The Craziest Stuff We Found On The Internet This Week

0:00It's insane. I think it's insane and brilliant. That's a good. Nobody knows about this account by the way, this account only has 750 followers. So I kind of maybe I'm blowing up my own spot here. 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. All right. What's up? It's time for the first ever Friday quickie. This is a little idea me and Sam had where we share basically the little things that we saw this week that were either the best article, the best tweets, the best, you know, a little video that we saw. Normally, this is stuff we just only share in our group chat.

0:35And we wanted to try it out on the pot, showing it to each other. I don't know what he's going to say. He doesn't know what I'm going to say. We each have three. So we're going to do a list of six things. Let's run through it. Sam, you want to go first? You want to go first? Oh, jinx. I'll do when I have a quick one. So this is a genius deal flow hack. You ever heard about how hedge fund traders will move their servers to be as close as possible to the pipe or they'll use a certain kind of wire so that the trades get executed faster? I used to hear all these things about how in traditional finance, people would go to crazy lengths just to get that little edge, that little extra edge.

1:10And I always felt a little sad that us, you know, the soft boys of Silicon Valley, we don't really do that. We're all nice, paying it forward, just blogging everything that we know. There's no like kind of, you know, real secrecy, the real ruthless secrecy about things until I saw this. So our buddy Sully tweeted this out, that there is a company that started to help VCs improve their deal flow. So he was like, basically every VC knows deal flow matters. Normally the way you do it is you're hosting dinners or conferences, or you go on podcasts, or you make a Patagonia vest that you give away, shit like that.

1:45But they were like, the problem is you don't know what deals you're not hearing about. So what if there was a way where you could know about the deals you're not hearing about? So what they did was some company basically puts a photographer in front of the offices of Sequoia and Andreessen and all these top funds. Is this real or an idea? I think this is real. So when people are leaving the office, they're like, hey, do you want a picture in front of the Sequoia thing? I'll send it to you. They take a picture because it's a great moment for the entrepreneur. Oh, this is when we pitch Sequoia. And they're like, great, what's the name of your company?

2:15And they're like, awesome. And they basically sell that list to all the other funds. It's like, hey, did you know these guys are out raising? They were talking to Sequoia. And he's like, I heard about this and I thought it was amazing. Genius deal flow hack. He's like, the VC who told me about it was like, we don't pay for this, but I know it exists and others do. I think that's brilliant. What do you think? I think it's brilliant. I think it's insane. I think it's insane and brilliant. There's another version of this that I follow. There's a Twitter account called Stealth Something. And it's anytime somebody who had working on something new or Stealth blah, blah, blah, anytime they change that to the name of a project, it immediately tweets out.

2:54This person just announced they're doing this thing. And so you could reach out to them and be like, hey, that's really cool. I like what you're doing. What's the name of that handle? All right. So that account is called Stealth Co. Spy. So if you go to at Stealth CoSpy, it's a real-time notification of any time people. It also tracks LinkedIn. If you leave a company that they consider a high-trajectory, fast-growth startup, it's like, this person's leaving to do something new. You can see it. So for example, the last tweet was, Julia is now building in stealth mode. She's the ex-data science director from GitHub, and she lives in Boston.

3:28Here's her LinkedIn. She just posted that she's working on something new that's in stealth. This is awesome. Or it'll be like, Noah comes out of stealth. He's got a platform for no-code SDK tooling for enterprise LLM applications. Here's the link. Here's his LinkedIn. This is awesome. All right, that's a good find. Nobody knows about this account, by the way. This account only has 750 followers. So I kind of, maybe I'm blowing up my own spot here. This is a good find. There's also that for when people remove their employer off of their Twitter handle or their LinkedIn. And they'll be like, this person is now available.

3:58I like this. All right, let me give you another one. So I was reading Reddit the other day. and I found this old post. It's over a year old. Do you remember Jake Casson? I don't actually know how to say his last name, but Jake. So we started Movement Watches and they were one of the first DTC guys to go big. And so they started this company where they sold watches. They got popular on Instagram. I think he sold it for$100 million. Then there was another$100 million earn out, which I'm not sure if they hit or not, but the company was bootstrapped. So he made north of$50 million, I would imagine.

4:28I found this post. I don't know why he did this, but he did. and I think it's great. But he didn't really talk about it on social media, but I found this on this subreddit called Find a Path. For those who have a hobby, passion, or a passing whim that they want to make a living out of, but don't know how they can get there. So that's the description of the subreddit. But he's got this description or this post on the subreddit and says, I sold my company, Movement, a few years ago for a lot of money and thought all my problems would be solved. I made my life really cushy and comfortable and I optimized to be as stress-free as possible.

4:55And then he goes on to say that he's new to this subreddit and he's still trying to find out what he wants to do with his life and that he set up his life to be easy. And now it's been two years since he sold the company and he's 31, single. He never has to work again, but he's never been lonelier and depressed or depressed than ever. And he basically talks about what he's trying to do in order to find his passion. And I think that what's interesting about this post is A, people never talk about this type of stuff like publicly where they put their name on it and they truly say how they feel. That's fascinating.

5:24And B, you see his replies of people asking him different questions. And he goes through really detailed replies of what he's trying to do. So he's like, I love video editing and making movies. So now I bought a camera and I took a YouTube class and I'm trying to learn how to take pictures and film new videos and chop them up or whatever. And it's super fascinating to see behind the scenes of someone who's young. I think he was 29 when he sold. So 29 worth tens of millions of dollars. He's pretty lonely. He's depressed. And it's really fascinating to see someone break all this down. I thought this was a really, really fascinating Reddit post that I didn't see shared anywhere.

5:59I love this. I thought it was awesome. I saw it because somebody on Twitter goes, I wonder what the guys who like crushed it in the early wave of e-com are doing now. I bet they're just killing it. Somebody tweeted this. And then this other guy goes, actually, I just saw this post on Reddit. This is a year ago. He's like, I saw this post on Reddit from the founder movement saying exactly what he's been doing. And actually, you know, he's been kind of wandering and trying to figure it out. And then I read this thing. I was like, dude, that's the magic of the internet. Someone just tweeting a random question.

6:25Somebody else being like, oh, here's the obscure Reddit post. that's like filled with, you know, the answer to your question. And also just that this guy, you know, I almost felt bad. I didn't bring this up on the pod because I was like, it's kind of personal. It's kind of personal. Maybe he doesn't want this like on blast. I mean, he posted it publicly on Reddit, so I guess it's fair game, but he's being very vulnerable. He's like, you know, I'm lonelier than ever. I'm deeply depressed and I'm trying to figure it out. But props to him for doing that and doing it with his name on it. Because he could have very easily just like done this same thing and just say, I sold my company.

6:54He didn't have to say who he was. So respect to him for doing that. I really, really appreciate that. I think it's awesome. I think that this is a problem that not a lot of people go through, but it's really fun for people who are dreaming of making money or who want to sell their company. What happens on the other side? I think someone described this thing as called the second mountain. So you've climbed the first mountain, but you still need another mountain to climb. And he talks about, they're like, why don't you start another company? He was like, well, in the past, money and ego were the huge motivators for me.

7:21And those motivators are gone now. And so whatever I do next, I need to find fulfillment and to help others in some way. And so I think it's really interesting. All right, what do you got? All right, number three, I'm going to do the Hormozy bump. Okay, so Alex Hormozy, a friend of the pod, good dude. He bought a company recently, School, from another guy who has been on the pod talking about School, the original founder of it, Sam Ovens. So that's like his new thing. And that was like, he tweeted out, he's like, this is the biggest bet I've ever made. I'm investing a bunch of money into this.

7:54And now he's wearing a school hat on every interview he goes on and every video he creates. And he's trying to promote school. It's an awesome product. School's really good. I've never used it. You actually used it? Yeah, it's a good product. That guy Sam is very savvy and it's a very good product. Yeah. And so basically it's like a community building tools. You can create a paid community and people can join it on there. It looks like it's heavy in the affiliate marketing, dropshipping type of game. when I went and browsed the top communities that were on the site or whatever. Anyways, I think it's a good investment.

8:28So I was curious, how much of a bump do you think school got in web traffic after Hermosi did it? Because obviously he's doing it with this belief that, hey, I've just spent two years plus building my audience, huge audience of entrepreneurial people. And I'm going to invest in this thing and then I'm going to try to use my weight to drive traffic. This is very much the same strategy I've used, which is you could buy something at a fair price knowing that you have a growth lever to bring more traffic to the site. So I'm curious, how much do you think it went up? So I'll give you the before. Yeah, what was the before?

9:05The before was, let's say, web traffic was in, let's say, three months ago. Let's say, no, one, two, three, four, five. Five months ago was at about 8 million in monthly visitors. What do you think it is? I would have guessed 10 or 12. Okay, so it went from 8 million to, in January, it looks like, spiked at almost 17 million, according to SimilarWeb, which is not exactly accurate, but directionally correct. So almost double, about double the traffic for that month. Now, a lot of it is people just coming and checking it out because of the announcement. It's not necessarily the most sustainable thing.

9:48But let's now look. Wow. So go mostly through February. So what's the February numbers looking like? But check this out. So circle.so, I think they're called. Circle.co or circle.so. They're a community platform that's a competitor to school. They've raised, I think, tens of millions of dollars. School has more than double their traffic. They had doubled their traffic before they even took the money. That's insane. And Sam actually told me, and he posted it on their about page, that he has invested$10 million of his own money, which I think was a large percentage of his money that he had into making school a reality.

10:23Yeah, it's interesting what these are. So I just sorted by paid. So you can see it's the digital growth community, which is like basically internet marketing. Number two, Mark's manifestation thing, pay$49 a month and you join his thing. It's got 284 members. Digital Wealth Academy, right? It's like, it's a lot of the like, the Adonis school, like-minded men who want to live the Adonis lifestyle. It's like a lot of Andrew Tate-y type stuff, which I find interesting. But it's cool because I think you've done a bunch of paid communities on Facebook and now Slack and other places. You didn't use this for Hampton, right?

11:02No, because when we started, I didn't know enough about it and I didn't think it would be any good. But then I met Sam, the guy who started it, and we were already on Slack. But I was like, oh, you actually are really smart. I kind of regret not using it. And I have nothing to do with this company, but I thought it was awesome. But they have a bunch of non-businessy stuff. So there's stuff on style and clothing. And then there's one on meditation. So there's stuff on non-business stuff. It's like anything aspirational you would want, right? So whatever you want. You want a better body. You want a better style.

11:31You want better finances, whatever it is. That's how you get there. I think it's a great move also just in general. The business model of, I take a kind of crappy but high volume business model, which is let's say media, but I use it to buy assets in the best business model, SaaS, which is what he did. So he converted his YouTube fame, which doesn't pay very well, into owning a SaaS asset, which SaaS is one of the best business models out there. So good move by Alex on that one. And congrats to all involved on the big spike. I hung out with Sam Ovens once, my wife and I, we were at a restaurant with him or some type of bar or something.

12:06And we were just talking and Sam Ovens is, he's a wonderful person, but he's almost a little awkward. He's really awkward in the sense of he's comfortable with silence. And it got to the part of the conversation. And you're like, turns out I'm awkward. Yeah, he's actually kind of normal, I guess. Yeah, it was me. And it got to the point of the conversation where there was some silence. And I was just like, I'm going to sit in this for a minute. Let's just see what this feels like. Let's sit in this silence. And so we sit and we finish the conversation. And there's about five seconds. And he goes, I delivered my baby.

12:38And he's from New Zealand. And I was like, what? What do you mean you delivered your baby? With what? He goes, my hands. And he tells a story about how his wife went into labor and the paramedics couldn't make it in time. And he's like, I just, he delivered it on his own. And he just threw that out there. And I was like, oh. Doug, I would join a paid community of him just sending me a voice note every morning of that. that was like that was like the silence breaker was i delivered my baby and i just thought it was awesome i was like you're the best person i've ever met all right let me show you another one there's this tweet i saw her name is julia chang all right so this uh she just shared this woman uh on instagram named amanda wolf so she goes through what she does is she gets people to share their finances and then she like is a personal uh finance wizard or something like that.

13:34And so she writes out all the, I don't know, what do they call these people? She's some sort of magician. She's a witch. I don't know, whatever you call these people. But it's normally like people who are making like 80 grand a year. And then she talks about like, you know, this looks normal. This doesn't look normal. She got this couple that's 39 and 37 years old. A husband and wife, one's an attorney, one's a CIO. Their net income or their personal income is$3.7 million. They live in Alpine, New Jersey, and their expenses each month are roughly $77 ,000. And they break through or they break down what their expenses are.

14:15So the biggest one being mortgage,$29 ,000. Utilities,$1 ,200. But then it gets to some wild stuff. So where does it say they're... Oh, the$29 ,000 mortgage wasn't wild? That's wild. That's wild. But a$29 ,000 mortgage, I think that's what it costs to have a$4 million house. I mean, so I guess that makes sense. But their personal trainers are$4 ,000 a month. And she breaks down all these expenses. And I thought it was really fascinating to see what these people are spending on and basically how you can make almost$4 million a year, and you're not really saving a lot of money at all. It's pretty ridiculous how much these people spend.

14:57And so they are able to invest. So they invest something like$1 million a year. So that's a ton of money. But then she kind of shows that off in a weird way where she's like, look, they only have$2 ,300 left over each month after they invest$1 million each year. But it's kind of ridiculous to see these expenses. Sorry, the mortgage for$29 ,000 is$5.2 million at a 4.25 % interest rate. But pretty crazy, right? To see these expenses of$80 ,000 a month. And so what does she do? I see it all written out with nice handwriting here. Does she just cross it out at the end and be like, no, start over, change this?

15:34What's the punchline of this? What's the takeaway? Well, her takeaway was just basically like, I don't think her takeaway is important. It was just like crazy, right? Yeah, it was just like crazy. I mean, I don't think that the takeaway, her takeaway is actually that interesting to me. But I do think that four grand a month of personal trainers is ridiculous. But a nanny,$10 ,000. Their kid's school,$2 ,500. Kids, tutors, and coach is$3 ,000. My takeaway is just, if they live in Alpine, New Jersey, I bet they work in Manhattan then. Just that lifestyle out there, even if you are making close to$4 million a year, it is really hard to get terminal velocity out to the point where you don't actually have to work anymore.

16:13So in order to not work and spend a million dollars a year, you have to have something like$25 million liquid. I think that would be the number right around there. If you want to withdraw 3 % of your money every month, a year, sorry, a year. And so in order to actually save up that amount of money, even when you're earning almost$4 million in the Manhattan area, really, really challenging if you live the life like these types of people. And I thought that That was wild. Yeah, I think that's the key is if you want to spend$29 ,000 a month on your mortgage, if you want to spend$10 ,000 on your nanny, another basically$8 ,000 on miscellaneous and personal trainer,$6 ,000 a month on shopping, right?

16:53The shopping is separate. Just on shopping, fun, and dining out is$4 ,000,$4 ,000, and$6 ,000, right? So like$14 ,000 a month on shopping, fun, and dining out. I don't know. If you're not having fun with the shopping and dining out, maybe don't have another. Maybe don't spend another 4K on the fund. This is just excessive spending for that level of income, I think. I agree. But it's just interesting. I think a lot of people who earn that amount of money, by the way, I think they spend that way. I think the real takeaway of this is whoever posted this is just good at social media. They're like, how do I enrage everybody?

17:28Okay, let me post this. Because all this does, this is just engagement bait, right? Everyone in the comments is just like, oh man, what the fuck? I can't believe this. This is not real. These people are so out of touch. They get so angry about it. Dude, I know so many people who live like this, by the way. I know a lot of people who live like this, who make multi-millions and they spend almost all of it. I know a lot of people who earn millions of dollars a year and they still live almost paycheck to paycheck. It sounds crazy, but I know people who do that. What's it like having dumb friends?

17:59You know, you are the average of those five people you're spending time with. Those five idiots that are somehow burning four million a year. dude it's insane man if you live in the east coast man it's insane you spend a lot um all right you do one and then i have one more all right my last one uh quick one did you see this liquid death marketing campaign that they did no oh okay genius so super bowl was a couple weeks ago and they were like hey all right how do we we want to do an ad we want to hijack this moment of this marketing moment but we don't want to buy a six million dollar super bowl ad so they They go, they put on eBay, they called it the biggest ad ever.

18:36And they go, we have a national run of half a million liquid death cases. And it's the side of this box. And you can have this ad space. It costs you 6 million bucks to get in front of 110 million people on the Super Bowl. But 200 million people are going to walk through the doors of these retailers and see our liquid death thing. Pretty big leap of faith, by the way, that all of those people who attend a grocery store will look at this ad. but whatever. And they auctioned it off. Coinbase ends up buying this thing for half a million bucks. So they get first like pump one of PR in the marketing community because marketers are like, oh, so smart.

19:11Then pump two was Coinbase actually pays them$500 ,000 to buy the ad space. So they got 500 grand off this thing that was just excess inventory for them anyways. And then pump three was the news that somebody actually bought it. And they got three hits out of this thing. very smart marketing by Liquid Death. Dude, the guy who started Liquid Death, he came on our podcast, I think, two years ago. So they were getting going, but they were still big, but they weren't this big. And if I remember correctly, his background was he worked at an agency. And my takeaway from the podcast was basically, when you're selling water, the product's not that important.

19:45It's just water. I don't think it tastes particularly different than any other water. But he was just like, I'm really good at advertising and I'm going to do all of these funny things in order to get eyeballs. and I would not have predicted that that would have worked. And it has. He's completely crushed it. His name's Mike, I don't know his last name actually. I just remember him being Mike. I don't know how you pronounce it. But you can go back and listen to that pod. It's really good. He was really fascinating. Yeah, that was a few years ago and they were a lot smaller than now. They're like prepping for an IPO or something like that.

20:16It's pretty crazy. I don't know how healthy the business is, but it definitely went way further than I ever thought it would. Probably way further than you ever thought it would too because it's basically the bet was, we're just going to be incredible at marketing. Like that was the entire bet was, yeah, it's water. And then we're going to be absolutely incredible, world-class at marketing, and that'll be the thing. And they pulled it off, props to them. Well, guys, when it comes to banking, the only time I feel truly happy is when I'm using Mercury. And that's today's sponsor for the show. That is the banking product I use for not one, not two, but actually eight of my businesses.

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21:23And this is the one that he wished he had. And I actually reached out to them to become a sponsor for this show because I'm such a big fan of it. So if you need a banking product for your startup, use Mercury. You will not regret it. It's amazing. For more information, check out mercury.com. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Check show notes for details. All right, here's the last one. So I found this article. It was from houseoffresh.com. So if you Google House of Fresh and then David and Goliath. You'll see this article. But I'm going to tell you why I was interested in this.

21:56So do you ever use review sites to decide which product you want to buy? Not anymore, but I did for a long time. Me too. I did for a long time. And I started diving deep on this. And I was like, okay, so how does BuzzFeed, which is like, I don't even know what their specialty is, know which air purifier is best? I don't know if they can actually test all of this stuff. And I started noticing that there's all these websites like menshealth.com and a whole bunch of other stuff reviewing products or posting like this is the 10 best these items. And I'm like, I don't think that they actually review these things, but maybe I'll trust them.

22:30Well, I read this article. And at this point, I'm not going to trust any of them. So let me give you like a little breakdown. So this company that wrote this, houseoffresh.com, they're a small company. And all they do is they review air purifiers. and that's all they do. And they're like a missionary in the mercenary game, meaning most of the people who review air purifiers, they're just like BuzzFeed and they're just like, look, we can rank on Google. So we're just going to read a bunch of Amazon reviews and we're going to like, whatever, pick the one that looks best and we're going to put that at the top of our list.