Sep 17, 2021 · 44m · my-first-million
12 Startups Where Stock Grants Can Make You a Millionaire | My First Million #220
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of My First Million, hosts Sam Parr and Sean Puri unveil 'Sarah’s List,' a curated collection of 12 mid-to-late stage tech startups where non-technical operators can achieve life-changing wealth through calculated equity grants without taking founder risk.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 99.1% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 6.8 Guest teaching 1.7 Guest disagreement 1.3 The hosts pushing back 1.7
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 38:05 Challenging OpenStore's qualification for the list
Sam actively rejects Shaan's nomination of OpenStore, arguing that because it launched less than a year ago, it is far too early-stage and volatile to meet the cushy, de-risked criteria of Sarah's List.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 38:05 Holding the line on risk parametersSam firmly pushes back against adding an unproven startup to their recommended list, prompting Shaan to concede that OpenStore belongs 'in the on deck circle' rather than the final roster.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 13:29 Shaan educates Sam on decentralized exchangesShaan methodically walks Sam through how Uniswap executes billions in weekly volume with only 35 employees by replacing centralized order books with peer-to-peer liquidity pools.
The host holds their own ▶ 30:26 Sam corrects the Adobe valuation baselineWhen Shaan understates Adobe's market cap at $150B, Sam looks up the actual figure of $315B, proving that Figma has significantly more enterprise market cap to capture.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Origin of Sarah's List: Low-Risk Startup Wealth Strategy | 6 | 1 | 2 | 2 | Sam introduces the thesis behind 'Sarah's List,' explaining how joining a late-stage unicorn can yield multi-million dollar upside with minimal startup risk. Shaan reframes the strategy as the ultimate low-effort career hack while Sam playfully clarifies valuation and headcount figures. | |
| Candidate 1: Flexport and Global Freight Logistics Modernization | 7 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Shaan breaks down Flexport's freight forwarding software model, funding rounds, and competitive moat in global logistics. Sam corroborates with personal anecdotes about founder Ryan Petersen. | |
| Candidate 2: Zapier and Bootstrapped API Workflow Automation | 7 | 1 | 1 | 2 | Sam pitches Zapier, detailing its capital efficiency, ARR growth, and similarities to Atlassian's compounding trajectory. Shaan probes the valuation math before enthusiastically greenlighting the pick. | |
| Candidate 3: Uniswap and Decentralized Finance Scalability | 8 | 6 | 1 | 3 | Shaan educates Sam on Uniswap's decentralized protocol, contrasting its tiny headcount and automated liquidity pools with Coinbase's overhead. Sam asks probing questions to understand token economics and hiring suitability. | |
| Candidate 4: Anduril Industries and Modern Defense Contracting | 7 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Sam introduces Anduril Industries and Palmer Luckey, discussing how hardware-software integration targets the massive US defense budget. Shaan reinforces the analysis with specific product details like the Sentry Tower. | |
| Candidate 5: Replit and Collaborative Multiplayer Software Development | 8 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Shaan outlines his investment thesis in Replit, walking through the browser-based development environment and social multiplayer coding dynamics. Sam readily approves the pick and checks accessibility for non-technical roles. | |
| Candidate 6: Airtable and Next-Gen Collaborative Databases | 6 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Sam nominates Airtable as an entrenched Excel alternative with sticky enterprise workflows. Shaan validates the pick with an anecdote about attempting to recruit founder Howie Liu for dinner. | |
| Candidate 7: Figma and Challenging Adobe's Market Dominance | 7 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Shaan introduces Figma, drawing parallels to Photoshop's unbundling, while Sam looks up Adobe's actual $315B market cap to demonstrate the massive headroom available. | |
| Candidate 8: Rippling and Unified Employee Management Infrastructure | 7 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Sam highlights Rippling's unified IT and payroll platform along with Parker Conrad's second-time founder redemption arc. Shaan identifies Rippling as potentially the highest-multiple candidate on the entire list. | |
| Candidates 9 and 10: OpenStore and Wholesale Platform Faire | 6 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Shaan pitches OpenStore, but Sam pushes back, arguing it is too nascent and high-risk to fit the core criteria of Sarah's List. They agree to place it 'on deck' and transition into discussing wholesale platform Faire. | |
| Candidate 11: NexHealth and Universal Healthcare API Infrastructure | 7 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Sam shares his angel investment NexHealth and its medical record API integration. Shaan counters with OneTrust, making the bull case for enterprise privacy compliance software. | |
| Conclusion and Launching a Curated Venture Job Board | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | The hosts conclude the brainstorm, with Shaan revealing his plans to launch a curated venture job board on Pallet restricted to these high-upside companies. |
Statements from this episode (23)
Parr: Well-resourced startups offer competitive pay plus 5x to 15x upside
“The idea here is that we made a list of companies that are cushier than like a 20 person startup, but still have wonderful upsides. So you can make a very competitive salary, have wonderful benefits, and there's like a five, 10, 15 x upside.”
Puri: SoftBank Invested $1B in Flexport at $3.2B Valuation
“Flexport's currently valued last public valuation was about three billion dollars. The SoftBank put in a billion dollars at a three point 3.2 billion dollar valuation. It's got about 2500 employees.”
Puri: VCs prefer founders aiming for zero or a $100B valuation
“Why would I say my company's either going to be worth zero or a hundred billion? It's like, well, that's exactly what a VC wants because that's how their economics work.”
Parr: Zapier bootstrapped to $60M-$70M in recurring revenue
“They bootstrapped it to like 60 or seventy million dollars in recurring revenue, and they did it very quickly.”
Parr: Zapier raised funding at a $5B valuation from Sequoia
“They recently raised a little bit of funding at a five billion dollar valuation by, I believe, Sequoia.”
Parr: Zapier pays Chicago market salaries, not San Francisco rates
“They've been remote from day one. They own, they pay against Chicago market salaries. So they don't pay San Francisco salaries.”
Parr: Zapier can reach a $50B valuation within five years
“Can it be worth 50? Yeah, definitely. Keep in mind, we're talking about like five years from today.”
Puri: Uniswap's market cap exceeds three major global banks combined
“It is it's bigger than Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse and State Street all combined.”
Puri: Uniswap processes $10B weekly with fewer than 35 employees
“What if I told you that this company is doing ten billion a week in trading volume? And what if I told you it was doing that with less than 35 employees? What if I told you that it took Coinbase eight years and a thousand employees to get to a billion dollars …”
Puri: Uniswap reached Coinbase-level scale on only $11M in funding
“So I think they've only raised eleven million dollars to date, and they've reached basically the same scale as Coinbase on eleven million dollars.”
Parr: Anduril will reach a $20B to $50B valuation within five years
“Can this company be worth 20, 40, fifty billion in five years? 100%. It definitely can. It definitely can.”
Puri: Replit is valued just under $1 billion
“Companies value just under a billion dollars right now.”
Puri: Replit is outpacing GitHub's early growth trajectory
“They do this side by side comparison, like, here's our growth compared to GitHub's growth from your zero, your one, your two, your three, your four, and they're like outpacing GitHub's growth.”
Airtable raised funding at a $5.7B valuation in 2021
“Since 21, they raised money at a 5.7 billion dollar valuation.”
Puri: SaaS startups compete with Microsoft Excel, not rival software
“Every SAS company, you actually compete with Excel. You don't compete with other SAS companies. You compete with Excel because people just use Excel for everything.”
Puri: The best competitor to Excel will reach a $20B-$30B valuation
“The best threat to Excel is going to end up being worth, you know, 2030, pretty, I think there's a pretty good chance of that.”
Sam Parr: Figma raised $200M at a $10B valuation in July 2021
“So in July of 2021, they raised two hundred million dollars at a ten billion dollar valuation”
Sean Puri: Figma's growth over five years will beat Adobe's past growth
“Figma's growth rate should be in the next five years much faster than Adobe's was in the last five. And so I think there's a fairly good chance of that.”
Puri: Rippling is the top candidate to 30x to 50x in valuation
“And so I think rippling is one that if you told me this, 30 to 50 X's, I'd say of the things we've said on this list, that might be the number one candidate so far.”
Puri: OpenStore has a very good shot of reaching a $1B valuation
“With this guy's track record, Square, Opendoor with Jack Abraham's track record, there's a very good shot that this ends up being, being worth more, more than a billion dollars.”
Puri: Thrasio will go public at a $10B valuation
“They're going to go public at a ten billion dollar valuation.”