Matt Kelly | The Midnight Pod

Sam Posthuma started at 16, selling electric lighters at school in Holland. A dozen brands later, he built Old Money into a fashion brand with half a million followers, sold it after two years, and went all in on HiStrips: the pink nasal strip that started as a party brand on a boat in Valencia. Now world-class athletes wear the strips, 4,000 creators make content for the brand, and the factory in China says it gets a request to copy them almost every week. This is a conversation about why the story now matters more than the product: building with three co-founders, how a small e-commerce exit really works, growing through creators, funding stock without investors, and how Sam would start a brand today on a small budget. Sam Posthuma: https://www.samposthuma.com HiStrips: https://histrips.com ✅ All my links are here - https://www.midnight.co 00:00 Why e-commerce is now all about the story 03:14 The factory that said "you're number 14" 06:29 Selling lighters at school at 16 09:51 Song Shirts and the copyright claim 12:37 Years of trial and error 15:49 Building Old Money 19:21 Why fashion is brutal 22:56 Why he sold 25:26 How a small exit actually works 31:59 The buyer, and keeping 20% 35:47 Joining HiStrips as co-founder number four 40:39 Four co-founders, four jobs 44:28 18 months of compounding 46:03 World-class athletes in pink strips 48:03 4,000 creators: the growth engine 50:03 Why he still runs the ad account 52:08 Funding growth without investors 56:09 Electrolytes and the email-list test 58:52 Can HiStrips sell more than strips? 1:00:22 Making the best product possible 1:04:08 Hiring from the DMs 1:08:46 Retail, global and getting 10x bigger 1:11:49 Why they won't sell 1:13:43 The hardest part 1:16:58 Money, freedom and how much is enough 1:19:31 How he'd start a brand today 1:24:37 Quickfire 1:26:56 Advice to his 18-year-old self Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Four and a half years after his first episode, Jack Zambakides on walking away from LS Personal Shopper, building D.Louise, and the lesson from scaling nobody tells you.

The Midnight Pod - episode 83

The Midnight Pod - episode 82