Sam Rattner - From Startup to $40M Exit at 23
The Casey Adams Show
Listener.com Podcast Network
4.8 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 30 May 2024
⏱️ 62 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today on The Casey Adams Show I sat down with Sam Rattner.
In this captivating episode, we sit down with Sam Rattner, the visionary founder of Victory and Showroom, who sold his first company for a staggering $40M at just 23. Sam takes us through his thrilling journey in the online gambling and fashion e-commerce industries, sharing the highs and lows of building a business in a regulated market. He emphasizes the importance of taking risks early in life, being fully informed before pitching investors, and the concept behind Showroom—a revolutionary vertical-specific search engine for fashion and e-commerce.
Takeaways
-Starting a business in a regulated market requires navigating complex regulatory processes and compliance requirements.
- Building an asset along the way is important, as it increases the value of the business and makes it more attractive to potential buyers.
- Taking risks early in life, when there are fewer responsibilities, can lead to greater opportunities and success.
- When pitching investors, it is important to be fully informed about the business and to have a clear understanding of the market and competition.
- The future of shopping may involve vertical-specific search engines that provide a more personalized and efficient shopping experience. Product discovery is a challenge in the e-commerce industry, and traditional keyword-based search engines are not effective in helping users find what they are looking for.
- Building relationships with partners is crucial for Showroom's success, and the company curates a list of high-quality brands to ensure a positive user experience.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Background
03:35 Starting Victory and Overcoming Regulatory Challenges
06:33 Building a Business with Acquisition in Mind
09:40 Early Entrepreneurial Endeavors
14:38 Gap Between Snow Plow Business and Victory
17:39 Raising Capital for Victory
21:36 Never Pitching Twice
30:38 Introduction to Showroom
33:14 Thoughts on Live Shopping
36:33 Personal Shopping Habits
38:59 Product Discovery and Keyword-Based Search Engines
39:52 Expansion of Showroom Categories
40:38 Building Relationships with Partners
41:01 Revenue Share Model
42:53 Curated List of Brands and Quality Products
44:12 Choosing Showroom as a Second Time Founder
45:11 Importance of Talent and Team Building
47:07 Product Discovery and Live Shopping
49:30 Acquiring a Former Riverboat Casino Vessel
57:06 Unique Ventures and Pursuing Opportunities
58:37 Embracing Pain and Learning from Challenges
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | All right, welcome back to the Casey Adams show. Today we are joined by Sam Ratner. Thank you so much for coming to show, Sam. |
| 0:07.1 | Thanks, Casey. Appreciate you having me, man. Of course. So you've had quite the career, man. I'm excited to really just not only go back to where your journey all begun, but to talk about what you're currently building. But one thing that stuck out to me when I was not only learning about you, but I heard about you on my first million and learned more about your |
| 0:24.7 | story. So you started a company that you sold to Fubo TV that was in this online sports |
| 0:31.1 | betting gambling space called Victory. What was victory for those that may not know? And what led |
| 0:36.8 | you to starting a company in the world of sports betting online gambling? |
| 0:41.4 | Sure. So Victory was an online gambling company. We had sports betting products. We had table games, |
| 0:47.2 | blackjack, Bachrott, you know, stuff like that. We were, we were an authorized gaming operator of the NBA major league baseball. |
| 0:55.2 | So we had gone through the process of working with the leagues and in turn a handful of the teams. |
| 0:59.7 | It had gone through regulatory compliance and at the time most legal U.S. markets and had |
| 1:04.2 | market access licenses and a few of them. |
| 1:06.8 | Prior to the company, I had been a big poker player. |
| 1:09.6 | So I kind of knew the community a bit, especially the online community, which at the time was mostly overseas. |
| 1:15.9 | And so listening to people in Eastern Europe talk about the online gaming market, you know, at the time when I was, whatever was 18, 19 years old, I was like, oh, this is like a lot different overseas. |
| 1:27.4 | So it's a part of the culture. People bet when they're 18, sometimes when old, I was like, oh, this is like a lot different overseas. So it's a part of |
| 1:28.3 | the culture. People bet when they're 18, sometimes when they're 16 in certain jurisdictions. |
| 1:33.2 | And so there's less of a stigma around it. You're betting, you know, you're betting at the games. |
| 1:37.8 | And so everyone in these group chats, most of which were not really in English, but I managed to plug in some |
| 1:45.6 | Google Translator plugin or something to figure it out. |
| 1:48.7 | But essentially, we're all talking about how there was rumors going around that the United States |
| 1:54.0 | was going to repeal the federal ban on sports betting, online sports betting that is, across |
| 1:58.3 | the country. |
| 1:59.1 | It still be a state-by-state regulatory process, |
... |
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