Good morning, friends!

Let’s do something fun: Send me a memorable sentence, phrase, quote, or piece of wisdom that you’ve come across recently, and I might compile the best ones in a future edition of the newsletter. (Just hit reply to this email, or email me at polina@readtheprofile.com with the subject line: “Memorable Thoughts”)

I’ll start.

I was reading Life Stories, a compilation of the best New Yorker magazine profiles, and it has an unforgettable line: “One of art’s purest challenges is to translate a human being into words.”

That’s exactly what the profile writers whose work you see below do on a weekly basis, and for that I am grateful.

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LET’S CONNECT: I don't share much publicly on Instagram, but I recently created a new account where I'll be sharing updates for my new book, HIDDEN GENIUS. Follow me on Instagram here.

THE PROFILE DOSSIER: On Wednesday, you received The Profile Dossier, a comprehensive deep-dive on a prominent individual. It featured Luis von Ahn, the immigrant founder who built the world’s most downloaded education app. Become a premium member, and read it below.

The Profile

The Profile Dossier: Luis von Ahn, the Immigrant Founder Who Built the World’s Most Downloaded Education App

Luis von Ahn invented an app so addicting that it attracts nearly 50 million users per month. But here’s the catch: It’s not a social network. Von Ahn is the entrepreneur behind the popular language-learning platform Duolingo. The app offers 40 languages — including English, Spanish, French, German, and even High Valyrian (the fictional language featured…

Read more

4 days ago · 3 likes · Polina Pompliano

PROFILES.

— The school shooting survivor healing the mental scars [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The author who sold 2.2 million books in 2 years
— The actor opening up about years of addiction
— Hershey’s sweet turnaround story
— The delivery startup burning through cash

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The school shooting survivor healing the mental scars: I know this is the highly recommended article for the week, but I warn you that it is heavy and heartbreaking, so keep that in mind before you choose to read. The feature profiles Keegan Gregory, a student who nearly lost his life while trapped in the bathroom with a school shooter. A year later, Gregory is still grappling with the mental wounds that resulted from the trauma of that day and trying to find a way back to his old, happy self. (Sports Illustrated)

“What do you say to a family that loses a child, or to a town that loses four?”

The author who sold 2.2 million books in 2 years: Author Morgan Housel wrote one of the top-selling personal-finance books of the past five years. His book, The Psychology of Money, was rejected by every publisher in the United States. Since its publication in September 2020 by Harriman House, a U.K. publisher with a staff of 11, his debut book has sold more than 2.2 million copies worldwide and has consistently ranked as one of Amazon’s best-selling money-related titles. Here’s how he helped reshape the way people think about personal finance and investing. (MarketWatch)

“I’ve always thought that the most valuable content comes from things that are more or less timeless.”

The actor opening up about years of addiction: For 10 years, actor Matthew Perry was known as Chandler Bing in “Friends,” the NBC sitcom that catapulted all six of its stars into fame, fortune and infinite memes. But Perry was hiding something big: an addiction that dated back to his teens. His addiction led to a medical odyssey in 2018 that included pneumonia, an exploded colon, a brief stint on life support, two weeks in a coma, nine months with a colostomy bag, more than a dozen stomach surgeries, and the realization that, by the time he was 49, he had spent more than half of his life in treatment centers or sober living facilities. “I’ve probably spent $9 million or something trying to get sober,” he says. Here’s why he decided to write a book about the darkest days of his life. (The New York Times)

“Alcohol really did save me for a while. Then it didn’t. It’s like your best friend turns to you and goes, Now I’m going to kill you."

COMPANIES TO WATCH.

Hershey’s sweet turnaround story: Any stock that doubles in five years, outperforms tech giants over three years and beats more than 450 companies in the S&P 500 this year is clearly worth studying. That company happens to be Hershey. How did the iconic American chocolate maker avoid the market meltdown? It turns out Hershey became more American and less reliant on chocolate. (WSJ; reply to this email if you can’t access the article)

“Halloween is a convenient reminder that you don’t have to follow the money at Hershey. You could just follow the candy.”

The delivery startup burning through cash: GoPuff is part of a class of startups that soared during the pandemic, trying to solve a logistics and math puzzle that’s dogged Silicon Valley for decades: Can an e-commerce company whisk products to your house in under an hour? And more important: Can it actually make money doing so? GoPuff was supposed to crack Silicon Valley’s longtime obsession with one-hour delivery. Instead, the startup valued at $15 billion risks flaming out. (Bloomberg; reply to this email if you can’t access the article)

“As the saying goes, history is rhyming.”

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