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