WorldNet

Xavier Niel: from a teenage sex hotline to a $6.6B telecom fortune

Shaan profiles French billionaire Xavier Niel, who at 19 built Minitel (a sex phone line), later flipped a stake in WorldNet for $50M before the dot-com crash, then undercut France's pricey carriers with low-cost mobile brand Free, ballooning his net worth to $6.6 billion.

“age 19, he creates this business called Minitel. Minitel is essentially a sex hotline, a phone service, you know, you call, it's called like sort of a sex line. And at 19 he creates this thing and it goes gangbusters.”