Author: Sam Allcock
Seeing a way to solve climate change turn into a money-making scheme is kind of ironic. It should be easy to understand carbon credits: businesses that pollute too much buy permits from businesses that don’t pollute enough. Green projects get money. The Earth benefits. It was a clear, market-sensible idea that would look great on a whiteboard. In real life, things have been messier. Wall Street was the first to notice the hole. Carbon credits are bought by companies and then sent to projects that are supposed to absorb emissions. Along the way, more and more brokers, resellers, exchanges, and…
There is a moment that shows how strange Goop’s rise has been. Harvard Business School asked Gwyneth Paltrow to speak to a class of MBA students in November 2017. These are the people who study market logic, competitive moats, and sustainable advantage all day. Why was she there? To talk about how her wellness brand had grown to be worth $250 million. A company that paid $145,000 to settle a lawsuit over jade eggs that were sold as tools for balancing hormones. The kids agreed and wrote down what they heard. That picture says a lot. At its core, the…
She came up with the idea for The Honest Company because she wanted to solve a certain problem. It was 2008, she was pregnant, and it seemed harder than it should have been to find natural baby products that were also affordable. That anger turned into a business, and it grew into a public company worth more than a billion dollars. In between, there was a story about ambition, timing the market, and how harsh Wall Street can be when the growth story stops making sense. In May 2021, The Honest Company went public on the Nasdaq at $16 a…
At the end of 2020, Nasdaq quietly opened the world’s first water futures market. This was a financial product that was tied to the price of water in California. It wasn’t in the news like crude oil is. But people who had been paying close attention to the water sector thought it was a sign. the kind that usually comes before something much bigger starts. Most of the Earth’s surface is water, but only a small amount of it is fresh water, and even less is easy to get to. Those numbers haven’t changed a great deal. What has changed…
Business reporters sat down to type about the Victoria Beckham fashion label for years because it was the kind of story they were used to hearing. A wealthy celebrity with a well-known last name starts a high-end brand. It spends money quickly. They roll their eyes. In the background, the losses are slowly adding up, but the front pages are all about the fashion shows. It seemed like it had to happen. It didn’t seem like it was going to happen, and to be honest, it still does. The story didn’t end there. With the launch of her namesake label…
It put up a sign on the door of a distillery on Northwest Wilson Street in Portland, Oregon, on June 28. It said: “Thank you for all the memories, Portland. Stay weird.” The Aviation American Gin visitor center was finished in an instant. A celebrity co-owner, four years of business, and a tasting room that Ryan Reynolds once called “Disneyland for adults” came to an end with a note that felt more like a band breaking up than a company closing down a building. Diageo, the London-based beverage company that bought Aviation in 2020, quietly announced the closing. It has…
There’s something quietly interesting about Kunal Shah’s money. While he is in charge of one of the most popular messaging apps in the world, he has built two big companies and backed hundreds of startups. However, he doesn’t give any hard numbers. Not a real number. No ticker to keep an eye on. Just guesses that are often very different from each other in the financial media. Kunal Shah’s net worth is said to be between $500 million and $2 billion, which is about ₹4,700 crore to ₹15,000 crore. That’s a very wide range for someone with his background. It…
There is something quietly sobering about seeing how much money Chris Johnson has in 2026. The man known as “CJ2K” has an estimated net worth of $14 million. He got that name by doing something that only ten other players in NFL history have ever done. That number holds some weight for a player who was in the news almost every Sunday for five years. Shame and failure are not okay. Just the truth about what careers in professional sports look like when the lights are off. Johnson joined the NFL in 2008, when the Tennessee Titans picked him with…
During most reunion tours, you can tell if the band really wanted to be back together or were just there to make money. When I was at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth and watched Geddy Lee jump around on stage during “Freewill,” I knew the answer was pretty clear. Rush was keen on being here. The crowd, which was mostly men and very emotional, wanted them there even more. But to get to that point, you had to be very patient, which is something that only Rush fans could do. The band was supposed to start their four-night stay in…
When Ro Khanna talks about wealth inequality, there is something quietly striking about it. This California congressman talks about the “new Gilded Age,” tech billionaires getting too much power, and kids not having enough food because the rich don’t pay their fair share. He does this with a sense of urgency. He sometimes sounds like someone who has grown tired of the game from the outside. But Ro Khanna is really on the inside. A new report from the Washington Free Beacon says Khanna’s net worth might be more than $340 million. Every word he says at a podium is…