Founders: #383 Todd Graves and his $10 Billion Chicken Finger Dream

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Todd Graves is one of my favorite living entrepreneurs. He's a great example of Charlie Munger's maxim: Find a simple idea and take it seriously. Todd wanted to create a quick service restaurant that only focused on quality chicken finger meals and nothing else. Everyone told him that couldn't possibly work. The college paper that described the idea that would turn into Raising Canes got the lowest grade in the class. Banks wouldn't loan him any money —but nothing could stop Todd from living out his "chicken finger dream." He worked 95 hour weeks as a boilermaker, risked his life on a commercial fishing boat off the coast of Alaska, and scrounged up startup money from his bookie and a guy named Wild Bill. Todd made every mistake in the book, over leveraged himself, almost lost everything and yet he refused to give up or sell out. Today he has over 800 locations, 50,000 employees, and owns 90% of a business that's worth at least $10 billion. Todd's maxim is "Do one thing and do it better than anyone else." Sources: Trading Secrets: Raising Cane’s founder Todd Graves reveals his path to building the wildly popular restaurant Theo Von: Raising Cane’s Founder Todd Graves ---- Ramp give

[00:00] David Senra: Todd Graves is obsessed about staying in the details of his business. He says the most successful people he knows stay in the details of their business. In fact, he mentioned learning from his friend who runs a multi billion dollar shipping company and how his friend would even pay attention to how much his business was spending on bottled water. And when I read that section, I thought it would be a lot easier to do this if that shipping company was running on Ramp. Something a lot of histories greatest founders have in common is that the fact that they know their…

Founders: #383 Todd Graves and his $10 Billion Chicken Finger Dream

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