27 | Ilya Zaritskiy built a PE firm from credit cards

Ilya Zaritskiy arrived in Los Angeles as a refugee from Ukraine. He was a child, in middle school, perhaps. There were tanks on the streets in LA – the 1992 Rodney King riots were happening. Neither he nor his family spoke any English. This podcast is the story of how one immigrant kid used the 18-month 0% APR schemes banks were pushing to buy a UPS franchise, start a PE firm, and buy a bar.

I liken it to trying to build a house by throwing up beams in the air and shooting them with a nail gun and hoping that you can hit them in the right place so that by the time gravity takes its toll it will fall down as a building… otherwise it’s going to fall on your head and break you.

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