Hope Versus Hopelessness: Fighting Through Depression
I am continually surprised when I hear or see that someone, usually young and successful, ends their life. This seems chronic in Hollywood, and I am seeing much more of this in sports and the business world as well. Not sure if this was the case before but we did not have social media and the Internet. Or if it was always around, we just never noticed. It strikes me as a new epidemic.
And these cases seem extra tragic because from the outside it seems like they have everything. But I guess we never truly know the pain people suffer inside. To feel so much pain in your life that it seems easier and better to just end it. What a tragedy.
“The Japanese say you have three faces. The first face, you show to the world. The second face, you show to your close friends and your family. The third face, you never show anyone. It is the truest reflection of who you are!” (Source: https://x.com/hvgoenka/status/1551101818545254400?lang=en#)
This is my situation. I show a face of optimism and energy. I highlight at conferences & do keynotes. But I’m a deeply private and introverted person, filled with rage and deep sadness like many type A individuals.
I think we are so trained by society to think that once we reach our goals and dreams, once we hit that target, that everything will be okay. That you will be happy. But like many people, I’ve learned that this is just not true.
And maybe even worse, that all the crushing sacrifices in time, family relationships and health you made to get there was not worth it.
This has been my 2020-2024. All exacerbated by deep isolation I felt due to pandemic lock downs and just losing touch with so many people.
I tried the escapism of travel and conferences. I tried deep immersion into my businesses, pushing them to levels of risk and redlines of cash flow limits. I tried materialism in buying books. I went down the therapy route as well as exercise route by getting personal trainers and joining fight training camps. I tried going to church more often. These all helped to keep the dark thoughts at bay but they kept returning.
In the darkest moments of night, when I think of the mess that my life had become I fantasize of jumping in front of traffic or taking sleeping pills and not waking up.
But then I think of my amazing daughter and the hope that we can reconcile. Watching her grow and be happy. I think of the many books I want to read. And of the ideas to explore to indulge my curiosity. I think about my beloved Japan, Taiwan and Ukraine. I think of the places in the world I’ve never been to yet like Mongolia, Bhutan, Vietnam, Nepal, Colombia, Zanzibar or Peru.
On the darker side, I tap into my deep hate and anger for my enemies. They win if I go away. One way or the other, I will see them get Rekt. There is a Chinese saying: “Wait by the river long enough and you will see the corpses of your enemies floating by.”
I think of the people reliant on me in my family and businesses. I think about this blog, my writing and the lessons I want to share. And I think of my mission and the impact I can still have on people and in the world at large. That quitting life is the worst thing you can do.
I think about hope. There is always hope. And that taking hard action can make things better. That you can eventually and always fix things if you put in the time and effort. I think about how lucky I am to have what I have: my health, my resources and family and friends all over the world. How grateful I should be. And thus, how I need to stop moping and get back to work & get back to real living. Moving forward.
If you are feeling these dark thoughts. Talk to someone. Think about happy moments in your life. Visualize a better tomorrow. Don’t give in.
As Aragorn from the Lord of the Rings says: “There is always hope.”
Insomniacs After School: Living is Impact
I watched a lovely Japanese movie based on a comic book about two teenage insomniacs Isaki & Nakami whose illness brings them together. It was fun and surprisingly life affirming.
They start an astronomy club at their high school on a lark but end up really committing to it with gusto. Setting up a night watching event and even going to the mountains to take special pictures of the night sky.
On one of their adventures, they meet an older man who tells them:
“Human existence doesn’t disappear that easily. Proof that they were here doesn’t disappear. That’s what I believe.
For instance, You say something and you forget. Even if you forget, the other person remembers. It happens to me all the time.
Every time it does, I realize I exist everywhere. In the earth. In the scenery. In the night sky. We’re etched in their memory.”
What I get from this is that everything we do matters. Every person we meet. Every little thing we do. How we live. And how to live with inspiration.
A word of advice given to the aspiring photographer was “Press the shutter when your heart flutters.” It’s not the simple, trite advice of following your passion but it’s doing things that speak to you. Chase your curiosity. Do more things that spark you and give you joy. Live life to your fullest because life is fleeting. We should all remember this.
The Lord of the Rings: A Timely Reminder and Tale of War
I think we all have watched the movie series or even read the books by Tolkien. It’s a story of men, dwarves, elves & hobbits standing against rising immense evil in the world. It’s a story about sacrifice, honor, adventure and friendship. It’s about ordinary people doing heroic things despite their fears. I still rewatch this series. It's so evocative of the times we live in.
“There is no time. War is upon us.” I can’t help but feel this is true right now in the world. Wars run across the world, the enemies of the West are united against us. Yet our governing elites and most people have no clue about the threat we face and how unprepared we are.
But I still have hope. That if we wake up in time we can face this threat.
There is a scene when one of the characters Faramir is sent on a suicide mission by his lord and father. The townspeople throw flowers on the ground in front of them as the soldiers grimly ride out of the gates. knowing none of them will be coming back. His friend implores him. “your fathers will has turned to madness. Do not throw away your life so rashly.”
Faramir answers: “where does my allegiance lie if not here.” It’s such a powerful scene. Loyalty, honor even if it means your death.
There is another scene when the mounted warriors of Rohan ride to fight orcs who are coming to attack their women and children. They fight them off at great cost. On their return, the king’s niece says: “So few. So few of you have returned.”
The king responds: “Our people are safe. We have paid for it with many lives.”
I think this is why I admire soldiers and warriors so much. They put themselves in harm's way to protect us. Sadly we seem to be coming to this time soon. Maybe Lord of the Rings holds some lessons for us that evil wins in the world when we do nothing.
Which is why so much of my focus now is on geopolitics, investing in Defensetech, helping ramp up our industrial and manufacturing base, personally learning fighting and tactical skills. Anything to help America and our allies in Asia and Europe build deterrence & protect our way of life. We have to protect the shire. “If you want peace, prepare for war.”
I leave this with a quote from King Theoden: “If this is to be our end, then I will have them make such an end to be worthy of remembrance.”
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads June 8th, 2025
"Chaos is the law of nature; order is the dream of man"--Henry Adams
"I was personally hands-on with a half-dozen founders in my portfolio who were fundraising in Q1 and many more through mentorship programs like Creative Destruction Lab. Almost all of these companies successfully closed their funding rounds — and they should have, because they all had strong, high-potential businesses.
But not all of them got the valuation they wanted.
The biggest difference? Whether or not the founders ran a tight fundraising process.
In my experience, there’s a direct correlation between how easy it was for a founder to raise their initial round of capital (whether it be friends-and-family, angel or Pre-Seed) and an over-confidence going into their Seed or Series A round. Founders who raised their first round quickly and with minimal effort often underestimate the effort required to raise true institutional capital."
2. I hope everyone hears about the Imaguru story in Belarus. These are good people and hope we can help them.
3. The Manufacturing renaissance in America (despite the Tariff wars).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgo0jTdN8Eg
4. "What happened in the 1970s that seemed to rob the future from the Boomer generation? Energy. With the end of cheap oil in 1973, and the failure of nuclear power to get cheaper as volumes scaled up, the dreams of the sci-fi authors of the mid-20th century failed to materialize. Those dreams had partially been based on fantasy physics (faster-than-light travel, gravity control, time travel), but partly they were based on the expectation that energy would keep getting more plentiful and engines would keep getting more powerful and compact. But in the 1970s, humanity suddenly stopped being able to harness more and more energy per person.
Limited by energy scarcity, humanity’s innovative efforts switched from atoms to bits; “
technology” in 1970-2010 was defined by computers, software, and the internet. In 2011, Paul Krugman and Tyler Cowen were writing that the appliances in their kitchen hadn’t changed since they were children.
Science fiction writers anticipated this shift quite early on. The “cyberpunk” writers of the 1980s and 1990s — William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Masamune Shirow, Bruce Sterling, Mike Pondsmith, Kojima Hideo, Konaka Chiaki, Vernor Vinge, and many others — didn’t envision a future entirely devoid of hardware innovations, but most of what they envisioned for the 21st century centered around advances in the internet, AI, robotics, and biotech.
That was the future I grew up expecting — a neon-drenched, mostly earthbound world where humans would mingle with robots, escape into digital fantasies, and modify their bodies. Instead of bold space explorers firing ray guns at alien conquerors, the heroic figures of my fantasies were hackers and street samurai, battling the nefarious plots of shadowy corporations, insane billionaires, and dystopian surveillance states."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/welcome-to-the-future
5. This was insightful, educational and just plain fun as a conversation on the state of VC and startups. Worth listening to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ncnpYtJCNQ&t=391s
6. Winning the war for the future. Wide ranging and interesting conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMgPTMM2Gzs&t=1850s
7. The what's up in Silicon Valley this week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkEI3csOHGQ
8. "Eleven months into the pandemic, Warren Buffett wrote in his annual shareholder letter, “Despite some severe interruptions, our country’s economic progress has been breathtaking. Our unwavering conclusion: Never bet against America.” This statement was based on a set of assumptions that our checks and balances protected the U.S. engines of growth (risk aggressiveness, rule of law, IP, university research, attracting premier human capital). Over the past 100 days it appears we’ve taken these things for granted, and I now believe it makes sense to bet on other regions.
Over the long run, I’m bullish on America, as there’s no better platform for unleashing human potential. The question isn’t whether to bet against America, however, but at what valuation? BTW, if a human was engineered to be the polar opposite of Warren Buffett, they’d look strikingly similar to Peter Navarro.
The Great Rotation isn’t as much a bet against U.S. equities, but simply the recognition that U.S. equities are overvalued relative to those of Europe and China.
As Brand America shifts from prosperity and rights to oligarchy and corruption, I distract myself with a great American pastime: wondering how I make money here. The greatest own-goal since Brexit/Iraq/Vietnam is underway, and, as in any disruption, there is an explosion in Alpha. It’s fun and (again) helps distract me from watching the pillars that provided me with a life my immigrant parents couldn’t imagine crumble. It helps. Sort of."
https://www.profgalloway.com/the-great-rotation
9. This was a crazy yet also fun conversation. Net net: drones on the battlefield are scary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRe_8k9Lah8
10. This should keep most Americans up at night.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtLsyH-2xg0
11. This is a must watch for VCs and LPs. Definitely a master class in how venture capital works and what's happening now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VCSi7F1j0o
12. Actually this really makes sense. Buying a farm as a city entrepreneur.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x54ojJ9ttxI
13. As a history guy, this was a great run down on the growth of Silicon Valley, changes in Venture capital and A16Z themselves. The rise of a monster sized VC & the insights they had in building the firm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpBDB2NjaWY
14. "Sales has always been a critical role for entrepreneurs. Nothing happens until someone, somewhere, is sold. However, we’ve all encountered a founder who failed to convince us of a product’s value or worth. They couldn’t transfer their belief.
As an entrepreneur, I recommend reframing the concept of selling as transferring belief in your solution and vision. Belief comes from a deeper, more meaningful place, carrying greater conviction. A sale can feel superficial or transactional. Moving forward, focus on transferring belief rather than just closing a deal."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/05/03/the-power-of-transferring-belief/
15. Your regular tinfoil hat Alt-geopolitics review. Don't agree with most of this but it's important to listen to non mainstream narratives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcPuq3iiyiM
16. This is depressing but facts are facts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW6k9z8OCEQ&t=3s
17. "This gets to the part that really interested me: how financial and technological leverage determine which wars break out in the coming decades. In a multipolar world, wars occur at the seams between larger blocs. Yet so far in the 21st century, it is comparatively rare that the two sides in a war are supported by opposing geopolitical blocs—wars such as Ukraine, and to a lesser extent Syria, are the exception, not the rule. More common are wars like Libya or Nagorno-Karabakh, which did not directly touch on core US interests and where both sides are friendly to America; or Iraq, where a US-aligned coalition attacked a diplomatically-isolated country.
Even if the world remains fundamentally unipolar, then, supply-chain diplomacy may create smaller de facto blocs. Access to weaponry remains one of the fundamental prerequisites for a state’s war-making capability, and increasingly complex weapons supply chains will continue to stretch across multiple countries. It is obvious how this creates potential chokepoints for the end user; less obvious is how those chokepoints incentivize broad alignments—such as Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Israel in the Nagorno-Karabakh War—that have both the industrial capacity to fight a war and the collective diplomatic clout to prevent outside interference. And, given the outsized advantage that a secure supply of outside weaponry can generate, a world with more chokepoints may paradoxically incentivize more wars."
https://dispatch.bazaarofwar.com/p/book-discussion-on-chokepoints-american
18. Lessons from history from Sarah Paine, one of the best historians around. Lots of implications for geopolitics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcVSgYz5SJ8
19. "Unfortunately, the US has focused its global efforts on actively managing, militarily and through economic sanctions, its version of the ‘global order.’ It has been at the expense of growing its trade relationships. This global order is falling apart as US interests diverge from the standards it developed during the Cold War, leading to expensive military adventures and dismantling the international organizations it painstakingly built to manage this sprawling network.
The other nations that are involved in this multipolar conflict;
All are self-interested. Since this war isn’t a systemic conflict primarily focused on network influence, coercion of these nations will be resisted.
China’s focus on ‘trading with all’ in contrast to America’s ‘we are in charge’ has levelled the playing field regarding influence.
Some, like the EU, see themselves as contestants on par with the US and China despite their dependence on US security and Chinese-manufactured goods."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/framing-a-conflict-with-china
20. I like Mike Thurston, creator extraordinaire. He discusses living in Dubai, it's NOT my favorite place but lots of people seem to like it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ftv9Td2TSKA
21. "The U.S. isn’t just helping Ukraine. It’s creating a blueprint.
I would not be surprised if every country that benefits from the US military, especially resource-rich nations, will see a version of this deal coming their way.
Aid, in exchange for access. Weapons, in exchange for minerals.
Let’s not pretend. The United States has the biggest military and economy in the world. But real power—the kind that lasts—comes from controlling resources.
Right now, China holds a very strong hand. With 90% of the global rare earth supply, they have leverage over the entire world. If the U.S. wants to break that grip, it needs alternative sources.
That means locking down friendly governments with untapped mineral wealth, like Ukraine.
Because under the surface, it’s never been about politics or speeches. It’s never really been about democracy or peace.
It’s always been about control.
Resources are the game board. Everything else is just the packaging."
https://jaymartin.substack.com/p/ill-give-you-the-sticks-you-give
22. "The irony of it all is that Japanese entertainment represents one of the few things a fractured America can agree on. “The primary uniting force in this country is anime,” posted the pop star Grimes, Elon Musk’s ex, in February. “It's the only media through line that I can reliably observe regardless of political alignment.”
In other words, Japanese fantasies are helping to hold American society together at the moment. Those fantasies naturally encode different values, different ways of looking at the world. They’re much-needed escapes, but also quiet beacons for diverse ways of thinking. Their continued popularity amidst the chaos of it all gives me hope that years from now, when America gets through this crazy time, we’ll be talking less about the manosphere that divided us than the Japanosphere that united us."
https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/boys-vs-girls-japan-vs-america
23. "By limiting cash, government significantly increase the control they can exert on people by forcing us to live within the digital ecosystem of banks they control. And by being forced to transact in this system only, governments can also wield the power to cut us off from our only way to exchanging money in the modern world.
It’s a power they are increasingly using to de-bank people who are critical of our rulers.
But without cash or when its use is restricted like what’s happening now in Europe, removing someone from the banking system or freezing their assets in this manner would be simply devastating.
In other words, it’s the perfect threat to ensure we comply. It’s a device of ultimate control. Because if we’re forced to live in a society where our use of cash is trampled upon, the government controls our very ability to survive in the modern world."
https://anticitizen.com/p/are-you-paying-attention
24. "In the end, Europe’s key problem in rearming is that, while its demographic, economic, and industrial outlook is clearly better than Russia’s over the medium to long term, the short-term prospects currently favor Russia. And if Europe fails to act, it is the short term that may ultimately matter."
https://missilematters.substack.com/p/forward-presence-or-forward-defense
25. "As with many early stage tech bets, perhaps we are wrong. But what if we are right? What if, 6 months after its invention, everyone everywhere has access to superintelligence and the ASI itself is not an advantage? Where do you want to be invested, and what assets to do you want to have?
That is the main question we have been asking ourselves."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/our-most-controversial-thesis-open
26. "McCarthy’s partnership with Sheridan has made Paramount+ a real competitor to streaming services from larger companies such as Amazon, Apple, Disney and Comcast—of course, it doesn’t hurt that the service carries CBS’s livestream of the NFL. Paramount+ has been the fastest-growing streamer in the US for the past couple of years, and over the last six months it’s had more top 10 streaming shows than any service but Netflix and Amazon. (Sheridan is responsible for them all.) Which is why it’s a weird moment for McCarthy’s time at Paramount to possibly be coming to an end. Barring a Trumpian twist, Ellison will take control of Paramount before the end of the year. While he plans to keep McCarthy’s co-CEO and friend, George Cheeks, McCarthy and fellow co-CEO Brian Robbins are expected to depart.
Sheridan, who says McCarthy’s handling of the franchise was “extremely shrewd,” tells Bloomberg Businessweek, “I sure hope that if this merger takes place, they have the foresight to keep him. I don’t know of another executive that I could do this with.”
McCarthy, though, says he hasn’t given his future much thought. “I’m tired of reading about us,” he says, referring to 18 months of merger speculation. Later, he adds, “Weirdly, I’m the most comfortable with uncertainty.”
McCarthy is an unlikely architect of one of the biggest franchises in Hollywood."
https://archive.ph/2dfza#selection-1605.0-1643.80
27. So much to love about Japan. I'm doing the Nakasendo hike either later this year or in spring 2026. Business and work is great but sometimes you need to get out to nature to reset.
https://www.afar.com/magazine/visit-japans-post-towns-on-the-nakasendo-trail
28. Learning from Sequoia Capital. 50 years of success.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oYXDK9xhb4&t=121s
29. Geographic Alpha.
"And while we have come down from the 2021 ZIRP infused madness, to today’s more sober reality, our focus remains the same. We back simple businesses, offering products real customers value and pay for, and who do not blitzscale. Yes, “camel startups.”
https://99tech.alexlazarow.com/p/introducing-fluent-ventures-and-geographic
30. "Mr. Buffett's parting gift to a conflicted and over-extended investment industry could be the gift of simplicity. As we enter what my friend Grant Willams calls the 100-year pivot, perhaps we might consider returning to the plain-old investing that Mr. Buffett has practiced for sixty years.
Perhaps the image of a solitary Warren Buffett, turning pages in a book of thousands of public equities to find a few qualifying investments, will remind us that the key attributes of successful investing are patience, wisdom and ethics, not the size of your team or your access to influential members of the Chinese Communist Party.
A return to plain-old investing alongside partnership with our closest ally could cure what ails many of our most elite institutions. What a boon this would be from a great American."
https://japanoptimist.substack.com/p/warren-buffett-and-japan-turning
31. Not a fan of this guy Cyrus who is CCP shill but he is definitely spot on re: what a mess this Tariff war has caused in US & around the world. The trust and brand of America has been severely tarnished.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxOBXW1ghqI
32. "Between 1927 and 1938 over one-hundred German military officers assisted the Chinese Kuomintang under five different directors. The last of these, Alexander von Falkenhausen, had trained alongside Kurt as a cadet and became his supporter.
Their mission was to professionalize the Chinese military, establishing military schools modeled after the Kriegsakademie, and Kurt, an expert in military engineering and munitions, was assigned to Nanking after arriving in Shanghai with his family.
Kurt’s plan, if you can call it that, wasn’t unique. Some of the other officers sent to China were what the Germans classified as "Mischlinge"—individuals of mixed Jewish heritage—making the mission an escape route for Jewish military members fleeing an increasingly Nazified Germany."
https://walkingtheworld.substack.com/p/a-german-officer-and-jew-in-1930s
33. "AI won’t transform defense unless we bridge the gap between capability and application. These Seven Patterns offer a blueprint—for commanders, acquisition leads, and technologists—to map real operational needs to proven AI strategies."
https://buildingourfuture.substack.com/p/the-dod-doesnt-know-how-to-apply
34. Pretty instructive discussion on what is going on in a hyper competitive VC market and how to adopt as a VC.
The Age of Austerity: Getting Lean & Mean
I read a very interesting article by Eric Newcomer on Silicon Valley bad boy Chamath Palihapitiya.
“Forbes doesn’t seem to have called him a billionaire since the SPAC frenzy in 2021. It seems highly unlikely that he is one. (To be sure, Palihapitiya is almost still certainly very wealthy by any normal standard. And his challenges may mostly amount to liquidity problems given that much of his wealth is tied up in private investments.)
Palihapitiya has openly discussed his belt-tightening on the All-In Podcast.
In January 2023, he talked about looking at his household spending. “I haven’t really looked at my household budget in 2 or 3 years — didn’t even bother. Then when I looked at it, I was like wow this is really inflated to a level I didn’t even expect. It makes a lot of sense to live in a more heads down, austere way.”
In June, he said on the podcast that he “flew public” by taking Southwest Airlines.
I’ve learned that last year Palihapitiya quietly sold his expensive private jet.
His public letter to investors last year called this an “age of austerity.” (Source: https://www.newcomer.co/p/the-dictator-chamath-palihapitiyas)
Why?
In his latest investor letter published this week, Palihapitiya wrote, “While 2023 was full of challenges, we are near the end of the hard reset from zero interest rates. After a decade of low rates and rising valuations, many of the tailwinds that benefited us as technologists are now gone. Instead, disruptive change via advancements in AI and reshoring of critical industries are reshaping how companies are built.”
The net net: the world has completely changed. In technology, geopolitically, economically. ZIRP is over and cheap money is gone for a while at least.
But we all got fat and lazy during the decade of 2012-2022. What a nutty time. Maybe not as nutty in tech as the dotcom bubble in the 90s, but nutty in every sector to the point that historians will call it the “everything bubble.” Add in the chaos from the Liberation Day tariffs implementations, it’s hard to predict where the world or economy is going. Now it’s payback time for regular folks like you and me, the billionaire class, cities, states and even countries who got used to fat tax income and big budgets.
We are entering an age of austerity. We need to be cutting back budgets and reprioritizing everything we are doing. At all levels of the government, at companies and businesses and in our own lives.
I’ve done this myself. Starting to classify what is critical and what is a luxury and thus unnecessary. Cutting back on unnecessary travel in 2025, like to Europe for example, cutting out conferences that I normally would have gone to. I’m using the hard filter of ROI, if it’s not paid or fully covered, nor in a strategic mission that is core to my business, it's out. If it’s not part of my personal goals and contributes to my health or wellness, it’s eliminated from my schedule. Only travel kept is for Canada, Taiwan and Japan because these are strategic or deeply personal due to family stuff. Otherwise, I am completely focused on the core. Anything Non-essential is gone.
I fully expect that we will be entering tough times financially, physically and mentally, so these actions will be a big part in shepherding my resources to weather the storm. And so I can come out the other side stronger. Kind of like a UFC fighter going into quarantine, training hard for an important fight that is coming up soon. Word to the wise.
Being Off Your Game: Coping & Recovery
You ever have a feeling that you are out of synch and feeling slightly off. I believe the term is discombobulated. I’ve felt this repeatedly since 2020. But especially from June 2023 through to most of 2024. A feeling of going through the motions but barely awake. A fugue state. Basically I was operating like all the zombies I see around me.
Why? I think the setbacks in my family life compounded with frustrations in my business led me to do what I criticize others of doing. Hiding. Not behind drugs or alcohol but keeping super busy with conference speakers' life, random consulting projects and such. Activities that look like you are doing stuff but things that make zero difference to fix the core business or your family. Confusing activity with achieving results. It’s a dangerous form of escapism so you don’t have to face the truth.
That as smart as I hoped I was, I still ended up making many decisions that were suboptimal and taking actions that were just 5-10% off. This adds up overtime. I’ve realized I’ve lost a lot of momentum in all aspects of my life.
But life kicks you hard and wakes you up eventually. It’s like a cold painful blast of the Baltic ocean after a hot sauna to jar you to reality. It was not until I faced up to reality that I was able to start taking small actions to fix things. Bit by bit.
So I finally cut most of my non essential trips and conferences outside of one's I previously committed to. Limited to the top events and just a few a year for 2025.
I focused on the small 20% of things that matter in my life and business. Really doing more exercising and training. More reading and writing. Trying to spend more time with the family. Taking care of my portfolio companies as well as my present and future fund & hold co investors/LPs. Anything not additive to these activities, I cut out of my life. Essentialism. Back to basics. Focusing on the core. Focusing on what is important.
This was how I got my life back on track. Or at least in the right direction it seems. That’s a good start at least.
The New Chivalry: Being a Modern Knight
I think every young male is entranced by medieval knights and chivalry: the western version of Bushido. I grew up reading about medieval knights and their adventures. Who did not enjoy the stories of King Arthur and the knights of the round table. Riding around saving damsels in distress or tilting after imaginary dragons.
The reality is that knights were brutal, killers who traveled, fought and feuded with their fellow knights. They lived and died brutally. Usually young too. Remember this was in a day where medicine, nutrition and cleanliness was not well known. But with time, like with everything, we end up glamorizing their lives.
No one did a better job of this than Geoffrey de Charny who codified chivalry in a book called The Book of Chivalry.
He was one of the few who lived the ideals. The was the knight of knights. One who every noble looked up to. And no surprise, not only was he a true gentleman, honorable, cultured & educated, he was an incredible warrior.
Charny was a literal one man wrecking & killing machine. I wonder if the word “charnel” did not come from him, that is how good he was. He was eventually killed in the battle of Poitiers holding up the flag of the French King. But it took 20+ top English knights, men at arms and squires to take him down. And he ended up injuring and killing many of them as he fell. Honestly, what a way to go. A true warrior's death.
De Charny wrote: “He who does the most is worth the most.” I love this. He/She who contributes the most and adds the most value should get the most value back. This is why capitalism works.
Yet somewhere along the way in modern life and organizations this has been lost. Yes we should protect the weak and less advantaged but we shouldn’t venerate them. It’s like when people misunderstand the biblical saying that “the meek shall inherit the earth.” Meek does not mean weak. Meek means someone who is strong but chooses to hold back and control themselves.
Chivalry Guild writes about this: https://twitter.com/ChivalryGuild/status/1789733767747092919
“Good manners are good and fine. They're an important aspect of the larger vision, and I'm all for them. But you can’t take the aspirational parts out of a code and then expect it to still speak to hearts of spirited men. Holding doors open is easy. Becoming a man of serious vigor is not. Chivalry is a code for men willing to fight, willing to risk themselves for a worthy cause. This is the vision that moves a young man. A knight who can't or won't fight is not much of a knight, no matter how refined his manners. “
We need to bring chivalry back. Where there is a code of honor. Where martial skills are venerated. Where effort and action is rewarded and the lazy and weak are disdained. Where leaders actually lead from the front and stand for something. What a world that would be. And in a world that is breaking down fast, this may be needed soon.
I’ll let Chivalry Guild finish:
“What was true of Charny's country in the 14th century is just as true of our country in the 21st. Flabby men are unequal to the challenges ahead. We’ve slowly forgotten that a man’s purpose begins with his ability to confront the dangers of life, to protect his own, and to fight for what matters—and that the failure to cultivate this ability invites all sorts of troubles.
So a revival of chivalry, it starts with rediscovering prowess. Those who would be chivalrous must commit themselves to becoming physical specimens, like the heroes whose muscle protected Christendom in times of great danger and gave Christian civilization a chance to flourish.”
Amen to this.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads June 1st, 2025
“There is no sin except stupidity”--Oscar Wilde
What an interesting idea. A Militarized REIT.
"The problem for our dying towns and cities, therefore, isn’t that recovery is impossible. Rather, it’s that they often can't afford the investment levels and police presence necessary for a Greek Town-style rebuilding, and because of that have trouble attracting new residents that would spark a revival of sorts by providing the resources necessary for it. It only works in a sliver of Detroit because a few wealthy company owners bought up real estate and demanded employees move back to town, which generally isn't replicable.
That gets to the militarized REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust, or a company focused on developing and running a specific sort of real estate) idea: what if you had an East India Company-style, well-capitalized company that provides security and government services in the Western manner, in exchange for rents and limited liability for its owners.
Such a company could take advantage of situations like that in Baltimore, where the city government is willing to sell abandoned homes for a nominal fee if buyers will move in. Right now, buyers won't, because of the danger; if you could provide safety for the purchased area, and subsidize the cost of living in such a situation, people could move back. So, the problem is not finding opportunity, but how to provide security, and make it desirable and profitable?
Providing that opportunity and security is what a militarized REIT could do."
https://www.theamericantribune.news/p/what-about-a-militarized-reit-that
2. "In other words, neither investors nor manufacturers themselves believes in the long-term reindustrialized future that Oren simply assumes will come about. Instead, it appears that tariffs are dramatically accelerating America’s deindustrialization.
And if that’s true, Cass’ other arguments all go up in smoke. Who cares if people like working factory jobs when there are fewer factory jobs to work in? And so on. Every defense of the tariffs is based on this assumption of reindustrialization; if, as looks very likely, that turns out to be a fantasy, the whole edifice collapses.
Oren Cass and other tariff-defending pundits have thus hitched their wagons to a stagecoach that is driving straight off a cliff. They have managed to remain inside the favored circle of the MAGA movement, but this required them to make a terrible sacrifice — they lost their freedom to look out the window and see the calamity unfolding."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-pundits-dilemma
3. "The new normal is a market environment where every unit of inventory carries an opportunity cost. The winners will be those who can squeeze even just one more dollar from their inventory. The operators who can maximize the value of inventory to accrue as much cash as possible are best positioned to weather the storm."
https://newsletter.equal.vc/p/inventory-apocalypse-20
4. "When it comes to worshipping mammon (money), I suspect that investors will stay true to their religion. They will buy yield. US Treasuries may temporarily sell off while all this restructuring of cash flows, assets, and liabilities, and overall rules of the game are going on.
But America is a master of restructuring a deal that has gone wrong. Americans are masters at reinventing themselves and launching new businesses. Everywhere I go, I hear of new ventures being launched as people seek to take control of their future in the US. Notice what The WSJ points out: Trump is a disaster in the headlines everywhere, but not in the data.
The moral of the story is to know your schisms, be surer of your chosen catechisms, and hold onto some gold."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/schisms-and-gold
5. "Ignorance of the macro is not a virtue." Macro helps your micro. Bridging the gap between science fiction and science fact.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us58WjbknsI&t=2031s
6. Billionaire Defense Builders. Don't say Dual Use. The story of Anduril. It's a really insightful convo here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPOjD0RxX_k
7. "The next time Trump presses the tariff button – which he will do, to ensure nations respect his authority – he will be able to ask for additional concessions, and Bitcoin won’t get crushed alongside certain equities. Bitcoin knows that the deflationary policies cannot be sustained for long, given the insane levels of current and future debt the filthy financial system requires to operate.
The ski cut of Mt. Sharpe World, produced a category 2 financial markets’ avalanche that could have quickly escalated to category 5, the highest level. But team Trump reacted, changed course, and put the Empire on a different aspect. The slope’s base was solidified upon using the driest dankest pow pow made of crystalline dollar bills provided by treasury buybacks. It’s time to transition from the slog up the mountain carrying a backpack filled with uncertainty, to jumping off powdery pillows, yelping with delight at how high Bitcoin shall levitate.
As you can tell, I’m very bullish. At Maelstrom, we have maxed out our crypto exposure. Now it’s all about buying and selling different cryptos to stack sats. The coin purchased in the largest quantity was Bitcoin during the dip from $110,000 to $74,500. Bitcoin will continue to lead the way as it is the direct beneficiary of more fiat dollars sloshing about due to future monetary liquidity injections provided to soften the impact of a Chi-Merica divorce. Now that the global community believes Trump is a madman crudely and savagely wielding the tariff weapon, any investor with US stocks and bonds is looking for something whose value is anti-establishment. Physically, that’s gold. Digitally, that’s Bitcoin.
Gold never held the narrative as a high-beta version of US tech stocks; therefore, as the general market collapsed, it performed well as the longest-standing anti-establishment financial hedge. Bitcoin will shed its association with said tech stocks and will rejoin gold in the ‘Up Only’ cuddle puddle."
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/ski-cut
8. "Japan’s corporate governance reforms, which began with Abenomics about a decade ago, have made notable strides. But the TSE’s recent directive signals a meaningful shift—from procedural compliance to outcomes-driven accountability—and the momentum is clearly taking hold. The durability of this corporate renaissance now hinges on whether more companies are willing to break from outdated norms and adopt a capital allocation mindset aligned with shareholder value.
Ultimately, the TSE’s initiative isn’t about valuation multiples for their own sake. It’s about prompting a reckoning in Japanese boardrooms—about what it truly means to be a public company, the responsibilities that come with access to investor capital, and the role listed firms play in the broader allocation of financial resources across the economy. The P/B ratio may be a blunt instrument, but it remains a telling one. And the market has made clear: it stands ready to reward those who rise to the challenge."
https://mailchi.mp/verdadcap/diverging-destinies-in-corporate-japan
9. "I suspect that Trump’s ultimate agenda could be aimed at returning the United States to Alexander Hamilton’s American System of political economy and away from the British free trade system. The difference is that the American System allocates credit for industrialization and productive ends while the British free trade system credits nonproductive uses aimed at inflating, then bursting asset bubbles. Abraham Lincoln's chief economic advisor Henry C. Carey contrasted the two systems in his 1851 work, "The Harmony of Interests"
https://alexkrainer.substack.com/p/is-trump-actually-taking-on-the-bankers
10. How Great powers self destruct.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT3hoxOwtgQ
11. "It is right and proper to revere and venerate our ancestors — not because they were wiser than us, or because they ruled over great empires, but because they struggled up out of the animal muck into which they were born. They put their shoulder to the wheel and kept going, day after day, through all the sorrow and hardship, and they never quit.
Our ancestors were not wise kings and majestic emperors. They were filthy apes who dared to look up at the stars. That struggle is your blood and your heritage, and it is greater than any empire that has ever existed.
The proper way to honor that legacy is to emulate it — to build more, to keep struggling upward in the present day. To believe that we live in a fallen world is to disgrace every one of our forebears who worked to give us a better future. Instead, we should stay on the path they set out for us, looking forward instead of back.
Squabbling over whose people “built America”, and trying to keep out anyone who doesn’t spring from that stock, is a fool’s errand; instead, we should be welcoming and encouraging the people who will keep building America tomorrow, no matter what part of the globe they hail from. Fighting over whose ancestors were greater is useless; instead, we should resolve to create a great line of descendants. Rather than restoring our societies to the (real or imagined) glories of the past, we should expect to build our societies to peaks never imagined.
That task is what we should take pride in. That is what we owe to the future, and to those who came before."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/you-are-the-heir-to-something-greater
12. "The database that records your financial transactions might seem like an invisible technical detail, but as assets move to blockchain databases, the implications for investors, startups, & the entire financial system will be profound & hugely positive."
https://tomtunguz.com/tokenization-ipo/
13. Lessons from building Mischief VC, a true founder driven VC fund.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5Ym_n9fhSk
14. George Friedman has been right more than wrong on geopolitics. Worth watching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmmyLzlELz0
15. "The autocrats have a simple plan: tear everything down and give them control. Let them use technology and artificial intelligence to optimize our lives, realizing efficiencies through the consolidation of power. They decide who's a terrorist and who goes to globally centralized prisons and concentration camps. Indeed, are we not already here?
While it is possible that we may, through some combination of luck and leadership, throw off the convergence infection for a short time, we are unlikely to vanquish it permanently. The only solution is to outflank it with a new vision for global democracy. This is so far outside the Overton window as to be unthinkable crazy talk — for now. But will that still be true in a month, a year, a decade?
Convergence starts slow, and then gains speed as the poles begin to meet. Things are moving so rapidly now, it's likely we will face a series of destabilizing events such that won't know what has happened until after it's occurred.
Consider this a warning, and a call to action: we must start thinking about what comes after the United States in its current configuration — indeed, we must start to design America 2.0, and be ready to counter authoritarians with a truly better vision of a democratic global future."
https://america2.news/convergence-is-here-and-were-not-prepared/
16. A wide ranging conversation on the state of venture capital and startups. It's rough out there. Environment really matters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgcrazZ3YmU
17. Grim view of the stalled Re-industrialization process in America. Trump Admin has fallen down here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3UxkOG-wzQ
18. A very sober conversation on tariffs & free trade. USA is shooting itself in its foot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPfE5SS7fc0&t=8s
19. Trump trade deals. What trade deals? What a mess.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v25aMhjKqQ
20. Ian Bremmer: Decline of rule of law, Chaos and uncertainty under Trump. Not good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLtb9HVNY0I
21. Fascinating conversation. How to understand how people and the world works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3cdPis--kU&t=11s
22. Be the mountain, not the storm. The what's up in Silicon Valley news.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYoEmqM24b4
23. Surviving the DoD Meat Grinder for defense focused Investors and startup founders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tlGWpzOxbU&t=1s
24. Always direct and sometimes controversial but always smart takes on venture and startup land.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXDrl_yyWJo
25. A very educational conversation on how CCP won China and implications for today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l3Sa8ImGFQ
26. Always sober conversation on geopolitics from one of the best historians of our generation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yot-L8X8XC8
27. "Similar to a mob boss, the president has created an incentive system to keep everyone in line. Donating $1 million to his inauguration fund, nodding politely, publishing a (bullshit) press release about a “massive” investment in domestic manufacturing, and staying quiet is the way to go … if you know what’s best for you and your economic interests. I’ve heard firsthand that CEOs at the biggest companies agree — in private — that Trump’s policies are dangerous and stupid. In public, they cower. They keep their heads down and their knees bent, fearing retribution or hoping to profit.
The fastest-growing, and possibly most dangerous, class in America is what I’d label the Transnational Oligarchs (“Togarchs”). The Togarch has no use for the government once Uncle Sam’s check has been cashed. The charging stations are built, and the government-sponsored technology is already stitched into their offering. The rule of law, regulation, tax system, and public infrastructure that paved the way for their billions is now a liability for their “genius” — an obstacle to paying no taxes or worrying about the damage their product(s) levy on others.
They have little vested interest in the things the government does or why it requires their tax dollars. Their wealth, comparable to that of a nation state, yields its own sub-infrastructure: private schools, health care, security, and rights. Overturning Roe v. Wade or rounding people up poses no threat to them. If shit gets real, and someone in their life becomes pregnant or people show up with pitchforks, no bother. The Togarch will always have access to mifepristone or residency in Dubai, London, or Milan. In sum, they’re no longer Americans. The Togarch class is growing and slowly co-opting Fortune 500 CEOs to join their ranks."
https://www.profgalloway.com/breaking-the-silence/
28. "Everything compounds—from money to relationships to knowledge and beyond. The key is to start investing time and energy now. Build a process through consistent inputs and habits, and after many years, you’ll reap the rewards. The best time to start is today."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/04/26/everything-compounds/
29. Sarah Paine is one of the most erudite historians from the Naval War College. This was a very informative conversation. Learning how to operate geopolitically from history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbkO84MsmyM&t=3800s
30. Solid overview on what it takes to be at the top.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zBa_qEZZe0
31. "Our numbers look about right. If you’re getting punched in the face right now, so is everyone else. We’ve got a rough estimate of 15% for the average decline in demand. There is always some crazy trend (Pistachio chocolate for example) but the general rule is about 15% plus or minus 5%. This means if you’re down about 10% you’re probably gaining market share. If you’re down 5% you’re *definitely* gaining market share.
Vast majority of people are not built to sustain pain and get greedy (as we’ve seen time and time again). This is great news for you as the female buying patterns have already shifted. We already mentioned press on nails, mainstream finally caught up to mushrooms (source) and you already know the step by step on how to test demand.
As usual, people give up at the first sign of weakness. Similar to how they get greedy when things are going up. Do the opposite.
Right now if you can find a product in any of the following that makes money, we’re near certain you’ll be a deca-millionaire. While crypto/tech all have bright futures, thinking that a meaningless $200K in any of those assets will make you rich is comical (at best). Using $25-50K to build into one of these niches could net 8-figures."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/selling-to-gen-z-women-wtaf
32. "Most prefer to doom post. They won’t even bother trying anything. 90% of businesses fail blah blah. Reality is that $1M is attainable by simply putting in effort. Anyone who disagrees, just do yourself a favor and delete their contact info.
You don’t even need good timing.
People *choose* to be millionaires. Or they choose not to. It’s lack of priorities that set them back. Go into Tech sales, Tech or worst case scenario Wall St (secular decline). Immediately (not later) start a boring side biz that can be a product or consulting. The second you get your first $1 we promise you will already see it.
At this stage, you are no longer shipping all your money back into the business. We’d wager majority end up making $150-200K online. This has been the rough average in the jungle from our glance in the background.
Everyone has a different belief system but the same concept is this, ship into appreciating assets: 1) other e-com/biz flips, 2) Real estate, 3) SaaS or 4) the aforementioned secular trends.
Create that Money Making Machine = Put in $1 get more than $1 back. Keep spending until it is no longer green."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/how-the-rich-avoid-massive-taxes
33. Short but important discussion. Why we need to utilize AI in our defense industry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooMXEwl7N8Y
34. Mercenaries, the world's oldest profession. Expect a major resurgence of their use now.
The Long Sword: The Middle Ages of Wisdom
I am an amateur historian and I truly believe one of the best and most enjoyable ways is reading historical fiction. Christian Cameron is one of the best because he does extensive research on the time periods and regions he writes about whether it is about Alexander the Great, or the time period of war on the steppes in the post Alexander periods.
He is an incredible writer and comes into his own when it comes to the Middle Ages in his series of the medieval knight Sir William Gold as he fights his way around France, Italy, Greece, Germany, Prague and the Holy Lands during the Middle Ages.
Through his 6 book series we see Sir William Gold turn from a young boy, bandit/routier, mercenary, squire, then decorated knight and war hero. It’s a grand adventure filled with interesting characters found during those tumultuous times. It’s a fine story not just because of the fighting and descriptions of the amazing cities and culture of the times but watching William Gold evolve, grow and mature.
One of my favorite passages of one of his great moments of growth:
“There are moments in life that are as definite as battle. As stark. There are moments when you see things as if they are outlined in scarlet, when truth is illuminated, when a man’s character changes because he understands something heretofore hidden, for good or for ill.
We remember with pleasure the achievements of some goal: the wife, the treasure, the golden spur, the Emperor’s sword. But in our secret mind we know that some of the red letters that mark our days were not achievements but discoveries.”
Every moment of joy and happiness in my life was a learning experience. But the most impactful thing was when everything went to crap. Going through hell in 2001 during the dotcom bust. Getting Rekt financial and emotionally in 2020 and the scars of the pandemic lockdown which ruined my family. Horrific times that still stay with me.
A rough 2022 with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Family issues, challenges in the business. But these challenging moments were also moments of tremendous growth and insight. I learned about myself, I learned about people and friends, I learned about how the world works. And I think I retained my optimism and enthusiasm for life, trying to squeeze in as many moments of joy. Just like William Gold, I am trying to get better and live better. And like William Gold, I never gave up and never will.
The Zen Diary
This excellent movie is about an older Japanese widower living in the mountains who writes and cooks seasonal vegetarian foods based on old monk recipes and his experience growing up in a zen monastery.
Surrounded by gorgeous mountains and natural landscapes, he eats what the season and the earth provides at the time. Nothing is wasted. Learning from his dad and his old monk masters he says: “food was more delicious, it was from the resourcefulness of a poor man.”
He lives in zen. “Life becomes complicated when you anticipate the upcoming days. I should be content to live each day.”
“Living in the hills, working in the fields and cleaning the house, I learned through my body that movement is life. With the changing season there’s more to do in the field. Daily life involves physical labor and that makes you hungry. Hunger improves the taste of food.”
This movie is another example of beautiful Japanese food porn. “The food we eat comes from the soul of the earth and over time, the earth and tastes intertwine.” The exquisite food shown. Wow.
Japanese food is the absolute best and I think this is the case because of the care put into them. It’s not just the technique and freshness of the ingredients, even though these are amazing. The difference is the love, intensity and care of the cook. He prepares the food according to the old traditional ways.
“As zen master Dogen instructed in his writings, the monk in charge of cooking should rinse rice and prepare vegetables with his own hands at all times. Give your full attention to the ingredients and treat them carefully. Not neglecting them for a moment.
Be consistent and Immerse yourself in every process. Don’t see the preparation as an ordinary function.
Changing your heart or words depending on the situation won’t lead to enlightenment.”
The attention to detail, the care, this is why most people I know love Japanese food and why it’s so hard to replicate in other places. That unique mix of fresh unique ingredients, the technique of masters and the deep attention to detail in making the food that only really exists in Japan.
This mentality also carries to almost everything else the Japanese dominate in: crafts, service & hospitality and of course manufacturing. If you have never experienced Japan, I highly recommend it.
Takano Tofu: A Family Business
I’m Taiwanese-Canadian/American with a deep love of Japan so of course I love tofu. I grew up with it. So of course, when I saw the description of “Takano Tofu” movie on the plane I had to watch it. It’s a story about an aging father and daughter who run an exquisite tofu making business in a small port town of Onomichi. A literal tofu craftsman, making perfect tofu with pure ingredients in the traditional Japanese way.
It’s a great and classical tale. The traditionalist, idiosyncratic father who doesn’t want to change anything and the younger daughter who wants to try some new innovative takes on the product or new sales channels like selling their tofu in Tokyo.
There was a time in the movie where he ends up fighting with his daughter and she leaves the home. An old man’s stubbornness and pride gets in the way of happiness. I recognize that in myself. I recognize that in my daughter as well. He realizes he is wrong and he apologizes. It was touching.
The story goes deep into the art of making delicious tofu. Watching the process makes you want to eat it and also drink the soy bean milk they make. It’s what we used to drink for breakfast in Taiwan. So much better than milk.
“The tofu you make, it’s got a fine texture yet it’s soft…..a little sweet. It melts in your mouth as the bean flavor spreads….leaving just a hint of the beans essential astringency. Only you can make it. It’s the flavor of who you are.”
And the joy on the faces of those who eat the tofu. It reminds me of the look I see on people’s faces when he in all the various Japanese food movies: steak, cake, ramen, sushi. Joy and happiness. That is what great food does, it brings joy and happiness. Maybe that is why I love going to food paradises like Japan, Taiwan and Italy, as well as great food cities like Montreal, Vancouver, New York, LA and others.
I’d love to run a business with my daughter. I spend so little time with her and seeing her grow up to be this fine young brilliant lady is one of the greatest joys of my life. How great it would be to work on the business together. One day perhaps.
There is a great quote in the movie when the father is talking about surviving the war, “that was certainly a terrible thing but it’s not an excuse to be unhappy. We live on so we can look back and laugh. That was a great time and I was damn happy.”
The point of the movie is that you are never too old to try to find happiness. It’s good to have someone to live for. It’s good to have something to live for. Having someone who cares for you. We should all realize how fortunate we are to have family & friends.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads May 25th, 2025
“Chaos, when left alone, tends to multiply”--Stephen Hawking
End of the age of debt and death of the global trading system we all know and love. Massive uncertainty and Global macro changes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c31cSvX_UG0
2. "Slightly more behind the scenes, another fundamental force is reshaping how technology scales in this new economic paradigm, putting pressure on the traditional venture capital model: debt.
From transport fleets (Zenobē) to digital infrastructure (CoreWeave) to energy storage (Base) to manufacturing (Hadrian) to clean fuels (Twelve) to aerospace (ISAR) – debt is playing an increasingly key role in the capital stacks of the most promising emerging companies. For companies deploying valuable hard assets – batteries, modular robotics, CNC machines – asset-based lending is emerging as the wedge to unlock scalable project and equipment-level finance, allowing these companies to grow at venture speed while consuming far less equity capital.
These hard asset businesses are increasingly built and valued on bundles of cash flows rather than revenue multiples, requiring an entirely different approach to capital formation across the company lifecycle. And while several early movers have begun to break through, the holistic financing models best suited to systematically support and scale this model remain fragmented and underdeveloped.
The even greater challenge comes in bridging these two worlds under one roof – the venture market dreamers and the credit market pragmatists – to create not just unique positioning but an integrated capacity to transform how emerging industrial technology scales.
The answer to Larry Fink's question of "who will own" the $68 trillion infrastructure boom will increasingly include Production Capitalists and the companies they finance and shape.
By removing transaction costs, unlocking information asymmetries, and reducing friction from the capital formation process, these firms will accelerate the deployment of critical technologies at precisely the moment when speed of implementation matters most, and where existing financiers will prove unable to cope in the face of increasing complexity.
The firms that successfully embrace this capital orchestration role will not only generate superior returns by manufacturing their own alpha, but they will also become critical enablers of the infrastructure revolution essential for driving the next era of economic growth and competitiveness in Western economies."
https://venturedesktop.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-production-capital
3. "Ghosts are popping up everywhere. The long-suffering workers of China who make those beautiful luxury handbags have been like ghostly apparitions, silently toiling away on perhaps not much more than slave wages. Now, thanks to Trump’s tariffs, we hear these ghosts rattling those heavy handbag chains on Tik Tok, crying out from their graveyard shifts for customers to know their true role value creation. We see the ghostly reminders of the World Wars as Germany and Japan re-arm, and the youth of Europe on Instagram telling us how excited they are about conscription and national military service.
We see mysterious spectres buzzing in our skies and over our most important military facilities and know, deep down, that everything is not fine. AI-driven stealth ghost ships without human pilots now silently ply the world’s waters, skies and airways.
Even the nation state’s spooky dark side, which usually lurks in the shadows, is increasingly visible, a living phantom that continues to practice its dark arts in the open, even though the President is revoking their security clearances as fast as he can (even revoking those of entire law firms). But, the corpses are piling up anyway."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/american-ghost-stories
4. Instructive conversation from a GP at Benchmark. Very interesting convo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHuAsfyHHD0&t=1666s
5. "How bad is this debt crisis? It’s too early to tell. But as former Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers explained, what has people most scared is the real-time erosion of the American-led economic order. Our reputation as a bastion of strength and stability, with our dollar and Treasuries representing safety, is in jeopardy. Increasingly, we resemble an emerging economy, where a crisis in confidence sends stocks, bonds, and currencies down and spikes interest rates.
“If the United States isn’t credible, that makes the whole financial system less stable,” Summers said, adding, “we are more vulnerable to bad surprises from here than to good surprises.” One potential bad outcome? A stagflation cocktail of high interest rates, low growth, and high unemployment. This week, Fed Chair Jerome Powell warned that Trump’s trade policy and the resulting uncertainty may put us in a “challenging scenario” in which the Fed’s dual-mandate goals of maximum employment and stable prices are “in tension.” That’s Fed-speak for: This could be a clusterfuck.
With 4% of the world’s population and 25% of global GDP, we have a debt to our allies, who’ve engaged in relationships that provide roughly 6x the prosperity relative to the rest of the world. However, that hasn’t been enough, and we’ve accrued unsustainable debt. From George Washington through George W. Bush, we borrowed $10t. During the first Trump administration, we borrowed $8t (Biden was $4t). We find ourselves ignorant of our debts and in a prison of our own making — a giant with feet of clay, ignorant to our vulnerabilities. In sum, we (America) are acting like assholes."
https://www.profgalloway.com/united-states-of-debt/
6. "Instead of expensive centralized systems, Europe should prioritize decentralization. Small, networked autonomous systems that can be quickly deployed and adapted to new threats should be the focus.
Cost asymmetry is one of the biggest issues in modern warfare. Drones are cheap to build but expensive to stop. Many air defence systems still use high-cost missiles to destroy low-cost targets. A Shahed-136 loitering munition—used by Russia and Iran—costs around $150K–$200K. A single Patriot missile to intercept it can cost $3–4 million. Meanwhile, Ukraine deploys thousands of FPV drones, often costing just a few hundred dollars, to disable multi-million-dollar systems.
This is where Europe has an opening. While the U.S. can afford high-cost tools, European countries must be more resourceful. We can skip over legacy systems and focus on cheaper, more relevant tech. Europe could spend $800 billion on traditional weapons or a fraction of that on modern systems and still achieve similar results.
Countries like Poland, Finland, and the Baltics are preparing for asymmetric warfare by investing in drones and mobile strike capabilities instead of relying only on heavy armor. Smart spending on drone interceptors, precision-guided munitions, and AI targeting can level the playing field without overspending."
https://www.resiliencemedia.co/p/europes-defense-needs-a-reboot-to
7. Best show in town on Silicon Valley news and trends.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esDwl-PRVgI
8. "Meanwhile, it is hard to see how anyone preoccupied with enhancing American global power — particularly, relative to China — could be pleased with Trump’s first three months. By violating the terms of America’s existing trade agreements — including some he personally negotiated — Trump undermined our nation’s diplomatic credibility. And by imposing across-the-board tariffs on core US allies, he led European and Asian powers to consider the possibility that China is the more stable and reliable global superpower.
In recent days, the Trump administration sought to rally America’s allies into a united front against Chinese trade abuses. But it is struggling to mount such an alliance, according to the Wall Street Journal, because “many European and Asian partners aren’t sure to what extent they are still allied with Washington.” Rather than becoming more adversarial to Beijing, some in the EU are calling for the bloc to end its cooperation with American efforts to starve China of cutting-edge technology.
Finally, the Trump administration is jeopardizing America’s access to the most fundamental economic resource: skilled labor.
Among the list of pro-growth policies that Andreessen and Horowitz endorsed in their “Little Tech Agenda” last year was an “Expansion of high-skilled immigration to encourage foreign graduates of American universities and others to build new companies and industries here.”
But Trump has done the very opposite, exiling foreign students and recent graduates from the United States, thereby discouraging others from immigrating to the country."
https://www.vox.com/technology/409256/trump-tariffs-student-visas-andreessen-horowitz
9. What a masterclass in venture investing. Neil Mehta of Greenoaks Capital. Legendary returns and approach. Learned a lot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=502sB_IbjpQ&t=3661s
10. "The 10X Operator will be someone who treats AI tools as extensions of their own capabilities. They’ll habitually use AI copilots and agents to enhance productivity, creativity, and decision-making, and their first instinct for any challenge will be to leverage AI.
Being “full stack” will no longer imply you know how to code, but that you know how to command an army of AI workflows.
As AI agents take over more executional work, the role of the human shifts.
You’re no longer the individual contributor, but instead the orchestrator, managing hundreds (or even thousands) of AI agents to bring ideas to life.
Taste → Knowing what great looks like.
Judgment → Evaluating AI outputs with nuance.
Decision-making → Choosing the right tools, workflows, and strategies to execute effectively.
But AI doesn’t understand cultural context, intuitive design, or the small emotional cues that build trust. That’s where humans come in.
In a world that will inevitably be overflowing with content, products, and data, the ability to curate and sift through the noise will be invaluable."
https://www.andrew.today/p/the-10x-operator-era
11. "By 2025, the situation has changed fundamentally. Ukraine now fields hundreds and even thousands of indigenous long-range strike capabilities. These systems are less sophisticated and less lethal that Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG and Taurus — particularly against hardened targets — but they are far cheaper. This changes the calculus. If Taurus is delivered, Ukraine would be able to reserve it for those targets where pinpoint precision and lethality truly matter, while saturating less complex targets with existing domestic systems.
As noted above, the precise impact of Taurus remains difficult to predict. Still, there is a strong case that the cumulative effects of delivering Taurus in 2025 could be greater than if deliveries had taken place in earlier years.
Overall, the conclusion remains unchanged: Taurus should be delivered to Ukraine as quickly as possible. The case for delivery is arguably even stronger now than it was in 2023 — both militarily and politically. Moreover, if the delivery serves as the final trigger to restart cruise missile production in Germany to replenish transferred stocks, it would bring additional long-term benefits for European defense."
https://missilematters.substack.com/p/taurus-redux-the-return-of-the-zombie
12. "If one AI can develop an integration into another AI, well, then those two systems can talk together seamlessly irrespective of changes within API specification, network communication challenges, state management issues, historical problems that have plagued integration.
This sets the startups up well for the next generation of protocols, including model context protocol and agent2agent. AI generation of those interfaces further separates startups from incumbents.
With fast integrations, startups can shorten sales cycles and be among the first to build and deploy a complete AI architecture."
https://tomtunguz.com/integrations-as-advantage/
13. "My recommendation to entrepreneurs is to identify a vertical they or a colleague know intimately and consider building a comprehensive application that replaces multiple existing tools for that target customer. By leveraging AI, cloud infrastructure, and open-source technologies, they can deliver a fully integrated solution at a fraction of the cost."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/04/19/the-rise-of-ai-powered-vertical-saas/
14. "When we think about the worst-case scenario for Trump’s economy,1 we shouldn’t just think about the worst possible effects of his current policies; we need to think about how much damage he could plausibly do with additional bad moves. We need to skate to where the proverbial puck is headed.
Don’t get me wrong — Trump’s tariffs are already very bad, and will cause grinding deindustrialization, a macroeconomic slowdown, and possibly higher inflation. They may even cause continued capital flight, which would raise U.S. borrowing costs, hurt the economy even more, and make the national debt less sustainable. We’re already on the path to some bad economic outcomes, and it’s not clear how bad they’ll get, even if we don’t make any big additional mistakes.
But that’s a very big “if”. In my post about capital flight, I outlined two nightmare scenarios for the endgame of Trumpian economics: a sovereign default and spiraling inflation."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/worst-case-scenarios-and-endgames
15. What an insightful and incisive conversation on YC with Garry Tan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4KcYTMC1lM&t=141s
16. Very important to understand the bond market and implications for America and the global economy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVk5Xpd9cvg
17. These two have long been part of the "America Bad" school of thought (I dislike them).
But they are not wrong this time about the end of American leadership in the world due to the badly thought out Tariff strategy and general capriciousness. American self own here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWvKs_XWZQs&list=PLgfli1PY64h3bpPsycG1E1PquoujN9wII
18. Some tinfoil hat Alt-Geopolitics here. But this definitely breaks the common narrative in the media. Helpful to understand the world we are in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjiZUkayyCY
19. How to build a long arc of an interesting career. How to be relevant for a long time. "Lifelong Doing." So many different paths to the top.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkwBD3ueOt4&t=362s
20. How to be "high agency". This is a must watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVl5FLRuGXI
21. There is no financial risk, there is only ego risk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXMTbeCM-9Y&t=1s
22. Lots of great investing wisdom from my friend Sven. Happy 50th!
"It's worth repeating this point over and over again, because it's so easy to speak about this yet so difficult to actually do it.
If placing a buy order doesn't make you break out in cold sweat, it's probably not a real contrarian investment.
Following, analysing, and capturing the zeitgeist, or "spirit of the age", should be one of the most important priorities for investors.
Once the zeitgeist changes, so do investment fads and valuations.
The combination of an investment theme getting back in fashion and its valuation multiples expanding can have a powerful double-effect on your investments (and the other way around). It's these major turning points in dominant narratives that can make for the biggest investment opportunities."
23. "One of Jordan Peterson's best ideas is that the human brain is not adapted for specific environments but for Order and Chaos. No matter where you are, there is stuff you understand (therefore control)—and stuff you don't. Climate changes, eras flip over, Order and Chaos remain.
This explains why all ancient cultures told stories around chaos: dragons, floods, supernatural beings intent on mischief. And similarly, all ancient cultures venerated heroes who would restore order in a troubled world."
https://oldbooksguy.substack.com/p/jordan-petersons-best-idea
24. "For example, a sci-fi magazine that accepts submissions is overwhelmed by AI generated stories. And some community colleges are overwhelmed by bot based submissions for admission.
My question today is - when this happens to every corner of the internet, and every type of content, what does it mean for investing in AI?"
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/investing-against-ai-multi-modal
25. "the truly proactive crawl all the internal info about the company and find ways to make it better. they manage their boss -- their boss never manages them.
they push initiatives forward without waiting for permission and own problems as if they were the CEO.
they think beyond their role and contribute to long-term company success.
they spot patterns in company operations and prevent issues before they arise.
they take responsibility for results, not just effort"
https://auren.substack.com/p/ultimate-employee-the-one-that-is
26. "There is a teaching here that transcends history. When faced with a task of enormous cost or a decision clouded by uncertainty, the best path forward may be to eliminate the possibility of turning back. Only then can one summon the clarity, resolve, and ferocity to see it through.
If we leave the door open—even slightly—to giving up, we risk sabotaging ourselves. This holds true for life’s most consequential choices, whether by nations, companies, or individuals. Even for something as trivial as a New Year’s resolution.
When we take a bold gamble, sometimes the best way to follow through is to create conditions where retreat is no longer an option. In that moment, the will to power thrives, and so does victory."
https://www.businessofpower.com/p/burn-the-ships
27. "The Internet has recently been flooded with content of a de-dollarisation of the world economy. Combined with the subject comes the usual plethora of reporting about the end of the US as a superpower, its coming bankruptcy on the back of spiralling debt, and similar predictions.
It reached a point where I asked myself: "Is being short the US dollar such a widely held view that it's worth heading the other way?"
If you have been around for a bit, you'll understand why despite all the well-deserved criticism and the need to be vigilant about a potential change to long-term trends, it's also worth spending a bit more time looking at the counter-arguments."
https://www.undervalued-shares.com/weekly-dispatches/usa-the-unstoppable-juggernaut/
28. "Given the fiscal and political mess that Trudeau has left behind and the resulting broad discontent in Canada one would expect that, like in any functioning democracy, the opposition would clean out the election and comfortably cruise to a win. Not so in Canada where fear mongering and obfuscating the truth is a time tested campaign tactic that has historically serviced the Liberals best. This was about to come to an end with an easy Conservative win - as per the polls - until Donald Trump unleashed his torrent of tariffs and accompanying rhetoric of making Canada the 51st state.
It was all the Liberal Party needed to scare the living daylights out of Canadians. And by putting forward the indeed seasoned Carney as the economic genius who would guide Canada to ride out the storm, it turned all polling data and electoral logic upside down. With one week to go to election day the race is now too close to call and the Liberals may eke out yet another win.
The fear apparently is so deep that, and I just have to scroll my social media pages, that the most hardcore left wingers are now arguing the merits of Carney’s bond trading strategies and economic smarts. This is a guy who made his bones at Goldman Sachs. It is unreal to see how to public mood has shifted from confidence to one of fear and that also tells us that a lot of Canadians are overreacting and looking away from what is really going on."
https://pieterdorsman.substack.com/p/canadas-choice
29. "The reality is that Taiwanese have been living with the threat for 75 years. The only difference now is that 1) the CCP has dramatically ramped up military spending, and 2) the United States has deserted its past ally, Ukraine. That has led some to question whether it would desert Taiwan in a time of crisis, too.
I came away from the trip thinking that I’ve probably overestimated the risk of a full-blown annexation of the island. Practically nobody in Taiwan is in favor of communist control. Taiwanese will certainly fight to avoid letting the island “becoming another Xinjiang”, in one person’s own words. I also believe that the Japanese are serious about intervening in any conflict, as it has a history with Taiwan being a former Japanese colony for 50 years. A slow takeover from the inside seems much more likely than an all-out war."
https://www.asiancenturystocks.com/p/travel-notes-taipei
30. "In Europe and beyond, many golden visa buyers have used their citizenship to escape tax burdens or move into countries with a lower cost of living. The countries have benefitted from injections of cold hard cash into moribund economies.
Locals, however, have also noticed the unfortunate side effects: rising prices and property values.
In Athens, fears of displacement and gentrification echo those seen in other global cities that embraced luxury developments and foreign investment programs.
While a flourishing golden visa program and developments like the Ellinikon promise jobs, tourism, and revitalization, Athenians are left wondering whether their country is reviving for average residents — or just for rich investors.
Golden visa programs, also known as immigrant investor programs, first gained traction in the 1980s when tax havens like St. Kitts and Nevis introduced them to attract wealthy individuals. Around the same time, Canada began offering visas to those who invested $150k in an investment fund.
Even the United States launched the EB-5 visa in 1990, granting green cards for people who invested in a business that employed at least 10 workers. These days, that investment must reach at least $800k.
But it wasn’t until the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis that golden visas became a widespread tool for economic recovery, particularly in European countries like Cyprus, Italy, Ireland, and Spain that used them to rebuild."
https://thehustle.co/originals/the-economics-of-golden-visas
31. Quite interesting. From vet to founder. How to transition to entrepreneurship in defense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqf20n6q2vI
32. This was an incredible interview: Was both insightful, inspiring and eye-opening. Both on personal growth & how corrupt the American food system is at present. Much watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAQhh7zyUuo
33. "Guess what. With the internet you can now join the “CEO” trajectory. All you have to do is build equity in your own ventures. While you’ll *Smile and Nod* at work to keep the prison guards happy, in reality you will stop playing the corporate game: LinkedIn gone. Happy Hour meet ups, gone. Never the #1 employee.
What are they actually doing? They are taking all their savings and they are: 1) building a basic online business targeting women, 2) they are taking calculated risks with real estate projects, 3) they are investing in asymmetric assets - crypto, tech stocks, bio tech and 4) they are eventually leaving to tax havens when they are truly “untouchable” rich.
Another good tell-tale sign is that they *don’t* complain about the compensation difference of CEOs. Instead they know that they are slowly becoming the CEO of their own smaller enterprise. Most just see a chart like the above and quit/complain about the system (good luck because AI doesn’t complain).
Typically, the guy who escapes will be in contact for a short period. Next thing you know they are in full disappear mode: tax haven (Dubai, Singapore, PR - Act 60, Panama etc.), spinning up another biz line and generally changing their entire rolodex.
Usually takes about 3 years (odd that everything comes in threes) and then *poof* never heard from again. The spread between the old working life and the life as an entrepreneur is just too big. Life paths fork when someone quits and they begin running 100mph in the opposite direction. After 3 years of that, no one can relate.
The General Premise: Here, the goal is self reliance to the best of your ability. Everyone starts somewhere. The goal is to build a life that no one can take from you and control your time (time rich = no boss).
Despite the near-term pain caused by politicians today? The future is still the same.
We’re of the belief that quite literally anyone can get into the low-mid 7-figures. This is significantly more than any career will get you (outside the rare exceptions to the rule). AI is taking over and companies are going through flattening/wage compression.
People who say “anyone can get to $10M+” are just full of it. To get to those numbers? Requires luck, insane talent or both. Even Elon Musk was miraculously saved from bankruptcy several times.
Therefore we can outline what you’ll need to do based on quality of life expectations. The vast majority are not going to be flying private or driving lambos. Instead we’d look at it in terms of quality of life benchmarks"
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/escaping-the-cube-the-smartest-people
Lisan Al Gaib: Believing In a Something Greater Than Yourself
I believe everyone has seen the Denis Villaneuve made Dune 1 & Dune 2 movies. Absolutely majestic and grand movie remakes of the classic sci-fi book by Frank Herbert. It’s moving. But there are several parts that jump out to me.
There is the scene when Paul Atreides speaks in front of the grand gathering of Southern fremen tribes. The power when they come to realize and believe he is the messiah, the Lisan Al Gaib, messenger from the outside. You see looks of pure rapture and joy. Even more so when he unleashes them on the universe.
I believe this is what happens when one discovers religion. To subsume their wants and needs in the effort of the greater good. To be part of a movement and community. Everyone wants to believe in something bigger than themselves. It used to be religion, then your country aka Nation-state. But with modern times, people find this in their sports team or the company they work for. It’s a pale semblance but it’s still something.
Ever since I became independent, it’s hard sometimes to keep going when the goal is just to enrich yourself. It was only when I thought of the bigger mission that keeps one focused and driven. My family’s security and happiness, ensuring that all the people in my various businesses are taken care of. That my investees are meeting their potential. That my investments are a net positive for the West and the world at large. That I serve the bigger mission.
Don’t underestimate the importance of having a big massive mission and goal. We all want to believe in something. Something amazing. Hopefully something positive. And if you are leader, give your team a massive goal and something to believe in.
As Paul Atreides says near the end when he starts the Holy War.
“Lead them to paradise.”
Baragaki: Unbroken Samurai
The Shinsengumi were a feared and elite samurai unit that fought on the side of the Shogun against the revolutionaries during the chaos of the fall of the shogunate. Baragaki is a fictionalized story of the start and rise of this unit through its founders and the bonds of brotherhood they found. Otherwise nicknamed the Mitu Wolves for their daring raids.
Especially Hijikata Toshizo who came from the countryside and vowed to obey the Shogun to the end. It’s filled with bloody fights and battles, it was a war after all. Spoiler alert, like all samurai movies, everyone dies violent deaths. But they are samurai so they die fighting.
Fighting to uphold their honor and code of Bushido. A rather strict version too: failure to cut down an enemy after showing a blade, Seppuku, ritual suicide where one cuts open their stomach with a blade. Fleeing a battle: seppuku. Leaving the unit: seppuku. Basically seppuku for everything. Why? “The shinsengumi is a motley crew, it falls apart if we relax the rules even a little.”
Hijitaka is told: “You are writing your only poem with your life.” And that is exemplified by their banner “True Heart.” So few of us live this way of giving your all in life and in a cause. I suspect that is why so many people feel so empty inside. The only places I see this contentment is in religious communities.
I think this is why so many of us love these old samurai movies. Yes, these men lived violent and chaotic lives. But they were governed by a code of conduct and honor. Bonded in brotherhood in a fight for a larger cause. They may have lived short lives but they lived full ones. I take this as a reminder to try to live a full and honorable life.
The Observer Affects the Observed: Power of the Beholder
Babylon 5 is one of the most underrated sci-fi series ever made. Great characters, interesting alien cultures, with action, drama and comedy with cutting edge effects for the time. It captured what good sci fi is, illuminating human struggles and courage. I was thrilled when I saw they had an animated version called Babylon 5: Way Home.
The main character John Sheridan gets caught in a time loop that pushes him through many different times in his history and through alternative universes.
One of them is when he makes it home and sees his father on Earth. He reminisces with him. Especially the time he gets lost in the corn fields, which discusses with his father.
“I started to panic. Which only made the situation worse. And then I thought, if panic doesn’t help, maybe being calm will do something. For a long while after that, I’d go in once a week to get lost on purpose. Just to prove to myself I could always find my way home.”
His dad asks: “why’d you stop?”
John answers: “I got tall enough to see past the corn.”
His dad responds: “Perspective changes everything, I guess.”
Perspective is important, you get it with age, experience throughout time. He slowly learns to find his way home with the right mindset and understanding. He jumps around aimlessly due to fear and anxiety. It is only once he discovers the right frame of mind.
He is guided by an old friend:
“In all realities, all universes, the everything of everything. There is no greater force than love.
Tearing apart is easy. Destruction and hate are easy. Which is why they do not endure. What love knits together can never be torn asunder. The universe itself and all things within it bend to that power. As you say “the observer affects the observed.”
When that eye sees through love anything is possible.”
How true. The love you have for your child, your spouse, your parents, your siblings and cousins, your friends, your community and your country. It’s so motivating and powerful. It’s also a much more positive way to look at the world.
I’ve long been driven by hate, anger, fear and love. Hate and anger tends to be my default. Fear embedded in my heart due to my scarcity-driven immigrant upbringing. But when I look at what I treasure and what has been most impactful, long lasting and sustainable, love has usually been the reason. My wonderful daughter, my marriage (at least the first 18 years of it), my friendships, my travel and my books.
In one of the final jumps: Sheridan says to his guide: “I have so many questions.”
The response: “And that is the glory and beauty of mortality.”
Knowing we only have so many years of life, we need to make sure we are living it to our full potential and filling it with as much experience, purpose, joy, and love. That’s what I am reminded of again by Babylon 5.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads May 18th, 2025
“Doing what you like is freedom. Liking what you do is happiness.” ― Frank Tyger
"Over the last few centuries, the cycle of great powers has corresponded almost exactly to the cycle of reserve currencies, with at most a lag of two or three decades. If America ever stops being the world’s leading power, then the dollar would also cease being the global reserve currency. Such a momentous reversal might take place after a world war or a catastrophic financial crisis. One might think, however, that a hegemonic power should be able to prevent those outcomes, if only to preserve the privilege of holding, in its printing presses, the key to something far better than the gold of the alchemists. But this is where things get both more interesting and more complicated.
The truth is that for a country to hold the global reserve currency is both a privilege and a curse. Remember the internet-meme aphorism: good times breed weak men. The dialectic was well explored by classical thinkers such as Polybius or Ibn Khaldun. It applies to money no less than people.
If a country can become prosperous just by printing money it will likely lose interest in producing actual goods. There could be a psychological dynamic at play here, but even in its absence there would always be a monetary mechanism. If the whole world wants to hold assets in the global reserve currency, in order to save or invest or speculate, then that currency will be grossly overvalued. It will no longer reflect demand and supply in global trade markets and will no longer allow for trade deficits to balance. The country with the global reserve currency will find it very hard to sell its artificially inflated goods in global markets and, as a result, manufacturing and agriculture and even many services will move elsewhere. It might end up specialising in financial services, the management of money, at the expense of almost everything else."
https://www.newstatesman.com/business/economics/2025/04/the-downfall-of-king-dollar
2. "Every island matters. That is why during the last great Pacific war so much blood and treasure was expended to hold and take them.
For far too long, this territory or that was either forgotten or dismissed as “not an atoll worth dying on” by people either ignorant of history, geography, or simply unserious people in serious jobs. The People’s Republic of China (PRC), especially when we were engaged in unwise imperial policing actions in Central and Southwest Asia, took advantage of the West’s neglect and moved it. A lot of work needs to be done to roll their advances back."
https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/brave-little-palau
3. Lots to learn as always. Life is about making bets and statistics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1pciCFUpQk
4. "The longer a war lasts, the more it is dominated by economic factors. This is just as true in Saladin’s quarter-century war with the Crusaders as in a massive industrial conflict like World War II.
The Red Sea, and the wide-ranging trade networks it enabled, was therefore foundational to Saladin’s grand strategy. Although Reynald’s adventure was ultimately far too small to seriously threaten this, the harsh reaction it provoked—above and beyond the obvious religious motivations—shows just how sensitive it was for any ruler of Egypt."
https://dispatch.bazaarofwar.com/p/red-sea-pirates-commerce-raiding
5. Incredibly rich dissection on the art and science of venture capital. Very helpful to anyone who wants to get good at this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVMnMlsVnCc
6. "We call them tetris business models because they are built in different configurations than we are used to. Common business sense, historically, says you expand in one of two directions. One is, you have a core customer, and you make a product offshoot of your core product to sell to that same customer. Two is, you have a core product, and you tweak it to take it into a different market.
But in this new world of AI tech, you get these weirder business models that still make sense, like being a vertically integrated tech convenience store but also selling your tech like a SaaS company. The way you build looks funny compared to previous waves of technology.
These tetris business models are arising because of the issues and opportunities of AI. One is that execution of almost everything is going to get easier because of AI. So, the parts of a business that AI can’t impact very much will get so much more valuable. Secondly, your assets in an AI business are often data and models and, those may give you an advantage in areas that are quite different than your core initial business model, at least from an investor perspective."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/tetris-business-models-the-ai-opportunity
7. "From an investment perspective, memory challenges the frequently repeated Silicon Valley belief that AI lacks defensibility. Spend five minutes at a Bay Area investor dinner and you'll hear that take. That was lazy thinking.
Memory is a massive, defensible moat everyone, from startups to tech giants, will race to capture.
Memory, and the deeply personal context that comes with it, will make Facebook Connect’s 2008-era social graph look primitive.
If Facebook Connect was about who you knew and your surface-level likes, memory is about who you are and the deepest thoughts you carry every day.
Your work goals. Relationship doubts. Health concerns. All of it.
Once OpenAI amasses enough memory, expect them to roll out deep personalization APIs for third-party developers.
They'll effectively become the Memory Operating System (MOS?) for anyone building new products. No startup can realistically compete with that kind of context from scratch.
And of course, OpenAI will build many of these apps themselves. Given their current product velocity—arguably the fastest we’ve seen from any modern internet company—it’s hard to imagine otherwise.
Switching to a new assistant won’t just be inconvenient — it’ll be costly. An AI that knows your habits, preferences, and workflows over years is leagues more valuable than one starting from zero. Just ask anyone who's had a great Chief of Staff."
https://jeffmorrisjr.substack.com/p/the-new-moat-memory
8. "But “people” is much less valuable today because most firms will have way fewer employees in the future. almost every company, except for the startup, is at peak employee count today.
The revenue per employee will go up 3-10 times in the next decade.
in the future, the most valuable work thing will be to select and manage vendors — including software, APIs, tech contractors, AIs, and more.
there are ZERO good books (or even blog posts on this) on selecting and managing vendors — so if you can do this well, you will have a big advantage.
most people are really bad at selecting and managing vendors. Like grade F bad. So even if you get yourself to a grade C, you will be in the top 10%. the best people are the crazy founders that run $100 million companies by themselves … but you cannot hire those people to help."
https://auren.substack.com/p/vendor-management-is-the-most-important
9. "In general, with a real friend, you will have agreements AND disagreements. With fake friends, you will primarily have agreements.
You need to observe this over time and you will catch a lot of fake friends."
https://lifemathmoney.com/how-to-identify-fake-friends-from-real-friends/
10. Great conversation on Agentic AI in the Enterprise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdLPl4WLOgQ&t=448s
11. Learning from the master of the entertainment world and Kaiser Soze of Silicon Valley: Michael Ovitz.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RHFu4N3fq4
12. How to win this new great powers competition & the future of war.
Net net: we are our own worst enemy in DoD: bureaucracy and central planning. by The CTO of Palantir. Worth watching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTG393KqOGc&t=4s
13. I try to understand the other side. But this sounds like a psy-op from CCP as she is a princeling even though she is based in Europe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4oyfAH94TE
14. Understand thy enemy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idaSfpD1pBI
15. "Trump has stated, in his rather dysfunctional manner, that America will not be the sole consumption engine of the global economy—it will not be the place where others dump their excess production. From now on, the rest of the world can produce less, in which case we have a global depression. Or the rest of the world must find a way to consume more—in which case, we have a more balanced, and rapidly growing global economy.
This is a direct challenge to many global leaders, to large corporations, and to literally everyone else who’s about to have their lives upended. Many are upset, and many will push back—as their whole existence is based upon dumping product on the US. I don’t think there’s a going back now—the die has been cast, and Trump seems rather defiant that we’re not going backwards.
So, which will it be. Will we have a global depression?? Or will everyone else consume more?? I feel rather strongly that after a period of chaos and reflection, the world will choose to consume more, if only because the other option is so bleak.
Besides, it’s not that hard to consume more. If you lower taxes on the bottom half of income earners, their propensity to consume almost all of the tax savings is quite high. If you subsidize low interest loans for cars and homes, people will take them up and consume more. If you do direct payments, people will consume more, as we learned during Covid. If you do massive infrastructure programs, then the nation consumes more. Increasing consumption isn’t hard, however it’s a political decision. A decision to have the oligarch class share a bit more with the peasant class.
Naturally, these sorts of difficult decisions can only come about during a crisis. Trump has created the necessary crisis. Will global leaders take him up on their chance to push consumption and fix the global imbalances?? If not, do they just sort of shrug their collective shoulders, and accept a collapse?? One thing is for sure, the old model of stimulating production and then dumping it on the US is not going to work this time. Everyone needs domestic demand. They need to run it hot."
https://pracap.com/theyre-gonna-choose-to-run-it-hot/
16. "Practically everything that would impact the lower-end consumer is getting hit harder. While someone like Gucci could take a short term hit to profit *margins* without raising prices, the majority of lower end apparel, toys, hardware, furniture and even some basic home improvement items *cannot*. This means prices will be raised at the low-end of the spectrum relative to the luxury end (unless China’s marketing push really kills demand for Luxury products being secretly manufactured in China at scale).
Onto Some Optimism: Don’t think this is going to lead into any sort of 4-year recession. Perhaps part of the game is create a bunch of uncertainty to force the Fed’s hand. Again. No clue and gave up trying to figure it out since they flip flop every 24 hours.
Instead the more important part is that consumers are giving up. This is historically a *good* sign for future returns on stocks, crypto and any other asset.
Looking Good for Around Summer: If people need a timeline we’re hopeful that May/June is the time we get answers. We’ll have rules on DeFi, real expectations on tariffs and we’ll have a good idea on Q2 GDP + Fed positioning.
As you all know, in 10 years, 20 years etc prices will be disastrously higher. All of this volatility ends with money printing."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/most-cooked-industries-post-tariffs
17. So much tinfoil hat geopolitics. But always an interesting lens to look at the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZMiQ-vdfD4
18. Grim assessment of tariff mess. 2025 is gonna be pretty ugly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHkg5o52XW8
19. "China's electricity comes mainly from coal and hydro. They've dammed most of their dammable rivers and they've created far more smog by burning coal than is healthy for their population. Their nuclear program is firmly 20th century in character and already has a way of doing business that will be difficult for them to adjust. The Chinese deserts that are best suited for large solar farms are far away from the coasts that consume most of the energy. They might be able to cut their energy prices in half, but I doubt they’d be able to do it quicker than America can, and I really doubt they’d be able to follow us even further if we were to shoot for an objective like $0.01/kWh.
It's crazy that a relatively energy-poor country operating under all these physical and organizational constraints manages to get cheaper electricity in its major economic centers than we do. Our government had a lot to do with the perverse financial incentive structures and stupid regulations that got us to this point, and only our government can undo it in timeframes that matter in the context of fierce global competition. We have to throw money at the problem at grand scale, but if we do we can expect to cover a lot of ground quickly, and in a way that China can't easily duplicate.
Scaling American energy generation by enough and in the right places might be a >$1t project, but we will reap far more than that sum if we pursue it aggressively, and we may even enable victory in the most consequential geopolitical confrontation of our times in the process. We have the means, now it is a question of will.
Economic prosperity is a function of energy availability to a great extent. We’re currently underperforming the Henry Adams curve by at least a factor of five. We must be competitive with Chinese industry in order to maintain our security and prosperity, but once we’ve accomplished that objective we must stretch our ambitions further. I’ll settle for doubling energy generation for now, but in the long run we should be discussing orders of magnitude, not factors of single digits."
https://mattparlmer.substack.com/p/america-can-beat-china-on-energy
20. Good summary of the disastrous last few weeks in America and the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXETOHvRMj4
21. A master class on how to drive returns in a venture fund. Lots of interesting practices and ideas for VCs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If0UxGxTuFg
22. "That’s the reality behind today’s ERP - the operating system of business encompassing financials, inventory management, supply chain, reporting & human resources.
The fundamental problem? By the time vendors finish modeling a company’s operations in software, the business has already evolved: grown into new markets, restructured teams, and shifted key metrics. The software becomes outdated before implementation completes.
AI disrupts this negative feedback loop with composable software. It enables organizations to model themselves in plain English, empowering teams to adapt their software systems at the same pace as business evolution - not months or years behind it."
23. George Friedman always has a pragmatic perspective and pro-US view. So this is his bias but it can help for trying to understand the Trump tariffs & present geopolitics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0YJSEMy0sc
24. "They want to hammer in a good vs evil framework into people’s heads by repeated exposure to their language manipulation.
And so far it works really well because unless you are actually affected by something, you don’t really think about it beyond PERCEIVED “good vs evil”.
This is how it is. It’s a way to rig the game. The media is a tool of psyops."
https://lifemathmoney.com/how-they-manipulate-you/
25. "Being TED, the idea that we might be living in a simulation naturally came up amongst the assembled technologists, philosophers, and scientists. But most concluded that no such exotic explanation was necessary to explain what we observe.
Individuals with high agency (such as Musk, Trump, Putin) have simply decided to ignore consensus reality and the laws and norms that previously shaped it. They are following their own agenda and we're all being dragged into a new reality, whether we like it or not.
In fighting it, we are lured into engaging with the old systems — wasting time spinning the knobs labeled checks and balances, finding they do nothing. What may happen next is anyone's guess. But we're running out of time."
https://america2.news/americas-meltdown-as-seen-from-ted-2025/
26. 4 years of NIA, this is as usual, a fun and informative episode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xd-izEcoT50
27. "The inconvenient truth, for China, is that its scale relies upon American power and influence. The Chinese export machine, for instance, requires a relatively free world trading order. The recipe to date has been “mercantilism for us, free trade for everybody else.” Yet Trump threatens to smash that framework. If the world breaks down into bitterly selfish protectionist trading blocs, China will be one of the biggest losers. After all, where will the Chinese sell the rising output from their factories?
The Chinese growth and stability model also requires relatively secure energy supplies. For that it relies on the United States and its allies, as the Chinese programs for nuclear and solar power remain far from their final goals. If the Western alliance system collapses, who is to keep the Middle East relatively stable, at least stable from the point of view of procuring fossil fuels? China hardly seems up to that task, as the country has neither the means, the inclination, the experience, nor the allies to do the job.
Furthermore, China relies more on American hard and soft power more than it likes to let on. The leading role of America makes both Western Europe and also Latin America a bit “soft” when it comes to self-defense and martial spirit and also nationalistic pluck. After all, many countries are outsourcing their defense and also parts of their intelligence-gathering to the United States.
That makes them relatively easy pickings for Chinese infiltration, whether it be economic infiltration, pulling up alongside as an easy “extra friend” to boost bargaining power with America, or spying and surveillance. If Trump scuttles our current multilateral commitments and trust, China will find most other countries harder to penetrate, not easier."
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/04/is-china-the-ultimate-free-rider.html
28. "The overall dilapidated state and overcentralization on the East Coast of U.S. shipyards has proven to be a consistent problem. If we want to be able to quickly build and repair ships and relevant assets at both scale and a rapid pace, the U.S. must diversify our shipyards to focus on getting the right systems into the hands of the warfighter. Too much of our defense budget is being poured into ineffective programs and overcomplicated contracts that don't keep pace with evolving threats.
Eliminating unnecessary bureaucratic red tape is necessary here to unshackle our domestic defense industrial base. Incentivizing private companies to contribute to our defenses and infrastructure would help to streamline this process and allow for faster development and deployment of new technologies that can give us an edge over China in key areas.
If the U.S. is serious about deterring CCP aggression in the Indo-Pacific, we must give our navy the tools and resources to do so. This means embarking on a concerted effort to restore our domestic defense industrial base so as to prevent the projected 2027 scenario from happening in the first place."
29. Worthwhile conversation on global macro trends. How to play secondary effects for investing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JSFlAIvsdE
30. An absolute masterclass on the practice of venture capital investing right now. The game has changed & there will be blood.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JAY6q6LaHI
31. Russia is not as strong as people think from a true Russia expert. Valuable to understand what is going on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz9xWglp6rY
32. Kind of depressing. Russia clearly has massive influence in present Trump admin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoZq4sAE1YQ
33. One of the most original thinkers in America. Peter Thiel, love him or hate him, he has been more right than wrong about where the world is going.
Shogun: Master of Fates
I was so happy when I heard they were doing a remake of James Clavell’s masterpiece book that takes place in feudal Japan right before the rise of the Tokugawa shogunate. The plot of the miniseries by FX “follows "the collision of two ambitious men from different worlds, John Blackthorne, a risk-taking English sailor who ends up shipwrecked in Japan, a land whose unfamiliar culture will ultimately redefine him; Lord Toranaga, a shrewd, powerful daimyo, at odds with his own dangerous, political rivals; and Lady Mariko, a woman with invaluable skills but dishonorable family ties, who must prove her value and allegiance.”
And it did not disappoint. The acting was amazing but the story overall was spellbinding. More so as a self professed Japan-ophile and samurai movie guy.
It captures the beauty of Japan, the plots of great men of power for more power, and all the spectrums of humanity like ambition, love but also sacrifice, honor and duty.
I loved the scene that encapsulates Japanese samurai thinking: Lady Mariko is talking with her dear friend Lady Ochiba, who questions why she wants to commit suicide or at least die in duty.
She answers “Accepting death isn’t surrender. Flowers are only flowers because they fall.” It’s so profound but then it also describes life. Life is magical because it is finite. Cherry Blossoms are beautiful because they are only here for a short period of time. So life like cherry blossoms are better to be enjoyed while around.
There are also many great insights and nuggets of leadership and human psychology. Toranaga is the penultimate war leader, wise, crafty and understands people. Understanding people is the key to leadership and there is a scene when he abraids his reckless son.
“You so easily fell into their trap. Broken to another man's fist. Like a falcon, but without the beauty. All men are falcons. Some are flown straight from the fist, killing anything that moves. Others are lazy and tempted by the lure. But all men can be broken. Learn to fly them at the right game, and they will do your hunting for you.”
The lesson I get from this is that incentives matter. Know what your colleagues, partners and subordinates want. Make sure you want the same things so you are aligned and going after the same goals.
There are so many excellent scenes, there is one where the warlord Toranaga schools one of his retainers who asks him: “How does it feel to shape the wind to your will?” “I don’t control the wind,” replies Toranaga. “I only study it.”
There is another conversation between a samurai Omi and his courtesan Kiku. Omi asks: “Do you think loyalty could ever be a disservice? Or even a harm?
Kiku answers: “No”.
Omi: “I don’t know what I’m fighting for anymore.”
Kiku: “If you look and see nothing…..you must simply look harder.”
I feel this way sometimes, and wonder what the point is. This is why it’s important to have a clear mission in life. It’s why you need to have family, friends and goals. Something beyond yourself.
The whole point of life is winning, however you define it. Life is meant to be hard and difficult and full of challenges. He says to his retainer: “Do you remember what the Anjin said on the day we met when I told him his fight was pointless?” He responded: “Unless I win.” Toranaga then says “If you win, anything is possible.”
What I take from this: Go figure out what you want. Like what you really, really want and go for it. Win or lose, you will be ahead of most people.
So I end with some beautiful words from Lady Mariko:
“If I could use words like scattering flowers and falling leaves, what a bonfire my poems would make.”
Life is too short, just like that of cherry blossoms. Yet every life is a beacon. Make your life as bright as a bonfire, as bright and illuminating as possible.
Build Your Binge Bank: Shaan Puri’s Creator Tip
I listened to a great interview with David Perell (of Write of Passage fame) and Shaan Puri, investor, entrepreneur and co-host of the excellent “My First Million Podcast” and social media influencer as well. He introduced the great concept of the “Binge Bank”:
What’s a binge bank? A binge bank is when you basically stack material. I’m creating a bank so that if someone was curious about this guy, I want to learn more. What’s he all about? The next hour you would walk out with my reputation way higher with you.
You would like me, you would respect me. It changed the way I thought about it. I used to be very results driven. If it’s not immediately paying off, it’s hard for me to get excited about it.
But when I thought of the binge bank, I just thought I need to create this library that if anybody, if David wanted to do research and he was going to spend an hour or two hours going down the rabbit hole. I need to leave a little breadcrumb trail that by the end, he’s like ‘I love this guy, I’m all about this guy.’”
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BVgkViWDCEU)
This is a great mental trick. Becoming a creative entrepreneur requires grit, longevity and constant production even in face of zero interest or engagement. This is why the rule of 2-3 exists in the creator media business, most people just quit after 2-3 blog posts, or 2-3 podcasts or 2-3 newsletters. It requires an extended period of time, sometimes, years of regular publishing before you get some growth and traction.
The mental trick is what helps you stay in the content game. Really powerful when you think about it. So if you are out to build a creator business, this is a must use tip. Keep on going, keep on creating, keep on publishing and be prepared to do it for a LONG time.
A Pep Talk from Gordon Gekko: Use It When You Are Down
We all have good days and we all have bad days. When I look back at my life, the highs are really high and the lows are really low. Just like startups. 2024 was shaping up to be a pretty crap year. Family issues, a massive tax bill, business issues and thus cash flow issues. And then to add insult to injury also got scammed by ID harvesters (and believe you me when I find them, there WILL be payback).
And all within a few weeks. It felt like blow after blow after blow. Plus it’s spring break/Ramadan so no one is around and you can’t do anything yet. You feel like the whole world is against you.
So what do I do? Besides going to the gym to work out my rage and frustration? I go listen to Gordon Gekko in “Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps”. In a famous scene where he makes his comeback, he gives advice to a friend/colleague:
“Hey hey, stay positive, pal. Most people they lose, they whine and they quit. But you gotta be there for the turns. Everybody’s got good luck, everybody’s got bad luck. Don’t run, when you lose. Don’t whine when it hurts. It’s like the first grade Jerry, nobody likes a crybaby.” (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO3Rd6U4CjE)
After listening to this, I remember that it’s a long game. I remember all the crap I went through to get here. I remember 2001 and 2020 and how I got through those hellish years and came through. I go to church and I also meditate to calm my mind. I do my gratitude exercise and thank God for my health, my books and all the experience I’ve had over the past decades.
I take responsibility, accept reality and adapt. Then I come up with a game plan and do what I do best: Take massive action, attack and conquer. If you are in this situation in life, I suggest you do the same. It bloody works.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads May 11th, 2025
“Busyness chokes deep thinking.”― Todd Stocker
"Many founders focus too narrowly on their current revenue or product features. However, talent, revenue, or product acquisitions are actually some of the less valuable M&A outcomes. The highest value comes from positioning the acquisition as a strategic threat or a defensive move."
https://1984.vc/docs/founders-handbook/mergers-and-acquisitions/how-to-sell/
2. "That instinct for spotting talent is central to Paradigm, which began in 2018 when Coinbase Co-founder, Fred Ehrsam, approached Huang at Sequoia Capital with a vision for a different kind of investment company. They started as equal partners, but Ehrsam has since stepped back to split his time between crypto and his new brain-computer interface startup, recognizing that Huang was, in his words, “born and bred to run Paradigm.”
The son of one of the world’s most accomplished financial theorists and a pioneering computer science professor, Huang grew up at the nexus of math, economics, and technology. In six years, his firm has grown from managing $400 million to over $12 billion by making early, concentrated bets on foundational crypto projects, while also building significant parts of crypto’s core infrastructure. Paradigm’s researchers—who double as investors—develop foundational innovations, then open-source them for the entire industry to use. It’s an unusual approach for a financial firm, but Paradigm isn’t a typical investment company. It’s more like a research lab crossed with an engineering outfit, wrapped in the sophistication of a West Coast Wall Street.
This combination of technical excellence and quiet integrity has helped establish Paradigm as one of crypto’s most important institutions. In an industry that’s grown from zero to $3 trillion through waves of speculation and collapse, the firm’s open-source tools now power 90% of smart contract development. Its innovations help hundreds of billions in digital dollars move more efficiently. And its investments have earned the trust of the world’s most sophisticated investors, including Harvard, Stanford, Sequoia and Yale."
https://joincolossus.com/article/paradigm-shifts-matt-huang/
3. "By 27 Mehta’s seen enough, and he’s left D.E. Shaw to start a firm with his friend Benny. On a whim he calls it Greenoaks, after the street in Atherton, California where he grew up. In the first deck for Greenoaks there’s a slide called ‘Finding Value in Unusual Places’, which at the time meant the internet. The idea was that these internet companies, these unbelievably cheap businesses, were going to replace a large percentage of the S&P 500. In 2012, he bets 40% of his first fund on Coupang, an ecommerce retailer in South Korea, led by a founder, Bom Kim, whom Mehta’s fallen head-over-heels in love with. Greenoaks soon owns upwards of 15% of the company, and eventually returns about $8 billion from that one investment.
Today Mehta is 40, and over its first 13 years, Greenoaks has played a legendary part in the rise of Coupang, Figma, Wiz, Carvana, Stripe, Discord, Rippling, Toast, Robinhood, and other unicorns led by N of 1 founders, generating over $13 billion in gross profits, a 33% total net internal rate of return, and only about a point of principal impairment. The firm is unusually small and concentrated: five funds of 55 core companies across nearly $15 billion of assets managed by nine investment professionals—with Mehta himself as one of the largest LPs in each fund. Henry Kravis, one of the first LPs, told me that at the top of the market between 2020–2022, Greenoaks probably returned more money to investors than anyone else. “Neil’s extremely disciplined, he’s gone against the tide many times, and he’s had exceptional timing,” Kravis said. “He’s the real deal.”
The firm has now achieved icon status among founders and investors—but casual observers more familiar with names like Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz might have come across Greenoaks for the first time only recently.
“Nobody else wanted to do it, we were the only ones,” said Mehta. “All of our alpha comes from ignoring the memetic vibes of Silicon Valley and New York and focusing on the fundamentals of a business and the founder. That’s it.”"
https://joincolossus.com/article/the-visions-of-neil-mehta-greenoaks/
4. "As modern warfare becomes increasingly reliant on space-based networks, Russia and China are stepping up efforts to counter the dominance of commercial satellite constellations, particularly SpaceX’s Starlink. The Secure World Foundation (SWF), a nonpartisan policy think tank, detailed these developments in its latest annual report which assesses global counterspace capabilities."
https://spacenews.com/russia-china-target-spacexs-starlink-in-escalating-space-electronic-warfare/
5. Title says it all. Killer robots and drones in Ukraine. Pioneering the scary new world of war by necessity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NLfLuqeA0Y
6. Important discussion that is topical: building defense startups that last.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOIrMNFGHLM
7. "Play symmetric games for fun, not fortune. Don’t get addicted. You can’t win.
But asymmetric games? That’s where it gets interesting. That’s where you can win.
In a good asymmetric game, the upside is vastly greater than the downside. Asking someone out. Investing in a business. Moving to a new city. If it works, your life changes. If it doesn’t, you move on to the next bet.
The trick to winning asymmetric games is information. Not just more of it, but having ways to get better, earlier, and cheaper access to information."
https://newsletter.sanjaysays.co/p/win-at-life-by-understanding-asymmetric-risk-49265da43723cb69
8. "When you are thinking about market ending moves, be creative! You can brainstorm literally any scenario. Can you convince a large public company to spin out a key subsidiary to merge with you? Can you put aside ego with your main competitor to combine forces and stop competing for everything? Think broadly. Even if doesn’t happen, this often sparks key thinking on M&A, partnerships, and key hires that you may not have considered otherwise."
https://blog.eladgil.com/p/market-ending-moves
9. "This brings me to something I have noticed — the closer someone is to the finance industry, the more they are against the tariffs. The closer someone is to the industrial or manufacturing industry, the more they are supportive of the tariffs. Fascinating to watch.
Lastly, one aspect of these tariff deals that seems to be undiscussed is the likelihood that foreign countries will commit to making direct investments in the US. These countries will also look to buy products made in America too. As I wrote yesterday, Taiwan committed to buying industrial products, agricultural products, energy, and weaponry from us. I would expect many of the deals to include these concessions and commitments.
There is plenty of volatility left in these markets. Stocks are down. Bitcoin is down. Crypto is down. And no one knows where the bottom is. The undisciplined, over-levered, and short-term oriented panic, while the patient, un-levered, and long-term oriented feel nothing.
Make sure you are on the right side of that equation."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/tariffs-are-controversial-depending
10. The two critical years that we need to worry about from a National Secretary perspective. 2027 and 2049.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWP-6DcHN9Q
11. "Those who invest in Emerging Markets are familiar with the concept of Fiscal Dominance. Developed Market investors will soon learn this term as well. This is when the Central Bank loses control of its core mandate to tinker with inflation and employment. Instead, the Central Bank is forced to focus on the government’s fiscal needs—either through monetizing debt or stabilizing the bond market. This then starts a vicious feedback loop that is difficult to escape from. At some point, investors wake up and decide they’re not going to throw good money after bad.
Applying this thought progression to equities. When I look at equity valuations in Brazil, and then look at valuations here in America, I realize that the gap between the two is quite wide. In a higher interest rate regime, equities are often priced at single digit earnings multiples, as opposed to the crazy multiples that we’ve taken for granted in America. Now, I’m not calling for a crash. It took Brazil over a decade to deflate to where it is today. Then again, Brazil didn’t have anywhere near the level of financialization that we do—nor did it rely as highly on foreign flows to finance itself."
https://pracap.com/watch-bonds/
12. "The end of Bretton Woods was probably inescapable, but it’s worth pointing out that the Nixon Shock was an economic disaster: the country endured a decade of drastic inflation that was only cured with sky-high interest rates and a massive recession (the architect of that cure, Paul Volcker, was a part of the team that instituted the Nixon Shock in the first place; Volcker came to regret it). In other words, the reaction of the market and the press was totally wrong.
The question is if what happened this last week ought to be compared to the Nixon Shock, or contrasted? Certainly the reaction is a contrast: everyone hates the “Liberation Day” tariffs, including the market. Moreover, the Trump administration’s rollout has been the very opposite of a PR masterpiece: no one in the administration can seem to agree about what exactly the goal is, or what success looks like. I’m certainly not going to attempt to speak for an administration that can’t speak for itself, particularly given Trump’s on-again-off-again approach to tariffs over the last few months.
What I do come back to, however, is what I opened with: there is a scenario within the realm of possibilities that is far more painful than anything Trump proposed; is it better to try and force into place a new economic system that, at least in theory, reduces dependency on China and resuscitates U.S. manufacturing now, instead of waiting for the current system to collapse by literal force?
This does seem to be the administration’s goal: simply tariffing China is deadweight loss, leading to rerouting and the fundamental problem of the dollar as reserve currency unaddressed; blanket tariffs, on the other hand, are a valid, if extremely blunt and inefficient, way to meaningfully restructure incentives.
Make no mistake, the structural problems facing U.S. manufacturing in particular are very real, and the China-Taiwan systemic risk is only going to increase. Instead of changing the system to ameliorate the risk, however you could simply address the risk directly; I think the best way to do that is to undo the chip controls and tie China even more tightly into the current system generally, and to Taiwan specifically. Yes, this is kicking the can down the road, but path dependency is a far more powerful force than we often realize."
https://stratechery.com/2025/trade-tariffs-and-tech/
13. Topical conversation on tariffs. Jury is still out from my side as this is one man's view of the Tariffs and economy. Always interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmDt_zAlL8E&t=24s
14. "Tobi’s point was that working long, hard hours can itself be fun, if you enjoy the work and the people you’re working with.
But no matter how passionate about the work you are, and no matter how caring and brilliant the people you’re surrounded by are, it can still be exhausting. Which is where genuine fun comes in. The thing is, you don’t need to come up with grand plans to have fun. You just need to be open to taking things a bit less seriously. And the impact can be huge (both on you and on your team)."
https://chrisneumann.com/archives/life-is-short-have-fun
15. Always interesting views on geopolitics with Zeihan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e0IZv31820
16. Great discussion on NIA episode on Liberation Day Tariffs Day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W6ZszzoWc0&t=1815s
17. "Broadly speaking, economic warfare is causing substantial uncertainty. How can businesses plan when they don’t know how input costs will change? How can countries plan when they’re questioning who their friends are?
This creates substantial volatility in asset prices, which turns those using too much leverage into forced sellers at any price. And this creates reflexivity in the market: selling begets selling. Time is compressing."
https://phronesisfund.substack.com/p/volatility
18. "One consequence of this maturation is that our industry has become very prescriptive regarding what works. Limited partners have developed relatively fixed views of portfolio constructions and investment strategies that will generate returns and primarily back VC firms that conform to those models. Increasingly, venture capitalists focus on algorithmic approaches for founder selection, emphasizing folks with low employee badge numbers at well-known companies, people in their social or professional networks, or people who have otherwise achieved some level of fame or notoriety online.
Maybe it’s just me, but it feels like our industry is trending in a direction where everything feels the same - firms feel the same, the founders we back feel the same, and certain parts of the business feel like they’ve devolved into a cookie-cutter approach to finding and funding businesses. This is not a good direction for an industry focused on finding and backing outlier businesses."
https://chudson.substack.com/p/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-venture
19. "Unfortunately this is the state of growth marketing. A lot of channels are not working, or are slow, expensive, or one-time only. This is the natural end state for things, and maybe we’re in a bit of a lull due to the technology super cycle as we’re 15+ years into the mobile wave, we’ve had various kinds of paid ads for 20+ years, and so on. All of these aforementioned marketing channels are now fully mature."
https://andrewchen.substack.com/p/every-marketing-channel-sucks-right
20. "Clearly, the Scott Bessent + Elon Musk faction in the White House—which pitched the president on an approach involving rational and strategic statecraft—won over the “burn it all down” left-wing coalition led by protectionist ideologue Peter Navarro.
Before Wednesday, Mr. Musk and like-minded, powerful allies outside of the White House deployed significant political capital to convince the president of the merits of a more focused trade strategy, including lowering tariff barriers and providing much-needed relief to businesses of all sizes. These forces won the day over the “Wall Street is not Main Street” faction, which sought to advance class warfare and sow division between Americans."
https://www.dossier.today/p/trump-aligns-with-rational-white
21. The art and science of building a venture firm in this crazy competitive market.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUrgLyEioZ4
22. So much wisdom and a fun conversation with Tai Lopez. Stop being so fearful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHUXruWi6Es
23. This discussions shows that there are levels to levels in everything that you do. Also why Sequoia Capital is one of the best in the venture business for so long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jcx3pKnvT8I
24. The Drone arms race.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9acvfAAQEA
25. Lasers in future wars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7P5js8B32I
26. Maximum bullish on Ukraine.
"Researching investments in situ is always interesting, and my trip to Kyiv ranks among the most unique ones I've ever done.
Reality on the ground can be ever so different from the perception elsewhere."
https://www.undervalued-shares.com/weekly-dispatches/ukraine-research-excursion-what-did-i-find/
27. Important discussion on drone warfare and how America can position for the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZL-0yzCaSQ
28. "The US had been heading towards becoming the next Argentina. The tariff shock therapy firmly demonstrates that the bond market vigilantes are not just back. They are now in charge of policy. As The Secretary of the Treasury said, “I could have kept issuing bonds,” but it would have ended in a catastrophe. The snafu happened because of the religious zealots on trade. Peter Navarro and, to a lesser extent, Howard Lutnik hijacked the narrative from the calmer and more measured Secretary of The Treasury. This kind of interdepartmental mixed messaging is typical of new administrations.
What matters is that Bessent has reasserted control. Bessent understands that the markets are full of people whose whole professional life has been dominated by Alan Greenspan’s “Forward Guidance.” For decades, policymakers took risks out of the market and subdued volatility in order to remain popular and powerful. They spoon-fed the markets. They kept Greenspan’s put in place.
Bessent may take a gentler approach than Lutnick and Navarros, but make no mistake; he is also signaling that this is the end of the molly-coddling. If you want to get paid in markets, there must be risk, and you must take risk. He is restoring risk into the markets. There will be fewer warnings. No more bailouts. No more spoon-feeding. The investor’s job is to pay attention and get paid for managing the volatility.
Returns will go up for those who have the skill to ride both the Bull and the Bear. For the young who have no memory of the pre-Greenspan era, buckle up, take a deep breath, and enjoy the ride. This is when you learn. You don’t learn anything when markets smoothly and predictably rise. By the way, this kind of volatility used to be normal when I started working on a trading floor in 1991. You’ll get the hang of it.
It is easy to think about all this as a fight between the US and China. That’s the way it’s being framed. But, the tariff strategy also reflects a domestic fight between two distinct camps: The Corporatists and the Techno/Oligarchs. The latter is now in charge and signaling a serious change in the way capital will be allocated going forward. They want to disintermediate Wall Street and the handful of private equity firms that have decided who does and does not get capital. It was a small club. They only invested in potential unicorns. This left most of the entrepreneurs out in the cold.
With these announcements, the TechnoOligarchs aim to shift more money into the hands of small and medium-sized businesses that may not be unicorns but which are reliable workhorses. Banks and community lending institutions will be encouraged to lend. IPOs of unicorns led by investment banks are no longer the only game in town. The legalization of tokenization/crypto/Bitcoin/ & the creation of a US Sovereign Wealth Fund will open up new pathways for capital to bypass intermediaries and reach risk-takers more directly."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/tariffs-the-american-mittelstand
29. "Outside of its dishonorable trade practices, the Chinese Communist Party is the world’s most malevolent force, and it threatens America’s founding principles and global sovereignty. Sure, the United States often finds itself trading with some unsavory partners, but China combines tyranny with bad faith, and it’s simply a bridge too far.
Wall Street may not like it, but America's complete decoupling from Chinese trade is both morally and economically sound in the long term. It will greatly benefit the United States to completely detach from China so that we can have reliable, good faith, and morally sound trade partners."
https://www.dossier.today/p/decoupling-from-china-is-worth-the
30. Satellites and drones: the future of war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5rNOg3ZmmY
31. "Professional life gives you ready-made answers to the existential question: How do I matter? Your contributions are measured, evaluated, compensated, and—at least occasionally—recognized. Even when the system is flawed, it offers clear feedback. You know where you stand.
If you're anything like me, your entire world—dating back to elementary school—was shaped by external measures of success. First came grades, academic accolades, internships, job offers, promotions, and funding rounds. One milestone after another. Then suddenly… it’s gone. There’s no longer anyone around to tell you how valuable you are. And if you haven’t built a strong internal sense of worth, that silence can be deafening. You might look for comfort in friends, family, or a partner. But not everyone has those support systems in place—or can lean on them.
When those external scorecards disappear, you're left with the deeper, more difficult task: defining your worth on your terms. This isn’t a minor adjustment—it’s an existential unraveling. You begin to see how much of your identity was built around performance. Achievement-based cultures tend to reward what’s visible: outcomes, titles, impact metrics, and social proof. But the most meaningful human contributions—presence, wisdom, care, creativity— defy measurement.
This recalibration can stir up deep discomfort. You begin to notice the subtle ways you’ve internalized capitalism—the belief that your value is directly tied to your productivity. Even if you reject that idea intellectually, you might still feel the urge to produce, achieve, and prove your usefulness through output. Releasing that pattern takes time, practice, and a lot of self-compassion."
https://cluesdotlife.substack.com/p/what-happens-when-you-leave-your
32. "As I’ve written about in the past, it’s not entirely fair to say that the US does not manufacture things anymore. In fact, the US manufacturers more today than it ever did in the pre-globalization era. However, it is true that many fewer Americans today actually work in manufacturing, making it a much less visible industry to the average American. Further, manufacturing is a much smaller share of the US’s GDP today than in the past, and while the US is still the second largest manufacturer in the world, the US controls a much smaller share of overall manufacturing than it used to.
Regardless, there is no doubt that US supply chains are overly reliant on nations like the PRC. Many parts of the DIB rely on supply chains with key vulnerabilities in the PRC, posing a threat to US national security. A Govini report highlights that many US military systems rely on microelectronics from the PRC, and another report reveals, “China is the single or sole supplier for a number of specialty chemicals used in munitions and missiles. In many cases, there is no other source or drop-in replacement material and even in cases where that option exists, the time and cost to test and qualify the new material can be prohibitive – especially for larger systems (hundreds of millions of dollars each).”
Other startups looking to build hardware for DoD customers need to take the time to understand the supply chain constraints and system hardening required by their customers as early as possible. Of course, startups don’t need to meet all of the DoD’s stringent requirements when building initial prototypes, but they need to understand how the DoD’s unique supply chain and system hardening requirements will impact the cost, performance, and manufacturability of their systems, work those constraints into early product designs, and start the process of hardening systems and supply chains early on.
Additionally, it is critical that startups test their systems as often and as realistically as possible to ensure that the systems actually meet the needs of warfighters.
Building American-made defense hardware is hard, but it’s not impossible. As the US looks to reassert its manufacturing strength and reduce reliance on adversarial supply chains, companies like Neros show what’s possible with the right focus, urgency, and willingness to rethink old assumptions. There’s still a long road ahead, but the blueprint is finally starting to take shape."
https://maggiegray.us/p/manufacturing-for-the-mission-what
33. Global Fallout is right. Making sense of the Trump chaos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jr-nqA6hfco&t=9s
34. "If you’re under 45 or so you should be celebrating the declines. There is no way you are down a significant amount of money relative to your annual income. The only people who should be upset are retired because they rely on the market to live. Far too many people were sitting back hoping for double digit returns while they build no valuable skills at all (no biz, no nothing just ticker price go up).
Wealth Is Relative: This comment always makes people mad but wealth is relative. If you own $100K of a stock and it goes up 10% but all the rich people own $10M of it, you’re not gaining ground on the elite (not even close).
You’re actually better off if that stock goes down 50% (you have $50K, they have $5M each) and you can buy $50K more of it. Now as a ratio you own more on a weighted basis.
Why This Matters? This is important because its actually how the USA continues to retain global dominance. If US markets go down 10% but all other markets go down 30% who is the winner? The USA is. Don’t leave us any messages saying you’re going to invest in the Mexican Stock Market or the European Stock Market. We know you’re lying.
After all is said and done, the US market will be the best performer. Down less than everyone. Or up more than everyone. Been this way for a century now and be careful when someone says “the US is done”. What they are really saying? They are personally done.
They couldn’t even make it in the USA. The easiest place in the world to get rich."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/downturn-recovers-faster-than-you
35. "I think there will be a small handful of AI-enabled law firms or accountants or architects with the best technology that will service 80% of the market in each jurisdiction at a very low cost. There will be a few holdouts providing "handcrafted legal advice", but I think they will be the minority share of the market. We've seen this pattern in technology over and over again. The benefits accrue to a small handful of dominant companies which have an advantage in product or technology or distribution.
I don't know for sure whether these dominant players will be incumbents or newcomers in each industry. My guess is mostly newcomers. The ability to iterate quickly is overwhelmingly the most important factor in growing a successful business today, and big companies are too burdened down with thousands of people.
In the short and medium-term, I think it's very likely we see an explosion of indie hackers making $1m/year from side projects, with perhaps less need to raise VC funding.
I think the real winners in the immediate future will be those high-agency people who are good at noticing problems that people or companies have and then obsessively building solutions using the latest tools. One of YC's mantras is "Make something people want." Figuring out what people want will be a much more valuable skill once the "making" bit is freely available to all."
https://tomblomfield.com/post/1743528547367/the-age-of-abundance