Framework
Pay attention to the tools teenagers use — they become big companies
Shaan's heuristic for spotting winners: he noticed Replit because his teenage nephew used it to learn coding. The products teenagers adopt (Snapchat, Minecraft, Roblox) tend to become big companies, so they're worth tracking early.
“Kind of like, that's interesting stuff teenagers use. You should probably like pay attention to stuff teenagers use because those tend to be big companies, you know, whether it's Snapchat or, you know, Minecraft or Roblox or things like that.”
Steal thisWatch what teenagers are adopting before anyone takes it seriously — those products disproportionately become the next big companies.
Idea
A fund that pays the FAANG-to-startup pay cut in exchange for equity
Shaan relays a Replit-founder idea: bored FAANG engineers won't leave $500-600K salaries for a startup paying a fraction. A fund covers the salary gap via an income-share agreement repaid in startup stock, helping the startup hire and earning the fund shares across many companies it couldn't otherwise invest in.
“So if you say you thought these 100 startups are great, you could basically say, great, you're all eligible for this, this like kind of like income share agreement that we do where if you hire somebody and they want a bit higher salary, we'll front that salary in exchange for stock and hopefully bring more talent into the startup workforce. I thought that was a pretty clever idea. A way to get shares in all the companies that you want shares in that you can't go invest in directly.”
Steal thisFront the salary gap for engineers leaving big tech for startups via an income-share agreement repaid in equity, and collect shares across a whole portfolio you couldn't invest in directly.