Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads June 29th, 2025
“The tans will fade but the memories will last forever.” – Unknown
Building focused and talent dense teams. Learning from Zuck at Stripe Sessions 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gF12Xn3C-0c
2. "The world is a complex system with many feedback loops at many levels. Very small changes, the kind that are hard to measure, will have huge long term impacts in many areas.
This difficulty won’t necessarily stop companies are governments from trying to use AI for places it fails. After all, the world hates uncertainty."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/ai-snake-oil
3. "Your communication quality is a small key that opens—or locks—big doors. As one slide in my deck says, “Your email response time is a trust builder, a reputation maker, and a success predictor.”
https://startupistanbul.substack.com/p/van-halens-secret-investor-test
4. One of the best interviews I've heard in a long time. The joy of design by Jony Ives.
We need more of this taste and craftsmanship back in Silicon Valley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLb9g_8r-mE&t=89s
5. "Lifton remembers telling others in the rare earths industry this would be a mistake. But the consensus was that the Chinese would essentially be suppliers to Molycorp, giving the company more product at a lower cost, while never developing their own processing facilities, much less permanent magnet companies.
That’s not what happened.
The Chinese businessmen “went and sold those blueprints all over China,” Lifton says. “And by the end of the decade, there were a hundred of these plants of all sizes throughout China.”
“I'm not blaming Molycorp,” he added. “They were trying to be good capitalists. They were trying to get the cost down. It just backfired.”
In 1988, according to media accounts at the time, Chinese companies, which could undercut Molycorp prices because of cheap labor, fewer environmental restrictions, and a greenlight to maximize output, overtook Molycorp as the world leader in refining rare earths. By the mid-1990s, China also produced more rare earth oxides than Molycorp and the US.
The power had shifted enough for Chinese Premiere Deng Xiaoping to boast, in 1992, “There is oil in the Middle East; there is rare earth in China.
There wasn’t any mystery about why this happened: Once China developed and scaled its rare earths capabilities, the US rare earths industry couldn’t keep up. US electronic and car companies, not to mention defense contractors, preferred China’s lower prices.”
https://thehustle.co/originals/what-the-hell-are-rare-earth-elements
6. "So this is me, saying it now. Loud and clear.
If you’re a founder, you don’t get to overlook these things.
You don’t get to ignore the warning signs.
You don’t get to say I’m not a finance person. You become one. Fast.
You don’t get to say I’ll fix it later. Later might not come.
You don’t get to tolerate the wrong people. They will kill your momentum.
You don’t get to overspend and call it growth. That’s not growth. It’s delusion.
You are building a high-performance machine with no safety net.
Mistakes are expensive. Time is limited. Nobody’s coming to save you.
So please. Get serious. About people. About data. About money."
https://2lr.substack.com/p/financial-immaturity
7. This conversation scared the crap out of me. Securing critical infrastructure & lots of foreign spies in Silicon Valley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLzrQweAICM
8. Inside Substack and how it is reinventing media. I'm a fan and user.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFbL5G0CT-Y
9. "That kind of attitude is pervasive in America. The model used to be that of Henry Ford, mass production and ruthless efficiency to create high quality cheap cars with low profit margins, underpinned by machine tooling. You’d get rich by deploying a lot of capital, selling a lot of units, and being ruthless about productive efficiency.
Today, the model is to do something that doesn’t require a lot of investment, so software or advertising or finance, essentially leveraging someone else’s capital. To do something like make screws for a low margin, you can just go to China, which seeks lower returns on capital. Indeed, we’ve been leveraging China’s capital for a long time.
There are many downsides to our model, but one of them is that high profit margins without discipline ends up causing bloat. Procurement consultant Rich Ham described the dynamic in corporate America, which is wildly inefficient, masked by excessive and persistent profit margins.
All of these dynamics are a result of law. I’ve gone over this dynamic many times, the basic idea is that a lot of the policies we implement, like strong patent rights, financial deregulation, and low corporate tax rates, are designed to ensure very high profits on any dollar of invested capital. Just having skilled labor and machine tooling around doesn’t fit in that model; a shop like that of Charles Williams’ shop could not exist today, at least not in America."
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-china-is-not-why
10. "No matter where we look in history, if there were eyes to bear witness, we would always find inspiring stories of adventure and heroism, proof that those who have a spirit strong enough can always find their way.
The lesson: Golden Ages do not simply descend upon us through the works of others. They are actively shaped by our own choices and actions.
The only difference between a Golden Age and a Dark Age but the vision and actions of those who inhabit it. Borrowing from Mann’s own metaphor, even in the darkest times, there have been those who have found their ship full of gold."
https://www.businessofpower.com/p/lessons-from-simon-mann
11. "Being a professional is an apex trait that is completing dying out in 2025.
Professionalism is a lifestyle.
It’s the close sibling of competence.
It transcends language, race, religion.
Anyone can spot a professional from a mile away.
Why?
Because he is intentional. He isn’t sloppy. He is punctual.
Each of us have this person in our lives. They are ultra reliable.
You name a time & place, they are there without fail."
https://www.lethalgentleman.com/p/how-to-be-a-professional
12. "Those two meals fifty hours apart capture a contrast between the US and Europe I’ve seen in years traveling both, with the US undeniably wealthier in easily quantified material terms, but lagging in harder to measure, more subjective qualities, such as aesthetics, fulfillment, and contentment.
While the US and Europe share a broad commitment to classical Liberalism, and Democracy, we have very different definitions of the Public Good, which means different views of what we want out of life, and what we consider fulfilling. In broad and simplistic terms, the US emphasizes material wealth, opportunity, and individual liberty while Europe values community health, a shared common good, and a sense of place.
From the European perspective the US has a cult of the individual, and that's why it has too many guns, obscenely large cars, can't build a public transportation system, and has dysfunctional public spaces. From the US perspective Europeans are unmotivated unproductive slackers who would rather sip coffee all day than work, and their idea of a shared common good means stealing from the successful to give to the losers."
https://walkingtheworld.substack.com/p/is-it-euro-poor-or-ameri-poor
13. This is a sobering calculus: impacts on agricultural industry from the trade war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_jtHIezOqU
14. "Illusions don’t last. Rome’s bread and circuses couldn’t halt the barbarians. The Soviet Union’s grand plans masked a rotting core until it buckled. When the chasm between the fantasy and the facts grows too wide, it breaks.
We’re nearing that edge. The trillions propping up this delusion are a debt reality can’t repay. When the public wakes up—when the AI doesn’t think, when the rockets don’t land—trust will vanish. Riots, bankruptcies, or worse will follow as the powerful flail unable to redirect the wrath of the people. Unable to buy off the might of fighters who will take what they believe to be theirs."
https://emburlingame.substack.com/p/the-great-deception-572
15. "The great deception of manufactured scarcity is a timeless tool of despotism, used to control populations through fear, dependence, and division. By understanding the forms of despotism and the mechanisms that sustain them—violence, ignorance, and critical resource control—we can better recognize these tactics in both historical and modern contexts. Constant self-education, reviews of broad spectrum information, and seeking self-sufficiency in all things are essential to dismantling these systems.
Only by exposing the lie of scarcity can societies break free from the cycle of despotism and control to build thriving families and communities based on truth and independence, not deception."
https://emburlingame.substack.com/p/the-great-deception-0d5
16. "One thing is clear: Facebook doesn’t really care about countries other than America. Though Wynn-Williams chalks this up to plain old provincial chauvinism (which FB’s top eschelon possess in copious quantities), there’s something else at work. The USA is the only country in the world that a) is rich, b) is populous, and c) has no meaningful privacy protections. If you make money selling access to dossiers on rich people to advertisers, America is the most important market in the world.
But then Facebook conquers America. Not only does FB saturate the US market, it uses its free cash-flow and high share price to acquire potential rivals, like Whatsapp and Instagram, ensuring that American users who leave Facebook (the service) remain trapped by Facebook (the company).
At this point, Facebook — Zuckerberg — turns towards the rest of the world.
Suddenly, acquiring non-US users becomes a matter of urgency, and overnight Wynn-Williams is transformed from the sole weirdo talking about global markets to the key asset in pursuit of the company’s top priority."
https://medium.com/@doctorow/sarah-wynn-williamss-careless-people-45a7e06b8578
17. "And without a doubt, different peer groups are getting out in the world in totally different ways.
For Gen Xers (born between 1965 and 1980), you might have noticed your Boomer parents (born between 1946 and 1964) regularly turning to travel advisors to book their cruise vacations while your kids or nieces and nephews in Gen Z (born between 1997 and 2012) often get their itinerary advice from TikTok.
“While the desire to explore remains universal, we see clear differences in how each generation approaches travel planning, values experiences, and defines luxury,” says Melissa Krueger, CEO of luxury travel company Classic Vacations."
https://www.afar.com/magazine/the-unique-travel-styles-of-each-generation
18. "Today, we are witnessing another military revolution, driven not by muskets but by machines. First-person view drones are changing the calculus of battle, placing surveillance and precision strikes in the hands of infantry squads. Like the arquebus, they are tactically fragile but strategically revolutionary, and when integrated into modern formations, they are reshaping warfare. The tercio’s genius was not just its weapons but its integration with existing infantry formations. The Spanish tercio taught us that victory belonged to those who mastered the system, not just the weapon. Today, first-person view drones demand the same rethink. Whoever masters this integration first on a massive scale will hold a significant advantage on the battlefield.
Some may argue that first-person view drones are merely the new tactical artillery, offering a cheaper, faster means to deliver a strike. However, this analogy overlooks the scale of the shift. Artillery operates in a linear, pre-planned manner, pounding coordinates. In contrast, drones hunt. They chase heat signatures through windows, dive into trenches, and strike from angles no mortar ever could. This isn’t just a new delivery system — it is a new predator on the battlefield, enabling dynamic and networked lethality. First-person view drones do more than simply deliver effects — they are actively reshaping how combatants see, move, and survive on the battlefield.
From 2025 on, ground forces without drones are extremely vulnerable. They’ll be hunted from the sky, tagged by sensors, and carved up by fearless machines. The old tercio was forged in iron, flesh, and gunpowder. The new tercio is built by pairing humans with drones — melding intuition with machine precision. And just like before, those who fail to adapt will be the first to fall."
19. List of American Brands that in big doo doo. Live by Chinese manufacturing, die by Chinese manufacturing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2fV_bBYMPs
20. "Of course, there will also be passive reading, it will be largely aggregated by AI & very few people’s voices are both consistently insightful & unique enough to warrant a direct line in a particular voice on a daily topic to abroad audience.
Time to prepare for that future."
https://tomtunguz.com/nobody-wants-to-read-your-stuff/
21. "Today, these groups are illicit networks, backed and controlled by Western intelligence, forming what I call the "Devil's Legions"—a global network generating over $1.5 trillion annually, which is laundered through the "Spider's Web" of offshore financial centers. All while being the self-funding, unaccountable, non-state, intelligence and military for the Financialists. Used against any and all state or state actors who might stand against them. This article delves into this history, evolution, and financial underpinnings."
https://emburlingame.substack.com/p/the-devils-legions
22. Inside baseball on venture capital. My weekly fix.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxSwlAa30lY
23. What a fun discussion this week for Silicon Valley news.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQUhLaylKq0
24. "Every election cycle, candidates tell Americans their healthcare system is expensive and broken. Yes, Americans know this. Incomprehensible insurance bills, medical and dental debt haunting 40% of U.S. households, and trips to Canada or Mexico for cheaper prescription drugs have turned our healthcare system into one of our biggest sources of emotional distress. U.S. healthcare is a $4.9t corrupt cop. In a report that looked at costs and outcomes across 10 industrialized nations, researchers at the Commonwealth Fund wrote, “The U.S. continues to be in a class by itself in the underperformance of its healthcare sector.” For those in the back of the class, that’s the wrong kind of exceptionalism.
According to the most recent data, the U.S. spends $13,432 per capita on healthcare — more than twice what the average comparable nation spends. We pay 8x what Germany and Switzerland pay for Ozempic and 7x what they pay for Humira. Insulin, which has been in mass production since the 1930s, costs 8x more in the U.S. than it does in Greece. The median cost of a coronary bypass in the U.S. is $89,000, approximately 8x and 5x what the procedure costs in Spain and Australia, respectively. In the U.S. a childbirth with a C-section costs 4x what it does in South Africa. An appendectomy in the U.S. costs 3x what it does in the U.K. For what we spend, we should be the healthiest nation among our peers. We aren’t; we pay significantly more for dramatically poorer outcomes."
https://www.profgalloway.com/the-fix/
25. "The question of course is ... how? Drones are a well-understood technology now that's been dominated from the very beginning by Chinese companies. If SiFly's figures hold up and this company truly puts 4-10X multiples on these key performance stats, it's sitting on some revolutionary technology advances in energy storage, propulsion, aerodynamics and/or materials – areas that are already highly optimized after more than a decade of commercial and industrial drone development."
https://newatlas.com/drones/sifly-q12-american-drone/
26. A must listen to if you want to understand where the world is going. Geoeconomics & the Fourth Turning and how this will affect savers and investors around the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50VsgBTZYsk&t=1s
27. "My recommendation was to align the next round of funding with the business’s current potential and evaluate whether a smaller amount of capital could maintain optionality. Too often, entrepreneurs raise as much money as the market allows, which isn’t always best for the business.
Here, raising capital requires careful consideration, especially since the entrepreneur aims to build a larger business than the current market supports. He’ll need to either expand the product line, adding complexity, or temper his ambitions and consider building another company in the future."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/05/17/matching-funding-with-entrepreneur-ambitions/
28. Breaking myths of the US economy and manufacturing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjDgEHDaX4U
29. One of the few original thinkers as investor in Silicon Valley. Money plowers vs artiste investors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_aHzJGrBN0
30. "To survive the "Eternal War" and to thrive in the "Infinite Game"—metaphors for the ceaseless, evolving nature of competition at every scale—we need master generalists: individuals with deep, proven knowledge and experience within each element and the ability to navigate their intersections. This following explores why our current regime’s hubris demands nemesis and why a shift toward highly capable generalism is absolutely essential.
The infinite game of global competition favors those who see the whole board. By cultivating master generalists—humble, adaptable, and integrative—we can temper hubris and avert nemesis. In a world of complexity, survival hinges not on the depth of one skill, but on the breadth of many, wielded with wisdom. One note, takes a very long stretch of years of careful and deliberate study and hands on experience to become a true generalist. And even then, to maintain the status of a master generalist, one must spend hours a day in study, conversation and thought.
Do you have what it takes to be a generalist or master generalist in your local area, in your community? We need high quality generalists or our hubris will most certainly ensure the nemesis may well finally end our civilization."
https://emburlingame.substack.com/p/hubris-nemesis-and-the-need-for-master
31. "As a Cold Civil War simmers in the United States, with ripples in all the lands of the former British Empire, the lesson of the 400-year Great Cycle is clear: conflict, though painful, is the furnace in which liberty is reforged. The English-speaking world’s greatest strength lies not in avoiding crises, but in emerging from them with systems more resilient than before."
https://emburlingame.substack.com/p/the-cycle-of-power
32. “It’s a sector where there are no rules, no authority. This freedom now comes at a price: isolation and fear,” explained FRANCE 24 business correspondent Mounia Ben Aissa Kacem. “When you hold several million, or even billions, in a single digital wallet, you are totally vulnerable. Unlike a bank account, you can't stop payments on a crypto wallet. If you give up your security key, that's it. The funds disappear in just a few clicks – for good,” she added.
“That's precisely what exposes crypto bosses. Cryptocurrency is a fascinating sector that inspires many fantasies, not least the possibility of making a fortune very quickly,” noted Ben Aissa Kacem."
33. "Today I want to write about something that is more investing related than AI related. You have probably read that it is a difficult time to raise a venture fund because LPs don’t have much liquidity from previous funds. With the IPO market stagnant and M&A opportunities lukewarm, companies that you expect to be positioned for an exit are just slow growing stable small tech businesses. They aren’t selling. But to make the startup market works, money needs to flow through the ecosystem. When it doesn’t there is a problem.
There are some solutions out there. One is the rise in secondary funds that buy private stock positions from LPs, GPs, founders, etc. These are ok but, as someone who has bought and sold on these markets I can tell you the discounts are steep and the process is bespoke for all but the largest private companies.
I propose a different solution to this problem. I think it should be normal for the earliest investors to get their money back when the company starts generating decent levels of revenue or raises more capital. There are many ways this could work, so let me explain."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/improving-early-stage-dpi-with-a
34. "To summarise all of the above, things are very likely to go financially bad sometime in the immediate future.
Not just for the United States.
For all of us.
We’re almost certainly entering a time of chaos. These are the prosperous financial days before the devastating economic end times.
I don’t say this to make you fearful. Quite the opposite: I say it so you can take action to prepare for this possible upcoming storm.
If I had a shortlist of things I would do to get ready for such an event, it would be as follows:
Buy gold and silver. You’ve heard me talk about this ad nauseam, so I won’t reiterate on this point any further.
Prioritise paying off debt. Especially any high-interest debt you may have.
Ensure you have at least one other residency permit (or even better, citizenship/passport). This is an insurance policy in case things get really bad in your home country (unaffordability, massive unemployment, etc.) and you need a backup plan to go somewhere where things are better.
Increase your earning ability. Get more clients, grow your business, and do whatever it takes to have more in reserve to protect yourself from a company recession, crisis, or crash. One of the best ways to do this is to reduce what you pay in taxes—try our membership Untaxable here at no cost to learn how to do this.
Become more employable. If you're not self-employed (which would be preferable), ensure you up-level your skills to become more employable. In times of recession, as unemployment rises, only those with the most skills will be guaranteed a job.
If I were preparing for a global recession today, these are the key areas I would focus on first.
Beyond all of that, I believe it’s always important to focus on becoming as untouchable in times of crisis as possible, regardless of how near or far one may be.
Become more independent.
Become less reliant on an employer or your government.
Become as self-sufficient as you possibly can."
https://abundantia.substack.com/p/end-times
35. High Agency beats High IQ. So good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oKPARKxZdM&t=760s
36. "Millionaires once had a rarefied mystique, inspiring curiosity and causing envy among everyday Americans who dreamed of financial independence.
Just over 25 years ago, in 1999, “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” topped the primetime TV ratings over “Friends,” “ER,” and “Monday Night Football.” Magazines profiled “internet millionaires” during the dotcom boom, and rappers like Juvenile and Lil’ Wayne ushered in hip-hop’s bling era as part of a supergroup called the Cash Money Millionaires.
These days, though, millionaires aren’t what they used to be. They’re literally average.
The net worth of the mean American household is $1.06m, according to data from the Federal Reserve released last year, marking the first time average net worth has topped $1m.
Altogether, according to an estimate by UBS Wealth Management, the United States is home to ~22m millionaire households — roughly one of every six households.
Millionaires are defined by owning at least $1m in total assets (stocks, retirement accounts, housing, etc.), minus debts. Some calculations of net worth exclude assets like primary residences, which brings the number of millionaire households down to ~15m, still a large number.
How did America get so many millionaires?"
https://thehustle.co/originals/the-insane-growth-of-americas-millionaire-class
37. “All models are wrong. Some are useful.” — George Box
It’s one of those quotes that, if you get it, you get it. (And then you fall in love with it.) Today, I’m hoping to bring more people into the enlightened fold by discussing Box’s quote as it pertains to three everyday go-to-market (GTM) models.
First, it’s why we don’t want models to be too precise and/or too complex. They’re not supposed to be exact. They’re not supposed to model everything, they’re supposed to be simplified. They’re just models. They’re supposed to be more useful than exact."
https://kellblog.com/2025/05/18/all-models-are-wrong-some-are-useful/