Moneywise

We're still surprised people did this but... 50+ founders worth $10M to $4B reveal their personal finances. Here it is: https://joinhampton.com/mw-wr

Why do we do this? Because if you're an aspirational person or someone who runs a business and is making money, it's incredibly challenging to figure out what to do. Information is impossible to find — and that's what we put together: the net worth reveal and why we do this podcast, Moneywise.

He got his first $5M check and expected to feel superhuman. The next day was one of the most disappointing of his life.

Jesse Pujji walked away from a Goldman Sachs job where he made $500K at 25 — with a boss making $3M and a group head making $20M — to bootstrap an ad agency on $33K per partner and a stack of Amex cards. Ampush cracked the Facebook arbitrage before almost anyone: $100K in monthly revenue in June 2010 became $2M a month with $600K in EBITDA fourteen months later. He scaled it to half a billion in annual ad spend and 250 employees without raising a dollar, turned down $25M at 27, sold 20% to Red Ventures in 2015, and sold the whole thing to New Mountain Capital in 2022 for somewhere between $40M and $60M on a 35% stake. He never got the nine-figure number he made up in his head, and he says chasing it was the mistake.

This episode gets into the exact allocation of a post-exit portfolio, why Jesse refuses to let his advisors put illiquid startup equity on his balance sheet, what $500K a year of "normal" spending actually buys, and why he asked his financial advisor how people possibly spend more than that. He's honest about the gap between the money he expected to change him and the money that didn't. And we spend real time on the part most founders avoid: three kids who never saw him grind, a Greenlight allowance split into thirds, a $63 JCPenney paycheck at 16 that taught him more than any of it, and the question of whether to leave them anything at all.

Also, this podcast is made by Hampton, which is a community for founders doing on average $20 million a year in revenue. We saw a lot of these money conversations happening privately behind closed doors and we thought, "What the heck, let's make it public." If you are a founder, apply here: http://joinhampton.com/mw

Timestamps:
00:00 — Jesse's origin story: immigrant household in St. Louis, a snow shoveling business in middle school, and $33K each plus Amex cards to start Ampush
02:00 — The Facebook arbitrage that changed everything: $100K/month in June 2010 to $2M in revenue and $600K in EBITDA fourteen months later
02:49 — "Sandbox entrepreneurship" — Facebook cold-calls them: "Who the hell are you guys? You're one of our top 100 advertisers"
04:24 — Why he left Goldman at 25 making $500K: "I would rather make half of my future expected earnings and do something I feel excited about"
06:18 — The $25M offer two years in, why they said no, and the $3M dividend they took instead — $1M each, which bought his SF house
07:30 — The made-up number that wrecked them: hoping for $150M, getting $60–75M offers, and turning down $190M in Marin stock
09:24 — The Red Ventures deal and $5M after tax: "I thought I would get wings or superhuman strength... nothing changed"
11:16 — 2022: selling to New Mountain and walking away without going with the deal
13:12 — The exit number, on the record: a $40–60M range on a stake "a little bit more than a third"
16:04 — The Zone of Genius framework, and why being a CEO sat in his zone of excellence — good at it, drained by it
17:52 — Gateway X by the numbers
19:06 — Whether the scarcity ever goes away: "nine days out of ten" became "one day out of ten," and the coach question he couldn't answer
20:16 — The Deer Valley condo, and finally understanding why people buy vacation homes
21:08 — Full portfolio breakdown and why he tells his advisors to mark his startup equity at zero
23:24 — Annual spend 
26:52 — The schedule that makes it work: Tuesdays and Thursdays he misses bedtime, Monday/Wednesday/Friday he doesn't, and he deletes Slack on vacation
28:16 — The thing that keeps him up: "They've gotten all the fruits of the grind without actually observing the grind"
29:23 — Greenlight, allowance equal to their age, and splitting it into thirds — spend, save, give
30:19 — Running a Starbucks P&L with his 9-year-old daughter in the store
32:30 — The four-bucket framework: spend it, give it to the government, give it to charity, or give it to your kids
34:44 — A Schnucks family board member on generational wealth: "Money doesn't ruin kids. Lack of values does."
35:36 — What Jesse wants said at his funeral

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Listen on Spotify / Apple Podcasts: [search "Moneywise Hampton"]

He pastored for 30 years, then sold his company in a ~$500M deal — and gave away $1.5M the same week.
Also, this podcast is made by Hampton, which is a community for founders doing on average $20 million a year in revenue. We saw a lot of these money conversations happening privately behind closed doors and we thought, "What the heck, let's make it public." If you are a founder, apply here: http://joinhampton.com/mw
Dean Sweetman spent 30 years as a pastor before founding Tithe.ly at 51 — a giving platform for churches that Excel KKR acquired in a deal in the hundreds of millions. The same week the wire hit, he moved $1.5 million into a donor-advised fund he can never take back. Today he's worth $30–50M, gives away 10–15% of it every year, and still budgets like he did when he ended each week with $150 to spare.
This episode covers the anatomy of his exit — upfront cash, rolled equity, earn-outs — and where every dollar sits now: 95% liquid, 50% indexed, 5% of net worth in debt. Plus the $10,000 tips he leaves strangers in airports, why he calls himself a "biblical capitalist," the dollar amount where he stopped thinking about money, and what he plans to do with all of it when he's gone.
Sponsors: Daily Body Coach - achieve your dream body with https://moneywise.dailybodycoach.com
Subscribe to Moneywise: https://www.youtube.com/@themoneywisepodcast
Follow Daniel on X: https://x.com/danielcberk
Listen on Spotify / Apple Podcasts: [search "Moneywise Hampton"]

Craig Newmark turned down an $11 billion offer for Craigslist, and he's already given away $570 million of his own money chasing a number even bigger than that.
This podcast is made by Hampton, a community for founders doing on average $25 million a year in revenue. We saw a lot of these money conversations happening privately behind closed doors and we thought, "What the heck, let's make it public." If you're a founder, apply here: joinhampton.com/mw
Craig founded Craigslist off a mailing list in 1995. He turned down that $11 billion offer, and since then has given away $570 million through his foundation, aiming for a billion before he dies. He funds NYPD bomb squad gear, an NYU cardiologist's AI research, Wikipedia, journalism schools, and pigeon rescue. He's 73, hasn't owned a car in ten years, and just upgraded from $50 Skechers to $80 Skechers.
This one gets into what happens once a founder's number stops being the problem, the Sunday school lesson behind his moral compass, why his own headline net worth is wrong, the two causes eating most of his giving budget, and his plan to train an LLM to keep making his philanthropic decisions after he's gone. It closes on Take Nine, his campaign for the nine-second pause that stops most scams.
Sponsors: Daily Body Coach - achieve your dream body with https://moneywise.dailybodycoach.com
Subscribe to Moneywise: https://www.youtube.com/@themoneywisepodcast
Follow Daniel on X: https://x.com/danielcberk
Listen on Spotify / Apple Podcasts: [search "Moneywise Hampton"]

He had $15 in the bank and a $1M judgment against him. Eight years later, Nestlé bought his company for $1.5B — then shut it down.
Also, this podcast is made by Hampton, which is a community for founders doing on average $20 million a year in revenue. We saw a lot of these money conversations happening privately behind closed doors and we thought, "What the heck, let's make it public." If you are a founder, apply here: http://joinhampton.com/mw
Michael Wystrach built Freshly out of the wreckage of a failing restaurant, with $15 in the bank and a personally-guaranteed lease that left him with a $1M judgment against him. Six years later he sold the company to Nestlé for $1.5B — then watched it get shut down. He never took time off. He started a veterinary platform with his sister, raised a $75M venture fund, and put almost his entire payout back to work.
This episode gets into what really happens to your bank account after a nine-figure exit — secondary sales, earn-out math, his actual living costs, his real estate philosophy at 2% interest rates, and what it felt like to lose the company he built after selling it. He also shares why he believes the first $10M matters more than the hundredth, and why he plans to keep building for the rest of his life.
Sponsors: Daily Body Coach - achieve your dream body with https://moneywise.dailybodycoach.com
Subscribe to Moneywise: https://www.youtube.com/@themoneywisepodcast
Follow Daniel on X: https://x.com/danielcberk
Listen on Spotify / Apple Podcasts: [search "Moneywise Hampton"]

We did something nuts: we got 50+ founders to reveal their net worth, portfolios, income, expenses. Its free and right here: https://joinhampton.com/mw-wr
Why this podcast exists:
Hampton is a community for founders. Members do an ave of $20m/year in revenue.
Tons of the convos within the community are about money: how to invest, how to spend, how much to pay yourself...all this stuff you can't Google.
We thought "Let’s just make these convos public". And thus, this podcast Moneywise came to be.
We publish weekly. Click the subscribe button and the goodness will be delivered. 
Also...we've done 100+ episodes. If you want the aggregate info of all the numbers, meaning the net worth, spending, income of 50+ founders ranging from $10m to $1 billion: https://joinhampton.com/mw-wr
Ok, so let's talk David Royce, today's guest:
He built the same pest control company four times — $13M, $30M, $135M, $1.5B — and says the first exit was the most life-changing.
David Royce sold four pest control companies — Moxie, Eco First, Altera, and Aptiv — each bigger than the last, culminating in a $1.5B sale of Aptiv when it was doing $508M in annual revenue. He kept 100% equity through the first three, gave 25% of the last one to his employees, and personally walked away with hundreds of millions across the run. He's now on an indefinite sabbatical, investing through Iconic (the firm that manages Zuckerberg's and Dorsey's money), with half his net worth in S&P 500 and the rest in private equity, direct deals, and alternatives — including multiple Anthropic investments.
This episode covers the exact mechanics of each asset-sale exit, why David kept restarting instead of holding, his full portfolio framework (including the 4-year cash buffer strategy), the "the answer is just a little more" moment that hit every entrepreneur in the room, and the story of flying his dying father on a private jet from a New Orleans hospital to Cedars-Sinai at 2am — made possible only by one call to a CEO WhatsApp chain.
Timestamps:
00:01:39 — David's full intro: four companies, four exits, what actually happened with the money
01:55 — First company (Moxie): nearly went bankrupt the first year, how a cash flow crisis taught him "cash was king"
03:14 — The asset-sale strategy: selling customers and technicians to Terminix while keeping the sales operation
04:57 — "Pretty close" — David confirms Forbes' reported $13M and $30M exit figures
05:37 — Why he gave 25% of Aptiv to employees and stepped back as chairman
06:23 — Aptiv was doing $508M in revenue; Daniel and David settle on $1.5B as the sale range
07:13 — What he actually took home: cap gains, California taxes, "hundreds of millions"
08:37 — Net worth today: "do the math backwards and figure it out"
09:09 — Portfolio breakdown: 4-year cash buffer in fixed income, S&P 500 with tax-loss harvesting, alternatives
11:31 — "I just invested in Anthropic — three different times in the last year and a half" via Iconic
14:35 — "The one that was life-changing was the first one" — $13M from nothing hits differently than $1.5B
17:46 — Why pest control? A starving college student, a friend who made $25K in a summer, and zero sales for five days straight
21:16 — His boss's question that changed everything: "What on earth would you go work for somebody else?"
27:31 — Fifth grade through eleventh grade: watching his family nearly lose the house, the fear that built everything
36:35 — Flying his dying father on a private jet from New Orleans to Cedars-Sinai at 2am
39:36 — What he wants to be remembered for: "The sign of a good leader is not how many followers you have, but how many leaders you create"
Sponsors: Daily Body Coach - achieve your dream body with https://moneywise.dailybodycoach.com
Subscribe to Moneywise: https://www.youtube.com/@themoneywisepodcast
Follow Daniel on X: https://x.com/danielcberk
Listen on Spotify / Apple Podcasts: [search "Moneywise Hampton"]