SanDisk stock up ~3,000% in 2 years
SanDisk stock rose approximately 3,000% in the past two years, which Levie noted as a missed investment opportunity given Box's supplier relationship.
Snapshot · My First Million
I dropped out of college and built a $3.6B company from scratch
Explore episode
Jul 2, 2026
Where this was said
Angel Investing, Missed Bets, and Investing in Your P&L
At 19:32 · chapter starts 17:05
Shaan reads out a ChatGPT-generated version of Aaron's angel investment portfolio (Stripe, Figma, Robinhood, Airtable, Instacart, Plaid) and Aaron gently corrects it — attributing some entries to 'good embedding space clustering' rather than actual investments. The Figma story is the most revealing miss: he met Dylan Field at the seed round, liked him enormously, but couldn't visualise real-time collaborative design in the cloud. He was a 'huge Luddite on the pitch.' [1] — Shaan Puri "Shaan Puri calls it 'investing in your P&L' — just buy shares in the tools you're already paying for and couldn't switch off. Aaron Levie a…" 19:23 The conversation then opens into a broader investing framework that both Aaron and Shaan find compelling: what Shaan calls 'investing in your P&L.' The idea is simple — look at your expense line items, identify the tools you'd never switch off, and buy those stocks. Aaron confirms the thesis: Box's 20-year tech stack, if you'd just bought those companies' equity, would have outperformed every major index. SanDisk — one of Box's key hardware suppliers and a company that helped catalyse the move to cloud storage — is up approximately 3,000% in two years. The data, Aaron notes, is basically public. Engineers know what's good before anyone else does. Within 90% accuracy, paying attention to what engineers use tells you most of the investment advice you need.
Invest in Your P&L: The Tech Stack Strategy
Shaan Puri calls it 'investing in your P&L' — just buy shares in the tools you're already paying for and couldn't switch off. Aaron Levie agrees: Box's tech stack over 20 years would have outperformed every major index. SanDisk, one of Box's key suppliers, is up 3,000% in two years. The data is public. Most investors just don't leverage it.
Tech stack investing outperforms every index
Aaron Levie argued that simply buying stocks of the tools in Box's tech stack over 20 years would have outperformed every major index.
Similar snapshots
$14K/month in 6 months
Sam built Algrow from zero to $14,000 in monthly revenue within just six months of shipping his first MVP.
10,000 users in 6 months
Algrow reached over 10,000 users in roughly six months, driven almost entirely by organic Discord community growth.
First 400 users from Discord
Sam acquired his first 400 users entirely through Discord communities, without paid advertising or traditional outreach.
480 new customers in one month
Algrow added exactly 480 new paying customers in its most recent month, demonstrating strong ongoing growth.
£10K revenue in last 4 weeks
Sam's Stripe dashboard showed over £10,000 in revenue in the last four weeks, equivalent to roughly $13,000–$14,000 USD.
Free access for early users as growth hack
Sam gave all early users free access so they could show the tool to friends, turning them into live demos and advocates who helped the product spread virally.
No self-promo rule exploit: screen sharing
By silently screen-sharing his tool in Discord voice chats rather than posting links, Sam attracted curiosity without violating no-self-promo server rules.
$10K+ from affiliate marketing first
Before building Algrow, Sam and two friends made over $10,000 in revenue through affiliate marketing for RizzApp by posting faceless texting story content.
$13K MRR with $0 marketing spend
Bhanu grew SiteGPT to $13,000 monthly recurring revenue entirely through organic channels, spending nothing on paid marketing.
