The Zeroes by Randall Lane

Author:Randall Lane
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.
Published: 2010-05-12T10:00:00+00:00

By 2007, the emirate of Dubai, population 1.5 million, had broken ground on the tallest building in the world, the Burj Dubai, which would ultimately stand twice as tall as the Empire State Building, opened the world’s first indoor ski mountain, and unveiled a $14 billion man-made archipelago of islands shaped like a world map, except that each of these “countries” cost as much as $200 million to build on. In another sign that Dubai had arrived, the local press would note, Doubledown Media’s two flagship magazines, Trader Monthly and Dealmaker, finalized an agreement to launch in the capital of Arab capital.

Dubai represented everything we were about at the end of 2007: unfettered, self-generated growth, in all directions, from a tiny perch devoid of any inherent resources save pluck and ambition.

Our failed dance with the Robb Report had put us back on the treadmill. Given our recent track record, success would have to come through building rather than buying. As long as we had a cash source in Jim, that didn’t seem particularly daunting. Trees still reached infinitely to the sky in 2007, and from what we gathered from our bonus forecasts, not even the increasing number of defaulting, junky subprime mortgages could put clouds on the horizon.

The international expansion was my hands-on passion. Our London operation would soon launch Dealmaker UK, and a licensing deal for Brazil followed fast on the heels of Dubai. I found interested parties in Russia, India, and China, and publishers in South Korea, Germany, France, and Japan all found me. Every developed or developing country was sprouting its own local Stevie Cohens and Steve Schwarzmans; we had the blueprint to tap them.

All these countries would be interlinked through our expanding Web sites and daily electronic newsletters; we experimented with mobile applications and digital magazine delivery; we launched a for-profit events division. And, of course, we launched more magazines. Since we already had the traders buying and selling corporate securities, and dealmakers buying and selling the companies themselves, the next natural targets were those who ran the companies. In November 2007, Corporate Leader was born. So we had yet another launch party. Same formula: five hundred suits swilling Patrón tequila and Hennessy cognac, ogling models of private jets. New venue: the Four Seasons.

We didn’t stop there. Rather than cut our losses with Deedee Morrison and the floundering Private Air, we doubled down again, launching Private AirMart, a glossy pennysaver for used planes. Then came our first product-specific magazine: The Cigar Report, which tagged along with the other magazines, leveraging the fat-cat stereotype of our reader and that habit.

The latter effort came courtesy of Aaron Sigmond, who had originally sought to be our “chief luxury officer,” aping an actual job title he had seen in the Robb Report. Ostensibly, he seemed even less fit for that position than me: think Groucho Marx’s head atop the body of Barney the Purple Dinosaur. He signed his correspondence “Sig,” but I was immediately told, upon asking around, that some friends referred to him as “Wilbur,” as in the whiny corpulent pig from Charlotte’s Web.

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