TBPN’s 9 Lessons From Turning a Niche Livestream Into a 9-Figure Exit
Daily tech live show TBPN has proven that a startup can achieve a multi-million dollar exit by building a high-frequency, highly commercial livestream for a small, elite professional community.
Colin and Samir were joined on stage by TBPN co-founders John Coogan and Jordi Hays to discuss how they got acquired for nine figures in less than two years of operating.
The Nine Lessons
Go full-time: Ditch part-time execution and side projects to commit complete operational focus and resources to the media product right from day one.
Don’t be afraid to be niche: Resist the temptation to broaden content for cheap views; long-term commercial value comes from fully capturing a specialized professional audience.
Daily, timely, and live: Broadcast live every single weekday to cover breaking industry news in real time, using the high-frequency schedule to quickly iterate and improve the show’s format and content.
Create a differentiated and distinct product: Invest heavily in an original visual layout and a highly unique physical studio to instantly separate the program from standard, identical online interview formats. For example, John and Jordi dressed in suits to stand in contrast to the typical casual tech executive attire.
Treat it like a show, not a podcast: Approach the broadcast with the high-energy performance mindset of live television rather than a casual discussion, ensuring the format actively commands attention.
You can't buy an audience: Turn down outside venture capital if it forces the business to chase arbitrary traffic numbers that dilute core authority and disrupt the true market niche.
Be commercial: Prioritize structured, long-term brand sponsorships from the beginning, treating corporate advertisements as a proud and central engine of the revenue model. John and Jordi sold TBPN as an F1 team, where brands would sign yearly contracts.
Engage with the media and Hollywood: Collaborate openly with traditional journalists and major media organizations to build mainstream institutional authority and expand distribution.
Channel the mindset of a Golden Retriever: Take a “hot, dumb, and happy” mindset to business—ignore market noise, negative comments, or copycat competitors; keep your head down and stay relentlessly focused on your own execution.
Top Quotes
On finding a singular focus: We sort of burned all the other ships and focused full-time just like it was any other startup and viewed it as an opportunity to build something not alongside something else, not in service of something else, but actually as a first-class media product that was going to be our entire focus." —John Coogan
On corporate media vs. niche strategy: "You just can't get millions and millions of views on an interview with a Series B company that's doing HR software. But our niche audience loves that, as boring as that sounds to a lot of people. So we said we're going to be okay with that and we're not going to try and view-max." —John Coogan
On the power of content iteration: "Every single weekday we record, and the second we go offline, we're immediately talking about what could have been better... You can just improve much more rapidly because of that constant iteration." —Jordi Hays
On rejecting VC funding: "Every single time we were just early on like, what would we do with the money? And we could not find a single thing that would actually make the show better... If you're trying to go after something other than serving that 200,000 people, there would have been things we could do with the money. But if you actually had that staying true to how you make the best daily media product for those 200,000 people, we couldn't find anything." —Jordi Hays
On M&A strategy for media companies: "Companies are bought, not sold. So if you go out and you try to sell your company, you have no leverage, you'll get beat up on price, you come across as needing something. Whereas we truly had the mindset of doing this for 30 years. So, having that leverage of full independence allowed us to get the outcome that we did." —Jordi Hays
