SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi, Bihold Ranters. This is Adrian, the producer behind the scenes of your favorite investing podcast. Every week, I get to read your comments and questions during the live stream. And after spending all this time listening to Hamid and Dustin debate stocks, defend their hot takes, and yes, occasionally rant, I realized something. We actually don't know that much about the guys themselves. We know what stocks they love, we definitely know which ones they hate. But how did they get into investing in the first place? What were they doing before Bifold Rant? And why did they decide to start a podcast together? This week, I convinced them to hand over the microphones and let me ask the questions for once. We spend every week getting their hot takes on the market. Today, we'll get to know the men behind the microphones. As Kamita always says, let's do it. Recording. All right. Where did you grow up and what were you like as a kid?

SPEAKER_02 1:01

I was uh born in Iran. Then my family moved to the US at 10. And as a kid, I was always interested in computers and um I got hooked on programming at an early age and started like reading uh programming books. So I would literally carry my book as a teenager to with me with when my parents went to friends' houses or whatever. Uh and I was reading programming books as a teenager and um grew up just wanting to write programs and control this machine that was so fascinating to me.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

I grew up in New Jersey, uh the great state of New Jersey, I might add. Um, but you know, for anyone who asks, I just say I grew up in New York. So New York. It was a good normal childhood. Uh you know, I had a good group of friends. We were very creative. We used to make a lot of like YouTube videos and and songs and like different things, which I think drove my interest in working in software, building something out of nothing. And of all the fields, software is the most lucrative. Where if you wanted to break into uh the music industry or the movie industry, it's basically impossible. Software, it's the opposite. At least before AI, it was extremely easy.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

What was your first real career job?

SPEAKER_02 2:22

I think I was like 19 years old, and I uh literally programmed an accounting system for this uh complicated manufacturing facility that was custom tailored to them. The back end was uh uh a uh Fox Pro database at the time. I was running all these sort of uh custom screens and SQL scripts for them. Uh super fun project. They replaced a $100,000 accounting system and paid me about $3,500 for this custom uh accounting software, which I thought was so much money at the time. It was just fascinating and I loved it.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

My first internship was at AE Networks, which is AE Lifetime History Channel, like legacy media. And I worked as an IT intern in the IT department. And it was the perfect internship at the time because I knew I wanted to be in technology, but I didn't know what I wanted to do. And it was a rotational program. So I got to try uh four different roles in the IT department. Through that experience, I learned that I wanted to do UI and UX design, which eventually pivoted to product design and eventually pivoted to product management.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

Were you naturally entrepreneurial or did it develop later?

SPEAKER_02 3:35

I grew up with parents who um had businesses from the moment I was born. My mom owned a gift shop and my dad did various different business things. Um, so I grew up around uh parents who were constantly looking out for cost of goods sold. You know, like obviously they wanted to buy things at the lowest possible price and have good prices when they're selling to their customers so that they can be competitive and still have a margin uh allowed. And then my mom was a natural saleswoman. Uh, so I learned a lot of sort of um natural sales techniques, if you will, just growing up around her and watching her operate in her uh little gift shop. So I don't know if I was like always entrepreneurial as much as I was uh growing, I grew up around entrepreneurs, and therefore like my mindset was like very different. Every business that I saw, I was like thinking about its costs and its potential revenue and its margins and how much could this business make. And uh, and that's the perspective I had on it. And then when I started getting interested in software, uh I just wanted to build uh a software company. As a teenager, I knew someday I was gonna have a software company, and that was like my number one goal uh by the time I was 15 years old. Uh, it just seemed like something that was definitely gonna happen in my future, or I was gonna make it happen in my future.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

I never thought I was much of an entrepreneur, but my grandparents always thought I was going to start my own business uh or do something along those lines, which maybe they saw something I didn't. I have gravitated towards very early stage startups in my career outside of the internships. The job I was at previous to Savvy Trader was a pre-seed startup. Savvy Trader, also a pre-seed startup. There's just something exciting about, again, building something out of nothing, having a lot of control, uh, and working with a great tight team. It's just very efficient.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

The first entrepreneurial experience that I had is that um I built this computer, put an ad in the newspaper, and sold it for a $500 profit. The next week I did it again for another $500 profit. The next week I did it again for another $500 profit. And uh, by the time I sold three of these, I had made $1,500 in less than a month. And I was just beyond myself. It was just uh an incredible feeling. I knew you know, uh uh building a company or entrepreneurship that was definitely going to be in my future, and I just absolutely loved it. Uh, unfortunately, I got shut down by uh the city of Tempe zoning laws because the the local PC shop down the street had had reported me for selling computers uh or having a uh business from running a business that um required traffic from home. Uh and uh I got shut down by the fourth week. But but I got the taste just enough to to know that I want to be building uh companies in the future. And software was my interest. So at that time I was selling uh computers that I was assembling, but later I I switched over to software and uh just loved uh loved putting together together something that was of interest to other people and they were willing to pay for it. So uh that was probably the moment where I realized uh wow, this is this is something that uh I could do for the rest of my life.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

When I was a I think either a junior or a senior in high school, I must have been a senior in high school. Um my English teacher came to me and was like, I think you should be the columnist for the school newspaper, based on like some of the writings that he's seen from me. And like you know, I was an okay English student. Um, I definitely it took me a while to find my voice um on the page. But once he believed in me, something clicked and I was able to articulate myself on again on paper really well. And I had this unique voice uh that had a bit of wit, a bit of sarcasm, and it it kind of adjusted my perspective a bit because that was always I was always capable of doing that, but it took someone to believe in me for it to be unlocked. So now I try to skip that step where it's great and I hope people believe in me, but I just need to kind of believe in myself. So it's a little bit of a corny answer, but it did change my perspective a lot uh going forward on different endeavors.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

That was very inspirational, Dustin.

SPEAKER_01 8:21

I didn't mean it.

SPEAKER_00 8:22

I love it.

SPEAKER_02 8:22

I love it, but it is a real story.

SPEAKER_00 8:25

How did you grow up thinking about money?

SPEAKER_02 8:27

Making money was not the uh main focus of my childhood, or you know, like making products that other people wanted and loved and wanted to pay for, uh, and that as a result ended up making me money, was uh was was what my goal was. Uh I remember as a kid having these arguments with friends who were like, What would you do if you won the lottery? And I was like, I my response was always, I don't want to win the lottery. I want to make my money myself. Uh, and I want to make sure that I had the skills to make that money as opposed to just winning the lottery. Um, so uh my perspective on you know money has always been like you need some to sort of survive and live and you know, uh live a comfortable life with respect to food and shelter and clothing and so on. But um uh but anything extra should be like uh just because people really want to give you their money, right? And and that's the perspective I've always had on it is that build great products that people love who they want to throw their money at you for. Uh and uh uh and then if you have excess, then great, you know, like um it's it's well earned, if you will.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

I didn't really think that much about money until I started earning it, right? Like as a kid, you know, it's I'm not I'm I was fortunate that I didn't have to think about that. Um and once I started earning it, there was a moment where I was like, oh, I should probably like ask my parents for some advice about what to do because they're they're genuinely pretty good with money. But then I second guessed myself, I was like, you know what? I should have an opinion of my own before I blindly follow them. And then I went down the rabbit hole of the internet and you know, learning maybe best practices, maybe not best practices of how to manage money. Um, so now I kind of handle my finances and partially their finances too, um, especially when it comes to tax season. The other thought around money is just like the perspective of there's so much of it in the world that you only need a little bit to do really well. And I think that just helps drive me where you don't you really don't need that much um relative to what is out there. Um, so if you could just find ways to get crumbs, um you you could really succeed.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

Has investing changed the way you think about money?

SPEAKER_02 11:00

I would say investing is the least satisfying way of making money. Like, so I have made more money now investing than building companies. Um, ironically, uh building companies was uh building products that people loved. They wanted to give me their their money in exchange for that product or service or whatever it is that I was doing. Um and that felt very satisfying. That felt very well deserved. Investing is like I buy something now, I basically sit on it for some period of time, and it either goes up or down. Uh, I largely don't have an influence on the outcome. Uh, and um, and in either direction, it wasn't anything that I did that resulted in a great outcome or a bad outcome. So uh it's not very satisfying for whatever reason, uh at least for me. Um but uh the perspective change for me with respect to earning money through investing is that I feel like there's a lower level of appreciation for the money that people earn as investors than there is when you work at it to make that money. So uh it's a subtle difference, but um, but it is an important difference.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

So I think investing has given me more focus around how I should handle my time in regards to money. So, what I mean by that is um I spend a lot of time managing all of my finances. And there was a time earlier in my career where I spent a lot of time optimizing for credit cards and credit card points, uh, because that's a whole fun game. And then you start investing and you realize, yeah, you made some money off credit card points and you saved a lot on this flight or on this hotel, but that is nothing compared to what you can make through investing. So I still take every piece of my financial life seriously. I don't ignore anything, but I definitely have reallocated my time to focus on what's actually going to provide a lot of return. So my job being one of them, adding fresh capital to my investments and then my investments themselves, but also not spending too much time on it where you get obsessed, obsessive, you second guess yourself. Um, there's definitely a right and healthy balance.

SPEAKER_00 13:25

What's something you both could talk about for an hour that has nothing to do with business or investing?

SPEAKER_02 13:31

I could probably talk about space and uh physics and uh space exploration, that sort of thing is just such a fascinating topic for me. And it has nothing to do with investing. Of course, some aspects of space have worked into my investment world, but uh space is just such a fascinating topic to me. It just seems like we weren't um meant to be bound by the limitations of Earth. And um, I can't wait that uh until as a civilization, we are a space-faring civilization. So that is an uh inspiring, aspirational thing for humanity, I think.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

What I find myself spending the most time just ranting about, if I'm talking to the right friends, is uh movies, specifically superhero movies. Um, we could watch a three-hour superhero movie and talk about it for five hours. I'm not sure how we're able to dissect that much out of these things, but um there's it's it's just uh fun.

SPEAKER_00 14:31

You guys are both kind of nerds, aren't you? Kind of, definitely. You both separately came up with essentially the same idea, which is Savvy Trader. How did you each think of that initially?

SPEAKER_02 14:46

So the idea for Savvy Trader for me was born out of necessity. I always talked about stocks and investing with my friends and family members. Uh, and they often wanted to know what am I currently invested in, what am I uh buying, what am I selling? Uh, and I thought that there's got to be a tool out there that sort of makes this easy where I can share my investments in real time with friends and family without them seeing the dollar amounts necessarily, but seeing the percentage of my portfolio that I am uh investing into a particular thing and notifying them when I make a transaction. I thought for sure that such a tool existed. I'd look for one, it didn't exist, and uh the idea behind Savvy Trader was born. I was like, I'm a software guy, and I happen to be recently retired, and uh it makes sense to build this tool.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

Hamid and I, I think came at it from different angles because Hamid has been an investor for a lot longer than I have. Um so yeah, I had some family that definitely wanted to see what I was doing and learn from what I was doing, but I wasn't my investing skills were not what they are today when we started Savvy Trader. I've definitely learned a lot through the platform, through Hamid. And that's why I thought of this idea initially is I wanted to have something where I could learn from other people, more so than um, you know, uh share what I know. There's also the element of just identifying larger trends of more people are sharing more things, right? Like there's people who go out to dinner and before they take a bite of their meal, they post a picture on Instagram of what they're eating. So if we could do that for food, why can't we do that for investments? Again, with the right safeguards in place where you don't need to necessarily share uh exact dollar amounts, but you could share what you're buying, what you're selling, and hopefully have uh meaningful conversations about these stocks and investments because it's not only beneficial to the people following, it's also beneficial to the portfolio owner, where they can maybe learn something too.

SPEAKER_00 16:52

Whose idea was buy hold rant?

SPEAKER_02 16:55

I had been wanting to do a podcast around investing, and I had started doing teaser videos about like what I thought about a particular stock on X. Uh, and then um and one day I just uh uh in in one of our team meetings, I think, or maybe separately uh to Dustin. I was like Slack. It may have been in Slack, yeah. Uh I was like, hey Dustin, uh we're gonna do a podcast starting next Wednesday. And I think it may have been like Thursday when I said that. Um, do you want to be my co-host? And uh he's like, Yeah, hell yeah. So uh I think that was the uh the beginning of it.

SPEAKER_01 17:31

I was excited about it, but I was also like, well, I need to figure out how we're gonna brand this thing. We didn't have a name at the time. Uh what are we going to talk about? Uh but what I appreciate about Hamid is he's very quick to do anything he sets his mind to, right? So like we could have said, okay, we're gonna start a podcast and then waited a month, and then a month becomes two months, and then two months becomes six months, right? Like, because you just want to kind of perfect that first episode. But the mentality of like, we're just gonna start and we'll see how it goes, uh, I think was really helpful and key to our success.

SPEAKER_00 18:11

Did you guys think anybody would actually listen?

SPEAKER_02 18:15

The growth of the podcast has been very um uh both both humbling and also very exciting, right? So uh it's been exciting because it motivates you and what makes you want to do better and uh uh prepare better, and um, you know, they're just more fun to do. And of course, this is something that I think both Dustin and I uh love doing. Um, but it's definitely more enjoyable when the audience is growing and you can kind of see that happen, and um people are looking forward to the episode. So uh that makes it extra satisfying for sure.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

And then one other tidbit, which Hamid, I don't know if you remember, we tried doing this years ago as uh a Twitter space. Do you remember this, Amid? Yes, as a like audio only Twitter space. Yeah, yeah. Like we we did it, we did a Twitter space. It was, I don't know, once or twice. Um, and it's a lot harder just doing audio because you can't really work off of each other. And I think we were also in very different places at the at the time. Like Savvy Trader was just launching, you didn't have the following you have today. Uh our portfolios were wildly different. I know my mindset around my investments is very different. Uh, but so like you we already had like one quote unquote false start. So it was it was hard to know what this was going to turn into.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

What do you hope people get out of buy hold rant?

SPEAKER_02 19:44

As an investor, I've always had a long-term perspective on my investments. And one of the biggest things that I hope that um uh audience members of Buy Hold Rant take away from the show is that uh investing long-term is better than investing short term. Not investment advice, but this is these are my perspectives. And of course, um just uh nobody, including uh the best investors in the world, try to predict day to day what's gonna happen or have any possible way of knowing what's going to happen. So those um those uh uh market volatilities are just part of the investment game, if you will. Um, so if people walk away with some of that perspective with the buy hold rent uh podcast, I would be very happy.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

The biggest takeaway I would like a listener to walk away with is our general mindset around investing, more so uh about our our emotions and how those are handled, right? Like if the market's really up, we're not necessarily overly excited. If the market's down, we're not overly depressed. Uh this is just what the market does, and you gotta kind of go with the punches. Um and I think that's a really hard skill to learn, and it takes a lot of time to master it. And you and the market's always going to do something that you don't expect, right? Like the COVID crash, um, for example. Like that was another learning lesson, uh, at least for me. So I hope we provide some normalcy in this crazy market.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

Thanks for listening. I hope you know the guys a little better now. Hamid and Dustin will be back next week with another episode of Buy Hold Rant.