I Turned $1M into $2.3B (Then Blew It Up and Rebuilt)

**Mike Novogratz** (0:00)
I'm a good guy to sit around a campfire with drinking because I got a lot of stories.

**Sam Parr** (0:04)
This is Mike Novogratz. Mike grew up as a poor kid on Long Island, made his first million working as a trader at Goldman Sachs at the age of 32, and made his first billion at the age of 40 Is that life changing?

**Mike Novogratz** (0:15)
Yeah, we were the only company ever where five guys became billionaires in a day.

**Sam Parr** (0:20)
That's wild. Mike is a cowboy in his personal life and his professional life. This guy likes to push it, and he's max risk all the time. That's crazy, man. Mike's made and lost a fortune about two different times.

**Mike Novogratz** (0:35)
We made a bunch of mistakes, and next thing you know, not only aren't you worth two billion dollars, but you're going under the billion pretty quick. And you're like, oh shit, that sucks.

**Sam Parr** (0:44)
And what are you doing? Like, what's the lesson to be learned here?

**Mike Novogratz** (0:47)
The gap between the really greats and the next level, and I put myself in that next level, is...

**Sam Parr** (1:04)
I value people who are good operators at life, and who live a certain way that I like. I'm dressing like a cowboy today, because I'm like, you're kind of like a cowboy a little bit, like the energy that you have. And that's something that I really respect. But I thought one of the coolest things was how you've made and lost a fortune, I think two or three times.

**Mike Novogratz** (1:21)
You know, I certainly have lost lots of money. That narrative exists. And one of my kids and a few of my friends are like, dude, that's a little unfair, because even at your lows, you still had a lot of fricking money.

**Sam Parr** (1:34)
So your first hit was in your mid-30s, you were at Goldman, right?

**Mike Novogratz** (1:38)
Yeah, I was a partner at Goldman Sachs. Goldman is an amazing firm.
It might be one of the firms that everyone should study, because they create a culture there where, maybe not good for your mental health, but good for the firm, people define themselves by what their boss thinks about them. Lloyd Blankfein was like the big guy at Goldman in the later part of my career. In every single person, what does Lloyd think about me? You know, you gave your heart and soul to this culture of Goldman. And it's a culture of excellence, it's a culture of world-class people. You're competing and working alongside the best and the brightest. And so you feel like you're on the New York Yankees when the Yankees are winning. And one of the big advantages of that is they paid you wildly less than market on your working your way up because you had the privilege of being a Goldman Sachs. And one day you might become a partner. And so I started at 24 because I had done the army and flew helicopters for a while. And April 1st, 1989, I got my job. And I moved out to Asia, which was a great move. And so the Asian financial crisis happened. And what you'll learn in a financial crisis is you're either on the right side of it or the wrong side of it. And if you're on the right side of it, i.e. if you're bearish when the world blows up, you make far more money than you thought you would for the firm. And so Goldman and me and the team I was with was very lucky that, you know, we got ourselves on the right side of Asia Blunt and we killed it. And so I became a managing director first and then a partner.

**Sam Parr** (3:15)
What age were you when you left?

**Mike Novogratz** (3:17)
I think 33 when I became a partner, 34 when I left.

**Sam Parr** (3:19)
And what was your big year?

**Mike Novogratz** (3:22)
97, 98, I made a ton of money for the firm. Now in 97, I got paid $2 million, which was by far the most I'd ever been paid, which was a ton of money no matter what you look at. I was a millionaire at 31
I wanted to be a millionaire by the time I was 30, but I didn't have a net worth of $1 million until I was 31 But the first year, I really felt like I got paid. I got paid $2 million in 1997 Now, me and my team had made the firm like $200 million, and so that was a 1% payout, right? If you work at Citadel or any big hedge fund today, you're broadly getting paid 15% to 20% of what you make. Goldman paid us 1%, but you're going to be a partner one day and as part of the... And listen, you didn't make it all on your own. There was a huge infrastructure. Goldman deserved more than, let's say, Citadel might, but they had this mythology at the place that allowed you to stay there. And I once quit and the bosses would take you out and say, oh, no, you're going to be a partner one day. And listen, I made partner in 1998, and in 1999, the company went public. And listen, anyone who was a partner at Goldman Sachs when they went public in 1999 was just lucky because the company had been built over 100 plus years. So all those people who had built that enterprise value that weren't partners that day, we got all their hard-earned effort. We sold this enterprise that was built over 100 plus years to the public, was one of the coolest IPOs of all time. And the junior partners, we all had 420,000 shares, and the stock was a $55 IPO, which traded to $75, and you can do the 400,000 times 75 And we all were roughly worth $30 million overnight. $30 million is still a huge amount of money. In 1999, it felt a lot bigger.