I was offered $200M at 24 and I turned it down

We interviewed the founder of Rev.com (they transcribe audio into text), to hear how he built this into a $206M (to be precise) business. We used them to transcribe the My First Million podcast episodes, and realized how badass of a service this was. Super simple concept - create a workforce (currently 50,000) that works remotely, transcribing audio from podcasts, conferences, meetings etc.. into text, for less than $1 per minute. Jason talks about freelancers making money in their pajamas, why they opened an office away from Silicon Valley, the impact of AI on remote work, working for free to show your worth, buying his domain for $400,000 and a clever way come up with and test a killer startup name.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

29 Jan 202055min

The Hustle's My First Million presents: Million Dollar Brainstorm is back. Host Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and The Hustle CEO Sam Parr (@theSamParr) sit down and discuss what side hustles, trends and big business ideas that's keeping them up at night. Long episode today! First half is with 8-figure ad agency founder Brendan Gahan to talk biz models, overhead and profitability. Then the second half is with Daniel Gross who sold his startup to Apple in his twenties and rolled that win into multiple unicorn investments. Enjoy!  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

26 Jan 20201h 53min

Ever think your side-hustle could become a million-dollar company? Paul Anderson (@paul_d_andersen) did. Today on My First Million, we sit down with Paul who quit his 9-to-5 to focus on his Amazon FBA and how his passion became a full-blown multi-million dollar company. Side hustles, getting ‘em out there, increasing your profits, credit lines and more this week! Also, go sub to his new personal finance newsletter: https://wealthfam.com/newsletter/  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

22 Jan 202049min

The Hustle's My First Million presents: Million Dollar Brainstorm is back. Host Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and The Hustle CEO Sam Parr (@theSamParr) sit down and discuss what side hustles, trends and big business ideas that's keeping them up at night. Today Shaan kicks it off with food industry ideas: keto peanut butter, vintage fast food chains transitioning into the modern era, modifying US chains and taking them global. Then the guys chat about Aliexpress, pop-up esport tournaments, Tough Mudder bankruptcy, data privacy tools, targeting wealthy alumni for fundraising, networking hacks and a discussion about Silicon Valley mistruths.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

18 Jan 202052min

Shaan sits down with Peter Dering (@peterdering), Founder & CEO of Peak Design, maker of beautiful, highly functional redesigns of photography equipment. He quit his construction job and traveled the world with $25K in savings. After awhile, he found it to be a pain in the ass carrying his camera around with him. So he thought of a camera holder clip that’d go onto your bag strap. Next thing you know, he filmed a kickstarter video to accompany his simple yet revolutionary product and within 90 seconds of launching he had his first sale. Bags, tripods, straps. Almost every year Peak Design releases some sort of iteration of an outdated piece of equipment and it SELLS. Last year they employed 38 people and did $70m in revenue. He owns 100% of it. Like I said, you want to be this guy. He talks about the process of how you actually create a physical product from scratch, how to work with international distributors, why and how he structured a public benefit entity, how to offset business carbon footprint and how much it ACTUALLY costs (it's tiny!). Have a listen to learn how to kickstart your own carbon-neutral Kickstarter empire.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

15 Jan 202047min

The Hustle's My First Million presents: Million Dollar Brainstorm is back. Host Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and The Hustle CEO Sam Parr (@theSamParr) sit down and discuss what side hustles, trends and big business ideas that's keeping them up at night. We're going to try and keep these consistent -- about every Thursday and even maybe even 2 a week. Today Sam kicks it off by telling some of the most promising technologies he found at CES 2020, meeting some D2C guys and being astounded by their insane growth rates, the 3 bro's shamelessly knocking off US startups and getting rich, how lucrative trade shows/membership programs/courses can be, why compliance education packages could sell for $$$ to large companies & Shaan reflects on his decade goals and talks about what he wants accomplished by 2030.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

12 Jan 202046min

We're back with Season 3, brought you by Microsoft: The latest episode of My First Million, Shaan sits down with Vlad Magdalin (@callmevlad), Co-Founder & CEO of Webflow: a visual tool to build web apps. Vlad shares the several attempts in 6 years to get his no-code brainchild going. Persistence paid off as it quickly got to $20MM in revenue and raised a monster $72M Series A round led by Accel. He talks about the emotional rollercoaster of getting into Y-Combinator, the video that made him quit his high paying job immediately, kickstarter kicking him off their platform and the trick to get investors interested without changing anything.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

8 Jan 20201h

We've got a different flavor today for you. We sat down with Scott Belsky (@scottbelsky) join us today and instead of hearing his backstory, we bounced around a bunch of topics. Scott has done it all. He's been a founder (Behance), angel investor (Uber, Pinterest), VC (Benchmark), Tech Executive (CPO of Adobe currently), and Author (The Messy Middle). So sit back, grab a salad (cause we're healthy in 2020) and enjoy this conversation.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

25 Des 201948min