The Profile: The $30 billion AI startup & the Mango founder’s mysterious death
This edition of The Profile features Katie Drummond, Isak Andic, and Damola Adamolekun.
Good morning, friends!
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.
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)
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