Five +$10M Ideas (from a guy who's done it 3 times)

**Shaan Puri** (0:00)
All right, we have Sheel today here, who is, by my call, the most interesting man in tech. And that is a big claim. And I'm aware of the power of my words, but I did not stutter. Sheel, I think I've told you this before, but I think of all people, I feel like you live in this beautiful blend of, you do things that make you successful, but then you do a lot of things that just seem like a lot of fun and they're random, and you're letting life kind of bounce you in whatever direction it's going to take you. And it's kind of inspiring. And Sam, I know it's inspiring for you, because Sam is a perfect square, and he just likes to be a perfect square, and he doesn't know what to do with this crazy blob shape like you, Sam, is that right?

**Sam Parr** (0:51)
Yeah, I mean, he's inspiring to me. He just does the silliest stuff. But let's just say, so Sheel, here's like, I'll brag on your behalf. So basically, you have what? A $320 million VC fund. You've built a business called Thistle to 100 million in revenue, and you've built another business that sold domains. I think you've sold half a billion dollars in domains. You've done all this amazing stuff, but then you do like the silliest things. Like you did like an online version of The Bachelor. You're in a Justin Bieber music video. Like you do ridiculous stuff.

**Shaan Puri** (1:18)
You got married, sponsored by Taco Bell in the metaverse. You had a wedding in the metaverse with Taco Bell somehow. I don't even know what that is.

**Sam Parr** (1:25)
I didn't know about that. That's awesome.

**Shaan Puri** (1:27)
What was that?

**Sheel Mohnot** (1:28)
Oh, it's a long story. But yeah, Taco Bell sponsored my wedding. We had a series. I figured like, if you're gonna have a wedding, it's a great excuse to bring your friends together. And so I was like, it's an excuse for all your friends to come together. As many times you do it, they're all gonna come. So we had six weddings and nine wedding related events over the course of a year, one of which was sponsored by Taco Bell because we entered a contest and my amazing wife let me do this.

**Shaan Puri** (1:58)
Yeah.

**Sam Parr** (1:58)
Makes sense.

**Shaan Puri** (1:58)
I don't even know what to make of all this.

**Sam Parr** (2:00)
It makes sense.

**Shaan Puri** (2:05)
I went back and I listened, because you've been on the podcast way back when I first started it, because you were a friend of mine in San Francisco and I wanted to have interesting people on the podcast. So back in 2019, you're probably in the first 20 episodes.
I actually went back and listened to it this morning, because I forgot all of it. I don't remember any of this. I'm going to repeat a couple of the stories. I actually want to start. You brought some ideas, opportunities you see, things like that. I want to get to those. But I want to start with maybe the relatable side hustle. Can you talk about one of the early ways you made money, which was this story about the iPod Mini? I don't even know if you remember the full story here, but can you tell this iPod Mini hustle story?

**Sheel Mohnot** (2:47)
Yeah. I was a new college graduate. I was working a job. They gave me an iPod Mini, which is the iPod had come out, it was white. Then the Mini came out, it was smaller, and it was available in four colors, blue, yellow, pink, and green.
Right after I got it, my headphones got stuck in a bike I was riding and broke. Apple was not selling those headphones. Those iconic headphones that I wanted, Apple was not selling them. I had this idea of, let me make these headphones and I will make them in the colors matching the iPod Mini. I went to China for the first time in my life, just to figure this out.

**Sam Parr** (3:31)
You went for this reason.

**Sheel Mohnot** (3:32)
I went for this reason, yes. I was working a full-time job, I took a two-week vacation, and I was like, let me spend those two weeks in China.

**Shaan Puri** (3:41)
Where in China? China is a big place. You were just like, I'm just going to go, I'll find a guy. What was the plan?

**Sheel Mohnot** (3:46)
Okay. I went to Hong Kong actually originally. I looked up trade shows, and there was this big Consumer Electronics trade show. So I was like, I'm just going to go to this trade show, and then I'll figure it out. I hadn't booked anything else, so I went to this trade show. There were thousands of boots.