During the go-go bust of the early 1970s, the Wellington Fund's assets collapsed from $2 billion at the time of the Ivest merger down to $483 million — a loss of over three-quarters of assets.
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At 48:29 · chapter starts 46:04
Determined to compete with Fidelity's go-go style, Bogle set about finding a partner to transform Wellington. Unable to hire star managers as employees, he found a small Boston firm of four young partners — Thorndike, Doran, Payne, and Lewis — who had worked with Jerry Tsai and raised a go-go fund called Ivest. Despite Wellington's $2 billion in AUM dwarfing Ivest's $17 million, Bogle offered the four partners 40% of Wellington Management Company — described at the time as a stunning price. Institutional Investor ran a cover story titled 'The Whiz Kids Take Over at Wellington.' Then the go-go era collapsed. The oil crises of 1972–74, stagflation, and a 50% market decline destroyed everything. The Ivest fund cratered 65% in a single year and was shut down entirely. Wellington Fund assets plummeted from $2 billion to $483 million — over three-quarters of assets gone. With four new partners drawing on 40% of the management company's collapsing revenues, the crisis was existential. Bogle began to question aloud whether it was ethical to continue charging fees from clients while incinerating their capital. This was, as the hosts put it, his 'Jerry Maguire moment.'
In 1974, as Wellington's assets collapsed and clients fled, Bogle gave a speech proposing the unthinkable: dissolve the management company, mutualize the funds, eliminate all fees above cost, and hand the profits back to investors. Nobody had asked for this. No regulator required it. It existed solely in Jack's head — and it got him fired.
Despite months of meticulous preparation, Starter Story's initial launch attracted zero users — a humbling reminder that building alone guarantees nothing.
A single Reddit link post quickly drove 100 visitors to the Starter Story website, igniting the founder's belief in social traffic.
After reformatting content as a native self-post (no direct link spam), the post exploded with hundreds of upvotes and thousands of readers.
By posting again and again with the native-content strategy, the founder's posts repeatedly hit Reddit's front page, reaching millions of readers.
Before Reddit banned his domain, the founder converted his viral traffic into an email list of tens of thousands — a self-owned audience independent of Reddit.
Redditors eventually organized a petition to ban starterstory.com posts, effectively ending the Reddit growth channel — but the email list was already built.
The Reddit attention strategy ultimately served as the foundation for a million-dollar business, proving that free distribution channels can replace paid marketing.
The key tactic was keeping content fully on-platform (no direct link spam), then adding a small link at the post's end for users who wanted more.
With a thriving email list and a self-owned audience, the founder quit his six-figure New York City salary job to go all-in on Starter Story.
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