#84: Anthropic IPO - Invest in What’s Replacing You (Explained by Former IPO Banker)

Sam Dogen (0:00)

The best way to hedge against AI destroying your livelihood and your future is to invest in very AI companies that are going to disrupt your livelihood. With Anthropic, they 10x their revenue three years in a row. So this whole idea of figuring out their growth path, it kind of breaks the brain a little bit. So I think people are really underestimating how fast it can grow. And I've been trying to build a position because I truly believe that the bigger risk is not losing a ton of money, but it's completely missing out on the AI revolution and 10 to 20 years from now, your kids are asking, hey, Dad, weren't you around in 2022 when OpenAI came out ChatGPT? Why didn't you invest in those companies back then? Even just a little bit, Dad, what are you doing?

Craig Stephens (0:41)

Welcome to the Access IPOs Podcast, where we explore opportunities to invest in the world's most innovative and disruptive pre-IPO companies. I'm Craig Stephens, founder of Access IPOs. And this week, I'm very excited to have Sam Dogen, the Financial Samurai, on the show, to talk about AI and the Anthropic IPO. Sam is a prolific finance writer, venture capital investor, San Francisco resident, and former IPO banker. He's been very forthcoming about his AI investment thesis on his blog and on his podcast, in part as a hedge against AI replacing workers and what that means for our kids. He's not shy about sharing numbers and his specific investment strategy. And he even gave us a target anthropic IPO valuation to look for. Sam is the author of two books, Millionaire Milestones. I'm giving away three copies of this book to newsletter subscribers and Buy This Not That. And I'm giving away this book to a Patreon member. There are also links in the description to buy the books and instructions on how to win a copy from me. Sam was super fun to talk to on the show. So let's get into the conversation. My guest today is Sam Dogen, aka the Financial Samurai, longtime fire blogger, investment blogger, podcaster, author, times three. He's a former investment banker at Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse where he worked on dozens of IPOs. He left his career in 2012 to focus entirely on writing his blog.

Sam, welcome to the show.

Sam Dogen (2:11)

Hey, thanks for having me, Craig.

Craig Stephens (2:12)

Sam, I really appreciate you coming on the show. I've been reading your blog since probably 2012, 2013, back when I started blogging.

And thanks for coming on to talk about Anthropic and AI. My first question for you is, is AI coming for our jobs? And if so, what do we do about it?

Sam Dogen (2:32)

Absolutely. AI is coming for 100 percent of all knowledge jobs. And if you're not hedged or properly prepared, the future is not looking bright. I really, unfortunately, believe this. And I believe this due to first-hand experience. In November 2022, OpenAI came out with ChatGPT, played around with a little bit of whatever.

Early 2023, started looking at Claude. And my dad had been editing my post for at least 10 years. And every single post took about one and a half to two hours to edit. And I was like, well, let me just try to save him some time one day. And I put a post up into ChatGPT. I was like, well, not bad, not really good, but not bad.

And then I fed it into Claude. I was like, oh, little bit better, little bit more human, a little bit judgmental, but not bad. And then so over time, I was like, okay, dad, actually, you actually don't like to edit my post. So I'm going to relieve you of this duty for the past 10 years and get AI to edit it. And so that's what happened first. And I was like, okay, so no more editing jobs, thousands and thousands of editing jobs gone. And then my wife, she used to edit my posts, don't have to do that anymore. And then start, I started extrapolating, okay, if these editing jobs are gone, maybe the marketing jobs are gone, maybe the finance jobs are gone. And it just went on and on to where, at the point where I realized, oh, this could be really bad for our children.

Craig Stephens (4:00)

So I've got kids as well. If things are not looking good for our kids, maybe what are some of the steps you're thinking about today that could improve the life for our kids if AI is indeed going to take over the knowledge jobs? Will we push them into manual labor type of jobs, home service type of jobs, or are there other options?