Me and my wife watched the Fyre Festival documentary on Netflix. We only watched it under recommendation of my brother because the trailer wasn’t appealing to us (kids partying on the beach with Ja Rule…pass). My brother’s track-record of recommendation is rock solid, so we gave it a shot. I told my wife let’s give this thing 10 minutes and we ended up watching the whole thing.
Q4 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc
While the documentary focus on the Fyre Festival fiasco, there are lessons for the investor. The head of the group, convicted fraudster Billy McFarland, took everybody for a massive epic failure of a ride. It reminded me of Theranos founder, Elizabeth Holmes. She was the perfect package and turned out to be the perfect fraud. While Billy wasn’t as refined or smart as Elizabeth, he always had some kind of hustle on (mostly scams). Billy had ambition, vision, and could talk a great game and people fell for it. Here are 3 key ingredients for a great person: brain, energy, and integrity. If you have the first two and no integrity, you have a recipe for disaster. That’s when people like Elizabeth Holmes and Billy come in. They are terrible for society but they make a great documentary.
The lesson: Have a healthy dose of skepticism. When pitched with the a revolutionary way of doing something, a great idea or an awesome product, make sure that the people involved have integrity. Because if you bet on a person with high energy, high intelligence, but low integrity and you’ll get a smart, fast-moving thief.
This is what they promised:
- The biggest party of the decade on Pablo Escobar’s old island
- A line up of musicians, artists, celebrities.
- Supermodels everywhere
- Private jets from Miami to bring guests
- Gourmet food
- Luxury villa
- A treasure hunt with over a $1m in prizes.
- Party yachts
What was delivered:
- A dump of a site with hurricane relief tents.
A lot of people got burned. People paid a lot of money to show up to realized they got scammed. A lot of hardworking people didn’t get paid. Investors got ripped off. Everybody got ripped off. Expectation and reality clearly weren’t aligned. Billy is probably safer in jail.
The gourmet food:
McFarland was charged with defrauding investors by presenting them with fake documents while seeking investment in his company, Fyre Media. He’s currently in jail for 6 years.
Article by Brain Langis
