Vinay Hiremath's Net Worth is $50-70M. His Goal? Figuring Out What To Do With His Life.

I spoke to Vinay Hiremath in this week's episode of Moneywise.

Like all Moneywise episodes, Vinay breaks down his net worth, income, portfolio, and monthly expenses, and then I, your host, discuss each detail.

We also went deep on: walking away from an additional $60 million earnout, his identity crisis after selling the company, and how he's using his newfound freedom to rediscover himself through physics, robotics, and potentially building physical things.

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, a community I founded where CEOs and business owners come together in small groups of 8 to help each other grow. Hampton members range from people with newish startups doing $3M in revenue all the way up to publicly traded companies with hundreds of millions in revenue and thousands of employees. Because of Hampton, I get to see these private conversations about business, money, success, and life. I figured some of these private conversations should be public, which is why I started this podcast. 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.

The Numbers

• Loom Acquisition: Sold for $975 million
• Personal Takeaway: Between $50-70 million post-tax
• Money Left Behind: Turned down an additional $60 million earnout that would have required staying for 4 years
• Pre-Exit Financial Status:
  • Salary as CTO: $315,000 per year
  • Secondary sales before exit: Only about $2 million, with $1.7 million going to his parents' retirement
• Current Financial Allocation:
  • Cash/Savings: ~50% of net worth
  • Equities/Index funds: ~20%
  • Bonds, multi-strategy funds, and other investments: ~30%
  • Angel investments: ~5% (the most enjoyable part for him)
• Monthly Spending: $25,000-30,000
  • Largest expense: Rent ($12,000/month for NYC apartment)
• Net Worth Required for Freedom: Initially thought $10 million, now believes it could be lower (around $5 million)

From Farm Town to $1 Billion Exit

Vinay's journey started in Huntley, Illinois, where he grew up as one of the few Indian kids in a predominantly white community. Inspired by the movie "October Sky" and feeling like an outsider, he developed a chip on his shoulder that would later fuel his ambition.

"When you grow up in a neighborhood where people tell you that white girls will never date brown guys, and you get beat up and all this other honestly terrible shit... you build up that resentment. You build up that chip on your shoulder, and it's so much easier for you to be like, 'alright, well, I'll fucking show you guys,'" Vinay explained.

After dropping out of college in his sophomore year, Vinay moved to the Bay Area with one goal: to become the best engineer possible. At 23, he co-founded Loom with his partners, starting with no revenue for the first three years. The product took off during the pandemic, and by the time they sold, they were growing at 400-450% year-over-year.

The $60 Million Decision

One of the most fascinating aspects of Vinay's story is his decision to walk away from an additional $60 million that would have required him to stay at the company for four more years after the acquisition.

"I was really struggling with this decision," Vinay admitted. The turning point came during a hike in the redwoods, where he had a moment of clarity. "Within five minutes of going on my first hike of unplugging, I just looked at the trees and, dude, I swear to God, the trees spoke to me. They were like, 'What is the point?'"

This simple question helped him realize that more money wouldn't significantly change his life. He had enough for himself and his future family, and the freedom to discover who he was outside of Loom was worth more than the additional $60 million.

Life After Exit: Identity Crisis and Rediscovery

The sale of Loom triggered an identity crisis for Vinay, which he documented in his viral blog post titled "I am Rich and I Have No Idea What to Do with My Life."

"What that blog post was about was more of a reflection of how much of my identity I had invested in the company," Vinay explained. "I hadn't attached all of my identity and self-worth to this entity that was separate from me and also nebulous. It wasn't even a person. It was a company."

Post-exit, Vinay has embraced what he calls a "chaotic" lifestyle—traveling, climbing mountains in the Himalayas, having spiritual experiences in Hawaii, and most importantly, rediscovering his passion for learning. He spends 5-8 hours daily studying physics and engineering, with the goal of eventually building physical things.

"At one point I thought it was robotics. At another point I thought it was nuclear. At another point, I was like, maybe SpaceX would be cool. I have no fucking idea," he admitted. What he does know is that he wants to move beyond software into the physical world.

Money Philosophy: Less is More

Despite his substantial wealth, Vinay lives relatively modestly. The most expensive thing he's bought himself since the exit is an iPad. His current monthly spending of $25,000-30,000 is primarily for his NYC apartment and basic expenses.

"I learned somewhat the hard way that I'm not nearly as money-driven as I thought I was," Vinay reflected. While his initial "fuck you money" threshold was $10 million, he now believes that's probably too high. "I really think people need a lot less than they think," he said.

His most meaningful financial experience wasn't buying something for himself, but rather giving his parents financial freedom. Using some of his first secondary sale proceeds, he wired $1.7 million to his parents so they could retire.

"To see your parents' face and just for them to be so proud... that was probably the coolest thing that money has bought for me," Vinay said.

Other Key Quotes

"Well, I left 60 mil on the table. I have no income right now. I'm looking for internships. How much of my very strong emotional reactions are due to me putting so much life on hold?"

"We were worth less than that for sure. The answer was that we were worth $975 million, which is what we sold for. Couldn't get to the billion number, you know."

"I have this vision in my head of a factory. There's like a giant American flag... but then there's flags of the nationalities of all of the people that work there. And it's like, bring your dog to work day. And there's a bunch of dogs that run up."

"I think there's a lot of value in being starkly aware of what you're doing."

"I estimate maybe $1 million for each kid. So that's like $5 million and then I'm not going to be buying many houses. So it's like at most $7 million for a really nice house with upkeep."

Links You Might Like

• Vinay's Blog Post: "I am Rich and I Have No Idea What to Do with My Life"
• Loom - Video Messaging for Work
• MIT OpenCourseWare Physics Series
• October Sky - The Movie That Changed Vinay's Life
  
  

Full Transcript

[00:00:02] Vinay Hiremath: Well, I left 60 on the table. I have no income right now. I'm looking for internships. How much of my very strong emotional reactions are due to me putting so much life on hold?

[00:00:16] Sam Parr: I've got this buddy named Vinay, and he started and sold a company called loom and made something like 50 to $70 million while he was still in his early 30s. And he actually could have made a whole lot more money, around $60 million in additional money had he stayed for an earnout. But he decided to walk away and leave that extra money on the table. And recently he kind of had a personal identity crisis, and he wrote this blog post that was beautifully titled, and it went viral and it got my attention. And the blog post was titled I am Rich and I have no idea what to do with my Life. A perfect blog post to talk about on Moneywise, and so I wanted him to come on and talk about what it was like growing up in a small Midwestern farm town, being basically the only brown kid to being in New York and having a huge budget and unlimited budget, being incredibly wealthy at a very young age. And I wanted him to talk all about that on this episode of Moneywise. And of course, like every other Moneywise episode, we're going to break down all of his numbers. So he's going to be very transparent about his financials, about the money, his asset allocation, everything. And then we're going to dive deep on what it was like to have this, like massive change in his life to make all of this money at a very young age. This is an episode of a 30 something year old who sold his company for $1 billion.

[00:01:36] Sam Parr: And if you've listened to a lot of Moneywise episodes, we talk about people after they've made money. Usually that's after they sold their business. But a common thread that they've felt while they were running their company before the sale. It's this deep bit of fear and frustration and doubt that most people have most of the time before they kind of made it. And so I thought it was funny. There was this guy in Hampton, the community I run. And he posted the other day about how he was frustrated about his business, and I could just tell that he wanted it to grow faster or be a little easier, which is a feeling we all have a feeling where we just wish we could be more hands off. We just wish it could make more money. We wish that it wasn't so stressful. And so he posted in Hampton asking, is there a way to grow his company without being stressed? And there's this billionaire in Hampton who replied, and he gave him advice. And this billionaire, he has two different startups that collectively do something like 4 to 600 million a year in revenue. And so he has a ton of experience. And here's what he said. He said, what are some good examples of hands off businesses that generate significant income for decades? It's actually quite hard to find any. Before you say things like car washes or restaurants, check in with someone who owns six of them.

[00:02:46] Sam Parr: Also, those are very boring. Do you really want that? If you're completely aloof, then why do you even care what the business is? It might as well be a mutual fund with large dividends. Is that fulfilling to you? Of course, a company isn't like a mutual fund. It could be sold, except you said you didn't want to. So you're explicitly removing one of the main reasons to do it in the first place. And you cannot say Bo. But it could grow a lot without also saying, but it could also shrink or go to zero. And also, most companies eventually shrink and sometimes go to zero. You don't get to establish a scenario with only upside. That's not how anything in the world works. So it's not even useful as a thought experiment. Instead, what do you really want to get out of this? If it's money that changes the type of activity and the type of business, if you want to build something because you love building and then you don't want to be involved anymore, why keep it around and accept all of the downside risk rather than converting the I don't want to be involved anymore feeling into a chunk of cash where you can set the risk level and then do whatever it is that makes you fulfilled. That's the quote. And here's my takeaway. In business, almost everything is hard. To that I say Nonsense. The answer is to go all in and to accept that things are going to be hard and to accept that things might turn out poorly.

[00:04:02] Sam Parr: So instead, you need to pick something that's still worth it, even though it's going to be impossibly hard and it's going to take two, three, four, or five times as long as you think it will. My friends, I am Sam Parr and this is Moneywise. This show is basically a personal finance podcast for people who are high net worth, people who usually have started and sold a company. Most all of these conversations are convos that have happened in Hampton. Hampton is my community of founders and CEOs. You can check it out at join hampton.com. We have in real life meetings and in real life events all over the world, all of the time, and I am able to see all these amazing conversations and that inspired this podcast. And so this podcast is where I take a lot of these rich people conversations, and I make them public with their permission. And so if you're a founder that does at least 3 million in revenue and you're feeling lonely or you want amazing advice, like the stuff I just talked about above. Check it out. Join Hamptons.com. Until then, I give you this. Here's Vinay's complete story, and we're going to start with the details that everyone loves. We're going to start with how much money Vinay made when he sold his company for nearly $1 billion. So what was your value of the company, like 200 million or 300 million or something?

[00:05:16] Vinay Hiremath: The valuation before we sold. Yeah, it was technically, but not technically 1.5 billion.

[00:05:21] Sam Parr: That's insane.

[00:05:22] Vinay Hiremath: Yeah.

[00:05:22] Sam Parr: So you're like worth nine figures or something on paper.

[00:05:26] Vinay Hiremath: We're worth less than that for sure. You know, decidedly, I think it had gotten to a point where, like, the Band of Illusion had, like, been pulled off for everybody, and they're like, we're not worth $1.5 billion. And so the answer was that we were worth $975 million, which is what we sold for. Couldn't get to the billion number, you know. Even then.

[00:05:43] Sam Parr: What did you walk away with?

[00:05:44] Vinay Hiremath: I walked away with a lot tens of millions of dollars.

[00:05:47] Sam Parr: Closer to 100 or closer to 30.

[00:05:50] Vinay Hiremath: Okay. It's like in between that.

[00:05:52] Sam Parr: Okay.

[00:05:52] Vinay Hiremath: Yeah.

[00:05:53] Sam Parr: Enough. Forever.

[00:05:54] Vinay Hiremath: Enough for forever. For my kids and all that stuff. And like.

[00:05:58] Sam Parr: Post-tax.

[00:05:59] Vinay Hiremath: That's post-tax.

[00:06:01] Sam Parr: So let's say around 50 to $70 million, which at that point the difference doesn't really mean that much. But he could have made another $60 million had he just stuck around for a little bit longer. Instead, he said no and he walked away.

[00:06:14] Vinay Hiremath: I was really struggling with this decision.

[00:06:17] Sam Parr: And this all comes back to the self-reckoning the exit triggered. We're going to get to the details of that decision, how he made it and whether he regrets it or not. But first, to understand why Vinay could have even considered turning down 60 million. We have to understand how he got there in the first place. That starts in a tiny town in Illinois.

[00:06:35] Vinay Hiremath: Growing up in the middle of nowhere was an interesting way to grow up.

[00:06:39] Sam Parr: Yeah, particularly as a brown kid. I mean, when I think when I think Illinois, I think everyone looks like me.

[00:06:46] Vinay Hiremath: And Huntley's an interesting place was I haven't been back there and I honestly don't plan on going back. But, you know, they were like kids who had, like, Confederate flags on their their trucks and.

[00:06:56] Sam Parr: That's fucked up.

[00:06:57] Vinay Hiremath: Yeah, yeah. It kind of sucks. Yeah.

[00:06:59] Sam Parr: I don't blame you for not wanting to go back. You took school seriously and dropped out, right? Is that, like, the most. That's, like, the most badass way to take it seriously.

[00:07:07] Vinay Hiremath: Yeah. I've always taken my my education seriously, which is like.

[00:07:12] Sam Parr: It's in your blood.

[00:07:13] Vinay Hiremath: Yeah. Hiremath Indian. Yeah. You know, like, in high school, I didn't really care about my grades. Actually, there was a period where I thought I was going to go to the Air Force. There was like, this moment that felt very dramatic to me as, like a high schooler, which is just, like, comical and feels very cliche as a high schooler now, where I had like a falling out with my friends, I was essentially my prototype and my like the people I hung out. I was the popular kids bitch. That was essentially my role up until like freshman year, like freshman year of high school. And I had this falling out with like two of my friends who, like, went to this party and they, like, lied to me. And his, like, phone picked up and I could hear him at this party.

[00:07:51] Sam Parr: Your friends are cheating on you.

[00:07:52] Vinay Hiremath: My friends were cheating on me and I felt so bad. But honestly, it was like a good wake up call. And kind of through this teenage angst and depression, I. I watched this movie called October Sky, and it's about these kids in. They make it out of this town where you could only make it out on a football scholarship usually. And that like, actually really inspired me. And that actually began this kind of like realization that movies were going to have like a huge impact on my life. But ever since that moment, it was very clear to me, since I had already let down my Indian parents like to me, it was very clear that like, okay, if I'm going to like learn stuff, I should do it because I actually want to learn it.

[00:08:32] Sam Parr: Jake Gyllenhaal, change your life.

[00:08:33] Vinay Hiremath: Jake Gyllenhaal did change my life.

[00:08:35] Sam Parr: It is a great movie though. I remember watching that as a kid, too, and I'm thinking, this is a that's like a perfect movie for a 16 year old.

[00:08:41] Vinay Hiremath: Especially one like a brown kid who feels trapped in a corn field. So if you fast forward through dropping out of school, I worked at a couple of startups met my co-founders.

[00:08:51] Sam Parr: Anything cool?

[00:08:52] Vinay Hiremath: I mean, the first startup that I worked at was an absolute failure. Like the way that they hired their CTO was by like two non-technical people who had no idea how to hire anybody technical. They just asked for people to apply and went to the first at google.com email address. And it turned out this guy like was just an intern and he was actually a UX designer and didn't even work there anymore. He was fired the day before I started. I feel like at the first startup it was called Back Pain. I learned how to get stuff done really quickly, and I learned how to hire off of vibe, which I find that like a lot of people at like Google and stuff really suck at. Yeah, and it's like 90% of it, actually. And then the second startup that I went to, I got really technical. I started on the web team, made my way all the way down to like, working with like the data center people all the way back up to the web team. And then eventually I, I left that company to, to start loom.

[00:09:44] Sam Parr: And you had left Illinois, you dropped out and you went to San Francisco to do all this?

[00:09:49] Vinay Hiremath: No. When I dropped out, I dropped out because I'd started experimenting with psychedelics. I'd bought a MacBook Pro, and I was reading Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson. And the day that Steve Jobs passed away. It's so ridiculous. But I actually felt sad. Like, I felt like there was a hole in the universe. And I was like, this person who I like, look up to is no longer here, and I'm just finding out about these amazing products where I don't have to restart my fucking computer after every update, like, what's going on.

[00:10:19] Sam Parr: That caused you to drop out?

[00:10:20] Vinay Hiremath: That was one of the big reasons. It was also another call with this guy, Cory Levy, who like runs.

[00:10:25] Vinay Hiremath: Yeah, he runs Xfels now. I called Cory because he was like one of the only people I knew who had, like, dropped out and seemed to be doing like, okay, and not living out of a box. And so I was like, dude, should I drop out? And he was like, yes. He was like, this is going to be a really long conversation, but just do it because you do not seem like built for long term.

[00:10:44] Sam Parr: What grade do you drop out or what year?

[00:10:45] Vinay Hiremath: Sophomore year.

[00:10:46] Sam Parr: And then you moved to San Francisco from there.

[00:10:48] Vinay Hiremath: And then I moved to the Bay area. I lived all over South Bay, all over SF, but my only goal was to be the best engineer I could be, and that's still my only goal.

[00:10:58] Sam Parr: So you got these kind of crappy jobs, but what age were you when you started loom?

[00:11:02] Vinay Hiremath: How old was I? I must have been 23 or.

[00:11:06] Sam Parr: Oh, I didn't know you guys were that young. That's crazy. How much money did you have?

[00:11:09] Vinay Hiremath: When I got my first salary offer and it was like, $90,000 a year. My first job, I was 20 years old. So I didn't understand the concept of, like, cost of living. I didn't know what it meant to, like, save up money. I was helping support my parents a bit just before starting my company. Like my sister ended up having some medical issues and so I was like supporting them with that.

[00:11:28] Sam Parr: Like what, $1,000 a month or something?

[00:11:30] Vinay Hiremath: Yeah, a little bit more than that.

[00:11:31] Sam Parr: It was pretty heavy as a young person to like be doing that, right?

[00:11:34] Vinay Hiremath: For sure. Dude, my biggest expenses were like that rent and like weed. I was just like, stoned all the time. I was fucking high all the time. Dude, I'm not anymore. But, like, back then, I was just like before I had to, like, manage people. And then I was like, okay, this is like very obviously not working with like the management for me.

[00:11:57] Sam Parr: The stoner adolescent phase of loom, it didn't last long. Loom is one of those products where it's so simple and so obvious that it feels silly that it didn't come sooner. And because of that, they had no problem getting users to talk it up and hype it up. Which kind of makes you wonder, by the way, how many great business ideas never got out of that broke stoner phase because the people running it didn't really step up and meet the moment, but Vinay obviously did. And because of that, he was able to do a lot more for his family than just a few thousand dollars a month. We'll tell that story in a minute. But before that, this is a thing that I ask everyone in this podcast. I want to know the timeline and the financial trajectory of his business loom.

[00:12:38] Sam Parr: So it was a hit right away.

[00:12:40] Vinay Hiremath: You know, honestly, pretty much so at first we were like in user testing mode, you know, and we kind of like pivoted through that mode for like six months, which. It was just like a bunch of failure. It was honestly not not very exciting. It was just a bunch of hard work. And we eventually got to this point where we had this, like, user testing platform that was hooked up to like a JavaScript snippet that you put on your website, and you could use this Chrome extension to ask your own users questions about the current experience they were going through. And we just decoupled that Chrome extension, and it did really well the first day that we launched on Product Hunt.

[00:13:13] Sam Parr: Oh yeah.

[00:13:14] Vinay Hiremath: But we didn't really know. Like it's not like we were using it a bunch up until then. Like we totally fabricated this page of like use it for sales and use it for like resume overviews.

[00:13:24] Sam Parr: Yeah. That was like a guess, dude.

[00:13:25] Vinay Hiremath: We thought like, resume overviews was going to be like a killer use case because that's what I was doing as like a 24 year old, you know, like giving my friends, like, feedback on their resume because they were looking for like, I don't know, like junior engineering positions.

[00:13:36] Sam Parr: At what year did you sell the company? What, like how many years into the company?

[00:13:41] Vinay Hiremath: I think we must have been a decade.

[00:13:43] Sam Parr: So year ten, Do you remember the revenue progression? I love making timelines.

[00:13:49] Vinay Hiremath: Dude. Yeah. So basically the first like two and a half, three years, we made no revenue. In fact, we gave away a bunch of free money because we, we created this credit system, which we absolutely did not have to do for referrals to like unlock like paid features in the future. So the first three years, we didn't make any money.

[00:14:06] Sam Parr: You had funding, I assume then.

[00:14:07] Vinay Hiremath: We had funding. So essentially after the six month period when the Chrome extension started taking off, we were like in the negative, all of us on our on our bank accounts, very cliche, you know, founders story and Danielle and Michael at 1517 were going to write us like a pity cheque essentially. And when they came down to our apartment in San Mateo, we sat them down. We're like, hey, actually, we're going to like, focus on this new thing. And they wrote us like a larger 250 K check in our pre-seed round. From that moment, which was summer of 2016, to like essentially 2018 or 2019, we we had no revenue. Then we started making revenue. We started generating revenue. And then from it must have been 2018. It wasn't 2019, 2018 to you know, 2020 was kind of a moment where we started to see signs of like intra and interoffice virality. You know, our first major customer was HubSpot, and we had built this, like Graph Explorer to show over time how the tool was like growing in HubSpot, which was a distributed workforce. And it's crazy because we saw, like a person in Ireland, like send a video to somebody in like, New York. And this was like a crazy thing back then when the pandemic hadn't happened. You know, we were like, okay, we know remote work is working, but like, it's wild to see looms literally being sent, like all over the world and how it grows. And you just see these like little spurts where somebody signs up and then there's like a huge explosion of a bunch of people who are like using it all of a sudden in that office. And so around that time of like 2018 to like 2020, we started to like, really understand that this was going to be like an enterprise tool where like, okay, like there's definitely an enterprise play. We were not ready to make any enterprise sales. Um, actually, we weren't for a very long time. And then like during the pandemic, that that kind of accelerated everything.

[00:15:55] Sam Parr: And what was the first couple of years you think of revenue?

[00:15:58] Vinay Hiremath: I'm going to butcher these numbers. Joe's going to like, watch this interview and be like, dude, I should have been on it.

[00:16:03] Sam Parr: Ballparks, ballparks.

[00:16:04] Vinay Hiremath: Yeah. We were I think we were 0 to 1 million in RR in like five months or something because we had just it wasn't even impressive because we were we had just had so much back pressure.

[00:16:17] Sam Parr: And what was the what do you think the revenue was when you sold?

[00:16:20] Vinay Hiremath: When we sold, I think we were at like 65 or 60.

[00:16:23] Sam Parr: Wow. Okay.

[00:16:24] Vinay Hiremath: And actually before we sold, there was a period of like a year and a half where we had gone through two rounds of layoffs and our company was like, stagnating. And it was kind of like, you know, post zerp. And we had like, really not found our way. That's a whole story in and of itself. But the team really rallied. We like got our shit together. And actually at the point that we sold, we were essentially like 400 or like 450% year over year RR growth.

[00:16:48] Sam Parr: Right before selling. What was your personal finance situation at 30?

[00:16:53] Vinay Hiremath: You know, I had actually of all the secondaries I had done up until the point, which was not much. Me and me and Joe and even Shaheed hadn't like sold much. We believed in the company. My personal finance situation was like I was doing well, but I was mostly living off of like an executive C-suite paycheck that I knew I would have this, like windfall in the future.

[00:17:13] Sam Parr: So like 200 to $500,000 a year?

[00:17:15] Vinay Hiremath: Yeah. Yeah, I was making like 315,000 or something like that.

[00:17:19] Sam Parr: And you had, if I had to guess, did you sell, what, $5 million worth of secondaries?

[00:17:23] Vinay Hiremath: Not even like 2,000,001 point like seven of that went to my parents for retirement.

[00:17:30] Sam Parr: Wait, how much? Much of your retirement. Your parents retirement?

[00:17:32] Vinay Hiremath: Like 1.7. It's more.

[00:17:33] Sam Parr: Wow. So you hooked them up, man. You just bought your way into heaven or whatever. I mean.

[00:17:37] Vinay Hiremath: They crawled their way out of, like, you know, a ditch in India to, like, provide this life that me and my sister get to have. I was like, this is like an easy decision.

[00:17:46] Sam Parr: Do they freak out?

[00:17:47] Vinay Hiremath: Oh, yeah.

[00:17:48] Sam Parr: Probably the best, right?

[00:17:49] Vinay Hiremath: Dude, it was so good. It was so good. Like to see your parents face and just for them to be, like, so proud.

[00:17:54] Sam Parr: And did you do it in person?

[00:17:56] Vinay Hiremath: I did not do it in person, unfortunately.

[00:17:57] Sam Parr: So how did you. What was the reveal like?

[00:17:59] Vinay Hiremath: We hopped on a FaceTime and I was like, mom, dad. So, you know, we raised another round of funding. They don't know what the fuck that means. They don't know what that means, right? They're like, cool.

[00:18:09] Sam Parr: They said, you're a little IT project.

[00:18:10] Vinay Hiremath: Yeah, yeah. They're like great. Like Vinay is doing his like tech thing. And I was like, but I sold some of the company during this and they're like, oh, you can do that. I was like, yeah. And I was like, you guys, you know how you're thinking about like moving like closer to Suma, my sister and all this stuff. I was like, you guys are just going to do that. And they're like, what do you mean? I was like, you don't have to worry about your mortgage. You can retire whenever you want. And they're like, oh, I was like, yeah, you're good, you're good forever. And yeah, they're definitely.

[00:18:39] Sam Parr: And you and you got their bank info and you're like, I'm wiring you one seven right now.

[00:18:43] Vinay Hiremath: I remember because I was staying at Polyus who was the first hire? First hire at loom. I was staying at his place when I had this FaceTime with him. And I literally he lives in this, like, tree house, like beautiful place in Mill Valley and which is also like very proud for me because he did not come. He's from Lithuania. He did not come from much. And so it's kind of like this crazy simulation of a life where you're with, like one of your best friends and they're like driving from their beautiful place that they were able to do by taking a risk on you.

[00:19:11] Sam Parr: And then he was an investor or an employee.

[00:19:13] Vinay Hiremath: He was the first employee got it, and he had sold some secondaries.

[00:19:16] Sam Parr: So he's now wealthy.

[00:19:17] Vinay Hiremath: Yeah. He's good. He's good. And we went down to the chase. And I remember like signing the $1 million wire. It was like 1.2 or something. And then there was going to be more after that. And I just remember like saying, yeah, I need to initiate a wire. And the lady was like, oh shit. The lady was even like, we don't even get these types of wires in Mill Valley. Usually we people. This doesn't happen that often. It felt cool, you know, like felt like.

[00:19:41] Sam Parr: Yeah, you felt like a baller validating.

[00:19:43] Vinay Hiremath: And then I was like, oh my God. And on the other end of this, it's like my parents getting freedom.

[00:19:47] Sam Parr: So that was awesome, dude.

[00:19:48] Vinay Hiremath: Like that was probably the coolest thing that money has bought for me. Like since the selling the company, the most expensive thing I bought myself is an iPad. I think I learned somewhat the hard way that I'm not nearly as money driven as I thought I was.

[00:20:03] Sam Parr: Yeah, and I want to talk to you about that with you because I'm not. But when I've had that same realization when I sold my company, I took my parents, who had never really been out of the country, like on a first class trip to Paris. And like, you know, we kind of balled out. I remember seeing my dad, you know how dads hold their boat, their iPhone when they record the video?

[00:20:22] Vinay Hiremath: Oh, yeah.

[00:20:22] Sam Parr: Yeah, yeah. Like I have this video of him standing in the first class seat, like taking a video, like, look, we're in first class, and there's. Oh, this lady's handing me champagne. Like, I remember, like that experience. And I'm like, this feeling is so much greater than a car, than a whatever else. Like it was. It's the best.

[00:20:41] Vinay Hiremath: And also.

[00:20:42] Sam Parr: It makes me want to make more just to create that experience more.

[00:20:45] Vinay Hiremath: For more people. Dude. Yeah, 100%.

[00:20:51] Sam Parr: As he said, that moment still remains the best thing in his life that he's ever done with his money. And what's crazy is that it's something that he was able to do before he even got his exit. Now. Yes, he knew that there was a lot of money coming, but this was the start of a larger realization of what money could do in his life and what really mattered, which is definitely a factor. On why he turned down $60 million, an additional $60 million after selling his company. And also why his threshold number of what he thinks he actually needs to live a good life is far below what you may expect, given what he's now worth. That's coming in a second, but the realization didn't come until he was confronted with the money that he had been expecting, and it came with the exit. Before that, he was living as large as he could.

[00:21:36] Vinay Hiremath: It's super cringe. And it's also like very ego centered. But I was just like, I know I'm going to have a windfall at some point. Like, there might be moments that are really difficult, but I'm fucking I'm in New York. Like, I'm going to have a good time. I'm not going to live like a broke me right now because we're ten years into the company.

[00:21:53] Sam Parr: So you're spending it all. What was your monthly spend?

[00:21:55] Vinay Hiremath: So the first place that I rented, I was actually so busy I couldn't go to this place. My e pretended to be my wife and went to, like, showings for me. And she found this beautiful place right off of Washington Square Park. And it was like.

[00:22:07] Sam Parr: They met you. And they're like, dude, she's out of your league. What are you doing? This is not your wife. We didn't believe that for sure.

[00:22:12] Vinay Hiremath: They made it like this brown.

[00:22:13] Vinay Hiremath: Leprechaun, you know.

[00:22:14] Vinay Hiremath: Like, what is this? Like, where's that beautiful. Yeah.

[00:22:18] Sam Parr: Like, you must be rich or funny, bro.

[00:22:19] Vinay Hiremath: For sure. For sure. And. And so.

[00:22:22] Vinay Hiremath: Yeah, that place was like 13.8 a month. And then my Soho loft was like eight. And then my current place is like 12. I've been living in nice places and I like having a nice space. That's what I spend most of my money on.

[00:22:38] Sam Parr: And then came the exit. Just to recap, Vinay walked away with somewhere between 50 to $70 million personally, and he was only in his early 30s. Though, as I've been teasing this entire episode, it could have been nearly double that. And given that the most expensive thing that he's bought for himself since the exit is just an iPad, it's hard to say. He really missed out on anything but deciding to walk away from $60 million. That's not an easy call, especially when you're just in your early 30s. And this was all before he had the time to fully process what that kind of financial freedom actually means. Now, in order to come to this conclusion of leaving $60 million on the table, you'd think someone like Vinay, who's built this huge company, would be rational. They would create a list of pros and cons, they would use a spreadsheet, they would do something. But Vinay did something that I love when people do. He kind of went off the deep end. He did something very weird, something deeper, but something that worked.

[00:23:38] Vinay Hiremath: I was actually, like, struggling with it quite a bit because you think about these numbers and you're like, okay, like I've made a lot, but this is still a lot. And it's like, should I stay? You know, I went to the redwoods and essentially within like the redwoods. I always joke that I'm in like a polyamorous relationship with, like, redwood trees and like, whoever else, you know, but like, within five minutes of, like, going on my first hike of, like, unplugging, I just, like, looked at the trees and, dude, I swear to God, the trees, like, spoke to me.

[00:24:08] Sam Parr: Were you sober?

[00:24:09] Vinay Hiremath: I was sober, I was sober, and the trees, like, spoke to me. They were like, what is the point?

[00:24:14] Sam Parr: They're like, leave.

[00:24:15] Vinay Hiremath: Yeah. Leave now. Leave. Yeah, exactly.

[00:24:19] Vinay Hiremath: Dude, I love that.

[00:24:21] Vinay Hiremath: That's so funny.

[00:24:23] Sam Parr: So you left 60 million. But that 60 million. You were gonna have to work. For how long?

[00:24:28] Vinay Hiremath: That would have been over a full four years. And there were, like, a couple different tranches of like, payout and all this stuff.

[00:24:34] Sam Parr: This was a pivotal moment for Vinay. He had decided enough was enough, and he was ready to walk away from what he had spent his entire adulthood to date defining himself by. And that could be a really difficult thing for a lot of young founders. You get into something, you start a company in your early 20s. Meanwhile, all of your buddies, they're jumping into life and they're maybe living a little bit messier and they're having more fun because they have a traditional job, so they have more time. Meanwhile, you're grinding it out. You probably aren't making a lot of money in your 20s because you're hoping for this big payout and you have a lot of uncertainty, you have a lot of doubt, and you're not really sure what's going to happen. And so you're delaying the self-discovery process. It is great to be in your 30s and already have a lot of money and more money than you'll ever need, but you do sacrifice this transitional period in your early 20s, where everyone else is probably already gone through it, which is why a lot of people feel great coming on this podcast like Vinay, and discussing this because it's lonely and it feels good to talk about this stuff. And this is actually the whole point of Hampton, my company. Join Hampton comm. It's why my company exists, and it's a great place to find other people who have been there, done that, and who can experience thoughts that only you and entrepreneur probably has. Ultimately, though, Vinay's feelings, it led to him feeling lost and insecure, and it was only recently that he started to understand why. And this is when he wrote his viral blog post. I am rich and I have no idea what to do with my life. How's that for a headline?

[00:26:00] Vinay Hiremath: I left Atlassian just under a year ago. May was my last month of working last year and I think like really, what that blog post was about was more of a reflection of. It wasn't just like chasing after money and status. It was actually more of a reflection of how much of my identity I had, like, invested into the company, because early on, when we were starting, there was a period where loom was like blowing up. But I still felt very grounded in myself and I hadn't attached, like all of my identity and self-worth, to this entity that was like separate from me and also nebulous. It wasn't even like a person. It was a company. So I think, like a lot of that blog post was me starting to come to terms with with the fact that I was like, honestly, like had become like pretty insecure and like it was just me recognizing that, like.

[00:26:48] Sam Parr: Why did you become insecure?

[00:26:50] Vinay Hiremath: I think that, you know, the company goes up. Okay. So our COO and like always had the saying that really resonated with me. She was like, I mean, anneke's awesome. She's like, was like a co-founder to me and Joe. But she was like, the difference between, like all of the execs and you guys is that you guys are like driving the car. And even if the car is, like headed to the end of the Grand Canyon, your hands are shackled to the fucking steering wheel. Like that's what it's like to be a founder. Yeah. And I actually think it's, like, totally necessary for a founder to attach their identity to the company. I think it's the major reason that founders should take the power to say, fuck no. We're doing it this way. My way. Because I think it's right. Because guess what? At the end of the day, you'll leave this company. You'll see, like the logo attached to your resume, and you'll feel really good about it. And it's like, okay, like, I worked at loom when it was like, you know, blowing up. But for me, I have to, like, be here. Like, this is like what people associate with me. And I think there's a necessity in that. I think it is necessary for founders who really want to push the envelope to attach some of their identity to their company, a non-trivial amount of it, and to, like, take that spiritual risk. I think for me, like just based off of being like a 20 something year old kid who was already like somewhat validation seeking, like, I think that's pretty natural.

[00:28:05] Sam Parr: I say that I always joke and I tell my wife and friends every success I've had, it's because my high school girlfriend said something mean to me when she broke up. Dude. Yeah, like there was one conversation where I felt not good enough and I never let it go.

[00:28:21] Vinay Hiremath: Dude exactly, exactly. And when you grow up in a neighborhood where people tell you that, you know, white girls will never date brown guys. And you know, you get beat up and all this other honestly terrible shit. It's like you build up a lot of that resentment. You build up that chip on your shoulder, and it's so much easier for you to be like, all right, well, I'll fucking show you guys, right?

[00:28:39] Sam Parr: And I like that feeling.

[00:28:41] Vinay Hiremath: I love that feeling.

[00:28:42] Sam Parr: Yeah. People are like, dude, you got to let the rage out. I'm like, nah, I don't know. It's pretty fun. It's pretty great.

[00:28:48] Vinay Hiremath: It is. You know, it is.

[00:28:49] Vinay Hiremath: Yeah. But look like, you know, you kind of take this chip on your shoulder. You take like a bunch of people validating you and like, the startups raising. You're like, hanging out with chicks that you never thought you'd be able to hang out with. And you're like, okay, it gets to your head, you know, it gets to your head.

[00:29:03] Sam Parr: And are you happy you sold?

[00:29:06] Vinay Hiremath: Yeah. You know, I think both because and this isn't like a bullshit answer. I think loom is, like, genuinely well housed at Atlassian. I think it's like a good home for loom. And like, you know, we could go on a whole thing about.

[00:29:22] Sam Parr: Well, what about you? I don't care about the product. Like that's it's no longer your problem. You know.

[00:29:27] Vinay Hiremath: For sure.For me personally.

[00:29:28] Sam Parr: I hate when people say that company was my baby. It's like your kid will be your baby, you know?

[00:29:33] Vinay Hiremath: For sure, dude. It's funny because I'm in this phase where, like, I know I want to have kids and I, like, have a bunch of I have a notion database of, like, all my friends who are parents and I go visit them because otherwise I'll never fucking see them. And I know when people are like, this is like my baby. I'm like looking at Joe, like, and Margot, who's like the cutest thing in the world, you know, she's so cute, dude. And I'm like, no, it's not. But I get what they're saying. Obviously, for me personally, I think that there was part of me, you know, you're at this point where you you sell and like, things are going really well. Like I said, we were like 400 or 450% year over year growth. The team's ripping. You know, they're locked in. It's fun. It's so fun. And you're like, oh my God, this might be another golden age for loom the company. And you know that when you're selling, you're giving you're giving that up. You don't know by how much. But there's an integration tax like you're getting absorbed by an 11 000 person company.

[00:30:29] Vinay Hiremath: People who go to work at an 11,000 person company, very different rudder and direction than than people going to work at loom. And so there's part of me that's like, oh man, it would have been really fun to keep it going and to like, truly build like we had built like instantaneous video editing technology, truly build like some crazy shit where you get like automatic highlight reels, like the best in-browser, like video editor that just works like instantly and is like magic. Same sort of magic as, like creating a video. There's a part of me that's like, that would have been so much fun. And then there's also part of me where it's like, okay, well, people had like a really good outcome. And for what it was like, it was an amazing ride. And I genuinely vacillate between these two modes of thinking. At this point. I'm like fully moved on. So I think I like more trend towards like acceptance. But right after the sell, like it was definitely like 60, 40, 40, 60, like switching back and forth.

[00:31:26] Sam Parr: The fortunate thing. Or maybe the dangerous thing about trying to discover yourself after an exit is that you've got tens of millions of dollars and all the time in the world to do it. That kind of freedom can send you in the wrong direction fast chasing status, spending recklessly losing yourself. But it also can go the other way. The way that Vinay is trying to make it work, his investment strategy and what he's done with all of his money since the exit is all aimed at one thing, trying to figure out what the hell it is that he wants to do with his life.

[00:31:55] Sam Parr: Where did you put the money?

[00:31:57] Vinay Hiremath: Oh man. In a lot of places. I mean, like diversified equities, options, bonds.

[00:32:03] Sam Parr: You bought options?

[00:32:04] Vinay Hiremath: Yeah, I'm a much more active investor. I actually hate the idea of being an investor, but I spend a good amount of my time investing. And right now I'm thinking about this pretty interesting play on Oscars, which are like congestion rights for Ercot, which is like the Texas Energy Board. Maybe I shouldn't be talking about this over the pod, but whatever you can keep it in. Like, basically there's all of these data centers that are about to get spun up in the Dallas, Waco, Texas corridor. And you can buy these options on the congestion pricing, which is essentially the price differential between two different transmission line nodes, the sync node and the source node.

[00:32:42] Sam Parr: So your portfolio out of a 100%, what percent is in public equities?

[00:32:47] Vinay Hiremath: Well, first of all, most of my money is still in cash.

[00:32:51] Sam Parr: Like cash money market or treasuries or a savings account.

[00:32:56] Vinay Hiremath: Savings.

[00:32:56] Vinay Hiremath: Account. Okay, straight cash and Interactive Brokers maybe like 50%.

[00:33:01] Sam Parr: What's your thinking on that?

[00:33:03] Vinay Hiremath: There's part of it where like my financial advisor is supposed to be like the yin to my yang. Like I'm definitely the more like chaotic. Let's like, invest in this early stage startup. Let's go balls to the walls on this like crazy thing that's probably going to go nowhere. And he's like the dampening force, right? So there's part of the answer is just that it's not like a sexy answer. But the other part is there's a lot of uncertainty in the markets in the world. And, you know, you can make a lot of money off of uncertainty. But I firmly believe that at any point in your life, you should have one foot in chaos and one foot in stability. And right now, like in my personal life, I have a lot of I have like one foot firmly in chaos. Like, I'm in a transition period doing a bunch of random stuff.

[00:33:49] Sam Parr: And that chaotic is you don't have a job, you're not sure what you're going to do. You're jumping around from experiment to experiment.

[00:33:55] Vinay Hiremath: Jumping around, and also just in general.

[00:33:58] Sam Parr: Recently single.

[00:33:59] Vinay Hiremath: Recently single, you know, recruited for Doge for five weeks, like climbed mountains in the Himalayas. I'm in like a decidedly extremely chaotic like had a spiritual without drugs spiritual experience in like a jungle in Hawaii. You know, this is like not a person that.

[00:34:14] Sam Parr: This is your cray cray period.

[00:34:15] Vinay Hiremath: You wouldn't give me your daughter and be like hey, watch, watch my daughter. You know, it's like person who's climbing your daughter's strapped to my back.

[00:34:22] Sam Parr: You didn't get to experience probably too much when you were 21. And now you're kind of doing what you do when you're 21, for sure.

[00:34:29] Vinay Hiremath: You know, I think about that a lot of, like, how much of my very strong emotional reactions are due to me putting so much life on hold. You know what I mean?

[00:34:40] Vinay Hiremath: Like, yeah.

[00:34:41] Vinay Hiremath: Projecting out.

[00:34:42] Sam Parr: And it's like stunted growth.

[00:34:43] Vinay Hiremath: Yeah.

[00:34:44] Sam Parr: Yeah. Like, I need to get out of my system. Yeah, I totally get that.

[00:34:47] Vinay Hiremath: Yeah.

[00:34:47] Sam Parr: What? And then what's the other 50% in?

[00:34:49] Vinay Hiremath: There's maybe like 20% in, like, equities.

[00:34:54] Sam Parr: Um, do you pick stocks or just index?

[00:34:56] Vinay Hiremath: Index and there are some that are picked but they're usually part of like multi-strat funds. Like my financial advisor created a multi-strategic fund that includes some stuff with like DTC. There's like these interesting you know they're all hypothesis driven which means they're bullshit.

[00:35:11] Vinay Hiremath: And so that's like 30% there. And by the way like the 50% in cash. Like I think that everything seems safe, right? Everything seems safe. But it's like there is some risk to all of this. Like, even with index. And that seems like, you know, okay, you're obviously, like, super conservative if you say that. But, you know, there's even risk in owning US dollars.

[00:35:32] Sam Parr: Of course.

[00:35:33] Vinay Hiremath: You know, there's risk in owning Bitcoin. There's like I'm starting to buy gold. Actually, I was at a friend's house. I won't name his name because he might not want to be named, but a friend's house in Austin. And he was literally as I was meeting him, he was like taking these like small boxes, like there's like a hundred of these small boxes. I was like, what the fuck is that? It's like it's gold bars.

[00:35:52] Vinay Hiremath: I was like, dude where do you get your gold bars? He's like, Costco.

[00:35:55] Sam Parr: Yeah, you could do that. You could get mayonnaise, a tub of mayonnaise, a diamond ring, some socks and gold.

[00:36:00] Vinay Hiremath: It's crazy.

[00:36:02] Sam Parr: Okay. And then anything else? You 50% cash, 30 in equities and then 20 in what?

[00:36:07] Vinay Hiremath: There's probably like a spread. That's all sub ten at this point between like an all weather kind of bond strategy which is Done. Okay. And then municipal bonds like money markets. There's some.

[00:36:23] Sam Parr: Are you happy with this setup?

[00:36:24] Vinay Hiremath: I don't really give a shit, to be honest. Like, I think it's like, it's not really interesting to me. Like, probably 5 to 10%. No. Like 5% of my net worth is like active investments that I make, like angel investments. And that's like the most fun to me. That's like, okay, I get to invest in these founders. They hit me up. They need help. Like on like 11:00 PM calls with like two founders who are like fighting about something. It's like actually being involved as, like an angel who was like an operator is really fun. But all of this stuff is, like, not very fun to me. Like, I think it's like, fine. But I think life is about creating and like, I don't want to spend my life like swapping values and databases across, like, different financial systems. Like that's where you are. You're like a database row swapper. It's like it's you are like, that's what you are, like trading financial instruments. That's like the raw truth of it, in the same way that the raw truth of what we were building at loom was not like an asynchronous video messaging platform. This bullshit that we told ourselves, it's like we built a fucking screen recorder that was hooked up to the cloud. And so I think there's like a lot of value in being like, really starkly aware of, like what you're doing.

[00:37:31] Sam Parr: Yeah but I would argue, like if I was in your position, I would say you're just building a silly widget, but I'm building a way for 100 plus or however many employees to have a wonderful experience. Like for.

[00:37:45] Vinay Hiremath: Sure.

[00:37:45] Speaker3: Like priests selling my company and getting liquidity. It was like, yeah, the mission is like whatever bullshit to make news better. I don't know. Now the mission is like, I just want to create, like, excitement and fun for a bunch of people who I care about. And if we just so happen to sell this, or we just so happen to sell that. Awesome. That's great. You know what I mean?

[00:38:03] Vinay Hiremath: It's a really good push, I guess. Like, you could walk away from what I was saying and think that I'm just, like, infinitely nihilistic about building anything, you know, or doing anything. But you're right. I think I was maybe, like, if I could caveat what I was saying. It's more like when you think about the type of activity you do and you remove like the impact that it has on others, how do you view your work? But then obviously like the impact that you have on others is the most important thing.

[00:38:30] Sam Parr: Do you have a timeline for when you're going to do something next or no? What are you telling yourself?

[00:38:35] Vinay Hiremath: I mean, honestly, at this point, what I'm telling myself is, like, you really don't know what you're doing. And it's like, just submit to that ambiguity. I'm like in a very, like, happily ambiguous moment in my life. I've been like doing a bunch of physics. I like am potentially, hopefully, knock on wood, interviewing a few different startups here, like a couple robotics companies to basically intern as a mechanical engineer. And then I want to like intern as an electrical engineer. I really don't know what I'm going to do with this. I really have no idea.

[00:39:05] Sam Parr: But you're going to start as an intern.

[00:39:07] Vinay Hiremath: I'm going to start as an intern. Yeah.

[00:39:08] Sam Parr: That's awesome.

[00:39:10] Sam Parr: Big trips, new hobbies, trying out different jobs. That's all part of the classic 20s experience. But there's one other big piece of it is just trying to find time for, and that is dating.

[00:39:21] Vinay Hiremath: I think part of why dating this time around is like so much fun for me. It's for a lot of reasons that, like, I think 24 year old Vinay, like, I've had several moments where 24 year old Vinay is like screaming. He's like, what are you doing? I feel like I've worked on a lot of my insecurities over, especially over the last like 6 or 7 months, and I feel like I'm at a point where, like things where I'd be like, man, like, you should, like, hook up with this girl because she's really, really cute. And it's like, man, like it's been like a few weeks or a month, like, since you've hooked up, like you should really hook up. It's like all this shit. I'm like, shut the fuck up. Like, I don't need to do this. Like I'm very happy. Like I'm learning physics. Hopefully going to intern somewhere, like I have great friends. Like New York is fun. And so for me, like, I just kind of like, know what I want a lot more. And it's not driven, obviously. Like we're all animals. Like we have animal animalistic instincts, but it's not like driven by that part of me nearly as much as it was before. And I actually find it a lot of fun. Like, I know that the outcome of where I'd like to go is to find someone to have, like kids with. But I'm also like, not not forcing it too much.

[00:40:28] Sam Parr: Do you have a, um, a budget and how do you withdraw money?

[00:40:32] Vinay Hiremath: I don't have a budget. Not really. Basically, my credit card bill is paid off and my rent is all paid off by, like, regular draws from, like an Interactive Brokers account.

[00:40:43] Sam Parr: What do you think you spent each month? 25,000.

[00:40:45] Vinay Hiremath: Yeah around there. And like in a crazy month where I'm like traveling and stuff, like I'll spend like 30.

[00:40:51] Sam Parr: My wife and I do a meeting every month where we like, look at our finances and we talk about like where we want to spend to be happier or where we spent before. Did that make us happier or not? Last month we spent 37,000, and some months we'll spend 60. And I was like, I was kind of amazed because we've had people on this podcast who spend 300,000 a month.

[00:41:11] Vinay Hiremath: Right, dude?

[00:41:12] Sam Parr: And I don't fly private, but I fly first class. But I don't fly a lot because I don't like traveling. I mean, I travel occasionally, and I was like, I'm 37,000. I was like, I just feel like I have the dopest life ever on that span. I was like, I buy everything I want.

[00:41:28] Vinay Hiremath: I don't know about you. I wonder sometimes because I have I have good friends who spend a lot of money. And I wonder sometimes I'm like, because when I start spending too much, I just inherently I'm like, man, there's something wrong.

[00:41:40] Speaker4: I feel guilt.

[00:41:41] Vinay Hiremath: I feel guilt, yeah, I feel.

[00:41:43] Sam Parr: You have the immigrant guilt. I have the Catholic guilt. Like where I'm just like, yeah, I feel like I'm a sinner. Like, you know, this is gluttonous. This is one of the seven deadly sins. So, yeah, I feel bad being wasteful. Like it'll keep me up at night.

[00:41:58] Vinay Hiremath: Me too. And, dude, I can't even do first class because.

[00:42:01] Sam Parr: You don't do first class?

[00:42:02] Vinay Hiremath: You're a big guy. I'm five foot six.

[00:42:05] Sam Parr: Do you do economy plus?

[00:42:07] Vinay Hiremath: Dude, I usually do economy.

[00:42:09] Vinay Hiremath: And here's the thing.

[00:42:11] Sam Parr: Even abroad.

[00:42:12] Vinay Hiremath: Oh, yeah. Okay, so I did Premium Select for the first time. I'm going to India to see my parents because they're just.

[00:42:17] Sam Parr: That's like million hour flight.

[00:42:19] Vinay Hiremath: I know, I know, it wasn't even that much more for business, but I'm just like should I spend this on. It's like I'm not a very big guy.

[00:42:26] Sam Parr: So I think it's whatever makes you happy. You should do what makes you happy.

[00:42:30] Vinay Hiremath: It does feel a lot better. Like just physically, I feel way more restored when I'm like first class business.

[00:42:37] Sam Parr: Like we have rules in our relationship or for our financial budget, which is like, um, my goal is to always have enough, uh, to keep my monthly spending below 3% of my liquid money. I spend way below that now. And so I'm like, great, I got enough to sweat, but I like, have like, rules where it's like anything below this I go to bed at night. I don't think twice if it's above this, maybe if it's above that for a couple more months, I should like address.

[00:43:06] Vinay Hiremath: Yeah, I should probably. I mean what's like let's say that I spend like 350 a year, right? Or 360.

[00:43:13] Sam Parr: So that's, uh. What does that mean? 30,000.

[00:43:16] Vinay Hiremath: Let's just say 50 million. Like, I won't I won't say the actual number, but that's 1.5.

[00:43:21] Sam Parr: 1.5 would be, uh, 120,000 a month.

[00:43:25] Vinay Hiremath: Okay.

[00:43:26] Sam Parr: So, like, you're well below that.

[00:43:27] Vinay Hiremath: Yeah so I'm like way, way below.

[00:43:29] Sam Parr: Yeah, I think that's great.

[00:43:30] Vinay Hiremath: Yeah but I should probably. I feel like it's good to just be mindful.

[00:43:34] Sam Parr: Like, that's the point. I mean, it's fun having those rules because, you know, I don't need to worry or a lot of people when they don't know. It's sort of like running a company, not knowing when you're going to run out of cash. Right? If you know that, like, look, I got 36 months and I will tell myself with 12 months, then I will worry. Up until then, I do not worry about that. Do you know what I mean? Like creating those rules, I think, has made my life so much easier.

[00:44:00] Vinay Hiremath: I mean. I'm gonna do that. I should do that. Yeah.

[00:44:02] Sam Parr: So I use Kubera, who's a sponsor of the show. They sponsored it because I talked about them.

[00:44:06] Vinay Hiremath: This is like the third time I've heard about it.

[00:44:07] Sam Parr: They sponsor it because I talk about it all the time. And I emailed the guy the other day and I was like, can I just invest? Or like, you're giving me this money for the show? Can you just keep the money and just give me equity? Because I love your product and then I use monarch. So I use monarch money for spending and income, and I use Kubera for net worth tracking.

[00:44:25] Vinay Hiremath: Right.

[00:44:26] Sam Parr: It's the best. It's like kind of game changing in my opinion, because there is no fear.

[00:44:31] Vinay Hiremath: Yeah, I am fearful. I don't know, I've always had this belief that there's a decent chance that I, like, end up crazy and homeless.

[00:44:37] Sam Parr: I still have that.

[00:44:38] Vinay Hiremath: Do you.Have that?

[00:44:40] Sam Parr: You know, when it goes away, when you get income.

[00:44:43] Vinay Hiremath: Okay.

[00:44:44] Sam Parr: That's my opinion.

[00:44:45] Sam Parr: My income right now is like crazy high during the company and two years after selling the company, it was like nothing.

[00:44:52] Vinay Hiremath: Yeah.

[00:44:53] Sam Parr: And then I had income and I'm like, oh my God, this is great. For some reason, income changes income. If you could have the best of both worlds, which is a nut and income, it's like the greatest thing ever. But income totally makes you feel better, dude.

[00:45:05] Vinay Hiremath: Yeah, I got to get this internship.

[00:45:13] Sam Parr: Founding, running, exiting $1 billion company before you are in your mid 30s. That's a pretty good resume. And still Vinay's got a lot of education to catch up on in order to become a world class engineer, which is something that he's working on. But one of the weirdest paradoxes of Post-exit life is this you've got all of the time in the world, and yet somehow, none at all. Time is one of those things where no matter how flexible your lifestyle is, if you're not intentional with it, it slips away. I hear this all the time from founders. They'll say something like, look, I just want to sell my company and I want to have time to do all these amazing big plans. Or sometimes they'll just say, I just want to read all day. But then a year goes by and they haven't done anything that they said they were going to do. But Vinay, on the other hand, he's been surprisingly disciplined and he's actually putting in the work.

[00:46:06] Vinay Hiremath: I'll probably average like 5 to 8 hours of studying each day.

[00:46:10] Sam Parr: Daily?

[00:46:11] Vinay Hiremath: Yeah.

[00:46:12] Sam Parr: And that is blocked on your calendar?

[00:46:15] Vinay Hiremath: No, I just do it.

[00:46:16] Sam Parr: But how do you not fall down the hedonistic lifestyle of, like, I can go and do this and this and meet up with this person. Do that?

[00:46:23] Vinay Hiremath: Yeah. You know, sometimes it's hard. Sometimes I catch myself going through these cycles, especially in New York, where you have so many cool people that are just coming to visit the city, you know. And you have to get good at telling people, hey, like I actually don't. I know you're visiting. I know you're a good friend, but like, this happens to me every week. I can't hang out this time, which sucks, but I fall into that every now and then. But right now, I'm kind of. I'm in a moment of my life. I think in general, I've always been good at self-directed learning. I'll start with that. Like even dropping out of out of school, I roomed with still probably the best engineer I've ever met, which for a guy who like says my goal is to be the best engineer I can be. It's like a total hard on, you know? And I roomed with this guy, Dave Miner, who at the time was a core OS engineer at Apple, and I learned most of what I know about computers by basically just rooming with this guy. And then like after that, you know, I taught myself, like, distributed systems and then, like, I've gone through these, these phases. I taught like Zero to Hero with Andre Karpathy. To me, it's like crazy that I actually can't comprehend that people don't do this. Like, I genuinely can't. Like, I've done it so many times now at this point.

[00:47:32] Sam Parr: Like a process for.

[00:47:33] Vinay Hiremath: Yeah, like at first I'm, I kind of I first say, okay, what is your goal. So I just create like a notion doc or something.

[00:47:40] Sam Parr: What's your goal?

[00:47:41] Vinay Hiremath: My goal with the physics at first was like it was, you're going to learn this because you're tired of just pure software companies and you want to like, build real stuff. Like, I have this vision in my head of, like, a factory. There's like a giant American flag, like the cliche, but then there's like, flags of like the nationalities of all of the people that work there. And it's like, bring your dog to work day. And there's like a bunch of dogs that run up and like.

[00:48:02] Sam Parr: Anything you want to build.

[00:48:03] Vinay Hiremath: There's like a squat rack, you know.

[00:48:05] Sam Parr: Do you want to build anything in particular, or do you just want to make things in America?

[00:48:08] Vinay Hiremath: At one point I thought it was robotics. At another point I thought it was nuclear. At another point, I was like, maybe SpaceX would be cool. I have no fucking idea.

[00:48:15] Sam Parr: You just want to be. So the the goal is I want to be able to have a warehouse that employs a diverse crew of American workers all working together, building physical things in America.

[00:48:24] Vinay Hiremath: Yeah, I think the goal also on some meta level is like, okay, I feel like for me there's levels to this shit for sure. But for me, like, I genuinely feel like I think I'm one of the best, like computer programmers in the world. And I know a lot of people who are much better than me, but it's like it feels like that part from like a technical and spiritual challenge has kind of been conquered. And I'm like, okay, I want to go do that for physical things now. And I just think I swap it. I don't think it's like necessarily even that different. Like you still have like meetings, you have like performance reviews and all this other bullshit, right? It's like, well, actually a lot less of that bullshit the second time around. But I think that, like, you're just swapping out, being on your keyboard all the time to like, seeing real things happening and like tinkering with stuff and people.

[00:49:10] Sam Parr: And so you have that goal and then what do you go do? Read a bunch of books or what?

[00:49:14] Vinay Hiremath: Right now I'm, I'm almost done with the Physics Mechanics series from MIT OpenCourseWare, which is fantastic. They actually have a new version of this where there's like 3 to 5 minute videos for each concept, and then it's just a bunch of problems.

[00:49:27] Sam Parr: And so you're just doing homework.

[00:49:29] Vinay Hiremath: I'm just doing homework.

[00:49:30] Sam Parr: You're just going to school. Basically.

[00:49:31] Vinay Hiremath: I'm in discord groups with like 18 year olds that are doing this. Like, they're like doing MIT OpenCourseWare and they're like, dude. I'm so stressed.

[00:49:38] Sam Parr: Like, do they know your age?

[00:49:39] Vinay Hiremath: They don't know. They don't know. So they're like, I'm so stressed like, does anybody know how to like, integrate tension along this rope? I'm like, dude, I figured it out. Like it's all good, man. And they think I'm like a, you know, a 17 year old, like. So I'm like. Yeah, it's weird, but I wish I had an answer. I feel like at one point I had this, like, grand answer of, like, I would love to, like, contribute to the same thing Elon's contributing to of like expanding consciousness in the universe and, you know, like all this shit. And I'm like, I don't know, man, I don't know, but.

[00:50:09] Sam Parr: You're having fun.

[00:50:10] Vinay Hiremath: I'm having a shit ton of fun.

[00:50:12] Sam Parr: Well, good.

[00:50:12] Vinay Hiremath: I'm having a ton of fun.

[00:50:20] Sam Parr: It's been a year and a half of living without income, just trying to figure things out. And along the way, he's realized that for the kind of life he actually wants, he didn't really need nearly as much money as he thought.

[00:50:31] Sam Parr: How do you calculate what's forever for you?

[00:50:33] Vinay Hiremath: So I'd like to have 4 to 5 kids. That's probably the ballpark.

[00:50:38] Sam Parr: You got to get to work.

[00:50:39] Vinay Hiremath: I know. I know that that's a whole conversation. I'm actually having a lot of fun getting to work on that but, yeah, I.

[00:50:46] Sam Parr: Bet you are.

[00:50:47] Vinay Hiremath: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:50:48] Vinay Hiremath: It's a good time. But I estimate maybe, let's say like $1 million for each kid. So that's like $5 million and then like, I'm not going to be buying like many, many houses. So it's like at most like, let's say $7 million for like a really nice house with upkeep. Like you can live nice most places.

[00:51:10] Sam Parr: Except in this neighborhood.

[00:51:11] Vinay Hiremath: Not not here, not in New York. But really, my factor for the math is just like one place wife kids. Like I really, honestly think, like with $10 million, that's kind of like that was my cliff for fuck you money.

[00:51:24] Sam Parr: Your threshold was ten, I think. So looking back, was that the right number?

[00:51:28] Vinay Hiremath: I think it's probably too high.

[00:51:30] Sam Parr: Like you think ten is too high. You think it could be even lower? Five.

[00:51:32] Vinay Hiremath: I think it could be even lower. I really think people need a lot less than they like. Most of the shit that I think about when I'm like, because you do this math and you're like, okay, 5 million, you're like, but isn't it more? And you like, think about your lifestyle. Like, I'm paying $12,000 a month, right? I don't need to be paying $12,000 a month to be happy in New York. And so I even think ten is probably like high, unless you're going to buy, like a bunch of Lamborghinis or you're going to buy a bunch of Ducatis.