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Shaan Puri

5 Oct, 7 tweets, 4 min read

companies I coulda woulda shoulda invested in but didn't .. (aka the "greatest misses")

@calm

@calm - I am friends w/ @tewy & @acton and think they are ballers. probably could've invested at seed round (~$5M valuation). Now worth $1B+ easily. 200x+ return

didn't invest because I didn't consider myself an investor at the time

@clearbit

@clearbit - friendly w/ @maccaw - told me about it over lunch.

Seemed like a decent idea but I didn't fully understand it (still don't)....But I thought he was really clever (I remember a story about a 🍆 detection thing he built)

Shoulda asked to invest. now worth $250M+

@ApplyBoard

@ApplyBoard I asked a 13 year old (@SoroushG_ ) to scout deals for me. He intro'd me to @MartinBasiri . Loved the concept of helping international students apply to US colleges (I finished highschool in beijing)

Woulda been $25k at $5M. Now worth $1B+. Chickened out last min🤦‍♂️

@loom

@loom - buds with @_shahedk, had him at my mastermind to help think through loom. could've invested early on (~$5M cap?) now worth $250M+.

Didn't see it being that big and as much as I loved shahed - founder seemed young/likely to trip over their own feet. wrong!

@TheSocialChain

@TheSocialChain - hired @SteveBartlettSC when he was like 20? 21? thought he was a future star.

Should've handed him his 1st check when he wanted to go do SC fulltime. Best way to show you believe in someone.

Started as a meme ad agency.. now a $200M+ public company.

ok that's about as much regret as I can handle in one sitting. will add more to the thread later.

biggest takeaway: shoulda invested in my friends

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More from @ShaanVP

Shaan Puri

@ShaanVP

19 Sep

Putting up the bat signal.. 🦇

who wants to be a startup investor someday?

I want to give someone who's hungry a shot to learn by doing.

I just raised a rolling fund - and now have a few million bucks to invest into ~15-25 startups in the next year.

You can learn the investing process from A to Z.

finding deals --> vetting --> negotiating --> closing --> supporting

+ creating content to build the fund brand

let's start with the basics:

you get:
- 4 years of experience, in 1 year
- a piece of my carry (I take 0% management fees, so there's no salary)
- walk away with a portfolio of 25+ companies in your portfolio

you give:
- your nights/weekends hustling to invest in startups

Read 10 tweets

Shaan Puri

@ShaanVP

20 Jun

software is such a cheat code in the game of business. My first company was a restaurant. One of the worst businesses you can start (everyone told me this, but being young, I told them to kick rocks)

we tried building the "Chipotle for Sushi"

Here's the rule of thumb $s :
- ˜10-15% profit margins (if you survive)
- ˜$500k-$1.5M up front investment
- 6 months+ per new store
- need tons of employees, <15% employee retention
- spend 85% of time on the bottom 10% of stores

Plus the lifestyle.
- business runs 7 days a week, no holidays
- I still remember going to the fish market at 430am to get fresh ingredients, & washing dishes until midnight
- Hated the work (crappy feeling "this sucks, who can I pay $12/hr to do this for me?")

Read 14 tweets

Shaan Puri

@ShaanVP

2 May

the speech "you and your research" by Richard hamming is A+. I think it's a must-read for any person who wants to make the most of their time & talents.

My notes:

@_johnnydallas_

re: Luck - "there is indeed an element of luck..The particular thing you do is luck, but that you do something is not"

I was telling @_johnnydallas_ yesterday: "if you're a founder, every year you have a high chance of failure, but over a decade, you're almost certain to win."

"one of the characteristics successful scientists have is courage. Once you get your courage up & believe that you can do important problems - then you can. If you think you can't, almost surely you're not going to."

Read 21 tweets

Shaan Puri

@ShaanVP

23 Jan

@moizali

I did a podcast w @moizali - founder of @native_cos. His story is bananas. Created & Sold a new deodorant brand $100M to P&G in 2.5 years and only raised ~$500k... my top 10 gems from the episode THREAD 👇

1/ “It was like taking an Advil every morning when all you needed was a glass of water”

Core insight = trend to natural/organic products, but popular deodorants used a ton of chemicals (aluminum etc).”

2/ they did A/B testing like a software co, except on physical products

Version A went to 1000 customers
Version B went to 1000 customers

Which version gets higher reviews and higher repeat purchase rate?

Read 13 tweets

Shaan Puri

@ShaanVP

1 May 19

the job postings on hacker news are terrible (the postings, not the companies)news.ycombinator.com/item?id=197975…

my rewrite:

We're Divvy Homes, and we're helping people buy homes. We're buying 1 home a day right now, which frankly, is kind of nuts.

You see - lots of people want to buy a house, but can't afford the full down payment. We came up with a clever way to solve this problem.

We let people pick their dream home, live in it, and count their rent towards ownership every month. Kind of cool right? This has been around forever (a "sale leaseback") but we're making it accessible. (the way uber/lyft did for carpooling & airbnb did for couchsurfing)

Read 9 tweets

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