The #1 Most Underrated Quality in an Entrepreneur

**Sam Parr** (0:00)
Josh Wolf has this phrase where he says, Chips on shoulders equals chips in pockets. Basically, when you meet an entrepreneur who's got an uncurable, unhealable identity wound, that ends up being somebody who ends up doing really well.

**Shaan Puri** (0:22)
Let me fill you in on some things that I saw this week that I just want to get your opinion on. Sam Lesson. Sam Lesson, I think he was an early Facebook employee and now he's an investor. He says a lot of interesting stuff. He did this tweet where he talked about revenge businesses, people who have started stuff because they want to get revenge. An example of this is this guy named Parker Conrad. Basically, he started this company called Zenefits, which was a fast growing company. It kicked ass, whatever. He gets fired because it was a bro-y culture. There was people caught having sex in the stairwells, people doing drunk dumb shit. There was also some compliance issues of not everyone was compliant. He got fired. He started this new company called Rippling, which has taken off like a rocket.
Sam Lesson invested in it. Same with Palmer Lucky. Guy got fired from Facebook. He started Oculus. Now starts what's called Andral.

**Sam Parr** (1:16)
Yeah, Andral.

**Shaan Puri** (1:18)
Anyway, Sam Lesson has this really cool line. He says, if you have in your diligence checklist, is this company a form of deep revenge? The answer is yes. Cut the check. And the reason I'm bringing this up is because oftentimes you'll talk to someone and they'll say, hey man, you got a lot of hate in your heart. You gotta let that out.
You can't hold that in your heart. You can't like live with that. I've taken the opposite approach for like the last handful of years. I actually think that hate, if you have in your heart, it can be really useful. Like revenge and rage is like a very useful feeling. So is shame. People will be like, why are you guilting someone into like doing this or that? I'm like, well, guilt is a wonderful emotion to improve. And I wanted to get your opinion on his take here.

**Sam Parr** (2:02)
I mean, I think it's honestly kind of genius. And I think people don't like to say things like this, but there are a bunch of heuristics for investing that sounds so stupid or sound inappropriate, but are actually true and useful. So, for example, and you can frame these different ways, but I have a friend who was like, you know how Paul Graham talks about he wants to invest in fierce nerds and a fierce nerd is basically it's a nerd who's like overly competitive.

**Shaan Puri** (2:36)
And also like a little bit of a shithead.

**Sam Parr** (2:38)
Yeah, exactly. You know, doesn't, is looking to sort of break the system, beat the system, is overly competitive, maybe unrefined in certain other areas of their life, but that's what you want. And my friend was like, yeah, I look for fierce nerds who love money. He's like, specifically the for love who love money is a multiplier on the fierce nerd concept. And, you know, we've joked on this pod before about like, you know, if in your pitch deck, I'm like, okay, went on a Mormon mission or like, you know, grew up in, you know, a Slavic country, Eastern Europe. I'm like, you know, little plus points are going off in my head. These are green flags in my head. It's not a for sure yes, but like, I'm not stupid. Like eventually you realize, God damn, these people from Utah can sell. Or wow, these programmers from this area of the country are pretty, pretty bad ass. Or when somebody is, you know, it's like getting up, being a Harvard dropout is a stronger signal than being a Harvard graduate. There's all these things that sound silly, but actually end up being true, because if you're the type of person who can get into Harvard and that has enough conviction and an idea to drop out of Harvard against the social pressures of Harvard, that actually turns out to be a pretty good filter. Now, of course, these things can be gamed if people realize that these are the signals you're looking for, right? Like people showing up to pitch meetings and acting a little extra autistic. It's like, okay, we kind of know what you're doing here. You're trying to fit some pattern that this investor is trying to match against. So all of these things would be gamed, but it's great when you can figure out a signal that is not yet common. And so this one of is this person a revenge company is a great signal.