Story
Ampush's 'angel round': selling $5K research reports to hedge funds
Bootstrapping Ampush, Jesse got himself listed as a GLG expert at $500/hour, then upsold a $5,000 research report on the lead-gen industry. They sold 30 copies and raised $150K without giving up equity.
“We have no money. We're bootstrapping. Let's get ourselves on GLG as experts. And I'm like, okay, my charge is $500 an hour. She goes, no problem. But we talked to like someone after a few weeks and he goes, do you guys have research? And we looked at each other. We're like, yeah, yeah, we have a report. It's $5,000. So I always joke that was Ambush's angel round. We raised $150,000 selling research reports to hedge fund people.”
Steal thisProductize your expertise into a paid report and let an expert network funnel hungry buyers to you.
Idea
Marketing due-diligence consulting for private equity (Aux Insights)
Jesse built Aux Insights after PE friends kept calling him to vet target companies' Google/Facebook ad performance. It does marketing diligence before a deal and value-creation strategy after, mirroring how Accordion serves the office of the CFO.
“And so Aux Insights is essentially a private equity consulting business. It works for private equity firms, specifically in the office of the CMO, marketing-related diligence and what's called value creation.”
Steal thisPick a niche skill you have, then sell it as diligence-plus-value-creation consulting to PE firms buying companies that lean on it.
Tactic
Price as a Giffen good: undercut McKinsey while charging $50K/week
Aux charges $50,000 a week for a team of consultants versus $200,000/week for McKinsey, Bain, and BCG, positioning as 75% cheaper but more expert in online marketing. Jesse notes a report becomes more desirable when it looks more expensive.
“We charge $50,000 a week for, for a team of consultants. And McKinsey, Bain, and BCG charge $200,000 a week. So our argument is we're 75% cheaper than them, but way better in our world of online marketing”
Tactic
Audit a Facebook account: match quality and creative volume
Jesse's quick diagnostic for ad accounts: check Facebook event match quality (old PE-owned companies often score 3/10 vs 9/10 for startups) and creative testing cadence (2 a month is why performance is horrible). Creative testing is the easiest lever to pull.
“Oftentimes these old, old school companies owned by private equity, they don't even, they have like a 3 out of 10 match quality, which means Facebook signal is super crappy for them. And I bet Sean's company and most startups have 9 out of 10.”
Steal thisRaise your Facebook event match quality toward 9/10 and test far more creatives per week before blaming the channel.
Framework
The validation test: when prospects ask to buy during discovery
Jesse's signal that a business idea is real: during the discovery phase, people start asking to buy it. That happened with Growth Assistant, Aux, and early Ampush, the inverse of cool ideas nobody lines up for.
“one of my other tests for a business is If in my discovery phase, people start asking me to buy it, I know I'm onto it. Like, that's what happened with Growth Assistant. That's what happened with Aux.”
Steal thisTreat unsolicited 'can I buy that?' during customer research as the green light to actually build.
Number
Aux Insights to hit $5M revenue at 1/10th the cost of a failed bet
Aux Insights will do $5 million in revenue in its first year, and Jesse invested one-tenth of what he put into the failed Kahani plugin business to get there.
$5M
First-year revenue of Aux Insights · USD/year
“It'll do $5 million this year.”
Idea
Sell aggregated ad-spend survey data to hedge funds, reverse-auctioned
Jesse's pitch: survey advertisers controlling ~$5B in Meta spend each quarter on whether spend is up or down, then sell that signal to hedge funds for $50K/quarter on 2-year contracts, expanding to Google and Amazon. Limit it to ~20 buyers and reverse-auction the access.
“is I just, with my network, I could probably get $5 billion in Meta Facebook spend. Of, and give people a survey every quarter. Did you spend more or less? How excited are you?”
Steal thisAggregate a proprietary spend/usage signal and sell exclusive quarterly access to hedge funds via a capped reverse auction.
Framework
Know one thing cold, then find who'll pay the most for it
Jesse's repeatable playbook: identify what you know extremely well (or a cross-section of skills), then figure out who is willing to pay you the most money for that knowledge. That's how he chose to point his marketing expertise at private equity.
“what is it that you know extremely well, or a couple of things that are cross-sections of each other? And so first figure that out and then figure out who's willing to pay you the most money for what you know.”
Steal thisList what you know cold, then aim it at the single buyer segment that will pay the most for it.
Story
Red Ventures became DirecTV's 'internet dealer' and built $75M EBITDA
Red Ventures' founders became an authorized DirecTV dealer but claimed the internet as their territory, owning all the AdWords, SEO and web rights. In four years they built a $75M EBITDA business selling DirecTV subscriptions at a $500 bounty per customer.
“They owned all the AdWords rights. They owned all the SEO. And in 4 years, they built a $75 million EBITDA business just selling DIRECTV subscriptions because they would run the media, take the phone calls”
Framework
Red Ventures' 4 levers for growing acquired SEO businesses
Jesse breaks down how Red Ventures multiplies EBITDA on acquisitions: (1) improve paid+organic traffic acquisition, (2) onsite conversion optimization, (3) price to each advertiser's willingness to pay, and (4) ruthlessly cut org bloat, all on top of a unique numbers-driven culture.
“They have 4 main levers. The first is improvement of traffic acquisition, both paid and organic.”
Steal thisOn any content/affiliate acquisition, attack traffic, onsite conversion, advertiser pricing, and headcount bloat in that order.
Tactic
Throw away the auction: call advertisers and charge their max
After closing Bankrate, a Red Ventures exec scrapped the supposedly unbeatable bidding algorithm for credit-card applications. He called every advertiser, asked what they'd pay (Discover would pay $900, not $500), charged exactly that, and gained 20% more EBITDA in the first month.
“I called all the customers. I said, what are you willing to pay? What are you willing to pay? I got them. I charged them exactly what they were willing to pay. And I got 20% more in EBITDA overnight within, within the first month I owned the business.”
Steal thisDon't trust the pricing algorithm; call each buyer, learn their true willingness to pay, and charge it.
Framework
Multiple arbitrage: roll up small EBITDA shops, sell the whole bigger
Jesse argues every profitable founder should understand roll-ups: buy small $1-2M EBITDA businesses at 4-5x, combine them so growth, stability and margin push the multiple up, and exit the larger entity at 15x. He walks through Elite SEM's path from an 8x sale to a $225M acquisition.
“the finance nerds call it multiple arbitrage, which means I can buy at a low multiple and then I can sell in a few years for a higher multiple.”
Steal thisRoll up smaller competitors at low multiples, integrate for scale, and sell the combined business at a higher multiple.
Framework
Find purpose by asking 'what's the one thing you can't not do?'
Jesse's coach reframed purpose not as a far-off thing to acquire but the trait already in you: ask 'what's the one thing you can't not do?', write a few sentences, and revisit weekly. For Jesse it's helping others become the best version of themselves, which reshaped how he runs GatewayX.
“what's the one thing you can't not do? It's like a really weird question. And the exercise for it, you know, you can do it, Sam, right now is what's the one thing you can't not do? Write down a few sentences and then every week look at those sentences and see if they seem to grow with you.”
Steal thisWrite down the one thing you can't not do, then revisit it weekly to see if it grows with you.
Framework
Already jogging: hop platforms when your thing isn't working
Shaan's recurring pattern from founders like Jesse Pujji and Suli — when your current project is sputtering and a new platform launches (Facebook apps, AdWords, News Feed), you're perfectly positioned to jump because you're already in motion, not at a cold start or married to success.
“a lot of times as an entrepreneur, you just need to be in the market. You need to be in the game. And even if your current thing's not working, if you are aware of these like inflection points, these shifts, these platform shifts or big changes either in law or technology or open platforms, things like that, you're the perfect person to just shift over because you're kind of like already jogging. You're not at like a cold start.”
Steal thisStay active in the market with a project that isn't working so you're 'already jogging' and can pounce the moment a new platform or law opens up.