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The Empire Builders Podcast

The Empire Builders Podcast

Di: Stephen Semple and David Young
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 Reverse engineering the success of established business empires.The Empire Builders Podcast Economia Gestione e leadership Leadership Management Marketing Marketing e vendite
Episodi
  • #240: Wham O –

    #240: Wham O –
    Jan 21 2026
    Snippet Dave Young: Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not so secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is… Well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So here’s one of those. [ECO Office Ad] Dave Young: Welcome back to the Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here with Stephen Semple and today’s topic, Wham-O. It’s from Wham-O. In all the toy stores, I’m trying to think. Slinky wasn’t Wham-O, was it? Stephen Semple: No, Slinky was not Wham-O. Dave Young: Yeah. I’m trying to think of what Wham-O was. Stephen Semple: Frisbee’s. Dave Young: Frisbee’s. Stephen Semple: Hula Hoops. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: All sorts of crap, right? Dave Young: I didn’t realize the Frisbee was a Wham-O product. I mean, I remember the name. I remember the ads and it’s a cool name. Stephen Semple: Yeah. Well, it’s so funny. Wham-O was Frisbee, Hula Hoops, Slip ‘N’ Slide, Super Ball, all of those- Dave Young: Probably lawn darts. Stephen Semple: All of those sorts of things were Wham-O. But what I find funny is before getting on, we were talking about this whole thing of sounds and things like that and communication. And then all of a sudden it’s like, “Oh, we’re going to talk about a company whose name actually has that real kinetic feel of Wham-O.” Dave Young: Mm-hmm. I love a name that is also a sound. And if we have time, I’ll tell you about a client I’m working with that we changed the name of the company to make it a sound. Stephen Semple: Oh, that’s cool. Dave Young: Yeah. Stephen Semple: That’s awesome. Oh, the other ones that they did, Hacky Sack and Silly Strings was a couple of the other ones. Dave Young: Were they responsible for lawn darts? That’s my question. Stephen Semple: I’m not sure if they’re responsible for lawn darts. So since it didn’t come up- Dave Young: Maybe not. Yeah. Stephen Semple: … I guess probably not. The company started in 1949 out of, basically a lot of these things out, of the garage in South Pasadena. And it was Richard Knerr and Arthur Melin, who are basically two university graduates, started this company. And their first product was a slingshot, was a wooden slingshot made from ash wood. And the name Wham-O was actually inspired by the sound of the slingshot hitting a target. Dave Young: You release it… Yeah. Stephen Semple: Yeah. Yeah. Dave Young: Very satisfying. Stephen Semple: But here’s the funny thing is, it wasn’t originally… The idea behind making it was not actually a toy. They loved training falcons, and it was to train falcons for hunting. Dave Young: A slingshot? Okay. Stephen Semple: They would shoot the meat into the air. They got frustrated that the regular slingshot wouldn’t fire it the way they wanted to do it, so they made their own. Dave Young: So they made a meat slingshot. Stephen Semple: Made a meat slingshot. Dave Young: It turns out there wasn’t a huge market for meat slingshots. So you pivot and put it in the hands of children eventually. Stephen Semple: It’s the 1950s, dude. Dave Young: Uh-huh, that’s right. “You’re going to put an eye out.” Well, somebody already did. Stephen Semple: Be careful with that hamburger you’re firing out. Dave Young: But that was their fault, not ours. Yeah. Those were the days, right? Stephen Semple: Right. Dave Young: When the manufacturer could say, “Well, that’s your fault. You shouldn’t have been an idiot.” Stephen Semple: “What’d you expect a rock to do?” But again, so many businesses, it started with them just solving their own problem. And their own problem was they wanted this thing. But what they found out, they created one that was so good that all of a sudden was like, “Wow,” people became interested in this. Dave Young: It the wrist rocket? Stephen Semple: You know what? I was able to find- Dave Young: I don’t know if that’s the same kind of- Stephen Semple: I wasn’t able to find pictures of the original thing around, because it didn’t do particularly well, but it kind of put them onto a path. Because very quickly they added blow guns and boomerangs. Dave Young: Nice. Stephen Semple: Right? But the whole idea was these types of things. And they get to the stage with these various products. So they’ve got the slingshot, they got the blow gun, they got the boomerang, they got these little niches going on and they’re selling basically $100,000 a year of this stuff. But they’re thinking to themselves, “If we’re going to really make this a business, we need a bigger idea.” And I’m going to say, if you’re going to really make this a business, you need an idea which is not going to ...
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    27 min
  • #239: Cup O Noodle –

    #239: Cup O Noodle –
    Jan 14 2026

    Snippet
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    22 min
  • #238: Google – Do No Evil…

    #238: Google – Do No Evil…
    Jan 7 2026
    Larry Page said in the early day, a guiding principle is Do No Evil. I wonder if we can say that today or is it just business as usual? Dave Young: Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom-and-pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So, here’s one of those. [Out of this World Plumbing Ad] Dave Young: This is the Empire Builders Podcast, by the way. Dave Young here, Steve Semple there. I wonder, Stephen, if we could do this whole episode without mentioning the name of the company that we’re going to be talking about. I ask that for the simple reason of they already know. They already know what we’re talking about. They already know we’re talking about them. They probably knew we were going to talk about them. Stephen Semple: Because of all the research I’ve done on my computer. Dave Young: No, because they’re listening to everything. They probably already know the date that this is going to come out and how long it’s… I don’t know, right? When they first started, and I don’t think we felt that way about them, and I can remember back in the early 2000s, just after the turn- Stephen Semple: In the early days, they had a statement. Larry Page was very famous. Dave Young: Yeah, “Do no evil.” Stephen Semple: “Do know evil. Do no evil,” and that was a very, very big part. In fact, in the early stages, they made a bunch of decisions that challenged the company financially because they were like, “This is not good experience for the person on the other end.” I wonder if anybody’s guessed yet what we’re going to be talking about. Dave Young: Well, then you go public, and it’s all about shareholders, right? It’s like the shareholders are like, “Well, we don’t care if you do evil or not. We want you to make money.” That’s what it’s about because you have [inaudible 00:03:01]. Stephen Semple: All those things happen. Dave Young: Yeah. Stephen Semple: This company that we’re talking about, we’ll go a little while before we’ll let the name out, was founded… On September 4th in 1998 was when it was actually founded. Dave Young: Oh, ’98. It goes back before the turn of the century [inaudible 00:03:14]. Stephen Semple: Yeah. It was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who met at Stanford. Interesting note, the Stanford grads also created Yahoo. Dave Young: Okay, yeah. Stephen Semple: That’s giving you another little clue about the company that we might be talking about. Dave Young: In the same geek club. Stephen Semple: Yeah, so 1998. I was thinking back, one year after I graduated from university, Windows 98 is launched and, believe it or not, the last Seinfeld episode aired. Dave Young: Are you kidding me? Stephen Semple: No, isn’t that crazy? Dave Young: ’98. Stephen Semple: Yeah. Dave Young: I mean, I was busy raising four daughters in ’98. Stephen Semple: Yeah. Today, this company, as you said, because you didn’t want me to name the company, has more net income than any other business in US history. It has, now, I got to let the cat out of the bag, eight and a half billion searches a day happen. And yes, we’re talking about the birth of Google, which is also now known as part of the Alphabet group. Dave Young: Alphabet, yeah. It’s funny how they got to get a name that means everything. Did they have a name before Google? I know Google was like… Oh, it’s a number really, right? It’s a gazillion, bazillion Googleplex. Stephen Semple: As we’ll go into a little bit later, they actually spelled it wrong when they registered the site. That’s not actually the way that the word is spelled. I’ll have to go… But yeah, the first iteration was a product called BackRub was the name of it. Dave Young: Backrub, okay. Stephen Semple: Alphabet also owns the second largest search engine, which is YouTube. Together, basically, it’s a $2 trillion business, which is larger than the economy of Canada. It’s this amazing thing. Going back to 1998, there are dozens of search engines all using different business models. Now, today Alphabet’s like 90% in the market. Up until this point, it’s been unassailable, and it’s going to be really interesting to see what the future of AI and whatnot brings to that business. But we’re not talking about the future, we’re talking about the past here, so back to the start. Larry Page was born in Lansing, Michigan. His dad is a professor of computer science. His mom is also a computer academic. This is in the ’70s. Between 1979 and ’80, his dad does a stint at Stanford and then also goes to work at Microsoft. Now, Larry and Sergey ...
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    26 min
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