Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host)
The Contrarian Challenge [00:00:00]
Shaan: Here’s my challenge for each of us: what’s one narrative that you think you should actually be going counter to? Like there’s a narrative we hear as entrepreneurs, as people in tech — what do you think is actually the other thing instead? If anyone has one, go for it. Otherwise I’ll give you one.
Sam: Yeah, go for it.
Shaan’s Crypto Take: Just Buy BTC and ETH [00:00:20]
Shaan: So mine — I’ll give you two. Inside crypto, there’s a narrative that’s basically like, “Oh, there’s all this innovation happening — the next protocol, the next token, the next whatever.” I’m pretty sure that if you just buy three or four things — if you buy Bitcoin, ETH — I had Luna in there, but now just buy those two or three — and you just chill… either all of crypto is going to work and those will work amazingly, or crypto’s not going to work and no matter what you did, if those fail, nothing will work. None of this stuff will work.
Shaan: So I think a basically solid strategy for a while was Bitcoin and chill, and now it’s ETH and chill. I basically think it’s still the same — buy two or three tokens and you don’t even need to know anything more. Just chilling on those is probably the best investment of the next 10 to 15 years. It’s going to outperform everything during that time, I think. Going deeper down the rabbit hole and learning more is actually going to hurt your returns versus just buying the main ones and holding for 10 years without thinking about it.
Shaan: That’s one. And then the other: I think that angel investing doesn’t make much sense anymore, and I say this as somebody who angel invests. The valuations are so high that if I think about that same money going into one of these boring cash flow businesses, it’s so much better for your life. So if you’re an individual angel investor and you have, let’s say, $100,000 or $300,000 that you want to put into a basket of 20 startups — are you sure you shouldn’t just get an SBA loan and go buy some random website that’s already producing profit? One that’ll pay itself off in two years or less. Now you own a cash-flowing asset. I’m pretty sure that’s just going to do better than a basket of angel investments.
Sam: Dude, I agree. Our friends who have crushed it on angel investing — they made their investments five or eight years ago and it was different. It’s outlandish at the moment.
Sam’s Take: Dedicate Your 20s to Getting a Win [00:02:15]
Shaan: So I agree with that. What’s yours?
Sam: Mine is that I think you only have a few swings in your career, and a lot of people say, “Oh, you should be patient, you’ve got a lot of time.” I actually think you should dedicate your 20s to getting your first significant win, because after that, life gets a lot harder. You have a lot less energy. You’re a lot smarter, which is actually bad — it’s kind of good to be a little ignorant. And not enough people do this. A lot of times people go the other route: “Just go join something for a while and learn.” In my opinion, screw that. Your 20s — dedicate them to getting a win, even if it’s relatively small, and do it as fast as possible. Because after that, life is a lot easier.
Shaan: I’ll give the Moise quote about getting rich quick. He goes, “Why does everyone hate on getting rich quick? Get rich quick schemes are the best. I want to get rich quick. I don’t want to get rich slow.”
Sam’s Crypto/NFT Take and the Facebook Job Hack [00:03:20]
Sam: I got two real quick. I just got off the phone with a friend of mine who works at Facebook. He told me this morning that he works roughly 90 to 120 minutes per day on average.
Shaan: I thought you were going to say 90 to 120 hours a week.
Sam: Yeah — it’s the best when you measure your work in minutes. He texted me at 9:12 a.m. and said, “Finish work for the day.” So I told him: you need to create a Twitter account and tweet just the timestamp every day. I’m going to stay tuned on that.
Sam: But I think that in your 20s, potentially go work at Facebook, go work at Google, get those high-paying jobs. I think that’s actually a good way to get a win. Do that for a few years while you’re learning on the side — join a DAO, build a community, build a newsletter, do whatever speaks to you — while you’re making money. What more could you ask for?
Sam: And just because you gave a crypto one, Shaan — I spent a lot of time in NFT land and Web3 land too. I think NFTs are going to go to free mint. It’s going to be a free-mint thing. The idea of selling NFTs will become a very small thing.
Shaan: Why? What happens after it’s a free mint? What’s the incentive?
Sam: So right now it’s like people are selling NFTs and projects for 0.05 to 0.2 ETH — let’s say on average for some of these 10,000 PFP projects. I think that’s going to burn out. We’re already starting to see it burn out a little bit. Did you see the 100 Thieves drop?
Shaan: Yeah — what did they do exactly?
Sam: They did a much smaller amount. It was in gaming, and gamers hate NFTs, so the fact that they did a successful gaming NFT launch — kudos to them. But basically they won this championship and said, “In order to get this collectible, you can go grab it — it’s free. We’re not saying it’s going to be worth anything.” And they got 700,000 people to collect this collectible. There’s like a trophy. And then they make money if there’s value — if it grows in value they get royalties. I think that’s what you’re going to see a lot of: creators and big communities doing free mints, even though people today think selling NFTs is the future. I don’t think so.
Buy an Existing Business Instead of Starting One [00:07:00]
Shaan: By the way, I’m going to change mine. To simplify it: instead of starting a company, buy an existing business. I think that is the most overlooked, obvious thing for a smart person to do. How do you take your market risk to essentially zero? You buy a business that’s already working and profitable and you just say, “Cool, I’m a better operator than this person, or I know about a different form of operation — I can grow this using Facebook ads, or using outsourcing, or using code, or whatever.”
Shaan: You hear almost no narrative around that. You hear tons of narrative around the genius visionary startup — start a new thing, build a new project, launch a new thing — and you hear like one or two examples of people buying businesses. For most smart people, buying a business is a far better idea than starting one.
Sam: Yeah, but my pushback is — when you’re in your early 20s, do you really know how to do that? That’s where my point comes in: it’s worthwhile to take a high-paying job and then on the side experiment and do stuff. You’re making money and you’re learning. What more could you ask for?
Shaan: That’s true. I’m not really limiting mine to the 20s — I’m still making mistakes in my 30s, so I’m assuming other people are too. I guess it’s more like: what narrative do I hear now that’s easy to float along with? And for me, it’s that most people who want to be entrepreneurial default to starting a business. I think actually maybe it should be the opposite — you should default to taking on an existing business and growing it, and only create a new thing if you actually have a new invention in mind, a new idea you really can’t shake, versus just starting a new startup because you want to be an entrepreneur.
Sam: I like that, because if you want to be an entrepreneur, you should have the experience of running a business and all that comes with it.