The Profile: The founder bulding America’s $31-billion defense startup & the NFL commissioner going to Hollywood
This edition of The Profile features Jake & Logan Paul, Brian Schimpf, Roger Goodell, Jean de La Rochebrochard, and Jennifer Foyle.
Good morning, friends!
Last week, I published my latest profile on Jake and Logan Paul.
I spent months reporting it — sitting in on LP meetings, watching how they operate behind the scenes, digging into their businesses and investments, and trying to answer this question: Can internet attention actually be converted into longstanding wealth and power?
One thing I’ve learned from profiling people is that we’re all driven by some unspoken need. Why do we keep doing what we do every single day? Usually, there’s something we’re trying to prove, resolve, escape, or heal within ourselves.
So when I profile someone, I really try to understand their worldview. What drives them? What scares them? What are they chasing?
With Jake and Logan, I could tell that they seem to genuinely want to be taken seriously while simultaneously having become wildly successful by being unserious.
That was the crux of my story. So instead of only asking, “Why do you want to be billionaires?” I kept approaching the question in different ways:
“What would billionaire status actually change for you?”
“Would it change how people see you?”
“Does it bother you that people underestimate you?”
Eventually, both brothers arrived at the same idea: At the highest levels of wealth and power, people care less about how you got there and more that you made it there at all.
If you read the piece, I’d love to know what you thought. And if you have questions about the reporting process, profiling, or anything behind the scenes, reply and send them my way. (I’ll be answering the questions in a live AMA soon.)
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PROFILES.
— The influencers turning attention into a billion dollars [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The engineer-CEO building America’s $31 billion defense startup
— The NFL commissioner going to Hollywood
— The obsessed investor
— The $2 billion brand rejecting the Victoria’s Secret playbook
— The companies driving renewed interest in nuclear energy
PEOPLE TO KNOW.
The influencers turning attention into a billion dollars: Jake and Logan Paul are trying to turn internet outrage into a billion dollars. The same traits that made the brothers impossible to ignore online — provocation and attention-seeking — have evolved into a deliberate business strategy centered around their venture firm Anti Fund and stakes in companies like Prime Hydration, Betr, and Whatnot. (The Profile)
The engineer-CEO building America’s $31 billion defense startup: Brian Schimpf is the engineer at the center of Anduril’s rise — a technical, intensely operational CEO trying to build the next great American defense company by applying Silicon Valley speed and software thinking to modern warfare, while avoiding becoming the bloated military bureaucracy he’s trying to replace. (FORTUNE)
The NFL commissioner going to Hollywood: Roger Goodell has turned the National Football League into the most valuable force in modern media, with giants like Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube fighting to pay billions for live football rights because the NFL still commands mass real-time attention. The profile argues that in a fragmented media landscape, live sports have become the ultimate power asset, and Goodell is the executive sitting at the center of it. (Vanity Fair)
The obsessed investor: This profile of Kima Ventures investor Jean de La Rochebrochard is all about obsession, insecurity, and endurance. The piece follows Jean through founder meetings, nonstop dealmaking, emotional setbacks, and Ironman races, revealing a man driven by a constant need to prove himself. This profile reveals something we can all understand: the fear of never quite being good enough. (Thomas Yeddou)
The $2 billion brand rejecting the Victoria’s Secret playbook: Jennifer Foyle is the retail executive who turned Aerie into a nearly $2 billion brand by betting early that women wanted comfort, authenticity, and “realness” over the hypersexualized fantasy pushed by Victoria’s Secret. Now she’s trying to turn that same instinct into an advantage in the coming backlash against AI-generated beauty. (FORTUNE)
COMPANIES TO WATCH.
The companies driving renewed interest in nuclear energy: This is the ****story of how Three Mile Island — once the symbol of America’s nuclear disaster fears — is being revived to power the AI boom. As companies like Microsoft race to build energy-hungry AI systems, nuclear power is suddenly becoming strategically valuable again. The piece frames it as a remarkable collision of two high-risk technologies reshaping the future. (Bloomberg)
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