Billy of the Week: Chris Aker

they they sold it for nine hundred million dollars in cash they don't really mention much about the company other than it was doing over a hundred million revenue what they what what they don't mention is the guy who started it he bootstrap it raised no outside money and owned one hundred percent of it all the way through the sale all the way through the sale owned one hundred percent of it million dollars isn't cool you know what it's cool a billion dollars so let me tell you this quick story this was not a big headline i bet you didn't even see it so my friend i was in college at the time he's a little bit he's older than me so he was not in college was probably in his thirties when i was twenty one he started this company called lin did you see yesterday a company called lin was acquired for nine hundred million dollars in cash yeah who bought it it was at act is it called aka aka yeah aka and so they bought it for nine the our the everything i'm gonna say is is is relatively public or it's you could piece together in a bunch of different articles but basically they they sold it for nine hundred million dollars in cash they don't really mention much about the company other than it was doing over a hundred million in revenue what they what what they don't mention is the guy who started it he bootstrap it raised no outside money and owned one hundred percent of it so his name was chris he i knew him when i was in college but we're not bad all the way through the sale all the way through the sale owned one hundred percent of it the company alright let me give you a little bit background i think when they sold they had like three hundred ish employees but throughout their existence they had a relatively small staff like at like they're doing like multiple millions of dollars in revenue per employee and it was it wasn't run like a family business but almost kind like a family business based out of new jersey so basically this guy what does it do what is leonard so i'm not in this space so excuse me but basically it's it's basically like the generic is this it's cloud computing so basically before amazon web services was around lin was there and i think some of their customers are like walmart so they host they help host you know applications and websites is the is the non tech version that i'm the that i would say but what are you look at the website with it say i'm looking with the website basically says you know cut your cloud bill or your cloud bill in half it's basically like deployed linux servers in the cloud is the idea i think we used this by the way my previous start i remember seeing a bill for lin probably they're they're pretty popular but they because they were bootstrap they couldn't quite keep up with like what's the other competitor i think digital ocean which is like publicly traded now for multi billions but basically in the early two thousands like two thousand five or two thousand six chris worked at this company called health stream which was it's not poor it was a boring company and they he worked in like with with computers with tech and he he grew up with an apple and loved tinkering with computers but what he noticed was that hosting was really expensive so he basically locked himself in his apartment from like two thousand two to two thousand and three and like had a year's worth of savings and like locked himself in this apartment to code and build this website and he's like if it works it works if it doesn't it doesn't it so he launches it and right away it does good enough to pay his salary like single digit hundreds of thousands of dollars by year two because this was in early two thousands i'm i don't even think amazon web services was around at this point and if it was it was like brand new and in fact this whole idea of cloud computing was brand new at health stream and chris was like look we've better like spend all this money to buy servers if we just like bought a bunch of servers and rented it out to people and that was like the idea because it's it it's really hard for a small business who doesn't wanna create a bunch of servers in their office to like actually host a website host application things like that so that's where the idea came from and so it grew like a little bit year over year it wasn't growing like crazy for a long time but it was doing okay chris kinda was always obsessed with automation so we did a really good job of automating a lot of the parts of the company and so they could hire relatively small staff you know like only like ten or fifteen people for the first handful of years even when it was getting close to making over ten million dollars a year still really small and basically the way it worked was i don't think he ever took out a loan i don't it was one hundred percent self financing and so it would make a lot of money like these businesses can make on ten million dollars in revenue can make four million in profit but in order to get to like thirty million in revenue you've gotta go open up a warehouse or rent a warehouse and buy a bunch of servers and there was times where like my friends who work there along with chris were literally like tinkering and assembling the servers and they did this for years and years and years and it and it grow it grew nicely and they did a really good job of like automating their customer service even for a long time chris was answering the customer service it grew really quietly he's not on twitter i don't if you google him you might find two pictures there's basically nothing out there about them the he's based out a philly and he bought a bank like a like a physically a bank that was the whole it was a bank turned house it was the house from the real world philly he bought it and they did an article about him how he was restoring this bank and lin it was lin new office but he was taking a little bit of money off the table enough to buy ten million dollar bank but on the whole thing and just yesterday it was announced that it was sold for nine hundred million dollars in cash how do you know this guy you said you knew in college he was at your college or you just while you were in college so when i was in college i used to work for that show i told you american picker and a guy came in and he was like i start internet companies and i was like oh really i like entrepreneurship that's cool will you like just let me hang out with you and he let me hang out with them and this guy his name is casey he became the he was in mind wedding i became friends with them for years and years he was probably thirty five when i was twenty one or probably ten years older than and casey helped chris get lin off the ground and was the coo for a decade or so gotcha oh wow and chris now at this point he's got this like huge collection of b motorcycles so for motorcycle fans there's like motorcycle fans is like a sub category of like car enthusiasts and b and vintage motorcycle fans is a sub category of that and chris owns i think one vintage b w motorcycle from every single year ever produced and so we are all motorcycle nerds and we would geek out over that stuff and we would ride motorcycles together dude i need a white guy rich guy hobby this is what's holding me back i realize i need to start fucking buying motorcycles from you know good nineteen anything like thirty years ago and then i need to care about it and i need to learn how to store it and like polish it or whatever i to become tim allen from home improvement and have this like thing in my garage i'm always working on so i could just when i meet these guys i gotta have something to say you got that you have that something to say i'm like what am gonna say like you know hey bro are you like the nba and it's like yeah me and hundred million other people there's nothing to get what about about so rolex or rare watches is one of those if you you gotta spend thirty thousand dollars of care about these things dude why do i i can't care about it i see it i just feel nothing i'm dead inside yeah it sucks man you gotta get passionate about something outside of your house like it's fucking do like i i literally don't leave a house dude by the the chef was like hey we need more gas for the grill and i was like oh i was like oh grill need gas and i was like never girl and i was like okay what do i get that and she's like you know like next time i'm at a gas station i was like i don't really go to run errands she's like next time we got running errands just grab one gotta really go run errands and so like she's like been ask too months just i finally got it and i was like so proud of myself and she's like so did you forget every time i was like no no i just don't really go out of my house unless it's like for very specific things like i'm taking my daughter to the playground i'm gone you know to a restaurant and back home you need a little house last night i went to home depot just to walk around and luck like like in the evening i was like i bit at home all day i'm gonna go walk around home depot see if like let's like let's check out like many home depot workers do you know by first name no like three what you could do if you go to home depot if you see a guy wearing car and paint on their pants you don't even have to ask a worker you could just ask that guy who's their shopping home people he'll take an hour to help you yeah like hey do you know where the wood screws are yeah i got you broke like i wouldn't even know what to ask i would just be like hey do you know what home and wear home improvement is are really yeah ben you need to get a hobby like i bet i bet ben has one ben do you have ben has one because he's like a history buff another white which rich white guy hobby to have is like you know studying you know great men through history ben do you have any other you know very rapport building rapport building things i don't know that i do but i don't know if you guys have seen this but mark and has been going nuts of like reading history books and then tweeting about history so like i i feel like that's your in the that crowd yeah yeah like if i was with morgan jason and i could not talk about tech we would be on a silent retreat it would be a silent but by the way you gotta keep your camera on because when i see you laugh i know on to something anyway yeah you need to get a hobby rolex is is a good one a lot of people like that if i see someone with a certain rolex i i talked to them about it cars is good but i a feeling you don't even how a drive so i would say away from that i learned how to drive at age nineteen so because i just wasn't interested yeah how your wife ever music you shocks me don't listen to music i only listen to sports radio my whole life so if somebody's like what songs do you like i'm just like you know i'm cool with whatever and they're like oh you're fucking weirdo oh my god that's great yeah you need to get a hobby dude but this is the story of lin kind of a cool story right you never really talked about it but no that's that's awesome