How Oba Butler convinced venture capitalists to give him more than $1 million

Not long In his new documentary, Opa Butler tells the founders of his startup, Drops, that they needed to create a luxury bag that “looks like a bomb” and will sell for $200,000.

Right off the bat, I think his quest for £1m in 90 days could end early.

But I’m wrong.

Butler is a prankster British documentary filmmaker known for stunts like having Amazon sell its drivers’ urine as energy drinks or creating a fake restaurant called The Shed and playing TripAdvisor to make it the best restaurant in London on the platform. His latest documentary, produced for Britain’s Channel 4, is called How I made £1 million in 90 days. Set in London and New York, the film depicts the world of startups, venture capital, cryptocurrencies, and what ultimately seems like a lot of nonsense called get-rich-quick.

Butler opens the film by saying that, as someone who did not grow up with money and has no motivation of his own, he is fascinated by the fact that people “worship” wealthy businessmen.

“It came from a place where I wanted to understand why… everyone is obsessed with money,” he told WIRED. “And I’m not talking about survival. I’m not talking about affordability. I’m talking about…addiction to making money.”

His only rules for getting the £1 million ($1.3 million) are that he’s not allowed to break the law and that he’s responsible for any costs he incurs to get there. He uses several strategies to raise money, including just asking wealthy people to do so (which doesn’t go well) and creating publicity for the cryptocurrency company UNFK by doing things like tricking bankers into committing crimes on camera. He also created Drops, a company that makes headlines for its controversial actions and then attempts to capitalize on the attention by selling “extremely expensive” items.

Butler takes advice from Venmo co-founder Ikram Magdoun Ismail, who quickly introduced himself as Butler’s co-founder at Drops and seemed enthusiastic at first, thinking the company was “already worth at least $10 million” just because there were two people associated with it who might be able to sell the Madison Square Garden story for a year. Their brainstorming session includes plans to purchase the first piece of land on Mars and sell the opportunity to name the first “branded species.” But after Butler suggests a bomb-like bag and a pair of “real ad-blocking sunglasses” that completely obscure the user’s vision, Magdon Ismail temporarily ghosts him.

Butler then embarks on a memecoin adventure heading south, before returning to Drops to launch “the first legal children’s liquor store in the UK in over a century”. He avoids paying child laborers on the grounds that since he is filming children in the documentary, they are technically actors. His underage employees help him come up with marketing ideas to sell custom football jerseys (a fake brand of religious cigarettes called Holy Smokes). Despite the clothing line being covered in GQ, Butler doesn’t sell any £1m worth of clothes.