How FTX Scaled A $30 Billion Company With Only 30 Engineers!

i read something very interesting that f t x as a you know thirty billion dollar company only has like two hundred employees or something like that and i believe you the you know for the first year the product was built by just two engineers and even now you only have sub twenty sub thirty engineers a is that true and b what the hell going on like do you is f t x hey he's like ethan he's like i can only think of one of two things either f t x is simply like you have a unique set of problems so you could do you can operate your business differently or the rest of us are doing this completely wrong which is it and and he goes the latter what a birthday boy thank you what's how how's it going it's going okay i you a little time i was gonna sing to you you face facetime me a facetime during earlier oh i'm sorry i didn't even get the notification i was i had personalized but you did miss out on what would have been a good serena aid actually can tell you a funny story about that always was your kids there no it was just me and ben and we're oh man what a bummer i'd rather this see your kids though so i've got baby fever oh nice yeah well actually my son was there but you know before the age of like two they're kinda just like an ina of an object that you just carry around that i was i was working out and when i work out i put my phone on like focus mode or whatever so i'm sorry but thank you sw mode so yes how old are you now thirty three thirty three okay you're getting up there too alright i like it so you're i think a you're younger than me we i was at a birthday party like two weekends ago i had to leave the house it was crazy and we get there and this guy did this thing that i saw and i was like oh what an amazing little life hack he basically had so they like some kid's birthday party they sing happy birthday it's time to blow the candles to cut the cake and the guy grabs the mic and he's like hold on hold on we got a special birthday song for you and this guy apparently because my wife knows him she's she's like oh my god he's doing it he always does this and it's like he has his own version of happy birthday these he sings but it's not like a singing thing it's more like like he's indian and so it's kinda got like an indian vibe to it but i just pretend to sort of like when i say happy you say birthday happy and everyone i was like birthday happy birthday he's like he's always open and i always like all those oh of course it's like you know there's something in my body that just like can't help but become like you know the the the the follow the leader during that moment and they'll be like you who's the birthday boy sam sam sam right and it's like it'll make you feel good and then and i was like what a life hack to just be the life of the party is to simply have a cool version of happy birthday that you can do that's amazing that's like having a joke that just always kills so listen of this i've got this friend name and and jonathan we'll get we'll get to the same severe thing in a second but i have this friend named nick ray sean do you know who nick rae is i know of him i don't i know i don't think ever met but i've seen his like he's like website and like you've told her about a and he looks like it he's like an entrepreneur but he kinda looks a little bit slick got it out don't know who who he is so i i calm grown up dennis menace because he looks like a forty year old dentist menace like if you think of like what dennis menace would look like what he's forty that's like dick he had a company called he he had a one business that was like it worked as the aviation industry sold it then he started this thing called museum hack which was like you pay like twenty five dollars or something like that and it you get a group museum tour like a private museum tour whatever he sold it and then he loves hosting parties so much that i believe he used scribe like you did and he wrote a book on how to host the perfect two hour evening party and this guy yes i'll i'll i'll try to find the the title have you read i it just came out like two days ago and he just sent me a copy it's called the here i'll find it but it it's like it's like how to host the perfect cocktail party and this guy whenever he hosts parties he brings name tags to all every time when you're with him he has a name tag a kite of frisbee and a blanket i'm telling you this guy's like a clover girl if like home growing up dennis the menace because he just like he's like these are the best things to bring to like a park party and it they just it just works and so he brings this to like all of his parties and it's hilarious bring the rule book to the game red rover and it's a great ice breaker to play in the game red rover it's been working since preschool and he brings like a harmonic and when he goes he'll like play the harmonic and he goes alright everyone come to the circle any he like does these ice breakers it's hilarious so the book is called the the two hour cocktail party and it's just a book on hosting a two hour cocktail party been working on for like two years i give a shout up but i actually wasn't i'm only bringing this up because we were talking about hosting the perfect party and everything it's hilarious and he's and it's like might actually become like a brand around host it's like you know like maria con made like putting your clothes away into like a martha stewart dies business that's what this guy might be doing for like a cocktail party oh wow okay so i have three instant reactions to this number one what a great idea what a great thing because when you first said it i laughed which to me already means this is kind of remarkable as a product meaning you you had to remark on it it was worth telling so that's already like a good thing second thing is it's actually a real problem like nobody teaches you how to do things in life that are life stuff and so if you can hone in on a piece of life stuff like you know the classic example is like you know the book the game which is like you know about how to like pick up appointment how do you approach stranger that you're interested and like you know can you get a date and like we all laugh and say man that's so you know people will start of point at it it'd be like you know the sort of a loser thing right in reality best bestselling book it was one of the best books i've ever read and like really for sure a lot of people who literally don't know how to navigate this social situation that they get put in yeah i dude i think it's awesome yeah so by the way look at the link i sent you i sent the link in riverside and i didn't realize this but look at the reviews three three reviews are all of our friends so it's nick hub it's cap from best self it's ben the guy who i think he started what's that group on deck sarah and then david your wife is she on there says say she might might be her yeah i it could be her and then david per on there the they're all like the isn't that hilarious they're all like they're reviewers or whatever i don't know yeah i agree it's it's a pretty pretty funny niche to own so my first thought is it's actually what a great idea helping people know how to host a party just like fun in a box it's like look you don't have to be creative and you don't have to have experience doing this like i will help you know the like three or four things that will make you look awesome when you do this i think that's kind of great second reaction what a terrible idea why is this a book why is it this a twitter thread i'd like it if there's ever a thing which is like this book could have been an email like this book could have been an email i got guarantee it so that's my second reaction to this it's just like love the idea of creating a brand and content on this topic book wow overkill like it's a a book takes more than two hours to read look like like the book shouldn't be longer than the full party of which in this case i i kind of agree with you but i think you have to forget that most people don't have charisma and although i think i definitely have like a little social anxiety i think you do too like i don't like leaving in my house that often don't wanna like talk to like strangers that often but i could like i can turn it on and it'd be like alright fine i'm in that mode i think most people like all of our like nerdy ass friends i just don't they just like stand around like what do i do with my hands like they don't know like where to hold their hands they don't know anything that's busy actually dude i i still remember so i've been to a bunch of like startup up events i was in this accelerator called the mass challenge back in the day it's like a a boston based like startup up accelerator i don't even know how i ended up there and i've heard i would say at this point in my life i've heard at least five hundred in person like talks to entrepreneurs okay five hundred if you know what's the most memorable one it was this guy this old school guy who came he was probably in his late sixties and he's like he did two things the first one was he goes alright you guys are entrepreneurs somebody stand up and pitch your business tell me what your business does and somebody who stand up they'd be like hey we i'll go i'll go right it's like a brave contest i'll go a thousand hands go up because entrepreneurs you got it you gotta be the one who's like courageous so every is a hand pick the first guy i'm sam i hope you know i'm ceo of the hustle we're a media company from millennials who love to learn about business he he just no you're not actually i heard forgot the very first thing the verb the best part of the whole thing is he started to talk from the back of the room and he was like he's like hard me and everybody's looking at the stage all the chairs face one way right and he's like i'm back here entrepreneurship you gotta adjust it's like you know a duck dodge ball right you wanna dodge ranch not the wrench so this guy was like that guy and he's like i'm in the back of the room what are you gonna do and he's like he's like all of a sudden you gotta adjust turn your seat around are you stuck to with the ways that the society works or are you just gonna do what sense and so that's how he started then he goes and he's like pitcher business and if if you just said like i'm sean you know we're the milk road we you know we we're a a web three focused newsletter that does book no he would just cut you off but he wouldn't tell you what you're doing wrong and his process of elimination everyone just trying one thing and then finally some guy said it right he goes we're smart shave you know when you're in a room and it's too bright through the window we help you make sure that you have a shade on there that doesn't make your room look ugly and the guy i was like yes that's exactly right you explain the situation and you use the key help your business exists to help someone do something help someone get some outcome some benefit he's like all of you guys think your entrepreneurs and you couldn't tell me who you're hoping do what and then we're all like we're like reeling and then he transition into he goes put up a diagram of a of a of a meeting room of a bunch of six chair table or like an eight chair table it goes biggest meeting of your life where do you sit hey smart chain guy where do you sit like i don't know the chairs had numbers on them and you're like three he's like no he's he's like you sit in chair two it's the corner of the table here you're not the head of the table but you're the corner of the table you have like you know sort like eighty percent of the visibility as the head of the table but you now have both angles you're kind of at the wide angle where people can see you and talk to you and then he showed another diagram of like another a round table where you sit a round table if this is the door where you go sit then he's like you have five minutes before the meet your meeting is about to start in ten minutes not everybody's there you have ten minutes to talk to the number two person what do you say and he was like giving these like real world social and business to use around i don't even remember that what it was like you know you you go to the other you basically go like i know was like you don't have your back to the door you kinda have a side facing think to the door you don't wanna be directly facing the door because then you're like a little child sitting in your seat waiting for the teacher to come like you know you do that and like in your small talk thing he's like you talk about the weather and sports no he's like you've done already eight hours of research on this person you already know a a b c d e and you were gonna bring up this topic and so this guy was like so opinionated it's so crazy but i remember it because he was answering things that i felt like nobody had instructed me how to do and it was the where do i what do i do with my hands while i talk problem which is like i definitely run into these situations and i've received zero guidance in my life on what i'm supposed to do and if you have like the solution in a box i'll take it that's interesting well knicks said freaking love that because you know like cocktail parties is such a niche thing but i i he'll probably do well he's pretty successful you we so we wanna talk about colin sami amir jonathan so colin sami amir that episode went live jonathan people jonathan john so we have it's sean and me and ben typically and jonathan most of the time is actually on air i actually don't know jonathan why you're on air like why you're here but i know what you do as a job you grow the podcast but i don't know like why do you actually need to beat sitting here why why do you sit here one because this is fun and two this is the only time i can get like facetime with you y'all to talk about these types of things so it's like my only time i can actually carve out time on y'all calendar our calendar we are the issue yeah i mean he's good i he he slacks us he asked us to do stuff and we just never respond like yeah it makes perfect sense it's like you know oh why did you open the sushi restaurant because because i knew you love sushi and i just needed to get your approval all these three things like damn with we're that much of an asshole sorry sorry john but i i apologize that we are not very responsive in general and so you came out and and you said you said hey talk about the colin smear thing because a it was interesting and what was the b i think there's just like some good takeaways that we should probably implement into our youtube thursday youtube and the podcast as well but first of all i've hosted a nick gray party and it was awesome and like like you just described sean like there's so much nuance to you know like hosting a good meeting and like where you sit and how the experience is for everyone else and so you kinda do need a book to like piece all that together chapter one here's the pre you know party stuff and all that but yeah email templates and all that stuff are kinda necessary and all that well wait but did you hosted a great party what does that mean you you did his method or you attended a party did he's like famous he he did like a beta launch for his book and so a few people myself included hosted at one of like the beta parties wow wow this is beer blowing my mind right now on so wow holy shit dude he's like famous it austin it's hilarious which by the way we gotta them a proper shout out so it's nick gray g r a y i believe his website is nick gray dot net so if you wanna go and learn but whatever go ahead so you were like a pilot for this thing first all how much of a frigate early adopter are you that you like i know about a book that's not even written yet and you were like i'll be what are your test cases to test your your party thinking okay wait well give us the rundown give me like one or two of the golden nuggets that like you wouldn't otherwise have done in a party that nick kinda of like helped you try out yeah well so nick every everyone just kinda knows nick and austin if if you're kind of running in the same circles and so i went to another guy who hosted a nick gray party and i was like this is awesome and so and i knew the i was like let's c host the next one we had it at in my house i got like backyard and everything and so the takeaways were went i bought a house i got ready for this work yeah we got pizza and it was just remind me of kind of like a prom party just to begin with but the pieces that were kind of crucial are the one like the ice breakers so like you start the night with like you know everyone's getting their drinks and getting comfortable and stuff like that and then you blow the harmonic or whatever you're like you play you strap the ban joe or whatever it is you str the ban joe and you get everyone's attention and be like hey we're doing ice breakers say your name and then like the fun fact would be like what was the first thing you did for money and so it's kinda gets people like you know to get a little bit deeper and then that can lead into the next conversation and so on and so forth so there's like two or three those throughout the night and then you know it's just like the the email before the email after and like how you nurture those people i guess and like actually you know connect them and all all the little things like that but i feel like there's like a bunch of little hacks like like emailing is part of this template i didn't even yeah think about and email as part of the experience dude he's got a whole shot got it and the funny thing about nick is he's like he's very flamboyant like he's like greg bulgaria but he's like loud and a lot of people think that he's gay and he gets more girls than eddie would i've ever met and it's mostly because of this party this party stuff he like he like dates so many like well i i won't say the i'll say girls love him women love this guy and yeah that's partially because it's called straight up gay how do be straight use game and get your dad whatever his next social happen that he's got he kills it like when he kills that this guy is very that that's another huge thing about this is like when you become the connector when you're hosting these parties like once a month or once a quarter like that's really valuable when you're able to like kind of be that person they're like oh i'm gonna reach out to jonathan because he knows x y and z or whatever so that's like kinda what you did in san francisco i feel like with the house meet right yeah it and it is a hack it totally works and sean did the same thing because we hosted like all of our events at his house like at his office so he was like my proxy was like the man dude so i know we probably have other things to talk about but i'm so mind blown by this and i just have so much more that i need to know okay so give me okay so give me something that is you wouldn't expect it right like let's say maybe like i don't know okay like email kinda accounts to the harmonic is a great example of this like have a little instrument that will help get people's attention and like you know just kind of like lighten the mood a little bit by just hearing it out great sound give me another one respect let me give one jonathan he hosted a party one time called the petting zoo party and he hired like a mobile petting zoo for like four hundred dollars or i don't even know what it was but it wasn't like a big deal and it like was the most fun at a party i just sat around a pe like rabbits and like guinea pigs and it was awesome so he like does themes like then he'll have a dinosaur theme where you wear like a dinosaur themed at clothing which i don't know what that means but what else jonathan what else does he do again i've only been like one or two but it it's if it's not that like you really don't need to put a theme around it if you're just doing something super simple like i did but like you wanna make it a little more memorable like yeah i feel like he's done like he just did a paddle board thing where like everyone went out to to like austin and we're on their paddle boards and like did a whole thing there and he had a thing where he gave numbers he gave a whiteboard to three different people and he says we're having a diving contest so the best the person goes the best cannonball off of their paddle board and he he goes the contestants are and he had already planned he goes they're this person this person and this person you guys get up front and be your cannonball ball and we're all gonna in these three judges are gonna give you a review the second or third thing that he does is he has a very specific end time to the party so he goes come on over the party's gonna end at eight o'clock and at eight o'clock he goes alright everyone thank you for coming the party's over you don't gotta get you don't gotta go home but you gotta get out of here and he's like party's need end otherwise they drag on for too long and people don't wanna go anymore and so he always hasn't an ending to his parties it was actually pretty great because i go because i'm like i gotta sneak out like it's gonna end at every particular time so two hour cocktail up on it did we okay i don't know if for oprah but i feel like we just sold the shit out of this book like you know then this this guy gonna get a lot of sales from this from this this plug because this was incredible but honestly i i'm genuinely interested in this topic you know i had heard something once like charity water is kind of known for their events and they raised a ton of money for charity and like most charity events are kind of the same old stale like dinner gala you sort of go sort of a drag and trade waters events you feel like you're you know you feel like you're at some like hollywood party basically and it's not because they spend more money it's like they're just more creative with like the way that they they like create memorable things and so and every year they topped themselves which is like this impossible standard it's like last year the super bowl halftime show was this this year it's gotta be even bigger that's how they treat their annual events and they raised like i don't know seventy five million dollars in a night doing that and that fun clean water for a lot of people and i remember asking scott i go well so what's like how do you think about these events like how do you everybody always graves about these i've never been to one what is the secret sauce like well how do you guys think about this and he goes oh that's my wife victoria that's that's her her thing he goes she has this phrase which is it's about the moments in between the moments like it's the moments between the moments that matter and so it's like everybody thinks of when they planned their event okay for dinner we're gonna do this and then for the dancing we're gonna do this but they don't think about the like twenty minute period right before dinner when it's like getting set up or served and like the the five minute walk between this place to this place or whatever and if you do something there people feel like wow i'm having a like a ten out of ten experience because they thought of everything like they thought of like i know for charity water it was like they really thought about like the walk between like where the cocktail hour was and the dinner and they were like okay yeah you could just like traverse through this like you know hallway like what can we do in the hallway that will like send the message and they basically created like i don't know like a visual light show of like i don't know a woman in africa a real starts when you start and she's carrying these like sixty pound gallons of water and there's one on the you see her carrying it and then fifteen steps in there's one sitting on the ground that you could pick up and you could try carrying it and then by the end of you've had like it's like dan that was heavy and i that was hard and i only walked fifty four steps she does that for three hours a day just to get clean water for her family and you're like are you likely to donate by the end of that yeah right it's like but they just used the hallway as this by the i made up this exact example because i didn't go to the event but that was really gonna the was like i that was great yeah i had to put the disclaimer because i was like damn i just made up a really vivid ass lie about what they did at their event and like scott's big on integrity let me be clear that's not exactly what happened that's what i kind of remember from him telling me while we were drunk six years ago and he was telling me like what he did so so yeah but at the moments between the moments it's just a good like phrase to remember when you're gonna host an a event i'm might write my own book fuck nick gray alright let's talk about colin sami so these these guys came on they're like these youtube don't exactly know how you describe them but the popular on youtube and people seem to like it in the comments you know my takeaway was sean do you think being a youtuber is a good life or not i can't decide actually i think it's a good life the way they did it so the the daily vlogger style i think is a is a tough one and i think the like gaming streamer who's gonna sit in their chair play video games for seven hours a day every day is not a good no not a bad nor is the mister beast like i have to up my prank or my stunt like i gotta come up with a miracle every month or i lose relevance that to me is like stressful and to be fair that's like seventy five percent of youtube success is like daily vlogging stunt and prank or like gaming so you know if you're not that good for you call same here for example not in that an interview show that's like paced out well they do you know like whatever one or two a week or something like that it's not as treadmill as other content things what i'm learning about through them what we need to do and what more people should do that woman rebecca a keep calling like that woman rebecca texted us and she was like our friend rebecca our friend rebecca sorry rebecca she told us that this guy she worked with i won't say the name went from zero to eight was it eight million subscribers in eight months or was it like fifty three million and they i forget the number but i think it was eight million the number and how many months twelve months like a year a year yeah and all from shorts is that crazy all from freaking youtube shorts i never watched youtube shorts yeah i i i do i actually watch youtube shorts but the the thing the once i've worked inside a tech company i was like oh i get it like i'm youtube the biggest threat to my company is tiktok every day like you know somebody there's like every every core quarterly off site we're hearing about the latest tiktok numbers wow their growth is crazy wow they're blown us away wow the the stars are going there you know like tiktok is your like kind of like main priority if you're one of these big social media companies right now beyond like you know your core business like if you're gonna think about growth you're gonna think about tiktok and so you release a competitive product shorts and you announce it to the world and you put your best people on it and like you can't let that feature fail right away and so you like you gotta pump the engagement how do you do that you're like alright you know engagement was a ten out of you know a ten out of a hundred okay if we put it at the top of every time you open the app it jumps to a forty okay now we're also gonna add it every three scrolls we're gonna add another little shorts banner oh also we're gonna like you know make it one of our we're gonna change our recommendation engine to just recommend a short after a long video and so you you're gonna try to game the system to give yourself the best shot at that feature becoming successful and so at least in the short term if you're a creator you say oh their priority is pushing like you know oh instagram priority is pushing stories and then reels then i'm gonna make great reels and stories because that's what they're pushing right now that's what the algorithm wants to they're gonna they're gonna favor that in the ui and the algorithm and so i'm gonna get faster growth because i'm sort of like piggyback off of their priorities and i think that's actually a really good strategy for like if you and i or my million wanted to get popular on youtube is just like exploit the ego of the social media platform like it totally works just just give them exactly what they want and not always but sometimes they'll give you exactly what you want which is you know more followers but are we gonna do it maybe it's clearly a good idea that we may or made not execute on just by more warriors and hilarious thing that i saw so there was like some page that's like know like these meme pages on instagram that get like a bunch of followers so it's like had like friday beers i think this is the one it was this is like friday love i found so many of them yeah they're great they're very humorous they could post great memes whatever so they did a collab with something called like it was the word entrepreneur but it was spelled like super wack because like you know the word entrepreneurs i kind of a wack word in general so it's like training you p poor and like that was like the name of the account or something like and i went and i clicked on it and the bio cracked me up so hard it was like cultivating that trillion mindset that multi trillion mindset and then the next line was mindset is grind hashtag grind just and still i have decided that on this podcast our new intro is gonna be about cultivating that multi trillion air mindset hashtag grinds and i'm gonna start every single podcast by saying that and somebody who doesn't know what i'm talking about they're gonna be so turned off but the people who i listen to this podcast are gonna know that that is the funniest thing ever because it is that's amazing what we'll retain jonathan i i love that that you know he's always but they always also say they always also say read that again like they'll do the post and then all the copy and then it's like read that again yeah alright guys that's the show listen to that again go back you you know what you gotta do now re rewind for the two time double time get double get triple trillion in our mindset hashtag grind go back and listen again what was double the right double what was that phrase the latest post as read that again the their latest post says you keep your monkey in the pink i keep on my fish in the tank think about it yeah i think johnny reeves like you know we we named this my first million and the reason we get flack for that and reason we give ourselves grief for that is because my first million is in the middle it's like neither it's not like trying to be humble and like you know thoughtful about life it's like no you wanna make a million dollars but it's only a million when you say we're you know we're all about that trillion lifestyle you you all of a sudden you it's like hey we are not trying to be that guy who's trying to sell you a dream of making a billion dollars and so i think i realized the mistake in the name the name should not have been million the whole brand should have been mindset it should have been my friend trillion we're we're a community we're a community of future multi trillion errors who gather around you know to to train stories our son where's is the worst have you heard of hubspot see most crm are a cobb together mess but hubspot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous i think i love our new crm our software is the best hubspot grow better what do you wanna go from here did you have anything on did you have you have topics i've got one or two do you have any i have a couple what do you have i have a couple i have a couple good ones okay so what do you wanna do you wanna do okay i'll i'll give you three options a really interesting thing i heard that i i wanna get your opinion on like i like a thing about how a company we a big famous company runs their company that i thought was kinda mind blowing number two is an idea that i don't really even understand as i don't know what they're doing but maybe it's cool and then the third is you know random business idea which which one would you like to go go through number one number okay so interesting okay so we so the mo our main sponsor right now is f t x and i don't know if you like do you know what f x is dude in my on my topics i have a thing about how they run their company and how it's weird go ahead yeah okay f the same thing that is it about how many employees they have and how many engineers there yes look at the doc i have the exact same topic go ahead okay so so it recently so we we were like as part of the sponsorship it's like okay we tell people you know hey f is great trading platform blah blah and in addition we were like hey we wanna do a deep dive on you guys and i was like here's the thing you don't get to tell us what to write about i'm gonna like i'm gonna talk to your head of strategy i talk to whoever and whatever is the most interesting thing to me that's what we're gonna do the deep dive on and i ended up doing it on like the the like kinda like the seven like growth hack strategies that they used to grow because they went from zero to a thirty billion dollar company in like three years and so i thought that was kind of amazing i wrote the whole thing and then i discovered i discovered something even more amazing which is that they built the whole the they'll built like for the first year or something they had two engineers and even now to this day they have like i think twenty five to thirty software engineers it's they're amazing and i think and i think they only have two fifty people yeah exactly and so he did this he went this the guy sam baker afraid he did this talk at the zone conference it's so stone i don't know if people know it's spelled s o h n it's like this big kinda like economic annual conference or whatever and what happens is the big shit like and sam sam beck freed is the twenty nine year old like twenty or thirty billion dollar found he was before the crash but like d billionaire guy and he started this coinbase based competitor which is called f t x after he got rich in bitcoin yeah is it's a platform for people to trade crypto announced stocks and other things but basically he he talks there and if you've ever watched these i don't ever watched other own conference talks very interesting to go go back and look at because you get the it's the it's like a ted talk for it's ted but just for like invest investors just for like finance at wall street people so like bill act will go on there and you could look at his old videos by the way if you go watch these so here's what here's my journey i'm like bill my man this guy's is really smart and our buddy andrew will get to loves bill act says he's he's the best and and i go back and i i go look for old youtube videos a app when i see a own conference talking and it's like i don't know ten years ago it goes on and he talks about what's the name of the it's like the howard hughes company he's like like it's like a home builder tool like how or something yeah i know you're talking about oh i think it's i it's called the howard use company it's basically like whatever that guy famous guy howard hard hughes or whatever and you got this company they build homes and he'll give a so what you do is you go give a talk about like a thesis that you are really bullish on and basically like a big bet you're making or you've already made basically and you go pitch your case for for that bet and this kinda has like two fold effects one if you're in the audience you get ideas on investments like you know why this person is so bullish on this thing it's it's interesting to hear their case two it's only like the who's who that talk like it's like the top top guys and and that go and talk at this thing and then the third thing is that like you for the speaker they get to kinda like build their brand but they always like it to pump their bag so like they've already made this bet then they go talk here they gets upon much retention bunch of other people are gonna invest in it and it may cause the price to go up which is like a good thing for them so they're helping propagate get the narrative that helps their their case so anyways you go hear and talk to you by the end of the forty minutes you're like there's has never been a better investment on earth than the howard hard to use right like you're like so convinced because these guys are very convincing and they have a great track record so you're like wow whatever now if you actually go look at the results it's like i remember cha went spoke and he talked about how box like box dot com is like like of all the tech companies i we have identified one winner that is gonna benefit the most from this cloud movement and ai ml and it's box and you go look at the stock chart for box since that day it's like down into the right you know what i mean it's like it has not done well but they they put together other very convincing cases and of course occasionally they're they're they're correct so anyways at this year soon there was a really interesting talk which was sam bank fried talks to i think patrick or john call what the the patrick call the one of the brothers who started stripe red heads or or whatever the brett had one i think they're are they not patrick head no it patrick he's yeah but they both actually did interviews one interview stanley dr miller awesome interview go watch with the other brother one freed and first of all the one thing that stood out is kind of like when you watch these guys doing an interview it's basically like what if you have like a world class brain become a podcast for like you know like like i'm talking a world classic these guys are some of the smartest most well read best executor most like most well connected people on the planet or they're the company see everything they do they were millionaires at like i don't know seven they've they built cool shit at seventeen like they sold for a million dollars or whatever they there's now they built like a hundred billion dollar company and they're like the best of the best like they're the best yc founders and yc is the best group of founders right so they're amazing and you hear them given interview to hear their talks to how they frame questions that alone is like worth the price of admission just to see that but then they ask questions and they're so he asked a question to sam bank before he goes i read something very interesting that f t x as a you know thirty billion dollar company only has like two hundred employees or something like that and i believe you the you know for the first year the product was built by just two engineers and even now you only have sub twenty sub engineers a is that true and b what the hell is going on like do you is f t x hey he's like ethan he's like i can only think of one of two things either f t x is simply like you have a unique set of problems so you could do you can operate your business differently or the rest of us are doing this completely wrong which is it and and he goes the latter that's a really good way to frame a question exactly and so he goes he goes i i he's laughing he's like i think it's the latter and he goes you know we he's like i more i looked at tech companies i looked you know facebook google you know successful tech companies i think yeah i don't know for sure i can't say like you know i don't know the their exact business but from what i can gather they they employ an order of magnitude more people than they need to you and then he's like what how many he's like how many people do you think facebook would have optimally and he's like you know he's like he's like i don't know if let's say they have fifty thousand employees you know that's somewhere between you know like five to thirty times too many and like and so you know it's kind of shocking to hear this and it's something i liked it because i believe this for a long time which is that you like most tech companies are completely over hired i've told the story before which is that when i interviewed at twitch for our acquisition they did you know the part of the interviews is they get at the end of the interview they're you know hey do you have any questions for us and this is my first my one i how many employees to twitch have this eighteen hundred two thousand how many do you think is the right number for twitch like what do you think is is how many people do you guys actually need to be like firing on all cylinders and like i would get basically three reactions the first was sorta like just like shock like what are you even saying and are you ins that like i shouldn't be here or like we shouldn't hire you or that we hired too many people we don't know what we're doing like you know the people are just like i don't get what you're getting at but it's not good whatever you're gonna answer is not no matter what interpretation i have of this question it's pretty bad the second was a genuine answer which was like you know probably like you know fifteen percent to twenty percent last but we you know you don't know you don't know over time who those top performers are you figure that out and like you know it's good to have buffer redundancy or whatever and then i asked to emmy the ceo and he was like i think twenty five hundred and like you know because his plan is like to hire and grow and he's like you know he he and like we didn't get into a big debate about it i was curious what he would say and so what was your reaction to this thing where you found out that f t x has like you know twenty engineers and is running the pretty large tech platform and everybody else has thousands of engineers i think people over hire and so i wrote a tweet that said you know i'm really fascinated with the idea of just hiring less people who are higher quality and paying them a lot more versus hiring a ton of people and most of them by definition are pretty average and you pay them a medium or market rate i like that idea of doing the first thing but is that actually practical and what are some examples and the reason why i wasn't sure if it was that actually practical is like even if you get the highest performing people in a room does it just become natural still whereas like the eighty twenty where twenty percent of the people does eighty percent in the work and it just always and i think actually maybe that would actually would still exist but at like a higher caliber and then also i was like i actually understand why you want red redundancy i understand why if you rely on five people and three of them quit like you're really screwed but let me give you the and someone tweeted out i and i found two good examples one example was sam beck when free with f t x and here's what he said here's the tweet he actually tweeted this out i guess after that talk kinda summarizing his his thoughts he goes i've looked into hyper growth companies and time and time again growing from two hundred employees to two thousand doesn't seem to ten your pro per your productivity as a company in fact sometimes it doesn't even one extra productivity sometimes the more you hire the less you get done so why exactly is it that hiring doesn't scale the way it should a coordination becomes really hard and b diffusion of responsibility five people could theoretically do something maybe no one will actually feel like they have to get it done and have to do it and then he just goes on to say that basically companies hire more or sorry lower the bar as they hire more and over time the average coworker people in africa becomes a worse experience and incentives become harder to align as people have less and less of a sense of what each person is doing and i completely agree i think that the i i'm not smart like these guys i can actually come up with a number but i think a large percentage of jobs at least in the tech world and i would say most companies are bullshit jobs i'd call them bullshit jobs and they're only there because the person who's running this particular division has to request more budget and hire more so they get more responsibility and more credit and they seem more important so then when they go to their next company they get paid more and they can climb the ladder because it seems like oh well like you know you manage two hundred people you must be legit yeah that's why i think it happens the number of people under you is a is a power consolidation technique inside of of large companies and even if people aren't doing it for malicious reasons it it is the incentive like you get just the game a larger of a group of people that you can manage and so your incentive is to hire people promote them to managers have them hire people have them promote them to managers and have like layers and layers of people because if you were if you were if everybody got the same budget and then you were just measured on how much you got done and you got to keep the extra i think companies would work wildly differently than they do today right and he says something he goes in that tweet he goes sam says he goes as far as i can tell this is the most common reason that successful companies decay it's a race between how quickly new employees can understand the culture and how quickly people are higher the faster you hire the harder it is to keep everyone on the same page and you know if you're growing a fifty percent of a year maybe you could still mentor each new recruit and get them you know to learn how you guys work if you're going three hundred percent your each employee only has four months to learn before they have to start teaching and meanwhile we have you know you have to also figure how to make sure compensation is fair coordination keeps happening like i remember this inside of even a startup up even a very small company when you go from one people to two people generally productivity increases like almost every time one person to two people is is almost a always a win two people to three people usually a win but there's usually a cost which is oh now we have to have meetings whereas before like one person the whole projects in your head you don't have to talk to anybody two people like by default you're gonna basically share everything with the other everybody because there's only the one one other person knows everything that's shared once you have three people no longer does everybody know everything that's going on and basically i think there's this rule which is that for every for every double of your employee base you square the amount of communication required meaning so if you go from four to eight you don't that doesn't double the communication it four is the communication or whatever right like i don't do my public math but it's basically like a nonlinear like it's a non nonlinear linear investment you have to make in communication and coordination and like suddenly it's like oh man we have a twelve person team and like it's really hard to keep everybody on the same page and now i'm having to do meetings that are all hands meetings or things like that just to keep twelve people organized now imagine that at twelve hundred and imagine that at twelve thousand it's like it's miserable it's miserable so the other example by the way that someone i don't know if anyone replied to how i found this but have you heard of the company called stream yard stream yard no they're in your world so go to stream i think it's stream yard dot com so they're like the stream world are they like canadians maybe so easy it's it's easiest way they say to create a professional live stream so okay it gives you like a it's like a broadcasting tool for live streaming okay cool so this guy it was two guys one guy engaged and i i don't remember the other guy amazing name gauge is a first dan he yeah gauge and dan yeah gauge like rode a dirt bike to school when he was a kid and gauge power yeah those guy's amazing so he so he started this company with dan and they were basically i think just making it away for like i think it was like twitch folks you or just like streamers to stream but then eventually they kinda pivoted a little bit so it could be like a professional stream so like don't know who actually would do a quote professional stream i guess like a company but like and had all these like d it had all these like like yeah so you just make it look cool and really easy well anyway they launched this in nineteen or i think even twenty and it was just them too and they got up to three million in arr just these two guys then the pandemic hits and in one year they go from three million to thirty million annually recurring revenue wow zero outside money just these two guys and when they they eventually sold at the so they launched i think in nineteen the pandemic hit went in twenty or twenty one but basically in like one year they went from three million to thirty million and then they sold that same year to hop in for two hundred fifty million dollars in cash and these two guys own the whole thing and when they sold they basically scaled the company to twenty million in arr with five people and by the time they sold they had thirty million and they had just hired the seventh person and this whole business was built which just seven people really is built with two or three people and then the second half they were like our customer service was just getting out of control and so we had to have someone manage like an agency who was doing our customer service and and they're were like it was just like of course they did they they were kinda were already killing it but they hit a lick with like covid that like was unexpected so that accelerated it but they were doing three million with two guys like a year and a half into the business that's which is amazing for software but it's a pretty ridiculous it's a pretty ridiculous company you should google like what the founders look like i think they're like they look like they're like twenty eight like they're like kids yeah i pretty sure i met these guys at a conference by the way now that now that i'm seeing their faces yeah gauge and dan but we're gonna call dan dirt so this gauge in dirt we're the cofounder a street yeah i love it this i mean that's a that's an amazing story of like you know right place right time you know and being ready to like surf wave i tell you like another random business like this that's like yeah just deceptive big so my buddy corey tweeted this out he's was like he's like the high school guy no no is levy this is corey nicholson his thing is corey and ceo this is is twitter account so corey is a good dude he's a real young guy he's like doing an e ecommerce thing right now i really like them i'm like he's the one if we were gonna do southern sam sticky ic this is the guy to run it and he's down to run it he we're just waiting on you if you wanna run it but like he's a d guy who he's really what he's really good at he's good at building a d product and using tiktok to marketing and like that's like his a current like niche and so anyways he goes he goes next time you're stressing over a business idea just remember there's a website that just simply removes the tiktok watermark from a video and receives thirty seven million monthly visits and has ads everywhere and so it's called it's called s ss s t i k i don't know if you ever seen this website s s s t i k so three s's and then tick wow i'm looking at the traffic now forty million monthly visitors for the last six months straight and it's with ads like i don't know i just like you know when you if you vin tiktok is a great way to create videos but it always keeps the tiktok watermark in there and so i guess this is a way to remove the watermark because i'm pretty sure if you post a watermark video from tiktok on a twitter i always feel like they like have a way to like download it know what i mean so it doesn't get shown to be is that legitimate i i don't know if i don't know if it's at i i i really don't give twitter that much credit like yeah i i don't think they can build the future that smart but but i know for facebook i think facebook if you upload a watermark video as it ads because those tiktok videos do great as ads they won't let you run it because it's got a tiktok thing and you're basically promoting their competitor right so you have to like it the raw video dude this is crazy i'm looking at the traffic now and so it gets like forty million a month it looks like around that and they're from every country so united states only makes up eight percent of the traffic and then there's like colombia philippines in mexico peru peru the biggest source which is makes up ten percent this is crazy what a crazy business do you think this makes money surely it makes some but you think this is big yeah i think it is by the way okay so i tried to get in touch with this so i don't have the full story on this but go to you're gonna love this this is like i might be telling about something like you already know you're gonna be like my cousin started this go to egg cartons dot com alright why would my i don't have a cousin would start egg cartons dot com what is this egg card i don't know this this is just a sam park special right here it's just like did you know there's a business called egg cartons so many that i'm like i thought you're safe for i'm from the middle midwest so many people think they're like oh like hey i wanna go hunt can you like teach me how to hunt like they think that i'm like from like a rural southern area i'm not i i don't know anything about that like i i i'm like when you think of they they hear i'm from saint louis missouri and they i think it's the country i'm like think of detroit that's kinda like where i was raised like that's it's more like detroit than it is are you more like the rural area are you more likely to go bow hunting or get a pedicure dude well neither people from missouri don't get pedicure as at least men though but bow hunting like i only know about bow hunting from like the tv show to pulling dynamite where they talk about like a bose staff like i don't even know like i don't know what boat i've never killed a animal before no i've never done either that you don't have the you don't have the urge too i definitely do it would be fun to look something in the eye then consume it i think that would be exciting but anyway okay so back to egg cards dot com alright so basically it's just a website that sells like the actual packaging you need for eggs so every form factor of eggs you got the twelve one you got the twenty four pack you got the plastic one you got the foam one you got the good for the environment one and i thought it's was really interesting because this is this is a multi million dollar business that just is like wholesale selling packaging for eggs and they just like if you go to the websites it's like egg cartons dot com call one eight eight eight five two six three forty right and it's like you know when that's in your logo that this business prints cash because it's like oh yeah we got like just this like you know every grocery store in america every corner store in america they just at cartons dot com and they they got my number you know in their phone book and it's like the biggest tell and so what was interesting about this is i was like who owns this thing and then if you look up egg cars dot com owner you're gonna see this woman named sarah moore and sarah moore if you go look at her thing it says her her linkedin says sarah moore egg carton and packaging fan and she's been doing this for four years and before that she went to harvard business school and so i was like who is this and basically this is somebody who's like an m is a mba private equity type that identified this business that's been around for twenty years and basically you know like went and you know either bought it took it over or or you know did something i don't think it's like her dad is the owner because this is other guy paul b something who you know was the owner of it and for nineteen years now he says he semi retired but i think she bought it and i was like wow this is a this is a like fascinating like path to pick for somebody who's just like smart and is like you know what i'm gonna go fish where nobody else is fishing instead of going to try to build the next social app or the next crypto thing or the next podcast it's like let me go identify one of these businesses that's like a wholesaler of packaging buy the company and then just like you know modernize and grow it so is this sarah moore from massachusetts oh wow are you sure this woman owns so this woman does not look at all like you're gonna think of a a a carton salesperson this is the owner or you like if you look if you looked at her picture what look at her picture what's your guess what does this woman do like enterprise sales at salesforce exactly i was gonna say the exact same thing she sells high end enterprise software or she runs an ad agency or you know like whatever out she's said like you know professor and part time model or something like that right like crazy she's like a really good looking harvard person and i would not expect her to do any of this in sutton massachusetts like this is crazy if you look at the guy who's the previous owner you go to his linkedin it's like a dude on the like he's got his next side sideways basically he's on the phone he's like guy's his computer's like looking up someone took this photo of him and that's the best photo he has of himself that's a going different yes yeah mo his desk has like you know nineteen seventies world series like you know ball from the game he was at and he's got like a marble red in his mouth that's exactly how i would imagine this this is crazy how'd do you find this so because i just saw the tweet about the about the egg card i went down the rabbit i found a pdf and it says she purchased it in twenty seventeen after her after getting her nba from harvard and you know now she has a a private equity she she she did that by the way in her twenties so she's got a private equity company that basically does egg cartons dot com fall harvest products and those both per those both serve the egg producing company sorry industry and and king supply which provides plumbing materials to campground grounds and parks and i was like what the hell like who is this person what are they doing and so by the way i might have some these wrong because i tried to get in touch with their emailed and i just subject line like holy shit you know first line egg cartons you know like who would have thought this is amazing and i sent i was like look you know i wanna know more about you but i don't wanna schedule time and i for you or for me like here's a google doc like would you mind just answer these questions so i'm waiting on her to answer these questions now because i have i must know more i must know where was this her family business i does she get into this so this like model looking harvard grad owns an a cart business she owns a plumbing supplies business is that right and i don't know what a fall harvest the what what is fall harvest products what what do you make when you saw that i think it's also it's also for the egg industry what this is awesome this is a really good find i love sarah moore sarah moore i love women named sarah my wife's name sarah i love sarah moore is great it's not where i thought you were go without i love women named sarah no this woman's awesome i'm a be on factor out great party yeah my wife's named sarah and there's this woman i admire who like with the harvard and it does an card business who's also dave sarah she's i'm fond of hers founder of a founder of of span pants love with pants make look thinner sarah blake another great sarah yeah i'm a big fan of this this is a good fine why did the person tweet about it i don't even know it was like what did they say they go i think that so the the thread was like a kind of a golden thread where it was like boring businesses are the best businesses and and then somebody patrick b patrick b johnson said i got one that's even better egg dot com this is a multi dollar business and that was the only reply to the threat by the way this was like a popular threat thread so one guy tweeted that first three this guy okay he knows something it's like a heat seeking missile yeah he knows something no i didn't reach out to this guy he's got like a picture that makes up look a little crazy and so i was like i don't know what means been like a assault here he's on twitter look like again let me read you his bio this is why i was like i wanna have a conversation right now beats up indian guys and i it he goes teen v his this this is bio teen teen v called me a visionary elite daily called me a genius lincoln bio then he goes at ram blocked me is my biggest accomplishment i'm the founder of progress labs okay yeah i would like i other either it's awesome or he's completely not awesome and i just didn't have the energy to go find out this is a badass fine i'm all about is it a cartons a cartons dot com i'm all about this because if anyone thank care for you if anyone could find sarah moore so please find sarah moore and and tell her to tell her to join the pod there's this one woman i i don't know if i told you this did you see the tweet where i saw this lady at whole foods and i thought it was school and i just tweeted it out a picture no wait what happened so there was this lady giving out samples at whole foods and okay the sample was called i don't i actually don't know what it was j j e s h a and she it's like a sourdough do you know anything about sourdough bread like i don't know like entirely behind it but like it doesn't be honest it like something involving like it doesn't have yeast or something like something where like it you you actually digested it a little bit easier and it doesn't make you as bloated at least when i eat it because it doesn't have like yeast it like it's missing it's a there's one ingredient that's missing that just makes it feel sometimes feel better on your stomach so she made sourdough like mix that you can use for like pancakes and like muffins and shit like that and i was just talking and i just like went to the whole foods and i saw was oh let me try some this i was like this is great this your business she's like yeah i just started at like six months ago and i just cold emailed someone at whole foods asking if we could sell in the store and they said yeah and now they're stocking it on all the shelves i was like oh wow it's a pretty good story you know what's your background she she's like i just worked at a fintech startup up for a a bunch of years and i just always wanted to do this and i just saved up a little bit of money and i quit and i just launched it and i called emailed them and i just kinda figured it out and i just tweeted that one tweet it was it was a picture of her and it was like you know worked in fintech quit started this in six months got the whole food just cold emailed someone and it got red by like two million people that tweet and she like and i have no idea who she was i even like know her handle and she like somehow fun i i at the end of the tweet i was like if you know who she is send this to her and you know she'll like know all the sales came from apparently she like knocked it out the park with sales off from just this one little tweet and then i did the same thing with a pool company trek pools and they sold a shit ton of pools i like from from this mentioned it's kinda funny just the these silly little tweets actually moved the needle for people so you're saying if you're out there and you'd like your needle moved your boys are available for hire and bribes actually not even for hire just bribes yeah just money send does get your awesome stuff or cash in some kind of brief briefcase and we will move the needle for you needle movers yeah one eight hundred five five hundred move my needle alright that's the episode i think hey we're just a couple of needle movers cult cultivating that multi trillion mindset hashtag greg