Ankur Nagpal
Founder & CEO, Carry. On 4 shows, 7 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderinvestorexecutive@ankurnagpal ↗LinkedIn ↗ankurnagpal.com ↗
Nagpal founded the creator platform Teachable in 2013 and served as its CEO until its reported $250 million acquisition by Hotmart in 2020. He subsequently launched the early-stage venture firm Vibe Capital and founded Carry, a fintech platform providing tax and wealth-building strategies for entrepreneurs and business owners.
4shows
7appearances
127statements
30resolved
24supported
1contradicted
80%fully supported
16said about them ↓ Everything Ankur Nagpal said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Emerging Market Startup Deals Require Higher Integrity Screening and Local Diligence
“I do think you sometimes have to screen for integrity a little bit higher and I'm Indian, so I can say that, but like, I do think, you know, like from a diligence perspective and stuff, the one thing I try and do is a little bit of local diligence because ther…”
Nagpal Asserts That the Majority of VC Investors Detract Value From Startups
“I think the majority of investors take away value, not a ton, take away value.”
Nagpal: Goldman Sachs wealth management returned 6% versus 13% S&P 500
“The best part of my portfolio that they did was simply indexing the S&P. The S&P has returned about 13% in that time. They did a lot of other stupid shit that averaged it down to six percent.”
Nagpal: Peter Thiel grew Roth IRA from PayPal shares to $5B
“He put his PayPal founder shares in a Roth IRA. Sold those for about twenty seven million dollars, then used this as a supercharged investment account to where it is today, where he has five billion dollars in his Roth.”
Nagpal: Most course creators can double prices without hurting conversion rates
“What we found is most creators could double their price and see no change in conversion rate.”
Nagpal: Initial job performance never reverses; test hires as contractors
“I will get one out of every four hires wrong. And if you work with that constraint, you can be smart about it. So wherever possible, I love to have people contract or do something for a couple of months, because you can always tell after you start working with…”
Nagpal predicts a billion-dollar one-person company will emerge soon
“There'll be a billion dollar Company soon with one person and all of that, but for now, yeah, it's getting there.”
Nagpal: Actively managed funds promising outsized returns are a scam
“What I think is a little bit of a scam is a lot of the financial services industry that tries to promise you outsized returns.”
Nagpal: Guaranteed tax savings beat trying to generate alpha in markets
“I do think better tax strategy can actually create alpha. Alpha is a, you know, finance term for like, You will outperform. And using that tax alpha to just put more dollars in the market, I think is a smarter approach”
Nagpal: How Peter Thiel shielded $27M in PayPal gains using a Roth IRA
“What he did is he bought his founder shares at PayPal with his Roth IRA. So he spent like 2000 dollars to buy PayPal shares that became worth twenty seven million dollars when PayPal sold. And then he had twenty seven million dollars to just make all kinds of …”
Nagpal: Nothing gives more tax benefits than owning a business
“The first sort of overarching piece of advice I have for everyone is, even if you have a full-time job, consider starting a side hustle, because nothing will give you more tax benefits than having your own business.”
Nagpal: Startups should give first employees 2x to 4x more equity
“Fundamentally, I do believe early startup employees, like the first few people are undercompensated in terms of what are like norms of how much to give early employees. Like historically, a lot of people, you know, would give First employee, one percent, and s…”
Nagpal: Founders should always take secondary liquidity if employees get equal access
“I think you can always, always, always take a secondary if someone offers it to you with the caveat that you make the exact same offer to the rest of your team. I think that's a really important rule, but otherwise, I know a lot of investors are like, oh, you …”
Vibe Capital Charges Zero Management Fees to Invest 100% of Capital
“We also charge zero management fees. So a hundred percent of the capital we raised ended up being invested.”
Founders Should Optimize for Median-Case Outcomes, While VCs Optimize for Best-Case
“I think founders should optimize for the median case outcome, like a case where the company could do relatively well and you can still end up wealthy versus the very, very best case outcome while investors should always optimize the very, very best case outcom…”
Founders Should Accept Preemptive Series A Rounds but Reject Series B
“I think a preemptive A, you do it. A preemptive B, you don't. Because I think at an A, you already have a roughly infinite amount of money. Like, you're pre-product market fit, and you have five million dollars in the bank, that's more than enough. The differe…”
Nagpal Advises Founders to Take Secondary Liquidity When Offered
“But as a founder, I've multiple times given multiple of my companies, the advice, the founders rather advice that Go ahead, take the secondary, because if I was in your position, I would have done that.”
Middle 80% of VC Funds Will Get Squeezed Out by Top Firms
“I think there's, like, this, like, 80% of everything else in the middle, I think, is who I think will compete it against from both sides. Like, if you're not amongst the best firms, or if you're not an operator that thinks like a founder, moves at the speed of…”
Good Businesses at Cheap Prices Are Often the Worst Venture Investments
“My worst early investments were things that were frankly good businesses at great prices, and as a founder, you know, get trapped into being like, wow, this is actually a really solid business or profitable, the price is incredible, but then you realize this m…”
Nagpal: High-net-worth investors should pay flat advisor fees instead of AUM percentages
“I think financial advice is incredibly valuable. I think they serve a really good purpose, but at a certain point, the math ongoing flat fee is just substantially better for you, right? Like if you have five million dollars, fifty million dollars, five hundred…”
Nagpal: Investors should seek alpha through tax optimization rather than stock picking
“So most people should not try and find alpha on the investment side. However, if you can be smart about saving money on taxes, that is where your alpha comes from.”
Nagpal: Direct indexing generates 30% to 40% of capital as usable tax losses
“I've started to do something called direct indexing, where instead of buying a Vanguard fund, it buys each and every one of the 500 companies individually. And the advantage with that is you have more positions, so more volatility. At any given point, more com…”
Nagpal: S&P mega backdoor Roth yields $30M tax-free by retirement age
“I built a very simple model that makes the assumption that you start contributing to your Roth Diary by 21, the mega backdoor by like 30. Even if you just indexed the S&P and you looked at the hundred year average of the S&P, you end up with thirty million dol…”
Nagpal: Businesses bypassing the US industrial food system will succeed
“Secondly, I think anything that helps us break out of the US food system will do quite well. And again, probably more so in cities like New York, but it's kind of funny, like every Friday evening, I go and meet my like raw milk dealer, which is super sketchy. …”
The other half of the tape: Ankur Nagpal's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 15 times in 9 episodes across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Sam Parr 11Alex Lieberman 2Sahil Bloom 1Harry Stebbings 1
Statements about Ankur Nagpal, by other people (1)
Lieberman: Ankur Nagpal validated Ocho Wealth using an intro-offer tweet thread
“And the way he got validation for this business is he posted a tweet thread about a friend's business that does solo for one case. And he described what the solo for one K is. And then in his CTA, he said, if you want an intro to my friend, let me know. His fr…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
My First Million 11
Founder's Journal 3
20VC 1
2023 3 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
2021 7 mentions in 5 episodes 1 per episode
- How a City Tour is Making Millions, & Selling Manhood | My First Million # 177
- Half-Baked TV Show Ideas, Miss Excel Making Millions, The Adventure Challenge, and More
- 20VC: Instacart CEO Fidji Simo on Why You Need Sponsors Not Mentors, Where Management Skills Align with Good Parenting & The First 100 Days as CEO at Instacart; The Challenges, The Surprises and The Next Chapter
- How to Get a Slice of Harvard's Billion Dollar Case Study Industry | My First Million #222
- MFM #160: How to Build a Paid Community Making $20M a Year
- every mention in 2021, scene by scene →
2020 5 mentions in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Ankur's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MY FIRST MILLIONLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Carry | 2 | 42 | 71% 12/17 | full record on My First Million → |
| FOUNDER'S JOURNALLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Carry | 3 | 34 | 100% 10/10 | full record on Founder's Journal → |
 BIGDEALLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Carry | 1 | 27 | 100% 1/1 | full record on BigDeal → |
| 20VCLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Carry | 1 | 24 | 50% 1/2 | full record on 20VC → |