Whatever Works: Where Product is King

Morty and Joel

During his visit to Long Island, Larry met Steve’s two partners, Morty Williams and Joel Jacobs. The pair owned a low-end mail order company called Jay Norris—at the time, one of the largest buyers of space advertising in the United States. It was a huge business that was run like a candy store, with the partners holding strategy meetings in a booth at the local diner and jotting down contracts for tens of thousands of dollars on paper napkins. Everything was done with a handshake, and nothing happened in the business without one of the partners knowing about it.