The average Sam's Club generates about half the revenue of the average Costco, and that gap has widened over time, while Sam's Club's unit count is smaller today than a decade ago.
Where this was said
At 2:39:50 · chapter starts 2:39:40
The closing carve-outs section delivers a mix of product recommendations and media picks. Ben's first carve-out is Tifosi sunglasses — grippy, anti-slip, and cheap, solving his long-running annoyance of sunglasses sliding during runs. His second is a mashup by NYC DJ Dwells of Radiohead's 'Everything in Its Right Place' and Kendrick Lamar's 'N95,' posted by Jason Kottke — described as one of the best mashups Ben has ever heard, instantly transporting him back to college-era all-Radiohead programming sessions. David recommends the Patrick O'Shaughnessy / Jeremy Giffon episode of Invest Like the Best, praising it as one of the year's best podcast episodes for the density of mind-bending one-liners Giffon delivers. He also recommends San Francisco's Dogpatch neighborhood for a date night, specifically calling out an ice cream stop at Humphrey Slocombe and noting the neighborhood's transformation from its Hell's Angels era. The hosts close with subscription reminders — email list, LP program, Slack — and a shout-out to Fast Company writer David Lidsky for a piece chronicling Acquired's research process for the Nike episode.
The first Costco store in China, which opened in 2019, attracted 400,000 members within 2 years — nearly 6x the 68,000-member average of a mature US store.
Despite months of meticulous preparation, Starter Story's initial launch attracted zero users — a humbling reminder that building alone guarantees nothing.
A single Reddit link post quickly drove 100 visitors to the Starter Story website, igniting the founder's belief in social traffic.
After reformatting content as a native self-post (no direct link spam), the post exploded with hundreds of upvotes and thousands of readers.
By posting again and again with the native-content strategy, the founder's posts repeatedly hit Reddit's front page, reaching millions of readers.
Before Reddit banned his domain, the founder converted his viral traffic into an email list of tens of thousands — a self-owned audience independent of Reddit.
Redditors eventually organized a petition to ban starterstory.com posts, effectively ending the Reddit growth channel — but the email list was already built.
The Reddit attention strategy ultimately served as the foundation for a million-dollar business, proving that free distribution channels can replace paid marketing.
The key tactic was keeping content fully on-platform (no direct link spam), then adding a small link at the post's end for users who wanted more.
With a thriving email list and a self-owned audience, the founder quit his six-figure New York City salary job to go all-in on Starter Story.
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