Intel

Three years of side hustles before the side hustle became the main hustle

Kagan describes stacking businesses while at Intel and Mint, working mornings, weekends, lunches, and nights on Facebook apps and games, until after about three years his side hustle finally became his main hustle.

“I was putting on these conferences that I charged for, and then I was working at Mint. I started doing the Facebook apps, like I did all these games, and I started making a lot of money. And I was working at morning, I was working on weekends, I was working at lunch, I was working at nights. Uh, I was working, I was— I kept going and I kept trying a lot of different— and eventually, after probably 2 and a half, 3 years, graduated in '04, and 3 years later, my side hustle finally became my main hustle.”

Steal thisUse a day job as your investor and stack side bets cheaply until one becomes the main thing.

The smart Berkeley kids went to HP; the weak students went to eBay and Yahoo

Out of Berkeley in '95, the top students took 'safe' jobs at Intel and HP while weaker classmates took jobs at unheard-of startups like eBay and Yahoo. When Yahoo IPO'd around '96, those friends got rich, and Hong realized he had been playing the wrong game.

“And meanwhile, our friends who were not as strong students who couldn't get into a good grad school, who couldn't get a job at HP, they ended up taking jobs at other places that we'd never heard of, like eBay and Yahoo or whatever. So like around '96 or '97, maybe '96, whenever Yahoo went public, all these friends got rich, and that's kind of like when you realized that like, oh, like— What game should I be playing?”