What I’d build if I wanted to get rich with AI

*$1M Problems Worth-Solving (90+ Business Ideas):* Episode 880: Shaan Puri and Sam Parr break down the moats in AI.

Shaan PurihostSam Parrhost

Nov 9, 202638mWatch on YouTube

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Transcript

45 min read · 8,505 words

0:00 – 7:05
Drugs and Miracles
1. SPShaan Puri
  You were talking about moats, and as a person who likes the game of business, I don't like to get made obsolete. [upbeat music] Uh, okay, yeah. I wanted to show you something. So it certainly feels a lot of days like AI makes you obsolete. There's a- there's a bunch of different conflicting feelings. One is, "What the hell am I gonna do if AI can do everything?" The other version is, "I should be doing way more. AI can do anything, and there's all these other people doing really awesome things around me. I, I should probably go do something awesome. But what, what should I go do? It seems like I'm... It's a really competitive game. I'm really late to the race with a lot of these things."
2. SPSam Parr
  And you think you have all these ideas, and then you sit there at the computer, and you're like, "What should I make if I can make anything?"
3. SPShaan Puri
  Yeah. That, that's one part of it. How do I use this to make stuff? Another part of it is like, wow, you look at a company like Anthropic, it's basically the most fast-growing... It's basically the best business in the history of capitalism so far, right? Like, they've created $2 trillion of value in, like, five years. You know? It's, it's an incredible thing. They're doing-
4. SPSam Parr
  Do you realize that amongst the seven co-founders, I think they've been around for $2,500... 2,500 days. They have basically created, collectively, the seven founders, $96 million of net worth every single day since founding.
5. SPShaan Puri
  Yeah, bananas. [chuckles]
6. SPSam Parr
  Crazy.
7. SPShaan Puri
  I think they only own like 2% of the company now, right? [laughs]
8. SPSam Parr
  Like seven- uh, like 14 or something. But yeah-
9. SPShaan Puri
  Each, each is like 2.5% or something like that.
10. SPSam Parr
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
11. SPShaan Puri
  Okay. So, so you know, on one hand, you see tons of people making hay, and you're like, "Oh, I wanna get in on that," but it feels very competitive. On the other hand, you think, "Well, if I just go build this thing, isn't it gonna be obsolete in a day? You know, what's the future of software?" So I, I really started thinking about where would I go if I really wanted to make something happen right now. And so let me show you kind of like my quick thoughts on this. "Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been," Michael Scott. [laughs] And so, you know, the, the goal is what in four or five years is gonna be something we look back at and say, "Man, that was... Now is the time that we should've been doing that." Five years ago, the thing to be doing was to go work at one of these model companies, OpenAI, Anthropic, you know, so on and so forth. And so using AI to create video, like Runway, images like Midjourney, text like ChatGPT, you know, those are the things to go build. It was not obvious at the time, uh, but for a small number of people, they did see that. They saw around the corner. They saw that this is the place to be. That's where the action is. So where do I think the action will be over the next five years? So you know, right now, what you will hear about with AI is, "AI is amazing." You'll hear about coding. You'll hear about personal agents like, uh, Instinct or Muse or GrokBot, and you'll be hearing about LLMs. But Sam, you see that in the far left corner? You see that down there?
12. SPSam Parr
  Yeah.
13. SPShaan Puri
  It just says, "Look over here." There's something else smaller around the corner for you to go look at, and I call this AI in the world of things. And so I think that using AI in the world of, um, you know, bits, which is basically like digital stuff, I think has very low returns. I think using AI... Anybody who's like, "I'm using AI to make content," it's a race to the bottom there. I think using AI to make, uh, make software, SA- SAS, right? Make tools, I think is, you know, kind of a race to the bottom. You know, do it if it's just where your heart is, but to me, that's not where the opportunity is. So where is the opportunity? I think it's in the world of things. What does that mean? So the first place I would go look is-
14. SPSam Parr
  [chuckles] Drugs
15. SPShaan Puri
  ... drugs and miracles. So if you go look at, um... There's a... Somebody posted this tweet the other day that was, "Here's a list of people that are curing their own cancer right now."
16. SPSam Parr
  [laughs]
17. SPShaan Puri
  And it was basically like, you know, the guy from GitLab who used, you know, tech, right? AI plus, plus, uh, to sequence his tumor to then find... To run through, like, possible drugs that could do it, to then synthesize them, compound them, research them, ultimately take them and shrink his tumors and get rid of his cancer. The guy cured his own cancer.
18. SPSam Parr
  He has a service that you could sign up for. My friend with cancer signed up for it, and he's doing great.
19. SPShaan Puri
  And so the... And there's like seven other people that are doing the same thing, and i- in general, the idea that we are gonna apply AI to science, to biology, to developing new drugs. You know, a drug typically took 10 years and $2 billion to make and had like a 80 or 90% failure rate. Pretty tough game. And because of those numbers, only drug companies of a certain size really play that game. And I think what Eli Lilly's doing is awesome. They are... Like, Eli Lilly's like, you know, leaned in super hard to AI. They're, you know, they're, they're buying compute like they're, like they're one of the tech companies, or like, you know, the way Citadel is spinning up its own data centers or, uh, Jane Street, you know, s- spinning up their own data centers to be able to u- apply AI in the world of finance. They're applying AI in the world of drugs. And so Google has this company called Isomorphic that Demis, the, the kind of founder of DeepMind who was running AI, he's now just kind of like all in on Isomorphic, which is basically, "Great. How do we cure cancer? How do we, how do we go solve some of these big health problems?" And now is the perfect time to go build a new type of drug company, a new type of health company. And, um, so I think that's super exciting. That's one place to look. Any thoughts to that, or you want me to go to the next one?
20. SPSam Parr
  Yeah. No, I think it's awesome we're seeing it firsthand. Our good buddy Ben. Ben, old producer Ben, who had the most dire outlook, and he still is not out of the weeds, but he... Or out of the woods or whatever the phrase is. But he, uh, posted an update that he's doing way better, and when he tweeted out about this because he has, uh, a big following, he had all the nerds, all the AI nerds like reach out to him, and he like got hooked up with all the right people, and he is a recipient of some of this stuff. So we're seeing like our buddies like actually-
21. SPShaan Puri
  Yeah
22. SPSam Parr
  ... survive or, or, or prolong their lives because of this. It's awesome.
23. SPShaan Puri
  I mean, if you haven't seen it, go watch Ben's tweet update. I... It was like I, I opened up my phone on Saturday morning, s- watched that thing, and basically cried. Like, I was just so happy. He-
24. SPSam Parr
  He looks so much better.
25. SPShaan Puri
  Yeah, he looks better. He sounds better. I mean, he's doing better, right? He's like it's... You know, he's like still got cancer, but it's, I mean, a, a dramatic improvement. From this drug. And e- the way he tells the story is amazing. Uh, everybody go watch that. It'll, it'll, it'll make your day. So okay, so I think this is, like, a super exciting space. If you're a smart person, join one of these companies, go build one of these companies. Like, uh, there's never been a better time to go do something that has high impact, and the technology window has opened where new things are gonna happen. There's new results possible that really... That technology window was not, uh, anywhere near as attractive in the past.
26. SPSam Parr
  Oh, do you see that? I just stepped over a million-dollar problem, a million-dollar business idea. And that's the thing, most people walk by these million-dollar ideas all the time, and they don't even notice. And so our friends at Starter Story, they put together a list of 90 business idea. Each one is vetted. They're all real problems, real gaps in the market because they talk to hundreds of entrepreneurs, and they put together this amazing stuff that's incredibly well-researched. And so if you want to find a bunch of amazing business opportunities, you can get it for free. Just scan the QR code or click
7:05 – 8:45
Food Is Technology
1. SPSam Parr
  the link in the description.
2. SPShaan Puri
  Okay, the next is Food Is Technology. So I don't know if you saw this. There's a, um, a YC company called... I wanna call it... This is called Nitroduck that just came out of stealth.
3. SPSam Parr
  Nitroduck.
4. SPShaan Puri
  And basically, they're doing, like, genetically modified food, um, you know, using CRISPR to change fruit so that it, like, grows better, higher yield, tastes better, is better for you. Like, you know, all the good things that somebody would want out of growing food.
5. SPSam Parr
  Like how somebody invented the Honeycrisp apple. It took 20 years to do it, and it... And we get it 24 or, uh, 365 days a year. It's incredible.
6. SPShaan Puri
  It's incredible. Where does the food come from, dude? Where does the food come from, right? It's like, uh-
7. SPSam Parr
  It's incredible
8. SPShaan Puri
  ... you know, I just walk into the grocery store. It's just there. It's not just there. It comes from somewhere. And like, like you said, like, that variant of that fruit, that came from somewhere, right? Like, you know, like a s- each one of these things is a genetic being, a genetic, like, organism. And those organisms, just like we're gonna be applying, you know, biotech and AI to our bodies, we're gonna be applying it to plant bodies. And so super exciting. You know, I think David Friedberg is probably the most well-known entrepreneur that's doing something here. He's trying to make, like, you know, potatoes and corn, like, new, new versions of, of these foods that are better seeds, better crops that farmers can then use to get better yields to have better f- whether it's better flavor, better for you, or better production. And so just the idea of appli- uh, that food is a technology and that, again, the technology window is open, to me, there's so much exciting stuff that could be done there, ranging from technology that works the fields, you know, so new kinds of tractors and, you know, using cam- uh, computer vision and whatnot to actually, like, help grow their crops to actual seeds
8:45 – 12:40
Warfare
1. SPShaan Puri
  of the food. New food, now, you know, new types of food. I think this is, like, super, super exciting and, um, you know, so much work can be done there.
2. SPSam Parr
  All right. What's the next one? Wa- whoa. Yeah.
3. SPShaan Puri
  Next one, warfare. Um, so, you know, there's, uh, the idea... Like, if I picture in my mind, like, the military machine of America, you know, I think about tanks and soldiers and boats and maybe some, like, fighter jets. And I think... You know, okay, I'm speaking a little out of turn here. I don't know actually what's going on on the war fronts here.
4. SPSam Parr
  [laughs]
5. SPShaan Puri
  But I suspect that that is a bit of a fantasy. It's like, you know, my wife growing up dreaming about her wedding. [laughs] She just, like, had this vision in her mind that w- didn't meet reality for a very long time. You know, the little girl when she was, you know, 8 versus, like, when she was 30 getting married, like, a lot had changed. And I think what's... The same thing is s- is similar with w- what war probably will look like at this point, which is drones fighting drones. It's, you know, unmanned tiny aircrafts that are super cheap to build. I think this is what's going on in Ukraine and other places where you can spend re- you can send really expensive equipment out there, but they can just send, like, you know, a little piece, a li- you know, a piece of junk metal autonomously flying. It's super cheap to make. You can make it in high volume, and it could do a lot of damage. And so I think warfare is probably... You know, Anduril obviously is doing really interesting things there. There's other companies. Uh, you know, Joe Lonsdale has a company that's, uh, you know, kind of a underwater, you know, the sort of Navy, uh, the Navy version of Anduril.
6. SPSam Parr
  Did you read about, um, you know how we, um, took the, uh, took the leader of Venezuela?
7. SPShaan Puri
  I didn't read. H- how did we do it? W- what did they do?
8. SPSam Parr
  [laughs] It was basically l- l- well, so they... When... Wherever they took him, it was, like, in the middle of a city, and I'm almost... I'm not positive, but I think either no one died or, like, close to no one died.
9. SPShaan Puri
  Mm.
10. SPSam Parr
  And people are like, "How did, how did this happen?" And they were talking to people on the ground, and they're like, "We don't know what happened. We saw the helicopter laying on the roof, and we were standing there, and we couldn't do anything." And, and they were like, "What do you mean?" They're like, "We couldn't move." And the, uh, people are like, "What do you mean you couldn't move?"
11. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs]
12. SPSam Parr
  And it turns out they used, like, this new weapon that's like a... It sounds science, science fiction. It's like a r- a ray of stuff that, like... It's like a ray that shines down to you and, like, stuns you, and you can't move or think.
13. SPShaan Puri
  What?
14. SPSam Parr
  And people can just go... Yeah, yes. L- look up what happened. It-
15. SPShaan Puri
  What? [laughs]
16. SPSam Parr
  Yes. Yes. This is like a thing.
17. SPShaan Puri
  This is insane.
18. SPSam Parr
  Yes, where, like, they basically... There was a joke where-
19. SPShaan Puri
  Freeze tag. [laughs]
20. SPSam Parr
  So on Google, reports claim that the US forces used a mysterious sonic or directed energy weapon during the January 13, 2016 raid that captured the, the leader. Eyewitnesses that, um, a security guard claimed that it was an intense unknown force described as a powerful sound wave or directed energy, and it made him feel like he was exploding, causing the guards to bleed from the nose, vomit, and collapse to the ground. Um, [laughs] Donald Trump-
21. SPShaan Puri
  Oh my, oh my God
22. SPSam Parr
  ... called it, uh... He used discombobulator [laughs] with describing the weapon.
23. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs]
24. SPSam Parr
  Yeah, but it was, like, this new weapon that just, like, cau- like, they couldn't do anything. It didn't kill them, but they couldn't, they couldn't move.
25. SPShaan Puri
  That's wild. I met a guy in San Francisco. Um, you know, if you go to San Francisco, you sort of walk around, you just meet, like, random hackers that are doing very interesting things. So I go into this one place that used to be an old auto body shop that my friend had turned into kind of like a hardware co-working space or just, like, place for his investments to go work. And, um- There was one dude in there. It was 11:00 PM. There's one guy in there, and he goes, "Oh, you better... You might wanna back up." We're like, "What?" [laughs]
26. SPSam Parr
  [laughs]
27. SPShaan Puri
  This guy is... He was like, "I'm building lasers that can shoot drones from, like, extremely high distances away."
28. SPSam Parr
  [laughs]
29. SPShaan Puri
  And I was like, "Oh, okay."
30. SPSam Parr
  You were about to walk in to run. [laughs]
12:40 – 18:05
Building Homes With Robots
1. SPShaan Puri
  Um, so yeah, I think there's crazy shit going on in warfare. I, I think, like, you know, obviously there's a lot happening here but, you know, if you think about AI applied to the world of things, this is obviously a space that's gonna happen. Uh, next one, building homes with AI and robots. And, uh, I don't know if you've been following this, but one of the big things that's gonna improve the quality of life of humans is if we can bring the cost of living down, right? A lot of people's stress stems from the cost of living and just feeling like they're constantly underwater with how expensive it is, and the most expensive part of your life is gonna be, um, you know, for most people is, you know, their, their home, the place they live. I think right now the, uh, mortgage rates are 7.25%. I think, you know, uh, where I live, I think... I don't know what the cost to build per square foot is, but it's something like, you know, for a nice home in this area it'll be, like, $600 to $800 a square foot, let's just say, roughly. And there are people who are building, uh, homes, like prefab high-end homes that could be done at 20 times cheaper. 20 times. And so, you know, if you could do something at 20 times cheaper for something that... You know, the construction industry is a gigantic industry. It's one of the biggest industries in the world, and I feel like we are within 10 years away from there being a kind of night and day difference of the cost to build a home. If you wanna go see some crazy shit, go look up ZURU Tech. This is our friend Nick Beaubrun, who was on the podcast, who, um, him and his brother are, like, you know, two of the craziest entrepreneurs in the world. They have a factory in China that is literally printing homes. So what they do is they ma- they basically, like, print a home a day. And when I say print, that sounds like some cheap 3D printing shit. No, no, no. These guys bought... When the, when the fires happened in LA and people's homes burned down and those lots were kind of ruined and there, there was no, no, like, nobody... The people who didn't wanna rebuild, they had to sell. These guys bought, I think, like $60 to $80 million worth of lots out there, and they're building, like, 20, 30, $40 million homes that are gonna be built in a factory in China. And, um, what they're doing is literally you type in-
2. SPSam Parr
  Yeah, 3D, 3D printing's not the right word. It's like-
3. SPShaan Puri
  It's not 3D printing
4. SPSam Parr
  ... a more efficient way to pl- uh, more, a more efficient way to, like, pour concrete.
5. SPShaan Puri
  It's ima- If you've ever seen how, like, the iPhone factory works, where it's this incredibly automated factory in China where they're just spitting out these incredible devices that a billion people will use and it's, like, the highest quality manufacturing you can do, these guys are doing that but they're making homes instead of iPhones. And so they figured out, you know, each part of the, the home, like, how to, how to build it, and they're building these, like, luxury homes that are modular, can be assembled on the spot almost like Lego block style. And, um, if you go look, l- look at their-
6. SPSam Parr
  Like magnet tiles
7. SPShaan Puri
  ... earthquake simulator. He basically was showing me, he's like, "Yeah, like, we made this home and, you know, just to test the seismic resilience of it, we had to build, in the factory, a earthquake simulator where we could put this, you know, 5,000 square foot home or whatever and then we can run it through the five biggest earthquakes that have happened on Earth in the last 50 years. So, hey, let's push this button, and that's the Chilean earthquake. Let's push this button, and that's the huge one that happened in, uh, you know, Morocco or whatever."
8. SPSam Parr
  Oh, sick.
9. SPShaan Puri
  And it's basically sh- shaking the home, making sure that it's, it's architecturally sound, that it doesn't... You know what, and they're iterating on these homes daily. And then they take the home and they put it... Right now they just put it outside the factory. So outside the factory there's like 100 homes in a row where the workers just go live [laughs] uh, as they're building their, like... iterating over their prototypes every single day. It is, like, one of the most insane projects in the world right now. Most people have no clue it's even happening. It's like Elon level of ambition, technical scope, um, change the world when it works type of shit, and it's real. This is not like pipe dream. It's not Silicon Valley where you're, like, raising money. These guys raised no money. They put a billion dollars of their own personal capital into funding this thing. Took no external capital, and they're just building it in China. They, and they've, they... Because they've spent 20 years building highly automated factories, um, in China. They started in the toy business and I, I don't know if you know this, but the toy business is like, if you, like, if you ask Elon who he admires in terms of manufacturing, he'll say Lego. Because to manufacture at scale with absolute precision a Lego block that's gonna perfectly fit into every other Lego block, it can't be off even by, like, the smallest amount. Or, like, when they were doing the Tesla cars, he would famously... Like, there's a meeting where he had a, a Hot Wheels car and he's, like, hearing all the problems of their assembly line and he's like, "Well, why don't we do it like this?" You know, they just inject the whole bottom thing as one mold. It's not 200 pieces. It's one mold. And they're like, "Well, Elon, that's a tiny car. That's two inches big." He's like, "Yeah, but what if we just made it bigger?" And they built their own custom, like, molding thing for the bottom of cars and they actually pulled it off and it s- radically simplified their assembly process and now... And then they got ahead of all the other car manufacturers. They're the only ones that did it for, like, seven years because they owned all the machines that were... The only... They built the only machines that could do it at that size. Um, and so being great at toy manufacturing actually translates really well to manufacturing other things.
10. SPSam Parr
  Are you... Is that your presentation? Are you done or is, is there more?
11. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs]
12. SPSam Parr
  Because I wanna, I wanna, I wanna talk to you about it but I don't wanna, like, derail it.
13. SPShaan Puri
  There's people who are being played off the stage. Okay, let me give you-
14. SPSam Parr
  No, no, no, no. I wanna ask you about it but I don't wanna, like, derail it.
15. SPShaan Puri
  Let me just give you... Okay, I'm just gonna say the other
18:05 – 18:20
New Materials
1. SPShaan Puri
  ones. I'm not even gonna explain them. All right. New materials. I don't even fully understand this. I would need to go hang out with some, like, crazy people 'cause this is, like, when you hear it and it's crazy talk. Uh, but there's people in San Francisco that are, like, trying to literally do alchemy. They're like, "Oh, we made gold." We figured out we can literally
18:20 – 19:10
Full Self-Driving Everything
1. SPShaan Puri
  make gold out of, like, this other material, or they're literally trying to just invent new materials. So mater- actual material science is happening. I find that to be interesting, but way above my pay grade. FSD for everything, so full self-driving everything. So, um, I don't think people f- understand, like self-driving cars are definitely here. Like, I, I, I get in my Tesla every day, I push the button, it drives 90-something, ninety-five percent of all the miles. The only time I take over is basically in parking lots where I wanna pick my spot and I don't like the spot it's gonna pick for me. So it's crazy how self-driving works, but they're now applying that to everything. So forklifts inside of warehouses, machines that go clean windows at the top of skyscrapers. Um, so basically, like, the machines that will fix the world. Like, how do you go get the barnacles off the ship? How do you go, you know, maintain bridges that are not being maintained today? And so people are building the machines
19:10 – 19:25
Weather and Oceans
1. SPShaan Puri
  that will go automatically go maintain our world, our living world, that today, like, takes a lot of human effort to go maintain. Weather and oceans, um, we had Will O'Brien on, and he was talking about, like, basically ocean tech. So the way that space and space tech has gotten
19:25 – 25:30
Human Body Hardware
1. SPShaan Puri
  super hot with SpaceX and others, ocean tech is, um, you know, right around the corner for the same thing. And the last one is human body hardware. So this is Neuralink, this is basically... It's AI in the world of things, but the things are us. And, uh, you know, I have a friend, Tyler, who's been working for years on, um, uh, this thing called Adam Limbs, and he basically, you know, he's like, you know, somebody goes to war, they fight for our country, they lose their arm or their leg. They're given this really shitty prosthetic, like, stiff piece of plastic, this piece of junk, where the technology is actually out there now where you can put a robotic arm onto your arm that you can use your mind to say, "Pick that up," and it'll pick it up. It's kind of a shame that we just haven't done the engineering to bring the cost down for people who come back from wars or have, like, you know, tragedies where they lose a limb. We can actually give them a really superior limb if we just do the, do the hard work in engineering to actually bring the cost down where it's affordable and let people know that this exists, and you don't have to have a, a prosthetics dump. Um, and I think that's really inspiring to me.
2. SPSam Parr
  This is awesome. I feel very optimistic because I've been, like, trying to figure out... I read a lot of history because I'm trying to, one thing, figure out what makes America so special. Like, how, how did this experiment come to be? It's pretty crazy how, um, like, these group of guys, like, had this opinion on what the world should be, and 250 years later, like, it's mostly great. And I was, um, reading books on it, and between, like, 1880 and, like, 1970 or so, there was this massive explosion of American growth. And part of it was, like, our values and ideas. Like, this idea of individual liberty, um, equality, um, uh, private property, capitalism, like that all like combined, and we were the first country that was founded with that collective group of principles. We were the first one that really had that. But one of the reasons why America became so special was in, like, the 1890s, 1880s or so, Rockefeller discovered oil, and then soon after, Carnegie, uh, started creating, um, steel using iron ore. And we had so many resources in America that basically everyone talks about the Gold Rush. The bigger rush was out of Duluth, Minnesota, where we had this massive, uh, mine that created this stuff called iron ore, which was used to create steel, and we also had huge copper mines. And you could put it on a ship based out of Duluth, and it could go through the Great Lakes, which is basically the size of an ocean. Great Lakes are huge, and it could get up to New York and get up to all these amazing places really, really fast. So the point where in the 1950s, we were transporting so much iron ore that that was enough to create 50 million cars a year. That's how much we were transporting on the Great Lakes. And then we were growing all this food in the farmlands 'cause, um, uh, of America 'cause one of America's greatest abilities is to grow tons and tons of food. And so we had all these people, and we had 50 states that ha- were tariff free. And so, like, I was reading about, like, the massive resources in America, and that we don't get enough credit. I mean, it was luck, but we don't get enough credit. Like, that's one of the reasons that made us great. And then in the 1940s, uh, World War II happened, and every place in, uh, Europe and a lot of places in North Africa, uh, in Asia were destroyed, but we were good. We were good because A, we are so far away, and B, we didn't get destroyed. And so I was thinking, I'm like, "It feels like we're gonna go through another one of these things," because if you look at the data center creation, uh, in America, it's like way beyond, uh, uh, most every other country right now. And it feels like we're gonna go through this n- another one of these industrial revolutions simply because of our entrepreneurial spirit, but also the huge amount of resources, including people. We have so many people working on this stuff.
3. SPShaan Puri
  Mm.
4. SPSam Parr
  And so whenever you talk about this, I'm like, "America is gonna go through this massive, massive explosion." I don't know how it's gonna look. I don't know how long it's gonna take, but it seems very comparable to the Industrial Revolution.
5. SPShaan Puri
  Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I, I, I was in a group chat yesterday, and I think people have-- There's one way to look at it is exactly what you said. That's, I would say, a very optimistic take. I think a, a- another group of people s- feel extremely pessimistic. And, you know, if I boil down what are they pessimistic about, it's basically the most popular parts of America, uh, like New York, California, are trending towards socialism. So, um, you know, a hatred of billionaires, a hatred of companies, a hatred of AI, a hatred... You know, like, there's a lot of, like, negativity towards those exact things, those drivers of progress that you just talked about, right? Capitalism and, and obviously an output of capitalism is that you can build a successful company, and you can become very wealthy, and you can, you know, go compete and build new technologies and all those things. And then you can s- you know, take those resources you have and reinvest them in the next, you know, in others, right? And that self-sustains, uh, all the progress. And so I think one negative view is- Have you, you know, are, are we losing, are we losing what made us great in that way? Another piece of the negativity is, um, you know, have we hollowed out our ability to actually build things? Um, you know, for so long we kind of outsourced manufacturing to China, and so now trying to get back and kind of reshore or reskill or re- reindustrialize is like, sounds good, easy to pump your fist to, really hard to do. Do we actually have the stomach to do it? Um, it's like a big company that hasn't innovated in a very long time, and even if you realize you need to innovate, can you, can you actually move such a big ship? Can you culturally, like, get back to that or not? I think that's another one. And then the third one is, like, you know, ge- general skepticism around AI. So, you know, either AI is so good that we're all gonna lose our jobs and people are gonna be out of work, or AI is so, is not as good as it's advertised and it's a huge bubble and this is all, you know, it's gonna tank the market because everybody's overspending on it. Um, just sort of like a no-win proposition. And so it's funny to hear you say that because several of our friends in a group chat
25:30 – 33:05
Common Sense Politics
1. SPShaan Puri
  literally had, like, such a negative view that was so foreign to me, but, you know, I understand where they're coming from.
2. SPSam Parr
  Well, I think that I don't-- I would change the word pessimism towards, uh, and switch it to uncertainty and fear, which is very understandable. I think that what we're missing now is good common sense leaders who can say things like, "America's amazing, and we have problems that we should fix. Uh, capitalism is amazing, and I understand why you guys are upset that housing is so ca- uh, expensive. Let's try to fix that." Like, it just seems like there's this, um, you have, like, uh, guys like Trump on one side and then, like, an AOC on the other side, and they say such polarizing things. And it's-
3. SPShaan Puri
  Do you think those people don't exist, or do you think that the incentive of the media machine is that the more, the farther to one end you go, the louder your voice gets, right? Because it's more, more polarizing.
4. SPSam Parr
  The second one.
5. SPShaan Puri
  You get more attention.
6. SPSam Parr
  The second one. I think that most people can't, like, it just, it's insane to me that capitalism is considered an insult or a negative word.
7. SPShaan Puri
  Right.
8. SPSam Parr
  And I, I do, there, there needs to be, like, ways to reclaim some of these words that people use. For example, the Democrat socialists of America, like, when they talk about socialism, I'm like, that's, that's really, historically, that's quite bad. Uh, that's not, like, a good thing to do. Now, when you-- I, I'm not, like, I would consider myself very moderate, so I don't consider myself to be, like, total libertarian, where anything goes. And also, I like capitalism, I like immigrants, I like, like, uh, but there needs to be someone who, like, has this, like, fairly common sense approach where they can bridge both sides and, and, and talk about this in plain, simple language-
9. SPShaan Puri
  Right
10. SPSam Parr
  ... in a charismatic way, 'cause that's very important. Um, where you, but you can't be fear-based, and you can't say, like, "This other side is gonna ruin everything," or, "Capitalism is evil," et cetera.
11. SPShaan Puri
  Right. Yeah, I've actually always thought that somebody should make the, uh, common sense political party, 'cause I think common sense is such a, uh, such an amazing phrase that lets you take the moral high ground. Common sense, if you say you're the common sense party, it, it a ] implies that everybody else is being a dumbass, right? Like, everybody else is not using common sense if they're on, if they're not in the common sense party. And then also, who can argue with common sense? It's sorta like when, you know, Trump came out and was America first or make America great again. It's like, well, who can take the other side of that? Who can say, "No, no, not America first," [chuckles] right?
12. SPSam Parr
  Right.
13. SPShaan Puri
  Like, you know, he took the moral high ground with a, uh, sort of i- inarguable thing that he could then put his agenda underneath. And I think if somebody really wanted to create, like, instead of being, like, moderate, which basically sounds like, uh, the tampered down-
14. SPSam Parr
  Passive, yeah
15. SPShaan Puri
  ... version of everything, the passive, the middle, the not gonna do anything party. It's the, you know, I think that, that, or, like, you know, the third party, the alternates, it's like, um, you know, they always make themselves sound less than, like third place. And I think you have to basically go in and go into one of the parties but hijack it and, and rename the platform around being the common sense candidate, and then just constantly beat the drum of common sense. And I think a, a sufficiently charismatic person could use language like that and go pretty far. I would love to see it.
16. SPSam Parr
  Yeah, like for example, there's so many things that Trump will say, and I'm like, "Okay, well, that policy I, I don't disagree with, but I don't like how you talk. I don't like how you're rude to people." So it's hard for, it like, you know, there's the emotional side where it's like-
17. SPShaan Puri
  Right
18. SPSam Parr
  ... I don't like supporting you because I don't think that you do great things. And then, like, a left person will say something, when Mendati will say something, and I'm like, "Okay, but can, uh, free preschool, that doesn't sound so bad," because that's something he enacted. That didn't sound so bad. But all this other shit about free stuff, I don't like that, and so I don't wanna agree with, you know what I mean? And so, uh, but he does it in a very charismatic way. Um, and so I'm like, I just wish that there was a charismatic, uh, fairly moderate, common sense person who could say, like, "AI is good. We will use it to help us. America's amazing, and also we need to fix these things in our country. And also capitalism, capitalism rocks, and we could try to make housing more affordable so everyone could be happy-
19. SPShaan Puri
  Right
20. SPSam Parr
  ... and have some type of saf- safety net." And so I just wish that we could have that, and I think if we get that, which I, frankly, I think we will. I do think that there are a lot of really-
21. SPShaan Puri
  Don't, don't you think it's sorta weird, like, we've all just become, we've all just accepted this? Like, in a country full of very smart, high agency, brilliant, there's brilliant people. There's brilliant people in the country. And yet, if, like, an alien came down and was trying to understand what was going on, and it's like the McKinsey of aliens. He's like consulting. He's just doing a quick audit.
22. SPSam Parr
  [laughs]
23. SPShaan Puri
  Just doing a quick, quick management check here of what's going on. They'd be like, "But why don't you, why are the, why are the leaders always like this?" Like, is this-
24. SPSam Parr
  Yeah. [laughs]
25. SPShaan Puri
  Are these the two best people in the country? Like, wouldn't you want the two best people in the country kinda going head to head to see who should be the leader of the country? And like, does, does anyone think those are the two best people? Like, that, that's a kind of a c- it's like a kind of bizarre thing that we've all just sort of like, "I guess that's just how it is."
26. SPSam Parr
  And like, why are you being such a dick about your own people?
27. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs]
28. SPSam Parr
  Like [laughs] there's something I don't understand. I'm like, we're trying to g- we gotta rally everyone together. You don't wanna, like, be an asshole.
29. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs] Anyways
30. SPSam Parr
  But yeah, I, I, I think that I-
33:05 – 38:20
Think About Your Career Like an Investor
1. SPShaan Puri
  smart. He's, like, the... We're, like, the same age. He's basically, like, smarter, better-looking version of me. And he was recently became a free agent, so he's, like, sold his company. He's thinking about what to do next. And he was about to do what I think a lot of people do, which is we look inside the peephole, and we say, "All right, what do I see? What's the best thing I see here?" When actually the job is to expand your field of vision. Just, y- you're not even looking at what the possibilities could be yet. You're still looking at a very narrow, limited set of what's possible. You know, who are the people I know? What could I do with them? Uh, what are the jobs or companies available around me, where I happen to live? Um-
2. SPSam Parr
  What did I do in the past, and what's a slight-
3. SPShaan Puri
  What did I... Yeah, what am I-
4. SPSam Parr
  What's a slight difference?
5. SPShaan Puri
  What am I good at? What are my experience? And then let me stay in that industry. Let me stay in that job, even if that industry is not the one w- that has a huge tailwind behind you. You know, w- when really the thing to think about is like, "Wow, I'm a free agent. I'm a really smart person, and I have the opportunity to go do anything right now. Why don't I put kind of my investor hat on and think like an investor of, like, where is the best body of water that I should go be in?" As Mark Pincus said on our podcast, like, go find the right body of water. That's far more important than trying to be the best sailor in a shitty body of water. And, um, you know, when Mark Pincus was talking about that, he was basically saying social media was the, the right body of water to be in back in the early 2000s when he was building social networks and then ended up in, building Zynga and invested in Facebook and, like, made a bunch of money doing that.
6. SPSam Parr
  Right.
7. SPShaan Puri
  And so I was told, I told my cousin, I said, I said, "Why don't you just write down the five most interesting things that are, uh, like s- most interesting companies you've seen that you think, like, if I gave you, you know, $10 million and you were gonna, you got to keep all the profits, but you have to invest in these five companies, which five companies would you pick?" And he's like, "I don't know." And I was like, "You, that's a good exercise to do." It's a much better exercise to do, um, because it ta- it gets you to stop thinking like a, um, like a worker and start thinking like an investor. Investors have this incredible benefit that they get to go where the action is. [laughs] They move where the, where the money is to be made, where the opportunity is, is happening, where the growth is happening, and they move themselves. They're more, more nomadic than entrepreneurs tend to be or employees tend to be, who like to stay in their industry, stay in their lanes. And, um, he did the exercise. He sent me the companies. It was kind of eye-opening for him to be like, "Oh, yeah, like I have really hadn't been think- I don't even really know that much about this, but my gut says there's something here 'cause I know this, and actually I'm gonna go look more into that." He started looking more into it and started to expand his horizons. I think that's what my hope is, that when somebody sees a deck like this, is that it takes whatever, like, narrow field of view you had and just says, like, you should probably widen that. St- You should probably think more like somebody who's a, like a total free agent, more nomadic, doesn't need to stay in their lane, uh, because the opportunities are, like, bigger than anything we've ever seen. But it's all gonna be in the new spaces where you don't have a lot of experience or you don't have a lot of intel. You don't need to have it. Look at this, you know, even this presentation. I, you know, it's not like I went and deeply researched any of these, but I know enough to know that there's a lot of opportunity in each one of these, and you just have to g- then go start digging and figure out what's the exact angle.
8. SPSam Parr
  Yeah, you just gotta be ambitious. When I see these things, I'm like, "I really want that to happen. I'm not gonna do it, but I want someone to do it."
9. SPShaan Puri
  Well, we're in a different season, right?
10. SPSam Parr
  [laughs] Yeah.
11. SPShaan Puri
  When you, when you're in your 20s, you probably would have wanted to go do it.
12. SPSam Parr
  Yeah, I'm like, I wanna watch someone do that. [laughs] Uh-
13. SPShaan Puri
  Like, we, both of us moved to San Francisco 'cause we're like, "I don't know what. That's the right body of water to be in." [laughs] "Let's just go figure things out when we get there."
14. SPSam Parr
  And it worked.
15. SPShaan Puri
  And it works.
16. SPSam Parr
  And it worked.
17. SPShaan Puri
  It worked amazingly well, right? Like-
18. SPSam Parr
  Like, even, even if you just get the crumbs, it works.
19. SPShaan Puri
  Totally, and I, that, that's what I think it is. You know, there's both moving ge- geographically, but also, like, move where the puck is going, and I think this is where the puck is going. I think AI in the world of things is where the puck is going over the next 10 years. That's where a lot of the opportunity's gonna go, and, you know, go pick any of these and, and there's a lot of, lot of good stuff you can be in. And the good thing about each one of these is not really like, "Hey, h- here's how you make money." It's, "Here's how, like, the world is about to change, like, you know, like, for the better." Like, all of these are gonna change the world for the better, and, um, so you get to go have impact while doing cool new shit while making a bunch of money. It's like, what, what more do you want?
20. SPSam Parr
  You just, like, you just, like, uh, appropriated the word, uh, Internet of Things. You remember that? That was supposed to be like, uh, O'Reilly Media was like, "That's gonna be the thing, the Internet of Things."
21. SPShaan Puri
  Like smart fridges?
22. SPSam Parr
  Yeah, and it, like, never took off. Like, we're gonna make our appliances talk to each other. It did not... You know, it w- they wanted it to happen. It did not happen.
23. SPShaan Puri
  [laughs]
24. SPSam Parr
  Um, and yeah, you just took that. Now it's actually gonna happen. They were about 25 years too early. Do you remember how they tried to make that a thing?
25. SPShaan Puri
  Yeah. I mean, it's kind of a thing. I feel like, uh, annoyingly-
26. SPSam Parr
  Yeah
27. SPShaan Puri
  ... I have to download an app to use a bunch of shit that doesn't need an app. So they, I guess they're trying to make it a thing still. [laughs] Some- somebody's out there fighting the good fight still.
28. SPSam Parr
  Yeah, like-
29. SPShaan Puri
  I have to, like, log in to use my vacuum. Like, why? I don't, I don't-
30. SPSam Parr
  [laughs]