Amazon

Build Jungle Scout for second-tier marketplaces (Etsy, Poshmark, Airbnb)

Shaan's thesis: B-class marketplaces like Etsy, Poshmark, Mercari, and Airbnb have far less competition than Amazon. Build seller-tooling SaaS (à la Jungle Scout) on top of them, since the existing tools 'exist but they're not great.'

“So I'm really interested in the second tier or like what I'll call B-class marketplaces. I don't mean that as an insult. I mean it more like if you're in real estate, you're like, oh, do I buy an A, you know, A-class property, which is like it's a modern building, fully leased up, blah blah, or do you go for like an older thing that has upside, right?”

Steal thisFind a big marketplace where the third-party seller tools are weak, then build the 'Jungle Scout' for it.

Jungle Scout raised over $110 million

Shaan points out that Jungle Scout — an Amazon seller research Chrome extension that looked like a small 'indie hacker' business — raised over $110 million, signaling how large seller-tooling businesses can become.

“By the way, Jungle Scout raised over $110 million, which is— that gives you a sense of how big it is if it was able to raise that.”

Side hustle type 2: own the supply side of an existing marketplace

Justin Mares's second side-hustle category: find a marketplace with existing demand (Airbnb, Amazon, Udemy) where you only have to provide supply. The platform finds the customers; you just learn its ranking rules and feed it inventory.

“look at what is a marketplace with existing demand where you don't have to go out and find the customer. You just provide the supply side stuff like buying, you know, putting a property on Airbnb. All I have to do is understand how does the property like, or how does Airbnb dictate where I rank, you know, and what does it want from me as a supplier? And then my shit is going to get booked up.”

Steal thisPick a marketplace that already has demand and become the supply, learning only its ranking algorithm rather than hunting customers.

The next Apple is a health-monitoring device, not a phone

Shaan predicts the next trillion-dollar consumer-device company won't be a phone company but a healthcare monitor, a wearable measuring what's happening inside your body and feeding the data back to you. He frames Apple itself shifting toward health via wearables.

“So I don't think the next Apple is a phone company. I think the next Apple, the next Apple, which is going to be a trillion dollar company that has, uh, that gives you kind of like a consumer device. I think it's going to be a healthcare monitor. I think it's going to be something that is going to be measuring what's going on inside your body. And feeding that data back to you.”

Jet.com sold to Walmart for $3.5 billion

Intro recap of Lore's track record: he sold Diapers.com to Amazon for around $600M, then built Jet.com and sold it to Walmart for $3.5 billion.

“He sold diapers.com to Amazon for like, I don't know, $600 million. He created Jet.com and sold it to Walmart for $3.5 billion.”

Jetblack: a concierge that beat Amazon Prime, killed for cost

Walmart ran Jetblack, a text-based personal shopping concierge for NYC parents. Users dropped Amazon Prime and gave it multiples of their Amazon wallet share, but it needed humans in the loop until the AI could learn, making it too expensive for Walmart to keep.

“I mean, it was like, you know, people stopped using Amazon Prime. It was, they just dropped it. It's like all the shopping, the entire, the entire wallet share was given to Jetblack, and it was multiples of what they were spending on Amazon.”

Online apparel return rates run 40%

Lore cites that return rates on apparel sold online are 40%, an expensive problem for retailers that a virtual fitting solution could dramatically reduce.

“Return rates on apparel are 40%.”

You're early even when you're late: megatrends run longer than you think

Shaan's core thesis: even in 2010 when Google/Apple/Facebook looked mature, buying them would have 10x'd your money — Google's revenue went from $5B to $55B. The lesson is that real megatrends (internet, mobile, cloud, crypto) have far more room to run than they appear, so feeling 'late' is usually wrong.

“2010, when I graduated, Google's revenue was $5 billion. Today, its revenue is $55 billion. And you could do the same thing with Amazon, with Facebook. And if you had just bought those companies back then, you would have made 10x your money, right?”

Steal thisWhen something is a genuine megatrend, ignore the feeling that you're late — they compound over 20-30 year arcs.

The strategy too stupid to sell: just buy FANG and hold

Shaan relays Peter Thiel's point that simply buying FANG (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google) in 2013 and holding would have 6x'd your money and beaten almost any money manager — but advisors can't recommend it because it's too simple to justify their 1% fee.

“if you had just put your money into FANG, which were obviously great companies that were technology companies that were growing, and you didn't even need to know how fast they were growing, but if you just said, these are solid companies that, you know, seems like everybody in America is using their products, you would have made 6 times your money in the last 8 years. And he goes, that would beat the performance of almost any money manager or hedge fund or investment banker that you're thinking of working with.”

Steal thisDefault to the embarrassingly simple buy-and-hold strategy; complexity in investing usually underperforms.

The law of increasing returns: build a positive flywheel

Shaan's core investing filter is whether a business has a positive flywheel where each new user makes it more valuable to everyone else, citing Amazon (selection, price, delivery), Facebook, and Uber. He contrasts this with e-commerce, where every new dollar requires equal or more work.

“It's this one theory, which is, does it have a positive flywheel? Which means the more people who use it and the longer it's around, does it become more and more valuable? There's something called the law of increasing returns. And so I want to be in a business that's like that.”

Steal thisPick businesses where each new user or merchant makes the product more valuable to everyone else, so momentum compounds instead of resetting.

Bitcoin hit $1T in 12 years vs 42 for Apple, 44 for Microsoft

Saylor argues Bitcoin is the most disruptive technology of our lifetime by citing how long it took companies to reach a trillion-dollar valuation: Google 22 years, Amazon 24, Apple 42, Microsoft 44 — and Bitcoin just 12.

“It took Google 22 years to get to a trillion. It took Amazon 24 years to get to a trillion. It took Apple 42 years to get to a trillion. It took Microsoft 44 years to get to a trillion. It took Bitcoin 12. It's a monetary fire.”

Shaan let TechCrunch overstate his exit at $25M

Shaan's company was acquired (by Twitch/Amazon) and TechCrunch published a $25M price that was actually a bit higher than the real number. When asked to confirm, Shaan declined to correct the inflated, lazily-reported figure rather than risk trouble disclosing the real terms.

“And they said we got bought for $25 million. And it was actually a little less than that. And so they reached out to Twitch or Amazon. Sean for comment and they were like, they don't comment. So they didn't say anything. And they asked me and I was like, hey, if you were lazy enough where you just printed this wrong number that's higher than the real number, I'm also not going to correct you.”

Sam wrote a #1 Amazon romance bestseller to prove a point

To expose how easy it was to game Amazon Kindle, Sam wrote a romance novel under a fake author name ('Captivating Claire'), bought fake Fiverr reviews, and hit #1 in the category for a few hours.

“So we wanted to become a bestselling author because I knew a guy who was writing books on how to sleep with women and he was not a ladies' man, but he was just plagiarizing people. And I did it because I actually thought that what he was doing was highly unethical and stupid and not right. But Amazon knew about it and they were gonna like let it fly. So I go, okay, we're gonna do something funny just to like prove our point. And so we wrote a bestselling book in the romance novel category. We gave it a fake woman's name, a fake name called Captivating Claire.”

Sam made $4-5K/month from Amazon affiliate links

Sam recalls earning roughly $4,000 to $5,000 a month from Amazon affiliate links on his blog before being banned multiple times for things he didn't think were against the rules.

“Yeah. I would make about 4 or 5 grand a month from it.”

Raisins and turds: diversifying junk Amazon FBA roll-ups

Andrew is skeptical of Amazon FBA roll-ups (like Thrasio) buying businesses at 1.5–2x earnings, arguing a diversified portfolio of moat-less businesses is still bad — invoking Munger: combine raisins with turds and you still have turds.

“I think Charlie Munger said, what is it? If you put raisins with turds, you've still got turds. It doesn't matter if you group together a bunch of shit, it's still shit. We've looked at tons of these businesses. They're They're sandcastles.”

Ben & Jerry's vs. Amazon: which kind of company are you building?

Sam relays Joel Spolsky's framework: decide if you're in the 'Amazon' camp (winner-take-all, get big fast, lots of capital, strong network effects) or the 'Ben & Jerry's' camp (crowded market, weak lock-in, little capital, break even quickly). The choice dictates every other decision.

“You have to decide, are you in the Ben Jerry's model or the Amazon model? And the Ben Jerry's model is basically— or the Amazon model is basically you have to get big fast because you're using some type of new competition or new technology where there's very little competition at first and the winner takes all type of market.”

Steal thisBefore building, decide if your market is winner-take-all (go big fast) or fragmented (stay lean and profitable).

Sketchfab: the category-leading marketplace for 3D-model stock

Shaan flags 3D objects as an underbuilt stock category and is trying to invest in Sketchfab, a marketplace where creators upload and sell rotatable 3D models. He claims Google and Amazon tried to compete and lost badly, with Sketchfab returning ~300 results to their near-zero for common searches.

“And like if you search for like common things like Tesla or a car on both of those engines, the Google one shows like zero results and the Sketchfab one shows like 300. Right? Like, they're just like dominating this market right now. And so I think there's, there's some niche things, there's some niche things that are for different types of stock items that are like not just photos and sounds, but I don't know, 3D objects is a good one.”

Amazon delivery franchisee with a 20-40 van fleet makes $1.5M-$4.5M revenue

Shaan describes Amazon Logistics' Delivery Service Partner program: a $10,000 startup cost, 1,300 franchisees employing 85,000 people, where a 20-40 van fleet operator does $1.5M to $4.5M in revenue depending on market.

“And so it's a $10,000 startup cost. He said they have 1,300 franchisees now that do this, that employs 85,000 people. A franchisee who's operating a 20-40 van fleet will be making between $1.5 million to $4.5 million in revenue, depending on their market, which is amazing.”

Amazon builds an empire; Shopify arms the rebels

Shaan relays Tobi Lutke's framing of Shopify's strategy versus Amazon: rather than become the one mega-shop, Shopify gives individual merchants the tools to run great independent stores. 'Amazon wants to build an empire; we want to arm the rebels.'

“You know, Amazon wants to build a giant empire, and at Shopify, we want to arm the rebels, which is basically like, you know, give, give each of the individual merchants the tools and abilities to sell and have great shops on their own rather than become the one big mega shop of the world.”

Sold Bebo for $850M, then bought it back for $1M at auction

Shaan recounts the wild arc: after AOL wrote Bebo off as a near-zero tax loss and it passed through bankruptcy, his team bought the brand, domain and email list back for $1M at auction, then later sold the company again to Twitch (Amazon).

“We go buy it back. We go buy it back for $1 million. And so we go to this crazy-ass auction I can talk about, but buy the, buy the company back for $1 million. So sold for $850, bought it back for $1 million. And then a couple years later, we now sold it again, uh, you know, to, uh, to Twitch.”

Luster.ai: a curation Chrome extension that recommends the best product and best price

Shaan describes his friend Stuart's pivot from Slant (a crowdsourced Wirecutter-style SEO site) to Luster.ai, a Chrome extension that overlays sites like Amazon to recommend the single best product worth buying and where to find it cheapest — a Honey-meets-Wirecutter curation layer.

“he similarly threw the whole thing away, pivoted to a Chrome extension that works on top of several sites. Like I use it on top of Amazon, for example, and it'll just say like, hey, you know, I'm looking for a TV. It'll be like, by the way, here's the best TV worth buying and here's where you can find it at the best price across other sites. So it's kind of Honey-esque, but it's really about the recommendation”

Productize 'Stripe Home': a branded new-tab homepage for every company

Shaan pitches turning the internal company-homepage that firms like Stripe (Stripe Home), Amazon (Phone Tool), and Clearbit built for themselves into an out-of-the-box, design-led product. Any engineer could enable a branded new-tab homepage bottoms-up, showing new hires, announcements, and org data — and he'd invest to get it built.

“anytime some, anytime you see several companies building the same in-house system, for themselves, that's something that you could export out and can be given to any company out of the box, uh, as an easy-to-use thing. And this is something that literally you just win on design.”

Steal thisWhen multiple companies build the same internal tool, productize it as an out-of-the-box offering and win on design.

Wait until your core is stable before expanding (the AWS timing rule)

Shaan argues that branching into a new line of business works when the core is already mature, using AWS as the model: Amazon only spun out its compute system ~10 years in, once it could throw hundreds of people at it. Do it too early and it becomes a distraction.

“Let's call AWS being the best example of this, where Amazon takes its own sort of server and compute system and services system and makes it available to any company. And now AWS brings in, you know, tens of billions of dollars a year. And so that's like the best case scenario. And then you have probably, you know, hundreds of thousands of other examples that you could come up with where somebody does this it doesn't take off, it becomes a distraction, etc., etc.”

Steal thisOnly spin out a new business unit once your core is stable enough to survive without your attention.

A 10-year B2B base of TRXers who never owned a strap

Because TRX was B2B for a decade, millions of devoted users only ever used it at the gym. When COVID shut gyms, that huge installed base suddenly rushed to Amazon and the website to buy for home — driving the explosive sales growth.

“But, what happened with the virus was when all the gym doors got shut, all of a sudden, all of those installed, that installed base of TRXers went, well, how the hell am I going to do my workouts? And so they turned to our Amazon site and our website. And that's been, I believe, the big source of the growth, the explosive growth.”

Anonymous pulse survey that predicts employee attrition

Shaan pitches software to solve the attrition-modeling problem at big companies: an anonymized lightweight pulse survey (like Amazon's) that lets employees safely flag if they're job-searching, mapping the percentage of engineers thinking about leaving to a real attrition forecast.

“if you could find a way to make it where employees would feel comfortable saying if they're thinking about searching, if they are job searching and they know it's totally anonymized and protected, but it helps the company figure out Oh shit, you have this many, this percentage of your engineers that are thinking about leaving the company.”

Steal thisBuild an anonymized pulse survey that surfaces flight-risk percentages and feeds an attrition forecast for HR planning.

A $3-5M Amazon seller pockets $500K-$1M a year

An insider FBA seller breaks down the economics: a typical $3-5M-revenue Amazon business nets the owner $500K to $1M a year, running on a small US team plus cheap labor in the Philippines, at 10-20% margins.

“the typical size is $3 to $5 million in revenue and they're probably pulling in $500,000 to $1 million a year for themselves.”

Amazon FBA is picking up pennies in front of a steamroller

Shaan relays Nassim Taleb's metaphor (via Andrew Wilkinson) for Amazon selling: high probability of steady small gains, low probability of total death when Amazon suspends your account or cuts your category's take rate.

“it's like picking up pennies in front of a steamroller. So, you know, there's a high probability you can make a little bit of money, you know, consistently, every single time you reach down, you pick it up. And then there's, you know, low probability of complete death.”

Steal thisTreat any platform-dependent business as a pennies-in-front-of-a-steamroller bet: keep diversifying off it before the steamroller hits.

Amazon halved Sam's affiliate rate overnight on a $3-5K/month income stream

Sam's old blogs passively earned $3-5K/month from Amazon affiliate links at 6-9%. Amazon cut the rates roughly in half with no warning. Minor for him, but the same change wiped out huge chunks of revenue for sites like Wirecutter and BuzzFeed.

“it makes just like small amounts of money, like $3,000 to $5,000 a month off Amazon affiliates. And I don't even check it. It just runs because I've just written a lot of content over the years. They changed their rate and someone told me in the group, I think that I forget what I was earning. I don't even check it. I think I was earning 6% to 9% for affiliate revenue and then they changed it to— they like halved it.”

Why Amazon FBA brands aren't durable or defensible

Shaan's core critique of the FBA roll-up model: these businesses lack a moat because competitors can easily clone products, you only win by ranking at the top, and Amazon itself enters categories with Amazon Basics brands.

“The but is Amazon FBA businesses are not durable or defensible. Now maybe I'm wrong. Maybe these guys have a contrarian point of view. That's correct. But the conventional wisdom here is It's very easy for a competitor to come in and compete with you. It's very hard to build any kind of moat because you're just hoping to be at the top of the rankings. On top of that, Amazon themselves is going into different categories and creating Amazon Basic Brands.”

Steal thisBefore buying a cash-flow business, stress-test its durability: can a competitor clone the product in days, and does the platform you depend on compete with you?

Anker: from a 4.5-star Amazon strategy to a billion-dollar brand

Sam tells the story of Anker, started in Shenzhen by an ex-Google employee. Their explicit goal was products that rest at a 4 to 4.5-star Amazon review, good but affordable, and they built a billion-dollar company before expanding beyond Amazon.

“And he goes, when we, when we started this business, our goal was to be at a— we would want to rest in the 4 to 4.5-star review on Amazon. So we wanted to have products that were pretty good but affordable. And they started making phone chargers and it's a billion-dollar company now. And they lived on Amazon for a long time and then have since built a brand beyond it.”

Steal thisTarget a deliberate 4 to 4.5-star review band: good enough to sell, cheap enough to win, then use the cash to build a brand beyond the platform.

Buy blue-chips on sale, keep dry powder

Shaan's takeaway from people who lived through dot-com and 2008: downturns start great startups and put assets on sale (stocks 50% off, real estate 30% off). He eyes Amazon, Facebook, and Google as blue-chips at a discount, while stressing you can't time the bottom—so having dry powder matters.

“But companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google, I think they are on sale. I think they're a discount. It's like, you know, get these blue chip companies 15% off, 20% off. It might get up to 30, 40% off. And those are opportunities for— because I asked a bunch of people, I said, hey, you know, you saw the dot-com boom and bust.”

Steal thisHold dry powder so you can buy blue-chip companies at 20-40% off during a crash, accepting you can't call the exact bottom.

Skincare FBA brand: $7K month one to $3M, targeting $6M

Tom Wang and his girlfriend launched a single face serum on Amazon in 2017. First month was $7K, first year $123K, then $1.7M, then $3M, with a $6M plan for the current year.

“We started with one product, which was a face serum that you put on your face. And we had no idea what we were doing. For the first month, we did like $7,000 in sales. And we're like, "Whoa, people are actually buying this product from us on Amazon. What is going on here?" We had no idea what we were doing. And from there, first year, we finished the year off at like $123,000 in sales. I was working a 9-to-5 job at that time. So I really, really wanted to quit my 9-to-5 so I could focus on Amazon. Then the second year we were able to scale that to $1.7 million. Then last year we did $3 million. This year if we don't sell our business, we have plans to do about $6 million.”

Amazon FBA brands sell for 2-6x EBITDA based on how branded they are

Tom Wang explains FBA businesses trade in a 2-6x EBITDA range: commoditized, unbranded products (rose gold balloons) fetch the low end, while a real branded product earns a premium. He's targeting at least 4x.

“The market value can go anywhere between roughly 2 to 6x. That's obviously a huge range. The ones that are on the lower end are just products on Amazon that are just like not branded. For example, like, like rose gold balloons or some random things like that, like very commoditized. But with our product that is branded, um, you can definitely get on a little bit higher end. So we're hoping to get at least a 4x of EBITDA.”

Steal thisBuild a real brand, not a commodity listing, to push your FBA exit multiple from 2x toward the 4-6x end.

Become a destination, get out of Google: how Amazon and Yelp diverged

Daniel Gross recounts that pre-Prime, 60-80% of Amazon's traffic came from Google, an existential risk; Amazon escaped by becoming a destination, while Yelp got killed when Google promoted Maps over it.

“we forget before Prime, before Prime, Amazon had this giant existential threat, which is I think 60 to 80% of its traffic came from Google. And this is what killed Yelp at the end of the day, because at some point Google was like, "Mm, we're gonna integrate into Maps and just promote Maps over Yelp."”

Steal thisDon't build a business that depends on Google traffic; race to become a destination people open directly.

Launch tactic: slash price to climb to the top of page 1

To get organic ranking on Amazon, Anderson cut his product's price heavily at launch to entice early buyers, which signaled the algorithm to move him up to the top of page 1 where the sales actually happen.

“So a lot of, a lot of times people will cut the price of their product pretty heavily, which will basically entice people to buy the product, and then it you get in the good graces of Amazon's algorithm, you start moving up to the top of page 1. So long as your, your product's good and your service is good, you can stick there.”

Steal thisLaunch below market price to buy early velocity and rank, then raise price once you hold page 1.

The two levers of Amazon's algorithm: reviews and price

Anderson's distilled view of ranking on Amazon: the two variables that matter most are reviews and competitive pricing. Good reviews plus a competitive price keeps you in the algorithm's good graces.

“To me, the two big variables are reviews and price. Like, if, if you have good reviews and you're priced competitively, like, you're gonna be in the good graces of the algorithm.”

Steal thisOptimize relentlessly for review quality and competitive price before chasing any other ranking tactic.

Target 20-25% margins on an FBA business

Anderson's rule of thumb for a healthy Amazon FBA margin is 20-25% of revenue, noting that rising PPC advertising costs have squeezed the high-margin opportunities that used to exist.

“So I, I would target about 25% is good, I would say. Right. Um, PPC costs, advertising costs have been creeping upwards. So I think like there's not a ton of like high sales spots anymore where you're going to be able to pull that margin. Um, but 20-25% is, is pretty realistic.”

Steal thisModel an FBA business at 20-25% net margin after PPC, not the fat margins of the early gold-rush days.

FBA businesses sell for ~3x EBITDA

Anderson sold his business at roughly a 3x EBITDA multiple, a low multiple relative to other businesses that reflects Amazon's platform risk. He notes the buyers could plausibly resell for 5x later.

“Yeah, so usually about a 3 multiple, uh, of what? Of EBITDA? Of EBITDA? Yep, 3 of EBITDA. So it's a lot, you know, relative to other businesses, it's a low multiple. But you're also— Amazon's a risky animal to be on.”

Build a niche AirPods-accessory FBA business riding Apple's growth curve

Shaan pitches owning a small slice of the booming AirPods-accessory market - replacement cases, aesthetic add-ons - via Amazon FBA, since once Apple killed the headphone jack everyone needs Bluetooth earbuds and the category is exploding.

“I think there's just like a lot of random niche things, but because this is a product that pretty much— once Apple removed the headphone jack, everybody needs Bluetooth headphones now. And so I just think being in that space, you could take a tiny piece and do quite well right now.”

Steal thisPick a fast-growing hardware product and own the #1 Amazon FBA listing for one accessory niche around it.

Amazon FBA businesses sell for just 1-2x earnings

Sam worked with a broker who'd sold ~500 companies and found Amazon-seller valuations were terrible: businesses doing $5M revenue and $1M profit were selling for around $800,000, roughly 1-2x earnings, because of platform-dependence risk.

“And so we sold, or he was is he was selling companies that were selling on Amazon for like 1 or 2 times earnings. So if a company made like $10 million in revenue, or let's say $5 million in revenue, $1 million in profit, they would sell for like $800,000.”

You don't need 100% of the market to beat Amazon at books

Helgesen argues you can compete with Amazon by targeting a niche; capturing just 0.1%-1% of the huge book market is enough. Better World wins value-conscious shoppers by being cheaper end-to-end and keeps more margin because it owns proprietary inventory sources.

“and that the way betterworldbooks.com competes is it doesn't have to take 100% of the book market. The book market's actually pretty huge. You know, it can be very happy with between 0.1% and 1% of the book market around the world.”

Steal thisAgainst a giant, pick a sliver of a massive market and win on a single dimension (price, value) instead of trying to take the whole thing.

The roll-up arbitrage: pool $200K businesses into a $2M one and double the multiple

Valley describes how private equity and search funders buy small 90%-Amazon businesses at 2-4x discretionary earnings, then pool them. A bundle doing $2M in SDE commands a much higher multiple (a 3x can jump to 6x) than the individual sub-$1M businesses did separately.

“And they're buying them at 2 to 4 times discretionary earnings. But when you pool them all together, you don't have a business doing $200,000 in discretionary earnings anymore. You've got a bigger business doing $2 million in discretionary earnings. And that 3x multiple might immediately jump to 6x multiple, or depending upon how defensible it really is, maybe even more. So they're buying them up low, and just by pulling them together, they're becoming much, much more valuable.”

Steal thisRoll up several small Amazon businesses bought at 2-4x SDE into one larger entity to re-rate the combined cash flow at a higher multiple.

The 30-year-old stay-at-home-dad CPA who built an Amazon brand from scratch

Valley's favorite listing of the year: a former CPA who left corporate at 30, built a 90%-plus Amazon brand growing 200% year over year while being a stay-at-home dad to his 2-year-old, his schoolteacher wife keeping her job, and outsourced his own bookkeeping despite being a CPA.

“left the corporate world as a CPA to become an entrepreneur and run a business online and built it from scratch while his wife, who was a schoolteacher, stayed employed. And not only that, he was the stay-at-home dad to his 2-year-old running this business. But the beautiful thing— and this goes back to financials and instilling confidence— he's a CPA, but he outsourced his bookkeeping to an e-commerce bookkeeping firm.”

The 30-year-old stay-at-home-dad CPA who built an Amazon brand from scratch

Valley's favorite listing of the year: a former CPA who left corporate at 30, built a 90%-plus Amazon brand growing 200% year over year while being a stay-at-home dad to his 2-year-old, his schoolteacher wife keeping her job, and outsourced his own bookkeeping despite being a CPA.

“left the corporate world as a CPA to become an entrepreneur and run a business online and built it from scratch while his wife, who was a schoolteacher, stayed employed. And not only that, he was the stay-at-home dad to his 2-year-old running this business. But the beautiful thing— and this goes back to financials and instilling confidence— he's a CPA, but he outsourced his bookkeeping to an e-commerce bookkeeping firm.”

Amazon paternity leave stops your stock from vesting

Shaan notes Amazon's policy: take official paternity leave and your stock stops vesting, so he used unlimited vacation time instead since most Amazon comp is equity.

“In fact, the actual policy's kind of messed up, which is that if you actually take official paternity leave, your stock stops vesting, which is like insane, especially cuz at Amazon, most of your compensation is stock.. So instead I just took vacation time and cuz they have an unlimited vacation policy and a limited paternity leave policy.”

He prototyped the first weighted blanket by sewing Amazon pellets into sheets

Rather than wait for manufacturing, Fiorentino bought weighted pellets on Amazon and sewed them between two sheets to make a 10-pound blanket and test the concept on himself.

“I basically went on Amazon, bought these weighted pellets, and then sewed them into two sheets, basically.”

Steal thisPrototype the product yourself with cheap materials before raising money or manufacturing.

Bebo sold for $850M to AOL, bought back for $1M, resold to Amazon

Shaan recaps Michael Birch's arc: Bebo sold to AOL for $850 million, then Birch and team bought it back for $1 million years later, then sold it again to Amazon.

“That company, Bebo, if you've ever heard that before, sold for $850 million to AOL. And when I met Michael, we got back together and we bought it back for $1 million. Years later. And then we actually sold that again just now to Amazon.”

No money, no plan, no technology — the 3 things that kill a company in excess

Alibaba's internal motto warned that an excess of money, plans, or technology will kill any company. Each becomes a crutch that erodes creativity, adaptability and customer focus.

“there are 3 things that will kill any company if in excess. So if you have an excess of any of these 3 things, it'll kill your company. Money, plans, and technology. That's not what I was expecting. So then he continued to explain that at Alibaba they had this internal motto. No money, no plan, no technology.”

Steal thisTreat abundant cash, rigid plans, and tech-for-tech's-sake as risks, not assets.

No money, no plan, no technology — the 3 things that kill a company in excess

Alibaba's internal motto warned that an excess of money, plans, or technology will kill any company. Each becomes a crutch that erodes creativity, adaptability and customer focus.

“there are 3 things that will kill any company if in excess. So if you have an excess of any of these 3 things, it'll kill your company. Money, plans, and technology. That's not what I was expecting. So then he continued to explain that at Alibaba they had this internal motto. No money, no plan, no technology.”

Steal thisTreat abundant cash, rigid plans, and tech-for-tech's-sake as risks, not assets.

Hot dog stand: $500 start, $1,000 days, $5,000 nights

Sam started Southern Sam's with $500, only enough for the first day's ingredients. Most days he made $100-$500 at ~50% margins, but working a concert all night could net $1,000-$5,000.

“I started it with $500. I was only able to afford the first day's ingredients and the first day it did okay, but it took me about a week to get a $1,000 day. With like 50% margins. Most days I would make between $100 and $500. If I would go and work all night or go to a concert, I could make $1,000 to $5,000 a night.”

If starting at 21 with no money: dropship arbitrage off Alibaba to Amazon

Asked what he'd do at 21 with no resources, Moiz Ali says start dropshipping: find a product on Alibaba, sell it for more in the US on Amazon, and arbitrage the difference to learn e-commerce with no capital at risk.

“if I had no resources, I would say start dropshipping something. Find something that on Alibaba that you can purchase and sell more in the United States on Amazon or some something else and arbitrage that difference. I've seen so many people do that and so many people do that well, and that's a great way to get your feet wet into e-commerce and understand what's going on without having any personal capital at risk.”

Steal thisStart with no-capital dropship arbitrage, buy on Alibaba, sell higher on Amazon, to learn e-commerce risk-free.