The Professional Pivoter
Before he became a millionaire entrepreneur, investor, and creator, Shaan Puri almost became a professional poker player. The discipline, strategy, and risk tolerance that poker demands ended up shaping how he approaches everything else in life. But instead of playing for chips, he decided to build his own table.
Shaan has built and sold companies in tech, media, and crypto. He's scaled audiences from zero to millions. He's hosted one of the world's top business podcasts. And he's done it all with the same trait that separates long-term winners from the rest: the ability to pivot.
From Tech Builder to Media Creator
Shaan's first big chapter began in Silicon Valley. He became CEO of Monkey Inferno, a small product incubator, where he led a 20-person team that rebuilt the social app Bebo and sold it to Twitch. For most people, that would have been the endgame. For Shaan, it was just the warm-up.
After that exit, he walked away from tech and started creating content. He'd spent years watching founders build great products and fail to communicate why they mattered. So he decided to get good at telling stories.
He started writing online and later co-hosted the podcast My First Million with Sam Parr. What began as two guys riffing on business ideas became a massive media brand with millions of monthly listeners. The podcast worked because it didn't sound like business school. It sounded like two friends trading secrets. Shaan's gift was framing ideas in a way that made them feel electric and possible.
He understood how to mix curiosity, emotion, and clarity so the listener couldn't tune out. That's a pattern that runs through all of his work.
The Milk Road Playbook
In 2021, Shaan built one of the fastest-growing newsletters in the world. It was called The Milk Road. The idea was simple: explain crypto in plain English, make people laugh, and give them something valuable every morning.
The execution was not simple at all. But Shaan used everything he'd learned from years of studying media. He reverse-engineered the success of The Hustle, the newsletter Sam Parr had built and sold, and applied the same mechanics in a new niche.
It exploded. Within ten months, The Milk Road had over 250,000 readers. Soon after, it sold for eight figures.
That story isn't about crypto. It's about repeatability. Shaan didn't stumble into success. He built systems for it. Every sentence in The Milk Road followed the same rules he talks about on his podcast: clarity, rhythm, and energy. He knew that attention is the new currency, and that great writing works like a slippery slope—you read the first line, and before you realize it, you've read to the end.
Reps, Frameworks, and Curiosity
Shaan treats storytelling the same way he once treated poker: through endless reps and careful pattern recognition. He studies people who are better than him. He borrows their frameworks, tests them, and throws out what doesn't work.
He learned dialogue from Aaron Sorkin, pacing from comedians like Hasan Minhaj, and emotional tension from movies. He's a collector of techniques. One of his favorite ideas is Sorkin's "intention and obstacle." Every story needs a character who wants something and something in the way. Another is the "five-second moment of change" from Storyworthy, which teaches that all great stories revolve around a single emotional transformation.
He doesn't chase trends. He chases frameworks that can be used anywhere.
Shaan also has an uncommon view on energy and creativity. He believes most people sit down cold and expect brilliance to appear. Instead, he warms himself up. Music. Movement. Pushups. Whatever it takes to get into a peak state before creating. He calls it "making yourself magnetic." He believes energy transfers through words. And it's hard to argue with the results.
A Philosophy Built on Motion
At the core of everything Shaan teaches is motion. Curiosity is the engine. Energy is the fuel. Repetition is the method.
He often says the best ideas come from following what excites you. When you feel stuck, change your state, change your focus, or change your story. It's equal parts practical and philosophical. Simple, but not easy.
Shaan is one of those rare people who seem to have figured out how to live life in beta. He's not chasing one finish line. He's building a portfolio of interesting things—startups, shows, communities, and ideas—and letting them evolve as he does.
He's proof that mastery doesn't come from specialization. It comes from curiosity, storytelling, and the courage to keep reinventing yourself every time the game changes.
That's Shaan Puri's real secret. He didn't just learn how to win. He learned how to pivot before anyone else even realized the rules had changed.