Billy of the Week

Palmer Luckey: sold Oculus at ~19, sued Facebook and won, now builds for the military

Sam profiles Anduril founder Palmer Luckey: started Oculus around 16-17, sold it to Facebook for ~$1B, was fired (he claims for liking Trump), sued Facebook for hundreds of millions and won, then built a defense-tech company in Orange County making border-surveillance hardware.

“So basically it started by the guy named Palmer Luckey. And the reason why this is interesting is Palmer Luckey started Oculus when he was like 16 or 17, and then he sold it to Facebook for some, what, like a billion dollars, just like a ton. And it's interesting because Palmer Luckey is very controversial. So he's a big supporter of Donald Trump, which is very atypical in Silicon Valley. He was fired from Facebook and a lot of people, or he was the one who said he thinks he was fired because he liked Trump., and he sued Facebook for hundreds of millions and won.”

Billy of the Week: Wayne Huizenga, the three-empire roll-up king

Shaan crowns Wayne Huizenga the Billy of the Week for an extraordinary career building Waste Management, Blockbuster, and AutoNation plus owning the Miami Dolphins and Florida Marlins.

“Yeah, this guy's definitely the Billy of the Week. Extremely impressive career. You know, shout out to this guy. He looks like he passed away a couple years ago at age 80.”

Billy of the Week: Pavel Durov, the stateless Telegram billionaire

Shaan crowns Telegram founder Pavel Durov Billy of the Week: 36, worth ~$20B, ripped, fled Russia after refusing to hand over VK, self-funds Telegram, posts only shirtless model-style photos, and floats between countries.

“He's the Billy of the week. Pavel, Pavel, you are the Billy of the week.”

Otto Jostens: invented the class ring in 1897

Shaan's first 'Billy of the Week': Otto Jostens, who invented the class ring in 1897 and built the upsell machine where graduating seniors get pressured into buying a $400-$600 ring on campus to commemorate the occasion.

“this guy is kind of like my Billy of the Week. I got two very boring business people that I'm going to feature here. So the first guy is called Otto Josten, and Otto Josten is the founder of Josten's, which is the number one class ring maker. And Otto Josten, he invents the class ring basically. So he started this thing in 1897 in Ottawa, right?”

Pantone makes $100M+/yr selling a color booklet

Shaan breaks down Pantone, which standardized ~2,500 colors into a numbered matching system used by manufacturers, fashion houses, and even Ben & Jerry's QA on brownie color. They make over $100M/year selling booklets that run $85 to $500, launching ~100 new colors a year to force re-buys.

“It's like 2,500 colors. They make over $100 million a year just sending out this little brochure, this little pamphlet, this little booklet with all the colors in it. And everybody buys these things.”

The Uzbek teen who sold $10M of ringtones to Americans, solo

Sam profiles Val Kataev, a Jewish immigrant from Uzbekistan who started a cell phone ringtone business at 18 as the only employee and hit $10M revenue (essentially all profit) by year 3. He went on to serially bootstrap companies across ad tech, peer-to-peer lending, and jewelry software.

“He, at the age of 18, listen to this, he started a cell phone ringtone business. He was the only employee and it did $10 million in revenue in year 3. He started it when he was 18. So this is when he was like 21, $10 million. So $10 million in profit.”

Billy of the Week: First Kid child actor turned Bitcoin billionaire Brock Pierce

Sam crowns Brock Pierce — the kid actor from First Kid and young Gordon Bombay in Mighty Ducks — as Billy of the Week for becoming a crypto billionaire after getting into Bitcoin around 2012–14.

“But Brock Pierce, the fucking first kid. Gordon Bombay when he was a kid, whatever the guy's name was. He's a Bitcoin billionaire.”

Quinn Miller, the Hillbilly of the Week vending operator

Quinn Miller is celebrated as the 'Hilly of the Week': a 27-year-old who quit tech sales to cold-call low-income apartments and motels, place vending machines for free, and net roughly $100K-120K a year off just 27 machines.

“So Quinn Miller, you are the Hilly of the Week. Congratulations. I love this business. So just to summarize, buy the thing for $1,000, cold call, you know, apartment complexes, motels, hotels, you know, low income, the better, I guess, is the way that this market works.”

The secretive Brazilian billionaire who owns Burger King, Budweiser and Heinz

Andrew Wilkinson's Billy of the Week is Jorge Paulo Lemann, the press-shy Brazilian behind 3G Capital, who buys old, simple, multi-generational brands using piles of debt and runs them better.

“if you think about the businesses that he owns, uh, you would know them. So for Burger King, Budweiser, Tim Hortons, Kraft Foods, Popeyes, Heinz Ketchup, right? So he basically goes out, he finds these amazing, you know, multi-generational businesses that have been around for 50+ years that do something very, very simple. It's just going to grow over time. He goes out, he usually raises a ton of debt, and then he goes and buys them and takes them over.”

Michael 'Harry-O' Harris: $100M cocaine fortune funded Death Row Records

Michael Harris, a cocaine dealer who made close to $100 million, co-founded Death Row Records and owned its masters before serving 25 years in San Quentin. Now out of prison, he wants to come on the pod.

“And he went to prison, uh, particularly, uh, I think it was San Quentin for 25 years. But prior to prison, he, uh, made close to like $100 million from selling cocaine, and he funded Death Row Records, and he got it off the ground. He's a co-founder of Death Row Records, owned the, uh, all the originals or the masters of everything.”

Michael Loeb: punched-in-the-face, mugshot-having Hamptons incubator king

Sam Parr marvels at Michael Loeb, who sold Synapse to Time/Meredith for ~$800M, co-founded Priceline (one of the fastest billion-dollar fortunes ever), owns the Hamptons mansion used as Bobby Axelrod's house in Billions, was arrested for punching his son's drunk friend, and now runs a Tiny-style incubator (Loeb Enterprises) that built Script Relief to ~$100M/year profit.

“he throws this party or a charity, actually a charity event, and they raised like $350,000 for this event. But one of his sons has a friend over who gets drunk and says something smart to him. So Michael punches him in the face and gets arrested. So he's got this— if you Google Michael Loeb arrested, you'll see his mugshot.”

Beachbody's breakthrough: make the customer the celebrity

Beachbody couldn't afford celebrity endorsements, so after polished 'jacked people' infomercials failed, they spliced in real, messy customer before/after testimonials. The amateur, America's-Funniest-Home-Videos authenticity made the product sell like hotcakes.

“And instead, they try one version of the infomercial where they took a few testimonials that had been sent in from their buyers that said, hey, look at, you know, this was me before and this is me now. And me now wasn't like, didn't look like a Greek god, but just like definitely looked better than the out of shape, overweight person, you know, in the before photo. So they slapped those into the infomercial like real customer testimonials and boom, this thing starts selling like hotcakes.”

Steal thisUse raw, amateur-looking customer testimonials instead of polished celebrity footage; authenticity converts better.

Sam Bankman-Fried hammered one crypto arbitrage into a $10B fortune

Shaan tells the story of a 29-year-old who left Jane Street, started Alameda Research, and chased the Bitcoin price premium between countries. He passed on the steeper Korean 'kimchi premium' for a 10% daily-compounding Japan premium.

“And what this guy did was he was like, okay, fuck the kimchi premium. He went for the Japan premium, which was far less appealing. It was only 10%. But he's like, still, if I could trade a US Bitcoin for 10% more in Japan every day, I'm making 10% compounding daily.”

Harala Bob: the bettor who found the mispriced first-half over-under

Pro sports bettor Haralabob noticed bookies set first-half over-under lines by simply halving the full-game line, ignoring that scoring spikes late as losing teams foul. He quietly exploited this mispricing, especially against specific coaches, and now works for Mark Cuban's Mavericks.

“So he realized it was this small edge where they thought they were taking the full score and dividing by half and making that the line. He's like, oh my God, this is almost always going to be under. And he specifically noticed that these 3 teams, their coaches would do that foul strategy way more in the second half.”

Billy of the Week is whoever reinvents themselves 3-4 times

Shaan defines what makes a great 'Billy of the Week' character: someone who has reinvented themselves across 3-4 chapters of life. He maps Jake Paul's arc — Vine, YouTube, celebrity boxing, then rolling fund — as exactly that, all before age 25.

“I think if you, if you listen to like whenever we do Billy of the Week, it's usually somebody who's reinvented themselves and 3 or 4 different chapters of their life. That is interesting. And this guy's— I thought that was kind of cool how he's done that. He didn't say any of those things, but just when I was doing the research, I was kind of taken aback by, oh yeah, that's cool. He's already had like 3, 3 to 4 pretty interesting chapters before the age of 25.”

Brad Jacobs: the man who started 5 billion-dollar companies

Sam profiles Brad Jacobs, who started his first company at 23 and built five companies that went public or topped a billion dollars, running the same acquisition playbook across oil, waste, equipment rental and logistics while buying 600-700 companies.

“And this person is super interesting because they have started, uh, 5 companies that have either gone public or are worth over a billion dollars. He started age 23, he's 64 now. Uh, Google him, Brad Jacobs. He's worth somewhere in the range of $3, $4, $5 billion, and he's bought or in both. He doesn't like invest passively like a venture check. They buy companies and he's bought something like 600, 700 companies and he's done it across a variety of industries and he's done the same strategy over and over and over again in different industries.”

Dan Gilbert: the 'capitalist Batman' rebuilding Detroit

Andrew profiles Dan Gilbert, who went from a struggling Detroit bar family and pizza delivery to founding Quicken Loans, and whose net worth jumped from ~$7B to $57B even as he survived a major stroke; he pours money into revitalizing Detroit.

“He's like a capitalist Batman in Detroit, and I'll talk about some of the cool stuff he's done. And one of the things I like about him as well is that he. He does a lot of stuff that might not work. He takes big swings, takes big risks that he thinks can make the world better. And he invests in all sorts of crazy ideas.”

The Domino's-of-India franchisee with 9,000 stores teaching Indians to eat pizza

Shaan marvels at dinner-party operators he met in India who hold exclusive franchise/distribution rights—one is the exclusive Jockey underwear seller, another runs ~9,000 Domino's stores after essentially teaching Indians to eat pizza.

“Next guy at the dinner table, what do you do? Oh, we're the Domino's guys in India. What? Yeah, we're the exclusive franchisee of Domino's for India. Um, okay. What does that mean? Well, we have like, Indians didn't really eat pizza before this. So we're like teaching people to eat pizza. They fucking love it. Turns out. Uh, and so we have like, you know, 9,000 Domino's throughout India now.”

Billy of the Month: how Saylor got DuPont to seed-fund his startup

In a Billy-of-the-Week-style riff, Shaan tells how a 24-year-old Saylor quit DuPont after they ignored his simulation results, then negotiated DuPont into giving him $250K, letting him hire 8-10 of their people, and becoming his first multimillion-dollar customer to start MicroStrategy.

“You give me a quarter million dollars and I want to hire some of my colleagues from DuPont. I want to hire 8 to 10 people from there. And I want you to be my first customer. So I want you to give me a few million dollars worth of contracts to do work for you. And I'm going to start my company, MicroStrategy”

Billy of the Week: Brad Kelley, the man with a million acres

Brad Kelley dropped out of college at 19 to buy and lease warehouses, stumbled into a cigarette-rolling machine a tenant left behind, and built Commonwealth Brands into a discount cigarette company. He's a reclusive Kentuckian who became one of America's largest landowners.

“Went to college in Kentucky, but at age 19 dropped out because he started buying warehouses. And he started making enough money buying and leasing out warehouses that he goes, all right, I'm going to do this. I don't need school anymore. And eventually he started renting them out to people who were building stuff. So creating little miniature factories, he would fix them up and lease them to people. And eventually he saw that people were using them to store tobacco.”

Marcus Bullock turned prison into Flikshop, hustling into 2,700+ prison systems

Marcus Bullock, a former inmate (armed carjacking, tried as an adult), built Flikshop - an app that turns a photo and text into a physical postcard mailed to inmates - and personally pitched wardens to get it into over 2,700 prison systems.

“you basically do whatever you do with Twitter or Facebook You click on an image and you send it, but instead of sending an image between phones, you are sending it to Flikshop and they're going to write a postcard for you with the image and the text. And what's amazing about the story is the hustle involved for him to get into like over 2,700 prison systems in America. He was like meeting these wardens and administrators like in person, trying to convince them that they should allow Flikshop.”

The Uber engineer who lived on $3 of food a week

Shaan tells of Jeff, an Uber engineer making great money who lived on $3/week of food by eating free office meals, walking everywhere to avoid expenses, and treating himself to a $3 Costco chicken bake on Sundays, singularly obsessed with becoming a billionaire.

“So Jeff, uh, used to spend $3 a week on food, and I was like, how's that possible? And he was like, well, you know, I work at Uber, it provides— they provide, you know, like a lunch and kind of dinner service, and they have snacks, so that's breakfast.”

Katalin Karikó's lost decade that enabled the mRNA vaccine

Shaan's Billy-of-the-Week-style tale of Hungarian scientist Katalin Karikó, who stayed focused on mRNA for decades through a 'lost decade' with no funding, eventually publishing a paper that spawned Moderna, BioNTech, and the COVID vaccines.

“There's like a lost decade where she's bootstrapping this herself, determined to find a way, publishes a paper saying, look, this actually like shows really promising results. And 3 different people read that paper and acted on it.”

Billy of the Week: Katalin Karikó, the immigrant who bet 30 years on mRNA

Shaan's Billy of the Week is biochemist Katalin Karikó, who torched her career to keep working on mRNA when the scientific community abandoned it in the '90s. Her eventual paper seeded Moderna, BioNTech, and the COVID vaccines.

“This woman basically like threw away her career because she believed in it. She was like, all right, I know there's no funding for this. Nobody will hire me to work on mRNA vaccines. There's just no money in this space, but I believe. And so she just kept working on it and kept persisting all the way through the '90s, a decade plus.”

Mark Leonard: the anonymous $2B SaaS roll-up king

Andrew names Constellation Software founder Mark Leonard his Billy of the Year: worth ~$1.9B from acquiring boring vertical-market software businesses with high switching costs since 1995, while remaining almost completely anonymous online.

“He founded Constellation Software, which is like the OG SaaS acquirer. So over the last 5 years, I think every single person in the world has realized software businesses are good businesses. Everyone's trying to buy them, paying crazy prices. This guy's been doing it since 1995 from up here in Canada. He's been focusing on super boring verticals with low competition.”

Dan Gilbert: the mortgage king who co-founded StockX off his kids' sneakers

Shaan marvels at Dan Gilbert, owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers and Quicken Loans, who noticed his kids were obsessed with sneakers and helped turn a sneaker store into StockX, a stock exchange for shoes that became a billion-dollar company.

“the other company that Dan Gilbert started or helped start was StockX, which is a billion dollar, uh, what do you, uh, eBay for sneakers basically.”

Michael Saylor bought every great domain early, sold angel.com for $100M

Shaan recounts how Saylor, convinced early that the internet would be huge, bought up domains like hope.com, wisdom.com and angel.com for cheap, then built angel.com into a voice customer-service company sold for $100M cash.

“For example, angel.com was one of the domains that he owned. They turned it into like kind of like a, a voice-operated customer service thing. Again, this was early. He was like, oh, I think that's cool. You can talk to a computer and the computer can understand you and talk back. Like kind of like Siri early on, uh, before the tech wasn't any good. But he's like, that's gonna be a big deal. And so he built angel.com. They ended up selling it for $100 million in cash.”

Eric Ryan: the serial chemical-free brand builder behind Method, Welly, Ollie

Sam celebrates Eric Ryan, who built Method Soap (chemical-free soap in Target), then Welly (cute Band-Aids), then Ollie (bullshit-free kids' vitamins) by repeatedly applying the clean-alternative playbook to old categories.

“this guy named Eric Ryan, he started Method Soap, which you've seen in Target. Maybe Target bought him actually, but you see him in Target all the time and it's basically soap without chemicals. I buy it, I love it. Then he started Welly and then he started Ollie.”

The Nelk Boys: 100K shoppers a drop, zero ad spend, a Girls Gone Wild club

Shaan marvels at the Nelk Boys, prankster creators who get 100,000 people on their site per merch drop doing an estimated $1-3M per drop with zero customer-acquisition cost, plus a paid X-rated 'Send Club.'

“they said, you know, during their drops they have 100,000 people on the website trying to buy. 100,000 people on the website trying to buy is one of the most insane like e-commerce numbers you can get to. I think they're doing between $1 and $3 million per drop that they do in merch. And I think, you know, they're spending zero on customer acquisition for that, right?”

Getty paid his kidnapped grandson's ransom at the max tax-deductible amount

Billionaire J. Paul Getty's grandson was kidnapped and an ear was mailed to him. Getty negotiated the ransom down to $2.2 million, the maximum that was tax deductible, then lent his son the remaining $800K at 4% interest.

“So when the kidnappers finally reduced their demands to $3 million, Getty agreed to pay no more than $2.2 million, which is the equivalent of $12 million today. This is the maximum that is tax deductible. He then lent his son the remaining $800 grand to get to the $3 million at 4% interest.”

The pooper-scooper millionaire: $550k at 40% margin, 3 hours a week

Huber's D.C. friend runs a dog-poop-scooping business doing $550k a year in sales at 40% margin, charging monthly fees. He works about three hours a week and clears a quarter million a year because nobody wants to scoop poop.

“And there's a good friend of mine in D.C. who runs a pooper scooper business that does $550 grand a year in sales at 40% margin. And he works 3 hours a week scooping poop out of people's yards, makes a quarter million dollars a year. Like, because nobody wants to scoop poop, it's scooping up people's dog poop.”

The Israeli locksmith who owns Yelp rank #1 through #10

Sam describes an Israeli locksmith in Nashville who recruits fellow immigrants and creates 10 differently-named websites (Smith, Expert, ABC, AAA Locksmith) that all rank on Yelp and route to one call center where prices are quoted on the spot, cornering the local market.

“And on the phone I just see like, yeah, you know, like, you know, maybe, uh, $300. Does that sound good to you? You know, they just make up prices and then they deploy their, their coworker out there and they own the whole Nashville Locksmith. They own number 1 through 10.”

The Indian tycoon who got mega-rich selling the color blue

Shaan recounts visiting a fabulously wealthy man in India (cricket field backyard, servants with servants) whose fortune came from petrochemicals — specifically being the largest producer of the chemical dye that makes things blue, even envying 'that bastard' in Africa who owned yellow.

“And he's like, "Blue, like the color, like the dye you need to make anything blue. Yeah, like my company is the largest producer of that petrochemical dye that you need, the chemical dye." And I was like, "What the hell?" And he's like, "Yeah, so like, you know, if you see a blue car, because they bought my dye, that's how they got the blue car." And I was like, "Holy shit." And he's like, "Yeah, there's a guy in Africa, he's got yellow, and that bastard, like I wanna get yellow."”

Khabib: undefeated, ~$100M earned, more followers than Mayweather

Shaan profiles Khabib Nurmagomedov, the devout, modest Dagestani fighter who went 29-0 in the UFC, amassed 23 million Instagram followers (more than Floyd Mayweather), and per his dad earned roughly $100M as the most famous Muslim athlete since Muhammad Ali.

“What's interesting is he got super popular. So he has 23 million followers on Instagram. He has more followers than Floyd Mayweather. Um, he has made— his dad estimated that he made about $100 million total because because there's a billion Muslim people out there and he became the most famous Muslim athlete since Muhammad Ali.”

Fashion Nova's Richard backed Cardi B before anyone knew her

Harley marvels at Fashion Nova founder Richard Saghian, who discovered Cardi B and planted small investments in her before she was famous. Because he was part of her story when no one else would back her, Cardi gives Fashion Nova attention and loyalty no money from Pepsi can buy.

“But Richard, the genius of Richard is that he discovered Cardi B before anyone even talked about it. And he planted these seeds, these small investments with people that he thought had the potential to be the next biggest pop star in the world. And because of that, what you end up with is a relationship between Fashion Nova and Cardi B that is unlike any other relationship from any other brand because Richard was part of Cardi's story.”

Billy of the Week: John Catsimatidis, the $3B grocery hustler

Sam celebrates John Catsimatidis, who started a NYC grocery store (Red Apple) at 21, built it to 10 stores doing $25M while paying himself $1M a year in the late '70s, then expanded into oil, gas, airlines and radio, becoming a self-made multi-billionaire who owns ~100% of it.

“I built it up to 10 stores and was doing $25 million and I was personally earning $1 million. Personally earning $1 million a year. So $25 million in sales and he was paying himself $1 million. And this is in 1978 or something. Then when the company had like $100 million in sales for a grocery store, he bought this other chain.”

Billy of the Week: Isaac Larian, from Power Rangers toys to Bratz empire

Sam crowns MGA Entertainment founder Isaac Larian Billy of the week: an Iranian immigrant who started as a Power Rangers toy licensee, then went on to invent his own IP with Bratz dolls and build the world's largest privately owned toy company.

“That guy's the Billy of the week. Isaac Larian, that's the founder's name. Yeah, or is— yeah, Isaac Larian, I believe that's his name. So the world's largest privately owned toy company is MGA Entertainment, and Isaac Larian owns it. Born to a Jewish family in Iran, he immigrated here, and so Originally, what they did was they, they became a licensee for Power Rangers”

Zach Parr: the Kickstarter whisperer who built Cubcoats

Zach Parr was a hired-gun who ran other people's Kickstarters to multi-million-dollar results, then launched his own: Jacket Pets (now Cubcoats), a stuffed animal that unzips into a kid's jacket. He crushed Kickstarter, then layered on licensing deals with sports leagues and Disney/Marvel plus retail and online.

“And so Jacket Pets was, uh, take a stuffed animal, kids don't want to leave it behind, and so like, let's put a zipper in the back, and then when you unzip the stuffed animal, you can like turn it inside out, like press it inside out, and it'll turn into a kid's jacket.”

Stubborn founder sells Dil Mil dating app for $50M

A founder Shaan passed on built Dil Mil, a marriage-focused dating app for Indians (LinkedIn sign-in required because job/profession matters). Despite a stubborn '7 seconds to decide' mechanic Shaan thought was bogus, he sold the app this year for about $50 million to a dating conglomerate.

“Anyways, fast forward a few years, he sells the app this year for $50 million to, I think one of the conglomerate groups like Match or whoever, like IAC or all of these.”

The chartered-Boeing pitch: fly 50 people to a mountaintop and ask for $1M each

To raise money for Powder Mountain, Summit gave 50 hand-picked attendees a card telling them to cancel their flights, then chartered a Boeing with a comedian onboard, bused them to the mountaintop overlooking four states, and pitched them on putting in $1M each for the future home of Summit.

“And on that final day, we chartered a, a big Boeing aircraft and we had a bus ready and we took everyone onto this plane where we had like a comedian perform on the plane. We did this whole fun kind of experience and we brought everyone to this crazy place, Powder Mountain, drove up to the top of the mountain.”

Lloyd Armbrust: 5 exits, 5 kids, now reshoring N95 masks

Lloyd Armbrust, a YC 2010 founder with five acquisitions (and five kids) under his belt, went all-in on US-made medical masks with Armbrust USA. Sam, who had Shabbat dinner at his house, vouches for him as a sharp, real hustler.

“Lloyd's a hustler, I'll say that. The small amount of time that I've hung out with him, great guy, Total, like, real sharp businessman.”

Joe Lamont buys companies and outsources coding to India for $15/hr

Sam's prior Billy of the Week: Joe Lamont (Trilogy), a likely multi-billionaire who buys companies, outsources simple programming to India at $15/hour, and built software that tracks keystrokes and screenshots workers' screens every 10 minutes.

“he, uh, buys companies and he outsources a lot of the simple programming work to India for $15 an hour. And he developed software that tracks keystrokes and takes a picture of the person's screen every 10 minutes.”

Mark Leonard: the mysterious $31B software roll-up king

Billy of the Week is Mark Leonard of Constellation Software, a company worth $31 billion that buys software companies and holds them forever for the cash flows rather than flipping them like private equity. Shaan calls him a 'Satoshi Nakamoto of boring businesses.'

“His company's worth $31 billion. What they do is they buy software companies and they roll them up and they try to be a perpetual owner. So they're not private equity where they're doing the leveraged buyout and trying to flip, cut it, skin it, and flip it or whatever. They try to just own the thing for a long period of time and have the cash flows. And so what I like about this guy, what I thought was cool was this guy's like a Satya Toshi Nakamoto of boring businesses. So nobody knows shit about this guy.”

Nana: Lambda School for appliance techs + B2B lead engine

Sam pitches Nana, which trains appliance-repair technicians one appliance at a time (a 'career in a box') while partnering with manufacturers who hand over warranty repair leads. It solves both the technician shortage and customer acquisition at once.

“So then he was like, all right, I'm going to build— and what he's built is basically Lambda School for technicians. So you can say, okay, I want to make this much money. I want to, you know, you pick your own hours, but you can make good money if you're a technician. And, um, but you don't know anything. And so he's like, cool, I can train you in one month to repair one appliance.”

Steal thisPair a trade school that trains supply with a B2B partner who supplies free demand leads.

The Israeli locksmith making $500K/year off Google rankings

Shaan tells of his friend Ram, who said he makes about $500K a year as a locksmith not by picking locks but by learning to rank on Google, then routing every lead to Israeli friends he brought over on $25/hour jobs.

“I was like, Ram, what is this locksmith shit? He goes, dude, I make like half a million dollars a year as a locksmith. With because I like, I learned how to rank on Google and anytime I get a lead, I just send it to my friends. And a lot of my friends came here from Israel and I just said, hey, come, I'll give you like a $25 an hour job.”

Kanye West called Forbes to demand they call him a billionaire

Shaan's Billy of the Week: Kanye, upset he wasn't on the billionaire list, contacted Forbes claiming he was worth $3 billion and handed over his financials to prove it. Forbes verified he was a billionaire, but at $1 billion, not $3.

“It was Kanye telling Forbes, I'm a billionaire, write about me. And so the article was basically saying Kanye came to us. He was really upset that he was not on the billionaire list or something like that. He tells us he's worth $3 billion. And so, and then he gave us all his financials so that we could verify that he's worth it. They're like, you know, good news, he is a billionaire. Bad news, it's not $3 billion. We think he's worth $1 billion.”

Follow the ownership trail to find fascinating operators

Sam's research method for discovering business stories: when something interests him (e.g. Guinness World Records), he scrolls to the far right of the Wikipedia infobox to find the parent company and owner, then opens tabs tracing the full chain of who bought and sold it.

“So like Ripley's Believe It or Not has always interested me, so did Guinness Book of World Records. You and I one time talked about the business behind like certifying and like giving like a seal of approval. I got interested in that and I thought, what, what out there is kind of like that?”

Steal thisStart from any brand you find interesting, trace its parent company and ownership history, and you'll surface the operators and playbooks behind it.

Michael Loeb: Priceline co-founder who punched a kid and owns Axelrod's house

Sam's Billy of the Week is Michael Loeb, who built Synapse Group, co-founded Priceline, and runs a web of incubated companies (one, Script Relief, made ~$100M/year in profit). He owns the mansion used as Bobby Axelrod's house in Billions and broke a teenager's nose at a party.

“And a business like Script Relief was making something like $100 million a year in profit. Um, and so some of his companies are really big. Now here's another reason why he's interesting. Do you ever watch that TV show Billions? Yep, love it. You know the house that Bobby Axelrod bought? Okay, yes, that's his house. That's Michael Loeb's house.”

How Shaan found Bitcoin: a tip from Tim Draper's son

Shaan heard about Bitcoin after a colleague (Tim Draper's son Billy) confirmed Draper was buying the seized Silk Road coins. He bought $200 of Bitcoin for each family member as a 2013 gift; they laughed, then each made about $5,000 when it hit $20,000.

“for each family member that year in 2000, I think it's 2013, I bought like $200 of Bitcoin for each family member as a present. And they all laughed at me. And then a few years ago, when I got the $20,000, they each made like $5,000.”

Plenty of Fish's Markus Frind: solo-coded an $800M dating empire

Bradford holds up Markus Frind, the Plenty of Fish founder, as her role model: he coded the whole product himself, shipped at night, raised no funding, kept a tiny team, owned 100% of the company, and sold for around $800 million.

“he really, you know, he built all the algorithms. He would go and ship code at night, and he was able to basically not have to raise any funding.”

GoPuff: the vending machine that rolls to your dorm room door

Shaan marvels at GoPuff, a mobile convenience model that brings snacks, Red Bulls and condoms straight to college dorm doors, reportedly doing hundreds of millions in revenue on a dead-simple convenience premise.

“There's a company called Puffs or Go Puffs, you know this company? They basically— it's a little mobile vending machine that rolls around college campuses and will bring you like, you know, Cheetos and Red Bulls. Yes, Condoms. Awesome. And they're doing like, I think, I don't know the exact numbers, but I saw at one point, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue on this very simple business”

The fund that programmatically spun up an alumni VC for every university

Shaan marvels at operators who built a venture fund off people's emotional attachment to their alma mater - branding subsidiary funds like 'Towerview Ventures' (named after a Duke street) and running Instagram ads to raise small checks from alumni, replicated programmatically across every school.

“There's a group of people that have created a venture fund off of the insight that people have this weird attachment to their university. Do you know about these guys? No. So basically, I see Instagram ads all the time saying, hey, Tower View Ventures is investing in Duke startups. So Tower View is a street and I like known building at Duke campus. So they name it, they, they create all these like subsidiary funds.”

Broke college student snags Webflow.com with fake lowball accounts

As a college student with nothing but a credit card limit, Vlad wanted the Webflow.com domain listed at $10,000. He created several fake accounts to send lowball bids and negotiated the price down to about $4,000 — most of his available credit card debt at the time.

“It was like, it was for sale for like $10,000 and I was a college student. I mean, all I had was credit card, uh, you know, kind of limits to think of those are my assets. So I ended up negotiating for a while, like sort of throwing these, uh, I actually created some fake accounts to send several lowballs. Exactly. Lowball bids. And then ended up picking it up for something like $4,000”

Fashion Nova: immigrant turned a meme into a $600M Shopify brand

Sam celebrates Fashion Nova's founder, a Middle Eastern immigrant whose parents ran a knockoff-clothing mall store. He took it to Instagram, flooded models with funny clothes until 'Fashion Nova on everything' became a joke, and built a roughly $600M-a-year brand selling cheap clothes, now with Cardi B as spokesperson.

“And so Fashion Nova is, I think it's one of the largest Shopify stores out there. And it's like a $600 million a year fashion brand and they sell really cheap, low quality clothes, but they're kind of like funny and cool. Right. It's like Cardi B is now their spokesperson.”

He bribed an engineer and hijacked MTV Australia at 2am

Early in his career Werdelin pitched a UGC-style web/TV show idea that MTV engineers dismissed as impossible on a Windows 95 machine. So he bribed the transmission engineer, discovered the offices were wired for broadcast, and went live at 2am without permission — turning the stunt into a job running product development for all MTV channels outside the US.

“So I got a little bit stubborn and figured out that all the offices was wired for broadcast. And so I bribed the transmission engineer and I went live at 2 in the morning from my studio without permission. And so back in the days, that didn't kind of land you in jail at MTV.”

Four cans of tuna, $4 a day, sprinting between doors to dig out of debt

To claw back from a quarter-million in debt, Svetski did door-to-door pay-TV sales: he carried four cans of tuna, refused to eat until he made a sale, sprinted between houses, and within three weeks ranked third best in the country.

“I, I, within 3 weeks, I was the third best in the country, and I was living on some dude's lounge, you know, paying $20 a week rent. And my sort of motto was this: I'd carry 2 cans of tuna in each pocket, so 4 cans of tuna. I would only eat if I sold something, and I would sprint between doors because then I could get to doors faster.”

Sam's teenage YouTube clickbait scam: fake fight videos, charging bands to host their music

Around 2009, Sam exploited YouTube's autofill and lack of thumbnail filters to make clickbait 'street fight' videos that were actually just a single static image with no real footage. One racked up 10M views, and he charged bands $10-$50/month to run their music as the background audio.

“And so I would— was kind of scammy and I would create these videos with these clickbait titles and the thumbnail would be the only image that existed. So it was a video with just this because YouTube didn't have that filter to like catch that. —So the video was nothing? —Yeah, it was nothing, but if you— I can go and find it somehow, and it probably has 10 million views, and then I would charge bands money, $10, $50 a month to have their music as the background.”

12-year-old Edison corners the Battle of Shiloh newspaper market

As a 12-year-old, Edison bought up an entire newspaper stock for 5 cents each, bribed a telegraph operator to tease the Battle of Shiloh news ahead at every train stop, then sold the papers for a couple dollars each, making a mini fortune in a day.

“And so he buys all the newspapers for 5 cents, the entire stock, and sells them for like a couple dollars. And in one day makes like a mini fortune, right, for a 12-year-old, which is how old he was. So, uh, yeah, he was this little like Mark Twain type type character.”

The LinkedIn ad targeted at a single person

Unable to get into AngelPad among 2,000 applicants for one spot, Jack discovered a loophole in LinkedIn's new ad system letting him target an ad down to essentially one specific person to reach the accelerator's founder.

“I'd found this kind of loophole hack on LinkedIn where I was able to create an advertisement and target it down to a specific person. So LinkedIn has its kind of own ad system like Google AdWords, but they— I think it was a software engineer, like, I think some software engineer had done this as a bug that I found I could set the targeting so specifically, say, like, job title AngelPad, job title CEO, that there's kind of only one person who that ad would show it to, you know.”