How Dollar Shave Club's Founder Built a $1 Billion Company That Changed the Industry Michael Dubin is just getting started.

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Michael Dubin occasionally allowed himself to envision the moment when everything paid off. He'd be ushered into a grand ceremony, where some conglomerate, eager to own his massively successful company, would offer him a fortune for the pleasure. "I thought we would pass a really nice pen around in a wood-paneled boardroom with portraits of men with white hair," he says.

When the moment actually came, on July 19, 2016, there was none of that. He was in his pajamas, lying on a bed at the Skytop Lodge in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. His lawyers had been working through the night, and now the sun was up and Dubin had his cellphone pressed to his ear. In two hours, he was set to take the stage in the hotel's ballroom, where leaders of the multinational conglomerate Unilever would gather for its biannual conference. There, they'd announce that he was now part of their team: Dollar Shave Club was being acquired for $1 billion. But first, the deal had to be finalized. Dubin listened as, one by one, the executives on the phone gave their approval. Then it came down to him.