Chapter 1: What is the main focus of The Top podcast?
This is The Top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base. You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have. I'm now at $20,000 per talk. Five and six million. He is hell-bent on global domination. We just broke our 100,000 unit sold mark.
And I'm your host, Nathan Latka. Yesterday morning, I spoke with Joe Paluzzi, who is of Content Marketer Institute. He breaks down how he gets 3,000 people to pay $1,100 for a single event. He clears $3.2 million. Go listen to see how he does it. Okay, Top Tribe, it is so good to be talking to you again this morning.
Hopefully, you're just starting out on your jog, you're pumped, you're going to make it a great morning, or you're slowly sipping your warm coffee this morning, and you're going to love our guest. It's Mr. Paul Singh. He's an investor, founder, and I'll tell you what, the dude is an all-around hustler.
He was previously managing director at 1776, founder at Disruption Corp., which was acquired by 1776 recently. He was a partner at 500 Startup, and he was an EIR at... U-S-C-I-S, which I have no idea what it is. We'll ask him in a second. And he grows startups and small businesses, and he's up to something very interesting right now. Paul, are you ready to take us to the top?
Yeah, I'm just trying to keep up with you, Nathan.
Dude, I'm going a million miles an hour. I apologize. What is EIR?
So it's an entrepreneur in residence at the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service.
There we go. Of course. Okay, so people are going to go, well, how does Nathan know Paul? Do you remember how we met?
Uh, I, well, we met through somebody. We're both from this, uh, small place outside of Virginia or outside of DC, right?
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Chapter 2: How does Joe Paluzzi generate $3.2 million from events?
I mean, you were in Leesburg. I was in Ashburn. I can't remember who introduced us.
Wasn't it Bill Babel or, or, uh, it was either Pat or Bill. Yeah. And it was a guys, for those of you listening in, uh, Paul was actually, he was with disruption and Paul, did you or Dave that, that the Heyo deal?
I did that one, actually.
Yeah, and you know what really made me mad about what you did when you decided to invest? Jen from CIT. She comes down to Blacksburg, takes me out to dinner, and it was random. And I go, why the hell is she taking me out to dinner? And then after she said, oh, Paul wanted to see how you treated the waitress to decide whether to put in 50 grand into hay or not. Is that true?
Oh, well, so that's generally, yes. So... What I wanted to know is a lot of the business when we invest in people is really just figuring out what they're like. At the time, one of the easiest ways to figure out what you were like, other than the metrics and the traction and all the other references that came back, was just to see how you were around servers and stuff like that.
It's a nice little culture hack, if you will, or a good way to figure people out really quickly.
So guys, there you have it. A lot of the top tribe listeners, Paul, they're students who want to start their own business or they're SaaS entrepreneurs. All you got to do is take the investor out to dinner and just tip the waitress damn good. And there's your 50K investment, all right?
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Chapter 3: What makes Paul Singh a notable entrepreneur?
Well, I don't even think it's about tipping, right? It's just about like just being nice, right?
Yep. Yep. No, I love that. I love it.
Chapter 4: How does Paul's background influence his investment strategies?
It's great. And I got to tell you, you know, I, I look at, I mean, I look at just the people we have around Heyo and you, and then all the introductions you've made when I visit DC, they've been incredible. So I consider you a friend and I'm thrilled that you're on the show and you have had just a whirlwind of success over the past several years.
So walk us through, you went from 500 startups, how many investments again were made at where did you guys make it 500 startups when you were there?
Well, I think by the time I left, I think we were probably at something like 600 or 700 investments. I think 500 is up to about 1,200 investments now.
And they were about 50K each. That was your thesis.
Uh, the initial check is about 50,000. Now that that's gone up over time and things like that. But the initial check is typically smaller like that. And then, and then subsequent checks are much larger. They can be, you know, a hundred K, 250 K. They could be even more than that.
So walk us through, you go from 500 startups, walk us through why the transition to transition to disruption corp.
Yeah, so two things. One is I wanted to come back to the East Coast. We had moved out to California for 500 Startups, but all my extended family's here in the D.C. area, and so I came back here for that, first and foremost.
Secondly, I had an opportunity to start building out more of the technology that I had been working on at 500 Startups, particularly around tracking companies and getting information about them and things like that. And so it was really about jumping back into the founder's seat Uh, although I pretty quickly decided that I also wanted to be investing money.
So I ended up raising another fund as well, um, called crystal tech fund. So I started investing and running a company.
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Chapter 5: What lessons can entrepreneurs learn from Paul's transition to Disruption Corp?
I'm projecting here. All right. Now, so yes or no, Paul, do you get eight hours of sleep every night?
I wish, man. I wish. No, I don't. It's usually anywhere between like four and five.
There you go. All right. Number five. How old are you now? I'm 34. 34. Take us back 14 years. If you wish your 20-year-old self knew one thing, what would it be?
I'd probably want to save more money.
Save more money. There you go. Except I hope it's not in the stock market right now.
Time is the one thing you can't get back. And if you look at the way that compound interest and all that works, I just wish I'd saved more back then.
There you go. Well, Paul, people are going to want to follow your journey online. They obviously can research your involvement in things like 500 Startups, Disruption Corp, etc. But if they want to follow you now, where's the best place to connect with you online?
My website, resultsjunkies.com, or if you're on Twitter, it's just at Paul Singh.
Well, guys, there you have it. Paul, thanks for joining us from investing in hundreds of deals at 500 startups to exiting and selling Disruption Quark and building the ecosystem in Crystal City. Paul, thank you for taking us to the top.
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