Original subtitles

This programme contains strong language

and is intended for entertainment purposes.

So obviously I googled you,

your net worth on the way here, and you're a billionaire.

Yeah.

So I worked it out.

And basically a million to you is like £20 to me.

So, um, please, could I have £1 million?

When I was younger,

the coolest thing you could be when you grew up

was like a rock star or a footballer

or an actor in Hollywood films.

But now it seems like there's this entire generation

of ambitious young entrepreneurs

dreaming of becoming start-up founders.

It's everywhere in our media.

People don't just envy entrepreneurs

for their net worth any more. They idolise them.

In a world where people have become less certain

about their future, is it that surprising

that they're spending all their time thinking

about money and trying to get it?

I don't know, it just feels like hustle culture has taken over.

Like everywhere you look, somebody is promising

that they've figured out how to get rich quick.

Do you want to be the first millionaire in your family?

So let me show you guys exactly how I do this as a teen.

So I've never really been motivated by money.

Like, I didn't grow up with it. I'm not going to inherit any.

But this cultural moment around hustle culture

has made me think maybe this is the time to actually make some cash.

Just over a year ago, I released my first film with Channel 4

and it actually did pretty well.

So what I did was I immediately leveraged

that goodwill and trust that I'd earned

with them to pitch them a show about me getting rich.

We're on.

We've signed a contract with them guaranteeing

that I am going to make £1 million in 90 days.

I basically had to say like, this is possible.

Even though I've never earned anything like that in my life.

If this goes well, I could end up a millionaire.

If it doesn't go well, then I suppose

that I won't be working with Channel 4 again.

I mean, obviously you're watching this right now,

which means something has happened that warrants a television show.

But, yeah, this is it.

My name is Oobah Butler,

and this is...

The rules are, they're pretty simple.

Any money that I'm spending to try

and generate this money needs to come from me.

The second rule: don't break the law, I've been told.

But otherwise, like, I can kind of do whatever I want.

I've spent the last few days just like consuming books

by successful entrepreneurs for invaluable advice.

Checking out the bullish wisdom of online business gurus.

This is super illegal and I would never do this,

but this is probably the fastest way to make $3,000 in a single day.

Consuming questionable hustle culture content.

What do you learn from 9/11? That it was an inside job.

What does that tell you?

That there's going to be more of them.

What does that tell me?

That I need to get rich and get out so that I'm not bound to the system.

I need to do what, like any good entrepreneur does:

start a business and become a founder.

And, um, I think I've got an idea for a company.

I was reading all this stuff that Stephen Bartlett said about how

you can turn, like, attention into money.

And then I heard about these companies

who essentially create hype

and noise and controversy and then sell things

off the back of that.

So the brand Supreme put their logos on bricks,

a company called mischief, who created these Satan shoes

that were like copies of Nike shoes

that had a drop of blood in every set,

and they did 666 of them and sold them all for $1,000 each.

If I was to do even like one thing

that sold as well as that, I would be well over halfway.

I think that is a business model that I could replicate.

So what the idea of the company is, is,

um, it's called Drops.

And what Drops does is it does stunts

and then it sells products off the back of them.

A load of controversial stuff happens,

it's in the news that then has a very

overpriced item attached to it that you can buy.

So each drop is hopefully going to make money towards my target.

But look, the bigger picture is this: after 90 days creating noise

and building the value of the brand,

I'm going to attempt to sell Drops for £1 million and exit the company.

And I think I've got my first idea for a drop.

So I want to launch the first legal child sweatshop

in Britain in over a century.

So I'd better get started.

So today we're creating the first of five drop ideas,

essentially a luxury fashion brand that is designed by

and made by children, which I'm calling Ethical Sweatshop.

OK, kids. So, hello, my name is Mr Butler.

ALL: Hi, Mr Butler. Hello. Hello.

You do know that we're not getting paid for this?

Yeah, I know. Sorry. What? I want to get paid.

Not going to get paid. We need to get cash.

I've used a loophole so that they can work for free for me.

So we've got a camera set up which is documenting.

So that is technically like a performance,

which makes them performers.

So while I'm having to pay for everything else,

I can keep my labour costs down to zero.

If that sounds mad or bad, good,

that's the whole game with Drops.

They're going to design like football shirts

that have like logos and designs on them for like the kind

of amoral shite that's on football shirts.

Do you know what I mean?

So like a drinks brand or a gambling company maybe.

Who knows what cigarettes are?

OK. The problem is, is that they can make you really, really sick.

They can give you lung cancer... Lung disease.

15 kinds of cancer. Yeah. Yeah.

So what we need to do is to make a cigarette brand

that makes the grown ups forget about

the consequences of smoking it.

Does that make sense? Yeah. Anyone got a name?

Uh. It's coming, it's coming, it's coming.

Yes. We could do like the Butterfly Cigarette?

Butterfly Cigarette? Yeah. I Like that.

Oh, I have an idea.

Start Smoking, I'm Not Joking.

Whenever I see, like empty cigarette packets,

it says something about like, Jesus doesn't like smoking,

so I thought it could be Jesus Says Smoke.

Holy Smokes.

Holy Smokes? Mm-hm. That's actually good.

With their sacrilegious cigarette sponsor, Holy Smokes...

He's praying by the way.

..the kids have nailed the controversy generating brief.

And now we have a concept for them to design the shirts around.

I can't even use any of these machines,

so I don't know how they're going to do it.

So I took some of the best designs to Icarus FC,

this bespoke football shirt manufacturer

who could make them a reality.

How much do you think I can charge for these?

There is, like, no upper end.

It just kind of depends on what you think people

would be willing to pay for.

If I do a £100 shirt,

1,000 people buy it, 100 grand.

But that would cost like 20 grand to pull off.

And that's just money I don't have right now.

If we don't sell them, can I get a refund?

No. Sorry.

I'm already thousands out of pocket.

But my idea was to do four to five drops

to make the brand as valuable as possible.

And if each one ends up costing around 20 grand,

then I need to raise about 100 grand.

If I wanted to say, for example, 100 grand to get going,

on a scale of one to ten,

how likely is a high street bank to give me money?

At this point?

One?

A bank, they're probably going to struggle to lend

when there's no history of sales.

You don't have that, basically.

So if banks are too scared to lend me start-up cash

and Drops needs to find an angel investor quickly,

I know where I've got to go.

New York is home to almost 385,000 millionaires.

I just needed a few of them to give me a little cash

so I could get going on my Drops.

PANTS

Five.

Make it here, you can make it anywhere.

So I'm trying to expand my network so I can find an investor.

And I found this guy, Jon Levy,

who literally wrote the book on networking.

Surrounding ourselves with people who are interesting, ambitious.

How big a part of your own success has that been?

If you have a friend who's obese,

your chances of obesity increase by 45%.

Your friends, who do not know them,

have a 20% increased chance.

They found that this kind of effect is true for happiness,

marriage and divorce rates, smoking habits.

Basically, anything that really matters is contagious.

When I was 28-ish, I'd get upset that I wasn't good with money.

I was overweight. When I read that research,

I thought, wait, maybe the problem is just

that I'm hanging out with people that don't have good habits.

And so I created a dinner where we invite astronauts,

Olympians, Nobel laureates, the occasional member of royalty.

And so I'm suddenly in the middle of a huge community of people.

Let's say you want to accomplish something,

people often call me saying, "Hey, Jon,

"how do I get nominated for the Nobel Prize?

"Or how do I become a New York Times bestseller?"

And so say, for example, I'm trying to pitch to an investor,

you know, I want $100,000.

Yeah, I could probably figure out the right context

to make that happen.

Jon's connected me with some of his network,

so I'd better get going on finding that investor for Drops.

WHISPERS:

It's all made by children.

You're amazing.

I kind of bottled it. She's just too nice.

I work in tech. So we have a rocket company.

And I'm a descendant of Elvis Presley.

And I don't like to brag, but I'm a pretty cool guy.

Great.

What do you think is the quickest way to make money? Shrimp farming.

Shrimp farming? Yeah.

Make some bullshit app.

If the Syrian economy survives,

you can bring all sorts of stuff there, like hotels.

Do crypto. But if you don't know anything about it,

how do you know if you're doing it right, right?

Where did you learn everything?

I taught myself, but also, I mean, my family's in it.

Oh, really? Yeah. My dad was a Fortune 500 CEO.

Oh, shit. '90s. Yeah. He's smart. He actually just went

to prison on last Friday for securities fraud.

Who? My dad.

Seriously? Yeah.

How? What happened? Yeah. The FBI went to his house.

They were like, "If you lie to us, you know,

"it's, like, pretty bad."

He lied to them and he went to prison.

But, um, he taught me a lot.

I think my networking is starting to pay off.

So I met this guy at a party.

He seems interested in Drops,

my business where I do publicity stunts and attach products to them.

And he told me to stop by his office.

How's it go, man?

Iqram was a co-founder of Venmo,

one of America's largest payment apps,

He told me he came up with the idea for Venmo with his mate Andrew.

I came up to visit him without a wallet,

and so he ended up paying for everything,

uh, throughout the weekend, you know,

whatever, drinks at the club, coffee the next morning.

Uh, like you paid for my coffee today.

I should hit you back for that.

Um... No. It's cool. Don't worry about it.

No, no, I got it, I got it. Yeah. That's...

All right. It was a moment like that,

where, right there, for some reason, it clicked.

"Why can't I just send this money to you with my BlackBerry?"

Yeah. You're just like, fuck it, let's just build it.

Yeah. Sounds like a good idea. And it's entered the dictionary.

"I'll venmo you." That we planned. Really?

"It has to be a verb."

And I kind of tried to do that with everything.

Like Jelly, for example. "I'll jelly you."

It has to work in a conversation.

Jelly is Iqram's latest venture,

a gimmicky video sharing app that he hopes

is going to rival TikTok.

My mission is to try in three months

to build the most valuable company that I can.

The part of it is getting the right team in place.

Yeah? Yeah. the thing the questions I have is,

are we going to raise... Are we doing this together, is number one?

Well. Why not? I don't know, man. I mean, my thing...

This is the first, I would say, session of like,

we're going to make something.

We're ideating right now for the next couple of weeks.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Drops is a good name.

Drops is a good name.

Drops is like you could do a luxury line of clothes.

You could have a piece of art. You could have a piece of music.

You could have anything that just, like...

There's always a product which is attached.

We could make a dope-ass Shopify for creators.

We would just need all of the drops

to be really clever and really viral.

Yeah. "And then how did that person do that?"

"Well, he went to whatever." Yeah, yeah. .."creators.com."

Right. You're like the first creator.

Right. How confident are you that we can make a company

worth 1,000,000 in three months? Easy. It's already worth a million.

What do you mean, like? What do you mean?

By the team alone.

Like...

What, the cameraman...

It's worth at least ten million right now.

Hey. How's it going, man? What are you doing?

I'm going to be, I don't know,

possibly your co-founder. I'm your co-founder?

Yeah, man. Cool. So is it hard to make a million?

I would say the first million is the hardest part.

Really? Yeah. I think we should do two targets on that.

Value the company at ten million. Yeah.

Generate the first million of revenue in three months.

That's crazy. It's possible. Really? If you want to hear how this

is going to go in, I would say six months,

maybe next year, we're going to be selling out

Madison Square Garden to watch the entire story

behind how this came to be.

This is so crazy.

What the fuck is going on?

I love it.

The co-founder of Venmo wants to start a company with...me.

I started writing on foil.

We need our team.

I got you: strategy, general hustle.

Sure. You got me: first investor in some ways,

you know what I'm saying? I'm just kind of like adviser.

I'm helping get the company off the ground. Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We need our investors, right? So the company, Drops,

will do publicity stunts with products attached to them.

I'm thinking,

like, you should be able to drop sell a house

on this shit eventually.

Like, who's going to buy the first piece of land on Mars?

Like that should happen through Drops.

I want to sell the opportunity to name a species.

It's like the first branded species.

Yeah. This species is called JellyJelly.

Yeah. I'm just saying. Right.

Could you sell a piece of luggage,

but it's made to look like a bomb. A bomb?

Yeah, it looks like a bomb and we charge $200,000 for it or something?

Whatever. Another item. So next item along could be

like 200 sets of luxury sneakers,

a pair of real-life ad blocking sunglasses.

Basically, you've got two settings on it.

You click it and it blocks all of your vision.

The thing of Drops, the reason it works is because, uh.

THEY LAUGH

I think it works.

Yeah, as what?

Drops.

That could get boring.

You see what I'm saying? At any given day, you can come to me

and be like, I'm not interested in doing this.

Yeah, right. And I can do that. Yeah.

As soon as you get that capital in,

you have a little bit of a responsibility and a commitment.

You don't want to raise a bunch of money,

and then all of a sudden quit. Just give it back.

You'll get a bad reputation in the world.

Let's get some food. All right? Yeah.

I need to find investment before Iqram loses interest.

Tapping into my network. How's it going? Yo.

Yo, I've got this kind of app idea.

We got a guy, office on Friday.

Huge VC.

Lovely to hear from you. They're piling up.

I feel like we're on a roll. This could be the million

cresting over the horizon.

What I'm planning on doing is loads of different social experiments.

OK. Using pranks and stunts to achieve social impact.

Creating noise and attaching products to it, essentially.

You have ten ideas, you hope that eight of them go viral.

These are all very large commitments.

It's an opportunity, Jim.

GUFFAWS Oh, God.

No, I get it, I get it.

But, like, we...I want to see something repeatable.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. With real economics.

What would you give me right now?

Well, I would give you almost nothing.

Nothing, yeah.

We just need 100,000 to get us kicking off.

Uh, send me the ducks. I'll look at the ducks.

That is.... That is a no.

Cheers, Ian. Have a good one. Take care.

I've got one last investment meeting with Iqram's friend, Tom.

We've been told he invests in a lot of stuff.

He's a serious guy. And there's the film crew.

I'm famous, baby. WOMAN OVER PHONE: Hey.

You look good, by the way.

Can you give me a full body shot?

So basically, these things that we're doing right now

are our first drops and the brand

that are going to be taking credit

for all of those things that I've just mentioned is Drops.

This sounds like a brilliant idea. Yeah.

We think you should come on and be a partner on it.

Yeah. Oh, boy. He's raising money.

This is a clever way to raise money.

I don't have the dough right now. It's me and Iqram. I soon will.

Iqram doesn't have money. He's full of shit.

No, no, no, he's join... He's on the team.

No? Good luck. No, I don't know, dude...

I'm not... Look... Yeah, I know, but I'm just telling you.

It's 100 grand. We're going to a couple of people. No.

Just because they have a nice house doesn't mean anything.

That's why I have a nice house because I don't have any money.

What are you talking about? Of course you got money.

Everyone thinks I do. I do. It's liquid.

Yeah... It's in the house and it's in three or four investments.

After not securing financial interest in Drops,

it seems like Iqram has gone cold on me.

Iqram's completely disappeared.

Sent him like 10-15 texts over a matter of a week.

Won't answer my calls.

Clearly, he's either lost confidence in me or I've like...

Or he's lost interest.

But I know he's on his phone

because he keeps on posting these catchy songs on Jelly.

Yo, check it out.

We're making progress on our song to end the war.

Yeah.

# We don't want war

Check that pocket.

So this company has reached out to me called UNFK.

What are you doing? What you got on there?

Oh, man.

Yeah, man. I mean...

He's basically created a platform

pranking corporations into changing, we're shaming them.

It's not a drop, but it's quite similar because what they're doing

is they're trying to create hype and like noise online

and then sell something off the back of it.

But what they want to sell is, is a meme coin.

Meme coins are a type of crypto and anyone can create a meme coin.

Yet unlike established cryptocurrencies,

meme coins have no inherent value except

what their creators and owners can convince other people

to pay for them.

UNFK have created their own crypto coin

and because I've created viral stunts in the past,

they want me to create stunts that inflate

the value of their meme coin.

Got it.

I don't know if UNFK fits this model, but often with crypto,

the hope is that you get in early enough

that you buy it at a moment before it blows up

and you pull your money out when it's at its highest value,

and you make a lot of money doing this.

Like, I know a lot of people who make money from this.

I've always been a bit uncomfortable about it because,

um...

Because my dad said it felt like a pyramid scheme and,

um, you know, he lost a lot...

They lost money when we were kids in a pyramid scheme,

so I've always been a bit sensitive to it.

Let's just have a look at their website.

I'm, like, playing some game where you're basically shooting

the guy who wants to regulate crypto.

Then a builder appears on his head.

No, this is not me.

I wish I had not seen this.

DIRECTOR: But you need the money. I need the money.

I might not like it,

but this could be the money that gets Drops off the ground.

Get in.

100 grand from UNFK.

Four to five different stunts

that promote their... what they're up to.

They're willing to pay $100,000 for it.

So I think that the quicker that I make those,

the quicker I'll get paid.

OK, great. Go for it.

New York City, it's a crazy old place.

Do you work in the city? I do, yes. Can you throw this ball at my head?

Oh. Thanks, man.

I don't know, I just feel like it's...

This is bad. I'm associating myself with,

like, basically a political ideology that I...I don't agree with.

This film is just driving me mad.

Now, because of this whole project,

I'm being forced into making decisions

that I wouldn't in real life.

I just really want this to be over now.

I preferred my life when I wasn't...

Literally all I think about is money now.

Gunnar is...

Now he's basically saying that, you know,

what we actually said was

that it was based on views and specific payoffs.

I looked at the value of the coin. It's gone down.

I don't think they're getting the pick-up that they hoped they would.

But that's not my job. My job was to create these videos.

It just feels like it's not going well.

I suppose I'll just do the second video.

I'm here at McDonald's and today

we're doing some blind taste testing.

Crypto bros have pulled out.

So much time has gone into it,

and now they're saying they're not going to pay for it.

Of course, like I have no protections.

There's nothing signed.

I was my stupid fault for rushing this thing

through without a contract in place or anything.

The reality is UNFK aren't happy with the videos and the deal is off.

They've only paid us $18,000.

I feel like I've lost $82,000 that we thought we were going to get.

Let's have a look at the value of their coin.

That's funny. So basically the last

bump it had was when we put out the last video.

The currency is almost worth nothing now.

That makes me feel a bit better.

With 994,000 still to make and nearly half of my time gone,

my American dream is over.

I need to go back home.

I've spent way too long in America on things

that haven't really made me that much money.

Everyone's saying things that could completely change your life,

but you know, in the end, it's all just fucking hot air.

Oh, God. Iqram's posted a snappy video proudly announcing something.

Hey, what's up, everyone?

Sam and I are excited to announce

the JellyJelly coin to support the Jelly creators on the Jelly app.

You know what the number one trending meme coin

on the planet is right now?

Iqram launched this coin,

Jelly-My-Jelly, which was an app when I met him,

and now it's a meme coin.

And...

And now it's got $250 million worth of money behind it.

IQRAM: We could launch a Jelly token together and you get some of those,

that money.

The thing of Drops, the reason it

works is because, uh...

I could have been involved in this meme coin.

I just didn't listen when he pitched me it before.

Everyone's made money. Everyone. It's so depressing.

So this one guy managed to earn more than 2.4 million USD

within just three hours from JellyJelly token.

And, uh, the account's called Hitler.Sol.

I could have made a million.

I got money to spend. You know, I need to do something.

So I'm going all in on launching my first drop.

Do you want to see it? I would love to see it.

And this is made by children? Yeah. Are you actually selling them?

Yeah. They're £100 each. £100 each? Yeah.

Should I go down?

Do you want to go down the helter-skelter-type thing? Yeah.

Oh, it's a bit...bit slow.

I've never shot in a sort of cigarette-themed

football shirt before. No.

We're not trying to sell them to children, right?

They're just created... The brand is just created by children.

OK. Ethical Sweatshop. Jesus says smoke.

Well done, guys.

So we launched the Ethical Sweatshop trailer yesterday.

We have created the first fully legal child sweatshop

in Britain in over a century.

And it's doing really well. GQ did a profile about it.

There's influencers who are now making these reactive videos.

This shirt was made by children in a sweatshop

and the company uses that for their marketing.

So what it's actually going on here?

I'm a little bit concerned that people think it's a joke,

but this is a real product.

To prove Drops is a viable business, I reckon I need to sell 1,000.

Let's launch it.

There's already been a sale.

I mean, it's been six minutes now and we've got eight sales.

Where does this stop? One a minute.

If we can get up to, like, 100 grand, then that'd be good.

It does seem maybe like they're starting to slow down.

Refresh it again.

Yes. All right.

That was our first sale in two hours.

I'll refresh just to make sure there's not been any others.

We sold shirts all over the world. We sold about 100.

And it means we've made about £10,000.

Against a million, that's 1% of the target.

And that was a lot of work.

That didn't do well enough, basically,

and I don't have the time or money to make four more physical drops

and products to grow this brand and sell it for a million.

It's just not a scalable, realistic idea.

It's not a business model that's gonna make me a million in 90 days.

So I do have an idea. I've got another one.

And it's something that I've learned, again,

from consuming endless hustle culture, -

all of these people have their own classes,

educational classes that they sell

in how to make money.

Even people who don't have huge profiles and stuff

are making money out of these, selling courses.

I want to show you absolutely everything

about how I've made over $10 million selling online courses.

So what I think I will do is... is do my own one,

is write a three-hour masterclass about how to make money

and how to get rich.

And the thing is with this is that,

unlike drops, the sky is the limit.

Like, I can do something once

and then sell it for an unlimited amount of time.

I can put it up for sale, £100 each, sell 10,000 - millionaire.

We live in a world where the richest people

or the most valuable companies

are essentially just compelling ideas.

Hello, my name is Oobah Butler.

This is the trailer, the launch video for the masterclass,

for Million Dollar Ideas, an instructional class.

It's three hours long.

I've hired a professional crew to shoot it...

..hired a venue, and I found actual students.

I've had a website built,

paid a third-party company to publish an article I've written,

calling me a genius, on Forbes Georgia.

Million Dollar Ideas: Sharing The Blueprint Of Success.

It's published on Forbes Georgia, right? So this is the hack.

So now I can say, "As featured in Forbes."

I've created this stunt to promote the course,

where I used actors to convince an actual art collector

into bidding for a random stick from my brother's garden.

You're all people who collect art, and I'm interested in the value.

So I want to start at £100.

200. 200? All right.

200. 300. 300.

That just makes me want it, you know?

THEY LAUGH

Can we have a 400? 400, 400. 400!

Whoa!

Anyone at 500?

500. 500. Easy.

GAVEL BANGS

Sold. OK. So what you just participated in

was a bit of a social experiment. Ari and Rebecca are actors.

We're not going to take the £500.

I think, as this goes on TV... Exactly. It's going to be worth it.

..it will have a value. It actually will have value.

Do you want it? Of course. Yeah.

I think that will do well when it comes out -

"I sold a stick for £500."

It's a good idea.

The video is now... The stick video for the masterclass, the trailer,

has now got two million views.

Forbes. Stick.

I genuinely think this might be it.

I'm being serious here.

Like, if 0.5% of the viewers buy the masterclass -

like, not a big percentage - I'm a millionaire.

I think...

I think we're going to do it.

OK, so, um...the Masterclass has been up for just over a day

and, er...it had one sale.

Another complete waste of time.

There's more money in sticks.

CHATTER AND LAUGHTER

OOBAH BLOWS That's £5 down.

I think I've got a lifeline.

So Iqram has been back in touch, finally.

I feel like it would be insane for me now to have the chance again,

to be back in the room with Iqram and to just...

..not take up the opportunity.

I think we've got to go. We've got to go back to New York.

Hey, man. Yo. How's it going? Good to see you. Yo.

LAUGHING: Sorry about the... No, man. How's it...?

How you been? How you been?

A lot of shit going on.

I'm working on Jelly and all that stuff.

Yeah, yeah. JellyJelly.

I didn't mean to disappear like that. Don't be silly.

But I'm glad we're here. so... Yeah. No, man, I appreciate it.

I mean, now we've kind of run out of time on this show.

We're supposed to make the million.

What are you thinking? Like...?

I think we're done. I think we're... I feel like it's...

OK, look, we might be able to do something

where I bring you to a couple of investors I know and be like,

"You invest, like, a million bucks in Oobah for a percentage..."

Takes 10% of... Of everything.

We're selling... I'm your manager. "We're selling 10% of him."

"We're selling..." Yeah, selling 10% of Oobah.

So in that kind of deal, it's basically everything forever?

Some people don't like it

because it's like they feel like it owns your life.

But we close this deal? Boom! A million.

I'm in! Same!

THEY LAUGH

Exactly. Jelly owns 1% of you. Yeah, yeah. That's what we do.

Sounds like a plan, man.

Well, I think I might have just got a lifeline.

We can do a deal that we sell off 10% of me

for the rest of my life for a million.

So I'd be a millionaire, and I wouldn't have fucked this up.

Iqram's introducing me to a friend of his, creator Naz Daily,

who he thinks might be interested in this deal.

He wants to sell -

auction off - 10% of him and his future earnings... Mm.

for a million bucks.

Forever. Forever? I may be interested in buying. Interesting.

10% forever? No way you're serious about this.

Why? What, you think that the valuation's too low?

I mean, I think 20 years from now, you'll look back and be like,

"I made the biggest, stupidest mistake of my life." Mm.

I would...I would love to buy 1% of you.

1%? Yeah. Interesting.

It's 10% that's up for offer. No, but...

Whoa, we have our first investor!

It's multiple people, right? You think it's better as a round?

No, no, it's a round. You can't do one person. That's not gonna work.

Then it becomes true slavery. No, no.

He wants to give you 100k and he wants, like, 10 million back.

Yeah. No, I don't want ten million back. I just want to have fun.

THEY LAUGH

That's bullshit.

THEY LAUGH HARDER

Maybe I'll buy 0.5%.

50,000. 50,000.

I can get my team to start it. We'll just do a little group.

Yeah, I'll start a group first. But, yeah, basically...

Maybe this works?

It's fucking crazy, man. That was fantastic.

THEY HIGH FIVE Yes! I mean, it's happening!

50,000's huge. But to hit my target, I need to move faster.

So I'm arranging an event where I invite

as many high-net-worth individuals as possible

and we hold a live auction of me and my future earnings,

hosted by Iqram.

It's all going down in the JellyJelly world.

Look at the value of the coin. Look.

It's dead.

"The backlash over the JellyJelly

"coin has been hilarious to watch."

"Rugged by billionaires."

Another person -

"Absolutely rugged everyone.

"Jail them."

"..justify to the FBI the withdrawal

"of 250 million in 24 hours."

Then Iqram's come out and been like,

"This is not a pump and dump thing. #jellyjelly."

Maybe it was good that I didn't get involved with this.

Sunday. 10% of me on the table.

A live round of investing.

So it's happening. Yeah!

I saw this go crazy online.

What, the Jelly coin? The Jelly coin, yeah, yeah.

What the hell is happening? Yo, it was insane, man.

This shit went from 0 to a $250 million market cap

in two hours.

Did you make a load of money?

Well, everything is held. We're holding everything. So...

So that...? I have to be clear - no-one on the Jelly team

is doing what's called rug-pulling. Right. This is long-term. Yeah.

Oh! Missed the easy one.

Good game. Good game. Lovely game. Good game, man.

Whew! Got to take a little break?

Eh? Heh. All done.

If I was Iqram, and a load of people on the internet

were calling for me to go to prison,

I, like, wouldn't be, like, bragging

and talking about how much money the coins made.

It went from 0 to 250 million in less than two hours.

Super viral!

There's something admirable about him, in a way.

The way that everything that happens to him, he just spins as a win.

Maybe that's the pitch.

Like, everything that's happened to me, I just claim it to be a win.

Thank you for coming. This is my mentor, Iqram.

Million Dollar Ideas, my educational platform...

This might be a bad idea.

Do I really want to give 10%

of everything I'll ever make to somebody?

Do I really want to spend the rest of my life

working with someone I've never met before?

Yeah, I definitely wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't for the challenge

and the time and the constraint and the pressure.

There's a handful of investors come in.

It's a small group of 30, 40 people,

and they're going to have the opportunity today

to buy 10% of me for a million.

That is the offer.

Do you take Apple Pay? THEY LAUGH

Isn't the Venmo guy here? Yeah. Yeah, he's right there.

If he doesn't hit a million, there's no round.

I'll only accept the full million.

Everything else means I'm giving away

a piece of my life forever for not enough money.

Today is the last chance, really.

Can everyone hear me?

Yeah! Right, welcome.

This is all going to be slightly weird, and, um...

Right, Iqram, come up!

Come on, everyone. All right. APPLAUSE SLOWLY BUILDS

IQRAM CHUCKLES

So first, I was told to offer some credibility to what we're doing.

I started Venmo, and some of the things I've learned

is you gotta do something crazy in order to build something big,

so just working with him, I've seen how things can go viral,

and he's going to be like the next MrBeast, you know?

A creator that's capable of building a multibillion-dollar empire.

I've got a soft commitment from Nuseir, from Naz Daily -

he's going to put in the first 50k.

So, Oobah, without further ado... Thank you.

APPLAUSE

Yeah. So my name is Oobah Butler, and I want to make a million.

Million Dollar Ideas. Forbes covered it.

This brand called UNFK.

We sold out the run, so it was a complete success.

The product...is me.

I'm going to auction off 10% of me with a reserve of a million.

That's the opportunity.

Whoever the hell wants to come in on this thing...

Anyone got any questions about how this works? Like...? Go ahead.

Well, let's not hope for that. THEY CHUCKLE

I'm assuming we'll have a "return the money" clause or something.

I mean, I'm worth more dead than alive at the moment.

LAUGHTER Jesus.

I'm telling you now, no-one has ever done this before.

Oh, do we...? Whoa, whoa, whoa, do we have a bidder?!

LAUGHING: I think... Hold on a second. Wait, wait.

Do we have our first bidder?

What's the offer here? We... Don't accept anything yet.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, do we have a bidder?!

LAUGHING: I think... Hold on a second. Wait, wait.

Do we have our first bidder?

What's the offer here? We... Don't accept anything yet.

Personally? Yeah. Give us something.

All right. We have our first 50, ladies and gentlemen.

In for 50 grand right there.

I should say as well... By the way, just so you all know,

I'm not getting involved in any rug pulls.

You know, my reputation is... You know.

So I have the rare opportunity of being an adviser. So I...

I haven't written a cheque.

100k? Yeah.

I'll consider it.

OK. He's in, he's in. 100k. Yeah, for real.

We got 100k.

As soon as this round closes, it closes.

And if we don't hit a million, it dies.

Is there anyone else who wants to come in

on the round of buying 10% of me?

Going once.

Twice.

Three times. OK. You've raised... 200.

Oh, is it...is it not gone?

It's gone, it's gone. That's it.

Thank you very much, guys. I appreciate it.

Give it up for Oobah. It takes balls to...

WHOOPING AND APPLAUSE DROWNS SPEECH

CHATTER

We raised 200,000, so it failed. We failed.

That was humiliating.

Er...I'm kind of done.

I don't want to play the game any more.

I want out, you know?

I mean, this was fantastic.

Yeah, it was great.

We're going to look back at this two or three years from now

and safely say we've created

the next fucking Gwyneth Paltrow, MrBeast. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, this kind of shit fuelled... Yeah, totally. Does it fuel you?

Yeah, totally. I'm like, "Yo, fuck it.

"I made Venmo. What are you fucking talking about?"

And then...

..a lifeline.

All right, let's get to Miami.

So it's 4:19 in the morning.

I'm going to Miami to try and get a million.

This is one last roll of the dice,

and there's an investor who's legitimately interested.

So one of the people who wasn't able to make the auction,

crypto hedge fund manager Kavita Gupta,

got in touch and wants to meet in Miami.

She's got $500 million at her disposal.

She told me she could be in for the full million.

But I'm worried that she's also going to ask me

to make a meme coin with her.

If she signs this paper, then, er...I'm a millionaire.

Hello! Hello.

You're always on the television.

I don't know. Like, Trump is just pumping crypto like crazy.

They only find only one brown woman to talk about it!

THEY LAUGH

Oh, I should wear a watch, at least.

My mum, anyways, always has a problem

that I don't look rich enough for her.

OOBAH LAUGHS

She thinks I look poor.

I pitched Kavita what I'd offered at the auction -

10% of my business and all my future earnings

in exchange for £1 million.

This whole thing for me has been about making a million. OK.

And you said earlier, "Why not a billion?"

Yeah. I mean, I said, "Why not billion?"

If you're making a million, that's easy.

But maybe it's easy in my world, I don't know,

because if you would have come to me first,

we would have already done a meme coin.

It is a fad. Like, I would be the first one to say, like, "NFTs"...

Yeah, yeah. ..because I don't know any real use case of meme coin.

But if you have followers, if you have interaction

and real incentives for people to be part of your community,

it's very simple.

Oobah meme coin has to be part of it.

What do you predict that, in ten years,

the valuation of this whole structure could be?

Your best-case scenario,

definitely anywhere between $5 billion to $10 billion valuation.

Mm. So this is a no-brainer, then.

KAVITA LAUGHS

So do you think you're in?

Let's do it. Seriously?

Let's do it. LAUGHING: OK, fine! Let's do it.

Amazing.

THEY LAUGH

OK. So I get 10% of you.

So my lawyer put it together. It's just a letter of...

I'm ready. Like, a letter of intent.

With my lucky pen.

Oh, my God, we're doing this.

DRINKWARE CLINKS Cheers!Cheers!

I think I just...

I made a million.

So mad, isn't it? So fucking mad.

The trials and tribulations of this whole thing, and then...

..flip of a coin, a couple of lucky rolls,

and all of a sudden you're stood on a balcony in Miami

and you've got a million. £1 million.

It just doesn't feel real to me. The whole thing doesn't feel real.

It just feels like a kind of game and...I'm at the end of something.

But, really, truly what I've just agreed to

is just the start, isn't it, really?

I'm probably the most sour-faced person

who's just made £1 million that you've ever heard.

I just don't... It doesn't feel real to me.

That's why I'm so... Do you know what I mean?

I just feel a bit, like...

Sea air - this is really nice - blowing,

and I'm, like, just allowing my...

..allowing myself to just take a breath

for the first time in a while.

FAINT MUSIC PLAYS UNDER BREEZE

The meme coin idea?

Yeah, I mean, she seems to think we can make a lot of money doing it,

and I don't know.

I mean, wouldn't I be an absolute numpty

not to be blown a little bit by that? Come on.

My problem with meme coins is that, ultimately,

it's people at the end of it who can be exploited

based upon things that I've said in bad faith.

And that's what happened with Mum and Dad

in that pyramid scheme in the '90s.

They were sold a dream and then exploited.

It ruined them.

It's something I feel vehemently against

and I don't want to do,

but, my God, that's a lot more money than I thought would be in it.

Dad.

How's it going?

I did it. I'm a millionaire.

Can you tell me about what happened with the pyramid scheme?

You get drawn in

on the back of people who've been successful in the business -

or purported to be successful - when in reality, as I found,

weren't making hardly any money whatsoever.

Then, slowly, as it starts to not work,

you think, "I just can't afford to keep going in this any more."

Then you're left with this... It's just a massive hole.

You couldn't make it work, and if you had to make it work,

you were going to have to rip people off. Right.

Sell somebody a dream and then just milk them.

Keep the treadmill going, the conveyor belt of losers.

That comes easy to some people,

but I think to the majority of people, it doesn't.

Yeah. And then afterwards,

the underlying current of deception -

it still hurts now.

All right. Love you, Dad.

I told Kavita I was out.

Over the course of 90 days,

I hadn't made the million that I'd promised Channel 4.

I'd made more.

You see, throughout this process, I kept thinking,

"This can't be how the ultra wealthy do it."

And it turns out they're operating in a different universe.

They don't make money like the rest of us.

They build value and then borrow against it.

Loans are the secret weapon of the super-rich.

Not loans like a mortgage or a payday loan -

these loans have absurdly low interest.

And the thing is, they're not even taxed as income.

Look, if I'd have earned £1 million in 90 days,

I'd have had to have given £450,000 straight to the taxman.

But if I'd have got one of these types of loans,

I could play with all of it.

I could buy cars, properties,

social media platforms.

These loans are gatekept

for a select few.

They're not just available to anybody.

You have to convince lenders you're worthy of them.

One approach is to lie.

Mr Trump intentionally misvalued his asset

for the purposes of increasing his net worth

and inducing banks to offer more favourable terms.

But I can't break the law, so I needed another strategy.

Get a genuine offer, use that to establish my value...

If I had an offer... Yeah? ..for a percentage of my business

and I turned down a million for that,

what am I worth, then?

You're worth 10x, at least.

..and then take that to the bank.

You work on Wall Street.

MASKED VOICE: I do work on Wall Street.

I raise millions of dollars for companies

in the public and private markets.

To you, what does it mean that I've had that offer,

in terms of your willingness to lend me money?

Well, it helps a lot. It gives me some level of clarity,

in that there is someone else in the room

that would give you that amount of value.

At $1 million at 10%, your valued at $10 million.

Given that you have a third party

that has valued you at this amount from a reputable source,

then, yeah, I would be comfortable with 80% loan-to-value.

So I would give you $8 million in loan.

There is a process that we have to go through,

but that wouldn't take any more than two weeks.

90 days ago, a high street bank wouldn't lend me a single pound

towards a business loan.

Eight million.

Now? I can get access to £8 million from Wall Street within two weeks,

and finally I'm off the conveyor belt of losers.

I've joined the club.

MUSIC: Showtime by Valentino

Subtitles by Red Bee Media