Lane Merrifield

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487 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Oct 2025 last heard 1 Oct

Lane Merrifield’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Oct 2025 with 1.

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Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin · The Double-Edged Sword of the "Shark Tank Effect" with Club Penguin Cofounder Lane Merrifield · 1 Oct 2025 podcast

of dave crisco saying hey use my office use my equipment use my systems and here's even a couple of employees who part-time can kind of help you out with this it was very generous but it also kept us focused on just creating the product and we weren't trying to lease office space and come up with a logo and figure out like i see so many entrepreneurs get so obsessed around what's the company going to be like that they forget and lose sight of what the product really should be so

Being capital efficient also forces you to get the product out faster and see if you've got a market there, right?

I mean, we all talk about MVPs, minimum viable products and getting it out there.

But sometimes when you got a lot of money, it gets really easy to convince yourself that it's not ready yet.

It's not ready yet.

There's friends and family, although that's always a little bit dicey.

But one thing I've seen work really well with friends and family rounds and stuff is to say like, hey, invest in this.

We'd love to repay you.

But then I'd also love to set up a trust or a fund for future kids, grandkids, whatever, for like an education fund or something like that and have part of this equity kind of go into that in a way that...

Now that they're not trying to pay out VCs and trying to give big capital returns, it's like, hey, if we're dropping in 50 grand, 100 grand into this fund, it's actually a way that our family and the legacy of our family can endure.

There's a lot of creative things you can do around that that don't put the same stakes as high as saying, well, how can I become a unicorn in the next year?

And if I can't become a unicorn, I must be a failure, which is kind of like what I think has transpired a lot over the last 10, 15 years.

Or you could say, hey, I'm going to return the 100 grand or even say, hey, the goal is to return 120 grand.

But then I'd love to have a piece of equity of the company that is basically just family equity.

And in some ways, we did this a little bit with Club Penguin, like all of my nieces and nephews.

went to school and got their bachelor's degrees based on a fund we set up.

Actually, a trust we set up that any kid who wanted to could use it.

And now I think 24 of them have all used it and have all gotten bachelor's degrees.

And some are now going to med school and others.

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