My First Million
The best business ideas come from noticing what's working and doing it better, faster, or for a different audience.
Airport Business Model for Social Networks
Social networks function like airports - they control a captive audience that congregates predictably, allowing you to sell them diverse products and services beyond the core offering.
Decision Rule
When evaluating social networks or community businesses, focus on audience captivity and engagement patterns rather than just user count.
How It Works
Once people gather in your digital space regularly, you can monetize through multiple channels - books, courses, products, services - as long as you maintain community happiness.
Failure Modes
Over-monetizing and destroying community trust
Focusing on audience size over engagement quality
Neglecting the core community experience while pursuing monetization
Trying to monetize too early before establishing strong community
Example Decision
“When evaluating Letterboxd acquisition, Andrew saw 10M engaged film enthusiasts as an 'airport' where he could sell film-related products, courses, and experiences beyond just the core movie tracking functionality.”
Related Knowledge
Structure matters more than price in business deals
Focus on creative deal structures rather than just negotiating lower prices when acquiring businesses
B2B influencer marketing works as well as consumer influencer marketing
Business influencers can command similar premiums and drive similar results as consumer influencers in their respective
Audience-Accelerated Business Acquisition
Investment strategy where you buy existing profitable businesses and use your audience/influence to dramatically accelerate their growth rather than starting from scratch.
Influencer-Business Synergy Multiplier
Strategic combination where a mediocre-to-good business paired with the right influencer creates exponentially greater value than the sum of parts.
CEO Management Error Classification
Framework for determining when to intervene with hired CEOs by classifying potential errors as either fatal (business-ending) or non-fatal (learning opportunities).
Scale local service business from $13M to $140M revenue
10x revenue growth while maintaining service quality and building systematic training programs