- [Audience] Good morning.

- So, I'll give a little spiel, but honestly,

I think given the size of the audience,

and given the vibe here, I think we should go into Q&A.

I think that's where the more interesting

value comes out of.

But, to create a little framework.

I am an immigrant.

I was born in Belarus in the former Soviet Union.

I came here when I was three.

I lived in Queens, in Rego Park for two years,

in a studio apartment with five, six,

seven, eight family members.

So, I can relate to that grind and that hustle.

I literally didn't even know my dad

for the first 14 years of my life,

because he would leave before I would wake up

and get home after I fell asleep.

First as a stock boy in a liquor store

making two bucks an hour,

and then eventually a manager.

And immigrants, and I'm sure some of you know this,

immigrants have really figured out the secret

of American Business.

Which is don't spend any money

on dumb shit for 10 years,

save it all, and then buy something, right?

And so, that's what my dad did.

And he bought a small liquor store

in Springfield, New Jersey.

I grew up in Edison, New Jersey.

You know, lemonade stands, shoveling snow, baseball cards.

You know, it's so crazy for me that I get to live

through the era where an entrepreneur is cool.

The fact that I take 10 selfies a day blows my fuckin' mind.

The fact that hip hop artists that I love DM me.

It's just so crazy.

And it's happened, right?

It's happened for sports.

I think a lot of people forget.

In the 1950s, baseball players and football players

had jobs during the summer at hardware stores.

Everything gets it's day,

and I think there's nothing more Americana

than the entrepreneur, than the business person

and so, I'm just fortunate.

You know, when I was your age, I was a loser

by a lot of people's POV,

because I was a terrible student.

And the narrative 25 years ago was that entrepreneurship

was not a feasible way out.

That the only way out was Yale and Harvard and Cornell.

School was the only benchmark that created opportunity

and so for me,

I'm excited about this entrepreneurial thing,

but at the same token, to be very frank,

one of the things that I want to try to dissect

in our Q&A now is,

I also think it's gone a little bit too far

in the other direction.

I think everybody thinks they're going

to be a winning entrepreneur.

You know, it's funny.

Everybody says they're an entrepreneur.

That's like me saying I'm a basketball player.

That's cool.

It's fun that I get to run at the YMCA a couple of times.

But, I don't get paid.

Right, I'm not an NBA All-Star.

And what I think is happening right now is

people are putting the word entrepreneur

in their Instagram profile and they think it's a wrap.

They think they're going to make it and this and that.

And it's extremely hard.

It's extremely lonely.

Listen, if you want this, you need to understand

that there's a lot of stuff

that people are not talking about.

Nobody in my tech startup world is talking

about the suicides that are happening when kids fail.

Maple, the food service

that was supposed to be so big, folded yesterday.

This is happening every day. Right?

And everybody thinks it's so easy,

and the reason they think it's so easy

is I grew up, when I was your age,

you couldn't roll up on people and say

here's my idea and they'd give you a million dollars

on a $4 million valuation.

That was insane, that's not how it was.

And I think the other thing I'm fearful of,

especially when I look around the room,

there's a couple of us, but for the majority of you,

we've had a good economy now for the last

seven or eight years.

And for a lot of you, seven or eight years ago,

you were a real youngster.

So you haven't lived through when the world melts.

I lived through the collapse of .com, 2000.

And then right behind it 9/11.

And then 2007, and eight.

And I've navigated my businesses through that.

That's hard.

Everybody's a peacetime general,

but who's a wartime general?

Everybody's really great, everybody's a hero

when you can print a logo on a t-shirt

and say I've got a fashion brand. Right?

But what about actually building something sustainable

that you can eat on and things of that nature?

So, for me, I'm not trying to discourage,

I'm just trying to paint a very real picture.

This is a long game.

Like, from 22 to 30, I did nothing.

I worked 15 hours a day, Monday through Saturday.

You know, it's funny.

I was talking at a talk the other day,

it was a Friday.

I go, "Tomorrow, more of you are going to

"have more Saturdays off in your 20s than I did

"in my entire 20s, tomorrow."

Because Saturday is the biggest day of retail

and that's when we sold the most wine,

so I was just there every single Saturday

of every 20 to 30 years old, 10 years.

Every fuckin' Saturday.

And so when people,

all the cliche shit that we all talk,

"I'm grindin'," "I'm hustlin',"

you know, like "I'm doin' this."

I laugh because I look at people's Insta

and they're fucking at Coachella.

(audience laughter)

So I think there's a mix.

There's a mix because entrepreneurship

has also gotten cool.

I said something at a talk that really resonates with me.

And she's like, "Oh fuck, club promoters

"have taken over entrepreneurship." Right?

We're putting it on this pedestal.

And now, with the way that Instagram dominates our world,

and the visuals of watches and private jets,

and girls and guys,

and boats and champagne,

I'm just like, "Fuck."

99% of people are gonna lose.

And what I'm scared of,

is if people actually knew what to do, which is eat shit,

like work real hard, be real patient.

You know what I would wish on you more than anything?

More than anything.

And I'm looking around the room.

Our wonderful cops back there, a couple people here.

There's seven or eight of us that know this,

the rest of you don't,

which is if you knew that at 40,

you felt the same way inside as you do at 20,

it would fuck with your head.

If you actually knew how on fire

like, I think we're friends.

Like, I think we're the same age.

It's crazy.

When I was 22, my cousin was in the business.

He was 30, he was eight years older than me.

I thought he was old as fuck.

(audience laughter)

I remember, that's not super long ago.

I was 22, he was 30.

He was old as shit.

So when I sit here and I'm 41,

I'm like, "Fuck, these kids think I'm real fucking old."

(audience laughter)

And I feel fucking as young as you.

And if you knew that, if you knew that,

you would get way more patient.

If you knew that, you would get way more patient.

I promise you, the number one thing

that I'm trying to leave here with

is to get a couple of you to get real fucking patient

'cause that is the singular advantage.

If you actually don't give a fuck,

the way I didn't, of what people think about you,

all through your 20s, like you just don't care,

like you literally don't,

and you just build something for yourself,

you have a much better chance.

So many people here will fail

in their entrepreneurial journeys

because they're worried about what people think.

That's just what it is, my man.

That's just what it is.

People are worried about what other people think,

how many followers they have,

how good the business is doing,

what they're doing, where they're going,

what they're wearing.

It doesn't fucking matter.

It especially doesn't matter

if you pour all that energy into building something

and then at 33 you're winning, and they're resetting.

(audience cheers and applause)

And if you really knew how young you would be at 33,

it would really change everything.

Like, that's the thing.

I'm trying to really put the words together

'cause I'm going back to that time.

It's just hard. Right?

It's hard when you're that young.

It's hard to realize you'll feel that young.

I just don't know how to say it.

I really don't know how to say it.

I don't, but I want to say it with conviction,

so that a couple of you believe me.

But you have to build an actual business that makes money.

If you're going into the tech business,

if you want to build an app, it's hard.

For every single Snapchat and Instagram,

there's eight million Insta-shits. You know?

Everybody fails.

And we get seduced by the two or three people that don't.

It's really funny.

I went to Mount Ida College.

It was 94% African-American, Latino,

real minority college.

And every single person wanted to be a rapper.

It was 1994.

Everybody was gonna and I remember thinking,

"Wow, this is some delusional shit."

How are you gonna be a rapper if you're not writing?

How are you gonna be a rapper if you're not in the studio?

How are you gonna be a rapper if you're not hustling?

And it's funny, like, the white boy version

of that now is tech.

Everybody thinks they're gonna build Snapchat and Instagram.

And I'm like, how are you gonna do that

when you're at Coachella?

How are you gonna do that if you're out every night?

How are you gonna do that

when you're raising money and you're,

it's funny, raising money has been so detrimental

to the startup community.

It doesn't take a hero to lose $30,000 a month.

Everybody in here can do that.

And so, a couple things I want to get across,

and I wanna really go into Q&A,

and get real detailed 'cause I'm here.

I'm not coming back.

(audience laughter)

So let's take advantage of it, you know what I mean?

So the couple things that I think

you need to really wrap your head around is "it's for life."

99% of the kids that walk into my office or I come across,

they're trying to flip their shit.

Which means they're doing it for the money.

And when you're doing it just for the money,

you've got way less chance to actually make the money.