Field Notes
Every big number has a story behind it. These are the long reads where I chase one down, through funding rounds, filings and old court cases, alongside reports from the cricket matches worth remembering and notes on the books that stayed with me.
67 pieces 36 essays 5 match logs 23 books 3 notes
Where money moves and why: venture rounds, buyouts, public markets, regulation and the odd piece of transit history.
The longest, most-researched pieces, newest first.
Venture Capital · Deep dive
$32.8B accumulated deficit by the end of 2022, and $24.8B of it refilled in 42 months
Uber burned through more outside capital than any startup before it, dug a $32.8 billion hole, and then refilled three quarters of it in 42 months. The full funding history, round by round.
Systems & Learning
55 free YouTube channels in eight tracks, on a five-hour weekly budget
YouTube holds more good teaching than any campus, and no way to find it. Not a list of channels but a curriculum: eight tracks, 55 channels, and a 300 minute weekly budget.
Regulatory data
56,107 SEC-registered advisers analyzed, from assets to disclosures
An empirical review of 56,000+ SEC registered advisers, $163T in assets, and their institutional holdings.
Public Equities · M&A
$55.5B offered by an $11.9B company for one worth $46.2B
How a 41-year-old mall retailer with a $9 billion cash pile decided to take over a 30-year-old auction house worth four times as much.
Macro · History
$5,001 the 1949 penalty: $5,000 for GM, $1 for its treasurer
The rise, fall, and afterlife of the American streetcar: from Frank Sprague's 1888 demo in Richmond to a $5,000 fine that helped reshape a continent.
Capital Lens · Sports money
~$90B of 2025 distributable revenue traced across twelve sports
Twelve sports. Roughly ninety billion dollars in distributable revenue. We trace every flow from broadcasters to players.
Everything else, searchable. Rankings fold into one row; the March 2026 explainers sit in their own archive group.
30 essays
| Date | Title & core thesis | Subtopic | Read |
|---|---|---|---|
| Retail software: who runs the till, the pumps, and the back office Independent shops run on a patchwork. This report maps the software stack across six retail verticals, its costs and vendors, and where the workflow still breaks. | General | 20 min | |
| One Ticker, Three Businesses, 94 Times Revenue SpaceX's S-1 is the first look at the company's financials. What it shows is three businesses under one ticker: one that prints cash, one that breaks even, and one that burns $6.4 billion. | Public Equities | 12 min | |
| Does CAIA Cover Mutual Funds? A Study Guide for the Curious Mutual funds are not a CAIA topic. They are the counterfactual behind every CAIA topic: the comparison set, the regulatory wrapper for liquid alternatives, and the distribution channel alternative managers now use to reach retail. | General | 12 min | |
| Q1 2026 Big Tech Earnings: Cloud Beats, Capex Soars Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon printed the cleanest set of cloud and advertising results of the AI cycle. | Public Equities | 10 min | |
| Dutch Bros: From Pushcart to Public Market Phenomenon How two dairy farmers from Grants Pass, Oregon built a $6.4 billion drive-thru empire... | Public Equities | 12 min | |
| The Earnings Volatility Trade: Capital Lens Q2 2026 reporting season opens with implied moves at multi-year highs. We rank the 20 biggest single-day post-print swings of the last twelve months. | Public Equities | 8 min | |
| The Sovereign Wealth Invasion Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Abu Dhabi are co-leading the largest AI deals in history. We map where sovereign capital is concentrating and what it means when nation-states become the primary backers of the AI stack. | Macro | 7 min | |
| The Extraction vs. Reinvestment Playbook: Beyond F1 CVC bled Formula One dry. Liberty Media bought it and tripled the audience. Both won: on entirely different logic. We take that lens beyond F1 and map where extraction ends and compounding begins. | Macro | 8 min | |
| Andreessen Horowitz: The Firm That Rewrote the VC Rulebook a16z started as a VC fund. Today it has $42B+ AUM, a media arm, a policy shop, and dedicated crypto and bio funds. It's not a venture firm anymore: it's a capital platform competing with Goldman for the future of financial intermediation. | Venture Capital | 8 min | |
| The Whisper Number Economy The consensus EPS estimate is the floor, not the target. In modern markets, the price-moving number is the whisper: an invisible, crowd-sourced expectation that Wall Street never publishes. We explain how it works and what it means for your portfolio. | Macro | 7 min | |
| Starlink vs. The World SpaceX's Starlink has 9.2M subscribers, $10B+ in annual revenue, and 60%+ share of all active satellites in LEO. Amazon, OneWeb, and every national broadband programme are chasing a lead that is growing, not shrinking. We map the battle for the sky. | Venture Capital | 9 min | |
| The Death of the Mutual Fund $32B fled mutual funds in a single week in Q1 2026. Active managers have been losing to index funds for 20 years. ETFs are eating their lunch from below while SMAs take their high-net-worth clients from above. We write the obituary. | Macro | 7 min | |
| OpenAI's Cap Table Is a Map of the Future Three of the ten largest private funding rounds in history belong to OpenAI. Every investor at the table represents a theory about how AI power will be distributed. We trace every major position and what it reveals. | Venture Capital | 8 min | |
| The 100 Greatest Venture Capital Funds Ever Raised Welcome to the data the industry doesn't want you to see: the actual, audited fund-level returns of the most successful VC vehicles ever raised. | Venture Capital | 15 min | |
| The 100 Greatest Private Equity Funds Ever Raised In venture capital, a 10x return makes a legend. In private equity, a 3x return makes a dynasty. This is our attempt to rank the 100 greatest PE funds ever raised. | Private Equity | 16 min | |
| The 100 Greatest Venture Capital Bets Ever Made From a $500,000 check into a Harvard dorm room to a $20 million gamble on a pre-revenue Chinese marketplace, the history of venture capital is written in asymmetric bets. | Venture Capital | 15 min | |
| Archive · March 2026 explainers A burst of shorter explainers from late March 2026, kept in full and listed newest first. | |||
| The Dutch Bros Effect: When Founder Culture Scales Dutch Bros grew from a pushcart to a $6.4B public company on the strength of something that doesn't appear on any balance sheet: cult founder culture. We examine when that culture survives institutional growth: and when it breaks. | Public Equities | 7 min | |
| When PE Goes Public, Everything Changes CVC Capital Partners listed on Euronext Amsterdam in April 2024. Apollo, Ares, and Blue Owl have all gone public. The PE industry that built its identity on opacity is now subject to quarterly earnings calls. We examine what happens when the GP becomes the asset. | Private Equity | 8 min | |
| The $100B Bet on Human Capital Blackstone, Apollo, and KKR are quietly buying coding bootcamps, credentialing platforms, and professional training companies. The same playbook that conquered sports and infrastructure is now targeting education: the one market that is simultaneously huge, fragmented, and politically explosive. | Macro | 7 min | |
| Blackstone Buys Into the IPL: What You Need to Know We break down the deal, the consortium, and what it signals about Blackstone's broader ambitions in the sports economy. | Private Equity | 6 min | |
| The $169B Corporate Venture Machine Ranked by AUM, activity & strategic impact: The Top 10 Corporate Venture Arms and what they signal about the next decade. | Venture Capital | 12 min | |
| The Original Sports PE Firm: CVC Capital Partners From Formula One to a £10 billion sports empire currently being reorganized for the next era. | Private Equity | 10 min | |
| The Other Side of the Trade: Liberty Media The Malone doctrine, the Drive to Survive effect, the MotoGP bet, and where it all stands today. | Private Equity | 10 min | |
| Nasdaq Ventures: The Exchange that Invests in the Markets of Tomorrow Every check connects back to Nasdaq's core business: the infrastructure layer of global finance. | Venture Capital | 8 min | |
| Apollo Global Management: From Junk Bonds to the Beautiful Game Nine days ago, Apollo Global Management completed the most audacious move in its history: buying a football club. | Private Equity | 14 min | |
| Blackbird Ventures: The AU$250,000 Check That Built an $8 Billion Empire The story of Blackbird Ventures: the firm that proved world-class startups don't have to come from Sand Hill Road. | Venture Capital | 12 min | |
| I Applied to Blackstone. I Interviewed at BlackRock. Here's Why the Entire World Makes the Same Mistake. Junior year of college, I did what every ambitious finance kid does: I applied to Blackstone. Or at least, I thought I did. When the interview schedule arrived, I read the name three times. BlackRock. | Macro | 12 min | |
| Canva vs. Figma: Two Philosophies, One Canvas The story of two companies that originated in completely different worlds, built for different people, and are now building the exact same thing. | Venture Capital | 12 min | |
| Figma: The $1 Billion Browser Bet That Redrew Silicon Valley How a design tool became a $12B enterprise platform, and an options strategy to play its volatility. | Venture Capital | 10 min | |
| The Covered Call Playbook: How to Generate $100+/Month on a $10,000 Portfolio Three stocks, three strategies, one goal: turn a $10,000 portfolio into a monthly income machine using the most reliable options strategy ever invented. | Public Equities | 10 min | |
No essays match that search.
League cricket in Florida, written up when a match turned on a spell, a chase or a last over. I play as an all-rounder and bowl right-arm fast. Three of these finishes are playable: set the field yourself in the fielding tactician.
Blazehawks vs Go Leopards
Waverly Cricket Field, Tampa
Go Leopards 149/8 (20) · Blazehawks 150/4 (16.3)
5 min read
TB Bengal Tigers 128/7 (16) · Mustangs 123 all out
4 min read
SWAT vs Tampa Telugu Titans
Tampa Telugu Titans 136/6 (20) · SWAT 101/2 (12.5)
6 min read
TPCC 129/7 (16) · Bengals 133/2 (15.2)
6 min read
SWAT vs Royal Phoenix
SWAT 95/6 (16) · Royal Phoenix needed 7 off the last over
7 min read
Short notes on the books that changed how I think: what stayed, what it changed, and why it is still on the shelf.
How finance really behaves, from the trading floor to the plumbing.
Why Flash Boys made markets feel more physical than abstract.
What Going Infinite suggested about intelligence, narrative, and self-deception.
Why Michael Lewis made finance feel like culture, not just math.
Why Schwarzman's story made judgment feel like a craft.
How companies get built, run and repaired.
Notes on Pixar, trust, and protecting honest feedback.
What I took from Isaacson's portrait of intensity, engineering, and volatility.
What Good to Great taught me about restraint and compounding.
Why I picked it up Read in the summer of 2021, while I was interning at Skybridge Associates. My mentor and the firm’s CEO suggested it.
A note on Phil Knight, risk, and building while half-unsure.
Notes on taste, intensity, and the sharp edge of product obsession.
Why this startup story felt more social than technical.
Why The Everything Store made scale feel cultural as much as strategic.
Notes on Hubert Joly, renewal, and making business feel more human without making it soft.
What Bob Iger taught me about timing, trust, and steadiness.
What I kept from Zero to One beyond the slogans.
Memoir, fiction and the slower questions.
What Becoming taught me about poise, discipline, and voice.
What Designing Your Life changed about career decisions and experimentation.
What I took from a book built on movement, place, and self-repair.
Why Educated felt less like a school story and more like a story about identity under pressure.
Notes on Viktor Frankl, endurance, and the discipline of meaning.
A note on Siddhartha, interior restlessness, and learning by living.
What Randy Pausch made me think about effort, time, and grace.
A note on tension, loyalty, and one of the sharpest true stories I have read.
Notes on choosing better values and wasting less attention.
Notes on taste: games, films and what makes a book worth keeping.
A short map of the things that make a book keep opening in my head after the last page.
A note on why some films stay vivid long after I can no longer explain the whole plot.
The games that taught me more about pressure, choices, and consequences than I expected.