From Kingmakers to Championship Windows
On the quiet breakdown of kingmaking, and what the job actually asks of you now
There is a scene in the show Paradise where the president walks through a bunker built to survive the end of the world. It is overbuilt. Redundant. Thought through at every level. And he stops, looks around at all the preparation, and says something that has been following me around ever since.
Empires do not fall because they were not prepared. They fall because they believed nothing could touch them.
He runs through the list. The Romans. The Aztecs. The Bulls. Six championships in eight years. Two three-peats. A team so dominant it felt structural, like it was written into the rules of the sport. And then the window closed, the way windows always do, and they have not been back to the Finals since 1998.
That monologue resonated with me this week because it does not just describe history. It describes something I keep hearing in rooms across this industry right now.
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Over the last few weeks I have been in a lot of conversations with founders, seed investors, LPs, and GPs. Different cities, different strategies, different fund sizes. But the same undertow in almost every conversation. There is a growing fear around kingmaker checks. What happens to your portfolio company when its main competitor raises from a multi-stage firm with billions behind it? Is that a death sentence? How do you advise your founders when it happens? And what if your founders are deciding between a mega fund and a Series A fund, do you tell them the brand matters? Do you tell them it does not? And do you believe whatever you say?
Underneath all of it is an assumption that has been baked into how this industry operates for a long time. That capital, at sufficient scale and from the right source, can still crown a king.
I think that assumption is breaking. Not slowly. Structurally.
The reason is mechanical, not philosophical.
