Gilt

Kevin Ryan's pencil-and-paper studio: $300K and 6 months

Sam admires Kevin Ryan (early DoubleClick employee, ~$20M from the Google sale), who with partner Dwight writes out the math on paper, then funds a company with $300K and 6 months to show traction. Hits include MongoDB (~$21B), Business Insider, Zola, and Gilt.

“Then using that, him and this guy named Dwight would invest $300,000 and give a company 6 months to show traction. The outcome of their companies, there's a couple losers and a couple winners, probably a lot more losers than winners. But the first one is MongoDB. Which is currently publicly traded at a $21 billion valuation.”