meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
My First Million

3 Niche Business Ideas: AI Psychics, Creator-Owned VPNs & Guns with Soylent co-Founder John Coogan

My First Million

Hubspot

Investing, Entrepreneurship, Business

4.7 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 19 September 2023

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Episode 496: Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) talk with John Coogan (https://twitter.com/johncoogan), co-Founder of Soylent & Lucy and EIR at Founders Fund. John shares the most underrated creator-business no ones talking about, what Peter Theil and Keith Rabois are like, why he thinks lifestyle businesses are worthless and much more. Want to see more MFM? Subscribe to the MFM YouTube channel here. Want MFM Merch? Check out our store here. — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com/ Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Try Shepherd Out - https://www.supportshepherd.com/ • Shaan's Personal Assistant System - http://shaanpuri.com/remoteassistant • Power Writing Course - https://maven.com/generalist/writing • Small Boy Newsletter - https://smallboy.co/ • Daily Newsletter - https://www.shaanpuri.com/ Other Cool Stuff: • MFM Clips Channel - https://www.youtube.com/@ClipMFM • MFM Merch - https://store.mfmpod.com/ — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (3:15) Soylent origin story (14:50) Lucy background (17:00) Business Idea 1: Creator-owned VPN (23:20) Business Idea 2: Ammunition Rollup (28:45) How often does Sam think of the Roman Empire? (32:20) Thoughts on Keith Rabois (34:40) Best Twitter follows (36:15) Debate: Lifestyle businesses vs. VC-backed (48:15) Who John’s voting for (51:00) Why AI wrappers are great businesses (53:30) Business Idea 3: Lensa for ChatGPT (57:40) Scam artist telemarketing (1:04:05) Closing thoughts — Links: • John Coogan Twitter - https://twitter.com/johncoogan • John Coogan Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/johncooganplus • Soylent - https://soylent.com/ • Lucy Gum - https://lucy.co/ • Sam's Soylent article - https://tinyurl.com/mu8yhbyv • Linus Tech Tips - https://www.youtube.com/user/linustechtips • Anduril - https://www.anduril.com/ • Founders Fund - https://foundersfund.com/ • Keith Rabois - https://twitter.com/rabois • Sean Parker - https://twitter.com/sparker • Ligma Johnson - https://tinyurl.com/yx598zcc • Peter Thiel - https://twitter.com/peterthiel • Will Hurd - https://twitter.com/WillHurd • Lensa - https://prisma-ai.com/lensa • Power Law with John Coogan - https://tinyurl.com/3fdz6axs • Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. — Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. — Other episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto • #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

It's useful for crypto users to use a VPN and so that was one of my ideas about we sold before we got around to do that that that would have been cool if you would have done that that would have been and that's a pretty cool move.

0:13.3

Too bad.

0:14.1

I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like a days off on a road.

0:26.6

Right. What's up? We got John Cougan here. John, somebody who I only know through a lunch at a Mexican restaurant in LA. And that's the best way to meet anybody who's going to be a podcast guest. So you got a crazy background, get people to run down if they don't know who you are.

0:43.1

So you've been entrepreneur your whole life, never had a job started two companies that were both really interesting, so I lent, which was basically making a meal replacement drink is the easiest way to explain it tasted like the milk of honey that Cheerios, which I always appreciated.

0:59.1

And then Lucy gum, which is a nicotine gum, both of them went through YC together. They've raised over $130 million. A bunch of good lessons there.

1:08.6

You're also an EIR at founders fund, which is one of the more interesting places to kind of hang out or be a part of. And like us, you've made the mistake of leaving entrepreneurship to just be a YouTuber. And this is great. So you know how to make content too, which isn't, which is amazing. You make really awesome videos. Sam was sending me one this morning. Sam, you like his stuff, huh?

1:28.1

I love it. Yeah, I like your stuff, John. By the way, Sean, I'm an investor of Lucy. So I got to get that out of the way. And probably a user to at one point for sure.

1:37.6

But I mean, I think you did invest like four years ago. So, you know, the fact that I haven't been on yet. I think I earned my stripes by posting on YouTube playing in the content world. You know, what is your guy?

1:47.6

I don't even know. Can you say what the valuations? I think I invested $25,000 at a $10 million valuation.

1:53.6

And yeah, you were probably in like this seed round. And now the companies were like 60, 70 mill. All right. I'm paper. I've made a little bit of money.

1:59.6

Yeah, not bad.

2:01.6

We had, I think we could tell the story. We had one of the other co-founders of Lucy come on the pod once.

2:06.6

And this guy, we had met him at a, at some like event. Maybe a hustle event. So some some nighttime event.

2:13.6

And this guy was holding core. That was Dave.

2:16.6

Dave, yeah, he was telling stories. There's five people around him. He's got ideas. Yeah, he's like, oh, there needs to be something called pleasure Island.

2:23.6

And it's a place where you can just go sin. And I was like, wow, what is this guy? What is he talking about? And he's telling stories.

2:29.6

He's amazing. Everybody's just captured by this guy. I'm like, we got to have this guy in the pod. He comes on the pod.

2:35.6

Tells none of the stories. And none of the ideas is like, nah, I don't want to sell those on the pod.

2:40.6

And we're like, dude. And so I don't even think we ever ran the episode because he refused to tell the good stuff.

2:45.6

So John, will you make the same mistake as your pal?

2:48.6

Absolutely not. I mean, I do think a lot of founders have a, just a ton of scar tissue built up from like the last 10 years of like the media just going after tech founders and like tech bros,

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Hubspot, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Hubspot and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.