Shaan shares a story from a Farm Con dinner where a guy described building a tailgate-setup business at his college and scaling it into a private equity acquisition. Sam and Shaan then riff on the broader pattern of becoming the exclusive campus vendor in new categories — from scooters to food delivery — and how that model could apply to any entrepreneur willing to find the captive market first.
Speakers: Shaan Puri (host), Sam Parr (host)
The Tailgate Guys Origin Story [00:00:00]
Shaan: Tailgate guys — have you ever heard of this business?
Sam: No.
Shaan: So this came up at Farm Con. I go to this dinner with this guy who listens to the pod. I was trying to make small talk at this dinner, and I hate normal small talk. I’m not just going to do “oh yeah, how’s the conference going? Good, yeah. Good. How about you? Good, good.”
I also don’t know anything about farming, so it’s not relevant to me. You know, “you like corn too? Yeah. What’s your favorite type of corn?” So I tried an ice breaker — I asked, “First job — did you have a side hustle in college?”
I went around the table. Everybody was doing something different now, all established, but did you when you were in college have a side hustle? Everybody had an interesting one.
So one guy tells this story. He went to Ole Miss or Alabama or one of those big Southern football schools, and he’s like, “I created a tailgate-in-a-box.” Basically, tailgating is huge before football games — people go to the parking lot, they want to grill and drink and play beer pong and do all that stuff. His family used to love doing it, so it was super competitive. You had to go wait overnight to get your spot. They would send him down to the grove — or whatever it was called — to wait in the parking lot and hold the family spot.
Then they’re like, “Okay, you got the spot — well, you’ve got to set up the tailgate too.” So he’d go get all the stuff every week, set it up, create a good setup. Then the space next to him was like, “Hey, next week, will you set ours up?” He said, “All right, give me $200, I’ll get you guys some stuff.” Then the price went up, and he’s like, “Oh my god, I can basically charge each little tailgating group $500 to set up a cool tailgate spot for them turnkey.”
He did this at his college and was making thousands and thousands of dollars every semester. He’s like, “Dude, I was running this business and Tailgate Guys tried to come in, but they couldn’t break into our market. We owned our market.”
Sam: Who’s Tailgate Guys?
Shaan: He’s like, “Oh, these guys basically took this idea and started doing it nationwide.” I was like, that’s really smart.
The Tailgate Guys Business Model [00:04:00]
Shaan: So how does it work? You hire college kids and say, “I’ll pay you $50 an hour for three hours on Saturday, I keep $50, you keep $50”?
Sam: Exactly. And do the kids go to Walmart and buy the stuff?
Shaan: Either you give them supplies in bulk, or they go grab it and you tell them, “You need to get this table, these bowls, whatever” — and they use a company credit card.
The key is they partnered with the school. They said, “Hey, we’d like to be the exclusive tailgate provider for the school,” and the school gave them the license. So they had a monopoly.
Sam: What?
Shaan: Yeah, and this is actually pretty common — schools will basically pick one vendor provider, sell the license rights, let you become the official, say, “Tar Heel Tailgate.” It’s their thing. You pay them a fee or a revenue share, and in exchange you get a monopoly. You get to be the only provider.
It’s super viral, right? Because everybody sees, “Wow, that setup looks great. What is that?” “Oh, they use Tailgate Guys.” “Okay, we should use them next time.”
Tailgate Guys apparently got bought out by private equity. I think they were doing somewhere like $30 to $50 million a year doing this.
Sam: What?
Shaan: And I thought, what a great example of a college hustle that you then scale up. You say, “All right, if this works at my college, it’s going to work at every college that has a football program with tailgating.” Then you have this repeatable sales model: go to the university, tell them “these other eight universities partnered with us, we’d like to partner with you — you get extra income and we’ll provide a safe, convenient way for your fans to do this.”
Exclusive Campus Licensing as a Business Model [00:09:00]
Shaan: Then I started thinking — what are the other businesses that use the same sales tactic? Basically partnering with the school and becoming the exclusive provider.
We had a little mini brainstorm at dinner, and he was like, “Dude, this is also happening with scooters. When Bird and Lime came out in cities, companies decided, ‘We should become the exclusive scooter provider on campus.’ Drop scooters everywhere, branded with the school, the school gets a rev share for every ride, and we get a captive market nobody can compete with us in.”
Sam: So you just have to think about what’s something today that doesn’t even really have an option yet — there isn’t really a market for it on campuses.
Shaan: Exactly. Scooters worked because it was a new category. Tailgating worked because it was a new category, even though tailgating itself was old. The professional service of setting up a tailgate was new. So you just have to think: what’s something today where there isn’t really a market yet?
So I started thinking — what other businesses could use this sales tactic? What categories could you go to a school and say, “Let us be the exclusive provider”? Something the school doesn’t already have a deal for. Something where the school benefits by having one reliable, safe vendor rather than a chaotic free-for-all. And you get the upside of owning a captive audience.
Sam: Yeah, and once you own one campus you have the proof point to go to the next one. “We did it at Alabama. We’d like to do it at Auburn.”
Shaan: Exactly. That’s the playbook. This is a really cool little niche business — and the broader pattern is useful way beyond college. Find a captive market, partner with whoever controls access to it, and become the monopoly provider of something new.