Rich Boy Misery
TFO's Red Sea retreat, Hisham Alfalih's Lean, The New Yorker, Peptides, Anthropic, and the Virgin Atlantic RUH-LHR route.
It’s 11:49 a.m. on a Tuesday, and your goalless, affluent 35-year-old self just woke up. You sip your Turkish coffee, followed by an IQOS hit, in your hollow, eerily quiet Riyadh mansion. You have everything in the world, but also nothing at all.
Waking up in the morning is challenging, primarily because of your lack of purpose, and partly due to irregular blood pressure resulting from nicotine abuse, a poor diet, and the fact that you haven’t worked out in about ten years. Why would you, though? People were always clinging to you. Everyone wanted to be your friend. Who your dad was became the magnet everyone else relied on to create a semblance of a social life. A good body, a healthy lifestyle, or even an interesting personality was never a prerequisite for you to make a friend (or more). So why now?
You pretend to be humble, but everyone knows that you know who your family is. While that level of silent hierarchy felt exciting when you were younger, it now casts a lot of shame over your subconscious. Being a rich kid is only fun when you’re, you know, a kid. The fact that you’ve never worked a day in your life is what you are paying for right now. Your parents gave you a credit card and a sports car that was shipped around Europe all summer, allowing you to grow up skill-less. The sports car and lavish spending aren’t interesting anymore. You have nothing else to offer and are far too narcissistic to admit that. Being an heir to a finance mogul without knowing what the CMA does, being able to spell أسوأ properly, or having a hobby that doesn’t involve anyone but yourself is, in my opinion, the equivalent of being successful and unhappy—the worst type of failure.
The resentment you have toward your parents is buried deep in your subconscious because, where else would you go? Baba has paralyzed you by spoiling you so much that you can’t move anywhere without his guidance, blessing, and, of course, money. How could you suddenly detach from that? You’ve never even dined at a restaurant by yourself. You love your parents, and it’s all you’ve ever known. Money is the best instrument of control.
Remember Saad? Your lower-middle-class classmate who would spend his summers in Riyadh while you bopped around the Mediterranean? He went to Duke and has worked at several tech startups. You will never admit how good it makes you feel to know that, despite Saad’s trajectory and career development (two things you can’t buy, by the way), he will never have lived your childhood. But all of that doesn’t matter now, because Saad owns Anthropic equity—a chunk of money that might now allow him to live as wealthy as your dad, but more importantly, enough to set him freer than you’ve ever been.
Your look into the past is a bandage that helps you endure the present you live in today, in your rich boy misery.
Today’s Letter includes: CAA hired a Saudi head, The Family Office’s investor retreat on Shura Island, Hisham Alfalih’s Lean Technologies, Peptides, The New Yorker’s Filmmaking Essay, Anthropic, and the Virgin Atlantic RUH-LHR route.
The following isn’t meant to be educational, it’s meant to be conversational:
The Family Office hosted hundreds of its high-net-worth clients on Shura Island in the Red Sea. Earlier this year, TFO threw its Investing is a Sea summit, or الاستثمار بحر, where a few hundred of their retail clients took to a stunning two-day beach gathering with some of the biggest names in Saudi finance. Attendees were mostly retail, high net worth individuals whose money is invested and held by TFO. I know a few people who went and said they wish they were on Nujuma or Shebara, the fancier part of the Red Sea where the St. Regis is. On Shura, hotels are more contempoary like SLS, the InterContinental, and the EDITION—honestly? Shura sounds more like my vibe (it’s also much cheaper!).
Some big names beyond clients were there: Jomana AlRashid (who I ran into once at the Ritz in Midtown Manhattan), Abdulrahman Alrashed (Alarabiya), HE Ahmed Alkhateeb, among others. It’s interesting to see Saudi companies hosting their clients in Saudi. I was jealous not because I’m not amongst TFO’s clientele list, but because this was basically the equivalent of an influencer brand trip. Except, in this case, people invest their money instead of their privacy to get a free two-day trip hosted by a large institution. Maybe I’ll go next year.
CAA hired a Saudi to lead their Middle East office. Creative Artist Agency “CAA” was the hottest place to work when I was living in LA (and working in entertainment). I had no idea they had an office set up in the region until I read the news about their new regional head, Omar Ayman Abdu, who holds a master’s from NYU and has extensive experience across Hollywood-adjacent companies in addition to Saudi government experience (Ministry of Sports, Diriyah, Alula). A Saudi New Yorker who works in Entertainment and has strong Saudi roots? Sounds like my kinda guy. But in all seriousness, this is huge. It feels like the equivalent of when Deena Aljuhani became editor of Vogue Arabia. It’s a big deal when a Saudi is chosen to lead the Middle Eastern operations for a multinational conglomerate. Bravo!
Everyone is on Peptides. I met an Irish guy in Zermatt who swears by them and there’s a doctor in Dubai that’s great for this, apparently. Peptides are essentially a personalized enhancer. They create one personalized for you and your body. I looked into it and there’s a peptide that would help with nicotine short-term effects. So essentially taking peptides would make me smoke more. No thanks. I have a bad feeling about them and they are too newly developed for me to try them. I will focus on staying naturally healthy for now.
The New Yorker published a fantastic essay by Lena Dunham about her filmmaking career. I liked how she touched on her inherent privilege without trying to hide it while simultaneously not rubbing it in because, in a way, privilege in all its forms is a kind of luck. When the Safdie brothers were at the same indie film festival in 2010, igniting their friendship and ultimate support that follows to this day, that was luck. A great read for sure!
The Saudi Central Bank issued its first Open Banking license last week. The beneficiary was Lean Technologies, a Saudi FinTech startup owned by Hisham Alfalih. But what is Open Banking, really? From a Google search I ran months ago, I remember that it has something to do with cross-institutional transparency and thus creating more swift transactions. Essentially, it allows Saudi bank customers to connect with third-party apps like Stripe for payments. I used Stripe via my American bank account, and so I’m glad to know it’s coming to Saudi. If I was wrong about any of this, Hisham, you know how to reach me.
Anthropic is going public. If you’re still using ChatGPT instead of Claude, it’s like being in 2011 and you haven’t yet migrated from Facebook to Twitter. Anthropic is the company behind Claude, and they plan on going public later this year. Claude Code is incredible, and the UX while seemingly slower than OpenAI’s, still feels more futuristic. More techie. Here’s an unironic, AI-generated summary:
Anthropic, creator of the Claude AI, is preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) potentially as early as October 2026. Driven by high capital needs for AI development and a desire to outpace rival OpenAI, the company is engaging bankers for a listing that could value it at over $300 billion.
Virgin Atlantic cancels Riyadh-London route permanently, and after only a year of operations. I mean, I get it. Because isn’t Virgin Atlantic meant to fly… over the Atlantic?
Thank you. Until next week!
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