
Shaan Puri of My First Million & The Milk Road
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A
Hey there, freedom fighters. My name is Andrew Warner. I'm the founder of Mixergy, where I interview entrepreneurs about how they built their businesses. Joining me is someone who I've watched now for years, Sean Pory. And I've listened to him for years, like many of you have on my first million. And the thing that I always felt about Sean is that he was like this Silicon Valley wannabe guy, that he really dove into this world. He's nodding, so I'm not being a jerk by saying this. He dove into the world in a way that's so fricking admirable. He knew the right people, he worked with them, he raised money. I remember when I was talking to Naval about something, I was fact checking one of my other interviews and Naval said to me, by the way, did you see what Sean is doing? I go, know what? He's one of the first people to do a rolling fund. And he started walking me through what you were doing over there. And I go, this freaking guy, he's always the first on all these Silicon Valley new things. And then he goes and gets a newsletter. I go, what? This is like, like Sam Par going back to the hot dog stand, he's going and getting a newsletter. What's he up to? I subscribed. The newsletter was hella fun because Sean is way more fun than I am. And I watched the business grow. And here's my theory, Sam, and I should say this, this interview is sponsored by Beehive, which is the platform you built on. Here's my theory. My theory, Sam, Sean, is that you put more money in your bank from the Milk Road, this newsletter than you did from all the other. From any one of the other things that you've done before.
B
Not quite true, but maybe on a time invested versus payout basis. Because the Milk Road was a one year project. And the other things, I made more, but I worked on them for. I was grinding away for seven, eight years to try to make something work. So definitely for the time invested, it was excellent. So we'll give you half credit for that.
A
What put in more money than that?
B
What's that?
A
What put in more money than that?
B
When we sold Bebo, it was more.
A
Oh, really?
B
Yeah.
A
You know what I think, because of. I guess I didn't realize you had a big stake. Can you tell me about that exit and what your share in that business was?
B
Yeah. So we. I guess there's a backstory here. I don't know how far you want me to go back, but basically, Bebo back in the day was a social network similar to MySpace, Facebook, they were all competing at the same time. MySpace was the biggest in the US at the time. Facebook was number two in the US but growing very fast. And Bebo was the biggest in a bunch of other countries, Ireland, UK, et cetera. So the way that game played out, MySpace sold to Rupert Murdoch for something like $500 million. Facebook almost sold for a billion, but refused to sell. Started growing faster than everybody. And Bebo, which I was not a part of at the time, was owned by a guy named Michael Birch and his wife Zochi. And they decided to sell. They timed it beautifully, unintentionally, intentionally. I'm not sure, but he did tell me, you know, he sort of saw that Facebook was kicking their ass and he was like, okay, I don't think we're going to be the winner based on the trajectory, the slopes of these lines. So he had an offer to sell to AOL for $850 million. So he cashes out. Hallelujah. I meet Michael. Years later. Michael's now running a Idealab, which is what a lot of founders do. They sell, they make a bunch of money. They say, well, what, you know, they go buy the boat, they buy the island, they. They buy the things. No joke. He literally bought an island. And then he was like, well, I still love building things. I still want to do things, but now I could do it on my own terms, which is amazing. So buys a fancy office in San Francisco, hires up a awesome team of engineers, and he's creating an idea lab. I join to work with him. I'm 24 years old. I decide I want to go work with the guy who's been there and done that in Silicon Valley. I quit my job. I moved from Australia, where I was living at the time, to San Francisco. I show up, I don't know anybody, but I'm interviewing for literally two jobs. One was a job at Stripe, which I got rejected for. And the second one was a job at this place called Monkey Inferno, which is what Michael's idea lab is called. When I join, I'll fast forward a little bit. I join. I don't know what the hell I'm doing, but I'm just trying to make things happen. I end up getting promoted. So he was CEO of the lab. I was just a pm. I was the youngest guy in the company. Within six months, he actually gives me a promotion where I'm now CEO of a 20 person kind of company that's making a few million dollars a year. Of profit and where the job is. You're going to create new ideas along the way. After he does that, he pulls me aside, he says, hey, there's an opportunity to buy Bibo back. I said, what do you mean? Like, so Bebo had gone to AOL $850 million exit. They then did a tax write off and basically a year or two later, once Facebook had dominated everything and AOL was a mess, AOL writes it down, sells it for like $10 million to some guy. That guy was a bit of a crook. He is just like siphoning money out of the business, you know, illegally in a way. Business is going bankrupt. Michael tells me, hey, we have a chance to buy this at an auction before it goes into bankruptcy. We go and we buy it back for $1 million. So sold for 850, buy it back for 1 million in a crazy high stakes game of poker where we're at an auction table bidding against other players and we, we end up winning the bid. So now we own the brand again, but nobody's really been able to bring anything back. If you remember, at the time MySpace tried to come back, they hired Justin Timberlake and shit like that, and they tried to make it cool and it totally flopped. We took the opposite approach. We were like, okay, everybody's gonna think this is a joke. And so we released. We didn't even know what the product was gonna be. The news breaks that we bought it back. And so we make a joke video making fun of ourselves for buying it back. That video goes viral. We get about half a million people signing up to check out what the new Bevo is gonna be when it comes out. So now I got like six to nine months where we're gonna try a bunch of prototypes to try to figure out what Bevo should be. We've got half a million people waiting. And I start creating products and I would email 10,000, 20,000 people off the list, getting them to try something under a code name. And if it was good, the idea was we'll roll it out as Vivo.
A
Meaning, like lots of different business ideas.
B
Lots of ideas. Lots of shots on goal. One, two, three shots on goal. One was like a. This is. You have to rewind the clock a little bit. This is less popular then, but it's like a video messenger. So you would. It's like a video walkie talkie. I could send you a quick video message. You would get it. You could play it. You just put your thumb on the screen. You record a video message. As soon as you let go of your thumb, it sends a message back to me. Very fast. Ping ponging of video messages. Snapchat ultimately won that space. They just kind of added video, made it easy enough. It was, you know, not there. We did a thing that was like a Bitmoji type of thing where you would create this little character. Whatever you typed in, your character would do it. It was kind of magical. It's kind of like the way Dall E or AI Tools work today, where you just type in, give me an image of X and it will just give you an image of it. We made a thing that could do that, that got to number one on the App Store. Got about half a million installs, but had kind of shitty retention. It's kind of a novelty. So we're trying a bunch of things. We end up creating a live streaming app that sells to Twitch. And so we got bought by Twitch, which is owned by Amazon. And so that was the exit that you're. To take it back to your original question. That was the first business I ever sold, was that one. And now that was a business where Michael and Zoji, the couple who I said bought it back and were funding the lab, they owned the majority of the company. I had a stake in that business and, you know, it was a good exit for everybody. And, you know, so that was kind of like exit one. And then after that, I created the podcast. After that I created E Commerce Brand. After that, created Milk Road, started creating other businesses after that.
A
You know what? I didn't realize that you had significant equity in that business. I'm seeing here. I forgot how much it sold for, according to TechCrunch anyway, was $25 million. Does that sound.
B
Yeah, the number's high because it wasn't that high.
A
Okay. But I. I just didn't realize it.
B
So.
A
You know what? One of the reasons why I didn't realize it is you still, even long after the podcast had taken off, had this, like, I don't know, this energy of I gotta succeed because I'm a failure and I know I can do better than this. You know, like, at the. The end of how to Be Rich, what's his name that, that author talks about how, look at me, I'm now in a shed by myself writing poetry because no one likes me. And my wife, I couldn't marry anyone because I have this glint in my eye like I'm going to kill somebody in order to be rich. And it could be whoever I'm going to marry. And I felt like, you still had that until recently. And that's where I thought. Didn't do that well with Bebo. No, no.
B
Why do you still have it, that whole narrative? I don't know where you got that because you. I have no idea what you're talking about. You don't even know me. That's a very specific narrative to have, but it's hilarious.
A
Don't you think it's enough for me to know you if I follow you on like your podcast? Obviously clearly filling in gaps with my own experience. I do feel like, and I, for many reasons, I feel like I need to do more.
B
I'm not enough.
A
Look at all these things that I should be doing. And it clearly comes out of lots of pores of my body.
B
And so I do think that's one way to. You, you could be fueled by. By that. There's many sources of fuel, right? Like if you go into a gas station, you could put diesel, you could put unleaded, you could put whatever in and they'll all make your car go. Some will make you go and blow up, and some will run really smooth, some will gunk up your engine. I sort of think the same way about, you know, what inspires you to get up and do things every day. And for me, it was very much after we sold Bebo. I remember vividly I went for a walk with my buddy, who's kind of like a mentor to me. I think he's a guy who lives life in a way that I think is inspirational. He helped me sell the business too. He was kind of my voice in my ear, helping me figure out how to sell a business. I had never done that before. And I remember going on a walk with him. We went for like a four hour walk. And he said a couple things. He was like, okay, so what's next? And this is, the deal had just closed, so what's next? Should have been, I'm going to go work at Twitch Fest out and, you know, spend a couple years there and I'll learn so much and blah, blah, blah. I said, what do you think I should do? I said, how long do you think I should stay? And he was like, I think you should already quit. And he's like. I was like, why? And he's like, you're an entrepreneur. I was like, but there's so much money on the table. If I just, I stay till one year to two years, till three years, I get, you know, here's the structure. He's like, I know the structure, but you know, you'll create so much more if you. If you do whatever he's like, but that's me, you know, what do you think you should do? I said, well, I'm about to have a kid. This is the first big money I've ever made. I don't really want to just give it up and not even hit that one year mark. Because actually, the way the deal was structured, if I left before a year, I'd have to pay back money. Um, so it was not even like, if you stay, you get more. It was like, if you stay, you get more, and if you don't stay, you owe us money back. So there was, like, a real penalty to not hit one year.
A
Okay.
B
So I said, let me use this as an opportunity to shift gears a little bit. I feel like for seven, eight years, I've just been pushing a boulder up a mountain. It felt so hard to make something work. And I desperately wanted to have a win, kind of like what you described. My motivation was like, I think I'm good, but the evidence says I suck. Which one is it? And I said, I finally got, you know, a little bit of a win. I said, I think the next thing I should do is I should do the thing that I'm. I'm most excited about, regardless of the opportunity. Because, like, I spent eight years trying to make money. Can I spend a year not optimizing for money? Right? Like, if not, what was the point of making life changing money if it doesn't change your perspective of life? It's not just. It changes the things you can buy, right? It's not, you know, sort of, I have freedom to go buy this car, freedom to go do this. I have freedom from something, so I have freedom from the obligations of bubble. I have freedom from that pesky voice inside me that's saying, you haven't made it yet. You need to make a success. And so I really had a moment there. So kind of the opposite of what you said. I had a moment there where I said, I want to spend the next year just doing whatever seems most interesting to me and not prioritize money at all. That's why I started the podcast, because on that walk, I told him, I said. He goes, so what's that thing? And I go, you know, I think it would be amazing if I woke up. And I remember saying this vividly is, what if I woke up and I was in a million people's earballs? I said, you know, like, there's. There's been people who are like that for me, you Know Tim Ferriss or Tony Robbins or Naval. These voices who really like. I enjoyed it. I. It was entertaining, it was insightful, it was helpful. It was like that friend or mentor who never met me, but they had a big impact on me. And I was like, I think I could be that for other people. And I just think that would be so cool. What if I got to just like, be myself talk? And that was getting in the middle of people's ears. So that's why I started the podcast. I also said, well, I'm start. I'm starting a family, so I want to be a great dad. I want to give in great shape. So I set a bunch of other goals for myself that was like, maybe there's more to life than just this kind of career success thing. And I wanted to dabble. So I also created an e commerce company. I'd never done a physical product, so let me try that, see if that's good. Spoiler. Even when the business is good, physical products are a pain in the ass. It much, much easier to do digital things, but that's kind of what that next couple years of my life look like. And since then, other things have happened, but, like, that was really that transition. And it didn't come from a place of, to answer your question, it didn't come from a place of I'm not enough or I gotta do whatever it was. I got these chips now, these tokens, and I'm at Chuck E. Cheese. Which machines do I want to go Put the chips into that. That one looks fine, one looks fun, and I don't have to play for tickets. I can play the game that looks the most fun now. And that's how I viewed the next few years of my life.
A
You know what I think? For some reason, I thought my first million was Sam coming up with an extension of the Hustle. No, that was you.
B
No, no, that was me. I wanted to create a podcast. I created the podcast and then I approached Sam and I said, hey, you have a giant audience, right? Because the entrepreneur doesn't turn off, right? So you think, okay, I'm creating a product, but how am I going to get this distributed? I said, well, if I went to Sam, he's got a big audience, he's got no podcast. And so I asked him, I said, why don't you have a podcast? He's like, oh, it's, you know, I think podcasting is hard. I don't have the talent. It'd be too, too expensive. We just got to stay focused on the newsletter. I said, well, here's an idea. I'm creating a podcast. Anyways, here's the premise. I think it's going to be great. I will give you content. So I give you content, you give me distribution. We split the money 5050 so you don't have to put any out of pocket costs or do any work or distract your team. I'll just give you the audio file and you just put it in the newsletter. And now your audience got extra content and you get extra revenue without any of the cost and work. Kind of a no brainer offer, right? And so he became my publisher and later I looped him in because we were friends. I looped him in to actually be the kind of recurring co host somewhere, you know, six months in or something like that.
A
That explains why. So every time I listen to your podcast on my Apple Watch and I do that because I like to ditch my phone, it will just randomly shift to the very first episode and I hear you doing an interview and all right, I get it. Let me shift then over to the Milk Road. I was fascinated by the Milk Road. I'm not into crypto and never was, not really. And something pulled me in and I think it was the watching you build in public. And obviously you built on your reputation and your audience that you had from the My First Million podcast. But let me understand the whole story of it because I think this is an interesting bootstrap story. Why did you decide to do a newsletter and why crypto? Let's start with that.
B
So the two questions are actually in reverse. So it was first why crypto? And then, oh, we should do a newsletter. So the, basically the, at the time now what year was this? I'm trying to remember. I don't really remember what year this was. This must have been 2021 or 2022. You know, I was, I'd been into crypto for a while, was always interested in it, but my interest has just basically grown every year. My conviction has grown every year. And at the time this was pre AI, so it was pre chat GPT. At the time, if you said, what's the most exciting thing in tech right now? It was undoubtedly crypto. Probably the really smart people were doing AI. It wasn't very popular yet, but for me of what I could see, you know, it seemed like the smartest people I knew were all interested in crypto. It seemed like the biggest upside industry and it seemed like the new Greenfield opportunity. And so I knew crypto was really interesting. I knew I wanted to be more A part of it. But I've always had this theory, which is that it's better to host the party than attend the party. Meaning hosting the party is certainly more work, maybe three times more work, four times more work than attending a party. But it's a hundred x the return. Meaning when you host the party every. You meet everybody, everybody knows you, you know everybody, and you get. You put yourself smack dab in the center of a network whenever you host a party, even if at the beginning you didn't know anybody, simply hosting a party will fast track you to the center of a network. And so I told Ben, who's my business partner, I said, look, we're both really interested in crypto. We're either going to be interested on the sideline, we're going to be interested as investors. So some skin in the game, we're going to be interested as investors, and maybe academically, if we just kind of follow along and we read along and we just scroll on Twitter all day, or we could host the party. And I said, I think we should do something that puts us in the middle of the network. Because if we are correct that crypto's super interesting that this is going to be a big deal, we should just get in the middle first and then sort of find an opportunity, right? We'll figure out what's the right play. Is it investing in other companies? Is it starting a company ourselves? Is it being the media player? Is it being a fund? Is it what? We don't know at this moment. But I knew that that was an area of interest, and I knew that if it is an area of interest, it's so Greenfield, just go host the party and you can become in the center of it very quickly. You can bootstrap your own network very quickly. Now, once we decided that, then the question was, what is the party? Is it an event? Is it a company? Is it a fund? Is it a newsletter? What is it? And I was fortunate that I had known Sam for many, many years. I was with him, we were friends, and we were in a mastermind together before he even created the newsletter the Hustle. So back, you know, hustle might have 2 million subscribers or something today. It had zero back then. As I watched him build it brick by brick and also followed that space with Morning Brew and the Scam. There was kind of these, like that generation of newsletter companies. So I knew that model well. I knew where it works, and I knew where it doesn't work. So once I decided to be in crypto, I was just Looking for an excuse. I said, what will be something that will give us an excuse? A forcing function, which is a great word. What's a forcing function? For us to be learning every day about crypto and to be become super well connected in that space. So we meet all the smartest people and we, we get, we get access to all the best opportunities. And that's why we decided to create the newsletter. Because I knew that model, I knew it would work in crypto. And it wasn't. I want to create a newsletter. Okay. About what? Crypto. So it wasn't newsletter then. Crypto, it was, crypto is where I want to be. Oh. A newsletter is a great vehicle that will get us to the center of that network and that's why we did it.
A
I see, that makes sense. I thought you were watching this thing and saying, okay, I can just copy it for any model. Anything that's interesting right now. Got it. Did it help you actually get to know people, make better investments? Know something or get what?
B
Absolutely. And, and by the way, the, the reason that's important is, you know, the why. Everybody only sees the iceberg, they see the tip. They don't understand the thinking that goes underneath it. And I realized that the best way to do projects is to do them where even if this fails, it's a success. Meaning even if the venture fails, will the skills I pick up, the network I build and the experiences I have, the fun I have, will it still make it worth it, let's say 24 months in? And so I knew that even if the newsletter was a modest business or kind of a money losing business or sort of a shitty business, I knew that it was still would be a success. Because if you're writing a daily newsletter, that means every day you gotta have something interesting and smart to say about crypto. Which was like our rate of learning about crypto will probably 300x, right? So I went from learning, you know, randomly whenever I watch a YouTube video or had a conversation or scroll Twitter to by 6am tomorrow I gotta send something out to a hundred thousand plus people and it's gotta sound smart and it's gotta be interesting. What's the most interesting, most smart thing I can say? That was a forcing function to like really get me to get sharper faster. And then in doing that, we now got well connected because we could go to anybody and say, hey, we have the largest crypto audience. Because we did in one year. We built it to about, I want to say, 250 ish thousand readers and so that was the biggest daily crypto newsletter. So that opened up all the doors we wanted. And lastly, it also forced us to refine our thesis of, like, it's easy to be interested in crypto when the numbers are going up to say, I like it because it makes me rich. When you have to talk about crypto, even when it's down, it forces you to ask yourself what's actually fundamentally interesting about this. Right? So I knew I would get those benefits even if the newsletter didn't work.
A
I. You know what? I get that. And at the same time where all that benefit. It feels really scary to do it daily. I've done this podcast daily for years, and I'm not doing it daily now. But it wasn't that hard because I could spend an hour researching someone, and then I'm talking to the smartest person I know where I could get today. And they could be incredibly smart. And that's not scary. Writing a thing every day is so much pressure. And you got work, you've got other things to do. How did you do that?
B
Well, I made it a priority, so it was my project for that year. I was like, this is the main project. It wasn't like a side thing for me. And also, I didn't write it every day. So I knew I had a. I knew if I can figure out the format, meaning if I can make one edition that I think is dope, then I could probably make two or three editions, I think. And by the time I get three, now I've got a template, now I've got a format. And a format is something I could train others. So I, from day one, was the editor, not the author. So first I made Ben write it, and Ben was like, dude, I'm not a writer, blah, blah, blah. I said, well, we don't have any. Look around the room. There's nobody else here. And if I start writing this, we will never get off that train because we'll just always assume that Sean has to write it. So I said, all right, you write this tonight, I'm going to be your editor. And editor would mean at the beginning I'd rewrite the whole thing, but I would do that two or three times. And I was like, dude, you see, I'm. And I would not just edit it. I would write the comment. Why? I changed this line. So it was like a. Took me like three times longer than normal, but I was like, this is training. So I trained him. He wrote it for about a month or two, and then about two months in I was like, cool, it's your turn to be the editor. You need to find a writer. And we found a writer and then we, you know, we were on our way. So I also would have been scared of Daily, but again, it's sort of like the four minute mile thing. Once you see somebody run it, you're like, oh, that's possible. I had seen Sam already do this. I'd seen Sam train a team of writers to do this. So I knew if Sam could do it, I could do it. It's not going to be that hard. It wasn't scary to me. I do say, I will say, you know, daily's not ideal. Like, it's much nicer to do the podcast, you know, twice a week. It's very, that's much easier. But that was what was needed for that business. And so we did it.
A
Yeah, I think it was. I always forget how to pronounce their names, even though I'd interviewed them years ago. The Caris Kresten brothers, you know, those two brothers who used to do a lot of crypto stuff. Anyway, they went on a YouTube live daily thing and that helped them build their, their audience. But it wasn't this kind of intensity.
B
Yeah, there was, there was a huge appetite for crypto. So there was, you know, there was daily news and there was a huge appetite for people who wanted to learn, keep up and found it difficult to learn and keep up. So it was, you know, that was the, the need in the market.
A
All right, I should say this interview is sponsored by Beehive. You built your, your newsletter on Beehive. Do you know why you made that decision or was it someone else?
B
We looked at it, we looked at a couple different options, right? We, we looked at four options. We tried, you know, test them all. Beehive was by far easiest to use, had all the features that we needed. Right? So it's like, you know, what do you need in a newsletter? You need to be able to spin it up quickly because speed to making it a thing matters. But it wasn't just easy to use then, it had the depth. So it was like, oh, this can do all the automations we need. It has the referral program built in, it has the feedback and polling system built in. It had all the things built in because Tyler, the guy who created it, was at Morning Brew and knew that they basically built these all home homebrew solutions themselves. So he basically just productized a bunch of the best things that worked for Morning Brew and just made it available to the rest of us who didn't have to make that same investment. So yeah, it was a no brainer. Beehive was awesome. We, we, we used it.
A
And do you end up investing in them too?
B
We ended up investing so we were already. So we turned them down first because I was like, ah, how big can a newsletter business be? From like the software said, you know, venture investing requires like a billion dollar exit. Like, do I believe this is going to be a billion dollar company or could it just be a great bootstrap company? I wasn't convinced. Started using it, saw how fast they iterated, like everything we needed, they would just ship super quick. And I told Ben, I was like, look, I still don't know how big this market is, but I do know that founders and teams that ship that quick and like just solve user problems that quick, they win. So I said let's, let's write a check. So yeah, we ended up investing in them somewhere along the way.
A
All right, I'm going to say for anyone who wants to try them free and by the way, one of the features that I love about them is the feature that I'm going to ask you about where you can incentivize people to share the newsletter and get their friends to sign up. And so I'll talk about that in a minute. But for anyone who wants to try them out, the URL is to get to try them free and get My discount is mixergy.com beehive. No one's going to remember that. And so I'm going to put it in the chat if you're watching live and you can email me and I will give you a link to that so you can use my link to get it to try it for free for a while and then get a discount afterwards. My email address is alikeandrewbootstrappedgiants.com aotstrapgiants.com As a podcaster, how do you feel about the way that I've always done interviews and then interrupted and brought my guest into the sponsorship? Now that you're sitting here, does it feel awkward or good?
B
That's slick. I like it. I mean, perfect for this case because I'm a fan, I'm an investor, I'm a user and I'm probably their best success story as well. Because you know, a lot of people use Beehive because they saw Milk Road and they were like, well, they spun up a newsletter with a, you know, two, three person team, sold it for millions of dollars a year later. Well, that would be great. I'D like that too. Right? So it ends up benefiting them. How do you do that? If, you know, if you're chilling some product that I don't know anything about.
A
I usually ask the guest about it beforehand, and they might say something like, I don't know about them. And I'll say, do you mind if I tell you about them and how you might use them? And go, sure. Or sometimes they'll say, I don't like that company. I go, do you want to be open about it? I mean, don't be mean, but can you be open about why you're not using them? And people have done that. And that also creates a very honest conversation where I could say, look, clearly Gusto doesn't work for your company because you've gone public and it's too big. Here's where they are. Good. And for everyone else, make your own mind.
B
That's pretty dope. I mean, you're. You're a pro. How many podcasts have you done? You must have had thousand plus reps, easily, right?
A
It's a thousand plus reps. I wrote them. The book on interviewing called Stop Asking Questions. You have this book yet? Can I send it over to you?
B
I do not have the book yet. I send it over. I would love to learn.
A
I don't even know. I. I want to send it to you, but I feel like for you and your podcast, the interviews are where you started. Where you're really good is you being the center of attention. You're a good. I'm not great at being the center of attention on a podcast. I don't enjoy it. You almost like, as I'm going a little bit longer right now, you're feeling a little anxious.
B
Let.
A
Let me talk. And the audience is feeling the same way. It's not me, but I'm good at interviewing and pulling stuff out of people. You're a fricking great storyteller. You can take something that you heard a year ago and tell it like you just heard it a second ago and wrote it down.
B
Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. I still love to read the book. I'm always trying to get better.
A
All right, I'm gonna hit you up for your address, and I'll send you. I'll send you a signed copy. You can send that and, you know, show it to your kids. How many kids you have now?
B
I got three.
A
Congratulations. Me too. I just had another baby.
B
Congrats. Congrats. Fatherhood club.
A
All right.
B
Yeah.
A
Let's talk about. Let's talk about what you did to grow. So clearly we talked about the podcast. That helped. What else did you do?
B
I mean, we tried a bunch of things. This is one of the interesting things when you ask somebody what they did to grow, I feel like you remember two things. You remember probably 70, 60, 70% of the stuff that worked, and you forgot 30, 40% of the stuff that worked that wasn't as glamorous. And then you remember the stuff that was fun to try that probably didn't have too big of an impact. And then you just forget the. All the failed experiments. And the problem is then people go try to grow their thing and all they see are failed experiments. And they're like, that guy didn't mention all of the dead ends. And so I apologize, I'm not going to remember all the dead ends either. It's just the sort of the nature of like the human brain makes you forget so that you. You forget how hard it is so you can try it again the next time. Sort of like childbirth, right? You. If you remembered all of the pain, you would probably not do it again.
A
You know what? I. I gotta. I gotta tell you one of my dead ends. So I had a newsletter company that I sold years ago. We hit 20 million unique email. And when I got started, I was so sure that the thing was gonna. That was gonna get me to grow was I would give away 10 cents every time someone subscribed to a charity. And it worked. It was hard to get a charity to even partner with me and lend me their name. So I did it, and then I started advertising it and no one gave a damn. It was so painful. I thought, look, you don't even have to pay anything, and we'll give. So. They sound so smart, these ideas at the time, and so stupid in retrospect. Do you have one of those?
B
Well, let me tell you kind of what we tried in order that I remember. So I remember when we first started, it was obvious, you know, when you have 0 subscribers, you don't need a growth plan. You need, you know, 10 friends. It's like, all right, this is a good forcing function. Who are the 10 people that we think are most likely to love this? It's a powerful question. Who's most likely to love this? Not who do we know? Not who might like this? Who do we think most likely to love it? And then we. That forces you to get clear about, like, okay, who's the person that we think this fits? And then where do we find more of those people will be in the next Question. Right, but if you can't get to 10, you're not going to get to a hundred. If you can't get to a hundred, you're not going to get to a thousand. Sort of. That type of logic. So very first thing we did was we wrote it in a Google Doc before even beehive. And then he sent it to me, audience of one. So I was like, all right, I want you to send me this for the next three days, and let's see if you like writing it and I like reading it. And if we don't get that right, it's not going to work. Next thing we did was, all right, who are the, you know, 10, 20 friends that we could email this to? No, no newsletter platform, no design, no, nothing like that. Let's just email this out. And so we tried to do that. We. We emailed it out. After that, we went to kind of like the Twitter thing where I tweeted out and I said, by the way, can you hear me?
A
All right, you were saying, was that me? So you're saying Sam's. You saw me with Sam and the connection sucked back then. Thought I fixed it. All right, let's come back into it. So you did the newsletter sent to yourself using a Google Doc. Three days to see it. Okay.
B
Couple days like that, we were like, could pass that first check mark. Sent it to a couple friends. Okay. So then we said, time for the next step. What's the next step? Tweeted it out and said, kind of like trying a new experiment. First hundred people who see this, get it right, try to use scarcity, try to use mystery to try to get the next kind of people in, people who just like being early adopters of things. All right, so tried that. That got us to a couple hundred. And then somewhere along the way, we said, well, we know our initial audience, if we use the podcast, whatever will get us a few thousand, but they may not love crypto. And so we needed to get people who were really into crypto. So I had an interesting idea, which was, what if I put up a million dollars and I put it in a crypto wallet and I said I was going to trade it, and I was like, you can watch publicly what I do, and I'm going to try to run it up to 10 million or I'm going to lose it all. You're going to watch, you know, you're going to get to watch the spectacle or a stunt. And I thought this was genius. I thought this would be great in reality, a lot of people think this drove a lot of growth. In reality, this did not drive that much growth. It was interesting. It didn't go like super viral or anything like that. I also didn't really do it, meaning all I did was I bought ETH on day one and then I basically didn't do anything else and I bought one NFT later, like that was it. And so I did. It was so busy running the company, I didn't have time to actually do the day trading thing. And I was not going to. And I didn't. I didn't see that. It was like, you know, drawing in a bunch of other, other eyeballs. So we just held ETH and ETH went down and then our portfolio went down. So that was kind of it. And then now ETH is back up and great portfolio is back up to. To even or something like that. So that was another thing we tried. Really all it was was writing, writing the newsletter in a way that was humorous. So the big differentiator, and I think it's a good lesson to learn. This actually worked for the podcast too, which was we think we need these growth tactics, but actually just like a more remarkable product is better, meaning a product where a product that stands out because it's different and is good and is worth telling other people about was the thing that actually worked for us. And in our space, in the crypto space, there was a lot of like 9,000 IQ people who could tell you the deepest ins and outs about the L2 chain and about like this, you know, advanced block transfer, like all kinds of crazy jargon and you just never know what they're doing. You just feel dumb. And we said we want to leave people every day feeling a bit smarter. They don't have to feel like 9,000 times smarter, just a bit smarter, a bit more informed about what's going on in a way that relaxes them because they feel like, ah, this person's got my back. If I'm ever confused about what's going on or I want to be in the loop or want to actually understand something, I trust that these guys will make me feel smarter, not dumber. And that along the way, at the very least, I'm going to have a chuckle. So that even as my interest in crypto goes up and down, this will be light and leave me feeling, you know, leave me happy. It's an email I look forward to opening. So as actually the product delivering on, coming up with that as the promise and then actually delivering on that promise was the thing that worked and that's why we had, I think 40 or 50% organic subscribers coming in through referrals and word of mouth and people sharing. Because we did something actually different in the product. Meaning we said, well, we're not going to be the most in depth and we're not going to talk about all the smartest things and we're not going to have the best thesis in the world about every best point of view about everything. We're just going to make you a bit smarter and we're going to make you laugh. That's the objective every single day.
A
I did find that it was interesting even if I didn't care about Crypto. Like, I loved how you had what's your name? Ethereum founder on the bottom of every newsletter in some goofy old photo of him.
B
Yeah, exactly. That's an example of something I think nobody would do where basically at the bottom the PS of every email, we just put a random picture of Vitalik. And Vitalik is the creator of Ethereum and he's just this uber nerd goofy looking guy who I love. I really admire this guy. I think not only is he brilliant, but like, I just like his spirit. I just love that this guy is just like a total. He's totally comfortable in his own skin and he's super weird and I just love it. I admire that. I wish I was as comfortable in my skin as he is in his. And I always just thought one of the amusing things about Crypto is the characters that are involved in the stories. You got Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious founder that nobody ever knows and who is it. That's cool. I think there's like a movie element to that. I think Vitalik is a character that's interesting. I think SBF turned out to be a fraud, but he was a character. He's just a villain character in this whole play and leaning into the characters and how funny they are and making it more like the stuff I would send in my group chat with my friends. But now I just have a group chat of 250,000 people. And that's how we wanted the thing to feel. And in fact, every day when we would. Before we would do like, before we would sit down and write, I forced the team. I said, send me a voice memo as if you were just texting me, you know, telling me what's the most interesting thing of the day and forcing them to say it out loud would get them to stop sharing stories. Like, you know, Gary Gensler and the SEC have decided that they've made this ruling, say, dude, if you wouldn't send that to me, why are we going to send it to 250,000 people we don't even know? Like, just send me the stuff you think is funny or interesting, and that's the content we should cover. And that's why it leaned a little more towards barstool in a little way, away from, you know, the New York Times or whatever.
A
What else did you do to keep it funny and light? You're really good at that. But to do it on command is hard.
B
Well, I think formats are underrated in content, so layout of the actual. Yeah, not formatting, that was part of it. Like, I was. I'm a big stickler for readability, so I don't care about grammar, but I really care that the fonts are big enough that anybody can read it easily and that the colors are clear and that like, all that stuff. Um, but we would experiment with formats, meaning the opening line was always different, but the same structure. We would always start with, you know, hey, this is the milk road. We are your, you know, we're your friend, which keeps you in the loop on everything. Crypto. Think of us like that Chia Pet. You pour a little bit of water on us every day and we grow a little bit of hair, Right? Or is this like some nostalgic, random reference that was lighthearted to be like, you know, we are the. Reading this email is the second best feeling in the world. The first, of course, is when you roll down the window and you do that dolphin thing with your hand out the window, right? Like, just like random shit like that that would try to get a chuckle in the first line while also reminding people what this is all about. What are we here to do? Right? We're here to keep you in the loop. What's going on? We're your smart friend who doesn't bore you with all the jargon. And so we would try to make that the first line. So coming up with a format that worked. The end of the email had the Vitalik picture. We had the Fear versus Greed index, which would show you the sentiment of the market, but we would brand it in a more interesting way. And so coming up with a format made it both easier to write because we had a structure, but also, you know, consumers actually want that. I think there's a mistake that consumers want variety all the time. If you look at Friends or the Office or the shows that we all love, the shows that people are addicted to, that you'll watch in season 12 and 13, you'll stick with. You stick with it because the characters don't change and the set, the scenes don't change, the settings don't change. It's what doesn't change that builds that familiarity and that habit. And I knew we wanted this to be a daily habit. And one of the keys was to come up with the right format and then stick to it and don't get addicted to variety and change.
A
What's your creative, like, writing room experience? So texting using voice, let me hear you tell the story is a good one. What else is there that brings us out?
B
I think being a great thief. So, you know, you see something smart or clever that somebody else does and then you try to put your remix on it. So, for example, I thought the fear versus Read index was cool. We didn't invent that. That was a thing that was on this random website that looks like Craigslist or something like that. And I thought, oh, this is actually a really interesting indicator of where the market sentiment is and how this works. What if that was cool? What if we simplified it? What if we put our twist on it and what if we include it in the newsletter? Because I don't think most people know about this and it's not. Who's going to remember to go to this site every day? Nobody's going to remember that. So let's put it in the newsletter. So I think stealing things that you find interesting and using, you know, then the product will be as good as your taste over time. And after that, the trick is have good taste. Very hard to do, but, you know, that's something that you can't. Can't be copied either. There were so many people who tried to knock us off. And the problem was the best taste they had was that Sean's good. And what I said was, Sean sucks. There's people that are way better than me out there and I had the taste of admiring them and learning from them. And so our product got better than other people's product got because a product over time would become as good as our taste. And having great taste is a creative. It's a. It's a competitive advantage and is something that cannot be copied.
A
Can data help you do that? I know you always ask in the bottom of the email, what do you think of this? Is that kind of feedback helpful?
B
Not really. The data was extremely consistent. It was like, great. Every day it's. 77% of people said it was five stars and the ratios were almost identical. Occasionally you would have a real stinker or a real gem. And that was always cool to see. But we kind of knew beforehand, like if we put out a banger post, I knew it was going to have a banger reaction. And sure enough, it did. So it was like I wasn't really surprised either way. The thing that was great about the feedback was that I gave people a way to feel like I made it a two way connection. So you got to see people's. People felt like they had a voice in it. And we would then include the funniest reviews in the email. So it built a culture of who are the other readers? Right. Email is normally a solo experience. You don't really know who else is here. You don't know the vibe of this party. By including the funniest emails that would either make fun of us or give us a backhanded compliment. Things like that, we set the vibe of not only are we talking this way, but so are our readers. And if you're a part of them, that means you're cool. Because I can make it seem like all of our readers are cool. And again, I stole that from Bill Simmons, my favorite writer, because he did that. And so my taste was shaped by, oh, how does Simmons do this? He does these mailbags and his mailbag, which is like, ask me anything. But his questions are never dry. The questions themselves, really entertaining content. And it showed that the readers were as, you know, fun and interesting to hang out with as he is. And it set the vibe that if I'm a reader, I'm cool too. And so I stole that from him.
A
How high did ad revenue get?
B
What do you mean? Just like total monthly revenue?
A
Just like, how significant was it?
B
We had crossed a million dollars a year before we sold. I don't remember what the exact run rate was. Now it's been a couple of years, but some will retain a million and 2 million bucks. I think.
A
When we sold, I heard that the exit was kind of tough, that you did it just as crypto was getting questioned and it was going down. That's why that portfolio you put at the top of the newsletter was. Was lower than the million that you apparently put in. Kind of. What was it like to sell it? How'd you find the buyer? What was the experience?
B
What do you mean by exit's tough? So I think all exits are a roller coaster and an adventure. I've never sold a business. I've now sold maybe three or I think three. Three done. One more in progress. There's every M and A event I've ever had is like the most exciting time. And then it also has these ups and downs. Right. There's the excitement. It's like you're speed dating, but instead of hooking up, you might get paid in a big way and it's this great thing. But then deals often will fall through or get renegotiated or whatever. They go slower than you want. That's like. But that's completely par for the course. I've never seen an M and A deal that doesn't have any back and forth negotiation. I mean, that'd be crazy to have an M and A without negotiation or without diligence or without something taking longer than you want or, you know, that sort of thing. So I would say that's pretty normal. The exit for this was not tough. It was amazing. It's probably the best exit experience we've.
A
Had because it was so quick.
B
And. What? Yeah, it was just. I think we had an asset that people wanted that makes things easier. We had leverage, which meant we were happy to keep growing it because the business was working and the business trajectory was in the right direction. So that was good. You're right that the crypto macro had changed. Basically, crypto prices were going down. So when a bull run ends, that's definitely not ideal. So that was probably the only downside of the M and A process was that it was kind of clear that the bull run was ending. We didn't know how long a bear market was going to be around. So, you know, that was probably the only. But. But that wasn't difficult. It just meant we weren't going to get a ludicrous. We were going to get a ludicrous money that we could have got had we timed it differently. But you can't control timing. So there's never something that we really. What'd you sell it for plan for anyways? What did you sell it for? We've never. Never disclosed.
A
Is it more than Sam got for the Hustle?
B
I don't know how much Sam got for the Hustle. Actually.
A
I thought he started his talk about it publicly. More than 20 million. Can we say that?
B
Never discuss.
A
Not even a little bit?
B
Can't say. Can't say.
A
Not even a little bit. Nothing.
B
Yeah, we agreed when we sold we weren't going to talk about that term, so why not?
A
Nick, you could have.
B
You have to honor that. Right. Like, because I have business partners. I have people on the buyer side.
A
Okay.
B
It's not really cool if you agree that you're not going to share details and then suddenly one guy goes on a podcast, starts sharing all the details.
A
All right. I thought maybe it would have been long enough ago that it would have been okay. Did you do anything differently? Did you buy anything fun for yourself?
B
I caught my mom and all of her sisters. Like, like, I kind of like they were on a trip and I got them a surprise or they all went down. They got like a spa day, massages for all of them. I remember that happened like a couple days after. I always buy socks when I sell. That's just my tradition because I love, I hate the feeling of having either bad socks or just a bunch of mismatches. Like this annoying part of my day trying to like find a good pair of socks. And so every time I exit, I will always get rid of all of my socks and I'll buy whatever, the best, highest quality socks I can find. I'll buy like a hundred pairs of it. And it's my way of like splurging in. I don't know, it's just like my own little tradition for myself because I find it pretty cliche and lame to be like, oh, I got, I went and bought a Lamborghini. Like, that's not me. I also, what's the point if you're not going to celebrate at all? And so, you know, you kind of toast to success with the people who got you there. But then I just thought it would, it was funny to just buy socks and buy, like go just ball out on socks rather than balling out in some other way. And I also have this theory that I think most people spend money the wrong way. So I think people spend money on these expensive, either depreciating or one time assets. And I think that the underrated thing is things that add a little bit of pleasure every single day or multiple times a day. So for example, like, I hate when I lose the remote and I'm trying to find, I'm digging through couch cushions. So I'll buy like 15 remotes or I'll have a charger and a computer charger in every single socket in my house. It seems a little extreme. Like, do you really need to charge it every socket? I'm like, yes, because I hate that little paper cut every day when that happens. And so I found that like you can either get a lot of pleasure once or you can get a little pleasure every single day for the next five years. And I find that those things are super cheap and easy to do and I kind of appreciate it every single time. And it's A reminder of, like, oh, yeah, we had that win. This is great. But spending money isn't really super, super fun. Aside from, you know, I guess, like, the first time, the. Probably the biggest thing I did was the first company we sold. I got a private chef. And that was probably the biggest value add, because you get, you know, three, four hours of your day back. You get healthy food that is really tasty, better than you could cook. Like, so you get a time win, a health win, and a taste win. That was definitely the best way to spend money. And I think any. Anybody who buys, like, a hundred thousand dollars car before you have a chef, I think is a wild decision.
A
What does it cost to get a chef full time? Or how many hours did you get?
B
Not that much. I mean, I pay now, and I pay a lot because we have, like, a. A great chef, and I live in the Bay Area. There's a bunch of reasons why it's higher costs, but I pay about 5 grand a month, so 60k a year. You know, like, you. Again, like, you buy cars for more than 60k a year, and a car gives you nothing compared to the value of having a chef for your family every single day. Three meals a day. It's amazing. I have friends who, once I did this, you know, they live in, you know, Georgia or other places. You know, they're able to do it for two grand a month. And so two grand a month is. Is extremely affordable for such a big life win, especially if you care about, you know, your time and your health. Yeah.
A
And it's much harder to eat healthy when you don't have time. It really sucks a lot.
B
And for my kids. Right. Like, anybody who's got kids, like, you know, I'm trying to get my kids to try new foods. My kids are picky eaters, and it's such a demoralizing thing for me to, like, try to go. Go to the grocery store, get the broccoli, try to cook it in a way that they're gonna like it, and then it gets thrown away. And that happens three straight times. And then you throw in the towel. You're like, all right, Mac and cheese for life. And so one of the good things here is that he's always trying new foods because the chef is doing it. And I'm. I'm happy to. To try to feed it. I don't have to bear the cost of the effort there. It's a little parenting thing, but the food is, you know, the chef thing is obviously fun for me, but, like, the fact that it's for my whole family. My wife is vegan. My kids are picky. It gives all of us something that we want. Is such an amazing, amazing way to spend money. Highly recommend. And the reason I bring it up is not to, like, you know, obviously. Like, I remember once I brought. I. I tweeted about it and somebody was like, dude, what a douche move. And I was like, okay, fair. Maybe it is. But at the same time, in the same way that you have to learn to make money, actually learning how to spend money is a skill. And. And for a lot of people who start to win, we lack the imagination and the creativity of. How do I use money as a tool to improve the quality of life? My life and the people around me versus most people do, sadly, is money just becomes a measuring stick. It's like, the more I have, the more I'm worth, and that's it. And like, no, no, no. You forgot the purpose of this thing. This thing is a tool to improve the quality of your life.
A
Give me two things before we close. One other thing that you do that's like a way of passing on what you've gotten from entrepreneurship to your kids. Do you do anything like that? I don't really. Except for getting them.
B
My kids are so little. My daughter's five. Right? So, like, what am I going to do? Right? Like, we. We play tag and hyper. No seek. And things like that. Like, I'm not trying to make her an entrepreneur right now. I do think that, you know, the best thing to do with kids is to be a kid. So, like, instead of trying to make them like me and like, oh, you know, grow up faster and learn these skills, it's like, how do I play with you? Which is what all they want. Quality time. Have fun, feel that connection. But also keeps me young and youthful and playful and curious. All the traits that I value in adults, kids just have out of the box. They're not stressed, they're not anxious. You don't find kids who are like, oh, I need a therapist. Like, you know, my mental health is not in the right spot. Like, that's adult shit. You know, kids don't have that. Kids and dogs, man, they kind of have what's going on. And so I actually spend more time trying to learn from them versus trying to teach them how to be more like me is really the way to go. And I think in exchange, they get the thing that they want and they need at this time, which is just presence, just some joy and. And play. And play is Also, the way you learn. So, for example, like, you know, you don't learn business by going to business school. Right. I know I've learned more about business from playing poker or trying to, you know, do a summer project where we found all these cans and we tried to flip them, like, things like that. And so just doing games and projects is, I think, going to be a much better way to teach them. But they're a little young for. For that.
A
All right.
B
And My oldest is 5.
A
Yeah, my oldest is 10 now. But I did take them out to do lemonade over at the farmer's market in Noe Valley. It's a great place. A lot of people who want to support kids doing it, they didn't fully understand, but they started to get it.
B
Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. I'm excited for that phase. I'm not. I'm not there.
A
Fun. All right. The other thing I've been just curious about now, based on what you're saying about my first million, is ownership of my first million. Who owns it? Is it you and Sam? 50. 50. Is it you? Sam?
B
And HubSpot owns the IP.
A
They do.
B
So when. When the Hustle sold, they wanted the podcast as well. And so we cut a deal where HubSpot owns the IP. They wanted to start a podcast network as part of the acquisition. They wanted to make sure it worked. And so we just got a deal that worked for everybody. It's like, okay, how do we make sure that we retain the things that matter, like creative control, and we get paid as it grows and, like, as if we owned it. Like, what do you want? You want upside and you want creative control? So we maintain that, and they get to own the ip. They get to feel like they. They have that asset. And that asset came with the. The rest of the assets of the Hustle. And so that's how it all worked out.
A
All right. It's a great fricking podcast. You guys really made my first million into a must listen in this world, and it gets me fired up without any politics talk. Like, I don't know if you ever do it, and maybe I missed it, but I just like getting fired up about ideas and stuff like that.
B
Cool. Thank you, man. I appreciate that.
A
All right. Thanks so much, Sean. Thanks for doing this. And I think I'm gonna. Don't you think the. The Beehive spelling needs to be changed? Because I would like to tell people, you'll get my discount. Just go to mixergy.comehive but they're going to spell Beehive any other way.
B
Yeah. Who owns Beehive? Spelled the other way the weird way or. Sorry, the normal way, not the weird way. Bernstein Society General Group.
A
Okay. Yeah. They're never selling.
B
Sort of. Their vision is. Is their vision is to service their institutional investor clients with best in class research and execution. Fantastic. Everyone's going to there for a.
A
Maybe they could. Maybe they. They can actually buy from them. Because you know what? Bernstein has no connection to Beehive as a name. They're redirecting from beehivetheword.com to beehive, like to Bernstein Society General.
B
Yeah, it's going to BernsteinResearch.com anyways.
A
Yeah, yeah, I think. I think there is an opportunity to switch. Tyler doesn't believe in that. He thinks, look, it doesn't really matter that much, but maybe that's his negotiating ploy through the conversation with me.
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's supposed to say that while desperately.
A
Trying to convince it is a damn good product. And I will get everyone access to it for free if you email me@bootstrapgiants.com Sean, congratulations on the success here and on investing in beyond.
B
Thank you, man. Thank you.
A
Bye.
Host: Andrew Warner
Guest: Shaan Puri
Date: November 15, 2024
This episode features Andrew Warner in conversation with Shaan Puri, best known as co-host of “My First Million” and founder of The Milk Road newsletter. The discussion dives deeply into Shaan’s entrepreneurial history, how he built and sold several digital businesses (notably Milk Road and Bebo), his unique philosophies on motivation, business growth, product design, and the art of spending “startup money.” The two also touch on practical advice for newsletter entrepreneurs, the challenges and rewards of exits, and lessons from both failure and success. The tone is candid, witty, and densely packed with takeaways for aspiring founders.
[00:45–07:20]
“We bought it back for $1 million in a crazy high stakes game of poker…” (Shaan Puri, 04:38)
[08:12–13:07]
“If not, what was the point of making life changing money if it doesn’t change your perspective of life?” (Shaan, 10:59)
[13:07–14:58]
“The entrepreneur doesn’t turn off… if I went to Sam, he’s got a big audience, he’s got no podcast.” (Shaan, 13:28)
[14:58–18:24]
“Hosting the party is certainly more work... but it’s 100x the return.” (Shaan, 15:43)
[20:23–40:26]
“A product over time will become as good as our taste. And having great taste is a creative... competitive advantage and is something that cannot be copied.” (Shaan, 38:20)
[27:13–33:30]
[33:43–39:03]
[40:26–47:10]
“All exits are a roller coaster... The exit for this was not tough. It was amazing. It’s probably the best exit experience we’ve had…” (Shaan, 41:07)
“Anybody who buys, like, a hundred thousand dollar car before you have a chef, I think is a wild decision.” (Shaan, 46:01)
[48:19–50:03]
[50:20–51:07]
“We maintain [creative control and upside], and they get to own the IP.” (Shaan, 50:45)
Shaan Puri’s startup story is packed with practical wisdom: from bootstrapping daily newsletters and engineering a remarkable product, to “winning” in ways that change your life more than your status. His transparent approach to both success and failure models a kind of entrepreneurship driven by intrinsic curiosity, taste, and reinvesting in life’s true pleasures—while building teams and products others want to talk about. Andrew’s probing questions and Shaan’s candid answers make this a vital episode for any founder wondering “what comes after the win.”
(Summary by Startup Stories - Mixergy Podcast Summarizer, all rights to content remain with Mixergy and original creators.)