Esri's Student-to-Decision-Maker Pipeline
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A story about how Esri, a mapping software company, built their monopoly through a clever education strategy.
"One of the most interesting things about Esri is how they built their monopoly. They go into colleges and work with engineering students, giving their software away for free. They've worked really hard making sure all the colleges get their software for free, so engineering students start using it at a very young age and get used to it.
Then when these students graduate, they naturally go 'Oh yeah, let's just use Esri.' They knew exactly what they were doing. They also have a total moat because selling to government is impossibly hard. When you're a government or Fortune 500 employee, you want cover-your-ass insurance - you want a well-known company that's going to take responsibility if something bad happens. That's Esri.
The company is 100% family-owned, no debt, they've never taken outside funding, and they do over $1 billion a year in subscription revenue. The founder, Jack Dangermond, is probably worth around $4 billion himself."
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.