Michael Rubin is the founder and CEO of Fanatics. He grew up outside Philadelphia, started tuning skis at 12, opened a ski shop in his parents' basement at 13, and had a storefront in a shopping center by 14. At 16, after a winter without snow, he was facing $200,000 in bills and thought he was going bankrupt, until he learned minors can't legally take on debt. He settled for $35,000, then bought a bankrupt store's $200,000 of inventory for $13,000. That deal got him into the closeout business, and by 21 he was doing $150 million a year. Michael tells the story of nearly being margined out of GSI Commerce during the 2009 financial crisis, with hours to spare, two years before eBay bought it for $2.4 billion. He explains how Fanatics grew from a fan gear business into a $14 billion digital sports platform with 140 million customers, why he guaranteed the leagues the high watermark of a cyclical trading card market, and how debut patches and George Condo–painted cards turned collectibles into "art for sports fans." He also shares the advice Robert Kraft gave him when a partner broke a deal, why he gave investors their money back on NFTs and Mitchell & Ness, why there's a "0.0 chance" he'd put his own money into prediction markets at today's valuations, and the call from Silver Lake's Greg Mondre that saved him from a multibillion-dollar mistake.