The story behind the cartoon
Chamath Palihapitiya was born in Galle, Sri Lanka, in 1976 and moved with his family to Ottawa, Canada, at five. He worked at Burger King as a teenager to help support the household, then graduated from the University of Waterloo in 1999 with a degree in electrical engineering. In 2007 he joined Facebook as vice president of user growth and helped grow it from about 50 million users to more than 700 million before leaving in 2011.
In 2011 Palihapitiya founded Social Capital, backing early bets including Slack, Yammer and Box. In 2019 he took Virgin Galactic public through a SPAC, making it the first publicly traded commercial human spaceflight company, and the run that followed — Opendoor, Clover Health, SoFi — earned him the nickname SPAC King. He also co-hosts the All-In podcast with David Sacks, David Friedberg and Jason Calacanis.
The boom ended in the bust: in September 2022 Palihapitiya wound down his two remaining SPACs and returned $1.61 billion to investors after failing to find deals, as his earlier SPAC stocks plunged. Then came the comeback — in September 2025 he launched a new $345 million vehicle, American Exceptionalism Acquisition Corp, and publicly warned retail investors not to buy it.
The joke in Zimbo's strip is the arc itself: the kid flipping burgers becomes the man flipping whole companies public, crowned SPAC King over a rocket, left holding a $1.61 billion return sack when the music stopped — and ends the strip at a podium under a $345 million SPAC sign, hands up, delivering the kicker straight to the crowd: he's back, and he says don't follow him.
THE DRY WELL
THE STOLEN-FACE SMEAR
THE HOMEWORK SHUTTER
EXHIBIT A IS STILL RECORDING