We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP435: Why the Youngest Billionaire Walked Away from Wall Street w/ John Arnold & Michael Faye

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to TIP. A quick note before we start today's episode, Clay Robert and I will be attending the Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting on April 30th. If you don't know Clay and Robert, be sure to check out their show Millennial Investing on our network. This event is called the Woodstock of capitalism and it takes place in Omaha, the birthplace of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. And for those who aren't familiar, all you need to attend the meeting is to be an owner of a Berkshire B share, which today is around $350. Also, each shareholder is entitled to a maximum of four meeting credentials, so if you're not currently a shareholder, you may be able to attend through someone you know. We'll be sending details on this to our email subscribers soon in case you're interested in meeting up with us.

Starting point is 00:00:39 On today's show, we have a powerhouse duo, and that is billionaire philanthropist John Arnold and Michael Fay, the co-founder of Give Directly. John was an early employee at Enron, becoming a multimillionaire in his mid-20s before starting his own hedge fund. After retiring from finance, he has been operating full-time at Arnold Ventures, his philanthropic foundation. Michael Fay holds a PhD in economics from Harvard and has founded multiple philanthropic organizations that focus on getting money into the hands of those who need it most. Give directly has support from billionaires like John, Reid Hoffman, and others. This was an amazing opportunity to seek to learn about the philanthropic world through the

Starting point is 00:01:16 challenges John has faced and the solutions that Michael has implemented. In this episode, we discussed John's early career that led him to become the youngest billionaire in the U.S. in 2007, his experience as an early employee at Enron becoming the head of their natural gas trading desk, his journey in founding his own hedge fund, his relationship to money and his experience in philanthropy to date, what led Michael to co-found Give Directly, how Give Directly operates, and why it's important to start your own philanthropy efforts today, that and a whole lot more. It was truly an honor to sit down with both of these gentlemen who are focusing their full efforts and resources on solving global poverty. It was a very enlightened,

Starting point is 00:01:55 discussion and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. So here's my conversation with John Arnold and Michael Faye. You are listening to The Investors Podcast, where we study the financial markets and read the books that influence self-made billionaires the most. We keep you informed and prepared for the unexpected. Welcome to the Investors podcast. I'm your host, Trey Lockerbie, and today we have a powerhouse guest list. We have John. John Arnold and Michael Faye, and I'm so excited to have both of you on the show. We're going to kick off the show by speaking a little bit to John, mainly around his career. He was at one point the youngest billionaire, what he's up to, how he's discovered Michael

Starting point is 00:02:48 Faye and give directly, and pull Michael in about halfway through. So with that all being said, John, welcome to the show. Thank you. It's great to be here. I am so glad to learn about you and meet you. This has been a really fun journey coming through from the game. Give Directly team. And from what I've gathered about you, learning what I have, you seem to have been a very

Starting point is 00:03:10 enterprising young man. Your first company started when you were 14. And given that you were the youngest billionaire back in 2007 and have now gone into philanthropy full time, as well as signed the giving pledge, I'd like to start out here by just hearing about your relationship to money, especially early in life, because that philanthropic career seems to have captured you very early on. So we're starting with a softball question. My relationship to money.

Starting point is 00:03:37 I think it's fair to say that I was consumed by the idea of making money from a very early age. I remember having this conversation with my parents that I wanted to be a millionaire by the time I was 30. That was my goal. It wasn't that I wanted a specific career track. It was my goal is to become a millionaire. And so I was going to reverse engineer how to get there, which started with that summer walking around the neighborhood, trying to knocking on doors, trying to mow somebody's yard for $15. And the following year when I was 14, it was the baseball card craze had started.

Starting point is 00:04:11 And my friends were all collecting cards. And I collected baseball cards for five minutes. And then I realized, I want to buy and sell baseball cards. I want to translate this into how can I start a business and make some money around it. And so that led to kind of a several-year enterprise with me becoming a wholesale distributor of cards. taking advantage of geographic arbitrage and information arbitrage opportunities, sending cards all around the nation, bringing cards in, and earning enough money to pay for a couple years of college.

Starting point is 00:04:40 But went that concept of how do I make money? I think it translated into the books I read in high school. I remember reading Writers Poker, reading the Wall Street Journal every day, reading corporate biographies, things like McDonald's and even a Donald Trump biography, God help me. And then when I got to college, it was, how do I get out of college as quickly as possible and get into the game? So I took heavy course loads, had some AP credits, took summer school so I could graduate in three years and just get out there. And so the whole life progression up to that point was I want to be in the business world. And if your goal is to make money, especially back in the 90s, you very easily got steered into the field of finance.

Starting point is 00:05:25 And so here I was, I didn't really know what investment banking was. I didn't exactly know what trading was. I had read enough about them both to kind of understand that that's where I wanted to be. And so that steered my career track. And certainly in the field of trading, which is probably the one profession that is most directly related to money. You have that scorecard with you every day about how are you doing in the market and how does that translate to your own compensation? And that very much steered me from an early age. Where do you think the urgency came from? You know, why age 30, what did money kind of mean to you at age 30?

Starting point is 00:06:04 Were you planning on retiring at that point? Did you just want freedom? What was the drive there? I think I was trying to prove something mostly to myself, but a little bit to the world, that I was a good student. I wasn't a great student. I was naturally very talented in math, but I never put in the effort to get the best grades. And so in high school, again, I had good grades, but I wasn't valedictorian or slithorian.

Starting point is 00:06:30 I applied to go to Ivy League schools. I got rejected from them all. I ended up at Vanderbilt. Coming out of Vanderbilt, I applied for the marquee Wall Street banking jobs, the Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch's, and got rejected from them. And so at that point, it was I had high confidence in myself, but I needed to prove it to myself. I needed to prove the success. And again, at that time of my life, the scorecard was money for better or worse, but it drove me into this career, which ended up being perfect, both from my skill set, as well as what I ended up being really passionate about, especially at that time of my life in my 20s and into the 30s, was really enjoying the markets and that game and that fight every day. I loved and I was good at it. So I happened into that job that was perfect for my skill set. Yeah, let's talk about that job because it does seem like, you know, you really just found your sport or something at that stage, right? You just kind of gravitated from what I've read. So out of college, the first job you land is with a burgeoning company called Enron. And that'll perk a lot of people up, I think, when they hear the word. It's obviously, it's kind of a tarnished name at this point. Obviously, that name bears a lot of weight. There's a lot there, which we could get into a little bit. But what I'm mostly interested in is while you.

Starting point is 00:07:51 may not have set out initially to be a natural gas trader, you most certainly had a knack for it. So what was your experience like and what do you think kind of led you to ultimately being at this trading desk at Enron? So coming out of college, the best job I got was at Enron. And at the time, it had a very active energy trading desk. It was kind of the largest energy trader and had a bit of an investment bank for the energy industry, had developed this merchant firm around the energy. business. And that was close enough to being in finance for me. And so I figured I'd take that job,

Starting point is 00:08:28 work two or three years, go back to business school and kind of figure out what I wanted to do with my life. And I happened to be put on the trading desk from day one, which was a bit unusual. But I found my home there immediately. And as a company, it was a great place to be in the 90s. It was creating and inventing these business lines. And it was taking lots of risk. It was doing things, other companies, were not. It was named the most innovative company by, I think, Forbes magazine of fortune for a number of years running. And it was a fantastic place to be as a young, ambitious employee, because you got responsibility much earlier than I would have gotten had I gone to one of the marquee investment banks. They were growing so quickly that they would often take somebody

Starting point is 00:09:15 at a middle management, promote them, and to go start a new line of business, and everybody below them would take one step up. And so I was able to escalate my career much quicker there than I would have anyplace else. I think the firm obviously had its strengths. It had its weaknesses. I had a hubris around it that I think was led to the downfall. I got there in 1995. It declared bankruptcy in December of 2001. And so for six and a half years. And I saw so much. A joke that I earned my MBA there. I never went back to get my official MBA, but I saw so much on the way up with the innovation, but then I learned even more on the way down, understanding what the company did poorly, what it did wrongly, and the ramifications that it had not only to investors, but more importantly,

Starting point is 00:10:04 to the older employees. It was fairly easy for people like me, the people in their 20s, to transition into a new career or a new firm, but the pain that it created for older employees who lost a significant amount of their retirement funds and their next job wasn't as clear, it was real. And so having all those mixed emotions about being part of the creation of this or the buildup, the success that the company had had, but then seeing that downfall and all the pain that it caused was real. It was an emotional roller coaster. I at the time was by 2000 at the age of 26, I was the head natural gas trader at Enron, which was the biggest gas trading firm in the industry. So I was sitting in the biggest seat in the industry at a young age and just completely focused on trading the markets, had a small team around me.

Starting point is 00:10:59 And we were just heads down, pedaled to the metal just all day, every day. And it was exhilarating. At that age, you just have infinite energy and just this roller coaster of emotions around the whole thing. At that age, did you feel the pressure that you had being in that position? Were things moving so fast that you were just sort of like moving with it and have time to think? Or were you feeling that pressure and stress along the way and that responsibility being in that role? Both. I think it was you're just trying to keep your head above water.

Starting point is 00:11:32 We were trying to do so much. The industry was so busy. The volumes that were being traded in the industry were so high. And we were the center of it. We were trading multiples of what the next largest company was. And much of that was going through my desk, was getting priced and managed through my desk and a lot through me. And so each day was just a battle to stay alive.

Starting point is 00:11:54 But then you'd step back and see what was being created, and it led to a sense of pride about the success that certain divisions within the company were having. Now, you often hear that bankruptcy happens slowly, then suddenly. Right. And I imagine 2001 could have been a very confusing time as you kind of highlighted, you know, seeing this peak and then this ultimate crash and the pain that went along with it. But in a strange way, you also had just made this $8 million bonus. So you just brought in nearly, you know, three quarters of a billion dollars for the company. And this is seemingly right before the collapse. So I'm just kind of curious, was there writing on the wall? Were you seeing the cracking, you know, around you? Or was it were you pretty blindsided to the whole thing on, you know, the day that things really turned. around for it. It was mostly blindsided. I had had friends in other divisions of the company, and we would go get a beer, and some of them would talk about some of the issues that were in other divisions. But at the time, especially in 2001, the trading division was so profitable, that there was a sense that those trading profits could mask over other parts of the company

Starting point is 00:13:02 that were doing poorly. And so I didn't give it a whole lot of thought. I kind of knew that things weren't 100% kosher there. But again, it was just a day-to-day survival of trying to get through that day, get through all the trading volumes, and translate that into some profit for the company, which then translates into success for me. And you mentioned innovation in how innovative the company was. As I understand it, you were using a system called Enron Online, which allowed you to trade these derivatives. What did that software allow you guys to do? Just talk us through about that experience and what that innovation, having that in your arsenal meant for you in that particular position? Sure. So at the time, the main trading venue was a open outcry system on

Starting point is 00:13:51 mercantile exchange, the NYMEX, and it was incredibly inefficient. Just the number of phone calls and people you would have to go through in order to get a transaction completed. And this was about the time at 99, 2000, Web 1.0, when things started moving online and auction market started moving online, all types of markets started moving. And some of the executives at Enron had the idea of, let's put our markets out online. Let's make it easy for customers to transact. Let's give full price transparency. So we're not quoting one customer, one thing, and another customer or another thing. We have to have very tight bid offers and they're going to be fully transparent to the market. And if anybody wants to transact with Enron, they can do it with one click. They get an instant

Starting point is 00:14:39 confirmation and their transactions done. And that was a far superior system than what existed at the time. And so when it was introduced, it very quickly became industry standard. And so the volumes that we were getting starting in 2000 and continuing on through 2001 through that system of all products, but especially the ones that I was responsible for managing were just incredible. And trying to manage the risk that was coming into the company, price and manage warehouse that risk was a very substantial enterprise that we were doing. And it provided a lot of liquidity for Enron to take its speculative positions. It provided a lot of information as we saw what everybody in the market was doing.

Starting point is 00:15:25 And we theoretically made some bid off for income. But the downside was a market maker that's constantly out there. You can end up with positions that you didn't put on by design and that would go against you. So there was that struggle of how do you manage these positions? How do you manage a bid offer, given that you may or may not want these positions that are coming through on your markets? Now, from learning on that system, I'm kind of curious as we kind of go from the Enron collapse into your next venture, which was Centaurus, your own firm. Walk us through what led you down the path of starting your own firm and what maybe learnings you took from either that software or any kind of other systematic trading you took along with you. So I was very happy to get away from Enron online, right, and getting to have that time back and that stress removed.

Starting point is 00:16:14 But when Enron went bankrupt and I was contractually obligated to stay there to and through bankruptcy, so I didn't leave until February of 2002. And the question I had was, what next? And I had a number of opportunities. I wanted to run my own thing. I wanted to either run my own company or run a division within a company. And at the time, I was running a trading desk, but I wanted to take that next step up and run a division. And so I talked to some of the New York banks about that. I talked to some of the energy companies about going there.

Starting point is 00:16:48 And I started talking to some of the hedge funds. And it was clear that the highest compensation for me was going to be through the energy companies. the hedge fund structure. Just the economics of that, especially at that time, it was far superior to be in the hedge fund structure. And then the next question was, was I going to start my own or was I going to go work for a larger fund? And the business that I was running at Enron that I continued on at Centaurus didn't have much synergy with what other hedge funds were doing. It was a pretty unique strategy. We were trading this niche market of U.S. natural gas. We were trading the commodity. We We weren't trading equities or bonds around the energy space.

Starting point is 00:17:27 And so there wasn't synergy of me going to another hedge fund besides the fact that they had day one capital that they could allocate to me. And during this time, I had a number of people approach me and start offering me day one capital if I wanted to start my own company. And when I got confidence that I could get that, that became an easy decision of let's go down that route. I'll start my own company. and in August of 2002, it was the first day of Centaurus Energy. Amazing. So you achieved your goal. You were a millionaire well before age 30.

Starting point is 00:18:01 What was that day like, you know, realizing that goal that you had kind of been after for so long. What did you feel and what was kind of anything you learned from that? Yeah, there's a psychology of money that I've been a part of. And I've been a part of it directly and I've seen this affect others, which is, you have this goal and as soon as you get to that level of success, your goalposts change. They move. And so it was, okay, it's not one million, it's 10 million. And then when you get there, it's something else. And I was definitely on that treadmill for a long time as I was having success. What I defined as, okay, I have enough. I've met my objectives. I've proven it to

Starting point is 00:18:43 myself kept changing until it got to a point where at some point I said, I'm not enjoying this anymore. I'm not happy on this treadmill and I need to step off. And looking back, that was scary. It was risky for me. I didn't know whenever I stepped off if I would find happiness and satisfaction doing something else. My career at that point when I finally closed Centaurus in 2012, it was 17 years in energy trading is the only thing I had done. And so the question was, again, could I find that satisfaction? Could I find success doing something else? And could I define my life with something other than money? And that was the question that was going to, that I was going to face stepping out. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. All right. I want you guys to imagine

Starting point is 00:19:35 spending three days in Oslo at the height of the summer. You got long days of daylight, incredible food, floating saunas on the Oslo Fjord, and every conversation you have is with people who are actually shaping the future. That's what the Oslo Freedom Forum is. From June 1st through the 3rd, 2026, the Oslo Freedom Forum is entering its 18th year bringing together activists, technologists, journalists, investors, and builders from all over the world, many of them operating on the front lines of history. This is where you hear firsthand stories from people using Bitcoin to survive currency collapse, using AI to expose human rights abuses, and building technology under censorship and authoritarian pressures. These aren't abstract ideas. These are tools real people are using right now.

Starting point is 00:20:22 You'll be in the room with about 2,000 extraordinary individuals, dissidents, founders, philanthropists, policymakers, the kind of people you don't just listen to but end up having dinner with. Over three days, you'll experience powerful mainstage talks, hands-on workshops on freedom tech, and financial sovereignty, immersive art installations, and conversations that continue long after the sessions end. And it's all happening in Oslo in June. If this sounds like your kind of room, well, you're in luck because you can attend in person. Standard and patron passes are available at Osloof Freedom Forum.com with patron passes offering deep access, private events, and small group time with the speakers. The Oslo Freedom Forum isn't just a conference.

Starting point is 00:21:06 It's a place where ideas meet reality and where the future. future is being built by people living it. If you run a business, you've probably had the same thought lately. How do we make AI useful in the real world? Because the upside is huge, but guessing your way into it is a risky move. With NetSuite by Oracle, you can put AI to work today. NetSuite is the number one AI Cloud ERP, trusted by over 43,000 businesses. It pulls your financials, inventory, commerce, HR, and CRM into one unified system.

Starting point is 00:21:39 And that connected data is what makes your AI smarter. It can automate routine work, surface actionable insights, and help you cut costs while making fast AI-powered decisions with confidence. And now with the NetSuite AI connector, you can use the AI of your choice to connect directly to your real business data. This isn't some add-on, it's AI built into the system that runs your business. And whether your company does millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you stay ahead. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get their free business guide, demystifying

Starting point is 00:22:12 AI at net suite.com slash study. The guide is free to you at net suite.com slash study. NetSuite.com slash study. When I started my own side business, it suddenly felt like I had to become 10 different people overnight wearing many different hats. Starting something from scratch can feel exciting, but also incredibly overwhelming and lonely. That's why, have you, the right tools matters. For millions of businesses, that tool is Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S. from brands just getting started to household names. It gives you everything you need in one place, from inventory to payments to analytics. So you're not juggling a bunch of different platforms.

Starting point is 00:23:00 You can build a beautiful online store with hundreds of ready-to-use templates and Shopify is packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions and even enhance your product photography. Plus, if you ever get stuck, they've got award-winning 24-7 customer support. Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify, and start hearing sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash WSB. Go to Shopify.com slash WSB. That's Shopify.com slash WSB. All right. Back to the show.

Starting point is 00:23:41 That kind of reminds me of, you know, another hedge fund manager we brought on the show, Jason Carp. He told us that he had a mentor at one point who told him that he had been to the top of the mountain and there was nothing to see. So when you talk about being on this treadmill, I think that really kind of accurately describes how you were feeling. But I'm kind of curious, you know, stepping off of that huge business. I mean, stepping away from that, was there a lack of identity, you know, that you were seeking for shortly thereafter?

Starting point is 00:24:10 What was the, you know, aftermath of that stepping away? How did that look for you? I was lucky. I had met my wife in 2006. We got married in 2007. And she had a professional career. We both had this idea of wanting to do something significant philanthropically when the time was right. And about 2009, she was at a crossroads in her career and decided to step out and start thinking about our foundation full time.

Starting point is 00:24:42 And I started doing it very much part time, maybe an hour a day, go over to the foundation offices and spend some time there. And over the next several years, I started getting more and more interested in some of the issues and work that we were doing at the foundation. to by the time 2012 came again my last year of running Centaurus, I was finding more happiness and more challenge thinking about our philanthropic activities rather than trading energy markets. So it was a very easy transition for me, at least from having something to do. The next day I would just show up at a different office. The bigger question was, would I enjoy going from one hour a day doing that to doing it full time? Now, we're going to get to the philanthropy here in a second, but I have to just ask while we're still vaguely on the topic of your trading career. The markets are a lot different maybe today than they were back then in a lot of different ways. I'm curious, do you still trade on the side? Do you miss it? Do you participate in any way? Have you stepped fully away from the game?

Starting point is 00:25:45 So I don't manage anybody's money, which, thank goodness, that takes away a very significant stress out of my life. I still mess around in the markets a little bit. I like having one foot in that for-profit space. I like just thinking about markets and investing. And so I do, at times, whenever I see something that's really disjointed in the markets, we'll step in and put a little something on. Is there anything at the moment I have to ask, you know, where you're focusing the most, I'm just going to frame it that way. Is there any opportunities that are calling to you? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:26:20 The oil market, I think, is in a structural bull market. And the boom-bust cycle associated with commodities continues. We had seven years of very low oil prices where the industry just got decimated. And the cap-ex that was put into the industry fell precipitously. And there was a belief, I think, that oil demand peak was nearer than, what it was. And the markets, the equity markets, were not valuing growth anymore. They were sending a signal to producers not to invest in new supplies because the energy transition was going to make oil have a terminal value of zero at some point. And companies responded to their

Starting point is 00:27:04 financial duress. They responded to equity valuations and what Wall Street was desiring from them. and they severely cut back their exploration budgets. And we're at a point now where oil demand is still going up. And so that spare supply and that supply demand just kept getting tighter. And I think the COVID of 2020, when you had the demand shock, hid the tightening of the market and caused even more financial duress such that whenever things emerged, it became a more blatant supply demand discrepancy, as well as a lack of capital to figure out how to get yourself out of this. And I think even still, the markets aren't valuing growth.

Starting point is 00:27:47 They want the oil today, but they don't want oil five or ten years from now. And you can see that from the forward curve. And I think this is going to be a challenge for the markets and for the oil markets during the 2020s. It's very unclear how they balance other than very high prices that cause demand destruction. Thank you for that. That's amazing. I'd like to talk about the Arnold Foundation, and one of our other recent guests was Tony Robbins, and he said something that really stood out to me, which was that money does nothing for you.

Starting point is 00:28:17 It only enhances the person that you already are, meaning that if you're a giving person, you will give more. If you're a materialistic person, you'll spend more, et cetera. It stood out to me that your philanthropic efforts began really early in your career and have only expanded from there. Did you always have the drive for philanthropy? you seem to have been involved from an early start. I think it's natural for people whenever you have enough resources to meet the demands of yourself and your family to look broader and start thinking about your community and people define their communities different ways. It could be extended family.

Starting point is 00:28:54 It could be a geographic community. It could be any number of things. But I felt that. And I felt that I wanted to be productive to society. and the professional occupation I chose of financial trading, you can tell a story about why it's the needed function, but it's pretty hard to draw the direct correlation or direct tie between trading and making society better.

Starting point is 00:29:20 And so I used, even from an early days at Enron, when I started making some really good bonus checks, I started giving money back to the community, mostly in education. And so I agree with you. I agree with Tony Robbins. that the money allowed me to be much more philanthropic. It exaggerates all traits, both good and bad.

Starting point is 00:29:41 I think that can be, it exaggerates the bad traits as well, and you have to be very careful about that. But it allows somebody who naturally wants to give back to have that opportunity and to do things that most people can't. And so I've had that great luck and blessing in my life of being able to do that in the manner that we are. How steep was the learning curve, you know, entering into philanthropy? I'm curious, you know, given the skill set you were bringing to the table, were you able to leverage any of that and apply any of the either strategies or lessons from the trading career and apply them to your philanthropic work?

Starting point is 00:30:20 So the work that we do at Arnold Ventures is domestic public pause. We work in areas like education, criminal justice reform, public pensions, health care policy, everything. evidence-based policy. So all of that was completely foreign to me when we hopped in. I had been in education reform circles for over a decade when Laura and I kind of really started to ramp up our foundation. So had theories of that, had learnings from that space that then to some extent were applicable to these other spaces, just about how these large public systems work, what the incentives and rules are how actors respond to incentives and rules, how change happens. the role of legislation in driving change, the role of public opinion in driving change. And so

Starting point is 00:31:10 wasn't starting from scratch, but it was very much new work. And there was a very steep learning curve associated with that as we were trying to figure out as outsiders to these systems, how could we be productive? How could we as a third-party foundation in these very complex systems with a lot of actors and special interests with government intervention in these systems, how could we be productive? And so we tried a lot. We did some things right. We did a lot of things wrong. And now, kind of 14 years into this, I think we've had a lot of learnings. We've been able to create a brand and a reputation that's attracted some real experts, top experts in the field. So it's much easier now that we don't have to go into these systems. And the

Starting point is 00:32:00 these fields and try to figure it out ourselves. We can hire great people who have the knowledge, but we're trying to do things a little bit differently than what others do. I think there's only a few foundations that are really focused on public policy as the lever for structural and sustainable change. And within that, we're probably the largest that's focused exclusively on policy. We're going to talk about some of those organizations, especially give directly here in a moment, But I'm kind of curious, and maybe this ties into how you found Give directly, but what have been some of the biggest challenges you've experienced so far in the philanthropic career? What hurdles have been, you know, the most to surmount, so to speak. The hardest by far is special interests in all these fields.

Starting point is 00:32:49 Anytime you're trying to change a system, there's winners and losers. And people who are harmed by that change, the special interests who are harmed, who have economic interests, in the system are very good at stopping that. And certainly some fields more than others, but at the instance of healthcare, which is probably the most powerful special interest in D.C. And every congressman has a hospital in his or her district. Everybody uses the health care system. It's very easy to tell stories about the harms that are going to develop if the health

Starting point is 00:33:26 care system changes at all. political careers have been ruined trying to make change in health care. And so we go in and point out these deep inefficiencies in the system. And it's clear to experts about the flaws of the system, about ideas of how to improve it. But actually reaching change and reaching success on trying to improve the system is enormously challenging. And I think one of our advantages is we're young, we're patient. We don't have economic interests in any of the things that we're working on and we can be a safe space for policymakers because of that. We can be objective and we can be trusting and we can provide that information. But trying to actually

Starting point is 00:34:12 get policy change, trying to get legislative change is challenging. And it's been the biggest struggle. The upside is whenever you do create change, whenever you do get that law passed, it's hard to get that changed again. So that's the structural and sustainable aspect of the work. that really drives us day to day, but it requires a level of patience that I think few have. Yeah, the special interests are particularly interesting. And there's just sort of the misalignment of incentives. It just seems all across the board. And in researching you, I came across some what seemed to me of like these cheap shots.

Starting point is 00:34:49 I mean, you've seen advertisements of people kind of, you know, dragging your name through the mud just because of the association with Enron and trying to discredit you. when it's just fascinating to see that, knowing that the intentions and how, you know, how genuine they are and the change is a significant one that you're trying to make. What has the experience been like just dealing with all of that external kind of ramifications or like collateral damage, you know, from effort? It was hard in the beginning. We were trying to improve these systems and we were getting attacked.

Starting point is 00:35:23 And especially I was getting attacked. And to some extent, I had an easy target on my back, having Enron on my resume. But at some point, step back and say, why are we getting attacked? And the answer was because we're having an effect. If we were not doing anything, if we weren't successful in trying to change the conversation in these systems, we would be ignored. But the fact that we were getting ad hominem attacks against us and that special interests were hiring attack firms to go after us was an indication that we were having success.

Starting point is 00:35:55 We were making progress, that they were scared of us. And that when we came to that realization, there were, I think, two ramifications. One was it was a renewed energy. Don't let this bother us. We don't have a business on the side. We don't have a day business that we have to protect, that we are able to put our reputations on the line and take that criticism like very few people in our situation are. So let's use that to our advantage.

Starting point is 00:36:24 and take on issues that have scared others off because they don't want that backlash. The second thing was we realized we need to tell our story better. I came from energy trading. Laura came from M&A legal background. In both professions, it was stay out of the press. You don't want to be in the news. And we took that philosophy into our work in the beginning was we're just going to put our heads down, do the work, not talk to the press.

Starting point is 00:36:53 We don't really have successes early on. So let's not tell the story of what we're going to do. Let's just do. And the problem with that was if we weren't telling the story of what our motivations were, why we were interested in the work, what the ideas that we were promoting were and what the ramifications of those ideas were going to be, somebody else was going to be telling that story for us. And it wasn't going to be favorable to us.

Starting point is 00:37:16 So we realized that we needed to get out more. We needed to tell the story. Who are Laura and I as people? What are our interests in this work? What are the ideas that we're promoting? And why are we doing it? And since we started doing that, it's changed dramatically. All right. So I imagine along your journey, you've dealt with a number of different organizations, seen some work, some not work. You've obviously found something that intrigued you with GiveDirectly. And we have Michael Fay, co-founder of Give Directly here on the show. Michael, welcome.

Starting point is 00:37:49 Thanks for having me, Drake. You've been patiently waiting in the wings here. really appreciate it. You are a particularly impressive person yourself. So I have to highlight that. I mean, unbelievable resume and you've had a significant impact on the philanthropic world through multiple organizations. I'd like to kind of explore this thesis that seems to underlie all of them, which is that the best way to combat global poverty is to simply put money into the hands of those who need it most. So where did you first originate this idea and how did you kind of prove this out? Yeah, so I did a PhD in economics a while ago, and it wound up being a pretty interesting time for the field.

Starting point is 00:38:30 Because we started to A, B, test what worked and what didn't work. So we applied some of the same rigorous techniques that you might use to test a drug to poverty programming. And what we learned to synthesize the literature was that a lot of what we had hoped to work and that we had been doing in the field did not work as well as we would have liked. And simply giving someone money to make them less poor worked remarkably well. We went around and said, well, this seems great. Why don't we give out some of our money this way? And as it turned out at the time, nobody was really letting you do that. People were running small programs here and there.

Starting point is 00:39:01 But if you wanted to give money and simply have it get to someone else in extreme poverty, that was impossible. And little by little, we built give directly to do exactly that. And we're under no illusion that cash is the only thing that should be done. But we do believe that recipients themselves should have some say in how the capital in this sector gets allocated. Ultimately, it is to benefit them. Why not give them some choice in that decision?

Starting point is 00:39:26 Fascinating. So I'd love to kind of explore, give directly as it stands today. It seems like the majority of the philanthropic work is benefiting Kenya. But you've also had programs even here in the U.S. in Atlanta, Georgia. Walk us through the decision on starting in both Kenya and also Atlanta. Yeah, it's a great question. So Kenya, we've got to go back more than a decade. And there was a dramatic change in financial systems about two.

Starting point is 00:39:50 2007 and 2008, which started in Kenya. And that was the introduction of mobile money and specifically in Pesa. So we went from a world where most people in the emerging markets had no access to the financial system, no access to the digital financial system. So no bank accounts, really no way to get the money outside of physically handing someone money, which is hard. And we literally saw T companies, T companies would drop boxes of dollar bills denominated in tax to pay folks.

Starting point is 00:40:17 So in PASIC comes out and all of a sudden any person that has a feature phone can get paid. I could literally sit in my living room in New York and pay someone in a refugee settlement in Uganda. And that very quickly changed what was possible philanthropically as well. So for the first time, I can get money to these folks. And that's why we started in Kenya, because mobile money started in Kenya. Since then, it's expanded. We're working in places as diverse now as Yemen, Liberia, and Atlanta. And it definitely just piqued my interest about Atlanta. What was the thesis going into that region in particular? Yeah, so a lot of the cash programming we do is a lump sum grant that lets people take investments they may not have made otherwise.

Starting point is 00:40:56 There's been this other idea out there for a long time from Martin Luther King to many others to give people a basic income. And the concept of a basic income is everybody deserves a minimum standard of living, which we can achieve by giving people a minimum standard of income. So in the U.S., that winds up being about $1,000 a month. And most of Africa, that'll be about $1 a dollar a day. So why not do that? And why not do that with some of the most vulnerable people, which is how we got started with this guaranteed income program in Atlanta? And what are the limitations of that in your mind? For example, you know, you had Andrew Yang recently campaigning about a universal basic income. And at what point, is there a limitation to that

Starting point is 00:41:36 idea, meaning, you know, we're spending around trillion dollars in welfare programs in the U.S. That theoretically, that could work out to be 25 grand a year to people who, like, in the 40 million people in the U.S. here who are considered poor. I'm just kind of curious, does that broaden out that just theory in your mind and economically, you know, given your PhD and your work? Are you a proponent of the UBI mentality? Yeah. So cash will not solve everything, right? There are problems of coordination and public goods. So cash is not going to discover a COVID vaccine. It's not going to build roads. It's not going to establish other public systems. And we should be clear about that. At the same time, there is a lot of waste in the system. And

Starting point is 00:42:16 deep degree of paternalism, right? Even in the U.S., there was a discussion a few years back about instead of giving people food stamps, actually sending them boxes of food. So you pick the powdered milk, you pick what goes in that box of food. Now, that is tremendously wasteful. Not only this, you have to send shipments of food to people, but because I have no idea what kind of powdered milk you want, or even if you want powdered milk. So we should at least start by asking the question, why not cash? For so long, we haven't trusted recipients. And we forced organizations like GiveDirectly donors to justify, why would you give cash? And I think that's the wrong question. I think we should ask, why would you not give cash? Let's start from a place where the recipient chooses, where we empower

Starting point is 00:42:55 them, and where it's efficient. And then let's make the argument, why not do that? And there will certainly be cases. The other thing I would say on this, you asked, what are the limitations? I think we're just scratching the surface. Cash has historically been a rounding error of what we do as a sector and the potential for it's tremendous. You look at the global poverty gap today and Burkings will estimate it's about 95 billion. That's the amount that it would take to get every person in the world above the poverty line. That's 0.1% of annual global GDP. That's not a lot of money. That means that for 0.1% of our global income, we could potentially end poverty today. So there's a whole lot more 0.1% to solve other problems. But why not take a crack?

Starting point is 00:43:34 Why not take a chance at ending poverty in the next decade or two? Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. No, it's not your imagination. Risk and regulation are ramping up, and customers now expect proof of security just to do business. That's why VANTA is a game changer. VANTA automates your compliance process and brings compliance, risk, and customer trust together on one AI-powered platform. So whether you're prepping for a SOC 2 or running an enterprise GRC program, VANTA keeps you secure and keeps your deals moving. Instead of chasing spreadsheets and screenshots, Vanta gives you continuous automation across more than 35 security and privacy frameworks. Companies like Ramp

Starting point is 00:44:17 and Riter spend 82% less time on audits with Vantta. That's not just faster compliance, it's more time for growth. If I were running a startup or scaling a team today, this is exactly the type of platform I'd want in place. Get started at Vanta.com slash billionaires. That's Vanty. Vantta.com slash billionaires. Ever wanted to explore the world of online trading but haven't dared try? The futures market is more active now than ever before, and plus 500 futures is the perfect place to start. Plus 500 gives you access to a wide range of instruments, the S&B 500, NASDAQ, Bitcoin, gas,

Starting point is 00:44:58 and much more. Explore equity indices, energy, metals, 4X, crypto, and beyond. With a simple and intuitive platform, you can trade from anywhere, right from your phone. Deposit with a minimum of $100 and experience the fast, accessible futures trading you've been waiting for. See a trading opportunity. You'll be able to trade it in just two clicks once your account is open. Not sure if you're ready, not a problem. Plus 500 gives you an unlimited, risk-free demo account with charts and analytic tools for you to practice on.

Starting point is 00:45:31 With over 20 years of experience, Plus 500 is your gateway to the markets. Visit Plus500.com to learn more. Trading in futures involves risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. Not all applicants will qualify. Plus 500, it's trading with a plus. Billion dollar investors don't typically park their cash in high-yield savings accounts. Instead, they often use one of the premier passive income strategies for institutional investors. Private Credit. Now, the same passive income strategy is available to investors of all sizes

Starting point is 00:46:07 thanks to the Fundrise income fund, which has more than $600 million invested in a 7.97% distribution rate. With traditional savings yields falling, it's no wonder private credit has grown to be a trillion dollar asset class in the last few years. Visit fundrise.com slash WSB to invest in the Fundrise income fund in just minutes. Funds total return in 2025 was 8%, and the average annual total return since inception is 7.8%. Past performance does not guarantee future results, current distribution rate as of 1231, 2025. Carefully consider the investment material before investing, including objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. This and other information can be found in the income funds prospectus at

Starting point is 00:46:54 fundrise.com slash income. This is a paid advertisement. All right. Back to the show. Speaking a little bit more about that waste, kind of on the flip side of that is the dormancy of money, right? And you have both been outspoken about this thing called a donor advised fund and it needing more regulation. So walk us through the misincentives around DAFs and what changes you'd like to see. What are the issues and what are the changes you're out to kind of change? I've met a lot of very philanthropically inclined people over the past 10, 15 years. Many of those people, are not actually giving money on an annual basis that's aligned with what their intent is. So there's this big gap between philanthropic intent and philanthropic action. And the question is why. And I think it's become easy to push off the decision about how to choose which organization

Starting point is 00:47:51 you're going to support until tomorrow. There's no forcing mechanism with donor advised funds that forces you to make a decision today. And because it's hard, people don't want to make a decision. make a mistake with their giving, they put it off, some people. And so there's a reason why we see most of the philanthropic giving that happens in a year that comes out of your checkbook happens in December. You have this forcing mechanism that you have to give it away by December 31st in order to get the tax credit for that given year. And if you give money to a private foundation, there's requirements that you have to distribute 5% a year. So again, there's these forcing

Starting point is 00:48:27 mechanisms that get money moving. A donor advised fund, is this unique structure where there's no requirement to actually distribute the money into the community. So you can write the check now into a donor advice fund. You get the tax credit for this year, but that money can sit dormant forever. And I think that's wrong. So what we're saying is that if the donor gets the tax credit today, that within a certain amount of time, that money needs to start flowing into the community, that this shouldn't be wealth warehousing vehicles, some of them are, especially some of the very big ones are, and that donors actually should be incentivized to give them money while they're living while they are thoughtful about it, rather than

Starting point is 00:49:12 dying and having this money in a will be lump sum to a number of organizations or more likely what we see is that these decisions just get pushed off to a future generation, a future generation that might not want that responsibility, might not have the same passions that the original donor had and set the tone and admission statement for the donor advised fund. And so there's this enormous amount of resources that's, again, received a subsidy from the government that's meant for the community, but isn't getting to the community. So what we've proposed, a coalition of a number of policymakers and donors and academics, including Michael, have suggested is that there should be a requirement that the money gets to the community within a certain time frame. And lawmakers

Starting point is 00:49:59 in D.C. have heard this, and it's really struck a chord with them, and there's been bipartisan legislation introduced both in the House and the Senate along these lines. It makes sense. And there also appears to be an interest of those brokers, managers who are collecting fees on the assets under management as part of these funds that I imagine are kind of the coalition you're up against, right, who are trying to protect almost the fees, that they're obviously disincentivized to give that money away. So that seems like a structural change that's needed as well. Exactly. So they get fees based upon assets under management. So it creates this misalignment that they are naturally inclined to want that money to stay in investment funds

Starting point is 00:50:45 and not get distributed to the community. Exact opposite from what these funds were intended to do. And shifting gears a little bit while we have you, John, what kind of drove you to partner up with give directly. What did you see in them that you liked? So I saw some of the same things that Michael had seen with the fault of programs that weren't meeting the intended targets and goals. And as Michael was talking about, that the research that started happening in evaluation of programs, the randomized control trials and AB testing, you could start seeing what effect do these programs that have high intentions and are really well-meaning, what are they actually doing? And I think especially in the international space,

Starting point is 00:51:29 there was a lot of disappointment that the programs as crafted by Americans and by NGOs were not having the desired effect. And although we are a domestic public policy foundation, I was very interested in these debates that were happening among development economists about why aren't they working and what's a better way for resources to go for good overseas. And that's that led me to find give directly as the gold standard of any program should have positive impacts that exceed what you can do just by giving cash to an individual. That should be the base and you should have to prove that the idea of this program is better than just giving the individual cash.

Starting point is 00:52:17 Yeah, so Michael, obviously is not that passive, right, where you're just handing out cash walking way. You guys are tracking the effectiveness of these dollars. Walk us through how give directly works exactly, how it tracks the effectiveness and the efficiency of the donations. Yeah, for sure. One thing to pick up on what John said as well as I think cash does push structural change of a sector that has largely anchored the programs. And I think it does it two ways. One is that it forces us to think about what the recipient wants, right? The unique thing about nonprofits first of for-profit is the person that pays is not the person that benefits. And that's unusual, right? If you don't like the phone you bought, don't buy the same phone next year. And the market has a mechanism

Starting point is 00:52:58 to fix that. The mechanism doesn't really work in the nonprofit sector. That way, right? Just the person that pays is different. And the second thing is when you tell people you're giving cash and we'll talk about the systems for doing it. Everybody has a thousand questions. How do you know it gets there? Who do you give it to? Do they waste it? How do you know it works? Is there a fraud? Like, what exactly does it cost? And our answer is these are exactly the right. questions, but we need to be asking them for everything. So if cash is the mechanism by which we push the sector and other organizations to ask and prove those questions, that's a gift in itself beyond the direct impact of doing cash. Now, on the operational bit, it seems like the easiest

Starting point is 00:53:32 thing in the world. You just hand someone cash and you'll leave what could be easier. But it actually turns out to be relatively complicated, right? So if you think about the structure of any intervention, the first part is figuring out whom to give to. So in our case, we look for those in extreme poverty. how do you find people in extreme poverty? And how do you do it at scale? What if I want to find a million people in a month to pay, a piece of generous donor gives? And that's complicated, right?

Starting point is 00:53:55 That's step one. We've done everything from door-to-door surveys, how big is your house, what assets do you have, to literally using machine learning algorithms on people's phone data to identify who the poorest people in a country are. And that sort of program is amazing because it scales rapidly and kind of infinitely within a country. So that's finding who the people are.

Starting point is 00:54:13 Then you need to plug them into a program. How do you actually persuade them to sign up? How do you teach them about the program and so on? If I showed up at your house and said, Tray, I've got a $30,000 for you, you just need to sign here and give me your phone number. You probably would ask me to leave, right? And it's not just you, but a lot of recipients have that skepticism. People say no all the time. How do you convince them and persuade them that this is real and different? Third bit is you have to pay them. How do you pay someone in remote Liberia, which is a country that does not even print its own currency? It literally imports physical bills of which there's often a shortage. How do you make sure there's enough money in rural Liberia where there's no reception? So it's everything from even bringing in kind of remote cell phone towers to provide the connectivity to working with the telecoes to do it. And then of course, how do you monitor and evaluate this? Right. And the gold standard are these randomized trials, which we do in partnership with academics. But we also literally interview every recipient and publish this on the website without editing, live.givorep.org. And you can see the stories. So anyway, that's the short

Starting point is 00:55:11 answer to some of the complexity of simply giving people cash. Well, I'm glad you brought up the challenges to actually getting the dollars into hands, and especially in rural, impoverished nations where internet can be a challenge. Because one thought I've had, I'm sure it's something that's come to mind for you both is this new world of cryptocurrency, for example, and having a blockchain and traceability to some extent of how to go bypass an intermediary and get someone money. I know Jack Dorsey, for example, is doing a lot of initiatives in Africa for this exact kind of reason, you know, propagating Bitcoin and countries such as, you know, Kenya especially.

Starting point is 00:55:49 So is that anywhere in the near future? Do you see a benefit of the blockchain technology entering the philanthropic world in a beneficial way? I think it's early days, but I think the crypto community has been quite generous. I think direct giving and the crypto community, I think, share a lot of common philosophy. One is decentralization and power the individual over the institution, which is kind of at the heart of what we do. And two is traceability. I want to know where my funds go.

Starting point is 00:56:18 I think a lot of the skepticism around NGOs or taxes is what happened to my money. So the fact that I can tell you, your money went to this person in Malawi at 2.23 p.m. Here's the proof that your money went there in 92 cents on dollars in this person's hands now. It's pretty powerful. Now, of course, there are places, Zimbabwe, other places with really volatile currency markets. It's hyperinflation for which crypto is the most stable asset. And we are starting to experiment with some of those projects as well where you actually deliver crypto on the recipient end.

Starting point is 00:56:49 Fascinating. Now, another kind of curveball question, but given your background, I'm just curious, you know, especially with the printing of money, so to speak, because one benefit, you hear the Bitcoin community say is, you know, by giving someone Bitcoin, it's not going to inflate away, right? That's much like the U.S. dollar. But this UBI philosophy is a bit different. Obviously, we could reallocate some of the budget towards things like.

Starting point is 00:57:09 extinguishing poverty, but I'm kind of curious what your thoughts are about just the creation of dollars and how much more runway we have to do that, you know, to solve things like global poverty. So I think I'll put my economist hat on for a second. When you drop money on a place, one of two things can happen, right? Prices can go up or you could see a change in the real economy. And that is a purely empirical question. There are undoubtedly places where prices will go up, right?

Starting point is 00:57:37 places that are shut off from the global economy and so forth. There are places that we've seen where the real economy changes. So we've, the largest experiment we've run to date on this actually dropped. There's about 15 to 20 percent of GDP on a region. So pretty meaningful chunk of cash, if you think about that in the context of a large economy. And prices moved, I think it was about 0.2 percent. And output moved significantly. So much so that you actually saw the benefits of cash to those that did not receive it to be about the same as those that did. And And that was through a spillover mechanism, right? So I give you cash.

Starting point is 00:58:10 You need to spend it. You now go get a haircut that you might not have gotten. That barber now has more work and has more income as well. And you did see the expansion of the economy. So where we have worked and where we have tested this rigorously, the impact on price has been small. But of course, there are situations where that would not be the case. And we will continue to test for them. It depends on how much spare capacity is in an economy.

Starting point is 00:58:32 I just got back from Sri Lanka. and it was notable you drive around there, a very poor country, and there's just a lot of spare capacity of labor. You'd pass a roadside stand and there's two or four or six people kind of sitting out in front of the stand waiting for a customer. And you could easily, with some economic stimulus, imagine that that labor is put to a better use than having four people wait for one customer to show up. In the United States now, there's demand for millions of employees that the market, can't match. And so if you dumped a lot of money into the United States economy, as we have in the past 24 months, you see a very different result than what you see if you dump it into Sri Lanka. And so I do think there is this question of how does UBI intersect with the existing social

Starting point is 00:59:22 programs? When UBI as a concept was originally proposed, I think most people viewed it as a replacement to the safety net as it currently exist, what would happen if instead of of having Social Security and Medicare and food stamps, et cetera, if you took all that and just gave it check. And I think people over time have realized that that's probably not going to happen. It's hard to see Medicare being replaced. We talked earlier just about what happens when you try to deal with the edges of the health care system. If you were to completely get rid of the health care safety net through Medicare and Medicaid, I just don't think that's realistic. So now is being discussed as a supplement to the existing safety net. And the ramifications

Starting point is 01:00:10 for inflation in the United States on that type of program, I think would be real and have to be thought through before it's considered at the economy-wide scale. So one other question I had, just around like, let's say Kenya in particular, there's well-known government corruption there and crime, is giving individuals cash directly a better way to kind of circumvent the corruption and crime? Or do you see challenges on that side as well, just giving directly with cash? Yeah. So the Kenyan government is actually running some of the most effective national cash programs out there. So I want to make sure to kind of recognize that they've been doing that for a while and doing it pretty well. I think the beauty of cash is that it does go directly

Starting point is 01:00:58 and you have this traceability. So if there is any block in the system, and a block could be an additional cost, it could be a diversion of funds, whatever the case is, you don't have to worry about it. You've proven that you can go directly. And people often say, but Michael, you know, this doesn't solve every problem. This doesn't solve governance. This doesn't solve public goods. And of course, it doesn't solve every problem. But you can certainly solve the individual's problems while we figure out how to solve other problems. Some of those other problems are important, but we don't have any great solutions right now. And we don't need to wait to help lift somebody over the poverty line while we figure out

Starting point is 01:01:32 how to solve some other big problem that we haven't yet solved. We should be doing that today. And this goes back to the DAF point and the urgency of problems today, but not just the urgency of the problem, but the existence of very good, impactful solutions today. Like there are great ways to spend your philanthropic dollars today. You don't need to wait. And you also don't need to decide on the perfect solution, right? If we all sit deciding on what is the absolute best thing to do, we will never give money

Starting point is 01:01:59 because we will study the problem for decades. Let's find something that is above the bar and there's plenty of that and start doing it today. Progress, not perfection. Yeah, I appreciate that. Two questions to kind of round us out here. What is next for Give Directly? And also, what does success look like either in Kenya or Georgia, are there metrics that you're, some KPIs that you were targeting to say, okay, we did our work here?

Starting point is 01:02:24 Not that it's ever done, but is there something short term? Yeah, so we look at all the KPIs, the efficiency, how many dollars do we put in the hands of poor, how quickly do we get it, how well did we target and find the poorest of the poor and so forth? In terms of what's next, it almost sounds naive to say, but I think we have now developed the tools to find the poorest of the poor and to transfer the money. So let's ask, what does this look like at the next scale? Can we take an entire district out of poverty? Can we take an entire country out of poverty?

Starting point is 01:02:54 And could we count back from the 711 million people left in extreme poverty to zero? Because it wouldn't take that much as a fraction of global wealth today. So at least let's take a shot at it. All right. So before I let you both go, I'm going to let you both hand off to our audience where they can learn more about you and your individual endeavors. John, let's start with you, Arnold Foundation, and any other resources you want to share. I just direct people to Arnoldventures.org

Starting point is 01:03:20 shows who we are it shows the work that we're involved in and what we're trying to do. I tweet occasionally at John Arnold Foundation and I think I found Twitter to be useful outlet for my random

Starting point is 01:03:36 thoughts on the world. I love it, Michael. Yeah, we're at give directly.org and if you had a give directly.org back slash WSB will actually match the first $1,000 donation. It's worth it. Try taking one person over the poverty line.

Starting point is 01:03:51 It's about a dollar a day, and it's probably one of the most rewarding uses of a dollar a day. I think you could spend. Well, gentlemen, I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day. You're both incredibly impressive, well accomplished, and it's just an honor to sit here with you both and learn from you and root and cheer and participate alongside. So I really appreciate it. I'd love to catch up and see how we progress from here.

Starting point is 01:04:14 So thank you again for coming on the show. It's been fun. Thanks. Thanks, Trey. All right, everybody, that's all we had for you this week. If you're loving the show, don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app. You can always reach out to me on Twitter. My handle is Trey Lockerby. And if you haven't already done so, be sure to go to the Investorspodcast.com and check out all of the resources we have for you there. And with that, we'll see you again next time. Thank you for listening to TIP.

Starting point is 01:04:40 Make sure to subscribe to Millennial Investing by the Investors Podcast Network and learn how to achieve financial independence. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision consult a professional, this show is copyrighted by the Investors Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.

We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP435: Why the Youngest Billionaire Walked Away from Wall Street w/ John Arnold & Michael Faye

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.