He built a $1M/MRR dinner club app in 2 weeks with 0 employees
Dinner, Money, ChatGPT, and Black Friday - December 9, 2024 (over 1 year ago) • 01:01:00
Transcript
| Start Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
Shaan Puri | "I can't believe we just agreed to do *public math*. It's like we only have two rules here:
1. **Don't get canceled.**
2. **Don't embarrass yourself by doing public math.**
And we did it." | |
Sam Parr | yeah we did it a bunch of times frankly | |
Shaan Puri | "Alright, I got a business that you're gonna love. Okay — this is a business that, in 10 months, has gotten to **10,000,000** in ARR [annual recurring revenue]."
</FormattedResponse> | |
Sam Parr | I think I know what you're talking about | |
Shaan Puri | Okay, so it was started by this French guy. The business is called **Time Left**. | |
Sam Parr | yep I had it on my topics list too | |
Shaan Puri | Okay, so *check this out*. You... I don't know. I don't know how deep you went. Did you go into the backstory, or...? | |
Sam Parr | I know it took a lot longer than it appears | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, exactly. It's a *multiyear "overnight success"*, as they tend to be. Right — you've heard the phrase "10-year overnight success." It's kind of like that.
I want to show you some things about this guy. The first thing is this graph: here's the revenue graph. If you're listening on audio, you should go to YouTube so you can actually see what we're showing, because it's way more fun — and you can also see what we look like.
By the way, **I'm Sean** — this voice is Sean, the Indian guy. **Sam**, talk — you're the white guy. You should talk now. | |
Sam Parr | "It's like they think I would talk like a *white* alpha jock because of the way I look. I talk like an *Indian* nerd, and they think that you would talk like an *Indian* nerd, but you—you talk like a *white* bro, alpha jock." | |
Shaan Puri | Exactly — we need the record to be clear on that. Who's who.
Alright, so **check this out**: this is the **revenue graph**. Already impressive. You can see it kind of starts *super, super flat* and then grows to now over **$1,000,000 a month** that the business is generating. And what does it do? | |
Sam Parr | what what what month did it describe that graph | |
Shaan Puri | Okay, so this is basically: if you start in January of last year, it's like zero. You get to January of this year, and it's still— you know— the ARR [annual recurring revenue] is still under, I don't know, standard care or something. | |
Sam Parr | like that tens of 1,000 maybe a | |
Shaan Puri | As of October–November it's over a $10,000,000 annual run rate. It's crossing $12.5 million. So in 10 months, to go to greater than $10,000,000 in ARR is great. He said it took seven months to reach $1,000,000 and then another seven months to get from $1M to $10M — so, crazy growth.
So what's growing like crazy? What is this business even?
**TimeLift** is a business that just gets people together for dinner. It is a solution for the loneliness epidemic that is everywhere. If you go to their website it just says:
> "Every Wednesday night strangers meet for dinner. Book your seat and meet five strangers over dinner, all matched by our personality algorithm."
Book your seat, and in hundreds of cities every Wednesday people get together for a dinner with a bunch of strangers curated by this app. You pay something like $20‑ish a month to be part of this club — part of this supper club — and every week on Wednesday they'll set up a dinner. Then you go; you pay for the dinner separately while you're there. They book the restaurant, they book the table, you show up, and it's supposed to be a bunch of other people you should find interesting or get along with. At the end, you split the bill. | |
Sam Parr | And they claim the product has an *algorithm* that asks, "Are you logical? Are you more emotional? Are you this? Are you that?" That helps match. | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah—roughly what age are you? Are you, you know, kind of single and looking to mingle? Like, what are you all about? You say you take this little quiz and you do that.
Now, the backstory: I first found it pretty fascinating that this business, which is so simple—a **dinner club with strangers**—is scaling so well. This is not a new idea, obviously... people have been doing this, not even as a business, for a long time.
I remember when I first moved to San Francisco, I used an app called "Let's Lunch." It was the same idea: you would just agree, "Hey, I'm down to get a lunch with a random person who's also in the tech industry." I used it when I first moved there and I knew nobody. I used it to meet some cool people, and it's kind of a hit-or-miss first date without the romance. | |
Sam Parr | "Do you remember **Grouper**? Before that, I loved Grouper. Grouper was my favorite.
It was you and two friends going on a group date with three other ladies. They tell you where to meet, and you have a—you have a blind date: a three-way blind date, I guess, a six-way blind date." | |
Shaan Puri | Right. Okay, so now here's the *backstory* that I find interesting. Let me just get you interested in this guy. I know there's really only one way to get you interested in a guy. Do you know what I'm about to show you? | |
Sam Parr | what's his calves look like | |
Shaan Puri | I'm gonna show you a body transformation | |
Sam Parr | there he is | |
Shaan Puri | "I'm gonna show you what this founder looks like *without his shirt on*. Alright, so not only did he transform his business in **10 months**, I think this is also a **10-month** body transformation, where he went from the skinniest he ever was." | |
Sam Parr | did he have was he sick | |
Shaan Puri | He was trying to run an ultra race, so he got to less than 10% body fat. Then he was like, "Cool — now I'm going to try to become the strongest I could ever be," and in 10 months he kind of transformed his body too. This guy is pretty fascinating.
Before doing all of this, here's his story. He starts out as a nightlife promoter — which is a bit of a pattern (Scott Harrison from *charity: water* had a similar background) — a nightclub promoter in New York. There are several people who have this same sort of background before they make it.
Then he decided to start a media company. The twist was: he was **only going to say good news**, because the news is always bad news — "if it bleeds, it leads." Instead, he wanted to tell uplifting, good-news stories every single day. He grew the business to 90 employees and was acquired by a larger French broadcasting company, going through that whole process. | |
Sam Parr | what was that called | |
Shaan Puri | I think it was called "Buzz"—like "Buzz" something, "Millennium Buzz" or something like that. I don't know the exact name.
He's written about it because they got acquired and merged. They had a **horrible deal structure**, it sounds like: it was a **three-year earnout**, but the way the earnout worked was:
> "Year 1: we're gonna make all these changes and invest in the business.
> Year 2: we're gonna continue with those changes and invest in the business—it's gonna be losing money.
> Year 3: if it hits, if it performs, you get this big payout." | |
Sam Parr | right | |
Shaan Puri | And if by year three we haven't done that thing, you get nothing. He basically— that was too aggressive of a plan, too risky. They did not hit the three‑year plan. It turned into a kind of **messy divorce**: he was ousted by the majority shareholder and basically *walked away with nothing*. It sounds like I don't know the exact details, but it didn't end well for him. I think they ended up settling and he got a little something out of it, but it wasn't what he wanted from the whole thing.
This was after creating, kind of, a video‑first, online‑only news company that was doing hundreds of millions of views a month. He was getting excited that, "hey, we've built something here — that's the future." A traditional company bought them, and they thought "1 + 1 is going to equal 7," right? It sure didn't.
He goes through that experience, gets the settlement, and finally leaves. I think he's got some money, but he has a lot of time, so he decides to travel. This was right when 2020 happened — COVID‑19 [the COVID‑19 pandemic] hit. While everybody else was locked at home, he was traveling solo. He planned, I think, to travel for 30 days solo, and it ended up being 700 days, because COVID happened and he figured, "well, I might as well just kind of travel around to different locations," while I'm boarded up at home. | |
Sam Parr | how old is he | |
Shaan Puri | he's I think 30 years old at the time and so he something like this 30 something years old early thirties he during this time he's posting on social media he starts getting some pushback and people are like dude like there's a pandemic going on I'm stuck at home a lot of people are kinda miserable right now and you're out here posting pictures of you on a beach in australia or scuba diving or doing these like kind of fun exotic solo travel things and so he meets somebody and a friend suggests to him hey you should you should do a little shake up you should have coffee and meet with a 100 strangers do a 100 coffee meetings with strangers so he does and he does he accepts the challenge he does a 100 coffee meetings and something that happened in that changed his life he's meeting with these people and what he realized is that the common denominator amongst 100 strangers was like man what stood out to him was I meet these people and I ask them what they're excited about or what they dream about and their dreams have been snuffed jeff probst at the tribal council has snuffed their torch basically they've forgotten how to dream they've been suffocated by everyday life and they don't really even have like a compelling vision or dream for themselves and so he decides to make his own bucket list and you could see his bucket list on his home page he got a 100 things he wants to do before he dies what's his name I've seen barbier I think is how you say his name french guy and if you go to his blog his daily max you could see a 100 things that are on his bucket list things like swim naked in the ocean number 1 crossed out participate in a protest do a live dj set at a festival you know things like that so he's got this reach 12% body fat he's got this bucket list for himself he decides he's gonna make an app so he says okay I got it I got my new company my new company and this is kind of like idea 1 in 2020 he says I'm going to create a app that lets people create their bucket list so create and share your bucket list so he sets out he draws the wireframes he finds a coder he hires a guy they make the app and people upload thousands of their dreams to this but kinda goes nowhere after that so he says okay strike 1 | |
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Now, back to the show. | |
Shaan Puri | So he says, "Okay, maybe I'll try something different. You know what was the problem with this one? I got people to create a bucket list, but they're not doing anything. What if I connected people over their dreams? It would be like **Tinder for bucket lists**."
He continues: "Now this is 2021 — Year 2. I'm going to make a *dating app that's not dating*. Meaning: you say what your dream is, I say what my dream is. If I swipe right on a dream and both you and I share that dream, it'll connect us over our shared dream and maybe we could actually go and do it together."
So that's aspirational. People message, but they don't actually go do anything. | |
Sam Parr | and this is still under the same all under the same name of time left | |
Shaan Puri | He called it *Time Left* because, while traveling and recharging his batteries after that acquisition and the kind of messy divorce and settlement, he did some math.
He thought, "Okay, I'm 30—no, wait, I forgot, he's 36 years old or something like that, maybe 35." Then he figured, if he's going to live until he's 80, he has about 600 months left in life. He said, "That's my 'time left.'"
He had read that blog post on *Wait But Why* — the "Your Life in Weeks" poster that visualizes the number of weeks you have left. He created that poster, put it on his wall, and every week he would take a black dot and mark out one week gone. He developed an urgency around how much time he really had left and what he wanted to do.
That urgency spurred the bucket-list thing. He wanted other people to realize how little time they have left. He loved that quote — I forgot who said it — but it's: "Every man has two lives, and the second begins when he realizes he only has one."
</FormattedResponse> | |
Sam Parr | Does this stuff inspire you as you're talking about it? I can't decide if I'm, like, *all in* or if the *old man* in me thinks, "That's a lot of work." But I'm pretty sure I'm about 60–70% on the side of, like, "this is inspiring." I need to have a *bucket list*. | |
Shaan Puri | "Yeah, I get what you mean. I saw these kids skateboarding and doing tricks by my house, and I thought, *this is awesome — this is great.* Look at what they're doing; they're having so much fun and just doing their thing.
Then I was kind of out of breath from watching, and I thought, 'Oh, okay. Yeah, I should probably just move along with my days.' You know, it is a lot of work to do." | |
Sam Parr | With stuff, his list is full, though—he's inspired by... He wants to go for a run around Paris. He wants to get his boating license. Some of these aren't crazy, but then he's like, "**I want a world record.**" | |
Shaan Puri | By the way—sick thing for personal lives. I'm going to steal this and put it on my site, which is *"Write your bucket list and start crossing them out publicly."* I think it's great, and he links to the story behind each one once he does it. | |
Sam Parr | it's great | |
Shaan Puri | So anyway, he names the company **Time Left** because he realized he's got about 600 months left in life. He starts doing this bucket-list thing.
App 1: create a bucket list — fail.
App 2: connect people over shared dreams so they can message each other — also fail.
Now it's Year 3. He says, "Okay, here's what we're gonna do: I'm gonna connect two people who want to do the same activity. I'll actually connect you and get you to go do the thing in real life — let me get you off your phone." The idea is to find somebody to do the thing with.
It starts off okay, but then he realizes that women don't feel safe doing one-on-one activities with strangers. This is kind of why **Grouper** worked.
That's 2022 — another year with no traction. In 2023 he says, "Okay, forget the one-on-one. Small groups doing an activity in the city you love," and he gets small groups together. He adds one feature: you upload a photo of who you are so that when other people are trying to create the group they can check you out before they do the thing, trying to make people feel comfortable.
But what you realize, talking to users, is: as soon as you put photos in the app, they thought of it like dating, even though it wasn't a dating app. | |
Sam Parr | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | Right. The people immediately wanted to gravitate toward certain others; they started judging people. It was like, "This is not at all what I wanted to do." So 2023 went by — the third year of no progress.
</FormattedResponse> | |
Sam Parr | but he can't cross off have a winning app on his bucket list you know it's just sitting | |
Shaan Puri | there uncrossed uncrossed 2024 this year finally he hit he realizes okay this company's called time left well I got 9 months of cash left so now cash left is sitting there realizing this doesn't work he had raised $2,000,000 initially back in 2020 for this idea nobody wanted to invest anymore so he said I had an honest conversation with myself and by the way so many success stories start with this I had an honest conversation with myself he says do I want to continue and if I do want to continue more importantly what do I no longer want to continue doing and so he realized he made some rules he goes I want to do an idea that I can launch in 2 weeks or less without any technical team so no co no coders needed and I can launch this thing in 2 weeks number 2 I wanna actually make some money it's been 3 years I've made $0 in the lifetime of this company I wanna make some revenue and he goes 3 I wanna have it be a group thing connecting people over an activity but it's gotta work without photos meaning I can't have it be where people want me to check out the other person to be willing to go do the activity so he comes up with this idea of time left as dinners with strangers so in 3 weeks he launches this thing it's the first time left dinner there's 4 tables of 6 people that he launches with on that wednesday in his city and he makes $110 and at the time he does it with just he makes a typeform so it's just a form you fill out using typeform off the shelf a whatsapp account that's how he coordinated all the dinners and a stripe account for how you pay and he was able to spin that up in 3 weeks and he was doing all the matching manually for 3 months so he himself was the algorithm no code he was just figuring out who should I put together at these dinners that I think will work and then he starts to move it to low code and eventually he's getting 300 people together every wednesday and he makes $20.20 but he does the math he says alright I still don't have a lot of cash left here I'm default debt I'm dying slower than I was before but I'm still gonna die unless I figure out how to do this in a more in a in a more scalable way so he quickly builds a simple app and he makes one shift he goes | |
Sam Parr | does he have any employees | |
Shaan Puri | It's just him and a co-founder. He says, "I'm gonna figure out how to do these without having to go visit the restaurant in person."
What he was doing before was operating in his city and checking out each restaurant himself. He says, "I gotta figure out how to scale this."
So he takes a *leap of faith*. He says, "We're gonna do this without that pre-step. We're just gonna book the restaurant, book the table, and see what happens." | |
Sam Parr | Do they *automatically* use a handful of popular booking platforms, or something like that? | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, you know, OpenTable-type things to book these restaurants. So he does it like that. It works. On that Wednesday he says, "Holy shit — this is gonna work."
So now he starts opening up more cities, not just his city. He's like, "I could do this without geographically being in the place. I was being too precious about that." That was a *sacred cow*, and once I slayed that *sacred cow*... the ceiling for my business, you know, got removed and I could explode this thing.
So now he opens up hundreds of cities. | |
Sam Parr | how are people hearing about it | |
Shaan Puri | Ads — he's advertising it, and people are talking about it organically. He's getting a ton of free press. In fact, he's been written up in **400 free-press outlets** because the narrative fits the *zeitgeist* of today.
People feel too alone; they're too depressed. It fits trends like not getting married, sadness after **COVID-19**, and the rise of incel-related stories. There are all these other stories you can piggyback on and news-jack.
And on top of that, it's just a **feel-good mission**: getting people together in person, not on social media, not on their phones, but actually in real life. | |
Sam Parr | listen to the ad | |
Shaan Puri | it's working | |
Sam Parr | The ad from Facebook said: "Dine with five strangers, all matched by our algorithm, every Wednesday night in your city."
That's all it said. *It's nothing.* | |
Shaan Puri | Very simple. If you go look at their *TikToks*—go look at TikTok content about them—it's really cool; you can see what's going on.
In one year, he's exploded this thing. It's now in 300 cities, and the app is translated into eighteen languages. He has 70 employees who are all ops people organizing thousands of dinners—**18,000 dinners a week** they have to plan. | |
Sam Parr | what | |
Shaan Puri | He did, you know, over $1,000,000 by November. Their IG exploded — they now have 1,000,000 Instagram followers and are written up in 400 articles. The reason why, he says, is because, "I tapped into a simple, universal, multicultural need: people want to get together and they enjoy eating at a restaurant."
I love the way he talks about this. He goes:
> "I realized that **dinner is a technology**. If I wanted to get people together to actually have a good time, dinner is a piece of tech that just works. It makes that whole 'meeting new people' thing just work because we all know how to do it already. It's an activity every single person knows how to do, so there's no skill required. It has a natural flow that we're all familiar with. It has a natural start — you know, beginning, middle, and end. At the very least you're going to break bread and eat good food. At the very best you might actually meet a couple of cool people that you want to have ongoing connection with."
You've met some cool people in your city — how amazing is this dude? How amazing is this business? | |
Sam Parr | This is great. How did he hire—I'm looking at his *jobs page*—how did he hire all these people that fast?
</FormattedResponse> | |
Shaan Puri | He’s — he’s like, “I’m hiring every week. I’m hiring people. I’m interviewing everybody myself.” The job is pretty simple: it’s all ops [operations] and user experience.
He said, “We take the dinner and we try to break it up into moments. A dinner is not a single thing.” As Scott Harrison said on this podcast:
> "It's the moments between the moments that matter."
So you think it’s just about the dinner. Well, break the moments down. There’s the greeting, the sitting, the connecting, initially getting to know each other, the sharing of information and food, the bill, and the awkwardness at the end. He asked, basically, how can we make each one of those steps a little bit better? If we can do that, we can make the user experience better.
“We don’t measure clicks and daily active users,” he said. “We measure… how many people had a great dinner this week.” And that’s the **KPI**. | |
Sam Parr | will this last | |
Shaan Puri | Yes, I think this will last. I think that some ideas just take time — when the time is right, the time is right.
In the same way that *Calm* (the meditation app) went from a fringe behavior—something not a lot of people would do, outside the mainstream—to mainstream. We all had a buddy who meditated, but it wasn't a behavior everybody did. Only when we all got too hooked on technology did the need for *Calm* break through. Suddenly *Calm*, *Headspace*, and these apps became mainstream.
I think this "getting together with strangers" thing will follow a similar path. People are lonelier than ever and more addicted to their phones and technology than ever. Whether it was COVID or other factors that accelerated the need for something like this to exist, I'm a believer in it.
I think this is like the new Meetup.com. I think this is going to scale, and you could build a kind of ritualistic thing. There will be a lot of churn in this business, but it's a huge *TAM* — everybody needs this, and it's inherently viral. You're going to tell people you were doing this. | |
Sam Parr | Well, they're charging now on a *monthly subscription*. It's not going to be a monthly-subscription business, but it's still going to be an awesome company. I think— I think their *branding* is fantastic, too.
</FormattedResponse> | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, exactly. I think this is an *inspirational* company that a lot of people are going to rally behind. You can see why the traction is what it is. | |
Sam Parr | I went and read a bunch of reviews on Reddit. They're **overwhelmingly positive**—people love it. They'll say things like, "We met up; I was so awkward and uncomfortable at first, but we hit it off and it was great."
One reviewer said their dinner went from 7 to 10 p.m. At 10 p.m., there were about eight people at their dinner, so there must have been ten other dinners happening in that city that night. In total, about 70 other people met up afterwards at the after‑party, which was also arranged by **Brian Love**.
People said it was "a little too crowded, but it was awesome." "I got to meet these people; I ended up leaving early, but I had a fantastic time." We have a text group now, and there's even an after‑after party where people were hanging out till 4 a.m. I'm going to do it again.
It sounded like people absolutely loved it. | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, exactly. This is a *big-city problem*. Dude, it's so hard to make friends when you become an adult.
Once you're out of college, you don't really realize this until you leave, but you're like, "Man, my number of new connections that I just get to stumble into per week drops dramatically." You're at home, you know, alone or with a couple of roommates. You have work, which is a static number of coworkers. Then you might go to a bar or some place where people are, but it's not clear that people default to wanting to meet you. It's so different than when you're in school, and I think that—yeah. | |
Sam Parr | but that | |
Shaan Puri | really shocks a lot of people | |
Sam Parr | Men just, like, won't talk to anyone.
I was reading this thread that asked, "What's something that women should know about men that would surprise them?" The top comment was **"Most men never get a compliment."** I thought that was pretty funny.
There was a story about a guy who was with his girlfriend or something, and someone else just randomly said, "They smell nice," or some other random compliment. The guy was very affected. The woman asked, "Why are you like that?" He said, "I haven't had a compliment in, like, eight months—no one said anything nice about me in so long."
So... it's like complimenting should... | |
Shaan Puri | we change the | |
Sam Parr | world right now you look great today | |
Shaan Puri | Should we create—should we create? Yeah. Exact. Thank you.
I love your—love your jacket, love your *Inspector Gadget* outfit. Oh wait, I did it wrong.
Should we just start, like, you know, a… you know, like a **"No November"**? Should we start a new trend? Should we pick a month where it's basically just bros complimenting bros? | |
Sam Parr | yeah yeah | |
Shaan Puri | "And it's like, 'Hey — every day, your job is: you've got to give another guy *just a solid compliment*.'" | |
Sam Parr | yeah we're we're caught up way | |
Shaan Puri | A *one-way flight* to feel good. And that's—that's what that month has: nothing going on. | |
Sam Parr | just just just a bunch of guys being dudes every may | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah — the **March of Men**. It's like, "Here we go: every March, every day, 30 days, gotta give another guy a compliment." | |
Sam Parr | that's actually a great idea | |
Shaan Puri | This is also what I wanted to do. People were hosting these **MFM meetups** in every city. This is kind of what I wanted this to be.
I would love it if we could do this with—if we could basically have [unclear: "time left"] create, like, an **MFM button** or whatever. Or, I don't know, somehow somebody could create this for our listeners.
The idea is: on the **first of every month**, and always on the first of every month, there's a dinner in 100 cities around the world where you're going to meet with five or six other people who listen to the podcast. | |
Sam Parr | We're going to have to call it *more than a nod*, because that's basically my interaction with most every man — it's just a nod. So... are we going to do more than a nod to each other now? Is that it? | |
Shaan Puri | yeah yeah exactly the nod is is pretty effective to be honest this is I see you | |
Sam Parr | yeah it's just a nod | |
Shaan Puri | I see you and I respect you | |
Sam Parr | Yeah. Can I ask you a question about your weekend?
I have a *strong* opinion about something, but I have nothing to do with the industry and you do.
How is it — you are working in the e-commerce world — was **Black Friday**, and I guess **Cyber Monday** still, for you: miserable or awesome? | |
Shaan Puri | Well, for me, now I have a full team in place, so it was awesome. I didn't have to do a thing. I just looked at the app and said, "Wow—that's a great number right there." I was not responsible; I was not on the—it's like the perfect thing: I'm not on the hook for the inputs, but I get the outputs.
To be clear, I sweated this business for three or four years to get to that spot. Before that, I will say it was very stressful. It's stressful in the same way that I don't love birthdays: I don't like forced fun, and I don't like high-expectation events where it's like, you need this to go well. You want it to go well; it seems like it's going well for everybody else because you'll just see screenshots of people crushing it.
I remember in the first couple of years I was so underwhelmed and disappointed by **Black Friday**. That was a combination of me not knowing how to do it, but also when you start, **Black Friday** is basically people who already know about your brand who kind of wait around for discounts and for your brand to come back. For a new brand, you have a very small pool of people who already know and care about you, who want to shop and have been waiting to shop with you for your discounts. So the first couple of years just sucked. Now it's amazing—now I get why they call it **Black Friday**; you know why it's called Black Friday.
</FormattedResponse> | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, let me tell you the background really quick. Basically, in the 1970s, originally *Black Friday* was negative. It was called "Black Friday" because, for some reason, there was a—what was it...—Army versus Navy football game. | |
Shaan Puri | it was it was the the philly police called it black | |
Sam Parr | friday because | |
Shaan Puri | they hated it they hated the friday after thanksgiving | |
Sam Parr | This is the day that all the bad people come into town, and it's just going to be crowded.
Retailers also use the term **"Black Friday"** because they're like, this is when our employees never show up — it's the day after Thanksgiving. Black Friday sucked. Then, in the eighties or nineties, it kind of got shifted to where **"Black Friday"** now means we're going to change it from this:
- *your retail business is in the red* [meaning you lose money all the time]
to this:
- the beginning of the season — the first day of the season — where you're going to **"switch to black"** and you're finally going to make a profit for the quarter. | |
Shaan Puri | Exactly. They flipped it on its head. They turned lemons into lemonade.
Where this was a bad day — “Oh, there’s gonna be a huge rush in the city, everyone’s gonna try to do their shopping at once, it’s gonna create traffic, then there’s gonna be a bunch of drunk people because of the game” — they turned it into this shopping event that retailers now love. | |
Sam Parr | And then in 2005 there was a trade group that included Google, Amazon, and a few other online retailers. They said, "Hey, this Black Friday thing — that's pretty good, but we need our own thing." They came up with *Cyber Monday*, and they collectively agreed to do Cyber Monday together.
Once Amazon got even bigger and more famous, they pushed it forward until Cyber Monday was huge, and now all the other retailers are doing it.
But as an outsider, my opinion — and it's not entirely rooted in data — is that there are numbers showing how discounts affect margins. For example, if you discount something 20% and you only have a 40% gross margin, you have to sell about twice as much. If you discount it 30%, you have to sell roughly three times as much. The stats are pretty crazy about how much more you need to sell for each 10% discount.
From an outsider, I hate Black Friday. I just think it ruins people's brands. To me, everything eventually turns into J.Crew, where I only buy it when they inevitably have their 50% off sale. | |
Shaan Puri | Well, actually, it kind of works the other way: every brand wants to discount but doesn't want to dilute the brand.
Why do you want to discount? You have too much inventory left over, and that's just cash tied up sitting on your shelf. Maybe it's expiring; maybe it's out of season. But it's definitely cash that's tied up in inventory. So, every brand is not perfect with inventory—that's the first problem.
The second is, if you want to *"juice your numbers"*, you would love to have more revenue and more profit if you could. The problem is, if you just start discounting, you sort of train people to shop only with discounts.
Like you said, the beauty of **Black Friday** is it gives every brand air cover. It says, "Alright, we're all going to do it. I'm not less of a premium brand because I'm doing this, right? I'm going to join in."
So you get the middle set of brands. In every category you'll have the low end that are always trying to compete on price—always trying to lower the price, always trying to discount; they're known as discount brands. Then you have the mid-tier, which is trying to find that balance: still a value purchase but maintaining some brand premium. | |
Sam Parr | would you say that's like a that's like a j crew | |
Shaan Puri | I don't shop **J.Crew**, so I couldn't tell you anything about J.Crew. But that's like **Nike**, for example.
**Nike** is not **Louis Vuitton** — it's not truly luxury or scarce. But it's also not trying to be **32 Degrees**, you know, the Costco athleisure wear brand.
So you have that middle group. That middle group wants to participate in **Black Friday** because it gives them "air cover" to offer discounts like the cheap brands without being seen as a desperate, cheap brand — because it's like, "well, today is the day we all do it." I think it's really important for them.
Then you have the luxury brands, who can go the other way and say "0% off." In fact, "it's 10% more expensive today," because they're going to use this as a branding moment. They're not going to sell high volume anyway, so they use this as a moment to reinforce their position as luxury. So it kind of works for everybody. | |
Sam Parr | "I think I'll prefer the **last one**. I like it — I would hate to have to do this.
I've been friends with you, and I've been friends with, you know, dozens of other people who have startups in the *e-commerce* space. Some brands are not established yet; some are established, but their Fridays are miserable. It seems like their entire year is kind of made or broken by these two weeks. Does that seem accurate?" | |
Shaan Puri | It is for a lot of people. It's not—that's not the case for us.
I saw somebody who does **50%** of their revenue for the year in this like an eight-week sprint, or a six-week sprint, between Black Friday—the start of the early Black Friday sales—to the Christmas shipping cutoff.
By the way, can I give you two funny things? One is: Jack Butcher used to do this great **"reverse Black Friday"** sale. Do you remember this? | |
Sam Parr | he always did some crazy stuff he's great man he's an artist what did what what which one are you doing | |
Shaan Puri | Artist — he knows that kind of positioning. **Positioning** is all counter-positioning, meaning you position yourself relative to the position of other things. That's how positioning works: it's a relative exercise. He gets that.
So what he did was — I think he had a course or something like that — and he would do a **"reverse Black Friday"** sale. He would start the price at a certain point, and then the prices would go up in the two weeks leading to Black Friday. Every day the prices would go up, so the message was, "If you want to buy it, buy it now," because over the next two weeks prices will increase every single day.
It wasn't even that effective of a sales tactic, but rather than do nothing or dilute his brand, he decided to use it as a *branding moment*, which I thought was cool.
We also talked about — I don't know if it was **Brooklinen** who started this — but it was the old "leaked email" tactic. | |
Sam Parr | well I stole I I did it and I stole it from chubby's did they also steal from brooklinen I | |
Shaan Puri | I think they also stole it. I've seen a ton of people do this same trend, but we talked about it on the pod [podcast]. | |
Sam Parr | which is the beneath brooklinen | |
Shaan Puri | But **most consumers don't know**. They don't care. They have no idea—they fall for it, right?
Which is this: you send an email out to your user base that looks like it was supposed to be an internal email where someone on the marketing team says, "Hey, just doing the testing—final testing for Black Friday. I have it, you know, the code is X. Go test it out and see if it works." Then you send a follow-up: "Oh my God, whoops—that was not meant to send to everybody, but we're gonna honor it."
"They're not fired. Yeah, or, you know, whatever—we'll deal with Jacob's mess up internally. But, you know, whatever—have at it. We're gonna leave it up for 24 hours."
People go crazy because they feel like they got access to a **leaked discount code**, and it works. By the way, I did that too; it was super effective. | |
Sam Parr | I did it in 2019, right before we sold — about a few months before we sold. I did it in '19, and we did it for **Trends.co**, which was a digital product. It was like the best **Black Friday** deal ever. I didn't have to fulfill anything, and it was 100% profit. I don't remember exactly, but we made something like $1,000,000 in profit in one day.
</FormattedResponse> | |
Shaan Puri | from that email so you love black friday what the hell are you talking about | |
Sam Parr | Well, I guess... if I were to own a brand now—like a, particularly—I think *[unclear: "by friday"]* is mostly clothing or furniture, something like a normal retailer. I don't think I would do it, but I would be tempted. | |
Shaan Puri | You're like those people who live in a gated community with 12-foot fences around their house and then want, like, an *open border*. It's like, "Bro, your house doesn't even have an open border — what are you talking about?"
It's like, "Oh, I hate Black Friday," after you totally leaned into Black Friday and did the, like, "yeah." | |
Sam Parr | once I got | |
Shaan Puri | rid of all of them | |
Sam Parr | I was like yeah exactly | |
Shaan Puri | it's dumping beneath me now | |
Sam Parr | Yeah. Oh—*you used to do that.*
Yeah, no. It's... I do.
Did you buy anything yesterday? | |
Shaan Puri | No, and by the way, I found it so funny. There's a great meme that goes like:
> "Thursday, everybody's like, 'I'm so thankful for everything that I have. I just feel so full. My cup is so full with all the love and everything in my life. My life is so, so full. I'm so thankful for everything — so grateful.'"
And then, *Friday*, you're like, "I need more. Shit, I don't have any. I don't have anything. I need — how much stuff do I need right now that I don't have?"
It's like literally the clock strikes 12 and everybody's *attitude flips*. | |
Sam Parr | "Dude, you wanna do it? Alright — you were talking about challenges. How about this challenge: what if you try to go one week (so seven days) without spending a cent on a consumable? **Mortgage or rent is okay.** Daycare is okay. But things like coffee and food — no.
[Transcript ends abruptly with 'no it has' — original appears incomplete.]" | |
Shaan Puri | to be like out | |
Sam Parr | **You can't eat out.** You know, you can't eat out. It's just like what you bought the week before at the grocery store. You think you can go seven days without spending a cent, so you can't buy anything extra. | |
Shaan Puri | can I absolutely will I absolutely not | |
Sam Parr | I think I'm down. I want to do that as the **MFM challenge**.
We—you know—do a whole week of not buying anything. They do, you know... look, people do fasts. We gotta do a **money fast**. | |
Shaan Puri | "I'll tell you what I wanted to do that you're not — I'll tell you where I'm gonna get your butt to clench. I was pretty inspired by **Burning Man** and everybody... you've never gone to Burning Man?"
</FormattedResponse> | |
Sam Parr | man have you | |
Shaan Puri | no but I'm just it's like it's like a movie it's based on a true story so everybody if you live in san francisco people will make you nauseous telling you how amazing burning man is and what they're trying to do is convince me to go but what they don't know about me is I'm like a cat where the more you try to pet me the further I run away so you telling me to do something only makes it less cool in my books and so by this at a certain? I was like I'm definitely just not going why because I'm stubborn you're dug in I I am what the what the french call dug in and but I was like oh what's cool about it and I was like I do like the idea of like you go to this deserted place you basically build a town it's all barter and free love and you know all that good stuff and then they burn this thing at the end and it's sort of symbolic in this way and I thought what's my version of that and I came up with this idea and I pitched out at this dinner and this this guy was like that so here was the idea I go we should do a money burn I was like so much of our life is based around money and wanting money and this attachment to money and people have unhealthy relationships with money and money has this power over you and I felt it on me money has a power over me it gets me to do what I don't wanna do sometimes it gets me to act in ways that are I'm ashamed of sometimes it gets me to it just takes up so much of my mind space that it really shouldn't that that portion of my mind could be used on other things but but money has this power over me I go you know what we should do once a year we should do this thing where you take some amount of money then for everybody it's different you come with an envelope and it's an amount of money that hurts you to burn oh my god and we burn it and I was like think of a how it would feel b what it represents c how polarizing and how angry this would make people how much how much news and buzz this would create and how much of a conversation this could create I go imagine if the the sort of like tech head up their ass you know elites in san francisco do the the most obnoxious thing possible they go and they literally light money on fire and they say they're doing it for this reason but it's gonna piss off a bunch of other people it's gonna inspire a bunch of people I was like this is actually a tremendous idea and my friend was like dude this is one of the best ideas you've ever had I'm hooked | |
Sam Parr | Who— which friend said, "This is a good idea"? I have to make sure I **never** listen to their opinion ever again. | |
Shaan Puri | I'm not—I'm not going to say their name because I don't want to out them on this. But they were like... and for years, every year, they text me the same thing: **"When are we doing the money burn?"**
I don't do it because I literally already feel anxiety over the idea of taking, I don't know, **$7,000**, and just burning it. Just some amount of money that would feel horrible to burn.
*What is that minimum charge?* | |
Sam Parr | You're gonna say that you're willing to burn $7, but I'm just saying—don't spend, like, $150 in one week on coffee. | |
Shaan Puri | Well, because I think it's like—if I'm gonna do it, might as well do the more dramatic, impactful version of it. You know what I mean? How good of a story is it if I'm like, "Yeah, and then for one week I didn't drink coffee outside the house"? Like, nobody gives a shit, right. It's like... okay. It's like doing a fast where you still eat sandwiches—well, that's not really that impressive.
So if I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna do something that makes for a better story than your *consumables fast*, which is not catchy, not buzzworthy, and not bragworthy. | |
Sam Parr | yeah I mean that sounds like a horrible idea but I think you should do it I I would love | |
Shaan Puri | to watch there was the money burn would you do it | |
Sam Parr | "No, but I would love to watch you do it. What?" | |
Shaan Puri | yeah I'm still too scared to do it alright let's move on | |
Sam Parr | you wanna do one more topic | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, by the way, I did a great ChatGPT prompt about Black Friday. Just want to share this — a **prompt hack**.
So I go to ChatGPT and I’m like, “Hey, tell me about Black Friday: the origin and anything interesting,” blah blah blah. Then it mentioned the Philadelphia Police Department did something, right? So me and you both did the same thing. Here’s the prompt hack.
I then asked about the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade: “Tell me about the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade as if you were Malcolm Gladwell teaching me about it. What would he say?” I just use Malcolm Gladwell as this guy who gets interested in things we all overlook or the things we’ve already accepted, and then turns them into a bigger story.
It goes — so it becomes a tipping point for American consumer culture. It talks about how the Macy’s parade was started by an immigrant and how employees were dressing up almost like clowns, cowboys, and knights. They borrowed live animals. Malcolm would say, “This is how all great movements began: messy, grassroots, and deeply personal.”
Then it talks about each symbol — for example, the balloons, and why the balloons were a genius idea compared to live animals. Using “How Malcolm Gladwell would explain X” (or switching out Malcolm Gladwell for someone like Richard Feynman — “How would he explain this scientific topic?”) is such a **prompt hack** for ChatGPT. It makes ChatGPT talk to you in a different way. | |
Sam Parr | Our friend **Sahil** had a tweet. He said, "What's the best **one-shot prompt** that you've made in the last 30 days? It could be for a recipe, a front-end developer, or image generation. The more specific the better. The best answer gets **$1,000**."
It's all these pretty good prompts that people have submitted that were amazing. The simple one I actually liked was: "Based off of everything that you know about me, suggest 3 to 5 books that you think I'd enjoy reading." | |
Shaan Puri | it | |
Sam Parr | That was pretty good, and I went and did that. It suggested a book that I'm going to start reading.
Another one was:
> "You are a lawyer that specializes in working with startups. Please review this legal document that was sent to you by your client and summarize each section in plain English and determine if that's good or bad for me."
That's actually a pretty good one, too, but there's... | |
Shaan Puri | This is good — today has been chaos. Ask me questions to help me figure out what to do next. **Don't stop asking until you are fully sure you have all of the context of my situation and can generate an actionable plan for me.**
I use ChatGPT this way too. I often tell ChatGPT to ask me questions. For example:
> "Say: 'Your role is this. I'm trying to figure out X. I don't know where to start — start asking me questions and don't stop until you feel like you have enough necessary information to give me useful advice.'"
I keep saying, "Yeah, ask me more questions." I'll answer parts of their questions along the way. It's such a useful thinking tool this way versus just searching and getting an answer.
If you ask, "How should I do X?" you'll get a generic answer. But if you say, "Ask me the questions you would need if you were my coach who has tons of experience in this subject, in order to get me to figure out the answer," it forces you to think about it better.
</FormattedResponse> | |
Sam Parr | Are there deep questions? It could be marriage advice, or it could be "What do I do with my life?" advice. Or "I'm struggling with this person — help me solve it." Things like that. | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, because any of those personal things—I’ve used it [the AI] for tax matters. If you ask it a tax or legal question, it’ll give you a generic answer, but there’s **high risk**. It doesn’t have all your context, because you don’t know how to give it everything it needs. So it just gives you a general answer, which could be totally misleading for tax or legal issues.
Instead, I say: “Here’s my situation—ask me the questions you would need to know if you were my lawyer.” Then it asks me the questions and gets that context. Now I say, “Give me an informed answer based on what I just told you.” Then it can say, “Well, you could do X, but since you said you’re incorporated here...” and it can give you a smarter answer that way. | |
Sam Parr | Oh, that's pretty good. Have you used it for any other prompts that are helping you solve, like, life problems—where it's like a *therapist* would help guide you, or like an *executive coach*?
</FormattedResponse> | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, I use it. I tell it it's my coach, or it's my therapist, or it's my strategist, or it's my analyst. Then I'll either ask it the questions or I'll tell it to ask me the questions.
By the way, that's one of the useful things about **ChatGPT**: tell it the role upfront. The prompt structure that works is **role**, **goal**, and then **context**.
So you go role. You say:
> "You are my research assistant. Your job is to find examples that support the ideas that I'm going to present to you."
Then the goal:
> "I'm trying to write a really persuasive blog post about X, so I need to come up with great examples and counterexamples."
And then you give it the context — the context is *blah blah blah*. Then it knows the role, it knows the goal, and it has the context in order to actually do the job. | |
Sam Parr | dude that's amazing I love chatgpt | |
Shaan Puri | that's why I got my ai tutor every every week to teach me how to actually use these tools better | |
Sam Parr | I have a friend who works at OpenAI. Apparently he was able to sell some of his shares, and he said:
"Do you remember when I told you I was starting to work there and I told you, like, if things go well how much money I think I could make? Add a 0 to that."
That's how— and that's just a percentage of the shares that he sold to achieve that number. | |
Shaan Puri | Wait—can you say, *roughly*, the level of seniority of this person, the amount of money they made, and *roughly* what time?
</FormattedResponse> | |
Sam Parr | I'm going to be very vague on purpose. Let's say they've worked there for **2–3 years**.
According to the news—"Business Insider" did an article—they said the average all-in pay was about **$800,000**. So if you're making **$800,000** (three years ago), let's say that's **$400,000** cash and **$400,000** equity. That means you're expecting **$400,000** a year in equity.
I don't know how much their value has gone up in 3 years, but I think **10x**. So if that **$400,000** a year in equity multiplied by 10, you're now at **$4,000,000** a year in equity. If you've been there for 3 years, that's **$12,000,000**.
Nice—that's crazy, right? And that's not even all your shares, because they're known for paying people even more now that there are more competitors. | |
Shaan Puri | "You *didn't even invent artificial intelligence*, right? You didn't even have to do the incredible thing at that company in order to do that. You did good work, and I mean this in a good way — you didn't have to pull off a miracle in order to get incredibly wealthy." | |
Sam Parr | and you are like the 1,000th employee like | |
Shaan Puri | Which is why people should listen to our "Sarah's List" episodes. Whether you believe the companies we picked are right or not, you should listen.
If you're going to take a job, might as well take a job on a *rocket ship*, right? Might as well take a job where your equity is going to appreciate at an absurd rate or has a realistic chance to do so. The problem is, most people have no ability to assess that. | |
Sam Parr | And it's not always obvious... For example, I think **OpenAI** raised money at a **$120 million** valuation recently. Is that right? | |
Shaan Puri | 120,000,000,000 | |
Sam Parr | A hundred—sorry, **120 billion**. I would imagine the majority of people listening to this are saying, "that's outrageous."
But in five years there's definitely a world where we look back and say, "that was a steal—how did I not put my whole life savings into that?" There's a world where that's definitely a possibility.
</FormattedResponse> | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, yeah. There's still a **10x** jump from here for OpenAI. OpenAI could have a legitimate, realistic chance of becoming a **$1 trillion** company. | |
Sam Parr | I think | |
Shaan Puri | you can only say about a handful of companies | |
Sam Parr | I was listening to this thing about **Facebook**, and this guy was talking about working there. He said, "When I joined it was worth **$78,000,000,000**, and I thought, 'Is this peak? I'm selling everything. I've got to get out.'"
Facebook is now worth **$1,500,000,000,000,000**. These numbers are really hard to comprehend. I mean, have you ever thought about **$1,000,000,000,000**? How much is it? | |
Shaan Puri | no honestly I haven't a | |
Sam Parr | "$1,000,000,000,000 is $1,000,000,000. That is, like, an *insane* number." | |
Shaan Puri | they should call it that they should call it 1,000,000,000 and not even 1,000,000,000,000 trillion actually doesn't even do it justice | |
Sam Parr | that's so and and you know what in about 5% | |
Shaan Puri | is that even right is it a 1,000,000,000 or is it a 100,000,000,000 no it's a 1,000,000,000 | |
Sam Parr | It's a **1,000,000,000** [one billion]. Is that *insane*? Is that *insane*? That's *insane*. Not only is that *insane*, there's a world where, in 10—no, for sure 20 years, a human being is worth that. Because I think, how much is Elon Musk worth now? | |
Shaan Puri | 200 200,000,000,000 | |
Sam Parr | So if he just has a **7% annual growth rate**, that's gonna double in 10 years and then double again. So you're looking at **800 billion**, like—it's just so much money: **1,000,000,000** [one billion]. | |
Shaan Puri | He's the betting favorite to become the world's *first* trillionaire. That is... so, which would— I mean, I think he said that he thinks Putin might already be that, or he said that he's the richest man, but he's not on any of the lists. | |
Sam Parr | So, that would be like — let's say you're comparing two amounts. If you divide $100,000,000 by $100,000, that's equivalent to the ratio between a **trillionaire** and a **billionaire**.
In other words, a trillionaire to a billionaire is the same thing as a **$100 million** person to a **$100 thousand** person. Does that make sense? Yeah — that's insane, right?
So, a $100 million person versus someone worth $100,000: they're not in the same ballpark. Their lifestyles are drastically different. To a billionaire — to a trillionaire — that's how different it is. | |
Shaan Puri | "It makes a billionaire look just like a six-figure W-2 employee." | |
Sam Parr | Like one bad medical bill could knock you out. Or it's like—you still use Wow airline and you only did it because you got the voucher for $250 round trip. It's ridiculous; I was thinking about that math. It's crazy.
The reason I was thinking about it is because Warren Buffett just did this big speech or this big letter. He's such a good writer. He wrote, "Father Time always wins." He said Father Time "is a mean son of a bitch" and that he's a real fickle guy.
He said Father Time took my wife Susie before me. Our plan all along was based on the opposite assumption—because, you know, he eats horribly—we assumed I was going to die first. So the plan was that it was her job to give away all the money. Unfortunately, she died.
We also gave money to our children. When Susie died, they each got $10,000,000 ($10 million). Warren Buffett is currently worth $150,000,000,000 ($150 billion), so $10,000,000 is nothing. Now it's their job, when I die, to give away the money. I don't think they're going to live long enough to be able to give away this much money.
As for future generations, I don't know them as well as my current kids. I trust my current kids, but it's hard to say about my future generations. They have this monumental task to give away all of this money. If they don't, it has to go to this foundation where everyone has to vote on it. This way, each of the children as well as the grandchildren have an excuse to say something like, "Well, my brother doesn't think that's a good investment, so I'm sorry—I gotta pass on you."
So he wrote this letter explaining a bunch of tips and tricks. He's like, "Even if you're rich or you're wealthy, my opinion is you should discuss your will with your children before you die. It's a great way to bring the family together." And he also says... | |
Shaan Puri | that's so funny funny by the way isn't it funny that a will is like the surprise | |
Sam Parr | it is weird it is weird it's like oh | |
Shaan Puri | let's open up the time capsule see what was in it like why is it a surprise that doesn't even make | |
Sam Parr | Since, dude, there are so many issues with **wills** that I've learned about because we're setting up an estate. For example, a lot of people—and he talks about this; I've read about it constantly—I know friends whose wills aren't equal, particularly affecting women.
The **Vanderbilts** did this where the women get $400,000 and the men each get $10,000,000, and it creates all this anger among siblings which ruins families. He talks about that in his letter, and so it was a really good letter that he just released last week about how he's... | |
Shaan Puri | didn't he sign the like giving pledge though | |
Sam Parr | Right. Yeah, but he pledged — I don't think he pledged a percentage. I think he pledged an amount that he said in the letter, and he's like, "But the amount is now huge, so I need to give more." And so, yeah, he's giving it. | |
Shaan Puri | All in all, **99%** of my wealth will go to philanthropy during my lifetime or at death. Maybe it's just that the **1%** is now huge. Is that what this is? Is that the issue? | |
Sam Parr | I didn't understand. Well, I didn't understand because in the letter it was like, "I am now gifting **150,000 shares of Berkshire Hathaway**."
Previously we did this, but now we need to give more than that. So he didn't reference the **Giving Pledge**. It was an absolute amount, not a percentage amount — other than saying he gave each of his kids **$10,000,000**, and he's like, "That's all I gave them." | |
Shaan Puri | So he's selling these gifts. "I'm making today reduced my holdings of Berkshire shares to **206,000**, a **56%** decrease since my 2006 pledge." So he's cutting it in half. And so how much is that—**206,000** shares?
</FormattedResponse> | |
Sam Parr | I think it's a $1,500,000,000 that he just gave away | |
Shaan Puri | "I think it's more... dude, how—how much? **Berkshire A stock** [Berkshire Hathaway Class A stock] is $700 a share. So $700 a share times 250,000, just to use round numbers, is almost... oh, sorry, wait." | |
Sam Parr | 7 100,000,000 did my calculator | |
Shaan Puri | like yeah how many commas is this that's 200 almost 200,000,000,000 | |
Sam Parr | oh yeah well that's that's a lot of money | |
Shaan Puri | what's happening the. | |
Sam Parr | The numbers are so grand that it's frankly incredibly hard to comprehend. But basically, he's making the **largest gifts of all time**. | |
Shaan Puri | "I can't believe we just agreed to do public math. It's like we only have two rules here:
1. **Don't get canceled.**
2. **Don't embarrass yourself by doing public math.**
And we did it. Yeah." | |
Sam Parr | We did it a bunch of times, *frankly*. But, *dude*, that's—it's a good article, right? You gotta... you'll have to read that, yeah. | |
Shaan Puri | I'm gonna read this thing | |
Sam Parr | He's talking about giving away **$150,000,000,000** [150 billion dollars], but he's doing it in a way we can easily understand: by saying, "Everyone should read their will with their children before they die." | |
Shaan Puri | "Dude, Buffett doing anything—I'm in. I'm so in on Buffett telling any story or talking about any subject of his liking. He is an absolute **blank check** of attention from me, right? Yes." | |
Sam Parr | yes | |
Shaan Puri | Bill Simmons had this thing he coined once called the **"Tyson Zone"** about Mike Tyson. The Tyson Zone is when somebody reaches a level of crazy that someone could tell you anything about Mike Tyson and you would believe it.
For example: if it was, "Mike Tyson got arrested because he's been eating sharks every morning" — you'd be like, "Fuck, that's crazy." He bit an ear; he's going to jail. There's no story that's out of bounds on Mike Tyson.
I feel like the **"Buffett Zone"** is basically someone who has my *undivided attention* at will, whenever he wants it, for however long. If he's like, "I'm doing a 16‑hour livestream," I'd be like, "Okay, well, I guess I better get a comfy chair because I'm gonna be here for 16 hours today." There is nothing Warren Buffett could do that I would not be interested in. If he was just like, "I'm gonna livestream myself doing ASMR, eating soup," I'd be like, "Alright, I'm in." | |
Sam Parr | I'm going to start just attributing facts and stats to him. Well, you know what Buffett says—he says... | |
Shaan Puri | yeah buffett says is the the new harvard study | |
Sam Parr | yeah right | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, there was a study at *Harvard* to support whatever. I'd like to make—and similarly, you know, *Buffett* once said, "x." | |
Sam Parr | "Oh—really quick: can you tell me if this is true? Is this **Enron** thing a joke?" | |
Shaan Puri | I think it's real but I'm not sure | |
Sam Parr | alright | |
Shaan Puri | **Which is — I hope it's a joke.** What is it? What's the story? Someone bought Enron and is relaunching it as a crypto token. It's worse than a bad Silicon Valley plot. | |
Sam Parr | I don't know if the story is out, but the Twitter handle "Enron" — which, if you are under the age of 28, you probably don't even remember — Enron is, like... it's... | |
Shaan Puri | a t x for oil | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, it was like an oil/energy company in the 1990s that was one of the biggest companies in the world. Then, within a month's time, it went bankrupt. It turns out the executives had all committed fraud; a bunch of them even killed themselves before they got sentenced, and a lot of them went to prison. Whatever — horrible.
On Twitter, somebody is now tweeting from the **Enron** Twitter handle with their logo saying, "We're back," and they are talking about their new decentralized product. No one online knows whether this is real or not. But it's a perfect way to say "fuck you" to the crypto crowd, because that's basically what they're doing. They're just sitting in a room like, "Should we name our new crypto scam after a scam?" ... "Do wrongs make a right?" It's like... | |
Shaan Puri | When a rapper samples an old song and they're like, "Yeah, it's like, it's like *a new fraud sampling an old fraud*." | |
Sam Parr | yeah they're remixing crime | |
Shaan Puri | Dude, can I just give you one *rant* real quick? I was watching this video on YouTube called "The Elon Musk Learning Method." I'm like, "Alright — click." | |
Sam Parr | that's like another warren buffett says | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, exactly. Elon explaining how he does this, or some backstory about Elon. But one thing he says in it — which struck me — is obvious, yet the implications really slapped me in the face.
> "People say we have to give people better access to education. That could not be further from the truth. You can literally learn anything. Everything you want to learn is available online at a world-class level for free to anyone who has an internet connection, which is almost everyone."
He's basically saying there is **no lack of access to education**. It's so true. If I wanted to—say, I wish I could have gone to Harvard—just Google it. Watch every Harvard lecture; it's online. You could get a Harvard computer science education today for free, in your underwear at home, and nobody does it. And that's the thing—I'm not doing it. | |
Sam Parr | I spent hours this weekend learning how different magic tricks were done on YouTube. *I can't be fooled.* | |
Shaan Puri | oh not even learning how to do them no just learning how they're done | |
Sam Parr | I just needed to confirm that david blaine was just a human | |
Shaan Puri | yeah dude when that show came out magician's greatest secrets revealed do you remember that | |
Sam Parr | just so pissed | |
Shaan Puri | I remember literally thinking to myself: "**TNT**, you sure do know drama—this is an amazing premise."
They were like, "This magician has to wear this mask because if his peers in the magic industry knew what he was about to tell you..." | |
Sam Parr | they're gonna kill him | |
Shaan Puri | He would be killed, ostracized. He could never show his face in a magic room again.
I was like, "Oh holy shit." "Mom! Mom, where's the remote?" It was like pre-recording.
I got a notebook out and I was like, "Oh my God, how do they do it?" And he just showed you every magic trick and how they do it. | |
Sam Parr | that's the greatest | |
Shaan Puri | that's the greatest smartest right this is absolute greatest | |
Sam Parr | "That's what I do on YouTube. You're telling me he didn't actually bite that quarter in half?" | |
Shaan Puri | oh it's so insane | |
Sam Parr | what were you saying about elon though no | |
Shaan Puri | it doesn't matter that's the pod | |
Sam Parr | alright that's it |