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Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos made $49.8 million in 2023. Aaron Paul won three Emmys for Breaking Bad, a show Netflix has streamed since 2011. He says Netflix pays him $0 for it.
He said it on a picket line, outside the studio that made the show.
In the video below, Paul stands outside Sony in 2023 and says: "I don't get a piece from Netflix on Breaking Bad, to be totally honest, and that's insane to me."
Breaking Bad ran on AMC from 2008 to 2013. Paul has said it drew about 700,000 viewers before Netflix. Then Netflix put the early seasons online, people binged them, and the finale pulled 10.3 million.
"I just saw the other day Breaking Bad was trending on Netflix," he says. "Shows live forever on these streamers."
At the same picket, Bryan Cranston is blunter. Without unions, he says, management "will just keep stuffing their pockets."
The case for Netflix: it didn't make the show. Sony did, and Netflix paid Sony to stream it. When Paul signed on in 2007, Netflix was still mostly mailing DVDs. And he was paid for every episode he shot.
The case for Paul: the show keeps making money from his face, years after the cameras stopped. He says he doesn't.
One man helped run Netflix that year and made $49.8 million. The other played Jesse Pinkman, and he says he got $0.
The show never stopped making money. It just stopped paying him.
So does Netflix owe Aaron Paul a cut, or was he already paid in full?
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Corey Feldman of The Goonies says the only way his father would sign the emancipation papers was if he paid him the last $40,000 he had. He had grossed $1 million by 14.
"The only way my father, who loves me so much, would sign the papers to release me is if I paid him $40,000."
He started working at 3. Both of his parents were his managers, and he says each of them took 15% off the top. At 8 he was living in a $400,000 house in his own name. He says they took out a second and a third mortgage on it and lost it.
At 15 he went to court to get free of them.
$1 million grossed. $40,000 to walk away.
In 1997 he told the story on Howard Stern's TV show with his father sitting a few feet away. Asked if it was true, Bob Feldman said: "I'm sorry, that's wrong." He said he fought the emancipation because he wanted his son to finish school.
"What was that piece of paper I signed?" Corey asked. "And what was that check?"
Asked if he had ever hit his son, his father said he had spanked him. His mother has denied the abuse.
He paid the $40,000. He got the signature.
Was Bob Feldman a father worried about his son's schooling, or a manager who simply billed his son for the way out?
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A few weeks after breast surgery, she was walking through a shopping center in Miami when a car stopped next to her. The window rolled down, someone told her she was gorgeous and handed her a card, and asked if she wanted to model. She went home, googled the company, and found out it made porn.
Mia Khalifa was born in Lebanon and moved to the US when she was about 10. Two weeks after she started school, 9/11 happened, and her classmates started calling her “the terrorist.” In college her weight dropped to 98 pounds. She says she grew up never feeling pretty and craved male attention.
Two weeks later she called back. She thought it would be her dirty little secret. She had 400 friends on Facebook, so who would ever find out?
In late 2014 she shot a scene wearing a hijab. Within three days her Instagram went from 400 followers to 200,000. ISIS sent her a photoshopped picture of her head on a beheaded body. She joked about it online. A week later someone posted a Google Maps image of her apartment, and she lived in a hotel for two weeks.
In the video below she tells both stories herself, the card from the car and the night she realized they knew where she lived.
In the same interview she says she still hates leaving the house. When fans ask for a photo and thank her for her “work,” it makes her feel dirty.
She also admits she kept the link in her bio after she quit, because she needed the money. Asked what she’d tell young girls, her first answer is “Don’t do porn. Don’t ever do porn.”
Three years later she was back, selling adult content to subscribers.
So was she a victim of her own fame, or did she learn to sell it better than anyone?
Rob Gronkowski got a few BodyArmor shares in 2012 and forgot he owned them.
In 2021, Coca-Cola bought the company in a deal that valued it at $8 billion.
He was one of the first athletes to sign with the brand. Some cash up front, some shares.
Then he won the Super Bowl, and BodyArmor offered him less than before.
In the video below, he admits: "I didn't know how companies worked, I didn't know how business worked."
A pay cut right after a Super Bowl made no sense to him. So he walked and signed with Monster Energy.
Kobe Bryant became the face of BodyArmor. The brand took off.
Gronk stayed with Monster and didn't think about it again.
Years later, the sale went through and a check showed up for shares he'd totally forgotten.
"That's when I really realized, oh, I see how equity works now."
He walked away over the cash. The shares he never sold were the part that mattered.
Now he tells rookies to skip the $200,000 car and get the $60,000 one. "It's not going to make you play better on the football field."
My takeaway: the best move he made with those shares was doing nothing. No selling, no checking, no panic. I check my portfolio way too often to pull that off.
Would you take less money today for a piece of a company that might be worth nothing?
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Lil Wayne says Birdman sat on $10 million of his money and 49% of the label that signed Drake and Nicki Minaj. So he sued the man he called his father for $51 million.
In the video below, the two of them sit side by side on Rap City in 2007. Then Tampa, 2025, when Birdman tries to give a speech on stage.
Wayne joined Cash Money in 1997.
In 2006 he and Birdman put out a joint album. It was called Like Father, Like Son. The single was "Stuntin' Like My Daddy."
Wayne started his own label inside Cash Money, Young Money. It signed Drake. It signed Nicki Minaj.
Then his album Tha Carter V got stuck. In December 2014 he tweeted: "I am a prisoner and so is my creativity."
And: "I want off this label and nothing to do with these people but unfortunately it ain't that easy."
A month later he sued Cash Money and Birdman for $51 million.
His side said Birdman owed him an $8 million advance for the album and $2 million more once it was done. He said he never got the 49% of Young Money he was due.
The label had registered Young Money under Cash Money. So, he said, he never saw an accounting of what Drake made for it.
It took three and a half years. In June 2018 they settled. The terms are secret. Reports said more than $10 million.
Hours later, a photo showed the two of them in the studio together. Tha Carter V finally came out that September.
Then came Tampa. February 2025, the Hot Boys reunion. Birdman was talking to the crowd. Wayne cut him off mid-speech: "Alright, let's go, let's go, let's go."
Like Father, Like Son, the album said. The son needed a $51 million lawsuit to get paid.
Was Birdman the father who made Lil Wayne, or the boss who kept his money?
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Who fixes the culture after AI deletes the meetings?
Eric Schmidt sat down with Nicolai Tangen, who runs Norway's sovereign wealth fund, and gave Fortune its story. He used to sit in meetings 12 hours a day, and AI, he said, can strip out that coordination tax. A 10,000-person company probably has a couple of thousand people it doesn't need.
Asked how AI reshapes business, he said almost none of the companies listening "will actually do the necessary changes in their culture." Companies are organized around belief systems, he explained, where the morning is predictable and everyone is comfortable. You'd sit through 13 minutes of regulation talk to reach it. The meetings quote Fortune ran comes 23 minutes later.
This is my reading; he never said it. The cut is the easy part. A friend of his laid off 20 percent of his people, mostly the glue people who did planning and shuffled numbers, and got death threats for it. A company can do exactly that and still run the old approval chain with fewer hands.
So the scarce skill is a manager willing to make the morning unpredictable. A team lead who deletes the weekly status meeting but keeps the same three sign-offs gets the layoff without the speed.
Plenty of the people cheering the coordination tax line work at exactly the kind of company he says won't change.
Daymond John's mom took a $100,000 loan on a house worth $75,000 to fund FUBU.
Three months later, $500 was left.
He had $300,000 in orders from stores. 27 banks still turned him down.
In the video below, he remembers what his mother told him: "Let's take all the money we can out of the house."
He turned the house into a factory. Friends slept in sleeping bags next to the sewing machines. He rented rooms to strangers and kept his shifts at Red Lobster.
Here's the part nobody warns you about.
He paid for fabric 90 days ahead. Then staff, then shipping. The stores paid him in 30, 60 or 90 days.
"It wasn't that I was spending on lavish things. I just didn't know how money worked."
He was selling more than ever and running out of cash at the same time. The bank was talking about taking the house.
Then his mom had one last idea. A $2,000 newspaper ad: "Million dollars in orders. Need financing."
33 people called. He says most of them were loan sharks.
But one call came from Samsung's textile division. FUBU got a manufacturing and distribution deal.
My takeaway: orders aren't money. Cash in the bank is. I've had months where people owed me more than I had.
Would you let your mom put her house on the line for your business?
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Yale students pay thousands of dollars for lectures like this. You’re watching for $0
Bonus: the Rule of 72. Divide 72 by the annual interest rate to see how many years it takes your money to double. At 8%, that’s 9 years.
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In 1962, Stan Lee's publisher told him he couldn't call a hero Spider-Man. In 2002, the Spider-Man movie grossed more than $800 million, and Lee sued Marvel for his share.
In the video below, Lee recalls the answer: "You can't call a character Spider-Man. People hate spiders."
Martin Goodman let him try the character once, in Amazing Fantasy #15. It was the last issue of a title already being cancelled.
In 1998, as he stepped back from daily work, Lee signed a lifetime deal: $1 million a year, plus 10% of the profits Marvel made from movies and TV shows using its characters.
The first Spider-Man movie came out in May 2002. Lee had a cameo. He stood in a crowd.
Marvel collected more than $50 million in profits from the film, NBC News reported.
In November 2002, Lee sued. He said he hadn't seen any money from it.
Marvel argued the 10% only counted after production and distribution costs were taken out. In January 2005, a federal judge ruled for Lee. Marvel said it would appeal.
In April 2005, the two sides settled. Marvel booked a one-time charge of $10 million, covering Lee's past and future claims.
In the same announcement, Marvel said it would start making its own movies. Three years later, its studio released Iron Man.
Lee kept his salary and his cameos. The 10% stayed with Marvel.
Did Marvel shortchange the man who pitched Spider-Man, or did Lee sell his share too soon?
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Paris Bennett his IQ 141. The mind of a genius, but the actions of a monster. He was 13 years old when he stabbed his four-year-old sister Ella seventeen times while she slept.
He says he had planned to kill his mother first. Then he decided death was too quick. He wanted her to live with it for the rest of her life, so he took the one thing she loved most.
Under Texas law a 13-year-old could not be given life or the death penalty. He got the maximum available: 40 years.
He has never apologised to her. He becomes eligible for parole in February 2027.
Afterwards he called a friend and talked about nothing for ten minutes.
Then he called emergency services, put panic into his voice, and pretended to be giving his sister CPR.
The first officer walked past him into the bedroom.
"I remember hearing him mutter oh my god when he saw what I had done."
"I just felt like I was drowning in shame."
In the video below Piers Morgan notices that he is talking about his dead sister in the present tense, and stops him on it.
"I loved her. I loved her with every fibre of my being."
She's dead, Morgan says. Because you killed her.
Yes.
But you love her?
"Yes. I do."
Asked whether he even understands what love is, he says he cannot answer that. That he cannot point at something and say, that is love.
His mother is sitting beside him. She answers it for him.
"There is at least one thing he should be able to point at and say that's love. And that's the fact that I'm still here."
He says he spent his childhood feeling alone, left out by his family.
She says he was her only child for years, that her life revolved around him, that he was loved by everybody, and that she remembers his childhood completely differently.
Morgan puts the arithmetic to him plainly. His mother lost both her children in one night. One to death, one to prison.
"At no point did I ever feel like I had accomplished something."
"I realise we're talking about myself, but it doesn't feel like we are."
After the killing he met the criteria for conduct disorder. Standardised assessments later recorded significant psychopathic traits. The experts who examined him did not expect him to change.
His mother has since stopped speaking to him entirely.
"I finally accepted it is okay to love him as my son but really dislike the man he has become."
She has been told that she and her younger son will be at risk when he is released, and that she will probably have to move.
In February a parole board decides whether the thirteen-year-old who did this still exists somewhere inside the man who now talks about him in the third person. If they let him out, his mother has already been told to leave her home. So whose call should that be — the board's, or the one person alive who loved them both?
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ANTHROPIC MADE $16.3B IN 6 MONTHS AND LOST $80.7B DOING IT
the S-1 dropped today. ticker $ANT on Nasdaq, debut expected Thanksgiving week. the numbers that matter:
→ revenue H1 2026: $16.3B, up 13.5x from $1.2B a year ago
→ net loss $80.7B, but $72.4B of it is an accounting charge on convertible notes, not cash
→ compute and infrastructure: ~$8.9B in 6 months
→ ~250 customers pay over $10M a year
→ 1,900+ pay over $1M, 11,900+ pay over $100K
→ net revenue retention ~900%. customers from a year ago now spend 9x more
→ no revenue split by product. Claude Code isn't broken out
→ risk factors name a state-backed group that ran Claude Code against ~30 targets
the headline loss looks scary. the number to watch is the 900%
stop reading 10 recaps of it. the filing is public, let Claude read it for you:
→ open the S-1 on SEC EDGAR, save it as PDF
→ drop it into Claude with the prompt from the reply
→ ask follow-ups: risks for API users, compute deals, voting control
→ every number comes back with the exact quote, so you can check it
before: hundreds of pages of legal text. after: a 1-page brief you can trust
prompt in the reply ↓
follow @X1Kafadzhy for AI news you can actually use
Anthropic has filed an S-1 registration statement with the SEC related to its proposed IPO.
Read more: anthropic.com/news/s1-sec
Legal disclaimer: A registration statement relating to these securities has been filed with the SEC but has not yet become effective. These securities may not be sold, nor may offers to buy be accepted, prior to the time the registration statement becomes effective. This post does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy these securities, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.
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Michael Jordan signed with Nike in 1984 for about $500,000 a year, plus royalties. Last fiscal year, the Jordan Brand sold $7.03 billion.
The man who signed him says the idea that changed the deal came from Jordan’s mother.
In the video below, Sonny Vaccaro tells Rich Eisen how it came together.
Jordan was not on his A-list that day. Vaccaro had seen him play once, when North Carolina beat Georgetown, and never again until Jordan turned pro.
Eisen asks whether owning a piece of the company was Deloris Jordan’s idea. Vaccaro says it was.
He says he had already promised Michael a piece of the shoe. Then Deloris asked for more, and he and Phil Knight said yes.
Vaccaro says Jordan saved the company. “I don’t know if there’s a Nike today,” he adds. Nike would have been another Reebok or another Puma.
Forbes estimates Nike now pays Jordan nearly $300 million a year. His NBA salaries over his whole career added up to about $90 million.
The case for Vaccaro: he talked Nike into betting its marketing budget on one unproven rookie instead of several players.
So who deserves more credit for the deal: Vaccaro, who bet the budget, or Deloris Jordan, who asked for a piece?
Shaquille O'Neal got a $1 million endorsement check at 20 and spent it in one day.
A couple of days later, he was $80,000 in the hole.
In the video below, he explains the first mistake. "There are two words you forget about: FICA and sales tax."
The $1 million was really about $600,000.
He bought a black Mercedes for $150,000. No negotiating. "The guy could have told me 200,000, I would have bought it."
His dad looked at it and asked, "Where's mine?" So he bought a second one. Then his mom wanted one too, just smaller.
Then suits, jewelry and a loud stereo for the car. The money was gone before he noticed.
The bank manager, a family friend, called and asked if he knew how to read a bank statement.
That call is where his story splits from so many others.
Advisors lined up. One promised to turn his first $40 million into $200 million by the time he was 23.
Shaq went with a man named Lester who talked about savings bonds. "I've been with him ever since."
The flashy guys promised to multiply it. The boring guy promised to keep it.
He still slipped sometimes. Mike Tyson bought three Rolls-Royces, so Shaq bought two. Lester called. "Hey, you've got to stop this."
My takeaway: the advisor promising the most is usually the one to walk away from. My first paycheck was gone in a week, and it wasn't even close to a million.
What did you blow your first big paycheck on?
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Leona Helmsley, a New York hotel owner with a fortune of more than $5 billion, left $12 million to her dog and cut two of her grandchildren out of her will.
her empire included more than 30 hotels, among them the Helmsley Palace on Madison Avenue, 51 floors and over 1,100 rooms. her husband Harry died in 1997 and she inherited a fortune of more than $5 billion.
in 1983 the couple bought Dunnellen Hall, an $11 million mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut. part of an $8 million remodel was billed to the hotel companies as a business expense. federal agents later found more than $4 million of personal spending charged to the companies.
at her trial a former housekeeper, Elizabeth Baum, testified that Leona told her “we don’t pay taxes. only the little people pay taxes.” in 1989 she was convicted of tax fraud and related counts, fined more than $7 million, and in April 1992 she began 18 months in federal prison.
she died in 2007 at 87. her will left her dog Trouble $12 million. a Manhattan judge cut that to $2 million and reportedly gave the two grandchildren about $6 million. the dog’s care was reported to cost around $190,000 a year, $100,000 of it for security. Trouble died in 2011 at 12.
most of the estate went to a trust for dogs, estimated at $5 to $8 billion. its 2003 mission statement listed two goals, helping poor people and caring for dogs. unnamed sources later said she deleted the first one about a year later.
$12 million for a dog and nothing for her grandchildren: spite or a joke?
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Charlie Sheen was the highest-paid actor on television. For four years, he paid people millions of dollars to keep one secret.
In the video below, he tells the TODAY show who was blackmailing him and why he finally decided to stop paying.
In 2015, Sheen sat down with Matt Lauer and said it out loud: he was HIV positive. He had known for about four years.
Back then, he was making about $1,800,000 an episode on Two and a Half Men, until his very public meltdown got him fired.
He told only people he trusted. Some of them started demanding money to stay quiet. One woman photographed his medication in his bathroom and threatened to sell the picture to the tabloids.
Sheen says the payments added up to millions, money he says was being taken from his five children.
Asked if he was still paying, he answered: "Not after today."
If you were in his place, would you keep paying to protect your secret, or did Sheen make the right call by telling the world himself?
Arnold Schwarzenegger was a real estate millionaire before he turned 28.
Almost a decade later, he became the Terminator.
He came to America in 1968 as a bodybuilder. The money from bodybuilding went into buildings.
In the video below, he explains the math of the '70s. Inflation was high and prices kept climbing.
"You buy a building for a million dollars, the next year it's 1.3 million, the next year it's 1.6 million. You put $200,000 down, and you can double your money in no time."
Here's the part most people skip.
Hollywood kept offering him villains, Nazi officers and bouncers.
Most new actors take those roles to pay the rent. Arnold was the one collecting rent.
"I didn't have to take stupid roles just to pay the rent."
He wanted to be a leading man. So he waited.
Conan came in 1982. The Terminator in 1984.
And the role that made him a legend was a villain anyway. The difference is he picked it.
My takeaway: savings don't just buy things. They buy the right to say no. I'm still saving up for my first no.
What would you say no to first if rent wasn't a problem?
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Money sitting on your card loses value every year. Here’s how much
Inflation at 5% a year: in 10 years, your $1,000 buys only what $614 buys today. That’s why cash that just sits there loses.
Save this
Mark Cuban sold Broadcast to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in 1999.
Within a few years, Yahoo had shut most of it down.
Broadcast was streaming radio and live shows back when most people were still on dial-up.
In the video below, Cuban puts it in three words: "We were YouTube."
They had user uploads, live comedy shows, hundreds of radio stations, police scanners from different cities and Christmas music all year long.
Matchbox Twenty's first big hit broke on their CD jukebox.
Yahoo promised to put its traffic on top of it. Millions of users would become hundreds of millions.
Then the internet stock market crashed.
Cuban says it wasn't even the CEO. "Their board just went nuts and closed everything."
Yahoo paid billions for the future of video and cut it to save money.
Seven years after the deal, Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion.
Cuban was fine. He had protected his Yahoo shares before the crash. "It worked out in the end, and I'm not complaining at all."
My takeaway: once you sell, the buyer's plans stop being your problem. Your price doesn't. I'd still be checking Yahoo's stock every morning.
Would you rather take $5.7 billion or watch your company become YouTube?
Jay Leno says he was making $30 million a year hosting The Tonight Show.
He says he never spent a dollar of it.
He lived on what he made doing stand-up. He says he was doing 210 dates a year.
Every TV check went into an account. He didn't think TV would last forever. "I wanted to be a comedian."
Adam Carolla asked him if that money just sat there.
"Yeah. Still there."
In the video below he explains how: "I don't have girlfriends and cocaine habits and stuff like that, you know. So you can save a tremendous amount of money."
Then the network wanted to cut half his crew.
Leno tells it as a joke. He says he asked the staff for a show of hands on him taking a 50% pay cut so everyone could stay. "Well, I got outvoted."
"It didn't cost me anything, really, because I had plenty of money."
Tyson handed out Bentleys and went bankrupt. Leno handed out half his salary and was fine.
My takeaway: the trick isn't earning more, it's having one income you live on and one you never touch. Honestly, I can't even leave my coffee money alone.
Could you live on half of what you make?
Warren Buffett got shortchanged by 12.5 cents a share in 1964.
His revenge cost him about $200 billion.
He was running a small partnership, about $7 million. Berkshire Hathaway was a dying textile company, cheap on paper. His plan was simple: buy the stock, sell it back to the company, take a small profit.
The boss, Seabury Stanton, asked him what price he'd sell at. Buffett said $11.50. Stanton made him promise.
A few weeks later the offer arrived in the mail. $11.375.
In the video below Buffett holds up that letter: "He chiseled me for an eighth. If that letter had come through with 11 and a half, I would have tendered my stock. But this made me mad."
So he bought control of the company and fired Stanton.
Great story. Terrible deal.
He had just tied a big chunk of his money to a business that was dying. Every good company he bought later, starting with an insurance company in 1967, sat on top of that anchor.
He fought the textile business for 20 years before he gave up.
His own math: without it, Berkshire would be worth twice as much. "This is $200 billion."
His words, not mine: "the genius here thought he could run a textile business."
My takeaway: never make a money decision to win an argument. And if you're stuck in a bad deal, get out early. Honestly, I've lost money out of pride for way less.
Have you ever paid more just to prove a point?