In this conversational podcast segment, Sam Parr, Sean, and a third speaker challenge popular narratives about entrepreneurship, investing, and career planning for people in their 20s. They propose several contrarian viewpoints: (1) a minimalist crypto strategy of buying only a few major tokens (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Luna) and holding them long‑term, arguing deeper research harms returns; (2) angel investing is overvalued and a better use of capital is to acquire an existing cash‑flowing business via an SBA loan; (3) the 20s should be spent securing a first significant win—either a high‑paying tech job or a profitable acquisition—because later life offers less energy and flexibility; (4) NFTs will shift to a "free‑to‑mint" model where creators earn royalties, exemplified by the 100 Thieves gaming trophy drop; (5) buying an established business is a lower‑risk path compared to launching a startup, especially for smart individuals; and (6) working a high‑paying role at companies like Facebook or Google while experimenting on the side is a practical way to build wealth and experience. The discussion also includes an anecdote about a Facebook employee who works only 90‑120 minutes per day, illustrating extreme productivity. Overall, the speakers advocate for simplicity, cash‑flow focus, and early tangible achievements over hype‑driven trends.
Chapters
Here's my challenge to each of us. What's one narrative that you think actually you should be going counter to that narrative? Like there's a narrative that we hear as entrepreneurs, as people in kind of tech, and like, what do you think is the like, actually, I don't know, maybe it's this other thing instead. So if anyone has one, do it, but otherwise I'll give you one.
Yeah, go for it.
So mine would be, um, I'll give you two. There's the— inside crypto there's a narrative that's basically like, oh, there's all this innovation happening at this— it's like the next protocol, the next token, the next whatever. I'm pretty sure that if you just buy 3 or 4 things, like if you buy Bitcoin, ETH, um, I put Luna in there now. Just buy those 3 and you just chill. Either all of crypto is gonna work and those will work amazingly, or crypto's not gonna work and no matter what you did— like, if those fail, if those don't go up dramatically in value, um, crypto just didn't work and none of this shit will work. And so I think actually a basically like— for a while the best strategy was Bitcoin and chill, and now it's ETH and chill. I basically think it's still the same. I think it's like buying 2 or 3 tokens and not even needing to know anything more, just chilling on those is probably the best investment of the next like 10 to 15 years. It's going to outperform everything during that time. I— so I think like going deeper down the rabbit hole and like learning more is actually going to fuck up your returns versus just buying the main ones and just holding for like 10 years, not thinking about it. That's one. And then the other is I think that angel investing doesn't make much sense anymore. And I say this as somebody who angel invests, like the valuations are so high, um, that like, if I think about like that same money going into like one of these sort of boring cashflow businesses is so much better for your life. So if you're like an individual angel investor and you have, let's say $100,000, you know, or $300,000 that you want to go put into like a basket of 20 startups, It's like, are you sure you shouldn't just buy, like, like get an SBA loan and go buy like some random website that's already producing profit and that'll pay itself off in 2 years or less? And, uh, and now you own this cash-flowing asset. Like, I'm pretty sure that's just gonna do better, dude. I agree, than a basket of angel investments.
The, the, the— no, the— our friends who have all crushed it on angel investing, you know, that means they made their investments 5 or 8 years ago and it was different. It is, it's outlandish at the moment. So I agree with that. I think for mine that I think that it's actually, I think that, I think that you only have a few swings in your career and a lot of people are like, oh, you should be patient and you've got a lot of time to do certain stuff. I actually think you should try, you should dedicate your 20s to getting your first significant win because after that life gets a lot harder. You get a lot less energy. You're a lot smarter, which is actually bad. You actually, it's kind of good to be kind of ignorant. Um, and not enough people, I think oftentimes people go the other route where they go, well, just go join something for a little while and learn. In my opinion, F that. Your 20s, dedicate it to getting a win and getting it, even if it's relatively small and do it as fast as possible because after that life is a lot easier.
I'll give my—
what, Sean?
I was gonna say, uh, give the Moyes quote about getting rich quick.
He goes, why does everyone hate on getting rich quick? Get rich quick schemes are the best. I want to get rich quick, I don't want to get rich slow.
I got— I got two real quick. So I got off the phone with a friend of mine who works at Facebook. He told me this morning He told me that he works roughly 90 to 120 minutes per day on average.
I thought you were gonna say 90 to 120 hours a week.
He, yeah, it's the best when you measure your work in minutes.
He texted me, he texted me today. He said it was 9:12 AM. He said 9:12 AM, finished work for the day. 12 minutes. And so, yo, put, put us in a group chat.
I want him to text us every day, just the timestamp of when he works.
So that's what, that's what That's what I told them to do. I said, you need to create like a Twitter anon account.
A Twitter.
That's— and so I'm gonna stay tuned.
Do that.
Um, but I think that in your 20s, like potentially go work at Facebook, go work at Google, get those high-paying jobs.
I think that, by the way, I think, I think that's a good way to get a win.
Get, get, you know, do that for a few years while you're, you know, do your, doing your, your learning on the side, like join a DAO, build a community, build a newsletter, do whatever you want to do. It would really that speaks to you while you're, you're not, you know, yeah. So you're making money and you're learning. What more could you ask for? And then my, and you know, just because you gave a crypto, uh, one, Sean, I think that, and, and I spent a lot of time in NFT land and Web3 land too. I think that NFTs are going to 99% free to mint. It's gonna be a free, freedom in thing, I think the idea of selling NFTs will be a very small thing.
Okay, so what happens? Why would I give away something for free? Or what's my incentive? So what happens after it's free to mint?
So, yeah, I mean, you know, okay, so the idea right now, it's like people are selling NFTs and projects for 0.05 to 0.2, let's say, on average, for some of these, you know, 10,000 PFP projects. I think that, um, that's gonna burn out at some point, and I think we're starting to see it burn out a little bit. And I think that, you know, did you see the 100 Thieves drop?
Yeah, they, uh, what did they do exactly? They did a much smaller amount.
So they basically, first of all, it was in gaming, and gamers hate NFTs. So the fact that they did a successful gaming NFT launch, like Obviously kudos to them, but basically they won this championship and they were like, okay, in order to get this like collectible, you can go grab it. It's free. We're not saying it's gonna be worth anything. And they got 700,000 people to collect this collectible.
And, and it was like a trophy, right?
It's a trophy. And then they make money on if there's value, right? So if it grows in value, they get royalties. And I think that's what you're going to see a lot of is like creators and big communities basically doing free to mint. Even though people seem, you know, people today think that selling NFTs is the future. I don't think so. Right.
By the way, I'm going to change mine to just simplify it. Instead of starting a company, buy an existing business. I think that is the most overlooked, obvious thing for a smart person to do. Is how do you take your market risk to essentially zero? You buy a business that's already working and profitable, and you just say, cool, I'm a better operator than this person, or I know about a different form of operation than they do. And so I can grow this using Facebook ads, or I can grow this using outsourcing, or I can grow this using, you know, code or whatever it is. So you hear almost no narrative— you hear tons of narrative around the genius visionary startup, start a new thing, building a new project, launching a new thing. And like, you hear like one or two examples of people buying businesses. And I think that for most smart people, buying a business is a far better idea than starting.
Yeah, but when you're in your 20s, my pushback to that is like, when you're in your, let's say, early 20s, like, do you know, like, you're saying that now, but I think like, yeah, um, you do need like that operational experience And that's where my point is, um, you gotta like, it's worthwhile to, to just potentially take a high-paying job and then on the side kind of like experiment and do stuff.
Yeah, that's true. I'm not really limiting mine to the 20s. I think, uh, I'm still making mistakes in my 30s, so I'm assuming other people are too. And I guess it's more like, what narrative do I hear now that's easy to float along with that I'm like, you know what, actually I don't, I don't actually think this is true. And like, that's the one for me, which is like, for most people who want to be entrepreneurial, they default to starting a business. And I think actually maybe it should be the opposite. Maybe you should default to taking on an existing business and growing it and only create a new thing if you like actually have a new invention in mind, a new idea that really you can't shake in your head versus like just starting a new startup. I like that because because you wanna be an entrepreneur, right?
