BrickLink's LEGO Acquisition
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A story about how BrickLink, a LEGO marketplace website, evolved from a one-man project to being acquired by LEGO, with mysterious circumstances surrounding its founder.
"BrickLink was started in 2000 by Dan Jezek. Dan was kind of like a hacker type guy, and he built this website called Brick Bay because he lived in Hawaii on a bay. Eventually, he got sued by eBay, so he changed it to BrickLink.
He ran it anonymously under the name 'Admin' for 10 years and it became a good business. But then he died tragically - no one online actually says how he died. When he died, his mother, who was like this cute old lady who bakes cookies, loved her son and was so passionate about the community that she couldn't let it go away. She and her husband, Dan's stepdad, took over the website.
They didn't even have the passwords because it was just one guy running it. They had to call the web hosting service and explain what happened to get access. They spent 3 years figuring it out and trying to make the community thrive again.
Then a billionaire named Jae Kim bought it. He was basically like the Marcus Pincus of Korea - he created games and became the biggest gaming company in Korea. He bought BrickLink through his family holding company because he loved it. Interestingly, Jae Kim also died under mysterious circumstances in his fifties in Hawaii, where Dan died.
Most recently, after Jae Kim died, LEGO bought the website. They openly said, 'We bought this website because we want to carry on this tradition. We don't want anyone messing with it. We don't intend to do too much with it, we just want to keep it going because this is for the people.'"
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.