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A Billionaire’s Advice [Part 2]

Yesterday I wrote about a meeting that I had with a billionaire in NYC and some of the advice that he gave me. When we met him, our situation was unique and it made us feel invincible. So I asked him some questions that a lot of other people probably wouldn’t. Because we had a unique relationship with him, he was very kind to us, and wanted to genuinely help us so he welcomed all questions.

The unique situation that we had was that we had successfully setup the US infrastructure including a company, payment gateway and access to other business tools that weren’t available to people in Pakistan. We were at the top of our game with regards to the revenue that was being generated and like other Pakistanis we had extra-ordinary tax benefits available for IT services and IT related services. So when he recommended that we move to US, a natural question came up that we’re able to use most American infra without paying any taxes, why would you ask us to move to US, bear higher costs of doing business and also pay insanely high taxes.

His answer was tax is what you pay for the privilege of doing business in the US. The privilege that you think you have is not nearly enough compared to the privilege that you will have once you’re here. He was vague like that. He didn’t give any specifics of what privilege other than what we already have.

He reminded us once more, “I was going to be a teller at a bank 5 years ago but I’m not. The US has something to do with that”.

I didn’t follow his advice. I’m still here in Pakistan. I know I missed a lot of things. As a digital nomad, that’s okay. But if you’re looking to build the next big thing and want to amass insane amount of wealth, you should give his advice a thought.

A Billionaire’s Advice

I and Saad met a young CEO in his 30s who is a billionaire. The meeting happened in New York City in October of 2013. He encouraged us to move to US and pursue a career there. He said if he hadn’t moved to US, which he had done only a few years before that, he would have been a teller at a bank in his home country.

I obviously didn’t take that advice as I have continued to live in Pakistan for over 7 years since that meeting. For a brief period, I had thought about taking his advice but I was only slightly motivated. And after I was turned down by an accelerator in US, I also lost the little motivation that I had.

As some of you may know, I’m a proponent of digital nomadism. There’s a freedom associated with the ability to be location independent. Moreover, $100K in US last a really short time compared to $100K in a developing country. As for the quality of life, sure quality of life is not great in Pakistan, but in theory you could have great quality of life at a small cost in many countries if you wanted.

Digital nomadism also instilled remote work habits in me. While many of my friends are going bananas now that they have to work from home, it has come naturally to me. In fact, every effort that I’ve made previously to move to an office has failed so far.

In summary, digital nomadism is great but it’s a freedom movement. It’s a hack to live well, spend less, be free and happy. However, in no way it’s the right strategy to be really wealthy. The right strategy to be really wealthy is the one outlined by the CEO we met; relocating to the land of opportunity.

I want to continue to believe that remote work is the future of work. Unfortunately the keyword here is “future”. The present of work is still in the bay area. People like Paul Graham believe US needs to have better immigration policies as 95% of the best programmers live outside of US.

But he doesn’t see hiring the same workforce remotely as a viable solution.

The world has made a lot of progress to equalize the opportunities at a global scale but we’re just getting started and there’s a long way to go. Until then, bay area is your best bet.

The World Is Working From Home & Distributed Companies Are The Future

If you have read my thoughts before, you may have known that I’m a big supporter of distributed companies and remote work mentality. My favorite part of the remote work is the ability to have a higher quality of life for a much lower cost.

Many tech entrepreneurs and investors feel that remote is not the way to go. That the physical presence within the Silicon Valley is a very important pre-requisite to success. They back this with statistics that over 70% unicorns are born in the bay area, and that less than 10% are born in NYC or LA. With only 3% or so coming out of India or China and 5% from rest of the world.

Their case is strong as far as the statistics are concerned. I’m the numbers guy so there’s no basis for me to refute what they are saying. Despite that, I believe remote work is the way to go. Silicon Valley could be the present, but remote is the future. The statistics that are thrown around only reflect what is happening today, and not what could be happening in the future.

As with the COVID-19 emergency, many tech companies have decided to go remote. The list is a bit too long but here are the ones I’m aware of; Amazon, Facebook, Google, Linkedin, FourSquare, Twitter, Uber, Lyft, Zillow, Bitly, Digital Currency Group, IBM, MongoDB, Airbnb, Grammarly, PostMates, SalesForce, ShutterStock, KickStarter, Silicon Valley Bank, WeWork, Yelp etc. I think when all of this is over, some of these companies, and many other companies will have a part of their work force hired to work remotely.

Remote work is to HR what CloudFlare is to the internet. Remote employees ensure higher uptime, load balancing, no single point of failure. Remote employment means you can hire better talent for cheaper costs. Forget cheaper costs, remote employment ensures you can hire better talent from the talent pool that was previously unavailable to you, even if you want to pay identical salaries as you pay in the SV. For the employees, it’s the ability to get a serious bang for the buck by being in a high quality low cost area.

After the COVID19 is over, the world will retrospect. The world will question the ability of the US to handle health crisis. The world will question if China should be the sole manufacturer of the global goods. The world will question the open borders of the EU and the lack of systems in place to protect against a pandemic. And a small part of the world will also question how can we leverage remote work to build more durable companies.