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(hip hop music) - let's start with this. i fully, fully, 100,000% with no hedge do not believe that youcan teach entrepreneurship. right, so that's awkward, you know. (audience laughter) what i mean by that isthat it's crazy for me that that word is nowconsidered like cool and good. like when i was your age,20 years ago, entrepreneur

meant that you were a fucking loser that was figuring it out, right? so watching what's happeningto the world right now where this has become a hottopic is interesting to me and like i'm super pumpedthat people now value that in a different way than they did. i grew up a d and f student, right? and the reason i grew up a d and f student was i was unable to sit ina room like this and listen

to whoever was sitting up herebecause all i wanted to do was sell shit, right? and so, that's all i've ever known. i've had no other gear. somewhere around fourth grade when i got an f on a science test i literally, like that day, was like yeah, that makessense to me because i don't give a fuck about saturn, right? like i don't, that's not who i am.

and so i think if therewas anything i could do, if there was anything i coulddo that would be awesome for you guys to make themost money i could make i would create a test ora drug that allowed people to become self aware. i think that the number onething that i could tell you, 'cause i'm desperate tobring value since i'm here, is i think everybody lies to themselves. and i think all of you want certain things

to be happening with you. you want yourself to be something. and i think what you need to do more of, and if i can give you, clearlyi'm coming out the gate with my best piece of advice, i really do think you have toaudit who you actually are. i think that america as a society has done a really good job in selling us how to fix the things

that we naturally aren't. there's a lot of moneybeing made on us forming into something we can't be. and i either throughmassive ego and bravado, complete ignorance, i don't know what it was early on in my life. maybe the outrageous levelof self-esteem that my mom instilled in me. i was able to quickly,very, very early on.

and let me take it back,because a lot of you don't know who... i was born in belarus inthe former soviet union. and so i came here when i wasthree and we were super poor. i lived in a studio apartment. i know what it tastes liketo walk five miles to k-mart, buy toilet paper, come homeand then sit there for an hour and split the toiletpaper to get efficiency. and that's a huge advantage for me, right?

like the fact that i'vebeen working 19 hours a day everyday for the last 20 years is easy for me, it's theonly gear i knew, right? i was poor, i sucked shit at school. it was the only gear i had, right? so like i sit here withenormous disrespect and with enormousassumptions around all of you that you're just toosoft to beat me, right? that i think that you've had it better.

and that that alone doesn'tallow you to beat me. and that's how i think ofentrepreneurship in a very rugged, veryraw, much dirtier way. i've been investing for about seven years. the first three things i invested in. in 2007 after i got my wine business, and i realized that thisinternet thing was gonna be big, was facebook, twitter and tumblr, right? and then i've collectivelygotten stupider

since that moment, mainlybecause i didn't think of myself as an investor when i invested in those companies. i just thought that ev williams, zucks, and david karp were really fucking smart and we're gonna win, right? and so when i think aboutuber, like travis is one of my best, best buddies, likenow he has a lot of press, i'm sure a lot of you know who he is. that just makes a lot of sensebecause all the negative

press he gets makes sensebecause he's a fighter. but he was the only ceo of that company because uber's had a fight city hall for the last four years. it's hard to fight the mafia that owns the taxi service in vegas. that takes, i can't do that, i'm too not confrontational, right? so i think that the numberone thing that you can do.

you know,i'm desperately competitive and wanna be the personthat brings the most value to you out of all these talks. like i secretly sit hereand say, "oh they're gonna "get all these peoplethat they've heard of, "but i'm gonna be the onethat tells them something "that actually fucking matters." and that one thing is youneed to bet on your strengths and don't give a fuckabout what you suck at.

way too many people inthis room a gonna spend the next 30, 40 yearsof their lives trying to check the boxes of thethings they're not as good at. and that you're going to wastea fuckload of time and lose. i highly recommend auditingyourself or if you have no fucking empathy oreq or self-awareness, find someone in your familyor friendship that does, and let them tell you who you are. and once you believethat, either for yourself

or someone else told you,go directly, all chips all into that, because thatis the only possible way, in my opinion watching from the outside, that is, let me rephrase, that is a very highlylikely way of over indexing. because the truth is, ifyou wanna be an anomaly you've gotta act like one. you know, like... and so that's it. that's what i got.

so thanks for having me. - i think that, i think that, i think it's been really interesting for me for the last three years to watch. so tech, when i was investing in it for me and when i was growingmy business in the '90s and then when i really got intoit in '04, five, six, seven, you know people were in it 'cause they were really good

at it or in it or really passionate. right now, everybodythinks that if you're 22 and you have an idea you'reentitled to a startup, right? and so, the thing that'sbeen really fascinating for me to watch, the dichotomy of structure and understanding how to play the game versus entrepreneurship. so for example,

again, being a dick about it, i know i'm sitting in a room full of number twos,threes, and fours, right? there's so many people in this room that are like gonna be dot, like could be dominant, number twos, threes, and fours. and i'm pissed that the narrative now is that you need to be a number one

and have your company. because a lot of people are gonna lose or leave money on the table because that's just thenarrative, right? and so, the difference for me between a two, three, and four, and a one is having a stomach. and so one of the thingsthat we've seen a lot of because zucks went to harvard and like

literally being east coast bound like watching all these kids that are going to ivy league schools, including stanford somixing the whole like mix. just like actuallyeverybody's a better student than i was, so i'll just call it everybody. but, watching the elite top three percent so many of those players, guys and gals,

have come into to game inthe last 24 or 36 months and have lived a narrativewhere things have been good. right? like, you know again, i'm using a lot of prejudice. i default into thinking that like you guys were way more capable than me than figuring out how to map yourselves to go through the school system. like you understood that game.

like very honestly, like it's cool to be like oh fuck school and i sucked, and then i was a great entrepreneur. but like, it would have beencool to have figured it out. like i would have been finegetting c's and b's, right? like that would have been interesting then i would have had a better life. like college would have been more fun.

i wouldn't have went to mount ida college where seven of my eight core friends fucking went to jail. right, so, you know (chucking) if you wanna keep it real. so, you know, but i just couldn't and i think that that's what i'm seeing the reverseof right now which is on the flip side being an entrepreneur

and really running a successful company, here's the problem. there isn't justlike one teacher who fucking decides and you figured out howto map him or the syllabus or whatever the fuck you guys do to figure out what you needed. the problem is when youhave a startup or a business you're playing to the market.

and the market doesn't givea fuck who your parents were or how you rolled,or what happened before. the market just cares about the market. and so i think that what'sbeen really interesting for me to observe, and i would say is somethingfor you guys to think about is again you're gonna wannathink in a certain way versus what may be the reality. or you might underestimate yourself,

it just depends on your dna. but, the ability to adjust is the entire game. like, i'm so proud that i change my mind everyday. my dad used to get so pissed when i was building wine library. he would always be like fuck, he's like, he would say like, "three months ago you said ricky

"was gonna be the best employee." i'm like i changed my mind. he's shit, fire him. or, he's like, "you saidsparkling wine was important "and now you just eliminatedit from the key spot." like my ability to only becomfortable in massive chaos has been my biggestasset as an entrepreneur. like i would never take a fucking note. like that scares the piss out of me

what these three peopleare doing right now, right? (audience laughing) and so, now (chuckles) that may work for them and i'm not like back to the opening statement. like you need to do you plenty people that makea fuck load more money than me and have won biggertake fucking notes. the key, the key though,

the key is way too many people are doing, like here's a good one. you know what reallypissed me the fuck off? (sighing) i'm completely driven by like happiness and like i'm crippled by like chaos. like you know vaynermedia,which is now 500 people. update your shit. vaynermedia iscompletely dictated by,

like i'm a dictator of hr. all i care about is the atmosphere, all i care about is how people, intern, all i care about is how people roll. i think i've fired the fourmost talented, smartest people that have worked for mebecause if you don't know how to play with the otherboys and girls, you're out. because i suffocate under, youknow, conflict and negativity and nobody's better thanme, so you gotta go.

so what really pissedme off in tech world was when steve jobs' book cameout, when he was dying, when it was all about stevethree or four years ago, i literally watched a lotof my tech start-up friends start being like a dick to their staff. because jobs was tough,everybody fell into the romance of i have this big vision and i'm gonna be a dick like steve, right? and i thought that wasreally interesting for me

to watch that half decadeof literally watching people i know and thenwatching them act differently because the status orthe icon of the moment, and you see a lot of that. and so that is probably theenergy i'm trying to bring to this class today, which is you can look at how people roll and it's great to admireand things of that nature but it's so damn importantto stick to your dna, right?

and what you're good at. and to recognize that youneed to surround yourself, whether it's your co-founder, or whether it's thepeople that work for you, like all i do is hire thepeople that are the opposite of me, that bring the othervalue, that bring me the ability to remember what the fuckthat meeting was about and go make sure it happens. you know, whatever it may be, right?

and so i think that's another thing that i would highly recognize. i think the other thingyou guys should recognize is how ridiculously luckyyou are, but how interesting the supply and demand ofyour luck is changing. meaning, it's never beenbetter to be an entrepreneur. right now, right thissecond, is the greatest. there's massive destruction,i promise you because i spend a fuckload of time witheverybody in corporate america,

the big companies are sofucking slow and stupid, it's almost unbearable, right? so that's great for us,if we don't have money and we've got time, right? and so that's great. and the cost of entry's easy. there's so many people thatare envious of the lucky things that happen to me investing inuber and birchbox and twitter and all those things, that now everybody

in their thirties to sixtiesthat has any level of money is chasing any kid ina hoodie with an idea and giving them money toinvest in their start-up because everybody's looking for their exit, right? so on top of the fact that theinternet is hitting maturity and every user's on asmartphone and blah blah blah and we're at scale, ontop of that, in parallel, there's a fuckload of dumbmoney chasing it and looking to give it to anybody they can.

which is your opportunity. so we need to takeadvantage of that horse shit and actually, if you think you're ready, you should literally startyour company right now because i'm sure it'simportant to finish this class and whatever, but tomorrowthe market could collapse and you'll miss this opportunity. literally right now on afucking half-ass idea, right? with like two or threeconnections from your parents

or professors or emailingme and i introduce you to somebody, you can literallyraise a million dollars on your horse shit idea. (audience laughter) but we need to like, i wanteverybody to understand that all it takes is something crazy, like a terrorist attack, orsome fucking bank full of shit breaking, all it, liketomorrow that can go away. i think it's super importantfor everybody to understand

that if you're itching, i thinkyou should start tomorrow, because the money's there, andyou're gonna need the money. because, this happens all the time. everybody that lookedlike you in 2008 and 2009, they went and got jobs. everybody that lookedlike you in 2002 and 2003, after the first bubble,they went and got jobs. so if you're a true entrepreneur, if you're sitting here like,no i'm an entrepreneur,

i'm not just in the class,you need to seriously concentrate on where weare at this exact moment in the market and recognizehow fruitful it is for you, how much of an advantage you have. you may want to seriously consider and take advantage of it. because it could reallygo away in a second, and then you've gotta wait,like if it collapsed tomorrow, if there's a bubble burst,you're gonna have to wait

three to five years to get your shot. when bubbles burst, no fuckingkid with an idea gets dick. got it? that's a good one. i like that one. but that's what happens. so i think that's important. timing's massively important. and so that's why i'm pushing that agenda.

(audience member sneezes) bless you. i think the other thing to think about is i think that, here's just some random shit and then maybewe can go into q&a. i think that uber, airbnb,and instacart are not anomalies the way a lot of people in my world think. i think they're just a preview. i think if everybody hereunderstands that the number one

asset to everybody in theworld is time, and if you can figure out how to buy and sellit back, that's a big coup. so i think the biggestreason i got excited about uber yearsago was i realized, holy shit, this isn'tabout transportation, this is about a companythat sells me back time. as a matter of fact, i actuallyboycotted la for four years. i actually didn't cometo la for four years 'cause i hated fucking coming here so much

because i didn't want torent a car and the fucking, i fucking hated this place. literally i started, nowi'm back all the time because uber, because i can get around, right? i can actually move, and so that was good. but, back to the main point. it's stunning for me towatch people's behavior. literally, fundamentally we care about the health of our lovedones, money, and then time.

and i think if you reallylook at what uber's doing, it's selling back time. and i think if you'rethinking in start-up mode, if you're looking foran inspirational seed as a starting point, i highlyrecommend thinking about time. people will massively overpay for it. you love time so much,you don't even realize it. think about the last timeyour phone or your computer was a hundredth of a secondslower than what you're used to

on wifi, how fucking pissed you were. that's how much we like time. and so that is a big themethat i think is gonna play out. so again, recognizing not everybody here has their full idea oreverything figured out, i think that's an important place to play. i think the other thingthat's really important is, i think i play the gamea little bit backwards. so i publicly give away all my best ideas.

all of them. i recognize as an individual,i'm not gonna be able to go and execute every great idea,every great thought i have. and so i've lived a lifefor the last seven years where i put out all my content at scale, whether through blogs, i'm writing a lot of medium right now, if you don't know what that is you should check it out, it's really rad. you know, stuff like that.

and so i think early on in one's career, and definitely i watch alot of people that don't understand what's happening now, is the value of yourthoughts can be extreme. so i highly recommend thinking about putting yourthoughts out into the world in whatever way youcommunicate, whether through audio podcasts or written formfor medium, or video blog, if you're thinking aboutentrepreneurship,

if you're thinking about trends, if you're thinking about business, you're literally just one three-minute read on a medium away from creating a huge gatewaydrug to a lot of opportunity if your thought is deemedas smart or forward-thinking or different by another thought leader or somebody who's got an opportunity. and i'm surprised, i think this is very residual

from the way it used to be in the world of patents and ideas, i love when, my assistant'sgot a great thing now in this. once in every four monthssomebody sends an email saying, i've got a huge start-upthat i want you to invest in, but you've gotta sign this nda, right? which literally everytime gets an email back that says fuck you, right? and the reason is, i'm a humongous believer

that ideas are shit, and thatexecution's the game, right? we've all got ideas,everybody's got ideas. do you know how many fuckingideas we all have here? we could probably sit herefor the next two hours, draw them all out,record them, and predict the next 78 great start-upsover the next nine years. and? so i think the thing that is another theme in entrepreneurship isthere is way too much fodder

brought to the idea. uber was magic cab three years earlier. uber is not an idea, uber existed. it was called magic cab. but the guys that executedit sucked, so they lost. so i think, you know, if there's any level of romance left in this room about youridea, i'd like to suffocate it. because i think the actual situation is what you actually do with it.

and so that leads me to the last point. i'm, you know, maybeit's because i was born in a communist country, maybeit's 'cause i came from zero, but i really think thatpeople who think they're entrepreneurs, that don't work15 to 17 hours a day, aren't. i really believe that. i'm sure that's short-sightedand one-dimensional, but i just believe it with my entire soul. it blows me away of watchingthe start-ups i'm investing in,

where they're leaving halfday friday during the summer to go to the hamptons to hook up. it, you know, cool, i get it, i wish i could do it, but i think that there'sa pretty substantial soft mentality in the game right now, and what's deemed as hard work is probably not gonnabe deemed as hard work by your grandparentsor great-grandparents, and definitely the opportunity at hand,

when you're taking people's money. i mean look, i think one thingthat should be talked about as well is,i would say 80% of the kids that i'm giving moneyto between 22 and 25, as you can tell, i'm not traditional and so we get nice relationships. i would say 80% of themtell me right to my face that they actually haveno worry whatsoever to lose my money.

that it's awesome, right? i'm sure you're thinking it too. like, cool, i'll raise a million bucks, i'll learn a fuckload. if i lose, i'm still just 26, i've got plenty of time. i'll take all that experienceand i'll go apply it. let me tell you one thing about that experience and applying it. one of the things that's very dangerous,

if you think you're gonnabe great, i highly recommend that you be very smartabout how you go about this. because the thing that mostpeople don't talk about is the fact that that checkbox in the loss column eliminates you from a lot ofopportunity the next go-around. and so a lot of people rightnow, they're taking money and just starting shit 'causeit's easy, and who knows? and it's like fucking roll it, right? what's happening is when youlose, all the people that are

you're gonna look for moneyin the future, and the market, and your fucking wikipediathat say you fucking lost, and all that shit, it's all there. and so i think there's alack of thinking about legacy and long-term marathon thinking right now, in a sprinter's mentalitywhere there is a lot of access to capital andeverything feels shiny. so i'd like to instill somelevel of giving a shit about 10 or 14 or 19 years out too.

i'd like to do some q&a if that's cool. yeah, man. what's your name? - [shane] i'm shane. - shay. shay? - [shane] shane.- shane. - [shane] thanks for coming out. - i liked shay better. (audience laughter)- [shane] can we start

our company tomorrow, ordo we protect our legacy? - that's a great question. so i think you can start your,so perfect, thanks, i am a contradiction so fuck you, shane. i think you do both, andthis is what i mean, right? there's a big difference between going to 15 tech conferences,using all your leverage, getting to everybody that sat up here, say you've got it, getting those checks,

versus, you know, borrowinglike 30 grand from a rich friend or your parents or, you know,there's a way to do both. right? and so i would do both. i mean, if you, look,let's play this game. and don't bullshit mebecause i might call on you and then expose you. how many people here really, really think they've got their ideaand they're ready to go? i really think you should leave.

with all my fucking heart. like, leave right the fuck, walk out of this room and go do it, right? because i really believethat tomorrow something bad can happen and it's reallygood for you guys right now. you could really get 200 thousand, you know this, right? it's crazy, the default that we think of how easy it is to get money.

you know how hard itwas to get money in 1998 when i came out of the game? you couldn't get 50 buckfrom somebody, right? it's so fucking bonkers becausehollywood dictates thinking. guys, zucks' fucking moviefucked with people's heads. and you're taking advantage of that. so i think that what happens is, and listen, this is me being a historian. i wasn't in the game from web 1.0 bubble.

i was in new jersey building a wine store during web 1.0 bubble, so i wasn't in those little cosmo.com, pet.com game. i was being practical withmy $15,000 a year marketing and building my business. i mean, all those guys andgals did the same thing. they fucking went out, they had the moment that you have right now, theyfucking were worth a drillion on paper, 'cause everythingwent ipo back then, right?

and then, like april happened,and everybody lost everything and they were all workingfor like fox, and fucking the new york times and condenast, the next fucking day. and so, you know, onemore time, who's got it? who's got it right now? you need to really, really debate it. and the only dynamic that i would even accept is like, you love your parents somuch and they're still so fucking old-school thatit would hurt their feelings.

but other than that, there'sliterally no other excuse. - questions. yes. - [june] my name isjune, thank you so much for coming.- june? - [june] yes, june, like the month. so, what did zuck and allthe other guys who came, what did they do, right,that they you knew that they were the spotlight,they were the winners?

- well, the things withtumblr, twitter and facebook, they had all already won. like, i love when people are like, "he is such a forward thinker," i'm like, i'll take it, butfuck, they were already winning. it was 2007, facebook was fucking huge. twitter, i felt like, i justfelt intuitive about twitter. coming from email marketingand being a marketer and a salesman, i understoodhow building an audience,

and then that audience,like email marketing was like you blastedpeople, and they did shit. but like forwarding emailsto your entire address book, that died by like '99, right? and so, when twitter came,thinking like i was gonna push something out andthen people were like, "i'll pass that on," i was like, fuck. word of mouth, right? so twitter as a product spoke to me,

it's why i've over-indexed onit, it's been my foundation, that was a little bit different. and then ev, who i bet on more than jack, it was more ev, and my wholetheory on that was well, he built blogger and sold it to google, he's already won once, andthat was kind of a nice thing. it's fun to bet onsomebody who's been able to see it through. tumblr was interesting.

so, i'm a straight creeper. on the way here today at jfk,i literally got to my gate, looked around, found likefour 13-year-old girls, literally sat behind them andwatched everything they did. (audience laughs) so by the way, realquick, if you ever hear that i go to jail, justknow it was market research. and i did that today,and what did i watch? i watched them spend 99%of their time on instagram,

yik yak and snapchat. right? and so that's what happenedwith me and tumblr in 2007. it was a little differentthen, it was laptops. phones are better, you look less creepy. i just started getting asense that junior high kids were on tumblr way more thananybody was talking about it. that was a good one for me,'cause i'm new york-based, karp was in new york. karp is super artist,i'm super businessman,

so there was a nice yin and yang. by that point i knew how torespect that fucking nerd shit, and not scare them. so, yeah, it just worked out. i mean, this is how insane 2009 was. i joined tumblr, andtumblr on the dashboard, put "garyvee joins tumblr"on everybody's dashboard for a week. it was just a different world.

i got into a series b at 14 million. they already had users. now, like somebody farts an idea and gets 14 million pre-product. so it was a different market. birchbox is probablythe best one. birchbox had 60 no's, i wrote the first check. how many people arefamiliar with birchbox? cool, so birchbox, if you don't know

you should check it out,it's two harvard hbs girls, they got like 60 noes. i remember sitting in that meeting and investing on the spot,and they were super pumped and then they told me they got 60 no's, which was probably a smart strategic move. and i remember just leavingthat meeting thinking that was just straight sexism, right? like that was the only thingi could wrap my head around,

that people just didn'twanna invest in the girls. i couldn't understand, 'causethe model was phenomenal. it's like, here's our business model. we're gonna sell people makeupsamples that we get for free. back to my first business,of ripping people's flowers, ringing their doorbells andselling, it felt like that. i'm like, this is a good model. no overhead, and then i remember telling them, i'm like look, if we can docustomer acquisition at scale

and get enough leverage,eventually makeup brands are gonna pay you to be in there. and that's what's happenedwith that company. that one was more them,they were so sharp. i literally have never... i'm acutely aware of like, racism, i got out of russia by being jewish. my parents were superpersecuted in the soviet union and so i've always beenhypersensitive to it,

but that one was the most extreme case, because they crushed and knew what they were doing. and it's great to watch thatgo out and actually become such a big company. but simple things, like yik yak. i fucked up and didn't see it through, which i'm pissed about,but the only reason i even reached out to them,just to give you an example, like messing up.

nine or 10 months ago,i could have gotten in at a four millionvaluation, they just raised at a $350 million valuation. and the only reason i gotto that gateway is that every morning when i wakeup and go take a crap, the first thing i do on my phone is look at the itunes top 150 free apps. and yik yak just started showing up. 150, 137, 123, 123.

like what the fuck is this, right? and secret and whisper were getting all the silicon valley attention, yet they weren't even showing up on that, and just knew normal kids were doing it. same thing happened with snapchat, i remember creeping on 13-year-old girls for a couple months and being like, what thefuck is that yellow thing?

on their phone, likeit's always showing up. that was good, 'cause it wasyellow, it was easy to see fast and not get beat up by their dad. and so i spend all of mytime looking at behavior. at the end of the day all i dois reverse engineer behavior, and that's what i figuredout i was good at. because i was such a great salesman, i was able to reverseengineer as i got more mature and older, i'm like,"ah, i'm a great salesman

"'cause i actually amreally paying attention "to what you're doing." like when i took overmy dad's liquor store, i made a lot of money as ateenager selling baseball cards, all i used to do was standbehind a baseball card table and just people in malls wouldwalk by and look at your case and i would just literallywatch their eyes and be like, what are they responding to? so ui, ux, my designerfriends are always freaked out

of how "good" i am at it, 'cause they think i'm a business guy, i shouldn't be good at that, but that's all i've everdone my whole life at scale. i feel like i'm doing it right now. i'm watching what's happening here. so, i use my eq to do my thing, and that's why i'm such a bigfan of betting on strengths. i think that's theunknown thing about zucks. i mean, zucks gets portrayed,definitely in the movie

and just in general,like, he's got crazy eq. he really understands people. i think he's a reallysmart entrepreneur. - yes? what's your name? - simone. - how are you? - [simone] good, how are you?- good. - [simone] what was your biggest regret out of all of your businessesthat came out on honestly?

you don't seem really regretful. - yeah. yeah, you know regretsare interesting for me. look, i have a ton of them, right? if you go look at my firstbook, it's called crush it! in there i thank my entire family and one random humanbeing, travis kalanick, ceo and co-founder of uber and i passed on the angel round of uber.

i literally left $700 million on the table by not investing in mybuddy after i just told you, you bet on people and this and that. it happens, right? so i have plenty ofthings to regret, right? i regret the fact that i,and look, don't cry for me, i'm going to make $200 million because i got in the next round. but, but. but

i regret that when i was doing open cart optimization onwinelibrary.com in 1997 that i wasn't smart enough to realize that if i turned that into a product and sold it to amazonfor $500 million dollars, i would have make a fuckload more money than selling 18 more bottlesof pinot noir, right? but very honestly, you've got me pegged. i'm basically not capableof really regretting it.

i'm trying to answer your question and not be a douche bag about it, but regretting feels to me like the opposite ofentrepreneurship, right? i just think it means looking back and i think speed isthe number one variable that most people in thisroom will struggle with. that is the variabledifference that i think, that's what travis and zucks.

zucks moved, so when mark bought instagram for a billion dollars, a couple months earlieri did some fox program and i said that, i waslike, it was december and they're like, "hey, makesome predictions for 2013." i was like, facebook's goingto buy instagram, right? cool, whatever. four months later it happensand cnn asks me to come on because the video wenta little viral in the

tech community, so i was on piers morgan. on piers morgan's show,his opening line is, "this company's 550 days old, "how the hell is itworth a billion dollars?" and my opening line is, "they stole it." i get out of the studio,i'm hardcore twitter, so i go on it and literallythere are thousands of tweets of people calling me a fucking idiot. so literally that night,from like 10 o'clock at night

to four in the morning, i favorited every single one of those tweets by hand. (laughter)all of them. i think this is a good story, because this is what anentrepreneur, i think, does. i favorited them all. and then, i guess lastyear this time, right? facebook bought whatsapp for $18 billion and every article, like thenext day after the news came out

is like, oh wait a minute,they fucking stole instagram. and no joke, for a week,my wife and i went to turks and caicos for a weekend, right? luckily she just likes toread and i can't bother her and i laid on a beach for 19hours a day, two days in a row, and replied to every singleperson that called me an idiot and said, "what now, bitch?" (applause) i really think i just wantedto get that in and humble brag,

but i don't remember why i said that. oh, why i said it. so zuck's offered threebillion for snapchat and a lot of people didn't,like that seemed insane. but i don't think anybody thinks that's insane anymore, right? and so what he'sreally smart is he understands the gatewaydrug is important to him. because the 15 year oldgirl right now in america

is not going to be a facebook user. and so he needs to keephaving the next one, right? luckily he's got the rightone right now with instagram, but every day that snapchatbecomes the next one, he needs to figure that out. but i think he sees it and solike, it takes that vision. travis knew that he had to move to every market faster than lyft, right? and so he just keptraising money if he could

and that was the right execution. so i think speed is something that people really need to wrap their head around. - yeah man. - what's up, man? alex.- alex, what's up man? - [alex] what do you think aboutsnapchat's new discover page? - i think every platform'sgonna be a media company, and so i think it makes a ton of sense. i think everybody in this room

is gonna watch a feature film that's gonna be facebook-only, i think there'll be anumber one hit sitcom on snapchat only. all that matters is theattention graph, right? where the fuck are our eyes and ears? where are they, right? and i can tell you rightnow if i want to sell to a 16-year-oldgirl in america,

i want to be in snapchat, right? so i thought it was a huge coup for the media companiesthat were launch partners because some of themi think we'd all agree are stodgy and not great, and for them this was alittle bit of good value. i think it was a reallysmart move by snapchat because i really live in this world. a lot of the big advertisers look at them

as too young. you only have 13-year-olds. so this kind of grew them up. i think emily white is areally interesting executive for a lot of people in this room. i think she's superinspirational boys and girls in this room. emily white, if you don't know her, google, facebook, instagram

and now the coo of snapchat. i think she's a beast and i think it was a really smart play because it instantly madethem more mature, right? i've been fucking yelling about snapchat for like two years. finally when that happened, i got like 9,000 emails from like old fuckingwhite dudes saying, "oh."

i was like, "yeah, dick." you know, like "oh." you know, like hundreds of millions of people's attention fucking matters. what pisses me off, where you're seeing i'mgetting a little pissed, is facebook just went through this. the first time makes sense, right? it never happened before.

but facebook was only college kids. now it's your fucking grandmother. that's what happens. and so that will continue. the fastest growth on instagram right now is 40 to 50-year-old women. the fastest growing sector of people taking selfies,fastest growing. so it's a smaller basebut it's still volume.

fastest growth of selfiestaken on instagram are 40 to 45-year-old women, like straight-up fucking cougar selfies. and again, back to watching. i'm watching people haveconversations real quick off that reaction, and people are like, "yeah, my fucking ma." people know what's going on, right? your mom's on instagram now,

24 months ago shedidn't know what it was. that's just what it is. that's just what's always gonna happen, because what's happening is we're living through the age-ification, the downward age-ification of society. the number one thing i love right now is that the average42-year-old american woman in her behavior, the clothes she buys,

what she does, how shehangs out with her friends, is acting like theaverage 29-year-old woman only 10 years ago. nobody wants to be old. i'm 39. like i shouldn't be dressed like, do you know what the 39-year-old version of me looked like 15 years ago? nobody wants to get old, it sucks.

and there's a flip side to it. whereas only 10 years ago, a 15-year-old would look up to their 18-year-old sibling and listen to the same music and all that. that's why you're seeing snapchat and yik yak and other things. there's a fragmentationeven within generations. they want their own fucking thing,

and in a much shorter period of time. it used to be more like seven to 10 years. now you're seeing three years is okay, but after that. there's a lot of people in here that their high school siblings that are younger than them don't want to fuck with the thingsthat they fuck with. and so it's interesting what's going on

with the psychology ofgenerations and people, the youth-ification of our society. - [shane] shane jackson, thanks so much. this is awesome. - thanks, brother. - [shane] so you talkedabout kind of how great a time this is to start a company-- - yeah.- and all that stuff. you also talked about kindof the problems with failing

especially early. - only failing, and thatwas a great question. i wanna make sure, like i don't wanna stop anybody because they don't want to fail. i just want, i just wanna say this. there's a shitload of audacityin the market right now, like who gives a fuck? i'm gonna lose this moneyover the next three years, but it's gonna be good for me

because i'm gonna have experience. i'm not gonna work a dick job. i'm gonna do what i want, and then i'll figureit out after the fact. i think failing's fine. look, i have a couplepeople that have failed, and i'm gonna re-investin their next idea. i just wanna make surethat you think you're ready and you're not just doing it

because it's easy money right now. so if you think you're good, like i have a huge failright now that i can't, i mean i'm gonna investin this kid the whole way because i've watched him fail, but i've seen all the great things he did. the market and his ideawere off a little bit, but he's a fuckin' assassin. so i just wanna, i wanted to clarify,

and i'm glad you did that because i think you made it better. better, sean? - [shane] that being said, and like-- - shane, sorry. - [shane] you said ideaswere shaped by like-- - but way to have hisback, fuckin' united class. - [shane] if you were20 years old right now, what would you go do?

- i would do what i did which was like not give a fuck about schooland start prepping for my life. but that's what i did, right? it's not like, i'm nottelling you like what is cool to say in a room of kids. i'm telling you whatthe fuck i did. like go google mount idacollege, like, like, like... (laughs) did you do that? ok, i thought you did it.

so like, you know, like i, i had no other gear, right? so, but i truly feel i was100% purebred entrepreneur. i truly believe that,and i truly believe that it's probably a high significant chance that nobody in this class is, and that's not bad. i promise you 90% and 85% and 80% can be dramaticallymore successful than me.

i probably could have used alittle 10 or 20% of other stuff that would have leveled me out. i was just fuckin' off the chart. yeah, man? - [man] so you saidyou came from zero, graduated from mount ida college. was there ever a point where you felt like you had to leverage what you had to do with what you wanted to do?

spend your life makingmoney at an hourly job working a start-up on the side, or-- - my dad had a liquor store, right? and so that made it alittle bit different. so i didn't, you know, i came from zero early on, but by the time my dadlived the american dream, so it'd be a false to saythat i did it all by myself. it was a super small business. it was a three milliondollar revenue business

with 10% gross margin. we made $300,000 before expenses. it wasn't a big business, but i knew at 14 that i could, that i was way better than my dad, right? and i was pumped because i was so thankful for what my dad did because like we came here and had nothing, and then we had something, right?

so i had this incredible family pride to come in and pay him back, right? and to walk into a family business that's doing three million and in 24 months be doing 12 million? and like i had to buy my own car like at a garage sale, by the way, and then my brother, who's11 years younger than me, got a lexus like...

i'm a little bitter, but likei'm super proud of that part, so i'm not sure, like i havea little bit of a different, like everybody, we allhave our different... look, look, i used to be superdisrespectful to rich kids, but now that they're all my friends, i now realize, like fuck, they've got it shitty too, right? like, i have a bunch offriends who are like fucking really struggling to try tonavigate like that they weren't

that they didn't starton third and a half base and are trying to do it their way, and so everybody's got their shit, right? but what i can tell you, wheni think about entrepreneurship i couldn't breathe. like, i couldn't breathe. all i could ever do was thinkabout what i was gonna sell and what i was, like, there was no... i mean, like i struggled toeven give a fuck about girls

like in my late teenageyears and early 20s and like that's just naturalto like give a fuck, right? and i struggled to likeget there because like... i actually did better withgirls than i deserve to because i literallyreverse engineered them because if they would realize,like they would realize that i'd literally rather go to the mall and go to the dollar storeand buy something for a dollar and go to a flea market onsaturday and sell it for three

than like hang out withthem, so they liked me more 'cause they were like, "what the fuck?" right like it became, itactually gave me a good preview to a solid thesis later on, but it was like that's how raw it was, and so that's what i look for. a lot of the people thati'm excited about... there's a start-up that i'm an investor in called lawn starter.

it's literally a saas play forfuckin' landscapers, right? but like i invested in thissecond 'cause i'm like, "oh, this fucker's like me, right?" like there was just nothing else. it was all blow pops in junior high. it was all like fuckin'whatever, right? like whatever, yeah man. - [teacher] we only havetime for one more question if we want to keep you on time.

- seriously? - [teacher] yeah. - fuck, ok. - [teacher] you're gonna come back. - i'll come back. - what's your name, man? - johnny- johnny. - [johnny] so as an investor, what exactly do you look for?

kids rolls up to you,what catches your eye? - i probably invest 80% of the time, if i'm investing, i fullyam bought into the jockey. and i believe enough in their horse right? like you can show me a hustler like me and he's like, "i'm going to fucking "sell pillows, that fucking go..." and i'm gonna fuck you, right? no matter how much i love you, right?

but i'm often times veryromanced by the idea but don't believe thatkids can execute it. and so it's a mix. so here's my strategy: if i think you've got the chops, i may still write a small check just to get into your ecosystem. double check you andtry to make sure i get on the second, third, andfourth once you mature out

and maybe actually have a good idea. so a lot of times, so that'swhy i bet on jockeys, because i want to catchthem on the next thing, on the next thing, on the next thing. and you know, when somebodywrites you that first check, you know, look, some peoplearen't going to stay loyal, something could happen,but like, i win that game. i have good stickinessby being a good dude and by betting on someone.

so that's a little bitof my strategy for me. - [teacher] 6:51. - cool, guys thanks so much for having me. - [teacher] wait, we're not-- - oh, well, i'm leaving. - [teacher] you gotta headout, but i know you've got-- - yeah, i know you've gotthe rest of the class. - we know, but we're notdone with you either. this is, i mean, have weever squeezed 45 minutes

of stuff you can use forthe rest of your life? this has been remarkable,really remarkable. now, this guy talksa lot of places, you've seen him online, you've seen his-- - what are you talking about? none of these fuckers even knew who i was. (laughter) - they've got to read your email. but it's been a while, we've been wanting

to get him here for a couple years and one of our common friendsmade the connection happen, so we don't know whenhe's going to come back. but i saw everyone writing,i know what you picked up, so let's give him a little bitof something to think about. five years from now andmaybe five minutes from now, what are you not going to forget about this talk thatgary can take with him? you guys ready?

- [gary] oh, this is cool, i like this. - bet on your strengths andforget about what you suck at. - go all in on your strengths. - don't give a fuck about your weaknesses. - oh, my god. - understand the gateway drug. - time, execution and behavior. - ideas are shit, execution is the game. - ability to adjust.

- it's all about people's time. - [teacher] speak up. - if you want to be an anomaly, you have to act like it. - the value of thoughts are extreme. - speed is key. - you need to do you. - if you're itching, start tomorrow. - [audience member]you've got to be hungry.

- [audience member] audit yourself. - [audience member] audit who you are. - reverse engineer women. - [gary] i like that johnny damon type character in the left corner. - who's over on the other side, go. - but on the jockey, not the horse. - cougars take selfies. - last one, right here.

- people will massively pay for time. - [teacher] one more,anyone else, here we go. - bet on your strengths, don't give a fuck about your weaknesses. - nice guys get dick. (laughter)- wow. - [gary] it's true, when you take things out of context it's like-- thanks guys, thank you, thanks.

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