| Principle | WatchMojo | Peanut Project |
|---|---|---|
| Started from the bottom | We weren’t the first wave of internet video. We were behind others—but early relative to where the world ultimately went. | Montreal may appear behind Nashville and other cities, but MLB hasn’t even launched a formal expansion process. Being less visible isn’t necessarily being late. |
| Started with nothing | No meaningful IP, rights, audience, distribution advantage or institutional backing. | No franchise, land, stadium, ownership group or invitation from MLB. |
| Resourcefulness > resources | I started with roughly $250K while competitors raised $45–100M. | We’re operating in a world of billionaires, PE funds, sovereign capital and established sports owners. |
| Build in public | I wrote publicly about online video, copyright and Content ID—including why platform policies needed to evolve with existing law. | Articles, FAQs, social posts, investor discussions, stadium concepts and expansion economics all help make and refine Montreal’s case. |
| The pen can be mightier than the sword | We couldn’t dictate YouTube’s policies, but we could articulate why changing them benefited the ecosystem. | We can’t dictate MLB’s expansion plans, but we can systematically address the reasons Montreal might otherwise be overlooked. |
| Don’t wait for permission | We didn’t wait for Hollywood, broadcasters or platforms to declare internet video legitimate. | Don’t wait for MLB to announce expansion before assembling the pieces required to compete for it. |
| Take on bigger names | Better-funded startups had elite investors, pedigrees and enormous war chests. | Conventional wisdom says only a Bronfman, Bouchard, Molson or another established billionaire can lead an effort like this. |
| Constraints create architecture | Without premium rights, we developed scalable formats we could control. | Without one billionaire underwriting everything, build a structure involving HNWIs, family offices, PE, infrastructure investors and strategic partners. |
| The best entrepreneur is part social scientist | I watched the kids who grew up reading comic books become the adults running Hollywood, Madison Avenue, Wall Street and Silicon Valley. Disney buying Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm wasn’t merely M&A to me—it was evidence that the cultural map had changed. Time to redraw the map and reposition the soldiers. | The kids who grew up loving sports now run PE funds, family offices, media companies and technology businesses. Some of today’s capital allocators literally grew up watching WatchMojo. Yesterday’s fan becomes tomorrow’s LP, CEO, owner or comm |
Twenty years ago, I put roughly $250,000 into a media startup.
We had no meaningful intellectual property.
No library.
No audience.
No distribution.
No famous investors.
No reason for anyone in traditional media to believe we belonged.
Meanwhile, some of the companies we were competing against raised $45 million, $50 million, even $100 million.
We weren’t even particularly early.
There had already been multiple waves of companies trying to crack internet video before WatchMojo came along.
YouTube itself wasn’t the first online video platform.
We started from the bottom.
Sound familiar?
Twenty years later, I’m involved in something that, superficially, couldn’t be more different.
I’m trying to bring the Montreal Expos back.
There’s no franchise.
We didn’t start with a stadium.
We didn’t start with land.
We didn’t start with an ownership group.
We weren’t invited by Major League Baseball.
Hell, there isn’t even an MLB expansion process yet.
Meanwhile, Nashville has generated enormous attention and other cities have been positioning themselves for years.
I’ve seen this movie before.
Being behind isn’t the same as being late
One of the lessons of WatchMojo was that people dramatically overestimate the importance of being first.
What matters more is recognizing where the world is going while there’s still time to position yourself for where it eventually arrives.
Which leads to another lesson I’ve come to believe deeply:
The best investors and entrepreneurs are part social scientists.
Numbers tell you where the world has been.
People tell you where it’s going.
In WatchMojo’s early years, I noticed something happening culturally.
The kids who had grown up reading comic books, playing video games and obsessing over science fiction weren’t kids anymore.
They were entering Hollywood.
Madison Avenue.
Wall Street.
Silicon Valley.
They were becoming executives, investors, producers and consumers with disposable income.
Then Disney bought Pixar.
Then Marvel.
Then Lucasfilm.
To me, those weren’t simply acquisitions.
They were signals.
The map had changed.
So it was time to redraw the map and reposition the soldiers.
The supposedly niche culture of one generation had become the mainstream culture of the next.
And I think something similar is happening today in sports.
The kids who collected baseball cards, memorized statistics and dreamed about owning a team grew up.
Some of them now run private-equity funds.
Others manage family offices.
They run technology companies, media businesses and institutional pools of capital.
Some of the people allocating billions of dollars today grew up watching WatchMojo.
That’s not a throwaway observation.
It’s how generational change becomes economic change.
Yesterday’s audience becomes tomorrow’s capital.
You don’t need the biggest army
WatchMojo’s competitors had pedigrees.
They had venture capital.
They had Silicon Valley connections.
Some had $45–100 million in financing while I had $250,000.
Trying to beat them at their game would have been suicidal.
So we played ours.
We produced.
We iterated.
We learned.
And we stayed alive.
Peanut has a similar problem.
People understandably say:
You need a Bronfman.
You need a Bouchard.
You need a Molson.
Maybe one or several of Quebec’s great business leaders ultimately participate. That would bring tremendous experience and credibility.
But there’s a dangerous assumption buried underneath the argument:
that only the people who built yesterday’s institutions can build tomorrow’s.
That wasn’t true in digital media.
There’s no reason to assume it’s true in professional sports.
Build in public
There’s another parallel.
When WatchMojo encountered problems with platforms—including copyright and Content ID—I wrote.
A lot.
Not because the pen magically overpowers a trillion-dollar technology company.
Because writing forces you to make the argument.
It exposes weak assumptions.
It invites criticism.
It attracts people who recognize the same problem.
And occasionally, it helps institutions understand why changing something is actually in their interest.
I’ve taken essentially the same approach with Peanut.
Write the thesis.
Publish the economics.
Ask the uncomfortable questions.
Talk about ownership.
Explore stadium sites.
Discuss infrastructure.
Invite criticism.
Revise.
Repeat.
Some people interpret that as unusual because sports ownership traditionally happens behind closed doors.
Maybe.
But building in public worked once before.
Don’t fight the gatekeeper. Solve its problem.
This may be the most important parallel.
WatchMojo couldn’t force YouTube to do anything.
So the argument couldn’t simply be:
This isn’t fair to us.
The better argument was:
Here’s why changing this creates a healthier ecosystem for platforms, creators and rights holders.
Same principle with Major League Baseball.
I have little interest in arguing:
Montreal deserves the Expos back.
Nostalgia isn’t a business plan.
Instead, the objective is to eventually present MLB with something much simpler:
Here’s the market.
Here’s the ownership.
Here’s the capital.
Here’s the stadium.
Here’s the land.
Here are the strategic partners.
Here’s the community support.
Here’s the economic opportunity.
Which problem would you still like us to solve?
That’s a much more powerful proposition.
Turn constraints into architecture
WatchMojo couldn’t afford Hollywood’s intellectual property.
That constraint helped create the WatchMojo format and library.
Peanut didn’t begin with one billionaire prepared to write a multi-billion-dollar cheque.
So perhaps the answer isn’t finding one.
Perhaps the architecture itself evolves: entrepreneurs, HNWIs, family offices, private equity, infrastructure funds, strategic corporations and institutional partners.
Different capital for different pieces.
Franchise.
Stadium.
Infrastructure.
4C.
Sometimes what looks like a disadvantage is simply the market telling you to design something differently.
The snowball
WatchMojo wasn’t built because one video went viral.
One video became ten.
Ten became a hundred.
A hundred became thousands.
Videos created audience.
Audience created revenue.
Revenue funded more videos.
Those videos became a library.
The library became an asset.
The asset created leverage.
The leverage created opportunity.
A snowball.
Peanut increasingly feels the same.
An idea became an article.
The article attracted fans.
Fans generated surveys and engagement.
That attracted conversations.
Conversations attracted investors.
Investors attracted experts.
Experts attracted strategic partners.
Partners make infrastructure conversations more credible.
Infrastructure makes the franchise proposition more credible.
Each piece makes the next one slightly easier.
No individual snowflake creates the snowball.
It accumulates.
Impossible is an emotional judgment
This may be the biggest lesson WatchMojo taught me.
People use impossible when they frequently mean improbable.
Those aren’t remotely the same thing.
WatchMojo becoming what it became was improbable.
But once enough things compounded—audience, library, revenue, distribution, brand, longevity—the improbable began looking obvious.
And eventually, inevitable.
That’s the exercise with the Expos.
Not pretending success is guaranteed.
It isn’t.
Not predicting what Major League Baseball will do.
I can’t.
The job is simpler:
Take something that appears impossible and identify why.
Then start removing those reasons.
No capital?
Find it.
No ownership group?
Build it.
No stadium?
Design the structure.
No land?
Keep working the map.
No baseball expertise?
Recruit it.
No institutional support?
Earn it.
No expansion process?
Be ready before one begins.
Remove one obstacle.
Then another.
Then another.
Because twenty years ago, I learned something that has stayed with me ever since:
You don’t make the impossible inevitable in one giant leap.
You turn impossible into improbable.
Improbable into plausible.
Plausible into credible.
Credible into compelling.
And then you keep building.
Until one day everyone looks around and wonders when it became obvious.
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