I was recently on The Hustle's "My First Million" podcast with Sam Parr and Shaan Puri. I'm a fan of the show, so it was a lot of fun to be on as a guest.

One quick apology before we jump in: I try not to be too braggy -- but I balance that with transparency and openness. Sam and Shaan asked me several questions about what it's like to be a billionaire, and I answered them openly and truthfully.  (They did warn me beforehand and gave me the option not to answer).

And, The Hustle team decided that having "billionaire" in the title of the episode will attract more viewers -- so here we are.  :)  In any case, it's a fun episode and we cover a lot of different topics that I'm hopeful you'll find useful.

The Hustle My First Million Episode #197

Frameworks To Become A Billionaire 

 

Full Episode Transcript Below

Sam:        Oh, we're live. Yeah and so -

Shaan:        Okay. And just quick audio check. Are we all good? So we don't have to restart.

Sam:        No.

Shaan:        Is it the right mic?

Sam:        Yeah.

Speaker 1:        That's the right mic. You sound a smidge loud on my end.

Sam:        Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Shaan:        Okay. I might just move it further away, or be quieter.

Speaker 1:        Oh, that sounds better.

Sam:        Your camera's crooked. I don't know if you're stopped using the fancy camera?

Shaan:        It's still the fancy camera, but the tripod is not as fancy.

Sam:        Got it. Okay.

Shaan:        Yeah. It's going to trigger every OCD person that watches this [inaudible 00:00:35]. Goddammit, how is he slanted sideways?

Sam:        Okay.

Shaan:        Okay, cool. Go ahead.

Sam:        I don't remember what I was going to say, but right before you came on, I was asking Dharmesh what he listens to. And he says that he listens to us almost every day for the past 60 days.

Dharmesh:        Yeah.

Shaan:        Amazing.

Dharmesh:        Yeah.

Shaan:        Has that changed you? You've probably become a worse person. You seem like a pretty good person. I feel like if you listen to us for 60 straight days, there's going to be a part of your brain that's good, but a part that gets corrupted slightly.

Dharmesh:        I think that's true. That's an astute observation, [crosstalk 00:01:10]. We just have... I won't say like This is not stuff I'm like... You know, looking at retail businesses or... You guys have a wide array of stuff. But I think that kind of thing builds a different muscle group, and I think it's been useful for me. I'll put it to you that way. We're not separated at birth by any stretch, but we have things that the three of us luckily have in common. But there are things that I'm just different... I know it'll come out in the pod. I'm a weird dude.

Sam:        We're we're on now. So -

Dharmesh:        Okay, all right.

Sam:        This is the pod.

Dharmesh:        This is the pod.

Sam:        I have a feeling this might go a little long and I'm okay with that. Shaan, do what you want.

Sam:        But, I, in my world... So I was just hanging out with Hiten Shah yesterday, and your name came up. We were just talking to Nathan Barry the other day, your name came up. Shaan and I are in this text group where people talk about BigClout, your name comes up. Your name comes up everywhere. You got like a spider web. Like you get your hands in all these little things. And I think part of it's because you've been in the game for a while and you're incredibly successful. So this is Dharmesh. Dharmesh is the... You're the co-founder of HubSpot. Is your title CTO?

Dharmesh:        Yes, CTO.

Sam:        Are you active? Like, are you working really hard at HubSpot? How do you have time to have your hands in all this different stuff?

Dharmesh:        So the answer is yes. HubSpot is my obsession and preoccupation. Anything else that you see me doing, there's probably some diabolical thread that connects it back to HubSpot. There is. So yeah, it's my baby. It's the thing that I spend pretty much all of my non-family time, non-personal time on. So it's fine.

Shaan:        And I just want to describe for people who are not watching. So you should go to the YouTube channel. It's youtube.com/hustlecon and you'll see the videos. But, so here's what I see. So Dharmesh is sitting there, he's got a keyboard, like a piano keyboard to his right. He's got a, I think, a Steve Jobs piece of art behind him. Or is that Lennon or something like that? I can't tell exactly who it is, John Lennon maybe. And you're in this room. Is this where you work on a day-to-day basis?

Dharmesh:        Well, yes and no. So this is my -

Sam:        You're getting tricked, Shaan. You're getting tricked. Listen.

Dharmesh:        This is my living room, but it's a, like a capture a moment in time when the living room was somewhat less disorganized than it usually would be. But it's a virtual background. I've got the green screen and things set up so I can...

Shaan:        Oh okay. That's pretty good. Cause you usually when you have a green screen, it's like half your head also turns into the background and this one's actually pretty good. All right, I'm impressed.

Dharmesh:        I've done a multiple green screen. So I'm sort of surrounded with it. So if I need to twist the camera one way or the other, it's still kind of -

Shaan:        So you're kind of doing the oasis thing that we talked about. You have a virtual background, but the virtual background is not just you on a beach, like a fake situation. It's your actual living room when it's clean and perfect, the way you want it. And you're like, that's what I want my background to be, regardless of the reality of whatever your current situation is. I like that.

Dharmesh:        [crosstalk 00:04:19] really cool is that the keyboard itself is actually real. That's not part of the background. So if I [inaudible 00:04:22] you'll see that the keypress makes sounds, it's kind of cool, yeah.

Sam:        So let me do like a very brief intro and an overview of what we're going to talk about. So Dharmesh sent us a list of ideas, we're going to get into them, but I need to give a background here so the listeners entirely understand. So HubSpot today is like a 25 or 30, I don't know whatever the market cap is. So $25 billion publicly traded company. You co-founded it 15 years ago, I think.

Dharmesh:        Yip.

Sam:        Prior to that, you had another startup that you sold for a significant amount of money, we can talk about that. Throughout this whole time, you own, I believe, millions of millions of dollars worth of domains. You bought your wife, as a gift, humanism.com, which we got to talk about. That's pretty funny.

Sam:        You're an angel investor in a lot of different startups, including Coinbase and things like that. You've got your hands in all these different things. According to wallmind or wallstreetmind.com you're worth today 850 million dollars. So you do a little bit of everything in the world of business. Is incredibly fascinating. So I wanted to talk about.. Well, you might be the wealthiest person we've ever had on this podcast. I'm going to ask you questions about that.

Sam:        I don't know

Dharmesh:        [crosstalk 00:05:44], but it's okay. It's fine.

Sam:        We're going to ask you questions about it.

Dharmesh:        [crosstalk 00:05:47] it doesn't really matter. And that's the one thing I've learned. We can talk about that too.

Sam:        Well, that's that's okay if it doesn't matter, we're going to talk about it. We're also going to talk about your ideas. We're going to about building HubSpot. We're going to talk about why you invest in what you invest. And we're going to talk about, do you ever invest in non startup stuff? We're going to talk about a lot of stuff. Shaan, what do you think?

Shaan:        Yeah, let's do it. Let's jump in.

Sam:        Where do you want to start? You want to start with... What?

Shaan:        Okay, so here's my question. My question's actually not about Dharmesh. It's actually about Sam. So, I've always wondered this. So you acquired The Hustle. And I hope you could be as transparent as you want here. I think Sam will not care. So I would say DNA-wise, The Hustle is kind of a unique company. Sam's a pretty unique dude that brought into your company. Different DNA probably than the vast majority of employees there. Give me kind of like...

Sam:        Well you too.

Shaan:        I don't know.

Sam:        You're part of the deal too, Shaan. So you're in the boat.

Shaan:        Sure, but he doesn't have to deal with me on a day-to-day basis. So doing that deal and bringing these guys in, are there any interesting observations or any entertaining little stories about either pre-acquisition or post that had to do with Sam and The Hustle? I'm just curious. What's your view on that side of the table? Because I've only been on the same side that Sam's on.

Dharmesh:        Yeah. HubSpot has not done a lot of acquisitions in the past. We've done a handful of them. Pretty much most of them have gone well. The one thing that made this different, I think as you observed, is the DNA of The Hustle is different than HubSpot, and that's both a good thing and a bad thing.

Dharmesh:        So the thing that I was worried about is... Until now I don't think Sam and I have actually ever had a one-on-one chat.

Shaan:        That's okay. This is my therapy session therapy for you guys.

Dharmesh:        [crosstalk 00:07:32] therapy for two people, Shaan.

Sam:        Dharmesh and I talk a lot on Slack.

Dharmesh:        [crosstalk 00:07:37].

Sam:        We're like buddies on slack.

Dharmesh:        We've actually talked. But the thing I was worried about is that... So, Sam is a kind of what I would think of as a kind of type A personality, just like he's out there, he's hustling [inaudible 00:07:47] the name of the company. Which is fine, but it's just not... Most of the makeup of HubSpot is not that. We're a very... I don't know what the right... It's going to overly stereotype us, but we're not type A. We're like a kinder, gentler, humble, quieter kind of company.

Shaan:        Yip.

Dharmesh:        So that's the one thing -

Sam:        So let me explain it this way -

Shaan:        So Sam would be described as brash. I don't think anybody would ever describe HubSpot as brash.

Dharmesh:        No.

Sam:        Well today, Kieran, the guy I work with, technically my boss. He was like, "You should probably hire someone outside of HubSpot for this role, for your growth."

Sam:        And I was like, "Well, why?"

Sam:        He goes, "I think you're too direct for anyone who works at HubSpot." It's like that. That's an example.

Dharmesh:        I think that was good advice. But, it's worked out well. So there've been... The one minor story I can recall. There was a Twitter back and forth that I think Sam had with Rand Fishkin. I don't know if you recall this Sam, that there was something that was said about VCs or investment or something. And Rand's been a good friend. It was like, Oh, okay well... It's fine. And I'm like, okay. This is like [crosstalk 00:08:52]. not like either party was right, wrong or indifferent, but I know them at least now a little bit, both. But it's been fine.

Shaan:        Okay.

Sam:        Well, in my defense, and even our podcast's defence, our goal is... We will disagree with people, but I hope that it never comes from a place of disrespect or -

Dharmesh:        No it didn't. No.

Sam:        Or trying to hurt your feelings.

Shaan:        But I will say, I do put entertainment first sometimes. So sometimes I will poke the bear for the entertainment value of it when the kinder, nicer, simpler thing to do would be to do nothing or just back away. So I do like to have fun, either on Twitter or the podcast.

Dharmesh:        [crosstalk 00:09:30] HubSpot too much. But the one thing I will say, as far as the deal itself, it was one of the better things HubSpot has done. The strategy behind it, I think, is strong in terms of it gets HubSpot into a thing which is where I think the future of SaaS companies is going to be heading. Which is more and more [inaudible 00:09:50] were going to control their own distribution versus renting audiences from other people, and resources.

Dharmesh:        And there's other deals that have been done around the same timeline, but I'm a believer in companies controlling their destiny in terms of distribution versus constantly just buying audiences and renting them from someone else.

Shaan:        See, this is where you should just say, just drop a one line. Be like, "And we got it at a fantastic price." Just to drive Sam crazy for the next seven years. Just leave him constantly questioning himself.

Sam:        Look. Yeah. Could we have sold for more? Definitely maybe. Like that always is a maybe, right? I think that when we sold, HubSpot I felt was undervalued. What was the stock in January? It was worth like $350? Or was it even less? $250?

Dharmesh:        Yeah.

Sam:        I don't remember.

Dharmesh:        Yeah.

Sam:        Today it's 600 bucks. My guests was that I think HubSpot is undervalued. And also, I wanted to create a reputation of someone who was a fair deal maker. I think people will know that if I built something, I sold it, that all parties got a good deal.

Dharmesh:        Right.

Sam:        And so -

Shaan:        Okay. All right. Sounds good. We can switch off The Hustle acquisition. So let's do some ideas.

Sam:        Wait. No, wait. I want to talk about one thing really quick. Let's talk about money stuff?

Shaan:        Okay.

Sam:        Because I told Dharmesh I was going to ask him this. So first of all, is it weird that I know what your net worth is today because it's public information?

Dharmesh:        It's not weird for me, honestly. I'm generally transparent. I believe in the openness of the web. In a sense, it's a publicly traded company. Would I want my bank accounts and all my accounts published on the web? No, but the fact that I'm an executive in a publicly traded company and most of my net worth is in the form of shares.

Dharmesh:        Which you can take the number of shares, which is on the public record and multiply it by the current price and get... Which is probably roughly 85, 90% of my overall net worth, because that's where all my money is, is in HubSpot shares. I don't find that weird.

Sam:        Yeah.

Sam:        Has your life changed as this has accumulated and things got different? You had another company before this, how much did you sell that for?