How Brett Adcock Went From Corn Farmer to $2.6b AI Robotics Founder & The Next Elon Musk

When Brett Adcock places his bet, he goes all in. 

This is the story of how the son of a farmer became a Silicon Valley billionaire thanks to his thirst for learning, networking and risk taking at the very highest level. 

Evolving every step of the way.

Meet Brett Adcock (Beta)

Brett has had an unconventional journey to the top. 

Growing up on a corn and soybean farm run by his third-generation farmer parents in Moweaqua, Illinois, Brett packed up and left the village of 1,700 people, and set out to earn a business degree from the University of Florida.

As the loans started to stack up to pay for school, he wanted to get a head start and launched several web side hustles from his dorm room. 

There was one common theme with these early ventures, they were focused on finance and careers.

In 2010, he combined both. Using detailed notes and study materials on financial modelling and investment banking principles, he formed an online resource to share with his brother - this became Street of Walls.

The content site wasn’t just a pet project - it helped secure many finance jobs and amassed over 30 million views and generated $600,000 over the last 15 years. 

The traffic and cash helped bootstrap job marketplace his first big venture Vettery.

Brett v1.0: Vettery

2012 was a pivotal year. 

Brett, alongside his "partner in crime" Adam Goldstein who he met while working at a hedge fund, kicked off Vettery. The online jobs marketplace targeted at workers in finance and IT. 

Investors? Nowhere in sight. Brett dug deep, investing $200,000 of his own cash to keep the lights on. No salary at the start, just pure grind. 

In 2015, Brett faced severe financial difficulties, including borrowing $50,000 to pay rent, resulting in $100,000 of debt.

It gets worse.

They missed several huge opportunities while building Vettery. Their team whipped up an internal tool for outbound lead generation. This wasn’t some basic software—this thing was a powerhouse, automating the massive email campaigns that were instrumental in scaling their business.

Their software scraped LinkedIn profiles, matched them with emails, and sent millions of cold emails to gather leads.

Heard of Outreach? They’re valued at over $4 billion now. Vettery’s lead generation tool was on that level—a $4 billion idea sitting right under their noses. They missed the boat and Outreach captured the market.

Thankfully they were eventually rewarded for their hyper focus on Vettery.

Their lead generation strategy turned out to be their golden growth strategy that allowed them to acquire customers 10x cheaper than their biggest competitor.

After scaling to 300 employees, 30,000 interviews per month across 20,000 customers, Adecco Group snapped it up for a cool $110 million in 2018, netting Brett somewhere in the region of $30 million.

Flush with cash, Brett had enough money to kick it on the beach of Costa Rica with his family. 

Did he play it safe? Heck no. 

It was time to go again.

Brett v2.0: Archer Aviation