Saas Companies that Anyone Can Start with Rob Walling

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 Almost every year Peak Design releases some sort of iteration of an outdated piece of equipment and it SELLS.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 Dec 201948min

Mike Brown is my new hero. He's an ex military man, who came back & built a super lean business (5 employees and 10's of millions in revenue annually) - hired best friends and brothers to share the experience. Mike Brown (@mb_abides) and his gang went on a mission to buy small pieces of real estate from hundreds of families because they were potentially (and quite literally) sitting on a gold mine. They'd then package them up and sell it to the big oil & gas funds - which meant tens of millions of dollars for them. The business part is good - but I love the philosophical and practical advice around optimizing for quality of life. Let me know what you think! Puri.shaan@gmail.com  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

18 Dec 201949min

LifeAid’s Aaron Hinde (@aaronhinde) stopped by to talk “vitamins that you’ll enjoy drinking.” He built a new beverage brand from zero to $100m+ in value, taking on the big boys like Red Bull, Monster etc.. He talks about coming up with the formula, and their distribution strategy thru CrossFit gyms. We also chat about his unique decision to live off the grid: chicken, solar & batteries and more. Got feedback? email us at puri.shaan@gmail.com  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

11 Dec 201934min

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. This time, it’s live with you guys who came to the Trends meetup last Thursday and answered some of burning questions.They also explore this week powder diets, turnkey instagrammable moments, building products around the distribution & why Facebook groups is the place to be.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

4 Dec 20191h 8min

Carey Smith sold Big Ass Fans for Big Ass Money. As you can probably tell, he found a way to make ceilings fans sound sexy, but more importantly a sexy business. Find out how this unconventional self-appointed CBA (Chief Big Ass) turned a failed bootstrapped Mom & Pop into a 1,200 person $500M giant. Hear him talk about re-branding his company name to include ‘Ass’ & how that changed his entire business’ trajectory, a random meeting that turned into selling for half a billion dollars, writing $50M worth of checks to his employees after the sale and how the secret to making money isn’t to make money. Like our podcast? Join our Facebook group to share feedback, ideas and advice so we can all make that first million: www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

27 Nov 201943min