$1M By 19, $100M+ By 35 -- Here's How He Did It
About This Episode
Sam Parr and guest-host Ben Wilson interview serial entrepreneur Val Katayev about his journey from a teenage immigrant to generating over $30 million in profit by age 23. The episode breaks down Val's 'digital pirate' mentality and his ability to identify distribution arbitrage across industries like search engines, ringtones, jewelry, and real estate.
Episode Description
Show Notes
- 00:23- Val going viral on Twitter
- 1:35- How he got his start
- 19:15- How he builds launches new products
- 37:40- Are you driven by money?
- 42:30- How Sam accidentally exposed Val
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- Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more.
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- Additional episodes you might enjoy:
- #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits
- #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future
- #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto
- #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett
- #218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates
- Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More
- How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More
Key Takeaways
Increase testing velocity by launching ten small experiments in the time it takes others to perfect one product to improve your odds of success.
Identify and exploit 'white space' distribution channels like early-stage TikTok or podcasts where supply is high and monetization efficiency is low.
Cultivate systemic resourcefulness by intentionally limiting your own or your employees' resources to force creative and lean problem-solving.