MMy First Million
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Sahil Bloom10 November 2022

Sahil Bloom: Left Private Equity To Make Millions As A Content Creator And 3 Profitable Businesses To Start Now

5Frameworks
12Insights

Frameworks in this episode

Entrepreneurship5 steps

The Agency Price Arbitrage Model

Build a service business by owning the spread between what talent costs and what the client will pay.

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Marketing5 steps

The Cringe Tolerance Scale

Calibrate how much second-hand embarrassment you will accept, then only play where you can execute at an A-plus level.

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Strategy5 steps

The Right Kind of Stubborn Test

A short set of honest questions for deciding whether to persist or to change your mind.

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Marketing5 steps

The Two-to-Three Content Pillars System

Pick two or three durable topics you can talk about forever, then make vulnerability one of them.

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Mindset5 steps

Tourist, Local, and Stubborn Local

Three postures toward a downturn — and the third one drowns while insisting the water is fine.

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Insights & moments

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

Explainer· 2

Explainer03:00

How much a private equity GP actually makes

Bloom breaks down the economics of being a principal owner of a private equity fund. Funds take management fees of roughly 1.5% to 2%, so a billion-dollar fund pulls in $20M-plus a year before carry, with relatively few employees eating into it. On top of that, carry runs 15% to 25% of profits above a hurdle rate of around 8%. If a fund doubles, there is $200M-plus of carry to distribute, and principal owners take the lion's share. His conclusion is that a long-tenured GP across multiple performing funds is safely north of $50M net worth. He pushes back hard on the idea that it is easy money — nobody he knows works under 70 stressful hours a week, and 80% of the time goes to the few losers in the portfolio.

  • Management fees of 1.5-2% on a billion-dollar fund yield $20M-plus annually
  • Carry is 15-25% of profits above a hurdle around 8%
  • A doubled fund produces $200M-plus of carry, mostly to principal owners
  • Long-tenured GPs are safely north of $50M net worth
  • 80% of time goes to the portfolio losers, not the winners

“it's pretty safe to assume that you've got a net worth north of 50 million dollars because I mean you just like simple math on…”

Sahil Bloom · 03:00

“you spend 80 of your time on the like couple of losers in the portfolio and the winners you just like kind of get to…”

Sahil Bloom · 05:00
#private equity#fund economics#carry
Explainer07:00

Sahil's three-business portfolio and what each one earns

Bloom lays out what he actually does now, with numbers. He raised a $10M venture fund from a handful of institutions plus GPs at large funds, which also gives him shared deal flow. The newsletter sits at roughly 125,000 subscribers, earns $3,500 to $6,000 per send, and he sends eight to ten times a month for two pieces of writing a week. The agency started in 2021 as an arbitrage play he spotted and scaled to roughly six figures a month in gross revenue at very high margins. He explicitly notes he did not do a rolling fund despite Sean's suggestion.

  • $10M venture fund raised from institutions and GPs at big funds
  • Newsletter at ~125,000 subscribers, $3,500-$6,000 per send
  • Eight to ten sends a month off two pieces of writing a week
  • Agency scaled to roughly six figures a month gross, very high margin
  • Deliberately raised a traditional fund rather than a rolling fund

“now it's 125-ish thousand subs and you know it makes anywhere from like three and a half to six thousand dollars per cent right now…”

Sahil Bloom · 07:30

“it ended up scaling into like you know order magnitude probably like close to six figures a month um gross revenue business with super high…”

Sahil Bloom · 08:00
#newsletter#venture fund#agency

Story· 3

Story08:30

The fork in the road, and the Stitch Fix pitch that saved him

After six years of 80-to-100-hour weeks in private equity, covid gave Bloom the first chance to look up and ask what he was doing. Twitter had grown to 100,000-200,000 followers but none of the businesses existed yet, and he was preparing to join a crossover hedge fund and move back east. A conversation with Sean reframed it: you are choosing the thing that sounds like it sucks over the thing you get energy from that is scalable, so why. Sean's read was that path A sounded miserable and path B sounded fun with some unknowns. The punchline is that Bloom got rejected from path A anyway — his final interview required pitching Stitch Fix, he spent a miserable week building a deck, pitched it as a buy at $46, and the stock later traded at $3.56.

  • Six years of 80-100 hour weeks left no time to reassess until covid
  • Path A was a crossover hedge fund and a move back east
  • Sean's reframe: you are picking the option that sounds bad over the one you get energy from
  • The final interview required a week-long Stitch Fix stock pitch
  • He pitched it as a buy at $46; the stock later traded at $3.56

“it sounds like you're just gonna go do the thing that kind of sounds like it sucks instead of doing the thing that you actually…”

Sahil Bloom · 11:00

“I pitched it as a buy uh got rejected because my pitch was shitty and now that stock is trading at 3.56 so I would…”

Sahil Bloom · 12:30
#career pivot#decision making#reframing
Story45:00

Sean's 50% drawdown and the deliberate response

Sean walks through his 2022. His pre-2022 thesis was cash is trash, so he held big tech as his version of safe, a large pile of startups getting marked up, and a significant percentage of net worth in Bitcoin, ethereum and Luna. Everything he owned went down at once and his liquid net worth fell roughly 50%. His response was procedural rather than emotional: first check whether there is real hardship for him or his family, then decide whether he was wrong about anything or simply wanted more comfort. He concluded he wanted to stop sweating it, so he margin-called himself, sold a chosen amount into cash, and booked the loss deliberately to offset gains elsewhere in the year. His stated logic for staying calm is that he never took his happiness from the way up, so taking sadness from the way down made no sense.

  • Pre-2022 thesis was 'cash is trash' across tech, startups and crypto
  • Liquid net worth fell roughly 50%
  • First question was whether there was actual hardship, not how it felt
  • He sold deliberately to reduce worry and book a tax loss
  • He explicitly does not consider himself a trader or investment genius

“it's probably down 50 or something like that I mean most of the Investments I I didn't keep much cash this is my investment strategy…”

Sean Puri · 45:30

“I'm gonna sell this amount here so that I don't have to worry about anything I'm gonna move more into cash and I'm gonna book…”

Sean Puri · 47:00
#drawdown#investing psychology#risk
Story51:30

The Luna pre-mortem: a bad outcome is not a wrong thesis

Sean uses Luna as a case where losing money did not mean he had been wrong. Before investing, his team wrote a one-page investment memo covering why it was a good idea and why it could go horribly wrong. The death-spiral risk was public in blog posts from the beginning — Luna being the collateral meant a reversal could cascade fast. When it collapsed, it followed exactly the downside scenario they had already described. Critically, he sized for it: $250K, a solid but not massive bet, explicitly chosen because he had identified key risks. Bloom's own story is the retail counterpoint — he bought a bag on Sean's recommendation around $40, watched it hit $118, got a bad feeling when Do Kwon's assistant rescheduled a podcast interview, sold the whole position the next morning for a small gain, and woke up to find it at $5.

  • A one-page memo covered both the upside case and the failure mode in advance
  • The death-spiral risk was public and known from the start
  • The collapse followed the exact downside path they had written down
  • $250K was sized deliberately as a solid but not massive bet
  • Bloom exited on an instinct trigger — a rescheduled interview email

“we wrote Our Little investment memo to ourselves about like here's our one pager why we think this is a good idea and why we…”

Sean Puri · 52:30

“just because it turned out bad doesn't mean that the um doesn't mean I changed my position because actually at the beginning we said well…”

Sean Puri · 53:00
#crypto#position sizing#pre-mortem

Takeaway· 3

Takeaway05:30

Judge a path by time-adjusted profit, not raw profit

Asked whether the information economy can match traditional company building or private equity as a wealth driver, Bloom reframes the comparison. You have to multiply profit potential by the time freedom that comes with it to get an adjusted profit figure. Making $50M in PE is high certainty and low beta if you are at a good fund riding into bigger funds with more carry, but it means working flat out until you are sixty. The information side has a completely different time-leverage profile — he cites Sean making $300K from a course in a week and then being able to chill for two or three months. His own newsletter is the same shape: two pieces a week, and the business scales.

  • Adjusted profit = profit potential multiplied by time freedom
  • PE is a low-beta, high-certainty, high-grind path to $50M
  • A course can produce $300K in a week and months of slack afterward
  • Bloom writes the same two newsletters a week and it scales
  • The right comparison is time-adjusted, not gross

“you have to think about it in terms of like your uh you know profit potential multiplied by like the freedom and time Freedom that…”

Sahil Bloom · 06:00

“making 50 million dollars in PE from a time adjusted standpoint is a is a pretty grindy way to go do it”

Sahil Bloom · 06:00
#time leverage#creator economy#career
Takeaway22:00

Repurposing tweets to Instagram, and what a subscriber is worth

Sean and Sahil both took Instagram seriously around the same time, posting their best-performing tweets as images. Sean went from 5,000 to roughly 50,000 followers; Sahil rocketed to 62,000, adding one to two thousand a day. The revenue question gets a concrete answer: in a month averaging about 35,000 followers, Instagram drove roughly 1,000 newsletter subscribers through the link in his bio, and Bloom values a subscriber at $3 to $4 on sponsor revenue alone, before any book sales. Both agree there is a threshold before you can monetise — Sean puts it at around 100K followers on LinkedIn, and frames it as needing to plant enough seeds before harvesting. They cite Dakota Robertson, at roughly 250,000 Instagram followers almost never showing his face, running a thriving ghostwriting business, and Justin Welsh doing over $100K a month in non-cohort course sales built off LinkedIn.

  • Sahil hit 62,000 Instagram followers adding 1,000-2,000 a day, posting tweets
  • About 35,000 average followers drove roughly 1,000 newsletter subs in a month
  • A newsletter sub is worth $3-$4 on sponsor revenue alone
  • Roughly 100K followers is the bar before you can harvest value
  • Justin Welsh does $100K-plus a month on evergreen courses off LinkedIn

“Instagram this past month I think generated a thousand newsletter subs for me just through the link in my bio”

Sahil Bloom · 26:00

“you gotta like you know plant enough seeds over a period of time to Sean's point I think like 100k is probably the point at…”

Sahil Bloom · 24:00
#instagram#repurposing#audience monetization
Takeaway34:30

Ask what game you are playing, then parlay the window

Bloom's resolution of the cringe debate is to zoom out to the long-term game. He was never trying to be a thread guy — that was never the long-term vision. The point of being A-plus at something, even briefly, is what you convert it into. Being a Twitter thread writer vaulted him from an unknown private equity VP to a big book deal signed the month before recording and a raised fund he says he never could have raised otherwise. The instruction is to keep asking what you are parlaying the current advantage into, so you move into an upper echelon rather than staying in the same class as the people doing what you used to do. He extends this to the Elon-buying-Twitter risk: he already benefited from being early and built brand assets he owns, and the general rule is eat or be eaten — if you are not out front on something new, you are in for a tough time regardless.

  • Ask what long-term game you are playing before optimising a tactic
  • Being a thread guy was never the vision, just the vehicle
  • It produced a big book deal and a fund he could not otherwise have raised
  • Keep parlaying an A-plus window into the next echelon
  • Platform risk matters most to people who have not yet converted the window

“what game are you playing like what is the long-term game you're playing and for me I was always thinking about like what is the…”

Sahil Bloom · 34:30

“how are you using that to Vault yourself into that next level where you're like I'm not even in the same class as these other…”

Sahil Bloom · 35:00
#strategy#personal brand#leverage

idea· 3

idea19:30

Business idea: the LinkedIn growth agency

Bloom's first of three ideas, and one he is actively spinning up with friends. LinkedIn is the current audience-growth arbitrage because Twitter has saturated while a few LinkedIn posts can immediately reach 10K-plus, and the platform matters for founders on business and recruiting. The mechanic is to approach someone with an existing Twitter presence or a body of blog writing, take their proven, socially-validated content, and turn it into carousels using a tool like Tweetpic — carousels being the current LinkedIn growth hack. You post two or three times a week on their behalf so they never have to open LinkedIn, which people hate doing. Pricing is either a success fee tied to a follower milestone or a flat $2,500 to $5,000 a month, on roughly an hour a week of work per client.

  • LinkedIn is the current arbitrage; Twitter has saturated
  • Repurpose proven tweets or existing blogs into carousels via Tweetpic
  • Sell it as 'you never have to open LinkedIn again'
  • Charge $2,500-$5,000 a month or a success fee at a follower milestone
  • Roughly one hour a week, four hours a month, per client

“LinkedIn growth agency stuff um massive opportunity here I mean like you you guys know a couple of our friends me and a couple of…”

Sahil Bloom · 20:00

“the amount of time it would take you is literally like I mean you could probably do like an hour a week to cover a…”

Sahil Bloom · 22:00
#linkedin#agency#business idea
idea36:30

Business idea: a full-suite newsletter growth service

Bloom's second idea, and one he is personally a buyer for. The monetisation side of newsletters is solved — ConvertKit has an ad network that manages the entire back end and brings in sponsors, and Workweek and Smooth Ops handle business services. Growth is completely untouched: nobody offers a full suite covering landing page optimisation, referral networks, newsletter swaps, paid ads, SEO for the website, and cross-channel optimisation in one place. He says he would easily pay $10,000 a month for it on top of ad spend, given what subscribers are worth to him. Sean's objection is that few newsletters are large enough to afford that. Bloom's counter-hypothesis is that plenty of already-wealthy founders want a Paul Graham or Sam Altman style owned list and do not need it to generate revenue. His suggested go-to-market is to partner with him, prove it over two or three months, use him as a case study, and give him a percentage so he is incentivised to refer.

  • Newsletter monetisation is solved; ConvertKit's ad network runs the back end
  • Nobody offers a single full-suite growth service
  • Scope: landing pages, referrals, swaps, paid ads, SEO, cross-channel
  • Bloom would pay $10,000 a month on top of ad spend
  • 10-20 clients at $5-10K a month is an 80%-plus margin business

“the like growth side of newsletters is completely untouched there's no one out there that I've been able to find that is like a full…”

Sahil Bloom · 37:00

“I would easily pay 10 grand a month to someone that could figure that out and do it in one place on top of whatever…”

Sahil Bloom · 37:30
#newsletter#business idea#growth
idea56:30

Business idea: the mobile podcast and video studio

Bloom's third idea and his only non-services one. Buy a van or box truck — a used U-Haul box truck runs around $25,000, potentially $5,000 down — and kit it out with dual DSLR setups, mics hanging off the sides, good lighting, neon signs and dope backgrounds for another $5,000 to $10,000. Park one in each major city, LA and New York being the obvious first two, and rent it for around $500 for two hours of podcast recording or a couple of hundred dollars for people shooting Instagram or TikTok content. The insight driving it is that New York in-person podcast studios are paying Manhattan rent for solid-but-not-great rooms, whereas a truck moves to a new parking lot every two hours and pays no rent. Sam's refinement, which Bloom calls genius, is to sell it as a gym-style monthly membership with on-demand booking rather than pure hourly rental, since you probably need an on-site operator anyway.

  • Used box truck around $25,000, roughly $5,000 down
  • Another $5,000-$10,000 to kit out cameras, mics and lighting
  • Rent at ~$500 for two hours of podcast recording
  • The edge is zero rent versus New York studios paying Manhattan prices
  • Sell it as a monthly membership with on-demand booking, not hourly

“buy like a few vans get them out with like a pretty fire setup just in the back of like a normal sized band doesn't…”

Sahil Bloom · 57:00

“if you got a truck and you just bought it you could go post this thing up in a parking lot and every two two…”

Sahil Bloom · 59:30
#business idea#podcasting#unit economics

contrarian· 1

contrarian27:30

The pit of cringe: why copying an A-plus performer fails

Sean's central objection to the whole growth-hack playbook. He worries the episode will breed nine thousand people executing the strategy at nowhere near Bloom's level. His illustration is Tony Robbins, who does every criticisable thing on stage — clapping, calls to jump, questions whose only answer is yes, holding a crowd for twelve straight hours — and is, in Sean's view, the best public speaker he has ever seen, more powerful over a crowd than Obama. But in the hallways at the same event were life coaches, motivational speakers and change consultants running identical material without forty years of craft, natural charisma, or hard-won life experience. Bloom counters with the market analogy — In-N-Out gets a Five Guys, every A-plus gets diluted B-plus copies — and with the pragmatic case: someone making $25,000 a month from home instead of $5,000 or $10,000 at their old job, with time for their kids, does not care what tech people think.

  • Sean fears the episode breeds thousands of poor-execution imitators
  • Tony Robbins does every cringe-coded thing at an A-plus-plus level
  • The hallway imitators run identical concepts without the underlying experience
  • Bloom's counter: every A-plus gets B-plus copies, like In-N-Out and Five Guys
  • Making $25K a month from home is a legitimate answer to the cringe question

“for most people they will fall into the pit of cringe because they're not going to execute it at that same level they didn't have…”

Sean Puri · 33:00

“I've never seen Obama control a crowd for 12 straight hours like Tony Robbins will do in an event”

Sean Puri · 32:00
#execution quality#content strategy#contrarian