Lady Gaga & Atom Factory: Troy Carter (2018)

As a kid, Troy Carter dreamed of being a rapper, but soon discovered he was a better manager than a musician. He took Lady Gaga from obscurity to stardom – helping shape both her music and her brand. Then he turned his gift for spotting talent to spotting investment opportunities with his company Atom Factory. PLUS, for our postscript "How You Built That," we check back with Robyn Gerber for an update on Parkarr, a mobile app that helps drivers find street-parking. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Guy Raz?

  Hey, it's Guy here. You know, a lot of you have started to tell us about your all-time favorite quotes and stories from our interviews. And this one definitely has a bunch of them. I'm not going to spoil anything by telling you what you're about to hear. Let's just say, you'll know them when you hear them. Oh, and this episode ran about a year ago. It's with Troy Carter, and I hope you enjoy it.

• 0:26Guy Raz?

  So what happened to the business?

• 0:29Speaker 01

  It was over. You know, I didn't have the cash flow. And the phone started ringing. And it was the landlord of that building saying, you know what, rent hasn't been paid. You know, all of my vendors, you know, started calling me. My house was under foreclosure. And my wife and my mother-in-law ended up pawned in their wedding rings to, you know, to save the house.

• 0:54Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  You know, and with me, I, you know, I never considered suicide, but I know why people do.

• 1:07Guy Raz?

  From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 1:19Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on today's show, how Troy Carter went from the rough streets of West Philly to launching the career of one of the biggest pop stars in the world, Lady Gaga.

• 1:36Guy Raz?

  So it usually takes a bit of instinct, some failure, and a lot of luck to figure out what customers are going to want to buy. Seth Goldman, he figured a lot of people would want a barely-sweetened iced tea. And with Honest Tea, he turned out to be right. Herb Kelleher, he thought people wanted cheap flights with no frills. And, well, we got Southwest. But for Troy Carter, it wasn't just that he thought Lady Gaga would be huge. It's that he had no choice because at the time he met her, and this is just 10 years ago, he had lost all of his money. He was totally broke. But somehow, over the next few years, Troy essentially built a company.

• 2:21Guy Raz?

  You could call it Lady Gaga, Inc., a sprawling empire of writers, dancers, choreographers, costume artists, roadies, musicians, producers, engineers, marketers, publicists, you get the idea. And Troy built that without any family connections, or money, or formal training. In fact, much to his mother's disappointment, Troy dropped out of his high school in West Philadelphia in 1990 to pursue a dream. And that dream was to become a rapper.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  We had this idea that we were going to be this rap group called Too Too Many. And it was me and two of my best friends.

• 2:59Guy Raz?

  OK.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  And we called ourselves Too Too Many because it was, we only had enough money for one of us, so it was always too too many of us. And my best friend said, if we ever meet Will Smith, Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince, they're going to give us a record deal. So that we had the sole focus and sole purpose of meeting Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince.

• 3:20Guy Raz?

  Because those were the guys from Philadelphia.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  They were the only guys from Philadelphia. They were from our neighborhood. They were successful. They were like gods in Philly. And they were the way out. That was Plan A, B, and C.

• 3:34Guy Raz?

  So did you meet them?

• 3:36Speaker 01

  Yes, we actually hopped the train. And we didn't have money, so we just would wait for the train to pull up, then jump over the turnstile and take the train down to Delaware Avenue. And we knew Jazzy Jeff had a recording studio there. And we just would wait outside of the recording studio. And I think we did that for almost six months. And Jeff used to see us outside, but would never let us in. I think he thought we were stalkers or something. And then one day, we saw some friends in the studio that let us in. Will Smith just happened to be in the studio. And we walked in and we played our demo tape.

• 4:13Guy Raz?

  And he listened to it right then and there?

• 4:15Speaker 01

  He listened to it. And we actually went outside. It was snowing. And we said, well, we want you to see us dance, too. So we actually started dancing in the snow. I think we quickly found out we sucked. But, you know, Will saw some potential in us. And he said, look, you know, how are you guys getting home? And we said, we don't know. And he drove us home that night and basically told our parents that, you know, he had us covered. We were gonna be OK.

• 4:44Guy Raz?

  And what was the track you played for him? Do you remember How Goes?

• 4:47Speaker 01

  Oh, my god. It was pretty terrible. So I don't-

• 4:52Guy Raz?

  You have to give us some of it.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  It was a song called Where's the Party? That was like, I'm not telling you-

• 4:59Guy Raz?

  You gotta tell us how it goes.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  And actually, I shouldn't even said the name because you'll go on Google now.

• 5:06Guy Raz?

  We're gonna find it.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  I know you are.

• 5:16Guy Raz?

  It's not so bad.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  We thought it was really good. Will thought it had some potential. We put it out, and it went double wood.

• 5:26Guy Raz?

  So you made no money off that?

• 5:29Speaker 01

  We made zero money. I probably still owe Will Smith money for that record.

• 5:34Guy Raz?

  But you established a relationship with Will Smith, which was kind of a big deal, I guess.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  Yes. And you know what? And Will has a partner still to this very day named James Lassiter. You know, he was in the studio that day we played the demo tape. And he was Jazzy Jeff's and Fresh Prince's manager. He actually got the job as their manager because he was the only guy in our neighborhood with a car. And James had become this sort of mogul in the industry. And I wanted to be James. So in my soul, I wanted to be less Fresh Prince and more James. So I just kind of put myself under James, and James became my teacher.

• 6:17Guy Raz?

  So you basically moved away from being a performer at that point. And did James give you a job?

• 6:23Speaker 01

  Yes, James gave me a job. I had a few jobs within the camp, but I was James's assistant. I was Jazzy Jeff's assistant. And I ended up moving out to LA and working with James and his production company with Will.

• 6:37Guy Raz?

  How old were you, by the way, at the time?

• 6:38Speaker 01

  I was in my late teens, early twenties during sort of that transition period.

• 6:44Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  And I was working at Will and James's production company. And I was having the time of my life and a very hard-headed, thought I knew everything. And I didn't have a car. I thought it was gonna be like Philly where you just can take the train everywhere. And in LA, everything's so separated. And I was taking this car service from the office to visit this girl, probably two or three times a week or whatever. But I would pay the bill every two weeks when I got my check. I would pay like the office manager and say, hey, the bill's gonna come in. I got you covered or whatever. And one time, I think I pissed the office manager off over something. And she told James that I had been using this car service to visit this girl.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  And James came in and fired me and sent me back to Philly.

• 7:31Guy Raz?

  Wow, so on the spot, that was it. You were done?

• 7:34Speaker 01

  Done. James, basically, you know, he saw the route that I was going. And I was taking a lot of shortcuts. And I was kind of living this LA fast life and sort of the stereotypical fake executive thing. You know, I thought I was much bigger than what I was at that particular time. And he kicked me out of LA. Like he said, you're going back home.

• 7:56Guy Raz?

  So like you're in your early twenties, you lose your job, and you go back to Philly?

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I went back to Philly, sort of with my tail in between my legs. And my cousins in Philly had started a small management company, a sort of a production company, that they asked me to come in and run. And one of the clients was a girl that I met when she was 16, so she and I had known each other. And we started working together and it was the rapper Eve.

• 8:26Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  But I had absolutely no clue what I was doing.

• 8:35Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  And it started off, Eve had come to me and she said, "Look, I need your help in figuring this out." And at first, I was kind of helping her find a manager. Finally, she said, "Look, I want you to do it." And of course, I said yes and jumped at the opportunity. And I think initially, the job was protecting my friend. So instinctively, the decisions that I was making was really about how do I protect her and make sure that she has the best possible chance to make it? And everything else was learning as I was going along. And I remember the first tour that we went on was this Cash Money Rough Riders tour.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  I got on the bus and it was this old bus driver, scruffy beard, and he said, "You got the float?" I said, "I'll be right back." And I got off the bus and I caught one of my buddies who had done touring for a long time. And I said, "Dude, where's float?" And he said, "It's the money that you give the bus driver for gas, tolls, fuel, everything else or whatever." So I got back on the bus and gave him the money and I said, "Here's the float." And I sort of floated my way through the rest of-- for the next three years, I kind of floated my way through, kind of figuring it out as I was going along.

• 9:57Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I mean, what did you have to do as a manager for Eve? Book shows? And how did you even know how to do that or how to promote her brand and how to get her out into the world?

• 10:08Speaker 01

  You know, the way it works is the manager is sort of-- it's like the hub of an artist's career. So I go out and I hired a booking agent who books the shows. I hired a publicist who does interviews and television. I bring in the record label who distributes the music. So it's sort of like a CEO of Eve Inc., of her business.

• 10:35Guy Raz?

  And that became a pretty big business.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, she actually became one of the biggest female hip-hop stars of all time.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  And, you know, I was lucky enough to have the Fresh Prince blueprint. So to kind of understand that a rapper could do TV and a rapper could do, you know, things outside of their core business. And with Eve, we ended up building, you know, a clothing line, a television show. She had gone on to do, you know, Barbershop, you know, with Ice Cube and Cedric the Entertainer. So we ended up building something really special and something unique for a female rapper at that particular time.

• 11:26Guy Raz?

  How did you know what to do? Like, I mean, negotiating is really, really, really hard work, right? And you were so inexperienced at that time. Like, how did you know what to negotiate and how to negotiate?

• 11:40Speaker 01

  You know, I think a lot of it is, you know, is West Philly Spidey senses. You know, so when you have to negotiate for survival and you have to know how to read rooms and you have to know who the bad guys in the rooms are, who has the gun in their pocket, who's just going to brandish it and who's going to actually pull the trigger. So I think that's just a natural instinct that comes with coming from where I come from. So being able to take that tool into negotiations on reading people and reading rooms and reading circumstances, I think is very, very important.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  And then also knowing what's important for that person on the other side of the table and what's important for the client.

• 12:30Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  And a lot of times, it's not conflicting. So both sides can kind of get what they want out of it.

• 12:37Guy Raz?

  So, I mean, presumably at this point in your life, you're still a really young guy, like, you're thinking, I'm set. I am, this is all like, this is all unfolding exactly as I had hoped.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I was, I was on cloud nine because, you know, this is everything that I've ever dreamed. That's all I ever wanted to do in my, in my, in my life was, was music. And because I was a failed artist, I was actually able to help somebody accomplish their dream was, you know, definitely fulfilling. And then the trappings that came along with it as a young guy, I was, I was loving it.

• 13:17Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Were you making money at the time?

• 13:19Speaker 01

  I was making hood money. So, so I was like, I was ghetto rich at that, at that particular time. So if you had, you know, the, the nicer house out of the 40 row homes on that side of the street, you were doing okay. But by no means was I, was I rich, you know? My goal was to make a thousand dollars a week. If I could make a thousand dollars a week, that was it for me. I was set. That was my, that was my goal.

• 13:46Guy Raz?

  Yeah. What was the name of your company, by the way?

• 13:48Speaker 01

  It was called Irving Wonder.

• 13:49Guy Raz?

  Irving Wonder, okay.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  And, and I did it out of Philly for five years and then I sold that company in, in 2004.

• 13:55Guy Raz?

  You sold it to another management company?

• 13:57Speaker 01

  Yes, it was a, a big company in the UK called The Sanctuary Group. And so I sold it to The Sanctuary Group and then moved to LA to help them open up their LA offices.

• 14:07Guy Raz?

  Why did you sell the, your, your management company that you, that you built?

• 14:11Speaker 01

  The real reason was, at that particular time, it was the largest liquidity event that I would have experienced.

• 14:19Guy Raz?

  It was a lot of money, basically.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was hustling.

• 14:21Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  You know, I was living check to check, you know, walking around venues with, you know, a backpack full of cash from venue to venue. So, you know, it was, it was a complete lack of sophistication in, in, in the way we operated the business. And then the guys from Sanctuary, you know, they were managing Guns N' Roses and, you know, a bunch of huge rock acts. And they had just done a deal with Matthew Knowles, who was, who's Beyonce's dad, and bought his company. And he approached me and said, look, this company can help you scale your business. They can help you grow your business, you know, in a way that you can't grow it internationally. And, you know, you don't have to live check to check. You have a young family. And he said, look, this is going to take you to the next level.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  And I, and I ended up doing it.

• 15:08Guy Raz?

  What did they pay you?

• 15:09Speaker 01

  I can't tell you what they paid me.

• 15:11Guy Raz?

  You can't, really?

• 15:12Speaker 01

  They paid me more.

• 15:13Guy Raz?

  That NDA is long expired.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  They paid me more than I ever made. You know, but, you know, I'll tell you. It was a, it was a, it was a $2 million check. It was two point, actually, the actual number was two, $2,275,000 was the actual number. Because I remember when the wire, when the wire went through and I called and checked the automated bank machine about 10 times to make sure that the money was still there. Because I never, I never had a million dollars in my, in my bank account before. I never had even close to it and, you know, in the bank at one time. And here it was. Now it's like, OK, you know what? It's, this is, this is very real.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  And I just, yeah, it was very real.

• 16:03Guy Raz?

  So what was it like working, working for Sanctuary?

• 16:07Speaker 01

  I hated it.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  I hated it.

• 16:12Guy Raz?

  What happened?

• 16:12Speaker 01

  It was, it was fantastic at first. And because, you know, I was so excited to, you know, to get the check, I completely overlooked all of the red flags.

• 16:23Guy Raz?

  But what were they?

• 16:24Speaker 01

  You know what? It just was certain things and certain behaviors that showed up during that period that I chose to ignore because I, I said, I'm just going to take the check and I'll, and I'll deal with that. And maybe he isn't such a bad guy. And maybe those, those, maybe they are ethical underneath some of the things that was happening during the negotiations. So coming in, I just didn't do the diligence on them that they were doing on me.

• 16:53Guy Raz?

  So how, how long did you last there?

• 16:55Speaker 01

  You know what? Probably, I remember waking up and talking to my wife a couple of times about buying the company back. Because I'm talking about, you know, me growing up, loving music, worshipping, you know, Barry Gordy's and all of these guys and like, this is my dream and I didn't have a plan B and this is all I wanted to do. And I was dreading getting up in the morning, going to the office. Like, I had knots in my stomach going in. And I would go into the office and I would pull my shades down. We had glass offices. And I would pull my shades down because I didn't want to work with people there. And about two years in, a year and a half in, it was over.

• 17:38Guy Raz?

  And you were managing, you were still managing Eve at that point?

• 17:41Speaker 01

  Yes, I was managing Eve.

• 17:42Guy Raz?

  Now, when you left Sanctuary, you were still pretty much financially secure at that point, right?

• 17:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I thought I was. So I invested a lot of money back into the business, into this new business.

• 17:55Guy Raz?

  The new business that you started after you left Sanctuary?

• 17:57Speaker 01

  After I left Sanctuary. So one of the things I realized was $2 million isn't actually $2 million.

• 18:06Guy Raz?

  You gotta pay taxes.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Exactly. You buy a house, you pay taxes, you buy a couple new cars.

• 18:13Guy Raz?

  And it's gone.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  It's gone. I invested in this new business and Eve was going with me. So I said, you know what? I know exactly what we're doing. This is going to the next level. You know, did a build out on these beautiful offices on Wilshire Boulevard and started this new business.

• 18:32Guy Raz?

  What happened to it?

• 18:33Speaker 01

  You know what? Eve walked in one day, you know, I think maybe I was probably about a year, maybe a year or two into the new business. So she came into my office, you know, she sat down on the couch and she said, I think I want to go in another direction.

• 18:50Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  And I said, well, what do you mean? She said, well, I think I'm going to find new management. I said, well, why? She said, well, I think I want to go to the next level and I want to go with a manager who I think could get me to the next level. I said, well, are you thinking about anybody specifically? She said, yeah, I'm thinking about this guy, Shakem.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  I said Shaquem, Shaquem's my mentor and good friend. So she ended up signing with one of my good friends for management.

• 19:25Guy Raz?

  Wow. And I mean, she was like your, she was your ticket to making that new business successful, so.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  And even, even more, she wasn't even, she was my friend. And we were, you know, really close, you know, she was there through, you know, girlfriends and through my wedding, through the, you know, birth of, you know, my kids and it was a heartbreak, you know, number one, in terms of how, how it ended up happening, you know, and then the business was highly hedged on us, on that success, you know, of her.

• 19:58Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  You know, it was a single, a single client business, pretty much at that time.

• 20:02Guy Raz?

  So what happened to the business?

• 20:04Speaker 01

  It was, it was over. This was, you know, this kind of bleeds into, you know, going into probably 2007, when, you know, I didn't have the cash flow and a phone started ringing. And it was the landlord of that building saying, you know what, rent hasn't been paid. You know, all, all of my vendors, you know, started calling me. And then it kind of spilled into home. My house was, was under foreclosure. And my wife and my mother-in-law ended up pawned in their wedding rings to, you know, to, to save the house.

• 20:39Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  And even down the, you know, the kids were in private school and having to, to tell, you know, the, the head of school, asking them to, you know, could you please keep the kids in school? You know, and I'm going to pay tuition. I just need a little bit of time. But, you know, scared that when I gave the waiter my credit card for a couple of bowls of oatmeal, that it was going to be declined.

• 21:03Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  You know, so it was, it was, it was tough and, you know, super humbling, not, not just as an entrepreneur, but as a dad and, you know, and having to live through that really, that really dark, dark, dark period.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  And hip hop is a very small community and it, you know, we had a couple of buddies who were like, you know, real executives in our business, who had committed suicide, who were, you know, had successful careers and everything else or whatever. And, you know, and with me, I, you know, I never, you know, considered suicide, but I know why people do.

• 21:48Guy Raz?

  Obviously, you had already demonstrated some talent by managing Eve and by all the promotional work you'd done. But in your mind, were you able to say to yourself, "Okay, I'm talented. I'm gonna pull out of this"? Or were there moments where you just thought, "I'm doomed. I am not gonna get out of this"?

• 22:06Speaker 01

  No, you know what? You can't fall off the floor. And I was on the floor, nowhere to go, right? And my mom, she was a single mom. We grew up where a lot of times, we had to choose between whether we were gonna have a phone line in the house or electricity. And I remember us being on the bed with a penny bank, and it was a bronze penny bank shaped like a pig. And she would stick a butter knife into the slot to get the coins to come out. And we would divide the coins up. So me and my brother would have bus fare to get to school. So we grew up tough.

• 22:48Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  My mom caught the bus every day to go to work and walked sometimes for 30 years straight. So my mom's work ethic and spirit is in my DNA.

• 23:03Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  And I was always working. I wanted to make my mom and my grandmother proud. That was always a big thing for me. And, ah, I'm getting a little choked up.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  Sorry.

• 23:21Guy Raz?

  It's okay.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  And, you know, I wanna do that for my wife and family. And I think having somebody who has your back... Knowing you've got somebody who has your back like that?

• 23:37Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  It's a big deal.

• 23:41Guy Raz?

  So in the midst of this, this like really tough period, what happened? How did you, how did you turn the corner?

• 23:50Speaker 01

  Wow. A good buddy, Vincent Herbert, who's like this very jubilant guy. Vince is like a character, but he's super talented. You know, he was a child prodigy. He was like 16 or 17, producing records for Celine Dion and, you know, Whitney Houston and Toni Braxton. And we were the same age. And every time he was in LA, he would pop by and just, you know, we would just talk and catch up. And he had called me and said, you know, Carter, I got this girl that I saw on MySpace that I want you to check out.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  And he brought her in and she played her music, which was great, and was Lady Gaga.

• 24:42Guy Raz?

  In a moment, the story of how Troy Carter came back from financial ruin and helped to build a superstar. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 25:14Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So Troy Carter is probably at the lowest point in his life. His house is in foreclosure, his business has fallen apart, and he's basically bankrupt. But around this time, he gets introduced to a young singer and piano player who calls herself Lady Gaga. Did you know that she was gonna be huge?

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know what? The real answer is you don't know. You think and you hope, but you don't know. And what people see now is what she was, you know, except for, you know, she was a brunette. And she didn't dance at that particular time. You know, she was behind the piano. Actually, Ellie Reid, who had done your show, had just dropped her from Def Jam. But you know what? She, in all fairness to LA, she was a piano singer.

• 26:10Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  And she had gone to West Virginia, cried on her grandmother's couch afterwards because her dad gave her a year off from school and basically said, "You got one year to figure this out or you need to go back to NYU." So she thought her dreams were shattered. I think it was that sort of thing. You can't fall off the floor. And so, you know, she had this spirit in her that, you know, when you feel that sort of pain, you never want to feel it again. So she was an incredibly hard worker. So she just worked hard every day to get better and better.

• 26:44Guy Raz?

  So what did you guys start to do? I mean, how did you? I mean, you are almost, or bankrupt, basically. Financially, you're bankrupt.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 26:51Guy Raz?

  And she's like, "Oh, please, can you manage me?" And you're like, "Yeah, sure, okay."

• 26:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:56Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  So, you know, so we made music. That was the big thing. Like Vince was incredibly talented at, you know, helping her shape the sound. I knew how to work with female artists, you know. I knew about the fashion business from working with Eve. You know, Gaga had signed to Interscope, which was the same label that Eve was on. So I had a, you know, great rapport with the label already. So it was very, it felt natural kind of navigating it. And, you know, I think we worked on the music for almost nine or 10 months. And then we took it to the record label and the record label said, "Oh, those songs are great. Let's give this to the Pussycat Dolls.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  Let's give this to Britney Spears."

• 27:42Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  So she ended up becoming a great songwriter. And a few of the songs, we actually fought for and we said, "We're just not giving these records up." And we went out and we took those songs to radio and it was a disaster. The radio wouldn't play it.

• 27:58Guy Raz?

  They wouldn't play what song are you talking about?

• 28:00Speaker 01

  It was the song "Just Dance."

• 28:04Guy Raz?

  Nobody would play that song?

• 28:05Speaker 01

  Nobody would play it. Nobody would play it.

• 28:10Guy Raz?

  How did you start to build her career? What did you do?

• 28:14Speaker 01

  We, you know what? It's, uh, we ended up, this is as Facebook and Twitter and MySpace and YouTube. All of those platforms were starting to just emerge as places where you could reach audiences directly. And we started using the platforms. They were free. Where we got lucky is that a lot of them were global. They were in markets outside of, outside of the US. So we started reaching audiences in places where we, we didn't travel geographically.

• 28:48Guy Raz?

  What would you do? Would you just like post text or videos or like, like messages from Lady Gaga?

• 28:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, both.

• 28:55Guy Raz?

  How would people even discover her?

• 28:58Speaker 01

  You know what? It's these sort of underground music communities that want, that want to find things before other people find them. And, um, and I remember we came up with this concept called Gaga Vision for YouTube. And it was like these three minute video clips of basically these art clips of her and her dancers. Her, and you know, but we would have the bed of music underneath it. And it was super artistic and you know, she was brilliant and you know, one of the first music voices who really knew how to use and leverage social. And, and it really worked. So we started building these sort of underground followings throughout the world. But it wasn't big.

• 29:36Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  It was 75 to 100 people in clubs that we would play. But we, we super served that community.

• 29:44Guy Raz?

  Let me just pause for a sec because just a few years or a year and a half before that, you're in a high-rise office building in LA, a glass office building, living this life as a corporate executive at this management company. And you are now like going back to traveling in vans and like sleeping in them and trying to get this artist into small clubs?

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Yep. Start, start it over.

• 30:08Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  Start it over. And also, you know, this was new for me because this was pop music. Totally different from hip hop. It was a different skill set.

• 30:18Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  And so really starting over.

• 30:21Guy Raz?

  How were you able to even fund like the videos and her tour? Like you didn't have any money at the time, so how were you able to do it?

• 30:28Speaker 01

  Interscope Records.

• 30:29Guy Raz?

  OK.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  So Interscope stepped up and they funded a bit.

• 30:34Guy Raz?

  But presumably not a lot because it sounds like they didn't think she was going to be as big as you thought she was going to be.

• 30:39Speaker 01

  No, you know, it was a shoestring budget.

• 30:42Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  We didn't need a lot, though. You know, I remember her, you know, she didn't have outfits. So she had this idea for this sort of mirror bra panty set or whatever that she couldn't afford. So she took a mirror and she actually broke the mirror up with a hammer and crazy glued each piece onto a bra and panties. You know, we had this, you know, for all of the early Gaga fans, you know, from the early days, you know, she had this latex costume, you know, with these big shoulder pads that she wore to every single show. Not multiple outfits, one outfit that she wore to every single show.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  So, you know, so we basically bootstrapped this thing and every dime that she did make, she reinvested it back into her career. So I think when you married, you married that with the perfect storm of I don't have a plan B, she doesn't have a plan B, Vincent doesn't have a plan B, we have to make this work.

• 31:47Guy Raz?

  This had to work.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  It had to work. It had to work.

• 31:50Guy Raz?

  I'm getting anxious just listening to this story because I'm thinking, oh, my God, this is crazy. It's such a crazy risk. OK, so you, so you're trying to convince radio stations to play her music. You're building up a social media network, but what was a moment where she just blew up?

• 32:10Speaker 01

  The moment that I knew, like, you know, because it wasn't just one moment, right? It just was like this grind over a one-year period to get it on the radio. And so I remember we were playing a theater. It was the Wiltern Theater in LA. And, you know, this is as things were feeling better.

• 32:29Guy Raz?

  Yeah, it's a pretty big venue.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I remember we were so nervous about the Wiltern, though, because it's 1,000 seats.

• 32:37Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  But we had sold out a couple of nightclubs. So we're like, maybe we can stretch it. We'll keep the tickets at $20. So, you know, so it's super affordable or whatever. And we can give away whatever we don't sell. We can give to the radio stations or, you know, kind of pad the venue, right?

• 32:54Guy Raz?

  This is like 2008, 2009?

• 32:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, around that time. And I remember driving down the street that morning because I had to go downtown for something. And I drove down and passed the theater and kids were asleep outside.

• 33:08Guy Raz?

  To get tickets to that show?

• 33:10Speaker 01

  No, they had already bought tickets to the show and they just wanted to get in first.

• 33:14Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  And when I saw those kids sleeping outside, I said, we did it. We did it. Because when you can get them to line up, you got something special. You got something special.

• 33:27Guy Raz?

  What was that ride like?

• 33:29Speaker 01

  You know what? It was pretty incredible, you know? We had gone to places that I never dreamed about, met people you never thought you would meet. So not only did she go to an incredible level in her career, it actually took me to a level in my career that, you know, I thought, you know, what I did with Eve, I thought I was at, you know, a height. But this height was, you know, you're in a, you're on Mount Everest.

• 34:00Guy Raz?

  Did you guys, you and Lady Gaga, did you ever have moments where you just had a quiet moment and you would just look at each other and say, how did this happen? This is amazing.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. You know, me, Gaga and Vince, we're like a trifecta. And we would always have those moments like, oh, my God. Can you believe?

• 34:23Speaker 01

  Wow. You know, you look out at a crowd. Or, you know, I remember seeing her play Sting's Ring Forest event in New York, where Sting will bring out, you know, legend after legend, you know, Elton John, Bono, Stevie Wonder, you know, just all of the greats. And her being the only young artist there playing with those guys. Seeing her hold their own with those guys and them just take her under a wing, you know, under their wings. So, you know, it's just all of those moments, or just, you know, very, very special moments.

• 34:55Guy Raz?

  So during this time, I guess, this is sort of like 2010-ish. You also start to, like, you thought, I'm gonna branch out, right?

• 35:02Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:03Guy Raz?

  I mean, because you started a company around that time. It was called Atom Factory, right?

• 35:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I started Atom Factory. Actually, so I started Coalition Media Group was the original name of the company. Things started, it was this sort of energetic shift within the company. And, you know, I'd gone through, you know, terrible time period. I said, you know, I'm just gonna, I wanna change the name of the company. I wanna bring a new energy into it. And I said, I want this company to be something small, but yet powerful.

• 35:37Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 35:37Speaker 01

  And just to be honest with you, the thing was, I just said, I wanna wake up every day and do cool shit. That was the mantra for me, personally.

• 35:46Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  And so whether that included management, or, you know, producing, TV, or whatever, I just wanted to do things that inspired me.

• 35:54Guy Raz?

  Yeah. So you start this company, and Lady Gaga's career's doing great. And one day, she walks in and says, I'm leaving.

• 36:06Speaker 01

  Yep. She walked in and say, I wanna go in another direction, basically.

• 36:11Guy Raz?

  Which is a story you had heard.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I can't say it felt any different than it felt the first time. But you know what? It's... It was a different experience for me.

• 36:23Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  The first time I went into panic mode, you know, when that, when that happened to me. This time, you know, I think, I think I was able to, to sit in the middle of that storm and, and watch the storm pass.

• 36:36Guy Raz?

  Why did she want to part ways with you?

• 36:38Speaker 01

  Uh, you know what, it's, I think it just, it happens. I think it differs in opinion, you know, on, on what happened and, and why it happened. But ultimately, I, you know, I respected it and took it on the chin.

• 36:52Guy Raz?

  Are you guys still friends?

• 36:53Speaker 01

  Uh, you know what, I, I wouldn't say friends, but cordial.

• 36:57Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Cause you were, she was probably the closest person to you outside of your family for like a lot of years.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, you know, that's the thing about management, you know, you, I, I can't do it without pouring my soul into it. I can't do it without investing 100% into, into that relationship. So I didn't go into the relationship with Gaga with my guards up, you know, because the thing happened with Eve, you know, so it just doesn't work that way for me. I'm, there's just no gray for me. I'm, I'm either all in or all out.

• 37:31Guy Raz?

  Is it, is it bittersweet to see her perform at the Super Bowl?

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Well, you know what, it's, uh, not, not even bittersweet. I think it's just sweet, you know, um, the, the songs that she sang at the Super Bowl, you know, are, those are records that, you know, I know the origin. I know the stories behind them, you know? We, we were part of, I was part of getting those records to, to, to the Super Bowl. So it's a part of my life that, you know, I'm always going to be proud of.

• 38:07Guy Raz?

  Okay, so, so I want to, I want to talk about a completely different side of your career, which, which is arguably a much bigger part of your career, which is investing, right? I mean, you basically, at a certain point, decided, I want to invest in startups.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, that, that sort of came about through, you know, we were doing all of these things in technology with these startups with Gaga, you know, in order-

• 38:32Guy Raz?

  Social media stuff.

• 38:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, just to promote the music.

• 38:35Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  And the music industry and, and just Hollywood in general were in litigation with most of the, you know, the technology companies. So it was this sort of, this wall between technology and content. And we embraced it. And so I started building a lot of relationships in Silicon Valley that introduced me to a lot of young entrepreneurs who started asking me, you know, could I advise their companies? Could I put in some introductions? You know, did I want to invest in their companies? And that ended up turning into, you know, I think I've invested in close to 100 early-stage technology companies now. Yeah.

• 39:13Guy Raz?

  And some pretty, pretty, like Uber, Warby Parker, Spotify, right? You were an early investor in all of those.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Spotify, Warby, Uber, Lyft, Dropbox, Slack. Really great companies that we're proud of.

• 39:29Guy Raz?

  So like, looking back at that $2 million check that you got, you know, 20 years ago, I mean, you are, let's face it, like, you're a very rich guy now. You've done very, very well. Do you feel secure now? Do you feel like you'll never get back to that point, you know, in 2006 where the banks are going after you and trying to take back your house?

• 39:49Speaker 01

  It's funny talking to like, people who grew up poor. You suffer financial PTSD. You know, so going through financial PTSD, you always have that fear, that thing.

• 40:03Guy Raz?

  You always have it.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, you always have it. So I'm just, I'm a simple guy. What I appreciate in life and the things that make me happy tend not to have to do with the money itself. More importantly, it's having the ability to live a life that I can wake up every morning doing what I love to do. Nothing's more important to me than that.

• 40:30Guy Raz?

  You know, you never went to college. You don't have an MBA. You don't have an advanced degree. There've been, I think, two Harvard Business School case studies about you in Lady Gaga, which is a great irony. But do you ever feel like you didn't belong, that you weren't? I don't know that, like, you were around people who had credentials and made you feel intimidated?

• 40:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, at times, right? You know, and um, I had a fifth grade teacher named Miss Moore. And I was always the littlest guy in the class. You know, you take the school pictures or you get in line to go to lunch in the hallway. I was always first in line because I was the smallest guy. So, um, but she used to call me the big guy. And she made me feel like I was six foot five. And like she get, it was something that she did psychologically that like really, really made me feel not only did I belong, but that I was special.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  So, you know, sometimes I'll go into rooms where it's, this person has a lot more experience than me, they're much smarter than I am, but I, I know what I know. And I think I bring a very, I bring a unique point of view to the table, you know, just with, with different experiences. And I'm, I'm confident in that, in that point of view.

• 41:59Guy Raz?

  Yeah, you know, I was thinking about the story you told about your mom earlier. And, and she must be so amazed at, at how it turned out. I mean, you, I mean, you dropped out of school, she was super disappointed. And, and I mean, look where you are today.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  You know, she, she passed away three years ago. And, yep, and um, she was 63 years old when she died. And she spent the last three years with me and my family. But I remember, ah, man.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  We were at an award show. They were giving me some award for an achievement in the, in the music industry. And she, she was sick. And she was my date to the show.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  And we saw Barry Gordy.

• 42:58Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  She said, that's you.

• 43:03Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 43:06Guy Raz?

  Amazing.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Dude, you're like Oprah, you bring out the tears.

• 43:21Guy Raz?

  Troy Carter, founder of Atom Factory. By the way, Lady Gaga was not the only star they managed. Over the last several years, their roster has included John Legend, Priyanka Chopra, Meghan Trainor, and John Mayer. And you know that decision he made to quit rapping when he was a teenager? It was probably a good one, because too too many song "Where's the Party?", the one we played earlier, it's been on YouTube for 10 years, and it only has 13,000 views.

• 43:58Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks so much for sticking around, because it's time now for How You Built That. And today, we're going to update a story we ran last year. This one comes from Robyn Gerber, who works for a bank in New York. But she wanted to solve a problem that has nothing to do with her day job.

• 44:13Speaker 02

  I get super frustrated looking for parking. If I'm driving, if I'm a passenger in a car.

• 44:20Guy Raz?

  Yeah, you know, probably one of the most annoying things about having a car in a big city.

• 44:25Speaker 02

  People fight with their spouses.

• 44:27Guy Raz?

  Is trying to find a parking space when you need one.

• 44:30Speaker 02

  Go take that spot, and they didn't drive there fast enough. So it's really a source of tension.

• 44:37Guy Raz?

  Anyway, about four years ago, Robyn noticed that her dad had come up with kind of a low-tech solution to the city's parking problem.

• 44:45Speaker 02

  He devised this system where he would put a piece of paper on his car window with a smiley face if he was leaving the next morning. And drivers in his neighborhood began to look out for his car if they saw the smiley face.

• 44:58Guy Raz?

  And of course, when Robyn saw that...

• 45:00Speaker 02

  I thought to myself, there should be an app for this.

• 45:02Guy Raz?

  And how many of us have thought the very same thing? But Robyn actually did something. She got a friend to help her do the coding, and then she made an app that allows drivers to share information about parking spaces.

• 45:15Speaker 02

  We have a find a spot option and a host a spot option. So if you were looking to find a spot, you could click that button, and it would search for all the spots within your vicinity, and it would show you the 20 closest spots.

• 45:28Guy Raz?

  So you choose the spot you want to snag, you get the make and model of the car that's leaving, and then you navigate to your space.

• 45:35Speaker 02

  And they are actually tracking you on GPS, so you know if the person is on time, you could chat with them, and each person has to say if it was successful or not.

• 45:45Guy Raz?

  Of course, for the app to really work, Robyn needed hundreds, actually thousands, of New York City drivers to download it and start sharing their spaces. So to get the word out, she made a music video.

• 45:56Speaker 03

  No, I'm not trying to be rude. But let me get that parking spot from you. I wish we had a better way than I let good spots go to waste. That's why I'm always.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  OK, so that is my cousin Brad Meyer. And my whole family either sang in it or danced in it.

• 46:12Guy Raz?

  The video did not exactly go viral, but Robyn kept pushing. She put flyers on thousands of cars all over New York City.

• 46:20Speaker 02

  People chase after me when I'm handing them flyers, asking for more flyers to give to their friends that live in the neighborhood. They love this, and that enthusiasm is what keeps me pushing forward.

• 46:36Guy Raz?

  Robyn called her app ParCar, that's spelled P-A-R-K-A-R-R. And since she launched in 2016, she's signed up more than 16,000 users in New York City, and she's adding more every day. She's also hoping to launch ParCar on a few college campuses this summer. It's still a side hustle, though. She's keeping her day job at the bank. And if you want to tell us your story, go to build.npr.org. We love hearing from you about the things you're building. And thanks so much for listening to the show this week. If you want to find out more or hear previous episodes, you can go to howibuiltthis.npr.org. Please also subscribe to the show at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, give us a review.

• 47:21Guy Raz?

  You can also write us. That's h i b t at npr.org. And if you want to send a tweet, it's at howibuiltthis. Our show was produced this week by Ramtin Arablouei, who also composed the music. Thanks also to Noor Kudsi, Neve Grant, Sanaz Meshkempur, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is J.C. Howard. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This from NPR.