Insights on Frameworks and Moats in Venture-backed Companies

Episode 496: Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) talk with John Coogan (https://twitter.com/johncoogan), co-Founder of Soylent & Lucy and EIR at Founders Fund. John shares the most underrated creator-business no ones talking about, what Peter Theil and Keith Rabois are like, why he thinks lifestyle businesses are worthless and much more.

Want to see more MFM? Subscribe to the MFM YouTube channel here.

Want MFM Merch? Check out our store here.

—

Check Out Sam's Stuff:

• Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/

• Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/

• Copy That - https://copythat.com/

Check Out Shaan's Stuff:

• Try Shepherd Out - https://www.supportshepherd.com/

• Shaan's Personal Assistant System - http://shaanpuri.com/remoteassistant

• Power Writing Course - https://maven.com/generalist/writing

• Small Boy Newsletter - https://smallboy.co/

• Daily Newsletter - https://www.shaanpuri.com/

Other Cool Stuff:

• MFM Clips Channel - https://www.youtube.com/@ClipMFM

• MFM Merch - https://store.mfmpod.com/

—

Show Notes:

(0:00) Intro

(3:15) Soylent origin story

(14:50) Lucy background

(17:00) Business Idea 1: Creator-owned VPN

(23:20) Business Idea 2: Ammunition Rollup

(28:45) How often does Sam think of the Roman Empire?

(32:20) Thoughts on Keith Rabois

(34:40) Best Twitter follows

(36:15) Debate: Lifestyle businesses vs. VC-backed

(48:15) Who John’s voting for

(51:00) Why AI wrappers are great businesses

(53:30) Business Idea 3: Lensa for ChatGPT

(57:40) Scam artist telemarketing

(1:04:05) Closing thoughts

—

Links:

• John Coogan Twitter - https://twitter.com/johncoogan

• John Coogan Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/johncooganplus

• Soylent - https://soylent.com/

• Lucy Gum - https://lucy.co/

• Sam's Soylent article - https://tinyurl.com/mu8yhbyv

• Linus Tech Tips - https://www.youtube.com/user/linustechtips

• Anduril - https://www.anduril.com/

• Founders Fund - https://foundersfund.com/

• Keith Rabois - https://twitter.com/rabois

• Sean Parker - https://twitter.com/sparker

• Ligma Johnson - https://tinyurl.com/yx598zcc

• Peter Thiel - https://twitter.com/peterthiel

• Will Hurd - https://twitter.com/WillHurd

• Lensa - https://prisma-ai.com/lensa

• Power Law with John Coogan - https://tinyurl.com/3fdz6axs

• Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel.

—

Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more.

—

Other episodes you might enjoy:

• #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits

• #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future

• #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto

• #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett

• ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates

• Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More

• How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More