Jim Pattison

Jim Pattison's 'bag of money' monopoly play in signage

Andrew Wilkinson recounts how Canadian billionaire Jim Pattison broke into US signage by paying incumbents three years of revenue in cash upfront at double the rates, then slowly raised prices to build a near-monopoly.

“And so he gave all of his sales guys bags of money and they would walk into all the places that had signs and they'd say, I'm going to give you all the money you would make from the other guys for the next 3 years. In cash right now. I'm going to double the rates and I'm going to give it to you all up front. They dominated throughout different regions in the States, and then over time they started increasing prices again and they basically took over a monopoly down there.”

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.

Raising startup capital is one of the easier steps, not the bottleneck

Sam argues most people overestimate how hard it is to raise startup money. He cold-emailed people, met for 30 minutes, and walked away with $25k checks; the pitch is unfalsifiable, so charisma plus credibility is enough.

“I don't— I think that people would be shocked at how getting access to startup capital is typically the one of the easier things in the progression.”