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CHAPTERS
- 0:00 – 5:24
The Wargraphs Sale and Rules for the Tiny Desk Awards
Shaan Puri explains that the episode was prompted by Wargraphs, a one-person League of Legends companion app that sold for $54 million. He and Sam Parr then set the awards-show format and the loose rules for what counts as a one-person business.
- •Wargraphs sold for $54M, half in cash upfront and half as an earn-out
- •Past popular episodes on solo builders like Peter Levels and Amit Agarwal
- •Sam shares an aside about Juvenile's Tiny Desk concert
- •Format is awards categories, each host giving a pick
- •One person can mean a founder plus contractors or agencies, in the spirit of the law
- 5:24 – 16:42
Biggest One-Person Business: Stardew Valley, StreamYard, PlentyOfFish
Shaan picks Stardew Valley, built solo over four years and now past $150M in sales. Sam picks StreamYard, sold to Hopin for $250M, and mentions PlentyOfFish. The conversation drifts through Notch's mansion and a story about Twitter trending-topics tooling.
- •Stardew Valley's creator taught himself to code, lived off his girlfriend's stipend, and sold 20M copies at $13
- •Minecraft's Notch sold for billions and bought a mansion
- •StreamYard grew from $14M ARR with two founders to $30M with a team before the Hopin sale
- •PlentyOfFish is described as probably the biggest exit for a tiny team
- •A friend's story of building Twitter trending and working to keep the site up after Twitter bought it
- 16:42 – 26:27
Highest Degree of Difficulty: TinyWow and Photopea
Sam picks TinyWow, a free tools site with 6.6M monthly visits that earns little so far, arguing that getting traffic is the hard part. Shaan picks Photopea, a browser-based Photoshop clone built by one person who put in 7,000 hours before earning anything.
- •TinyWow earns about $20K a month against $10K in costs, with traffic driven by TikTok videos
- •Remove.bg is cited as a comparable that Canva acquired for roughly $100M
- •Photopea's creator made nearly $1M in a year, mostly from ads
- •Photopea's creator put in 7,000 hours before earning money
- •Sam wonders how someone can sustain that grind alone, citing ViralNova's founder
- 26:27 – 37:28
Easiest to Recreate: Information Businesses, Lenny, and Harry Dry
Sam argues that selling information or services is easiest to start, citing course creators, DesignJoy, and CyberLeads. Shaan breaks the formula down using Lenny's Newsletter and Harry Dry's Marketing Examples: free niche content builds authority, then gets monetized. Timing and riding new platforms also come up.
- •DesignJoy is a design subscription at about $100K a month
- •A product-manager interview course does about $2.5M a year with three founders
- •CyberLeads sells curated funding-based leads to agencies, and Sam is quoted in its testimonial
- •Lenny's combined ventures are estimated at $2-3M a year
- •Both Lenny and Harry were early on Twitter, so timing mattered; Shaan offers a surfing analogy
- 37:28 – 43:23
Most Fun One-Person Business: Joe Rogan and Gym Streak
Shaan picks Joe Rogan's media operation, run by a very small team and built around things he enjoys. Sam picks Gym Streak, a workout-tracking app built by Joseph Mambwe, who is the only employee and grew from $300K to $2.5M in a year.
- •Rogan's operation is estimated to be bigger than the late-night shows, run by a tiny team
- •He only does UFC commentary close to home and runs the Comedy Mothership
- •Joseph Mambwe moved from Zimbabwe to England, taught himself to code and design
- •Gym Streak uses 3D exercise models and AI, with growth coming from Facebook and TikTok ads
- •Mambwe aims for $15-20M a year and is taking the summer off after having a child
- 43:23 – 48:23
Business We'd Most Want to Own: Milled and BuiltWith
Both hosts want low-maintenance businesses. Shaan picks Milled, an archive of brands' marketing emails earning about $1M a year from display ads and affiliate links. Sam picks BuiltWith, which shows what technology a site uses and was reportedly at $14-15M in revenue with one person.
- •Milled grew from the founder's need to research competitor emails
- •Milled monetizes through display ads and affiliate links, which both hosts call under-monetized
- •BuiltWith reveals the plugins and tech behind WordPress and Shopify sites
- •BuiltWith has tens of millions of monthly visitors
- •Shaan sees BuiltWith as more of a data index than a marketplace
- 48:23 – 53:23
Rookie of the Year: Joseph Mambwe and OnlyFinder
Sam repeats Joseph Mambwe as his rookie pick. Shaan picks OnlyFinder, a one-person search engine for OnlyFans that earns by charging per click to creators and agencies. The discussion turns to the scale of OnlyFans earnings.
- •Sam takes pride in spotting people early and praises Mambwe's story
- •OnlyFinder targets high-intent niche searches through SEO
- •It charges models and agencies per click
- •OnlyFans deliberately has no discovery section
- •Shaan says he has met creators earning $1-2M a month and wants to invest in cash-flowing OnlyFans businesses
- 53:23 – 1:04:57
Worst of the Best: Kevin Van Trump's Daily Newsletter
For the business they would least want, both hosts pick Kevin Van Trump's paid agriculture newsletter, which Sam says brings in around $20M a year but requires writing daily. Shaan recounts lessons from FarmCon and the memorable dealmaker he met there.
- •Sam met Van Trump in 2018; the paid newsletter has about 60,000 subscribers and no ads
- •Van Trump writes 2,000-plus words six days a week, for roughly 18 years
- •His investing lessons: buy and put it in the drawer, and you get a second chance to board the train
- •Sam says the FarmCon crowd taught him not to judge people by stereotypes
- •A dealmaker's one-liners and Disneyland window-company story
- 1:04:57 – 1:07:41
Shaan's Worst Picks: DesignJoy, Stratechery, and the Pressure of Daily Output
Shaan explains that he'd avoid DesignJoy and Van Trump's newsletter because of the time pressure, and adds Ben Thompson's Stratechery. They marvel at its low price relative to its audience, then ask listeners for feedback on the format.
- •Shaan felt the daily deadline pressure during his Milk Road newsletter work
- •Stratechery is a daily newsletter on the same big tech companies, earning roughly $3M a year
- •Shaan thinks Thompson should charge far more than the $120 a year
- •The hosts ask viewers in the YouTube comments whether to do more themed episodes
- 1:07:41 – 1:10:57
Takeaways: Industries, Strategy, and Leverage
Shaan summarizes common industries for tiny businesses and strategic lessons: be great at distribution or product, develop expert skills, and use leverage through code, capital, or media. He uses Miss Excel to show how the internet lets the best at something serve everyone.
- •Common categories include content creators, e-commerce, agencies, games, plug-ins, and data aggregators
- •Be exceptional at either distribution or product
- •Expert-level skill in something like copywriting, design, or market analysis is needed
- •Leverage comes from code, capital, or media rather than labor
- •Miss Excel illustrates being the best at one thing and reaching the whole world
- 1:10:57 – 1:13:23
The Loneliness of Solo Work and Why Two People Is the Sweet Spot
Sam says one-person businesses are lonely and hard to push through without teammates. Shaan agrees, describing his own experience as a would-be solo capitalist and arguing that two people is the sweet spot before the hosts sign off.
- •Sam finds it hard to push yourself hard and think big alone
- •Shaan found going solo unfun and quickly partnered up
- •A complementary partner helps and gives someone to joust ideas with
- •Shaan says two people gives the most autonomy with the fewest management headaches
