In this episode of the My First Million podcast, Sam Parr and his guest discuss how to spot private companies that could grow from a $1‑$5 billion valuation to $100‑$500 billion, akin to Facebook’s rise. They start with a career‑advice metaphor – “if you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, just buckle up” – and explore two ways to ride these rockets: buying secondary stock in late‑stage private unicorns or working at the companies. The conversation weaves personal anecdotes (a friend’s 10× return on Stripe secondary shares, Sam’s own Atlassian investment, a missed Stamps.com trade) with a list of candidate sectors and firms: Stripe, Atlassian, Gusto, Rippling, Airtable, Carta, Coinbase, Opendoor, Brave (browser), AR platforms, and self‑driving car startups. They evaluate what makes a company a potential $100 billion player – massive addressable market, defensibility, network effects – and express skepticism about predicting such outcomes. The episode also touches on historical benchmarks (FAANG returns outperforming VC averages) and the idea that future giants could emerge from new search engines or browser replacements. Throughout, the tone is conversational, enthusiastic about high‑growth opportunities, yet measured and occasionally skeptical about over‑optimistic forecasts.
Chapters
I have a question for you now. So before last week, I think maybe it was when I was with Stu, but I shared this anecdote or this sort of advice, which was if you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, you know, don't ask which seat, just sit down and buckle up. And this is just career advice, which is if you're not going to start your own company—
You got flack for it.
Did I?
Yeah.
Oh, I thought people loved it. What do you mean? Well, what was the criticism?
Nice size audience, not everyone's gonna be happy.
But what was, what was the criticism based on? It wasn't even controversial.
Just stuff like, um, titles. It was just comments like people saying titles are important, how much you get paid is more important, things like that.
That's crazy. Disagree. Hard disagree. Um, okay, so anyways, the question was sort of— that led to a different question, which is what are the rocket ships of today? And so somebody, by the way, took that idea and made a rocket ship newsletter for jobs or whatever. Um, but beyond that, I was just sort of thinking, just my thought experiment. Um, what companies that today are worth $1 to $5 billion do I believe will be multi-hundred billion? So what's just as a way of phrasing it simpler, what $5 billion company today could become a $500 billion company in the future? I say this because we have friends who bought Facebook secondary stock back in 2006, 2007, when Facebook was valued at over $1 billion. And today Facebook's like whatever, $500 billion company. And that, you know, it was clear it wasn't going to zero. It was clear it was a thing. And the question— but you could have invested then and got a phenomenal return. And I have several friends who did. I had a friend, Alex— oh no, sorry, Josh Buckley, who's a good guy, founder.
British guy?
Yeah, he's a British guy. Yeah, I know him. And so he was telling me, we were just hanging out one day, and he's like, yeah, I'm buying secondary stock of Stripe as much as I can get. And I was like, oh, like, what do you mean? Like, I'm not doing that. Why are you doing that? I should do that. And he was like, yeah, I just think Stripe's a great company, and there's secondary stock available, and I'm just buying it. I'm like, well, what's the valuation? It's already like a $2 billion company. He's like, yeah, but it's like, Stripe's gonna be big. He's like, I think Stripe's going to be huge. So I'm just buying up secondary. And now, so Stripe's valued now at like $20 billion. So he took essentially like a no-risk bet, in my opinion, and 10x'd his money on a private company that was— it was already a unicorn but wasn't yet on the stock market. It wasn't doing like 10% a year. You know, that's a 10x appreciation. So long story short, what companies do you think have that potential that are in the single-digit billions today or less that you think could be a Facebook, Google, Amazon of our generation?
So a few years ago I answered this question and I thought it was Atlassian and I went in on that and it worked.
Okay. Tell me about that. What do you mean it worked? Well, back then it was—
Can you just look at— look, go ahead, Henry. Look, go to Atlassian stock. You're busy today. I invested in Atlassian stock. I mean, it's not like I like— yeah, Atlassian spelled with an A-T-A-T. There it is. Yeah. And then go to all time. I bought at max on the far right. I bought it when it went public. So what did it go up by?
It's like a 3x already.
So I 3x my money. So I bought it last year because I read their annual report and I was like, oh, these guys are great. Right.
So their market cap is now $35 billion.
Yeah. So I bought it right when it went out. So that worked out well.
What do you think could get to the over $100 billion? It's very hard to get over $100 billion.
How many companies are worth over $100 billion?
Like, very, very few. Especially if you think about tech companies. So some of the tech companies that made it, Amazon made it, Google made it, Microsoft made it, Facebook made it. Uber did not quite make it yet, but it's getting there. Tesla made it. Like, I think I invested in Tesla when it was at about this number, $5 to $8 billion.
Oh, really?
And now it's almost $100 billion. And so like, that's a, that's a big lift of a company that it's out there. It's not a seed stage startup you're taking a bet on, right? It's a company that's out there. And the other way to take the bet on it, even if you're not an investor, is to go work at one of these companies, right? So like Airbnb was a good candidate. Uh, now it's valued too high to qualify for this. Airbnb's like at, I don't know, $35 billion or something like that.
We'll see what happens with this.
But it's not in the single-digit billions anymore. But when we, when we moved to San Francisco, we could have done that, right?
When I moved to San Francisco, I had a job offer at Airbnb when it was worth a billion.
$1 billion.
Maybe less. I don't know. There was only— no, it was less. It was 2012, right?
So, so let's just say it was at a billion, which it wasn't, but let's say it was. Uh, you—
yeah, I would have made $10 million.
I don't know, it's 35x. So even if you had just gotten a, a sort of standard stock package, which was like over 4 years you're going to get $200 grand, I would have made $5 or $10 million. Yeah, that's insane.
And I got fired before I even showed up to work.
Uh, so some other candidates that I put up here, Flexport, I think is a candidate. Maybe. Oh, oh, you got some inside intel? That sounded like a juicy maybe.
Well, Ryan told me he thinks it's gonna be massive or it's gonna go bankrupt. Okay. Which is like how you're gonna be when you're—
Yeah, that's how you're gonna be.
That's how you gotta be.
So some other, some, this was harder than I thought. I also tweeted this out. So the most popular answers I got was Airtable and Carta, and I pretty much disagree with both of those. I don't know under, I, and I asked, these are smart people replying and I was like, Carta, why Carta?
We should get Carta to sponsor this podcast, by the way.
Yeah. Why are they not sponsoring?
I don't know. You guys need a sponsor and I'm gonna, I, I don't give a fuck if people sponsor. I'm gonna tell you the truth. Carta, it's the best option out there, but it still needs a lot to improve.
Right.
I use it. I give you guys $5 grand a year. I'm happy that I give you the money. Um, but it can improve.
Yeah. So Airtable, Airtable, it would have to basically replace Excel in the corporate world for it to do this. Otherwise it will not be a $100 billion company.
How about Gusto?
Gusto's a good one. So I think there's a lot that are in the sort of either HR tech, just you need to be in huge space.
I like Gusto and Rippling.
Yeah. Gusto, Rippling, I think.
I would bet.
I mean, $100 billion's a high bar, but yeah. So other ones that I, that I put up here, so Stripe, but it's past this point. So Coinbase, only if the Bitcoin, if Bitcoin actually becomes, like, if Bitcoin actually is the thing, it becomes the global reserve currency, then—
Well, it doesn't have to be.
The largest Bitcoin sort of company, the largest Bitcoin brand would be, I think, $100 billion.
Yeah.
It just has to—
can it become Bank of America? Can it become Wells Fargo?
Yeah, but I think Bitcoin has to become that relevant for Coinbase to be—
Yeah, I buy that.
OpenDoor is another one just because residential real estate is so big. So if they actually have a working model, they could become a $100 billion company.
I don't buy that because what? Because Zillow and Trulia aren't that huge.
They don't do what these guys do, though. Zillow and Trulia, they sell leads to brokers. They're now trying to copy OpenDoor. So now they offer what OpenDoor offers, but Opendoor is literally buying and selling the houses. They're flipping houses at scale, which is pretty crazy.
What else?
This was tough. I don't know. That's all I had. But I put this on here. I wasn't going to talk about it initially, but I'm like, I want to bring this up. I want people to tell me what I'm wrong about. Well, what, what companies I should be considering in this. But I think it's a really important question because for me, I'm going to go try to buy secondary stock in all these companies. Okay.
So I don't—
and if you're working, you should go work at one of these companies.
$100 billion is that's impossible. I won't even, I'm not even gonna try to predict that because like only like a few hundred people, a few, a few hundred businesses have ever probably done that. I don't know the number, but that's really hard to say. But if I had to make a prediction, I do think that there will be some new search engines. And I also think that some of the new Chrome replacements could be quite large. So Brave is one of them. What's another one?
Replacing the browser.
Yeah, anything that are replacing browsers I think are kind of cool and could potentially be that big. I think there's gonna be a lot of browser—
I think if any company nails AR, they will, they will be able to do this, but that's a ways away, I believe.
How about Zoose?
The self-driving car company? Yeah, yeah. So that was the other— I considered all the self-driving car companies because I'm like, if If one of them becomes a success, a self— a successful self-driving car company, the market leader will be worth over $100 billion. It's just more likely, I believe, is more likely to be Tesla or one of the incumbents. Rather, they'll buy one of these companies rather than that company independently going from where it is today, which is $1 billion to $100 billion.
How about this? What companies are public now that could grow that much? So I was talking to Moise the other day and we were looking at Stamps.com. They were crazy undervalued. And the next day we We were like, let's buy this. The next day, we didn't buy in time, it—
Went up 50%.
Went up 50%. Yeah, I love that. It was coincidental.
Just, I saw an interesting stat. Over the last 10 years, if you had just bought the FAANG companies, so Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google, in the 10 years, it outperformed all VCs, or sorry, it outperformed even the sort of top, like, expected returns of venture capital. So the public market, if you just bought the 5 most popular tech stocks, You did better. It was a 20, 24% IRR over 10 years.
Okay, well, what, what's public now that could— I don't fucking know. That's a great question. Um, it's— that's hard. You got to really bet on industries.
