My First Million: #180 with Furqan Rydhan - What it's Like Co-founding a $20B Company, Hardware for Mind Control & Vertical Farming

All right.

Quick break to tell you about another podcast that we're interested in right now, HubSpot

just launched a Shark Tank rewatch podcast called Another Bite.

Every week, the hosts relive the latest and greatest pitches from Shark Tank, from Squatty

Potty to the Mench on a Bench to Ring Doorbell, and they break down why these pitches were

winners or losers, and each company's go-to-market strategy, branding, pricing, valuation, everything.

Basically all the things you want to know about how to survive the tank and scale your

company on your own.

If you want to give it a listen, you can find another bite on whatever podcast app

you listen to, like Apple or Spotify, or whatever you're using right now.

All right.

Back to the show.

This episode is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, but what is the HubSpot Podcast

Network?

That's right.

It's a new thing by HubSpot.

They started with our podcast, and now they're branching into more and more podcasts with

experts in different business areas.

So you might have a podcast about marketing, or sales, or operations, or customer service,

and we're going to go over through the different podcasts on this network.

Some are more entertaining, some are more informational, some are a good mix of both.

That's what we try to do here.

And HubSpot's goal here is to have on-demand mentors.

So if you're an entrepreneur, you're a startup, you're scaling up, you're going to be able

to hear practical tips and inspirational stories by listening to the different podcasts on

their network, which by the way, I think this is a smart idea.

Too many brands just try to sell you their thing.

HubSpot, I love their approach here.

Just put out great, valuable, free content, and help more companies succeed, and the more

companies that we help succeed, the more we'll eventually come back to us, sort of like a

good karma kind of thing.

So listen, learn, and grow with HubSpot Podcast Network, HubSpot.com slash Podcast Network.

I got one more in a different space that I think Sam will love, but Sean, I told you

about this book I read about vertical farming, and basically, like I read this book-

Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.

You guys just were talking about crypto stuff, and then he just said, I've got something

I think Sam will like, farming.

Yeah, wait a minute.

Did that make him a redneck to you?

I liked it too.

Yeah.

I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to, I put my all in it

like days off on a road, let's travel never looking back.

All right.

We have a special guest on the pod today, Furcon is here, he's my old co-founder, probably

the smartest guy I know, especially tech-wise.

So we talked about a bunch of things ranging from his last company, Applovin, which just

went public at a $20, $30 billion valuation.

So we talked about the humble beginnings of that and all the way to a massive IPO.

What he's doing with his money, so you win the lottery, what are you going to do?

And he talks about his new project that he's building out.

And then we talked about a bunch of cool things that he shows me.

So every week, I do a call with him called the cool shit hour, where I just sit there

on video and I just say, hey, show me cool shit that you're interested in, because he's

like a total tech nut, he's on the bleeding edge of everything.

And so that's my hack to learn a bunch of things before they go mainstream.

And so he talks about some hardware stuff that he's really interested in, like a brain

wave measuring device that he's wearing.

He talks about crypto, and then we talk about vertical farming and the future of that.

So a bunch of cool topics on that side.

I would say there's some part of the crypto stuff that might be over your head.

So too many terms, acronyms, stuff you don't know about.

Here's my advice.

Two ways you could still get value, even if you don't fully get it, because, hey, I only

half get it.

Furgon's usually 10 steps ahead of me.

And so what I've learned in knowing Furgon for like almost a decade now is when he thinks

something's interesting, instead of just saying, I don't understand that, that's weird.

Lean in.

Go Google it later.

Look it up.

If I had just followed a bunch of the things he was interested in, I would have made a

killing investment-wise over the last decade.

And I've learned the hard way that that's what I should do.

The second thing is he shared a bunch of general advice about how he went about his career.

College dropout, choosing jobs that weren't the highest paying job and why he chose it,

what he kind of optimizes for, I thought there was some good stuff in there.

So if you are not subscribed to this podcast, if you're just listening to this podcast,

maybe your friend told you about it, you know what you need to do.

Open up the podcast app, Apple, the iTunes app, or open up Spotify.

On Spotify, you click follow.

On the Apple podcast app, you're going to click subscribe.

We are climbing the charts.

I think we're number 12 in maybe business or investing category.

And we are breaking into that top 10 and we're not leaving when we get there.

So how do we do that?

Subscribe.

If you've enjoyed this podcast, you get value out of it.

Just hit the button.

That's all you got to do.

Hit the button.

Thank you.

So Sean and I are both wearing Harvard shirts.

I actually planned this.

I saw you a screenshot of you testing and I went and grabbed my Harvard shirt.

I was about to go on this big like, what a coincidence.

This is amazing.

No, I do have one that I wear, but I saw you were wearing it.

So I wanted to wear the same thing because we normally wear black t-shirts.

Yeah, and you know, for the record, neither of us went to Harvard, but we both do this

thing where we'll wear Harvard stuff and then people will be like, oh, Harvard.

And then you respond, you're like, miss that campus.

Love it.

Love it there.

Yeah.

And you went on a tour and they actually went to Harvard.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They're like, oh, you wet?

Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I got a group on.

It was lovely.

They showed me around.

Oh, four?

Oh, four.

Yeah.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.