Ideas That Sound Illegal (But Print Money Anyway)

- November 26, 2025 (4 months ago) • 01:00:24

Transcript

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:00	Shaan Puri	"We call you the most interesting man in tech, and I stand by it. One of the reasons you're great is that you made money in all these random ways that I wouldn't have even thought of. You've got a $450 million fund down."
00:12	Sam Parr	He also started Thistle.
00:13	Shaan Puri	A food delivery business that's doing over $100 million a year. </FormattedResponse>
00:16	Sam Parr	You're in SF [San Francisco], running around like rich-people weirdos. What's hot?</FormattedResponse>
00:19	Sheel Mohnot	"What are the kids into? Everyone is on peptides, and everyone's got their dealer."
00:25	Shaan Puri	I can't say who was doing this, but on the pitch I was like, "So how do you plan to be legit with this whole thing?" He basically pulls up a picture — it's the co‑founder with Trump and Kennedy — and says, "Yeah, we're pretty sure we're going to be able to get some things through."
00:40	Sam Parr	Say it with me: "crony capitalism."
00:42	Sheel Mohnot	One of my best friends is completely jacked. He does not really work out—he does EMS [electrical muscle stimulation].</FormattedResponse>
00:49	Shaan Puri	"It's going to go viral because it's going to be hated and loved at the same time, which is what you need."
00:54	Sam Parr	"Dude, I'd rather take drugs."
00:55	Shaan Puri	This is the only podcast where you're going to get AI, a Triple H reference from wrestling. I mean, the range is incredible.
01:01	Sheel Mohnot	We're gonna get canceled for this episode.
01:09	Shaan Puri	"So, one of the reasons you're great is because you made money in all these random ways that I wouldn't have even thought to. You created a domain-auction thing and made millions of dollars that way. I think you did, like, a FeeFighters thing—yeah, yeah—with card FeeFighters [unclear]."
01:24	Sheel Mohnot	Processing. Yeah.</FormattedResponse>
01:25	Shaan Puri	Credit card processing. You've got a $450,000,000 fund down. You're probably—if anything is in fintech—I go to you as basically like, "Hey, gut check: is this smart or is this dumb?" Because it's easy to fool me; it's hard to fool you.
01:36	Sam Parr	He also started Thistle.
01:38	Shaan Puri	"Yep. A food-delivery business that's doing over $100,000,000 a year. So, all these different spaces. The guy got married in the Metaverse at a taco... about whatever the hell that means. We call you the most interesting man in tech, and I stand by it. I have yet to meet a more interesting man in tech. Welcome, Shield, back for round three or four."
01:54	Sheel Mohnot	So happy to be back. Also, I gotta tell you — since the last time I was on, so many things have happened as a result of me being on MFM. I was hiring a chief of staff and a bunch of people applied. One person applied who ultimately got the job. My current chief of staff is a huge fan of MFM. She was debating leaving her previous position, which was paying her a lot more money, and then she was like, "Fuck it — I got the opportunity to work with this guy who was on MFM, I'm gonna take it." So she joined because of MFM. That's a lot.
02:30	Sam Parr	That's a lot of pressure for you. I hate when people say that. When they're gonna—like, they're like, "I'm willing to take this big pay cut to work for you." I'm like, "It's a lot." </FormattedResponse>
02:36	Sheel Mohnot	Of pressure. Last time I was on, I talked about wanting to get better at photography and video with AI, and this guy Jacob reached out. He was like, "I can help you," and we went out for hours in New York shooting. He showed me all this cool stuff. I mean, your audience must be the nicest people out there. Recently I went back and looked at the YouTube comments—usually a cesspool—but you guys are so nice. Everybody that listens to your podcast is super kind. Nobody was like, "That guy has a big nose," or whatever people would say in YouTube comments. Everyone was just talking me up and talking you guys up. It's great.
03:22	Shaan Puri	Ari, the bots are working. Keep—yeah, keep paying them. Yeah. Alright, so we wanted to brainstorm with you. We asked you to bring some ideas — businesses that you think are interesting or would be cool to start. I think we said $10,000,000 ideas, which I don't even really know what that means, but here we are. She brought five ideas. Let's run through some of the ideas, and then I want to talk about some. Oh, actually — wait. Before we go to the ideas, you had a great thing on: there's this idea of this 50-year mortgage, and you're my finance guy, you're my fintech guy. Yeah, 50-year mortgage. Trump is like, "you know what, more years the better." Is this a good idea or a bad idea? Wait… do you
03:55	Sam Parr	Guys, give me context. I don't really follow the news, so... I mean, Trump—sure.
03:59	Sheel Mohnot	So, right now a 30-year mortgage is generally the maximum in the United States. You pay off a home over 30 years. Trump wants to address the affordability crisis, which is a real problem, and said we should "extend mortgages to 50 years" — so you would have 50 years to pay it off instead of 30. I think it's a terrible idea because basically what happens is you give people more money, so the monthly amount they pay goes down a little bit. But actually, you're not earning equity in the home. The average length of time that somebody our age stays in their home is relatively low, and by that time they'll have no equity in the home — or almost no equity. </FormattedResponse>
04:40	Sam Parr	I think the average person spends something like 6 or 7 years. Right now, that's not a lot.
04:45	Sheel Mohnot	Yeah, I think that's right — six and a half years, and then on...
04:47	Sam Parr	A thirty-year mortgage. I think the way it's set up right now, something like the first fifteen years is just interest. Is that right?
04:53	Sheel Mohnot	It's not just interest—you're not earning that much equity. So here you'd be earning less. The thing is, switching from a 30- to a 50-year mortgage doesn't change the payments that much. The real problem is the thirty-year mortgage kind of worked well for an American back then: you bought a house in your upper twenties, then you retired by 60 and owned your home outright. Even today, when people retire, the median American has almost 80% of their net worth in the equity of their home. </FormattedResponse>
05:32	Shaan Puri	Yeah — your home is your retirement plan, right?
05:34	Sheel Mohnot	Your home is your retirement plan. Part of that is, for Americans, you can't spend it. If you could spend it, you would spend that money, but because it's tied up in your home you can't. I don't think the 50-year mortgage really solves anything. Actually, what it probably does is drive asset prices higher. Japan did this in the 1980s. They had a bunch of problems—interest rates were zero and asset prices went through the roof. At one point, a single property in Tokyo was worth more than all of the real estate in California; it was an insane bubble. Part of that was they extended mortgage terms to 50 years, and actually some people got 100-year mortgages. Your grandkids are on the hook for the home that you buy, and asset prices went through the roof. Leverage is nasty when it collapses. When prices drop a little bit, you're pretty screwed. Home prices have actually gone down so much that they're still half of what they were in 1989.
06:36	Shaan Puri	In Japan. In Japan.
06:38	Sheel Mohnot	Yeah — in Tokyo and Spain.
06:39	Shaan Puri	Did you say one property was worth more than all?</FormattedResponse>
06:42	Sheel Mohnot	Okay, so it was the land value under the Imperial Palace. That's about half a square mile of space in Tokyo.
06:55	Shaan Puri	So, okay—maybe a bad idea. From what I understand, when rates drop here, basically the sellers just raise the price because they're like, "You're buying — not really looking at the whole price. It's more like, 'What do I owe per month and what can I qualify for?'" If my monthly payment is X, I can afford that.
07:14	Sheel Mohnot	Yeah.
07:14	Shaan Puri	Exactly. So what happens is when your monthly payment goes down—whether it's because you stretch the payments over 50 years or the rates go down—the sellers can just justify a higher price. It doesn't affect anything; you just end up paying more. I think in a 30-year mortgage you pay whatever the home price is plus something like 50% or so, because the interest compounds over 30 years. If it's 50 years, you're going to basically pay almost double the list price of the home, because you pay so much more in interest. </FormattedResponse>
07:44	Sheel Mohnot	Yeah, exactly. I think the solution — we do have an affordability crisis, no question — but the solution is not to induce demand. Because if you induce demand, what happens? You have the same fixed amount of properties; you're just making prices go up. So the solution is creating more supply: making it easier to permit, implementing reforms to build more housing, and making it cheaper to build housing.
08:10	Sam Parr	I was listening to someone who had a different take on affordability. He asked, "Are things less affordable today than they were in the 1960s?" > "Look, here's the deal: in the 1960s your version of a family vacation was a road trip to a state park once a year. You never traveled; you didn't go on a plane. You lived in a 1,800-square-foot home in Dayton, Ohio. You had a crappy car, you didn't eat out, and you never took vacations." Now, young people today want more things. They want to travel internationally once a year; they want cool trips, fancy phones, a new home. Even the average home nowadays is a new home with two ACs, a beautiful build, a really nice kitchen, and a really nice bathroom. He asked: "Are things less affordable, or do people just want more stuff?" It was an interesting take. I thought, "That's okay — that actually does have a good point." Because even when I grew up, I didn't... This isn't like, I was so poor, but I didn't go on a plane until I was 18. We never took vacations — I do now. I remember one summer the AC was broken and we just left the windows open.
09:17	Sheel Mohnot	Well, it was a lot of rooms—bunk beds. There'd be two or three kids in a room. Now each kid needs their own room. Like you said, Sam, 1,400 to 1,500 square feet was a nice-sized house, and now that's not the case.
09:30	Sam Parr	Have you guys ever seen the TV show The Wonder Years? Yeah. It's like—one father, the husband, could provide for the whole family, but he was angry all the time. He worked at a factory and developed black lung. He was borderline an alcoholic and was grumpy all the time. They didn't go anywhere, and when they did, the car broke down. Times were different. </FormattedResponse>
09:53	Sheel Mohnot	Yeah, I think so. Taking the other side, though—I think we shouldn't be telling people, "You shouldn't want these things." I think we should say...</FormattedResponse>
10:01	Sam Parr	Saying that I'm just joking, but yes. </FormattedResponse>
10:02	Sheel Mohnot	Yeah, so I think we should make stuff cheaper, and I think we can do that by making the cost of the inputs cheaper. I think that's all possible, but I hate demand-side adjustments.
10:16	Shaan Puri	The way you said that made it so simple to me. If all you do is increase demand and the supply stays the same, you're not going to make things cheaper — you're going to make things more expensive. It's like, "yeah, that obviously makes sense."
10:30	Sam Parr	Alright, so a lot of people watch and listen to this show because they want to hear us just tell them exactly what to do when it comes to starting or growing a business. A lot of people who are listening have a full-time job and want to start something on the side — a side hustle. Many people message Sean and me and say, "Alright, I want to start something on the side — is this a good idea?" What they're really saying is, "Just give me the ideas." Well, friends, you're in luck. My old company, The Hustle, put together 100 different side-hustle ideas and have appropriately called it the Side Hustle Idea Database. It's a list of 100 pretty good ideas, frankly — I went through them; they're awesome. It gives you how to start them, how to grow them, and things like that. It provides a little bit of inspiration. So check it out. It's called the Side Hustle Idea Database. It's in the description below — you'll see the link. Click it, check it out, and let me know in the comments what you think.
11:22	Shaan Puri	"What do you got, Sheila? Hit us with your first."
11:24	Sheel Mohnot	Okay, so a lot of these are based on what's going on in my life today. I am trying to redo my backyard. I redid it about ten years ago, and it's kind of a shithole now. I want to add pavers, maybe a nice waterfall or something like that. I've been reaching out to all these landscapers and backyard specialists, and the process sucks. It takes them forever to get back to me. Then they come here and all they do is measure — I already knew the measurements to begin with. Scheduling is a pain: coordinating my schedule and their schedule sucks. Sometimes they're coming from an hour away just to do this ten‑minute thing. Once they take the measurements, they're super busy and don't get back to me for a week. Then I'm like, "Can I really trust this guy?" I was talking to a guy who built a company in this space, and he said one of the things that's really important to them is just getting back to you quickly. If they get back to you quickly, you're way more likely to purchase from them. This is a fairly large purchase — let's say $50,000 — so I was thinking there's gotta be a better way, and you could solve this with AI, in part. All I would have to do is give them my address and they would know what my backyard looks like: they could get the measurements from satellite imagery and actually give me a design. They could either not show up at all, or when they show up they could have an iPad with a bunch of sample designs of my place. How amazing would that be? The idea came to me from a buddy who has a company called DeepLawn. All they do is help lawn companies quote. You put in the address, it looks at satellite imagery, uses some AI to determine how much grass you have, comes up with the square footage, knows what you charge, and instantly gives a quote. They charge a couple dollars per quote, but there are so many lawn care companies and so many lawns out there that it's actually pretty good business. It's simple. This is one step beyond that. It's not just giving you a simple quote, but giving you a bunch of designs and stuff like that. I think it's very doable, and it would solve a problem that I have if these guys used it.
13:44	Shaan Puri	So it's really interesting. You say that Ben had told me about a business that's very, very similar in the roofing space. If you go to roofer.com — he said roosr.com [domain as reported] — the guy's doing the same thing. It's just the quote part. Basically, the way roofing works is if you want a roof or a repair, the contractor will come out. You schedule it, they come out, check the roof, get up there, and give you a quote. Roofers hate this step because they make no money in the quoting process. They need to get the job, they have to climb the roof, schedule it, and they can only do so many in a week. What this guy was doing — I don't remember the exact method — was he would go to the roofers and say, "Anytime you need a quote done, I'll do the quote for you. You just pay me a small amount to go do this quote for you." I think he was using either drones or imagery — I think it was drones. The drone would fly by, automatically do the quote for you, so you would get a much faster quote, which increases your odds of getting the job. You didn't have to do it yourself, and it could scale, so it could do way more quotes per week than the roofer could do on their own. It takes off one part of the sales funnel that they really hated doing. I think this business is doing really well. I believe he's bootstrapping it, though I'm not entirely sure. That was the last time I heard the numbers for it.
15:02	Sheel Mohnot	"Yeah, I think you could do the same thing for pools, decks, pergolas, playgrounds, fences, outdoor kitchens — all this kind of stuff would be fairly easy to do. So you could build this in one niche and then go into all the others."
15:18	Sam Parr	Do you guys remember? There were, like, two or three tech guys who left their seemingly great tech companies and, I think, started bathroom-remodel businesses. I think the first one was this guy named Roger. Roger was previously—like, I think he started Zynga or something like that. He... he founded "Mafia Wars," which was part of Zynga. Okay, sorry—I'm in the ballpark, close.
15:41	Sheel Mohnot	"You're the ballpark."
15:41	Sam Parr	"I'm not right, okay. And then, like, Gickster was, like, you know, raised money from prominent investors. Then he left to start Made.com, which was basically—think of the best barbers. You go and sit down in a chair and they're like, "What do you want?" and you're like, "Oh, just do a little here, I don't know, just give me the Justin Bieber." The great barbers are like, "There’s option one, option two, option three, option four—here's the menu. Which one do you want?" You're like, "Give me that one. Give me the four." He did that for bathrooms, and it killed it. Then the second guy was this guy I think named Luke, one of the cofounders of Casper. He left Casper and he started, I think, a bathrooms-and-kitchens [company].
16:21	Shaan Puri	"It's called block renovation."
16:23	Sam Parr	Was it just... was it both of them, or just bathrooms?
16:26	Shaan Puri	Same thing — it was bathrooms. Maybe now they've expanded to kitchens. By the way, I don't know how these businesses have all done now, but it's super interesting. It was like, "Hey, here's four — you can pick off the menu. You want your bathroom to look like this, this, this, or this." And they were running Facebook ads. We talked about this years ago on the pod: running Facebook ads for people who wanted to upgrade their bathroom, which is not how any other construction company was selling to customers. So you had this new channel, and they were acquiring customers to do these expensive bathroom renovations using this "pick-off-the-menu" model, which I thought was pretty fascinating.
16:59	Sheel Mohnot	I think it's interesting, but it's so complex. Things can go wrong and you can get bad reviews based on your partner or whatever. I feel like it's a very complicated business — I don't know why. I know Roger sold "Made To", like Home Depot; I don't know how good of a business it was. What I like about this one is it's really software: you just have to sell these folks and you're not on the hook for anything else. It could be a pretty lean team. I think you can easily do $10,000,000 in revenue on this business.
17:26	Shaan Puri	Right. I love this — I love this because, you know, I hate when people want to start a marketing agency. You're signing up to be a genius every month.
17:33	Sheel Mohnot	Yeah.
17:33	Shaan Puri	It's like, "Oh, I'm gonna be..." And every business really cares how their marketing is going. You're gonna be on your ass — you have to continually be fighting. Versus things like compliance: nobody cares how their compliance is going as long as it's not a problem. Similarly here, with roofing: doing the quote is very different than the emotional purchase of a new bathroom that's going in our master bath.
17:56	Sam Parr	"That's like... I really have—how the..." [incomplete fragment]
17:57	Shaan Puri	Grout was done, or whatever. I don't know what that word is — I just used it. Did that work? I don't know.</FormattedResponse>
18:01	Sam Parr	Yeah, you're there.
18:02	Shaan Puri	So... you want to sell things ideally that people don't have extreme preference or emotional attachment to, because the bar for delivery is so much higher than it is for more trivial things they don't really care about. I like the example you gave better. Also, the fact that if you can do it for roofing, you can do it for lawns or pools. Totally — it's a blueprint business; anybody can go and do these businesses.
18:27	Sam Parr	"Is the stereotype that Indian guys don't like being handy true?"
18:31	Shaan Puri	> "That's like saying, 'Do white men not like to jump?' You know, it's not that we don't like being handy — we're just not handy. Okay. The blood rushes to our brains; there's just nothing left in the limbs."
18:42	Sheel Mohnot	My dad likes being handy. He owns some apartment buildings, and I've read reviews where people say, "Whenever I have a problem, there's Mr. MacGyver." He'll try to solve it even if he doesn't have the right tools—he comes up with some crazy way to fix the problem.
19:00	Shaan Puri	The Indian handyman comes to your house when you have a problem. He just convinces you that it's okay, and you need to compromise. Life is not about getting what you...</FormattedResponse>
19:07	Sheel Mohnot	"Want? Yeah, it'll be."
19:08	Shaan Puri	Fun — exactly.
19:11	Sam Parr	And now, look at you guys — just talking about, you know, bathroom-remodeling startups.
19:16	Shaan Puri	No, but this one works. This is an Indian-friendly business — it's satellite images.
19:19	Sheel Mohnot	Exactly.
19:19	Shaan Puri	Price quoting, and then you hand it to a strong guy who's going to be able to go do the manly stuff. Strong idea with number one. Okay, let's go to...
19:29	Sheel Mohnot	Number two — that's number one, and then number two is maybe an offshoot on that. Like, you could start with number one and go into number two. Let's use this: backyard guys. Every service business runs the same workflow. You get a call or an online lead — Thumbtack, for example. You have to answer calls, schedule jobs, dispatch a crew, follow up, provide an estimate, schedule the job, and then ask for reviews. A lot of that stuff is super automatable. I think the big unlock is actually AI voice. A lot of people are sleeping on how good AI voice already is today and how useful it would be for something like this. Actually, yesterday or the day before, Bill Ackman posted something about Elon Musk and he was like, "I'm not sure if this was AI or not." The three of us were like, "Are you fucking kidding me? It's obviously AI." It was a fake video about Elon Musk and it was so obviously fake — it didn't have his mannerisms, it was talking slowly, it was kind of his voice, kind of not. But the fact that Bill Ackman — I don't know how old he is, maybe 60 — couldn't tell, or was unsure, means that AI voice is already good enough. If Bill Ackman's fooled by this video, then a lot of people are fooled by AI voice. So already these service providers should be having AI voice do the work for them. It's already good enough and it's just going to get better in the next year. Instead of a contractor hiring an office manager, you give them an AI office manager for like a few hundred dollars a month. You might think of it as a money-saving thing, but it's actually more than that. You get super-fast response time and people responding around the clock. When I decided to do this back remodel, it was a Sunday afternoon and nobody was responding. The first person to respond is way more likely to get the job than the next person and the person after that.
21:40	Sam Parr	It responds super fast: no missed calls. It texts to follow up and does all that stuff for you in a super-easy app. We have Alex Hermosy on the pod—he's one of our buddies. He runs seminars and events that look really cool. I wanted to see how good his sales funnel was, so I went to sign up for a call. As I clicked "confirm calendar," I got a phone call from a guy named Xavier. He said, "Hey Sam, what's up? I just saw you booked a call. I just want to confirm a couple details with you and make sure we're good, and if you want I can move the appointment up." I said, "I don't believe this is you." He said, "It's a real person." I said, "FaceTime me right now." He said, "Well, I don't have FaceTime." I said, "You know my number—FaceTime me. I know you have an iPhone." So he FaceTimed me while he was talking, and it was him. It was totally him. That kind of got me bought into the idea of calling leads within minutes. There have been so many times when I've been on Yelp and the first person to respond to my car wash request is on their way to my house. I don't care how much it costs — it's the first person, exactly.
22:54	Shaan Puri	"And Sheila, what do you think is going to be the challenge? I've seen it. This idea makes so much sense, and there are a couple of them out there. What do you think is going to be the key? If you're the founder running a business like this, what do you need to do to win? What would you do in your go-to-market strategy? How would you take this idea—which I think a lot of people are going to have—and end up being the winner? What do you think would make the difference between winning and fourth place?" </FormattedResponse>
23:19	Sheel Mohnot	Yeah, so it's too bad that AI robocalling is illegal, because what I would probably...
23:25	Sam Parr	Do send this one: my voice.
23:28	Sheel Mohnot	"I would just have my voice agent call each of these people, right."
23:33	Shaan Puri	Right.
23:33	Sheel Mohnot	So, maybe you can do it where—I'm not sure about the legality of this—but you have your AI voice agent call in while you're on the call. Maybe it's fine then. The AI voice agent is so good that you convince them. So you just call each of these people and convince them that their agent is so good, saying, "Don't you wanna try this? Try it for free. I'll just send you leads right now." You do it that way, and it can be...
24:04	Sam Parr	A great business. I want to ask you—so you have two or three more ideas on here that are actually really good. One that has the least amount of information on it, I actually have a question about it. Let's do it. You put on here something about peptides because everyone—yes, because everyone in SF is doing it. And yes, this is me just wanting to get information. So peptides, basically it's a category of drugs. We could talk about it, but oftentimes people use peptides and TRT and HGH interchangeably or in the same ballpark. Are you saying that all the nerds in SF are now on testosterone or peptides? [TRT = testosterone replacement therapy; HGH = human growth hormone]
24:44	Sheel Mohnot	Everyone is on peptides, and everyone's got their dealer. The way this works is: peptides [short chains of amino acids] tell your brain to repair or regulate something.
25:01	Sam Parr	They're like precursors to protein or something like that, where... yeah.
25:05	Sheel Mohnot	So, it's really good for a bunch of things your body can do and regulate: healing, body composition, giving you more energy, and controlling your appetite. Those are GLP-1s. The problem with this business idea is they're not legal—well, they're legal only for research purposes.
25:24	Sam Parr	They're not approved for the applications that people are using them for.
25:28	Sheel Mohnot	That's right. I don't know where the opportunity is here, but it's really complicated to use them. In San Francisco, everyone's doing it. You have friends who are doing it; they're like, "I got this peptide and it's been so great for me," or whatever. Of course, there are challenges with it not being FDA-approved. But I think, for the most part, these are things that people have been using for years and have some sense of efficacy. People are getting semaglutide — like Ozempic — and other Ozempic-like things via peptides. Right now, longevity is a huge opportunity. You've seen companies like Function Health and Superpower and others do really well there, so there's a ton of interest. The experience I've had with peptides is confusing and sketchy, so I actually haven't tried them yet. I have tons of friends who are talking about it, though. I feel like there's some educational opportunity — dosing guidance, safety, a high-trust supply chain, and coaching opportunity in this space — but I don't know exactly what it is. The FDA-approval thing is obviously a big problem.
26:41	Shaan Puri	Interesting. So you're saying maybe right now, because the legality and the approval part of selling the things directly is sketchy, you would build the biggest, most trusted information source. So that when the time comes and this becomes more clear, you either become the highest-value affiliate or you yourself could start dealing peptides.
27:02	Sheel Mohnot	Exactly, exactly right. Have you guys heard of peptides, or do you have friends on them?
27:08	Shaan Puri	I heard about it because Sam, about five years ago—before peptides were really a thing—told me his Achilles tendon hurt. He said he was on some Reddit forum, got a vial of something, and injected it into his body. I was like, "Bro, what are you doing? You know, just taking drugs off the internet?" And he's like, "It's amazing. I feel like Wolverine."
27:27	Sam Parr	Yeah, BP 157, baby. My, oh.</FormattedResponse>
27:30	Sheel Mohnot	People love BP 157, dude. My, my, somebody told me.
27:33	Sam Parr	My daughter, who was just born—that's her middle name: BPC-157. I love that stuff. So yeah, I've always been into this type of stuff. If you listen to the podcast, you know I'm going to kind of brag a little bit here: semaglutide, Ozempic—when it got popular, that was all news to us on this podcast. We had been talking about it. I had already overdosed on it; I could've told you all about it. I was into this stuff in San Francisco, and then I moved to Austin. That's when I really got my fix, man. Every jacked guy ever was showing me all the cool stuff they were doing. Not a lot of the stuff was—it's not the definition of a steroid; it wasn't anabolic in the sense of making your muscles huge. But there was BPC-157 [a peptide] for when I hurt my Achilles—someone was like, "You should try this," or "Try it for your shoulder." There were all these weird peptides and things centered around longevity—not "How do I look huge?" like in wrestling—but "How do I live a long time?" I've been fascinated by all this stuff. I still test a lot of the things. I got a guy: I text him and I Venmo him. It's incredibly shady. Sean and I invested in a company called "Hone." Hone's first—well, I forget what they were originally called—"Peak."
28:54	Shaan Puri	Peak health, or something like that.
28:55	Sam Parr	Yeah, yeah. I don't even remember, but they were originally just TRT. Now they do everything, and we get their monthly updates — this is like the chart [monthly update chart]; it's like you want the chart to look this way. I think that they're doing a really good job of not looking... For a long time, actually, we talked about TRT clinics — Sean and I did — and it was like, "Dude, the biggest TRT clinic is this guy based out of Vegas." He's got these stores; you go to the store to get your TRT. They have La‑Z‑Boy leather sofas and Monday Night Football on. It was the lamest, most untrustworthy thing. So Hone is actually a good example. They also do female stuff too — I don't know what types of drugs women take, but they sell women's drugs as well — and they've done a much... </FormattedResponse>
29:35	Shaan Puri	It's better—it's not like Spanish, where there's a male and female.
29:39	Sheel Mohnot	Yeah.</FormattedResponse>
29:39	Shaan Puri	I don't know the pronunciation of the verb... </FormattedResponse>
29:43	Sam Parr	You know.
29:44	Sheel Mohnot	What are...
29:44	Shaan Puri	"Are you talking about women's drugs?"
29:46	Sam Parr	Yeah, I don't know... whatever you guys take, whatever you're into. I guess there's a little bit of everything for everyone.
29:51	Shaan Puri	This is the only podcast where you're going to get AI, TRT, and a Triple H reference from wrestling. I mean—the range is incredible. Dude, you know, I looked at this peptide business recently because, same thing: I'm like, okay, clearly there's demand, right? But how do you do this legally, and what's the right way to do it? I can't say who was doing this, but on the pitch I said, "So how do you plan to be legit with this whole thing? It's unclear what the legality is going to be." He basically pulled up a picture of the cofounder with Trump and Kennedy and said, "Yeah, we're pretty sure we're going to be able to get some things through that will make it..." I was like, "Oh wow. Okay — that's probably one of the best slides I've ever seen in a deck."
30:38	Sam Parr	He pulls out—he pulls out a card from his wallet. He goes, "I have an answer right here." You're like, "Sir, that's a 'Get Out of Jail Free' card from the game of Monopoly. That doesn't work."
30:48	Shaan Puri	And so I was like, "I think, actually—yeah. Being really close with Bobby Kennedy would be a perfectly reasonable part of your business plan right now," so...
30:56	Sam Parr	Is that really what he said?</FormattedResponse>
30:57	Shaan Puri	Literally, yeah. They were like, "Hey, we're pro this. It's gonna pass." And we're like, you know, we're going to do everything the right way. One thing they pointed out—rightfully so—is that everybody who's in this space right now is, like, the kind of... like, you know, the early kind of crypto community, or the totally kind of mid-stage crypto community where everyone's...
31:12	Sam Parr	Just trying to get...
31:13	Shaan Puri	A quick buck, and they're gonna go like "foul" [unclear—possibly "full"]. Or you could just be Coinbase, right? You could just say, "Hey, we're just gonna do things the right way," and trust that over time this will become more and more mainstream. But we're just gonna do things the right way from the beginning. What Coinbase did—where, you know, all the other crypto exchanges sort of fell off—is, I think, a valid strategy in this case.
31:36	Sam Parr	They're like, "Say it with me: crony capitalism."
31:39	Sheel Mohnot	Oh, dude, this is a good topic because there's so much of it. Actually, I've never—in the past, I'd never seen anybody pitch a core part of their pitch as being "I'm close to administration." I've heard so many pitches about that now, which is kinda sad, honestly... but that.
32:00	Sam Parr	It is what it is.
32:01	Shaan Puri	"Like, Slide 13 — 'We know a guy.' Yeah. And then it's just like... exactly. It's like, 'What? Why is this in your deck?'" </FormattedResponse>
32:07	Sheel Mohnot	Totally. Actually, I've been searching, and ChatGPT will not answer a bunch of questions I have because it says, "peptides are not medically cleared" — "we can't answer this question." So one of my main sources of information is gone.
32:22	Shaan Puri	Right, by the way—can we do a little politics tangent real quick? Earmuffs if this bothers you, but Sam, I just thought you'd find this entertaining. Did you see the Trump thing about... do you know who CZ is? Do you know who CZ is from Binance?
32:36	Sam Parr	"Binance guy — didn't he pardon him? But Trump definitely doesn't know who that guy is."
32:41	Shaan Puri	So he pardoned him, and then he gets interviewed. The guy was in jail, I think, four months or something like that. This guy owned, like, the biggest Asian crypto exchange and was in hot water for money laundering and wire fraud — a bunch of stuff where bad people were using his exchange to do money laundering. They asked him, "But you pardoned this guy, and then he bought, like, $2 billion of your son's cryptocurrency. Don't you see how that seems—why did you pardon him?" He's like, "Here—here's the thing. You wanna know? I don't know who he is." I was like, wow. The audacity. It was just the audacity of saying, "I don't even know who he is. Don't know anything about the guy," and he pardoned him. I just thought that was one of the craziest things I've ever seen. It's like this man has no fear. He's not afraid of anything. He does not fear anything if he's gonna say...
33:39	Sam Parr	"The... what was the guy from Nikola?"
33:42	Sheel Mohnot	Trevor Melton — he...
33:44	Sam Parr	They pardoned that guy too. That guy—what the hell, man? And then they looked into it. They're like, "Oh, that guy donated."
33:51	Shaan Puri	Yeah, it's "get out of jail free" card.
33:53	Sam Parr	Yeah, get out.
33:54	Shaan Puri	"Of jail at this fixed price."
33:56	Sam Parr	Yeah, that was insane.
33:57	Sheel Mohnot	And the price was actually very low. It was like a couple million dollars ($2 million).</FormattedResponse>
34:02	Sam Parr	And did he really say that, word for word? He was like, "I don't know."
34:05	Shaan Puri	Know that thing where it's like, "You're not ugly — you're just poor"? It's like, "You're not — you're not a criminal, you're just poor." You know what I mean? It's like you can get out if you got access to a couple million dollars.
34:17	Sam Parr	There was that joke — I forget who or where it originally came from. They were like, "Look: if you owe the bank $50, that's a big deal — it's really bad for you. But if you owe the bank $500,000,000, that's really bad for the bank." </FormattedResponse>
34:31	Shaan Puri	"Yeah, I guess that's the bank's problem."
34:33	Sam Parr	Yeah, the other one...
34:35	Sheel Mohnot	That was crazy. Was that George Santos? That guy... I just thought it was so funny. This is a congressperson who lied about everything. He would claim he went to a different college each time you talked to him.
34:47	Sam Parr	"But the guy said he was Jewish. He said he was Jewish, and..."
34:50	Sheel Mohnot	Then he was... "Did he say?"
34:51	Sam Parr	I meant "Jewish dude" — kind of Jewish. Out here where I live, there was, like, a New York congressman or something like that... or the local senate; I don't even remember what it was. Not that important. But he was a gay Brazilian guy, I think. He had the audacity to tell people that he was Jewish, and they were like, "George Santos, I don't think you're Jewish." He goes, "Oh, I didn't say I was Jewish. I said I was Jewish — like, I like hanging out with Jewish people."
35:20	Shaan Puri	"Honestly, it's Alzheimer's."
35:22	Sheel Mohnot	It's Alzheimer's, and he had so much audacity. He claimed, "My mom died on 9/11," but there are very good records of who died on 9/11, and he lived in Brazil at the time. There was no chance that was possible. He just... anyway, pretty, pretty incredible.
35:40	Shaan Puri	Alright, ear muffs can come off. I know the politics. Alright, so what else you got?
35:45	Sam Parr	Oh, the surrogacy thing or the EMS thing — those are all okay.
35:48	Shaan Puri	Okay, let's do the surrogacy one.
35:50	Sheel Mohnot	Alright, let's do the surrogacy one. Personal note: my wife and I—we're, like, old. I'm 43; my wife's 40. My wife has a genetic condition that we need to screen against, and being pregnant can trigger this condition. Our doctors said, "If you can avoid pregnancy, you should do so." We were like, okay—we can afford it; let's do it. So we started going down the surrogacy path. For those of you who don't know, surrogacy is when another person carries your child. You transfer your embryo to that person, and then they carry your child. It's growing very substantially. This wasn't really a thing not that long ago; actually, New York only legalized it five years ago, so it's still growing very rapidly. It's obviously extremely common in the gay community because that's the only way they can have their own children. It's actually a very complicated process—there are a bunch of surrogacy agencies out there. The agencies have a number of women they work with (carriers), and then they try to match you. The way it works is they can only introduce you to people who are on their platform. It's a matching thing. There are a bunch of things that we care about and a bunch of things that she cares about. We ultimately found a great match—she's wonderful. We love her.
37:23	Sam Parr	And how much is it? And how much does the woman get?
37:26	Sheel Mohnot	Yeah, so it costs roughly $150,000 to $200,000.
37:32	Sam Parr	Okay.
37:33	Shaan Puri	And that goes to her, and the agency takes a cut—Is that how it works?
37:37	Sheel Mohnot	The agency takes a cut; she gets a certain amount. I think in our case she gets $75,000, roughly — something in that ballpark. There are a bunch of things included: there's a base fee, a monthly fee, travel, time off work, and all sorts of childcare — lots of stuff embedded in that. Then there are legal fees, and of course medical fees for actually doing the transfer, plus her health care and the insurance that we pay for.
38:05	Sam Parr	Do you get to hang out with her, or is it more like you see her monthly—do check-ins?
38:11	Sheel Mohnot	Yeah, so we hung out with her. We're in San Francisco; she's in the Las Vegas area. We've hung out with her—she's come to our house. We like her. We text with her. When the transfer happened, we sent her stuff. We know what her family life is like... all sorts of stuff. The thing I didn't realize going into this is that there are a bunch of things you might care about, or that somebody might care about, that are important in making this match. I didn't really know what I would care about, but we've talked to people who care about things like: what do they eat? Are they eating only organic? I met a Hindu person who said their surrogate can't eat beef during the time of pregnancy. People obviously care about: would they abort if medically necessary? Are they okay carrying twins? Would they have a C-section? And then there are all sorts of other things—like, do you want to have a relationship with this person? We really like our surrogate; we check in with her all the time and she texts us back. But anyway, there are all these things that you want to match on. The way it works is each agency only has a few folks that you can talk to and make that match. It would make a lot more sense if you had a dating-app-like system—like eHarmony—where you list "here are the things I care about" and "here are the things they care about." So it makes sense for it to be a larger thing. Imagine if you were buying a home and your real estate agent could only show you homes that they had listed. That's kind...
39:44	Shaan Puri	Of what?
39:45	Sheel Mohnot	It is today. I think there's an opportunity in making this much more common. I think people don't realize how many medical challenges people have and that being the reason they're not able to carry and not able to have kids. If people knew that, some of the stigma about this would go away and you'd have more people who want to be surrogates—want to be carriers. So I think there's an opportunity to create a company that does this for people, and is a much broader agency than what's out there today. It would handle the matching process, bring people on, and recruit carriers. That's really the challenge right now: there are not enough carriers. I think you have to create more carriers. To do that, you market and offer them a higher portion of the payment. By automating some of this instead of it being a manual process—where our agency relies on word-of-mouth to find new carriers—I think you can automate a lot of that process and create an awesome business. But I don't think this is going to be a billion-dollar company. I think there are maybe 5,000 to 10,000 births in the United States every year from surrogacy, and I think that'll probably expand, but I don't think you can build a billion-dollar company here. I do think you can build something great for the world and run a company as well.
41:08	Sam Parr	How do they recruit these women now? That's such a strange way to recruit someone. It's a great question. I don't know, but I think... what?
41:17	Sheel Mohnot	What they do is, there are all these communities—Reddit, Facebook, etc.—where people are posting. When you go there, you'll find people... and a lot of the ad agencies are there just recruiting.
41:27	Shaan Puri	Can I go full, full crazy here?
41:29	Sheel Mohnot	Yeah.
41:29	Shaan Puri	Surrogacy — MLM
41:31	Sheel Mohnot	Yeah.
41:31	Shaan Puri	I think an MLM has solved the marketing challenge of: how do you recruit other women to go—kind of do this thing for money? This is just the, like, premium version. Why sell makeup and candles when you could have a downline generating, you know, $100,000 a pop? Right... that's a—it's a—it's a premium MLM.
41:50	Sam Parr	Man, I feel... it's so crazy. I've got so many friends doing this. When I was a little kid—or in my earlier twenties—the only thing I knew about surrogacy was that Amy Poehler movie where she's the surrogate for Tina Fey. She, you know, eats Big Macs and it's like, "Can we change her to be healthy?" That was the movie, but I didn't know anything about this. Now I think I probably know five, six, or seven friends who have done it this way. It's a pretty wild experience. It's also, like, science is amazing. It's one of those things where I learn about it and I'm like, "This is just absolutely insane... I can't—"
42:24	Shaan Puri	"Believe so. So, Shiel, if you said there's 10,000 surrogate births a year, roughly—do you think that's ballpark, right?" </FormattedResponse>
42:30	Sheel Mohnot	Yeah, it's growing fast. I think it's growing about 10% a year, but let's just say 10,000.
42:34	Shaan Puri	So, if it was an average spend of $100,000 per surrogate surrogacy, that's about a billion dollars a year in revenue generated across all the different agencies today.
42:46	Sheel Mohnot	But yeah, note that most of that goes to the surrogate.
42:51	Shaan Puri	Right. You know—what if you're a venture investor? How do you describe to somebody who's not a VC the appeal of that sort of niche, weird marketplace behavior that seems a little fringe today, but then—oh my God—"wait, people spend how much money watching people break open Pokémon card decks and whatnot," and that's a $12 billion company now?
43:14	Sheel Mohnot	Yeah.
43:14	Shaan Puri	"Watching people open Pokémon card packs live on the internet — what do you mean? There's an appeal to this. How would you describe that kind of phenomenon, and what's the upside of this sort of fringe?"
43:26	Sheel Mohnot	Yeah, I think Whatnot's a great one because it started out as a collectible marketplace for Funko Pop toys. If you told me that a collectible marketplace for Funko Pop toys would, five years later, be worth—I think—about $12 billion or something, I would say you're crazy. But you start somewhere and you dominate that niche. In this case, I don't think it's a venture opportunity, and I also think venture capital incentivizes growth, which might incentivize the wrong things in this space. So I probably wouldn't want it to be a venture opportunity, but I think it is a good opportunity for somebody to build a business.
44:04	Sam Parr	"Can I ask you about one more thing you have here? This is on the long list of things I thought were so stupid when I first heard about it, and people seem to love it. And it's—you know, what do I know—Sean, have you heard of EMS?"
44:14	Shaan Puri	Is that like an ambulance? Is that what EMS is?
44:19	Sheel Mohnot	That's another EMS (electronic muscle stimulation).
44:23	Shaan Puri	"Okay, tell me about it. Is this like the thing where you get six-pack abs by putting that electrode on your... thing and watching TV?"
44:29	Sheel Mohnot	Yes. So, okay—here's the thing: you gotta try it, first of all. But one of my best friends in the world...
44:40	Sam Parr	Dude, I'd rather take drugs. Yeah. Okay—fair. So...
44:44	Sheel Mohnot	So one of my best friends in the world is completely and utterly jacked. He was not five years ago. He does not really work out—he uses EMS. What it is: he has this little machine that he bought for $35 on Amazon. Look for TENS and EMS.
45:05	Shaan Puri	Oh, do we have one of those? That's for during contractions. My wife used the TENS machine.
45:09	Sheel Mohnot	Yeah. So he puts those all over his body and he, like, jacks it up. I hate the feeling of it, so I don't do it, but I have seen it work for him so well that this is something. Recently I was in New York a couple weeks ago and I went to a workout facility where they have it set up on a thing that you wear. Part of the problem is it needs direct skin contact, so it's annoying to put on and off. If it were easier to put on and off, I would be doing this. At the facility they had a shirt with electrodes on it and they spray water on it so it basically touches your skin. It was an amazing workout — one of my favorite workouts ever — and it was 15 minutes. I know it sounds like total bullshit.
46:02	Shaan Puri	Wait — so with this one, do you work out while it's happening?
46:06	Sheel Mohnot	You do a little bit of a workout, but it's working you out a lot more because of the stimulation in your body.
46:12	Shaan Puri	Wait, wait. So let's go to the case study of your friend—your friend five years ago, not Jack.</FormattedResponse>
46:17	Sam Parr	"Tell me his name. I'm going to go to his Instagram." </FormattedResponse>
46:18	Sheel Mohnot	"Dear, he's gonna love this."
46:22	Shaan Puri	Okay, so Sam, pull up a picture. Ari, get a picture. Let's get a screen share.
46:25	Sam Parr	Yeah, let's do... Do we have a shirtless pic?
46:27	Shaan Puri	Yeah, we have a shirtless picture. This can...
46:28	Sam Parr	I can.
46:29	Sheel Mohnot	Send you guys a pic.
46:30	Shaan Puri	"So he's jacked now, and you're saying that in between there wasn't, like, a CrossFit phase and then this? It was really just this over a period of time and diet, I assume?"
46:42	Sheel Mohnot	Not much changes in his diet. He's diabetic, so he's kind of limited in what he can eat. He hasn't changed his diet, but he attributes it all to this. Okay, so where's the opportunity? I think this gym thing that I did in New York was amazing. I looked for one here in San Francisco — I couldn't find one in a cursory search. But I think you basically build a series of EMS [electrical muscle stimulation] workouts where you have a workout routine that's really fun. There's a class, people put on this thing, they're used to it, and they get jacked. People see them getting jacked. I think the way you do it is you start with somebody like me — not in great shape, a little flubby — and then I go through this process and you show the evolution. Then people get into it and they're like, "Gotta try this."
47:31	Shaan Puri	Yeah, this has the viral factor of being weird, right? Like people hating on it, right?</FormattedResponse>
47:36	Sam Parr	Like, yeah.
47:36	Shaan Puri	If I posted this and I was like, "This is all you need," you're going to get all the comments like, "Dude, just do it," blah blah blah. It's going to go viral because it's going to be hated and loved at the same time, which is what you need.
47:49	Sheel Mohnot	Yeah. So the problem with the $35 product — he bought it for me. The issue is you have to do these sticky things: you have to put them on your body, and it just takes time. What he does is his primary workout. He flies a lot for work, and when he's on the plane he's doing it the whole time — that's his primary workout.
48:12	Shaan Puri	Does he put this through the X-ray machine, and they're like, "What the...?"
48:15	Sam Parr	"Hello. Are you... It's..."
48:16	Sheel Mohnot	A little thing — it's like the size of a phone. It's nothing.
48:19	Shaan Puri	Oh—oh. But this thing you linked, this Catalyst thing: is this the full-body suit? Do you go there and exercise, or what is this? </FormattedResponse>
48:27	Sheel Mohnot	Yeah, that's the full-body suit. It's basically this, but already in suit form.
48:32	Shaan Puri	Alright. I think I may have to try this, Sam. What do you think, as an actual fit person? What do you think of this? This might not be the market, actually. </FormattedResponse>
48:40	Sam Parr	I love shortcuts, though. You know—if I think we had someone in the pods saying, "Why do people hate on get‑rich‑quick schemes? Getting rich quick is the best way to get rich." So if I can get more fit without doing anything, I'm on board. Is there actually data that backs this up? I think it's pretty lame, but if I can...
49:00	Shaan Puri	Did you not hear the story about his friend?
49:03	Sheel Mohnot	Yeah, no — it's a...
49:04	Shaan Puri	Good. The data.
49:05	Sheel Mohnot	So, I think there is data on Catalyst — people use it. I think the question is whether these $35 machines work. I only have one friend as a data point [one data point]. The funny thing is we've all seen it work for him, and yet none of the rest of us in the friend group have done it. The reason for that is it's annoying to put these things on and it's painful. He's willing to do it on every plane ride — the whole flight — and I'm not. When he took me to this workout class in New York two weeks ago, I thought, "This is actually really fun, and I know I'm getting a great workout." You feel it the next couple days — it was the good kind of hurt after a great workout. So I thought, "I know this is working, but how come I haven't heard more about this?" I think there's an opportunity in building a product around this — like a berry-style workout [unclear: possibly "Barry's-style" or "barre-style"] where you teach people how to...
50:03	Sam Parr	"Do it, dude. This looks pretty sick. The vest looks like armor—like body armor."
50:09	Shaan Puri	"Yeah, you look like a Navy SEAL."
50:10	Sam Parr	Yeah.
50:11	Shaan Puri	Except for—I don't know what this tank is here. That's a little bit suspicious. I don't really fully understand what all the pieces are. But, dude, if people are buying $6,000 cold plunges for their homes, and $5,000 to $10,000 saunas, and red light therapy... my brother-in-law has a red light therapy bed in his house, and his kids are doing it because it's, like, good for their sports recovery, whatever. There's really no end to the kind of wellness rabbit hole. There are always people who are going to look for the next edge. It's not too dissimilar to a reformer machine in a Pilates class.
50:48	Sheel Mohnot	Yeah, absolutely.
50:48	Shaan Puri	It's a tool that gets you more leverage on your hour of exercise. Although this makes me want to make fun of it, it also makes me want to secretly do it.
50:58	Sam Parr	These guys—I actually was looking it up. I think they emailed me; these Catalyst guys were asking if I wanted to test this out, and I don't know if I replied. But if they're listening... </FormattedResponse>
51:06	Sheel Mohnot	Wanted you to.
51:06	Shaan Puri	Be an influencer. Was this during the Sam fitness-influencer era?</FormattedResponse>
51:09	Sam Parr	It could have been. That was a great era, I think. It was... it's dozens of people [unclear: "does six"].
51:15	Shaan Puri	Weeks count as an era.
51:16	Sam Parr	Though—well, you know, it's a season that... that was you, the...
51:21	Shaan Puri	Transitioned to the dad influencer pretty quickly, and the content shifted.
51:26	Sam Parr	Once I had a kid, I wanted to quit posting shirtless photos online. But just so you know, it's still there — it doesn't go away. It's still there. And so, catalyst: I would totally try this thing. "Yep, this looks cool." I like to make fun of these things, but suit me up, baby.
51:39	Shaan Puri	There's an announcement on their site like, "Hey — we know a lot of you have had a very, very bad experience, but there's a new owner and we're going to, you know, do it right this time." So, you know, maybe it's been a little bumpy road.
51:48	Sheel Mohnot	Yeah, I'm in a bunch of these longevity groups in San Francisco and on WhatsApp, and people were... people were trying.
51:56	Sam Parr	To buy the company—can you... it can—let—wait, wait. That's actually okay. You just gave me a beautiful opening. You're in SF. You're kind of running around with a bunch of rich people, weirdos, successful people — this really cool combination of people. What are the kids into? Like, this longevity stuff... what else is interesting to them? What—like, you know, I don't live in San Francisco anymore. Sean lives a little bit outside of SF now. Before, when we were there, it was the best place to see what's going to happen in a handful of years, because there's always weirdos doing cool stuff — like sharing their couch on a website (and now Airbnb is a thing), or sharing their car. What are some other interesting things that the oddballs are into?
52:33	Sheel Mohnot	Yeah. I think—so, I think we talked about a lot of them: peptides. Nobody's drinking. You know, I think Brian Johnson has done wonders for a lot of folks in just changing how they think about life. Not necessarily all good. I don't think drinking is absolutely terrible, but I think people should probably drink less than they do. One interesting one that I did not like as a new business—like, as crazy as Airbnb and Uber were—I think prediction marketplaces are a good one. It's obviously not just the San Francisco thing, but it's the kind of business that, like, I probably would not have funded when these companies got funded. I would have said, "This is never gonna work; it's gonna be highly illegal." But the fact that...
53:16	Sam Parr	So what's the difference between prediction markets? Does a "prediction market" just mean guessing who's going to win president or who's going to win the mayor? </FormattedResponse>
53:24	Sheel Mohnot	Yeah. One of my initial pushbacks was that it's only going to be used for elections — because that's obviously what everyone is thinking about and wants to bet on. But actually they use it for so many other things too, like political outcomes. People are using it all the time. It's basically like a proxy for sports betting. You can build all sorts of secondary derivative products on top of equity investing. There are markets for everything. I think there are a lot of questions in my mind about why it's legal, and can you influence the outcome of something that you're betting on? For example, if there's a marketplace on how many companies BTV would invest in next year, I'd be, you know, betting on that while participating as well. But I think there's no question that there's a huge opportunity in this space.
54:16	Shaan Puri	Did you see the Coinbase earnings call thing?
54:19	Sheel Mohnot	Yeah, that was fucking hilarious.
54:20	Sam Parr	What happened?
54:21	Shaan Puri	Did you see this? So, there was a prediction market on Polymarket for the Coinbase earnings call. It was like, "Oh, the Q3 earnings call—will Brian Armstrong say any of these words? Or how many times will he say these words?"
54:34	Sam Parr	Oh my gosh... and
54:36	Shaan Puri	And then, at the very end of the call—how?
54:37	Sam Parr	Much volume.
54:39	Shaan Puri	I think it was probably...
54:40	Sheel Mohnot	You know, some of it was low.
54:41	Shaan Puri	Shield, you know.
54:42	Sheel Mohnot	It was single-digit thousands.
54:43	Shaan Puri	It was like a very small thing, but his team passed him a note. He goes, "Oh — before we hang up here, I just would like to say Web3, crypto, blockchain, Bitcoin, Ethereum. Thank you very much." He basically—like, you know—said, "Just for all the prediction markets out there, here we go." He just said seven words and then laughed. Then they hung up the call, and I thought that was so funny. But of course it's not that funny when, like...
55:07	Sam Parr	It's real.
55:08	Shaan Puri	There are all these sports things going on right now where a dude in...
55:10	Sam Parr	The UFC—like, in the UFC, if you're a nobody UFC guy, you get like $25 for fighting. They've flagged a bunch of— they flagged a bunch of fights where they're like, "this is very suspicious," because there was, like, $80 on the line for a fight that the guy would only earn $25,000. They're being investigated. So yeah, there's gonna be a lot of downsides. But, like, the average tech nerd—when I was in San Francisco—it was a joke. It was like, "the Giants play here," where do the Giants—no one knew about it. It wasn't particularly popular. I know Sean was into basketball, but basketball or any sport wasn't particularly popular among the young tech guys. Are the young tech guys caring about gambling for sports, or is it all other stuff?
55:51	Sheel Mohnot	It's a lot of other stuff. I think sports is interesting and will be one of the key markets in the prediction space. But there are also other things, like gambling on — or, you know, predicting — equity outcomes, which are interesting too. I look through those things all the time. I'm just curious. It's also uncanny how right they are and how ahead of the curve they are in some of these things.
56:17	Sam Parr	"Can I ask you about one more thing?" "Yeah. You made a very interesting statement. We asked, 'What are three strong opinions that you have for life?' and your number one opinion is: 'I think books are a waste of time.'"
56:31	Sheel Mohnot	For me, I think books are a waste of time. This is... I haven't read a book in like 15 years, and I know it's a very, very contrarian opinion. I have so many friends who are authors that I talk to; they're just trying to get the words out. But if you listen to a podcast, one podcast by that author is at least 80% of the value of the book. So is it worth spending another 5 hours reading to get the additional 20%? In my mind, no. So that's my provocative statement.
57:09	Shaan Puri	It is the first thing I do when there's a book I'm interested in. I go to YouTube and look for a talk by the author. If they're not interesting in the first 15 minutes of that YouTube video, the book is definitely not going to be interesting. The book will probably have more—it's not going to be fully sufficient—but if you can't give a good talk, you probably don't have a good book.
57:28	Sam Parr	Let me give a different opinion that's related. I read a lot in terms of quantity, and I was rereading a book I read when I was younger. I think it was Robert Cialdini's Influence — it's all about persuasion. I thought: I've read all these other books on business and whatever; I should have just reread this same book every three or six months and not read any other book on this topic, and I would have been significantly further ahead. So my advice to young people when it comes to reading: pick the two or three classics or the greats of the topic and master them. Know them word for word and master them. Don't read a lot — just read the same thing over and over and over again. If you want to read for fun, read for fun, but for your educational books, just do the same thing repeatedly. </FormattedResponse>
58:13	Shaan Puri	"What were the other three? You said you had three."
58:16	Sheel Mohnot	I think I had two. The other one was just: reach out to the owner. Lately a few things have happened. I'm booking my wife's fortieth birthday trip — we booked a trip for about 40 of her friends — and I was having some trouble with the cruise. It's a Virgin Voyages booking and I was having issues, so I just reached out to the CEO. I found the CEO's email and I reached out to him. I said something like, "Hey, if I were you I'd want to know about these troubles. You're a smart guy, you want to build a great brand. I've had an experience with your brand that was not great; let me tell you about it." He responded very favorably. He said, "Thank you so much for telling me. Here's what I'm doing about it." That just made me realize that I should be doing that more often. We did the same thing recently with our fertility clinic. Same situation: we had a bad experience, so I reached out to the guy who founded the clinic. Obviously you shouldn't do this for everything, but in some cases these people want you to have a great experience with their brand, and they often don't know there's a problem until you write a bad review. It's important to let them know earlier on. It doesn't have to be the owner, but in my case it was.
59:33	Sam Parr	What did... and did you get a discount?
59:36	Sheel Mohnot	I didn't get a discount, but I got really white‑glove service—they responded immediately to everything I wanted. I'm not trying to be a dick about it and get something I don't deserve, but it worked out quite well.
59:50	Shaan Puri	Right, but it wouldn't say no to you making it right, either.</FormattedResponse>
59:52	Sheel Mohnot	"Yeah, exactly. Exactly. If you want to give me a discount, I'll... I'll take it."
59:58	Shaan Puri	Seal, you're great, man. Thanks for coming on — as always, it's super fun having you on.
01:00:04	Sheel Mohnot	Super fun to chat with you guys. It was great.

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Ideas That Sound Illegal (But Print Money Anyway)

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