Adam Foroughi

speaker

1,682 appearances 2 recordings 2 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 27 Apr

Adam Foroughi’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 2.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch · 20VC: Applovin: $160BN Market Cap, $5.48BN Revenue, $10M EBITDA Per Head | Why the Best Do Not Need Mentorship | Why Founders Should Not Angel Invest | Why Kindness in Business Will Slow You Down with Adam Foroughi · 27 Apr 2026 podcast

Yeah, so to understand my comp in 23, you got to really look backwards in 22.

When we went public, we went public in 21.

In the first year, the stock went up to about $40 billion market cap.

In 2022, we fell about 92% to a little bit under $4 billion market cap.

I, for the life of the company, had only taken equity that was my founder stock and based on the money that I originally put in the company.

So I had taken no compensation.

I was taking basically the bare minimum to have benefits.

At the bottom in 22, I made a decision, and that was, for the first time, to ask for compensation.

And the reason I did that is because I felt like I'm public, turning this company around is a big task, and I'd like to align myself with investors to say,

I'm going to get paid, but I'm only going to get paid if the stock recovers.

So the thresholds of compensation that the comp committee on the board granted me were at a minimum, the stock was $9.

We had to get to the first threshold, I think was about $38 to $40.

And in order for me to get paid anything, the stock had to clear that and then keep going up from there for me to get any sort of compensation.

And then there were, I think, five or six levels from there.

So all the way up to a return to $80, which was our IPO price.

And I had a term to go achieve it.

I feel like CEOs who are founders originally started a business taking really big risk.

If the belief is that the CEO should then never get compensation ever again, it's completely flawed logic.

You want to give people who chase really big upside by creating really big things the potential to continuously have that really big upside because it allows them to, in a way, just mentally stay motivated on what they're doing versus start drifting to other things.

Because any founder, even at the low point, I was worth quite a bit of money on paper, at least with my equity, could have walked away and started something else.

Showing 41–60 of 1,682 · page 3 of 85