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EVERY SPOKEN WORD
85 min read · 16,986 words- 0:00 – 3:50
Introduction
- SPShaan Puri
I was like, "Have you done any deals, like, that I would've heard of?" And he's like, "You know Disneyland?" [laughs] I was like, "Yeah."
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
He's like, "A lot of windows in Disneyland. We do all the windows at Disneyland." [laughs] I was like, "What?"
- SPSam Parr
Oh my God.
- SPShaan Puri
I was like, "Okay." They bought a window company-
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
... got 'em a Disney contract. "We do all the windows at Disney." [laughs] [upbeat music] All right. What's up? We are talking about something pretty special this episode. This is gonna be different than our normal episodes, which are, you know, freewheeling, freestyling. Today, we got a plan, and the plan is we're gonna talk about companies that crush it with only one or two employees. So the reason we thought about this was there was some news, I dunno, a couple weeks ago, that a company that I had never heard of called Wargraphs sold for $54 million. And the... Yeah, that's... I mean, that's obviously impressive, but the most impressive part was that Wargraph was just one dude. So one guy sold his company for $54 million. And, uh, s- I don't even... Do you know what Wargraphs did? Are you familiar with it?
- SPSam Parr
No. Is it a, a gaming thing?
- SPShaan Puri
It's a gaming thing, yeah. So he built basically a companion app, I think, for, uh, League of Legends. So if you play League of Legends, this was, like, a thing that would keep track of your stats and stuff like that, help you get better at the game. So he built this little companion app, and, uh, it had gotten really popular. I think it had gotten to, like, a million, uh, players that used it and was generating serious revenue. And so he sold it for 51, f- f- 54 million in cash. And he was upfront. He was like, "I got half of the..." Uh, sorry, "I got half of the 54 million in cash upfront, and I have the other half as, like, my earn-out that I have to..." You know, like, you know, if it hits, you know, or milestones along the way, which is just super impressive for a one-person company and-
- SPSam Parr
How old was the person?
- SPShaan Puri
Uh, I think he started when he was young, but now it's been, like, you know, seven or eight years. So, you know, he's probably-
- SPSam Parr
See, that's amazing
- SPShaan Puri
... I'm gonna guess something like 30. But the, the... It got me thinking. It was like everybody talks about big businesses, for good reason. Big businesses are awesome. Uh, they, they are. But what about mighty businesses? What about the, the, the guys who are punching above their weight, so somebody who has just themselves or just one or two people that does millions in revenue profitably, flies under the radar. And like, how many other Wargraphs are there out there? So we did some research, [laughs] and we found some. And so that's what this episode's gonna be about, and we've kinda touched on this before. We've done some of our most popular episodes. If you go on YouTube, you'll see the episode with Peter Levels I think has a couple hundred thousand, um, listens. The lesson, uh, the... Sorry, the, uh, episode about Amit Agarwal, the guy who builds, uh, G Suite, you know, basically like Google Sheets plugins. Um, he does millions of dollars in revenue as just kinda one guy who was a blogger turned app builder. And so those have been some of our most popular episodes, so I think this is gonna be a good one, too. Sam, anything else before we jump in?
- SPSam Parr
Yeah. I wanna give an honorable mention to this one person. Have you listened to Juvenile growing up?
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Remember rapper, the rapper Juvenile?
- SPShaan Puri
Of course. You giving him a shout-out like he's listening? [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Yeah. I... Like, last year, NPR, they do this thing called the Tiny Desk Concert Series. You know what that is? It's like they're in the office, like, playing acoustic songs.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, those are cool.
- SPSam Parr
They said, "Who should we have?" And this one guy goes, "You should have Juvenile."
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
And Juvenile replies, and he goes, "What the, what the..." He goes, "WTF? What, what the F is a Tiny Desk? And hell no."
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
And you know what? They got him to do it anyway. It happened this weekend.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
And so in preparation for this one-man band show, I've been listening to that Juvenile concert-
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
... at the Tiny Desk NPR series. It was awesome.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
It was awesome. He, he... You remember Back That Ass Up and Slow Motion-
- 3:50 – 15:45
Biggest One-Person Business - Stardew Valley, Streamyard, and Plenty of Fish
- SPSam Parr
It was so good.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
I had to be inspired. Him and Mannie Fresh did it, and it was awesome. It was awesome, awesome, awesome, so honorable mention to Juvenile.
- SPShaan Puri
All right, so these are the Tiny, these are the Tiny Desk Awards then.
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
Let's call it that. These are the Tiny Desk Awards, which are the [laughs] the, the businesses that can be run off of one tiny desk, 'cause it's just one or two people. All right? And, uh, we're gonna do this like an awards show. So we have a long list, but that'd be kinda boring. So we're, we broke it up into categories, and we each have our answer for the category. So for example, first category is gonna be biggest one-person business.
- SPSam Parr
But we also have to set some rules here.
- SPShaan Puri
Yes.
- SPSam Parr
Some of these things, one person, it's a bit, uh, vague.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah.
- SPSam Parr
One person oftentimes can mean, like, the founder and, like, a team of contractors, or in many cases it's going to be, um, uh, agencies that they work with.
- SPShaan Puri
Of course.
- SPSam Parr
Or it started as one person and it was that way for a long time, and then they hired a team. Um, so-
- SPShaan Puri
Exactly. So it's more of the spirit of the law than the, than the letter of the law here. So, you know, they don't have T-shirts for the company because, you know, there's... they don't have, like, you know, a, a bunch of employees and, and, uh, you know, morale. They d- they probably won't have a, uh, an office where, where a bunch of people go into. It's either one or two people who are kind of the core drivers, and maybe they use some contractors or vendors or agencies for, for other things. But, uh, that's, that's generally the, the way we're looking at this.
- SPSam Parr
Yeah. And so, uh, let's get into it. So what's the first one? The, uh-
- SPShaan Puri
Biggest
- SPSam Parr
... is it... the, uh, the biggest.
- SPShaan Puri
So who-
- SPSam Parr
You go first.
- SPShaan Puri
So I'm gonna do one, another gaming one that, that I doubt you know of. Do you know what Stardew Valley is?
- SPSam Parr
No. What is that?
- SPShaan Puri
So Stardew Valley is this game, and if you look at the game, the game art looks like... it's, like, 8-bit art almost. It looks like a very, very simplistic game. And it was made by one guy, this guy Eric Barone. And he basically is like, you know, "I'm..." He, he gets out of school. He doesn't wanna get a job. So he's like, "Well, I, you know, I'm gonna teach myself how to code, uh, instead of going get a good job." So he's like, "Why don't I learn how to build a game in order to teach myself how to code? Like, I don't wanna just code for coding's sake. I'll try to do something with it." And he always liked these games back in the day. I don't know if you know Harvest Moon. It's like this kinda like farming simulator game. Um, these like very simple kinda like, uh... You, you know, it had like a cult following. And so he's like, "I'm gonna make my version of Harvest Moon," which was like kind of... was popular when I was a kid, like, you know, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. And, um, so he spends basically, uh, four years in solitude just building this game by himself before he releases it. And for four years-
- SPSam Parr
What was his job?
- SPShaan Puri
What's that?
- SPSam Parr
Did he have a job?
- SPShaan Puri
He j- he just-
- SPSam Parr
Did he have a job?
- SPShaan Puri
... lived off his girlfriend. His girlfriend had a, like, a, a grad degree stipend. And, uh, [laughs] and then he had a part-time job as an usher. [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Goddamn.
- SPShaan Puri
Which is amazing. I mean, an usher is a terrible j- unles- unless you're literally trying to be, like, a cover artist covering the artist Usher, like, you know, [laughs] you never wanna be an usher. That's not the... That's not... Your career's not going the right direction when you're doing that. Um, so anyways, the... He, he launches this thing. Stardew Valley has sold 20 million copies. Um, it sells for $13 a pop. And so, uh, you know, he sold this thing. I think over time it has done 150 million in sales-
- 15:45 – 26:00
Highest Degree of Difficulty - TinyWow and Photopea
- SPShaan Puri
wake up. Oh, where was I? And I just kept going." He's like, "That was six months straight of my life." He's like, "I've never experienced anything like it." And at the time I remember thinking, "Oh, there's levels to this thing." Like, that's what it feels like when you really have one of the winners. Like, a- and, and if you talk to people early at Facebook and they talk about, like, what the, what, what it was like working early at Facebook, Facebook, it's like when people talk about living in New York, they're like, "Just the energy was just, it's just-"
- SPSam Parr
The energy. [laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
"... you can't explain it." A- and it's like that's how, that's what you get when you're inside one of these generational companies at the early stage when they're, they're scaling too fast.
- SPSam Parr
Dude, that's exciting. I love that one. Um, I like hearing those old stories like that. I always read those old books like the fo- the Hatching Twitter and all that shit. I love that shit.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, me too.
- SPSam Parr
Um-
- SPShaan Puri
All right, next category.
- SPSam Parr
Let's go to d- Let's... Wait, let's go to highest degree of difficulty. We'll skip a category and come back to it.
- SPShaan Puri
Okay, so this is the hardest one, the hardest example, the one that we're like, "How the hell did you even do that?" And there's no way anyone else would've done this. You go first.
- SPSam Parr
All right, I have one. It's called TinyWow. So I think the URL is just tinywow.com. So do you have that pulled up, TinyWow?
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah. Got it.
- SPSam Parr
All right. So I met this guy, he's a member of Hampton, that's why I met him. His name's Evan Gower. He had a, uh, a, a, another website called TechJunkie. Maybe you heard of TechJunkie, but they, like, just talked about, like, tech topics, whatever. It's pretty normal website, but he ended up selling it for eight figures, and on the side he started this thing called TinyWow, which is a bunch of tools that include, like, how to convert a PDF, but then image editing tools that use AI, and it's one of those websites where you Google, like, convert j... this file to PDF. It is able to... There... He's able to come up first. Right now it has 6.6 million visits a month, and the reason it's int-
- SPShaan Puri
Insane.
- SPSam Parr
Yeah, it's insane. The reason it's interesting is right now it only does 20,000 a month in revenue because he says, "I haven't, I just haven't turned on any of the, um, monetization. It just has, like, uh, little ads." He goes, "I'm gonna turn it on eventually, but right now I'm just enjoying the summer and time with my family, so I haven't really, like-"
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
"... dug deep and, like, built it." And so basically this guy, Evan, he was a, a pro-
- SPShaan Puri
Bitch, you're talking about the weather? Put on AdSense. What are you doing? [laughs] Evan, this is insane.
- SPSam Parr
Dude, that's the cool part about, uh, these one person businesses, and this is... The, another guy who I'm gonna tell a story about has said the same thing. He goes, "Ah, I felt like taking the summer off, so I just let, let it ride for a little while." Uh, so this guy, Evan, he basically had a history as a, a, a developer. He says he doesn't do any development now, but he has a team of three people who are helping him, or one contractor who helps him wi- uh, overseas who's helped him actually, like, build it and implement, and he basically just draws it and designs it. But the reason why this thing has taken off is if you Google... Or do you remember, like, do you ever see those videos on TikTok that say, like, "Here's five websites that should be illegal but aren't"?
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah. So good that they should be illegal. [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
What I want.
- SPSam Parr
It's like a shtick that So that is basically how it, the, the website got popular, is it's gotten popular from those videos. And so the reason why this is really hard to create, because, A, getting traffic to a, a, a, like a content site or any type of website like this, it's very challenging. Oftentimes building the product is not the hard part, it's getting users. Uh, and getting 6.6 million visits a month, mostly from social, quite challenging. We'll see if he's able to turn this. But I asked him, I was like, "How big can this get?" And he's like, "Well, like, I think of, like, Canva." So I'm like, can we... I think it can make tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue, because we're gonna ultimately... We have this traffic, we can have like a feature that says, "Hey, you can edit this, uh, picture using our platform, and we'll charge a small fee." I think this actually could be a big business, but right now it's really tiny. He told me it costs $10,000 a month to run, and it's making $20,000 a month in revenue.
- SPShaan Puri
Wow. Yeah. Do you know how much, uh, how much Remove.bg makes?
- SPSam Parr
Who?
- SPShaan Puri
Y- Do you ever use Remove.bg?
- SPSam Parr
No. What is that?
- SPShaan Puri
Oh, that's... I mean, that is, that was the old way. It was like, if you need to remove a background from an image, like you need to just cut out the object and remove the background, Remove.bg was this website-
- SPSam Parr
Shit
- SPShaan Puri
... that was, uh, like just the go-to.
- SPSam Parr
Look at the traffic.
- 26:00 – 36:00
Easiest to Recreate: GetCyberLeads, Lenny Rachitsky, and Marketing Examples
- SPShaan Puri
this is, like [laughs] the most intense hobby." That's how, that's how I feel about the Photopea guy.
- SPSam Parr
I'm not that, I'm not that type of person. Are you?
- SPShaan Puri
I'm not.
- SPSam Parr
You're definitely not, I think, right?
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs] Come on. I am not... Uh, yeah, I envy those people. That, that's an amazing, uh, willpower. All right, let's do another one. Let's do on the other end, easiest to recreate. So which of these one person, one or two-person businesses do you think are easiest to recreate that, um, is the opposite of the highest degree of difficulty? Go ahead.
- SPSam Parr
Um, so mine would be anything that sells information or a service. So I put just any course creator, but you and I know a bunch of these people, of which you and I are both of those people.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Uh, you know, we make hundreds of thousands or a million dollars a year from, like, a, a course or two, and I think they're fairly easy to recreate. Another one is, uh, there's this company called DesignJoy. Do you... What... You know what they do?
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah.
- SPSam Parr
I believe that, uh-
- SPShaan Puri
It's a design subscription, basically. It's him. He's a design subscription.
- SPSam Parr
Yeah, but the way that he positions it, it seems really hard to imagine that that's the truth. But basically, it's just this designer that you pay thousands of dollars a month for, and you ask him to make small changes to different design-related stuff. And he claims that it's just him, but I, I believe he claims that.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah.
- SPSam Parr
But that sounds like-
- SPShaan Puri
He says it's just him, and he does $100,000 a month, so he does 1.2 million a year or so, r- rough- around that range. And it's basically you buy a subscription plan. So you pay and you buy, like, the five... It's like 4,000 or 5,000 a month. Um, and then you, you basically get one request at a time. Um, and that's it. [laughs] You get to just say, "I'd like this design thing done," and then he just turns around in some... I don't know what his SLA is of how long he takes to, uh, to do this, but it's like, it's cheaper than hiring a full-time designer probably, unless, like, in, in the US. Um, but yeah, that's the, that's what he does.
- SPSam Parr
I think that's the easiest to recreate, but also the worst to run, which we'll talk about later. But that's probably the easiest one, is like a bunch... Who... Do you know any of the course people that do, like-
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah
- SPSam Parr
... like I know Sam Ovens does 10 million in revenue, 5 million in profit, and for a while it was just him. Um-
- SPShaan Puri
I met these guys. I met a guy recently who does, like, a product management course, and I was like, "Oh my God, who's taking a product management course?" He, he goes, "No, no, no, it's how to ace your job interview as a product manager," like how to get a job as a PM at one of these tech companies. And I think he was doing... What was he doing, about like 2 million a year or something like that? I think they were doing, like, two... What? Two-
- SPSpeaker
2.5.
- SPShaan Puri
2.5. Yeah, 2.5 million a year, uh, roughly in, in revenue. I think it was, like, 80%-ish margins. And what they would do is they would basically say... They would give away free content that was like how to, you know, how to get a job as a PM, how to interview as a PM, how to, uh, prep for this interview, what, what it was like talking to a Facebook PM, blah, blah, blah. They give away free content to get you kind of on the email list and get you to the website. And then they're like, "Hey, do you wanna, like, get a job as a PM which will pay you, let's call it $120,000 a year? If you want that job, um, buy this course, and, uh, join this cohort course or whatever." And they basically sell this course for a couple thousand dollars that's gonna help you get this job that's gonna pay you over $100,000. And that's just, like, a very simple value proposition for somebody who wants to, uh, wants to do that with their career.
- SPSam Parr
And it was just him?
- SPShaan Puri
It was him and three... It was, it was three of them, three p- three PMs that kinda, like, got together and made this thing.
- SPSam Parr
Another example of an easy one to start ha- I think I told you about this. It's called Cyber Leads. So you go to getcyberleads.com. So it's C-Y-B-E-R leads, so getcyberleads.com. It's this guy named Alex West. And basically, it's a newsletter where I, I think it costs 4 to $1,000 a month, so 400 to $1,000 a month, uh, depending on what you get, what you do. But basically, he goes and he handpicks different companies that have recently raised money and based off a bunch of attributes he thinks are about to hire an agency, and then he gets all these agency owners to sign up to his service, and he emails this list out once a month, along with, like, the contact information, the hiring decision, or the hiring, uh, uh, like, whoever's managing ad spend, whatever, and you can just contact him on who-
- SPShaan Puri
He's, he's got your face and quote as a testimonial. Do you use this?
- SPSam Parr
No, I don't use this.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
But I talked, I talked about it on the pod. Uh, I talked about it on the pod, like, two years ago. I've never used it. Uh, I've never... I, I'm not-
- SPShaan Puri
You've never used it?
- SPSam Parr
I'm not-
- 36:00 – 42:00
Most Fun: Joe Rogan and Gym Streak
- SPShaan Puri
gotta wait, and sometimes it's a dud. Sometimes it's just a small wave. You're gonna have to paddle back out again, but when you catch a good one, you know, that's when you got... A- and we'll see how good you are at surfing. You might wipe out the first couple times you try it, but, like, that's your job as an entrepreneur is to paddle out, be out there, and start trying to surf these waves and, and get a sense for where are the big waves and, um, and how do I not wipe out when I do f- when I do find one.
- SPSam Parr
So this episode you're giving a really in-depth surf analogy. Last episode you gave a slow-
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
... uh, a fat, uh, a f- a pitching of baseball. What did you say? A fat, a slow s- a small swing?
- SPShaan Puri
I love fat pitches. [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Fat pitches. [laughs] It was fat pitches.
- SPShaan Puri
I got a fat pitch prediction. [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Have you ever played base- [laughs] Have you ever played baseball or surfed in your life?
- SPShaan Puri
Bro, I was starting right fielder for my high school team, which anybody who knows baseball knows that means you're the biggest scrub on the team, 'cause that's who, that's who they put in right field is the guy who's n- you know, you n- the ball never comes to right field. And, uh-
- SPSam Parr
Yeah, but didn't you play baseball in China?
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Like, they were just learning. [laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
I might have been in China. I might have been in China.
- SPSam Parr
You played, or you went to high school in H- you went to high school in China. Yeah, I mean... Or, or Australia. Like, it was the scrubs.
- SPShaan Puri
Hey-
- SPSam Parr
It was like-
- SPShaan Puri
We play the ball as it lies. There, I got a golf analogy for you, too. Uh, I was in China, well, that's where I'm gonna be. [upbeat music]
- SPSpeaker
Our software is the worst. Have you heard of HubSpot? See, most CRMs are a cobbled-together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous. I think I love our new CRM. Our software is the best. HubSpot. Grow better.
- SPShaan Puri
Let's go to the next one. Most fun one-person business. So the one that seems like the most fun to, to work on, I'll go first. Joe Rogan. So I'm pretty sure Joe Rogan's media enterprise is bigger than all the late night talk shows combined. So forget The Tonight Show, Letterman, and any of these guys, whoever the new guy, Conan, whoever these guys are.
- SPSam Parr
Dude, Letterman's been retired for 10 years, man.
- SPShaan Puri
Ji- Jimmy Fallon, I don't know. I, uh... Bro, who's wa- who's watching this stuff? His audience is bigger. He makes, uh, hundreds of millions in, uh, he's made hundreds of millions doing it, and I'm pretty sure it's just him and young Jamie. Uh-
- SPSam Parr
I've heard from, uh, a few of my friends who have been on it how it works. So basically they told me that it's Jamie who produces it, and it's Joe, and then they have one other guy named Matt, I think, and I forget his name exactly. I think it was Matt. And basically Matt sends Joe a list of like 30 people. They're like, "Hey, I can get these 30 people, these 30. Let me know who you want." And sometimes he just ignores it. Every once in a while he'll say, "That person and that person," and that's all he says.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
And I've heard that it's just those three people.
- SPShaan Puri
That's amazing. So I think most people just think, "Oh, Joe Rogan, he's just a podcaster." Yeah, he is a podcaster, but that thing is a juggernaut. It is a media juggernaut. So the, you know, uh, Spotify o- obviously paid him, you know, hundreds of millions to, to be there, uh, for a couple years. But even before that, you know, just off the sponsorships, off of, uh, off of the Alpha Brain, you know, um, product that they build off of it. Joe Rogan, I think, has the most fun probably of anyone on the planet [laughs] is, is my sense. He took all of his hobbies. He's like, "Oh, I like UFC." He gets to be the UFC commentator, uh, doing exactly what he would want. He gets to go sit ringside, commentate for these fights, and analyze the fights, but he only does it th- for the ones in Vegas that are an hour flight away from him. He doesn't do any of the l- the, the ones that require a bunch of travel. Um, and so all the b- he does all the best ones, he does none of the worst ones. Uh, you know, he was like, "I wanna do stand-up comedy," so he does stand-up comedy, sells out, you know, uh, theaters all around the country and, um, you know, gets to make people laugh for a living. Does his podcast where he's like, "I'm gonna have conversations with the people I want." And people are like, "Oh, Joe, three hours is too long." He's like, "That's the type of conversation I wanna have, so I'm gonna do it my way," and it worked. And so, like, I just think he just dictated how he wants to live life on his terms. I think he has the most fun. I think his business is absolutely a mighty business in that it's just, let's say, one, two to three people that, uh, is building a, a thing that does, you know, over $100 million in, in revenue, which, like, if you just valued something like that, you know, um, traditionally, which is not, it's not apples to apples, but, like, if you have a thing that can do 100 million a year in revenue-
- SPSam Parr
For multiple years
- SPShaan Puri
... for multiple years, you- typically that's a billion-dollar property. And, um, you know, obviously it's weird. You can't really sell the J- you know, Joe Rogan experience 'cause y- you need him. It's tightly branded with him. But let's say at least he's built something worth $100 million. I think we can agree on that 'cause it's generated 100 million of profit for him. And so he's built, you know, with a very small team, a multi-hundred million dollar business at the minimum.
- SPSam Parr
And he has this new thing called the Comedy Mothership. It's like a mile from my house in Austin, and there's always a line out the door to get into that place.
- SPShaan Puri
Right. Yeah, he builds his own comedy club.
- SPSam Parr
If you dr- if you dr-
- 42:00 – 46:30
Business You Would Most Want to Own: Milled and BuiltWith
- SPSam Parr
to do. He has hundreds of these 3D models of, like, what a proper bicep curl or what this other type of exercise looks like. In year one, he did $300,000. That was in year 2021. In year two, he did 2.5 million, and his goal, he says, is by in the next two years I wanna get to $15 to $20 million a year in revenue, and he's the only employee. I don't believe he has any contractors. I think he, uh, he told me that he, uh, got most of his, uh, users from Facebook and TikTok ads, and he hired a consultant and an agency to help him learn how to do that. And right now he said, "I'm taking the summer off, so our growth this year might still only be 2.5 or 3 million a year in revenue, but I d- 'cause I don't feel like buying ads or staying on top of that, so I'm taking the summer off because we just had a kid." But super fascinating to see a guy who basically came from Zimbabwe, didn't use the internet until he was 12, 13, and taught himself how to do all this. He's, like, one of those really cool tinkerers. And on that blog post you could see pictures of him, like, arriving from Africa and, like, learning how to work the computer. It's super fascinating. You'll see pictures of him with his, like, iPhone and a laptop at the gym filming people doing, like, the curls so he can use his AI or whatever to, like, get the 3D imaging. Really fascinating company. I think Gym Streak is awesome. If this could get to 15 or 20 million a year in revenue like he thinks, that would be a monster business for one person.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, that's an amazing story. Wow. Love that. Uh, good for him. That's, that's really, really cool. Um- Next category, business we most want to own. [laughs] So this is, um... I think this is specifically a good question because for us, a business we'd wanna own would be the lowest maintenance business, 'cause neither of us wanna really run an extra business right now. So it's like, which business would you wanna own because it is very much, uh, you know, autopilot? So it's not design joy, it's not people are paying you and you're providing a subscription. It's not one of those content or course businesses where you constantly have to create new content in order to stay relevant and get more customers. Um, I think we both have the same one. Let's just do the same one that we- we both are really interested in. You- you explain it.
- SPSam Parr
Go for it. No, you go first.
- SPShaan Puri
All right. milled.com. So most people don't know milled.com. It's M-I-L-L-E-D.com, and it's a really, really simple website. It's just a compilation of email marketing that different companies do. So if you wanna see, like, what are my competitors sending for their 4th of July sale, you just go to milled.com, you search the brand, and you'll see, okay, here's what Ridge Wallet sent, uh, for their 4th of July, uh, email. It's the top one on the, on the side r- site right now. So it says... You know, you just click, and it shows you the exact email that they sent, so you can see the design, you can see the offer, you can see the copy, and you could use that to get inspiration for what you should be doing for your email marketing. And this guy built this site, uh, I don't know how long ago now, but, um, he's posted on Hacker News a little bit about it. And it's one person, it's a side project, and he does a million dollars a year on it. And he said, "I was, uh, I was doing email marketing for a brand. I noticed two things. One, it's took us several days to create each email blast. Um, and two, I had to subscribe to, like, dozens of other co- competitor emails just to do research for, for them. So my hypothesis was I could create a site that would just sign up for all the brands', uh, you know, email newsletters, and, um, and then make it easier for anybody who's trying to do email marketing." Right? That's the, uh, that's, that's the core, core pitch for it. And he's just been running it as a side project. Doesn't take much maintenance. Doesn't... You know, he could just do nothing on it for a little while, and-
- SPSam Parr
And it makes money through ads?
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah. So, so they use ads. On the left side here, you can see, like, I have it open, and he's basically got, like, an, a, like, a link to the brand itself, and then he's got, like, a cybersecurity, uh, like, ad here popped up on, below it. He's got, like, a skincare ad. Yeah, it's just display ads.
- SPSam Parr
So but here's another way how he makes money. So basically, you- you're a marketer, you go to Milled, and you wanna see, like, uh, it looks like some shoe brand, they run, they ran this campaign, and you wanna check out the email, and you read it and get inspired, whatever. You click that ad [laughs] and it takes you to the shoe company, and it's using an affiliate link if you buy some of the shoes.
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- SPSam Parr
This is a horrible way to monetize.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
This is a, a really am-
- SPShaan Puri
Under-monetized
- SPSam Parr
... amazing product.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Undermono- under-monetized website, for sure. But good for him for getting the traffic in the first place. But that's a horrible way to monetize.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Uh, but I think the guy doesn't care. He's just like, "This is easy-"
- SPSam Parr
That's cool
- SPShaan Puri
... uh, low maintenance," which is why I put it in my one I'd wanna own because it's low maintenance,
- 46:30 – 55:30
Rookie of the Year: Joseph Mambwe and Only Finder
- SPShaan Puri
and I think it still has a lot of upside, uh, left.
- SPSam Parr
I'll do one for one I wanna own. So I said anything that is, like, marketplace-y, uh, sorta like a marketplace 'cause sometimes if you do it right, those don't... They don't run themselves entirely, but the, the community kinda handles the business. Uh, BuiltWith. So BuiltWith was started in, mm, 2015 or '16 probably. BuiltWith is, like, the most niche shit ever, but there's, it's a really big niche. So you go to BuiltWith in order to see which plugins a website is using if they're using WordPress. And the reason why that's important is you go to a website that you like, and you go, "Oh, I love this feature they have. Let's go and see what they're using."
- SPShaan Puri
By the way, not just WordPress. Shopify also.
- SPSam Parr
That's new. It started with just WordPress, I think. Um, and so you're like, just tell me, like, the plugins, and tell me the, the, everything that they're using. Shopify and BuiltWith. Uh, Shopify and WordPress. It has something like tens of millions of people going there a month, and does, at the time, when I first found them, I think in 2020, I think they were doing 14, 15 million in revenue with just one person. So I think that would be a really cool company to own 'cause I think it's super valuable. Once you get all that traffic and those people coming back to you all the time, I think it's a really valuable site. Do you know anything about BuiltWith?
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah. Uh, just what you told, what you said there. I've been using it for a long time. Basically, if you see a website and you wanna know what they use for whatever they use, just go to BuiltWith. It's, it's pretty great. Uh, it's kinda like a data... It's almost like a data index, right? It's, like, more like a database than it is a, a marketplace in a way. Uh, but I agree, it's kind of amazing. Um, all right, let's keep going. We got a couple categories left. We have, uh, rookie of the year. So a, a new one. A new, a new one that we found. I think you might have already covered yours, uh, in here, but I have a new one.
- SPSam Parr
Dude, it's boring. I didn't wanna say the same thing twice. But this guy, Joe Mambrea, this Joseph Mambrea, like, I love his story. I think that this guy's gonna be a big deal, and I, and I take a lot of pride in trying to find people before they're, like, really popular. I, I think he's... Read the blog post that I, that I have linked up there from the Hampton site. It, it's really good. I think this guy's gonna be a winner, so that's my rookie of the year. What's OnlyFinders?
- SPShaan Puri
OnlyFinders is mine. So this is one that I, I don't know how old it is, maybe a couple years old now. Um, so OnlyFinders is a search engine for OnlyFans. So if you wanna find a type of model on OnlyFans so you, you know, you're into, you know, blonde Asians or, like, you know, whatever. Good-looking midgets. Whatever, whatever you're into.
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
You can search on OnlyFinders and it'll give you a list of top ranked profiles for that thing. So as you know, I've been down the OnlyFans rabbit hole where I'm like, I think there's a lot of potential in the OnlyFans, uh, world of, like, businesses, and this was one of them that I found. And, um, OnlyFinder's run by one guy. He's awesome. He listens to the pod. He, um, and he crushes it. So he crushes the SEO game for, for OnlyFans. If you search for a bunch of different popular searches, um... And in fact, actually, what, what it, what he did was smart, which is he didn't want to just rank for, like- The general, uh, searches, like best OnlyFans or something like that. Like, he wants the high-intent ones. So he wants the person who's searching for, like, whatever. I, I don't know what people search for, but like-
- SPSam Parr
Redhead
- SPShaan Puri
... yeah, redhead-
- SPSam Parr
So if, if, if-
- SPShaan Puri
... nice feet or something
- SPSam Parr
... if you go to his site, if you go to his site, you c- you click the button on the right-hand and it says, like, what the top searches are. So it's, like, Indian, uh-
- SPShaan Puri
Girls with boyfriends
- SPSam Parr
... uh, I don't even wanna-
- SPShaan Puri
Whatever. [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Yeah, I don't even wanna read half of that stuff.
- SPShaan Puri
The stuff that people are into.
- SPSam Parr
But, yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
So it's, what he-
- SPSam Parr
Categories
- SPShaan Puri
... what he did was he ranks really high for the categories that people are, that's, like, clearly people's thing, and it's like, "I don't know what your thing is, but I got... If, if you got a thing, I got it for you." And because of that, those are really, really high-intent searches. And then what he does on the other side is he goes to OnlyFans models and agencies and he says, "Hey, if you want more traffic, I have tons of people searching for your exact thing. Pay me per click for every person I send to you." So he's basically recreated Google. It's a search engine, but you get paid per click to send a, uh, somebody with intent to your, to your s- to your site. And, um, he could do it... [laughs] He does a really, really good job of it. And OnlyFans does not have a discover section on purpose. They decided they don't wanna be in the discovery business. They wanna only be in the, uh, like, the kind of the underlying tools underneath these creator profiles. And so-
- SPSam Parr
This is insane
- SPShaan Puri
... um, and it's just been surfing the growth of OnlyFans, which has grown, like, exponentially. Like, OnlyFans a few years ago was very small. Uh, you know, five, uh, whatever, four, five years ago it was very small, then it got bigger and bigger. It's like, sort of like... I mean, the, the curve looks, looks unreal. Like, OnlyFans is bigger than Twitch. It's bigger than, like, some of these massive websites, uh, now, and it generates a lot of money. Like, they pay out billions to creators, uh, on the platform. And so if you can be part of that ecosystem, it's valuable.
- SPSam Parr
That's insane.
- SPShaan Puri
I have met, I have now met multiple people on OnlyFans that you've never heard of, girls that are doing between 1 and 2 million a month on their profile.
- SPSam Parr
No way.
- SPShaan Puri
It's all profit.
- SPSam Parr
2 million a month.
- 55:30 – 1:13:23
Worst of the Best: The Van Trump Report
- SPShaan Puri
he's amazing. You put me onto him. I met him and his son. Such awesome people. So, like-
- SPSam Parr
They're awesome
- SPShaan Puri
... super fun.
- SPSam Parr
They're so awesome.
- SPShaan Puri
Just fun to be around, smart, uh, really nice, just kind people. Don't, like, n- you know, no, no pretense about them. Um, and same thing, he was hosting FarmCon. I went 'cause you had told me about him and introduced me to him. And when, when I go there, he's, we're hanging out-
- SPSam Parr
He has a conference called FarmCon.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, he's got FarmCon, which is, like, the biggest farming conference get-together. So I go to Kansas and I, and-
- SPSam Parr
Was it awesome?
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, it was amazing. And I'm there and we're talking, it's, like, 11:00 at night. It's, like, the, the whole event's done. Everyone's at the bar. Every single person is drinking a beer. Every single person is drinking a beer. [laughs] And, uh, he's like, "I gotta get up, gotta get up to the bedroom. Gotta, I gotta go back to my room real quick, write the, write tomorrow's edition." And I was like, "Wait, you write it yourself still?" And he's like, "Yeah, I write it. I've, I've written it myself by hand every night." And he started this thing more than 10 years ago. Like, I think he'd said, like, it's almost, like, 20 years basically that he's been writing this thing, 18 years or something insane.
- SPSam Parr
Every day almost.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, and it's long too. It's not, like, just some cookie cutter, like-
- SPSam Parr
Mm-mm
- SPShaan Puri
... here's three links that are interesting. It's like-
- SPSam Parr
My analysis
- SPShaan Puri
... you know, "Jerome Powell came down, said this, but, uh, and he's, uh, said this, said that. You know, here's how this is gonna affect corn futures, and here's what I'm, I'm betting over here," and blah, blah, blah, and then there's a bunch of memes. [laughs] It's amazing. It's basically his market analysis for, like, crop, you know, crop and commodities, and then it's a bunch of memes u- underneath it. And he's like, "Nope, never do ads." Um, he's like, "I just wanted to build as much trust as I can in this community. And, uh, so I never advertise. I, I charge for it, and, uh, that's why we have FarmCon, that's why everybody shows up, is because, you know, they, they... I built a lot of trust over the, over the years." And I learned more about business from that guy in, like, one hour than I did in my entire, like, four-year education at Duke. Like, he said to me, he said a, a bunch of things that I, that I loved. I put this in my, my, my newsletter. I did a feature on him that I, I wrote a bunch of the lessons. But one of them that he said was, he goes, "Yeah, the content's cool," but he's like, "Being an inv-" He goes, "Being an investor is the best job in the world." You kidding me? Uh, he's like, and he, he just said it so matter of factly. He's like, "There is no better job in the world than being an investor. It is, it is the best." And you sort of think about that, you're like, all right, well, that sounds, you know, whatever, I guess kind of obvious. And it's like, okay, if that's true, then how do you get into that job? Like, if, if that is true for you, um, w- how do you architect your life to get there? 'Cause he was basically just like, "Look, this newsletter's great. Yeah, it crushed, it makes a lot of money, but I wish I was just an investor. Uh, it would've been a better, better, better choice," blah, blah, blah. And he talks about investing 'cause he, I think he was on Wall Street before he started doing what he was doing.
- SPSam Parr
Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
And he goes, um, he goes, "You know, one thing I only..." He goes, "I was early into Bitcoin. I was early into Facebook." I was like, "Really?" And he's like, "Yeah." He's like, "I wasn't as early as I could've been." He's like, "But there's always a..." He, he's like, "I got into Bitcoin, like, in 20..." He's like, "We started hearing about it at FarmCon, like, in 2013, 2014. I didn't buy it till 2015, 2016. I should've been in it right when I first heard it." He's like, "Same thing with Facebook." He goes, "One, one lesson I learned in investing," he goes, um, he goes, "Two, two lessons for you in investing. Number one, the best trades are gonna be one where, ones where you buy them and you put them in the drawer, you never think about them again." He's like, uh, he's like, "That was the best thing I did about Bitcoin. I bought Bitcoin, I put it in the drawer, never thought about it again. Heard all the news, didn't care. It's in the drawer." And I was like, damn, in the drawer, that's a cool concept of, like, what investments can you just have the conviction in and you put in the drawer? You say, "I'm not gonna react to the daily news cycle about this investment. I'm gonna let the 10 years play out on this investment," 'cause it was a let's see what happens on the long term type of bet. Um, second thing he said was, he goes, uh, "You always get a second chance to get on the train. With the best investments, there's always a second chance on the train." He's like, "With Bitcoin, you know, you think you missed it, and then the price will come down. That's your chance to get back on the train. And most people, by that time, you know, they spend the whole way up wishing they had got on the train. Train comes back around, and they get scared. They don't get back on."
- SPSam Parr
Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
He goes, "Same thing happened with Facebook. Facebook, you know, we had our chances, uh, when it was private, then it goes public. It goes up, up, up, crashed back down to $19. I got back on the tra- You know, that, that train came around, I got right back on." And he's like, "You know, that will happen for the best investments." And I sort of look for this now of, like, uh, how do you override the psychology that most people have, which is when it's going up, you wish you had gotten in earlier. Then when it crashes down, you're too afraid to buy in 'cause you feel like, oh shit, did it... Is it over? Did it pop? Is it, did I miss it? Um, was I wrong? And it's like, well, then you lose-lose. You, [laughs] you don't, you know, you wanna buy on the way up and you don't wanna buy on the way down. That's, that's a recipe for being poor, right? Like, you know, [laughs] buy high, don't buy low, right? That's not gonna work. And so, uh, those two little lessons were, were ones that stuck out for me, but this guy's business is amazing.
- SPSam Parr
He's an amazing guy, and the reason he's amazing, among other things, is he breaks all the stereotypes. He, you, you'll think that he's just this, like, hickey guy, just like people used to think about me. Uh, and like, I grew up around people just like him. Turns out he's, like, brilliant. He'll, he'll like... You're, you're like, "You're gonna talk to me about Facebook?" And he knows way more about it than you do. He'll probably knows all about Bitcoin. I mean, the guy is brilliant, and, uh, I love hanging out with him and his friends because you, it teaches you, like, I'm a fucking idiot for judging people a certain way. These guys are all badass.
- SPShaan Puri
Dude-
- SPSam Parr
And they're fun as shit
- SPShaan Puri
... I did a call the other day with another guy, so, uh, another guy from FarmCon. Same, same sort of guy. He's this, uh, white guy, maybe, mm, I don't know, in his 50s-ish, something like that.
- SPSam Parr
Was he super rich? 'Cause so many of those guys are loaded.
- SPShaan Puri
Super rich. And, like, I think this guy... I, I don't know how rich this guy is.
- SPSam Parr
Like, private jet rich.
- SPShaan Puri
I don't know how rich this guy is, but the guy who introduced me to him was just like, "Yeah, this guy's worth, you know, $300 to $500 million personally." And I was like, "Wow. Uh, okay, that's crazy." 'Cause I was like, has... I was like, "Do his deals..." Like, he's always talking about these deals. Like, does he actually make money on these? Like, does he have a track record of success? He's like, "Yeah, he has."
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
Um, so this guy, this guy's got phrases for days. So I, I have this doc that I keep on my phone doc I call Phrases. It's anytime somebody says something that's just like ... funny or worded well, it just sticks out to me, it's a punchy phrase, I write it down. At FarmCon, I filled out my phrases thing, like because there were so many. So this one guy, um, I, I don't wanna say his name to put him on blast, but he, uh, he was at a dinner with... Uh, so it's Kevin VanTrump, and then this guy was at the dinner, and it was like a private dinner at the, at FarmCon. And [laughs] he stands up and he goes, and it was every- everyone at the table's doing introductions. And so there I'm like, "Yeah, hi, I'm Shaan and yeah, I work in tech and, uh, just fucking kill me. I guess I'm boring." Like, you know [laughs] like that's basically like how I felt during the introduction. This guy stands up, he goes, "Yeah, my name's so and so." He goes, um, you know, uh, he goes [laughs] I forgot exactly how he said. He goes, he goes, uh, "I don't know who won the World Series." [laughs] He starts, "I don't know who won the World Series." [laughs] "I can't tell you how to get six-pack abs. Hell, I don't even know where the remote is in my house. But I know one thing."
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
Episode duration: 1:13:23
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Transcript of episode giis6_u8n3M
