#132 - A Simple Email Hack That Generated Millions, The World's Cheapest Billionaire, and A Simple Startup Idea No One Has Done

MFM #158 Andrew Chen story University of Washington has a program for gifted high schoolers who want to do college early. Andrew took part and graduated at 19. He met some pretty cool people doing this including emmit of twitch, and head of hedge funds. Shaan got into a Duke program as a teenager via TIP program by scoring high on PSAT. Shaan: This is a great marketing trick -- he’ll do this when he starts his school For athletics, the opposite is done. MJ’s house Michael Jordan’s Chicago home went on sale for $30m many years ago, but hasn’t sold. Today it’s on sale for $14m. Idea #1: Buy the house using crowdfunding and through NFTs, any fan can own a fraction of the property. From there, the property can be turned into a museum. Idea #2: Instead of turning the house into a museum, turn into a great Airbnb. Obama’s Hawaii house (the Plantation Estate) rents for $6k a night or $180k a month. You have to make it the dream “man cave”/sports fan getaway. Make it an alternative to Vegas for bachelor’s parties. Fill the house with Jordan memorabilia, and make it an incredible experience for fans to come to. Famous homes: There's a precedent for taking famous homes and turning them into museums.  Graceland: Elvis’ former home receives 600k visitors each paying ~$30 Painted Ladies: Painted Ladies and “Full House” house are mainstay attractions. “Full House” house sold for a premium above market price.  Counter: Sam is sceptical of crowdfunding on Rally Road because of the difficulty in liquidating. Shaan counters by saying fractional ownership makes liquidity less of an issue. Also many aren’t concerned about selling. Would rather wait and hold. Big League Advance BLA: Offers cash to minor league baseball players with the promise of making money if the baseball player hits it big. Fernando Tatis Jr: Took cash when he was in the minors from BLA, but now has to pay out ~$30m after signing a $300m+ deal Opportunity: Baseball is the easiest to model, but the NBA presents a great opportunity because of guaranteed contracts. If a player gets a $100m, 5 year deal, you can offer them $80m upfront for the contract. Instead of  Counter: This is a risky business. The business only works if you can model properly and get big hits to cover the losses. Startup studio Instead of investing in companies or starting just one company, startup studios invest and incubate several businesses at once. Shaan: Historically very tough and didn’t work. Garret Camp, Mark Pincus, Kevin Rose, and Michael Birch (Monkey Inferno where Shaan worked) all had studios which had no big winners. Successful studios: The tides may be shifting as a few studios have begun getting hits. Thrive Capital by Josh Kushner (Oscar), Atomic by Jack Abraham (Hims), Prehype (Barkbox and Ro) Atomic: Only works at one project at a time and the team has 9 months to raise a series A or else may be out of a job. Also focused more on B2B than consumer. eFounders: European studio that only does SaaS. They’ve been able to make the model successful Kevin Ryan: Part of DoubleClick when it was sold. Made about $20m and created AlleyCorp which incubated companies like MongoDB, Business Insider, Zola and Guilt. Good: It’s a dream job because you work on multiple ideas. Unlike a traditional startup, when failure happens you can just move onto a new project as a team Bad: For a startup to work, you need laser focus. Often what happens, when a startup hits a plateau, you can pivot to an area that’s working. At studios, the team is more inclined to move onto another project altogether. No do-or-die, back-to-the-wall mentality as with startups. --------- Have you joined our private Facebook group yet? Go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion and join thousands of other entrepreneurs and founders scheming up ideas. Editing thanks to Jonathan Gallegos (@jjonthan)

5 Mar 20211h 4min

MFM #157 Rewarding hustle: MFM is hiring two kids to do video production because they took the job without permission. They heard Sam complain about needing a recording studio and offered to do the work https://twitter.com/DylanJardon/status/1366274333858017282?s=20.  This is how you get the job you want. Don’t send a resume. Do the work instead. Don’t ask for permission. Food topics The food companies of Instagram: Companies mycookiedealer.com, 1-900-Ice-Cream, and Allie’s Banana Bread are crushing it on IG with food drops that sell out in seconds. Why it’s big: These work because it’s at the intersection of many trends: cloud kitchens (no need for expensive restaurant infrastructure), DTC (no need to get costly distribution deals and shelf space) and have virality baked into them. My Cookie Dealer is estimated to be doing $200k per weekly drop. This is a potential $10m business today. Formula: Sam breaks down how these companies are going viral, and how you can copy. Make a side ingredient the main thing (cheese, cookie dough) Make it in an unusual color (rainbow bagel, rainbow kettle cork, green ketchup, cloud bread) Make it huge (huge sundae, massive pizza cookie, sushi-rito, massive KitKat) Frankenfood: combine two different foods (cronut, pancake cereal, donut cereal, cream cheese, bell pepper, desert burger, ramen burger, spaghetti donuts, fairy bread) Food allergy or remove stuff from it (vega ice cream, Banza) Make junk food or simple food ultra-fancy (tater tots, mozzarella sticks) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IFYt20QON8  Tiller money Spreadsheet plugins: The guys have talked Chrome plugins and browser extensions in the past, but an overlooked niche is spreadsheet plugins. Plugins are great businesses because they are sticky and capitalize on an existing platform and user base. They can be light, simple tools that can gain huge adoption quickly.  Tiller Money (https://www.tillerhq.com/): Personal finance nerd Sam loves the simplicity of this plugin. Most people already manage their money on a spreadsheet, Tiller Money just makes it easier to do so. Supermetrics (https://supermetrics.com/): Marketing data plugin Sam uses. He predicts the business does 8-figures in revenue. Open salaries Open salaries: Should companies publish employee salaries? Open salary data is becoming a legal requirement, starting with 🍃 Colorado: "From 2021 employers must disclose pay rates or ranges in job postings for jobs that could be worked in Colorado (including remote)" Source Open salaries is part of the culture of some companies. Buffer used it as a growth hack. The company continues to publish a lot of it’s financials and all employee salaries. Companies doing it now: Glassdoor shows average and anonymous salaries but can be inaccurate They were acquired for $1.2B in 2018. At the time did $170m in revenue with 700 employees  Founded by Rich Barton (we’ve spoken about him a few times before). Famous for saying “Information wants to be free”. Started Zillow, Expedia, and Glassdoor off this principle. Levels.fyi: A helpful guide to understanding what employees at top tech firms should be making. They even help you negotiate a salary.  Take: Open salaries tend to benefit employees (more transparency means higher, more equal pay) and is more detrimental to employers. Apple stopped doing it. Buffer has also said it’s not helpful anymore and was only good for initial growth. Pat Flynn published his income for several years, but eventually stopped as he started getting hate.  --------- Have you joined our private Facebook group yet? Go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion and join thousands of other entrepreneurs and founders scheming up ideas. Editing thanks to Jonathan Gallegos (@jjonthan)

3 Mar 20211h

Sam Parr (@TheSamParr), Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and David Segal (@_davidsegal) discuss: David’s background - At 26, David teams up with his 70-something-year-old cousin, Herschel Segal, to start DAVIDsTEA. - Herschel had made his fortune in Canada’s fashion industry. Previously Davis was helping his Herschel make small investments. Together they saw an opportunity to grow a tea brand, where David led and Herschel invested - He made his first million when a Boston PE firm (Highland Capital) made an investment in DAVIDsTEA. - When the company went public it was doing $30m in EBITDA. He didn't want to sell shares at the time, but needed to in order to make the IPO big enough. He eventually left the business and sold his shares because of management issues. He sold at an average of $14 a share. - Today he runs a few businesses. One of which is a restaurant where he is trying to mix the best of ghost kitchens with a sitdown restaurant - David is currently trying to get back in the tea game. He sees an opportunity to make tea good, and cool again. Tea penetration is tiny in NA, so there is a lot of room to grow. - With his new brand he wants to do DTC business by keeping tea simple, but widening its appeal. - Previous to DAVIDsTEA, he ran a software business. It was essentially an abandoned cart business but for real life. Brainstorm - Idea: good video for online meetings is like what a nice Italian suit was in the 80s. It shows professionalism and class. Sam mentions he is willing to pay thousands to have someone create a turnkey video conference setup for him. He thinks this could be a great business opportunity. - Made Renovation (https://www.maderenovation.com/ founded by Roger Dickey) offers turnkey bathrooms. The idea is clients can select from a limited amount of pre-selected styles. Shaan suggests applying this same idea to video conferencing setups. - Idea: Uber for contractors. David suggests it’s hard finding reliable contractors, and there may be space for a company that can help organize the market better. - Modsy: For $500 per room, Modsy provides an on-demand interior designer. They will create a layout and make suggestions for furniture to use. - The guys discuss several “experts on-demand” companies. Companies like Intro.co, GLGinsights.com, Clarity.fm & Officehours.com all do similar things in different ways: connect users with experts on a variety of topics. - Idea: Decommoditizing everyday stuff. By taking an everyday item and adding a unique element to it, you can charge more and differentiate an otherwise commodity. David brings up Duraflame. Duraflame is a fast lighting fire log. The company does 9 figures in revenue but hasn’t been innovated upon in years. Homesick Candles successfully innovated on candles by adding regional scents and creating a differentiated product. Eric Ryan built his career doing this with Method, Olly, and Welly. - Idea: Firelogs with scents. Decommoditizing a boring product like fire logs with a viral and catchy twist. - Idea: “...For dummies 2.0”. The “...For Dummies” were a popular series of books educating anyone on any topic. Both David and Shaan are bullish on doing the same for complex modern topics like blockchain or NFT. But doing so through viral videos. - Idea: Using stores as showrooms. David nearly started a company just like this. It’s a massive opportunity for whoever can figure out how to make use of retail space in a way that makes sense in the ecom age. A company doing this is b8ta. - Smart Center: David mentions Smart Center and other REITS have been big winners during the pandemic, by converting abandoned retail space into apartments, senior living etc. - WGSN (https://www.wgsn.com/en/): A subscription service that helps businesses understand the biggest trends in just about every sector.  See

26 Feb 202150min

Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) and Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) discuss: Negotiation as a Service (NaaS) - The guys talk about (and maybe invent) a new category of business: negotiations as a service. The idea here is that there are certain big ticket items where a professional can negotiate a better price for the end consumer. - Incentives matter, however. For a Realtor, getting a client a better deal isn’t always in their best interest. A better model: the negotiator gets a designated percentage if they are able to negotiate below a set price. - Idea: Applying a better incentive model to real estate or home financing. Paying a skilled negotiator a fee for reducing your interest rate can result in thousands being saved annually. - Idea: Salary negotiations for both employee and employer. NFTs - NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are unique crypto tokens. Unlike say, Bitcoin, they aren’t mutually interchangeable -- each token is unique. In other words, NFTs are collectible. - NFTs have exploded in recent months. One site, https://cryptoslam.io/ (also https://defipulse.com/), tracks the daily transactions of different NFT. The top NFT, NBA Top Shots, does $46m worth of digital art transactions daily. - Shaan 10xd his money on the following piece in a matter of days. https://niftygateway.com/itemdetail/secondary/0x8ae06a29a816580cbd069e460dd57c6c964bb3da/7500010105. - This piece alone https://cryptoslam.io/cryptopunks/mint/6487 sold for over $1m. - Artists like Eminem and shows like Rick and Morty are created pieces of content that’ll be sold as NFTs. - Logan Paul made $3.5m in one day selling nfts https://beincrypto.com/logan-paul-raises-3-5-million-in-one-day-from-nft-sales/. - Opportunity: When a goldrush is happening, sell shovels. Shaan and Sam think the shovels here are displays. People are buying NFTs, they are going to want to display them. The options at the moment are frames like https://infiniteobjects.com/ and https://www.netgear.com/home/digital-art-canvas/. On the pod Shaan estimates you can sell 300-400 frames and easily generate $5m in a month. - https://opensea.io/: Another marketplace for NFTs. This is the eBay of NFTs CoinMarketCap - CoinMarketCap is a displayed of crypto prices. It's a simple idea that has been working. - When they delisted South Korean cryptos without warning on Jan. 7th, the move wiped out $100 billion of total crypto asset market value. - They were acquired for a rumored $400 million. The company only had 36 employees. Check out today's sponsor: Ourcrowd. They make it easy to invest in early startups. Go to ourcrowd.com/thehustle to get started. Have you joined our private Facebook group yet? Go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion and join thousands of other entrepreneurs and founders scheming up ideas. Editing thanks to Jonathan Gallegos (@jjonthan)  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

24 Feb 202153min

In today's episode Sam Parr (@theSamParr) interviews Ryan Hoover (@rrhoover). Ryan has seen thousands of companies launch since founding Product Hunt in 2014. He shares dozens of places that he sees opportunities, including several of his own investments. Listen to the rest of the episode at http://trends.co/.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

22 Feb 202126min

Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) and Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) discuss: - Investing like a $16B dollar fund - The guys who built multi-million dollar businesses anonymously - A genius company manipulating web results - The big opportunities in privacy - The hack Sam used to grow The Hustle when they were small - The company archiving family stories - Who is Lex Friedman? - Shaan reads a mean tweet - What is Gayburgers? Check out today's sponsor: Ourcrowd. They make it easy to invest in early startups. Go to ourcrowd.com/thehustle to get started. Have you joined our private Facebook group yet? Go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion and join thousands of other entrepreneurs and founders scheming up ideas. Editing thanks to Jonathan Gallegos (@jjonthan)  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

19 Feb 202154min

Sam Parr (@TheSamParr), Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Kieran Flanagan (@searchbrat) discuss: - Crafting the perfect cold email to catch Sam's attention. - The grueling process of selling a company and how to do it right - The best advice on how to negotiate correctly (silence is your friend). - How the D.E.N.N.I.S system can help you sell a company. - Why every deal needs a "deal dual". - What it feels like to be rich? Today's episode is brought to you by FOCUSAID. It’s the #1 and first nootropic drink in America that’s sold over 100m cans. For 30% off your first order, go to DrinkFocusAid.com. Check it out! Have you joined our private FB group yet? It's a page where people share each others million dollar ideas or what they're already working on: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion. Editing thanks to Jonathan Gallegos (@jjonthan)  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

12 Feb 202150min

Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) and Trung Phan (@TrungTPhan) discuss: - How the HubSpot/The Hustle deal came about? - Why did Sam decide to sell? - What will be Sam's biggest purchase now that he's sold? - What will change with The Hustle and MFM going forward? - Trung brings some massive opportunities: financial engineering for good, improving the lives of prisoners and the big potential of paid Twitter Articles mentioned: - https://thehustle.co/he-was-facing-life-in-prison-now-hes-the-ceo-of-the-instagram-for-the-incarcerated/ - https://thehustle.co/how-one-man-went-from-a-life-prison-sentence-to-a-100k-engineering-job/ Thank you to Lemon.io for sponsoring today's episode! They are offering a 15% discount for the first 6 weeks of work for all MFM fans. Go to Lemon.io/mfm to claim the offer! Have you joined our private FB group yet? It's a page where people share each others million dollar ideas or what they're already working on: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion. Editing thanks to Jonathan Gallegos (@jjonthan)  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

10 Feb 202143min