Business Finds: Hormozi’s Skool Investment, $700M Water & VC Hacks

About this video

Sam and Shaan debut their ‘Friday Quickie’ format, sharing six interesting finds from the week: a VC deal-flow photography hack, a Twitter account tracking stealth-mode founders, Jake Kassan’s vulnerable Reddit post about post-exit depression, Alex Horios’s acquisition of School and its traffic spike, breakdowns of high-income household spending, Liquid Death’s Super Bowl marketing strategy, and an investigation into how review sites are consolidated and biased.

Key takeaways

• Sam describes an emerging deal-flow service where photographers capture entrepreneurs outside top VC offices and sell the resulting leads list to other funds—a ruthless efficiency tactic normally seen in traditional finance, not Silicon Valley.
• Shaan highlights @stealthcoy, a 750-follower Twitter account that tracks when people announce stealth projects or leave high-growth companies; it’s a free, real-time source for finding emerging founders and companies.
• Jake Kassan, founder of Movement watches (sold for ~$100M+), publicly posted on Reddit about severe loneliness and depression two years after exit despite having tens of millions, illustrating the ‘second mountain’ problem where money and ego-driven motivation disappear.
• Alex Horios’s acquisition of School (a community platform) reportedly drove its monthly traffic from ~8M to ~17M visitors in one month, demonstrating how a founder’s existing audience can be a powerful growth lever for an acquired SaaS asset.
• An analysis of a high-income couple earning $3.7M annually in Alpine, New Jersey revealed they spend ~$77k monthly ($924k annually) and still struggle to build wealth, suggesting extreme lifestyle inflation limits financial freedom even at very high incomes.
• Liquid Death executed a three-part marketing win by auctioning excess inventory (half a million cases) as a ‘Super Bowl ad’ on eBay, ultimately receiving $500k from Coinbase while generating press coverage—demonstrating marketing creativity over budget spending.
• House of Fresh’s investigation revealed that 16 large media conglomerates (Meredith, Dotdash, BuzzFeed, etc.) control ~3 billion clicks monthly and dominate review rankings through SEO, often by aggregating Amazon reviews rather than conducting original testing, making independent reviews untrustworthy.
• Shaan proposes a subscription-based review model (like The Athletic) that explicitly refuses affiliate commissions and relies on paying subscribers, which could differentiate on trust and eliminate bias incentives.

Episode details: published March 1, 2024 · 40K views · 29:09 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. The business ideas, figures and results discussed are the hosts’ and guests’ own claims, shared as brainstorming and entertainment — not verified facts and not investment advice.

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