PAGE 47 · July 3, 2026

Building something useful is hard, near impossible, and as we push out a product I’ve dreamed of now for two years, I don’t want to let my team down; my investors, my family and friends…and probably more than any of them, myself. I bet it all on this idea and I’m nervous I may fuck it all up.

Believing something should exist in the world is a powerful motivator, but the best ideas fail with poor execution. And as we roll into the 250th anniversary of this country, where would be had those founding fathers failed in their pursuit of independence? What if they had realized the magnitude of resources and experience they lacked to fight, that their analyst had only given them a 2% chance of winning; what it be worth fighting at all?

I think about what money can do for a startup. You see capital can be a cure or a curse, and I understand why founders need it to scale. In the first two years building MALKA, I wrote everyone’s payroll checks out of my own personal bank account. I didn’t know anything about fundraising or investing or venture capital. A Rutgers kid who was learning on the job, trying to figure it out along the way somehow, someway.

If we had more money, raised from investors and went bigger and faster; would things be different? I’m not sure. Constraints create creativity. You’ll never have what someone bigger and stronger than you has, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t step on the field to fight. Everyone loves to root for the underdog, but the people in the stands only get to cheer for the surface layer. Even after the documentary, the truth for those who lived it remains silent. Those who fought maintain their PTSD…and life, well, it just goes on.

During my trial, after two days on the stand, when I got home, something was wrong. I sat in my tub as I always did, soaking my back in the boiling heat to try and wash away 15 years of sciatic pain that sidelined me from the childhood joys of playing basketball; and felt something stirring inside. The sweat bubbles that constantly fell on to the keys as I caught up on emails from whatever the day required felt different, and in a few moments, an excruciating pain came over me as if some exorcism was underway.

Maybe the anxiety of having a public company drag me through the mud on the daily for two years, try and twist and turn every word I’d written to friends and colleagues over the last decade to craft their own false narrative, had finally strapped itself to my organs to wreak havoc on my body as it was tired of the scar it had already carved in my mind and in my heart.

I cried in the uber on the way to the closest hospital that would take me, a burning pain unlike anything I had ever felt before. I remember the uber driver being so kind, hustling a pace like he had done this drive before, constantly asking if I was ok. And at 3am, some young doctor in training showed me the knife he was about to use as I gripped his wrist with all the hope I had left, and with my last remaining breathe he asked me to hold, he sliced an abscess that had formed where you would not dare to ask. I screamed louder than any woman giving birth. Louder than any torture scene from the These Hills Have Eyes. I passed out.

At 5am, I was back home, limping, devastated, questioning everything in life. Why me. Why now. WTF did I do to deserve this. My business partner was taking the stand in a few short hours. I could call my lawyers, tell them I was sick, unable to make it. But I remember the view from the stand. What it looked like from the Judge’s POV to see an army of 50 lawyers on one side representing the bad guys, and four, bootstrapped founders with one lawyer, sitting on the other, representing the truth. A true David vs Goliath story, and I would not let them beat me.

With whatever shower I could endure, I cleaned myself off, put on a suit and tie, and drove myself on no sleep into the city to join my team in the fight of our lives. I remember walking into the bathroom right before court was to be in session. My pants off, placing pain medicine around the raw wound that had just been operated on, thinking to myself “what the fuck is life”. I then sat myself on the hard, wood bench, slowly bending my knees as if to not force a yell from the pain I wished no one would see, and rose again and again when the judge came and went. I sat with dull eyes and a blurred mind, watching the orchestra of legal jousting of minds much smarter and intellectual than mine, fight over what I had spent 10 years of blood sweat and tears building. Arguing words, while I sat there. Replaying….everything.

No one knew. I was uncommonly quiet. My team thought I was just tired from taking the stand and defending myself. But I wasn’t tired. I was angry. Angry at everyone. The situation I had somehow found myself in from not vetting my acquirers, to every action and decision that I made that ended me up in the hospital just a few short hours before I snapped back into the reality of the Law & Order episode I was in.

This Independence Day, take whatever moment you find away from your phone, and ask yourself, what’s worth fighting for? We forget during the burgers and dogs and beers that plump our bellies that a long time ago, against all odds, a few brave men decided that we should have what we have today. Freedom.

Maybe the ocean that separated them gave them comfort. The impending stampede of red coats was unfathomable and that the King would pursue more of a contract negotiation rather than an all out war. Children. So bold to think they could take on the world and naive to think they could win. Fight a behemoth no one had ever beaten. All for what?

Well let me tell you, when you find something worth fighting for, you fight. When they fired me and froze my assets, lied to my employees and bullied me in every way possible to get me to quit, I could have laid down my arms. I could have made the same calculus that I didn’t have the resources to fight and simply moved on. Today my life would be very different.

I wouldn’t be building OWM. I wouldn’t be writing this story. I’d be a man, beaten and deserted, who’d simply; given up.

But I didn’t.

Tyranny has no mother, only children.

God bless America.

WHAT WE’LL HIT ON THIS WEEK

MUST KNOW
Jalen Brunson’s price for a sponsored post has never been higher. So the week he won Finals MVP, he skipped the check and took equity in a salad chain.

ON OUR RADAR
Three founders to watch: clean-label ice cream jumping from #16 to #3, a Slovenian rubber toothbrush 20x-ing revenue, and canned sake taking on the seltzer crowd.

THE OWNERSHIP LEAGUE
“Nobody buys a lacrosse league…” This week ESPN, Clippers owner Joe Tsai, and Glen Powell all did, for $100M.

THE OPERATOR
Bethenny Frankel didn't sign on to endorse dpHUE. She bought a stake and took the Chief Brand Officer title.

Must know · 5 min read

Jalen Brunson was named 2026 NBA Finals MVP on Tuesday, the night he handed the New York Knicks their first championship since 1973. On Wednesday, he joined Just Salad as a partner and equity owner.

This is the first athlete partnership in Just Salad's history, and it is Brunson's first equity stake in a restaurant. The two sides had been circling each other since early 2025, long before the ring, back when the deal was a bet on a guard rather than a victory lap for a champion. Brunson wanted a New York born brand that matched how he actually lives. Just Salad, a fast casual chain with more than 125 locations across seven states, wanted an operator, not a face.

So that is what they built. Brunson is embedded with the leadership and culinary teams. He will be in the restaurants. He will be in the room where the menu and the operations get decided. In his own words, this is about more than putting his name on something.

That's not an endorsement. That's a founder joining the cap table with a job attached.

Read the timing. Twenty four hours removed from the biggest win of his career, at the exact moment his rate for a sponsored appearance spiked to a career high, Brunson chose equity instead. He could have rented his name this week for a number with a lot of zeros. He took ownership in one.

That decision is the whole shift compressed into a single news cycle.

An appearance fee gets deposited once. Equity compounds every year the company grows. If Just Salad doubles its footprint over the next decade, the check he could have taken this week looks like a rounding error next to the stake he took instead. Sure, only a superstar athlete can wait, creators living paycheck to paycheck have a different calculation; but the thesis should remind you of the growing shift happening.

Brunson's real asset was never his jump shot. It is his distribution: the New York loyalty, the on court credibility, the audience that follows him and not a logo. Distribution is worth far more when you own a piece of what it sells. He did the math, and the math said own the store.

On Our Radar · 1 min read

Brian McDermott | Fronen

Brian's a turnaround guy. Two years ago he and his partner took over a clean-label ice cream brand, stripped away the narrow positioning, and rebuilt it around one idea: ice cream your kids can eat that isn't a chemistry experiment. Since then, Fronen has rocketed from #16 to #3 in non-dairy natural, and the bars they launched in February are already #2 in velocity, all with basically zero marketing spend. NFL QB Derek Carr found the brand through his wife at Sprouts, loved it, and both he and his brother David ended up coming in as investors. Major retail distribution on the horizon? We'll see. Grab a pint before everyone else figures this out.

Jan Habat | Fresh32

Jan saw the toothbrush aisle as unchanged for decades, a false choice between a $2 stick that scrapes microplastics in your mouth, and a $200 gadget that shimmies your gums; so he invented a third category. Fresh32 is a TPU rubber-bristle brush with interchangeable heads on a reusable handle, refills on subscription, and it's made in Slovenia, not China. In one year, in a country of 2 million people, he's sold 50K+ brushes and grown revenue 20x, then won a world startup pitch competition for good measure. He just closed a seed round, has clinical studies with dentists underway, and has his sights set on global domination. The best product stories start with "why has nobody fixed this?" This is one of them.

Brenna Turner | Sakehigh

Brenna is building the sake-based answer to the canned cocktail boom: lychee martini, yuzu sour, shiso mojito... for people who want something beyond the hundredth tequila seltzer. Sake gives you the buzz without the harsh burn, and nobody in the US has made it cool yet. Her playbook is the opposite of spray-and-pray: she's laser-focused on CA, hitting retail through nightlife, DJs, and culinary creators. She's betting on partners who see the opportunity that others, too focused on fizz and dazzle, are missing. Is sake the next big thing in canned cocktails?

Industry Moves · 1 min read

The interesting part of this raise is not the number. It is who skipped the sponsorship and bought the equity instead.

THE NEWS:

On June 30, the Premier Lacrosse League closed a $100M Series E led by Ares Management and Clippers owner Joe Tsai. Actor Glen Powell and Wrexham co-owner Rob McElhenney joined the investor group. ESPN added a follow on minority equity stake, deepening the position it first took in 2025 as part of its media rights extension with the league.

THE OPERATOR TAKE:

What gets me about this one is who showed up, not how much they put in. The company that distributes the games took equity in the league it distributes. Sit with that for a second. ESPN could have just kept selling ad slots around lacrosse and cashing rights checks. Instead it decided it would rather own a slice of the thing that is already growing on its own air. Ares brought the capital. Tsai, McElhenney, and Powell brought something you cannot wire into a Series E: audiences that actually move when they point at something. Nobody in this round rented the league a logo. They all bought the upside.

And that is the part most brands still cannot bring themselves to do. They keep writing sponsorship checks that die the second the campaign ends, while the smart money quietly buys equity that compounds every season the league grows. When the network that distributes you would rather own you than bill you, the model has already changed. The only thing left to decide is which side of that trade you want to be standing on.

Industry Moves · 1 min read

Bethenny Frankel has run this play before. She built Skinnygirl, exited, and spent years as a pitchwoman for other people's brands.

THE NEWS:

On June 29, Frankel acquired an ownership stake in hair care brand dpHUE and joined as Chief Brand Officer and strategic partner, working directly with founder Donna Pohlad.

With her capital behind the brand and a new global retail launch ahead, dpHUE is projecting a 32 to 40 percent jump in year over year net sales. The size of the stake was not disclosed, but it is a meaningful position, not a token one.

THE OPERATOR TAKE:

Look at the title, not the headshot. Frankel did not sign an ambassador contract. She bought into the profit and loss statement she is now being asked to grow. A spokesperson gets paid to talk about the category. An owner gets paid when it expands. Stop pitching your best known partners a licensing deal. Start pitching them the cap table.