Just found out my neighbor’s business sold for $450M

Shaan Puri

I talk to my barber, and he tells me this story that's pretty crazy about *Muscle Milk*. He's cut my hair, and he knows I have the **podcast**, so every time I go in for a haircut he just gives me research, and it's great. Dude—my handyman knows I have... [sentence trails off] </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

the podcast and he always asks me what stocks he should buy and I'm like that's not the. Bro

Shaan Puri

he thinks you're jim cramer

Sam Parr

"He's like, 'So, what stocks—what stocks should I buy?' I'm like, 'I... I don't know. I don't know. **Don't ask me that.** Just change the light bulb, please.'"

Shaan Puri

If he asked you, "What's the best way to increase my testosterone right now using an illicit drug?" I feel like that is what he should be asking you.

Sam Parr

yeah what like clearly he's not a listener

Shaan Puri

What can I buy from a forum that will make my *tendons* stronger? Like, Sam has answers to those types of things.

Sam Parr

"I'm like, 'Do you wanna know some really cool subreddits or an illegal place to download books?' I got you, bro. 'Alright, go ahead.'"

Shaan Puri

I talked to my barber and he's like, "Dude, you know whose hair I was cutting?" He goes, "He's your neighbor." I was like, "My neighbor?" He said, "Yeah—the guy lives just down the street from you. It's the family that started *Muscle Milk*." They started back in 1998. It actually began because he bought a sub-brand from his employer. Who does that? Who goes to their employer and is like, "Hey, can I buy this asset that's kind of undervalued?" It was a niche product, and he had this idea: he named it *Muscle Milk* because he wanted to name it after mother's milk—breast milk. He wanted to make a drink that had the nutritional profile of breast milk because he was convinced breast milk was the most nutritious food ever. It didn't end up being what worked, but I think it's a hilarious origin story. Yeah, it's sort of like how *SpaceX* started—he wanted to send a small plant to Mars and now he's built, like, a $1 trillion company doing this.

Sam Parr

you know what's the colostrum I get so many ads on on

Shaan Puri

colostrum good stuff

Sam Parr

dude I don't is it like from a animal or a human

Shaan Puri

it's from a cow yeah

Sam Parr

*Damn* — I'm, like, depriving some newborn cow of her fresh milk.

Shaan Puri

Well, that's how—have you ever seen how milk is made? It's pretty insane. No, no, no. It's made... it's... it's *messed up*.

Sam Parr

is it just tons of devices that hook onto you like an alien

Shaan Puri

Alright. My wife is *vegan*, so she's forced me to go down this road and acknowledge what goes on. **Here's how a lot of milk is made.** I can't say this applies to all farms, but I think this is the mainstream way: they impregnate a cow artificially. Literally, a dude sticks his hand in and artificially inseminates the cow. The cow gets pregnant and then has a baby. The baby is then *ripped away* from the cow but placed nearby so the mother can hear the crying and will produce more milk. Then they take the milk.

Sam Parr

yeah I mean that's that's sad fucked up I hate that

Shaan Puri

what kind of podcast is this

Sam Parr

yeah dude I literally drink

Shaan Puri

a sad ass vegan podcast is this I drink

Sam Parr

a glass of whole milk just last night

Shaan Puri

What up, YouTube — Sean here. You guys know that I started a newsletter company and sold it. Sam has done it too: Sam built *The Hustle*, got it to **1,000,000** subscribers, and sold it to **HubSpot**. I built a company called *The Milk Road* as a crypto newsletter and sold it for **$1,000,000** one year later. We've both had success with this newsletter business model. The team at **HubSpot** got together and did a research project called *The Future of Newsletters*. They're putting together research around where they see opportunities for the newsletter industry — checklists, things you should pay attention to when it comes to newsletters, and a bunch of other data and research packaged together. If you want to check out what the HubSpot team has put together, go to the link below this video and download it. It's free and you could learn something about newsletters. Back to Muscle Milk. Muscle Milk — not actual milk — is a supplement. It starts out as a powder you put in a drink, and he's like, "cool, I think bodybuilders are into this; they're willing to drink this kind of chalky, nasty drink," so he buys in. Basically it's a family business: Greg Pickett and his kids are involved. What's cool about this business is that years later Muscle Milk becomes a household brand. They end up selling it for **$450,000,000**. This will net almost half of **$1,000,000,000** from the Muscle Milk thing. The guy lives down the street. They basically started this as a cul‑de‑sac company — he lives in one house, the son lives in another, the daughter lives in another — and they all just live on one cul‑de‑sac. Sounds awesome: the kids play together and then they just built this behemoth that way. Like — isn't this insane?

Sam Parr

that is badass

Shaan Puri

That is badass. That was inspiring to me. It's just like a family—you've heard of a family business, but dude, just imagine the *cul-de-sac business*. I'm kind of inspired by this, very much in the vein of *"find the people you love and do life with them."* So... okay, how did it win? Must've—wait.

Sam Parr

really quick have you seen landman the oil show

Shaan Puri

Hell yeah. I've seen Landman. I might have worn a cowboy hat yesterday—just feeling a little Billy Bob Thornton myself.</FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

I haven't seen it, but this clip I just watched makes me want to watch it. Basically, **Jerry Jones** comes on and gives this amazing acting performance. He talks about the importance of working with his family and how he's proud of his wealth, his real estate, and the Cowboys. But you know what he's proud of most? He says: > "I got to spend time with my kids and we worked together. That's why they're here at my deathbed—because they loved me and we got to spend a whole bunch of time together." I heard that speech and I was all in. Two things stood out to me: first, I was completely sold; second, Jerry Jones—who would have thought—had tears in his eyes. I did not think he could act like that.

Shaan Puri

Somebody was saying, "They're like, 'I don't think... I think this is such a good performance because he's not acting. I think all of this is just true for him and he just said the truth.'" Which is great, by the way. *Landman*—fantastic show.

Sam Parr

yeah it was such a good scene alright so tell me about milk and muscles

Shaan Puri

Milk and muscles. Alright, so they started the business with a pretty humble plan. They bought this kind of supplement — a powder you mix into drinks — and thought, "If muscle/bodybuilding enthusiasts drink this, this would be great." They believed they could make it more mainstream, but they didn't really know how. They were just believers in the general idea. They said, "If this thing ever got to like $18,000,000 in sales, that would be — imagine that, that would be crazy." That was dinner-table talk. By the time they sold, the product was doing over $200,000,000 in revenue and about $60,000,000 a year in profit. So they had built a really successful company. How did they do it? What I love about these stories is you hear the story and you nod — "Yeah, that makes sense" — but then you look at the timeline. Sometimes I force myself to literally draw out the timeline: 1998 they start the company, then 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004. 2004 is when they actually made the product that hit, which is the *ready-to-drink* version — we've all seen the **Muscle Milk** carton. When you hear that, you're like, "Okay, cool — 2004 it really took off." You read the numbers and the revenue ramp and it looks good, but then you zoom in and force yourself to look at that five- or six-year time [period].

Shaan Puri

And you're like, "They don't even talk about what they were doing during that time." It's just the **forgotten**—the forgotten, grinding-out years of trying to make shit happen and staying in the game long enough to get lucky.

Sam Parr

and what were they doing

Shaan Puri

They were just selling. They were selling to really small niches but gradually expanding out of those niches. Eventually, he—the dad—had an insight. The insight was basically: "Hey, you know what? *Flavor matters.*" He thought, "If more people are going to drink this, it's going to be because I can get this to taste like dessert." He realized the initial market they were targeting—bodybuilders—took pride in drinking nasty stuff. So anytime you tried to make a fruity, better-tasting, sweeter product, they almost kind of rejected it because it felt less hardcore. They were super hardcore, and that was who the market was.

Sam Parr

A lot of people who take testosterone, steroids, or Ozempic... A lot of doctors will offer you a pill, a cream, or a syringe. I've asked the doctors, and they said, "They all want the **syringe** because it feels more—like, 'this works better; it's going through my veins; I can feel it.'"

Shaan Puri

Right. So exactly — and I think that's true for the early, hardcore markets. Ben is like this: Ben is an early adopter of every product. As soon as a product gets popular, his interest completely drops. The fun part was doing the hard thing, getting the edge, being ahead. Same thing for bodybuilders. The genius of the business was that they saw, “Hey, the market we see today — the people buying it now — is actually different. If we want to reach this other market, we have to ignore the signals we're seeing today.” So he goes into the lab and starts doing **small-batch production**. Everybody else was so big that they could only test flavors in larger batches. That meant slower cycles and fewer tight feedback loops. What he did was go to LA and start testing flavors in **15-gallon increments**. He pours it, gives it to people. They say, “Too chalky.” He gives another one — “Too sweet.” He tries another, and finally makes this vanilla flavor and people say, “This tastes like dessert. I love this.” He brings those flavors into the ready-to-drink beverage, and it just takes off. It goes nuts. Eventually Walmart starts knocking — “Hey, we want to carry this.” He says, “Dude, we can't even fulfill Walmart.” But all the specialty stores — the GNCs — it's flying off the shelves. For the first year they were inventory-constrained because he nailed the flavors. What my barber was telling me, which is fascinating and caught my attention, was: “So this dude down the street — they created Muscle Milk, sold it for like $500 million. But the cool part is he didn't sell the flavors.” I asked, “What do you mean?” He said, “Yeah, there's some story — it's not out there — but the guy, he's like, 'Cut my hair.' Yeah, I've cut his hair.” He's telling me the story.

Sam Parr

barber on blast

Shaan Puri

"It's not like insider trading—he's just telling me it's a really cool story. But he's like, when you go and research it, this part's not as reported, so maybe he got some of the details wrong. **That's my caveat.**" Here's what he explained, which was basically this: When they did the sale, they sold the brand *Muscle Milk*. They sold the operating business and all the distribution. The buyer was like, "Cool—what about the flavors?" And the sellers were like, "Actually, we have our own separate company that does flavors and we're not going to sell you that company." The buyer said, "Well, we need the flavors." The sellers responded, "Cool, yeah—we'll do a licensing deal." In other words: "We could provide flavors, but we won't sell the flavor company." Again, this is where the details are not reported, so either that's what happened, or right after they sold they started a new flavor company. Now this is what the family does: they have this flavor house that they created. They basically decided, "We're not going to do any brands anymore, but we will do flavoring. That's what made *Muscle Milk* successful, and that's what we're going to do now as a service." Now they've got a bunch of customers for this flavor house they created. If you look at their facility, it's an insane, huge facility with a vacuum-sealed room. They say, "We do this technology—spray flavoring—where you can add flavor to things that doesn't add any calories." It's basically all about flavor tech, and I'm just fascinated by flavor houses and flavor technology.

Sam Parr

It's called *Flavor Insights*. It looks awesome. I see they have a video with the father and his son, and on the About page it's the whole family. **This is my dream**, by the way — this is something I'm going to do.

Shaan Puri

Why is this even more your dream? While he's building *Muscle Milk*, he's got a hobby — and I know that you love a man with a real hobby. His hobby is racing cars. He has his own racing team that he created, and he races himself. I don't know shit about racing, but is it *Le Mans*? *Le Mans*?

Sam Parr

le mans

Shaan Puri

something like that

Sam Parr

it's like a a famous I guess

Shaan Puri

loulou lamont

Sam Parr

The track... but it's the famous thing: it's a *24-hour race*, and so—Ford versus Ferrari.

Shaan Puri

All these other things... I think he won the race, or he performed really well. How impressive is that? Is this just rich guys doing it, or is he competing against real racers?

Sam Parr

I'm not a real race enthusiast, so I could be wrong. But yeah... it's like, dude — the story "Ford v Ferrari" was about the time that Ford beat Ferrari at Le Mans. It's a big deal. Yeah, it's a movie‑worthy deal, you know, like a "Rudy"-style movie of an underdog winning Le Mans.

Shaan Puri

right so yeah dhh the guy that jason fried's cofounder

Sam Parr

he competes in that did he I don't think he won did he

Shaan Puri

He won. Yeah, he won — *I think* he won the race. He said, "He's competed in it 11 times."

Sam Parr

"Yeah. It's sort of like this: oftentimes the company that wins wins for some innovative reason. Then, ten years down the line, that car part that helped them win becomes the norm."

Shaan Puri

gotcha gotcha

Sam Parr

yeah so that's like a big deal

Shaan Puri

Isn't this a—it's a total *life‑goals* story: build a **killer brand**. You stuck with the thing; you built it with your family; you do it in the cul‑de‑sac. I just think it's amazing—sell the thing for $100 million.

Sam Parr

None of his kids are *yoked*, right? Like, these guys—they don't look very yoked. I'm looking at the family now.

Shaan Puri

Well, as their public defender, here's what I have to say about that. One of the things they talked about with **Muscle Milk** is they go: > "We wanted to build a product that everybody would look at and see a different thing." > "Women see it as a weight-loss product; men see it as a muscle-building product; some people see it as a snack; some people see it as a meal replacement." Our **goal** was to build a product that would basically, you know, solve multiple problems for different people at once. </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

"I'm just saying that I want to see some bigger buys and tries on this family photo. They look great — they look very healthy. More importantly, they look *happy*. The founder's teeth are *beautiful*; he's got a really nice smile. I just think that we should see a little thicker neck." [Note: "buys and tries" in the original audio is unclear and may be a transcription error.]

Shaan Puri

Can I tell you one other thing? So, this company that bought them originally—I know they're owned by **Pepsi**.

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

Pepsi owns it now, but before that it was bought by something called **Hormel Foods**. It's one of those companies you've never heard of. This company does about $12 billion in revenue and around $1.5 billion in profit a year. If you go to their website, the tagline is: > "We sell more pepperonis than anyone on earth."

Sam Parr

and they're

Shaan Puri

just like food holding company they own skippy peanut butter they own planters

Sam Parr

they own spam

Shaan Puri

They own Spam, and then they sell just a *shit ton* of "ronis," dude. They just sell pepperonis worldwide. </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

They own Applegate. They own Justin's. They own Planters, Skippy, Chi‑Chi's. I don't know what Chi‑Chi's is... I don't know what...

Shaan Puri

Is that Black Label bacon? They own a lot of... I mean, literally, **Spam** is on their homepage as their pride and joy. It's like the way my parents pin pictures of me up on the fridge — that's what this company does with Spam.

Sam Parr

Which is, like... it's pretty, pretty good—horrible for you. Oh, dude, yeah, *Hormel* pepperoni. I know them. That's one of my snacks. One of my snacks is like eight pepperoni slices with a little bit of mozzarella cheese on it, microwaved. </FormattedResponse>

Shaan Puri

it's a pizza without the the pizza

Sam Parr

yeah I just call it like so

Shaan Puri

does pizza hold the dough just just pepperoni and mozzarella

Sam Parr

redneck fitness food

Shaan Puri

Dude, this should be your brand: a line of "Not That Bad for You Redneck Snacks." It's like, "it'll make you farm strong." </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

yeah or do you know like pb dip you know your I call it dip

Shaan Puri

but you know pb powder the powder yeah

Sam Parr

Yeah. You get a spoon of that, put it on the roof of your mouth, and suck on it for 60 minutes. I call it the *"fitness dip."* So instead of having a fat lip, you just have a **PB (peanut butter) dip**. Your tongue just rubs it against the dehydrated nut.

Shaan Puri

oh boy oh boy you wanna have

Sam Parr

a good time put a little pb dip on the roof of your mouth

Shaan Puri

alright we got our we got our cold open for the episode

Sam Parr

By the way, let me show you one thing. You said something that I do religiously. I just sent Ari a document — one of the tabs. I have dozens of tabs on this. "Ari, can you share your screen?" Whenever I read a book, I use this Google Doc that I've had since around 2010. Here’s what I do when I read a book: 1. I record any year, money figure, or milestone in a spreadsheet. 2. I create timelines from those entries. The reason I put these things in a sheet is that when you're building a company or doing anything really challenging, you often read about someone else and think, "That was easy." Timelines show the reality — for example, you can see that someone went four years with nothing happening. For those listening: I made a timeline of Koch Industries, which is one of the largest privately held companies in America. I read the family's biography and created a timeline of every major event in their lives. Then I converted the dollar amounts into 2019 dollars (the year I made that particular timeline). It's really fun to do because you can see that things often took decades — in this case, about 30 years.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

And so, if you like—if you scroll all the way to the left—I did this with **Kirk Kerkorian**, another one of the guys who I love. Every biography I read, I create one of these. </FormattedResponse>

Shaan Puri

Just another man you love. Can I just point out a couple things about this we're seeing, Jerry, that are just—just fantastic? This is a peek into the mind. First of all, it's a Google Sheet that's just called **"Sheet,"** which is a great title. Okay, scroll over. Here are some of the milestones that Sam wrote down. It starts for **Koch Industries**: - 1900 — Fred Koch born. - 1924 — 24-year gap; big break, finds mentor. - 1927 — Just a quick update: still broke. - 1929 — See success. - 1931 — Big success with two G's — just a big double-G success right here. It's amazing.

Sam Parr

And then, in 1940, he buys a company for $4 million.

Shaan Puri

You also should just have pictures on here where it's them and the *cavs*, and it's just your cavs—just for reference. You're just comparing cavs. Because I feel like... tell me that's not part of your research process. Is it looking at photos and judging their looks?

Sam Parr

"Yeah, particularly the Koch brothers, because they're like these tall, *WASP-y* guys, and I definitely am sizing myself up to them."

Shaan Puri

yeah the the the total picture of success includes a picture

Sam Parr

For sure. Yeah — it's like *tennis sweaters*. It's like, "Oh, they're into tennis sweaters; therefore I will wear tennis sweaters." But yeah, I definitely like two guys that are both 62 from the Midwest, with blonde hair and blue eyes. There's definitely... there can only be one of us in this room.

Shaan Puri

Dude, there's this girl who keeps going viral on Twitter. It's the same tweet every time. She writes that her dad goes to a bar with his friends every Friday and he makes a list of topics to discuss. She posts a photo of him holding a printed-out agenda. I'll read one of them: > Ted Perry's fun capital story shown on Fox News 6 > Next one: What's going on with the Bucks? > NFL overtime rules — take ball first or second? > Bahama Breeze — how close is too close to an alligator? > Do you think people that throw garbage out of their car window are the same people that don't pick up their dog poop when walking through my subdivision? > *Please be on time — as you can see we have another week of a packed agenda.* It goes super viral every time — like 100,000 likes. I think everybody who sees this is like, "Yeah, that's part of the winning life." I'd like to go to the bar with my friends every Thursday and have an agenda that we print out and talk about while wearing our New Balances.

Sam Parr

do you know who does this and he's not joking

Shaan Puri

"I already know, because you're talking about a legend—a *social legend*—and I know it has to be **Nick Ray**. Tell me I'm wrong. No, I'm wrong. Is it not **Nick Ray**?"

Sam Parr

The second time I hung out with Nick Ray, we went to a bar called Lazarus. Sarah and I came, and he goes, "Hey guys, I would love to hang out. This is our second time hanging out. I thought it'd be nice to have an agenda so we could stay on track." There was a 13-item agenda list where it was like, "Ask Sarah about her job; figure out how that's going; explain my dating life and get opinions from it" — like it was a... and we stuck to that agenda, and he took notes, and it </FormattedResponse>

Shaan Puri

was thrilling because I think I'm gonna absolutely start doing this

Sam Parr

it was thrilling you know how like you know how like

Shaan Puri

was it the agenda that was great or the fact that he had an agenda that was great which which of the 2

Sam Parr

Was great. Here's why. So look — in a world where everyone wants to be a *tough guy*, it feels good to be a leader. But you want to know something? **Everyone likes getting led.** We like the assertive person.

Shaan Puri

I'm just a leader who loves being led that's me like that's on my linkedin

Sam Parr

I like leading some stuff, but there are other times when it's: just tell me what to do. *Small talk* is one of those things that nobody really tells you how to do. When there's an assigned leader who has something outlined for small talk, I'm just like, "Yes sir — I'll do whatever you like me to do. Thank you, may I have another, sir?" It's the best way to go about doing things, and that's what **Nick Ray** does.

Shaan Puri

Okay, and by the way, that's how we do this podcast. Actually, we both bring some agenda items, and then we discuss them in *bullet form*.

Sam Parr

yeah I think it's good I and he's done that for years and it's awesome alright

Shaan Puri

We're gonna normalize having conversational hangouts with an agenda. Okay — let's do more. I have a business that's pretty cool. Can I tell you about it? Here's my opening for this business: > "Sam, I found the business that you should have started instead of wasting your goddamn time with the hustle."

Sam Parr

okay I like that

Shaan Puri

So you built **The Hustle**, and if you recall, one time you came to me *hat in hand*—absolutely begging for an investment. You needed the money, and you got down on your knees and said, "Please, sir, invest in my company." I looked at it. I flipped through the business plan like it was a flip book, and I just said, "No thanks."

Sam Parr

"No, that's not what you said. You said, 'Look, Sam — you're coming to a knife fight with a knife. I don't even want you to come to this knife fight with a gun. I want you to come to this knife fight with a *magic fucking wand*,' and and that."

Shaan Puri

I clearly turned away on my heel with a *dramatic spin*, and I left through [unclear]. And then you tried...

Sam Parr

to pull the door to open but it was really a push door

Shaan Puri

exactly totally blew it at the end did not stick the landing

Sam Parr

"You clearly had just read that on whatever the equivalent was of Twitter, and you're like, 'That is **now** my line.'" </FormattedResponse>

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. This is back when I had it written on the inside of my palm. I was like, "Peter Thiel says this: *'magic wand'*." They say that somebody totally owns them no matter what they're doing. But the reality was I looked at the business and I was like, "Here's what I'm doing: I am creating a media company." So every day we're going to write the news. Every day you had to recreate your product.

Sam Parr

yeah it sucks

Shaan Puri

oh that sucks

Sam Parr

what did they did

Shaan Puri

"Did you get any— is there any benefit to all the work you did in the last three months?" "It's like, not really. We have to recreate it again. *We gotta bake that cake every morning.*" "Okay, sounds good." And then I was like, "Cool. So then people pay you—certainly for the service that you're doing?" "No—it's free." "Oh, okay. But then the ad revenue... then we have to do a separate business, basically a separate customer—selling to advertisers. And they're like, 'Okay, but certainly they're on retainer and it's going to be recurring revenue that's going to stack up.'" "You're like, 'No, no, no. They're just going to—if they feel like advertising, they will; if they don't, they don't. Every month we're going to start back at zero.'" "Yep. And I thought, 'Damn—this is a tough business to win.' And that's when I hit you with the knife and the knife fight and... blah, blah, blah."

Sam Parr

which it is tough ish to to do well

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and by the way, the *best pun story* of the whole thing is: five years later, after you successfully sold the business and got rich doing it, I copied your business model and did the same thing for crypto. I basically came back to you like, "What was the business plan again? How do you do this?" So that's the end of that story. Now here's a better business that somebody created five years ago that has the following profile: they don't recreate the product every day; people pay them for the product on a subscription; it's in a hobby that you love doing; and it's a thing you were doing anyway for free. I think you would have been great at it. Also, it uses your gift, which is making things simple—summarizing things, making them easier to understand, and saving somebody time doing it. This person has bootstrapped the business to $200 million in revenue with 30% profit margins.

Sam Parr

I have no idea what is this

Shaan Puri

**Headway** app is a book-summary app. A guy in Ukraine created this company where he takes popular books and summarizes them. The promise is basically: "Instead of reading the book, I already read it and summarized it." He says, "I can tell you the main 1, I can tell you the main 2, I can tell you the main 3," and in under 15 minutes you can get the gist of what's in the book. You'll get the big ideas and an explanation. You can either read the summary or we have **AI** that turns it into audio, so you can listen to a 15-minute summary of the book. They've done this for about 1,500 of the most popular books. People pay a simple $12–$13 a month for this, and it has become an absolute juggernaut. I did not think these book-summary apps could get this big, but damn, that's impressive: $200,000,000 in ARR, 30% profit, built out of Ukraine.

Sam Parr

they just raised funding at a $2,300,000,000 valuation

Shaan Puri

right right

Sam Parr

holy crap

Shaan Puri

So—you could've done that instead, and I think you would've been great at this, by the way. Here's why I said that: you could've done this because when I went and looked at their ads—right, the way this business grows—they run ads on TikTok, on Facebook, whatever. The hook of their ads. Tell me if this sounds familiar: > "My boss thinks I'm a genius and thinks I read 150 books a year, but actually I just use Headway."

Sam Parr

that's their ad

Shaan Puri

It's not *word-for-word*. I just wanted to really **bait you** with that one, but it's basically the **gist** of their ads. It's the same way we post the same quote.

Sam Parr

"Ad. I invented that ad. I stole it from someone else, and I invented that ad. **That's my ad.**"

Shaan Puri

that's the ad that's my ad that I took

Sam Parr

yes I stole that from the scim and I invented that ad

Shaan Puri

Their ad is a little bit more like: "It'll be, '**The average CEO reads 52 books a year — how many do you read?**'" Right? So they're basically making you feel like a shitty CEO. Or it'll say, "Everyone thinks I went to Harvard with the amount of books that I know, but actually I just use Headway," or it'll be, "Meet the app that all the intellectuals are using." Stuff like that. And so those are the sort of hooks that they use to get people to do this, where they're not saying, "Here's a book summary." They're basically saying, "Be a smarter person and be seen as a smart person because you seem so well read, and here's your hack to seeming so well read."

Sam Parr

so what's interesting is thrive thrive

Shaan Puri

We should do this for the podcast. It's like—my boss thinks I'm kind of retarded, but I know a lot about business. The secret is I just listen to "My First Million."

Sam Parr

but I still sound a little retarded

Shaan Puri

my boss is so impressed that I know all these numbers but then he wonders

Sam Parr

but then he fact checks me

Shaan Puri

my boss is wondering why I have pepperoni in my mouth

Sam Parr

This is ridiculous. These guys—so they raised money from **Thryv**, which, Thryv is a big VC investor in **ChatGPT**. Aren't they worried that **ChatGPT** will just do all this?

Shaan Puri

Well, they're using **AI** themselves for a bunch of stuff. If you go look at a bunch of their ads, they're all AI-generated ads. I think, you know, businesses like this that are super laser-focused on one thing... even if you can use **ChatGPT** to generate a summary, that's not the same thing. And I think, you know...

Sam Parr

dude they're not even old they started in 2019

Shaan Puri

I know, right? Super impressive. They also made this other app. There’s this one ad that was *so frustratingly good* it made me pissed that I didn’t think of it. It’s a simple-looking puzzle — tell me if you’ve seen this. I don’t know how much you use these, but it’s in a lot, a lot of games. This ad pops up on TikTok. It’s basically a maze: you start on a dot and have to get across without lifting your pen. It just shows somebody trying to do it, and they keep messing up.

Sam Parr

yeah yeah yeah

Shaan Puri

Try to see if you can solve this: only 5% of people you know can solve it, but 50% of fifth-graders can do it. So you download the app. By the way, that puzzle is *actually impossible*. There is no solution to it. They just put in something that looks simple, but you can't figure it out because it's an *optical illusion*. It's actually impossible.

Sam Parr

but it that

Shaan Puri

They use it to get to the game. Yeah, they have another app called *Impulse* that has been downloaded about 70 million times. It's a brain-training app. The framing is basically "keep your brain sharp" with these little mini mind games. My mom likes a lot of these things because she feels, "Oh, I'm getting older; I should have these little things on my phone to keep me sharp." So she plays Sudoku and crosswords and downloads apps like this. </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

So they're still set. They're just, like, *crazy good* internet marketers and really good at creating apps that retain [users].

Shaan Puri

Apps that, first and foremost, get you to convert and become a subscriber. Then, yeah—obviously the retention helps. This guy talks about it; he frames it as *microlearning*. He's like, "Microlearning is this: how do you get somebody to spend 5 to 15 minutes a day getting smarter? What if you use your phones to get smarter instead of just to waste your time?" He makes it sound like this grand, noble mission. At the same time, on the back end it's just this ruthless funnel that's being run.

Sam Parr

buy now buy now

Shaan Puri

get the download convert convert convert convert convert and like that's the game that's what you gotta

Sam Parr

**Be focused.** We talked about... was it—remember the app or *Flow*? Were they *Flow*? Yeah. Were they Ukrainian as well?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so we did this call with, like, an Eastern European app maker—what I’d call a "cruise-flow" company—where they have a family of apps. You go look at their website and they say, "no raise, no funding," and then they'll have around 300 employees and their apps will do about 100 million downloads a year. It's based out of Kyiv or whatever, right? This just seems to be a pattern. I think there's a very high density of talent that knows how to build this specific type of company.

Sam Parr

Yeah, they're just all homies, and they all have this... I don't know, this idea that it feels fun to get one over on someone. But then they're like, "Alright, if we're gonna have that attitude, we should also provide value so we stick around for a long time." This is *what every internet marketer ever has*: they're like, "I'm gonna do something shady," and when they win they're like, "Oh, but it'd be a lot cooler if customers came back to us, or if we didn't have to refund people constantly. So let's still do the shady stuff, but I'll do it for something."

Shaan Puri

like if I could tell my mom what I do without shame

Sam Parr

Which is, like, what every internet marketer ever has done, but this is *badass*. How'd you find this? </FormattedResponse>

Shaan Puri

How did I find this? Actually, that's another good story. Have you seen this Twitter account, "Arthur Rock"?

Sam Parr

well arthur rock I know that arthur rock was

Shaan Puri

It's a parody account. **"arfurock"** is his account. Have you not seen it? This thing is amazing. Alright, so how do you spell **"arfurock"**? Bro, just try to spell "Arthur" naturally and see what happens—you'll land exactly at the right thing. [spelled aloud: "a r f u r"] Got it? "Rucker"? Okay. So it's this guy—like an anonymous **VC**. He created a **Twitter** account where he tweets numbers from companies that are raising money or trying to sell, and he leaks information. He's just this giant leak. He tweeted out the numbers for the **Headway** app. If you just look at his feed, his feed is pure signal because it'll literally just be like: **PostHog**, 13,000,000 in **ARR**, growing 2x year over year. They're currently...

Sam Parr

raising crazy

Shaan Puri

It'll be like—someone will say, you know, the founder will be like, "We're pleased to announce that we've raised our **Series C** from **Excel**. It's a huge milestone and we feel so validated." And then he'll just quote-tweet: "*50,000,000 ARR as of November — up 1.8x year-to-date. Congrats.*"

Sam Parr

Or there's another one where they raised **$400,000,000**. After that, they did **$6,000,000** in 2024. Congrats.

Shaan Puri

Yeah — exactly, exactly. How amazing is this? This is *like* the best Twitter account, right?

Sam Parr

This is really good. And, you know what's funny — we've seen this again and again — these meme people, anonymous meme jokers, are right a lot, you know what I mean? It's sort of like *Esquire* or... what was it called — *American*... what was the tabloid that's in the grocery store? "The National Enquirer."

Shaan Puri

yeah the national enquirer

Sam Parr

They say a lot of bullshit, but they also predicted the Bill Clinton stuff before everyone — and the John Edwards affair. So I do love following these Anand accounts [unclear: "Anand" may be "anon"]; this guy is great. He says **Hallow**, a Catholic prayer app, is doing $60,000,000 ARR, growing 3.5x a year. [ARR = annual recurring revenue]

Shaan Puri

Yeah. He'll also post updates. So in May he'll be like, "Suno, the AI music app, just closed around $15,000,000 ARR in the first year." [ARR = annual recurring revenue] Lightspeed invested $500,000,000 and posted "congrats." That was May. Then in October — five months later — he wrote, "at $40,000,000 ARR now." This guy's just providing... I don't know. You're not as big of a basketball fan, but in basketball there were two guys famous on Twitter for having sources everywhere: **Shams** and **Woj**. They always had intel; their entire Twitter feeds were literally just inside info. For example, "sources say Jimmy Butler wants a trade; his list of teams that he wants to go to are these four." Or during the NBA draft, about 45 seconds before every pick they'd say who was being taken — they'd just spoil the draft.

Sam Parr

If I'm one of these Ukrainian guys... I don't have the skill set to do this; I'm not technical. But I wonder—do you ever wonder why there aren't more people just copying fast-growing companies? We'll just...

Shaan Puri

there are that happens a lot

Sam Parr

it doesn't

Shaan Puri

But I think your— I think your answer is actually pretty good, which is *why aren't there more?* So, actually, I think I answered your question wrong. I was like, "No, some people do do that," and I think your question is actually correct: *why aren't more people doing this?* Because I think...

Sam Parr

I don't want to do this because I kind of have a reputation, and I don't really want to do it. But if I were a little bit younger and if I had the skill set—which I don't—like, if I see a company that's growing at, like, *400x a year* (which this guy does), he's like, "Here's some app that was only doing $5 million in revenue, but they're set to grow 4x." I'm like, "Yeah, just go to their website and copy that."

Shaan Puri

Yeah — I mean, it's *not so easy*, right? You could copy a product that doesn't get you to the customers. So you have to not only copy the product; you have to figure out how they grow and be as good at *growth*.

Sam Parr

As they figure that out, you can use all this technology. Like: "Here's what their ad says — I'm just gonna do that *exact same ad*."

Shaan Puri

you can but you know most people who have that ability if you're if you're that good you're also able to create new things from scratch and I think also what ends up happening is that a lot of things look similar but they're you know they're 80% the same and they're 20% different but that 20% difference is actually a huge difference right it's just like if you've ever looked at we were talking about flavors earlier it's like the difference between 2 flavors is like a 0.1% change in a certain you know certain chemical but it'll change you know from vanilla that's that's the difference between you know vanilla and and you know orange soda or whatever right it's like there's it's not that big of a difference on the on the whole right you're doing 80% the same but it's 20% that's different and so you know I actually advise this and and talk a lot about this which is if you see something that's working not as a company maybe but like let's say a trend or a business model like you know let's say ecommerce or whatever try to figure out what's working better or worse in a category and then you know if you're gonna go into that category you're probably gonna end up even if you're trying to be super original you're probably gonna end up with 80% of the things the same because that's how business is you're not a 100% different but the key is to figure out what is your 20% difference gonna be and how how well can you execute on that 20% innovation and I think that's a more humble honest way of going about things versus I think most people believe they're doing everything a 100% original and unique and that's just not true right like even this is also for content or wisdom right like how many truly original wise thing you know I love naval but how many of naval's things are a 100% homegrown not inspired by anything not not not similar to anything else that was out there which is very rare right like that's not how anybody does things tony robbins talks about this he's like yeah I I learned under jim rohn and jim learned learned under zig ziglar or whatever and like it's the same school of thought but like me putting my twist on it is the is what makes all the difference then you have people like rocket internet which are literally like pixel for pixel clones but even they operate in different markets so they'll be like cool we're building

Sam Parr

amazon and thailand amazon for

Shaan Puri

For Brazil or Thailand, or whatever. It turns out that once you try to do that, *over time* a lot of things end up different.

Sam Parr

Alright. Let me tell you a story, really quick, about some investment thing that I heard about that I would never do. You would do, but it's a *thrilling* story.

Shaan Puri

Okay. Let me guess: it's **obscure**, **overly complicated**, and **doesn't really make a whole lot of sense**. Too much risk, and we'll end up netting less than the S&P 500 in the long run.

Sam Parr

No—this one, he came out on top, actually. So the story is this: first of all, I was just listening to **Scott Galloway**'s podcast while I was driving somewhere. I think it was over **Christmas** break. Something happened at the very end of the podcast, and I was with **Sarah**. I literally pulled over to the side of the highway and said, "Are you listening to this?" She said, "Shut up. No." I replied, "Alright, but this is actually amazing."

Shaan Puri

"Can we get an instant replay on **YouTube** of your *wheel diagram* you just did? How big is your wheel, dude? You're like literally driving a school bus. What was that?"

Sam Parr

it's like a ship

Shaan Puri

armed ship fully out loud it's like a tractor that you're driving

Sam Parr

it's a ship I pull the ship over and I literally had to sit down because she yells at me when I use my phone and I had to like type this out so I had this note I remembered it but Scott galloway had michael lewis on so Scott galloway is an investor and podcasters michael lewis is an amazing author wrote about ftx's downfall and he was with sam bankman fried when this all happened and so he he you know he has a unique perspective in the 45 minute part of this like 50 or 55 minute episode Scott galloway just mentioned something where he's like yeah I bought some of the the the bankruptcy claims against ftx and michael lewis started talking about something else and then michael lewis goes wait wait wait wait wait what you made a good investment where you bought the ftx claims what was that about and Scott like just casually throws this out there but the story is actually pretty amazing so the background is this so in 2022 ftx goes bankrupt because sorry ftx goes bankrupt because sbf sam bankman fried he's overleveraged and he spent all the money and whatever it didn't work out because of a bunch of different reasons and because of that $10,000,000,000 in customer funds are lost you know they're just gone and people are distraught they're freaking out but when a bankruptcy happens one major thing happens which is the person who had the money in ftx so let's say I stored $1,000,000 in ftx I now am I'm gonna have a claim against that company for $1,000,000 so it's gonna go to court and we're gonna figure out how do I get my money back somehow and in a lot of cases you get no money back and so what happens is these kind of vultures I mean I don't know what you wanna call them but they come along and they go hey ftx owes you a $1,000,000 you're probably not gonna get that back you might get that back but I'll tell you what you have a $1,000,000 claim I will buy that claim from you for a $100 so you get the $100 today whereas the other outcomes are potentially you eventually get nothing or maybe you'll get a little bit more like a $100 200 300 300 grand but it's gonna be in like 4 or 5 years and you don't even know for sure so just let me buy your claim and so sure you could do that so it creates a market when that happens but Scott galloway he's kind of a he's kind of a strange guy and he had this quote on this podcast where he's like when I see fire I run towards it because when because I've known enough seeing a lot of bankruptcies that when there's when a bankruptcy happens there's opportunity and so Scott galloway he reads the paperwork about the claim or about the bankruptcy and what he notices is that sam bankman fried unlike a lot of different ponzi schemes a lot of times with ponzi schemes they're spending this money on coke hookers planes like party shit spf maybe did a little bit of that but you wanna know what he was a real degenerate about venture investing he loved investing in companies and one of the companies he invested in a few and I think a lot of them didn't work but one of the big ones that he invested in was he invested in anthropic which is like the number 2 or the number 3 best ai company and Scott looks at the numbers and they don't actually say what the valuation was of what s of what the they didn't they don't say the valuation of anthropic when sam bankman fried invests in them but what they say is that he invested $500,000,000 and Scott does a little math and he's like I think the valuation was around $5,000,000,000 meaning spf owns 10% of this company and this was happening 2 years ago he's like I think anthropic is going to raise money at a $10,000,000,000 valuation and then eventually one day at a $60,000,000,000 valuation which by the way as of today there are rumors that that's happening and because of that I think I can buy a claim for 20% so a $1,000,000 claim for $200,000 and if you do all the math I think I could actually triple or quadruple my money based just off this venture return let alone if we ever are going to claw back any of the crypto that was lost well turns out a few things happened 1 bitcoin exploded and because of that well not because of that but they were able to recap or claw back a lot of the money and bitcoin exploded and so a lot of these people are going to be getting back a lot more money than they actually had in there because the money you know the bitcoin was just sitting there growing and also sam bankman's freed investments one of them killed it knocked it out the park and so I think now the people who lost money they're getting something like a 125% of their money back which is not bad for a ponzi scheme that you are a victim of Scott said the numbers he goes I bought $250,000 worth and I sold I bought 2 a $1,000,000 claim for 2.50 and I sold it for 90% of the 1,000,000 so he like tripled his money and Scott like goes through the story and he explains like his reasoning on this podcast and it was amazing to be honest like how on earth you could find value in this way

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's super impressive. I actually happened to hear this segment too and had the same... I wasn't driving a bus, but I had the same sort of snap reaction where I was like, "What?" What's funny is you said a couple of things, but I don't think— a couple of things... I think we have to correct a couple of things. **First:** *it wasn't a Ponzi scheme.*

Sam Parr

no I meant like

Shaan Puri

a lot he stole customer funds

Sam Parr

I guess I wasn't saying that this was a *Ponzi scheme*, but it's in that category of schemes where, you know, a lot of people are like, "How do I get my money back?"

Shaan Puri

Scammed — you lost your money. Yeah, exactly. The other thing is that he was saying, "I valued FTX's stake in Anthropic at $4 billion," but that's not really what happened. They sold their stake for $800 million. I think he put in $400 or $500 million, and they sold it for $800 or $900 million in the liquidation. **So it wasn't the Anthropic investment that really paid off.**

Sam Parr

He was using the *Anthropic* investment as *downside protection*. He was doing the math, thinking, "Alright, that gets me — that gets my investment up just a little bit, to a safe zone." But then, what else could there be?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. I think his math was wrong. He said, "I valued Anthropic based on the Anthropic stake. I thought it was worth $4,000,000,000; the total claims were $9,000,000,000, so I thought Anthropic was giving me **44¢ on the dollar**." Claims were selling for **22¢ on the dollar**. He told me, "That was the easiest trade I ever made." But the reality is that the Anthropic stake ended up being worth less than $1,000,000,000 — about **10¢ on the dollar**. So he got it right, even though his logic was wrong. We had Sheila on the other day and he basically said his two best investments worked out the same way. He said, "I bought **NVIDIA** in 2017 because I thought crypto mining was going to take off." NVIDIA did take off, but not because of crypto mining at all. It turned out to be **AI**. He was wrong about the reason, but massively right about the outcome. Same thing with **Bitcoin**. "I bought Bitcoin early on because I thought it was going to be this fast peer-to-peer transfer thing." That use case turned out to be wrong, but Bitcoin went up anyway because of another use case — a store-of-value, "digital gold." I think what ended up happening is that he made a great investment, but his underwriting was wrong. That's one of the hard things about smart-money investing: when you're right you feel like such a goddamn genius, and when you're wrong you chalk it up to whatever. You either mentally block it out, admit you were wrong, or say one of your assumptions was a little off. There's also this weird state where you can end up right even though your underwriting was wrong, and you conflate luck and skill. One of my observations in this process — as I do my own investing and get some things right and some things wrong, and as I talk to other people — is that it's very humbling to realize how much of even your wins aren't really yours. They're not truly your wins because you got so much of it wrong.

Sam Parr

Well, another learning I had was *finding value in crap*. This story — this was the worst. This was the worst asset, the worst company. You don't want to touch this because, a) it's like a scam — so that's a no-go; and b) it's a reputational ruiner. Who wants to be involved in this guy? I have so many better things to do. Why would I waste my time with this pile of shit? What was interesting was seeing Scott walk through his reasoning on how he can still capture value from a horrible situation. I thought that was really intriguing because that is not how I tend to do things. As they said, "try to catch a falling knife." When something's bad, it's just going to get worse, so just stay away — but that's not always the case.

Shaan Puri

Dude, when I went to Mohnish Pabrai's house and we recorded that podcast together, we did the podcast and then, at the end, he kind of just toured me around. I went to his desk where he works. I like seeing literally where you sit when you work — I think the environment tells a lot. He had this placard on his desk, like the nameplate you would see in a bank. Instead of a name on it, it just said: > "Trouble is opportunity." He told me he wanted that on his desk because in those moments of panic, where there's trouble, he wanted the reminder that *trouble is opportunity*. Not all trouble is opportunity, though. One of his isms he took from Charlie Munger and Buffett is that he puts things in what he calls the *"too hard pile."* He said, "I look at 100 opportunities. I can probably tell you the three obviously good ones and the ten obviously terrible ones, but the other 77 I just put in the too hard pile." He's sure some of them are really good, but he throws things in the too hard pile when they're too hard. For example, I asked him his thoughts on crypto. He said, "Well, I think there's a case for it. I think there's a case against it. But I just don't do anything because I put it in the too hard pile." He doesn't need to win in that — it's too hard for him to figure out, so he's not going to bother. I think the concept of the too hard pile is so valuable because I used to be very black and white about everything — either it's good or it's bad. If I thought something could be good, I would smash my head against the wall trying to make it work. If it was bad, it had to clearly be bad for me to discard it.

Sam Parr

the so you said a 100 ideas

Shaan Puri

The story is this. He's at lunch with Warren Buffett and says, "Warren, I think one of your great gifts is you're a great judge of people." He was talking about Ajit, who runs their insurance business. He continues, "I just think you're a great reader of people — judge of people. How do you do it? What's your secret?" Warren replies: > "I don't think I'm a great reader of people. I'm not trying to be humble. I just approach it differently. It pays to be a *harsh grader* when it comes to people. The cost of being optimistic about somebody who turns out not to be great — letting them into your circle of friends or doing business with somebody who turns out not to be great — is so costly that I just rule a bunch of people out. > If you put me in a cocktail party and let me have 5 minutes with 100 people, in that 5 minutes I could probably tell you the 5 people who are really outstanding. I could tell you the 5 people who are really lousy, and I just don't want anything to do with them — they obviously come off super bad in a 5-minute interaction. But then there are 90 people that I just can't make a judgment on in 5 minutes, so I just put them all in the 'bad' pile. They're all in the 'too hard to know' pile, and I just rule them out because it's not worth the brain damage to try to figure it out on a case-by-case basis just so you don't miss a good one. > The cost of a bad thing is much higher than the cost of missing out on a good thing. There are more good things that I can filter for, and I'll find those good things over time — they'll obviously be good. I'll just focus on the obviously good things." He does this with investing and with people. It's a useful heuristic because most of us try to be accurate about all 100 people. We spend time on the hard-to-judge cases and get many of them wrong, taking on too much risk. His approach is: don't take too much risk — act on the obviously good, throw away the obviously bad, and put everybody else in the "too hard" pile and ignore them.

Sam Parr

Can I dumb this down? Let me explain why *I'm a genius*. When I go to a restaurant, there are two columns of entrées. I start at the top and skim down. The first one I see that's a seven out of ten—I go, "Oh, that's it." *Menu over.* I don't look at the menu for the rest of the meal. I don't second-guess it. I just pick the first one that's a seven; that's done, and I'm able to do that right away.

Shaan Puri

Does this apply to everything? Is this *marriage advice*? Is this—what other things does this apply to? Where does this not apply?

Sam Parr

I mean, yeah. I think it could apply to marriage — *the idea of settling* is good. You settle for something that's pretty good, and you can make it great. I don't know... is there any data on Indian couples who have been...

Shaan Puri

Yeah. Arranged marriages have the same "success rate" as American marriages, which involve dating, selection, courtship, and then, eventually, engagement and marriage. By contrast, the way Indian couples do it is very much like scanning a menu or a listing. </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

that'll do

Shaan Puri

Engineer. Good family. Full set of teeth. **7 out of 10** — let's go. "Yeah, I will see you at the altar for the first time." "Yeah, yeah, and then do a high five."

Sam Parr

I just think that's how I order — I've done that for years. I just don't want... I want less choice. I think what **Warren Buffett** is actually saying is similar: "I know for certain that these three are fine enough; therefore I don't care about the rest."

Shaan Puri

Yeah. You know that book by Mark Manson, *The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck*? I think it got so popular that it sort of got written off, you know what I mean. Do you ever hear a smart person say, "Man, I learned so much from this book, 'The Subtle Art'?" It's not a cool intellectual thing to reference because it's pop — it's pop culture.

Sam Parr

so popular

Shaan Puri

"It's made of shame. It's like, if I'm like, 'Oh, I really like Justin Bieber's music,' it's like, 'Okay, what? That's a low-status thing to say.'" He brings up one good point in the book. The book is basically around one idea: life is not about caring about everything or not caring about everything. It's about choosing. Assume you have a limited set of **F's** to give in your pocket—like you've got **five** to give. Choose wisely. Choose the things you're going to care about. So the menu—you just don't have to care to get that right. And that's kind of like the **Warren Buffett** idea: you can throw a bunch of things in the *"too hard"* pile and ignore them. Then there may be a few decisions where actually getting it right really matters, and you'll have enough bandwidth to actually care about those things because you're not caring about everything.

Sam Parr

yeah I think that's good shit what do you wanna do now

Shaan Puri

I want to give you one other story. Have you heard the **Bill Ackman** story of his "running into the fire" when everybody else is running out? It's the story of his four-hour investment decision.

Sam Parr

do you

Shaan Puri

know this one

Sam Parr

oh man I thought it was like literally a fire

Shaan Puri

Well, kind of. It was the **'08 crisis**, which, I think, to people on Wall Street felt like the giant fire. </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

Oh, you mean **Bill Ackman**, the famous *Twitter* influencer? He invests—wait... he's an investor.

Shaan Puri

We're joking — I hope you're still coming on later. Alright, so he tells the story. It's 2008. The financial crisis is happening: banks are failing. Bear Stearns fails, and then another big bank is going to fail. People don't know what's going to happen — there's widespread panic, and Wachovia was on the brink. Basically, what he did was **four hours**. He spent four hours just looking at the business of Wachovia and came to a decision in that time: the panic was overblown and Wachovia would be saved. He concluded Wells Fargo, which ended up buying Wachovia, was far healthier than the market believed in that moment of panic. So he made a huge investment — one of his most lucrative ever — based on that four-hour decision. It was made at a time of extreme panic when trouble was opportunity. While everybody else was running out screaming, he was calm and assessed the risk-return differently. It's sort of like what you're talking about with Scott Galloway when FTX "just feels taboo in every way" and it feels like the worst possible situation. As he put it: "Cool — it's the worst possible situation at a price, and there's a price for everything." The price for him to buy those claims at $0.22 on the dollar turned out to be the right price. </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

Dude, **Bill Ackman** is also, like, *64 years old*, I think. That's pretty cool. We should create an index for **CEOs above 62**, and I bet it'd do alright.

Shaan Puri

Alright, so he bought—let's see—178,000,000 shares at $3.15 per share. So he spent $560,000,000 after four hours of thinking, and his estimate was that it was going to be worth more than double that. The next week, Wachovia bought it at about $7 per share, so he basically doubled $500,000,000 in a week.

Sam Parr

"*That's insane.* Alright—well, that's cool. **Bill Ackman's great.** Alright, great story."

Shaan Puri

great story alright

Sam Parr

I think that's a pretty good podcast what do you say

Shaan Puri

I think that was alright huge huge alright that's it

Sam Parr

that's the pod