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SPEAKER_00
Okay, million dollar brainstorm, we're back. You've been in Hawaii, tell us about that.
SPEAKER_01
If you guys Google lobby conference, you'll see it. A lot of people write about it as if it's a Stushi event, which definitely checks the boxes from the outside of being that.
SPEAKER_00
Okay, what's Dushi about it?
SPEAKER_01
It's expensive and it's in Hawaii and it's much of tech people. I don't think that's Dushi, but it definitely checks many people's boxes.
SPEAKER_00
And it's exclusive, right? It's like, I think 50 people.
SPEAKER_01
It's like invite only. 100 people, yeah, it's a small number. It's like an invite only thing, so it definitely checks all the boxes to fit that stereotype.
It's called lobby conference. So how'd you get invited? One of my investors, Narendra, you referred me. Okay, so you can Google it to learn about it, but it's this event hosted by David Hornick, one of the partners at August Capital of VC.
150 or 200 people, invite only, they've done it for 13 years now. And the guys who were there on the first year, many of them are still there. And it's like internet, oh geez, like Tony Shea, founder of Zappos was there.
Kevin Rose. Kevin Rose, dig. I had dinner and hung out most of the time with Tim Westrogen, founder of Pandora.
Like all these guys who were like maybe my age now, but are in their 40s, who were still trying to have a hit and have now had some hits. It was awesome. It was great.
Two takeaways. Number one, Gen Z, totally, they're fucked. Okay, why? We talked about like, there's this one.
SPEAKER_00
Were they there? I don't think they're there.
SPEAKER_01
No, there was like, we had these like little meetups about like, when we were talking about interesting things, Gen Z, I didn't realize it. They're having a very little sex. They're doing a lot of drugs, but they're not drinking.
And a lot of them have depression and mental.
SPEAKER_00
Gen Z is like 21 and younger right now?
SPEAKER_01
Maybe four, 24.
SPEAKER_00
24 and younger, okay.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, suicide rates high. The depression rate is like astronomical.
SPEAKER_00
A lot of it. So who was talking about this? Who was like the Gen Z?
SPEAKER_01
There's one woman who runs like a research firm for Gen Z. So it was very much like, well, here's what the cool kids think. Like I realized that at that time, I'm like an old guy who's like, well, how did they use?
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, exactly. Old people talking about young people. Yeah. It never fails.
SPEAKER_01
Funny, I was like the youngest guy there. People had Gen Z children and they were talking about it.
SPEAKER_00
Right, right. Okay, fair enough. All right, so that was one takeaway.
SPEAKER_01
What's the second one? The second thing, there was tons of like rich ballers there. Like really wealthy. And a lot of them seem just horribly like down, depressed and not like that.
SPEAKER_00
If you're young or if you're rich, you're depressed. That's what I'm learning.
SPEAKER_01
Well, like, and this is something that's kind of like, I can't believe I'm saying this because everyone who's young hears this and no one believes it, which is that money will not make you as happy as you think it will. Right. I saw this firsthand very clearly.
SPEAKER_00
What made you say this? So they're at this conference and they were just kind of recluse or what made you feel this? Or they were sharing like, look, I'm not feeling great.
SPEAKER_01
First of all, yes. A lot of people, there was this one gathering. It was like a bunch of small sessions that people would complain about stuff.
Like say, here's what I'm struggling with. And you think that these people who have it all figured out, they definitely don't. Right. People brought their families. And you see like the interactions that people have had with their husbands or wives or kids.
And it's like, this guy on the surface appears like this baller, but he just has, he's going through the normal bullshit that every family man is going through.
SPEAKER_00
Right, right, right. Yeah, I have a friend who's, I don't know how wealthy, he's close to a billionaire. And he basically, he was talking about this, how he was feeling this way.
And he's like, the problem is no one wants to hear about an unhappy billionaire. He's like, you will get zero listeners to that talk. And he's like, so you end up just sort of bottling it up and going on your way.
SPEAKER_01
What you're saying and what happened this past weekend. And I have a few friends that just sold your friends too, just sold big companies. And I was with one of them.
And we went to the ATM, cause he was like wanting to have like a celebratory where he like printed out his receipt. $200 million on the ATM receipt. Wild, wild about.
And then we went and had dinner at like a Whole Foods. Like really steep. $7. Yeah, like we went to a grocery store, I think and just ate on the patio. And he was stressed out.
He was like, what am I going to do with this? And I was like, dude, when are people going to like chill?
SPEAKER_00
And see, There's a Jim Carrey quote where he goes, I wish everybody could be rich and famous. So they would know that that's not the answer.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it's depressing.
SPEAKER_00
This podcast is like all about building successful businesses called million dollar or everything. I feel like half the conversations are like, yeah, money's not the thing.
SPEAKER_01
I think we need to reiterate that, which is that it's not. It's just like if you're training for an event or training for weightlifting, you are no different from 150 pounds to 300 pounds in terms of like bench press. It's just the act of pursuing that is.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, the act of pursuing is fulfilling in itself. And the other thing is when you have money, you have freedom. But you don't need.
SPEAKER_01
You need less than you think.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you need less than you think, but that freedom is very powerful. Okay, so let's do it. Ideas, what do we got? We promised the people some ideas, talking about different trends, talking about different ideas that we found interesting.
You want to go first or me? You. Okay, cool. All right, I have one.
Have you heard of made bathrooms? No. Okay, these things called made renovations. All right, so I saw this ad on Facebook and basically it was like a before and after.
And before after is in my opinion, the best sales pitch I've ever seen, always, right? If you split screen on the left, it's like this is you before on the right, this is you after. And so the left and right and this one were, left was like a normal, ordinary, kind of crappy looking bathroom. And on the right was like this really slick looking bathroom.
And it basically said, we will come renovate your bathroom for X dollars and it'll look exactly like this. I was like, this is interesting. Like they're, I've never seen somebody advertise a bathroom renovation on Facebook, so I clicked it.
And basically what this company does is they have three stock designs and they're all look great. And so there's like a super modern one. There's kind of an old school Victorian looking one, but again, very clean.
There's like another one that's like also modern. What's the company called made bathroom? Yeah. And so all you do is you say, yeah, I want that bathroom.
Like you don't have to hire a contractor, go through ideas with them, figure out what you want for the sink versus the toilet versus the walls. It's like, no, this is the bathroom. Do you want this in your house?
SPEAKER_01
Is this like a Silicon Valley thing or like a,
SPEAKER_00
I don't think that they're super Silicon Valley centric. They are available here, I saw, but I think.
SPEAKER_01
Is this like a new startup? Like it's a startup.
SPEAKER_00
Yes. It's a startup. So it's a direct to consumer turnkey renovation.
And so most people who do home renovations want kitchens and bathrooms. Clearly they're starting with bathrooms. They'll probably expand the kitchens.
The second thing, they're taking all the thought out of it. I love that. They're like, this is a beautiful bathroom.
Do you want this one, this one or this one? We have three models. And then I thought, wow, because they only have three models, they're probably getting phenomenal prices, you know, economies of scale on buying the materials they need to do this. They're training contractors to like deliver the exact bathroom.
And so they're probably training staff that's like just has to learn this one thing. And for the buyer, they're taking all the complexity of this kind of tangled project. Like, oh, do I want to do a home renovation right now?
SPEAKER_01
Elimination of toys. Elimination of toys. Okay, I think that should work for haircuts, men haircuts, like barbers.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, when I go to the barber, I want to choose like I'm at Subway. Be like, here's the 14, I'll take the number 12, Marge.
SPEAKER_01
Because everyone gets this, 80% of people get the same shit. They say, short of the side, it's a little bit off the top. Right. Okay.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I don't even know why they ask me. I'm like, just look at it and just make it shorter of this.
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so what else could that work for? Where like you eliminate choices. I think interior design and renovation is like a great idea.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it's just so complicated. I think travel is another one. So turnkey vacations.
So if you knew not just the flight, the hotel, the whatever, people do this, but like flight hotel and activities, bundle it up, give you a price and be like, okay, you've heard that the Bahamas is great. Here's Bahamas, if you want to just hit the buy button and just email people every week being like, here's Aruba buy button. Here's, you want to go to Venice, here's the buy button.
And I think eliminating the choice and the planning required, set up a vacation.
SPEAKER_01
I think that's a cool concept. I'm going to think about that for a little while of what to start that, where you eliminate choice. I mean, look, it goes both ways.
Like the more products that company launches, the more money they make typically, but also a lot of times when you just sell one or two or three things, it makes life better and you can do really well.
SPEAKER_00
And you can deliver on that service in a way that you can't if you have this like larger variety of choice and customizability. And so it won't work for everything, but if it does work for one thing, I think it'll work for something like bathrooms and kitchens that's such a high ticket price thing that that could be a really big business.
SPEAKER_01
So I'm excited about this guys. Okay, something we covered on trends and I experienced this weekend because people were talking about it, Kava bars or Kava.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, what is Kava?
SPEAKER_01
I've heard of this. Okay, I've done it. I lived in Australia for a little while.
Fiji is like Australia's Mexico. So it's like, it's like the Caribbean like.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, of course.
SPEAKER_01
And so I went to Fiji for two weeks and we hung out and we drank Kava. It's like a root. It tastes like dirt and you mix it with water and we would just sit around a circle with the folks who lived in the Fijians and we would drink it and it gives you a mild high effect.
If it kind of felt a little bit like weed where you're like chill and people loved it. Immediately when I went home from Fiji I wanted to buy some more and it was really hard to buy it.
SPEAKER_00
But what's the experience? So you said tastes a little bit like dirt. It's a drink. It's bad.
It's a drink.
SPEAKER_01
It's a communal thing. You sit around.
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so it's like hookah in a way or are you passing it or something?
SPEAKER_01
It's like hookah, but it definitely gives you a small high.
SPEAKER_00
Gives you a small high.
SPEAKER_01
It's just like smoking weed with your friends.
SPEAKER_00
Right. So on a scale of like, I don't know, is it like a cigarette? Is it less than weed? Is it like Molly?
SPEAKER_01
Less than weed, less than Molly, more than a cigarette, less than alcohol.
SPEAKER_00
Okay, gotcha. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01
Okay, we discover that trend. That's, I think that's all right. I don't think that's gonna ever gonna be huge but it's definitely like a niche popular thing that you could make a business out of.
But hallucinogenics, man. I met this guy who at that lobby, he was like, I just got back from 30 days in Amazon doing ayahuasca. There's this idea that whatever is popular among elite Silicon Valley people 15 years from now will be mainstream.
Because they're like the rich nerds who like have the time to like try stuff.
SPEAKER_00
Do this experimentation.
SPEAKER_01
I've never done a hallucinogenic. Right, me neither. I'm super into it though, like the idea of it.
I want to explore it.
SPEAKER_00
What stops you from doing it? Cause you're super into it. I'm not that into it. So it makes sense that I haven't done it.
You're super into it. Why haven't you tried?
SPEAKER_01
Because I don't know who to trust.
SPEAKER_00
But even your buddy does it, right?
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but he's a weirdo. We won't name a name. And I tell him, I don't know if I can trust you because you're extreme.
So like if I could find like a normal person who could be like, yeah, this one is a little too much.
SPEAKER_00
If you could go into a clinic and you're like, great, under supervision in this cool environment, if it looked like a spa.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and so I would you want that? Yeah, I would love that. And I went to a session where I met with a guy who was going to take me through the process. And I got into an argument with him because he was talking to me about, I was like, ask him what he did for work.
And he like was a former venture capitalist. But then he was talking about how capitalism was horrible. And I was like, well, that doesn't, so like, why are you charging me? And so anyway, we got in a fight over like values.
And so it kicked me out of the group. But I was almost on the verge of trying it. So I'm really interested in, we discovered Kava, or we talked about Kava and trends.
I think that ketamine, crazy interesting. I think these things are going to be much bigger.
SPEAKER_00
And there's a related trend of this like kin euphorics. Have you heard of this? It's a, basically there's a trend of non-alcoholic. Oh yeah.
So they're non-alcoholic drinks. And what they are is, I think kin euphorics has like some, I don't know what chemicals they put in, but it's supposed to give you some kind of buzz without being alcohol.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, we covered the non-alcoholic stuff as well. So non-alcoholic beverages, I've drank non-alcoholic beverages now for about eight years. I drink non-alcoholic beer regularly.
I like it.
SPEAKER_00
Like what, like a ginger beer type of thing?
SPEAKER_01
What did you drink? No, Odoul's was for the longest time, has been the only one, but over the past three years, Heineken has introduced some Japanese brands have come about. It's a little more popular in Japan. So the Japanese brands have come to America.
There's been a lot of new variety. And that's a growing trend that we actually have already written a report on is non-alcoholic beverages. And interestingly, Gen Z is drinking significantly less than millennials and.
..
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, exactly. I think I've seen that trend firsthand. And then when I saw you guys write about that, it made a lot of sense to me.
SPEAKER_01
But Heineken, the CEO of Heineken said that the fastest growing category is, they call it 0.0. That's the name of the brand. Is these 0.
0 beers. Non-alcoholic beer. Non-alcoholic beer, but they even have some that are non-alcohol and no calorie.
SPEAKER_00
And no drink. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01
You just do nothing.
SPEAKER_00
All right, I got another one. All right, so what if I told you that I could give you some IP, IP intellectual property like Star Wars, Pokemon, Hello Kitty, whatever. I could give you a globally famous IP, billions of people recognize this IP.
And I could give it to you for free. And I could let you build a business around this IP at no charge. Would that be something you're interested in?
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, of course.
SPEAKER_00
Okay, religion. So I sort of had this realization the other day. Wanted to buy a gift for my niece.
And I was like, what did I used to like when I was little? I loved Where's Waldo books? And I was like, Where's Waldo? And I just went down the rabbit hole of like, who the hell made that? What is this? How was this so popular? Blah, blah, blah. Sort of thought, what's the modern day Where's Waldo? Could somebody create a new Where's Waldo book, right? So same premise, just finding pictures in a book. Cause kids love books, but reading is tough, right? So this picture book is actually pretty cool.
Cause it's like active. You don't just like flip through the pages.
SPEAKER_01
Who do we think owns Waldo? That probably like, Penguin or something.
SPEAKER_00
So I wrote about the guy who made it. I forgot his name, but yeah, he, you know, whatever, our publisher owns it.
SPEAKER_01
Probably crushed it.
SPEAKER_00
And they crushed it. And I was like, what if you made the new Where's Waldo? Well, part of the magic was that Waldo was this character that just worked. And I was like, what character could you use? And I was like, what if you did this with religion? Cause the other thing my sister always wants is to introduce culture to her kids in a way that they like, that this playful, that's fun, that's interesting.
And so I was like, my family is like Hindu, right? So they have like, Hindu is like a hundred different gods. Oh, this would be cool. You basically have this page with a bunch of different little, you know, drawings.
Stories about the God. Yeah, you're trying to find Hanuman. And you're trying to find this God.
And you're trying to find that God. Can anyone own? Anybody can use God's images, likenesses and names because nobody owns the religious IP. Hence my starter of what if you could use globally famous IP for free, for profits.
So I believe that there's a set of businesses. The Where's Waldo one is just a goofy version of this, but the better version, the version I've thought about starting was to do calm, but for religion. I don't know if we already talked about this, but like daily prayer, daily sermon, daily Bible passage, daily, whatever, these apps are quite popular.
And so if you use the calm model of audio, premium and freemium audio, and every day you could have five minutes of faith where you would just listen to a prayer or a sermon from your religion. So I think this could be a really big business. I was very close to going and starting this one, but it's not a founder fit for me.
Like I don't even believe in religion. So if somebody out there wants to do this, I will help you do this. I put a lot of thought into how you would do this, how you would grow it.
But I think religion generally as a free source of popular IP is like an untapped opportunity.
SPEAKER_01
That's awesome. Two comments. There's this set of Googlers, ex-Google people.
They either, I think they emailed me after our podcast who were Christians and they created like a Christian meditation app. Have you heard about this?
SPEAKER_00
Yes, a halo or something.
SPEAKER_01
Someone messaged me after our podcast and they told me the numbers and it was astronomical.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I've seen their numbers. They are really good. It validates this idea.
They're doing it for Christians. Somebody else can do it for Catholics.
SPEAKER_01
But is it just a Christian meditation thing?
SPEAKER_00
It's exactly what I just described. It's a daily Christian meditation, which is basically like a prayer. And you hit the amen button when you're done and you can share it.
People love sharing religious shit on Facebook anyway. So it grows somewhat organically through that.
SPEAKER_01
So when I think of like business ideas, I like to think of from a distribution first. So how do you get users? The advertising rates on Christian and without judgment, but let's just say conservative websites, stupidly low engagement is stupidly high.
SPEAKER_00
Because mainstream brands don't want to associate with some of these super popular conservative publications.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and the people who typically, because I've bought ads on like religious websites and right-leaning political websites.
SPEAKER_00
Where do you even go to do that? You just go direct or there's like an ad network for that?
SPEAKER_01
Direct, yeah, you can do direct, but like, so like Bright Bart, they're marketing. I send them to everyone's emails to understand what they're doing. Bright Bart has the most aggressive, like they'll let people buy their email list.
They're the most aggressive and the most effective. Like they sent one email to me that said like, from the desk of Nancy Pelosi. And it was like a letter written about, and it said like, we're gonna come for your guns.
So you better donate now.
SPEAKER_00
Or like whatever.
SPEAKER_01
I was like, oh, this is gonna kill it. So anyway.
SPEAKER_00
You can get distribution there.
SPEAKER_01
Oh yeah, I think that there's a lot of undervalued distribution. But a lot of like the young techies who build this stuff are typically on the opposite end of that. So they don't even think about that, but it's there.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I like that. I think traditional ad buys, that's a smarter way to add buy. I think that works.
Cause again, you're charging on the other side through people who pay for the $79 a year subscription. The other thing is, I think through churches, you can get distribution. So you give the church the ability to make their own group in this thing and let them distribute it.
And then it's like, hey, for the people who are not coming to church on Sundays or who want it Monday through Saturday, here's a way they can engage.
SPEAKER_01
And the market size for this is like 200 million people. Yeah. Only in America and only the Christian one, let alone the other religions.
SPEAKER_00
Right, exactly. So I would actually start with Islam for this. Cause there's a couple other like specific app features.
SPEAKER_01
There's like four billion Islamic people
SPEAKER_00
in the world or Muslims in the world. The type of people who start these companies will start with Christianity. So just start on the other side with like a super popular religion.
SPEAKER_01
Hindu is kind of cool. It is. Cause you have more characters.
SPEAKER_00
But I think that, yeah, I don't know. For some reason, I don't feel like that's a starting point, but maybe, although when it's like Mormons, like how do you go for the most devout, even if it's a smaller number of people, but like very active.
SPEAKER_01
I think Mormonism though, that's the fastest current religion in the world.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I know, but it's like a small base, but.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but that could be a good one to attach yourself to.
SPEAKER_00
Exactly. So anyway, religion. Okay, what else? That's not really an idea, but something to talk about.
So ghost kitchens or cloud kitchens, are you familiar?
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, Door Dash. I just saw a photo, someone drove by, placing Palo Alto and Door Dash had just opened up a kitchen.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so for those who don't know, a ghost kitchen or a cloud kitchen is basically a restaurant that doesn't have the sort of brick and mortar store front where you can come in, sit down and get a meal. You can't go there in order. It only exists to make food that gets delivered on Uber Eats, Postmates, Door Dash, and all these delivery apps that are out there now.
SPEAKER_01
And Travis Kalanick raised, well, I don't know if he raised it, he probably used his own money, but he allocated something like $500 million to creating ghost kitchens or services for ghost kitchens.
SPEAKER_00
So the founder of Uber was like, hey, what's the next big thing? And he was like, these cloud kitchens. And so his new company is all about, he's basically going into a city, he's buying up this like real estate that nobody wants, but it's very centrally located. And it's kind of useless today, but what he's doing is converting it into kitchens and letting sort of food entrepreneurs come in, make food, create these little digital restaurant brands that only are optimized for delivery.
So you would do things differently, right? So like you would want to make food that is, you'd think delivery first, packaging.
SPEAKER_01
Like no french fries.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, exactly. You'd make food that is going to travel well. You'd package it, you'd put a lot more money into packaging because you're not spending money in other areas.
SPEAKER_01
And you don't need to buy all the furniture for a restaurant.
SPEAKER_00
And you can make money by partnering with delivery companies to say, hey, you should actually pay us to be on your network because we bring this awesome set of delivery optimized food to you. So in fact, you should be paying us per order to be on your network.
SPEAKER_01
Are there any...
SPEAKER_00
We are great supply for your network.
SPEAKER_01
So, you know who I originally saw was doing this, was like a Chinese restaurant owned by a family and they were clearly just like hustlers. And they were like, well, let's offer like hot dogs. Or let's, like I could tell because it was like the same.
There was just a bunch of ways that I'm like, oh, holy crap.
SPEAKER_00
That's the same thing.
SPEAKER_01
They just, it's like, these are, this is a Chinese family and they're making Mexican food. So anyway, I saw them doing that. But what I'm curious about is there one brand that is like well, like a.
..
SPEAKER_00
There isn't today yet. But there will be. There will be, exactly.
So it's still in that early phase where all the fundamentals are there. So what's changed? These delivery apps have spent, I don't know, probably upwards of a billion dollars paying to get installed on a bunch of people's phones. And they're training people that, hey, don't go out to restaurants, order in.
And cause ordering in is now super convenient, really easy to do on your phone. And so anyways, they're training people and they're getting installed. That's your distribution.
They need restaurants that are gonna plug into their networks cause they wanna offer their customers better food. And so you have a good value proposition for them. You say, hey, wouldn't it be great if you had a central pickup point where you could pick up from all these different providers and we're centrally located in the city so you could provide really fast delivery.
What if we optimize our packaging and our foods that's traveled really well? Wouldn't we be a good partner to work with over a restaurant who's doing delivery as like a second thing or a side thing? The next thing you can do is you could test different concepts really quickly. So you can see, should I just make a hot dog only brand or a mac and cheese only restaurant? And like you try the brand and if nobody's ordering from it, you just take it down and you just do a new cuisine the next day.
SPEAKER_01
I had a hot dog stand and what I did was I would like, I don't know what people want. So I would have an idea going by ingredients for only one day.
SPEAKER_00
Right, exactly. And so in a lot of people who are great at making food are really bad at running business. I mean, so they don't, they're not great at picking the right location for a restaurant, running the operations, managing the cash flow and all the stuff.
A lot of them flock to food trucks for this reason because this is like a simpler kind of business in a box. I think this is even simpler.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and way more lucrative. Way more lucrative. Because you can be nationwide.
SPEAKER_00
Exactly. With any concept that works in one city you want to take to other cities because someone who owns the cloud kitchens will say, great, you want to expand? I already have infrastructure in 12 different cities. Just either you staff up or franchise your concept to other people.
SPEAKER_01
I'm incredibly interested in this. If anyone is actually good pursuing this, I would like to know about it.
SPEAKER_00
So there's a few people pursuing it that we know of but I bet that there's a lot more and I bet there's other angles to this that I'm not thinking about. So if anybody's really interested in this, reach out because we want to talk to you. Who's pursuing it? So Travis is like the kind of the main one that I know that's doing this.
SPEAKER_01
It's obvious. If that guy, if he is into this, it's like.
SPEAKER_00
Right. And he saw the Uber Eats numbers early on and was like, oh shit, this is going to be a really big business. And so.
SPEAKER_01
And I just saw an interview with Tillman Fratida. You know, Tillman Fratida. And he was saying his restaurants are hurting a little bit because of the, how big delivery is.
SPEAKER_01
And I think people love the convenience. He was like, I was shocked. People actually are ordering because he owns Morton's Steakhouse.
He goes, people aren't coming into our restaurants as much but we're still doing really well because they're buying it and bringing it home.
SPEAKER_00
Right. So I actually ran a restaurant like this back in the day. This was my first start.
Sushi, right? Sushi restaurant. And we got famous because we were the restaurant without a restaurant where we were delivery only. But this was before Uber Eats, before Postmates.
They didn't exist. So we were trying to get people to come to our website to order. And that was just very hard.
Whereas every night me or my wife opens up Postmates pretty much and we kind of scroll through and it's like, oh, do you want to order? Should we cook something? And so if our sushi restaurant had been on there, we would have been getting free customers.
SPEAKER_01
What do you think is the best? Okay, so what food is good delivered?
SPEAKER_00
Sushi is actually pretty good delivered because sushi is meant to be served room temperature. It's also packaged in a very like tight wrap. So it doesn't like sort of get loose and messy and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_01
But anything potato base is not. Have you ever noticed fried? I know someone who worked at Uber Eats and they had a phrase called keep your eye on the fry. And they had a whole team dedicated to McDonald's because of French fries.
SPEAKER_00
So the main one is obviously pizza, right? So pizza is the most delivered food. People love pizza. So you really want to work backwards from that.
Like what do people order the most? And so the question is like the Domino's Pizza Hut's of today, like of tomorrow, I bet we'll get started here. Either those brands will start delivering and make this a big part of their business or somebody will create a new pre-t's brand optimized for this. Maybe they don't sell full pies, maybe it's half or I don't know, you'd have to think through what would, what should pizza be? You'd have to think back from scratch, but I think this is great.
Pizza's the biggest delivery item.
SPEAKER_01
I'm going to post this in the group. I think it's actually bigger than I ever would have imagined. We recently wrote about this.
If you invested a dollar in Domino's IPO versus Google's IPO, you would have made like five times more.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I saw that chart. You posted that chart. It was like Domino's is the line that's up into the right.
SPEAKER_01
And Google, Facebook, just because they were valued really high right off the bat or higher.
SPEAKER_00
Do you know what's causing that? Why is Domino's stock been going up so much? Are they just-
SPEAKER_01
They're crushing it on marketing and they do, they are quite innovative for the space. Like they do like little cutesy things that is they're like, we're testing this new mobile oven. So it's going to show up even hotter.
Right. Which who knows if that works, but it makes you want to buy it.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, they're pretty forward thinking.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I love it.
SPEAKER_00
I had the app and their app is phenomenal. It's so easy to order. The tracker is amazing.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it is easy to order.
SPEAKER_00
It's in the oven, it's coming, five minutes from now here. It just left the store. It's going to be at your door in seven minutes.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, they're great. So this is interesting to me. I'm incredibly interested in this.
And this sounds kind of like a fun thing. You and I both owned food businesses. Right. I found that to be almost more rewarding than traditional internet things.
SPEAKER_00
I found it to be way harder than everything I've ever done. I don't know about rewarding, but it made the least money of anything I've ever done. I learned the most, but it was also the hardest.
Yeah. And I also feel like when we're in this tech bubble, it's very easy to like lose touch with like reality and how most people's job works, how the sausage gets made, all that stuff. And there's like a different level of respect, appreciation and like understanding because, you know, working in service industry for a bit.
I have a question for you. So do you use any of these book summary apps or anything like that?
SPEAKER_01
I was thinking about that today. What were you thinking about? I think those are stupid.
SPEAKER_00
Okay, tell me why. What type of apps? Blinkist. Blinkist, right?
SPEAKER_01
So like, that's cool. I think they're cool companies, they'll do really well.
SPEAKER_00
So what's stupid? You don't like it as a user.
SPEAKER_01
I'm not like that artistic of a guy, but sometimes I think like you got to read it to understand like the new, like you got to like really read the thing to get it. But the efficiency part of me is like, ah, it's kind of cool. Right. So I have mixed feelings on it, but I do think I would invest my time into, or money into something like that because I think it can work.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah. Cause I'm thinking about doing this for fun. So I started reading more because ever since our company got acquired, there's these hours of the night that used to be like grind mode that I'm like, well, I don't really need to put that into my job.
I'll put that into this podcast. I'll put that into like reading and learning and things like that. So I'm reading these books that I'm like, if I could summarize this for people, would that be useful?
SPEAKER_01
And so the answer is definitely yes.
SPEAKER_00
There's something kind of like off about it. Right. Like why did you say it's stupid? Like how do I make it less stupid?
SPEAKER_01
Well, I think there's a few things. The first thing is so Otis Chandler, the founder of Goodreads, spoke at our event. Yep. Cool company. Really cool company.
I think it's actually bigger than, they sold for a hundred million dollars. I think it's actually way bigger than that now. To Amazon, yeah.
Yeah. And then Bookbub. You know Bookbub? No.
They advertised with us and they spent a lot of money with us and the results are really great. And what they've done is it's a huge company now, or it's a startup. It's like basically an email for people who like Kindle books and they set out some free ones, some paid ones, and they're just an aggregator of cool stuff.
And then some publishers will pay money to get their free book. Like when a new release can happen, they'll make it free for like a day. Yeah. Just to get a bunch of ratings. The book space, I think that's growing like crazy.
Anything book related is, I would put my name on for sure, or want to be part of. That's one of the things we talked about with the whole Gen Z thing was that they're reading more than ever. But it does feel weird.
I found myself, whenever I read books, particularly, I've always wanted to look up the characters significantly more. And you told me about what you're doing with Blab. You were trying to do the same thing where you wanted to create communities around TV shows.
I have found myself wanting to do that for books. I've not found a solution for that.
SPEAKER_00
Right, right, right. And you read what, you read like, you read a lot of biographies, right?
SPEAKER_01
I read a ton of biographies.
SPEAKER_00
Do you read anything else?
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I like to read fiction, like American classics, Catcher in the Rye, things like that.
SPEAKER_00
I don't know what I'm gonna do, but I'm gonna do something here because I'm reading these books and I'm like, oh, a good way for me to even just digest this is to try to like distill it down into the most interesting bits and be able to explain it. Like if I can teach it, that means I've learned it. And so I'm gonna do that and I'm gonna experiment.
I'm gonna see if I can make something that I would want if I was the reader.
SPEAKER_01
Like I- To make it or break it though is the model that you choose because there's like the affiliate model, but you're gonna be earning 4% on a $8 thing. That's silly.
SPEAKER_00
Oh, I'm not even thinking about the business right now. I just wanna put the content out there and see if people like it.
SPEAKER_01
There's this guy named Nat. And I came across his blog, he's always popping up on my Twitter feed and he just started doing what you did where he summarized books. And then he just said, you could buy all my summaries for $100.
And I think he's selling a ton of them.
SPEAKER_00
Okay, nice. I'll check that out. Yeah, there's something to this.
I don't know what it is. Okay, that's like a half baked idea, but I'm gonna do something there. Do you have anything else that you've been seeing that's interesting?
SPEAKER_01
No, but follow ups on- Follow ups, yes. Okay, so last time we talked about Shopify. Yes. So I got a lot of criticism. People said the reason why WordPress is, why you could build a theme businesses around WordPress and software stuff around WordPress is because WordPress makes up 35% of the internet.
They told me in the, I multiple people cited this, they go Shopify only makes up 2% of the Ecom like store market. And WooCommerce is actually a significant, way bigger. Which is crazy to me.
Which is crazy to me. 100% crazy. Yeah, what is that? So I got a lot of criticism for that, but I know that's what the numbers say, but that doesn't sit right.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, something seems off about that.
SPEAKER_01
The second thing is agencies. We talked about agencies. So friend of mine who has a $50 million a year agency, Hollard and he wants to-
SPEAKER_00
Add agency, creative agency.
SPEAKER_01
Creative agency. Which sounds like a miserable thing to do. I think that sounds like a horrible company.
SPEAKER_00
So he reached out, he said.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, he wants to come and fill us in on all the, on the economics.
SPEAKER_00
And what do you want to know?
SPEAKER_01
So is it- So here's why agencies are interesting to me. One, I think they're easy to start. Like it's like a straightforward thing.
Someone needs a service and you say, okay, I can, here's my portfolio. I've been able to solve for this. And they say, okay, we'll give you a shot.
We'll pay you money. And then you just go out and find talented people who can execute on the work. You're super straightforward.
And it's actually interesting because if you start an agency, you actually will discover there's ways. Like I know a guy who has an agency that does 50 million in revenue. It's quite profitable, 20 million in profit.
And with all the profit, he invests in cool things that he's discovered with the agency.
SPEAKER_00
That's this guy or there's a different-
SPEAKER_01
A different guy. That guy who I'm talking about who invests in stuff. That's called MetaLab.
His name is called Tiny Capital. Oh yeah, you talked about that. But I'm talking about Brendan, my friend Brendan who has, he sold his company to an agency where he's now a partner and it's called Mechanism.
It's a 300 person agency. And it seems hard. It seems really hard.
SPEAKER_00
But we'll get him on, we'll check it out, we'll see.
SPEAKER_01
Because there's a few things that everyone starts when they're first getting going. The first thing is they're like, how do we create roommate matching thing? Everyone has that idea and I've done it.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, to-do list. And then a college- Dead simple invoicing. How do we sell our products to college kids? Like okay, this is like, it's like a social media agency.
So-
SPEAKER_00
Found an ideas, yeah.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so I wanna hear more about those agency stuff.
SPEAKER_00
The other thing that came to mind for me with dogs was, I was like, okay, given that 44% of people own a dog, what problem am I having as a dog owner? Maybe somebody could solve it. It's not a business I would wanna start, but a product I wanna buy is, I think my dog for a walk here in the city, city's filthy, dog comes back in, my wife demands that we wash the dog's paws.
SPEAKER_01
So what are you gonna make, socks?
SPEAKER_00
I don't know, it could be anything. It could be socks. It could be a little jacuzzi that I put her feet in to like wash her feet real quick.
SPEAKER_01
No, it's obviously socks.
SPEAKER_00
Is yeah, it's gotta be some kind of easy thing because I'm so sick of this mini bath I have to give my dog twice a day.
SPEAKER_01
What happens when you Google dog socks?
SPEAKER_00
I haven't Googled dog socks, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01
I would like to see what is on top.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and I just want something that's like, I don't wanna put shoes on my dog, so maybe more like socks or even just a really thin, transparent little plastic thing that I could put on her feet. That's hilarious. Just tear away when we're done.
I don't know, I need something because I'm sick of washing my dog's paws.
SPEAKER_01
So you just interviewed the guy who started BarkBox. Yeah, that's coming out in a couple weeks, yeah. Okay, are there any stats that blew you away?
SPEAKER_00
It's doing 250 million in revenue. Shit, really? For a year. I believe they're profitable, yeah.
They raised 50 something million bucks and total lifetime and they've been doing this for a while. So I think they're probably doing well. Probably I think at that stage is more of a choice.
It's like, do we have good ideas to go invest in or do we wanna optimize for profits?
SPEAKER_01
Well, they own like a bunch of stuff.
SPEAKER_00
They do a bunch of different things, yes. They do these subscription boxes.
SPEAKER_01
They do one off selling stuff. I mean, they have a bunch of little...
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, they're doing a bunch of things. The other part I really liked from his story was they kind of invented the dog influencer on Instagram trend. So he was like, you know, it's kind of unclear, but it was definitely early.
I followed one of those things. Before that was a thing. Yeah, I follow a bunch of cute dogs that are like my dog.
SPEAKER_01
My wife cried the other day when one of her dog influencers
SPEAKER_00
died. Yeah, I bet literally the same experience. That's crazy.
And so they basically started promoting all those dogs. They were like, hey, you're a cute dog. We will promote you.
And in turn, you promote our products. And they started this affiliate thing early on. And it just became great content for people.
SPEAKER_01
That sounds like the greatest company to work at, to be able to do that all day. That sounds awesome.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I feel like a pet lover. They're hiring. So anyway, we'll see what that comes out.
All right, we should wrap up. Anything you want to leave people with? No. Okay. On that note, we're done. See you.