Channeling Rage, Rolling Calls & Building an Entertainment Empire | Ari Emanuel, WME & TKO
Ari Emanuel’s $4.2 billion UFC acquisition bet on scarce live sports compelling platforms to pay, despite Fox’s sale, AT&T’s blocked deal, Comcast’s disinterest and Amazon’s withdrawal.By expanding ESPN’s initial $300 million, eight-event package into 10 events plus pay-per-view, he secured a seven-year agreement approaching $4 billion, while TKO and MARI extend the thesis but financing and timing remain risks.
$TPB: can Turning Point Brands be the third player in nicotine pouches? | Saberpoint Capital
Turning Point Brands is positioning FRE and Tucker Carlson-backed ALP as a third nicotine-pouch player, using national distribution, regulatory capability and an expanding salesforce.Cash-generative legacy businesses may support expansion, but PMTA, slotting, marketing costs and unresolved domestic-production timing and Tucker economics could pressure earnings.
Jake Paul & The Chainsmokers: Turning Fame into Funds, Jake Enters Politics? & Venture Bubble Signs
Chamath PalihapitiyaJason CalacanisDavid SacksDavid FriedbergJake PaulDrew TaggartAlex Pall
Jake Paul is turning owned attention into distribution and talent infrastructure, citing 138 million Netflix viewers for the Mike Tyson event and 400 MVP fighters.His $100 million Anti Fund and The Chainsmokers’ fund target venture economics, but later tranches priced at two or three times earlier valuations without operating improvement leave realized DPI—not TVPI—as the test of Chamath’s bubble warning.
AI 时代,我们到底该学什么?|对谈于红:三种不会过时的能力
于红放弃八位数 carry 和十五年一级市场生涯,转向儿童 SEL 教育,押注语数外巨头尚未覆盖、却在中国日益严峻的社会情感能力缺口。她以林迪效应判断 AI 时代语文和开放性更稀缺,并以高认知家长为起点逐步教育市场;五年十年仍是起步期,家长认知与效果验证是关键变量。
Adam Foroughi, Applovin CEO: Surviving a 92% Drawdown, Ads as ML 1.0 & the $50B Game Ad Market
AppLovin is extending a roughly $50B mobile-gaming ad market, with platform ad spend growing from $11B to about $20B, into e-commerce discovery.Its April 2023 deep-learning model improved advertiser performance and enabled scaling, while roughly $6B in buybacks retired 20–25% of shares after a 92% drawdown.Discovery may expand activity beyond Google Search, but stated 84% EBITDA margins depend on differentiated data, complexity and scale.
$NTDOY: is Nintendo's flywheel actually there? | Accrued Interest
Nintendo’s Switch 2 flywheel remains unproven: low attach rates, roughly flat online subscribers, a Zelda remake-led holiday slate, and Pokémon potentially delayed until spring 2027 leave the new cycle dependent on aging IP.Memory inflation has forced an early price increase, while Spotify’s 2024–2025 royalty resets and new audiobook revenue offer a cleaner path toward 20% operating margins by 2030.
Home Depot: The best-performing stock in the S&P 500 since IPO (Audio)
Home Depot’s extraordinary compounding rests on a differentiated specialty-retail system: tradespeople, 25,000 SKUs, supplier-financed inventory, and scale that once produced four times Lowe’s transactions.With 51% of a $300 billion market and a 42-year median U.S. home age, its logistics moat supports 2–24-hour delivery, while SRS integration and paused buybacks remain key milestones to monitor.
Inside Bending Spoons: Finding Talent, Leveraging AI & Driving Operational Excellence | Luca Ferrari
Bending Spoons is a buy-to-hold-forever operator, producing $3B in run-rate revenue at 54–55% adjusted operating income margins through acquisitions and deep integration.Evernote's headcount fell from 350 to about 20, while revenue now exceeds $100M and product velocity is at least three times faster, demonstrating the operating model's leverage.Diagram and Alt Spooner point to further productivity gains, while fewer, larger deals and the unresolved IPO timeline remain important execution signals to monitor.
$TBBB: Tiendas 3B is Mexico's Aldi. Is it too late to buy? | Fruit Tree Capital
Tiendas 3B brings Aldi/BİM’s hard-discount model to Mexico with roughly 3,700 stores, 1,000 SKUs, and over 60% private label.Organic distribution-center “cell division” supports expansion, while Vadia says halved 38% growth over two to three decades could produce a potential 100×.The key risk is whether two-year payback survives 15,000 stores as produce adds complexity and Mexico risk remains.
$ELAL: El Al is a wartime monopoly at 2x EBITDA. Is that a trap? | ASB Partners
El Al trades at 2.3x EV/EBITDA after three years of windfall profits, with 80% fleet ownership and 2023 FCF of $100–200M.Customer float, Sabbath downtime, the $40M pricing fine, and eventual full competition temper the asset and slot-scarcity thesis.Stride's CEO exit makes late-October fall enrollment a potential 20-point catalyst either way, with Canvas execution and take-private speculation unresolved.









