Orteig's Aviation Prize
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Sam Parr tells a story about how a prize inspired Charles Lindbergh's historic flight and revolutionized the airline industry.
"In 1919, there was this guy named Raymond Orteig. He was like, 'These planes we've created are pretty amazing, but we're not doing too many great things with them.' He offered $25,000 to anyone who could fly from New York City to Paris. That's like $500,000 today.
Eight people signed up and seven of them failed. In fact, five of them died. The one person who made it was Charles Lindbergh. The year after Lindbergh did his flight, airline passengers went from 5,000 to 300,000 a few years later. It completely changed the airline industry because it made a big hoopla and a big deal."
Sam Parr
Host of MFM and fitness influencer
Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.
In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.
Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.
After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.
Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.