Dollar Shave Club: Michael Dubin, From Zero to a Billion Dollar Exit in Five Years (December 2018)

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.7 • 31.4K Ratings

🗓️ 5 January 2026

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It started with a massive pile of razors sitting in a Rancho Cucomonga warehouse, and Michael Dubin’s chance meeting of the man who wanted to get rid of them.

In 2010, Michael was working in marketing in Los Angeles, producing online video content. As a hobby, Michael took improv comedy classes.

At a holiday party, he met a man named Mark Levine. Mark was looking for ideas to sell razors he had imported, but didn’t know how to unload.

Michael’s background in video and comedy helped him create a viral launch video for his spontaneous idea: an internet razor subscription brand called Dollar Shave Club.

Five years after launching, Dollar Shave Club sold to consumer products behemoth Unilever for a reported $1 billion in cash.

This episode was recorded in front of a live audience in Los Angeles.

What you’ll learn:

How Michael’s early career at NBC in New York exposed him to a world of video production - and comedy
The fateful party where Michael had to decide whether to start a company to sell razors - or to sell cake slicers
How Michael’s gut feeling was that shaving was a sector that could use disruption - even though it meant facing down daunting incumbent players like Gillette
Michael’s viral launch video was so good, it brought investors on board
How to DIY fulfillment to keep an overnight success on track
How expanding their offerings into other men’s grooming products caught the attention of Unilever and led to an acquisition offer

Listen now to hear the amazing backstory of one of the best-known early DTC brands.

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This episode was produced by Casey Herman with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to how I built this early and ad-free right now.
0:05.7	Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
0:10.1	I heard this stat recently that really stuck with me.
0:14.0	Most businesses only use 20% of their data.
0:18.5	That's like reading a book with most of the pages torn out. How can you
0:22.6	get the full story? And where's the other 80 percent of that data? It's trapped in emails,
0:28.9	buried in call logs and chat transcripts where businesses can't use it. That's where HubSpot
0:34.8	comes in. Their customer platform brings everything together so you can get the full story.
0:41.1	Because when you know more, you grow more. Visit HubSpot.com to get started.
0:52.6	Hey everyone, it's Guy here. So we're giving our team a short break over the holiday, so we're
0:56.8	bringing you an episode from the archives. And this one is from back in 2018. It's the incredible
1:02.5	story of Michael Dubin and how he built Dollar Shave Club. It's one of the OG direct-to-consumer
1:08.1	brands. And you'll hear how a viral launch video took Dollar Shave Club from zero to a billion-dollar
1:14.0	acquisition by Unilever in just five years.
1:17.4	This episode was actually recorded in front of a live audience in Los Angeles.
1:21.0	It was so much fun, and I think you're going to love it.
1:26.9	So our first investor was a company called Science throughout in Santa Monica.
1:30.4	They gave us a $100,000 check.
1:32.6	Actually, no, they gave us $100 check by accident first.
1:35.9	And I got all the way to the bank.
1:37.8	I literally, I got to the bank and I was like, here's my check for $100,000.
1:41.0	You had to fill out the form that said $100,000.
	...

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