Where this was said
Highest value comment from HackerNews
At 2:29 · chapter starts 0:00
The episode opens with Shaan Puri making a bold claim: he's found the highest-value comment in Hacker News history. Written by an anonymous 20-year sales leader in response to an engineer's plea for sales help, the comment distills the entire discipline into 7 deceptively simple rules. Sales is like golf — stop overcomplicating it and just hit the ball. People only ever buy four things: time, money, sex, and approval/peace of mind. Sell aspirin (urgent pain relief) not vitamins (nice-to-have). All things being equal, people buy from friends — so go make friends. Be useful, send interesting posts, write birthday cards, introduce people, and expect nothing in return. Do it consistently and money will come to you. And finally: nobody cares about your quota or burn rate — there are $100 trillion in the economy waiting for you. [1] — Shaan Puri "A Hacker News commenter with 20 years of sales leadership compressed the entire discipline into 7 rules. People only buy four things — time…" 00:07 Sam listens, nodding along, before mentioning he's rereading Cialdini's Influence and noting, in a Buddhist proverb that gets a laugh, that you are never the same reader twice.
A celebrated Hacker News comment distilled sales into 7 simple rules, including 'people buy 4 things only: time, money, sex, and approval' and 'sell aspirin, not vitamins.'
A Hacker News commenter with 20 years of sales leadership compressed the entire discipline into 7 rules. People only buy four things — time, money, sex, and approval. Sell aspirin, not vitamins. Make friends. Be useful. Expect nothing. There's $100 trillion in the economy waiting for you.
According to the Hacker News commenter, every purchase boils down to time, money, sex, or approval/peace of mind — selling anything else leads to failure.
Sam Parr negotiated a $14,000 motorcycle price from $18,000 by bringing the seller a Coke. Shaan tried the same trick at a school principal meeting — the principal refused the Diet Coke, and the program got shut down anyway. The rule of reciprocity is real, but execution matters.
