Lady Gaga & Atom Factory: Troy Carter

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. 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.

• 0:04Guy Raz?

  So what happened to the business?

• 0:07Speaker 01

  It was over. 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. All of my vendors started calling me. My house was under foreclosure. And my wife and my mother-in-law ended up pawned their wedding rings to save the house.

• 0:33Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  And with me, I never considered suicide. But I know why people do.

• 0:46Guy Raz?

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

• 0:58Guy 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.

• 1:15Guy 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.

• 2:00Guy 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.

• 2:32Speaker 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.

• 2:37Guy Raz?

  OK.

• 2:38Speaker 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.

• 2:58Guy Raz?

  Because those were the guys from Philadelphia.

• 3:01Speaker 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.

• 3:12Guy Raz?

  So did you meet them?

• 3:15Speaker 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.

• 3:51Guy Raz?

  And he listened to it right then and there?

• 3:53Speaker 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 Will saw some potential in us. And he said, look, 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 he had us covered. We were going to be OK.

• 4:22Guy Raz?

  And what was the track you played for him? Do you remember how it goes?

• 4:26Speaker 01

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

• 4:30Guy Raz?

  You have to give a sum of it.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  It was a song called "Where's the Party."

• 4:35Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  That was like, "Oh, I'm not telling you how it goes."

• 4:38Guy Raz?

  You gotta tell us how it goes.

• 4:38Speaker 01

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

• 4:44Guy Raz?

  We're gonna find it.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  I know you are.

• 4:54Guy Raz?

  It's not, it's not so bad.

• 4:58Speaker 01

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

• 5:05Guy Raz?

  So you made no money off that?

• 5:08Speaker 01

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

• 5:13Guy Raz?

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

• 5:17Speaker 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.

• 5:56Guy Raz?

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

• 6:02Speaker 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.

• 6:16Guy Raz?

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

• 6:17Speaker 01

  I was in my late teens, early 20s during sort of that transition period.

• 6:23Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  And I was working at Will and James's production company. And I was having the time of my life and 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 at the, 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.

• 7:07Speaker 01

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

• 7:10Guy Raz?

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

• 7:13Speaker 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 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.

• 7:35Guy Raz?

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

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I went back, 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, and it was the rapper Eve.

• 8:05Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  But I, I had absolutely no clue what I was doing.

• 8:13Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  And, you know, it started off, you know, Eve, Eve had come to me and she said, look, you know, I need your help in, you know, 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, 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, you know, she has the best possible chance to make it? And everything else was, you know, learning as I was going along. And, you know, I remember the first tour that we went on was this Cash Money Rough Riders tour.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  I got on the bus and it was this old bus driver, and, you know, scruffy beard, and he said, "You got the float?" I said, "I'll be right back." And I, you know, I got off the bus and I called 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, you know, everything else or whatever." So I got back on the bus and gave him the money. And, you know, 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.

• 9:35Guy Raz?

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

• 9:47Speaker 01

  You know, the way it works is the manager sort of, you know, is like the hub of an artist's career. So, you know, 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, you know, a CEO of Eve Inc., of her business.

• 10:14Guy Raz?

  And that became a pretty big business.

• 10:16Speaker 01

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

• 10:32Speaker 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.

• 11:05Guy 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?

• 11:19Speaker 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 gonna brandish it and who's gonna 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.

• 11:59Speaker 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.

• 12:08Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 12:09Speaker 01

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

• 12:16Guy 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.

• 12:30Speaker 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.

• 12:55Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Were you making money at the time?

• 12:58Speaker 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.

• 13:24Guy Raz?

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

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Uh, it was called Irving Wonder.

• 13:28Guy Raz?

  Irving Wonder, okay.

• 13:29Speaker 01

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

• 13:34Guy Raz?

  You sold it to another management company?

• 13:36Speaker 01

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

• 13:46Guy Raz?

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

• 13:50Speaker 01

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

• 13:57Guy Raz?

  It was a lot of money, basically.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was hustling.

• 13:59Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  You know, I was living check to check, uh, 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, uh, 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 gonna take you to the next level."

• 14:45Speaker 01

  And I, and I ended up doing it.

• 14:46Guy Raz?

  What did they pay you?

• 14:48Speaker 01

  I can't tell you what they paid me. You can't, really? They paid me more. That NDA is long expired. 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 in, you know, in the bank at one time.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  And here it was. Now it's like, OK, you know what? It's, this is, this is very real. And I just, yeah, it was very real. So what was it like working, working for Sanctuary? I hated it.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  I hated it. What happened? 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. But what were they? 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. So how, how long did you last there? You know what?

• 16:35Speaker 01

  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.

• 17:16Guy Raz?

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

• 17:19Speaker 01

  Yes, I was managing Eve.

• 17:21Guy Raz?

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

• 17:27Speaker 01

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

• 17:34Guy Raz?

  The new business that you started after you left Sanctuary?

• 17:36Speaker 01

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

• 17:44Guy Raz?

  You gotta pay taxes.

• 17:45Speaker 01

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

• 17:51Guy Raz?

  And it's gone.

• 17:52Speaker 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.

• 18:10Guy Raz?

  What happened to it?

• 18:11Speaker 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.

• 18:29Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 18:30Speaker 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.

• 18:55Speaker 01

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

• 19:03Guy Raz?

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

• 19:11Speaker 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.

• 19:37Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 19:37Speaker 01

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

• 19:41Guy Raz?

  So what happened to the business?

• 19:43Speaker 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 their wedding rings to, you know, to, to save the house.

• 20:18Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  And, 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 gonna 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 gonna be declined.

• 20:41Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 20:42Speaker 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.

• 20:59Speaker 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.

• 21:26Guy 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"?

• 21:45Speaker 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.

• 22:26Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 22:27Speaker 01

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

• 22:41Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 22:42Speaker 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.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  Sorry.

• 22:59Guy Raz?

  It's okay.

• 23:02Speaker 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?

• 23:16Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  It's a big deal.

• 23:19Guy Raz?

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

• 23:29Speaker 01

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

• 24:12Speaker 01

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

• 24:21Guy 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.

• 24:49Guy Raz?

  Built.

• 24:52Guy 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?

• 25:17Speaker 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.

• 25:47Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 25:48Speaker 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.

• 26:22Guy 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.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 26:29Guy Raz?

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

• 26:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:34Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 26:34Speaker 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.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Let's give this to Britney Spears."

• 27:20Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 27:21Speaker 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.

• 27:36Guy Raz?

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

• 27:38Speaker 01

  It was the song "Just Dance."

• 27:42Guy Raz?

  Nobody would play that song?

• 27:43Speaker 01

  Nobody would play it. Nobody would play it.

• 27:48Guy Raz?

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

• 27:52Speaker 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.

• 28:26Guy Raz?

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

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, both.

• 28:33Guy Raz?

  How would people even discover her?

• 28:36Speaker 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, 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.

• 29:14Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 29:14Speaker 01

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

• 29:22Guy 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?

• 29:43Speaker 01

  Yep. Start, start it over.

• 29:45Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 29:46Speaker 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.

• 29:56Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  And so really starting over.

• 29:58Guy 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?

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Interscope Records.

• 30:07Guy Raz?

  OK.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  So Interscope stepped up and they funded a bit.

• 30:12Guy 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.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  No, you know, it was a shoestring budget.

• 30:20Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 30:20Speaker 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.

• 31:02Speaker 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.

• 31:25Guy Raz?

  This had to work.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  It had to work. It had to work.

• 31:28Guy 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'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?

• 31:47Speaker 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.

• 32:07Guy Raz?

  Yeah, it's a pretty big venue.

• 32:09Speaker 01

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

• 32:15Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 32:16Speaker 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?

• 32:31Guy Raz?

  This is like 2008, 2009?

• 32:33Speaker 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.

• 32:46Guy Raz?

  To get tickets to that show?

• 32:47Speaker 01

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

• 32:52Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 32:53Speaker 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.

• 33:05Guy Raz?

  What was that ride like?

• 33:07Speaker 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.

• 33:38Guy 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.

• 33:47Speaker 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? Wow. You know, you look out at a crowd. Or, you know, I remember seeing her play Sting's Ring Force 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.

• 34:33Guy 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? I mean, because you started a company around that time. It was called Atom Factory, right?

• 34:46Speaker 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.

• 35:15Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 35:15Speaker 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.

• 35:24Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 35:25Speaker 01

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

• 35:32Guy 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.

• 35:44Speaker 01

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

• 35:49Guy Raz?

  Which is a story you had heard.

• 35:51Speaker 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.

• 36:00Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 36:01Speaker 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.

• 36:13Guy Raz?

  Why did she want to part ways with you?

• 36:16Speaker 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.

• 36:30Guy Raz?

  Are you guys still friends?

• 36:31Speaker 01

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

• 36:35Guy Raz?

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

• 36:40Speaker 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, it's just no gray for me. I'm, I'm either all in or all out.

• 37:09Guy Raz?

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

• 37:12Speaker 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.

• 37:45Guy 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? Because, I mean, you basically, at a certain point, decided, I want to invest in startups.

• 38:00Speaker 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-

• 38:10Guy Raz?

  Social media stuff.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, just to promote the music.

• 38:12Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 38:13Speaker 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, so.

• 38:52Guy Raz?

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

• 38:57Speaker 01

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

• 39:06Guy 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?

• 39:26Speaker 01

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

• 39:40Guy Raz?

  You always have it.

• 39:41Speaker 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.

• 40:08Guy 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 and 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?

• 40:31Speaker 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.

• 41:12Speaker 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.

• 41:37Guy 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.

• 41:54Speaker 01

  You know, she, she passed away three years ago. And, yup, 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.

• 42:17Speaker 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.

• 42:34Speaker 01

  And we saw Barry Gordy.

• 42:36Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  She said, that's you.

• 42:41Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 42:44Guy Raz?

  Amazing.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  Yup.

• 42:47Speaker 01

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

• 42:58Guy 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 wears the party, the one we played earlier. It's been on YouTube for 10 years, and it only has 13,000 views.

• 43:30Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. If you want to find out more about it, you can go to howibuiltthis.npr.org. Please also subscribe to our show on iTunes or however you get your podcasts. You can also write us at [email protected], or follow us on Twitter. That's at How I Built This. And one more quick thing. This week, we've taken a little break from our How You Built This segment, but we're definitely going to be back with a new one next week. So if you want to tell us a story about something you're working on, go to build.npr.org. Our show was produced this week by Ramtin Arablouei, who also composed the music. Thanks also to Neva Grant, Sanaz Meshkhanpour, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Claire Breen.

• 44:14Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 44:22Guy Raz?

  Hey, if you're still listening, you know, a lot of people ask me what podcasts I listen to, and I listen to a lot. And one of my favorites is NPR's Planet Money. It's full of super fun, insightful stories that explain all kinds of things about the world. You don't even have to care about finance or economics to love it. It's a great show, and you can find it right now at npr.org/podcasts or on the NPR One app.