Dear Lit Fam,
Happy New Year! This year-end letter has become an annual moment to reflect on my accomplishments, failures, and learnings in order to continue growing as an individual, entrepreneur, and investor.
I know we’re already three weeks into the new year but better late than never!
From the viewpoint of markets, 2025 can be best characterized as a year of tariffs, Trump 2.0, and AI slop.
From a personal perspective, 2025 was a year of seeing the Litquidity ecosystem flywheel in motion. Things started to click from a foundation set over the past 2-3 years. Investments into incredible startups, bringing the community together in person through dozens of events, and continuing to grind out content.
2026 is set to be an epic, record-setting year for the brand and I pray for anyone who gets in the way to try and slow this bullet train down. God forbid a meme account get a little motion.
LET’S GET INTO IT.
As always, this letter will cover my experiences, observations, learnings, and predictions in various categories:
I’m always looking to network, build, and play tennis / padel / golf, you name it. You can hit me up here: [email protected]!
1. BUSINESS BUILDING
It’s crazy to think I’ve been on my entrepreneurial grind for a little over 5 years now. So much has changed over this time and I’m always excited to write down my learnings from growing my first business. I sometimes think about where I would be right now if I had stuck it out and continued to climb the Wall Street ladder. Every time that idea comes to mind, I’m filled with joy knowing that I’m much better off – financially, physically, and mentally – with the decision I made.
As I mentioned last year, Litquidity is now much more than a media brand. It is a holding company for a variety of business pursuits and assets: a digital media brand, an e-commerce business, an investment syndicate, a recruiting firm, and an events business.
My goal the past 2 years has been to create a sustainable business from this powerful, highly-engaged audience (and growing in-person community). With multiple revenue streams such as ad revenue, affiliate income, management fees, and subscriptions (soon) and a largely variable cost structure, the platform is built to sustain itself profitably under any economic scenario (downturns, high rates, etc.). Carried interest and advisory equity grants are extra juice for the long term with potentially massive payouts (fingers crossed!!).
Here are some highlights from 2025:
Deployed ~$20 million of capital through Litquidity Ventures into companies spanning AI, defense tech, and fintech
Surpassed $1M of AUM on my three public equities strategies on Autopilot, allowing the community to invest behind my highest-conviction bets in the public markets
Hosted dozens of events and tournaments across NYC, Miami, and LA:
Litquidity Ventures: LA Tech Week with Harbinger Motors & a16z
The Litquidity Classic: Padel Tournament in Hudson Yards
The Capital Cup: Indoor Golf Tournament
Litquidity Ventures: Miami Tech Week with TradedVC & Brex
Launched an events business
Won a charity padel pro-am in the Hamptons and an all-Am tourney in Beverly Hills
Brought on some awesome new team members
Went to Roland-Garros for the first time
Elevated the Litquidity Merch Store with some great pieces
WHAT'S IN STORE FOR THE BUSINESS IN 2026:
MORE CONTENT: there is always more to do. With Trump 2.0, there is no shortage of wild, memeable events (just look at Venezuela, Iran, and Greenland to kick off this year)
SCALE THE TEAM: continue to bring on top talent to help full-time and part-time. As a bootstrapped business, I’ve long tried to balance growth and profitability through a lean team. Given the strong performance recently and revenue visibility, it now makes sense for me to invest more in the team and align incentives so the team is on board with a common mission
ELEVATE LITQUIDITY VENTURES: make it known far and wide that Litquidity Ventures is investing alongside the best and has amazing relationships with elite founders
BRING COMMUNITY TOGETHER: private dinners, padel & golf tournaments, happy hours, and more
EMBRACE AI: We’re undergoing a massive technological transformation and my goal is to stay at the forefront, learning how to use cutting edge AI tools to improve my workflows, make better investments, and avoid the permanent underclass
CONNECT THE FLYWHEEL: There are several pieces that comprise the Litquidity ecosystem but they are still not perfectly synced up to operate like a well-oiled machine. A fully-integrated flywheel will accelerate brand growth to new heights. This will largely be achieved by having the proper team in place with the right incentives
It’s never been a better time to go out and build your own thing. AI has made it possible for everyone to vibe code their dream businesses. You know when you have that idea in your head that you think would be the next big thing? You can now play around with LLMs and make things happen without having to quit your day job or pay an engineer a bunch of money to build a prototype.
That’s not to say I think everyone should be doing this. I know plenty of people who were born to be a rainmaker and love the grind of climbing the Wall Street ranks. But, if you’re cranking at your desk in Midtown Manhattan, working a job you hate, dealing with constant stress & anxiety, coping by binge drinking with the fellas, and only doing it for the consistent pay check, why not try to find your calling without having to take a massive leap first? Go and create your own path. You never know, you could be the next big entrepreneur that every banker on Wall Street is courting in hopes of earnings fees from your success.
Now to dive a bit deeper into the world of Litquidity:
2. LITQUIDITY MEDIA (CONTENT)📱📰
The @litquidity instagram and @litcapital X accounts continued to grow nicely, albeit slower than prior years. Maybe I’m washed or maybe I’m becoming an unc? I’ll chalk it up to taking the foot off the gas pedal a bit these past 2 years to prioritize the business side of things (a critical investment to ensure long term sustainability). Despite the tapered growth, engagement (measured by likes, comments, and shares) have remained pretty strong, which is a good sign that the content is still resonating (ok so maybe I’m not entirely washed).
I’m in the market for some experienced bankers / investors who’d like to get paid to crank out memes / reels and help manage the portfolio. Please reach out if you’re interested in joining the Litquidity content team and reach the largest, smartest, and most influential audience out there.
Growth: The audience grew to 890k on IG (up from 863k in 2024) and 430k on Twitter (up from 382k in 2024) at the time of writing. Exec Sum’s IG (@exec.sum) and X (@exec_sum) accounts grew significantly as a result of consistent news posting and collaborations with partners. Shoutout to Gannon and Sam for all their contributions in growing the pages.
Other social accounts in the network (@wallstreetintern, @thisguyfuchz, @venturekaepital, @retrowallstreet,) also grew modestly.
Collectively, the total Audience Under Management (“AUM”) is 2.5 million+.
M&A: We acquired a few accounts in 2024 and are still looking to integrate the properties into the broader portfolio and infrastructure. No meaningful M&A in 2025 but have identified a couple of prospects that will be a great addition in 2026.
ASKS: If any tennis or padel players within the Litquidity audience want to assist in managing these accounts, please also reach out to me at [email protected]. Ideally hardcore fans that track the tournament schedules, know the player personalities and dynamics fairly well.
One last thing on M&A: if you’re looking to sell your account (IG or X) or email newsletter, the Litquidity Buyout team is always looking for strategic tuck-in acquisitions. Send us an email and we’ll be in touch if there’s a fit!
Content: In 2025, I relied on meme carousels with a variety of bangers to maximize likes, DMs, and story shares. As mentioned earlier, engagement has remained solid but I’d like to lean into reels a bit more in 2026 as the IG algo is clearly prioritizing this format – evidenced by micro accounts often being surfaced on my feed with 500K+ likes / comments and millions of views.
Monetization:
2024 was a good year, but 2025 was ON FIRE. AI exploded, markets reached all time highs, and that feeling of SPEND SPEND SPEND, GROW GROW GROW was everywhere.
Advertising inbound was off the charts with the desire from brands to strike deals across everything socials, email, events, and more. From a marketing perspective, 2025 can simply be summarized as “the year of AI”.
The Litquidity media portfolio is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the wave of AI startups looking to reach high-end consumers and enterprise clients. It feels like there is a new startup being launched each week that aims to automate financial modeling, presentations, research, and other tasks that will make the lives of financial professionals better and more efficient (or, at the extreme end, obsolete). These startups are often backed by top VCs and founded by some wizards who went to Stanford/MIT and just left Google DeepMind / OpenAI / Meta to solve massive problems. This wave of AI marketing feels better and more organic to my audience than, say, 2021/2022 where the broad theme was web3 / NFT slop with no utility. That said, there are still plenty of AI slop companies being launched and it’s my team’s job to accept deals that are legit and can provide value to the community.
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. Typically, the products advertised on my pages are products I personally use and/or for which I can personally vouch.
This hat is the mood heading into 2026:
If you’re looking to advertise on my social media 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 2025:
Newsletters
Exec Sum
Exec Sum is my flagship daily newsletter that I launched in January 2021. My goal is the newsletter is quite simple: summarize the most relevant financial news in as few words as possible. It’s the perfect curation of deal announcements, markets recap, and headlines that matter for bankers and investors who cannot afford to be uninformed in a meeting with senior partners or clients.
If you're not signed up, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR??? It’s FREE.
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 grew to over 350,000 subscribers (majority organic) and still boasts a unique open rate of 50%+. This is a result of keeping content relevant and fresh, as well as maintaining a clean email list.
To put the engagement stats into context, that's materially stronger than pretty much any large business newsletter like Axios Pro Rata, Morning Brew, Bloomberg Deals, Wall Street Journal, or The Hustle which range anywhere from low teens to low 40% open rates (and the average email newsletter open rate across all industries is ~20%, per MailChimp).
Crypto Sum
In 2024, I expanded the newsletter portfolio by acquiring a crypto newsletter and rebranding to Crypto Sum. Crypto Sum is essentially Exec Sum, but solely focused on crypto news and markets. The asset class has officially gone mainstream with the President and his wife launching memecoins to kick off the Trump 2.0 administration in 2025 (they’re crashed hard since launching in case you were wondering). That said, the administration has brought in a Crypto Czar and has promised to be pro-crypto to compete globally on digital asset innovation.
That backdrop positions Crypto Sum well. This is not a publication that is shilling memecoins or random crap some anons on X are talking about, but rather a summary of M&A in the space, tracking which institutions are launching crypto ETFs, major cyber hacks, etc. as the industry matures and more people allocate capital to the asset class.
We’re currently at ~70k subscribers and plan to scale up to 100k+ in 2026.
Newsletter Monetization:
Exec Sum and Crypto Sum are free newsletters, so obviously there are ads to help pay the bills. We aim to understand our 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 brands such as Eight Sleep, Wall Street Prep, Perplexity, and more.
If you want to advertise on Exec Sum or Crypto Sum, pls fill out this quick form and reach out to us at [email protected]!
Observations / 2026 Plan
The newsletter business is a cash cow. It’s relatively stable, high margin, benefits from operating leverage, and email subscribers are stickier than followers on social media. This medium is also reliable for advertisers who see consistent results and can track performance through a variety of metrics like open rates, clicks, and conversion.
Beyond the monetization piece of the newsletter equation. Moving the community off of social media is critical in “owning the relationship” with each follower/reader. Social media is akin to rented real estate, where the “landlord” is the platform (IG, X, TikTok) and you are the “tenant” renting the audience. If you get suspended or banned, you lose access to the audience and are left with zero ownership. Contrast that with an email list or website where you “own” that relationship and can instantly reach each individual regardless of an algorithm or community guidelines change. This is important for deepening relationships off-platform whether that’s through building an in-person community, growing a monthly subscription base, serendipitously meeting new folks to launch new projects, or forming an investment syndicate.
In 2026, I plan to grow the email lists by continuing to market my publications to my social media audiences and mixing in some paid marketing to broaden the pie. Additionally, I am planning on launching a paid newsletter and would love to hear your thoughts / suggestions on what information would be valuable to receive – more in-depth business building insights / tips, premium markets analyses (private or public), proprietary interview series are all on the table!
Many thx in advance!
3. LITQUIDITY VENTURES (INVESTING) 🦄💰
2025 was a seminal year for Litquidity Ventures.
5 years ago, I was a small angel investor ripping $5-10k checks here and there, simply going with the flow. Now, the Litquidity Ventures portfolio spans 60+ investments across AI, fintech, defense tech, and more with over $30M deployed.
In 2025, my efforts were two-pronged: (1) get the name out there that Litquidity Ventures is out there deploying capital alongside the best and (2) establish solid relationships with founders who are building in the space I am interested in. This yielded solid results and will continue to be my focus in the new year.
Litquidity Ventures deployed ~$20 million of equity capital across early-stage startups and hot late-stage rounds (both, direct and secondaries). The investments were made through various sources, including Litquidity Ventures SPVs, LVP Fund I, Bain Capital Ventures scout checks, and personal investments.
The Litquidity Ventures differentiator: Memes, media distribution, community-building expertise, and the attention of a highly-coveted demographic 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 Sequoia, Founders Fund, a16z, and more. It is the best feeling when someone I’m mutuals with on IG or X happens to be raising a round and I am well-positioned to partner up with them + invest. This is the power of social media and networks. It is my “unfair advantage” (as the industry says) and I am only beginning to scratch the surface of this opportunity.
Here are some of our investments from 2025:
Forterra: Defense-focused autonomy company creating intelligent, terrain-condition-agnostic ground systems and interoperable autonomy ecosystems for battlefield operations.
Harbinger Motors: US EV business building medium-duty commercial EV chassis and platforms to decarbonize fleets.
Perplexity: AI-powered answer engine that combines real-time web search with LLMs to provide direct, conversational answers to questions, complete with clickable citations to verifiable sources.
Autopilot: Next-gen trading app and RIA that makes professional-style investing accessible to everyone.
In 2026, my goals with Litquidity Ventures are:
Deploy $50M+ of equity
Be top of mind for top founders and tier 1 VCs as a strategic investor
Bring the community together through more events targeting founders, VCs, LPs, family offices
If you're an accredited investor or qualified purchaser and want to be part of the Litquidity Ventures syndicate, fill out this quick form below:
Lastly, some calls-to-action for founders & VCs:
FOUNDERS: reach out if you are raising a round and would like to pitch Litquidity Ventures. I’m always interested in learning about new businesses and meeting smart, ambitious individuals.
VCs: Hit me up if you’re investing in a company, or have an existing portfolio company, and believe the Litquidity platform can add value through distribution, GTM expertise, or its network. Always down to grab coffee / drinks or hop on a zoom call to share more.
Check out some of our videos and photos from LA TECH WEEK (OCT 2025):
4. PALM & PARK (EVENTS)
Litquidity co-hosted a handful of events with various brands towards the end of 2024 and beginning of 2025. We organized happy hours, founder dinners, and other in-person activations to bring the community. These events were well-attended and impressed our co-hosts who were largely fronting the event costs. As a result, we began seeing increased inbound requests to organize events for a wide variety of AI startups and consumer brands. Olivia Curry (my head of partnerships) approached me with the idea of incubating an events planning business to capitalize on the momentum and further diversify the Litquidity ecosystem’s offerings.
We decided to create “Palm & Park Events” (P&P). The name is a nod to Miami & New York, which is where we live and where we have hosted all of our events. Similar to Litney Partners (my recruiting arm), Palm & Park competes in a largely commoditized industry while leveraging the Litquidity brand name to reach a targeted community, sponsorship base, and venue partners.
After several months of operations, we ended 2025 with nearly a dozen events executed, thousands of aggregate attendees, and over $100K+ in prize value gifted.
We co-hosted padel & golf tournaments, happy hours, art gallery mixers, and more at high-end bars, lounges, and private members clubs.
See below for some pics from our events.
P&P is an exciting addition to the Litquidity ecosystem, as it is a way to bring the community together in person during a time where people are becoming increasingly isolated, lonely, and depressed (especially on Wall Street). My goal with P&P is to create a series of events that will bring this community closer and hopefully result in new friendships, business opportunities, romances, and more. Fun things can happen when you meet new, awesome people.
Stay tuned for an even bigger 2026 where we are planning a wide variety of events, spanning comedy shows, tournaments, happy hours, exclusive dinners, and more.
You can check us out below and hit us up if you’d like to co-host or sponsor an event!
5. LITNEY PARTNERS (RECRUITING)
A quick refresher: In January of 2023, I launched Litney Partners, a financial services recruiting firm focused on placing junior professionals 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.
2025: Last year was a bit unpredictable given Trump 2.0’s trade war, the rise of AI, and a mix of job cuts across many firms. That said, we had a decent year and are set to capitalize on a lot of momentum from late 2025 early in this new year. We’ve learned how to pitch our value-add to clients, have built a robust database of impressive candidates, and have proven that we’re a serious player with world-class capabilities + built-in distribution.
This year, we will focus on converting leads into searches, establishing key partnerships, and continuing to leverage digital media to reach and win new clients / searches. We have so much momentum and 2026 is set to be a good year for us.
How we can work together:
FIRMS: If you are running a search for junior investors, bankers, or corporate development associates, 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.
ENDING NOTES
Alright, that took a lot out of me. I’m gonna need to start writing the 2026 year-end letter early December to get it out before the year is over. If you made it this far, thank you. I hope you were able to learn something from this or found it entertaining at least!
If you’d like to find a way to work together or collaborate, please send me an email at [email protected].
Thank you all for the support throughout this 9 year journey. I am still just getting started and aim to establish a generational business that will deliver the laughs, help you advance your career, present the next hot investments, and provide memorable in-person experiences. I can’t do it with you all. It takes a village. 🤝
Happy New Year! Let’s crush tf out of 2026.
Best,
Lit
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