Good morning, friends!
I saw the Matthew Perry documentary last week, and I have some thoughts. For context, I grew up watching FRIENDS and to this day, I could still quote some of the show’s iconic lines.
Perry’s character Chandler was the sarcastic, quick-witted friend who could turn even the most uncomfortable moment into a joke. He was funny, charming, and insecure. He used humor to hide just how much he wanted to be loved. In retrospect, it’s hard not to see some of Perry himself in Chandler.
I noticed a striking similarity between the Matthew Perry and Charlie Sheen documentaries: Both men struggled with addiction, and both were cursed by the very thing most people spend their lives chasing — early success.
Charlie’s early career was a golden streak — Platoon, Wall Street, Major League, even a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. By his late 20s, Sheen was one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars.
In one clip, a young Sheen reflects: “We’re not taught as children how to deal with success… Nobody ever said, ‘If at first you succeed, what do you do?’” And later: “Everyone teaches you how to rise after you fall. Nobody teaches you how to hold success once you have it.”
Perry’s rise was similarly meteoric. He landed the role of Chandler Bing at just 24, and by his early 30s, he was earning $1 million per episode on one of the most popular television shows in history. He had fame, fortune, and millions of fans. Yet behind the scenes, he was fighting an addiction that no amount of success could fix.
We’re trained to handle setbacks — grit, resilience, persistence. But few of us are taught how to manage abundance. Sometimes, when success piles up, the instinct is to test it, and in some case, even destroy it.
In 2023, I wrote a column titled, “The Hellish Curse of First-Time Success,” in which I argue that as the success mounts, so does the pressure. That’s the thing about success, isn’t it? It builds until it crushes.
Now, of course, I don’t know what caused Perry’s addiction struggles, and it would be reductive to suggest that fame alone explains them. Addiction is far more complicated than that.
But watching these two documentaries made me think about how yes, failure & rejection may sting, but mishandled success can be even more dangerous.
— Polina
THE PROFILES.
— The crypto mogul behind trading powerhouse Hyperliquid [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The friends launching a news venture for Gen Z
— The $300-million con man
— The online school empire for kids who don’t show up
— The conservative influencer who is tired of politics
THE PEOPLE.
The crypto mogul behind trading powerhouse Hyperliquid (gift link): Jeff Yan is the 31-year-old crypto billionaire threatening Wall Street’s biggest exchanges. His platform, Hyperliquid, has generated $713 million in revenue over the past year by allowing traders to make leveraged bets on everything from Bitcoin to stocks, gold, and oil, 24/7. Unlike his competitors, Yan refused venture capital funding, building a decentralized trading platform that’s now rattling giants like CME Group. However, the problem is that Hyperliquid isn’t officially accessible to Americans. Now, Yan is courting Washington, hoping to bring his technology to the world’s largest financial market. (Bloomberg Businessweek)
The friends launching a news venture for Gen Z: Two former 60 Minutes journalists are betting that the future of news looks more like TikTok than CBS. Wren Woodson and Mabel Kabani, both 30, left the legendary news program to launch Newsgirls, a Gen Z-focused media startup that combines investigative journalism with the personality and packaging of social media influencers. Their big break came when they turned the Jeffrey Epstein files into bite-sized videos, growing from 30,000 to 200,000 Instagram followers in just six weeks. Today, they have nearly half a million followers across platforms and have launched Newsgirls Investigate, a long-form reporting series. (Vanity Fair)
The $300-million con man: A Canadian mortgage broker pulled off a $301 million Ponzi scheme, ruined more than 1,700 investors, and then vanished. Greg Martel promised extraordinary returns by supposedly lending money to real estate developers. In reality, not a single one of his company’s 65,000-plus transactions involved a legitimate development loan. Instead, he used new investors’ money to pay earlier ones while funding a lavish lifestyle of private jets, luxury homes, and expensive cars. Despite years of complaints, regulators and banks failed to stop him. When the scheme collapsed in 2023, Martel fled to Thailand, then Dubai, before landing in a Georgian prison on unrelated drug charges. (Maclean’s)
The conservative influencer who is tired of politics (gift link): What happens when one of conservative America’s most influential women gets tired of politics? Allie Beth Stuckey, the 34-year-old Christian podcaster with more than 750,000 YouTube subscribers, has built an empire by blending biblical teachings with right-wing commentary. But now she’s in a really weird spot. Some conservative pastors are attacking her for preaching to men, former allies like Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson have become adversaries, and her audience is exhausted by political outrage. So Stuckey is expanding beyond politics. (Bloomberg Businessweek)
THE COMPANIES.
The online school empire for kids who don’t show up (gift link): What happens when a public school gets paid for students who barely show up? In Texas, it can become a billion-dollar business. A Bloomberg Businessweek investigation found that Stride, the nation’s largest virtual public-school operator, has collected more than $1 billion in Texas taxpayer money over five years, even as thousands of its students are chronically absent and test scores lag far behind state averages. At its flagship Texas Virtual Academy, just 5% of students tested met grade-level expectations in math. And the thing is that Texas funds these virtual schools based on enrollment rather than actual attendance, creating a system in which companies can keep collecting taxpayer dollars whether kids log on or not. (Bloomberg Businessweek)
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