A few semi-controversial things I believe 👇

Real Estate has the highest % of "dumb rich people".

I'm not saying you're dumb if you're in real estate.

I'm saying -- if you want to get rich without needing to be a genius, real estate is your best bet.

Hard work is massively overrated.

*WHAT* you work on is far more important than *HOW HARD* you work.

I'm pretty lazy. But I'm happy and successful.

Janitors work hard. Backline cooks work hard. Hard work helps you win your game. Choose the right game.

OK I have 3 nerdy business ideas to get off my chest:

• smelling salts for nerds
• FB ad dashboard that doesn't suck
• + a new privacy app I’m using

Quick thread for anyone who likes jamming on ideas:

OK don’t judge me - but I have a new weird habit.

I never drink coffee, and haven’t tried adderall. But I got hooked on a new way to get into peak state of mind before work or exercise.

b̵a̵t̵h̵ ̵s̵a̵l̵t̵s̵ Smelling Salts.

I first saw these when I saw NFL players using smelling salts as a boost before big games.

I thought you only used these when someone is knocked out. So I did some googling.

What I found was pretty interesting:

esports investments are a joke - there's so much dumb money in this space!

look at this "billion dollar" publicly traded company: $EGLX

Enthusiastic Gaming is a holdco of random assets ranging from the most popular website for The Sims, to a minority stake in the vancouver overwatch team.

It's not a bad company...it's just not worth $1b

here's a quick scan of their last quarter report

looks like they rolled up a bunch of companies:

- Bought @Luminosity for $1.5M cash, 7.5M stock
- Bought a couple agencies for $13M cash + more stock
- started trading on the TSX in january, up ~4x in a year.

They are basically an ad agency for gaming channels + websites

Every good clubhouse “show” would be 100x higher leverage if they did it as a podcast instead.

But hey, it’s new and hot, so follow the herd!

Btw this is for “shows” specifically. Not random convos/hanging out.

Which is why clubhouse going for shows is terrible strategy!

Eg right now- @pmarca and @bhorowitz are doing a weekly clubhouse. Reaching 5k people live.

If they launched a podcast, they’d be at 5m+ downloads a month. (See @chamath @Jason all in pod)

1000x more reach. Same format. There’s zero crowd interaction. no reason to use Clubhouse

Jeff Bezo's Amazon Run:
- 27 years
- $1.68 Trillion company
- 800k people employed

Crazy run.

And 6 funny stories about the early days of Amazon

#1 - The original name wasn't Amazon. Jeff wanted to name it "Cadabra" (as in, abra cadabra, like magic)

His lawyer said the name sounded too much like Cadaver (aka a corpse) for ppl to share.

His 2nd pick was Relentless (relentless.com still re-directs to Amazon)

#2 - The company almost died because of inventory.

The whole point of an internet book store was to carry WAY more books than you can find in a book store.

But the book distributors minimum order was 10 books.

They couldn't afford to buy 10 of every book..

Here's a lesson on how to do cold outreach right.

Don't ask someone for "coffee" or a "quick 20 min call"

(or worst of all - "to pick their brain". You brain pickers stay away)

Here's an example of how my cousin hustled & got connected with @chamath

On the all-in podcast, @friedberg joked that @chamath wants to run for governor.

my cousin @RohunJauhar hears that and tweets this out

https://twitter.com/RohunJauhar/status/1353386405754331137?s=20

One guy reaches out saying "i'll do it in a few weeks for $2k". Another says "I'll do it for free, tonight."

Rohun sketches out what he wants. Super simple:

If you're a college student who wants to pay off all your loans... here's an idea for you:

It takes ~$5k to start and will make ~$30k a year of profit

It won't get you rich, it'll pay for college.

(..and will teach them more about business than they’ll learn in school)

The idea isn’t sexy. But it works:

**Plastic Moving Bin Rentals**

Everyone knows moving sucks. The worst part is being stuck with 400 cardboard boxes at the end of your move.

Instead - @benmlevy told me about Gorilla Bins. They dropoff plastic moving bins, & pickem up later.

Let’s break it down. Our goal is to pay for college (~$30k profit per year).

To do that, I think we’ll need $50k in revenue.

The avg move (a 2 bedroom apartment) is $180

To hit our goal, we need do ~5.5 moves per week

Elon Clubhouse summary for those who are locked out:

Q: When are we going to get to Mars?

@elonmusk (says some smart space stuff)... I figure... idk.. ~5.5 years.

Q: What will it take to go to Mars?

@elonmusk You need a fully & rapidly re-usable rocket. Rapid is imp.. can't take months between flights. Needs to be like airplanes where the biggest cost is fuel.

And be able to send 2nd rocket to re-fuel

And be able to make fuel on mars

The ancient struggle was not having enough.

The modern struggle is having too much.

Too much news, too much sugar, too much of everything at your fingertips..There's only 1 way out.

Let's lay it out:

On one side, you have "Team Dopamine":
* 24/7 news cycle, full of clickbait headlines
* Social Media, friend's pics that disappear in 24 hours
* Endless varieties of sugar & porn

going up against your tiny, 3 pound brain running 20,000 yr old software

Even if you are a smart person who tries their best to stay healthy & happy... you are going up against Fox News, TikTok, PornHub, Robinhood, Instagram

These are weapons of mental destruction.

If you're out of the loop - this is the (hilarious) story of a subreddit (wall street bets) taking down a multi-billion dollar hedge fund... get your popcorn ready 🍿

the hero of our story: a user named DeepFuckingValue bought $50k of call options in Gamestop ($GME) that has turned into a $13M+ win in ~3 months.

he's a part of the subreddit r/WallStreetBets, a group of degenerate gamblers that I love.

So here's the situation.

Gamestop (GME) = a dying biz. circling the drain. Who goes to a store to buy games? It's basically a pokemon card dealership at this point. Plus with covid, malls are dead.

So some Hedge Funds are shorting the stock, betting it would go down.

10 years ago, Netflix spent $0 on original content.

This year:

Netflix: $11B
Apple: $6B
Disney: $1B
+ amazon, hulu HBO etc.
=
$20B+

Here's a crazy startup idea to take a swing at this $20B+ content piñata. 👇 Here's a quick business plan 🤔

The idea ---> @ycombinator for Content

Let's give it a made up name : Zeta Studios

It is a new accelerator model for getting shows & movies made.

@ycombinator = give engineer duos money ($120k), coaching, & give them 3 months to get ready for a Demo Day in front of a room of investors.

Zeta = give storytelling duos money ($120k), coaching, & 3 mo to get a sizzle reel ready for Demo Day w/ buyers from netflix, amazon etc.

Hmm... something interesting I learned from my buddy @RomeenSheth about McKinsey.

I thought they are just a stale boring consulting co

But he told me they've acquired a ton of software co's & now have a $100M ARR tech portfolio now (!)

I'll let him explain - guest thread!

If you don’t know, McKinsey is a gigantic consulting company:

- $10B+ in revenue
- 80%+ of the F500 as clients
- Hard to get a job there. (<1% of applicants get hired)

Their bread and butter (70% of revenue) used to be “pure strategy” work. That’s now down to just 10% - why?

Clients are demanding “value based” billing. Meaning less "guys in suits talking" and more "show me something tangible"

just sent out a newsletter to 16k subscribers about...CLOUT KITCHENS:

WHAT it is...HOW it works...and HOW MUCH $$$ they make👇

A lot of people have heard of Cloud Kitchens (a restaurant with no storefront. They ONLY do delivery via doordash, uber eats etc.)

That's a cloud kitchen. What's a 'clout kitchen'?

It's a cloud kitchen - branded with an influencer who has clout.. hence, a clout kitchen.

The best example? 3 weeks ago when @MrBeastYT came out with MrBeast Burger and it became the #1 app on the app store, and got slammed with so many deliveries it was 2-3 hour delays

🧠 3 years ago - I created a new framework for New Years Resolutions.

Year after year I would set New Years Resolutions (the same ones every year) and fail to reach them.

Am I doing this wrong? Am I just weak minded?

Then I found this, and switched up my new years routine

I wasn't alone in failing at my new years resolutions.

Not only do 90% of people give up on their new years resolutions… on average they fail by January 18th (known as “Quitters Day”)

It makes sense. If you were waiting for an arbitrary day to decide to change - you probably weren't that commited to begin with.

So instead of making plans for the future, use new years as a moment to reflect

They don't teach us this in school, so here's a framework for it👇

If you wanna level up - the fastest hack is to hangout with people who are ALREADY at that level.

The beauty of twitter is that you can hang with anyone.

The problem is ppl follow the wrong accounts. It's noisy as f*ck.

Here's 27 people you should follow (and why)👇

If you hang with smart, interesting, successful people - you will start to think & talk that way too.

We are monkeys that copy what we see. You can fight it, or use that to your advantage by surrounding yourself with people who you want to become more like.

Group 1: Smart, Rich, & Don't Give a F*ck (no filter)

@chamath - was early FB, has big balls, bet early on Bitcoin & SPACs

@rabois - kind of a dick but he's clearly smart

@balajis - this guy is from the future, and has come back in time to tell us what's going to happen

I think @paulg accidentally predicted Bitcoin exactly 1 year before it launched..

Paul was giving a talk at startup school about the two most common bits of advice YC gives its startups:

1) Make something people want
2) Don't worry too much about making money

If you put those two together...

= non-profit

It was a joke wrapped around a nugget of truth.

Some of the greatest startups look like non profits initially.

Eg. Google did not look like it was going to become a trillion dollar company. It was a free search engine built by 2 PHd students with no business model.

I doubled down on angel investing over the past 6 months.

Invested $600k in the past 6 months into 8 startups... for anyone interested in startup investing - a few standout companies and spaces

🇮🇳 INDIA - 2 of the co's were in India, I believe both will be $1B+

@mydukaanapp is building shopify for india (3M+ stores created in 5 months)

@wiseapplive gives teachers a digital classroom (to teach & earn money) that works even on 2G phones. 5x'd growth since we invested.

Remote Work -

I think there is both a huge opportunity AND a ton of garbage in this space right now.

Because 30M engineers all simultaneously experienced the pain points of remote work, and started building tools to solve it.

Lots of crap, but a few gems..

Reading this article, the story sounds pretty wild. But I spent a weird amount of time with Martin Shkreli, and I’m not surprised the journalist fell in love w him

A few years back my team built an app called Blab. It was like clubhouse before clubhouse.

https://twitter.com/ellemagazine/status/1340803953773191168

When he first joined the app I had no idea who he was. I just saw that his live streams instantly had 3-4K viewers. More than anyone on our tiny platform.

I googled him and it came up: “Martin Shkreli, most hated man in America”

I assumed he was bad news

And he was... but also he wasn’t.

He was a douchebag, but he was in on the joke. He was a dick, but he was also very entertaining.

In the mornings he would live stream himself analyzing stocks or walking through drug discovery pathways.

So I thought the whole "paid newsletter" thing was dumb.

So naturally, I tried it out as an experiment.. The results were kinda nutty. The newsletter started bringing home $49k per month (!) -- Here's the backstory

"what was the newsletter about?"

Well - for the past year, I've been doing a podcast called My First Million. Gimmicky name, but whatever.

It's a pod where me and @theSamParr (and friends like @awilkinson @_jacksmith etc.) brainstorm business ideas based on trends we see

Anyways - the podcast has gotten pretty big. We do over 350k downloads/month.

People like listening to us shoot the shit, brainstorming ideas.

But as the nearest schmuck will tell you - ideas aren't shit without execution!

The problem is - execution is less sexy.

How to find a mentor, in 3 easy steps, without making a fool of yourself

#1 - Work on something interesting. Just by picking a unique project/mission, you will get interesting people interested in you.

#2 - Don't ask someone to be your mentor. It's awkward.

Instead - ask for their opinion on a specific situation.

Eg. I just graduated & am debating between these two jobs. I'm torn. I respect you, what would you do?

1/ OK - Here's a free startup idea that can make ~$10M/year in profit.

No coding required. Just pure hustle.

If someone legit wants to run with it. I'll put up the cash - you do the work.

Here's the idea (and the numbers behind it)👇

2/ Let's create "The Combine" for youth sports.

This is a mashup of two things that parents are obsessed with:

1/ competitive youth sports
2/ standardized testing.

Let's break it down...

3/ Parents in America spend a small fortune ($20B/year) on competitive youth sports.

They pay for things like league fees, equipment, travel to tournaments, photos, coaches/trainers etc.

This starts as early as age ~6-8.