It’s The Most Taboo Business Model We’ve Ever Seen

0:01Sam, you know what they say when you're on a boat and it's sinking? get off women and children first and that's what we're doing with the podcast today women and children first 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 try i have a topic i want to talk to you about have you seen this startup that's called co-fertility how do you spell it co-fertility I don't know. It could have been co, like you spelled with a K, like in the Asian way. I don't know. Co-fertility. All right. I get it. Yeah, I'm there. So check this out.

0:41You know a little bit about egg freezing, but I didn't know much. I've never done it. But I do know there's like a growing trend of this. I think basically people are having babies later in life and egg freezing tech has come along and it's also become more normalized. I think some companies pay you or will pay for your egg freezing. but just look at this Google Trends chart. So last five years, egg freezing has basically gone from roughly 30, 40 on the Google Trends to basically 80. And so it is on the rise, and that's just in the past, I don't know, a couple years, two, three years. I think last year, 20 ,000 women in the United States chose to freeze their eggs, so still a very small number.

1:22So for the 18-year-old men who are listening to this podcast... For me, six months ago, what is egg freezing? What do you mean? So egg freezing. So I guess I actually don't know the difference in terminology, but I know from experience, there's two ways to do it. One, a woman just freezes her eggs. And then when she's ready, I guess... Why does it feel like we're having the talk? It's like when a man and a woman love each other very much. Birds of the bees. I was a participant in this. And so I guess you could freeze just eggs. And then eventually when you meet a husband or you meet someone who you want to mix it with, you mix it and they stick it upside the women.

1:59And then nine months later, hopefully she has a kid. The other way you do it is you freeze embryos, which is a process that I went through, which is awesome. But every leading up to doing it, I have to bring my sperm to the doctor like 30 minutes after getting the sperm out of my body. And you just have this ultimate look of shame. And I remember my wife and I have debated what is more embarrassing and shameful, like when a woman has to go to a gynecologist or when a man has to donate sperm. It's like when my son comes out. I haven't seen him in a little while. And he's like a three-year-old. And he just comes out of somewhere and he'll be like, I did a bad thing.

2:41That's you walking into the hospital holding a cup of sperm. It's a horrible experience. And so, yes. So that's what egg freezing is. Somehow we made this about the dude side of things. But I think for the women, it's a little bit harder. They have to literally take shots and harvest the egg. It's a very hard process on your body. Anyways, it's also very expensive. So I think traditional egg freezing, one cycle is something like$10 ,000. And so there's this startup, Co-Fertility. What they came out and said was, hey, free egg freezing. How is it free? And it says, by the way, they had this billboard or this ad where it says, the best time to freeze your eggs is often when you can least afford it.

3:21that's why we're making it free. And I don't know if you've ever heard that phrase. If it's free, then you are the product. Yes. Basically. Wow. The biggest version of this. So what it's doing, what they're doing is they're like, we will freeze your eggs for free, but we keep half, we keep half the eggs. And this sounds a little crazy when you first hear about it, but I actually think this is pretty smart. What they've done is they bundled together two things. They bundled together egg freezing and egg donation. So some people do donate eggs, they get paid for it, and they're willing to do that.

3:57They go in eyes wide open and they choose to do that. And that's great because other people need eggs. And so they bundled it together where now you can get free egg freezing if you bundle in and agree to donate half the eggs up front. And on the other side, they go and charge people who want eggs and they charge them$13 ,700 to as their matchmaking fee to get you your eggs. And so I think this is a pretty smart and disruptive model. What do you think of this idea? Insane. I think this is insane. Not in a bad way, necessarily. I think it's a bad way for me. I don't want to do that. But I think that the whole process that I went through, that my wife and I went through, I think it was something like$60 ,000.

4:42And her insurance paid for it. But if you can't afford it, you're screwed. This is pretty wild. Do you think this could actually work as a business? I think this can totally work. I think there's a lot of people out there who, like you said, they don't have the extra tens of thousands of dollars to freeze their eggs. And so if your options were don't freeze it or this free option, but you're going to donate some of your unused eggs and you'll know that they're out there in the world, I think there's a lot of people who will take that. And by the way, I think that because this is controversial, it's going to get so much free press.

5:17There is something almost strategic in doing a sort of controversial, taboo, almost a naughty idea. And you will get article after article, online argument after online argument. And all it really does is it pushes away the people who were never going to be your customer, but it educates the people who actually might be your customer because it's going to be so noisy. Dude, let me tell you a related story. So she said I could name her name, but you and I have a friend named Kat. And well, she's... I'm really close with her. I don't know if you're close with her. I think you've just met her once or twice.

5:52Her and her wife wanted to have a kid. And it was... And although she's successful, she's a frugal woman. And it was really expensive to do this. And we all have a mutual friend, David, who's this wonderful man. He's like a six foot tall, good looking, nice, smart guy. And Kat and her wife, Emily, were like, David, could we get some of your sperm and have a baby? And they looked into some of this egg freezing stuff, and it was really expensive. And they were like, can we just do it yourself on this one? And so they didn't have sex. They didn't have sex, but he would come over in the morning when they were ovulating, and he would do the deed in the bathroom.

6:37They would get the sperm, and they would just... I guess they had a do-it-yourself kid at home. A meeker? Yeah, I don't know. Like a turkey baser? I don't know. And they did that. And in the very first try, Kat got pregnant. Now she's got a beautiful two-year-old. And it worked. So what did you get? Like a free lunch? What did David get out of this? Nothing. He just... He's like, dude, it's like on paper. That's how she's a great marketer, dude. She is a great entrepreneur and a great marketer. She convinced this guy to do this for free. She used her marketing skills. Well, they have a beautiful kid and he's like the uncle and his parents sort of act like a mixture of grandparents and uncle and aunts.

7:19And it's like a wildly awesome relationship and everyone's happy with the ordeal. And so this whole like co-fertility thing, I think this is another interesting solution to the same problem. Similar problem. What's the what's the slogan for Austin? I don't know. What is it? Keep Austin weird? Keep Austin weird. You guys are doing your part out there. They kept it weird. If I told you this solution, like, oh, it's just possible, you'd be like, that's crazy. These three people, I guess it's a throuple. I don't know what you call this. It's perfect. It's like the most harmonious relationship I've ever seen.

7:53Yeah, it sounds actually very healthy, to be honest. It's very healthy. So I like co-fertility. Do they raise money? You know how I think they raise money? They have the like, you know when you see somebody who goes to the store and buys a new outfit and you're like, you're looking great, but can't really put your finger on what's new about it. And then you see the tag on their jacket still. You're like, oh, you got a new jacket. That's what you went shopping and got a new jacket. Their fonts are all the fonts of a Red Antler brand where you're like, oh, you launched, but you paid for fancy branding up front.

8:25You got a font that I can't find on dafont.com in the free section. And so I know that they got some money somehow to do this. This is pretty cool. Would you do this? Yeah, why not? Also, it's hilarious that on this huge life decision, I was like, why not? And then for the first time in my life, my brain responded with several reasons. Why not? Usually, why not is met with nothing. So I was reading some study, and it said that 83 % of egg donors share that they would donate again, and only 2 % regret their decision. Which, forget about surveys, I think, are often prone to just finding data that supports the point you want.

9:02But I do think that's an interesting statistical thing, which is what percentage of people regret X decision? I would love to see a list of life decisions and then the regret score. For example, Burning Man. Tattoos. Burning Man is this thing that I've been on the fence for for 11 years, even though everybody I like and trust in my life who goes is like, it's the best. What are you even talking about? What's the decision? Just go. and I don't know anybody that's regretted it personally in my life. I'm sure there are people because there's like a million people that go every year. But I just kind of want to see for life decisions, the regret percentage for each thing.

9:42I think that would be very illuminating for somebody who's trying to make good decisions in life, don't you think? Wait, so why haven't you gone? To Burning Man? I'm scared of drugs. Yeah, same. But you just literally said no one that you've met has regretted it. And when I tell them that, they're like, so then don't do drugs. I'm like, but I thought that's what you do there and they're like no that's just one of many things you don't have to do drugs what kind of dork ass response was that and then I'm like okay I'll think about it this year then I go home and I'm like I'm still scared of drugs I'm not doing this my square friend I'm straight edge my other straight edge friend and his girlfriend they're like hey we went to Burning Man it was awesome you guys want to see some pictures I was looking at pictures and swiping their phone and it looked a little bit normal a little bit normal and he's like sitting over my shoulder like yeah, this is this cool guy we met.

10:30Here's this cool van that we saw. There's us just doing this. And then there's a picture of him, butt naked, with a full frontal photo with his arm over her, who's also naked. And they're just smiling. And then he's just like, yeah, there we were celebrating this thing. The weather was great that day. Yeah. And then just swipe and I was like, okay. And I saw that. I was like, I don't know, man. Those might be the scariest words in the English language. Do you want to see some pictures from my Burning Man trip? It's like, you know, right before you go to Six Flags and they put the roller coaster thing and the thing comes down and clamps you in.

11:08That's how I feel when somebody says you want to see the pictures from Burning Man this year. I want to do another parenting one. Before I get to the parenting one, can I do a quick little thrill the shill? Thrill me, baby. This is something I'm proud of. So in Hampton, we have access to like a thousand founders and we've been doing these really cool surveys where we surveyed. What's Hampton, by the way? Hampton. It's my community for CEOs, average CEOs doing about$25 million in revenue. You guys can check it out and you apply. We interview everyone. Fun fact, my partner Joe and I watch 100 % of the interviews and we're the ones clicking the approve or deny button.

11:43You're like the Harvey Weinstein of the process, would you say? No, I would not say that. I would not. So check it out, joinhampton.com. But here's what's kind of cool. we did this survey and I was like, let's do wealth where we ask all these people all these questions like, how much money do you have? What's your monthly burn? All these questions that people are embarrassing to have. It was cool. But then we were like, let's actually do it by industry. And so we're doing it by software. We're doing it by all the different industries. So what other industries are there? Software, marketplaces, health stuff.

12:13We just did one on e-commerce. And if you go to joinhampton.com or just search... Just actually, this is easier. Look in the YouTube description or just Google Join Hampton and then blog. and you'll see our blog and you'll see all of our reports. Dude, we did this thing with e-com owners where we asked them all about their revenue per employee and how much profit they're making, how much they're paying themselves, things like that. Did you see that thing we released? What was the revenue per employee? I'm curious. Dude, it was pretty good. So let me read you off some of the... Wow. What a satisfying answer.

12:43Thanks. I'm going to read it. The chart just says pretty good. Yeah, dees. It just says dees. I'm going to read... I'll read you off. So we had about 50 people reply. The average revenue of the responder was$25 million. Average revenue per employee,$1.35 million. The average founder paid themselves$385 ,000 a year. Net profit has grown consistently over the last couple of years. And we break down each company's net profit. And shockingly, I guess this isn't shocking to you and I. Fucking meta, dude. It's still the best platform for buying ads for e-com. Dude, it is. except for there's a couple of people just dominating on TikTok shops right now.

13:21But let me ask you something. On 1.3 million of revenue per employee, so 1.3 million of revenue per employee, I would say that a good e-commerce brand is doing 20 % profit margins on that before taxes, EBITDA margin. And I would say the average might be between 10 % and 15%. So let's just do a little math. So 1.3, and let's just use the 15 % number. What is that? $195 ,000. And so I would guess the average wage might be$100 ,000 for these e-commerce stores, maybe$120 ,000. And so roughly$50 ,000 to$70 ,000 of profit per employee. And so that's why the 30th and final slide of this presentation, where we go through all the numbers, it just says...

14:07It just says, e-commerce sucks. It just says, don't. Don't. But if you're listening and you are into e-commerce, check it out. Just look up... you can go to joinhampton.com slash blog or just search Hampton blog and you'll see all the reports there or in the YouTube description. Now, can we talk about something that it was your idea to cover this person and I'm now obsessed with them. Who's that person? Dr. Becky. Dr. Becky. I love Dr. Becky. I more so love the idea of her than maybe I actually love her. Explain who she is and why you love her. I'm going to give you like the two minute breakdown of who she is.

14:44So Dr. Becky, I believe her real name is Becky Prince. Now her name is Becky Kennedy. Grew up in Scarsdale, New York, which is a really nice suburb on Long Island. It's like 45 minutes outside the city. She had a bunch of issues as a kid. So she had emotional issues that she wasn't sure how to handle. Eventually, that developed into anorexia. And she starts going to therapy at age 8 or 9. Gets obsessed with therapy. Goes to Duke and Columbia to study psychology. And then starting around the pandemic, so 2020, She just starts doing this content on Instagram. And I looked at her first post. It feels like very impromptu.

15:19So it's like her just kind of actually like this setting or like your setting next to a wall, just with their camera up and answering questions about parenting, of which she studied at Duke and Columbia. And it takes off. And one of the reasons it takes off is she's very charismatic. She's very cool looking. She's got the it factor. She looks like someone who you could trust. And she grabs your attention nicely. although it's sort of like Andrew Huberman, where he's not doing anything thrilling, but there's something about their personality and the way they look where you're like, I just want to trust and listen.

15:49I trust. You just trust this person. Yeah. I just want to listen to you. Now, things take off. And she's like, let's turn this into a thing. So she creates this business called Good Inside. And it's a community where you pay$300 a year. And you get access to this area where you can talk to other members. and you could ask questions. And they also have a bunch of, she calls it good inside clinicians, but people who I guess who she's trained who are talking and answering different questions. And now it's a thriving community. Behind the community, you also can see videos of her, things like that.

16:22And by the way, do you know who she partnered with to start this business? I do. I just found that out right before this pod. Did you catch that? I was like, Erica Belsky. Huh. Is that a common last name? Or is this Scott Belsky's wife? And it turns out it's Scott Belsky's wife. No way. It's Scott Belsky's wife. End of the pod, Scott Belsky. Yes, Scott Belsky, who's now the chief product officer at Adobe. I don't know if he's actually been on the pod, but we both admire him. Just a wildly successful, cool dude. And that's her partner. And did you also know that they've recently raised$10 million for this business, Good Inside?

16:57No way. I did not know that. And this is only like a few years old. I think it's like three or four years old. But you missed the headline. The headline of the story is their product, Good Insight, has about 50 ,000 paying members. So their membership community is probably doing around$13 ,000,$14 million a year in revenue, giving parents parenting tips, parenting advice from two clinical physicians and mothers, right? That's kind of amazing. And this is a - That's amazing. It's an interesting market. There's actually a bunch of these. So I don't know if you ever saw Taking Care of Babies. Do you know who that is?

17:28No, what's that one? So if you just get her, her, her name is Kara and then her handle is taking care of babies. We had bought her course like for a hundred something bucks when I had my first kid. And she has basically like a sleep training course of like training your baby to sleep without, without crying it out. I did this too. I bought her a hundred dollar course. I sat down, I did it. I looked at it, I watched it and I was like, yeah, we're not going to be able to do that. But either way, it was good material and there was some good insights in it. And basically the funnel for these is all the same.

17:58free content on Instagram or YouTube. And then basically like they're just building trust on Instagram, really, where it's like, here's who I am. Here's what I do. I'm going to put up stories and tips every single day. They build up trust, trust, trust, trust, trust. And then they have the free, or sorry, they have the paid either membership or educational product underneath it, the info product. Taking care of babies was making somewhere between 10 and$15 million. This was not even like a company. This is just like her, uh, 10 to$15 million a year in revenue with fat profit margins because she was spending nothing on marketing and basically had no, you know, a small team or no team.

18:33And then she got canceled. Unfortunately, she got canceled because she donated to Trump, of all things. Like a pretty crazy reason to cancel somebody, but the mom sort of in mass unsubscribed. And in all the mommy groups on Facebook, they were like, we're not going to support her if she's going to support Trump. And so she kind of got knocked down a couple of pegs. I think she's still out there doing fine. But wouldn't like the Trump people be like, yeah, I'm in even harder. Well, I think there's probably some lean in the like who uses these products and who pays for these products, which is like maybe more coastal moms and whatnot.

19:03Like it might be skewed in that way. I'm not sure, but you're right. It doesn't fully make sense. But I remember reading that. There's other ones. Ben had bought this one called Big Little Feelings, I think. They sold 200 ,000 courses at an average of$100, so$20 million in revenue. Turns out, mom influencer, great career. Great career if you could pull it off. And it's a very simple career, not easy to do. Let me put it that way. But very simple. Free content on Instagram, lead to paid thing. But obviously, these people have expertise. Maybe they've been a doula for a long time, or they're a clinical physician, or they're a clinical psychologist.

19:39Sorry. They have to have some expertise or authority in the domain. But one of the things I really liked about Dr. Becky's content, by the way, is I think intentionally, she makes it relatable. So she's not wearing a lot of makeup. She's not sitting in front of a very well produced thing, which of course they could afford it at this point. But she'll be like, on the go to pick up her kids from soccer practice, just take out her phone when she has the impulse about some topic and say it. And I think it makes her feel like the kind of relatable, but aspirational mom who just finds time, doesn't have time type of thing.

20:13And I think there's something strategic about that that's pretty cool. So that's what I wanted to bring up. So Dr. Becky is, I think, a very, very smart woman. And I think she runs with very smart people. Because I was looking into this woman a little bit. And this sounds like I'm hating. I don't mean for it to sound that way. I'm a big fan of this person. And I think they're the real deal. I think that this is far more put together than it appears to be. It tries to look like it's kind of thrown together and it's this thing. But Dr. Becky lives on the Upper West Side of New York, where a 1 ,800 square foot apartment is typically$5 to$7 million.

20:52and she also went to the best schools. She's from Scarsdale, which is a beautiful fancy community in New York. I think that she runs around with people like Erica Belsky, these people that are top notch, top at their game. I think that it was definitely like a we're going to do this and we're going to do this and we're going to do this. Not, oh, what thing just happened to turn to this, to this, to this. She's executing this plan perfectly. This sounds like I'm being negative. I'm not. there's nothing wrong or unethical at all about any of this. But I think this is like a perfectly executed plan is what I think it is.

21:29Yeah, I think for most content creators, it starts organically, right? Because you don't sit there and think, and now from scratch, I shall become an influencer with millions of followers. I think she did. I don't think so. I think she did. I don't think so. We can scroll back. Let's scroll all the way back. No, they deleted old posts. I already found the old posts. I looked on YouTube. There aren't that many old posts. And here's what I think. I think that had you met this woman 10 years ago, you could have just had a conversation with her and be like, yeah, I think you got the if factor. This is a type of person who I see her talking.

22:06I'm like, dude, it's very obvious that you've got whatever these popular influencers have. Let's just put a little bit of money behind this and turn this into a thing. Well, I like that you've gone coffee zilla on this one. You're like, hey, wait, pause that frame. That's Oprah in the background. She's friends with Oprah. like if I try to find the thing, I think my, my personal belief, I don't think it's plotted, but I do think it's strategic. Meaning I think there's a lot of, um, to make something look effortless, to make something look authentic and, and, and, and real, it actually takes some effort to make something look effortless.

22:38And it takes, um, some thinking to make something look off the cuff in a way. Right. And, um, and often it's not that you're manipulating people, but it's, you're intentionally saying no to certain things that would ruin that vibe, that would break that trust, that would break the fourth wall or whatever. And so I do think that they've done a great job of that. It's like, you know, but there is the negative version. Like I think, remember those stories about Sam Bankman Freed, where they were like, hey, you know, you're going to meet with whoever, this investor today. And they're in the boardroom and they're like, Sam, you look good.

23:11He's like, thanks. And they're like, no, like you need to, you need to look like a, like you need to look like a dork and they were like get this man some jorts and like somebody ruffle up his hair make it look like he hasn't slept in six weeks and there's a there's an article that basically was like we basically knew that people pattern match and if we can look basically like zuckerberg and a bunch of other like kind of prodigies who are awkward who don't know how to dress who they have these weird personality quirks okay let's play up that he's vegan. Let's make him drive this car. There was intentional choices along the way to either make him look more like that or prevent anybody from polishing up those rough edges.

23:52They're like, no, no, no. The rough edges are key. Let's keep those and actually let's put those front and center. And there were stories that came out. And it's very rare for those stories to come out because even the people that pull it off, they never have any incentive to come out and acknowledge that. It's only when somebody has a complete downfall that his closest confidants come and betray and be like, yeah, that actually happened. By the way, I am not remotely implying that Sam Bankman-Fried and this woman are even in the same... I'm not... All I'm saying... I like this lady. I trust her advice.