May 13, 2021 · 1h 8m · my-first-million
How Virtual Horses are Making Millions & A Potential 9-Figure Company | My First Million #181
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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, Sam Parr and Sean Puri break down lucrative startup opportunities in direct-to-consumer health, crypto gaming, and creator marketplaces while sharing strategic frameworks for defensibility and podcast growth.
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 98.7% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 5.6 Guest teaching 3.2 Guest disagreement 1.1 The hosts pushing back 2.1
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 2:25 Brady critiques the hosts' energy
Producer Brady gives the episode a grade of B and directly challenges Sam for bringing sluggish energy to the recording.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 44:53 Sam challenges Polymarket payout calculationsSam pushes back against Shaan's claim of a 6% return on the Mayweather bet, demonstrating that larger order size creates market slippage.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 10:20 Shaan reveals testosterone delivery perceptionsShaan educates Sam on Peak's customer data, revealing that while cream is medically more effective, users overwhelmingly prefer shots due to perceived efficacy.
The host holds their own ▶ 34:09 Sam breaks down unbundling FiverrSam demonstrates strong domain expertise by detailing how to scrape Fiverr's public investor reports to identify and build standalone marketplace businesses.
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 Agenda, Newsletter, and Upcoming Tour | 2 | 3 | 3 | 2 | The segment serves as an informal meta-intro where producer Brady grades the hosts' episode quality as a B and calls out Sam for bringing low energy. Sam and Shaan take the mild critique lightly and admit to feeling sluggish. | |
| Peak and the Booming Men's Testosterone Market | 6 | 5 | 1 | 2 | Sam and Shaan discuss their investments in Peak, a TRT subscription business. Both demonstrate solid market understanding regarding telehealth regulation, operational execution, and cultural normalization driven by figures like Joe Rogan. | |
| Zed Run and Virtual Horse Racing Speculation | 6 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Shaan breaks down the mechanics and drop numbers of Zed Run digital horse racing NFTs while Sam shares his attempt to invest in the company. Both agree that the business is riding a speculative hype cycle similar to Top Shot and BitClout. | |
| Positive Flywheels and the Law of Increasing Returns | 7 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Shaan outlines the law of increasing returns and positive flywheels using examples like Amazon, Facebook, and Uber. Sam contributes by reflecting on his past tendency to rely on brute force rather than compound defensibility. | |
| B-Roll.io: Scaling UGC Video Ads for E-Commerce | 7 | 3 | 1 | 3 | Shaan pitches the potential of B-roll.io for user-generated e-commerce ad creative, comparing it to UserTesting. Sam counters with his own strategy of analyzing Fiverr's public filings to unbundle high-margin creative niches. | |
| Polymarket and Decentralized Prediction Betting | 6 | 4 | 1 | 3 | Shaan explains how Polymarket enables decentralized prediction markets on Ethereum. Sam tests the math on betting odds and pushes back on slippage and payout expectations for large-ticket wagers. | |
| Brainstorming Upcoming 'How-To' Episode Topics | 5 | 2 | 0 | 1 | The hosts collaborate smoothly on brainstorming upcoming 'how-to' content, proposing tactical breakdowns on entrepreneurship within large corporations and managing personal operational teams. | |
| Live Tour Meetup Plans: Austin and Miami | 4 | 1 | 1 | 2 | Sam and Shaan organize logistics for live tour meetups in Austin and Miami, debating optimal crowd size and venue formats in a lighthearted, collaborative tone. | |
| Growth Metrics and the Philosophy of Persistence | 7 | 4 | 1 | 2 | The hosts review podcast download figures, distribution strategies via niche podcast players and email summaries, and conclude with Ben Horowitz's lead bullets philosophy on compounding consistency. |
Statements from this episode (15)
Parr: Operational excellence is a commodity risk solved by hiring top operators
“The third risk is operational excellence. Are you competent enough to pull this off? And that's the risk that they have. And I actually think that's a pretty easy risk. Cause that's a commodity. I mean, there, there's there, if you overpay a handful of Uber em…”
Puri: Peak will reach $100M in sales within three years
“I think there'll be I think there'll be at a hundred million in sales in the next three years. That's my prediction, my bet.”
Zed Run sold $18M in digital horses in a single drop
“So they did a drop and it was eighteen million in digital horse sales. So they sold eighteen million dollars of Digital horses to 2400 buyers. The top spender paid about 800,000 dollars and the top hundred spenders spent 8.3 million dollars.”
Parr tried to invest in Zed Run but was rejected
“And I contacted the founders of Zed, and I got them on the phone, and I spent like an hour talking to them, and they're raising money, and I was like, I'm in. They're gonna let me invest. And they took a week, and they said, no, we don't have either. It was a …”
Puri: Zed Run will peak and fade within 400 days
“My personal opinion is that this is going to have a hype cycle and the prices are going to go up. It's going to be like, oh my God, there's, you know, this company has done 303 hundred million dollars of digital horse sales. And then, you know, 400 days from n…”
Puri: Products built primarily on speculation struggle to sustain longevity
“The trick is, when the primary value is speculation, Then it's hard for something to sustain.”
Puri: E-commerce lacks compounding flywheels as customer acquisition gets more expensive
“E-commerce doesn't ever get this law of increasing returns. I don't think so at least, or it's minimal at best, which is that, you know, if you're at one million dollars in e-commerce sales, getting to two million you know, you're gonna have to do more work. Y…”
Puri predicts UserTesting will IPO within 12 to 24 months
“User testing has become a very large company, hundreds of millions in revenue, and will go public, you know, probably in the next 12 to 24 months is my guess.”
Puri: Raw UGC video ads outperform polished studio ads on social feeds
“That ad will kick ass compared to the studio photographer official
high quality you know, professionally done.”
Puri: B-Roll.io could easily become a nine-figure business
“I think that this could easily be, you know, nine figure business.”
Puri bought one million Dogecoin at three cents and scaled out
“I bought a million Doge at three cents. And so that would be, you know, I would have made, I don't know, like Half a million to a million dollars or something like that if I just held the whole thing, but I sold at eight, I sold at 15, I sold at 30, I sold at,…”
Puri achieved outsized returns at Twitch by avoiding the rat race
“So I've done a couple things since joining Twitch that I think allowed me to, I just like didn't do the rat race. And instead I made, I did, I just put a little effort into these like four or five other things that nobody else in the company does. And because …”
Parr: My First Million hit 520,000 monthly downloads in May 2021
“March, March, we did 338,000 downloads in April. We did 436,000 downloads. So that's a 30% gain about in May. It's tracking towards around 520,000, which is another 20 20% increase.”