BILLIONS · 2026-07-02 · 53 min
Today on BILLIONS, I'm sitting down with Pete Maldonado, the visionary who took $6,000, one failed food venture behind him, and zero institutional backing and built a dominant food empire that's approaching $1 billion in revenue this year. Pete and his co-founder Rashid bet everything on a category the entire industry assumed was dead: the gas-station meat stick. For nearly ten years they bootstrapped taking less than $1M in primary capital prioritizing extreme operational focus and deleting complexity at every corner. They stayed so maniacally disciplined that they only ever scaled one product format : meat sticksusing just 12 core recipes to capture market share from corporate giants. But extreme efficiency comes with massive friction. Pete opens up about the devastating reality of underestimating their explosive demand curve, which cost them 9 figures in lost revenue last year alone, the inside story of surviving an overnight COVID collapse with Trader Joe's, and why he chose to step down as CEO to hand over the keys to his co-founder.
The man who built a bank for people banks don't want - Jason Wilk [Dave]81 / 100
Why the world’s biggest tech companies may never IPO again - Peter Singlehurst [Baillie Gifford]
Why high valuations are secretly killing tech unicorns - Martino Cadoni [Deepl]
How a $75 sneaker bot became a $300M/Month financial engine - Steven Schwartz [Whop]
Very few growth moats will survive AI - Sandy Diao [Descript]