Read Online Double or Nothing: How Two Friends Risked It All to Buy One of Las Vegas' Legendary Casinos by Tom Breitling, Cal Fussman - Free Book Online Page B

no airs, and walked around in a cab driver’s cap. His investment record was so good over decades that friends of his put money into projects simply because The Captain recommended them. On the surface, The Captainwas not the best candidate to fund a fledgling Internet travel company. He was approaching seventy, and he didn’t know anything about computers. To this day, he does his spreadsheets in pencil. And he’s not the type to invest over the long haul. No quarterly interest payments for The Captain and his investors. Oh, no. “Me and my guys don’t buy green bananas,” he liked to say. “We want our interest payments monthly.”
    But The Captain immediately intuited that travel and the Internet were a perfect partnership. He invited Tim to make a presentation to a group of his pals in Baltimore.
    When Tim told Lorenzo that he was going to Baltimore to raise money, Lorenzo’s eyelids lifted. Baltimore? Lorenzo had been to the dance before when his own company went public back in 1993. He knew how the game was played. You give your pitch at a meeting in New York with investment bankers who’ll do their due diligence, who’ll make twenty additional phone calls with plenty of questions, and then, if they like the deal, will start negotiating the terms.
    Things were a little different in Baltimore. Tim and Lorenzo stepped into a banquet room at a restaurant on the waterfront. There were about thirty guys eating and drinking. Tim went up to the podium and gave his PowerPoint presentation. As soon as he was done, before a single question could be asked, The Captain grabbed the microphone, looked out into the crowd, and said, “All right, now, listen to me! I’m passing around a clipboard. I want you all to write your name down and how much you’re in for—and don’t embarrass yourself!”
    As the evening wound down, Lorenzo stood by in disbelief as people came up to Tim and said, “Oh, I remember going to the racetrack with your Uncle Jack back in…must’ve been 1949. If you’re okay with The Captain, you’re okay with me, kid. You need money, you can have whatever you need.”
    After it was over, the bill came to Tim. “Twelve thousand dollars!” he yelped.
    â€œSo my guys had a few glasses of wine,” The Captain said. “What are you complaining about? We just raised $8 million. Just sign the damn check.”
    That $8 million built up our infrastructure and propelled our numbers through the roof. In a single year, our sales climbed 60 percent.
    The year before the Internet, 1997: $12 million.
    The year of the Internet, 1998: $20 million.
    Once again, our timing was perfect. The entire travel agency business was being flipped upside down by the Internet. At first, United Airlines cut the standard airline commission to travel agencies from 10 percent down to 8 percent. The other airlines followed suit, and soon commissions were slashed to 5 percent. Then down to $20 maximum per ticket. Eventually, they were cut to nothing at all.
    Brick-and-mortar travel agencies with fixed costs that relied on traffic off the streets and phone calls just couldn’t compete with five clicks on a computer. We were like the telegraph in the day of the Pony Express. Two days after the last telegraph wire was strung, the Pony Express went out of business.
    We threw millions into advertising with search engines and partners. And even with so many reservations coming through the Internet, our phone traffic tripled .
    We hired Mr. In- credible—Edward Muncey—away from the Bellagio to bring in hotel rooms around the country. We’d set a goal. Twenty-five cities and 250 hotels.
    â€œHow ya doin’, Edward?”
    â€œ In -credible!” he’d say.
    We’d set a new goal. Fifty cities and 500 hotels.
    â€œHow ya doin’, Edward?”
    â€œ In- credible!”
    A hundred cities and 2,500 hotels.
    â€œHow ya