#1 - From making $76k at Microsoft to selling TinyCo for $100M+

**Suleman Ali** (0:00)
Just like, okay, I gotta move on with the rest of my life. This chapter is over, and the bet that we made failed. So I fall asleep, I wake up the next day, I immediately go look at our stats, and I'm like, oh, we just generated $400,000 in revenue yesterday, so this is working. Holy fuck, this is actually working, we're winning.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:21)
Today we have a entrepreneur and investor, Suleman Ali. He is the founder of several companies, TinyCo, which if you ever played the Family Guy mobile game or the Harry Potter mobile game, you were playing with his handiwork. He has built and sold multiple companies. He's an investor in over 40 companies, and we're here to hear that story of how he made his first million. It's a wild, wacky story where he won't believe the way that he did it.

**Suleman Ali** (0:45)
You have to hear it to believe.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:46)
He's going to be telling us about his first company, his second company, some of the investments he's made, and it's an awesome conversation. I'm excited for you guys to listen to it. Here we go. All right. We're rolling.

**Suleman Ali** (1:08)
Let's do it.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:09)
This is My First Million podcast where we talk to entrepreneurs, investors to find out the backstories of their businesses. We want to hear the good, the bad, the ugly, the untold stories behind how they built their fortune. We have our guest here today, Suleman Ali of Ali Capital and of TinyCo fame. Suleman, I guess the best way to describe you would be, you're an entrepreneur. You started and sold multiple companies now, maybe three companies, invested in 40 some odd other companies. You're a great friend of mine and I'm glad to have you on the pod. You don't usually do podcasts. My first question is, why is that?

**Suleman Ali** (1:44)
I think I'm just a little shy about talking about myself in this public way. But since you're doing it, I had to get on and be supportive of what you're up to.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:52)
Okay, good. And of course, this is the podcast where I'm looking to find the backstories. So we often hear, I remember when I moved to Silicon Valley six years ago. Before then, I was sitting in Australia and I was reading TechCrunch and I was reading books and blogs. And at first, I wanted to know tactics. But what I realized I actually liked a lot more was hearing the backstories, the failures, the successes, the trials and tribulations that it took for people to achieve what they did achieve. Because everybody's story ends up being different.
But when you hear so many, hundreds of entrepreneur stories, you end up finding the commonalities, the patterns and that could be the motivation for you to continue. So my hope with this podcast is to find guests like you who have incredible stories, hear them unwind all those stories from the beginning and let the listeners use this as motivation. I don't know if you know this, but there's going to be hundreds of thousands of people who are putting in their headphones in the morning, listening to this on their way to work, on their commute to a job that maybe they don't love and they're dreaming of starting their own business someday. And the responsibility is yours, my friend, to make it worth their while and give them a little inspiration today.

**Suleman Ali** (2:56)
That's great. I think I can do it. I remember being in that same place, having a job that I wasn't excited about and feeling like I was sort of stuck on this path. And so I'm really excited to share my story. And hopefully that inspires people to find their own path in life.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:11)
All right. So, okay, let's start there then. What was that job and what were you doing and how did you get off that path?

**Suleman Ali** (3:18)
So I studied computer science and undergrad at Georgia Tech. I graduated and I was really excited about graduating. I was really excited about entering the real world. I interviewed at 10 or 20 different companies. I got a job at Microsoft. That was probably the best of the companies that I'd interviewed at. It had the hardest interview and was really prestigious at the time. So I started in January 2004 at Microsoft. And I remember on my first day, I get there, go to the employee new training thing. One of the senior vice presidents of Microsoft is there introducing himself, telling us his story, telling us why he's so passionate about being at Microsoft. And I'm just so excited. I then go to my office at Microsoft. It's in this other building. I walk there. There's all these people that are young and excited about what they're doing.