From High School Dropout To $952 Million At 33 | Jess Mah Interview (#526)

Shaan Puri

Alright this is gonna be a special episode I think that the best episodes we do are the ones where we highlight a business or a person who is amazing that you've never heard of and that's what today's episode is the person that we have on jess ma she has built herself I don't know 10 companies that have combined you know they're worth $950,000,000 she and not only that just has she made a bunch of money or been successful with business but she's just a force of nature people that I respect think she's one of the best entrepreneurs in the world and that's kind of amazing for somebody who you don't know her name you've never really seen her do interviews you know paul graham when when he met her and she was at yc put her on the very short list of a couple people with sam altman and a few others as the most impressive people the people that he thought 30 years from now will have done done the most and gone the furthest I was at a dinner that's how I met her and a friend of mine pointed out he goes that woman over there is the best entrepreneur I've ever met and he's lived in silicon valley for 15 years and to say that that's high praise so I had to have her on the podcast to talk about everything from her beginning where she was basically a a loser amongst loser losers in school she talks about like you know not only was she not cool even in the computer club she got bullied and didn't really fit into school didn't get good grades really like was just kinda like school wasn't for her she ended up dropping out of high school because school wasn't for her she's but she started a business and it started off as a very and you know when she was a teenager she ended up making 100 of 1,000 of dollars on this little server business that she was creating just paying for her own video games we talk about that all the way to where she is today building these biotech companies that are doing crazy stuff and I asked her I was like were you like a science genius like how did you know to go into this how did you have the confidence to go into a space like that like I think we all I think there's a part of all of us that wants to go do the big bold crazy change the world thing but we're afraid like who am I to go do that at least that's a thought I've had and it was kind of amazing to hear her talk about she felt the same way like she's like I got a c - in biology and now I have like a 9 figure you know $100,000,000 + bio company like that's crazy to do that and and how she approached that how did she meet these scientists how did she get the funding how did she actually talk herself into doing that from rock bottom where she was completely depressed and didn't know what she wanted her to do with her life to now you know living the kind of life she wants the other thing that's in this episode that I think you're gonna like is she talks a lot about the lifestyle and financial stuff that come from people who are already really successful so she you know like I'm gonna give you a trigger warning now she talks about like you know yeah I just like I hop on my jet like you know and I bought this jet I bought it for this reason here's the tax write off that I got she's very open and very clear about this stuff and and I think for some people who are at the very beginning it's gonna feel unrelatable or it's gonna feel like oh yeah you know the the classic youtube comment guy who's like easy for you to say you're already rich but I think the important thing to figure out is she's successful because she always thinks this way she she talks about her mindset and that's why she was able to do this and also I love when people talk about money stuff I love when they're open and honest I hate the billionaire who downplays it and pretends like you know they're flying coach and oh you know money's no big deal and I I oh you know I don't I don't really do anything with my taxes no I like to hear what people actually do how they use money to improve their life how they architect their businesses she does that she's very open about it so that's all in this episode I think you're gonna enjoy it this is an episode with jessica ma alright it's good to see you good to see you again I wanna tell people the story of how we met which is not like this extravagant story but it is one that I don't know it's like it's this thing that happens that is I I would have bet anything that you're an interesting person just on the way that this meeting went so we got a dinner together so that's like signal 1 you know a a friend host a dinner and it's like only friends inviting friends to this thing that's gonna be like you know some sort of founder investor type of dinner so already you got filter number 1 filter number 2 is I'm sitting at one end of the table you're sitting at the far end of the side of the table but our mutual friend sieva tells me he's like I was like oh what's her name and he's like oh yeah that's jess ma he says he's like yes she is the most impressive entrepreneur I've ever met and I was like okay I didn't even ask and he just says that and he's he's he basically gives you this extreme compliment and I was like that's extreme and he's like yeah she's extreme and I was like okay I gotta know more so already I got a signal next thing I noticed that you had your dog in the restaurant and I was like okay that's awesome love dogs dogs here and later I was like is this like a service animal because this is kinda like a nice restaurant and you were like yeah amazon you could buy this for $10 this vest and like look and you flashed me like an fbi badge that was like a service dog thing and I was like did you buy that and you're like yeah this is great and I was like wow this person is just you know so there's a lot of little signals somebody rolls by their own little rules my friend telling me that you're you know one of the most baddest people that he's ever met literally in the game of entrepreneurship and and then when you did your intro you said something you go yeah I'm working on like I started this thing indonero which I've heard of and you were like you know it started that and now I've I sit on the board like you know whatever 10 companies and we do like bold science bets and you didn't even explain it and I was like okay well you have my interest what's a bold science bet and you're like you know like curing cancer but not like the typical way like this other path to curing cancer you're like you like kinda nonchalantly gave me some answer as to what a bold science bet would be and I was like okay say no more I need to meet this person I need to get to know this person and I've gotten to know you a little bit now and yeah you are just that impressive so this is my build up that is my perception and tell me what that feels like to hear because that's people never tell you their actual perception first impressions as they remember it you know in their own head

Hubspot

That's amazing! It was super fun to have that dinner and meet you that night. I just had a good feeling that we were going to have a fun time. Normally, I don't go out; I'm kind of like a loner. I like to be at home and, you know, just take it easy. It's a lot to deal with having 10 companies, and we're going to add more companies this next year. I'm trying to figure out where I want to spend my time as an entrepreneur, and that's an ongoing question. I'm sure we'll talk about that. But I've heard about you. I've seen your podcast, and you're famous, so it's kind of an honor to get to be friends with you too. So, our software is the worst. Have you heard of HubSpot? See, most CRMs are a cobbled-together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous. I think I love our new CRM. Our software is the best. HubSpot: Grow better.

Shaan Puri

Well, the other thing that's cool is you have a holdco. If I were to say, what are some of the themes of entrepreneurship trends? There are fashion trends, but now there are entrepreneurship trends. One of the entrepreneurship trends is this personal holdco model. What most people are doing with the personal holdco, I would say, is kind of like small boy stuff. It's like, "We acquire this little SaaS app," or "I'm going to buy this plumbing business," and I'm doing this holdco to roll these up. You kind of have a holdco, but you also have the big venture, "Change the world" kind of thing inside of it, which I find really fascinating. So you're like, "Yes, I'm doing a holdco, but the holdco is going to be all sort of game changers—type of like go big or go home type of bets." I find that really interesting. I also think that another entrepreneurship trend is doing hard stuff. I think Elon really popularized the idea that, "Yeah, you can create the next kind of app, and that's cute, but I'm going to make rockets and electric cars." Then you have AI and Sam Altman, and that's like the cutting-edge science "Do hard stuff" movement. I think you're a part of that too. I really like that you're here because you represent some intersection of these trends. There are very few people that really play that game. That's what I wanted to learn from you today: why do you play that game and how do you do it? But first, let's give people a quick background on you. Can you tell me how you introduce yourself when you're trying to brag a little bit about why anybody should pay attention to what you have to say?

Jess Mah

I'll I'll be honest I'm really shy and it's hard for me to talk about these things because everyone I meet is so impressive so no matter what I feel like the dumbest person in the room and the least successful person in the room and and so that's really hard for me to talk about still but just to catch everyone up I'm an entrepreneur I've started so many companies now my first company was called indoneira and indoneira is a financial saas company we do accounting tax bill fee management software and services for businesses and our customers were companies like slack stripe pinterest doordash instacart coinbase and I started that straight after college I studied computer science at uc berkeley and when I was a senior at berkeley I was running the computer science club and I brought in these speakers and one of the speakers I brought in was this kid named sam altman he was building a company called looped and I'm like hey sam what should I do after college and he said oh you should do yc and you helped review my application and and then the rest is history so I did that for 10 years grew that to a few hundred people valuation in the 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars but the way I built that business was I didn't raise traditional venture funding so I didn't bring in vc capital I only brought in some angel investors I was able to retain most of the ownership in the company and and it's a cash flowing you know profitable business to this day so that was kind of my first foray into business and lots of ups and downs and like you know being weeks away from insolvency multiple times over and I think it's because we were undercapitalized and I always ran things a little too close to the edge there and and I was pretty public about that I mean if you Google search me you'll see that I've survived a bunch of near death experiences with that business and eventually I I realized I didn't want to be a ceo anymore I grew up with this mindset of you have to be the operator and if you're not the ceo and make a company a unicorn you are a failure and I just didn't that didn't blend well with me I I Google searched you know the world's billionaires and I'm like how do these people become billionaires and most of them built companies a lot of them were diversified holding companies and they held on to these companies for decades and a lot of them they weren't the ceo or the operator they were more like investment manager and I mean warren buffett's a great example of this but there are many many more like that and so that kind of got me thinking am I doing this wrong am I just listening to silicon valley rhetoric that's pointing me in the wrong direction and and then a few years ago I went through a really tough experience where my boyfriend who I I was living with died very unexpectedly and I was going through a really dark.

Jess Mah

After that, I was not able to work. I just couldn't. I woke up in the morning, and I'd be super depressed. I didn't want to do anything. I thought, "What would I do if I was going to die this year? If this was my last year here because I'm so depressed, I have to make myself happy. What would I do?" Running a company was not on the list. So, I immediately hired a CEO for Nanero. I had another company that I had started, and I brought in a friend to run it. It's a litigation fintech company, and that company originates and funds lawsuits. You know, like the personal injury billboards you see on the side of the road? We do that in a very sophisticated way. There are a lot of details I really wish I could talk more about, but I don't want to invite competition there. Then, I've started a bunch of other interesting businesses like that. If you go look at my website, mawe.com, I don't go into much detail. Actually, I don't mention any of the details on these businesses for the same reason: I'd rather build quietly and come up with these really interesting ideas, find someone to go build those businesses. A good chunk of them are businesses that would just print cash, but a lot of them are more bold. That's why I got interested in the biotech stuff. I just thought, "What would I do if I wasn't scared of failure?" After my boyfriend died, I thought a lot more about that. I thought, "I shouldn't be scared of trying and failing because I've seen rock bottom. My life can't get any worse than it is today, so I might as well try something." And that's where I landed with that.

Shaan Puri

That's an amazing story. That question of, "What would I do if I wasn't afraid of failing?" is up there in the pantheon of great questions. I asked myself that same question, and it changed everything. I wouldn't be doing this podcast if it wasn't for the three paths that I had written out. I remember I made a Figma file and was drawing a flowchart of my life. I thought, "I could start a company, and maybe it'll be this, maybe it'll be that." That was, like you said, the Silicon Valley rhetoric. What gets written about is the visionary CEO founder who creates the next big thing. The movies are about "The Social Network," and the TechCrunch articles focus on that. The VCs want you to be that because they're like, "Yeah, sweet! I get to write a check and chill, and you go do the hard work." You go win the lottery and do all the hard work at the same time—like do the low odds, hardest thing you can do over there. So I thought, "I could go start a company. I could invest and just kind of be on the other side of that." I don't know if that would be the most fun thing for me. Then I literally wrote, "Or I could beat Tim Ferriss." I thought, "I think I want to beat Tim Ferriss." I was like, "Well, why don't I just do that?" I've been thinking about this for like seven years in the back of my mind. But then I thought, "What if it doesn't work? Then I'm just a guy with a podcast." It's cool to be Tavares, but it's not cool to be the guy with a podcast—just a normal podcaster with 100 views or listens per episode or something. I was like, "Alright, so am I just going to not do it because I'm afraid that I might fail at it? What's the worst that could happen?" I kind of had this whole talk with myself. You know, the most important talks are not with mentors; they're the talks with yourself. It sounds like you had one of those too, where you were like, "What would I do if I wasn't afraid to fail?" Can you just talk a little bit more about that talk with yourself? I think everybody should have some version of that talk with themselves.

Jess Mah

Yeah, I think just to expand on that, a big question I asked myself was also, "How will I deal with the insecurity of feeling like a beginner and terrible at something?" Despite the fact that for the past 10 years, I got pretty good at being a CEO and running a business. I'm sure you felt the same way, right? Where you're a great entrepreneur, and then now you're getting into building content and interviewing great folks. That's a new skill set that you had to become good at. But for a while, it's awkward. I'm sure your first videos were not nearly as good as the ones that you posted over the past few months, right? So that's a lot of the self-talk. It's like, "Oh my god, I didn't do a good job. I still don't know what I'm doing. People don't take me seriously. Do I even take myself seriously?" Meditating on that and thinking, "You know what? It doesn't matter because I'm having a great time. I'm learning a lot, and the outcome will work itself out." That's how I deal with it. But how about for you? What are your other best practices?

Shaan Puri

yeah so being a beginner at being okay like that mental prep for yourself of I'm gonna be a beginner at this I think is also a very important part of that conversation I'm glad you said that because it's one thing to just say what would I do if I wasn't afraid but then like the fear is still gonna be there it's not just gonna disappear when you ask that question and the fear is what the fear of being wrong being failing looking dumb all those things and so that beginner conversation is important which is cool if I go into this I'm gonna start as a complete beginner I'm gonna get better at over time because I'm good at learning and I'll try and you know if I don't need to become the world expert at this but I need to become competent at this and that might take me 6 months to a year that's like a reasonable expectation if I really put my mind to this it reminds me of the story I've told on the pod before of moiz ali who created native deodorant and deodorant is not curing cancer or whatever but it is you know still it's a totally different space and so when he told his friends he's like I think I'm gonna create a deodorant brand and they were like cool random you know do you do you even wear deodorant like do you know anything about deodorant and he's like today I know nothing about deodorant but in 6 months I'll know everything I need to know about deodorant and that idea of like writing yourself a blank check I think is really important to to starting anything and you told me this when I was like dude you're like working on crazy science stuff I like that idea and I wish I could do that but it feels above my intellectual pay grade are you just a science genius and you were like no I got like you were like I got like a c in biology in school and then like you know you're like I hired a tutor to like as an adult to like learn about this and I watched ted talks and podcasts and then and then I flew out and I met the scientists and talked to them you just did all of the like normal blocking and tackling I feel with like just like is that how you would describe it like is that that was totally different for me I just put you on a pedestal I was like oh maybe she's doing it because she's just smarter than all of us and that's why she can do this and nobody else can

Jess Mah

no I still have major in security you said that about this in fact last night I dreamt again this is a recurring nightmare where I am getting c's in school and I am very close to flunking and having to repeat a grade and I got c's in by and also in biology when I was in high school so I thought I could do a lot of things with my life but anything related to biology is not one of those things and then when I was so I was on the cover of inc magazine a bunch of years ago and there was a woman who who was on the cover a month before me her name's elizabeth holmes and you know obviously we all know what happened and so once she got you know 1 third dose went under and the whole thing happened I thought wow bio is really hard and I would be so paranoid and scared of doing anything in biotech because I don't wanna go to prison now obviously you know there's more to the story there and I don't think I'm gonna go to prison but like the thought crossed my mind like should I even risk my life and my career if everything's okay like why do something hard and where the last woman who tried to do something here you know got you know totally destroyed by the media and is now in prison like that's not a really good inspiration for me to try to be the next elizabeth holmes but you didn't fuck up as bad you know that's so that went through my head and I had to overcome that and then eventually I decided you know what fuck it I wanna give it a try why not you know just learn and so I hired a biology tutor I like digest digested all the information and I brought in people who've been running biotech companies and who had been part of big bio so that's that's really how I operate it's just bringing other people smarter than I am another question I would wanna ask you and it's something I ask a lot of my best friends is what would you do if you were a billionaire and if you had like 1,000,000,000 in hard cash in the bank account and you are not allowed to do what you're doing today how would you devote your life and it's so fascinating to hear the answers that that I get from my friends and I'd say occasionally it's I I'm doing what I'm doing today I would just keep on doing that I I hear that from my more successful friends but from people who hadn't made it per se it's very thought provoking

Shaan Puri

that is a great question I can tell a quick story and then I'm gonna answer that question so the quick story version is when we got acquired by twitch I grabbed I was like first day what do I wanna do I was like let me go find my people because I went into this all of a sudden I'm in a company of 2,000 people who you know each are doing their little function in this company and I was like where my entrepreneurs at like where are the people who like to like you know make shit happen and so there was a company that had gotten acquired a few years earlier and 3 years earlier and they got bought for like I don't know I wanna say like $100,000,000 and the founder was one of the founders was still working there and so I we go out to lunch and I was like hey can we meet he's like yeah let's go to the cafeteria I was like no no I just need to leave this building I'm having like big company faux claustrophobia they need to get out of this building so we go to a lunch and I say why are you still here and he's like what do you mean like it's going great we're working on stuff I'm like yeah but like you know is this what you wanna do like you're here you're 3 years in and I'm looking in the mirror thinking you know do I wanna be here in 3 years there's no way I wanna be here 3 4 years from now you're going on to year 4 and you're drinking this company kool aid what what happened to you why are you still here and he was like you know slightly offended but he was like no it's great I'm having fun I'm learning a bunch I go let me ask you the question differently it sound sounds like what you're saying is you don't wanna be doing anything else right he goes yeah and I go so let's say that I put a $100,000,000 in your bank account tomorrow would you show up to work and he's like well no like I'd be I'm like okay so you're doing it for the money let's let's okay well now we've established that because if I all I did was I changed the money part of the equation and now your answer is very different he's like well I would buy a ranch and I would you know I have 4 kids and we'd be outside all day but then on the side I'd be building this type of project I was like okay so that's what you really wanna do I'm not saying you have to go do that but let's at least be honest I didn't like the part where you were telling me this is exactly what I wanna be doing with my life and I can say today there's things there's a part of my life like this podcast part of my life that is exactly what I would be doing regardless of what the number is in the bank account and there's a part of my life where like we spin up companies but like we spin up companies like for example we just spun up a company that is I would say it is opportunistic it's not the most fun sexy company in the world I don't wanna operate it forever I'm like oh this business will work it'll be successful it'll have a great exit it'll provide a great return it'll you know it it'll put you know 1,000,000 of dollars in people's bank accounts in the next 3 to 5 years and that is good but if I was totally post economic there's no way I would spend an ounce of my energy doing that company like just the reality of the situation so I'm like you know partially following that that philosophy but not all the way yet and I'm kind of honest with my at least I'm honest with myself of like yes and no but the my answer to the question if I was totally post economic you know I have more money than I'll ever be able to spend the thing that I would do is I would teach and I would either just teach in the way that I do today like podcast write a book you know just basically be curious go learn something and then explain what I learned to people who don't have the 12 hours to go down the bioelectricity rabbit hole you know you know but that's what I would do or I would extend that if I wanted to be a little more ambitious and I would actually create a campus and a school for people like me and be like cool let me create the ideal school that I wish I had when I was younger and do that I just don't know how much I don't know how much that would be fun like the kind of reward versus extra effort that that takes versus creating content online and doing the same thing but not having any of the like students and physical campus and stuff that I need to deal with

Jess Mah

You know, you should talk about that sometime because I've thought of that as well. I wish there was a better school for me and for people like us who are creative, entrepreneurial, and quirky. The traditional school system does not satisfy our needs. What's cool about it is, if let's say we came up with a concept for how we would do this, I would just put my whole team behind it. Then, we would find a way to secure the funding, and it would just manifest. These things don't have to wait until you have a billion dollars in cash. I asked you the question because I found that "bio" was on my list. Like, "Oh, I would do more bio stuff." I'd just fund it. But I know people who could fund it, so I could just call them and have them fund it. I don't need to fully fund it myself; they'll manifest it. I think a lot of us have so many things we want to create in the world, and it's dangerous to let them sit idle because life priorities change. I see this with many of my friends who go on to get married, have kids, and get comfortable. They're building their ridiculous houses, and then life goes by, and they never go through this list. It always stays a dream or an aspiration. I just couldn't allow that to happen to myself, and I'm so glad that you're doing most of the things on your list.

Shaan Puri

That's a great phrase: **"It's dangerous to wait."** I think most people feel like it would be risky to go do it. They vastly underestimate the risk of allowing yourself to just wait on the things you really want to do in life. What actually happens is you accrue this... it's not like by waiting you get closer to the goal. By waiting, you actually get further away from the goal because you add all this space that gets filled up with other activities, other responsibilities, thoughts. You know, you train yourself to not take action on the things you actually want and to go down this long, winding path. I remember back when I was working at Twitch. There was a guy, Dan, who's now the CEO. At the time, he came in as, like, I don't know, Chief Product Officer or something. He became my boss. So we go into this one-on-one, and he's like, "So, what are your career goals for yourself here at the company?" I was like, "Well, I have two options here. I mean, I could lie to this guy and say, 'Oh, I can't wait to get promoted from L7 to L8 to L10,' like, you know, like this... it's literally a ladder, and that's your goal."

Jess Mah

five angles and I

Shaan Puri

I was like, "I'm either gonna lie about this to him because he's, you know, my manager. I guess that's what I'm supposed to say," or I'll tell the truth. So, I told him the truth. I was like, "Yeah, I can't wait to go build another thing or just go on my own. I don't see myself being here long term." He was like, "Okay, well that's..." but he didn't get it. I thought, "That's gonna put him in an awkward position," but he was like, "You know, he's an experienced guy. He totally rolled with it." He said, "Okay, great. Now that I know that." I was like, "You know, I don't want you to totally write me off because I said that. I do think I'll be here to earn out this part of the deal. I think I can do good work while I'm here. You'll get value from somebody with my talents being here. So, I hope you don't just say, 'Oh, this guy's not here for the long haul,' and write me off." But that's the truth. He was like, "Done. I appreciate that. Now, let's talk about the thing you really want to do. What is it that you really want to do?" I was like, "Oh, I wanna do this, this, this, but you know, before I do that, I need to kind of save up enough capital because that's gonna require a lot of capital. I'm gonna learn some things, I'm gonna build my network." He was like, "Yeah, I'm not really a fan of the 'I wanna do X, so I'm gonna go do A, B, and C before I do X.' You're better off usually just going ahead and trying to do X." I was like, "Alright, you're right. That's true. I don't need... you don't even need to say anymore. You're right. I was bullshitting myself a little bit. Thank you for saying that. That's actually a really valuable piece of wisdom." It reminded me of this Tony Robbins TED Talk. Have you ever seen the one time Tony Robbins went to TED?

Jess Mah

yeah

Shaan Puri

He's on stage and he's like, "What stops you?" "I've spent my whole life basically studying what stops people from having what they want in life." And he's like, "What do you think it is? What holds you back?" People are like, "Oh, for whatever it is you want. You want a better relationship, you want a better career, you want more money, you want better health, whatever it is." And people are saying, "Oh, I don't have the knowledge, the skills..." And then Al Gore is there. This was right after Al Gore had lost the presidential race to Bush. I think there was a runoff; they had to recount the votes in Florida or something. It went to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court ruled that Bush won. So he hears this voice that says, "I didn't have enough Supreme Court justices." And he's like, "What the hell? What do you mean? Oh, Al Gore's here." Then Tony Robbins gives this one-minute thing that actually kind of like "bitch slapped" all their answers. He's like, "You know, everything you guys just said is a resource you lacked: money, time, capital, Supreme Court justices. That's a thing you lack."

Jess Mah

supreme court justices yeah that's the most hilarious example

Shaan Puri

He's like, "The only thing you actually need is resourcefulness." He emphasizes that this is the master skill: the ability to go get the resources you need when you need them for the thing you're trying to manifest. He asks, "Is it not true that if you are motivated enough, charismatic enough, playful enough, convincing enough, determined enough, and charming enough, can you not get everything that you want?" Is there really anything that is outside of you? If you truly put your all into acquiring that resource, could you not have gotten the time, the money, the network—all of those things? Take Al Gore, for example. If he had been more passionate when he was on that stage in that debate, would it ever have come down to the Supreme Court justices? No, right? He would have just won in a landslide if he had acquired the things that he actually needed to get there. That's kind of what you're saying with your little manifestation studio concept. I love that because it's like you are completely breaking away from the thought process of an entrepreneur. They're often asking themselves, "Do I have what it takes, either personally or financially, or in terms of knowledge and skills?" But you're saying, "Well, if I want to start a bio company, I'll go recruit the best bio people, and then I'll go raise the funding."

Jess Mah

Exactly that, right? Say, like, you don't have enough time or money. Those are always the excuses. But you create the time by hiring other people to do the work who are better experts at whatever that thing is. You manufacture the money by raising it. In my case, I've got a multi-percent investor relations team. They have connections to tons of billionaires and family offices, and we're trying to place these deals with our family office connections. That's going to be, you know, within the next year, a four-person team and a capability I have. So instead of creating a hold crowd, let's create manifestation codes. That's what I'm talking about. They're not always going to be right. I mean, you coined it; it's the manifestation code. And because now, if it could be a profitable endeavor, great! Sometimes it won't be. But the point is, all of us have that thing we want to create in our lives, and we want to have the ability to do that in a way that's painless, fun, and exciting for us as the ideator.

Shaan Puri

What about, like, you know, crazy science dreams you have? You said you have ideas or you're talking to scientists all the time. What are some things that are, you know, in the future that you're excited about that are not just a pipe dream? Like, there might actually be a pathway to do it. I don't know if the growth test tube baby in a vat type of thing is just a dream or if there are actually people working on that. Can you tell me about some parts of the future that I should be excited about or that my kids might get to experience?

Jess Mah

I actually think that is very viable. The test of two babies I know of... I've talked to several scientists who are doing the research. For example, let's say you wanted to be the mother of a child, not the father. We could take your genetic material and treat an egg out of that. I think that we're going to see that within the next 5 years. As for converting and having an artificial embryo generated, avatar-style, that's a little harder to do. I've met scientists who've been able to get to maybe 6 weeks before the whole thing falls apart. That will get better and better over time, but the implications are huge. Imagine for women not having to deal with this and not having to do egg extraction if you're having trouble conceiving. What's also realistic, I think, is extending our lives by 30%. We need to be prepared to live until we're 120 or longer. Right now, the upper limit in our heads is, "Oh, I'll probably die when I'm 90." We're not thinking about the exponential rate of change here. I am talking to a lot of longevity scientists, and I'm seeing the data. It's compelling. I think we're going to live longer, and we need a plan for that future.

Shaan Puri

What's the short version of how we get that extra 30%? Is it drugs, diet, lifestyle changes, reversing aging, or getting blood from young... you know, baby seals? What are we going to do to make that happen?

Jess Mah

it's probably gonna be a combination of multiple factors

Shaan Puri

And all these projects fall under what you call **bold science**. Could you define **bold science**? What does that mean?

Jess Mah

Yeah, there are just so many companies working on very incremental solutions. You know, companies where it might extend your lifespan by 3 months or 6 months. That's not a great outcome. You're going to be going to the hospital and taking chemo drugs for another 6 months before you're dead. What do you do? I'd rather go to hospice than prolong my suffering. But what if, instead of patching the problem—like putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound—you could get to the root cause and reverse cancer, for example? Right now, everything we do within cancer is about trying to kill the cancer cells through chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery. CAR T therapies are super hot and trendy, but that just basically involves using your immune system to target and kill your own cancer cells. But what if killing cancer is the wrong approach? What if cancer happens because your cells are trying to protect themselves in some way? If you could train them and coach your cells instead of killing them, what's your ability to get them to integrate back in with their surroundings? Then you could fix cancer. So, we're working on a company around that. That's what I mean by bold science.

Shaan Puri

That's great! So it's basically non-incremental—a big leap in function or a leap in quality of life. So, like, you know, a complete step change. Usually, that's going to come from taking a different approach or looking at it through a different lens. What you do is partner with scientists to make that happen. One of the things you said that I liked when we were talking before was, "I get on the plane."

Jess Mah

I get on the plane every time yeah

Shaan Puri

And I don't know exactly what you mean by that, but talk about that because I think that's just the entrepreneurial... As part of the manifestation studio, you've got to just get on the plane sometimes. What do you mean by that?

Jess Mah

I have a real example. There's this successful entrepreneur who I'm sure you've heard of. We've interviewed him. He lives in Vegas, and I live in LA. I just said, "Hey, tell me a time and place on Sunday and Monday, and I will fly to Vegas to meet you." I'll literally take my plane and fly there just for the meeting, and then fly home afterwards. Then, you say the same thing. I have Patrick Collison from Stripe asking me to hang out with him and have dinner. It's like, "Alright, cool." So I'll just get on my jet, go see him, and then fly back to be in my bed after dinner, you know?

Shaan Puri

and does does that only work if you have a jet

Jess Mah

No, buy a Southwest ticket. I mean, just get creative about it. I do it so often, though, that it is really nice to have my own airplane. But I think that it doesn't matter. If I have to fly to London and see someone, I will. I'm glad to book a ticket and do that. I think that it really... you know, I had a billionaire do this for me where he literally flew in from South America. He went straight from the airport to dinner with me. That was the first time I had a one-on-one meeting with this person, and it really made an impression on me. I'm like, "Wow, this guy went out of his way." He was planning to go to some other city; instead, he came to LA to meet me just for dinner. And he's more important than I am by a million miles. He's so much more important than I am. I believe he wanted to be friends with this person. You know, I have another billionaire who I hit it off with. We hung out for drinks; we were part of a bigger group. We had two hours where he just talked about the meaning of life, all of his regrets, all the things he'd do differently. He's like this 70-something-year-old dude, and he's like, "Yeah, everyone wants me for my money, but no one just asks me these questions that you're asking me about life advice." I'm like, "You know what? We should continue this. Where do you live? I'll visit you." He says, "I live in the Bahamas." I'm like, "Great! I'm visiting you." We booked the time, and I'm seeing him for dinner in three weeks. I want to literally go there just to see him, and he's so happy about it. I want to get four hours of downloading this man's wisdom, and it's super cool.

Shaan Puri

I think it's massively underrated. Well, my uncle calls it "meeting belly to belly." He's like, "You gotta be belly to belly in business." He's in the real estate game; it's a totally different game. But I loved it! I was like, not face to face, we're going belly to belly. I just think that created such a good visual in my head. If you were going to score it, let's say if I gave you one for trust, productivity, and relationship building for a Zoom call versus meeting belly to belly, if one is the call, how much is the in-person meeting?

Jess Mah

Well, I mean, I would think about it the other way. I mean, it's just... they're totally opposite ends of the spectrum. Like, a belly-to-belly meeting, like flying out to see them, is the ultimate 10 out of 10 way to engage with someone. There is no better way than to say, "I'm flying 5 hours out of my way to see you and to spend dinner with you." A call is definitely a 1, and a Zoom call is maybe a 2. It's like that's how wide the delta is.

Shaan Puri

right

Jess Mah

And oh, the other thing I want to mention is that you didn't... I think a lot of people think, "Oh, but Jess, like you've already muted a bit, so of course people want to hang out with you." Well, I was getting meetings like this when I was 16, and I knew nothing. I cold emailed the Reddit guys. I cold emailed Justin and Emmett from Twitch—I guess it was Justin.tv back then. I said, "Hey, I'm this idiot 16-year-old. I think you just put it on the table like I'm an idiot, and I think you are brilliant. I'm willing to fly to you, and I just want to be a fly on your shoulder and see you do your work. I just want to follow you around for a day." So if you pull up the Justin.tv archives, you will see me driving him around San Francisco and going to a poker game with him, and like all this random stuff, just because I was going to do that. Marc Benioff replied to me also. Again, I'm an idiot 16-year-old.

Shaan Puri

Is when you're a teenager. You also told me, because I asked you, that I think one of the valuable things in life is to study—to become a good evaluator of people. If, let's say, you're an MBA general manager, you need to be able to spot talent. I think any business person or investor needs to be able to spot talent and ideally spot the difference between good, great, and the best in the world. When I met you, I really felt like, "Oh, this might be somebody who's one of those elite best in the world at what they do." They're going to do special things that are beyond even what really great, smart, intelligent people are going to do, just because they seem to be operating differently. But I need to understand them a little more. So, I asked you a question when I was getting to know you. I was like, "If I met you when you were younger, like 13 years old, what would I have seen? Would there have been any signals for this?" I will say, on my side, I was a totally unimpressive 13-year-old. There were no signals that I was going to do anything out of the ordinary. Forget being great at something; I was just out of the ordinary beyond average. I wasn't that way, but I've met a lot of people who were. You know, they're like teenagers flipping things on eBay or building a product of some kind. You have an amazing kind of backstory. Can you tell it? What were you doing? What was like your first, you know, interesting little business you were doing when you were a teenager?

Jess Mah

When I was 13, I started a dedicated server and colocation business because that's what I thought you did in high school. I don't know why, but I thought it was kind of normal. I grew that to a few hundred dollars in revenue.

Shaan Puri

did you know somebody else doing it why would you think that's normal

Jess Mah

I don't know... I was talking about the internet forums. You know, there are lots of people who do this, so I thought, "Okay, this is like a commodity business, but I could probably figure out how to do it and make a few bucks and offset my gaming server expenses." That was the goal. I just wanted to make like $10,000 a year to offset my own costs and buy some clothes. And not have to like go work at the shopping mall or rake leaves or shovel stuff.

Shaan Puri

So you're like, "I'm playing video games. I want to scratch my own itch, be able to play my own video games, and, you know, pay off that, buy some clothes." Were you cool in school? Were you like a...?

Jess Mah

no

Shaan Puri

smart popular kid or what who who were you

Jess Mah

Total geek loser. I was so lame. I had no friends. I went to the computer club at my high school, which was filled with all the nerds who also had no other friends. So, we had to be friends with each other. They were making fun of me and bullying me. I was literally at the bottom of the bottom. That’s how I knew it was really bad. I thought, "Okay, I have to get out of here as soon as possible." So, I ended up dropping out of high school halfway through my sophomore year. But I got into this really cool college program called Simon's Rock College. You know Simon's Rock? Going to college really saved me because I was bored in high school. I wasn't doing well; I was getting terrible grades because I was uninterested and because I had no friends. I felt like I couldn't relate to anyone. All the other girls and guys were interested in things that I had no interest in. So, when you said, "Hey, I would love to create this school for people like us," I just thought, "Holy cow! I want to create that school too. We can make this happen. Let's do it! Let's brainstorm it. Let's set aside some time another day. Let's just go meet up for dinner. I'll come wherever you want, any day you want. I will fly to you, and we will put together a game plan for what this would look like and how we would manifest this without having to wait until we're sitting on a billion in cash."

Shaan Puri

Yeah, okay, done. Love it! Belly to belly, booked you. That's... tell me about this server business. Did you make the $10 off that?

Jess Mah

I was making like $100,000 a year off of it. I was thinking I was making more money than my teacher. I remember in biology class, it's EDM, and I can't pay attention. The biology teacher clearly doesn't like me because she knows that I have high potential, but I wasn't doing well because I was up until 3 in the morning answering customer service and sales emails. So, of course, I only had like 5 hours of sleep. When you're 13 and you're operating on 5 hours of sleep, you're not going to do well. But to make myself feel better, I thought, "Well, at least I'm making more money than my biology teacher." Well, I'm honestly...

Shaan Puri

A moral victory. So, when you were meeting these people, because you're like, "I'm a dumb 16-year-old college kid," you're in college because you're 16, because you dropped out of high school. Yeah, and like, just went to college. You met Justin Conn, you've met Marc Benioff, you've met, you know, these different YC founders. Did you learn anything? Did they stick with you? Was there a story that you remember? Like, what did you get out of those meetings?

Jess Mah

Yeah, what I got out of it was that, holy cow, there are other people like me who are a little crazy. They are willing to approach life and entrepreneurship in an unconventional way and are willing to do the hard things. So when I saw Justin and when I saw Steve Huffman read it, I realized, "Wow, I don't need to wait until I'm older to start doing this today." I also don't need to have money; I don't have to have a job to demonstrate success first. So it's more about the mindset. I would say it's always mindset and psychology more than tactics when you're meeting these people that I focus on.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and you also told me you had met these other people. When I was like, "Oh, what’s...?" I forgot. I think I was asking you, like, "What do you do with your money?" and you were like, "Yeah." I said one interesting thing. You were like, "You know, taxes..." I think I was asking you something about taxes, and you were like, "People don't spend enough time on taxes." So can you tell me? We'll put this in the bucket of billionaire secrets. You said you've met a bunch of successful, super-rich people, and the way they think is a little bit different than the way everybody else thinks. I'm interested in that gap. What's different about the way that the most successful, the richest people that you know think? What is it that they're thinking about differently? One of the things was taxes, but you had a few more. Can you tell me about the taxes and anything else you kind of remember on that?

Jess Mah

Yeah, top tax optimization is a really big deal. If you think about it, if half your money is going to Uncle Sam, it's really going to impact your compounding. Do a compound interest calculator and you'll see the delta is very wide. If you're starting at age, say, 30, these billionaires employ the best tax strategists in the world. Eventually, I said, "Hey, could you introduce me to your tax person?" That person, of course, works with like 30 other billionaires and has saved them collectively $100,000,000,000 in taxes. I've gotten enough of these tax professional introductions where now I have a whole collection of them. I call and combine advice from multiple tax professionals and merge it all together. I think that's the next level. Most people just pick one person. They say, "Oh, I've been working with Betty as my tax accountant for the past 10 years." Well, Betty doesn't work with billionaires. It's time for a new tax accountant. I literally had this conversation with someone over lunch last week, and he texted me right before we got on this call saying, "Oh my god, like this is going to make me $1,000,000 more over the next few years."

Shaan Puri

Well, this is so true. I feel like I have a lawyer and a tax person, and if I talk to another tax person or a lawyer, I feel like I'm kind of cheating on them. It's like, that's so silly. That's such a dumb way to think about it. First of all, it's your job to get the best opinion possible. It is to get the best answer. The best answer is not necessarily going to come from the one person you know, who you picked one time five years ago without vetting anybody else. They may also not specialize in other stuff you're doing. Oh, now you're doing real estate deals, but they don't know anything about real estate deals. Or you're doing an exit in M&A, and they don't know anything about M&A. So, you know, you should be talking to people who really understand that stuff. Having multiple opinions is better than one. Specialties matter. Also, when you said that, it reminded me. I was like, oh yeah, the person I have doing tax strategy stuff stopped giving me strategy after year one. The bulk of our conversations—I've had a pie chart of 90% of the strategy conversations we had were at the very beginning. Now, I'm just like the client that they stamp the thing on every year, right? That happens naturally. The same thing with legal stuff. So, you kind of need to keep dating in order to have fresh ideas or advice coming in from that perspective.

Jess Mah

they said that

Shaan Puri

There's a certain amount of time you think people should spend on taxes. Or, you know, maybe not "should," but the math tells you that you should be spending a certain amount of time on it. Actually, what people actually do is maybe less than 1% of their time.

Jess Mah

Yeah, exactly. Less than 1%—way less than even 1%. Because if taxes impact half your income potentially, if you invest just even 5 or 10% of your time this year to finding 5 amazing tax strategists, get all their advice, and figure out how to apply it... 10% of your time is the upper bound here. And you're making like way more money as a result. It pays for itself like a hundredfold. It's the highest IRR (Internal Rate of Return) investment you can make, and it's way better than investing in the stock market with the money you're paying these tax people.

Shaan Puri

That's so true because your tax is always your biggest expense. If you're a business person, you have your business tax, then you have your personal tax. You have investment tax, capital gains tax, and all kinds of taxes every single year. You know, the same dollar gets taxed a bunch of times. So you're right, basically, it's the biggest expense. Even 10% sounds absurd because I'm like, "Oh, that's 36 days out of the year."

Jess Mah

It's overkill. You don't need that much time. I mean, even 5 days in the year to do this gets you a...

Shaan Puri

A lot of time on the math... You would be justified spending 36 days out of the year. You would be justified spending 10% of your time and intellectual mind share on your biggest expense. That's going to compound every year for the rest of your life. Like, of course, that would make sense. So that is a kind of "aha" moment for me.

Jess Mah

right

Shaan Puri

What about coaching or some sort of... What is your... Basically, if the studio, the manifestation, kind of like vehicle here, is an extension of you and your brain and your dreams and your desires, then getting the brain to be functioning well seems important. Do you do anything, whether it's therapy, nutrition, morning routine... Do you do anything like that to make sure your psychology, you know, the little voice in your head, is saying the right stuff?

Jess Mah

Yeah, for sure. I have two different coaches I talk with each month. I think of it as like going to the gym or taking a shower. Even if I think I'm happy or in a good mindset, I still need to see them to make sure that my head is screwed on properly. And yeah, it costs me a ton of money, but it pays for itself right away. I also have my CEO group that I visit once a month. It's kind of like Alcoholics Anonymous for CEOs. I'm in the Waikyo Young Presidents' Organization, but there's also the Entrepreneur Organization and Bistige. The list goes on and on. You might think, "Oh, I don't have time for it," but I actually think you don't have time not to do that.

Shaan Puri

that's a good way of putting it

Jess Mah

Also, health stuff. We don't think about that. What if you could optimize, through better nutrition, nootropics, and IVs, not only your longevity but your mental acuity? So, I work with five concierge doctors to come up with my own custom plan. I'm actually going to put something together that I can share with all my friends, so anyone I love can get on the same program. It includes the supplements, custom compounding my own supplements into just two pills, so that's a little easier. Then, I'm doing the exosome IVs once a quarter, which I'm a huge fan of.

Shaan Puri

even what what is that what is that word you just said what what are you doing

Jess Mah

Exosome IVs... Yeah, I mean, the science on it is still a little, you know, up in the air. So I just want to be good on the disclosure there. It's not necessarily the fountain of youth, but there's a belief that if you're bringing in stem cells through an IV, it will help you lower your biological age, give you more energy, and assist with your autophagy. So, basically, your body's ability to get rid of old and dying cells. If you do that, then the thought is you're going to have more energy. More energy means more brainpower, and more brainpower means a greater ability to manifest and create great things in the world. This is another area where, let's say, you were able to improve your mental function and your energy by 25%. By the way, if you do all these things, you could probably do better than 25%. Is that worth $15,000 a year, which is roughly how much I spend on this? Maybe I spend $20,000 or $25,000 on it. It's not a lot of money. You don't need a pool of Brian Johnson where you're spending $1,000,000 a year to get 80% of the results. This is the 80/20 rule of Brian Johnson.

Shaan Puri

yeah that's what I need good I I I'm gonna hit you up for

Jess Mah

here's some

Shaan Puri

for some recommendations on that

Jess Mah

Some referrals... and then, yeah, I'll eventually pull all this feedback together to make it so that we can share it publicly and for free. So you guys don't necessarily need to pay for your own concierge doctor to do this for you. I think it's ridiculous that all the work I'm doing here, I'm spending this money on it. This should be like a public service that's offered.

Shaan Puri

yeah because it's not so personalized to you basically or

Jess Mah

Something... it's not that personalized. Ninety percent of what I'm doing, like anyone else, should just be able to do on their own. It's just that this whole longevity optimization arena is so new. In order for other folks to monetize on it, it has to feel bespoke and unique to you. When...

Shaan Puri

So, give me the quick rundown. You spend this money on this program that you're doing. You said you do these exosome IVs. Okay, great! What are, like, if you were going to go from the most impactful to, you know, whatever fringe stuff, what's the most and least impactful stuff you're doing?

Jess Mah

Again, I'll be super honest. It's hard to know where the impact is, of course. Yeah, like on what or...

Shaan Puri

Just what you kind of believe in or what you would recommend to your cousin or your friend. You know, who you're like, "Look, we all get the disclaimers. You're not a doctor. This is not, you know, bulletproof science." Cool, okay? Amongst friends, you know, to kind of tell me what your opinion is.

Jess Mah

Yeah, I'm a friend of EZ1. I'm sure people have talked about that on your podcast before. I'm a fan of adding in other supplements. There's this whole list of supplements and nootropics that I can't even recite the names of for you, but I could publish the list if you'd like. Then, having them all put together in a few compact pills that you could take. And then I have a friend who...

Shaan Puri

who does that you you like go to a compounding pharmacy and you're like hey do can you make these pills for me pretty

Jess Mah

much cool

Shaan Puri

we'll have like 32 pills delivered like how how does that work yeah

Jess Mah

I have a friend who actually has his own [business], so I get it at cost. My plan is to work with him to create it so that he can make some profit. Then my friends will have basically what I take and not have it be marked up too much, like all these other scumbag internet companies are trying to do.

Shaan Puri

shout out to the scumbags out there keep keep doing your thing

Jess Mah

That's it in a nutshell. I know that System IV is something I'm a huge fan of. Then there's also, yeah, I mean, there are a bunch of peptides as well if you want to do the more advanced thing. On the peptides, you know, some of them are injectable, so I would consult a doctor on that. But the supplements, you could probably just do.

Shaan Puri

right

Jess Mah

And I would benchmark. I would take the true diagnostics, biological, you know, each test just to see how you're doing before, middle, and after. And yeah, so that's another. So, taxes, health coaching, and mindset. What are the other categories for, you know, billionaire secrets we haven't covered?

Shaan Puri

I think those are big ones the I mean the other one is what you talked about which is being nonoperational

Jess Mah

nonoperational yep

Shaan Puri

Create a vehicle that's going to create all your other vehicles and be able to recruit talent that's going to put the pieces together. The way I look at it is that every project needs kind of like a vision. It needs capital, it needs an operator... What does it need? Okay, I'm going to be able to create those packages. I think that's what a lot of them do. They get out of the mindset of "I'm going to go every day and work on this one business and toil away like turning the crank myself." You know, that's the higher leverage way that they operate. It's like that.

Jess Mah

Yeah, exactly. I think that's great. I also believe billionaires have a different mindset when it comes to buying expensive things. You might think, "Oh, they have so much money, why would they waste it on a boat, a plane, or exotic cars?" The truth is, a lot of that is about taxes. I have a friend who's buying a $30,000,000 yacht right now, and he found a way for it to give him a $30,000,000 write-off. He's going to charter it out for a bit, but he saves more money on taxes than all he's spending on the yacht. His bank will finance 80% of the yacht, so he's only putting 20% down. It's net cash flow positive for him to buy the yacht, ironically. The operational costs are largely offset by the charter. You wouldn't think that, but it pays for all his costs. People do this with airplanes too. I did this with my airplane. I mean, I had a bigger write-off from buying the airplane than what I put down in cash to buy it. So...

Shaan Puri

You give the quick math on it. It doesn't have your specific plane, but just the general math. So people don't know, like, how does buying a plane work from a tax perspective?

Jess Mah

Yeah, well, the rules are changing. But I closed online about a year ago. Let's say you buy a plane for $5,000,000 and your bank's willing to finance most of it. So, you put $1,000,000 down, but you get a $5,000,000 write-off on the plane.

Shaan Puri

and it's a year 1 write off right

Jess Mah

That was an accelerated bonus depreciation year one. But now the problem is, this year it's only 80% you could deduct upfront. Next year it's 60%, and then 40%, and then 20%. Yes, it's getting worse and worse. But the benefit is, you do get a tax benefit for buying these assets. They are financed, and if it enables you to do more of what you want, then there's that like intangible benefit that you receive.

Shaan Puri

right

Jess Mah

Same with excited cars. A lot of people I know who have excited cars find that their cars are worth more than what they paid for them. So, they buy the car, drive it for a year, and then sell it at the same cost or a higher cost than what they paid for it. Other people want access to that car, but they don't have a relationship with the manufacturer and they weren't willing to wait four years on the waiting list to get that car.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I was surprised to learn that there's just a whole class of really expensive cars that you basically get to drive for free. It's like putting a deposit down. So, you go buy this car. I don't even know if this would classify, but our friend had a McLaren and he's like, "Yeah, it's great. I've driven it for a few years and I'm gonna sell it for exactly what I bought it for. It doesn't depreciate." Alright, it's up. You know, I'll make $10,000 to $20,000 on this thing for the privilege of driving it around. There's a whole bunch of these "rich get richer" style setups. Once you start to play it, it's like a snowball. You use the money to buy something that's gonna make you more efficient, have more fun, or do better business. Then, that also saves you on taxes today and holds value because it's a rare asset. So, if you ever sell it, you didn't lose anything just for holding it. You get all these gains and they start to accumulate once you start to get there. I think that's a real advantage. Some people who I think are on the other side of that hate it and feel like it's so unfair and unjust. I don't really give a moral opinion either way; it just is what it is. You can choose to either benefit from that, ignore it, or be upset about it. You have many choices on how you're gonna react to a bunch of these things that come with the snowball of wealth.

Jess Mah

Yeah, I think it's easy to hate on it, but what's cool is that people can learn about mindset and how to get there. That's what you're doing with your podcast. You're very specific about how to do these things, I've noticed. This was not available to people 5 years ago, so...

Shaan Puri

yeah well well it's funny because like money is this taboo thing it's like we're all supposed to not share anything we know about money how much we make what we how we invest what the returns are what taxes what do you do with your taxes like everybody plays you know close guarded on that and that's a real shame because it means it's very hard to learn until that gets cracked open and somebody starts sharing and then more people start sharing then you start to learn faster and there's this great conor mcgregor quote where he talks about like conor mcgregor went from plumber to highest paid athlete in the world in a span of 5 years and along the way he was higher paid than any ufc guy ever was faster than anybody was and there was a lot of guys who had been paying their dues for 15 years fighting for you know going out there and like fighting in a cage match for $20,000 and then they have to pay for their flights or hotels their medical bills and they're left with $2 at the end of it and they were very bitter and someone asked him in an interview they go connor you know do you ever think about kinda toning it down because you know there's so many people that are you know get upset when you talk about you call your shots you say how much you're making you wear the nice watch you wear the nice clothes and he goes no that says something about them not me he goes some people see this and they take inspiration and that's who I was I saw people doing things and I took inspiration and other people see things and they get bitterness and they will end up bitter it is not my job to figure out you know they get to decide if they're gonna go on the bitterness path or the inspiration path you know the right people will get inspired and that actually kind of freed me up in this podcast to do things that I think you know ask questions or talk about things that I think are you're supposed to downplay everything you're supposed to not talk about you know certain stuff but fuck that you know that doesn't seem like like you know I yeah I when I was growing up I couldn't wait to get a little more information or an inspiration or hear you know that somebody oh this guy has a private chef damn that'd be awesome I don't feel bad that I don't have one now I now have a new thing that I've decided that would be really awesome fun to work for and a and a great like an I a way to improve quality of life that I had never even thought about and thank you for putting it on my radar thank you for putting it in my in my you know in front of me that I now wanted to go go do that

Jess Mah

I love that! Yeah, I think it is difficult to struggle with the feeling of jealousy and aspiration. Another trick that I'm not sure if it came from Tony Robbins or someone else is this: if you're surrounded by people who are more successful than you, instead of envying them, you could interpret it as, "Hey, this is a great sign because this means more success and more happiness is coming my way." Now that I'm able to surround myself with and attract these people into my life, how awesome is that? I remember having to deal with that a lot, especially when I was an up-and-coming entrepreneur and I knew absolutely nothing. I had Drew from Dropbox and Sam Altman coming to speak to me, along with these CS students. We didn't know anything, and the gap felt very wide. Just having them there to spend time with us and to say, "Hey, we're open to just email us if you have any questions about what it's like to be a founder. We're going to be there for you," made them feel all the more approachable and accessible. I think that made it easier for me to focus on the education instead of the entity.

Shaan Puri

right that's a that's a great way of putting it can I ask you one thing before we go because I know I took too much of your time

Jess Mah

sure

Shaan Puri

Sam Altman is now this extremely interesting public character. Very few people actually know him. It sounds like you've had interactions with him in the past. Can you give me your impressions or any story you remember about Sam Altman? I remember reading Paul Graham's essays like 10 years ago, where he said, "Of the five most impressive people I've met, it's like Bill Gates, Larry and Sergey, and Sam Altman." At that time, he was doing Loopt, and nobody really knew about him. There was no tracker because it was just very apparent in meeting him that this guy was going to go on to do great things. Did you get that sense? I don't know how much interaction you had with him.

Jess Mah

Yeah, I actually mean this was probably 13 years ago now. I had a one-on-one with Polygram, and I asked him to share, "Who would you think are the most successful people you've ever met? Who will that end up being 30 years from now if you have another one-on-one like this?" Sam was on the list. I'm not going to share who the others were on that list, but they're all also doing extremely well.

Shaan Puri

what a question by you by the way fantastic question

Jess Mah

Yeah, I asked Paul, "What are the things in common with these people? What did...?" By the way, he put me on the list. I'm the worst one by far, so I'm embarrassed and I felt like I disappointed him. But we'll save that for another day. I asked him about the personality traits he finds in these people. How do you know? What do you see? For him, it was less about intelligence. Actually, it was not about that. It goes back to this common theme we've had throughout the past hour and a half here on grit and being willing to be unconventional. It's about trying different approaches and collecting ideas from multiple species, merging them together to come up with something even better than what a domain expert in any one field would be able to create on their own. Just like how they show up and what they're willing to do to meet the right people was a big part of what makes them successful. That also reinforced my desire to have this policy of just getting on the plane because that's a trait that successful people perceive will lead to you being destined for greatness, so to speak. So, I thought, "Alright, well, I don't think I'm destined for greatness, but what if I could manufacture making other people think I'm destined for greatness? Maybe I'll actually create that reality somehow."

Shaan Puri

Yeah, eventually, you know, it walks like a duck, it talks like a duck... hey, it became a duck, you know, by the end of it actually. So, those traits you mentioned just now—sorry to recap—were grit or resourcefulness. I know, like, the willingness to make things happen. You said going into being able to collect ideas from multiple spaces and synthesize them so that you actually might create something more than any individual domain experts had been able to reach. You get to a new ceiling from that. That was like the second thing you said. The third was wanting to meet the right people, ask the right questions, and being willing to go to certain lengths to kind of meet them, right? That was the third one. Did I miss one that you said?

Jess Mah

Yeah, just to build on that third one: how could you make yourself interesting enough at a dinner party so that they would want to invite you back to spend more time with them? How do you broaden your field of knowledge to be able to be an adviser? You know, someone that a king or president would want to call upon for feedback. You go to Polygram's office, or this was years ago before you left for the UK. He has a huge library of books and he's read most of these books. He's just fascinated by so many topics, and that also left an impression on me. Okay, like we should just learn about random things that have nothing to do with our day-to-day business because they'll help us with category number three on that list.

Shaan Puri

Right, right. Yeah, that's such a good call. I went to a farming conference last year, like two years ago. I'm like for...

Jess Mah

I'm super random I love

Shaan Puri

It was the best conference I had been to in like five years. I had only been going to tech conferences, and you know, I wasn't learning anything at these tech conferences. I was just adding the same incremental knowledge. It was the same thoughts, philosophies, and types of people in that bubble. There's nothing wrong with that, but you definitely want that 20% total change-up that is completely out of left field. It's like, "Wow, these guys talk about different things, think about different things, and have a different perspective." I was in Kansas City, right? You go to a different place and you have a totally different perspective. I literally started a company while I was there because I was piecing together two ideas: one from the tech world and one from this farmer that we had met. That was when we created the Milk Road. Even the name "Milk Road" was because we were at a farming conference and there was a dairy farmer next to us. It all kind of played into having that idea. If we hadn't stirred the pot in that exact way, maybe we would have come up with a different answer.

Jess Mah

Yeah, that's super cool that you did that. I'm curious to download from you what is also on your list of the next areas you would want to learn about. I think it's actually a good exercise for me too to think about because, for me, it's been bio lately, but I would like to bring in even more.

Shaan Puri

So, give an example of one of the bio companies that you founded. What is it? You know, give us the high level of like the problem, the solution you guys are trying to address, and like, you know, the rough stage where it's at.

Jess Mah

Yeah, the high level is I set up a holding company for biotech venture creation centered around the scientist named **Mike Levin**. If you search for Mike Levin, he has a TED Talk and a three-and-a-half-hour interview with **Lex Fridman** that I highly recommend you watch. You will get sucked in because he's a scientist who studied and has a PhD in genetics from **Harvard**. Now, he has devoted his entire career to basically proving the fact that genetics are actually not that relevant in the whole scheme of things. It's this other thing, **bioelectricity**, that dictates how long we live, whether or not we get cancer, and how our limbs and body shape form. It's actually not as much genetics as you think. Genetics is like the hardware level of biology, whereas he says bioelectricity is like the software.

Shaan Puri

So, you told me this: we have one company, Astonishing Labs, and it's about bioelectricity. I was like, "What's that? I've never even heard this word." You said it in a really interesting way. You know, people think that genetics is kind of like what your genes say or what your DNA says, and that's what ends up manifesting. But you were like, "Turns out it's not that at all." That already caught my attention. I thought, "What do you mean? That's all I've ever heard." So, what is the answer? You explained that there's this idea of bioelectricity. I went and watched his TED Talk, and he talks about how they're able to grow an arm on an animal's back. They're even able to grow a third eye! They can show all these amazing phenotype outputs without any genetic modification. Can you just explain that a little bit more? Maybe give the layman's version of it?

Jess Mah

Yeah, well, I'll be honest. I don't even fully understand the science of it, but everything you said is correct. If you manipulate the bioelectricity on an animal, you can create weird outputs like this. So, when they saw that a tadpole was growing an eyeball, the bioelectric signature of the cells in that area changed. The question was, "Oh, what if we created that same bioelectric signature but on another part of the body? What will happen? Will it grow an eyeball?" Not only does it grow an eyeball there, but it also grows a connection to the spinal cord. You don't have to micromanage biology. If you try to change that through modifying the genome, how would you do that? There'd be no way to do that, is the answer. So, if you just think about it logically, genetics are not the end-all, be-all. Anyway, I heard of this, and it blew my mind. I said, "This is brilliant! Does he have a commercialization partner? What's the status of it?" The answer is, it's still in the lab, and there was no one commercializing this yet. Paul Allen was funding the whole lab, and then, tragically, he passed away, and the funding dried up. So, he needed money; he needed people to help him make it a real biotech company. I come in and I say, "I know nothing about biotech, but I know a lot of rich people who would love to fund crazy stuff like this."

Shaan Puri

And wait, wait, wait. When you say "I came in," that means like I cold emailed him, I called him, or I met him? What did you actually do?

Jess Mah

I met him through a friend. I had a friend who was telling me about Mike over lunch, and I thought, "This is brilliant! This is amazing!" I asked, "Could we fly out and meet Mike like next week? I'll literally clear my calendar and spend a few days getting to know him and figuring out what we could do with this." So, I met Mike, spent some time with him, and realized that this was really compelling. We could do something cool out of it. I hired this guy named Tom. Tom had taken a drug called Elzonris from lab all the way through FDA approval, full approval, for $16,000,000, which is absolutely crazy in the drug world. Normally, it takes hundreds of millions of dollars to get something approved by the FDA. But his drug actually worked; it was putting patients in full remission. The first 8 out of 9 patients who would normally be dead within months were going into remission with this drug. I brought him in to do due diligence on all my Clevins science and figure out a strategy for turning these into real biotech companies. My contribution was that I have a team. I have 12 people who work with me at my holding company, or whatever you want to call it. For me, I don't really think of it as a holding company or a venture studio. It's just an extension of me. If there's something I want to manifest in the world, I have a team of brilliant people who will figure out how to help me make that happen.

Shaan Puri

That's amazing! So, you do that. What is the product, or what are you guys actually building?

Jess Mah

We are building several companies under this whole coast. The first company we created is called **Selljaboo**. It's essentially a company that will help overcome drug resistance. How do I make this more concrete? If you're taking drugs for your leukemia or you're taking chemotherapy drugs, they might be effective and work for a while. You have lots of drugs that are effective and work, but then one day they stop working. When they stop working, unfortunately, there are sometimes no other viable options for the patient, which means they're going to die. But a month earlier, the drugs were working and they were fine, right? So that's one company. There's another company that's developing programmable human bio-bots. In fact, there was an article about this in *Nature* as of today, and that company is called **Anthrobots**.

Shaan Puri

wow

Jess Mah

So, I'll send you more info on that if you're curious. That is really cool! I think CNN is going to post their interview with Mike today about that as well.

Shaan Puri

And so, is all your bio stuff under this lab with Mike Levin, or are there other bio bets too? Because, like, you've talked to me about, you know, at that dinner we were discussing, I don't know, like pregnancy or something like that. You said something kind of in passing, you're like, "Yeah, like in the next, I don't know, 10 years, you know, women may not need to birth a baby. You'll be able to just essentially grow a baby." And I was like, "What?" So, you know, how...

Jess Mah

How cool would it be if you could see a baby growing in a fish tank? All you would have to do is swab your mouth and swab my mouth, put it in the machine, and then a baby would start to grow out of it. You know, there's no...

Shaan Puri

get the genetic material no sperm and egg

Jess Mah

No sperm, no egg, just raw genetic material. I think that will eventually be in the future. I don't think that's going to be in the next 10 years, probably not even the next 20 years. But I have random ideas like this, and I think, how cool would it be to find who's doing that research? If I find people who are, then I might support their work and fund it. If not, then I'll put together my own team and try it ourselves. It's likely you're going to lose money and fail, and it might not work. But like, this is fun! Not everything has to be for profit. I know your whole podcast is all about making money, and all the shows are about how to compound cash flow and blah, blah, blah. But what if we could have fun doing this? By having fun and being mission-oriented, you think bigger. You think more grand about what the world could become one day, and then you're more likely to end up like Elon or whatever. That's kind of the direction I'm going with my company here, which I realize is not as sexy. It's not as compelling as saying, you know, we're making money. Well, you know, maybe it's...

Shaan Puri

more easy I don't know like you know when when facebook was going public mark zuckerberg wrote this letter to like the potential shareholders that were gonna buy the stock and it was like I think it was called the hacker way it's a really great thing you know I know people are very skeptical of zuck but I think a lot of the stuff he does is is pretty awesome including this letter that he wrote and he described the way that they do things and one of the things he said is like you know we don't build products to make money you know you know we don't we don't build products to make great money we we make money to build great products like that is the the core of what we're doing I think Google had said a similar thing when they went public and you know I don't think it's one or the other but there is a first order bit and second order bit meaning like if the first order bit is we are trying to fund bold science that might change everything even though it has a high likelihood of failure even though it might take many years and a lot of money to get there but we think that advancing the research and ultimately trying to commercialize the research is the way that to me is the version of like we don't do that to make money we make money so that we can do that so I think in in a way it's it's a lot more attractive and sexier to to to most people I think if they step back for a minute a lot of the like money first comes from the insecurity right like just the the sort of wanting wanting that success wanting that win under your belt wanting that safety in the bank account you know that's where a lot of that comes from I don't think anybody really if they looked at their life would say I'm so glad I devoted it to maximizing you know how much money I made that's a very unlikely scenario I think a lot of people would actually be more inspired by you know the way you're doing things now which is like what's fun what's interesting what gets me out of bed in the morning that's exciting that will if done well can like you know change change change the world in let in the non cliche way because the stuff you're doing actually is more change the world than like than you know the ended arrows of the world where it's like we're gonna change the world one set of books at a time and it's like well maybe maybe you're just doing bookkeeping actually

Jess Mah

Yeah, exactly. That's how I felt. I literally had this nagging feeling in my soul that I was wasting my capability. I'm sure a lot of people feel that way.

Shaan Puri

awesome well sounds like we got another couple conversations to have thank you for coming on

Jess Mah

thanks for having me

Shaan Puri

people go find you reach out to you where where where do you wanna direct people

Jess Mah

Yeah, I mean, I'm on my website, **mawe.com**. I've got a Twitter at **@jessicama** and **@jessmaofficial** on Instagram. If people want to reach out, you could either guess my email address, which is what I've done with Marc Benioff and everyone else.

Shaan Puri

Really, that's a good filter. Actually, you don't want the inbound; that's easy. You want the inbound of at least you're at least able to guess an email address.

Jess Mah

It's not that hard. Just like, I haven't... I literally emailed Marc at Salesforce, Mark Benioff, m.benioff, you know, like every permutation I could come up with. Most of them bounced, and one of them worked, so...

Shaan Puri

that's awesome thanks for doing this you're awesome and yeah that's a great episode

Jess Mah

yeah great great time hanging out with you thanks for having me