Idea
Teach kids blue-collar lead gen instead of doing the work
Shaan's teenage side-hustle: instead of mowing lawns, kids go door-to-door offering free pest-control or pool-fencing inspections, collect warm leads with contact details, and sell those qualified leads to local service providers. The lesson: value capture is in getting the customer, not doing the labor.
“And basically I would sell those leads to a local pest control company. And I think you can make good money doing that just around your neighborhood and other neighborhoods. Um, and you would learn that, hey, you know, where is the value capture? The value capture is in getting the customer, not in actually going and looking under the floorboards for cockroaches.”
Steal thisGo door-to-door, collect warm inspection leads with contact info, and sell them to local pest/painting/fencing services.
Story
Yellow notepad to $20M: the CalFinder lead-gen origin
Sam tells how his friend Gabriel started CalFinder by walking door-to-door with a yellow notepad collecting 100 homeowners interested in painting, then sold that list for $10,000 to paint companies. He repeated it and eventually built a proper lead-gen company doing $20M a year.
“The way it started is he bought a yellow notepad and he went door to door to find people who would be interested in having their home painted. He collected a list of 100 names in the first day, and then he sold that for $10,000 to a variety of different, like, different paint companies. And he did that a couple more times, and then he eventually created a proper company that made $20 million a year in sales.”
Framework
How apartment lead-gen arbitrage actually works
Sam explains the lead-gen middleman model behind sites like Zumper: apartment buildings pay portals ~$100 per call/lease, so a startup offers to sell them qualified email leads at ~$10 each, building a cheaper acquisition funnel and pocketing the spread.
“Will you give us $10 per email we give you of people who are qualified leads? So what Zumper did, I imagine they did this when they launched, and I'll explain why I say when they launched is what they did was they go to these places and they go, all right, give us a cut of the revenue per email. And so the math works out that if we send you 5 emails, Basically people who said, here's my email address, here's my phone number, I'm interested in a 2-bedroom at this particular building. Apartments will be like, all right, we'll give you $10 for that because we're pretty confident that for every 5 of these we collect, one of them will become a lead.”
Steal thisFind a category where buyers already pay big per closed lead, then sell them cheaper qualified leads and keep the spread.
Framework
The lead-gen grid: market size x cost-per-lead x low competition
Sam's playbook for picking a lead-gen niche: score opportunities on a grid of largest total market size, highest possible cost per lead, and least competition. You can stand one up cheaply in a month and start generating cash the next day.
“The best way I think to figure out how to do this is you figure out what has the largest total market size. With also the largest possible cost per lead, with also the least amount of competition.”
Steal thisPick a lead-gen niche by gridding total market size against cost-per-lead against competition, and chase the boring high-value corner.
Idea
Lead gen for senior living: $1,000+ per qualified lead
Shaan pitches lead gen for senior-living facilities, where his father-in-law operates. Because residents pay ~$8,000/month and stay until end of life, the lifetime value is huge, so facilities will pay around $1,000 per qualified lead.
“somebody who goes into a senior, senior facility, they're paying $8,000 per month and they're usually there till end of life. And so you get, you know, the very high lifetime value of that customer. So you're willing to pay $1,000 per qualified lead who's looking in your area.”
Steal thisTarget lead gen at high-LTV, low-occupancy-sensitive businesses like senior living where a single lead can be worth ~$1,000.
Number
A local home-services lead-gen business doing $60-70M a year
Sam cites firsthand knowledge of lead-gen operators, including one running local home-services lead gen at roughly $60-70 million a year in sales, and a senior-living one making hundreds of thousands a month.
$65M
Annual sales · USD/year
“I know a guy who did it for local home services and did about $60 to $70 million a year in sales.”
Number
A local home-services lead-gen business doing $60-70M a year
Sam cites firsthand knowledge of lead-gen operators, including one running local home-services lead gen at roughly $60-70 million a year in sales, and a senior-living one making hundreds of thousands a month.
$65M
Annual sales · USD/year
“I know a guy who did it for local home services and did about $60 to $70 million a year in sales.”
Idea
ApplyBoard: charge colleges $1k-3k per admitted international student
Shaan describes his friend Martin's ApplyBoard, which signs up no-name colleges desperate for applicants to pay $1,000-3,000 per admitted student, then runs lead gen on the huge pool of international students wanting to study in the US.
“they were like, hey, we will pay you $1,000 per admitted student. $3,000 per admitted student. So he was getting 3 grand per admission in contract with all these different schools, and then he just had to do lead gen on the other side for students who want to go to school in America, which is actually a big market of people who are searching for it.”
Steal thisMatch a high-paying buyer (colleges starved for applicants) with an underserved searcher pool (international students) and bridge them with lead gen.
Number
Credit Karma sold for $8 billion as a lead-gen play
Sam frames Credit Karma as the giant version of lead gen: hook users with a free credit report, recommend credit cards, and collect ~$100 per card affiliate. It just sold for $8 billion, and he bets it does around a billion in sales.
$8000M
Acquisition price · USD
“Credit Karma, I don't know what they do in revenue, but they just sold for $8 billion. I bet they did 1, I bet they did a billion in sales. And what their hook was, we're gonna get you to sign up for a report, a free credit report, and we're gonna recommend credit cards for you to use, and they'll make $100 per credit card affiliate we get, they get.”