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SPEAKER_03
There's this genre of idea of Sean business idea that essentially is, I went and watched an episode of Black Mirror and said, actually, that's a good idea. And this is one of those.
SPEAKER_01
That's actually all Black Mirror ideas are good ideas.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, that's actually a lot. Where do you think they're getting their ideas? They go to the great idea pile, and then they take a great idea and they say, okay, let's put this to a logical extreme where it actually turns bad.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.
I put my all in it like no days off on a road. Let's travel never looking back.
SPEAKER_02
I got my drunk ideas. Should we do some drunk ideas?
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, let's do it.
SPEAKER_02
All right, so again, to frame this, these are ideas that I had that I don't think are good, but I still want to say them. So I call it drunk ideas, even though I didn't have them while I was drunk. I was stone cold sober, but that's my cover story.
All right, so drunk idea number one is called, and you gotta tell me, I think I did this before, and by the way, one gem came out of it, which was my Lucky Water brand that I do intend to create. So some gems do come out of this. So Ben, you're a participant in this one.
I need you both to give me your reaction. What should the scale be on the reaction? Is it like, on a scale of sober to piss drunk, or on a scale of horrible to good idea? How do you want to rate these? Let's do one to 10. One to 10, all right.
First idea is called very long distance girlfriend. Okay, so I had this idea, because I realized I'm sitting there, and me and my wife, we like to watch all these dating shows. So we watch the love is blind, we watch the bachelor, and you watch these shows, and it's like the honeymoon period.
And I would say most people's homes are like ours. It's like, the scene is this. On screen, you see like two usually beautiful people living some kind of fairytale date.
And then like one person's kind of like, there's some drama, one person's being dramatic, or one person's unsure, and the other person's really good, or whatever. And then if you zoomed out off the TV, you'd see a couch with usually a couple sitting like six feet apart from each other, because they're so sick of each other. There's like, in their sweats, not dressed up with their double chin, eating their popcorn, and Cheetos, and pointing at the screen, and be like, ah, she's not even that hot, or like, oh, he's such a jerk, and it's like judging these relationships, right? But there's something to this of why we like it, right? We like seeing these other relationships.
But I also think, we like the-
SPEAKER_04
It's like when we do that with UFC, it'd be like, oh, he shouldn't have tapped out.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, dude, he's such a pussy.
SPEAKER_01
He looks scared. Dude, he's so scared.
SPEAKER_02
That's why I don't like him, because he's scared. Yeah, it's not confident. Oh my God, there's a spider in my room.
You know, like, so yeah, there's definitely like a judgy, there's a fun in judging it. But I would also say, there's a fun in the sort of fairy tale. Like, I think everybody, when you're watching these shows, you sort of put yourself in the shoes of either the person pursuing, or the person being pursued.
You know, you're the damsel, or you're the prince, whatever it is. So the idea behind very long-distance girlfriend is as follows. It's a service or app.
I think it's just a service. I think it's just a text message. This is a phone number you put in your address book.
And we give you the perfect boyfriend or girlfriend. You're never going to meet with this person. It's not even the intention.
It's just somebody who's going to treat you perfectly, because they're paid to do it. So it's like prostitution. It's like, what's a prostitute? A prostitute is somebody who's paid to love you, right? To make love to you.
But that's a lot. I don't want to cross that line. That's a lot of work.
So this is like, you know how Tinder made dating easier? Because you don't have to go date everybody. You just swipe left and right easily on your phone. It gave you this flirting hit, but you didn't have to go out, put in a lot of effort.
So here's what you would get if you sign up for very long-distance girlfriend. There's going to be a person that pretends to be your girlfriend. They're going to text you.
They're going to ask how you're doing. They're going to be emotionally there for you. They're going to text you baby photos of themselves.
They're going to say that they want you. You're going to be like, oh my god, this person wants me. They're never going to nag you.
They're never going to get mad at you. They're never going to get jealous. They're never going to do any of the things that real human beings do that are the downsides of relationships.
Only the upside, none of the downside. So for girls, you're going to get Prince Charming on the other side. He's going to be complimentary.
He's going to be thoughtful. He's going to be there for you. And for guys, you're going to get sort of what you want as the perfect girlfriend.
And we're just going to hire call centers of just dudes. And they're going to behave as your very long-distance boyfriend or girlfriend. All right.
Give me your ratings. I'm going to start with Sam.
SPEAKER_04
I give that a 10. I think that's great, to be honest. I think that surely if we went to adultfriendfinder.
com or something like that, is that what they do? What is adult friend finder? Is that webcam?
SPEAKER_02
You're asking the wrong guy.
SPEAKER_04
I don't follow these two questions. I have no idea. Yeah, I mean, this is brilliant.
How many friends do you have who you've only met via texting? And I've got a bunch of friends who I've only ever texted.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, exactly. I have now most of my life as people I only text with. Maybe I knew them before.
There's a bunch of people that I don't know just through Twitter or through the podcast or through friends or friends. We get in a group chat together. I know their personality.
They're cool. That's my actual friend, even though I never met them.
SPEAKER_04
Or I even heard their voice or talked to them through voice.
SPEAKER_02
And in fact, I have no desire to really meet them. I don't want to go out of my way to go like hang out with them. I'm getting all the benefits that I want out of just the texts.
SPEAKER_04
Yeah. So anyway, I have a lot of friends like that. And I consider them to be really close friends.
I can't tell you how tall they are or what their voice sounds like, but I love them. And so because of that, I'm in. What do you think, Ben?
SPEAKER_03
I give it a 1. It sounds diabolical. It sounds evil.
A 1, 0? Or just a 1.
SPEAKER_01
A 1, 0? It sounds a big slow roll for a 10.
SPEAKER_03
There's this genre of idea, of Sean business idea, that essentially is I went and watched an episode of Black Mirror and said, actually, that's a good idea. And this is one of those.
SPEAKER_01
But that's a great idea, though.
SPEAKER_02
They are good ideas.
SPEAKER_02
Where do you think they're getting their ideas? They go to the great idea pile. And then they take a great idea and they say, OK, let's put this to a logical extreme where it actually turns bad.
SPEAKER_04
Yeah. Remember that TV show in Disney called Smart Home, where it's like a smart home. It's like Alexa before Alexa.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_04
It's a great idea. And the smart home ended up being the mom and the wife. So it kind of is like what we're describing now.
So I think the like Alexa.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I haven't watched her. I think her is something like this. It's like a voice assistant that he kind of falls in love with.
I haven't seen that. But again, it's not even about falling in love. It's just, dude, it's fun to get certain types of text messages.
It's fun to get a funny text from a friend. It's fun to get something interesting texted to you. That's kind of what the hustle does.
The hustle just sends me some interesting stuff every morning. No growth tries to do that. Here's some interesting crypto stuff, right? Where your friend, but I'm not really your friend, I'm just sending you some cool stuff.
You like getting that message. But that's for the work part of our life. What about the personal side? Ben, are you telling me you would, I mean, I know what you're going to say.
You're going to say no. But let me just put it out there anyways. You're telling me you would not want to be getting texts from a woman who's so into you and it's not cheating.
You're never going to do anything. It's not even a real person. You're never going to see him.
Nothing like that, especially if you're single, right? Like I'm not talking about like we're all, I think we're all married Ben, right? So it's not for us. This is for 25 year old me, not 30, I don't know how old I am, 34 year old me.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah. I obviously we're not the target demographic, all of us because we're all married. Yeah. But having said that, like even if it was just like as a friend type of thing, I like, I already have actual friends that I don't text back. The last thing I need is another thing that's literally just a person to not text back.
I don't need another one of those in my life. But, Okay, fair enough, fair enough. Maybe it's a bad idea.
But no, no, no, as a business idea, of course it's a good idea. Of course it's like this has money making potential as a thing that is good for humans, you know, that's why I gave it a one.
SPEAKER_02
Oh, I'm not in the good for humans.
SPEAKER_03
I just felt like I had to be conscious here. I had one person had to be like, Sean, you know this is, okay, okay.
SPEAKER_02
It's good. You know, I'm the devil. You're the angel on the shoulders.
We have to be there yin and yang. That's how it works. That's good.
Yeah, you know, if you want good things, you should, you know, go eat your vegetables, work out, you know, wake up and pray, do all the things, right? Like that's cool. Don't invest in Russian companies. Yeah, don't invest in Russian companies.
Don't have the very long distance girlfriend service for 1999 a month. Don't, you know, don't use TikTok. Don't do any of the things that you do, probably.
All right, next idea. Sounds related, but it's not. It's the huge beds company.
You kind of alluded to this earlier. I've been thinking about the luxuries of life that I care about. We all know what I do, private chef, personal trainer at my house.
I live like a king. The one thing I don't live like a king with is my bed is only king-sized. But a true king would not have a king-sized bed.
True kings have what's called a emperor-sized bed. Have you ever heard of these? No. I've never heard of these.
So athletes have these. I saw these because there's a woman who has this business. It's already a great business.
There's a woman who makes beds for NBA athletes. And so Shaq has a 24-foot bed, I believe, of like 24-foot in diameter. And a whole bunch of NBA players do this.
They have 12-foot diameter beds, 18-foot, things like that. The room, it looks ridiculous, but the whole family can sleep on there and still have their space. Just to get to your spot on the bed, you kind of have to crawl there like a small child just to your pillow, like there was such a long runway.
And so I've always saw these and I thought these looked super comfortable. And I've decided I want a very huge bed. And I realized I wouldn't know where to go buy it.
So my idea is a DDC brand called HugeBeds, name TBD. We need a better name.
SPEAKER_04
No, no, no, keep it. It's like the company Big Ass Fans.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, it should be Big Ass Beds. Okay, that's the name. Big Ass Beds.
Big Ass Beds for bad ass people.
SPEAKER_02
Marketing slogan included with my drunk ideas. All right, so Big Ass Beds. And basically it's just a DDC brand that sells you this, right? Like these are very expensive.
So these run for like $20,000 on average, I think is like the cost of these humongous oversized beds. And that's why athletes buy them because they're a NBA players are already very tall, plus they got a lot of money. So it's like the sweet spot for them.
And there's a woman who they buy it from. It says one woman and she just sells it all through her Instagram basically. It's like some player posts a picture of his bed, tags the woman, people go look at hers.
She has like an Instagram full of huge beds. People go buy from her. So I think that's just like a niche that somebody could go own, Big Ass Beds.
And I think, you know, okay, athletes is one, but we need to find a new niche. We may need to go into a new sport, or maybe it's business nerds who are trying to optimize their sleep. And it's like, you know,
SPEAKER_04
you make some muck, jumbo about this. Having a big bed is not gonna make you sleep better unless you're like eight feet tall.
SPEAKER_02
Have you tried it? Well, maybe it's like a free range chicken. Maybe when you're not confined by this, you know, like maybe you have anxiety all night cause you might fall off the bed, right? Maybe just being able to stretch out is nice. Right? Maybe not being so cramped is nice.
I don't know. Seems like there's some benefits.
SPEAKER_04
There definitely maybe is, but definitely probably isn't. I mean, haven't you been in a cal, haven't you been in a California king size bed before?
SPEAKER_02
I have a California king size bed. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04
You have a California king.
SPEAKER_02
And it's not big enough for you. A California king is like the same size as a king. It's just longer instead of wider.
It's the same overall size. It's just longer.
SPEAKER_04
So it's not the same overall size, but yeah.
SPEAKER_02
No, no, it's the same size, but it's like less wide, more long. Or the other one's more wide, less long. You have a California king.
SPEAKER_04
Like time to with baby. That's a huge bed. If you ask me, I think that's big.
Is that not, is it just you and your wife in the bed or do your kids stay there sometimes?
SPEAKER_02
My kids stay there and my dog. So it's like, you know, we got a full house in the bed.
SPEAKER_04
Most nights. I think that likely there's another thing that should be addressed than making a bed bigger. Kids sleeping in the bed.
Yeah, like don't let, I would call it, I would create a, how about we call it, how about we create a little kid bed company or a dog bed, yeah, or we'll call it a crib or we can make like a dog bed business.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Also a good idea.
SPEAKER_04
I think maybe those are the solutions to your problem instead of making a 20 by 20, a 400 square foot bed.
SPEAKER_02
Ben, what do you got here? It seems like you might be on my side.
SPEAKER_03
Sam is so wrong on this. I have a king size bed. It is a good size.
I don't want to be anywhere. But it's good, good enough for you. No, I don't want to be anywhere near my wife when I sleep.
I want to have to shout for here to hear me. Like there's always like just some little toe poking me in the middle of the night. And if you could just offer me, I never have to worry about that A.
B, you're right, Sam, is it gonna actually give me better sleep? Probably not. Is it gonna be an amazing experience to just like crawl onto this massive piece of luxury that is 20 feet long? Yes, it sounds like an amazing experience. And I want it, I want to feel that.
SPEAKER_02
I'm so in it. And you're spending a third of your day on this bed, right? You're spending eight hours on this bed. Why not?
SPEAKER_03
Why not max it out? The second that you said like a 20 foot wide bed, I just knew I wanted it. My heart knows that I want that experience.
SPEAKER_02
Wait till you see the pictures, dude. When you see the picture, you're like, God, this looks like lavish as fuck. All right, so.
SPEAKER_04
Do you guys, one question, do you guys sleep with a pillow in between your legs?
SPEAKER_02
Of course, I sleep with a maternity pillow.
SPEAKER_04
Same, so I have a body pillow. And so I like basically spoon the pillow because I need my knees to be, I can't have my knees to touch them.
SPEAKER_02
Well, that's just straight ergonomics. That's just like, that's proven. That's not even like us being weird.
That's us being scientists. So the reason I use my wife's pregnancy pillow is science.
SPEAKER_04
Do you really, you use her? What does she use?
SPEAKER_02
I bought two. So I bought hers. I bought her one because my buddy told me this.
My buddy goes, congrats, you guys are pregnant. Fantastic, so happy for you. Hey, get your phone out and go to this website.
You're gonna buy this Swedish pillow. It's $200, but trust me, best pillow ever. And I was like, oh my God, I've never been so intrigued by a sales pitch.
Took out my phone, ordered it right there. I'll never forget where I was. I was in an Uber in Las Vegas when this happened.
And I thought, all right, and it says like five weeks to ship. I was like, oh my God, this must be fantastic if it's like such a shitty experience. And so it arrives, it's amazing.
My wife uses it, she's like, it's good. And I was like, only good, he really built it up. Let me try it out.
I try it for a nap, so good. I ordered myself one and now she never just uses, she never uses any of them. I use both of them actually.
And it's fantastic.
SPEAKER_04
What's it called?
SPEAKER_02
I'll have to look it up. It's like some Swedish name that I don't really know.
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, I'm a big fan of those. I'll buy one. I just had like a really long pillow that I just kind of spoon, but maybe I should buy one of these.
SPEAKER_02
It is called, oh, here it is, bbhugme.com. So the two letters, bb, then hugme.com, bbhugme.
And it's designed in Scandinavia. So not Swedish, Scandinavian. And just look at it.
It just looks like it's gonna be good. And then it is good. It's really great, really great pillow.
SPEAKER_04
All right, I'm gonna buy one of these. Wow, this looks huge.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, it's not that big, but it's kind of like beads inside or whatever. So it sort of forms to your body. It's great.
SPEAKER_04
All right, I'm on board with this. I bet these guys crush it, by the way.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I can imagine. I think it's pretty expensive. It's like $200 for one pillow, which is, yeah.
It's a great site. A lot. All right, so here's my next drunk idea. I got two more for you.
SPEAKER_04
All right, everyone, today's episode is brought to you by Imperfect Action, hosted by Steph Taylor. It's a podcast on HubSpot's podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals. Imperfect Action is a bite-sized online marketing podcast for business owners.
So join Steph Taylor as she answers all your business marketing questions that deep dives into the nitty gritty of online marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, and marketing for strategy for business owners. A few recent episodes include some of the biggest mistakes you can make with your launch. Another one is why growing your audience feels so hard in 2022.
And another one is five ways to make content creation less consuming. So check it out. It's called Imperfect Action.
You can look it up wherever you get your podcasts.
SPEAKER_02
HOA Court. Okay, so do you guys have an HOA where you live?
SPEAKER_04
No, I'm, no. One time, if I remember correctly, Sean, you had an HOA just for a duplex, didn't you?
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, yeah, me and the other person, we had an HOA, with an HOA fee. But we both, as soon as we bought the place, we were like, you know, we're not gonna put $400 into this every day, right? Like, and we both just agree, we're not putting $400 a month into this.
SPEAKER_04
You have an HOA, Ben?
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, and I kind of hate it.
SPEAKER_02
So my HOA has been harassing me lately. I've been getting letters, so I rent, I rent my current place. And we live in this neighborhood, and there's some Karen in this neighborhood that just hates me.
And she's like, oh, I don't like that you, you know, leave the trash bins out a little, you know, an extra day. I don't like that you work out on the street and the driveway, like you, no exercise. No exercise equipment is allowed.
I'm like, what?
SPEAKER_04
Are you exaggerating, really?
SPEAKER_02
No, no, there's three complaints. There's that, there's that, and then there's another one, which is, we get like water delivered, like, you know, like the, kind of like a water dispenser. So you get these jugs, these five gallon jugs.
And so they're like kind of like, they're like, the guy delivers it to our door, but he tucks it behind this pillar. So if you're looking at our house, you can't even see it. You'd have to like walk up to our, like walk halfway up our thing to go see the thing.
And so somebody just keeps complaining to, and our landlord's like, dude, what's going on? Is it, and he lives in another state. So he's like, what is this? Like, can you just, are you like fucking up things? I'm like, no, I don't do anything wrong. Okay, the trash I do leave out a little bit.
But, you know, besides that, it's not a big deal.
SPEAKER_04
Like when you're working out the street, is it like just you and your trainer? And what do you do, just throw in a medicine ball
SPEAKER_02
or something? No, we're doing lunges. Dude, I can lunge in the street, there's nothing, or like, we have a battle rope that we'll put on a, you know, that's my driveway, dude. I could do what I want in my driveway.
And so in my neighborhood, it's like mostly really old people that like don't really do it, do much. So, you know, I get it, but I'm not disruptive. Anyway, so, so this H away thing.
And so I first was like, I was like, okay, I have two choices. I can either just quietly resolve the issues, just listen, just move the trash cans in, put the battle rope inside the garage, only move it out when I want and water jugs. Like I guess I could pull them inside the door.
It kind of takes up space, but no harm done.
SPEAKER_04
No, you cannot do those. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, number one is not happening.
SPEAKER_02
Right, right, this is war. And so I went to war. So I was like, you know what? I'm gonna waste my time and energy fighting this HOA.
Who is this HOA after all? I demanded names. I demanded to speak to somebody. I said, they can call me direct next time they have a problem.
I said, here's my number. I put it out there. I started to, I said, I started to go take photos of other houses.
I said, I'd like to file some complaints by self. Oh, what is this children's swing in the front yard? This person has violation. Why is this person's garbage cans outside? Violation.
Why is this person riding their bicycle, exercise equipment on the street? Violation. And so I started fighting back. I started saying, is it because I'm the only brown guy in the neighborhood?
SPEAKER_04
I'm just curious. Of course, I was waiting for the race that you had to do that.
SPEAKER_02
You had to. I can only wonder, what's so different? Because again, I see violations all around me now. And so I'm, I am based, but there's no, my complaints are falling on deaf ears.
And I'm wasting a bunch of time. I need HOA court. It's a judge Judy like show, streamed on the Netflix and or YouTube, where I can go present my case.
And it's a place for petty people to do their thing. And that's, that's my pitch. This is actually a show.
It's a TV show, HOA court. Or petty court. Petty, yeah, maybe petty court.
Maybe petty is the right way to do it.
SPEAKER_04
I think that's beautiful. But isn't this, do HOA people not have a, what's that called where before you go to court, you can hire a, arbitration. Arbitration, an arbitration.
Mediation, arbitration. Mediation, yeah. Is there, what do you do with HOA? How do you know who wins?
SPEAKER_02
You can't win. That's the problem. HOA is this like, you know, ambiguous force that just controls you, even though you, you know, you pay your hard earned American money to live in this place, to buy this land, to live free, but the freedom's not there.
And that's why we need petty court to bring back our freedoms and to put these petty people back in their place.
SPEAKER_04
Do you, like, do you just like reply all to an email?
SPEAKER_02
Well, no, it's like, they use these agents like cowards. There's like a random HOA email address with like one person behind it. It's like, no, who's complained? Is the majority of the neighborhood complaining? Maybe it's a democracy.
Maybe we need 51% complaints for me to change the way I do things. Why does one person get to change my way of living? Right? That sounds a little crazy to me. So I just feel like there's no justice.
And then when there's no justice, I can't sleep. And that's my idea.
SPEAKER_04
So, but I wanna dig deeper on this because I actually think that it's totally not worth your time to fight this. This is, this is a fight, this fight.
SPEAKER_02
Oh, it's certainly not worth my time.
SPEAKER_04
No, it is definitely. These fights are worth, this is what living is for. I love doing this stuff.
I love fighting with neighbors and like trying to win and like rub their face in it. Like a dog who pees inside. I love this.
And so is there a way that you can-
SPEAKER_02
I don't believe that's considered the best practice anymore by the way for dogs, for dog training. I can deal with HOA. I don't want PETA coming after us.
SPEAKER_04
Is there a way that you can set a trap and figure out who it is?
SPEAKER_02
I don't know how I would do that. Oh, I know. I put a unique letter under the doorstep of everybody in the neighborhood.
I say, listen, I heard about the complaint and I understand. In fact, I'm sorry that I did what I did. You know, I would just love to make it up to you.
What's your favorite flavor? Chocolate or vanilla? I'll send you a treat because you were right and I was wrong and I just need you to know that you were so right with your HOA complaint. So just shoot me your, hey, just text me your favorite flavor. Honeypot, gotcha.
SPEAKER_04
That was actually pretty brilliant and you could do one of two things. You could either say this person's a flavor, this person, it's a what size t-shirt you are, or you could just get a bunch of different Google numbers and see which one like you know.
SPEAKER_02
Oh no, no, even better. Google, I say, hey, have you guys seen this asshole who lives over here? Guy keeps putting his, he keeps doing lunges in the street. Am I right? Like violence in our neighborhood.
I think we should escalate this. He's not listening. I believe it was you who made the complaint, but maybe I have that wrong.
If it was you, I'd like to discuss steps of how we might escalate this issue to make sure that jerk goes down. Bring him in, bring him close before I put him away.
SPEAKER_04
I would love for you to do this. How many people live in the neighborhood, do you think?
SPEAKER_02
Or how many people are part of an HOA? No, it's the neighborhood. It's everybody's default today and it's probably I don't know, like a hundred, maybe 60 houses, a hundred houses, something like that. It's a lot of time and energy.
I may have to like shut down one of my businesses just to do this.
SPEAKER_04
You don't think you know who's doing this? I have no idea.
SPEAKER_02
It hurts me because I know there's somebody who walks by smiling at me while I'm working out in my garage. I just work out in my garage with the door open. Just to have some air, right? Like it's no big deal.
I'm allowed to do that in my home gym.
SPEAKER_04
You can't change your behavior. You have to continue doing it.
SPEAKER_02
Well, I've already bent, but you know, I brought the water bottles inside and I moved the trash cans,
SPEAKER_04
but you should buy lawn chairs and put them in your front lawn and just hang out there without a shirt consistently. I think that's what the move has to be.
SPEAKER_02
That's a gift to the neighborhood. All right. Last idea.
Last idea. All right, the NBA All-Star game just happened and every sport has this and baseball has the home run derby, football has the Pro Bowl, NBA has the dunk contest and the All-Star game. Why does this exist for business? Is that a thought that's ever crossed your mind? Why don't we have the tech All-Star game? Why don't we have the business All-Stars? I feel like there's an opportunity here to bring together the who's who.
I'm just gonna use tech for now. So bring together the who's who of tech, just the All-Stars, honor them, get them to compete for our entertainment and just make a weekend out of it, right? Why aren't we treating this like the sport that it is? So here's how this might work. Tech All-Star game is basically a hackathon and I get Zuck and I get Larry Page and Sergei and I go get founders of different mega companies and they're gonna perform, it's gonna be live streamed onto YouTube and they're gonna have to build something.
They get 24 hours to build something. So you have an All-Star designer, you got Johnny Ive working with Mark Zuckerberg. All of a sudden you got Brian Chesky working with, you know, whoever, you know, Sundar or whatever.
You get, you pair these guys up into random combinations and they're gonna have to do a hackathon, they're gonna have to build something and demo it and somebody wins the trophy for building something cool. Cause you've seen that like Darmesh loves to hack and build little projects. I remember when COVID happened, Kevin Systrom, the guy from Instagram, he built this dashboard that was measuring the viral coefficient and the spread cause he's like, hey, these politicians are just like making statements and we have no source of truth, no dashboard that tells us how this thing's spreading and how it's not per city.
And that's what we need to look at. And so he built this dashboard there and I just thought, huh, wonder what would happen if you unleashed these types of brains, the All-Stars in a little competition of their own, a little hackathon of their own. What do you think of this idea?
SPEAKER_04
I think if you can, if it's, if the idea is like an award thing, then I think that's the worst idea you've ever had. I think that's a horrible idea. If you think, if it's like a hackathon, no one will ever do that.
But I think it's an interesting exercise. And that, and here's my question to you. If you took, let's say, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, the Google guys and the CEO, and you had them do a hackathon, do you think any of them are actually still capable of making anything?
SPEAKER_02
Like making it. But it would be them on their own. So you'd pair them with like, every team is an All-Star engineer, so All-Star technology person, an All-Star designer, and then an All-Star CEO product visionary person.
SPEAKER_04
No, that's bullshit.
SPEAKER_02
You want one on one.
SPEAKER_04
If it's just that, like for example, I feel so-
SPEAKER_02
Like Bezos can't probably build anything. He might, you know, he's gonna go build like a blog. You know, like a WordPress site.
SPEAKER_04
If it was like you and me, it's like you guys, like you gotta go make like a business in the next week. I'm very confident that just me on my own, I could build something that makes money. Do you think that, what are the Google guys, Sergey and Larry, Paige? Do you think that they're capable of actually making anything?
SPEAKER_02
Maybe, like I know Zuck can. So Zuck, when Snapchat came out, I remember that he recognized the threat that was Snapchat so early on and created Facebook Poke. He literally wrote code into the Facebook Poke.
Like they're competitive. I think they released it in nine days, or like 19 days or something ridiculous. And he was one of the lead engineers actually writing code in the project.
Now he doesn't normally do that, but I was like the story at least. Do you think- I think he could. I think very few others could.
I remember, so Mike Berch who built Bebo, he was a programmer, right? He's a programmer's programmer. He built four or five startups that were all interesting and successful. And we did a hack week and I invited Michael.
I was like, Michael, come hang out. Don't just be Mr. Investor far away.
Like come hang with us. Live in our, like we're staying in your cabin. So like just come hang with us.
And he came and I was like, you wanna build something? We're all building these little like apps. And he's like, well, don't exactly know JavaScript. The languages I know aren't really used anymore.
And I don't really remember a lot of it. And I haven't coded in years. My machine is not even set up to do it.
So, you know, I don't even know what I could build at this point. And so he cooked us dinner instead. And then later he got back into programming.
He's like, oh yeah, like, okay, now I got my machine set up. I'm using Python learning the new languages instead of the old stuff. But he like ramped up over time and now he loves to code.
He codes all the time. But I think when I put him on the spot when he hasn't been doing it, no, it was tough for him to just like go build something.
SPEAKER_04
Even though he's a engineer. Let me tell you something really quick. This isn't that shocking because I didn't exactly own a tech company.
But I owned a company that made tens of millions of dollars on the internet. When you use words like Python and JavaScript or whatever you said, I have literally no idea what those are. Like for real, I don't know how programming works.
SPEAKER_02
Just try to guess. What is Python?
SPEAKER_04
Well, it's like a language, but I don't know what you use it for. I don't know what it does. When people talk about Ruby on Rails, I'm like, so there's like a Java on Rails? Like, is there like, I literally don't know what the word means.
SPEAKER_02
What are these Rails you speak of?
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, or they'll be like, well, this is CSS and this is HTML. And I'm like, I don't know, like is one of those like the outdoor siting of the home? And like, I do like an analogy. I still to this day, I have no idea what they mean.
SPEAKER_02
This is like when I told you, I go into home improvement and they're like, okay, so is it a drywall or, and I'm like, it's not wet. Like, what do you mean? Like, can you give me four or five types of walls with some photos and I can tell you which one it looks most like? Can we do like a prison lineup here and I'll point to the wall that looks most like my wall?
SPEAKER_04
Like when people talk about this stuff, so the way that we worked at my company was I would sit with the engineer and I would just draw. I'm like the website, it probably should look something like this. And I'll write the words that I should say.
And once you click this button, let me draw the second thing that you should see. And I would give it to them and it would work somehow. And I, to this day, I have no idea how any of those things work.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, and who needs to? I used to be like, oh, I wish I knew how to code. I'd be so much better if I knew how to code. And I would love to learn how to code.
I'm still, actually, I'm still like kind of at night, I'm taking this like, you know, Udemy course on Python or something like that. And then our buddy, Suley was like, he's like, yeah, people say that. And he's like, I used to know how to code.
He's like, uh-huh. He's like dumbest thing ever. Who cares how to code? He's like, you could pay somebody here.
Here's a guy in India, he can code. Whatever you want, you just tell him he'll do it. He's like, are you so obsessed with knowing why?
SPEAKER_04
I actually totally disagree with him. I think that the key is at least you knew how to do it. So then, and if you don't want to do it anymore, that's fine.
But I actually think that when there's been times where I've talked to my developer and in my head, I'm like, well, you just got to click this button and you see this. And they're like, well, you don't even have to click the button, you know, like this technology, the way it works is you can, I'm like, that works. That's a possibility.
Like I don't even know, I wish I knew how to code. So I knew what frameworks I could like work within. Because when that as someone who doesn't know how to code, I'm like, how do you, how did you, I didn't even know that's possible.
Like, you know what I mean? It's like asking someone in 1800 to like explain to them how text messages work. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what the hell is a phone? Let alone, you know what I mean? And that's how I feel sometimes when we're talking about coding.
SPEAKER_02
So I think that's true. I actually agree and disagree with what he said. So I agree in the sense that I used to think, I used to have this story in my head that if I knew that, then I'd be able to do so much more.
And I don't believe that that's true. I think that anything I wanted to do, I could do by just, you know, hiring one of many, many programmers out there or using a no code tool. It is actually not holding me back.
And I can get the same result whether I do it or not. The part I disagree with is, I think it's really awesome to be able to have an idea in your head and be able to make it happen yourself because there's a huge lossiness in trying to explain to something else, explain something that's in your head. That's kind of fuzzy to somebody else.
Having them download your fuzzy picture, then they output it in an even fuzzier way. It's like a camera telephone and it comes out very different. A lot of times when I write something or like if somebody says, all right, can you help me with this email? I'm like, yeah, but you gotta give me the keyboard.
And they're like, well, I'll type it. And I'm like, no, you don't understand. I don't just think of the email.
I write the email and while I'm writing it, I think of what to say. Like I can't create content in my head. I create it while I'm doing it.
And I think most great things that get created are like that. You're building it and while you're building it, you're sort of like figuring out what you want to build and like playing with the idea live. And that's what gets separated when you're not the builder yourself.
And so I am jealous that I don't get to do that when it comes to building apps.
SPEAKER_04
And let me ask you one more question. So let's just say that we took some of the big folks. I actually, I won't use Elon because he's proven it, but like you take the guy who started Snapchat, Evan, I think.
Evan Spiegel, yeah. Zuck, the Google folks, Bezos, maybe not Bezos because he's also proven it. But you take them and you strip away like what they've done and they're the same age, but you know, they've just been like an insurance agent their whole life.
Do you think, in one scenario, do you think that they could still accomplish something great? And then on the other side, let's just say that they decided at the same time when they were young, 19s and starting Facebook, let's just say that like, you know, instead of Facebook, I'm gonna focus on like music or this like music app, like still tech, but just like a slightly different version. Do you think that they would be even remotely as big and successful as they are?
SPEAKER_02
So the second question I think is much easier to answer, which is I think all of those people would be very successful by any like kind of objective measure, but would they be people that we know their name, we talk about them and their, you know, hundred billionaire, you know, status? No, you know, I do not think that's true. I think luck plays a part in the magnitude of the success, but not the probability of success. So I think all of them, the probability of success for them is all 90 plus percent.
They would all be good at what they do, positive impact, you know, make millions of dollars over their career and be like considered top of their field and whatever field they go to. The magnitude of success, the fact that they end, you know, basis ends up being worth hundreds of billions of dollars, that I think is much more luck of the bounce which opportunity you took versus others. So yeah, so that's kind of my answer to the second one.
What would you say?
SPEAKER_04
I agree. I think that, so for example, there's this guy named David Karp, you know who David Karp is?
SPEAKER_02
He's the Tumblr guy, right?
SPEAKER_04
He invented Tumblr and Tumblr basically sold to Yahoo. I think for a billion was it? Oh, is it a billion? It's sold for a lot of money, but he's told it then they shut it down. Tumblers totally not existent anymore.
And he doesn't, I don't even know what he does. He's not relevant. And I think that a guy like him who I've seen talk and I've heard and I've read his writing, he's pretty brilliant.
And I'm like, man, if Tumblr had not sold or if you were working on something else, I think you could have been way better. Another one is the guy who created Meetup. Scott, I think his name is.
He is amazing too, but Meetup is not that big, it wasn't that big, it wasn't that interesting. I think if that guy would have worked on something else, it actually would have been significantly more successful. And some of these guys, it's kind of like they're Lance Armstrong and they're riding the Tour de France in a mountain bike or with a flat tire.
It's like, man, that was needlessly hard. If you could have been way better, if you just pick a different thing.
SPEAKER_02
That's the level 10 hustle, level 10 skill, level six opportunity. Meetup to me is like a level six opportunity. It was just like a really hard space to go into.
He did the best of anybody who went into that space. We all know the name because of that reason, but Meetup just wasn't as big as not meeting your friends in real life and only talking to them online through Facebook. Like Facebook was just a far larger opportunity and I don't think it was that Zuck knew that.
So I don't think it's that they're so kind of like big brain that they just, they filter out bad idea. It is luck. Best idea, I think.
There's a lot of text messages that got leaked from Zuck early on and he thought Wirehog was gonna be the real thing. He was like, still debating, I don't know if I should do Facebook. When Facebook was already a thing and working and he's like, I think this stuff that we're doing right now is gonna really help us when we do Wirehog, which is like a file transfer protocol that he just thought might be bigger.
And obviously at some point he recognized, no, this is the opportunity, let me do this. But it's not like upfront, he just said, I analyzed 100 opportunities and I've identified the one that's gonna be this app that has billions of users. I don't believe that that's true at all.
I think you sort of look into the size of the opportunity and the era that you were born. You know, these guys, if they were born before the tech wave, they might've just been the best blacksmith in town and not had any of the tools that let you become 100 billionaire because there was no leverage available to you 100 years ago or whatever.
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, by the way, Michael Chandler and Justin Gaitchie, they fought like three months ago. These are two UFC guys and they're both known for being big meatheads who just stand in the middle and bang and hit each other really hard and they're just kind of crazy. And Justin Gaitchie at the end said something amazing.
He goes, I love the, he had just suffered this like three round war where they were banging each other in the head as hard as they can and you feel sad because you're like, this guy is gonna brain damage. And at the end, he goes, what just happened? I love it. He goes, I feel like I was born in the wrong era.
I should have been a Roman gladiator because I would have loved to fight to the death in front of all you people. And I heard that, it gave me chills. I was like, I believe you.
You and I are not the same. You're crazy. Like you are built to be a warrior.
And sometimes I think about that. I'm like, who today? I think like who was like Alexander the Great. If we put him in like today's era, like would he just be like too brutish? And we'd be like, dude, you're an idiot bounce.
Like get out of here, you dumb idiot. Or like if Napoleon came into play nowadays,
SPEAKER_02
like we would just kind of like a dating app.
SPEAKER_04
Yeah. Like what would like the gladiators of then be working on now? Like would they just like,
SPEAKER_02
Well, let's ask our historian, Ben, you study these guys. What do you think if you transplanted Alexander the Great or Napoleon into this era?
SPEAKER_04
Or Edison, would he be like, what are you a dating app? Really? That's so stupid. Or what do you think that that's the coolest thing ever? And he goes, I wish I could have done this.
SPEAKER_03
I doubt Edison would be into dating apps. But I like, I was on my Alexander the Great episode. One of the points I made is I was just reading this book about Alexander the Great.
And it talked about a contract that he negotiated with one of his contractors, one of his suppliers to move their baggage train from one area to another. And I was just like, oh, this is like not that different. Like he had contracts that he had to negotiate and he had suppliers who provided his weapons and like logistics.
And he just contracted them out and he had people in charge of the contracts and like had basically kind of the same organization that CEOs have. So I think like, yeah. So Alexander the Great, I think he'd be a, his personality.
He'd probably be like a CEO, Edison would be like a entrepreneur kind of technical, but moves out of it like a Zuck. Like, yeah.
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, that's interesting. I think about that all the time about like what like the, the, you know, people who dominated from hundreds of years ago. What would they be like today? And vice versa.
I'm like, dude, if Zuck didn't learn how to use a computer, like would that guy have just been a dork like in the 1800s? Like what could he even have survived the plague? Like, you know what I mean? And so I think about that all the time.
SPEAKER_02
Cool. Guys, I gotta run.
SPEAKER_00
End of episode.