Free Double or Nothing: How Two Friends Risked It All to Buy One of Las Vegas' Legendary Casinos by Tom Breitling, Cal Fussman

doin’, Edward?”
    â€œ In -credible!”
    Our revenues shot to the heavens.
    The ringing phone that I’d casually picked up in Tim’s tiny office back in the days when I was trying to be the next Bob Costas had led to $20 million in revenues by 1998.
    By 1999, the revenues that had grown out of the sandwich that Tim bought me on the day we first met reached $100 million.

CHAPTER 5
ARE YOU READY FOR THIS?
    I f you’re going to be David in an arena of Goliaths, you’d better have some rocks for your slingshot.
    We were no longer a niche company selling hotel rooms in Las Vegas. We were now a travel company competing in a global market against others run by giants like Microsoft, AOL, and American Airlines. We needed big-time cash. The $8 million dinner with The Captain in Baltimore was great. But now it was time to go to Wall Street.
    When I first traveled to New York City just out of college to catch the Big East basketball tournament with Tim, Uncle Jack, and their pals, they loved seeing my head swivel between skyscrapers so they could tease. “Get your head out of the clouds, ya hayseed!” But the reality is that Tim had had a similar sort of experience only a few years earlier. Once, during his college years, he took a trip to New York City with Lorenzo and Lorenzo’smom. The Fertittas booked a hotel room for Tim where they were staying—although Tim insisted upon paying his own way. When Tim checked in at the front desk of the Peninsula, he glanced at the bill and assumed it meant he was supposed to take the elevator to room 375. He asked the clerk, just to make sure, and was informed that 375 was the daily room rate. This was back in the day when $375 was like $675 would be to a college kid now. It was an amount that Tim didn’t have, and he couldn’t hold back a gasp.
    More than a decade had passed since that day. We were now in the summer of 1999. Our company was growing fast. We were young and gung ho. And we couldn’t help but feel we belonged in the big time. It’s every entrepreneur’s dream to go public and see his company listed on the stock exchange. We were embracing the dream. We were such novices to the world of Wall Street that we were too naïve to even realize it.
    Fortunately, we had The Captain to look out for us. He came through immediately in a meeting with Goldman Sachs. There’s a cachet to doing business with Goldman Sachs. You might have to pay a little more, but it’s often worth it to associate your company with the gold standard. The terms that Goldman Sachs was offering, though, were ridiculously loaded down with fees.
    â€œGood morning,” the executive at Goldman Sachs cordially greeted Tim and The Captain.
    â€œGood morning???” The Captain shot back at the banker. “With the terms you guys are offering, I don’t know what the hell is so good about it!”
    If Tim or I had voiced the same opinion, we might’ve been pitched out to the sidewalk on our thirty-something asses. But having the words come from a guy who’d been to Shanghai and back before the banker was even born gave them credibility.When Tim and I got in way over our heads, we could always count on The Captain to guide us.
    Trouble was, we were navigating our way through a time period that nobody—and I mean nobody —could understand. Most people remember the time as the Internet Bubble, though the guy who looked after our finances, Ed Borgato, called it something else. He called it The Crazy.
    He called it The Crazy not only because the numbers on Wall Street were insane in early 1999, but also because in a normal world the idea behind running a business is to make a profit. During The Crazy, all you needed to make millions was an idea in a garage. Any young entrepreneur in a T-shirt could float up an Internet concept, and immediately the scent of money was wafting over Wall Street. None of the suits wanted to be left