Wait, My Intern Became a 21-Year-Old Millionaire?? (#510)

1. 0:00 – 2:00

   Intro

   1. SPShaan Puri0:00

      I remember at one point you were telling me in Slack, you're like, "These people just offered me two million bucks for this."

   2. IHIshan Haque0:05

      Yeah.

   3. SPShaan Puri0:06

      I'm like, "Holy shit, you did it, dude." [laughs]

   4. IHIshan Haque0:07

      [laughs]

   5. SPShaan Puri0:08

      We started-

   6. IHIshan Haque0:08

      Yeah

   7. SPShaan Puri0:08

      ... the podcast My First Million, you just made your first two million.

   8. IHIshan Haque0:11

      [laughs] Yeah.

   9. SPShaan Puri0:11

      Congrats. Like, I can't believe this worked out. You're like, "I'm not gonna sell, though." And I was like, "Wow, this guy's insane." [laughs]

   10. IHIshan Haque0:18

       [laughs]

   11. SPShaan Puri0:18

       And I was like, "That's an insane story." [upbeat music] All right, so I can't tell you how many times I hear this. People will DM me every single day and they'll say, "Hey, I'm just calling my shot right now. Today, sm- I'm just, I'm a small boy. In three years from now, I'm gonna be on MFM. I'm gonna be on My First Million. I'm gonna make my first million doing X, Y, Z."

   12. IHIshan Haque0:46

       Yep.

   13. SPShaan Puri0:46

       Every single day I get a message like that. Here's somebody who actually did it. [laughs]

   14. IHIshan Haque0:51

       [laughs]

   15. SPShaan Puri0:51

       This is Ishan. He was my intern turned guy who's made millions and millions of dollars, lost millions of dollars, and had a crazy journey in between. You were the guy who I created this podcast with.

   16. IHIshan Haque1:02

       Yeah.

   17. SPShaan Puri1:03

       You were the guy who cr- the, the cover art of our podcast, he created it.

   18. IHIshan Haque1:07

       [laughs]

   19. SPShaan Puri1:07

       Um, you know, the intro song originally, the original intro song, he created it. M- you know, I didn't even know how to record it audio at the time. This guy did all of it. Um, you went from behind the scenes to now you're on the stage here in my house-

   20. IHIshan Haque1:19

       Yeah

   21. SPShaan Puri1:19

       ... and we're gonna record this episode, so.

   22. IHIshan Haque1:21

       I've made it. [laughs]

   23. SPShaan Puri1:22

       You've made it. That, that, that, that's the teaser. All right. Let's tell the story. All right.

   24. IHIshan Haque1:27

       What's up, man? [laughs]

   25. SPShaan Puri1:28

       Yeah, what's up? [laughs] I, uh, so people don't know this, so you are Ishan.

   26. IHIshan Haque1:34

       Yeah.

   27. SPShaan Puri1:34

       You, uh, I met, I've known you since you were 18 years old.

   28. IHIshan Haque1:37

       Yeah.

   29. SPShaan Puri1:37

       You still are kinda like 18 years old.

   30. IHIshan Haque1:39

       Yeah, yeah, yeah. I still look like [laughs] 18 years old, yeah.
2. 2:00 – 7:00

   Recruiting tactic: Sliding into the DMs

   1. SPShaan Puri2:00

      know if I'm doing anything, but I'm good at picking people because I worked with you at age 18.

   2. IHIshan Haque2:05

      Yeah.

   3. SPShaan Puri2:06

      Steve Bartlett, 19, maybe 20-

   4. IHIshan Haque2:08

      Yeah

   5. SPShaan Puri2:08

      ... uh, years old. There's a guy, another guy named Ishan who just tweeted out today that, he's like, "Those four months I worked with you were super influential." He went from, like, guy just working someplace, now he's got a eight-figure agency, so that was cool.

   6. IHIshan Haque2:21

      Yeah.

   7. SPShaan Puri2:22

      Uh, Danny Miranda worked with me for a little bit. People know him in the podcast game now. He was with us for a couple months before he started creating content. So I f- I feel like-

   8. IHIshan Haque2:29

      There was two Ishans and maybe-

   9. SPShaan Puri2:31

      Yeah. [laughs]

   10. IHIshan Haque2:31

       ... getting, getting people that, like, sound similar to your name. [laughs]

   11. SPShaan Puri2:34

       Yeah, yeah. The closer, the better actually.

   12. IHIshan Haque2:35

       Yeah.

   13. SPShaan Puri2:36

       Um, all right. So you've had a crazy run, but let's do, let's do the history. So-

   14. IHIshan Haque2:41

       Yeah

   15. SPShaan Puri2:42

       ... how did we meet?

   16. IHIshan Haque2:44

       Uh, well, I followed you on Twitter when I was, like, 12, 13 years old. I was tweeting. My whole strategy was let me get my, like, like, profile picture-

   17. SPShaan Puri2:52

       Before we do that-

   18. IHIshan Haque2:53

       Yeah

   19. SPShaan Puri2:53

       ... I'm gonna re-intro the, the, the one part, which is-

   20. IHIshan Haque2:55

       Yeah

   21. SPShaan Puri2:55

       ... one thing that people don't know is this podcast was started actually not with me and Sam, me and you. [laughs]

   22. IHIshan Haque3:03

       Yeah. [laughs]

   23. SPShaan Puri3:03

       I hit you up on, uh, Twitter DMs.

   24. IHIshan Haque3:06

       Yes. Yeah.

   25. SPShaan Puri3:07

       And I saw that you were doing a p- you were a podcast editor for somebody else I knew. Um, I think Corey or AngelList-

   26. IHIshan Haque3:14

       Yeah, it was Corey. Corey Levy

   27. SPShaan Puri3:14

       ... or somebody like that.

   28. IHIshan Haque3:14

       Yeah.

   29. SPShaan Puri3:15

       Yeah, Corey Levy. And so I m- I w- had this idea, all right, I wanna do a podcast. I hit you up. I didn't know how old you were, but I was like, "Hey, um-

   30. IHIshan Haque3:22

       [laughs]
3. 7:00 – 11:00

   Knowing your win condition

   1. SPShaan Puri7:00

      And I remember for the crystals thing, [laughs] I was like, I read some article and I saw some magazine, like, I always try to look outside of... Like, I don't look at TechCrunch to get tech ideas or, like, business ideas. I look... I remember separately, so I remember reading, like, a People magazine, and it was like Adele was saying she won't go on stage unless she has her, like, rose quartz crystal.

   2. IHIshan Haque7:21

      [laughs]

   3. SPShaan Puri7:22

      And I was like, what? Like, you... That's insane. Like, you... Who believes in this crap? And I Googled it, and I was like, after Kim Kardashian got mugged, she had, like, a $4 million ring. She got mugged, and it was like, "How did you recover?" She's like, "Well, my crystals really grounded me."

   4. IHIshan Haque7:34

      [laughs]

   5. SPShaan Puri7:35

      And I was like, and then you see all these celebrities, I'm like, if... Again, I just think people are sort of like, I have this tweet that's like, uh, "The economy is just smart people paying beautiful people to market to-

   6. IHIshan Haque7:46

      Right

   7. SPShaan Puri7:46

      ... to, to sort of like-

   8. IHIshan Haque7:47

      Yeah

   9. SPShaan Puri7:47

      ... average people. And I was like, if all the celebrities are doing this, then there's gotta be a bunch of other people that believe in this. And so I remember calling you, and you were like... The best part about you was your game. Uh-

   10. IHIshan Haque7:58

       Yeah. [laughs]

   11. SPShaan Puri7:58

       That's, like, my favorite thing is, like, if you hire somebody with no experience, there's a bunch of bad things. Like, I'd be like, "Dude, like, I haven't heard from you in two days. Where'd you go?"

   12. IHIshan Haque8:07

       Yeah.

   13. SPShaan Puri8:07

       But then on the good side, it'd be like, he doesn't know any better, so I could just be like, "Hey, we're doing this, and it's gonna be... We're gonna launch it in two days." And you're probably just like, "I don't know. Is, is that normal?"

   14. IHIshan Haque8:17

       [laughs]

   15. SPShaan Puri8:17

       Maybe that's normal, right? Like-

   16. IHIshan Haque8:19

       Yeah. 'Cause bes- besides this, like, I'd never... I've always been working for, like, internet people. I have never had, like, a traditional go to an office and-

   17. SPShaan Puri8:26

       Right

   18. IHIshan Haque8:26

       ... and, like, I was... I remember at the time I was like, "Uh, I'm, like, I'm going to finish uni. Should I go and be a consultant for, like, some bank, whatever?"

   19. SPShaan Puri8:34

       Yeah, you asked me that.

   20. IHIshan Haque8:35

       [laughs] I was like, so, uh, 'cause yeah, I just didn't know what the other... I guess I was just scared 'cause I didn't know what the other world was like. I was like, all right, this is kind of-

   21. SPShaan Puri8:43

       Right

   22. IHIshan Haque8:43

       ... normal [laughs] and doing this. So, um, so yeah, crazy stuff like just, yeah, creating different e-com stores or different experiments. We did, like, a newsletter, The Good, Terrible, Bad, Very Bad. [laughs]

   23. SPShaan Puri8:54

       Oh.

   24. IHIshan Haque8:55

       And then, dude, I don't even remember after that one.

   25. SPShaan Puri8:56

       That was like top five before we found something.

   26. IHIshan Haque8:57

       Remember Milk Road, right?

   27. SPShaan Puri8:58

       Yeah, yeah.

   28. IHIshan Haque8:58

       Milk Road became a-

   29. SPShaan Puri8:59

       Yeah, yeah, yeah. Milk Road became a successful newsletter company, but I guess before that, I don't even remember that. We-

   30. IHIshan Haque9:03

       Yeah. [laughs]
4. 11:00 – 14:00

   Content creation for serendipity

   1. SPShaan Puri11:00

      makes you stick to it is not just willpower. It's, like, knowing your win condition. So, like, you, do you even know what to look at, and do you know what winning looks like? Do you know what the benchmark should be-

   2. IHIshan Haque11:10

      Right

   3. SPShaan Puri11:10

      ... so that you can actually assess a successful versus unsuccessful experiment? So that was one of my learning, one of my re- things I remember from back then. The other one I remember is, like, with the pod, I, we kind of, like, s- we called our shot a little bit. Like, we made this Google Doc-

   4. IHIshan Haque11:27

      Yeah

   5. SPShaan Puri11:27

      ... of the plan, the one-page plan, and now I call that my kickoff doc. But it was like before we started it, I wrote this out. Do you remember that, that doc?

   6. IHIshan Haque11:34

      Yeah, I remember. And it was... Well, the first thing that you harped on was, like, you need your thousand true fans. Like, that was the very, very first thing. And you're like, "If we just got this, you can build a pretty big business just with, with 1,000 people." That was, like, the first thing I remember. And then you had a few things like, we need to get to 100,000 listeners, and get a bunch of other, other, like, maybe build a business of, or, like, you know, these ancillary businesses, adjacent businesses across it. And, I mean, you did all that. [laughs] I was like, that's, that was one thing you just kind of step back and it's like, I'll share the doc. I'll put the doc, uh- And if you're on YouTube, I'm gonna put it on the screen so you can see literally, like, word for word what we wrote back then. And it's not that it-

   7. SPShaan Puri12:11

      It all happened, but it definitely didn't happen on the timeline. I remember thinking-

   8. IHIshan Haque12:14

      Yeah

   9. SPShaan Puri12:14

      ... we're gonna hit... Let's get to 100,000 downloads per episode. So that's the thing. Like, per episode, I want 100,000 downloads by the end of the year. So it was like 12 months.

   10. IHIshan Haque12:23

       Yeah.

   11. SPShaan Puri12:23

       Took me three years. So, like [laughs] you know, now we do that, but like, you know, it took three years for us to ever hit that mark. So it's kind of this old phrase, like, don't confuse a clear view for a short distance.

   12. IHIshan Haque12:35

       Yeah.

   13. SPShaan Puri12:35

       It's like I feel like we had a clear view, I just thought things would happen faster. I overestimated kinda like what could be done in one year. But with that one, because it's so fun, I just kept going. And like, sure enough, like, you know, it all... We- we- we've- we've-

   14. IHIshan Haque12:47

       That was, like, the right thing to keep going.

   15. SPShaan Puri12:49

       Yeah, yeah.

   16. IHIshan Haque12:49

       There was a lot of other things, shiny things, and that was, like, the right one.

   17. SPShaan Puri12:51

       The one that was making no money, actually costing me money, 'cause one of the things I wrote in that doc is, "I plan to lose $10,000 a year doing this."

   18. IHIshan Haque12:58

       Oh, yeah. Yeah. [laughs]

   19. SPShaan Puri12:58

       But it'll be worth it because I thought, you know, creates, like, some serendipity.

   20. IHIshan Haque13:02

       Yeah.

   21. SPShaan Puri13:03

       And you kind of talked about that, too, like, content creating serendipity or, like, just being online and being, like, in the mix-

   22. IHIshan Haque13:09

       Yeah

   23. SPShaan Puri13:10

       ... creates fortune.

   24. IHIshan Haque13:11

       Liking a post or replying to something or putting- putting yourself out there. Who cares if someone does... Like, when you... I mean, it's different for you now. If you post, there's millions of people that look at it. But, like, just for, like, a regular person, when you post, like, a tweet and it says, like, 116 impressions, it's got no, like... That's still, like, that's still some people that have looked at it.

   25. SPShaan Puri13:27

       [laughs]

   26. IHIshan Haque13:27

       And you don't know who it is, but, you know, later down the line, that could- that could come in handy. And when we talk about, uh, some- some of the stuff I'm doing now, I can... I've gotten all my opportunities, every single one of them has been, like, through Twitter or, like, through some, like, LinkedIn or some email or thing I've sent. And late- years later down the track, it's all come from-

   27. SPShaan Puri13:44

       Well, tell the story about the billionaire. So what- what happened there?

   28. IHIshan Haque13:46

       [laughs] Yeah.

   29. SPShaan Puri13:47

       That started on Twitter?

   30. IHIshan Haque13:48

       Yeah. Uh, that was a... That was me just, like, saying, "I need a... I just made this, like, kickass investment, and let me... Like, I want more people to know about it." So I- I was, like, talking to, like, journalists and stuff like that, like,

5. 14:00 – 20:00

   Ishan makes $40k in one minute

   1. IHIshan Haque14:00

      "Hey, write about the story," and no one was really [laughs] uh, taking the time. But there was one dude that was actually, yeah, on Twitter. He, um... I just, he wasn't responding to anything else. I went on Twitter. I saw he's active there. I was just like, I just kept liking his posts. I didn't actually say anything, and then, like, he checked out my LinkedIn profile and we started talking. He's like, "Okay, yeah. Let me write about the story."

   2. SPShaan Puri14:19

      Right.

   3. IHIshan Haque14:19

      And it was like, it wasn't, like, a Forbes or anything. It was, like, a pretty small news site that it's- it's so weird that they posted that article, and a few days later, a billionaire read that article and then reached out to you.

   4. SPShaan Puri14:29

      Yeah, he [laughs] That's right.

   5. IHIshan Haque14:30

      And then that-

   6. SPShaan Puri14:30

      Well, we'll tell that story. It's like, so even that is, like, um... There's this phrase that I read once, I think Mark Suster did a blog post about this, called Lines, Not Dots. Basically, the idea is, like, a line is just a collection of dots. Like-

   7. IHIshan Haque14:43

      Right

   8. SPShaan Puri14:43

      ... mathematically, that's what a line is. It's multiple dots just all- all connected. And so what he says is like, you know, in... He's like, "What people think happens is they see on TV that you go in, you meet this investor cold, and you blow their socks off with this pitch, and then they write you this check and say, 'You know, here you go, son. Go- go on.'" And it's like, that's not what happens. Like, that's movies. That's Shark Tank. That's not real. And the real thing is dots. And so he's like, you know, many interactions that stack up that when you look back later is a line. Um, and he's like, "Investors invest in lines, not dots," meaning they're not just gonna... Like, it's not the very first interaction typically where it's all just gonna happen for you. And so it's following the person, liking the post, replying to something. They notice that this person said something smart, not the first time, but the third time.

   9. IHIshan Haque15:28

      Yeah.

   10. SPShaan Puri15:29

       And then after that, they follow you back, and then because of that, they see this other blog post you wrote that you don't even realize that one of your 98 views-

   11. IHIshan Haque15:36

       Yeah

   12. SPShaan Puri15:36

       ... was this person who's actually legit, and then go, you know, like... And then so those dots stack up, and ultimately, that's how trust gets built. That's how.

   13. IHIshan Haque15:43

       This is the framework. This is the- the framework king at-

   14. SPShaan Puri15:45

       Yeah.

   15. IHIshan Haque15:46

       He's actually [laughs]

   16. SPShaan Puri15:47

       Watch me cook, baby. This is what I do.

   17. IHIshan Haque15:49

       Yeah.

   18. SPShaan Puri15:49

       Uh, yeah. So that's, I think, you know, what you've done really well. So all right. So let's get to the part where we break up.

   19. IHIshan Haque15:55

       Yeah.

   20. SPShaan Puri15:55

       So at some point, we break up. We worked together for a while, like, I don't know, a year.

   21. IHIshan Haque15:58

       Yeah, a cou- I think it was actually a couple years of, like, knowing each other and, like, doing stuff on and off.

   22. SPShaan Puri16:02

       Yeah.

   23. IHIshan Haque16:02

       Yeah.

   24. SPShaan Puri16:02

       So we get to some point where, um, you're like... You come to me one day, you're like, "I wanna day trade," or something. [laughs]

   25. IHIshan Haque16:09

       Yeah.

   26. SPShaan Puri16:10

       And, like, to be fair, you were actually kind of good at this. I remember one time we were on a call and, uh, I was, like, telling you, like, some instructions or sort of, like, some action items, and then, like, there was, like, no feedback.

   27. IHIshan Haque16:19

       [laughs]

   28. SPShaan Puri16:21

       And I was like, "Yo, are you listening? Like, what are you doing? What- what happened? Where did..."

   29. IHIshan Haque16:24

       Yeah.

   30. SPShaan Puri16:24

       "Is this thing on?" And you were like, "Oh, hang on. Um, Bitcoin just crashed to $3,500." I'm like, this motherfucker's looking at the Bitcoin price-
6. 20:00 – 28:00

   $100k bet on Animoca

   1. IHIshan Haque20:00

      I'm not a day trader, I don't think I'd go back to being a day trader or whatever, but I think all the money is made when there's like a few key decisions that happen maybe once a year or once every few years, once every few months, whatever it is, um, and you just have to act on it with like... It's a bit degenerate. You have to... Like, there wasn't a lot of thoughtful planning around I'm going to buy Bitcoin because of this mathematical equation that's forecast.

   2. SPShaan Puri20:23

      Right.

   3. IHIshan Haque20:23

      It was just times like this doesn't happen every-

   4. SPShaan Puri20:27

      Right

   5. IHIshan Haque20:27

      ... uh, all the time.

   6. SPShaan Puri20:28

      Well, what-

   7. IHIshan Haque20:28

      So let me act on it

   8. SPShaan Puri20:29

      ... in the moment, I was like, "This guy's a fucking degenerate," right?

   9. IHIshan Haque20:31

      [laughs]

   10. SPShaan Puri20:31

       Like, he's 20.

   11. IHIshan Haque20:32

       Yeah.

   12. SPShaan Puri20:32

       I didn't even know exactly how an option trade worked. I was like, "Okay, this is crazy."

   13. IHIshan Haque20:36

       Yeah.

   14. SPShaan Puri20:36

       But at the same time, you're right. Like, if you go read that Buffett quote where he's like, you know, there are moments or seasons where, you know, the, the, the, the s- the clouds fill the sky-

   15. IHIshan Haque20:46

       The weather is just right [laughs]

   16. SPShaan Puri20:47

       ... and it's about, and it's about to rain, and in that... He says, "In that moment, let us not come out with spoons, but bathtubs," to sort of like make hay. There's also, you know, Naval has a quote that's similar to this, which is he, he's talking about luck. He says, "One of the versions of luck is being able to recognize an opportunity."

   17. IHIshan Haque21:02

       Yeah.

   18. SPShaan Puri21:02

       So it's, um, the, it's the version of luck, it's like, he calls it level two or whatever or... He's not the inventor of this. I j- I just heard it from him. Um, but you know, the, the original guy who wrote this, he basically says, you know, it's sort of luck favors the prepared mind.

   19. IHIshan Haque21:14

       Yeah.

   20. SPShaan Puri21:14

       So anybody could have seen that price, and most people, when they see something going down, they get scared. You were like, "This is Bitcoin."

   21. IHIshan Haque21:22

       Yeah.

   22. SPShaan Puri21:22

       Bitcoin flash crash.

   23. IHIshan Haque21:23

       [laughs]

   24. SPShaan Puri21:24

       Blink decision that-

   25. IHIshan Haque21:26

       Yeah

   26. SPShaan Puri21:26

       ... this is a good bet for me, like whatever, risk-reward adjusted.

   27. IHIshan Haque21:30

       Yeah.

   28. SPShaan Puri21:30

       And, uh, you know, you were correct in that. Later, I'm gonna tell a story, so.

   29. IHIshan Haque21:34

       [laughs]

   30. SPShaan Puri21:35

       You come to the States, we fly you out, and uh, I remember we go to a restaurant, and we invite my buddy Suli. And we're talking, and Suli's like, "Okay, Shaan, like, you know-
7. 28:00 – 35:00

   Passing on $2,000,000

   1. IHIshan Haque28:00

      I still could have... Like, the Australian press wanted me to, like, name these people.

   2. SPShaan Puri28:03

      Yeah.

   3. IHIshan Haque28:03

      And, um, I think one of them stayed in public. But they're, like, pretty big-time people that... I mean, they're already rich.

   4. SPShaan Puri28:08

      Smart money, yeah.

   5. IHIshan Haque28:08

      Yeah, they're smart money. They're already rich. They had this because they invest in some fund that had some allocation, blah, blah, blah. So they were, like, just willing to get rid of it. They were like, "It's delisted." They don't know... They probably don't know that they were in crypto or they're gaming.

   6. SPShaan Puri28:20

      [laughs]

   7. IHIshan Haque28:20

      It's just one of the things in their portfolio that's, you know.

   8. SPShaan Puri28:22

      Right.

   9. IHIshan Haque28:23

      And so, so yeah.

   10. SPShaan Puri28:24

       So you're buying it for, like, what discount? Like, 50%-

   11. IHIshan Haque28:26

       Massive

   12. SPShaan Puri28:26

       ... 80%?

   13. IHIshan Haque28:27

       Uh, it was more like 80, 90% discount to what the last trade was.

   14. SPShaan Puri28:31

       And I remember when you told me. I have the Slack messages when you told me.

   15. IHIshan Haque28:34

       Yeah.

   16. SPShaan Puri28:34

       "I'm buying it for, you know, 10 cents on the dollar."

   17. IHIshan Haque28:37

       Yeah.

   18. SPShaan Puri28:38

       And I'm like, "Bro, you're just lighting money on fire."

   19. IHIshan Haque28:40

       [laughs]

   20. SPShaan Puri28:40

       Like, you're going crazy. Like-

   21. IHIshan Haque28:41

       Yeah

   22. SPShaan Puri28:41

       ... what's gonna... Like, that's a insane reaction to the bad news bears.

   23. IHIshan Haque28:47

       Yeah.

   24. SPShaan Puri28:47

       Was I'm gonna, like, double down, but it worked.

   25. IHIshan Haque28:50

       So I didn't d- I think I, like, month or two-

   26. SPShaan Puri28:52

       Well, it quadrupled

   27. IHIshan Haque28:52

       ... I doubled down. I, I, so yeah, I put everything I had. It was about 100K that I just like, "All right, this, this should work out." Well, it's also, like, I'm... If I lose all this money, all right, I'm in my 20s. I'll, like-

   28. SPShaan Puri29:05

       You told me this.

   29. IHIshan Haque29:05

       Like-

   30. SPShaan Puri29:06

       Yeah
8. 35:00 – 40:00

   Spending habits of a 21-year-old millionaire

   1. IHIshan Haque35:00

      these... Like, this is a lifetime hold. This isn't like you buy in, you sell out, whatever. Um, and so I was convincing myself of that. It's like, I w- I'll buy this and, you know, when this becomes, like, the next Tencent, I'll have a couple hundred million dollar stake, and that's how... And I didn't have to do it. This is, like, the only investment I had to do. I didn't have to-

   2. SPShaan Puri35:15

      [laughs]

   3. IHIshan Haque35:16

      ... make all these other investments. Um, there's still some, like, part of me that believes in that. It's like, uh, I, I still see a pathway where, like, in the next 20, 20, 30 years, whatever, this is, like, 100, 200, $300 billion company or whatever, and it's like, I have, I've got a pretty decent, you know, stake in that. Um, and so yeah, that, that's what I was, like, convincing myself of. That is a bit less now during times like this.

   4. SPShaan Puri35:40

      Right.

   5. IHIshan Haque35:40

      But I still have something here where I'm like, okay, um, it may-

   6. SPShaan Puri35:44

      Is it hard, is it hard to not just get attached, like, identity-wise to, like, I don't wanna be wrong?

   7. IHIshan Haque35:50

      Yeah.

   8. SPShaan Puri35:51

      I've made that mistake before. Like-

   9. IHIshan Haque35:52

      But I think-

   10. SPShaan Puri35:53

       You know, especially this is such an extreme case. It's one specific thing.

   11. IHIshan Haque35:56

       Yeah.

   12. SPShaan Puri35:56

       You were so right. You were boy genius.

   13. IHIshan Haque35:57

       [laughs] Yeah.

   14. SPShaan Puri35:59

       Then it crashes, but you're like, "Am I now boy idiot or am I boy genius?"

   15. IHIshan Haque36:03

       Yeah.

   16. SPShaan Puri36:03

       "Is this the moment where I held through the tough times, or-"

   17. IHIshan Haque36:05

       Yeah

   18. SPShaan Puri36:05

       "... did I just fuck up and I need to learn that lesson?" Like-

   19. IHIshan Haque36:08

       Yeah

   20. SPShaan Puri36:08

       ... really hard.

   21. IHIshan Haque36:10

       Yeah. I, well, I-

   22. SPShaan Puri36:11

       How do you deal with that?

   23. IHIshan Haque36:12

       Well, I think, um, well, I went into let me just, like, do something. Um, so I was like, I was still investing some money for, on behalf of other people, and I was going around and meeting, meeting founders and stuff like that, and that's why I'm, like, I'm doing something else right now. [laughs]

   24. SPShaan Puri36:26

       Well, okay, yeah, you have other bets now.

   25. IHIshan Haque36:27

       Yeah, I've got other bets. So that, that's what got me through it. I was like, if this goes away, I need to make sure that this is the next big bet.

   26. SPShaan Puri36:34

       Right.

   27. IHIshan Haque36:34

       Um, I don't need to be- I'm like, "I don't need to be right on this one." Um, like for, you know, if it ends up the way it's going, I could... I've got time to make more bets and-

   28. SPShaan Puri36:43

       Right

   29. IHIshan Haque36:43

       ... be really right on something else.

   30. SPShaan Puri36:46

       Yeah, and also you had done so much degenerate trading that, like, you don't emotionally mood swing like most people.
9. 40:00 – 48:00

   Crypto casinos and starting Shuffle

   1. IHIshan Haque40:00

      'Cause for me it's stocks, right? I kind of invested-

   2. SPShaan Puri40:01

      You told me some story. A billionaire takes you out to lunch and is like, "What's the next Animoca?"

   3. IHIshan Haque40:07

      [laughs]

   4. SPShaan Puri40:08

      'Cause he, he reads the article-

   5. IHIshan Haque40:09

      Yeah, yeah

   6. SPShaan Puri40:09

      ... and he's like, "I gotta meet this whiz kid." Takes you out, he's like, "What's the next one?"

   7. IHIshan Haque40:13

      Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   8. SPShaan Puri40:13

      You shit your pants immediately. You're like, "I don't fucking know."

   9. IHIshan Haque40:16

      Yeah. 'Cause at, during that time, like, I'm-

   10. SPShaan Puri40:17

       [laughs]

   11. IHIshan Haque40:18

       I mean, this was ZEP era, right? So I'm, like, everything I'm telling people to invest in, it's going up and up and up, and, um, you know, I'm a genius. [laughs] Yeah, I'm a genius. Um, and so I was like, "Oh, shit." But I truly believed, I was like, "Animoca just raised a billion dollars." I was like, "Uh, you should, you should invest in Animoca. Animoca is the thing. That's, that is the next thing." And he was like, "Oh, okay. Whatever, blah, blah, blah." And in the next few days-

   12. SPShaan Puri40:41

       But inside he's like, "Goddamn, I love that confidence."

   13. IHIshan Haque40:43

       [laughs] Yeah. The next few days he ended up becoming, like, the top 10 shareholder in the company, bought out tens of millions of dollars worth of stock, and then obviously, you know, Animoca didn't stop at a billion. You know, so he made, you know, over nine figures in that. Um, so then, then that-

   14. SPShaan Puri40:55

       He tip you a little bit on the, on the way out, or tip the dealer, or no?

   15. IHIshan Haque40:58

       [laughs] Uh, there's that comment. That was the best comment there.

   16. SPShaan Puri41:02

       Fair enough.

   17. IHIshan Haque41:02

       Yeah.

   18. SPShaan Puri41:02

       So, um, all right, so you go through that crazy journey. One of the things that comes out of that was you were then, on behalf of this guy plus other people, you were doing other investments.

   19. IHIshan Haque41:12

       Yeah.

   20. SPShaan Puri41:13

       One of them is Shuffle. Let's talk about Shuffle. So-

   21. IHIshan Haque41:15

       Yeah

   22. SPShaan Puri41:15

       ... um, you had Slacked me a while back, and you were like, "Hey." Crazy story. I think on the pod I was like, "Can't say who told me this."

   23. IHIshan Haque41:24

       Right, yeah.

   24. SPShaan Puri41:24

       Now it's all... Now it's, like, way more public.

   25. IHIshan Haque41:26

       Okay. [laughs]

   26. SPShaan Puri41:27

       But, like, at the time-

   27. IHIshan Haque41:27

       Yeah

   28. SPShaan Puri41:27

       ... you were like, "Hey, there's a company called Stake-"

   29. IHIshan Haque41:30

       Yeah

   30. SPShaan Puri41:30

       "... that is making unbelievable amounts of money." You were like, "They had, like, a," whatever, "$800 million dividend last year."
10. 48:00 – 51:00

    Managing regulatory risk

    1. IHIshan Haque48:00

       a clear difference between exchanges and casinos, though. Exchanges are raising tens of billions of dollars, and they're, they've got all the fame." Um, whereas, you know, in... If people just understood, if this was more public on how profitable these casinos are and how they're very similar businesses to, to exchanges, then, you know, there, there would be some re-rating of valuation for these, for these pla- uh, for these, uh, casinos. And so that was like, that's the-

    2. SPShaan Puri48:22

       Well, but, but a lot of these investors and funds, they have, like, a no vice clause, right?

    3. IHIshan Haque48:26

       Yeah. They do, yeah.

    4. SPShaan Puri48:27

       They, they just can't invest in weed.

    5. IHIshan Haque48:29

       Yeah.

    6. SPShaan Puri48:29

       They can't invest in gambling or porn or whatever-

    7. IHIshan Haque48:31

       Yeah

    8. SPShaan Puri48:31

       ... even though there's money to be made there. So I think, like, that's one of the other reasons is, like-

    9. IHIshan Haque48:35

       Yeah

    10. SPShaan Puri48:35

        ... some people just either themselves individually morally say that, or their fund charter basically prohibits them from doing those things, so they're just, like, out on-

    11. IHIshan Haque48:43

        Yeah. No-

    12. SPShaan Puri48:43

        Even if they know it's a great business. I mean, who, who doesn't think a casino's an amazing business? It's just-

    13. IHIshan Haque48:47

        We, we ra- we raised a seed round, and that was, like, the hottest Huge

    14. SPShaan Puri48:50

        Yes. [laughs]

    15. IHIshan Haque48:51

        [laughs]

    16. SPShaan Puri48:52

        One of my biggest regrets was-

    17. IHIshan Haque48:53

        Yeah

    18. SPShaan Puri48:53

        ... uh, was not investing. I tried to invest in them.

    19. IHIshan Haque48:55

        Yeah.

    20. SPShaan Puri48:55

        Like, it was like, oh, it's like one entity here, here, and I was like, "Oh, God." Like, if I have other people's mo- if it's my own money, fine.

    21. IHIshan Haque49:02

        Yeah.

    22. SPShaan Puri49:02

        But when I have other people's money, you know, I have to like, you know, think twice, and just in that time it, like, closed or whatever.

    23. IHIshan Haque49:07

        Yeah. But anyway, like that's... We- we all agree that, uh, in this, like, next cycle, whenever it is, could be five years down the line, who knows, but in the next cycle for crypto, um, we believe that there will be one, two, or three casinos in the top 20 of, of all the coins, and that's billions of dollars of, of value that we think that, you know, we could, we could do. And, and a big difference with us is like, like I am on this podcast right now, like we're not anonymous. Like, we're not like these people that-

    24. SPShaan Puri49:31

        Yeah

    25. IHIshan Haque49:31

        ... like all these crypto casinos, usually they're like very anonymous people. And, um, I mean, if you're putting your money into a platform, you wanna know who's behind it, right? You wanna know-

    26. SPShaan Puri49:40

        So-

    27. IHIshan Haque49:40

        ... who these guys are. But yeah

    28. SPShaan Puri49:41

        How do you, um... Like all the F- do you follow all the FTX stuff going on right now?

    29. IHIshan Haque49:46

        Yeah.

    30. SPShaan Puri49:46

        I'm like really into this trial. It's like my soap opera right now that I'm paying attention to.
11. 51:00 – 54:00

    Getting first customers

    1. IHIshan Haque51:00

       we can split off, let's say our casino, and then put a license to a sportsbook and offer it in a-

    2. SPShaan Puri51:04

       Right

    3. IHIshan Haque51:04

       ... different region. So-

    4. SPShaan Puri51:05

       It's just like Lost. It's like we had to move the island.

    5. IHIshan Haque51:07

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    6. SPShaan Puri51:08

       Remember Lost?

    7. IHIshan Haque51:08

       It's like-

    8. SPShaan Puri51:09

       We moved it. [laughs]

    9. IHIshan Haque51:10

       Yeah. So, uh, so some regulatory risk. There's some, like-

    10. SPShaan Puri51:12

        It's funny, like products have... Most startups have product market fit risk.

    11. IHIshan Haque51:17

        Yeah.

    12. SPShaan Puri51:17

        Like, we don't know if anybody wants what we have to offer.

    13. IHIshan Haque51:19

        [laughs] Yeah.

    14. SPShaan Puri51:20

        Casino, you-

    15. IHIshan Haque51:20

        This is not-

    16. SPShaan Puri51:21

        ... you have no market risk. Then the second tier is technical risk. It's like, uh, if we can make a, um, whatever, self-driving car-

    17. IHIshan Haque51:30

        Right

    18. SPShaan Puri51:30

        ... people are gonna want it. There's no market risk, but there's technical risk. Can you even build a self-driving car?

    19. IHIshan Haque51:33

        Yeah.

    20. SPShaan Puri51:34

        With this, there's no technical risk either, right? There's like... I mean, obviously you have to do technical work, but it's not... that's not the risk in the business. It's all regulatory, uh, it's all regulatory risk in this-

    21. IHIshan Haque51:44

        Yeah

    22. SPShaan Puri51:44

        ... which is so different than like 99% of the other startups I look at.

    23. IHIshan Haque51:48

        Yeah.

    24. SPShaan Puri51:49

        Very few times do you just, just get regulatory risk.

    25. IHIshan Haque51:51

        There's also just like actual risk that you have to manage of your book, like limits that you... Like, we will sweat sometimes, like when we... 'Cause we had to start upping the limits. You know, there's some high rollers that come and go like, "We... I wanna do a 10K blackjack hand, I wanna do a 25K blackjack hand," and you're just like, "Okay, holy shit, we have to..." You know, if they have a few good runs, you could be all of a sudden down a couple hundred thousand dollars.

    26. SPShaan Puri52:12

        Right.

    27. IHIshan Haque52:13

        And so your revenue is not always guaranteed. [laughs] That's also like the biggest difference in this, in the casino business.

    28. SPShaan Puri52:17

        Let's talk about the traction. So you guys launched, I don't know when, but-

    29. IHIshan Haque52:19

        In February of, uh, this year.

    30. SPShaan Puri52:21

        Yeah. What's the... What can you share traction-wise?
12. 54:00 – 1:05:00

    Influencer campaigns that work

    1. IHIshan Haque54:00

       Beyond like, "I'm going to find out where you live, and I'm gonna find out..." Like, so that was like the... When you talk about your first 10 customers, like your first 10 customers are, are pretty rough people [laughs] that you have to do. So, um, I mean, the first thing we went to was we're all a bunch of crypto kids that made a bunch of money, and then we gambled it ourselves. So like we already had a lot of other crypto kids that made a bunch of money and, you know, like to gamble. So we went to those guys first and like, "Hey, come, come, you know, play at our website and, and test it out." And we would, you know, there's little tricks and stuff of like, stuff with like deposit bonuses and like-

    2. SPShaan Puri54:33

       Yeah, like standard kind of sports-

    3. IHIshan Haque54:34

       Yeah, standard like sportsbook promotions and stuff like that. Um, one thing that I think we did that was, or that, that's pretty interesting that we found out was, okay, we should stop spending so much time trying to get thousands of people who will deposit like 10, $20 or whatever, 'cause they'll come on, they'll come on your site, and it's good for them to, you know, play, but they will lose $5 and then, you know, spend 48 hours in your support, you know- I'm going to kill you. Where, where do you guys live? I need my $5 back." Versus like, "Okay, let's, let's maybe try and find customers that are, you know, not like that." And we got pretty lucky in, in some parts of Asia, especially Japan, right? Like, they are, they are people who bet really big, and they're very respectful. [laughs] They're very... Like, they don't waste any of our time. Like, they will lose money, it's like-

    4. SPShaan Puri55:21

       They play with honor.

    5. IHIshan Haque55:22

       Yeah, that's- [laughs]

    6. SPShaan Puri55:22

       [laughs]

    7. IHIshan Haque55:23

       So it's like, okay, these are the customers we want. Now we know the customers that we want, and that it's good for the business. Um, and yeah, we started making some pushes there and, and trying to find, uh... You know, this is a pretty heavy, like, affiliate business. You wanna find... You want other people to go out and do the work, 'cause you can't do Facebook, we can't do Facebook ads. We're prohibited from doing Google, so you can't do PPC. So you ha- you have to find really creative ways of trying to acquire customers, and yeah. That, that was, yeah.

    8. SPShaan Puri55:49

       Well, this is why, like, Stake, I think, bought... or they created Kick.

    9. IHIshan Haque55:53

       Yeah.

    10. SPShaan Puri55:53

        And they're basically, like, paying Twitch streamers, you know, gobs of money. Reportedly, like, $50 million, $100 million-

    11. IHIshan Haque55:59

        Yeah

    12. SPShaan Puri55:59

        ... contracts to come play, 'cause they're like, "Oh, these are popular people. One of the things they'll play is we'll give them money to gamble on our platform." They gave Drake, like, tens of millions of dollars of-

    13. IHIshan Haque56:09

        Right

    14. SPShaan Puri56:09

        ... like, go play. Show people that you're doing a $20 million bet-

    15. IHIshan Haque56:14

        Yeah

    16. SPShaan Puri56:14

        ... and, or, you know, gambling $20 million one night. It makes you look like a baller.

    17. IHIshan Haque56:18

        Yeah.

    18. SPShaan Puri56:18

        It creates great content that's gonna go viral and get you likes.

    19. IHIshan Haque56:21

        Yeah.

    20. SPShaan Puri56:21

        And all those people are gonna see that gambling on Stake is fun, and Drake does it, right?

    21. IHIshan Haque56:24

        Yeah.

    22. SPShaan Puri56:25

        Like, that's like their-

    23. IHIshan Haque56:26

        Yeah.

    24. SPShaan Puri56:26

        Is that accurate? That's my perspective.

    25. IHIshan Haque56:27

        So Stake pioneered that mo- Like, they were like, "Uh, we can't bid on these other channels with all these other crypto... or, like, other casinos, um, and so let's try and find other ways." And the streaming model, like, they've pioneered that. They work-

    26. SPShaan Puri56:40

        It's genius, honestly

    27. IHIshan Haque56:40

        ... closely. It... Th- The thing that's genius about it also is that instead of, like, an influencer posting a picture saying, "Hey, come play on Stake," they're playing the product. They're showing you how it works. They're-

    28. SPShaan Puri56:49

        You're seeing their reaction. They're-

    29. IHIshan Haque56:50

        Yeah, you're seeing the reaction-

    30. SPShaan Puri56:51

        ... picture and picture-
13. 1:05:00 – 1:10:00

    Business Idea: YC for nerdy kids

    1. SPShaan Puri1:05:00

       Reels makes that much money 'cause it's plugged into one of the greatest moneymakers ever. Um- And livestreaming is, livestreaming commerce is, like, a pretty huge thing in Asia. Um- It really is ... and so if it can, if it can somehow work in, in Western markets, I think, like, there's something, I think, there where they could flick the switch, and then, you know, this is, this is how they go from, "We're already worth a couple billion dollars, how do we get to 10, 20, 50?" And maybe they don't care about how much they're worth, but what's, like, the biggest impact? What's the other game? Yeah, what's, like, the next... They've already won one game, it's like how do we, how do we get to the next? So I think, um, yeah, that, that's super... Like, I think more people should probably know about those guys, uh- And are you like, "I'm gonna be a degenerate forever"? Uh, or are you like- [laughs] ... you know, "I'm just gonna do this for this period, and then I'm gonna do something else"? Well, I'm, I'm, I'm just r- I really wanted to be a part of something that could be huge and that could grow really fast. Um, and so I, I want to do that with Shuffle, and you know, ride this wave. Um, like, will I do another thing in sports betting or gambling, whatever? I don't know. You know, maybe not. But, um, I, like, like I mentioned to you earlier before, it's like you make your nut and go do your noble mission. [laughs] Like- Yeah ... I, I think, I think I might. It's the Justin Mayer's quote. Yeah. [laughs] Uh, love that, love that quote. Um, I love that quote, not because I think it's right, but because so many people when they hear that, they're like, "That's what I'm doing." Yeah. 'Cause it's such an easy out to, like- [laughs] Yeah ... justify anything that- Yep ... you're doing in the moment. Right. [laughs] 'Cause you're like, "I'm gonna do the noble mission later." And so I love it 'cause it's hilarious how much people love that quote. I don't know if it's good wisdom or bad wisdom. [laughs] I can't tell. But, uh, what... By the way, what, uh, ideas do you have? So- Yeah ... you know MFM. You know that's what- Yeah ... we do here. I'm gonna, I'm gonna get out my notes app really quick- Okay ... to tell you. And we, we might have already talked about some. Just, uh, really quickly, there was, um, before when you were talking about kids that were playing RuneScape and stuff like that, I literally have already one in here. I have incubator around kids who are building businesses within games. Um- I like that ... 'cause I think everything- Roblox and- Yeah, every s- so I guess m- during my era, like, I'm, I'm a bit older now. During my era it was kids that were building Minecraft servers, or, um, I know for the guys that did Stake, they were RuneScape kids. They, they built a casino in RuneScape first, and then they did their own thing. So it's, like, RuneScape, Minecraft. I think now it's, like, Fort-

    2. IHIshan Haque1:07:11

       Roblox or like maybe, um, like Fortnite creative maps and stuff like that. Like, if you're building businesses within games, um, every single person I've met that's done that, they're all like super successful millionaires. [laughs]

    3. SPShaan Puri1:07:22

       I 100% agree.

    4. IHIshan Haque1:07:22

       Yeah.

    5. SPShaan Puri1:07:22

       I, I think I tweeted this out. I go, "What people think a suc- uh, the like winners backgrounds looks like."

    6. IHIshan Haque1:07:28

       Yeah.

    7. SPShaan Puri1:07:28

       And you know, what the world tells you, it's like, you know, good grades, he goes to a good school.

    8. IHIshan Haque1:07:33

       Yeah.

    9. SPShaan Puri1:07:33

       Has good internships and like, you know, uh, after-school activities.

    10. IHIshan Haque1:07:38

        Right.

    11. SPShaan Puri1:07:39

        Runs for student council, blah. It's like, what I've seen is like what the real winners are, are like the kid, the guy who's running his own gaming server when he's 14.

    12. IHIshan Haque1:07:48

        Yeah.

    13. SPShaan Puri1:07:48

        Kinda 'cause he just wants to be able to buy games. He's not like even running it as a business, right? Like, the sneakerhead, like sneaker flippers basically.

    14. IHIshan Haque1:07:55

        Yeah.

    15. SPShaan Puri1:07:55

        Um, you know, people that are like hardcore gamers that are like become best in the world at a video game that's like super competitive.

    16. IHIshan Haque1:08:03

        Yeah.

    17. SPShaan Puri1:08:03

        That ty- and like, you know, which requires skills, strategy, communication, like ton- like obsession. Those are pretty translatable skills.

    18. IHIshan Haque1:08:12

        Yeah.

    19. SPShaan Puri1:08:12

        Uh, you know, speech and debate is another one. Like, there's these like unc- unorthodox backgrounds. RuneScape is one that's crazy. The RuneScape mafia.

    20. IHIshan Haque1:08:19

        Yeah. [laughs]

    21. SPShaan Puri1:08:20

        The number of-

    22. IHIshan Haque1:08:20

        Yes

    23. SPShaan Puri1:08:21

        ... rich young people I've met that the common denominator is, yeah, we used to be like... I di- I didn't play RuneScape, but they're like, "Yeah, RuneScape has like the m- the marketplace or the plaza or something."

    24. IHIshan Haque1:08:31

        Yeah.

    25. SPShaan Puri1:08:31

        And they were like, "Yeah, we used to roll. We used to run the plaza or the marketplace."

    26. IHIshan Haque1:08:34

        [laughs]

    27. SPShaan Puri1:08:34

        And I was like-

    28. IHIshan Haque1:08:35

        Yeah

    29. SPShaan Puri1:08:35

        ... "Jeez, this is something." I have a idea around that which is, uh... I was like, I wanna create kinda like the outcast conference. So basically what I wanna do is be like these are actual hotbeds of talent-

    30. IHIshan Haque1:08:46

        Yeah
14. 1:10:00 – 1:13:00

    Business Idea: CRM for cashed up niches

    1. IHIshan Haque1:10:00

       lost to like banking or something like that. And then, um, there's a lot of them a- as well that they just don't have guidance coming out of with the first thing that they do, and so then they fuck around for maybe like a few years, and then like they-

    2. SPShaan Puri1:10:10

       That's why I'm calling it outcast 'cause like they probably feel like, "Oh, I'm kind of like behind a little bit."

    3. IHIshan Haque1:10:15

       Yeah.

    4. SPShaan Puri1:10:15

       "I w- I wasn't doing all the shit that the other like achiever kids were doing." But it's like, "No, no, no, trust me. Let me show you 10 other people that are like you." And then they're like, "Oh, I see myself in them. Like, I can do it, too." This is-

    5. IHIshan Haque1:10:27

       Yeah

    6. SPShaan Puri1:10:27

       ... this is the basis of like a lot of sports. Like, you see a guy that's from your hometown, and now you start to believe you can do it, too. Why do you like Australian entrepreneurs so much? Like-

    7. IHIshan Haque1:10:36

       Yeah

    8. SPShaan Puri1:10:37

       ... what do you care? It's like because they're from Australia, I'm from Australia. If they made it, I can make it. But that-

    9. IHIshan Haque1:10:40

       Yes

    10. SPShaan Puri1:10:41

        ... that's cool, but had you never heard of any, you would probably also be, you know, banking somewhere, you know, on that-

    11. IHIshan Haque1:10:47

        And also like, uh, I think a lot of them, when you spend your time or your childhood whatever like in a room doing all this stuff, you're, whatever, you're making money or like you're learning business skills, but then you start lacking in other areas. [laughs] Like maybe, so then like that, that's setting up, setting yourself up for failure to waste some time, whe- whether it's... Then afterwards, you know, you have some girl troubles, or afterwards you don't know how to do something with family or whatever, blah, blah, blah. But, um, yeah, I think that that's why there's-

    12. SPShaan Puri1:11:13

        Oh, that's a great idea. At the out- I'm just gonna have a kissing booth.

    13. IHIshan Haque1:11:15

        [laughs]

    14. SPShaan Puri1:11:16

        I'm just gonna have a hot girl. It's like, "Yo, if you haven't had your first kiss, just, let's just do it now."

    15. IHIshan Haque1:11:20

        [laughs]

    16. SPShaan Puri1:11:20

        And we're gonna get that all out of the way. We're gonna ki- we're gonna crush these like lingering [laughs] thoughts in your head.

    17. IHIshan Haque1:11:26

        Yeah. Uh, but yeah, that, that was one of them. Um, I mean-

    18. SPShaan Puri1:11:30

        But, but what was your idea? Was it... I, I-

    19. IHIshan Haque1:11:32

        Well, the, the idea was like just like a, like a, like a, uh, you know, giving these kids like mentorship and like just like-

    20. SPShaan Puri1:11:37

        Incubate program

    21. IHIshan Haque1:11:37

        ... yeah, yeah.

    22. SPShaan Puri1:11:38

        So like a-

    23. IHIshan Haque1:11:38

        Just like a little Y Combinator thing for, for these weirdos. Um-

    24. SPShaan Puri1:11:41

        What else do you got?

    25. IHIshan Haque1:11:42

        There's a... I, I was just at a conference. I was just really surprised. Um, I mean, something within conferences where I think maybe more people should, uh, make conferences for like cashed-up niches. Um, because especially if you do like the exhibitor model where it's like, oh, my God, like they, you know... And some of these people are, the one I just went to, they're paying a couple hundred thousand dollars for-

    26. SPShaan Puri1:12:03

        A booth

    27. IHIshan Haque1:12:03

        ... for, for a booth. So maybe that starts off as you do your newsletter, whatever. You do like the, the low effort thing first, the low price, low effort thing of newsletters, whatever, build that audience, and then just immediately go into... Like, I'm surprised you guys haven't done a conference yet 'cause I feel like that would, that would make like a-

    28. SPShaan Puri1:12:18

        Like an MFM one?

    29. IHIshan Haque1:12:19

        Yeah, like an MFM conference or whatever.

    30. SPShaan Puri1:12:20

        Yeah, just lazy, but yeah.
15. 1:13:00 – 1:16:00

    Business Idea: VIP Management Software

    1. IHIshan Haque1:13:00

       little bit boring, but it's like if you could just find like some niche that-

    2. SPShaan Puri1:13:02

       And what are these other cashed-up niches? So like one, for example, I think is like farming.

    3. IHIshan Haque1:13:06

       Right. Yeah, yeah.

    4. SPShaan Puri1:13:07

       Another, I mean, any, real estate is another one, right?

    5. IHIshan Haque1:13:10

       Yeah.

    6. SPShaan Puri1:13:11

       And within that you could even be like senior living or-

    7. IHIshan Haque1:13:14

       Right. Yeah

    8. SPShaan Puri1:13:14

       ... HVAC. You know, like things like that where you know that everybody there- Can spell EBITDA. [laughs]

    9. IHIshan Haque1:13:21

       Well, it's like, it's, I think for anything that where the interactions or the behaviors of your customer is-

    10. SPShaan Puri1:13:26

        High value

    11. IHIshan Haque1:13:27

        ... very, yeah, it's very high value, but it's also, it's very different to, like, maybe like an e-com or whatever, like, or like just a transaction. Like, on our one, it's like you, you have a bunch of games that you like and you spend... You know, we wanna know exactly if you've lost this amount of money. In the next few hours, we wanna t- like make some contact with you and stuff like that.

    12. SPShaan Puri1:13:46

        Right.

    13. IHIshan Haque1:13:47

        We can't really do custom behaviors like that with, like, a Salesforce server, because... Or, or, like, what- whatever else CRM platform, 'cause it's, it's very tailored to a very broad niche. So anything that has, like, a-

    14. SPShaan Puri1:13:57

        So you're saying high-value customers, and then basically figure out, like, first principles, what should this look like for this niche?

    15. IHIshan Haque1:14:03

        Yeah, yeah. Uh, I think something like that.

    16. SPShaan Puri1:14:05

        That's pretty good. I like that.

    17. IHIshan Haque1:14:05

        That'd be a good idea.

    18. SPShaan Puri1:14:06

        So I think that's a very, like... That's a very good sandbox for somebody that wanted to explore.

    19. IHIshan Haque1:14:11

        And we, we just worked on this before. Uh, there could be someone that does, like... So if in, in the gaming biz, there's, you know, VIP... Like, VIPs make up your whole entire business. If we're talking about, there's actually other verticals as well, where VIPs is, like, your thing. You sh- actually, every single business probably has VIPs that they're just, like, not, uh, interacting with. Um, so maybe, like, VIP management software for e-com-

    20. SPShaan Puri1:14:33

        Right

    21. IHIshan Haque1:14:33

        ... for whatever, you know, even for, like, retail businesses or whatever. Like, you probably have... Yeah, you probably have, like, customers that will come in, let's say, I, I started getting into, like, the hot/cold exposure therapy stuff. So-

    22. SPShaan Puri1:14:44

        Oh, nice

    23. IHIshan Haque1:14:44

        ... I started going, like-

    24. SPShaan Puri1:14:46

        How tech bro of you.

    25. IHIshan Haque1:14:47

        [laughs] I was like, I started going into these places like, you know, three, four times a week. But, um, you know, if these guys just would've n- know that, like, I'm paying this much am- amount of money-

    26. SPShaan Puri1:14:57

        Right

    27. IHIshan Haque1:14:57

        ... come upsell me on something else or do something else. Like, I think that even, like, retail businesses, like, just if you were to focus less of your time on trying to, you know, broaden and, uh, like, getting re- you know, paying on these Facebook ads to get the next 1,000 customers, what about the 10 that's gonna spend like, you know, you know, whatever, five, 10 times more on the business? Um, so that's probably, I think, some VIP management software for-

    28. SPShaan Puri1:15:19

        Yeah, that's... I like that

    29. IHIshan Haque1:15:20

        ... those guys, that would be another one.

    30. SPShaan Puri1:15:21

        It could sit on top of whatever, whatever niche you choose. It could just sit-
16. 1:16:00 – 1:22:00

    Business Idea: Cultural Concierge for Biz Dev

    1. IHIshan Haque1:16:00

       it seems like every single person wants to, like, you know, be a personality or brand right now. Um, and so people that... I mean, a lot of these are, like, uni kids that know how to do this. Um, but it's, like, exactly how to connect those middle... Yeah, they'd be the middleman for the uni kids-

    2. SPShaan Puri1:16:15

       Well, what this was, like, done for you, so D- DFY.

    3. IHIshan Haque1:16:18

       Yeah.

    4. SPShaan Puri1:16:18

       So, like, people who do this with e-com now, honestly, I think they're pretty scammy, but they're like, "Hey, we will just hand you an e-commerce business that makes cash flow."

    5. IHIshan Haque1:16:26

       Right, yeah.

    6. SPShaan Puri1:16:26

       It's like anytime someone promises you passive income, just, like, run away.

    7. IHIshan Haque1:16:30

       Yeah.

    8. SPShaan Puri1:16:30

       But, like, um, that's what they're promising. And a lot of people, I mean, these companies that are promising this are making a ton of money, and one of the reasons why is it's tempting to instead of just saying, "Here, we'll teach you Facebook ads, but now you gotta go figure out the rest. What product? What's the supply chain? What's, what's Google Ads?"

    9. IHIshan Haque1:16:45

       Yeah.

    10. SPShaan Puri1:16:45

        They're like, "We're just gonna give you the whole thing."

    11. IHIshan Haque1:16:47

        Yeah.

    12. SPShaan Puri1:16:48

        Uh, turnkey, and so, you know, there's a version of that. Like, there's video editors and content. There, there's, you know, copywriters, but, like, you kinda want the whole thing, the sort of, like, done for you package.

    13. IHIshan Haque1:16:58

        Yeah, I think, like, a full service, uh, agency for all that sort of stuff might, might work out. Um, trying to think of what else. Uh, let me see. Uh, this one's kinda related to, like, maybe, uh, what you do with Shepherd, but, um, so recently we, like, we ex- we started to, had to expand to Japan, right?

    14. SPShaan Puri1:17:18

        Mm-hmm.

    15. IHIshan Haque1:17:18

        Um, and that is, like, n- none of us speak Japanese. [laughs] It's like, we don't know how to scale i- in that country. And so, well, what we had to do was, like, first let me research what other companies have done, and I remember reading, I think maybe it was, like, a Chamath video when he was at Facebook, and he was like, "Uh, we hired some MBAs and they flew over to Japan, they came back and, you know, a few months went by, we weren't growing. We're like, 'What's going on?' We fired those MBAs. We got this, like, young woman from that, who was actually living in Japan, and within the first month we were seeing growth." And we're like, "Wait, what? Okay, what are you doing that these MBA people haven't done?" She's like, "Well, you know, on, on the Facebook profile, like, we don't care about your relationship status, we care about your blood type."

    16. SPShaan Puri1:17:59

        Right.

    17. IHIshan Haque1:18:00

        And it's just, like, stuff like that that you would only know to do-

    18. SPShaan Puri1:18:03

        Localization-

    19. IHIshan Haque1:18:04

        Localization

    20. SPShaan Puri1:18:04

        ... not translation.

    21. IHIshan Haque1:18:05

        And to find those people was, like... It, yeah, it's, it's pretty hard to, to do that. So maybe if there's some, like, agency where, um... Like, so we hired uni kids that are, that speak native, like, fluent English, so we can communicate with them, but also they're fluent in, you know, in Japanese. And doing that, like, you know, our growth has been like 10X of just, like... They know the market in terms of-

    22. SPShaan Puri1:18:26

        [laughs]

    23. IHIshan Haque1:18:26

        They'd like, they'd... By the way, none, none of them knew anything about, like, gambling. They don't need to know that. We can teach them that.

    24. SPShaan Puri1:18:31

        Right.

    25. IHIshan Haque1:18:31

        They just need to know, like, what are the people like? How do you communicate with them? How do we, uh, yeah, localize all that content, do everything, um, to, to cater to this market where... And it's, it's, in certain markets, it's very important that you are respectful and you appear like you're not, you appear like you're not a foreign company that's trying to attract the customers. You appear like you were born out of that country.

    26. SPShaan Puri1:18:52

        Right.

    27. IHIshan Haque1:18:53

        Um, so, so doing that whole process for me was very hard to find, like, the right people that spoke English that also was native i- in Japanese and, and knew all that. So, uh, maybe if there was some, like, Shepherd-like, uh, agency to help you. Okay, you're expanding into this country. Here's, like, your, you know, growth assistants that are native to that language and can do all these things. Um-

    28. SPShaan Puri1:19:14

        That's cool. I like that.

    29. IHIshan Haque1:19:15

        Yeah.

    30. SPShaan Puri1:19:15

        Um, yeah, there's two crazy things on that. One, if you look at the Facebook growth chart- Like, one of the key things for Facebook was getting the site translated and localized across, like... And they did a, they had to do some crazy Wikipedia-like shit to get the whole site translated-
17. 1:22:00 – 1:24:00

    The underrated growth model behind MrBeast

    1. IHIshan Haque1:22:00

       Right, yeah.

    2. SPShaan Puri1:22:00

       They're like, "Dollars? First of all, five? That's a week of groceries."

    3. IHIshan Haque1:22:04

       Yeah.

    4. SPShaan Puri1:22:04

       "And secondly, this site you have to pay to watch people? Screw this." They don't even know that it's free to watch.

    5. IHIshan Haque1:22:08

       Right, yeah.

    6. SPShaan Puri1:22:09

       It's like, "Can you just change the text on that button?" And I was like, "Oh, damn, how many more of those are there-"

    7. IHIshan Haque1:22:14

       [laughs]

    8. SPShaan Puri1:22:14

       "... inside this app?" And another one was like, we were, like, trying to come up with, like, these marketing campaigns. We had, like, marketing, like, our marketing experts were, like, coming up with these ideas. I asked the local team. They were like, "Hey, can you buy the... Can you just give me your credit card? I wanna buy five iPhones." I was like, "IPhones, why?" He's like, "In Brazil, an iPhone is like a gold bar."

    9. IHIshan Haque1:22:31

       [laughs]

    10. SPShaan Puri1:22:31

        He's like, "This is like..." He's like, "We're just gonna give these away. Trust me, you'll get, like, 20,000 people watching this stream." I'm like, "What?" And he's like, "This is a gold bar. Imagine somebody just giving out, like, golden bars."

    11. IHIshan Haque1:22:42

        [laughs]

    12. SPShaan Puri1:22:42

        And he just kept saying that, and he did it, and it was just exactly that. It was like all of a sudden it was just number one most watched guy on Twitch that day was-

    13. IHIshan Haque1:22:49

        Right

    14. SPShaan Puri1:22:49

        ... the guy giving away one iPhone.

    15. IHIshan Haque1:22:50

        That's crazy.

    16. SPShaan Puri1:22:50

        And he, he milked it for like four hours. He's like, "I'm not giving it away until we get, like, 30,000 people in here."

    17. IHIshan Haque1:22:56

        [laughs] Yeah.

    18. SPShaan Puri1:22:57

        And he's like [laughs] and it worked. It was insane.

    19. IHIshan Haque1:22:59

        Yeah, there's, yeah, stuff like that, that we're, that we find out, like, every week of like, "Oh, shit, you guys actually do it this way, and by us-"

    20. SPShaan Puri1:23:06

        Have you heard about what MrBeast does with this?

    21. IHIshan Haque1:23:08

        No. Uh, is it, like, the dubbing the videos?

    22. SPShaan Puri1:23:11

        What's that? So first he exploded his growth by just being the, one of the few American YouTubers to, like, create his Brazil page, create his Philippines page-

    23. IHIshan Haque1:23:20

        Yeah

    24. SPShaan Puri1:23:20

        ... create his Indonesia page. He created separate accounts for all those, localized them, hired somebody who speaks the language, and, like, yo- Like, when we were over hanging out with him, some lady walked in speaking Portuguese, and I was like-

    25. IHIshan Haque1:23:32

        Like, yeah

    26. SPShaan Puri1:23:32

        ... "What the hell's going on?" And he's like, "Oh, yeah, she manages, like, my whole page for, for Brazil."

    27. IHIshan Haque1:23:37

        True. Yeah.

    28. SPShaan Puri1:23:37

        Uh, you know, like, you have to have somebody who speaks the language and knows it. And then what they did was... I was like, "So do you dub it?" And he's like, "Yeah, we dub it, but we hire, like, voice actors." I'm like, "Why don't you, you could use AI." I'm, like, excited to be like-

    29. IHIshan Haque1:23:48

        [laughs]

    30. SPShaan Puri1:23:48

        ... "You could use AI." He goes, "Yeah, yeah, I'm sure you can," but, like, he's like, "What we do is we go and we find the guy who did the Spider-Man voice in Brazil-"
18. 1:24:00 – 1:26:00

    Content creator rollups

    1. SPShaan Puri1:24:00

       And then every comment is, "Holy shit, it's Spider-Man."

    2. IHIshan Haque1:24:03

       Yeah.

    3. SPShaan Puri1:24:03

       And, like, he's getting crazy engagement 'cause they're like, "That's Spider-Man."

    4. IHIshan Haque1:24:06

       Yeah.

    5. SPShaan Puri1:24:06

       And he's like, "Yeah, it costs me, like, an extra five grand, but, like, look at what it did to my page." And-

    6. IHIshan Haque1:24:11

       I think they turned that into, like, a agency where they, like, like, like-

    7. SPShaan Puri1:24:13

       That's right

    8. IHIshan Haque1:24:14

       ... they do it for other people as well. Like, it's, yeah.

    9. SPShaan Puri1:24:16

       They do the done-for-you thing. They're like-

    10. IHIshan Haque1:24:17

        Yeah

    11. SPShaan Puri1:24:17

        ... "If we did this for growth, we should do this for 20 other YouTubers." And I was like, "Dude, of all your businesses, like Feastables or whatever-

    12. IHIshan Haque1:24:23

        Yeah

    13. SPShaan Puri1:24:23

        ... this is, like, the most underrated one." Because I'm like, "This is genius. It's selling your sawdust, your, your by-product."

    14. IHIshan Haque1:24:29

        Yeah.

    15. SPShaan Puri1:24:29

        "Stuff you've already built in-house. You're just making it available for others." Like, that's a no-bra- And you're MrBeast.

    16. IHIshan Haque1:24:35

        Yeah.

    17. SPShaan Puri1:24:35

        If you just said, "Hey, every YouTuber, like, you can use what I use," they'll all sign up, right?

    18. IHIshan Haque1:24:40

        Right.

    19. SPShaan Puri1:24:41

        So it's, like, instant customer acquisition. Ping. And they take, like... They're like, "Dude, you don't even have a page in the Philippines. We're gonna run, we're gonna create it. We're gonna run it for you. We get half or whatever. We get 30 to 50%."

    20. IHIshan Haque1:24:52

        Right.

    21. SPShaan Puri1:24:53

        So it's like they don't just take, like, a monthly fee. They own, like, you know-

    22. IHIshan Haque1:24:56

        [laughs]

    23. SPShaan Puri1:24:56

        ... the majority, like, you know, like, a huge chunk of that channel. I'm like, "That's a really good model."

    24. IHIshan Haque1:25:00

        Yeah. I wonder if anyone's done, like, a rollup of YouTube channels and brands or whatever. Like, that seems like, seems like every niche ends up being, like, you get rolled up-

    25. SPShaan Puri1:25:09

        Get rolled up

    26. IHIshan Haque1:25:09

        ... yeah, get rolled up and do that. So I don't know if-

    27. SPShaan Puri1:25:12

        I don't know who does it

    28. IHIshan Haque1:25:12

        ... Spotter? No, I haven't noticed.

    29. SPShaan Puri1:25:14

        So they're kinda doing it. What they're doing is they go to the creators, and they say, "We'll buy your back catalog."

    30. IHIshan Haque1:25:18

        Right.
19. 1:26:00 – 1:38:38

    No small boy stuff

    1. IHIshan Haque1:26:00

       manages his IP... I don't know what to call it. Like, uh, whenever there's a video of Speed going viral on YouTube or TikTok, whatever, they will claim it, and then they make-

    2. SPShaan Puri1:26:09

       They claim it

    3. IHIshan Haque1:26:09

       ... revenue off... They'll, they'll actually, they'll run ads on it.

    4. SPShaan Puri1:26:12

       Oh, wow.

    5. IHIshan Haque1:26:12

       And I think, I think very quickly, like, just Speed alone has generated, like, a million dollars so far. And he's like, "We should just be doing this for, like, not just Speed, like all these different creators."

    6. SPShaan Puri1:26:19

       Yeah.

    7. IHIshan Haque1:26:19

       They'll probably do this [laughs] yeah, create, like, a big business. So that might be also, like, another, like, within that niche.

    8. SPShaan Puri1:26:25

       But because the way that works is if your video, if your IP is being played by somebody else, you can claim it and either they take it down-

    9. IHIshan Haque1:26:32

       Take it down, yeah

    10. SPShaan Puri1:26:32

        ... or you get all the ad revenue.

    11. IHIshan Haque1:26:34

        Yeah, exactly, yeah. And I think Eddie should just do, yeah, do [laughs] the latter. Like, get, do that. So, 'cause th- they found, like, they were like, just, uh, like, for people, creators like Speed, like, a lot of the eyeballs that is, that is on him is not on his videos, it's on the millions of clips-

    12. SPShaan Puri1:26:50

        Compilations, yeah

    13. IHIshan Haque1:26:50

        ... and compilations and stuff that are... That's, that's going unclaimed. Like, you're, you're, there's, like, easy money that you could be claiming-

    14. SPShaan Puri1:26:56

        Yeah

    15. IHIshan Haque1:26:57

        ... and getting. So, um, yeah, that's probably another thing that people should, you know, look into and-

    16. SPShaan Puri1:27:02

        Yeah

    17. IHIshan Haque1:27:02

        ... it's so good.

    18. SPShaan Puri1:27:03

        Uh, this is great. These are-

    19. IHIshan Haque1:27:05

        Yeah, some, some good-

    20. SPShaan Puri1:27:05

        These are fun ideas. Um, I'm glad we did this, man.

    21. IHIshan Haque1:27:08

        Yeah.

    22. SPShaan Puri1:27:08

        This is, this is awesome.

    23. IHIshan Haque1:27:09

        Yeah.

    24. SPShaan Puri1:27:10

        And, uh, yeah. Ishan, uh, where should they-

    25. IHIshan Haque1:27:11

        Yeah

    26. SPShaan Puri1:27:12

        ... follow you or go... What can they do?

    27. IHIshan Haque1:27:13

        Uh, yeah, you can follow me, just, like, Twitter, um-

    28. SPShaan Puri1:27:16

        Which is?

    29. IHIshan Haque1:27:16

        Ishan, uh, ishanhaq, but the last few letters of my name's cut off, so it's just H-A-Q. [laughs] So you're, you're S-H-A-A-N.

    30. SPShaan Puri1:27:24

        Yeah.

Episode duration: 1:38:38