Sam Posthuma started at 16, selling electric lighters at school in Holland. A dozen brands later, he built Old Money into a fashion brand with half a million followers, sold it after two years, and went all in on HiStrips: the pink nasal strip that started as a party brand on a boat in Valencia.

Now world-class athletes wear the strips, 4,000 creators make content for the brand, and the factory in China says it gets a request to copy them almost every week.

This is a conversation about why the story now matters more than the product: building with three co-founders, how a small e-commerce exit really works, growing through creators, funding stock without investors, and how Sam would start a brand today on a small budget.

Sam Posthuma: https://www.samposthuma.com

HiStrips: https://histrips.com

✅ All my links are here - https://www.midnight.co

00:00 Why e-commerce is now all about the story

03:14 The factory that said "you're number 14"

06:29 Selling lighters at school at 16

09:51 Song Shirts and the copyright claim

12:37 Years of trial and error

15:49 Building Old Money

19:21 Why fashion is brutal

22:56 Why he sold

25:26 How a small exit actually works

31:59 The buyer, and keeping 20%

35:47 Joining HiStrips as co-founder number four

40:39 Four co-founders, four jobs

44:28 18 months of compounding

46:03 World-class athletes in pink strips

48:03 4,000 creators: the growth engine

50:03 Why he still runs the ad account

52:08 Funding growth without investors

56:09 Electrolytes and the email-list test

58:52 Can HiStrips sell more than strips?

1:00:22 Making the best product possible

1:04:08 Hiring from the DMs

1:08:46 Retail, global and getting 10x bigger

1:11:49 Why they won't sell

1:13:43 The hardest part

1:16:58 Money, freedom and how much is enough

1:19:31 How he'd start a brand today

1:24:37 Quickfire

1:26:56 Advice to his 18-year-old self

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