Neil Patel on building businesses, giving back, and marketing in 2023

Executive overview

Neil Patel started earning at 16, scaled multiple companies, and now runs NP Digital — a bootstrapped agency at nine figures in under five years. The conversation spans his origin story, views on education and social responsibility, and the coming shift away from third-party cookies.

Giving back is not charity — it is a deliberate choice that reflects your values and the people you want to serve.

How Neil got started at 16

• Took a speech class in high school; gave a talk on Google's algorithm
• A classmate hired him at $100–200/hour; grew to $5k/month within that engagement
• Generated $20–25M in revenue for a power supply manufacturer in year one
• The client's son resold his services to Blue Cross, ING Direct, and Countrywide — $5k per client, $20k/month at age 16
• Opened an ad agency that same year, with employees, while still attending high school

Building and pivoting through crises

• The 2008 financial crisis wiped out many agency clients
• Had already started Crazy Egg (now run by his sister) a year or two earlier — that pivot saved the business
• Several ventures failed; the winners covered all losses
• NP Digital reached top-25 fastest-growing US companies (Inc. list), fully bootstrapped
• Turned down multiple acquisition offers — views businesses as his kids, not assets to sell

Money as a scorecard, not a goal

• Drives a Honda Odyssey by choice; no desire for luxury cars or large homes
• Revenue and headcount are milestones, not endpoints
• His wife's focus is donating and volunteering — particularly toward education and food for children in poverty

Giving back and education equity

• His wife's thesis: inner-city kids (e.g. Compton, East LA) given the same tools as Beverly Hills kids would outperform them — because hunger and hustle compound
• Single parents in low-income areas work multiple jobs with no nannies or support; Neil and his wife direct giving toward those communities
• Public school curriculum is broken everywhere, regardless of ranking: no tax literacy, no personal finance, no practical economics
• School rankings correlate with demographic wealth, not teaching quality — better-ranked schools attract better-funded teachers

The end of third-party cookies

• Google is deprecating cookies in the near term; primary driver is privacy regulation (GDPR and country-level rules)
• Google controls the browser, analytics, search history, YouTube, Gmail, and Android — it has already extracted what it needs
• Apple's privacy changes hurt Facebook's revenue, not Apple's; Google's move will likely repeat that dynamic
• Majority of the world uses Android, not iPhone — most people globally cannot afford a $1,000 device
• The deprecation will damage competitors (Facebook) more than Google, making it partly a competitive weapon