If you’ve ever watched the movie “The Social Network” you’re aware who Sean Parker is. Just yesterday I was watching “The Italian Job” and Seth Greene’s character played the original creator of Napster. In the movie he claimed Sean Parker stole the software from him while he was taking a nap. Hence the name Napster. 

While that story may not be true, the fact that Sean Parker is one of the few billionaires to have several movies mention him, his role on modern society and the products he’s played a part in bringing to the marketplace. He’s one of the most famous Entrepreneurs on the planet. He’s been single handedly responsible for some of the most innovative technologies ever introduced to the world.

Sean’s closed multiple billion dollar deals on multiple billion dollar companies. His portfolio and track record include Napster, Facebook, Spotify and Plaxo. It’s like Sean Parker has a crystal ball when it comes to finding the latest and greatest breakthroughs in technology. 

As a direct result of closing billion dollar deals, Sean Parker’s net worth, according to Forbes, is over 2 billion dollars. That’s a lotta bucks and I’d like to share some lessons learned from Mr Parker’s business transactions. One of my favorite things to do is breaking down thought and action patterns of billion dollar producers. 

Find The Unicorn – Napster, Spotify, Facebook and all of the other companies he invested in were unicorns, meaning there was nothing like them in existence in the marketplace. Most people don’t know what to do with a good idea. Sean Parker knows exactly what to do and he’s constantly on the search. 

It would seem Sean’s always positioned himself to attract the unicorns. When he was young he spent his time partying with college kids and would learn about new technology by proximity. As he’s gotten older, he’s created venture capital funds for start up tech companies. He’s put himself right in the middle of the action in oder to be the first to find the net tech unicorn. 

Results Over Reputation – If you can deliver the product and the results that go along with it, your personal reputation doesn’t matter. Back in the day, Sean was known to party like the rest of us. I mean, let’s get real, who didn’t enjoy life and party a bit when they were younger? But you know how it is, people always try to judge you. Partying led to his leaving Facebook for a while.

Party type or not, Sean also had another reputation. A reputation for getting funds in order and growing huge tech companies from viral marketing. Whether investors trusted his judgement on partying or not is tbd, but they damn sure trust his judgement on the next big tech start up. His reputation is now all about results, not about his past. 

Leverage Your Network – When Sean approached the Swedish music app Spotify, he was able to get them integrated with Facebook, which is what catapulted them into extreme momentum. He already had connections from prior work with the social networking giant, which made it easy to get Spotify plugged right in with their API etc.

I also assure you the lessons and network Sean Parker built from his Napster days played a big role in what moves they made at Spotify. Combining his network with his experience is what’s taken Spotify to levels Pandora and iHeart can only dream of. His vast network of capitalists, coders, lawyers, and everyone else is what it takes to make a billion dollar deal happen. 

Focus On What You Know Best – Mr Parker’s entire investment portfolio and track record have been based on tech companies. He’s found his niche. Sean knows his area of expertise and how to help start up tech companies get funded and grow quickly. That’s exactly what he focuses on doing. From what I can tell he’s not spreading his portfolio all over the place. He’s all in on tech and focused on being the venture and thought capital leader in that marketplace.

Many investors and entrepreneurs lose focus and get spread too thin, too quickly. This causes them to get weak in one area or another, which ultimately leads to losing money. Sean picks winners because he sticks with what he knows. That’s some solid advice right there. 

Get In Early – Sean’s talent is finding start up companies BEFORE they become mainstream. He discovered Facebook while crashing over at a girl’s college dorm. Once he saw the platform, he reached out to his network immediately to start the introduction process. He knew there wasn’t a second to waste.

I remember seeing a CNBC morning show episode with Sean Parker on as a guest. He was talking about this music app he had just discovered and how it was going to change the way music was produced, sold and streamed. I immediately jumped on Spotify and started checking it out. I fell in love. It was like Netflix for music. That was several years ago, now Spotify is the #1 music streaming app. Sean was in early CNBC was still confused on what the app did. 

I’m a big fan of Mr Parkers and I love following his moves. I’m excited to see what the next innovation he gets involved with does. In the mean time I’ll be observing from the sidelines learning billion dollar lessons from a billion dollar closer.