I’ve had bad partner relationships before. Girlfriends, friendships, business relationships. Whatever.

The cause of most of the issues: we didn’t want the same things and/or didn’t have similar values.

So, before starting my last company, Hampton, I made sure my partner Joe and I had similar values, and goals, and were willing to live complementary lifestyles.

The exercise was simple: write where you want to be in the future and what you’re willing. (and unwilling) to do to get there.

I’ve had partners who don’t care about money. I do care. It can be a nightmare when you’re money motivated and the other isn’t. Like a band member wanting to be Lady Gaga while the other wants to be like some no name indie band. Both can rock, but I want to write hits.

I wanted it to be clear to Joe what my insecurities were. Being taken seriously as an entrepreneur (and not just being a content creator) was one of them.

This is why I don’t want to take VC. Entrepreneurship is my art. My self-expression. I can’t do what I want when taking into account outsider’s wishes. I’ve raised money before. And when I did, it was my duty to make an effort to give them a good return. I don’t want that duty anymore.

This has changed btw. I don’t want to own any real estate. Ha!

Joe and I both hate scheduled meetings. We prefer impromptu hangouts.

Frankly, I don’t care about money, revenue, profit. I care about growth and aggressively improving. And trying to be great for the sake of greatness. At times, that means scaling revenue, profit, or users. But often it’s growth in mindset, performance, whatever.

I built my previous company to sell. I had a 5 year time span. I don’t regret that. But with my next company, I wanted a 10-50 year time horizon. Not only because I care about compounding, but because I want to make something I love so much that I don’t want to stop.

$100m is a nice round number that I made up.

I’m not a great investor. I want to learn how to invest properly.

This was important. Both Joe and I sold or stopped doing other projects so Hampton was #1.

Joe and I discussed this stuff on the phone afterward. But I was confident before we wrote this out that we had similar values as we founder dated the year before. 

Now, we both may change. Maybe we’ll hate each other in the future. I hope not! 

But maybe. 

But it was important for us to write this out and be intention about what we each want and the price we were each willing to pay. Hope this helps!

Sam Parr

I wrote this agreement with my co-founder before we started Hampton to make sure we were on the same page about our goals and how we wanted to work.

Have a thing that has the potential to be big

Will require years of dedication and focus

I’d love if we could each map out what we want, how we want to get there so we make sure we’re cool entering into this partnership.

Just so we know what each person wants, what each person’s willing to do, and we wanna get there in the same way.

Fame and influence. I want a seat at the big boys table and for people to think I’m a wonderful at my job.

Ability to live in different cities throughout the year with my family

To be present in my kids and wife’s life.

Own loads of different real estate in the form of short-term rentals, multi family, and other types.

Fun, adventure, and living life on my own terms

Working very hard. Like a lion. Long hours. But then long vacations. Example: 3-4 weeks of intensity, then 1 week chill. Or 9 months hard, take summer off.

On my own time, without a boss, with few, if any meetings, and few, if any employees.

Focusing on my strengths and not doing things that I am not great at.

Having different streams of income (courses, peer groups, angel investments, podcast fees)

What I’d want for this Hampton business

Companionship with you and other coworkers. A sense of tribe.

Zero outside ownership unless amazing case can be made

An attempt at $100m in revenue in 5 years

A business that’s owned for a long time and profits are continually invested into more things.

I want this to be my main job. I expect myself to work 40 hours a week or more. Then, when its chill time (like I mentioned above), its chill time.

Cash-flow positive company / self-sufficient

No intention of ever selling, but if we did it’d have to net me $X.

really want to funnel internet $ into real estate portfolio

Want to look back 20-25 years from now, and have a sick real estate empire

want excess capital to continue investing into early stage internet startups

while I’d love a skeleton crew, scaling to large enterprise value will require people, esp if we don’t want to overtax ourselves. We may need President/COO, CFO, etc. We may need some VPs or directors.

Agreed goal is to keep our overhead VERY lightweight, but can’t be allergic to hiring help to scale. Full time outbound sales, customer service, coach management, etc etc

Founder Agreement at Hampton

Where we are:

Sam Personal

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