Started/sold some startups. Founder + president of Hampton @hamptonfounders. Host My First Million podcast on the side.
NYC
Joined July 2012
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I've owned motorcycles since 2001.
My favs:
- 1996 honda xl650. Road it cross country. Cost $1200.
- 2008 Bonneville. Simple. Always worked. Enough power.
- GoPed Bigfoot. Got it when I was 12.
- Honda Passport 70c. More fun riding a slow bike fast than a fast bike slow.
Least fav:
- Triumph Scrambler. Pipe burnt me so much.
- 1995 BMW r100. Crackheads steal the spark plugs.
- 1980's Honda 3 wheeler. Death trap. So fun.
Sending out a weekly newsletter. samparr.com
This week's:
- 800+ conversations with successful founders taught me one thing: for any piece of advice, you can do the opposite and still win
- @dhh never raised VC. @bhalligan says raise a lot
- MrBeast works until he crashes. Rob Dyrdek works 40 hours a week
- A 6 year old bootstrapped knife company doing over $100 million a year
- Average net worth by age (35 to 44 is $670,000)
- I skated home with balloons for my kids' birthday
- Why admiration is what to look for in a spouse and a co-founder
Anthropic made $16 billion in the first half of this year, so a ~30b run rate (but will be bigger as its growing like hell).
They are only 5 years old!!!
With these ai companies growing this fast, I'm starting to take huge numbers for granted.
Building a company worth $1b in a decade is nuts. A $30b company in less than a decade, incomprehensible. A $30 billion run rate in 5 years...like its hard to get the physics behind this.
The 7 cofounders are now worth ~$15b each. That's like $8m a day for each founder that they made for themselves since starting.
There are so many crazy takeaways from this. But the obvious one is how much change can happen in such a short time.
I hate flying. The claustrophobia issues I have...its controlled a bunch of stuff in my life.
I read this book last month on panic attacks.
Its the only book I've read that has made a difference.
It hasn't cure my claustrophobia, but last month I had the best flight I've had in 15 years. Sharing so other f*cked up people can get fixed.
Been fun watching @isaacfrench_ grow on social.
He started insta recently-ish and not has 300k followers and great content.
I love Isaac because everything he does: its thoughtfully done and has this perfect balance of force, meticulousness, art, and capitalistic.
He becomes a student of shit and executes wonderfully.
Sam Parr retweeted
Holy moly... this new paper finds that 88% of VC-backed founders receive zero exit value 🤪🤪🤪
Yesterday at Hampton's office we did a blind fold taste test:
3 different ice cream brands. All vanilla bean. Employees blindfold tasted all 3 and ranked their favorite.
The results:
1. Haagen Dazs was everyone's favorite. It was the middle priced one.
2. Van Leeuwen was the most expensive. It was the 2nd favorite for most people, 3rd fav for others. Didn't get 1st place for anyone.
3. Generic target brand. Cheapest by far. Beat out Van Leeuwen for many people as the 2nd favorite.
Next week we'll do Coke, Diet Coke, Coke Zero. After that, maybe we'll do a little work. Who knows.
I like bands with 2 siblings as the front men. They often have awesome harmonies.
Also, The Proclaimers were very, very cool.
youtube.com/watch?v=ZF6vJobB…
I'm a lifelong wordpress user.
It feels the wordpress plugin and theme spaced is totally f-ed. I'm still using wp but claude's doing everything for me.
these theme businesses were huge. But seem unnecessary now and will be demolished. same with many plugins.
are yall still using wp or just making your own site?
I like using wp for security stuff but also its just what i know.
A trait of people I call natural moneymakers: these people are maximizers. Diminishing returns are still returns.
Jay Gould, who lived in the 1800s...John D. Rockefeller called him the greatest business mind of all time.
Gould's wife had died, he had tuberculosis, and doctors gave him about a year to live. At dinner someone whispered that a railroad was about to go bankrupt and he could have it. His family begged him not to, the family had plenty.
A week later he told them: I have to go back to my first love, making money. He made the deal and died about six months later.
Shaan told a good story about one of our guests who every time his wife got pregnant, he'd buy a gas station, and that gas station covered the cost of the kid.
The idea: only spend the second derivative. If you make $100k, you don't spend the $100k. You invest it and only spend what it throws off, maybe $10k, and you never raise your lifestyle past that.
Sam Parr retweeted
🚨 BREAKING : Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan caught using COMPANY MONEY for Private Jets flights.
Peter Thiel caught him red-handed using his investment money as a personal wallet.
Founders Fund, Peter Thiel's fund, discovered that Shayne had charged the following as company expenses :
- private jet flights
- apartment rent
- designer clothes
They immediately demanded a FULL REFUND
Shayne was forced to reimburse the money.
ICE and Founders Fund then teamed up to push for stronger financial controls
They were the one that forced Shayne to appoint a COO.
You remember Shayne's ChatGPT written tweet gleefully announcing the hiring of Collin McKinney Hill as COO ?
I called it extremely suspicious at the time. Turns out i was right, investors basically forced Shayne to hire him as a soft coup.
I don't know how long Shayne can stay in place when their main investors have lost confidence.
Last week I talked to four creators doing over $1m a year in ad revenue, almost entirely from AI companies.
All had fewer than 100k followers. Most of the ads are on Instagram.
On My First Million, I shared what else I found: three others doing over $10m a year, with just a part-time assistant or a few freelancers.
With AI getting all this funding, they have to spend the money somewhere for marketing. I don't know if this is going to last, but there's definitely a little trader gold rush going on right now.
I think it's going to last at least for a handful more years.
I've had a ton reach out to do ads with me on Twitter. Basically, I talk about something and get paid to do it and label it as an ad. I probably not going to do it on Twitter, but I would consider it for LinkedIn or Instagram if I love the product.
He's clearly read the book The Inner Game of Tennis.
High performers have brain 1 and brain 2. But they need to listen to brain 2: the subconscious part.
Disclosure: I may have mixed up the brain numbers.
Hampton started a physical newspaper.
We did it for our retreats...members got these amazing newspapers that our team made.
The strategy stolen from the Made to Stick book where they tell a story about this local newspaper that is thriving and when asked why, the publisher just said, "Well I name as many names as possible."
So, we named everyone on the retreat. What they're up to, why they're interesting, and news about them.
I'm now trying to make this post so I could pressure them into making the newspaper a monthly thing for our members.
