Story
Greg's teenage affiliate arbitrage: pay $1, earn $5 per install
As an 18-year-old in 2008, Greg Isenberg ran affiliate marketing for eHarmony, Match.com and Zynga, who paid $3-$6 per install. He built landing pages where it cost $1 to acquire a user worth $5 — and admits he invented the auto-playing video pop-under ad.
“Basically, I was doing deals with the eHarmonies, the Match.coms, and Zingas, who were like, they were willing to pay you $3, $4, $5, $6 for every install you generated for them. And back then, there was this arbitrage, I mean there's still arbitrage now, but there was this arbitrage where if you could create a landing page and cost you $1 to get someone to it, to install that game or get that lead to eHarmony, they would pay you $5.”
Framework
Build a rocket ship on the back of a rocket ship
Shaan cites VC Josh Elman's talk: platforms give you easy early growth, but you must build escape velocity to get off them before they change the rules. While exploiting a platform's advantages, you should equally be planning your escape, the way Zynga did off Facebook.
“hey, it's great when these platforms are around, you can go get some easy growth on top of them, but you gotta make sure you're building escape velocity to get off them quickly because you will not survive living off them.”
Steal thisExploit hot platforms for early growth but engineer escape velocity before they change the rules.
Story
How TinyCo won the Family Guy license by asking 'what more can we do?' daily
Competing against EA and Zynga for the Family Guy game license, Ali asked his BD lead every single day what more they could do. They wrote a memo on why EA was wrong, and pulled board member Marc Andreessen and Hollywood's Tom Rothman to vouch for them — winning the deal.
“So every day I would go to Andrew and say, what more can we do to get the deal done today? And he was like, there's no more. I have nothing. There's nothing we could come up with. And I was like, no, we need to come up with something more.”
Steal thisWhen chasing a make-or-break deal, ask 'what more can we do today?' relentlessly until the other side is afraid to say no.