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WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
FarmCon insights: a $30–$40M newsletter and overlooked ag-tech opportunities
- Shaan recounts getting COVID after attending FarmCon, describing how exposure happened across the conference, a hotel gym interaction, and extended time on a plane, and how his whole household eventually got sick.
- Sam and Shaan explain Kevin Van Trump’s business as a long-running daily paid newsletter (written by Kevin), which they estimate is now generating roughly $30–$40M/year in subscription revenue and built primarily through trust and word-of-mouth.
- Shaan describes FarmCon as a high-energy, personality-driven event where Kevin’s blunt business instincts and charisma shaped the experience as much as commodity market discussion.
- They discuss why agriculture surprised them as a financially sophisticated, high-scale industry and brainstorm business ideas in fintech, automation/precision agriculture, and farm succession planning.
- The episode shifts into how “brand equity” forms in tech (via influential relationships and consistently interesting public thinking), plus side discussions on a short-term rental community and a “steady returns” real-estate investing platform Shaan uses.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasFarmCon’s standout feature was Kevin Van Trump’s charisma and unfiltered delivery style.
Shaan describes FarmCon as an unusually engaging event where Kevin Van Trump ran the stage like a courtroom—desk, gavel, panelists—and mixed market talk with blunt, entertaining life and business rants that the crowd loved.
A single-writer, daily, “ugly” PDF can become a massive paid information business.
Sam and Shaan describe Kevin as a former commodities trader who writes a long daily PDF newsletter himself, with subscribers paying about $1,000/year; Shaan estimates it’s now doing roughly $30–$40M/year in subscription revenue and emphasizes it’s “substance over style.”
Kevin’s model relies on trust: no sponsors and no paid promotion.
According to Shaan, Kevin refused sponsorships (including turning down John Deere) and didn’t run ads, aiming to preserve trust; they describe growth as organic word-of-mouth via forwarding and sharing insights among people who rely on commodity decisions for their livelihood.
The Van Trump family appears to compound leverage by stacking several adjacent businesses on the same network.
Shaan lays out what he believes are multiple revenue engines: the paid newsletter, a brokering/matchmaking component connecting big buyers with producers (which he thinks can rival the newsletter), investing in ag-tech, and Jordan Van Trump’s “AgSwag” apparel/merch business serving large agricultural companies.
The conference reshaped Shaan’s view of agriculture as a sophisticated, high-scale market.
Shaan says he arrived with stereotypes about farmers, but was surprised by how financially sophisticated attendees were (risk management, hedging, derivatives), and how different “mainstream scale” consumption looks outside his personal bubble.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesCOVID was for sure there. It was the, you know, the, the, the main attendee, the main keynote speaker.
— Shaan Puri
It’s just the flu with a side dose of paranoia ’cause it’s like, "Oh, this ain’t the flu. This is, this is COVID."
— Shaan Puri
It hits the highest level of interesting me, which is where you say, "What am I doing with my life? Why don’t I do that?"
— Shaan Puri
I think conferences are pure fucking alpha, meaning I think there’s so much gains to be had at conferences.
— Shaan Puri
No, dude, ca- call it wh- what I sold my startup for less than what my investors had put in.
— Shaan Puri
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SPEAKERS
Sam Parr
hostEntrepreneur and podcast host, best known as co-host of My First Million and founder of The Hustle.
Shaan Puri
hostEntrepreneur and investor, best known as co-host of My First Million.
High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.
