Number
Autopilot: $1.8B managed, built in a fraction of Ackman/Dalio's time
Brian's Autopilot plugs into your Robinhood/Schwab account and manages $1.8B on $30M revenue after ~3 years. His mind-blower: it took Bill Ackman and Ray Dalio 10-15 years to reach $1B AUM.
$1800M
Assets under management · USD
“It took Bill Ackman and Ray Dalio about 10 to 15 years to start managing $1 billion. And the fact that like Autopilot, this tech company that plugs into your Robinhood account, your Schwab account, could manage $1.8 billion to me just blows my mind.”
Number
Pelosi tracker: up ~240% in 3 years vs ~30-40% for the S&P
Autopilot's flagship draw is copy-trading politicians. Brian claims Nancy Pelosi is up around 240% over the last 3 years, versus roughly 30-40% for the SPY over the same period.
$240
Pelosi 3-year return (claimed) · percent
“In the last 3 years, she's up around 240%. Check the app for the actual performance. I have to say that for SEC compliance, but she's outperformed the SPY significantly. So I think the SPY in that same time is around, is up around 30 to 40%, and she's up 240%.”
Framework
Solve the marketplace chicken-and-egg by manufacturing the supply
Autopilot bootstrapped its two-sided marketplace by manufacturing the supply side themselves — building the Nancy Pelosi tracker and 13F-based hedge-fund portfolios from publicly available information — so demand had something to follow before real pilots joined.
“I think every startup has like that chicken and egg problem they have to solve. For a marketplace, you have the supply side and the demand side.. And if you don't have anyone to follow, that's good. You're not going to get people to come follow that person. But if you don't have anyone to follow, no one's going to want to launch on your platform.”
Steal thisBootstrap a marketplace by manufacturing the supply side yourself from public data before recruiting real suppliers.
Number
Top Autopilot 'pilots' earn $1-2M/year on subscriptions
On Autopilot, retail traders ('pilots') publish model portfolios others copy-trade for a $100-$500/year subscription. The top pilots make $1-2M/year in subscription revenue alone — separate from their own stock gains — with one, Peter Wolf, having $220M following him.
$2M
Top pilot annual subscription income · USD/year
“the top people are making around $1 to $2 million per year on Autopilot.”
Story
The $450K fake-Pelosi UFC stunt Trump never showed up for
Autopilot spent ~$450K (incl. a $60K row-1 ticket) sponsoring a UFC event and hiring a Nancy Pelosi lookalike to be seen beside Donald Trump's planned front-row seat. Trump didn't show (there was an assassination attempt that weekend), so the earned-media payoff never landed.
“It didn't help directly. I think the brand affinity was there. Would I do it again? Probably not. It would have helped if Trump actually showed up. That was a weekend when there was an assassination attempt.”
Story
Leopold 10x'd in 2 years by buying OpenAI's overlooked bottlenecks
Ex-OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner raised ~$500M and grew it toward ~$5B (10x in 2 years) by identifying the non-obvious bottlenecks of AI — not GPUs but things like SSDs (Micron) — and buying the overlooked supply-chain plays.
“He looked at what companies, what was the bottlenecks of OpenAI and he was like, okay, well SSDs, like a lot of people thinking GPUs, here's like SSDs, like Micron. And so he just started buying all of like the other bottlenecks that no one was focusing on. And now they're just like skyrocketing.”
Steal thisIn a gold rush, buy the overlooked second-order bottlenecks, not the obvious pick everyone's crowding into.
Story
Listener stacked a ghost kitchen onto his restaurant, now wants to license it
Brian, a listener, learned about ghost kitchens on the pod and added a couple of ghost-kitchen concepts to his restaurant. He now wants to scale by licensing the branding and recipes to operators in other markets.
“So I developed a model to implement a couple of ghost kitchen concepts into my restaurant. I had great success, lifted my margins over 450%. 50% over 6 months with just one of the concepts. Now I'm looking to scale the business by offering licensing agreements for operators in other markets to use these concepts, including the branding, recipes, etc.”
Story
Listener stacked a ghost kitchen onto his restaurant, now wants to license it
Brian, a listener, learned about ghost kitchens on the pod and added a couple of ghost-kitchen concepts to his restaurant. He now wants to scale by licensing the branding and recipes to operators in other markets.
“So I developed a model to implement a couple of ghost kitchen concepts into my restaurant. I had great success, lifted my margins over 450%. 50% over 6 months with just one of the concepts. Now I'm looking to scale the business by offering licensing agreements for operators in other markets to use these concepts, including the branding, recipes, etc.”