#79 with Alexa von Tobel - From Dropping Out of Business School to a $375M Exit

**Sam Parr** (0:00)
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**Shaan Puri** (0:38)
Alexa, thanks for joining us on the podcast today. So we have a special guest.
I'll let you do your intro because I really am terrible at introductions. But for those who don't know, what was LearnVest? Give us kind of like your maybe two, three minute background so that people know who you are.

**Alexa von Tobel** (0:53)
Sure, I think so. I'll start from the beginning. I grew up in Florida, and when I'd always been an entrepreneur, love entrepreneurs, love building companies, went to Harvard undergrad and studied happiness, which I always mention because I actually think somehow it's been very helpful to life.
Ended up going back to business school there, dropped out bottom of the worst recession in originally 81 years. Now I feel like this may be our own COVID moment is becoming obviously something that's worrisome. But I built a financial planning software company called LearnVest with a really simple mission, which was so LearnVest became TurboTax for financial planning. So literally every American family for an affordable price could get access to a financial plan and an advisor. And on our fifth birthday on March 25th of 2015, sold the business to Northwestern Mutual for about $375 million. And then spent the next few years as part of that business at Northwestern Mutual. And through all of that, wrote some books, bestselling book called Financially Fearless and then Financially Forward, about the future of your wallet. And I'm just a diehard entrepreneur. I love entrepreneurs and I love to build businesses. And so now I'm the managing partner. I run a $200 million venture fund called Inspired Capital, which is headquartered in New York City. And we pay it forward and we invest in seed and series A entrepreneurs of tomorrow building big ideas.
So it's really fun to get to have done both. And now I'm on the investing side. And that's me and I'm married. I live in New York City. I have three beautiful little babies, a five year old, a two year old and a one year old, which means I'm completely crazy.
But that's who I am.

**Shaan Puri** (2:39)
Wow, impressive.

**Sam Parr** (2:40)
You're not in New York City right now. I see, are you? I see greenery.

**Alexa von Tobel** (2:44)
No, I'm not. I'm rich. No, so I have been in Florida. I'm actually sitting in my like high school bedroom, which is bringing it all back full circle.
Where we came, we came down here for spring break and just haven't gone back.

**Shaan Puri** (2:59)
Do you have like a Justin Timberlake poster on the wall or something? Or what's in the high school room?

**Alexa von Tobel** (3:03)
No, but you know, it's amazing. Look at this. My mom has literally kept like all of the things. Some days I'm like, mom, why didn't you throw some of this stuff away? But she kept all my pictures and all of my artwork and all of my silly stuff.

**Shaan Puri** (3:17)
So I'll start because Sam's probably still blown away. He loves Harvard. You had him at Harvard.
Then you sold a company for 375 million bucks and then financial planning. He's a total financial planning nerd, a personal finance nerd. So Sam, do you need a moment to just sort of gather your thoughts or are you ready to go?

**Sam Parr** (3:33)
No, he's joking a little.
I did not go to Harvard, I wish, but I do have an odd fascination with it. People say, I have a Harvard sweatshirt. People always say, oh, you went to Harvard? I was like, yeah, I went there. I paid money and took a tour and they showed me around.

**Alexa von Tobel** (3:49)
Well, I will just say, while Harvard was a great education, I think there's lots of things in life that are much cooler than Harvard. So, excited to be here.

**Shaan Puri** (3:59)
Did you say you dropped out?

**Alexa von Tobel** (4:01)
So, I graduated in undergrad and then I dropped out of Harvard Business School.

**Shaan Puri** (4:05)
Okay, gotcha. And you said you studied happiness.
Is that like one class? Like, I took a class called Getting Rich, but that wasn't like my major. It was just one class.