I Read 1,000+ Profiles of Successful People This Year. Here Are the Best Ones.
I’ve read thousands of profiles since I started writing The Profile, a weekly newsletter featuring the best long-form articles of interesting people and companies.
If you’re in need of holiday reading or you simply want to learn a lesson or two from the world’s most successful, here’s a comprehensive list of the best long-form profiles on the Internet from 2018.
I’ve organized the features into sections you can tackle — must-reads, business, entertainment, sports, crime, and adventure — all while avoiding your annoying relatives this holiday season.
Enjoy.
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THE MUST-READS
The celebrity selling fairy dust: Gwyneth Paltrow’s controversial wellness company Goop is valued at $250 million. On its site, you can find legitimate lifestyle tips alongside completely bonkers magical thinking: articles on body brushing, dieting, the afterlife, crystals, and something called “Psychic Vampire Repellent.” Every time someone writes a takedown of her company, it only grows in popularity and sells more products. This one is a must-read.
“Aspiration is suffering. Wellness is suffering. As soon as you level up, you greet how infinite the possibilities are, and it all becomes too awful to live without.”
The drone warriors: Targeted drone killings have become the centerpiece of U.S. counterterrorism policy. Often, those doing the killing sit in windowless rooms thousands of miles away from the action. But “kill chain” drone analysts are exposed to more graphic violence — looking at dead bodies or human remains all day — than most Special Forces on the ground. As a result, many of them suffer from acute “moral injuries,” which are defined as inner conflicts that weigh on the conscience for long periods of time. This is a heartbreaking, must-read.
“I’d literally just walked out on dropping bombs on the enemy, and 20 minutes later I’d get a text — can you pick up some milk on your way home?”
The most obsessive billionaire in America: For nearly a decade, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla has been fighting in court to keep the public off a piece of beach that abuts his property on the Pacific coast. The tech billionaire doesn’t even like the beach or spend any time there, but he is willing to keep litigating this for the rest of his life and has about $3 billion to spend on it. This profile is a masterpiece.
“My boss is going to the Supreme Court for a beach he’s never gone to. We’re not posturing here. This guy’s not going to settle.”
The NFL’s broken gladiator: Aaron Hernandez lived a life of secrets — about his childhood, his football career, his sexuality, his drug habits, and his fascination with violence. Boston Globe reporters obtained recordings of 300 phone calls Hernandez made from jail over a six-month period while he awaited trial. His conversations with family, friends, and former teammates open a window on his life the public has never seen.
“You have to find inner peace to be happy. Nothing you get is gonna make you happy. Just like me, like by having money … having everything in the world, I still was miserable. Know what I mean?”
The billion-dollar horse gambler: Veteran gamblers know you can’t beat the horses. Play for long enough, and failure is inevitable. Bill Benter took that challenge — and won. He wrote an algorithm that couldn’t lose at the horse track. A billion dollars later, Benter tells his story for the first time.
“Gambling has always been the domain of wise guys from the wrong side of the track.”
New York’s biggest con artist: In what reads like a version of the film Catch Me If You Can, an aspiring New York “entrepreneur” named Anna Sorokin turns out to be a stone-cold scammer. She managed to trick banks, hotels, private jet companies, and a whole lot of rich people out of ungodly amounts of money. But the house of cards, built on bad checks and unpaid debts, eventually falls apart in spectacular fashion.
“I was never trying to be a socialite. I had dinners, but they were work dinners. I wanted to be taken seriously.”
The $100 billion man: I’m fascinated by Masayoshi Son because he’s doing something most of us don’t understand. The SoftBank CEO has raised $100 billion (!) and fundamentally re-shaped the startup ecosystem through his aggressive investing strategy. The billionaire has become an unstoppable figure in tech, but we have yet to see if his enormous bets will pay off. He could be smart or just lucky … but he’s definitely too powerful to ignore.
“Anthony-san, you take my money. It’s good for you. It’s good for me. If you don’t take my money, not so good for you.”
BUSINESS
The woman running a $45 billion empire: Priscilla Chan is one of the world’s most powerful women. While both Chan and husband Mark Zuckerberg founded the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, she’s at the helm. This profile explores the vast responsibility that falls on the woman tasked with spending $45 billion to help society, while her husband is being blamed for exploiting it.
“Do you help 100 people very deeply or do you try to make the world better for everyone?”
The man who lost 800K Bitcoins: Mark Karpelès was the man leading Mt. Gox, formerly the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange. But he fell from grace as quickly as he rose. In 2014, the company announced that 850,000 Bitcoins (worth ~$473 million at the time) had somehow disappeared. Karpelès’s answer at the time? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ And yet despite the fact that he’s facing criminal charges, Karpelès is back in the game with a new job & a new life.
“The only thing I’m touching related to cryptocurrency is how to solve this bankruptcy. Nothing more,” says Karpelès.
Facebook’s unlikely critic: WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton didn’t agree with Facebook’s decision to show targeted ads on his platform. So, in one of the most expensive moral stands in history, he walked away from Facebook a year before his final tranche of stock grants vested. Acton took a screenshot of the stock price on his way out the door — the decision cost him $850 million.
“I sold my company. I sold my users’ privacy to a larger benefit. I made a choice and a compromise. And I live with that every day.”
Silicon Valley’s favorite doomsayer: The futurist philosopher Yuval Noah Harari worries a lot. He worries that Silicon Valley is undermining democracy, that big tech companies are destroying the idea of a sovereign individual with free will, and most of all, that one one else seems to be worried at all. So what does our future look like, according to Harari? It’s one in which we worship big data, AI surpasses human intelligence, and some of us develop God-like abilities. If you work in tech, this is an absolute must-read.
“Utopia and dystopia depends on your values.”
The most secretive CEO in tech: If you’re wondering what’s going on over at Snap, the answer is, well, weird things. After a disastrous redesign, declining daily usage, and an inability to turn a profit, CEO Evan Spiegel has embarked on a self-improvement quest. After receiving complaints about his dictatorial management style and penchant for secrecy, Spiegel hired a management coach and began holding New Age corporate retreats. There’s a lot to unpack in this bizarre story.
“I remember thinking, Why would I go around the company and just chat with people? Like that would be so awkward.”
The unicorn killer: Theranos may be the largest corporate fraud case since Enron. This article explains how so many powerful people were fooled by a remarkably brazen liar. It took one reporter, and three former Theranos employees, to expose her. This is their story.
“Theranos was a combination of fraud, with hubris mixed with incompetence.”
Wall Street’s master of knowledge: Shane Parrish was a cybersecurity expert at Canada’s top intelligence agency and an occasional blogger when he noticed that 80% of his readers worked on Wall Street. His site, Farnam Street, caters to a high-achieving audience by featuring strategies of rigorous self-betterment as opposed to cheesy self-help. He subscribes to the idea that reading, reflection, and lifelong learning are the keys to true personal development. (Check out his interview with Naval Ravikant in one of the most thoughtful conversations I’ve heard.)
“Reading is a way to consume people’s experiences, to learn something timeless and then apply it to your life.”
Virgin Galactic’s rocket man: Mark Stucker is the lead test pilot of Richard Branson’s spaceship company, Virgin Galactic. People are paying $250,000 to take a flight into space, and Stucker’s job is to make that happen. In his time at the ambitious company, Stucker has dealt with failed rocket launches, a fatal spaceflight crash, and his own disintegrating family.
“We’re test pilots of spaceships. As a Marine Corps colonel once told me, ‘If you want to be safe, go be a shoe salesman at Sears.’”
The world’s youngest (potential) billionaire: In less than three years, Kylie Jenner’s makeup empire has catapulted her net worth to $900 million. At 21, Jenner is on pace to become the youngest billionaire ever — male or female. With almost no overhead costs, the outsize profits of Kylie Cosmetics go straight into Jenner’s pocket. This story speaks to the power of social media & the far-reaching impact of the Kardashian empire.
“Social media is an amazing platform. I have such easy access to my fans and my customers.”
The billionaire king of private equity: Billionaire Robert Smith has built Vista Equity Partners into the gold standard for private equity. Vista’s portfolio counts 55,000 employees and more than $15B in revenue. How? When Vista buys a company, employees are required to take a personality-and-aptitude test & they get access to Vista’s playbook of operating standards. Sounds similar to Ray Dalio’s Principles. Maybe standardized mental models aren’t such a bad idea…
“The more standardized the input, the more standardized the output. You have to design your system, and you have to believe in it.”
The In-N-Out burger billionaire: At 36 years old, Lynsi Snyder is the youngest woman on this year’s Forbes 400 Richest Americans list. With a net worth of $3 billion, she’s the sole owner of burger empire In-N-Out. Snyder’s past lies in stark contrast to the company’s long-standing stability — she never graduated from college, battled through drug use, and went through three divorces. Taking over the franchise in 2010 gave her a sense of purpose. “When you persevere, you end up developing more strength,” she said.
“It’s not about the money for us. Unless God sends a lightning bolt down and changes my heart miraculously, I would not ever sell.”
Wall Street’s biggest gambler: Michael Novogratz is proof you can always make a comeback. Th ex-Wall Streeter is known for winning (and losing) big. He’s made three fortunes and lost at least two. His latest bet? Cryptocurrency. In 2013, Novogratz put $7 million of his own money in Bitcoin when it was selling at around $100 a coin. It now sells for more than 60 times that amount. As any gambler knows, even when you’re up, failure can be right around the corner.
“You know, when you’ve screwed up as much as me in life, you’re not so worried about it. I’ve tried my best. I think I’m right on this thing.”
The Swedish music powerhouse: This is the first profile of Spotify CEO Daniel Ek in three years. The company’s non-traditional IPO was big, but Ek’s ambitions are even bigger. Ek, who is personally reserved but professionally ruthless, reveals his plans to beat Apple, Amazon, and Google at the music game. In this profile, you learn just how central Ek’s character has been to Spotify’s evolution.
“Music is everything we do all day, all night, and that clarity is the difference between the average and the really, really good.”
The leader of a fallen empire: New Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has spent his first seven months on the job apologizing. A lot. He issued an open apology to the entire city of London, he apologized to the public after revealing that Uber hadn’t disclosed a 2016 hack, and more broadly, he apologized for his predecessor’s missteps. In this story, we learn just how difficult it is to turn around a company mired in accusations of misconduct and internal turmoil.
“Management is about a contract, which is, you manage me because you’re higher up on the level and you pay me and do my review,” he said. “Leadership is about the heart.”
Silicon Valley’s spin master: Margit Wennmachers has quietly shaped the public narrative of Andreessen Horowitz over the last 10 years. When things go sideways, she sends an email with the subject line: “4B.” It’s a nod to the idea that plans 1 through 3 didn’t work, and neither did plan 4A, so it’s time to resort to 4B. This is one of the many tricks of the trade that Margit has developed during her decades of experience putting out fires in Silicon Valley.
“Her advice has always been transparency and honesty — just tell the story, warts and all.”
The billionaire who lost his company: No one had a worse 2017 than ex-Uber CEO Travis Kalanick. The melodrama began with a #DeleteUber boycott and escalated to sexual harassment allegations. Then, when a video surfaced showing Kalanick berating an Uber driver over fares, he told colleagues, “This is bad. I’m terrible.” This is the story of how the world’s most valuable private tech company fell to its knees with its defiant CEO at the center of it all.
“Uber’s executives sat around a hotel conference room table in San Francisco, trying to convince their chief executive officer, Travis Kalanick, that the company had a major problem: him.”
SPORTS
The most disruptive man in football: Alabama head coach Nick Saban has won five titles in nine years by relying on constant self-disruption. He says our belief that we’re supposed to be rewarded for success is wrong. Rather, we have to do things even better the next time to fight off complacency. Saban calls it “the process” — a philosophy that emphasizes preparation and hard work over results.
“To me it takes a completely different mindset to stay successful as opposed to what you have to do to build something to be successful.”
The NFL coach searching for his family: I’m normally suspicious of stories with headlines that claim they’re “jaw-dropping,” but this one totally lives up to the hype. At 44 years old, Kansas City Chiefs running backs coach Deland McCullough went searching for his biological parents. What he found out will stop you in your tracks & make you realize life is just a series of weird coincidences.
“Being irresponsible is not neutral. When you’re irresponsible, someone becomes responsible for what you’ve been irresponsible for.”
The women of steel: For years, the U.S. women’s gymnastics team endured abuse at the hands of Larry Nassar. The respected physician turned out to be a sexual predator. Nassar violated the world’s top gymnasts, who remained silent and obedient, for decades. This story sheds light on the moment those women found their voice and broke the silence of terror.
“Well, you know what, Larry, I have both power and voice, and I am only beginning to ] use them.”
The athlete trapped in his own mind: At first, I really couldn’t get into this profile because I thought it was just a walk down memory lane with former NBA player Darius Miles. But then I realized it’s not about that at all — it’s about the relentless struggle of someone trapped in his own head, quietly drowning in the depths of depression. As someone on Twitter noted, “It’s crazy how many guys like Miles fade away without anyone really noticing.”
“I know dudes like me aren’t supposed to talk about depression, but I’ll talk about it. If a real motherfucker like me can struggle with it, then anybody can struggle with it.”
America’s newest international star: For snowboard star Chloe Kim, the Olympics are about proving she’s the best in the world. For her dad, the games represent the pinnacle of the American Dream. Her father, who immigrated to the U.S. & worked as a dishwasher, watched his Korean-American daughter win an Olympic gold medal in his native country. “As an immigrant, I could put my proud Korean last name in the American history books,” he says. No, I didn’t cry reading this….promise.
“As soon as we came to Korea, I could tell my dad was so proud,” Kim says. “In the States, he chills in sweatpants and polos with kimchi stains. But here he takes care and dresses up.”
HOLLYWOOD
The most likable man in America: Dwayne Johnson is making movie after movie, hosting SNL, doing ads for Apple, working out at 3:30 a.m., and spending time with his family. It’s really, really hard to not like him. But he hasn’t always been smiles and bear hugs. Johnson was arrested multiple times as a teen, failed to get drafted in the NFL, and battled with bouts of depression. In this profile, we learn how his darkest moments drive him forward.
“You gotta keep that shit in the front of your mind. When shit goes bad or sideways, when you get booed out of the building, it should form you. It should drive you.”
The woman defending Woody Allen: Buckle up before you read this roller-coaster of a profile. As controversies swirled around her, Soon-Yi — the daughter of Mia Farrow and wife of Woody Allen — stayed silent for decades. Now, more than 25 years after the stepfather/teenage daughter affair that “broke every taboo,” Soon-Yi is ending her silence. And she has quite a lot to say. Once you start, you won’t be able to put this one down.
“I’m not a retarded little underage flower who was raped, molested, and spoiled by some evil stepfather — not by a long shot.”
The actor trying to save his own life: In the last year, actor Shia LaBeouf was stalked by Internet trolls, sued for $5 million after a shouting match in a bowling alley, and arrested for public intoxication. LaBeouf witnessed a traumatic event as a child that can still trigger his violent outbursts. To this day, he sleeps with a gun in his bed. It’s a raw, unfiltered story about how to tame the demons of our past that still haunt us in the present.
“I’ve always thought somebody was coming in. My whole life.”
The loneliest man in Hollywood: This profile is dark. The Rolling Stone went deep into the twisted trials and tribulations of actor Johnny Depp’s life. The story takes you through the tragic details of his multimillion-dollar lawsuit, the haze of booze and hash, the marriage gone very wrong, and the lifestyle he can’t afford. What was cool at age 28 is disturbingly sad at 55. Tweet this.
“My son had to hear about how his old man lost all his money from kids at school, that’s not right.”
The grandfather of entertainment: Quincy Jones has an insane story about every famous person you can think of — Michael Jackson, Elon Musk, Frank Sinatra, and Tupac. But nothing compares to the tale of his upbringing. At 7 years old, he had to go out and catch rats so his mom could cook them for dinner. He stops and reflects on the fact that the poor kid who ate rats is now an 84-year-old music legend telling the story from a hilltop mansion. He says:
“Your dreams always have to be big. And mine were huge.”
CRIME
The John Gotti of Amsterdam: Astrid Holleeder agreed to testify against the most notorious criminal in the Netherlands, a man known as “De Neus,” or the Nose. It was a risky choice because “everyone else who has turned on him ended up dead.” Astrid used to be his legal adviser until Holleeder went into hiding. More importantly, she is his younger sister. If you think you’ve got family troubles, you’ve got nothing on the Holleeders. This is a real-life thriller that keeps you captivated until the end.
“The closest relationships are the ones that are based on fear, threats, and violence. If you are together with someone in that situation, you have a bond for life.”
The domestic stalker: A family in New Jersey bought a dream home for $1.3 million — and then things took a sinister turn. They began receiving anonymous letters from someone calling themselves “The Watcher.” The letters targeted the couple’s children saying, “Will the young blood play in the basement? Or are they too afraid to go down there alone?” The couple became obsessed with figuring out the identity of the mysterious sender, but several years later, the bizarre case remains unsolved. Don’t read this one at night.
“All of the windows and doors in 657 Boulevard allow me to watch you and track you as you move through the house. Who am I? I am the Watcher.”
The celebrity cult leader: You know Allison Mack as an actress on Smallville. In this bombshell profile, you get to know Allison Mack, the sex cult leader. A few weeks ago, Mack was arrested on sex trafficking charges in connection with the secretive “self-help” group Nxivm. The group recently came under fire for recruiting “slaves” and branding women with a hot cauterizing pen. This one is a must-read.
“She was so hungry for something bigger, some kind of sign [that would show] the purpose and meaning of life.”
The American hostage abroad: Xiyue Wang was a graduate student at Princeton when he went to Iran for archival research. Shortly after, Iranian authorities took his passport and laptop. On Aug. 7, an unknown caller told him he was being sent home. Home turned out to be Tehran’s Evin prison. Wang is one of at least seven U.S. captives in the Islamic Republic being used as pawns in a 40-year secret history of hostage taking. This chilling, heart-shattering profile is a must-read. Tweet this.
“It’s that kind of a mentality where, if you can’t resolve something in your relationship, you can take a hostage and demand that the other side resolves the issue.”
The spy who came home: Patrick Skinner was a CIA case officer who eventually realized that the best use of his training was to become a beat cop in his hometown of Savannah, Ga. Why? He believed the counterterrorism efforts overseas was creating more problems than it solved — fuelling hysteria, destroying communities, and diverting resources from essential problems in the United States. This story is fascinating.
“We have to stop treating people like we’re in Fallujah,” he told me. “It doesn’t work. Just look what happened in Fallujah.”
The sex crime investigator: Michael Osgood, NYPD’s top sex-crimes investigator, tried to bust Harvey Weinstein three years ago. He surveilled and recorded Weinstein trying to bully an Italian model into his hotel room. Yet Weinstein still managed to get away. Power, connections, and money can derail even the most well-executed investigations.
“Sexual assault is the hidden scourge on the American landscape.”
ADVENTURE
The only human in Antarctica: Henry Worsley is a modern-day explorer who set out to walk alone across Antarctic. The reason for this quest? To prove to himself he could be limitless. While obsession, drive, & persistence can propel you to greatness, they can just as easily lead you to your deathbed. The feature is long, but well-worth your time.
“We had seen God in his splendors, heard the text that Nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of men.”
The rock climber who can’t feel fear: Alex Honnold has become a paramount symbol of fearlessness. He is history’s greatest rock climber in the free solo style, meaning he ascends without a rope or protective equipment of any kind. In this profile, scientists take a close look at Honnold’s brain to determine what occurs in his amygdala, the “fear center” of the brain. If you find yourself experiencing pangs of anxiety in everyday life, this one will blow your mind.
“It’s better over time if you can put yourself in a situation where you experience some fear, but you overcome it, and you do it again and again and again.”
