My First Million
00:31:59 · Shaan Puri
[00:31:59] S0: don't I try to poll... Participate that much in politics, but it is... This is a curious person. It's this is very curious, like, how we ended up here. Right? Like, you said this thing, like, what made America great? And I feel like everybody can it's... Everybody can attach their own pet reason why, but it's more like Charlie Munger says, like, Lollapalooza effect. Like, anytime you have this extreme outlier, it's usually a a rare combination of seven or eight tailwinds at once that came together that creates such a huge outlier effect. And so it's like, yeah, maybe there was some natural resources at the right time. Maybe it was the culture and the values. Maybe it was incentives and systems that you had this sort of capitalistic incentive system that allowed, you know, those who were high agency and willing to create things that were of value for people would would go into competition with other people doing the same, which would create the best products in the market, which would create, you know, these winner take all dynamics. Right? Like, you would... You could assign, like, many different possible causes, and they all probably played their part. Maybe it's just that we were a new country, and it's sort of like when Africa never installed, you know, landlines, and they just leapfrogged straight to mobile. Right? Like, maybe America was just got to be new and got to leapfrog where other countries were.
00:33:09 · Sam Parr, Shaan Puri
[00:33:09] S1: We we had, like, a hundred and fifty years of practice. So the colonies were kinda, like, running themselves on their own, and then they're like, yeah. We're not feeling this England thing. We're gonna go ahead and just put on pen to paper on these rules that we've been doing. [00:33:21] S0: Right. [00:33:21] S1: And they had a fresh start. [00:33:22] S0: And there's clearly a network effect where when you have the best economy, then you attract the best people, the best people, then work in the economy, which makes the economy better, and you get this kind of runaway thing that happens. Okay. Great. So there's like all these things. And so, you know, it's interesting to know what what made it work, and it's interesting to know, like, why the weird broken parts are are weird and broken despite having all these advantages and all these really smart people who mean well in the country? Like, how does that still happen? What are the larger forces at play that are pretty hard to fight?
00:33:22 · Shaan Puri, Sam Parr
[00:33:22] S0: And there's clearly a network effect where when you have the best economy, then you attract the best people, the best people, then work in the economy, which makes the economy better, and you get this kind of runaway thing that happens. Okay. Great. So there's like all these things. And so, you know, it's interesting to know what what made it work, and it's interesting to know, like, why the weird broken parts are are weird and broken despite having all these advantages and all these really smart people who mean well in the country? Like, how does that still happen? What are the larger forces at play that are pretty hard to fight? [00:33:51] S1: But the point that I'm trying to make is you presented all these interesting opportunities, and I buy into all of them. And we have, I think, America is uniquely set up to be the petri dish where a lot of these things grow very, very quickly, so long as we don't get in our own way. Because we have the, it's sort of like, you know, a seven foot tall eighth grader who gets drafted number one. Like, it's there, just don't blow it. Like, it's there, you know? So I'm really excited for that, frankly. And I understand the fear and pessimism, I totally do, because it is a lot of uncertainty, But I'm pretty bullish on a lot of this stuff and making life better, not just in America, but around the world. So I'm excited about it.
00:33:51 · Sam Parr, Shaan Puri
[00:33:51] S1: But the point that I'm trying to make is you presented all these interesting opportunities, and I buy into all of them. And we have, I think, America is uniquely set up to be the petri dish where a lot of these things grow very, very quickly, so long as we don't get in our own way. Because we have the, it's sort of like, you know, a seven foot tall eighth grader who gets drafted number one. Like, it's there, just don't blow it. Like, it's there, you know? So I'm really excited for that, frankly. And I understand the fear and pessimism, I totally do, because it is a lot of uncertainty, But I'm pretty bullish on a lot of this stuff and making life better, not just in America, but around the world. So I'm excited about it. [00:34:31] S0: So one of the reasons I brought this up is I have a cousin who's really smart. We're like the same age. He's basically like smarter, better looking version of me. And he was recently became a free agent. So he's, like, sold his company. He's thinking about what to do next. And he was about to do what I think a lot of people do, which is we look inside the peephole, and we say, alright. What do I see? What's the best thing I see here? When actually the job is to expand your field of vision. Just... You're not even looking at what the possibilities could be yet. You're still looking at a very narrow, limited set of what's possible. You know? Who are the people I know? What could I do with them? What are the jobs or companies available around me where I happen to live? [00:35:12] S1: What did I do in the past, and what's What
00:35:12 · Sam Parr, Shaan Puri
[00:35:12] S1: What did I do in the past, and what's What [00:35:14] S0: did I Yeah. What do I slight difference? Good at? What was my experience, and then I'll me stay in that industry. Let me stay in that job even if that industry is not the one that has a huge tailwind behind you. You know, when really this thing to think about is like, wow. I'm a free agent. I'm a really smart person, and I have the opportunity to go do anything right now. Why don't I put kind of my investor hat on and think like an investor of, like, where is the best body of water that I should go be in? As Mark Pincus said on our podcast. Like, go find the right body of water. That's far more important than trying to be the best sailor in a shitty body of water. And, you know, when Mark Pincus was talking about that, he was basically saying social media was the the right body of water to be in back in the early two thousands when he was building social networks, and then ended up in building Zynga, and invested in Facebook, and, like, made a bunch of money doing [00:36:00] S1: that. Right.
00:36:01 · Shaan Puri
[00:36:01] S0: And so I was told... I told my cousin, I said I said, why don't you just write down the five most interesting things that are, like, most interesting companies you've seen, that you think, like, if I gave you, you know, 10,000,000 and you were gonna... You got to keep all the profits, but you have to invest in these five companies. Which five companies would you pick? And he's like, I don't know. And I was like, you... That's a good exercise to do. It's a much better exercise to do because it it gets you to stop thinking like a like a worker and start thinking like an investor. Investors have this incredible benefit that they get to go where the action is. They move where the where the money is to be made, where the opportunity is is happening, where the growth is happening. And they move themselves. They're more more nomadic than entrepreneurs tend to be, or employees tend to be, who like to stay in their industry, stay in their lanes. And he did the exercise, he sent me the companies. It was kind of eye opening for him to be like, Oh yeah, I don't even really know that much about this, but my gut says there's something here, because I know this. And, actually, I'm gonna go look more into that. Started looking more into it and started to expand his horizon. I think that's what my hope is that when somebody sees a deck like this is that it takes whatever, like, narrow field of view you had and just says, like, you should probably widen that. You should probably think more like somebody who's a, like, a total free agent, more nomadic, doesn't need to stay in their lane because the opportunities are, like, bigger than anything we've ever seen. But it's all gonna be in the new spaces where you don't have a lot of experience or you don't have a lot of intel. You don't need to have it. Look at this... You know, even this presentation, I... You know, it's not like I went deeply researched any of these, but I know enough to know that there's a lot of opportunity in each one of these, and you just have to get it then go start digging and figure out what's the exact angle.