My husband Anthony went on The New York Times’ podcast, “Interesting Times” to talk about the future of Bitcoin.

What I found compelling is that the conversation sidesteps the usual “Is Bitcoin a fad?” debate. Instead, it gets at the much more fascinating question of, “How does the financial system actually work, and who does it work for?”

Anthony’s core argument is that the system is structurally designed to erode the value of cash, and that’s why he believes bitcoin is a long-term digital savings mechanism.

Having watched and learned about Bitcoin since I met Anthony in 2016, it feels like the debate has changed. For years, the question was whether it had value at all. Now, the argument is over what kind of asset it is — currency, commodity, tech bet, insurance policy, or some combination of the four.

Anyway, it’s a fascinating conversation, and I hope you give it a listen.

Check it out here

— Polina

PROFILES.

— The CEO buying struggling airlines [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The TV anchor who went independent
— The billionaire trying to build the newsroom of the future
— The sports stadium surveilling you
— The AI startup helping reverse denied health insurance claims

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The CEO buying struggling airlines: Scott Kirby has reshaped United Airlines by aiming to build an ecosystem that keeps customers spending. Known for his sharp edges and outsize confidence, he’s paired bold strategic moves — like massive plane orders during Covid — with a push into higher-end travel and loyalty economics. This has resulted in a stronger, more competitive United, even as it chases Delta and flirts with industry-shaking mergers. (Bloomberg; alternate link)

The TV anchor who went independent: Katie Couric has embraced her post-network “no filter” era and built a thriving independent media business to match. Free from corporate constraints, she’s leveraging newsletters, social media, and podcasts to reach millions while speaking more bluntly about politics and the media than ever before. At the same time, she’s deeply skeptical of legacy news, arguing that corporate pressures, polarization, and the push for “both sides” coverage are eroding journalistic integrity. (Variety)

The billionaire trying to build the newsroom of the future: A billionaire media veteran is making a high-stakes bet on Washington journalism — again. After sensing an opening created by turmoil at The Washington Post, Robert Allbritton is aggressively hiring top reporters and rebranding his startup as “The Star,” aiming to build the capital’s next dominant newsroom. Backed by a $10 million investment and a plan to double staff, he’s betting that a focused, insider-driven publication can thrive in an already crowded market. (WSJ; complimentary link provided)

COMPANIES TO WATCH.

The sports stadium surveilling you: Madison Square Garden may be watching you. A new investigation reveals an expansive surveillance operation under owner James Dolan, using facial recognition, watchlists, and private security to track critics, employees, and even ordinary fans, sometimes in extraordinary detail. What’s framed as security often blurs into personal score-settling, with allegations of profiling, intimidation, and overreach extending beyond the arena itself. Dolan may be an early example of a broader shift toward corporate “private armies” powered by biometric surveillance. (WIRED; alternate link)

The AI startup helping reverse denied health insurance claims: When insurers deny care, most patients give up, but one startup is betting AI can change that. Claimable helps patients generate legal-grade appeals to fight coverage denials, flipping the script as algorithms increasingly drive those decisions in the first place. Early results are striking, with a majority of cases overturned, often by combining automation with public pressure and escalation tactics. (Bloomberg; alternate link)

✨ The rest of this newsletter is only available for premium members of The Profile, whose support makes this work possible. If you’re not already a premium member, consider upgrading your subscription below for access to an additional section of weekly audio + video recommendations. ✨

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My next profile is on two people who have spent most of their lives as targets for public scrutiny. In response, they’ve become highly skilled at controlling what you see.

I went in expecting to spend the day with the characters I’d seen online. That’s not who showed up. In their place were two people who were more thoughtful, more self-aware and more human than I anticipated. I found a constant negotiation between the person and the persona, and the question of whether, after two decades, any real separation remains.

I’ve spent the last four months working on this one, and I’ll be sharing more soon.

(This is the crowd that formed outside once one of them walked inside an office building in NYC.)

— Polina

PROFILES.

— The OpenTable CEO reinventing the business
— The new Mrs. Bezos who is unapologetic about being uber-rich
— The secretive wealth adviser to tech billionaires [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The $10 billion startup training AI to take our jobs
— The AI school bus camera company

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The OpenTable CEO reinventing the business: When Debby Soo took over OpenTable, restaurants — its real customers — were fed up, calling the company expensive, out of touch, and stuck in the past. She rebuilt the business by flipping its focus: serve restaurants first, or lose them entirely. The turnaround meant reworking pricing, rebuilding products, and winning back trust—often by sitting through angry meetings across the country. Now, as competition and AI loom, OpenTable is growing again with the idea that better data and better alignment with restaurants can fill every empty seat. (Bloomberg; alternate link)

The new Mrs. Bezos who is unapologetic about being uber-rich: Lauren Sánchez Bezos has turned her marriage to Jeff Bezos into a full-throttle embrace of wealth, visibility, and influence. From the morning gratitude lists to the headline-making appearances by night …. she’s living it up. She wants you to know she’s truly happy, even as critics see excess and provocation. I don’t know what to say about this one except you need to read it for yourself. (The New York Times)

COMPANIES TO WATCH.

The secretive wealth adviser to tech billionaires: Iconiq built its fortune managing money for billionaires, and now it’s using those relationships to become a major power broker in the AI boom. The firm is pouring billions into startups like Anthropic, leveraging its elite network to open doors that traditional VCs can’t. Its strategy is concentrated and high-stakes: pick a few winners, go deep, and use access as an edge. If it works, Iconiq will help shape who gets to build our AI future. (Bloomberg; alternate link)

The $10 billion startup training AI to take our jobs: A social worker logs on every night to train the very AI that could one day replace her. She’s part of a fast-growing startup, Mercor, that pays professionals to break their expertise into data — turning real-world judgment into machine intelligence. For many, it’s a lucrative side hustle born out of job insecurity; for others, it feels like monetizing their own obsolescence. The bet is that AI will create more opportunity than it destroys, but the transition may be awfully messy. (Bloomberg; alternate link)

The AI school bus camera company: A company promises safer streets by installing AI cameras on school buses, but the real engine may be fines, not safety. Across the country, drivers are racking up tickets by the thousands, while violations barely decline and cities often keep only a fraction of the revenue. Confusing road design rather than reckless driving appears to be racking up many infractions, trapping ordinary residents in a costly system. When enforcement becomes a business model, is it protecting children or profiting from confusion? (Bloomberg; alternate link)

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The artist, Alex Mebane, told me the cartoon chicken was once real. His daughter named it “Marzipan,” eventually shortened to “Little Marzi,” and it became his muse.

I’ve written before about “weak social ties” — the casual relationships with people you encounter in coffee shops, bookstores, or on your daily walk — and how they can magnify your happiness. This felt like one of those moments.

I stood there longer than I expected. There was something paradoxical about it — the simplicity of the image paired with the weight of the words.

When I asked Alex how much the paintings cost, he told me: “You pay me whatever you want. This is such a weird gift from God that he knows what I need.”

Today is Bulgarian and Greek Orthodox Easter, and it made me think about the nature of faith. I saw its power firsthand when my newborn twins were in the NICU. I’ve seen it again in friends going through difficult seasons.

And now, I saw it in the way Alex had turned his hardest moments into something unexpectedly bright. A belief in God carried him through the darkest stretches of his life.

For me, believing in God has always been a source of strength — the kind you don’t realize you have until you need it.

Of course, I asked Alex more questions, and I’ve shared his answers below. If you feel inclined, you can check out his work here or find him in Central Park.

Q: How did this become your life’s work?

ALEX: In 2016, my family had moved to Austin from Santa Monica and getting backyard chickens seemed like a fun idea. Marzipan (named by my youngest daughter), the main character to my paintings, was the only yellow chicken and a bit odd. Granted, ALL chickens are odd but she was more so. After a year, I moved back to Santa Monica to resume my career in entertainment. Then Covid happens, and I’m not working. A friend was painting water colors live on Facebook and I joined purely out of “something to do.” I envisioned perhaps writing a children’s book with Marzi (that’s usually what we called her) as the main character. I broached the subject with my painting friend and he responded, “I’ll teach you how I do watercolors.” So in 2020, my life as an artist began. The first couple of hundred looked like I had painted them with my foot. But they got better.

What drew you specifically to New York City and Central Park?

ALEX: Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way profoundly influenced both my painting and my move to New York. One of her exercises was to do a vision board and unfortunately, nothing I chose for it was in California. My grandparents had lived here in NY when I was young, and I always thought of NYC as a magical place. And still do. I figured I would just get a new agent and go back to working in entertainment.

I loved Central Park as a child and visited here not long before I moved here in 2022 and met a girl near the Bethesda Fountain doing poetry for strangers. She told me a permit wasn’t required to vend there along the Mall, so after I moved here in June of 2022, I gave it a shot. And oddly enough, people responded in a way that I didn’t expect.

Faith seems central to what you do. Has that always been true, or did it emerge over time?

ALEX: I’ve been a Christian for 50 years, and it’s always found its way into what I create. More than a few of my paintings I sell here in the Park came from struggle. LA was a hard period for me. I had some success (I sang on some Disney children’s albums, won a Los Angeles Emmy for a children’s show I’d help produce), yet consistent work was difficult to find.

Also, during the pandemic, I read an article by a pastor from Philadelphia, Paul David Tripp, about dealing with hopelessness, from which I was struggling. One of the suggestions was, “Be the encouragement you need to hear.” So some of what I paint is that. Hope my own heart needed to hear.

You let people pay whatever they want for your work? Why do it that way?

ALEX: Honestly it’s such a weird gift from God, (I had never painted anything before the pandemic other than a wall) and the reality, God knows what I need. It’s how I’ve made a living for the past 4 years. I often joke, following the Lord is a lot like the mapping app Waze. It takes you on paths that seem totally opposite of where you want to go, but you end up exactly where you were supposed to be, at exactly the right time.

My dad often tells me: “Sometimes God helps us, and other times, He uses us to help others.” I’ve come to believe that the highest form of faith is the kind that extends beyond yourself — helping others, even in the smallest ways.

Below is a ‘day in the life’ video of how Alex makes a living selling chicken paintings:

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On a recent walk through Central Park, I stopped in front of a display of watercolor paintings of a chicken — a small, yellow, wide-eyed bird, each one paired with a line of scripture or a simple, handwritten quote.

The artist, Alex Mebane, told me the cartoon chicken was once real. His daughter named it “Marzipan,” eventually shortened to “Little Marzi,” and it became his muse.

I’ve written before about “weak social ties” — the casual relationships with people you encounter in coffee shops, bookstores, or on your daily walk — and how they can quietly magnify your happiness. This felt like one of those moments.

I stood there longer than I expected. There was something paradoxical about it — the simplicity of the image paired with the weight of the words.

When I asked Alex how much the paintings cost, he told me: “You pay me whatever you want. This is such a weird gift from God that he knows what I need.”

Today is Bulgarian and Greek Orthodox Easter, and it made me think about the nature of faith. I saw its power firsthand when my newborn twins were in the NICU. I’ve seen it again in friends going through difficult seasons.

And now, I saw it in the way Alex had turned his hardest moments into something unexpectedly bright. A belief in God carried him through the darkest stretches of his life.

For me, believing in God has always been a source of strength — the kind you don’t realize you have until you need it.

Of course, I asked Alex more questions, and I’ve shared his answers below. If you feel inclined, you can check out his work here or find him in Central Park.

Q: How did this become your life’s work?

ALEX: In 2016, my family had moved to Austin from Santa Monica and getting backyard chickens seemed like a fun idea. Marzipan (named by my youngest daughter), the main character to my paintings, was the only yellow chicken and a bit odd. Granted, ALL chickens are odd but she was more so. After a year, I moved back to Santa Monica to resume my career in entertainment. Then Covid happens, and I’m not working. A friend was painting water colors live on Facebook and I joined purely out of “something to do.” I envisioned perhaps writing a children’s book with Marzi (that’s usually what we called her) as the main character. I broached the subject with my painting friend and he responded, “I’ll teach you how I do watercolors.” So in 2020, my life as an artist began. The first couple of hundred looked like I had painted them with my foot. But they got better.

What drew you specifically to New York City and Central Park?

ALEX: Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way profoundly influenced both my painting and my move to New York. One of her exercises was to do a vision board and unfortunately, nothing I chose for it was in California. My grandparents had lived here in NY when I was young, and I always thought of NYC as a magical place. And still do. I figured I would just get a new agent and go back to working in entertainment.

I loved Central Park as a child and visited here not long before I moved here in 2022 and met a girl near the Bethesda Fountain doing poetry for strangers. She told me a permit wasn’t required to vend there along the Mall, so after I moved here in June of 2022, I gave it a shot. And oddly enough, people responded in a way that I didn’t expect.

Faith seems central to what you do. Has that always been true, or did it emerge over time?

ALEX: I’ve been a Christian for 50 years, and it’s always found its way into what I create. More than a few of my paintings I sell here in the Park came from struggle. LA was a hard period for me. I had some success (I sang on some Disney children’s albums, won a Los Angeles Emmy for a children’s show I’d help produce), yet consistent work was difficult to find.

Also, during the pandemic, I read an article by a pastor from Philadelphia, Paul David Tripp, about dealing with hopelessness, from which I was struggling. One of the suggestions was, “Be the encouragement you need to hear.” So some of what I paint is that. Hope my own heart needed to hear.

You let people pay whatever they want for your work? Why do it that way?

ALEX: Honestly it’s such a weird gift from God, (I had never painted anything before the pandemic other than a wall) and the reality, God knows what I need. It’s how I’ve made a living for the past 4 years. I often joke, following the Lord is a lot like the mapping app Waze. It takes you on paths that seem totally opposite of where you want to go, but you end up exactly where you were supposed to be, at exactly the right time.

—-

My dad often tells me: “Sometimes God helps us, and other times, He uses us to help others.” I’ve come to believe that the highest form of faith is the kind that extends beyond yourself — helping others, even in the smallest ways.

Below is a ‘day in the life’ video of how Alex makes a living selling chicken paintings:

Share The Profile

PROFILES.

— The OpenAI CEO who may control our future [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The nuclear engineer who started the sports betting revolution
— The people who live on an isolated island
— France’s tech hub trying to win the AI race
— The luxury reading retreats

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The OpenAI CEO who may control our future: At OpenAI, the question isn’t just what Sam Altman is building, but whether he can be trusted to control it. Inside the company, allies see a brilliant operator; critics see a leader willing to bend the truth to win. As A.I. inches toward world-shaping power, that tension has turned one man’s judgment into a global risk. (The New Yorker; alternate link)

The nuclear engineer who started the sports betting revolution: A bored engineer turned a mainframe into a money-printing machine while accidentally rewriting the rules of sports betting. Mike Kent’s algorithm gave his crew an edge so powerful it drew the mob, the FBI, and millions in wagers into its orbit. But as the winnings piled up, so did the risks, until the operation collapsed under betrayal, paranoia, and federal scrutiny. (Bloomberg; alternate link)

The people who live on an isolated island: On Tristan da Cunha, the most isolated inhabited island on Earth, there’s no such thing as a quiet life. With just 221 residents and no way in or out except by sea, survival is a full-time, all-hands operation. Everyone does everything—and the island only works because no one opts out. What a fascinating article. (NPR)

COMPANIES TO WATCH.

France’s tech hub trying to win the AI race: At Station F, France built a startup campus to showcase its tech talent. Now, it’s trying to win the global AI race. Backed by political power, elite founders, and deep-pocketed partners, the campus has become a magnet for ambition and capital. But turning that momentum into lasting global dominance means closing the gap with Silicon Valley’s speed, scale, and mindset. ( Substack)

The luxury reading retreats: Reading, once a social ritual, is being reinvented as a luxury escape. Across the US and UK, people are paying up to $1,000 to sit in silence with strangers. The appeal is supposedly about reclaiming attention, community, and the rare feeling of being fully present. (Bloomberg; alternate link)

✨ The rest of this newsletter is only available for premium members of The Profile, whose support makes this work possible. If you’re not already a premium member, consider upgrading your subscription below for access to an additional section of weekly audio + video recommendations. ✨

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One Christmas a few years ago, my mom gave me a book titled, Life Stories. It’s a compilation of The New Yorker’s greatest longform profiles.

The first line of the book reads, “One of art’s purest challenges is to translate a human being into words.” That sentence has been on my mind ever since I read it, and as a writer who specializes in profiles, there’s no greater challenge.

There are layers on layers to a human being. And to think that you could deconstruct someone’s essence into 4,000 words is naive, and frankly, silly. But there are some profiles that capture the complexities of that elusive je ne sais quois in a way no one has been able to before*.*

One writer who is able to capture it is named Wright Thompson. He wrote this epic 2016 ESPN profile on Tiger Woods.

Let me preface this by saying that it’s about Tiger Woods, but it’s not really about Tiger Woods. It’s about anyone who has ever experienced profound loss, grief, and inexplicable loneliness.

In the 10 years since his father died, Tiger lost his greatness at golf, while becoming obsessed with the military and indulging in a dozen or more affairs — both reflections of his dad Earl. All kids, the story says, whether they love or hate their fathers, want to shake free of the past and overcome any inherited weakness. Tiger’s father seemed to evoke conflicting emotions: The best and worst things that have happened in his life happened because of Earl.

Tiger grew up without any siblings or many friends and spent his childhood with his father, either on the golf course or hitting balls into a net in the garage. They often butted heads, but their biggest, most serious fight centered around Earl’s love for women. Tiger hated that his dad cheated on his mom. Yet somehow, Tiger’s life unraveled in a way much like his father’s, and he found himself repeating the same mistakes.

We never see the past coming up behind because shaping the future takes so much effort. That’s one of those lessons everyone must learn for themselves, including Tiger Woods. He juggled a harem of women at once, looking for something he couldn’t find, while he made more and more time for his obsession with the military, and he either ignored or did not notice the repeating patterns from Earl’s life. “Mirror, mirror on the wall, we grow up like our daddy after all,” says Paul Fregia, first director of the Tiger Woods Foundation. “In some respects, he became what he loathed about his father.”

And that’s the thing — the past always sneaks up on us when we least expect it. We unknowingly pick up our parents’ habits, fall into old patterns, and get nostalgic about how things used to be.

The thing that struck me about the profile is that so many people expected Tiger to act a certain way because of his status. But he almost never behaved in accordance with social norms, and that made him, well, “a weird f---ing guy,” as one Navy SEAL put it.

This is a remarkable story of early success, a meteoric rise, a catastrophic fall, and an uncertain future. But it’s mostly a reminder that humans are complex creatures, and the unpredictable forces of life can bring anyone to their knees.

Wright Thompson — the writer of the piece — recently appeared on a podcast in which he discussed what a profile’s really about. He said: “Profiles are about figuring out what is a central complication of somebody’s life and how, on a daily basis, they go about solving it.”

It sounds simple, almost obvious, until you realize how rarely profiles actually do this. The best profiles reveal the problem the subject is trying to solve, and why a person’s decisions that seemed erratic start to feel inevitable.

Right now, I’m working on a profile of two people who have spent their entire adult lives in public. On the surface, their story seems like it is about attention. I was struggling to write the piece until I realized that the attention is actually not the complication of their life. It’s a need for a scoreboard that’s concrete enough to silence the doubters, the haters, and all the people who want to see them fail.

And so every day becomes a kind of experiment in solving that problem.

Thompson’s framing becomes useful because it forced me to look past the spectacle and ask: “What are they trying to fix?”

My hope is that the profile answers it.

— Polina

PROFILES.

— Apple’s next CEO [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The billionaire who wants to reshape Miami
— The most prolific reporter in media
— The woman who alerts the world when an asteroid could hit
— The designer helping men dress better

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

Apple’s next CEO: Apple is entering a leadership transition as longtime executives retire, with John Ternus emerging as the top candidate to succeed Tim Cook. Ternus is a respected operator who has helped steady Apple’s core products, but his rise raises this question: Can a company built on iteration find its next breakthrough, especially as it falls behind in AI?

The billionaire who wants to reshape Miami: Ken Griffin is betting Miami is the future of American capitalism, citing its speed, pro-business culture, and openness to growth. The Citadel CEO has turned that belief into power by building Citadel into a financial giant while emerging as a key voice in shaping Republican economic policy. Now, he’s pushing a broader vision of low-regulation, pro-immigration capitalism and positioning himself to help lead it. (FORTUNE)

“The fight in America is all about protecting the cultures in places like Miami or Silicon Valley, and keeping us a nation of entrepreneurs.”

The most prolific reporter in media: Nick Lichtenberg is using AI to produce more stories in days than many reporters do in months. At Fortune, his AI-assisted work now drives a significant share of traffic, offering a glimpse into how legacy media is adapting to survive. His approach is all about scaling speed and output while risking accuracy, trust, and the very definition of reporting. (WSJ; complimentary link)

“It’s like a sports car that you can crash if you’re not careful. You’ve got to be like a Formula One driver.”

The woman who alerts the world when an asteroid could hit: Aarti Holla-Maini, the little-known UN official in charge of planetary defense, found herself confronting a real “Armageddon” scenario when an asteroid briefly threatened Earth. Trained for simulations, she had to quickly coordinate a global alert to 193 countries — testing, for the first time, the world’s response system to a potential space disaster. The moment revealed how much responsibility rests on a small, under-the-radar team—and how thin the line is between routine monitoring and global crisis. (The Guardian)

“This wasn’t a simulation or a drill. It was real.”

The designer helping men dress better: Todd Snyder has built a thriving fashion brand by offering high-quality, Italian-crafted style at prices that don’t feel absurd. As luxury brands lose millions of customers amid soaring prices, Snyder is winning by occupying the middle — delivering classic, wearable clothes that feel elevated but attainable. His bet is that most men want to dress better, just not at the cost — or risk — of high fashion. (Bloomberg; alternate link)

“I’ve always been about creating something that is attainable.”

✨ The rest of this newsletter is only available for premium members of The Profile, whose support makes this work possible. If you’re not already a premium member, consider upgrading your subscription below for access to an additional section of weekly audio + video recommendations. ✨

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I am slowly emerging from the postpartum haze, and there’s no better way to do it than to try and turn your brain on for a philosophical discussion with the legendary Jim O’Shaughnessy.

We sat down in person this time and talked about something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: how people actually think versus how they present themselves.

A few ideas from the conversation:

• We are not who we say we are. We are how we move through the world. This is something I notice more and more when reporting. The truth usually lies in the small, in-between, seemingly ordinary moments. That’s why I pay attention to what someone emphasizes, what they avoid, and what slips out unintentionally. (Check out my piece: How I Capture the Hidden Side of Public People)

• The most creative people don’t wait for inspiration to strike. They move through the world actively looking for patterns, connections, and ideas. You can literally design your day in such a way that you find ideas in the most unexpected places. (Check out my piece: How the World’s Most Creative People Bring Their Ideas to Life)

• Rationality is a competitive advantage. It is such an advantage to be an emotionally sober person. The people who go furthest are often the ones who can attack ideas without attacking people. (Check out my piece: ‘The Power — and Limitation — of Rational Thought’)

• Betting on yourself is the most radical thing you can do. It becomes hardest right after failure. And yet, the people I gravitate to are the ones who are willing to do it again anyway. (Check out my piece: Why It’s So Hard to Create Original Work In the Face of Conventional Wisdom)

• Media has changed, but the core problem hasn’t. We all want to believe we’re consuming objective information. In reality, we’re often choosing sources that confirm what we already think. The harder (and more useful) path is to engage with ideas you disagree with. (Check out my piece: How to Improve Your Content Diet in the New Year)

• Freedom of speech is easy to take for granted — until you’ve seen life without it. Ah, freedom of speech. It’s one of those things that underpins everything like, you know, democracy. Remove it, and the system collapses faster than people expect. (Read my piece: Why Democracy Requires Action)

• Stories are what make ideas stick. Facts alone rarely change minds. But when you attach them to a person, a moment, or a lived experience, they have the power to change your life. (Check out my book: Hidden Genius)

You can watch, listen to, or read the full interview here. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

The OSVerse

What Drives Successful People? (Ep. 307)

Today I speak with my friend Polina Pompliano, writer of The Profile and author of the excellent Hidden Genius, which studies the secret patterns of the world’s most successful people. We explore the mental models behind high performers, why we misunderstand people (including ourselves), and what it takes to see the world differently…

Listen now

a month ago · 8 likes · Jim O'Shaughnessy

PROFILES.

— The CEO trying to revive Red Lobster [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The Mango founder’s mysterious death
— The WIRED editor angering the people it covers
— The satellite startup that imploded
— The $30-billion AI startup

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The CEO trying to revive Red Lobster: Red Lobster’s new CEO, Damola Adamolekun, has promised one of the greatest turnarounds in restaurant history, but the reality is quite messy. The chain, gutted by years of private equity deals, bad leases, and strategic missteps, is still losing money and weighed down by aging locations and crushing rent obligations. Adamolekun has brought energy, marketing savvy, and modest operational fixes, but none address the structural problems threatening the business. (Bloomberg; alternate link)

“We’re going to execute the greatest comeback in the history of the restaurant industry.”

The Mango founder’s mysterious death: The death of Mango founder Isak Andic looked at first like a tragic accident on a mountain trail outside Barcelona. But as investigators reopened the case and scrutiny fell on his son Jonathan—the only person with him that day—the story metastasized into a dynastic thriller involving inheritance, succession, class resentment, and the unresolved question of what really happened on that cliff. What makes the piece so gripping is that it’s not just about one suspicious death; it’s about the fragility of a family empire the moment its founder disappears. (New York Magazine; alternate link)

“Jonathan is a very nice guy. Spoiled kid. But I mean, you cannot run an aircraft carrier if you’ve only run a small boat.”

The WIRED editor angering the people it covers: Katie Drummond has reinvented Wired by pushing it beyond tech coverage into politics, power, and accountability, even though there’s been much backlash from the very industry it covers (see here). Even so, publication has added hundreds of thousands of subscribers and become a rare growth story inside Condé Nast. (The New York Times; alternate link)

“If you still don’t understand why Wired covers politics, you are either willfully ignorant or a complete idiot.”

COMPANIES TO WATCH.

The satellite startup that imploded: A startup called Theia raised more than $250 million on the vision to build a real-time, planet-wide satellite imaging network that could track everything from trucks to whales. It attracted elite talent, political connections, and global investors, but it never launched a single satellite. Instead, the company unraveled into lawsuits, unpaid debts, and federal fraud charges alleging it misled investors about its finances, technology, and contracts. Here’s how Theia’s collapse has become a cautionary tale of the space boom. (Bloomberg; alternate link)

“I began to get really suspicious about strange things that just weren’t making sense.”

The $30-billion AI startup: Cursor helped ignite the AI coding boom by growing at breakneck speed to billions in revenue and widespread enterprise adoption. But it’s now facing the brutal reality of its own market. New competitors like Anthropic’s Claude Code are reshaping how software gets built, shifting from human-assisted tools to fully autonomous agents, and threatening to make Cursor’s original model obsolete. The company is scrambling to adapt, even as talent leaves and pricing pressure mounts, revealing how quickly dominance can evaporate in the AI era. (FORTUNE)

✨ The rest of this newsletter is only available for premium members of The Profile, whose support makes this work possible. If you’re not already a premium member, consider upgrading your subscription below for access to an additional section of weekly audio + video recommendations. ✨

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Last week, I joined Jim O’Shaughnessy on his podcast, Infinite Loops.

We covered a wide range of topics — from the traits of successful people to freedom of speech to how my upbringing has shaped the work I’ve chosen to pursue. (If you’re interested, you can also revisit our 2021 conversation, where we discussed my decision to leave FORTUNE, the business of content creation, and how my writing has evolved.)

I’ll share the new podcast episode as soon as it’s published.

As an aside: one of my favorite pieces Jim has written is his guest essay for The Profile on the value of writing letters to your children.

It literally prompted me to start writing letters to my children, and I think you’ll enjoy it, too.

PROFILES.

— The longevity guru who fell from grace [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The founder battling the company board
— The biographer telling Judy Blume’s story
— The artist behind the Banksy mystery
— America’s most valuable used-car retailer

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The longevity guru who fell from grace: Peter Attia built a longevity empire on trust. In this profile, Bloomberg reports that the newly released Epstein files exposed a years-long relationship that now threatens the credibility behind his entire brand. The fallout has been swift and merciless. Business partners are backing away, his bestseller has stumbled, and a figure once seen as the voice of wellness is suddenly looking a lot more like the world he claimed to rise above. (Bloomberg; alternate link)

“The biggest problem with becoming friends with you? The life you lead is so outrageous, and yet I can’t tell a soul.”

The founder battling the company board: Lululemon’s founder is back in attack mode, arguing that the brand he built has lost its creative edge and become bloated, cautious, and forgettable. This time, though, his complaints land harder. Wall Street, former insiders, and even customers seem to agree that the company’s North American business has gone stale. The piece’s core tension is whether Chip Wilson is just another aggrieved founder who can’t let go or whether he is the person saying out loud what everyone else is already thinking. (FORTUNE)

“Lululemon has lost its soul.”

The biographer telling Judy Blume’s story: Mark Oppenheimer spent years researching Judy Blume and, with Blume’s cooperation, set out to write the definitive story of her life. But once she read the draft — returning it with hundreds of comments and a 40-page memo — the relationship cooled, and she stepped away from the project entirely. When a living subject invites a biography into being, how much truth are they really prepared to see once it’s no longer theirs to control? (The New York Times; alternate link)

“When you decide to write a biography, you don’t work for the subject. You work for the reader.”

The artist behind the Banksy mystery: Reuters claims that it has unmasked the legendary street artist Banksy. This investigation posits that the artist is Robin Gunningham, who later legally changed his name and continued operating behind an even more ordinary identity. What makes the piece especially strong is that it’s a portrait of how Banksy turned anonymity itself into a business model and a source of power. (Reuters)

COMPANIES TO WATCH.

America’s most valuable used-car retailer: Carvana’s comeback is one of the market’s strangest success stories: a used-car retailer once left for dead is now booming again. How? The company’s explosive growth rests on debt, subprime credit, and a tightly controlled Garcia family machine that investors have decided to trust. If demand holds, Carvana looks like the Amazon of cars, but if the credit cycle turns, the whole model could crumble. (Bloomberg; alternate link)

“If anyone but my son asked me to invest in this idea, I’d have politely told them to leave my office.”

✨ The rest of this newsletter is only available for premium members of The Profile, whose support makes this work possible. If you’re not already a premium member, consider upgrading your subscription below for access to an additional section of weekly audio + video recommendations. ✨

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Last week, my friend Hilary Hoffman invited me to take a workout class at her new Upper East Side studio, SotoMethod.

As Hilary guided us through the movements, she spoke to the room in that calm but focused way that great instructors have. In between cues, she kept returning to three words: intensity, consistency, and authenticity.

A little backstory: Hilary and I first connected over our shared love of words. On a Zoom call three years ago, we talked about language, ideas, and the power of the right phrase at the right time.

Back then, I had one child. Now I have four.

In the years between those two realities — pregnancies, postpartum recoveries, sleepless nights, and the chaos of a growing family — Soto became a small but meaningful constant. I would return to the virtual classes again and again because they made me feel stronger, calmer, and more like myself.

And this is why those three words hit me so strongly when she said them. If you really think about it, “intensity,” “consistency” and “authenticity” apply to almost everything that matters.

Raising children requires intensity — that ferocious love and superhuman strength that shows up at 3 a.m. when you’re exhausted but still rocking a baby back to sleep.

Building something meaningful requires consistency — the unglamorous act of showing up again and again, long after the initial excitement fades. Consistency is what has allowed me to send this newsletter to you for the last 9 years without ever missing a single week.

And living a life that actually feels good requires authenticity — the courage to do things your own way, even when the world is pushing you in a different direction.

This is how I think about it: Intensity is what you need to get started, consistency is what you need to keep going, and authenticity is what makes it all worth it.

You can apply those three words to parenting, relationships, writing, business, fitness — to pretty much any craft that requires devotion over time.

When you combine these three simple ideas, you are unstoppable.

PS: Hilary has an excellent Substack called that helps you frame the week ahead. And if you’d like to take a Soto class, check it out here.

—

VIRTUAL EVENT THIS MONDAY: I’m speaking at a New York Financial Writers’ Association event tomorrow, Monday March 16 at 8pm EST about how I built The Profile. I would love it if you could join. Register here.

— Polina

PROFILES.

— The best-selling author on the planet
— The libertarian negotiating lower healthcare costs
— The celebrity makeup artist
— The most disruptive company in the world [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The best-selling author on the planet: James Patterson built a literary empire by treating books like a business. He moves fast, follows the audience, and never confuses prestige with sales. But as younger authors and internet-driven fandoms reshape publishing, even the king of mass-market thrillers is feeling the squeeze. His answer is more collaboration, bigger names, and now even a MrBeast novel, as he continues to chase relevance. At 79, he may not care about legacy, but he still cares deeply about winning. (Bloomberg; alternate link) [For more, check out my Profile Dossier of James Patterson here.]

“One thing I love about the publishing business is that it’s this intersection of creativity and commerce, and Jim is the perfect embodiment of that.”

The libertarian negotiating lower healthcare costs: For decades, anesthesiologist Keith Smith has argued that one of health care’s biggest scams is that patients often have no idea what anything costs until the bill arrives. At his Oklahoma surgery center, he’s tried to prove the opposite. He posts the prices upfront, keeps them low, and forces the system to make sense. What began as a libertarian crusade against hidden fees is now influencing employers, governments, and providers looking for cheaper, more transparent care. (Bloomberg; alternate link)

“I wanted to start a price war—wanted these damn hospitals bankrupting people to have to explain themselves.”

The celebrity makeup artist: Celebrity makeup artist Nina Park has become Hollywood’s power behind the “no-makeup makeup” look, a style so natural it’s meant to look like nothing at all. Her philosophy is all about precision. Park’s approach, shaped by her early training as an artist and years of obsessive experimentation, has made her a favorite of stars like Emma Stone, Zoë Kravitz, and Greta Lee. The result is a paradox of modern beauty: the more effortless it looks, the more deliberate the work behind it. (The New York Times; alternate link)

“Success used to mean momentum and opportunity, and now it’s more about clarity.”

COMPANIES TO WATCH.

The most disruptive company in the world: Anthropic has become the company most obsessed with AI safety and the company that’s also racing fastest toward a future it warns could spiral beyond human control. Its Claude models are reshaping coding, office work, and even military operations, putting the company at the center of fights over jobs, war, surveillance, and who gets to set the rules for artificial intelligence. After clashing with the Pentagon over red lines on autonomous weapons and mass surveillance, Anthropic cast itself as the rare tech giant willing to sacrifice business to hold the line — though even it is already softening some of its own safeguards. Will it control the future? (TIME)

“We’re driving down a cliff road. A mistake will kill you. Now we’re driving at 75 instead of 25.”

✨ The rest of this newsletter is only available for premium members of The Profile, whose support makes this work possible. If you’re not already a premium member, consider upgrading your subscription below for access to an additional section of weekly audio + video recommendations. ✨

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🚨 If you’ve emailed me in the past month and didn’t hear back, there’s a reason.

For a while, I noticed that editions of The Profile would go out, and the usual stream of reader replies had completely vanished. Normally I hear from dozens of you after a post. And now … nothing. Total silence.

Support told me everything looked fine on their end, which only made it more confusing.

After some more digging, I finally discovered the issue: my domain had essentially blacklisted Substack, which meant I wasn’t receiving any Substack-related emails — including reader replies.

So if you wrote back to a recent newsletter and I never responded, please accept my sincere apologies. The issue has now been fixed, and I’m looking forward to hearing from you again.

—

VIRTUAL EVENT: I’m speaking at a New York Financial Writers’ Association event on March 16 at 8pm EST about how I built The Profile. I would love it if you could join. Register here.

—

PROFILES.

— The anthropologist reviving Coach
— The face of the ‘looksmaxxing’ movement
— The parenting guru who built a massive business
— The Olympic figure skater who won gold
— The companies gamifying truth [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The anthropologist reviving Coach: Coach, which was once dismissed as a safe suburban brand, has staged an unlikely comeback, winning over Gen Z and pushing annual revenue to $5.6 billion. Leading the revival is CMO Joon Silverstein, an anthropologist-turned-marketer who studies young customers the old-fashioned way: by visiting them in their homes and observing how they live. Her insight that Gen Z sees identity as fluid shaped Coach’s strategy by selling products like the Tabby bag as tools for self-expression rather than status symbols. (WSJ; complimentary link)

“A lot of brands mistake data for real insight. You don’t learn about people or culture by reading research reports or by studying them afar.”

The face of the ‘looksmaxxing’ movement: A 20-year-old streamer called Clavicular has become the face of the internet’s “looksmaxxing” movement — a subculture obsessed with hacking male beauty for status and success. He’s built a massive following by livestreaming extreme self-optimization, rating people’s looks, and turning bizarre slang like “mogging” into viral memes. The result is part performance art, part manosphere spectacle, and part commentary on the anxieties of young men online. In the attention economy, Clavicular may be less a fringe character than a sign of where internet culture is going. (The New York Times; alternate link)

“On one level, he’s funny. But on a deeper level, he’s kind of a demon.”

The parenting guru who built a massive business: The Dr. Becky Kennedy turned simple Instagram parenting videos into a full-blown company. What began as reassurance for overwhelmed millennial parents has grown into Good Inside, a profitable business with 3.4 million followers, 100,000+ paying members, and $34 million in annual revenue. Instead of relying on social media alone, Kennedy built a broader ecosystem — digital memberships, workshops, community forums, and even an AI chatbot — to “professionalize” parenting. Her core pitch is that parenting, like leadership, is a skill you can learn. (FORTUNE; If you want more, check out my Profile Dossier on Becky Kennedy here.)

The Olympic figure skater who won gold: Olympic champion Alysa Liu is focused on protecting her joy. After becoming the first American woman since 2002 to win Olympic figure skating gold, the 20-year-old celebrated by going home, eating Chinese food with friends, and ignoring the noise. Liu’s career has been defined by boundaries (she retired at 16 before returning to win gold on her own terms). She skates out of pure passion and joy, and that freedom is exactly what makes her so compelling. (Teen Vogue) “I pick hanging out with my friends over a session, and if that makes me a worse skater, so be it.”

COMPANIES TO WATCH.

The companies gamifying truth: Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket are exploding by turning everything from elections to Jerome Powell’s word choice into tradable bets that claim to “price” the truth in real time. Big money and big media are piling in, pushing those odds onto TV screens and trading desks. But the boom also brings manipulation fears, messy rule calls, and lawsuits that could decide whether this is finance or just gambling with better branding. Can they really become a useful signal? (Bloomberg; alternate link)

“Nothing is more valuable than the truth.”

✨ The rest of this newsletter is only available for premium members of The Profile, whose support makes this work possible. If you’re not already a premium member, consider upgrading your subscription below for access to an additional section of weekly audio + video recommendations. ✨

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I recently read the following quote in James Clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter:

Writer and scholar C.S. Lewis on what matters most:

“To be happy at home is the end of all human endeavor. The sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal, or two friends talking over a pint of beer, or a person alone reading a book that interests them; and all economics, politics, laws, armies, and institutions, are only valuable in so far as they prolong and multiply such scenes.”

With so much going on in the world right now, it’s helpful to remember that the point of this life is to protect and multiply those little scenes.

So today, if you can, step away from the noise. Linger a little longer at the table. Call a friend. Close the laptop, and be present with your kids. The real work is smaller — and closer — than we think.

—

For more ideas like this, you can check out my 2021 interview with James Clear here:

PROFILES.

— Palantir’s secretive CTO [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The AI that built a viral Epstein podcast
— The Georgia pastor accused of defrauding the VA
— The gravedigger grappling with grief — The crypto casino

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

Palantir’s secretive CTO: For two decades, Shyam Sankar has been Palantir’s hidden engine: the CTO who built its “forward-deployed” culture. He sent engineers into the field to turn chaotic government data into real-world decisions. The profile traces how an immigrant childhood marked by violence, instability, and relentless grind hardened him into a builder obsessed with meritocracy and national strength. Now, with Palantir’s valuation exploding on the AI wave, Sankar is stepping into public view as an evangelist for “defense reformation” and American industrial revival. (Colossus)

“He’s been one of the most impactful people in defense tech, working for 20 years, and he’s done it privately, quietly, and very much behind the scenes.”

The AI that built a viral Epstein podcast: Adam Levy built an AI-generated podcast about the Epstein files, and it rocketed into Apple’s top 10 after pulling in 700,000 downloads in days. Created in 48 hours, it uses large language models to mine 3.5 million documents and crank out twice-daily episodes. Critics call it bloodless and mechanical, but its viral rise signals a new reality: in the race to dominate sprawling investigations, speed may be beating soul. (Fast Company)

“People just want no bullshit. Strip the emotion, strip the bullshit, strip everything away—just tell me things for what they are and when you tell it to me, help me understand the facts.”

The Georgia pastor accused of defrauding the VA: A struggling young soldier finds faith, only to become entangled in a church former members say operated like a cult. Prosecutors allege its leader, Rony Denis, used spiritual control to build a hidden real-estate empire and siphon more than $23 million in veterans’ benefits. Now Denis is jailed on fraud charges, and the church is fracturing as followers confront claims that even his identity was fake. (Bloomberg; alternate link)

The gravedigger grappling with grief: A young gravedigger in Asheville takes a job hoping it will make him wiser about mortality, only to find death far harder to face than expected. His work partner Alison, who embraced death with humor and grace, becomes a close friend until Hurricane Helene kills her and her entire family. Forced to bury his own colleague on the same land where they once guided others through grief, he confronts loss as the bereaved. In the end, nature slowly covers the graves, reminding him how grief, like life, eventually grows over even the deepest wounds. (New York Times Magazine; alternate link)

“I was desperate to keep her death alive, to keep reckoning with our cataclysm, before it was all gone for good.”

COMPANIES TO WATCH.

The crypto casino: Drake’s Stake livestream showed him torching millions in crypto until co-founder Ed Craven jumped on the call, topped up his balance, and urged the crew to make the wins go viral. A Bloomberg Businessweek analysis of hundreds of hours of footage found that Drake and a few other influencers hit unusually frequent “big wins” on slots owned by Stake’s parent company, while their odds on third-party games looked typical. The profile argues this influencer-fueled jackpot theater helps power one of the world’s largest, lightly regulated crypto casinos, which is now facing lawsuits and regulatory scrutiny. Stake denies giving anyone preferential treatment and disputes the findings. (Bloomberg; alternate link)

✨ The rest of this newsletter is only available for premium members of The Profile, whose support makes this work possible. If you’re not already a premium member, consider upgrading your subscription below for access to an additional section of weekly audio + video recommendations. ✨

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I wrote this post two years ago, and I wanted to re-share it with you today. I hope you find it valuable.

—

What has been the most defining moment in your life?

I bet I could tell a lot about you based on your answer to this question.

Some of you will answer with a joyful event that shaped you into the person you are today — the birth of your child, the launch of your business, the attainment of a big goal.

Others, however, will point to a traumatic event — a near-death experience, a tragic medical diagnosis, or the loss of someone dear to them.

These are all life moments, but defining life moments are laced with emotion. And that emotion depends on the narrator’s perception of the event. (For example, one person may say a near-death experience made them paranoid and fearful while another may say it made them loving and grateful.)

I recently wrote about how no one single event will transform your entire identity because we have a multitude of layers that make us us.

But, as humans, we have a very hard time accepting this. We often can’t make our brains understand that people can be two (or three, or four) things at the same time. We want simplicity while we resist ambivalence.

And because we want that simplicity, one moment can dominate our entire life — for the rest of our life. But it’s not really our fault. Our brains sometimes get stuck in a loop that replays the moment like a broken record.

In a recent New York Times feature, writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner says this about trauma:

“I’ve now come to understand the same thing about trauma: Happy, well-adjusted people are all different. The traumatized are exactly alike.

“I’m about to tell you a story that is nothing like a violent kidnapping — almost laughably so — but what I’ve learned over the years is that trauma is trauma. Something terrible happens, beyond what is in our own personal capacity to cope with, and the details don’t matter as much as the state we’re thrown into.

“Our bodies and brains have not evolved to reliably differentiate a rape at knife point from a job loss that threatens us with financial ruin or from the dismantling of our world by our parents’ divorce. It’s wrong, but explain that to your poor, battered autonomic nervous system.”

Brodesser-Akner tells the story of the painful, invasive, and traumatizing birth of her first child. She says that she never got over it, never stopped being bitter about it, and never quit worrying about the impact it had on her son.

“I had been rocked into a full nervous breakdown, and I had no idea what aspect of the birth did it, she writes. “All I knew was that, should something go wrong — a car accident, maybe, or a mugging — I would be prone to falling apart.”

Her son’s birth transformed from a moment into a defining moment with tentacles that touched every aspect of her life.

Now, let’s take a look at someone else.

Last week, I included a profile about a skydiver named Emma Carey who survived a 14,000-foot fall when she dove out of a helicopter into an empty cow pasture in Switzerland, with two tangled parachutes and her instructor passed out on her back.

The reporter writes:

The skydiving story is just a story, and [Carey] wrestles with how much longer she wants to keep telling IT. She wants to talk about her.

It’s human nature to make a story about you into the story of you, and most of the time feels harmless. Think about how many people whose identities are subsumed going from Justin and Maria, to “Justin & Maria,” to Mom and Dad, to Grandma and Pap. Everybody has a friend whose marriage falls apart and he suddenly becomes “Divorced Dave,” or a cousin who has borrowed money from everybody in the family and therefore is “Broke Brooke.” We connect people with one of their stories, and a chapter about them becomes the book on them.

But who wants to be simplified down to one thing about themselves? This is especially problematic for people with trauma and disabilities. Most of us have said “Heather is paralyzed” or “Mike is autistic” without thinking twice, with no ill will. But there’s a reason why those affected often prefer person-first language -- Mike isn’t autistic, he has autism. He also has a dog, a job, a guitar and an on-again, off-again relationship. Nobody says “Mike is guitar.” And if they do, they probably shouldn’t.

As the writer notes, who wants to be simplified down to one thing about themselves? Who wants one moment to become the moment of their life?

Carey survived the impossible, but understandably, she wants to move beyond it. She doesn’t want to be the girl who “fell from the sky” for the rest of her life.

I got curious. I went to her Instagram to see how she’s moved on. How she’s told the story of her. How she hasn’t let this traumatic moment become the defining moment of her entire life.

The first thing I notice is her bio: “Emma Carey: The girl who fell from the sky.”

— Polina

PROFILES.

— The members of the ‘gay tech mafia’ [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The teen dominating YouTube
— The insurance analyst-turned-health influencer
— The No. 1 company of the Fortune 500
— The conservative Cosmo

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The members of the ‘gay tech mafia:’ Silicon Valley is buzzing with rumors of a so-called “gay tech mafia” running the industry’s upper ranks. This profile uncovers tight-knit networks of influential gay founders and investors who socialize, fund one another, and move in overlapping social and professional circles. In a hyper-networked ecosystem where access is everything, power, ambition, and sexuality sometimes blur in ways that can feel both empowering and uncomfortable. (WIRED; alternate link)

“The high tech VC world just seems to be one big, exploitative gay mafia.”

The teen dominating YouTube: Teen YouTube star Salish Matter has turned her father-daughter channel into a Gen Alpha empire. She’s selling out malls, landing a Netflix deal, and launching a Sephora beauty brand that flies off shelves. Millions watch her playful adventures with dad Jordan, making her one of the most influential creators under 18. But her meteoric rise also fuels debate over kids, fame, and the booming business of young influencers. (Bloomberg; alternate link)

“People will assume the worst. There’s this built-in assumption of exploitation.”

The insurance analyst-turned-health influencer: Gary Brecka has surged from little-known insurance analyst to celebrity biohacker at the center of America’s wellness and political conversation, boosted by allies like Dana White and RFK Jr. His longevity promises and supplement empire have drawn millions of followers — and sharp criticism from scientists who call many claims unproven or risky. After a past marked by business failures and lawsuits, Brecka reinvented himself as a health influencer whose rising power now sits at the heart of a broader fight over U.S. health policy. (Bloomberg; alternate link)

“He spreads a lot of really dangerous lies about a lot of different health conditions.”

COMPANIES TO WATCH.

The No. 1 company of the Fortune 500: Amazon is set to overtake Walmart as No. 1 on the Fortune 500, a symbolic changing of the guard in a rivalry rooted in radical customer obsession — a creed championed by Sam Walton and scaled by Jeff Bezos. Fueled by AWS profits and massive AI bets, Amazon has grown from online bookstore to $700-billion powerhouse, outpacing Walmart’s slower retail engine. Yet under Doug McMillon and Andy Jassy, the two rivals now resemble each other—tech-driven, logistics-obsessed, and locked in a two-company battle for the future of commerce. (FORTUNE)

“Indeed, the cost of not making bold moves is far riskier than the cost of steep investment.”

The conservative Cosmo: At a candlelit Fashion Week party atop the Standard hotel, Evie magazine—billed as a “conservative Cosmo” — showcased its vision of the modern right-leaning woman: glamorous, traditionally feminine, and unapologetically anti-feminist. Founded in 2019, the profitable, social-first brand blends beauty and lifestyle content with conservative cultural messaging, tapping into a growing audience of young women eager to make traditional values feel fashionable again. (WSJ; complimentary link)

“We started with a mission to embrace femininity, and we were definitely ahead of the curve for a couple of years.”

✨ The rest of this newsletter is only available for premium members of The Profile, whose support makes this work possible. If you’re not already a premium member, consider upgrading your subscription below for access to an additional section of weekly audio + video recommendations. ✨

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It’s been nine years since I sent the very first edition of The Profile to a few friends, my mom, and her friend Peggy. I had no idea it would grow into a massive community of curious people who continue to show up week after week.

Back in February 2017, I was 25, living in New York City and writing FORTUNE Magazine’s dealmaking newsletter, Term Sheet, Monday through Friday.

On the side, I started emailing family and friends the longform profiles I’d read and loved that week. (I almost didn’t send it — I thought people already had newsletter fatigue. Little did I know.)

Since then, I’ve left FORTUNE to pursue this full time, Substack has become a cultural phenomenon, and I now have a husband and four kids. Needless to say, life looks very different.

But one thing hasn’t changed: I’m still here, still writing, and this newsletter has landed in your inbox every single Sunday for nine years.

I made a reel about why I think The Profile has lasted while most newsletters disappear within a few months. As always, thank you for being here, and here’s to the next nine years together.

PROFILES.

— The author contemplating consciousness
— The woman teaching AI morals
— The princess-turned-VC
— The Mormon wives who conquered pop culture
— The company trying to understand their AI system’s mind [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The author contemplating consciousness: Michael Pollan’s new book explores the mystery of consciousness at a time when A.I. and modern media are increasingly competing for our attention. He argues consciousness may have evolved to help humans navigate complex decisions and social worlds, while questioning whether machines could ever truly achieve it without bodies and feelings. Pollan also examines how practices like meditation and psychedelics can temporarily dissolve the ego, offering insight into the self and our connection to something larger. (New York Times Magazine; alternate link)

The woman teaching AI morals: Anthropic’s resident philosopher, Amanda Askell, is shaping the moral compass and personality of its AI chatbot Claude. She’s essentially teaching a machine how to be ‘good.’ As chatbots grow more human-like, Askell’s job is to ensure empathy, ethics, and self-awareness are built in from the start. In the race to build smarter AI, she’s trying to make sure intelligence comes with a conscience. (WSJ; complimentary link)

“If you were like a child, and this is the environment in which you’re being raised, is that healthy self-conception?”

The princess-turned-VC: Jeannette zu Fürstenberg, a German heiress-turned-VC and literal princess, is now one of the most powerful forces in European tech. As president of General Catalyst, she’s betting heavily on AI and defense startups to help Europe stand on its own against the US and China. She believes crisis can fuel a European tech renaissance, but only if the continent learns to take risks and embrace failure. (Bloomberg; alternate link)

“Every crisis always has an opportunity. And Europe, historically, has always risen from crises.”

The Mormon wives who conquered pop culture: Utah’s influencer boom — led by shows like The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and creators like Jessi Draper and Ballerina Farm — has turned Mormon and ex-Mormon women into major cultural and commercial forces. They’ve been selling everything from beauty treatments to homesteading fantasies. Social media, reality TV, and affiliate marketing helped these once niche “mom bloggers” become mainstream tastemakers, reshaping how Mormon motherhood and lifestyle are seen across America. Yet tensions remain between empowerment, commercialization, and the church’s traditional expectations, even as Mormon aesthetics and family-centered branding continue to drive massive business and cultural influence. (New York Magazine; alternate link)

“The Utah bloggers were the first to drive commerce in a way we weren’t seeing with traditional street-style bloggers.”

COMPANIES TO WATCH.

The company trying to understand their AI system’s mind: Large language models are just vast math systems that convert words into numbers and predict what comes next, but once they started “talking,” people swung between hype (“they’re conscious”) and dismissal (“just parrots”). This article follows Anthropic’s attempt to understand these black boxes through interpretability, using experiments with Claude that reveal both impressive competence and unsettling, sometimes deceptive or self-protective behavior. The takeaway is that these systems are already reshaping work and forcing us to rethink what we mean by intelligence, agency, and even the self. (The New Yorker; alternate link)

“How are we going to interact with the models? How are we going to be able to understand them?”

✨ The rest of this newsletter is only available for premium members of The Profile, whose support makes this work possible. If you’re not already a premium member, consider upgrading your subscription below for access to an additional section of weekly audio + video recommendations. ✨

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As a perfectionist, this is hard to admit, but the truth is that people are often drawn to imperfect things.

Whether it’s art, movies, or books, we tend to remember — and talk about — the flawed things that stick in our heads more than the polished, perfect, and ultimately forgettable ones.

I was reminded of this while watching clips from Alex Warren’s Grammy performance. Nominated for Best New Artist, Warren began singing his hit “Ordinary,” but you could see him tapping his earpiece before eventually pulling it out. An audio malfunction left him about half a beat behind for part of the song.

Even though it must have been incredibly frustrating — especially during his Grammy debut — he pushed through and still delivered a great performance. And at the end, you could see the disappointment on his face because it hadn’t gone perfectly.

Later, he posted on Instagram: “When you’re performing at the Grammys and all you hear is this in your ears,” alongside a clip of the audio chaos, clutching his head in mock frustration.

And here’s the thing: Bruno Mars, Post Malone, Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, and plenty of other massive stars also performed that night. Their performances were excellent. And yet, I didn’t hear much about any of them afterward.

Warren’s moment went viral because it was messy and human. We’ve all been there — ready for our big moment, only to be tripped up by something outside our control. We rarely get to see imperfection play out on one of the biggest stages in the world. And yet, because of it, I now know who Alex Warren is — and so do hundreds of thousands of others.

As Malcolm Gladwell puts it: “You want an aftertaste, and that comes from not everything being perfectly blended together.”

— Polina

PROFILES.

— The dealmakers behind the secretive private equity firm 3G [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The CEO bringing ‘sexy’ back to Victoria’s Secret
— The founder dealing with customer backlash
— The Olympic skier who mastered the pain cave
— The old-school pizza chain that became an obsession

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The dealmakers behind the secretive private equity firm 3G: At 2 a.m. in a Midtown boardroom, little-known 3G Capital partners Alex Behring and Daniel Schwartz raced the opening bell to buy Burger King for $4.1B, while the press literally confused them with another firm. They imposed an owner’s mindset and ruthless cost discipline, then used franchising to reignite global growth. Fifteen years later, Burger King anchors Restaurant Brands International (~$45B), and the investment is up nearly 30x with no exit in sight. (Colossus)

“Is 3G the most unique private equity business model in the landscape today?”

The CEO bringing ‘sexy’ back to Victoria’s Secret: Victoria’s Secret is staging a comeback under CEO Hillary Super, reclaiming its signature glamour. The brand is leaning back into sexy — but on women’s terms — pairing spectacle and confidence with broader representation and better products. Early results show market share gains, stock recovery, and renewed buzz among younger customers. (FORTUNE)

“People were not loving the product, so they used all this other stuff as an excuse to leave.”

The founder dealing with customer backlash: Bilt founder Ankur Jain never meant to build a blockbuster credit card, but adding one was the hook that finally got landlords and renters to adopt his rent-payments platform. The strategy worked (millions now pay rent through Bilt), but its ultra-generous rewards proved costly and sparked backlash after a confusing revamp. Jain, shaped by a lifelong exposure to startup chaos, sees the turbulence as part of building something meaningful. The bet now is whether Bilt can keep its edge as its once-radical card starts to look more like the rest. (Bloomberg; alternate link)

The Olympic skier who mastered the pain cave: Jessie Diggins, the most accomplished cross-country skier in U.S. history, built her career on an unmatched ability to push through pain — even racing to Olympic silver in 2022 while sick, dehydrated, and physically collapsing at the finish. But years of pushing beyond her limits also forced her to confront the toll of elite sport, including struggles with eating disorders and burnout. Now heading into her final Olympics, Diggins is redefining toughness by learning that greatness isn’t just about suffering, but knowing when to protect herself. (The New York Times Magazine)

“The fact I’m standing here is an absolute miracle.”

COMPANIES TO WATCH.

The old-school pizza chain that became an obsession: A lone sit-down Pizza Hut in rural Pennsylvania has become a viral pilgrimage site, drawing crowds hungry not just for pan pizza but for the cozy, communal vibes of the ’80s and ’90s. Social media turned the retro restaurant into a secular shrine, where salad bars, jukebox dreams, and BOOK IT! posters promise refuge from a digitized, delivery-only present. Remember the feeling of being around other people, sharing a booth, and lingering over a meal? (Slate)

“It’s like stepping straight into 1987.”

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In April 2019, I published a longform Fortune magazine feature titled, “How the Kleiner Empire Fell.”

The premise? “Once the very embodiment of Silicon Valley venture capital, the storied firm has suffered a two-decade losing streak. It missed the era’s hottest companies, took a disastrous detour into renewable energy, and failed to groom its next-generation leadership. Can it ever regain the old Kleiner magic?”

After numerous pivots in strategy over the years, Kleiner never quite found its footing. The firm’s early-stage unit repeatedly missed promising young companies like Uber, Pinterest, Robinhood, Slack, and Airbnb — only to have Mary Meeker’s growth team invest later at much higher prices.

I spoke with more than 20 employees, LPs, entrepreneurs, and other industry observers about what went wrong — and whether the firm could ever revive what once made it great.

At the time, Mamoon Hamid had left Social Capital to join Kleiner Perkins and head up early-stage investing. When the legendary John Doerr became chairman, he handed the reins of the firm over to Hamid.

Below is an excerpt from my story:

The inability to get in on a hot startup’s ground floor, only to subsequently pay a far richer price, was all too common for the once-storied firm.

Kleiner had sat out on another generation of technology investments, the crop of so-called Web 2.0 companies, including Facebook in the 2000s. Now, in the 2010s, it was failing again to make early-stage investments—the traditional meat of venture capital investing—in the most sought-after startups of the day.

But this time its whiffs came with a perverse twist: Kleiner was succeeding wildly with a new strategy centered around Meeker, who ran a separate fund within the firm focused on more mature private companies that required capital to grow as opposed to merely establish themselves.

“Growth” investing, with its more developed companies, should be somewhat safer than “venture” investing and would also earn commensurately lower returns. Yet Meeker’s investment team outperformed the venture group overseen by longtime Kleiner leader John Doerr and a rotating ensemble of lesser-known investors who joined and left him over the years.

Meeker, not the venture capital investing unit, was landing stakes in the era’s most promising companies, including Slack, DocuSign, Spotify, and Uber, breeding resentment over tension points as old as the investing business: Who gets the credit and, more important, who gets paid.

Worse, a class system developed inside Kleiner, evident to the outside world as well, notably among entrepreneurs mulling accepting Kleiner’s money: Team Meeker was a top-tier operation while the venture unit was B-list at best. Says Ilya Strebulaev, a Stanford finance professor who studies venture capital: “Twenty years ago, Kleiner Perkins was at the pinnacle of venture capital. These days it’s just one of many firms trying to compete.”

What happened next is another age-old tale in the business world, of how a once-proud stalwart found itself on the edge of irrelevance. It’s about just how much succession planning matters and the ramifications of not adequately grooming the right successors. And it’s a reminder that something as elusive as identifying early-stage winners from the pack of wannabes doesn’t get easier, even after more than four decades of practice.

Well, Fortune has now published the sequel to that story, and it appears Hamid and his team have largely reignited the firm’s spark. In his first deal at Kleiner, Hamid led Figma’s $25 million Series B, and the company later went public at a $19.3 billion valuation. As the new article notes, Kleiner has returned $13 billion to its LPs since 2018.

But what may truly restore the firm’s luster is its AI-era portfolio. Kleiner has invested in Harmonic, Safe Superintelligence, Synthesia, Glean, Anthropic, and Applied Intuition.

I love a good reinvention story, and this is a strong one.

If you have some time this weekend, you might start with “How the Kleiner Empire Fell” and then follow it up with ‘Silicon Valley legend Kleiner Perkins was written off. Then an unlikely VC showed up.’

— Polina

PROFILES.

— The crypto CEO who’s become Enemy No. 1 [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The VC firm that regained its spark
— The Olympic freestyle skiing star
— The Trump family’s crypto empire
— The startups bringing male contraceptives to market

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The crypto CEO who’s become Enemy No. 1: Brian Armstrong’s bid to turn Coinbase into a “bank replacement” has ignited an unusually public turf war with Wall Street, culminating in Jamie Dimon bluntly calling him “full of s—” at Davos. At stake is whether crypto exchanges should be allowed to pay yields on stablecoins — returns banks fear could drain trillions from traditional deposits. As Armstrong leverages political muscle to stall legislation he dislikes, the fight has shifted from “crypto vs. banks” to Coinbase vs. the financial establishment. And for now, Armstrong appears to be holding enough power in Washington to stop the rules entirely. (WSJ; complimentary link)

“It is Coinbase who is seen as the one who has to say yea or nay to this legislation. That is a truly shocking state of affairs.”

The VC firm that regained its spark: Silicon Valley once treated Kleiner Perkins like a legendary ship taking on water — until Mamoon Hamid made the “irrational” move in 2017 to try to rebuild it from the inside. Teaming up with Ilya Fushman, he shrank and refocused the firm, rewired the culture for speed, and quietly stacked modern-era wins — most notably a massive return from Figma’s IPO — while loading up on AI’s hottest names. The piece argues Kleiner’s comeback is a conviction-driven model built to compete in a world of megafunds, sovereign wealth, and inflated AI rounds. Now the bet is whether Hamid’s discipline can keep producing generational winners, not just one. (FORTUNE)

“You’ve got to keep up with your founders … I see Ilya and Mamoon understanding that speed.”

The Olympic freestyle skiing star: Eileen Gu enters the next Olympics not just as a dominant freestyle skier but as a global celebrity navigating politics, identity, and immense pressure. A once-in-a-generation athlete who balances elite sport, academia, and fashion, she has faced backlash for representing China, mental-health struggles, and relentless public scrutiny. Her story is about reclaiming agency in a world eager to project meaning onto her. (TIME)

The space companies who want to take us back to the moon: After 54 years, NASA is sending Artemis II around the Moon — an Apollo 8–style “slingshot” test meant to prove the Space Launch System rocket and Orion before landing attempts later this decade. The story frames it as a potential morale-reset moment, echoing Apollo 8’s Christmas Eve broadcast that helped “save 1968.” But the real bottleneck is the lunar lander: SpaceX’s Starship plan is enormous, complex, and behind schedule, prompting talk of opening competition to Blue Origin and Lockheed Martin. In the background is a new space-race clock — pressure to move fast as China targets its own crewed Moon landing by 2030. (TIME)

COMPANIES TO WATCH.

The Trump family’s crypto empire: Eric Trump’s American Bitcoin reflects how the Trump family is rapidly expanding into crypto through partnerships, brand leverage, and asset-light deals. The company surged to an $8.5 billion valuation before being hit by market volatility and scrutiny over political conflicts of interest. Its trajectory highlights both the industrialization of Bitcoin and the risks of building a crypto empire at the intersection of capital and politics. (FORTUNE)

“The Bitcoin for America Act will position our country to lead—not follow—as the world navigates the future of sound money and digital innovation.”

The startups bringing male contraceptives to market: A wave of startups — including YourChoice Therapeutics, Contraline, and NEXT Life Sciences — is racing to commercialize the first widely viable male contraceptives, from hormone-free pills to reversible implants. Early clinical results are promising, but the biggest obstacle is capital, with founders struggling to raise the hundreds of millions needed to reach market. Despite a potential multibillion-dollar industry, big pharma and investors remain hesitant, leaving startups to shoulder the risk of building an entirely new category. The battle to bring male birth control to market is becoming a test of biotech innovation, investor psychology, and cultural change. (Bloomberg; alternate link)

“There is interest, but everyone’s hesitant to be the lead investor.”

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I am typing this with sweaty palms as I watch Alex Honnold climb one of the planet’s tallest skyscrapers in Taipei.

Honnold has become a paramount symbol of fearlessness. He is history’s greatest rock climber in the free solo style, meaning he ascends without a rope or protective equipment of any kind. If he falls, he dies.

I wanted to share this 2016 profile, in which scientists take a close look at Honnold’s brain to determine what occurs in his amygdala, the “fear center” of the brain.

Here’s an excerpt:

“Even to the untrained eye, the reason for her interest is clear. Joseph had used a control subject—a high-sensation-seeking male rock climber of similar age to Honnold—for comparison. Like Honnold, the control subject had described the scanner tasks as utterly unstimulating. Yet in the fMRI images of the two men’s responses to the high-arousal photographs, with brain activity indicated in electric purple, the control subject’s amygdala might as well be a neon sign. Honnold’s is gray. He shows zero activation.

“Flip to the scans for the monetary reward task: Once again, the control subject’s amygdala and several other brain structures “look like a Christmas tree lit up,” Joseph says. In Honnold’s brain, the only activity is in the regions that process visual input, confirming only that he had been awake and looking at the screen. The rest of his brain is in lifeless black and white.

“There’s just not much going on in my brain,” Honnold muses. “It just doesn’t do anything.”

Read the profile here

PROFILES.

— The mountaineer pushing his body to extremes [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The finance nerd who is the country’s best quarterback
— The actress opting for the quiet life
— The company using AI to solve rare disorders
— The skier making an Olympic comeback

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The mountaineer pushing his body to extremes: For Kílian Jornet, extreme effort is a way to strip life down to its essentials and reconnect with body, mind, and nature. The legendary ultrarunner and mountaineer has redefined human endurance, from oxygen-free Everest climbs to running 72 major U.S. peaks in a single month, yet speaks most passionately about calm, presence, and restraint. He sees both fear and euphoria as dangers, learned through close encounters with death and loss in the mountains. His philosophy? Push hard, listen closely, and know when to turn back. (The New York Times; alternate link)

“I loved to suffer, just to get out and push my body.”

The finance nerd who is the country’s best quarterback: Fernando Mendoza looks like a typical business-school senior — internships, investing, LinkedIn — except he’s also Indiana’s starting quarterback, fresh off a national championship run. A former Cal student who commuted from football practice to real-estate internships, Mendoza applies the same whiteboard-driven discipline to mastering playbooks as he did to finance coursework. Once overlooked as “too academic” for football, he’s now one of the most efficient passers in college football and a legitimate Heisman contender. (WSJ; complimentary link)

“My football career might not go the way I want, but I still have a little sliver thinking I’ll be the next Ryan Fitzpatrick.”

The actress opting for the quiet life: In a quietly rooted upstate life far from Hollywood flash, Amanda Seyfried has grown into one of the most daring and emotionally precise performers of her generation. As she approaches 40, her work — from volatile thrillers to a radical, feminist musical biopic — reflects a career defined by risk, discipline, and depth. Grounded by family and her animal-rescue farm, she chooses roles with intention rather than momentum. (Vogue)

“It surprises me that she can still access that part of her that wants to do simple, quiet things.”

The skier making an Olympic comeback: Lindsey Vonn’s had already built the most fulfilling life of her career after retirement. She returned for one reason: after a groundbreaking knee surgery, her body finally made the impossible feel possible again. Now, at 41, she’s chasing the 2026 Olympics because she genuinely wants to — and because she can. It’s a comeback story fueled by clarity, confidence, and most importantly, enjoyment. (SELF Magazine)

“I never stop believing in myself.”

COMPANIES TO WATCH.

The company using AI to solve rare disorders: For the first days of her life, every medical crisis Jorie Kraus faced seemed fixable, until a devastating diagnosis revealed an ultra-rare, incurable genetic disorder. Then an AI-powered tool helped doctors repurpose an existing drug, quietly rewriting what “no treatment” meant. Within days of starting a microdose, Jorie began moving, problem-solving, and speaking in ways her parents had never seen. It’s a story about how artificial intelligence, used carefully, can turn medical despair into cautious, life-altering hope. (New York Magazine; alternate link)

“We’re not just focused on one disease. Our goal is to move toward a treatment for any condition.”

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You may remember when I wrote about how to improve your ‘content diet’ in the new year by by auditing what kinds of information you’re consuming and noticing what it’s actually doing to your brain.

It’s a useful exercise to return to periodically, especially when you realize that mindless scrolling on social media has become a pacifier for your nervous system.

So on Wednesday, I decided to take a break from all the apps that exist mainly to distract me and use my phone as … a phone. Just calling and texting. (The irony, of course: Verizon had a massive outage, which meant I couldn’t even do that.) I used my laptop only to check email and read profiles for this newsletter.

The effects were more profound than I expected. I became acutely aware of how automatic it had become to reach for my phone and open Instagram. I noticed how much low-value information I’d been feeding my brain. I also noticed that my Kindle and Audible apps hadn’t been touched in a very long time.

Anyway, just a reminder that you are what you think. And as I wrote in that piece: don’t let yourself run on autopilot. Make sure you are the one choosing what gets to occupy your mind.

— Polina

PROFILES.

— The CEOs turning Spotify into an ‘everything app’ [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— Japan’s richest man
— The startup using robots to make human embryos
— The professor teaching a course on existential despair
— The meatless companies that got cooked

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The CEOs turning Spotify into an ‘everything app:’ Daniel Ek is stepping down as Spotify’s CEO, and handing the controls to two longtime lieutenants. He’s doing this right as the company tries to evolve from “music app” into an “everything” audio-and-video platform. Spotify is finally profitable and more powerful than ever, but it’s still dogged by the same old fight: artists and songwriters say streaming shortchanges them, while Spotify argues the pie is bigger than critics admit. The next era is a tightrope walk. How will the company fend off TikTok/YouTube attention, manage the flood of AI-generated music, and keep Gen Z from seeing Spotify as the establishment? (Bloomberg)

“For Gen Z, Spotify just looks like NPR—it’s part of the establishment, the old guard.”

Japan’s richest man: Tadashi Yanai built Uniqlo into a $22.9 billion giant by obsessing over how customers actually experience a store, down to folded stacks and fabric feel. The founder of Fast Retailing still shops his own aisles like a regular customer — and pays at checkout — to pressure-test every detail. Here’s how he plans to triple sales in the coming years. (Bloomberg; alternate link)

“How would the customer actually perceive this? You won’t really get the customer’s opinion looking down from above.”

The professor teaching a course on existential despair: A Penn professor has hacked the attention economy by turning reading into an almost monastic ritual: no phones, no notes, and hours of silent, start-to-finish books in a dark classroom. His cult-adjacent rules — sometimes including bans on sex — are designed to rebuild students’ tolerance for boredom, loneliness, and deep focus. Students are shocked at how effective his methods are. Students who hadn’t finished a novel in years leave with a nightly reading habit and a new comfort with being alone. His thesis is that great literature is a survival practice, and discipline can be a kind of freedom. (New York Magazine; alternate link)

COMPANIES TO WATCH.

The startup using robots to make human embryos: A startup has built a 17-foot robotic “IVF factory” that can automate nearly every step of creating embryos outside the body. It promises more consistency, higher success rates, and eventually lower costs. In Mexico City, its founders are running human trials and pitching a future of “superlabs” where a handful of technicians and AI robots can do what today takes scarce, highly trained embryologists. The first American baby from the system has already been born, but critics warn automation could scale mistakes, shift savings to clinics, and further distance humans from reproduction. What a fascinating story. (Bloomberg)

“People should be as excited about this as they were about the moon landing.”

The meatless companies that got cooked: Isa Chandra Moskowitz once symbolized New York’s vegan boom, but now her shuttered restaurants mirror a broader collapse of vegan dining, plant-based hype, and faux-meat optimism. After peaking in the 2010s, vegan restaurants are closing faster than they’re opening, sales of plant-based meat are down, and even champions like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are rethinking their pitch. Meat is back, while veganism remains a committed but tiny minority. (New York Magazine; alternate link)

“Maybe behaviors are changing, but maybe the market is not big enough for us to have a thousand companies all thriving.”

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When I think about the greatest pieces of writing I’ve ever read, they’re the ones that move me emotionally. But there’s a secret behind them: the writer didn’t set out to make me, the reader, feel something. They wrote until they felt something.

Let me explain.

I just watched David Perel’s interview with Tom Junod, the writer best known for his ‘The Falling Man’ feature about an unidentified man falling from the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. He is also behind the profile on Fred Rogers in a feature titled ‘Can You Say … Hero?’

Both articles have the power to make you cry. “When I started writing Falling Man, I sat down and wrote, ‘He departs this earth like an arrow,’ and the hair stood up on my arms,” he says. “That became my guiding principle: If you can keep on writing sentences to make the hair stand up on their arms, then you got this.”

You see the same principle at work in a very different genre. Colleen Hoover, the author of Verity, It Ends With Us, and Ugly Love, is known for her gut-punching plot twist. She expertly weaves in drama, mystery, and passion, and her books often read like fast-paced thrillers.

The magic of her writing is that it forces suppressed emotions to bubble up to the surface. You might find yourself crying on the subway or gasping in shock. Hoover’s hidden genius is that she can pierce through the monotony of our lives with vivid scenes that evoke emotion. “I write what I want to read,” she says simply.

Ironically, Hoover has also said she isn’t a particularly emotional person and that it takes a lot to make her feel anything at all. “I think the reason my books make a lot of people cry is because I’m kind of hard inside,” she explains. “So I write until I feel something sad inside of me, which takes a lot to get there.”

When I write profiles, I’m chasing the same thing. My job is to make the reader care about the person on the page, and that only happens if I care first. If I’m moved, unsettled, surprised, or shaken while writing, there’s a chance the reader will be too.

If I feel nothing, the reader won’t either. So I keep writing until the hair stands up on my arms.

— Polina

PROFILES.

— The billionaire founder who wants to automate restaurants [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The most talked-about woman in Greece
— The Olympic star focusing on personal fulfillment
— The coffee chain taking over America
— The real estate platform that redefined its market

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The billionaire founder who wants to automate restaurants: Billionaire founder Marc Lore is betting $186 million that the future of takeout looks less like a restaurant and more like an Amazon fulfillment center. He wants Wonder’s “food halls” to offer extreme variety via centralized prep, software-driven cooking, and (eventually) automation so robust it could host hundreds — or even thousands — of menus in one location. His next leap, “Wonder Create,” would let influencers and entrepreneurs spin up virtual restaurants in minutes while Wonder’s machines do the actual cooking. The question is: Do people want their food made in a culinary fulfillment center? (Bloomberg; alternate link) [For more, check out the Profile Dossier on Marc Lore here.]

“’Amazon is: pick, pack, ship,’ Lore says. ‘We’re pick, cook, pack, ship.’”

The most talked-about woman in Greece: Kimberly Guilfoyle’s arrival in Athens as U.S. ambassador was pure spectacle — private jets, sheer dresses, nightclub appearances — and instantly made her the most talked-about foreign envoy in Greece. Skeptics saw a flashy Trump-era appointment, but behind the paparazzi she moved fast, muscling through major U.S. energy and port deals and leveraging her direct line to the Oval Office. Admirers call her relentless and effective, while critics say she blurs diplomacy with dominance and celebrity. Here’s how Guilfoyle has turned the ambassadorship into a high-voltage mix of power, politics, and provocation. (The New York Times; alternate link)

“In terms of public relations, she has done an excellent job.”

The Olympic star focusing on personal fulfillment: Fresh off her Beijing gold and a dominant run that includes back-to-back X Games titles and another world championship, Chloe Kim says she’s entering the Milano Cortina Olympics happier, calmer, and more grounded than ever. After spiraling emotionally post-Beijing, Kim took a deliberate mental-health break, went to therapy, and rebuilt her life around routine, boundaries, and joy. She’s no longer chasing validation or even obsessing over winning, but instead wants to walk away proud of how she rides, regardless of the podium. (TIME)

“We are so focused on this one thing for such an extended period of time. When it’s over, it’s very strange.”

COMPANIES TO WATCH.

The coffee chain taking over America: Dutch Bros has turned sugary, drive-thru indulgence into a fast-growing national brand, using TikTok-fueled merch drops, relentlessly cheerful “broistas,” and $7 candy-colored drinks to hook Gen Z and millennials. The Oregon-born chain now has more than 1,000 tiny, drive-thru-only locations and sees a path to 7,000 stores, positioning itself as a high-energy alternative to a conflicted, café-nostalgic Starbucks. In a market crowded with rivals chasing youth-oriented drinks, Dutch Bros Coffee is betting that fun, fandom, and unapologetic sugar will scale. (Bloomberg)

“Hundreds of people will line up here. It’s actually crazy to witness.”

The real estate platform that redefined its market: Jeremy Wacksman, now CEO of Zillow, helped turn casual house-scrolling into a national pastime — and a $16 billion business. He did this by giving ordinary buyers the kind of data agents once controlled. Zillow dominates online home search, but it actually makes most of its money from agents, even as it steadily pushes deeper into managing real estate transactions itself. That expansion has drawn lawsuits, regulators, and industry backlash, especially as U.S. home sales sink to a near 30-year low. (Bloomberg)

“As you succeed in a category, as you’re an innovator and changing, there’s naturally a sharper focus on you.”

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I published the column below last year, and I wanted to resurface it again. I hope you enjoy it:

—

There are few moments in life that genuinely feel like you’re at the starting line of a new chapter. With every passing year, it becomes more and more rare to encounter moments that force you to feel like a novice.

For me, there are only three moments that have had this effect: The first day of first grade, the day we moved to the United States, and the day I became a parent. At one point in life, I was a student for the first time, I moved to a new country for the first time, and I had a baby for the first time. All three were a shock to the system.

But here’s the thing: You don’t need to move countries or have a child in order to feel totally incompetent. There are many ways to create an artificial beginning that creates a “before” and “after” effect in your life.

Every time the calendar flips to January 1, it marks an artificial beginning. Resolutions aren’t effective because they’re usually abandoned and forgotten in a matter of weeks. What’s more effective is setting practical goals that are difficult to weasel out of.

For instance, on January 1, 2015, I signed up for a four-year-long mentorship program. On January 1, 2018, I signed up for a marathon, and I bought flights and paid entry fees. On January 1, 2021, I cut out alcohol and got rid of all the beverages in my home.

Creating artificial beginnings is especially important when you start to feel comfortable and complacent. When I interviewed endurance athlete Amelia Boone, I understood why mastering something new is so crucial to building mental toughness. She was a corporate attorney and had never run a race in her life. At age 28, she signed up for her first Tough Mudder, became obsessed, and went on to become a four-time world champion.

How? She created an artificial beginning that forced her to be the worst before she could become the best.

Here’s how she describes the feeling of starting from scratch, learning a new skill, and mastering the art of suffering. “When you put yourself through situations that are very hard, and you do that on purpose, it helps you to deal with the messiness in life that is not voluntary,” she says.

Anyway, if you’ve been looking for a sign to commit to mastering something new this year, consider this your wake-up call. Remember, being a novice will likely be jarring, terrifying, and horrible at first, but those are all prerequisites to building true and long-lasting confidence.

Today is only January 4 — it’s the perfect time to find a new challenge, start over, and get closer to the person you want to be. As Matthew McConaughey says, “I’m a big fan of creating resistance to keep myself in check to make sure I’m feeling most alive. It’s a daily routine to sober yourself up. Big moments in our life sober us up.”

—

PS: I’ve been sharing more short videos and ideas on Instagram lately. If you want more of that in between newsletters, you can find me at @polinampompliano.

—

PROFILES.

— The self-made billionaire who never read an investment book [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The Supreme Court lawyer living a double life
— Justin Bieber’s priest
— The actor on the precipice of megastardom

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The self-made billionaire who never read an investment book: Thomas Peterffy automated his way out of postwar Budapest and, in the process, automated Wall Street — building the tools that replaced the trading floor and turned Interactive Brokers into a $100+ billion machine. The profile traces his obsessive commitment to efficiency: from hacking early computers and inventing handheld trading devices to outsmarting exchanges that tried to ban his “thinking.” The punchline is pure Peterffy: he claims it’s just common sense, and then casually checks IBKR and makes $1.7 billion while you’re saying goodbye. (Colossus)

“It’s all common sense. Hard work and common sense. That’s my story.”

The Supreme Court lawyer living a double life: Thomas Goldstein was one of the most formidable Supreme Court advocates of his generation, a self-made legal star whose instincts won Google a landmark victory. Behind the scenes, he was living a parallel life of secret high-stakes gambling and lavish relationships that eventually forced him out of the courtroom. The story is about how the same taste for risk that fueled his brilliance also engineered his downfall. (The New York Times; alternate link)

Justin Bieber’s priest: Judah Smith is the last hypepriest standing: a style-savvy, celebrity-adjacent pastor whose brand of gentle, therapeutic Christianity rose alongside his decades-long spiritual partnership with Justin Bieber. As flashier, more combative strains of Evangelicalism gain ground, Smith finds himself caught between cultural relevance and a shifting religious mood that now sees his grace-first theology as too soft. The question remains: Can the Bieber wave carry him through Christianity’s next turn. (New York Magazine)

The actor on the precipice of megastardom: Josh O’Connor is suddenly everywhere — Challengers turned him into an internet thirst trap, and a packed slate (Knives Out, a Spielberg sci-fi, and two indies) has him teetering on true megastardom. But the profile’s twist is that his ambition isn’t to be larger-than-life; it’s to stay human. His leading-man aura may be inevitable, but his refusal to be consumed by it is the real headline. (GQ)

“I really have this need in my soul to be private and quiet.”

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Exactly one year ago, my husband asked me a simple question: Why don’t you write original profiles for The Profile?

It stopped me in my tracks. After eight years of running this newsletter, I realized I had never done the thing I love most — write original profiles for a newsletter literally called “The Profile.”

So as I reflect on 2025, I’m proud to say that I returned to the foundational reason I started this newsletter in the first place — to write deeply reported, original profiles.

I began the year by diving into financier Anthony Scaramucci’s uncanny ability to bounce back stronger after every implosion. I obtained access to SkyBridge Capital’s returns and learned that more than 57% of its $2.7 billion in hedge fund assets were allocated to cryptocurrencies — a position worth roughly $1.4 billion. Almost no one knew that Scaramucci’s fund had outperformed some of Wall Street’s most iconic names, including Tiger Global, Citadel, Coatue, and Pershing Square.

Then I focused on real estate entrepreneur Ryan Serhant. Online, Ryan was all energy — charismatic, enthusiastic, always “on.” But in person, I could sense a trace of loneliness. When I asked why he started seeing a therapist last year, he told me, “Because I have no one else to talk to.” In this piece, I focused on how success is a double-edged sword. It doesn’t guarantee happiness, fulfillment, or peace. It’s shaped by what you bring to it, and what you’re willing to give up along the way. Before you watch his Netflix show Owning Manhattan, read this, and I think you’ll notice many of the same nuances I did.

Next, I profiled NFL star Saquon Barkley. We all know Barkley as one of the most electrifying running backs in the NFL. But I kept noticing something interesting. He was posting endless photos of him with startup founders. Founders at his Super Bowl party. Founders at NFL training camp. Founders at dinner. He even starred in a Super Bowl ad for Ramp, the $22.5 billion fintech darling. He was interested in equity. What I discovered is that for Barkley, equity is a way to wrest back control from the injuries, draft picks, or franchise decisions that can derail a career overnight. I managed to get his VC returns, and as someone who used to cover venture capital at FORTUNE, I can tell you this portfolio would make even top VCs jealous.

To close out the year, I wrote the definitive profile of Kathryn Wylde, New York City’s ultimate power broker. What drew me to her story is just how unlikely her career trajectory is. She began as a community organizer, leading sit-ins, protests, and marches. She attracted criticism from politicians who labeled her “a communist.” Over time, she evolved from a social activist into an advocate for pro-growth, business-friendly policies. In 2000, Wylde was named CEO of the Partnership for New York City, and became the rare figure who could bridge Wall Street and City Hall. Her journey — from activist to power broker — raises a central question: How does she respond to those who say she went from protesting the establishment to enabling it? That tension sits at the heart of the piece.

As the year comes to a close, I’m proud to say that I followed through on my promise to bring you more original journalism — journalism that once belonged in legacy publications that no longer have the means (or the desire) to fund it.

Why profiles? Because there’s nothing more fulfilling to me than piecing together someone’s outer life with their inner world by trying to understand how they built something from nothing, justified their choices, and crafted the story they tell others.

Because sometimes, to see your own life clearly, you have to understand someone else’s.

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Happy New Year to all of you, and thank you for making this work possible. If you’d like, reply to this email and tell me who you think I should profile next.

— Polina

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PROFILES.

— The architects of AI [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The war photographer who can’t walk away
— The self-help author who went dark
— The skier attempting an Olympic comeback
— The tech giant betting $300 billion on AI

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The architects of AI: Jensen Huang went from running a niche chip company to leading the most powerful force in the AI economy, and, increasingly, global politics. In 2025, artificial intelligence became a full-speed race, reshaping markets, geopolitics, labor, and daily life at once. Governments tore down guardrails, tech giants poured hundreds of billions into infrastructure, and the U.S. and China entered an AI arms race with world-changing stakes. The result is a planet racing forward on a technology that promises abundance, concentrates power, and carries risks no one fully understands. (TIME)

“You’re taking over the world, Jensen.”

The war photographer who can’t walk away: In the new documentary Love+War, Pulitzer Prize–winning photographer Lynsey Addario reflects on three decades spent covering conflict zones from Afghanistan to Ukraine while also navigating motherhood at home. Raised in a modest Connecticut household, Addario says that early grounding gave her the ability to connect deeply with soldiers, civilians, and refugees alike. The result is a portrait of a woman constantly balancing two extremes: the front lines of global conflict and the pull of family life. (Bloomberg; alternate link) [Check out my 2022 interview with Lynsey Addario here.]

“When I decided to have a family, that meant living between two very dramatic extremes.”

The self-help author who went dark: In her new memoir, Elizabeth Gilbert dismantles the serene, inspirational persona she built after Eat, Pray, Love, revealing a private descent into addiction, obsession, and moral collapse during her relationship with the dying musician Rayya Elias. Behind a public narrative of love and grace, Gilbert was living through darkness. Elias relapsed into heavy drug use, the relationship turned abusive, and Gilbert herself spiraled so badly that she briefly contemplated killing her partner to escape the ordeal. What an unhinged story this is…..(The New York Times; alternate link)

“I’m the nice lady who wrote ‘Eat, Pray, Love,’ and I’m out in the park with fentanyl and morphine and sleeping pills trying to craft a murder.”

The skier attempting an Olympic comeback: At 41, Lindsey Vonn is back with her eyes on the 2026 Olympics. After years of injuries, retirement, and personal loss, she’s attempting something no skier has ever done: return to the top with a partial knee replacement. The comeback about belief, joy, and loving the risk of going 80 mph downhill. Win or lose, Vonn is redefining what’s possible at the edge of human limits. (TIME)

“Believing in myself has always been so important. Now it has probably never rang more true.”

COMPANIES TO WATCH.

The tech giant betting $300 billion on AI: What began as a cold LinkedIn message turned into the largest cloud-computing deal in history: a roughly $300 billion bet by Oracle to power OpenAI’s AI ambitions. The partnership has vaulted Oracle — long dismissed as a legacy tech company — into the center of the AI boom, but at enormous financial and operational risk. Will OpenAI’s explosive growth justify the biggest infrastructure gamble Silicon Valley has ever seen? (Bloomberg)

“All that needs to happen for Oracle’s bet to pay off is for him to be right.”

✨ The rest of this newsletter is only available for premium members of The Profile, whose support makes this work possible. If you’re not already a premium member, consider upgrading your subscription below for access to an additional section of weekly audio + video recommendations. ✨

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On Wednesday, I published my profile on New York power broker Kathryn Wylde. What drew me to her story is just how unlikely her career trajectory is. She began as a community organizer, leading sit-ins, protests, and marches. She attracted criticism from politicians who labeled her “a communist.”

Over time, she evolved from a social activist into an advocate for pro-growth, business-friendly policies. In 2000, Wylde was named CEO of the Partnership for New York City, and became the rare figure who could bridge Wall Street and City Hall.

Her path from activist to power broker is unusual. I wanted to know: How does she respond to those who say she went from protesting the establishment to enabling it? And that’s the tension I explored in the piece.

It was such a pleasure to write this one because Wylde gave me real access to her world. I shadowed her to meetings, breakfasts, and events. I saw exactly how she moves through the world and how she interacts with those in her orbit.

I also spoke with more than 20 people, including Governor Kathy Hochul, ex-Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein, and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. But interestingly, the most revealing anecdotes came from those who know her best: her husband and her friends.

One anecdote that really stayed with me long after I wrote the profile came from her friend Lindsay Newland Bowker, who has known her since the 1970s.

One Christmas, the two friends were baking for her annual holiday party, and the cookies were elaborate, carefully shaped, and intricately frosted. But one of them wasn’t quite perfect. Newland Bowker told her: “Nobody will notice once it’s on the tray.”

To which Wylde responded: “People only see the cookie they get.”

The cookie story is a reminder that power isn’t abstract. Every decision made at the top is felt by someone on the receiving end.

Wylde’s story is ultimately about power in its most practical form — how influence is used to move people, align interests, and arrive at solutions.

I hope you enjoy this one, and please send me your feedback. I would love to hear what you think.

PS: I wrote this profile with two toddlers and newborn twins. Interviews happened during naps, and there was a lot of one-handed typing. But working on something that energizes me has been a real gift in the hazy days of postpartum. Shout out to all the parents out there making time for it all. (For more behind-the-scenes updates, follow me on Instagram here.)

PROFILES.

— The most powerful woman in New York [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The woman from Coldplay’s ‘kiss cam’
— The modern relationship whisperer
— The surrogates caught in a nightmare
— The AI company operating on ‘code red’

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The most powerful woman in New York: Kathryn Wylde has spent four decades connecting billionaires, politicians, and institutions in New York City through relentless, behind-the-scenes dealmaking. A former activist turned power broker, she believes real power is about getting the right people in the room and making things happen. Now, as she steps down from the Partnership for New York City just as a Democratic Socialist mayor takes office, her influence is being tested — and perhaps needed more than ever. (The Profile)

“She is unique in knowing who’s who, who knows who, who knows what, and who gets what done. She can get all of those ‘whos’ to answer her call and get them all into the same room.”

The woman from Coldplay’s ‘kiss cam:’ After a ‘kiss cam’ moment at a Coldplay concert went viral, Kristin Cabot found her personal and professional life upended overnight. The video sparked intense online scrutiny, leading to public humiliation, safety threats, and her eventual exit from her job. The profile shows how a private lapse became a global spectacle, fueled by social media and celebrity amplification. (The New York Times)

“I was so embarrassed and so horrified.”

The modern relationship whisperer: Esther Perel has become the cultural shorthand for modern intimacy, reframing sex, desire, and infidelity as questions of aliveness rather than morality. A polyglot therapist and master communicator, she built a global following through books, podcasts, and real-life therapy sessions that confront how we actually relate. As dating grows lonelier and more mediated by technology, Perel’s message is that real connection requires risk, honesty, and getting off the apps. (GQ; For more, check out my Profile Dossier on Esther Perel here)

The surrogates caught in a nightmare: Thai women recruited as surrogates in Georgia believed they were entering paid, temporary pregnancies but instead found themselves trapped, surveilled, unpaid, and subjected to medical procedures they did not understand or consent to. Their experiences expose how the global fertility industry exploits legal gray zones, moving women across borders and stripping them of autonomy over their bodies. At its core, the story asks an unsettling question: What happens when the desire for a child outweighs the humanity of the women asked to carry them? (The New York Times)

“Somebody is making lots of money, and that’s why commercial surrogacy with very few regulations and nonexistent monitoring remains.”

COMPANIES TO WATCH.

The AI company operating on ‘code red:’ OpenAI has entered a rare internal “code red” as Sam Altman warns employees that the company is facing its most serious competitive threat yet — this time from Google. Despite ChatGPT’s massive user base and high-profile partnerships, rivals like Google’s Gemini and Anthropic are rapidly gaining ground in both consumer and enterprise markets. The showdown increasingly looks like a founder duel — Altman versus Google AI chief Demis Hassabis — with the future standard-bearer of AI still very much up for grabs. (FORTUNE)

“You just don’t let any competitor get oxygen.”

✨ The rest of this newsletter is only available for premium members of The Profile, whose support makes this work possible. If you’re not already a premium member, consider upgrading your subscription below for access to an additional section of weekly audio + video recommendations. ✨

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