The Exchanges

Q Like, I track, I track income. I don't track, uh, net worth, because there's nothing I can do about that, right? It's, I've, I've, I'm not like you guys. I've done a set it and forget it, but now that Bitcoin, Bitcoin and, uh, Uh, ether is close to an all-time high. Bitcoin is, I think. Uh, should I just, should I just sell it all and get out?

A Uh, the number one rule of Bitcoin is you don't want to sell your Bitcoin, obviously. Um, no, I mean, look, I think the long-term kind of like thesis around Bitcoin is, uh, no different than it's always been, which is you have a scarce supply, uh, asset. There's lots of people who want it. That number of people who want it is increasing. Now the people who are banging on the door aren't like retail investors on the internet with 10 dollars. It's large institutions that have billions of dollars. Uh, they're obviously allocating to it. Um, and probably the most exciting part over, you know, call it the next 12 months or so, is that at the same time that all this demand is coming in, uh, the Bitcoin halving is coming, and that's just when the daily incoming supply, the number of Bitcoin that get created each day, is gonna get cut in half, from 900 Bitcoin to 450. So like, I always joke, if you went to Economics one-on-one class, supply and demand, if supply goes down and demand goes up at the same time, then the price has to go up to accommodate everyone, and we've seen this happen before, and it'll probably happen again.

AI assessment note: “the number one rule of Bitcoin is you don't want to sell your Bitcoin”

Q This is probably my favorite one of yours so far. Do you got any other ones? You had one more maybe?

A Uh, I've got two more that are kind of related. So, um, I, everyone's all excited about like the deep tech stuff. Uh, I, I invested in this company called Rainmaker. And so Rainmaker makes it rain. They're flying precision drones into clouds, and they're dropping chemicals in the clouds to make it rain. Um, and so, like, that's kind of crazy. That is probably the riskiest one. Wow. And then, um, kind of simultaneous to that, uh, if you look at like, what's like the cyber security version of all these deep tech companies, there's this guy, Joshua Steinman, who left, uh, I think he was on the national security council, uh, in the Trump administration. And he like realized, wait a minute, like there's no companies that protect all of our public infrastructure. So like the example he gave me was, uh, imagine what happens if someone can hack like the water treatment plants and change the pH levels of the water. And have like massive, you know, carnage or like, you know, really, really screw with like a local area by simply hacking this like one facility that's public infrastructure and doing something nefarious. And so he's creating a company called Galvanic. Uh, again, it's super small, probably, you know, on the higher end of the risk, uh, spectrum, but just like a really cool mission of, um, if you're able to protect public infrastructure, there's like unlimited demand for this t…

AI assessment note: “I've got two more that are kind of related. So, um, I invested in this company called Rainmaker”

Q do an analogy? Uh, you know, Pomp going from Bitcoin laser eyes to Real estate and all kinds of other shit that he's doing now. Is it, uh, is this Justin Timberlake from NSYNC now going solo Justin Timberlake? You know, what, what's the, what's the right analogy here? Who, who has made such a transition, such a life pivot like this? Is there anyone that's done this in Hollywood?

A Well, here's the thing is, uh, it's not really a pivot if you kind of expand out off of the internet, right? So if you think about, I started my career building companies, then I went and I worked at Facebook, uh, then I started investing. And then once I was investing, that's really where, uh, kind of the Bitcoin stuff happened. Um, but even the stuff on the internet, I worked directly with, you know, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg for a short period of time at Facebook when they were trying to figure out how do they grow their audiences on Facebook? I remember early on when Fuck Jerry, the Instagram account, they were trying to go from Instagram and figure out what's their Facebook strategy. And so the reason why I say that is like, I don't know, think of like a Kim Kardashian. She goes from like sex tape to reality TV star to like entrepreneur, billionaire to now like criminal justice reform to I think she's going to be president of the United States one day. Uh, and you look at that and you're like, actually the same thing that makes the sex tape go viral gets you elected to be president today. So like in some ways it's actually the exact same skillset, just, you know, packaged up in a different way and, uh, with different ambitions or, or aspirations.

AI assessment note: “think of like a Kim Kardashian. She goes from like sex tape to reality TV”

Q I'd rather be honest. Okay. Pump, you brought some ideas for us. You know that this is the idea podcast. Um, you brought some ideas. Let's rattle them off. So, uh, start with number one. What ideas and trends or opportunities do you see right now in the market?

A Yeah. So this, uh, this first one is one that we're actually doing. Um, so I've thought a lot about it. Housing affordability is the worst it's been in, uh, this century. Um, we continue to see people are worried like, Hey, I want to buy a house. Should I rent? Should I buy? What are interest rates going to do? All these different things, but there's no dominant voice in terms of news commentary and data. Um, and so we started a company called Resi Club. Uh, the idea really in the beginning is just go educate people about What is happening? And so, uh, I'm not an expert on residential real estate. Uh, I don't know that many other experts on residential real estate. Um, so we were able to partner up with a gentleman named Lance Lampert. Uh, Lance was the real estate editor at fortune magazine. So he's like quote unquote legit, right? He's got 75,000 followers on Twitter. A lot of people in the industry all follow him. And we basically just said to him like, look, man, we want to go build the dominant platform in residential real estate coverage. Why don't we do it together? We know how to scale things. We know how to grow this stuff and monetize. You know, the content, you are the expert. Um, and so let's partner up. And so we've gone ahead. We got started. It's about two months old. Um, and you know, I love these types of businesses because they kind of look stupid almost in th…

AI assessment note: “there's no dominant voice in terms of news commentary and data. Um, and so we started”

Q Wait, were you about to say the reason you joined was to kind of the people and the culture was different?

A Cause I, the first two companies I built, I couldn't get them to grow past a certain point. And so I pretty much came to this like fork in the road. I was like, I can go to business school and like pay to try to get this education where I can just go join the people who seem to be like the best in the world at growing things, which was the Facebook growth folks. Uh, and they'll pay me. And like, that literally was the evaluation. And so I went to Facebook And they blew away my expectations. Like, sure, you get some, you know, resume, uh, benefit and all that kind of stuff. Uh, but what I found in my career is kind of like college. Like, no one actually cares where you went to college after, like, maybe the first, like, three to five years of your business career. Working at a place like Facebook, unless you're one of the first maybe, like, two to 500 employees, um, it kind of just is like, all right, you're, like, kind of legit. You know, you worked at a place that has some sort of high bar. But now there's, uh, 80,000 people that worked at Facebook as of, like, the end of last year. So it's kind of like 80,000 people got in, right? You know, does it have the same, you know, kind of cachet as it did, uh, a decade ago? Unclear.

AI assessment note: “I can just go join the people who seem to be like the best”

Q Were you inspired by the Warren Buffett million dollar S&P 500 bet? Is that the, is that where you took it?

A Of course. I think that that was one of the smartest things that he's done. Like Buff, Buffett's interesting because Uh, a lot of the advice that he gives, I think is, you know, pretty solid, you know, circle of competence being one, um, you know, uh, kind of value investing, like, like all these things that we're kind of talking about here, uh, I, I think, uh, very much draws back to Buffett and then obviously, uh, Graham and Dodd and all these guys, but, uh, he also is like a master marketer. Like Warren Buffett was the original finance influencer, right? And I, I've joked a million times that if he was today, Buffett in his thirties, he'd have a sub stack, a Twitter account, a podcast. He'd be streaming on TikTok, like doing all this stuff. Um, and so he understood how to like leverage the tools he had at the time with the media. And so he didn't need to do it, but a way to really continue to drive like the lore of Warren Buffett is like issue the bet and say no hedge fund manager can beat the SMP over like a decade or whatever. We just talked about in the nineties, only Bill Miller did it. Right. So it's very hard.

AI assessment note: “Of course. I think that that was one of the smartest things that he's done.”

Q good foothold in finance, and I'm sure, uh, yeah, we haven't talked about this, but I am sure that there was a little bit of a walk down an idea maze looking for, oh wait, what is the real opportunity here? And then it all starts to, starts to come together. You get the right operator, you figure out the right idea, the right brand, then you go for it.

A A hundred percent. So, uh, this one's actually a great one to talk about this because we actually, uh, I would call it like a false start. We had partnered with somebody else who they were not in residential real estate. The way that they cut the market was by geography. And so they were very focused on South Florida. And so it was like, okay, we think that there's a massive business to build, uh, that content first that eventually leads to kind of data products that is in the real estate market. And when we got started, we didn't know a lot of people. Right. And so I went around, I talked to a couple of people. I found someone I said, Hey, they do really good work. Uh, it was a person I really enjoyed kind of working with and talking to on a day to day basis. And so we got started, but it was very much like small geography all about South Florida. And then the idea was like, we'll go to like Tampa and then we'll go to like Orlando and then we'll go to Atlanta and then we'll like just go through these geographies. And it didn't work for a whole bunch of different reasons. Uh, probably some of it was our fault. Some of it, uh, was the other person was, you know, very focused on like what they wanted to do in terms of the, the content that they had already been creating. And, and, um, so we kind of just were like, Hey, this isn't that this like explosive thing. The market isn't l…

AI assessment note: “this one's actually a great one to talk about this because we actually... call it like a false start.”

Q How are you balancing the two things of, A, like, buy versus build? So I think Sean and Andrew Wilkinson, they're toying around the idea of buying parts of companies or wholly owning companies that they buy, as well as focus of, well, these one or two things could have outsides returns. I should only do those.

A Yeah. Um, so buying versus build is like really interesting. I've gone back and forth over the years. Like we've bought a couple of businesses, not a lot, but, but a few. Um, and then we've obviously built a number of them and you know, there's a sector right now that I'm looking at. Um, it's in the media space. It's very specific type of audience. I think that it's kind of a unique thing. I'm not usually big on like, uh, ideas are valuable. This to me is just like, we understand something about an audience that most other people haven't yet discovered. And so we think that it could be interesting to go after. There's two players in the market that are well known in that industry. Um, again, it's a, a niche, but also like very big and both players, you'd probably have to pay like over a hundred million dollars to buy them in, in kind of total cost. And you probably can't buy a minority stake. And so it's like, at this point, given our track record, I probably could go try to figure out, you know, a bunch of these like big institutional investors who want to buy media businesses and like go put it together. It's a lot of work. You have to convince someone to sell it to you. You have to get the terms right. Integration. Like, like there's a lot of challenges. But then I'm like, dude, I think for a hundred grand, we could create a competitor and like, it's not gonna be worth a hun…

AI assessment note: “So when it's that skewed, I obviously tend to lean towards building versus buying.”

Q How are you balancing the two things of, A, like, buy versus build? So I think Sean and Andrew Wilkinson, they're toying around the idea of buying parts of companies or wholly owning companies that they buy, as well as focus of, well, these one or two things could have outsides returns. I should only do those.

A Yeah. Um, so buying versus build is like really interesting. I've gone back and forth over the years. Like we've bought a couple of businesses, not a lot, but, but a few. Um, and then we've obviously built a number of them and you know, there's a sector right now that I'm looking at. Um, it's in the media space. It's very specific type of audience. I think that it's kind of a unique thing. I'm not usually big on like, uh, ideas are valuable. This to me is just like, we understand something about an audience that most other people haven't yet discovered. And so we think that it could be interesting to go after. There's two players in the market that are well known in that industry. Um, again, it's a, a niche, but also like very big and both players, you'd probably have to pay like over a hundred million dollars to buy them in, in kind of total cost. And you probably can't buy a minority stake. And so it's like, at this point, given our track record, I probably could go try to figure out, you know, a bunch of these like big institutional investors who want to buy media businesses and like go put it together. It's a lot of work. You have to convince someone to sell it to you. You have to get the terms right. Integration. Like, like there's a lot of challenges. But then I'm like, dude, I think for a hundred grand, we could create a competitor and like, it's not gonna be worth a hun…

AI assessment note: “when it's that skewed, I obviously tend to lean towards building versus buying.”

Q It was revolutionary. Why? Because what, what did they do differently? They just made good investments or did they actually do something?

A He's one of, he's one of like the very first like true hedge fund. Right. Like he, he basically was, Hey, I'm not just going to do like value investing. Like I'm, I'm a true hedge fund. Um, and I think that he had like a lot of what we all look at on the internet today and we're like, Oh, that person's doing something interesting. It was different. He had high conviction and he ended up being right. And so he was able to gather a lot of assets. He was able to drive a pretty good return. Um, and he did it at a time where this whole concept of like hedging or like going long and short, wasn't necessarily the traditional way of investing. And so, I don't know if they actually consider him like the godfather of hedge funds, but he basically could be considered that, um, and then, you know, the lore of Julian kind of expanded even more when a bunch of people who worked for him left, he would seed them, and when he would seed them to get them off the ground, those guys, now known as Tiger Cubs, became very successful, Tiger Global probably being the most successful, and so it was like, hey, he was good as an investor, But he was even better at like a talent, uh, um, you know, kind of identifier, and then seeding these people to create these great firms.

AI assessment note: “concept of like hedging or like going long and short, wasn't necessarily the traditional way”

Q business builder has trained themselves to not have that same swing of psychology to go from peak euphoria. Everything is amazing. It's going to go up and oh my God, it'll never recover again. A builder kind of has been through that themselves. And therefore, when they're an investor, they don't get caught up in that kind of herd psychology that the worst investors do. What do you think, Pomp?

A I, I think that's dead on. Um, you see this not only in the public markets, you also are starting to see it in the private markets. Like, uh, how many of the great angel investors today are really just running companies or, or building things themselves, and then they kind of angel invest on the side, or vice versa. Um, and so, like, Founders Fund maybe is, like, the best example, where they're really, you know, putting a flag in the ground, and they're like, look, we want to be operators, and we want to invest. By operating day to day, we learn, which makes us a better investor, and vice versa. Um, I, I just think of, like, To win in the dynamic world we're headed into, you have to be a ball player. And I always go back to the, uh, like, you remember when you were 12 years old, you play like little league baseball, and there's like, okay, hey kid, today you're the pitcher. Tomorrow, like, you're gonna play shortstop. Tomorrow, you're gonna be like the catcher. Oh, now you're like the designated hitter. Like, you just have to be able to do all the different positions, and there's not really like this specialization that you get maybe when you get into high school, college, or definitely at major league baseball. And so like that in entrepreneurship is like the most coveted position to be able to stand in is like, if you're a ball player, you can build things, you can invest, yo…

AI assessment note: “I, I think that's dead on.”

Q guys who have done, like, for example, Chase Coleman's an interesting one, because you can't really, like, if you Google Chase Coleman, the guy's worth, I think, fifteen billion, something in that range. There's, like, four pictures of him on the internet. Uh, like, what, and so these, like, mysterious guys are always, they're always fascinating. What attributes do you think some of these people have that started with Julian?

A Yeah. So obviously I met Julian. There's a bunch of other folks that I've met over the years, uh, that would kind of fall similar to Julian. And usually it is not, uh, unfortunately in a situation where I'm like, Hey, I just want to learn from you. You're usually going to like ask them for something, whether it's for money, for an introduction or whatever. So like the power dynamic is definitely off and it'd be weird to like sit there and be like, Hey, by the way, now that the pitch is over, like, let me grill you for 30 minutes. Um, but in those conversations, what you basically find is like, they're all very, very curious. Two is like, these guys just have like brass balls, right? Like, I don't even know how to describe it other than that. They are willing to just make insane bets at times when other people are not. You know, another person that maybe doesn't get the same fame or recognition as Julian, but I put up there as one of the best investors over the last 50 years is Bill Miller. And you know, Bill, in the late nineties, people were giving him shit because he said he was a value investor, but he started to buy tech stocks. And so obviously tech exploded. He was outperforming everybody. Uh, there's a book that I recently read where he was the only investor to outperform the S and P 500 for 10 years straight, uh, in the nineties. And so everyone was like, you're not a r…

AI assessment note: “they're all very, very curious. Two is like, these guys just have like brass balls”

Q And the market for this is, is it brokers, real estate agents that want to pay for this, or you look at investors, or is it the average person who might be, you know, on Zillow looking for a home?

A Yeah. So the beauty of residential real estate is it's the largest asset class in the world, but none of us who are like, oh, we're so smart. We're like business people. We're finance people. We have podcasts. We never think about residential real estate as like the largest asset class in the world. We're like, oh, stocks or crypto or bonds or whatever. And so what you end up getting is it's a very niche thing in that it's residential real estate, but it's a very big thing in that it's the largest asset class in the world. And so what that involves is home builders. It involves real estate agents. It involves people who want to buy or sell homes. It involves Uh, people who are doing mortgages, like lenders, et cetera. So there's like huge, uh, kind of ecosystem of folks who all need to be aware of what's happening in this industry. And so it's one of these great businesses where it's, it's like small and specific, but also large and broad at the same time.

AI assessment note: “what that involves is home builders. It involves real estate agents. It involves people”

Q What was his business at the time? Hustler university, like his course.

A He, he had a bunch of them. They were like online businesses. Uh, he, you know, he described them actually. It was the first time that ever a podcast episode I had done was, like, cited in articles where people were, like, writing hit pieces or, like, you know, critiquing him, and then they were, like, referencing things on the podcast, so I'd get, like, a Google alert notification, like, oh, like, you've been mentioned in, like, the New Yorker or whatever, and I'm like, ah, must be awesome, like, obviously I'm a cool guy, and then you go and you're like, oh, I'm in an article where they're, like, you know, talking about misogyny and, like, all these things, and, like, oh, ok. Um, and so, uh, At the end of that interview, he asked me, he's like, what's the one thing you disagree with me today? And what I say to him in the interview is I said to him, I said, every single thing that you're saying has like this like kernel of truth, but then you like extract it and have this like bombastic wrapper that basically is going to go viral online. And he kind of like cracks a little bit and breaks character. And he's just like, ah, you're a smart man. He like shakes my hand. And I think like that was the biggest takeaway was people don't become viral and successful without being highly intelligent. And he very well understood the human psychology and the way the internet worked. Um, and …

AI assessment note: “He, he had a bunch of them. They were like online businesses.”