Daario and Open AI saying that there's a
good chance AI is going to kill us all
and that the government needs to
regulate them and we need to slow down.
What do you think?
>> I think they're foolish. Some of the
people right now telling us that AI is
going to kill everybody and they need to
be regulated. We're telling people only
criminals use Bitcoin and the government
needs to regulate it. Look at the exact
same people 50% of all entry- level jobs
are going to be destroyed by 2030.
>> Yeah.
>> My first question is always show me your
math. I think there's three assets.
Bitcoin, gold, and land.
>> I said land was making a comeback. If
you look over the last 5 years, the S&P
is up 70%. Give or take.
>> Mhm.
>> In that same 5year period, the Bitcoin,
gold, and land, if you just put 33% of a
portfolio in each one of those, it's up
about 170%. The government will never
ever stop printing money. As long as you
understand that one idea, you can become
wealthy beyond your imagination.
>> Yeah, that's what I want to ask you.
How's Mark behind closed doors?
>> The only story I ever tell, we were in a
meeting. There's 15 people maybe in this
meeting, and he used All right, so
there's a lot of drama going on in the
AI world right now. You got uh Daario
and Open AI saying that there's a good
chance AI is going to kill us all 10%
20% and that the government needs to
regulate them and we need to slow down.
What do you think?
>> I think they're full of But uh I
also think that they're being
intelligent about what they should do
for their business. Two things can be
true at the same time. I don't think
that AI is going to kill us. I don't
know about you, but there's near 0%
chance of that. I keep joking that if AI
was so good that it could kill us, they
should just use it to build profitable
companies first, right?
>> But more importantly is when have you
ever heard an entrepreneur say the
government needs to take control of my
business? The government needs to
regulate.
>> It's literally never.
>> Now the other side of this is you know
who's not asking people to slow down?
Who's not asking the government to
regulate them? Mark Zuckerberg. Why is
Mark Zuckerberg not asking for us to
slow down? Because Mark Zuckerberg is
the man. He is the incumbent. He is the
guy who has a super profitable business
that he can siphon those profits over to
the AI side.
>> Yeah.
>> Open AAI, Anthropic, Grock, all these
guys, they're the challengers. So the
challengers realize is this thing is
really capital intensive.
>> Yeah. you'd much rather be Google and
Facebook or Meta than you would be the
challengers from a perspective of who's
got the most money to be able to invest.
So what I think is happening is these
guys are basically trying to slow down
the industry, use government regulation,
etc. to even the playing field because
they know that they're out resourced
from these large companies like Meta and
Google. If they can get things to slow
down and kind of level that playing
field, now they got a better shot.
>> Yeah. The other thing that's happening
that nobody is talking about yet, I
would love to see the per customer
growth of revenue at OpenAI and
Anthropic. And I'll give you a direct
example. We have a public company with a
product called Sylvia.
Sylvia uses some of our own internal
models. It uses some of the frontier
models. We used to pay a lot of money to
the frontier models. We pay
significantly less to them today because
when we were using their models, we
realized we have no sovereignty. We have
no control. We don't know if this is
actually the best way to do the AI for
our users or not. So we started making a
massive investment in building out our
own models, our own AI harness, our own
file system, all this proprietary
technology. So even though we have more
users today, we have more queries on our
platform, everything has continued to
grow, we spend less money with them
today than we did before because it was
too expensive and it was too general.
Every CEO I know in the technology
industry right now is going through the
exact same exercise. Why am I paying
them so much money if their technology
is not built for my use case? And why is
it so expensive compared to if I just
run it myself?
>> Yeah. So, they're still growing their
company, but it's because they're
signing up new users. It's not because,
hey, I used to pay them $100,000 a month
and now I pay them a million,
>> right?
>> And so, when they go public, we're going
to see all this data. It's going to be
very fascinating to see how many
companies are actually reducing their AI
bills. RAMP, which is the big uh
finance, you know, fintech company,
>> they recently showed that the top
companies using AI, their AI spend
overall on a per company basis is down
almost 10%. in the last quarter.
>> Yeah.
>> So, companies ran and adopted the
technology. It exploded
and then everyone's like, "Wait a
minute. We're using too much of this
stuff. It's not efficient." You know,
I've got employees.
>> It wasted. Well, it's just like I got
employees with six different
subscriptions to all these services.
Maybe they only need six. They only need
three.
>> Yeah.
>> And so, that's why costs are, you know,
coming down. The expenses are coming
down. And so, I think there's a lot of
nuance in here that is feeding into the
AI is going to kill everybody.
>> Yeah. I was watching they just did the
all-in podcast and they had Jensen on
and Trump called in and you know all
that stuff yesterday and it was
fascinating to for me to think about
because you know Jensen uh CEO of Nvidia
was talking about how
>> none of their predictions have come
true. Not one of them. He's like you
know they say we're going to lose all
these jobs. The jobs are still here.
They say that GBT2 was too powerful and
and it was dangerous. It's not. you
know, then they say this and they say
that and um it's like, dude, as a
private company that's trying to go
public for all of them, uh if you have a
dangerous thing, it's on you to like
figure it out and solve it because uh if
your your thing does something, you're
not going to end up, you know, being
able to go public for what you want.
>> Here's what I ask you. Do you trust
them?
>> No.
>> Do you trust them?
>> No.
>> I don't think I trust them either. I
still use the products.
>> Yeah. It's a very weird dynamic, right?
The products are valuable. Anyone who's
like claw's not valuable, you're a
>> For free or for $20 a month, like what?
>> Dude, these things are incredible. This
is
>> the best tool ever for $20. Like,
>> this is insane.
>> Yeah,
>> but people are using the product despite
the fact that they don't trust these big
companies. Now, this is not new.
>> We don't trust Facebook.
>> I was going to say the government
>> all throughout history, I don't trust
Google. I don't trust Facebook. Like
this is this is what happens is people
see a new technology, they start to use
it, they find it valuable and they're
distrustful of that new thing. Mainly
because we don't have that much detail.
>> Like if you look at Meta now, you may
not like some of the decisions Meta
made. You may not think that they've
done everything right, whatever. But you
kind of have like for 25 years or 20
years, Mark Zuckerberg has been who he
is and he's made certain decisions and
so you kind of like know what you're
getting.
>> Yeah.
Do you know what Daario is going to
decide in certain situations? You don't
have a lot of data points and the data
points you have may give you a little
bit of pause for concern.
>> And Alman's track record's really scary
when you look into it.
>> So, this is where it gets into, you
know, there's these like public
narratives that take over. And if you're
one of these companies and you think
it's going to be to your strategic
benefit for the public narrative to be
AI is really dangerous, then you start
telling people that. But there's a whole
another side of the equation which is
like think of social media.
We all have kids. How many people tell
you social media is really bad for your
kids? Don't put your kids in front of
the the screen. You know, all this like
bad mental health. Let's just say that
all that's true, which is probably
directionally is right. I still think
social media is a net positive for
humanity.
>> Connects people, they learn, they meet
their spouse, they get jobs. Like
there's all this, you know, benefit.
>> Yeah.
>> You're going to literally distribute
this podcast on social media, right? Y
>> so it's like it can be true that there
are negative side effects but it's still
a net positive
>> right
>> AI 100% will affect some jobs but the
data is showing us that AI is creating
more jobs than it's hurting so it is
then gets into this nuance conversation
of like well which jobs get hurt
>> maybe those people are going to have to
figure out what to do but overall as a e
economy and society like we're gonna
have more jobs not less and so these
guys who are like we're gonna you know
what they say 50% of all entry- level
jobs are going to be destroyed by 2030
30.
>> Yeah.
>> My first question is always, show me
your math.
>> It's just a statement.
>> What's the difference between 2029,
2030, and 2031?
>> Yeah.
>> Social Security. The government will
tell you that Social Security is going
to be out by like 2033. We're going to
literally be bankrupt at Social
Security. But they'll show you the math.
They're like, "Here's how much money we
have. Here's how much we owe. Here's the
growth rate of how much we owe. And like
you just do math and like we're out of
money by 2033." Like, by the way,
there's a bunch of stuff that could be
done to prevent us from losing all the
money or like going bankrupt, but like
that math pencils. And I understand how
you got to your number.
20 30. Why 20 30? It's just round
number.
>> Yeah.
>> 10%. Well, what's the difference between
5, 10, and 15% likelihood that it kills
us?
>> Yeah. Where's the number coming from?
>> So, okay, let's just all agree that they
just made it up. Fine.
The other way to report it is there's a
90% chance that the guys who are most
scared by AI think it's not going to
kill us.
Okay? Like I'm going to air on the side
that they are directionally correct, but
they're off on the number.
>> Do you think they really believe that or
you think it's just all business play to
benefit themselves?
>> If you thought you were building a piece
of technology that had a 10% chance of
killing people, would you stop?
>> I would hope yes. You're thinking about
it too long, brother.
>> Well, I'm just thinking like, dude, cuz
we've built a lot of
>> 10%.
>> Well,
>> that's a lot.
>> No, but we've built a lot
>> to kill all society. Or you're talking
about kill yourself.
>> Just kill people. Like
>> we don't know what they think. Do they
think they're going to die?
>> Yeah. Like because cars kill people,
alcohol kills people,
>> but that's like to travel. AI is just
like a
>> they're all tools. Are you Are you AI
non-believer?
>> I am an AI non-believer, actually.
>> Oh, explain more. I would love to hear.
>> I'm an AI believer. He's a non-believer.
>> I'm a non-believer. I'm a skeptic.
Amazing.
>> So I think
>> I met one of you in the wild. Wow.
>> Really?
>> I'm joking.
>> So I'm like I'm like I think AI
>> also he's also heavy Democrat now.
>> I'm I'm a big Democrat big uh Biden fan.
>> The good news. He's really not there.
The good news is they know how to spell
AI. So we were starting there. Okay,
let's go.
>> So this is what I think. I think AI is
the modernday
internet. So the people in the tw in in
their 20s and 30s, they didn't go
through the internet rolling out where
it actually affected us. Like so I think
AI is going to end up being like the
internet, it's just another tool that's
on our phone and we use it and it's
great. I don't think it's going to kill
us. I don't think it's going to wipe out
50% of jobs. I think it's just I think
it's a bunch of bunch of hype. Kind of
like when crypto first came out and
they're like they're going to get rid of
the banks and you're going to pay with
this and blah blah blah and then oh it
all went away and it was all hype and
everything's still.
>> So you are a AI believer. you're just a
believer that it's like a more normal
technology and the hype is not true but
the the doomsday is not true either.
>> The best the best way to think about it
is I think it's just a another internet.
>> Have you ever read the book rational
optimist? No.
>> That's what you are.
>> Really?
>> Rational. It's a great book. It's
probably one of my favorite books to
ever read. Rational optimist is
basically this idea of like I believe
that uh the world is going to improve
and all this stuff, but I just don't buy
into like the hype cycles.
>> Yes.
>> That that's basically you're a rational
optimist when it comes to
>> Yeah. But that's what I've seen like my
whole
>> So you're a believer
>> in AI. Yeah. I'm a Christian believer.
Yeah.
>> Okay. Both.
>> Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So I don't I don't
I'm not like so sold even like the doing
the jobs thing. I think robots and stuff
like that will take more jobs than AI
because AI needs to be able to like do
things
>> like I don't know if I agree with that.
>> Yeah. I don't know cuz and when I say a
like robots even like screens and stuff
like that, I think that's more powerful
than like AI. Like I I went to
McDonald's the other day.
>> Yeah.
>> And
>> they got you working for them.
>> Yeah. So So I went to McDonald's, right?
And the inside of the McDonald's looked
like this room. It's just a big room
>> and then there's kind of sad.
>> Yeah. And then there's just a couple
screens and there's no employees there
in the front. So like that will take
jobs because obviously the cashiers I
went to the pharmacy the other day at
Walgreens there's no pharmacist there.
You walk up they ask for your birthday
and then they'll say hey do you need to
talk to a pharmacist?
>> No. Okay thank you. And that's it.
>> I went and picked up some medicine
recently for my son. Same thing. And
they just like bring it out and you're
just like okay like
>> I kind of wanted you know like little
like instructions. Yeah. No, no. I I
just wanted like a little human touch to
this rather than just like
>> or call restaurants, you call the DMV,
you're talking to, you know, AI, but
like
>> that might be better than
>> Yeah, that's way better.
>> That's way better cuz you can call in
the middle of the night and you
>> You sound like a big AI advocate.
>> Yeah. But I'm just saying it's not going
to be bad. It's like people are
thinking, "Oh, it's going to kill the
economy. It's going to kill us. It's
going to do all these things." I'm just
not sold on that.
>> So, you and I actually are very aligned.
>> Yeah. And I think it's I think a lot of
people are going to get rich from
selling the dream and then these
companies are going to go bankrupt and
then you know they made a bunch of money
and they and they got paid. And
>> what AI products do you guys use?
>> I mainly use Claude.
>> Claude, that's the main one.
>> I'm old school.
>> But like you don't use any of the
applied AI products.
>> So my tech guy, we actually just built
an app for M19, my golf mastermind
that's super sick. And I was asking I
was like, "Did you use Claude co-worker
or what did you He's like, "No, it was
like four different things that we I
couldn't tell you what he used."
>> And he he used it all. Yeah.
>> Yeah. You guys know I love the game of
golf and that is why I started M19. It
is a golf mastermind for entrepreneurs
who are doing over seven figures in
their business and who want to go on
bucket list golf trips together. We
already have hundreds of members all
across the country and we've been to
some of the best courses in the world.
Places like Pebble Beach, Pinehurst,
Bandon Dunes, and many others. The
course is the best place to do deals,
make great relationships, and have fun.
So go to mastermind 19.com today.
>> So like my general view of the world is
uh claw chatbt they're trying to build
general intelligence right they they
basically want to create something that
is like having a very smart friend and
we all have a friend that
>> the smart Google that's how I see
>> yeah but like you can call that smart
friend and you can be like hey do do you
know anything about and you can almost
throw any topic at them and they'll like
have something to say or something
intelligent.
>> Yeah. But you don't go to that friend
when you're like, I need a doctor or I
need like a tax expert. You go to the
expert on the specific vertical thing.
>> I don't I go to AI for my doctor.
>> Do you?
>> Yes, 100%. Like my doctor sucks compared
to my AI. Like it's like
>> give me an example what you would.
>> So I'll give you an example. So earlier
this year I was having like uh anxiety,
right?
>> So I was like what the hell's going on?
So, I took my blood, all this stuff,
right? And my doctor was like, "Oh,
well, you know, we're going to go give
you this blood test and then you could
come back in two weeks." So, I do the
blood test, I go home, and then I was
like, "Bro, this is this is going to
take too long." And Whoop has an AI
doctor attached to it. So, I I signed up
for the Whoop blood test. I went took my
blood test. That evening, I had my
results back and the AI was already
telling me like, "Okay, you're
dehydrated. your hemoglobin's high, like
this is high, this is high. And I and I
was like, "Okay, how do I fix it?" It
told me what to do. And by the time the
doctor actually I actually had the
appointment with the doctor, I was like,
"Hey, I'm good." Like I already know.
>> So to me, this is actually like uh the
the medical professional was augmented
by the technology.
>> Like to get the blood drawn. Yeah. The
AI can't do that. No.
>> Right. You had to go like go to a
professional, whatever. So I actually
think that what you're describing is
where most of the value is going to get
created which is it is all about
augmentation of the experts or in if
it's just a software world doesn't
involve the physical world then you're
going to have very vertical specific
type things. So like chat GPT is not
great at answering a ton of questions
where people are going to go build
vertical specifics like for us personal
finance
>> we don't think that Claude is nearly as
good from an accuracy standpoint. Do you
think Claude is a better doctor than
your normal primary doctor?
>> It depends because if you just go to
Claude right now, you give it no context
and you say, "What's wrong with me?" I
think it's a horrible doctor.
>> But if you give it all the context,
>> okay, but if you describe the pain, then
it could be like, "Well, it could be
this, it could be that, it could be
this." What a doctor would do. But then
what's the doctor say? Go get a blood
test. Go get the EKG. Go get the MRI.
>> More context. And then the doctor is
like trying to problem solve the thing.
Claude needs the same thing. Claude
needs the blood. You know, you took the
blood.
>> It needs all the inputs.
>> Correct.
>> It does. But let's just say for for my
for my scenario. I This is personal
health. So I had high hemoglobin, right?
>> I I told Congratulations.
>> Thank you. I told Chad
>> high is good, right?
>> I think so. So I was like, "Hey, I have
I have high hemoglobin." And it was
like, "Okay, go take this test, this
test, and this test." I went to my
doctor. I was like, "Hey, I want to do
these tests." I told my doctor, "I want
to do these tests."
>> I got these tests. They gave me results.
It said, "Hey, you probably have sleep
apnea or XYZ." So, I was like, "Okay,
hey doctor, like I I I want to get a
sleep apnea test." They sent me to the
sleep apnea test.
>> Guess what? I was positive for sleep
apnnea. Okay. I told Claude, "Hey, now
what do I do?" It's literally and my my
doctor is has no idea. the best part of
what you're saying
>> might also have the wrong doctor.
>> Yeah.
>> But but it doesn't have all the context
because with with AI I could I could
send my blood work. I could send my
Whoop scores. I could send my stools. I
could send everything all day and it has
all this data where my doctor I get to
sit down with them for 15 minutes and
give them like feedback.
>> You hear what he's describing? Remember
we're talking about what Sylvia is?
>> Yeah.
>> The exact same thing he's describing
right now is what we do for personal
finance.
>> Exactly. He blood test, whoop, all this
stuff. He's putting all the context into
the AI. Yeah.
>> And then he's talking to it. And the AI,
the more context you give it, the more
value. So if you just give it whoop,
>> it's better than not having it. But then
the blood, then your weight, then your
sleep, then you could health, whatever.
>> You could give it everything. Where a
doctor, it's like you're going to walk
in and they're like, "Oh, well, how you
been feeling? Okay, let's let's go do a
blood test. It's going to take two
weeks." So then after that, you know, we
have this and it just takes so long.
With AI, it's just so much better.
>> But yeah.
>> Yeah. And you're you're just saying with
Sylvia, you guys do it the exact same
way that people feed you your P&Ls.
They're
>> take the doctor and his example. That is
>> your lawyer, accountant, financial
adviser, whatever. They How many, you
know, take a financial adviser. How
often do you talk to them? Once a
quarter, once a year, right?
>> At the end of the year.
>> Yeah. Whenever
>> you're like my tax bill. Instead with
Sylvia, somebody comes in and they
attach their bank account, their
brokers, their crypto account. They
upload their credit cards. Then they
attach their private investments, cars,
collectibles, real estate, etc. So, you
give it all this information. You can
even upload your tax returns. You can
put your trust documents, all this kind
of stuff. And I tell people the first
thing to do, you go to sylvia.com, you
upload it all, and then you simply say,
"Enter me to get the information you
need to be valuable to me."
>> And she starts asking you questions. Are
you married? Do you have dependence?
What city do you live in? and all this
information that she can glean and then
you start talking to it. And what I did
was I just said, "Here's my goals over
the next three years. I want to
accomplish A, B, and C things." They
weren't like, "I want to have X amount
of money." It was like, "I have a very
specific thing I want to do from an
estate planning standpoint. I haven't
done a lot of it. This is what I want to
eventually get to. I don't even know how
to get there, but you have all the
context of my life. Like, help me create
a plan that I can execute against over
for the next three years." Mhm.
>> And what you're describing in your
doctor example, Sylvia starts to then
say, "Okay, you should do this. You
should think about this, whatever." But
what I find interesting is um if you go
and you ask Google, for example, how do
I get my tax rate down?
>> Oh, bro,
>> I I have no context. I can't I can't
help you. So, they just give you very
generic ad advice. Same thing with the
traditional, you know, claude, etc.
With Sylvia, if you ask how do I get my
tax rate down, she will go asset by
asset and tell you that piece of real
estate you own, you can actually bonus
depreciate it because it's in this zip
code or it's an opportunity zone, you
know, opportunity, right? Because it's
in that zip code. That stock you have,
this stock is up. Don't sell it. Sell
the stock that's down because we can tax
harvest that rotate into this thing. For
me personally, I have a family office, I
have an accountant, I have a lawyer, I
have all these people, a private bank I
work with, etc. Sylvia last year gave me
two ideas on the tax side that none of
them had ever told me before. It's not a
knock against these people. It's just it
was super
>> infinite knowledge.
>> It was super nuance and it was like
because this is true, this is true, this
is true, and this is true. You could do
this, right?
>> And I went to the accountants and I was
like,
>> this is a little weird, but uh could I
do this thing? And the accountants were
like basically like how the hell did you
find like where did that come from? I
was like, oh, I used Sylvia. And they
were like,
>> damn. Yeah, it does work.
>> And so I was like, okay, that's where to
me AI is valuable, but it's all about
feeding it context
>> and then using the intelligence that it
has for a specific use case.
>> So the thing that we hang our hat on
with Sylvia is we are more accurate than
OpenAI, Chat, GPT, Anthropic, you know,
all these things in tax, mortgage,
credit cards, etc.
>> So if we can be more accurate, that
ultimately should drive trust. If we can
drive trust, then people will use it
more. the more they use it, the smarter
it makes the system because it's
learning from all the edge cases. And so
the more people that use it, the more
often they use it, the better the system
gets. Like it just becomes this
reinforcing loop that this thing should
pull away from everybody over time
>> because of that.
>> I have I have the thing I'm confused
about, not to cut you off, like two
things. One, the other day I was on chat
GBT and it like it it changed screens
and it said, "Hey, we have this new
thing. You could connect your bank
account." And I was like, uh, I thought
about it. I was like, you know what? I
don't trust it. And I tried to wipe like
swipe off of it and it was like it had a
countdown where I couldn't swipe off of
it and I was like, "Oh, that's weird."
So that was weird. But another thing,
>> you ever you ever been building a
company and had a trillion dollar
company try to compete against you?
>> Yeah. No.
>> Yeah.
>> That's what you're going for.
>> I'm living that right now.
>> You know the best You know, the best
part is
>> what?
>> Everyone used to give us a knock and say
that, "Oh, we just built a chat GPT
rapper."
>> Mhm. They literally launched a chatbt
wrapper.
>> Oh, they just launched that.
>> Yeah, it's just a wrapper around CHBT.
That was my question. There's no custom
technology there for the use case.
>> That was my question with AI companies
because let's just say you you create a
a great CPA company or any company, a
health company on AI. What's because
everyone has access to the same tools
almost. What stops any of these
companies from just ripping each other
off? Can't like Wells Fargo come up with
the same AI finance stuff that anyone
else can?
>> Well, there's two there's two elements.
Uh, distribution becomes much more
important.
>> Exactly.
>> I would have a much harder time building
Sylvia
>> if I didn't already have millions of
people who follow me who are independent
investors who I've been creating content
for 10 plus years. They trust me. They
understand how I think. They understand
that I built the product for myself.
>> Yeah.
>> Shane, my co-founder, right? We
literally built it for me. And then once
it was cool, it was like, "Okay, now I
can roll it out." And people are like,
"Hey, if it's good enough for him, I
want to try it." Type thing. So
distribution is going to always be
important.
>> But then also the technology that Wells
Fargo uses, no disrespect to them. It's
not like the best AI engineers are like,
"Let me go work at Wells Fargo."
>> Yeah. But couldn't they though? Can they
just rip off? Do you get what I'm
asking? Like all AI companies, can't
they just rip each other off like so
easily and then it comes down to just
branding?
>> Well, you you also have to get into the
training thing. So like you let's use a
direct example just because I've been
working on it for so long.
>> Sylvia started out just using the legacy
models. So you would connect all your
accounts and when you would ask a query,
we told you, hey, we're just going to
feed it to one of the models with the
context of your personal finance.
>> Over time, we realized that there was a
bunch of challenges. So for example, it
would hallucinate, it wasn't accurate,
all this kind of stuff. So if you fast
forward a year and a half now, we had to
go build an entire file system. So like
memory,
>> we had to go build a model router
because when you ask a question to
chatbt, they're only going to serve it
to open AAI models. If Claude can answer
it better, Open AAI is not about, hey
Claude, can you answer this for me?
>> They keep it within their family. So by
being a neutral third party, we route it
to the right model,
>> then we had to build a whole AI harness
that does data retrieval, all this kind
of stuff. And so let's use a concrete
example of if you ask a tax question to
ChatGBT. ChatGBT says, "Okay, my model
was trained on a certain set of data,
right? And let's say that they trained
it up until December of 2025.
>> If a tax rule changed in January of
2026,
>> the model doesn't know that."
>> So what they do is they say, "Well, that
might happen often. So why don't after
we look at the model, then we'll do web
search. We'll go search on the internet
just like you or I would, etc. We're
going to look at blog posts, articles,
etc., and we're going to try to find the
information.
>> Mhm.
>> What we do is when you ask a tax
question is we actually built an entire
database where we took the entire
federal tax code, all of the states, we
put it in the database and then we made
it really easy for the agent to know
where everything is. So when you ask a
tax question, it doesn't go search the
internet. It doesn't look at what it was
trained on in past data. It just says,
I'm going to go look at the data that is
accurate today.
>> Yeah.
>> So every day we refresh that database
with the latest tax rules. Yeah.
>> So when you ask, we're just going and
pulling the actual federal tax code.
>> But can't any other company do the exact
same thing?
>> No. So I'll make it simple.
>> So like I own a tax firm and so I
actually the the problem you encountered
I uh encountered as well when I was just
researching. So I was actually doing a
presentation about QBS and how it had
changed and
>> every business owner should do it
>> and yeah and like you should get a CC
corp and this is a great idea and you
know they changed the the amount. used
to be 10 million and then it became 15.
But I was getting data from chat that it
was still 10 million because that was
the old data. So I was like, "Wow, like
it doesn't even know that that's wrong."
And I'm like, "Chat, that's not true."
Like I knew what the rule is. And it's
like, "Oh, you know what? Now that we
looked, yeah, you're right." And it's
like I'm helping train essentially their
model for them. But the way I would
equate this to is because I I' I've now
that I've I've seen like to go back to,
hey, why are all the uh frontier models,
anthropic chat, all these guys wanting
uh regulation? It's because you have all
these now open-source models coming in
and they're way cheaper. Um they're not
just trained on just, you know, their
one thing with claude or whatever else.
They're pulling from so many different
places like you're talking about and
they're transparent. you can see how
they're going about it. So, it's like,
you know, open source might end up
winning a lot of this battle.
>> I I'll give you a um math on the cost
difference. So, when we take 500 million
tokens and we go through the frontier
models, approximately $5,000 of cost. Y
>> so process 500 million tokens from user
queries. We go and we ask them the
question, they give it back. We spend
$5,000.
If we process those same 500 million
tokens on our own hardware, on our own
infrastructure and software, which we've
built,
>> Yep.
>> the cost is about $200.
>> Yeah.
>> So, you look at that and you say, well,
every single business at some point is
going
>> their own thing.
>> Yeah. Now, there's a entire movement in
the AI world where it is own your own
intelligence.
>> It's basically crypto for AI. I
literally tell people all the time.
They're like, "How the heck is this guy
that most people, if I'm like really
self-critical, I don't think a lot of
people know anything I did before they
heard about me from Bitcoin."
>> Yeah.
>> They don't know I built companies, that
I had sold companies, that I worked at
Facebook, that I had done all this
investing. All they know is like this
dude found Bitcoin and he started
telling everybody about it and that's
when I discovered him.
>> Yeah.
>> How long ago was that?
>> 10 years ago.
>> Yeah.
>> So, people are like, "Well, what the
heck do you know about AI?" I was
investing in AI companies back in 2016
2017. Some of the leading AI companies
today were not calling themselves AI at
the time. They're big data, machine
learning, like that's how they describe
themselves in like the mid 2010s.
>> Yeah.
>> But even put that aside for a second.
Most of my worldview on AI is informed
by what I saw play out in crypto. Quite
literally, some of the people right now
telling us that AI is going to kill
everybody and they need to be regulated.
We're telling people only criminals use
Bitcoin and the government needs to
regulate it. Like the exact same people
are saying now just about a new
technology, same playbook. So I've
already seen this play out. I already
know how it ends. The government's going
to tell them to kick rocks. The
government's going to say, "Look, we
need kind of sensible, you know, like
guard rails, but they're going to let
the private market figure out who the
winners and losers."
>> Let Coinbase base figure it out.
>> Correct. They're like, "We want the
market to determine the winners, but we
want to make sure that like
>> you can't use AI, you know, you can't
use AI to tell people uh certain health
information."
>> Yeah. So we're going to create this
guard rail that you can't tell you know
an AI can't tell someone to go and you
know themselves or you know whatever
right
>> the second is in crypto what everyone
realized was I can go and keep using XYZ
service or I can figure out how do I do
it myself.
>> Yeah.
>> And so they it just became about
sovereignty.
The same thing's happening in crypto. I
can use this service which the crypto
exchanges I mean this is the best one
crypto exchanges usually charge like 2%
on transaction the prediction market
platforms right now some of them are
charging 5% transaction fees
>> crazy
>> the stock market
Robin Hood on stock trades it's free
>> so like what do you think is going to
happen to the 5% commission that they're
taking on prediction market transactions
it's going to go to zero
>> crypto used to be really high it's going
to go towards zero right it's going to
trend lower
>> the Same thing with token prices. Token
prices are going to trend toward zero.
Competition, open source, all this stuff
will will attack it.
>> Yeah.
>> So when you look at this, you say to
yourself, okay, if I as a business am
worried about three things. I want the
highest intelligence for my use case. I
don't care how good your model is at
answering physics questions. If I don't
have a phys physics question, I have a
personal finance question. All I care
about are you good at answering personal
finance? So I want the best
intelligence. The second thing is I want
the lowest cost. And the third thing is
I want the most amount of sovereignty or
security for my data.
>> Yeah.
>> So I'm a business.
>> I don't want competitors to know what
I'm doing.
>> Correct. So this math situation with
ChatGBT. Even if what they're being
accused of they didn't do, the optics
are bad. There was these two
researchers. They were using ChatGBT to
put all of their work into it. They were
trying to solve this uh very hard
physics problem. And all of a sudden
they get a phone call from Chad GBT.
They say, "By the way, we just solved
this problem." And they're like, "Dude,
we were right on the doorstep of solving
it. How did you guys solve it? Were you
looking at our chats? Like, did you, you
know, it's like doing your homework and
you're like, "Oh, that guy over there's
almost done. Let me look at his
answers." And like, "All right, turn it
in." Like, I beat him.
>> I saw they solved the math problem. I
didn't know that that's what happened.
>> So, in Open AI's defense, they were very
clear. They did not look at the actual
like prompts these people were putting
into the system.
>> It's probably a lie.
>> But I I actually believe them on that.
Okay.
>> What I also believe is true is that they
train the models on
>> the using other people's stuff.
>> Yeah.
>> So if you're making progress on a
problem, the model is learning about it
and then
>> the chat GBT guys are over there asking
the same questions. The model is now
smarter about this problem because you
were using their system.
>> Yeah.
>> And so then all of a sudden they get
this breakthrough. So they solved the
problem in 88 hours they said.
>> Mhm.
>> Hasn't been solved in like a century.
>> Wow.
>> And and the thesis is it would have
never got solved if those guys weren't
using chat to figure out and train the
model for them.
>> Now if they had been using claude open
AI would have solved it. Claude would
have solved it. So the sovereignty
becomes really important. Now take that
that's like solving a math problem.
Obviously there's a lot of academic you
know kind of posturing whatever. If
you're a business,
are you going to upload your strategic
plan
if you're competing with them?
>> No.
>> No.
>> Not for AI.
>> But like for me, I I talk about my real
estate investments and M19. I'm like,
look,
>> you don't care about that data from a
competitive standpoint because
>> I'm not competing with Claude or Open
AI, right?
>> They're they're helping me grow my
business.
>> Correct.
>> But to your point, and Brian, this is
back to your point. What I think happens
and this is like what you're already
doing is uh businesses build use
specific AIs that are sovereign and are
pulling data differently than how claude
or open AAI would because to your point
claude and open AI are basically just
generalist.
>> They're good at getting you 90% of the
answer in any question that you could
have. Right. But if you really wanted a
great medical feedback, there's a
medical AI out right now. I don't know
what it is, but there is definitely one
that you could have fed your stuff to
and it would have been way better.
>> Yeah,
>> there's Sylvia for personal finance
that's way better than Claude.
>> Uh if if I wanted a sports AI to give me
sports trivia or what, there's for sure
a collectibles AI. Collectibles are
blowing up for sure. There's an AI
trained specifically on where to dig the
best information on collectibles, all
this stuff because basically how they go
and search for the information is
different on all the models because
they've been trained to search in
different ways. And this is why they're
spending so much money trying to get the
training data.
>> So they're going and buying rare books
or, you know, they're just all trying to
get an advantage. Yeah. The thing that
we go back to is we probably have the
largest data set in the world of wealthy
people talking to an LLM about their
personal finances.
>> My data is on that platform.
>> Yeah.
>> We are probably overly sensitive to
things like we're sock 2 certified. We
encrypt the PII. If somebody broke into
the system, then the PII is encrypted
and so they couldn't connect the
portfolio to the person, right? like all
of these different details where you're
just like, "Okay,
if we want to build the best thing, what
is the number one hangup for when that
popup came and they were like, connect
your bank account?"
>> Mhm.
>> You're like, "Could it move my money? Do
I want to give them my data?" Like, like
there's all these questions that
>> I'm probably going to do it. I swear I
am. But I I thought about it for a
second. I was like, "Oh,
>> we got to go to silia.com."
>> I'm going to silia.com.
>> But but here's the deal.
>> Do you guys have an app? No, I'm just
kidding. I'm sure you do.
>> We'll link to it down below. But no, but
like the other thing just thinking about
my what I was saying earlier about niche
specific things. You were talking about
it beforehand of like uh you know
Hermoszi has his AI. Yeah. And so like
basically what proprietary data do you
have? Well, he's got all his workshops
he's been doing for all these years.
They all put their banks, their numbers,
their P&Ls, all the crap. And so he has
more info on small business than
probably anyone, right? Yeah.
>> He's got more info on wealth management
than probably anyone.
>> Yeah. uh you know Claude has more info
in general about everything than
everyone and and OpenAI does, but
>> you can definitely win with niche
specific info that only you have.
>> Yeah. I I would not go try to build a
foundation model and compete against
Open Anthropic. That'd be like a suicide
mission. Yeah. Right. But if you have a
specific vertical where you have a
distribution advantage and also
>> because everyone's giving you their
data, they're paying Hormosi to give
them their data.
>> Yeah. Also though, Hermoszi understands
the problems that those business owners
have better than an engineer sitting in
San Francisco.
>> Correct.
>> So, one of the things that we we have an
office in New York, we got an office in
San Francisco. We have a fantastic
engineer. I would I would put our AI
engineers up against anyone in the
world. They have built all this stuff
and we can objectively show that we're
more accurate on a bunch of topics that
really matter. Right? We're competing
against trillion dollar companies. But
one of the insights that we have is I'll
give you a a direct reason why it is
very hard for these companies to compete
in a vertical
answering a question like how do I get
my tax rate down pretty clear to
everybody that that's a question.
>> Yeah.
>> A product feature that we have is if you
work with a private bank they want or
you're a real estate investor they want
a personal financial statement every 90
days. So, we made it that if you upload
all of your assets, you press a button
and we create the personal financial
statement for you. You don't have to
spend the time filling out the form and
doing just super simple.
>> Yeah.
>> Cuz that was a pain point I had.
>> Yeah.
>> So, I was like, that's not an
engineering problem. That is an
understanding the user problem and then
just creating products for them.
>> The the the product is really easy to
build. It's actually just understanding
this is a problem. Correct. And that's
where the vertical it becomes very hard
for kind of a more general engineer to
compete against somebody who has
vertical because we just built our first
app for M19.
>> Okay.
>> And it's the first like real app I've
built with AI and we were able to build
it in just months and you know I have my
uh tech guy up there and he's great and
everything else.
>> He wouldn't know what to build, right? I
know exactly what these golfers want,
what we need, how the app should
function, how they're going to utilize
it.
>> What does the app do? So, the app is for
members only. I could show you it after
this, but basically like I created
everything I wanted. So, like we have a
community right there for people to
post. Every single golf trip is listed
on the app. Sick. Uh we got virtual
events, we got our socials, a shop for
all the swag that we got. You know,
members, uh what's it called?
>> You can search any member by their
industry, by their location.
>> It's basically like a private network of
>> It's a community.
>> Yeah, it's a private network of like
vetted people.
The average business owner is doing 27
million a year in revenue.
>> Wow.
>> In the in that app because we have now
all the backend data because they submit
all their stuff just like you're saying.
And so yeah, there I know their average
age, their average revenues, where they
live, their industries, and now they're
all in industry related chats. They're
all booking golf times together. They're
all networking locally, doing deals. And
so like our competitive advantage is we
have the number one app in the world,
the number one community in the world
for high-end business owners who golf.
>> If you're a high-end business owner who
golfs, there's literally nothing better
you could join than what we have.
>> But like to build that thing where they
could all connect because our mission
is, hey, let's just make sure we connect
these people because that's what they
want.
>> Yep.
Like the engineers don't really know
what that means.
>> But this is what's possible in the AI
world that was not possible before. It
used to be you'd have to build an app
for high net worth people. Yep.
>> You couldn't do high net worth people
who like to golf because it was cost
prohibitive, right? It was too hard to
pull together. Then you had to get an
engineer to work on that, then another
engineer work on something else. In the
world of AI, you're going to get way
more specialization and fragmentation,
which is actually better for the end
consumer.
>> Sure. because they don't want to go on
Facebook and see a post about their
mother, their mother-in-law, a high
school friend, and oh, I found my one
buddy who likes
>> and that's kind of my point with why
Sylvia works, why this works, why the
medical stuff works, because like we
were on school, which is great. School's
a great general,
you know, platform for just general
communities. It doesn't have it's not
meant for people who make $27 million a
year who golf trips who want to connect
in different you can't do group chats.
There's not industry chats. You can't do
any of that on school. It als it's not
built for that.
>> It also from a business perspective I
think one thing that people um business
owners, technologists,
if you were on school and you went to a
business, you said, "Hey, by the way, I
have this community of people. They're
great. You know, they they have $27
million of revenue on average. They've
got uh an interest in golf. etc. You
could probably do some brand deals. You
could probably get some like group, you
know, benefits or something from that
because you have the community.
>> The second that you say, "Hey, by the
way, we can surface it. We can target
based on what they like, what they don't
like, what their demographics are, what
location they like." The more detail you
get, it's actually better for them
because the guy who's in California
doesn't want to know about the discount
at the local golf course in Alabama.
>> Yeah.
>> Right. He just wants to know about
what's going on in my community.
>> Yeah. And so in a weird way, the
fragmentation allows for people to get
surfaced the opportunities, the
information, the data, etc. that they
most care about.
>> Yeah.
>> And so we just headed towards a world of
personalization.
>> Yeah.
>> You're you're creating a more
personalized version where you started
with a general one. Now it's your own
thing and eventually you're going to get
down to you literally could probably
change the feed based on their specific
preferences. Maybe they are trying to
work on putting.
>> Yeah.
>> Versus driving. And so you can feed them
that information and they're happy about
it because like that's what I'm
interested in right now.
>> Yeah, for sure. So to go back to just
what's happening even in the world of
AI, why do they want regulation?
>> Do you think they just want to create a
duopoly, a monopoly, like they they
can't catch Meta and and Google because
they have way more resource. So they're
just trying to figure out like they're
because if tokens go to zero, their
whole model is built on tokens. Like the
$20 a month subscription is not the
thing. Yeah,
>> it's the tokens that are the thing. I
think that um there's not one single
like this is the driver. It's a
combination of things. I think that they
realize they've got formidable
competitors and if they can get
everything to slow down, if you've got
an advantage over other challengers, you
kind of pull the ladder up behind you. I
think that's one piece of it. The second
thing is um I do think there's some
product liability stuff. So, if you ever
like are on like a hiking trail, you
ever notice how they don't shut the
trail. They just put up signs everywhere
like careful of falling rocks.
>> Yeah.
>> And if a rock falls and hits you,
they're like, "Well, we told you."
>> Right.
>> Fall off the cliff.
>> Yeah. So, if they're like, if somebody
comes out and they're like, "Hey, by the
way, uh the AI killed somebody or the AI
somebody got hurt." They're like, "Well,
we told you that."
>> Right. It's why cars are like, you know,
"Wear your seatelt, right?" Or
>> cigarettes,
>> all of these, right? So like there's
some product liability, you know, kind
of uh uh coverage. You you kind of cover
your ass a little bit
>> by just saying, "Dude, we warned you. We
warned you. We warned you. This stuff is
going to kill somebody."
>> Correct.
>> Okay.
>> Then I also think that there is a little
bit of it makes them sound smart,
>> right? If you're about to IPO,
what better thing to do than have
everyone talk about you?
>> Yeah.
>> So there is a little bit of like, dude,
these guys, we're talking about it right
now.
>> Yeah.
>> It's all anyone's been talking about for
a week is they said everyone's going to
die. So there's almost like a Strand
effect of like the more people talk
about you. By the way, the guy sitting
in the White House, he's the king of
this.
>> Yeah.
>> He doesn't care if you talk good about
him, bad about him, you like him, you
hate them. If you're talking about him,
he's happy.
>> Yeah.
>> Anthropic is doing the same thing right
now. Open is doing the same thing. And
then I do think that there's a another
element which is
I went on Fox Business earlier this week
and I said this and people got very
upset. But I said the same people who
told you the climate was going to kill
you, told you COVID was going to kill
you, are now telling you software is
going to kill you.
>> Yeah.
>> There's a little bit of like an alarmist
approach and it doesn't mean have some
people died from the climate.
Absolutely. But there are people who
were telling us five years ago. No, they
they were telling us five years ago that
like the glaciers were going to be gone
or you know like the certain cities were
going to be underwater like crazy stuff.
>> Yeah. You guys can't sit next to each
other six feet.
>> Yeah. Co. Did some people die from CO?
Absolutely. But it was elderly, it was
sick people, it was, you know,
vulnerable. Like, by the way, that's
really sad,
>> but it happened.
>> But the 12-year-old kid was never really
at risk in the way that we were told,
right? The the numbers aren't as big as
they were. Same thing here. Are there
dangers to AI? 100%.
>> They are nowhere near what these guys
are talking about, right?
>> And so, it goes back to there's a
community of people who are just like
professional alarmists. Every single
thing that they possibly can, they're
like almost too smart for their own
good. I I'm a big believer that I want
to be around smart, dumb people.
>> If you're too smart, I don't actually
want to be around you because you
overthink everything. You overanalyze
everything. If you go and you look at
the great people in the world that are
some of the smartest, Elon Musk, it
sounds crazy, but he's like a smart dumb
person. He's just like, I'm going to buy
X cuz I think that free speech is
important. He didn't like pull out a
spreadsheet and do like a whole
calculation and like he was just like he
literally tweeted back at somebody was
like how much is it right? Like he's
obviously incredibly intelligent but
like that's kind of what like a dumb
degenerate gambler says on a Friday
night when he's drunk. It's like
>> smart simple people.
>> Yeah. It's like yeah smart simple people
maybe is a better way to put it. Right.
So like
>> he's like you know what would be a lot
cheaper? What if we just reuse the
rocket?
>> Yeah.
>> Right. Like what? And everyone's like,
"That's impossible. It's not." And he's
like, "Well, what if it's not?"
>> And you're just like,
>> "That's the stroke of genius."
>> What if cars didn't have gas?
>> Warren Buffett, right? Warren Buffett
says he knows whether he's going to do a
deal or not in five minutes. If he can't
do it on the back of a napkin, he
doesn't do it. He's not some super
genius financial analyst, whatever. He's
obviously smart, but it's the
simplicity. It's the like quotequote
dumbing down of the problem. And it's a
very binary. it's a great deal or I'm
not doing it right. And so you look at
this and you say to yourself,
>> I don't know how many of those people
are working at some of these companies.
I think there's a lot of overly
intelligent like overeducated people.
>> They're looking at the the crazy
scenarios that could happen.
>> If you ask them I I've seen now a couple
of examples of this. If you ask them,
okay, cool. How can people die from AI?
They will tell you the most cockamani
ideas I've ever heard. like well if AI
infiltrates the uh biochemical uh
facility that doesn't exist yet but it
could uh and then it infiltrates the uh
computer and it releases it into the
pathogen into the air and it gets in the
jetream.
>> Mhm.
>> I'm like bro what are we talking about
here? Right. Like like what?
>> Yeah.
>> By the way, you just lock down the world
and that wasn't what you said it was
going to be.
>> Yeah.
>> And so it's like
>> everyone calm down.
>> At least the other threats were very
like Yeah. They're making nukes and like
Yeah,
>> they could drop one. It's like, okay, I
could see that. Yeah.
>> You know,
>> but it goes back to the rational
optimist.
>> Yeah.
>> We should not be so optimistic that we
ignore all warnings, all dangers.
>> Mhm.
>> But we also should be rational enough to
understand that the people who are like,
>> you're never going to have to work for
money.
>> I don't know about you guys, every
person I know involved in AI or using AI
is working harder than they ever have
right now.
>> Really? And it's because there's an
opportunity there. There's like a
there's a race and so there's this
economic reward there and these guys are
running so hard at it.
>> Speaking of that, how important is it to
beat China? Why is that such a big deal
in AI?
>> It depends on your view on China.
>> It's because China sucks, dude.
>> Well, I I'll give you a good example. So
for example, um, China recently got
accused of their openweight models
distilling the American closed source
models. What that basically means is
they almost like reverse engineered and
like quote unquote stole IP. Okay. The
Ford CEO recently was on a podcast and
he was talking about how they buy the
Chinese electric vehicles and they bring
them to America and they un they take
them apart to understand what they're
doing.
>> Mhm. So like are we distilling the
Chinese technology?
>> So you get in this weird world of like
everyone when it's done to them doesn't
like it but then they do it to everybody
else because like
>> guess how the models got created? They
distilled the intelligence of the world
by reading through all the Reddit
comments and getting the rare books and
like so they like quote unquote stole
the IP and they've now settled with
journalists and media companies and all
this stuff are taking their information.
So just put aside for a second all the
like IP China America nonsense.
If you believe this technology is
valuable
then you ultimately have to come down to
what are the values of the western world
versus the eastern world.
>> And what I always tell people is
be again very simplistic. We believe in
capitalism they don't. We believe in
democracy they don't. Okay. If I ask an
American model a question in personal
finance, let's say using Sylvia, it's
probably pretty important that the
model's inherent cultural weights
think about capitalism
versus maybe an eastern model from China
or somewhere else that has communist or
socialist cultural weights. So now you
get in this world of well, if I ask the
internet, it's on the internet, isn't it
true? So if you let's say for example
back in 2020 pandemic breaks out if you
were to ask a Chinese open source model
did this start in Wuhan
would it have told you no?
>> Yeah.
>> Now by the way the Americans would also
would have told you no because every
they were censoring it right. But like
at least in that case you want to have
the technology that can quote tell the
truth.
>> Mhm.
>> So that to me is really the actual
important thing. And Twitter or X now I
think is a great example. If you go back
pre I don't know 2018
amazing crazy crazy place but amazing
2020 2021 those guys lost their minds.
They started censoring people. They
kicked the president of the United
States off of the service. They were
taking things down. The White House was
calling them up being like hey uh
misinformation.
I remember um in 2020
I was a very early believer but I I did
not have the uh intestinal fortitude to
publicly say it unfortunately. There's a
lot of other things I said in 2020 but I
did not say this. The lab leak theory
almost immediately I was like that's
true. And the reason I knew is because
Zero Hedge posted the theory and they
immediately got uh deactivated.
>> Yeah.
>> If it's not true why did you deactivate
it?
>> Yeah.
>> Right. And I actually don't know that X
could be like the arbiter of truth
there, but I am a very big believer and
uh one of the chapters of the new book
that we have coming out is
when disscent is outlawed,
that's how you know the truth.
Because if something is true, it is able
to withstand the pressure of disscent.
>> Yeah. Mhm.
>> But the second that somebody says you're
not allowed to say something else,
you're not allowed to go a different
direction, they don't have truth on
their side, they have to use coercion
and force, etc.
>> Communism, social like that. That's what
they do.
>> And so it comes back to this idea of why
does America want to win? That is just
like the programming of people and the
access to information. Then you take a
step further. Well, like I don't know,
man. AI seems pretty good at like
robotics. Seems pretty good at capturing
the Venezuelan leader, you know, like
sounds like we used it for some of that
stuff, some planning purposes.
>> Yeah,
>> Claude is so good. I don't know if you
guys saw this, the Iranian government
just got caught uploading all of their
war plans to Claude and talking to it.
And they also uploaded funeral plans for
the Ayatollah.
>> Oh, dang.
>> Or something.
>> Wow.
>> And Claude was like, "Uh, yeah, we're
going to turn this over to the
government." like like what?
>> But like some dude probably sitting
there in Iran was like, "How do we get
Trump?" But we could use super
intelligence,
>> right? So like that's funny.
>> So you think about this and you're like,
"Wait a minute.
>> I think we probably want to control the
technology that's really good at doing
this stuff, right?"
>> So like it there's a lot of different
reasons why, but I do think that some of
it's like cultural weight type stuff.
Some of it's like just what is true, but
then also like
>> national security. Yeah, it's just
there's many many reasons that it's
probably a pretty good idea for us to
win, not them,
>> right? What's your book coming out?
What's it about?
>> Um, so this is the second book in a
series where I write 50 to 55 ideas that
changed my life, uh, practice that I've
had for almost a decade now is every
time that I hear an idea or I learn an
idea that I think is either really
important or life-changing, I write it
down in a note in my Apple Notes. And
there's hundreds of these. And so, uh,
on October 6, I've got a book coming out
where I take 50 of those ideas and I
basically explain here's the idea, here
is how it impacted my life and then
here's how I think you can apply it to
yours. I write the book as each chapter
is for uh the lesson so I can impart the
knowledge on my child or my children.
Um, but it is written in a way where
anyone regardless of if you're 80 years
old or you know 12 year old 12 years
old, you could go and you could learn.
So, some examples are um farmhand sleeps
well at night. There's an old parable
that basically is a guy's trying to hire
a farm hand and he says,"What are your
qualifications?" And the farm hand says
back, "I sleep well at night." Guys,
that's not what I asked you. What are
your qualifications?
>> Yeah.
>> And he says, "I sleep well at night."
So, he goes, "I don't know what that
means, but they're fine. I'll hire you."
Couple weeks go by, he wakes up in the
middle of the night, the farmer, and
there's a big storm outside. He wakes up
his wife, and he says, "Hey, hey, oh my
god, the storm's here." They run outside
and they try to wake the farm hand, but
he's sleeping. So, they run to the barn
and they're like, "We got to put away
all the tools." And they realize that
all the tools are put away. Then they
run over to the animals and they realize
the animals are all in the barn. Long
story short is the farm every single
night prepared as if there was a storm
coming so that when he went to sleep at
night, he didn't have to worry about
running around and trying to do all of
his chores, right? He had already done
everything. He was prepared. Another
example is um when you think about uh uh
some of these ideas that really kind of
impact people's lives, I always like
stories where um
you learn about people who take
different conclusions from the same
scenario. So two two brothers, they have
an alcoholic father. One becomes an
alcoholic, one doesn't. They go and they
ask the alcoholic, "Why are you an
alcoholic?" He says, "Because of my
father. How could I not be an
alcoholic?" They go and ask the sober
brother, why are you why don't you
drink? Said, ' Because my father was an
alcoholic. How could I drink?
>> Yeah.
>> Same situation, same experience, two
different takeaways, right? And so you
like go through all of these ideas and
it changes your perspective. It's
impacted my life uh in a meaningful way.
And the entire book is basically it
takes you, you know, pretty quick read
50 ideas that if you pick up the book,
you read it, I think that you'll get two
or three ideas out of it at a minimum.
Yeah. And hopefully it positively impact
your life.
>> When what's it called? How to live an
extraordinary life.
>> And it's is it already on Amazon? I know
you said it comes out October.
>> Yeah, you can go on, you can order it,
resell it.
>> The uh the Barnes & Noble people, they
would love if you go there, but uh
Amazon usually is the dominant one, but
Barnes & Noble is uh they got their link
ready.
>> There we go. Yeah, we'll link to that
down below. So, another thing I want to
talk to you about, you know, we've been
talking about Sylvia and it's just part
of your public company that when when
did you guys go public? Like
>> we went through a spa process and
despected in early December of 2025. So,
uh,
>> nine 10 months ago.
>> Yeah. So, like what's that process been
like? Cuz you've been kind of
documenting the journey of like, hey, we
launched, things went down a lot, now
we're going to just rebuild this thing
with Sylvia and everything else.
>> So, um, there was not a lot of
documenting going on in the beginning
because when you're getting your teeth
kicked in, it's not fun. You know, you
wake up every day, you're trying to like
not get your teeth kicked in, not
worried about, you know, creating the
content. Um, the public market is all of
the negative things I was told with a
huge amount of positives that no one
told me. So, the negatives are it's
public. There's a daily stock price goes
up, people are excited. It goes down,
people are upset. Your employees are
constantly looking at the stock price.
And there is an immense amount of
scrutiny both online from shareholders
and non-shareholders, but also the
media, etc. you have to publish your
information every 90 days or so and is
incredibly expensive to run a public
company. So, as you go through that
whole process, you're like, "Well, that
sounds horrible. Why would I want to do
this?" The flip side of it is I actually
think the scrutiny helps you build a
better company. I think that the 90-day
cadence is a really good forcing
function to make sure you always have
things that you can report as progress.
You have immense amount of access to
capital. And so, we've got a balance
sheet that's got hundreds of millions of
dollars on it. We probably couldn't have
done that in the private market. And
then I think that also you see the stock
price and so when it's going in your
favor, people are excited. People want
to partner with you. They want to work
at your company. They they want to be
involved in what you're doing. And so
when you look at it on a net basis,
there's positives and negatives as
anything. I think that I learned um
you just got to be yourself though. And
so when I took the company public,
I had a suit and tie on. I was doing
everything that everyone was telling me.
you. They're like, "Hey, you got to talk
to these people. You got to hire these
people. You got to, you know, play this
game. You got to be professional." All
this stuff. I'm like a chill dude,
right? I'd done things my way my entire
life. Seems to be working, you know,
fine. Uh, so far. So, the stock fell
from $10 to $150.
For those paying attention at home,
that's not fun.
>> Yeah.
>> Right. 85% is not good.
>> Yeah. It's like a welcome to the public
market. Bam.
>> Isn't that normal, though? Isn't that
what usually happens?
>> It depends.
SpaceX, they went public 135, they went
to 200, then down to 100, now they're
back at like 140, 150. Right. So, like,
there's volatility for sure.
>> Yeah.
>> Down 85 right out of the gate. Like, it
was down 70% in like 4 days.
>> Oh, damn.
>> So, like that's not fun.
>> Continued to fall. Got down 85%. In July
of this year, I finally was like, I
either do things my way or this is like
one, not enjoyable. two, I'm going to
regret it for the rest of my life
because I'm going to be sitting there
saying, "I listened to all these people.
Why didn't I do what I thought I should
do?"
>> And so, uh, on July 13th, we put out a
video and literally, I think the title
of the video is, "I got to turn around
my company that's down 85%."
>> I want to watch it now.
>> Like, like, if there's ever like a
owning the problem, it was like the
title of that video and the thumbnail is
like me and a big red arrow down on the
thumbnail, right?
CEOs like that made those type of
videos.
>> They don't.
>> They don't.
>> By the way, when you publish that video,
you get a lot of phone calls.
>> Oh, yeah. People like, "Are you okay?
What are you doing? You're not supposed
to celebrate being down 90%." Like, all
these, you know, like I'm not
celebrating, but like
>> the elephant in the room is the stock is
down, man. Like, like we can't just be
like everything's going great. You know,
the joke is whenever you call like a a
CEO or like meet up with a buddy and
they own a company like how's it going?
Like, it's going amazing. And then you
find out.
>> Yeah. Yeah. They're like, "Yeah, we're
killing it." And then you're like,
>> "I don't know, man. Your restaurant
doesn't look like there's a lot of
people in there." Like,
>> public company that everybody knows.
>> That's I never thought about that.
>> And how much how much did you guys like
what was the market cap and all that?
>> The company fell down to uh probably
like $130 million market cap or
something like pretty small for the
public market.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> And when we put out this video, um
>> so before though, that would have been
what, a billion?
>> It was like high hundreds of millions. I
forget exactly when it went out. Um,
>> and and so it had collapsed, you know,
significantly, right? And so when we put
out this video,
>> I think people kind of thought I was
joking at first. They were like, "Oh,
that's a awesome." Like people like
friends of mine who I've known for a
long time, they're like, "Dude, great
video."
>> But but like nothing about the company.
Like everyone was just like, you know,
Isaac, who's here, he he edited the
video that was viral.
>> And and people were like, "Yo, who
edited this?" Right? Like like that's
was nobody was like, "Hey, tell me more
about your company." They were all like,
"Great video." And I'm like, "Oh, we got
a lot of work to do here." And so then
it was just like I am going to document
win or lose whatever happens here. And
part of it it if I'm really honest with
myself I kind of want to look back on it
like I know I'm living through a moment
where I'm like all right this is
probably one of the hardest things I've
done professionally.
>> I know that I again got my teeth kicked
in
>> at a pretty you know low like damn this
is like welcome to the public markets.
This sucks.
>> I think I know how the story is going to
end but I'm not 100% sure. Like there's
always risk. There's always, you know,
kind of different outcomes, things could
change, whatever.
>> But I kind of want to look back and see
the documentation of this 20 years from
now and be like, dude, if we build what
I think we can build, it's going to be
awesome to look back at this exact
moment being like, hey, I didn't know
whether it was going to work or not. I
think it's going to work, but like,
let's see.
>> Yeah.
>> So, we start putting out these videos
and the first thing
everyone is shocked that we work.
They're like, "Dude, you guys do like a
lot of meetings. You guys like like go
to a lot of I'm like, "Yeah, man. What
do you think we're doing? You think
we're just like Like, well,
stock was down 85%. I don't think you're
doing anything.
>> So, there's a lot of that going on. The
second thing though is
>> if we think about the products we use,
the companies we use, a lot of it is
like your values aligned.
>> You're just like uh you know, uh the CEO
of Bloom Energy. Yeah.
>> You know, I think that he does a
fantastic job of just being like, "Yo,
this is who he is."
>> Yeah.
>> And I think a lot of people go buy that
product because they're just like,
"Dude, this guy this guy I I you know, I
screw with this guy." I never even heard
of Bloom a year ago content
>> and I was like, "Bro, I like this guy."
>> You know who else had a great one is um
Mark Wahberg has a show that was on HBO
called uh Wall Street, but like WA HL.
>> Oh,
>> it was just like him as an entrepreneur.
>> Okay.
>> And it was it was like pretty well done
as like a true documentary, but it was
like very well done in terms of showing
you like what is this guy's day like?
>> And I walked away from that. like I like
his movies and stuff, but like man, I
got a hell of a lot of respect for what
he's doing business-wise, right?
>> So, that was the idea as we started
documenting this thing. Now,
>> you can imagine,
>> you know, we went to dinner last night
with a a buddy of mine, u you he's
investor, etc. He's like, I don't film,
right? So, there's a lot of that that
goes on. So, it's hard. But then also,
um we were talking last night that um
Casey Neistat when he first started uh
doing a lot of vlogging type stuff, he
was doing it because he had a business.
>> Yeah. Yeah. But he quickly realized like
if you just film people like sitting at
their computer, it's not very exciting.
>> Mhm.
>> So then you got to figure out like okay
like what are the exciting things that
we're doing versus what is just like
day-to-day boring like dude I'm sitting
in a meetings for six hours.
>> Oh damn.
>> You know so like what are you going to
do? You're going to put a camera outside
and like see me talking but you can't
hear the meeting.
>> Yeah.
>> So there there's a lot of that type of
stuff. But I would say that the number
one thing that has happened is one uh
there was a very big inflection point at
that moment. We started doing some
different things inside the business,
but people immediately were just like,
"Yo, I with you guys." Like, I I
get what you're trying to do now. I see
what is the philosophy behind this. I
understand what your vision is. I don't
know if you're going to do it, but it's
a public company. I'll use the product.
I'll buy some of the stock. I I I'll
kind of I I'll be along for the journey.
And so one day we were sitting on a Zoom
call and um we uh uh we've got this AI
team and um these guys are uh are
incredible. They're not your standard
like Silicon Valley engineers. So
they're incredible AI engineers, but
they are very unique individuals in
terms of where they live, what they do,
their interests, etc. And I was sitting
there and I was like, dude, we assembled
like the little giants of an AI company.
Like this is like the misfits,
>> but we're kicking these guys ass. Like
again like again like again we're
competing against trillion dollar
companies.
>> Yeah.
>> And we're more accurate. How does that
happen?
>> So I started talking about the misfits
>> but I was talking about our team
>> and then all of a sudden I realized
everybody who uses Sylvia they feel like
they're a misfit in the traditional
financial world. They're like I don't
trust the financial adviser. I don't
trust the mainstream media. You say some
big financial institution I immediately
don't want to use the product. So I was
like actually that is the thing that we
have backed into unintentionally. We
have a team of misfits who are building
a company for a bunch of people who feel
like misfits in the traditional system.
>> Yeah.
>> So we start say yo Sylvia misfits.
>> You've never laughed as hard as I have
laughed. When a 65year-old man DMs you
on Twitter and says I'm a misfits
and you're just like
>> you are though. You know what I mean?
like it like they feel like hey you are
speaking to me about this product and so
I've learned a lot about company
building about branding about how do you
help people understand that they have a
home
>> when they feel like they are kind of
like a a loner in their experience
>> a community within AI
>> it's the same thing you've got the guys
who you know they like golf they they
run a business they probably feel a
little alone on an island they're like I
don't know anybody else like me right
>> so when you create this now all of a
sudden we have people a guy today sent
me. He wrote a book in my ex DMs. He had
all these suggestions and everything. I
was like, "Dude, I need to like schedule
30 minutes on my calendar to read your
DM." Right. Yeah.
>> But he's really passionate about here's
how you can improve it. Here's what I
like about here's what I don't like
about it. Like that doesn't happen
unless we're doing the content. That
doesn't happen if actually people had
seen the stock 85%. Because if we came
out and the stock had just skyrocketed
and people were like, "Oh, dude, screw
this dude. This dude was right about
Bitcoin. Now he just creates a public
company and it's easy."
>> Yeah. They kind of start cheering for
your downfall.
>> Yeah.
>> But when they see that, oh wait, this
thing went down 85%. He launches a video
that's like, you know, our stock's down.
We got to turn it around.
>> Yeah.
>> I think people are like, you know what?
I I gotten kicked in the teeth before. I
know what that feels like.
>> This guy now.
>> Yeah. And and it's not just me, right?
Like our entire team, we have people who
are been highly successful in their
careers.
>> You're getting to watch a front row seat
to people who are used to winning and
now are they're down, you know, what is
it 213?
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> When the Patriots came back,
>> I hate the Patriots, but I'll use them
as the example, right?
>> That's kind of what people are like, can
you come back?
>> Yeah.
>> Most of those stories don't end in the C
Cinderella like, you made the comeback.
>> And people don't make the content while
they're at the bottom.
>> Yeah.
>> You know, like they make it once they've
already like, "Okay, let me tell you how
I did it."
>> I called my wife before we published the
video. I was like, "Yo, we're going to
publish this. What do you think?" She
seen me at my lows, at my highs, through
everything. She was like, "Are you ready
for what that is? G like basically
you're gonna like, you know, it's like a
like a a mosquitoes to a light."
>> Yeah.
>> A small group of people know the stock's
down 85% 90%.
>> Yeah.
>> If you go publish it on YouTube,
everyone is going to know. People who
think that you're a genius are going to
know. And people who think you're stupid
but didn't know the stock was down,
they're going to know. Yeah.
>> Are you ready for that?
>> And I said to her, I was like, "This is
what it's about, man."
>> Yeah. E e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e
e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e
e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e
e e e either we can succeed or we can't,
but rather than try to hide it or not
talk about it or whatever,
>> let's just put it out there.
>> Let's see what happens.
>> Yeah.
>> It's gonna be a hell of a story if we
come back.
>> Yeah. No, I love that. So what were you
you you mentioned this before, but like
you know, a lot of people don't even
know your career, right? They see you as
uh this financial guy running a company
and you know, they see you on X and just
talking about the markets,
>> bullshitting on Twitter. Yeah.
>> Yeah. But where did you get all your
experience from? What were you doing
before all this?
>> I have pretty much been uh building
companies since I was a teenager. And
whether it was stupid stuff that I
didn't even think of as a company, like
you know, my brothers and I would snow
when we'd run around and try to, you
know, grab up all the uh driveways in
our neighborhood so that we could uh
shovel them before somebody else to
running all kinds of businesses when I
was in school and things like that. To
when I graduated college, I'd been in
the military. um I was leaving and I
didn't want to get a job. I literally
created what I would consider my first
like real company as an excuse to not
get a job.
>> So, it's just like I've always been
drawn to doing that. Um I was very
fortunate uh early on. I built two
software companies I was able to sell.
Um not for a lot of money, but enough
where I was like, "Hey, you know,
there's something here. I need to learn
how to build bigger ones, but at least
like this this kind of early moment
>> like seven figures."
>> Well, I I'll tell you a good story. Um,
the second company I sold, uh, I did an
amazing deal at the time, big earnout,
saw zero dollars from the earnout. So,
you know, on paper it was awesome, man.
My bank account is still waiting for the
money to hit, you know, 20 years later,
right? So, like, you also learn some of
these things along the way of you're
like, "Ah, man, I probably should have
hedged a little bit more. I was too
optimistic, you know, wasn't rational
optimist. I was just, you know, like
like idiot optimist, right?
>> Optimistic."
>> Yeah. And and so like you kind of learn
along the way, but I made more money
than I would have if I had gone and
gotten a regular job. So I I was doing
perfectly fine. Um and frankly I had
more fun, right? Was probably the most
important thing. And I got to this point
where I said, "All right, I either need
to go to business school and like go get
like an MBA and get taught how the hell
do you scale these things, etc. Or I
need to go learn from somebody who does
this." And right about the same time I
was thinking through this, I was in the
process of selling said company. Um,
somebody from Facebook reached out to
me, a recruiter, and he was like, "Hey,
would you ever be a product manager here
and we had been trying to work with
Facebook because the second company used
the APIs of the social media platforms
and so we were always trying to get like
more access and they had heard that we
were selling the company and they're
like, "Yeah, why don't you come work
here?" Single best decision I made early
in my career was to go work at Facebook.
>> What year was this?
>> 2014.
>> Yeah.
>> So, I show up there's uh probably just
under 3,000 employees at the company.
They just gone public. Stock had dropped
significantly. Like went out at like 50
bucks. it dropped like $20. And when
these companies go public, a lot of
times there's a rotation of employees.
All the people who had worked in the
private market, it goes public, now
they're rich, they take the money, and
then like new employees come in. So I
was part of that wave of like, all
right, we're like the reinforcements, if
you will. And I was 25 years old at the
time and they put me as the head of a
growth team focused on Facebook pages.
does not sound sexy at all except for it
is the top of the funnel for all
advertising dollars on Facebook. You had
to have a Facebook page to become an
advertiser to give the company money. No
one had ever worked on growth before. So
I show up and we're like, why don't we
change the button to green? 20% increase
in conversion. Like this guy's a genius.
>> I'm like, wait, watch wait this next
trick. Why don't we make the button
bigger?
>> You know, like all these little things,
right? So team does very well right out
of the gate. Also, we had like kind of a
sister team that was working on
advertiser growth and they were killing
it as well. So the two teams together,
all this revenue started showing up. And
I learned a lot about how to grow
audiences on these platforms, etc.
Because one of the things that these
platforms learned early on is if you
show up and let's say you create a
Facebook page and you're a small
business and you start posting on
Facebook, you have no followers, you
have no network, there's nobody there.
You're like yelling in an empty room.
>> Yeah.
>> You just stop posting. You're like you
get discouraged very quickly. So what
they would do is you would create a page
and they would blast you
distribution-wise.
>> Oh, that's good.
>> And so you would get a bunch of
followers and likes and be like, "Oh,
there's people here. Post more."
>> And then over time they would take it
back down to the normal baseline. So
people felt like you're taking it away
from me, but really they were just
returning it to the baseline.
>> But you realize, oh, it's really
important to like get people
incentivized. How do you, you know, how
do you do this all stuff?
>> So we're doing all this growth stuff.
And one day I get tapped on the shoulder
by some of the executives and they say,
"You're going to leave this team. You're
going to go to another team." I was like
heartbroken. I loved the team I was
working with. It was a very small team
kind of very uh like the ethos of
Facebook was embedded in this team and I
was 25 26 years old. Like what are you
guys putting me in charge of this thing
for? This is you guys are idiots. And
they say uh on Monday you're going to
work for a new team. You're going to
come work with us. And they were like
pretty senior. They were kind of like
right below Zuck and Cheryl Samberg. So
I was like that's probably a pretty good
idea, but like I I really don't want to
leave this team but okay. So I show up
on Monday and I'm like so what am I
doing? And they're like, "You're going
to work directly with Mark Zuckerberg
and uh you're going to also help Cheryl
and there's this little small team of
three people and you guys are going to
figure out how to grow their audience on
Facebook."
>> Oh wow.
>> And I'm like that sounds like a complete
waste of time. Why would I help the
billionaire grow his audience on FA?
Like what the I was making money for the
company. Like why am I doing this? Mark
Zuckerberg uh is very similar to Peter
Teal to me. He's always like four or
five years ahead
>> really. And what he understood in 2014,
this like December 2014, is what now is
called going direct. He realized that he
had to talk to the media to communicate
to the users.
>> And the media didn't like him.
>> So they would always twist it or make it
the worst, you know, negative kind of
slant on his story.
>> Yeah.
>> So he wanted to communicate directly. At
the time, I think we had maybe probably
around a billion users, maybe 800
million users, something like that. But
it was a lot of people. But he had 9
million followers on Facebook.
>> Oh wow. So compare it to like MySpace
Tom who when you would join MySpace he
would friend everybody.
>> Tom man.
>> So we went through all these exercises
of like should we do that? Should Zuck
friend everybody right? Should um
another thing we thought about is like
one day should we put like an
interstitial on the page that you
couldn't X out kind of like your your
bank example and you had to like friend
him,
>> right? Or like should he write a letter
like asking people like that sounds kind
of desperate, right? You know, like like
what do we do? How do we do this? And to
his credit, he was very adamant. Do not
change the product to give me an
advantage. He didn't want a boost. He
didn't want the letter. Like he was just
like, we need to figure this out. And so
we had to resort to is basically using
analytics and testing, which is a very
Facebook thing to do. So we would post
things and then we would measure. No
different than you guys probably do on
social media, right?
>> But in 2014, it was like doing that back
then.
>> We got, hey, we got a great idea. Every
time you post your dog, it gets more
likes. Post more the dog. like when you
put your face in the photo versus not it
gets more likes like do that. Uh when
you write something do that.
>> So over like a 90-day period we pretty
much learned you know I don't know 80%
of the stuff we were going to learn. And
so the team kind of got told like all
right great job like everyone go back to
like do what they wanted what you were
doing before. And so that same executive
group asked me um they said well we're
starting this new team. Why don't you
come over here? And so I was like all
right I got great experience here. I
worked on the Facebook pages thing. I
saw monetization. I got exposed to
probably one of the smartest men in the
world, one of the best entrepreneurs in
the world, who to this day does not get
enough respect for how good he is.
>> And he gets no love.
>> I I tell one story all the time that
people always ask me, they're like, "Oh,
yeah, behind closed doors." Like, yo, is
he as good as people think he is?
>> Yeah, that's what I want to ask you.
How's Mark behind closed doors?
>> Hey, real quick. I'm looking for one
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The only story I ever tell, we were in a
meeting. There's 15 people maybe in this
meeting and he used to do these like
product reviews. So like you're going to
launch something and he would bring
everyone in a room and then you
basically would demo it. It was like a
very demo helpy uh uh heavy culture. So
he'd have a screen, you're pulling it
up, you're like, "All right, so they're
going to go to this page. When they go
to this page, they click on this and
then and you're showing it to them." And
this man in a span of 90 seconds
literally while we were talking about
this is when we were thinking about
putting the interstitial like all this
crazy stuff and like not bet the company
serious, but like dude, if this goes
wrong, the headlines tomorrow are going
to be Mark Zuckerberg is an insecure
billionaire who wants everyone to be his
friend.
>> Yeah.
>> You know, like pretty consequential type
things. And he goes, "Go back a slide."
Why is that not the Facebook blue?
>> I'm like, "Bro,
what?"
I didn't even see it wasn't the Facebook
blue. Nobody in the room that had looked
at the presentation before realized
that. And so I'm like, "This man went
from high level to literally the color
of the pixels."
>> Yeah.
>> Back to high level in 90 seconds.
>> Mhm.
>> So we walk out of the room and I ask uh
one of the guys in the room, I say,
"What was that?" Like this was like the
first time I had like seen him really,
you know, do something like that.
>> And he goes, "You have to remember that
Zuck has more context than all of us."
>> Yeah.
>> He picked the blue.
>> Yeah.
>> Right. Like he remembers when he might
not have like made some big decision. He
didn't do a focus group. He may have
just been like, I like this blue,
>> but like the guy has more context over
time. And so he has an advantage,
>> but he also cares. And so he's not going
to let that mistake
>> go in that presentation because if he
lets it slide this time then another
thing slips in another thing. And so
like he's maniacal about the details but
he's also smart enough to do the high
level decisions. When you're exposed to
that you're just like bro there's
different levels to this stuff. Like I
don't care how good you are. There's
three freaks in the world like Mark
Zuckerberg.
>> Do you have any other stories about Mark
you've never told before?
>> That's probably the single most
important one. One one that's fun. Um he
he he uh he probably doesn't even
remember this. My very first meeting
with him, he was late.
>> So it was like me, him, and maybe
there's like three or four other people
in the room. And um I'm like nervous as
hell. I'm like, "Dude, this guy, he's
the CEO of the company." Like, you know,
>> this guy's a robot.
>> Yeah. Like you hear all these stories
like all whatever, right? And so I'm I'm
sitting there and he's like a minute
late, two minutes late, three minutes
late. And I'm like,
>> well, he's obviously important. Like
he's probably late to all meetings. And
you find out he's like almost never
really late to the meetings, but the
first one you're sitting there, you're
like, "Okay, okay." And he comes in and
he's got, you know, the hoodie on, but
his face is like really flush. Like, you
know, like when a kid like runs around
and gets like overheated, but can't
sweat
>> or like if you sweated a bunch, took a
shower and you're like still overheated,
but not sweating.
>> So, he comes in like that and he's got a
protein shake and he's like shake but
like in like the uh like a bodybuilder
like uh you know, shaker.com.
>> Yeah. And so he's like shaking it and
he's like flush and I'm like
I'm just who I am, man. Were you just
working out?
>> Yeah.
>> And he's like, "Yeah." And so I'm like,
>> "What are you doing in the gym?" Like
I'm just like, "Dude, this is
fascinating to me that like the guy who
>> everyone says is a nerd, says he's a
robot, all stuff like he's a he works
out.
>> Yeah.
>> And so he's like, "Oh, I was doing bench
press." And so
>> nice.
>> What do you bench?
>> And like very quickly I like getting
death looks from like other people in
the room. They're like, "Dude, shut up."
like you're you're not supposed to talk
in this meeting type thing. Like you're
just like this underling, you know? But
I was like he like answered the
questions and he worked and I was like,
"Oh, this guy like puts his pants on the
same way we do." Whatever. And so I just
think that people get very caught in
like the public narratives, but you
realize like he's got kids. He works
out. He eats the same food we do. He
likes doing cool Like
>> how much did he bench?
>> To be honest, I don't remember. But it
was
>> 135. I bet
>> it was a number that was I mean my
baseline for him or my expectation was
like he was going to tell me like 50
lbs. So it it was higher than that but
it wasn't anything that I was like wow
you're really strong.
>> He's like 225 you're like damn okay.
>> If you told me 225 I'd like give him a
high five right I don't care if you fire
me man you're awesome
>> but I think I it was like you know I
don't know 150 185 what whatever the
number was it was like
>> respectable given you know the the
expectation.
>> Did you learn anything from Mark? Like
what was like the biggest thing you
learned from him specifically?
the Facebook was just um I actually
tweeted it today. Uh fa Facebook was
such a unique place. I don't think that
we will ever like I will personally
never experience that where it was such
a concentration of talent um
ambition and results.
It was um I remember hearing one time
somebody said uh that worked at Google,
I forget what book I read, and they were
talking about when they worked at
Google, uh every week they would send
out these emails and be like, "Hey,
these are the people who are joining and
here's their background."
>> And he was like, "So you'd read the
email and it'd be like, "All right, uh
this person's joining. They were a
two-time Olympic gold medalist. They
went to Stanford undergrad, got an MBA
at Harvard, and uh in their free time
they like saved the whales." Yeah.
>> And you're like, "That's a one of
freak." Like, "We're never going to get
another one of those." Second person in
the email, uh, this person speaks 17
languages. Uh, you know, got a five on
the AP calc test when they were in
fourth grade. And you're like
>> two freaks in one, you know, one
recruiting class.
>> Yeah.
>> Every person was like that. And so you
have like massive amount of insecurity
cuz you're just like, dude, I should not
be here.
>> I didn't even know my high school had AP
classes, you know? like these guys are
all smart, but you realize like that was
the culture. It was just a very heavy
like get great talent, which I think a
lot of companies aspire to, but like
when you see it, you're like, "All
right, this is special." And then the
second thing was uh Facebook was very
unique and that it was super data
driven. And they've gotten critiqued
over time for being data driven, but I
actually think people don't quite
understand what truly being data driven
means in in kind of the modern world.
So, I'll give you um uh a very concrete
uh positive result.
In 2015, Facebook had faced a lot of
backlash publicly. Part of that was why
Zuck wanted to go direct all this stuff.
But in 2015, um, they were trying to
understand what a lot of people would
think of as like an NPS score. Do people
like this company or not? How do like
what could we do to have a better NPS
score? But in a very Facebook way, they
were like, well NPS isn't a good
measurement. So they invented their own
metric and they called it cow cau which
stood for a question Facebook cares
about users and what they used to do is
they would give a survey to users and
they would say here's like three to five
questions rank on a scale of one to five
do you agree or not agree with these
statements and five meant you agreed one
meant you didn't agree at all and one of
the statements was Facebook cares about
users and so they would serve this to
people and you would answer it and then
they would show you different changes in
the product and then they would survey
you again later and they were trying to
figure out what could we do in the
product to get you to become more
agreeable to the statement Facebook
cares about users
just the premise of we're going to
measure this thing that is really like
brand affinity which most people you
know you go to like Madison Avenue
they're like well just buy billboards
and like I promise it works
>> it's immediately just like what is the
quantifiable metric how do we perfectly
design a test that we can run to
understand are we moving this or are we
not? Every single thing is ROI, metrics,
etc.
months and months and months of trying
to do this. Nothing is working. These
are incredibly smart people that have
been at Facebook for a long time.
Facebook has a ton of internal tools
that have been built. They're very good
at this testing and they have a lot of
traffic so they can rapidly test things
and get statistically significant
results. Nothing is working to the point
where now people are like having
meetings about like this isn't working.
One night
we had been putting these like uh kind
of cards at the top of the news feed and
the cards would be like it's your
birthday or it's a holiday or whatever.
And to give you a scale of Facebook when
I joined it was about 3,000 employees.
When I left two years later it was
12,000.
>> Wow.
>> Rapid growth. And we had a whole team
that was dedicated to just those cards.
What holidays do you celebrate? Who sees
them? When do they see them? What does
it say? What is the image? Well, on that
holiday, that image actually this group
of people will be offended. This other
group though in a different country,
they look at it different. Like you're
like localizing it. Then you're doing it
for a billion people on all these
holiday. Like so it's a very like
complex thing, but it's just like one
card at the top of your newsfeed. You're
like why would you ever have you know 15
people working on this?
>> And so they had created one of these and
um on that team was like a copywriter
essentially. So they would put this and
somebody would write the copy and then
the copywriter would send the copy to
the designer. The designer would put it
into the design and then the engineers
would make it go public. Everyone had
gone home for the night was the story
and the designer didn't want to wait and
so they just wrote something went home
came back the next day jubilee. Everyone
was excited and you could like feel the
energy and you're like what what
happened? They're like cow moved and
you're like this is like the white
whale. Like you're like no it didn't
like the test is wrong. the system
broke. Like there's no way somebody
moved cow. Who did it? You know, type
thing, right? Long story short, what
happened is the designer wrote on that
card whatever the holiday or thing was
and then they signed it dash from all of
us at Facebook.
>> That's what moved it from all of us at
Facebook.
>> They humanized the company. Some of the
smartest people in the world, unlimited
resources, one of the top company
priorities. No one could figure it out.
This designer who genuinely cared
just I don't know anything about
copywriting from all of us at Facebook
moves cow. If you go on Facebook today
you'll see that everywhere
>> because they realize like oh people
don't even know like humans work here.
>> Yeah.
>> It was like this like clinical thing.
And so you go back to
Mark Zuckerberg and the executive team
at Facebook one of one because they
identified a problem. They refused to
take the like normal route of let let's
just go spend a bunch of money on
marketing. How do we quantify it? And
then probably my single biggest lesson
from Facebook was especially from a
growth perspective is there are two
rules or two kind of like laws of the
universe when it comes to growth
especially at Facebook. You have to
clearly define the test that you are
going to run and then you have to
execute the test perfectly. And most
people usually don't even define the the
test. But if I said to you, "Okay, we're
going to wear different pairs of shoes
for a week to see which one you like."
Clearly defined. We're trying to figure
out what it is, and then we're going to
say, "Okay, you're going to wear this
shoe on Monday, this shoe on Tuesday,
whatever." The second part of that is
the most important. You have to
perfectly execute the test. Because if
you get to the end of a test and it
didn't work but you didn't execute it
perfectly, you're left wondering did it
not work because the thing we were
testing was wrong or because we just
didn't execute well. Right?
>> So every test has to be done perfectly
so that you can isolate the thing that
you're testing.
>> So Facebook had built all this tools,
all this technology etc to do this in a
worldclass way. And then you know when
we think about building Sylvia the
number one disadvantage we have is not
how much money we have our team it's
traffic.
>> Facebook has three billion people using
their products.
>> They can run a test and get a
statistically significant result by
dinnertime. It may take us two, three,
four weeks to get the same result.
>> So they can more rapidly test things.
>> Yeah. And let's say that they're
running, I don't know, that company is
probably running at any given time,
hundreds of thousands of tests, maybe
millions of tests.
>> Wow.
>> Because if you think of like a button,
so they had this system internally, uh,
that could do multivariate testing. A
single button. When you first think
about, you're like, "All right, it's a
button. What could I change? The color,
the location,
>> the words, the size, font.
>> What about are the edges rounded or
squared? Is there a shadow?
>> Mhm. How rounded? What is the different
hues of of the color?
>> Yeah.
>> How big is the font? What font? Is it
underlined? Is it not? Is it bold? Is it
not?
>> Yeah.
>> What are the dimensions of the button?
What it all of a sudden you have
hundreds of variables that you could
play with.
>> Yeah.
>> They had a system you could feed all of
that into it would just constantly show
it to a tons of different people and it
would basically spit back out and say
this is the winning combination.
>> It's like playing growth on easy mode.
hard work, but the tool made it way
easier. And so that's when I think about
like these companies that everyone loves
to kind of like poke at or or critique.
Like, dude, you don't accidentally build
Facebook.
>> Yeah.
>> You know,
>> they're that good.
>> Yeah. And look at SpaceX. People like
Elon's an idiot.
>> He might be smart dumb,
>> but he's still got the smart is comes
first, right?
>> Yeah. Well, they're both also not just
insanely smart, but they're so good at
execution.
>> Yeah,
>> I think that that's the main thing that
great entrepreneurs have compared to
everyone else is like there's a lot of
smart people with great ideas and great
theories and
>> but the execution is what lacks. I
recently heard um X or Twitter, they are
still doing meetings like 4 a.m.
meetings
>> when they were doing the like we're
going to fire, you know, 2,000 people or
you know, whatever the numbers were. Um
it was kind of like we're in wartime,
you know, we're under attack, the
advertisers are all leaving. Like I
think people were like
>> that's crazy, but I understand the
moment in time.
>> Yep. I have heard now from two different
people,
wartime never ended.
>> Like,
>> yeah,
>> that's just Elon M.
>> Yeah. It's just like that's just how he
operates his companies.
>> Yeah.
>> And so the team is significantly
smaller,
>> but
in a way it is um
it is a thing that we know works across
all industries. Why is it that certain
people are drawn to be a Navy Seal? Why
are certain people drawn to work at an
Elon company? Why are certain people
drawn to do the thing that everyone
tells them is impossible to set a world
record or whatever?
The more you tell somebody it's hard or
that it's going to suck or that they're
not going to get glory from it or that
they can't do it, certain people, not
everybody, but certain people are drawn
to that.
>> Yeah. And it's the old like I'm sure you
guys have seen like the uh Ernest
Shackleford ad I think is his name who
um he's like uh I'm looking for
explorers dangerous mission no guarantee
of success may lose your life but you
know reward and glory for those that
make it back or something.
>> Yeah.
>> And it's like one of the best ads of all
time because he basically like he
anti-sold them
>> on like you can go do some epic
right? But like written in like old
English.
>> Yeah.
>> That's what Elon does. That's what, you
know, these companies do is they're just
like, "We don't want everybody. We just
want the right people." And so to find
12,000 people now, 80,000 people, you
they're not all like that. But the core
group,
>> Facebook in particular, there are three
people who have worked at Facebook, uh,
they're the three longest standing
employees outside of Zuck, savages. They
forever will have my respect. I don't
care whatever happens at that company.
Those guys are incredible. And that's
just really rare. Like how many
companies can say that the core four, if
you will, right? And they're okay.
They're actually a fifth guy who's been
there a long time, too. Um, just call it
maybe the top five or six exacts have
been there for 15 years, 20 years.
>> It's rare.
>> It's crazy.
>> So, after you got out of Facebook, what
what ended up happening?
>> Um, I did a 17-day stint at Snapchat,
which was uh yeah, which was an
interesting experience. Um, and then uh
I pretty much started investing. I
wanted to start another company but I
didn't have a good idea and I think I
had like learned the idea is actually
pretty important. You can make any idea
succeed but if you want to build
something big
a lot of it is what market are you
choosing? Who are you going to compete
against etc. There's a great saying um I
think Mark Andrees is the one who said
it uh a good team meets a bad market the
market wins. A bad team meets a good
market the market wins. So like a lot of
the almost like strategic planning of
what am I going to do? Answering that
question determines a lot of the success
of whatever business you go into.
>> The vehicle matters matters more than
anything.
>> Correct. And so I just didn't have an
idea where I was like this is the thing
I want to go you know full speed at. And
so I started helping some friends
started investing. Um but I didn't know
if I was going to like investing. Like
it was kind of weird. I was kind of like
I I think I like building but let's try
this investing thing. Um it helps to
have a little bit of you know good
fortune right out of the gate. Um the
very first fund that I had it was me and
a buddy uh we invested in about 50
companies or so and five of them became
unicorns and so it was like okay small
dollars but like on paper the like
percentage markup was big uh for each of
those companies. were like that was kind
of fun, you know, we we like got to meet
a lot of people, we got to talk to a lot
of people, like let's do this a little
bit bigger. And that's when we did a
deal with a large hedge fund, kind of
more traditional institutional asset
manager um called Morgan Creek. And we
basically raised one of the first
dedicated venture funds specifically
focused on crypto more broadly. So we
said, no different than you would have
like a healthcare fund or maybe a real
estate fund. We're going to do one just
focused on this crypto thing. This is in
2018.
>> Okay.
>> So, pretty early.
>> This before it blew up in 2018.
>> This is uh No, no,
>> no. 2017.
>> No, of course. 2017 it goes up. We're
like, "Yo, we should do this."
>> 2018, like March, I think, or something,
we start going out and talking to
people. And you're like, "Man, every day
I wake up, this thing's lower." Talk
about getting your teeth kicked in.
Like, not real fun,
>> right? So, um, we kind of like begged
and borrowed our way to a $42 million
fund, I think it was.
and
public pension funds, hospital systems,
endowments, foundations. Like I feel
like I've just gone from basically a
bunch of individual investors investing
alongside me to now like we're playing
the big leagues.
>> Public pension funds. You go to meetings
with their like board and they, you
know, they ask you questions and stuff,
right? It's like real
>> like real present to them money.
>> Yeah. Well, like you know, the joke is
always like a venture capital uh when
you're raising money from individual
LPs, it's like, you know,
>> a doctor's like, "Hey, I'll put in 100k,
you know, let's see how this goes." Like
they're they're kind of loose and you
know, they're kind of I'll bet on you
type thing.
>> The other side of venture capital is
like young guys flirting with old guys
for money, you know? So like the young
founders like I promise I'm going to
change the world and the old guys like
sounds great, here's money, you know,
whatever, right?
>> The institutional world is like
everyone's covering their ass,
>> you know? So, it's like, "Okay, where's
your presentation? We're going to send
someone to your office and they're going
to do like real diligence. Uh, you have
to come to our office." In this case, it
was in Virginia. Well, you got to come
to Virginia. And one of them was a
police pension fund.
>> Oh, wow.
>> We're like sitting in front of the and
there's like a police officer there.
You're like,
>> "Oh, okay. Uh, I promise we're going to
do a good job, right? Like, what
questions do you have?"
>> So, we did this whole thing and we
started investing and we bought Bitcoin
at $5,500 for them. So, obviously I've
done very well there. Um we invested in
uh Coinbase uh Bitwise
um we invested in Figure Technologies
like these many of these companies have
gone on to be you know multi-billion
dollar businesses and so you know did
did uh very well for the LPs but what I
learned was the same amount of work was
involved in the small fund and the big
fund when you tell the founder I'm in
for 100k or I'm in for 10 million
no difference in the
And so I was like, "Oh, there's like
there's levels." And so then we went and
we raised a $100 million fund. And we
were right on crypto. And we actually
not only got the industry right, which
was important. We stayed away from a lot
of the like nonsense. A lot of the like
longtail tokens and all that kind of
stuff,
>> all that stuff.
>> Fartcoin did not make it into the public
the the public pension fund did not get
Fcoin, unfortunately. drunk monkeys or
whatever the MC stuff.
>> So it was Bitcoin and then it was the
equity of a bunch of these
infrastructure players, right? Um and so
>> going through that experience, what I
think I learned was one, okay, maybe I'm
not horrible at doing this, but more
importantly was
the private markets have an immense
amount of asymmetry to them. Both in
terms of how much you can uh drive the
value of these companies, but more
importantly is an information asymmetry.
So if you think of Wall Street in the
80s and 90s like what did everyone talk
about like who has what information that
they can use to you know invest
whatever. So people got in trouble
because there's rules in the private
market you can just call the founder be
like how's the company doing?
>> Yeah.
>> And they're like uh you know we're
growing 30% month over month. Great. You
want more money? Yeah. Okay. Here it is.
You know what I mean? Like you there's
complete access to information that a
founder will tell you. Now they might
not tell you all the information there.
You know there's gamesmanship whatever.
but you actually h can make a more
informed decision in the private market.
>> And so I really like that. And so I
basically
>> went crazy. I invested over 300 private
companies and I was just like
>> this is a great way to invest capital.
And if you fast forward um we started to
build more private companies. Like we we
really were like all right this is what
we want to do. And in uh 2022,
I went to uh buy a house in Florida. And
I called the bank and I said, "Uh, I've
never bought a house before, but I've
read about a mortgage. I think you can
lend me money. How much will you lend
me?" And the banker says to me, "You're
broke." And I was like, "I'm not the
richest guy in the world, but I'm not
broke, I don't think." Like, what do you
mean? And he was like, "Well, all of
your money is in private investments and
Bitcoin.
>> Both of those when you apply for the
mortgage, that's just zero. Like you get
no credit because the private
investments could all go to zero." And
this Bitcoin thing, like we don't
believe in that. Like that's a zero,
too.
>> So he was like pretty much whatever cash
is in your like checking account, that's
your assets in our eyes.
>> And I was like, well that's like not
good.
>> So like how much will you lend to me? He
was like a lot less than you thought we
were going to lend to you. So I was
like, how can I like remedy the problem?
And he was like, you got to build a
public portfolio.
>> And so quite literally the reason why I
started investing in public companies
was because that banker at a private
bank told me that that was the only way
that I could really interface with the
bank was I had to have assets they would
recognize.
>> Now fast forward, there's Bitcoin ETFs
and like now they'll like, you know,
look at a lot of this other stuff.
They've obviously built a whole practice
around like preipo companies and they'll
put value on it, whatever. But at the
time, I remember just being like again,
like there's levels to this game that if
you never been exposed to it.
>> Yeah.
>> You're just like, "Well, don't you just
give me the mortgage?"
>> So, so you had raised a $100 million
fund, but you had never bought a house.
>> Correct.
>> Damn.
>> That's crazy.
>> But I think that I I think that that is
a more common story today than people
realize. Like people talk about like
homes are unaffordable.
I don't think that that is a wrong
assessment at all. I think that home
prices have exploded. I was recently
telling somebody cuz the boomer
generation, I say that lovingly as a
term, but it's like the older baby
boomer generation, they don't want home
values to go down
>> because they own the homes. So like they
want them to go up.
>> Yeah.
>> The young people who don't own the homes
are like, "Yo, can we get another one of
those global financial crisis real
quick?" So like, you know, crash. So
like there's some of that going on. But
I actually think that a lot of young
people, especially after COVID,
some of them want to own a home, but a
lot of them don't want to own a home.
>> Yeah.
>> Not because they're like, I don't want
the uh I can't afford it. They're just
like, I like the flexibility of being
able to travel or move around or, you
know, I'm going to go live in this city
for one year, but I don't know if I like
it yet or not. Or I want to have a
family. I don't have the family yet, so
I don't want to buy something and then
have to move later. Like there's a lot
of things that go into that. And so I've
seen some studies that show the
preference of kind of the millennial and
lower generation. More of them prefer to
rent than own. And then you look at the
economics. And now I believe that in all
50 major metros, it is cheaper to rent
than buy.
>> It's 100% cheaper to rent.
>> So you're like, okay, they're actually
making a smart financial decision on
like a monthly cash flow basis to rent
instead of buy. And so you're like,
okay, it's kind of crazy, right? right?
Like I hadn't bought a home,
but like I don't know, like I was happy.
It was better experience, right? You
know, to be able to do that. So I I do
think that the whole like homes are
unaffordable is true, but there's more
nuance around like, well, how many of
the young people want to own a home?
It's a big number, but it's not nearly
as big as it used to be. And so, you
know, you just got to kind of account
for all of that.
>> How much are you worth? Can I ask you
that? Is that like a inappropriate
question?
>> Uh, I I would ask Sylvia.
>> Yeah, ask Silia. Um, I I uh I try my
absolute best to have what I call
illquid wealth.
>> Uhhuh.
>> So, there's a uh there's an investor um
who I really respect. Uh he is
incredibly wealthy and he told me one
time that he's a great private market
investor.
>> He's a horrible public market investor.
>> And the reason is because he can sell.
>> Yeah.
>> So, he buys a stock, he likes it on
Monday, on Wednesday he reads a news
article.
>> Yeah.
>> I'm out. Sells it. and then it rips, you
know, 2x.
>> And so he's a horrible public market
investor. That's how I am
>> is um if I buy a public stock, I say to
myself, I'm going to give it to my
grandkids. That is my whole investing
like philosophy is I want to buy things
that I can give to my grandkids.
>> What about Bitcoin? Like are you still
holding a ton of Bitcoin?
>> My personal Bitcoin I have said I'm
going to hand to my grandkids and
they're going to think I'm a genius or
an idiot. There's pretty much no in
between.
>> Got it.
The odds that Bitcoin is worth a ton
more than it is today is very high in my
opinion.
>> Give us interesting advice. Like I
didn't know you were this big investor
guy. Like what what should myself and
Ryan and the people listening to this
invest in?
>> So it's funny you asked this because one
of the reasons why people always ask me
like why did we work on Sylvia is I
probably get that question multiple
times a week if not every day
>> really. and I meet a 22-year-old kid
that is working on something and then
he's like, "Hey, by the way, you know, I
have uh birthday money or bar mitzvah
money or something like what do I do?"
You know, or I had a side job or summer
job, whatever.
>> And I always tell them it's it's so hard
to give that advice because you don't
have the personal context.
>> Yeah.
>> If a 75-year-old man asks me, I'm not
going to tell him to like go buy some
super speculative tech stock.
>> Yeah.
>> Cuz he needs cash flow because he's
like, "Yo, I don't got a job." Right.
and he wants to live and he's like
trying to figure out how long am I going
to live and how much money do I need?
The 22-year-old kid is like, "Dude, go
max risk on and like who cares if you
lose all your money because you're going
to make it back in like two years
because you don't have that much money
to begin with."
>> Yeah.
>> And so that is ultimately like the power
of Sylvia is the personalized insights
of like if you give it context, you ask
it questions, it'll tell you. My general
philosophy though, which is probably a
little bit different than most people,
is I believe that every great investor
gets one idea that they can exploit in
their life. Mhm.
>> And so let's go through a couple of
great investors. Warren Buffett, what is
his one idea? He can buy things for less
than they're worth.
>> He just did that over and over and over
again his entire career. And the dude
made, you know, whatever, a couple
hundred billion dollars.
>> What's your idea?
>> Genius.
Peter Teal
early and right on contrarian ideas.
>> He did it over and over and over again.
Worked. Bill Aman. I can antagonize the
out of these people because I'm
right and I can get them to change from
an activist perspective. Then he
evolved. He actually got two ideas now.
He pretty much owns most of the major
companies. He just waits for them to
sell off like 10, 15, 20% and he buys
them when there's dislocation in the
market. Okay,
RENT,
we're just going to use math to high
frequency trade and beat everybody.
I think that our entire generation has
one idea. It's not my idea. It's
everyone's. The government will never
ever stop printing money. That one idea,
as long as you understand that one idea,
you can become wealthy beyond your
imagination. Because what does that
mean? If the government never stops
printing money, they're going to devalue
the dollar. If they're going to devalue
the dollar, investment assets are going
to keep going up and to the right.
>> And that means stocks, Bitcoin, real
estate, land, all this stuff.
>> Mhm.
>> There is a reason why Bitcoin,
collectibles, and your favorite stock
all are just at a 45 degree angle up and
to the right. It ain't because we're
geniuses. It ain't because we're good at
picking the collectible or the stock.
It's because they are just printing so
much money that they're inflating all of
this stuff.
>> It's the same reason though why home
prices are up so much. It's the same
reason why young people are like, "Dude,
I can't get ahead. I have no
investments. I I I don't understand why
I'm doing everything that my parents
told me to do and I'm in debt from
college. I don't make enough money. It
feels like groceries and gas are so
expensive." Like all of this stuff. So
if you take that one idea of the
government will never ever stop printing
money, then you ask yourself what are
the best things to buy in that scenario.
>> I think there's three assets, Bitcoin,
gold, and land.
>> That's it.
>> I said land was making a comeback, so
that was good.
>> So if you look over the last five years,
the S&P is up 70% give or take.
>> Mhm.
>> In that same 5year period, the Bitcoin,
gold, and land, if you just put 33% of a
portfolio in each one of those, it's up
about 170%.
>> Oh wow. Now, when you say land, are you
counting actual houses too or raw land?
>> I'm talking about there are public
stocks like I'll use an easy example. Uh
Texas Pacific Land, TPL. Um those guys
have hundreds of thousands, maybe
millions of acres. I I don't know how
much. Um they timber it, they mineral
rights, like it's like productive land
that they own.
>> You're not talking about just
speculative real estate. No, you're
talking about incomeroucing land. The
worst part about making a lot of money
is that you have to pay a lot of taxes
on it. This is exactly why I've
partnered with Taylor tax strategy. You
may have heard me talk about all these
different types of strategies like cost
segregations and depreciation and lots
of other things. But the reality is
there are so many other strategies right
now that you can be taking advantage of.
The team will audit your situation this
year and also previous years to see if
you're entitled to tax savings that you
did not take advantage of. So, if that
sounds good to you, go to taylor-tax.com
today.
>> If you don't understand like the public,
you know, assets you could buy that have
land type exposure. It's probably not a
bad idea to like, I don't know, get a
map of your local area, look at the
downtown, see which direction it's
expanding, and like call up a land
program and be like, "Hey, where's a
couple acres that I could just like buy
and hold for 10 years?" And like if it's
going in that direction development
wise, like you're probably going to make
money. Yeah. because the inflation and
all stuff, but generally I'm talking
about like, you know, public stocks that
you can buy that have land exposure
where they're productive. Bitcoin, gold,
and land to me outperform the stock
market because most of the stock market
performance like why is the S&P
continuously just go up at about the
same rate as the money printing. M
>> like it's just money printing because if
you take the same S&P go back to 1970
and you look at the S&P 500 denominated
in gold instead of dollars it's
basically flat.
>> So like why is it that the S&P goes up
against the dollar which is losing value
but it's flat against the thing that
holds or appreciates in value.
It's just money printing. And so you go
back to this idea. You say to yourself,
"Okay, I can try to be the genius that
picks the next great stock. There are
some people who are great at that.
That's not my game. Smart, dumb. I just
want to be super simplistic. Bitcoin,
gold, and land. Now, I invest in a lot
of tech companies, all this stuff. Why
do I do that? I have uh tweeted before,
I would rather see my portfolio go to
zero, holding things that I think are
solving people's problems than try to
play some insider game of like you call
me up and you're like, dude, this
restaurant about to kill it.
>> Yeah.
>> I don't give a Like, I just don't
care, right? I don't care about the
restaurant. What I care about is a lot
of the companies that I've invested in,
I'm like, I see how this directly
positively impacts people's lives and I
almost think of it in a weird way as
like a capitalist philanthropic
exercise.
>> I want to give money to this founder
because if they are successful, it will
have this positive impact. And I know
that this thing that's really small
today that isn't helping anybody, if
they can do that, it'll create value and
I'll make money and you know, I'm a
capitalist just like everybody else. But
I want to do it in companies where that
positive impact. What I don't want to do
is
I don't care about the next calendar app
or that type of stuff. Maybe I'll do an
investment if I'm like supporting a
friend and they're doing something that
I don't really care about. I'll kind of
do like a friend support, you know, type
investment, but if you look at my
portfolio, like a lot of the companies
I've invested in in the last, I don't
know, five years, they're all these like
kind of pie in the sky like if we do
this, we're going to, you know, make a
positive dental problems.
>> Correct. Think about um a good example
is a base power. I don't know if you
guys have come across this company. So,
Space Power is based in uh Texas and um
Zack Dell who Michael Dell's son and uh
and this guy Justin who used to be at
and come together and they basically
have an idea of the United States
electrical grid is very broken and as we
see now electric prices are exploding.
>> Mhm.
>> Well, a huge reason for that is because
electric prices let's say during the day
in residential areas are lower because
no one's home. ACs aren't on. you're not
had TVs, all that kind of stuff. But
then everyone comes home, you know, 5 6
7 o'clock at night and all of a sudden
prices surge because everyone's using
the electrical grid. So, it's just
supply demand. So, what these guys
realize is battery technology gets to a
place where they can actually sell you a
battery. Now, I think it's $500 for the
battery and you attach it to your home
and it gets hooked into the electrical
grid. They install it for you. And what
they do is they say, "Okay, during the
day, we are going to pull from the
electrical grid when prices are low, and
we're going to charge the battery. At
night, when you need electricity, you're
going to use your normal electricity,
but we're going to take the battery
that's in uh the power that's in that
battery, and we're going to sell it back
into the grid because now prices are
high. Buy low, sell high arbitrage."
And by the way, for you doing this, your
electrical bill is going to be lower
because we're monetizing this battery
that is on your home rather than you
just pay the electrical power uh prices.
So now all of a sudden you're like, wait
a minute, if these guys are successful,
one, you can stabilize the grid, you can
upgrade the grid. There's all these like
benefits for society, etc. But most
importantly is like they're driving the
electrical price down on a per household
basis every single month. How many
people would love to save a $100, $200,
$300 on their electrical bill every
month? A lot of people.
>> And so these guys have exploded. They're
they went from, you know, starting maybe
three years ago or so to now I think
they've 12 13 billion company.
>> Wow.
>> Just here we go.
>> Crazy.
>> They have uh don't quote me on this, but
I think that they have uh publicly said
they have like over 10,000 customers or
something. Like a lot of people using
this thing. It works. They're expanding
now. They've gone to a second state uh
in Illinois. And I think that they can
go across the entire country. Mhm.
>> And so you look at that and you're like,
"Dude, I would love to make money. You
guys would like to make money. I'd like
to make money. My wife would like me to
make money. My kids would like me to
make money.
>> But you know what? If they succeed and
my investment went to zero, I would
still I'd be pissed because I lost
money, but I would still be happy that
they were successful."
>> And so it's like that's the type of
investments that I think that if you can
find those, you're kind of like I'll
live with the fact that this could go to
zero
>> because there's a potential positive
impact.
>> Yeah. the stock market. There are some
companies like that for sure, but you
don't really get the like it could go to
zero every once in a while, but not
really. But you also don't get the zero
to$13 billion valuation in, you know,
three years.
>> Yeah. One of my uh buddies, I'm starting
a Christian toy line later this year and
he invested in it. It's first time I've
ever taken an investment for a company,
not that wasn't real estate. I was like,
"Ah, man. I don't really know if I want
to do this. Like, I need a few hundred
thousand to buy inventory and the molds
and all this stuff." He's like, "I want
to be in on it." He's like, "This is
just a cool idea for, you know,
obviously families and Christians and
everything else." He's like, "I'll
invest in it." And, you know, if it goes
to zero, whatever. We made some cool
toys and like like that's his mindset.
And I was like, "All right, well, here
we go.
>> Let's do it."
>> One of my standing rules is uh if any of
my friends start a company, I have to
invest. And I stole this from from a
buddy of mine. The reason is if they
succeed, I want to be able to celebrate
with them.
>> Yeah. if they fail, I want to like be
with in misery with them, right? Like
like we're in this, right? And it's not
always a big check, right? It may
literally just be, hey, I just want you
to know I'm in and you know, we're in
this together. Call me if you need help,
whatever, but like I'm on your team type
thing.
>> Um,
>> but man, when they succeed, it's
awesome. Yeah,
>> but we were talking uh to my buddy last
night and um the hardest investments to
make are to size up your investment in
your friends companies because usually
you're too close to them.
>> Yeah. You're not objectively looking at
it.
>> You're like, you know, if you've ever
gone like especially when you're
younger, um if you like go to the bar
with a buddy and he's just like a fun
idiot, you know, he likes to, you know,
get drunk and like he says stupid crazy
off-the-wall stuff, whatever. Then he's
like, "I'm starting a company." You're
like, "Dude, yeah, I'll I'll support
you, but like you're not building a big
company." And then you're like, "Oh
yeah, by the way, my friend is like and
he's some like amazing entrepreneur and
he builds like a multi-billion dollar
company." You're like, "Dude, how did I
not put give you all of my money? Like
you were like one of my best friends.
You you know, I was so close to it
though that I couldn't believe it." Mhm.
>> And so I know that this is true for a
lot of people because when Travis
started Uber, a bunch of people didn't
invest because he was actually doing
something else and this was kind of like
a side project. And so they were like,
"Ah, you're not serious about this
thing." And then it became Uber.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> And Jason Calcanis, who I think invested
$25,000, he's only told everyone like a
thousand times. Um, he turned in $100
million.
>> Wow. Geez. And so you're like, you know,
he didn't have to invest a lot, but like
it helps if your friend is Travis.
>> I saw a thing like had you invested like
a million dollars in Anthropic like six
years ago or something, it's worth like
10 billion.
>> Wow.
>> Oh, probably. Yeah. I mean,
>> it's an insane kind of number.
>> Wow. They're they're um one of my
favorite stats is um
I think that Nvidia
25,000 employees at Nvidia are now worth
more than $20 million.
>> Wow.
>> It's crazy.
>> Like when you get to
>> how do you get them to keep working?
That's the crazier part.
>> When you get to a certain level of
company building, that's the flex.
>> It's not how big did my company get.
It's not how much money did I make. The
incremental dollar doesn't change your
life.
>> Yeah.
>> I have a lot of friends who have sold a
lot of companies.
The thing that they like compete on, how
many of their employees became
millionaires?
>> Yeah.
>> Now, mind you, if you sell a company for
like $10 billion, you made a lot of
money. I don't care how much of it you
owned, right?
>> Yeah.
>> But SpaceX is a good example. Um, there
were some stories where Elon was very
adamant that every single person that
worked at SpaceX got equity, even if it
was $5,000 of equity. And there were
some stories when they were going public
that like a mechanic became a
millionaire.
>> Wow.
>> But he had gotten like, I don't know,
$10,000 of equity or something, but he
had gotten it so early
>> that it had just appreciated, you know,
what is that a 10,000x I think. I don't
I don't like doing public math, but I
think it's 10,000x. And so like dude,
how awesome is capitalism where you can
make the mechanic a millionaire
>> by just solving the problem that
everyone has where hey we can't go to
space often.
>> Like that to me is again you go back to
like the Zucks of the world, all these
guys. It's like
I get that people like oh there's like
the evil billionaires whatever. Like I'm
sure there's people doing nefarious
stuff and and being bad people whatever.
But most of them, the people that I
respect and I think that I've been
around and I'm like, "Man, these people
are impressive."
>> They sit around and they're trying to
figure out like, "How do we solve the
problem for the customer?"
>> And I always joke that like, I don't
know, Jeff Bezos probably got underpaid.
>> Yeah. That dude solved a lot of
problems.
>> Yeah.
>> Right now, I could press a button on my
phone and someone who I've never met
before, don't know their name, have
never thought about will go pick
something up for me and bring it to me.
>> Yeah.
and maybe might do it in like an hour.
Crazy.
>> What are you trying to build your
company to? Like what's your goal with
your company?
>> The company mission is to help
independent investors make money. And I
think when people hear that, I like the
fact that it's crude. It It's just like,
wait, what do you mean make money? That
sounds like very like uh greedoriented.
My belief is that the people who use
Sylvia in talking to hundreds of them at
this point
>> are people who identify as that Sylvia
misfit, what does that mean?
>> There is a streak of they are self-made.
No one gave them anything. They didn't
inherit money. They they had to figure
it out themselves.
>> Yeah. And we were uh we were recently
talking um
I forget who said this but somebody said
to me, "You become a man the day you
realize no one is coming to save you.
>> No one is coming to do anything for you.
You have to figure out your problems.
You have to figure out what you're
doing. You have to figure out how to
make money. You have like like that is
your thing. I don't care how much your
family loves you etc." At some point
they're like, "Yo, you either do it or
you don't." Right? That same person,
whether they start a company, they're in
real estate, they just get a good job,
whatever, like that self-made person is
who uses Sylvia,
when they make money,
their families are better off, they get
financial security, their children have
a better life, their friends, their
community, the uh philanthropies they
care about. All of that improves by this
one person becoming wealthier. Mhm. And
so we don't have a lot of people that I
would consider like day traders. People
aren't coming on like let me buy a stock
and sell it tomorrow. We have a lot of
people who think about generational
wealth. A lot of estate planning, tax
orientation, etc. And ultimately those
are the people who they spend money in
their local communities to improve it.
They donate to charities. They help
their children. They help their
families. All this kind of stuff. And so
to me, that's the single most important
thing. M
>> a lot of people don't like hearing this
but like I'll take less success on the
company if we are successful in the
mission
>> but I think because I know that that is
the motivating factor the company will
be successful because it's really easy
guess what we have to do talk to them
what problems do you have when they tell
you the problem solve it
>> tomorrow talk to them what problems do
you have solve it just do that over and
over again and if you do it for enough
people you'll build a massive business
>> it's what Bezos post did. It's what all
these guys did. So like business
building is this complex thing, but at
the same time it's like very simple.
Just solve people's problem.
>> So I like to tell my kids all the time
when people ask them like what do you
want to be when you grow up? They you
know they say all the things that kids
would say you know my son for a while
was saying he want to be Batman. When
two two months he wouldn't respond to
his name just you had to call him
Batman. And I was like
>> like I kind of respect it. You know he's
got his grown ass dad like in public but
hey Batman you know he's whipping his
head around you know he like broke his
neck. He turned around so fast right? Um
but uh I always try to tell them like no
you're a problem solver and it's just
like if you identify as I solve problems
it doesn't matter if it is somebody is
in physical danger if somebody has a
problem at work if somebody you know you
want to build a company whatever you
want to do in your life if you solve a
problem including if you want to be
artistic what's the problem people have
they want to be entertained
>> it's like solve their problem right I
I've been thinking about this a lot
actually and sounds like you're the same
way where we we get a lot of people on
the show who um you know they just want
to make money. And so it's like, "Hey
dude, if I just buy like a home service
business or I flip some houses and you
know, there's nothing wrong with those
businesses or careers. They're just, you
know, very predictable ways to make
money." Um, from what I hear, what it
sounds like with you and same thing kind
of where my mind's been at lately is
like you want to just do things that
solve new issues that haven't been
solved before. And and and you lean more
on the side of innovation and hey, I'm
going to invest in things that are
solving new issues in the world. And you
know, yeah, a lot of them won't work
out, but the ones that do are going to
probably be really, really good both uh,
you know, fulfilling wise and then
obviously the money will come with it.
>> Either I want to solve new problems or I
want to solve old problems with new
technology better. I would Yeah, I would
say those are the two things. Um, but
it's also um I have a very hard time
being bored or being what I call
soulless. And what I mean by soulless is
I have friends who run incredible
businesses. They don't care. They they
just
>> It's just a money-making thing.
>> Yeah. And by the way, the ones who are
honest about it are actually happier
than the ones who are like lying to
themselves about it.
>> Yeah.
>> But just like
>> Brian and I both say we don't like real
estate.
>> Yeah.
>> It just is what it is.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. And it's like um car washes is a
good example. Like, do you know how much
money you probably could make if you
were a good operator and you just went
around, you know, a major metro and you
bought up all the car washes and you
like figured out all the stuff,
whatever, automated it? Like,
>> I don't care. Like, like I'm not I'm not
passionate about that, right? I don't I
don't like it doesn't get me excited.
>> And so, I think if you go and you look
um
>> I do a lot of different things. I have a
lot of different businesses. We do all
those investment, you know, invest 300
companies. You can imagine some of these
founders call me never. Some of them
call me once a week when there's like
kind of crucible moments. Some of them
may call me five times in a day.
The single best conversation I have
every single week right now is when I
talk to a user of Sylvia and they tell
me, "Here's my situation. Here's what
I'm trying to accomplish. Your product
is helping me do that." I'm like, "Dude,
I like screw drugs. Screw anything."
like this is the most energizing thing I
have ever done because you're like I see
the direct impact that this product has
on your life and then they'll tell me
like there's a guy who I recently talked
with he um uh he's in Ohio uh he's worth
um three four million bucks
>> and he tells me that he comes from a
union family.
So I'm like well that could mean a lot
of different things. What do you mean?
because my dad was like the the union
president or whatever like I was in all
and he worked at a a very large
manufacturing industrial business and it
went bankrupt and so he got a buyout of
I think it was his pension I don't know
all the deal but like he got like a lump
sum of money back in 2019ish time 2020
and rather than take that money and give
it to a financial adviser he said I'm
going to give it a go I never had money
before like I'm going to try to figure
this out this guy's like the next Warren
Buffett he like bought Carvana at three
bucks sold it at 80, bought Bitcoin at
the last bottom of the bare market in
2022. He was in Robin Hood. I mean, he
was like all over all the things that
like are kind of like the internet
darlings. And I was talking to him and I
was like, you know, what are you trying
to accomplish now? And he's like, dude,
I I never thought I'd have this money.
>> Yeah.
>> He's like, I'm actually scared of losing
it all.
>> I know what it feels like to not have
it.
>> Yeah. And he's like, I live every day as
like the thing I'm doing is working,
>> but I'm scared.
>> But like I'm I'm one bad decision, too
much concentration, too much risk
somewhere.
>> Yeah.
>> And it and it disappears.
>> That's how Brian lives.
>> Yeah.
>> I think it's really really natural for a
lot of people. And so it goes back to
concentration builds wealth. You know, I
I am uh infamous at this point probably
for I had 95% of my money in Bitcoin at
one point.
>> Yeah. And I was just like, "Dude, this
is the thing I believe in." But I also
told my wife, now that I've made that
investment,
yo, I'm broke because I ain't selling
that. I got to go build a whole another
financial life again.
>> Yeah.
>> Of all these things that aren't that
>> because I can't, you know, I we can't
have a family and be rolling around and
being like, "Yo, dad's in a good mood or
a bad mood because Bitcoin went up two
or three% today or it went down,
>> right?
>> So, like, let's go do this." And so I
think that there's this element of you
almost want to like create concentration
and then leave it, then go create
concentration again and then leave it.
And by creating a basket of very
concentrated bets, you naturally get
diversification.
>> But you have these like concentrated
things where you're like right now, you
know, at the time this is the moment to
buy Bitcoin.
>> I'm going all in. And then I scrambled
and was like, all right, well like I
don't need to buy more Bitcoin. I need
to go and do this other thing.
>> Yeah. And so it's a different way of
thinking about wealth building, but you
actually are getting into the
diversification. You're just doing it by
>> you're not just blindly diversifying on
every you're your whole way up.
>> Dude, the 604 dollar cost averaging guy.
>> The 6040 portfolio is atrocious. If you
look at um look at TLT, TLT is a uh a
20-year bond fund. It's not a perfect
measurement, but just use it as an
example. It's down over the last five
years like 40 or 50%.
Yeah.
>> Like, dude, people are just guaranteed
to lose money if they buy bonds. And
everyone gets mad at that. I'm like,
okay, well, let's think about this for a
second. Right now, what is the inflation
measurement? The government is telling
you the inflation measurements somewhere
three, three and a half%. Depending on
which metric you look at, you know what
time period? Okay. What is the yield you
get on treasuries? Three and a half%.
>> You're going to lose. Mhm. So, best you
can do according to the government if
they're right about inflation, which
they never are, but let's say they're
right, is that you can break even
on interest plus inflation. Well, I
don't know about you guys, but like I
think that inflation is probably a
little bit higher just naturally. And
so, that means that you're actually
losing money by buying bonds.
>> Bonds are the only thing that you can
put in a portfolio that are guaranteed
to lose value.
>> Mhm.
>> So, you say to yourself, you're like,
the traditional financial system tells
people to put 40% of their money in
bonds.
It's crazy. And the reason why they used
to do it is because when stocks would go
up, bonds would lag. And then when
stocks would go down, bonds would yields
would go up. And so you had this kind of
nice diversifying thing and you had a
little bit more weight towards equities.
Well, like actually that broke in the
last couple years. Stocks and bonds
moved together. So when stocks were
going down, your bonds were getting
crushed. So like why do you have the
quotequote diver there's no
diversification.
>> Bonds had no upside.
>> Correct. So you start getting in this
weird dynamic of you got to be very
careful where you get advice.
>> And one of the things that I always tell
young people is if you ask your
grandparents for financial advice,
>> you have to be careful. Why? They grew
up in a world where you could save
money, you can't do that anymore.
>> Yeah.
>> They grew up in a world where they were
like, buy real estate like a like a
single family home and like just save
your money.
>> It was a very kind of like protectionist
mindset.
>> If you do that now, you'll get smoked
financially.
>> Yeah. That's what we keep telling
people.
>> Yes. We've been telling everyone about
buying rental properties.
>> But just that they'll get smoked on the
rental properties. Yeah.
>> So you guys don't like real estate.
>> We do.
>> It's very similar to what you just said
where we went through a cycle where in
2020 it was like buy real estate, buy
real estate. You can get interest rates
so low and houses were cheap.
>> To give context, him and I have both
flipped over a thousand houses.
>> Okay. Yeah. So there was a period
>> rentals. And
>> my guess is that you didn't do the 995th
one cuz the other ones didn't work. But
go ahead.
>> Yeah. Yeah. So like me and him went
through a cycle where it was cheaper to
own than rent. It was like cheaper and
you could buy houses that your mortgage
would be a,000 and then you could rent
them for 2,000.
>> Yep.
>> But now like if you buy it's reversed
and the interest rates are at historic
highs right now like 7% for the last
decade.
>> Prices are at an all-time high. Rents
are actually coming down in some
markets. So it just doesn't make sense.
So that's what
>> and I don't see it changing.
>> Yeah. So, we're actually both trying to
do what you're talking about where we
built a bunch of wealth in real estate,
but now we're like the next thing I'm
concentrating elsewhere.
>> Yeah, exactly.
>> The um the the one thing that I will say
is uh you asked earlier like, "Hey, what
should we do?" And one of the things
that you know, you guys been creating
content for a long time. I've been doing
it for a decade or so. Um I always tell
people if you watch a video of something
I say,
>> you better make sure that you are
dynamically watching, not taking like a
static moment in time. Because if people
listened to you two years ago and they
were like, "Oh, buy real estate."
They're all about buying real estate and
they never watch another video.
>> Yeah.
>> And now you're like, "No, actually it's
a horrible time to buy real estate." I
know.
>> And they go and they do it and they're
like, "Oh, those guys are idiots." And
you're like, "No, actually, it was a
good time. Now it's a good time." Like,
you have to be very uh kind of aware of
>> why did you guys say it was a good time
to buy real estate? Yeah.
>> Right. Oh, it's because the interest
rate was lower and versus the rent
prices were down. And so I always
caution people that if you just hear
someone say buy real estate like buy
rentals and you don't actually
understand why
>> well when it changes like dude you're
just pouring money still in right and
like you you you don't know when do you
stop and so one of the helpful exercises
for me whenever I have bought things
that are liquid or kind of gone on into
new markets is what has to be true for
me to change my mind.
>> Yeah. One thing that that I'm very
cautious of is a lot of these guys on
social media that don't change their
mind. They are just so dead set on I
could easily be like, "Look, I've been a
real estate guy, so people know me for."
And I could just be like, "Guys, it's
going to get better." You know, I could
be not rationally optimistic. I could
just be wildly optimistic. And I'm like,
"No, my mind and and the data and
everything tells me this is not what
it's been for the last 15 years." And I
can't rationally see how this changes in
the next five.
>> So, you know, if I have to change my
opinion, I change my opinion. It is what
I'm I'm okay doing that. But then you
get, you know, whatevers of the world.
They could be Bitcoin maxis, they could
be Tesla maxis, they could be real
estate maxis, whoever that just will not
change their mind even as things around
them are changing significantly.
>> So, it's interesting. Take Bitcoin as an
example. And I I've talked at nauseium
to like the Bitcoin people about this,
which is I'm not going to change my mind
on Bitcoin only because I have already
diversified. And so I've said I'm going
to hold Bitcoin and I'm going to give it
to my grandkids. Psychologically, I've
removed myself from ever being shaken
out of my Bitcoin position because I'm
just like, I don't care if it goes to
zero. I'm literally just going to hold
it and I'm gonna give it to my
grandkids. I have the good fortune of
being able to do that because I built
the diversification by concentrating in
other areas. But man, has it been really
valuable to have that mindset when it
goes up hundreds of percent, drops 90%,
you know, over and over and over and
you're just like, dude, how do you live
through that? It's like there was
nothing you were going to tell me that
was going to change my mind. So the
reason I say that is I actually think
that um I call it like investment design
is a very underexplored you know kind of
uh uh topic because what most people do
I think is they look at their portfolio
every day with fresh eyes and so they
say okay do I like this stock do I not
like the stock should I buy should I
sell whatever what I try to do is I try
to say to myself again I want to buy
things that I never have to sell or I
don't have to sell for a very long
period of time I want to make one
decision and then I I basically want to
save myself from myself,
>> all the drama that happens,
>> all the energy and Yeah,
>> dude. It's like, you know, I um
>> should we buy Bitcoin now or is it too
high?
>> So, an easy way to think about this is
why would you buy Bitcoin?
>> Well, if the government's never ever
going to stop printing money, it's
probably going to go up.
>> I don't think they're going to stop
printing money.
>> And then are you going to buy Bitcoin
with money you need next week for rent
or are you going to buy money with, you
know, money that you're going to give to
your grandkids? Mh.
>> If it's the latter, then yeah, of
course, over a long period of time, all
these assets are going to go up.
>> What if someone's goal is to be worth
like $10 million in the next 10 years?
>> Well, you know the fact you know the
fastest way to get a $10 million net
worth?
>> What?
>> Start with 20.
>> How do I do that, bro?
>> You're real quick. Real quick. You know,
you're a bad trader. You'll be at 10
real quick.
But yeah, let let's say seriously
someone wants to be worth $10 million
because we were having this discussion
about investing yesterday. Was it
yesterday?
>> Yeah. So it's like okay, if we want if
our goal is to be worth $10 million in
the next 10 years, right? What's the
best?
>> They shouldn't invest.
>> They should not invest.
>> You got to earn it.
>> No. Yeah. I think that
>> 10 years is not feasible.
>> It 10 years investing. I mean, you got
to be world class to create $10 million
of value starting with let's say define.
Would you have done that with Bitcoin?
>> Let's say that you start with $25,000.
>> Okay.
>> Right.
>> Your grandmother unfortunately passed
away and you inherited $25,000 as like a
little starting point.
>> Yeah.
>> And you want to turn into 10 million.
>> Mhm.
>> Well, first of all, okay, what does that
mean? That means that you need to uh
what? 400x the money.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay. The best investors in the world
don't do that.
>> Like eight flips, right? Or something.
>> No, of course. Trust me, there's
somebody who's like, "Dude, no, but if I
just buy this,
>> I'll tell you a great story. Ready?" We
had a kid who used to work doubles away.
>> Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
>> We had a kid who used to work for us. Um
he he'll die laughing here say this, but
this kid walks into our office one day
and um usually like a very happy
golucky. He's a sales guys, you know,
very kind of energetic and he's down.
And so I see it, but I don't really say
anything. Second day, he's down again.
I'm like, that's weird. Third day, he's
down again. So I'm like, all right,
something's up. So I say to somebody
else on the team, because if I go ask
him, he's not going to tell me. So I
ask, hey, what's going on with him? And
uh they're like uh he don't want to tell
you
>> like well now I'm interested like
>> broke up with his girlfriend
>> immediately. I'm like it's got to be a
girl related thing you know whatever. So
I'm like but I'm busy today like I don't
got time. So like by day four he's still
like down in the dump. So I'm like all
right dude. So I get him and I bring him
into a conference room and I tell him I
said look man what's wrong? He's like I
don't want to talk about it. And I'm
like let me rephrase. We're not leaving
the conference room until you tell me
what's wrong cuz I don't got time to
like play this stupid game with you. And
so he um long story short ends up
telling me that he took let's say 80ish%
85% of the money that was in his bank
account and he put it into a cryptocoin
called ski mass dog.
>> Hell yeah.
>> Ski mass dog.
>> He says this to me. I'm literally like,
"Dude, you're you're messing with me."
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> Like you don't want to really tell.
They're like, "What are you really upset
about?" He's like, "No, no, I did that."
And he says to me, he goes, "Um just so
you understand," he goes, "Uh, it went
down 99%."
>> Oh, damn. So he So now the conversation
flips from like, "Oh man, I feel bad."
to like, "Do you have enough money for
rent and food?" Yeah.
>> Like like we're like in survival mode.
I'm like, "Do we have to like give you
like a like a like a bonus to like make
sure that you could pay for food?"
>> He's like, "No." He's like, "I'm okay
right now." He's I'm just like really
bummed. I don't know why I did this. And
you know, he's like a rational person,
whatever.
>> So I'm like, "Okay." So over like a two
to two and a half week period, he kind
of like comes out of the funk. And he's
definitely not like happy golucky again,
but like he's like not in the dumps. And
then we're probably now like three weeks
into this exercise. He comes in the
office one day and he is bouncing off
the walls. And I'm like, "Dude, did you
meet a girl last night?" You know,
whatever. And he goes, "No, man. No."
And he like literally cannot describe to
me fast enough what happened. He goes,
"I I I never sold the coins. I never
sold them. They they came back. I'm up
$100,000."
>> Oh, damn.
>> And I'm like, "Go sell it right now."
Like, "What are you doing?" He's like,
"Hell no, diamond hands." No. HE GOES,
"OH, YEAH. OKAY." And he runs to his
desk.
>> At least he's smarter. Yeah.
>> And he sells and he comes in and dude
like the guy he's like salivating from
the mouth. He thought he just lost all
the money to his name essentially and
now he's made $100,000
>> and he's just like holy And like
it's like almost like a near-death
experience, but he like survived.
>> And so he's telling me this and I'm
like, "Okay,
>> deep breath like wooai. Go sit back at
your desk. Go do your job. I don't want
to hear about this shit."
So two weeks go by, three weeks go by.
He comes in and he's dejected again. I'm
like,
>> I lost money.
>> No.
>> Or it went up.
>> So immediately I'm like, dude, in my
office now, what happened? He goes,
you're never going to believe this. I'm
like, did you not sell the coins? They
went back down. So immediately I'm like,
we're back down 99%. He goes, no worse.
A politician published their filing and
they had bought ski mass dog. Oh,
>> and my position, if I hadn't sold it,
would be worth $11 million.
>> I almost
>> I almost literally kicked him in the
shin. I was like, "Dude, we're banning
Ski Mask Dog can never be talked about
in our office ever again. Goodness."
>> So, to this day, no one is allowed to
talk about that. He no longer works at
our company, not because of that. He he
he did a fantastic job for us. But every
time I see him, I just think I'm like,
>> "Dude, you like that was the experience
of like a Gen Z investor for the first
time.
>> Put too much money in, go down 99,
>> be too stubborn to sell."
>> Yeah.
>> Then make it back.
>> Yeah.
>> And then have the regret of And what
goes to $11 million?
>> Yeah.
>> And I'm like,
>> how do you invest? How do you tell that
person how to invest?
>> Exactly. Yeah. So I want to know like if
someone wants to be worth
million. Yeah.
>> Right now I
>> That's a That's a real question.
>> Literally right now if I had to start
over.
>> Yeah.
>> The first thing I would do is I would
immediately go and I would start to
create a bunch of content on the
internet around how do you use the AI
tools inside of a small business.
>> Okay.
>> Second thing I would do is as soon as I
started creating that content, I would
spend like the morning doing that. In
the afternoon, I would go and I would
walk into not call, I would walk into as
many local businesses as I possibly
could
>> and I would say, "Is the owner here?"
And when I talked to the owner, I would
say, "Hey, my guess is that you are
spending money on things, whether it's
software or people, that you don't need
to be spending money on. I am an expert
at using AI technology to save small
business owners money.
>> I want to come and build some tools for
you. You don't pay me anything unless I
save you money. But if I save you money,
I want half."
>> And then I would go to all these
business owners. A bunch of them are
going to like literally chase you out of
the uh store with a broom. It's fine.
>> But you're going to find a couple. And I
would watch YouTube videos. I'd figure
out how to build some pretty simple
stuff. And then I would go and implement
it. I would then start making some
money. Probably going to make a couple
thousand dollars.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay. Then I would say to that business
owner, what other what other problems do
you have? Now I'm not going to try to
save you money. Now I'm going to try to
make you money.
>> I want a piece. I would just keep doing
this. If you think about an AI type
consulting business, maybe they trade
for 10 times revenue, five times
revenue. So, I got to get to a million
or $2 million of revenue to have a $10
million business.
>> Okay. If I got to get to a million, that
means I need $83,333
a month. How do I know that? Because
every single business we've ever
started, I tell the CEO that is the only
number that matters. You have to get to
$83,333 a month as fast as possible
because if you get there, you're alive.
You'll be okay. Okay. Okay. Well, if I
need $83,000 a month, then how much can
I make per client? Well, maybe I can
make $5,000 a month.
>> Okay. Well, what's $83,000 divided by
5,000?
>> Then how many can I do?
>> Can I get my buddy to do it? Hey, I'll
give you half the money if you go and
you do and you just start to Here we go.
>> Yeah.
>> And you will probably for somebody who
is skilled could probably build a $10
million net worth on paper
>> within two years.
>> But could you you couldn't sell that
company though. But
>> yeah,
>> you're making a million bucks a year in
revenue.
>> What are your costs? If it's just you
doing it,
>> yeah,
>> you're making a million bucks.
>> I got to push back because the the
question is, how do I get $10 million
>> in cash?
>> In cash.
>> I think that you could build a company
and make $10 million of cash.
>> So, let's look at it this way.
>> How many people do you think create
content on the internet? That's all they
do. And they make a million bucks a
year.
>> I say a lot, but it's going to be spread
across
>> more than we think. Yeah,
>> but not like hundreds of thousands
probably, right?
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> Creating content on the internet is
basically like the new small business.
>> You can have what's a small business.
Okay. Hey, I I have a family restaurant,
a family store, whatever. There's a
small number of employees that usually
are like family members, right? Or or
like closed people and we sell things to
the public.
>> And maybe a small business might make a
million bucks, two million bucks of
revenue. They've got some expenses and
so maybe they take home a couple
hundred,000 a year.
>> Mhm.
>> Okay. Well, could you do that with a
podcast, a YouTube, an Instagram, or
whatever? Probably.
>> It's not easy, but you could definitely
do it. So, if you can get to making a
million bucks a year doing that,
>> you're working for yourself. You pay
taxes. The rest is yours. Okay? Live
below your means. Take that money. You
could probably just put it in the stock
market at that point. Just put in the
S&P 500.
>> Do that every year for 10 years. You'll
be you're worth $10 million.
>> Okay. I'm gonna do that.
>> Yeah. It's just earning more is
essentially the answer. the the the big
lie I think that a lot of people have is
like, "Oh, I'm spending too much money."
>> There are very few people in the world
who have a spending problem.
>> Yeah.
>> And don't have a you're not making
enough money problem.
>> Mhm.
>> Because most people are not like buying
Lamborghinis and Rolexes and like doing
crazy. There's some, but like that's not
most people's problem. Most people are
like, "Damn, I have to save an extra
hundred bucks a month."
>> Yeah. I know.
>> They're And they can make his original
question. They're thinking about
becoming investors when they need to
think about being an operator.
>> Correct. Yeah. It it it's you are more
likely to make $10 million before you
will
>> invest and make $10 million.
>> Got it.
>> And so again, Anthropic, if you just got
a job at Anthropic, you made $10
million. How would you if you're all of
our age? We're all similar age. How old
are you?
>> 38.
>> 38.
>> Damn, you're 38. Holy crap. I feel like
I'm not doing anything in my life, bro.
>> I'm 37.
>> Freak.
>> He's 34.
>> I'm 35.
>> 35. Okay, but hold on a second.
One of the the uh great challenges of
our time is that everyone looks at and
says to themselves, "Yo, what's that
dude doing over there?"
>> Yeah.
>> How old is he? Where am I? But like the
comparative stuff, right?
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> In 2020, the start of 2020, six years
ago, so I was 32 at the time.
I was not married. I had no kids. And I
had just enough money to think that I
could uh like go to a restaurant and pay
the bill and not look cuz everything was
illquid in Bitcoin.
>> Mhm.
>> So like I had very little money in my
bank account, right? And I said to
myself, and by the way, also the funds
that we raised, I didn't pay myself.
That's another thing people don't
realize. I don't pay myself at the
public company. I get paid a $1 salary a
year. I get no cash bonus and I get no
equity grant. The only way I earn money
is if I get the shares to $15 a share.
>> Damn, we're at three bucks.
>> Oh my goodness. How are you going to do
it? I was going to ask you that, too. I
know we're running out of time, but I
was going to ask you, how are you going
to turn this stock around?
>> So, you think about this, right?
>> Yeah.
>> How many people are willing to do that?
Now, I'm very fortunate to be in a
position that I'm in to be able to do
that, right? Yeah.
>> But I taking immense risk. I'm spending
my most valuable resource, which is my
time. Mhm.
>> And I said to the board, I said,
"Listen, I want nothing if I don't
perform."
>> How much would you make if you get it to
15?
>> If I get it uh at 15, it's only uh I get
like a million bucks or something if I
get it at 15.
>> If I get it to 50,
>> yeah,
>> 50. Basically, between 15 and 50, every
$2.50, I get more shares. If I get it to
50, that means that the one that I got
at 15 obviously have appreciated plus
what I get, I'd make $400 million.
>> Damn.
So, I'm just going to shoot my shots and
ask questions. Did you get a lump sum
when it went public? Like, did you get
paid?
>> Our investment firm has shares that are
allocated to it. But again, we could
have just taken the shares.
>> Yeah.
>> We locked them up for two years. We said
we're not going to touch them for two
years because we knew the stock was
going to fall because of the way Bitcoin
everything. And so we said again,
long-term thinking, we're not going to
have access to the money
>> until we address the investors.
>> We are not even one year in. And my
guess is that we will be back before
those shares unlock.
>> The investors who invested in the
company
>> will be very happy.
>> Yeah.
>> Now, could could not work, right? A lot
of risk, all this kind of stuff,
whatever.
>> But
>> it goes back to people. You ever heard
the saying of like uh people want to be
the man till it's time to be the man.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> Type stuff, right?
>> There's, as far as I understand, there's
three CEOs in the public market who have
a pay package like me. Elon Musk, Cass,
the CEO of Open Door, and me, and I 100%
ripped off what they were doing.
>> Damn.
>> Elon did it, then Cass did what Elon
did, and then I was like, "Well, these
two guys are good, and I like that those
packages. I'll bet on myself." And then
I did what they did.
>> I don't know that I'd be betting on Open
Door, but yeah,
>> I'm an Open Door shareholder. I'm a big
believer.
>> Yeah. Yeah, he's better than I'm a big
believer.
>> I've been in the real estate game a long
time.
>> Now, here's what I will say is it is not
fun. When I when we do the payroll every
uh two weeks, year zero,
>> I approve it, right?
>> Yeah.
>> They pull it together, whatever. But I
fin approval.
>> Everyone's getting paid all these
numbers. I get I think it's four cents.
>> Damn, bro. You know how many times I've
wanted to screenshot that and tweet
it and be like, "Yo, this shit."
>> Now, by the way,
>> I'm guessing you're worth at least $100
million.
>> Listen, but by the way, it's my it's my
choosing.
>> Yeah.
>> Right. And
>> man, is it this whole thing of like
>> you see that and you're like, "Dude,
this better work."
>> Yeah.
>> Like back up against the wall.
>> I know. Yeah.
>> And so, in a weird way, I I actually
made a whole video about it. I was like,
I think every public company CEO should
be compensated this way
>> because now not everyone can. So I
understand that. But the reason why I
think that is why is it that public
companies where the stock price goes
down, which means that the retail
shareholders are losing money, their
hard-earned money that they put into
this company is going down in value
>> and the CEO is getting paid tens of
millions of dollars.
>> Yeah.
>> The incentives are off.
>> Yeah.
>> Do you want to sell the company? Like is
your goal to sell the company?
>> Well, it's already public. You can't
>> you can't sell.
>> I mean, somebody could buy it, but
that's not the goal. The share price
goes It's uh the the the better.
>> But like how would you exit at some
point? Like or you just
>> you want to hear a good story?
>> You would sell all your shares, all of
them. But there's a guy that uh recently
sold his company for a couple billion
dollars. We saw him last night. And um
he said that when he sold his company, a
bunch of people called him like, "Dude,
congratulations." Like he made a
ton of money, right? Like awesome. He
goes, "Why are you congratulating me?
You should call them and congratulate
them."
>> Yeah.
>> And they were like, "Why?" He goes,
>> "Dude, they convinced me to sell my
life's work."
>> Yeah. like he he was like, "I think that
this could be worth way more in the
future." He's like, "I can't believe I'm
selling this thing." Like,
>> and I heard that and I was like, "I got
a bunch of friends who made a ton of
money, sold all these whatever."
>> That was awesome, right? He told the
people calling him to congratulate him
on a multi-billion dollar sale of his
company. He said, "You should call him
and thank him and congratulate him."
>> So, you we asked, "How would you make 10
million?" This would be the last
question because I know you got another
pod and we're super late. Uh, how would
you go about getting to a hundred
million? And then is that any different
from getting to a billion one day?
>> You just got to build a company. There's
>> the only way is building a company.
>> I have a couple of people I know I I
wouldn't even say that they're very
close friends, but just people that I
I've known over the years that um
bought Bitcoin at a dollar and held.
>> Yeah.
>> One one dude of all time, right? Like
you know, whatever, right? I've got a
couple of friends who uh they're a seed
in, you know, I told you the story,
Jason Calcanis, 25,000 turns into 100
million, right? So, could that happen?
Sure.
>> Did you just find a crazy investment?
Yeah.
>> Yeah. Also, a billion dollars could fall
from the sky and in your pocket, right?
Sure.
>> The only way that I believe that you can
predictably create outsized wealth is
you got to own equity. Now, there's a
lot of people who made $100 million who
worked at some of these companies that
weren't the founder,
>> right? Like a Steve Balmer.
>> Steve Balmer actually owns more of
Microsoft than Bill Gates does. Y,
>> right?
But usually it is the business owner.
The person who starts the company has
the bulk of the equity. They took the
most risk. It was their idea. They're
the source as this one guy calls it. And
that is the ultimate path.
>> Yeah. You're not going to invest your
way to nine figures or that that was the
argument I made yesterday to these guys.
They're like, "Well, you know, you could
do this." I'm like, "But that's not the
goal."
>> Also, I I I think we live in a world
where like everyone's like, "I want to
be a billionaire." I'm like, "Dude,
okay, let's say I make $500 million.
That's a lot of money. A lot of money.
That's more money than most generations
and generations of families will ever
see.
If you make $500 million, you're only
halfway there. You have to make another
$500 million, right? Like a billion is a
lot of money.
>> Yeah.
>> Why do you need a billion dollars,
>> right?
>> I'm not saying it wouldn't be cool. I'm
not saying that you wouldn't want it.
all that. But most people, if you have,
I don't know,
>> 10, but definitely 20, but maybe 10
million dollars liquid,
>> you're done.
>> You're good. What What do you
>> Your your family is doing whatever you
want.
>> Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like, like
depending on where you live, New York
City is a little bit different, but like
depending on where you live, the number
is not nearly as big as people think.
>> Vegas, Cali, most places you're going to
be fine. So my point to him was I was
like, "Look, I'm just taking moonshots
trying to get a business that pops and
does something crazy." And even if crazy
is a $30 million sale at at this point,
that being this young, that 30 million
compounds to over figures
>> by the time it's over.
>> 100%. I have a friend um he he he he's
real weird and dumb and I hate him a
lot, but his name's Sam Parr. Um and uh
>> like Mike Zuber.
>> Yeah. No, no, no. My uh my my buddy my
buddy Sam is the worst. But um Sam's the
worst. So he's just the worst. He's like
I don't know why anyone listens to him,
talks to him, whatever. His podcast My
First Million is horrible. His company
Hampton I would not go check out. Um but
um he sold a company called The Hustle.
And when he sold this company, um the
rumored numbers are like$25ish million
dollars give or take.
>> And he has some investors whatever, but
like he definitely made money, right?
So, I don't I don't know how much
exactly, but like probably more than 10,
less than 20 would be my guess.
>> Y
>> and he's been very clear publicly that
he just like invested majority of it in
the S&P.
>> He's his grandkids are good.
>> Yeah.
>> Right.
>> It'll keep doubling every what, seven
years?
>> Like, okay. So, if he had 15, that means
it's 30. He's he sold the company like
three or four years ago. So, he's
probably almost doubled it.
>> Yep.
>> Like, guess what? He's I think he's a
year younger than me. So he's got like
how many sevenyear you know periods in
his life
>> where it's gonna double a lot.
>> It'll be worth nine nine figures
guaranteed.
>> So you look at it from that perspective
and like by the way guess what he did?
He went and started another company.
>> Yeah.
>> So like you look at it from that
perspective and you're like okay
when you put a goal on like I want to
build a billion dollar company. Like
dude that's really hard and like a real
billion dollar not like a I I convinced
an investor. I'm a young guy and I
flirted with an old guy and he gave me
money and signed a piece of paper and
it's worth a billion. Like actually a
billion
>> through being gay
>> dude. Yeah. Yeah, like a high a man. Uh
you said that. Uh
but
>> if you're just like, dude, I want to
build a company where I can make $10
million. That is a very feasible thing
for a lot of people.
>> And that was my point to him yesterday.
I'm just like, dude, all it takes is
just sell a company for $20 million.
>> Yeah.
>> Which is not that difficult.
>> 20 million. But but just take this one
step further. If you want to sell a
company for $20 million, right? We have
a business um that is in um in a
specific industry and uh they trade for
somewhere between 8 to 12 times revenue.
So, we were I was talking with the uh
CEO of the company and I was like, "All
right." We were talking about $50
million cuz in her uh in her life, she's
like, "If we sold a company for $50
million, she's like, "You'll never see
me again." Like just like that is, you
know, like whatever, right?
>> And so, um I said to her, I said, "Okay,
well, like let's just work backwards.
You want to sell the company for $50
million? Let's say 8 to 12 times revenue
multiple. So, that means let's say 10.
You'd have to do $5 million a year of
revenue and you got $50 million
business." She literally was like,
>> "Well, we're at two. like I could get to
five and I was like that's the game.
>> Like that is the game right there. You
don't have to build $50 million of
revenue. You got to build five. If you
want to do five, well, what is that per
like
>> that to me?
>> You got to be in the right vehicle to
get those multiples.
>> Correct. Correct.
>> So,
>> dude, this has been awesome. Uh
definitely everyone should check out
Sylvia.
I'm signing up silva.com.
>> Investing into it.
>> Yep. Right now. Right. I'm going to do
it.
>> Yeah.
>> I'll send you a screenshot.
>> Yeah.
>> Believer. If it doesn't get to 10
million, I'm
>> check out silia.com and then uh go buy
uh go buy the book. How to live a
extraordinary life.
>> Stock ticker so people can buy the stock
too if they want.
>> Um when's this going to come out?
>> Uh soon. Probably this week since
there's a lot of relevant info.
>> So BRR.
>> Yeah. Cool.
>> Go check it out guys. And uh if you like
this episode, make sure you subscribe
and we'll see you on the next one.
Peace.
