Sadi Khan, co-founder and CEO of Aven, retired from Facebook only to return 3 months later to build a $2.2B fintech solving America’s $1 trillion credit card debt crisis.
In this brutally honest interview, he reveals:
– Why his first advice is "Don’t start a company"
– The CFPB graph that ended his retirement: 75 years of unchanged 20-25% credit card rates
– Why he checks SAT scores when hiring ("Intelligence is massively underrated")
– How 70 employees beat FAANG revenue per employee
– His extreme lifestyle: Same shirt daily, "I love boring"
Key quotes:
"Unless you’re willing to go decades without pay or recognition, don’t start"
"Your weakest engineer determines your ceiling"
"If we die, we can’t help anyone"
The unconventional story of building a robot arm to sign mortgages, reading Dodd-Frank instead of TechCrunch, and why removing emotions from decisions built a $2.2B company.
00:00 Don’t Start a Company (Unless You Have This)
01:40 Meet Sadi Khan & Aven
02:51 How One Graph Created a $2.2B Company
05:40 What 12 Years at Microsoft & Facebook Taught Me
09:00 Most Founders Don’t Know Why They’ll Fail
11:03 Do Half of What You Think You Should
13:31 Why Feelings Are Your Biggest Scaling Enemy
18:01 Kill Decision Fatigue Before It Kills You
24:08 Credit
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