December 13, 2021 • 35 mins
This week, Ryan is joined by entrepreneur, investor and NBA owner, Marc Lore. Marc explains why he didn’t find his way until after high school and college, how he managed to build a diaper empire by buying out wholesalers and what the future might hold for E-Commerce.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome back to another episode of Big Money Energy, where
we talked to super successful people and self made people
to find out exactly how they did it, how they
went from nothing to something. Today, I'm insanely excited to
talk to one of the most impressive and successful entrepreneurs
in the world. And it's funny. When we started this
podcast and we're talking to my heart and we were
(00:22):
listing out people that, you know, I wanted to talk to.
The guy in front of me was on that list,
but I never thought that I would actually be able
to convince him to slow down for a split second
and actually talk. But here we are, and we're in
the room. He's an entrepreneur and investor or father. Uh
even better, he's a New Yorker. He started and sold
for companies, with many more in the works, one of
(00:43):
them being diapers dot com, which she sold for just
under five and fifty million dollars, and then jet dot com,
which he sold for three point three billion dollars. And
those that's real money, that's not crypto, it's like U
S dollars. He also recently started adventure fund with a
very very small athlete. This guy some people know him
named A Rod and if that wasn't enough, he beat
(01:05):
Jerry Rice in the forty r Dash, which is insane. Anyway,
I'm super excited to discuss how he makes it all happen,
the all amazing man in front of me, Mr Mark Lord.
This is one of my favorites. Let's get into it.
Welcome to another episode before I get into everything else. Uh,
(01:30):
you're a New Yorker, you love New York. This is
your spot right now. We're in Tribeca and you quarantine
through here. But you're from Staten Island. Staten Island until
I was ten years old fifth grade and moved to
New Jersey. So talk to me before we get to
the companies and and everything else. I want to go
through about those kind of formative years in Staten Island. Uh,
(01:52):
and how you think that made an impact on your
life today, Like, did you think it did it all? Yeah?
Well it's interesting because I think it definitely did. The
first four years of my life we lived above my grandparents,
you know, part of their house, like in the top floor,
and then from four to ten lived in a multi
family kind of home and it was very modest. Growing up,
(02:13):
we lived in a predominantly Italian, Irish Catholic neighborhood. I
didn't even know what a Protestant was until I was
moved to New Jersey. So I was at least in
sixth grade when I thought everyone was pretty Italian. Yeah,
I just thought everyone's Catholic. Everyone's Catholic. I don't know
about you know, Italian and Irish, but I didn't know
(02:34):
anything else. It was incredibly uh diverse. It wasn't diverse
at all. And you know, I had a thick statin
on accent. And then we moved to New Jersey and
was thrown in this like small thirty four kids in
a class, uh, super diverse, you know, like you know,
maybe there was one other Catholic, you know, in the
entire class, and it was every nationality, and they made
(02:58):
fun of my accent. And I was this like just
assumed to be dumb because I had this like thick,
you know, stating own accent and it was a jock
and just you know, it was a very interesting juxtaposition
to go from that to where I was. And I
you're kind of forced in a small school, especially diverse,
to be sort of friends with everyone, and it's not typical,
(03:18):
I think to grow up and go to a school
where you're friends with people you never would have been
friends with if you were in a bigger school and
just found your crowd. Like if there was a whole
crowd of like Italians Catholic Italians there, I probably would
have gravitated toward that. But no, I was like the
only one. So you're friends with everyone. My two best
(03:38):
friends are you know, Indian American to this day, you know,
And I think that really helps shape me a lot
in terms of like empathy and values and how to
understand people different viewpoints, the benefits of diversity, appreciating people
for who they are as opposed to like what they
(04:00):
look like or where they come from, and things like.
It was a really cool experience. I didn't really appreciate
it until many years later, but you know, just it's
part of your you know, it becomes part of your DNA.
After a while, I was not into school at all.
I told my parents, like, the school doesn't give homework,
and they did and I never did it, and I
didn't do well. But I did have like just a
(04:21):
natural gift for math, so that kind of carried me.
I really haven't completed any fiction books. I haven't completed
any fiction books yet in my life. So I wasn't
ever into books growing up in grammar school and high school,
and then just kind of carried on, you know. I
start reading, I tried, I get through like the first
few pages, and I just start thinking, and then I
(04:42):
closed the book and I just spend time thinking. I can't.
I can't get through more than a few pages. Um.
So I always feel like reading takes time away from thinking,
and I'm a thinker. I like to think. I don't
know how people actually read, because it's like you're committee
to somebody else's words and I don't know how you
think and invent same time you're reading. Interesting. I just
never read. Do you get bored easily? I do? Yeah, definitely, Yeah,
(05:06):
definitely get bored. Yeah, I get what's funny. I get
bored unless I'm focused on a specific vision, you know,
like there's something and then I can be like I
can and be laser focused, but it has to be
toward a very specific golden like focused on Otherwise. Yeah. No,
Like I don't do TV like stuff like that. It's
(05:28):
just tough, got it. No TV, No books, just thinking thinking.
That's why you have that crazy terrace upstairs. You can
just go out there and you can think and invet,
that's awesome, that's I do. I wish I knew to
say that to my parents, like listen, you guys the
books and then for me, I just I need more
(05:49):
time to think. Did you know early on that you
wanted to be an entrepreneur or not work for other people?
Because you when you graduated school, you went into bank,
you got a job because that's what you thought you
were supposed to do. No, I had no choice, really,
so I did when I was a kid, so four
years old. Um Grandma used to spend all the time,
my grandmother and just ask me, what do you want
(06:11):
to be when you grow up? She's always just to
say this to me. And I always said, I want
to be a farmer. Now, you don't want to be
a farmer, doctor, lawyer? No, I want to be a farmer.
Why don't want to be a farmer because you grow
stuff from nothing? Yeah. I just loved as a little
little kid this idea that from a seed grew something
and which is basically entrepreneurship. And throughout my entire childhood
I did every entrepreneurial business you can think of mowing lawns, recycling,
(06:36):
you know, newspapers, um lemonade, stand baseball cards, like anything
to sort of make a buck and be entrepreneurial. But
when I graduated college in ninety three, like I had
no money, didn't know anything about startups or that didn't
really wasn't really a thing. Nine I'd like stocks. I
had followed stocks as a kid, was interested in it,
(06:58):
and I I was like, okay, I'll go work for a bank.
It didn't occur to me that it was even an
option to be an entrepreneur or something. So I went
into banking, and like each year and banking and I
started getting more and more anxious, like I don't like
the culture. It's all about mercenary as I call it,
you know, just all about making a buck. The values
weren't great, and I was more mission oriented, as like
an entrepreneur as a kid, like what's the mission? Like
(07:21):
what are we gonna go out? And how are we
going to change the world? And it never it just
felt wrong. And every year I was doing better and
better and better in banking, and probably about six and
a half years into banking, I was chief risk office
and doing really well, making a half a million bucks
a year. I just had a kid, and I'm like,
it's now or never, Like I need to like go
do this and be an entrepreneur. So I just went
in my boss's office and quit and just said I'm
(07:42):
going to be an entrepreneur. And he laughed at me
and said, well, you don't just like walk in and
just say I'm going to be an entrepreneur. Like what's
the business? I said, I don't know yet. I just
know I can't figure this out when working eighty hours
a week for you. I need to like quit, focus,
put together a bass plan, raise money, think and and
so he's like, you're crazy, and I'm like maybe he's like, well,
(08:04):
can I be a first investor because I just have
a feeling you're gonna make this work. And so you
put fifty grand in And that was like the start
of the start of it. And what was that company
that was called the pit? It was Sports stock Market
and basically combined my love for sports with stocks. I
got my two best friends from from grammar school and
I said, you know, and to quit their jobs to
(08:26):
go do it together. And it was like the most
fun time. Learned so much about entrepreneurship. Um learned what
a CAP table was. We're in the first venture capital meeting. Uh,
and we're just sort of like saying, here's the business
and everything of that. And then then I never forget
the venture investor I think his name was Tom Grant,
and he said, uh, he said, uh, so can you
(08:47):
just walk me through the cap table? And we're looking
at another and anyway, he said, the cap tables I
don't know kept black. You know, I don't like cap table.
What's a cap table? And they were like, maybe you
guys should come back, should come back when you know
what a cap table is. So that was that was
pretty funny. So you know, everyone starts from the bottom,
you know, there's no you just just learn. You get
(09:08):
thrown in, throw yourself in and learn, you know, trial
and error. How much did you end up raising for
that business? Ultimately five million? It was only angels, no institution.
We couldn't get any institutional because we didn't know what
a cat table was. So so friends, people you knew
it was like it was yeah, it was basically my
boss at Santua Bank, but the first fifty and instead
(09:30):
go talk to these two people and then every two
people we talked to. We said, okay, were the interested
or not int do you know two people? And it
was literally like this tree we had built and we
talked to like a hundred and twenty angel investors and
we got had a good hit, right. We had that
sixty people to invest on average what is that like
eight tho each? So it was like just clawn, you know,
(09:54):
trying to raise that five million UM. But then the
market crashed. This is this is on the nastack in
two thousand just got destroyed. Forget about. We couldn't raise
venture before. We're definitely we're going to raise venture after UM.
And we were nine months in and we're the business
was doing well, was getting some action and fortunately the Tops,
(10:14):
the baseball card of Zuoka gun manufacturer, came in and said, hey,
you know, we like what you guys are doing and
we'll give you a five point seven million for it.
And we're like, we'll take it because there was literally
the market was destroyed and even our investors were like, wait,
you're gonna make money in this market, yeah, take it.
(10:34):
So everyone back, pay everyone back and uh. And then
worked in side tops and that's where we got the
idea for diapers dot Com had that idea come about.
I was basically, I mean I had a baby at
the time, so paying me ask going out for diapers
all the time. But the way it came together was
(10:55):
I was literally in Google. They used to be able
to like search to figure out how many times have
searched term was searched in Google, and they remember typing
the word diapers into the search engine and it said
two hundred thousand times it was searched in a month.
I'm like, wow, search two hundred thousand times. Nobody's buying
diapers online. That's interesting. People want to buy them. They're
not online. I certainly want to buy them online. And
(11:17):
the baby that's pain in the ask, going to like
diapers every every few weeks. So I thought, well, let
me see Amazon. I mean, no, Amazon, they sell diapers,
but they're like three times it's expended, Like nobody's buying
diapers online. Why, Oh, they're a lost leader. You know,
Walmart and Target they saw m at a loss. So
now if you want to ship them there big and
bulky and shipping everything. So everyone's like the scars and
(11:38):
like you can't make money. I was like, yeah, but
why they were lost leader in the store. I didn't
know anything about retail. I was like, Okay, they're a
lost leader because it drives traffic and it drives moms
to the store. Because yeah, interesting, so it's a lost leader.
So why couldn't you be a lost leader online? Well,
you're gonna lose a lot more money. Yeah, but there's
a much longer tail of products I can sell mom
(11:58):
because there's unlimited shelves based online. And that was sort
of like the breakthrough. It's like, Okay, we're gonna sell dipers,
We're gonna bring people in and we're gonna sell them
everything else, and we're gonna lose money. The problem was
the manufacturers wouldn't sell us diapers direct because they thought
it wasn't gonna work. So what do we do. We
had to go to Costco b J's and buy the
dipers in the wholesale club. So we literally go into
(12:21):
sell the diapers for let's say forty dollars a box.
Then we go into Costco and buying for forty box
and pay ten dollars to ship them. And we were
funding this ourselves, so it's like, you do know, Mark,
you're selling a dollar for ninety cents and I said, no,
actually selling a dollar for eighty cents, but that's okay.
But but yes, the plan is we're gonna sell these
(12:42):
dollars for eighty cents and then when we get enough
people shopping and we're gonna then sell them stuff that
we actually make real money on. And it was painful
in the beginning because we're literally like having to go
to b J's and buy these diapers, and we stopped
buying them. Yeah, but we buy them the day that
they were sold because it was But then it got
(13:03):
to the point where we're selling like truckloads of diapers.
So me and Vinnie, we're going Vinnie barras co founder
and best friend, you know, we go to we go
to uh b J's, and we have a deal. If
we leave them some diapers, they will pack them on
the eight and wheeler in the back because they have
the equipment and stuff. I'm like, okay, great, we'll leave
you diapers. That's a great deal. Okay, we still have
(13:24):
to pay money and stand online and go through and
it's like ridiculous, right, and have all the things and everything,
like with the cashier. Yeah, with the cashier, we couldn't
like do it like you know, like through like why
or anything heavy. You're a diaper broker. Yeah, basically a
diaper broker. And literally two years into it, Proctan Gamba
Chamilli Clark still not selling us diapers and we're like,
(13:45):
we're selling thirty million dollars of diapers. You we can't
keep doing this. We're like clearing out wholesale clubs, like,
we gotta figure this out. We gotta figure this out.
How many people work for you at that time still
really lean, like Vinnie and I were doing everything. It
was probably like you know, diapers a year, probably like
six people crazy crazy and buying them from the thing
(14:05):
and shipping them, going to like UPS stores and just
like putting all these boxes in yeah basically yeah, but
putting the labels. I would be out on the front
law on these boxes and you just put the labels
on it and put it on the truck and bring
it to FedEx and UPS and Silt the website who
bought the platform for you, Um yeah, we had got build. Yeah,
you just designed it personally. You guys just said this,
(14:27):
we design it, no firm. We designed the logo you know,
and this kind of stuff. Yeah, we did everything, and
they beginning and but we couldn't keep this up. We're
burning a lot of money. Now we're burning a serious
amount of money. We basically took it, funded ourselves to
the first eleven million that was That was the first
two years, the eleven millions, and parked kemal Clock still
wouldn't sell us the diapers, and it seemed like there
(14:49):
was not even close to selling us. So we came
up with the city like, oh, we got what were
we gonna do? What you can do? Okay, we need
a reason for them to sell us. We need a reason.
And we're like, you know what, what if we took
all the diapers from BJ and left nothing for their customers?
Don't they have to don't they need diapers? Like yeah,
but they're not gonna load the truck. All right, Well
let's let's go for it. So we went into Pj's
and we talked to the man. You said, hey, sorry,
(15:11):
you know this deal, it's off. We need them all.
We're taking them all. And he's like, no, you can't
take them all, Like, well, there's nothing We're gonna buy
all the diapers, right this is anybody could come in
and buy the dipers. You can't stop something from buying them, Like, oh,
you're right, we can't, but we're not loading the truck,
so good luck, Like, oh, ship, we can load his truck.
A team real and mean Vinney were like boxes and
(15:32):
like it was just a war of wills, like who
can last longer? You know, We're we cleared them out.
Customers are coming and complaining, right, and but we're like
loading the truck and these diapers Like man, dude, I
don't know how how long can we keep loading the
truck And like I don't know, I think you're gonna break. Man.
They have no diapers to their customers. They're gonna have
to like call Procton Gamble. We're like, listen, you can
solve this pain. Just call Proctor and Gamble Kimberly Clarke
(15:54):
and tell them to sell us diapers. Then you're good.
You off the hook. And like, after like a few
times to do this, they did, like we broke them.
We were like sweat and we're like pounds. So like, dude,
I don't know how long we can do this for,
you know, but they broke first. They called procting a game.
We're procting. We're called us and said, Hey, one of
our big customers UM asked us to sell you direct
(16:16):
or a good client, and we're gonna do it. We
don't believe in it, nothing's changing how we feel about
your business, but we will sell you direct. And that's
how we kind of like, you know, got direct and
then we raised venture at eleven run rate, and then
we took it to thirty six and then ninety and
then yeah, two and it was like and he started
(16:37):
started hiring back office people to run it, and then
we started hiring people to run it and everything. But
the first eleven million was like just a few employees,
Like it was like probably anything we're doing everything we
do in the accounting, marketing, web design, customer care. It
was diapers, wipes, and then we added formula at that
(16:57):
time and that was pretty much it. Yeah, how much
until it did you end up raising before before you exited?
That's it? That's it crazy. And you just use that
for pure expansion, just for hiring and build hiring marketing. Yeah,
(17:19):
and you sold him what year was sold in two
thousand eleven? And did the buyer come to you or
was it something that you were thinking about, Hey, it's
time to turn to South two is an eleven. It
was not like a great time. No, it wasn't a
great time. And uh so Amazon bought us. We actually
had an offer from someone else for a hundred million more,
but we took the Amazon offer because Amazon was being pretty.
(17:42):
They've been pretty tough. They cut the price at diapers.
They were paying to burn a lot of money to
put a den in our business, and they were they
were pretty. They were pretty tough. I'll just leave it
a tough tough But the other are acquire that offered
a hundred million more. There was this one clause in
(18:05):
the sort of agreement that said, um, as long as
there's no adverse changing your business between like signing this
and then like actually closing, we're good. Everything else we're good,
and we're like, but no adverse change, Like do you
realize Amazon is gonna kick our ass? You realize that, right, Like, yeah,
it's okay, don't worry about that, Like, no, you're worried
(18:25):
about it. It's clause here that says everything else is great.
Just take out this one clause. We're done. They wouldn't
take the clause out, and so like talk to the
board of directors and said, hey, like I don't think
they get it, Like there's this clause here and we
don't understand what they're trying to get at, like like
they're gonna kill us. And so like that's a good point.
(18:46):
You know, five is not bad. It's not bad. So
we sold the Amazon And I always always talked about this.
Is like people say, oh, man, this is your first
big exit, Like you made a ton of money, Like
you never need to work again. You guys must have
been so excited. We're literally depressed, Like Manny and I
were just like after after the close, we're like do
(19:08):
we get a beer and go celebrate? You want to?
Now me? Now, let's just let's just call it a day.
You know. It's like it's literally it was the most
depressing day because we sold out. So you aren't building anymore, right,
we don't build anymore. And I always talk about this.
It's like the difference between selling your company and selling out.
Selling is okay? Selling out, it's not. It's like you
(19:28):
have a mission, uh, you know what you stand for,
a set of values. You have a vision of what
you want to become. And if you can sell the
company and that stays intact, they needn't sell out. It's
actually you're accelerating. You know, you have more capital, you
have more resources, you you can go after it with
the help of the acquiring company, which is what happened
(19:49):
with Walmart. We didn't sell out. We we sold it, sure,
but we were still you know, the vision of like
creating you know, a formidable competitor Amazon that was still alive.
And well when we sold the Amazon, we're sort of
like pushed in a corner. Guys, just keep doing your thing,
like doing our thing, but you own us and you
also have a diaper business, and what do you mean
do our thing? Aren't we gonna like join forces and
(20:09):
let's go you know together. And I was like, no,
just keep doing anything. Over the side. It was very
like you out. Yeah, I was like just watch it
like it was just terrible competing with the owner and
it was just very very not fun um. So yeah,
So I always talked about that as being like, yeah,
we sold out, but most people would then like, go
to the beach, right, Well, I wasn't going to the beach.
(20:32):
So how did you get the idea to build your
second company? To build jet dot com? Okay, that was
the fourth but yeah, but the second big one, right,
second big um just inside Amazon for you know, two
and a half years, continue to build Vipers dot com
and we hit a bunch of other sites like wag
dot com and soap dot com, these other websites and things,
(20:53):
and uh, it just felt like we had learned so
much and still felt like there was a knee for
a formidable number two competitor. The market was growing fast.
It was so big e commerce and it was growing,
and I felt like we can you know, I use
this acronym VCP vision capital people, and I think that's
(21:13):
all it takes to create an incredible business. And we
had the vision UM. We thought we could get access
to capital just giving our track record, and we thought
we could hire the best people in e commerce in
the world, again given the track record. So it's kind
of hard to pass up the opportunity because you're primed
and ready to get primed and ready to go. And
(21:34):
that's what we did. We raised a ton of money
up front, so yeah, just I mean just the pitch deck.
I think we raised fifty five million with the pitch
deck UM and we're able to hire an incredible team
and then we followed it up with another quickly five
million pre launch. So we had a lot of money
and uh and made a great team. And I always
(21:55):
feel like with businesses, if you hired an incredible team
and you're in the right size market at the right time,
you're never gonna lose because there will always be a
strategic that's interested in that right Like, you know, because
if if there's a lot of big companies like, wow,
(22:16):
we need to be in this space, it's the right time.
It's massive, Okay, we can't do it ourselves. What's the
best team in the world. Oh, look at jet dot Com.
They've got the best e commerce team in the world.
Why because they have all this capital, they hire the
best people and so it's it's as I always felt
it was defensible. Some people are against like don't waste
too much money early, you can burn it in the
(22:37):
wrong ways and things like that. I've never been like
a fan of that strategy. I would always say, like,
raise as much money as you can, as early as
you can, and hire the best team in your industry.
If it's a big enough market to support, it's got
to be a big enough market, the biggest tam it's
gonna be the right time. But if you literally hire
the best people. That's what we did with Archer, the
(22:57):
flying car company that I invested in two years ago.
Two founders came in, sat on the couch right upstairs
and said, we have this vision for this flying car.
It's basically a drone that carries passengers and it's safer,
a faster, cheaper, all this stuff, big vision. And I'm like, Okay,
that's the v I get it. It's the right time.
It's massive market, massive tam and well, the two founders
(23:21):
are great, their second time founders. They had a great exit,
loved them, had all the values and traits that I admire,
and I think it would be really successful. It's about capital.
So we need to hire a great engineering team, the
best in the world. And what they told me was, Mark,
we need five million. Now we're going We'll go out
and hire we know where they are, will pull the
best people from the best companies in the world, will
(23:43):
have the best engineering team, and then we need to
raise fifty million to build the very best um flying car.
And then once we had that, then we should be
able to go out and raise a billion. And this
was two years ago, and I said Okay, I totally
get it. I'm gonna put five million in here. I'm
gonna help you hire this great, best in the class team,
and then I'll kick off the fifty million dollar round
(24:03):
and help you raise fifty and then you're on your own.
And played out exactly that five million. Hired the very
best team in the world. Raise fifty because we had
the best team in the world. Now we're building the
best aircraft in the world because we have the best
team and all the learnings from everyone else before us.
And they spacked and raised a billion, all within two years,
and now it's at three point seven billion dollar market
(24:24):
cap company. And it started with a big vision and
capital in this mentality of like, we're gonna hire the
very best. I don't mean just good people, I mean
the very best in the world. And if they didn't
raise that billion dollars, there's plenty of companies out there
would say, wait, you only put million this company. You've
(24:45):
got this incredible state of you are playing in the
very best team in the world. Yeah, so how do
you find the best people in the world. I get
hiring problems all the time, right, there's lots of how
do I even know that the person in front of
me is the best. You're just looking at competitors who
already through the process, and so you're just coming in
and poaching. Certainly, there's the best people tend to work
(25:05):
at the best companies, so in the space. So so
that's I think that's one Existing companies are to disadvantage
in some ways because they can offer the upside you
can at the startup. So I think there's there's a
reason for people to leave, which is always great. Um,
but also I've just I've also hone my resume reading
skills tremendously over the years. I used to get burned
(25:26):
all the time early so many things I just didn't
understand about, like what things to look for in a resume.
I think a lot of people that like look at
a resume and see, like I'm looking to hire a CFO. Okay,
this person is a CFO and there's this company, and
you're like, okay, great, I'll interview them, and you talk
(25:46):
to them like, oh, I really like this person, and
in an hour interview like yeah, let's let's hire them
because I like them. And you didn't really study the resume.
You didn't do due diligence. You sort of just just
saw that there's a CFO and you like them, and
I call it honey you get honeypotted. You know, you
just like like the person because they're like you. You think, okay,
this is a great person to get a beer with
(26:07):
and stuff. But they're not a superstar. Most people aren't.
If you say superstar, if you define it as top
ten percent, only one in ten people of superstars. So
how do you find the one intent? Every time? I
think on the resume, if you are really um focused
on only accepting a certain type of resume to interview,
(26:30):
much less chance that you get you get burned or
get honeypotted. And like, I've now pretty good track record
if a resume qualifies a superstar, and then I bring
them in and I'll interview them for values and traits,
like what are the traits to be sure it's a
good cultural fit. But I don't have to worry about
whether or not the superstar. A lot of times it's
(26:52):
not even people that actually have the exact experience. Sometimes
you have to sacrifice the experience. But I've never sacrifice
the superstar resume, and superstar resu may there's a few
qualities that jump out UM. The most important of which
is um, did they show a demonstrable level of success
in every job that they're in, which may seem like yeah,
(27:13):
of course, of course they no. No, like look at
the company. Understand how many years are there and how
many years like the top people and the companies would
get promoted like their Procter and Gamble and they're there
for five years. Well, I know when you get in
Proctor Gamble early, you should get promoted every two years.
So if you don't have at least two promotions, that's
the yellow flag. But if you're a Proctor Gum of
(27:33):
five years and you have two promotions, great, now you're
leave in Procer and Gamble. And this is the most
important part. When you leave a job, superstars see step
changes in level in camp, in company step change. You
don't see a step change out. So so somebody's like
you know, the starff and their career and their associate,
(27:54):
their senior associate, their manager, and then they leave and
you're like wow, director, like that was a nice step up.
It's a better company. And then they go director and
then two years later senior directing like, oh I know
that company two years of director to seniorrector. That's they
must really like this person senior director and then there
for two years and there four years, five years while
(28:15):
they like state that companies a while, these big moves
and their senior director and I'm like, okay, I'm not
moving a lesson's VP boom VP s v P. Like wow,
this person in you know, college twelve years has gone
from graduate to s v P at a good company.
I know that s v P and that company that
(28:36):
that's gonna be one of the youngest. People like that,
that's a superstar. And I can short resumes to people
and they'll say, you know, I totally get it. Yeah,
that that's a superstar. Okay, then just don't settle, like
wait until you see a resume that has and scream
superstar and then bring them in. Most people doesn't work
like that. How many companies are you invested in right now? Yeah,
(28:56):
Vision Capital people, there's probably six companies of which m
CO founders so really involved, two of which that's your day.
You're working on those companies all day today. I'm watching
those companies, are working on the Timberwolves. I'm working on
congrats on that. By the way, thank you crazy. Yeah,
where do you think e commerce goes from? Here? We're
post covid, We're out of it, we're post post right,
(29:19):
it's vaccinated. Covid showed us a lot about what people
can do from the home, from their computers. People are
trying to bring physical products to the Internet more than
ever before. Right, No one wants to go to stores,
but they kind of do, Like what do you what
do you think we are in? From the guy that
a lot of people think predicted the future anyway, Yeah,
(29:40):
I think there's two with the early stages right now
of what I think will be two big mega trends
in retail. One is social commerce and the other's conversational commerce.
UM social commerce. We just announced that we just arod
and I just invested in a company called now with
UM the connect connects brands to inf answers. I think
(30:00):
there's a really big future on people buying products off
social media platform So I think that that's that's a
that's a megatrend, that's early stages, and the other one
is a conversational commerce. I think people will be using
text and voice to basically converse things that they want
to buy with someone who knows them as well as
their best friend, who has the knowledge of the most
(30:21):
uh knowledgeable person in the showroom floor of a specialty retailer. Um.
And I think search engines in twenty years are going
to be something people will laugh about, like the cassette tape,
Like so you needed to like go to a search engine.
You're typing one toaster and you've got ten thousand responses
and how did you know what's to buy? And you
had to read reviews and filter and search like that
(30:43):
seems tiring. It is, it's tiring you. You should be
able to just say to you in a conversation away, Hey,
I want to buy a toaster, Oh Ryan, yeah, of course,
I know. I know what you would ideally want. Here,
let me give you a couple options, and you're like,
this one's great, but have one in black? Yeah great, boom,
I'll take the black one. And then it's just done,
(31:04):
like there's no you just converse and and and shot.
That way, you don't need to to this archaic you know,
search engine and do all this work and scrolling, especially
on products that are more commoditized, like I'm sure you
know there'll still be some clothing apparel and things like
that that you want to browse and discover like discovery.
(31:26):
But for the most part, most things you don't need discovery,
you know, you just you just need something for anyone
who's listening. And I think, um uh, you've been awesome
and taking a considerable amount of time with me today,
So this has been great. Um But like as a
last little piece of advice to people who are you know,
either out of work now or thinking about quitting their
(31:48):
job or doing something they don't like right, kind of
like where you were when you're in the bank, great job,
it's fine, and you're on that ledge of hey, we
can go and do something much much better for myself.
What what what? What if I do you have for
those people who are just too scared, too nervous. They
have responsibilities, there's life. It's not going to work out,
like it's one thing to say yeah, but you never know,
(32:10):
so just go try it. Yeah. I think I have
a have a unique advice here, and not everyone shares
the same way of thinking. My advice is there's no halfway,
Like you can't dip your toe in, do it on
nights and weekends and things like that's the chance of
(32:30):
it working is just so much lower. My thing is
like jump, like literally put yourself in a position where
you cannot afford to fail. Some people do the opposite
and say, well I can't do that because I can't
afford to fail. Yeah, well, put yourself in the position
that you can't afford to fail, and you won't like
you just won't let yourself um, and so it's uh,
(32:53):
there there are people capable of doing things that they
don't even know are possible. I'd like to use the
six gear analogy where I think, you know, you're working
in a bank. I was killing myself working eight hundred
hours a week. People lawyers and things, lots of professions
working really hard. You're in fourth gear, and people like
fourth gear. No way, man, I'm in sixth gear. I'm like,
(33:14):
d I can't go any harder? Is you can? You can?
Your life not on the line. You're not gonna get
killed if you if if you know, if you get fired,
you'll find another job. Like you're not in six gear.
When you actually jump and you quit and you have
a family and you have to pay bills and you
quit and you have a certain amount of money before
it runs out, and you have to make it work,
(33:37):
you wind up doing things that you didn't know you
were capable of doing. Like literally, it's like it's like
if I told you, let me look at you're in
good shape. But if I told you, like you need
to like bike across the country in thirty days, you
might say, no, way, I can't do that. I'm like
out of shape. That's like, you know, a hundred miles
a day for thirty straight days. I can't do it. Okay,
(33:58):
gun to your head, kill you if you don't do
it suddenly like you do, I'll do it. You know,
you might be like nearly dead when you get there,
but you like in your mind you think, no, I
won't die, I'll figure it out, like I'll somehow someway,
I'll figure it out. That's kind of what happens with
with entrepreneurship. When you put yourself in that position. You
(34:18):
go from I can't I'll figure it out, like I'm
not gonna die, I'm gonna figure it out. And and
it's just there's a different thing that comes and takes
over your body and your mind and enables you to
focus in a way that just would be impossible if
you had like one ft in. So many people do
that like kind of like try it or and they're like,
(34:39):
I don't know why this is not working, like I'm
I'm like, we have a full time job. Like you
gotta quit, you gotta go, you gotta jump. Big Money
Energy is hosted by me Ryan Sirhands. It's produced by
Mike Cosparelli and Joe Loresca and executive produced by Lindsay
By More podcasts like Big Money In or G on
(35:00):
the iPark Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
H
Welcome back to another episode of Big Money Energy, where
we talked to super successful people and self made people
to find out exactly how they did it, how they
went from nothing to something. Today, I'm insanely excited to
talk to one of the most impressive and successful entrepreneurs
in the world. And it's funny. When we started this
podcast and we're talking to my heart and we were
(00:22):
listing out people that, you know, I wanted to talk to.
The guy in front of me was on that list,
but I never thought that I would actually be able
to convince him to slow down for a split second
and actually talk. But here we are, and we're in
the room. He's an entrepreneur and investor or father. Uh
even better, he's a New Yorker. He started and sold
for companies, with many more in the works, one of
(00:43):
them being diapers dot com, which she sold for just
under five and fifty million dollars, and then jet dot com,
which he sold for three point three billion dollars. And
those that's real money, that's not crypto, it's like U
S dollars. He also recently started adventure fund with a
very very small athlete. This guy some people know him
named A Rod and if that wasn't enough, he beat
(01:05):
Jerry Rice in the forty r Dash, which is insane. Anyway,
I'm super excited to discuss how he makes it all happen,
the all amazing man in front of me, Mr Mark Lord.
This is one of my favorites. Let's get into it.
Welcome to another episode before I get into everything else. Uh,
(01:30):
you're a New Yorker, you love New York. This is
your spot right now. We're in Tribeca and you quarantine
through here. But you're from Staten Island. Staten Island until
I was ten years old fifth grade and moved to
New Jersey. So talk to me before we get to
the companies and and everything else. I want to go
through about those kind of formative years in Staten Island. Uh,
(01:52):
and how you think that made an impact on your
life today, Like, did you think it did it all? Yeah?
Well it's interesting because I think it definitely did. The
first four years of my life we lived above my grandparents,
you know, part of their house, like in the top floor,
and then from four to ten lived in a multi
family kind of home and it was very modest. Growing up,
(02:13):
we lived in a predominantly Italian, Irish Catholic neighborhood. I
didn't even know what a Protestant was until I was
moved to New Jersey. So I was at least in
sixth grade when I thought everyone was pretty Italian. Yeah,
I just thought everyone's Catholic. Everyone's Catholic. I don't know
about you know, Italian and Irish, but I didn't know
(02:34):
anything else. It was incredibly uh diverse. It wasn't diverse
at all. And you know, I had a thick statin
on accent. And then we moved to New Jersey and
was thrown in this like small thirty four kids in
a class, uh, super diverse, you know, like you know,
maybe there was one other Catholic, you know, in the
entire class, and it was every nationality, and they made
(02:58):
fun of my accent. And I was this like just
assumed to be dumb because I had this like thick,
you know, stating own accent and it was a jock
and just you know, it was a very interesting juxtaposition
to go from that to where I was. And I
you're kind of forced in a small school, especially diverse,
to be sort of friends with everyone, and it's not typical,
(03:18):
I think to grow up and go to a school
where you're friends with people you never would have been
friends with if you were in a bigger school and
just found your crowd. Like if there was a whole
crowd of like Italians Catholic Italians there, I probably would
have gravitated toward that. But no, I was like the
only one. So you're friends with everyone. My two best
(03:38):
friends are you know, Indian American to this day, you know,
And I think that really helps shape me a lot
in terms of like empathy and values and how to
understand people different viewpoints, the benefits of diversity, appreciating people
for who they are as opposed to like what they
(04:00):
look like or where they come from, and things like.
It was a really cool experience. I didn't really appreciate
it until many years later, but you know, just it's
part of your you know, it becomes part of your DNA.
After a while, I was not into school at all.
I told my parents, like, the school doesn't give homework,
and they did and I never did it, and I
didn't do well. But I did have like just a
(04:21):
natural gift for math, so that kind of carried me.
I really haven't completed any fiction books. I haven't completed
any fiction books yet in my life. So I wasn't
ever into books growing up in grammar school and high school,
and then just kind of carried on, you know. I
start reading, I tried, I get through like the first
few pages, and I just start thinking, and then I
(04:42):
closed the book and I just spend time thinking. I can't.
I can't get through more than a few pages. Um.
So I always feel like reading takes time away from thinking,
and I'm a thinker. I like to think. I don't
know how people actually read, because it's like you're committee
to somebody else's words and I don't know how you
think and invent same time you're reading. Interesting. I just
never read. Do you get bored easily? I do? Yeah, definitely, Yeah,
(05:06):
definitely get bored. Yeah, I get what's funny. I get
bored unless I'm focused on a specific vision, you know,
like there's something and then I can be like I
can and be laser focused, but it has to be
toward a very specific golden like focused on Otherwise. Yeah. No,
Like I don't do TV like stuff like that. It's
(05:28):
just tough, got it. No TV, No books, just thinking thinking.
That's why you have that crazy terrace upstairs. You can
just go out there and you can think and invet,
that's awesome, that's I do. I wish I knew to
say that to my parents, like listen, you guys the
books and then for me, I just I need more
(05:49):
time to think. Did you know early on that you
wanted to be an entrepreneur or not work for other people?
Because you when you graduated school, you went into bank,
you got a job because that's what you thought you
were supposed to do. No, I had no choice, really,
so I did when I was a kid, so four
years old. Um Grandma used to spend all the time,
my grandmother and just ask me, what do you want
(06:11):
to be when you grow up? She's always just to
say this to me. And I always said, I want
to be a farmer. Now, you don't want to be
a farmer, doctor, lawyer? No, I want to be a farmer.
Why don't want to be a farmer because you grow
stuff from nothing? Yeah. I just loved as a little
little kid this idea that from a seed grew something
and which is basically entrepreneurship. And throughout my entire childhood
I did every entrepreneurial business you can think of mowing lawns, recycling,
(06:36):
you know, newspapers, um lemonade, stand baseball cards, like anything
to sort of make a buck and be entrepreneurial. But
when I graduated college in ninety three, like I had
no money, didn't know anything about startups or that didn't
really wasn't really a thing. Nine I'd like stocks. I
had followed stocks as a kid, was interested in it,
(06:58):
and I I was like, okay, I'll go work for a bank.
It didn't occur to me that it was even an
option to be an entrepreneur or something. So I went
into banking, and like each year and banking and I
started getting more and more anxious, like I don't like
the culture. It's all about mercenary as I call it,
you know, just all about making a buck. The values
weren't great, and I was more mission oriented, as like
an entrepreneur as a kid, like what's the mission? Like
(07:21):
what are we gonna go out? And how are we
going to change the world? And it never it just
felt wrong. And every year I was doing better and
better and better in banking, and probably about six and
a half years into banking, I was chief risk office
and doing really well, making a half a million bucks
a year. I just had a kid, and I'm like,
it's now or never, Like I need to like go
do this and be an entrepreneur. So I just went
in my boss's office and quit and just said I'm
(07:42):
going to be an entrepreneur. And he laughed at me
and said, well, you don't just like walk in and
just say I'm going to be an entrepreneur. Like what's
the business? I said, I don't know yet. I just
know I can't figure this out when working eighty hours
a week for you. I need to like quit, focus,
put together a bass plan, raise money, think and and
so he's like, you're crazy, and I'm like maybe he's like, well,
(08:04):
can I be a first investor because I just have
a feeling you're gonna make this work. And so you
put fifty grand in And that was like the start
of the start of it. And what was that company
that was called the pit? It was Sports stock Market
and basically combined my love for sports with stocks. I
got my two best friends from from grammar school and
I said, you know, and to quit their jobs to
(08:26):
go do it together. And it was like the most
fun time. Learned so much about entrepreneurship. Um learned what
a CAP table was. We're in the first venture capital meeting. Uh,
and we're just sort of like saying, here's the business
and everything of that. And then then I never forget
the venture investor I think his name was Tom Grant,
and he said, uh, he said, uh, so can you
(08:47):
just walk me through the cap table? And we're looking
at another and anyway, he said, the cap tables I
don't know kept black. You know, I don't like cap table.
What's a cap table? And they were like, maybe you
guys should come back, should come back when you know
what a cap table is. So that was that was
pretty funny. So you know, everyone starts from the bottom,
you know, there's no you just just learn. You get
(09:08):
thrown in, throw yourself in and learn, you know, trial
and error. How much did you end up raising for
that business? Ultimately five million? It was only angels, no institution.
We couldn't get any institutional because we didn't know what
a cat table was. So so friends, people you knew
it was like it was yeah, it was basically my
boss at Santua Bank, but the first fifty and instead
(09:30):
go talk to these two people and then every two
people we talked to. We said, okay, were the interested
or not int do you know two people? And it
was literally like this tree we had built and we
talked to like a hundred and twenty angel investors and
we got had a good hit, right. We had that
sixty people to invest on average what is that like
eight tho each? So it was like just clawn, you know,
(09:54):
trying to raise that five million UM. But then the
market crashed. This is this is on the nastack in
two thousand just got destroyed. Forget about. We couldn't raise
venture before. We're definitely we're going to raise venture after UM.
And we were nine months in and we're the business
was doing well, was getting some action and fortunately the Tops,
(10:14):
the baseball card of Zuoka gun manufacturer, came in and said, hey,
you know, we like what you guys are doing and
we'll give you a five point seven million for it.
And we're like, we'll take it because there was literally
the market was destroyed and even our investors were like, wait,
you're gonna make money in this market, yeah, take it.
(10:34):
So everyone back, pay everyone back and uh. And then
worked in side tops and that's where we got the
idea for diapers dot Com had that idea come about.
I was basically, I mean I had a baby at
the time, so paying me ask going out for diapers
all the time. But the way it came together was
(10:55):
I was literally in Google. They used to be able
to like search to figure out how many times have
searched term was searched in Google, and they remember typing
the word diapers into the search engine and it said
two hundred thousand times it was searched in a month.
I'm like, wow, search two hundred thousand times. Nobody's buying
diapers online. That's interesting. People want to buy them. They're
not online. I certainly want to buy them online. And
(11:17):
the baby that's pain in the ask, going to like
diapers every every few weeks. So I thought, well, let
me see Amazon. I mean, no, Amazon, they sell diapers,
but they're like three times it's expended, Like nobody's buying
diapers online. Why, Oh, they're a lost leader. You know,
Walmart and Target they saw m at a loss. So
now if you want to ship them there big and
bulky and shipping everything. So everyone's like the scars and
(11:38):
like you can't make money. I was like, yeah, but
why they were lost leader in the store. I didn't
know anything about retail. I was like, Okay, they're a
lost leader because it drives traffic and it drives moms
to the store. Because yeah, interesting, so it's a lost leader.
So why couldn't you be a lost leader online? Well,
you're gonna lose a lot more money. Yeah, but there's
a much longer tail of products I can sell mom
(11:58):
because there's unlimited shelves based online. And that was sort
of like the breakthrough. It's like, Okay, we're gonna sell dipers,
We're gonna bring people in and we're gonna sell them
everything else, and we're gonna lose money. The problem was
the manufacturers wouldn't sell us diapers direct because they thought
it wasn't gonna work. So what do we do. We
had to go to Costco b J's and buy the
dipers in the wholesale club. So we literally go into
(12:21):
sell the diapers for let's say forty dollars a box.
Then we go into Costco and buying for forty box
and pay ten dollars to ship them. And we were
funding this ourselves, so it's like, you do know, Mark,
you're selling a dollar for ninety cents and I said, no,
actually selling a dollar for eighty cents, but that's okay.
But but yes, the plan is we're gonna sell these
(12:42):
dollars for eighty cents and then when we get enough
people shopping and we're gonna then sell them stuff that
we actually make real money on. And it was painful
in the beginning because we're literally like having to go
to b J's and buy these diapers, and we stopped
buying them. Yeah, but we buy them the day that
they were sold because it was But then it got
(13:03):
to the point where we're selling like truckloads of diapers.
So me and Vinnie, we're going Vinnie barras co founder
and best friend, you know, we go to we go
to uh b J's, and we have a deal. If
we leave them some diapers, they will pack them on
the eight and wheeler in the back because they have
the equipment and stuff. I'm like, okay, great, we'll leave
you diapers. That's a great deal. Okay, we still have
(13:24):
to pay money and stand online and go through and
it's like ridiculous, right, and have all the things and everything,
like with the cashier. Yeah, with the cashier, we couldn't
like do it like you know, like through like why
or anything heavy. You're a diaper broker. Yeah, basically a
diaper broker. And literally two years into it, Proctan Gamba
Chamilli Clark still not selling us diapers and we're like,
(13:45):
we're selling thirty million dollars of diapers. You we can't
keep doing this. We're like clearing out wholesale clubs, like,
we gotta figure this out. We gotta figure this out.
How many people work for you at that time still
really lean, like Vinnie and I were doing everything. It
was probably like you know, diapers a year, probably like
six people crazy crazy and buying them from the thing
(14:05):
and shipping them, going to like UPS stores and just
like putting all these boxes in yeah basically yeah, but
putting the labels. I would be out on the front
law on these boxes and you just put the labels
on it and put it on the truck and bring
it to FedEx and UPS and Silt the website who
bought the platform for you, Um yeah, we had got build. Yeah,
you just designed it personally. You guys just said this,
(14:27):
we design it, no firm. We designed the logo you know,
and this kind of stuff. Yeah, we did everything, and
they beginning and but we couldn't keep this up. We're
burning a lot of money. Now we're burning a serious
amount of money. We basically took it, funded ourselves to
the first eleven million that was That was the first
two years, the eleven millions, and parked kemal Clock still
wouldn't sell us the diapers, and it seemed like there
(14:49):
was not even close to selling us. So we came
up with the city like, oh, we got what were
we gonna do? What you can do? Okay, we need
a reason for them to sell us. We need a reason.
And we're like, you know what, what if we took
all the diapers from BJ and left nothing for their customers?
Don't they have to don't they need diapers? Like yeah,
but they're not gonna load the truck. All right, Well
let's let's go for it. So we went into Pj's
and we talked to the man. You said, hey, sorry,
(15:11):
you know this deal, it's off. We need them all.
We're taking them all. And he's like, no, you can't
take them all, Like, well, there's nothing We're gonna buy
all the diapers, right this is anybody could come in
and buy the dipers. You can't stop something from buying them, Like, oh,
you're right, we can't, but we're not loading the truck,
so good luck, Like, oh, ship, we can load his truck.
A team real and mean Vinney were like boxes and
(15:32):
like it was just a war of wills, like who
can last longer? You know, We're we cleared them out.
Customers are coming and complaining, right, and but we're like
loading the truck and these diapers Like man, dude, I
don't know how how long can we keep loading the
truck And like I don't know, I think you're gonna break. Man.
They have no diapers to their customers. They're gonna have
to like call Procton Gamble. We're like, listen, you can
solve this pain. Just call Proctor and Gamble Kimberly Clarke
(15:54):
and tell them to sell us diapers. Then you're good.
You off the hook. And like, after like a few
times to do this, they did, like we broke them.
We were like sweat and we're like pounds. So like, dude,
I don't know how long we can do this for,
you know, but they broke first. They called procting a game.
We're procting. We're called us and said, Hey, one of
our big customers UM asked us to sell you direct
(16:16):
or a good client, and we're gonna do it. We
don't believe in it, nothing's changing how we feel about
your business, but we will sell you direct. And that's
how we kind of like, you know, got direct and
then we raised venture at eleven run rate, and then
we took it to thirty six and then ninety and
then yeah, two and it was like and he started
(16:37):
started hiring back office people to run it, and then
we started hiring people to run it and everything. But
the first eleven million was like just a few employees,
Like it was like probably anything we're doing everything we
do in the accounting, marketing, web design, customer care. It
was diapers, wipes, and then we added formula at that
(16:57):
time and that was pretty much it. Yeah, how much
until it did you end up raising before before you exited?
That's it? That's it crazy. And you just use that
for pure expansion, just for hiring and build hiring marketing. Yeah,
(17:19):
and you sold him what year was sold in two
thousand eleven? And did the buyer come to you or
was it something that you were thinking about, Hey, it's
time to turn to South two is an eleven. It
was not like a great time. No, it wasn't a
great time. And uh so Amazon bought us. We actually
had an offer from someone else for a hundred million more,
but we took the Amazon offer because Amazon was being pretty.
(17:42):
They've been pretty tough. They cut the price at diapers.
They were paying to burn a lot of money to
put a den in our business, and they were they
were pretty. They were pretty tough. I'll just leave it
a tough tough But the other are acquire that offered
a hundred million more. There was this one clause in
(18:05):
the sort of agreement that said, um, as long as
there's no adverse changing your business between like signing this
and then like actually closing, we're good. Everything else we're good,
and we're like, but no adverse change, Like do you
realize Amazon is gonna kick our ass? You realize that, right, Like, yeah,
it's okay, don't worry about that, Like, no, you're worried
(18:25):
about it. It's clause here that says everything else is great.
Just take out this one clause. We're done. They wouldn't
take the clause out, and so like talk to the
board of directors and said, hey, like I don't think
they get it, Like there's this clause here and we
don't understand what they're trying to get at, like like
they're gonna kill us. And so like that's a good point.
(18:46):
You know, five is not bad. It's not bad. So
we sold the Amazon And I always always talked about this.
Is like people say, oh, man, this is your first
big exit, Like you made a ton of money, Like
you never need to work again. You guys must have
been so excited. We're literally depressed, Like Manny and I
were just like after after the close, we're like do
(19:08):
we get a beer and go celebrate? You want to?
Now me? Now, let's just let's just call it a day.
You know. It's like it's literally it was the most
depressing day because we sold out. So you aren't building anymore, right,
we don't build anymore. And I always talk about this.
It's like the difference between selling your company and selling out.
Selling is okay? Selling out, it's not. It's like you
(19:28):
have a mission, uh, you know what you stand for,
a set of values. You have a vision of what
you want to become. And if you can sell the
company and that stays intact, they needn't sell out. It's
actually you're accelerating. You know, you have more capital, you
have more resources, you you can go after it with
the help of the acquiring company, which is what happened
(19:49):
with Walmart. We didn't sell out. We we sold it, sure,
but we were still you know, the vision of like
creating you know, a formidable competitor Amazon that was still alive.
And well when we sold the Amazon, we're sort of
like pushed in a corner. Guys, just keep doing your thing,
like doing our thing, but you own us and you
also have a diaper business, and what do you mean
do our thing? Aren't we gonna like join forces and
(20:09):
let's go you know together. And I was like, no,
just keep doing anything. Over the side. It was very
like you out. Yeah, I was like just watch it
like it was just terrible competing with the owner and
it was just very very not fun um. So yeah,
So I always talked about that as being like, yeah,
we sold out, but most people would then like, go
to the beach, right, Well, I wasn't going to the beach.
(20:32):
So how did you get the idea to build your
second company? To build jet dot com? Okay, that was
the fourth but yeah, but the second big one, right,
second big um just inside Amazon for you know, two
and a half years, continue to build Vipers dot com
and we hit a bunch of other sites like wag
dot com and soap dot com, these other websites and things,
(20:53):
and uh, it just felt like we had learned so
much and still felt like there was a knee for
a formidable number two competitor. The market was growing fast.
It was so big e commerce and it was growing,
and I felt like we can you know, I use
this acronym VCP vision capital people, and I think that's
(21:13):
all it takes to create an incredible business. And we
had the vision UM. We thought we could get access
to capital just giving our track record, and we thought
we could hire the best people in e commerce in
the world, again given the track record. So it's kind
of hard to pass up the opportunity because you're primed
and ready to get primed and ready to go. And
(21:34):
that's what we did. We raised a ton of money
up front, so yeah, just I mean just the pitch deck.
I think we raised fifty five million with the pitch
deck UM and we're able to hire an incredible team
and then we followed it up with another quickly five
million pre launch. So we had a lot of money
and uh and made a great team. And I always
(21:55):
feel like with businesses, if you hired an incredible team
and you're in the right size market at the right time,
you're never gonna lose because there will always be a
strategic that's interested in that right Like, you know, because
if if there's a lot of big companies like, wow,
(22:16):
we need to be in this space, it's the right time.
It's massive, Okay, we can't do it ourselves. What's the
best team in the world. Oh, look at jet dot Com.
They've got the best e commerce team in the world.
Why because they have all this capital, they hire the
best people and so it's it's as I always felt
it was defensible. Some people are against like don't waste
too much money early, you can burn it in the
(22:37):
wrong ways and things like that. I've never been like
a fan of that strategy. I would always say, like,
raise as much money as you can, as early as
you can, and hire the best team in your industry.
If it's a big enough market to support, it's got
to be a big enough market, the biggest tam it's
gonna be the right time. But if you literally hire
the best people. That's what we did with Archer, the
(22:57):
flying car company that I invested in two years ago.
Two founders came in, sat on the couch right upstairs
and said, we have this vision for this flying car.
It's basically a drone that carries passengers and it's safer,
a faster, cheaper, all this stuff, big vision. And I'm like, Okay,
that's the v I get it. It's the right time.
It's massive market, massive tam and well, the two founders
(23:21):
are great, their second time founders. They had a great exit,
loved them, had all the values and traits that I admire,
and I think it would be really successful. It's about capital.
So we need to hire a great engineering team, the
best in the world. And what they told me was, Mark,
we need five million. Now we're going We'll go out
and hire we know where they are, will pull the
best people from the best companies in the world, will
(23:43):
have the best engineering team, and then we need to
raise fifty million to build the very best um flying car.
And then once we had that, then we should be
able to go out and raise a billion. And this
was two years ago, and I said Okay, I totally
get it. I'm gonna put five million in here. I'm
gonna help you hire this great, best in the class team,
and then I'll kick off the fifty million dollar round
(24:03):
and help you raise fifty and then you're on your own.
And played out exactly that five million. Hired the very
best team in the world. Raise fifty because we had
the best team in the world. Now we're building the
best aircraft in the world because we have the best
team and all the learnings from everyone else before us.
And they spacked and raised a billion, all within two years,
and now it's at three point seven billion dollar market
(24:24):
cap company. And it started with a big vision and
capital in this mentality of like, we're gonna hire the
very best. I don't mean just good people, I mean
the very best in the world. And if they didn't
raise that billion dollars, there's plenty of companies out there
would say, wait, you only put million this company. You've
(24:45):
got this incredible state of you are playing in the
very best team in the world. Yeah, so how do
you find the best people in the world. I get
hiring problems all the time, right, there's lots of how
do I even know that the person in front of
me is the best. You're just looking at competitors who
already through the process, and so you're just coming in
and poaching. Certainly, there's the best people tend to work
(25:05):
at the best companies, so in the space. So so
that's I think that's one Existing companies are to disadvantage
in some ways because they can offer the upside you
can at the startup. So I think there's there's a
reason for people to leave, which is always great. Um,
but also I've just I've also hone my resume reading
skills tremendously over the years. I used to get burned
(25:26):
all the time early so many things I just didn't
understand about, like what things to look for in a resume.
I think a lot of people that like look at
a resume and see, like I'm looking to hire a CFO. Okay,
this person is a CFO and there's this company, and
you're like, okay, great, I'll interview them, and you talk
(25:46):
to them like, oh, I really like this person, and
in an hour interview like yeah, let's let's hire them
because I like them. And you didn't really study the resume.
You didn't do due diligence. You sort of just just
saw that there's a CFO and you like them, and
I call it honey you get honeypotted. You know, you
just like like the person because they're like you. You think, okay,
this is a great person to get a beer with
(26:07):
and stuff. But they're not a superstar. Most people aren't.
If you say superstar, if you define it as top
ten percent, only one in ten people of superstars. So
how do you find the one intent? Every time? I
think on the resume, if you are really um focused
on only accepting a certain type of resume to interview,
(26:30):
much less chance that you get you get burned or
get honeypotted. And like, I've now pretty good track record
if a resume qualifies a superstar, and then I bring
them in and I'll interview them for values and traits,
like what are the traits to be sure it's a
good cultural fit. But I don't have to worry about
whether or not the superstar. A lot of times it's
(26:52):
not even people that actually have the exact experience. Sometimes
you have to sacrifice the experience. But I've never sacrifice
the superstar resume, and superstar resu may there's a few
qualities that jump out UM. The most important of which
is um, did they show a demonstrable level of success
in every job that they're in, which may seem like yeah,
(27:13):
of course, of course they no. No, like look at
the company. Understand how many years are there and how
many years like the top people and the companies would
get promoted like their Procter and Gamble and they're there
for five years. Well, I know when you get in
Proctor Gamble early, you should get promoted every two years.
So if you don't have at least two promotions, that's
the yellow flag. But if you're a Proctor Gum of
(27:33):
five years and you have two promotions, great, now you're
leave in Procer and Gamble. And this is the most
important part. When you leave a job, superstars see step
changes in level in camp, in company step change. You
don't see a step change out. So so somebody's like
you know, the starff and their career and their associate,
(27:54):
their senior associate, their manager, and then they leave and
you're like wow, director, like that was a nice step up.
It's a better company. And then they go director and
then two years later senior directing like, oh I know
that company two years of director to seniorrector. That's they
must really like this person senior director and then there
for two years and there four years, five years while
(28:15):
they like state that companies a while, these big moves
and their senior director and I'm like, okay, I'm not
moving a lesson's VP boom VP s v P. Like wow,
this person in you know, college twelve years has gone
from graduate to s v P at a good company.
I know that s v P and that company that
(28:36):
that's gonna be one of the youngest. People like that,
that's a superstar. And I can short resumes to people
and they'll say, you know, I totally get it. Yeah,
that that's a superstar. Okay, then just don't settle, like
wait until you see a resume that has and scream
superstar and then bring them in. Most people doesn't work
like that. How many companies are you invested in right now? Yeah,
(28:56):
Vision Capital people, there's probably six companies of which m
CO founders so really involved, two of which that's your day.
You're working on those companies all day today. I'm watching
those companies, are working on the Timberwolves. I'm working on
congrats on that. By the way, thank you crazy. Yeah,
where do you think e commerce goes from? Here? We're
post covid, We're out of it, we're post post right,
(29:19):
it's vaccinated. Covid showed us a lot about what people
can do from the home, from their computers. People are
trying to bring physical products to the Internet more than
ever before. Right, No one wants to go to stores,
but they kind of do, Like what do you what
do you think we are in? From the guy that
a lot of people think predicted the future anyway, Yeah,
(29:40):
I think there's two with the early stages right now
of what I think will be two big mega trends
in retail. One is social commerce and the other's conversational commerce.
UM social commerce. We just announced that we just arod
and I just invested in a company called now with
UM the connect connects brands to inf answers. I think
(30:00):
there's a really big future on people buying products off
social media platform So I think that that's that's a
that's a megatrend, that's early stages, and the other one
is a conversational commerce. I think people will be using
text and voice to basically converse things that they want
to buy with someone who knows them as well as
their best friend, who has the knowledge of the most
(30:21):
uh knowledgeable person in the showroom floor of a specialty retailer. Um.
And I think search engines in twenty years are going
to be something people will laugh about, like the cassette tape,
Like so you needed to like go to a search engine.
You're typing one toaster and you've got ten thousand responses
and how did you know what's to buy? And you
had to read reviews and filter and search like that
(30:43):
seems tiring. It is, it's tiring you. You should be
able to just say to you in a conversation away, Hey,
I want to buy a toaster, Oh Ryan, yeah, of course,
I know. I know what you would ideally want. Here,
let me give you a couple options, and you're like,
this one's great, but have one in black? Yeah great, boom,
I'll take the black one. And then it's just done,
(31:04):
like there's no you just converse and and and shot.
That way, you don't need to to this archaic you know,
search engine and do all this work and scrolling, especially
on products that are more commoditized, like I'm sure you
know there'll still be some clothing apparel and things like
that that you want to browse and discover like discovery.
(31:26):
But for the most part, most things you don't need discovery,
you know, you just you just need something for anyone
who's listening. And I think, um uh, you've been awesome
and taking a considerable amount of time with me today,
So this has been great. Um But like as a
last little piece of advice to people who are you know,
either out of work now or thinking about quitting their
(31:48):
job or doing something they don't like right, kind of
like where you were when you're in the bank, great job,
it's fine, and you're on that ledge of hey, we
can go and do something much much better for myself.
What what what? What if I do you have for
those people who are just too scared, too nervous. They
have responsibilities, there's life. It's not going to work out,
like it's one thing to say yeah, but you never know,
(32:10):
so just go try it. Yeah. I think I have
a have a unique advice here, and not everyone shares
the same way of thinking. My advice is there's no halfway,
Like you can't dip your toe in, do it on
nights and weekends and things like that's the chance of
(32:30):
it working is just so much lower. My thing is
like jump, like literally put yourself in a position where
you cannot afford to fail. Some people do the opposite
and say, well I can't do that because I can't
afford to fail. Yeah, well, put yourself in the position
that you can't afford to fail, and you won't like
you just won't let yourself um, and so it's uh,
(32:53):
there there are people capable of doing things that they
don't even know are possible. I'd like to use the
six gear analogy where I think, you know, you're working
in a bank. I was killing myself working eight hundred
hours a week. People lawyers and things, lots of professions
working really hard. You're in fourth gear, and people like
fourth gear. No way, man, I'm in sixth gear. I'm like,
(33:14):
d I can't go any harder? Is you can? You can?
Your life not on the line. You're not gonna get
killed if you if if you know, if you get fired,
you'll find another job. Like you're not in six gear.
When you actually jump and you quit and you have
a family and you have to pay bills and you
quit and you have a certain amount of money before
it runs out, and you have to make it work,
(33:37):
you wind up doing things that you didn't know you
were capable of doing. Like literally, it's like it's like
if I told you, let me look at you're in
good shape. But if I told you, like you need
to like bike across the country in thirty days, you
might say, no, way, I can't do that. I'm like
out of shape. That's like, you know, a hundred miles
a day for thirty straight days. I can't do it. Okay,
(33:58):
gun to your head, kill you if you don't do
it suddenly like you do, I'll do it. You know,
you might be like nearly dead when you get there,
but you like in your mind you think, no, I
won't die, I'll figure it out, like I'll somehow someway,
I'll figure it out. That's kind of what happens with
with entrepreneurship. When you put yourself in that position. You
(34:18):
go from I can't I'll figure it out, like I'm
not gonna die, I'm gonna figure it out. And and
it's just there's a different thing that comes and takes
over your body and your mind and enables you to
focus in a way that just would be impossible if
you had like one ft in. So many people do
that like kind of like try it or and they're like,
(34:39):
I don't know why this is not working, like I'm
I'm like, we have a full time job. Like you
gotta quit, you gotta go, you gotta jump. Big Money
Energy is hosted by me Ryan Sirhands. It's produced by
Mike Cosparelli and Joe Loresca and executive produced by Lindsay
By More podcasts like Big Money In or G on
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