Snap vesting: 10-20-30-40 schedule
Guo left Snapchat on a 10-20-30-40 vesting schedule, meaning she forfeited the majority of her equity to pursue Scale AI.
Snapshot · On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Lucy Guo: The Fastest Way to Build a Business Today (The #1 Strategy That Saves You Months of Wasted Work)
Explore episode
Jul 6, 2026
Where this was said
Change Your Life at 22
At 8:44 · chapter starts 7:15
Jay asks about habits ambitious people think will help them succeed but actually hold them back. Lucy's answer is counterintuitive: the habit of gathering mentors. Smart people poll everyone around them, then freeze when the advice conflicts — or, in Lucy's case, when every mentor unanimously says the same thing. She describes the moment she faced the choice between staying at Snapchat (on a 10-20-30-40 vesting schedule, about to IPO, with a 10-person special team) and leaving to start a company. Every mentor said stay. She left anyway, optimizing for learning rather than money, and what followed became Scale AI [1] — Lucy Guo "Every single mentor told Lucy to stay at Snapchat. She left anyway, and built Scale AI. The lesson: gathering too many mentors creates deci…" 06:54 . The lesson she crystallises: make an imperfect decision and move, because a correctable path beats a paralysed one every time.
The Delusion Required to Build a Unicorn
You cannot build a venture-scale business without genuinely believing you will be in the 0.01% that creates a unicorn. This is not arrogance — it is necessary delusion. Lifestyle businesses are easier to win, but if you are swinging for the fences, logic alone will never get you there.
0.01% chance of building a unicorn
Lucy Guo says founders building venture-scale businesses must genuinely believe they will be in the 0.01% that creates a unicorn, calling this necessary delusion.
What to Do If You Are 22 With No Money or Network
Hang out at college campuses, attend hackathons, and blend in. Hackathons attract exactly the kind of people who spend weekends building instead of partying — and a single event draws the smartest students from dozens of universities. That concentrated density of ambitious people is almost impossible to replicate any other way.
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