Fall girls, Wild's £100m exit, and YouTube as the new 'king of media'
Issue #50
Weekly Exhale
Hopefully, being a founder means bringing something good into the world, building a product people need, creating jobs and communities along the way. And if you work hard, get lucky, and stay standing, maybe you can gain a little economic freedom for yourself and your family.
But for Charlie Javice, there’s no freedom, or family, on the horizon. Last week, the 33-year-old fintech founder was found guilty on four counts of fraud and now faces decades in prison.
Another Forbes 30 Under 30 turned rogue, Javice sold her student loans platform Frank to JPMorgan for $175 million, claiming it had over four million customers. In reality, the number was closer to 300,000. The rest? Manufactured by a data scientist she hired to generate “synthetic users.” She’s now deemed a flight risk and will wear an ankle monitor until she’s sentenced in July.
The media loves a fall. Especially the fall of a woman who rose too fast, smiled too wide, or promised too much. The symmetry with Elizabeth Holmes is uncanny. Once valued at $9 billion, Holmes’s company, Theranos, built a blood-testing device that didn’t work, potentially endangering lives. Javice’s fraud didn’t cost lives. But her punishment will likely echo Holmes’s, who, now serving time at Federal Prison Camp Bryan, gets up at 6 a.m., works in the kitchen for 12 cents an hour, and sleeps in a shared dorm with no door. Her children—William, 4, and Invicta, born just months before she reported to prison—are allowed to sit on her lap during weekend visits.
Javice, by contrast, has no known partner or children. But like Holmes, she came up through a pushy private education system obsessed with winning. Both women showed signs of pathological ambition—the compulsion to impress others, even if it meant bending the truth. This is a pattern of behaviour venture capital actively encourages, of course.
Here’s the thing: The Wall Street Journal’s write-up of the case didn’t focus on Javice’s background or schooling, or even the eerily similar older male collaborator who was also convicted (yes, like Holmes, she had one too). Instead, the spotlight was on JPMorgan.
In the summer of 2021, deep in the lockdown-era acquisition frenzy, JPMorgan made 45 deals—nearly one a week. CEO Jamie Dimon was paranoid about the bank losing ground to tech. So, the due diligence team of a $3.9 trillion institution never saw Frank’s actual user data. They just believed Javice.
The real crime: Javice made JPMorgan look stupid.
Holmes faced the same dynamic. Her investors included Rupert Murdoch and the Walton family. When they realised they’d been fooled—maybe even by a girl—the approach to prosecution started to look less like justice and more like vengeance.
Don’t get me wrong. Both Holmes and Javice committed crimes. Javice’s private WhatsApp messages (kept out of the trial) referred to investors as “sophisticated assholes,” and joked, “Don’t worry, I don’t want to end up in an orange jumpsuit.” So, Javis knew. Well, she didn't know that it's not orange, nor a jumpsuit. At Camp Bryan, it’s standard-issue khaki trousers and shirt. (You could mistake it for SKIMS if you weren’t wearing it involuntarily.)
And both have money. Javice walked away with $21 million upfront. Holmes may have lost her official net worth, but she’s done enough glossy profiles to suggest money still floats nearby.
But let’s get some context. Let’s pick on the golden child of the moment, OpenAI, which lost $5 billion last year. Javice’s fraud adds up to less than 3% of that. And yet OpenAI’s entire valuation is built on theft—books, images, voices, thoughts. Their future is built selling back to us all the things we already built. Scarlett Johansson declined to work with them. Then sued when they released a voice eerily similar to hers. So, Javice and Sam Altman are both familiar with synthetic data. And when it comes to lying, well, Altman was fired by his own board last year, for “not consistently being candid.” He was reinstated five days later.
First, they think you’re crazy. Then they fight you. Then you change the world. Isn’t that how it goes?
If you’re Adam Neumann (who made over $1 billion collapsing WeWork), Trevor Milton (Nikola founder convicted of wire fraud and later pardoned by Trump), or Elon Musk (facing ongoing SEC charges), you survive. Maybe even IPO again.
Javice and Holmes played the same game as these guys.
For a lot of reasons, they just weren’t allowed to win.
—
My son used to love FIFA—the football game, now rebranded EA Sports FC. (FIFA, fittingly, has been mired in corruption.) One Christmas, he unwrapped a high-spec gaming PC, and this game quickly took over his mind. Within weeks, he’d developed an encyclopaedic knowledge of players and their skill ratings. Soon after, he started asking to buy add-ons to enhance his team.
But, I wasn’t paying attention.
Over the weeks that followed, I lost track of the small sums he was spending on top-ups. My stomach knots whenever I think of him not having what he needs—or just wants. Is that feeling understandable? Of course. Is it a reliable system for making parenting decisions? Probably not.
Small sums. Go for it. I hooked up my credit card. It was easier. You probably know where this is going.
One Saturday morning, he was buzzing—telling me about all the incredible players he’d unlocked, how high he was in the leagues. But that evening, while being tucked into bed, he burst into tears. He’d spent hundreds of pounds on gold player packs, gambling for the chance to land a Messi.
As in life, there are two versions of the game. One where you build slowly—develop your skills, grow your team, play with character. Ted Lasso football. And one where, if you’ve got the capital, you can skip the hard parts. Pump in enough money, and eventually, you can swap out all your bench warmers and fly up the tables.
When I called EA to alert them, they refunded the money, no questions asked. Which tells you two things: First, they know they’ve created a gambling machine with shin pads. And second, it’s easier to refund a few upset parents than to change the game.
I guess that most parents don’t think to ask for their money back. So, most kids just end up working off the debt with chores, or worse, with shame —and it was shame that gripped me and my son.
A few days after the refund came through, we both wrote down everything we didn’t like about that game and what it made us feel. Whilst we’d done bad, we noted that we weren’t bad people. We folded the words into paper planes and launched them from the upstairs landing. And then tossed the planes into the front room fire.
It was a small gesture. But it mattered.
When young people are handed a game that invites them to gamble in pursuit of the ultimate win—and when we attach funding and praise to that model—there’s a non-zero chance it will start to make sense to cheat. And lose. And fall hard.
I’m not sure Holmes or Javice are the most likeable characters. Their entitlement, lack of remorse, and proximity to power make them easy to dismiss and punish.
But there’s no warm fire for them to burn their regrets on. No ritual of letting go. Just decades of reckoning inside a system far colder than the one that put them in the spotlight in the first place.
When I see new brands celebrating their funding rounds, I know what they’re feeling. They think their vision has been affirmed. But that affirmation is fragile. It’s dependent. It can disappear the moment investor returns disappoint—or worse, when investor pride is bruised.
And that’s the real killer, isn’t it?
Pride.
The pride parents want to feel about their kids succeeding. The pride investors want to feel about being right. The pride lawyers want to feel putting criminals behind bars.
And somewhere in between, some kids are just trying to play the game.
Let's rise together with every issue. ♡
Market Movements
British stocks slump in worst day since 2020 | Reuters
China hits back as global recession fears grow | The Guardian
British winners and losers from Trump tariffs | BBC
Brand Beat
Starbucks and Peanuts unveil exclusives | Starbucks
Ben & Jerry's co-founder calls on Unilever to set them free | Wall Street Journal
CMO Terence Reilly of Crocs and Stanley Cup tells all | Bob Lefetz
Rocket to buy mortgage firm Mr Cooper in $9.4 billion deal | Yahoo! Finance
Lululemon boss: We want to be number one for athletes | The Times
Meta moves into controversial principal-based trading | Digiday
Apple launches Lumon Terminal as April fools | TikTok
Coca-Cola CMO: AI ads will be the norm | Marketing Week
Why brands failed to amuse this April Fool's Day | Marketing Beat
Apple rejects proposals to scrap DEI | AP News
Innovation is entering a new era and luxury is following | Vogue Business
Adolescence to be streamed in secondary schools | Variety
Bumboo launches social media feed on toilet rolls | LinkedIn
A new generation of alternative milks | Vogue
White Lotus TV show boosts UK Thai takeaways by 25% | The Guardian
Easter chocolate prices soar 50% following cocoa shortage | The Grocer
You should not invest in brand until leadership aligns on truths | Preston Rutherford
Analysts hail YouTube as 'New King of All Media' | Variety
Media detoxes kill ad attention | MediaCat
Hershey's strikes $750m deal for LesserEvil popcorn brand | Wall Street Journal
Two chicks sells majority stake to Eurovo | Two Chicks
Wild co-founders land £100m sale to Unilever | The Guardian
Starting Up
Wall Street hails Charlie Javice conviction but wonders how JPMorgan failed | Fortune
UK startups scale back hiring ahead of tax hikes | Sifted
Meet Ponte Labor, a startup matching immigrants to jobs using WhatsApp | TechCrunch
From bootstrapped to AI exit, Zoomin on trust and timing | BVP
Tech Tidbits
Amazon said to make a bid to buy TikTok in the U.S. | New York Times
The Founder of OnlyFans wants to buy TikTok | Wired
AI faces government plan over copyright-protected work | The Guardian
This case has a solution for phone addiction: A smaller screen | Fast Company
If Anthropic succeeds a nation of benevolent AI geniuses could be born | WIred
Venture Vibes
Bradley Tusk says he makes more money with 'equity-for-services' | TechCrunch
S4 Capital is at an uncomfortable crossroads | Green Square
How New York is battling London to win new IPOs | The Times
Venture Capital has never been this obsessed with AI | Inc
AI founders score the sweetest term sheets | Sifted
Design Driven
Mauro Porcini will be Samsung's first chief design officer | Fast Company
New typeface Base Pixel slowly turns to "trash" | It's Nice That
We can still learn a lot from the older design generation | Design Week
Happiness
The Gen X career meltdown | New York Times
Love, sex and happiness explained by philosophy | BigThink
How to buy a year of happiness explained in one chart | Vox
Stay gold 🙏🏻
love this take. thanks for sharing