How Prankster Oobah Butler Convinced Venture Capitalists to Give Him Over $1 Million

Not long in between his new DocumentaryObah Butler told the co-founders of his newly minted company, Drops, that they should create a luxury luggage that would “look like a bomb” and sell for $200,000.

Immediately, I think his quest to get £1 million in 90 days may have ended early.

But I was wrong.

Butler is a British prankster documentarian known for his stunts, such as managing the Amazon. sells the urine of its drivers such as making energy drinks or fake restaurant Shades and Gaming called on TripAdvisor to make it the top-rated London restaurant on the platform. His latest documentary for UK’s Channel 4 is called How I Made £1 Million in 90 Days. Based in London and New York, it takes on startups, venture capital, crypto, and what ultimately comes off as a lot of bullshitting, all in the name of getting rich quick.

Butler opens the film by saying, as someone who didn’t grow up with money and wasn’t particularly motivated by it, he’s fascinated by the fact that people “idealize” wealthy entrepreneurs.

“It came from a place of wanting to understand why … everybody is so obsessed with money,” he told Wired. “And I’m not talking about surviving. I’m not talking about being able to exist. I’m talking about…being addicted to making money.”

The only stipulation for him to receive the £1 million ($1.3 million USD) is that he is not allowed to break the law and must bear the costs of trying to do so. He uses various tactics to raise cash, including simply asking rich people for it (doesn’t go well) and doing things like tricking bankers into committing crimes on camera to build hype for the crypto company UNFK. He also created Drops, a company that made headlines for its controversial stunts and then tried to garner attention by selling “overpriced” items.

Butler seeks advice from Venmo co-founder Ikram Magdon-Ismail, who quickly announces himself as Butler’s co-founder at Drop and seems enthusiastic at first, thinking the company is already “worth at least $10 million” because the two of them are connected, and they might be able to sell out Madison Square Garden to tell their story within a year. Their brainstorming session includes plans to sell the opportunity to buy the first land on Mars and name the “first branded species.” But after Butler suggests a bomb-like suitcase and a pair of “real-life ad blocking sunglasses” that completely block the wearer’s vision, Magdon-Ismail temporarily ghosts him.

Butler then embarked on a memecoin adventure that went south, before returning to Drops and launching “the first legal child sweatshop in Britain for over a century”. He finds a loophole to avoid paying child workers, because while he is filming the children for the documentary, they are technically actors. His minor employees help him come up with marketing ideas to sell bespoke soccer jerseys featuring a fake religious cigarette brand called Holy Smokes. Although the clothing line gets Coverage in GQButler doesn’t sell £1 million worth of jerseys.