Belsky's Pinterest Uber Windfall
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A story about how Scott Belsky made two $15,000 investments in Pinterest and Uber that each turned into $50-100M.
"Scott Belsky was starting his company Behance when he was 26 years old. He had left Goldman where he was making $90k a year and had saved about $50-60k. While bootstrapping Behance, they were getting traffic from two different websites - Stumbleupon and a small company called Pinterest.
He emailed both companies. Ben from Pinterest told him they were raising money at a $3M valuation. Scott only had about $50k but didn't want to look like a noob, so he invested $15k. Then Garrett from Stumbleupon said his friend was starting a car service, though none of them were going to work there because he was too busy with Stumbleupon. Scott didn't want to invest in a limo company, but again didn't want to look like an idiot since this guy had been sending him traffic. So he gave another $15k at around a $3.5M valuation.
He basically had $50-60k in his checking account at the time. His startup was only doing okay and he was doing consulting on the side to pay bills. His wife was angry at him for investing $30k total.
Fast forward to when both companies went public around the same time - each of these $15k checks turned into around $50-100M. Additionally, Behance later sold for $175M, with Scott owning around 70% of it. He knocked it out of the park over and over again, and a lot of it came from those early Uber and Pinterest investments that he made just because he didn't want to look silly."
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.