BILLIONAIRE UNIVERSITY®
@TheBillionaireU • 59,406 subscribers
BILLIONAIRE UNIVERSITY - Learn from CEO’s & Icons. Part of BILLIONAIRE COLLECTION | In association with @billionmagazine, @ceolawrence.
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In 2004, CNBC interviewed two young founders in the same segment. One was a 19-year-old from Harvard who said his site had "maybe 100,000 people" and he hoped to "make something cool." That kid was Mark Zuckerberg. Nobody remembers the other founder. Not his name. Not his startup. Nothing. Same show. Same age. Same shot. Why?
BILLIONAIRE UNIVERSITY®1,991,172 views • 20 days ago
27-year-old Elon Musk paid $200 a month for a leaky roof office and slept in it because it was cheaper than an apartment. Summer of 1995, no money, no income, so he showered at the YMCA for 4 months and worked out of the nastiest place you can imagine. The office had 1 hidden advantage an internet provider sat on the floor below, so he drilled a hole in the concrete and plugged straight into their server for near-free bandwidth. He couldn’t afford a Cisco T1 router either, so he read a white paper and wrote an emulator, skipped the web server entirely to save CPU cycles, read port 8080 directly, and coded the first national maps, directions and yellow pages on the internet that summer in C with a little C++. The company was Zip2 online city guides, where to eat, how to get around. By 1998 CBS came to film the vintage Jaguar, the 6-figure salary, the dog, the house, the girlfriend, and a market Microsoft had tried to enter and failed. Then the reporter asked the standard 1998 question where is the internet going? The 27-year-old answered like he’d already seen the ending: “The internet is the superset of all media. Print, radio, broadcast all of it folds into the internet. It’s the first two-way medium that’s intelligent, where consumers choose what they see and when they see it.” That was 28 years ago and he was describing a feed. A year later Zip2 sold for $307M, the money became X com, X com became PayPal, and PayPal became rockets. It all started with a drill and the server downstairs.
BILLIONAIRE UNIVERSITY®330,730 views • 25 days ago
Ever noticed how some people eat a burger with both hands and finish it in minutes? It's not about the burger. Sometimes, it reveals a mindset of impatience and always rushing, always chasing the next thing, rarely slowing down to observe and think. Many successful millionaires understand that patience is a competitive advantage. They know that wealth, businesses, and opportunities are built over time, not overnight. The ability to slow down, pay attention, and make thoughtful decisions often separates long term success from short term gratification. Patience isn't weakness. It's discipline in action.
BILLIONAIRE UNIVERSITY®426,019 views • 1 month ago
In 1998 Shaquille O'Neal had a $40 million deal with Reebok. Then a mother stopped him outside an arena and changed everything. She was furious. Told him he was charging kids too much for his shoes. Shag pulled $2,000 from his pocket and tried to hand it to her. She smacked it away. "Why don't you make a shoe that's affordable?" That same day Shaq called Reebok. Told them to keep the $40 million. Walked away completely. Then he went to Walmart and created his own shoe line priced at $19 to $29. Everyone said it would never work. He has now sold over $10 billion worth of affordable shoes. Roughly one million pairs every single month. But the story doesn't end there. While building his shoe empire Shaq became the second largest individual shareholder in Authentic Brands Group, the company that owns Reebok, Forever 21, Brooks Brothers, Sports Illustrated and over 50 other global brands valued at $20 billion. In 2022 ABG bought Reebok for $2.5 billion. Shaq came back as President of Basketball Operations. Since his return Reebok revenue has grown from $1.6 billion to $5 billion. He didn't just walk away from Reebok. He came back 25 years later and helped rebuild it into a $5 billion brand. Net worth today, $500 million. Annual income in retirement $95 million a year. More than triple what he made at the peak of his playing career.
BILLIONAIRE UNIVERSITY®846,401 views • 3 months ago
He signed for $55M as a rookie. In six weeks he's getting $326M more. Wembanyama is 22 years old and already has Nike, Louis Vuitton, 2K, and Fanatics behind him. His endorsements outpace his salary before his real money even arrives. The baseline extension is $252M. Win MVP, DPOY, or make AII-NBA? That jumps to $326M. Stay in San Antonio and earn the supermax on contract three? Analysts project $513M starting in 2031. No player in sports history has a financial runway like this. Is Wembanyama about to become the richest athlete in NBA history?
BILLIONAIRE UNIVERSITY®546,015 views • 2 months ago
Elon Musk just personally bought a $1B power company as an individual, not through Tesla or XAl. It only surfaced through an SEC filing. Here's why it matters, the real bottleneck in Al isn't chips, it's power. A grid connection can take 5 years; Nvidia ships GPUs in months. So instead of waiting in the utility line, Elon bought the thing that makes the line, a fleet of mobile turbines he can park anywhere. Founders wait for permission. Operators delete the bottleneck. That's the whole lesson.
BILLIONAIRE UNIVERSITY®94,679 views • 17 days ago
$700 million contract. $2 million a year take home. Shohei Ohtani told the Dodgers to keep $680 million of his salary, interest free until 2034. Not because he had to. Because he wanted to win. By deferring that money with no interest he left an estimated $49 to $91 million in lost investment returns on the table. He doesn't care. He makes $45 million a year in endorsements. He already won the World Series in year one. The most expensive player in sports history is essentially playing for $2 million a year and he chose that. Was this the smartest contract in sports history or did he leave too much money on the table?
BILLIONAIRE UNIVERSITY®391,990 views • 2 months ago
Only one driver in F1 history has been so fast he almost bankrupted his own team. His name is Kimi Raikkonen. 2012: Lotus signed him on €8M base salary, plus a "safe" bonus of €50,000 per championship point. They assumed the car wasn't fast enough to worry about. 390 points later, 15 podiums, 2 wins. That triggered €19.5M in bonuses. Three times his base salary. By the end of 2013, Kimi told the BBC: "I have not been paid a single euro all year." €17M owed. He threatened to boycott the final two races and missed them anyway because of back surgery. According to his biographer, he was still owed €5M years later but he never sued. He said he didn't want anyone at the team to lose their job. Lotus signed a former World Champion expecting a comeback story. What they got was one of the greatest value for money seasons in F1 history and a bonus bill they couldn't afford to pay. Best clause in F1 history or worst business decision ever?
BILLIONAIRE UNIVERSITY®271,458 views • 2 months ago
In the summer of 2024 Jalen Brunson left $113 million on the table. 👀 He could have signed a 5 year $269M supermax in 2025. Instead he signed a 4 year $156.5M extension one year early. $113 million less in guaranteed money. On purpose. Why? Because he understood the business. That decision kept the Knicks under the NBA's second apron, the hard cap that restricts roster moves. It unlocked OG Anunoby's $212.5M extension. It made the Mikal Bridges trade possible. It built the roster playing in the NBA Finals tonight. But here's the part nobody is talking about. He didn't just sacrifice. He was strategic. Fourth year is a player option. He can opt out and sign a 4 year $323M deal in 2028 or a 5 year $418M deal in 2029. He positioned himself to earn more than the supermax would have paid him anyway. That is not a pay cut. That is a business move. 52 years since the last championship. $113 million left on the table. One player who understood that winning builds more wealth than any contract ever could. Game 1 tonight. 8:30 PM ET on ABC. Was Brunson's $113M sacrifice the greatest team move in NBA history?
BILLIONAIRE UNIVERSITY®164,347 views • 2 months ago
There really are millions of ways to make millions.
BILLIONAIRE UNIVERSITY®53,761 views • 22 days ago
Everyone thought Messi went to Miami to retire. Saudi Arabia offered him over $400 million. He chose Miami instead. Here's why that was the smartest business decision in soccer history. His official MLS salary is $20 million. But his total earnings are $70 to 80 million per year, confirmed by Inter Miami's own owner. The difference comes from a revenue share on every Apple TV MLS subscription sold worldwide and a cut of every Adidas jersey with his name on it. He also holds an equity stake in Inter Miami that converts to full ownership after retirement. No buy in required. The result? Inter Miami is now the most valuable franchise in MLS history at $1.45 billion, up 22% in a single year. The club generates $250 million in annual revenue. More than half of all NFL teams. Career earnings on the field is $1.6 billion. Net worth today, $850 million and climbing. With the World Cup being held in America at the moment, Messi's brand is becoming even bigger. He didn't come to Miami to retire. He came to own it. Was this the smartest business decision in soccer history?
BILLIONAIRE UNIVERSITY®106,668 views • 1 month ago
He was a broke playboy prince. Then he turned a worthless Spanish coastline into the private playground of the Rothschilds, Grace Kelly, and the Rolling Stones. His name was Alfonso von Hohenlohe. A German prince and the son of a Spanish marquesa, he survived a plane crash and sold Volkswagens in Mexico before doing something far stranger: he bought the empty coast of a poor fishing town no one wanted, Marbella, for almost nothing, and sold it off plot by plot to the Rothschilds and the Thyssens. Then he opened an old farmhouse as a 20 room hotel. Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Ava Gardner, Cary Grant and the Duke of Windsor followed, and the whole jet set abandoned the French Riviera for his. Today that farmhouse is the Marbella Club, and the Golden Mile it created is some of the most expensive sand in Europe.
BILLIONAIRE UNIVERSITY®69,656 views • 1 month ago
