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 if you could get into a top 20 university and you have to get go into a ton of debt it is 100 worth it and that if that’s the case it ain’t broken i think it’s doing great i feel like i can rule the world i know i could be you know when you’re listening to this it’s all going to sound smooth but we’ve just recorded this like three times because remote work still sucks a little bit um but we have brie here bree bree kimmel is an investor in mostly i think work work-related products so maybe you could tell us why it’s so hard uh all right let me just read three things off your little bio thing here that i think are interesting so um solo capitalist so you raised your own fund by yourself after never having worked in vc before that is that correct that’s correct okay great uh another one according to this you have invested in seven unicorns already which is kind of nutty what are the seven yeah so started work life about a year and a half ago invested in hoppin web flow which was an angel investment from when i was at zendesk um pipe public uh a bunch of interesting companies and sort of future workspace okay wow that’s pretty impressive um okay and then another one that’s on here that i think is kind of interesting that i think we should just jump in on i don’t know sam where do you want to start you want to start with this i want to start with this bourdain story but that’s mine i want to start with this that’s mine do you know what this podcast is about i do know what this podcast is about i’ve actually listened to many episodes i’m a big fan great so we don’t need to explain much to you um so brie um you and go ahead and plug your new podcast you have uh coming out what’s it called oh we’re coming in hot we’re plugging the podcast already i thought that was going to come in later no no we do it now oh and then people are yes i’m not going to crazy and they’ll do it yeah so we’re um the first podcast after um this one to be part of the hubspot podcast network um so myself and my best friend alexis gay she’s a stand-up comedian she makes a lot of tech parody videos um we decided to start a business podcast with the fine folks over at hubspot who have been awesome they’ve given us a team we’ve interviewed interesting people it’s it’s been cool for me because you know as you mentioned i mostly do software investing and we’re actually interviewing a lot of direct consumer founders and people that i’ve never met before and so we have this new podcast coming out called the shake up where we interview business leaders about very specific decisions that they’ve made that have changed the trajectory of their company so hang on is that uh like is the vibe like comedy because she’s a comedian like is this called her daddy or is this like uh you know how i built this or what is this it actually that’s a really great that’s a really great point uh we’re somewhere between the two um we wanted to make it interesting and educational and it is more of a business audience i think in this new era of working from home unless it’s interesting and entertaining people don’t want to listen and so it’s not corporate it’s not boring um one of the most challenging parts of the podcast for me is that it’s very hard to get business people off script they’ve all gone through comms training they all have you know their executive coach to get them to really open up and share vulnerable moments or to be really open and authentic has been surprisingly really hard sam is really good at it he uh i don’t know how he does it but he he breaks through that every single time um but i gotta wait sean i mean i i think you’re good at you’re you’re pretty good at that too i think we both are you’re good at getting them you’re good at like getting people off the script really good at getting people off the script um because sam will do something like he’ll like he’ll see you and he’ll be like he’d be like like yeah he’s like you’re good looking i mean like not traditionally but like you’re you’re good looking so what and then they’re like what are you talking about and it’s like kind of a compliment kind of an insult and then they’re just trying to figure out like where do i take this and so then like something natural comes out or he’ll be like you know ask them about i don’t know something weird that’s it that’s behind them in the room or something like that and uh that usually gets people off so i’m so so bad at this that i had to bring a stand-up comedian to really like warm up the guests i i like as an investor it’s a little bit robotic and you tend to ask the same five to ten questions and so that’s alexis’s job she’s world class at getting people you know maybe flattering them a little bit maybe flattering herself maybe complimenting the show but then finding ways to get people to open up and to be a little bit less scripted is it hard to be on a podcast with somebody who’s a professional comedian like i know sam struggles just dealing with my level of my prowess are you intimidated by your comedian uh co-host you know it has been fun um you know now that we have a producer as well you know the producer is very clear at uh helping us define our roles and so like i know that i’m not funny it’s not my role to be funny on the show it’s my role to like bring in data and research and i get to be the nerdy one which is great um i don’t attempt to be funny at all yeah that’s my strategy by the way sean they have like producers and [ ] and like hey like they got like resources the lady who runs the podcast network at hubspot i’m like wait brian these folks are getting like producers and head shots like i’ve been using like eric on fiverr like have to like rig this stuff together honestly it’s i don’t even show up to the meeting so they’re probably like yeah of course you don’t get anything you don’t show up to the [ ] meeting why would we give you any resources so you’ve listened to you’ve listened to a couple podcasts i to just so what we’re going to do is we’re going to brainstorm a little bit i know that you who you’ve got a couple ideas here that i definitely want to talk about i want to talk about your calendar because like when i see that i just want to kill myself i can’t believe that that’s your calendar i’m embarrassed that you saw it actually i’m a little bit embarrassed oh my god so well i want to talk about a bunch of stuff but before we um get into that can i tell you guys something that’s i’ve been obsessed with over the past week so there’s this new anthony bourdain documentary um i actually don’t remember what it’s called um do you guys know what i’m talking about a roadrunner it’s called roadrunner okay so it came out last week and it’s basically about his last maybe uh three or four weeks of life or something like that and it talks about like details his last four weeks of life and talks about the his whole journey and whatever that’s not the point the point is is at the end they have this amazing sound bite so basically right before he died he wrote an email to someone and it wasn’t like a suicide note but it was like like i’m sad type of thing and you hear him read that email well it’s not actually him uh it’s ai he never actually said that but he died you know he wrote the email and then he died and this company used this technology to to read out the email and it sounds just like him if i wasn’t like a nerd and researched it i would have thought that it was him and i started i started thinking about this i started thinking about a few things and um the reason i kind of putting all together is i read the story about this guy last week named josh and basically what happened was his girlfriend died and he used gpt3 or gpt3 and he loaded up a ton of social media messages like you know facebook messages and tweets and twitter stuff or and and text stuff that she had said and he put it to gb3 and he made a girlfriend who knew she died and he could talk to her uh and and and and like feel like he’s still connected hey do you think this is wrong and creepy b that anthony bourdain thing that’s obviously that’s gonna happen that should that’s gonna happen in the future how movies are gonna are gonna come about but three when are we gonna start talking to our dead moms came in hot at the end there is this crazy like like it like the fact that anthony bourdain did this isn’t it wild that we’re gonna be having these conversations i don’t hang around with the smart enough people to be to be who built your stuff yeah did you ever see that episode of black mirror where they did this basically so do you watch any black mirror sam no it’s all right it’s a little bit depressing but it’s like too accurate also at the same time so the in in black mirror they take this to the extreme and basically this girl’s living with her boyfriend and then by the you know middle or end of the episode you realize that this boyfriend is not like real he’s basically like an ai robot that is just like kind of like he’s not perfect like so it gives her companionship because like it’s like he’s still here he’s doing all the things it sounds like him and it looks like him but he’s not actually human so it’s kind of like you know the uncanny valley it doesn’t seem it’s not actually the real thing and so it’s kind of depressing for her uh to be with this kind of like shadow of her boyfriend or whatever and so there’s been a bunch of people trying to do this with gpd3 and um somebody did it with our podcast i don’t know if you saw that uh somebody uploaded my a bunch of stories i told or something like that i put it in i saw that yeah and he’s like look you can ask john a question and then like it gives a pretty real like it’s like me when i just [ ] some answer it’s like it bullshits it just as good as i can i’m like wow this is kind of amazing so i think we’re getting we’re getting closer to where that’s that’s like um it’s like the anthony bourdain thing where of course it’s not gonna be fully accurate but damn it’s like it feels like magic it was that this wasn’t really a thing five ten years ago bri what have you seen in that space yeah i mean one point i’m at with the bourdain piece i mean what’s interesting there is you know he the question is are you building a legacy and are you carrying someone’s story forward i think that’s really cool i think if there are sound bites or old songs or if you can take a book that was written a decade ago and then put it in the voice of someone who’s already passed away that can be really cool i mean that’s really like a strong storytelling angle and a way to really continue their legacy the kind of the gray area for me is you know for the guy that’s created a fake girlfriend that’s uh using previous text conversations like i’m a little bit concerned for him in in the long the long term you know i think he’s maybe staying in the past as opposed to like you know going through therapy or you know spending time with family and friends and then like getting back out there again and so it probably depends on the use case and some of the scenarios for these technologies but i agree i love black mirror i’ve watched them all binge watch them all and uh it’s really creepy to see that a lot of these things are actually proving to be true so then i was i was looking around at what other stuff is like this there’s just this one called airwriter.app and what you can do is you can look at the variety of different dead authors and dead famous people that they have and they’ve uploaded all their personalities and you can ask ben franklin a question it’s pretty amazing anyway i just wanted to tell you all about that i’ve been obsessing about this so there’s one that i’m going to tell you guys about but you uh i almost don’t want to tell you until i lock in my full investment but i want to invest in this company i saw it i haven’t even had a chance to talk to them yet but what they’re doing is um they basically made a a version of deep fake that you can do for yourself so you can thank customers personally for um for a purchase or for anything that they did so basically you record yourself once sitting in a room like i’m here right and i say oh you know thanks for leaving that review on itunes for the podcast yeah or thanks for tweeting out the podcast and then what what it does is it basically takes me in that scenario and it starts it off with hey sam uh you know saw your review just want to say blah blah but i don’t have to record the hey sam part the hey sam part the personal touch gets basically deep faked in the video and then they can insert any of the variables so like let’s say it’s ecommerce i could say hey blank name right so i’ll be like hey sam thank you know thanks for uh thanks for shopping with us i hope you love the casper mattress that you just bought right and it’ll make the whole thing sound pretty seamless and just input variables from uh from a database essentially and just turn it into your voice so i think that’s kind of amazing to add a quote-unquote personal touch that’s going to be you know automated it scales sometimes scalable uh my uh scout zach found it and he sent it to me i’m really excited for that use case i’m also really excited to see some of the bloopers like i can’t wait to see a person’s face say hey first name last name right yeah like how’s your day going thanks for being a customer right hey [ ] thanks [Laughter] i find sometimes the automated stuff i’ve tried at some of these automated gifting services before and if the database isn’t in a perfect form and first name last name isn’t spelled right you end up looking like an [ ] but it can be pretty funny so bree i have to ask you a question it this is going to sound like an insult which we just told you i’m apparently known for it he’s about to do the thing this is not an insult this is not an [ ] um all right so i’m looking at work-life ventures so this is this uh firm you started in 2019 before that you worked at uh uh i was looking at your linkedin what was it it starts with the z that’s the big software um you had a normal a good job there so like you are a relatively normal person but you are investing in like the most baller companies at the earliest times how are like the the left-handed compliment is like you’re not really like a somebody and yet somehow you already are somebody how on earth did you pull this off how did you go from nobody to somebody i we could go even even before zendus before zendesk you know i worked at a big tech company i was at expedia went to a state school grew up in ohio i mean we can we can cut the data anyway i’m a very normal person i live a very normal life like i’m not your like venture capitalist that’s flying in private jets and you know doing all these crazy things you might be now yeah you might be now i you said it sounds like you’re about to make a killing uh well going back to your point thank you that wasn’t insulting that’s like very clearly uh something you can see from linkedin is like you know i i started out as a marketer um started meeting startups on evenings and weekends started hosting dinners um the interesting thing that i don’t think a lot of people truly realize until you’re on the ground in silicon valley is you just end up meeting a lot of people just by proximity like you walk into a dinner you make one or two connections you keep checking in with them you stay in touch um and that’s how you build your network and you know everyone there is going somewhere like you don’t move to the valley pay crazy insane rent prices uh to not in the mix and so i found that you know a lot of the things that i did early on as an angel i was really intentional about like the angel investment and web flow um i had organized a go to market workshop invited webflow so i had like you know a whole day with the team which was great i hosted a couple of no-code dinners just spent as much time with them as possible i try to find interesting ways to really build close relationships with a handful of companies i know we talked about you you mentioned my calendar and how insane it is i actually don’t take that many meetings and i i rarely do one-on-one coffees with people which is really interesting and kind of a different strategy from other vcs but i try to find interesting touch points that will give me enough of an angle to invest in a company that’s starting to work so webflow can i just read your schedule by the way because nobody’s looking at this so let me just take let’s just take a wednesday okay here’s wednesday just for for people you you wake up seven a.m morning block what happens in morning block are you uh i’m doing that usually i go to the gym usually i go to the gym during combat i rode my peloton but i’m now back to going to the gym right okay exactly so we’re going up until uh about 8 30 so from 7 to 8 30 that’s like getting ready to go to the gym go to the gym it says peloton 45 all right great now we have morning block two what’s happening morning block two morning block two i send emails to portfolio companies and ask them for ways to help or sometimes there’s proj specific tangible projects i have to work on for a specific company cool so 30 minutes there then uh okay where are we at so team check-ins we have a one-on-one with neil great email processing i love that you’re like an actual machine i’m a little bit embarrassed right now this is like you’re reading my diary it’s like you put it on the internet yeah i know hearing it out loud makes me sound insane so thank you okay prep pitch number one that’s 12 15 to 1 then we have pitch number one so you you do the research before the pitch then you take the pitch oh yeah that’s interesting usually i start the call and then they see my eyes frantically going around the screen well i’m looking for like a [ ] did i get who is this what is the deck what is the name of this company and i’ll just be like let’s just before we talk about your company just tell me about yourself while i go look at what company you are uh all right so you’re doing your research you do your pitch uh next step so you do immediate follow-ups you do your second pitch prep second pitch second pitch follow-up text triage what’s that like text text messages yeah i am horrible at responding to text messages i will read them i will think that i responded and then i’ll reply like four days later and so i actually block time in my calendar to go through all of the texts that i’m getting throughout the day do you actually follow this i do i do and i will say for people um that aren’t aren’t in venture or aren’t doing early early stage startups a lot of thing is done over text and over phone calls it’s a highly inefficient process it’s not like corporate where you know everyone’s on email and everyone’s on slack it’s mostly through one-on-one text so all right we’ll just round it off so we’re going email processing part two then ad hoc strategy what does that mean ad hoc strategy is uh so part of the the goal of work life is we help a lot on go to market and so typically we’re working through various different go to market strategies for certain companies gotcha then you do a virtual dinner amazing uh life admin so that’s like you know what laundry what is that code for laundry uh when i when i published this it was around the time i was i had a crazy backlog of just like random things like i woke up one morning was like my driver’s license is expired my passport is expired i haven’t left my house in a year like i need to get my life in order and so that was the week that they said this was screenshots and published there you go all right evening block from 8 p.m to 11 p.m and then what bedtime 11 p.m yeah usually okay do you think that’s a difference we want as well and so i could probably like throw in my sleep data if we want to get really weird do you so i i um i try like i say no to everything i think shawn you might be the same way but for my i try to have nothing on my calendar i don’t want to talk to anyone ever uh and like a meeting to me is like a really big deal like i just don’t want to do it they gave me an ea and i was like oh so great first time having an ea what what do you do and they’re like oh like calendaring i manage your calendar if you want to book meetings i’ll book them for you if people want to book you i’ll do it and i was like oh okay all right uh look you’re gonna love me this is the easiest task ever somebody asked for a meeting just say hey he asked if you could slack him instead and then if i ask you for a meeting just say are you sure and just delete all the group meetings in the next three weeks just delete them and i’ll add them back in if they were important and so basically her job was just to make sure nothing gets on the calendar rather than taking things off rather than putting these on do you think that um this calendar has been this discipline do you think it’s helped you because it’s i mean i’m looking at like i’m trying to find all the unfair advantages to how you kind of came up so fast probably not going to say it sucks i can tell you i can tell you pros and cons pros to the pros to the insane calendar is it did provide a lot of structure i felt that working from home uh i am not the best at working from home i will say that and so the structure has been really helpful um it’s been great the reason for a lot of the uh new routines is because i do have a team now so i have a team of five people behind the scenes and so i need to make sure that the the firm is running accordingly and so i think having that structure is really helpful um i also find it does help me say no and to have specific moments throughout the day where i text founders or jump on a call just because i i had talked to a lot of traditional venture capitalists and if you ask them how they spend their week or if you ask like you know what did on friday friday afternoon like what did you do this week it would all be a blur because there’s so much activity and so many things that are happening and so i found that quantifying it a little bit was a nice way for me to at least establish some of these routines will i continue doing this forever probably not but it’s at least something that was helpful um when getting the firm off the ground sam we were looking at that that spreadsheet of uh what do vcs make i think we should talk about that so this is one of these yeah this is what does the solar capitalists do yeah um so the reason why go ahead you find it sean and then i’ll talk so bri bri the one of the reasons why i’m prodding you so much is this whole vc world it it kind of um i i just like i can’t tell if i’m just low iq i just it’s really hard for me to understand like how the money actually gets in debris pocket you know like how i understand you invest it i understand you um invest in in startups and you wait 10 years to sell but like sometimes i’m curious like okay but how much money can you actually make and so we recently found i have no idea how our friend found it a spreadsheet that i think it’s all uh user submitted salaries and carry numbers of maybe like a thousand different vcs do you want to read it read that often i’m trying to find it it’s a little bit hard to find here while we’re while we’re live but basically i don’t know if you could do it sam if you could find it but basically it broke it down by fun size so it’s like all right if uh so you were p people were volunteering their information here’s what i make that’s my base compensation here’s what i make as a bonus and here’s what my carry is and it was like you know my fund is 0 to 50 million 50 million to 100 million 100 to 250 million and then like all the way up to a 2 billion plus fund and um and it was it’s even there there’s like quite a lot of variety right because not every partner has the same deal but what it looked to me like was that for small funds um and you correct me if i’m if i’m wrong here but this is this was my my summary of like you know 500 rows of data just eyeballing it it looked like if you work at a small fund let’s call it under 100 million dollars is your fund size um the good news is you know you’re taking two percent of let’s call it a hundred million that’s two million dollars and usually it’s just one or two partners maybe you know some some admin people kind of behind the scenes um but you can you can basically take a a large salary and you have a large percentage of the carry but you um but then on the other side the small the small funds seem to do pretty well and then the lar the really large funds that were like a two billion dollar fund their you know their fees itself is insane um right two percent of two billion every year that you’re taking is a large number and then they’re carry um you know they’re the multiple they’re they’re expecting to do on a two billion dollar fund they may they may not 5x that fund they may just two exit the fund or three x that fund and so their carry expectations are different it looked to me like this venture capitalists kind of have like a high paying job maybe 400 500 000 a year and then if they hit winners like you seem to have hit some winners or you have some winners in your portfolio like you you you’ve hit a lot of winners if those pan out if hop in truly does end up as a five to ten billion dollar company then you know you’re gonna you’re gonna have a big windfall which might look more like 20 to 50 million dollars can come your way if these winners pan out go public and whatnot so tell me how accurate that is or like put differently what are your expectations on like how much you can make doing this thing you’re doing now yeah um great question i wanted to touch on something that sam said as well um what’s interesting when you look at venture capital today is when i was initially starting the firm i went into this with a belief that venture is or traditional venture is on the decline i saw angel investors that were getting into really great rounds i saw um solo capitalists or super angels like i know scott belski has been on the show elod gil is a close friend and someone that’s deploying a lot of capital i mean a capital that looks like almost a large top-tier firm and so i saw that individuals were doing the work that you know a 20 to 30 person venture firm were doing and so i think it’s interesting to see like i’m a great case in point where i was in marketing i went to a state school i grew up in ohio like i’m by no means a pedigreed person but i have been able to build a track record and i have been able to raise outside money and i think this is just like the very very early days for what’s about to happen where there will be a lot more people that look like me and there will be a lot more people that start their own firms because i think it’s one of these things where like the nature of venture is changing and my investors like smaller funds because you have one of those higher return profiles as opposed to some of the larger institutions that their multiple is coming down over time and many of those lps are having a hard time getting access to those funds at all so a guy like um so who what was the guy’s name uh alad gill is that you say zayn i’ve read a great book by him i forget operator’s manual i think it was called no high growth startups or something like that manual handbook uh yeah it was good that was a great that was a great book i had i hadn’t heard of this guy but like i see him everywhere and so is this just basically an incredibly high net worth liquid person who just writes massive checks to hundreds of startups a year is that just i mean is it as simple as that um in a lot’s case it’s a combination of personal capital plus outside money as well i will say that a lot of the solo capitalists i mean even the um you know my fund size is primarily my first check-in i do a lot of spvs and i do a lot of follow-on investing and that’s with a handful of lps and so many of us we kind of publish here’s our core strategy and then behind the scenes many of us have other playbooks that we’re running as well and have you made have you had any returns so far since since you’ve started i have those have mostly been on the spb front um you know i i’m setting up uh special purpose vehicles where i have one or two lps where they’re um it’s it’s primarily their capital i might write a small personal check or something small out of the fund alongside that but i’m starting to see some returns in companies however i will say i’m holding on all of those positions what do you think is a re because this is what the thing me and sam talk about which is like with investing you have you have illiquidity for a long period of time right now typically right you invest in a startup it might take seven ten years for it to exit um and along the way you’re getting these paper markups and so i guess like give us a sense of if you are if you do go the solo capitalist route and you i would say you’re like the success case of going to solar capitalist route there’s a lot of people who could try it may not have the same results as you but let’s say things work out how do you think about because i think a lot of people are trying to decide do i do this do i start a business do i take a job somewhere or do i work at a fan company do i what do i do and so what do you think’s realistic expectations for if it works this is what it looks like over like a seven year period right the first five years you’re just taking kind of your salary which might be 250 000 might be a little more a little less um and then like but you’re hoping by year seven or ten you’re able to get this this type of a personal personal win out of it which makes your average over the 10 years look really good i guess can you walk us through the numbers because i think for most people this is just a black box they don’t really understand they don’t really understand how the money would what the money could look like in this uh if things work out yeah i i’m hearing all sorts of variations to this model i mean i have friends who are running early stage startups and they’ve raised you know five to 20 million dollars and they’re deploying capital while they’re operating i think that’s the best case scenario i mean if you’re ready to start a startup and you have ceo potential and you know exactly what you want to build that is going to have a much higher um you know you’re you’re building a legacy there you have the ability to hire people like those people will even start startups like i just think there’s so many great things when ceos are active angel investors that’s why i chose to raise from a lot of founders and not traditional lps or you know traditional finance financial institutions um i think they have a lot more access and they have the ability to invest in startups opportunistically not as their full-time thing and while they still have really great access and mind share in the ecosystem you know for individuals like myself like you know i had 10-ish years of of tech company experience i don’t even want to say startup experience because i was at a big company and then i was at a second more medium-sized tech company and those scenarios you know you your investors are looking for your ability you know have you already built a track record do you have an ability to invest in really great companies um and so that’s one thing to consider i actually spent about two solid years of blogging tweeting you know really investing and building my personal brand so i could gear up to go and raise outside money so i think you have to build a really strong case if you want to raise from outs from outside investors um the one thing that i will say um you know angelus and carta have made this incredibly easy i think the forcing function and venture which has caused you know the ability for anyone to become a vc or to raise their own fund is these platforms which basically connect you with investors they make it really easy to manage like your back office and you know you don’t have to deal with lawyers and all of that stuff right that’s the habit you dodged my question on how much money you could make but that’s okay maybe maybe you don’t want to answer that no let’s go into it i think this is fun i mean this is this is the the title of the podcast so i think i think we should go into it um i would say so every solo capitalist does it differently um some people are purely one person um they’re pocketing all the management fees they’re taking all the carry um i’m actually seeing today you know if you’re raising a 5 to 10 to maybe even 25 million fund if you’re doing something on angel list that’s a true solo capitalist fund um you can actually take 2.5 to 3 management fees um what i did for mine is i did two percent management fees the way that i thought about it because this is a rolling fund it could be a traditional fund or it could be a rolling fund so the rolling fund means that structurally you’re able to um talk about your fund broadly you’re able to market your fund which historically um you know you weren’t able to market your fund when you’re actively fundraising you know if someone has distribution if you have a podcast um you know if you’re an active angel investor and you already have great deal flow or you’re leaving a high growth startup and you have a great network rolling funds are great because you can market it and you can constantly be bringing in new lps it’s not something where you go out you raise money you ask a bunch of people for money you know maybe a handful of people say yes you do a first close you go out and ask more people for money you do a second close that historically has been a really time consuming process and as a solo capitalist how you spend your time is your strategy and so you don’t want to spend the majority of your week meeting with investors and you’re not meeting with and so it can be something that really impacts the business model and so i think that the rolling fund works well if you already have distribution if you don’t have distribution and you you know want to experiment with raising outside money oftentimes the people that are doing this really well are individuals that have a valuable network i mean maybe they’re leaving stripe or airbnb or one of these companies where they have a very entrepreneurial culture and the people you know that used to sit across me at work are likely likely to go leave and start a startup and they’re going to be able to raise from top tier funds like that’s one of the strategy as well where i’ve seen many of them go out and raise some outside money or you know there’s a lot of the startups that have been really successful in the last generation their alumni actually have whatsapp groups and they’ve created their own syndicates where you can co-invest alongside the airbnb mafia or there’s a stripe group or that’s somewhere where i spend a lot of my time where i help a lot of the alumni groups build their first syndicate and that’s been a ton of fun because you get to meet the whole company and you get to really you know understand who are some of the power builders i guess i would call them um inside the company who are most likely to leave and start something so so what would you say the the potential earning then is for a solo uh capitalist to go back to sean’s yeah it depends on your goals i mean i’m seeing solo capitalists that are going out maybe you start with a 10 to 25 million dollar fund one for how quickly um the fundraising climate is moving today you know in the next 12 months you could go out and raise you know 40 to 60 million dollar fund too um the interesting thing is like this isn’t purely a new model i think what’s changed is that the types of people that are starting funds do look very different from the last generation um like i look at um iden san cut at felicis you know he was a super angel and then started felice’s ventures mike maples who’s been on the show you know mike was a super angel and then he started floodgate i think what’s different today is how fast you can make money because there are spvs and ways for individuals to invest in later stage companies like early stage is one thing but i think later stages where a lot of people are finding great returns in a short amount of time so you have your 25 million dollar fund as the operator what do you expect your your your pay to be it’s a good question i mean as as you said earlier i mean a lot of people are holding for the long term and so i wouldn’t bank on cary you know in the first you know seven to ten years but you do get a a reasonable salary because many solo capitalists are do taking 2.5 to 3 management fees so 2.5 2.5 percent of 25 is what i don’t even know i can’t do math in my head so that’s uh there’s a great line on pomp’s podcast you guys somebody asked them this question they’re like wait if somebody has 100 000 bitcoin and bitcoin goes to 750 000. how much is that worth he just goes i don’t do public math think of what they’re like what did you just say he goes i don’t do public math you don’t do math in public he’s like yeah i don’t do public math and i just was like that’s actually a great policy i don’t do public math so 2.5 of 25 is so you have you have 625 000 a year in salary off a 25 million dollar fund and then the carry a fee sorry and then if that and if you’re solo so yeah that’s a great living and then what what what would you estimate you could do with your fun three exit four exit do you have like a target uh right now it’s north of five x damn all right so five x so that’s a hundred uh four what i can’t i don’t know 125 million 125 million you pay back the 25 first so now there’s 100 million a profit of the 120 100 million a profit you keep 20 that’s 20 million so you might make 20 million at the sort of in the termination of the fun basically after 10 years that sounds amazing right it’s amazing it’s amazing i also find i mean when once you get into this world um typically you’ll see that’s that’s the core fund and the core fund is like your v1 like that’s the first thing you do to build a track record and to like get in the game where people start to make a lot of money and make a lot of money in the short term is what i mentioned doing spvs or even buying secondary one of the things that i’ve been doing a lot over the last year year and a half is one of the things that holds people back from starting a startup is the fact that they’re illiquid and sitting on a lot of equity at their last and so there are a lot of vcs that are exploring like what would it mean to buy shares from you know employees to then put them in business and so that’s another way to think about it as well i think there’s different playbooks that you can layer on top of each other once the fund is in a good place then you can get more creative with spvs or you can get more creative with even buying employee shares and companies that still have a lot of upside um you know and so i think that becomes pretty creative as well let’s switch gears to ideas so what spaces what ideas uh do you have that you think people should be building in or you you see interesting stuff so give me a sense of like it can either be a specific idea or it could be kind of like a trend you’re noticing what do you got yeah it’s interesting i tend to look at what are the smartest people that i know thinking about or working on i consistently see um a lot of people are moving into crypto and into climate change i think these are two areas that you can’t really ignore um and i’m also seeing people leave very well-paying jobs that have a lot of equity to work on things like climate change and so i do think that there are trends that are starting to bubble up that have maybe been either underserved by venture underfunded rather and so it does seem like there’s a lot of things that are happening especially during covet i feel like during the pandemic people started re-examining what matters like you take away the fancy office you take away all the perks you take away the ability to you know physically see your team and so i’m i’m seeing a lot of people that are leaving to work on things that they actually care about which is really interesting not to say that they won’t make a lot of money but to say that there are new opportunities and new types of companies that people truly want to build and so that’s been something that i’ve been thinking about so what um what’s an example of some yeah i was going to ask about climate change and climate tech that’s interesting give us a cool idea in climate change that you’ve seen or you have yeah i mean today it feels like it’s very early days i’m seeing a lot of companies that are thinking about carbon offset or they’re coming up with ways for corporations to be think more think in more sustainable ways i will say i mean a lot of the stuff that’s directly related to climate change i probably don’t see because i do a lot of workplace and future of work stuff i think a lot i think we’re going to see more specialized firms that are focused on climate change or that are focused on frontier tech the cool thing about being a solo capitalist and having more of a perspective on like this is my area of expertise and this is where i can add value means that when i get together for dinners with other new solo capitalists or new funds they’re specialized in their own way and so i do like spending time with experts on climate change and frontier tech like there’s so much happening in space right now do i have the you know the experience or the network to really dig in not at this time but i love hanging out with people that are working on space tech and what uh in in the work life portfolio so future of work what’s um what’s an idea that our company you’re excited about that’s not already like well known it hasn’t hasn’t had that breakout moment where raises a huge round so people in tech find out or everybody’s already using it like slack or something like that so what what’s an example of a company that you think is super cool give us one from your portfolio yeah absolutely one thing that’s not obvious about the work life portfolio is i do spend a lot of time in education and reskilling i think this is a really important thing where even from your earliest days like kids are brought up being asked by their parents like what do you want to be when you grow up and i think this is sort of a question that historically you know kids have been taught to do very normal jobs like well you should be a teacher you should be a doctor you should do like these very traditional things there was an interesting um study that i read when i was just thinking about work life building out the first version of the pitch deck where kids today are you know kids would rather be youtubers than they would be astronauts like maybe that change that changes today because we’re now going to space and so space is very cool again but what’s interesting there is there isn’t really education that aligns to that you know i think the textbook education is you memorize something you take the task and you forget about it like my recall from elementary school middle school high school is zero like i studied for a test as soon as the test was done i didn’t think about that topic again but i am seeing new platforms and new styles of learning that kids are being taught based on the things they’re interested in i invested in a company called primer which is essentially online education i think we’re thinking about like do we call it homeschooling i think homeschooling tends to have a fairly negative or you know neutral connotation depending on who you are but the concept is can you know eight to ten kids get together and can they learn video game design can they learn about you know certain types of writing can they build their own websites like what are these tangible skills that are aligned to the hobbies and interests of kids that they develop at a very young age and can they build their own network or community of other like-minded kids so they actually care about school when i bring so i’ve been thinking about this whole school thing both sean and i have invested in a little bit of it sean teaches a course i’ve taught of course before i’ve been thinking about school for a little while and i’ve actually completely changed my opinion it was one thing now it’s the total opposite the whole like i think that the the everyone talks about education is broken it’s broken this and that i think only part of it is the for the top 30 universities i think are doing just wonderful stuff and here’s why sean if well you’re different i didn’t go to a fancy school brie if you could have graduated if you had to graduate with a quarter of a million dollars in debt but you could have gone to harvard would you i actually think i would to be honest i think it’s worth it i completely agree it’s 100 worth it it’s 100 worth it the case it ain’t broken i think it’s doing great if someone’s willing to like go into a crippling amount of debt and go ahead why why okay okay great why do you think it’s worth it because you learned so much from those great harvard classes no right that’s not the reason why you don’t learn the school is not about learning cool so you get the stamp that says i went to harvard yeah so now every time a guy like sam or me looks at you oh harvard okay yeah you perk up a little bit um and then the second thing you get the network right so you’re gonna bump into you know the next winklevoss and zuckerberg and whoever else uh that’s on on your campus at that moment right those are the two reasons the stamp and the network yes the problem is that there’s schools like belmont university where i went that costs fifty thousand dollars a year and then they’re like [ ] belmont i mean who’s this no one knows what belmont is they provide zero value um like there’s no point if you go to belmont you should quit right now and basically the only way that we should solve education i think is by letting those businesses just go out of business and die and then keeping in the top 20s the top 20-ish i agree with that i mean the liberal arts schools are hurting a lot i think the 40 50 60 000 a year school i mean i grew up in ohio and there’s no shortage of like liberal arts colleges that have a beautiful campus but you know is it the type of school someone’s going to pull your resume and put it at the top of the pile or in the era of today we have ai that’s scanning resumes and they’re scanning specifically for harvard stanford mit like those are the people that have the one up and so i do agree with that yeah that’s nice well i think i think but you’re saying you know you you change your opinion did you think that before that harvard was a waste of money did you really think that yeah i was like good while hunting like you know yeah like you’re going to go you know for like eight dollars of late fees you know yadda yeah i mean you want that romantic crap to to be true but it’s not my wife went to an ivy league school i was such a redneck when she said she went to penn i was like oh is that where that football rapist coach went that sucks uh and then she was like no it’s part of the ivy league i’m like i really don’t know what that means i think i’ve heard about that in like a harry potter book but um and like then i met her friends and i was like well this is totally worth it 100 worth it whatever i actually i have a bit of fomo i i very rarely have fomo but going back to my crazy psychotic calendar um the virtual dinner on wednesdays is with friends that are vcs that all went to stanford gsb together and so i’m the only non-gs beer on this virtual dinner we used to meet and have dinner in person we weren’t always internet friends but what’s interesting there is once you start having dinner and getting to know them you’re like [ ] i could have been like hanging out with you for two years all the time like grabbing lunch hanging out white boarding coming up with startup ideas like the whole concept to me makes a ton of sense because once you start start spending time with friends that do have an ivy league education you just feel a little bit jealous because they got to hang out a lot more when i was at college so i went to duke which is kind of like more like more like what you’re talking about sam and uh i remember after my halfway through my freshman year or something i called my dad and i was like hey you know before i came here we had been thinking like should i go to a state school i could go to university of texas or should i go to duke and like you know i’m not doing so great here like i kind of like you know i’m like a minus student type of thing and i was like i’m at first i wasn’t trying now i’m trying but i’m still a b minus student even after trying because like the kids here are just like everyone here is like the smartest kid from their high school so like they’re all smarter than me and then they all already work harder than me i’m just learning to work hard um and so i told him i was like you know i feel like if i stay here i’m just gonna kind of be like in the middle of the pack and i started telling i was like he’s like well why do you um like you know i i think you’re being hard on yourself and i was like no no my friend tophek is like super genius and like during the summers you know i go home and play nba 2k and he goes and drives like a you know an ambulance on the war front in palestine like helps people and like my other friend over here he’s doing this other thing and so i was trying to say that as like you know i’m not i’m one of them i think you’re wasting a lot of money sending me here like this i’m not gonna be a winner here i’m gonna be like average or below average as far as the rest of the kids here and he goes you’re not there for grades you’re there because tawfiq is your friend next to you and that guy’s your friend over there you being friends with these people you’re not even going to realize it but your whole what you think is normal is actually going to be excellent because it’s just going to seem totally excellent will seem average to you just by spending four years with these people so don’t stress yourself out about the grades don’t don’t worry about all that you’re doing the right thing just by being by being like five feet away from all these other people and i was like man that was like you know that’s like dad hits you with some wisdom and i didn’t even really realize it at the time i was just like okay i guess i’m staying here uh but now when i look back i’m like wow that was actually like kind of a stroke of genius uh and on his part and and so to bring it all back whenever i hear people talk about like the future of education education is broken i’m like maybe like it’s broken in the sense of like i think people shouldn’t pay for this stuff unless it is of this caliber but also um i think that a lot of people approaching this this this market they think like well i just need to make like a better mousetrap or like i need to um just like make it so you can learn more important stuff and i’m like i don’t think that’s actually the right way to go about this the mistake is uh oh man the classic we’re still teaching you know these classes and they’re teaching it from textbooks how boring i’m gonna teach it i’m gonna teach better subjects in a better way and the problem is that people don’t choose to go to college for the classes they don’t choose to go to college for the information they go because they want the stamp and they want the social experience and then they want you know the parents need that as an insurance policy and uh you know so college does many things and then they solve only the information problem but they don’t have a credential they don’t have the social experience they don’t have it the other five reasons that people actually go to these places that that ends up being a big problem bree what i’m looking at your portfolio right now of all these what do you think is going to be the biggest hit right now hoppin’s the most obvious um this is a really special company um you know when they initially raised their first round of funding i believe they had around four employees um i caught up with johnny last week and they’re at 800 820 so i invested a little over a year ago they’re now valued at 5.65 b um and so they’re really building a a really disruptive platform i say platform because initially they started out as a way for companies and festivals and publications to host conferences online they’ve since then moved into streaming they’re moving into all forms of virtual collaboration and even hybrid collaboration where hoppin is being used at in-person events as well and so i feel like this is a company that has uncapped upside they’re making a lot of acquisitions um you know they have only been around for two years um you know johnny was initially based in london he built hoppin because he had an illness where he had a compromised immune system he couldn’t go to networking events he was you know in his early-ish mid-20s um and so he built the technology because he needed it and so like the team itself is in it for the right reasons and moving really quickly and so that’s one that i’m super excited about um you know but there are a couple of other ones where they’re stealth they don’t have a website yet they’re building quietly behind the scenes and i’m very excited for those companies to come out as well but you can’t talk about those right now i can’t talk about those ones what are they doing what are they doing two two themes that i’m really excited about the first one is disrupting venture capital and that’s controversial because i myself am a venture capitalist but a number of startups that i’ve invested in are non-dilutive ways for people to raise money like i think has a very they look for very specific things typically it’s more it’s more um software focused business models you know typically it’s founders that are in an ecosystem where there are a lot of vcs i think that’s changing but it’s going to take some time for that to what’s interesting to see is i was the first money an investor in a company called pipe um pipe is non-dilutive capital for software companies or now any companies with recurring revenue that wouldn’t that that one’s going to make you a bundle how do you end up as the first money in pipe how does that happen yeah i i’m excited to tell you this story because it’s it’s it’s atypical um what happened was i was in la for my birthday um so my birthday is september 12th i heard about pipe on september 10th something like that um i was at drinks with friends they’re like you got to meet this guy harry hurst he’s very charismatic he’s building something in sass like you got to meet this guy and so i had called a few investors i was emailing people i’m like hey you know how do i get an intro to harry wasn’t happening wasn’t happening and then finally on my birthday um i tracked down his phone number i text him i’m like hey here’s like here’s who i am here’s what i do i’m in la and it’s my birthday can i come to your office and so he um you know we ended up meeting in the middle he’s like okay uh you don’t have to come to our office we can go to soho house and so we we caught up on my birthday i was super excited about what he’s building um i committed on the spot i you know started the process to wire the money from the parking lot like i’m sitting there on my birthday late to my own birthday laptop out doing all the things to get ready to wire money for this company because i knew if i waited it wasn’t gonna happen um you know founders are meeting so many angel investors and so many vcs through the process where sometimes i’ll talk to founders and like yeah room are so excited to work with you two days later they’re like oh i completely forgot because it’s been a whirlwind and so i wanted to make sure that that email was sent that we started the process and that i was going to keep bothering harry like frankly we didn’t have a relationship so i was bugging the [ ] out of him so i could invest in the company but okay so let’s take it even a step further this even though i’ve i lived in silicon valley in san francisco for eight years and i felt like i was you and i probably shared so many friends technically i guess i was kind of part of it but not really but it all like this guy harry how did he even create this much hype for you to chase him down like that there were a couple things so harry um it’s a disruptive model i will say that you know we’ve seen um new ways for founders to raise money but oftentimes there’s misalignment because you’ll have ways for founders to raise money but it’s on unfavorable terms less sophisticated investors and so for harry he the initial concept was enough where where investors are like oh we need to catch up with them and like learn what’s going on here it sounds like you were the first money in but people were telling you you got to meet with this guy who are those people why were they even saying that if they weren’t already investors in the company what was he you know who who are these people that were giving you this great tip that you were like okay i gotta i gotta meet this guy and if if they hadn’t already invested because that makes sense when somebody’s invested they say hey i just invested in this thing it’s great for you should check it out um but that wasn’t the case here that wasn’t the case there were a lot of people that were trying to meet pipe um you know i think a lot of ways when you’re fundraising for a company i always encourage founders like many of them get discouraged in the beginning they’re like no one cares like no one cares until everyone cares and that’s how it always works like the last 12 hours of fundraising is always a mess because once people once someone hears that someone else is investing or someone else is interested it just all snowballs into like a huge amount of texts and phone calls and emails and so in harry’s case um he’s he’s a brilliant fundraiser i mean if you look at the cap table he’s raised from the ceo or you know one of the co-founders of every major sas company and so i give him a lot of credit for from the earliest days um you know he had a conversation with david sacks so you know david had started yammer and and david was very interested in it for the same reason that i was interested for me as a first money and investor pipe is a great resource where when a company hits a certain inflection point and they’re thinking about raising more money it’s great for me it’s great for the founders it’s great for anyone that’s been involved from the very beginning to introduce options of non-dilutive financing um it’s more upside for us it’s better for employees like all the way around i’m like i want to spend time with this and ultimately get work-life companies to use it when it makes sense and so that was part of it as well so then it was basically so did did he know david um i believe harry met um someone on david’s team that’s la based i just like a cold email or something something like that so that that’s kind of interesting so i mean it’s just like it’s a huge game of telephone and it’s fascinating this is just a fascinating thing what what is pipe valued at two or three billion dollars north of two now yeah okay so they don’t have that much revenue like everyone it’s it’s just crazy that you could say that they’re probably gonna grow into that and become way bigger but they created all this off of like a really good story and very strategically getting in the right years and i think that’s incredibly fascinating and really really cool it also just speaks to the amount of capital that’s available in the ecosystem right now i think oftentimes these valuations are getting out of hand because there’s so much demand from the last round or there is so much money where investors would rather pay a high pay a premium to have exposure to the company and to share in some of that upside than waiting until you know a traditional milestone or metric or moment in time where historically they would have fundraised like to give you context and i don’t say this uh as someone who wants to brag by any means but when i invested in pipe it was at like a nine post and now they’re worth north of two billion and so that’s not saying like well you’re a world class investor like you’ve changed this company but it’s to say that when you have a big vision you have a good team that’s building it when you have a founder that’s exceptional at fundraising like investors will come to and they’ll come to you even before you know the next financing round because they want to get in so how much you gonna make off that one i’m holding it’s hard to say i’m i’m holding just what’s your stake worth uh i don’t know if i’m allowed to say that am i allowed i’m not sure what the rules are i don’t know if i’m allowed to say that what size but i invested i believe i invested um 150 k and then i’m continuing to follow on well so like there’s a lot of math here that involves dilution but you just told us the you just told us the you know the variables that we could do the math but we don’t do public math if you recall so we don’t do publicly we could tell you the number but we don’t do public math and we should you could do like uh all this evaluation might be like well if it’s worth 2 billion and you invested at 10 10 million dollars i mean like and 125 grand like you know you could do the math it’s it’s a whole lot i just don’t know you know don’t don’t do it it has on so on paper it has returned the fund and so i ha i have returned the fund in the the first year and a half um which is an interesting point i i think a lot of investors are very quick to scale the fund size like they want to go out and raise 100 million dollar fund for fund one to raise a little bit north of 10 million and to return it in the first year and a half like that’s a pretty safe bet um and one where i didn’t overextend myself in a way where it could impact my reputation that’s something that i do encourage people i’m like start with where you are today um and find ways to keep building concentration over time do spvs buy secondary like do whatever it takes to like hit that annual number that you need to make to be happy don’t necessarily overextend yourself and go out and try to raise 100 million fund i wouldn’t have been able to raise 100 million fund but i i have been able to return it on paper very quickly right well congratulations and so uh we should wrap it up a little bit over time and we saw her calendar so we know we’re we’re eating into like a peloton class or like a pitch meeting or or email processing maybe we don’t know exactly which one but texting triage all right so we won’t we won’t keep you any longer all right so so brian campbell where should people find you and they should go uh let’s is the podcast live yet can they go subscribe uh on the field yeah subscribe to