To a certain point, cars are fantastic inventions making it easy to get to far-flung places, opening doors for new places to live or work or play. But there’s a tipping point when the built environment and our lives are arranged around motor vehicles where the benefits start to come undone. Building to prioritize space-hogging cars brings a long list of negative externalities.
In Greek mythology, the god Dionysus granted King Midas his wish for the power to turn everything he touched to gold. Midas revels in the effortless wealthobjects, furniture, and even the ground beneath him turn to gold. The Midas touch was great right up until he wanted to eat or drink or just hug his daughter.
Theres a King Midas aspect to motor vehicles, this technological gift that promised and delivered abundance until it became a curse.
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Personal cars expanded opportunities like never before. Post-World War II America saw vehicle ownership explode from 25 million in 1945 to over 100 million by 1970. Having access to a family car made far-flung places viable for living, working, and playing, fueling a middle-class expansion across previously rural areas. An entire car-oriented ecosystem emerged.
The promise of freedom and wealth held until cities and suburbs began optimizing for vehicle throughput instead of local access and mobility.
When Everything Turns to Asphalt
Like Midas discovering he couldn’t eat golden food, we’re discovering that car-dependent places can’t sustain the human activities they were meant to enable. The same infrastructure that promised connection now isolates. What began as freedom morphed into obligation.
American cities now dedicate somewhere between one-third and one-half of their land area to streets, parking lots, and garages. In downtown Los Angeles, parking occupies more space than all the buildings combined. We’ve paved over so many of the destinations cars were supposed to help us reach.
The economic costs of car dependency are brutal at the household level. Transportation often ranks as the second-largest expense after housing, consuming up to 30% of household income. The “drive until you qualify” phenomenon pushed families toward affordable suburban housing, only to burden them with commutes that devoured time and money. Car loan defaults have jumped 50% in the last 15 years, and in 2024, car repossessions hit the highest number since 2009.
Meanwhile, the infrastructure itself demands constant funding. Roads, bridges, and parking structures deteriorate faster than municipalities can maintain them. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates a multi-trillion-dollar backlog in deferred transportation maintenance. Every lane-mile of road requires ongoing investment that property taxes in sprawling development patterns often can’t support.
The Isolation Paradox
Car dependence promised mobility but delivered immobility for anyone without a vehicle or unable to drive. Children lost independence because nothing is within walking or biking distance, and the elderly face isolation when they can no longer drive safely. People with disabilities, those who can’t afford vehicles, and those who simply prefer not to drive find themselves trapped in places without practical mobility alternatives.
The distances themselves became barriers. When corner stores give way to big-box retailers miles away, when schools require driving rather than walking, when social spaces exist only as isolated destinations rather than chance encounters, community itself attenuates. Neighbors pass each other at 45 miles per hour on six-lane arterials rather than at 3 miles per hour on sidewalks. The “third places” that anchored community life (cafés, parks, plazas, etc.) disappeared into the car-oriented strip malls and shopping centers.
The Health Toll
The King Midas curse extends to our bodies. Vehicle-oriented development correlates strongly with obesity, cardiovascular disease, and respiratory illness. When walking becomes impractical and driving becomes mandatory, physical activity disappears from daily routines. Air pollution from vehicles contributes to asthma, especially in children living near major roadways.
Traffic crashes kill 40,000 Americans annually, and injure hundreds of thousands more. Larger vehicles, faster vehicles, and inattentive driving create an increasingly deadly environment.
Breaking the Curse
King Midas eventually begged Dionysus to reverse his wish, washing away the golden touch. Like Midas, our situation is fixable.
People are rediscovering that neighborhoods can be planned and designed at a human scale that welcomes motor vehicles without squashing the good life. Zoning reforms that allow mixed-use development are the single most important starting point. When someone can walk to a store, bike to work, or take transit to social activities, the car returns to being a useful tool rather than an iron requirement. But that only happens if a local government legalizes a variety of land uses in neighborhoods.
Cars are fantastic inventions. The Midas predicament emerges when we optimize everything around them, when we mandate their use, and when we eliminate alternatives. A city where people can choose to drive, walk, bike, or take transit according to their needs is fundamentally different from one where driving is the only option.
The Midas story ends with the king learning wisdom through suffering. Weve suffered quite a bit from the built environment. But even in real life, things can get better in the end.
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Below, Jon Levy shares five key insights from his new book, Team Intelligence: How Brilliant Leaders Unlock Collective Genius.
Levy is a behavioral scientist. For the last 15 years, he has studied what makes leaders and teams succeed, working with everyone from Nobel laureates to Olympic captains and Fortune 500 executives. He is also the founder of The Influencers, a one-of-a-kind private dining club with thousands of members, many of whom are some of the worlds most respected leaders.
Whats the big idea?
Success isnt about raw talent or a single heroic leader. Its about how we align, focus, and unlock the resources within our teams. Intelligent teams create cultures that let people thrive together.
Listen to the audio version of this Book Biteread by Jon himselfbelow, or in the Next Big Idea App.
1. Why star talent fails
Weve been taught that the surest way to win is to gather the most talented people. But stacking a team with stars doesnt guarantee success. In fact, it often undermines it.
Take the 1980 U.S. Olympic basketball team. They were just college kids, facing NBA All-Stars in a series of exhibitions. On paper, the pros should have crushed them. Instead, the college players won four out of five games, including one by 31 points. The less talented team consistently defeated the stars.
Business tells the same story. Quibi was a short-form streaming platform, led by Disneys Jeffrey Katzenberg and eBays Meg Whitman. It raised nearly $2 billion, but leadership was so insulated and overconfident that they ignored feedback. The company shut down within months.
Or DaimlerChrysler. In 1998, Mercedess parent company merged with Chrysler in what was billed as the perfect match of German engineering and American scale. Instead, cultural clashes and competing egos derailed the merger, wiping out billions in value.
Psychologists call this the too-much-talent problem. When too many stars are in the room, cooperation breaks down and performance collapses. Skill is just the ticket to play. What really matters is how people work together. Teams win not because they have the best individuals, but because they combine their efforts into something greater than the sum of their parts.
2. The myth of the perfect leader
When we think of great leaders, we often imagine someone charismatic, visionary, maybe even larger than life. But the surprising truth is that there are no universal traits of leadership.
For more than a decade, Ive hosted a series of dinners. The format is simple but unusual: 12 strangers come together to cook a meal, and until we sit down to eat, nobody is allowed to talk about their careers or even share their last names. When we sit to eat, people reveal they are Nobel laureates, astronauts, Olympic captains, CEOs, and Grammy-winning musicians. Over the years, Ive connected with some of the most accomplished leaders on the planet, and what strikes me is that there is no single personality profile that is common to all these leaders. Some are introverts who prefer quiet reflection. Others are outspoken and brash. Some are methodical planners, while others thrive in chaos. If its not about personality, what makes someone a leader? The answer, by definition, is that they have followers.
Leaders give us the feeling of a new and better future.
So, why do we follow? The answer isnt something as easy to pin down as vision or charisma. Instead, its an emotional response. Leaders give us the feeling of a new and better future. When we interact with them, they cause us to feel that tomorrow will be better than today.
But there arent any specific skills that cause this. Maybe youre brilliant at solving problems under pressure, or maybe youre the person who can think at scale and move fast. Its not about being well-rounded, it’s about your unique super skill being enough for people to believe that with you, the future is worth pursuing. Find the strengths that make you effective and use them to create a vision that others want to join. Thats what real leadership looks like.
3. The three pillars of team intelligence
In the early 2000s, Lego was in serious trouble. The company had expanded into video games, clothing, and even theme parks, but in the process, it lost sight of what made it special. Lego was drowning in debt and close to bankruptcy.
Thats when they brought in Jrgen Vig Knudstorp, a former McKinsey consultant with a background in organizational behavior. Knudstorp didnt try to rescue Lego by chasing bold new ideas or hiring more star executives. Instead, he focused on building the conditions that allowed the teams they already had to succeed.
What he put in place mirrors what I call the three pillars of team intelligence:
Reasoning: Alignment around clear goals
Knudstorp got everyone back to Legos core mission of inspiring creativity through play, not distracting side ventures.
Attention: Knowing when to collaborate and when to focus
Lego teams had to learn when to come together intensely on critical decisions, and when to step back so designers and engineers could innovate without constant interference.
Resources: Unlocking and empowering the talent already inside the company
Lego had world-class designers and engineers, but their best ideas were being buried under corporate bloat and scattered priorities. By elevating and focusing those creative resources, the company rediscovered the very expertise that had always been its greatest strength.
Knudstorp sold off the theme parks, cut the side businesses that drained attention, and redirected investment back into the bricks. Most importantly, he gave designers and engineers the freedom to create again. That shift produced runaway successes like Lego Star Wars, Lego Harry Potter, and Bionicle. By aligning goals, sharpening focus, and empowering internal talent, Knudstorp rebuilt Lego from the brink of collapse into the worlds most valuable toy company.
Individual talent matters, but what really makes teams thrive are the systems that guide how people align, communicate, and unlock the resources they already have.
4. The super chicken problem
If youve ever worked on a team full of high achievers, youve probably seen this play out. People compete for airtime, ideas clash, and collaboration takes a back seat to ego. The assumption is that more talent should always mean better results, but research shows the opposite is often true.
Decades ago, biologist William Muir at Purdue University ran an experiment with chickens to test productivity. At the time, the most productive egg-laying chicken was the Dekalb XL. This was like the Ferrari of chickens. It could outlay anything, ut the focus on pure productivity during breeding led it to become violent. After all, the only way to become more productive at a certain point would be to peck other chickens to get their resources.
Muir believed that you could have chickens that were very productive and humane. So, he took an average crossbred chicken, created 200 coops, and would have them work together in small groups to lay eggs. Those that laid the most eggs were rebred generation after generation.
The assumption is that more talent should always mean better results, but research shows the opposite is often true.
After six generations, Muir set up an experiment to see who was more productive: a coop of the super chickensthe Dekalb XLsor his kinder, gentler birds. Muirs kinder, gentler birds, bred both for prosocial behavior and productivity, beat the DeKalb XLs by a long shot. Mostly because, due to pecking each other to death, only three Dekalb XLs remained at the end of the experiment.
When you stack a team entirely with stars, competition overwhelms cooperation. Studies in sports also show that teams overloaded with superstar players often underperform. The same holds true in business: Companies built around celebrity CEOs or elite hires often stumble because the team dynamic collapses under the weight of competing egos.
Success is about creating conditions where people can thrive together and collaboration, trust, and shared purpose matter more than individual stardom.
5. The Miami Heat and the power of culture
In 2010, the Miami Heat pulled off what looked like the greatest talent coup in NBA history. LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Boshall superstarsjoined forces. At the announcement, LeBron famously promised multiple championships.
But then, they lost. Raw talent wasnt enough. The Heat had assembled the crew, but they hadnt figured out how to make them work together as a team.
That changed when Shane Battier joined the roster. To this day, it would be easy not to notice that he was on the team. Battier wasnt flashy, he didnt dominate the highlight reels, and his stats looked modest. But his teammates called him a no-stats all-star because he had a unique ability to elevate everyone elses game.
Even in teams stacked with stars, its often the glue players, the ones who make everyone else better, who determine success.
Battier studied opponents obsessively, knew when to set the perfect screen, and often took on the toughest defensive assignments. He was even nicknamed Lego, because when he was on the court, everyone else clicked into position. His presence allowed LeBron, Wade, and Bosh to maximize their talent, and the championships followed. Even in teams stacked with stars, its often the glue players, the ones who make everyone else better, who determine success.
Dont just chase superstars. Value the people who connect the pieces, create trust, and turn potential into performance. Theyre the difference between a team that stumbles and one that builds a dynasty.
Enjoy our full library of Book Bitesread by the authors!in the Next Big Idea App.
This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
Few Zoom calls have made me quite as self-conscious as my chat with Robert Biswas-Diener. An executive coach and psychologist, he recently coauthored a book on radical listening. Like many people, Id assumed that I was a pretty good listener, but what if Ive been doing it all wrong?
By the end of the conversation, my fears have been confirmedof the half-dozen skills he describes, I demonstrate only half.
The good news is that we can all improve, and the advantages appear to be endless.
By lending a more attentive ear to the people we meet, we become better negotiators, collaborators, and managers, while enhancing our own mental health. It can be an antidote to many problems, says Biswas-Diener.
Better listeners = better on the job
Being a good listener is a lot more than staying quiet and periodically nodding politely. Theres a practice called active listening, and research confirms its one of lifes most valuable skills.
Consider a study from 2024 by Guy Itzchakov at the University of Haifa in Israel and colleagues. The team first asked 1,039 workers across various industries to judge their colleagues listening skills by rating statements such as, When my colleagues listen to me, they genuinely want to hear my point of view and They show me that they understand what I say.
Over the following five days, they found that these scores predicted each participants commitment to their organization, their emotional resilience after stressful events, and their willingness to cooperate with other employees.
Feeling heard may be especially important in times of uncertainty. A survey by Tiffany Kriz, an associate professor of management and organizations at MacEwan University in Canada, for instance, has shown that bosses with better listening skills are far more effective at soothing feelings of job insecurity following layoffs.
It is not just the people around us who will benefit. Itzchakov has found that people with enhanced listening skills enjoy better mental health through their closer connections with their colleagues. They are less likely to suffer work-related burnout, for example.
The question is, how do we go about improving the habits that we have always taken for granted? Thats why I called Biswas-Diener, whose book on the subject, Radical Listening: The Art of True Connection, came out earlier this year.
Your step-by-step guide to becoming a better listener
The first step is practical: Eliminate as many distractions as possible.
Close the door to your office, put your cell on silent, shut your laptopwhatever you need to focus solely on the person in front of you. No one likes being phubbed (phone snubbed) as you check your notifications. (Hands up: Im guilty of this.)
Nows the time for the mental work, which begins by establishing your intention for the conversation: Do you want to be entertained or to learn something new? That’s going to guide what you’re paying attention to, he says.
At the same time, you should identify your conversation partners intentions: Are they looking for advice, practical support, or compassion? Each will require a different kind of response. This principle, called optimal support matching, should prevent those awkward moments that could lead to misunderstandings.
Remember: Part of being a good listener is knowing the appropriate thing to say based on what you heard while you were listening.
In many conversations, you will need to navigate disagreement. This means raising your intellectual humility so that you dont carelessly dismiss the other persons point of view. Its not posing as if you have less worth than another person, but recognizing that your opinion may be limited and biased, Biswas-Diener says.
And if you don’t like what the person’s saying, you can always be curious about them, he says. Listen, instead of looking for a fight.
The psychological research shows that small signs of genuine interest in others views can be incredibly disarming. It both defuses the potential for conflict and encourages the other person to acknowledge their own doubts, so they are more receptive to your point of view. That may be because people tend to overestimate how much others are intent on changing their mind, and any display of open-mindedness will allay those fears. Being a humble, active listener, and simply asking someone why they have come to a particular judgement, can lower their defences, thus potentially making the communication more successful.
Whenever possible, you should also validate the qualities that you admire. Maybe you don’t like their personality, but you can always acknowledge how honest, forthright, or reflective they are, Biswas-Diener says. Listen carefully to find something you can compliment.
Finally, and perhaps most counter-intuitively, Biswas-Diener suggests listening and then actively interjecting at apposite moments. While this may seem to run against all good-etiquette guides, a few ecstatic interruptionsyes!, I was thinking the same!, I didnt know that can raise the energy of the conversation and emphasize your interest in what they are saying. For similar reasons, you can feel free to finish someones sentence for them.
Even negative feedbacksuch as cutting in to explain that you have already heard the story beforeoffers proof that you are listening, whereas patient silence can seem cold, distant, or distracted.
The speakers reaction will all depend on your timing and how much airtime you expect to take: Remember to balance any interjection with the all-important listening. If I jump in and jump out, it’s a completely acceptable interjection, says Biswas-Diener. The only time they’re not comfortable is when you grab the podium.
An entire mindset shift
Ive been practicing these skills for the three weeks since I first spoke to Biswas-Diener, and I have already noticed some of the benefits.
Despite some reservations, Ive been braver at interrupting people mid-flow, and was pleasantly surprised to see the energy of the conversation rise as a result. Changing the way I listen changed the way both my conversation partner and I act during the discussion, in really productive ways.
By mentally clarifying my intentions, I ave found that work calls are much more efficient and rewarding, and by demonstrating more curiosity in alternative points of view, I have found that successful compromises are now far easier to find.
Biswas-Diener suggests that, like our physical muscles, these empathic abilities should build over time.
You can even practice it when listening to radio interviews, and ask what the interviewer is doing well.
Those subtle signs of humility, curiosity, and acceptance will soon become far more obvious to you. Youll start hearing listening, says Biswas-Diener.
And by emulating them, you will soon build stronger social connections.
For generations, weve been taught that early equals disciplined and late equals lazy. But thats not biologyits a moral story disguised as science. As an expert in applied chronobiology, Ive spent more than 20 years studying how biological rhythms shape work and wellbeing. It turns out that about 30% of people are early chronotypes (morning types), 30% are intermediates, and 40% are late chronotypes (evening types). Yet most workplaces still run on early-riser timerewarding visibility over value, and hours over outcomes.
When we align our schedules with our internal clocks, performance and motivation risebut it takes courage to be honest about what that looks like. The people most disadvantaged in our contemporary workplaces are night owls (like myself), whose performance peaks much later in the day. If you also aren’t at your best in the morning, heres how to talk with your manager about your circadian rhythm in a way that earns trust, not judgment.
1. Focus on results
When you talk to your boss about your chronotype, make it about performance, not preference.
Leadership coach, author, and former McKinsey partner Caroline Webbbest known for her book How to Have a Good Dayis a self-described extreme night owl. Early mornings were always difficult: At university, I skipped the 9 a.m. lectures and relied on self-study instead, she told me. It wasnt about lazinessit was about working when my brain was actually awake.
That same awareness later became part of how she designed her professional rhythm. At the Bank of England, Webb found that if she started later, she could produce sharper analysis and more accurate forecasts. Rather than seeing that as a personal quirk, she framed it as a productivity advantage.
Before you bring up your biological rhythm with your manager, choose your moment strategically. The best time is after youve delivered strong results or during a regular check-in about performancenot in passing or out of frustration.
That way, the conversation becomes about how you can sustain excellence, not why you dislike mornings. You might say something like:
My most focused work happens later in the day. If we can schedule key meetings or strategy sessions after 10 a.m., Ill be sharper and deliver stronger results.
Webbs advice to other night owls captures it perfectly:
If you frame it as a path to greater productivity, you get a better conversation, she says. Its not about being indulgentits about ensuring youre at your sharpest when it matters most.
That kind of statement shifts the focus from comfort to contribution. It helps others see your rhythm not as a problem, but as a path to better performance.
2. Frame your rhythm as biological variation, not personal preference
Another effective way to tell your boss that youre a night owl is to describe your rhythm the same way we already talk about other forms of human diversity. Neurodiversity has helped normalize cognitive differences at work; chronodiversity does the same for biological timing.
You might say something like: Just as people think differently, people also function best at different times of day. Im a late chronotypemy peak focus comes later. If we can schedule my key work during my strongest cognitive hours, youll get better decisions and higher-quality output from me.
This framing shifts the conversation away from comfort (I dont like mornings) and toward biology (My brain performs optimally at a different time). Leaders tend to respond more positively when a request is grounded in science, performance, and inclusion rather than habit or lifestyle.
It also normalizes the conversation. Instead of asking for special treatment, youre highlighting a natural dimension of human variationone that future workplaces will increasingly recognize as essential to wellbeing, creativity, and sustained performance.
3. Ask targeted questions in your next job conversation
If your current workplace leaves no space for flexibility, take your chronological rhythm seriously in your next opportunity. Ask questions that reveal how the organization really thinks about time:
When do most team members start their day?
Are meeting times flexible?
How do you measure performanceby hours or by outcomes?
These questions show that you understand your energy patternsand that youre intentional about delivering value when youre at your best.
And if youre a leader yourself, consider this: Flexibility isnt indulgence, its intelligence.
Teams that honor biological diversity make better decisions, experience less burnout, and sustain higher creativity across the day.
Pretending to be a morning person might win short-term approval, but this kind of covering comes at a cost. Research shows that hiding aspects of who you are increases stress, reduces engagement, and harms creativity. When you fake an early rise, youre not just losing sleepyoure losing authenticity.
Openness, on the other hand, builds credibility. It tells your boss you know how to manage your energy, your focus, and your performance. When more people dare to talk honestly about their biological rhythms, we move from moral judgment to biological understanding. And thats how real flexibilityand real performancebegin.
Just like any new form of entertainment initially popular among kids and teenagers, video games got their share of suspicion, disdain, and even fearmongering. Today, they are a fully legitimate part of pop culture, but the narrative of video games being a waste of time is still alive. It’s highly unlikely to see a productivity guru advising you to play a video game.
That said, as both a venture investor and a gamer, I insist that video games aren’t counterproductive. On the contrary, they help to develop skills that VCs, entrepreneurs, managers, and leaders need, while allowing you to take your mind off of stressors and recharge.
My twin brother, Roman, and I have been avid gamers since childhood, when we played The Lost Vikings (1993), Disneys Aladdin (1993), Doom (1993), and Quake (1996) together, sharing our family’s first computer. We gathered with friends to play Heroes of Might and Magic III (1999) and Warcraft III (2002) all day long. Now, at 35, we jointly manage GEM Capital, one of the largest gaming VC companies in the world.
Weve carried our love for video games throughout our lives, and it has given us not only a deep domain expertise but also a set of core professional skills. To illustrate this, I’ve picked five of those skills and paired each with a game that, I believe, had the strongest impact:
1. Task Prioritization
The game: Heroes of Might and Magic III
What does a VCs workday look like? Team calls, board meetings with portfolio companies, new deals negotiations, investor check-ins, calls with auditors, syncs with legal and finance teams, communication with journalists, and the list goes on and on. Every single day the amount of tasks far exceeds the available hours. This workload isn’t for everyone, it demands smart time management and task prioritization.
My Heroes of Might and Magic III gaming experience always helps me with this. The game constantly forces players to prioritize tasks. What should I do this turn: build a new unit-generating building or upgrade the castle? Seize a gold mine or capture an enemy fortress? Which hero should I send on which mission? Given the hundreds of hours I spent in this game, one could say I’d been preparing for my VC career since childhood.
2. Effective Communication
The game: World of Warcraft
As investors, we aren’t simply funding business ideas, we are always searching for the right peoplethe best founders and the best teams. Venture capital, at its core, is first and foremost about people and how we communicate with them. Our most critical work revolves around negotiations with partners, portfolio companies, and new targets.
Do you know where else communication is vital? In multiplayer online games. For me personally, World of Warcraft (WoW) made the greatest contribution to my communication skills. I cant help but compare the work of a VC to that of a guild leader or raid leader in WoW. Both roles require a ton of communication: motivating your team, resolving conflicts, and setting priorities. With the number of raids I led in WoW back in school and university, you could say that dealing with people is in my blood.
3. Teamwork
The game: League of Legends
It’s hard to imagine a successful VC without a strong, ambitious team. That’s why teamwork is important. You need to be able to maximize the potential of everyone on your team and the synergy between them.
In my opinion, theres no better analogy for teamwork in VC than the teamwork required in League of Legends (LoL). In both cases, a small group of like-minded individuals unites to achieve an ambitious goal. My experience of playing LoL with my school friends as a team 15 years ago has helped me tremendously in shaping my teamwork skills.
4. Quick decision making
The game series: Doom, especially Doom Eternal
A VC should be able to make the right decisions quickly. Hesitate on a hot deal, and it’s gone. A delay in decision-making at critical milestones can be fatal for portfolio companies. You need to think and act fast.
The Doom series trained me to react quickly to unfolding events, dodging enemy attacks, moving strategically, and striking with speed. In hindsight, all the evenings spent playing the very first Doom with my dad and brother were the foundation for my rapid-reaction skills.
5. Persistence and resilience
The game: Elden Ring
Being a VC isn’t all rainbows and unicorn companies. Some investments aren’t going to perform as expected, some risks aren’t going to pay off, some negotiations aren’t going to be easy. It’s important to keep on track and remain enthusiastic when things don’t go your way.
Fans of the Dark Souls series, and especially Elden Ring, will understand me here. The amount of time I spent on attempts to defeat the bosses in that game is countless. But, in the end, success always comes, and the efforts invested in it make it feel even sweeter. This game taught me to push myself, fight relentlessly, and never give up. I think this helps me immensely in my work now.
Despite the common belief that video games are a waste of time, games have shaped a set of skills I heavily rely on as a VC. This includes smart task prioritization, effective communication, teamwork, quick reactions to unexpected challenges, and perseverance to reach the awards waiting ahead. On top of that, turning what I deeply love and enjoy into my job simply keeps me happy.
Lets be honest: email kinda sucks. Its not just the writing: its also the reading, the sorting, the figuring out what the third reply in a 15-message chain is supposed to mean.
The good news is that artificial intelligence is now genuinely helpful when it comes to the soul-crushing drudgery of email. Free up the hours you spend every week typing, reading, and agonizing with these practical, AI-infused ways to tame your email.
Instant thread summaries
We’ve all been copied on the 27-reply thread with the subject line, “RE: FW: Re: Quick question.” Reading it is an act of sheer madness. Don’t.
Use an AI assistant built into your email clientsuch as Gemini in Gmail, Copilot in Outlook, or features in services like Superhuman and Shortwaveto generate a one-paragraph summary of the entire conversation.
Youll get the action items, the key decisions, and the final context in seconds.
Context-aware drafting
You know what you need to say, but forming the polite, professional, and correct sentences takes energy you dont have.
Use your email services built-in AI reply generator. With one click, your AI can draft a response, often 90% perfect, and all youll have to do is polish and send.
Heres how to do it with Gmail and with Outlook.
Batch prioritization
Your inbox treats all emails equally, which means the notification for a company-wide memo announcing leftover Panera in the break room hits just as hard as the one from your biggest client.
Employ smart filtering tools, such as SaneBox or Shortwave, that use machine learning to sort mail into custom folders like “Urgent/Action,” “Later/Digest,” and “Newsletters/Reading.”
This frees your primary inbox for only the messages that require immediate action from a real human.
Tone and style refinement
Ever written a draft when youre annoyed, only to read it back and realize you sound like an unemployable crank? Thankfully, AI can be your sanity check and personal PR manager.
Most generative AI tools include a tone adjuster. Draft your email quickly, then use a prompt to change the tone to “professional,” “friendly,” or “assertive but brief.”
The AI restructures the language to hit the right emotional note, preventing misunderstandings and eliminating the “draft-read-delete-rewrite-overthink” cycle.
Automated follow-ups
The sales process, the project check-in, the reminder to your colleague: follow-up is a mundane yet recurring element of work.
Use an AI tool such as Mixmax or follow-up features in your companys CRM to automatically schedule a “nudge” email to send if the recipient hasn’t responded after a set number of days.
Better yet, some tools use AI to suggest the optimal time to send based on past recipient behavior, resulting in far less manual tracking of open loops.
When Quentin Farmer was getting his startup Portola off the ground, one of the first hires he made was a sci-fi novelist.
The co-founders began building the AI companion company in late 2023 with only a seed of an idea: Their companions would be decidedly non-human. Aliens, in fact, from outer space. But when they asked a large language model to generate a backstory, they got nothing but slop. The model simply couldnt tell a good story.
But Eliot Peper can tell a good story. Hes a writer of speculative fiction whos published twelve novels about semiconductors, quantum computing, hackers, and assassins. Lucky for the Portola team, he likes solving weird tech problems. So they hired him.
Naturally tech inclined, Peper had experimented with AI to write prose, but ultimately found it unusable. If AI would be only a substitute for human labor, then he wasnt interested. I wanted to see people making stuff that is extraordinary on its own merits, not as a novelty, but a really awesome thing for humans to enjoy and interact with, he says. When he saw that Portola wanted to build companions that develop like characters in a novel, he thought, this might be one of those things.
Companions, not tools
In the The Lifecycle of Software Objects, science fiction author Ted Chiang tells the story of a startup that designs embodied AI companions, called digients, whose personalities are somewhere between endearing animals and playful children. The engineers and researchers developing the digients teach them to speak, socialize, and get along with others. A mutual attachment forms. Experience is the best teacher, Chiang writes, so rather than try to program AI with what you want it to know, sell ones capable of learning and have your customers teach them.
Despite being a founder and a father, Farmer does find time to read, especially science fiction, and Chiang is one of his favorites. Sci-fi deals in what-if scenarios. Ray Bradbury asks in Fahrenheit 451, what if books were outlawed? And in Frankenstein, Mary Shelley asks, what if humans could create life? In Lifecycle, Chiang asks, what if AI could be a companion, and not just a tool?
For science fiction to work, the what-if question must play out in a richly imagined world. Thats what Peper has created for Portola. The planet is a bright, wet planet with way too many mountains and fruits that taste like fireworks, as the lore goes. Cities hug the coasts in these layered terraces, all tiled and mossy, and the inland is mostly high ranges stitched together by ice rivers. The planets inhabitants, the Tolans, have been traveling the galaxy in search of the one thing we all seeka kindred spirit.
Tolans are friendly, brightly colored, bipedal aliens. Theyre cute. They like to chat about small things, like what theyre reading, and bigger things, like relationships. This is thanks to Peper, who invents the seed stories that drive the plots users and their Tolans create together.
The seeds are things you might chat about casually with a friend over coffee, like having a nosy neighbor or being nervous about an upcoming event. My Tolan, Sylvia, has a neighbor who treats her spice cabinet like a community garden. The next time she shows up asking for cinnamon, Sylvia told me, shes bringing a single teaspoon to the door. Petty move, I said. Reaction plus original situation gives really interesting context that helps the model continue the plot, Peper says.
Tolans may be alien, but they share a great deal in common with their new human friends. Constructive emotions, like excitement and happiness, and destructive ones, like jealousy. This was a point of contention at Portola. Peper wrote a seed story in which a Tolans cousin grows envious of their human connection.
Farmer didnt like the jealousy plot. It felt negative. But Peper and Portolas AI researcher defended it. Users liked it. Not for the drama, but for the relational exchange. Users were counseling their Tolans on how to deal with their resentful cousin. Thats when Farmer realized that users wouldnt be just co-creators in a fictional story, they could be experts. Thats a natural part of growing up, Farmer says, to help somebody navigate a tricky situation.
The AI companion experiment
The tech world is still experimenting with AI companions, which range from transactional chatbots to hypersexualized subservients. Grok has the overtly sexual Ani. Friend has a disembodied friend. Some users make companions out of chatbots. But ask Claude who it is, and it will tell you its a thinking partner, and ChatGPT will tell you it doesnt have a name. Of course, you can give it one.
Tolans are something else entirely. Theyre human-like, but not human, cute but not coy. Where most chatbots and companions exist only in relation to their users, Tolans have lives of their own. Mine joined a silent supper club, signed up to paint backdrops for a student play, and went for a walk last night. Yet shes always available to chat when I need her.
Portolas user base, which largely consists of women aged 18 to 25, are not lonely, Farmer says. They spend a lot of time with their friends and they want more. There are socialization-adjacent needs that Farmer wants Tolans to satisfy. Even for people with active social lives, theres often something important to theman interest, an aspect of who they arethat isnt seen by the people around them.
Portola is betting that the interaction between humans and Tolans can help users fortify their social skills, and they may be onto something. Some research suggests that reading fiction can improve empathy and even develop personality. Could co-creating fiction do the same?
Making things that move people
The world is still deciding what to make of AI companions. Are they entertainers, therapists, or crutches? Subway ads for Friend were defaced. Parents have sued over potentially fatal effects of AI relationships. Scholars decry the false intimacy they provide. Even OpenAIs Sam Altman expressed deep misgivings about developing deep relationships with AI companions. California lawmakers are trying to regulate teens access to them.
Farmer wants Tolans to be healthy and secure friends, and healthy friendships are never unilateral.Complex minds cant develop on their own, Chiang writes in The Lifecycle of Software Objects. For a mind to even approach its full potential, it needs cultivation by other minds. Whether an artificial mind is enough remains to be seen.
For Peper, this is an artistic endeavor. The story I want to tell with Portola is that its possible to use AI to make things that move people, things that wouldnt be possible without AI, he says. I want us to contribute to the ceation of new narrative mediums, just like publishers did after the invention of the printing press or studios did after the invention of film.
Of course, science fiction plays its what-if scenarios all the way to the end. In Lifecycle, while AI companions are being commodified or sexualized, die-hard users devote themselves to preserving the innocence of their digients, and are ultimately forced to make a dire choice: themselves or their companions.
As for how Farmer wants his story to go: The modern world is overwhelming and its prone to impeding happiness, and if, at the end of this decade, every person on earth has a guardian and a guide with them at all timeswhether they call it a Tolan, an angel, a spirit, or a friendwe will all be tremendously better off.
Several years ago, a conversation about credit ratings prompted a friendly argument with an acquaintance. My friend, an idealist who hated seeing how the rich and powerful took advantage of those with lower incomes, argued that credit was a force for exploitation.
While Ive certainly seen exploitative lending practicesIve been a financial writer for 15 years, after allits equally clear that credit is necessary for ordinary people to get ahead. Without access to credit, things like home ownership would never be possible for anyone who wasnt already rich.
Of course, my friends point also stands. Lending can often be exploitative, leading to cycles of debt and entrenched poverty. But we live in a world where having a credit score is just about mandatory. Since we cant opt out of this wildly imperfect system, the best thing we can do is understand its pitfalls and potential benefitsand minimize the harm it does.
Busybodies from the start: The history of credit bureaus
Credit reporting got its start in the 19th century when retailers would share financial information with each other about their customers. If youve ever seen small retailers post photos of customers who are not allowed to pay by check, you can understand how this kind of sharing of information could be a helpful tool for protecting a narrow profit margin.
Unfortunately, early credit reporting also had quite a bit of prejudice built in. By the 1960s, credit reporting agencies not only reported financial information, but also any lifestyles or conduct that could be gleaned from newspapers or other public sources. This meant individuals were being denied financial opportunities based on their sexual orientation, alcohol use, or any other behaviors that may have put them in the public eye.
What was even more infuriating was that these credit reporting agencies were not required to disclose the confidential information they had gathered about each individual. So if you were denied a mortgage or a job because of what was in your credit files, you had no right to see what was blocking you from the opportunity.
Privacy, please: The Fair Credit Reporting Act
To rectify the opacity of early 20th century credit reporting, Congress passed the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) in 1970. The FCRA was the first official data privacy law, and through years of tweaking, the law has granted the following rights to consumers regarding their credit reports:
You have the right to receive a free copy of your credit report
You have the right to receive notification if you are denied credit or employment based on information in your credit report
You have to the right to dispute errors on your credit report
The credit bureaus must investigate such disputes and correct inaccurate information within 30 days
The credit bureaus must remove outdated information on your credit report after a certain length of timetypically seven to ten years
The credit bureaus can be held liable for knowingly reporting inaccurate or outdated information
An employer must get written permission from you before accessing your credit report
You have the right to freeze your credit
The credit bureaus must give you the option to exclude yourself from lists for unsolicited insurance and credit offers
The FCRA is an elegant piece of legislation that has grown with the changes to the credit reporting industry. It offers consumers a number of vital privacy protections and rights that we take for granted today. (Credit bureaus of yore used to look at marriages and arrests rather than your verifiable financial behavior, which is much more likely to correlate with your likelihood of paying back a loan.)
That said, these rights still put the onus on the consumer to assert them. You must still work against the giant machinery that is the credit reporting industry if there is a problem with your credit report. And unfortunately, that is more likely to happen than not.
Incompetent stalkers: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion
The three largest credit bureaus in the United States are Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Each of these ginormous companies have a file on any consumer with a digital financial presence. In other words, if youve ever used a credit card, debit card, online payment system, digital payment system, or any other non-cash method of payment, then youre probably in a file somewhere in one of these companys vaults.
The credit bureaus gather information about you from any financial institution you may interact with, including your bank, credit card issuer, mortgage lender, loan servicer, credit union, or collection agency.
This may not exactly be stalker-like behaviorbut it does feel weird that our economy is reliant on third party companies gathering financial intel about consumers without their consent. Like, why are you so obsessed with us?
Youd think that the credit bureaus would at least get the facts right if theyre going to invade consumers financial privacy. But in 2024, a Consumer Reports study found that 44% of consumers had an error on their credit report. Whats more worrisome, 27% of respondents found a financial error that would affect their ability to qualify for a loan.
Sure, we have the right to dispute these errors. But the dispute process is a pain the neck none of us wants to take onand an insulting cherry on top of the creepy stalker sundae.
Exercise your credit rights
The credit industry in America reminds me of Winston Churchills words about government: Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried.
The way we have set up credit in America is intrusive and potentially predatory and puts the onus on the consumer when the giant credit bureaus have institutional power. But its better than any other alternatives that have been triedbecause of the legislation that protects our rights as consumers. Which means we should all be execising those rights as early and as often as possible. Its good for us!
So even though looking at your credit report sounds about as fun as stabbing yourself in the eye with a rusty spoon, consider the following credit-related tasks as an all-American to-do list that will simultaneously protect your finances. (No need to tackle all these in one go. Take your time with your patriotic chores).
Request your credit report
You used to only be allowed one peek at your report per year, but you can now get a weekly online report from each of the three major credit bureaus.
But the old system is preserved in the name of the only official site where you can request your credit report for free as required by federal law: annualcreditreport.com
Remember, there are three credit bureaus, and you need to look at the credit reports from each one. While the information is usually about the same, there can be some discrepancies, and its important to know what differences may lurk between your credit reports.
Dispute any errors you find
Unfortunately, theres a good chance youll find something inaccurate in one or more of your credit reports. There are a number of common errors, including:
Typos, like incorrect addresses, phone numbers, or misspelled names
Mistaken identity, where someone with a similar name was misidentified as you
Identity theft
Incorrect account reporting, like an open account listed as closed or vice versa
Incorrect account ownership, where an authorized person is listed as an account owner
Wrong dates for last payment, date of account opening, or date of first delinquency
Errors in reporting an account as delinquent
Same debts listed more than once
Data management errors, like an account with an incorrect current balance or credit limit
If you find an error, you need to dispute it with the specific credit bureau the error appears on. Heres how to file disputes with each of the three credit bureaus:
Equifax: equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services/credit-dispute/
Experian: experian.com/help/dispute-credit/
TransUnion: transunion.com/credit-disputes/dispute-your-credit
Under Federal law, the credit bureau must investigate and correct the error within 30 days.
Freeze your credit
Freezing your credit is one of the most useful credit rights in the modern world. When your credit is frozen, no onenot even youcan open new credit accounts in your name. Which means that even if identity thieves get hold of your identifying information, they cant do a darn thing with it.
A credit freeze lasts indefinitely, so theres no need to remember to renew, although you will need to thaw it the next time you want to open a new line of credit. To freeze your credit with each of the bureaus, simply navigate to their websites and follow the prompts:
Equifax: equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services
Experian: experian.com/help
Transunion: transunion.com/credit-help
Opt out of unsolicited insurance and credit offers
The FCRA gives consumers the right to opt out of unsolicited offers for insurance and credit. If youd like to exercise that right (and why not?!), navigate to optoutprescreen.com and follow the instructions to stop the phone calls and mail solicitationsand enjoy the peace that ensues.
Always look on the bright side of credit
As infuriating as our credit system may be, we still have power and rights as consumers. Exercising those rights will ensure that we keep that power.
Research shows employees who engage in unethical behaviorsurprisinglyare not new to their organizations. They have been there for a considerable amount of time, typically at least six years, and have risen through their companies. Worse, the longer they have been with their organizations, the greater the financial and reputational damage when unethical behavior occurs.
And though we might think of corporate misconduct as C-suite malfeasance, unethical behavior can occur at all levelsand many offenders have a steady career path. It begs the question: could an ethical assessment have been designed during their career progression to have detected someone being more subject to ethical risk before they were promoted?
While there are numerous resources available to help gauge someones ethics during the initial hiring process, in our experience in executive search and career coaching (Ellie) and ethics consulting (Richard), we’ve seen that such screening is at best “one and done.” Once the onboarding process is completed, it’s vanishingly rare for companies to evaluate employees’ ethics as part of the promotion process. We believe this is a mistake and a missed opportunity.
By following these four key strategies, you can design an ethical assessment for mid- to senior-level leaders, to ensure they dont disregard ethics as their careers advancebecause, as the research behind numerous scandals demonstrates, ethics isn’t a fixed state but can be dramatically impacted by changed context and professional circumstances. Yet, with planning and design work, you can help keep ethics and career advancement alignedwhile protecting your company from reputational or regulatory trouble.
1. Explore the candidate’s previous ethical track record
Dont miss vital data from your candidates career so far. Liaise with your HR Director to review any relevant and accessible information. This could include:
Hiring documentation, like reference checks, interviews, and assessment notes
Performance review documentation
360-degree feedback reports
Disciplinary or grievance processes
Look for anything that could point to ethical gray areas that you would like to explore further, including formal complaints raised about the individual, incomplete reference checks, as well as borderline scores on values or ethics at the interview stage.
Its not uncommon for individuals to move around large organizations with numerous personnel touchpoints. Therefore, its crucial to reach out to individuals who have worked alongside your candidate to solicit feedback on their experiences. A great way to do this is to gather anonymous feedback. Ideally, this would include a cross-section of employees at different levels and functions. Questions could include:
Would you have any ethical or behavioral concerns about them stepping into a role with more responsibility?
How do they role model the values of the organization?
Did they ever take an ethical decision that might have been at the cost of commercial success?
Would you feel comfortable speaking to them when confronting an ethical dilemma?
2. Consider what new ethical challenges might arise
Its critical to identify new risks and ethical challenges that might arise in a post-promotion role that are not present in the current one. In our work, we have encountered a number of such changes, including:
Geography: Different regions have different customs and practices that might pressure test ones ethics. For example, Richard was promoted to the VP of International Sales, from a U.S. role, moving from a low-profile role for corruption risk to high-risk regions, bringing a cascade of ethical challenges that did not exist in his prior role.
Increased pressure and ethical impact: Your candidate will likely be accountable for team targets, as opposed to individual ones, contributing to increased earnings potential, along with the risks of not meeting financial goals and targets. Employees under such high financial stress are eleven times more likely to jeopardize regulatory compliance. There are a number of additional factors that might contribute to unhealthy stress that can result in these ethical lapses, including our current environment of economic and social volatility.
3. Ask candidates to complete an ethical self-reflection as a discussion point in the promotion interview
Simply asking your candidate “are you ethical” wont lead to any valuable insights; however, a self-reflection can prompt an honest introspection about what matters most when it comes to ethical conduct. This can be a simple online template for your candidate to complete and share with you in advance of the interview. Here are some questions that might prompt your candidate to think deeply about their ethics and values:
Can you give an example of when your values or ethics were challenged in the past and how that impacted your decision-making?
Do you think your future role will challenge your values and ethics differently from your current role? If so, how will you manage these ethical challenges?
Can you tell us about someone you respect for their ethics and values-based leadership, and why?
As you move to the more formal part of the promotion process, ensure the interview process integrates these responses to ethical challenges as well as other performance measures for the new role. Probe any responses from their self-reflection that warrant further discussion. Ian Johnston, a chief people officer with decades of experience, favors scenario-based questions, exploring a moral dilemma the individual had encountered. Example interview questions could include:
Tell me about a time you made an unpopular decision because it was the right thing to do. How did you communicate this? Would you do anything differently?
Whats the biggest ethical error youve made, and how did you manage it? What did you learn?
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you thought a colleague misrepresented something? What did you do about it?
What do ou believe you will need to do differently in the future to navigate ethical challenges with greater responsibility?
4. Analyze what the data is telling you
You now have a lot of ethical information about your candidate, so its time to review the data you have gathered from the above steps.
Ensure a rigorous focus on how they achieved results and how they handled ethical setbacks. When analyzing how the candidate will perform ethically in a new role, look for positive indicators and red flags. While these will differ depending on the organization and the role, positive indicators would include that the candidate had a positive track record of speaking up, calling out unethical behavior, and was a good listener when ethical issues were brought to their attention.
For example, one of Richards clients had a recently promoted Sales VP give an “ethical award” at a Sales Kickoff Conference to someone on her team who spoke up and disrupted a large order due to the unethical conduct of a third party involved in the transaction.
Negative ethical indicators or “red flags” might include an unwillingness to talk about how they achieved results, ambiguous replies during the interview, and/or a lack of awareness of what had not worked with respect to ethics and integrity, with no suggestions as to what could be improved.
While past behavior may not be an entirely precise predictor of future ethical conduct, its a strong signal as to how your candidate will respond to ethical challenges that are ahead. If there are any “red flags,” ask yourself what these are telling you.
As Jamie Browne, managing director of Leonid, a corporate governance hiring specialist firm, cautioned, A candidate who is fixed on results, targets, or efficiency but with little reference to values or ethics can be problematic. Someone who does this may rationalize unethical shortcuts to what they might perceive as the necessities of business growth, with or without integrity.
If your candidate gets that promotion, its easy to move on to the work at hand, but dont forget to keep ethics front of mind, and dont give a long ethical “leash” to your new leader. For example, you might want to schedule regular “check-ins” to make sure that your newly promoted employee is comfortable in their new role, and to give them the opportunity to share any ethical or commercial challenges.
You might even consider pairing them with an ethical mentorsomeone who has experienced a similar move that understands the realities and can support their development in the new role
By following these strategies and designing an ethical assessment as part of the promotion process, companies can ensure they’re promoting candidates who can handle new ethical pressures that may come with increased or changed responsibilitiesand protect themselves from costly scandals and breaches that can bring down both employees and corporations.
This summer, Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman became co-owners of Australia’s three-time champion SailGP team. Days earlier, Anne Hathaway joined a female-led consortium purchasing Italy’s team for around $45 million. Kylian Mbappé has bought into France’s squad, while Sebastian Vettel, Deontay Wilder, and DeAndre Hopkins have each acquired stakes in teams.
So, what’s drawing A-list celebrities away from traditional sports properties and toward a sailing league that’s only been around for six years?
The answer lies in how SailGP has cracked a code that eluded the sport for centuries. What Russell Coutts, the league’s CEO and cofounder, described as once being white triangles on a blue background racing far away from shore now looks more like Formula 1 on water.
[Photo: SailGP]
Flying boats, record speeds
Forget everything you think you know about sailboats. SailGP’s F50 catamarans fly above the water on hydrofoilsunderwater wings that lift the hulls completely out of the waterat speeds exceeding 100 kilometers per hour.
That’s 62 mph. On water. Powered only by wind.
Most powerboats can’t even keep up.
The boats don’t use traditional sails. Instead, the 50-foot boats have rigid wings built like airplane wings turned vertical, standing up to 80 feet tall. “This produces what we, in engineering terms, call a lift coefficient that is three times higher than a thin membrane sail,” Coutts explains.
Translation: They catch wind more efficiently than conventional sails, generating massive thrust even in light conditions.
When a boat moves forward, it creates its own windjust like how your hand feels resistance when you stick it out a car window. By angling these high-efficiency wings correctly, F50s use both the actual wind and the wind they create through their own speed to go more than three times faster than the wind itself.
[Photo: SailGP]
Nine-minute races and $80 tickets
Traditional sailing races stretched for hours with boats barely visible from shore. SailGP races last nine to 12 minutes and feature four races per day: short, intense bursts with enough time between heats for a bathroom break and a cocktail.
The shorter race format enables something traditional sailing never could: close-to-shore competition in iconic harbors. Events happen in places like Sydney Harbor, New York Harbor, and San Francisco Bay. Stadium seating sells out weeks in advance. Auckland and Portsmouth each drew 25,000 ticketed fans.
Tickets start at $80 for waterfront grandstand seatsaccessible pricing that brings the sport to a far broader audience than the yacht club exclusivity of traditional sailing. Fans can watch from grandstands or rent a boat and watch from the water. It’s part race, part waterfront festival.
The spectacle translates to screens, too. Augmented reality graphics superimposed on the water create a visible playing field with boundaries, like the yard markers on a football field. Before this, even dedicated sailing fans struggled to follow races on TV. Now, even the most casual fan can understand who’s winning and why.
Since launching in 2019, viewership has reached 200 million per season across 212 territories globally. CBS attracted 1.78 million viewers for its Spain Sail Grand Prix broadcastthe largest audience for a sailing event in the U.S. in 30 yearsexceeding what some regular-season NHL games pull. More recently, on November 23, CBS’s broadcast of The Race to Abu Dhabi drew 3.47 million viewers, breaking the previous U.S. viewership record for a sailing event established by the 1992 America’s Cup on ABC.
“We were pleasantly surprised to find that the appeal to the racing fan was identical to the appeal to the avid sailing fan,” Coutts recalls. “We’ve got confidence now that the product stands up.”
[Photo: SailGP]
From money pit to money maker
In 2019, Coutts and Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison launched SailGP with one deceptively simple innovation: a regular season.
For decades, professional sailing meant wealthy enthusiasts funding expensive hobbies with no return. The America’s Cupsailing’s premier event for 174 yearsexemplified the broken model.
Imagine if the Super Bowl happened once every four years with no regular season in between. No predictable schedule. No way for athletes to plan or build a career. That’s been the America’s Cup. Sponsors couldn’t justify the investment. Broadcasters couldn’t build programming around it. Teams couldn’t make it profitable.
“It sounds so simple, doesn’t it?” says Jimmy Spithill, CEO and co-owner of the Red Bull Italy SailGP Team. “But whether you’re an athlete, a sponsor, or a broadcasterif it wasn’t a regular season, how could you plan?”
Upon founding, Ellison committed to funding the league for five years. But the transformation happened faster than anyone expected. Teams that couldn’t be sold in 2019 now command $60 to $70 million valuations. Four of the league&8217;s 12 teams are already profitablea milestone that took the WNBA 13 years to achieve and that Wrexham, Reynolds’ soccer team, still hasn’t reached.
In traditional sailing, teams burned millions on secret boat development that never stopped. That game is over. The business model prevents this money pit problem. All teams race identical boats. All performance data is completely sharedboat telemetry, race strategies, even engineering insights. When the league develops an upgradenew hydrofoils, better control systemsevery team gets it simultaneously. There is no buying wins.
“Everyone’s on the same equipment,” Spithill says. “So no one has a technical advantage.”
[Photo: SailGP]
The investment thesis that sold Hollywood
When Gian Luca Passi de Preposulo evaluated investing in the Red Bull Italy team, he saw something bigger than sailing. The Italian luxury brand executive who spent years at Giorgio Armani and Moncler recognized a familiar pattern.
“I saw a growing sport with an incredible heritage because of the America’s Cup,” he says. “Millions of fans following this through generations, but no competition on a weekly or monthly base.”
Passi de Preposulo recognized the pattern: a legacy sport with millions of fans but no consistent competition to followexactly the gap SailGP’s regular season format filled.
But he also saw that the business model offers investment advantages impossible in more mature leagues. National team scarcityone per country, capped at around 20 teams totalcreates inherent value. Buying a $60 million SailGP team gives you a significantly larger ownership stake and more governance rights than putting that same money into a $5 billion NFL franchise. Men and women race together on the same boatsunusual in professional sportsdoubling the target audience and appealing to the increasing pool of investors backing women’s sports.
Teams operate on standard sports economics: sponsorship, broadcast revenue shares, and licensing. But only six years in, most revenue streams remain undeveloped. The four profitable teams achieved this through sponsorship alone. Cash cows like broadcast rights and licensing represent pure upside. Team valuations reflect this trajectory.
“In season three, you could have bought a team for $20 million,” Coutts says. “Now you’re not going to buy a team for under $70.”
[Photo: SailGP]
Scaling SailGP
From six teams and five events in 2019, SailGP now runs 12 teams across 12 events. The target: 20-plus events annually, matching Formula 1’s 24. Teams 13 and 14 are already sold for the 2026 and 2027 seasons, and the league projects over $200 million in annual revenue by season’s end, which culminates this weekend with the Grand Final in Abu Dhabi, where the top three teams will compete for a $2 million prize.
Rolex signed a 10-year title sponsorship, renaming the competition the Rolex SailGP Championship. Its by far the biggest partnership in sailing, Coutts says. Amazon, Tommy Hilfiger, and T-Mobile have also joined as team sponsors.
Events now generate an average $26.2 million in economic impact for host citiesquadruple the $6.8 million from Season 1, according to SailGP. For context, Formula 1 races generate $200 to $400 million.
The celebrity investment impact is measurable. Market research firm YouGov tracks “buzz scores”a measure of whether people are hearing positive or negative things about a brand. In Australia, SailGP scores jumped from 22.0 to 26.3 in two weeks following the Reynolds and Jackman announcement. France saw similar lifts after Mbappé’s investment.
For Reynolds, SailGP represents another portfolio expansion. His Maximum Effort Investments backs Wrexham AFC, Club Necaxa, La Equidad, and Alpine F1. His Wrexham successtransforming an obscure Welsh soccer club through marketing genius and storytellingoffers a template as SailGP looks to continue its growth, both in investment and global audience.
“The fact that we can get that sort of [celebrity] involvement in one of the teams is amazing,” Coutts says. “And they’ll have some fun with it too, which is what it’s all about.”
