This Is The Most Exciting Drama in HR SaaS History | Rippling vs. Deel

- March 21, 2025 (about 1 year ago) • 58:59

Transcript

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:00	Sam Parr	Alright. A sentence that has never been said before: "B2B enterprise HR software space is the most riveting, the most compelling espionage story you'll ever hear."
00:11	Shaan Puri	I feel like this episode's going to have to start with the Netflix-like "da-dun" — because this is an FX-original level drama. Alright, we gotta do this story. Parker Conrad, who is the CEO of a company called Rippling (they do payroll and other back-office stuff for startups), tweeted two days ago: > "Rippling sued Diehl today. Our lawsuit alleges that Diehl cultivated a spy at Rippling and orchestrated a long-running trade secret theft. The spy searched Diehl in our system 23 times a day on average, letting him spy on deals on customers who were considering switching to Rippling..." Then he posted screenshots of the lawsuit. Did you read this?
01:01	Sam Parr	Yes, and we should preface this by saying, "I think you have friends at deal."
01:04	Shaan Puri	I'm an investor in Deal. I invested in Deal many years ago. It's one of the best investments. I really like Alex. </FormattedResponse>
01:09	Sam Parr	I don't know.
01:10	Shaan Puri	I know him super well. We're not like buddy-buddy, but Alex, the founder of Deal, I think is awesome. I use Deal — I think Deal's a great product. So that's kind of my context and bias coming in: I like Deal, and I invested in Deal, and when I...
01:24	Sam Parr	Everything they're talking about here is alleged. Also, this is just what the lawsuit says.
01:30	Shaan Puri	"And also, it's just comedy for me. I don't... I don't know about any of this, and I am just like everybody else on Twitter. This is for entertainment for me, so please don't take this too seriously."
01:42	Sam Parr	"What's the baseline story?"
01:44	Shaan Puri	Okay, so basically the story is Rippling notices... He's saying, "We noticed somebody was looking up 'deal a lot' in our systems." Then, "This is where it gets good," he's like, "so we created a honeypot."
01:57	Sam Parr	The best—the story behind this is basic. I wouldn't even be smart enough to come up with the idea; this is amazing. The way it worked was: I think I read that it was Rippling's founder, their legal team, and maybe one other executive who were in a room one night saying to themselves, "Dude, Deel is spying on us. What is going on? How do we catch them?" And they said... </FormattedResponse>
02:22	Shaan Puri	Let's—how did they know they were spying? Like, is it really that they just noticed on the logs that this guy was searching "deal a lot"? That sounds...
02:28	Sam Parr	"I don't know."
02:28	Shaan Puri	So crazy.
02:29	Sam Parr	Yeah, so there's always—no matter how thin a pancake, there's always two sides. That's what my dad always tells me. We only know this side, though. This side is that they had a suspicion. They're sitting there one night and they go, "I got it—let's make a screenshot, or let's actually make a fake Slack channel that no one at the company knows about. We're gonna call it 'deal defectors,' meaning all of Deal's ex-employees who now work at Rippling. They're talking trash about Deal and they're spilling the beans." Turns out that was a channel that no one at Rippling was a part of, but they emailed the Deal team and said, "This exists and you would love to see it." The next day after sending the letter, they noticed someone tried to log in to this "deal defectors" Slack channel. That seems strange since the only people who know about this are Deal's three people on their executive team and Rippling's three-person executive team — and it wasn't us (Rippling). Therefore, it had to be one of the Deal executives who knew about this espionage and spying situation and had access to the back end of Rippling's login. Is that right?
03:36	Shaan Puri	I think that's right. Allegedly, this happened in Ireland. He's working at the Dublin office. They went to the local authorities and got the ability to subpoena his phone. The story is: a person comes in and says, "You've been served—you need to hand over your phone right now." He says, "Oh, it's upstairs in my bag." They go upstairs, look in the bag, and there's just a laptop—no phone. They're like, "Okay, where's the phone?" He says, "I gotta go to the bathroom." He goes to the bathroom, locks himself in, and then the story goes that the person outside heard him doing something on his phone. The person was basically shouting at the door: "If you delete anything on that phone, you're in violation of the law." The story ends with the spy saying, "That's a risk I have to take"—or, "That's a risk I'm willing to take."
04:41	Sam Parr	He said that.
04:42	Shaan Puri	That's what they wrote at this thing. Then they hear a "flush" — they hear a flush, and the guy flees the premises. They don't get the phone. Rippling orders somebody to go check the plumbing of the building to see if he flushed a phone. They couldn't find a phone in there — no phone. So that's where the story stands today. That's why they came out publicly and tried to... win this in the court of public opinion instead.
05:10	Sam Parr	"Can I give three little bits of advice to anyone listening? If you're ever going to get in trouble: 1. Don't say shit. Do not say things like "that's a risk I'm willing to take." Don't say anything — just say, "I don't want to talk," or "give me a lawyer." 2. Don't write down anything you'd be afraid to have found in discovery. 3. Do not delete messages when you think you're in trouble — that's against the law.
05:34	Shaan Puri	Dude, I don't know — I don't know if any of this is true. There's a whole bunch of back and forth. So here's a bit of the other side of the story. I think someone from Deel came out, and here's what a Deel spokesperson said: > "Weeks after Rippling was accused of violating sanctions law in Russia and spreading falsehoods about Deel, Rippling is trying to shift the narrative with these sensationalized claims. We deny all legal wrongdoing and look forward to asserting our counterclaims." Alright. I, too, look forward to them asserting their counterclaims.
06:05	Sam Parr	You know what's funny: I lived in San Francisco, and I was a customer of the guy who started Rippling. His name is Parker Conrad. Parker previously started Zenefits. Back in 2013, 2014, or 2015—around that era—I think Zenefits was the fastest-growing company ever. I think it grew to about $100,000,000 in revenue, something insane. From what I remember, he got fired by the board because Zenefits was a payroll-and-benefits company, which means you need to be pretty uptight. He was accused of being a little "loosey-goosey." I recall the articles saying people at the parties were "having sex in the hallways" or something insane like that. </FormattedResponse>
06:51	Shaan Puri	"I don't think that was it. Well, maybe that was happening, but I don't think that was the issue that got him. No."
06:55	Sam Parr	That was—like a canary in the coal mine. It was like, "dude, this guy—he does it." Not everyone has their health benefits license, or some license like that that you need to sell benefits.
07:05	Shaan Puri	I guess, in order to be a broker—a licensed broker—you had to have it [the license] in every state that you were operating in. There were a bunch of compliance things. What had happened was either some people didn't have it, or there was another thing: he had created a macro, like a piece of software, that would just take the tests for you.
07:22	Sam Parr	Yeah.
07:23	Shaan Puri	You could speed through this and get your license way faster to keep up with the growth — and, kind of, not actually do it yourself. I think that's when he got in a lot of trouble. Again, in this case, he got shamed and was kicked out of the company. David Sacks took over — David Sacks, who was his COO and a major investor. I think Sacks had put in like $10 or $20 million of his own money into the company and then came in as COO because it was the next big, hot startup. When this came out, Sacks basically threw Conrad under the bus.
07:53	Sam Parr	"But they use, like, 'These guys are partying — they're banging in the hallway.'"
07:56	Shaan Puri	They just made it look like the whole thing was a mess—whatever, yeah. Then he took over and he basically got the shaft. Rippling was sort of his revenge company. But yeah—this guy finds himself in some drama, I guess.
08:09	Sam Parr	Parker likes to party. Parker's putting the "pa" in "party" — I mean, he likes to get down. And now I'm hearing about — I didn't know about this Russia stuff. So Parker lives life on the edge, and, you know, he's kind of the bad boy of the HR SaaS industry. What can you say?
08:26	Shaan Puri	He needs to go Jensen leather jacket—just pure snakeskin. The bad boy of HR SaaS is here.
08:36	Sam Parr	I like Parker. Parker parties, man — he just gets down. He always finds himself in a sticky situation. Sign me up. Parker should come on to MFM, and...
08:47	Shaan Puri	"We should go hang out."
08:48	Sam Parr	But this guy likes to party, you know.
08:51	Shaan Puri	Alright. So—alright. A lot of uninformed speculation here. Feels like we're going to get hit with a lawsuit, so we got to be careful. Alright.
09:00	Sam Parr	What's he gonna say, that he does a party? Like, is that slander—Parker's Ring doorbell?
09:06	Shaan Puri	Has shown him to be home before 8 PM every night. </FormattedResponse>
09:10	Sam Parr	Does Parker, the man in the polo and jeans, not like to get down?
09:13	Shaan Puri	"We deny these allegations." Alright, let's take a quick break because we got something for you. We pinned a survey to one of our videos and asked, "What's the biggest challenge you have right now in your business?" The number one response was getting your first 100 customers — that was the most popular answer. Of course, that's the challenge. If you can't get to 100 customers, you're definitely not going to get to a thousand. What the team at HubSpot did was go through all the old episodes. They listened to the stories about how I got customers for my first business, how Sam did it for his first business, and what some of the guests talked about — how they scraped and clawed to get those initial 100 customers to get the ball rolling. Then they put those stories together in a report. It's a PDF, totally free. You can get it and it will give you some inspiration and ideas around how you might be able to go get your first 100 customers. Check it out — it's in the description below. Alright. So, okay — whatever. There's the whole Deal Rippling thing; there are a bunch of funny tweets about it. It's just good comedy. I actually have a different angle here. I don't know if you have anything else you want to say on this, but it got me thinking: what are some other great examples of corporate espionage in history? I have some for you, Sam.
10:18	Sam Parr	Oh, okay — cool. I like that.
10:20	Shaan Puri	Alright, so check this out. I went down a little rabbit hole and tried to find examples of great corporate espionage cases that have happened in the past. I want to start with the British East India Company — okay, are you prepared for this? Basically, back in the day — we're talking about the 1800s — the British East India Company was a trading company between the UK and India. They did two notable things, one of which is unrelated to corporate espionage: did you know they had their own corporate army?
10:57	Sam Parr	Well, now, they were like the ballers of the earth. They started in the 1600s and basically helped shape global trade.
11:07	Shaan Puri	So, they were so prolific that other parts of Europe — basically, they were attacked on their trade routes. There were a lot of security concerns, so they formed their own corporate military, which is pretty badass, and I think that's awesome. If I was Perplexity or something like that — if I'm like the third- or fourth-tier AI company right now — I might just spin up a corporate military, just to put some shine on me and what I'm doing, make it seem like I’ve got some trade secrets that I need to protect. Like, just armed guards going through soma [unclear: "soma"]... it'd be amazing.
11:35	Sam Parr	Yeah, I think that every company needs a fake enemy or a fake emergency to prepare for. I think it's good for them.
11:42	Shaan Puri	It's like when I used to be in college and we would go out. I'd be at the bar, and just a lot of strikeouts were going on — pretty low batting average, pretty low slugging percentage, just taking a lot of L's. </FormattedResponse>
11:56	Sam Parr	What was your cold approach open?</FormattedResponse>
12:02	Shaan Puri	"What was that? Cold approach... Open. Okay, here we go. Ready? Sam, just turn around. I'll be the girl. I'll be... and now you're just gonna feel my body." "Yeah."
12:09	Sam Parr	So I...
12:10	Shaan Puri	Was hanging out.
12:10	Sam Parr	"In the dance — wait, hold on. What? What? What is this?"
12:13	Shaan Puri	"Oh, you didn't want to grind?"
12:15	Sam Parr	Oh—oh, shit! No. Okay, my bad.</FormattedResponse>
12:18	Shaan Puri	Totally thought you wanted to grind.
12:22	Sam Parr	That was it: the mistake—grind with the "immediate apology" shtick.
12:27	Shaan Puri	That was—if it was on the dance floor. Alright. If we're not on the dance floor, if we're at the bar, ready? </FormattedResponse>
12:33	Sam Parr	"Yeah, so I'm just turned around. I'm looking over here. I'm just hanging out. Hey."
12:38	Shaan Puri	"Yeah, do they do drinks here? Just a question — just an innocent question."
12:46	Sam Parr	That was it. Mine used to be: "Hey [Salvabet?], how many oceans are there—five or seven?"
12:53	Shaan Puri	Oh wow, that's great. Yeah, this was—I was talking about pre-reading the book The Game. Once I read The Game, then it was, "Hey, you guys gotta settle an argument here," and I just literally ripped the line from the book where it's like: > "My roommate's girlfriend is making him throw away all the pictures of his ex-girlfriend in his apartment. Is that crazy, or is she? We think she's crazy. Is that crazy?" And they're like, "No, you gotta get rid of that." And it's like, "Oh, you do wanna be my girlfriend?" "No? Okay, never mind."
13:22	Sam Parr	Do you know what the worst line is? It's when I would steal all of the lines from The Game, and then one out of ten times a woman would say, "Yeah, I read The Game too, you douche." It was just like... you go home. So sad. That was the worst I would have. </FormattedResponse>
13:38	Shaan Puri	Thought that worked. We have so much in common — we love the same books.
13:41	Sam Parr	I didn't have that "turn shit into gold" type of persona back then. No — I was... there's... </FormattedResponse>
13:47	Shaan Puri	A reason I was single for—not just all four years of college, but even two years after college—was that it was a long drought. I felt like the British East India Company had just marched through the drought.
14:01	Sam Parr	That's not exactly a drought, because drought implies that that's not normal.
14:06	Shaan Puri	Well, yeah—exactly. I guess it's just a desert.
14:10	Sam Parr	Yes. What are some other ones? Wait—by the way, have you ever done this with a company? </FormattedResponse>
14:16	Shaan Puri	Done. What—corporate espionage? Do you think I'm cool enough to do that?
14:19	Sam Parr	My extent of it was having a friend at Facebook who told me what my competitors were doing. I've been there, done that a few times.
14:31	Shaan Puri	Yeah. No — I’ve never done anything this cool, I don’t think. But you know, I gotta tell you this British East India Company story. Back in the day, China had a monopoly on tea production. This was a big problem: tea was super popular, China made all the tea, and nobody outside China could figure out how to produce it. They didn’t have the seeds or the know-how. So everyone was trading with China to get tea, but they had nothing China wanted in return. That created huge trade imbalances. Basically, Britain ended up trading opium into China as the only good that would be accepted. China didn’t like that, and it led to what was called the First Opium War. There was literally a war because of this trade imbalance around tea. So the British decided to do something about it. The British East India Company hired a man named Robert Fortune. He was a Scottish botanist and adventurer. They paid him to infiltrate China and “steal” China’s tea industry secrets. By the way, Google a picture of this guy — he looks like a Scottish man, but he disguised himself as a Chinese merchant and went undercover. He wore Chinese clothing and a Chinese hairstyle. He traveled deep into China’s tea regions, which were actually off-limits to foreigners. He gained access and studied tea production step by step: planting, harvesting, drying, packaging — everything. He didn’t just observe; he was able to collect thousands of tea plants and seeds... [transcript cuts off]
16:09	Sam Parr	The guy was supposed to be Chinese. </FormattedResponse>
16:11	Shaan Puri	This guy was supposed to be Chinese. I don't know how he did it, but he's me — he's you — with sideburns like sick chops. Wow. Not only that, he started recruiting others, turning people. He recruited Chinese tea growers, hiring them and persuading them to leave China secretly and relocate to India. Basically, he pulled it off. He stole the trade secrets: he hired the tea growers, smuggled them out of the country, and brought the seeds, the tools, the knowledge — the trade secrets — to India. They started growing tea, and soon after, India surpassed China in terms of tea production, broke the Chinese monopoly on tea, and prevented future wars. It actually de‑escalated the conflict because there wasn't this huge trade imbalance and opium problem.
17:01	Sam Parr	That's insane that this guy pulled this off. How long was he in China for?</FormattedResponse>
17:04	Shaan Puri	I think this was a multi-year thing.
17:07	Sam Parr	How exciting. That's a life worth living.
17:11	Shaan Puri	Let me give you some other ones. Alright, so now let me give you a more modern example: Oracle versus Microsoft. Have you heard this story? No? Alright — two giants, two successful companies. Microsoft, if you remember, in the 1990s was facing antitrust cases. There are videos of Bill Gates on YouTube; he's in depositions. They were being hauled in front of the antitrust committees and had to defend themselves.
17:34	Sam Parr	So, he was being accused of a monopoly.
17:36	Shaan Puri	Monopolistic behaviors — and this really was a problem for Microsoft. It slowed them down. I think it's called the "lost decade", where, basically, for a long time Microsoft couldn't acquire companies. They couldn't—if something got hot—release a competitor and kind of use their distribution to win because they had just gone through this antitrust process.
17:55	Sam Parr	They had to lay low.
17:56	Shaan Puri	They had to lay low, exactly. While Microsoft was in this situation, Oracle hired private investigators to dig up dirt on Microsoft. This happened during this time, and it got found out. What they were doing was pretty smart: instead of digging up dirt on Microsoft directly, they went to all these other companies that were supposed to be independent. These organizations were coming out and providing testimonials or testimony in support of Microsoft—like the Independent Institute and the National Taxpayers Union—and I was like, “Oh, this independent counsel... the independent institute... they’re coming out in support of Microsoft here.” Larry Ellison from Oracle was like, “Nah, no way.” So Oracle hires these private investigators to go dumpster diving. They dig through the trash of these independent organizations, finding links where they got paid by Microsoft, and they get caught doing this. But they also expose that Microsoft funded these organizations. Then they go to Larry Ellison. He says, “Look, I had nothing to do with this. I wasn't made aware of it till the end, and I agree this was a bit unsavory.” But he spins it: “Corporate espionage? This is a public service. We're doing our civic duty here. We are taking hidden information about how Microsoft is funding these supposed independent orgs and making it public. We are doing—we are doing God's work out here.” Calling it public service and doing his civic duty was an incredible spin.
19:25	Sam Parr	The other day, in an Elon Musk interview, someone asked him — I think it was Ted Cruz — "A lot of people think you're smart; who do you consider smart?" The first person he named was Larry Ellison. </FormattedResponse>
19:38	Shaan Puri	"Elon said that."
19:39	Sam Parr	Yeah. He goes, "I think Larry Ellison is one of the smartest people I work with." He said, "You remember from Forrest Gump where he says, 'Stupid is as stupid does'?" Elon goes, "Smart is as smart does." So he took the inverse of that line, which I thought was funny. He says, "Smart is as smart does," and I think Larry Ellison might be the smartest person I know. It's pretty funny that, until Larry became more front-facing with some of these things, I regarded him as just a guy who started early and became the best. I didn't realize how "sharky"—not necessarily in a bad way—he actually was.</FormattedResponse>
20:20	Shaan Puri	Yeah. How elite he is—wow, that's amazing. Elon [Musk], I think, took some of his spin. Remember when he, like, impregnated that woman who works with him and he was just like, "underpopulation is the biggest crisis we face—saving the planet"? Yeah, and I was like, "whoa—player. 'Player' with no 'r' at the end." Man, that is... that is incredible. Can you imagine having the balls to just come out and not just defend it, not deny it, but to claim that you're doing good?
20:56	Sam Parr	That's incredible. In high school, when you're hanging out with your buddies, smoking weed late at night, you're just riffing and saying the dumb shit you're going to do the next morning when you're sober. Like, "We're gonna go, dude — we're changing now. We're gonna get up, and we're gonna... start working out first thing in the morning." That's the kind of thing that Elon would say.
21:13	Shaan Puri	It is crazy. It's like, "Hey, don't you think it's kind of inappropriate? You know, she works with you. She's an executive at the company. Maybe there's an imbalance of power here. Are you concerned about this at all?" He's like, "I'm concerned about underpopulation." Like, wow — holy shit. Nick Cannon just, like, writing notes out there. Alright, here's some other ones: Coke versus Pepsi.
21:31	Sam Parr	Dude, did Nick Cannon just catch a stray bullet on that one?
21:34	Shaan Puri	Yeah, he's like the icon for too many kids, dude.</FormattedResponse>
21:38	Sam Parr	Dude, it's 08/08, so not Nick Cannon.
21:42	Shaan Puri	2006 — Coke versus Pepsi. Another, you know, deal rippling — Microsoft vs. Oracle, Coke vs. Pepsi. These are all just legendary rivalries. So an EA at Coke, who's disgruntled — this woman, Joya Williams — decides, "You know what? Screw it." She leaves her post as an executive assistant [EA] and she basically steals some trade secrets. She takes a can of their new, unreleased product and writes a letter to Pepsi. In the letter she says, "I have the formula for Coke. Do you want the secret formula? I also have a new unreleased product." She sends the letter and adds, "I'll give you the formula for a price." Guess what her price was?
22:21	Sam Parr	$100, 1,000,000. I don't know.
22:23	Shaan Puri	$1,500,000
22:24	Sam Parr	"And what year?"
22:25	Shaan Puri	2006
22:27	Sam Parr	Alright, so it's about $3 million today. </FormattedResponse>
22:29	Shaan Puri	Pepsi, being the good guy that it is, says, "You know what? Not doing it." They tell Coke, "Hey—you have this woman; she's trying to sell you a formula. We don't want it. Let's use the FBI. Let's take this woman down." What they do is set up a sting operation. She comes out and she's ready to sell the formula. They do a test payment for $4,000 to show that they're legit. They record her saying what she has and that she's doing this trade. Then they lock her up—they arrest her, and she goes to prison for eight years. "Wow— isn't that crazy?"
23:05	Sam Parr	Wow, that's a lot... maybe, like, a...
23:08	Shaan Puri	Few, maybe too much.
23:09	Sam Parr	Yeah, maybe too much. Maybe a few months. Dude—Pepsi, you guys suck.
23:15	Shaan Puri	Maybe promote her.
23:16	Sam Parr	I don't know.
23:16	Shaan Puri	Eight years in prison seems like it was a lot for that. So, yeah—she got made an example of.
23:22	Sam Parr	That's crazy. This was, like, a recent story.
23:25	Shaan Puri	2006
23:26	Sam Parr	So, it looks like her boyfriend was also in on it. This was a legit scheme. Yeah, that sucks. When I hear Joya, I think of an old woman who's like, "Oh, Coke, you didn't give me a raise—I'm gonna get back." You know what I mean? I think there was more to it.
23:47	Shaan Puri	What do you think about Pepsi turning down the "secret formula" and the "trade secrets," and deciding to take her down?
23:54	Sam Parr	Because, what are you gonna do with that Pepsi? It's like, what am I supposed to do — make my shit taste like Coke?
23:59	Shaan Puri	"It's just sugar, yeah."</FormattedResponse>
24:03	Sam Parr	"I don't know what you expect me to do with that, because the thing with Coke is that only a few people have access to it. I don't—who the fuck knows. There's no way that's true, by the way."
24:14	Shaan Puri	Let me give you a couple other quick ones: Uber and Waymo. Do you remember this one? You probably remember this.
24:19	Sam Parr	Yeah. The main character of Waymo stole a bunch of stuff from Google, and Uber was going to use it. Now Uber got sued.
24:29	Shaan Puri	Yeah, so, exactly. Basically, Anthony Levandowski was this guy who worked at Waymo. Travis Kalanick recruited him to Uber—he wanted him to set up the autonomous-driving stuff at Uber. He came from Waymo, which is the autonomous-driving division inside Google. Apparently he downloaded 14,000 confidential files on the way out—maybe a bit much; maybe a little too many files. He could've got away with a little less. They had the information. He ends up getting fired from Uber. Uber had to settle. Google received 0.34% of Uber, which was about $250,000,000 in stock back in 2018 (which I think is closer to $1 billion now). He had to go to prison for 18 months, but then Trump pardoned him early, so he got out. Why he didn't want him to serve all 18 months, I guess.
25:27	Sam Parr	Well, I understand. That's why a part of it exists.
25:30	Shaan Puri	"He's like, 'Anthony's a big football fan. We don't want him to miss the Super Bowl — it's only once a year. Let's get him out.'"
25:34	Sam Parr	So, where is he now? That's a good— I wonder: is he damaged goods, or surely not? Like, some VC [venture capitalist] was like, "Dude, I don't care. You're like Martha Stewart — you're not cooler."
25:47	Shaan Puri	He's the CEO of Pollen Mobile. He's been there for three years. I don't know what that is.
25:53	Sam Parr	Okay, these are great stories. I'm in on it. Do you want to hear something that's related to security and that I think is almost equally exciting?
26:03	Shaan Puri	Yeah—wait, wait. Before we finish, I just have one more little tidbit: the U.S.—this is actually baked into the DNA of the United States.
26:10	Sam Parr	Don't
26:10	Shaan Puri	Know espionage — you know, corporate espionage. America's founding father and first US Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, basically realized that Europe was ahead of the US and actually decided to encourage intellectual piracy. Doesn't all crime sound better when you just give it, like, more letters? Make it sound better. So what he said was he advocated rewarding "those who would bring improvements and secrets of extraordinary value into the United States," which was instrumental in making the US a safe haven for industrial spies. They did this with Samuel Slater. </FormattedResponse>
26:47	Sam Parr	My boy—I love Samuel Slater. One of the greatest stories of all time.
26:51	Shaan Puri	What's his story? So, he brought British textile technology to the U.S. What does that mean?</FormattedResponse>
26:55	Sam Parr	Is he — they claim, they claim. Well, sort of. Actually, they claim he had a photographic memory. This is the story you're told as a kid in history class: that he had a photographic memory. But basically he was from England, and he memorized and partially wrote down how factories in England worked. He came to America and helped reinvent American factories, which spurred the Industrial Revolution, which arguably made America what it is.
27:22	Shaan Puri	Are we pro-espionage? I think I might be. So, by the way, this guy's nickname — top five nickname. Do you know Samuel Slater's nickname? No? "Slater the Traitor" — that's what they called him in the UK. </FormattedResponse>
27:34	Sam Parr	Yes, but he was welcomed with open arms here. We loved him. So, yes, Samuel Slater is sort of an American hero.
27:42	Shaan Puri	That's crazy. At the age of 21, he literally "prison-broke it"; he photographically memorized all these trade secrets, then came to America, gave them to us, spurred the Industrial Revolution, and made America great again.
27:54	Sam Parr	Maybe not again. For the first time, yeah. For the first time, yeah, yeah.
27:58	Shaan Puri	The inaugural "Make America Make America Great for Once."
28:01	Sam Parr	Yeah, yeah, those hats are...
28:04	Shaan Puri	Out of style.
28:06	Sam Parr	That's actually pretty funny. Yeah—he made America great. I have another story. Last year, there's two parts to the story. Last year we talked about this company, Wiz. Wiz is a cybersecurity company. To most of our listeners, we mostly talk about small business stuff; these guys are not that. They're an enterprise cybersecurity company, but it has two amazing components. One part of the story that you talked about—and by the way, these guys, Wiz, remember when we did "Sarah's List"? They were on Sarah's List. So, right, we kind of didn't exactly nail it because it was... a little pat on the back.
28:42	Shaan Puri	I don't know if the mic's picking that one up.
28:45	Sam Parr	They were already kicking ass, and I don't know what the multiple was on when we named them, but it was at least double. There are two amazing stories about this. The first is how fast they grew. I want to show you how fast they grew, but before we talk about that, we have to talk about how they started — and you talked about this.
29:01	Shaan Puri	"Wait—you buried the elite? They're getting bought for $32 billion."
29:04	Sam Parr	Oh yeah — they got bought for $32,000,000,000 ($32 billion), sorry. So this company, Wiz, is getting bought for $32,000,000,000. The story of how they started is amazing. The story of how fast they grew is also amazing. It just happened the other day. But listen to this: I think you are the one who brought this up. Were you the one who talked about this guy Gilly?
29:24	Shaan Puri	Yes.
29:25	Sam Parr	So, Gilly is an Israeli cybersecurity veteran. He's exited a few companies in the cybersecurity space. He was also part of this elite group of cybersecurity specialists in the Israeli military called "eighty two hundred" — I believe it's called [Unit 8200].
29:41	Shaan Puri	And he invented CAPTCHA. He invented, like, a certain type of firewall. He invented a lot of shit. He's an OG — the OG in cybersecurity.
29:49	Sam Parr	And so he has this thing I believe it's called Cyberstarts. Yes, you can call it an incubator or a VC firm, but here's how it works. He teamed up with a lot of young ex-military from Unit 8200. I think that's "eight two zero zero" — it's the name of the part of the military that's the cybersecurity specialist. So after you finish your compulsory service, you go to Gili and you say, "Gili, sign me up — I want to start a company." What Gili has done is he has this fund, and in the fund are dozens or even hundreds, I believe, of cybersecurity officers at large companies — not just Israeli companies but American companies. And what they do, these cybersecurity officers see...
30:34	Shaan Puri	So, yeah.
30:34	Sam Parr	Yes. They say, "Here's the problems I need solved, Gilly—go." So go have your young founders create products to solve these problems, and I will be your first customer. Gilly goes to these founders and says, "Guys, I'm going to invest in your company. Here's the idea to get you started. I guarantee you $2,000,000 in revenue in the first year." That's amazing, because these companies will either sell or raise their next round of funding at 20 times $2,000,000 in revenue. So with $2,000,000 in revenue the first year, they can raise money at a $40,000,000 valuation. That's a no-brainer. Now, what's pretty controversial is these CISOs — Chief Information Security Officers — at these companies. They own pieces of Gilly's fund, and anytime one of these startups does well and succeeds, they get paid out. It's a very insular group of a lot of Israeli guys. They have that bond over being Jewish, and they probably all came from very similar parts of the Israeli army. So there's this bond after bond after bond, and they're like, "Yeah, look — we'll help you, we'll get you off the ground, and then we're going to get the money." It just flows around nicely. And so that's what he did with these guys... which is—isn't that a crazy setup?
31:46	Shaan Puri	It's amazing. I'm going to read you this: the numbers from his CyberStarts fund are phenomenal. This was about six or seven years ago. It only has 22 companies, but the 22 companies' combined value was $35,000,000,000 at the time — $35 billion. Wiz just sold for $32,000,000,000 itself ($32 billion). Five of the 22 are unicorns, so that's an extremely high hit rate. A normal VC fund, I think, has between 1–3% of the companies become unicorns. YC (Y Combinator), which is the best accelerator in the world, I think their number is between 6–10%. So this guy is like double YC, right? Four of them sold in the last 12 months for a total of $1,500,000,000 ($1.5 billion). In all three of his funds he shows an IRR (internal rate of return) of more than 100%, which is obviously fantastic. Not a single company in the portfolio has closed to date, and he basically beats every VC fund in terms of his performance. </FormattedResponse>
32:56	Sam Parr	In his first fund, he turned $54,000,000 into $1,000,000,000. That was his stake.
33:02	Shaan Puri	Yeah — crazy, right? You described the model well. Basically, he's got this network of CISOs and they're called the Cyber Star [CyberStar CISO group]. They all talk: they say what problems they have, but they also get pitched solutions. It's kind of the handpicked-solution model—everyone starts using the solution and they all have a share in the fund. So if those companies take off, they win. There is definitely a conflict of interest with this—let's be clear—but wow, what a powerful network and what a powerful way to use a network. James Currier came on the podcast; I just did an interview with him (I don't think it's out yet). His fund is called Network Effects and his blog post is called "Your Life on Network Effects." The idea is that your life is a network effect. Everything you do is choosing a network. When you choose a college, you're not just choosing a school—you’re picking a network to join. I joined the Duke alumni network when I picked Duke. When you move to San Francisco, you're picking a network of people to join. When you pick a company, you're picking a network of people to join, and those are going to be the coworkers and future opportunities that open up for you. Once you realize your life is dictated by networks—the church or religion you're in, the language you speak, the country you live in—they're all networks. Similarly, this is such a powerful example: this guy's network, dating back to the Israeli security/intelligence groups to the network of Fortune 500 CISOs, is extremely valuable. That network turned out to be worth tens of billions of dollars.
34:43	Sam Parr	And it's pretty amazing — he's so precise about this. Look at the first YouTube link that I posted in our MDB doc. Basically, there's a video that has less than a thousand views: 528 views. Do you see that 528-view video? In this video he breaks down his process. He says: > "I've done this 35 times. I have a nine-to-eighteen-month journey that I use to achieve product-market fit before building any cybersecurity company." He goes through the key phases, which are basically exploring different pain points and how to find them. You spend seven months developing the right solution that mere mortals can use. Then he outlines the questions you need to ask prospects and explains how to find prospects.
35:32	Shaan Puri	This is great. What a great find—only 500 views on this guy who's given out... a billion-dollar playbook.
35:39	Sam Parr	And he goes—he talks about how he's going to, you want to accelerate the timeline and what the benchmarks are. He gives this whole playbook that he uses, and he goes, "I've done this 35 times and we've turned this into billions of dollars." It's incredible. Now, here we are with Wiz. Wiz was founded by a guy named—what is his first name—Asaf? Is it Asaf? His last name's Rapaport. He basically had a company that he previously sold for something like $350,000,000, and he did it when he was, like, a kid still. So when you think, "Well, someone does that well—why on earth are you going to join this thing?" Well, he did join this thing. He left Microsoft and even explains, "I sold this company to Microsoft and I left, and I'm afraid to leave Microsoft. I'm not sure what to do." So he joins this thing. Listen to the timeline that Wiz went through. Wiz was founded in—when you say he joined this thing, he joined what? Gillies Cyberstarts? Sorry. [unclear phrase]
36:32	Shaan Puri	Oh, joined Cyberstarts. Okay.
36:33	Sam Parr	He joined Cyberstarts — Gillies' thing [unclear reference] — and he started the company in January 2020. Because he was already successful and part of this Gillies crew, right off the bat they raised $21 million in funding. They were able to hire a team of 10–20 people by December of that first year. They raised $100 million. Fast forward one year to March — we're still in 2021, one year after founding — they're only at 40 employees, but they are at roughly $100 million of ARR [annual recurring revenue]. That's crazy.
37:15	Shaan Puri	So that's breakneck speed, right? By the way, we do this, but there's a lot of people who are like, "Dude, venture money — don't raise too much money. Growth, growth, growth. It's a problem. You gotta bootstrap." You know, people — there are different ways to win. This is a great example of, like, "No — raise a bunch of money out of the gate, go and blitz-scale this thing, keep raising money, and just go for the huge prize."
37:44	Sam Parr	And I'm gonna— I have a takeaway on that. Two years after the start of the company, now in 2021, they raised $250,000,000 at a $6,000,000,000 valuation. This was a handful of months after they'd already reached $100,000,000 in revenue with 40 people, eighteen months in. Now we're in 2022. This is the second year of business. They're at, I believe, 100 employees, and by the end of that year they're at 400 employees. Fast forward each year: after $100,000,000 in revenue, by year three they're at $200,000,000. By year four they're at $500,000,000. By that same year they sell for $32,000,000,000. Is that insane? How on earth can you imagine going zero to five years in and creating between $500,000,000 and $1,000,000,000 in revenue with only like 500 or 600 employees?
38:40	Shaan Puri	I was watching a clip of their CRO [Chief Revenue Officer] talking. He said they were growing so fast that the only reliable benchmark for how much to grow headcount on the sales team was calendar utilization. When people asked if they used pipeline leads or did market analysis or market studies, he said, "We just looked at how full the calendars were." He explained that, for every product line and every category, they looked at the calendar density of all their sales reps. In areas where the calendar density was high, they knew that area was working — hire more people. They measured calendar density of sales reps by booked calls for people looking for demos, and that's how they determined that was the only reliable leading indicator they could find for growth. </FormattedResponse>
39:32	Sam Parr	And if you look at their Glassdoor review, the CEO—people rave about them. You could say, "Well, is Glassdoor even accurate?" I'm not sure. </FormattedResponse>
39:40	Shaan Puri	You're the only dude who looks at Glassdoor. They have one web visitor a month, and it's you.
39:45	Sam Parr	Man, I'm telling you—you can get so much insight. If you go to Glassdoor, sort by "negative" and look at the negative reviews. Then look at the positive reviews. The truth is in the middle. I'm telling you, you can learn so much about what people are complaining about.
39:59	Shaan Puri	Did you ever—were you ever on Glassdoor with any of your companies? Like, was "Social" on Glassdoor?
40:05	Sam Parr	Yeah, I didn't look because the only people that left reviews were the people I fired.
40:09	Shaan Puri	Correct. Do you think they had an accurate view of the company?
40:14	Sam Parr	Well, it's an accurate view of the people who disliked me... But there's—there's, like, so... I don't even want to read it. What does it say? Does it say I'm...?
40:23	Shaan Puri	Trying to go.
40:24	Sam Parr	I don't know if we have one anymore because we haven't been in business independently for years. They could have shut it down. But it was probably that management is good — the CEO moves too fast and is not communicating well, which is probably true.
40:37	Shaan Puri	Too handsome. Too ripped. Moves too fast.
40:41	Sam Parr	Well... I would make decisions like I'm intimidatingly smart. I would make decisions quickly, and I would say, "This is what we're doing now." I just wouldn't communicate with my managers; I would just say, "This is it."
40:51	Shaan Puri	I just can't believe you like reading the reviews of whiny employees of other companies. I just... what do you really get out of it?
40:59	Sam Parr	Like, it reveals so much truth... It could, it could say...
41:02	Shaan Puri	But that thing you said is true about, like, every company, you know. </FormattedResponse>
41:07	Sam Parr	Yeah, but...
41:08	Shaan Puri	CEO likes to move fast.
41:09	Sam Parr	It could be like—let's say there's this new startup, and it says, you know, the market. We were going to do something like BetterUp. You know what BetterUp is? It's a coaching platform. For [unclear: "before hampton"], we were thinking about getting into that. I read the reviews of BetterUp, and the reviews were like: "Business boomed during COVID, but now we can't get anyone to sign up for online coaching." That's an interesting macro insight into the coaching market — it boomed.
41:37	Shaan Puri	During COVID, I like that.
41:39	Sam Parr	And so you'll see that on four different coaching platforms, Glassdoor reviews, or—like—you know, our valuation. If you see this in five different ones, it will be "way too high." I have no idea how we're ever going to grow. That's not something you want to see on four different Glassdoor pages of companies in the same industry. So you get insights like that. Or it could be like, "CEO's amazing at press" — don't believe everything you see. If you see a bunch of those, I think to myself, ugh... I've been basing a lot of my insights off public articles. I don't know if I should actually do that. Do you know what I mean?
42:09	Shaan Puri	Yeah... I personally wouldn't do it. I wouldn't trust it, because I think you're going to get a lot of false negatives in this that would spook you. For example:
42:20	Sam Parr	"You ever work?"
42:22	Shaan Puri	At a company that had blind... [sentence incomplete]
42:25	Sam Parr	I didn't work at a company when that existed. I know.
42:28	Shaan Puri	Or, like I used to.
42:29	Sam Parr	Read it.
42:29	Shaan Puri	You probably had one. You probably just didn't join it. Blind is basically a private social network. Let's say you work at a big company. There's an app called "Blind." You log in; you have to use your... I think you have to show that you have a work email there. So only people who work at the company can see it and can post, and it...
42:46	Sam Parr	Still exists.
42:47	Shaan Puri	But it's all anonymous. Yes, it still exists, and it's all anonymous — it's basically just like a back channel for people to bitch and moan and complain. The upside would be that there's kind of a whistleblowery type of thing where you can call out hard truths that you're not going to call out publicly. The reality, though, is that it was all just complaints, and the problem was that they were misguided complaints. For example, at Twitch — I was on the executive team — so I knew all the numbers of the company. I knew what was going on, I knew the strategy, I knew who was smart and who wasn't because I'm sitting with these people every day. Then you read a review on Blind [anonymous app] or a post on Blind from someone who's, you know, just a mid-level employee — some engineering manager somewhere — and they would often be like, "Oh, there's no way we're going to hit our numbers." I'm like, dude, we're hitting our numbers. What are you talking about? I could see the numbers; you don't have access to the numbers, so you're just talking out your ass. The loudest, most extreme voices get the most play. They get the most attention. It's the same way when Dropbox launches on Hacker News and the top comment is, "No one's ever gonna use this." Someone can give you a highly intelligent breakdown of why nobody's ever going to use Dropbox, and then Dropbox becomes huge. So I think a lot of these anonymous message-board–type things are biased toward negativity from people who don't have real information and are too prone to false negatives to be trusted. For every example you can find where you get signal, you'll find counter-signal. That means, to me, I can't use this because I can't differentiate signal and counter-signal properly — only hindsight helps.
44:26	Sam Parr	I think if you read enough of them, you can start to see patterns. For example, if you're trying to understand a macro trend or do an industry analysis, you can see trends in the cluster reviews. I think that can help paint a picture, but it's not a fact. It's just asking, "Does this jive with other sources that I'm learning about?" So that's why I'm on board with it.
44:48	Shaan Puri	By the way, agree to disagree. I think you're right. I don't think you're wrong. I think there are problems with it, but there's some utility. You're the only guy I know who uses it, which I find funny.
44:57	Sam Parr	Well, I wanted to learn about the CEO and wondered, "What makes a CEO so great?" I read an article about him that said, "Don't mistake this guy's gentleness for ruthlessness."
45:08	Shaan Puri	It said, "Don't mistake Asaf's gentleness for someone who is willing to play by the rules."
45:12	Sam Parr	Yeah, and I was like, "That's an interesting title." So this guy must be a really nice guy, but he's ruthless—kind of a killer. That's an interesting trait. Is there anything I can learn from his personality? I went and read his Glassdoor reviews. He had glowing reviews as a CEO where people said, "Nice guy but total hard-ass." I thought that mix—those two traits—was fascinating. You can be polite and hardcore. I respect that; I like that. Is this a person I want to learn from? That was kind of my insight from looking at the Glassdoor reviews and reading interviews and things like that.
45:53	Shaan Puri	Right.</FormattedResponse>
45:53	Sam Parr	And so I just thought it was fascinating. We had Mark Lore on the pod. Mark started Diapers.com, which he grew during the dot‑com boom and sold for hundreds of millions of dollars. Then he did the same with Jet.com and sold that for billions of dollars. Now he's got a new thing. Have you seen this new thing? It's called "Wonder," I think.
46:08	Shaan Puri	Wonder, yeah.</FormattedResponse>
46:09	Sam Parr	And he had this thing when he came on the pod. By the way, when he came on the pod, we could tell that he didn't have a laptop. We were like, "Are you calling from your iPhone?" and he was like, "Yeah. I don't — I don't use laptops." We were like, "Is that, like, a billionaire thing?" and he was like...
46:24	Shaan Puri	He was awesome, by the way. I love that guy's energy. He was super positive, super energetic, super optimistic. He was great—charismatic and fun. He was fun. He was the best, I would...
46:35	Sam Parr	Love to.
46:36	Shaan Puri	Have him on. Yeah, we gotta get him back on.
46:37	Sam Parr	Well, on the pod we asked him how he did it, and he had one phrase that has always stuck with me because it was almost like saying — I'll explain why it stuck with me — but it was called "vision capital." He goes, "Those are the three things I care about. I find a really big idea and a big opportunity. I raise a ton of money, and then I go and hire the best people. I pay them all of that money that I raise and I sort of get out of the way and let them do the work." "I have a bootstrap company. You have only done bootstrap — mostly bootstrapped companies. It's really hard to do that because you don't have a lot of money to pay people, so you're doing the work, so it feels like a grind." This company, Wiz, is sort of a good example of the founders: they found an amazing opportunity, they raised shitloads of money, and this is a perfect example of how it's done when you have a really big idea, a really big opportunity, and a ton of money. And I think it's as hard as a bootstrapped startup, do you know what I mean? They're of equal challenge and stressfulness.
47:41	Shaan Puri	Equal. I don't know. This scaling at breakneck speed seems a lot more challenging to me.
47:47	Sam Parr	I think if you had a small bootstrap startup that was growing quickly, you would feel a similar amount of stress, but there is no...
47:56	Shaan Puri	"That's true."
47:57	Sam Parr	But there is no chance that you would have a $32 billion exit in five years.</FormattedResponse>
48:01	Shaan Puri	One of the funny things about life is that if you decide to start a business, you're going to spend—let's call it—ten hours a day, maybe twelve early on. You're just obsessed. Your mind is obsessed with this company: ten hours a day, twelve hours a day, every single day. It doesn't matter if that's a taco truck or Wizz selling for $32 billion—it's still going to take ten to twelve hours a day of your time and mindshare. It's still going to stress you out pretty much equally. If you are doing something that's, you know, $1,000,000 in ARR [annual recurring revenue] and you're trying to pay the bills, pay yourself, and grow, well, guess what: those bigger companies are also trying to pay the bills and grow and do all that stuff. So you're right—the stress levels are more based on you as a person than the company you're running, and the time commitment is equal regardless of how many zeros are at the end of the business. This was probably one of the most important lessons my dad taught me. He said (my first business was in the restaurant industry, and he worked in oil and gas his whole life, for BP): > "The energy industry is just like the restaurant industry. You're going to spend the same ten hours a day, except in this one there's three extra zeros on the end of every project. So would you rather spend that same time on a small project or a bigger project? That's what you're deciding between here." I was like...
49:21	Sam Parr	Which is sort of hard to hear, right? You're like, "I'm dedicating my life to this thing. You're dedicating your life to this thing, but your prize is so much bigger."
49:29	Shaan Puri	I didn't think it was hard to hear. I was like, "Oh, that's the truth — okay, cool, thank you. Okay, what do I do?" Then I pretty much immediately switched and went to Australia to do a biotech thing with him. I was pretty ready to hear the truth. I think — you're right — most people don't like to hear the truth. I like to hear the truth because I realized that, basically, the truth — while short-term painful — is actually less painful in the long term. I think most people don't like the short-term pain; they're willing to have long-term pain.
49:59	Sam Parr	Have you been following these guys getting acquired? Was there anything you liked about the story or that stuck out to you?
50:06	Shaan Puri	Well, remember when we first brought this up? We first brought this up because Wiz was rumored to be selling for $23 billion. Then something happened where it was like, no—that's just a rumor, or Google couldn't do it because of antitrust, or for some reason the deal wasn't going to happen. If you remember, Asaf came out and he tweeted this kind of badass memo. First, the deal information got leaked—rumors about an acquisition for $23 billion. Then he released this and said, "We're not looking to get acquired. Let me be clear..." I think he said, "Let me cut to the chase: our next milestones are $1 billion in ARR and an IPO." Everyone was like, "Yeah, that's it—that guy's a killer." Most of us on the other side were like, "Oh, nice negotiating. Pretty sure it's going to sell for, I don't know, $25–$30 billion in the next twelve months." And that's exactly what happened. It sold for $30 billion, $32 billion in the next twelve months—it came exactly true what a lot of people noticed.
51:01	Sam Parr	"What was the first offer?" "The first offer was like 20 or 23." "Got it. So we got $10,000,000,000 — 10 extra billion dollars."
51:09	Shaan Puri	And I don't even know if the $23,000,000,000 was on the table. Maybe the $23,000,000,000 was what he wanted at the time, and they continued to grow. This is all part of the negotiation, right? I don't think this leaked because somebody really wanted the world to know. You know, this is part of a public negotiation: it's price-setting, it's anchoring, it's getting the second bidder to up their bid. There's a whole bunch of stuff happening there. And when a CEO is like, "We want to be independent," it's like—yeah, you do, but if the price is right, we'll see what happens. Almost always, once the price is right, they do it.
51:52	Sam Parr	I love hearing about this story. I'm very excited. In the time that we've worked on this podcast, this guy has built and sold a $32 billion company.
52:07	Shaan Puri	Well, would he put it like that?
52:09	Sam Parr	Yeah, but does he have 650,000 subscribers on YouTube? Probably not.
52:15	Shaan Puri	And now he will try to... I bet you this guy's gonna get into podcasting. That was the funniest tweet I saw the other day. He goes, "Even kings and billionaires wanna be podcasters." And I was like, it's true, dude. You see, whether it's billionaires on the All-In Podcast or Brett — you know, Bill Gurley on his podcast — like Bill Gurley's podcast, Elon is tweeting like crazy and trying to get his word out there. You see Gavin Newsom starting his new podcast. They all want what we got, Sam. They all want what we got. We'll sell it to them for $32 billion.
52:50	Sam Parr	It's always been this way. You know, look at who has bought "Time" magazine and "The Washington Post" — Bezos, you know. Once you're rich, you always want to be king. And to be king oftentimes is to own a media company. For some reason, it's been that way for hundreds of years.
53:09	Shaan Puri	Yeah, it's basically just like there are three buckets. If you're rich but lack status, you're going to chase status. If you're high status but have no money, you're going to chase money. If you have both wealth and status, you're going to chase power. Those are the three—you'll fill those up. Someone—[a friend who knows Elon]—was telling me that Elon gets all this criticism right now for backing Trump and Doge and all this stuff. The thing people say is, "He's doing this to give Tesla or whatever an unfair advantage; he's doing this to enrich himself." And my friend was like, "Are you an idiot? He's not doing this to enrich himself. He wants status." Not that he's doing this altruistically, but he wants status. That's, of course, what people want: when they have the money, they want the status; and when they have the status, they want the power. Those are the three things that draw people to do crazy stuff. Yeah—he wants something, but it's not money.
54:06	Sam Parr	Yeah. He's got, I think, at this [point]. When you have that much money, more money is probably boring. His father did a good interview on DJ Vlad, where he was talking about how he was like Elon: "I knew after he sold Zip2 that he wouldn't stop until he was number one, the richest person in the world..." like I...
54:24	Shaan Puri	Knew that.
54:25	Sam Parr	He goes, "I knew that was— that's what he wanted to do, and he would never stop until he was number one." I could tell he was like that since he was a kid.
54:33	Shaan Puri	Wait — so Elon's dad did an interview with VladTV?
54:36	Sam Parr	Yeah. Didn't we talk about this? Yeah.</FormattedResponse>
54:39	Shaan Puri	No, there's—dude, what else was in this? This is incredible.
54:42	Sam Parr	So VladTV, part of Black YouTube — one of my favorite niches on YouTube. He had: "What's Elon's dad's name?"
54:51	Shaan Puri	"I don't know."
54:52	Sam Parr	Emeril—or something like that... ah, forget his name. He had his dad on the other day. DJ Vlad is weird; he never just releases the whole episode. Yeah—Errol Musk. Errol releases clips, and he's been releasing clips over the past month from this interview. He talks about what Elon was like as a kid and asks, "Are the rumors true that you are rich?" It sounds like this guy and Elon are exactly the same: he made some money, then said, "We're gonna spend it all buying this farm and turn this farm into a thing," and it went broke. Then he'd say, "Well, I'm gonna convince some other people to give me money; we're gonna start this new thing." That worked, and he went rich and bust constantly. He also says, "I loaned Elon money to start Zip2 and that turned into $30,000,000, and I knew when he made that money he was never gonna stop until he was number one." He just tells these crazy stories along the way.
55:42	Shaan Puri	Dude, we need to do a whole "reacts" video. Was the interview good?
55:46	Sam Parr	It's pretty good. It's shocking that, if my father said any of this shit publicly, it would be weird, dude. It makes it very... they talk exactly the same—the way they are.
55:57	Shaan Puri	All comments are like, "His laugh is a DNA test in itself." Or they're timestamping it and it says, "I swear this is Elon." The face mimics it—the way he laughs, the way he rolls his eyes. I could see Elon here. This laugh is a paternity test.
56:11	Sam Parr	Like the spacing in words. You know how Elon talks—slow. He has a very unique structure to how he speaks. It's exactly the same. His dad is insane, by the way. There's some crazy story about how he is now married to his stepdaughter. He does some wacky-ass shit.
56:28	Shaan Puri	He's married to his stepdaughter.
56:29	Sam Parr	Something weird like that, yeah.
56:31	Shaan Puri	"Has a kid with a stepdaughter."
56:33	Sam Parr	Yeah, and there's... just when he's talking, you see I understand why the children he raised are insane and why they're ultra. In order to be ultra-successful, you have to have some type of weird daddy issue. I see him and I'm like, "Oh, yeah—yeah, I get why you have a daddy issue: because you're insane." He reveals stuff. He'll be like, "Yeah, Elon was crying to me when he was like 23, and I thought, 'How weak.'" He'll tell a story where he's disrespecting his son in front of everyone, and I'm like, "Oh, you're an asshole; that's why your son behaves this way sometimes." It's a very interesting interview, and it has been totally under-talked-about.
57:11	Shaan Puri	"Yeah, this is crazy — this is a two-and-a-half-hour interview."
57:14	Sam Parr	Oh — did he release the whole thing finally? When did that get released? He normally just releases clips. </FormattedResponse>
57:20	Shaan Puri	That's a two-and-a-half-hour interview released a month ago.</FormattedResponse>
57:24	Sam Parr	How many views does it have?
57:25	Shaan Puri	A 171,000 — that's it. Yeah. Just to put that into perspective here: DJ Vlad's most popular interview is with... let's see who he's got here. Boosie has "6.6 and a half million" views. Cardi B has 5,700,000 views. </FormattedResponse>
57:47	Sam Parr	I mean, Boozy is a good—a good listen. It's a great interview.
57:52	Shaan Puri	Double ba million.
57:54	Sam Parr	So, we're going to have to watch the whole thing, but there's some crazy-good insight into all of this. My takeaway from it is: "It's not worth being successful if you and your father behave this way toward one another." It's very strange to see. You don't have to be a psychologist to watch this and understand why this family's screwed up.
58:18	Shaan Puri	Yeah — messed up family. Okay, wow, that's amazing. Alright: corporate — especially corporate espionage stories. You got what you wanted? Ever? Remember, everything on this podcast is "allegedly", and this is a comedy podcast. Thank you very much. Don't come after us.
58:32	Sam Parr	Alright. That's it — that's the pod.

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This Is The Most Exciting Drama in HR SaaS History | Rippling vs. Deel

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