5 under-the-radar trends (+ our business ideas)

- April 24, 2025 (12 months ago) • 50:01

Transcript

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:00	Steph Smith	We all run into these stats throughout our lives, and most of us are just like, "Oh, that's cool." But I think there are some that you should actually examine a little more closely. I compiled 100+ of these, and we can talk about some of them today.
00:20	Sam Parr	"Steph Smith, this is your tenth time on MFM, is that right?"
00:24	Steph Smith	Nine, nine — not quite the tenor.
00:27	Sam Parr	And Steph Smith — the background, if you're just now listening for the first time: she used to work with me at The Hustle, where she ran this thing called Trends (Trends.co). Then she went and joined a16z, one of the most prominent venture capital firms. Your whole thing right now is finding up-and-coming trends, but you do it by looking at the data, is that right? </FormattedResponse>
00:47	Steph Smith	I try to... I try to, but yeah. I guess now, after Trends, I run this thing called Internet Pipes. That was kind of like Trends in the way that you want to surface things that other people don't know about. But it's also about how you show people how to catch their own fish, if that makes sense.
01:04	Sam Parr	And you come on every once in a while, and you basically have all of this data that you rattle off. A story behind the number, a story behind the data, and you explain why it's an interesting trend. Sometimes you'll say, "How different people are pouncing on this trend" — is that right?
01:22	Steph Smith	Lately I compiled a database I call Digits. You guys call them, like, one-chart businesses, but basically they’re generation-defining stats. We’ve all heard the story about when Bezos saw the internet was growing at a crazy rate and asked, "What does that mean?" In his view, "It means that people will be buying stuff online in the future. Let me go create this crazy thing called Amazon." We run into these stats throughout our lives and most of us are just like, "Oh, that's cool." But I think there are some that you should actually examine more closely. So I compiled 100+ of these, and we can talk about some of them today.
02:02	Sam Parr	And the guy who—one of the two guys who started your firm, Marc Andreessen—he has this famous quote or this famous story where, you know, people are like, "Marc, what's most important: having a good team, having a good product, or picking the right market?" He goes, "It's picking the right market. That's easily the most important thing." Because if you pick the right market, you can have a bad team and a bad product, and the market still pulls success out of you. For example, you could have the world's greatest team—brilliant people who come up with an amazing product—but if it's in a tiny market that people just don't want, then you're going to lose. But if you are Coinbase in 2014 and crypto is all the rage—which is what happened—Coinbase.com crashed all the time. It wasn't that good of a website, but people were begging for it, so they put up with it, used it, and that demand pulled the company into fruition and made it a success. So you're going to show us potentially some of these markets.
03:01	Steph Smith	Yeah, maybe, maybe. But I think that's the perfect setup. If you think about it, a bunch of other people saw that exact same data. He was like, "Oh, well, I should go create this company called Coinbase," and a bunch of other people were like, "Oh, I'm just gonna go for a run," or "I'm gonna go to my nine-to-five" and ignore that same thing. So let's start with one that I think you know pretty well: hearing loss. The stat is that nearly 2.5 billion people by 2050 are expected to experience hearing loss, with over 700 million requiring rehabilitation. I saw this interesting quote that framed it: "Hearing aids are about to become as common as reading glasses." Think about how normalized reading glasses are. People wear them all the time. You have all these optometrists; it's a very normal thing. Even in the benefits companies offer, vision is often part of that. If you think about where hearing is in that equation, it is nowhere near the same trajectory—yet. If it's true that billions of people are going to require hearing assistance, and you consider other signals—like the fact that today we have AirPods in our ears (at least many people in our circle)—how many hours a day?
04:20	Sam Parr	Like eight.
04:22	Steph Smith	Exactly — that was not true ten years ago, right?
04:26	Sam Parr	Wait—so first of all, I wear a hearing aid. I've had probably 10 or 12 surgeries on my ears. I was born with bad ears, and I fought putting a hearing aid in because I didn't want to look old. A lot of times on this podcast people see me where I'll do this [gesture toward ear], and I do it instinctively because I'm always leaning in with my good ear. So I wear a hearing aid, and they all suck. Why are more people needing a hearing aid? Is it because something's going on, or is this a normal number and there are just more people?
04:58	Steph Smith	No, I mean, I think the technologies that we use are influencing a greater number of people who experience hearing loss. Even as you said, there's a cultural element to it too. I go to SoulCycle. The first year I went, no one's putting in earplugs — it's so uncool to put them in. As you know, I've been doing it for a few years now, and it's about 20% of the class that is putting in earplugs.
05:25	Sam Parr	People put earplugs in because the class is too loud.
05:27	Steph Smith	The class is way too loud. And, by the way, even think about the technologies we have now that signal to us some of this stuff. Your Apple Watch will tell you when you're in a SoulCycle class: "This is damaging your ears. If you do this for more than 10 minutes, you will impair your ears in a permanent way." Around the cultural side, it's interesting because I don't know if you experienced the same thing, but I grew up in the '90s when glasses were not cool. Now you see some people and you're like, "Man, you look so much cooler because of the glasses you wear." I almost wish I needed glasses.
06:01	Sam Parr	That's how I used to feel when I was in third grade about braces. If you had braces, you were cool. It's like, "I need braces..." I...
06:09	Steph Smith	"I don't know if I ever felt that way about braces."
06:12	Sam Parr	That's probably why I didn't have a girlfriend until I was 21 years old. Are there any interesting companies in the hearing-aid space that you've seen? When I was trying to get a hearing aid, there were all types of promises—like, "this will listen to the words that people are saying and it's gonna repeat it in your hearing aid." It was stupid. Honestly, I think I paid $2 for a hearing aid. They're really expensive, and the app is horrible. These are not good products. One time, my hearing aid broke and got stuck in my ear, and I had to go to the hospital just to get part of it out. I've had all types of [problems]. It was horrible.
06:45	Steph Smith	My God, you should found a company in this space, because, you know, of all the— I don't know the hearing-aid space as well. I have been seeing a lot of people who have been getting—have you heard of Loop? The... what's that earplug company? No, it's just these kind of nifty-looking earplugs. You go to something like a workout class and they give you these disposable, bright-yellow earplugs that you can't even get into your ear. So I do think there's going to be, again on the cultural side, a shift: how do you create products that not only are solving the problem—like they have utility—but they also move in this direction of "Oh, I look cool. I feel cool. I want to wear this thing"?
07:29	Sam Parr	"Dude, this company Loop is going to kill it. They sell $50 earplugs—oh my God."
07:35	Steph Smith	This is... it's super smart marketing. If you go—if you just search "Loop earplugs"—they've got a page that says "earplugs for events." Because, again, they're not marketing to the everyday user necessarily for this stuff. It's like, "Oh, you're going to a concert, you're going to the Super Bowl—it's going to be really loud." These look really cool; people don't even realize they're earplugs.
07:59	Sam Parr	Alright, my friends. A lot of you who listen to the show listen because you want to start a company but you're not sure what idea to choose — or you may not even have an idea. You like our podcast, "My First Million," because we've done a lot of the work for you researching business ideas. Well, my friends, we've made life a lot easier for you because HubSpot just put together an entire list of resources you can use to find a market opportunity and validate your next business idea. If you're looking for a market-size calculator, tools to identify market trends, or a huge list of ideas to get started, there's a link below. Click it and you can access the whole thing — it's completely free. [HubSpot link below] Now, back to the show. Alright, let's move on from hearing stuff, but one last fact: this is one of the reasons I succumbed and got the hearing aid. If you have hearing loss and you don't address it, the increase in risk of getting dementia jumps significantly — about four or five times. I believe there are two reasons. One, the part of your brain that processes sound, because it's not working, begins to atrophy, and that's correlated with dementia. Two — and I find myself doing this all the time — when I'm at a restaurant I can't hear the difference between someone talking to me and the background noise, so I usually just zone out. If you zone out all the time, you're going to be mentally, or permanently, kind of zoned out. I believe those are the two theories as to why that happens. So yeah, getting your hearing fixed is a big deal. What's another one you want to do?
09:32	Steph Smith	Okay, so rounding out the hearing-loss thing: by the way, something we didn't quite touch on—there is the fact that they went over the counter in 2022 [over-the-counter hearing aids]. That means you don't need a prescription. I think that is, you know, opening the aperture, and you guys often talk about these policy- or legislation-related shifts or "unlocks."
09:53	Sam Parr	I call them regulation inflections. Something changes drastically. For example, one negative inflection is "New York bans Airbnb." In that case, short-term rentals would go to zero. Conversely, if they were to say it's allowed, there would be an inflection where it's allowed — a massive change.
10:13	Steph Smith	Yeah, exactly. So, the FAA has made a few changes recently, and I want to call out two. One is around drones. Consumer drones have existed for quite a while — I have a DJI drone. People use them for anything from filming your neighborhood to real estate agents capturing better imagery of their assets. But recently the FAA changed regulations for some companies, allowing them to fly drones beyond visual line of sight. That doesn't sound like a big change, but if you can fly a drone beyond your visual line of sight — to actually see what it's doing remotely — it enables things like drone delivery. There are companies like Zipline, and I'm sure you've heard of Amazon playing around in this space. That changes the game. Another change the FAA made recently is that they started approving electric vertical takeoff and landing companies — the eVTOL companies. Again, that was in the news, but what wasn't covered as much was the fact that this was the first new category of aircraft in nearly 80 years. The one just before this was called light‑sport aircraft. You know what light‑sport aircraft are? No? It's helicopters, small business jets — these are things where each individual category is a massive industry. If you think about super‑wealthy people who take helicopters or business jets, that meaningfully changes their lives. And each one of those is a vertical... eVTOL again. This is the first new category of aircraft in 80 years. You can only imagine... how do...
11:59	Sam Parr	"Say that."</FormattedResponse>
11:59	Steph Smith	The word eVTOL — so, again, it's like "electric vertical takeoff and landing." There are some companies playing in this space. Obviously, I think Joby Aviation is one.
12:09	Sam Parr	Archer's another one, exactly. We had Brett Atkoc on the pod [podcast], and he started a thing called Archer, which is publicly traded. I think they have some huge deals with United, things like that.
12:21	Steph Smith	"Yeah. So, I mean, if you think about this, it's like thinking more long-term. These are designed specifically to operate within cities, taking people from one end of New York to the other — airport trips. If you think about what that kind of thing is a parallel to, it's not the mega Boeing jets; it's actually more like cars. And if you consider how cities have been oriented around cars — and what businesses have been built from that — I think, again, these are two legislative changes that are, in the long term, going to meaningfully reshape the way that we all engage."
13:04	Sam Parr	One of our friends—Nikita, who a lot of people know—was telling us, "I have to get it right." I believe he told me that he invested in a company where, if you are in LA [Los Angeles] and you call 911, the police will take however long to get there. Let's say 20 minutes or something, because LA is really big—30 minutes or even just 10 minutes—but they send out a drone right away to go and see what's going on. Have you seen that?
13:34	Steph Smith	We at a16z [Andreessen Horowitz] have invested in a few of these companies, so the drones can get there more quickly. They also have a safety angle. From the perspective of 911 calls: when someone calls, they're reporting something. Sometimes they're just saying, "I think there's this scary person on the highway doing X," or "I think there's someone in this alley and they have a gun." The ability for these drones to not only arrive faster but to validate the statement — and say, "Oh, actually that's not a gun; that's a poster in a tube" — changes responders' ability to react to the situation.
14:10	Sam Parr	More guy‑like: wanting to show off his Lamborghini poster from the Scholastic Book Fair instead of, like, a gun. Yeah, that makes sense.</FormattedResponse>
14:18	Steph Smith	It happens all the time. Yeah, no.
14:19	Sam Parr	Yeah—been there, been there. What are some other ways people could pounce on this? </FormattedResponse>
14:25	Steph Smith	Well, I think the thing I'm trying to drive home here is: these changes are obviously going to take years, if not decades, to influence us in major ways. But I want people to ask questions. For example, if there is drone delivery at scale, think about even the ways that we package goods. Right now you package a product to sit in a truck and travel across the country, and it needs certain levels of padding to make it unbreakable. All of those things potentially change if we're able to pick something up and drop it off a mile away. So I think it's just encouraging people to ask: if this is true, what are those second- and third-order effects? If it's true that there's going to be a lot more autonomy, how quickly does that ramp up? You take Waymo — a lot of people think of it as in Phoenix or San Francisco — I just read an article the other day saying that "Waymos are already taking up 20% of Uber rides in Austin." So this stuff can move pretty quickly.
15:28	Sam Parr	I don't smoke weed anymore or do anything like that, but I had this thought the other day because I had to send someone a letter in California. Isn't it insane that for what a stamp costs—$0.40, $0.50—I can send a letter 3,500 miles and it will reliably get to pretty much any house I want in about four or five days? I think that is insane. That is so crazy. I think of that type of delivery all the time. The post office, USPS, FedEx—these companies are wild. They've got the biggest moat ever. Building that is so freaking hard. Then there's the last-mile component, and that's a whole other thing. To think that drones—that's what's going to happen—drones are going to be flying everywhere. It's pretty wild to imagine the moat that a company in this space has. It's hard to comprehend. If you think about trying to explain it fifty years ago—no, you're not going to go to Walmart anymore; you're not going anywhere—everything's going to come to your door. To think how that will change in the next twenty or fifty years is hard to comprehend.
16:41	Steph Smith	Totally. And I think, to your point: it's like — are people on this podcast going to go create the next Waymo or the next Zipline? These companies have been working on these problems for years and years and years. Maybe not. But okay — if a significant number of cars on the road are autonomous, who's cleaning those cars? Who is creating the LiDAR that goes into the cars so they can actually drive safely? Who is coordinating the cleaning and the use of these cars, and managing their degradation? Who's the person that gets called if there's an issue in a Waymo? All of these are new businesses. It's the same way that when Airbnb got big, the answer wasn't “go create another Airbnb.” The opportunity was to create the cleaning companies and the operations companies to run an Airbnb. There's still, I think, a lot of opportunity on the edges of these major trends.
17:42	Sam Parr	"Alright. Let's do another one. Let's go to the psychedelics thing."
17:46	Steph Smith	Psilocybin has been illegal for a long time in the United States and elsewhere. It was decriminalized first in Oregon in 2020 and has subsequently become decriminalized in a host of other states and cities, with lots of legislation pending. This is another one where we're talking about what's going to happen not in the next year but over several years, if not decades. People are already jumping on this — some are doing psychedelic retreats. </FormattedResponse>
18:14	Sam Parr	You.
18:14	Steph Smith	"You know, again, a policy change that we're seeing."
18:17	Sam Parr	I think we have a few Hampton members that run these psychedelic retreats, and I've seen some of them. Did I ever tell you that I tried to go to one? I think it was in 2018 or so—right when this stuff was getting popular. I knew the organizer through a friend of a friend. Jack introduced me to this person; my friend Jack was hosting. He said she was a shaman, and I imagined some brown guy in a sheet saying "namaste" as I walked into his house to take off my shoes. They asked us to go to a meeting in advance to see if it was a good fit, so I went. It turned out to be just a normal-looking white woman in San Francisco, in a fancy condo building. We sat down for dinner so she could get to know us and decide if we actually wanted to go through with the psychedelic experience. She asked a few questions, but then, "So, where are you from?" I said, "Missouri." She replied, "Oh—flyover country." I was like, "Bitch, what the fuck, are you insulting me right now?" She said a few more things mocking where I was from. She asked, "What do you do for a living?" I said, "I kind of work in technology and the internet." She responded, "Ugh, capitalism really bothers me." I had looked at her LinkedIn in advance: she had worked at Lehman Brothers. That's where she worked before becoming that.
19:41	Steph Smith	A is why she's now doing psychedelics.
19:44	Sam Parr	I go, "Lady, you worked at Lehman Brothers. You were literally a venture capitalist—what are you talking about?" And then at the end she was like, "By the way, it's gonna be $2,000." I'm like, "Lady, you just said you hated capitalism. Alright, what the hell is going on?" So I got asked that night not to come back, and I was disinvited from my psychedelic experience, which probably shows that I need this more than anything, but you
20:08	Steph Smith	You know, well, I was gonna say — you definitely... those are some pretty bad vibes, and you definitely do not want to be on psychedelics with that introduction, I...
20:19	Sam Parr	I got kicked out of my psychedelic group, so that was my early experience. I wanted to— I forget what it was, like ketamine or MDMA; I don't know. Everyone said it was dope, and I was like, "Let's see what this is about." I got kicked out of the group. But I have seen a bunch of these retreats. I do think it's cool. I have friends—I've got a couple of vet buddies—who have done it, and it's like changed their life. We had Scott Galloway on here, and he says that it's been really helpful, so I'm on board with him. I'm just not on board with it for me, you know? It's kinda like, I say cornrows—it's cool for other people but not for me: cornrows and face tattoos.
20:52	Steph Smith	And psychedelic retreats.</FormattedResponse>
20:54	Sam Parr	"Yeah—any other interesting opportunities with the psychedelics?"
20:59	Steph Smith	I mean, I think maybe the marketer in me — not that I'm trying to push psychedelics — but a lot of people think of them in two ways: either you do them if you're a drug user who takes them all the time, or you do them if you're in an impaired mental state and need to get past something. For example, say you were a vet [military veteran] and had some terrible experiences. There's a lot of ketamine-assisted therapy popping up, and psilocybin as well. Again, it's often used to solve some kind of negative experience in your life and help you move past that. If this becomes more normalized, I think some of this — at much lower doses — could be helpful for smaller life decisions. For example, when you're starting a new job, trying to decide "do I want to join one company versus another," trying to decide "do I want to quit," or trying to decide "do I want to have a child." Those aren't things with a direct relationship to psychedelics, but they are decisions where people have a really hard time understanding their perspective and how they relate to, say, their partner or their family. I think there could be a future scenario where someone guides you through a psychedelic experience specifically related to your career, or specifically related to the difficult and very meaningful decision of having children. I think there's something interesting there.
22:27	Sam Parr	I completely agree — that's actually a really cool idea. For example, if you are in a certain social class, you don't have the same problems as someone who isn't in that class. When I quit drinking, I went to basically a mental clinic in South — in SoMa [South of Market, San Francisco]. It was me and everyone else who was homeless, and I was thinking, "What am I doing here?" The reason I went was because I didn't have any income: I had just started my company and I was solid on Yelp. I stayed with the same doctor for about ten years. She was amazing. There was one time when I remember telling her certain problems I had, and this woman had never worked with anyone else who had similar types of problems because she wasn't used to a client like mine. I was desperately seeking a therapist who worked with people at a higher tier of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and it was so hard to find someone who could serve that need. So that is very interesting — to have a different genre of psychedelic guides, or whatever the hell they call them, you know what I'm saying?
23:33	Steph Smith	Yeah, yeah. I mean, even within therapy—for a long time people thought therapy was only for when you're kind of about to divorce, right? There was a sense that therapists only provided therapy when there was a clear issue. Now therapy has expanded a lot. People do it preventatively. People do it because they just like their therapist and need someone to talk to. There are many different reasons people go to therapy. I think, obviously, people use psychedelics on their own for many different reasons. But you could imagine that if this is something that is no longer illegal, people will build businesses around it. They can build those businesses for these other needs. There doesn't need to be a problem.
24:16	Sam Parr	Is this going to become, like, a whole therapy session for me? I'm telling you about the doctors I used to go to when I was homeless, or about my psychedelic—getting kicked out—and how I'm deaf. Oh my gosh. Every time you come on here, man... can you talk about this job stuff? Find this... sure—the most interesting.
24:35	Steph Smith	Okay, so a few things. I think the most relevant thing to the listeners would be that AI is here. A bunch of people are freaking out about jobs. They're wondering, "Do I still have a job? Are my skills still relevant?" So I think it's interesting to discuss, number one: what are the new jobs that are on the horizon? What existing jobs are going to become more important? I have some other ideas we can talk about. But first—did you know that the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, every year (or perhaps more frequently), what the fastest-growing jobs are? Do you know what they are? </FormattedResponse>
25:22	Sam Parr	The fastest-growing jobs.
25:23	Steph Smith	Yeah.
25:26	Sam Parr	White-collar stuff — computer engineers, graphic designers, anything involving computers.
25:33	Steph Smith	Yeah. So among the top five are data scientists and security analysts, but there are also wind turbine service technicians and solar panel installers. Nurses are on the list as well, further down. Some of the most interesting roles are in the climate installation/operation space. One thing I didn't realize—because I've never owned a house with solar panels—is that you don't only need to install them. In order for them to be used efficiently, they need to be cleaned. If you want to get maximum efficiency, they often need to be cleaned every six to twelve months. So, who's cleaning those solar panels? That's an opportunity on its own. Other roles on the list include physician assistants and actuaries. Over the last two decades, some of the fastest-growing jobs were manicurists, HR managers, event planners, massage therapists, and compliance officers, which is also interesting.
26:35	Sam Parr	I have a small website called SamsList, which is like Yelp for accountants. It's a tiny site, but I think we have three or four hundred accountants listed. The woman who runs it, Kimmy, has talked to nearly all of them. The common complaint they all have—and it's really horrible for my business—is this: SamsList makes money when a user who needs an accountant (for their business, rather than their personal life) submits their information. We then allow other accountants to pay us to essentially bid on that client's lead or to be shown and introduced to them. What we've noticed, after talking to about four hundred accountants, is that they don't need more business. They say, "We have enough business." What they need is more accountants. They're like, "I can't hire fast enough — no one wants to be an accountant." We simply do not have people who want to work here.
27:41	Steph Smith	Yeah, and by the way, those are exactly the industries that people should be looking at for building AI products. Right? If you think about even just the selling motion that you need to do for any new product: if you're going to a company that has ample demand and there's a very, very liquid market for talent, that means they can probably get talent for cheaper. They have to worry about, "Am I going to bring in this AI tool and then fire or lay off a bunch of my existing staff?"
28:11	Sam Parr	All.
28:11	Steph Smith	Considerations: in the world of accounting—let's say, like you said—there's a firm and that firm is like, "I can't hire fast enough." I literally don't have people. I have clients who want to pay me, and I don't have the staff to actually facilitate that project well. Then it's an easy sell, right? To be like, "I can support you in this way." So I think that's just—like—AI is obviously being applied to a lot of the obvious areas. But a lot of these industries where there is not enough talent—that, in my opinion, is where folks should be looking.
28:47	Sam Parr	There were two different members in Hampton who had companies. In nursing, there's a huge shortage of nurses in America. It's a great job: it pays really well and you often get good benefits. The downside is you're obviously working with sick people, and it can be tragic sometimes. But there's a huge need, and the work is relatively secure — you will almost always be able to find a job. They have these things called travel nurses. A lot of hospitals are lacking nurses, so they'll pay extra to have someone come and stay for three months, or to work Monday to Friday — the five-day block — or another fixed block like a three-month assignment. There are a bunch of companies that build businesses around facilitating getting a travel nurse to a hospital in need. I think Trusted Health is one of them. I have no connection with these guys; I just saw them online. I believe they are a unicorn — they've raised funding in the billion-dollar-plus range.
29:54	Steph Smith	I've heard that's a huge industry. And the fact that—like we talked about last time—the "silver tsunami" means a lot more nurses are needed. The concentration of that talent is not always where it needs to be, so it makes sense.
30:09	Sam Parr	Alright, let's do one or two more. What else? Well, tell me some other interesting ones.
30:13	Steph Smith	Well, one note about the world of jobs — I want to get your take on this. We've talked before about pay transparency, and there are, I think, over a dozen states that have put pay transparency laws in action. California is one of them. You go to a website, you see a new job posting, and you see how much that job pays. One super simple opportunity for folks that I haven't seen — though I'm sure someone's building this — is basically just the Glassdoor for open salaries. There are sites like [Levels.fyi] that operate at a more aggregate level, but if you take what Glassdoor did: Glassdoor became the go-to because, beyond a bunch of other features, people used it mainly to see two things. One, whether a company had good or bad reviews (to be determined if that was actually useful). And two, mostly to see, how much am I going to make at this company? When negotiating, what should I ask for? That model relied on people who worked at that company to submit their salary to Glassdoor, and then Glassdoor built up a database — that was their moat. Today, all of that is online. Every time a company posts a job, they are saying how much they pay. I have not seen anyone aggregate this information in a meaningful way where, if I'm trying to join a new company or trying to negotiate, I can go to one place. I'm still going to Glassdoor, which is crazy to me, because even Glassdoor has really limited data.
31:41	Sam Parr	In.
31:41	Steph Smith	My opinion: Someone should just go—and, again, you would need to build this up over a little bit of time—but someone should be scraping these salaries off different websites or from different companies and building up this database, completely usurping, again, the requirement of people needing to submit their salaries themselves.
31:59	Sam Parr	Is that—like, is the range huge? So, for example, a16z — I assume they're California-based. Yep. So would they list the... let's see, do they list their salaries there?
32:13	Steph Smith	They do, and lots of other companies do too. People only notice this when they are in the job process. They have only a snippet of time, and often the jobs are not the same as the one they're applying to, right?
32:26	Sam Parr	Sorry — I just went to Andreessen Horowitz. I clicked "Fund Assistant Controller." I assume that is related to accounting. They’re going to work closely with assistant controllers and funds, so it’s a finance/accounting job. It says the expected pay for this position is between $216,000 and $252,000, but the actual starting pay may vary based on a range of factors, which include experience.
32:54	Steph Smith	And they.</FormattedResponse>
32:55	Sam Parr	I have to say that.
32:55	Steph Smith	They always say that.
32:57	Sam Parr	Yep — interesting. Wow, that is very intriguing. I did not think... But would it say, like, in order to be a legit partner at a 16c [unclear: "16 c"], or something, will they even list the jobs that are paid potentially millions of dollars?
33:16	Steph Smith	They have to, but the thing worth calling out is that they are only required, as in through law (to my understanding), to list base pay. So, obviously, a lot of these jobs—not just at A16z—have other mechanisms for rewarding people. This is only one part of the story. Also, if you've ever gone to Glassdoor, Glassdoor has been terrible at capturing that other segment. In any case, at the very least, a lot of this information is out there. I think you take this... like an age‑old company—well, actually, I don't know: when was Glassdoor even founded? Let's see.
33:50	Sam Parr	It's not that old. It's not August 2007.
33:53	Steph Smith	Age-old, I would say. I would say it's internet.
33:55	Sam Parr	"What does 'age old' mean? It's as old as age."
33:59	Steph Smith	"It's — in my opinion, it was great for the first version of the Internet. Now, again, there are changes in legislation here, fitting with our theme. But also the technology exists in a way that allows someone to scrape this really easily and aggregate this information across — not just a few companies but many, many companies. What else do you want to cover here?"
34:22	Sam Parr	I read a book that you suggested because of this whole animal thing. It was called, like, "The Five Senses," or... what's the—the animal—it's... [uncertain about the exact title]
34:30	Steph Smith	Called an immense world.</FormattedResponse>
34:32	Sam Parr	Immense world.
34:33	Steph Smith	You have heard me give this spiel so many times, but okay. There's this book, An Immense World, by Ed Yong. Whenever I explain it, it sounds really obvious — but "obvious" does not do the book justice. The book is about the fact that we as humans are familiar with five senses: this is how we interpret the world. Even within those five senses, they are not equal. We talked about hearing, for example, but sight for sure is the sense humans tend to use most to interpret the world. If you benchmark that versus other species (other than birds), we have some of the most precise vision in the animal kingdom. That drives the way we see the world. I say that because the book recognizes that, yes, this is how humans see the world, but every animal is uniquely tuned to its environment, its prey, and how it survives. For many animals, sight is not the most important way they interpret the world. There are senses we don't have that they use to engage with their environment. Even within the five senses we're familiar with, it's worth acknowledging that the spectrum of light we see or the range of temperatures we're comfortable in are simply not the way other animals exist. If you expose an arctic squirrel or a camel to temperatures we think are extreme, they may not react the way we would — those temperatures can be comfortable for them. Or consider ultraviolet light: we can't really interpret it, but other animals or creatures will react to it. That's my spiel about what the book is about — and the book obviously does a better job of making that interesting. But this is my "first million," and the reason I'm bringing this up is that there is a converging world of nature and technology. That convergence has always existed to an extent, but for a long time people thought technology was adversarial to nature — that humans were progressing and leaving nature behind, sometimes even destroying it. Yet there are tons of examples where we learn from nature in how we build technology: Velcro was modeled off burdock burrs; bullet trains were inspired by the kingfisher's beak; NASA has learned from birds when designing airplane wings. We not only learn from nature in the way we build technology — which is an interesting thread to pull — but there's also a really interesting space in how technology is actually getting us closer to understanding the animal kingdom and communicating with it. So we can pull any of those threads, but that’s my nature–technology rant.
37:44	Sam Parr	Keep going—I'm fascinated. Keep... just keep talking. What were you—now you're on this document? You were talking about a trip you took, but does that weave into this? </FormattedResponse>
37:54	Steph Smith	Yeah, so I just came back from the Galapagos Islands. Have you ever been there?
37:59	Sam Parr	"No, and I'm super ignorant. If I'm being honest, I don't even know where it is, but I know it's related to Darwin. I mean, I'm incredibly ignorant of the Galápagos."
38:11	Steph Smith	Yeah, so—okay, the Galápagos are, I think, about 600 miles west of Ecuador, so they're in the Pacific. There's a set of islands that…</FormattedResponse>
38:22	Sam Parr	So, Central America, right? I mean...
38:25	Steph Smith	South America — but yeah, so I'm...
38:27	Sam Parr	No... I'm not the biggest South America or Central America expert. I don't even know—I don't know much about it.
38:31	Steph Smith	Ecuador is... the northern end of South America. </FormattedResponse>
38:35	Sam Parr	Okay.</FormattedResponse>
38:37	Steph Smith	The Galápagos Islands are part of Ecuador, but many people know them—again—because of Charles Darwin. From my perspective, having been to 50 or so countries, it's the most nature-focused trip I've ever done. You actually feel like you're entering their world, versus the opposite. The reason it fits into Darwin's story is that when you have a bunch of islands, species evolve differently across them. Especially land-dwelling creatures that can't make their way from one island to another: they end up evolving differently due to the unique fauna, environment, and set of predators on each particular island. Darwin observed, for example, blue-footed boobies and red-footed boobies on different islands. He also did a lot of work with finches and noticed some of the giant tortoises. He noticed these things, and that contributed to his understanding of evolution.
39:58	Sam Parr	I knew nothing about Darwin. This is actually the first time I've ever heard that. I'm sure there's a lot more to the, you know, moment story, but I have never heard that before.
40:10	Steph Smith	Yeah, and he did a lot of his research there. I think in particular with the finches—there are about 17 kinds of finches. The interesting part is: when does an animal become a separate species? Do they become a new species when they no longer mate with each other? One example is lava lizards. These lava lizards perform mating dances—what humans describe as "push-ups." Because they've evolved on their own islands, each population has slightly different displays: one lizard might do three push-ups, another might do five, another might do a bigger or funkier version. What's crazy is that they will not mate with each other. If you take one lava lizard from one island and another from a different island, even those slight differences in the display are enough to prevent mating. One interesting takeaway for me—and this is just me; this has nothing to do with business—is that this has never happened to humans. There are some bad historical examples like segregation, but for the most part, even though we've existed on different continents and evolved over long, long periods of time, a person from Australia will still mate with someone from North America or Europe, etc. I just thought that was interesting—I wonder why that is.
41:53	Sam Parr	"I've heard of a bunch of friends of mine doing push-ups to impress some 'lot lizards,' but never 'lava lizards.' Mm... except—do you know what a 'lot lizard' is?" </FormattedResponse>
42:04	Steph Smith	"I don't. Is that embarrassing?"
42:07	Sam Parr	"No, it means... it means you're much more sophisticated than me. A lot lizard is a prostitute that serves truck drivers."
42:14	Steph Smith	Oh, that makes sense. I...
42:19	Sam Parr	I feel like if you know what a lot lizard is, that sort of says what part of the tracks you're from. You know what I'm saying?
42:27	Steph Smith	I hear you, so...
42:30	Sam Parr	You're talking about the Galapagos Islands and Darwin, and, you know, the eight senses that animals have. But I know a few people who know a few things about "lot lizards" if you want to talk about that. Yeah — just saying. Yeah, what's this "ass nature" thing? [phrase unclear]
42:50	Steph Smith	So, if people want to go down the rabbit hole of exploring—kind of not just "let me go look at pictures of animals"—but understanding: how do animals produce color? What are examples of technology being inspired by natural design? For example, a search algorithm that was inspired by ants.
43:12	Sam Parr	This is so fascinating. So Ask Nature has this—there's all this stuff you can click on. There's one about the African darter; apparently that's a type of bird, and it has a very special feather that is incredibly water-resistant. Then it tells you different applications that this feather—or the inspiration of this feather—could have. It talks about the strategy of how it works and the potential for copying this feather. This is amazing. How did you find this website? This is really cool.
43:49	Steph Smith	So someone shared it within InternetPipes. We have this survey whenever people join, which just asks, "What's your favorite tool?" A lot of responses end up being what you expect—ChatGPT, Ahrefs, etc.—but there are a bunch of gems that come through, like this. </FormattedResponse>
44:02	Sam Parr	And so, by the way, Internet pipes — it's literally just tons of different resources for finding these things.
44:09	Steph Smith	So, what the product started as — I hate the term "course" — was a course that existed to say, "it's called..."
44:16	Sam Parr	A book. It was a book.
44:18	Steph Smith	It was a book. It exists in Notion, and there are videos and text. Now there's a community, and there are things like databases — for example, the Digits database. The origin was this: the most common question I get asked is, "You find all this cool stuff online — how do you find it?" So Internet Pipes was showing people how to find this information through a series of tools. That's why it's called "pipes," right? It's like, use these tools to make sense of all the purchases that are happening on Amazon, all of the pages that exist on Wikipedia, all of the searches that are happening on Google. You go down the line — this data exists. And, by the way, we're at a unique [moment]. It didn't quite exist 15 years ago, and 15 years from now probably everyone will know it exists. So Internet Pipes is a course, a book — whatever you want to call it — to learn how to do that.
45:11	Sam Parr	"And you've made a lot of money off of it so far, haven't you?" "Yes." "That's pretty dope. When you answer just 'yes,' that means I'm not gonna ask how much."
45:19	Steph Smith	It's six figures. There's a pretty wide range...
45:23	Sam Parr	Does the six-figure include the ".00"—so it could really be like $1,000.00?
45:29	Steph Smith	It's eight figures now.</FormattedResponse>
45:31	Sam Parr	Got it. This is a really, really cool website. I could spend hours just looking at it. There's an article about camel fur and how it keeps camels cool in the desert but also warm at night, and why that particular type of fur is special. It's fascinating. The reason it's kind of interesting is that the two examples I've named are clothing-related. If you had a clothing brand, it's not stealing the story—it's giving you the hook. Do you know what I mean?
46:04	Steph Smith	"Exactly, exactly. And, by the way, people in our world — in business and tech — are always talking about the longevity of something: how long has something existed for. It's like you're learning from millions of years of evolution, from these animals that have become purely optimized for this purpose. To you, I think, the marketer in both of us is like, "What could— you know, what products could you make off of this?"
46:32	Sam Parr	"There's one — otters — where their fur keeps heat in and cold water out. I'm sure every single wetsuit company has stolen this for their marketing or branding or whatever. It's really fascinating. Sorry — go ahead."
46:45	Steph Smith	Well, did you ever see Mischief, right?
46:49	Sam Parr	Mischief — the brand. Mischief is the company.
46:52	Steph Smith	That stunts.
46:53	Sam Parr	Like weird projects. They did "Blood Shoe" with Lil Nas X, or something like that.
47:00	Steph Smith	Yeah, yeah. So they've done a ton of shoe collabs. They did one—I think it was...
47:05	Sam Parr	"I don't remember if it."
47:06	Steph Smith	It was with Jimmy Kimmel, or they just announced it, but it was called the Gobstomper. Did you ever see this? No? I thought they were kind of cool. They basically have the bottom of the sneaker come gray at first, and then as you wear it more — as your shoe wears away — it looks like a gobstopper. And it was just like...
47:27	Sam Parr	"Which is the candy that you suck on, and each shell layer turns colors. Okay—cool."
47:32	Steph Smith	Yeah, exactly. You might think this is the silliest idea ever, but when I went to the Galápagos I saw these red-footed and blue-footed boobies. By the way, fun fact for the listeners: the reason these birds have different colored feet is because of what they eat, which I just thought was so strange and interesting. Basically, the two different birds on different islands eat different things, and that ends up impacting the pigment in their feet. But imagine a sneaker brand that was—again, "stick with me here"—this might be a really awful idea that's related to health in some way. So, let's say you're wearing a CGM [continuous glucose monitor], and your shoes change color in some way based on, like, if you're in range or some other metric that you care about. Basically, you're able to signal something in a way that changes through your feet. That awful idea.
48:32	Sam Parr	Well, it could be like—if you know, we could, we could, we could show "you're fertile" or something. It'd help with the whole "lot wizard" thing... have?
48:40	Steph Smith	It's like those parties, right, where you wear—what are they called? stoplight parties, where you...
48:44	Sam Parr	"Wear red, yellow, red. That's..."
48:47	Steph Smith	Pretty... so, "stoplight"—maybe that's a better version of the idea.
48:50	Sam Parr	We just put all of our blood work on our... you know... like, I don't have a thyroid issue—I'm good.
48:59	Steph Smith	"Yeah, your, like, your functional health results show up in you, like a pendant around your neck, or..."
49:05	Sam Parr	Let's end here. I think we got a ton of stuff. Steph Smith, thank you very much. Internet Pipes. stephsmith.io — is that your website? </FormattedResponse>
49:14	Steph Smith	Technically, yes. I haven't updated it in a while. But if people are interested in our netpipes, I think we dropped a code last time — "mfm" — if people want to use it. They can get that digits database of 100 stats. We talk about shipbuilding, disaster insurance, tech literacy, nomad visas... all that good stuff.
49:32	Sam Parr	Alright. God bless America. We're done. That's it. That's the pod.
49:35	Steph Smith	Thanks, Sam.

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