How Prankster Oobah Butler Convinced Venture Capitalists to Give Him Over $1 Million
Shortly after In her new documentary, Oobah Butler tells the co-founder of her new company, Drops, that they should create a luxury piece of luggage that “looks like a bomb” and will sell for $200,000.
Immediately I think his quest to get £1million in 90 days might have ended prematurely.
But I’m wrong.
Butler is a British prank documentary filmmaker known for stunts, such as convincing Amazon to sell its drivers’ urine as energy drinks or creating a fake restaurant called The Shed and messing with TripAdvisor to make it the highest-rated London restaurant on the platform. His latest documentary, produced for the British channel Channel 4, is entitled How I made £1 million in 90 days. Set in London and New York, it tackles the world of startups, venture capital, crypto, and what ultimately appears to be a lot of bullshit, in the name of getting rich quick.
Butler opens the film by saying that as someone who didn’t grow up with money and isn’t particularly motivated by money, he is fascinated by the fact that people “idolize” wealthy entrepreneurs.
“It comes from a desire to understand why…everyone is so obsessed with money in that way,” he told WIRED. “And I’m not talking about survival. I’m not talking about being able to exist. I’m talking about…being addicted to making money.”
His only rules for getting £1 million (US$1.3 million) are that he is not allowed to break the law and that any costs he incurs to get there are his responsibility. He uses several strategies to accumulate money, including simply asking rich people for it (this doesn’t go well) and creating hype for the crypto company UNFK by doing things like tricking bankers into committing crimes on camera. He also creates Drops, a company that makes news with its controversial stunts and then attempts to capitalize on the attention by selling “very expensive” items.
Butler seeks advice from Venmo co-founder Iqram Magdon-Ismail, who quickly declares himself a co-founder of Butler on Drops and initially seems very enthusiastic, thinking that the company is “already worth at least $10 million” simply because they are both committed to it, and that they might be able to sell out Madison Square Garden in a year to tell their story. Their brainstorm includes plans to buy the first piece of land on Mars and sell the possibility of naming the “first marked species.” But after Butler suggests the bomb-shaped suitcase and a pair of “real-life anti-advertising sunglasses” that completely remove the wearer’s vision, Magdon-Ismail temporarily ghosts him.
Butler then embarks on a memecoin adventure that goes south, before returning to Drops and launching “Britain’s first legal children’s sweatshop in over a century”. He finds a loophole to avoid paying the working children, reasoning that because he is filming the children for the documentary, they are technically performers. His underage staff helps him come up with marketing ideas to sell custom-made football jerseys emblazoned with a fake brand of religious cigarettes called Holy Smokes. Although the clothing line is covered by GQ, Butler is not selling jerseys worth anywhere near £1 million.
