Paul English: How He Built And Sold 6 Companies And Why He Believes Irritation Becomes Inspiration

**Shaan Puri** (0:00)
All right, there's this amazing book called Getting Everything You Can Out Of All You've Got. I read it a few years ago and it changed my life.
And the reason I loved it was because it basically talks about how to get and make more money using things that you already have.
Coincidentally, today's podcast is brought to you by Business Made Simple. It's a podcast by Donald Miller, who I'm gonna tell you about in a second, but he has this amazing episode that's all related to this book and the things that I learned in this book. It's called How To Make Money With What You Already Have. It's an incredible episode. It talks about all the stuff that I learned in this book. The host is Donald Miller. I didn't know who Donald Miller was up until recently, but over the last 12 months, this is totally by coincidence. It was all separate people. They said, you have to check out Donald Miller. He's amazing. So I'm happy that he's part of HubSpot's podcast network. You can check it out, Business Made Simple Podcast. It's where he coaches you on how to build your business like an airplane, where the cockpit is your leadership, the body is your overhead, the right engine is your marketing, the left engine is your sales.
You have to check it out. This guy's amazing. It's called Business Made Simple with Donald Miller.

**Paul English** (1:02)
I think a lot of people say it's harder because you don't have the edge. You don't work as hard. That's not true with me. If you talk to anyone who works with me, they'll say I'm working as hard now as I was during my first company when I was blown through my 401k to finance it.

**Shaan Puri** (1:22)
All right, Paul, what's going on, man? Well, you, Dharmesh, CTO, co-founder HubSpot told us, we have to, we don't have to, but we should talk to you.
Why did he say that?

**Paul English** (1:35)
I don't know, it's gonna be connected. Dharmesh and I have a lot of fun talking together about technology, philosophy and teams.
One fun thing that Dharmesh and I did, going back many years ago now, when I was CTO, co-founder of Kayak, Dharmesh and I switched jobs for a day. So I actually had him made up, I got him an email address, dharmesh.kayak.com and made up business cards. And he basically sat at my desk at Kayak for a day and then I sat at HubSpot for a day. And that was sort of the beginning of our friendship, realizing that we each had some overlap, but some things we can learn from each other. And he's been a great mentor to me and friend.

**Shaan Puri** (2:17)
And your big hit has been, well, so far, you have a new company, Lola, which I don't know if you know this or not, you guys advertised with my old company, The Hustle, a bit. So we worked with you a bit, but your big hit so far has been Kayak, right? What did you sell that for? Like two or 3 billion?

**Paul English** (2:34)
2 billion. I've actually sold six companies in a row, including Lola. I've sold even another one after Lola, Moonbeam, which is a podcast app. And now I'm on to my seventh company.

**Shaan Puri** (2:43)
So which of the six has been the most financially successful for you?

**Paul English** (2:50)
Kayak was the biggest financial outcome, which I'm deeply appreciative of. And I learned a lot at Kayak. I met some amazing people. But there's other things which are also really significant that aren't just monetary.
So my first sale, I just told you I sold six in a row. There's another one that I don't really count, because it only was a company I created in high school. But it's very meaningful to me, making money in high school, designing software.

**Shaan Puri** (3:18)
And what were the six?

**Paul English** (3:20)
So I had a company called Boston Light. We were an e-commerce company. We let people set up storefronts, a little bit like Shopify, but this goes back 20 years ago. We sold that to Intuit. I became VP Technology for Intuit. Then I had a company called Intermute, which is internet security software. I did that with my brother Ed English. We sold that to Trend Micro. I did a company, gethuman.com, which is serve customer service information to over 200 million people.
Kayak, Moonbeam, the podcast player, Lola, which is the business travel and expense.
And did I forget one? I think that's the list.

**Sam Parr** (3:54)
And so what's the thought process? So did you start them all in kind of the same way where you were maybe scratching your own itch or you're like analyzing trends? So like what's your process to come up with these ideas?