Eko Weekly Round-Up

🧠 Insights You Won’t Forget

Today's insights are compiled from the past week!

1. Long-term conviction, not just capital

   From aggressively buying Bitcoin at $4K in 2018 to backing open-source infrastructure without proprietary control, Paradigm plays a decades-long game. They optimize for long-term protocol success rather than short-term returns, betting on crypto’s inevitable maturity.

2. Crypto’s three-phase evolution framework

   Huang outlines a compelling mental model:

   • Stage 1: Money (e.g. Bitcoin, stablecoins)

   • Stage 2: Financial System (DeFi, tokenized assets)

   • Stage 3: Internet Platform (decentralized social, gaming)

   This frames crypto not as a product but as an evolving ecosystem, similar to the internet’s rise.

3. The Outsiders Framework: Simple, Not Easy

   The foundational thesis of The Outsiders remains: CEOs who master capital allocation (buybacks, leverage, M&A, decentralization) outperform. Despite being conceptually simple, few public companies implement these strategies due to structural inertia and misaligned governance.

4. Search Funds as Life’s Work Launchpads

   Thorndike positions search funds not as exit-driven tools, but as platforms for ambitious early-career CEOs to build enduring businesses. With heavy board mentorship and low-risk, high-ownership paths, they are “forced savings programs” that convert youth and grit into multi-generational wealth and purpose.

5. Contrarian Ownership and League Model

   Instead of independent owners, Cole owns all teams, allowing mission alignment, quality control, and experimentation. This counters conventional league structures and enables innovations like consistent ticket pricing and K Club membership benefits.

6. From Bankrupt to a Global Phenomenon

   Jesse and his wife sold their house, lived on a $30 grocery budget, and risked everything—only to eventually create a team with 3.2M+ people on the waitlist, selling out NFL stadiums, and disrupting how sports leagues think about growth.

7. Avoid Herd Mentality in Strategy and Firm Building

   Hoag cautions against copying trending sectors or rapid firm scaling. He emphasizes starting with a unique focus, hiring only exceptional people, and growing patiently, even when contrarian.

8. The Pyramid of Success is More Than a Metaphor

   Inspired by John Wooden, Hoag operates with a personal ethos centered on preparedness, ethics, and doing your best to become the best you’re capable of becoming, an underrated mindset in finance.

💡 Eko Worth Remembering

🛤️ Off the Record

Happy Friday!

What do a bankrupt couple selling out NFL stadiums, a VC firm with zero interest in short-term IRR, and a college basketball coach have in common? They all operate from conviction so strong it looks irrational at first, and unstoppable in hindsight.

This week, a throughline emerged: long games, played patiently but with intensity. Paradigm isn’t just deploying capital, they’re making generational bets on crypto as foundational infrastructure—open-source, non-proprietary, and way ahead of the market. Their thesis isn’t yield; it’s inevitability.

Same with crypto itself. Huang’s three-stage framework, money, then finance, then the internet, feels obvious once you see it. But few are building for stage 3 yet. That’s the point. Thorndike sees something similar in search funds: not quick flips, but 30-year arcs of impact, where 30-year-olds can become legacy operators. The tools may look financial, but the playbook is deeply human—grit, focus, and patience.

That ethos echoes in Hoag’s “Pyramid of Success,” where self-mastery outranks spreadsheets. Or his warning to avoid the herd: build firms slowly, uniquely, and with excellence, not because it’s trendy, but because it works.

Even sports isn’t safe. Cole’s full ownership model is shaking up league orthodoxy by removing fragmentation and realigning incentives. And Jesse’s comeback story, built on sacrifice and an absurd belief in a different kind of sports community, is a lesson in enduring risk for outsized cultural returns. None of these stories are about tactics. They’re about belief, execution, and playing long while the rest optimize short. And that might just be the most contrarian move of all.

This weekend I plan on learning about robots and (fingers crossed) finishing the back-end of Eko so you all can start using it!

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