In this segment of the My First Million podcast, Sam Parr and a guest discuss HumanIPO (humanipo.app), a platform that lets individuals "go public" by issuing a ticker and selling blocks of their personal time as tradable shares. The guest explains the model: sellers can auction up to 500 hours of their time at a set price (e.g., 100 hours at $250 per hour, totaling $25,000), and buyers can either use the hours or hold the shares hoping the price rises. Sam likens the service to expert‑network sites like Clarity.fm, calling it a rebranding of existing consulting hour marketplaces. They debate logistical concerns—whether sellers will honor booked hours, the feasibility of scaling the model, and the risk of sellers bailing on commitments. The conversation shifts to alternative ideas, such as selling a percentage of future earnings, which Sam dismisses for himself but acknowledges could appeal to some. The guest mentions discovering HumanIPO on Product Hunt and notes parallels with personal ICOs in crypto. Sam expresses curiosity, calling the concept innovative and “nerdy,” and even jokes about signing up, while remaining skeptical about its practical viability.
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have to buy 100 hours of his time at $250 an hour. So what does that mean?
I want to get your opinion on this. Just give me a, a dumb or awesome. Um, the website's called humanipo.app. Um, these guys are doing a very fancy branding around an old idea. So what it does is I can go, I can go do a human IPO So I'm Sean, I go public, I get a stock ticker, which is like, you know, SHA or whatever. And I basically IPO off a share of my time so I can auction off up to 500 hours of my time that you can book from me at a certain price. And then if people think, hey, you know, this Sean guy, he's on, you know, he's on the way up, his time is gonna be more valuable in the future. I'm going to buy a unit of this guy's time. I can either hold it and trade it later at a higher price, or I can, I guess, use it to like book an hour of my time. So this is the core idea on the website now.
It's incredibly interesting.
Tell me what you think of it.
For sure. Interesting. For sure. Innovative and wild. And whoever invented this is a nerd, and I fucking love those types of people. Logistically, I just don't think it makes sense because, well, so I can buy Brian's time. Well, so if it was— I'm looking at their site now. I don't understand why they call it like it's— they're really just rebranding, just like expert networks and consulting. Like, it's just like, dude, just let me have time for it. So I think they—
Clarity.fm.
It's the same thing. Definitely cool. Highly unlikely to work, right? That's what I think. I think this is like an art project that's neat. This is— I don't know. How did you find this?
Um, I saw it on, I think, Product Hunt, and I was like, yeah, I've been following— I think I talked about this on one of the previous things. I've been following these, uh, personal ICOs, personal, personal coins that people are creating in the crypto world. This is not crypto, but But it's the same idea. And I think it sort of has the same pros and cons. I think it's like kind of exciting in a way to like bet on people. And I think it's kind of lame in a way, which is like, what do I get? I get an hour of their time.
Like, well, no, on this you have like this guy I just clicked on, you have to buy 100 hours of his time at $250 an hour. So what does that mean? Is that— wait, is it $25,000 or $250,000? I didn't hear exactly what you said, but you have to buy 100 hours from him at $250. So that's $25 grand. Yeah. So, but like, I don't think, like, if I was this guy and I just sold 100 hours of my time, I have a feeling that I would bail on a lot of that.
Yeah. So one, one piece is, are you actually gonna fulfill? The second is, so what am I doing? It's actually basically like a freelancer selling blocks of design time or programming time or consulting hours or whatever it is. Okay, that's cool. Maybe for really special, unique people that works. I don't think this is that interesting overall. The ones I think are more interesting are the ones where you actually get a piece of their earnings over the next X years.
I would never do that in a million years.
I know, but some people would. Some people would say, cool, I'll take— you know, it's like people who raise money for their company, right? They're selling off future earnings for capital today. And some people might want, instead of doing it for your company, you might do it for yourself. So I think it's interesting. I want to see somebody like—
I'm going to sign up for this.
Figure out the use case.
I'm going to, I'm going to, I want to, but do you know these guys? Can you introduce me? Can I be one of these people that they, that can I sell 100 hours? It seems, it does seem interesting. I'm just, just from like a, like an, like an innovation perspective. Like it's just so. Weird and interesting. I would love to— I would love to try this.
