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SP Shaan Puri Shaan Puri Entrepreneur, angel investor and content creator who sold the esports platform Bebo to Twitch and co-founded the Milk Road crypto newsletter.

“The line between crime and hustle is thinner than people think in the startup world.”

My First Million · Startups & Venture · October 2026

“The line between crime and hustle is thinner than people think in the startup world.” — Shaan Puri, My First Million

The hosts wrap up their discussion of Elizabeth Holmes. They agree she knew what she was doing but likely told herself the ends justified the means.

Transcript

My First Million Around 52:47 into the episode
Shaan Puri

The means justified the ends.

Speaker 4

Yes, that's how I think she told herself that story. It

Shaan Puri

wasn't, it's kind of like the line between the line between crime and hustle is thinner than people think in the startup world.

Speaker 4

Yeah. And she told herself that what she was doing was hustle and that's what it was going to take to build this generational company and not fraud.

Shaan Puri

I'm with you on that. I think that she knew what was going on, meaning she wasn't out of the loop. It wasn't being done behind her back by other people. She knew what was going on and was complicit in it. She didn't see it as fraud or illegal or harming anybody. She saw it as being determined…

Speaker 4

But it was fraud. She just didn't think of it in that context. Correct. In my opinion.

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

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