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Litquidity's Response to A Recent Bloomberg Story

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Litquidity Capital
August 02, 2022

Hey guys,

This is far from the biggest news of the day, and I don’t want to come across as having “Main Character Syndrome”, as I know meme-related news is clearly not more important than covering rampant inflation or Nancy Pelosi risking WW3 by visiting Taiwan. But I did want to address questions I’ve gotten from the Bloomberg article that dropped today, August 2, 2022 (headline screenshot below).

The article left a lot of questions because it was framed as PR for Mark and made no mention of what that means for the future of the “meme account”.

The main reason for this: Bloomberg is a dinosaur legacy media corporation that refuses to cite me due to my anonymity. My portion of the interview was omitted by some greaseball news editor so they can only write a portion of the truth. I have respect for Misy for her reporting, but know there are things that were cut by an editor because they didn’t meet Bloomberg’s ~eDiToRiAL sTaNdaRds~.

I’m not a journalist so pls excuse any shitty grammar, sentence structures, or typos…

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In March 2017, I created the @litquidity Instagram account to meme about my experiences as a young finance professional living in Manhattan. I’ve been the sole admin of this account since inception and will continue to be going forward.

After spending slightly less than a decade on Wall Street across IB and PE, I decided to leave my job late 2020 and pursue building “Litquidity” full-time. My first goal was to bootstrap this endeavor, grow my audience, and expand into other obvious mediums such as written, audio, and video. Many don’t understand the economics behind digital media, let alone the meme game, and the potential to build a business around it. It’s a head scratcher for many but it was a no brainer for me.

I’ll spare the full rundown, but I was able to launch a limited edition beer / hard seltzer, publish articles, create branded Rhone vests, and invest in early stage startups all on my own through long nights, thoughtful intros from some of my followers, partnerships, and interns (shoutout Christian, Alex, TJ, Aadil, and Jack… oh and Karl Smith, CFA Level 1 Candidate).

Ultimately it became too much for one person to do and I knew it was time to change up the structure.

So last October, I hired Mark Moran as my first full-time employee focused on expanding my social media / newsletter following into a diversified digital media business.

Throughout the past 10 months, Mark and I:

  • Dropped a high-end dress shoe in collaboration with Del Toro

  • Partnered with OfficeHours to launch the "Litquidity Student Athlete" program with over 150+ impressive college athletes

  • Published a compensation survey that played a role in getting dinner stipends bumped across Wall Street

  • Increased our merchandise offering

  • Secured a lucrative podcast sponsorship (RIP now… more on that later lol)

  • Raised capital through an SPV to invest in an indie film

  • Facilitated the first ever public company earnings call on Twitter Spaces

Over the past few months, Mark has spent a significant amount of his time focused on growing the client list for an “Investor Relations” business which meant less support across other facets of the organization. Mark and I ultimately had differences in interest and vision, and decided to amicably pursue different paths.

Mark and I discussed this many times and agreed it was a better approach for him to dedicate all of his time to building his new company, Equity Animal, as the CEO while continuing to receive support from the Litquidity brand through the form of a revenue share agreement. While he’s no longer my employee, we’ll continue to work together on projects, plan on recording “Season 2” of Big Swinging Decks in the fall, and shitposting on Instagram and Twitter on the regular.

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As for me, I’ve learned a lot about building a business from the ground up. IT’S HARD AS A MF. That said, I now know how to launch new projects, structure agreements, and more efficiently allocate my most precious resource (time) to execute on dozens of projects at once.

My path forward is to continue expanding the brand through strategic partnerships in the form of revenue-share or incubator-like equity interests. This gives me the flexibility to partner with solid individuals that can help me execute, while giving them more autonomy and potential upside. I recently signed a collab agreement w/ a brand I’m sure a lot you already follow on IG (stay tuned for more on this!)

Additionally, as some of y’all know… I’ve spent time scaling up my profile as an early-stage investor by participating in over 20 startup funding rounds co-led by reputable VC firms, becoming a scout for Bain Capital Ventures, and raising capital from the audience via SPVs to invest in exciting opportunities. You can check out my current investment portfolio here. My goal is to double-down on these efforts, continue to prove my value-add to founders, and be top of mind for entrepreneurs / VCs when a strategic investment opportunity presents itself. The next step here is building on my existing track record, fine-tuning my investment thesis / fund strategy, and set out to raise “Litquidity Ventures, Fund 1”. So if any potential LPs are out there, hmu ;)

I didn’t set out to re-write my business plan for everyone to see… but here we are. As always, I’m grateful for the support from this amazing community and I want to continue entertaining and informing y’all every damn day.

If you want to explore incubation of a business idea, an investment into your startup, sponsor my newsletter, etc… please reach out to me at [email protected]

Stay classy,

Lit

P.S. here are some more links for those who want to build together:

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