5 Internet Goldmines To Spot The Next $1B Trend | Steph Smith

26:38And maybe one product that came out in the last year or so that's indicative of that, that a lot of people made fun of was the Dyson mask headphones. So I'll stop there. What were those? Yeah, I never saw those. They are headphones that have a, basically a mask, an air purifier attached to them. Wow. And they're expensive. They're$1 ,000, I think, right? They are$700 from what I can see. And what, this came out and people just made fun of them? Well, if you Google images, it's like a white guy in like the New York subway wearing it. You know what I mean? Like it's a little off on, because you're talking about India and a few other countries, not maybe the New York subway.

27:23So it's kind of like a misleading ad they have, but that's pretty fascinating. Are these taking off? No, I think they're in that zone of a lot of people making fun of them. However, the reason I'm calling this out is because I think there is this understanding that it's just a new deli. It's not, you know, anywhere close to home. But I think, have you guys ever used like an air quality index measure in your home or like a CO2 monitor? Yeah, I have multiple times. And I bought like these air purifier things that also measure the air quality in my house. And I have them and it's like shocking whenever it'll like, it basically turns red.

28:03And it's like, oh God, there's something going on. You know, we need to air this place out or whatever. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, air quality changes over time. And I don't know, I've been noticing more even in San Francisco a few days where people are like, oh, I'm wearing a mask at work, not because of COVID, but because like, oh gosh, like I have you checked the air quality? And a lot of people aren't doing this still today, but I think that'll change. And I think if you use some of these, like the CO2 monitor, for example, you literally like if you go to bed with your door closed and you wake up and you check that thing, it is wild how high it is.

28:34And all you need to do is open a window or circulate the air in your home. But I think as the stuff, I guess, is people are more educated on it. I think some of these devices, like the air quality monitors, are going to take off. And you can see some of this data in Jungle Scout as well, of just the kinds of products that people are buying. Do you see anything in Jungle Scout that stood out? Any product that stood out? Okay, so there's one product which has to do with an AC furnace and an air filter. But guess how much this thing sells every single month? What is it? It's an AC furnace air filter and an air quality monitor.

29:14And so what does that mean? Literally like the filter I put on the vents of my... I've got like eight vents around my home and I put these filters there. Is that what you're referring to? Like the cloth almost filters? It's a filter you would put on your furnace. Got it. Okay. All right. So what I'm looking at here is, yeah, like the kind of standard air vent filters that you have to swap out every, whatever, six months or so. But also, it's a smart one. So it has like a monitor associated with it that has an app. This thing costs$250. Yeah, I have no idea. But, you know, sounds like it might be a little high.

29:51So tell us. What does Jungle Scout tell us for the revenue? So I'm seeing four entries in Jungle Scout and they are 17 million, 12 million, 8 million, and 8 million. So what is that all total? That's like over$40 million per month. What? This is what Jungle Scout is saying. So, you know, take it with a grain of salt. I'm not sure how they measure, but they tend to be pretty accurate. And so that's an example of, I think, as people, again, like try to understand the air quality around them. I think there's a growing business here. That is fascinating. I want to point out another thing. So this chart that you have of like causes of death.

30:31So the top, let's see, risk factors. I think I might have chosen the United States here. But in the United States, I believe the top ones are smoking, number one, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and obesity. So I have a crazy story to tell you. So I can't say his name because he asked me not to or he said. He prefers to stay under the radar. But I have a friend who is an investor, and he's a very different kind of investor. So what you see on Twitter often is people who are investors, they like to be loud about what they do. They'll just kind of spray and pray. They're doing a lot of deals.

31:08They love to be angels in 50 things, putting 20K checks. My friend is very different. He says that in every year, there's like one thing that matters, maybe two. and his old job is to just find the one or two things that matter. And so I've known him for, you know, maybe 10 years now. And at one time it was like, he's like, Bitcoin, it's Bitcoin right now. And I was like, Bitcoin, really? Like, you sure? And this is like, you know, let's say, I don't know, 2013, 2014, 2015, somewhere there. He's like, it's Bitcoin. And then he was the one who was like, OnlyFans, I'm all in on OnlyFans. And I was like, OnlyFans, what is that?

31:44This is before any of the revenue numbers had come out about OnlyFans. He's like, I think, and I was at Twitch at the time and he's like OnlyFans is bigger than Twitch or it's going to be bigger than Twitch and I was like no dude Twitch is like one of the biggest internet sites on earth and he's like trust me it's going to be bigger and he's like called it basically each year and he doesn't necessarily always get to invest but he's trying to identify what is the thing Did he get in on those? Yeah so like for a couple of these yeah he's got the ones I've mentioned so far he did so then he texted me the other day and he goes GLP greater than and GPT.

32:19So this is like, I talked to him maybe, I don't know, nine months or a year ago. And he was like, yeah, I think this Ozempic stuff is the thing for the year. And I was like, really? Like, isn't it AI? He's like, no, I think this, I think GLP is bigger than GPT. And I was like, well, what do you mean? He's like, I'm trying to figure out the right way to invest in this. Because they're all like, basically Ozempic and the makers of these are all public stock. So he's like, I could buy that, but the upside's not exactly there. So I'm trying to figure out what's the move. And he told me, he's like, there was one company I invested in several years ago that might actually be a beneficiary of it.

32:55So yesterday, he sends me an article. Carmot, this pharmaceutical company got bought for$3 billion yesterday. And they are a maker of GLP drugs. He was an early investor in it. He invested in it like seven years ago or something. And I was like, dude, how did you get in on this? He's like, well, at the time, I mean, this all wasn't clear. I can't say that I definitely didn't know about that. But it was, these guys were drug makers that were attacking obesity drugs in a different way. And, you know, just looking at the charts about what kills everybody, you know, like the obesity is a massive, massive problem.

33:29There's not that many interesting bets of who's attacking obesity in a different way. These guys were one of them and I liked their team and whatnot. So I invested early on and I was like, geez, man, like just to have like a$3 billion exit out of nowhere, kind of amazing. What do you think his return on that was? I don't want to say, but he got in fairly early and $3 billion is a big number. So I think he did extremely well on that one. But what I will say is that he kind of looks at these mega trends and this is kind of what you're showing here, Seth, is that if you understand how big the wave is, then it kind of simplifies life.

34:08You can ignore all small waves if you know what the big tidal waves are and you just figure out, okay, what's the best way to surf this? And even if you don't figure out the best way, even the fourth best way to surf a megatrend is going to work in your favor. And I've heard this now from a few investors, but also Mark Zuckerberg said this a while back. I remember when we were working on some app that was like a messaging app, like text messaging app. And this was maybe 2015 or something. And it seemed like text messaging was the big thing. And Zuck came out and he goes, there's only a few mega trends.

34:42Mobile was the last one. And then the new one is video. He goes, video is a mega trend. Everything is moving to video. People are kind of going to communicate through video. They're watching more and more video, short video, long video, medium sized video, scripted videos, UGC videos. It's all going to video. And I had never heard anyone say this word mega trend. And when Zuck said that, I started to pay attention. And we actually ended up pivoting our company into video streaming, live video. We were like, oh, we'll go for live video. and that's the company that got bought by when we got acquired by twitch is because we were just partially in the right space like live video streaming there weren't that many people working on it in an interesting way but live video kept growing kept growing kept growing at this like really fast rate and so it was smart to get out of the text game and get on the right megatrend yeah

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36:30You know, something I'll mention about the air quality stuff that's related to what you said there, Sean, is I feel like one missing gap with air quality readings and devices and all that is it's not obvious. As in, I feel like most people would be surprised to be like, oh my gosh, I inhale all this stuff and it has these adverse effects and it's, you know, it ranks here on, you know, the likelihood of death. But it's not obvious. it's not in your face like let's say like the glp ones people see themselves every day and they're constantly trying to improve their image and how other people interpret them um so i think maybe one thing that if someone was going to go figure this out you guys have talked about um the air the water filters people go into your home and they're like they say like did you know like you're drinking like this much uh of like basically like rocks and other sediment and lead in your water.

37:21Can you believe it? And they show you. And so I feel like there's an element of that where it's going to take a while for people to really care about the air quality stuff, but there may be some middle ground where some company is able to effectively give people that aha. Yeah, I would put it differently. I don't think it's going to take a while. I think it's going to take a marketer for people to care. It's just going to take a marketer and a product design that puts it in your face and that educates you about this and kind of scares you about it, But then it says, don't worry, there's a solution.

37:49And that's how a lot of things get done is a great marketer or product designer figures out the way to put it in your face. Did you guys remember what Rob Dyrdek said? So Rob Dyrdek came on and he didn't spend too much time talking about this. But he said he bought a good chunk of a company that is doing water filters for showers. And I've got a bunch of friends that are like health freaks. So Justin Mayers is one of them where he's a health freak and he's a great entrepreneur. and he was like, man, I installed this really expensive, basically Berkeley filter, which is that big metal. It's like those metal jugs that you see in people's homes.

38:26And he's like, I wanted to install one for my whole home because I wanted my shower water to also be completely filtered. And I went through this whole ordeal to do this. And then Rob Dyrdek invested in this company that is basically making a showerhead that is a filter. So it's ideally simplifying that entire process. He talked about that on this podcast, but he didn't spend too much time talking about it. and I went and researched a bit of it, I think that is going to be a pretty big company. And I think there's going to be a whole... I imagine it's going to be like a boxed mattress trend where no one has them.

38:58And then suddenly, many people have them. And there's tons and tons of competition. Because I don't think that's quite that hard of a company to create. I don't know what the motive is entirely. But I imagine there's going to be a whole bunch of people in that space. And so I'm pretty much on board with what he said. And I think you have an interesting insight, particularly with the AC vents. That's another product that literally everyone has in their home. You have to replace it two or three times a year. And it's a really, really easy Instagram ad to make. All right, let's go to the next one.

39:29What else you got? All right, next one in here is GadgetFlow. So this is just an interesting site that aggregates gadgets, friending gadgets. I want to call it two things here. The first is, if you look at the most popular gadgets, you might say, well, what's the opportunity here, right? Like, I'm not going to create a drone like DJI. I'm not going to create the next AR, VR device. Apple's doing that. Meta's doing that. Like, there's no opportunity. I just wanted to call out that every time there's a new device that ends up penetrating a lot of people's homes or wallets, there's almost always an opportunity for accessories.

40:06So a good example that we covered years ago, Sam, on Trends was AirPods. And you have got a crazy stat on that. You've got a crazy AirPods stat. This was forever ago. I wonder what it is now. But back then, it was like early on in the AirPod journey. And it was like, AirPods, if it was a standalone company, would be in the Fortune 50 or something like that. And I was like, whoa, whoa. I think your stat was like, AirPods make more revenue than like Spotify, Snapchat, and Airbnb combined. Yeah, I think Twitter was in that too. And that was, again, that was in 20, I want to say 2019 or 2020. And so now there's some crazy stats with AirPods, which is just like 70 % of all US teens have AirPods.

40:47Like that is like true penetration. And so early on in that trend, it's like, okay, there's like cases, there's, I'm trying to remember, like keychains, really simple stuff. But I think what is worth just understanding or what you can take away from this Gadgetflow website is like, okay, what are the newest devices that are not going to have the scale of like hundreds or thousands of people using them, but millions or hundreds of millions? And what are the adjacent accessories or products that I can create? So how do you use Gadgetflow? So Gadgetflow is not as much of like, you know, a searchable database like something like Jungle Scout, but it's more so just what I would do if I came to this page is first, I would look at the drop down of most popular, right?

41:36So that's where you're going to see some of those big devices. And then the other takeaway is some of the drop down categories, I think. So the one that caught my eye was pet accessories. So remember, Gadgetflow is like all tech devices. And so if you go to pet accessories, there's a bunch of different things. I guess you both have owned dogs. I've never owned a dog. But I wonder if you're familiar with any of these devices. And in particular, there was one that I noticed. Have you guys heard of Fluent Pet? No, what's that? What is it? It is this really interesting trend of these buttons. Fluent Pet is a particular brand that I think is going pretty viral because of one account.

42:23This dog called I Am Bunny. this this account has i think a million followers on instagram and it's it's basically these buttons where you can i don't know how like how well this works for all dogs you can kind of teach them to communicate with you uh by pushing these buttons to indicate what they want and i've seen these and it's and it is actually really cool so the way it looks is it looks like a uh so it looks imagine like a twister pad and each color has a button on it. One button means bathroom. One button means food. One button means this other thing. And you could train your dog to click a button to tell you what they want.

43:05It's actually really cool. It's pretty awesome. I've seen these. We trained our dog how to do that. I could tell what he wanted based off of a handful of activities that we would teach him how to do. This is actually really cool. Yeah. My dog is way too dumb for this, but this is awesome. Yesterday, I took my dog out. I took my kids to gymnastics and we brought the dog. And so all these kids love to come pet the dog. And this kid comes up, probably like, I don't know, seven years old or something. He goes, oh, your dog is so cute. And I was like, thank you. I was like, you want a pet? He's like, yeah.

43:40He goes, what's her name? And I go, yeah, her name is Bunsley. He goes, oh, why didn't you give her a better name? Like Rosalina. and I was like okay maybe I and I was like I didn't know how to respond I was like man I just got owned by this little kid what are you supposed to say to that why didn't you give her a better name like Rosalina yeah it's like oh my god I was it's like I got a jab in the nose Sean did you name the dog I did name the dog Bunsley yes what was the answer I just thought it was a very regal sounding name I think your definition of regal and everyone else's definition is a little bit different.

44:22Like a butler. I don't know. Like, oh, Bunsley. Steph, what are you doing all day? Are you just clicking through all these? I mean, you probably have 100 or 50 different links here. Are you just clicking through this stuff all day? How many tabs are open right now? I want to say 35. And are you going to go through those or are you just a hoarder? There's an order. There's like the Jungle Scout tabs grouped together. the similar web tabs grouped together. I don't know. I mean, I think... So I will spend time every so often just going through these websites and scouring for ideas. But I think there are a few newsletters and things that I pay attention to that kind of surface ideas that I then, if I find them interesting, will go and check them in SimilarWeb or Jungle Scout or whatever.

45:10And I know you're at A16Z now and I presume you're happy. but inevitably one day you're going to go and you're going to start a company that you have it in you i think you're going to do that what do you think it will be which category because you you've seen all this data you look at all this data what what's going to interest you whenever you do it well i don't want to share the ideas that i actually want to pursue soon because which category um you could say games um or i like the idea of you know people we've talked about before someone if you guys remember neil agarwal neil.fun um yeah great great website you know part of me we talk about these big ideas like ai and biotech and it's all very interesting and you know someone please go become the air quality uh marketer that we all need but part of me just wants to create things that i wish i saw on the internet or i wish existed on the internet that aggregates some of these ideas or gets people to learn things in ways that they never thought of before.

46:12And so I kind of just want to be, this is too silly of a term for this, but like an artist, like an internet artist, if that makes sense. Are you, and you work at an investor now, is this something that you'd raise money for or you'd want to do all on your own? I'd do it on my own. You wouldn't raise money? I don't think it's the kind of, it's not a VC. Internet artist? Who's gonna, they're gonna be like, do they have those in Massachusetts?

46:41All right. Well, I'm just curious. Like Peter Levels is like the Banksy of internet art right now, right? Yeah. Like he's kind of one of those guys. Yeah, exactly. And I think you will do that. I'm eager to see when you finally do do it. I think you're going to do really well in it. Well, to have her trapped, because I saw her do something yesterday that made me just shake my head. She tweeted out, who's got the best company swag in the world? Oh, no. Don't sell me out like that, Sean. a backpack and like a koozie and like a water bottle that all set a 16 z on it and no doubt they were beautiful products it's great to get free stuff but that's how they get you steph i was like no they're wrapping their tentacles around you you know what's the the two most addictive things in the world heroin and a monthly salary well third is free swag yeah they don't even you don't even have golden handcuffs you have a black umbrella that's what they did for you The internet artist that I want to follow, that I admire, does not fall into the traps of company swag.

47:37They reject company swag. They reject company swag. When I saw you post that, I was like, oh, no. She's in too deep. It's like an inception. We need to wake her up. She's so far. She's in level three of inception. And we got to snap her out of this. Well, I mean, I am human. I am convinced by free stuff. It looks like they got you with a book bag and umbrella and a poncho. that's what yeah so for all the people who have previously tried to coach me that's all you need just send me a backpack and a poncho and well I'm eager to see you start a company where do you want to go from here Sean? yeah I think we will let's wrap it up but Steph where can people get more of like this type of stuff specifically so like you have this very unique method to your madness that you you know these nooks and crannies you're like those people where you go to a city and you're like, I really wish I just knew kind of like what tourist traps to avoid, what good places to go, what's the best place to eat.

48:36Oh, she knows this hole in the wall where you can enter through the chef's kitchen and blah, blah, blah. You're like that for the internet. So how can people get more of that? Yeah. So like you said, it's my seventh time on My First Million, which is kind of crazy. And ever since the first few where I'd come with these docs and you guys would be very nice and hype up the doc and say, oh my gosh, so crazy. There's so much in phone here. I constantly get people reaching out, asking for those docs and an aggregation of all the websites that I visit and how to use them and how to internet sleuth. Or I like the term to use the internet pipes.

49:08So I'm putting together something. I don't know what to call it. Maybe you guys can help me with it. That aggregates these internet pipes and shows people how to use them. So I think the only thing I've done is aggregate them and then buy the domain internet pipes. But I think by the time this episode goes live, I'll probably have some sort of like presale up on that page if people are... What are you going to charge for it? Okay, if you guys have a minute, I want your opinion because I think I'm going to do something wrong here. No, just don't use the C word. You can't say course. You have to call it something else.

49:42Like a... I don't know. You got to use chat, GPT, but something involving the word research, I'd imagine. There was this one guy that used to really... He had a lot of knowledge. He read a lot of books. He had a Lamborghini in his garage and he too had a course. Oh, no. So maybe you can to his blueprint. He had a good one. I mean, so I don't know what I'm going to call it. I don't like the idea of it being a course because I want it to just be like a resource that people go to and it's not like a teachable course or something like that. But what do I charge for something like that? When I did my book, I did this tiered pricing scheme where it started at$10 and then it went up for every 30 or 50 sales.

50:19But I have no... I feel like I'm going to end up charging too little. What was that called? It's called Doing Content Right. So Doing Content Right. Sean, tell me what you would have done in this situation. So Steph worked at my company. Yeah. And she was talented at it. She was talented. She worked at my company while she was doing this. And I remember Steph, someone came to me and they're like, Do you care that Steph is doing this and launching this content book? And I was like, no, why should I care? Would you have cared, Sean? And I think, Sepp, you made, I don't know, you could say what you made, but you made great money.

50:52You maybe made more than that than we were paid. Did you make more doing the book than I paid you? Maybe in the first year. And Sean, what would you have said if your employee was doing this? Would you have been pro or anti? Yeah, I would have been pro. I mean, it's fine. I have no problem with that. I would have had a conversation just to be like, cool, where are we going with this? Where does this live in your life? Is this like fun side project? Is this what you actually want to go do? Then maybe I can help you go do that more. I just kind of want to know where that lives. And I just, obviously, for you, Steph was like a star performer.

51:28So stars get more rope to go do things. If you are doing a mediocre job and then you got the side hustle, that's the final straw for me. Then you're not putting your energy towards actually getting a good outcome. But Steph was crushing it. So I don't think we were pretty encouraging of people to do stuff unless they were screwing up. I don't know if we ever lost an employee because of their side thing. But I think that was pre-Twitter getting popular like it is. I think in the future, I maybe wouldn't have encouraged it. It's kind of effed up. But I don't know if I would have encouraged it. But I did encourage it back then.

52:07Well, that's what I mean by I want to know where it lives in your life. meaning if this is kind of what you really want to do, then let's just be honest about it. Like, let's just have the honest conversation and we can figure out like, what's the right pathway forward. And if you're like, I just want to make a little bit of extra money, we could talk about like, hey, if you just did X, Y, Z here, you can make that, you know, you don't have to start a separate business, right? If that's the motivation. If you're just like, oh yeah, I just use this for serendipity and networking and I just kind of like to put stuff out there at nights and weekends.

52:35Like, this is my hobby. Like, that's what I told people when I was doing things. I'd say, business is my hobby. So for you, when you log off work, you might go to CrossFit or you might go play golf. What I do is I read, I write, I make things. That's what I like to do on the internet. And so this is just me doing that hobby. You do Taekwondo or whatever you do. And I think there's just some people that are like that. You got to let them spread their way. I mean, I think also to your point, Sean, it depends. Is this like an ongoing thing forever? You're going to be doing a course every quarter and it's going to take up all your time.

53:10I intentionally with this project, partially because I didn't want it to last forever, but partially also because it's just my psychology to get something done and out there, was like, I think I compressed it until like a six-week thing. And I was like, this is the only time I'm going to allocate to this. And I feel like for this new project that I'm launching too, it's kind of the same thing where it's like, I don't want to be doing a course forever and people checking in with me and have this, I just have this like little burst of like creativity. I need to get something out there to exist. And then that's it.

53:43Yeah. Yeah. Your question was, what would you, what should you charge for it? I don't think this is going to make a ton of money because the, who's the type of person that wants to, who's the type of person that wants to buy this is somebody like you. So there's not that many people that are like you that are like, Hey, I just have some disposable income that I'm going to use so that I can have better internet, random research tools and like ability to lurk and just find interesting things on the internet. I think those are awesome people, but it's not like mass market, right? So you either got to charge a bunch or you go the other way and you charge very little, but you get the value in a separate way.

54:21Like for you, what I would be doing is I would use this as a honeypot to attract like the type of person that's going to pay even$99, whatever,$100 a year to have access to this database is like somebody that you would want to go hang out with for three hours most likely. Right? And so I would just use it as the value isn't going to come from the direct monetization of this asset, but from the little community you build and then the interesting either investments you get out of it or introductions or opportunities or the company you started someone from this. That's, I think, where you're going to get way more value than just trying to charge a premium for this.

54:57Yeah, but it'll pay for her monthly expenses. This, you're doing content right plus a new thing. you'll make 25 ,000 a month, I think. We'll see. Yeah, but like your needs are covered, right? So like, you know, one thing I think about a lot is like, you know, more of the same keeps me where I am. So, you know, if I keep doing things that kind of keep me in the same level of the game, I'll never have the bandwidth to do whatever it's going to take to get me to the next level of the game. And so like, for example, I had a course that I was teaching maybe five to 10 days a year, not much. And it was making over a million dollars a year.

55:35So that's an amazing effort to pay off thing. And then I stopped and I was like, why? Because for me, making an extra$1 million a year is not going to get me to the next level of the game I'm trying to play at. So I was like, if I'm trying to get to the point where, let's just say, let's make up a goal. Say I was trying to make, I want to get to where I'm making$20 million a year. Okay, let's say that was the goal. then I need to like have enough like room on room on my plate just empty space that will like force me to go create the thing that gets me to the next level um or I might give things away for free in fact if it's gonna like create the serendipity that's gonna take to like open up new opportunities that are bigger and so that's just something to think about is like how do you if do you care about uh you know maybe the next level of financial freedom of you know sort of wealth that will give give you more runway, more ability to use money to do the shit you want, like the internet art type of thing.

56:30And if you do, maybe you could use this as a tool to get the right people around you and do something else. I don't know. It's just worth considering. One of the biggest learnings from the book was some people are like, oh, you're totally undercharging. But it's like, how do you deliver a product at a price point that people are so happy with that they go and share it and talk about it and also want to work with you and actually digest the information instead of... And requires no customer service. Yeah, exactly. It's just like it runs itself. It markets itself. That's what ended up happening with the book.

57:02And so I am leaning more in that direction. But then I also... I was expecting you guys to be like, no, no, no. Charge more. You always undercharge. But I guess maybe I should keep it low. Tim Ferriss said something that changed my thinking on this. Tim Ferriss said, he goes, I had a strategy which was ultra free or ultra premium. He goes, I was going to give away 99 % of what I do for literally for free because I'm trying to reach the broadest number of people possible and I want to over be over delivering. I treat it like it's a paid product but I deliver it for free to the masses because then on the one day and he gives the example he did a this was back when he was doing 4-Hour Workweek and whatnot.

57:40So he's doing his blogging for free podcast for free and then he said hey I'm doing a two day kind of like in person workshop seminary thing that's going to open the kimono thing or open the kimono yeah exactly and i think he did two or three million dollars in sales in like 30 minutes right because people were like i will pay ten thousand dollars he was like it's it's expensive i don't expect everybody to be able to afford this or want to i'm not even going to promise anything but if you're what i do like i'm going to do this open the kimono thing it's two days and i think he made two two to four million dollars on that day and he's like if i had been trying to like kind of charge along the way like let me do this little ebook for$9.

58:19I mean, let me do this like monthly subscription for maybe I can get$20 a month. He's like, I would have had a smaller audience and less money. And so, and same thing with his podcast ads. He's like, I would rather have no ad in the thing or charge an ultra premium to a premium brand because there's always really, he said, there's always a market for luxury, right? There's always a market for the, for the absolute best. So I wanted to make the absolute best product and then charge the absolute, you know, best price I could for that. And that was like his strategy when it came to that. I think Alex Hormozy does a similar thing.

58:50So Hormozy's like, look, I could be trying to make a little bit of money here, a little bit of money there, do a course, do a seminar, do whatever. But he's like, no, no, no. I'm going to be really in your face that this stuff is normally what people charge for. I'm giving it to you for free, builds a bunch of goodwill, builds a big audience. And then when he's ready to charge, he'll make all the money back and more when he finally does charge for the thing. In his case, it's a combination of acquisitions.com where he's like, I'm going to buy equity in your business at this super, super sweetheart deal for him because he's built up so much goodwill and reputation amongst his potential acquisition targets.

59:28Or if he ends up doing ever a course or a seminar or a live in-person thing, he'll be able to charge$25 ,000 per person to get in. And he'll make$10 million on one day because he's built it that way. So I think there's something to learn from these people that play the real long game. Totally. I don't think I could charge 25k for anything, but we'll see. We'll see if I ever get there. Well, you do. You get paid more than that. That's true. That's true. So, I mean, you definitely do. And you definitely can. I think that you will eventually, for sure. Someone, by the way, I read the comments and I read one from something, one of the episodes I was on ages ago and someone wrote something like, wow, Steph has a really intense case of imposter syndrome.

1:00:15And I was like, oh, true. Anyway, I guess if people want to find... By the way, I'll tell you this now. You do. I remember when I was negotiating your salary, when you first joined and you asked for a number. I don't remember if I did this for you. In particular, women would typically do this. They would say a number and I would say a number back. or I would just say a number to them and they would just accept it. And I'd be like, hey, you should negotiate with me. Women in particular were horrible at pushing back on their salary for what they should ask for. And my company was small. We in aggregate probably hired 75 people.

1:00:55But I noticed a small trend of women in particular did not push back nearly as hard as the men. There were many men that they would push back and it was laughable. what they I'm like, there's not a chance I'm going to give you this. But I guess I'll meet you somewhere in the middle to like adjust this. But like, this is crazy. I offered I was thinking you're$150 ,000 a year person you're asking for$700 ,000. Like that's just ridiculous. But I remember with you, Steph, you were way, we gave you a lot of bumps, I think, over the over the however long you worked with us. But you, you started way too low.

1:01:26And I would encourage you to maybe not for this product, but to definitely elevate what you should be demanding for pay. I think you're doing all right now, A16Z. But I've noticed that with you, in particular, amongst very, very, very smart and qualified young women. Yeah. It took me around, what is it? So 21 to 28 or 29 when I joined A16Z. So it took me like seven years or so to actually learn to negotiate. So I agree. Can I tell you an embarrassing version of imposter syndrome that I have, which is, it's not imposter syndrome, but it is what I call Michael Scott syndrome, where sometimes I felt this for like 10 years.

1:02:06I always hire people that are like super smart. That's great up front. But the downside is sometimes you just feel like Michael Scott. You're like, oh, I'm the idiot in the office. And I'm telling these people I'm actually in their way. These people are like, they're kind of looking at me like the way that Jim Halpert looks at Michael Scott. And I'm like, oh, no, it's happening. that's the Michael Scott thing is happening have you ever felt that yes I felt that way all the time and then I realized that's actually I felt that way for a long time and then I realized oh wait no that just means I'm good at hiring uh so like I should just get out of the way

1:02:47no I felt that way too I remember hiring people that were a older than me and be smarter and I'm like what the fuck are these people did i really just convince this person did i just trick this person into coming and joining anything i'm doing i feel horrible about that i feel that same way one woman that's so good at what she does um in our e-commerce business she's so fast like literally so fast and hyper productive like she gets the like she gets like three people's stuff done and in the same amount of a day and uh she's the one who michael scots me all the time i'm like I'll be telling her something in the meeting.

1:03:21I'll be like, yeah, let's follow up next week on that. And she's like, I already sent it out. And I'm like, while I was talking, but I was giving you such a good anecdote and metaphor. And oh, you just like finished it? Oh, okay. I guess I could have shut up five minutes ago, huh? And I realized, actually, this is a great thing. Just like you said, Sam, it's not that I'm great at hiring. I said, now this is actually the bar. I only want to hire people that make me feel like I'm the Michael Scott of the office. That's actually how it should feel when you're doing it right. That's how you should feel.

1:03:47That means you're good at hiring. Now you just got to get the hell out of the way. You did the hard part. And you're funny. That's the other thing. Yeah, I don't know about that. I'm just going to quickly shout out, if people want to go find it, internetpipes.com. I guess we'll figure out the price. It'll be live when this goes live. All right, that's the pod. Steph, thank you for doing this. 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 the road, let's travel, never looking back.

1:04:21All right, this episode is brought to you by Mercury. They are the finance platform of choice for over 200 ,000 companies. Shouldn't be surprised because I use it myself for not one, not two, but I have eight different Mercury accounts. I have seven for different companies that I'm a part of, and then I have my own personal account because now they have personal banking, which is a really cool feature. I highly, highly recommend it. Like I said, I use it myself. And the reason why is because the way that Mercury works is beautiful. It's very intuitive. And you could tell that it's actually made by a startup founder.

1:04:48It's an entrepreneur. You could tell it's made by somebody who used other banking products in the past and didn't like all the different rough edges and annoyances and decided to actually fix it himself. And really, any type of entrepreneur you are, let's say you're an agency, well, one of the things every agency has to do is be able to send invoices, easily create them, send them to customers, and stay current on your balances with all your customers. Well, you can do that inside Mercury. And so I think that Mercury is great. Highly recommend you check it out. And thank you for sponsoring the show.

1:05:14For more information, check out Mercury.com. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Check show notes for details.