In his memoir, Blackstone founder Stephen Schwarzman says he saw a student fridge-rental firm was doomed back in 1969 because it was not a real business, just salespeople persuading people of something unreal.
In his memoir, Schwarzman recalls that on his first Wall Street job in 1969 he concluded a student fridge-rental company would eventually go bankrupt. His reason was plain: internally it was out of control, nobody seemed to know who was in the next room, and it only looked like a growth company because student numbers kept rising.
The piece then turns that test on Blackstone itself: its $2.3 billion debt financing for CoreWeave closed when the company had only $16 million in revenue, a Blackstone-owned company paid $1.5 million after employing more than 100 children, and Blackstone is simultaneously the world's largest commercial landlord and one of the biggest backers of AI infrastructure.
Using the author's own words against him is the sharpest move here.
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