Activity

The rain had stopped. But the air was still wet. The venue felt like a deserted schoolyard. No kids, barely any adults. The paint on the tugboat and crop-duster planes looked dull and faded and the gardens had a revolting quality to it, a place where clowns, balloon twisters, popcorn scoopers, and …

Money can solve nearly everything.

Nearly everything. The real enemy of a hedge or venture or crossover fund was any person who was not in the room and who could not be persuaded to want to be in the room. Put differently: someone who could not be fueled by money.

Boone harbored no illusions about the game. This was, perhaps, his ultimate genius. I saw how the belief that the game was about more than just money was my fallacy, not his. I had fallen for his diversions, those repeated instructions to be “super nice” and “thoughtful” and “kind” and to “give fir…

I put my own needs aside for Carbon and Boone because I had believed that serving my employer meant serving humanity. I had believed in the prestige of Carbon, which, to me, lay not in any zeros after commas but in the moral legitimacy of the enterprise. I ignored the fact that individual portfolio…

Adjust the size of the bets.

I must change my life.