Vizio: William Wang

When Wiliam Wang started selling flat-screen TV’s, he used a winning playbook: partner with an efficient manufacturer, cut out the middlemen, and price your product as low as you can. William used a similar strategy at his first company–making computer monitors–and he built it into a multimillion dollar business. But he wound up mismanaging it into the ground, and spent years working to pay off millions of dollars in debt. After surviving a catastrophic plane crash, William embarked on a new venture, Vizio, and returned to his “cut-out-the-middlemen” playbook to sell one of the world’s first internet-connected televisions. Today, Vizio is one of the top-selling TV’s in the US, and in 2024, sold to Walmart for $2.3 billion. This episode was produced by J. C. Howard, with music by Ramtin Arablouei. Edited by Neva Grant, with research help from Alex Cheng. You can follow HIBT on Twitter https://twitter.com/HowIBuiltThis & Instagram https://www.instagram.com/howibuiltthis, and email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Sign up for Guy’s free newsletter at guyraz.com http://guyraz.com/ 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.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

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• 3:45Guy Raz?

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• 4:27Guy Raz?

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• 5:23Speaker 01

  So he started taxiing on the runway pretty rapidly because I think he wanted to beat the typhoon. So I was on a plane. I was sitting in a number, I think, 22. I requested a seat. Nobody was next to me, so I was watching People Magazine. And we hit the lift-off speed, 165 mile per hour. And my portion of the plane was up in the air. And then I hear this noise, like somebody knocking on a door.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  I say, what the heck is that? Obviously, something really bad happened.

• 6:08Guy Raz?

  Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 6:20Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how William Wang lost his first business, almost lost his life, and then built one of the bestselling television brands in the country: Vizio.

• 6:39Guy Raz?

  There are a number of ways to break into a crowded market. One of them is through branding. You differentiate by creating a culture around the product, kind of like how Liquid Death managed to break into the $300 billion bottled water category. Another way is to just price your product so comparatively low that consumers notice. So, for example, Harry's Razors, which were designed to compete against more expensive brands like Gillette. And this is the playbook that William Wang used, not once, but twice. The first time was in the 1990s, when he built a company that made cheap, high-quality computer monitors.

• 7:20Guy Raz?

  Even though big players like IBM dominated the category, William managed to undercut their price and build a pretty significant business. That is, until the bottom fell out and the company went broke. But that didn't stop him from trying again. The next time was with flat-screen TV's. In the early 2000s, a flat-screen TV would set you back $13,000 to $15,000. But William believed that with the right efficiencies, he could build a flat-screen TV and sell it for under $3,000. His brand was called Vizio, and within just a few years, he built it into a massive business that now sells smart TVs, soundbars, and targeted ads on its own platform.

• 8:07Guy Raz?

  In 2024, Vizio was acquired by Walmart for $2.3 billion. And if all of that weren't enough of a story, as you will hear, when William was already reeling from debt incurred when his first business failed, he experienced something even more catastrophic: a plane crash. In the year 2000, he survived a horrific accident during a typhoon, which killed scores of his fellow passengers. He flew safely home a few days later and then started a company that would become Vizio. William Wang was born in the early 1960s in Taiwan. When he was 14, his family settled in Southern California, where adjusting to American life was hard.

• 8:50Guy Raz?

  For starters, William barely spoke any English.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  It's hard. I had no friend, right? And don't know anybody. It's tough as a kid. You know, I want to try out sports. I had no idea how to do it. And of course, I failed. You know, it's just difficult.

• 9:11Guy Raz?

  Were there a lot of Chinese kids around when you were growing up?

• 9:15Speaker 01

  No, no. I was 78 and came to Huntington Beach, a little upscale neighborhood.

• 9:22Guy Raz?

  Now, very upscale, but back in 78, I think, middle class. But you grew up, you know, a complete outsider. But I imagine that your parents had high expectations for you because they made a big sacrifice to come to the United States and to start over. Is that fair to say, that they expected a lot out of you?

• 9:43Speaker 01

  Well, having good, you know, Chinese parents, of course, they want me to get a PhD or something.

• 9:52Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  That was always the expectation. So in high school, because of this disconnect, you know, for a couple of years, my GPA was okay, you know? My math is pretty good. Of course, my English was poor. And I think my GPA in high school was like 3.3.

• 10:11Guy Raz?

  Respectable? Respectable?

• 10:13Speaker 01

  Respectable, yeah. So my GPA wasn't good enough for UCLA, wasn't good enough for Stanford, Berkeley. But somehow I did, I got into USC. And my mom, she highly recommended to become an engineer because, you know, the high-paid jobs are all engineers and like $30,000 a year. So I got into electrical engineer at USC, which is kinda not my personal favor. I wanna be, I like art. I wanna be a, I wanna be an architect. But it's alright. I think, I don't know any better too and just follow my mom's guidance.

• 10:56Guy Raz?

  Advice, yeah.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:58Guy Raz?

  So, and by the way, I mean, today, a 3.3, you would not get into USC, right? Much harder today to get into.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  I know. I don't even think you can get into USC at 4.3 now.

• 11:07Guy Raz?

  No, it's very hard. It's completely changed, but, but, but a wise decision you made. Cause you've got a USC degree, which is a very prestigious degree. And from what I understand, out, out of college, you get a job working for a company that made computer monitors. I guess you were, it was like a sales job. Is that right?

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, technical support, answering phone calls.

• 11:32Guy Raz?

  Technical support, okay.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  It's a Taiwanese company. It's called Datong. It's the biggest consumer electronic company in Taiwan.

• 11:40Guy Raz?

  Yeah, Datong, right? I remember.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're, they're, they're famous for rice cookers.

• 11:45Guy Raz?

  Mm-hmm. Didn't they have a commercial, Da Da Da Tong? Didn't they have that commercial on TV?

• 11:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:50Guy Raz?

  I remember that commercial.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  Amazing. Yeah, we grew up with that commercial. And so I was hired as the first technical support slash customer service. Because it's, first of all, I was born in Taiwan, so I know their culture. I speak the language. So they hired me pretty cheap. I mean, it wasn't $30,000 a year. It was, my salary was 1,750 bucks a month. And my boss say, hey, you're pretty good at telling the story of why the computer monitor should be better, or why is our monitor better? Why don't you try sales? So I say, okay, I'll give it a shot.

• 12:33Guy Raz?

  So you're, you're really focused on now in sales, selling Datong computer monitors. But I guess around four years into it, you're 25, 26, maybe 27, I don't know. You get frustrated there and you decide to leave and start your own monitor company. Tell me the story about that. What, what was, what was going on?

• 12:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, there were multiple reasons. I was twenty six years old and I was so jealous. Every Saturday when they had this management class, only the senior manager can attend. I say, how come I wasn't invited? I wanna, I wanna know more. So I went to my boss, say, can I go? Can I do that? He said, no, no, you're too young. I already got promoted from like nobody to director of sales marketing at that time. I say, okay, but you guys know nothing about this business. So I, I know better than all of you. I should be the next in line to be a VP. And then my boss's boss say, no, you need more time.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  And when my previous VP left, yeah, I saw definitely I'm the next in line. And he went to do something else on his own. All of a sudden they, he dropped somebody else to replace him. Who know nothing about computer monitor. And I think, I just think he's, it was, it was a wimp.

• 14:03Guy Raz?

  A wimp.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  And I say, I can't work for this guy. At the same time, I really fell in love with the computer monitor industry. And I know this industry very well. I know the problem with the industry. At that time, the computer monitor, the spec on the monitor was fully controlled by IBM.

• 14:22Guy Raz?

  Right, based on their specs because IBM dominated the PC market.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 14:27Guy Raz?

  Or, or IBM clones, yeah.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, everything is called IBM compatible.

• 14:32Guy Raz?

  Compatible, yes.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  They use the TV interlacing technology to do computer monitor. I look at it and say, you're gonna, this is not good for consumer. The resolution is too low. You're gonna kill people's eyes.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  And I look at it as it's flickering, right? It's refreshing at thirty hertz, meaning thirty times a second.

• 14:53Guy Raz?

  And, and just to, just to, for, for simplicity reasons here, this is the frequency, right? That powers the, the cycles right here. Right, and, and so sixty hertz would mean a better quality monitor essentially in, in.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, sixty hertz meaning just for every second, each screen refresh sixty times.

• 15:12Guy Raz?

  There's less lag.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  There's no lag, yeah, exactly. So.

• 15:15Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  I just, I couldn't take it. I say, there's a golden opportunity to build something a little better. You can easily turn it into sixty hertz. It's not hard. You just spend a little bit more mon- more money. So I went all the way out to the chairman of the company, Datong. He told me, who's your customer? I say, we'll build it, customer will come. He said, no, we're IBM. Everybody else is not our customer. We don't want to build it. So he shut me down.

• 15:46Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  So that's one of the main reasons. Again, I left, I say, I'm gonna build it myself. If IBM want to build this, my company will build that.

• 15:55Guy Raz?

  This is a classic story, you know? The young upstart has an idea. They bring it to the boss. The boss says no, and the upstart gets frustrated. And they leave. And that's basically what happened, right? And you said, all right, I'm gonna try to figure this out myself. This is 1990. What is that? I mean, first of all, how did you even get the money to start a computer monitoring? Monitor, I guess you had experience now. You knew where the factories were in Taiwan. You knew, kind of had an understanding of how they are manufactured. But you still needed money. And in 1990, you know, to raise the money wasn't easy. Who did you go to?

• 16:34Speaker 01

  At that time, Datong was also buying from other suppliers.

• 16:39Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  So I got pretty lucky because I know all the factories.

• 16:43Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  So one of the supplier would build for Datong, which I know very well. They're hungry like me. And they're pretty much a similar age. And they, he raised a lot of money to do their own computer monitor manufacturing.

• 17:01Guy Raz?

  So wait, so this person you're talking about, this person you pitched your idea to, he was like a supplier or a factory owner in China?

• 17:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the opportunity I presented, they say, God, we want to do that, right? So they're very entrepreneurial in spirit. And they say, oh yeah, if you do this, I gave you $150,000.

• 17:25Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  So he gave me $150,000. So I went to my dad and I put together $50,000. Some of it from my dad, some of it from my own saving after four years of working. Then after, I told my boss and my bosses, I'm leaving. The funny part was. My boss is the boss, the chairman of the company of Datong US. He say, oh, we really like you. I think you definitely worthwhile to investing. So he gave me hundred fifty thousand dollars.

• 17:56Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  So, you know, I, I, you know, twenty seven years old. I found three hundred fifty thousand dollars. And I just started the business. Don't understand balance sheet, don't understand income statement. Never run a company in my life.

• 18:12Guy Raz?

  Wow, all right. So you start, so you start your business

• 18:17Guy Raz?

  to make competing monitors, better monitors. It's called, you call it Mag InnoVision, I think.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 18:23Guy Raz?

  And this is, I mean, it's a kind of a fortuitous time. Because nineteen ninety, I mean, this is, people think of the eighties as a time when the PC boom really happened. But it was really the nineties when so many more people brought personal computers into their homes, in part because the internet was coming. And Windows made it easier to use PCs. Before, in the, in the eighties, it was DOS, you know. And, and so now in the nineties, ordinary people without a lot of skills could figure out how to use a Windows PC. Meaning lots of people needed monitors. So if, you know, there was one standard, which was the, the IBM specs,

• 19:05Guy Raz?

  and you could improve on it, you could stand out, I guess, right?

• 19:09Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. It was the crazy times in this industry. I mean, back then, if you can't build cam monitor, you will sell them out. And if you can't build-

• 19:21Guy Raz?

  It was selling out.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  Oh, guys, the PC, personal computer was in great demand.

• 19:26Guy Raz?

  Yeah, and they're getting cheaper and, you know, so, right? I mean, all these things were happening.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  Cheaper and cheaper, you can't get enough monitor, you can't get enough memory chips. And the, the technology was growing at such a rapid speed. You won't find, the hard drive won't find. Can make to twenty make to fifty to, you know, just-

• 19:46Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  Nonstop innovation from in the nineties for personal computer. And this whole industry was, was on fire.

• 19:56Guy Raz?

  In your case, where were you selling the monitors? Were you selling them through retail stores? Or were you selling them to PC makers as a bundle? Like where they would just, they would sell it with their computers?

• 20:07Speaker 01

  I found a really key customer called Gateway.

• 20:11Guy Raz?

  Gateway, yeah, sure.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, Gateway 2000 back then it's called because we're the same age. And I used to go visit with them a lot and we think alike. We say better technology, lower price. Better technology, lower price. And they were able to make PC cheaper by selling it direct. Because they were mail order. There wasn't e-commerce. There was no in-commerce back then, but they were mail order.

• 20:36Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  So they bypassed everybody by making the computer so much cheaper. So they became one of my biggest customer. And whatever I made, they sold.

• 20:50Guy Raz?

  So, all right, so Gateway is your biggest customer, like 80% of your sales?

• 20:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say 70, 80%.

• 20:57Guy Raz?

  Wow, okay. This is, this is key because I think within six years, you guys are doing $600 million in revenue. So you really like caught a wave here. I mean, this was massively growing massively fast. You had 400 employees for Mag Inovision. Just very briefly, William, how were you able to make a cheaper product that was better quality? Was it, I mean, A, I'm assuming you were making these in China, so that lowered costs. But, but how else were you able to really compete against these much bigger companies like Tatung?

• 21:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, in, in the very beginning, we're just making it better. My customer made it cheaper, like Gateway. And I just, I keep on, again, in the early 90s, the technology shift so fast.

• 21:48Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  We had 14 inch computer screen, 15 inch computer screen, 17 inch computer screen. This is all happening in three or four years. We had 60 Hz, we had 70 Hz. So my engineering background, I keep on pushing the technology envelope. So in the first four years, when it grew so fast, I just focused on technology advancement. And I found a factory to do it. That was the key. I mean, we're building everything offshore. So so Taiwan is pretty efficient back then.

• 22:20Guy Raz?

  I mean, to go from zero to 600 million within six years is mind blowing. I mean, the the pace of growth was probably so fast that you had no. I mean, I don't even know how you you were able to handle that because. And by the way, not always a good thing, right? Because it can lead to huge challenges. Fat, very fast explosive growth like this must have been quite overwhelming.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was way too overwhelming, all right. It was a disaster later on.

• 22:56Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I mean, let's so let's talk about this because we obviously there's a wave gateway. Eighty percent, seventy, eighty percent of your business is coming from gateway, which on the one hand is amazing. On the other hand, is a little scary because you're dependent on gateway, right? By by nineteen ninety eight, your revenue drops to four hundred and seventy million. And then it really stops, starts to drop further and further from there. Tell me what what happens. Is it just competition enters the space? Many more companies are like, wait a minute, we can compete against these guys.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's a combination of problems, right? The market got so much bigger, so efficiency became a key ingredient for success. And the competitor are coming in like crazy, you know. We're still focused too much on technology and there was a focus on efficiency. So their cost is more competitive. So I was the only supplier for them. And they want to diversify also. So, you know, gateway start to buy from other people. And because we grew so fast, I mean, we couldn't control our quality. But most importantly, I literally outgrew myself in management capability.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  I'm still a kid who think technology would dominate everything.

• 24:16Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  So I wasn't a great manager. I don't have enough. My management team is not strong enough because I didn't hire good enough. Also, I was into too many, too many sectors of the business. I was in the service business, service computer monitor. I had an engineer lab designing smart TV in 98.

• 24:39Guy Raz?

  Already an idea.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  Already an idea, yeah.

• 24:41Guy Raz?

  Way before its time.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  Way before its time, when, when internet was still going through modem. And I sunk a lot of money in there, so I was, I wasn't good enough to make it to the next level. The management team was still challenged by me, by the dumbest entrepreneur like me.

• 25:03Guy Raz?

  You were a micromanager.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  I was a micromanager, oh yeah, yeah.

• 25:07Guy Raz?

  But, I mean, but, but you couldn't see it at that time because you were young and learning, but obviously with, on reflection, you, you realize that because you were involved in every, I mean, there's, look, there's different arguments that people make about this. Some people say you have to be involved in every detail of the business. Some people say, no, you really have to delegate and trust your people. Sounds like that's where you, you landed eventually.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, well, I learned the hard way because it's, I mean, I was 30 years old. I don't know what management means and I don't know how to manage my finance, right? Because I was, I thought money would come easily, but money didn't come. And I learned the hard way, pay my tuition. It was tough.

• 25:56Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, William faces something even scarier than massive debt, a catastrophic plane crash. Stay with us. I'm Kai Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

• 26:15Guy Raz?

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• 28:27Guy Raz?

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• 29:53Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 1998 and William's first company, Mag Inovision, has gone from $600 million in revenue to being buried in debt. And William, looking for a way out, decides to sell the business.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  I want to pay on my debt.

• 30:13Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  I couldn't. And I sold companies to the factory under duress.

• 30:19Guy Raz?

  How much debt did you have at the time?

• 30:21Speaker 01

  Uh, I think we had $25, $30 million of debts.

• 30:26Guy Raz?

  And obviously you had some investors who you wanted to pay back, I guess.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, the investors lost some money.

• 30:33Guy Raz?

  They lost, yeah.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  They lost, yeah, including myself. I'm putting another more money. So the shareholder values all disappear. And it was tough. So under duress, we had to settle with your supplier. I tried to, you know, from 98, 99 until 2001, I did nothing but settling debts. So I tried to make money. Pay them, make money. So three years, I didn't do anything but paying suppliers.

• 31:05Guy Raz?

  Just to understand, so you, you, you sell it under dress. It's amazing because a lot of people from the outside would think, wait, you were doing 600 million in sales just two years earlier. This is an incredible success story. And yet, it just shows you how tough that business was. That if the bottom fell out and you had to sell it and you, you were left with nothing, like you were broke.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, nothing.

• 31:31Guy Raz?

  And you had to pay back the, the people you owed money to. I mean, couldn't, here's just a weird question. Couldn't you declare bankruptcy and, and have those debts forgiven, I guess?

• 31:41Speaker 01

  I, I could, but I don't, I mean, that's not my motivation, right? I, I believe I, I want to do better for them. You know, we looked at bankruptcy, but I just don't want to do it.

• 31:52Guy Raz?

  So what was your plan to, to pay back the, the debtors, the, the people that had, you know, that you owed money to? How were you going to pay them back?

• 32:00Speaker 01

  I was making, I became like, for example, I know what's a new product. So instead of going through me, I say, you pay me 2% commission. I use that 2% commission to pay you.

• 32:12Guy Raz?

  So you were doing consulting work for some of the people you owed money to, basically for free?

• 32:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, for free to pay them off because I want to pay that off. And again, I know a lot of supplier and they, they know I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't take the money or anything and they still trust me. They just know that during that time, there was a major transition. And it's just poor management on my behalf. So they allowed me to give me some time to use my talent to make some money for them to pay off my debts.

• 32:45Guy Raz?

  Wow. Okay. So this is, I think this is like a period of four, at least four years of trying to,

• 32:53Guy Raz?

  you know, doing consulting work in part to try and pay back debts. And I think one of the things you got involved with was helping one of these companies try and figure out like, like a smart TV and, and also plasma screen televisions, right?

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, back then, the plasma TVs started to emerge and very expensive.

• 33:16Guy Raz?

  They were like $20,000, I think. And I mean, today, they cost, you know, like, nothing. But, but, but back then, I mean, they were super expensive. Meanwhile, I want to talk about, about smart TVs for a moment because, I mean, this is the late 90s. And I mean, no one was really interested in them yet, right? But I guess, I guess you were, right? You wanted to sort of make them or something that would resemble them, right?

• 33:39Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I just built it. I say, hey, TV should be connected to the internet. I actually had a whole design lab. We lay out a board. We, we found a software company in Boston to do Linux-based software for us. I found the chip supplier. Put a CPU in the TV and connected to internet. And when you turn on that TV, first page was apps. Back then, we didn't call it apps. Back then, we called it widgets. This is way before iPhone. The TV worked great, but the problem was the internet connectivity was rather slow. So it takes five minutes to warm out a TV because its modem need to connect.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  And again, that was 98 and lost all my money.

• 34:26Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  That's, that's part of the...

• 34:29Guy Raz?

  Part of why your first business went under.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:33Guy Raz?

  So, all right, let me, let me kind of set the context here because you are financially in crisis at this time,

• 34:41Guy Raz?

  trying to figure out how to pay back debt and also trying to figure out how to make money. I guess both of them are connected. And you are going back and forth between Asia and Southern California to do consulting work and to try and figure out different ideas, you know, that you could generate income from and innovation, but none of them really work. And you get on a flight, October 31st, Halloween 2000. You're about to fly back, Singapore Airlines flight. You're in Taiwan and you're going to fly back to Los Angeles. Tell me what happens.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the reason I want to get back that evening was because it's uh it was my daughter's first trick or treat.

• 35:29Guy Raz?

  Halloween, you were gonna get back, even though you were leaving on the thirty first, by the time you get back to LA, it was still the thirty first.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  If I leave like eleven thirty, I'll get back here like six thirty, I barely make it. I can still see my daughter in the

• 35:43Guy Raz?

  Her costume.

• 35:44Speaker 01

  In customs. Yeah, so I realize she's like four years old, three years old, so. So I say, okay, and let's do that. And by the time I finished my meeting at five o'clock, I came out of the office, saw the rain. I don't know what's going on in Taipei, the weather, I didn't pay attention, but a typhoon hit.

• 36:02Guy Raz?

  It was very stormy that night.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  Very stormy that night. So by the time I got to the airport, uh Singapore Airlines' terminal, this is kind of creepy, there's nobody around. Most people are not in airport because I think most people in Taipei don't want to take the flight because it was typhoon. They don't even think, they don't even know that the plane's gonna take off or not. But uh I asked Singapore, if you're taking off, I'm gonna be on a plane, I need to go back. So I was the last person on the plane.

• 36:34Guy Raz?

  This was a Boeing seven four seven, obviously, because it's a transatlantic flight, so big plane.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. So he started taxiing on the runway pretty rapidly because I think he want to beat the uh the wind.

• 36:45Guy Raz?

  Because what, what were the winds at, like thirty, forty miles an hour?

• 36:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's going over, so it's a little bit over fifty, I think.

• 36:52Guy Raz?

  Over fifty, yeah.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  I think the uh seven forty seven four hundred can still take off on a headwind like sixty mile per hour.

• 36:58Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  Uh he, obviously, he just want to beat typhoon. He want to get out there quick. So we took off uh rather quickly, but I was on the plane, I was setting a number, I think twenty two. I requested a seat, there was nobody was next to me, so I was watching People Magazine. And we hit, we hit what, uh the lift off speed, one hundred sixty five mile per hour. And uh my portion of the plane was up in the air. And then I hear this uh noise like somebody knocking on the door.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  I say, what the heck is that? Then immediately, I started leaning to the left. Obviously, something really bad happened. The last tires of the plane hit the construction equipment and the concrete barricade where they were doing construction works.

• 37:52Guy Raz?

  It clips the concrete barrier as it's taking off.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  As it's taking off and, you know, the... Now you hear everybody scream. And, you know, the plane obviously came down. And I was in the front of the plane came down. And so I lift my feet up, I lift my hand up. That was my crash position. And the moment, right after I lifted on my feet, my hand, the fire came on underneath me. Bright orange fire came on underneath me. Apparently, the 60,000 gallon of jet fuel exploded. And the plane was torn to two pieces right where the fuselage was.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  And the fire came on underneath me. And once it hit the wall, I thought, okay, this is it. I'm gonna get burned. But the fire disappeared right away. Because it's, I think the fire burned out all the oxygen in the pseudoexplosion. It sucked all the oxygen away from the plane.

• 39:00Guy Raz?

  The, I mean, the images of the aftermath are shocking. I mean, it was ripped in half. And you were in the front half of the plane. Ninety-six people survived. Eighty-three people were killed in that flight. And you, I mean, you... I can't even imagine what that was like. But you, when it stopped, when you could leave your seat and get out, what do you remember?

• 39:31Speaker 01

  Well, the fire came on underneath me. And the fire disappeared. Immediately, I couldn't breathe.

• 39:36Guy Raz?

  No oxygen, yeah.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  No oxygen. First thing that went through my mind was, I'm dead. And uh, I immediately, you know, within half a second,

• 39:51Speaker 01

  I thought, oh wow, you know, I miss all my family. My mom, my dad, my wife, my daughter, my sisters, my brother, everybody.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  Then, next thing flashed to my mind was uh, oh, okay, uh, I had no more headache.

• 40:11Speaker 01

  And uh, no more stress.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  I'm kind of uh relieved, because at the time, I was, my blood pressure was hundred sixty over hundred thirty, constantly because I was under a lot of stress, obviously, because I was in debt. So, that was uh, what went through my mind in like two seconds. Because you were gonna die. Yeah. And that was it. Yeah, so, I unbuckle my seatbelt, the plane was still moving. Unbuckle my seatbelt, I say, I'm gonna get out of here. I need to breathe. So, I went to the first door on the right, I tried to open that door while the plane was still moving. I couldn't open it, obviously because of pressure, pressure of the plane is still fully engaged. And uh, now I went to the door on the left.

• 41:00Speaker 01

  When I went from the door on the right to the door on the left, uh, the plane stopped. But uh, the last few seconds, I had no memory. I don't know what happened. And uh, next thing I knew was the door popped open, and the rain hit my face. The rain. The rain hit my face and doors just exploded open. And along with the, the escape chute, and the fire, and the smoke rushing out of the plane, pushed me, I got ejected from the plane.

• 41:42Guy Raz?

  It's unimaginable. And I mean, it's almost a, you know, a cliche, I guess, which is when somebody has a near death experience, it does often change their life because it changes their perspective. And from what I gather, that happened to you. I mean, here you were focused on these stressful things about debt and then you go through this experience. And I have to imagine that this was going to fundamentally change the way you saw your life.

• 42:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's really hard to describe because I'm always a I'm super optimistic, always. I didn't really look back that much, honestly. It's kind of unfortunate. It is unfortunate, but I didn't want to think too much on that. I'm never really digging into my own mind. What really happened? What did it really change me? How did it really change me? Because I don't think it's going to help me anyway. So I say, just keep on looking forward. What else can you do? What other problem can you solve? So I really focus on that instead. So, yeah, did it really change me? I don't, you know, I'm still the same person.

• 43:07Guy Raz?

  I guess my question is, did it change what matters to you?

• 43:13Speaker 01

  I know, I know I really want to come back home.

• 43:18Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  That's one thing I really want to do during the fire. I mean, after the plane, that's something I really, really want to do at that time. I really want to be close to my family. And that matters to me the most versus, you know, anything else. Yeah, you have money, success, a lot of problems to solve, technology. But that doesn't really matter. Yeah. I think the most important thing is love. I kind of differentiate love and passion, I guess. I went to Singapore and I'm like, say, I say, get me out of here. I want to go back.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  It was scary for me.

• 44:01Guy Raz?

  I, I, I mean, I can't imagine like getting on a flight after going through that.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was tough. I mean, my, I don't have a sweaty palm. But I had a pretty sweaty palm that, that flight.

• 44:14Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  The whole flight and uh, but that's all right. I know. I, I wanna, I just wanna get back. I don't care.

• 44:20Guy Raz?

  So you get back. Um, and eventually you continue with, with your work, but um, I guess one of the things that you'd been doing, one of the consulting jobs that you'd been doing was with your former customer Gateway. I guess they had retail stores in the US at that time and they, they wanted to sell other things besides computers because the market was getting competitive and presumably they wanted to build out their inventory, their product offering. And you suggested that they look into televisions, into plasma televisions, which were, again, in 2001, really expensive. I mean, they were like fifteen, twenty thousand dollars.

• 45:03Guy Raz?

  But I guess your idea was, hey, maybe you guys should get into the plasma TV business, but make them really cheap. Tell me, tell me about your, your proposal to them.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I knew high definition TV is gonna be a hot item because US government was really pushing for HDTV. But high definition TV wasn't affordable back then. It was fifteen, twenty thousand dollars.

• 45:29Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 45:30Speaker 01

  So there's problem. The problem is government wanna push digital and digital TV are not affordable.

• 45:38Guy Raz?

  And I guess I should point out that the government had required this digital makeover at the, at the time. They wanted televisions to move away from analog to digital video signals, high def.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:51Guy Raz?

  And high def was part of that. And so it required all manufacturers to move from analog televisions with an antenna, essentially to a, a new type of digital, well, there's digital antennas, but a digital, receiving digital video signals.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  Yep. Yeah, government wanna do that desperately. Their mandate was like 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002. They keep on pushing back.

• 46:13Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 46:14Speaker 01

  Because TV, the, the Sony and Panasonic of the world and the retailer of the world don't, don't care. They're making so much money on analog TV, why should they give away? The digital TV, right? They they they look at digital TVs as something belong to rich people. So I knowing the cost of the components. I said, I think I can build this TV a seller for like three thousand dollars. So I was running around asking for money to fund my new project. And I went to Consumer Electronics Show to talk to my friends at Gateway. And I say, how about investing me? I want to do TV. At that time, Gateway had like five hundred country stores, retail stores.

• 46:58Guy Raz?

  All across the US.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  All across the US. And a founder US retail store, the the person computers is a a a price point. When from like twenty five hundred dollar average to like a thousand dollars.

• 47:11Guy Raz?

  Right, so I mean, at that time PCs were getting cheaper for consumers, but not, I mean, not much cheaper to make, I guess. So so I imagine Gateway was just cutting their profit margin in half.

• 47:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, so they were suffering because they lost fifty percent of their margin to support the stores. So they went to the Consumer Electronics Store, they want to know what else to put in the store. And so I went to them and say, I want to you invest in me. And so they turn around and say, how about this? Why don't you help us get into this place under the Gateway brand? So we can sell at the Gateway country stores. So later on, they say, OK, in that case, it's a we will pay you two percent of all the revenue you help us generate on TV. And on top of that, we'll pay you twenty thousand dollar months.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  So here I say, OK, I started this as a consultant. And my own money, I started from my second mortgage, my house, four hundred thousand dollars to fund my business. I hired a few people who's been with me for a long time. And we started the business.

• 48:24Guy Raz?

  So just to just to clarify, you you went to Gateway to pitch them an idea on cheaper plasma TVs, but then you started a business called Vizio?

• 48:35Speaker 01

  I started the business as V Inc.

• 48:38Guy Raz?

  V Inc., okay, and the brand was called V?

• 48:41Speaker 01

  The brand initially was called V at that time, so actually my first TV was V.

• 48:46Guy Raz?

  Right, and the business was to make plasma televisions for Gateway under their under their brand?

• 48:53Speaker 01

  My origin of business was selling V TVs, but I had no funding and Gateway say, "Help us get into the Gateway brand." I say, "Okay, we'll do Gateway brand instead." So I changed my business plan, I say, "I'll do it because you're paying me."

• 49:08Guy Raz?

  Got it.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  So from 2002, 2003, and 2004, the very beginning of the Vizio, V Inc. later became Vizio.

• 49:16Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  We were making money from Gateway, so I went to Asia, set out a factory for them. I went to Korea to get the component for them. I went to the chip manufacturer to procure chip for them.

• 49:30Guy Raz?

  Computer chips, yeah.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  With everything for them and they just marketed the product, which we helped them build.

• 49:37Guy Raz?

  You were trying to get the cost of a plasma TV down to under $3,000, which would have been, which you did, and that would, that was kind of crazy. How did you do that? How were you able to get them so so much, you know, if they were selling for 15 grand, how were you able to get them to retail, to get the retail price down to 3,000?

• 49:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, the same thing I have been doing all my life, right? Simplify the supply chain and control costs. The supply chain at that time for Sony and Panasonic is Sony will build a TV in Japan, which is very expensive, they will... Build everything, right? Build even their own plasma screen.

• 50:17Guy Raz?

  They were vertically integrated, totally vertically integrated.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  Completely vertically integrated, so they build it. It's already a little bit more expensive than it should. And they sell it to Sony US. And another layer of margin, right? So Sony US has a big organization and they do Sony marketing. And was adding additional overhead. And Sony will probably sell it to a distributor. The distributor will add more margin. The distributor will sell to Circuit City at a time. The Circuit City will market plasma screen as their ultra high end for ultra rich, uber wealthy people. The billionaire in Beverly Hill. And they were, it's like white glove service. And they will mark out like 40 points.

• 51:00Guy Raz?

  So what did you do to beat that? Like, what was your strategy?

• 51:04Speaker 01

  I found the right factory in Taiwan. That can be a lot cheaper than at a time the labor costs in Japan. And the components are all the same. At the same time, we're vertically de-integrated. I use that efficiency and we're passive saving to the consumer. So I went to Gateway and say, let's do the same thing we've done before. You have your own retail store. You don't need a lot of margin. You go direct.

• 51:34Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, how William's Gateway strategy to go direct gets derailed, leading him to start a new business and revive an old idea. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

• 52:03Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2004 and William has teamed up with his old partners at Gateway to sell affordable flat screen TV's. And they're selling well at first, but then.

• 52:18Speaker 01

  By 2004, Gateway was under a lot of pressure because the PC price went down even further.

• 52:24Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  And they had pressure to shut down the country stores because I think each store at that time is costing like $1 million a year to run. So for finding a store, that's $500 million. So they had to shut down the store. But when you shut down the store, nobody, I mean, people, when people buy TV, they want to see it.

• 52:42Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  So, so they end up shutting down the store. Once they shut down the store, they say, we're going to get out of TV business.

• 52:48Guy Raz?

  Which meant that you were going to focus on your, on building at your brand, essentially.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I tried to license the brand from them, and they won't, they don't, they don't want license to me. And I say, okay, what do I do, right? So I came up with our own brand cover, Vizio, and I went to the supplier, tried to get them to pay a TV for me.

• 53:06Guy Raz?

  But just to be clear, Gateway would not, even though they decided to get out of the business entirely, Plasma, they would not license the, the brand name to you.

• 53:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:16Guy Raz?

  So you decided, well, I'm just going to come up with a new brand name.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:22Guy Raz?

  It's also an interesting time because most televisions in 2002, when you really, really, when you launched Vizio, were still big rear projection, right? TVs, they were like huge, heavy things.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:37Guy Raz?

  If you had a flat screen plasma TV, you were a very wealthy person.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:41Guy Raz?

  So you start to produce these televisions, but I think you also did something which proved to be very prescient, which is you cut a deal with Costco, right? That they would sell your televisions. And did that happen almost immediately, that you made that deal with them?

• 53:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, so around, I think, 2004, 2005, I used to sell a computer monitor at Costco. So I know the people a little bit.

• 54:06Guy Raz?

  You had, you had a connection there.

• 54:08Speaker 01

  I had a connection there, so at the time Costco had no market share for TVs.

• 54:13Guy Raz?

  Yeah, people didn't buy that at Costco at the time. They still mainly bought, you know.

• 54:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:19Guy Raz?

  Food.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, because people like Sony and Panasonic, and they don't want to deal with Costco.

• 54:25Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  They, they give Costco the leftovers because it's a, they want to protect their existing dealership with Circus City and Best Buy. So I went to Costco and say, you know, you guys are so aggressive in costs. And your biggest frustration is like, cannot get good brand product for you? What does it carry us? Let me prove to you that we can work together and disrupt the whole TV market. And they're very efficient because at that time their break even is around nine and a half percent. And they don't want to make money on merchandising anyway. They just want to make money on membership fee, right?

• 55:03Guy Raz?

  The membership fee, yeah.

• 55:04Speaker 01

  And merchandising for them is a service for members. And with the same mentality, I say, I don't need to make a lot of money. I'm pretty small, but I can put together this great screen for you at twenty five hundred bucks. So we did a deal.

• 55:19Guy Raz?

  Twenty five hundred bucks that they would buy the televisions from you?

• 55:22Speaker 01

  They would buy like twenty four hundred, still for twenty five hundred dollars.

• 55:25Guy Raz?

  Wow, so their margins were, wow, that's. And so all of a sudden, people go to Costco and see these flat screen TV's for twenty five hundred bucks.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it was so like a hot cake. And the government is happy because more people are buying digital TV. And Costco is really happy because all of a sudden there's somebody in the consumer electronics space. I started to grow my business.

• 55:50Guy Raz?

  What's remarkable is that there are parallels between the Vizio story and your previous company, the mag, you know, the monitor company that really had this rapid rise and then a fall. But here, I mean, within a few years, you hit seven hundred million revenue, right? Vizio, I think by two thousand and seven, so just a few years after you launch it. It was, it was the number one HDTV brand in the US. It surpassed Samsung, had a market share of like fourteen, you know, and a half percent. And from what I understand, that year, you were, you did about two billion dollars in sales, which is remarkable.

• 56:32Guy Raz?

  What I'm wondering is, why didn't the big players see this coming? Samsung, Sony, Panasonic, I mean, why didn't they compete when they saw you selling these TVs at Costco? And just selling these TVs like hotcakes?

• 56:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, a legacy. I think their legacy relationship, their legacy business model, right? I mean, I pick a partner like Costco. I mean, all they need nine percent to break even. You got Sukkot City require what 25% to break even.

• 57:02Guy Raz?

  They they had to make 25% margins to break even.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  To break even and so Costco clear was a winner and also right we we look at inventory control like a hawk and versus big company like Sony and Amazon and for them to make a decision, the salesperson got to talk to their US corporate, US corporate got to talk to their Japanese counterpart, Japanese counterpart got to go up. Is that 25? I don't know how many tiers are reporting. We have one tier. So EV believes it's right thing to do or do it right away. So about about efficiency and we have, you know, few people and they have a lot of people.

• 57:40Guy Raz?

  I I read a stat that's that you you claimed it in 2007 that your overhead was 0.7% of sales. That was your overhead cost and that your competitors, their overhead cost was 10% of sales or more. So your your costs were a fraction.

• 57:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:58Guy Raz?

  Now, here's my question, though. I mean, you saw this happen in a different business before where you catch a wave, there's all this excitement, but then the other competitors come in. So I know you had this strategy of like, let's make cheap TVs, let's sell them to cut through Costco and then eventually Walmart and Kmart and others. But you must have known in the back of your mind that history could repeat itself, that very soon the big players were going to figure out how to make cheap TVs and go after your customers.

• 58:30Speaker 01

  Yes, that was a tuition I paid dearly for.

• 58:33Guy Raz?

  When did that start happening? I mean, when did you start seeing the the, you know, some of these competing brands start to come in?

• 58:40Speaker 01

  Right around the same time, there's a lot of people try to compete in the space. A lot of new brand came in. It was a brand called Olivia. Some of my supplier even had their own brand. So I say, okay, well, we better be really efficient, be really smart, better have better product, or better have a better management team. That means I can't manage everything by myself, by technology anymore. I want a great team of people, so I start to hire who understand finance better than me. So I start to spend a lot of time putting together a great team.

• 59:17Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because physios sort of, you know, it, your sales would go up and down and up and down, like, you know, 2007, I mentioned, two billion in sales, but then there were some years, you know, where the sales were, you know, three billion, but then they would, then some years they went down to one and a half billion. And, and I know that this is a tough business, right? And, and so was the outside pressure on your sales really just simply a matter of more competitors?

• 59:51Speaker 01

  A lot of competition, right? But we invest heavily into the company. I think that kind of set us apart, right? I say this time around, I'm not going to be, money is not the only thing, right? I want to, I want to make physio enterprise. So we invest in the brand, we invest in the people. And around 2008, 2009, I think, God, my competitor at Harvard is getting stronger and stronger.

• 1:00:17Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  Sooner or later, I got to add more value.

• 1:00:19Guy Raz?

  Right, and, and I guess to add more value, you revived this earlier idea you had about, about making smart TVs, because right back in the late 90s, when, when you tried doing that, it, it didn't work, but now you're talking about 10 years later, the technology is better. So I guess you, you went for it again, right?

• 1:00:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I went back to my roots. I say, we got to have a recurring revenue. I say, how do we do that? We got to get TV connected to the internet again. I think instead of making money once on TV sales, the customer, same customer probably come back seven years later to replace their TV. I say, why don't we just make money every time people turn on a TV? How do we do that? And I started investing to internet TV in 2009. We start shipping. The first internet TV on a digital TV in two thousand nine.

• 1:01:14Guy Raz?

  And did that really turn things around?

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, actually, we got Hulu, YouTube and Netflix. Although it's not a hundred percent of our volume, people respect that, right? So people say, oh, what is the streaming?

• 1:01:28Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 1:01:29Speaker 01

  We had the first wifi TV and we had the first TV with a little keyboard. So you can browse the web. And back then with Tina was Yahoo. They built the first operating system for TV for us.

• 1:01:46Guy Raz?

  Eventually, I mean, now we're going into twenty twenty four. I mean, you guys did eventually go public and but in twenty twenty four, you were outright acquired by Walmart. They they bought Vizio for two point three billion dollars. And Walmart, it's amazing, I read that according to Walmart, ninety percent of Americans shop at Walmart every year. Tell me about the decision to go with Walmart because I mean, you you guys had gone public at one time. You were valued at three and a half billion and and then the revenue, you know, the the value had gone up and down. But, you know, pretty good outcome, two point three billion dollars to acquire the business in twenty twenty four.

• 1:02:29Guy Raz?

  Was it kind of a relief for you when that when that happened, when that offer came through?

• 1:02:35Speaker 01

  Well, it's bitter and sweet, right? As an entrepreneur, I don't think, you know, it's my intention to ever stop solving more problem for this industry. I love attacking, making TV better. So when they came to us and they want us to consider this deal, it was a tough decision for me. But if I look at what's best for the company, potentially, this is big, right?

• 1:03:02Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  This is this is a lot bigger. Well, well, we I built from, this is way beyond my entrepreneurship now. Way beyond, right? We built a platform that, you know, last year we did over seven hundred million dollars in in media.

• 1:03:16Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  This is not something's all of my garage anymore. This is an enterprise.

• 1:03:22Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 1:03:22Speaker 01

  Right? I think one of the happiest moment in my life, I told that to a lot of people. It's like ten years ago when I walked into Vizio, I felt Vizio was bigger than me.

• 1:03:30Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 1:03:30Speaker 01

  Right, which is what I want. It's like, I I described it to a lot of people. It's like having a daughter. I have a daughter, right? It's like someday you're gonna walk down the aisle for her, with her, and marry her to somebody else. I mean, it's sad, it's not your girl anymore, right? But it's actually great, because that's the outcome you want. You want, you want to, you want her to continue her own legacy. You want her to start her own family. You want her to create her own, chasing after her dream. So I couldn't find a better partner than Walmart to do that, because they reached ninety percent of America.

• 1:04:10Guy Raz?

  Do you, when you think about, you know, what, what you built and what you achieved and everything that happened? I mean, how much of, of, of your success do you attribute to the work you put in? And, and how much do you think has to do with just getting lucky?

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  You know, uh, okay, you need to define being lucky, because I was really unlucky on the, on the plane.

• 1:04:34Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  Thinking about, I was really unlucky when I lost my first, uh, millions of dollars on my first business. I was very unlucky when I had a great idea and connected TV, smart TV, but I was way ahead of time. So I think my definition of lucky is always worry more about other people surrounding you than yourself. I think the luck doesn't drop out of the sky. You can't stay at home and be lucky. The luck is given to you by, by people around you, right? And sometimes you never know who's gonna make you, who's gonna help you, right? I wasn't lucky enough because I didn't hire good enough back twenty, thirty years ago. But now I surround myself with very, very critical, uh, very smart business people, a lot smarter than me. I'm lucky.

• 1:05:20Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:20Speaker 01

  Because I have done.

• 1:05:25Guy Raz?

  That's William Wang, founder and CEO of Vizio.

• 1:05:31Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And please sign up for my newsletter at guyraz.com or on Substack. This episode was produced by J.C. Howard with music composed by Rantin Arablui. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Alex Cheng. Our audio engineers were Robert Rodriguez and Maggie Luthar. Our production staff also includes Catherine Seifer, Iman Mani, Casey Herman, Sam Paulson, Chris Messini, Kerry Thompson, John Isabella, and Elaine Coats. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.