The Wildest Stories of Corporate Espionage We’ve Ever Heard

Summary

Podcast Summary: My First Million – Episode: The Wildest Stories of Corporate Espionage We’ve Ever Heard

Introduction

In this riveting episode of My First Million, hosted by Sam Parr and Shaan Puri from Hubspot Media, the duo delves deep into the shadowy world of corporate espionage. They explore some of the most audacious and intriguing cases of trade secret theft, insider sabotage, and strategic intelligence theft that have shaped industries. Through engaging discussions, historical anecdotes, and contemporary examples, Parr and Puri shed light on the lengths companies will go to outmaneuver competitors.

Rippling vs. Deal: A Modern Espionage Saga

The episode kicks off with a high-stakes corporate battle between Rippling and Deal. Parker Conrad, CEO of Rippling, has accused Deal of orchestrating a long-running trade secret theft by cultivating a spy within Rippling.

Shaan Puri [00:27]: "Rippling sued Deal today. Our lawsuit alleges that Deal cultivated a spy at Rippling and orchestrated a long-running trade secret theft."

Shaan Puri, who reveals his investment in Deal, brings a personal perspective to the conversation, emphasizing his positive views of Deal despite the allegations.

Shaan Puri [01:07]: "I'm an investor in Deal, so I invested in Deal many years ago. It's one of the best investments. I really like Alex."

The hosts dissect the lawsuit’s details, highlighting Rippling’s innovative approach to uncovering espionage by creating a fake Slack channel named "Deal Defectors." This strategy led to the identification of suspicious activity, eventually escalating to legal action.

Sam Parr [02:24]: "They created a honey pot... They go to the local authorities... the spy flees the premises, and Rippling never recovered his phone."

Shaan humorously adds his skepticism about the truth of the allegations, framing the situation as entertainment.

Shaan Puri [01:33]: "It's just comedy for me. Like I don't know about any of this... this is for entertainment for me."

The segment concludes with a reflection on Parker Conrad’s colorful past, including his tenure at Zenefits and the boardroom drama that led to his ousting. The discussion paints Conrad as a charismatic yet controversial figure in the HR SaaS industry.

Sam Parr [07:24]: "Parker likes to party. Parker's put the PA Party. He likes to get down."

Historical Corporate Espionage: Lessons from the Past

Transitioning from modern tales, the hosts dive into historical instances of corporate espionage, starting with the British East India Company (BEIC).

Shaan Puri [10:10]: "The British East India Company hired Robert Fortune to infiltrate China and steal tea production secrets."

Robert Fortune’s mission to break China’s tea monopoly by smuggling tea plants and secrets to India illustrates early examples of industrial espionage.

The conversation shifts to the fierce rivalry between Oracle and Microsoft in the 1990s. Shaan recounts how Oracle attempted to undermine Microsoft during its antitrust battles by surreptitiously supporting independent organizations that were actually funded by Microsoft.

Shaan Puri [17:00]: "Oracle hires private investigators to dig up dirt on Microsoft... They end up exposing Microsoft’s funding of these organizations."

Another compelling story involves a former Coke employee who attempted to sell the company’s secret formula to Pepsi, resulting in a sting operation and an eight-year prison sentence.

Shaan Puri [22:33]: "She sent a letter to Pepsi offering Coke’s secret formula for $1.5 million. Pepsi set up a sting, and she was locked up for eight years."

Modern Espionage in Tech: Wiz and Cyber Starts

The discussion then moves to Wiz, a cutting-edge cybersecurity firm that recently sold for a staggering $32 billion. Shaan introduces Gilly, an Israeli cybersecurity veteran who founded Cyber Starts, a unique incubator and VC firm that has propelled Wiz and other startups to unicorn status.

Shaan Puri [32:39]: "Cyber Starts has 22 companies with a combined value of $35 billion. Wiz alone sold for $32 billion."

Gilly’s model leverages a network of Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) to identify pain points and invest in startups that provide solutions, ensuring a high success rate. The hosts marvel at the fund’s impressive internal rate of return (IRR) and the rapid scaling of Wiz, which grew from inception in 2020 to a $32 billion valuation within five years.

Sam Parr [33:48]: "His first fund turned $54 million into $1 billion. That's crazy, right?"

The conversation underscores the importance of leveraging strong networks and strategic investments to achieve monumental growth in the tech industry.

Corporate Culture and Insights from Glassdoor

Sam and Shaan also explore the use of platforms like Glassdoor and Blind for gleaning insights into company cultures and leadership. Sam advocates for using Glassdoor reviews to identify macro trends and validate leadership qualities, while Shaan remains skeptical about the reliability of anonymous reviews.

Sam Parr [43:04]: "If you read enough of them, you can start to see trends... It's just not a fact, it's more about aligning with other sources."

The hosts share anecdotes about assessing CEOs based on public reviews and personal observations, highlighting the blend of qualitative and quantitative data in understanding corporate environments.

Conclusion: The Cost of Success

In the episode’s closing segments, Sam and Shaan reflect on the intense dedication required to build and scale successful companies. They discuss the balance between personal sacrifice and professional achievement, emphasizing that regardless of a company’s size, the entrepreneur’s commitment remains a constant source of stress and challenge.

Sam Parr [51:30]: "You're dedicating your life to this thing, your prize is so much bigger... that's the hard truth."

The episode wraps up with a nod to the pervasive nature of espionage in the business world, reminding listeners that corporate battles are fought in both the open and hidden arenas.

Shaun Puri [60:35]: "Remember, everything on this podcast is allegedly. And this is a comedy podcast. Thank you very much. Don't come after us."

Key Takeaways

• Innovative Espionage Tactics: Companies like Rippling are employing sophisticated methods to uncover internal threats, illustrating the evolving nature of corporate espionage.

• Historical Lessons: Historical cases like Robert Fortune’s mission and the Oracle-Microsoft rivalry provide context for understanding modern business competition.

• Strategic Investments: Gilly’s Cyber Starts exemplifies how leveraging specialized networks and focusing on key pain points can lead to exceptional startup success.

• Balancing Success and Sacrifice: Building a billion-dollar company requires immense dedication, often paralleling the stress levels of smaller ventures despite differing scales.

This episode offers a comprehensive exploration of corporate espionage, intertwining past and present narratives to provide listeners with a nuanced understanding of competitive business strategies.

Transcript

[Sam Parr]

All right. A sentence that has never been said before. B2B enterprise HR software space is the most riveting, the most compelling espionage story you'll ever hear.

[Shaun Puri]

I feel like this episode is going to have to start with the Netflix like da da. Because this is a Netflix original level drama.

[Unknown]

I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it. Like no days off on a road. Let's travel. Never look.

[Shaun Puri]

So all right, we got to do this story. Parker Conrad, who is the CEO of a company called Rippling, they do like payroll as well as other kind of back office stuff for, for startups tweeted, came out two days ago and said Rippling sued Deal today. Our lawsuit alleges that Deal cultivated a spy at Rippling and orchestrated a long running trade secret theft. The spy search Deal in our system 20, 23 times a day on average. Letting him spy on Deals own customers who were considering switching to Rippling and post screenshots of the lawsuit. Did you read this?

[Sam Parr]

Yes. And we should preface this saying, I think you have friends at Deal.

[Shaun Puri]

I'm an investor in Deal, so I invested in Deal many years ago. It's one of the best investments. I really like Alex. I don't know him super well. Like we're not like buddy buddy, but like Alex, the founder of Deal I think is awesome. And I use Deal. I think Deal's a great product. And so that's kind of my con. My bias and context coming in is I like Deal and I invested in Deal and when I talk about everything.

[Sam Parr]

Everything here it's allegedly. And it's also, this is just what the, the laws lawsuit says.

[Shaun Puri]

And also it's just comedy for me. Like I don't, I, I don't know about any of this. And I am just like everybody else on Twitter. This is for entertainment for me. So please don't take this too seriously.

[Sam Parr]

What's the baseline story?

[Shaun Puri]

Okay, so basically the story is Rippling notices. He. He's saying, we noticed somebody was looking up Deal a lot in our systems. So then this is where it gets good. He's like, so we created a honey pot.

[Sam Parr]

The best. The story behind this is basically like, I don't, I wouldn't even be smart enough to come up with the idea of this. This is amazing. So the way it worked was I think I read that it was Rippling's founder and their legal team and maybe one other executive were in a room one night saying to themselves, dude, Deal is spying on Us, what is going on? How do we catch them?

[Shaun Puri]

And they said, how did they know they were spying? Like is it really that they just noticed on the log this guy searching deal a lot? That sounds so crazy.

[Sam Parr]

Yeah, so there's always, you know, no matter how thin a pancake, there's always two sides. That's what my dad always tells me. So I don't know. We. But we only. That's a good one, right? Yeah, we only know this side. So this side is that they had a suspicion and then they're sitting there one night and they go, I got it. Let's make a screenshot or let's actually make a fake Slack channel that no one at the company knows about. And we're going to call it Deal Defectors, meaning all of Deel's ex employees who now work at Rippling, they're talking trash about deal and they're spilling the beans. Turns out that was a channel that no one at the at the Rippling was a part of. But they emailed the deal team and they go, this exists and you would love to see it. And then the next day after sending the letter, they notice someone tried to log in to this Deal defectors Slack channel. And that seems strange since the only people who know about this, our deal's three people on their executive team and Rippling's three person executive team. And it wasn't us Rippling. Therefore it had to be one of the deal executives who knew about this espionage and spying situation and had access to the back end of Rippling's login. Is that right?

[Shaun Puri]

I think that's right. So that's allegedly what happens. So they go to the local authorities because I think this is happening in Ireland by the way. Like he's working at the Ireland off the Dublin office and they go to local authorities, they get like whatever, the, the ability to kind of like subpoena his phone. So, so I guess what happened is person comes in, says hey, you've been served, you need to hand over your phone right now. And he says, oh, it's upstairs in my bag. Like all right, let's go get it. So they go up, they look in the bag, just a laptop in there, no phone. And they're like, okay, where's the phone? He's like, I gotta go to the bathroom. So he goes to the bathroom, locks himself in the bathroom real quick. And then the story goes, um, the person heard him doing something, quote, doing something on his phone and he's shout, knocking on the door, basically shouting at him. Like, hey, if you, if you delete anything on that phone, you're in violation of the law. The story goes that the spy goes, that's a risk I have to take. He said that that's a risk I'm willing to take.

[Sam Parr]

He said that that's what, that's what.

[Shaun Puri]

They wrote at this thing.

[Sam Parr]

So. And do they hear a flush?

[Shaun Puri]

They hear a flush, and then the guy flees the premises. They don't get the phone. And then Rippling orders somebody to go check the plumbing of the building to see if he flushed a phone. Couldn't find a phone in there. No phone. And so that's. That's where the story stands today. And then that's why they came out publicly and tried to, like, you know, win this in the, in the court of public opinion instead. Hey, quick message from our sponsor, HubSpot. You know, marketing in 2025 is wild. Customers can spot fake messages instantly. Privacy changes are making ad targeting a nightmare, and everybody needs more content than ever. That's why HubSpot has a new marketing trends report. It doesn't just show you what's changing. It shows you exactly how to deal with it. Everything is backed by research, and it's about marketing plays that you can use tomorrow. So if you're ready to turn your marketing challenges into results, go to HubSpot.commarketing to download the report for free.

[Sam Parr]

Can I give three little bits of advice to anyone listening if you're ever going to get in trouble? One, don't say shit. Do not say, that's a risk. I'm willing to say. Don't say anything. Just say, yeah, I don't want to talk, or give me a lawyer. The second thing, don't write down anything that you'd be afraid for to be found in discovery. And three, do not delete messages when you think you're in trouble. That's against the law, dude.

[Shaun Puri]

I don't know if. I don't know if any of this is true. There's a whole bunch of back and forth. So here's the. Here's a bit of the other side of the story. So I think someone from Deal came out, and here's what a Deal spokesperson said. Weeks after Rippling is accused of violating sanctions law in Russia and ceding falsehoods about Deal, Rippling is trying to shift the narrative with these sensationalized claims. We deny all legal wrongdoing and look forward to asserting our counterclaims. All right, I too, look forward to them asserting their counterclaims.

[Sam Parr]

You know what's funny is I lived in San Francisco and I was a. So the guy who started Rippling, I was a customer. His name is Parker Conrad Parker previously started Zenefits and back in 13 or 14 or 15 that era, I think Zenefits was the fastest growing company ever. I think it grew to like 100 million in revenue. Something insane. And Parker, from what I remember, he got fired by the board because Zenefits was like a payroll and benefits company, which means you need to be pretty uptight. And I think that he was accused of being a little loosey goosey. Like it was like people were. If I remember correctly, the articles were like people at the parties were like having sex in the hallways or something insane like that.

[Shaun Puri]

And like, I don't think that was the. Well, maybe that was happening, but I don't think that was. That was the issue that got him.

[Sam Parr]

No, that was. But, but that was like a canary in the. It was like, dude, this guy, like he does it. Like not everyone has their health benefits, license, something, some license like that that you need to sell benefits.

[Shaun Puri]

I guess in order to like be a broker, a licensed broker, you had to have it in like all. Every state that you were operating in.

[Sam Parr]

That's what it was.

[Shaun Puri]

There's a bunch of compliance things and would. What had happened was either some people didn't have it or there was another thing which was he had created a macro, like a piece of software that would just take the tests for you. Yeah, that's so you could like speed through this and get your license like way faster to keep up with the growth. And like kind of like you didn't actually do it yourself. And I think that's when he got in a lot of trouble. And he's got again in this case, you know, like basically he got shamed. He got kicked out of the company. David Sachs took over. David Sachs, who was his COO and big investor. I think Sachs had put in like 10 or 20 million dollars of his own money into the company and then came in a CEO because it was like the next big hot startup. And then this came out and then Sacks basically threw Conrad under the bus.

[Sam Parr]

But they use like the. These guys are partying, they're banging in the hallway.

[Shaun Puri]

Just made it look like the whole thing was a mess. Whatever.

[Sam Parr]

Yeah.

[Shaun Puri]

And then. And, and so took over and he got basically the shaft. And then Rippling was sort of his revenge company. But yeah, this guy finds himself in some drama, I guess.

[Sam Parr]

Parker likes to party. Parker. Parker's put the PA Party. He like, he likes to get down. And now I'm hearing about. I didn't know about this Russia stuff. So Parker live. Lives life on the edge. And, you know, he's kind of the bad boy. The HR SaaS industry. What can. What, you know, what can you say?

[Shaun Puri]

He needs to go. Jensen leather jacket, just pure snakeskin. The bad boy of HR sass is here.

[Sam Parr]

I like Parker. Parker parties, man. Like, he just. He gets down. He always finds himself in a sticky situation. Sign me up. Parker should come on to MFM and we should go hang out. But this guy likes to party, you know?

[Shaun Puri]

All right, so. All right. A lot of uninformed speculation here. I feel like we're gonna get hit with a hit with a lawsuit here.

[Sam Parr]

What's he gonna say that he doesn't party? Like, is that slander?

[Shaun Puri]

Parker's ring doorbell has shown him to be home before 8pm every night.

[Sam Parr]

Does Parker. Does the man in the polo at jeans not like to get down?

[Shaun Puri]

We deny these alle. All right, so. Okay, whatever. So there's the deal rippling thing. There's a bunch of funny tweets about this. It's just good comedy. I have actually a different angle here. I don't know if you have anything else you want to say on this, but I have a different angle, which was got me thinking, what are some other great examples of corporate espionage in history? And I have some for you, Sam.

[Sam Parr]

Oh, okay, cool. I. I like that.

[Shaun Puri]

All right, so. So check this out. I went down a little rabbit hole and I tried to find, you know, examples of great corporate corporate espionage cases that have happened in the past. I want to start with the British East India Company. Okay. Are you prepared for this? So basically, back in the day, we're talking about, like, the 1800s, the British East India Company. Basically, it was a trade. It was a trading company between the UK and India. Okay. And they did two notable things. One which is unrelated to corporate espionage. Did you know they had their own corporate army?

[Sam Parr]

Well, I know that they were like the. The. The ballers of the earth. They, like, started in like 1600s and, like, basically, like, helped shape global trade.

[Shaun Puri]

So they were so prolific that, like, other parts of Europe, like, basically they were attacked on their trade routes and there was, like, a lot of security concerns, so they formed their own corporate military, which is pretty badass. And I think awesome. If I'm perplexity or something like that, if I'm like the third or fourth tier AI company right now might just spin up a corporate military just to put Some shine on me and what I'm doing. Make it seem like I got some trade secrets that I need to protect. Like just armed guards going through Soma. It'd be amazing.

[Sam Parr]

Yeah, I think that every company needs like a fake enemy or a fake emergency to prepare for. I think it's good for them.

[Shaun Puri]

It's like when I used to be in college and we would go out and, you know, I'd be at the bar and just a lot of strikeouts was going on, you know, pretty low batting average, pretty low slugging percentage, taking a lot of Ls.

[Sam Parr]

What was your called? Approach open.

[Shaun Puri]

What was like cold? Approach open. Okay, here we go. Ready? Sam, Just turn around.

[Sam Parr]

I'll be the girl. I'm going to be the girl.

[Shaun Puri]

You're just going to feel my body.

[Sam Parr]

So I was hanging out with this guy. Wait, hold on. What? What. What is this?

[Shaun Puri]

Oh, you didn't want to grind?

[Sam Parr]

Oh, no.

[Shaun Puri]

Okay, my bad. Totally thought you wanted to.

[Sam Parr]

That was it. The mistake grind with the immediate apology shtick.

[Shaun Puri]

That was if it was on the dance floor. All right, if we're not on the dance floor, if we're at the bar. Ready?

[Sam Parr]

Yeah. So I'm just turned around, I'm looking over here. I'm just hanging out.

[Shaun Puri]

Hey.

[Sam Parr]

Yeah.

[Shaun Puri]

Do they do drinks here? Just a question. Just an innocent question.

[Sam Parr]

That was it. Mine used to be habet. How many oceans are there? Five or seven?

[Shaun Puri]

Oh, wow, that's great. This was. I'm talking about pre reading the book, the game. Once I read the book the game, then it was, hey, you got it. You guys got to settle an argument here. And I just literally ripped the line from the book where it's like, my roommate's girlfriend is making him throw away all the pictures of his ex girlfriend in his apartment. Is that crazy or is she. We think she's crazy. Is that crazy? And they're like, no, you got to get rid of that. That's like, oh, do you want to be my girlfriend? No. Okay, never mind.

[Sam Parr]

Do you know what the worst line is? Is when I would steal all of the lines from the game, and then 1 out of 10 times a woman would reply and say, yeah, I read the game too, you douche. And it was just like, you go home. So sad. That was the worst.

[Shaun Puri]

I would have thought that worked. We have so much in common. We love the same books.

[Sam Parr]

I didn't have that turn shit into gold type of Persona back then. You know, I was.

[Shaun Puri]

There's a reason I was single for, like, not just all Four years of college. But even two years after college, like, it was. It was a long, long drought. I felt like the British East India Company just blocked through the drought.

[Sam Parr]

That's not exactly a drought. Cause the drought implies that that's not normal. Well, yeah, exactly.

[Shaun Puri]

I guess it's just a desert.

[Sam Parr]

Yes. What are some other ones? Wait, by the way, have you ever done this with a company?

[Shaun Puri]

What, Corporate espionage? Do you think I'm cool enough to do that?

[Sam Parr]

Like, my. My extent of it was like, having a friend at Facebook and them, like, telling me, like, what my competitors are doing. I've been there, done that a few times.

[Shaun Puri]

Yeah, yeah. No, I've never done anything this cool, I don't think. But, you know. Okay, I gotta tell you this British ECD company story. All right. So back in the day, China had like a monopoly on tea production. And this was a big problem. Tea was super popular. China, all the tea. And nobody could figure out how to make the tea. Nobody had the, like, the seeds. Nobody had any of the stuff. You needed to, like, try to break that. So they were all trading with China to get tea, but they didn't have anything to trade back with China. So there was these huge trade imbalances. And so basically Britain, I think, was trading like opium into to China as its only thing that could get into China. And China didn't like that. And it created what was called the first Opium War. And so there's literally a war broke out because of this trade imbalance with the tea. And so what happens is the British decide to do something about this. And so let me tell you this story real quick. So the East India Company, the British East India Company, hire this guy named Robert Fortune. He's a Scottish botanist and adventurer, and they paid him. They were like, you are going to infiltrate China and you are going to steal the tea industry secrets of China. And by the way, Google a picture of this guy, because I don't know how he pulled this off. He looks like a Scottish man, but he disguised himself as a Chinese merchant and went underground. He was wearing Chinese clothing, Chinese hairstyle. He traveled deep into China's tea region, which is actually off limits to foreigners. And he was able to get access in. And he studied tea production step by step. Everything from planting, harvesting, drying, packaging, all of it. He didn't just observe. He was able to collect thousands of tea plants, seeds.

[Sam Parr]

This guy was supposed to be Chinese.

[Shaun Puri]

This guy was supposed to be Chinese. I don't know how he did it, but, dude, he looks like me. He's you with sideburns?

[Sam Parr]

Yeah.

[Shaun Puri]

Sick chops.

[Sam Parr]

Wow.

[Shaun Puri]

He not only that, then he started recruiting, like turning other people. So he started recruiting Chinese tea growers, hiring them and persuading them to leave China secretly and relocate to India. And basically he pulled it off. He goes and he steals the trade secrets. He hires the tea growers, he smuggles them out of the country. He brings the seeds, the tools, the knowledge, the trade secrets. He gets to India and they start growing tea. And soon after that, India surpassed China in terms of its tea production, broke the Chinese monopoly on tea and prevented future wars. Actually de escalated the conflict because now there wasn't this huge trade imbalance and opium problem.

[Sam Parr]

That's insane that this guy pulled this off. How long was he in China for?

[Shaun Puri]

I think this was like a multi year thing.

[Sam Parr]

How exciting. That's a life worth living.

[Shaun Puri]

Let me give you some other ones. All right, so now let me give you a more modern example. Oracle versus Microsoft. Have you heard this story?

[Sam Parr]

No.

[Shaun Puri]

All right, so two giants, two successful companies. Microsoft, if you remember in the 90s, was doing antitrust cases and Bill Gates, there's videos of this on YouTube. He's like in depositions and they just were getting hauled in front of the antitrust committees and they had to defend themselves.

[Sam Parr]

So he was being accused of a monopoly, monopolistic behaviors.

[Shaun Puri]

And this really was a problem for Microsoft. It slowed them down. I think it's called like the lost decade, where basically like for a long period of time, Microsoft couldn't acquire companies. They couldn't, like if something got hot, they couldn't release a competitor and kind of use their distribution to win because they had just gone through this like, you know, antitrust process.

[Sam Parr]

They had to lay low.

[Shaun Puri]

They had to lay low, Exactly. And so Microsoft, while it's in this situation, Oracle hires all these private investigators to go and dig up dirt on Microsoft during this period of time. And it's found out. But what they were doing was pretty smart. Instead of digging up dirt on Microsoft, they were going to all these other companies that were supposed to be independent. Like they were kind of coming out and providing like testimonials or testimony in support of Microsoft. And it was like, oh, this independent council, like the, the independent, the independent Institute, the National Taxpayers Union, they're coming out in support of Microsoft here. And Larry Ellison from Oracle's like, nah, no way. And so Oracle hires these private investors to go dumpster diving. And so they're digging through the trash of these, of these independent organizations, finding links where they got Paid by Microsoft. And they get caught. They get caught doing this, but they're also caught that Microsoft funded these organizations. And so they go to Larry Ellison. He's like, look, I had nothing to do with this. I wasn't made aware of it till the end. And I agree this was a bit unsavory, but he goes, corporate espionage. This is a public service. We're doing our civic duty here. We are taking hidden information about how Microsoft is funding these supposed independent orgs, and we are making it public. We're doing God's work out here and just calling it public service. And doing his civic duty, I thought was an incredible spin.

[Sam Parr]

All right, my friends, I have exciting news for that business idea that's been sitting in your notes app. The Hustle, which is my old company, has partnered with indie hackers, one of my favorite websites, to launch a pitch competition. It's called the Hustle's Big Break, and it's a pitch competition with a simple premise. You tell us your business idea in 60 seconds or less, and the winner gets $5,000 to turn it into a reality. Here's how it works. Record a 60 second video pitch of your business idea, include your business name, description, revenue model and tagline, and finally, submit it at thehustle co bigbreak. And it all has to be done by April 4th. The winner gets $5,000 in cash to kickstart their business journey. Plus, we're gonna feature them in the Hustle's daily newsletter, read by around a million and a half people. And these are the smartest business and tech folks out there. The winner will be announced on April 11. So again, if you have a business idea, go to the Hustle Co slash big break. All right, back to the pod. The other day, an Elon Musk interview. In an Elon Musk interview, someone asked him, I think it was like Ted Cruz was like, who do you. You know, you're. A lot of people think you're smart. Who do you consider smart? And the first person he said was Larry Ellison.

[Shaun Puri]

Elon said that?

[Sam Parr]

Yeah. He goes, larry Elson. He goes, I think Larry Elson is one of the smarter people I work with. He said, you remember from Forrest Gump where he says, stupid is as stupid does. Elon goes, smart is as smart does. So he took the inverse of that line, which I thought would be funny. He goes, smart is smart does. And I think Larry Ellison might be the smartest person I know. And so it's pretty funny that I didn't up until Larry kind of got A little bit more front facing with some of these things. I didn't. I regarded him as like, just a guy who. He kind of just started early and became the best. I didn't realize how sharky. Not necessarily in a bad way that he actually was, though. Yeah.

[Shaun Puri]

How elite he is. Wow, that's amazing. Elon, I think, took some of his spin. Remember when he, like, he impregnated that woman who works with him, and he was just like, underpopulation is the biggest crisis we face. And turned it into, I'm saving the planet.

[Sam Parr]

Yeah.

[Shaun Puri]

And I was like, whoa, playa.

[Sam Parr]

Playa.

[Shaun Puri]

With no R at the end. Man, that is incredible. Like, can you imagine having the balls to just. To just come out and not just defend it, not deny it, but to claim that you're doing good Story. That's incredible.

[Sam Parr]

In high school, when you're hanging out with your buddies, smoking weed late at night, and you're just like, riffing and saying the dumb shit you're gonna do in the next morning when you're sober. Like, we're gonna. Dude, we're changing now. We're gonna get up and we're gonna, like, we're gonna start working out first thing in the morning. That's like a thing that Elon would say.

[Shaun Puri]

It is crazy. It's like, hey, like, don't you think it's kind of inappropriate? You know, she works with you. She's an executive company. Maybe there's an imbalance of power here. Like, are you concerned about this at all? He's like, I'm concerned. Holy shit. Nick Cannon just, like, writing notes out there. All right, here's some other ones. Coke versus Pepsi.

[Sam Parr]

Did Nick Cannon just catch a stray bullet on that one?

[Shaun Puri]

Yeah, he's like the icon for too many kids. Dude.

[Sam Parr]

Dude, say dates. So not Nick Cannon.

[Shaun Puri]

So 2006, Coke versus Pepsi. Another deal rippling. Microsoft, Oracle, Coke, Pepsi. These are all just like the legendary rivalries. So an EA at Coke who's disgruntled. This woman, Joya Williams, decides, you know what? Screw it. She leaves her post as a EA and she steals basically some trade secrets. She takes a can of their new product that's unreleased, and she writes a letter to Pepsi, and she says, I have the formula for Coke. Do you want the secret formula? And I have a new unreleased product. She sends a letter and she says, I'll give you the formula for a price. Guess what her price was?

[Sam Parr]

100 grand. A million? I don't know.

[Shaun Puri]

$1.5 million.

[Sam Parr]

And what year? 2006 all right, so about $3 million.

[Shaun Puri]

Today, Pepsi, being the good guy that it is, says, you know what? Not doing it. They tell Coke, they say, hey, you have this woman. She's trying to sell your formula. We don't want it. Me, you, and the FBI, let's take this woman down. And what they do is they set up a sting operation. And so she comes out and she's ready to sell a formula. They do a test payment for $4,000 to show that they're legit. They record her saying what she has and that she's doing this trade. And then they lock her up, they arrest her, and she goes to prison for eight years.

[Sam Parr]

Wow.

[Shaun Puri]

Isn't that crazy?

[Sam Parr]

Wow, that's a lot. Maybe like a few.

[Shaun Puri]

Maybe two months.

[Sam Parr]

Yeah, maybe. Maybe a few months. Dude, Pepsi, you guys suck.

[Shaun Puri]

Maybe promote her. I don't know. Eight years in prison seems like it was a lot for that. So, yeah, she. She got made an example out of.

[Sam Parr]

That's crazy. This was, like, a recent story, 2006. So it looks like her boyfriend was, like, also in on it. Like, they. Like, this was like a. This is like a legit scheme. Yeah. That sucks. I like, when I hear Joya, I think of, like, an old woman who's like, oh, Coke, you didn't give me a raise. I'm gonna get back. You know what I mean? Like, I think that there was more to it.

[Shaun Puri]

All right, also, what do you think about Pepsi turning down the secret formula and the trade secrets and deciding to take her down because what are you.

[Sam Parr]

Going to do with that? Pepsi's like, what am I supposed to do? Make my taste like Coke.

[Shaun Puri]

It's just sugar.

[Sam Parr]

Yeah, Like. Like, I don't know what you expect me to do with that. With that, because, like, the secret or the. The whole thing with Coke is that like, only, like, a few people have access to it. I don't. Who the fuck knows, dude? There's no way that's true, by the way.

[Shaun Puri]

Let me give you a couple other quick ones. Uber and Waymo. Do you remember this one? You probably remember this.

[Sam Parr]

Yeah. The main character of Waymo stole a bunch of stuff from Google and Uber was going to use it, and now Uber got sued.

[Shaun Puri]

Yeah. So, exactly. So basically, Anthony Levandowski was this guy who worked at Waymo, and Travis Kalanick recruits him to Uber, wants him to set up the autonomous driving stuff at Uber. He comes from. He was at Waymo, which is the autonomous driving thing inside of Google. He apparently downloaded 14,000 confidential files on the way out Maybe a bit much. Maybe a little too many. Too many files and could have got away with a little less. They have the info. He ends up getting fired from Uber. Uber has to settle. Uber settles for 0.34% of Uber that Google owned, which is about $250 million of stock back in 2018, which I think is closer to a billion dollars now of Uber stock. And he had to go to prison for 18 months. But then Trump pardoned him. Trump pardoned him early, and so he got out.

[Sam Parr]

Why?

[Shaun Puri]

He didn't want him to serve all 18 months, I guess.

[Sam Parr]

Well, I understand that's why a part of it exists.

[Shaun Puri]

He's like, anthony's a big football fan. I don't want him to miss the Super Bowl. It's only once a year. Let's get him out.

[Sam Parr]

So where is he now?

[Shaun Puri]

This is a good question.

[Sam Parr]

Like, I wonder, is he, like, damaged goods or is surely not like some. Some VC was like, d. I don't care. You're like Martha Stewart. You're now cooler.

[Shaun Puri]

He's the CEO of Pollen Mobile. Has been for three years.

[Sam Parr]

Okay.

[Shaun Puri]

I don't know what that is.

[Sam Parr]

Okay, these are great stories. I'm in on it. Do you want to hear something that's related to security and also, I think, is almost equally exciting?

[Shaun Puri]

Yeah. Wait, wait. Before we finish, I just have one more little tidbit. The US this is actually baked into the DNA of the United States. I don't know if, you know, espionage, corporate espionage. And so America's founding father and first U.S. treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, decided that. Basically realized that the Europe was ahead of the US and actually decided to encourage intellectual piracy. Doesn't all crime sound better when you just give it like a. Like a longer. Like, more letters, make it. Make it sound better? And so what he said was he advocated to reward those who would bring improvements and secrets of extraordinary value into the United States, which made. Which was instrumental in making the US a safe haven for industrial spies. And they did this guy, Samuel Slater.

[Sam Parr]

Samuel Slater, my boy. I love Samuel Slater. One of the greatest stories of all time. What's his story?

[Shaun Puri]

So he brought British textile technology to the U.S. what does that mean?

[Sam Parr]

Is he, like, they claim, sort of. Actually, they claim he was, like, had a photographic memory. This is like the story that you're told as a kid, like, in history class, which is that he had a photographic memory, but basically he was from England, and he memorized and partially wrote down how factories in England worked. He came to America and he helped reinvent American Factories, which spurred the industrial revolution, which arguably made America what it is.

[Shaun Puri]

Are we pro espionage? I think I might be. So by the way, this guy's nickname, top five nickname. Do you know Samuel Slater's nickname?

[Sam Parr]

No.

[Shaun Puri]

Slater the traitor. Yeah, that's what they called him in the uk.

[Sam Parr]

Yes. But he was, like, welcomed with open arms here. We loved him. So, yes, Samuel Slater's sort of an American hero.

[Shaun Puri]

That's crazy. At the age of 21. So he literally prison breaked it. He photographically memorized all these trade secrets and then came to America and gave them to us and spurred the industrial revolution and made America great again.

[Sam Parr]

Well, made America great for the first time. Yeah. For the first time. Yeah. The inaugural Make America.

[Shaun Puri]

Make America great for once.

[Sam Parr]

Yeah.

[Shaun Puri]

Those hats are out of style.

[Sam Parr]

That's actually pretty funny. Yeah, he made America great. I have another story. So last year, there's two parts of the story. Last year, we talked about this company, Wiz. Wiz is a cybersecurity company. To most of our listeners, we mostly talk about small business stuff. These guys are. Not that they're enterprise cybersecurity company, but it has two amazing components. So one part of the story that you talked about. And by the way, these guys whiz. Remember when we did Sarah's list? They were on Sarah's list. So we kind of. We didn't exactly nail it because it was. Yeah. A little pat on the back.

[Shaun Puri]

I don't know if the mic picking.

[Sam Parr]

That one up because they were already, like, kicking ass. And I don't know what the multiple was on when we named them, but it was at least double. But there's two amazing stories about this. The first is how fast they grew. I want to, like, show you how fast they grew. But before we talk about how fast they grew, we got to talk about how they started. And you talked about this.

[Shaun Puri]

Wait, you buried the lead. They're getting bought for $32 billion.

[Sam Parr]

That's where they got. They got bought for $32 billion. Sorry. So this company, Wiz, is getting bought for $32 billion. The story of how they started is amazing. The story of how fast they grew, also amazing. It just happened the other day. But listen to this. So you, I think, are the one who brought this up. Were you the one who talked about this guy Gilly?

[Shaun Puri]

Yes.

[Sam Parr]

So Gilly is a Israeli cybersecurity veteran. So he's exited a few companies in the cybersecurity space. And he was also part of this elite group of cyber security specialists in the Israeli military called 8200, I believe it's called.

[Shaun Puri]

And he invented captcha. He invented like a certain type of firewall. He invented a lot of shit. He's an og, like the OG is OG in cyber security.

[Sam Parr]

And so he has this thing, I believe it's called Cyber starts. You can call it an incubator or a VC firm, but here's how it works. So he teams up with a lot of young ex military. 8200, I think that's. 8200 is the name of the part of the military where it's the cyber security specialist. So you leave that after you finish your compulsory service, you go to Gilly, you go, gilly, sign me up. I want to start a company. And so what Gilly has done is he has this fund and in the fund is dozens or even hundreds I believe, of cybersecurity officers at large companies, not just Israeli companies, but American companies. And what they do, these cybersecurity officers, yes, they say, here's the problems I need solved, Gilly, so go have your young founders create products to solve these problems and I will be your first customer. And Gilly goes to these founders and goes, guys, I'm going to invest in your company. Here's the idea to get you started. I guarantee you 2 million in revenue in the first year. And that's amazing because these companies will sell or get. They can raise their next round of funding at 20 times 2 million in revenue. So with 2 million in revenue the first year, they can raise money at $40 million valuation. That's a no brainer. Now what's pretty controversial is these CISOs, these Chief Information officers at these companies are. What's the ciso? A Chief Information and Security Officer.

[Shaun Puri]

Information.

[Sam Parr]

They own pieces of Gilly's fund. And anytime one of these startups does well and succeeds, they get paid out. And so it's this very insular group of a lot of Israeli guys. So they have that bond over that. They have the bond over being Jewish and they have the bond that they probably all came from a very similar part of the Israeli army. So there's this like bond after bond after bond and they're like, yeah, look, we'll help you, we'll get you off the ground and then we're going to get the money just, it just flows around nicely. And so that's what he did with these guys, whiz. And isn't that a crazy setup?

[Shaun Puri]

It's amazing. So I'm going to read you this. The numbers from the from his cyber starts fund are phenomenal. This was about 6, 7 years old. Now it only has 22 companies, but the 22 companies combined value was 35 billion at the time. Now Wiz just sold for 32 billion itself. So it says 5 of the 22 are unicorns. So that's an extremely high hit rate. So, you know, a normal VC fund, I think between 1 and 3% of the companies will become unicorns. YC, which is, you know, the best accelerator in the world ever. I think their, their number is between 6 and 10%. And so this guy's like double YC, right? So five of the 22 are unicorns. Four of them sold in the last 12 months for a total of 1.5 billion. And then it says in all three of his funds, he shows an IRR. So his internal rate of return of more than 100%, which is obviously fantastic. Not a single company in the portfolio has closed to date. And he basically beats every VC fund in terms of his performance.

[Sam Parr]

His first fund, he turned $54 million into $1 billion. That was his stake.

[Shaun Puri]

Yeah.

[Sam Parr]

Crazy, right?

[Shaun Puri]

You described the model well. So basically he's got this network of CISOs, and they're called the cyber start. Cyber Cyber Starts like CISO Group. And they basically all talk, they say what problems they have, but they also get pitched solutions and it's like kind of the handpicked solution. They all start using it. They all have a share in the, in the fund. So if those companies take off, they win. It's this kind of like, I mean, there's definitely a conflict of interest with this, let's be clear. But it's wow, what a powerful network and what a powerful way to use a network. You know, like James Courier came on the podcast. I just did an interview with him. I don't think it's out yet, but he's got this whole thing. His fund is called network effects. And he has this blog post called your life on network, your life on network effects or your life is a network effect. And it's basically like everything you do from the college you choose, you're not just choosing a school, you're picking a network to join. Like I joined the Duke alumni network when I picked Duke, right? When you move to San Francisco, you're picking a network of people to join. When you pick a company, you're picking a network of people of people to join. And those are going to be the co workers and future opportunities that open up for you. And so once you realize like your life is dictated by networks. The church, the religion you're in, that's a network. The language you speak, that's a network. The country you live in, that's a network. And so similarly here, this is like such a powerful example of this guy having this network dating back to the Israeli kind of like security intelligence groups, to the network of, you know, Fortune 500 CISOs, how valuable that is. That network turned out to be worth tens of billions of dollars.

[Sam Parr]

And it's pretty amazing. He's so precise about this. So look at the first YouTube link that I posted in our MDB docum. So basically there's this video that has 400 or 800 views, less than a thousand. It has 528 views. Do you see that? 528 view video. In this video, he breaks down where he says, he goes, I've done this 35 times. I have a nine to 18 month journey that I use to achieve product market fit before building any cybersecurity company. And he goes through the key phases, which is basically like exploring different pain points and how to find them. You spend seven months developing the right solution that mere mortals can use. And then here are the questions that you need to ask. Prospects. Here's how you find prospects.

[Shaun Puri]

What a great find. Only 500 views on this guy who's given out like, you know, like a billion dollar playbook.

[Sam Parr]

And he goes, he talks about how he's gonna, you want to accelerate the timeline and what the benchmarks is. He gives this whole playbook that he uses and he goes, I've done this 35 times and we've turned this into billions of dol. It's incredible. Now here we are with Wiz. So Wiz was founded by a guy named. What is his first name? Asaf. Is it Asaf or his last name's Rappaport. But he basically had a company that he had previously sold for something like $350 million. And he did it when he was like a kid still. So when you think what someone does that, well, why on earth are you gonna join this thing? Well, he did join this thing and he left Microsoft and even explains, he's like, he sold this company Microsoft and he left and he was like, I'm afraid to leave Microsoft. I'm not sure what to do. So he joins this thing. And listen to the timeline that Wiz went through. So Wiz was founded in.

[Shaun Puri]

When you say he joined the thing, he joined what?

[Sam Parr]

Gillies? Cyber Starts. Sorry?

[Shaun Puri]

Oh, he joined Cyber Starts.

[Sam Parr]

He joined Cyber Starts. Gilly's thing. And he starts the company in January of 2020. And they go through the. And because he was already successful and he was part of this ghillie crew, right off the bat, they raised $21 million in funding and they're able to hire a team of 10 to 20 people. By December of that first year, they raised $100 million. So fast forward one year to March. So we're still in winter of 2021. That's one year after founding. They're only at 40 employees, but they are at roughly $100 million of AR. Is that crazy?

[Shaun Puri]

So that's breakneck speed, right? Like, this is. By the way, there's a lot of. We do this, but there's a lot of people who are like, dude, venture money, don't. Don't raise too much money. You know, growth, growth, growth. It's a problem. You know, you got a bootstrap, you gotta, you know, you know, people. There's different ways to win. This is a great example of like, no, raise a bunch of money out the gate, blitz, scale this thing and keep raising money and just go for the huge prize.

[Sam Parr]

And I'm going to. And I have, like a takeaway on that. But two years after the starting the company, we are now in winter of 2021, they raised $250 million at a $6 billion valuation. This is a handful of months after they've already reached 100 million in revenue with 40 people 18 months in. Now we're in the year 2022. This is the second year of business they are at. I believe that, yeah. Second year of business, they're at 100 employees. And by the end, by the end of that year, they're at 400 employees. Now we're going to fast forward each year. Here's how fast they grew the revenue after 100 million in revenue. By year three, they're at 200 million in revenue. By year four, they're at 500 million in revenue. And by that same year, they sell for $32 billion. Is that insane? How on earth can you imagine going zero to five years in and you're creating between 500 and a billion in revenue with only like five or six hundred employees?

[Shaun Puri]

I was watching a clip of their CRO talking and he was like, we were growing so fast that the only reliable benchmark we could use for how much to grow our headcount on our sales team was just. He's like. They were like, did you use, you know, like pipeline leads? Kind of like, how did you do you do market analysis, market studies. He goes, we just looked at how full the calendars were and he's basically like, for every product line and every category, we just looked at how like the calendar density of all of our sales reps. And in areas where the calendar density was high, we knew that area is working. Hire more people, Just hire more people based on the density. And we measured our calendar density of sales reps for booked calls, for people looking for demos. And that's how they knew that was the only reliable leading indicator they could figure out for growth.

[Sam Parr]

And if you look at their Glassdoor review, the CEO has like, people rave about them. And like, you could say, well, I don't know, is Glassdoor even accurate? Not sure.

[Shaun Puri]

If you're the only dude who looks at Glassdoor, they have one web visitor a month and it's you, man.

[Sam Parr]

I'm telling you, you can get so much insight. So if you go to Glassdoor, you sort by negative and you look at the negative reviews and then you look at the positive reviews and the truth is in the middle. And I'm telling you, you can learn so much information about what people are complaining about.

[Shaun Puri]

All right, I got a public service announcement for all the tech founders that are listening to this. Listen, job number one for you is to get customers. And ideally, the bigger the customers, the better. And I know when I was trying to do that, we would get somebody interested. Oh, man, there's a big Fortune 500 company, or it's a company that's raised hundreds of millions of dollars. They want to work with us. This is so exciting. And then we hit the wall. And the wall was the security and compliance team. And all of a sudden we could not land our biggest customers just because we were shooting ourselves in the foot by not being security ready and compliant. And so if you want to solve this, use Vanta. Vanta is an all in one solution. It helps you get audit ready and it's quick, it's painless, it's easy. They're the number one guys at doing this. There are 8,000 companies that use them. YC companies use them, we use them. And so if you want Vanta to help simplify your security and compliance program, to help you streamline anything, take all those manual security tasks and automate them, you should use Vanta. If you listen to this, you actually get a thousand dollars off Vanta too. So we got a deal for you. Go to vanta.com million. That's V A N T A.com vantage/million. Use Vanta that's what all the cool kids are doing. Were you ever on Glassdoor with any of your companies? Like, was the hustle on Glassdoor?

[Sam Parr]

Yeah. And I didn't look because the only people that left reviews were the people I fired.

[Shaun Puri]

Correct. And do you think that they had an accurate view of, like, the company?

[Sam Parr]

Well, it's an accurate view of the people who disliked me. Like, so. But. But there's like. There's like, so, like what? I don't even want to read it. But what's it say? Does it say, I'm trying to go, I don't know if we have one anymore because we haven't been in business for, like, independently for years. They could have shut it down, but, like, it was probably like, the management is good, but the CEO, like, moves too fast and, like, is not communicating well, which is, like, probably true.

[Shaun Puri]

Too handsome, Too ripped. Moves too fast.

[Sam Parr]

Well, like, I would, like, make decisions. Like, I'm like, intimidatingly smart. I would, like, make decisions quickly. And I would say, this is what we're doing now. And I just wouldn't, like, communicate with my managers. I would just say, this is it.

[Shaun Puri]

I just can't believe you like reading the. The reviews of whiny employees of other companies. I just like, what. What do you really get out of it?

[Sam Parr]

Like, it reveals so much truth. Like, it could. It could say, like, that thing you.

[Shaun Puri]

Said is true about, like, every company. You know, like, yeah, but like, CEO likes to move fast.

[Sam Parr]

It could be like, let. Let's say there's this new startup and it says, like, you know, the market. Like, like we were. We were going to do like a better Up. You know what Better up is? It's like a coaching platform for Before Hampton, we were thinking about getting into that, and I read the reviews of BetterUp and the reviews were like, business boomed during COVID but now we can't get anyone to sign up for online coaching. So that's like an interesting, like, macro insight into the market of coaching. Like, it boomed during COVID I like that. And so you'll see that on, like, four different coaching platforms. Glassdoor review or like, you know, our valuation, if you see this in like five different ones, is way too high. I have no idea how we're ever going to grow in this. That's not something that you want to see on four different glass doors of companies in the same industry. So you get like, insights like that. Or it could be like, CEO's amazing at press. Don't believe everything you see. And if you see A bunch of those. And I think to myself I've been like basing a lot of my insights off of public articles. I don't know if I should actually do that. You know what I mean?

[Shaun Puri]

Yeah, I just, I, I personally wouldn't do like, you know, I personally wouldn't trust it because I think you're going to get a lot of basically false negatives in this that would spook you. So for example, but you ever work, did you ever work at a company that had Blind?

[Sam Parr]

I didn't work at a company when that existed. I know.

[Shaun Puri]

Or like I used to read, probably had one, you probably just didn't, didn't join it. But like Blind is basically a private social networks. So let's say you work at a big company, there's an app called Blind. You log in, you have to use your, I think you have to show that you have a work email there. So like only people who work at the company can see it and can post it there.

[Sam Parr]

Still exists, but it's all anonymous.

[Shaun Puri]

Yeah, it still exists and it's all anonymous. And it's basically just like a back channel for people to bitch and moan and complain. And then the upside would be that they, you know, there's kind of like a whistleblowery type of thing where you can, you could call out hard truths that you're not going to call out up. But the reality is that it was all just complaints. And the problem was it was misguided complaints. So like for example, at Twitch, it's like I was on the exec team, so I knew, I knew all the numbers of the company. I knew what was going on, I knew the strategy, I knew who was smart, I knew who wasn't because I'm sitting with these people every day. And then you read a blind. A review on Blind or like a post on Blind from someone who's like a, you know, just like a mid level employee, you know, some engineering manager somewhere. They would be often be like, oh, we're, you know, there was no way we're going to hit our numbers. I'm like, dude, we're hitting our numbers. What are you talking about? I could see the numbers. You don't have access to the numbers. So you're just like just talking out your ass basically. And the loudest, most sort of extreme voices would get the most play, right? They would get the most attention. And so it's the same way like when Dropbox launches on Hacker News and the top comment is like, no one's ever going to Use this and he can give you a highly intelligent breakdown of why nobody's ever going to use Dropbox. And the Dropbox becomes like so big. Right? So I think like a lot of these message board, anonymous message board type things are too biased towards negativity from people who don't have real information and are too prone to false negatives to be trusted. So like for every example you could find where you get signal, you're going to find counter signal. Which means to me, I can't use this because I can't differentiate signal and counter signal properly. Only hindsight, you know.

[Sam Parr]

No, I think if you read enough of them, I think you can start it. Like, like for example, if you're trying to understand like a macro trend or industry analysis, I think you can see trends in the glassdoor reviews. And I think that it could help paint a picture but not be. It's not a fact, it's just like a, is this, like, is this, does this jive with other sources that I'm learning about? So that's why I'm on board with.

[Shaun Puri]

It, by the way. Agree to disagree. Like, I think you're right. I think you're right. I don't think you're wrong. I think there's some problems with it, but there's some, some utility. You're the only guy I know who uses it, which I find like, funny.

[Sam Parr]

Well, like, like I wanted to learn about the CEO and I'm like, what makes a CEO so great? And I read an article about him and it was like, don't mistake this guy's gentleness for ruthlessness.

[Shaun Puri]

It's a. Don't mistake Assaf's gentleness for someone who is willing to play by the rules.

[Sam Parr]

Yeah. And I was like, that's like an interesting title. So this guy's like, must be like a really nice guy, but he's ruthless and he's kind of a killer. That's like an interesting trait. Like, is there, like, is there, is there like anything I can learn from his personality? And I went and read his glassdoor reviews and he had glowing reviews as a CEO where people are like, nice guy, but total hard ass. And I just thought like that is a, that, that mix those mixes of those two traits. When you mix like beat your, you could be polite and like hardcore. I respect that. I like that. Is this a person I want to learn for, learn from? That was kind of like my insight from looking at the Glass door reviews and also reading interviews, things like that.

[Shaun Puri]

Right, right.

[Sam Parr]

And so I just thought it was fascinating. But we had Mark Laurie of the pod. Mark started Diapers.com, which he grew, like, during, like, the dot com boom. And he sold for hundreds of millions of dollars. Then he did the same with Jet.com, sold that for billions of dollars. Now he's got a new thing. Have you seen this new thing? It's called, I think, Wonder.

[Shaun Puri]

Wonder. Yeah.

[Sam Parr]

And he had this thing when he came on the pod, by the way, when he came on the pod, we could tell that he didn't have a laptop. And we were like, like, are you calling from your iPhone? And he was like, yeah, I don't. I don't use laptops. And we were like, is that like a billionaire thing? And he was like.

[Shaun Puri]

He was awesome, by the way. I love that guy's energy. Like, he was super positive, super energetic, super optimistic.

[Sam Parr]

He was great.

[Shaun Puri]

Charismatic. He was fun. He was a fun.

[Sam Parr]

I would love to have him on.

[Shaun Puri]

We got to get him back on.

[Sam Parr]

Well, on the pod, we asked him how he. How he did it, and he had one phrase that has always stuck with me because it was almost like saying, I'll explain why it stuck with me, but it was called vision capital and people. He goes, those are the three things I care about. He goes, I find a really big idea and a big opportunity. I raise a ton of money, and then I go and hire the best people, and I pay them all of that money that I raised, and I sort of get out of the way and let them do the work. And I have a bootstrap company. You have only done bootstrap, mostly done bootstrap companies. It's really hard to do that because you don't have a lot of money to pay people. So you're doing the work. So it feels like a grind. And this company, Wiz, is sort of a good example of the founders. They raised. They found amazing opportunity. They raised shitloads of money. And this is a perfect example of how it's done when you have a really big idea and you have a really big opportunity and you have a ton of money. And I think it's as hard as a bootstrapped startup. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's that they're of equal challenging and stressfulness equal.

[Shaun Puri]

I don't know. This scaling at breakneck speed seems a lot more challenging to me.

[Sam Parr]

I think if you had a small bootstrap startup that was growing quickly, you would feel a similar amount of stress. But there is no.

[Shaun Puri]

That's true.

[Sam Parr]

But there is no chance that you would have a $32 billion exit in five years.

[Shaun Puri]

One of the funny things about life is that if you decide to start a business, you're going to spend, let's just call it 10 hours a day, maybe 12 early on, just obsessed. Your mind is just obsessed with this company. 10 hours a day, 12 hours a day, every single day. It doesn't matter if that's a taco truck. It doesn't matter if it's WIZ selling for 32 billion. It's still going to take 10 to 12 hours a day of your time and mind share. It's still going to stress you out pretty much equally. If you are doing a thing that's 1 million in ARR, and you're trying to pay the bills and you're trying to pay yourself and you're trying to grow and you're trying to do all those things, well, guess what? These guys are also trying to pay the bills, trying to grow, trying to do all that stuff. So you're right, like the stress levels are more based on you as a person than the, than the company that you're doing. And the time is equal whether, whether you have, you know, doesn't matter how many zeros are at the end of the size of the business. This was probably one of the most important lessons my dad taught me. He was like, my first, my first business was in the restaurant industry and my dad worked in oil and gas his whole life. He worked for bp and so he was like, yeah, the energy industry is just like the restaurant industry. You're going to spend the same 10 hours a day, except in this one there's three extra zeros on the end of every project. And so would you rather spend that same time on a small project or a bigger project? Like that's, that's what you're deciding between here and.

[Sam Parr]

I was like, which is sort of hard to hear, right? Like you're like, I'm dedicating my life to this thing, you're dedicating your life to this thing, but your prize is so much bigger.

[Shaun Puri]

I didn't think it was hard to hear. I was like, oh, that's the truth. Okay, cool, thank you. Okay, what do I do? And then I pretty much immediately switched and went and did a biotech thing with him in Australia. I was pretty ready to hear the truth. I think that most people, you're right. Don't like to hear the truth. I like to hear the truth because I realized that basically the truth, while short term painful, is actually long term less Painful. And I think most people don't like the short term pain. They're willing to have long term pain.

[Sam Parr]

Have you been following these guys, like, getting acquired? Was there anything that you liked about the story or that stuck out to you?

[Shaun Puri]

Well, remember when we first brought this up? We first brought this up because Wiz was rumored to be selling for 23 billion. And then something happened where it was like, no, that's just a rumor, or Google couldn't do it because of antitrust or for some reason the deal wasn't going to happen, happen. And if you remember, Assaf came out and he tweeted this like, kind of like, badass memo where it was like, first they leaked the deal, first deal information got leaked. There are rumors about an acquisition for 23 billion. Then he releases this thing and he's like, we're not looking to get acquired. Let me be. I think he said, like, let me cut to the chase. Our next milestones are a billion in ARR and an ipo. And everyone's like, yeah, that's it. That guy's a killer. And most of us were like, most of, most of us on the sideline were like, oh, nice negotiating. Like, pretty sure it's going to sell for, I don't know, 25, 30 billion in the next. In the next 12 months. And that's exactly what happened. It sold for 30 billion at 32 billion in the next 12 months. It like came exactly true. What a lot of people noticed, which.

[Sam Parr]

Was like, but what was the first offer? The first offer was like 20 or 18.

[Shaun Puri]

Got it.

[Sam Parr]

So we got $10 billion, 10 extra billion dollars.

[Shaun Puri]

And I don't even know that the 23 billion was on the table. Maybe the 23 billion was what he wanted at the time. And they continue to grow. And this is all part of the negotiation, right? It's not. This didn't. I don't think this leaked because somebody really just wanted the world to know. You know, this is part of, a. Part of a public negotiation. It's a price setting, it's an anchoring. It's getting the second bidder to up their bid. There's a whole bunch of stuff happening there. And when a CEO's like, we want to be independent, and it's like, yeah, you do. But if the price is right, we'll see what happens. And almost always once the price is right, they do it.

[Sam Parr]

I love hearing about this story. I'm very excited. The time that we've worked on this podcast, this guy has built and sold a $32 billion company.

[Shaun Puri]

Well, when you put it like that, yeah.

[Sam Parr]

But does he have 650,000 subscribers on YouTube? Probably not.

[Shaun Puri]

And now he will try to. I bet you this guy's gonna get into podcasting. That was the funniest tweet I saw the other day. It goes, even kings and billionaires want to be podcasters. And I was like, it's true, dude. Like, you see, you know, whether it's billionaires on the all in podcast or, you know, Bill Gurley in his podcast, you have, dude, Elon is tweeting like crazy and trying to be. Trying to get his word out. There you see Gavin Newsom starting his new podcast. They all want what we got, Sam. They all want what we got, and we'll sell it to them for 32 billion.

[Sam Parr]

It's always been this way. You know, you look at, like, who has bought Time magazine and with Washington Post and Bezos, you know, king. Or once you've. Once you're rich, you always want to be king. And to be king oftentimes is to own a media company for some reason. It's been that way for. For hundreds of years.

[Shaun Puri]

Yeah, it's basically just like, there's three buckets. If you're rich, but. But lack status, you're going to chase status. If you're high status but no money, you're going to chase money. And if you have rich and status, you're going to chase power. Those are the three. You will fill those up. Like somebody. I have a friend who's. Who knows Elon, and he was telling me, he's like, elon gets all this criticism right now for backing Trump and Doge and all this stuff. Stuff. And the thing people say is, like, you know, he's doing this to make like. He's doing this to, like, give Tesla or whatever an unfair advantage. He's doing this to enrich himself. And he's like, are you an idiot? He's like, he's not doing this to enrich himself. He wants status. Like. Like, not that. Oh, he's doing this altruistically, but he wants status. That's, of course, what people want when they. When they're. When they have the money, they want the status, and when they have the status, they want the power. Like, those are the three, like, things that draw people to do crazy stuff. Yeah, he wants something, but it's not money.

[Sam Parr]

Yeah, he's got. I think at this point, when you have that much money, more money is probably boring. His father did a good thing on DJ Vlad where he was talking about how he was like, Elon. I knew after he sold Zip two that he wouldn't stop until he was number one, the richest person in the world. He's like, yeah. He goes, I. He goes, I knew that was, that's what he wanted to do. And he would never stop until he was number one. I could tell he was like that since he was a kid.

[Shaun Puri]

Wait, so Elon's dad did an interview with Vlad tv?

[Sam Parr]

Yeah. Didn't we talk about this? Yeah.

[Shaun Puri]

What else was in this? This is incredible.

[Sam Parr]

So Vlad TV, part of Black YouTube. One of my favorite niches of YouTube. He had what's Elon's dad's name?

[Shaun Puri]

I don't know. Or something like that.

[Sam Parr]

Forget his name. He had his dad on the other day and DJ Vlad is weird. He never just releases the whole episode.

[Shaun Puri]

Errol Musk.

[Sam Parr]

Errol. He like releases like clips and he's been releasing clips over the past month of this interview. And he talks about what Elon was like as a kid and how like, are the rumors true that you are rich? And it sounds like this guy and Elon are exactly the same. Where he made some money and then he's like, we're gonna spend it all buying this farm and turn this farm into a thing. And it went broke. And he's like, well, I'm convinced some other people to give me money. We're gonna start this new thing. And they. That worked. And he went rich and bust like constantly. And he was like, I loaned Elon money to start Zip2 and that turned into $30 million. And I knew when he made that money, he was never going to stop until he was number one. And he just tells these crazy stories along the way.

[Shaun Puri]

Dude, we need to do a whole reacts video. Was the interview good?

[Sam Parr]

It's pretty good. It's shocking that like if my father said any of this shit publicly. It's weird, dude. It makes. It's very like they talk, talk exactly the same. The way they're. They're two.

[Shaun Puri]

And all the comments are like his laugh is a DNA test in itself. Or they're timestamping and it says, I swear this is Elon. The face mimics it. The way he laughs, the way he rolls his eyes. I could see Elon here. This is, this is a. This laugh is a paternity test.

[Sam Parr]

Like the spacing in words. You know how Elon talks slow. He has like a very like unique structure. How he talks. It's exactly the same. And his dad, dad is insane by the Way. Like, there's like some crazy story about how he is now married to his stepdaughter. Like, he does some wacky ass.

[Shaun Puri]

He's married to his stepdaughter.

[Sam Parr]

Something weird like that. Yeah.

[Shaun Puri]

He has a kid with a stepdaughter.

[Sam Parr]

Yeah. And there's a. And there's like, just when he's talking, you see, I understand why the children who you raised, why they're insane and why they're ultra. Like, in order to be ultra successful, you have to have some type of, like, weird, like, daddy issue. And I see him and I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I get why you have a daddy issue because you're insane. Like, he reveals stuff. Like, he'll be like, yeah, Elon, like, was crying to me when he was like 23. And I thought, how weak. Like, he, like, will tell a story where he's like, disrespecting his son in front of everyone. And I'm like, oh, you're an asshole. That's why your son behaves this way sometimes. It's like a very interesting interview and it has been totally under talked about.

[Shaun Puri]

Yeah. This is crazy. This is a two and a half hour interview.

[Sam Parr]

Oh, did he release the whole thing finally? When did that get released? Normally, when he normally does, like, clips. Like, he releases clips.

[Shaun Puri]

It's a two and a half hour interview released a month ago.

[Sam Parr]

How many views does it have?

[Shaun Puri]

171,000.

[Sam Parr]

That's it?

[Shaun Puri]

Yeah. Just to put that into perspective here, DJ Vlad's most popular interview is with. Let's see, who's he got here? Boosie. Boosie has six. Six and a half million views. Cardi B, 5.7 million.

[Sam Parr]

I mean, Boozy's a good. A good. Listen, it's a great interview, baby.

[Shaun Puri]

Five million.

[Sam Parr]

So we're gonna have to, like, watch the whole thing. But there's like, crazy good insight into all this. And like, my takeaway from all this is like, it's not worth being successful if you and your father are behave this way to one another. Like, it's very strange to see. Like, you don't have to be a psychologist to like, watch this and be like, like, I. I understand why this family screwed up.

[Shaun Puri]

Yeah. Messed up family. Okay. Wow, that's amazing. All right. Corporate esp, corporate espionage stories. You got what you wanted. Every. Remember, everything on this podcast is allegedly. And this is a comedy podcast. Thank you very much. Don't come after us.

[Sam Parr]

All right, that's it. That's a pod.

[Unknown]

I feel like I can rule the world I know I could be what I want to I put my all in it like no days off on the road let's travel Never looking back.

[Shaun Puri]

Hey, Sean here. I want to take a minute to tell you a David Ogilvy story. One of the great ad men, he said, remember, the consumer is not a moron. She's your wife. You wouldn't lie to your own wife, so don't lie to mine. And I love that. You guys, you're my family. You're like my wife. And I won't lie to you either. So I'll tell you the truth. Truth for every company I own right now, six companies, I use Mercury for all of them. So I'm proud to partner with Mercury because I use it for all of my banking needs across my personal account, my business accounts, and anytime I start a new company, it's my first move. I go open up a Mercury account. I'm very confident in recommending it because I actually use it. I've used it for years. It is the best product on the market. So if you want to be like me and 200,000 other ambitious founders, go to mercury.com and apply in minutes. And remember, Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group and Evolve bank and Trust Members. Fdic. All right, back to the episode.