Greg Isenberg and Sam Parr discuss early bets on Uber and their crypto allocation strategies. Greg recommends keeping 2-5% of net worth in crypto as a hedge; he's at 7.5% and Sam at 9%. Both plan to hold long-term and advocate a "pay-to-learn" approach: invest small amounts in emerging sectors for exposure and experience.
I definitely wasn't like, "Hey, like, take my money." So you ended up being within reach of being able to invest in Uber, right? Yeah. Because you knew Garrett, and then do you remember the first time you heard that he was doing this Uber thing?
I mean, I don't remember exactly, but I remember when I met him. Uber was a thing, it wasn't obviously what it is today, but I definitely wasn't like, "Hey, take my money." I think, but I guess you live and you learn.
You live and you learn.
I have a friend who Garrett pitched him, and he was in New York City, this is one of the smartest guys I know. Garrett pitched him on the seed round of Uber, and this is in Manhattan. He was just like, Garrett, I don't know what you're thinking about, man. People aren't going to press a button and a car is going to come. You raise your hand, look at me. He raises his hand, a car comes. Right, watch this. Watch this, bam. It's about creating 10x better product. This isn't 10x, quote unquote.
Yeah, that's true. In New York it actually wasn't, right?
It wasn't.
A whole bunch of other places it was, right? It's like people now with crypto, they're like, oh, watch this credit card, boom, paid for coffee, I'm done. Uh, you know, look at this bank, you know, don't need to worry about my money. It's like, well, yeah, but that's not the experience for most people in most of the world. And so maybe this doesn't solve your problem, but it's going to solve somebody's.
Exactly. So, you know, are you a crypto guy? Am I a crypto guy? I, um, I have some crypto. I— not enough, but I have some crypto. I dabble. I mean, my whole thing is like everyone should have 2 to 5% of their net worth in crypto as a hedge, right?
I calculated the other day, I think I'm at 9%, um, because I was like, am I going a little too crazy with this? But then I was like, no, no, it's okay, it's at 9%. That's, that's except— it's in the acceptable range.
I'm at 7.5%.
—so it also grows, right? So as it grows, the thing is, are you going to sell off? No. Um, no. So yeah, not, not gonna, not gonna sell off.
Um, we'll see if this ages well, this podcast. The other—
yeah, exactly. The other thing is like pay to learn in a way, right? It's like, dude, okay, this is interesting. I need to get in the game. I need to get a little bit of skin in the game just to like be, be, um, you know, if not like sort of driving things in that, that space, but at least I'm in the passenger seat or the back seat or the trunk. Like, I'm involved in the journey of where that's going by putting a little bit of skin in the game. So, I highly recommend that too because that's been my approach with a lot of things now is just pay to learn. Right.
Yeah, I think like for me, like I learn best when I'm just like pushed into the ground. Just like push me into the arena and like listen, like I've lost a lot of opportunity and I've learned a lot of things. And you just have to assume that you're in it for the long game and like life is long hopefully. And that you have enough at-bats. It's all about at-bats, like getting at-bat, trying different things, you know, build good relationships. In the end, you'll be fine if you learn and if you have a lot of at-bats.
