I’m really bad at fundraising, and I know why.

I was on stage yesterday being asked a simple question I was NOT prepared for, and the answer I gave was deep rooted in the real time dissatisfaction I had with myself. “What’s one thing every person in this room needs to do when they leave here.” And I said “be intentional with your time. Go put 15min on your calendar right now and make room for the things that are going to grow your business”.

As soon as I said it, I was mad. Mad at myself. I’ve been pushing off reaching out to investors to tell them about what we’re building and how we’ve been scaling, and how we productized our Creator Stock Option Plan (CSOP™) and have a major launch happening before Cannes that’s gonna 10x our business overnight… all because I’ve been so inundated preaching the gospel. Talking to founders, partners, customers, to everyone about everything except…. fundraising. And it’s no one’s fault but my own.

So I’m going to be intentional. Make the time. I have $1M left to raise on our seed round, and I’m telling you because I don’t know who reads my diary, but if you know someone who would be interested in investing in OWM, whether its $5k or $500K, they will help me build something absolutely incredible.

Because my gospel is working… just not as fast as I know it can. I need to hire more me’s. A couple more engineers. Ya know, every founders growth dilemma, especially the half that are the salesperson. The other CEO’s that are engineers, well storytelling isn’t their superpower. But me, I like to think I’m both, although I’m sure many of my friends would like to debate that, and my old business partner Louis, well, he would say that I’m the “king of the nerds”.

I know that was his of way of gently saying even a Jensen Huang type can rock a leather jacket while talking nanometers. And trust me, I’m no Huang, but I do know the Terafab will get to 2nm.

I think about what I’m building at OWM as “why the fuck did you choose that”. I could’ve built something easy. Built something cheaper, better, faster. Target a customer that knew exactly the price and pain points of what I was going to rip and replace, and then literally, sell them the thing that would rip and replace it.

But a conceptual sale, one you can’t grab and compare, at the intersection of creators and capital, jeez… why that? Why choose to create a new category?

Well, I think we look at Airbnb and Uber as daily amenities that just seem so second nature now. Yeah of course I’ll get into this strangers car. Of course I’ll sleep in this strangers bed. People will get it instantly, right? Hundreds of billions of dollars is the TAM to transform two of the biggest industries in the world, yeah…ok!

So yeah, that’s what I’m shooting for. OWM will create the category it will own. And if that’s something you’re trying to do to, indifferent of the tailwinds and momentum at your back, your story still needs gospel. It needs believers, and it needs teachers (we call those “creators”). And so I wake up every morning hoping I can be our Paul Revere. Riding around, by land and by sea, hanging lights for all those to come and gather around our mission.

Because when I speak, every word I say comes from the heart. I’m trying to build something I think every person will find value in. Every creator who wants to participate in the upside of the things they help scale. Every founder with an idea that the world needs to know exists. Every investor who wants to see a return on their money. That’s what people want. And that’s why I’m preaching the American Dream is no longer about owning a home, it’s about being an owner.

And while OWM’s go to market is Creator Ownership, we are building the platform that will unlock ownership for all.

So if you, or someone you know wants to join this investment round, reply to me or share my email, and I’ll send over the deck to get invested in our success.

Much love.

— Jeff

Must know · 4 min read

Kane Parsons is twenty. Six days ago, his first feature film opened to $81 million, making him the youngest filmmaker ever with a No. 1 movie at the box office. On Wednesday, Backrooms crossed $100 million domestic. A24 had operated for fourteen years and never put up a $100 million domestic movie. They have one now.

At the same time, Curry Barker (26) made Obsession for $750,000 in twenty days. Focus Features bought it from him after the festival debut for $15 million. Last weekend, Obsession pulled off something no non-holiday release has done since E.T. in 1982. It grew into its third weekend, climbing 10% to $26.4 million, and crossed $100 million domestic on the same trip.

Disney's The Mandalorian and Grogu cost $165 million. It came in third behind both. It was the lowest opening for any Star Wars film of the Disney era.

That's not two horror movies. That's the YouTube generation's first run at the studio model.

Both directors did the YouTube version first. Parsons posted his original Backrooms short on his Kane Pixels channel in 2022. Eighty-one million views. Barker shot The Chair in 2023, then Milk & Serial on an $800 budget in 2024. The audience came with them. The analytics firm Brighter Path estimated that Kane Pixels fandom alone accounted for 22% of opening weekend demand for Backrooms. Three-quarters of the opening crowd for Obsession was under 25.

Markiplier's Iron Lung was the test case. Backrooms and Obsession are the proof of concept.

The asset is not the screen, and it is not the platform.

It is the relationship the creator already compounded with the audience. Backrooms shipped because Kane Pixels had already shipped. Obsession opened because Curry Barker's $800 short had already opened, on YouTube, in 2024. The studios paid the production cost. The creators owned the demand.

That is the OWM playbook said out loud. We help founders find the creators whose audiences are already pre-bought, before someone else makes the movie of their category for them.

Industry Moves · 2 min read

Phia is an AI shopping app. It closed a $35.5 million Series A on January 27 at a $185.5 million post-money valuation, with Notable Capital leading and Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins participating. That was the institutional round, and it was the boring part.

The interesting part landed on CBS Mornings last Friday morning. Co-founders Phoebe Gates (23, Bill Gates's youngest daughter) and Sophia Kianni, her former Stanford roommate, sat down on a national broadcast and read off the names of the angel investors they had quietly added on top of the Series A.

THE NEWS:

Sydney Sweeney. Khloé Kardashian. Alix Earle. Priyanka Chopra Jonas. Jessica Alba. Mindy Kaling. Karlie Kloss. Paris Hilton. Alexandre Arnault. Halsey. Olivia Culpo. Lilly Singh. Ice Spice. Gunna. Winnie Harlow. Eileen Gu. The seed cohort, closed last September, had already included Kris Jenner, Sara Blakely, Michael Rubin, Hailey Bieber, and Sheryl Sandberg.

Phia today has 1.5 million users, roughly 10,000 retail brand partners, 2.7 million social followers, and more than a billion platform views. Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates are not on the cap table.

Phoebe has said publicly she will not take her parents' money.

THE OPERATOR TAKE:

The institutional round was priced like a software company.

The celebrity round was priced like a marketing budget that pays itself back. The four-month gap between them was the strategy.

Phia let the financial story breathe in January, then re-opened the news cycle in May with thirty A-list owners ready to amplify from their own audiences. Each one has a real reason to. Each one compounds.

The celebrity layer here is not a launch tactic, it is a financing instrument with a multi-year payout schedule, and Phia structured the disclosure so that every name was a separate news event for the company.

Industry Moves · 2 min read

Glen Powell co-founded Smash Kitchen in April 2025 with CPG operators Sameer Mehta (CEO) and Sean Kane. Twelve months in, the brand is on track to clear $100 million in 2026 retail sales.

THE NEWS:

Smash Kitchen is in nearly 15,000 stores (Walmart, Target, Sprouts, Albertsons, with Kroger launching next month).

The line has expanded from a dozen barbecue condiments to nearly 60 SKUs of oils, dressings, salsa, taco sauces, chips, and popcorn. Same shelf price as Kraft Heinz and Hellmann's, but organic.

Twenty-five employees. Backed by Collaborative Fund. In April, the company landed an American Airlines deal placing its ketchup, mustard, and mayo across first class and main cabin on every flight.

THE OPERATOR TAKE:

Powell is the third co-founder. Founder equity. A seat at the operating table. About 100 of his nearly 3 million Instagram followers had publicly asked the company for a buttermilk ranch.

When Smash Kitchen shipped one this spring, the first hundred bottles went to those exact fans, each one with a postcard print of the original social post.

That is a product development panel. That is also a distribution channel. The audience compounps both.

The next condiment company that clears $100M will be the one whose celebrity is in the founder Slack, not the photo shoot.

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