What It’s Like to Lose 95% of Your Net Worth Overnight

Moneywise

Hampton

Business, Entrepreneurship, Investing

4.8 • 674 Ratings

🗓️ 13 August 2024

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Imagine waking up one day to find nearly everything you've worked for is gone. Today’s guest, Domenic, lived through that nightmare. His story begins at Facebook, where he was one of the early employees during the dawn of the social media era. He wisely took as much equity as possible, which paid off handsomely when the company went public. Despite his newfound wealth, a series of unfortunate decisions—risky investments, a poorly negotiated acquisition, and unforeseen personal losses—led him to lose nearly everything he had earned. Domenic’s tale is not just about loss but about resilience. From growing up in a modest household in Southern Virginia to navigating the high-stakes world of Silicon Valley, he shares his experiences of building wealth, facing devastating setbacks, and the philosophy that keeps him moving forward. This is Moneywise, a podcast where host Sam Parr is joined by high-net-worth guests to explore exclusive insights into personal finance and lifestyle tailored for other high-net-worth people, or those on their way. They'll get radically transparent about the numbers, revealing things like their burn rates, portfolios, and spending habits. Who is Sam Parr? Sam is a serial entrepreneur and the co-founder of The Hustle, which he sold to HubSpot in 2021. He's also the co-host of one of the world's top podcasts for entrepreneurs, My First Million. Known for his insightful business acumen and candid communication style, Sam Parr continues to be a prominent figure in the world of media and entrepreneurship. Sam's newest and biggest venture yet is Hampton, which he co-founded in 2022. This podcast was made for the Hampton community, a private, highly-vetted, peer membership community for founders and CEOs of fast-growing, tech-enabled startups. Chapters: Early Facebook Employee (0:29) The Facebook IPO and Domenic’s Net Worth Impact (12:53) Life After Facebook: Investments and Mistakes (17:29) Losing It All in a Bad Acquisition Deal (24:46) Rebuilding from Scratch (31:55) Final Thoughts and Takeaways (38:50) This podcast was produced in partnership with Lower Street and distributed by Morning Brew.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I lost around 90, 95% of my net worth.
0:05.4	This is one of my worst nightmares.
0:08.4	I've worked hard.
0:09.4	I've made sacrifices.
0:10.9	I got a little lucky.
0:12.1	And as a result, I've built something quite substantial.
0:15.5	A lot of people say that this fear is incredibly irrational.
0:19.5	But that doesn't mean it doesn't happen once in a while.
0:22.6	I don't know if it's Warren Bethard or Charlie Munger that said you only have to get rich once.
0:26.6	I'm going to do it twice because I have to.
0:28.6	Today we're going to talk to Dominic. He made his money in a bunch of different ways, including building a business,
0:34.6	he made some investments, but, and this is the biggest one, and it's my opinion the most interesting one,
0:39.2	he made a ton of money because he was a very early employee at Facebook.
0:43.9	I had gotten fairly lucky at the time that somebody advised me to take as much inequity as possible.
0:52.2	Being an early Facebook employee, to me, that's like a very
0:54.9	mythical thing. To have been there, to have witness history, to be at the beginning of social
0:59.8	media, I think that's incredibly fascinating. Now, aside from the historical part, there was also
1:05.3	a lot of money that was being made by a lot of employees. Having shares of Facebook in the early 2000s, like Dominic did,
1:12.7	that was like winning the lottery.
1:14.7	This is the story of what happened to one of those early employees.
1:18.0	We'll hear how much he made at Facebook, and by the way, it is a ton.
1:21.7	We're going to hear about when he left, what he built on his own,
	...

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