Sam Parr:"I Failed to Raise Money, So I Built a $20M+ Company Instead" | The Further, Faster Podcast

Sam Parr (0:00)

I know this one guy who sold his company for $900 million, and he made $3 million because he had raised so much, and he had like four or five partners or something like that. And I was like, was it awesome? He's like, yeah, it was amazing. It was worth it. And I was like, then you just care about different stuff.

Jeff Becker (0:20)

This content is provided for information or purposes only, and does not constitute legal, business, tax, or investment advice. It does not constitute an invitation or recommendation to purchase or subscribe for and should not be relied upon when making any investment decision in any Antler Fund or any other investment instrument. Welcome back to The Further, Faster Podcast. I'm Jeff Becker, your host and general partner here in New York City. Today's guest, you know him. He's the co-host of My First Million. They have over 900 episodes, 100 million downloads. It's one of the most watched startup podcasts in history.

Before that, he got a start in hot dog stands and in online liquor stores, and he sold The Hustle to HubSpot for over $20 million.

He's back in the founder seat with Hampton, the CEO Members Club with over a thousand users, 18 cities across the world. You know him by Sam Parr. A lot of the content I've watched over the years seem anti-VC. That's more about building durable companies and profitability. Maybe I'm just... I'm not anti-VC.

Sam Parr (1:21)

I'm anti-VC for me. My thought is if your main goal is freedom and like making money for yourself, bootstrapping is 100% the way to go. If your main goal is to have like impact and buy a lottery ticket and go really big, do that. That's just not my... It doesn't meet my needs.

So do you think that's wrong?

Jeff Becker (1:44)

Well, no, I heard you say something like, why sign up to own like less than 10% of something that has a 70% chance of failure?

Sam Parr (1:51)

Well, I don't know if I said why, because I understand your why, but that doesn't satisfy my wants. So I get why people dig it. I'm just not like, I guess maybe I'm just selfish, to be honest. I care about more about my own lifestyle and how I live.

Jeff Becker (2:06)

Well, I think a lot of founders I meet, they don't realize there's this other path of building something that's bootstrapped. They think, oh, they see in the news, they see in the media, they see on LinkedIn, go raise money, get this valuation, this is success.

That couldn't be further from the truth. That's actually like a bar to go hit, a homework, a hurdle to go climb over. Yeah.

Sam Parr (2:21)

I think it's cool if you're into that.

I know this one guy who sold his company for $900 million and he made $3 million because he had raised so much and he had four or five partners or something like that. I was like, was it awesome? He's like, yeah, it was amazing. It was worth it. I was like, then you just care about different stuff.

Jeff Becker (2:41)

What was the context? Like a prep stack that he couldn't overcome?

Sam Parr (2:43)

I didn't even understand half those terms, but it was basically like a bunch of partners raise a bunch of money, probably at low valuations. I mean, HubSpot, the company that bought my company, they raised their first round. The numbers are, I could be off by like 20%, but it was like a $5 million valuation and they raised $2 million or something like that when they first started it. So it's like right away, almost half the company goes away. And they would say it was worth it because it got huge. They made a lot of money, but there's a lot of companies that don't make it, but that's just like the game you're playing.

I just don't want to play that game.

Jeff Becker (3:15)

I think it's smart. A lot of founders I meet, because we don't invest in front of Antler, we get the chance to help people decide, do you go this route or that route? Where do you sign up? Do you sign up for the treadmill? Do you sign up for the, let's go build a trillion dollar company? Or do I increase the odds of some kind of outcome for myself and my family and my employees?

Sam Parr (3:33)

Yeah, well, I had all these people. I tried to raise money. I tried to, by the way, I tried to raise money. I failed. No one wanted to invest in me.