Syed Balkhi: How He Went From $0 To +$100M Before Age 30

**Syed Balkhi** (0:00)
Yes, in the early days, I saved everything. I mean, I did not buy a bed until I got married, dude, just to put in perspective.

**Shaan Puri** (0:07)
Even when we were dating?

**Syed Balkhi** (0:09)
No, there was no bed.

**Sam Parr** (0:24)
What up?

**Shaan Puri** (0:24)
Dude, this is a long time in the making episode here. I think we've been talking about you for like two years. I think you told us you're like, hey, hey, guys, don't put me on blast like this.
We were like, you got to come on the show. You're like, no, you're just going to ask me how much money is in my pocket right now. And I don't know if I want to do that.
But somehow, some way, we convince you to come on. Syed Balkhi, you're here. First, why did you just change your mind? How did you decide to come on?

**Syed Balkhi** (0:50)
You know, I was talking with Sam over Twitter DM, and that's how it happened.

**Sam Parr** (0:55)
Well, what I told you, a lot of people think that Shaan and I are like really aggressive about questions, but what they don't realize is like, we'll ask an aggressive question, but if you say, I don't wanna talk about that, we just go, all right, cool, we'll move on. Like we're not like digging that hard.
So hopefully that changed your opinion.

**Syed Balkhi** (1:13)
That did, that did.

**Shaan Puri** (1:14)
So Syed, you're kind of an amazing guy. So let me just set the table here for people. Let me just give you a little, let me just tease everybody with the appetizer. So I think you are one, you've done something that I don't even know five other people on earth who have done what you've done, which is that you've basically bootstrapped a unicorn. You've bootstrapped a billion dollar company.
You've done it, you're only 32 years old. So you did this by 32
You also didn't like invent the next big thing. It's not like you did this because you're super genius. You know, you're not, you didn't, you're not like a, you know, Vitalik, you know, creating Ethereum on the blockchain or something crazy like that. Like you just did a very specific set of like prudent smart actions and it just added up in an amazing way. We're gonna talk about it. But also I didn't know shit about you. Sam's known you for a little while. He brought you up on the pod a while back.
He goes, I know this guy or I met this guy. He's really interesting. He does this WordPress stuff. Have you seen him? And I was like, no, we went to your personal website. I don't know if you ever got this clip, but like way back in the day, we went to your personal website. We were talking about you, but we didn't know too much.
Then we do Camp MFM, which was my basketball fantasy camp. We were invited like 25 other founders and we had an NBA guy come basically treat us like we were, pretend we're a pro for the weekend. And when we were there, there were so many people to get to know. Again, I didn't really get to know everybody at the same time, but then Mr. Beast did something amazing. So one night we were all in the kitchen, basically. We're all hungry after basketball. And Mr. Beast just sets a chair in the middle of the room.
And he goes, I don't know who any of you guys are, because he's like, we've just been playing basketball all day and now I'm curious, like, who the hell are you guys? You tech nerds, basically. And he's like, sit out of this chair, you, sit out. And then he would just interrogate that person, be like, all right, what do you do? Who are you? All right, how does that work? Is that big? What's your dream? Okay, cool. And then he would like go to the next person.
And I think you were maybe the third or fourth person in the hot seat. And I was like, oh, this is great. I actually don't know too much of Syed's story.
And then you just blew us away. You blew us away. Your story was so good. Mr. Beast was while he was interrogating you. I thought it was just like the perfect interview. If we had just recorded that podcast, I would have been happy. So we're just gonna try to recreate that moment right now.

**Sam Parr** (3:36)
Well, and Syed, you were one of the quieter, more humbler people there.
And probably the most impressive in terms of like traditional business accomplishments. And it was very fascinating what you've done. I basically heard about you through my friend Neville Medora.