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

Just found out my neighbor’s business sold for $450M Siqi Chen: I'm talking to my barber and he tells me this story that's pretty crazy about muscle milk. So he's cut my hair and he knows I have the podcast. Every time I go in for a haircut, he just gives me research. It's great. Sam Parr: My handyman knows I have the podcast. He always asks me what stocks he should buy. I'm like, that's not the point, bro. Siqi Chen: He thinks you're Jim Cramer. Sam Parr: Yeah. He's like, so what stocks should I buy? Siqi Chen: I don't know. Sam Parr: I don't know. Don't ask me that. Just change the lightbulb, please. Siqi Chen: If he asked you like, you know, what's the best way to increase my testosterone right now using an illicit drug, I feel like that is what he should be asking you. What can I buy from a forum that will make my tendons stronger? Sam has answers to those types of questions. Sam Parr: Yeah, I'm like, do you want to know some really cool subreddits or an illegal place to download books? I got you, bro. Siqi Chen: I'm talking to my barber and he's like, dude, you know whose hair I was cutting? He goes, he's your neighbor. I'm my neighbor. And he goes, yeah, the guy lives just down the street from you. It's the family that started Muscle Milk. It started back in 1998 and it actually started because he bought a sub-brand called Cytomax from his employer. It's not what ended up working, but I think it's a hilarious starting point. It's sort of like how SpaceX started because he wanted to send a small plant to Mars and now he's built a trillion-dollar company doing this. Sam Parr: What's the colostrum? I get so many ads on. Siqi Chen: Colossal good stuff. Sam Parr: Is it from an animal or a human? Siqi Chen: It's from a cow, yeah. Sam Parr: Damn, so I'm depriving some newborn cow from her fresh Milk. Siqi Chen: Well, that's how all I've ever seen how milk is made. It's pretty insane. No, no, it's messed up. Sam Parr: It's just tiny devices that hook onto you like an alien. Siqi Chen: All right. This is this is my wife's vegan. So she's forced me to like go down this road to like acknowledge what what goes on. Here's how a lot of milk is made. I can't say all but I think this is like the mainstream way. They impregnate a cow artificially. Literally a dude sticks his hand in and like artificially inseminates a cow. Gets the cow pregnant. Cow has a baby. Baby is then ripped away from the cow but placed nearby so that the mom can hear the crying and will produce more milk and then they take the milk. Sam Parr: Yeah, I mean that's sad. Fucked up. I hate that. Siqi Chen: What kind of podcast is this? What kind of sad ass vegan podcast is this? Sam Parr: I drank a glass of whole milk just last night and now I regret it. Siqi Chen: Back to Muscle Milk. Muscle Milk, not actual milk. It's a supplement. It starts out as powder. You put in a drink. He's like, cool. I think bodybuilders are into this. They're willing to drink this kind of chalky, nasty drink. He buys in. Basically, it's a family business. It's Greg Pickett. His kids are involved with it. What's cool about this business is Years later, Muscle Milk becomes a household brand. They end up selling the thing for $450 million. I'll make almost half a billion dollars off this Muscle Milk thing. The guy lives down the street. They basically started this as a cul-de-sac company, meaning he lives in one house, the son lives in another house, his daughter lives in another house. And they all just live in one cul-de-sac. Sam Parr: Sounds awesome. Siqi Chen: The kids play together and then they just built this behemoth that way. Like, isn't this insane? Sam Parr: That is badass. That is badass. Siqi Chen: That was like inspiring to me. It's just like a family, like you've heard of a family business, but dude, just imagine the cul-de-sac business. I'm kind of inspired by this very much in the vein of thinking of find the people you love and do life with them. Like, so how did it win? Sam Parr: Wait, really quick. Have you seen Landman, the oil show? Siqi Chen: Hell yeah, I've seen Landman. I might have wore a cowboy hat yesterday just feeling a little Billy Bob Thornton myself. Sam Parr: I haven't seen it, but this clip I just saw makes me want to watch it, but basically Jerry Jones comes on and Jerry Jones like gives this like It's an amazing acting performance where he talks about the importance of working with his family and how he's proud of his wealth and his real estate and he's proud of the cowboys. But you know what he's proud of most is that I got to spend time with my kids and we worked together. And that's why they're here at my deathbed because they loved me and we got to spend a whole bunch of time together. And I heard that speech and I was all in. For one, I was all in. And two, Jerry Jones Who would have thought? He like had tears in his eyes. I did not think he could act like that. Siqi Chen: Somebody was saying they're like, I don't think I think this is such a good performance because he's not acting. I think all of this is just true for him and he just said the truth. Which is great. By the way, Landman, fantastic show. Sam Parr: Yeah, it was such a good scene. All right. So tell me about Milk and Muscles. Siqi Chen: Milk and Muscles. All right. So they start the business, pretty humble plan. They bought this kind of supplement. It's powder you mix into drinks. And they were like, look, if muscle bodybuilding enthusiasts drink this, this would be great. We think we can make this more mainstream, but we don't really know how. We just kind of are believers in the general idea. And they were like, look, if this thing ever got to like 18 million in sales, that would be like, imagine that. That would be crazy. And that was like the dinner table talk. By the time they sell, this thing is doing over $200 million in revenue and about $60 million a year in profit before they sold. So they had built a really successful company. How do they do it? They eventually, and what I love about these stories is you hear about the story and you're like, you nod your head. You're like, yeah, that makes sense how that happened. But then you look at the timeline and sometimes I'll force myself to literally draw out the timeline. So it'd be like, all right, 1998, they start the company and then I'll draw 99, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004. It's like 2004 is when they actually made the product that hit. Which is the ready to drink like we've all seen, you know, the muscle milk carton. And so you, when you hear that, you're like, okay, cool, 2004, then it really took off and you just sort of read the numbers and the revenue ramp and it looks good. But then you think you zoom in and you, you force yourself to look at that like five or six year time period. And you're like, there's not, they don't even talk about what they were doing during that time. Because it's just like the forgotten, the forgotten grinding out years of trying to make shit happen and staying in the game long enough to get lucky. Sam Parr: And what were they doing? Siqi Chen: They were just selling. They were just trying to sell and they were selling to like really small niches but ever expanding out of that niche. And eventually, he has an insight. The dad has an insight. And the insight is basically like, hey, you know what? Flavor matters. And he's like, if more people are gonna drink this, it's gonna be because, can I get this to taste like dessert? And he realized that the initial market they were looking at, which was bodybuilders, they took pride in drinking nasty shit. And so anytime you try to make like a fruity, better tasting thing, sweeter thing, they almost kind of rejected it because it felt less hardcore and they were super hardcore and that's who the market was. Sam Parr: You know, there's a lot of people who like take testosterone or steroids or ozempic and a lot of doctors will offer you a pill, a cream or a syringe and I've asked the doctors and they go, they all want the syringe because it feels more like this works better. It's going through my veins. I can feel it. Siqi Chen: And I think that's true for the early markets, the hardcore markets. Ben is like this. Ben is an early adopter of every product. As soon as a product gets popular, his interest completely drops in it. Because the fun part was doing the hard thing, getting the edge, being ahead. And so same thing for bodybuilders. So the genius of the business is that they saw that, hey, OK, the market we see today, the people who are buying it today actually is different. If we want to reach this other market, we got to, like, ignore all the signals we're seeing today. So he goes in the lab and he starts doing small batch production. And everybody else was so big that they could only test flavors in basically bigger batches. And so that meant slower cycles. It meant kind of like getting less like tight feedback loops. So what he did was he goes to L.A. and he starts testing flavors in like 15-gallon increments. And he pours it and he gives it to people and they're like, ah, too chalky. Then he gives them another one, they're like, too sweet. He gives them another one and he finally makes this vanilla flavor that they're like, this tastes like dessert. I love this. And so he brings those flavors into the ready-to-drink beverage and it just takes off. It goes nuts. And eventually like Walmart starts knocking and Walmart's like, hey, we want to carry this. He's like, dude, we can't even fulfill Walmart. But he's like all the specialty stores, the GNCs, it's flying off the shelves. And for like the first year, they're like so inventory constrained because he nailed the flavors. So what my barber was telling me, which is fascinating, what caught my attention about this, he goes, So this dude down the street, they created Muscle Milk, sold it for like $500 million. But the cool part is, he goes, he didn't sell the flavors. I go, what do you mean? He goes, yeah, there's some story. He goes, it's not out there. But the guy, he's like, cut my hair. He's telling me the story. Sam Parr: You put this barber on blast. Siqi Chen: It's not like insider trading. He's just telling me it's a really cool story. But he's like, you know, when you go and research, it's not, this part's not as reported. So maybe he got some of the details wrong. That's my caveat. But here's what he explained, which was, Basically, when they did the sale, they sell the brand, Muscle Milk, they sell the operating business, they sell the distribution, and then the buyer was like, cool, and the flavors? And they're like, actually, we have our own separate company that does flavors, and we're not gonna sell you that company. And they're like, well, we need the flavors. They're like, cool, yeah, we'll do a licensing deal. We could provide flavors, but we won't sell the flavor company. Again, this is where the details are not reported. So either that's what happened or right after they sold, they started a new flavor company. Because now this is what the family does. They have this flavor house that they created. And they were like, we're not gonna do any brands anymore, but we will do flavoring. That's what made Muscle Milk successful and that's what we're gonna do now as a service. And now they've got a bunch of customers for this flavor brand, this flavor house that they've created. And if you look at their facility, it's like this, Insane, like, you know, huge facility with like a fucking vacuum sealed room. And they're like, oh, we do this technology like spray flavoring where you can add flavor to things that doesn't add any calories. And they're basically it's all about flavor tech. And I'm just fascinated by flavor houses and flavor technology. Sam Parr: It's called Flavor Insights. It looks awesome. I see they have a video with the father and his son. On the about page, it's the whole family. This is my dream, by the way. This is how it's supposed to be. Siqi Chen: Can I tell you why this is even more your dream? While he's building muscle milk, he's got a hobby. I know that you love a man with a real hobby. His hobby is racing cars. And he has his own racing team that he created, and then he himself races in, I don't know shit about racing, but is it Le Mans? Le Mans? Sam Parr: Le Mans, yeah. It's like a famous... I guess track, but it's like the famous thing is like it's a 24 hour race. And so like Ford versus Ferrari and all these things. Siqi Chen: I think he like won the race or he performed really well. How impressive is that? Is this like just rich guys doing it or is he competing against like real racers? Sam Parr: I'm not a real race enthusiast, so I could be wrong. But yeah, it's like, dude, like the story Ford versus Ferrari. It was about the time that Ford beat Ferrari at Le Mans. Like it's like a big deal. Yeah, it's like a movie worthy deal. You know, like Rudy style movie of an underdog winning Le Mans. Siqi Chen: So, you know, DHH, the guy, Jason Freed's co-founder. Sam Parr: He competes in that. Did he? I don't think he won, did he? Siqi Chen: He won. Yeah, he won. I think he won the race and he said he's competed in it 11 times. Sam Parr: Yeah, it's sort of like And oftentimes, the company that wins, they win for some innovative reason, and then 10 years down the line, that car part that helped them win becomes the norm. Yeah, so that's a big deal. Siqi Chen: Isn't this a total life goals story? Build a killer brand, you stuck with the thing, you built it with your family, you do it in the cul-de-sac. I just think it's amazing. Sell the thing for $100 million. Sam Parr: None of us kids are yoked. Right? Like, these guys, they don't look very yoked. I'm looking at the family now. Siqi Chen: Well, as their public defender, here's what I have to say about that. One of the things they talked about with Muscle Milk is they go, we wanted to build a product that everybody would look at it and see a different thing. So they go, women see it as a weight loss product. Men see it as a muscle building product. Some people see it as a snack. Some people see it as a meal replacement. Our goal was to build a product that would basically solve multiple problems for different people at once. Sam Parr: I'm just saying that I want to see some bigger buys and tries on this family photo. They look great. They look very healthy. More importantly, they look happy. The founder's teeth are beautiful. He's got a really nice smile. I just think that we should see a little thicker neck. Siqi Chen: Can I tell you one other thing? So this company that bought them originally, now they're owned by Pepsi. Pepsi owns it now, but before that it was bought by something called Hormel Foods. It's one of these companies that you've never heard of. This company does $12 billion in revenue. They do like a billion and a half dollars of profit a year. And if you go to their website, the headline, the tagline for them is like, We sell more pepperonis than anyone on earth. And they're this food holding company. They own Skippy Peanut Butter. They own Planters. Sam Parr: They own Spam. Siqi Chen: They own Spam and then they sell just a shit ton of ronis, dude. They just sell pepperonis worldwide. Sam Parr: They own Applegate. They own Justin's. They own Planters, Skippy, Chi-Cheese. I don't know what Chi-Cheese is. Siqi Chen: Black Label Bacon. They own a lot of shit. I mean, literally Spam is like on their homepage as like their pride and joy. The way my parents pin pictures of me up on the fridge, that's what this company does with spam. Sam Parr: It's pretty good. Horrible for you. Hormel pepperoni, I know them. That's one of my snacks. One of my snacks is eight pepperoni with a little bit of mozzarella cheese on it, microwaved. Siqi Chen: It's a pizza without the pizza? Sam Parr: Yeah, I just call it... Siqi Chen: A pizza hold the dough? Just pepperoni and mozzarella? Sam Parr: Redneck fitness food. Siqi Chen: This should be your brand. A line of, of not that bad for you. Redneck snacks, it's like it'll make you farm strong. Sam Parr: Yeah, or do you know like PB dip? I call it dip. But you know PB powder? Siqi Chen: The powder, yeah. Sam Parr: Yeah, you get a spoon of that. Straight. And you chuck it up on the top of the roof of your mouth and you suck on that thing for 60 minutes. I call it fitness dip. So instead of having a fat lipper in, you just have PB dip and your tongue just rub it against that dehydrated nut. Ooh boy. Oh boy, you want to have a good time? Put a little PB dip on the roof of your mouth. Siqi Chen: All right, we got our cold open for the episode. Sam Parr: By the way, let me show you one thing. You said something that I do religiously. I've just sent Ari a document that I just sent her one of the tabs. I have dozens of tabs on this. Ari, can you share your screen? So whenever I read a book, I have this Google Doc that I've used since the year like 2010. All right, so check this out. Whenever I read a book, I do a few things. One, I make, whenever there's like a year, And a money term or some type of milestone, I write it down in a sheet. And the reason why I write it in a sheet is because a lot of times when you're building a company or doing anything that's like really challenging, you'll read about someone else and you're like, that was easy. And so I like to do timelines and you'll see like, okay, like they went four years with nothing happening. So for those listening, I have got a timeline of Koch Industries, which is like the largest privately held company in America. I read the biography of their family and I like, I did a timeline where everything major happened in their life, and then I converted the dollar amount into 2019 dollars, which is when I made this particular one. It's really fun to do because you could see that things took, in this case, 30 years. If you scroll all the way to the left, I did this with Kirk Kerkorian, another guy who I love. Every biography I read, I create one of these. Siqi Chen: Just another man you love. Can I just point out a couple things about this What Works Free chair here that are just fantastic. It's just a peek into the mind. Sam Parr: First of all. Siqi Chen: It's a Google Sheet that's just called Sheet, which is just a great title. Okay, scroll over, Ari. Here's some of the milestones that Sam wrote down. All right, so he starts for Koch Industries. 1900, Fred Koch born. 1924, so 24-year gap. Big break, finds mentor. Okay, so then it goes. 1927, just a quick update, still broke. Then it goes 1929, see success. 1931, big success with two G's. Just a big double G success right here. It's amazing. Sam Parr: And then 1940, he buys a company and that company, he buys it for four million dollars. Siqi Chen: You also should just have pictures on here where it's them and the calves and it's just your calves just for reference. And you're just comparing calves because I feel like tell me that's not part of your research process. Is it looking at photos and judging their looks? Sam Parr: Yeah, particularly the Koch brothers, because they're like these tall waspy guys. And I definitely am sizing myself up to them. Yeah. Siqi Chen: The total picture of success includes a picture for sure. Sam Parr: It's like tennis sweaters. It's like, oh, they're into tennis sweaters. Therefore, I will wear tennis sweaters. But yeah, I definitely like two guys that are both 6'2 from the Midwest with blonde hair, blue eyes. There's definitely like a There can only be one of us in this room. Siqi Chen: Dude, there's this girl who keeps going viral on Twitter and it's the same tweet she does every time and she just goes, my dad goes to a bar with his friends every Friday and he makes a list of topics to discuss. Sam Parr: Yes. Siqi Chen: And then she has a photo of him holding a printed out agenda and I'll just read you one of them. Ted Perry's fun capital story shown on Fox News 6. Sam Parr: Next one. Siqi Chen: What's going on with the Bucs? Question mark. Sam Parr: NFL overtime rules. Siqi Chen: Take ball first or second? Question mark. Bahama breezes. How close is too close to an alligator? Do you think people that throw garbage out of their car window are the same people that don't pick up their dog poop when walking through my subdivision? And then it read at the bottom, please be on time. As you can see, we have another week of a packed agenda. And it goes super viral every time. It's like 100,000 likes and I think everybody who sees this is like, yeah, that's part of the winning life. I'd like to go to the bar with my friends every Thursday and have like an agenda that we print out and we talk about it while wearing our new balances. Sam Parr: Do you know who does this? And he's not joking. Siqi Chen: I already know because you're talking about a legend, a social legend, and I know it has to be Nick Gray. Tell me I'm wrong. Is it not Nick Gray? Sam Parr: The second time I hung out with Nick Gray, we went to a bar called Lazarus. Sarah and I came and he goes, Hey, guys, I would love to hang out. This is our second time hanging out. I thought it'd be nice to have an agenda so we could stay on track. There was a 13-point agenda list where it was like, ask Sarah about her job, figure out how that's going on, explain my dating life and get opinions from it. We stuck to that agenda and he took notes. Was it thrilling? Siqi Chen: Because I think I'm going to absolutely start doing this. Sam Parr: It was thrilling. You know how I like it. Siqi Chen: Was it the agenda that was great or the fact that he had an agenda that was great? Which of the two was greater? Sam Parr: The second one. Here's why. So look, in a world, everyone wants to be a tough guy. It feels good to be a leader, but you want to know something. Everyone likes getting led. And we like the assertive person. Siqi Chen: I'm just a leader who loves being led. Sam Parr: That's me. Siqi Chen: That's on my LinkedIn. Sam Parr: I like leading some stuff, but then there's other times where it's like, just tell me what to do. And small talk is one of those things that no one just tells you what to do. And when there's an assigned leader who has something outlined for small talk, I'm just like, yes, sir, I'll do whatever you like me to do. And thank you, may I have another, sir. It's like the best way to go about doing stuff. And that's what Nick Correa does. Siqi Chen: By the way, that's how we do this podcast actually. We both bring some agenda items and then we discuss in bullet point form. Sam Parr: Yeah, I think it's good. He's done that for years and it's awesome. Siqi Chen: Alright, we're going to normalize having conversational hangouts with an agenda. Speaker 2: All right, let's take a quick break because I got to tell you about a friend of the pod who's got their own podcast. If you know Steph Smith, she is a legend. She's been on MFM many times and she's got her own podcast called the A16C Podcast. Siqi Chen: And it's all about technology. Speaker 2: If you think about it, technology has evolved like crazy. Siqi Chen: I mean, I grew up in the 90s. I had CDs. Phones had cords. Speaker 2: You couldn't use the Internet if your mom was on the phone. And now there's like 3D printers and there's rockets that could go up into space, AI. There's so much crazy stuff going on. And you got to have a place that helps you stay ahead of the curve. Siqi Chen: And that's what the A6Z podcast is trying to do. It's a podcast from the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, and it's trying to give you an inside look at the trends that are shaping our future. They've had guests like Mark Cuban and Neil Stephenson on, and they talk about topics like deepfakes or the science behind GLP-1s or autonomous drones. No small boy stuff at all. Speaker 2: Steph is the host. She's awesome. Siqi Chen: I think you'll enjoy the podcast, so check it out. It is the A16Z Podcast, and I like this tagline. They say, it's like eavesdropping on the future. Speaker 2: That's pretty cool. Siqi Chen: That's a good tagline. Speaker 2: So check it out. Siqi Chen: The A16Z Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. I have a business that's pretty cool. Can I tell you about it? Here's my opening for this business. Sam, I found the business that you should have started instead of wasting your goddamn time with the hustle. Sam Parr: Okay, I like that. Siqi Chen: So you built the hustle. And if you recall, One time you came to me, hat in hand, absolutely begging for an investment. You needed the money. I begged a ton of people. And you said, please, sir, invest in my company. And I looked at it. I flipped through the business plan like it was a flip book. And I just said, no, thanks. Sam Parr: No, that's not what you said. You said, look, Sam, you're coming to a knife fight with a knife. I don't even want you to come to this knife fight with a gun. I want you to come to this knife fight with a magic fucking wand. Siqi Chen: And I turned away on my heel with a dramatic spin and I left the room. Sam Parr: And then you tried to pull the door to open but it was really a push door. Unknown Speaker: Totally blew it at the end. Did not stick the landing. Sam Parr: You clearly had just read that on whatever the equivalent was of Twitter and you're like, that is now my line. Siqi Chen: Yeah, exactly. This is back when I was like, I had it written on the inside of my palm and I was like, Peter Thiel says this magic one. They say that somebody totally owns them no matter what they're doing. But the reality was, I looked at the business and you were like, Here's what I'm doing. I'm creating a media company so every day we're going to write the news. So every day you had to recreate your product. Sam Parr: Yeah, it sucks. Siqi Chen: Oh, that sucks. Is there any benefit of all the work you did in the last three months? It's like, not really. We got to recreate it again. We got to bake that cake every morning. Okay. Sounds good. And then you said, and then I was like, cool. So then people pay you certainly for the service that you're doing. Nah, it's free. Oh, okay. But then we have to do a separate business basically to a separate customer selling advertisers. I was like, okay, but certainly they're on retainer and it's going to be recurring revenue that's going to stack up. You're like, no, no, no. They're just going to, if they feel like advertising, they will. If they don't, they don't. Every month we're going to start back at zero. And I thought, damn, this is a tough business to win. And that's when I hit you with the knife and the knife fight and blah, blah, blah. Sam Parr: Which it is tough-ish to do well. Siqi Chen: Yeah, and by the way, the best part of the whole thing is five years later after you successfully sold the business and got rich doing it, I then copied your business model and did the same thing for crypto and came back to you basically being like, what was the business plan again? How do you do this? So that's the end of that story. Now, here's a better business that somebody created five years ago that has the following profile. They don't recreate the product every day. People pay them for the product on a subscription. It's in a hobby that you love doing and it's a thing you were doing anyways for free, so I think you would have been great at it. And also, it uses your gift, which is making things simple, summarizing things, making them easier to understand, saving somebody time doing it. And this person has bootstrapped this business to $200 million in revenue with 30% profit margins. Sam Parr: I have no idea. What is this? Siqi Chen: It's called Headway app and it is a book summary app. So this guy in the Ukraine created this company. Where he takes popular books and he summarizes them and the promise is basically, instead of reading the book, I already read it. I summarized it. I could tell you main point one. I could tell you main point two. I could tell you the main point three. And in under 15 minutes, you can get the gist of what's in this book. You'll get, you know, the big ideas and you'll get them explained to you. You could either read it or we have AI that turns it into audio and you can listen to like a 15 minute summary of this book. And we've done it for 1,500 of the most popular books. And people pay a simple 12, 13 bucks a month for this, and this has become an absolute juggernaut. So I did not think that these book summary apps could get this big, but damn if that's impressive. 200 million in ARR, 30% profit, built this thing out of the Ukraine. Sam Parr: They just raised funding at a $2.3 billion valuation. Siqi Chen: Right, right. Sam Parr: Holy crap. Siqi Chen: You could have done that instead. And I think you would have been great at this. By the way, you know, here's why I said that you could have done this. Because when I went and looked at their ads, right, the way this business grows, they run ads on TikTok, on Facebook, whatever. And the book of their ads, tell me if this sounds familiar. My boss thinks I'm a genius and thinks I read 150 books a year. But actually, I just use Headway. Sam Parr: That's their ad? Siqi Chen: It's not word for word. I just wanted to really beat you with that one. But it's basically the, it's basically the gist of their ads. Speaker 2: It's the same value. Sam Parr: I invented that ad. I stole it from someone else and I invented that ad. That's my ad. Unknown Speaker: That's the ad. Siqi Chen: That's my ad that I took. Sam Parr: Yes. I stole that from the sim and I invented that ad. Siqi Chen: Their ad is a little bit more like, um, It'll be, the average CEO reads 52 books a year. How many do you read? Right, so they're basically making you feel like a shitty CEO, or it'll say, everyone thinks I went to Harvard with the amount of books that I know, but actually, I just use Headway. Or it'll be, meet the app that all the intellectuals are using. It's stuff like that. And so those are the sort of hooks that they use to get people to do this where they're not saying, here's a book summary. They're basically saying, be a smarter person and be seen as a smart person because you seem so well read. And here's your hack to seeming so well read. Sam Parr: So what's interesting is Thrive. Siqi Chen: We should do this for the podcast. It's like my boss thinks I'm kind of retarded but know a lot about business. The secret is I just listen to My First Million. Sam Parr: But I still sound a little retarded. Siqi Chen: My boss is so impressed that I know all these numbers. But then he wonders. Sam Parr: But then he fact checks me. Siqi Chen: My boss is wondering why I have pepperoni in my mouth. Sam Parr: This is ridiculous. These guys, so they raised money from Thrive, which Thrive is a big VC investor in ChatGPT. Are they not worried that ChatGPT just does all this? Siqi Chen: Well, they are themselves using AI for a bunch of stuff. Like if you go look at a bunch of their ads, they're all like AI generated ads. I think, you know, businesses like this that are like super laser focused on one thing, you know, even if you can use ChatGPT to generate a summary, that's not the same thing. And I think, you know, they're not even old. Sam Parr: They started in 2019. I know, right? Siqi Chen: Super impressive. They also have done this other app. So there's this one ad that was like so frustratingly good. It made me pissed that I didn't think of this. It's this simple looking puzzle. Tell me if you've seen this. I don't know. I don't know how much you use these like it's like in a lot of games. This ad pops up or TikTok. It's this like it's like a maze. Imagine a maze and it's like you start on this dot. You have to get across without picking up your pen. And it just shows somebody trying to do it and they're messing up. And it's like, see if you can solve this. Only 5% of people, you know, can solve this, but 50% of fifth graders can do it or whatever. And you're like, ah, I got to see if I can do this. So you download the app. By the way, that puzzle is actually impossible. There is no solution to it. They just put it in. They put a thing that looks simple. But you can't figure it out. You can't figure it out because it is actually an optical illusion. It's actually impossible. They have this other app called Impulse that's done like 70 million downloads and it's a brain training app and the framing of that is basically Keep your brain sharp with these little mini mind games. My mom likes a lot of these things because she feels like, oh, I'm getting older. I should have these little things on my phone that keep me sharp. So she plays Sudoku and Crossword and she downloads apps like this to stay sharp. Sam Parr: So their skillset, they're just crazy good internet marketers and really good at creating apps that retain. Siqi Chen: Apps that first and foremost get you to convert and become a subscriber. And then, yeah, obviously, you know, the retention helps. And, you know, this guy talks about he frames it as micro learning. He's like, Microlearning is this, how do you get somebody to spend 5 to 15 minutes a day getting smarter? What if you use your phones to get smarter instead of just to waste your time? And so it makes it sound like this grand, noble mission. And at the same time, on the back end, it's just this ruthless funnel that is like, run ads, get the download, convert, convert, convert, convert, convert, and like, that's the game. That's what you gotta be world-class at. Sam Parr: We talked about, was it, remember the Period app or Flow? Flow, yeah. Were they Ukrainian as well? These guys all have a crew. Siqi Chen: There's these Eastern European app makers where they have these family of apps and you go look at their website and they raise no funding and then they'll have 300 employees and then their apps will do 100 million downloads a year and it's based out of Kiev or whatever. This just seems to be a pattern. I think there's just a very high density of talent that knows how to build this specific type of company. Sam Parr: Yeah, they're just like all homies and they all have this like, I don't know, this idea of like it feels fun to get one over on someone, but then they're like, all right, if we're going to have that attitude, we should also like provide value so we stick around for a long time, which is like what every internet marketer ever has. They're like, I'm going to do something shady and they win. And they're like, oh, but it'd be a lot cooler if the customers came back to us or if we didn't have to refund people constantly. So let's just like do the shady stuff, do it for something. Siqi Chen: If I could tell my mom what I do, without shame. Sam Parr: Which is like what every internet marketer ever has done. But this is badass. How'd you find this? Siqi Chen: How did I find this? Actually, that's another good story. Have you seen this Twitter account, Arthur Rock? Sam Parr: I know that Arthur Rock was... Siqi Chen: No, it's like a parody account. It's Arthur Rock is his account. Have you not seen this? This thing is amazing. Unknown Speaker: How do you spell Arthur? Siqi Chen: You try to spell Arthur naturally and just see what happens. You'll land exactly at the right thing. It's A-R-F-U-R. Arthur Rock. Okay, so it's this guy who's this anonymous VC. And what he did is he just created this Twitter account where he just tweets out numbers from companies that are raising money or trying to sell. And he's just like leaks information. And so he's just this giant leak. And so he tweeted out the numbers for Headway app. But if you just look at his feed, his feed is like pure signal because it literally just be like, It'll be like post-hog, 13 million in ARR, growing 2x year over year. They're currently raising. It'll be like, or like somebody will be like, you know, the founder will be like, we're pleased to announce that we raised our Series C from Excel. It's a huge milestone and we feel so validated. And then he'll just tweet out, he'll quote tweet it, it'll just go, 50 million ARR as of November, up 1.8x year to date. Congrats. Sam Parr: Or there's another one that they raised that $400 million post. They did $6 million in 2024. Congrats. Siqi Chen: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. How amazing is this? This is the best Twitter account, right? Sam Parr: This is really good. You know what's funny? We've seen this again and again and again. These meme people, anonymous meme jokers, We are like right a lot. You know what I mean? It's sort of like how Esquire, or what was it called? American, what was the tabloid that like is in the grocery store? Inquirer, National Inquirer? Siqi Chen: Yeah, the National Inquirer. Sam Parr: Like they say a lot of bullshit, but they also like predicted like the Bill Clinton scam, or Bill Clinton stuff before everyone, or like the John Edwards affair. And so like I do love following these Anand accounts. This guy's great. Dude, he says Holo, a Catholic prayer app doing 60 million ARR growing 3.5x a year. Siqi Chen: He'll also post updates. So in May, he'll be like, Suno, the AI music app, just closed around 15 million ARR in the first year. Lightspeed invested at 500 million post. Congrats. That was May. And then in October, so five months later, he just wrote, at 40 million ARR now. This guy's just providing... I don't know. You're not as big of a basketball fan, but in basketball, there's these two guys who were famous on Twitter for just like, this has sources everywhere. So it'd be like Shams, and it'd be Woj. And they would just always have Intel and there's all their entire Twitter feed is literally just inside info. And be like, you know, sources say Jimmy Butler wants trade, his list of teams that he wants to go to are these four, or it'd be like, Like, during the NBA draft, like, you know, 45 seconds before every pick, they just say, they're taking this guy. It would just spoil the draft. Sam Parr: If I'm one of these Ukrainian guys, like, I don't have the skill set to do this. I'm not technical. But I wonder if you like, do you ever wonder why aren't there more people just copying fast growing companies? There are. Siqi Chen: That happens a lot. But I think your answer is actually pretty good, which is, why aren't there more? I think I answered your question wrong. I was like, no, some people do do that. And I think your question is actually correct, which is, why aren't more people doing this? Sam Parr: I don't want to do this because I kind of have a reputation and I don't really want to do it. But if I was a little bit younger and if I had the skill set, which I don't, If I see a company that's going at like 400x a year, which this guy does, he's like, here's some app that is only doing 5 million in revenue, but they're set to grow 4x. I'm like, yeah, just go to their website and copy that. Siqi Chen: Yeah, I mean, it's not so easy, right? You could copy a product that doesn't get you the customers. And so you have to not only copy the product, you have to figure out how they grow and be as good at growth as them. Sam Parr: You can figure that out. You can use all this technology. Here's what their ads say. I'm just going to do that exact same ad. Siqi Chen: You can, but most people who have that ability, if you're that good, you're also able to create new things from scratch. And I think also what ends up happening is that a lot of things look similar, but they're 80% the same and they're 20% different. But that 20% difference is actually a huge difference, right? It's like, if you've ever looked at, we were talking about flavors earlier, it's like the difference between two flavors is like a 0.1% change in a certain chemical, but it'll change from vanilla. Speaker 2: That's the difference between. Siqi Chen: It's not that big of a difference on the whole. You're doing 80% the same, but it's 20% that's different. I actually advise this and talk a lot about this, which is if you see something that's working, not as a company maybe, but let's say a trend or a business model, let's say e-commerce or whatever. Try to figure out what's working better or worse in a category. And then, you know, if you're going to go into that category, you're probably going to end up, even if you're trying to be super original, you're probably going to end up with 80% of the things the same because that's just how business is. You're not 100% different. But the key is to figure out what is your 20% difference going to be and how well can you execute on that 20% innovation. And I think that's a more humble, honest way of going about things versus I think most people believe they're doing everything 100% original and unique, and that's just not true. This is also for content or wisdom. How many truly original I love Naval, but how many of Naval's things are 100% homegrown, not inspired by anything, not similar to anything else that was out there? Very rare, right? That's not how anybody does things. Tony Robbins talks about this. He's like, yeah, I learned under Jim Rohn and Jim learned under Zig Ziglar or whatever. It's the same school of thought. Me putting my twist on it is what makes all the difference. Then you have people like Rocket Internet, which are literally like pixel for pixel clones, but even they operate in different markets. So they'll be like, cool, we're building Amazon for Brazil or Thailand or whatever. And turns out once you try to do that, you're going to like over time and a lot of things are going to end up different. Speaker 2: Hey, can I tell you a Steve Jobs story real quick? So Jobs once said that design is not just how something looks, it's how it works. And a great example of that is my new partner, Mercury. Mercury has made a banking product that just works beautifully. I use it for not just one, but all six of my companies right now. It is my default. If I start a company, it's a no-brainer. I go and I open up a Mercury account. The design is great. It's got all the features that you need. And you can just tell it was made by a founder like me, not a banker somewhere who hired a consultant in an agency to try to make some tool. So if you wanna be like me and 200,000 other ambitious founders, head over to mercury.com and open up an account in minutes. And here's the fine print. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group and Evolve Bank & Trust members FDIC. All right, back to the episode. Sam Parr: But it's a thrilling story. Siqi Chen: Okay. Let me guess. It's obscure, overly complicated, doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, too much risk, and will end up netting less than the S&P 500 in the long run. Sam Parr: No. This one, he came out on top, actually. So the story is this. First of all, I was just listening to Scott Galloway's podcast while I was driving somewhere. I think it was over Christmas break. And something happened at the very end of the podcast and I was with Sarah and I literally pulled over to the side of the highway and I was like, are you listening to this? And she's like, shut up. No. But I'm like, all right, but this is actually amazing. Siqi Chen: Can we get an instant replay on YouTube of your wheel diagram you just did? How big is your wheel, dude? You're like literally driving a school bus. What was that? Sam Parr: It's like a ship. It's a ship. Siqi Chen: Arms fully out wide. It's like a tractor that you're driving. Sam Parr: Yeah, it's a ship. I pulled the ship over and I literally had to sit down because she yells at me when I use my phone and I had to type this out. So I had this note, I remembered it. But Scott Galloway had Michael Lewis on. So Scott Galloway is an investor and podcaster. Michael Lewis is an amazing author, wrote about FTX's downfall and he was with Sam Beckman-Fried when this all happened. And so he has a unique perspective. In the 45-minute part of this 55-minute episode, Scott Galloway just mentioned something where he's like, yeah, I bought some of the bankruptcy claims against FTX. And Michael Lewis started talking about something else. And then Michael Lewis goes, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What? You made a good investment where you bought the FTX claims? What was that about? Scott just casually throws this out there, but the story is actually pretty amazing. The background is this. In 2022, FTX goes bankrupt because SBF, Sam Beckman Freed, he's overleveraged and he spent all the money and whatever. It didn't work out because of a bunch of different reasons. Because of that, $10 billion in customer funds are lost. They're just gone. And people are distraught. They're freaking out. But when a bankruptcy happens, one major thing happens, which is the person who had the money in FTX. So let's say I stored $1 million in FTX. I now am going to have a claim against that company for $1 million. So it's going to go to court and we're going to figure out how do I get my money back somehow. And in a lot of cases, you get no money back. And so what happens is these kind of vultures, I mean, I don't know what you want to call them, but they come along and they go, hey, FTX owes you a million dollars. You're probably not gonna get that back. You might get that back, but I'll tell you what, you have a million dollar claim, I will buy that claim from you for 100 grand. So you get the 100 grand today, whereas the other outcomes are potentially you eventually get nothing, or maybe you'll get a little bit more, like 100 grand, 200 grand, 300 grand, but it's gonna be in like four or five years and you don't even know for sure. So just let me buy your claim. And so sure, you could do that. So it creates a market when that happens. But Scott Galloway, he's kind of a strange guy and he had this quote on this podcast where he's like, when I see fire, I run towards it because I've known enough seeing a lot of bankruptcies that when a bankruptcy happens, there's opportunity. And so Scott Galloway, He reads the paperwork about the bankruptcy and what he notices is that Sam Bankman Freed, unlike a lot of different Ponzi schemes, a lot of times with Ponzi schemes, they're spending this money on Coke, hookers, planes, like party shit. SPF maybe did a little bit of that, but you want to know what he was real degenerate about? Venture investing. He loved investing in companies. He invested in a few, and I think a lot of them didn't work, but one of the big ones that he invested in was he invested in Anthropic, which is the number two or the number three best AI company. And Scott looks at the numbers and they don't actually say what the valuation was of what, of what the, they didn't, they don't say the valuation of Anthropic when Sam Beckman invest in them. But what they say is that he invested $500 million and Scott does a little math and he's like, I think the valuation was around $5 billion, meaning SPF owns 10% of this company. And this was happening two years ago. He's like, I think Anthropic is going to raise money at a $10 billion valuation and then eventually one day at a $60 billion valuation, which by the way, as of today, there are rumors that that's happening. And because of that, I think I can buy a claim for 20%, so a million-dollar claim for $200,000. And if you do all the math, I think I could actually triple or quadruple my money based just off this venture return, let alone if we ever are going to claw back any of the crypto that was lost. Well, turns out, A few things happened. One, Bitcoin exploded. And because of that, well, not because of that, but they were able to recap or claw back a lot of the money and Bitcoin exploded. And so a lot of these people are going to be getting back a lot more money than they actually had in there because the money, you know, the Bitcoin was just sitting there growing. And also, Sam Beckman's Freed Investments One of them killed it, knocked it out the park. And so I think now the people who lost money, they're getting something like 125% of their money back, which is not bad for a Ponzi scheme that you were a victim of. Scott said the numbers. He goes, I bought $250,000 worth and I sold, I bought a million dollar claim for 250 and I sold it for 90% of the million. So he like tripled his money. And Scott like goes through the story and he explains like his reasoning on this podcast. And it was amazing, to be honest, like how on earth you could find value in this way. Siqi Chen: Yeah, that's that's super impressive. I actually happened to hear this segment, too, and had the same. Yeah, I wasn't driving a bus, but I had the same sort of like neck snap reaction where I was like, what? What's funny is you said a couple of things, but I don't think A couple of things, but I think we have to correct a couple of things. One, it wasn't a Ponzi scheme. Sam Parr: He stole customer funds. I guess I wasn't meaning that this was a Ponzi scheme, but it's in that category of schemes where a lot of people are like, how do I get my money back? Siqi Chen: Scammed. You lost your money. Yeah, exactly. The other thing is that he was saying, I valued FTX, the stake in Anthropic at $4 billion, but that's not really what happened. They sold their stake for $800 million. So I think he put in $400 or $500 million and they sold it for $800 or $900 million in the liquidation. And so it wasn't the anthropic investment that really paid off. Sam Parr: He was using the anthropic investment as a downside protection, where he was doing the math, where he was like, all right, that gets my investment up just a little bit to a safe zone, but then what else can there be? Siqi Chen: Yeah, exactly. But I think his math was wrong. So he said in the thing, he goes, I valued the anthropic, based on the anthropic stake, I thought it was worth $4 billion. The total claims were $9 billion. So I thought anthropic was giving me $0.44 on the dollar. For every dollar of claims that I would buy, claims were selling for 22 cents on the dollar. So he says, to me, that was the easiest trade I ever made. But the reality is that the anthropic stake ended up being worth less than one billion, right? So it would have been 10 cents. So he got it right, even though his logic was wrong. And we had Shiel on the other day, and he basically said his two best investments kind of worked out the same way. He's like, I bought Nvidia in 2017 because I thought that crypto mining was going to take off. And NVIDIA took off, but not because of crypto mining at all. It turned out it was AI. I was wrong, but I got massively right. Same thing with Bitcoin. He's like, I bought Bitcoin early on because I thought it was going to be this fast peer-to-peer transfer thing. Turns out that was all wrong, but Bitcoin went up anyways because of this other store of value, digital gold use case. And so I think what ended up happening is that he made a great investment, but I think his underwriting was wrong. I think that's one of the hard things about doing this smart money investing is that When you're right, you feel like such a goddamn genius. And when you're wrong, you chalk it up to, you know, whatever, you sort of either mentally block it out, you either say you were wrong, or you think maybe one of your assumptions got a little off. But there's also this weird state where you can end up right, even though your underwriting was wrong, and you conflate kind of like luck and skill. And I guess the question is, I guess that's one of my observations I've had in this process of like, As I do my own investing and get some things right, get something wrong, I talk to other people. It's very humbling to realize how much of this, even your wins aren't yours. They're not your wins because you got so much of it wrong. Sam Parr: Well, and there's another learning that I had, which is finding value in crap like this story. This was the worst asset, the worst company. You don't want to touch this because A, it's a scam, so there's a no-go there, and B, it's a reputational ruiner. Who wants to be involved in this guy? And then it's like, I have so much better things to do. Why would I waste my time with this pile of shit? And what was interesting was seeing Scott walk through his reasoning on how he can still capture value from a horrible situation. And I thought that that was really intriguing because that is not how I tend to do things. Like, what did they say? Trying to catch a falling knife. Like, when something's bad, it's just going to get worse and just stay away. But that's not always the case. Siqi Chen: Dude, when I went to Manish Prabhari's house and we recorded that podcast together, we did the podcast and then at the end, he's kind of just like touring me around and I go to his desk where he works. I like seeing like literally where you sit when you work. I think the environment kind of tells a lot. And he has this placard on his desk, like the way you would have, like if you walk into a bank or whatever, it would be like the name tag of the bank manager or something like that. But instead of a name on it, it just said, trouble is opportunity. And literally he was reminding him that he wanted this on his desk because in those moments where there's panic, where there's trouble, he wanted a reminder that trouble is opportunity. And not all trouble is opportunity, right? Like one of his isms that he took from Charlie Munger and Buffett is he puts things in what he calls the too hard pile. So he's like, yeah, you know, I look at a hundred opportunities. I can probably tell you the three obviously good ones, and I can tell you the ten obviously terrible ones. But then the other, whatever, 77, I just put in the too hard pile. And I'm sure some of them are really good, but I just throw things in the too hard pile when they're too hard. And so, for example, I was asked, like, what's your thoughts on crypto? And he was like, Well, I think there's a case for, I think there's a case against, but I just don't do anything because I put it in the too hard pile. So I don't need to win in that. It's too hard for me to figure out, so I'm not going to bother. And I think the concept of the too hard pile is so valuable because I used to be very black and white about everything, like either it's good or it's bad. And if I thought it could be good, I would smash my head against the wall trying to make it work. And if it was bad, it had to stand out as bad for me to throw it away. Sam Parr: So you said a hundred ideas. Siqi Chen: The story is this. He's at a lunch with Warren Buffett and he goes, Warren, I think one of your great gifts is you're a great judge of people. And he was talking about like, you know, Warren Buffett hired that guy, Ajit, who like runs their insurance business. He's like, I just think you're a great reader of people, judge of people. How do you do it? What's your secret? And he goes, I don't think I'm a great reader of people. And he's like, but I'm not trying to be humble. He goes, I just approach it differently. He goes, it pays to be a harsh grader when it comes to people, meaning the cost of being optimistic about somebody who turns out to not be great, to let them into your circle of friends or to do business with somebody who turns out to not be great. My first million is so costly that I just rule a bunch of people out. He goes, if you put me in a cocktail party and you let me have five minutes with 100 people, in that five minutes, I could probably tell you the five people who are really outstanding. I could tell you the five people who are really lousy and I just don't want anything to do with them. They just obviously came off super bad like in a five minute interaction. But then there's 90 people that I just can't make a judgment on in five minutes. And he goes, so I just put them all in the bad pile. They're all in the too hard to know pile. And so I just rule them out because it's not worth the brain damage to try to figure it out on a case-by-case basis just so you don't miss a good one. Because the cost of a bad thing is worth way, cost me much more than missing out on a good thing. Because there are more good things that I could just filter for and I'll find those good things like over time. They'll be obviously good. I'll just focus on the obviously good things. And he does this with investing, he does this with people and it's just a very useful heuristic because I think most of us try to be, if there's a hundred, we try to be accurate at the hundred level. It's like I want to have an accurate grade on all hundred and I'll spend all my time on the hard to judge things and I'll get a lot of them wrong. But I'm trying to get them right and therefore I'm taking too much risk. Whereas his technique is, don't take too much risk. Take the obviously good and act on it. Obviously bad, throw them away. And everybody else, put them in the too hard pile and ignore it. Sam Parr: Can I dumb this down? Let me explain why I'm a genius. When I go to a restaurant, there's like two columns of entrees. I start at the top and I skim down. And the first one that I see that's a seven out of 10, I go, oh, that's it, menu over. I don't look at the menu for the rest of the meal. I don't second guess it. I just say, the first one, that's a seven. That's done. And I'm able to do that right away. Siqi Chen: Does this apply to everything? Is this marriage advice? What other things does this apply to? Where does this not apply? Sam Parr: I mean, yeah, I think it could apply to marriage. The idea of settling is good. You settle for something that's pretty good and you can make it great. I don't know. Is there any data on Indian couples who have been. Siqi Chen: Yeah, like arranged marriages have like the same quote-unquote success rate as like American marriages which are like involve dating and selection and courtship and then eventually, you know, engagement and then marriage versus like The way that Indian couples do it is very much the menu that you scan the listings and that'll do engineer good family full set of teeth Seven out of ten. Speaker 2: Let's go. Siqi Chen: Yeah, I Will see you at the altar for the first time. Sam Parr: Yeah No, I I I just think that's how I order. I've done that for years. I want less choice. And I think what Warren Buffett is actually saying similar, which is like, I know for certain that these three are fine enough. Therefore, I don't care about the rest. Siqi Chen: Yeah, you know that book, the Mark Manson book, Subtle Art of Not Giving an F. I think that book, it got so popular that it sort of got written off. You know what I mean? Like, do you ever hear a smart person being like, man, I learned so much from this book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving an F. Like, it's not like, it's not like a cool intellectual thing to reference. Because it's pop, it's like pop. Sam Parr: So popular, yeah. Siqi Chen: It's like if I'm like, oh, I really like Justin Bieber's music. It's like, okay, what? That's like a low status thing to sort of say. But there, you know, he brings up one good point in the book. The book is basically around one point, which is life is not about caring about everything or not caring about everything. It's about choosing, you know, assume you have a limited set of, you know, F's to give in your pocket. Like you got five to give. Choose wisely. Choose the things you're going to care about. So like, you know, the menu, You just don't have to care to get that right. And that's kind of like the Warren Buffett. You can just throw a bunch of things in a too hard pile and ignore them. And then there may be a few decisions where actually getting it right really, really matters. And then you have enough bandwidth to actually care about those things because you're not caring about everything. Sam Parr: Yeah, I think that's good shit. What do you want to do now? Siqi Chen: I want to give you one other story. Have you heard this Bill Ackman story? Of his running into the fire when everybody else was running out story, his four hour investment decision. Do you know this one? Sam Parr: Oh man, I thought it was like literally a fire. Siqi Chen: Well, kind of. It was the 08 crisis, which I think to people on Wall Street felt like, you know, the giant fire. Sam Parr: Oh, you mean Bill Ackman, the famous Twitter influencer? He invests? Wait, he's an investor? Siqi Chen: We're joking. I hope you're still coming on later. All right. So he tells a story. It's 08. The financial crisis is happening. Banks are failing. Bear Stearns fails. And then this other bank is going to fail. People don't know what's going to happen. Widespread panic. And the bank, Wachovia, was on the brink. And basically what he did was he did a four, he's like, I had four hours. I spent four hours just looking at the business of Wachovia and came to a decision in four hours that the panic was overblown and that Wachovia would be saved and that Wells Fargo, which ended up buying Wachovia was far healthier than the market believed in that moment of panic. And so he made a huge investment and it was like, you know, one of his most lucrative investments ever. It was a four-hour decision and it was made at a time of extreme panic when trouble was opportunity. And when everybody else was just running out, you know, screaming, he was calm and basically looked at the situation and assessed the risk return differently, which is sort of like what you're talking about with Scott Galloway when FTX just feels taboo in every way and it feels like, you know, the worst possible situation. And he's like, cool, it's the worst possible situation. At a price. And there's a price for everything. And the price for him to buy those claims at 22 cents on the dollar turned out to be the right price. Sam Parr: Dude, Bill Ackman's also like 6'4", I think, which is pretty cool. We should create an index for CEOs above 6'2". And I bet it'd do all right. Siqi Chen: All right. So he bought Let's see, 178 million shares at $3.15 a share. So he spent $560 million after four hours of thinking. And his estimate was that it was going to be worth more than double that. And the next week, Wachovia bought it at about $7 a share. So he basically doubled 500 million in a week. Sam Parr: That's insane. All right. Well, that's cool. Bill Ackman's great. All right. Great story. Siqi Chen: Great story. All right. Sam Parr: I think that's a pretty good podcast. What do you say? Siqi Chen: I think that was all right. Unknown Speaker: All right. Sam Parr: That's the pod. Speaker 2: Hey, Shaan here. I want to take a minute to tell you a David Ogilvie story, one of the great ad men. He said, remember, the consumer is not a moron. She's your wife. You wouldn't lie to your own wife, so don't lie to mine. And I love that. You guys, you're my family. You're like my wife, and I won't lie to you either. So I'll tell you the truth. For every company I own right now, six companies, I use Mercury for all of them. So I'm proud to partner with Mercury because I use it for all of my banking needs across my personal account, my business accounts, And anytime I start a new company, this is my first move, I go open up a Mercury account. I'm very confident in recommending it because I actually use it. I've used it for years. It is the best product on the market. So, if you want to be like me and 200,000 other ambitious founders, go to mercury.com and apply in minutes. And remember, Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group and Evolve Bank & Trust members FDIC. All right, back to the episode.