Javi Zavala is the creative director and co-founder of HiStrips. He runs seven creative agencies on commission, cuts the worst one every month, and makes ugly ads on purpose because they print. This is his full playbook for static ads.

Watch the video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrZ1q6yTqXc

Javi Zavala: https://www.javizavala.com

HiStrips: https://histrips.com

JPEGS Mafia: https://jpegsmafia.com

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

00:00 From crypto to SaaS to HiStrips

07:29 Tribe: the platform that scaled them

09:58 Is a winning ad art or science?

13:22 The ugly ads that print in every account

15:00 The 6am ChatGPT report

19:11 Seven agencies, all on commission

21:52 What they pay their agencies

24:10 Judging ads on spend, not just ROAS

28:20 Hiring editors with one tweet

33:08 Brand vs performance: ugly only in the ads

38:52 Starting from $10k and a laptop

41:06 The Twitter like-chain hack

45:50 Quickfire

51:15 Final wisdom: attention, not time

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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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.