Ronald Ackerman

Meet Michael Rubin He turned $2,500 in Bar Mitzvah money into Fanatics, a $30 Billion sports powerhouse. Born in 1972 to a Jewish family in Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania, Rubin showed entrepreneurial drive early. • At 12, he started a ski-tuning shop in his parents’ basement. • At 14, using his $2,500 Bar Mitzvah money as seed capital (and a lease signed by his father), he opened Mike’s Ski and Sport in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. By 16, he was $120,000 in debt. He settled with creditors using a $37,000 loan from his father—on the condition he attend college. He briefly attended Villanova University but dropped out after a smart deal: borrowing $17,000 to buy $200,000 worth of overstock equipment at a discount, then reselling it for $75,000. He sold his ski shops and launched KPR Sports (named after his parents’ initials), a closeout company for overstock athletic gear. • By age 21 (1993), KPR hit $1 million in sales. • By 1995, it reached $50 million. In 1998, Rubin founded Global Sports Incorporated, which became GSI Commerce—a major e-commerce and logistics player. In 2011, at age 38, he sold GSI to eBay for $2.4 billion! eBay kept the fulfillment business; Rubin bought back the consumer brands at a bargain, including Fanatics (licensed sports merchandise), Rue La La, and ShopRunner. He became CEO of Fanatics and focused on scaling it aggressively: • Secured major partnerships with Nike, NFL, MLB, and over 900 leagues/teams. • During COVID-19 (2020), repurposed an MLB uniform plant to produce hospital gowns and PPE. • Raised big funding rounds: $350M (2020, valuation $6.2B), more in 2021, then $1.5B + $700M (2022, valuation hit $31 billion). • Expanded into trading cards (acquired Topps for $500M in 2022) and betting/gaming (launched 2023). From a teenage ski shop to a global leader in sports merchandise, trading cards, and more, Michael Rubin’s journey is a classic American Jewish entrepreneurial success story built on hustle, smart deals, and Values.

News: The White Sox are in agreement with free agent OF Austin Hays, sources tell ESPN. Hays, 30, hit 15 home runs in 103 games for Cincinnati last year. The Sox were looking for a veteran OF and Hays fits the bill.

Amazon is planning to cut up to 16,000 jobs starting next week. The company is valued at $2.5 trillion and made nearly $60 billion in profit in the first nine months of 2025.

If you don’t respect $100, you’ll never respect $1,000,000.