the first side hustle that made a nobody richer than kings

The factor was history's first pure middleman, and the role emerged from a delightfully simple market inefficiency. Wool producers in medieval England and Flanders had fleece to sell. Cloth manufacturers in Italian city-states needed that fleece. But crossing borders meant navigating currencies, languages, tariffs, and the constant risk of bandits on trade routes.

Enter the factor: a local representative who'd buy wool on behalf of distant merchants, warehouse it, arrange transport, handle payments, and assume the risk. They earned a commission on every transaction—typically 2 to 5 percent—plus fees for storage, insurance, and currency exchange. The genius was that both sides paid them: producers paid for market access, buyers paid for reliable supply.

The truly successful factors became merchant princes. They'd advance money to producers before harvest (earning interest), warehouse goods until prices peaked (profiting from timing), and build networks across multiple cities (creating information asymmetries they could exploit). The Medici family started as factors before becoming bankers. Francesco Datini, a factor in Prato, died in 1410 worth the equivalent of hundreds of millions today.

The factor model proved so profitable that it spread to every commodity: wine, grain, metals, even human labor. When English textile production exploded in the 1500s, factors evolved into the "putting-out" system, contracting with cottage weavers and controlling the entire supply chain. It was dropshipping, arbitrage, and supply-chain finance rolled into one medieval hustle.

The factor eventually evolved into the modern broker, agent, and distributor—but never again would the middleman role offer quite such spectacular margins for so little capital investment.