Megan Greenwell

Bad Company / 2025 / @greenwell.bsky.social

www.harpercollins.com/products/bad...

Philz Coffee close to closing deal to sell to private equity firm for $145 million Employee stocks will be canceled as part of the deal; former employees point to culture change across Philz Coffee.

BAD COMPANY
Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream
bookshop.org/a/109816/978...

(Philz was already the worst coffee chain in American, so surely this will go great.)

1. I love Bluesky for having moved 1000s of copies of my client Megan Greenwell's BAD COMPANY.

2. Candidly, the key to effective BlueSky book promotion is not to come in with the attitude of "if you people don't give me the one-way utility I want, I'm bouncing."

Tim! I'm flattered!

"Twitter's dead, Facebook’s garbage, TikTok’s sus, and everyone’s scattered. How on Earth am I supposed to promote my book online?" Digital strategy for an eshittified age.

Bluesky made a meaningful difference in my book sales, especially the first week preorders were announced. I can see how many from referrals to my Bookshop affiliate link.

Did you miss my summer book list? It's up for everyone now, and while I'd still love if you sub to the newsletter or Patreon you can read my picks, including bangers from @greenwell.bsky.social, @restingdinoface.bsky.social, and @annaleen.bsky.social here:

buttondown.com/alanhenry/ar...

The book is good, folks. Absolutely the most human-centered and even intermittently uplifting way of writing about a legitimate cultural scourge imaginable. Absolutely as fun to read as it is infuriating. You should get it.

oh wow, I'm flattered!

This is good. You could teach this in secondary English or in a GenEd course. Maybe you should.

I’m reading @greenwell.bsky.social’s BAD COMPANY and it is a masterful and infuriating recounting of private equity’s disastrous management of the assets they borrow money to own using personal experiences and building out case studies from there

one of my teens said to me this week “not a date that starts with 19” 💀

Over the course of Bad Company, Greenwell follows four people whose lives have been altered by a private equity takeover. The history and policy analysis act as a scaffolding for these stories; it’s in these intimate portraits that the book truly shines. Though never stated outright, the experiences of Greenwell’s subjects act as a powerful foil to a certain kind of managerial thinking that is implicit at the heart of private equity’s pitch: that profits could only possibly matter to the people in charge of the ledgers, that employees need to be micromanaged, that businesses suffer because of a lack of commitment from the people who clock in and out every day. In other words, Greenwell managed to find a collection of characters utterly devoted to what they do.

What a damn honor to have a writer as incisive as @mollyo.bsky.social write about my book in such detail (and say such nice things about it!) newrepublic.com/article/1983...

Inside the Private Equity Scam—and the Livelihoods It Has Destroyed Financiers have bamboozled the public for years about their expertise in “fixing” companies. Yet they often—and sometimes deliberately—run them into the ground.

'Years later, I still acutely remember the shock of watching a few guys armed with little more than inspirational quotes turn a functional if imperfect company into a series of spammy content farms.'

Over the course of Bad Company, Greenwell follows four people whose lives have been altered by a private equity takeover. The history and policy analysis act as a scaffolding for these stories; it’s in these intimate portraits that the book truly shines. Though never stated outright, the experiences of Greenwell’s subjects act as a powerful foil to a certain kind of managerial thinking that is implicit at the heart of private equity’s pitch: that profits could only possibly matter to the people in charge of the ledgers, that employees need to be micromanaged, that businesses suffer because of a lack of commitment from the people who clock in and out every day. In other words, Greenwell managed to find a collection of characters utterly devoted to what they do.

What a damn honor to have a writer as incisive as @mollyo.bsky.social write about my book in such detail (and say such nice things about it!) newrepublic.com/article/1983...

Molly, this is so smart and thoughtful. Thank you so much for the incredible read.

Inside the Private Equity Scam—and the Livelihoods It Has Destroyed Financiers have bamboozled the public for years about their expertise in “fixing” companies. Yet they often—and sometimes deliberately—run them into the ground.

Write a bit about @greenwell.bsky.social's very good book, which among other things has some excellent anecdotes about how private equity guys understand their role in the world

newrepublic.com/article/1983...

This sums it up #BookSky
Bad Company by @greenwell.bsky.social

including among many journalists!!

Kate! 😭

BAD COMPANY
Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream

one of the best to ever do it

An unbearably sad statement from the Editorial Committee (SDJ) of the AFP news agency, please read:

"Without immediate intervention, the last reporters in Gaza will die.
AFP has been working with 1 writer, 3 photographers and 6 videographers, all freelance, in the Gaza Strip… /1

Defector staff writer Maitreyi Anantharaman's YOU CAN'T SEE ME: INSIDE THE NEW GOLDEN AGE OF WOMEN'S BASKETBALL, balancing reporting with criticism to chronicle a power shift in women's basketball-a sport that is seeing record-breaking viewership numbers, growing corporate interest, and the negotiation of a new collective bargaining agreement set to transform how the players are valued-with a focus on the star players at the forefront of the sport's rapid cultural rise, to Pilar Garcia-Brown at Dutton, at auction, by Laura Usselman at Stuart Krichevsky Agency (NA).

interesting weekend! anyway! I’m really excited to work on this book about all the ways women’s basketball players are valued and devalued

holy shit maitreyi please take all my money

Today 3:02 AM were you ever a fall out boy fan and if your answer to that inquiry is "sophia, are you asking me that because i'm a millennial?" the answer is yes but i promise my intentions are 100% pure

four days ‘til I go to journalism camp with 40 teens for the 10th year in a row and, for the 10th year in a row, get roasted harder than I ever believed possible.

ah jeez thank you. my editor gets all the credit for the length, my first draft was, uh, somewhat longer.

I was one of the pre-orders, and I just finished it a few moments ago.

An excellent book, very clearly written. I so love a well edited book, the length is perfect.

Rage inducing accounts of how private equity ripped through these people's lives and those around them.

PE is a scourge.

I refuse to dignify this behavior with a like

Adam.

sad that you lost my number