The Wildest Stories of Corporate Espionage We’ve Ever Heard

25:23Yeah. Wait, wait, before we finish, I just have one more little tidbit. The U.S., this is actually baked into the DNA of the United States. What, espionage? Espionage. Corporate espionage. And so America's founding father and first U.S. Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, decided that, basically realized that Europe was ahead of the U.S. and actually decided to encourage intellectual piracy. Doesn't all crime sound better when you just give it like a longer, like more letters, make it sound better? And so what he said was he advocated to reward those who would bring improvements and secrets of extraordinary value into the United States, which was instrumental in making the U.S.

26:03a safe haven for industrial spies. And they did. This guy, Samuel Slater. Samuel Slater. My boy. I love Samuel Slater. One of the greatest stories of all time. What's his story? So he brought British textile technology to the U.S.? What does that mean? They claim, sort of actually, they claim he had a photographic memory. This is like the story that you're told as a kid, like in history class, which is that he had a photographic memory. But basically, he was from England, and he memorized and partially wrote down how factories in England worked. He came to America, and he helped reinvent American factories, which spurred the Industrial Revolution, which arguably made America what it is.

26:42Are we pro-espionage? I think I might be. So, by the way, this guy's nickname, top five nickname, do you know Samuel Slater's nickname? No. Slater the traitor? Yes, that's awesome. That's what they called him in the UK. Yes, but he was like, welcome with open arms here. We loved him. So yes, Samuel Slater is sort of an American hero. That's crazy. At the age of 21, so he literally prison-braked it. He photographically memorized all these trade secrets and then came to America and gave them to us and spurred the Industrial Revolution and made America great again. Well, not again. Made America great for the first time?

27:16Yeah, for the first time. Holy shit. Yeah, the inaugural Make America. Make America great for once. Yeah. Those hats are out of style. That's actually pretty funny. Yeah, he made America great. I have another story. So last year, there's two parts of the story. Last year, we talked about this company, Wiz. Wiz is a cybersecurity company. To most of our listeners, we mostly talk about small business stuff. These guys are not that. They're an enterprise cybersecurity company. But it has two amazing components. So one part of the story that you talked about, and by the way, these guys, Wiz, remember when we did Sarah's List?

27:54They were on Sarah's List. So we kind of, we didn't exactly nail it because it was, yeah, a little pat on the back. I don't know if the mic's picking that one up. Because they were already like kicking ass, and I don't know what the multiple was on when we named them, but it was at least double. But there's two amazing stories about this. The first is how fast they grew. I want to show you how fast they grew. But before we talk about how fast they grew, we got to talk about how they started. And you talked about this. Wait, you buried the lead. They're getting bought for$32 billion. Oh, yeah. They got bought for$32 billion.

28:27Sorry. So this company, Wiz, is getting bought for$32 billion. The story of how they started is amazing. The story of how fast they grew, also amazing. It just happened the other day. But listen to this. So you, I think, are the one who brought this up. Were you the one who talked about this guy, Gilly? Yes. So Gilly is an Israeli cybersecurity veteran. So he's exited a few companies in the cybersecurity space. And he was also part of this elite group of cybersecurity specialists in the Israeli military called 8200, I believe it's called. And he invented CAPTCHA. He invented a certain type of firewall.

29:04He invented a lot of shit. He's an OG. The OG is OG in cybersecurity. And so he has this thing. I believe it's called Cyber Starts. You can call it an incubator or a VC firm. But here's how it works. So he teams up with a lot of young ex-military 8200. I think that's 8200 is the name of the part of the military where it's the cybersecurity specialist. So you leave that after you finish your compulsory service. And you go to Gilly, you go, Gilly, sign me up. I want to start a company. And so what Gilly has done is he has this fund. And in the fund is dozens or even hundreds, I believe, of cybersecurity officers at large companies, not just Israeli companies, but America companies.

29:51And what they do, these cybersecurity officers, yes, they say, here's the problems I need solved, Gilly. So go have your young founders create products to solve these problems, and I will be your first customer. And Gilly goes to these founders and goes, guys, I'm going to invest in your company. here's the idea to get you started. I guarantee you$2 million in revenue in the first year. And that's amazing because these companies will sell or get... They can raise their next round of funding at 20 times$2 million in revenue. So with$2 million in revenue in the first year, they can raise money at a$40 million valuation.

30:23That's a no-brainer. Now, what's pretty controversial is these CISOs, these chief information officers at these companies are... What's a CISO? A chief information and security officer. Information. They own pieces of Gilly's fund. And anytime one of these startups does well and succeeds, they get paid out. And so it's this very insular group of a lot of Israeli guys. So they have that bond over that. They have the bond over being Jewish. And they have the bond that they probably all came from a very similar part of the Israeli army. So there's this bond after bond after bond. And they're like, yeah, look, we'll help you.

30:57We'll get you off the ground. And then we're going to get the money. It just flows around nicely. And so that's what he did with these guys' whiz. And isn't that a crazy setup? Yep. It's amazing. So I'm going to read you this. The numbers from his Cyberstarts fund are phenomenal. This was about six, seven years old now. It only has 22 companies, but the 22 companies combined value was$35 billion at the time. Now, Wiz just sold for$32 billion itself. So it says five of the 22 are unicorns. So that's an extremely high hit rate. So a normal VC fund, I think between 1 % and 3 % of the companies will become unicorns.

31:36YC, which is the best accelerator in the world ever, I think their number is between 6 % and 10%. And so this guy is like double YC, right? So five of the 22 are unicorns. Four of them sold in the last 12 months for a total of$1.5 billion. and then it says in all three of his funds, he shows an IRR, so his internal rate of return, of more than 100%, which is obviously fantastic. Not a single company in the portfolio has closed to date. And he basically beats every VC fund in terms of his performance. His first fund, he turned$54 million into$1 billion. That was his stake. Yeah. Crazy, right? You described the model well.

32:25So basically, he's got this network of CISOs, and they're called the Cyber Starts, like CISO group. And they basically all talk. They say what problems they have, but they also get pitched solutions. And it's like kind of the handpicked solution. They all start using it. They all have a share in the fund. So if those companies take off, they win. It's this kind of like, I mean, there's definitely a conflict of interest with this. Let's be clear. But it's, wow, what a powerful network. and what a powerful way to use a network. You know, like James Currier came on the podcast. I just did an interview with him.

33:00I don't think it's out yet, but he's got this whole thing. His fund is called Network Effects and he has this blog post called Your Life on Network Effects or Your Life is a Network Effect. And it's basically like everything you do from the college you choose, you're not just choosing a school, you're picking a network to join. Like I joined the Duke Alumni Network when I picked Duke, right? When you move to San Francisco, you're picking a network of people to join. When you pick a company, you're picking a network of people to join and those are going to be the coworkers and future opportunities that open up for you.

33:32And so once you realize like your life is dictated by networks, the church, the religion you're in, that's a network. The language you speak, that's a network. The country you live in, that's a network. And so similarly here, this is like such a powerful example of this guy having this network dating back to the Israeli kind of like security intelligence groups to the network of Fortune 500 CISOs, how valuable that is. That network turned out to be worth tens of billions of dollars. And it's pretty amazing. He's so precise about this. So look at the first YouTube link that I posted in our MDB doc.

34:12So basically, there's this video that has 400 or 800 views, less than 1 ,000. It has 528 views. Do you see that 528 view video? In this video, he breaks down where he says, he goes, I've done this 35 times. I have a 9 to 18 month journey that I use to achieve product market fit before building any cybersecurity company. And he goes through the key phases, which is basically like exploring different pain points and how to find them. You spend seven months developing the right solution that mere mortals can use. And then here are the questions that you need to ask prospects. Here's how you find prospects.

34:53What a great find. Only 500 views on this guy who's given out a billion-dollar playbook. And he talks about how you want to accelerate the timeline and what the benchmarks is. He gives this whole playbook that he uses. And he goes, I've done this 35 times, and we've turned this into billions of dollars. It's incredible. Now, here we are with Wiz. So Wiz was founded by a guy name. What is his first name? Asaf? Is it Asaf? Or his last name is Rapoport. But he basically had a company that he had previously sold for something like$350 million. And he did it when he was like a kid still. So when you think what someone does that, well, why on earth are you going to join this thing?

35:34Well, he did join this thing. And he left Microsoft and even explains. He's like, he sold this company to Microsoft and he left and he's like, I'm afraid to leave Microsoft. I'm not sure what to do. So he joins this thing. And listen to the timeline that Wiz went through. So Wiz was founded in roughly - When you say he joined this thing, he joined what? Gillies, Cyberstarts, sorry. Oh, he joined Cyberstarts, okay. He joined Cyberstarts, Gillies thing. And he starts the company in January of 2020. And they go through the, and because he's already successful and he was part of this Gillies crew, right out the bat, they raised$21 million in funding and they're able to hire a team of 10 to 20 people.

36:13By December of that first year, they raised$100 million. So fast forward one year to March. So we're still in winter of 2021. That's one year after founding. They're only at 40 employees, but they are at roughly$100 million of AR. Is that crazy? So that's breakneck speed, right? By the way, there's a lot of, we do this, but there's a lot of people who are like, dude, venture money, don't raise too much money, you know, growth, growth, growth, it's a problem. You know, you got to bootstrap, you got to, you know, people, there's different ways to win. This is a great example of like, no, raise a bunch of money out the gate, blitz scale this thing and keep raising money and just go for the huge prize.

37:04And I have like a takeaway on that, but two years after the starting the company, We are now in winter of 2021. They raised$250 million at a$6 billion valuation. This is a handful of months after they've already reached$100 million in revenue with 40 people 18 months in. Now we're in the year 2022. This is the second year of business. They are at, I believe, yeah, second year of business. They're at 100 employees. And by the end of that year, they're at 400 employees. Now we're going to fast forward each year. Here's how fast they grew their revenue after$100 million in revenue. By year three, they're at$200 million in revenue.

37:42By year four, they're at$500 million in revenue. And by that same year, they sell for$32 billion. Is that insane? How on earth, can you imagine going zero to five years in, and you're creating between$500 and a billion in revenue with only like 500 or 600 employees? I was watching a clip of their CRO talking and he was like, we were growing so fast that the only reliable benchmark we could use for how much to grow our headcount on our sales team was just, they were like, did you use pipeline, leads, kind of like, how did you do market analysis, market studies? He goes, we just looked at how full the calendars were.

38:25And he's basically like, for every product line and every category, we just looked at how the calendar density of all of our sales reps. And in areas where the calendar density was high, we knew that area is working. Hire more people, just hire more people based on the density. And we measured our calendar density of sales reps for booked calls for people looking for demos. And that's how they knew. That was the only reliable leading indicator they could figure out for growth. And if you look at their Glassdoor review, the CEO has like people rave about them. And like you could say, well, I don't know, is Glassdoor even accurate?

38:59I'm not sure. You're the only dude who looks at Glassdoor. They have one web visitor a month and it's you. Man, I'm telling you, you can get so much insight. So if you go to Glassdoor, you sort by negative and you look at the negative reviews and then you look at the positive reviews and the truth is in the middle. And I'm telling you, you can learn so much information about what people are complaining about. hey this episode is brought to you by mercury they're the fintech of choice for over 200 000 companies i myself use it for eight different companies the reason why we all choose it is because it does everything you need under one roof so like my e-commerce company it's super important for us to be able to easily wire transfer pay all our different vendors and suppliers all around the world and the old way with our you know more traditional bank that shall now be named i try it online it would say no it would freeze my account then i'd have to go in, book an appointment, speak to a specialist who would try to upsell me on something I didn't need.

39:52And then finally, after 30 minutes there, then they charged me 50 bucks for the pleasure of that terrible interaction. And now with Mercury, I just go online, push two buttons, and I'm done. It's such a seamless experience. It's very intuitive. Everything's under one place. They basically took all the things any company would need for their financial tech, and they made it super easy to use and put it into one platform. So highly, highly recommend it. If you're not using Mercury, I question your judgment. So that's it. You've Put it on My First Million. For more information, check out Mercury.com.

40:19Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Check show notes for details.

40:25Did you ever, were you ever on Glassdoor with any of your companies? Like was the hustle on Glassdoor? Yeah, and I didn't look because the only people that left reviews were the people I fired. Correct. And do you think that they had an accurate view of like the company? Well, it's an accurate view of the people who disliked me. Like so, but there's like, there's like, I don't even want to read it, but what's it say? I'm trying to go. I don't know if we have one anymore because we haven't been in business independently for years. They could have shut it down. But it was probably like the management is good, but the CEO moves too fast and is not communicating well, which is probably true.

41:03Too handsome, too ripped, moves too fast. Well, I would make decisions. Intimidatingly smart. I would make decisions quickly and I would say, this is what we're doing now. and I just wouldn't like communicate with my managers. I would just say, this is it. I just can't believe you like reading the reviews of whiny employees of other companies. I just like, what do you really get out of it? Like - It reveals so much truth. Like it could say like - That thing you said is true about like every company, you know, like - Yeah, but like - The CEO likes to move fast. It could be like, let's say there's this new startup and it says like, you know, the market, we were going to do a BetterUp.

41:45You know what BetterUp is? It's like a coaching platform. Before Hampton, we were thinking about getting into that. And I read the reviews of BetterUp. And the reviews were like, business boomed during COVID, but now we can't get anyone to sign up for online coaching. So that's an interesting macro insight into the market of coaching. Like it boomed during COVID. That's good. I like that. And so you'll see that on four different coaching platforms, Glassdoor reviews. Or our valuation, if you see this in like five different ones, is way too high. I have no idea how we're ever going to grow in this.

42:14That's not something that you want to see on four different glass doors of companies in the same industry. So you get like insights like that. Or it could be like, CEO's amazing at press. Don't believe everything you see. And if you see a bunch of those, then I think to myself, I've been like basing a lot of my insights off of public articles. I don't know if I should actually do that. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I just, I personally wouldn't do like, you know, I personally wouldn't trust it because I think you're going to get a lot of basically false negatives in this that would spook you.

42:44So for example, did you ever work at a company that had Blind? I didn't work at a company when that existed. No. Or like HubSpot probably had one. You probably just didn't join it. But like Blind is basically a private social network. So let's say you work at a big company. There's an app called Blind. You log in. You have to use your... I think you have to show that you have a work email there. So like only people who work at the company can see it and can post there. And it still exists. But it's all anonymous. Yeah, it still exists. And it's all anonymous. And it's basically just like a back channel for people to bitch and moan and complain.

43:21And then the upside would be that they, you know, there's kind of like a whistleblower-y type of thing where you can, you could call out hard truths that you're not going to call out. But the reality is that it was all just complaints. And the problem was it was misguided complaints. So like, for example, at Twitch, It's like I was on the exec team. So I knew all the numbers of the company. I knew what was going on. I knew the strategy. I knew who was smart. I knew who wasn't because I'm sitting with these people every day. And then you read a review on blind or like a post on blind from someone who's like a, you know, just like a mid-level employee, you know, some engineering manager somewhere.

43:56They would often be like, oh, you know, there's no way we're going to hit our numbers. I'm like, dude, we're hitting our numbers. What are you talking about? I could see the numbers. You don't have access to the numbers. So you're just like, you know, just talking out your ass basically. And the loudest, most sort of extreme voices would get the most play, right? They would get the most attention. And so it's the same way like when Dropbox launches on Hacker News and the top comment is like, no one's ever going to use this. And he can give you a highly intelligent breakdown of why nobody's ever going to use Dropbox and the Dropbox becomes like so big, right?

44:26So I think like a lot of these message board, anonymous message board type things are too biased towards negativity from people who don't have real information and are too prone to false negatives to be trusted. So for every example you could find where you get signal, you're going to find counter-signal, which means to me, I can't use this because I can't differentiate signal and counter-signal properly. Only in hindsight. No, I think if you read enough of them, I think you can start it. For example, if you're trying to understand a macro trend or industry analysis, I think you can see trends in the Glassdoor reviews.

45:02And I think that it could help paint a picture, but not be, it's not a fact. It's just like, is this like, is this, does this jive with other sources that I'm learning about? So that's why I'm on board with it. By the way, I agree to disagree. Like, I think you're right. I think you're right. I don't think you're wrong. I think there's some problems with it, but there's some utility. You're the only guy I know who uses it, which I find like funny. Well, like, like I wanted to learn about the CEO and I'm like, what makes a CEO so great? And I read an article about him and it was like, don't mistake this guy's gentleness for ruthlessness.

45:33It said, don't mistake Asaf's gentleness for someone who is willing to play by the rules. Yeah. And I was like, that's like an interesting title. So this guy's like, must be like a really nice guy, but he's ruthless and he's kind of a killer. That's like an interesting trait. Like, is there like, is there, is there like anything I can learn from his personality? And I went and read his Glassdoor reviews and he had glowing reviews as a CEO where people are like, nice guy, but total hard ass. And I just thought like that is a, that, that mix, those mixes of those two traits, when you mix like, you could be polite and like hardcore.

46:07I respect that. I like that. Is this a person I want to learn for, learn from? That was kind of like my insight from looking at the glass reviews and also reading interviews, things like that. Right, right. And so I just thought it was fascinating. But we had Mark Laurie of the pod. Mark started diapers.com, which he grew during the dot-com boom, and he sold for hundreds of millions of dollars. Then he did the same with jet.com, sold that for billions of dollars. Now he's got a new thing. Have you seen this new thing? It's called, I think, Wonder. Wonder, yeah. And he had this thing when he came on the pod.

46:37By the way, when he came on the pod, we could tell that he didn't have a laptop. And we were like, are you calling from your iPhone? And he was like, yeah, I don't use laptops. And we were like, is that like a billionaire thing? and he was like... He was awesome, by the way. I love that guy's energy. He was super positive, super energetic, super optimistic. He was great. Charismatic. He was fun. He was a fun guest to have on the pod. I would love to have him on. We got to get him back on. Well, on the pod, we asked him how he did it and he had one phrase that has always stuck with me because it was almost like saying...

47:10I'll explain why it stuck with me, but it was called vision, capital, and people. He goes, those are the three things I care about. He goes, I find a really big idea and a big opportunity. I raise a ton of money. And then I go and hire the best people and I pay them all of that money that I raised. And I sort of get out of the way and let them do the work. And I have a bootstrap company. You have mostly done bootstrap companies. It's really hard to do that because you don't have a lot of money to pay people. So you're doing the work. So it feels like a grind. And this company, Wiz, is sort of a good example of the founders.

47:45They found amazing opportunity. They raised shitloads of money. And this is a perfect example of how it's done when you have a really big idea and you have a really big opportunity and you have a ton of money. And I think it's as hard as a bootstrap startup. Do you know what I mean? They're of equal challenging and stressfulness. Equal? I don't know. This scaling at breakneck speed seems a lot more challenging to me. I think if you had a small bootstrap startup that was growing quickly, you would feel a similar amount of stress. But there is no chance that you would have a$32 billion exit in five years.

48:27One of the funny things about life is that if you decide to start a business, you're going to spend, let's just call it 10 hours a day, maybe 12 early on, just obsessed. Your mind is just obsessed with this company. 10 hours a day, 12 hours a day, every single day. it doesn't matter if that's a taco truck it doesn't matter if it's whiz selling for 32 billion it's still going to take 10 to 12 hours a day of your time and mind share it's still going to stress you out pretty much equally if you are doing a thing that's you know 1 million in ARR and you're trying to pay the bills and you're trying to pay yourself and you're trying to grow and you're trying to do all those things well guess what these guys are also trying to pay the bills trying to grow trying to do all that stuff so you're right the stress levels are more based on you as a person than the company that you're doing.

49:13And the time is equal whether you have, you know, it doesn't matter how many zeros are at the end of the size of the business. This was probably one of the most important lessons my dad taught me. He was like, my first business was in the restaurant industry. And my dad worked in oil and gas his whole life. He worked for BP. And so he was like, yeah, the energy industry is just like the restaurant industry. You're going to spend the same 10 hours a day, except in this one, there's three extra zeros on the end of every project. And so would you rather spend that same time on a small project or a bigger project?

49:43Like that's what you're deciding between here. And I was like, okay. Which is sort of hard to hear, right? Like you're like, I'm dedicating my life to this thing. You're dedicating your life to this thing, but your prize is so much bigger. I didn't think it was hard to hear. I was like, oh, that's the truth. Okay, cool. Thank you. Like, okay, what do I do? And then I pretty much immediately switched and went and did a biotech thing with him in Australia. Like, you know, I was like, I was pretty ready to hear the truth. I think that most people you write don't like to hear the truth. I like to hear the truth because I realized that basically the truth, while short-term painful, is actually long-term less painful.

50:19And I think most people don't like the short-term pain. They're willing to have long-term pain. Have you been following these guys, like getting acquired? Was there anything that you liked about the story or that stuck out to you? Well, remember when we first brought this up? We first brought this up because Wiz was rumored to be selling for$23 billion. And then something happened where it was like, no, that's just a rumor, or Google couldn't do it because of antitrust. For some reason, the deal wasn't going to happen. And if you remember, Asaf came out and he tweeted this kind of badass memo where it was like, first deal information got leaked.

50:54They're in rumors about an acquisition for$23 billion. Then he releases this thing and he's like, we're not looking to get acquired. I think he said, let me cut to the chase. our next milestones are a billion in ARR and an IPO. And everyone was like, yeah, that's it. That guy's a killer. And most of us were like, most of us on the side of that were like, oh, nice negotiating. Like, pretty sure it's going to sell for, I don't know, 25, 30 billion in the next 12 months. And that's exactly what happened. It sold for 30 billion, 32 billion in the next 12 months. It like came exactly true, what a lot of people noticed, which was like - What was the first offer?

51:28The first offer was like 20 or 18? 23. So we got$10 billion, 10 extra billion dollars. And I don't even know if the$23 billion was on the table. Maybe the$23 billion was what he wanted at the time. And they continued to grow. And this is all part of the negotiation, right? It's not – this didn't – I don't think this leaked because somebody really just wanted the world to know. You know, this is part of a public negotiation. It's a price setting. It's an anchoring. It's getting the second bidder to up their bid. There's a whole bunch of stuff happening there. and when a CEO is like, we want to be independent.

52:06And it's like, yeah, you do. But if the price is right, we'll see. We'll see what happens. And almost always, once the price is right, they do it. I love hearing about this story. I'm very excited. The time that we've worked on this podcast, this guy has built and sold a$32 billion company.

52:32well when you put it like that yeah but does he have 650 000 subscribers on youtube probably not and now he will try to i bet you this guy's gonna get into podcasting that was the funniest uh tweet i saw the other day it goes even kings and billionaires want to be podcasters and i was It's true, dude. You see, whether it's billionaires on the All In podcast or Bill Gurley and his podcast, you have Reid Hoffman and his podcast. Elon is tweeting like crazy and trying to get his word out there. You see Gavin Newsom starting his new podcast. They all want what we got, Sam. They all want what we got.

53:13And we'll sell it to them for$32 billion. It's always been this way. You look at who has bought Time Magazine and with Washington Post and Bezos. Once you're rich, you always want to be king. And to be king oftentimes is to own a media company for some reason. It's been that way for hundreds of years. Yeah, it's basically just like there's three buckets. If you're rich but lack status, you're going to chase status. If you're high status but no money, you're going to chase money. and if you have rich and status, you're going to chase power. Those are the three. You will fill those up. Like somebody, I have a friend who knows Elon and he was telling me, he's like, Elon gets all this criticism right now for backing Trump and Doge and all this stuff and the thing people say is like, you know, he's doing this to make, like he's doing this to like give Tesla or whatever an unfair advantage.

54:07He's doing this to enrich himself and he's like, are you an idiot? He's like, he's not doing this to enrich himself. He wants status. Like, not that, oh, he's doing this altruistically, but he wants status. That's, of course, what people want when they have the money, they want the status. And when they have the status, they want the power. Like, those are the three, like, things that draw people to do crazy stuff. Yeah, he wants something, but it's not money. Yeah, he's got, I think at this point, when you have that much money, more money is probably boring. His father did a good thing on DJ Vlad where he was talking about how he was like, like, Elon, I knew after he sold Zip2 that he wouldn't stop until he was number one, the richest person in the world.

54:49He's like, I knew that. Yeah, he goes, I knew that's what he wanted to do. And he would never stop until he was number one. I could tell he was like that since he was a kid. Wait, so Elon's dad did an interview with Vlad TV? Yeah, didn't we talk about this? Yeah, there's a - Dude. What else was in this? This is incredible. So Vlad TV, part of Black YouTube, one of my favorite niches of YouTube. he had, what's Elon's dad's name? I don't know. Emeril or something like that? I forget his name. He had his dad on the other day. And DJ Vlad is weird. He never just releases the whole episode. Errol Musk.

55:27Errol. He releases clips. And he's been releasing clips over the past month of this interview. And he talks about what Elon was like as a kid and how are the rumors true that you are rich? and it sounds like this guy and Elon are exactly the same, where he made some money and then he's like, we're going to spend it all buying this farm and turn this farm into a thing and it went broke. And he's like, well, I'm going to come with some other people to give me money. We're going to start this new thing and that worked. And he went rich and bust, like constantly. And he was like, I loaned Elon money to start Zip2 and that turned into$30 million.

56:00And I knew when he made that money, he was never going to stop until he was number one. And he just tells these crazy stories along the way. dude we need to do a whole reacts video was the interview good it's pretty good it's shocking that like if my father said any of this shit publicly it's weird dude it makes it's very like they talk exactly the same the way they're they're all the comments are like his laugh is a dna test in itself or they're time stamping and it says i swear this is elon the face mimics it the way he laughs the way he rolls his eyes i could see elon here this is this is a this laugh as a paternity test.

56:37Like the spacing and words, you know how Elon talks slow. He has like a very like unique structure, how he talks. It's exactly the same. And his dad is insane, by the way. Like there's like some crazy story about how he is now married to his stepdaughter. Like he does some wacky ass shit. He's married to his stepdaughter? Something weird like that. He has a kid with a stepdaughter. Yeah. And there's like, just when he's talking, you see, I understand why the children who you raised why they're insane and why they're ultra like in order to be ultra successful you have to have some type of like weird like daddy issue and i see him i'm like oh yeah yeah yeah i get why you have a daddy issue because you're insane like he reveals stuff like he'll be like yeah elon like was crying to me when he was like 23 and i thought how weak like he like like will tell a story where he's like disrespecting his son in front of everyone and i'm like oh you're an asshole that's why your son behaves this way sometimes it's like a very interesting interview and it has been totally under talked about yeah this is crazy this is a two and a half hour interview oh did he release the whole thing finally when did that get released normally when he normally does like clips like he releases two and a half hour interview released a month ago um how many views does it have 171 000 that's it yeah just just to put that into uh into perspective here dj vlad's most popular interview um is with let's see who's he got here uh boozy boozy has six point six and a half million views cardi b 5.7 million i mean boozy's a good a good listen it's a great interview baby five million so we're gonna have to like watch the whole thing but there's like crazy good insight into all this and um it like my takeaway from all this is like it's not worth being successful if you and your father behave this way to one another.

58:35It's very strange to see. You don't have to be a psychologist to watch this and be like, I understand why this family screwed up. Yeah, messed up family. Okay, wow. That's amazing. All right, corporate espionage stories. You got what you wanted. Remember, everything on this podcast is allegedly, and this is a comedy podcast. Thank you very much. Don't come after us. All right, that's it. That's the pod. 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.

59:14Hey, let's take a quick break because there's a quote that I love I want to read you. It's that we shape our tools and thereafter, they shape us. And as an entrepreneur, if you're using a bank that was built in the 90s, you're operating like you're in the 90s. And trust me, I've been there. clunky portals, random holds on your money,$50 wire fees, and then being told, please visit your local branch. Well, that's why I switched to a different type of banking solution, Mercury. It turns your financial chores into a smooth workflow. You can do wires, invoices, cards, reimbursements, two clicks, and I'm done.

59:44If you're already using Mercury, respect. If you're still using one of the old big banks, I got questions for you. So go visit mercury.com and give it a test drive. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Column N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust members FDIC.