Good morning, friends!
One of my favorite parts of building The Profile has been meeting the fascinating people who read it.
A friend and I have started hosting small-format dinners in New York City. The idea is to bring together a small group of founders, investors, creators, writers, reporters, operators, and other curious & ambitious people who probably wouldn’t otherwise end up around the same dinner table.
If you’re based in NYC and would like to join us for a future dinner, leave your information in the form below. We’ll be keeping the dinners small, but we’d love to know who’s out there.
THE PROFILES.
— The founder with all the power in the world [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The restaurateurs building a lifestyle empire
— The sorority girls using weight loss drugs
— The 24-year-old exposing fraud in America
THE PEOPLE.
The founder with all the power in the world: Mark Zuckerberg runs history’s largest nonterritorial empire — 3.6 billion users, ~$1.6 trillion in market cap, and a voting structure that makes him nearly impossible to remove. Three mornings a week, Zuckerberg trains MMA so someone will still hit him hard enough to tell him the truth. And most interestingly, after every death pronouncement — mobile, Snapchat, politics, TikTok, the Metaverse, Llama 4 — he has somehow emerged larger. If there’s one thing you read today, let it be this.
The restaurateurs building a lifestyle empire: Carbone started with a simple idea: take something people already love and make it so much better—and more theatrical—that they’ll happily pay $98 for veal Parmesan. Fifteen years later, Mario Carbone, Rich Torrisi, and Jeff Zalaznick have turned Major Food Group into a $500 million-plus empire spanning restaurants, private clubs, condos, hotels, sauces, and soon much more. This GQ profile goes inside their unapologetically maximalist approach to business: charge a premium, obsess over every detail, ignore the critics if the dining room is full, and keep expanding until Carbone is an entire lifestyle. (GQ)
The sorority girls using weight loss drugs: Sorority girls are secretly injecting themselves with GLP-1s in dorm rooms in pursuit of the ultimate status symbol: thinness. The Cut reports on an “Ozempidemic” sweeping college campuses, where young women are spending thousands on weight-loss drugs— sometimes sourced through friends, telehealth companies, or overseas suppliers — in hopes of getting into top sororities, attracting the right guys, and fitting into a culture of size zeros and double zeros. (New York Magazine; alternate link)
The 24-year-old exposing fraud in America: Nick Shirley, a 24-year-old YouTuber, has become a surprising force in Republican politics by turning government fraud investigations into viral content. His confrontational videos have earned millions of views, praise from Republican leaders, and a partnership with CMS chief Dr. Mehmet Oz, who has adopted a similar influencer-style approach. While the fraud they target is often real, critics argue that Shirley and Oz blur the line between allegation and proof. (New York Magazine; alternate link)
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I love this idea Polina -> "A friend and I have started hosting small-format dinners in New York City. The idea is to bring together a small group of founders, investors, creators, writers, reporters, operators, and other curious & ambitious people who probably wouldn’t otherwise end up around the same dinner table." I'm sure it will be an exciting success. Hope you write about it.