Timothy Armoo, co-founder and former CEO of Fanbytes.
Tim Armoo.
Timothy Armoo, a co-founder and former CEO of influencer marketing firm Fanbytes, is not what you might expect from a multi-millionaire.
He doesn’t own any mansions — or property at all — saying he prefers to spend some of his money on eclectic investments, ranging from exotic fruit businesses in Africa to funding the sale of a lithium mine.
Armoo made his money selling Fanbytes to digital marketing agency Brainlabs in May 2022 for an eight-figure sum (the exact amount has not been made public).
But the young entrepreneur told CNBC Make It that he felt “almost too crippled to spend the money” after growing up poor in public housing in south London.
Describing what he called a “scarcity mindset” that he developed growing up, Armoo said: “I was convinced that if I started to spend the money, it would all start to go.”
“I would track it every week, maybe twice a week,” he said. “I had this spreadsheet where I would track to the penny how much I had.”
Armoo knew he had to find a way to come to terms with the fact that he was now wealthy, and wasn’t about to lose it all — so he called his bank. “I said: ‘I would like to come and take out a million pounds in cash.'”
After various checks, Armoo collected the cash from the bank and took it home in a big bag. He then spread it all out over his bed.
“I just looked at it,” he said. “The reason I did that was that I wanted to make it very visceral to me that: ‘Dude, if all else fails, if you spend everything on gambling, or you spend it on crypto, or something bad, at the very least, you have a million pounds in cash.'”
‘Completely exotic’ investments
Armoo said he invests his money in index funds — passive funds that track an index, such as the S&P 500 — and owns a variety of stocks including Shopify and Cloudflare.
“So I basically have two camps: one is the extremely safe bucket: index funds, overweight cash, bonds and guilt and treasuries. Then the other side of things is completely exotic.”
Some of Armoo’s more unusual investments include financing avocado, soybean, and mango businesses in Kenya, Angola and Tanzania, which supply supermarkets in Europe.
Armoo on a banana farm in Angola
Tim Armoo.
He also admitted he gets involved in “random stuff” and “alternative investments” such as buying uranium and funding the sale of a lithium mine.
“I enjoy the game of finding different arbitrages and different cool ways to spend, and invest the money, as opposed to ‘we’re just going to put it all in index funds,'” he added.
Armoo is a minimalist and doesn’t own a house
Most wealthy people love to invest in real estate, but not Armoo.
“I actually don’t own a house. I didn’t get involved in any residential property or any direct commercial property,” he said.
“Most people see property as their way of building wealth, but I use businesses as my way of building wealth and I don’t have a family, I don’t have a partner now, so why?”
Armoo said he expects more younger millionaires to make this choice, rejecting property in favor of being able to travel and move around more. “I probably only spend maybe half the year in London,” he said.
And unlike his peers, he’s less inclined to buy extravagant things.
“I’m generally quite a minimalist person,” he said. The one example he gave of a “flashy” purchase was first-class flights to Bali for him and his now ex-girlfriend. “That was cool. I remember thinking: ‘Yo, this is gangster.'”
The young millionaire emphasized that sometimes it’s good to reject the traditional way of doing things.
“I think there’s actually a bigger point here, which is to examine the rules that you live your life by. You should examine them and say: ‘Well, why should I do this? Why should I choose this career? Why should I invest my money in this way?” he said.
“You should really examine those rules, because if not, you’re going to wake up later on and realize that you’ve lived your life by someone else’s rules.”