The Profile: The CEO of one of software’s buzziest unicorns & the No. 1 podcast in tech

This edition of The Profile features Assaf Rappaport, Grimes, Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal.

Good morning, friends!

My husband Anthony and I recently had the pleasure to connect with Andrew Yeung, who is a New York-based Google product lead by day and ‘the Gatsby of Silicon Alley’ by night.

In the last three years, he has organized nearly 200 tech events, which have been attended by more than 15,000 people. Over the last several months, he and Anthony have been working on BUILD Summit, an exclusive NYC-based founders-only summit.

I’ve seen the session agenda and the speaker lineup, and I can confidently say it’ll be a really high-quality event from which you’re guaranteed to learn.

I figured the best way I could help was to share the application form with the founders who read this newsletter.

If you are in New York City on Sept. 22-24, and you’re interested in attending, fill out this short survey to apply. See you there!

PROFILES.

— The CEO of one of software’s buzziest unicorns [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— New York City’s candy sellers
— The artist re-invigorating high fashion
— The musician who wants to die on Mars
— The No. 1 podcast in tech

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The CEO of one of software’s buzziest unicorns: $200 million in sales. A $10 billion valuation. New billionaire Assaf Rappaport has built Wiz into one of software’s fastest-growing startups ever. Wiz connects to storage providers like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure and scans everything it stores in the cloud, flagging and prioritizing security risks. But Rappaport’s ultra-competitive approach is leaving singed eyebrows. (Forbes; reply to this email if you can’t access the article.)

“We’re fighting giants.”

New York City’s candy sellers: In New York, asylum seekers have struggled to find space in the city’s shelter system, which currently houses 57,000 undocumented new arrivals, outnumbering the homeless population for the first time. Most of the candy sellers you see on the subway are Indigenous people from Ecuador’s rural central highlands. They are part of the largest wave of Ecuadoran migration to the U.S. since the turn of the century. And many of the migrants’ children sell candy on the subway alongside their parents. Even if their parents might want to put them in school, they know a simple truth: Children sell more. A heart-shattering story. (New York Magazine)

“For you I will fight day after day.”

The artist re-invigorating high fashion: With Pharrell Williams freshly enthroned at Louis Vuitton, a grand new convergence between fashion and pop culture is underway. One of the world’s most famous people was being invited by one of the world’s biggest brands to reshape the business of luxury fashion. Will his curiosity and creativity help propel high fashion forward? (GQ)

“I was drawn to Pharrell by his music, then his style and his overall energy when we first met.”

The musician who wants to die on Mars: Grimes, the techno artist and co-parent with Elon Musk, hopes to die in space. In this wild Q&A, Grimes explains how she would love to travel to space and die there closer to “the end of [her] life.” “Maybe 65,” she adds. Unreal interview filled with quotes like these: “I think if I died on Earth, in my last moments I would regret it. If I died in space, I would be like, ‘You’ve lived a great life, you did all the things you wanted to do.’” (WIRED)

“I’m meeting a lot of Gen Z people raised on the internet who have a real vision for the future.”

COMPANIES TO WATCH.

The No. 1 podcast in tech: Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal are two millennial investors who met almost a decade ago and started a podcast called ‘Acquired’ in 2015 as a way to cement their friendship. Gilbert, who is a managing director of the early-stage venture fund of Pioneer Square Labs, acknowledges today that if Acquired had been a startup, it would have been shuttered after two years because of its slow growth. Now the show has gotten so big that both Gilbert and Rosenthal, who was a professional VC for a decade and currently has a fund called Kindergarten Ventures, have gone from investors with a podcast to podcasters whose popularity creates a multitude of previously unimagined investing and business opportunities. (Fast Company)

“Losers make excuses. Winners make adjustments.”

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