My First Million
00:18:16 · Sam Parr, Shaan Puri
[00:18:16] S0: Dude, the guy who started it was a quant at Citadel in Bridgewater. [00:18:21] S1: Yeah. No no surprise. But there's a bunch of these, dude. Like, Logan Paul launched his own called Rip It. This is like a mega mega, like, you know, fad right now. Collector Crypt, what he did was he he kind of was... I think they might have been the first, but definitely they they benefited from this, what they call the vending machine thing where they they buy it back. They were doing something like $50 a month, and now it's 25,000,000 a month now. [00:18:45] S0: How did you hear about this? [00:18:48] S1: I was at a dinner and somebody was talking about Triumph doing a billion dollars in revenue. Now for an app to do a billion dollars in revenue is extremely rare, especially an app I've never heard of. You know what I mean? Like Snapchat does what? Like, 4,000,000,000 something like that? And, you know, it's not... Like, this is like the size of the social apps that you can count on your, you know, on two hands that you've... We've all heard of household names. And so I was like, how is this app I've never heard of doing this in a year? And then when I heard, oh, they're basically doing the gotcha mechanics. So have you ever heard of gotcha games? [00:19:20] S0: Mhmm. No. But And [00:19:21] S1: and it's not gotcha like gotcha, but it kinda is. It's gotcha, g a c h a. It's a Japanese term. [00:19:29] S0: Oh. And
00:19:30 · Shaan Puri
[00:19:30] S1: so, basically, what they would do is they had these kind of mystery unboxings. So you would buy, like, a mystery ball. You would unbox it. You would get something, and then you would kinda go again, and you try again. And it... It's a sort of, like, toy form of gambling. And gotcha got so popular in Japan that they had to ban it. I think it's, like, outlawed by law at this point. Now American games started to steal this. So if you've ever played, like, Overwatch or different things like that, they would have loot boxes. Same thing. You open up a box. You might get the rare skin. You might get the common skin, but it's very easy to... Very addictive to just put in some credits into the machine and start opening up a bunch of packs. And FIFA started doing this. A bunch of people started doing this. All these games started copying this gotcha mechanic. Well, the mobile games have figured this out even more, and the the thing with the collectors is they attached real money to the other side. Because if you happen to get a real thing, it's not like getting a skin in Overwatch where it's this purely aesthetic. Like, you kinda know to some part of your brain that this is somewhat stupid. Right? There's no real value to it. But when you do it with collecting and you say, well, I could get this rare card that's worth, you know, like, I I... Like, the top Pikachu card will sell for, like, $15,000,000. Right? Like, they... These cards could be worth a lot. And so they attach the kind of gambling mechanic of I might make money to the... A very addictive gotcha behavior. And so that's like the, you know, the underlying psychology that's worked in many, many different form factors. Toys do this now all the time. LOL Surprise Doll. Right? What is it? It's a... You know, all of the squishies that are super popular right now. I don't know if you've... I don't know if your kids are old enough to be in this squishy craze.
00:21:02 · Sam Parr, Shaan Puri
[00:21:02] S0: No. But my wife is. [00:21:03] S1: The dumplings and the the squishies and the mystery boxes. Like, my daughter just loves to open these dumplings. Right? And, like, you'd have tried to get a rare dumpling. Right? It's like this crazy thing, but it's the mystery ball mechanic that gets you to spend way more. I actually have a friend who's in the toy business and showing me the data of before... When they're in Walmart or Target, they were just selling where you pick what you want. And, like, here's a shelf. Here's all the different things. You could pick what you want. And then they just took the same things and put it in a mystery box, and it was seven x the revenue. And literally, like, with... Which sounds like the opposite. Right? Like, well, the consumer gets less choice. They might get something crappy. And I heard him on the phone. He was talking to one of the major IP holders in the world. [00:21:46] S0: Wait. This guy just called you while he was negotiating?
00:21:48 · Shaan Puri
[00:21:48] S1: I was hanging out with him. He's like, just join. They're just like, listen in. Like, sit right next to me. It's fine. Like, no problem. They don't know who you are. It's... They'll just assume you work with me. And he's talking to them, and they were like, yeah. Well, like, our customers really like Choice. And he puts up on the screen. He's like, yeah. I know. Like, everybody thinks they like Choice, but here's what the data shows across category one, two, three, four, five. Like, over and over again, this overperforms. This this kinda gotcha mystery box mechanic. Today's podcast is brought to you by my friends at Mercury. They make the world's best banking product. I think you know this already. I use Mercury for all of my businesses. I think I have, like, maybe seven or eight businesses. We use Mercury as our business banking across all of them. And now they actually just launched a personal banking account. So I have my personal account there. I moved off of Wells Fargo and Chase. I'm just all in on Mercury. Why? I like products that are easy to use. I like products that get me and the problems that I have. So, like, very easy to make a joint account with my wife. Very easy to spin up virtual cards. One click, and I get savings yield. It just has all the stuff that I need in one place. So if you're looking for the best banking product on the market, it's definitely Mercury. I will fist fight anybody who disagrees with me on that. Go to mercury.com/personal and learn more. Mercury is a fintech, not an FDIC insured bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group in column NA, members FDIC.
00:23:04 · Sam Parr, Shaan Puri
[00:23:04] S0: Can I give you one quick app update before we move on from apps? Do you remember about three years ago, you and I, maybe you brought it up, I don't remember, talked about this thing called Private Photo Vault. It's basically where you hide photos. It's like... To put it bluntly, it's like where people hide, like, nude photos on their phone, and you have to, like, lock it. So Yeah. I think [00:23:25] S1: this is one of my drunk ideas. Right? Hiding behind a calculator. [00:23:28] S0: We talked... Either you brought it up and I said this is a thing or somehow it got brought up. Well, look at the reviews. Do you see how many ratings it has? A million. So it has a million. [00:23:40] S1: A million reviews? [00:23:41] S0: So it's called Private Photo Vault. Also, then it says, like, dash pick safe, like a safe for pictures. And I met the founder. He came to a Hampton event, and I started talking to him, and I was like, he's like, yeah, you guys talked about me like three or four years ago. And I was like, how's it going? And I can't... This is gonna be, like, such a tease. I'm sorry. I can't reveal the numbers, but he told me the numbers and how many people work there. It's a behemoth. [00:24:11] S1: This this private picture sending thing? [00:24:13] S0: Yes. Yes. It's a... It's not a picture sending thing. It's... All it is is storage. It just stores photos that you can delete off your photo roll and keep in this photo vault. Right. And So why do people want that? For nudes. [00:24:28] S1: But they're not sending them.
00:24:28 · Shaan Puri, Sam Parr
[00:24:28] S1: But they're not sending them. [00:24:30] S0: If you are sent to them and you wanna store them. Alright. Do I have to walk this guy through this? [00:24:34] S1: I'm just trying to understand [00:24:35] S0: the net... [00:24:35] S1: The bank it is up here. You receive one. You save it here. You delete it off your photo. That's it? Or you're taking it [00:24:41] S0: That's it. [00:24:42] S1: Saving it here? [00:24:42] S0: The first one. The first one. It's... All it is is a place like phone. [00:24:47] S1: I've never received a nude. I'm unfamiliar with your game. I've always been curious. Always wanted to. [00:24:56] S0: Yeah. You've always wanted participate. I don't think it's ever gonna happen unless I've got a rash. But this app has and is doing over revenue, and has been doing it that for a long time. [00:25:12] S1: That's impressive. Are they also Eastern Europe? I feel like these are all Eastern Europe. [00:25:15] S0: Nope. Just a guy. American? Just a nice guy. I'm proud [00:25:19] S1: to be an American, if that's an American doing that. This is normally the work of somebody in Czech Republic or something. [00:25:27] S0: Nope, just a guy, just a nice guy. He does live in Vegas, but he's a nerd. So he was raised there, he didn't move there. [00:25:33] S1: By the way, the Collector Crypt thing that I was talking about, I just pulled up the data, they do a 100,000,000 a month right now. And this is like a... It's like a blockchain thing, so you can see like the actual fees that are renovated out of this thing.