📈 How much do you make #3

• This week we spoke with Arian, a 28-year-old AI/ML Engineer at Meta

• He makes ~$325K/yr

• All-in: ~75% startups and 25% Bitcoin

• “I probably have one of the most aggressive investing strategies of anybody on the planet”

What do you do professionally and how much do you make?

My bills currently get paid by being a machine learning engineer at Facebook, aka Meta. I work on AI/ML stacks embedded in AR and VR hardware.

I joined Meta to work on misinformation and other integrity problems due to my background in natural language processing. But I found the AR/VR group my first week at Meta and became convinced that this space was where I wanted to be. I switched over as soon as they let me change orgs.

My interest in XR and AI really stems from the power of these technologies to impact the human experience. They have the potential to disrupt societies and our experiences within them.

Compensation is interesting because you get compensated through salary but also stock. In my case, stock makes up about 40% of my income, which in total is somewhere between $275-325K. I typically sell my stock right away, so it’s basically cash as well.

At my level, there can be a bonus component, but it’s not significant until you maybe reach senior management levels.

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Why do you sell your shares right away?

The first year that I was at Meta I actually held the stock because I viewed it as an investment that would likely appreciate in value. Then I realized that even if I don’t sell the shares, they’re taxed as income and I had to pay tax on them and suddenly needed a bunch of cash to pay taxes on unrealized income. So I began selling my shares primarily for cash flow reasons and so that I could reinvest the money elsewhere.

The second reason I immediately sell is that by way of working at Meta, my compensation is, for the most part, already tied to the performance of the company, so I see no point in holding the stock when I can sell it and invest in other things.

How do you spend your money?

I allow myself to spend my base salary (the non-stock and bonus portion) to cover my living expenses. All else gets invested.

Travel

I fly about 6x per year. 

At least half of those trips are to the Bay Area for work / investing (which if I stay for a week costs me like ~$1200).

Leisure travel is usually twice a year. Some example trips I went on recently:

• Iraq last October (cost me like $500 for a week)

• Austria & Switzerland for an F1 race + 11-day vacation in July (came out to more like $3.5K for the whole thing).

My main travel hack is that I rarely ever pay for flights since I get enough points on my Chase card to cover them. So for that reason, none of my travel expenses include flights.

What’s your current portfolio allocation? Explain the investing philosophy behind it.

Currently, I’m saving a lot of money. A lot more cash than I historically save. I’m in the process of transitioning from engineer to fund manager, and I want to have some degree of cash certainty in the beginning.

Aside from that, I probably have one of the most aggressive investing strategies of anybody on the planet, which means virtually no savings and plowing everything into highly asymmetric bets. I have a very specific reason for doing this and it’s very calculated.

A lot of people put their disposable income into index funds that appreciate an average of 5-10% per year under normal market conditions. In my opinion, that’s the definition of mediocrity, i.e. doing what everybody else is doing.

Unless you already have a large amount of capital to start with, you won’t have an extraordinary life or outcome by just investing 5-6-figure savings (what most early-career folks can typically save). You basically know what your future holds. For some people that works, for me, it doesn’t.

I want more than that, so I have to do something different. You’ve got to find a way to get that first $10 million. That’s why I place strategic, asymmetric bets so that I have a chance to be independently wealthy in five to ten years.

Around the same time that I began angel investing is also the same time that I started caring about my portfolio because I also started making real money. Since then, about 75% of my money has gone into angel investing and 25% into Bitcoin. I’ve put money into nothing else, and I would typically have less than $10K sitting in cash at any given moment. I don’t have any public equities as I sell my Meta shares immediately when they vest.

The largest asset that I own is technically a Ferrari that I purchased two years ago, and it’s been one of the shrewdest financial decisions that I’ve made. I sold a chunk of BTC to buy it, and the car has since appreciated like crazy.

Note: the asset allocation excludes the Ferrari

What kind of Ferrari do you have?

I own a 458 Italia.

Angel Investing 😇

Tell us more about why you focus on companies in AR/VR and how you got started investing in startups.

Most of my disposable income goes to startup investing for a number of reasons, and I almost exclusively invest in the ML/AR space. I personally understand it well and I have a professional context that enables me to invest with great confidence. As I mentioned earlier, I’m deeply passionate about these topics and how they’ll impact all of us. Working and investing in this space, I want to catalyze net-positive outcomes for the whole human condition while protecting against dystopian side effects.

I see the inside of Meta which has effectively monopolized the space and this gives me an incredible edge as an angel. I know exactly what’s technically feasible, and what’s on our product roadmap. All this allows me to contextualize the industry better than most others and place bets accordingly.

Years ago, I believed that the only way I could start angel investing was by starting a company and selling it for a few hundred million. So when I was in college I started a company that ultimately failed. I learned that I was a terrible operator. But I still enjoyed learning about new technologies and began to realize that I would rather be an investor in the future.

Then during Covid, a friend called me about a company he invested in which was in the CPG space called Snack Owl. I had nothing to do so I decided to meet with this founder and eventually wrote him a check. I began meeting a bunch of other investors and it kind of snowballed from there. I started building out deal flow, diligence processes, relationships, etc.

Why start a VC fund?

Either you do it as an investor by starting a syndicate or a fund, or you do it as a founder and raise external capital. As a founder, you’re essentially allocating other people’s money to achieve the optimal financial outcome. It’s a type of operational allocation in a way.

So, my angel investing morphed into leading syndicates/SPVs such that I could get higher leverage and do more deals, and this is now morphing into a debut fund to continue executing on the same thesis.

What are you paying the most attention to in AR/VR today?

I wouldn’t say there are any particular sub-themes, but I spend a lot of time looking at enterprise-level applications.

With regards to VR, I look for stuff that creates real value by being 3D. You must be generating some sort of value through this digital third dimension.

I’m bullish on AR long-term but not bullish on most of the companies I’m seeing in the space right now.

Future hardware is further out than many people think and is riddled with hardware challenges that have not been solved yet. For example, Apple pushed their AR glasses back to 2026/27, and I wouldn't be surprised if it takes longer. I’m not bullish on most AR attempts through phones either. It’s gimmicky and neuters the value proposition of 3D applications.

My thesis has not changed much since I got into the space and to be honest I’m not affected by all the hype that's going on right now because I can see through much of it. That said, I like personalization a lot as well as vertical products in the generative AI space that are hyper-verticalized.

In terms of personalization, an example would be a company I just invested in called Neon Wild that’s building personalized comic books for kids. They create templates of stories and allow kids to make avatars of themselves and embed them in the story.

Personal Financial Stack

• Charles Schwab - my Meta shares vest through Schwab

• Wells Fargo - for personal banking

• Spreadsheets - for budgeting and keeping track of my finances and investments

• Chase - credit card

• Robinhood - mostly for crypto

• Ledger - for crypto cold storage

• Amex - credit card

And, I encourage everyone to get a good CPA. Mine got me about $18K in savings for $1K spent on the CPA.

Hot Takes on Personal Finances & Investing

• I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all solution to personal finance. Everyone has different financial goals. They have different risk tolerances, and different aspirations and what you do with your money is tied to those sorts of things.

• I don’t believe in financial planners and the like because, for the most part, they’re primarily incentivized to not lose your money rather than making you more money.

• I also don’t believe in diversification. I think you should find topics you’re interested in, immerse yourself in them, become an expert, understand it, and based on that, put your money at risk. Don’t index yourself across 25 different markets that you know nothing about just because you heard there is some interesting economic activity going on in a particular market.

Financial + Life Goals

How will you know you made it financially? Do you have a number you’re trying to achieve?

It’s an interesting question because what I consider wealth is control over my time. I think of it more in terms of time than in terms of money. My goal is to by age 35 be in control of 100% of my time and be able to do whatever the hell I want all the time and not answer to anybody.

At a minimum, I would want $500K of cash flow per year plus whatever assets I have behind that, but obviously much more than that.

Where should people follow you to keep up with your journey?

The best place to follow me is on Twitter (@arian_ghashghai).

Disclosure: the content contained herein is not financial or investment advice.

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