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My First MillionMillion Dollar Businesses with 0 Employees
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CHAPTERS
- 0:00 – 4:36
Steph's Research List and Billionaire Ambitions
Sam welcomes Steph, who is subbing for Shaan, and asks about her 15-page running list of ideas. Steph says she wants to become a billionaire by owning equity in something she builds herself, and Sam introduces her background at The Hustle, her book and her podcast.
- •Steph keeps a running Evernote list of ideas from newsletters and past episodes
- •The shared doc is a fraction of the larger list, about 10,000 words
- •Steph says becoming a billionaire requires equity in something she builds, not a job plus ETFs
- •Sam recaps her work on Trends and her Gumroad book Doing Content Right
- 4:36 – 7:56
BuiltWith and Ugmonk: One-Person Companies
Steph and Sam begin the companies-of-one list with BuiltWith, which Sam says is run by one guy in Australia, and with Nomad List and Remote OK. Steph then covers Ugmonk, a simple e-commerce store that grew from T-shirts into productivity products.
- •BuiltWith shows what a site is built with and sells plans of $3,000 to $10,000 a year
- •Sam explains the business likely monetizes by selling lists of sites using certain plugins
- •Steph credits Peter Levels with Nomad List and Remote OK, both solo
- •Ugmonk moved from quality T-shirts to desk and productivity items, perhaps a couple million a year
- 7:56 – 11:12
Carrd, About.me and One-Page Site Builders
Steph presents Carrd, a one-person subscription site builder doing about $1M ARR, and Sam compares it to About.me. They also discuss Unfold and Media Kit as similar one-page and media kit builders.
- •Carrd is built by one person and has 2.5 million sites
- •About.me sold to AOL for about $40M after two years
- •Unfold, which was sold to Squarespace, expanded into link-in-bio one-pagers
- •Sam compares media kit builders to DocSend
- 11:12 – 13:45
NextEpisode.net: 15 Years Solo
Steph shows nextepisode.net, an old-looking TV tracking site that one person has run for 15 years. Sam checks Similarweb and finds 3.6 million monthly uniques with mostly direct traffic.
- •The site tracks TV shows and has a community element
- •Sam sees 3.6M monthly uniques with 80% direct traffic
- •A premium tier costs $2 a month
- •They guess about $1M a year, mostly profit, and the founder avoids hiring to scale
- 13:45 – 17:49
Lean Giants: SurveyMonkey, Plenty of Fish and Craigslist
Steph mentions other lean companies such as Hostify, SurveyMonkey and Plenty of Fish, and explains where the SurveyMonkey numbers came from. Sam shares a story about the cheap Craigslist office he later occupied, and Steph adds one about Peter Levels carrying his laptop in a grocery bag.
- •SurveyMonkey reportedly did $19M with 12 employees, according to a commenter who invested
- •Plenty of Fish reportedly did $10M with one person
- •Sam says Craigslist had about 14 people in a tiny office
- •Steph says Peter Levels carries his laptop in a plastic grocery bag
- 17:49 – 21:59
Bannerbear and the MotoMeter
Steph covers Bannerbear, an image-generation API run by a solo founder she knows from Bali, with a public open page and a MotoMeter showing motorcycle goals. They discuss why one-person builders are creative and why this niche problem is broad.
- •Bannerbear is at roughly $300K ARR and began in 2020
- •Its open page unlocks motorcycles as MRR goals are hit
- •The tool auto-generates images for blogs and social media
- •Solo founders handle marketing, design and development, which Steph says makes them more creative
- •Peter gave away $10,000 via retweets instead of paying for ads
- 21:59 – 24:48
Headlime: AI Copy Tool Sold in Months
Steph describes Headlime, built in a couple of months on GPT-3 and sold for seven figures within a year. Sam is surprised to see his own face on the site. Steph draws the lesson that these founders solve existing, seemingly niche problems.
- •Headlime generates landing page headlines and copy with AI
- •The founder built in public on Twitter and launched on Product Hunt
- •It sold for seven figures in about eight months
- •Steph says people go wrong by seeking problems that don't exist
- 24:48 – 31:25
Glitchn Deals and Nugget Comfort
Steph shows sites with surprising traffic, starting with Glitchn Deals, which tracks pricing glitches and has a huge Facebook group. Sam connects it to people who love giveaways, and they move to Nugget Comfort, a children's pillow company making over $4M a month with no ad spend.
- •Glitching means buying items mispriced by company error
- •Glitchn Deals gets 4M page views a month, and its Facebook group has 342,000 members
- •Sam says giveaway enthusiasts often just want to win
- •Nugget Comfort reportedly made $4M in a month with zero ad spend
- •Steph notes areas like pets and children draw endless spending
- 31:25 – 35:37
Public Domain Review and Copyright Debate
Steph introduces Public Domain Review and speculates about opportunities when Winnie-the-Pooh enters the public domain. Sam and Steph discuss merchandise value and how long copyright should last.
- •Public Domain Review tracks works moving into the public domain and sells prints
- •Steph says Pokémon, Hello Kitty and Winnie-the-Pooh have each made over $80B in merch
- •She is unsure whether public domain status covers merchandise
- •Sam argues expiring copyright is unfair, comparing it to land
- 35:37 – 38:12
FoodTimeline.org and a Quirky Internet Find
Steph shares FoodTimeline.org, a single-page history of when foods first appeared, as a fun find rather than a business opportunity. Sam admires its late creator and notes the domain is set to lapse.
- •The page gets over 150,000 page views a month
- •Surprising dates include broccolini in 1993 and buffalo wings in 1964
- •Sam describes Lynn Olver, who launched it in 1999 and died in 2015
- •Its domain was set to lapse in April 2022
- 38:12 – 44:18
"Your Listicle Is My Opportunity" and Healthiest-Food Sites
Steph points to big search volume for "healthiest" food queries and coins the phrase "your listicle is my opportunity." Sam outlines a TikTok-plus-affiliate-site plan, and Steph suggests Ahrefs keyword research showing low difficulty.
- •Monthly searches include healthiest cereal at 50,000 and healthiest bread at 30,000
- •Nomad List turns listicle topics into explorable data
- •Sam proposes a TikTok page that drives people to a Wirecutter-style affiliate site
- •Steph says keyword difficulty looked low and hundreds of terms are available
- •Sam notes Eat This, Not That's owner Galvanized Media probably makes tens of millions
- 44:18 – 49:10
Magnus Carlsen's Chess Business Empire
Steph explains how chess player Magnus built equity in a company, Play Magnus, which is publicly traded. They look up its revenue and ownership, then discuss chess.com's scale and built-in game analysis.
- •Steph says Magnus built equity instead of just earning appearance fees
- •Play Magnus has 250 employees, 4 million users and a $115M market cap
- •Revenue was $5M last quarter and the company was trending toward $20M
- •Ownership stakes got confusing between Play Magnus and Magnus Chess
- •Chess.com has about 150 million monthly uniques and automates coach-style blunder review
- 49:10 – 52:15
Wrap-Up: Praise for Steph's Research and Plugs
Sam relays that Ben said Steph had been spitting fire, and a speaker on the production side rates the episode an A+ and suggests she teach a research course. Steph says she may share the research openly, notes the healthiest-food idea checks her criteria, and plugs her podcast and Twitter.
- •A speaker suggests Steph do a course on how she does research
- •Steph says Sam and Shaan are A+ entertainers while she is working on that
- •She is nervous to return because the show's audience has grown
- •The healthiest-X idea has sat on her to-do list for two years
- •She plugs her podcast The Sh*t You Didn't Learn in School and her StephSmithio handle
