Vizio: William Wang
How I Built This with Guy Raz
Guy Raz | Wondery
4.8 • 31.1K Ratings
🗓️ 14 April 2025
⏱️ 65 minutes
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Summary
When Wiliam Wang started selling flat-screen TV’s, he used a winning playbook: partner with an efficient manufacturer, cut out the middlemen, and price your product as low as you can. William used a similar strategy at his first company–making computer monitors–and he built it into a multimillion dollar business. But he wound up mismanaging it into the ground, and spent years working to pay off millions of dollars in debt. After surviving a catastrophic plane crash, William embarked on a new venture, Vizio, and returned to his “cut-out-the-middlemen” playbook to sell one of the world’s first internet-connected televisions. Today, Vizio is one of the top-selling TV’s in the US, and in 2024, sold to Walmart for $2.3 billion.
This episode was produced by J.C. Howard, with music by Ramtin Arablouei.
Edited by Neva Grant, with research help from Alex Cheng.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Wonderie Plus subscribers can listen to how I built this early and ad-free right now. |
| 0:05.7 | Join Wonderly Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. |
| 0:10.5 | This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. |
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