Sam asks Shaan how he built such strong brand equity and reputation despite his startup not being a conventional success. Shaan breaks down his two-part framework: first, build one-on-one credibility with influential people through in-person interactions; second, create content that demonstrates your thinking publicly. He uses Josh Elman and the tbh app distribution story to illustrate how a few smart ideas — shared in the right places — accumulate into a reputation that precedes you.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host)
Sam Frames the Question: Reputation Without a Big Exit [00:00:00]
Sam: I sold my startup for less than what my investors had put in. You know how it worked — the team still did well, and I made good money off of it. But that’s not the definition of a successful business, because there are a lot of people who have sold their companies for a lot of money. We have a handful of buddies who are uber rich — no one knows who they are. And even if they told you what they did, they’d have to beg to speak at a conference.
Whereas guys like you — you’ve got the Daily Show reaching out to you, you’ve got celebrities reaching out to you who want to get on board with you. What I want to know is: how does someone create so much of this brand equity? I’m asking for myself, honestly. How do you create that?
Shaan’s Two-Part Framework for Building a Reputation [00:01:00]
Shaan: I think in both cases it basically comes down to: you put your thoughts on blast.
And by the way, I say this not to make fun of the app — I think it did sell for a profit, so good for them. I’m saying I know that I’ve gotten disproportionate credit for my track record of success, when in reality the best thing I’ve built is this D2C company that I don’t tell anybody the name of. That’s the profitable business doing eight figures a year. But that’s not actually where my reputation came from. My reputation came before that — which is kind of weird, right?
So where does the reputation actually come from? It comes from two things.
Part one: You meet people in real life. You go meet investors at big funds, CEOs of different companies — and when they’re talking to you, they’re making an independent assessment of your caliber based on your thoughts. So first, it’s a hand-to-hand combat thing. You meet a bunch of people, you earn their respect one-on-one. When they’re talking about a deal they’re doing or a company they’re building, you contribute — you add value, you point out things, you give criticism, you give feedback on what’s really great, you identify other things that are cool. And they walk away thinking, “Wow, I got a lot out of this conversation.”
You do that with 300 people — and those people matter, because they themselves have influence and trust.
The Josh Elman Example [00:03:00]
Shaan: For example — Josh Elman is a good example. This guy was early at LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Robinhood. He was head of growth at a bunch of these companies.
Sam: Yeah, he’s a big deal. He’s been on our podcast.
Shaan: Right, so he’s got tremendous respect because he’s had a tremendous career. Both you and I have, on separate occasions, met with Josh. And when we’re talking about our startup — whether it succeeded or failed — Josh knows: you’re playing in the startup lottery, the startup olympics. A startup can fail and an entrepreneur can still be really great.
If out of that conversation Josh walks away thinking, “This person is really smart” — and then he connects you to other people he knows, and those people say “Josh, thanks for the intro, Shaan was really great” — you develop a reputation among people who already have a reputation. That’s the first step. Through real-life interactions, you develop a reputation with people who already have one, so that they will retweet your stuff, they will vouch for you when you have a project or you’re doing something.
That goes a long way in the marketplace. I’ve had Josh, or Biology, or different people with their own big followings — if they share me, or they say “this person is great,” then a whole bunch of other people just inherit that reputation. They say, “Okay, if Josh says he’s great, he’s great.”
Sam: That’s such a unique way of thinking about it. It’s almost like credibility hacking.
Why It’s Not Actually a Hack [00:05:30]
Shaan: Here’s the thing though — I’m telling you how the mechanic works, but the reason it’s not really a hack is because your thoughts actually have to be interesting. You actually have to be the real deal.
Part two: We both created content. Now his tweets are mostly making fun of people who create content and threads and teach courses — but before that, he was doing it himself. He was saying things like, “When you’re building a social app, here’s what works” or “Here’s how we grew inside high schools for tbh.”
The tbh Distribution Story [00:06:30]
Shaan: And why did I respect him? Because he released this memo — it actually got leaked from inside Facebook. The memo basically said: “Hey guys, here’s some of the stuff we did to grow amongst teenagers, and I know Facebook wants to grow amongst teens, so here’s what we did at tbh.”
For example — for every high school, we would create an Instagram account branded to that high school. Like “McKinley High Secrets.” That’s the account, and it would be set to private. We would follow anyone who had “McKinley High” in their profile. About 40% of people would follow us back — they would request to follow, but we were private, so we wouldn’t approve anyone’s requests.
Then at 4pm on the day everyone got out of school, we would accept all the requests simultaneously. So everybody would get a notification about our account at the same time. They’d all go check it out, see the link to download the app, and download it. And as they’re downloading the app, they’d get notifications that their friends are all downloading it today — and it felt like a big deal. That’s how we hacked distribution into high schools.
Sam: I have actually told a very similar story about how we would get half a high school to download our app in one day. We did it a completely different way, but I’ve shared that on podcasts and on Twitter threads.
The “Three Interesting Things” Rule [00:09:00]
Shaan: People read that story and they’re like, “This guy’s smart. That’s a really smart growth tactic. This guy really understands growth. This guy really understands teens. This guy really understands social.”
It’s that quote my buddy Jason Hitchcock told me once. He goes: “You say one interesting thing — I say, ‘Huh, that’s interesting.’ You say two interesting things — ‘Oh, those are interesting.’ You say three interesting things — I say, ‘This guy is interesting.’”
That’s really what you have to do with content. If you say three original, interesting things around one topic — whether it’s Bitcoin, media, robotics, whatever — if I get three interesting things from you, in my brain I will assign that tag to you: “This person is interesting, worth watching.” And if other people endorse it and say this is interesting, it goes even faster.