We talk to the guy who knows Silicon Valley’s darkest secrets

My First Million

Hubspot

Entrepreneurship, Investing, Business

4.8 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 26 February 2025

⏱️ 79 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Episode 680: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk to Nick Bilton ( https://x.com/nickbilton ), investigative journalist and author of American Kingpin and Hatching Twitter. — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (7:03) Inside a criminal mind (12:57) Getting people to open up (20:49) The real story behind Twitter (29:40) The auras of Trump, Bezos, Musk (33:13) Becoming a journalist (37:24) Steve Jobs' reality distortion field (43:16) Who has it all in Silicon Valley? (49:43) Being a professional asshole (57:56) Nick's next story (1:03:38) Storytelling — Links: • American Kingpin - https://tinyurl.com/yckc6smh • Hatching Twitter - https://tinyurl.com/3ah2j9ym — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it’s called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth • Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/ My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I've got Steve Jobs stories.
0:01.5	I've got Jack Dorsey stories.
0:02.8	I've got Ross Albrecht's stories.
0:04.1	You name it.
0:04.6	I got them.
0:05.5	I feel like I can rule the world.
0:07.4	I know I could be what I want to.
0:10.3	I put my all in it like no days off.
0:12.7	On a road, let's travel, never looking back.
0:15.0	All right.
0:15.2	Sam has been telling me about a book for probably 10 years in a row. And I finally got around to reading it this year. And the book is
0:21.8	American Kingpin. It's a story of the Silk Road, of Ross Ulbricht, who created it, grew it to great
0:30.6	prominence, ended up going to jail, what we thought was for life. And then he just got pardoned by
0:35.1	Trump. And so Sam just reread the book. I read it this year. We both love this thing. It's a page life. And then he just got pardoned by Trump. And so Sam just re-read the book.
0:37.5	I read it this year. We both love this thing. It's a page Turner. And the author, Nick Billton,
0:42.6	not only wrote that, but he wrote hatching Twitter and a bunch of other stuff. Fascinating guy.
0:46.9	And he's here with us today on MFM. So let's do it. Nick, what's going on? We wanted to talk about all types of stuff. We want to talk about storytelling. We want to talk about things that you researched that didn't make the book. We want to talk about the OG stories of Silicon Valley because you've been covering this stuff forever. But you're like one of the three people who we've had on the pod that I'm like nervous to talk to and I stayed up all night, like reading everything about you. Don't be nervous. This is exciting. This is fun. It's going to be great. We're going to tell some
1:13.0	crazy stories. I've got Steve Jobs stories. I've got Jack Dorsey stories. I've got Ross Albrecht's stories.
1:18.6	You name it. I got them. Who, of all those people, have you become friends or admire any of them?
1:25.8	Or do you, are you like a strictly like a journalist who doesn't
1:29.2	cross the barrier? Well, that's a great question. I feel like we should save, I should save
1:34.8	that answer because I've got such great stories about all these people, about Bezos, everyone,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

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.