Number
ESRI: a family-owned mapping firm doing $1B+ a year, no outside money
Sam describes ESRI, a geographic-information-system software company started in the 1960s, still 100% owned by one man and his brother with no debt and no outside funding, doing over a billion dollars a year in subscription revenue.
$1000M
Annual subscription revenue · USD/year
“It's 100% owned by this one guy and his brother. So 100% owned by the same family. No debt. They've never taken any outside funding. You can't find anything about it. It does over a billion dollars a year in subscription revenue.”
Framework
Win a market by giving students the software free
Sam explains how ESRI built a monopoly: give the software away free to engineering students in college so they're trained on it by graduation, then add a moat by being the safe, accountable vendor governments need for cover-your-ass insurance.
“So in the way that they got their monopoly is they go into colleges and so they work with engineering students. They've worked really hard on making sure all the colleges, they give their software for free. So the engineering students start using it at a very young age and they're used to it. Then when they graduate, they go, oh yeah, let's just use ESRI.”
Steal thisGive your product free to students so they enter the workforce already trained on and loyal to your tool.