<p>Today on BILLIONS, I&#39;m sitting down with Larry Aschebrook, the guy who invented a market that Wall Street didn&#39;t think existed.</p><p>Larry started personally buying shares in Twitter and Uber on the side and he realized: there are thousands of employees sitting on life-changing paper gains, with zero liquidity, waiting for companies that might never IPO.</p><p>So in 2011, he quit his safe university job and launched G Squared, a fund to solve that problem. Nobody took him seriously. The secondary market was &quot;taboo.&quot; Companies thought selling shares meant you were failing.Today, he manages $5 billion. </p><p>He turned a $150M Spotify bet into $1 billion. He made $800M on Coursera. And the market he built is now worth $140 billion a year.</p><p>Larry, welcome to BILLIONS.TIMELINE : </p><p>00:00 : The psychology of the secondary market pioneer. </p><p>01:13 : Quitting a decade-long career for a &quot;ghost&quot; market. </p><p>03:23 : The Hustle: Cold-calling alumni for early Twitter and Uber shares. </p><p>05:41 : The $150 million Spotify bet and the $9M personal risk with zero collateral. </p><p>11:19 : Data Arbitrage: How Larry knew record labels were secretly buying Spotify. </p><p>15:43 : Scaling G Squared: From a $35 million pool to $7 billion AUM. </p><p>20:05 : Why DPI (Cash Back) is the only metric that matters, and why paper gains are a lie. </p><p>25:09 : The Scars: Learning from the &quot;quick commerce&quot; collapse and other losses. </p><p>37:09 : The Future: OpenAI, SpaceX, and the evolution of private liquidity. </p><p>53:12 : Advice for Founders: Why you must hire &quot;grinders,&quot; not just pedigree.</p><p><br></p><p><u><strong>REFERENCES : </strong></u></p><ul><li><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-ek-1b52093a/"><strong>Daniel Ek</strong></a> </p></li><li><p><a href="http://linkedin.com/in/spencermcleod"><strong>Spencer McLeod</strong></a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://leadedge.com/team/mitchell-green/"><strong>Mitchell Green</strong></a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Simons"><strong>Jim Simons</strong></a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://x.com/elonmusk"><strong>Elon Musk</strong></a> </p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.spotify.com/"><strong>Spotify</strong></a> </p></li></ul><ul><li><p><a href="https://x.com/"><strong>Twitter</strong></a> </p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.uber.com/"><strong>Uber</strong></a> </p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.palantir.com/"><strong>Palantir</strong></a> </p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.coursera.org/"><strong>Coursera</strong></a> </p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.anthropic.com/"><strong>Anthropic</strong></a> </p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.openai.com/"><strong>OpenAI</strong></a> </p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.spacex.com/"><strong>SpaceX</strong></a> </p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.stripe.com/"><strong>Stripe</strong></a> </p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.wiz.io/"><strong>Wiz</strong></a> </p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.toasttab.com/"><strong>Toast</strong></a> </p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.netflix.com/"><strong>Netflix</strong></a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.apple.com/apple-music/"><strong>Apple Music</strong></a> </p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.instacart.com/"><strong>Instacart</strong></a> </p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.postmates.com/"><strong>Postmates</strong></a> </p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.meituan.com/"><strong>Meituan</strong></a> </p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.alibabagroup.com/"><strong>Alibaba</strong></a> </p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.turo.com/"><strong>Turo</strong></a> </p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.getaround.com/"><strong>Getaround</strong></a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.klarna.com/"><strong>Klarna</strong></a> </p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.revolut.com/"><strong>Revolut</strong></a> </p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.databricks.com/"><strong>Databricks</strong></a> </p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.23andme.com/"><strong>23andMe</strong></a> </p></li><li><p><strong>Gorillas</strong> </p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.pagaya.com/"><strong>Pagaya</strong>⁠</a></p></li></ul>