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My First Million3 Profitable Business Ideas From A Private Equity Guy | Sahil Bloom (#384)
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Cold Open and Guest Introduction
The episode opens with a clip of Sahil pitching a mobile podcast studio idea. The hosts then introduce him and trade banter about haircuts and sweaters.
- •Cold open teases the mobile podcast and video studio idea
- •Shaan introduces Sahil Bloom as the guest
- •Banter about haircuts and barber shops versus salons
- •The hosts tease each other's look and clothing
What Private Equity Partners Earn and How It Compares to the Information Economy
Sam frames Sahil's story as a nobody PE guy turned Twitter-famous, and asks how rich PE owners really are. Sahil explains management fees and carry, the stress of the work, and why the information economy gives better time leverage.
- •A longtime GP at a successful fund can plausibly have a net worth above $50 million
- •Funds take 1.5 to 2% management fees plus 15 to 25% carry above a hurdle rate
- •GPs work 70-plus hours a week, and most of their time goes to the few losers in the portfolio
- •PE is high certainty but grindy, while newsletters, podcasts and courses offer far better time leverage
Sahil's Current Work: Fund, Newsletter and Agency
Sahil lists what he does now. He runs a $10 million venture fund and a newsletter with about 125,000 subscribers, and he has an agency business that grew from an arbitrage opportunity.
- •$10 million venture fund raised from institutions and GPs at larger funds
- •Newsletter has about 125K subscribers and earns roughly $3.5K to $6K per send, 8 to 10 sends a month
- •Agency business reached close to six figures a month in gross revenue with high margins
The Fork in the Road: Leaving PE
Shaan asks Sahil to retell his decision about whether to stay in a safe finance career or leap into the unknown. Sahil describes his COVID-era reflection, a conversation with Shaan that reframed the choice, and the Stitch Fix pitch that sealed it.
- •After six years of 80 to 100 hour PE weeks, COVID gave him time to question what he was doing
- •Twitter writing started without a plan to make money and grew into possibilities like courses or an agency
- •Shaan pointed out he was picking the option that sounded miserable over the one that gave him energy
- •His final interview for a crossover hedge fund required pitching Stitch Fix, which he rejected as a buy and which later collapsed
How the Twitter Agency Started
Sam asks about the ghostwriting and Twitter circle, and Sahil explains how his agency really began. It started as five-thousand-dollar-a-month advisory for startup founders and grew by connecting clients with freelance writers.
- •Started in late 2020, when threads were a real growth arbitrage on Twitter
- •Charged startups $5K a month for light-touch content strategy, mostly over text
- •Advised founders to pick two or three content pillars and share their losses, using the pratfall effect
- •Scaled by connecting clients with freelance writers from his 400-student Maven course, paying writers $1K to $2.5K and charging about $5K
- •Clients are founders, not VCs, split between tech and traditional businesses
Business Idea #1: A LinkedIn Growth Agency
Shaan asks for business ideas, and Sahil's first is an agency that grows LinkedIn audiences. He describes the carousel method, pricing, and why followers must build up before they can be monetized. Sam shares his own LinkedIn experiment, and the group discusses Sahil's growing Instagram.
- •LinkedIn is described as a massive audience-growth arbitrage because Twitter has become saturated
- •Turn proven tweets or blog posts into carousels using TweetPik and post for clients two to three times a week
- •Charge roughly $2.5K to $5K a month, or a success fee, for about an hour a week per client
- •Shaan says his LinkedIn grew to 38,000 followers without him opening the app, but he doubts it will convert to sales yet
- •Sahil says about 100K followers is where value can be harvested, and Instagram drove about 1,000 newsletter subs in a month
Is Social Content Too Saturated and Cringe? Tony Robbins and Parlaying Early Wins
Shaan worries the audience-growth playbook is now figured out and low value, which turns into a debate about cringe. Sahil argues you should pick how much cringe you can accept and use early success to vault into something bigger. The chapter ends with a discussion of Elon's Twitter changes.
- •Shaan says the window of opportunity is closing and that the strategy was best before it was figured out
- •Sahil says to decide what percentage of cringe you are willing to accept
- •Shaan uses Tony Robbins to argue that mediocre imitators of a top-tier performer land in a weak middle ground
- •Sahil says to ask what game you are playing and what you can parlay early success into, such as his book deal and fund
- •Sahil says he already benefited from being early and would be more worried if he were just starting
Business Idea #2: A Full-Suite Newsletter Growth Service
Sahil's second idea is a service that handles only newsletter growth so the writer can just write. He explains what it would cover, who would pay, and how to deal with the headaches of a service business.
- •Newsletter monetization can be outsourced, but nobody offers full growth services such as landing pages, referrals, swaps, paid ads and SEO
- •Sahil says he would pay about $10K a month for this at his newsletter's size
- •Target clients could be successful founders who want an owned list or essays, and a case study could prove it out
- •Ten clients at $5K to $10K a month could make an 80%-plus margin business
- •To avoid service-business headaches, hire a great operator and give them a stake, as is planned for the LinkedIn spin-off
Low Beta, High Beta and Shaan's Emotional Equilibrium
A tangent starts with the finance term beta and becomes a conversation about the hosts' temperaments. They discuss what bothers Shaan, Sam's view that Shaan is high-variance, and whether happiness counts as success.
- •Sahil calls Sam low beta because people know what to expect from him
- •Shaan says what bothers him is mostly his own impatience, boredom or crankiness
- •Sam says Shaan could be more likely than him to become a billionaire, but also more likely to become a degenerate
- •Sahil argues that Shaan may be the most successful if success includes happiness
Losing Half His Liquid Net Worth and the Luna Collapse
Shaan describes how his pre-2022 investment approach left his liquid holdings down roughly 50%, and how he responded without losing sleep. Sahil recounts buying Luna on Shaan's tip, getting out just before it collapsed, and the canceled Do Kwon interview.
- •Shaan's holdings in big tech, startups and crypto all fell in 2022
- •He got perspective, asked what to change, sold some positions to stop worrying and booked losses to offset gains
- •He says he never got happiness from gains, so he wouldn't take sadness from losses
- •Sahil sold his Luna bag after a canceled-interview email from Do Kwon's assistant, and it collapsed overnight
Tourist vs. Local, Stubbornness and Rethinking Bitcoin
Sahil brings up Shaan's local-versus-tourist framework and adds the risk of the stubborn local. Shaan discusses telling good persistence from bad, how his Luna bet was sized for a known downside, and why his inflation thesis for Bitcoin did not play out.
- •Locals know markets move in seasons while tourists panic, but a stubborn local can ignore real change
- •Founders and investors must decide whether to stay stubborn or update on new information, and the answer depends on context
- •Shaan's Luna bet of $250K came with a written memo on the downside, which was exactly what happened
- •His thesis that inflation would push people toward Bitcoin did not play out, since the dollar strengthened
- •Sahil suspects the price run was driven by speculators rather than technology believers
Business Idea #3: A Mobile Podcast and Video Studio
Sahil pitches renting out vans or trucks kitted as podcast and video studios in major cities. Shaan works through costs and suggests a membership model, and the group jokes about a name.
- •Outfit a van with DSLR cameras, mics and lighting, and rent it for about $500 for two hours of podcasting or a couple hundred for short-form video
- •A used box truck might cost around $25K, with about $5K down and another $5K for the kit
- •Shaan suggests selling it as a membership, and notes the operator is the tricky part
- •Existing New York studios pay city rent, while a truck can move between parking lots
- •Sam proposes the name Moodio
Looks, Personal Branding and Shaan's Uniform Bounty
Sam asks whether Sahil's good looks are an advantage online and what look he and Shaan should adopt. The conversation turns to being interesting-looking, consistent signature looks, and a $1,000 bounty for Shaan's uniform.
- •Sahil says looks help on visual platforms but that top YouTubers aren't necessarily conventionally attractive
- •Shaan's line is that if you aren't good-looking, be interesting-looking
- •Alex Hormozi and Chris Sacca are cited as examples of a consistent signature look
- •Shaan offers a $1,000 bounty for a signature chest-up look, and Sahil adds $1,000
- •Sahil suggests Shaan try traditional Indian attire such as a kurta
Sahil's Grand Plan and Wrap-Up
Shaan asks about Sahil's long-term vision, and Sahil says public office could be in the cards, probably governor rather than president. He explains his policy background and independent leanings, then the hosts close and he shares where to find him.
- •Sahil sees running for public office as a possible long-term plan and calls the presidency one of the hardest jobs in the world
- •He did a master's in public policy and says politicians need to be reasonable thinkers who can change their minds and inspire people
- •He is an independent who has voted for both parties and hopes a third party rises
- •He can be found at @SahilBloom and sahilbloom.com
- •The hosts mention wanting to bring on Austin Rief and Nikita
