The Simplest Way To Make $1M In 2026

**Shaan Puri** (0:00)
We have this podcast called My First Million, where we're coming with all these complicated schemes of how somebody can make their first million. Meanwhile, in their relationship, Sarah made her first million before Sam with the simplest scheme of all.
So we invited our buddies from TBPN, John and Jordi here, to do one of our favorite episodes that we do every year called Sarah's List. And it's called Sarah's List in honor of the queen herself, Sam's wife, Sarah. You know, it's a classic story, really. She just joined an great company that was clearly already great as like employee 3000 And the math was like this. She got a job at Airbnb. And I think it was, you know, her numbers aside, the general math is you get a job and they'll offer you maybe like a 40 or 50K a year stock package in addition to your salary. So you get your salary, you get your health care. They got a kitchen where they're serving you lunch. They got oat milk in the fridge. So you're not sacrificing anything. She didn't have to come up with the idea of Airbnb. She joined it. She wasn't the first employee grinding like crazy. She was employee 3000 But that stock package, which over a four year period is, you're granted about $200,000 worth of stock, five X and she made a million bucks before either me or Sam. And so we kind of wanted to honor the brilliance that is joining companies that are already clear winners, especially in tech because the winners can run so far. And so every few years, me and Sam have done this where we come up with our list, we call it Sarah's List, which is the 10 companies you would join right now. Because as a person, your time is essentially your investment, right? When you join a company, that's an act of an investment.

**Sam Parr** (1:42)
It's funny because I know some investors who did, who made an investment in that unicorn round, and they had the exact same logic. They were like, complete parlor market fit, obvious runner, like just pile money into this easy investment and then it worked.

**John Coogan** (1:57)
She joined, I think, at the $18 million valuation, something like that, and then COVID happened, and we were like, well, shit, that was a good idea. Sucks it didn't work. And then obviously everything changed in six months, and then I think it IPO'd around $100 billion. And you guys remember that famous interview with Brian Chesky where he's told on air, he's like, the share price is this, and it's worth $100 billion. He's like, I didn't know that until just now, because back then in 2019 or 18, when it was $18 million, we were like, this could be worth like $30 billion. Like, you know, if everything works. And so anyway, that was her story, and it worked out great because she worked a normal amount, had great maternity paternity package, had great benefits, all that stuff. And so we've done this for a few years, but you know something, we haven't actually done this in like 18 months because it's been so hard these last 20 or 24 months with everything going on with AI. And so you guys are pretty cool to have because I think you'll know a lot more about some of the latest and greatest.

**Shaan Puri** (3:01)
Yeah, we wanted you guys on because not only are you guys super smart, but part of your show is you're talking to the CEOs of these companies in these like 15 minute interviews every single day. And so you're getting a good sense for kind of like, who's doing well, who do you believe, what companies excite you. So we wanted to hear what you guys have. By the way, last time, Sam, I went back and checked. I think of the 10 companies that we did in our last round, which was something like 18 months ago, or 18 months, two years ago, something like that. I think we got six out of 10 that are like already either there or pacing to be there. So for example, like when we did OpenAI and we were laughing, we were like, hey, here's this shocker OpenAI. It was $100 billion valuation at the time.
It's now like close to $800 billion now. And we even said, look, there's no bonus points for difficulty in life and the game of business. Sometimes the best companies are just hidden in plain sight. They're right in front of you. And so I think we've done pretty well with these in the past.

**John Coogan** (3:58)
The biggest one was Androl. We did Androl in 21, I think. And that was $4 billion at the time. And I think it's 90 or 50 I don't remember.