PAGE 45 · JUNE 19, 2026

I joined a beach club recently, but I can only go Mon thru Fri because we’re not “full members” yet. So the other day I got home early to try and take advantage of the thing I bought to enjoy WITH my family. I put away the phone. The sun was just setting. And it was absolutely… perfect.

I asked my 6 year old son if he would run with me to the rocks a half mile away. We played a game trying to run as close to the water, trying to not let our feet touch the waves as they rolled in. Mid way through the laughs and hop skips and jumps, something happened. Maybe it was the glisten off the water or the orange hue radiating against the sand castles being washed away.

Time slowed in a way I’m not sure I’ve felt before, and I saw something that I’m so happy I was actually present enough to remember. A moment I don’t think I’ll ever have again. He’ll get older. No longer reach to hold my hand. No longer skip rocks and jump over imaginary lines I draw in the air. In this moment, right here on this day on this beach, I needed to remember this. Because as an entrepreneur, if you don’t make room to capture these moments, you’ll look back and wonder what it was all for. So I’m happy I did.

After, I sat for a moment, staring at the tiny islands of sand that scattered the shoreline as the tide pulled in, and instead of thinking about my son, I couldn’t stop thinking about this teenage boy I saw on the boat home that day. It was almost as vivid as this moment I just had, which I thought I’d hold for a lifetime.

He had these large headphones on, and you just knew something was “off”. As I worked through my inbox pounding Rufus in my flow state, I could hear him making snarls through my noise cancelling pods, see him jerking in his chair with his hands bent in as if his wrists had been handcuffed too long, too hard. And I watched as every time he stood up, his father would calmly stand up beside him, place his hands on his shoulders (as I’m sure he’d done every day for the last 13 years), and gently, pull him back down.

As I watched it over and over again, my fingers stopped typing. I froze to take in what no one else cared to capture. And time slowed for me yet again. The email I was sending faded into the Joshua Tree set that seemed to pause for the incoming drop. And all I could think about, was my life is so… easy.

Every day at work, I have to solve a problem I’ve never solved before. A new challenge in a distant remote place I’ver never seen or been to. With no map. No guide. And yet when I get home, I stretch my worries. Compartmentalize my struggles, and I become dad. It’s hard to put away my phone. I know that email that just came in is new business. I know that slack might be the extinguisher I hoped for the fire. But I try. For them. On the couch. In the bed. For the moment.

“You can’t take it with you.” That’s what my friend said after his 50 year old brother woke up from a two week coma. The things you lose make you count the things you have. I remember before my back surgery, when I was actually disabled, unsure if I’d ever stand or walk again; and uncertain if the level 10 pain would ever subside on its own or if id have to be the one to turn it off forever… that if I made it out, I’d never want to be in that position again.

I think a lot about nurture vs nature. About getting out what you put in. About luck not just being in the right place at the right time but doing the work to have gotten there in the first place. And when my son was running, and on the same day, I got to see that boy struggling, it just reminded me…

That whatever you have, don’t for a moment take it for granted. Even just the slightest. In work. In life. With friends and family. And with yourself. You get what you’re given, and you’re given what you get. You can only pretend that it’s all choice and you’re in the driver seat of every turn you make. And when you finally step into the truth of it all, you’ll better accept the things you do, and the things that happen to you.

So live.

WHAT WE’LL HIT ON THIS WEEK

MUST KNOW
Jalen Brunson wore a tiny horse-logo hat on the plane home with the trophy. The founder who made it never paid him… but that’s the point.

THE OWNERSHIP LEAGUE
CHAMP, a $500M fund backed by more than 250 athletes, just wired nearly $50M into Rhoback and made the whole roster co-owners in a single move.

THE INFRASTRUCTURE PLAY
Lionsgate stopped renting its AI tool and took equity in Runway instead, turning a quarterly software bill into an ownership stake.

Must know · 5 min read

Jalen Brunson dropped 45 in Game 5, won Finals MVP, and ended a 53-year title drought for the Knicks on Saturday. Then he boarded the plane home, sat next to the Larry O'Brien trophy, and pulled on a hat with a little horse-and-sulky logo on the front.

That hat wasn't Nike. It was Siegelman Stable, and as far as I can tell, the founder who made it has never paid Brunson a dime.

Here's what everyone is going to miss this week. The Knicks championship isn't only a win for the players and Madison Square Garden. It's a quiet payday for the founders who saw these guys coming and got in the room before the rest of the market was watching.

Max Siegelman started his brand in 2020 off two logos his mom sketched on a napkin in the 1980s. Years ago he cold-shipped hats into the NBA bubble with zero relationships, betting that the address for one player was the address for all of them. Tim Hardaway Jr. wore one first. Six years later, the Finals MVP is texting him at 4am from the team plane, asking him to design a custom shirt overnight.

That isn't a sponsorship. That's a relationship that compounded into the most-watched image of championship weekend, and he didn't spend a marketing dollar to get it.

And Max isn't the only one holding a winning ticket.

The Faherty brothers, Alex and Mike, met Brunson through a friend in 2021. By September 2022, before he had played a game in a Knicks jersey, they had built a whole collection around his mantra, "The Magic Is in the Work" and routed 15% of profits into his Second Round Foundation. This April, with the title run still ahead of him, they named Brunson their employee of the month. A two-time All-Star, employee of the month at a clothing company. It was never a transaction.

A year earlier, Quincy Moore and Liz Eswein launched New York or Nowhere off an Instagram audience and a trademark, where the whole wager was the city itself. When the city's team got good, NYON became a top-three Knicks apparel brand at the Garden, roughly $1M in collaboration revenue, now officially licensed. Their finals capsule is literally called "The Finals or Nowhere."

Three founders, three different bets, one identical instinct: get in before the banner.

And that banner is suddenly worth a fortune. The Knicks are valued at around $9.85 billion, up 30% in a year. MSG Sports stock is up 86%. The playoff run added a reported $140 million in revenue. Game 5 pulled nearly 25 million viewers, the biggest Finals closeout since 1998.

The market is repricing the Knicks in public, at a premium. Faherty, NYON, and Siegelman priced them years ago, in private, for the cost of a relationship.

Strip away the jersey and this is the playbook you should be running this week. Picture a supplement founder who finds a run-club creator in Austin with 9,000 followers and the best form-check videos online, and starts shipping product while the "rate" is still a thank-you text. Picture a cookware brand backing a home cook with 15,000 followers and unteachable warmth on camera, two years before the algorithm decides she's a star.

Neither is expensive yet. That's the entire point.

The old move is to wait until the talent wins, then pay sticker price to stand next to the champion. The new move is to back the person before the banner, build something real, and let it compound when they break through. Endorsement checks clear once. Relationships compound.

That's the whole OWM thesis in one championship weekend. Anybody can find Jalen Brunson in June 2026, when he is on every screen in America and his rate knows it. The skill is finding the next Brunson in 2022, while being early is still cheap and the only currency you need is conviction.

The next one is posting to 9,000 people right now. Go find him, build the relationship before it's expensive, and let it compound.

Remember, relationships build partnerships, and partnerships scale brands.

The OWM team is headed to Cannes next week, and we're not coming to sit on panels. We're coming to meet the founders and operators actually building this stuff.

If you're going to be on the Croisette, let's grab a drink and talk talent deals, equity partnerships, and how to build a brand your audience actually wants to own.

Reply to this email or shoot me a text and let's get something on the calendar. Come find us.

Industry Moves · 1 min read

For years, getting an athlete onto a cap table was a one-off you fought for brand by brand. CHAMP just turned it into a machine.

THE NEWS:

On June 15, CHAMP, a $500 million fund from L Catterton and sports advisor Mark Patricof and backed by more than 250 elite athletes, made its first investment: nearly $50 million into Rhoback, the Charlottesville activewear brand founded in 2016 by Kevin Hubbard and Kristina and Matthew Loftus.

Rhoback did more than $150 million in revenue last year, is on track for $200 million in 2026, and had never taken a cent of outside money in almost a decade.

THE OPERATOR TAKE:

What gets me about this one is the structure. CHAMP doesn't show up with money and a wish list. It shows up with 250 owners already attached, which is a distribution network and a believer base in a single wire transfer. And look at where they aimed it. Not some pre-revenue idea that needs a famous face just to exist, but a profitable nine-figure brand that was already winning without anyone's logo on it.

The athletes aren't the marketing here. They're the multiplier on a business that already worked. Patricof built the machine. Most of the industry is still out there doing this by hand, one handshake at a time, and wondering why it doesn't scale.

Industry Moves · 1 min read

Every studio in town is paying AI vendors by the use. Lionsgate decided it would rather own a slice of one.

THE NEWS:

On June 11, Lionsgate took an equity stake in generative-AI company Runway, deepening a partnership the two started back in 2024.

It isn't a cash deal. They're spinning up a joint development program and co-producing new IP, beginning with an AI short-form series built from Lionsgate's own catalog of franchises.

THE OPERATOR TAKE:

This is the ownership instinct showing up where you'd least expect it. The most valuable thing Lionsgate has is its library. The thing it doesn't have is the tech to bring that library back to life cheaply and at scale.

So rather than cut Runway a check every quarter and let it stay a vendor forever, Lionsgate tied the two futures together and gave itself a reason to root for Runway winning.

That is how a line item quietly becomes an asset. I'd put money on the studios still treating AI as a monthly software bill looking a step slow by this time next year.