Zevix

Money talks

[Zevix @0xZevix]

Steve Jobs was worth over $200 million the day Apple went public. His closest friend, who assembled Apple's first computers for $3 an hour, got zero stock options.

An engineer offered to match any stock Jobs gave him. Jobs reportedly said, "I will give him zero."

In the video below, Daniel Kottke remembers what happened when he asked his old friend to talk about it.

Kottke and Jobs met at Reed College. They traveled to India together looking for enlightenment, and later shared a house.

He was Apple employee No. 12. He put together Apple I boards in a garage in Los Altos. "Steve was paying me $3 an hour," he says.

Back then only engineers and executives got stock options. Kottke was a technician. "Many years later I find out Steve was head of the compensation committee that was awarding stock options," he says.

Apple went public on December 12, 1980. It was the biggest IPO since Ford in 1956, and it reportedly made about 300 people millionaires.

Kottke just wanted his friend to tell him how to earn an option someday. "He would not talk to me," he says. He remembers going to Jobs' office and asking, "Steve, could we have lunch? Could we have lunch please?"

The engineer who offered to share was Rod Holt, according to Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs.

Steve Wozniak stepped in. He gave some of his own Apple stock to a handful of early employees, Kottke included. Years later Kottke did the math. "It's like a 10th of what the early engineers got."

The case for Jobs: those were the rules in Silicon Valley at the time. Technicians didn't get options, and Kottke wasn't an engineer. Jobs also brought him onto the Macintosh team later.

The case for Kottke: he was there before Apple existed, put the first machines together by hand and was Jobs' closest friend.

One of them was worth over $200 million. The other assembled his first computers for $3 an hour and got zero stock options from him.

So should Jobs have taken care of his friend, or were the rules the rules?

[Zevix @0xZevix]

@zerodoubts0 You can live comfortably and still owe millions, but a $550M loss and a $7.3M IRS lien raise serious questions about where the money actually went.

[Zevix @0xZevix]

Floyd Mayweather says two men he trusted stole $550 million from him. "Yes, and I still live a great life," he told Patrick Bet-David last week.

Seven months earlier, the IRS filed a $7.3 million tax lien against him in Las Vegas.

And the business manager he sued says Floyd blew through it himself.

In the video below, Mayweather explains who took the money, and how much he says he'll get for his next fight.

Few athletes have ever been paid more. In three fights alone, against Conor McGregor, Manny Pacquiao and Canelo Alvarez, he says, "I made 750 million."

The first man, he says, was "sort of like a father figure." He says this man helped him get free of his old promoter. Floyd wrote that check himself, $750,000.

Years later they went through the paperwork. "We come to find out 350 million was stolen," he says. He says it's in litigation now.

The second man was "sitting next to me acting like he was a friend helping me clean up business and he stole 200 million."

He didn't say either name on the show. But he has been suing people all year.

In February he sued Showtime and its former boxing boss Stephen Espinoza for more than $340 million. Showtime denies it.

In May he sued his former business manager Jona Rechnitz, claiming more than $175 million. In September he dropped the case.

Rechnitz denied all of it. "It's sad that Floyd blew through his money," he said in June. "First, he blamed Al Haymon, and now he's blaming me." Al Haymon was Floyd's longtime adviser.

Rechnitz isn't a clean witness either. He pleaded guilty to fraud conspiracy in a New York corruption case in 2016.

The IRS lien covers unpaid taxes from 2018 and 2023, according to Business Insider.

And Floyd isn't worried. For a Pacquiao rematch, which he expects in 2027, he says, "I'll be guaranteed 110 million."

The case for Floyd: boxing is full of champions who were robbed by the people around them. Fighters fight, and other people handle the money. And the Showtime case is still in court.

So was "Money" Mayweather robbed of $550 million, or did he spend it?

[Zevix @0xZevix]

@0xNaoris Absolutely. Earning $750 million doesn’t mean keeping it. Taxes, investments, spending, and bad deals can drain a fortune before you realize how much is gone

[Zevix @0xZevix]

@ESC__AI That’s the difference. When you’re broke, money is survival. When you’re wealthy, it becomes a choice.

[Zevix @0xZevix]

Hailey Bieber sold her skincare brand Rhode in a deal worth up to $1 billion. Now she says "this isn't like about money for me."

And that she's "not interested in overconsumption." Rhode launched with 3 products. Its online store now lists 123.

Then the interviewer said what everyone in the room was thinking.

That was 2022. A serum, a cream and a lip balm. In 2025 e.l.f. Beauty bought the brand, and $600 million of the price was paid in cash at closing.

Last fiscal year Rhode did about $390 million in sales, up 80%. The new goal is $1 billion a year.

This month at Fortune's Most Powerful Women summit, she was asked what doesn't belong in Rhode, even if it would sell.

"I really am not interested in overconsumption," she said. The whole idea from the beginning, she said, was "one of each thing done really well."

Today the store lists 19 lip tints, 14 lip shapers, a $38 phone case made to hold a lip tint, and a $16 case for its $16 pimple patches.

Then she joked that "a conversation about margins hates to see me coming."

"I'm always in the meetings like," she said. "This isn't like about money for me."

She won't compromise what her gut tells her "for the sake of margin, which maybe is like the wrong thing to say."

Fortune's Ellie Austin didn't let it go. She said that's a "position you can be in" because of the "enormous platform" Bieber had going into Rhode.

"A hundred percent," Bieber said. She called having a platform "a privilege."

The case for Bieber: Most of those 123 items are shades and sets of the same few formulas. She says she's been working since she was 17, and that Rhode is the number one brand in every retail market it's in. Product first, money later is how a lot of brands get big.

But it's a lot easier to say when your company just sold for up to $1 billion.

So is Hailey being honest, or is "it's not about money" something only rich people get to say?

[Zevix @0xZevix]

@ESC__AI Anyone can say money doesn’t matter. The real question is whether they’d still believe that before the first million

[Zevix @0xZevix]

@ESC__AI The real flex isn’t saying money doesn’t matter. It’s building something so valuable that you no longer have to chase it.

[Zevix @0xZevix]

@CASHVAULTk6v Money looks different when you already have it. The real test is whether you’d make the same decisions when every dollar matters and nothing is guaranteed

[Zevix @0xZevix]

@0xNaoris Selling for a billion doesn't mean you've stopped caring about how much money you keep. The smartest founders know that revenue is vanity, but profit is what builds lasting wealth.

[Zevix @0xZevix]

@0xNaoris Most people focus on how much they can earn today, while the real wealth often comes from owning a piece of what you help create. Arnold traded guaranteed money for a share of the upside, and that decision changed everything

[Zevix @0xZevix]

Arnold Schwarzenegger took $0 to star in Twins. He says it paid him more than $40 million, more than any Terminator movie ever did.

When the money came in, a studio executive turned around, pulled his pockets inside out and told them, "You robbed me blind."

In this interview, Arnold explains the deal he says the studio would never make again, no matter who asked.

In the late 1980s, every studio wanted him in another action movie. He wanted a comedy, and nobody would give him one.

So he made an offer. "Don't give me any money, nothing, just pay for the production."

Director Ivan Reitman, fresh off Ghostbusters, and Danny DeVito did the same. No salaries, just a big chunk of the profits. Arnold's share was 17.5%, according to the AFI catalog.

Without their paychecks, he says the budget was $16.5 million. With them, it would have been about $50 million.

Twins made about $217 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo. Arnold remembers it as $260 to $270 million.

Years later, Andy Cohen asked him if he made more than $40 million from it. "It was more than that," he said.

"That was the best investment we've ever made," Arnold says. "Every one of us says that."

The case for the studio: it carried all the risk on a comedy with an action star nobody had tested. And it still made money. It just had to share it.

So would you bet your whole paycheck on yourself, or take the guaranteed money?

[Zevix @0xZevix]

@ByConstantine_ Earning millions means nothing if you dont control the money. Legal protection matters as much as talent.

[Zevix @0xZevix]

Shirley Temple earned about $3.2 million as a child star during the Great Depression. At 22, she asked where the money was. Her trust fund had $44,000 in it.

It took a two and a half hour meeting at her house to get that number out of her dad and his business partner. And she still wouldn't blame him.

In this interview about her 1988 memoir, Child Star, Larry King asks if she was making $10,000 a week. "I guess," she says.

She was the biggest box office star in Hollywood in the mid-1930s. By the end of 1935, Fox was paying her $2,500 a week plus bonuses. She was 7.

Her dad, George, was a bank employee. He quit his job to manage her money.

Her mom was on the studio payroll too, at $250 a week.

Her earnings supported her parents, her brothers, 12 household staff, her grandmother and two uncles, according to American Heritage.

A court had ordered a trust fund for her. Her father reportedly didn't make the payments into it.

"I was 21 and I didn't get the money. I'm 22, where's the money?" she says.

"Out of the $3,400,000 or so that I'd earned, I had $44,000 in my trust fund. That was it."

King asks if she was ticked. "No, I think I would have paid the studio for the privilege of working and I think I did."

Friends told her to sue. She didn't. "My attitude has always been, get it over with, and get on with life," she wrote in her memoir.

The case for her dad: he left school in seventh grade and was a banker during the Depression. She says he was "like an innocent led to slaughter" and blames the people who advised him. "I don't blame him a bit."

She went on to become a U.S. ambassador to Ghana and later to Czechoslovakia.

So was her dad a victim of bad advice, or did he spend his daughter's childhood?

[Zevix @0xZevix]

@MarkTaylormmh Coogans case proved that making millions means nothing if you can’t protect what you earn.

[Zevix @0xZevix]

@0xNaoris And her mom was on the studio payroll the whole time, at $250 a week. So the family had its own income. The trust was the one part that was supposed to be hers, and her father reportedly never paid into it.

[Zevix @0xZevix]

@kirisando Appreciate that. The wild part is they had two Grammys in their hands that night and still had to tell reporters they were broke. What got you more, the 1% or the manager being married to the man who co ran the label?

[Zevix @0xZevix]

TLC's albums brought in an estimated $175 million. They won two Grammys in one night. And all three of them were bankrupt.

In the video below, Left Eye tells reporters how that happens. And their manager turned out to be married to the man who co-ran their label.

It was February 1996. CrazySexyCool was everywhere. "Creep." "Waterfalls." Two Grammys in their hands.

Then Chilli stepped up to the mic backstage and said it out loud. "We are broke as broke can be."

Almost eight months earlier, all three had filed for bankruptcy. About $3.5 million in debts.

TLC reportedly got about 1% of those album sales. Each of them took home less than $50,000 a year, by some accounts.

Their manager, Pebbles, owned the company that signed them. Her husband at the time, L.A. Reid, co-ran LaFace, the label that sold their records. So the people managing TLC and the people paying TLC were married to each other.

"Trust me, you can sell 10 million albums and be broke if you have greedy people behind you," Left Eye says.

And it got worse. They say people were calling the Recording Academy to say TLC was out of control. Even people "who's supposed to have your back."

The case for the label: TLC signed the contract. Pebbles' company and LaFace said the group simply wanted more money. And part of the debt came from insurance payments after Left Eye burned down the mansion of her boyfriend, NFL star Andre Rison, in 1994. Plus T-Boz's medical bills.

They settled in late 1996. T-Boz later said they paid "a million dollars per letter" just to own the name TLC.

Left Eye died in a car crash in 2002. She was 30.

Thirty years after that press conference, Chilli said the label "was not happy that we said that, but it was the truth."

So was TLC robbed by the people around them, or did they sign the deal and blame everyone else?

[Zevix @0xZevix]

@0xNextCore Some things did. Taylor Swift re recorded her old albums and then bought back her masters in 2025. But she had the money and the leverage. A 20 year old signing a first deal today mostly doesn't.

[Zevix @0xZevix]

@0xNaoris My take, it's a bit of both. Nobody forced them to sign. But at 20, your manager is the one who's supposed to tell you a deal is bad. And their manager's husband co-ran the label on the other side of the table.