Sam and Shaan answer the question: what business would you start to make a million dollars, and what business would you start to make a billion? The million-dollar answers cover buying or copying businesses from Quiet Light brokerage, niche B2B membership communities, and a QSBS advisory firm. The billion-dollar answers go bigger — humanoid robots (Sam) and buying a university and selling NFT admissions licenses (Shaan).
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host)
The Question [00:00:00]
Shaan: Someone asked me an incredible question: if you had to pick one idea to make a million dollars this year — and it can’t just be a newsletter, blog, or agency — what would it be? And then: what one idea would you pursue to try to make a billion dollars?
Sam: Is the billion a company worth a billion, or net worth of a billion?
Shaan: Company worth a billion. You own a big chunk of it. And note: I know a guy who sold for $990 million and walked away with three million. He had five co-founders, raised a ton of money. That’s an extreme case, but it happens. You can create a billion-dollar company and own 8% of it by the end. Still a ton of money, but not what people imagine.
How to Make a Million Dollars [00:05:00]
Sam: For the million-dollar path — the honest answer is: I probably wouldn’t invent anything new. I’d copy what works and put a slight twist on it.
Sam: Specifically: go to Quiet Light brokerage. Quiet Light is a curated marketplace where you can browse businesses for sale anonymously — you see earnings, revenue, how they got customers, where their customer mix comes from, what the growth levers are. They do a detailed interview with the seller that’s gold for reverse engineering the model.
Sam: Here’s an example. I’m looking at one right now: an FBA business selling money-counting machines and counterfeit bill detectors. Launched 2020. 1.8 million in revenue, $625,000 in net profit. Husband and wife team, “spend five to ten hours a week on it.” That’s the classic Quiet Light listing — they’re not lying, they just have a day job and this is mature enough to run itself. Someone who stepped in and focused could grow it.
Sam: The play is: look at 30 to 50 businesses. Find one where you understand the model and could either buy it with an SBA loan (put down 10-15%, buy a $2M business that throws off $600K/year) or reverse-engineer it and build your own version in a slightly different niche.
Shaan: Both options are on the table — buy the business (more capital required, more risk) or use it as a real-world MBA and replicate it. Going from zero to $1.8M in revenue is hard. Going from $1.8M to $3M is much easier.
Sam: The second million-dollar idea: a niche B2B membership community.
Sam: The “knowledge complex” is the problem: you know a lot about your industry, but you assume everyone knows it too, so you undervalue it. That’s wrong. Examples: automations for HVAC owners. Outbound sales tactics for chiropractors. A database of media buyers at brands, updated regularly.
Sam: The model: charge $3,000 a year. If you get 100 members paying $3K, that’s $300K in annual recurring revenue. A membership community worth $300K in annual profit sells for maybe $1M to $1.5M. And the customer acquisition is dead simple — cold email the 500 people in the world who have exactly this problem. You don’t need 10,000 Instagram followers. You need 100 buyers.
Sam: Example: Exit Five, the community for B2B marketers. They could charge $2,500 to $3,000 a year. Probably 500 to 1,000 members. That thing’s worth a few million dollars right now.
The QSBS Advisory Firm [00:22:00]
Shaan: My million-dollar idea: a QSBS advisory firm.
Sam: What is QSBS?
Shaan: Qualified Small Business Stock. It’s a tax treatment where, if a company meets certain criteria and you hold the stock for five years, your first $10 million in gains are tax-free. Per person, not per company. So if a startup has multiple executives, each one of them could shelter $10 million from taxes.
Shaan: Most tech startups are QSBS-eligible. Most of their founders don’t fully understand the rules. There are qualifying events — things you could do that might accidentally disqualify you (like certain secondary sales, certain revenue classifications). You can’t write the letter for yourself. So companies hire experts to do an assessment and write an attestation letter.
Shaan: The play: build a firm that does QSBS advisory. Hire lawyers or accountants on a per-engagement basis. Charge $10,000 to $15,000 for the initial letter. Charge an ongoing retainer to monitor disqualifying events throughout the company’s life. Annual retainer of $1,500 to $2,000 per client.
Shaan: Do the math: if you charge $10,000 per engagement, you need 30 clients a year to hit $300K in annual profit, which sells for maybe $1M or more. And the sales pitch writes itself: “If you don’t do this and get audited, your employees just lost $10M each in tax-free gains. Our fee is rounding error.”
Sam: And there are natural upsells — 409A valuations, legal advisory, cap table management.
Shaan: Exactly. This is already a service people provide. You’re not inventing anything. You’re just building a better-branded, more targeted version of it.
How to Make a Billion Dollars: Humanoid Robots [00:38:00]
Sam: Humanoid robots. Specifically, purpose-built robots.
Sam: Elon Musk has said Tesla’s humanoid project Optimus is going to be bigger than the car business, bigger than self-driving, bigger than solar. I invested in a company called Figure — Brett Adcock’s company. I’m convinced this is one of the biggest industry movers in the next ten to fifteen years.
Sam: But here’s the nuance: I’m not sure the end state is a full bipedal humanoid that does everything. I think the near-term opportunity is purpose-built robots.
Sam: Think about the most successful robot in the world right now: the dishwasher. It doesn’t have arms and legs. It’s a purpose-built robot that does one thing. There’s a company called Renovate Robotics that’s building a robot that does roofing — it goes up and down a roof and installs shingles. Their pitch: “Labor is the biggest challenge for roofers. Our robots make roofers twice as productive.” Easy sale.
Sam: The pizza robot example: Domino’s doesn’t want to pay $15 an hour for someone who calls in sick, eats pepperonis, and leaves after six weeks. They would buy one machine that makes a perfect pizza 24/7 and never complains. That’s not crazy speculation — that’s solving a real problem that has infinite, obvious market demand. You’re not creating demand. You’re just removing the obstacle.
Sam: My friend who invested in this space described his filter as “no product-market fit risk.” If you can actually build it, the sale is easy. The risk is technical, not demand. That’s the opposite of most consumer products, where you have technical feasibility and no idea if people will buy it.
Shaan: I love that framing. Technical risk only, no demand risk.
Sam: So what I’d do: go to Carnegie Mellon or MIT, find the brilliant hardware nerds who are building things but have no business sense, organize them around a specific problem, and be the company builder. There are Hardware Labs — Founders Inc in San Francisco, for example — where hardware hackers work on 3D printers, laser cutters, robotic arms. These people are genius-level engineers who wear one sock. If you can be the organizer, you can win.
How to Make a Billion Dollars: Buy a University [00:55:00]
Shaan: Here’s mine. We’re buying a university.
Sam: What?
Shaan: Stay with me. There are colleges for sale. Go to a website called Dealstream — it’s like Quiet Light for businesses, but it includes universities. You can buy a fully accredited institution for $5M to $25M. The accreditation is the “liquor license” — the most valuable part. It lets you grant degrees that are recognized globally and issue F-1 visas for international students.
Shaan: Do the math on even a small school. Belmont University: $38,000 tuition, 7,300 students, $464M in revenue, $350M in expenses — $100M in annual profit. $1.5B in assets, only $200M in liabilities. For a school nobody’s heard of.
Shaan: So here’s the business: buy a small, accredited school for $10M-$25M. Raise $50M-$100M to fund the brand build. Then execute a prestige strategy.
Shaan: The brand strategy: make it harder to get into than Harvard. Sponsor math competitions and programming competitions at high schools — these cost almost nothing (pizza, honestly). Go to sixth graders. Run your own entrance exam. Don’t take the SAT — “we’re not peasants.” Bring in speakers: pay $5M-$6M a year in speaker fees, get Obama, get the biggest names, put them on the website, let it go viral. Target international students heavily — nobody wants to get into a hard-to-get-into American school more than a Chinese student whose parents will pay anything.
Shaan: The direct marketing angle: University of Phoenix spent $3 billion on Google over five years. Nobody with prestige does DTC university marketing. That’s a gap. Run native ads about the controversy of only accepting gifted students. Make the exclusivity itself the content.
Shaan: Now the wild funding idea: NFT admissions licenses. Like a stadium’s personal seat license. In NFL stadiums, you have to buy a PSL — a Personal Seat License — which just gives you the right to buy a ticket. The PSL itself is the asset. You mint 10,000 admissions licenses — one per seat in each graduating class. Sell them for $25,000 to $50,000 each. That’s $250M to $500M raised.
Shaan: The pitch: you own one seat in every admissions class, forever. Use it for your kid. Gift it as a scholarship. Rent it out to a student and collect a revenue share of their tuition. As the school’s prestige grows, the license appreciates. This is like buying a piece of Harvard’s admissions pool.
Sam: And there’s a Dealstream listing right now — a fully accredited university in Southern California, 900 students enrolled in undergrad and MBA programs, Title IX eligible, F-1 visa eligible, for $25 million.
Shaan: That’s the entry point. Buy the school, build the brand, sell the licenses. We’re building the first new prestigious university in America.