#136 with Jack Smith - Trading Cards and Collectables: A Deep Dive Into The Opportunities In The Space

**Sam Parr** (0:17)
So, an introduction here. This is Jack Smith.
He's one of my one or two closest friends.

**Shaan Puri** (0:23)
He's number one, dude.

**Sam Parr** (0:24)
He's number one, he's up there. He's above them.

**Jack Smith** (0:26)
Sam tells everyone they're the number one, so.

**Sam Parr** (0:28)
No, it's like, there's like a couple guys who are the crew. We have like a tight-knit group.
Jack doesn't like to brag. I'm gonna brag for him. But basically, he started this company called Vungle, which was sold to Blackstone, the large PE company for I think 750 million in cash.
They had raised a little bit of money, but not a significant amount. It was a wonderful exit. He also helped start this company called Ship, which crashed and burned, but it was awesome. It was cool while it lasted, and it was a good idea. And then he was, he had his, did you know, Shawn, Jack had his hands, he was involved slightly with that. Remember that credit card that went viral in 2013 or 14, where it was like called Coin, and you click a button and it would change your debit cards. You could have five cards on one card.

**Shaan Puri** (1:10)
It was sweet concept. It was one card, and then you just switch over, you just push a button. It's like, now it's your business. Now it's your travel rewards card or whatever else.
I think it was a Kickstarter project, right, Jack? Or like you got a big...

**Jack Smith** (1:19)
Yeah, it started as Kickstarter, yeah. Yeah, it was like one of the first to use Sandwich Video, which is the guy that has done videos for like Square and all these lot after. His was one of the first ones to do it, and then it kind of went viral mainly to the video.

**Shaan Puri** (1:32)
So talk about the Sandwich guy, because that guy is interesting, right? So he has, if you haven't seen it, basically he was like an ad agency, or not ad agency, I don't know what to call it, but marketing agency, and he would make videos. And so people wanted their version of the Dollar Shave Club launch video, which was like this really like funny, entertaining, but like told the company's story really well and got a bunch of customers, got a bunch of hype.
And so if you go to their portfolio page, it's like kind of like a bunch of big winners, like Slack and others.
And at some point, you know, they were just charging so, and the guy himself, I think his name's Adam, is that right? He's in all the videos, which is cool.

**Sam Parr** (2:07)
He's a good actor, he's like a good straight man.

**Shaan Puri** (2:09)
You know, he's the perfect normal dude just explaining this cool thing.
And it got to the point where it was too expensive, he would only take equity or he would like require equity now for these projects that he was helping launch into kind of the stratosphere. Is he still doing that or have they pivoted? Or what's the latest? Because that was a few years ago.

**Jack Smith** (2:26)
Well, actually, Coin was one of the first ones. So I think Coin, it was something like, the video was something like $75,000 or something, I don't know.
So they paid in cash, but actually was because of the video that they just did so much better than they thought. Then the guy just told him like, hey dude, you pretty much blew it out of the park for us. So he just like gave him that T.

**Shaan Puri** (2:47)
Even though he never asked for it.

**Jack Smith** (2:48)
And so after that, then the guy was like, hmm, probably should ask for just equity and for any future deal that I do. If this guy's giving it to me voluntarily, I probably should ask for it.

**Sam Parr** (2:57)
What we're gonna talk about today is collectibles. And the reason why Jack is here is because Jack sold Vungle. Is it two years now or a year ago?

**Jack Smith** (3:04)
Yeah, something like a year, one year.

**Sam Parr** (3:06)
But prior to that, he wasn't working there. He left and has had a lot of free time, like three years of free time, four years of free time.
And what Jack does in his hobby is so weird. He just like buys and reviews tons of stuff and he definitely returns a lot of it, but he just consumes information and he loves trying new products. Like he's so like, I remember for his birthday recently, his wife and me and a couple of buds, she got, we went to Tahoe and she got him a cake that was an Amazon box.