I\u2019ve never met a billionaire before. And this isn\u2019t how I imagined it would go. Don\u2019t get me wrong: his brightly lit Manhattan office is pleasant, but not unusual. The pipes are scalding hot. As his assistant leads me through to the meeting room, I\u2019m fairly sure I can spot discarded paper plates from pizza slices poking out of the kitchen bin. In other words, it is similar to most of the city\u2019s workplaces.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m here to meet Jim McKelvey, somebody Forbes will tell you has roughly \u00a31.3bn to his name from co-founding the payment app Square. Jim is straight off a flight from Tokyo, I\u2019m told. He enters the room and shakes my hand politely, but soon seems agitated. I\u2019m not sure whether it\u2019s his lack of sleep or if this is just how people who make more money during power naps than you earn annually deal with potentially having their time wasted. In other words, I\u2019m going to have to ease my way in gently.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, I Googled you on my way in,\u201d I say, \u201cand it turns out you\u2019re a billionaire.\u201d He agrees. \u201cI worked it out,\u201d I continue, \u201cand it seems like \u00a31m to you is the equivalent of \u00a320 to me. So please can I have a million pounds?\u201d<\/p>\n
It is over quite abruptly. Pretty much everything has been going this way for over a month, since I started this project to become a millionaire in 90 days. Today, money seems to be all people have room to care about. This makes sense: a huge number can no longer afford most things that provide stability or meaning. Simultaneously, if you look at anybody\u2019s tailored social media algorithms, they\u2019re being served a cultural diet of entrepreneurial slop. Business gurus in brightly lit rooms talk earnestly about meditation. Teenagers give crash courses in how to make it big in cryptocurrency. The rock stars of today seem to be founders, venture capitalists and money men.<\/p>\n
I cannot help but find this depressing. I didn\u2019t grow up with money and have become accustomed to the idea of a life where it will be transient. However, as my savings dwindle, I find myself wondering if it has to be this way. Could there be something in society\u2019s shift towards hustle and grift? Perhaps this could be my opportunity to make that elusive secure living. But I think there has to be some sort of pressure involved \u2013 which is why I have challenged myself to become a millionaire in 90 days.<\/p>\n
So I pitch the idea to Channel 4, keen to film my bid to bag \u00a31m, even though I really haven\u2019t thought things through. They seem sceptical but, before the mood sours, we make a deal.<\/p>\n
I lose my first few days to TikTok, observing the best minds of my generation \u2013 Steven Bartlett, host of The Diary of a CEO podcast, and Luke Belmar, a digital creator and investor in crypto \u2013 discuss things like whether humans actually need sleep or how the Bible tells us not to eat crisps. The consensus seems to be that I need a business. I come up with one based on my past, doing stunts like creating London\u2019s premier fake restaurant in a garden shed<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2018I need a business\u2019 \u2026 Oobah Butler. Photograph: PR Image<\/p>\n As a model, I will use the artist Banksy and the Brooklyn-based art collective\/business agency MSCHF, who both manufacture headline-grabbing moments to sell expensive products and inflate the value of their brand. MSCHF sold 666 pairs of shoes in a collaboration with the rapper Lil Nas X, each containing a drop of blood, for $1,018 each. I would do similar to launch my new company, Drops. The plan is, after 90 days, to have made enough noise to sell the company for a million. But first, to fund my publicity stunts, I need investment.<\/p>\n Even before Swoop Funding sees me out of its office in London\u2019s Regent Street, I know they aren\u2019t the ones for me. They want to see a business plan, disconcerted by the fact that Drops barely exists. Such old-world thinking! I need somewhere that embraces risk.<\/p>\n Thank God for New York. On day 15 of my challenge, I arrive and immediately think: \u201cThis is going to be easy.\u201d Ping-ponging from party to party, I realise everybody is a millionaire here. \u201cYou want to make a million?\u201d I am asked. \u201cWhy not a billion?\u201d Yes, why not?<\/p>\n Iqram Magdon-Ismail is introduced to me as the co-founder of one of the US\u2019s largest payment apps, Venmo. A company he\u2019d sold in 2012 was valued at $38bn (\u00a328bn) in 2020. A day or two later, I stop by his office and he explains his latest business venture, Jelly-My-Jelly, an app that seems to completely change every time we meet. He has forgotten the details of my challenge but, hearing it now, his eyes light up \u2013 he wants in.<\/p>\n Iqram stands up, explaining how this is going to be big. He declares himself my co-founder and announces that our company is already worth $10m. In a year\u2019s time, people will fill Madison Square Garden to hear how this business came together.<\/p>\n A week later, I pitch my planned publicity stunts over coffee. \u201cI want to create and sell a luxury piece of luggage that looks like a bomb.\u201d Iqram stares blankly. I continue: \u201cLet\u2019s create the first legal child sweatshop in over a century!\u201d Soon, Iqram makes it clear that positioning himself as co-founder was not legally binding. In the subsequent days, whenever I try to contact him, I am unsuccessful. Iqram doesn\u2019t answer a text from me for a while. I am getting desperate, which means crossing one of my red lines: getting into crypto.<\/p>\n Joining me on Zoom from inside a hyperbaric chamber, an oxygen-boosting device with contested health benefits used by many Silicon Valley loyalists, is Gunnar Lovelace. He is the founder of a crypto company named UNFK that aims to create, hype and inflate the value of its own meme coin. He wants viral ideas. I have always avoided crypto due to feeling uncomfortable about the ethics. Iqram even floated the idea of us doing a coin together, but I resisted.<\/p>\n However, I am now running out of options. I agree to four or five viral stunts with Gunnar. Over the coming weeks, I film something about trying to trick bankers into committing crimes. I make people taste plastic burgers outside a McDonald\u2019s to make a hazy point about chemicals in the food packaging of a Filet-O-Fish, and another poking again at Amazon like in my last film for Channel 4<\/a>. I end up making $18,000, which is a lot less than I\u2019d hoped for.<\/p>\n I pitch all the businesses I\u2019ve created during the 90-day period, but claim them as wins<\/p>\n I am now dangerously low on time. I commit to launching my headline-baiting Drops idea where unpaid kids design a \u00a3100 football shirt emblazoned with their own faux-religious cigarette brand, Holy Smokes. GQ write about the<\/a> release, while influencers find it puzzling<\/a>. When it comes out, we manage to sell \u00a310,000 of shirts. It\u2019s not enough. Drops is dead. I am forced to pivot.<\/p>\n