May 12, 2021 · 1h 37m · my-first-million
Furqan Rydhan on What It's Like Co-founding a $20B Company | My First Million #180
Furqan Rydhan · 46m spoken Shaan Puri · 30m spoken Sam Parr · 12m spoken Outro / Theme Vocals · 14s spoken
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of My First Million, hosts Sean Puri and Sam Parr sit down with technologist and AppLovin co-founder Furqan Rydhan to explore frontier technologies, decentralized finance, vertical farming, and the tactical realities of building multi-billion-dollar startups.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 48% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 3.9 Guest teaching 4.4 Guest disagreement 0.6 The hosts pushing back 1.1
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 1:18:57 Furqan presses Shaan on inaction with NFTs
Furqan challenges Shaan directly, asking why he talks constantly about NFTs but has not even tested minting one the way he opened a test Shopify store.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 47:28 Sam jokingly rejects farming stereotypeSam interrupts to push back on Furqan pivoting from crypto straight to farming for Sam, demanding to know if Furqan views him as a redneck.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 41:54 Furqan breaks down smart contract liquidation vs 2008 bailoutsFurqan educates the hosts on how decentralized protocols enforce strict programmatic liquidations, contrasting it with discretionary Wall Street bailouts.
The host holds their own ▶ 37:52 Shaan articulates live DeFi loan mechanicsShaan clearly demonstrates his own technical and financial literacy by breaking down his live test borrowing USDC against ETH on Compound.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Episode Overview and Subscriber Push | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Shaan gives a solo intro summarizing Furqan's background and pitching listeners to subscribe on Apple and Spotify. As a monologue segment, all interactive scores are zero. | |
| Harvard Merch and Dropping Out of College | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Friendly banter about wearing Harvard merchandise as dropouts and Shaan explaining Furqan's background and incubator f.inc. Highly collaborative and complimentary dynamic. | |
| The Rise and $20B IPO of AppLovin | 4 | 5 | 0 | 1 | Furqan explains how AppLovin's blocked acquisition by a Chinese firm due to regulatory changes became a huge win leading to a $20B IPO. The hosts probe into the business model evolution into first-party gaming. | |
| Startup Iteration and Flow States vs. Strict Schedules | 5 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Shaan and Sam explore AppLovin's iterative phase and contrast Furqan's nocturnal flow-state working style with CEO Adam Foroughi's strict operational efficiency. | |
| Hardware Trends and the Neurosity Brain Interface | 3 | 6 | 0 | 1 | Furqan introduces commodity hardware trends and fetches the Neurosity EEG headset to show how motor thought detection works. The hosts ask clarifying questions and test the concept's plausibility. | |
| Decentralized Finance: Protocols, Staking, and Loans | 7 | 6 | 0 | 1 | Shaan demonstrates practical DeFi knowledge by recounting how he borrowed USDC against ETH collateral on Compound, while Furqan explains Liquity Protocol and code-enforced liquidations. | |
| Uniswap and Automated Liquidity Provision | 3 | 7 | 0 | 1 | Furqan explains how Uniswap's automated market maker (AMM) pools eliminate order books and enable liquidity provider yields. Shaan keeps Furqan grounded for the audience. | |
| The Agritech Revolution: Nebullam and Vertical Farming | 4 | 6 | 1 | 3 | Sam jokes about being stereotyped with farming before Furqan explains Nebullam's aeroponic vertical farming business model, prompting Sam to reframe it as distributed urban infrastructure. | |
| Building Maker Spaces and the San Francisco Hacker Scene | 5 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Sam and Furqan reminisce about SF hacker spaces like Founders Dojo, Hacker Dojo, and Monkey Inferno, validating Furqan's plan for a new Fort Mason hardware laboratory. | |
| Founder Traps: Over-Engineering vs. Market Growth | 4 | 5 | 2 | 1 | Furqan delivers direct startup advice, warning engineers against over-indexing on technical architecture instead of market growth and customer discovery. | |
| DAOs, NFT Infrastructure, and the PAX Protocol | 5 | 5 | 3 | 2 | Furqan pushes Shaan on why he hasn't minted an NFT yet, and explains NFTLabs and PAX protocol loot box mechanics for creator-audience engagement. |
Statements from this episode (22)
Shaan Puri: The most common co-founder pairing is a builder and seller
“Most co-founder pairings, I would say the most common one is one guy who can build and one guy who can sell.”
Sam Parr: AppLovin is publicly traded at a $20B valuation
“Furcon co-founded a company that is currently publicly traded for twenty billion dollars.”
Rydhan: AppLovin's blocked 2016 acquisition valued the company at $1.4B
“I think they put a 1.4 billion value. I think the terms are something like they're going to put in a billion dollars and the value would be at 1.4. They're going to buy a maturity of the company.”
Shaan Puri: AppLovin acquired Machine Zone to build its gaming arm
“They bought machine zone, right? So they acquired a bunch of studios. They have their own studio. So they're almost more a gaming company than a mobile ad network now.”
Rydhan: Games represent about half of AppLovin's business
“When I looked at the S one and kind of like dug into it, it's like, I think it's like half the business now, you know, there's obviously details on how you determine where the business is, but I think it's like half the company”
Rydhan: AppLovin's co-founders initially self-funded the company with $4M to $5M
“Them three put in the initial funding. I think it was like around four or five million bucks if I remember correctly, but it was a lot in the sense that it gave us many years of runway to work on whatever.”
Rydhan: AppLovin's first iteration was a social feed of friends' apps
“AppLovin, when we started, was actually an app where you could see what games and apps other people were playing in your social network. It was like, kind of like a feed of app. That was the first iteration of AppLovin, and it was because we just wanted to see…”
Rydhan: Commodity hardware and ML unlock advanced hardware products
“In the hardware space, there's just this trend that I feel like I can't get out of my mind, which is, you know, commodity hardware, whether it's like a Raspberry Pi, kind of a simple device like that, or off the shelf gears and things like that, plus software …”
Rydhan: Neurosity's brain-computer interface triggers desktop actions from thoughts
“This device it can for sure detect when I'm focused, it can detect when I'm calm and different points, and I've programmed it to basically, like, when I have it connected to my computer, I can move my desktop around or, you know, I basically wanted to, like, s…”
Rydhan: I bought Ethereum for single-digit dollars after its crowd sale
“I bought a little bit after the crowd sale, but it was like single digit dollars. It was very cheap.”
Rydhan: Liquity protocol offers zero percent interest loans on ETH collateral
“There's this a protocol called liquidity protocol. It's a new protocol. They do zero percent interest loans on your ETH. So you can put up ETH, you take a zero percent loan.”
Rydhan: Early Uniswap liquidity pool yields reached over 100%
“Obviously in the earlier days of Uniswap, the pool yields were very high. Like you could see a hundred percent plus on like fairly good assets.”
Rydhan: AMM liquidity in diverging assets hurts long-term accumulation
“So if you have, if you're into Ethereum and U S dollar pool, when Ethereum is going up, you're like losing some of it, right? Because you're giving it away. To kind of like receive basically dollars. And, you know, so if you want to hold a lot of Ethereum long…”
Rydhan: Stablecoin liquidity pools yielded 8% to 15% over the past year
“So like two stable coin pools, a USDC and dive pool that does, you know, anywhere from like eight to 15%. And that's been like that on the low end of the spectrum for the last year plus.”
Rydhan: Founders Inc is building a hardware and robotics lab in SF
“I'm building a hardware and robotics lab here in San Francisco as a part of F dot Inc. And, you know, the idea is software you can do in a coffee shop in a living room, but you can't really build any one of these, even off the shelf hardware products in your l…”
Rydhan: Nebullam Can Deliver Same-Day Harvest Across Much of America
“And I believe they can make this happen, you know, same day harvest to delivery for a large part of America.”
Rydhan: Making NFT creation as easy as Shopify is a huge opportunity
“I believe that's like one of the biggest opportunities in NFTs is just like make, make it really easy for people to do it almost as easy as creating a Shopify store.”
Rydhan: NBA Top Shot is the biggest digital hit since Pokémon GO
“NBA Top Shot, I mean, probably one of the biggest digital products we've seen since Pokemon Go.”
Rydhan: NFT Labs created PAX protocol for digital loot boxes
“And so we, you know, as part of NFT Labs, we created this PAX protocol, which is a protocol to create kind of a, you know, like a little loot box pack where you can put in digital items and you could put in an image, a sound clip for like, let's say your guys'…”
Rydhan: Content creators are founders who cannot thrive in Big Tech
“I find creators really interesting because they're kind of an analogy to founders where, you know, I don't want to go work at a fan company. I mean, you know, I made it through Twitch, but it was not, it's not the right environment for me, right? Like it's not…”
Rydhan: Took a low salary and moved home for AppLovin equity
“And Adam gave me two options. He gave me a higher salary and a low stock. And A lower salary and a higher stock option. And I was like, I kind of just made the decision down to like, well, if I go with, you know, Adam, I need to take the low salary, move back …”
Shaan Puri: Outsized startup outcomes require an irrational career playbook
“When they make career choices, it's a rational, logical decision. And I think that gets you to a certain type of outcome. But if you hear these outcomes and you're like, how do I get some of that? I think you got to follow the irrational playbook a bit more.”