Jessica Ma

Ask: what would I do if I were going to die this year?

After her boyfriend died and she fell into depression, Jessica Ma rebuilt her life by asking what she'd do if this were her last year. Running a company wasn't on the list, so she hired CEOs to replace herself and pursued bold bets she'd been too scared to try.

“And I thought, what would I do if, if I was gonna die this year? If this was my last year here because I'm so depressed and I have to make myself happy, what would I do? And running a company was not on the list. So I immediately hired a CEO for Nenero.”

Steal thisAsk what you'd do if this were your last year; if your current job isn't on the list, hire your replacement and go do the real thing.

Ask: what would I do if I were going to die this year?

After her boyfriend died and she fell into depression, Jessica Ma rebuilt her life by asking what she'd do if this were her last year. Running a company wasn't on the list, so she hired CEOs to replace herself and pursued bold bets she'd been too scared to try.

“And I thought, what would I do if, if I was gonna die this year? If this was my last year here because I'm so depressed and I have to make myself happy, what would I do? And running a company was not on the list. So I immediately hired a CEO for Nenero.”

Steal thisAsk what you'd do if this were your last year; if your current job isn't on the list, hire your replacement and go do the real thing.

What would you do with a billion in the bank, banned from your current job?

Ma's favorite question for friends: if you had a billion in cash and couldn't do what you do today, how would you devote your life? Successful people say they'd keep doing the same thing; everyone else's answers reveal what they actually want.

“Another question I would want to ask you, and it's something I ask a lot of my best friends, is what would you do if you were a billionaire? And if you had like a billion in hard cash in the bank account, and, uh, you are not allowed to do what you're doing today, how would you devote your life?”

Steal thisPressure-test your path: imagine a billion in the bank and a ban on your current work, then see what you'd actually choose to do.

Get on the plane: in-person beats every other channel

Ma's relationship-building rule is to physically show up. A billionaire once flew in from South America and went straight from the airport to dinner with her, which instantly made her want to be his friend, the kind of impression a Zoom call can never make.

“I had a billionaire do this for me where he literally flew in from South America and he went straight from the airport to dinner with me. And that was the first time I had a one-on-one meeting with this person. And it really made an impression on me. I'm like, wow, this guy went out of his way.”

Steal thisWhen a relationship matters, get on the plane and show up in person; the gesture itself is the message.

Cold-emailing the Reddit and Twitch founders at 16

Ma got high-value meetings as a clueless 16-year-old by cold-emailing the Reddit guys, Justin and Emmett from Justin.tv, and Marc Benioff. Her pitch was disarming: 'I'm an idiot 16-year-old, I think you're brilliant, and I'll fly to you to be a fly on your shoulder.'

“Well, I was getting meetings like this when I was 16 and I knew nothing. I cold emailed the Reddit guys, I cold emailed Justin and Emmett from Twitch. I guess it was Justin.tv back then. And I said, "Hey, I'm this idiot 16-year-old." I think you just put it on the table, like, "I'm an idiot and I think you are brilliant and I'm willing to fly to you and I just wanna be," a fly on your shoulder and see you do your work”

Steal thisCold-email people you admire with self-deprecating honesty and an offer to fly out and just observe them work.

She built a colocation server business at 13

At 13, Ma started a dedicated server and colocation business because she assumed that's just what you did in high school. She grew it to a few hundred thousand in revenue while still a kid.

“When I was 13, I started a dedicated server and colocation business because that's what I thought you did in high school. That's just, I don't know why, but I thought it was kind of normal. And I grew that to about a few hundred grand in revenue.”

Out-earning her biology teacher at 13 from a server business

Ma's teenage colocation business made hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, more than her biology teacher, while she dozed in class after staying up until 3am handling customer-service and sales emails.

“I was making like hundreds of thousands of dollars a year off of it. I was making more money than my teacher. I remember in biology class, it's EDM and I can't pay attention and I'm like, doing, like, the biology teacher clearly doesn't like me because she knows that I'm high potential, but I wasn't doing well because I was up till 3 in the morning answering customer service and sales emails.”

Collect multiple billionaire tax strategists and merge their advice

Rather than sticking with one accountant, Ma got intros to the tax strategists who serve billionaires, built a stable of them, and combines their advice. One such pro had saved clients a collective $100 billion in taxes.

“So eventually I said, hey, could you introduce me to your tax person? And that person of course works with like 30 other billionaires and has saved them, you know, collectively $100 billion in taxes. And then I, I've gotten enough of these tax professional intros where now I have a whole collection of them I call and I combine the advice from multiple tax professionals and merge it all together.”

Steal thisStop relying on one accountant; get intros to the strategists who serve the ultra-wealthy and merge advice from several.

Tax strategy is the highest-IRR investment you can make

Ma argues that since taxes can take half your income, spending 5-10% of your time finding great tax strategists pays for itself 100-fold, a higher return than putting that same money in the stock market.

“It pays for itself like 100-fold. It's the highest IRR investment you can make. It's way better than like investing in the stock market with the money you're paying these tax people.”

Steal thisTreat tax planning as an investment: a few days a year finding great strategists can out-return the stock market.

The 80/20 of Brian Johnson: longevity for $15-25K a year

Ma spends roughly $15-25K a year on supplements, custom compounding, and quarterly exosome IVs aiming to boost mental function and energy by 25%-plus. She frames it as the 80/20 of Brian Johnson, getting most of the benefit without his million-dollar-a-year spend.

“Is that worth $15,000 a year, which is roughly how much I spend on this? Maybe I spend 20 or 25 grand on it. It's not a lot of money. You don't need to pull a Brian Johnson where you're spending a million dollars a year to get 80% of the results. This is the 80/20 rule of Brian Johnson.”

Buy the yacht for a cash-flow-positive tax write-off

Ma describes a friend buying a $30M yacht who structured a $30M write-off, financed 80% through the bank, and chartered it to cover operating costs, making the purchase net cash-flow positive. She says the same logic applies to airplanes, where her write-off exceeded her cash down payment.

“So I have a friend who's buying a $30 million yacht right now, and he found a way for it to give him a $30 million write-off. He's going to charter it out for a bit, but like he saves more money on taxes than what he's spending on the yacht. And his bank will finance 80% of the yacht. He's only putting 20% down. So it's net-net cash flow positive for him to buy the yacht, ironically.”

What Paul Graham's most impressive people had in common

Ma asked Paul Graham what his short list of most-impressive founders shared. His answer was not intelligence but grit, unconventional thinking, synthesizing ideas across fields to beat any single domain expert, and the willingness to go to great lengths to meet the right people.

“And for him, it was less about the intelligence actually. It was not about the— it goes back to this common theme we've had throughout the past hour and a half here on like grit and being willing to be unconventional and to try different approaches and to,, you know, to collect ideas from multiple spaces and merge them together to come up with something even better than what a domain expert in any one field would be able to come up with on their own.”

Bioelectricity may matter more than genetics

Ma's biotech bet centers on scientist Mike Levin, who argues genetics is overrated and that bioelectricity dictates lifespan, cancer, and body shape. His framing: genetics is the hardware of biology, bioelectricity is the software.

“And that it's this other thing, bioelectricity, that dictates how long we live, whether or not we get cancer, how our limbs and body shape forms. It's actually not as much genetics as you think. And genetics is like the hardware level of biology, whereas he says bioelectricity is like the software.”

$16M from lab to full FDA approval, a drug-world miracle

Ma hired Tom, who took the drug Elsonris from lab to full FDA approval for just $16M, when approvals normally cost hundreds of millions. It worked because the drug put 8 of the first 9 patients, who would normally be dead within months, into remission.

“Tom had taken a drug called Elsonris from lab all the way through FDA approval, full approval for $16 million, which is absolutely crazy in the drug world. Like normally it takes hundreds of millions of dollars to get something approved by the FDA, but his drug actually worked. It was putting patients in full remission. The first 8 out of 9 patients, normally they would be dead within months. With this drug, they were, they were going into remission.”

Babies grown from raw genetic material, no sperm or egg

Ma predicts that eventually you'll grow a baby from raw genetic material, swabbing two people's mouths into a machine with no sperm or egg involved. She estimates it's not in the next 10 years and probably not the next 20.

“No sperm, no egg, just raw genetic material. And, you know, I think that will eventually be in the future. I don't think that's going to be the next 10 years, probably not even the next 20 years.”