Great Business Stories

The whole WorldCom scandal never really registered with me- because it happened straight after the dotcom bubble burst, so myself and my cofounders were just dusting ourselves off and slowly realising that we weren’t going to suddenly become business tycoons and on top of that whole Enron scandal had exploded just  a bit before so that was the story that consumed me back then - so when WorldCom went bust, I didn’t really give it a lot of time, but I knew in the back of my mind that there was great story here- Bernie Ebbers, this 6 foot 4, honest to goodness church-going  cowboy who kind of came from nowhere to all of a sudden building one of the biggest telecom companies in the USA, until suddenly it all collapsed becoming the biggest bankruptcy in US history, far surpassing Enron and and I’m glad that I finally got round to digging into thai story because it really is a cracking one- enjoy

This is the remarkable story of how David and Frederick Barclay went from painters and decorators to owning the most prestigious hotels in London: the Ritz, Claridge's, the Connaught, the Berkeley.
They bought the Telegraph Newspaper Group, they bought an island and built a £100 million castle on it, their fortune was estimated to be £7 billion pounds as late as 2020. But these guys, man, they were secretive, underhand — these guys pulled some very sneaky shit. And then it all came crashing down when the twins turned on each other, culminating in the Ritz Hotel bugging scandal. This is a sensational and cracking story — enjoy.

This is, without doubt, one of my favourite stories ever. And look, I'll be doing a good few episodes on Gates and Microsoft, but why I decided to start off with this one is because it's a fantastic standalone story. You have Bill Gates and Microsoft, in the mid-90s at the height of their power, and then along comes Marc Andreessen and Netscape, who develop a browser that really launches the World Wide Web. And this is an existential threat to Microsoft. They try to bully Netscape into a deal, but Netscape fight back, and this sets in motion an antitrust case that brings out Gates' arrogance, petulance and fear, and it leads to a judgement where Microsoft is ordered to split in two. This is a cracking story, enjoy.

I wanted to dig into this story purely because what I knew of Peloton really was just from the headlines. During the pandemic, stock pickers and the business media crowned Peloton the business of the future. It was called the Apple of fitness. You had the Obamas, Usain Bolt, Leonardo DiCaprio, dozens of high-profile celebrities as customers, and some of Peloton's live classes had bigger audiences than Madison Square Garden. And then, just as quickly, the same press that had lauded him turned on him. Foley and Peloton became the poster child for pandemic-era hubris. A company that reached a $49 billion valuation is now just worth $2.6 billion. Was it all Foley's fault? That's what we'll find out in today's episode. It's a cracking story, enjoy.

I've wanted to cover Milner ever since I first came across him in Sebastian Mallaby's excellent book, The Power Law, where Mallaby introduces Milner with the following:
"At the start of 2009, the CFO at Facebook took a call from Moscow. A soft Russian voice announced that he wanted to invest in Facebook. The caller had a gentle but insistent style. He had a slight build, a nose bent to his right, and an oval face crowned by a smooth dome. He wanted to meet in person. Facebook did not accept capital from just anyone." The CFO told Milner bluntly: "Don't come all the way here just to see me." Milner booked a plane ticket, flew to San Francisco, and more or less doorstepped the CFO.
This is the story of how this small, quietly spoken Russian goes from earning just $5 a month to reaching the very peak of Silicon Valley, investing in Facebook at a valuation that US investors thought was crazy, becoming one of Mark Zuckerberg's most trusted friends and advisors, and then going on to make huge and very successful investments in Spotify, Zynga, and Revolut, to name just a few. Along the way, Milner navigates his way through the oligarch-infested pools of Russian business, survives all of the political and media backlash that comes from the revelation that much of his early money came from entities closely linked to the Kremlin, and has come out the other side still riding high with a personal fortune of $8.7 billion. It's a cracking story—enjoy.