Cocktail Chats with a Pro Magician

Author

Joel Hansen
April 28, 2026

Happy Tuesday fam,

Welcome back to Stay Curious — a newsletter I write once per week on 3 things keeping me curious, or I send one of you a 100 dolla bill for catching me if I skip.

Here’s what’s on my mind this week:

1. Cocktail Chats with a Pro Magician

Last Sunday, I got to hang out with a pro magician, and my mind was blown

I was there with 30 other people at an intimate dinner party and this guy definitely had his 10,000 hours in on the craft.

The magician’s name was Jason Verners, and the way he presented his tricks and his storytelling was next level.

My biggest takeaway from the event was — events are produced again and again. Few take the extra time to outline how they wanna be different. This event was planned by my friend Randy Watson and it had all the little touches that will make the event one of my favourite of the year.

Go check out what he’s doing at Ally Global if you haven’t already.

2. May 11 Event in Vancouver with 2 Billion Dollar Founders

We’re hosting an intimate 75-person fireside chat with Jack Newton (Founder of $5B Clio.com) and Ryan Holmes (CEO of Hootsuite.com), the two unicorn founders in Vancouver everyone is talking about.

​This will be a private 75-person event. No ticket = no attendance.

3. Tim Cook’s CEO Run

Trung Phan wrote a fantastic breakdown of Tim Cook’s CEO history. Grab it here. The TL;DR is:

  • Market cap increased by more than 10x from $350B to $4T ($700m a day during his tenure).

  • Annual revenue went from $108B (2011) to $416B (2025).

  • Net profit went from $26B (2011) to $112B (2025)

  • Installed devices is now at over 2.5 billion.

  • Services revenue — aka squeezing Google to be the default search on Safari and milking mobile game ads — is up 11x from $10B (2011) to $109B (2025).

  • Wearables (Watch, AirPods) revenue reached $36B in 2025, more than AMD ($35B), Essilor Luxottica ($33B), PayPal ($33B), McDonald’s ($26B) or Adobe ($24B).

  • The left bud of an AirPods set I bought got lost a record 3x in 2025.

Anyways, Tim Cook is the real deal and deserves a break and a half.

Liked today’s deep dive? Forward it to a friend.

Joel

You can hit me up on Twitter or LinkedIn. But the true besties hit me up on Strava and IG.

Forwarded this email? Sign up here