NerdWallet started with $800 and an Excel spreadsheet. Now, the personal finance site is headed for a ~$5B IPO.
To get here, it mastered SEO including a genius hack that drives millions of organic page views: free finance tools (eg. mortgage calculators).
Here's a breakdown🧵
1/ Founded in 2009, NerdWallet began as a credit card comparison site but has expanded into mortgages, personal finance, investing and more.
The business model: NerdWallet offers free reviews/content/tools and receives affiliate fees if it drives conversions on finance products.
2/ Per SimilarWeb, NerdWallet gets 20m+ site visits a month. And 86% of that is via search (which is nearly all organic).
NerdWallet has a big editorial team (100+) to create content that ranks high in valuable finance searches.
It also offers ALOT of free tools.
3/ In total, NerdWallet has 25 (!) free finance calculators
These tools are genius SEO hacks in the ultra competitive personal finance world.
It dominates Google for keywords like “mortgage calculator”, “refi calculator”, “compound interest calculator”,”retirement calculator”.
4/ Here are other calculators it ranks for:
5/ “Mortgage calculator” alone gets ~3.5m Google searches a month.
In total, NerdWallet's free finance calculators drive an estimated 1m monthly visitors.
How much would an always-on marketing campaign which drives 1m visitors a month cost via other marketing channels?
6/ These free content tools are quickly becoming the go to playbook for the smartest marketers:
◻️ Canva = tool that ranks #1 for “color wheel”
◻️ Shopify = tool for “business name generator"
◻️ Hubspot = tool for "email signature generator”
7/ Notice how each tool is specifically created with the desired target market in mind:
◻️ Canva’s "color wheel" --> "Designers”
◻️Shopify’s "business name generator" --> "First time business owners"
◻️Hubspot’s “email signature generator" --> "Sales professionals"
8/ How can you find content tool ideas for your business?
Searches for “calculators” are perfect for content tools but there are many alternatives ("templates”, “worksheets”, “generators”, “planners”) to find what your audience might be looking for.
Give it a whirl:
9/ If you enjoyed that, I write threads breaking down tech and business 1-2x a week.
Def follow @TrungTPhan to catch them in your feed.
11/ In addition to calculators, NerdWallet also builds domain authority with:
◻️ Awards ("best mortgage lender", "best state for young families") that sites link to
◻️ Syndicate content (Forbes, AP, etc)
◻️ Back link magnets (reports, guides)
Francis Ford Coppola’s new film “Megalopolis” cost $120m and he self-financed it (including money from selling his winery).
Coppola is a legend of “going all in” and “putting skin in the game”.
The GOAT example is “Apocalypse Now”, his classic 1979 war film with arguably the most insane production story ever.
Let’s rewind to 1975, the year Copolla turned 36: he is on top of Hollywood after directing “The Godfather” (1972) and “The Godfather II” (1974).
What does Coppola choose to do next? Make a film about the Vietnam War. The script was based on Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”, the 1889 novel about the horrors of colonialism in the Belgian Congo.
The major studios all said “no” to Coppola’s pitch for three major reasons:
1️⃣ He wanted full creative control
2️⃣ He wanted to own all of the film rights
3️⃣ The Fall of Saigon happened in April 1975 and the American audience wasn’t exactly asking for a Vietnam War film (the studios wanted Coppola to make another Mafia flick)
Coppola was undeterred and made a huge bet.
“The Godfather II” cost $14m and the director estimated that “Apocalypse Now” would be the same budget.
He put up $7m (mostly from those sweet Godfather checks) and raised another $7m from United Artists (which bought domestic distribution rights for ~7 years).
But the project was a disaster from the start.
Filming started in The Philippines in March 1976 and was supposed to last 3-4 months…it would take 16 months:
▫️Harvey Keitel was the initial lead but Coppola fired him after one week.
▫️Martin Sheen (Captain Willard) took the lead role but drank so much on set that he gave himself a stress-induced heart attack and almost died.
▫️Dennis Hopper was doing 3g of coke and 20+ drinks a day while on set (him and Marlon Brandon also hated each other).
▫️A typhoon destroyed 80% of the set and delayed filming for 2-3 months.
▫️Actual dead bodies — stolen from a local grave — were used on set and the Filipino government and its strongman leader Ferdinand Marcos threatened to shut down production after finding out.
▫️Marlon Brando (Col. Kurtz) demanded a huge fee ($3m+ for 3 weeks of work and 10% of the film’s gross). He then showed up late, asked for rewrites, declined to read Conrad’s book and was so overweight that the costumes wouldn’t fit (to obscure his heft, Copolla filmed Brando in the shadows and had him wear oversized dark clothing).
The budget ballooned to over $30m.
To maintain creative control and maintain all the film rights, Coppola mortgaged his home and borrowed money against his ownership in The Godfather.
After the success of “Star Wars” (1977), Coppola even asked his friend and business partner George Lucas — who was originally tapped to direct Apocalypse — for some funds.
I repeat: Coppola went ALL THE WAY IN and had SKIN IN THE GAME.
His wife Eleanor took recorded video of all the insanity and the footage was turned into a 1991 documentary (“Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse”).
The total cost for the film — including marketing spend — reached $45m.
Against all odds, Coppola finished the project and the film was released in August 1979. It grossed $105m and Coppola would make a fortune on future DVD, Home Video and other ancillary revenue streams (below is a trailer for a re-mastered cut from 2019).
During the Cannes Festival in May 1979, Coppola famously said of the film: “The way we made it was very much like the way the Americans were in Vietnam. We were in the jungle, there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little, we went insane.”
Coppola also said at Cannes that “My movie is not *about* Vietnam. My movie *is* Vietnam”.
It’s def one of the best films ever but that is … a stretch of a comparison.
If you want more on Apocalypse Now, I went on Jim O'Shaughnessy’s “Infinite Loops” podcast with Rob Henderson to talk about the making and psychology of the film. open.spotify.com/episode/38OYIn…
When Iron Man came out in 2008, Robert Downey Jr. was *not* a marquee star.
He was rebuilding his career and paid a below market rate of $500k.
But the deal terms set him up for one of the great acting comebacks ever (while earnings $450m+ as Tony Stark).
Here’s the story 🧵
The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) we know today was a long shot in the early 2000s.
Marvel was a public co. coming off bankruptcy in 1996 and had sold rights to its best IP (Spiderman, X-Men, Fantastic 4)
From 2000-07, films based on the IP minted cash but Marvel made little:
In the early-90s, Downey Jr. was one of the brightest young stars in Hollywood, receiving a Best Actor nomination for "Charlie Chaplin" in 1992 (@ 27yrs old).
In the 2nd half of the decade, though, he dealt with drug addiction, arrests and jail stints before going clean in 2003.
Masayoshi Son does the craziest investment swings:
▫️In mid-90s: invested $1.7B into 100+ internet firms (including a ~30% stake in Yahoo! for $100m)
▫️In 2000: was worth $78B at peak Dotcom and was the richest person in the world for 3 days (ahead of Gates)
▫️The bubble burst and he lost 99% of wealth
▫️In 2000, puts $20m into Alibaba for a 34% stake (sold out almost entirely by 2023 and made ~$72B)
▫️Lost $14B on WeWork
▫️Once owned ~5% of Nvidia but sold it all for $3.6B in 2019 (that stake would now be worth $90B)
▫️In 2016, Softbank bought Arm Holdings for $32B (still owns 90% and the stake is $114B, a gain of $82B)
Based on his ownership in Softbank and other investment vehicles, his personal wealth is currently ~$15B.