The Great Pollination Machine
A field guide to the species of investors fueling capitalism’s bloom and bust.
Few human creations are as mysterious, dynamic, and unresolvably complex as the stock market. In real time, the prices of roughly 50,000 listed — and countless unlisted — companies are set by the shifting interactions of millions of buyers and sellers.
As a system, these collisions of differing worldviews give rise to the birth, growth, decline, and death of everything from enduring commercial empires and world-changing discoveries to culture-shifting fads and executive-imprisoning frauds.
Viewed from afar, this life-giving, life-taking machine resembles nature’s own evolutionary dance — the co-adaptation between bees, birds, insects, and the infinite varieties of flowers they pollinate, reproduce, and mutate. Each species acts from self-interest, sipping the nectar it craves, never realizing it is furthering the grand reproductive experiment of Life itself.
Viewed up close, each “species” of market participant — with its own peculiar instincts — helps shape the rise and fall of some small subset of companies across some small slice of time.
🐝 The Pollinators of Capital
First comes the ENFP seed-stage hype-man venture capitalist, who bursts into the founder’s life yelling, “NO, THINK BIGGER!” He brings inspiration, media exposure, and borrowed credibility to a lonesome first-time founder with no network — just enough buzz to attract the ENTP shiny-object chaser, who tosses in a few chips, convinced that holding 9-6 offsuit in early position is totally fine, because “we’re here to see the flop.”
Next, the INFP full-time empath mom with a sizable PA (personal account) lobs in a few shares after meeting the charismatic founder at the local dog shelter. She felt “a calling from her Higher Self” and confirmed the trade with her Spirit Guides.
The hype cycle gains momentum. The combination of an exponential funding curve, a beautiful website, and three cherry-picked customer testimonials convinces the ISFP consumer VC that she’s witnessing the dawn of Culture 8.0. She pens a “deeply researched” white paper, sends it to her ESFP influencer bestie, and convinces her to lead the next round at double the valuation. Ten million YouTube followers later, the company’s ARR is up 500% year-over-year, and our consumer VC proudly shows her LPs a 125% IRR before raising an even larger fund to double down.
💥 The Bloom and the Wilt
Now the company’s revenue chart has gone fully exponential — and its retention metrics have gone fully fictional. The codebase is a landfill of tech debt. So naturally, the founder executes a 25% layoff and rushes to IPO “while the numbers are still hot.”
Enter the ESTP momentum traders and the 281 ENTJ portfolio managers, each told by the same banker buddy that they have exclusive priority access to the deal. They pile in, ignoring the warnings of their ISTJ analysts. Three-quarters are left holding the bag when the stock drops 30% after the second earnings call, as the CEO announces “temporarily elevated churn due to unexpected demand volatility.”
Sensing blood, the ISTP tactical traders short the stock into oblivion. Within six months, it’s down 80%. The early employees and VCs stampede for the exits, the founder retreats to a silent meditation retreat, and CNBC declares a “reckoning in consumer tech.”
🧠 The Final Stage: Value Investor Necromancy
Finally, the twelve remaining INTJ value investors still alive in 2025 begin circling the wreckage. At a 1.5× price-to-sales multiple, it almost looks cheap. They are “skeptical,” but “open-minded to take a deeper look.”
After 2,500 due diligence calls, they conclude the CEO accidentally fired 100% of the competent engineers in the layoff and kept only the smooth-talking C-players who have never written a line of code but can flawlessly articulate “strategic vision.”
They look to one another, nod solemnly, and declare with conviction:
“The intrinsic value of this company is zero.”
And so the cycle completes itself — another flower pollinated, bloomed, and wilted, awaiting the next swarm of hopeful, self-interested, nectar-seeking investors to begin it all again.