Texas Precious Metals is a premier gold and silver dealer that allows customers to buy, sell, and securely store physical bullion and commemorative coins. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Texas Precious Metals co-founder and CEO Tarek Saab to learn more.
Tarek Saab’s Background
Could you tell me more about your background? Saab said:
“I grew up in a lower income household in Massachusetts, the son of a Lebanese immigrant father and a Portuguese mother who worked extremely hard to put me in good schools. My parents pushed me toward STEM, so I got my degree in electrical engineering and liberal arts, which led me to an internship at Analog Devices, then to Texas Instruments and their elite TSA program. After cutting my teeth in technical sales in Silicon Valley, I was promoted to worldwide marketing manager at 24, spending half the year overseas in Japan, Korea, China, Germany, and Italy, a young kid from the projects in New Bedford learning how to navigate business dinners in Tokyo and multi-million dollar deals. I eventually left TI, was cast on Season 5 of The Apprentice in 2005, launched a Christian clothing company called Lionheart Apparel off the back of that exposure, and when the financial crisis hit in 2008 it sent me down a rabbit hole asking why the paper dollar has value, which ultimately led me to precious metals, a move to South America, and eventually co-founding Texas Precious Metals in 2011 with my partner Jason Kaspar.”
Formation Of The Company
How did the idea for the company come together? Saab shared:
“The idea was born out of frustration with how broken the precious metals buying experience was. During the financial crisis I bought precious metals personally, wrote a check, mailed it to a company in Washington, waited six months for the product to arrive via untrackable registered mail, and thought: this industry has not figured out e-commerce at all. Around the same time I befriended a German investor in Texas who was relocating to Paraguay and needed help selling his precious metals because the bids he was getting were terrible. I threw up a $12 GoDaddy website, sent out a press release — “Trump alum fired up about gold and silver” — and sold out all of his inventory in 24 hours. I realized: I’m in the metals business now. That eventually led to a conversation with Jason Kaspar about starting a proper precious metals dealership, tucked into his hedge fund, using physical inventory rather than brokering, and we launched Texas Precious Metals on February 4th, 2011.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Saab reflected:
“I look back on living in Paraguay as one of my greatest professional achievements, even though it didn’t feel that way at the time. I was sitting in an empty house with a laptop on a cardboard box, $14 in my bank account, no cell phone, no internet, couldn’t speak Spanish, my source of income completely dried up, with a young child, and a pregnant wife, and I just had to work my way out of it. I started building websites, doing copywriting, taking any contract I could find, and that’s actually what built the digital foundation for what Texas Precious Metals became, because TPM is fundamentally a technology company. Going from the absolute highs of The Apprentice to being a contract laborer in Paraguay was humbling in a way that brought me close to God and forced me to understand who I really was as a man, a husband, a father, and a businessman. That’s the period I’m most proud of surviving.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Saab explained:
“At the core, Texas Precious Metals is an e-commerce precious metals dealer — we buy and sell gold, silver, platinum, and palladium in coin and bar form, direct to consumers, with an obsessive focus on customer experience, transparent pricing, and only selling product we actually have in stock, never forward selling. We also operate a purpose-built depository we launched in 2018 in Shiner, Texas, integrated with RFID, Bluetooth, barcoding, and facial recognition technology, which serves everyone from retail customers buying a few coins to large institutional clients like RIAs, IRA custodians, retirement funds, hedge funds, and family offices. And we have Texas Mint, our proprietary branded product line — very much cowboy-themed, quintessentially Texan — which carries our registered Texas silhouette trademark and represents the brand identity we’ve spent over a decade building.”
Challenges Faced
Have you faced any challenges in your sector recently, and how did you overcome them? Saab acknowledged:
“The most significant recent challenge has been managing explosive growth while keeping the culture and customer experience intact. When COVID hit, precious metals entered what I’d call a new super cycle — we grew something ~500% in 2023 alone — and at the same time we were building a new depository facility and opening new verticals within the organization. The challenge of hiring and sustaining quality service during that kind of growth, and managing all the change that comes with going from 10 employees to 77, was very real. The way we handled it was to turn all of our energy inward first, making sure our operations, infrastructure, and foundation were exactly where they needed to be before resuming marketing. We also leaned into technology, using AI for customer service analysis, content, and improving depository operations, while being deliberate about not letting it replace the human touch that defines who we are.”
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Saab noted:
“When I was in Paraguay learning to build websites, I had no idea how important that would become, because Texas Precious Metals is fundamentally a technology company. In the early days the entire industry was stuck on USPS registered mail, untrackable, slow, capped at $25,000 in insurance , etc,, and so we partnered with UPS to reinvent shipping for our industry, overnighting 40-pound packages of silver worth $30,000 affordably and with full insurance. As the company grew we built out the full e-commerce infrastructure, and when we launched the depository in 2018 we integrated RFID, Bluetooth, barcoding, and facial recognition technology along with automated reporting for institutional clients. Today we’re using AI to improve customer service quality, optimize how we handle metal in the depository, and improve our website and content, always with the philosophy that AI is a tool like a chainsaw, it still requires a human being to run it wisely.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Saab cited:
“Launching on February 4th, 2011 is the obvious starting point, and the timing turned out to be fortunate because gold and silver skyrocketed right after we launched and we were one of the only dealers with metal and no customers, so we grew fast. Getting traction during the Eagle Ford shale boom in 2012 was a big moment, as South Texans flush with mailbox money came to us to put it into metals, and it helped build our brand in the region. Moving back from Argentina to Shiner, Texas in 2012 to go all-in on the company was a major fork in the road personally. Launching the depository in 2018 transformed the business. We went from about 10 employees to 77 and entered an entirely new tier of the market. And the recent partnership with Pro Rodeo is a meaningful milestone for us in terms of bringing the brand to a new audience, because there hasn’t been a precious metals company connected to rodeo in in the sport’s history.”
Customer Success Stories
Can you share any specific customer success stories? Saab highlighted:
“One that stands out structurally is the 2012 Eagle Ford shale boom. We had South Texans coming to us with mailbox money from fracking royalties, looking to put it into metals, and those early customers helped build the credibility and word-of-mouth that the company’s reputation was founded on. More broadly, our customer success story is really about word-of-mouth. We were never SEO kings, we didn’t have the biggest marketing budget, but our customer service and reputation were second to none, and the business grew year over year on the strength of that alone.”
Funding/Revenue
Are you able to discuss funding and/or revenue metrics? Saab revealed:
“We launched with a pool of capital from the Kaspar family — a 125-year-old fifth-generation family conglomerate out of Texas — starting with a $1.5 million silver purchase in 2011. The business grew organically from there, built on inventory, customer service, and reputation rather than outside venture capital. The depository launched in 2018 and grew much faster than we expected. We grew approximately 500% in 2023, which created its own set of challenges around scaling operations and maintaining culture. The trading business and the depository together now serve customers ranging from retail buyers to large institutional clients transacting in the tens of millions, and we’re actively expanding into Switzerland, the Cayman Islands, and Singapore. Today, we process more than $2 billion in transactions annually.”
Total Addressable Market (TAM)
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Saab assessed:
“The retail precious metals TAM is approximately $15 billion to $20 billion annually.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Saab affirmed:
“The short answer is that we don’t try to sell precious metals; we aim to sell trust. I don’t want to be in the business of convincing someone to buy precious metals; I want to be the company they come to once they’ve already decided they want to buy, because we’re reputable, our prices are transparent, we only sell product we actually have in stock, and we do business the Texas way. Texas is a brand unto itself. It carries values around rugged independence, Americana, God and country and family, and that brand alignment with our customer base is something no competitor built out of a generic national platform can replicate. Add to that over a decade of investment in the depository infrastructure, institutional-grade technology, and a customer service philosophy built around the platinum rule — treat others how they want to be treated, not just how you would want to be treated — and that combination is very hard to copy.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future goals? Saab emphasized:
“We’re at a point now where the internal infrastructure is where it needs to be, so we’re going to start bringing the brand out to the market in a bigger way, starting with a major partnership with Pro Rodeo, which is blue ocean for us since there hasn’t been a precious metals company connected to rodeo in its history. We’re expanding geographically with satellite depositories opening in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands, with Singapore on the roadmap, to give clients geographic diversification. We’re deepening our institutional relationships, moving up the market strata toward larger and larger clients. And we’re building out content through Y’all Street — the podcast and media platform — because I want people to know us beyond the transaction, to feel like we’re in the journey of life together rather than just a company that sells them something and disappears. We are launching multiple precious metals ETFs in the capital markets this summer, which will transform our business from a retail to a commercial focus.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics you’d like to discuss? Saab concluded:
“The thing I keep coming back to is communication. Early on, when I stripped away everything — the TI career, The Apprentice, the companies — I asked myself what skills I actually had. The only real answer was that I was a good communicator. That ability to connect with people, across cultures, across generations, across the boardroom and the barn, has been the single most important driver of everything I’ve built. I talk about it constantly inside the company. It’s underappreciated by young people starting out. And it’s ultimately what Y’all Street is built on: great conversations with successful people that give our customers a reason to keep coming back, to feel like they know us, and to trust us not just as a vendor but as a company they want to be in business with for the long haul.”
