MMy First Million
← All episodes
Favorite Finds22 September 2023

Favorite Finds: From McDonald's to Twitter Famous, Pelosi's Finances & How To Close A Deal

3Frameworks
12Insights

Frameworks in this episode

Communication6 steps

Copywork

Learn to write persuasively by hand-copying great writing and annotating what makes it work.

Read →
Leadership6 steps

Standards Over Speeches

Build a winning team by enforcing tiny daily input standards rather than delivering motivational speeches.

Read →
Sales6 steps

The Last Deal Point Close

Win the final 1-3% of enterprise value that everyone else surrenders because they are exhausted.

Read →

Insights & moments

The myth-busts, hot takes, explainers, and tools worth keeping.

Explainer· 1

Explainer05:00

Why regulatory grift is structurally unfixable

Sam asks whether Gurley offered any hope that the situation improves. Gurley's first answer is exposure — bacteria grows in the dark, so shining light on it is step one. His second answer is the trap: the only people who can pass a law stopping legislators from trading the stocks of companies they regulate are the legislators profiting from it. Their entire incentive is to preserve the system exactly as it is, so change would require overwhelming external pressure. Sam notes they have raised the same point on the podcast before.

  • Step one is exposure, because the corruption depends on obscurity
  • The people who would write the fix are the beneficiaries of the status quo
  • Reform requires external pressure large enough to overcome that incentive
  • Example fix floated: barring lawmakers from trading stocks they regulate

“the people who need to pass that law, they're the ones who are profiting from this”

Shaan Puri · 05:30

“In fact, the opposite. Their entire incentive is to keep the system the way it is.”

Shaan Puri · 06:00
#regulation#incentives#policy

Story· 4

Story06:30

Autopilot's Pelosi Tracker as a growth hack

Sam brings up Autopilot, a startup that lets you deposit money and copy a public portfolio — you can mirror the Michael Burry portfolio, for example. The business was doing okay until growth suddenly took off on an incredible chart. The cause was a Twitter handle they created called the Pelosi Tracker, which digs through public filings and posts every trade Nancy Pelosi makes along with her gains. It has 339,000 followers, alongside sibling accounts like the Burry tracker. Pelosi was up 30% year to date at the time, outperforming Warren Buffett and most hedge fund managers, which Sam reads as evidence of information asymmetry. Shaan calls the tracker a genius growth hack.

  • Autopilot lets users copy a public investor's portfolio automatically
  • The Pelosi Tracker account had 339,000 followers
  • Trades are sourced from public filings and posted with performance
  • Pelosi was up 30% year to date, beating Buffett
  • A free media property drove a step-change in the underlying product's growth

“And the Pelosi tracker has 339,000 followers.”

Sam Parr · 07:00

“happens to be up 30% year to date”

Sam Parr · 07:30

“that was a genius growth hack that they did.”

Shaan Puri · 07:30
#growth-hack#fintech#distribution
Story08:00

Deion Sanders on 60 Minutes and the son documenting everything

Sam's pick is the twelve-minute 60 Minutes segment on Deion Sanders, now head coach at Colorado after a stint at Jackson State. Sam expected the cocky showboat he remembered as a player and found someone genuinely insightful instead. The first thing Sanders is doing well is media: one son is the starting quarterback, another is a cornerback, and the third — the one not playing football — is filming everything behind the scenes and posting it to YouTube in a Gary Vee style vlog. Sam's view is that they are doing a better job of documenting a program than anyone else in the space.

  • Twelve-minute 60 Minutes segment, went around Twitter widely
  • Sanders came from Jackson State, a historically black college, to Colorado
  • One son is starting quarterback, one a cornerback, one the vlogger
  • Locker-room documentation posted on social as the season happens
  • Media output is treated as a first-class part of the program

“one of his sons is filming the whole thing. It's like his Gary Vee thing.”

Sam Parr · 08:30

“the son that's not playing football is basically the Gary Vee vlog guy”

Sam Parr · 09:00
#media#personal-brand#sports
Story21:30

Cultural Tutor: from McDonald's to 1.5 million followers

Shaan's last pick is David Perell's podcast interview with Cultural Tutor, shot on a set that looks like a royal library. Cultural Tutor was working at McDonald's flipping burgers when, through a mutual connection with Harry Dry, Perell effectively became his patron and paid him to write. He quit and committed to publishing one amazing Twitter thread a day. His routine is deliberately anti-aspirational: wake at 4pm, think about the thread, smoke cigarettes, walk, write, walk again, publish, pass out, repeat. His viral thread on why all modern architecture looks minimalist and the same hit an enormous audience. He now has around 1.3 to 1.5 million followers and a 100,000-person email list, with no obvious monetization yet. Shaan only listened to the first ten minutes and was satisfied.

  • Perell paid him to write, letting him quit McDonald's
  • One goal: publish one amazing Twitter thread per day
  • Wakes at 4pm, alternates walking, cigarettes and writing
  • Viral thread on modern architecture all looking the same
  • ~1.3-1.5M followers and a 100k email list, not yet monetized

“do you know this account Cultural Tutor on Twitter? Awesome follow.”

Shaan Puri · 21:30

“this guy was basically working at McDonald's. Literally, he was like flipping burgers and doing french fries.”

Shaan Puri · 22:30

“I'm going to write one amazing Twitter thread a day”

Shaan Puri · 23:00

“But everybody's just got a thing. That's my thing, okay?”

Cultural Tutor · 24:00
#twitter#writing#audience-building
Story27:00

David Perell's apartment where every object has a story

Shaan closes with a visit to David Perell in Austin. Perell rented a second apartment in his building purely as a studio, knocked down a wall, and set it up so precisely that walking in feels like an Airbnb or a Restoration Hardware store. One room is the recording studio, another a guest room for visiting guests. Shaan noticed every object seemed chosen and Perell confirmed it — including admitting he bought cream-coloured books on Etsy because someone said they make you look classy in a background, one of which is titled Tango Lessons and which he has never read. Shaan sent Sam a video saying they had to step it up, calling Perell the Deion Sanders of podcasting, and noting he makes millions a year teaching people to write long essays, which Shaan calls ten out of ten execution on a four out of ten opportunity.

  • A second apartment rented purely as a podcast studio, with a wall removed
  • Every object on set is deliberately chosen and has a story
  • Cream-coloured Etsy books bought purely for background classiness
  • Shaan calls him the Deion Sanders of podcasting for his standards
  • Millions a year from Write of Passage — high execution on a modest opportunity

“Everything is perfectly set up. And David is really OCD.”

Shaan Puri · 27:30

“everything at David's place is on purpose and it all has a story.”

Shaan Puri · 28:30
#production-quality#standards#creators

Takeaway· 2

Takeaway00:30

Change your info diet, and the interview question that reveals it

Shaan frames the whole episode with an analogy: to change your body you change your diet and habits, and to change your mind you change your info diet. Sam uses this in job interviews and refuses to accept the generic answer — when someone says they read the New York Times he pushes for which subreddits, which Twitter accounts, who they follow on Instagram, who is actually influencing them. Shaan asked Palmer Luckey the same question because Luckey was firing off interesting ideas across unrelated areas. The conclusion is that interesting outputs are never accidental; they come from a deliberate set of interesting inputs. MFM's stated goal is to be one of those inputs, which is why they made this curated finds episode format.

  • Changing your mind works like changing your body: change the inputs
  • Reject the generic media answer in interviews and drill to specific subreddits and accounts
  • Palmer Luckey's range came from a curated input set, not accident
  • Shaan wishes more interesting people published their one or two best finds each week

“if you want to change your mind, you need to change your info diet”

Shaan Puri · 00:30

“what subreddits are you like consuming? Do you use Reddit? What about Twitter? On Instagram, who do you follow?”

Sam Parr · 01:00

“That happens because he's got a set of interesting inputs that leads to a set of interesting outputs.”

Shaan Puri · 01:30
#info-diet#hiring#curation
Takeaway24:30

Bring seriousness to a category everyone treats as unserious

Shaan generalizes from Cultural Tutor into a repeated pattern he has noticed: bringing real intensity to something everyone else considers not serious lets you win far bigger than people expect. He cites newsletters — they sold The Hustle early but the category could support a hundred-million-a-year business, and Morning Brew is close to that, precisely because people thought newsletters were silly while the math said otherwise. Sam applies the same logic to Hampton, where most competitors treat founder communities as a hundred-dollar-a-year hobby. Shaan pushes back that groups like YPO and Vistage do take it seriously, and reframes the real edge as taste rather than seriousness: Hampton is more stylish, more desirable, driven by design, FOMO, content and the first hundred members.

  • Intensity applied to an unserious category is an underpriced edge
  • Newsletters looked silly but Morning Brew approached $100M a year
  • They sold The Hustle early despite the math supporting more
  • Most founder-community operators treat it as a hobby priced at ~$100/year
  • Shaan's counter-frame: the real moat is being beautifully done, not just serious

“if you bring a level of seriousness to something that everybody else considers not serious, you can actually win much bigger than most people realize”

Shaan Puri · 24:30

“which is we're just taking something seriously that most use as a hobby”

Sam Parr · 25:00
#strategy#positioning#communities

resource· 2

resource02:00

Bill Gurley's 2,851 talk at the All-In conference

Shaan's top pick of the week is Bill Gurley's talk at the All-In conference. Gurley, the lead investor in Uber and now retired, delivers a monologue on how regulation corrupts business rather than the venture capital talk Shaan expected. The title is the number of miles between Silicon Valley and Washington DC. Gurley walks through example after example — COVID test pricing where the US mandated two approved vendors while Germany's free market drove costs down to a fraction, and a lawmaker who wrote a rule naming three permitted government vendors and turned up on one of their boards five years later. Shaan compares the format to a John Oliver monologue or a Coffeezilla exposé. Gurley reveals he spent fifteen years writing down every instance of grift he encountered, and closes by saying Silicon Valley innovates because it is the farthest possible point in the country from DC.

  • Title 2,851 is the mileage between Silicon Valley and Washington DC
  • US COVID tests cost around seven times more than UK or Germany due to mandated vendors
  • A lawmaker who named three approved vendors later joined one of their boards
  • Fifteen years of accumulated notes turned into one talk
  • A retired investor with nothing to lose is the best version of a smart person

“It wasn't a talk, Bill Gurley went off.”

Shaan Puri · 02:30

“this talk is basically 15 years in the making of me kind of uh observing what's screwed up about the way that Washington works”

Shaan Puri · 04:30

“That's the number of miles between San Francisco and DC”

Shaan Puri · 04:30
#regulation#venture-capital#recommendation
resource14:00

The CFO Secrets newsletter on working capital in acquisitions

Sam's nerdy pick is a Twitter account and newsletter called CFO Secrets. The specific post covers working capital in acquisitions — a topic Sam jokes has a market size of about three people. His justification is personal: when he sold to HubSpot it took a week for anyone to explain what working capital was and he still does not fully understand it. The post walks through enterprise value versus equity value, where the debt and capital in the business sit between the two, and eventually gets to the spreadsheet. Sam notes it is part of a roughly nineteen-part series and he has read two of them. His closing advice is that if you are going to do a transaction, it really pays to have someone good at deals on your side.

  • CFO Secrets is a Twitter account plus newsletter, part of a ~19-part series
  • The post covers working capital, enterprise value and equity value
  • Sam had working capital sprung on him eight days from close
  • Probably overkill to read early, essential if a transaction is imminent
  • Hire deal expertise rather than learning the mechanics mid-negotiation

“there's a guy who is a Twitter account I really like called CFO Secrets.”

Sam Parr · 14:00

“when I sold HubSpot, it took me a week to for them to explain what working capital was and I still don't understand it”

Shaan Puri · 14:30
#m-and-a#finance#recommendation

contrarian· 2

contrarian09:30

The roster purge: I'm here to encourage most of you to quit

In one of his first team meetings, Sanders told a squad that had gone one and eleven the previous season that he was there to encourage most of them to quit. His reasoning was that the coaching staff was to blame but so were the players, because the old staff recruited people who lost. Challenged by the interviewer that this was harsh talk aimed at kids, Sanders answered that anyone willing to quit over words is weak and not an asset. He then reframed it as his job: truth is good for the kids, he is there to teach them football and how to live, and the real world requires it. He turned over roughly half the roster — about forty new players in, about fifty out through the transfer portal.

  • Colorado had gone one and eleven the prior season
  • Sanders assigned blame to both the old staff and the recruited players
  • Willingness to quit over words was used as the selection filter
  • Roughly 40 players in and 50 out via the transfer portal
  • He framed brutal honesty as preparation for the real world

“I'm here to encourage most of you to quit.”

Deion Sanders · 09:30

“And he revamped the roster. He brought like 40 play 40 new players in, which is half of a football team roster.”

Sam Parr · 10:30
#leadership#hiring#culture
contrarian14:30

The competence ladder in online content

Reading the CFO Secrets post triggers a rant from Sam about credibility online. His test is whether you can tell someone actually knows their subject, and his frustration is that the most vocal people usually do not. He describes a ladder: someone genuinely successful produces content and it does well, then someone not yet successful decides they will also create content about how to be successful, and below them someone who has never done sales starts teaching sales despite having sold ten thousand dollars in their life. The structural problem is that the people lowest on the ladder have the most free time, so they publish the most. Finding a writer who visibly knows the material is the reason he flagged the newsletter at all.

  • Signal to look for: can you tell the writer actually knows the subject
  • Each rung teaches what the rung above them earned
  • The least qualified have the most time and therefore publish most
  • Volume of publishing is inversely correlated with expertise online
  • Genuine domain depth is the scarce thing worth subscribing to

“I too will create content about how to be successful, although I am not successful yet.”

Sam Parr · 15:00

“those people have the most time on their hands. So they're the most like active publishing stuff”

Sam Parr · 15:30
#content#credibility#media

idea· 1

idea26:00

Mining the 60s and 70s for brand aesthetics

Sam explains his actual branding method: follow people like Cultural Tutor and look for what was cool in the 1960s and 70s that can be reused today. Hampton's brand colour is taken from a Jaguar model popular in the 70s, and he pulled old Rolex ads while developing the identity, asking what was cool then that could still be cool now. Shaan points to the sunscreen brand Vacation as another example of the same move with an 80s and early 90s aesthetic. They name Jeremy Summers, who did Vacation's branding and also developed the Milk Road brand, as the specialist in that vintage, classy, nostalgic and beautifully done look.

  • Method: find what was cool decades ago and reuse it now
  • Hampton's colour comes from a 70s Jaguar
  • Old Rolex ads used as reference during identity work
  • Vacation sunscreen does the same with an 80s/90s aesthetic
  • Jeremy Summers did both Vacation and Milk Road branding

“what I do for a lot of my brands is I follow people like him and I look at like what was cool in the…”

Sam Parr · 26:00

“I found old Rolex ads cuz I'm like, what was cool then that could still be cool now.”

Sam Parr · 26:30
#branding#design#aesthetics