Biotech Bankruptcy to Millions

Martin Shkreli shares how he made his first millions through developing a pharmaceutical company called Retrophin (now Travere).

"I never made any money in hedge funds. When I started my first drug company called Retrophin about 10 years ago, that's where everything came together. I learned pharma by being in hedge funds for 10 years, studying pharma starting with the early Jim Cramer days. I mastered pharmaceuticals - I knew everything about pharma and impressed a lot of people in the field.

The first asset I found actually received FDA approval just a couple months ago. When our company went public in 2012, I was 29 and became CEO of a publicly traded company. The market cap is now about $1.5 billion and the drug got FDA approved, so I'm really happy about that.

When people ask where I made my first million, I made my first $25 million all at once, on the same day. I was literally almost starving, broke, trying to get that big win and it came through. I went from 90% ownership when we started, to 50% when we went public, then down to 30% after our second financing, then to 20%. By the time of our IPO in 2014, I owned about 15-20% and the company was worth $300-400 million.

The funny thing is, even though I had millions in stock value, I actually didn't have any cash. I was sitting there wondering how I could afford to move from a $5,000 to $7,000 a month apartment. I'd go to banks asking to borrow 5% of my stock value and they would say no because it was a new stock and I was the big shareholder."