The 5 Most Shocking Businessmen Alive...

Sam Parr

These are the five most interesting businessmen alive. These are going to be eccentric billionaires, people who not only have a crazy business life, but also have a crazy personal life and have just done a variety of wild shit. These are people that they should be making movies about. So we got a list. I feel like I can rule the world.

Shaan Puri

I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it, like my days off on a road list. Can I start off with number five? We're going to go five to one. One being who we crown as the most interesting man alive.

Sam Parr

The criteria for this, by the way, is they got to be interesting. So not just rich, not just successful, but fascinating. Interesting. That can be good and bad. They have to be men.

We have a separate list coming for women, and they have to be alive. So nobody who is, you know, some dead historical figure. Fair enough. Yeah. You going to kick it off?

Yeah, I'll kick it off. Okay, so number five is a guy who won the game twice and on his way out the second time is just flipping the bird to everybody. And this is a guy named Pavel Durov. Hey, quick break to talk about our sponsor today, we're talking about HubSpot and their new AI powered service hub. Okay, so what is service hub?

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So visit HubSpot.com service to learn how this all new solution can help you deliver customer service with AI to your customers. I call this guy James Bond with Wifi. If you see this guy's instagram, you'll know why I said it. He looks like James Bond. He travels around the world, international man of mystery.

But he built his claim to fame as using his laptop, using Wifi. So this guy's basically the russian mark Zuckerberg. It's even more impressive than Zuck. So when he was young, he built the Facebook of Russia, and it was called VK. And what's cool about this is two things.

Number one, he actually beat Facebook. So there were many countries in the world where somebody built the Facebook of Brazil, the Facebook of Africa, the Facebook of Europe. There has been tons of these. And in every single one of them, the end game was, no, no, no. Facebook is the Facebook of Brazil.

Facebook is the Facebook of India. And Facebook dominated everywhere. The one place they couldn't dominate was Russia. And in an interview, Zuck was talking to Sam Altman and he even said, he's like, God, the only ones we could ever beat were the Russians. He was like, it was insane.

He's like, we would make a change. And literally, like, twelve minutes later, they would have that update on their, on their side. Like, if we moved a pixel, they moved that pixel. And he's like, these guys were just the most prolific copiers we've ever seen. And we just could not figure out how are we ever going to overtake them if they're the world's smartest mathematicians and programmers who have dedicated, who are dedicated twenty four seven to beating us or cloning us and doing exactly what we do if they can't come up with a better idea.

And so he gave them a hat tip. So he creates VK. It becomes the Facebook of Russia. He won, but he had to sell it, because one day the russian government approaches him and says, pavel, we need some information. He's like, cool, what do you need to know?

We need some information about all your users and what they're saying. He's like, what? Why? And they're like, well, there's been some users who are saying some anti government things. As you know, that's not how we do shit around here.

So give us some names and we'll make sure that they get quiet. And he's, while you're at it, drop your pants and bend over and cough. So he doesn't want to do it. And so what Pavel does, and by the way, this is not like, this is not just a business move. This is not a lawyer sending you a cease to desist when the russian government comes knocking.

This is a pretty serious, there's serious consequences for what you decide to do after that. You comply, right? If you don't comply, there's not only consequences for those people they were after, now there's consequences for you. And so what he does is he not only doesn't comply, he flips the bird. So he goes and he posts on VK, the government request, the memo that they, the secret, like, kind of letter that they sent him telling him what they needed.

He said, they're asking for your data. I'll never do it. And here's my official. They asked, you know, here's my official response. And he posted a picture of a dog wearing a hoodie.

It has this famous picture of a dog in a hoodie that he posts. He's like, here's what I have to say about this. And he just posts a dog with a hoodie. And so immediately, he's now in trouble. They raid his apartment.

He ends up losing this company, has to flee the country, never allowed back in Russia. Costs him basically everything. His entire life gets completely uprooted. It's not like he was just a guy. He had something to lose here.

And so, at the end of all this, he says, and I would do it all again without hesitation. And I love that. I love this guy. And what he does, he now gets kicked out of Russia. He loses his company.

He does get $300 million because he sells it on the way out to some other guy who is going to comply. So I don't know fully what happened to your principals. I'm not sure what happened after that, but whatever. He gets $300 million. And he.

He's. He hasn't fully left Russia yet, but he's, like, kind of, like, figuring out his way out. But he's like, dude, I can't even message my brother who. To tell him, like, what, you know, what we're going to do, because they'll just see these messages. Like, they want to see our message.

They're going to see all these messages. So his brother, who is a double PhD in math, is like, you know what? Let's make a encrypted protocol. An encrypted messaging protocol so that we can communicate. Like, this is bullshit.

That they could just read all our goddamn messages. And this becomes the precursor to Telegram, which is now one of the biggest messaging apps in the world. So this guy not only invented Facebook, he then got kicked. It's like, if the Winklefosses had beat up Mark in the locker room, took Facebook from him, kicked him off Harvard campus, and then he goes and creates WhatsApp. Cause that's basically what he did.

Shaan Puri

How big is telegram? I know it's huge, but I don't use it. Do you use it? I use it. I love it.

Sam Parr

It's probably my favorite messaging app. Of all messaging apps. It's an incredible product. It's got a billion users. Dude, what's so good about it, other than the encryption thing, which is huge?

I mean, the encryption thing is huge. It's just really well made. The app is really fast, works really well. It's got a ton of features. You can do a broadcast channel where it's like Twitter, and you're broadcasting to a bunch of followers.

You can just message each other. You could do huge groups. You can have admins. You could send stickers and memes, and you could send a ton of different types of messages. It's a really well made app and.

Shaan Puri

Has a billion people using it. Yeah, about a billion users now. Last I think I heard was like 800 million. But I think recently he said something like, we have about a billion users. Never runs ads.

Sam Parr

He's refused to sell any equity in the company. He took about a billion dollars of debt, but he never sells any equity. It's just, him and his brother owned the whole thing. He's got 30 full time employees. So he's got 30 employees running a service that a billion people use all around the world.

And every government attacks them and tries to, like, break their encryption or ban them because no government wants this. Nobody government wants the citizens to be able to speak freely. He is the sole director equity holder, and he's the sole product manager. He works directly with every engineer and designer himself. He has no HR.

He only recruits people through something called contest.com, which is a contest platform where he puts up engineering challenges. And the people who are the best at cracking his engineering challenges get hired. They get an offer to come work at Telegram. Is it a russian company? No.

He's like, it's crazy. Everyone calls us a russian company. We have no office in Russia. We have no employees in Russia. We have no servers in Russia.

But the media just will be like, oh, russian founder, blah, blah, blah, blah. He's like, dude, he basically, for a while, he just moved around the world every three months, living in different airbnbs. And then finally he now settled in Dubai. This guy's worth about $15 billion. So he's the richest expat in Dubai.

He's one of the top 150 richest men in the world. And then you go look at his Instagram. You're going to love this dude. The guy's ripped. He's absolutely ripped.

And every photo, there's never another human being in any photo with him. Every photo is him alone with his shirt off, doing something manly as hell. It's hilarious. All the photos look AI generated. It's like if I said, hey, generate a rich billionaire living in Dubai who is on the Brian Johnson protocol and wants to become Instagram famous.

This is what Dali would give me. He's literally on a pirate ship on some of these photos. Yeah, I have a bunch we're going to show him on YouTube. Uh, if you're listening to this. You should go to YouTube for this episode.

We're going to show a bunch of things. People's houses and crazy shit. Um, another quote I love from him. So, yeah, he says, uh, they're like, you know, you're a billionaire. Billionaire, billionaire.

He's like, dude, this billionaire thing's like, a little overplayed. He's like, he's like, yes, it's true. I've had a few hundred million dollars of both, uh, dollars and bitcoin in a bank account for ten years, and I've never touched it. He goes, yeah, that's true. But he's like, but I don't own any jets or yachts or mega mansions.

Like, I don't do any of that shit. I would rather make decisions that would influence how a billion people are going to communicate rather than sitting there choosing the color of the seats in my house that only me and my relatives are ever going to see. That's amazing. I read another interview with him where he goes, I went to San Francisco to see if I wanted to open an office there, and I met with Jack Dorsey, and it was great. And I went to the Twitter office, which the Twitter office is in the epicenter of kind of bad stuff or crime is happening in San Francisco.

Shaan Puri

I used to live down the block from it. And he said, after the meeting, I was walking around and three guys tried to mug me. And the interviewer was like, well, how'd it go? He goes, blood was spilled. But he doesn't, he doesn't say, like, who's blood?

He just said there was blood. Well, he was like, yeah, three, three guys tried to steal my phone. I fought off the Roberts, and then he posted on Twitter. He's like, he's like, my goal was, I was trying to tweet out. I just hung out with Jack Dorsey because Jack Dorsey made Twitter.

Sam Parr

He's like, that's what I was trying to do on my phone when they did this. So he posts a picture of his bloody knuckles reaching for a book, which is just a hilarious thing. He goes, and this is the tweet. He goes, just got into a fight with guys who tried to grab my phone near mission 980. Scary neighborhood.

Question mark. Not for a Russian.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, this guy's pretty badass. I like the idea that San Francisco is like, the nice, quaint neighborhood in Russia. It's the nice, clean family area of Russia. Yeah, I read that. It was so funny.

Yeah, he's clearly manicuring his social presence, but I think, I believe it yeah. The guy's amazing and he just flexes on everybody. His instagram is just a pure flex. Yeah, I mean, he's awesome. This guy's a good one.

How does telegram make money? Or do they. They basically don't make money. They've made. I read somewhere, I don't know if this is 100% true.

Sam Parr

I was trying to find it, but like two things. One, they take donations. And so I read something that they've had over a billion dollars in donations from users and that's been part of what keeps it going. And like, you know, it's 30 people and then it's the server costs, right? So it's like, you know, there's, there's burn, but it's not like he's running a 3000 person or 30,000 person company.

Um, in addition to that, he raised a billion dollar debt bond, uh, which is basically like a pre IPo coupon. So he was basically like, we're going to make money someday and we need money now to get there. He had offers to sell 10% at a $30 billion valuation, turned it down, so he turned down 3 billion. Then they came back and said, well, buy 10% out of $40 billion valuation. So $4 billion, he turned it down and he said, I don't want to sell any equity.

I'm scared of what an investor will do for this. He did a crypto token back when crypto was really hot and he raised over a billion dollars for their crypto coin. But then the SEC came after him and was like, this was basically like you were selling equity. You called it a token and as a utility, but this is equity. So he had to return a bunch of money.

And that token project never got off the ground because he had raised, and I think the minimum at the time, because I was looking into investing in it, is you had to buy in chunks of minimum 20 million, Preston. Oh my God. So basically people were forming syndicates. It was like, oh, you want to come in for 500k? All right, cool.

We're trying to get to 20 million so we could buy some, some of the telegram token because you had an app that actually had a ton of usage, the most brilliant engineering team probably that exists on earth, or one of the top 20 engineering teams on earth. And um, and now they were going to do a token to try to make money and um, you know, figure out like basically you'd be able to, to use the token to do things inside the app. So anyways, that's kind of some of the things they've tried, but, you know, he has, you know, quote, unquote, some plan of how they're going to make money that doesn't involve you selling user data. This guy's really cool. All right, that's a good one.

Yeah. Who's number four? What do you got? All right, so my goal with this was to pick people who, you have no idea who they are, and hopefully, most of our audience has no idea who they are either. And so we did not talk before this.

Shaan Puri

So it's just a coincidence that my guy is also russian. I call him the Russian Richard Branson. His name is Oleg Tinkov, so you'll have to google him to see what he looks like. But Oleg, Oleg. And then Tinkov.

T I n k o v. So he grew up as in a mining family. So very, like, humble beginnings. But he goes to the city because he wants to experience freedom. And he gets into cycling for some reason.

He's into cycling, and he goes abroad for a bike race, and he sees someone wearing blue jeans. And this is in the eighties in the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union's about to crumble and become Russia. And he starts bringing home these blue jeans and selling them, and he's like, all right, it looks like people in Russia really want this, like, western fashion. And so he opens up a chain of stores where he starts selling blue jeans, but then everything else, perfume, VCR's, electronics.

This is right in 89, 90, where the Soviet Union's crashing, and these people actually want to be able to buy stuff from western countries, and he kills it. And so in his early twenties, he sells that business, and he makes something like $7 million. And then he does something that you'd expect him to do. He starts a ravioli business. Is this guy just watching commercials in the States?

Sam Parr

He's like, levi's got it. Okay, next one. Ravioli. Cool. We'll do that too.

Shaan Puri

Well, what he does is he goes to America every once in a while, and he says he goes every five years to learn what's popular in America, like, different advertising, whatever. And he, like, basically brings that to Russia. Have you ever heard of the phrase, it's a word. Baba. Baba.

Baba gushta. I can't even say it right. It means Russia. It's like a russian grandmother. It's like when you think of, like, fiddler on the roof.

It's like a bushka. Yeah, babushka. It's like a russian grandmother with, like, a scarf over her head. So typically, raviolis, they have a different word for them in Russia. But the raviolis were made by that type of person, and it was like a comfort food.

And so he gets the idea where he's like, we're gonna do something sexy. We're gonna make this, like, really stand out. And so he buys this huge ad, and it's just a woman's bear ass. And it says something like, ravioli's not made by your grandmother. It's like a woman's bare ass with flour on it, as if, I guess this woman's ass is pounding out the flour.

I don't know. Which is kind of weird when you think about it. I don't want ravioli like that. But I don't understand. But I'm hungry.

Yeah, but it takes off. It works. This business works. He eventually sells it for $21 million. So his next thing is that he's in California, and he actually meets with Dan Gordon from Gordon Biersch.

That's interesting to you and I, because Gordon Biersch was a microbrewery outside of San Francisco. One of the co founders, or at the time, CEO's, was actually Lorenzo Fertitta from UFC. And he starts seeing this trend in the nineties where these microbreweries are quite popular. And so he opens up a microbrewery in Russia, and he calls it tink off breweries. And it's kind of like Sam Adams Beer, where at the time, beer in Russia was, like, not that good tasting.

And he goes, we're actually going to charge four or five times the price of normal beer, and we're going to make this thing very americanized. And he says, like, he's got this famous phrase where he says, beer and freedom go great together. And he's all into, like, freedom. And, like, not in line with what Russia wants him to do. And so he starts this brewery.

It takes off. So they start it in 1997, but by 2003, it's doing 35 million in sales. Two years later, 2005, it's doing $200 million in sales. And that year, he sells it for $200 million, which is a huge sum. He owns most of the company, so he's just sells his company.

He's immediately in Necker island with Richard Branson. And Olag is talking to Richard. He goes, Richard, I was in America recently. I moved there for just, like, a few months, and I was able to get a credit card. It was so amazing how easy I got a credit card.

We need this in Russia. And Richard's like, you should start it. And so that's exactly what he does. Like, six months after selling his beer company, he starts this credit card company. It's called Tinkoff Bank, I guess, is how it translates, or bank of Tinkoff.

And he, for some reason, names everything after himself because he's great at marketing and his name is popular. He starts this bank with $70 million of his own money, and he actually buys a bank. The reason why this guy is interesting is because. Or this bank is interesting is we know what Mercury is. We know what a bunch of these neo banks are.

He beat all of them. He started this in 2005, and it gets huge to the point where Goldman invested into it. He invests $70 million of his own money. A bunch of people invest in it, and it becomes massive. Business takes off.

It's up until recently, 2021. It was the second largest issuer of credit cards in Russia. It was the largest digital bank in the world. And the idea being like, we don't need branches. We don't need any of that.

It's just all going to be online, and we'll send you your card. And so it goes public. And his stake in it is worth $10 billion. And here's where the story gets kind of crazy. Hey, let's take a quick break to tell you about our sponsor.

Sam Parr

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So check it out. Listen to DC pod wherever you get your podcasts. Just like Pavel, Russia does not like Oleg. He talks a ton of shit. Basically, at one point, when they invade the Ukraine, he's very anti the war.

Shaan Puri

He says. He just says, putin, you're full of shit. All these oligarchs in Russia, you're all full of shit. He tweets us out. He goes, the generals, they wake up with a hangover and realize they have a shitty army.

How can the army be any good when our. When the rest of our country is also shit. Like, he says these things. He tweets this out. He says all this crazy stuff, and eventually they delist Tinkoff bank, so it's no longer public, and he loses most all of his money.

And so at this point, he's worth. I think he's. He was able to, like, force sell some of his shares, and he walked away with, like, $200 million. And he's now he has leukemia, and he's dying. He's got to die soon.

And he basically is still talking mad shit. He says, like, they wanted to punish me for this. And to that, I say, fuck off. I want to die with good karma and for people to remember me for being strong and fair. And so he's paid the price for being outspoken, and he's still being outspoken, and he's been completely screwed, but he's doing a good job of kind of still sticking it to the man.

The other thing that he's done, he's always done. He's done really well at challenging the status quo. The reason I have found this guy is he owned a very successful cycling team. Cycling is not a very popular sport. I'm one of the few guys that watches it.

But he did a great job of, like, getting into the cycling game, and he, like, criticized the Tour de France for tons of stuff. They eventually changed tons of rules, and finally, he's a shithead in the best possible way. So there's this famous story where, for his micro breweries, he wanted to name the street that the brewery was on, Tinkoff. He wanted it to have the same name of his restaurant. And so what he did was he got a basically a version of an encyclopedia, and he made a fake encyclopedia that said years ago in the 17 hundreds, there was a brewery on this street named Tinkoff.

And so we need to do it justice by naming the street after it, because this is a historical thing. And so they named the street after it. Years later, he admits he made the. He made one page in an encyclopedia and just put it in there, and they totally went for it. And so he's done tons of things like this, and he's gonna die soon.

They. He says that he's. He basically has said he's gonna die soon, and he's donated what's left of his big fortune. It's now a small fortune to leukemia. And so he's young, and if you look him up, he's famous for dyeing his hair.

He kind of. He looks like Richard Branson, actually. And so he's very Richard Branson esque. He dyes his hair purple because that's the color for his cycling team. He's pretty eccentric, very unique guy.

He also wrote a book, but the book's hard to read because it's, it was translated. But he's a columnist, and he, and he writes a lot, so you can read a lot of his work. Speaking of which, this is my cue for you. You know, books are cool, but books are a little. Little heavy for me.

Sam Parr

If any of these people wanted to put their thoughts out there, they would have great newsletters. And if they wanted a great newsletter, they would use a great newsletter platform like Beehive. And that is our thrill of the show this week. The most interesting men in the world, if they were ever going to write a newsletter, they would write it on beehive. Back to the show.

Shaan Puri

Anyway, so what do you think of Oleg? He's an interesting guy. You've never heard of him, I think. Fascinating. Never heard of him.

Sam Parr

Well done. You got me with that one. I like that. Yeah, this is super cool. And I also like just the idea, the move of, I'm just going to export western culture.

I feel like this is a common blueprint for coming up with really big businesses, which is you go to Japan, you observe japanese culture, you find the most interesting bits of it, and then you export that culture to a different country that doesn't quite yet have it, but most humans are pretty similar, and you can sort of create the demand, especially when some cultures just tend to be net exporters. I think the US is a net exporter in movies and entertainment, you know, has certain strong values like freedom and whatever else. So you can, like, use those in bringing that to a place that's sort of, you know, deficient in those areas. And so I think that's a, that's just a cool model, is exporting culture from one, one place to another. And that's what he did.

Shaan Puri

He went and studied business for some classes at Berkeley, and he would just see what's going on in San Francisco, in the Bay Area, what's interesting, what's neat. And he was inspired by that. And he said, every five years, I go to America to learn these things, and I don't want to bring them back. But huge coincidence that we both chose Russian. Russian guys, russian expats, sort of, I guess that kind of tells our stance and sticking it to the man, sticking it to Putin.

Sam Parr

All right, my next, I think I'm going to do a back to back here. Cause I have one extra one that you do so number three for me, I call him the walking middle finger. Number three is Sean Parker. And Sean Parker is a fascinating guy. So a lot of people know him because in the social network movie, Justin Timberlake is supposed to be Sean Parker.

And he's this like super charismatic, kind of know it all guy that, you know, tells them to drop, drop the, the. In the Facebook. Just make it just Facebook. It's cleaner, right? Do you think that's real?

Yeah. So that is real. But a lot of that role is not how Sean Parker actually is. Like, he, he's like, I'm all. He.

They were like, what do you think the movie got right? He's like, well, they got some, some of the stuff right, but the most of the character, he's like, I'm not like Justin Timberlake. He's like, I'm not cool and smooth. He's like, I'm weird and insecure. He's like, I'm a lot more eccentric.

They made him seem like cool and normal. I'm not cool and normal. He's like, I might be cool, but I'm definitely not normal. And I want to just tell you a little bit about this guy. So one of the commonalities I had when I was searching for people like this, and you'll see the next guy I have has the same story, is that when he was in his teens, hacked, was a hacker, hacked into something and got arrested.

So I don't know if you know this, but basically when he was a kid, he was 16 years old and he basically got tracked down by the FBI because he hacked into like a Fortune 500 companies network. And they were like, hey, he got offered, he eventually got offered a job with like, I think the CIA. He turned it down. He was like, no, no, no. I'm like, you know, I'm on the rebel side.

You guys are the, are the authority, I'm rebel. And so he creates, of course, Napster. And Napster is just like one of the coolest, biggest middle finger companies that I think has ever existed. Obviously people today, there's probably some generation of people today who don't even know what Napster is. But Napster was like the first place before Spotify, the first place where you could just go and you could just get access to all of the world's music and then movies and other things too.

But like really, music was the main thing and it was illegal. You could upload the songs, you had, other people could download those songs and it was music file sharing and it got mega, mega popular and then it got sued out of existence. And to, like, let the young people know this was game changing. I think you and I must have been in grade school, like twelve and eleven and 14 when this came out. This was such a big deal.

Shaan Puri

It got to the point where artists would even release fake music that were on. Remember that? When they were scrambled, after 10 seconds, they get scrambled because they want the fake song to go viral. Yep, yep, exactly. Or like comedians.

Sam Parr

I remember, I forget who it was. It was like Dane Cook. Yeah, Dane Cook. Basically be like Chris rock comedy special featuring Dane Cook. And like, people just read Chris rock comedy special.

And the first three minutes were Chris rock doing comedy. There's like, and now Dane Cook and Dan Cook, a mega, mega popular by, basically it's a growth hack, a genius growth hack, which is to say, oh, how do I basically, like, hijack the SEO, the search intent of Chris Rock in order to distribute my own, you know, comedy virus to, to everybody else. So Napster was super cool. He gets sued out of existence. But the thing I like about Sean Parker is that there's this phrase that Kevin Van Drump said once, and we're going to have him on the pod.

He's the guy who, what's his newsletter called? The farming newsletter. I forgot what it's called. But he basically writes the biggest newsletter for farmers in the, in the country. And he has farm con and a bunch of different things.

But he said something to us once. He goes, you know, the train always comes back a second time. And we're like, what do you mean? He's like, for all of the best possible deals, investments, trends, opportunities, you overlook it the first time, very common, and you think you totally missed it. I missed the boat.

He's like, but I. He's like, I just see it over and over again. The train comes back around. You know, maybe you didn't invest in Facebook, but then the stock tanks for a couple months. That's your time to get back on.

He's like, it's not always going to be the same price as it was the first time, but for the truly great things. The train has such a long Runway. It's so much upside that even if you just get on the second time, you still get filthy rich. And he's like, the same thing happened with bitcoin. The people who just kicked themselves for not buying bitcoin the first time they heard it at $150 instead of just buying it at 500.

They just kept telling the story about how they missed it at 150 and then they missed it at 600, 700, 801,000. And now it's at 60,000. They're still missing it. He's like, but the smart people are like, well, the train came back around. Let me hop on.

I now recognize the value in this thing. And I feel like Sean Parker did that with his career. So for a period of time, Sean Parker was seen as this kind of like, bad boy, but like kind of untouchable. Like, you couldn't invest in Sean Parker. He's too rebellious.

He's getting sued out of existence. The big companies hate him. The government's after him. He was like an untouchable. And then later it was like, oh, Sean Parker.

This guy was the, you know, he led the round into Facebook and he was an early huge investor in Spotify. And he was, did this and that, and he became the guy who could do no wrong. But those weren't his companies. But he recognized that those companies were winners and actually made his fortune not on the thing he did, Napster, but in recognizing the brilliance of the next Sean Parker. And that was, you know, Danielle Ek for Spotify or.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, when he was like, he did this, when he was like, he was the elder at 25. Yeah. And every hacker looked up to him because he's, guy's an icon. He used the reputation, but not necessarily the money to make all his money. Usually you use your money to make money.

Sam Parr

He uses reputation to make money. So a couple of things that this guy did that was, that's pretty fascinating. So first I'm going to give you some lifestyle things, and then I'm going to give you the career story. So crazy lifestyle thing. So I met somebody who went to his wedding.

Have you ever heard about his wedding? Yeah, man, he got a ton of shit for it in like, the heyday of Silicon Valley. So this guy basically spent somewhere between five and $10 million on his wedding. And he was like, and so the interesting thing here is just like, weird people are not just like, they're not just like crazy in their business and super chill in their normal life. Most of them, if you're wired a certain way, you just apply that to everything that comes your way.

So, for example, when it came to time to get married, he's like, all right, the budget, no budget. Let's just do the sickest thing we can imagine. So they're like, we're going to go to a forest in the big Sur. And it's not just going to be a wedding. It's going to be like an immersive theater experience.

I got people who were there, and they're like, it was crazy. You walk in and you could see the stars above you. But it was daytime. It's like, how the hell are there stars? And there was rabbits running around like wild rabbits that were just there because we were in the forest.

And they're like, but it was all planned. They had to. The costume designer from Lord of the Rings made everybody's outfits. He ended up paying, like, two or $3 million in fines because you're not allowed to just use the most beautiful public forest for your own wedding. But he was like, fuck it.

I'm doing it to propose. Sean, are you sure? They're like, is there a permit? And he's like, put on your costume and get in here to propose. He baked his wedding ring into an onion, gave it to his wife.

Like, what? I don't even know what this is, dude. It's like. It's like being mad at a UFC fighter for getting, like, drunk in a fight in the streets. Like, yeah, he's an animal.

Shaan Puri

What do you expect, right? The guy who gets caged up in his underwear and fights another man to the death. Like, he wasn't super chill outside their octagon. No. That's weird.

Sam Parr

He bought this $55 million house in LA from Ellen DeGeneres and then, like, tricked it out. He's just got like, his houses are crazy. Like, it's worth a 30 minutes dive just to go look at his houses. But even in his other stuff, like, rich people do philanthropy, but, like, how you do it is also interesting. So for him, he's like, I want to bet on.

He's like, I'm going to take a venture capital approach to philanthropy. So he's like, I'm not just going to donate to the Red Cross or whatever. He's like, I'm going to find the people that are trying to cure cancer in the most interesting ways, and then nobody will fund them because it's too crazy. It's too unproven. They have to, like, they'd have to convince the whole world that their crazy approach is going to work.

He's like, but that's what that's like in the startup world. That's exactly what happens. Some crazy kid has a crazy approach that most likely will not work, but if it does, it's going to change the game. And that's what VC's do. They bet on that.

He's like, I'm going to do that for curing cancer. And so he's poured in tons and tons of money into unorthodox cancer treatments. How wealthy is he? He's very wealthy. So when he identified Facebook as a thing and he was like, you know what?

I want to invest in this, be a part of this. Mark really liked him. He's the one who connected Mark to Peter Thiel to get the investment, the first 500k investment. He's the one who convinced them, I think, to move to Palo Alto and leave Boston, which then let them recruit the best talent, which let them succeed when other social networks like Friendster and MySpace were failing. So Sean ended up owning 4% of Facebook, which is like, became worth like, I don't know, four or $5 billion just on his Facebook stock.

Then there's an interesting story of how he invested in Spotify. Have you ever read this email that Sean Parker sent to the Spotify founder? Wasn't it something like, this is Napster, but done legally? Exactly. So he just cold emails them.

In 2009, Spotify launched in kind of like 0607 range. Spotify launched in Europe. So Daniel, I think, lived in Sweden. And then on top of that, they only launched Europe because the rules allowed them to do it in Europe. But he knew he had to build up enough critical mass before entering the United States market.

It's like one of the weird reasons that Spotify worked and all the other music sharing services never worked because they all tried to start in the United States and all of the music labels were so ready to just sue the shit out of everybody from Napster that, like, you couldn't have done that. That was not, they would come after you when you were just a baby, an infant. So he writes them this email and it's just subject line thoughts. And he's like, Daniel and Shaq, he goes, I've been playing around with Spotify. You've built an amazing experience.

As you saw. Zuck really likes it too. I've been trying to get him to understand your model and I think he just needed to try it to see it for himself. Then he talks a little bit about Facebook and he's like, you know, we should partner because we can integrate like, you know, Spotify's music stuff with Facebook, social graph, all that. But then he just compliments me.

Your design is clean, elegant, tight and fast. It's clearly lacking some important features like the social stuff. But I think you've done a great job sequencing. You've nailed the core experience, blah, blah, blah. Ever since Napster, I've dreamt of building a product similar to Spotify.

I might have tried had I not been, quote, sidetracked with Facebook founders fund, like this dope shit that I've been doing. And he's like, to be fair, I also was, like, pretty scarred from the record labels. He's like. And he's like, you know, so I've adopted a watch and wait thing to try to see a when the labels would come to their senses and realize that they need something to distribute music. And two, until a product that would come in that would fix all the things we got wrong with Napster.

And he's like, you have done that. And then he just goes on and articulates from a product point of view what they have done right and what they need to change. And he's like, I can help you do this shit. And he ends up leading a $15 million investment into Spotify, which is, like, an amazing investment. I want to read you one other Sean Parker story.

So the guy's pretty magnetic. And actually, this story comes from you. A long time ago, you posted on the hustle a blog post about this famous story of the painter who took stock in Facebook. I guess he was supposed to get paid 60 grand, and instead of taking the 60 grand for the painting he did on Facebook's office wall, he took stock, and the stock ended up becoming worth $200 million. I almost chose him for this segment because David Cho, I think he's a crazy man.

He's a crazy man. And he did this interview on Howard Stern, and what? That's cool about it. So I knew the story. I think everybody kind of knows the story of the painter.

What I didn't know is why he took the stock. And the answer to why he took the stock is that motherfucker Sean Parker. He's like, that guy. And so he's like, dude. And so Howard Stern's like, why did you pick the stock?

Like, you know, were they offering not a lot of money? And he's like, no, they were. I told him the price is 60,000. They said yes. He's like, that's a lot of money.

He's like, yeah. I just. I decided that's what it was going to be worth. And I think he was, like, coming out of jail or something at the time. And Sean Parker loved this artist, was like, no, no, no.

This artist has to be the guy. And he had tried to get him to do something for Plaxo, his other company, but they didn't have any money. He's like, finally, he hit him up. He's like, yo, we finally have money. I'm at this new thing called the Facebook.

I think we have enough money. Come on, I want you. Only you can do this painting. So he comes over, he's like, cool, it'll be 60 grand. You want to paint this whole building, be 60 grand.

Shaan Puri

By the way, I've been to the Facebook office, and they've redone it, but parts of the ceiling, they use the same drywall, so you could actually still see the painting. Right? And so Howard Stewart's like, what happened? Like, they didn't have the cash. He's like, no, no, they had the cash.

Sam Parr

He's like, so why'd you take the stock? Did you believe in this? Are you, like, an investor? Did you believe in this? He's like, dude, I never invested anything in my life.

He's like. He's like, I asked Sean. I was like, what's this company he starts describing? You know what Facebook is a social network for college kids. And I was like, dude, that's lamest shit.

And he's. He's like, I wasn't on friendster. I wasn't on MySpace. I hate that shit. He goes, um, and this is for college students?

Oh, even worse. I hate education. I hate college. I never went. I don't even like college students.

He's like, so you hate no social networking, you hate college? He's like, yeah, I dropped out of school. I hate everything about school. And he's like, and it's only starting on Harvard at Stanford campus. Oh, man.

Like, I hate Harvard. I hate Stanford. I'm like an anti anti. All those things that they stand for. He's like, so why'd you do it?

He's like, cause every time I'd hang out with Sean Parker, he would just tell me, like, yo, I'm gonna make some shit happen. He's like, before he went and met with Peter Thiel, he says, oh, I gotta go. I gotta raise money for Facebook. And he goes, I'm gonna bend these fuckers minds. He's like, and then he came back, and he's like.

He's like, yeah, the rich. He's like, those fuckers ended up being, like, the richest men in America. Like, you know, like Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel. And he's like, dude, this little nerd, this scrawny nerd. He's got a lot of swagger and confidence, and he's like, he's just.

And he came back, he had raised the money from them, and he's like, okay, interesting. And he's like, so he's like, you want those cash or you want stock? He's like, you're in this. He's like, yeah. He's like, all right.

He's like, I sized him up, and I'm like, this guy's going somewhere. He's like, so that's why I took the stock. That's awesome. That is so awesome. And it ended up being worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Shaan Puri

I don't know what he sold and when he sold it, but that's insane. And that's what, you know, these people are. They have a sort of magnetic. A magnetic trait to them that I think is pretty common. And that was a good example of it.

Were you gonna talk about his career, or is that the career part? That's mostly the career part. Right. Well, you know that he's done a few other things. Yeah, a bunch of things that failed.

Sam Parr

So he had Plaxo, he had air airtime. He had a bunch of things like that. Then he was managing partner, founders fund. That's all I know. What else is there?

Shaan Puri

Have you heard of opportunity zones for real estate? You know, I believe he invented that. So, basically, I read this a long time ago. I'm going off the cuff. But basically, opportunity zones, if I remember correctly, they're zones designated by the government that show these places are impoverished or they're like warehouse spaces.

And we want to incentivize investors to open up, I believe, residential build stuff there. And I think it was his idea. And he. And he lobbied the. He lobbied the government, and he turned it into a reality.

Sam Parr

Opportunities, those are the brainchild of Sean Parker. He, in the early two thousands, he was Facebook's first president, and he wanted to minimize his capital gains on his tech stock fortune. So he lobbied the government to create this idea of opportunity zones so that investors would be incentivized to invest in areas that, you know, were not receiving enough investment. And he did it. That's pretty.

That's pretty fascinating. Yeah. He convinced the Obama administration, I think, it was, to make this a reality, and now it's a thing where billions and billions and billions of dollars go to this. And it was his idea. And he didn't just come up with the idea.

Shaan Puri

He. He lobbied the government. He changed the law. Uh, which is really fascinating that he did that. So he's done a bunch of interesting stuff.

And I think, in fact, I think he also played a hand in Obama getting elected a little bit or something like that. I mean, he's a political guy, so he's. He's done a bunch of interesting stuff. All right, let me do number two. Then you do number one.

Sam Parr

All right, so number two is Tom Anderson, aka Tom from MySpace. And I call him the guy who won the game and simply stopped playing, which is really critical. Almost all these guys like you talked about, Oleg, it's like he did this, and then he went bigger, and then he went bigger, and I think that's a common thing. But Tom had one thing those guys will never have. He had enough, and he was able to walk away.

And so Tom's story is pretty wild. I didn't know the backstory. So also, age 14 hacks Chase bank, gets root access into Chase bank. All of the names, the bank accounts, the amounts in them, he could have wired as much money as he wanted out of it. He did not.

He knew their mortgages. He knew everything. And he was basically the leader of a hacking crew. And his nickname was lord Flathead. And so lord Flathead gets root access, and he leaves a message in Chase bank, and he says, basically, you need to let me keep my access, or I will expose all this information.

I will leak all this, blah, blah. You need to give me full access, even just acknowledge that I won and give me access to this thing. And he starts bragging about it. So he tells 40 of his friends. He shows them exactly how he did it, how he hacked Chase bank at age 14.

And this is why the FBI conducted one of the biggest raids they've ever done. A simultaneous raid of 40 different people, all happening at 07:00 p.m. All in one area, because they didn't know who was the kind of the mastermind behind it, but they knew who all had seen it or had access to it or was talking about it. And so they rate everybody at 07:00 p.m. They steal his computer, they take all stuff, but they leave him alone because they're like, the guy's 14.

What are we going to do? We can't charge him. And so he gets off, and he agrees, okay, I'm not going to hack stuff anymore. That's his origin story. So now he ends up creating MySpace.

MySpace obviously was one of the biggest social networks in the world, and MySpace was dope for a bunch of reasons that don't even exist anymore. So he's on our top five, but he was in everybody's top eight on MySpace, which was, like, my top eight friends, and he was the first friend to everybody on MySpace. He has the iconic picture of him turning away from a whiteboard, wearing his white shirt, everybody knows that photo. Everybody who's our age, at least that grew up on MySpace. And MySpace was kind of a culture shifter.

Something that Facebook never really actually captured was that MySpace actually was cool for bands and getting discovery for music and talent and art, and MySpace was kind of amazing. And he sells MySpace for $580 million, and he pieces out, he bounces. He has a quote where he's like, yeah, before the acquisition, I could do wherever I wanted. It was pretty fun. Hes like, now it takes all this time to get anybody to agree on things because they sold to news corp, I think.

And he says theres a budget review and a process for everything. Its a pain. So im out. So he pieces out and hes, I think, 38 years old or something when this happens. Hes pretty young.

And instead of doing what almost every other business guy does, which is cool, and now I shall change cancer free speech. I'll take rockets to Mars. Tom's like, now I'm gonna travel the world and just take a bunch of pictures. He's like, I'm just gonna go have fun. So I'm gonna read you what I admire about this guy.

A his Twitter bio is not, it doesn't say I'm Tom. I invented MySpace. I exited to News Corp. $580 million. Currently a vc and professional.

Dad, husband of two. Husband of one, father of two. You know, he doesn't do all that shit, virtue signaling. He just says, enjoying the good life. My new hobbies are surfing, architecture, photography, and golf.

And what he does is, you know, basically, he's like, I'm not going to waste my time just debating politics or, like, trying to be the next big, you know, venture capitalist or whatever. He's like, I'm too busy, busy, like, you know, my eyes are too busy blinded by the, by the reflection from the Maldives sea. I can't, I can't be bothered with all that bullshit. I'm just going to go travel the world, do awesome things and take awesome pictures. And so he becomes, if you go to his instagram, he becomes, like a world famous photographer dude.

Shaan Puri

He has almost 700,000 followers, and he takes beautiful pictures. His Instagram is amazing. It's just pictures from his life traveling the world. And even he's surprised. He's like, I didn't have a big background of this.

Sam Parr

He's like, but I took a few photos. I was traveling, and he's like, I couldn't believe what was coming out of the camera. He's like, I couldn't believe that this was coming out of my camera. So he's like, yo, I decided I'm gonna post this stuff. And so, you know, he starts posting, it gets popular.

So his second act was, was as this. The reason I put him on this list is because I was on air chat the other night, and somebody shared a story about him. They go, you know, the, they go, tom is a hero of mine. Of all the tech heroes, he's one of the biggest because he was able to win the game and then bounce, and they go, not only did he win the tech game, but he won the photography game, and then he bounced from that, too. So if you go to his Instagram, his last photo that he posted was, like, 300 weeks ago.

So you're like, what happened? Where'd he go? Why did he stop? And why did he stop was because Tom has the ability to have enough. And what happened was this guy goes, I ran into Tom.

And I was like, tom, why aren't you posting pictures anymore? He goes, oh, dude, I was traveling one time. I was in, whatever, Thailand, and I was, he's like, I keep all my camera stuff in my locker, and my locker got jacked. And he's like, somebody stole all my cameras. So I was like, all right, that hobby's done.

Moving on.

Can you imagine, like, not only winning the business game, then you win the social media game, and you're super popular, and everything you post, you get the dopamine rush of hundreds of thousands of likes and comments saying how beautiful it is, how they're so jealous of your life, and then someone steals your camera. And of course you could afford another one, but you're like, maybe it's a sign time for the next adventure. And he just moved on to the next adventure. So what's he doing now? So the last thing I could find, because I was like, I needed to know this answer.

And I went into, by the way. He does reply to some tweets. I did. I did remember he replied to one of mine. And if you go to his replies, or maybe he didn't, but somehow he.

Came up and he replied recently, and it was like the last time somebody had heard from him, and he just replied, like, with emojis to somebody. And people were like, oh, Tom, he's back. And somebody on Reddit was like, I bumped into him in Hawaii. He's like. And I basically got the sense that this guy is literally just like, swimming, taking pictures, do it, like, kind of like, you know, he's just like, swimming, hanging out.

He's like, I think he's just like, you know, hooking up with, like, smoking hot women. And I think he's just having a great time, and he's, like, not bothered by anything. They're like, that's the vibe I got from him for my 32nd encounter. And that was the last information I could find about Tom. Look at this picture I just posted on.

On the MdB thing. Tom's on that longevity protocol. This guy's in his fifties now, and look at him. He looks great. He's young.

He looks fresh. He looks happy, but he looks like he's in his thirties. He looks really good. Yeah. Without life hacking, bio optimizing, and taking 96 pills a day and cold plunging for ten minutes every morning, he's just like, cool.

I'll just live a stress free, happy life and get a lot of sun and hang out and eat good food and meet cool people. Dude, when I think of hackers at 14, I don't think guys who look like Sean Parker or. Or Tom. So God bless these guys. What do you think they look like?

Shaan Puri

Harrier. Rounder. Like, for sure Harrier. And for sure rounder. These guys aren't that hairy or round.

They look great. So they've won. Yeah. That's part of why we put them on this list, because they're awesome in more ways than just. Just their, you know, the net worth.

All right, I'll bring it home. Like I said, I tried to pick people who you or the listeners would not have any idea who they are. There's a 5% chance that you've had a run in with this guy, though. And I only put maybe 10% because I think he would have ran in the circles of Michael Birch. But basically, his name is Vivi Nevo.

So. V I. V I. Space. N e v o.

Google this guy for me really quick. Tell me who you think he looks like. You probably don't know pop culture enough, so I'm actually gonna say it. He looks exactly like sting.

Sam Parr

He definitely looks like a rock and roll icon. Or, like, you know what I think the guy who invented Zara should look like? Yes, exactly. Exactly. That's a great.

Shaan Puri

Which, by the way, Google the guy who started Zara doesn't look like that looks like what I think a hacker looks like. So I call this guy the israeli great Gatsby. And so I need to tell you this guy's story because he's incredibly mysterious. So this guy, he's famous for being an investor. He claims to be, and many people, including New York Times, claim that he was the largest shareholder in Time Warner, he was a very large shareholder in Goldman Sachs.

So he, like, runs in all these amazing circles. He's the godparent of some of Rupert Murdoch's kids. And he's like, incredibly well connected. The reason I heard about him was, do you know how there's that famous, like, bohemian Grove, like, who's who of the world conference called Allen and company, like the Sun Valley Allen and company conference, where everyone walks out in their vest? You know what I'm talking about?

And they have those high def photos. Every photo on Google images is him at the Allen and co conference. He sticks out. He's a really good looking guy. And he does not look.

He looks like a rock star. And I thought it was sting at first, and they said his name was Vivi Nevo. And I was like, who the hell is this guy? So I started researching him. So here's his backstory.

He was born in Romania, eventually moves to Israel, and his parents die when he's in his twenties. And his parents were very successful. They owned a chemical company and they leave him something like $3 million. And he was obsessed with Hollywood. And so he moves to LA and he's like, somehow I want to make it into the entertainment business.

And so the story is, is that he got some type of low paying, like, not low paying, but he got, he convinced some guy who he met at a gym to hire him at this man's investment bank. Because Vivi was like, look, I like investing. I know a thing or two about it. I've been investing my parents money. Hire me.

And so this guy eventually goes on record, his last name is Burke. And he goes, somehow he just, this guy just starts showing up at my office. And he was incredibly engaging. However, he didn't do anything. And that was his whole point, is that he did nothing.

He was kind of a gopher. And he didn't really do anything. And all the traders and money management guys were like, what the hell does this guy even do? He doesn't keep a schedule. He can't.

He's like a hummingbird. He's so add. He just jumps around from thing to thing. And I didn't even know what he was doing, but he just showed up at my office until suddenly he quit showing up. And I don't see this guy for years.

I went to his apartment to see if he's okay. He moved out of his apartment. I couldn't find any records for him. I just, I was looking all over the place in yellow pages. I couldn't find this guy, he comes back into my life like three years later, and he's totally different.

He dresses fancy, he starts hanging out with celebrities. And we have no idea what, what he did in those 2345 years. And so the rumors about this guy, and there's all these articles about what the hell does this guy do for a living? None of us can figure it out because he basically has said that he's one of the largest shareholders of Time Warner, which was eventually sold for tens of billions of dollars. Like I said, he was one of the largest shareholders of Goldman, and he's hanging out with all of these celebrities.

And so he's, like I said, he's friends with the Rupert Murdoch Vivi. He owns homes in New York City. He owns home in Beverly Hills. He owns these mansions in Malibu. And Lenny Kravitz eventually lives in one of his guest homes.

That's how fancy it is. And a reporter goes to, like, check out his house because it's like this amazing piece of architecture. And they're like, what do you do for a living? And he won't tell anyone what he has done for a living. It even comes out that he is engaged to the actress from Crouching Tiger, hidden Dragon.

This woman is like one of the top five most famous women in China, and he's engaged to her. Everyone's like, dude, what the hell has this guy done? Like, we have no idea what he's done for a living. And it turns out he's also one of the larger investors of Twitter, one of the larger investors in square. And if you google him, you'll see there's all types of photos of him with Leonardo DiCaprio, with all these, like, young, amazing, attractive women.

Even though he's like 65 now, he hangs out with all these celebrities, the who's who of everyone. And these reporters are like, I have no idea how this guy is everywhere. He was always at the biggest events. I don't know what he does for work. I can't figure anything out about this guy.

And he's a prolific investor now in startups. He's a, that's how I thought you would have known him. And he owns homes that are worth tens of millions of dollars, many of them, you know, he's got one in, I think, Beverly Hills that he tried selling recently for like 50 or, sorry, that he bought recently for $48 million. The homes are filled with the most amazing art. You know, these things by Basquiat, Keith Haring, like tens of millions of dollars worth of artwork.

And he claims to be a startup investor. He claims to be a public equities investor. Uh, have you ever heard of this guy? I've never heard of this guy. And also, I'm still unclear.

Sam Parr

Are you saying you don't think he is those things? Cause you're kind of like, he claims to be this, he claims to be that. But, like, the story doesn't fully add up. So what's the what, what's your take here? The story doesn't fully add up because if you own more than 5% of a publicly traded company, you have to be listed as that.

Shaan Puri

And, and New York Times have asked Time Warner and a bunch of his people, uh, they go, he is a shareholder. That's just all they'll say. They'll say, he is, in fact, a shareholder, and he's in the ears of the CEO's. And the CEO's of time warmer will be like, hey, v vivi is really important to our operation. He's been a big deal.

Now, a lot of people think there's rumors that he's part of the Mossad, which is basically like the israeli, like, secret service, because no one actually understands what he does. And you'll see him with all these interesting celebrities. He looks super fit. And they all say the same thing about the guy. They go, he's the most charismatic person we have ever met.

And, like, story after story after story, it's billionaire after billionaire after billionaire, saying, oh, vivi, he's one of my best friends. And they'll say, well, do you know what he does for a living? You know, we don't really talk about that, but he's the most engaging guy we will ever, you'll ever talk to. He's the least boring person. And they go, we're best friends because just like this person, this person and this person who will say the same thing, he came up one day and he sat next to me, and I couldn't stop listening to what he had to say.

Cause he was so interesting to talk to. And so my theory is that he is, in fact, very wealthy. And he's wealthy because he made connections to a bunch of different people, and he connected them and would get little bits of equity into a variety of businesses. And he's fascinating to me because he's completely kind of made up this fake Persona that has become a reality. And, you know, if you read that book, 48 laws of power, one of the rules is to change your image constantly.

And he basically disappeared in his thirties, and he came back with a new Persona, and he became that person, and many, like, Hollywood people have been like, this guy needs a movie. If you guys would know, this man. Had the greatest New Year's resolution of all time. He's like, all right, new year, new me. Literally.

Literally. Now I'm the most charismatic, interesting, well connected, romantic, and richest person in the world. Fantastic. You've never had run ins with him? No, I've never bumped into this guy.

Sam Parr

Have you? And I'm glad, too, because it sounds like, have you ever seen Eric Weinstein talk about Jeffrey Epstein the first time you met him? What did he say? That he was charismatic? Well, no.

He's like, the hair on my neck stood up immediately. He's like, it didn't add up. Like, you know, where did this guy. You know, how have I never heard of this guy? Where did he get his wealth?

How did he create this hedge fund? How is he splashing cash around like this? How does it. Why does nobody know him from, like, before a certain time? And he's like.

He's like. Jeffrey Epstein was a government construct. Like, he was basically a government, you know, created entity that was meant to, you know, ultimately, like, get, you know, compromised. Like, you know, blackmail on a whole bunch of rich, successful people. And that's what he goes around talking about on podcasts.

I don't know this guy at all. But it just reminded me of the mystery of, who is this person? How does this all add up? Your mom left you $10 million. But then how did you become such a big shareholder in all these things?

That's not a big starting amount of capital to be able to accumulate big stakes in things. It's also interesting that, like, you know, he was one way, that he came back years later as, like, a totally different guy with a totally different personality and a different Persona. Dude. The New York Times said he's the single largest shareholder of Time Warner, which is a big deal. That's.

Shaan Puri

That's billions of dollars. And it's amazing that in today's age, that you can't find out this guy's background. No one really knows. No one talks about it. Look at this picture I put into the document.

Sam Parr

It's him at the Allen and co. Conference riding a bike while the two people he's talking to are walking. Yeah. And he's like, dick. That's not even impossible, dude.

How are you going to ride a bike? And how are people going to walk and talk next to you? You can't even. I've tried that. You can't ride slow enough.

Or they could do that and they can't walk fast enough for you to do this. This just added to the allure to me in a way that nobody else will really understand. This is impossible. He is defying physics to be able to socialize like this. And you see him with literally the most powerful people on earth, and he is always talking with his hands flailing.

Yeah, he's gesturing like crazy in all these pictures. And the people who are the most powerful people on earth are leaning in, listening. There's a photo of Tim Cook stroking his chin, leaning in, like, oh, what's your opinion on this? And he's just engaged them wildly. And so this guy, he is somehow in the ear of the most powerful people on earth, but no one knows who he is.

I think it's hilarious that we ended this list with a guy that we basically know nothing about, no one knows anything about, may not actually be an interesting guy. And we are also massively reading into these signals of, like, from these, like, random photos where we're like, look at the way that lean is happening. Oh, he must be charismatic. Or like, I'm like, look at this bike. Look at how he's biking while other people are walking.

How can he even do that? Wow, this guy is fantastic. And we have so little to go on. We are grasping for straws on this. We are not grasping.

Shaan Puri

He's. I'm grasping. You're grasping, too. There's something here about, there's something here about this person. I need someone to message me information about him.

Surely people in our audience know who this person is. I did that on a t shirt, by the way. I'm not grasping. You're grasping.

Sam Parr

That's our version of, like, you can't triple stamp a double stamp. All right, well, that's. That's the list. I think the real list here is basically that these are the most interesting billionaires you've never heard of. That's right.

Shaan Puri

I agree with that. All right. That's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to I put my all in it like days off on a road, let's travel never looking back.

The 5 Most Shocking Businessmen Alive...

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1: Introduction

2: Pavel Durov - The Rebel

3: Business and Controversy

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