Jul 9, 2021 · 1h 3m · my-first-million
How to Build a Unicorn Around the NCAA Reg Changes | My First Million #198
0:00 / 0:00
▶ Watch on YouTube →
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, Sam Parr and Sean Puri break down lucrative startup opportunities created by the NCAA NIL regulatory shift, detail the 'Arm the Rebels' SaaS framework, and share tactical playbooks for product onboarding and growth psychology.
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 99.5% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 6.9 Guest teaching 4.5 Guest disagreement 1.3 The hosts pushing back 1.6
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 43:00 Sam challenges Shaan's default optimism on small toys
Sam pushes back on Shaan's Zapier for sound idea, questioning why he defaults to believing seemingly silly toys can grow into giant companies.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 49:45 Shaan pushes back on Sam's dismissal of layawayWhen Sam claims layaway no longer exists, Shaan firmly pushes back, arguing that layaway remains a massive economic mechanism in lower-end retail like Walmart.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 34:00 Shaan explains Nira's true value propositionShaan corrects Sam's perception of Nira as merely a company document search engine, explaining that the true valuable business is cloud permissions and data security.
The host holds their own ▶ 22:30 Shaan articulates the enterprise compliance SaaS playShaan demonstrates deep market knowledge by citing OneTrust's $200M ARR GDPR compliance model to outline a back-office compliance solution for NCAA athletic departments.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Episode Preview: Software Ideas and Regulatory Opportunities | 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Sam shares a personal road trip anecdote about losing his key fobs in Tennessee and attempting to negotiate private flights, while Shaan connects it to entrepreneurial problem-solving and hotel booking tactics. | |
| Road Trip Observations on American Fast Food and Nutrition | 6 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Sam observes widespread fast food consumption across middle America, leading Shaan to analyze healthy vending machine startups like Daily Blends and institutional distribution via hospitals. | |
| Post-Pandemic Consumer Spending Boom and Economic Optimism | 7 | 5 | 1 | 2 | The hosts discuss post-pandemic consumer spending tailwinds before diving deep into the NCAA NIL regulatory changes, citing Drew Hanlon's Pure Sweat business and Cameo/Barstool monetization. | |
| Regulatory Inflections: Compliance Software and NCAA Infrastructure | 8 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Shaan details regulatory inflection plays such as OneTrust for GDPR and pitching a back-office compliance and reporting tool for university athletic departments, which Sam endorses as a top-tier concept. | |
| Stan App, Thomas Edison, and the Anatomy of Historical Inflections | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Sam uses historical anecdotes about Thomas Edison creating electrical infrastructure and inventing the greeting 'hello' to illustrate how technological inflections require proactive platform creation. | |
| Staying in the Game: Capitalizing on Platform and Regulatory Shifts | 7 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Shaan and Sam review startup founder stories (Jesse Pujji, Suli) who pivoted into massive platform shifts like Facebook Apps and Google AdWords simply by already being actively 'in the game.' | |
| Nira: Enterprise Cloud Document Security and SaaS Patience | 7 | 5 | 2 | 2 | Sam introduces Hiten Shah's Nira.com, with Shaan clarifying that its pivot moved from document search to enterprise document security and permissions management across distributed cloud apps. | |
| Startup Concept: Zapier for Sound and Workplace Celebrations | 7 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Shaan presents the concept of 'Zapier for Sound,' triggering customized office or remote celebration sounds and milestone thresholds when company events occur. | |
| Defaulting to Optimism: Why Seemingly Silly Toys Become Giants | 7 | 5 | 2 | 3 | Sam questions why Shaan defaults to optimism regarding toy-like ideas, prompting Shaan to explain that most giant tech companies start with narrow wedges that expand with user demand. | |
| Stake.rent, Layaway Mechanics, and Real Estate Loyalty Systems | 7 | 5 | 2 | 2 | Sam discusses Stake.rent and tenant cash-back loyalty models, while Shaan compares the behavioral economics to layaway retail mechanics and Rhino security deposit insurance. | |
| Smile.io and White-Labeling Big Enterprise Tech for SMBs | 8 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Shaan explores Smile.io and Joe Coffee, highlighting the powerful business model of white-labeling enterprise-grade customer loyalty and mobile ordering technology for independent retailers. | |
| The Product 'Aha Moment' and Creating Habitual Power Users | 8 | 4 | 1 | 2 | The hosts debate product 'aha moments' and power user indoctrination (Facebook's 7 friends in 10 days, The Hustle's onboarding), closing with Slice's pizza ordering playbook. |
Statements from this episode (20)
Parr: Private jet charter prices are negotiable like small businesses
“You think like private airlines, like there's no room to haggle, but it's like, they're just like small businesses. And so they get me a quote, and that ended up falling through. But I realized that you could They're like, ah, you know, like they actually got …”
Parr: Office water dispenser company Bevi is worth one billion dollars
“It's like a billion dollar company.”
Puri: Healthy vending machines can win via hospital and airport placements
“If you just take hospitals, And airports and things like that. Like they kind of, they're in sort of incented to have like another option and a kind of a better option, even just from optics point of view. And so I think you could do pretty well just by gettin…”
Parr: NCAA NIL rule changes will spawn niche athlete workout apps
“So what I think would, what I think is an easy opportunity is you're going to see loads of little pure sweats, which is like a really simple app that just has basketball workouts that you pay a hundred or 200 dollars a month or a year for. I have to imagine yo…”
Puri: Top college athletes will partner with Barstool for NIL deals
“The best athletes are going to want to work with Barstool just because of their reputation.”
Parr: Regulatory and Political Inflections Spark Massive New Businesses
“This is a perfect example of a regulation slash political inflection. And that, that big businesses are built in times like this.”
Puri: OneTrust reached $200M ARR as the decade's fastest-growing SaaS
“So, I think OneTrust is, like, Over two hundred million in annual recurring revenue. It's probably the fastest growing enterprise SaaS company in the last 10 years.”
Puri: UnitedHealth stock outperformed Amazon and Google after Obamacare passed
“Oh, you know, like, as the, as Obamacare kicked in, the stock price went from, like, 24 dollars a share to 400 dollars a share now. And so you know, that was a better investment than Amazon, Google, Netflix, whatever, during the same period of time because the…”
Puri: NCAA NIL Back-Office Reporting Software Will Become Incredibly Valuable
“And so somebody who builds that back office sort of reporting tool, that underlying infrastructure layer that's going to become incredibly valuable. A way to think about that is like Carta or AngelList, like these underlying platforms that sit underneath the e…”
Sam Parr: Clubhouse Likely Will Not Pan Out
“Clubhouse likely won't pan out, but that was definitely an opportunity to have one.”
Parr: Zapier reached a billion-dollar valuation on only $1M in funding
“There is a million dollars in funding and use that million dollars in funding to get to a billion dollar status.”
Puri: 'Zapier for sounds' could reach $100M in revenue
“I think there's a very simple company to build here. That's Zapier for sounds. That could be a SaaS company that, you know, I think it could do a few million dollars a year, but maybe it's more like Zapier. Maybe this is a bigger problem than I would have othe…”
Parr: Stake.rent founder created American Express's original rewards program
“So there's this guy, I don't even know his name. I barely talked to him, but he created the rewards program for Amex and a couple other airlines.”
Puri: Find SaaS ideas by white-labeling custom enterprise retail software
“If I wanted to think of other ideas like this, I would just go look at what do the top retailers, like I would go to Starbucks, I go to Lululemon, I would go to, you know, whoever, Macy's, Nordstrom, and I would walk around, I would use their online shop, and …”
Puri: Facebook's 'Aha Moment' Was Getting 7 Friends in 10 Days
“What they found was seven friends in 10 days was the aha moment. So once you saw seven different friends on your feed, and if you could do that within 10 days, you were like super, super sticky.”
Parr: Hustle subscribers who opened five early emails retained long-term
“So at the hustle, we found, I don't remember the numbers off the top of my head, but we found like, if you open five out of seven days right off in the first seven, five times the first seven, you're going to be with us and we're going to call you a gold perso…”
Parr: Users Completing Onboarding Flow Are 3-4x More Engaged
“And what we're seeing is that the people who fill that information in, and it's like a relatively long flow, they are Like, three or four times more engaged than other people.”
Parr: High-friction onboarding actively creates power users rather than filtering them
“Because you are there going through this little small indoctrination process. They are now becoming power users. It's like, what do you, are you confident? Therefore, you're going to flex your muscles? Or do you flex your muscles and then feel like you are con…”
Sam Parr: Never build custom software internally when off-the-shelf solutions exist
“A lot of people who have been there, done that will say the exact opposite, which is never build anything if you don't have to always use off the shelf, right? I fall into that category. Yeah. And I wish I wish a lot of this stuff had existed. I'd rather pay a…”
Puri: Slice reached a $1B valuation arming independent pizzerias against Domino's
“And what slice did was slice went to every indie poppy indie pizza shop. It basically gave them an app that was the Domino's mobile ordering experience and said, Hey, now you can compete against that. So let's just compete on the basis of whose pizza is the be…”