LinkedIn Ads Drive $800M Exit
Share
Sam Parr shares a story about how his best friend Jack Smith used targeted LinkedIn advertising to get into a startup accelerator, which eventually led to an $800M exit.
"My best friend Jack Smith sold his company Vungle for $800 million right before the pandemic when he was 29 years old. The way he started it was he was in England as a college student and had this idea. He wanted to go to an accelerator called AngelPad, but missed the deadline.
The guy who ran it was named Thomas. Jack noticed on LinkedIn you could advertise to just 100 people a day. He thought 'What if I just move it to 10 people a day?' They allowed him to do it. He set it to only show to 10 people who work in San Francisco at AngelPad. The ad said 'Hi, we're trying to reach Thomas, please tell us to contact us.'
It worked - they let him into the incubator. Six or seven years later the company sold for $800 million. We at The Hustle wrote an article about this, it went viral, and LinkedIn changed how they did advertising. You can't actually see how many people you're going to reach per day anymore."
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.