Andrew Yang on Reaching Multimillionaire Status by Age 34 (Part 1)

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:05]All right, here we go. Today we have former presidential candidate and businessman Andrew Yang. Welcome to Vlad TV.

[00:00:12]>> It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

[00:00:15]>> Absolutely, man. Absolutely. We have a very very interesting story. So, let's start in the very beginning. Your parents were immigrants from Taiwan.

[00:00:24]>> Yeah, they met at UC Berkeley, which I think you know well.

[00:00:28]Yeah, that's where I went to school.

[00:00:31]Okay. And why did they come from Taiwan to the US?

[00:00:37]Man, the same reason everyone came to the US in the '60s. Uh because this was the place to build a life, career, have opportunity. Uh Taiwan back then was kind of rural and agricultural. Uh my dad grew up on a peanut farm in the south and so uh trying to to get to the states was a dream for most everyone of that generation I think.

[00:01:00]>> Okay. So you know my parents are immigrants as well as am I. So you start going to school and by age 12 you scored 1,200 out of 1600 on your SATs.

[00:01:13]>> That is a true fact. And uh you know I I didn't realize that was unusual. So I think I might have told someone and then gotten punched in the face for it. I was like, "Oh I probably shouldn't be sharing my SAT scores around."

[00:01:30]Well, to put in perspective, I got a 1290 on my SAT, but I was 17 years old at the time. And the 1290 is what helped me get into Berkeley cuz it was like the top like one or half of percentile or something like that. So 1,200 at age 12 is kind of insane.

[00:01:48]>> Yeah. Again, I didn't know what it meant. Uh but some of my peers let me know what it meant.

[00:01:55]And not like a that's great way, more like a you know what are you some kind of uh you know uh alien nerd? Um I was one of the only Asian kids in my town.

[00:02:09]>> Okay. because by age 15 you scored a 1500 which now is a fraction of 1%.

[00:02:16]And you said that with that type of score you can get into any school.

[00:02:22]>> Yeah, I mean it was a good score. Uh uh my parents were pumped. uh you know in my case I saw it as a maybe like you know ticket to get into various schools and got into Stanford and Brown where I ended up going. So my immigrant Asian parents were really pumped at the time.

[00:02:45]>> Yeah, I bet my immigrant, you know, parents were totally, you know, thrilled that I was going to Berkeley. So I can, you know, I can relate. And I also grew up in an area where there's a lot of Asians, a lot of immigrant Asians also.

[00:02:58]So, they're kind of going through the same thing you were going through.

[00:03:01]>> Yeah, you and I are about the same age.

[00:03:03]So, >> uh, immigrant Asians, you know, growing up, uh, I got pumped anytime I saw an Asian on TV, including the kung fu movies on Saturday on Channel 5, the drive-in movie with the five deadly venoms and um, the kid with a golden arm. I don't know if you remember these vintage kung fu movies. So that's like growing up in the >> 70s, 80s, the the lone Asian kid uh in in my part of New York State. U but it's great you grew up with a lot of us because you know like uh you would understand it and plus you would fit right in as an immigrant yourself.

[00:03:41]>> Right. Exactly. Okay. Now I don't know why you went to Brown instead of Stanford because Stanford was my dream school but I didn't get in.

[00:03:49]>> Yeah. My my brother transferred from Berkeley literally that year. So my brother is two years older than me. He went out to Berkeley and then transferred out his sophomore year. So I was deciding between Stanford and Brown.

[00:04:00]Literally my brother was like, "Yo, I'm coming back east." Uh and when I visited Stanford, I thought, "This is so nice. I can't imagine studying here." It's like it literally had palm trees. I was like, you know, palm trees doesn't equate to work for me.

[00:04:18]So, so I was like, "Look, my brother was out here and then he came back east. I should take a queue from that." Um, so I decided to go to Brown instead.

[00:04:29]>> Okay. So, you go to Brown and then you get your law degree from Colombia, another top school.

[00:04:36]And at that point, you could pretty much do whatever you want.

[00:04:42]And you ended up going to a law firm that you hated. Yeah, that's right. My comp at the time was that uh working here is like entering a pie eating contest that if you win, the reward is more pie. Uh so I was like, "What the hell am I doing here? This job sucks."

[00:05:03]So I I went home to my parents that Thanksgiving and was like, "Yo, you did not come to this country for me to do this job." Uh they didn't really understand what I was talking about. And so I I quit that firm. a couple months later. I left in uh February. I got there in maybe September. Um so I was there for six months or so.

[00:05:24]>> Okay. And then you started going in different directions. Uh you started a a philanthropic fundraising company.

[00:05:34]>> That's very grandiose, Vlad, cuz that uh was a flop of a dot in the first bubble.

[00:05:41]It's called stargiving.com.

[00:05:43]Um, so you know, you can put a positive spin on a lot of things, but I I was a 25-year-old wannabe entrepreneur who started a dot when the air was coming out of the bubble, not going in. So my timing was poor on that level. Uh, and then after that company flopped, I worked at another startup that ran out of money and then another startup. And so I started moodlining as a test prep tutor on nights and weekends and also became a nightclub promoter in uh Tribeca in downtown New York under the name Ignition NYC.

[00:06:20]Uh and this happened because I I had a birthday party and a bunch of Asians I didn't know showed up to my party and drank a lot. It's like wallto-wall. And so then I was like, "Oh man, there might be a business here." So then I said, "Well, shoot. maybe I can have a party when it's not my birthday and get a bar or lounge to give me some of the bar.

[00:06:42]And then I I got a couple of partners.

[00:06:44]Um so I had three jobs throughout my late 20s. I was working at a healthcare software startup and I was tutoring on the side and I was throwing parties on the weekends.

[00:06:58]>> Okay. And that led into the test preparation company.

[00:07:02]>> Yeah. uh the founder of the test preparation company wanted to leave to start uh school for underprivileged kids. He's a very genuinely um philanthropic soul. Uh and so he asked me to take over the business as the new CEO and I said yes and then I became the CEO of that company. I was 31 or so. And then the company grew over the next number of years to become pretty successful and then was bought by a public company when I was 34, right? You actually grew it to 69 locations and Kaplan came in and bought it.

[00:07:47]So at the height with 69 locations, how much were you grossing a year?

[00:07:54]between 17 and 18 million in revenue.

[00:07:59]>> Okay. How many employees >> if you included instructors?

[00:08:05]Uh maybe 100. If you didn't include instructors, then it was much smaller because our corporate staff might have been 25 to 30.

[00:08:17]>> Okay. And how much did Kaplan buy the company for?

[00:08:20]>> Wow. Uh, this has never been publicly disclosed. Am I going to break this news on Vlad TV given that uh, you know, it's a million years later, be able to get a judge. Um, but I mean, you know, I I shouldn't be because it's not just me. It's like, you know, my partner and some other things, but it was uh I I'll say it was um low eight figures.

[00:08:49]>> Okay. Okay. Okay. So, over 10 million.

[00:08:52]>> Yeah.

[00:08:53]>> So, in the the 20 30 million range maybe >> ish. Yeah, it's about right.

[00:09:00]>> Is okay. And you became a millionaire after that?

[00:09:04]>> Yeah, I was 34. I remember the day very vividly. Um, so this this Have you sold a company, Vlad? Uh, >> I have not.

[00:09:14]>> All right. So, check it out. So, so we signed the deal. It was, by the way, all of the documents and everything, huge pain in the ass. And there's a period when you you're uh keeping it secret from people because if the deal falls through, then it's going to be this massive um distraction and morale shifter and all this stuff. So, I was like doing all the stuff myself and then uh I signed all the paperwork and then sent it and then I I went to our lawyer and say, "Okay, what happens now?" And he says, "Well, the deal essentially closes when they send you the money." So, uh, I was there with this bank window open, just hitting refresh, refresh, refresh over and over again, like waiting for money to hit.

[00:10:00]And then when the money hit, uh, all of a sudden I, you know, I like got off my desk. It was December 19th, 2004. And I just went like Santa Claus. I just went out into the halls and started uh you know celebrating with everyone.

[00:10:17]No, no one had any idea what I was celebrating.

[00:10:21]Then I would bring people to my office and then give them uh the news. Now the news uh obviously for most employees would be a mixed bag um at best because you know you know you never know what's going to happen with new ownership and the rest of it. But the reason why it was good news and why I could be Santa Claus is that we had set aside a chunk of the purchase price to give to employees as a bonus. And there there was no contractual or legal reason for us to do it. It just felt like the right thing to do. So I did get to be Santa Claus and I was giving away five figure bonuses um to people out of the blue like they had no idea it was coming. Um so that was a really happy day.

[00:11:08]Okay. And after the dust settled, you were a a millionaire or a multi-millionaire?

[00:11:15]>> I was a multi-millionaire. This is true.

[00:11:19]>> Okay. This is after paying taxes and everything else like that.

[00:11:22]>> Yeah. I was a 34 year old multi-millionaire and I went and visited my folks in Taiwan uh over that holiday.

[00:11:29]So, we sell December 19th and then I go out literally the next week uh to Taiwan to visit my folks. And I remember walking around being a multi-millionaire, you know, like five, six days in and then just feeling like I can do anything. Like world's my oyster.

[00:11:44]I walked into a 7-Eleven. I was like, I want to buy everything. I want to buy every snack on the the aisles. There was like a person in front of me in the line. I was like, I want to pay for your snack. Like that was the energy at the time. That was I'm obviously, you know, reminiscing. um because I'd had a lot of ups and downs up to that point and you never know if you're going to succeed honestly and and so uh it was still sinking in. Um but I celebrated with my parents and my joke is that they started being proud of me again.

[00:12:17]It was like a extended arc when they would just lie and tell their friends I was a lawyer cuz I'd been a lawyer for 6 months and then uh I was a failed entrepreneur and all this other stuff.

[00:12:28]And so my parents didn't want to explain all that to their friends.