Adam Curry's Ask Jeeves Investment Allowed Him to Buy a Castle | Joe Rogan

No, don't have any of that. At least you guys don't have bears. That's when it really is a pain in the ass when people... We've got coyotes now though. I'll bet you do. Yeah, I saw a couple of those walking through the yard. And I have no pets, so... We've lost pets. I used to have so many pets. I had everything. Dogs, cats, goats, frices. Do you feel for now, without them? I do. You don't really realize it until you're closing the sliding door, you're opening it up, and you're not thinking, shit, is someone going to get out? That's very free. That's a weird thing. I always feel bad the cats can't even go outside. Well, they can't go outside in Texas. They'll get eaten. But it's just sad that they can't even go outside. Like, what the fuck kind of life is that? Just living in a little prison where you get gerrits. Like gerbils, you know, in a cage. I don't like goldfish. I don't like any of that. Goats, though. I had a lot of goats. Those are mean fuckers. Yeah. Horses, too. I had a thing. My daughter had horses. I had a castle in Belgium. We had two horses there. You had a castle in Belgium? Yeah. I used to have money. Is this MTV money? No, no. I took my company public in 1996 called Think New Ideas. And it was one of the first internet marketing advertising companies. And it was big. We had 400 people. It was a big company. Oh, wow. And yeah, my buddy and I just worked out and we took it public. Back then it was like, this is before the real dot com craze. So we raised $20 million. Like, holy shit, we couldn't believe it. Which is nothing these days. And after all the lawyers and everyone had taken their money, there was 15 million left. And so we started to build the business. And what were we talking about? Oh, yeah. So there was that. And then I'd also, at the time, someone had said, and I did pretty well on the IPO. And I'm not crazy, but okay. I learned what dilution means. I learned that pretty quick. But I had invested $50,000 in some company. And then in 2000, just before 2000, moved to Amsterdam, moved back to the Netherlands. And the bank called me and said, are you sitting down? I said, yeah. What's up? What time of that company you invested in? I said, yeah. Well, it went public. It was Ask Jeeves. Oh. And you now have $65 million. I'm like, oh, yeah, on paper. On paper, Joe. So lock up. You couldn't sell any of it, you know, all this stuff. So I did get some out, but, you know, basically wrote it down to wallpaper. How come you can't sell it? I never answered that. Well, if you're an insider, you lock up your shares. It's an SEC regulation. So you can't sell for it. I think it's negotiable, but it's so the other investors who come in won't be left holding the bag. So, you know, you do the IPO and then all the insiders sell their shares, and everyone who just bought at the IPO, then all their shit goes down in value and they're screwed. Got it. So you have to, there's a lock up typically six months or 12 months or 18 months. And through some back-ended way, I don't know what the hell was going on. I don't know how bankers do it with swapping stuff and promises and derivatives. They were able to get some money out for me that I spent on helicopters and castles and all kinds of fun stuff. I've enjoyed the money. That's good. Definitely. Glad I got the podcasting thing left. How'd you get back to Austin? Well, so I had the company in San Francisco. This was a different company, the podcast company. And I was living in London at the time. So I lived there for five years. Damn, you're an international traveler. Oh, I have lived in a couple places and was going back and forth San Francisco, London. And there was a breakup between me and my wife and we got divorced. And so I stayed in San Francisco and then moved to California, to Los Angeles for about a year. I always want to live in LA. I lived in the hills over by Highland. And it just didn't work for me. I was doing basically the podcast. That shows me I'm like 12, 13 years ago. And I don't know, it was just maybe it was that area. But I really had nowhere else to go. And if I wanted to go somewhere, I'm just sitting in traffic all day. It's like if I want to go to the beach, no. I was with a woman at the time who was an actress. Never marry an actress, man. It's bad. I was warned. She wanted to be in that general area. So it just wasn't working for me. And then I did a tour from Virginia down to Florida, the Gulf Coast for the show with an RV, doing the show from the RV, meeting people, doing meetups. And it was just around the time when you had the BP oil spill in the Gulf. And so people really depressed and it was all messy and just was not a good vibe. And I was going to go straight up to Chicago. And a buddy of mine, Greg Lawley, who was one of the true last independent record promoters who I'd known from San Francisco, and I knew him from Chicago back from the radio days. And he said, oh, Adam, come to Austin. You'll love it. Come to Austin. Stay at my place, come to Austin. Like, nah, I'd never really been to Texas. It's like, that doesn't really interest me. I'm just going to go up to Chicago. And he just kept pushing and pushing as I'm driving up. And then he says, or I thought to myself, Greg is flamboyantly gay. Single dad adopted a kid from Ukraine. And if he's in Texas and he's still alive, it can't be that bad. So maybe it's just Austin. I don't know. So I visited him. And we did a meetup. And this is in the summer, so it's about 112 degrees. But, you know, that Austin heat is not too humid. It's doable. And there were 30, 33 people at the meetup. And they were all happy and proud of their city and proud of their state. And they loved it. It was so much good energy, particularly after it just came from the Gulf. And one young woman, her purse fell on the ground and out rolled a fresh pair of underpants and a handgun. Unlike Texas. This is where I moved there three months later.