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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