Freeloader sold for $38M in ~10 months
Mark Pincus sold his first company, Freeloader, for $38 million after roughly 10 months, walking away with $5 million after short-term capital gains taxes.
Snapshot · My First Million
Brainstorming business ideas with a billion-dollar founder
Explore episode
Jul 10, 2026
Where this was said
$0–$38M in 7 months
At 2:15 · chapter starts 0:00
The episode opens in medias res, with Mark Pincus already at a whiteboard — a fitting start for a man whose mind is perpetually in motion. Sam Parr traces Pincus's biography: a hummingbird of a founder who starts a company, sells or fails, and launches the next one six months later, a cycle he's repeated roughly eight times. Pincus admits he is 'working on sitting still,' comparing himself to a hummingbird and his partner to a redwood tree. He describes his ADD not as a disability but as a feature his brain has learned to harness, and he resists the idea of medicating his daughter's similar traits. The conversation quickly turns financial and specific: Pincus sold Freeloader for $38 million in about 10 months — paying short-term capital gains because the exit was so fast — and walked away with $5 million. He also turned down a deal that would have given him 1.5% of Yahoo at 35 employees and $800 million in market cap, a calculation he made on the back of an envelope. The episode is already doing what My First Million does best: turning abstract entrepreneurial wisdom into concrete, numbered decisions.
$38K Facebook check worth ~$6B
Pincus wrote a $38,000 check into the Facebook seed round alongside Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel; that stake would be worth roughly $6 billion today.
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