Paying It Forward

From FUBU to Shark Tank, Daymond John has become one of the country’s foremost entrepreneurs. Now he’s teaching the importance of financial intelligence to people everywhere

- Alix Sharkey

IF YOU’RE OF a certain age—let’s say old enough to recall LL Cool J dropping his 1985 debut album, Radio—then you’ll remember Daymond John first as the young, up-by-the-bootstraps founder of the phenomenally successful hip-hop clothing label FUBU. Conversely, if your demographic brand is millennial or Gen Z, you’re more likely to know him primarily as the smooth, shaven-headed and goateed kingpin from ABC’s reality show Shark Tank, oozing style and sophistication in his Tom Ford suits, custom shirts and Italian silk ties.

John, who turns 54 this month, is widely reported to have a $350 million net worth. But he has never forgotten his roots, when he first started hand-sewing ski hats in 1989 in the front room of his family home in Hollis, Queens, selling printed T-shirts from the back of his van outside the Harlem Apollo Theater, and hustling and grinding every day.

Perhaps his biggest break came when fellow Hollis habitué LL Cool J and former manager Charles Fisher decided to pay it forward by supporting local businesses, including FUBU—an acronym meaning “For Us, By Us.” Soon he was wearing John’s brand for shows and video shoots, but the seismic shift happened in February 1999, when the rapper was hired to appear in a Gap television commercial. LL Cool J pulled off an astonishing marketing coup: Not only did he sport a white FUBU ball cap with his white Gap T-shirt and “easy fit” Gap jeans, but one line of his freestyle also name-checked the brand:

G-A-P, gritty / ready to go / For Us, By Us / on the low