Billionaire Of The Week: Christopher Aker

Ben Wilson

They sold it for **$900,000,000** in cash. They don't really mention much about the company other than it was doing over **$100,000,000** in revenue. What they don't mention is the guy who started it. He bootstrapped it, raised no outside money, and owned **100%** of it.

Shaan Puri

all the way through the sale

Ben Wilson

All the way through the sale, I owned 100% of it. A $1,000,000 isn't cool. You know what's cool? A $1,000,000,000. So let me tell you this quick story. This was not a big headline; I bet you didn't even see it. My friend, I was in college at the time. He's a little bit older than me, so he was not in college. He was probably in his thirties when I was 21. He started this company called Linode. Did you see yesterday that a company called Linode was acquired for $900,000,000 in cash?

Shaan Puri

yeah who bought it it was

Ben Wilson

at a is it called akamai

Shaan Puri

akamai yeah

Ben Wilson

Akamai. They bought it for $9. Everything I'm going to say is relatively public, or you could piece it together from a bunch of different articles. Basically, they sold it for **$900,000,000** in cash. They don't really mention much about the company other than it was doing over **$100,000,000** in revenue. What they don't mention is the guy who started it. He bootstrapped it, raised no outside money, and owned **100%** of it. His name is Chris. I knew him when I was in college, but not bad at all.

Shaan Puri

the way through the sale

Ben Wilson

All the way through the sale, they owned 100% of the company. Alright, let me give you a little bit of background. I think when they sold, they had around 300 employees. But throughout their existence, they had a relatively small staff. They were doing multiple millions of dollars in revenue per employee. It wasn't run like a family business, but almost kind of like a family business based out of New Jersey. So basically, this guy...

Shaan Puri

what does it do what is linode

Ben Wilson

So, I'm not in this space, so excuse me, but basically, the generic term is cloud computing. Before Amazon Web Services was around, Linode was there. I think some of their customers are like Walmart. They help host applications and websites, which is the non-techie version that I would say. But what are you looking at on the website? What does it say?

Shaan Puri

I'm looking at the website. Basically, it says, "Cut your cloud bill in half." It's essentially about deploying Linux servers in the cloud. I think we used this, by the way, at my previous startup. I remember seeing a bill for Linode.

Ben Wilson

probably they're they're pretty popular but they because they were bootstrapped they couldn't quite keep up with like what's with the other competitor I think digital ocean which is like publicly traded now for multibillion but basically in the early 2000 like 2,005 or 2,006 chris worked at this company called healthstream which was it's not important it was just a boring company and they he worked in like with with computers with tech and he he grew up with an apple and loved tinkering with computers but he what he noticed was that hosting was really expensive so he basically locked himself in his apartment from like 2002 to 2003 and like had a year's worth of savings and like locked himself in this apartment to code and build this website and and he's like if it works it works if it doesn't it doesn't so he launches it and right away it does good enough to pay his salary like single digit 100 of 1,000 of dollars by year 2 because this was in early 2000 I'm I don't even think amazon web services was around at this. And if it was it was like brand new and in fact this whole idea of cloud computing was brand new at healthstream chris was like look we gotta like spend all this money to buy servers what if we just like bought a bunch of servers and rented it out to people and that was like the idea because it's it's really hard for a small business who doesn't wanna create a bunch of servers in their office to like actually host a website host applications things like that so that's where the idea came from and so it grew like a little bit year over year it wasn't growing like crazy for a long time but it was doing okay chris kinda was always obsessed with automation so he did a really good job of automating a lot of the parts of the company and so they could hire relatively small staff you know like only like 10 or 15 people for the first handful of years even when it was getting close to making over $10,000,000 a year still really small and basically the way it worked was I don't think he ever took out a loan I don't it was 100% self financing and so it would make a lot of money like these businesses can make on $10,000,000 in revenue can make 4,000,000 in profit but in order to get to like 30,000,000 in revenue you've gotta go open up a warehouse or rent a warehouse and buy a bunch of servers and there was times where like my friends who worked there along with chris were literally like tinkering and assembling the servers and they did this for years years years and it and it grow it grew nicely and they did a really good job of like automating their customer service even for a long time chris was answering the customer service it grew really quietly he's not on twitter I don't if you Google him you might find 2 pictures there's basically nothing out there about him he's based out of philly and he bought a bank like a like a physically a bank that was the it was a bank turned house it was the house from the real world philly he bought it and they did an article about him how he was restoring this bank and linode it was linode's new office but he was taking a little bit of money off the table enough to buy a $10,000,000 bank but own the whole thing and just yesterday it was announced that it was sold for $900,000,000 in cash

Shaan Puri

Alright, and then I forgot to tell you this, but this is the most important thing. I can't believe we didn't talk about this earlier, to be honest with you. If you're listening to this and you like what you're hearing right now, and you haven't gone and subscribed to the "My First Million" podcast wherever you get your podcasts, then that's the thing you've got to do. There's nothing more important than doing that right now. And don't do it because I said to do it. Do it because you want to do it. Do it because that's who you are. How do you know this guy? You said you knew him in college. He was at your college or...?

Ben Wilson

you just met him while

Shaan Puri

you were in college

Ben Wilson

So, when I was in college, I used to work for that show I told you about, *American Pickers*. A guy came in and he was like, "I start internet companies." I was like, "Oh really? I like entrepreneurship. That's cool! Will you let me hang out with you?" He let me hang out with him, and this guy, his name was Casey. He became a friend of mine and was even in my wedding. I became friends with him for years. He was probably 35 when I was 21, so he was about 10 years older than me. Casey helped Chris get Linode off the ground and was the COO for a decade or so.

Shaan Puri

gotcha wow

Ben Wilson

Okay, Chris now has this huge collection of BMW motorcycles. For motorcycle fans, there’s a subcategory of car enthusiasts, and BMW vintage motorcycle fans is a subcategory of that. Chris owns, I think, one vintage BMW motorcycle from every single year ever produced. So, we are all motorcycle nerds, and we would geek out over that stuff. We would ride motorcycles together.

Shaan Puri

Dude, I need a white guy, rich guy hobby. This is what's holding me back. I realize I need to start buying motorcycles from, you know, the 1930s or anything like that. Then I need to care about it and learn how to restore it, like polish it or whatever. I need to become Tim Allen from *Home Improvement* and have this thing in my garage that I'm always working on. So, when I meet these guys, I gotta have something to say. You got that. You have that something to say. I'm like, "What am I gonna say?" Like, you know, "Hey, what's up, bro? You like the NBA?" And it's like, "Yeah, me and 100 million other people." There's nothing to get excited about.

Ben Wilson

So, Rolexes or rare watches is one of those. If you had to spend $30,000 on...

Shaan Puri

I care about these things. Dude, why do I? I can't care about it. I see it, and I just feel nothing. I'm dead inside.

Ben Wilson

Yeah, it sucks, man. You gotta get passionate about something outside of your house. Yeah, like you, you dork.

Shaan Puri

I literally don't leave my house. The chef was like, "Hey, we need more gas for the grill." I was like, "Oh, grills need gas?" because I've never grilled before. So I asked, "Okay, where do I get that?" and she said, "Yeah, just next time you're at a gas station, grab one." I told her, "I don't really go out to run errands." She replied, "Next time you're out running errands, just grab one." But I really don't go out for errands. So she's been asking for two months, and I finally got it. I was so proud of myself, and she asked, "So did you forget every time?" I said, "No, no, no. I just don't really go out of my house unless it's for very specific things, like taking my daughter to the playground or going to a restaurant and back."

Ben Wilson

Last night, I went to Home Depot just to walk around and look. It was in the evening, and I thought, "I've been at home all day. I'm going to go walk around Home Depot and see what's there."

Shaan Puri

how many home depot workers do you know by first name more or less than 3

Ben Wilson

Dude, what you could do if you go to Home Depot is, if you see a guy wearing Carhartt and paint on their pants, you don't even have to ask a worker. You could just ask that guy who's there shopping. That's why Home Depot's not...

Shaan Puri

he'll take an hour to help

Ben Wilson

you yeah it's like hey do you know where the wood screws are yeah I got you bro like I

Shaan Puri

I wouldn't even know what to ask. I would just be like, "Hey, do you know where home improvement goods are?"

Ben Wilson

man you need to get a hobby like I

Shaan Puri

I bet Ben has one. Ben, do you have one? Ben has one because he's like a history buff. Another hobby for a rich white guy is studying great men throughout history. Ben, do you have any other rapport-building things?

Ben Wilson

I don't know that I do, but I don't know if you guys have seen this. Marc Andreessen has been going nuts reading history books and then tweeting about history. So, I feel like that's your...

Shaan Puri

mind with

Ben Wilson

some of the that crowd yeah

Shaan Puri

Yeah, like if I was with Marc Andreessen and I could not talk about tech, we would be on a silent retreat. It would be a silent retreat.

Ben Wilson

Ben, by the way, you gotta keep your camera on because when I see you laugh, I know we're onto something. Anyway, neither... yeah, you need to get a hobby. A Rolex is a good one; a lot of people like that. If I see someone with a certain Rolex, I talk to them about it. Cars are good, but I have a feeling you don't even know how to drive, so I would stay away from that.

Shaan Puri

I learned how to drive at age 19 because I just wasn't interested.

Ben Wilson

how your wife ever music do shocks me

Shaan Puri

I don't listen to music. I only listen to sports radio my whole life. So if somebody asks, "What songs do you like?" I'm just like, "Oh, you know, I'm cool with whatever." And they're like, "Oh, you're a fucking weirdo."

Ben Wilson

Oh my God, that's great! Yeah, you need to get a hobby, dude. But this is the story of Linode. Kind of a cool story, right? You never really talked about it.

Shaan Puri

just no that's that's awesome