The Profile: Wall Street’s most controversial investor & America’s first Formula 1 superstar
The Profile: Wall Street’s most controversial investor & America’s first Formula 1 superstar
Today's edition of The Profile features Cathie Wood, Daniel Ricciardo, and more.
Good morning, friends!
A great quote can stick in your mind and leave you reflecting on it for days.
The following quotes have shaped my thinking, and I refer back to them often.
(This is an excerpt. Check out the full article here.)
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ON RATIONALITY
“Discovering you were wrong is an update, not a failure, and your worldview is a living document meant to be revised.”
— Julia Galef
“I’m a fan of the edict: If an argument lasts more than five minutes, both sides are wrong.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
"If you believe one person who says you can’t, you have to believe one person who says you can.”
— Melanie Perkins
“Acquire worldly wisdom and adjust your behavior accordingly. If your new behavior gives you a little temporary unpopularity with your peer group…then to hell with them.”
— Charlie Munger
"You are not the opinion of someone who doesn't know you.”
— Taylor Swift
ON RELATIONSHIPS
“Admit when you're wrong. Shut up when you're right.”
— John Gottman
“Love is a vessel that contains both security and adventure, and commitment offers one of the great luxuries of life: time. Marriage is not the end of romance, it is the beginning.”
— Esther Perel
“The beauty of empathy is that it doesn’t demand that you agree with the other person’s ideas.”
— Chris Voss
“You can love someone and still choose to say goodbye to them. You can miss a person every day, and still be glad that they are no longer in your life.”
— Tara Westover
"At the end of the day, it’s about trust. If you say what you're going to do, and then keep on doing that — you'll do pretty well.”
— Daniel Ek
"Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now."
— Fred Rogers
“Forgiveness doesn't sit there like a pretty boy in a bar. Forgiveness is the old fat guy you have to haul up a hill.”
— Cheryl Strayed
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THE PROFILE DOSSIER: On Wednesday, premium members received The Profile Dossier, a comprehensive deep-dive on a prominent individual. It featured Lynsey Addario, the war photographer capturing our collective humanity. 🔓 I’ve unlocked this edition, so everyone can read it below.
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PROFILES.
— Wall Street’s most controversial investor [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— America’s first Formula 1 superstar
— The YouTuber exposing crypto scams
— The most clever oligarch
— The kids falling through the cracks in a post-COVID world
— The Gerber baby who sold baby food by the billions
PEOPLE TO KNOW.
Wall Street’s most controversial investor: Cathie Wood’s flagship fund, the ARK Innovation ETF, has lost roughly half of its value over the last year, as its aggressive bets on hot companies from Coinbase to Robinhood and Tesla have melted down amid a bear market in tech stocks. But Wood remains brazen and her willingness to make bold calls so far ahead of reality has earned her a rockstar reputation. Will investors remain bullish on Cathie Wood? (New York Magazine)
“Her biggest blind spot is managing risk and volatility.”
America’s first Formula 1 superstar: America hasn’t had a bona fide Formula 1 star since Mario Andretti won the world championship in 1978. Now, the sport is aching for an American driver who can boost its promotion in the U.S. to new heights. F1’s new American fans, though, aren’t exactly clamoring for homegrown talent, because they’ve already chosen Australian superstar Daniel Ricciardo as their superstar. Here’s why Ricciardo became America’s F1 sweetheart. (GQ)
“For anyone getting into the sport of Formula 1, he’s easy to relate to. He’s a guy you want to drink wine with, and also play beer pong with.”
The YouTuber exposing crypto scams: Stephen Findeisen started a YouTube channel after college. His content began to take off when he began critiquing sleazy finance gurus. These days, his channel Coffeezilla has more than a million subscribers, and YouTube is his full-time job. Today he specializes in exposing cryptocurrency scams. “Crypto scams are like discovering fentanyl when you’ve been used to Oxy,” he says. “It’s a hundred times more powerful, and way worse.” (The New Yorker)
“I try not to be too negative about crypto. I think about how we can shape it into something better.”
The most clever oligarch: Len Blavatnik calls himself foremost a self-made billionaire. The Ukraine-born British-American, by his own telling, is also a media mogul, a tech titan, a pioneering real estate investor, and an industrialist. But above all, what Blavatnik has always strived to make clear: He has no connections to Vladimir Putin or Russian politics. Had things gone a bit differently, Blavatnik could have been sanctioned too. Instead, he has amassed the world’s 33rd-largest fortune and quietly ingratiated himself into British and American high society. (Bloomberg; reply to this email if you can’t access this article)
“I think what we’re seeing is that he may very well be the most clever oligarch of them all.”
The kids falling through the cracks in a post-COVID world: Sabrina Benedict, who was given a diagnosis of autism coupled with a rare genetic disorder, has exhibited aggressive behavior since she was a little girl. Now she towers over her parents. When she is happy, she gives them great big hugs, knocking them slightly off balance. When she is frustrated, she sometimes hits them. And then COVID lockdowns made things worse. Without school and day programming, the behavior of many autistic children like Sabrina regressed. Some stopped sleeping through the night; others began harming themselves for the first time. Here’s how the system continues to fail them and their families. (The New York Times)
“One of the glaring weaknesses of the system is there is no real option for families whose children fall into that category.”
The Gerber baby who sold baby food by the billions: For more than 90 years, a charcoal sketch of an infant has graced the label of every Gerber product, from infant formula to baby food to bottled juice. But the one name no one thought to mention — because for half a century no one knew it — was that of Ann Turner Cook, a retired schoolteacher who died this month in her home in St. Petersburg, Fla. Cook, who received no royalties for the use of her image, profited from it by precisely $5,000 over some 90 years. Here’s why she kept her identity secret for decades. (The New York Times)
“I was really no cuter than any other baby, but she had wonderful artistic talent and was able to draw a very appealing likeness.”
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AUDIO TO HEAR.
Luke Burgis on how mimetic desire runs your life: Whether it's the annual craze for the newest iPhone or the daily sales of top-of-the-line cars, it's hard to deny that we live in an age of status signaling. And in a world where one is shamed for not owning the flashy stuff, it's easy to confuse what we truly desire with what the world says we should desire. In this podcast episode, Luke Burgis explains 'mimetic desire' in detail. (Link available to premium members.)
Carolyn Childers on elevating women in leadership: Carolyn Childers has built a billion-dollar company by elevating and supporting women in leadership positions. "We hear so often that it gets lonely at the top," she says. "But it's a lot lonelier for women at the top. By driving more women into leadership positions and keeping them there, we believe we can create a ripple effect across all companies and organizations." (Link available to premium members.)
VIDEOS TO SEE.
Lynsey Addario on working on the front lines: Riots for bread. Women who tried to commit suicide by setting themselves on fire. Moms dying during childbirth. War photojournalist Lynsey Addario has not only witnessed it herself, she’s photographed it for the world to see. In this must-watch talk, Addario explains the reality of working on the front lines. (Link available to premium members.)
David Perrell on building an idea factory: Every now and then, every creator faces the age-old dilemma of coming up with ideas for their work. While this is the cross we must bear, what most creators don’t realize is that they rely on the infrequent creative spark to jumpstart their process, which explains why their work remains sporadic. In this seminar, David Perrell together with YouTuber Ali Abdaal lay out their respective systems for generating ideas round the clock. The Idea Factory, he calls it. It’s a must-watch if you struggle with consistency as a creator. (Link available to premium members.)