Recommended by: WiseSuit Staff 

In the early nineties, two twenty-something year-old boys set up a hotel reservations company LVRS to fill hotel rooms in Las Vegas. In the late nineties, they discover the Internet that seems to have been invented specifically for their business. They rename their new online business Travelscape.com to fill hotel rooms worldwide and their already profitable business takes off. Then Microsoft's Expedia.com comes along with an offer they can't refuse, and two thirty-something year-olds become $105 million richer. 

It doesn't stop there. They take their newfound wealth and buy the Golden Nugget casino and even star in their own reality TV show (The Casino) produced by Mark Burnett (of The Apprentice). They later sell the casino for another $100+ million profit. Sound too good to be true? Well, it is true. An incredible story...

Tom Breitling (the author) and Tim Poster are two high school best friends with big dreams. Poster is the wise guy, the numbers guy, the gambler, the kid from Vegas who literally grew up in gambling. He was a bookie in high school for the other kids and even teachers. As a teenager, he lost $20,000 on a boxing match and lived to tell the story. After an ill-fated internship, he decided to launch the business he had presented in his university entrepreneurship class - a hotel room reservation business.

Tom Breitling is the people person, the manager, whose dream was to be the next Bob Costas. After a brief career as a weatherman and sportscaster in the middle of nowhere, when Poster pitched him to join his new business LVRS as his 50/50 business partner, he jumped at the chance.

With some investor dollars, they grew LVRS's sales from $800,000 in 1990 to $12 million in 1997. Then Breitling attended a conference where he heard about this new thing called the Internet. They added the Internet medium to LVRS, renamed it Travelscape.com, instantly became a global business reserving hotel rooms worldwide, and by 1999, they hit $100 million in sales.

After a failed IPO and a $120 million offer from Barry Diller that fell apart, Microsoft's Expedia stepped in to buy them out and they soon found themselves $105 million richer. Breitling went on to join Expedia's board while Poster didn't know what to do with his newfound time. Then he realized he could now live his dream of owning a casino in Las Vegas.

Most young men with this much wealth would just do nothing but not Breitling and Poster. Poster convinced Breitling that they each put up $25 million of their money, and with a little more money from investors like Andre Agassi, purchase the landmark Golden Nugget casino. They were entering an industry they knew nothing about. But they decided to bet it all anyway. Their story was so compelling that Mark Burnett created a short-lived reality TV show documenting their experiences running the casino.

The new casino experience wasn't pleasant initially as Poster, the gambler himself, improved the odds for gamblers to attract the high-rollers to his casino. After losing $8 million within two weeks to a few huge gamblers, with upcoming million-dollar interest payments looming, the new owners looked like the rookies they were. But they soon made it throught the rough patches.

Then just as they were getting warmed up and beginning to make money, they got another offer they couldn't refuse: An offer to sell the Golden Nugget for a quick $100 million profit after owning it for just about a year. They sold and made their second $100 million.

A well-written story by Tom Breitling who gives us a behind-the-scenes look at how it all went down from the very beginning.

Reviews:

"Beyond all of the colorful stories in Double or Nothing, beyond the eye-opening success of two young American entrepreneurs, there is the most important story of all: a story about friendship and loyalty." - Andre Agassi

"Tom Breitling's inspiring and jealousy-inducing story of the entrepreneurial bravado that led him and a friend to own The Golden Nugget." - Esquire

"[A] delightful and insightful travelogue...Breitling presents a tale of a remarkable friendship interwoven with indelible portraits of various players.... But the book is more than a series of memorable characters...It also provides details of gigantic transactions that make you a fly on the wall of boardrooms with legends." - Las Vegas Sun

"[A] fantastical story.... The book is full of interesting tidbits.... But the big "aha!" in the book might be the realization that they sold out too soon. It will be interesting to see the next trick up Breitling and Poster's sleeves." - Associated Press

About the Author:

Tom Breitling is the president of Breitling Ventures, a private investment company. A graduate of the University of San Diego and a mentor at the Andre Agassi Preparatory Academy, he lives with his wife in Las Vegas.

Category:  Biography