
- SPShaan Puri
... to Ben's point, he, he opened up a brick-and-mortar location for his burger joint. And normally you're like, "Ah, you know, opening up a restaurant in a mall, maybe not the best idea." And then he, like, posts this video. There's, like, literally, I don't know, 50,000 people in the mall [laughs] like lined up. It was like people were lined up, up and down each concourse, just like, you know, l- [laughs] the, the restaurant's on floor one or whatever, and, like, people were on floor four just lined up in this line, and it was insane. So, you know, this guy's got pretty massive pull. Um-
- SPSam Parr
So what are the other examples of, of turning cost centers into-
- SPShaan Puri
Okay, so, so the first one that came to mind for me was AWS. So AWS today is basically Amazon. Amazon's, most of its profits come from AWS. And AWS is basically when Amazon had to have a really robust set of servers to run their own website, and then they were like, "Hey, the way we use this kind of, like, server infrastructure, and it's just, like, this big expense for us to have this server farm, what if we just rented this out to other companies who wanna have, like, Amazon-level servers without having to go rack their own servers in some data center?" And that became AWS. And basically AWS just spits off billions and billions in profit now, what started as what would've been a billion-dollar loss. And so, you know, that's a huge swing. But I have some others, uh, that I wanna explain to you. So, uh, Michael Girdley, who came on the pod, he goes, "My favorite is, um, this company called Freight Alley." They did what, what HubSpot kinda did with The Hustle. They basically have this thing called Freight Waves, which is, Freight Waves is basically a, um, media company. And Freight Alley is the, like, the SaaS company. So basically they're a SaaS company that created a media arm that goes and, uh... And normally a media company's, you know, has expenses, but they turned it into a profit center. And basically that acquires customers for the SaaS business at a negative customer acquisition cost. So the media company is profitable and brings in customers to their own SaaS, uh, you know, at the bottom of the funnel. So that's one example, not exactly the full thing. But another is-
- SPSam Parr
Dude, that guy, the guy who started that company, his name's Craig. I've hung out with him a bit. He, um, bought a big piece of property in Tennessee, and he's the one who's turning it into, like, an airport. It's like a country club, but instead of a golf course, there's an airport. So he's selling... He bought a huge plot of land. Now he's sub-selling, or he's selling smaller plots of land, and there's gonna be an airplane strip and a hangar that everyone has access to. So if you're a flying enthusiast, you buy a home there, and you can use this.
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- SPSam Parr
And he bought a magazine. I think it was called airplane.com or something like that. He bought a magazine, and he's like, "I'm gonna buy a magazine and do the same thing that I did. But instead of software, we're gonna do it with these houses."
- SPShaan Puri
Wow. That's, it's, it's amazing. Another, um, another example, so, um, any D2C company that eventually takes their own warehouse and starts fulfilling for other customers, so they turn their own warehouse, which is a cost for them for fulfillment, into a profit center because they're doing fulfillment for themselves and others. Very similar to, to AWS. Okay, here's another one. Uh, this guy George on Twitter just sent me this. He goes, "Ford decided to own the timber supply for their vehicles, so there was lots of wood in the early cars."
- SPSam Parr
Yeah, charcoal, baby.
- SPShaan Puri
They ended up with, they ended up with so much leftover wood they started selling charcoal, and that's Kingsford Charcoal Company.
- SPSam Parr
That's my favorite, man. That's my favorite story.
- SPShaan Puri
That's, uh, that's kind of amazing. I didn't know that. Uh, is there more to know about that, or did, did we kinda nail it there?
- SPSam Parr
No, you nailed it. So basically they were... So Ford was making frame, car frames, and they had to burn a whole lot of wood in order to, you know, bend the steel or do whatever they had to do. And they had all this leftover charred wood, and they're like, "What do we do with this?" And I think it was Henry Ford's idea. I forget exactly whose idea, but he goes, "Hey, let's, let's start selling this. Let's make something out of this." And that's where it kinda came from. There's a bunch of entrepreneurs that have kinda like done things like this. Uh, Standard Oil did something like this where they're like... This gets more complicated and, and is less interesting, but like, "Hey, this offput of kerosene is like this weird like fluid that's like really greasy. Is there anything we could do with that?" And like WD-40 or something like that-
- SPShaan Puri
Right
- SPSam Parr
... came. Like they've like... There's like stories like that with, with Standard Oil as well.
- SPShaan Puri
And so here's a couple others. So Foursquare, Foursquare had an API for businesses 'cause they needed all this data about businesses, where they're located, all that stuff, and they needed that for, to power their own Foursquare app. And Foursquare kinda went up in this hype cycle, then went down. Many years, sort of forgotten, sort of written off, but a new CEO joined and almost oriented the company around this and was like, "Look, the more valuable thing is not people using Foursquare, the app, and playing the game. It's all the data we've collected about businesses, where they're located with like hyperprecision, and so we actually just need to make that API available to everybody." And they productized the API, and they make, I think, more money off the AP... I think they make more money off the API than they do off the core app at this point. Um, so, so I think that's, uh, that's another great example of this. Amazon has a bunch. Like, Amazon was a bookseller, right? So their main cost of goods sold was their books. But then they create Kindle, and Kindle self, and then self-publishing business, and the pub- you know, and all that. And so now Kindle itself became a profit center. What... So what used to be a cost, which was selling books, now they sell e-books that they kinda own and, um, you know, they turn that a profit. Same thing with payments, right? Amazon had to pay a, a merchant, like a fee every time they processed a payment, so they created their own payment software, Amazon, called Amazon Payments. And now, like, you know, for our e-com store, I just went... I, I was like, "Oh, I think we take Amazon Payments. Where does that money go?" And I went and found an account w- we have with Amazon Payments that had like 400 grand sitting in it 'cause we use that service, Amazon Payments, to take payments for somebody who wants to pay with Amazon. And so they turned it into a profit center along the way.
- SPSam Parr
That's crazy. Another one is, um, Slack. So Slack started out as a game, and when they were working on their game, they... It, it wasn't actually doing that well, but they created a way in order to communicate effectively with their, with their coworkers. And they said, "Ah, fuck this game. This thing's actually way cooler. Let's actually turn this internal tool into a, uh, a proper tool." We thought about doing that. So here's... But here's the problem with this. This all sounds sick. A lot of people, uh, say, "Yeah, let's do this." And so a lot of publishers are doing this. And so they are like, "Let's sell our CMS." So BuzzFeed, Vox, Washington Post, I forget who else. It was like they build these custom website builders, and they say, "Let's sell this." And I think oftentimes it's a distraction. And they always say, "Well, Amazon did it." And I looked into this. Amazon did launch AWS, uh, pretty early on, but do you know how many employees they had when they did it?
- SPShaan Puri
How many total employees or on AWS?
- SPSam Parr
Yeah, total employees. It was about 5,000.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
So they were already a multi-billion dollar company with... And, and so they... The way the story's told is like, "Oh, they were just this little guy do-" No, they had about 5,000 people when they launched AWS.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Like, it was like a... You know, it was a, it was a thing. It wasn't just like a scrappy startup. And a lot of times people, like, will say, "Well, well let's also sell this." It's like, dawg, we've got eight people working here. Like, who's gonna do this?
- 42:54 – 1:00:59
Zuck fighting MMA
- SPShaan Puri
more.
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
And so, like, you know, he turns into an absolute animal. By the way, this MMA clip of Zuck- You seen this?
- SPSam Parr
Awesome.
- SPShaan Puri
Awesome.
- SPSam Parr
Awesome. Killed it.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
He killed it. He killed it. So for the background on this, uh, but Zuck went on Rogan and talked about a bunch of stuff. It was, it was, uh, actually a pretty good interview, I think. Zuck actually kinda redeemed himself a bit. But, uh, in, in part of the interview, Zuck said, "I've been training MMA," and people are like afterwards, "Yeah, right. Okay, nerd." He posts this video of him training.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
He looks really good. Way faster than I thought he was gonna be, like, fighting. He was fighting. It was like fighting.
- SPShaan Puri
Just, dude, uh, even if he wasn't good, the fact that he does this is just, like, I... Basically, this was my tipping point. I already liked Zuck, but now I'm Team Zuck, which there's not a lot of us here, right? [laughs] We, we can't even play a-
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
... game of pickup basketball. There's four of us on Team Zuck. We're just l- still looking for a fifth. And, and somebody tweeted this out. They were, they, they go, "Jack Dorsey," um, you know, [laughs] he goes, "Jack Dorsey, uh, hasn't worked in 10 years, uh, constantly, like, constantly meditating, uh, you know, dating different models, no family, tries to run multiple companies at once, fails. Uh, Twitter never makes anybody blah, blah, blah. Zuck, b- you know, begrudgingly runs a trillion-dollar empire, d- you know, faithfully m- monogamous, a great dad, uh, trains MMA," [laughs] like, like, all these, like, it was like, "Jack Dorsey doesn't work out." It's like, "Zuck trains MMA," and it just, like, highlights, like, you know, basically like why does everybody hate this guy again? Like, what has this guy done, like, you know... The, a- a- and, and, [laughs] and some people are like, "He r- he ruined democracy." It's like, no, dude, he built basically the modern telephone. You're pissed that some people make phone calls that you don't like. That's, that's basically what happens on Facebook, is that he built the app everybody uses to communicate everything stupid or amazing, and sure enough, some percentage of that is not content you like and is not controllable. And the guy's literally built, like, it's v- you know, it was at a trillion dollars at a point in time. He's built a trillion-dollar company, and he just keeps running it, and he keeps trying to make it better, and he keeps trying to push the envelope, and he keeps trying to make, like, better and better products and services. And do you think he really cares about, like... Do you think he sits there being like, "Ha, I wanna influence the election?" But no, that's like... You know, that's the, that's a pain in the ass he's trying to deal with. It's not, like, his agenda. People make him out to be, like, this evil guy, and it's like-
- SPSam Parr
Dude
- SPShaan Puri
... people, people don't like him 'cause he's awkward? Like, all right.
- SPSam Parr
Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
You're, you're a bully if you don't like him-
- SPSam Parr
[laughs] Right
- SPShaan Puri
... 'cause he's a nerd. You know? Like, think about who you are if you don't like Mark Zuckerberg. You're a fucking bully.
- SPSam Parr
He, uh-
- SPShaan Puri
You just think he's awkward, and you, that's how you judge him. Like, screw you, man. The guy's awkward.
- SPSam Parr
We should do, we should do, like, an entire episode about this because there was one beautiful line that he said. So Rogan was like, um, "Look, like you had these Russians doing this and influencing the election, and then the Hunter Biden story, story came out, and you guys, like, took it down, and you told them it wasn't allowed." And then, and, like, Rogan was like, uh, criticizing him or at least voicing all the criticisms that Facebook had. And Mark goes, um, "Yeah, look, like, how would you handle that situation?"
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
And R- a- and-
- SPShaan Puri
Love to see you do it. Love to see you try, Joe
- SPSam Parr
... yeah, and, and, and Rogan goes, "I don't know."
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
And he, and Zuck's like, "Yeah, we didn't either."
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
"And so our reasoning was, like, we, like, took down the Hunter..." Like, I don't even remember how he explained it. He's like, "Well, our reasoning was this, this, and this."
Episode duration: 1:01:00
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Transcript of episode ER7bO2hFndE
