Max Klein

I sat alone in the donut shop in the middle of the seedy San Francisco mission district, a large suger covered donut on the plate in front of me. I was waiting for this unknown investor to arrive.

An unkempt and dirty looking man stirred his coffee and looked sullenly at me. Outside the big glass windows, other wretched looking people slowly moved past, the strange bouncing walk and blank faces making them look like zombies dragging missing legs.

A man excitedly burst in and held up a key to the donut seller. “I got an apartment now, man”, he said, his voice rough. “I got my own place”. The donut seller nodded non-commitally. “This is my ticket, man, I got my place.” The last part of the sentence was mostly muttered to himself – everyone in the shop ignored the homeless man who now apparently had a home. I looked at him with interest, the man glanced at me and quickly looked down and away.

A big black car slowly pulled up outside the window. Out of the car stepped a smiling short man – he looked in and waved! I recognized him from his twitter icon – the same half smile, the slightly drooping eyes.

He dropped himself into the seat opposite me and beamed. He had the hearty confidence of successful men – and we got to talking quickly about the tech industry. He told me a number of stories, and one in particular struck me, because it reminded me of some articles I had read recently.

The story was about a company that he had help setup. There was a little trick that one could use to grow rich quickly, and that a few of his friends had used. He gave an example: What you would is simply to spend all your income on selling more of your product, and repeating over and over again, which would lead to insane growth.

You’d start off by finding a product that is selling well and that is used by business, for example Anti-Virus software. Raise a small amount of money and start selling the software by spending all this money on adverts and direct calls. With all the revenue you gather, re-invest it back into your adverts, and sell even more. Sink back all the revenue again into adverts. You are selling a large number of copies, so you go to an investor and raise some amount of money. Use this money to hire more sales staff, pay for more ads and sell even more copies. Reinvest all your revenue. This way, your growth is going to be explosive, allowing you to raise even more money. Once you raise a huge amount of money, then pay yourself out. Instead of re-investing in sales, simply sell your shares and take out the cash. You’re now a millionaire.

If people still believe in your company, you can go raise some more money. Once the investors start asking too many questions, you can do an IPO and the gullible public will buy your shares at a high price. You could even become a billionaire!