The My First Million podcast features something that most podcasts don’t have, laughter. Shaan Puri and Sam Parr have more in common than their initials. They are both Silicon Valley veterans who have made their money in the newsletter business. But the most enamoring moments of the show are the laughing fits the two friends enjoy.
Shaan has, according to his LinkedIn bio, started 6 companies. Three failed, two sold, and one is still going. But I believe he recently sold The Milk Road, a newsletter with the tag line of “Get smarter about crypto”. So that means he’s batting .500, with half of his companies being sold.
Sam also has a rich entrepreneurial history, starting with a hot dog stand in his hometown of Missouri. His biggest venture was his media company, The Hustle, which consisted of a newsletter, conferences, and other media properties, including the MFM podcast. The Hustle grew to 3 million daily readers before selling to HubSpot, the CRM giant. Sam lists about 5 other entrepreneurial ventures on his LinkedIn bio. Sam is now working on a new venture, Hampton, that has a ‘private network for high-growth founders.’
Speaking of cool bios, read our post on creating a great Origin Story for yourself.
The boys also share their affinity for spit-balling cool business ideas. And you can tell from their resumes that they aren’t lacking follow-through. One of the best schticks of the show is when the two S.P.’s read multiple plausible business ideas from their google docs. They seem to have accumulated a group of like-minded, twitter-famous friends. At times I feel incredibly inadequate, compared to all of the accomplishments of the hosts and their guests, but the show is just so damn fun and educational that I hesitate to shut my car when pulling into the office parking lot.
Out of the 400+ episodes, it’s difficult to choose a favorite. I’ve listened to many of them multiple times. (By the way, I use the Overcast podcast app, which has so many great free features. It was created by Marco Arment, the founder of InstaPaper.) But if I had to choose a favorite it would be episode 407 with Anand Sanwal, the CEO of an analytics company called CB Insights.