What's up, everybody? This is Cortland from ndhackers.com, and you're listening to the
Nd Hackers Podcast. There's actually no new episode of the podcast this week, because
last week, instead of recording an episode, I decided to go camping in the middle of the
desert. What I'm going to do instead is feature an episode of my other show, it's called Brains.
It's got a four-person format. It's always me, my friend Julian Shapiro, who you've probably
heard on the show before, and two of the most interesting guests that we can find. The topics
aren't always relevant to Nd Hackers, but if you guys like the show, I will try to cross-post
the episodes and to the Nd Hackers Podcast feed when they are. So whether you like the
show or not, tweet me. Let me know. I'm at CSLN on Twitter. And if you do like the show,
search for Brains and your favorite podcast player and subscribe.
Hey, this is the Brains podcast. I'm Julian Shapiro, and I'm Cortland Allen. Today, we're
talking money with a couple of friends, Anthony Pompliano and Sam Parr. Both of these guys
have amassed substantial fortunes at a young age and the multiple tens, if not hundreds
of millions of dollars. This conversation is not financial advice, especially not for
the average person. Rather, our goal is to get into the minds of a couple of rich people
to share some strong opinions about how we make and manage our money and to have some
fun while we're at it.
I think I'm the only one... No, Pomp, you're married. I married a woman that is also getting
after it.
The voice you're listening to belongs to Sam Parr.
And that is one of the best secrets ever, because when I didn't have a lot of cash,
she did, or at least more than I did.
Yeah, if I'm remembering correctly, she made a ton of money off of the Airbnb IPO, right?
Yeah, and she also had a much higher salary than me for a long time.
You're going to hate me for asking this. What was the prenup situation like?
Nothing.
Same.
No prenup.
To quote Ari Gold, I'll kill my wife before I get a divorce. No, I didn't get one. You
didn't get a prenup, Pomp?
Never even was a conversation.
Really?
Never was a conversation for me either. Are you Catholic?
I grew up going to Catholic Church. The voice you're listening to belongs to Anthony Pompliano.
But it wasn't, you know, I haven't been to church in probably too long.
Dude, blood in, blood out. If you're in, you're in. And I was raised Catholic as well. And
like the idea of a divorce, it didn't even have that. It wasn't even the conversation.
This is fascinating to me because I would 100% get a prenup if I were to get married.
No question asked.
I mean, somebody once told me who's married and doesn't have a prenup, they said they're
very, very like nine figures wealthy. And they were like, yeah, you know, I have like
a 50 plus million dollar stupidity tax on the way out if I do something stupid. So like,
you know, like almost like he had it like, and it was a weird way for him to say it,
but like he said it. I was just like, okay, you know, maybe just don't get divorced because
you love your wife. But sure.
Maybe it's like a way to keep you honest. Well, look, that wasn't my reason. I don't
know about Sam. No, I don't know. I didn't even because I didn't even think about like
many experts would say that I'm in I'm foolish for not doing it. Getting a prenup, it really
like we maybe we had the conversation, but it was like not even it was like, hey, I don't
want to it was like I don't want to get a prenup to you.
There's also an element, I think. What's the Jay Z line? What's better than one billionaire
to have like, if you marry the right person who says that you're the one that's going
to be giving shit up, right? Like, I don't know. There's just like very, very weird dynamic
to it. So I don't know. Times are changing.
When you buy, so you invested 90% of your net worth or something pop into Bitcoin or
something like that, like that you're very public about it. Did you ask your lady about
it? We're like, hey, are you, you're, are you on board with this?
So there's like three pieces to it. A lot of people, well, I mean, maybe, maybe not
as many people now, but when somebody says they have that much of their net worth in
Bitcoin or crypto, it's like, oh, I bought really early and it just like grew a bunch.
And now it's like this huge piece. That was not me. Like I, you know, in 2016 was first
time I ever did anything. I thought I missed the whole thing. In 2018 is when I made the
first like really big move. I put 50% of my net worth into Bitcoin in December of 2018.
And there was definitely like a conversation, but we were just dating at the time and it
was more so like, Hey, I'm going to do this like really crazy thing. You know, like, let's
see what happens. Here's my logic. You know, more so like, do you think I'm as crazy as
I probably think I am, but I'm still going to do it. More so than like, you know, are
you cool with this? But in March of 2020 we were like a month away from getting married
and I was like, all right, they're going to just print money until they can't like literally
like the printer breaks. I'm going to like go all in and I'm basically going to put everything
else in. And so we had a conversation about it. But the funny part was, it was March 12
of 2020. Bitcoin fell 50% in a single day. And like, it felt like 20% in the morning.
I was like, ah, nice bought some. And it felt like, you know, another bit. I was like, nice
bought more. When I got down, like around $4,000, I was fucking curled up on the couch
like a little bitch. And I was like, man, like, am I about to watch this thing go to
zero right before, you know, like it just, I mean, it's like extreme volatility. And
she looked at me and she goes, what do you mean? Like you're all in already, like buy
more house. Okay. Yeah. Like nothing like just getting like taunted by, you know, your
fiance of like, like how much do you believe? So, uh, I tell her all the time, like, you
know, I, I don't know who knows what I would have done if she hadn't been there, but I
bought more and it was a great decision, you know, given the fact that it's at fucking
$50,000 today, I, uh, whenever we make decisions, I, I'm like, if it's like a fairly big decision,
I like discuss it with Sarah. Um, and it's mostly, it's kind of the same thing. She's
actually probably more aggressive than I am. I don't, we, I don't, I don't, I'm not in
your world pump. I don't know much about crypto, but she's like, Hey, let's buy, uh, and she'll
say like a number and I think it's a fair amount. And, uh, like, for example, when Ethereum
was like a thousand, she's like, let's buy like $150,000 worth. And I'm like, that's
nuts. And she's like, just do it. And we did it. And it's right. I don't know what it is
today, but it's up. And, uh, and she's like, we should have done more. I wanted to do more
and I didn't listen to her and she, she was right. Would you ever turn a hundred percent
of your portfolio over to, uh, to your wife? I would, I would definitely, um, because yeah,
I think I would would, of course you would, right? Yeah. I, what I think I would do is
I would, uh, I would turn it over, but I would do the same role that she plays for me. Like
I would play for her, which is almost like, I'm convinced also like an individual, regardless
of whatever bullshit history tells us, there's nobody who can manage a portfolio perfectly
by themselves. They always have like some random person. It could be like the old man
down the street that sits on the park bench and they just like randomly talk to them.
Like there's always like something else that keeps you like emotionally grounded because
we're all just humans and we succumb. Well, there's the, uh, there's the book. What's
it called? The man who solved the market, the Renaissance guy, you know what I'm talking
about? Oh, uh, Jim, um, Simon's. Yeah. Yeah. And in the book there's a story that he tells
where the market drops for a lot by a lot. And he called, he had a financial advisor
and he called him and he goes, sell, sell, sell. And the financial guy goes, dude, chill,
relax. And don't do this. Like, this is just how the world works. You don't need to freak
out. And he talked him out of selling and it worked out. And so even that guy had someone
that, that he refers to and he's, you know, they're the best hedge fund in the world.
I think a big part of it is just having a second person who's not enthralled by the
narrative. Like I get really stoked on a narrative. If the pitch was good, if the deck was compelling,
my friends have gone in. But if someone else sits next to me and they're like, I don't
give a shit about any of these prior factors. I'm just looking at this, this deal and it
looks like crap. It really helps. Like cuts through like a knife. So that goes a long
way. Um, yeah, just being dispassionate goes such a long way. I forgot who it was. I think
it was David Sachs who just had some speech or a threat or something. And he's like, I
need to figure out a way to invest where I don't even know what the narrative is anymore.
They just give me the numbers. They give me the revenue growth rate or the traction from
customer acquisition. Uh, I know the TAM, uh, I know a few other details and then I'll
make up most of my decision off that. But do you guys, are you, maybe you're different
pump cause you're, you, I mean, I mean, I don't know if the, my perception of you is
the reality, but I perceive you as like doing a lot of, like making a lot of decisions,
but do you guys actually make trades actively? I mean, I don't really do anything other than
like occasionally we bought crypto and then I just own like HubSpot, Airbnb, and then
an index fund and that's it.
Yeah, I don't trade at all. Um, and I'm a big believer in deep concentration. Um, I
just had a conversation with a William Green, the guy who wrote Richard Weiser Happier.
And like, one of the themes of that book is he talks to all the best investors and like,
he's like, Hey, how many stocks do you own? They're like three. And they're like, what
stocks? And I'm like, Berkshire Hathaway, Costco, and you know, whatever. You're like,
wait, what? And they're like, yeah. And like, that's like my whole thing. You know, Bill
Miller is, uh, probably 70, 75% of his net worth is in Amazon. Right. And it has been
for like a long time. So I think concentration is a big piece, but Julian, I think at your
point, like the dispassionate piece is definitely effective, especially when you have like a
metrics based vertical, like SAS, right? The metrics are the same in almost every business.
It's very clear. You can almost like run them through, uh, an algorithm to some degree in
like that can make the decisions. I think where it gets much harder is when, you know,
Elon shows up and he's like, dude, I'm gonna like launch rockets and like land them. And
you're like, uh, maybe right. Right. And like, he's probably not the first person to tell
that story. Uh, we just know his story because he's the one who actually did it. And you
know, there's 20 other guys who took a bunch of money from people and it never worked.
So I think SAS is much more, uh, conducive to that type of investing versus, you know,
Tesla or anything else. If Elon came to you and was like, I'm starting something. I'm
not going to tell you what it is. Minimum investments, a million bucks. Would you just
throw the money in? Yes. You would do that. I would not. I think he's too crazy. It's
a no brainer for me. I can't, I can't stand his volatility. Like I just can't, it freaks
me out that like, if he's, what do you think would happen to Tesla stock if he died? Crash.
Well, true. But also what happens to Tesla is getting started. If he doesn't step in,
what happens to space X, right? Like, uh, when I first started investing, every major
mistake I made, it sounds actually a lot like sacks. Like, Oh my God, this is an amazing
like idea. Like this is going to be cool. If I was running the business, this is what
we would, we do ABCD and like, it'd be a mate. Like the person ended up not thinking they
were going to do the same thing. And so they wanted to build like a different business
or they ended up doing something different. Now I'm just such a believer that like, if
you bet on the right person, it does not matter what else happens. They'll just, they'll figure
it out. Um, and you actually have to bet on like the really fucking crazy people. Like
Bezos is not, he's just as nuts. He just doesn't do it on Twitter. But if he had a Twitter
account, he tweeted every day, we would be like, holy shit. That guy, like he was sending
dick pegs, right? Like, like he's just as crazy. It's just that he, he's a, got a better
PR team, I guess. The, the reason I would take the million dollars into Musk is because
I know he wouldn't spend time starting a business unless it was a really good idea. He's not
going to waste his time. It's too precious to him. By the way, I've been seeing neural
link space X, maybe the boring company. I've seen all three of his companies on like, like
SPVs have come my way, like secondary opportunities and direct investment opportunities. Have
you guys seen those? And would you ever, would you go in on any of those? So space X, uh,
I've done a bunch of stuff in and around space X over time, uh, all secondary SPV type stuff.
If you just think of like the market opportunity, like what's the market, uh, of going to Mars?
I don't fucking know, but it's like a lot bigger than 76 billion. And then the other
piece of it too, like space X is really interesting because it's basically the AWS like tax on
like the startup ecosystem where if you're going to create a business today, what do
you do? You go spin up like AWS server and you know, they have this whole like thing
and it's not even just startups. It's like the whole tech industry right now. If you
want to go to space, like Varda, right? I mean, they talked about it, uh, Deleon and
all those guys are going to create these space factories. They have to use space X rocket
launches. Like they literally have a tax on anyone who wants to go do anything in space
because they have the cheapest, uh, rocketry to get there. Uh, maybe that changes over
time, but like that alone feels like that's like a trillion dollar type thing for anyone
who angel invest. Do you count like for your carry and also for the actual, your own money
that you invest, do you actually count your angel investments as part of your net worth?
Well, hold on. Before we answer that question, uh, I have a, like, um, a Google doc, like
at a cell file that every month I track bank balances, you know, crypto prices, like all
that stuff. Uh, I'm interested one, if you guys do it. And then two, if you do why I
have a Google sheet and I use this app called tiller, it's a hundred dollars a year. And
what it does is it pulls automatically pulls your bank balances and all your, like it's
kind of like mint in that it like, you know, it's like plaid or whatever it is that attaches
to everything, but then it just puts it straight into a Google sheet. Ah, this is pretty sweet.
So you have like the Google sheet and Excel optionality of like moving stuff around and
doing calculations, but you don't actually have, cause like, you know, you have like probably
10, I have like 20 accounts, like a 401k, this, that thing, like all stupid shit. And,
uh, it automatically pulls it all, all in there and I track it, uh, weekly on Google
sheets. Hmm. Yeah. I've never seen this before. This is actually pretty cool. Um, it's sick.
Yeah. I did this same parts. Yeah. Yeah. It works for everything. So like my fidelity
account is in there. Like anything that plaid does it can pull into. So fidelity accounts,
you could do manual stuff. Um, all any pretty much the most popular banks chase bank of
America, all that my 401k is in there. Um, and then what you can do is you can put how
you can put how many or you can put like how many shares that you, cause you can use Google
sheets to do like equals finance and then the stock taker multiplied by the amount of
shares that you have. And so it makes it super easy to like count everything. Interesting.
So I do the same thing. I don't have all the bells and whistles that you have. So I'm going
to be the next teller customer that you can think Sam. Uh, but the reason I do it is like
more directional, like I don't care what the numbers are, right? It's just like, is this
month higher than last month? Okay. Like we're heading the right direction. Is the next month
higher than, you know, this month, right? Uh, cause to some degree, like I would go crazy.
We're like trying to optimize the number. Like I would literally go nuts, right? I would
like turn into a game and next thing you know, I wouldn't be sleeping, whatever. So it's
like, I've tried to convince myself that the number doesn't matter. It's just like, is
it headed in the right direction? I think that's actually where the, where this all began.
The reason I started doing investing and venture and crypto is as a kid, I just never cared
about making any money. I really did not care. I just wanted to be creatively fulfilled and
have enough to be comfortable. And then when I came to Silicon Valley, I said no to being
employee 21 at Slack. I said no to being an early employee at Stripe. I literally walked
away from my Webflow equity two months before. Cause I was like, I want to do other stuff.
I didn't even bother to stay for the cliff. And like two years after all that, I'm like,
fuck that was like a hundred million dollars more. And, uh, I was like, cool. I'm going
to learn from this. You should, um, tell me where you want to quit next. That's right.
That's right. That's right. So I'm a little different than you guys. And that I don't
do almost any budgeting and here's why almost my entire nest egg, like 99.99, whatever percent
of my net worth is in Stripe stock. And I can't sell it because it's a private company. All
I can do is just log in to share works or whatever and watch it go up every year, which
I'm fine with because my future is taken care of. And beyond that for the present, I just
try to spend as much money as I possibly can to maximize my present happiness, to make
sure that this year is a good one, that this month is a good one. You don't, do you budget
pump?
No, budgeting not as much only from the sense of like, I mean, I have like a general idea.
Uh, and I would say that the one thing that Julian said, that, uh, it kind of backs in
this answer around budgeting is like, every time I make an investment, I literally say
to myself, Hey, I'm going to hand this money to my grandkids. And what I mean by that is
like, like the Bitcoin, like I'm never going to use it, do anything. Like it's just, it
was a pure investment. I just said to myself, like, Hey, I'm going to have some of my grandkids,
which like puts me at ease when it comes to, uh, all the volatility, like I literally don't
care what, whatever, do whatever you want, go to a dollar final buy more. Um, but when
it comes to budgeting, the only thing I care about is like, okay, I'm not eating into the
cash that I have sitting there so that I could live for a certain period of time without
needing more cash so that I'll never have to actually tap into the investments because
I have that like such a long time horizon. And, uh, I forget what I was reading, but,
uh, Buffett's whole thing is like, never get in a position where you like basically you
screw up the compounding yourself, right? Where you have to like, you're forced to sell
things. Um, and so it's like funny how, you know, all these timeless like investing principles
that people that we would probably laugh at a little bit and be like, Oh, boomers don't
understand technology. Like it's the same stuff, right? It's just now we're trading
JPEGs on the internet versus the, he was buying cash flowing businesses. Okay. Question for
all of you guys. What would you say are the smartest financial moves you've made in the
past few years or that you're making right now? Well, pomp actually just hit on something
I'm trying to do right now. If I don't have the bandwidth to get very good at something
or very knowledgeable, but like an asset class, I'm trying to find people to do it for me
and just charge Carrie. So I'm trying to find someone who actually like, let's say a 20
year old NFT nut who has their ear on Twitter and discord and he's in all the telegram groups
and I'll be like, Hey, here's 30 grand. Uh, you'll get 20% carry. Go do, I trust you.
Go buy a basket of NFTs, do your thing. So I'm doing, I want to do that for NFTs, which
is the plan. I did that for crypto as well. I have one friend who knows all these weird
long tail altcoins I've never heard of. I'm not going to spend time on this shit. He does.
So they call here 60 grand. Go have fun. It's okay if you lose it. Uh, hopefully you don't.
So that's probably been the smartest thing of them lately is stop trying to be an expert
in everything. The only thing I'm trying to be an expert in is venture, essentially.
I think that you guys are all on drugs or crazy. Like the idea of giving a rate up,
like someone to do the NFT stuff for 60, 60 K. I think that that is fucking nuts. Like
I think that is Euro drugs. I like, that's, it's called Vanguard. Okay. It's called the
Vanguard total index fund. Just do that. Like I think 14% a year will, well, it's a quote
pump. I don't do public math, but I think that's five. I think that that's a, it doubles,
it doubles every five years, right? Cause seven and a half percent doubles every 10
years. So, uh, I think that that's so like, why don't you just, instead of like doing
that shit, why don't you just do this other thing? So, okay. I'm seeking anomalies. I'm
seeking really high spikey returns. Um, and it's funny cause we were in a, I'm in a chat
group with Sam and Sam podcast co-host Sean was like, yo, I'm giving this like young,
cool dude who knows his shit, like 20 K to go play around. And Sam's like, are you dumb?
And so I remember I knew you're, I knew this was coming, but, um, uh, that's only going
to happen in a situation where I think they could 20 X, uh, with a likelihood doing that
with venture true. But the liquidity on crypto and FTS, let's just say is it's there. And
on this venture shit, like I'm not getting returns for 10 years.
I think it's a big piece of it too. It's just like you have 30, 40, maybe 50 years. Like
one argument is sure compound at the 14%. The other argument is that's actually eight
or 9% real rate of returns and CPI is at 5.4%. And outside of the stock market, almost every
other asset is a negative real rate return, right? Bonds, you know, just goes to the whole
thing. Um, and so you could buy stocks for sure. But other than that, what are you going
to buy? Like, like there's not that much to buy, right? So Bitcoin's compounded annually
at 200% for a decade. Look, I'm not saying don't do that for a decade, Sam. Look, I'm
on board. I'm on board and, and, and pop, that's your game. That's what you've been studying
now for years and years and years. I'm just saying like how, if you're, if you're going
to go hard on something, go hard on something. But I, I think that it's crazy when I've got
friends, Sean is one of them. Sean is one of my best friends and I'll, and I've said
this before, he goes hard on everything. So like there's nothing that's safe or, you know,
that I'm being, I'm exaggerating a little bit, but like that in our little internet
bubble and this little group chat we're in, it seems like everyone's going hard on everything.
And I'm just like, that's crazy. That's just what happens when you get a bunch of guys
in the chat room talking about money. Yeah. But, but it's also, but, but it's also structural,
right? Like, like they basically have flooded the market with cash, they being the fed,
the treasury, the fiscal policy, like all that stuff. They flood the market with cheap
capital interest rates at zero, you know, here's trillions of dollars that they print.
And what they essentially have done is they've arbed out all of the traditional returns,
like 60, 40 portfolio for decades was the, you know, pristine, this is what you're supposed
to do. You literally are losing money on 40% of your portfolio if you do that today. Right.
And so it's like completely pushed people out on the risk curve. And then all of a sudden
you overlay that with, uh, stocks are up 30%. And like, I've got a 25 year old brother.
He literally is like, dude, there's not a kid I know who's putting a dollar in anything.
Unless I think 10 X in a year. And like, that's crazy to the legacy investors. And then I
ask him like, how many of them are doing it? And he's like, all of them. Right. And like,
that probably ends at some point, but like, you know, they just bought ether, they bought
Bitcoin or they bought a NFT or they bought, you know, uh, one of my brothers bought Roku
stock and it went up 10 X and he's like bragging about it. And people are damning. I'm saying
10 X is baby shit. Like, I mean, it's like, like, what world are we living in? Right?
It's like, this is not normal, but well, it's cause we're all just reading and sharing stories
of the craziest people. But I will say crazy people, it often seems are the ones who have
like crazy returns. Um, I, and, and, and so I'm just not looking for crazy returns with
everything. How do you guys think of cash positions, uh, in terms of like percentage
of, uh, either net worth or portfolio? Do you have like a, Hey, I try to target 5% cash
or 10% or 2%. Like, is there a framework that you use to think of like actual liquid US
dollar cash, not, Hey, I have the S&P and I could sell it like actual cash.
I have, I just looked, I've got $267,000 in a checking account right now. That's how much
cash I have. And I, and that's over two years of expenses. And that's all your cash altogether.
Um, well, a lot of, some people will call bonds like cash. I could, I can click a button
and I can get a whole lot, but I currently have 267. I just logged into my chase account.
We don't have a savings account. We just use a checking account. And then we spend all
of our stuff on credit card, mostly in credit card. And I have $250,000. And so, uh, that's,
that's what we have.
The idea that checking and savings is different in today's environment is like comical, like
you're checking and your savings is the same. So I do the exact same thing. Like there's
no savings account. Like that, I think that whole idea is like pretty much left, uh, for
an end generation.
Uh, yeah, it was actually just in Atlanta visiting some friends and I saw some family
while I was there, my mom and other people from my parents' generation and they give
like very antiquated financial advice. They're talking about going to college and getting
a really good stable job and saving up to buy a home. And they're celebrating like penny
pension essentially. And of course, like none of them are rich. And when I talked to my
friends in Silicon Valley, many of whom were fabulously wealthy, they're talking about
compounding your money and investing or owning in a piece of a business. And you know, most
of them are not buying homes or renting and it's just a completely different outlook.
Can I ask a question real quick? What do they all share that knowledge with each other?
Yeah, they share knowledge. They have the same financial advisors, they read your mom
and their friends all like kind of share back and forth and are they all like 50 plus or
older early sixties. So my theory is that it was actually very sound financial advice
50, 60 years ago. Like their parents could save their way to financial security and they
probably did right over the lifetime. Uh, also like buying a house was like a great
idea. Like all these things today, that advice actually is bad. And it's like the, uh, the,
uh, what do they call it? The folklore writer, like the thing that like gets passed down
from generation to generation, they're just telling you like what their parents told them.
And it was actually good advice then now, you know, as you, you know, as you alluded
to, like it's really, really hard to do that, I guess.
But the, the advice pomp you're mentioning, like the folklore, I think putting people
putting themselves in debt is it's like indoctrinated. Like our parents are still telling us we should
go to college. Obviously they're cheaper college alternatives. I would do that.
It's a counterpoint. You're totally wrong because dude, getting going, like I can't,
I love this when people say that everything you said, yeah, I agree with you, but that's
not the point. You go to college for probably two or three reasons, but if you, if you can
go to school at a top 20 university and you have to go into 100% of debt, which is how
much is a Stanford cost? I don't even know $65,000 a year, $70,000 a year. So you get
let's say $300,000 after four years of debt, 100% worth it debt. Graduating with debt from
a top 20 graduating from debt from a top 20 university, 100% worth it. Graduating from
debt with a non top 20 university, not worth it at all. Dude, have you ever met someone
who went to Penn or Harvard? Wait, Cortland didn't you?
I went to MIT and I don't, I disagree with you. I don't think it was going into a lot
of it. I disagree completely. Yeah.
Getting MIT on your resume, you will get an interview. I get it. Everyone here is a little
bit out of the ordinary, but for the average Joe, if you can get an MIT and you have to
go in debt, that's a no brainer. You always take that.
But are you better? Are you better getting accepted than just dropping out and saying
you're an MIT dropout and not getting the debt and just saying that you're the dropout?
Yeah. If you want to be like homies with Peter Thiel, yes. Or if you want to go start a company,
if you just want to go work at Facebook and make a quarter of a million dollars a year
and rest, invest and chill and have a, and go play softball at four o'clock on the, on
the weeknight. Yeah. I'd say go to MIT, get the degree.
It's definitely worth the debt. It's definitely worth like meeting like some senator's like
son or something like that. It's worth like the crew that it's worth going. And like you
go like, do you know, does, does Facebook ever recruit from Belmont university where
I went where it costs $50,000 a year? Not a chance. I didn't even know what Facebook
was. I thought, why do they need $5,000 or 5,000 people to run a website? Okay. Like
it's just a webpage. You don't need 5,000 people, but they're outside a pen. So is McKinsey.
Those Goldman, if you want to get paid when you're 21 years old, graduate with that.
It's selection. If you go to a top 20 university, that should be that. That's the quote. That's
the quote I'll give you for this episode is graduate with that debt. Sam park.
Totally worth it. I think they're already smart, ambitious people to get into these
universities in the first place. And if you're one of these people, like you don't need the
debt, like you could just go get one of these jobs. Like you don't need $50,000 in debt.
Okay. It's a, it's very much, it's very much a job by job thing. If you're in, if you're
starting a startup, you don't have how many people are doing that. We can't, we, we can't
sit around like a circle and just sniff our own farts. Like we have to be like constructive.
The average Joe should definitely go if they can to a top 20 university. Totally worth
it. Also, you know what else you can't get online on YouTube doing drugs, getting drunk
with your friends, like all those amazing stuff, trying on different personalities.
I think it's totally worth it if you can get into a top 20 university. Am I crazy? Am I
the only one here who thinks this? Okay. I've got four good things that I got from college.
Number one, I got 20 plus close friends that I'm going to have for the rest of my life.
I'm always going to be friends with them and they're always going to be friends with each
other. And that's awesome. Number two, because I was at MIT, I met a couple of really smart
people who pushed me to do ambitious things. They're like, Hey, you can start that startup.
And I never would have done it otherwise. Number three, I got a degree that makes people
think that I'm smart before they've even met me. And then number four, it changed my self
image from lazy to hardworking because it would have been so embarrassing to get kicked
out of MIT that I had no other choice than to work super hard and graduate. And by the
end of it, I actually was just a hard worker. So how could you tell me that MIT was not
worth it? Well, it was worth it for me because I barely had like $10,000 in student loans
after four years. It would have been worth it if it was worth $250,000. Am I the pump?
You don't see, you don't, you're not going to tell your kids that if they get into Harvard,
they're going. There's a 0% chance I'd send them, but I've
a very, I have a very, very, very different reason for not wanting to send send them has
nothing to do with the education. It has nothing to do with the debt. I don't think you can
be an independent thinker and go to Stanford, MIT, Harvard, et cetera. Like, I think there's
something conformist at this point of like going. I don't think that was true 10, 15
years ago. Like it was very kind of aspirational and it was hard to get into, et cetera. I
think it's just become this game of like the person who's willing to jump through all the
hoops they get in. But like, are you really going to be like a first principled independent
thinker going there? I don't know. I didn't go. So I can't like fully comment, right?
But it's like you like doctors. I mean, look, well, doctors, I mean, look, there's some
professions for sure. You're going to have to still go to college. And that's my point,
which is most smart people, they want to get a really good paying job. They want to get
off work at four, 30 or five. They want to have three kids and they want like a pretty
nice easy life. And that's wonderful if you could. And if that is the case and you could
just jump through the hoops, I say do that if that's what you want. And I think that's
what most people want. I don't think most people want to do this really risky shit.
And if you do want to do that risky shit, then just bail and just get to it right away.
I see what you're saying. Okay, so going back to the if you were starting from 10,000 bucks
or something, I know you know where this is going and you had a year to turn it into millions.
What would be your play and you're willing to lose it all? It's obviously something crypto.
No, I wouldn't invest it. I would leverage it into building a business. It's way easier
to drive millions of dollars of revenue in the first year of a business, I think, than
to turn 10K into a couple of million dollars from an investment standpoint. I mean, you
basically have to pick one of if not the best investment of a single year. It's possible,
but I think it'd be much easier to drive a million dollars in revenue for a business
than to pick an investment that could do that. What would you start?
I mean, this is going to sound super dumb to people who come from a different mindset
maybe, but like a million dollars in a year, I really don't think is that crazy for like
you could go wash cars. I mean, you have to work your ass off, right? But like, you just
start doing the math. Like, all right, how many cars can I wash in a day? You know, if
I work six days a week, but like you can just back into it, like you probably can make a
million bucks washing cars.
You know what I would do? I would take the 10K. I would buy a few courses, like teach
myself introductory engineering, teach myself marketing, whatever. That's where the money
would go. Then I would go talk to a bunch of investors in tech and say, who are the
fastest growing startups, like consensus rocket ships, like early days of Stripe. I would
go and join them, use that knowledge I just gained from these courses, get some entry
level position, get my equity. And that's what I would do. But I want to be very clear
though, not jump and join a startup, join like Stripe. And it was like 150 people where
it's taking off. But also I'm biased because I failed to do that. And I wish I had. So
it's kind of where I'm coming from, to be honest.
Corlin, what would you do? Well, Corlin did exactly this. He sold his startup to Stripe.
I don't know if you report how much you have in Stripe stock, but it's a lot.
And starting a company isn't easy. I mean, I started one and sold it after nine months,
sure. But I had seven years of failed startups before that. But I would still do what Pomp
is saying. I would take that 10 grand and I would invest it in myself. I would rather
start my own business than invest in somebody else's business. And then I would just do
something that focused entirely on hustle, rather than trying to be too clever or too
smart. So for example, I talked to the founders of Retool. They were doing something like
$500,000 in revenue after a year or two, with just the founders. And they only had like
20 customers, because they hustled so hard that every single conversation, they just
raised their prices and raised their prices until their average customer was paying them
like 25 grand a year. So I would find something where I could do that with sales, something
where the average revenue per customer is super high, like something like startup recruiting.
Like I'm going to go out and I'm going to be the best person on earth at helping startups
hire engineers. And I'm going to charge bank and I'm going to make a million after a couple
years.
So there's an important point you're making there, which is you're choosing an idea where
the products and market are de-risked. You're saying what is something people are already
buying where my edge is the ability to hustle. And that resonates with me. I agree with that.
As opposed to starting some fancy, full metaverse company where you're like, who knows?
If I was 21 years old with $10,000, I think I could pretty much crush it by going on Yelp,
seeing which company like which category of service had the most amount of reviews, but
some of the lowest ratings, I would just start something like that. I think that you could
like I paid someone the other day $80 an hour or maybe $50 an hour just to do power washing
at my house. So I think that you could pretty much crush it doing something like that and
then hire someone for $20 an hour and then bill them out for $50 an hour, something like
that. I think you could pretty much crush it.
You know what this reminds me of? I knew a guy when I was a teenager who would read the
obituaries and then go to the houses of people who died like their families and say, Hey,
do you want me to repaint the room to kind of get the bad mojo away?
Dude, the other day I had to cancel a ticket. In order to cancel a ticket, one of the ways
in which they'll give you their money back is if you have a death in the family and they
need an obituary. What's an obituary? I mean, it's just like a picture with just some words
typed up and you just submit that in order to get a refund because it's not like they're
going to check to see. Hypothetically, you could just make an obituary or the second
thing that you could do is just find... You can go to obituary.com and create an obituary
for $10 if you really wanted to. Or the second thing that you could do is just find someone
with your last name that's died recently. Sam, are you killing fake people?
Dude, it's crazy. I wanted to cancel a ticket to Italy in two weeks and the government's
shutting down and I'm like, Hey, let me just get a refund and I'll buy a ticket later.
And they're like, You can't. I'm like, Well, what are the loopholes here? Just tell me
how I get this. And I'm like, Well, if someone died recently...
They're all these enterprise companies like airlines who have all these databases of intel
on their customers. And a bunch of them think Sam has like 12 dead brothers.
They have this totally wrong picture of your social, of your family life.
It was nonsense. Like the EU said, we encourage you not to travel here. I got a run, guys.
Yeah, we're done. We're done recording. I'll talk to you guys soon. Cortland, Julian, thank
you. Thanks a ton, Sam.
If you'd like to learn more about Anthony Pompliano and Sam Parr, you can follow them
on Twitter at apompliano and at the Sam Parr. Also, if you like the show, search for Brains
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