We spoke to Peter Wokwicz in this week's episode of Moneywise.
Peter is a self-described science nerd who built his wealth through dozens of smaller exits rather than one giant windfall. He runs a family office managing 60+ companies simultaneously. He is the definition of perpetual curiosity in action and unlike most wealthy entrepreneurs, he built his $500M fortune through dozens of smaller exits rather than one big windfall, all while pursuing what genuinely excites him. His mind never stops innovating – from AI that predicts music preferences by watching hand movements to a facility that extracts the world's most valuable substance from scorpions.
Like all Moneywise episodes, Peter breaks down his net worth, income, portfolio, and monthly expenses and then I, your humble host, pick it all apart.
The conversation reveals Peter's refreshing philosophy: only pursue projects that are genuinely fun, never work on anything longer than 18 months, and always push for technological breakthroughs others haven't imagined. His employees are incentivized the same way – with a base salary he tells them they "shouldn't be happy with" and commissions that drove four team members to earn over $1 million last year.
Below you'll find my summary of the episode along with the entire transcript.
And by the way...this podcast, the concept of it came from Hampton, which is my community for founders and CEOs. We host hundreds of events a year, both online and in person, and have thoughtful conversations about topics including wealth, business growth, and the things that we deal with. If you're a CEO, founder, or business owner, check this out. New Moneywise episodes come out weekly.
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Now, below are the notes and the full transcript.
Unlike many wealthy entrepreneurs who achieve their fortune through one or two massive exits, Peter has built his $500 million net worth through dozens of smaller deals. "I had a few that could've turned into big exits, but they just never turned into huge exits. But I had a lot of little exits, a lot of little things along the way, just again and again. And over time that really adds up," he explains.
His wealth-building strategy has always centered around trading time for equity rather than immediate cash. "One thing that made me unique is whenever I had the opportunity, instead of saying, pay me X dollars per day, I would say, I'll do this for nothing. Just give me equity," Peter shares. This approach allowed him to accumulate valuable stakes in companies that later became quite valuable.
Peter attributes much of his success to maintaining "velocity" – moving quickly and not getting bogged down in long-term projects. "Almost everything I can imagine anything better for the future can be done in 18 months," he says. "You got to move quick and things die. Technology. Financial world two three years. It's a death sentence."
Peter's family office, Positron Capital Management, operates unlike typical investment firms. With around 39 employees spanning various engineering disciplines, the organization follows a unique compensation model: everyone earns the same base rate of $50/hour, with substantial commissions based on project success.
"Everybody gets paid the same $50 an hour," Peter explains. "And I tell everybody in the family office you shouldn't be happy with that. You shouldn't be happy with $50 an hour." Instead, the real money comes from commissions on successful projects – last year, four employees earned over $1 million each this way.
What truly sets Peter's business model apart is his insistence that projects must be fun. "So anybody that takes on a project takes on a new product or project, it has to be something they want to do. And we have great ideas, awesome things, make tons of money off them, but they're just not fun. And so we don't do them," he states.
This philosophy stems from Peter's belief that life is too short to work on boring projects, regardless of their profit potential. His self-imposed 18-month rule ensures that he and his team remain engaged and excited about their work.
One of Peter's most unusual ventures is Venom Labs, a facility in Arizona where scorpions are "milked" for their venom – which can be worth up to $15,000 per gram, making it one of the most valuable substances in the world. The venom contains peptides used in medical research for conditions like Parkinson's disease.
"We literally have a lab with a bunch of scorpions in them," Peter says. "It's just one of the off the wall things that you just get involved with because you can help people out and it will make money from it."
His personal spending reflects his technological interests as well. When asked what he enjoys spending money on, Peter immediately mentions technology, particularly robots. "I have robots at my house. I have robots at a lab in Boston," he shares. One of his prized possessions is a Chinese-made quadruped robot that cost around $20,000 plus another $15-20,000 in tariffs and shipping costs.
Despite his wealth, Peter doesn't see the point in extravagant spending beyond his current $200,000 monthly budget. "If somebody told me I had to spend a million bucks next month on personal stuff. It's like, oh yeah, I don't know what I'd spend it on, I really don't," he admits.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of Peter's approach to life is his consistently positive outlook. "I'm very fortunate that I have a happy mind. I never remember not being happy," he states. Even when faced with challenges or problems, he views them as opportunities rather than setbacks.
"When bad things happen, I see opportunity. Bad things always happen. They always happen. But I always see that's a challenge and opportunity to do stuff and do things," he explains. This mentality drives him to constantly look for problems he can solve, whether it's wildfire management or medical research.
Unlike many wealthy individuals, Peter doesn't believe in traditional inheritance. "I don't believe in inheritance. My kids get nothing. I have a son that's in college. It's a loan. He's paying back a loan for his college," he says. Instead, he plans to channel his wealth into projects that "will lose a lot of money but do good things" as his legacy.
Peter sums up his philosophy simply: "I'll never retire, never stop working hard. It's just the work I do just becomes more fun. And to have that luxury is a great thing."
"I'll continue to give back more and do more projects that will definitely lose money. I think that'll be a shift over time. I don't know if I'll ever, like, give it all to like a charity. I kind of envision it that we'll do products that will lose a lot of money but do good things."
"I was always making more money off the financial, the investment plays than anything else I was doing operating companies. It was less time. I was making more money off that."
"I remember being bored a lot. I was bored in school. I was, you know, even bored at home because we really didn't do much. We didn't travel much. We didn't. It was very. I grew up in a small town. I just didn't have exposure to much."
"I can't imagine spending more, much more than that and being any better. If somebody told me I had to spend a million bucks next month on personal stuff. It's like, oh yeah, I don't know what I'd spend it on, I really don't."
"As a child, I remember being bored a lot. I was bored in school. I was, you know, even bored at home because we really didn't do much... I think science was my religion as a kid. I think everybody had an escape. And my escape was the universe and science."
[00:00:05] Peter Wokwicz: I'll never retire, never stop working hard. It's just the work I do just becomes more fun. And to have that luxury is is a great thing.
[00:00:14] Sam Parr: My friends, today's guest is named Peter, and he's worth $500 million. And like we do on every moneywise episode, we're going to break down his net worth, his portfolio. So how his money is allocated, his monthly expenses, his monthly income, and all the other numbers, all the other stuff that you're too embarrassed to ask. And we're going to ask that for you. Now, if you were like Peter, you probably wouldn't be motivated by money once you already made $500 million. And so why do you keep going? What are you working for? Well, for Peter, it's all about curiosity. And that curiosity. In my opinion, that's his superpower.
[00:00:47] Peter Wokwicz: How many startups are out of business that maybe had a three year product horizon because of AI? Tons. They just didn't move quick enough. You got to move quick. And it's also the fact I just don't want to get bored. You got to get in and get out today.
[00:01:01] Sam Parr: When you're as wealthy as Peter, financial success is just not really important to him. What is important is frankly just doing cool shit, which I love.
[00:01:11] Peter Wokwicz: So anybody that takes on a project takes on a new product or project, it has to be something they want to do. And we have great ideas, awesome things, make tons of money off them, but they're just not fun and so we don't do them.
[00:01:24] Sam Parr: In this episode of Money Wise with Peter, this $500 million man, we're going to talk about something that a lot of guests, they actually don't agree with, which is how Peter has chased his passion, chased his curiosity, and how money actually followed that. Normally it's the other way around. You follow the money and then you get passionate about it, or you get rich and then you do whatever you're passionate about. But that's not what Peter has done. And so we're going to talk about that. And then we're also going to talk about the numbers and get into all the nitty gritty and all that other stuff that people come for to learn about and money wise. So we're going to talk about all that stuff. And by the way, if you're new, welcome to money wise. You see on this podcast, we talked to a lot of wealthy people, the ultra high net worth people, and we want to know how much money they have, meaning with their net worth, how much money they spend, how much money they make each month, how they allocate their portfolio. We asked them all these real numbers, which frankly, it typically these conversations, if they ever happen, they're happening behind closed doors. And I thought, what the hell, let's make it a podcast so we could do this out in public. And by the way, the reason I know about these conversations, about the convos that happened, about money behind closed doors, amongst high net worth people is because I own a community called Hampton.
[00:02:32] Sam Parr: You can check it out, join Hampton. It's a community for founders, CEOs, people like that. Typically those folks are high net worth. And I'm able to see all these amazing conversations and I'm able to participate in them. And so if you are a entrepreneur who does anywhere from 3 million all the way up to like 300 million in revenue, check us out. Join Hampton. It's the place where we have a whole bunch of events, a lot of like in real life core meetings, not just stuff online, although we do have that. And so if you want to get out from behind the screen and actually meet people doing cool shit, check it out. Join Hamptons.com. And by the way, Andrew Nmami. He went out and got this interview with Peter. He's one of our correspondents. And so big shout out to him. Now let's get to it. So I think Peter's one of the wealthiest guys who we've had on the show at $500 million. We had another guy who I think was worth around a billion, 1,000,000,002. His name was Steve. You can go back and listen to that. But when you're worth $500 million, when you're worth $1 billion, what's crazy is how much your net worth can fluctuate on a daily basis because of a bunch of stuff that's out of your control. And those huge fluctuations, they're actually incredibly common. And so here's what Peter said when we asked him what his net worth was.
[00:03:44] Peter Wokwicz: It's a tough question because a lot of my money is in startups, it's in small companies, it's in investments that could go down to zero next week. It's well into nine figures. I don't know exactly, and I don't know if I'll ever know exactly. Just in the past week, I had one company that I thought was maybe worth a couple million dollars, but turned out to be worth about 20. And I had another company that I shut down that was worth 30 at one time. So to gauge what that's worth, or even if you have some, if you have money in a startup and it's not liquid and that startup's worth $50 million, what is it really worth? It's not worth $50 million. So it's a very hard question. You know, all I know now, just from the numbers I see, is it's well into the nine figures.
[00:04:26] Sam Parr: Oh, and by the way, he spends around $200,000 per month. And we're going to break that all down and we'll get the value of his multiple houses and the new one he's building. Hang on for that.
[00:04:35] Andrew: How many companies do you have?
[00:04:37] Peter Wokwicz: Oh, I'm thinking of a spreadsheet I have, you know, for this, I think it's 60 something right now. Yeah.
[00:04:43] Andrew: That you've all incubated.
[00:04:45] Peter Wokwicz: I would say incubated or have a large investment in. Yeah, a large investment where we have controlling and controlling investment.
[00:04:52] Sam Parr: We're going to talk in a second about that incubator and how it works financially and how it influences every aspect of his personal finances. But first, let's start by understanding how far back his curiosity motivator goes, which is, by the way, all the way back.
[00:05:07] Peter Wokwicz: You know, going back to very young days. And we kind of had a very dodgy basement in my house, and that was kind of like my lab. I remember getting electrocuted like once a week. So I was doing stuff and I was just creating stuff. I was making stuff, just trying to take things apart. You know, I just remember that I think that really spurred a lot of curiosity over time just how things work. Building little stuff. But I was always looking towards the future. I think it's like, okay, I didn't really have the skills at the time to create good things or change the world, but at the time it was very good. A lot of exposure to a lot of different things had the freedom to kind of do what I wanted to do, but didn't necessarily have the assets or the money to buy things that I could do stuff with.
[00:05:48] Andrew: Did that piss you off.
[00:05:50] Peter Wokwicz: A little bit? Because I think when I saw other people out there, you know, that maybe had more vehicles to do what they wanted to do. You know, a young age, I was I was a little bit jealous of that, and it inspired me to get somewhere in the future so I could be able to do that.
[00:06:03] Sam Parr: Now, where does this curiosity come from? Boredom.
[00:06:07] Peter Wokwicz: As a child, I remember being bored a lot. I was bored in school. I was, you know, even bored at home because we really didn't do much. We didn't travel much. We didn't. It was very. I grew up in a small town. I just didn't have exposure to much. And I think that was always a goal I had as a kid that, hey, I want to have exposure to the world. I want to travel, I want to do stuff. I want to see other stuff out there because I didn't get that as a kid, I really didn't. I know it's a little bit opposite of the answer. You expected that everybody encouraged me and everybody pursued that. But that wasn't the case. No.
[00:06:35] Andrew: Maybe it's the opposite, right? It's like that's what drove you?
[00:06:37] Peter Wokwicz: Yes, I think it was.
[00:06:39] Andrew: And now look how it's paid off.
[00:06:40] Peter Wokwicz: Yeah. Because that curiosity never left. And, you know, maybe if I achieved some of that when I was younger, that I wouldn't have the desire when I'm older to do that. And I think, yeah, it wasn't encouraged that much. I was I was a tech science person, you know, that's what I was I Jeez, I think I think science was my religion as a kid. I think everybody had an escape. And my escape was the universe and science. And I used to spend Saturday mornings in the library reading science books and financial books after a while, but I just remember being bored a lot.
[00:07:08] Sam Parr: Peter also spent a good deal of his early adulthood being bored, which led him to look for more interesting outlets.
[00:07:15] Peter Wokwicz: So out of college, I worked for Deloitte, I did technology strategy for companies, and I was on the road all the time. I caught a flight Sunday night, got back late Friday and then every Sunday would I do Sunday? I would do my side stuff, my side hustles. I would do that every Sunday. And I just did that. One thing that made me unique is whenever I had the opportunity, instead of saying, pay me X dollars per day, I would say, I'll do this for nothing. Just give me equity and I'll take equity. And over time, that built up where now I had this company that, you know, I was their interim CIO and now they just ipoed and I had that equity that was worth a lot. So that's just another way of making money, because I had the financial acuity to understand that I'd rather have equity than than cash in the pocket. It really helped. And looking back at that, that was great decisions because a lot of money came out of that.
[00:08:06] Andrew: How much were you making at Deloitte?
[00:08:07] Peter Wokwicz: Oh, my first year. Oh, I think it was 39,000 a year. I was probably underpaid, but it was it was a good chance. I mean, it was a, you know, a great place to be and worked with great people, but I was poor. You know, times I had to decide, hey, am I going to make rent on my apartment this month on time or, or eat? I had negative balances in accounts.
[00:08:26] Andrew: Were you living in Chicago?
[00:08:27] Peter Wokwicz: Yeah. Living in Chicago? Yeah.
[00:08:29] Andrew: So funny.
[00:08:29] Peter Wokwicz: I lived in Chicago just because I was traveling so much. It was a great place to live.
[00:08:32] Andrew: It's so central.
[00:08:33] Peter Wokwicz: Yeah. So central.
[00:08:34] Andrew: When you left, how much were you making?
[00:08:36] Peter Wokwicz: Maybe I would say 120 K. I didn't really start getting money in the bank account until I really did a lot of that interim advisory type stuff. And I realized that, you know, some of these bigger companies pay a lot of money for that. And so the ones that I couldn't get equity in, the bigger ones, You know, I'd make probably like $2,000 a day, you know, for some of the interim stuff I did, which was, you know, a lot of money at the time. And I banked a lot of that. And so I banked a lot of that. And then over time, that equity and I invest in startups, start investing in startups. But what I'd always do was unique. I would give my time as part of that investment. So I'd say, okay, I'll give you $100,000 in investment, but I want to be a $200,000 investment because I'm going to put, you know, I'm going to do a day a week for the next six months and help out, and that's the way it often structured. Also, at the time, I also loved just going to companies that were maybe not in good shape, kind of like cleaning them up, especially from a technology perspective and putting them in the right track.
[00:09:29] Peter Wokwicz: And I did that for a lot, a lot of companies, and I was in and out, and I just loved the fact that I could come into a company for 3 to 6 months and leave and leave things better and move on to the next one. Otherwise, you get bored. And I've always had an 18 month philosophy. I never want to do something more than 18 months, and that's one of our like, we're investing in a startup or creating a company. If we can't get to a good point in 18 months, we're not going to do it. And that leads us, leads us out of so many deals out there that we know we can make money on, but we just don't. I just don't have the patience. I don't have the patience to to do something for five years. I couldn't, you know, do something that I got to wait 5 or 10 years to.
[00:10:05] Andrew: Ten, right?
[00:10:06] Peter Wokwicz: I'm just that would frustrate me so much. I would just hate that.
[00:10:10] Sam Parr: Now because of the strategy. Peters wealth. It's not the result of a singular event, like selling one company and having one big windfall.
[00:10:17] Peter Wokwicz: I almost consider myself less lucky for maybe a better term, because I had a few that could've turned into big exits, but they just never turned a huge exits. But I had a lot of little exits, a lot of little things along the way, just again and again. And over time that really adds up. And I think a lot of that is just having the financial acumen to say, I would rather structure it this way than that way. When you're looking to the future equity.
[00:10:38] Sam Parr: And just so you know, this isn't the only path to this level of wealth. In our episode with Oscar, who's worth something like $3 billion, he talked about how he basically only invested in his own company, which is now publicly traded, and he's been running for something like 50 years. But for Peter, being super savvy about his investing, it's one of the biggest reasons why he's worth $500 million.
[00:11:00] Peter Wokwicz: I'll totally expose it here. That one thing I was making a lot of money on at the time. I'm a math guy, too. I mean, I'm science, math, and always very good at math. And I was really, you know, seeing the financial markets really, in a mathematical sense, back when that was just starting to be in vogue. And I knew I couldn't pick the big guys, so I can't do the high frequency stuff. I couldn't do that thing, but I could do the little stuff and I would find more like thinly traded stuff that the big guys weren't in, that I could make $10 a day on and I could bundle enough of these up bottom out, where now I have 100 at $10 a day, and the big guys weren't doing that. And I literally think for a while there, I was probably the only person doing this type of stuff that, you know, that cared about making $10 a day.
[00:11:46] Sam Parr: So the thing about people who start businesses is they love the beginning, the 0 to 1. A lot of people, they hate that, but entrepreneurs love that stuff. They love new projects. And so if you're an entrepreneur that probably resonates with you, and it's likely that you're already fueled by curiosity, or maybe you're just running away from the idea that you don't want to be bored. Which is why a lot of us who start and then eventually sell a company, we get depressed, which is a topic we talk about a ton on this podcast because we love building stuff and we love moving and we love starting. And when we're not doing that, we are just kind of bummed. We don't really know what to do. That trait of starting new stuff. It also makes us pretty eager to keep moving fast, and to keep trying new things, and to follow all of these new ideas that we have in our heads. I bet you have this notebook or Google Doc or something like that, where you've got this huge list of ideas that you want to start, or these domains that you own, and you just are itching to go and start like 20 different things. That energy. The love of starting stuff sometimes makes us have shiny object syndrome, where if we already have something that's working, or even if it's sort of working, but it just requires more grit and more hard work. It takes our eye off the prize, and we start trying to do a ton of different things, and we lose focus. And it takes a lot of discipline to stay on task a lot of the time. And if you lose focus, I think you're ruining a ton of stuff that potentially is working. Just requires another decade of work. But if channeled appropriately, this eagerness to get to the next thing I do think it can be an advantage. Peter actually said his desire for velocity is part of the reason why so many things he's been involved in have succeeded.
[00:13:27] Peter Wokwicz: Almost everything I can imagine anything better for the future can be done in 18 months. And we've had people in startups come to us where it's like, okay, here's our plan. We'll get it done in three years. And we've had success of coming in and I'll provide an engineer and we'll get it done in 18 months. So it's that velocity. I always talk about velocity. You got to move quick and things die. Technology. Financial world two three years. It's a death sentence. Things change so quick. How many startups are out of business that maybe had a three year product horizon because of AI? Tons. They just didn't move quick enough. You got to move quick. And it's also the fact I just don't want to get bored and you got to get in and get out. There's one startup we were looking at investing in. They were developing a product for about a year. It was an AI based social media product. What are my AI guys using? I think OpenAI and Gemini developed their whole product in about four hours. So you got to move quick and you have to and that's something that excites me. That's something I am that and and velocity and I use that term all the time with my employees velocity, you know, you got to get it done. You got to got to move it forward as quickly as possible.
[00:14:37] Sam Parr: That company is his incubator and wealth management firm, Positron Capital Management. I'll dive deeper into how it operates and how its personal finances are intertwined with it a little bit later. But before we get to that, I want to do a quick breakdown of his financial journey. We're going to start with the first small exit that opened up to everything else that was possible.
[00:14:55] Peter Wokwicz: The first one I remember actually, like said, wow, this is a really big check. We were doing some research, a couple engineers, and we actually developed a color changing LED bulbs. But our version of it and this goes this goes back like 14 years, but we got an offer from a large light bulb company just out of the blue for IP. And it's like oh okay. Yeah yeah maybe we won't. We don't want to bring product to market. That's like a hassle and stuff like that. So we don't. And we got a lot of big names against us that will probably try to shut us down. And so we said, okay, let's sell it. And I remember getting $900,000 check for that IP. And I was like, wow, this is actually real. This is actually real money.
[00:15:31] Andrew: How old were you?
[00:15:32] Peter Wokwicz: Early 30s probably. Yeah, that was the first one I remember that was like, wow, this is this is something.
[00:15:36] Andrew: What are the next paychecks look like.
[00:15:37] Peter Wokwicz: After.
[00:15:38] Andrew: That? Yeah.
[00:15:38] Peter Wokwicz: Yeah. You know, I sold out some startups. I had some companies I had equity in that ipoed.
[00:15:43] Andrew: Were they about the same size?
[00:15:44] Peter Wokwicz: No, no. They got bigger. Yeah, they got bigger for sure. I've sold companies for maybe $30 million. Was at the high end.
[00:15:52] Andrew: That's what you got personally?
[00:15:54] Peter Wokwicz: Yeah, but there were a lot in there that were. Let's just get out, you know, for a few hundred thousand dollars, you know? So there's a lot in there like that.
[00:16:02] Andrew: So you're telling me that you've developed a net worth that's deep into the nine figures on a bunch of checks that are $30 million and below?
[00:16:10] Peter Wokwicz: Yeah. For sure. And a lot of those, a lot smaller. I mean, a lot of those under a million.
[00:16:14] Andrew: So how many sellouts are we talking about? If you had to guess.
[00:16:17] Peter Wokwicz: You know, now now we're doing them all the time. But if I go back probably in the 40s.
[00:16:22] Andrew: You've sold 40 companies.
[00:16:23] Peter Wokwicz: Yeah. And some companies, almost a strong word. It's IP around product. Yeah. Because that's what everybody enjoys. They enjoy developing a product. At least that's what I do.
[00:16:38] Sam Parr: Not what I really want to talk about in this episode is how Peter uses his wealth to create a playground for innovation, both for himself and the team that he has at his incubator. Look, by the way, I totally get it. If you're broke or you're still kind of up and coming doing stuff just to make money, which I've done before, it's necessary. And I don't think you should ever feel bad about pursuing money just to pursue money versus following your passion. But even if you are in the position of being a broke person who's just trying to make things work and get your first hit, I do think that something you have to constantly think to yourself is, how do I add value in the world? And how do I get passionate? And how do I get excited about what I'm working on? And to be fair, if you want something to be successful, curiosity and excitement, I think, is absolutely necessary for meaningful growth and big outcomes. It's it's hard to have a huge success or even a mild success when you're not, like, terribly excited about what you're doing every day because it's really hard and it takes a long time. But after you've already made it, after you're in that crowd who listened to this podcast, you might have a little bit of money or you've created a comfortable life or a little bit of wealth for yourself.
[00:17:46] Sam Parr: I frankly think it's kind of soul crushing just to do something to make that number bigger when you're already pretty comfortable. I think that you have to have some type of passion in order to find that fulfillment, to make getting up each day truly worth it. And by the way, the thing that you're passionate about, it may not be the thing that does make the most money. I have this small little project I made. It helps people write better. It's called Copy that, copy that. It actually only makes like 5% of my income every month. It's like a fraction of my income and doesn't even really matter at all for my net worth. But I love it. I get so much freaking joy working on that thing that it just makes me happy. And I like having those passion projects. Now, if you're like Peter, he has more money than really anyone needs. I mean, you have plenty of money at $500 million. And so at this stage, the stage that he's at, he's able to double down on what excites him. And for a lot of his project, he ignores profitability altogether. He's using everything that he's built, both in business and personally, to fully embrace the things that he finds fun and fulfilling. That's the dream.
[00:18:54] Peter Wokwicz: I've always realized. You know, I was always making more money off the financial, the investment plays than anything else I was doing operating companies. It was less time. I was making more money off that. And it was really a structure to kind of protect that and set that up and have it go into the future. And actually people have people under a structure that, okay, now I work for this family office versus, hey, I work for this business that's three layers deep, that does some software stuff, but I'm not doing software. I'm doing quant stuff, you know, and it's like it doesn't make sense. So that really inspired to kind of create the family office. And I've always been independent and the family office still has that same mentality, same velocity. Our models, you know, have fun and do good for the world. And it has to fit within those categories anything we do. So anybody that takes on a project takes on a new product or project. It has to be something they want to do. And we have great ideas, awesome things, make tons of money off them, but they're just not fun. And so we don't do them. And people, you know, there's great products out there also that we can do. But the time frame is just too long. And to me that's just not fun. And we don't want to be stuck in something for many, many years. So.
[00:19:59] Andrew: So you started this family office. It's your office? Yes. And it's your money? Yes. How much money did you start it with?
[00:20:05] Peter Wokwicz: Yeah. I think what I designate under the family office initially, I think I remember, like about a $30 million allocation strictly under the family office entity. Um, let's put a lot more in since then. And obviously just the growth of that. I mean, it's very accelerated growth now. I would I would say if I look back on the last dozen years, most of the growth in monetary value has come from existing cash, for lack of better term cash that we've invested in, not necessarily startups or new products, but just through investment strategies and everything we have under the family office, we call plays. They're not projects, they're not products, they're plays. And I think that goes back to my youth, you know, have fun and play and do all that. And that's what they really are. You know, we're playing with something. And for every every you know, ten we'll dig into one will actually come to some fruition. And one out of every five of those will actually spin off a company for. So there's a lot of failure in there, a lot of failure. And sometimes that failure is costly. And you can spend a lot of money on it a lot of time. And but we want to fail fast. And I think that's a term you hear all over the place today in the business world fail fast. But it's so true.
[00:21:17] Peter Wokwicz: Sometimes we'll realize we'll get into something and we'll realize that, wow, we just can't quite do this yet. The technology is not there or it's way too expensive. And so a lot of times we're breaking through barriers. A lot of these we're breaking through barrier after barrier and say, hey, I don't think we're going to do that. And then you get through and it's like, wow, okay, I don't think we'll get through that. And then you get through it. And these are all tech problems. And if you can get through it to the end, then you have something that nobody's done before. And that's what excites me is to do that, that nobody's ever done this before. Nobody's create this product before. Whether it's a physical product, whether it's a software product, or even whether it's a financial play that I often ask myself, why has nobody done this before? Why is there margin in this? A lot of times the answer is because nobody thought of it. Nobody put these connections together. That's what I love. I love doing that. I love just doing, being the first to do something that's ever been done and to get it out there and get to an end around that, which is a great feeling. It's a really great feeling because there's a lot in this world that nobody's ever done.
[00:22:13] Andrew: What other place are you running?
[00:22:15] Peter Wokwicz: Oh, yeah. It's. Yeah.
[00:22:17] Andrew: Give me a few.
[00:22:18] Peter Wokwicz: It's well over 60. I mean, tons of them. Everybody's talking about AI right now. I mean, the two hottest things in the world right now are. Are I changing the world? We already have reached the the point where AI is smarter, better than humans. We're already there. We just don't realize we're in it. But but it is. And so some of the stuff we're doing around, like AI is we're doing a lot on the visual side, A lot of recognition around people. So for example, one product we have, which I told you about Andrew, is it actually recognizes your music preferences based on what you look like, based on your age, what you're wearing, how animated you are. You know, that's just one example of something that we're doing with with AI right now that it's teaching us we're teaching the AI, but I would have never guessed that one of the indications of what kind of music you like is how much you move your hands. It's like, okay, well, okay. Wow. Okay. If you move your hands a lot, you like this type of music, which I would never have guessed. So the AI world, I mean, we're much better than humans already doing that type of stuff.
[00:23:14] Andrew: When we first met Peter. The thing I remember about you is, one, your goal of doing good and having fun. I really resonate with that. And two Venom Labs. Tell us about that.
[00:23:25] Peter Wokwicz: Yeah. So it goes back and I add it to my list. Years ago, when I ran to somebody that was doing research with some peptides from venom, from snake and scorpion venom and it's like, man, you know, we can't get enough venom. I know we can get it two months out of the year. And we're actually really making progress on this, you know, from a medical perspective. And we're doing things for Parkinson's. And it's like, boy, you know, that really sucks. You know, it's probably a problem I can solve. So we literally, you know, out in Arizona, we have a lab with a bunch of scorpions that are milked. And there's one scorpion that the venom from. It's the most valuable substance in the world. Per gram. It's about $15,000 per gram. Sometimes it can go higher. It's the most valuable substance in the world. And just to, you know, have that and be able to create that is something that can do good. And, you know, as we're continuing to ramp up, they're putting more money into it. We're going to help a lot of people. So we literally have lab with a bunch of scorpions in them that are scorpions.
[00:24:21] Andrew: Are we talking about do you know, I.
[00:24:22] Peter Wokwicz: Think we're buying a bunch more now, but I think maybe we have 1000.
[00:24:25] Andrew: They get shipped in from Africa or like.
[00:24:27] Peter Wokwicz: Yeah, places. Yeah. So yeah, that's just one of the off the wall things that you just get involved with because you can you can help people out and it will make money from it. We will we'll make money from it.
[00:24:36] Andrew: That's incredible. You're leading this family office. It's your capital. Tell me about the team that you have supporting you.
[00:24:43] Peter Wokwicz: So, yeah, a decent number of employees and contractors. And we kind of have, like a company contractor. We're at about 39. Everybody has different skills. We have people on the financial side and then have engineers, you know, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, aerospace engineers, RF engineers. So we have all those type of people involved and everybody's busy. You know, we get to kind of choose their path. And how are.
[00:25:05] Andrew: They how are they incentivized.
[00:25:06] Peter Wokwicz: Yeah. So it's pretty easy. So employee or contractor or whatever your structure of your if you're part of the family office, it's $50 an hour. That's what you get.
[00:25:15] Andrew: Everybody gets paid the same.
[00:25:16] Peter Wokwicz: Yeah. Everybody gets paid the same $50 an hour. And the logic on that was back in the days when I would go into a startup or invest in a startup for the executives, I think what's like a living wage in New York, Chicago, LA, a living wage is 100 K a year. You know, if you kind of want to have a decent life and, you know, do stuff. And that sounds like a lot of money. But in New York it's really not. And that's kind of the way I structured it. And that's like, okay, we'll pay you 100 K a year. But anything you make, anything if you want to do really well, it's outside of that 100 K don't you shouldn't be happy with that. And I tell everybody in the family office you shouldn't be happy with that. You shouldn't be happy with $50 an hour. So then on top of that, there's a commission, any any margin we make off anything or any sometimes as goals like we had one like, okay, when this payload launches on a satellite, you get ten grand, you know, so it's also goal based, it's margin based, but off the, you know, just off the margin last year just I mean, we had four people, you know, over $1 million just on the margin component. So and a lot of that will continue. It keeps going. So that's how our structure we have. So you have an incentive. But you shouldn't be happy with that $50 an hour if you are something's wrong. And I do get mad at people and they seem content at making $50 an hour or happy because that's not the goal. It's to get way above and beyond that.
[00:26:33] Sam Parr: So Peter's goal on the business side, it's very simple. It's to pursue projects that excite him, inspire others and are genuinely fun. I do want to know how does this curiosity driven mindset. How does that shape his personal spending? And that's where it gets really tricky, because he intentionally blends his business with his passions and entertainment. And that line of personal and professional, you know, what's business versus what's just for my life? It becomes very blurred.
[00:27:00] Peter Wokwicz: At a personal level. It's probably travel. I kind of went through a story a little bit about how, you know, when I was younger, I didn't get to travel a lot. So I think one of my goals when I could afford I wanted to travel and see the world. And I've seen the world. I've been all over the place, and I often don't tie it in. Like whenever I travel, it's always business and personal. It's never fully one or the other. I've never going to a place and not finding business ideas.
[00:27:27] Andrew: I feel like you're very interconnected in that sense. Yeah, like you don't see separation, I would imagine.
[00:27:32] Peter Wokwicz: Which is probably a bad thing because I can't shut down. I never remember an occasion where I didn't work.
[00:27:37] Andrew: It's a bad thing for you or it's a bad thing for your family.
[00:27:39] Peter Wokwicz: Both. One thing. If I could improve my life, it would be able to be able to shut down totally for a day, which I can't do. There's always something I got to do, and I.
[00:27:47] Andrew: Meditate, man.
[00:27:48] Peter Wokwicz: I can't.
[00:27:49] Andrew: Do you meditate?
[00:27:50] Peter Wokwicz: No, no, maybe I should, I should start.
[00:27:52] Andrew: You should try. What do you think? What do you think you're spending on a monthly basis personally?
[00:27:56] Peter Wokwicz: Uh, probably $200,000.
[00:27:58] Andrew: Probably 200 K a month.
[00:27:59] Peter Wokwicz: Yeah, 200 K a month. Just on kind of the personal stuff. And that that varies across everything. But, I mean, there's been times in there where I've tracked it and it's been higher, but for good reason. During Covid and things like that, you'd travel more. You'd be, you know, some of your expenses would be more because you couldn't get somewhere. So you had to, you know, pay somebody to do something or something. So it kind of got more expensive there. But yeah, it's about that range. And I can't imagine spending more, much more than that and being any better. If somebody told me I had to spend a million bucks next month on personal stuff. It's like, oh yeah, I don't know what I'd spend it on, I really don't.
[00:28:35] Andrew: What are your favorite things to spend money on?
[00:28:37] Peter Wokwicz: Technology. Any new tech that's coming out that I can buy ahead of anybody else to play?
[00:28:43] Andrew: What's an example?
[00:28:44] Peter Wokwicz: Uh, robots. You know, I have robots at my house. I have robots at a lab in Boston. And, you know, I have some really cool robots that, like.
[00:28:52] Andrew: Are they the ones that we see on Instagram? They, like, in human.
[00:28:54] Peter Wokwicz: Form? Yeah. I have one humanoid, one I have I have a quadruped, which is like, it looks like a dog. I have the only one in the US, by the way, that I, the only one that got one in the US of that of that model. It's a Chinese bot that is just amazing. It's incredible.
[00:29:07] Andrew: How much did it cost?
[00:29:08] Peter Wokwicz: You know, list price of the bot was maybe 20 K, but to get it into the US with tariffs and shipping and all that, it was probably 3540.
[00:29:17] Andrew: Okay. Tell me about your houses. What properties do you have?
[00:29:20] Peter Wokwicz: Two houses. Pretty simple.
[00:29:21] Andrew: What's the worth of those?
[00:29:22] Peter Wokwicz: Oh, um, you know, I.
[00:29:25] Andrew: Asked tough questions. Peter.
[00:29:26] Peter Wokwicz: Yeah, I know these are tough questions, but, I mean, again, you don't know the exact answers, but. Yeah, one, that's a couple million. One. That's 10 million.
[00:29:32] Andrew: You're building a new one?
[00:29:33] Peter Wokwicz: Yeah.
[00:29:34] Andrew: Tell me about that.
[00:29:35] Peter Wokwicz: Yeah, building a new house out in Arizona. And it's kind of a weird situation where you finally get to a point where you can kind of build exactly what you want. And so you can kind of be eccentric. You don't know what to do when you have the choices to do anything you want. And it makes it's actually hard. It's hard. And I'm not involved in that that much. And I don't care to be. But it's cool. It's a luxury to have where you actually can actually do that, where you kind of see a vision down the road of kind of what you want and actually getting it there, which is it's a four year process. You know, it's a long time.
[00:30:09] Sam Parr: Robots. That's a first for the show. But he is a science nerd with a ton of money. So yeah, it kind of makes sense. But even though he's living lavishly and he's spending on a lot of cool stuff like robots, Peter doesn't see his money as just a tool for making his personal life awesome. His ability to pour everything into his startups, into his projects. He sees it as his way of giving back to humanity and a way to push the boundaries of what's possible. This isn't just a business to Peter. This is how he makes his mark on the world.
[00:30:43] Peter Wokwicz: I'll continue to give back more and do more projects that will definitely lose money. I think that'll be a shift over time. I don't know if I'll ever, like, give it all to like a charity. I kind of envision it that we'll do products that will lose a lot of money but do good things. I think that's a vision that will happen where we'll drain it down that way. So have a lot of good products out there, but they won't make money and there are a lot of things to do. Like we even talked about uploading your mind. You're not going to make money off that. You could put money into it right now. You're not going to make money off it. There's probably no IP you can get. Yeah, you're not going to make money off it. So that is something that maybe start putting money into.
[00:31:20] Andrew: But it's badass.
[00:31:22] Peter Wokwicz: Yeah, but it's badass. Exactly. It's badass. And I want to be wowed. I want to be like, this is incredible. This is.
[00:31:26] Andrew: Cool. You want to take risk?
[00:31:27] Peter Wokwicz: Yeah. Take risk. Yeah. Take risk.
[00:31:29] Sam Parr: That philosophy. It extends to passing money on to his family.
[00:31:33] Peter Wokwicz: I don't believe in inheritance. My kids get nothing. I have a son that's in college. It's a loan. He's paying back a loan for his college. And so I don't believe in free rides I don't believe in. I have less respect for people when they're like third generation of family offices. I have much less respect. Unless they're doing good stuff with it. Which people do you got to make it on your own?
[00:31:54] Sam Parr: Unsurprisingly, Peter's pursuit of following his interests and seeing what inspires him and chasing that down, it's given him a sense of feeling purposeful, a sense of fulfillment. And he's happy. Although admittedly, he did have a good foundation for his happiness.
[00:32:10] Peter Wokwicz: I'm very fortunate that I have a happy mind. I never remember not being happy.
[00:32:16] Andrew: Ever. Like you've never gone through a depressive state?
[00:32:19] Peter Wokwicz: No. I've suffered, but it's always for a bigger cause. I was always in my mind. So I was always happy. Suffering. And when bad things happen, I see opportunity. Bad things always happen. They always happen. But I always see that's a challenge and opportunity to do stuff and do things. And you know, we've been through a lot, you know, even the last five years. And I saw everything that kind of happened that, wow, this is an opportunity to do stuff, this opportunity to improve the world. Like, you know, the wildfires going on. My mind's racing. You know, as soon as I saw that, I said, okay, how do I develop a fire engine that doesn't have support, life that can go into a fire, that can spray stuff? How do we get, you know, I involved? How do we get pilotless helicopters? How do we get all that stuff to actually have robotics really attack a fire? Don't have humans involved? Humans don't. Humans and fire don't mix fire in a giant container of water. Do very well together. So that just goes through my mind is like, how do we fix that? And so honestly, I I've added some stuff to my list that is around how do you fight wildfires? And I guarantee within the next year we'll probably be working on a product around.
[00:33:23] Andrew: That or something.
[00:33:23] Peter Wokwicz: Because that's where you experience those bad things. You know, you have bad things happening and what comes out of that. And so it's not always I don't really see a bad thing happening. It's like, oh, I'm depressed or I'm not happy. It's like there's opportunities.
[00:33:33] Andrew: To seize an opportunity.
[00:33:34] Peter Wokwicz: Yeah. And I the happiness hasn't related to to money at all. I love life, it's a strange concept, but I always focus on happiness. And there's no magical answer to the question other than, you know, keep moving forward and being excited for the future.
[00:33:51] Andrew: So is that a weakness of yours? Like, has that held you back in some senses? Like you can't relate or empathize with people who. Yeah, I can't empathize.
[00:33:57] Peter Wokwicz: I don't understand it. I just can't empathize.
[00:33:59] Andrew: Do you see people as weak when they're going through it?
[00:34:01] Peter Wokwicz: No, I just don't understand it. And I try to help people all the time. If I have an employee who's had other people that had went through these situations, I try to help them out. And I to me, the answer is so easy. It's like, okay, like, you know, did you work out this morning? You know, take a vacation next weekend, you know, do all this stuff that'll make you happy. But and to me, that that just works by understanding what the human mind and that sometimes just doesn't work. And I don't understand it. Yeah. It's just that lust for life. And I just can't put a connection together where you don't want that nonstop. If I could improve myself, that would be. One thing I'd do is, is understand that because I don't. And I, of course I have sympathy. But my first view is, how do I fix that? How do I fix that? How do I help that person? And sometimes you just can't.
[00:34:42] Sam Parr: Now, we're not all fortunate enough to be as naturally happy as Peter is all the time. For some of us, myself included, being happy. It takes a lot of work and a lot of attention, but that doesn't mean that we can't learn from Peter. It's interesting. I read a lot of biographies, and when I see people like Peter, people who are happy all the time, I'm frankly, I'm envious of that. And I think a lot of it, it has to do with the fact that he follows his curiosity and he follows this passionate side that he has almost like like a kid, like he still has this, like, childlike wonder. And he's able to indulge that. And I think a lot of people that stay happy for a long time when they're adults, I think that they never really lose that childlike sense of questioning things or like just being curious about random stuff and then almost being a kid when you approach it like not knowing anything about it, but saying like, hey, I can learn this, you know, almost having like ignorance, but in a good way. And by the way, a lot of those people, I actually think they do work at having that type of happiness or that type of curiosity. I think they decide to do that sometimes. I think a lot of people who have been on the show who have told us that they've lost this sense of purpose, or they're feeling aimless after starting and selling their company and being wealthy.
[00:35:56] Sam Parr: I think if we had to psychoanalyze them and figure out why do they feel this way, it's because partially, they're not needed in a business which actually makes you feel good. But the other part is that they're no longer being curious about the world. They're no longer chasing an answer to a problem just for the sake of doing it, versus if it makes money, particularly if you had a big exit. You think, I'm not going to do this little tiny project because it's so small and it's just not worth my time, and I would actually say it is worth your time if you love it. And if you can't stop thinking about it, and if you're passionate about it, regardless of what the outcome will be. Obviously, this is easier said than done, and I'm just an armchair expert right now, but it's a perspective that I think is really interesting and valuable. The cool thing about having money is that you can put money into different projects just for the sake of learning, just for the sake of exploring. And I think that's super valuable not just for you and your happiness, but potentially for the world. And so if you are listening to this, and you do have something that you're curious about, whether you have money or not. Get after it. Go pursue it.
[00:37:07] Sam Parr: And that, my friends, is this episode of Money Wise. And by the way, if you are a CEO, if you are a founder, if you do lead a startup, Hampton is my company. Join hampton.com. You're listening to this in your headphones. You're probably staring at a screen we host a ton of in-person events. Hundreds. And we do have a digital community. But if you want to meet other people like you who run companies doing tens or hundreds of millions in revenue, check it out. Join Hamptons.com. It's my private community. It's near and dear to my heart. I guard it and I look over every single application. And so if you fall into that group of people who are starting and running companies, check it out again. Join Hamptons.com. And last but not least, Lower Street. They are the folks that make this podcast lower street wise, this podcast. It's helped my company, Hampton. It's why a lot of you who are members who are listening, it's why a lot of you ended up joining because you like this podcast. That's because Lower Street made it and they made it great. And so if you want a podcast like this again, Lower Street Moneywise, they are the production company that made this a reality. So if you're a business and want to podcast again lower street wise.