Episode of My First Million with Sam Parr and Shaan Puri.
Transcript
Note: This transcript was auto-generated from YouTube captions. It may contain errors and lacks speaker identification. A full Gemini audio transcript will replace this.
Kind: captions Language: en [Music] there were so many things that i did foolishly during that time and i’m not just talking about like you know oh you know i wasn’t as good at this thing as i am now it’s like no like there was so much opportunity right under my nose and i was blind to it and like one of the biggest like scary things for me now is like what are those things today that are right in front of me that i’m too stupid to see just like i was too stupid to see it seven years ago when i was doing that other thing um for example greg you were in our early mastermind groups and the founders of calm were there and they were talking about how hard it was and how they’re just you know it was just alex it was just kind of like yeah it’s hard to raise money right now i’m trying and and we were just like dude it’s cool app man you should stick with it he’s like yeah i’m gonna just keep going and like that’s a two billion dollar plus company now and we were helping him like dude why didn’t we cut the check you were there too i don’t know you didn’t cut a check either did you i remember at the time like if i’m being honest like i felt that it was too niche like i was like we were like sean you and i were focusing on like we were doing the big stuff stuff that was going to be yeah exactly later he’s got the huge company exactly uh there was so many of those so in our masterminds itself i think uh loom was in there that’s a billion dollar company and i remember kind of like trying to mentor shy and being like bro like you know don’t worry you’ll figure it out maybe it’s not this one but like when you get to your real game you’re gonna be like good because of this experience you were friends with him too like did you invest in that like i missed i missed it was called uh uh what was it called open test dot co and that’s what loom was originally and it you know it felt like you know when you’re doing your first startup and it just feels so shaky because you’re it’s your first time doing all this stuff like that’s what and so it was you know and then also the the narrative at the time was don’t invest in other people’s startups you got if you if you want to make it in silicon valley you got to give laser focus so i you know my mistake in my 20s was i came to san francisco and you know i listened to all these vcs with all their narratives and i did it and if i were to redo it i would frankly just be doing what i now which is doing like what i’m doing now which is like focused on communities doing agency services you know focusing on niches and and and web you know yeah just build an experiment and not have the biggest exits in the world so there was like 10 examples like that like i remember alex mccall came over one day and he we were catching up and then he went on to start clear i remember thinking this guy’s [ ] amazing um i should invest in this clear bit thing and i like went over to his office and we like hung out i was like about to meet the guys i was like i love the energy of this office man like if i just couldn’t do anything besides feel this office i would be like they’re building a winner in here and that’s also like i don’t know if it’s a billion it’s multi-hundred million um and he told me at the end he goes oh by the way i’m buying up uh i was like what else are you doing finally i started asking more questions like what else are you doing he’s like oh i bought up some stripe shares this striped shirt is available for like two billion dollars so i’m buying a bunch of striped shirts i think it was him maybe josh buckley is one of them and he’s like i’m buying up stripes for 2 billion let me know if you want in and i was like 2 billion to me i was like well that’s like the most a startup is worth there’s like a billion is like the top of the mountain so like to me it was like oh there’s no upside left you know i didn’t like think from first principles about like everybody knew stripe was [ ] amazing it was like the best startup in the whole like you know in silicon valley and i had this opportunity to go buy stripes at 2 billion and i thought how late i was and i was like man i wish i could have got in earlier and now like you know the things i would give for stripe shares at 2 billion now like it’s like that’s already like like 100x you know from from there and that was proven right forget that then there was all the services we were using like fur khan who’s my cto he would be like oh this is a cool cool product let’s use this in our tech stack if i had just invested in all the bills we were paying for like software we were using like pagerduty and elasticsearch and so you know like one after another those were all huge winners that were pre-ipo um so first was investing the second was like project selection so like you were talking about greg i did the same thing i was playing by the rules of like i was playing by other people’s rules meaning like what was considered cool in silicon valley was to be like a product guy who was building who had like cool product taste and was building like um you know like new markets and like going for the big billion dollar prizes and then i met sam who was like i’m writing this newsletter it’s free i’m gonna have like newsletter ads and i was like yeah but like are you gonna do a startup someday like that’s how i felt about it right sam’s company sells for more than more than my company sold for in the end he goes uh he goes look you’re good but basically like you’re showing up to a knife fight with a knife and i wish you would show up with a magic wand that would just murder the competition i’m like sounded cool right i was like uh that’s a great analogy that’s a cool story but like uh i don’t know man i think the math kind of i think it might achieve the desired outcome which i’m trying to do here which uh when i started i was just trying to be financially independent by the age of 30. that was the only goal um and so so like if i could go back and just whisper three things about like just stress just strategy like forget life advice just strategy advice i would have said um invest in all the smart people you know like it’ll it’ll work out if you don’t have the money go convince somebody that you have a bunch of really smart friends that they should give you money to invest in that that would be the first thing the second is invest in all of the expenses on your p l so go find all the places you’re spending money and go try to invest in all those companies that will also do fantastically well you’ll make more on that than your own company okay if you really want to do your own company beyond that fantastic that’s great you’re going to build up skills and you’ve got a lottery ticket there that might work i would have just said don’t try to be mark zuckerberg from the social network like think about what like like basically just open your eyes to the problems and the opportunities that exist today and so like you know whether it was like e-commerce or shopify apps or like these sounded small at the time but they sounded small because that’s where they were early and like at that time i needed a vc to like stamp their approval that this was a good market or a good opportunity which by that time is pretty late because what’s the vc doing they’re looking at what companies are raising huge rounds which means like four years ago those were great opportunities three years ago those were great opportunities and so i wish i had just kind of been more eyes wide open on what projects are available to you and like the things that sound kind of nation funny those are actually better signals for you than the thing that the vc is saying is gonna be huge or is already huge because it’s often um you know those companies to start are like you’re in a you’re in an absolute dog fight and it’s just like one winner out of 100 is going to emerge versus other things where like you could basically take no no product risks no market risk so i had a friend vishal tell me this once he goes i invest in companies with no product market fit risk i had never heard somebody say that it didn’t even make sense to me i go what do you mean like every startup is product market fit risk you guys know it’s not like what he goes he was the one who convinced me to buy bitcoin initially as well he was like bitcoin’s going to be the you know the biggest thing in the world he’s like i just put up basically all the money i have in the bitcoin i was like what the [ ] this is like back in 2005 16 15. nobody was really saying that back then so for the product market fit thing he goes he goes for example i just invested in a company that’s making a robot that makes pizzas and it makes pizza it makes a perfect pizza every time 24 7 at a lower cost than a human being can do it he goes i don’t know if they can because there’s a ton of engineering risk like they may not be able to technically do it but if they can do it there’s zero market risk every pizza shop will want this over paying an employee to make imperfect pizzas only in certain hours call in sick and blah blah like it for a higher cost and i was like oh [ ] that’s true there are things that have zero market risk and i was taking like maximum market risk before so like that’s the other strategy is like you don’t have to take as much market risk the thing you’re doing now greg is like way less market risk the thing i’m doing with milk road had like zero market risk basically and there’s just like there’s a lot of money there’s life-changing money that can be made and a lot of fun that can be had without taking on unnecessary what happened to that pizza company uh i think they’re still in engineering risk mode they got like a big contract from domino’s but then their ceo got was in trouble for some things that they hired a new ceo something something something you know like again these are legit engineering risks so i’m not like that doesn’t mean they’ll all work but like what i’m doing with the newsletter is like neither technical risk nor market risk yeah operational risk it’s just are you gonna are you gonna be able or wanting to do it for a long time which is yeah we’re just like you know that’s a pretty good thing to try to overcome right yeah it’s really tough you know i remember coming to san francisco and and hearing all these narratives and these bc’s telling me this and also entrepreneurs sort of repeating a lot of this stuff i will say it it’s tough to go against what these stamps of approvals say to do you know like you have to tell yourself every day like and i have to do that too when i started a services business all my most of my silicon valley friends were like a services business like an agency that’s what you’re gonna do after you know like and you just kind of have to push forward and really just um remember that you know just because some you know certain people on twitter say a certain thing or or or sequoia or andreessen say a certain thing doesn’t mean you can’t have a great like i would say you can have a better lifestyle not being mark zuckerberg than being mark zuckerberg yeah exactly you