The Signal: You can add “interactive podcasts” to the list of interactive digital experiences that will stick in the post-COVID world. This new genre of media, which blurs the lines between narrative and gaming, was gaining popularity before the pandemic.
In 4 years, the sports news website The Athletic has become a guide for modern and legacy media entities, as well as niche-driven subscription businesses in many other markets, both in terms of revenue model and content.
Remember when Nevada was the only state where you could place a legal, regulated bet on a sporting event? Neither do I, and that was just two years ago.
We have on Gelena (@gelenasays) & Keith Wasserman (@Keith_Wasserman), a husband and wife Real Estate duo who borrowed $5k during the end of the 2008 recession and have turned it into a $1.3 billion dollar portfolio.
Shaan Puri: All right, I’m recording this. I just finished my conversation with Michael Birch. For those of you who don’t know, Michael is a internet entrepreneur. He built a social network back in the day; he competed head to head against Facebook. And Although Facebook won the war, Michael didn’t end up too bad. That company, Bebo, if you’ve ever heard that before, sold for $850,000,000 to AOL. And when I met Michael, we got back together and we bought it back for $1,000,000 years later, and then we actually sold that again just now to Amazon.
Shaan Puri: Jack, man I appreciate you coming on the show. I’ve been excited to have you on because every time I meet you, you are up to some new companies, some new experiment, some new kind of clever thing. I would call you sort of, you’re the most clever guy I know in Silicon Valley.
Shaan Puri: Okay, so what is this? So something that entertains me. And so I wanted to create a podcast which was first and foremost, just an excuse to hang out with people who I haven’t been able to hang out with as much. So, now one way is to say, “Hey, let’s go grab a coffee.” And the other way is to say, “What if we recorded this so that other people could be a fly on the wall and hear stories or chatter about random stuff.” And I’m not trying to do it educationally. So for me it’s stories.
Sam Parr: A big CEO of a huge media company that you know of told me this business will never make more than $2 million dollars a year. And it wasn’t until like six months ago where I was like, “Man, there’s like a path to make literally $100 million a year in revenue.”
Shaan Puri: At this point it’s a money printer.