Shaan Puri

How it started.

After college, Shaan gave himself room to try things. In his own account, he moved to Boulder with two friends, lived cheaply and worked on projects while tutoring math and coaching basketball. He calls that period being “strategically broke.”

The startup years.

Before becoming a familiar voice on podcasts, Shaan worked on products including the live-streaming service Blab and Bebo. Bebo sold to Twitch in 2019. Those years of building companies gave him experiences he would later bring into conversations with other founders.

Finding his thing.

My First Million began in 2019, with Shaan and Sam Parr discussing business ideas and interviewing entrepreneurs. In his essay “finding your thing,” Shaan says he spent a decade trying to be a great CEO before recognizing that explaining ideas through writing and podcasting suited him.

Building with an audience.

In 2022, Shaan and Ben Levy co-founded Milk Road, a daily newsletter that made crypto news easier to follow. It grew to more than 250,000 subscribers in under ten months and was acquired that year. Shaan later brought the buyers onto My First Million to talk through the decision.