ATTIA’S ECCENTRIC SPRINT 

After getting a putrid taste for capitalism's syntax at Goldman, Attia mastered its grammar at Deutsche. In between, he delivered the sharpest asset pricing thesis in the country, unearthing industry momentum trading anomalies with a methodology so PhD meticulous it was Wall Street profitable.

Instead of the PhD, Attia returned to Deutsche to become apprentice to the godfather of M&A. At that desk, he bought a different kind of MBA, the kind that took the form of an investment in a startup, playfully named a “SAFE”.

The startup, Payapps, would set up an office across the street. Attia would later forgo his “top-ranked” bonus to become their first boots on American soil.

After being force-fed capitalism's principles in the hand-to-hand combat of raising capital, finding foreign product-market fit, acquiring companies, and raising more capital, he left Payapps primed for its annexation by Autodesk. 

An eccentric sprint advising on renegade acts of renaissance capitalism would follow. Including, but not limited to, multi-billion dollar hostile takeovers, which eventually led him to Scott Galloway. 

The Chaos Monkeys later formed Prof G Media (PGM).

As Founding Head of Research, Attia would help build the engine that helped shape not Silicon Valley's worldview, but the worldview of Silicon Valley. The engine turned ideas into airborne essays (podcasts), missiles-for-missives (newsletters), and a tour through television's hospice wing from Vice to CNN+.

Bloomberg, the one network that survived, trying taming the wild mountain lion that is Prof G. Attia didn't like the box they defined for Scott's genius:

"It's Prof G Media, not your stepfather’s Bloomberg: it’s not their line to draw, but your line to show." 

"You're basically calling me a bitch," Scott said, "and you're never gonna have to do that twice."

An inspired Scott would later freestyle a clip so lewd it got PGM cancelled.

The axis was redrawn, and the cancellation was the calibration.

Attia's favorite contribution was quieter: building the research spine of the NYT bestseller Adrift.