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Category: Mergers & Acquisition

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How Doritos Were Invented From a Disneyland Trash Can

Would you be surprised to know that the invention of Doritos was influenced by a trashcan at Disneyland?
In the early days of Disneyland, a restaurant named Casa de Fritos invented Doritos by repurposing stale tortillas they bought from a local vendor. The chips proved to be so popular they were eventually rolled out nationally by Frito-Lay in 1966.
Today the brands sells $1.48 billion of the chips every year.
Here’s how it all started…

How Doritos We’re Invented in a Trash Can

Casa de Fritos” was, unsurprisingly, all about the Fritos (corn chips). Customers got free chips, and they were incorporated into all of the dishes at the Disneyland restaurant.
All ingredients served at Casa de Fritos, such as the tortillas, chips, meat, beans, and fresh produce, were supplied by a company called Alex Foods, located just a few blocks from Disneyland.
One day, one of the salesmen from Alex Foods, making a delivery to Casa de Fritos, noticed stale tortillas in the garbage and gave the cook a little tip:
“fry them and sell them as chips instead of just throwing them away.”
So the cooks gave it a try and while they were at it, through in some seasoning. The result was an enormous success. Their customers couldn’t get enough of them.
Here’s how the company found an innovative way to sell them…

Who the Hell Was the Frito Kid?

Being a theme park restaurant, Casa de Frito, had a theme of their own. The company started selling chips from a “Frito Kid” vending machine. During the 1950s and 1960s, Disneyland guests could insert a nickel into the coin box and the Fritos official mascot, The Frito Kid, would come to life, lick his lips, and call for Klondike the Miner to send a bag of Fritos down the chute.
The stereophonic audio track changed with each purchase, so each customer would hear a different interaction between the Kid and Klondike.


Photo: Spacemountainmike, used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Casa de Fritos was located next to the Mine Train Through Nature’s Wonderland attraction (which was replaced in 1979 by the runaway mine train rollercoaster Big Thunder Mountain Railroad).
They were a massively successful…
A year later, the new VP of Frito-Lay, Archibald Clark West, dropped by the restaurant without warning and saw hundreds of customers stuffing their faces with the seasoned chips.
So he had an idea to turn the chips into a brand.
West quickly made a deal with Alex Foods to produce them as a separately branded snack. He later branded them as Doritos” (the name is Spanish for “little pieces of gold”).
When Doritos started to get big, production of the chips was moved to a bigger factory in Tulsa. West test-marketed the chips in southern California. They sold out faster than Alex Foods could produce them.
The whole world fell in love with Doritos. West even loved Doritos to his grave (literally). At his funeral, his daughter threw Doritos into the grave after him (as per his request).
Today Doritos is the top ranked tortilla/tostada chip brand in the world.100 million bags of various types of Doritos are consumed daily.

WATCH:

PS>>>Here’s a throwback to the bizarre time when Doritos launch a foot long chip…

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Mergers & Acquisition Personal Development

How a Boy Who “Never Made a Sub” Invented Subway.

Subway currently holds the status of being the biggest fast-food chain on the planet. They surpassed McDonald’s and KFC’s store count decades ago with over 44,000 stores in 110 countries. Last year they generated $1.3 billion in revenue (triple since 2019).

Their recent spike in gross sales though has exposed a tragic dilemma facing the franchise. More on that in a second but first, here’s how it all started.

Subway was launched by a 17-year-old from the Bronx who had never made a sub in his life until opening day. Despite his lack of subs, the sandwiches he sold eventually earned him a net worth of approximately $3 billion and became the most successful franchise business on the planet.

 

The Founder of Subway Never Wanted to be in Business…

Subway launched in 1965 when 17-year-old Fred DeLuca asked his family friend, Dr. Peter Buck, a nuclear physicist, for advice on how to pay his college tuition. With an idea to open a submarine sandwich shop and an initial $1,000 investment from Dr. Buck, the two formed a business partnership.

In fact, Fred had zero intentions of ever becoming a businessman. This was his plan to put himself through school in order to become a doctor.

The partners opened their first restaurant in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in August of 1965, where they served freshly-made, customizable and affordable sandwiches to local guests. Subway was originally called ‘Pete’s Super Submarines’.

And people ate up the concept of a giant foot-long sandwich “made right before your eyes, the way you want ’em.” As it turns out, customizing your sandwich was a novelty in the fast food industry.  This is probably also where Burger King adopted their slogan; “have it your way”.

 

 

Subway’s Insanely Effective Franchise Model…

What put Subway on the entrepreneurial map was their decision to begin franchising with a goal of operating a chain of 35 stores. The franchise model launched the Subway brand into a period of incredible growth and popularity.

Not only were Subway franchises successful, they were, and still are, one of the cheapest chains to open in the franchise world. It costs between $116,000 and $263,000 to open a Subway franchise. Compare that to opening a McDonald’s, which costs up to $2.2 million.

But here’s the catch…

Because Subways are easy to open, the number of stores skyrocketed. Between 1990 and 1998, store locations rose steeply from 5,000 to 13,200. And in that same period of time, gross sales rose by about $2.1 billion. Subway’s success continued into the early 2000s. At a time when obesity was rising rapidly in America, Subway continued to market itself as a healthy alternative to fast food.

Things were going great, until this happened…

 

Is This the Beginning of the End for Subway?

Starting in 2014, Subway’s sales began steadily dropping. Behind the scenes, many of the reasons for Subway’s success had turned on them. Quiznos was once Subway’s main competition, but tons of sub chains, like Jimmy John’s, Firehouse, Potbelly, and Jersey Mike’s, and fast-casual chains like Panera, were offering similar fresh and healthier options for sandwiches and wraps. Stealing away Subway’s dominant market share.

Other fast-food chains weren’t the only competition for Subway franchises. With Subway’s franchising model making it so easy to open locations, stores inevitably started opening up around the corner from each other in lucrative markets. And these locations in close proximity began cannibalizing each other’s sales.

It’s a real problem…

 

Subway’s Franchise Model Has Been Under Attack Since the 90s

In recent years, Subway has closed thousands of locations. Here’s why…

The Subway franchise agreement states the company can open locations anywhere they want. There’s no protected territories for the owners. So franchisees really have no say-so in where the other franchisees are going to open.

In 2016, Subway’s US location count dropped by 359. It lost another 909 locations in 2017. It dropped another 1,108 locations in 2018. In part due to market saturation and a drop in sales, but also Subway has been attempting to clean up the cannibalization problem that plagues their franchisees.

Another contributing factor to Subway’s dip in growth for their store locations are the size of the companies royalties at nearly 10% of sales!

The company’s 8% royalties (which are still in effect today)  are the highest in the industry (compared to 3-5% at other fast food stores like McDonald’s)

 

But all criticism aside, the brand still maintains 60% of the quick-service sandwich market in the U.S. A pretty impressive accomplishment for a kid from the Bronx with zero experience.

 

 

WATCH:

 

 

 

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Mergers & Acquisition

“Competition is for Losers” Peter Theil’s Billionaire Monopoly Strategy

“If you’re starting a company, you always want to aim for a monopoly and avoid competition. Hence, competition is for Losers.” – Peter Thiel

 

Who the Hell Are You Calling a Loser?

In a famous Y Combinator master class, Peter Theil founder of Paypal and Palantir, presented his famous business strategy that requires founders to position their growth for a monopoly of the industry.

‘Competition is for losers’ is one of his mantras. ‘Monopoly is the condition of every successful business’ is another. It is the ultimate test of entrepreneurship to build something that is one of a kind, sufficiently different from what already exists to render the idea of competition redundant.

In this article, we’ll cover how Peter approaches new markets and how to create a monopoly. But first, here’s a brief background on Thiel and why you should even care what he has to say in the first place…

 

Who the Hell is Peter Thiel?

You could say he knows a thing or two about the tech space. Peter Andreas Thiel is a German-American billionaire entrepreneur and venture capitalist. A co-founder of PayPal, CIA-based Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund.

He was also the first outside investor in some of the biggest unicorns in silicon valley including Facebook, Stripe and Space X.

His companies and investments have earned him a net worth of $5 billion. He also gives a small number of entrepreneurs $100k over two years to skip college and build their own companies.

You can watch his talk at Y Combinator. Or read the summary below…

 

WATCH:

 

So How Do You Enter a Crowded Market? Don’t…

As Peter explains, especially to tech founders, companies need to be very careful about what markets they enter and especially how they differentiate themselves as not better, but something entirely different when approaching markets of high competition.

Similar to the Blue Ocean Strategy, Theil explains that if you’re entering into a  crowded market it’s very difficult (and often expensive) to gain the attention needed to build effective brand awareness. Especially if you offer similar product or service…

Success in saturated markets requires a lot of money to advertise, dramatically lowering your margins and ability to win. This has also been dubbed, the start-up graveyard.

 

Evaluate the Cost Trap of Entering Saturated Markets

The only way to enter saturated markets with established larger brands (with way more money than you) is to make a product or service completely better and different than everyone else on the market.

But doing so is way easier said than done. That’s where the case for chasing emerging market trends pays off. Emerging companies (especially tech), should forget fitting into existing markets and instead pursue entirely new and emerging  potential markets. Even if it’s risky.

Here’s why…

When entering markets with less or no competition, you have a greater chance of success and it’s far easier and more cost effective to acquire the attention you need to scale. Simply because you’re one of a few players in the space.

Even if you launch in an emerging market with an average or similar product at the beginning, you will have more time and opportunity to develop and perfect your average product and service while you’re building your audience and future customer base.

In fact, if you think about it, that’s exactly how most successful tech companies have been able to scale so fast as early stage market players. They rode the wave of the trend and captured all the early attention establishing their future industry dominance.

 

Conclusion:

Facebook wasn’t the first social network site, Google wasn’t the first search engine, Microsoft wasn’t the first OS company or Apple wasn’t the first computer company. But they were early in the market, they caught the trend and they executed better than everyone else. And when market reached its full potential they became big brands or monopolies.

That’s what Peter Thiel meant by “competition is for losers”…

 

 

WATCH:

 

 

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Mergers & Acquisition

WATCH: High School Dropout Turns $500 Website into $35 Million Fortune Using This Platform…

Meet the Former MMA fighter, high school dropout, and single father who had absolutely zero business background bought a business for $500 on an online business flipping site. 9 years later, his business is doing $35 million a year.

His advice to you? “Don’t start a business, buy one.”

Here’s how you can do it too…

 

But first, here’s a quick background on Ramon Van Meer

Today Ramon Van Meer is the CEO and founder of Alpha Paw, a website for pet owners that offers products for every dog breed-specific health issue. Ramon bought the business for $300k and has built it to $35M in revenue within three years.

 

Where’d he get the money to buy it? Through a series of website flips that started with a small content blog about financial credit, a site he bout on Flippa for $500. He promoted it and built a small following and sold it. He did that again about 3-4 more sites.

You can watch Ramon’s incredible exit story below or listen to it in the Quiet Light podcast, but want I wanted to show you, is the site Ramon and thousands of others go to buy and sell websites. Flippa.com.

 

WATCH:

 

Want to Buy or Sell a Website? Meet Flippa.com

Flippa.com is an auction site where you can buy and sell internet businesses. Don’t know how to code or build a membership site or dropping shipping store? No problem, just buy one.

 

What Can You Buy and Sell on Flippa?

Flippa lets you can buy and sell websites, drop shipping stores, domains, and even mobile apps. The portal is aimed to assist website owners in selling their websites as well as assisting others in purchasing established websites, domains drop shipping sites, and mobile apps.

Sites can range from just created with zero revenue to multi-million in reoccurring sales…

If you’re interested in learning more about how to use Flippa and the pros and cons of the platform, check out this full report and guide from Niches Pursuits.

 

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Mergers & Acquisition Personal Development

WATCH. This is What Makes Taco Bell So Successful

Taco Bell is the largest Mexican restaurant on the planet by volume. Here’s how they did it…

Taco Bell has been dominating Mexican fast food since the 1960s. They own over 7,000 locations consistently generating over $10 billion dollars in annual sales.

Watch the full story how or read the summary below.

 

WATCH:

 

 

Here’s  5 reasons Taco Bell is a household brand:

According to this episode of Company Man anyways…

 

1. Founder Glenn Bell (hence the Bell logo)

First and foremost, Taco Bell wouldn’t be a thing without it’s founder, who knew how to spot a potential opportunity when he saw one.

A cook who served in WW2, Bell returned home to start a restaurant in San Bernardino CA. Inspired by the McDonald’s franchise, Bell copied the model. Literally, Taco Bell used to be called Bell’s Hamburgers, they originally sold cheeseburgers and hot dogs.

Until one day Glen added tacos to the menu, altering the course of taco history…

 

 

2. Taco Bell Single Handedly Introduced the World to Tacos

The second reason for Taco Bell’s now icon status, was their role in introducing tacos the American market.

After 14 years in the restaurant business and having gone through 5 different restaurants and concepts, Glen launch Taco Bell in March 21, 1962 in Downey CA.

At the time, most Americans had no clue what a taco was. When ordering, most customers asked for a “tay-ko”, simply because they simply had never heard of a taco. Kind of like the whole gyro “guyroh” thing…

And they obviously fell in love with them. Putting Taco Bell on the map.

“I always smile when I hear people say that they never had a taco until Taco Bell came to town”. – Glen Bell

 

 

 

3. Pepsi Gave Them a Shit Load of Money

Another reason for their success was their partnership deal with Pepsi.

In the 1970s Pepsi was expanding and looking to invest in new markets. They bought Pizza Hut for $315 million, giving them access to sell their sodas to customers dinning in the largest Pizza Chain on the planet up until that time. Pepsi  wanted to saturate the Taco consumer market too. So they gave Glen a handsome $125 million for the right to sell Pepsi products at every Taco Bell.

Pepsi’s infusion of cash enabled the franchise to massively scale. They went from just under 1,000 locations in 1978 to nearly 7,000 by 1998. Meaning, almost every Taco Bell you’ve ever visited was started between the 80’s-90s Pepsi infused growth period.

 

 

 

4. Absolutely Bat-Shit Crazy But Catchy Menu Items…

While declaring to serve Mexican food, no one buys into that claim when it comes to Taco Bell. That’s because they have become famous for coming up with bat-shit crazy menu items.

The fourth key to the mega taco franchise model was their dedication to marketing. Especially standing out in crowded markets through their off the wall menu item.

Items like the Cheesy Gordita Crunch, the Mtn Dew Baja Taco Blast, their most successful product launch; the Crunch Wrap Supreme, and most recently the Doritos Locos Tacos. Or finally the rather nachos fries.

 

5. Taco Bell Excels at Marketing to Drunk People too…

Despite how much you want to hate them, Taco Bell continues to stay relevant across generations. They have a consistent track record of being customer focused and keeping their cost low. Something they have been promoting in their ads for decades…

One of their most successful marketing campaigns was “the forth meal of the day” commercials. After noticing a high influx in sales late at night (wink wink), the Bell starting promoting a “4th meal of the day”.

 

WATCH: 

On a more serious note though, probably the biggest reason Taco Bell has been so success over the years has been their commitment to their original mission; “thinking outside the bun”. Mission accomplished…

 

 

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WATCH: Abandoned by Parents, Kid Vows to Be Successful. Builds $4B Wendy’s Fortune

Dave Thomas was an orphan. Growing up, eating hamburgers in restaurants was the only thing that gave him a sense of belonging and purpose. When he was 8-years-old, he set out a plan to open the best restaurant in the world and later founded Wendy’s.

But even at an early age Dave knew that in order to grow a successful business, he was prepared to learn everything about the business from the ground up.

WATCH:

 

15 year old Dave started as a busboy at a Hobby House Restaurant in Fort Wayne, Indiana where a guy named Cornel Sanders was touring the country, trying to convince restaurant owners into converting their buildings into Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises.

Thomas’ boss, Hobby House owner Phil Clauss, was one of those restaurant owners.   Hobby House became Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Thomas became one of KFC’s first cooks.

A new waitress, Lorraine Buskirk, caught his eye and they were soon married in 1954.

Dave and his wife Lorraine grew their family to include five children – Pam, Ken, Lori, Molly and Melinda (Wendy was her nickname and who Dave named the business after). All the while, Dave worked toward his goal of owning his own restaurant.

He was pivotal in helping grow KFC. He simplified the menu and came up with the classic rotating red bucket sign. Thomas also convinced the colonel to appear in TV ads for Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Thomas’ success eventually enabled him to sell his stake in the four franchises back to the colonel, for $1.5 million. He used the money to open his first Wendy’s and became multimillionaire by the age of 35.

Today there are 6,900 restaurants worldwide.

Dave Thomas passed away in 2002 with a net worth of $4.2 billion. Dave wins.

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Is This the End of Shopify? Shopify Lays Off 10% of Employees

Shopify Inc. SHOP 1.90%▲ is cutting roughly 1,000 workers, or 10% of its global workforce, rolling back a bet on e-commerce growth the technology company made during the pandemic, according to recently shared internal memo.

Leaving many people wondering why?

According to the Wallstreeet Journal reported today, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke says company made wrong bet on pandemic-fueled boom in e-commerce growth.

The main reason for the layoffs was rapid hiring to accommodate increased ecommerce shopping trends.

Basically, Shopify was betting on that the rapid Covid-era lock downs would increase in ecommerce shopping would continue as a trend, hastening a greater adoption of online shopping.

That didn’t happen…At least not for Shopify.

 

What is Shopify?

Based in Ottawa, Canada, Shopify is an e-commerce service that allows merchants to quickly build and customize websites for selling products online. In addition to plan fees, Shopify makes its money in part by taking a percentage of customer transactions. In short, they are a platform that enables users to create drop shipping sites.

 

WATCH:

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He Ran Away at 16 and Built a $4 Billion Business. John Nordstrom

Did you know that the $14 billion Nordstrom chain stores were started by a sixteen year old who fled to America with only $5.00 (roughly $119.00 in today’s currency) in his pocket?

His name was John W. Nordstrom, who’s dad died when he was eight. In need of money John fled his home at 16 and emigrated to New York City  in 1887.

WATCH: 

Nordstom Did a Series of Back Breaking Jobs Just to Get By….

John labored in mines and logging camps for years as he crossed the country to California and Washington. In 1897, he headed north to Alaska and the Klondike in search of gold. Two years later, he returned to Seattle with a $13,000 in Alaskan gold ready to make his next move.

Nordstrom partnered up with business partner Carl F. Wallin, a Seattle shoemaker Nordstrom had met in Alaska. Wallin offered him a partnership in a shoe store with zero retail experience. In 1901, the gold rush veterans had opened their first store, Wallin & Nordstrom, on Fourth and Pike in Seattle.

Then Nordstrom’s Son Scaled the Family Business into an Empire…

Nordstrom’s sons took over in 1928. By 1960, two stores had grown into eight. The Seattle flagship was the largest shoe store in the country, and Wallin & Nordstrom became the nation’s largest independent shoe chain.

Under a third generation of Nordstrom sons, Nordstrom, Inc. entered into new markets well beyond Seattle. Clothing was added to the shelves in the 1960s and the company was renamed Nordstrom Best in 1969. In 1971, the company went public with its first stock offering  and by 1973, Nordstrom Best formally changed its name to Nordstrom

Today, Nordstrom is doing $14.79 billion in revenue. The family still runs the chain of 247 rack stores across 40 states from their headquarters in Seattle.

WATCH:  

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The Multi-Billion Dollar KFC Franchise Started as a Gas Station Recipe?

The ‘finger-lickin’ good’ chicken has been dominating the American fast food fried  chicken for decades after a man named Harland Sanders mastered his 11 herbs and spices recipe. But not many people these days know, that he did it from inside his gas station during the Great Depression.

It started way back in the 1930s when Colonel Sanders, who went by his name Harland Sanders back then was running a gas station in his home town in Kentucky.

Here’s the full story…

WATCH:

 

From Gas Station to Multi Billion KFC Franchise

Harland was born in 1890 and raised quick on a farm outside Henryville, Indiana. His father died when he was just five years old. The oldest child, Sanders was left to care for his two siblings.

His mother taught him how to cook when he was seven. By 13, Sanders left home to pursue a series of professions including railroad worker and insurance salesman. Neither panned out.

In 1930, he took over a Shell filling station on US Route 25 just outside North Corbin, a small city on the edge of the Appalachian Mountains. It was at this gas station when he converted a storeroom into a small eating area using his own dining table, originally serving home cooked meals like steaks, country ham, and fried chicken to his gas station customers. He called his side hustle, Sander’s Café.

Things were going great until one day when became absolutely obsessed with the thought of mass producing fried chicken. Here’s why…

 

 

 

The Simple Invention That Made KFC Immortal

Sanders was supper dissatisfied with the 35 minutes it took to prepare his chicken in an iron frying pan. Time is money and during the Great Depression, his customers couldn’t didn’t have either to spare.

To make matters more complicated, Harlen refused to deep fry. Although a much faster process, in Sanders’ opinion it produced dry and crusty chicken that was unevenly cooked.

The on the other hand, if he prepared the chicken in advance of an order, there was sometimes waste at the end of the day. Then a new product emerged…

In 1939, the first commercial pressure cookers were released, predominantly designed for steaming vegetables. Sanders bought one and modified it into a pressure fryer, which he then used to prepare chicken. The new method reduced  his production time to be comparable with deep frying, while simultaneously retained the quality of pan-fried chicken. Now he could prepare high volumes of quality fried chicken at scale.

That is, as long as he could get anyone to buy into the his franchise model.

 

 

How Did Harland Sanders Franchise KFC?

In July 1940, Sanders finalized what later became known as his Original Recipe of 11 herbs and spices. Although he never publicly revealed the recipe, he admitted to the use of salt and pepper, and claimed that the ingredients “stand on everybody’s shelf”.

Sanders hit the highways pitching his chicken concept to as many restaurant owners he could meet. Independent restaurant owners would pay four cents on every piece of chicken sold as a franchise fee, in exchange for Sanders’ his recipe and method, and the right to advertise using his name and likeness.

Coined the name “Kentucky Fried Chicken”. Sanders adopted the name because it distinguished his product from the deep-fried “Southern fried chicken” product found in restaurants. Tripling his sales in the first year alone.

That’s when he met Wendy’s future founder Dave Thomas…

The Time Sanders Met the Future Founder of Wendy’s

By 1956, Sanders had six or eight franchisees, including Dave Thomas, who eventually founded the Wendy’s restaurant chain. Thomas developed the rotating red bucket sign, was an early advocate of the take-out concept that Harman had pioneered, and introduced a bookkeeping form that Sanders rolled out across the entire KFC chain. Thomas sold his shares in 1968 for $1 million and became regional manager for all KFC restaurants east of the Mississippi before founding Wendy’s in 1969.

For more on that story, here’s the Wendy KFC connection covered in this story: WATCH: Abandoned by Parents, Kid Vows to Be Successful. Builds $4B Wendy’s Fortune

 

Then, in another random series of cosmic associations, here’s the brief time a serial killer was made a KFC franchise manager at the request of his father in law..

 

The Time When a Serial Killer Became a KFC Manager…

In the 1960s, John Wayne Gacey was made manager of several Iowa KFC franchises where also around this time and would start his murder spree raping, torturing and murdered at least 33 young men and boys. Gacy regularly performed at children’s hospitals and charitable events as “Pogo the Clown” or “Patches the Clown”, personas he had devised.

There’s currently a documentary that covers the story on Netflix called Conversations With a Killer: The John Wayne Gacey Tapes.

It looks absolutely freaking terrifying…

Outside of the documentary, it’s often claimed that Gacy was such a fan of his workplace, he would provide free fried chicken to his colleagues and even insisted on being called the ‘Colonel’.

It would seem his love for the chain continued right up until he was put to death by lethal injection at the age of 52. His last meal request? A bucket of original recipe KFC.

 

The Fast Rise of the KFC Franchise

In 1960 the company had around 200 franchised restaurants; by 1963 this had grown to over 600, making it the largest fast food operation in the United States. At 73 years old, Harland Sanders sold KFC for $2 million in 1964 ($17.5 million in today’s dollars).

The company went through multiple acquisitions over the years to eventually Pepsico than Yum Brands who still owns and operates the franchise today. Yum Brands operates KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and The Habit Burger Grill.

Today KFC is pulling in $2.793 billion in revenue with 22,621 locations across 150 countries. And it all started in a gas station in Kentucky…

 

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Video Exposes the Most Powerful Company You’ve Never Heard of. The Blackrock Story

Blackrock is a company that virtually no one had heard of until recently. They have become one of the largest organizations on the planet with $9 trillion in assets under management.

That’s larger than the gross domestic product (GDP) of every single country around the globe, with the exception of China and the United States.

 

WATCH:

 

For perspective, the grand total of wealth funds managed by over 91 funds across the world is projected to be worth approximately 8.2 Trillion US Dollars. A single investment management firm based out of New York manages more funds than all the sovereign wealth funds in the world.

Crazy right? In fact…

If you were to make $1 every second, you’d be worth as much as BlackRock in about 240,000 years.

What’s more, if you research every major publicly traded company in the world and you’ll find that BlackRock is its first, second or third-largest shareholder. They also apparently own part of CNN and FOX.

How Much of the Media Does BlackRock and Vanguard Own?

  • 18% of Fox
  • 16% of CBS (and therefore also ofSixty Minutes)
  • 13% of Comcast (which owns NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, and the Sky media group)
  • 12% of CNN
  • 12% of Disney (which owns ABC andFiveThirtyEight)
  • Between 10-14% of Gannett (which owns more than 250 Gannett daily newspapers plusUSA Today)
  • 10% of the Sinclair local television news (which controls 72% of U.S. households’ local TV)

So yeah they own a  pretty influential piece of the news.

Where Did Blackrock Come From Anyway?

The Company was co-founded in 1988 by a very well-connected billionaire by the name of Larry Fink, who has been described as “a defacto middleman and lynchpin between Washington, DC, and Wall Street.” The firm operates globally with 70 offices in 30 countries and clients in 100 countries.

BlackRock started making headlines during the 2008 financial meltdown.

When the financial crisis of 2007-2008 hit, the US government hired BlackRock to clean up the mess from the crisis by managing the toxic assets that were owned by firms like the Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Freddie Mac. In fact, even amidst the current financial crisis caused due to the Coronavirus outbreak starting in 2020, the Trump administration turned to Blackrock to bail out companies overleveraged in debt. the government is once again looking for BlackRock’s expertise.

Today, at least three of BlackRock’s leaders now hold prominent roles in President Joe Biden’s cabinet.

Given the company’s habit of forming shadow cabinets ahead of presidential transitions and its involvement in the new Federal reserve programs, Bloomberg even went as far as calling BlackRock our “fourth branch of government.”

Pretty impressive positioning for a company that’s only 34 years old.

WATCH: BlackRock’s Investment Strategy: