This Opportunity Is Hidden In Plain Sight

0:00Very important question is, where is there opportunity? Well, yeah, I want to do an O's Perlman style. I'm going to write something down, and we'll see if I'm right. Go ahead. Let's see. All right, do you write it down?

0:10Tell me when it's done. All right, it's done. So obviously, there's a big opportunity in AI right now. Obviously, there's a big opportunity in peptides or, like, biology with AI, something like that. What I'm about to talk about is... I did not write that down. All right, carry on then.

0:37I was looking at, like, where is there opportunity right now?

0:48When you open your laptop, like, what is your to-do list, say? Scheme? Yeah, it's not even a laptop. It's, like, a notepad. It's the hotel notepad. But I don't think most people actually ask themselves this very important question. Where is the opportunity right now? That's like, you know, I was sitting there as a 14-year-old. How do I have sex? No, that's literally what you should be thinking. You should be thinking, as a 14-year-old, you're like, which girl's going to kiss me? Where are the girls that might kiss me? And how do I get them to kiss me?

1:18Right? That's, like, actually what you should be thinking about. I think entrepreneurs need to think like that. It's, like, sounds caveman, sounds stupid, but, like, it's actually the thing. Where is the opportunity right now? You met me back in, I don't know, 2013, 14, something like that. Do you remember what I was working on back then? Like, the types of stuff I was working on? Yeah, it was a, the first, it was a Bebo, which was like a, past its heyday social media network, and then that pivoted into a Twitch streaming competitor or a plugin for Twitch streaming.

1:52I don't think you ever totally figured it out. So, early on, I was working on, like you said, like messaging apps, social media apps, basically. And, hey, guess when all the social media apps were made? Between 2004 and 2012. And then I'm, you know, so, I'm 10 years late to the party, and I'm starting to think about, like, hey, what if I, what if I made, like, a place where you could post photos and send videos to each other? It's like, yeah, it's called Snapchat. Like, hey, what if we made a way for you to message?

2:24Like, yeah, it's called WhatsApp. It was actually created in, you know, whatever, 2007. And so, the things I was working on was the last wave's opportunity. Now, that sounds stupid. Why would you do last wave's opportunity? Well, the answer is it's pretty understandable because that's proven to work, and I'm trying to, I'm so insecure and, like, have such a lack of a spine that I'm just going to go towards what I think might actually work, and I'm using what has already worked. But the problem with what has already worked is in business. What has already worked is now done in the game of.

2:56No, that's not true. It's winner-take-all. You just talked about groons. No, no, but I'm saying what I was working on, like, social media, like, venture tech is winner-take-all. It's, there's, you know, you don't work on Airbnb five years after Airbnb has been proven to be successful, and you're going to be, like, another Airbnb. There's not going to, because there's no network effect businesses. The winners have these, like, runaway escape velocities. That's why they get so big. That was the game I was playing. So, I was in the venture game, right, doing venture technology companies. And in that, I was doing the venture technology companies of the last 10 years.

3:26Pretty stupid. So, and what should I have been doing during that period? Well, like, during that kind of, like, 2012 to 2018 range, like, the most interesting things were basically anything in crypto, which, by the way, it's not like it was invisible to us. Like, people in our office loved crypto. And you were into it. I was buying crypto. We just didn't, we didn't think of it as, like, we didn't put two and two together. Everyone has to Google this, that if you Google Sean Puri, there's an article from an Indian newspaper that says,

3:57famous entrepreneur Sean Puri puts 25% of net worth into Bitcoin. And I think this was any pre-acquisition. I think this was pre-wealth. So, like... Yeah, what's 25% of $300? So, yeah, crypto was an interesting space to play. The other one was basically, like, anything in machine learning or, you know, big data. And lastly was, like, different, like, new mobile apps. We had one mobile, we had one iPhone engineer in our company when I joined in 2012. The iPhone came out, I think, like, four years before that or something.

4:29So, like, you know, we were just not even on... Forget about, like, we weren't surfing the wave. We were in the lazy river and then the ocean is over there. And we were just going in circles in the lazy river like idiots. And so, I think the very important question is, where is their opportunity? Well, yeah, I want to do an O's Perlman style. I'm going to write something down and we'll see if I'm right. How about that? There is 0% chance you're going to get right what I'm about to say because it is so random. In fact, you're going to laugh when I say what I'm going to say because you're going to be like, after that huge ramble about big opportunities,

5:03this is the thing you just told me? Okay, go ahead. Let's see. All right, do you write it down? Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about dog reads. I'm going to close my eyes. You show the camera. You show the camera. I'm going to close my eyes.

5:14Tell me if it's done. All right, it's done. I showed it. All right. So, obviously, there's a big opportunity in AI right now. Obviously, there's a big opportunity in peptides or, like, biology with AI, something like that. I don't know if those are the ones you're thinking about. What I'm about to talk about is Grand Theft Auto 6.

5:37I did not write that down. Did you get that right, O's? What did you write down?

5:44GPUs and power plants. Okay, these are all so good. By the way, there's not one answer to where is there opportunity. I thought that's what you were going to say based off of things that we had seen on Twitter. But I am hearing about – someone just did a big shtick on Grand Theft Auto, didn't they? Well, the important thing is the new one is coming out is the big deal. So, I don't know. Let me just do a quick little – I'll do the personal story and then I'll do the primer on GTA. Okay, so the personal story is this. I have this friend who – I don't know if he wants me to say his name or not, so I won't say his name just right now.

6:15But I have this friend who was – you know him as well. He was one of the first guys to convince me that I needed to put a huge chunk of my net worth into crypto early on. And he was basically saying like, why aren't you 80% in crypto? And I was like, 80% is insane. Is he younger than you? Yeah, he's like, this is obvious. He's like, what are you talking about? This is what it's going to be, blah, blah, blah. So, he's been early on a few different calls with me in my life to the point where now when he says something that I find outlandish, I have learned through trauma of missing out on his prior – not fully backing his prior things

6:48that I should really pay attention. So, he came to my house about a year ago. And he was like, yeah, I'm thinking about putting together a hostile takeover of Take-Two Interactive. I'm like, Take-Two Interactive? What is that? Do they make video games? He's like, yeah, they make NBA 2K and they make Grand Theft Auto. And I was like, hostile takeover? Do you know anything about a – what is a hostile takeover? We won't even do that. He's like, yeah, well, this will be my first. And I was like, you're insane. All right. So, a lot of people watch and listen to this show because they want to hear us just tell

7:21them exactly what to do when it comes to starting or growing a business. Now, a lot of people message Sean and I and they say, All right, I want to start something on the side. Is this a good idea? Is that a good idea? And again, what they're really just saying is, Just give me the ideas. Well, my friends, you're in luck. So, my old company, The Hustle, they put together 100 different side hustle ideas. And they have appropriately called it the Side Hustle Idea Database. It's a list of 100 pretty good ideas, frankly. I went through them. They're awesome. And it gives you how to start them, how to grow them, things like that.

7:53It gives you a little bit of inspiration. So, check it out. It's called the Side Hustle Idea Database. It's in the description below. You'll see the link. Click it. Check it out. Let me know in the comments what you think. Dude, I saw the CEO of Take Two I've had some interactions with. He's a New York City guy. Ripped. Have you seen him? Zelnick, right? Dude, Google him and the word shirtless.

8:17Oh, my God. No, seriously. This isn't like Sam being weird. Like, this is his shtick. It's not? Are you sure? This is not me being cute. Seriously. People do stories on how ripped he is. He is absolutely ripped. See? This is what I'm saying. This is not like me just like commenting on men's bodies. This is... He's like 60 years old and he's absolutely jacked. No, he's almost 70. He's almost 70. Okay, yeah. Because this article is from 2018. Yeah, you're right. Good luck, Hustle. Take over these. Yeah.

8:48My point is, he was telling me, he was like, he's like, I think Grand Theft Auto is an incredible asset. And he basically made this case, like Warren Buffett describing a business with incredible moats. So he's like, here you have a product that's, you know, the last one, when they released it, it blew away all the analyst expectations. They did a billion dollars in sales in three days. It's bigger than any movie ever created. It's bigger than any video game ever created. By the way, the video game industry is three times bigger than Hollywood. This is the most defensible product in the world. Ten years later, it's still selling $500 million a year annually.

9:21It's not like a thing you buy once. They figured out how to make it a recurring revenue business. And there's no substitution. So there's not a second place thing that you go buy instead of Grand Theft Auto. If it was $90 instead of $80 or $110 instead of $80, it's not like you go buy Pepsi instead of Coke. There is no Pepsi. There's only Coke. And so he gave me this impassioned investment case for why this is such an important asset.

9:52So just like some of the numbers, they've sold almost 500 million copies of the game. So, you know, $20 billion in lifetime revenue. You know, it's one of the top grossing entertainment franchises, period. Like all media, Pokemon and Harry Potter and others. It's like at that level. It's in the upper, upper, upper pantheon of all IP ever created. And it's the fastest entertainment product to ever hit a billion dollars. 12 years later, still doing 500 million a year. Now, a lot of their revenue comes from GTA Online. So they figured out how to make it a recurring revenue business.

10:23The new game, which we've been waiting for, for, you know, 10 plus years, is almost ready. Whenever some of these games, like I like Call of Duty. I don't play any video games, except I like doing career mode on Call of Duty because it's like a war movie. Like it's like a movie. Career mode? I didn't even know they have that. That's like the only one I like. Like infantry, you know, like a lower tier guy or what? You like, you know, it's like James Bond career mode. You remember like you like hit complete missions. But these things are like movies. And so like I don't even own an Xbox. I buy an Xbox to play the game.

10:56And then I like, it sits there for three years. I never touch it ever again. And it gets old. And so now when GTA 6, I'm going to have to like buy a thing just to play it for six hours. And then I'll never touch it again. So yeah, exactly. And it's actually worth it because these are incredible products. I mean, they spent a billion dollars just developing the product, like just on the actual like development time. So the, you know, the predictions now are like in year one, they'll do like three billion of sales. They'll probably do a billion dollars of pre-orders before they even launch, which is bananas.

11:28But, you know, there's a whole economy around this. And so I just wanted to bring this up, not because it's the biggest opportunity. Obviously, if you're saying what's the biggest opportunity, go do AI. Gotcha, right? Like if you want to, what's the biggest opportunity? Great, go into energy, go into biology, you know, go into drug development. Using AI. Yes. But what's fun to talk about on this podcast is this little economy around GTA 6. By the way, I think we have, I think we have Mark, is it Marcus or Mark? Pincus, the founder of Zynga. I think we have him coming on soon and they're owned by Take-Two.

11:58So he could give us his take on this. The hostile takeover. By the way, the hostile takeover has been shelved now. The stock went up too much. So like, I don't know if you know how a hostile takeover works, but you have to buy, you have to kind of acquire like, I don't know, like 5% of the company silently. And then like announce your bid. And you really want it when it's like Snapchat right now, when the stock is just going down, down, down, down, down, and you can rally support that a change needs to be made. Can this guy come up with a billion dollars? So he was raising, you know, he was raising, you know, three, four hundred million dollars

12:30to do this, but the stock went up. And so then there was no, once the stock popped, then there was like not going to be enough enthusiasm and the price went up and, you know, the value, the return would go down on the activity. So there's a whole economy around this. So there's people who do content around this. There's people who create like mods and tools and data scrapers and guides. And then there's people who sell things in the game. And like, we don't know exactly how the game's going to work, but the game might work like some of these other video games now where you can buy and sell in-game items.

13:03Like outfits or something? Yeah, like skins, guns, outfits, whatever, like the different aspects of the game. And so there's going to be a lot of people who get wealthy off this. There's, you know, for example, in the last wave, when GTA 5 came out, these guys made this thing called No Pixel. So they created their own like mod version of the game and they ended up selling it back to the company after it got really like mega popular, got more popular than like the real game on Twitch. So I just think there's going to be a lot of opportunity for like, if you're in this kind of 13 to 25 year old range, you know, you're fun employed, basically.

13:35There's going to be an interesting chance to have fun, do something that's in your circle of competence, like in an area you know about and to actually like learn business by doing a starter business in this little Grand Theft Auto economy. And I'm saying little, but like, it's probably the game is obviously like, you know, tens of billions, but the economy around it is probably going to be in the hundreds of millions. And it's this weird thing where, you know, it's coming, but it's not out yet. And so there's no, like nobody has a head start necessarily in doing this.

14:08And so whoever moves fast, whoever builds interesting things, whoever creates interesting content is going to benefit from this. Did you, when you were doing this, you were in the video game world, who, what were some examples of shockingly large businesses that were like accessory, accessory businesses for games? So, uh, well, I'll say for gaming. So like there was this company I remember discovering called G Fuel and like I had never heard of G Fuel. Did you, do you know what G Fuel is? No. It's kind of like a energy drink type of, type of deal. They might be a little shady.

14:39The product might not be good for you. I'm not saying any of that stuff. As a business, I thought it was very smart what they did. You are saying that. No, no, no. I was just like Red Bull. Is Red Bull good for you? No, Red Bull's not good for you. But like Red Bull can be, you can admire Red Bull as a brand and a business. And not be like, I think you should drink this. One of their energy drinks is called F*** Shit Up Collector's Box. So. Yeah. You got three of them at home.

15:05I don't think that's shady. I don't see the red flags. What are you talking about? It's like the red flag is wrapped around my eyes.

15:15But they did something really start. They figured out that Twitch streamers were undervalued assets. That people were going for influencers based off of their like following size. And so as like a following size, the Twitch streamers on Twitch, they didn't have huge numbers. But they realized like the depth of trust was insane. Because when you watch somebody on Twitch, you're watching them live for eight hours a day. These gamers had a lot of influence. And the influence was disconnected from their price sheet. And so what G Fuel did was it went to all of them. And it ran basically the Nike playbook with streamers.

15:47So they would go to the popular streamers. They'd say, hey, we want to develop a flavor just for you. A shaker bottle that's your colors, your branding. And you're going to get a cut of the affiliate revenue. And they partnered with all the top streamers, which was not that hard to do at the time. Even though these guys were really popular, traditional brands weren't coming to them at the time. And so they went zero to 100 million in sales. And like guys like you and I had never heard of them. Because they did it just within this gaming bubble. Using just the gaming influencers. And so they did that. There's obviously like Elgato, which sells accessories for streaming.

16:19That now has become even more popular with, you know, podcasting as well. They got both of those waves. And so Elgato is another company that sells like picks and shovels to the streaming industry. You know that feeling when strategy is done, the brief is written, and everyone is aligned. And you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create the content. That someone is you and it's due tomorrow. Bree's assistant can help. It works right inside of HubSpot. Drafting campaign copy, blog posts, emails, all in your brand voice.

16:51All grounded in your actual customer data. So don't just create content. You create content that converts. Check out HubSpot.com. The agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Wait, can I ask you a question about streaming? I actually like don't play video games at all. But I do occasionally will watch clips of like gamers. Because like it's for some reason it's like fun. I don't I can't figure out why. But these streamers like what's the guy's name? Clavic, Clavic, Clavicular, Clavicular, whatever his name is. But are they when people watch them?

17:23Is it mostly from clips, which I do see and find them funny? Or is someone literally watching them on their TV? Like just walking around goofing around? Both. But they're just like, so they have to be funny. Or kick. Like all the time. No, they don't have to be funny all the time. In fact, they're not they're not that funny. They do they do do crazy stuff. So like, yeah, you're right. Like, so right now, if I go to Twitch, the top category is called just chatting. The top the top category is people not playing video games, just chatting. The second the third top category right now with 45,000 live people watching is IRL,

17:58which is basically them streaming. So you can watch right now. I will do crazy stunts. I will risk being in trouble. I will go meet these people. I will travel the world. And you from the comfort of your, you know, your bed can kind of like, watch me do it. Watch me make a fool of myself. There's one guy who's selling hot dogs, and he has 80 people on Twitch watching them. But are they watching this on their like, what? Okay, so when people do podcasts, they're normally working out or going to work. When people watch YouTube, it's usually on their phone when they're in public transport, or they're just goofing off on their couch, or they're watching it on their TV.

18:30When people watch Twitch or other live streamers, are they do they have it on a TV? And then they're playing games on their phone? Do they just sit there with the computer and watch the whole thing like a movie? What's the consumer habit? Obviously, there's like, because there's hundreds of millions of people, there's like a little bit of everything. But the three major use cases are young people just on their phone, because their phone is their like personal entertainment device. So they'll just watch a stream in, like on their phone. And it's the main thing they're paying attention to. Then there's like second screen background screen, which is either you put it up on the TV while you're chilling on the couch.

19:02Yeah. Or like what we saw a lot of at Twitch was like second tab. So like I'm a programmer. My main thing is like I'm working like all day. But while I'm doing it, I have like a second monitor, or I just put it in a background tab and I just have the audio going. Yeah, like waiting room noise. My favorite streamer hanging out and I'm watching. I'll glance over what he's doing, but I don't have to pay full attention to it. So that's like the behavior with this stuff. But it's pretty insane the level of trust. You know, I was talking to a guy who's 21, 22 years old. And I asked him, I go, you know, back in the day, like, you know,

19:32Logan Paul, Jake Paul, they were like popular YouTubers. There was Casey Neistat. There was, you know, Mr. Beast. I was like, who's, I go, not who is the most followers, but who has like the minds and hearts of young people? Like who do all the young people agree is like the shit? Who do they think is really cool? And so instantly he was like, oh, speed, definitely speed. And he was like, you know, Kaisenat, speed, like these are, they're the top. They're like both like the multiplier of popularity times like approval rank,

20:03approval rating, or, you know, you fit, you kind of admire them in some way. And where's he stream? YouTube, Twitch. Some of the guys stream on kick because that's like a big competitor that's owned by a stake, like the casino company. Okay. That's crazy. You mentioned clips. We should talk about this. So our friends from TBPN just had an incredible two-year run. Less. Less than two years. 18 months, right? All time. Isn't it even 18 months? Is it 12? I don't know what it is. Our friends at TBPN, so the story is TBPN,

20:36which is a tech live show, just got acquired by OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT, for an undisclosed sum of money. People rumor it to be $100 million, maybe $200 million, which is bananas for not just any product that's 12, 18 months old, but specifically a podcast or a show, specifically one that doesn't even get that much viewership for its actual flagship show. And John and Jordy are awesome.

21:06I'm super happy for them. But we haven't had a chance to talk about that. So what was your reaction? Where were you? And what was your reaction when you heard this? Where was I? It's like 9-11. I don't remember where I was. But I think my reaction is amazing deal for them. I would have taken that 9 out of 10, 10 out of 10 times. If it's anything north of $100 million, take that all day. Yeah, all day. And my second reaction is they're going to win even bigger. In two years, when the board of directors of OpenAI says,

21:37guys, we got to buckle our belts and get profitable. We got to look at why do we own all these things? Whose idea was it to buy a media company? Can we please just say that we're going to sell it back to them? Just give it to them and we'll own 5%. And they're going to own it again. That's the prediction. Not only was this an incredible first deal, but there's going to be a barstool style second deal on the other side of this. It was really dumb. I think it's really dumb for OpenAI. I think that HubSpot bought a media company, my media company, and it makes sense

22:08because they were using it to sell $20,000 a year software. And there's a direct attribution. When HubSpot bought the hustle, we had 90, I think, or HubSpot had 90,000 users, I think, something like that. Now they have 200,000 users, something like that. I don't know. Just look it up. And there's direct attribution of where they get their customers. And they could say, hey, we got this much revenue from this customer. It came from this podcast, this news, or whatever, this thing, this thing. With OpenAI, they already have a billion users. I don't understand how there's any growth related to this other than it's just a cool thing to own.

22:39Yeah, I do think it was, it's very interesting, right? Because they didn't really release any rationale for it. There is no rationale other than it's cool.

22:49And, you know, after a couple of weeks, you're like, I guess if there was a rationale, they would say it, right? And I think the closest thing that they mentioned was, I guess back in the day, Apple bought this ad agency. And it was like, yeah, bringing that in-house was like transformative for our marketing. And we think that like having John and Jordy and TBPN in-house is going to, but it's not, they're also saying, they're speaking out of both sides of the mouth, right? Because they're like, they have full editorial control. We're not going to exert our influence over it.

23:19It's not going to become a propaganda tool for us. Like we're not going to use it, but we just paid $200 million for it or $100 million for it. So, so which one is it? Do you think it was a good, it's, there's no debate. It was awesome for these two guys, right? Yeah, incredible, epic for the TBPN guys, for sure. Do you think this is a smart move for OpenAI? Let me make the case. Because I think on the surface, it's like, what? It's a head scratcher, right? You know, for example, ChatGPT has something like 900 million monthly active users.

23:53TBPN might have 90,000, you know, viewers, including, you know, across their, on their show. And then maybe if you include clips, it's like a million people see a clip. I don't know. It's not going to move the needle for growth. Maybe like getting an executive to buy OpenAI is a $200 million deal. I mean, you'd have to get a lot of, but again, who's already not? I don't know. Like buying, it's not like an awareness play. Like normally it's like media has attention and you have lucrative product.

24:25So you use media to get your lucrative product into more people to have more attention. In this case, ChatGPT has so much attention. I'm not sure what you get out of that. But I think, you know, here's the case. Because I think we should, you should assume that these very smart people don't do very dumb things. But as a default, you should try to figure out what they, what they're telling themselves. So, okay, let's spitball real quick. Like, even if it's a hundred million dollars, what is that? What is a hundred million out of 800 billion divided by 800 billion, right?

24:56Because that's the percent of the company they gave up, assuming it's a like mostly stock deal. But that's not how a disciplined company thinks, I would think. Let's start with this. Because you might say, if I was to give up 0.001% of my stock to a uniquely talented group of guys who understand media and marketing and communication and like the modern media playbook, and just having them in our office and having them be, you know, working on our comms or strategically guiding us, is that going to make our company 0.01, whatever, right?

25:32I don't know the math. 0.01% more valuable? For sure, maybe just one ad campaign, for sure, maybe you could pay for that. Yes. One insight into how we should be doing our comms differently. One insight into how we should be positioning ourselves. Because right now, it's kind of crazy. America hates AI. Like, I don't know if you've seen this. Sam Altman has had two, like, assassination attempts, essentially. They don't just hate AI. I think they specifically hate him. I think, A, yes, hate AI. And B, he is...

26:03And then he's the face, he's the hateable face of AI for whatever reason. Like, he, somebody drove by his house and threw a Molotov cocktail, like, a week ago. And then went to the office. And then they, no, then they drove by and shot, like, a bullet at his house also. In, like, two days later. And so, that's like two... No, but the same guy, the same guy who threw a Molotov cocktail, they arrested him at the OpenAI office because he was trying to do the same thing there. He was there, too. Oh, my God. That's insane. And so, literally, like, you know, obviously, there's a public perception, obviously, there's like a public brand issue here with, like, why is AI so deeply unpopular?

26:38Like, I've seen some charts where it's like, it's more unpopular than Trump. You know, it's like, wow, this is like, it's not like, it's not like a, it's extremely polarizing, you know, for AI. So, people don't like AI. They don't like what's going on with that. I'm not sure exactly why. It might be because of fear of job loss, data centers being built in my backyard. It's too powerful. The government's watching us. Like, what is it? Well, it's that. But also, like, I'm on this weird feed where I think I clicked one of them and I'm getting more. There's so many people who are doing these breakdown videos where they're like, I work

27:10so hard. I work 60 hours a week. I don't have my parents to support me. And yet, I still barely have enough money every single month to pay rent. I'm so angry that I've been struggling for eight years. I went to college. I did what I thought I was supposed to do. And yet, I'm still struggling. And I feel like I'm always one paycheck away, which is a totally fair sentiment. I 100% get that. So, you say, if my baseline state is a deep state of dissatisfaction. Like, I'm already, I already feel like I'm dying.

27:40I'm already dissatisfied without AI. Yeah. And now you're telling me I can't get a job. You're telling me that I'm not going to have a job and that my energy prices are going to go up. My electricity costs are going to go up because they're building this, like, megawatt data center. And then I hear that they're raising billions and billions of dollars and individual people are getting paid $100 million to go do this and that. That's what you think is the kind of the main issue. All after I've spent a decade doing what I thought I was told I had to do. It's okay to get debt to go to this college because it's going to be worth it. I'm going to get a good lawyer or accounting job that pays me enough to just live amazing

28:14life in a vicinity of a city that I want to live in. And yet, I can't have kids that I can't afford them. I'm single because a lot of them are single now. And I'm still struggling, even though I'm putting the effort in. Why? Why is this broken? That's the sentiment. And then why the hate of Sam and Chachipiti? Is it just the winner's curse? You hate the Yankees? You hate Duke because they're winning? Is that why? Or is there something else to it? And also, I think people, when they see him talk, one of the big sins that anyone who's a public figure can make is being inauthentic. And being inauthentic is what he screams, because what he screams is, I'm just saying

28:47what you want heard. That's one of the reasons why people like Elon, even though he's an asshole, he's very authentic. With Sam, it definitely feels, you're just telling me what I want to hear. That's the perception. Yeah. Which he admits to, by the way. He says, I'm horrible at confrontation, and sometimes I'll just say things that I think you want me to hear. Yeah, but I think he's saying it a slightly different way. I mean, I think Chachipiti is an amazing product. I think that what the TBPN guys did, what John and Jordy did, I think is nothing short

29:19of incredible. And that's putting aside this exit. If they had never exited, we were saying this before, like I think what they built as just a brand. It's awesome. And the fun they had, the brand they built, the way they captured people's minds, I would say like the way they broke the right rules. Like what's the, what's that phrase where it's like, you know, amateurs don't know the rules, pros know the rules, and the masters know when to break the rules. If you look at a couple of the things they did, it's kind of incredible. So first, they changed the playbook for the podcast.

29:51It was like, nobody's watching the show. We don't care. We produced the show and the show's, the functionality of the show was to produce clips. So what everybody else was doing in the industry was, let's post clips to promote, and the clip's job is to promote the real show, the long form show. And I think they inverted that. They didn't say this. I'm putting words in their mouth, but let me speculate for a second. I believe what they found was that it's not that the clips job, the clips are there to promote the live show. It's that the live show is there to produce the clips.

30:23And the clips is the product. And we do this four hour live stream as a farming exercise to just farm 20 great clips a day. And if we do 20 great clips a day, and we're on your feed where you're already browsing and where you're hanging out, and we give you 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds of entertainment, of insight, of a great soundbite, well, we've done our job. That's the show. The show is this distributed thing, not one central long, long form thing, right? Like the way we and most podcasters think of our show is what we do is like the podcast,

30:53listening to the hour long thing is the thing. And we're going to use social media to hopefully draw you into the main thing. They did it the exact opposite way. They're like, we'll sit here for four hours and talk. The product is the clip. You know, that's the end product that we're actually trying to create. So I think that was great. I think going all in on Twitter was smart and interesting when nobody else was doing that. I agree. I think, you know, they... Hey, for the record, I made a prediction three years ago. Do you remember the prediction? Yeah, you were like, every social media platform has like their star creator.

31:29Somebody who was born on the platform becomes super famous and super, you know, successful and wealthy from the platform. Instagram had it. YouTube had it. Vine had it. All the platform. And you were like, who's that on Twitter? We were like kind of, couldn't think of who's that person, that Twitter star. And your prediction was that there will be, I don't know the exact prediction, but it was something like... Well, I said that... There's an opportunity that somebody's going to do it and they're going to, you know, make a billion dollars doing this, essentially. Yeah. So it wasn't totally wrong and it wasn't a brilliant prediction, but it was just an observation.

32:00But that I still think it can happen. I think that there's like... By the way, TBPN was tiny, even on Twitter. Like it's only in a very niche of niche on Twitter. I still think that there's that. For example, I think that it's not in my world, but like sports Twitter is awesome. So I think political Twitter is awesome. I don't like it, but it's an awesome category to be in. Meme Twitter is awesome, yeah. Yeah. Like there's still like those categories. Can I give you two lock-in stories that I think anybody can take? Because, you know, we like to nerd out about media, but most people don't care about media.

32:33Yeah. Can I just tell you two John stories? So I don't know Jordy as well as I know John. So I was in a mastermind group. I created a little mastermind group for media, like guys like me who are like content creators. And we had this text group and we would do these calls. And at the time, John was doing a YouTube channel where he would do like an explanation, the history of Donald Trump, the history of Xi Jinping. Pretty good stuff. High quality. And it was actually getting like a lot of views.

33:04Like his videos could get like a million views or 200,000 views, 2 million views. So he was like doing well too. He was like successful at it. We had him on MFM during that point. But he wasn't like, he wasn't married to it. It wasn't like, this is my thing. I'm going to do this forever. He was exploring. And so I was kind of helping him and talking through like, what are you thinking about? He was like, oh, I'm thinking about this and this and this. And he tried several experiments before he landed on TPPN. So the first thing was massive credit for walking away from the metrics. So like, how many subscribers does he have on YouTube?

33:36450,000. And his last video did nearly 1 million views. And it was people still don't under, it was about Visa. So a pretty nerdy topic, but he did a good job. But that's like a high quality audience. This is, I would say, imagine financially, I'm sure this could have been a huge success. And he had half a million subscribers. That's a lot. So he had half a million subscribers. He was doing videos that were getting a million views. But it wasn't what he wanted as a creator. As like the artist in him was not like, this is it. This is the thing I want to do for the next 10 years. And he walked away.

34:08And I just want to point that out because walking away from that, and then not just walking away from that and trying to build back up to that. But like, when you're doing TPPN and you're going live every morning, and you don't get to go on vacation because you got to be live every morning. And you're dressing up in your suit. You're showing up at the studio. You're preparing, you're doing 16 interviews in a row. You're, you know, you're then going into cutting the clips. You're preparing for the next day. And you look at that number on your live stream, and you've got 3,000 people watched today. Do you know how hard that is mentally as a creator who was just seeing that same number

34:42on YouTube be 1 million? Did he say anything about that? To now see 2,000 and show up with enthusiasm the next day. I mean, I didn't bring it up like this with him, but like, I can tell you why. Because when you're doing the thing that you actually enjoy doing, you'll sustain even in the face of bad results, right? It's like, for him, I think talking to Jordi is fun as hell. Talking about venture tech was more fun than talking about like the history of Xi Jinping. I think he's like more in that, the scene of like true tech. And I think having the creative freedom to like build the brand and the show the way

35:12they wanted, I think was fun for him. And so like, I think the fun sustained him when the numbers would have been discouraging to the average person. So that's the first part of like massive credit. Because as a creator, I know how hard that is. I know how hard it is to go, like Naval has talked about this, that the hardest, the true masters are people who can go back down the mountain and start again and take a new path. Because going back down the mountain, once you've climbed up once, it's like, you know how exhausting it is. You actually know what goes into it. And it's so hard to give up the vantage point you have to go back to being a beginner again

35:43and seeing where that new road might take you. The second one, I invited John to our basketball camp. People don't know this. John's like freaking like 6'8 or something like that. He's huge. He's like the tallest guy in the tech industry. And I was like, oh, dude, you should come to our camp. It's amazing. We got all these amazing, the founder of Airbnb and Reddit and, you know, Mr. Beast. And then this famous guy, this famous guy, this famous guy, like, you should come, man. We want you to come this year. We'd love to have you. And he's like, oh, that's amazing. He's like, I just got to figure it out with TBPN. I was like, dude, it's two days.

36:15It's over the, you know, it's like, just like Thursday, Friday, you'll be back. You'll be fine. Also, who cares? TBPN. It's nothing yet. It's just a baby, right? At that time, they weren't even doing the live show. But wasn't this like two months ago? No, no. This was the year before. This was the prior year. Oh, got it. And so at the time, all they were doing was replying to tweets. They didn't even have their show yet. It was literally a Twitter account where they would reply to a tweet with them in nice suits recording a response to an interesting tweet somebody had. So there wasn't even like, we have to be live.

36:45It was just, he was just like, I got momentum. So first he asked me, he goes, can Jordy come too? And I was like, dude, we're super constrained on the, like, number of people. He's like, can we come and can we record from there? And I was like, I don't know, man. I'm not sure. Like, oh, big miss. Well, there's no miss. I'm saying incredible for him at that time to turn down that invite to be like, no, even 48 hours, I got to just be locked in. I got to just like, there's something here. I just, I don't want to lose any momentum. And as a founder, as like, as anybody who tries to like make a project happen, the amount

37:16of like manual cranking you have to do at the beginning to get something off the ground is like so underrated. And I know that me, I would have been like, ooh, I got invited to this cool event. Ooh, all these cool people are going to be there. Oh, it's only a couple of days. It won't be that big of a distraction. Like, whatever, I can come back to this. Like, I would have done that. Like mad props to him for being like, no, no, no. I got, I got to stay with this. And so he stuck with it. He, so he didn't come. He stuck with it. And when I texted him about this, uh, about this outcome, about this like incredible outcome,

37:48he goes, it's a testament to the great lock-in. And I was like, the great lock-in. And that's really what they did. They just locked the f*** in for 12 months. They're like, every day we are going to be balls to the wall at doing this thing. And it doesn't matter if other people think this thing is important. We think it's important. It is a testament to the great lock-in. So I give them all the credit. That's amazing. Have you seen this other drama? It's kind of cool. So Jason Lemkin, friend of the pod, he said, uh, okay, it's weird. Now I don't see TBPN on my P on my feed as often.

38:19I did a few weeks ago. Anyone else noticing the same? And there's like tons and tons of people, which. Yeah. It could be conspiracy theory because that's usually how things work. Like, you're like, oh, I don't see it. And like, dude, like, like people tell us all the time. They're like, oh, I don't listen to the podcast MFM anymore. I'm like, well, our numbers are like through the roof high. So someone is, um, that's a juicy story. So you're saying Elon, who's got a competitor to OpenAI, maybe, uh, it would turn down that knob a little bit. It doesn't seem crazy. Does it? Yeah. It doesn't because he, he, it's been proven he did that with Substack.

38:51You know, you know this story? No. So he tried to buy Substack. They didn't cut the deal. Founder walks away. It's like, dude, total respect. You're Elon Musk. This is amazing. But like, we just, we want to be independent. And then the next like day, all traffic to Substack from X goes to zero. Essentially, they basically shadow banned Substack links. And then they bought Review. They launched their competitor of X articles. They like did a whole bunch of things. So it is not beyond Mr. Free Speech, uh, you know, almost to, to put his, uh, you know,

39:24um, what is it? What do they say? Put the finger on the skip and his thumb on the scales to tilt, you know, to be competitive with, with other products. So I would not be surprised if the TBP invisibility going away is, is not a conspiracy theory. And then in fact is a, is a fact. I wouldn't be surprised. I think in two weeks. So right now, Elon and, um, Sam Altman, they're, uh, in a lawsuit and I believe it goes to, I don't, I'm, I don't want to sound, I'm, I'm an idiot. Just so you guys know, just deposition. Wait, should we set this up the front?

39:56They're doing the, like, I don't even know. I don't know how courts work, but like, is it the deposition? Is that the thing where they get the best clips from when they're in like a small room and they're going to ask him like, has he, like, what size is his penis? Like, can you describe his penis? Like, it's like going to be insulting. That's like what the best videos online are about. Uh, but anyway, they're doing something, uh, that's something happening is happening and it starts next week. But I do, I think, I think that starts in two weeks though.

40:25Yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing how I know some friends that are basically like, they get sued and then they won't, uh, they're like, we have to settle this because we just don't want to go to discover. We don't want discovery because discovery is like unearths a lot of stuff. And so like one of my, one of my absolute favorite accounts is, uh, internal tech emails. Yeah. Did you follow this on Twitter? It's like one of the best accounts and it basically just nicely format. It goes, it digs through all of the discovery that happens in these like antitrust cases. And then you see, you know, Mark Zuckerberg texting his, you know, CFO about buying Instagram versus

41:02Snapchat and how much they should offer. And what if he says this and then let's, no, let's try this instead. And you could basically piece these together and see the internal thinking and conversations, the stuff that's never public. This is the real stuff that goes into the strategy behind a lot of these companies. My sister's a corporate attorney and she's represented a lot of the guys that you just mentioned. And she always tells me don't text or write stuff because it's going to get discovered. And so one of my jokes is her and my wife and I are all in a group chat. I love to say the most offensive things that I'll say hello to the person doing the discovery.

41:34Sir, it was humor. Like this is the top pin tweet right now on internal take emails. It's from Elon Musk. Subject, re-honest thoughts. And this is his email to Sam Altman. Guys, I've had enough. This is the final straw. Either go do something on your own or continue with OpenAI as a nonprofit. I will no longer fund OpenAI until you have made a final commitment to stay or I'm just being a fool who's essentially providing free funding for you to create a startup. Discussions are over. Or the next one, Zuckerberg texting Elon Musk.

42:08Hey, quick heads up. We sent a letter to the California attorney general supporting your lawsuit against OpenAI. Someone, not us, leaked the letter. It'll be public in the next hour. Wanted to make sure you heard this from me. Elon. Okay. Zuck, I have an idea to run by you. Not urgent, but let me know if there's a good time to call in the next few days. These are my Epstein emails. This is what I love to read in my spare time.

42:33This is for the folks out there who have a business that does at least $3 million a year in revenue. Because around this point, that's when you're able to look up after being heads down for years building your company. And you realize two things. One, you've done something great, but you're still a long way from your final destination. And two, you look around and you realize, I am all alone. So I've outrun my peers, which means you're now making $10 million decisions alone by yourself. And that is when mediocrity can creep in. My company, Hampton, we solved this problem by giving a room of vetted peers, of other

43:05entrepreneurs who are going to hold you accountable, call you out on your nonsense, and help show you the way. Because the fact is, is that there's only a tiny number of people in your town who know what you're going through and who have been there. And they're hard to find. And if you can't find them, it's hard to have this explicit time, this explicit place where you sit down, where the rules are clear that we are here to help each other and to be one another's board of directors. The biggest risk is not failing. You have a company and it's working. You're going to be fine. But the biggest risk is waking up 10 years from now and saying,

43:36Shit, I barely grew in business and in life. And for people like you who are ambitious, wasted potential and regret is what we want to help you to avoid. We have made so many of these groups and we have a thousand plus members. And I know this stuff actually works, whether you work with Hampton or you get your own group on your own. But having a group like this, a group of people who you meet with in real life once a month, it can change your life. It changed mine and I know it will change yours. So check it out. Joinhampton.com. All right. I have a story that I think is going to be right up your alley.

44:07You're writing a book on this topic. So have you heard of William Randolph Hearst? Do you know who that is? I've heard of like the Hearst family. I feel like I've heard that. Yeah, let me give you a little bit of background on this because I went into reading about the story because I wanted to learn about how to build a company that can last 200 years, which he has almost done. But you're going to like it on how to manage creatives. That's like a big learning that I've had from this. So check this out. So William Randolph Hearst, I think he was born in something like 1860. I forget the exact year, but around there. The reason I liked him at first was his father was a Missouri miner.

44:37He kind of moved out to San Francisco, where you live, where I used to live, to kind of make it big in the mining industry. And he had like a boom or bust type of career where he found a little bit of gold when he was like 40 and became quite wealthy, lost all the money. And then when he was 60, became the richest man in America. So he basically like married this amazing young woman named Phoebe, got her pregnant and basically