Scott Harrison

Tomorrow is the big day. After a 12-year-journey, THIRST will be in bookstores everywhere… So excited to share these never-before-told stories in the hope that they inspire! thirstbook.com

The Anxious Generation was published two years ago today, in a very different world. Back then, the most common objection I got was resignation: "The train has left the station." "You can't put toothpaste back in the tube." "It's how the kids connect today." Today, the world looks very different. It turns out that if our kids were all on a train and we learned it was heading toward a collapsed bridge, we'd find a way to stop it and bring them safely back to the station. That’s what’s happening now. After the historic verdicts in Los Angeles and New Mexico, today is a great day to reflect on the capacity of people in democratic societies to take action, even when opposing some of the most powerful corporations in history. We're getting access to the courts. We're getting phone-free schools. We're seeing whole neighborhoods letting kids out to play, unsupervised, which is what we older folk all remember as the best part of childhood. So I want to recognize: --The mothers (and, right behind them, fathers) who rose up by the millions and powered the movement. --The farsighted governors and legislators in red states and blue states who have been innovating on policy solutions. --The leaders of a dozen of nations, who are raising the age to 16 for opening social media accounts (with a special shoutout to Australia, for going first). --The teachers and school administrators who had their classrooms disrupted for 15 years, and who are now eager to think through new solutions as screens have taken over and obstructed learning. --The grassroots organizations who have been dedicating their efforts to advocate for all of the above in their local communities. --The millions of members of Gen Z who have been rising up, demanding agency over how they spend their lives in the digital era, and finding better ways to connect in real life. And one final group: the survivor parents--the ones you saw in those pictures of people embracing on the front steps of the LA courthouse. I have met many over the years. I am in awe of their courage and tenacity, their willingness to tell their stories of loss, over and over again, to different audiences, in the hope that no other parent would have to endure what they have endured. At long last, juries and legislatures are hearing you, and are acting. Together, we are calling the train back to the station. Together, we are rolling back the phone based childhood and reclaiming life in the real world. The work continues. If you’re not already involved, join us: anxiousgeneration.com/join

@united Perfect for our family of six. Love the idea.

The entire row is alllllll yours. Welcome to United Relax Row, three adjacent United Economy seats with adjustable leg rests that can each be raised or lowered to create a cozy lie-flat space for stretching out... You'll also get a mattress pad, blanket and two pillows. If you’re traveling with kids, a plushie too! United Relax Row will be available starting next year on more than 200 of our 787s and 777s, each with up to 12 of these brand-new rows. united.com/Elevated

@travisk ⚡️

Atoms. atoms.co/vision

@vulturetrades Trade

I’ve only seen this setup 1 time in 6 years 👀 I’m putting $250k in this SINGLE stock Very similar to $OPEN that made millionaires $100 → $100,000 overnight $300 → $300,000 in a single day This is the third time. Comment “Trade” and I’ll send it. (Must be following to DM)

Andy Serkis recording The Lord of the Rings audiobook, casually shifting into pure unhinged brilliance about 25 seconds in.

@davidmarcus @mdudas Deeply grateful for everything you did for @charitywater during your leadership tenure there

A few thoughts about PayPal, nearly 12 years after I left. I woke up this morning to dozens of messages from former PayPal colleagues. It pushed me to finally speak up. I never spoke publicly about the company after I left. Part of that was loyalty to John Donahoe, who gave me an unlikely opportunity, handing the reins of PayPal to a startup guy who, on paper, had no business running a then 15,000-person organization. But part of it was something else: I had left. I chose not to stay and fight for the changes I believed in. Speaking from the sidelines felt like armchair commentary. Easy opinions without the burden of execution. So I stayed quiet. But twelve years of silence is long enough. And today's news makes it clear the pattern I've watched unfold isn't self-correcting. I left PayPal in 2014 because I was deeply frustrated. We had executed a silent turnaround of a company that had lost its soul. We brought back engineering talent, shipped good products quickly, and acquired Braintree and Venmo. The company was on a tear. So much so that Carl Icahn felt compelled to accumulate a position in eBay and push for a PayPal spinoff. At the time, eBay decided to fight Icahn. It was a difficult period for me, caught between what I felt was right for PayPal and my loyalty to the eBay team. This is when Mark Zuckerberg approached me to join Facebook. The combination of his conviction that messaging would become foundational, the appeal of going back to building products at scale, and my growing exhaustion with the internal politics at PayPal and eBay eventually convinced me to leave and join one of the best teams in the world, one I had admired for a long time. In the summer of 2014, I met John in a café in Portola Valley and told him I had decided to leave. During that conversation, he told me that Icahn had effectively won the fight, that PayPal was going to become an independent company, and he tried to convince me to stay on as CEO, but I had already said yes to Mark, and my word is my bond. There was no turning back. After my departure, the board scrambled to find a replacement, and it took a few months for them to land on Dan Schulman. The leadership style shifted from product-led to financially-led. Over time, product conviction gave way to financial optimization. Much of the momentum we had created still persisted and carried the company forward, mainly driven by Bill Ready, who came over in the Braintree acquisition and rose to COO. Under his leadership, Venmo grew exponentially, and total payment volume (TPV) accelerated quickly. But the shift under Schulman became more pronounced after Bill's departure at the end of 2019. With him went the product conviction that had defined the post-spinoff momentum. Then, for a period, COVID-fueled online shopping hid a lot of the company's new weaknesses. During that period, the company made a fundamental miscalculation: it optimized for payment volume instead of margin and differentiation. It leaned into unbranded checkout, where PayPal had the least leverage, instead of branded checkout, where the margin, data, and customer relationship actually lived. Visa masterfully structured a deal that effectively ended PayPal's ability to steer customers toward bank-funded transactions, which had been a core driver of PayPal's economics. Not long after, PayPal lost a significant portion of eBay's volume. Over time, it saw its share of checkout among its most profitable customers steadily erode as Apple Pay and others continued to execute well. The same pattern repeated itself across lending, buy-now-pay-later (BNPL), and new rails. On lending, PayPal missed the opportunity to turn it into a platform weapon. Products like Working Capital were conservative, short-duration, and optimized for loss minimization. Lending never became programmable, never became identity-driven, and never became a reason for merchants or consumers to choose PayPal over something else. The missed opportunity in BNPL was even more striking. Klarna, Affirm, and Afterpay didn't just offer installment payments, they built consumer finance brands, persistent credit identities, and new shopping behaviors. PayPal saw the BNPL turn, entered the market, and had every advantage: distribution, trust, and merchant relationships. But BNPL was treated as a defensive checkout feature rather than an offensive category. There was no attempt to turn it into a core consumer relationship, no super-app behavior, and no meaningful differentiation for merchants. Others built platforms, PayPal added a feature. The failure to lean into building and owning new rails followed the same logic. After the spinoff, PayPal had a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build a global, at scale payment network. Instead, the company focused on building on top of existing networks and third-party rails. More recently, that mindset carried over to PYUSD. Technically, the product was sound. Strategically, it launched without a compelling transactional reason to exist. PYUSD had distribution, but no organic demand. It was not embedded deeply enough into flows to become a true settlement layer, a cross-border merchant rail, or a programmable money primitive. It sat adjacent to the product instead of inside the core of it. Acquisitions during this period followed a similar pattern. Honey was not a strategic acquisition for PayPal. It added activity, but not leverage. It lived outside the transaction, monetized affiliate economics rather than payment economics, and never meaningfully strengthened PayPal's control of the customer or the checkout moment. Xoom solved a real problem in remittances, but it never compounded PayPal's advantage. It scaled volume without changing the underlying rails, identity graph, or settlement model, and as importantly, it didn’t cater to a high-value, high-margin customer archetype. None of these were bad companies. They were just a wrong fit for PayPal and became unnecessary distractions. The board eventually recognized the problem. In 2023, they brought in Alex Chriss, an Intuit veteran with a strong product background, explicitly to restore product conviction. It was the right instinct. But Alex came from software, not payments. He understood SMB product development. He didn't have the muscle memory for transaction economics, network effects, or settlement infrastructure. In hindsight, he also made an error: clearing out much of the leadership team that understood payments deeply. Executives with years of institutional knowledge departed within his first year. This morning, Alex was removed as CEO. Branded checkout grew 1% last quarter. The board tapped another operator, Enrique Lores, the former HP CEO who's been on the PayPal board for five years. I don’t know Enrique. And he might be a great leader, but on paper at least, he’s a hardware executive. For a payments company. The common thread through all of this is incentive design. Once PayPal became independent, short/medium-term predictability beat long-term vision and ambition. Stock performance mattered more than platform risk and network opportunity. Financial optimization replaced product conviction. I'm not claiming I would have made every call differently. Running a public company at scale involves tradeoffs I didn't have to make after I left. But the pattern, choosing predictability over platform risk, again and again, was a choice, not an inevitability. Over time, the company that had every advantage and could’ve become the most consequential and relevant payments company of our time, lost its mojo, its product edge, and its ability to compete in a market that’s being rewired and reinvented in front of our eyes. That's the part that's hardest to watch for a company I care so deeply about.

It is truly a blessing to live in an era where we can witness greatness in sport from anywhere in the world. That was not always the case earlier in my life, and it makes moments like I just witnessed even more meaningful.   Watching Novak Djokovic in the semi-finals of the Australian Open just now was a powerful reminder of why he stands as the greatest tennis player the game has ever known. He is now pursuing his 25th major championship, an achievement that speaks not only to talent, but to discipline, resilience and an unwavering commitment to excellence. I only wish everyone could view such performances with both appreciation and understanding, recognising greatness with fairness and respect.   The Australian crowds were magnificent just as they always were for me, and Novak’s pursuit of what would be his 11th Australian Open title carries special significance. History shows that the very greatest champions often face adversity late in their careers, yet it is precisely this adversity that defines them.   Across all sports, true superstars share one defining trait: longevity. We have seen it time and again with Jack Nicklaus winning the Masters at 46, Tiger Woods, Ben Hogan after this car accient, Tom Brady, Muhammad Ali, Michael Phelps, LeBron James and others. These athletes return to the summit not by chance, but because they possess something rare. Longevity, in my view, is one of the most underrated attributes in sport. Just as a great engine allows a BMW to endure, a great inner drive allows champions to last.   I was deeply moved watching Novak. His journey began under extraordinary hardship, growing up amid conflict surrounding his childhood. To rise from that environment to this level of global excellence is nothing short of remarkable. What he has achieved is admirable beyond words.   Novak now faces a monumental challenge in the final, but his legacy is already secure. Across all sports and all generations, only a handful of athletes possess what can only be described as “it.” That quality cannot be defined, measured or explained, but you know it when you see it.   Novak Djokovic has IT. GP

@leadlagreport Michael, I just finished one, and it’s amazing. It’s my fourth or fifth weeklong water only fast, and this time I took some potassium and magnesium- no headaches. Autophagy is amazing

One of the most challenging times of my life right now. An absolutely insane amount of work, and no one is coming to save me. So I’ve decided to do a 7 day fast. No food. Why? When going through hard times, elect to do something harder at the same time. Prove your strength.

We're bringing @NekoHealth to the US this spring, starting with New York! With now over 300k people on our waitlist, the Neko Body Scan will offer New Yorkers a completely new healthcare experience that combines breakthrough scanning technology with personalized preventive care. ...and our dedicated US waitlist is now open! So if you live in or travel to New York, join the waitlist now to be at the top of the line when we open our doors in the city. In 2026, we’re also excited to serve exponentially more people. We’ll be opening more locations in the UK & Sweden, and bringing new technology into the scan room powered by our latest research. @eldsjal and I have been talking about our US launch since the earliest days of building this company together. I couldn’t be more fired up that this moment has finally come! Lots of hard work ahead 🏗🏗

@byAndyAnderson @charitywater Andy - it’s funny! 😉💦💯

Every leader should read this - and laugh while you are at it: The Great Water Heist: Transparency Isn’t a Flex — It’s the Damn Baseline medium.com/p/the-great-wa… @scottharrison @charitywater #transparency #realtalk #purposedrivencompany

During Zeldathon Voyage we passed $500K raised for @charitywater over Zeldathon’s lifetime! 💛 We’re so grateful to everyone who contributed to this milestone and want to share this message from charity: water CEO and founder, @scottharrison:

@Cowpertweets @charitywater @DavidFBailey Easy - charitywater.org/crypto

I’m a @charitywater donor so I second this initiative! CC: @DavidFBailey @scottharrison I donate in fiat so if there’s a way to switch that to Bitcoin, I’d love to know how!

@iAhsh @DavidFBailey @charitywater @TheBitcoinConf We are still holding!

Hey @DavidFBailey what’s the chance we can get an AMA from @scottharrison and @charitywater at @TheBitcoinConf? Jan. ‘25 marked 4 years of holding their Bitcoin Water Trust and they raised over 106 BTC for clean water projects. We should celebrate!

🚰 200 million hours a day. That’s how much time women and girls around the world spend collecting water every day— that’s time stolen from school, work, and family life. @charitywater is changing that. In a world where traditional fundraising often leans on guilt and data, @scottharrison and the @charitywater team are rewriting the playbook— with empathy, tangible storytelling, and transparency at its core. 👓 At the Experience Lab in Tennessee, here in the US, visitors have the opportunity to step into an immersive virtual reality (VR) journey that replicates the daily reality of collecting water— from long walks, to heavy jerrycans, and unsafe sources. It doesn’t just inform. It moves people to take action. Highlights from today’s Forbes article: ➡️ The Experience Lab represents a powerful shift in how nonprofits connect with supporters ➡️ Access to clean water isn't just a health issue— it's a gender equity issue ➡️ Virtual reality continues to emerge as an effective tool in increasing donor empathy and action This article by Megan Bruneau is a must-read for anyone in philanthropy, fundraising, or impact-driven work. 🔗 Check it out here: forbes.com/sites/meganbru… As we navigate 2025, let’s reimagine what giving can feel like… and do it! P.S. check out 🟠 PhilanthropyFuturist.org 🔵, it’s a weekly advice column preparing you for the future of the Nonprofit Sector. For Nonprofit leaders, Creators, and Board members.

@mikebeckhamsm Well said. Believing 2025 will end up much better than you even initially planned for the company, and you realize all the leadership upgrades you are leaving into

Right now, none of the numbers in our business work as a result of the trade war. I believe we are going to negotiate new deals that will allow the company to continue to thrive, but it is a period of tremendous uncertainty. We were founded ten years ago, and over that time there have been several crisis moments. They are the gut check situations where you hope things are going to be ok, but you don't know for sure. For example, We once had our Amazon account suspended 4 days before Black Friday. During Covid, we had multiple retail partners tell us they could not order from us for months because they had to use all buying power on essential medical supplies. During each of these challenging periods, I have found myself at a crossroads. How do I manage myself through the chaos? Each time I have chosen to lean into my faith and to double down on the values that matter most to me. Generosity, excellence, collaboration, humility, and growth mindset to name a few. Looking back, I don't know that the choices I made with my attitude changed the outcomes from those trying situations. But I know it changed me. Your biggest asset is not your money and it isn't your career. It is your character and who you are as a person. Going through tough times has made me realize that the number one way Simple Modern has enriched my life is that it has helped me to continue growing towards the person that I want to become. The hardest part about personal growth is that it primarily happens in periods of extreme adversity. The times we most want to choose comfort are the best opportunities to experience the growth we desire. Right now, 2025 is not going the way I had planned. I would not have chosen this business environment. But I am not going to feel sorry for myself or get angry. I'm going to use it as fuel to grow. How you frame your circumstances is powerful. How are you framing the adversity you are experiencing in your life right now? What is happening in your career, your relationships, your health, or your finances that is an opportunity to grow? Choose the less taken path. Convert adversity into opportunity. To become a better leader. To reorder priorities. To become the best version of yourself.

This @charitywater ad isn’t about water. It’s about something even more powerful. It’s about Transparency. In just 181 seconds, this video does what most Nonprofit campaigns struggle to do. It brings donors and potential supporters along for the ride. It answers the big questions that often fuel donor skepticism: Where does the money go? How is impact truly being created? In this short video, you learn about… ➡️ The problem (unsafe water) ➡️ The economics (100% to the cause) ➡️ The communities (the people being helped) ➡️ The team (the staff on the ground, making it happen) 🚰 The solution (access to safe and clean water) And most importantly… This video brings you on the journey and gives you insight into how impact is actually being created 🌱 Safe and clean water is the outcome— but transparency is the message. Transparency is the seed. It nurtures trust long before it asks for support. And trust? That’s the first donation you earn. Everything else flows from there. Huge shoutout to @scottharrison and the entire @charitywater team. This ad isn’t just compelling, it’s timeless. Keep innovating. Keep raising the bar! P.S. if you found this post valuable, check out 🟠 PhilanthropyFuturist.org 🔵, it’s a weekly advice column preparing you for the future of the Nonprofit Sector. For Nonprofit leaders, Creators, and Board members.

@klarnaseb Things take time… 😉

Today marks 20 years since Klarna processed its first transaction!!! To celebrate I am sharing a secret private email sent to my co-founders a late night in cold Feb 2006. Proud to have predicted the financial crisis 2008 But most importantly don’t miss the surprising end!!!

@eldsjal @HNilsonne Congrats! 🎈

Exactly seven years ago today - I sent @HNilsonne a DM asking him to start a healthcare company with me. I didn’t know Hjalmar very well at the time. And his reply was a bit lukewarm - I think he said ”perhaps”. But I really believed he was the right guy for this idea, so after many many meetings about what this could be - I finally got him to agree. That company became @NekoHealth and it’s even better than I envisioned all those years ago. Fast forward to today, and we’re launching our second London location, just over six months since we first launched in the UK. Neko Health Spitalfields is our largest health centre yet, and watching it come alive has been so fun. We’re not stopping - two more UK locations are on the horizon before 2026.

@jack 💯

19 years