Mar 3, 2021 · 57m · my-first-million
MFM #157: Instagram Food Drops Making $200k/Week, Chrome Extensions That're Crushing & Open Salaries
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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, Shaan Puri and Sam Parr break down lucrative business opportunities across direct-to-consumer viral food drops, niche Google Workspace plugins, pay transparency platforms, and enterprise data businesses. They also discuss podcast production upgrades, the realities of corporate life post-acquisition, and high-margin agricultural media ventures.
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 99.6% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 6.3 Guest teaching 2.8 Guest disagreement 1.5 The hosts pushing back 1.8
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 34:13 Pushing back on the virtues of open salary transparency
Sam interrupts the praise of open salaries to present a counterpoint, highlighting how public salary disclosures create operational drag as companies scale.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 36:12 Nuancing the Buffer model versus anonymous data poolsShaan counters Sam's objection by differentiating between named public lists like Buffer and anonymous aggregated salary data like Google internal sheets.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 5:25 Breaking down 10M dollar Instagram cookie drop economicsShaan educates Sam on direct-to-consumer Instagram food brands that sell out weekly drops in seconds, pulling in multi-million dollar annual run rates without storefronts.
The host holds their own ▶ 13:28 Deconstructing the six archetypes of viral food marketingSam draws on years of studying content dynamics to systematically categorize the exact formulas that turn quirky food items into viral sensations.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pitching Podcast Upgrades and Hawaii Work Life | 5 | 2 | 1 | 1 | The co-hosts engage in casual banter regarding Sam recording from Hawaii and a creative video pitch from college students offering to overhaul their production setup. The dynamic is purely collaborative and agreeable. | |
| Instagram Food Drops and Viral Food Formulas | 7 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Shaan breaks down the unit economics and mechanics of Instagram food drops before Sam categorizes viral food frameworks based on media experience. Both demonstrate domain expertise in viral marketing, building seamlessly on each other's points. | |
| Reimagining 'Eat This, Not That' for Social Media | 6 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Sam introduces the classic 'Eat This, Not That' franchise and brainstorms how to modernize the concept into a high-growth Instagram account. The exchange is lighthearted and mutually supportive. | |
| Tiller Money and the Power of Google Sheets Plugins | 6 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Sam explains how Tiller Money built a recurring revenue model atop Google Sheets add-ons, highlighting the overlooked app store ecosystem inside spreadsheets. Shaan concurs while discussing personal finance and data privacy habits. | |
| Salary Transparency, Levels.fyi, and Data Businesses | 7 | 4 | 3 | 4 | Shaan champions open salaries and data platforms like Levels.fyi, prompting Sam to offer a counterpoint on the managerial downsides of complete transparency at scale. The conversation expands into B2B data businesses like PitchBook and The Org. | |
| Corporate Life, Software Superiority, and AgTech Ventures | 7 | 3 | 2 | 2 | Sam reflects on his initial transition into HubSpot post-acquisition, sparking a deeper discussion comparing software business margins to media and physical goods. Sam then pitches potential ventures in AgTech and high-net-worth mastermind clubs like Tiger 21. |
Statements from this episode (15)
Puri: Pre-made proof of work beats traditional resume job applications
“This is like, this is, you know, like, it's like the opposite of a job application. Normally you get a job app. You put a job up that you want to hire somebody to do X and then some people apply. And then you're like, are you kind of squinting? You're like, do…”
Shaan Puri: MyCookieDealer generates $10M annually dropping cookies on Instagram
“So a different flavor or whatever, and it sells out within literally seconds and they're doing 200,000 dollars a week. They're doing ten million dollars a year dropping cookies on Instagram and just instantly selling out.”
Puri: Next Ben & Jerry's will be an Instagram cloud bakery
“Who's going to be the next Mrs. Fields or Ben and Jerry's or like Auntie Andy's pretzels. It's going to be one of these brands. It's going to be one of these cloud bakeries doing it on Instagram, building a cult following like these guys are doing.”
Puri: PE firms will buy viral Instagram food brands for retail expansion
“You're going to see a bunch of private equity companies coming in and they're going to buy up You know, Ali's, Ali's banana bread. They're going to buy up one, 900 ice cream because they're going to be like, dude, this is the next Ben and Jerry's. And we're go…”
Parr: Cronut creator could have made tens of millions licensing the name
“He actually trademarked the name Cronut and he is like a purist. He's like an artist. So he didn't actually want to license it to people, but he easily could have made tens of millions or more by licensing that name to someone.”
Puri: Cold chain logistics demand is booming with more entrants coming
“And so I think that there's just a bigger and bigger need for cold chain logistics. And I think we've heard this a few times now, and I feel like if somebody's working on that or somebody has one of those, I would love to Talk to you just to learn, because I t…”
Puri: Legacy magazines and brands are best reinvented as Instagram accounts
“I think all these old, like kind of publications, like either magazines or little brands like this today, they're all just Instagram accounts. I think that's the way to like reinvent these.”
Puri: Copying the 'Eat This, Not That' format can build a massive Instagram account
“I think you could basically steal this concept, pick a different name and grow a big Instagram account off this.”
Sam Parr: Google Sheets add-on Supermetrics generates nearly $10M annually
“The other add-on I use is called Supermetrics which is it pulls in data from SQL and stuff like that. I'm, I bet you they do close to eight figures a year in, in revenue.”
Puri: Levels.fyi gets around 1.5 million monthly visits
“If you look at their traffic, they're getting about a million and a half visits a month.”
Parr: PitchBook revenue exceeds $100 million annually
“PitchBook is a publicly traded company. You can go and read about them. They're owned by Morningstar. So you could actually go and see their operations and how they work. They're growing like crazy. They're north of a hundred million in revenue.”
Shaan Puri: Structuring public data into subscription reports is a viable business
“And so I think that there's like, there's some good stuff in this kind of like data, data-based businesses where you're just collecting data from public sources, you're cleaning it up, you're structuring it, and then you're offering it as a service to a bunch …”
Shaan Puri: Market selection matters more than execution excellence
“It's much more important to pick what game you play than to try to be the best player at a game. Because if you pick the wrong game, even becoming the best player still ends up in a small outcome or a really painful path. But if you pick the right game to play…”