The Best "Fake It Til You Make It" Story Of The Year: Ozy Media Gets $90 Million From Investors With Promise To Reach Millennials Despite Having NO Audience
Launched in California in 2013, Ozy Media produces left-leaning podcasts, television series and events. The firm has won an Emmy for its work. In late September, the New York Times reported that co-founder Samir Rao impersonated a senior leader at YouTube during a conference call with Goldman Sachs in February. At that point the investment bank was considering making a $40m investment in the media company.
God damn, I love stories like this. It makes me think I should start a fake media company, but then like never leave Barstool and just take investment from old dudes in big board rooms who don't really care what is on their balance sheet because they don't understand the internet and you can just use words like "growth play" and "millennials" and have, ya know, your co-founder pretend to be a reputable executive from Youtube as he tells Goldman how great Ozy is even though they have no audience and no views or downloads
Ozy: We are a leading media company appealing to millennials
Goldman: That's awesome. How many impressions do you generate per year?
Ozy:
Just laugh out loud funny. This fucking guy, Carlos.
If Goldman is interesting in a rapidly growing media company that reaches a passionate fanbase of millennials because they deliver authentic and relatable content I might know one. Series C round for Wall St firms in Barstool? Wouldn't mind that. Just take the money they were going to give to Ozy with no audience and put it in a minority stake in Barstool Sports. Nothing changes on our end, but everyone has a summer house and the doorknobs have diamonds in them. Sounds good to me.
This guy even snaked his way on to Token CEO last year
Great clip for Erika which tells the whole story of Ozy in 10 seconds.
"I have never met Carlos before and I have no idea how he ended up on this show"--Erika
Uhh…probably ended up on the show through some PR bullshit as part of his plan to seem WAY bigger than he was. If you're in the millennial media space and Nardini hasn't heard of you then it's a pretttttyyyyy good indicator that you're a nobody.
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This clip made me laugh too
Uhhh…the haters? Yes, of course, the haters. We are so big and a totally real company that people know about so the haters say…..
this is a top 5 gif imo and I will use it twice in a blog
Well now the "haters" are your investors who are suing you for fraud. That is what the haters say. They say this guy is completely full of shit. Oh well. Good to be on this side of things with real numbers.