Adcock's Flying Car Gamble
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Sam Parr shares a story about Brett Adcock, a 36-year-old entrepreneur from central Illinois who took extreme risks with his wealth.
"Brett started a company called Vettery around 2012-2015. It was nothing particularly sexy, just basically a job site. Hired.com tried to bully Vettery, but eventually Vettery ended up buying Hired.com when they went bankrupt. Vettery was acquired for about $120-150 million.
He made low double-digit tens of millions from the sale, but here's what's interesting - he put 100% of his money into his next venture minus a house down payment. He told me he owned zero outside equities, nothing else.
He started a company called Archer making flying cars/helicopters. He learned it all on his own, read 50 engineering books and built 3 generations of electric aircraft in 2018 at the University of Florida where he was doing engineering courses. They eventually did a SPAC and sold $1 billion worth of these flying vehicles to United Airlines. The company went public for $3-4 billion.
His net worth skyrocketed to a billion, though now it's in the $300-400 million range. For his new startup, he took $200 million and put all of it in. Still to this day he says the only stock he owns is Archer and his house.
When I asked if his wife and family were okay with this, he said 'I've been going all in for 20 years, they're used to it by now.' When asked about people thinking he's nuts, he said 'I don't care what people think, I just want to build the future.'"
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.