Daymond John: The “Boom” Moment

We all have different beginnings to our entrepreneurial journeys.  For Daymond John, the Founder and CEO of the American apparel company FUBU and an investor on Shark Tank, his business was born on the street corner of Jamaica Avenue on a March afternoon in 1989.

Daymond started FUBU with three friends, Carlton E. Brown, J. Alexander Martin, and Keith C. Perrin.  At the time, Daymond had barely finished high school, didn’t have any money, didn’t have a career, didn’t have any knowledge of fashion, and didn’t have any connections.  FUBU was just a hobby for him, and he didn’t think it would become anything bigger than a clothing store – he simply loved hip hop and wanted to dress people on the side.

At the time, wool ski hats with a string knotted at the top were popular, and they were being sold for $20 in stores.  Daymond thought that they were way overpriced – he could make them for $3 to $4 each and sell them for $10.  So what did he do?  He went to a fabric store, bought $40 worth of fabric, and used the sewing machine in his mom’s house to make them.

On March 24, 1989, he went to Jamaica Avenue, stood in 40-degree weather outside the New York Coliseum, and started selling hats to random strangers on the sidewalk.  He was able to make $800 that day and was beyond excited – so excited that when he was driving home, he started counting the cash and rear-ended a driver by accident.  He didn’t have insurance so he ended up losing all of his profits, but it didn’t matter – after his success selling on that first afternoon, a lightbulb went off.  He was 20 years old.

Daymond said that it all came down to showing customers the value of his product and why this hat was for them.  Maybe it was cold outside, maybe the hat matched their sneakers, maybe because they wanted to look fashionable.  Whichever the case, this was a “boom” moment for him that opened his eyes to a world of possibilities for FUBU.

The first “boom” moment may have been when he made those sales on Jamaica Avenue, but these “boom” moments kept coming afterwards – when he found a manufacturer, when he found a store, when he found out about the MAGIC trade show in Las Vegas.  “As an entrepreneur,” Daymond said, “it’s like Christmas when you open a box and you figure out a better way to do something you’re doing.”  It’s about constant iteration, a thirst for education, and not having to depend on anyone else.

I also had many “boom” moments throughout my career – when I sold my first 100 t-shirts going door-to-door as a freshman at the University of Michigan, when I landed a meeting with Forbes 400 member Eli Broad at age 26 and he hired me for the Assistant to the Chairman at SunAmerica, when Akamai Technologies went public on October 29, 1999, when I started my investment firm JUMP Investors in 1999, and when I launched my podcast In Search of Excellence in 2021.  These are the moments that changed my life forever – and showed me that anything is possible.

If you’ve had your own BOOM moments, please share them below!

This article is based on my interview with Daymond John, an American businessman and investor best known as the Founder and CEO of the American apparel company FUBU. Daymond is also the New York Times bestselling author of The Power of Broke: How Empty Pockets, a Tight Budget, and a Hunger for Success Can Become Your Greatest Competitive Advantage (2016) and Rise and Grind: Outperform, Outwork, and Outhustle Your Way to a More Successful and Rewarding Life (2018). Daymond also stars as a “Shark” on ABC’s Emmy-award-winning hit show Shark Tank. Daymond’s impressive accolades include Brandweek Marketer of the Year, the NAACP Entrepreneurs of the Year Award (which he has won twice), the Advertising Age Marketing 1000 Award for Outstanding Ad Campaign, Crain’s Business of New York Forty Under Forty Award, and Ernst & Young’s New York Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Listen to the full episode here.

You may also enjoy other episodes on In Search of Excellence, which can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Overcast, and YouTube.

Randall Kaplan is a serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist, philanthropist, and podcaster. He is the founder and CEO of JUMP Investors, a venture capital firm that has invested in more than 80 early-to-late-stage technology companies, including Google, Seagate, and Lyft. Randall is a Co-Founder of Akamai Technologies, a publicly-traded technology company that has 8,000 employees around the world and earned $3.8 billion in 2022 revenues. He is also the Founder and CEO of Sandee, the largest provider of information about beaches in the world with over 100 categories of information for more than 100,000 beaches in 212 countries.

Randall is the host of In Search of Excellence, a podcast designed to motivate and inspire others to reach their potential and achieve excellence in all aspects of life. Randall’s guests have included Mike Tyson, Mark Cuban, Kevin O'Leary, David Solomon, Bob Pittman, Sharon Stone, David Rubenstein, Steve Case, Orlando Bravo, Sammy Hagar, Sam Zell, Rachel Zoe, Tim Draper, Kliff Kingsbury, and Eric Garcetti, among many others. Randall is also a dedicated philanthropist – he is the founder of The Justice Ball which has raised more than $8 million for a non-profit legal clinic that aids more than 12,000 poor, sick, elderly, and homeless residents of Los Angeles each year, and is the Co-Founder of The Imagine Ball which has raised millions of dollars and is dedicated to ending the cycle of poverty and homelessness in Los Angeles.

Read Randall's full bio at www.randallkaplan.com.