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Podcast

This Opportunity Is Hidden in Plain Sight

My First Million

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  • Ask Where Opportunity Lives Today
    • Entrepreneurs should constantly ask, Where is the opportunity right now, not copy last wave winners.
    • Sam warns chasing proven, winner-take-all network businesses late results in playing yesterday’s game and low upside. Transcript: Shaan Puri All right, it’s done. So obviously there’s a big opportunity in AI right now. Obviously there’s a big opportunity in peptides or like biology with AI, something like that. What I’m about to talk about I I was looking at like, where is their opportunity right now? When you open your laptop, what does your to-do list say? Scheme? Yeah, it’s not even a laptop. It’s like a notepad. It’s the hotel notepad. I don’t think most people actually ask themselves this very important question. Where is the opportunity right now? That’s like, you know, I was sitting there as a 14-year How do I have sex? No, that’s literally what you should be thinking. You should be thinking as a 14-year you’re like, which girl’s going to kiss me? Where are the girls that might kiss me? And how do I get them to kiss me? Right. That’s like actually what you should be thinking about. I think entrepreneurs need to think like that. It’s like, sounds caveman, sounds stupid, but like, it’s actually the thing. (Time 0:00:12)
  • Unexpected Opportunity Signals From Gaming Buzz
    • Shaan lists current big opportunity areas: AI, biology/peptides with AI, machine learning/big data, crypto, new mobile apps — but warns he and his team missed earlier waves.
    • He frames their past position as being in the “lazy river” while the ocean (real opportunity) was elsewhere, showing how easy it is to miss shifts even when adjacent to them.
    • The hosts play a guessing game about where opportunity is — answers range from AI and peptides to Grand Theft Auto 6 and GPUs/power plants — illustrating how cultural moments (like GTA6 hype) surface overlooked startup openings.
    • Shaan emphasizes there is no single answer; cultural events and tech shifts both create niches worth exploring rather than only following proven winner-take-all plays.
    • The segment sets up treating hype (GTA6 buzz) as a valid lens for finding hidden business opportunities rather than dismissing it as mere noise. Transcript: Shaan Puri We had one mobile, we had one iPhone engineer in our company when I joined in 2012. The iPhone came out, I think like four years before that or something. So like, you know, we were just not even on, forget about like we weren’t surfing the wave. We were in the lazy river and then the ocean is over there. And we were just going in circles in the lazy river like idiots. And so I think the very important question is, where is there opportunity? Sam Parr Well, yeah, I want to do an O’s Perlman style. I’m going to write something down and we’ll see if I’m right. Shaan Puri How’s that? How was that? There is 0% chance you’re going to get right what I’m about to say because it is so random. In fact, you’re going to laugh when I say what I’m going to say because you’re going to be like, after that huge ramble about big opportunities, this is the thing you just told me? Okay, go ahead. Let’s see. All right, do you write it down? Sam Parr Yeah, let’s talk about dog ribs. I’m going to close my eyes. Shaan Puri You show the camera. You show the camera. I’m going to close my eyes. Tell me when it’s done. Sam Parr All right, it’s done. I showed it. All right. Shaan Puri So obviously, there’s a big opportunity in AI right now. Obviously, there’s a big opportunity in peptides or like biology with AI, something like that. I don’t know if those are the ones you’re thinking about. What I’m going to have to talk about is Grand Theft Auto 6. I did not write that down. Did you get that right, O’s? What did you write down? GPUs and power plants. Okay, these are all so good. By the way, there’s not one answer to where is (Time 0:04:21)
  • Friend’s Hostile Bid Shows GTA Value
    • Sam shares a friend who planned a hostile takeover of Take-Two because GTA is a rare, defensible entertainment asset.
    • The pitch: GTA produced huge, recurring revenue and moat-like IP worth paying up for. Transcript: Shaan Puri I have this friend who, I don’t know if he wants me to say his name or not, so I won’t say his name just right now. But I have this friend who was, you know him as well. He was one of the first guys to convince me that I needed to put a huge chunk of my net worth into crypto early on. And he was basically saying like, why aren’t you 80% in crypto? And I was like, 80% is insane. And he’s younger than you. Yeah, he’s like, this is obvious. What are you talking about? This is what it’s going to be, blah, blah, blah. So he’s been early on a few different calls with me in my life to the point where now when he says something that I find outlandish, I have learned through trauma of missing out on his prior, Not fully backing his prior things, that I should really pay attention. So he came to my house about a year ago. And he was like, yeah, I’m thinking about putting together a hostile takeover of Take-Two Interactive. I’m like, Take-Two Interactive? What is that? Do they make video games? He’s like, yeah, they make NBA 2K and they make Grand Theft Auto. And I was like, hostile takeover? Do you know anything about a hostile? What is a hostile takeover? We don’t even do that. He’s like, yeah, well, this will be my first. And I was like, you’re insane. All right. Sam Parr So a lot of people (Time 0:06:10)
  • GTA Is A Perennial Entertainment Cash Machine
    • Grand Theft Auto is a category-defining IP that turned a one-time game into recurring revenue via GTA Online.
    • GTA V sold ~500M copies and still generates ~ $500M/year, making it akin to top entertainment franchises. Transcript: Shaan Puri And he basically made this case, like Warren Buffett, describing a business with incredible moats. So he’s like, here you have a product that’s, you know, the last one, when they released it, it blew away all the analyst expectations. They did a billion dollars in sales in three days. It’s bigger than any movie ever created. It’s bigger than any video game ever created. By the way, the video game industry is three times bigger than Hollywood. This is the most defensible product in the world. 10 years later, it’s still selling $500 million a year annually. It’s not like a thing you buy once. They figured out how to make it a recurring revenue business. And there’s no substitution. So there’s not a second place thing that you go buy instead of Grand Theft Auto. If it was $90 instead of $80 or $110 instead of $80, it’s not like you go buy Pepsi instead of Coke. There is no Pepsi. There’s only Coke. And so he gave me this impassioned investment case for why this is such an important asset. So just like some of the numbers, they’ve sold almost 500 million copies of the game. So, you know, 20 billion in lifetime revenue. You know, it’s one of the top grossing entertainment franchises, period. Like all media, Pokemon and Harry Potter and others. It’s like at that level. It’s in the upper, upper, upper pantheon of all IP ever created. And it’s the fastest entertainment product to ever hit a billion dollars. 12 years later, still doing 500 million a year. Now, a lot of their revenue comes from GTA Online. So they figured out how to make it a recurring revenue business. (Time 0:08:53)
  • Build Around Big Game Launch Economies
    • If you’re young, move fast to build businesses around big launches like GTA 6 where the ecosystem is nascent.
    • Sam suggests content, mods, tools, and in-game item markets will reward early builders. Transcript: Shaan Puri So there’s people who do content around this. There’s people who create like mods and tools and data scrapers and guides. And then there’s people who sell things in the game. And we don’t know exactly how the game’s going to work, but the game might work like some of these other video games now where you can buy and sell in-game items. Like outfits or something? Yeah, like skins, guns, outfits, whatever. Like the different aspects of the game. And so there’s going to be a lot of people who get wealthy off this. For example, in the last wave, when GTA V came out, these guys made this thing called No Pixel. So they created their own mod version of the game, and they ended up selling it back to the company after it got really mega popular. It got more popular than the real game on Twitch. So I just think there’s going to be a lot of opportunity for, if you’re in this kind of 13 to 25-year range, you’re fun employed, basically. There’s going to be an interesting chance to have fun, do something that’s in your circle of competence, like in an area you know about. And to actually like learn business by doing a starter business in this little Grand Theft Auto economy. And I’m saying little, but like, it’s probably, the game is obviously like, you know, tens of billions, but the economy around it is probably going to be in the hundreds of millions. And it’s this weird thing where you know it’s coming, but it’s not out yet. And so there’s no, like nobody has a headstart necessarily in doing this. And so whoever moves fast, whoever builds interesting things, whoever creates interesting content is going to benefit from this. (Time 0:12:44)
  • G Fuel Turned Streamer Trust Into $100M Brand
    • Shaan tells G Fuel’s rise as an example of accessory businesses exploiting influencer trust within gaming.
    • G Fuel partnered with streamers, made co-branded flavors, and scaled to ~$100M by using streamer affinity. Transcript: Shaan Puri Uh, well, I’ll say for gaming. So like there was this company I remember discovering called G Fuel and like I had never heard of G Fuel. Did you, do you know what G Fuel is? No. It’s kind of like an energy drink type of deal. They might be a little shady. The product might not be good for you. I’m not saying any of that. As a business, I thought it was very smart what they did. Sam Parr You are saying that. Shaan Puri No, no, no. I was just like Red Bull. Is Red Bull good for you? No, Red Bull’s not good for you. But like Red Bull can be, you can admire Red Bull as a brand and a business. Well, one of their energy drinks. Sam Parr I think you should drink this. One of their energy drinks is called F*** Shit Up Collector’s Box. So. Yeah, got three of them at home. I don’t think that’s shady. No. I don’t see any red flags. What are you talking about? Shaan Puri It’s like the red flag is wrapped around my eyes. But they did something really start. They figured out that Twitch streamers were undervalued assets, that people were going for influencers based off of their like following size. And so as like a following size, the Twitch streamers on Twitch, they didn’t have huge numbers, but they realized like the depth of trust was insane. Because when you watch somebody on Twitch, you’re watching them for eight hours a day. These gamers had a lot of influence and the influence was disconnected from their price sheet. And so what G Fuel did was it went to all of them and it ran basically the Nike playbook with streamers. So they would go to the popular streamers. They’d say, hey, we want to develop a flavor just for you, a shaker bottle that’s your colors, your branding. And you’re going to get a cut of the affiliate revenue. And they partnered with all the top streamers, which was not that hard to do at the time. Even though these guys were really popular, traditional brands weren’t coming to them at the time. And so they went zero to 100 million in sales. And like guys like you and I had never heard of them because they did it just within this gaming bubble using just the gaming influencers. And so they did that. (Time 0:14:26)
  • How G Fuel Built A $100M Business Inside Gaming
    • G Fuel identified Twitch streamers as undervalued: large depth of trust despite modest follower counts because fans watch them for hours daily.
    • They applied the Nike playbook to streamers: create personalized flavors, branded shaker bottles, and offer affiliate revenue cuts.
    • By partnering across top streamers (when traditional brands ignored them), G Fuel scaled quickly to roughly $100M in sales within the gaming bubble.
    • This model shows the power of creator-led product lines and selling picks-and-shovels to a rising creator economy (Elgato is a parallel example). Transcript: Shaan Puri But like Red Bull can be, you can admire Red Bull as a brand and a business. Well, one of their energy drinks. Sam Parr I think you should drink this. One of their energy drinks is called F*** Shit Up Collector’s Box. So. Yeah, got three of them at home. I don’t think that’s shady. No. I don’t see any red flags. What are you talking about? Shaan Puri It’s like the red flag is wrapped around my eyes. But they did something really start. They figured out that Twitch streamers were undervalued assets, that people were going for influencers based off of their like following size. And so as like a following size, the Twitch streamers on Twitch, they didn’t have huge numbers, but they realized like the depth of trust was insane. Because when you watch somebody on Twitch, you’re watching them for eight hours a day. These gamers had a lot of influence and the influence was disconnected from their price sheet. And so what G Fuel did was it went to all of them and it ran basically the Nike playbook with streamers. So they would go to the popular streamers. They’d say, hey, we want to develop a flavor just for you, a shaker bottle that’s your colors, your branding. And you’re going to get a cut of the affiliate revenue. And they partnered with all the top streamers, which was not that hard to do at the time. Even though these guys were really popular, traditional brands weren’t coming to them at the time. And so they went zero to 100 million in sales. And like guys like you and I had never heard of them because they did it just within this gaming bubble using just the gaming influencers. And so they did that. There’s obviously like Elgato, which sells accessories for streaming that now has become even more popular with podcasting as well. Like they got both of those waves. And so Elgato is another company that sells like picks and shovels to the streaming industry. (Time 0:14:51)
  • Clips First Is A Media Product Strategy
    • TBPN inverted the podcast playbook: clips are the product and the long-form show is a farming exercise.
    • That clip-first model made them culturally influential and monetizable for acquirers like OpenAI. Transcript: Shaan Puri Less. Less than two years. 18 months, right? All time. Is it even 18 months? Is it 12? I don’t know what it is. Our friends at tbpn so the story is tbpn which is a tech live show uh just got acquired by open ai the makers of chat gpt for an undisclosed sum of money people rumor it to be 100 million maybe 200 million which is bananas for not just any product that’s 12, 18 months old, but specifically a podcast or a show, specifically one that doesn’t even get that much viewership for Its actual flagship show. And John and Jordi are awesome. I’m super happy for them. But we haven’t had a chance to talk about that. So what was your reaction? Where were you and what was your reaction when you heard this? Sam Parr Where was I? It sounded like 9-11. I don’t remember where I was. But I think my reaction is amazing deal for them. I would have taken that 10 out of 10 times. If it’s anything north of 100 million, take that all day. Yeah, all day. And my second reaction is they’re going to win even bigger in two years when the board of directors of (Time 0:20:27)
  • Media Teams Buy Strategic Narrative Power
    • Acquirers may buy small media teams for strategic influence, comms expertise, or cultural insulation rather than pure user growth.
    • Sam suggests a small stock stake can buy high-skill media guidance that shifts perception for huge companies. Transcript: Sam Parr Incredible. Epic for, TPPN guys, for sure. Do you think this is a smart move for OpenAI? Shaan Puri Let me make the case. Because I think on the surface, it’s like, what? It’s a head-scratcher, right? For example, ChatGPT has something like 900 million monthly active users. TBPN might have 90,000 viewers, including on their show. And then maybe if you include clips, it’s like a million people see a clip. I don’t know. It’s not going to move the needle for growth. Sam Parr Maybe like getting an executive to buy OpenAI is a $200 million deal. Shaan Puri I mean, you’d have to get a lot of… But again, who’s already not… I don’t know. Like buying… It’s not like an awareness play. Like normally it’s like media has attention and you have lucrative product. So you use media to get your lucrative product into more people to have more attention. In this case, ChatGPT has so much attention. I’m not sure what you get out of that. But I think, you know, here’s the case because I think you should assume that these very smart people don’t do very dumb things. But as a default, you should try to figure out what they’re telling themselves. So, okay, let’s spitball real quick. Even if it’s $100 million, what is that? What is 100 million out of $800 billion? Divided by $800 billion, right? Because that’s the percent of the company they gave up, assuming it’s a mostly stock deal. Sam Parr But that’s not how a disciplined company thinks, I would think. Let’s start with this. Shaan Puri Because you might say, if I was to give up 0.001% of my stock to a uniquely talented group of guys who understand media and marketing and communication and like the modern media playbook And just having them in our office and having them be, you know, working on our comms or strategically guiding us. Is that going to make our company 0.01% whatever, right? I don’t know the math. 0.01% more valuable? For sure, maybe just one ad campaign for sure maybe could pay for that. Yes. One insight into how we should be doing our comms differently. One insight into how we should be positioning ourselves. (Time 0:23:34)
  • Make the Clip the Product Not the Trailer
    • The TBPN team inverted podcast playbooks: they treated long-form streams as a farm to produce short clips, not the other way around.
    • They ran long 4-hour live shows with the explicit goal of generating ~20 high-quality clips a day for feeds.
    • Clips (10–40 seconds) became the actual product because they meet listeners where they already browse.
    • This approach shifts promotion from driving listeners to a long episode to distributing many bite-sized moments as the primary offering.
    • Going all-in on where attention already is (e.g., Twitter) amplified this strategy when others were still treating clips as trailers. Transcript: Shaan Puri So first, they changed the playbook for the podcast. It was like, nobody’s watching the show. We don’t care. We produced the show and the show’s, the functionality of the show was to produce clips. So what everybody else was doing in the industry was, let’s post clips to promote, and the clip’s job is to promote the real show, the long form show. And I think they inverted that. They didn’t say this. I’m putting words in their mouth, but let me speculate for a second. I believe what they found was that it’s not that the clips job, the clips are there to promote the live show. It’s that the live show is there to produce the clips and the clips is the product. And we do this four hour live stream as a farming exercise to just farm 20 great clips a day. And if we do 20 great clips a day and we’re on your feed where you’re already browsing and where you’re hanging out and we give you 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds of entertainment, Of insight, of a great soundbite, well, we’ve done our job. That’s the show. The show is this distributed thing, not one central long form thing, right? Like the way we and most podcasters think of our show is what we do is like the podcast. Listening to the hour-long thing is the thing. And we’re going to use social media to hopefully draw you into the main thing. They did it the exact opposite way. They’re like, we’ll sit here for four hours and talk. The product is the clip. You know, that’s the end product that we’re actually trying to create. (Time 0:29:46)
  • Great Lock-In Built TBPN’s Success
    • Sam recounts John and Jordi’s ‘great lock-in’ — daily grind, live shows, and relentless clip production — that led to their breakout and acquisition.
    • John declined other events and stayed obsessed, turning momentum into an exit. Transcript: Shaan Puri Because, you know, we like to nerd out about media, but most people don’t care about media. Yeah. Can I just tell you two John stories? So I don’t know Jordy as well as I know John. So I was in a mastermind group. I created a little mastermind group for media, like guys like me who are like content creators. And we had this text group and we would do these calls. And at the time, John was doing a YouTube channel where he would do like an explanation, the history of Donald Trump, the history of Xi Jinping. Pretty good stuff. High quality. And it was actually getting like a lot of views. Like his videos could get like a million views or 200,000 views, 2 million views. So he was like doing well too. He was like successful at it. Sam Parr We had him on MFM during that point. Shaan Puri But he wasn’t like, he wasn’t married to it. It wasn’t like, this is my thing. I’m going to do this forever. He was exploring. And so I was kind of helping him and talking through like, what are you thinking about? He was like, oh, I’m thinking about this and this and this. And he tried several experiments before he landed on TPPN. So the first thing was massive credit for walking away from the metrics. So like, how many subscribers does he have on YouTube? Sam Parr 450,000. And his last video did nearly 1 million views. And it was people still don’t under, it was about Visa. So a pretty nerdy topic, but he did a good job. But that’s like a high quality audience. This is, I would say, imagine, financially, I’m sure this could have been a huge success. And he had half a million subscribers. That’s a lot. So he had half a million subscribers. He was doing videos that were getting a million views, but it wasn’t what he wanted as a creator. Shaan Puri The artist in him was not like, this is it. This is the thing I want to do for the next 10 years. And he walked away. And I just want to point that out because walking away from that and then not just walking away from that and trying to build back up to that, but like when you’re doing TBPN and you’re going Live every morning and you don’t get to go on vacation because you got to be live every morning and you’re, you’re dressing up in your suit, you’re showing up at the studio, you’re preparing, You’re doing 16 interviews in a row. You’re, you know, you’re then going into cutting the clips, you’re preparing for the next day. And you look at that number on your live stream and you’ve got 3,000 people watched today. Do you know how hard that is mentally as a creator who was just seeing that same number on YouTube be 1 million? Did he say anything about that? To now see 2,000 and show up with enthusiasm the next day. I didn’t bring it up like this with him, but I can tell you why. Because when you’re doing the thing that you actually enjoy doing, you’ll sustain even in the face of bad results, right? It’s like for him, I think talking to Jordi is fun as hell. Talking about venture tech was more fun than talking about like the history of Xi Jinping. I think he’s like more in that, the scene of like true tech. And I think having the creative freedom to like build the brand and the show the way they wanted, I think was fun for him. And so like, I think the fun sustained him when the numbers would have been discouraging to the average person. That’s the first part of like massive credit because as a creator, I know how hard that is. I know how hard it is to go, like Naval has talked about this, that the hardest, the true masters are people who can go back down the mountain and start again and take a new path. Because going back down the mountain once you’ve climbed up once, it’s like, you know how exhausting it is. You actually know what goes into it. And it’s so hard to give up the vantage point you have to go back to being a beginner again and seeing where that new road might take you. The second one, I invited John to our basketball camp. People don’t know this. John’s like freaking like 6’8 or something like that. He’s huge. He’s like the tallest guy in the tech industry. And I was like, oh dude, you should come to our camp. It’s amazing. We got all these amazing, the founder of Airbnb and Reddit and, you know, Mr. Beast. And then this famous guy, this famous guy, this famous guy, like, you should come, man. We want you to come this year. We’d love to have you. And he’s like, oh, that’s amazing. He’s like, I just got to figure it out with TBPN. I was like, dude, it’s two days. It’s over the, you know, it’s like, just like Thursday, Friday, you’ll be back. It’ll be fine. Also, who cares? TBPN. It’s nothing yet. It’s just a baby. At that time, they weren’t even doing the live show. But wasn’t this like two months ago? No, no. This was the year before. Sam Parr Oh, got it. Shaan Puri And so at the time, all they were doing was replying to tweets. They didn’t even have their show yet. It was literally a Twitter account where they would reply to a tweet with them in nice suits, recording a response to an interesting tweet somebody had. So it wasn’t even like, we had to be live. It was just, he was just like, I got momentum. So first he asked me, he goes, can Jordy come too? And I was like, dude, we’re super constrained on the, the like number of people. He’s like, can we come and can we record from there? And I was like, I don’t know, man, I’m not sure. Like a big miss. Well, there’s no, there’s no miss. I’m saying incredible for him at that time to turn down that invite to be like, no, even 48 hours, I got to just be locked in. I got to just like, there’s something here. I just, I don’t want to lose any momentum. And as a founder, as like, as anybody who tries to like make a project happen, the amount of like manual cranking you have to do at the beginning to get something off the ground is like so Underrated. And I know that me, I would have been like, ooh, I got invited to this cool event. Ooh, all these cool people are going to be there. Oh, it’s only a couple of days. It won’t be that big of a distraction. Like, whatever, I can come back to this. Like I would have done that. Like mad props to him for being like no no i got i gotta stay with this and so he stuck with it he so he didn’t come he stuck with it and when i texted him about this uh about this outcome about This like incredible outcome he goes it’s a testament to the great lock-in and i was like the great lock-in. And that’s really what they did. They just locked the f*** in for 12 months. They’re like, every day we are going to be balls to the wall at doing this thing. And it doesn’t matter if other people think this thing is important. We think it’s important. It is a testament to the great lock-in. (Time 0:32:29)
  • Why John Walked Away From Big YouTube Success
    • John had big YouTube hits (hundreds of thousands to millions of views) but wasn’t married to being a YouTube creator and chose to leave that path.
    • Shaan highlights the mental difficulty of trading millions of views for a smaller live audience while doing intense daily work: live shows, dressing up, prepping, filming, and editing.
    • The reason John sustained the grind despite smaller numbers was that he genuinely enjoyed the new content and creative freedom (talking tech with Jordi felt more fun than history deep dives).
    • Shaan frames this as “massive credit” — the hardest creators can climb down the mountain they’ve reached and start again with enthusiasm.
    • The personal example ends with Shaan inviting John to their basketball camp, humanizing the anecdote and showing their continued friendship outside content metrics. Transcript: Shaan Puri You’re, you know, you’re then going into cutting the clips, you’re preparing for the next day. And you look at that number on your live stream and you’ve got 3,000 people watched today. Do you know how hard that is mentally as a creator who was just seeing that same number on YouTube be 1 million? Did he say anything about that? To now see 2,000 and show up with enthusiasm the next day. I didn’t bring it up like this with him, but I can tell you why. Because when you’re doing the thing that you actually enjoy doing, you’ll sustain even in the face of bad results, right? It’s like for him, I think talking to Jordi is fun as hell. Talking about venture tech was more fun than talking about like the history of Xi Jinping. I think he’s like more in that, the scene of like true tech. And I think having the creative freedom to like build the brand and the show the way they wanted, I think was fun for him. And so like, I think the fun sustained him when the numbers would have been discouraging to the average person. That’s the first part of like massive credit because as a creator, I know how hard that is. I know how hard it is to go, like Naval has talked about this, that the hardest, the true masters are people who can go back down the mountain and start again and take a new path. Because going back down the mountain once you’ve climbed up once, it’s like, you know how exhausting it is. You actually know what goes into it. And it’s so hard to give up the vantage point you have to go back to being a beginner again and seeing where that new road might take you. (Time 0:34:28)
  • Pay And Protect Creatives To Collect Talent
    • Recruit and protect creative talent by paying well and giving editorial cover to win loyalty.
    • Sam highlights Hearst’s tactic: personally recruit writers, pay top rates, and shield them so they stay and produce great work. Transcript: Sam Parr Even though he was like a clickbait guy and he would sensationalize stuff, he still loved words and he loved like beautiful prose. And so he was a very, it was like a dichotomy where he like was like all about like building and flashy headlines and also beautiful. Isn’t this beautiful? Look at the sentence this author wrote. And so he would find, for example, there’s a story where he was based in SF. He found a little pamphlet that this one 23-year journalist in Oakland wrote. And he read it and he immediately went to Oakland and he personally recruited the guy. And what he was famous for was a personally showing up so at the time imagine um imagine you know i think phoebe gates is like in the news now for being a startup founder right imagine phoebe Gates knocking on sean’s door like one year or six months into mfm and being like because she read my blog you know and her saying like, you got it, you got what it takes. And he did that. He was famous for that. He would personally find these people. So he actually cared about that. And two, he paid really well. He was famous for like, he’s like my philosophy, which I think is a good takeaway. We see this time and time again, we’re seeing this with Facebook super intelligence. And that’s a way bigger extreme of like, getting the best people under one roof, even if it means that your profits are going to be really tiny or break even or at a loss, it normally tends To work out. And that’s what he did. And so his newsroom was famous amongst the guys who loved actual news as being the best talent. And he let them do what they want. Additionally, what he was really good at is he would take cover for them. (Time 0:57:01)
  • Win By Figuring Out Your One Main Thing
    • Success hinges on identifying the one main thing that drives your business and either mastering it yourself or recruiting someone world-class to own it.
    • Sam emphasizes founders must be the ‘figure outer’ or hire the recruiter who finds that talent. Transcript: Shaan Puri And I just said, I said, hey, what of our, what of our conversation in the last 24 hours do you think would make like be useful for people on MFM? Not just entertaining, but useful. And he goes, oh, the thing you said about one of our companies. So in one of our companies, we kind of hit a plateau. So we got into the like 20 million plus range of revenue, which is great because we were growing 50% a year, but then we plateaued. And I had stepped out of the company about two years ago. And so the question is like, what do we do? And I had told Ben, I was like, we’re in a little bit of a pickle because to be great in that type of a company, let’s just take, let’s use the analogy you were doing of Hearst, right? To be great in the newspaper business, you have to make the most compelling media, right? So you got to have stories that hook people that get people to become daily readers. If you don’t do that, it’s pretty hard. Like, what are you doing? That’s the main thing. And so identify the main thing. And then either the person who’s doing it has to be like the world-class figure it outer of that. So it’s like, you know, you were this with the hustle, I feel initially, which was with the hustle. Like, I remember you wrote this style, this writing style guide, and you’re like, this is how we write. This is what we write about. This is what’s a good story versus a story we don’t do that other people might think is good, but we don’t think it’s good. This is what a good headline looks like. This is what a bad headline looks like. And you were the figure outer of the main thing that you needed to get right in order for that business to work. In let’s say e-commerce, like I don’t know if you saw, Grunz just sold the like gummies company or whatever and they sold for a billion dollars. And what was it like? It’s like they just picked the right category with the right model. Obviously, a bunch of things have to go right when you get a billion-dollar exit in three years. So I’m not going to say you isolate it to one thing. Of course. What were the main variables? The main variables were like, yes, they were in a great category, like supplements are a great category. And then secondly, they were in like a, they were on trend with like greens basically. So like you have athletic greens, but then you had greens as gummies. And yeah, the product as a gummy is good and differentiated. But like, look, a lot of people were basically saying like, the genius of Grooms was that they turned athletic greens into a gummy. And like, guess what? Like a lot of people can do that, would do that. If that’s all it took, they would be copied like that. You know, it would be trivial for somebody else to create a gummy, a product equivalent of their product. The thing that was really hard to copy was their marketing excellence. And basically the dirty secret of all e-commerce and D2C businesses is that they are world-class at just marketing funnels. It’s like they’re world-class at the Facebook, TikTok, Google ad game, going to a landing page, getting you to buy a thing and then emailing you incessantly and texting you nonstop Until you buy again. They were good at that? They’re not just good. They’re world-class at that. And so anyways, back to kind of like the useful lesson. The useful lesson is figure out what the main thing you’re going to have to get right. That’s going to be like 70% of the battle. And then either the founder has to be so world-class at it that they’re going to do all the hard figuring out and then they’re going to like delegate to anybody else like to do the work, But they’re going to do the figuring out at each step. So for example, people don’t know this, but at The Hustle, when you started, you know, you started with the event and then you had to figure out how to, what was the main thing for the event? It was like, get speakers that I can use to sell the tickets. And you were just constantly playing this game of like, can I get a bad-ass speaker? And then can I tell the world that this speaker is going to be here and that they have to come and buy this ticket to this event? And then when you started, before you started the newsletter, you were blogging. And it was like, we have to have these articles that go viral. And being great at going viral is going to be the thing that is either going to make this company successful or not successful, right? And then you had to figure out when you switched the newsletter, it was a different thing. But let’s just take the going viral part. You got to be world-class at that, or you’re going to have to learn how to recruit world-class people at doing that thing. There’s only two ways to win. You are the world-class person doing the figuring out or your world-class recruiter to get the people who are going to do the figuring out. There’s really only two things to be great at with that. (Time 1:06:33)