Felix Dennis: the step by step playbook behind a £50 start and a £400 million fortune
Felix Dennis started his company with £50, no product and a printer he could not afford. He went on to launch Kung-Fu Monthly, sell MacUser for $23 million, co-found MicroWarehouse, a computer mail order company that reached about $2.5 billion a year in sales, and launch Maxim. He died in 2014 with around £400 million. This page breaks down the exact moves he repeated, and how to run each one yourself, with word for word scripts.
Overview
Felix Dennis (1947 to 2014) grew up poor in Kingston, outside London. He started out selling copies of the underground magazine OZ on the Kings Road in 1967, then worked his way up to editing it. After the OZ obscenity trial, where a judge called him "much less intelligent" than his co-defendants (the convictions were later overturned), he started his own publishing company.
His fortune came in layers: poster magazines, then computer magazines he built and sold, then MicroWarehouse, then Maxim and The Week. He wrote a book about it, How to Get Rich, where his main point is blunt: "having a great idea is overrated. You need great execution."
He used the same handful of moves again and again. Here they are.
Move 1: start on other people's trust, not your money
He registered his first company for about £20 in legal fees and opened the account with £50. He and his partner lived on £10 a week.
He had no money to print anything. So he went to a magazine distributor that had worked with OZ. In his words, they "agreed to distribute my product, although I had nothing to show them."
Then the distributor wrote to a printer and guaranteed the printer would be paid first. Felix's company would only get money "when and if the printer had been paid in full." The printer printed on credit because the distributor vouched for him.
The first issue "barely made a cent." But he now had a printer and a distributor who would work with him again. In his telling, within two years he had £60,000 in the bank, and he owned 100% of the company for the rest of his life.
The move: your first asset is not cash. It is people who have seen you deliver before. Ask them to lend you their trust, and structure it so they get paid first.
Move 2: follow the crowd, fast
When Enter the Dragon came out, Felix saw a huge queue outside a cinema in Soho. He went in, watched the audience go wild for Bruce Lee, walked back to the office and told his team they were doing a Bruce Lee magazine.
Kung-Fu Monthly folded out into a giant poster. It made about £60,000 in its first year (one account says £60,000 profit within six months), ran for 13 years and was published in 17 countries.
He did the same thing with computers. He launched MacUser in 1985, 21 months after the first Macintosh came out, while the market was still new.
The move: don't hunt for original ideas. Look for crowds that are forming right now, and get a simple product in front of them before the big players notice.
Move 3: buy what someone else is tired of, then grow it and sell it
Felix did not start Personal Computer World, one of the UK's first computer magazines. Angelo Zgorelec did. Felix bought 70% of it for £50,000 in 1979, according to Zgorelec, and later the rest. He grew it and sold it to the Dutch publisher VNU for £3 million.
That money paid for his next launches. Then he did it again with MacUser: built it, and within three years sold the US and worldwide rights to Ziff Davis for $23 million, while keeping the UK edition for himself until 2015.
The move: founders who started something often run out of energy or money before it peaks. Buy from them, put in the work, sell to someone bigger, and keep the piece you like.
Move 4: when you sell, ask for more than money
Running computer magazines showed Felix who the biggest advertisers were: companies selling computer parts by mail. They were making a fortune.
When he sold MacUser to Ziff Davis, according to his biography, he and his partners negotiated 24 pages of free advertising into the deal.
In 1987 he co-founded MicroWarehouse with Peter Godfrey and Bob Bartner, a mail order company selling computer products, and used that free advertising to get it going. They made high quality catalogues, offered overnight shipping for $3 so big companies would trust them, and sold to Mac users inside corporations first, then to the PC users in the same building.
By its 1992 Nasdaq listing it was taking 10,000 customer calls a day. By 2000 sales were about $2.5 billion a year (one source says $2.6 billion). MicroWarehouse, not the magazines, made most of his fortune.
The move: in every deal, ask what the other side can give you that costs them little and is worth a lot to you: ad space, introductions, customer access, a supply contract, a seat at the table.
Move 5: be ready to walk away
Felix was famous as a negotiator. His explanation to the Daily Mail: "They know, in their heart of hearts, that I don't care."
He meant it. He would launch titles against rivals, sell when the price was right, and say no when it wasn't. Not every move worked; he said he blew about $100 million over his life, and one attempt to block a rival by launching two magazines two weeks apart lost him a lot of money. But because he could walk, he usually got the deal he wanted.
His other big lesson came at the end. From How to Get Rich: "If I had my time again, knowing what I know today, I would dedicate myself to making just enough money to live comfortably." He spent his last years writing more than 1,500 poems and planting a forest. The charity he founded, the Heart of England Forest, now owns his publishing company.
The numbers
| Figure | Number |
|---|---|
| Company formation fee | About £20 |
| Opening bank balance | £50 |
| Living costs at the start | £10 a week for two people |
| Cash two years in | £60,000 (his telling) |
| Kung-Fu Monthly, year one | About £60,000; 13 years; 17 countries |
| Personal Computer World | 70% bought for £50,000 (per founder); sold to VNU for £3M |
| MacUser launch | 1985, 21 months after the Mac |
| MacUser US and world rights | Sold to Ziff Davis for $23M within three years |
| Extra in the deal | 24 pages of free advertising (per his biography) |
| MicroWarehouse | Founded 1987; Nasdaq 1992; about $2.5B sales by 2000 |
| US magazines (Maxim, Stuff, Blender) | Sold 2007 for a reported $250M |
| Fortune at death (2014) | Around £400M |
Do what he did: step by step
1. List the people who already trust you.
Do this: write down every past client, boss, supplier and partner who has seen you deliver. These are your first investors, even if none of them gives you cash. One of them introducing you or vouching for you is worth more than a small loan.
2. Ask for trust, and pay them first.
Do this: when you need a supplier or partner to go first, offer to pay them before you take anything.
The message, word for word:
"Hi [name], I'm starting [project] and I'd like you to [print / build / supply] the first batch. I can't pay upfront yet, so here's what I propose: every dollar that comes in goes to you first until you're paid in full, and I only take money after that. You've worked with me on [past project], so you know I deliver. Would that work?"
3. Look for queues, every week.
Do this: spend 30 minutes a week looking at what's suddenly popular: trending search terms, sold-out products, packed events, the top posts in your niche. Ask one question: what simple thing could these people buy from me within two weeks? Felix's version was a poster magazine. Today it might be a guide, a template, a small app or a service.
4. Ship something simple before the big players move.
Do this: give yourself a two week deadline from spotting a crowd to having something on sale. Simple and early beats perfect and late. Felix launched MacUser while the Macintosh was still new.
5. Find a tired founder and make an offer.
Do this: look for small newsletters, communities, websites or apps in a growing market whose owners have stopped posting or updating. They are often happy to sell for a fair price.
The message, word for word:
"Hi [name], I've been reading [their product] for a while and I think it's great. It looks like you might be busy with other things lately. Would you ever consider selling it, or bringing in a partner to grow it? No pressure either way. I'd just love to keep it going."
6. In every deal, ask for one extra.
Do this: before you sign anything, ask yourself what the other side owns that is cheap for them and valuable to you: ad space, an email to their customers, introductions, a supply deal. Then ask for it.
The line, word for word:
"The price works for me. One more thing: as part of this, could you include [24 pages of ads / one email to your list / three introductions]? It costs you very little and it would mean a lot to me."
7. Decide your walk-away point before you negotiate.
Do this: write down the lowest price or worst terms you will accept before the conversation starts. If they go below it, say thank you and leave. People can feel when you don't need the deal, and that is when they offer more.
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Sources
- Felix Dennis, How to Get Rich (2006), quoted on the Colossus podcast episode on the book
- Fergus Byrne, More Lives Than One: The Extraordinary Life of Felix Dennis (2015), as summarized by Jermaine Brown, "Felix Dennis Part 3"
- John Lettice, "Farewell Felix Dennis, deal-maker supreme of tech publishing," The Register, June 26, 2014
- Colin Morrison, "How the spirit of Felix Dennis lives on," Flashes & Flames, July 10, 2017
- Wikipedia: Felix Dennis, Kung-Fu Monthly, MacUser, MicroWarehouse
