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Sam Parr

Co-host, My First Million; Founder of Hampton, My First Million

Search every verified Sam Parr interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Sam Parr, co-host of the My First Million podcast, has been active in recent episodes discussing business ideas, investor behavior, and founder psychology. In several episodes, Parr described his preference for bootstrapping over raising venture capital, recounting how he failed to raise money for an early company before building The Hustle and selling it for over $20 million. He told the Further, Faster Podcast that he is "anti-VC for me" and believes bootstrapping is preferable if the main goal is freedom and personal profit, while venture capital may suit those seeking larger-scale impact. Parr also discussed his Hampton founder community on the podcast, describing the vetting process for members and noting the community's average member does $25 million per year in revenue. Parr and co-host Shaan Puri have covered a range of topics, including AI personal assistants, diamond industry marketing, investing strategies, and unusual business ideas. In one episode, Parr described meeting a Hampton member who had sold his company for eight figures and earned nearly a 22% annual return for a decade as a public investor. Parr also discussed business frameworks, such as labeling certain dealmakers as "natural money makers," and explored the idea that enthusiasm can serve as a business moat. In a conversation with David Rubenstein, Parr discussed Rubenstein's career and the importance of learning from successful people's trajectories. On the topic of AI, Parr commented that AI gives everyone access to tools previously available only to the wealthy, using Uber as an analogy for how technology democratizes services.

Recent appearances

  • We spent 8 hours finding the best stuff on X. Here it is.

    October 23, 2026 · 📺 My First Million

    Database of 300+ business ideas: https://clickhubspot.com/d51n Episode 875: Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) and Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) are joined by Ben Levy ( https://x.com/benmlevy ) to react to the best stuff on X this week. — Show Notes: (0:00) Idea: Wedding Crashers (3:10) Idea: Clavicular's Billion-Dollar Business Opportunity (7:55) Elon's Flying Tesla Roadster (12:25) Elon Wants to Give Every Kid a Share of SpaceX (16:50) Inside Andrew Huberman's Fridge (20:10) Peter Levels on Moats (26:40) Bryan Johnson's Quest to Dunk at 49 (35:15) The Craziest Rich-Guy Purchase…

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  • We watched the 3hr Elizabeth Holmes doc so you don’t have to

    October 20, 2026 · 📺 My First Million

    Sam's database on how long it takes to become a millionaire: https://clickhubspot.com/3jgb Episode 874: Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) and Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) are breaking down the best documentary of the year. — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton (joinhampton.com): My community for founders. Average member does $25m/year. Many of the guests are members. Get after it...apply: http://joinhampton.com/mfm — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com • Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500…

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  • The “lazy” investor beating S&P for 11 years doing (almost) nothing

    October 19, 2026 · 📺 My First Million

    Investing guide: 35+ money principles from investors/financial operators https://clickhubspot.com/mojf Episode 873: Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) and Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) talk about an investor who makes 2.9 decisions a year, Zuck’s victory lap and what happened when Sam hired an executive coach. — Show Notes: (0:00) Zero Action Investing (7:55) Premortems (10:05) Zuck's Victory Lap (16:50) The Superpower of 100x Leaders (20:45) Sam Hires an Executive Coach (21:35) Identify the Game You're Playing (30:15) Keep Your Sails Up (33:45) Sam Attacks His Panic Attacks (38:55…

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  • the 6 traits of people who can’t stop making money

    October 16, 2026 · 📺 My First Million

    Take our founder personality quiz: https://clickhubspot.com/xvm9 Episode 872: Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) and Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) talk about the different types of founders. — Show Notes: (0:00) Natural Money-Makers (1:52) Attributes of Natural Money-Makers (3:10) The Story of Nick Kokonas (8:12) The Story of Jay Gould (10:00) Can It Be Learned? (13:04) The Story of Syed Balkhi (17:58) Only Spend the Second Derivative (22:27) Trading Valuable Hours for Useless Dollars (26:50) Other Play Styles That Win — Links: • Syed Balkhi episode -    • From $0 To +$100M With G…

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  • we went down the diamond rabbit hole (and it’s unhinged)

    October 14, 2026 · 📺 My First Million

    $1M Attention Guide: 15+ ways to get eyeballs on what you're building https://clickhubspot.com/um02 Episode 870: Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) and Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) talk about the diabolical marketing tactics that De Beers used to convince every man to spend 20% of his annual income on a diamond. — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (2:15) A Brief History of Diamonds (8:25) The Marketing Genius of De Beers (18:15) Lab-Grown Diamonds (20:00) Shaan Goes Into the Back Room at the Jeweler (23:15) Bitcoin’s Marketing Genius (26:55) The Greatest Generation (28:10) Pronoia. Be It.…

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

    October 12, 2026 · 📺 Antler Global

    Sam Parr, co-host of the hit podcast 'My First Million' and founder of The Hustle and Hampton, joins Jeff Becker on this week's episode of The Further, Faster Podcast for an honest conversation on startup growth, wealth creation, and building a business on your own terms. Sam unpacks why he turned down the traditional venture capital path in favor of bootstrapping, explaining how being rejected by VCs early on forced him to focus on what actually matters: profitability and true ownership. He breaks down his practical "Z to A" planning framework for working backward from long-term goals, sha…

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  • 3 businesses we think are about to blow up

    October 05, 2026 · 📺 My First Million

    Database of 140+ business ideas: https://clickhubspot.com/2blw Episode 868: Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) and Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) talk about 3 business ideas. — Show Notes: (3:08) Idea: Oxytocin dosing (20:17) Idea: Loneliness solutions (27:30) Idea: Faith-based businesses (27:33) Angel Studios (34:36) What’s the reaction to the action? (42:03) The brutal business of making hit movies — Links: • Anduril - https://www.anduril.com/ • Oculus - https://www.meta.com/quest/ • BlueChew - https://bluechew.com/ • Hims - https://www.hims.com/ • Beckley Psytech - https://www…

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  • We tested Instinct, Muse and Grokbot. They’re ridiculous.

    September 30, 2026 · 📺 My First Million

    Get Sam's guide to turn AI into your executive coach: https://clickhubspot.com/z24x Episode 867: Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) and Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) test out the new ai personal assistants. — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (2:42) AI is the highest ELO game in the world (5:18) Instinct (9:31) Grokbot (20:24) It’s not all about intelligence (38:35) Micro1 (44:08) Exploiting vulnerabilities (58:48) $100 billion companies everywhere — Links: • Instinct - https://instinct.com/ • Grokbot - https://x.ai/news/introducing-grok-bot • micro1 - https://www.micro1.ai/ • OpenRou…

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  • Do this and you’ll thank yourself on Jan 1st

    September 25, 2026 · 📺 My First Million

    Sam's database on how long it takes to become a millionaire: https://clickhubspot.com/5ji2 Episode 865: Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) and Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) talk to about how to win 2027. — Show Notes: (0:00) There are 99 days left in the year (1:40) Parkinson’s Law (3:35) The toxic love of events (9:25) Joel Greenblatt’s Jelly Bean experiment (12:25) The aftershocks of Joe Hudson (15:30) Shaan’s “5 voices in the head” theory (18:05) Six Thinking Hats (20:00) The two minds of a creator (22:45) Blue notebook vs. red notebook (23:50) Sam’s three notebooks (27:00) “You…

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  • People are doing $100M+ in sales on this app (ft. Whatnot founder)

    September 21, 2026 · 📺 My First Million

    $1M Attention Guide: 15+ ways to get eyeballs on what you're building https://clickhubspot.com/c764 Episode 863: Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) and Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) talk to Grant Lafontaine ( https://x.com/GrantLaFontaine ) the founder of Whatnot. — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (1:00) Grant turned down Shaan’s investment (2:12) Shaan buys a crab on Whatnot (3:58) First 1,000 users (19:07) Black hat growth tactics (28:52) 30 sales to $2.3M in year 1 (34:03) $2.3M to $163M in year 2 (34:56) $163M to $1B in year 3 (37:02) How to be a billion-dollar founder (42:04) Going a…

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  • Sam Altman's coach destroys your limiting beliefs for 86 minutes straight

    September 18, 2026 · 📺 My First Million

    Get Sam's guide to turn ChatGPT into your life coach: https://clickhubspot.com/iph5 Episode 863: Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) and Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) get coached by Joe Hudson ( https://x.com/FU_joehudson ) on the mental game of being a founder. — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (2:35) Limiting beliefs (6:48) Mind, heart, gut (8:20) The self-reliance pattern (14:45) Unkink your hose (16:35) Phrases that change your thinking (18:20) Visualize the negative outcomes (21:35) Most common fear of founders: homelessness (23:45) Tricking your nervous system with repetition (27:35)…

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  • David Rubenstein: the dollar will go down in value

    September 14, 2026 · 📺 My First Million

    Sam's database on how long it takes to become a millionaire: https://clickhubspot.com/738i Episode 861: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) sits down with David Rubenstein ( https://x.com/DM_Rubenstein ) to talk about turning Carlyle into $500B, his $14B miss, and the greatest business lessons in history. — Show Notes: (0:00) Turning $5M into $500B (5:13) Scrappy private equity (11:58) Don’t fool yourself (14:14) Turning down 20% of Amazon (16:23) Recruiting big shots (20:40) Finding the right partner (22:02) Trade-offs (27:39) Witnessing ascents to power (31:40) The Greatest Sentence Eve…

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Verified interview transcripts

Notable quotes

“I think you want to be doing things where AI doesn't do the core of what you do, like fundamentally can't do the core of what you do, but it makes what you do easier. So, for example, I think a company like Amazon has a really good position because people are still going to want physical things to come to their house, but now if all those physical things become cheaper because they're made more by robots than humans,”

“So, check this out. So, um, a few weeks ago I met this guy in Hampton and basically his story is that a while back he sold his company and he made something like eight figures in in in money after he sold his business. And I was like, "What have you been doing?" He's like, "Well, actually, I'm a public investor. I'm a I'm a um I invest in public stocks." Yeah. I was like, "I'm pretty nosy. Do you have your laptop on ”

“And actually, this is a big part of the same thing with diamonds where because diamonds are forever. One of the key parts of that, the key parts of linking it to love and engagement is that they killed the resale market. Nobody resells their diamonds. Well, no one sells them because if you bought a used diamond from some other failed engagement, what does that mean about... Naming your boat Titanic. And then same thi”

“Yeah. Well, I had all these people. I tried to raise I tried to, by the way, I tried to raise money. I failed. Like no one wanted to invest in me. And for my first company, I tried raising money. I failed. Like no one they were like this is like a lifestyle business. And I was so bummed about it. And then I remember two things. I'm like dog you are a venture capitalist. That's a lifestyle business. And number two tha”

“I'm not anti-VC. 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. Yeah. If your main goal is to have like impact and buy a lottery ticket and go really big, do that. Uh that's just not my it doesn't meet my needs. Um so do you think that's wrong? Well, no. I heard you say um something like why sign up to own like less than 10% is s”

“I've talked to in the past week, I hung out with three to four like mostly Instagram creators. Some of them have like little podcasts that really no one actually listens to, but they make clips and that's how they got like an Instagram audience. And then some people they just do like them just holding up their phone talking. All of the people who I've talked to have less than 100,000 followers across their platform w”

Other executives at My First Million

The summary and quote tags on this profile are produced with AI assistance from verified, first-person interview transcripts, then checked by our team to confirm the speaker's identity and the accuracy of every quote. See how we verify →