Advice For 20 Year Olds Who Want To Make It In Silicon Valley

Shaan Puri

There were so many things that I did foolishly during that time. I'm not just talking about, like, "Oh, you know, I wasn't as good at this thing as I am now." It's like, no, there was so much opportunity right under my nose, and I was blind to it. One of the biggest, scary things for me now is: What are those things today that are right in front of me that I'm too stupid to see? Just like I was too stupid to see it seven years ago when I was doing that other thing. For example, Greg, you were in our early mastermind groups, and the founders of Calm were there. They were talking about how hard it was and how, you know, it's just Alex. He was just kind of like, "Yeah, it's hard to raise money right now. I'm trying." We were just like, "Dude, it's a cool app, man. You should stick with it." He said, "Yeah, I'm going to just keep going." And like, that's a $2 billion+ company now. We were helping him. Like, dude, why didn't we cut the check? You were there too. I don't know, you didn't take the check either, did you?

Sam Parr

I remember at the time, like if I'm being honest, I felt that it was too niche. I was like, "We were like Sean, you and..."

Greg Isenberg

I were focusing on like we were doing

Shaan Puri

Big stuff. Stuff that was gonna be big. Yeah, exactly. We were all one acqui-hire later. Exactly. And he's got the huge company. There were so many of those. So in our masterminds itself, I think Loom was in there. That's a $1,000,000,000 company. I remember kind of trying to mentor Shai and being like, "Bro, don't worry. You'll figure it out. Maybe it's not this one, but when you get to your real game, you're gonna be good because of this experience." You were friends with them too. Did you invest in that?

Sam Parr

I missed I missed I missed it

Greg Isenberg

it was called what was it called opentest.co

Sam Parr

and that's what loom was originally

Greg Isenberg

And it, you know, it felt like when you're doing your first startup. It just feels so shaky because it's your first time doing all this stuff. Like, that's what it felt like. And then also, the narrative at the time was, "Don't invest in other people's startups."

Sam Parr

you got if you if you wanna make it in silicon valley you gotta give laser focus

Greg Isenberg

So, you know, my mistake in my twenties was I came to San Francisco and, you know, I listened to all these VCs with all their narratives. I did it, and if I were to redo it, I would frankly just be doing what I'm doing now. Which is focused on communities, doing agency services, you know, focusing on niches and web... yeah, just build and experiment and not have the biggest exits in the world.

Sam Parr

I

Shaan Puri

so there there was like 10 examples like that like I remember alex mccall came over one day and he we were catching up and then he went on to start clear I remember thinking this guy's fucking amazing I should invest in this clearbit thing and I like went over to his office and we like hung out I was like we went to meet the guys I was like I love the energy of this office man like if I just couldn't do anything besides feel this office I would be like they're building a winner in here and that's also like I don't know I don't know if it's a 1000000000 it's a multi $100,000,000 company and he told me at the end he goes oh by the way I'm buying up I was like what else are you doing finally I started asking more questions like what else are you doing he's like oh I bought up some stripe shares this stripe share is available for like $2,000,000,000 so I'm buying a bunch of stripe shares I think it was him maybe it's josh buckley he's one of them everybody knew stripe was fucking amazing it was like the best startup in the whole like you know in silicon valley and I had this opportunity to go buy stripe shares at 2,000,000,000 and I thought how late I was and I was like man I wish I coulda got in earlier and now like you know the things I would give for stripe shares at 2,000,000,000 now like it's like that's already like a like a 100 x you know from from there and that was proven right forget that then there was all the services we were using like furcon who's my cto he would be like oh this is a cool cool product let's use this in our tech stack if I had just invested in all the bills we were paying for like software we were using like pagerduty and elasticsearch and so you know like one after another those were all huge winners that were pre ipo so first was investing the second was like project selection so like you were talking about greg I did the same thing I was playing by the rules of like I was playing by other people's rules meaning like what was considered cool at silicon valley was to be like a product guy who was building who had a cool product taste and was building like you know like new markets and like going for the the big $1,000,000,000 prizes and then I met sam who was like I'm writing this newsletter it's free I'm gonna have like newsletter ads

Sam Parr

and I

Shaan Puri

Was like, "Yeah, but are you going to do a startup someday?" That's how I felt about it. Right? And Sam's company sells for more than my company sold for in the end.

Sam Parr

He goes, "Look, you're good, but basically, you're showing up to a knife fight with a knife. I wish you would show up with a magic wand that would just murder the competition." I'm like...

Shaan Puri

sounded cool right

Sam Parr

I was like, "That's a great analogy. That's a cool story." But, like, I don't know, man. I think the math kind of... I think it might achieve the desired outcome, which I'm trying to do here. When I started, I was just trying to be financially independent by the age of 30. That was the only goal.

Shaan Puri

and so so like if I could go back and just whisper 3 things about like just just strategy like forget life advice just strategy advice I would have said invest in all the smart people you know like it it'll it'll work out if you don't have the money go convince somebody that you have a bunch of really smart friends that they should give you money to invest in that that would be the first thing the second is invest in all of the expenses on your p and l so go find all the places you're spending money and go try to invest in all those companies that will also do fantastically well you'll make more on that than your own company okay if you really wanna do your own company beyond that fantastic that's great you're gonna build up skills and you got a a lottery ticket there that might work I would have just said like don't try to be mark zuckerberg from the social network like think about what like like basically just open your eyes to the problems and the opportunities that exist today and so like you know whether it was like ecommerce or shopify apps or like these sounded small at the time but they sounded small because that's where they were early and like at that time I needed a vc to like stamp their approval that this was a good market or a good opportunity which by that time is pretty late because what's the vc doing they're looking at what companies are raising huge rounds which means like 4 years ago those were great opportunities 3 years ago those were great opportunities and so I wish I had just kinda been more eyes wide open on like what projects are available to you and like the things that sound kinda niche and funny those are actually better signals for you than the thing that the vc is saying is gonna be huge or is already huge because it's often you know those companies to start are like you're in a you're in an absolute dogfight and it's just like one winner out of a 100 is gonna emerge versus other things where like you could basically take no no product risks no market risks so I had a friend vishal tell me this once he goes I invest in companies with no product market fit risk I had never heard somebody say that it didn't even make sense to me I go what do you mean like every startup is product market fit risk he goes no it's not like what and he goes he was the one who convinced me to buy bitcoin initially as well he was like bitcoin's gonna be the you know the biggest thing in the world he's like I just put up basically all the money I have into bitcoin I was like what the fuck this is like back in 2,000 out of 16 15 nobody was really saying that back then so for the product market fit fit thing he goes he he goes for example I just invested in a company that's making a robot that makes pizzas and it makes pizza it makes a perfect pizza every time 247 at a lower cost than a human being can do it he goes I don't know if they can he goes there's a ton of engineering risk like they may not be able to technically do it but if they can do it there's zero market risk every pizza shop will want this over paying an employee to make imperfect pizzas only in certain hours call in sick and blah blah blah like for a higher cost and I was like oh shit that's true there are things that have zero market risk and I was taking like maximum market risk before so like that's the other strategy it's like you don't have to take as much market risk the thing you're doing now greg is like way less mark market risk the thing I'm doing with milk road had like 0 market risk basically and there's just a like there's a lot of money there's life changing money that could be made and a lot of fun that could be had without taking on unnecessary risk

Sam Parr

happened to that pizza company

Shaan Puri

I think they're still in engineering risk mode. They got a big contract from Domino's, but then their CEO got into trouble for something, so they hired a new CEO. These are legitimate engineering risks, so I'm not saying that doesn't mean they'll all work. But what I'm doing with the newsletter is neither technical risk nor market risk.

Sam Parr

Yes, operational risk is just about whether you are going to be able or wanting to do it for a long time, which is...

Shaan Puri

yeah which is

Sam Parr

good you know that's a pretty good thing to try to overcome

Shaan Puri

right

Greg Isenberg

Yeah, it's really tough. You know, I remember coming to San Francisco and hearing all these narratives. These VCs were telling me this, and also entrepreneurs were sort of repeating a lot of this stuff. I will say, it's tough to go against what these stamps of approval say to do. You have to tell yourself every day... and I have to do that too. When I started a services business, most of my Silicon Valley friends were like, "A services business? Like an agency? That's what you're gonna do?" You just kind of have to push forward and really remember that just because certain people on Twitter say a certain thing, or Sequoia or Andreessen say a certain thing, doesn't mean you can't have a great life. I would say you can have a better lifestyle not being Mark Zuckerberg than being Mark Zuckerberg.

Shaan Puri

yeah exactly