My First Million

The best business ideas come from noticing what's working and doing it better, faster, or for a different audience.

Pre-Fall vs Post-Fall Assessment

People are either pre-fall (haven't been truly humbled by life) or post-fall (have experienced deep adversity that fundamentally changed them)

When evaluating partners or employees, assess whether they've been through genuine hardship that tested their character and resilience

Major adversity reveals true character and builds resilience - people who've never faced real hardship may crack under pressure in spectacular ways

Assuming success means someone is post-fall

Underestimating pre-fall people who haven't faced adversity yet

Overvaluing suffering without growth

“Choose the co-founder who built a failed startup and lost everything over the one with only academic and professional success”

Audiences are massively underpriced relative to their value creation potential

Huge opportunity to partner with content creators on equity-based businesses

Audience Co-Founder Framework

Partner with content creators who have audiences by building or buying the perfect business for their audience, giving t

Regulatory Compliance Arbitrage

Build businesses around government-mandated compliance requirements where non-compliance leads to jail time or massive f

The Boy vs The Guy Framework

Young ambitious person works directly for successful entrepreneur for 2-3 years as protégé/chief of staff, getting mento

Launch a business using content creator's audience as unfair distribution advantage

Nine-figure exit where creator makes more from equity than they ever made from sponsorships

Acquire venture-backed companies with broken cap tables at discounted prices

Good business making $10M revenue growing 30% annually but founder and VCs both happy to exit due to misaligned incentiv