Story
Kevin Ryan's pencil-and-paper studio: $300K and 6 months
Sam admires Kevin Ryan (early DoubleClick employee, ~$20M from the Google sale), who with partner Dwight writes out the math on paper, then funds a company with $300K and 6 months to show traction. Hits include MongoDB (~$21B), Business Insider, Zola, and Gilt.
“Then using that, him and this guy named Dwight would invest $300,000 and give a company 6 months to show traction. The outcome of their companies, there's a couple losers and a couple winners, probably a lot more losers than winners. But the first one is MongoDB. Which is currently publicly traded at a $21 billion valuation.”
Take
One podcast mention beats a paywalled Business Insider feature
Shaan's rolling-fund story got featured in Business Insider but produced almost no inbound. He estimates a single mention on the podcast will outperform the press hit 5-to-1 because the audience is engaged and there's no paywall.
“Um, although there was no real clear call to action or something like that. But yeah, I think I got 1 person reaching out being like, hey, I'd like to invest. Uh, so that's 1, um, which, you know I think this podcast will be 5 if I mention it on the podcast versus 1 in Business Insider.”
Steal thisStop chasing press hits behind paywalls; promote to your own engaged audience where there's a clear call to action.