Jason Calacanis Book Signing Part 2

There's a weird thing going around though. We, we hate people who are powerful and rich and smart in society right now. We hate people who want to achieve. There's a lot of hate in the world right now. People feel kind of upset. Some people feel powerless. We need to admire the people who want to change the world. We— there's nothing Bad about wanting power or money or success. These are noble things. If you go out and you build big companies and you acquire large amounts of money and you acquire power, then you can shape and bend the world to the way you want it to be. So aspire to be powerful, aspire to make money, aspire to build big companies, think big. And everybody who you grew up with and all the people around you, with the exception of the people here in your cohort who are also entrepreneurs, but be prepared to be hated. Be prepared for people to tell you you can't do it. People are negative and people don't— people who are down don't like to see successful people. That's why you need to surround yourself with winners. And when the people in your life who are doubting you or have negative things to say about you becoming an entrepreneur and they tell you it'll never work, yeah, no shit. I'm doing something that is innovative. Of course, there's a long list up here of all the reasons of why I'm going to fail. I have the list. It's obvious. If I'm going to try to land a rocket after it's gone to space, I know this shit's going to blow up a couple of times, but if I make it land without blowing up, I will have changed the world. And Elon did it eventually. And I see this over and over again. Everybody likes to doubt. Everybody likes to look for the crack in the windshield. People see a stain on the shirt. They see somebody who's a little awkward. But all these companies start awkward. All the design is always bad in the beginning. There's always compromises, not enough resources. Don't be afraid if your shit is not tight in the beginning. Nobody's is. Uber Taxi, terrible name. It's not a taxi, it's a Lincoln Town Car. Why are we calling it Uber Taxi? And the car is going sideways down the street like it's spinning out or flipping over because we haven't figured out the technology to make the taxi on the map go in the right direction. 17 of the 20 people I introduced Travis and Uber to didn't invest. 3 did. One of them told me, you don't want to be in that dirty, horrible business. Just make software and sell it to cab companies, and you can just sell 1,000 different cab companies in America the software for $1,000 a month. And you'll make $1 million a month, $12 million a year. This is one of the most famous VCs of all time told me this. Uber should be enterprise software. I looked at them and I said, I think the cab companies are the problem. They're the— they need to be disintermediated. They're not adding enough value. They said, you don't know what you're talking about. Tell Travis to make software, not the network of cars. I said, you know what? Okay, I'll tell Travis that. You know what I did? I never told Travis that. Here's the thing about being an angel investor. You have to unlearn everything you've learned. What you think will work in the world does not matter. What matters is the founder's resilience and passion for getting up every day and pursuing that goal. It doesn't matter what I think. If I think your idea is good or bad, what matters is that you want to see that product exist in the world and that you will not give up. So people always ask me, oh my God, how do you make a decision of what company to invest in, what product to invest in? I don't make it. I don't pick a market or a product. I pick people. I pick people who are indefatigable. That means they don't get tired. Resilient means they don't give up. People who have grit and people who are fearless in the face of failure. Being an entrepreneur is like being a Jedi. You have to study and you have to be focused. You have to learn the skills. And sometimes you get your arm cut off or your legs cut off. Lightsabers, dangerous, not toys. So you have to be careful when you're learning this new skill of being an entrepreneur. But it can be learned. And you have each other to help you. Nobody's in it alone. And one of the great things about the ecosystem here is that people help each other in Silicon Valley with no expectation of return. They just help each other. And other parts of the world are not like that, are they? No. Other industries are not like that. People want to hold their information close to their chest. They don't want to help each other. So welcome to Silicon Valley for those people who've been here for 2 or 3 days. You made it. You've self-selected into a group of people who realize that going the normal route and just being an employee at some big company is not going to work in this century. All of your friends who are not here, who think they're going to get jobs and who are fucking around at Coachella and watching Game of Thrones and watching 5 hours of TV a day, they are fucked. Fuck. You're seriously fucked. Because the work in this world is going to go to the people who want it the most, who are able to do it for the least amount of money, who work the hardest. 996. Who knows what 996 means? The woman from Shanghai does. What does 996 mean? I don't know. 996 are the hours they work at startups in China. 9 AM to 9 PM, 6 days a week. It's a very simple way to be successful in life. Look at the person to your left. Look at the person to your right. Whatever time they get into work, you come an hour earlier. Whatever time they leave, you stay an hour later. Whatever skills they have, you just have 10 or 20% more. I've made a career after having a 71-year average in high school of being 6 months ahead of just the normal average Joe. And I've made a fortune by just squinting when looking at a project and saying, wow, I can make a list of all the reasons of why your startup is going to fail. And then rip that page out of my book. Throw it away. And then I list the 2 or 3 reasons of why it might work. And then I say, let's focus on the 2 or 3 reasons why this might work. And when you're a race car driver, they have a term for this. They say, look at the road, not the wall. In this analogy, the wall is all the things that can go wrong. Keep your eye on the road ahead. Not the wall. Focus on what could go right. And don't be afraid of failure. 3 out of 4 startups fail? Great. Do 5. It's going to take a lot of bad luck to have 5 go wrong. And even if all 5 go wrong, well, maybe you'll angel invest in a couple of your friends' companies and it'll work out for you. I think that's about everything I can tell you. So I'll take 2 or 3 questions. Should we—