2025 Fountain Awards & Look Ahead

It’s that annual moment where the world slows down just enough that you can settle in with your people and your thoughts. One can either use the time to reset and tighten the set of the sail or you sleepwalk right into the new year with the same habits and the same direction.

This edition is not heavy on the year past, It’s meant to be a fun one as we reflect and look ahead.

People are out of office, inboxes are messy, and half the world is living off automated replies.

We started the Fountain this year so thanks for being here, reading, listening, and engaging.

2025 was a great year - let’s look back, grade a few calls, name some fountains this year and some drains, then take a few swings at what might be coming around the corner in 2026.

While you read or listen to this episode, please think of a friend or family member who would enjoy fountain energy in 2026. If you have enjoyed the work we’re putting in to bring value with the ideas and stories and lessons. Please take a moment to forward this Fountain to someone that would get value from it.

As a thank you, we’ll send a gift to your inbox :)

⏳️ Estimated Read Time: 6 minutes

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You’ve probably seen MD Motivator, or you’ve heard us talk about him.

This guy is a machine in the best way. The Ahmed campaign alone was insane, the numbers were wild, but more than the numbers, it was the ripple effect. It’s one thing to donate quietly, and it’s another thing to consistently activate thousands of people to care, to move, to contribute, and to see themselves as part of something bigger than their own day-to-day life. If you want to tear up, watch this guy’s vids!

Women’s sports keeps taking ground, and it’s happening in a way that feels irreversible. The PWHL is not just a league, it’s a new set of doors opening in real time, and what I love about it is that it’s not just creating entertainment, it’s creating dreams. The WNBA did numbers as well, it’s incredible.

When Vancouver sells out opening night, it’s not just a fun headline, it’s a signal for more girls who can now dream something that wasn’t realistic a decade ago. When you build a place for people to become what they want to become, you create thousands of permission slips. That is fountain behavior!

The Women’s professional baseball league is starting next year. Excited to see the carried on momentum.

Gambling Addiction

Online gambling seems to be the drain of the year, and it’s getting worse because it’s not tucked away anymore.

It’s everywhere. It’s on every broadcast, in every feed, on every app, in every corner of the internet where attention lives.

It gets framed like it’s just harmless fun, but it’s built to hook people, and the people who get hooked are not the ones who can afford it. I don’t say that to sound righteous, I say it because I have watched what it does to people in my orbit, and it’s not theoretical anymore.

And if governments allow it, promote it, and cash the taxes, they own part of the downstream damage too.

I don’t want to do a list of villains, because that’s not the spirit of this newsletter, and it’s not even useful. But one humorous drain is the Phillies Karen.

Video below (with a happy ending)

Rule at MLB games is clear - if you catch a foul ball or a homer - the Ron Burgundy classy move is to give to kid nearby.

The Ocean Cleanup

The Ocean Cleanup continues to be one of my favorite examples of what a real fountain business looks like.

First they go after the big ocean systems, the huge nets, the ambition of cleaning up the Pacific Garbage Patch, and now they are moving upstream into rivers, catching plastic before it ever gets into the ocean in the first place.

That’s how you solve big problems. You don’t complain about the world, you build something that makes the world better, then you iterate until it actually works.

This again off the top is not financial advice, but humbly our picks crushed this year.

Google had an incredible year, and we’ve been talking about it consistently. ASML also crushed. The eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) theme kept proving it’s real with Joby continuing to build.

CRCL was the one that lagged and took a hit, but it’s also been bouncing back.

The deficit math in the United States is getting absurd, and at some point absurd stops being funny and starts being painful.

When interest costs eat too much of the tax base, something has to change, and it usually changes in ways that surprise people who thought they had more time.

That’s why you see people moving to assets that historically protect against currency devaluation, because they are not being dramatic, they’re responding to incentives and history.

Gold had the kind of year it had for a reason. People are reading the same charts.

My bet is we see pressure toward lower rates, even if the economy does not feel evenly strong for everyone.

If rates go down, there will be celebration in some corners, but that doesn’t automatically mean life gets easier everywhere, it just changes who wins and who loses.

I read The Black Swan: the results of the highly improbable this year and it reminded me of something annoying but true.

The biggest events are the ones you don’t see coming, and people are very good at explaining them after the fact like they were inevitable.

But there are also gray swans, things that are visible if you bother to look.

One that’s unsettling is infrastructure fragility, whether that’s power grids, supply chains, or the exposure we have to space weather and solar flares.

Another is population decline, and what happens when whole societies stop having kids, not in a dramatic way, but quietly, year after year, until the math changes everything.

Alcohol sales continuing to decline feels like a real trend, and it makes sense.

The generation behind ours seems less interested in drinking and more interested in wellness, performance, health, and not losing a day to a hangover.

People are opting out of the old social defaults and choosing a different definition of fun, and I have a feeling that continues. I don’t think the cultural center of gravity is “party harder” anymore. I think it’s “feel better.”

Gecko Robotics feels like it has a big year ahead. It’s the kind of company that has real industrial value, real product strength, and the kind of momentum that looks obvious five years from now.

Zipline drone delivery also feels past the “cool demo” stage and deep into the “this is actually happening” stage, and I think that story keeps getting bigger.

Friends of Felix continues to be a great example of how good products sell themselves. Their hats are unreal, and they even made the very exclusive Fountain Hat.

What we’re keeping our eye on this year.

Twins announce new leadership structure with limited partners joining ownership group

Nick Saban and Joe Agresti purchase minority stake in the Nashville Predators

It’s hard to bet against the Dodgers, even if you want to.

Sleepers: Braves and the Orioles, and the longer shots are interesting because of leadership changes and manager effect, which people underestimate.

But also, for the record, the drain team of my year is still the Las Vegas Raiders. I love them, they hurt me, and I will keep coming back anyway, which probably says something about loyalty, or stupidity, or both.

I’ve been working on it for about 10 days, and I took a different approach this year.

In the past, if I didn’t hit something, it just rolled forward automatically.

This year is thinner, more focused, more honest.

Less things, bigger things, better things.

Early January we’ll do a deeper piece on resetting the sail, tightening the ropes, and building a Dreams Card that isn’t just a wish list, but a real plan that changes how you move.

What’s your call for 2026? Hit reply with one fountain and one drain you’ve noticed this year. Could be a person, a company, a trend, or a habit. I want to know what the community it seeing!

Gratitude

Thanks for an incredible year; thanks to all the people who have shared ideas and have jumped onto the surface area we’ve created. I wish you all health and abundance in 2026 and remember to dream big, believe in yourselves and that you can do anything in the whole fucking world.

~Trent