Vice's Staged Office Deal
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A story about how Vice's founder Shane Smith staged a fake office environment to impress potential investors.
When Vice was just getting started, either IBM or Intuit was coming to their office for a pitch meeting. 24 hours before the meeting, Shane built a glass conference room to make the office look legitimate. He then hired a bunch of actors and got tons of friends to come work in the office to make it look important.
Shane's philosophy was "we want them to think we're rich." The staged office worked - they eventually got a $25 million deal from this company.
Years later when asked about this and other stories, Shane openly admitted to making up or embellishing stories, saying things like "we needed a story on how the company started" and would just take stories he heard from others and make them his own.
Sam Parr
Host of MFM and fitness influencer
Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.
In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.
Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.
After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.
Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.