Everyone I showed the name to tried to talk me out of it. The bankers. The lawyers. A well-meaning family member who thought I was being a teenager about it. I named the holding company NGMI anyway. This is why.
Where it comes from
"NGMI" is crypto slang — short for not gonna make it. It started as a put-down, migrated into self-deprecation, and landed somewhere close to a shrug. "WAGMI" (we're all gonna make it) is the optimistic version; NGMI is the older, quieter sibling. I ran a web3 fund called wagmi Fund I. The holding got the opposite.
That wasn't an accident.
Why name the house after the worst outcome
Because most of the things we start will not work.
NGMI has had eighteen projects since 2012. Eleven still standing. Four sold. Three closed. The base rate on everything I do is failure. The base rate on everything anyone does is failure. A name that pretends otherwise — "Catalyst," "Vertex," "Ascend Capital" — is a name that will eventually embarrass itself.
If the sign on the door tells the truth about the math, the wins feel earned and the losses feel expected. That's a healthier operating temperature than the alternative.
I've never felt lucky. I assume nothing. I build assuming it won't work, and when it does, I'm surprised and I keep going. That is the actual operating posture of this holding. NGMI is the accurate label for it.
Who tried to talk me out of it
Most people. In roughly this order:
- A banker who said LPs would never fund "NGMI-something." (Correct. I don't have LPs. I don't want LPs. The banker was right and I was right and we were answering different questions.)
- A lawyer who worried counterparties would read it as financial distress signaling.
- Family who worried I was telegraphing failure into my own children's mouths. (The plan is to gift them shares and vibes. They'll be fine. So will the vibes.)
All of them had a point. None of them were right enough to change my mind. wagmi Fund I raised and returned +73.31% under a name that sounded like a meme. The Crown hospitality concepts built a decade of turnover. The agent business compounded quietly in the background regardless of what I called the holding. The name does not do the work. The work does the work.
Who reacts well to it
Operators. Every time. Restaurant people, gym people, founders who have opened a second location and closed it and opened a third anyway. They hear "not gonna make it" and they laugh, because that is exactly what their P&L looks like for the first eighteen months and they don't need anyone pretending otherwise.
The people who bounce off the name are, almost without exception, the ones I would have bounced off regardless.
What the joke does
It filters. It sets expectations. It tells founders who cold-email us that this is not a white-shoe shop with a glass table. It tells LPs who work with us that we are not going to pretend away a drawdown. It tells me, every morning when I open the laptop, that today's work is the only thing stopping the name from being literally accurate.
Probably not gonna make it. Build anyway. That's the whole thing.