Fellow LitGang,

I know we’re already a week into the New Year but it’s better late than never to take the time to summarize my 2023 and give the Litquidity community insight into the business and my thoughts for 2024.

2021 was the year of GameStop, the Goldman Sachs 13, and all-time highs across equities, crypto, NFTs, and literally anything that could be traded for money. It was truly a year of irrational exuberance.

2022 was a volatility rollercoaster. The Russia / Ukraine conflict, nuclear threats, inflation, recession fears, widespread layoffs, frauds, the list goes on.

2023 was a mix of the above. Continued layoffs, bank implosions, the “golden age of private credit”, and a slow down on rate hikes / inflation.

For me (personally), 2023 was a year filled with big life changes, profound self-growth, and the planting of seeds for the future. It’s kinda corny to say, but this was the beginning of a new chapter in my life and I’m incredibly excited for what’s ahead.

This letter will cover my experiences, observations, learnings, and predictions in various categories:

1. Business Building

2. Digital Media

3. Venture Capital

4. Litney Partners

5. BOND Life Club

As I also mentioned last year, I opened up a Litquidity Miami HQ (read: got an apartment lol) and it has been a great lifestyle change during the winters while still maintaining a place in NYC. I’ve been able to play tennis, padel, and golf regularly without breaking the bank, spend time on the beach, and establish a network friends and business partners.

I’ll primarily be in Miami for the winter and back in NYC / East Hampton in the summer.

I’m always looking to network, build, and play the above mentioned sports, so hmu if you're in town: [email protected]!

Let’s dive in.

1. BUSINESS BUILDING

Three years after leaving a career on Wall Street to grow my business, I’ve accomplished an immense amount and learned more than any MBA program could ever teach someone about building and operating a business, let alone several at once.

It’s been quite the journey, filled with ups and downs, anxiety attacks, high stress, big wins, failures, and heartbreak along the way. I wouldn’t trade it for anything else in the world, though.

In 2023, I met a ton of amazing individuals in NYC, the Hamptons, Miami, and London. Some who I am proud to now call family and others who are amazing, pure-hearted friends. There was a lot of introspection, meditation, and an effort to surround myself with people who push me to be a better, healthier, and more compassionate human. 2023 was the start of a new chapter in my life and I am proud of what I achieved.

Here are some highlights:

• Co-found three new businesses that are poised to crush it: Litney Partners, BOND Life Club, and The Padel Press

• Invested ~$3 million of capital through Litquidity Syndicate SPVs and Litquidity Venture Partners I (more on that later) into companies spanning fintech, AI, space, and sports

• Recorded a podcast with the Mayor of Miami

• Featured in the Financial Times, Bloomberg, and New York Post

• Branded two padel courts in the Hamptons with a Litquidity logo

• Surpassed 800k followers on Litquidity and 250k subs on Exec Sum

• Hosted a handful of in-person events: Fireside w/ Bain Capital Ventures, a fintech happy hour for New York Tech Week, a fireside chat at USC, and the inaugural “Lit Cup” tennis tournament at BOND East Hampton

• Lost 10+ lbs of fat

• Gained new families with my BOND and Litney Partners teams 🤝

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My goal in building my business has always been to create a sustainable enterprise that could withstand the test of time and weather tough macro environments. In 2023, I laid the foundation to create a lasting brand. Instead of simply focusing on growing my social media following or newsletter subscribers (i.e. vertical expansion), I focused on horizontal expansion.

Much like “market-neutral” hedge funds that construct diversified portfolios to generate returns uncorrelated to the market, I too have sought to create a diverse platform with multiple revenue streams that can succeed in both bull and bear markets.

Litquidity is now much more than a media brand. It is a “HoldCo” for a multi-media brand, an e-commerce business, an investing arm, a private members club, and a recruiting firm.

While several of these businesses were launched just a few months ago, the foundation has been set with strong branding, clear go-to-market strategies, strong unit economics, relatively low capital requirements, and most importantly: good early traction.

That said, it all revolves around good content, authenticity, and the trust of an engaged audience. All of this would not be possible without the support of the followers, subscribers, and customers who fuel the beast. Shoutout to you all! Below are just a handful of photos of the Litquidity community repping the merch, y’all are the best.

KEY LEARNINGS

Here’s my advice to anyone thinking of building a following / brand / business:

• Own your audience. Audiences value authenticity and prioritize individual voices over brands (same advice as last year). Work with your audience, build a relationship with them, listen to your core following, and adapt your content in order to stand out as a community-leader. Otherwise, you’ll just be a random “shitpost” account that no one will care about if you get banned. To the extent possible, own the relationship by collecting emails / phone numbers to directly reach your audience. Social media followings are built on “rented land” and are at the mercy of the platforms who can ban you or change their algorithms to suppress your visibility.

• Surround yourself with good people. Do business with people you get along with and partner with those who strengthen your brand, rather than dilute it. Your business is as good as your people, your product, and your partners. Remember to do your due diligence and align yourself with honest individuals.

• Learn when to switch from growth mode to operating mode. It’s one thing to be a visionary and ideas guy, but new ideas require execution and proper attention to succeed. While it’s been incredibly exciting and rewarding to continue incubating new businesses and being involved in various things beyond media and investing, it has been extremely stressful and stretched me uncomfortably thin at times. Understand when you have a lot on your plate and find ways to optimize workflows, delegate tasks, and improve efficiency. This is even more important if you’re bootstrapped and working with very limited resources.

WHAT'S IN STORE FOR THE BUSINESS IN 2024:

• Focus: Nourishing the various business lines that were created in 2023 and help them blossom in the new year (instead of further expanding horizontally)

• More Content: Generating and posting more content regularly on social media and bringing back the podcast w/ a new co-host

• Grow: Refocusing on Exec Sum’s growth (as growth decelerated in 2023 due to other priorities)

• Strengthen Relationships: On the investing front, I plan on identifying heavy hitters in my angel syndicate and engaging them more personally to establish trust, credibility, and a familiarity with their investment preferences. On the partnerships front, I plan on doubling down on strong relationships and finding new ways to work together (events, dinners, giveaways, etc) and identifying / reaching out to new brand partners that will take the business to the next level

• Plan & attend events: Organizing private dinners, padel matches, golf outings, happy hours to meet more people (and hopefully generate more business prospects)

If you are sitting at your desk in Midtown Manhattan feeling unfulfilled, jaded, and want to do something more hands on and creating equity value, I highly recommend pursuing entrepreneurship. It’s not for everyone, but it’s INCREDIBLY rewarding.

Let's now dive deeper into the various business segments I’ve been busy working on.

2. DIGITAL MEDIA📱📰 

Social Media

The @litquidity instagram and @litcapital twitter accounts continued to grow nicely, albeit at a slower clip than prior years due primarily to fewer posts (recall, I was focused on horizontal expansion) and deep ‘core audience’ penetration. I’m not really looking to change the DNA of the main account to appeal to a larger audience. I’d rather have 800k followers who are affluent, high-earning investment bankers / investors than an audience of 3 million+ composed of teenagers yolo’ing $500 bucks on options on Robinhood.

Growth: The audience grew to 803k on IG (up from 743k in 2022) and 348k on Twitter (up from 310k last year) at the time of writing. Other social accounts in the network (@wallstreetintern, @thisguyfuchz, @venturekaepital, @retrowallstreet, @exec.sum) also grew modestly. Collectively, the total Audience Under Management (“AUM”) is 2.5 million+.

M&A: The LitCap M&A team also acquired and began integrating two new brands: @pikacap on twitter (500k+ followers) and @thebestofpadel on instagram (23k followers). Valuation and revenue multiples not disclosed 😉. These are slightly out of the core Wall Street / finance theme and will help broaden the scope of the media portfolio. The idea is that these accounts will appeal to more retail and racquet sports-focused audiences and open up additional monetization streams, without compromising the core brand.

Content: I took the year off from making video montages like the Covid Vaccine Hype video or the Saving Capital Markets video that summarized the blood bath in public markets. I will bring these back in 2024 now that I’m re-focused on content and have been able to delegate operational tasks to others! This year also saw the proliferation of the “meme dump”, the short IG reels memes with the large captions and green-screen cutouts, and AI generated images. I will admit I underutilized these “updates” in the meme game but rest-assured I’ve got the apps downloaded, a ChatGPT+ subscription, and will be coming in hot this year!!!

Monetization: 2023 was definitely slower than 2020-2022, as the advertising budgets largely follow the performance of the broader market. This was another reason for my focus on diversifying my revenues streams, because it was unclear how long this soft advertising market would last.

Nonetheless, it was great to still see ad revenue come in and a build out of my affiliate partnerships, while still keeping a high bar on the partnerships I accept. As a reminder, my framework in accepting partnerships has always been to properly vet the quality of the product, the integrity of the founders, and the relevance to the audience - the same way I would vet a startup for a potential investment. More often than not, the products advertised on my pages are products I personally use and/or for which I can personally vouch.

The beauty of social media marketing from a business perspective is that it is virtually 100% margin (if you run incredibly lean). However, running too many ads will dilute the brand and turn off the followers so it’s a delicate balance and something I always keep in mind. That said, I think social media is maturing and audiences understand that quality content and growth requires funding and advertising helps sustain brands. The key is to stay on brand.

If you’re looking to advertise on my channels, shoot us an email at [email protected] and also pls fill out this very quick form.

And with that, I’ll leave y’all with a few of my favorite posts from 2023:

Newsletters 

Exec Sum is my flagship daily newsletter that launched January 2021. At its core, the newsletter is quite simple: summarize the most relevant financial news in as few words as possible. Over the past three years, I'm proud of the immense value this simple newsletter has provided to thousands of individuals. If you're not signed up, wtf are you waiting for??? 

Exec Sum is not providing financial advice and is not here to write essays about interest rates and yield curves. We’re simply summarizing financial news in a way that (hopefully) doesn’t make you want to gouge your eyeballs out.

Exec Sum has grown to 265,000 subscribers (majority organic) and boasts a unique open rate of ~50%. For context, that's significantly stronger than pretty much any large business newsletter like Axios Pro Rata, Morning Brew, Bloomberg Deals, Wall Street Journal, or The Hustle. And for broader reference, the average email newsletter open rate across all industries is ~20%, per MailChimp.

But don’t just take it from me, it was something that even Bloomberg’s former head of news product recognized over the summer in a LinkedIn post. Here’s an excerpt:

Thank you for your kind words, Ted. It’s truly an honor and makes me feel like I made the right decision to leave my career on Wall Street!

But that’s not all in the newsletter side of the business… in 2023, I also helped co-found The Padel Press.

I am a huge fan of padel (not to be confused w/ pickleball or platform tennis) and have been studying the market closely in US, where the sport is still very nascent. While padel clubs, leagues, teams, and other infrastructure is still being built (or imported from abroad), it was clear that there was an opportunity to create a US-focused media entity dedicated to the news around the sport. Current padel media incumbents are either from either Spain, Mexico, Argentina, and are written in Spanish and published in very bulky web 1.0-type formats.

The goal of The Padel Press is to be an early mover in the industry and help build awareness, track the growth of the sport, and be a core piece of the US padel infrastructure. We’re currently at ~50,000 subscribers and already monetizing through ads. In 2024, we expect to ramp up advertising revenue, conduct product reviews, report live from tournaments, and also host our own events at new clubs with brand sponsors.

Newsletter Monetization:

Exec Sum is a free newsletter, so obviously there are ads to help pay the bills. I try to do my best to understand you (the audience) in order to source the most relevant sponsors and keep things interesting! Plus, if the ad doesn’t appeal to you, guess what… you can just keep scrolling (although link clicks help us out so we appreciate any and all clicks from y'all 😩🙏). That said, I've been incredibly proud to work with a wide variety of amazing sponsors and affiliates such as Eight Sleep, Mizzen + Main, Wall Street Prep, and more.

The Padel Press is also a free newsletter and we look forward to establishing relationships with sporting equipment, apparel, energy drink, and footwear brands in the new year!

If you want to advertise on Exec Sum or The Padel Press, pls fill out this quick form and reach out to us at [email protected]!

Observations / 2024 Plan

The newsletter business is great. It’s relatively stable and subscribers are stickier than followers on social media. From a business standpoint, it’s also incredibly high margin, with a lot of operating leverage. And as I said before, it’s a great way to directly interact with my audience / own the relationship.

My plan in 2024 is to focus on a mix of organic and paid growth marketing campaigns to accelerate subscriber growth, as this was less of a focus in 2023. Additionally, I believe there is an opportunity to launch a subscription tier of the newsletter, but I will only do it if there is real value that can be delivered and published on a recurring basis. Would love to hear your thoughts if anyone in the audience has any!

Podcast

Given everything I had going on personally and business-wise, this was on the back burner. Big Swinging Decks was a truly differentiated podcast given its blend of financial commentary, discussion of Wall Street culture, and humor.

As I’ve been able to expand the team to assist on the operations front, I intend to bring back a podcast in 2024, ideally with a co-host who has experience working in IB/PE/VC/HF and a great sense of humor (if you think that’s you, shoot your shot!)

The idea is to focus on interviewing deal makers, startup founders, celebrity / athletes-turned investors, cover interesting news, and also share more tales / tips from our times in the bullpen. 

ASK: If anyone can introduce me to solid sponsorship candidates, please email me at [email protected]. Preferably companies focused on financial services, mental health, luxury consumer goods, or alcohol (we litttt) 

Many thx in advance!

3. VENTURE CAPITAL 🦄💰

Over the past three years, I've learned a ton about venture capital and angel investing while building up a portfolio of over 40 investments across fintech, consumer, sports, and AI. You can see my portfolio here. 

Memes, media distribution, and community-building expertise are all sought-after by startup founders and have provided me with unique and unparalleled access into funding rounds led by Tier 1 VC funds such as Lightspeed Ventures, Founders Fund, and more.

2023 was a tough year in venture, as many companies were still reeling from the FTX fallout, crypto bubble burst, and tech stock rut. Tech companies were slashing jobs left and right and startups were running out of runway. However, its worth remembering that diamonds are created under pressure and seeing resilient founders grind, valuations reset, and a bigger focus on profitability was a silver lining.

This year, I was fortunate to invest in incredible businesses spanning AI, fintech, consumer, padel, and space. All-in, I was able to deploy ~$3 million of equity capital across early-stage primaries and late-stage secondaries (namely SpaceX) through Bain Capital Ventures’ scout fund, SPVs and Litquidity Venture Partners I (a fund exclusively focused on investing in YC demo day startups where I believe I can add value).

Here are some of my investments from 2023:

• Bezel: a marketplace for authenticated luxury watches. Investors include BoxGroup, CourtsideVC, Shrug Capital, John Legend, Steve Aoki, Kevin Hart, Michael Rubin, and Michael Ovitz

• Cylera: a healthcare IoT cybersecurity and intelligence company used to protect healthcare organizations. Lead investor: Maverick Ventures

• Dili: an AI co-pilot that automates deal due diligence for sell- and buy-side teams

• Rose AI: a cloud data platform that leverages generative AI to help users find, visualize, and share data. Lead investor: Streamlined Ventures

• SpaceX: spacecraft manufacturer, launch service provider, defense contractor, and satellite communications company

Litquidity Venture Partners I (“LVP”)

This year, I was able to launch a micro fund focused on investing in YC-backed startups. I am a co-GP alongside my partner Zach Kay, who is an active angel investor and was most recently an analyst at Elliott Management. We are aiming to deploy additional capital into YC’s Winter 2023 batch and will be fundraising again closer to demo day.

From the YC Summer 2023 batch, we had the opportunity to invest in a handful of companies spanning fintech, AI, and consumer. These companies were: Casca, Coba, Dili, and Pointhound. Be sure to check them all out, you’ll be seeing more of them soon!

If you’d like to be an LP in LVP, please shoot Zach an email at [email protected] for more info.

In 2024, my investing goals are:

• Improve the quality of my deal flow

• Create strong relationships with founders

• Be top-of-mind for VCs to invite me onto cap tables.

I plan on doing this by focusing on the following:

• Relentlessly networking: I need to be taking more pitches, grabbing coffee / drinks, attending networking events, and even host my own private dinners

• Strengthen my syndicate: While the accredited investor base has grown to nearly 9k individuals, my focus will be twofold: (1) improving execution speed and (2) establishing deeper connections with HNWIs in my network to provide more targeted investment opportunities

If you're an accredited investor or qualified purchaser and want to be part of my angel syndicate, fill out this quick form below:

To clarify on the difference between being part of the Litquidity Syndicate vs. an LP in Litquidity Venture Partners:

• As a member of the syndicate, you will receive investment opportunities for companies in which I’ve secured an allocation. There is no capital commitment, it is a la carte and deal-by-deal.

• As an LP in LVP, you will commit capital into a fund that will deploy into a handful of startups (in this case, companies that have gone through the Y Combinator program).

You are more than welcome to participate in both!

Lastly, some calls-to-action for founders & VCs:

FOUNDERS: Please don't hesitate to reach out if you are raising a funding round and would like to pitch me. I’m always interested in learning about new businesses and meeting smart, ambitious individuals.

VCs: Hit me up if you are investing in a company, or have an existing portco, and believe I can add value through my platform, knowledge, and network. Down to grab coffee / drinks.

4. LITNEY PARTNERS

In January of 2023, I formally unveiled Litney Partners, a financial services recruiting firm focused on placing junior professional into roles across the sell side and buy side. This company was formed in partnership with Gary Goldstein and Bennett Jordan of Whitney Partners, an executive search firm that has been around for 40 years and has worked with top financial firms across the globe. For those wondering about the name, “Litney” is a portmanteau of Whitney and Litquidity.

By combining forces, we brought together two reputable brands in their respective industries. One with 40 years of high-caliber recruiting expertise and another with the reach of over 2.5 million individuals who largely work in, or aspire to work in, high finance.

See below for the Bloomberg article and video that broke the news of our launch:

Litney Partners was launched in January 2023, at a time when major banks were announcing wide-spread layoffs, startups were shutting down, and the stock market was getting hammered. We knew it wasn’t the easiest environment to be launching a recruiting firm, but we did it nonetheless and took a contrarian view of using this as an opportunity to build a brand and get in front of thousands of candidates who were all wondering if they’d be laid off next and were looking for new opportunities.

We were lucky to see our thesis play out and also have firms work with us to source talent very early on. We built up a solid pipeline of candidates and have been working closely with many firms that are looking to increase headcount in the new year.

Over the course of 2023, we were able to close searches for companies spanning venture capital, energy trading, family offices, L/S funds, fintech startups and more. This is only the beginning and we expect a strong hiring environment in 2024, which will translate into more business for our firm.

How we can work together:

FIRMS: If you are running a search for junior investors or bankers, please reach out to us at [email protected] and [email protected]

CANDIDATES: If you are looking to lateral into another investment bank or buy side firm, let’s work together and help you secure the bag! All you have to do is drop a resume on our website.

You can follow us on Instagram as well to stay on top of our latest job opportunities, interview tips, and hiring news.

5. BOND Life Club

As many of you have probably seen, I am obsessed with padel. I fell in love with the sport in 2022 and quickly realized that the US is behind the rest of the world in terms of the padel hype and infrastructure, since the US is currently into pickleball (a zero interest rate phenomenon, in my opinion).

I wanted to capitalize on padel in 2023. I wanted to help shape the future of the sport in the US and sought out ways to get involved.

It sure paid off.

Earlier this year, I met the BOND Life Club team in Miami and learned about the padel / wellness popup they were putting together in the Hamptons in the Summer. It would involve a padel court, cold plunges, saunas, and more. I figured I would go check it out one weekend and maybe find ways to work with them.

Boyyyyy did that escalate quickly. After spending more time in the Hamptons, seeing the vision for the brand, and getting to know the team at a personal level, I wanted to be as involved as I could possibly be. After many conversations, I ultimately joined the team as a co-founder and would help in strategy, fundraising, marketing, and even dusting off the ol’ laptop to do some financial modeling.

The New York Post covered the launch of our pop up in the Hamptons and summarized our goal with the club.

I dedicated a lot of my time towards BOND this year (which is another reason for less content on social media lol). BOND will play a huge role within the Litquidity ecosystem so I wanted to go all-in and prove the value I could bring to the team. From the Litquidity brand’s perspective, BOND is my first foray into the “physical” world of sports, hospitality, event programming, and real estate. The Litquidity community is the perfect target member demographic for our members club and this would be an excellent way to strengthen my community and bring like-minded folks together.

This summer, I took great pride in having Litquidity branding on two padel courts that saw the likes of Roger Federer, Tommy Haas (pictured below), Andrew Schulz, Ronnie Fieg, Kevin Love, Deepak Chopra, and other celebrities pass by. This was another big step forward in elevating the Litquidity brand and integrating it into the Hamptons ecosystem.

This summer’s flagship event was the inaugural “Lit Cup”, a tennis tournament that saw many D1 tennis players compete for a prize. The event was sponsored by Wilson, Hampton Water, Onyx, and FlyJets. The tournament was then followed by a padel exhibition with a DJ, food, and drinks. It was incredibly fulfilling to organize it, witness such a great turnout, and receive positive feedback following the event. I’m looking forward to the second annual Lit Cup this summer and anticipate the turnout, prizes, and after-party to be a lot bigger and better. This is just the beginning.

Being a part of BOND has been incredible. The founding team are some of the kindest, pure-hearted, and driven individuals I’ve ever met. I ended up living with them all summer and we quickly became great friends. They were there for me during tough times on the personal front and also offered to help on other facets on my business. It has really meant a lot to me and for that I thank you all.

On a personal level, I adjusted my drinking and eating habits, played padel nearly every day, integrated cold plunging and saunas into my daily routine, and got the best sleep through a new Eight Sleep mattress. Through this, I lost 10+ lbs of fat, felt better mentally, and had newfound motivation to improve every aspect of my life.

What better way to build a members club focused on racquet sports, health, wellness, and longevity than to embody it and practice it in my own personal life? I’m incredibly excited for what BOND will become and the gap it will fill in the members club landscape.

We are keeping things low key and are excited to reveal more when we can. In the meantime, stay tuned and follow us on instagram where we will post more info surrounding our launch and how to become a founding member.

We are going to absolutely crush it in 2024 🤝

ENDING NOTES

Wow, 4,700 words later and I still feel like I have a lot left to say, but I’ll stop here for now! If you made it this far, I appreciate you for taking the time and hope you enjoyed it / found it helpful. If any of the above resonated with you and you’d like to find a way to partner / work together / collaborate, please send me an email at [email protected]

Thank you all for the support throughout this ~7 year journey. Here’s to many more years of memes, investment opportunities, news, and helping y’all advance your careers 🤝

Happy New Year!

Best,
Lit

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