$250M Founder Reveals How The Rich Avoid Taxes (Legally)

**Shaan Puri** (0:00)
Today, we're talking taxes. And we're talking taxes because taxes are my favorite subject. They became my favorite subject when I paid way too much in tax when I sold my company. And I was so happy and so sad at the same time. Today's guest had the same problem. He sold Teachable for over $200 million, and then decided, you know what? He's gonna go on a renegade to make sure that no entrepreneur pays more taxes than they need to.
We basically invited him here and he was like, you know, I could talk about my story, I could talk about my life. We were like, no dude, we're talking about taxes.
Ankur, welcome to the show, man, and it's a long time coming.

**Ankur Nagpal** (0:44)
Yeah, I'm excited to be here. It's weird how I've now accumulated a lot of specific knowledge in this one kind of very narrow topic, and I'm excited to share it.

**Sam Parr** (0:52)
And the summary of your story, and we'll talk about it a little bit later in the episode, but we want to talk about taxes. The summary of your story is, prodigy, entrepreneur, had a bunch of stuff, started in college, you started a company called Teachable, sold it for $250 million when you were 31 That was like a courses business. Now you've got a new thing, was called Cary, or no, it was called Ocho, now called Cary, and it's like a 401k, like a self-directed 401k thing.

**Ankur Nagpal** (1:14)
Yeah, absolutely. It's basically the bigger vision is how do we help people build wealth by saving money on taxes. And the solo 401k is our first product. But yeah, that's the story. The quick sort of other bit is, I did not grow up in America, so I knew nothing about the US financial system. The country I grew up in never had taxes. Taxes were just not a thing that existed in Oman where I grew up.
So the first time I heard about taxes was when I was 21 years old. And I was like, wow, you actually have to give money that you earn. This is crazy.
But yeah, you got most of the story.

**Shaan Puri** (1:41)
All right, I wanna take a quick break to tell you about HubSpot, our sponsor who makes the show possible. You know, there's a big reason why more than 300 of last year's unicorn startups use HubSpot. That's crazy, 300 And it's because no software keeps you better connected with your teams or your customers so that you can crush all your goals. HubSpot has a sales hub that brings to you the power of an easy to use platform with 360 degree deal management and real time reporting. So you can get accurate windows into every inch of your business. And with AI power tools like ChatSpot, you have a dedicated assistant that knows your business inside and out.
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By the way, before we talk taxes, I know we're supposed to start with the taxes thing.
You have earned your seat on My First Million. You made your first million bucks when you were like 20 years old, right? With something pretty funny. Well, can you tell that story? Can you tell the fast version of that story?

**Ankur Nagpal** (2:37)
Yeah, absolutely. I was in college at Berkeley and at the time Facebook released the Facebook platforms. You could send gifts to people, answering quizzes and all of that. And I built these viral Facebook applications starting from when I was 18 all the way to 20
And it was really fun. I mean, we created personality quizzes, like you could answer a few questions and find out how good a kisser you are or which friends character you're most like.

**Sam Parr** (2:59)
If you have to take a Facebook quiz to figure out if you're a good kisser, you're probably a bad kisser, right?

**Ankur Nagpal** (3:03)
The funny thing is I'm not gonna name names. One of the Facebook founders actually took that quiz multiple times. And I know that because you get their Facebook user ID in the database. So user ID number, not gonna tell you which number it is, was in our database. And we're like, wow, this person really wanted to know. But anyways, yeah, so we created these personality quizzes and then friend quizzes and stuff. And yeah, millions of daily users was able to make a million dollars before S21, which was pretty cool.