Revealed! How to become a tech wunderkind in 1,286 easy steps

My editor is ticked at me. This post is way late, but in my defense: It’s Ryan Allis’ fault. See, Ryan Allis is one of my favorite kinds of people: a young pseudo-tech entrepreneur with an almost Ivy League education, far too much money, and a level of self-love that would make Alexander the Great wince.

Furthermore, Ryan’s about to hit the big 3-0. To a guy my age, he might as well be dangling from his umbilical cord, but Ryan doesn’t think so. In the Silicon Valley startup universe, 30 is so old, you’re practically undead and certainly able to sell yourself as a life experience prophet. In Ryan’s case, that’s especially true because his life experience is what all Silicon Valley tweeners are looking for.

In his 20s, he sold an email and social media startup to some poor suckers for $170 million, did a year of Harvard b-school to show he could, and started a “global network of leaders and entrepreneurs under 40 who are creating a better world.” (You too can join that hallowed list for a mere $850, by the way.)

The wisdom of whippersnappers

With all those accomplishments under his belt, he’s obviously far wiser than the average tweener or indeed the typical human being. To prove it, he’s decided to park his methane-fueled Ferrari long enough to offer us — indeed, the world at large — the one birthday present that will keep on giving: “Lessons From My 20s.”

Yup, you can snarf up the wisdom of a pre-30, tech-bubble-bred, Ivy League dropout via an easily digested 1,286-slide PowerPoint deck. That’s not a typo. With 1,286 slides’ worth of truly migraine-inducing subject matter, I think it’s easy to see why my weekend took a few unexpected turns.

Ostensibly, he’s trying to pass on the wisdom his mother taught him, which appears to revolve around Web development, startups, and a rehash of every be-a-more-effective-executive self-help book ever written, starting with radically insightful advice like “write down your goals.” That’s followed by about 10 slides on exactly how to write down your goals, including opening Google Docs, printing, and eventually framing.

Next up: More quick instructions on how you can figure out your life’s purpose in 90 minutes or less, followed by another multihour exercise on putting this information on the wall in a “vision board” that captures all those goals, life purposes, wet dreams, and bucket lists. Ryan’s bucket list is in the deck, by the way. It takes up seven slides that include mature, not-at-all-childish leader-type goals ranging from traveling to space to seeing a Cirque du Soleil show. I cried myself into an involuntary sleep, eating away at my precious deadline.

Waking up with a start, I dove back in hoping to find absolutely anything I could respect. In return, I got more sage advice, including not allowing foolish considerations like chance, love, family, or sentiment to determine who your friends are. In fact, Ryan thinks you should dump everyone who can’t directly help with your career goals and replace them with folks you’ve handpicked based on the above criteria. He even provides a step-by-step guide on how to stalk these unfortunate souls, manipulate them into having coffee with you, and sucker them into becoming friends, mentors, co-workers, and eventual restraining order issuers. I’m sure that’s exactly what his mother taught him.

He also prattled on about achieving your dreams and becoming a Jedi in an adult context. That led to Ryan’s tale of forging his character in the long and dire crucible of his 20s. I’m not exactly sure because I rolled my eyes so hard I went blind for an indeterminate stretch.

Hold on, he’s not done yet

Yet I still wasn’t past section one. There was even more, including maintaining the Allis mindset, health, nutrition, happiness, meditation, and so on. I especially enjoyed the little-known money management advice, like not going into debt for things you don’t need, saving money every month, and building an investment account. Needless to say, his mother wasn’t Suze Orman.

Ryan’s investing advice was especially choice and certainly worth the 300-plus slides you need to slog through to get there: “The value of a company goes up when the company’s profits go up,” while “the value of a company goes down when the company’s profits go down.” Everything else, go see Warren Buffet. Boom — head on desk, KO’d again by Ryan’s sheer brilliance.

But wait, there’s more! If you manage to get through the financial planning section with your sanity intact, stick around for the life value section: the many lessons Ryan has learned in his 20s, thoughtfully broken out by year, and ranging from “just say ‘OK good’ to life” to “there is great power in a handwritten note.” There’s the 21st-century innovation timeline where you — and Ryan — can compare your august achievements to equally meaningful developments like the invention of penicillin or the mapping of the human genome.

He’s sprinkled pithy quotes throughout this work, too, from guys like Werner Erhard, whom I had to look up. I could’ve sworn he was the guy who sold me a used Jeep. Imagine my delight, then, to see his Wikipedia entry, which had him hawking cars for Lee Iacocca before he became a “critical thinker,” lecturer, and 20s tech turk role model.

After drifting in and out of consciousness four or five times and losing most of my Saturday down this biz-speak black hole, I can only sum it up as the brain fart of a mind far more egomaniacal than that of most 20-somethings, which is really saying something for that age group. Allis not only has an opinion on everything, he’s convinced that his opinions are intellectual platinum and we need to hear and learn from them or the world is doomed. Never mind that they’re eye-gougingly patronizing and seemingly copied from decades of executive day calendars and motivational cat posters.

A microcosm of Silicon Valley

The only redeeming aspect to Ryan’s deck is that it unequivocally demonstrates why we’re losing touch with Silicon Valley. The region has become a cocoon of overfunded kids who get gobs of money and empty compliments thrown at them for what are usually mediocre ideas. Before long, they’re convinced they’re unique and special snowflakes who can churn out random thoughts and life insights the rest of us unwashed muckcrawlers can’t fathom.

Allis isn’t trying to con us. He really thinks this stuff is new and needs to be said. After all, in his 29 years he’s become a successful entrepreneur in an incredibly challenging frat-network startup culture that hands out seven-figure paydays to business plans that have cellphones Yo-ing each other. Grow up in that world and of course you think you’ve earned the right to sum up “the Great Story of Humanity” in less than 50 slides of your my-life manifesto (I’m not kidding).

In Ryan’s world, he knows it all. He’s done it all. And like Werner Erhard, he’s happy to tell you about it as long as you pay him a small speaker’s fee, buy his book, and rent out the Rosewood room at the local airport Marriott. What I really want to read is “Ryan Allis: Lessons from My 30s and 40s” after the tech bubble’s burst again, when he’s gone through his first or second divorce and recently discovered Xanax and Viagra. I might stay awake for that one.