My First Million: Billy of the Week: Chris Aker

They, they sold it for $900 million 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 they don't mention

is the guy who started it, he bootstrapped it, raised no outside money and owned 100%

of it. All the way through the sale. All the way through the sale owned 100% of it.

A million dollars isn't cool. You know what'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, uh, I was in college at the time. He's a little bit, he's older

than me. So he was not in college. He was probably in his thirties when I was 21. He

started this company called Linode. Did you see yesterday a company called Linode was

acquired for $900 million in cash? Yeah. Who bought it? It was, um, is it called Akamai?

Akamai, yeah. Akamai. And so they bought it for nine. The art, everything I'm going to

say is, is, is relatively public or it's, you could piece it together in a bunch of

different articles, but basically they sold it for $900 million 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 they don't mention is the guy who started it, he bootstrapped it, raised

no outside money and owned 100% of it. So his name is Chris. He, uh, I knew him when

I was in college. We're not all the way through the sale. All the way through the sale owned

100% of it. All right. Quick break to tell you about another podcast that we're interested

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The company, all right, let me give you a little bit background. I think when they sold,

they had like 300 ish employees, but throughout their existence, they had a relatively small

staff like, 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 of like a family business

based out of New Jersey. So basically this guy, what does it do? What is Linode?

So I'm not in this space. So excuse me, but basically it's, it's basically like the generic

term is it's cloud computing. So basically before Amazon web services was around, Linode

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-techie version that I'm

the, that I would say, but what are you looking at the website? What's it say?

I'm looking at the website basically says, you know, cut your cloud bill and your cloud

bill in half. It's basically like deployed Linux servers in the cloud is the idea. I

think we use this by the way at my previous startup. I remember seeing a bill for Linode.

Probably they're pretty popular, but they, because they were bootstrap, they couldn't

quite keep up with like, what's with the other competitor? I think digital ocean, which is

like publicly traded now for multi billions. But basically in the early 2000s, like 2005

or 2006, Chris worked at this company called, uh, health stream, which was, uh, well, it's

not important. It was just a boring company. And they, he worked in like with, with computers

and with tech and he grew up with an apple and loved tinkering with computers. But he,

what he noticed was that hosting was really expensive. So he basically locked himself

in his apartment, uh, from like 2002 to 2003 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. And 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 2000. 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. Chris was like, look, we've got to

like spend all this money to buy servers. What 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's really hard

for a small business who doesn't want to create a bunch of servers in their office to like

actually host a website, host applications, things like that. So that's where the idea

came from. And so we grew like a little bit year over year. It wasn't growing like crazy

for a long time. Um, but it was doing okay. Chris kind of was always obsessed with automation.

So we did a really good job of automating a lot of the parts of the company. Uh, and

so they could hire relatively small staff, you know, like only like 10 or 15 people for

the first handful of years, even when it was getting close to making, um, over $10 million

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 100% self financing. And so it would make a lot of money.

Like these businesses can make, uh, on $10 million in revenue can make 4 million in profit.

But in order to get to like 30 million in revenue, you've got to go open up a warehouse

or rent a warehouse and buy a bunch of servers. And there was times where like my friends

who worked 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 grew, 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 him. Um, he's based out of Philly and he bought a bank, like a, like a physically

a bank that was the home. 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

Leno, it was Leno's new office, but he was taking a little bit of money off the table

enough to buy a $10 million bank. Um, but owned the whole thing. And just yesterday

it was announced that it was sold for $900 million in cash.

How do you know this guy? You said you knew him in college. He was at your college or

you just met him while you were in college. So when I was in college, um, I used to work

for that show. I told you American Pickers 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 was Casey. He became the, uh, he was in my wedding. I became friends with them

for years and years. He was probably 35 when I was 21 or probably 10 years older than me.

And Casey helped Chris get Leno off the ground and was the COO for a decade or so. Gotcha.

Uh, wow. And Chris now at this point, he's got this like huge collection of BMW motorcycles.

So for motorcycle fans, there's like motorcycle fans is like a subcategory of like car enthusiasts

and BMW vintage motorcycle fans is a subcategory of that. And Chris owns, I think one vintage

BMW 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 realized I need

to start fucking buying motorcycles from, you know, the 19, anything like 30 years ago,

and then I need to care about it and I need to learn how to restore it and like polish

it or whatever. I need 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 got to have

something to say. You got that. You have that something to say. I'm like, what am I going

to say? Like, you know, hey, what's up, bro? You like the NBA? And it's like, yeah, me

and a hundred million other people. There's nothing to get excited about.

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So Rolexes are rare watches is one of those. If you had to spend $30,000, it was so hard

to care about these things, dude. Why do I can't care about it? I see it. I just feel

nothing. I'm dead inside. Yeah, it sucks, man. You got to get passionate about something

outside of your house. Like you fucking dork. I literally don't leave my house, dude. The

chef was like, Hey, we need more gas for the grill. And I was like, Oh, I was like, Oh,

grills need gas. And I was like, I've never grilled it. So I was like, Okay, where do I

get that? And she's like, you know, just like next time you're at a gas station, I was like,

I don't really go to run errands. She's like, next time you're out running errands, just

grab one. I don't really go run errands. So like she's like been asked for two 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, 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 going to,

you know, to a restaurant and back home. You need a little like last night, I went to

Home Depot just to walk around and look like in the evening. I was like, I've been at home

all day. I'm going to go walk around Home Depot and see if like, let's like, let's check

out how many Home Depot workers do you know by first name? What you could do if you go

to Home Depot, if you see a guy wearing car heart and paint on their pants, you don't

even have to ask a worker. You could just ask that guy who's there shopping. 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 where home improvement? Yeah, man, you need to get a hobby. I bet

Ben has one. Ben, do you have a 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 Andreessen has been going nuts of like reading history books and then tweeting about

history. So like, I feel like that's your end of the crowd. Yeah. Yeah, like if I was with

Mark Andreessen and I could not talk about tech, we would be on a silent retreat. It

would be a silent retreat. Ben, by the way, you got to keep your camera on because when

I see you laugh, I know we're on to something. Anyway, yeah, you need to get a hobby. Rolex

is a good one. A lot of people like that. If I see someone with a certain Rolex, I talk

to them about it. Cars is good, but I have a feeling you don't even know how to drive.

So I would say away from that. I learned how to drive at age 19. So because I just wasn't

interested. Yeah. How your wife ever do 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,

Oh, you know, I'm cool with whatever. And they're like, Oh, you're fucking weirdo.

Huh? Oh my God, that's great. Yeah, you need to get a hobby, dude, but this is the story

of Linode. Kind of a cool story, right? You never really talked about it. No, that's awesome.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.