The Public Math Question
Ask a founder to walk you to $100M in revenue out loud — you are testing whether they have ever done the arithmetic, not whether the number is right.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 85%
Sam Parr asks every founder he invests in the same question: five, ten, fifteen years out, how much revenue will this make and how do I get my money back. Shaan asks a sharper variant — what would I need to believe for this to be at $100M in revenue, how many companies, how many people, work it out. The insight that makes this a framework rather than a question is Shaan's read of the answer: he is only partly judging feasibility. The bigger signal is whether this appears to be the first time the founder has done the math. A founder who has never worked it out is buried in product and, in Shaan's view, is unlikely to start thinking that way later. The framework also supplies the answer template for the founder side. Both hosts reject the evasive 'we're not thinking about an exit' response and model a better one: name a plausible worst case with a concrete multiple, name a genuinely exciting upside path, and be honest about the uncertainty above it. Shaan adds a calibration — a two-to-three-x downside answer works on angels investing their own money, while institutional VCs need the energy on the upside case. Sam notes the hosts refused to do public math themselves while making every founder do it.
Origin
Sam asks the money-back question of everyone he invests in; across five Demo Day pitches, the quality of the answer separated the founders more sharply than the quality of the businesses.
Core principles
- 01You are testing whether the math has been done before, not whether it is correct.
- 02A founder who has never run the numbers probably never will.
- 03Charisma cuts both ways — Sam's best and worst investments both came from charismatic CEOs.
- 04Evasion about exits reads as unseriousness, not integrity.
- 05Calibrate the answer to who is writing the cheque — angels want downside, VCs want upside.
- 06Certainty is contagious: a clear path stated with conviction transfers.
How to run it
- 1
Ask the money-back question
Sam's version: five, ten, fifteen years out, how much revenue will this be making, and how do I get my money back — a sale, an IPO, or something else.
- 2
Ask the belief question
Shaan's version: what would I need to believe for this to be a $100M revenue business? How many companies, how many users, at what price?
- 3
Force the arithmetic into the open
Push until they produce units, not adjectives. The Nickelpass founders produced '10,000 companies at current pricing', which is a checkable claim.
- 4
Read whether this is the first time
Shaan's real signal. A recalled number means they have been plotting how to build something big; a number invented on the spot means they are buried in product.
- 5
Sanity-check against the universe
Ask whether the implied number of customers is believable out of the total available. Shaan followed up by asking what would have to happen to go from 150 companies to 10,000.
- 6
As founder, answer in three parts
Worst case with a concrete multiple, best case with a clear path, and honest uncertainty above it — rather than either an evasion or an unbacked billion-dollar claim.
In the wild
Asked how they reach $100M, the founders answered ~10,000 companies based on their pricing, and broke the path into raising penetration inside existing accounts from 1% to 3% and sector penetration from 0.01% toward 1%.
→ Shaan: 'she had at least thought about we need 10,000 companies at our current pricing and scale' — he hadn't checked the math, but the answer existed, which was the test.
Asked the same question, the founder said there is a clear path to $50M in revenue in five to six years and that beyond that he wasn't sure.
→ Both hosts graded it: 'that's a good answer', 'that's a great answer'. Shaan later cited it as the model — honest about the ceiling, specific about the path.
Shaan modelled the answer he wants: worst case we reach $5M in this many years and someone buys us for $50M, giving a two-to-three-x; best case there's a clear path to $75M and several doors open from there. He illustrated with a friend whose pet business owns a database of 100,000 owners' names, addresses and dog details that Chewy cannot match.
→ A structure that shows weakness and uncertainty while still supplying an exciting upside — though Shaan flags it lands better on angels than on institutional VCs.
Common mistakes
Treating the question as a feasibility test
Grading only whether the number is achievable misses the actual signal. Shaan explicitly cares more about whether the founder has ever done this arithmetic before.
Answering 'we're not thinking about an exit'
Both hosts reject this as posturing. It reads as either unserious or evasive, and forfeits the chance to show you understand your own economics.
Investing on charm
Sam's warning: some of his best investments came from charismatic CEOs and so did some of his absolute worst. The math question exists precisely to get underneath charm.
Is it for you?
Best for
Angel investors and operators assessing whether a founder has thought past the current product cycle.
Not ideal for
Pure research or pre-product ventures where any revenue arithmetic would be invented on the spot.
From the transcript
“this is something that i love asking everyone that i invest in which is like 5 10 15 years down the line how does this…”
“the bigger part of it is does this seem like the first time they've done this math or have they done this before because if…”
“some of my best investments have come from very charismatic ceos and some of my absolute worst investments have come from charismatic ceos it cuts…”
From the episode
MFM Demo Day: 5 Startups Pitch Sam & Shaan and Raise $1.7M
MFM Demo Day