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#497April 29, 20231:14:47

Stanford Students Pitch Us Their Startups | $3500 Prize Money

Student entrepreneurship at Stanford and MichiganBuilding campus startup communitiesAngel investing in college-aged founders

About This Episode

Sam and Shaan host a live pitch competition for student entrepreneurs at Stanford, featuring four startups focused on AR hardware, college admissions data, AI mental health journaling, and recruitment automation. The hosts provide rigorous feedback on market size and consumer behavior, eventually awarding a $3,500 prize to Simplify, a career platform that has already achieved significant viral traction.

Episode Description

Episode 449: Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) judge the second My First Million college pitch competition with students at Stanford University for a prize of $3,500. The future is being built from dorm rooms - find out who wins the cash! Want to see more MFM? Subscribe to the MFM YouTube channel here. ------ Check Out Sam's Stuff: * Hampton * Ideation Bootcamp * Copy That Check Out Shaan's Stuff: * Power Writing Course * Daily Newsletter ------ 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. ----- 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

Show Notes

Check Out Sam's Stuff

  • * Hampton
  • * Ideation Bootcamp
  • * Copy That

Check Out Shaan's Stuff

  • * Power Writing Course
  • * Daily Newsletter
  • -----
  • Past guests on

Key Takeaways

1

Consumer hardware startups face a 'death by tech giant' risk when building in spaces like AR, where Apple, Meta, and Google can eventually integrate niche features as free software layers.

2

A 'utility first' growth strategy, such as a browser extension that saves users hours of manual work, is a high-retention 'wedge' that can be leveraged into a massive data-driven B2B business.

3

Deregulation in highly controlled industries, such as the recent shift allowing over-the-counter hearing aid sales, creates massive opportunities for new direct-to-consumer business models.

Business Ideas Mentioned

DTC Over-the-Counter Hearing Aids

E-commerce

AI Personalized College Admissions Bot

AI & Automation

Passive Social Media Mental Health Tracker

AI & Automation

View all ideas

Featuring

BB

Bobby Barshop

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Quick Stats

Duration1:14:47
Guests1
Ideas Discussed3
Topics3