Shaan Puri
Chairman at The Milk Road
San Francisco, California
Overview
Work Experience
Founder
2019 - Current
A business podcast listened to over 25,000,000+ times a year! I created the podcast with low expectations. I thought it would be fun, but nobody would listen, and it would just be a good excuse to interview interesting guests. Got very lucky that it found an audience. I think if you have a podcast with an audience, it's the best job ever. I get to talk to my buddy Sam, for 2 hours a week. That's a job? I would do that for free. But somehow we get paid and semi-famous for doing it. It's also a great vehicle to meet some awesome guests (Tony Robbins, MrBeast, Mohnish Pabrai etc.,... and a bunch of guests you've never heard of with incredible stories like Egg Carton Queen) This podcast has been the greatest project I've ever worked on. The most fun AND most lucrative. Yet it started as a just-for-fun side project that I figured would go nowhere, and lose money. I think there's a lesson there..
stealth ecommerce business
2020
After 10 years of doing internet/digital stuff, I tried a new challenge selling an actual product. Turns out, selling real things is fun (and way hard). I started the business because I was hanging out in my friends backyard and his phone kept ringing (ka-ching!) with shopify notifications. He was selling $20M worth of dog ramps (yes, ramps for tiny dogs to get down from couches safely) with no investors. I'm a grown man, but that day, I became a jealous grown man, and decided I needed to create an ecommerce company too. Spent 6 months trying to figure out the right product, before finally cracking it. Selling real-world physical things is fun, and hard. I feel like I run the world's largest lemonade stand. I haven't shared details about this one publicly yet - but excited to do so at some point
Co-Founder
2021 - 2022
I thought crypto was going to be a big deal, so I created a company that would force me into the middle of the dancefloor. In one year, we created the largest daily crypto newsletter (250,000+ readers) and the company ended up getting acquired. highlights: - putting $1M into a public crypto wallet to trade wildly as a marketing stunt - training writers so that I didn't have to write the thing everyday, but still was proud of the output - creating a fun brand. I liked the milkman character and working with the designers on it. - learned a lot about crypto (stuff that made me excited, and stuff that sketched me out) Lowlights: - selling ads when crypto markets crashed sucked. When everyone's broke, who's going to run ads? - I made a dumb investment and lost $1M when Luna crashed - realizing a lot of the people held up as geniuses (SBF, 3 Arrows Capital, etc..) were frauds/idiots, felt stupid in hindsight, but good lesson learned. If it smells like fish, it's probably fish.
Ethereum Price offers tools, analysis, and news for understanding the cryptocurrency market.
Resting & Vesting
2019 - 2021
We got acquired. I spent 2 years at Twitch as part of the earn out.
Twitch is a social video platform where gamers can broadcast, watch, and talk about video games.
Raised $35,000,000.00 from Thrive Capital, Nelstone Ventures, Take-Two Interactive Software, WestSummit Capital, Alsop Louie Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners.
CEO
2017 - 2019
Acquired by Twitch (!) We tried building an app for teens playing esports. Think of it like Little League Baseball, but instead of Johnny standing in right field, he's playing Fortnite with his friends. It was cool - but we realized this tech is more valuable to a big streaming company (eg. Twitch, youtube, facebook etc) than it was as a standalone product, so we decided to sell the company
CEO
2015 - 2017
push a button, broadcast a conversation. awesome product. used by ~4M people, including ESPN, Tony Robbins, and the UFC. ultimately didn't work out (full post mortem here: https://medium.com/@shaanvp/blab-is-dead-long-live-blab-d2f72449ddb8) http://blab.im
CEO
2012 - 2015
a startup studio, founded & funded by the Birch family. this was an absolute dream job. I got to dream up business ideas and had a team of ~20 developers and designers to build them. We built some amazing things. The last venture got acquired. www.monkeyinferno.com
Founder
2010 - 2011
after college, I skipped medschool and started a sushi restaurant with my 2 best friends It was supposed to be the "chipotle of sushi". The company didn't work out, but I had amazing sushi everyday for lunch. So I can't complain.
Sabi is the first ever fast-casual concept to provide fully customizable, restaurant quality.
Education
BS
2006 - 2010