About Hampton

Backstory: How my partner Joe lost $100M

My name's Sam Parr. The photo above, that's my co-founder Joe Speiser from a photoshoot with Inc. Magazine (link to the story). 

Poor Joe... I want to tell you the story about that photo and how he lost $100M. 

You see, when I was 28 years old, I was running my 3-year-old media company called The Hustle. That year we did ~$8 million in revenue. 

30% of the time I felt unstoppable. I knew exactly what to do. But the other 70%... I was full fear. “I’m making this up as I go,” I thought to myself. "If this employee quits, we're screwed" or "I have no idea how to keep growing."

And so, I started Googling to find other media founders to learn from. That's when I came across Joe in a “fast growing CEOs in media” type of Business Insider article. 

I cold-emailed Joe. I lied and said I’d be in New York for other meetings (I lived in San Fransisco) and wanted to see him (had no other meetings planned, ha). 

He said yes. I bought the ticket.

Joe was far more successful than I was.

He sold one company when he was 24 years old for $200M, scaled another to $75M, and was running a media business called LittleThings doing $65M in sales.

But the day we met, he was staring down disaster.

Facebook, his biggest source for readers and revenue, changed their algorithm right when he was in the process of selling the company for $100M.

Weeks later, the deal fell through. A few months later, LittleThings was sold for a fraction of that $100M.

Joe missed out on a $100M pay day.

Epiphany

After selling my company, another entrepreneur asked about the process. 

It was horrible, I said. But having a small group of other founders who've been there that helped guide me, it was absolutely game changing. Both before the sale, but also how to handle life after. 

And that's when Joe and I realized something: Most founders don’t have this.

Because once they hit $5M, $10M, $50M in revenue… and suddenly they’re all alone.

They've outrun most of their buds.

No peers who understand. No one to call bullshit. No one to say, “you’re playing too small.”

And when that happens, it's easy to slowly fade into mediocrity.

Because they don’t have folks to push back or give contextual feedback.

And that, my dear reader, is why we created Hampton.