Trends and Venture Capital Sheep-ism: Why Unsexy is Sexy
“No Conflict, No Interest” & ”Being Contrarian but Right” are the terms bandied around by Venture capitalists. But what do they really mean?
If you think about most recent tech history, most of the biggest & most popular companies now were very unpopular or had a very difficult time fundraising at seed. Uber, Carta, CreditKarma, AirBnB are the companies that stand out to me.
It’s so easy to say it was clear these were going to be the dominant successful companies they are today. But hindsight is 20/20 as always. It was not that obvious back then. In fact, the decision to invest was widely derided by most investors and the media.
The returns can usually be found at the Frontier & usually driven by Outsiders
Upstream is where action is, higher risk yet higher gain. VC Investing is options investing. Asymmetric bets are where returns come from. You can only lose the amount you invest in but the upside is literally multiple times higher than the base amount you put in.
Or to be safe, just do what everyone is doing: invest in founders from Stanford. But that is where everyone is looking. Competition is for losers as Peter Thiel famously stated.
You are probably better off looking at founders from UC Berkeley who are just as good but under-invested in.
Consensus sucks. Consensus is usually wrong & not fact. People are naturally risk-averse and this is why the saying “No one every gets fired for buying from IBM or Mckinsey” exists. (Both suck by the way). The Venture capital version of this is why you see so many me too investments in the same sector that are considered hot. One infamous example in my mind, there were literally hundreds of Food delivery startups funded in 2015 after Greylock & Social Capital led a series B round into Sprig. That sector overall has turned into a major bust overall.
But to be contrarian, we are fighting against our own biological instincts that have been developed for thousands of years. We’re naturally social creatures affected by everyone around us.
That is why there are so few truly original thinkers in the world, even more so in Venture Capital where we literally are in a bubble. This is why diversity of thinking & background is so important to break out of this bubble. This is why you need to travel, read and talk to different kinds of people. This is where ‘First Principle” thinking is critical and a good understanding of your inclinations ie. self awareness. I’ve also found studying cognitive bias like “availability,” “confirmation,” “pessimism” or “optimism”, “halo effect or “status quo” biases can be helpful.
And most important as an investor, once you have done your homework and thinking, have the conviction and commitment to follow through. The hardest part is actually the final decision to invest regardless of what anyone else thinks.
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads December 13th, 2020
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” - Leo Tolstoy
I would like to see more stories like this in the media and around the startup ecosystems. Massively successful bootstrapped businesses built without VC money. So many different options for founders these days. Tired of myth making of Venture Capital as much as I believe in it.
"What’s next for Nextiva? Growing at more than 30% a year, it could go public. Given that it is self-funded, it cannot have horrorshow cash burn by definition and meet requisite benchmarks for an IPO. Even more, while Gorny did highlight that being private allowed his company to accelerate and decelerate growth when it wanted to focus more on product work, I got the impression that Nextiva wants to be better-known. And an IPO would help with that."
https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/05/how-one-company-reached-revenues-of-200m-without-vc-money/
2. Short selling is a tough biz. But when it works, it really works. Kudos to these folks for their research & conviction. In this case, the early bet against American malls.
"When CMBX.6 hit bottom in May, Catie McKee and Dan McNamara decided to sell their credit default swaps and reap the profits. MP’s main fund, which includes other investments, was up roughly 75 percent year-to-date, a staggering turn of fate after a tumultuous run that nearly bankrupted the firm.
McKee and McNamara’s sister fund, which was all-in on shorting CMBX.6, had it even better. They saw 120 percent returns after it was all said and done, an ungodly amount of profit considering that many hedge funds saw their capital cut in half when the stock market crashed. In just three months, the scrappy team and their black-sheep idea had brought in well over $100 million in profit for the fund and their investors (before filling the hole created by the previous year’s losses, of course)."
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a34785141/shopping-mall-short-hedge-fund-covid-19/
3. That time of the year. I remember going to buy a fresh Christmas tree as a kid in Canada.
"Quarter Pine is one of thousands of Christmas tree farms in America. Collectively, these farms sell 25m-30m real Christmas trees to independent lots, big-box retailers, and garden centers every year.
At an average retail price of $75 a pop, these trees make up a $2B+-per-year business.
But what are the economics behind that price tag? Who gets the lion’s share of the profit? And how have Christmas tree producers fared with the growing popularity of artificial trees?"
https://thehustle.co/the-economics-of-christmas-trees/
4. These are good basics. But valuable framework for investors and founders to evaluate if customers/users really do like what you are building.
"As a VC, I’m going to talk to customers and non-customers to discern whether your product is solving a real pain point for them — and to what extent your product is indispensable. I will even ask Sean Ellis’ question “How disappointed would you be if you could no longer use the product?” when I interview customers during my due diligence.
As a founder, I hope you’re regularly talking to your customers and asking the same thing. Many founders don’t, and so they don’t know if their product is a vitamin or a pain killer."
https://medium.com/speroventures/a-framework-for-understanding-customer-love-cfe208d1437f
5. I love Sauna, Banya and Onsen. Nothing better for the health and stress than this. (well outside of sleep, exercise and good diet of course)
"While these correlations are certainly provocative, findings on the physical benefits of sauna heat are well-documented. Laukkanen’s published studies suggest that frequent sauna goers tend to live longer and have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease, compared with those who go once a week.
These observations could have physiological underpinnings—saunas mimic the stress and sweating of light exercise with almost none of the physical exertion—but Laukkanen admits there are several possible explanations. As he put it to me, in less than perfect English that I’m paraphrasing: we shouldn’t underestimate the effects of sitting, calming down, and relaxing."
https://www.outsideonline.com/2408578/saunas-mental-health-research
6. WOW. oh WOW. Such an amazing story on many different fronts. So good. MUST READ.
"After a year of running two shops they had saved $40,000 and Ted decided to expand. He bought a bigger doughnut shop, and offered to lease the original Christy's to a family of Cambodian refugees, who had been working in fast food outlets on low wages. He trained them and handed over the keys.
Ted began to look for more doughnut shops to buy and lease to fellow refugees. "Using money to provide for others is a feeling as powerful as any drug," he later wrote.
Over the years, Ted and Christy sponsored more than 100 families, often hosting them before setting them up with homes, loans, and doughnut shops. Ted encouraged others to do the same. "It went like fire on the hill, so fast," says Ted.
The Cambodians worked hard and because the whole family pitched in, they did not have to pay out any wages. It provided a path for refugees to settle and was a profitable business model. Eventually Cambodians owned so many doughnut shops in California that they dominated the market, pushing Winchell's into second place."
https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-54546427
7. I think this is a really smart deal.
"From the Salesforce perspective, Taylor says that the Slack deal was worth the money because it really allows his company to bring together all the pieces of their platform, one that has expanded over the years from pure CRM to include marketing, customer service, data visualization, workflow and more. Taylor also said that having Slack gives Salesforce a missing communication layer on top of its other products, something especially important when interactions with customers, partners or fellow employees have become mostly digital.
“When we say we really want Slack to be this next generation interface for Customer 360, what we mean is we’re pulling together all these systems. How do you rally your teams around these systems in this digital work-anywhere world that we’re in right now where these teams are distributed and collaboration is more important than ever,” Taylor said."
"As for the companies coming together, both men see a lot of potential here to merge Slack communications with Salesforce’s enterprise software prowess to make something better, and Taylor sees Slack helping link the two with workflows and automations."
https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/04/why-slack-and-salesforce-execs-think-theyre-better-together/
8. The Great Dispersion driven by the pandemic. Very observant.
"Amazon dispersed retail to desktop, to mobile, to voice. Netflix dispersed DVDs to our mailbox, then to every screen. The pandemic is causing dispersion in even larger industries — the greatest opportunity for wealth creation in decades. Work from home, telemedicine, & remote learning represent an impending disruption of over 25% of the U.S. economy. The largest sectors are about to leapfrog HQ, doctor’s offices, hospitals, & campuses.
Not all dispersion is about “x from home” or from cities to smaller towns. Social media is a form of dispersion, enabling connections, competition, and debate despite physical distance, print, and paywalls — the dispersal of community. It has also removed healthy friction (truth, science, editors) resulting in an afterburner for misinformation and conspiracy."
"Dispersion offers the same potential for wealth creation as globalization and digitization. This time around, however, we must be more conscious of downsides. Previous paradigm shifts catalyzed massive prosperity but little progress. We’ve embraced a winner-take-all economy crowding the spoils to fewer firms and people."
https://www.profgalloway.com/the-great-dispersion
9. I've always been a fan of Ukraine. Have so much more respect and admiration for the people here now after watching this.
Freedom and Dignity are universal rights. Something we should not take for granted in the USA & western developed world. This documentary was both heartbreaking and inspiring. Recommended.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RibAQHeDia8
10. This is timely and good. Getting close to the end of the year. So a personal Annual review is always good.
https://schlaf.medium.com/the-ultimate-annual-review-f0452bb83179
11. “Ideally, lockdowns are only done once and done well,” the proposal’s authors, Stephen Duckett and Will Mackey, explained. “The benefit of zero is to reduce the risk of ‘yo-yoing’ between virus flare-ups and further lockdowns to contain them.”
They treated the threats to public health and the economy as intertwined, which most experts agree they are. The Australian states that contained Covid-19 best also saw the strongest economic recoveries."
"The US probably cannot achieve zero Covid-19 cases anytime soon. But it could embrace the spirit of the Victorian model: a clear goal, support for the proven mitigation strategies, and a commitment from the public.
“Having a clear, uniform goal — that everyone could work toward — was critical to Victoria’s success,” Jennifer Kates, director of global health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told me. “But they didn’t just have a goal. They established the underlying components that were needed and provided strong social support.”
“All of this,” she continued, “has been mostly absent in America.”
https://www.vox.com/2020/12/4/22151242/melbourne-victoria-australia-covid-19-cases-lockdown
12. "It perfectly breaks down the difference between a time billionaire and a dollar billionaire. One has financial resources and the other has life resources. Our society overvalues the former, but undervalues the latter."
"With modern technology, the average human will likely live into their early 80s. A billion seconds is just over 31 years. The 20 year old has two billion seconds. The 50 year old has one billion seconds. Take a step back today and ask yourself — do I invest my capital based on the greatest resources that I have access to?
For some of you, that resource is money. But for most of you, that resource is time. Press your advantage. Start thinking in terms of decades. Use your status as a time billionaire to become a dollar billionaire, but remember — the time billionaire always dies with zero."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/time-billionaire
13. I agree with this perspective. SPAC Boom in long run is probably going to be good thing.
“There seems to be a lot of pretty crazy froth, and it’s gonna take years for some of these companies to grow into the valuations,” Thiel tells Forbes. “But I keep thinking the other side of it is that one should think of Covid and the crisis of this year as this giant watershed moment, where this is the first year of the 21st century. This is the year in which the new economy is actually replacing the old economy.”
14. Of course the Russians and others are attacking the new remote work infrastructure. I'd do the same thing if I were in their place.
"THROUGHOUT 2020, AN unprecedented portion of the world's office workers have been forced to work from home as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. That dispersal has created countless opportunities for hackers, who are taking full advantage. In an advisory today, the National Security Agency said that Russian state-sponsored groups have been actively attacking a vulnerability in multiple enterprise remote work platforms developed by VMware."
https://www.wired.com/story/nsa-warns-russia-attacking-vmware-remote-work-platforms/
15. This is one of the reasons I love Japan so much. I need to visit this Ichiwa mochi shop one day.
“Their No. 1 priority is carrying on,” he added. “Each generation is like a runner in a relay race. What’s important is passing the baton.”
Japan is an old-business superpower. The country is home to more than 33,000 with at least 100 years of history — over 40 percent of the world’s total, according to a study by the Tokyo-based Research Institute of Centennial Management. Over 3,100 have been running for at least two centuries. Around 140 have existed for more than 500 years. And at least 19 claim to have been continuously operating since the first millennium."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/02/business/japan-old-companies.html
16. "Substack is the medium of the solo artist. High-rolling soloists at that. Like Patreon, Onlyfans, book publishing generally, or any other medium where creators connect with the masses sans bundled packaging, Substack has (and will continue to have) a power-law distribution. The biggest names will earn in their hundred of thousands; the median user is going to scrape away $100-200 a month, at best. If measured in page hits instead of dollars, the same could have been said for the high and low tiers of the old blogosphere as well."
https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2020/11/why-i-am-bearish-on-substack.html
17. Super thrilled to see this. My old colleagues and friends at Better Tomorrow VC & Unit. So excited to see this news public.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/08/unit-raises-18-6m-to-offer-banking-features-as-a-service/
18. Really interesting company here. Varda Space.
19. I can’t wait to see this documentary. Silicon Valley is everywhere.
20. Without sounding like a hater. This is a signal we are at #peakVC
https://www.axios.com/josh-richards-tiktok-vc-investing-1282506b-2102-491e-b644-26bea97896f6.html
21. These are fairly good future of work trends worth reading about.
"Whether you call it “craftsmanship” or “passion economy”, there’s a trend that’s not about to stop and that’s likely to transform work as we know it. More workers seek autonomy at work and want to see the direct impact of their work. They want direct feedback from users, clients, or from the work itself. It means scientific management and division of labour are increasingly challenged."
https://laetitiaatwork.substack.com/p/future-of-work-7-trends-for-2021
22. Thank goodness I am a lazy person. Or Tactically lazy.
"Nature seems to have optimised our biological processes for laziness. Even beyond notoriously idle species such as pythons—which sleep about 18 hours per day—most animals spend a majority of their time doing nothing in particular. And the amount of time they spend doing nothing is correlated to the amount of time they don’t spend on activities such as hunting, foraging, and reproducing.
In Time Resources and Laziness in Animals, Professor Joan Herbers explains that because they have more free time, highly efficient predators may appear to be lazier than relatively unproductive predators."
https://nesslabs.com/benefits-of-laziness?mc_cid=660107d2ee&mc_eid=e1f2edadcf
23. Prepping has become mainstream.
"We're used to just-in-time inventory," he says, referring to the widespread practice among governments, private organisations and firms of only keeping enough stock on hand to fulfil current orders or maintain production.
While the current Covid pandemic is not "the big 'un" in terms of disasters, it has highlighted weaknesses in how we live, he says.
"We've removed slack from the system, whether that's your local energy grid or your water supply, and prepping is a way of taking back onto your own balance sheet the resources that have been reduced in the overall system."
"many have taken to prepping out of a sense of despair at the inaction of government in the face of crisis. "Taking care of your core survival needs, that should be one of the functions of government and where our tax dollars should go."
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55249590
24. "as Viktor Frankl discovered, beyond the needs for pleasure and power one can find the need for meaning, in the present, moment by moment, even during the most intensely difficult of times.
Everything else, especially the material successes like money, image and status, are secondary, transient and can really only lead to temporary, fleeting happiness. They can be a wonderful part of experiencing life, as long as they are not the foundation upon which our experience and identity are built."
https://integratedlistening.com/blog/2020/12/07/delivering-true-happiness-from-the-inside/
25. I discovered Khe Hy, really fascinating story. I can really relate to him.
"the truth was I was interested in money. There was this backstory of money—we grew up lower middle class, but we were raised into this scarcity mindset. Very much the immigrant mindset that at any point, everything you have can be taken away from you. You can lose it all. They’re just very frugal. And so to me, money could solve a lot of problems and anxiety if you had access to it."
"I had been executing on this plan since I was 15 years old, thinking that one day my bank account will be this size and all of my worries will melt away. And it happened and life got better for sure; life was easier when you’ve saved more money. But the core anxieties that I had—envy of other people, anxiety about not being able to focus on my wife, and this nagging sense that at the end of the day I’m just moving numbers from one cell to another and helping rich people get richer—were still there."
26. I firmly believe in paying it forward. I will also have to try Pecking House one day.
"The moral of the story is that it’s not a zero-sum game. What might be only a few minutes of your time to help make an introduction via an email or text, or to take a 30 minute phone call, can make a huge impact on someone’s life. Take the time and pay it forward. Good things can happen. Lord knows we need them to now more than ever."
https://davelu.medium.com/pay-it-forward-the-story-of-pecking-house-934f2272b219
27. "But the hallmark of a flywheel is momentum, and Roblox is spinning up fast. Prepaid revenues were $1.2 billion in the first nine months, and are growing 171% year over year. Negative working capital is a concept I understand well enough to know it’s awesome.
Roblox could be to Facebook what Shopify is to Amazon, the non–social media social media firm. Just as hospitals, doctors offices, headquarters, shopping malls, and campuses are being bypassed and shifting hundreds of billions in stakeholder value, Roblox could disrupt the kid attention economy. Roblox is set to go public this month, and will create meaningful shareholder value.
Prediction: stock trades up 70% or more on first trade. More important, Roblox could be the first social media firm whose shareholder value isn’t designed to extract value from the least powerful stakeholder, kids."
https://www.profgalloway.com/roblox-and-the-dispersal-of-creativity
28. "The appeal of running your own newsletter is obvious and simple: instead of working for a boss, you can work for yourself. Instead of having your salary determined by management, you can make more money just by getting more subscribers.
And most importantly, instead of feeling like you’re chasing clicks in an ad-supported business model, getting paid directly by subscribers theoretically incentivizes a different and better kind of journalism."
29. "If Core Scientific’s mining ventures are successful, the company will not just make a lot of money. It will also help to repatriate crypto production to the United States, where Bitcoin got its start.
The recent resurgence in crypto mining feels like a good-news story. Mining companies like Core Scientific are in a position to make money and create jobs in rural areas, while also ensuring more Bitcoin—which is becoming a strategic asset—ends up in American hands.
But there are also reasons for caution. The last crypto-mining boom promised similar benefits but resulted in fly-by-night companies leaving a trail of scams and environmental degradation in their wake. Will the outcome be any different this time?"
https://fortune.com/2020/12/12/bitcoin-jobs-cryptocurrency-mining-hiring-core-scientific/
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
The Portfolio Entrepreneur
In a discussion with my friend Eric Siu of Single Grain, I raised this concept of the Portfolio Entrepreneur.
“Basically the idea around the modern entrepreneur having multiple projects (or a portfolio of projects). More below:
Some Benefits:
-Multiple projects =multiple perspectives = more well rounded entrepreneur
-Multiple income streams de-risks the entrepreneur.”
Detractor might be that it decreases focus. (Investors don't like it either btw.)”
Yes, focus is important for all startups and this is very much the Silicon Valley startup founder path. But for those who are not going down the Venture Capital Go Big or Go Home funding route aka Bootstrapping, I think “Portfolio Entrepreneur” route is probably the way to go.
One of the best thinkers and practitioners in this area is Tiago Forte of Forte Labs.
“Portfolio thinking recognizes that having multiple parallel projects provides many opportunities for synergy. They don’t have to interfere with and impede each other — they can actually combine into something greater than the sum of its parts. Each one can make the others easier, more fun, and more profitable.”
Source: The Rise of the Full-Stack Freelancer
This portfolio of products and services can ultimately be of benefit not just to yourself but to prospective clients and customers. It’s a Win-Win.
Tiago goes on to say better than I can.
“If you only have one offering, then the value of, say, building a new website only flows to one node. If you have 5 offerings, that single website adds value to all 5 nodes with a single effort.
Since my portfolio is a network, it exhibits network effects: each offering added increases the value of all the others.
I believe this is actually the most profound benefit of a portfolio approach to work: it is fundamentally unbounded when it comes to personal growth, creativity, and learning. Changing direction is just a matter of adding or removing an item from your portfolio, not making a dramatic, wrenching career change. This offers the possibility of a deeper sustainability than even a well-paying job can provide.”
Diversification is King in a fast changing world like the one way we live in today. We have no idea how fast things change (or break). Customers/clients stop paying. Governments get toppled, or currencies or banks die. Just look at the pandemic and the atrociously incompetent responses across the globe in the USA, United Kingdom and European Union which are supposedly the best equipped to handle pandemics.
The wealthiest people have at least 7 streams of income. This is definitely something all of us can learn from, emulate and build towards. Being more “Anti-Fragile” is a good thing and something i think we all can agree on in 2020 and beyond.
For those interested in doing this, I would recommend this following book. “The 10% Entrepreneur Book” by Patrick McGinnis. It’s something I wish I had started doing much earlier in my career. Don’t make the same mistake I did, it's not too late.
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
High Opportunity Places vs. High Quality of Life: The Trade Offs
I feel very fortunate to have the life that I have. Growing up in Vancouver, Canada. Then living in San Francisco for two decades. Doing Business all across the globe in Asia, Europe, Latin America, Africa, Australasia and MENA region since 2001. Because of all my travels I’ve been able to get a good perspective on many different regions and countries and their prospective business and living situations.
I would classify the world’s countries into the following and very simple categories: High Quality of Life versus High Quality of Opportunities.
Some examples to characterize this better.
High Quality of Life aka First World (not sure how i feel about this term): European Union, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan
High Quality of Opportunities aka Emerging Markets: Africa, China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Latin America, Eastern Europe
(Note: these are not value judgements, just some general observations. I found that every place I visited had so many compelling things about them and you can live very good lives anywhere)
How I would describe the High Quality of Life places. They are stable politically, environmentally clean (good quality air and water), good rule of law, low crime. Good healthcare and education systems. Mainly middle class and arguably not super commercial places. One way to check this is to see how late stores are open on sunday. One could almost say stagnant or stable economic growth.
Contrast this to the High quality of Opportunity places. You don’t have many of the things mentioned in First World countries. General infrastructure whether it is roads, schools and general energy supply tends to be lacking or in the process of being built (China is the exception here). But there is a growing population and a fast emerging middle class. This gap is where there are a plethora of big business opportunities. If you want to confirm, just check the GDP growth rate or local stock markets of these countries over the last few years.
I saw this growing up in Canada with the mass exodus of well to do immigrant business people from Hong Kong, then Taiwan and then Mainland China. From 1991 to 2005, there were between 30,000 to 40,000 immigrants from these regions moving to Canada every year. Many of them came to Canada so their families could have a better life. But soon after, the parents got bored with the lack of excitement and business opportunities eventually moved back home. Or in many cases, they just sent the wife and kids over while the father stayed home running the business as they did not see many interesting opportunities in Vancouver or Toronto. Hard to compare a 1.3 Billion person market like China moving into the developed world status to a 30M population of mainly middle class Canada.
I would posit what makes the United States so attractive to many people (well at least until recent years) was that it is a good compromise between the high quality life and high quality of opportunities. If you compare the quality of life in the United States to Canada, New Zealand or Austria for example, I think it really comes up very short (in my humble opinion) on many fronts, the safety net, health care, basic education, level of crime/safety. But when it comes to career or business opportunities, the USA completely outweighs these places. And it’s why it attracts so many ambitious Australians, Canadians, French Kiwis etc. Yet at same time, the opportunities for young hungry individuals are nowhere close to places in the Emerging Markets.
No right answer, only answer is what’s best for you & what you are optimizing for. Lots of trade offs but if i were an ambitious 20 something i would be heading to the frontier like Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa or Eastern Europe. That is where the future growth is going to be.
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads December 6th, 2020
“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change” -Albert Einstein
Ryan Reynolds is one of the very few Hollywood celebrities who knows how to invest in and promote startups & products in such a savvy & effective way.
"Standing over a bear trap, Reynolds dryly states: “At Mint Mobile, we don’t hate you.”
Reynolds enjoys nearly 17 million Twitter followers & more than 36 million Instagram followers. He uses both platforms to promote his various brands without alienating his followers. Moreover, he doesn’t exclusively promote his brands on social media, but weaves in his own funny personal commentary or gives followers a peek into his marriage with Blake Lively, which we can all agree is #relationshipgoals.
Mint Mobile partners exclusively with T-Mobile to provide service, & unlike some other MVNOs, it uses a direct-to-consumer model, foregoing any physical footprint. Plans start at $15/month & top out at $30/month. CMO Aron North says that Reynolds’ ownership & involvement with Mint Mobile is “absolutely critical.”
“Ryan is an A plus plus celebrity, and he’s very funny and entertaining and engaging,” said North. “His reach has given us a much bigger platform to speak on. I would say he is absolutely critical in our success and our growth.”
https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/28/how-ryan-reynolds-and-mint-mobile-worked-without-becoming-the-joke/
2. Incredibly insightful and important for whatever you do.
"You see this pattern with startup founders too. You don't want to start a startup to do something that everyone agrees is a good idea, or there will already be other companies doing it. You have to do something that sounds to most other people like a bad idea, but that you know isn't — like writing software for a tiny computer used by a few thousand hobbyists, or starting a site to let people rent airbeds on strangers' floors.
Ditto for essayists. An essay that told people things they already knew would be boring. You have to tell them something new.
But this pattern isn't universal. In fact, it doesn't hold for most kinds of work. In most kinds of work — to be an administrator, for example — all you need is the first half. All you need is to be right. It's not essential that everyone else be wrong.
There's room for a little novelty in most kinds of work, but in practice there's a fairly sharp distinction between the kinds of work where it's essential to be independent-minded, and the kinds where it's not."
“Independent-mindedness seems to be more a matter of nature than nurture. Which means if you pick the wrong type of work, you're going to be unhappy. If you're naturally independent-minded, you're going to find it frustrating to be a middle manager. And if you're naturally conventional-minded, you're going to be sailing into a headwind if you try to do original research.”
http://paulgraham.com/think.html
3. Interesting list of countries. Would love to visit Colombia, Mongolia and Uzbekistan. Big fan of Armenia and Ukraine.
"Beyond any other metric that you care to mention, culture is important. How people think and how they act when faced with an obstacle is valuable information.
If they are not adaptable or hard-working, why should a nation full of people with such a mindset ever do well?
All around the world, there are countries with the capacity to be fantastic economic powerhouses, but for some reason or another, their progress was halted. It might have been that they didn’t have the technology, the business know-how, the capital markets, or the political system to move forward.
But the culture is there. And now they’re in a position to rise up to face the challenge, and you can make a tidy profit by helping them do so."
https://nomadcapitalist.com/2020/06/24/international-investment-markets/
4. This is a good background on Ryan Reynolds advertising agency he co-runs.
"Besides being known for his role in the Deadpool movies, a witty Twitter presence, and his banters with Hugh Jackman, Ryan Reynolds is also the co-founder of the ad agency, Maximum Effort Productions.
He heads the agency with George Dewey, content, communication, and creative professional who has worked at McCann, SpaceX, and Twentieth Century Fox.
The duo decided to formalize the venture in 2018 after their marketing efforts for Deadpool 2 raked in $785 million at the box office."
https://www.martechadvisor.com/articles/ads/ryan-reynolds-took-the-advertising-world-by-storm/
5. Man, I really want to go mushroom picking in Ukraine.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/29/world/europe/ukraine-mushrooms.html
6. "As we steam towards the end of this “annus horribilis” and look to a brighter future, we need to rethink how we handle differences, of all kinds. Let us begin with this basic premise: weird is good. Lean in."
7. I'm very optimistic here. I believe as horrible as Covid has been, it will awaken immense innovation and opportunities for all of us. It will end the Great Stagnation we've been in the last few decades.
"But perhaps VR/AR can become the next consumer electronic platform with a whole suite of specialized productivity-enhancing features, similar to the previous waves of computers and mobile phones. It seems plausible that many future vaccines will be made more quickly using this same mRNA technique that (we hope) works for COVID.
Maybe specialized AI manages to find 20 to 40% improvements to basically every informationally complex task we do. Finally we could see driverless cars/trains/trucks fulfill their promise and reshape American cities in a more healthy and human-centric way. With advanced geothermal or nuclear energy we would not only have clean energy, but abundant energy too cheap to meter, with all the economic applications downstream benefiting from that.
If some combination of those things happen, we will look back at the roaring 20’s as the decade which broke through the Great Stagnation."
8. "We don’t expect successful business managers to be fortune tellers either. So what do you do if you can’t predict the future, and don’t want your company caught off-guard as you navigate an uncertain, ever-changing economic landscape?
We’ve found that nimble, adaptive companies tend to be successful over the long term and offer investors a wider margin of safety. Indeed, we would argue that relying exclusively on valuation for safety, especially given the accelerating pace of disruption in the Information Age, is downright dangerous."
https://www.nzscapital.com/sitalweek/redefining-margin-of-safety
9. "The EU is the region with the greatest degree of participation in global value chains, but that participation — in the EU’s regional value chain as well as globally — is shrinking fast, a phenomenon that may have significant relevance for the integration of the EU single market. The EU’s decreasing role in value chains is linked to technological innovation and human capital. On both fronts, we find preliminary evidence that China is catching up very fast."
10. "The good news for entrepreneurs is that windows of opportunities for startups always keep opening and closing in various markets at different points in time. The bad news is that any particular window of opportunity remains open for a short time. Therefore, timing in a market can make or break a business. Launch too soon and customers reject it for being too unfamiliar and launch too late and the market is already well-established.
Both having no competitors or having too many competitors is a clear sign of wrong timing. Don’t build things nobody wants. And don’t build things that competitors are already fulfilling. Capitalism rewards rare and valuable."
https://invertedpassion.com/dont-be-a-first-mover/
11. Interesting move but such an awesome eclectic career path like many of the best people in Silicon Valley (or anywhere).
12. Not sure how I feel about this. One of biggest things I missed in 2020 is going to a live bookstore and browsing around.
https://www.protocol.com/manuals/retail-resurgence/covid-forced-bookstores-online-can-they-survive
13. Sadly this is a bad outcome for the early investors and employees. Liquidation preferences matter.
What happens when you raise too much money too early and just don't ship & sell to grow into your valuation. It happens alot.
14. Not sure why anyone would be surprised here that China is fudging their Covid numbers. They fudge their economic growth numbers and most numbers. Period.
"I believe that the Chinese government is massively under-reporting infection data in the pandemic regions of Hubei and Zhejiang provinces.
Just like the American government massively over-reported North Vietnamese casualty data in the Vietnam War."
https://www.epsilontheory.com/body-count/
15. Hard not to get outraged by reading this. There is alot here & it’s aged well since April.
"Those stories are dying. They are dying because the institutions built on those stories failed us all, and all at once.
First, the people die; then, the stories.
The failures of these institutions were not simple mistakes, evidence of wrongness of one kind or another. The failures of these institutions were failures of narrative, devastating revelations of each institution’s fundamental inability to do what they said they would do.
"Friends, for the first time in any of our lifetimes, everyone around us is seeing the same things that we are seeing about the same institutions. They know the same things we know. We may all observe in real-time the brokenness of a fragile economic system built on the present-efficient tools of the Long Now, the over-optimization of cash, inventory, supply chains, operating and financial leverage.
We may all observe in real-time how complexity makes liars out of global institutions designed with political pacification of the masses (“All is well!”) as their primary purpose.
16. Good one from my buddy.
"The fact that more founders are choosing to create syndicates highlights another shift in early-stage venture capital: the stigma around “party rounds” is all but gone. In the past, having no clear lead was seen as risky due to the lack of available follow-on capital. “If things go south,” the narrative went, “no one will bail you out.” While that can still hold true to some extent, it’s far less of an issue that in previous years, particularly at the early stages."
"Free of the stigma of syndicates and with an unprecedented number of early-stage funding options, I expect we’ll see many more founders raise “non-traditional” Pre-Seed and Seed rounds in the years ahead."
https://ckneumann.medium.com/why-vc-unbundling-is-great-for-founders-5e9420870d82
17. Key lessons from the Salesforce acquisition of Slack. Think it makes alot of sense.
"What you can learn:
--Bundling is magic.
--Salesforce and Microsoft are the main two natural acquirers for any enterprise SaaS product.
--If you control the right layer in the value chain — like a central hub for employee communication — the strategic value of your position might be worth more to acquirers than as a stand-alone money-printing business."
https://divinations.substack.com/p/why-salesforce-bought-slack-430
18. "While the story of American Dream is unique in many ways, its struggles are emblematic of the bleak future facing many US malls and department stores — whose destinies have long been intertwined. The downfall of these onetime crown jewels of retail will have meaningful impacts on the Americans who work for them and the communities they’ve long called home."
"Across the US, department stores are shrinking or shuttering altogether. In 2011, US department stores employed 1.2 million employees across 8,600 stores, according to estimates from the research firm IBISWorld. But in 2020, there are now fewer than 700,000 employees in the sector, working across just over 6,000 locations."
https://www.vox.com/recode/21717536/department-store-middle-class-amazon-online-shopping-covid-19
19. Lots of great founder wisdom here from cofounder of Segment.
"The startups who most rapidly improve are the ones who are able to take outside information, and then incorporate it into their product, their strategy, and their worldview. That's why, you should always be optimizing for one metric in addition to revenue and user growth: learning.
At any given time, your startup should have somewhere between 1-3 existential risks. Big questions that you are worried about that you really want the answers to. It's your job to get the answers to these questions."
"For most startups, it's better to do a few things well than try and do too many things poorly."
https://calv.info/early-stage-lessons
20. So very interesting for architecture fans. Super trippy pics of Soviet architecture.
21. This is SUPER interesting & a BIG DEAL!
"Liquidity is Coming" to startup land!
https://henrysward.medium.com/liquidity-is-coming-761a9140dedd
22. WOW. I mean HP totally sucks now & sort of irrelevant but they were one of the first in Silicon Valley. This move to Houston is kind of big deal and signal.
"Sobering" is right. This is not just an indictment of Silicon Valley but the poorly governed extreme left wing progressive mess that is California. (BTW I am left wing too)
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/news/is-silicon-valley-losing-its-shine-4275033/
23. "So what do I believe the future holds for venture partnerships vs. solo capitalists?
I believe solo capitalists are here to stay. They are finding founder-investor fit with a number of entrepreneurs, and leading competitive financing rounds. They’re an interesting option for founders, and an exciting career path for investors at any stage.
But I do also believe that the best partnerships have advantages that enable them to out-perform on all aspects of the venture capital model over a long period of time."
https://nbt.substack.com/p/venture-partnerships-vs-solo-capitalists
24. Ben is super credible and has a very impressive portfolio as both an angel and VC. No surprise this fund is oversubscribed.
"Between the more than five years that Ling spent with Sand Hill Road firm and the “nearly 80” investments he made as an angel investor before that, he says he has invested in 10 “unicorns” altogether so far, including Rippling, Airtable, Udemy, Quora, Instacart, Gusto, and the now publicly traded companies Pagerduty, Square, Lyft, and Palantir.
A Stanford PhD in computer science, Ling insists that by working as a lone GP — one supported by three principals — he can continue getting into more hot deals, too. “It’simportant because you can make decisions much more quickly, whereas in partnerships, you have to get a partner looped in, and all those days can cost you an investment opportunity.”
25. This is a pretty neat story. Nav the Flash crash trader.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZDEWVJan0s
26. This is a good retrospective look at 2020: reminder that as crap as it was, there may be some good things coming out of the year where the world literally has changed.
https://www.gq.com/story/the-best-things-about-2020
27. This is sad but it shows that EVERYONE faces their own internal demons. Even more so when you have resources to enable them. The world lost a good man here.
“He fostered so much human connection and happiness, yet there was this void,” the close friend continued. “It was difficult for him to be alone.”
"In some ways, count him as another Covid-19 victim, except that instead of succumbing to the disease itself, the virus appears to have accelerated some wrenching internal battles and a series of terrible external decisions."
28. "Find your purpose in life through meditation and prayer. Or, find your calling through repeated and difficult failure in life.
But once you find that purpose, devote yourself to that ideal and don’t let it go. You are here for a reason. Put everything else out of your mind. Pay whatever price you must. Seek out your goal with single-minded fervour.
Be careful not to limit yourself too narrowly when you devote yourself to your ideal purpose. The Greeks understood the danger of doing so."
“The Greeks were not trying to create men who would easily be pulled into various different directions. They were actually trying to build men who were good at being MEN. This lifestyle would create men with strong bodies, minds, and souls. That was the Greek notion of balance: a body, mind, and soul working in harmony.
This reached its apotheosis with, of all things, the Spartan agoge. The agoge was a brutal and terrifying system of education by soft, weak, and pitiful modern standards.”
https://didacticmind.com/2020/12/devote-yourself-to-an-ideal.html
29. Lots of good insights here. Well worth a read for founders and investors.
"One thing few people realize about billionaires is that all of them could have stopped sooner. They could have gotten acquired, or found someone else to run the company. Many founders do. The ones who become really rich are the ones who keep working. And what makes them keep working is not just money. What keeps them working is the same thing that keeps anyone else working when they could stop if they wanted to: that there's nothing else they'd rather do.
That, not exploiting people, is the defining quality of people who become billionaires from starting companies. So that's what YC looks for in founders: authenticity. People's motives for starting startups are usually mixed. They're usually doing it from some combination of the desire to make money, the desire to seem cool, genuine interest in the problem, and unwillingness to work for someone else. The last two are more powerful motivators than the first two. It's ok for founders to want to make money or to seem cool. Most do. But if the founders seem like they're doing it just to make money or just to seem cool, they're not likely to succeed on a big scale."
http://paulgraham.com/ace.html
30. “Savvy investors have realised that diversification is as relevant to lifestyle planning as it is to wealth management. By spreading their assets across a range of markets and jurisdictions, over time they are more likely to harvest returns than if they hedge their bets on one country alone — even if that is a world-leading nation.”
“Increasingly, people prefer the concept of being a global citizen, rather than being solely tied to the country of their birth,” he said. “They too value the many associated benefits including visa-free travel, world-class education, optimal healthcare, political and economic stability, reduced tax liabilities and wider business and career opportunities.
“The pandemic has brought into sharp focus what really matters to people: family, freedom and security.”
https://international-adviser.com/number-of-hnws-seeking-second-passport-skyrockets/
31. "Outside of the positive changes that COVID-19 is bringing *for a select group[* (ability to save tons of time and increase margins), we can look at the implications of the December shut down which are as follows: 1) more restaurants/retail will be shut down for good, 2) this will cause online sales to see a significant boost in December, 3) companies that were on the fence about remote working, will likely make it a permanent option, 4) major cities will continue to see outflows for example SF -> Nevada/Texas, Boston/NYC -> Miami/Carolinas, and preference for lower cost cities such as Nashville, 5) executives will be paid a *lot* since they know their workers won’t be able to move easily & 6) additional loss of trust with the government will make a vaccine deployment harder as citizens will not trust the initial solution.
Putting feelings aside, that appears to be the impact of the decision to shut down businesses in major cities. That said, you (yes you the reader) has to adapt or die. Keep your costs at near zero (especially if you own anything related to brick and mortar) and continue to build an online business/presence. The big will get bigger, but at least e-tail/online sales is a growing market."
https://wallstreetplayboys.com/realizing-time-can-be-saved-and-comments-on-december/
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
Old Man Yells at (Tech) Cloud
At risk of sounding like an angry old man and by Silicon Valley standards I kind of am, as a 46 year old. As someone who has been in the tech industry and in San Francisco since January 1999 there was a lot of “History repeating itself.”
I started having a tremendous amount of personal disquiet about the Tech industry starting in 2017. I saw a widespread lack of thoughtfulness & hype. At the same time, I also saw an incredibly high level of arrogance and bad behavior from both founders and Investors during this time in Silicon Valley. All mainly driven by Greed due to the immense amount of money coming into the industry. The Softbank Vision Fund was only just a signal of the overall craziness.
Reminded me of the stupidity driven by Frenzy & FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) that happened in 1999-2000, in the run up from 2006-2007 and more recently the Crypto ICO insanity in 2017.
Add to this, the increasing bubble and distance the tech industry was building around itself. This caused a massive disconnect to the real world, the rest of America and the world. For comparison, the average per capita income in the USA was $63,174 USD, in the San Francisco Bay area per capita was $96,265 usd. But add on another filter, for tech workers it is $122,000. A very large difference. Granted it is much more expensive to live in the SF Bay Area but this additional surplus of capital allows folks to build a bubble around themselves. A live example is of the self contained Google, Facebook and Twitter amenity filled campuses/offices where you literally do not need to leave the grounds at all. So we saw for most part, tech startups building stuff for high income earning urban dwellers leading to a dangerous echo chamber.
You can argue that Silicon Valley is incredibly diverse. It certainly is from a racial/international perspective. But from a socio-economic, educational perspective whether you are from India, Russia, USA, France, Argentina, Mexico, Canada etc. most of us in Silicon Valley tech are basically the same person with similar view/ values. Net net: left wing, high post secondary education and global minded + high income. This opens up a huge blind spot and why so many of us were shocked by the 2016 elections of Trump.
So what is the point of this tirade?
I believe that as the great educator and startup guru Steve Blank said, the importance of “getting out of the building” becomes even more important in times like this. In this case, getting out of your bubble, talking to customers both perspective and even talking to non-customers as an anti-pattern.
Building and hiring diverse people from other countries and races and sexes. Traveling within the country to non-coastal states and internationally as I’ve espounded on many times. For me, I also spend time reading right wing media like Breitbart and Fox, both of whose views I viscerally dislike and disagree with. But it certainly is still helpful to understand other’s differing perspectives.
I hold the view that technology, like many tools, ultimately is neutral. But I also understand the massively disruptive power technology has on the world.
The way we harness this technology in a society positive way is by understanding as much of the different people’s perspectives outside of our own filter bubbles. I think this is finally happening in 2020 with the pandemic. We have seen many key Silicon Valley investors and founders dispersing all over the USA and the world. These evacuees' mental horizons will be opened in these new environments. At the same time, they will bring their talent, knowledge, best practices and mindset to these new places. A true win-win in my view and why we will see technology become even more ingrained in the world and the rise of even more successful startup ecosystems all over the place.
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
Media Company of One
“Whether you like it or not, every person is now a media company. The tools are easy, free, and everywhere. More importantly, producing content is now the BASELINE for all brands and companies. It literally doesn’t matter what business you’re in, what industry you operate in, if you’re not producing content, you basically don’t exist.”
Gary Vaynerchuk wrote this in 2013. In 2020, this is more appropriate than ever. Look at the crazy career arc of super successful folks like Joe Rogan, Tim Ferriss, Tiago Forte, David Perell, Zuby, Hiten Shah, Anthony Pompliano or Eric Siu. They are in completely different industries but have attracted immense followings. I believe they provide a blueprint for how businesses will be built in the future. This is a content and audience-first approach to business building, what I call the “East coast” approach.
This is in contrast to what I call the “West coast” tech startup approach of “Build it & they will come” approach. In other words, the traditional Silicon Valley way of building the product first, then figuring out audience and distribution. This is an approach that when it works, it works well but it is now becoming outdated in my humble opinion.
Some universal lessons that we can take from their success.
They are consistent over a long period of time. Joe Rogan started his podcasts 11 years ago. Tim Ferriss started his 6 years ago. Pomp started on Twitter in 2017.
They dominate one audience platform or format initially before moving to start on another one. Pomp started with Twitter in 2017, then a Newsletter in 2018 and then podcasting in 2019 which translated well into Youtube. Tim Ferris and Joe Rogan on podcasting and have predominantly been strong there.
They started very small but kept going. They were prolific and regular. David Perell releases 2 newsletters a week consistently (monday and friday btw). Pomp literally tweets several times a day, he writes 5 newsletters a week, releases an interview almost every other day. Tim releases at least a new podcast interview every week. Joe Rogan releases new content every other day. I literally cannot keep with them. How many folks do you know who say they want to tweetstorm more regularly, podcast or blog more regularly? Yet you see them drop off after 5 posts or podcast episodes. This is quite common. You have to keep doing this for a VERY long time. You have to keep at this for at least 2 years in my opinion.
Why Should you do this?
Eric Siu: The benefits of creating a 'one-man media company':
- Defensible moat that insulates you from disasters
- Allows you to take shots
- Provides different income opportunities
- Gives you a stable foundation
(Source: https://twitter.com/ericosiu/status/1295372052854054912)
For all entrepreneurs, students and corporate execs, get working on your one person media company! It’s not too late and this will help you in whatever you end up doing. It is your “serendipity machine” as David Perell states. He goes further to say:
“It’s the best way to learn faster, build your resume, and find peers and collaborators who can create job and business opportunities for you.
Content builds on itself. It multiplies and compounds.
Day and night, your content searches the world for people and opportunities. Projects, mentors, speaking gigs, job offers, pitches, investment opportunities, interview requests, podcast appearances, and invitations to special events. It all starts with sharing ideas online.”
Now is the time!
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads November 29th, 2020
“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” —Seneca
Wind power is here in America. This Ukrainian immigrant entrepreneur is one big reason.
“I’m an engineer. Not an environmentalist,” says Michael Polsky, as if to explain why even after spending 17 years developing renewable-energy systems, he’s still enthralled by the sight of 125-foot-long wind turbine blades sweeping in elegant circles through the sky.It’s machines that this serial entrepreneur loves. And building. And making profitable deals. After becoming a centimillionaire by developing gas-fired turbines, the 71-year-old has ridden wind power to billionaire status.
If you’re just making money, you can only go so far,’’ he says. “When you have a mission, a conviction, you perform on a completely different level. You believe so strongly, you don’t take no for an answer.”
2. I love Substack & what they are doing.
"Substack, established in 2017 by three tech-and-media guys—Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie, and Jairaj Sethi—is a newsletter platform that allows writers and other creative types to distribute their work at tiered subscription rates. Newsletters go back at least as far as the Middle Ages, but these days, with full-time jobs at stable media companies evaporating—between the 2008 recession and 2019, newsroom employment dropped by 23 percent—Substack offers an appealing alternative. And, for many, it’s a viable source of income."
"Because newsletter creators retain control of their email list, archives, and intellectual property, Substack’s main selling point is independence—from bosses, from ad-dependent corporate media models, from the whims of tech monopolies like Google and Facebook. The founders don’t claim that Substack will “save” media—a promise that’s bound to disappoint—but they argue that their model is a core part of a better, more worker-centric and reader-friendly future for journalism."
https://www.cjr.org/special_report/substackerati.php
3. "Many people tend to write off self-help literature as little more than fodder for the worried well-off, and as Blum concedes, there is good reason to do so. Between books on self-actualization, speaking circuits for self-appointed life coaches, high-priced personal growth seminars, and corporate-sponsored self-care initiatives, the $10 billion a year industry can seem to be little more than, as she puts it, “a force…that fosters privatized solutions to systemic problems.”
"But as Blum shows, the genre actually originated in the literature of radical self-improvement societies and the collective do-it-yourself efforts of 19th century British anarchists and socialists."
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/self-help-compulsion-beth-blum-review/
4. One of the clear winners of the 2020 pandemic. Onlyfans.
"OnlyFans is a subscription social media site that lets fans pay to get exclusive content from creators. The site is perhaps best known for its adult entertainment content, which likely would make it difficult to raise venture capital anyway. Stokely, though, emphasizes that OnlyFans is for all types of entertainers, and he hopes to broaden into areas such as sports."
"Indeed, creators on platforms like TikTok and Instagram regularly tell their followers to sign up for their OnlyFans page to get exclusive behind-the-scenes material. OnlyFans has become enough of a pop-culture phenomenon for Beyoncé to name-drop it in a song.
As Stokely sees it, OnlyFans allows creators to become “the CEO of their own channels” and make revenue by catering to their most ardent fans. The company makes money by exacting a 20% fee from each transaction. That’s often higher than what competitive services charge, like Patreon, which can take as little as 5%. He says more than 100 creators have made $1 million or more through the site."
5. "the gangly, curly-haired 23-year-old has spent the past year on the road, poking a microphone into the oft-shocking subcultures of America for his show, “All Gas No Brakes.”
Callaghan has interviewed protestors, porn stars, Proud Boys, and Bigfoot hunters. He’s braved the crowds at Border Security Expos and Burning Man. He’s lent an ear to flat-earthers, alien truthers, psychonauts, and intoxicated partygoers.
Since launching in August 2019, “All Gas No Brakes” has amassed 3m+ fans on Instagram and YouTube. In getting there, Callaghan has had the help of Doing Things Media (DTM), a digital media company that runs a network of 25+ brands with an audience of 60m+ across platforms.
Doing Things’ revenue is almost at $10m for 2020 — 3x its haul from 2019. That’s partly been buoyed by merch.
“About half of Doing Things’ revenue is branded content,” says Hailey. “The other half is a mix of (mostly) merchandise, subscription, platform, and video licensing.”
With all of these moves, Doing Things Media is building out the playbook for what prominent business writer Web Smith calls linear commerce, whereby the lines between media and commerce are blurring.
In a previous world, a company would build a product and then go find an audience to market to. Today, those who wield a sizable audience have a better sense of what products can sell — and they’re poised to go out and make them. This approach greatly reduces customer acquisition costs."
https://thehustle.co/all-gas-no-brakes-the-inside-story-of-the-internets-favorite-interview-series/
6. Talk about wacky....."Dentist DJ Dictator."
"Berdimuhamedow has ruled the former Soviet republic since the death of his predecessor Saparmurat Niyazov in 2006, who curated his own infamous Stalinist cult of personality over his 16-year term in office. He famously renamed months and the days of the week after his relatives and even had his own gold statue that would famously rotate to face the sun. But it didn’t take long for Berdimuhamedow, then a former dentist who later became health minister, to dismantle Niyazov’s personality cult and replace it with his own.
In a move akin to Roman emperors, he lifted a ban in 2010 and reinstatedthe traditional big top circus - complete with clowns, fire-eaters, jugglers, lion-tamers and trapeze artists. He rides horses in public (and fell off one in a viral clip), engages in dagger-throwing, car racing and taekwondo. At a 2020 new year’s party, he was seen on camera deejaying at a rave. He also waged a peculiar crackdown on satellite dishes and air-conditioners."
7. "Now, in Egypt circa 2009, the government wasn’t even trying because it was preoccupied with the maintenance of the regime and skimming off the economy.
In the US circa 2020, our so-called leaders aren’t even trying because they’re preoccupied with zero-sum power games, and skimming off the economy (one need look no further than the farce that has played out around a second Covid stimulus package).
History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes.
I am still thinking through the investment implications of all this. My base case is now what I have called “the zombification of everything.”
MOAR dysfunction. MOAR debt. MOAR government intervention in capital markets (to hedge the political class from the financial consequences of its own ineffectiveness, ‘natch). Low rates, low growth, (alleged) low inflation, as far as the eye can see. The market narrative cartoon of this regime will be disinflation. In reality, I think it’s more of a stagflationary regime. But the cartoon is what matters for your returns. So somewhat paradoxically, this is GOOD for risk assets. Particularly long duration assets."
https://demonetizedblog.com/2020/11/21/zombieland/
8. I love this list of countries. Some of my favorite in the world. Good alternatives to the so-called First world. You can have it all sometimes.
"You can find the cheapest countries in the world. You can find the safest countries to live in. But if you want both, Eastern Europe (Georgia, Serbia, Armenia) is a great place to start.
If you know what you’re doing in Asia, places like Taiwan and Malaysia are also very safe and reasonably affordable. There may be some purse snatching, but there isn’t a lot of violent crime."
https://nomadcapitalist.com/2020/11/18/cheapest-safest-countries-to-live-in
9. "I live for myself and answer to nobody"--Steve McQueen
https://apexalpha.blog/a-successful-life-starts-with-mindset/
10. Thesis investing is really the only way forward for investing in any sector or category or asset. USV has nailed it in VC & this shows why. Generalists are toast in the new world (and I admit I am generalist investor so lots of personal retooling needed)
"All of this is a relentless effort to figure out what we are looking for and then go out and find it. It is not a static thing. It is a dynamic thing. A pandemic comes along and rocks our world. Time to revisit the thesis and the deep dives. When the pandemic ends, and it will, we will factor that into our thinking too.
In a world with so much opportunity, it pays to ignore the vast majority of it and focus on a tiny bit of it. That may seem counterintuitive, but I am certain that it is the right thing to do."
https://avc.com/2020/11/knowing-what-you-are-looking-for-2/
11. Good job Sherwin Williams! Some kid takes the initiative and it gets crazy good results for company. Corporate overlords fire him. This is why big companies suck!
Popular Paint-Mixing TikToker Fired By Sherwin-Williams
12. This is why the market works, like it or not.
"The Cobra effect" ie. Perverse Incentives.
https://deliber.at/2020/perverse-incentives
13. WFA=Work From Anywhere is a real thing.
14. Good news for Fish and the earth.
"I knew the pattern those trailblazers had to follow: media campaigns to convince people their fake meats weren’t bizarre, slow rollouts of product in a handful of hipster restaurants, and then years of struggle to develop the production and distribution needed to reach the mainstream.
I’d assumed alternative seafood would follow the same tortuous path. Yet here was Good Catch, already stocked by mainstream supermarkets like Whole Foods and Giant. Perhaps the trail had been blazed. And that made me wonder if the world of seafood was about to get pounded by a wave of fishless fish."
"Second spoiler alert: it is. Many of the most popular seafoods now suddenly face direct competition from dozens of startups offering animal-free alternatives. The industry is still tiny, but sales of plant-based foods have surged 29 percent in the past two years, compared with just 4 percent overall for U.S. retail foods, and many expect the category to follow the arc of plant-based milks, which now account for 14 percent of all retail milk sales."
https://www.outsideonline.com/2419099/plant-based-fish-seafood-good-catch
15. I kind of feel the same. So much I hate about how poorly run SF is & how it’s become a S--t hole. But if most of VC twitter is running away (but not the startups), it kind of makes me want to stay (or at least keep as my base, I travel so much anyways). Groupthink is dangerous.
"Right now, it seems that not just leaving San Francisco, but kicking it on the way out, has become a bit of a meme. And with all the bizarre propositions on our election ballots, our rabid political ecosystem, our declining quality of life, and the prospects of rising taxes, I can understand the temptation. After all, Texas is not greedy with its taxes. Montana has better mountains. Other places have warmer waters. I could join the exodus. But the contrarian in me says to zig when others zag."
https://om.co/2020/11/24/on-not-leaving-san-francisco/
16. Hope he is right for the economy. Who knows.
"Fritze, an Indianapolis accountant, is among millions of Americans who have squirreled away their money in savings this year as the coronavirus pandemic has put an end to many activities — like going to the gym, restaurants or bars — that were common before the pandemic.
The savings reach $2 trillion, or roughly 10% of the economy. With a successful vaccine, all that money could be steered toward spending, according to economist Ian Shepherdson, ushering in what he calls the "Biden Boom" by the time spring arrives."
17. SPOT ON.
"In the future, those who achieve the greatest results with the least number of employees will be admired above all others; the key statistic to look at is the go-forward net revenues per employee because it best encompasses the company’s leverage. What matters is each employee’s productivity and how the business itself can scale?
The intersection of powerful software tools and cheap capital means that companies can build higher-quality products with fewer people as the capital can go to acquiring the best talent for more experiments. Basically, companies should be spending time on what makes them unique."
https://summation.net/2020/02/11/the-new-status-game-for-companies-fewer-employees/
18. "One thing is for sure, you cannot simply “pause” a major economy like the USA for 9 months or more. Asia has been open for a long period of time and this is causing them to capture more and more market share.
European companies are shutting down (due to COVID restrictions) which means China has to pick up the manufacturing slack… the USA already relies on Chinese manufacturing and the general economy (in Asia) is simply better there due to limited COVID-19 cases. They successfully contained the virus."
"The USA has been the best place on earth to get ahead: opportunities are boundless, limited regulation and a high standard of living. That said, Asia certainly wins in a scenario where the other two major world economies are halted/half-halted while they are not impacted."
https://wallstreetplayboys.com/happy-thanksgiving-some-notes-for-2021-and-qa-announcement/
19. A medley of thoughts from the very thoughtful Ev Williams.
"And I noticed in 2018 or so, with this massive number of companies that were in San Francisco — startups and large public companies and pre IPO companies — that competition for talent had gotten more extreme than it had ever been. So it got me — along with a lot of founders and CEOs — thinking about maybe the advantage of hiring locally and having everybody in the same office [was a pro] that was starting to get outweighed by the cons. . . And, of course, the tools and technology that make remote work possible were getting better all the time."
20. Big exits of startups REALLY matter for supercharging emerging startup ecosystems.
"Careem’s exit generated wealth for many of its employees, co-founders Mudassir Sheikha and Magnus Olsson themselves gained a large infusion of funds and both have become investors. Where the Middle East wealth generation relies mostly on inheritance or family businesses, Careem’s exit demonstrated an alternative way to create value and has inspired many to pursue their own entrepreneurship journey."
"The company served as a fantastic training centre, a place for its workers to develop the skills required to found their own startups – navigating difficult regulations, launching in countries with poor or little infrastructure, flexibility in solving solutions and digitising efforts. Careem’s culture is embedded with innovation and such an environment encourages employees to go out and innovate themselves or do the same for other startups. So far this year 34 new startups have emerged, built by the Careem Mafia, most are focused on the mobility sector, but there several in e-commerce, marketing, fintech and edtech."
https://www.wamda.com/2020/11/glimpse-careem-mafia
21. Totally true.
"I believe one of the biggest luxuries right now is freedom.
Covid-19 lockdowns around the world have taught us how precious freedom is, and how easily simple things like going outside, breathing fresh air, and the ability to travel, can be taken away from us by people who refuse to follow their own rules.
Frankly this was another theme of the Soviet Union—the big bosses had one set of rules for themselves, and the rest of us peasants had another set of rules that we had to follow.
You see this all over the Western world now, with politicians who can’t be bothered to adhere to their own lockdowns, but require everyone else to isolate from friends and family.
It’s easy to be angry about this. But it’s more effective to do something about it.
Unlike expensive luxuries like fancy handbags and supercars, freedom doesn’t require suitcases full of cash. It requires rational thinking, the right information, and the will to take action."
22. Wow this is a baller investment team in gaming here.
“Gaming in the pandemic is very much not an aberration,” Levin said. “It is a reflection of the trajectory the industry was already going. Psychologically and philosophically, it was an eye-opener for much of the world who was not acutely aware of what was happening. It is no longer a luxury for any form of traditional media to understand what’s happening in gaming. It’s a strategic imperative.”
https://venturebeat.com/2020/11/09/griffin-gaming-partners-raises-235-million-to-invest-in-games/
23. Emergence is best of best when it comes to enterprise software investing.
"I do think it’s dangerous to assume that things would have turned out the same if if we had been investors in the company. I believe the kinds of investors you put around the table make a difference in terms of the outcome of your company, so I try to not beat myself up too much on the missed opportunities because maybe they found a better fit or a better investor for them to be successful."
24. This stability & experience of incoming core members of foreign policy is a good thing. The only Trump policy I hope that continues is the containing of China.
“These are all people who are able to step into these jobs and hit the ground running. And that, in itself, is a signal.”
"Introducing his team Tuesday, he (Biden) noted that while they have “unmatched experience and accomplishments, they also reflect the idea that we cannot meet these challenges with old thinking and unchanged habits.”
https://www.vox.com/21594368/joe-biden-blinken-sullivan-haines-foreign-policy-team
25. Bruce Lee. Global icon.
"Today, his DNA still flows through everything, from fashion to dance, film to politics. Like his millions of fans I was captivated and the more I learnt about Lee the more I loved him. He was a passionate champion of equality and believed that martial arts should be open to anyone who wanted to learn.
He understood racism and segregation and knew there was no place for it in martial arts. This philosophy extended outside of the dojo and through his life Lee challenged stereotypes and prejudice. He was a hero onscreen and off, a beacon of hope to so many around the world."
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/bruce-lee
26. Some good stats here. WFA=Work From Anywhere for the lucky tech workers is here to stay.
"Workers now have greater geographic freedom, and appear to be fleeing traditional hubs for smaller markets."
https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/work-from-anywhere/
27. "We are obsessed with unassuming types and rags to riches stories; to getting to peek behind the curtain of the lifestyles of ordinary people who have made it.
Just like YouTube juggernaut Zoella (whose brother and boyfriend also became influencers too), the D'Amelios have mastered keeping fame in the family.
Their new YouTube channel includes a series called Dinner With the D'Amelios. It's the latest brand expansion, and on to another platform, too: "She's been able to take the audience she has away from TikTok and put it onto other places where she can build intellectual property," says Armoo.
Which she'll surely continue to do, in the same vein as her TikTok fame: meteoric, and fast."
28. Huh? Interesting and scary.
"The researchers tracked the risks based on three factors: the first was identifying cities where intense urban life collides with both domesticated animals and rich biodiversity, raising interactions between humans, farmed animals, and wildlife, often due to disruption like deforestation."
https://fortune.com/2020/11/27/megacities-breeding-grounds-covid-pandemic/
29. This is a smart ambitious kid. Short selling is a fascinating space too.
“I’ve always been a big believer that you’ve got to get your face in front of people,” Dorsey says. “Almost everybody has something to teach you. Even if someone isn’t a wildly successful person in their industry, they’ll know something you don’t.”
"He’s already learned enough to carve out a niche for himself in the financial world. At an age when his peers are still learning the ropes, Dorsey is putting out a successful newsletter about a sector of investing that doesn’t get the sustained coverage it arguably should: activist short-selling, betting against a company’s stock while alleging fraud or other problems."
"Dorsey foresees “an explosion” in activist shorting, as technology makes it a simpler strategy for more people to use and a frothy market creates more shorting opportunities to take advantage of. So while he might change course down the line — work at a hedge fund or start his own activist-research outfit — for now, he plans to see how far The Bear Cave can go."
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
Why UX & Design Matter
UX=User Experience or Usability is one of the most important factors in technology adoption.
So many technologists focus on early adopters who are strongly technical so they tend to care less about the design or usability.
This is the edge for startups whether consumer or B2B SMB/Enterprise. It’s something I don't think founders think or care about enough. If you look at older established software companies ie. Salesforce, Oracle, SAP. Awful, godawful UX. The more established a company, the harder it is to change the product. They are completely locked in.
And it’s almost impossible to fix as:
1) they have an established customer base used to this and there is risk of destabilizing their business
2) They have to do a complete rework of systems/ back end technology infrastructure etc. which is really hard for big company that is publicly traded (or about to go Public as Who wants to take the risk)
3) Plain politics & complacency internally (why change what is working?).
If you look at Crypto, one of the biggest issues of adoption is that it is just not easy to use. Muggles like me just find it hard. While Crypto purists will hate on Coinbase & Robinhood, I would argue these two players are driving most of the new mainstream consumer adoption and growing like crazy as a consequence. The main reason these companies have done well is because they make it so damn easy to use. Kind of like what eTrade did for buying and trading stocks online 20 years ago.
So startup founders, anytime you are looking at why your tech is not being adopted. Pay close attention to your UX and fix it. Yes, I might be over simplifying things here but this is a trap many strong technical founders fall into. And it is so common that I am continually surprised that more people do not talk about this.
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
Entering the Post Covid 19 World: Get to “Pole Position”
It’s been a challenging 2020 to say the least. In California, we have been in lockdown since March. We have had mass protests, mass unemployment and mass bankruptcies of main street businesses. Yet housing sales, the stock market and ecommerce have skyrocketed.
All of this points to the K-Shaped recovery. Some folks are doing very well, while others have seen their lives and lifestyle decline precipitously. It’s a really strange and painful time.
But like all things in life, every situation can be seen positively and negatively. The question is what stance will you take and then what action you take.
While we can all lament about the lockdown, the devastation, and i can safely say, we all have done so. It’s important to mourn and move on from here as quickly as possible. I found my life getting much better once I just started doing small things to improve myself. These consisted of the “Write of Passage” class I took, the masterminds I joined, the hours of self education via reading & listening to some top podcasts like the Pomp Podcast, Tim Ferriss Show, Invest Like the Best, the 20 Minute VC.
It was the meditation, the walks around the neighbourhood, the exercise regime in the morning. The key is building your health and building your internal skills that help hone your craft whatever it is.
Surviving is thriving in this present environment. But once we are through this, the world is going to be ripe with a multitude of business and investment opportunities. There is a major economic and cultural boom coming.
“Stay Safe and Stay Positioned.”
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads November 22nd, 2020
Once You Choose Hope, Anything’s Possible -- Christopher Reeves
I have major issues personally with uncertainty. Something I need to work on.
"Humans abhor uncertainty, and will do just about anything to avoid it, even choosing a known bad outcome over an unknown but possibly good one."
"Life is ephemeral. Everything we know and love will one day cease to exist, ourselves included. That is life’s one certainty. The cherry blossom is lovely not despite its transience but because of it. This has always been the case.
The pandemic has driven home our own transience. And while it may be too much to ask to celebrate this truth under such dire circumstances, we can learn to tolerate the unknown, and perhaps even catch glimpses of the beauty underlying life’s uncertainties."
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/08/how-embrace-uncertainty-pandemic-times/615634
2. "When I hear founders talk about “getting back to product,” it’s hard not to think that long-term they are a product manager, rather than a CEO."
https://medium.com/upside-partnership/fundraising-commandments-f00275b4d038
3. "If a business is a marketplace, it is selling incremental demand to customers as its primary value proposition. A business is SaaS or SaaS-like if it sells anything else software-related. If a business starts as a marketplace, it usually means demand is the most important problem customers need to solve.
If a business starts out SaaS or SaaS-like, it usually means its customers have ways of driving demand and have other important problems software can better help them with. It could also mean the marketplace dynamics needed to drive demand are very hard."
https://caseyaccidental.com/marketplace-types
4. Good basics of raising your Series A.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/raising-startup-round-how-when-share-fundraising-updates-amit-garg/
5. Exciting and scary implications. But this is the future.
"A new field of science called “synthetic biology” aims to do just this by digitizing genetic manipulation. Sequences are loaded into software tools—like a word processor, but for DNA code—and are eventually printed using something akin to a 3D printer. Rather than editing genetic material in or out of DNA, synthetic biology gives scientists the ability to write entirely new organisms that have never existed."
"THE AMOUNT OF attention and resources being paid to synthetic biology has only grown in the face of the pandemic, making it more likely that this research will impact our health in the near future."
https://www.wired.com/story/synthetic-biology-plan/
6. Yup! Different & interesting perspectives on post covid world.
"travel will explode after the pandemic. People like (safe) novelty and changes of scenery. We have all been locked down with the monotony of the same rooms, same walking routine, inability to see new things. When it is safe to travel, people will go, go, go."
“trends in combination have boosted the appeal of investment migration and citizenship programs, whether for ‘digital nomad’, those looking to acquire second passports or those changing nationality altogether. Connected hubs offering hassle-free entrepreneur visas such as the UAE, Singapore and Thailand are likely to benefit. Every country for itself is also becoming every person for himself.”
7. Very impressive & overlooked historical figure.
"He called himself the “Black Thomas Edison,” but we should all know his true name: Garrett Augustus Morgan.
Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Morgan pioneered a wide range of technological advancements — predecessors to the gas mask, sewing-machine advancements, hair products, and the first 3-color traffic light — that continue to impact daily life decades later.
It’s the story of an insatiably curious soul who overcame tremendous social barriers and devoted his life to making the world a safer place.
And it began in a shack on a rural Kentucky farm."
https://thehustle.co/garrett-morgan-inventor-traffic-light/
8. A very big fan of Stripe Press. Lots of really great books being published there.
"Like other independent publishers, Stripe has identified a niche and clear position around advancing authors in a certain part of the market; the quality of the authors it works with speak volumes. Stripe Press is refined in its taste, and offers unique services to its growing, tech-savvy community of writers.
In 2018 when Stripe Press debuted, Axios wrote, the bottom line: “This is the latest example of how tech companies use content marketing to build their brands and connect with customers (and would-be customers) beyond the products they sell… Stripe’s mission is to grow the GDP of the internet… by sharing previously hard-to-acquire knowledge and expertise about starting and running companies.”
https://morgmah.substack.com/p/the-promise-of-stripe-press
9. This is why it’s still early days in the Cloud computing space. Plenty of head room and opportunities for startups.
https://www.protocol.com/datadog-ceo-interview-cloud
10. I love the concept of digital nomad-ing but this write up sure makes these people seem....naive, privileged or entitled?
When so many people are suffering, not folks should be bragging about their escape or employment. Stealth or modesty seems like a better strategy.
Also shows nothing is like the dream being shown on Instagram or other social media.
"for those who were unencumbered, with steady jobs that were doable from anywhere, it was a moment to grab destiny and bend employment to their favor.
Their logic was as enviable as it was unattainable for everyone else: If you’re going to work from home indefinitely, why not make a new home in an exotic place? This tiny cohort gathered their MacBooks, passports and N95 masks and became digital nomads.
They Instagrammed their workdays from empty beach resorts in Bali and took Zoom meetings from tricked-out camper vans. They made balcony offices at cheap Tulum Airbnbs and booked state park campsites with Wi-Fi. They were the kind of people who actually applied to those remote worker visa programs heavily advertised by Caribbean countries. And occasionally they were deflated."
“It turns out there are drawbacks the trend stories and Instagram posts didn’t share. Tax things. Red-tape things. Wi-Fi rage things. Closed border things. The kinds of things one might gloss over when making an emotional, quarantine-addled decision to pack up an apartment and book a one-way ticket to Panama or Montreal or Kathmandu.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/08/business/digital-nomads-regret.html
11. Some tips for emerging venture managers from one of the best in the business.
"a clear approach to money management, bet sizing, ownership and follow on strategy, will also play a part in how LPs perceive you. Being wishy washy on any of these dimensions will be damning and likely relegate you to a bunch of polite responses but little follow through."
https://blog.usejournal.com/building-a-seed-stage-venture-firm-c432816ce45e
12. “Technology means we can now choose where we live and work.”
This quote is true but it will be countered by growing government & societal push for control.
"Everything will be in the firing line — the cushy “golden passport” programs, aggressive international tax planning by tech companies such as Amazon. com Inc. and Google parent Alphabet Inc. and the digital nomads themselves. A recent proposal to tax remote workers to pay to rebuild the economy speaks to that frustration.
While indiscriminately squeezing work-from-homers who are trying to make ends meet is unfair and would encounter resistance, turning the screw on tech companies and international tax evasion is popular and would make the nomadic life harder. As big government gets bigger, post-Covid Leviathans will be in no mood to let free riders take advantage of internet and mobile infrastructure without giving back."
13. Easier said than done but this is right.
"In VC, it’s our job to imagine a world that might be different from the world we live in. This means being open to ideas that are hard to fit into our world, as we know it, right now. After all, we’re always looking for the non-obvious idea, the “contrarian but right” idea that only looks viable from certain offbeat points of view. Part of the job is appreciating ideas that are strange enough to provoke a reaction of skepticism."
https://medium.com/speroventures/contrarian-investing-101-94f14f074ccf
14. Hope he is right.
The creator of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine says life could return to normal by next winter
15. "Broadly, there are five buckets that talented people should start companies around: energy, education, housing, healthcare, and transportation. That’s because the western world has stagnated on all five fronts. For every sector except energy and sometimes housing, costs are rising faster than the rate of inflation."
"Paradoxically, ambitious and differentiated goals are sometimes easier to achieve than mundane ones. Ambitious people attract other ambitious people. In positive-sum areas, they find ways to work together and help each other. That's why inspiring goals make it easier to hire, raise money, and meet the kinds of people who can move the world with a single phone call."
https://www.perell.com/blog/what-should-you-work-on
16. This is pretty great as a tip for keeping your brain focused and not distracted. Reducing cognitive load and keeping your mind sharp.
"Your sources of information have enormous influence on what you think, how deeply you think, and how you solve problems. Be deliberate about how you choose them. Avoid free sources information, companies that give away free clients, and large media organizations.
Read twenty good books per year, read Twitter through Feedbin and Reeder, subscribe to niche communities, mute low quality signal from high quality sources, subscribe to Superhuman for email."
https://www.spakhm.com/p/signal-curation
17. People make mistakes, at least he is trying to fix it and was very generous & charitable with the $$ he made. More than we can say for many billionaires (or millionaires for that matter) out there.
"These two sides of Smith — the impressive generosity on one and the admitted tax evasion on the other — may be hard to reconcile."
"Thomas believes Smith agreed to Brockman’s offer because, while it gave Brockman more control over his offshore assets than Smith might have wanted, it made his financial dreams a reality.
"This was 20 years ago and a 36-year-old brown man running around Wall Street trying to get people to invest in a very big idea. Not a lot of takers. Then he gets a billion-dollar investment. That’s how he built an empire that made him a billion dollars.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/11/09/smith-brockman-tax-evasion/
18. Bullish on Crypto. For me it’s Bitcoin all the way.
"We are starting to see sectors of the economy decentralize using blockchain technology, starting with the finance sector, naturally. This is a ten to twenty year trend that is just getting started. And owning crypto assets is the way to play that trend. Starting, but not ending, with Bitcoin."
https://avc.com/2020/11/bitcoin-the-gateway-drug/
19. This is fascinating.
20. Also contrary to popular belief, I am not a Permabear. If I was I would not have been a VC. :) Nomad Capitalist said it best and it’s a lesson I've learned the hard way in 2020.
"I do realize that there are problems, but I also know I can fix them and protect myself as much as possible, and then I can move forward and focus on the positive. I want to look for the opportunities and go where I’m treated best rather than stay mired in negativity."
"But just because something is going wrong for you does not mean the country is collapsing.
Yes, taxes are going to go up. Yes, the dollar may drop. But the dollar won’t become worthless in one day or even one month.
If your mindset is focused on the world ending, it’s going to be harder for you to succeed.
So, the first step to being prepared and being okay no matter what happens in your country is to stop overdramatizing.
Once you stop focusing on all the near to impossible what if’s, you can come up with a realistic plan to be prepared and protect yourself, your family, and your assets."
https://nomadcapitalist.com/2020/11/13/doom-and-gloom-permabear/
21. What an interesting career.
"the United States Investing Championship seems like a straightforward investment contest.
Traders pay a fee to join and spend a year trying to juice their portfolios for the highest investment return before one competitor is crowned the victor in December.
But the story behind the competition’s founder, Norman Zadeh, who revived it in 2019 after a more than 20-year hiatus, isn’t that of a storied investor.
Zadeh is both a shapeshifter and a name-dropper. He goes by Zadeh, or Zada, depending on the day. He’s a poker king, a porn magazine magnate, Joan Rivers’ former “boy toy,” an intellectual property warrior, a wealthy man who lost a lot of money."
22. "I’m of the belief that “Come for the Content, Stay for the Community” will be one of the dominating themes for media this decade. As more creators break away from companies to go subscription indie, they’ll find it to be an effective and rewarding strategy to think of ways to build ‘whole is greater than the sum of its parts’ experiences and even perhaps subscription tiers based on access to these events, community spaces and chats.
A slew of platforms and apps are letting creators do this without large event staffs, logistics or the costs typically associated with physical gatherings (although getting your fans together IRL will still be a thing post-COVID).
So it’s not a question of “how many newsletters can one person pay for?” it’s “how many communities does someone want to be a part of?”
23. This is what I got out of it. Kevin O'Leary is a financier, but not an operator (but he sold it at top).
"SoftKey renamed itself The Learning Company to take advantage of its strong reputation, continuing to gobble up industry powerhouses including MECC, in 1995, and Brøderbund, in 1998. All told, SoftKey bought more than 20 entities, becoming the world’s second largest consumer software company after Microsoft in the process.
“O’Leary basically saw software companies as commodities,” said Buckleitner. “He was the soulless businessperson who just came in and bought a bunch of companies and scaled them back and laid off all the good people.” At its peak in 1998, O’Leary sold TLC to Mattel for an astounding $3.5 billion — 4.5 times The Learning Company’s annual revenue."
"“[TLC] killed the educational software industry,” Bernard Stolar, a leader in the world of video games who was brought in by Mattel to try and save TLC, told Canada’s National Observer in 2016. “It killed it because there was so much product out there and all of the product was crap.”
24. "This new reality has profound implications for the go-to-market strategy of any infrastructure software company. Why? Because the last thing developers want to do is talk to salespeople. The classic RFP process has been replaced by developers finding their own answers on developer forums. Vendor-controlled POCs have been replaced by self-service trials."
25. The internal civil war at NY Times. Institutionalists versus Insurrectionists. Sadly, feels like their overall credibility has gone down like that of most of mainstream media.
"It is difficult to think of many businesses that have benefited more from Donald Trump’s presidency — aside from the Trump-family empire — than the Times. After Trump’s election, in 2016, subscriptions grew at ten times their usual rate, and they have never looked back. The Times has gone from just over three million subscribers at the beginning of the Trump presidency to its record of more than 7 million last month.
It has hired hundreds of journalists to staff a newsroom that is now 1,700 people strong — bigger than ever. Its stock has risen fourfold since Trump took office........and the company has been able to weather the pandemic in part because it now has more cash on hand—$800 million—than at any point in its history. It has become the news-media organization to rule them all."
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/11/inside-the-new-york-times-heated-reckoning-with-itself.html
26. This is a master class in growth for startups. Must read.
"In our experience, founders are often surprised to learn that there are very few routes to scalable new customer acquisition. For consumer companies, there are only three growth “lanes” that comprise the majority of new customer acquisition:
1. Performance marketing (e.g. Facebook and Google ads)
2. Virality (e.g. word-of-mouth, referrals, invites)
3. Content (e.g. SEO, YouTube)
"The biggest customer acquisition mistake we see companies make is underestimating the time and effort it takes to make a lane really work, and spreading their efforts too thin as a result."
27. A real American icon and story.
"Although Nelson is now one of the most beloved and iconic figures in American music—the bandanna, the braids, the ever-present haze of marijuana smoke—he didn’t find real success until he was in his late thirties. “I’d been struggling like the dickens to make some money at the music game and failed miserably,” he writes. Part of what makes Nelson’s music so resonant across generations is his deep and visceral connection to failure—he understands, on a cellular level, what it feels like to lose a partner, your house, all your money, those big dreams.
Before he moved to Nashville, in 1960, he worked as a radio d.j., pumped gas, did heavy stitching at a saddle factory, worked at a grain elevator, and had a brief gig as a laborer for a carpet-removal service. He eventually discovered that he had an uncanny aptitude for hocking encyclopedias door to door."
“I had to get up off my ass and, like everyone else in this cold world, keep on trying to figure out how to make a living.”
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/willie-nelson-understands
28. "big tech companies are thriving despite blood being out on the streets because they are anti-fragile. In other words, they thrive in uncertainty, unlike fragile and robust companies that are going belly up now. Thus, we are entering a new type of economy where the gap between big tech and others will likely keep getting bigger in the near future."
"its likely big tech will emerge stronger than ever before post-pandemic. This is mostly because big tech owns virtually all of the digital distribution we rely on. As a result, they could play a bigger role in the dissemination and control of information related to the coronavirus and other (disastrous) events in the future."
https://medium.com/@ddrk/big-tech-vs-the-world-part-1-439572238c50
29. These rules work regardless of whether you have money or not. Basically how to live a better and more interesting life focusing on what really matters.
"Taking a diverse approach to covering your needs is an important part of the Nomad Capitalist lifestyle, as is determining what your real needs are. As a mentor once coached me, confusing wants as needs is among the fastest paths to unhappiness."
https://nomadcapitalist.com/2018/04/14/life-hacks-for-wealthy-digital-nomads/
30. "While democratizing access is perhaps an overused phrase in today’s technology ecosystem, I think it will continue to be a theme in some of the most important companies of tomorrow.
There are three types of companies that democratize access to a product or service:
those that make something that was previously paid now free.
those that make something expensive cheaper.
those that make something hard to use much more convenient."
https://nbt.substack.com/p/democratizing-access
31. What a charmed life. I am a fan of Mr Clooney.
"Now, at 59, Clooney tends to the myth of himself, built and burnished over the years, and to his actual domestic life, which used to be lived between film sets and plummy talk show appearances and now is what makes him happiest. There are those who retire or otherwise disappear, and those who hang on tighter than they should, past when they should, but there are vanishingly few like Clooney, who is still here, albeit on his own exact terms, giving us something to agree on long beyond the time of us agreeing on anything."
"And this is a story about a charmed life, of course, but it's also a story about a guy who is doing his best to keep it that way, to liven up the days, to give himself more stories to tell before his time is up."
https://www.gq.com/story/george-clooney-icon-of-the-year-2020
32. "Perception is reality to the entire population. If someone thinks you’re a smart guy, it doesn’t matter if you have no experience related to something, they will likely listen. Seriously. People take health advice from overweight guys simply because they have degrees (no real life experience). Similarly, if someone thinks you’re an idiot they will happily bet against anything you have to say. In that scenario, you know who to go to for your wagers =)
We don’t live in a world where results matter for 99% of society. We live in a world where perception matters. Industries have been created where *prestige* must be present… which means they don’t require any real skill. If an industry required real skill, it wouldn’t matter if your degree said “Harvard” or “University of Nebraska”… The only thing that would matter is your performance/product."
https://wallstreetplayboys.com/some-interesting-notes-on-the-last-couple-of-weeks/
33. I really like what these folks are doing. Mushrooms for a more sustainable fashion future.
34. Go Georgia. I am maximum bullish on this country.
https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/how-i-paid-just-1-in-taxes-legally-29348/
35. The exodus continues. This is a significant one. Mr Rabois is a long time SF Bay Area guy too. Miami is a heck of a nice city for sure (low state taxes sure help).
“I think San Francisco is just so massively improperly run and managed that it’s impossible to stay here,” Rabois said. He believes he is not alone in giving up on the Bay Area, a place he has called home for two decades. He cited anecdotal evidence about many people in his social circles leaving, and noted, “COVID sort of masks this stuff. It’s not quite as obvious where people are moving to and if they’ve actually moved since everybody’s working remotely.”
Silicon Valley loses another tech investor icon as Keith Rabois is leaving the Bay Area
36. This is an absolute must read. Exciting times.
"We live in the age of infinite leverage – an era where anyone with a laptop can choose to build and scale without permission. Follow your intellectual curiosity more than whatever is the current shiny flashy thing.
If your curiosity ever leads you to a place where society eventually wants to go, you’ll get paid extremely well."
https://www.value.app/feed/the-age-of-infinite-leverage
37. A good basic guide for those in SaaS. Worth a read.
https://medium.com/point-nine-news/why-your-ltv-might-be-higher-or-lower-than-you-think-f35539291701
38. Talk about the comeback kid. Still not a fan of the Vision Fund & cash cannon strategy but boy is this guy resilient. All cashed up now too.
39. Real validation that the European startup ecosystem has arrived (I personally think it arrived 5 years ago).
"With just three staff announced so far, Sequoia’s London office is small. But its symbolism goes beyond its headcount, both for the firm and Europe’s broader tech ecosystem. Firm leader Doug Leone notes that through the 1980s, Sequoia was known for a rule established by its first partners: if we can’t ride a bicycle to it, we won’t invest. That position worked in finding Apple. It’s increasingly likely it won’t for finding the next. “We’re not interested at Sequoia in partnering with a company that does a $1 billion IPO and over 20 years grows to $2 billion,” Leone says. “The interest is to find important market leaders. And more and more, we’re starting to see them come out of Europe.”
Investors and entrepreneurs in Europe’s tech hubs have seen Sequoia investors on the ground to visit startups more in recent years, part of a wider trend of U.S.-based firms pursuing deals more aggressively on the continent and in the U.K."
40. Lessons from Lebanese Central Banking. This gross mismanagement is frightening. This Ponzi scheme can happen in any country in the world by the way. (probably is happening actually)
https://thomassemaan10.medium.com/cryptolira-tyranny-or-another-ponzi-4965d4020594
41. I'm always a bit wary of these very early but highly funded startups done by Celebrity CEOs. A 20M seed round??? Have any of these very worked out?
Serious question here. Outside of Square, I don't recall any of top of my head so want to know.
42. I miss Anthony Bourdain. Still makes me sad but what a life lived.
https://thoughtnova.com/restaurant-owner-reveals-how-anthony-bourdain-changed-his-life/
43. Congrats Ham Serunjogi & Chipper Cash team. Crazy good news and you clearly do have product market fit here. Batch 24!
44. Timely write up. Really helpful for many of us here in 2020 trying to figure out our lives.
"Transitioning from VC to coach and creator has forced me out of my comfort zone. I’ve had to adopt new mindsets/perspectives and also shed old ones that were no longer relevant and useful. I’ve also had to acquire new knowledge and skills to support my business and the founders I serve. I’ve had to stretch in more ways than I expected."
"There’s a big difference between having a job, a career and a calling."
What I've Learned In My First Year as a Solopreneur
45. Pizza is beating salad in the pandemic.
"We are a nation in the throes of an unprecedented eight-month pizza binge that shows no signs of abating. Multiple pizzerias in Los Angeles reported a 250% rise in sales on Election Day, and on Thursday, Papa John’s reported quarterly same-store sales growth of 23.8%.
For months now, the underlying forces for the sustained pizza craze have been as hotly debated within the restaurant industry as the election results have been parsed by professional pollsters. Stress eating is a major cause; quarantine-induced failure of imagination and the return of three major-league sports within weeks of one another over the summer certainly didn’t hurt."
"But the actual reason that doesn’t get nearly enough notice is that pizza is one of the few genres of food that is actually more profitable than — and almost as addictive as — booze."
https://marker.medium.com/the-death-of-the-15-salad-96f920ec4dfd
The Jungle, The Dirt Road & The Freeway: Different Stages of a Company
I have spent a lot of time thinking about this topic.
Why do superstars do so well in one company but flame out in another. I’ve watched this and even experienced this personally in my 21 year career in tech. Having been an early employee (17 or 18) in a startup that scaled to 150 people in a year and then the reverse during the dotcom bubble bursting in 2000. Joining Yahoo! when it was less than 3000 people worldwide, then growing to over 15,000 employees. Also joining 500 Startups when it was sub 30 people and watching it grow to over 150 people in two years. I’ve also seen this in the multitude of portfolio companies which have scaled.
I think much of this can be explained by phase of where a company is at. I used the analogy of Jungle, Dirt Road and the Freeway. I think a better analogy would be Commandos, Infantry & Policemen.
In the earliest phase, you need commandos who will break all the rules to take the beach. These folks are self starters, highly entrepreneurial and do not follow any processes, nor do they need much guidance.
Then you need infantrymen to come in and establish the beach head. And for all intents and purposes expand and scale. These folks are the ones to start putting in processes and some level of structure to grow. They set up the initial playbooks for scaling.
Then finally you have the policemen. These are the folks who come in to fine-tune the playbooks and make sure people follow them to a tee. You could even call them Bureaucrats.
Having experienced all these stages of a company, I've personally found that I tend to do well in the late commando stage. I have also thrived in the infantry phase. But have little interest & inclination and little effectiveness in the policeman phase.
In an interview with Charlie Songhurst he distils it down to even more distinct phases.
Pre-Seed to Seed: Team coming together and being effective
Seed to Series A: Getting to Product Market Fit
Series A: scaling where you need formal management. You need to carefully manage Output of Productivity as you grow. More people is not always more productivity.
Series B onwards is Institution Building. Repeating a process at scale.
For publicly traded businesses that are usually 9-10 years in. You need a policeman with tight micromanagement & who can thrive in an environment of crazy amount of politics. In a bad company, executives spend 50% of time playing politics. In very good ones, executives only spend 25% of time playing politics.
When you apply this lens to your own career or other peoples career it starts to make so much more sense. I also think that this is a useful lens for hiring. It helps you identify exactly what you are looking for and whether this person is a cultural fit stage wise.
One of the biggest mistakes i’ve seen startups who have recently raised a series A or Series B or C round, is they hire an executive directly from Google, Oracle or Salesforce without considering whether they fit the phase/stage of their company. Google, Oracle & Salesforce are very established companies and while the executive might be highly effective at a big company, they may not be able to adjust to the still grungy infantry phase. You want someone who has gone through this phase before.
Thankfully this is something that is becoming much better understood in high growth companies in Silicon Valley.
The Sovereign Individual & The Idea of the Global Citizen Sandwich
Being a long time prepper, one of my favorite books has been Neil Strauss’ “Emergency” which came out in 2009. It is a story of how he goes down the rabbit hole of the prepper movement. Neil literally becomes “Batman” as I tell most of my friends when I recommend it to them. I re-read this book every year, it’s that much fun. The real point of this is it’s a guide for how someone to truly become independent and free.
It’s a guide to the power of Diversification & being Un-Cancellable. Of not being dependent on one country and having all your eggs in one basket. This is something that many of us who grew up in the very prosperous western world of the United States, Canada and Western Europe do not really understand because we have had a long period of prosperity and stability for the last 5 decades. But for those folks who grew up in China, Argentina, Zimbabwe, Russia, Cyprus or South Africa for example , or the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia, all understand or have experienced how things can quickly fall apart.
One of the concepts Strauss learned from the mysterious “Sovereign Society” is the 5 Flag Strategy. Literally having your bank, residence, business entity, citizenship and businesses in 5 completely different countries or jurisdictions. For me, it would not be about evading taxes and just being more diversified & prudent. As an American citizen, you have to pay the federal tax wherever you live. But in general the tax treaties they have with most countries are for the most part reasonable. I’m dead serious here. Pay your rightful taxes, the scariest arm of any government are the tax authorities, people you do not want to mess with. It’s REALLY not worth the trouble however much you think you will save. The goal is to have an interesting life, not a complicated one. Plus the US has a very long arm in the world of Pax Americana.
There is another concept I love from “Nomad Capitalist” Andrew Hendersen called the Global Citizen Sandwich which is detailed here.
https://nomadcapitalist.com/2019/06/06/global-citizen-sandwich-bank-live-invest-abroad/
In sum, a very similar concept. The bread at the top is where you bank. So for example, a safe, trusted international jurisdiction like Singapore, Switzerland, Austria or Uruguay if you are in Latin America. Haven’t figured out what makes sense for me here.
The meat is where you spend most of your time, relatively low local taxes, safe, low cost, high quality & pleasant place to live. For Andrew it's Malaysia. For me personally, it would be Taiwan, Portugal, Ukraine, Mexico or Japan.
The bottom of the sandwich is an emerging market that is growing quickly & where there are crazy good business opportunities. At the same time they have a lower quality of life as it is emerging. A place for example, like Cambodia where there is a fast growing middle class, lots of Chinese money and tourists flowing in, all leading to great investment opportunities. Yet not necessarily a nice place to live. YET. Ironically, I've come to include both the United States & my beloved Central & Eastern Europe region as whole ie. former Soviet Bloc countries in this category. The quality of life in the USA has declined precipitously in the last 21 years i’ve lived here sadly, yet it is still the best place in the world for my industry of technology.
Being stuck in the Plague States of America these last 8+ months due to the gross mishandling of the Covid, I have had a lot of time to think about these concepts more.
A point of consideration, the US passport went from being one of the most valued visa less door openers to most countries in the world to less than 49 countries as of October 27th. Americans are literally not welcome in the UK, the European Union, Canada, Japan & Thailand among many other popular destinations.
I think anyone who lives in the United States these days should think very carefully about this. I would never bet against the USA and am literally putting my money where my mouth is. But it is prudent to diversify a little. A good business person should always consider both the upside and the downside. This will help you prepare and take action in either scenario that happens.
“Forewarned is Forearmed” is apt here.
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads November 15th, 2020
Never Lose Hope, Storms Make People Stronger and Never Last Forever-- Roy T. Bennett
I really want to read this book now.
"Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China’s Countryside: a deep dive into how technology is transforming rural life in China, particularly for young people.
A new generation of China’s young people are moving from cities back to the countryside where they grew up, bringing with them new technologies, and a drive to unsettle the old ways.Travelling to remote parts of China, Wang documents the way that communities that are usually left out of Silicon Valley narratives are challenging what it means to live in a tech-dominated world."
https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/the-young-everyday-hackers-transforming-rural-china/
2. "Hims Inc. is a 3-year-old telehealth company in San Francisco. This year, as the pandemic created a surge of demand for online medical care, the startup began providing Covid-19 tests as well as primary care and mental health services. Mostly, though, it’s known for offering generic prescription drugs to treat erectile dysfunction and hair loss.
In Hims ads and on the company’s website, the products’ relevant medical information is scattered among hyperphallic cacti, eggplant emojis, and a cartoon Snoop Dogg. As with other breakout mail-order brands of the past decade, such as Casper and Warby Parker—which sell mattresses and eyeglasses, respectively—the packaging is central to the sales pitch.
In an interview conducted pre-Covid, Chief Executive Officer Andrew Dudum says his goal was to build a health-care delivery system with the inviting gloss of Instagram. “When you use it, endorphins are rushing through your body,” Dudum says of the photo-sharing site. “That currently doesn’t happen in the health system, which is a big problem. It’s an ugly experience.”
3. Arrogance & Ignorance Kills. Literally.
"Japan, Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, New Zealand, Australia, Mongolia, Thailand or Vietnam all followed different variants of the Hammer (heavy lockdowns when there’s an uncontrolled outbreak and they don’t know what to do) and the Dance (a series of intelligent measures to keep infections low), yet all have been successful.
This list includes all types of countries: democratic, authoritarian, continental, islandic, freedom-loving, Anglo-Saxon, developing, developed… They prove any country can succeed. And they’re not the only ones: From the Caribbean to Uruguay, Canada’s Atlantic Provinces or several African countries, many countries controlled the epidemic.
Meanwhile, most Western countries didn’t pay attention, suffered massive outbreaks, applied heavy Hammers to stop them, but never learned how to dance. When the summer recess ended, they were not prepared for the back to school season and its new wave of cases. As the winter progresses, it will only get worse."
https://tomaspueyo.medium.com/coronavirus-the-swiss-cheese-strategy-d6332b5939de
4. "Saltarrelli has built his career within the gallery system, elevating his profile most recently with an exhibition of collaborative paintings with Danish wunderkind Farshad Farzankia at Turn Gallery in New York. His paintings sell for many thousands of dollars.
But he discovered a newfound freedom in the direct-to-consumer model. His art was able to reach people for whom the gallery world is inaccessible, bypassing the elitism and exclusiveness and creating a more accessible path. “Over the years I’ve had people contact me through email or Instagram to ask if they could buy something, and I would just refer them to the galleries I work with. But a lot of the people that reach out don’t necessarily have the funds to buy something through the gallery,”
https://www.gq.com/story/the-big-pivot-mason-saltarrelli
5. "As the person that defines a company’s culture and values, you need to set clear boundaries from the beginning and determine what type of intolerance you won’t tolerate — if you don’t, you risk your hard work being undermined.
Tolerance doesn’t work without intolerance, but this paradoxical thinking applies to so many other aspects of growing a company.
I firmly believe you’re most creative when you have clear boundaries or you face seemingly narrow restrictions. NOT being allowed to do something, pushes you to find innovative solutions — something you might never have thought of if you hadn’t been forced to."
6. "Bartering relies on something called the coincidence of wants. In simple terms, this means that each kid must possess an item (or service) that the other kid desires.
As we age and start making money, item-for-item trades like this become less common.
But when we’re young, most of us didn’t think about the objective, monetary value of the items we were trading. We base our exchanges on subjective value, or what the items are worth to us."
https://thehustle.co/the-hidden-economy-of-schoolyard-trades/
7. This is really perceptive and important to understand. Read this! (I am anti-Trump for the record.)
"The common thread of the Trump appeal is that it is a complete and total counter-reaction to undifferentiation. Trumpism rejects the last couple decades of policy and rhetoric that have advanced, more or less, the agenda that “everybody is equal and the government is going to actively make sure that everyone is treated the same.” Trumpism is a rejection of the ideal that we are and ought to be undifferentiated."
"Trump is absolutely differentiated from everyone else, both in his metaphorical un-cancellability and in the literal wall he’s built around the White House. He is the perfect satirical caricature of an External Mediator. He flaunts every sacred taboo; his toilet is made of gold."
"He’s an outlet for all of our stored up anger and frustration, at ourselves and at everyone around us, wrapped up as an invitation to have fun, almost like a practical joke. Trump offers a rhetorical, even satirical, playground where you can shout nonsense slogans like “Obama is the Antichrist!”.......
If you don't understand what Trumpism is, like what it really is, it's going to stick around."
https://danco.substack.com/p/election-day-2020-rene-girard-part
8. "This week, the stock of both Pinterest ($40 billion market cap) and Snap ($67 billion market cap) reached an all-time high.
But there’s another reason they’re both seen as such strong players in the social media world, especially now — because they’re both focused on positivity.
Obviously, there’s no perfect place on the internet (and I should note both organizations had racism claims from ex-employees over the summer), but in terms of content, they are generally happier places than the alternatives."
https://ajasinger.substack.com/p/pinterest-and-snapchat-coming-back
9. This is a good list of basic metrics to track for every startup.
https://davidcummings.org/2020/11/06/critical-startup-metrics-by-department/
10. The only good thing Trump did was to start to act against China & treat them as the competitor/enemy that they are. I hope the Biden administration keeps this in mind.
"In Beijing the change will be very much welcome. If there is something Chinese strategists regret is the end of “bid your time,” the old understanding that what China needs is to be left alone, as it grows stronger both politically and economically, in preparation of the time when it can actively challenge America in each and every dimension of global power."
https://brunomacaes.substack.com/p/biden-your-time
11. I like his message.
"Dave Ramsey, America’s most influential personal finance guru, drives a pickup truck that, he says, will eat your electric car. He wears a .45 on his hip with a hollow-point in the chamber. He is an older white male, a self-described “capitalist pig”, and an evangelical Christian who almost always votes conservative. He hates government intervention in his life – and yours.
His mortal enemy, however, is personal debt, and he has spent the last three decades on a crusade against modern usury, in the form of credit card companies (scum), payday lenders (the scum of the earth), and debt collectors (“some good people”, but largely “complete scum”).
Ramsey believes that as long as you have one red cent of debt – credit card debt, student loans, car payments, mortgages, medical bills – you can never be free. The day you take scissors to your credit cards is the beginning of your financial salvation.
God help you if you’re waiting for the government to rescue you. It won’t, he says – and shouldn’t.
Your debt is on you."
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/oct/29/dave-ramsey-debt-financial-guru
12. Well, this would explain a lot in modern day life.
"So where are the rest of the psychos? The vast majority of them aren’t found in jail cells.
They’re found in positions of power.
If they have the desire to kill, they vault themselves into a place in society that lets them openly sate that desire. A wise psychopath, with a murderous and bloodthirsty will, skillfully works his or her way into a job that lets them kill in socially acceptable ways.
They might become a judge so they have the power of life and death over people every day. They might go into politics so they can use the law to dominate and control people. They might become corporate lawyers who relish destroying small business owners and leaving them with crushing debt that collapses their business.
The line between hero and psycho is thin as tissue.
Psychopaths excel at certain kinds of jobs, like surgery, law and corporate leadership, where their cold-blooded calm keeps them intensely focused when everyone else is cracking under the pressure."
13. This is amazing, laudable and just awesome! Go Rick Steves!
Rick Steves’ Travel Empire Is on Hold so He’s Paying His Employees to Serve Their Communities
14. Trump is a vile awful man, but the grievances of almost 50% of Americans he claimed to have spoke for are real. Let's not forget this & help fix America for them too.
"Trump will weigh on America’s consciousness for a long time. For some, these past four years will be a source of PTSD. They will constantly fear a resurgence of Trumpism and that’s not a bad thing. Hopefully, they will stop laughing at people whose worldview is shaped by Fox News and finally understand the nature of the struggle they are in. For the Republicans, by the time Trump has finished calling the election results into doubt, they will have yet another resentment that will never go away.
The power of Trump, whether you see him as leader or demon, is that he gave a human shape to a fact that predated him and will continue after he’s gone: America is perilously divided, with no sense that society will bind up its wounds soon."
15. "there is a far more urgent reason to transform our approach to work. Bearing in mind that at its most fundamental, work is an energy transaction, and that there is an absolute correspondence between how much work we collectively do and our energy footprint, there are good grounds to argue that working less — and consuming less — will not just be good for our souls but may also be essential to ensuring the sustainability of our habitat.
The economic trauma induced by the pandemic has provided us with an opportunity to reimagine our relationship with work and to re-evaluate what jobs we consider really important."
16. "Work may not be fun at first, but we can bring fun into the work as we learn. The more we learn, the better we do, the more we enjoy it. In other words, we discover work we love first learning to do it.
I’d go so far as to say that without learning a new skill, adding to our knowledge, or gaining new experiences, it’s impossible to find our fit. As the subtitle of Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You says, “Skills trump passion in the quest for work you love.”
What’s also obvious (and often unappreciated) is that the only way to get better at something is to spend time being bad at it. You make mistakes, improve, and repeat."
https://edlatimore.com/do-what-makes-you-happy/
17. This is one of the best reads in town if you are as interested in Fintech like I am.
https://sytaylor.substack.com/p/fintech-food-nov-8th-whatsapp-does
18. "We believe the press and investment community is telling the story about emerging consumer brands incorrectly. The difference between VC-backed DNVBs and the other group of equity value creating brands outlined above is two-fold: (1) DNVBs raised buckets of venture capital while the second group of brands were typically bootstrapped and/or funded by PE shops and (2) DNVBs all started online while the other group of brands launched in a more multi-channel fashion from the start.
The whole idea of a “digitally native brand” is outdated. Rather than digitally native, our belief is that today’s customers demand that brands reach them where they are — whether it is a hunter buying a Yeti cooler at Cabela’s, an Allbirds customer shopping at an outdoor mall, a Dolls Kill customer going to Coachella, or a college student buying Kylie Cosmetics on her phone between classes. We are starting to see even VC-backed brands go multi-channel right away: Kim Kardashian’s shapewear business SKIMS entered Nordstrom less than a year after launching online."
https://medium.com/@maveron/casper-aside-consumer-brands-are-thriving-eeb1fa3da86b
19. "The wheels and gears of democracy may have been rusty from disuse, but in the end it worked. That itself should be a huge shot of optimism heard among all the decent people around the world.
Yes, I know, the other half who didn’t vote for the winning guy. They’ll come along, what unites us is truly more than what divides us, we just forgot that in the bubbles we’ve created for ourselves. We have to win them over with competence of execution. And forgiveness and healing on all sides. Yes, those words we haven’t really meant in a long, long time."
"The shoots of innovation and optimism even in these locked-down febrile times for the travel industry has been a wonder to see for a realist like me, even in the depths of despair earlier this spring and summer. If we all knew where to look, the fecundity of innovation in travel wasn’t lying fallow, it was just waiting for that first day of sunshine to show through.
This morning of optimism will take us far, that much I sincerely believe. America can still do lots of good in the world if done by right leadership."
https://skift.com/2020/11/07/this-shot-of-optimism-heard-around-the-world/
20. Chamath has been on forefront of a lot of things. Believe he is Warren Buffett of this generation.
"Chamath Palihapitiya is an exceptional pitchman. He knows how to get you excited in four-minute bursts on CNBC about a tech company that flips houses or about a data-savvy Medicare insurance company. “He's willing to saddle up on CNBC and tell the story,” says venture capitalist Bill Gurley. “Chamath – he’s figured out the process for crushing it as a SPAC sponsor and I think a lot of the others are just sitting still and don't know what he knows.”
SPAC is the four-letter acronym on everyone’s lips in Silicon Valley right now. That’s special-purpose acquisition company. Many enterprising finance-types hope to make a killing in the next two years with their own SPACs. Anxious venture capitalists are more than happy to offload their private portfolios onto a euphoric public market. And cash-hungry companies see it as a speedy path to a becoming publicly traded stock.
There are lots of reasons to care about what happens in SPAC world. Some believe that the process (the mechanics of which I sketch out at the bottom of this post) could represent the future for small and mid-sized tech public listings."
https://www.newcomer.co/p/the-man-with-six-spacs
21. "Sustainable energy has become the new hot thing and it makes me laugh because I’ve been involved in energy for 30 years [including in government roles]. I wrote two books on the future of energy in the ‘80s, so I’ve been at this a bit.
Our thesis continues to be that there are revolutions occurring in smart energy, mobility and smart buildings, and they are being driven by renewable energy, which costs less than carbon-based fuels in virtually every part of the world today, from the U.S. to India to Africa. That’s not a political statement; it’s a fact.
Fully 70% of new energy coming online now is sustainable, so people are smart to pay attention to that. Because costs are going down and the cost of storage is going down precipitously — the cost of lithium ion batteries came down so much that we reached an inflection point in 2018, and the cost of a kilowatt per hour costs less than $150 now — everybody is going electric."
22. Very fair assessment for founders. Must read.
"When I first got going in the world of venture capital, I heard multiple times that the problem with European and Israeli entrepreneurs was that they sold out too early. Of course, I could identify with those founders because I myself had sold out too early on more than one occasion. Each time I felt I needed to — for a different reason.
Perhaps I just didn’t have sufficient belief — either in myself or in the company I was building.
Now I sit on the other side of the fence, I can see that a potentially world-beating company selling out too soon is potentially damaging to our funds. After all, world-beating businesses don’t come along that often and VC returns rely critically on the outliers. We also know that it generally takes at least 10 years to build a large, sustainable business which requires determination and stamina — and contrary to uninformed popular opinions about venture capital, we are patient investors."
23. I think Spearhead is a brilliant initiative. Democratizing startup investing.
Spearhead launches $100M fourth fund to transform founders into top-notch VC investors
24. One of most observant guys on politics and the mess in SF specifically.
"Today, the only thing anyone seems to agree on is America isn’t great. This is a stark departure from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 clapback to the rise of the MAGA hats: “America is already great,” she said, a now-inconceivable political phrase. That story has been shattered, and for the foreseeable future there’s no going back to that world.
Something is fundamentally off, and as much as I believe Biden is a decent man, he is not going to lull me back into some belief that everything is fine, or that our approach to government before Trump was, in even just some general sense, working. Our middle class is struggling. Our trade and labor policies have gutted our manufacturing capabilities, and much of American industry is stagnating. At every level of government, and from all of our “experts” in media and science, our response to COVID-19 was pathetic. China and Russia are, increasingly, a threat to the free world. Radicalism at home is on the rise."
https://solana.substack.com/p/no-more-clown-shit
25. Highly recommend this movie.
"Since it premiered on the streaming platform in September, the documentary has become a viral hit. Although Netflix does not release viewer data, it says it has been a global success, in the top 10 most watched in Israel, South Africa and Australia. Amy Schumer recommended it to her 10.2 million Instagram followers.
With the same introspective cadences of the film’s voiceover, Foster muses that in a time of growing separation from nature, the film has triggered a fundamental human longing to reconnect with our origins. “Just under the skin we’re still fully wild. And I think this touches on what it’s like to glimpse that.”
https://time.com/5909291/my-octopus-teacher-craig-foster-interview/
26. I'm happy for him! :)
"There’s just so much creativity that happens in the early phases of anything, whether that’s software or physical products or art or music. It’s the “anything goes” phase of creating that I get so much energy out of and that I haven’t really had in years.
I also realized that the same people who are good at starting companies aren’t always the same people who are good at growing or managing them. The company itself has so much more potential than I have the ability or interest in offering and on top of that, I just wasn’t enjoying myself anymore.
So, that’s why I sold it."
https://baremetrics.com/blog/i-sold-baremetrics
27. "Conventional wisdom says that attempting to move upmarket will be a struggle with never-ending product feature requests and excessive demands of customer support. As a result, the idea of moving upmarket is often associated with fighting an uphill battle or the even more futile struggle of paddling upstream.
But there are many SaaS product categories where the market leaders have emerged from the low end of the market by leveraging intuitive product experience and low-touch go-to-market strategy to undermine any ‘higher end’ competition.
These startups tap into product-led growth initiatives to gradually yet consistently move toward the enterprise to win larger customers, quarter after quarter, without ever forfeiting their command of the market’s longtail."
https://www.bvp.com/atlas/moving-upmarket-and-the-ascent-of-smb-saas
28. Well this is frightening.
"Make no mistake: The attempt to harness Trumpism—without Trump, but with calculated, refined, and smarter political talent—is coming. And it won’t be easy to make the next Trumpist a one-term president. He will not be so clumsy or vulnerable. He will get into office less by luck than by skill."
29. Immigrants to the rescue. Amazing story.
"On Monday, BioNTech and Pfizer announced that a vaccine for the coronavirus developed by Dr. Sahin and his team was more than 90 percent effective in preventing the disease among trial volunteers who had no evidence of having previously been infected. The stunning results vaulted BioNTech and Pfizer to the front of the race to find a cure for a disease that has killed more than 1.2 million people worldwide.
“It could be the beginning of the end of the Covid era,” Dr. Sahin said in an interview on Tuesday."
"Dr. Sahin and Dr. Türeci sold Ganymed for $1.4 billion in 2016. Last year, BioNTech sold shares to the public; in recent months, its market value has soared past $21 billion, making the couple among the richest in Germany.
The two billionaires live with their teenage daughter in a modest apartment near their office. They ride bicycles to work. They do not own a car.
“Ugur is a very, very unique individual,” Mr. Bourla, Pfizer’s chief executive, said in the interview last month. “He cares only about science. Discussing business is not his cup of tea. He doesn’t like it at all. He’s a scientist and a man of principles. I trust him 100 percent.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/business/biontech-covid-vaccine.html
30. This was one of biggest surprises coming out of the Pandemic in the USA. Pleasant surprise I might add.
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/news/americas-surprise-startup-boom-4259505/
31. Totally true in VC! The best pupils don't need you.
"There will always be the “star pupils” but the teacher’s job is to serve all of the students. The reward may be to watch the star pupils shine, but the job is not. The job is to serve all of the students equally, or possibly to help the students who are struggling more than the others.
That mindset has helped me navigate this challenging issue in the early stage venture capital business. The work is often in one place and the rewards in another."
https://avc.com/2020/11/the-star-pupils/
32. "Beyond this, if the Taiwanese marines manage to stage small-scale amphibious operations across the strait to infiltrate and neutralize attack key Chinese air defense facilities, Taiwan’s land attack missiles and air assets, manned and unmanned, will then come in play to enforce intra-conflict deterrence. One can imagine similar roles for the Taiwanese marines in disrupting PLA logistics and communications nodes.
Finally, of course there is the possibility of the U.S. Marine Raiders being deployed for similar cross-strait roles, especially in a scenario where the U.S. is hesitant to risk naval assets, including flattops, in face of China’s denial capabilities at the onset of the conflict. Whatever be the case, amphibious special forces have a major role in Taiwan’s asymmetrical defense strategy and allied support for it."
https://thediplomat.com/2020/11/us-marine-raiders-arrive-in-taiwan-to-train-taiwanese-marines
33. I agree with this perspective. All depends on type of startup and industry you are focusing on. Open your eyes. #AirplaneArbitrage
"Now, I don’t presume to tell every startup where they should be based, but I can tell you that there are so many places around the world right now that are trying to be the new tech hub.
They are becoming more developed tech hub alternatives to Silicon Valley. Other places like Yerevan, Armenia are pushing to join these new tech hubs.
There are already companies located in Yerevan, but it’s not enough to saturate the market. You have the chance to get in now while it’s a small & emerging market & see a profit in expected growth over the next few years.
While Silicon Valley may be number one right now, these other tech hubs are growing. So why not locate in the Silicon Valley of Mexico? Or the Silicon Valley of Eastern Europe? You can find better places where the laws are going to be in your favor & opportunities are expanding."
"There are opportunities outside of the United States.
New tech hubs are emerging all over the world.
Don’t stay in an area with more competition and less profit."
https://nomadcapitalist.com/2020/11/11/tech-companies-get-out-of-silicon-valley/
34. "The story of Trump’s rise is often told as a hostile takeover. In truth, it is something closer to a joint venture, in which members of America’s élite accepted the terms of Trumpism as the price of power. Long before anyone imagined that Trump might become President, a generation of unwitting patrons paved the way for him. From Greenwich and places like it, they launched a set of financial, philanthropic, and political projects that have changed American ideas about government, taxes, and the legitimacy of the liberal state."
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/11/how-greenwich-republicans-learned-to-love-trump
35. "From lockdowns to riots to the specter of major tax increases, the events of 2020 have proven to everyone that it makes sense to have a Plan B."
"And you actually don’t even have to be that rich– certainly not a billionaire– to be able to afford some of the world’s citizenship by investment programs."
36. The Dynamic Duo of Fintech! These are the guys to know when it comes to Fintech investing. Best in the biz.
37. "I'm a huge advocate of self-serve. With two caveats. One, in the long-run, it only works when it's paired with enterprise.I by no means hope to advocate self-serve at the exclusion of enterprise. It's essential that they go together, and that there are exceptions.
It's not for everybody. You can look at companies like Viva, which is one of the most successful and capital efficient startups in the past 10 years. They are not a bottoms up company but they're incredibly successful. It's not the only path. But for most companies, especially developer and infrastructure companies, it is the path."
https://www.heavybit.com/library/video/self-serve-go-to-market/
Remote is the New Silicon Valley
This meme has been going around Silicon Valley for the last 2 to 3 years. But this was crystalized to me in an interesting interview I heard between Balaji Srinivasan & Kyle Tibbitts.
Tech workers already spend 10 hours a day working online so going remote is very natural. Covid only sped up the process. Much of this move was exacerbated by a nutty closed-minded politically correctness (left wing in this case, btw I am also left wing but more centrist), a growing crazy expensive cost structure, rising taxes, local government mismanagement and never ending lockdowns & school closures in Northern California. This rapid decline of quality of life has led to these tech founders and workers moving somewhere else. One only needs to look at the long steady migration of Californians to Oregon, Colorado or Texas in recent years. Heck, a U-Haul costs like 5 times the price leaving California than that of one heading to California.
Think back to the 1600s when the Spanish/Portugese and English went to travel over the sea to explore and found the New World of the Americas accidentally. I think there is a natural pull of discovering the edges of the world. California used to represent the wide open West of the United States used to pull people here to chase their dreams in Hollywood (Entertainment) and Technology (Silicon Valley). Now that California is so saturated physically & mentally, maybe this is why Space and the Oceans hold so much more interest for people now as the next frontier.
Daniel Gross of Pioneer spoke about Frontier People vs. Normal People. Normal people chase Famous Brands. Frontier people are drawn to new things that are relatively unknown. The outsiders are more willing to try new things. Also outsiders are most likely to become outliers. I believe there is something in the psyche of people going to the frontier where anything is possible.
In many ways, as land becomes more scarce in the world, moving to the “Cloud” is natural. I see the talent of Silicon Valley now being widely distributed all across the world, almost like a hub and virtual spoke.
Watch this frontier of remote work as this is where all the interesting stuff will be happening in the next decade. This might be the most overlooked and underestimated impact of the pandemic.
Airplane Arbitrage is Moneyball for Venture Capital: Geographies/Regions of Personal Interest
I was re-watching the excellent movie “Moneyball” last week which was based on Michael Lewis’ also excellent book. The story of how the Oakland A’s in 2002 were able to win a record 20 games in a row despite having a budget that was a fraction of other Major baseball teams. They did this by finding & investing in overlooked players and playing them in different unorthodox ways. This was widely criticized and seen as heretical by most of baseball at that time. Yet it worked. Ironically this “moneyball” strategy has been now widely adopted by other teams after the Boston Red Sox won the World Series soon after using the exact same tactics.
What does this have to do with Venture Capital? I would posit this is exactly what emerging Venture capital investors must do. Invest in founders and geographies that are overlooked by top tier investors in the crowded ecosystems of Silicon Valley and New York.
I would definitely agree that there are so many excellent investors and founders and startups in a top tier ecosystems like the SF Bay Area. They will continue to be major centers of startup Unicorns (still hate this word) and talent. But this is also where the competition to invest in these amazing startup founders is the highest. Totally fine if you are Founders Fund, Sequoia or any of the top tier branded VCs who can get into most deals. If you are new or emerging, not sure you have much of a chance. Still it’s worth being there to compete and learn.
The real opportunity is going to other geographies or invest in overlooked vertical industry sectors (Gaming or Media come to mind) or founders/demographics. It’s astounding to me (STILL) that the venture capital industry has not invested more money into female founders. This has nothing to do with fairness or equality but just on the pure capitalistic investor view that they are just as good, if not, in many cases, better than guy founders. Some of my best portfolio cos were started & run by female founders. Yet VCs have underfunded them with only 20% of total VC money invested in female founded/co-founded startups. Seems really dumb to me on many fronts.
From the geographical side, this is exactly what Drive Capital and Steve Case’s Rise of the Rest Fund is doing in the mid-West & southern states of the USA.
Me personally, I've been super bullish on foreign & immigrant founders. Especially founders from Canada, Australia, Brazil, New Zealand and Europe. Also of note: usually B2B focused as well. Some of the best performing companies in my own portfolio that fit this criteria include ManyChat, AirCall, Pipefy, Shippo, BigFinite, Printify, Cube.js among others.
I’ve detailed the specific reasons in my previous post, “Playing against Rubes” https://hardfork.substack.com/p/play-against-rubes. These days (and last 3-4 years actually ) I'm particularly bullish on startups from Central & Eastern Europe. This is a region full of strong technical talent, super hungry founders who for most part think global from day one yet dramatically underserved by the local venture investment industry. I personally think this is the opportunity I'll be focusing on for the next few years.
That’s why I use the term “Airplane Arbitrage.” Despite being a long time Silicon Valley guy (21 years as i write this), i’ve always been willing to get on an airplane to fly to new geographies to search for and meet new awesome startups outside of Silicon Valley & the United States. I’m not alone here, as i’m starting to see top tier investors like Bedrock, Lightspeed, Union Square Ventures, Founders Fund and Kleiner Perkins do a lot more European, Australian & Kiwi (New Zealand) deals. The Covid Pandemic has really flattened the world and sped this trend up.
This is great news for founders in all the new emerging tech ecosystems around the world.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads November 8th, 2020
"It is the lot of man to suffer."--Disrael
I'm a big fan and really digging his new book too.
"To conclude that life is all about luck, he said, is to surrender to fatalism: “Quit letting yourself off the hook, McConaughey. If that’s true, then run every red light. You’ve got your hands on the wheel. You’re making choices. They matter.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/14/books/matthew-mcconaughey-memoir-greenlights.html
2. "But the Fed also owes much of its current success to the fact that it is led by Powell — who is not an economist, unlike his three immediate predecessors, but a bureaucratic operator skilled at making friends and forging consensus. In the popular imagination, the Fed is a nonpolitical entity, almost godlike in its distance from electoral pressures. But, as at the Supreme Court, that is just a cover for a slightly different, more personal form of politics.
At the same time the president was slamming him on Twitter, Powell was diligently building relationships in Congress, winning over skeptical stakeholders to his right and left, and building the political support he would need for an extraordinary crisis response when the pandemic hit."
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/jerome-powell-federal-reserve-profile.html
3. Happened in the Middle East and happening in the USA now. Word to the wise.
"Slowly, incrementally, much has been lost over the decades in the Middle East, and only today do people in the region grasp the magnitude of the change, as they look back to the 1960s and ’70s, and wonder how the past could be such a foreign country. In the beginning of this descent, what happened at the extremes was most evident to the naked eye.
But the more insidious, corrosive change came as a result of the reaction by society at large. Divisions deepened—within communities, friendships, families. Rage toward the other side grew. The middle ground evaporated, and we entered a new normal."
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/11/lessons-from-beirut-for-america/616941/
4. "1) stock up now ahead of election to reduce risk, 2) have “in-hand” net worth that is in excess of 6 months spending, 3) write down a serious plan B if things go south for your income streams, 4) look at alternative assets and 5) you need to optimize for growth… some argue this is a barbell strategy where you buy high-risk and extremely low risk only. "
"The final part is more obvious: 1) more remote work, 2) people moving to lower tax locations, 3) less conferences more zoom meetings, 4) reduction in air travel relative to the past, 5) reduction in cruise travel relative to the past, 6) massive increase in video games, at home entertainment, 7) increase in home remodeling, 8) decrease in commercial real estate prices due to reduction in footprint for major companies, 9) increased interest in healthcare investment and 10) another shift forward for technology companies.
A good way to think about the future is to simply bet on innovation. Trying to bet on people, companies or processes that worked in the past is not a recipe for success. You want to look for things that will make life cheaper, more effective, more efficient and easy to use."
https://wallstreetplayboys.com/anticipating-defaults-and-bankruptcies-a-short-term-outlook/
5. "The Keith Rabois framework for evaluating roles is to ask whether the role is value creating or value preserving? Value creating roles are exactly what they sound like; you create and capture value with the products/services you build. A value preserving role is less creative and more tactical; you’re already doing well, and you want to make sure nothing gets screwed up.
Your rule of thumb should be as follows:
Value protecting role? Hire for slope
Value creating roles? Hire for experience"
https://eriktorenberg.substack.com/p/frameworks-for-hiring
6. Border control is critical to controlling pandemic spread. EU is facing some major policy issues. Worth a read.
"Portugal is in a different boat. It has fought to crush the coronavirus. But it still has 40 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, five times higher than the EU average (outside of Portugal, Sweden and UK). One of the reasons might well be that, all this time, it has allowed travelers from Brazil and the US (among others).
Countries like Italy, Spain or France have fought the pandemic hard, suffering a massive death and economic toll. If I were a politician from these countries, how could I justify to my voters that citizens from other countries will put these hard-won victories at risk, just because their countries didn’t want to suffer the same costs?
Especially since, once the borders open within the EU, there’s a loophole: US and Brazilian travelers can simply land in Portugal and travel from there to anywhere else in the continent."
Coronavirus: How to Reopen Travel Safely | by Tomas Pueyo
7. "In the fall, about 1 of every 7 craft beer purchases is a pumpkin beer or a related fall seasonal drink.
In the beer world, pumpkin is a divisive ingredient. Earlier this month, Saturday Night Live featured a sketch of Bostonians trying the Sam Adams Jack-O Pumpkin Ale — a beverage that prompted the comedian Bill Burr to yell out, “The fuck is that?!”
But 40 years ago pumpkin products were not a joke. They were not oversaturated. They were obscure, as hipster as cauliflower.
And their rise as a flavoring in food, drink, and everything else may never have happened without Bill Owens, a Guggenheim Fellow turned failure turned craft beer rebel.
His experiment from the 1980s launched pumpkin beer — and ushered in America’s pumpkin-flavored industry."
https://thehustle.co/the-forgotten-father-of-pumpkin-beer/
8. Fun medley of thoughts and insights.
https://jasonshen.substack.com/p/mc026-its-a-fine-line
9. "resilience can be seen as three interrelated skills rather than as a fixed trait or capacity. The first skill of resilience, responding pragmatically, involves facing difficult situations directly and taking decisive action to prevent further harm or decline.
While seemingly obvious, one of the most difficult things to do during a period of adverse change and hardship is to confront reality. To seek out the truth, stare it in the face, and make decisions based on facts, not wishful thinking."
10. "In a pandemic where the virus is spread by extended close contact with other people, experiences don’t work. At least physical ones.[2]
And so we’ve seen a reversion by consumers to the form I learned to scorn as a kid and young adult: the American stuff havers.
Last week, economists at Wells Fargo predicted the 2020 holiday season would be a record because gifts are typically things, not experiences.
And in a world where a pandemic puts a freeze on all the experiences that attracted our dollars and attention, goods win."
https://mylesudland.substack.com/p/the-stuff-economy
11. Mexico is in my plans for 2021......
"So you’re thinking about leaving… whether due to strict lockdowns, peaceful protests, inevitably higher taxes, or simply to retire in peace, Mexico might be worth considering."
12. Fast (and Hopin and others) are really promising companies. But have investors and founders not learned anything about the cash cannon strategy. I get it. If the money is there at good valuation take it, but many startups die of indigestion too.
"While the coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent halt in business activity devastated some startups, it has acted as an adrenaline boost for others, particularly if their technology supports virtual activities. Hopin, which powers virtual events, is in talks to raise capital at a $2 billion valuation only months after having raised a $40 million Series A, for example."
"Fast, a two-year-old startup whose technology enables quick checkouts online, is in discussions with investors about a new round of financing between $50 million and $200 million. The deal could value the startup at as much as $1 billion, according to two people familiar with the talks."
13. Incredibly observant. This is my sense of 2020 (as it is for so many others).
"William Gibson develops the striking new concept of the Jackpot. Ironically named, it expresses the moment when everything suddenly goes wrong at the same time."
"In the original description, the Jackpot is obviously about climate change, but the concept can be extended to a more generalized sense of environmental exhaustion."
"Suddenly a pandemic threatens to uproot all normal life. How do you fight the pandemic? At first glance by slowing down social and economic activity, but then the pressure on the economic conditions of the middle class may quickly become unbearable. Protests follow, but protests threaten to destroy what little remains of trust in the political system and without trust it is no longer possible to respond to economic inequality or technological decay or the dispossession of the middle class or climate change or even the pandemic, where we started. In one word: Jackpot."
https://brunomacaes.substack.com/p/jackpot
14. "For your market, the two key things to understand are (a) how many potential customers are there and (b) how much will each of them be worth to you if everything goes right. The better you really understand those details and can go deep on them, the more successful both your pitch and your business will be."
https://medium.com/sequoia-capital/the-market-curve-44097b626f6d
15. "investors are definitely prepared for high levels of volatility over the coming months. Each person is positioning themselves to deal with the volatility differently, but they are all anticipating it. Some people are considering holding more cash in the short term. Others want to play the VIX. And others are acknowledging the higher probability for volatility, but claim that it won’t change their investment strategy over the medium to long-term."
"I reminded one of the more bearish investors that we live in the safest, most prosperous time in human history. His response was “Yes, that is definitely not a trend that I see changing any time soon.”
https://pomp.substack.com/p/how-investors-are-preparing-for-election
16. "But in the midst of all this drama is a central theme that’s almost always lost.
People tend to forget that WE have a much bigger impact on our own lives than any politicians or government.
Elections deceive us into pinning all the hopes and dreams for our future on some political candidate, like he or she is going to walk across the water and sprinkle prosperity everywhere.
But this is an absurd fantasy.
What we do matters far more– the plans we make, the actions we take, the things we do to improve our own lives.
This is like voting for yourself. And we have the opportunity to do this every single day."
https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/dont-forget-to-vote-for-yourself-29211
17. "Fast-forward a few years, and Discord is at the center of the gaming universe. It has more than 100 million monthly active users, in millions of communities for every game and player imaginable. Its largest servers have millions of members.
Discord's slowly building a business around all that popularity, too, and is now undergoing a big pivot: It's pushing to turn the platform into a communication tool not just for gamers, but for everyone from study groups to sneakerheads to gardening enthusiasts. Five years in, Discord's just now realizing it may have stumbled into something like the future of the internet. Almost by accident."
https://www.protocol.com/discord
18. "The only fair comparisons you can make are with who you were last year. See to it that you’re moving in the right direction and moving at a decent pace.
Once you have that figured out, you don’t have much to worry about. You need to give it time.
The only thing you can do is never stray from the way and give it time. As long as you are in the right direction and make progress (to the best of your ability) every day, you will get there.
(And even if you don’t, you tried your best, and that’s all you can ever do. So there’s no point feeling down about it.)
Remember, my friend, consistency is key. Rome was not built in a day, and neither will your life be built in a day."
https://lifemathmoney.com/consistency-is-key-not-where-you-want-to-be-this-is-for-you/
19. Any American or really any citizen of any country not thinking about this in 2020 is a blind moron.
"The more of these Plan B items you check off your list, the more secure you will feel. And all you have to do is start. Just take the first step.
If you’re in line for citizenship through ancestry, make an appointment at the nearest consulate. That’s a vote for
yourself.
Buy a few ounces of gold or silver, and there’s another vote. Begin your compost pile, plant a fruit tree, or start to learn a second language.
Each of those is a vote for yourself.
You may be shocked to find that the next election won’t worry you in the least because you’ve already achieved a landslide victory for yourself.
You’ve created a rock solid Plan B, taken your power back, and are prepared for whatever comes your way. All it takes is one vote at a time."
https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/talk-about-a-landslide-29217/
20. "I don’t think it takes a genius to figure out why distrust is so prevalent today. The story-tellers – public officials, the media, scientists: the elites – live in an entirely different information universe from the rest of us. They behave as if we were still in the 20th century, and information is still their monopoly, which they dispense as they see fit & which we will accept on authority.”
"In fact, the public, which swims comfortably in the digital sea, knows far more than elites trapped in obsolete structures. The public knows when the elites fail to deliver their promised “solutions,” when they tell falsehoods or misspeak, when they are caught in sexual escapades, & when they indulge in astonishing levels of smugness and hypocrisy. The public is disenchanted in the elites & their institutions, much in the way science disenchanted the world of fairies and goblins. The natural reaction is cynicism. The elites aren’t seen as fallible humans doing their best but as corrupt and arrogant jerks."
https://www.thepullrequest.com/p/the-prophet-of-the-revolt
21. "There are many kinds of democracy in the world. The United States seems to be moving away from the Western model, where rules and procedures stand above outcomes. What we have seen in the last two political cycles is a dramatic relaxation of those rules, with the concomitant acceptance of a much larger spectrum of behaviours. Democracy in America has become much rawer and more direct, at times resembling a street brawl where everything or almost everything is now admissible. Trump is only part of this evolution, more symptom than cause.
In just one word, American democracy is becoming less Western. It now resembles the Indian or Indonesian democracies much more than the Western European experience. If the consensus about rules disappears, no other model is possible. And yet, that resemblance is more apparent than real. In America the element of entertainment remains dominant."
https://brunomacaes.substack.com/p/what-is-happening-in-america
22. “Picking winners in a calm market is something first-timers do just as well as old hands, but avoiding losers is where skill and experience matters.”
This means fund performance today relies as much on the investment decisions made beforeCovid as it does on VCs’ ability to navigate the new landscape.
In other words, Covid has already determined the richness of existing portfolios, where experience may have offered a degree of foresight."
https://sifted.eu/articles/covid-test-vcs/
23. This is why so many folks in Silicon Valley are sheep. Envy.
"Envy is at every step in the funnel. Founders without funding envy founders with funding. Founders with funding envy founders with funding from more prestigious investors. Founders with funding from prestigious investors envy founders who are favorites. Founders of companies with a $30B market cap envy founders of companies with a $300B market cap.
VC associates envy junior partners, who envy senior partners. Investors envy other investors who have better deal flow. Tech employees envy other tech employees who get to spend more time with the senior leadership. Get a drink in a product manager, and they’ll tell you all about how the CEO plays favorites. Everyone watches each other as if it's their full time job."
"TL;DR: Spend time with people who don't feel envy. Avoid people who do. Pick a mission, and direct all your energy into solving problems that stand between you and your target. Nurture relationships by overcoming shared challenges with others. Avoid "the scene". If you were a musician, you'd want to be the type who's practicing scales rather than trying to get backstage to party with the rock stars. Find the equivalent of practicing scales in your field, and do that."
24. "We are in the midst of this great big storm thundering across our planet to clean out the old and introduce the new. And the new is down to whatever you want to create that is in harmony with people and the planet. In the palm of your hand, you have more power and influence than any emperor or king that has ever graced the earth.
The model is simple: become great at what you love and share that with 1,000 fans from wherever you decide to live. That might be a small chalet in the French Alps, a cottage on the English moors, or a surf shack on the Californian coast. As you wish.
We are shifting from toiling for others in factories and offices to creating art from our self-educated hearts and minds to be of service to ourselves and others."
https://fewerbetterthings.substack.com/p/letter-from-future-swells-no-56
25. "Building a business is insanely hard, and building a great business is insanely hard, takes a long time and requires a cascade of miracles to achieve. But make no mistake, you should be raising money from those who are authentically excited by what you are authentically excited to build, full stop. And if you ever feel yourself drifting into the land of “telling them what they want to hear”, stop yourself, recalibrate and tell the real story of your vision for the future.
And if they’re the right kind of partner for you, you’ll know soon enough. Life is too short to start out misaligned with your partners from the get-go. Don’t do it."
https://infoarbitrage.medium.com/the-potential-tyranny-of-fundraising-865dbd6a9c53
26. The irony. Goes to show you that it does not pay to needlessly antagonize people. Closes off options.
Friends today are enemies tomorrow and vice versa. Don't be a D--k & play the long game.
https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/54826101
27. The Exodus continues. No surprise. California is a mess and SF is veering into woke left wing progressive stupid land. + Austin is awesome with the benefit of lower state taxes.
"The exodus from Silicon Valley and San Francisco has picked up steam during the eight months of the coronavirus pandemic, which forced offices across the country to shut down and tech workers to retrofit their homes and apartments. Between the high and rising costs of living, California’s hefty taxes and a broader shift to remote work, many in the tech industry are finding plenty of excuses to seek refuge elsewhere.
In some circles, particularly those that lean libertarian, there’s also a growing disdain for Bay Area politics, which have continued to swing farther to the left."
Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale leaving Silicon Valley
28. "As we move forward, people have entirely forgotten about COVID-19 as the election has created a massive veil/distraction. Meanwhile, those who have no emotions tied to the election have made good money (tech, healthcare, crypto have gone straight up for clear reasons). The other thing we can conclude is that stimulus is practically guaranteed at this point.
Looking across the spectrum of emotional topics, we can clearly see that there are many asymmetric bets/investments to make over the next 5-10 years. We’re still quite bullish on the future even if we have to change physical locations (seriously we are). In the end, life is about winning and you deal with the circumstances you’re given."
https://wallstreetplayboys.com/risk-management-politics-bitcoin-basketball-and-stocks/
29. I discovered Raf coffee this year. Literally a decade late. I have it whenever I can.
https://sprudge.com/raf-coffee-russia-91027.html
Looking for Shiny Dimes: How to Find Undiscovered Emerging Niches
Chris Dixon’s writing has long influenced a lot of my thinking. He wrote:
“It’s a good bet these present-day hobbies will seed future industries. What the smartest people do on the weekends is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years.”
As a longtime Silicon Valley resident, I'm always fascinated by technology trends.
You read all the latest books both non-fiction and science fiction, you talk to many young startups, you read anything and everything whether they are science papers, articles or subscribe to newsletters like meetglimpse.com or trends.co. You can also use Google word searches for new keywords. Or tracking App Annie to look at fast rising apps on the edge as a signal for which sectors are growing.
The question is why do all of this. It is to answer the question on everyone’s mind: what is coming next? And of course, trying to spot them before anyone else.
What has been shown over and over again is that “The Next Big Thing” ie. the coolest new things in tech and media will happen on the edges. This will usually be done by newcomers and outsiders experimenting. These are the folks you should be watching.
It sounds simple, look at where the smartest people are spending their time either industry wise or hobby wise.
So how do you do this?
One of the best thinkers on internet communities, Greg Isenberg spends time on surging topics, FB groups & Subreddits for opportunities.
The questions he asks are:
How do you figure out what they need?
What product around this can you build to serve them?
How do you find an audience & community and then go build a product?
Why is exploring these internet communities important?
“People who spend a lot of time exploring these subcultures feel like they can see into the future, and for good reason. What happens online often shows up in the headlines weeks, months, or even years later. The internet has become the petri dish of culture — the soil in which new movements and novel conversations find root.”
“WHEN AN INTERNET SUBCULTURE GROWS large enough, it often gets spotlighted in the mainstream media. But old-school media outlets watch internet culture on tape delay. By the time they identify a subcultural tribe, it's usually already splintered or evolved into something different. This cycle has played out a number of times over the last decade, but it seems to have picked up steam since the Gamergate controversy of 2014. The time lag between Extremely Online conversations and mainstream newspapers/TV reveals that 20th century institutions no longer set the pace.”
(Source: The garden of forking memes: how digital media distorts our sense of time – AZL)
These communities act as potential tripwires for the future. So it behooves all of us to pay attention.
As former Secretary of State Dean Rusk once said “If you don’t pay attention to the periphery, the periphery changes and the first thing you know the periphery is the center”
The American Main Street Economy Will be Rebuilt on Tech
The SMB (Small Medium Business) main street was devastated in 2020 due to the Pandemic, economic issues and government enforced lockdowns. At least 100,000 small businesses have shut down this year.
But out of the ashes we will see the green shoots of new business life emerge. And surprisingly in 2020, due to many company closures and job losses, we’ve seen a 40% increase of new business registrations in the USA over 2019. A very unexpectedly quick blossoming (to me) of new SMB businesses. And all of them will be built by embracing technology and leveraging all the new tech tools that have emerged over the last decade and half.
Jeff Richards of top tier venture capital firm GGV said it best.
"the SMBTech stack is the new Main St storefront.
Think about it – if you were launching a new restaurant today, would you do so without mobile ordering, pickup and delivery via Slice, Toast, DoorDash or another technology platform? If you were launching a women’s clothing boutique, would you do so without an ecommerce presence on BigCommerce, Shopify, Etsy or Poshmark? Or if you were opening an outdoor gear rental business would you do without a POS system from Square or a web site from Wix? Today in almost every vertical there are SMBTech platforms like Brightwheel and ServiceTitan offering “operating systems” for SMBs.
Every single new company formed in every single industry will start with the question of “What technology do I need to launch and grow my business?” This is a trend that started a decade ago and will accelerate at an unprecedented pace over the next 6-12 months."
Jeff adds that “In general, think peeps are underestimating the depth and breadth of digital shift.” Every new Small business in the future will be omnichannel by default. We should definitely expect a major Renaissance in SMB mainstreet retail space. This is something worth celebrating.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads November 1st, 2020
'If you wish to be the king of the jungle, it's not enough to act like a king. You must be the king. There can be no doubt. Because doubt causes chaos and one's own demise.' - Mickey Pearson (The Gentlemen)
"When people say they have multiple priorities, what they’re really saying is that they have a hard time prioritizing. They are unwilling to make difficult, potentially uncomfortable decisions about what should take precedence over everything else.
The first step to catching and reversing burnout before it does damage is learning to take time to figure out which proverbial balls are actually important — and which need to be dropped."
https://thehustle.co/how-to-avoid-burnout-by-working-less-and-doing-more/
This brilliant man's death is a real tragedy for all of our society. Boy what a meaningful life though.
"This was a common tension throughout Gambhir’s career: a crystal-clear sense of where he was going, with an agonizingly complete understanding of the obstacles that would need to be overcome to get there. Cyriac Roeding, the CEO of the cancer-detection biotech company Earli Inc., told the hundreds of mourners at Gambhir’s memorial service that Gambhir once warned him, “The world of biology will always find a way to screw you over. It will be harder than you want, and it will take longer than you want.” Yet Gambhir always seemed content to wait. Naive or not, he had faith that society would catch up with technology. One of his mantras was “We’re in the field of research, not search. The prefix ‘re-’ is extremely important.”
As he told me, “The secret is not to give up, to take those decades and not look for short-term gratification, because most of the time, you won’t get lucky.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/10/sanjiv-sam-gambhir-early-cancer-detection/616784/
3. The Gold is in your email list as they say.
"Though loyal, Perry’s fan base is often underestimated. “That mailing list, that hunger that they have, can’t be tracked; nobody can really reach them. That’s why the tracking for all of my movies was always so far off,” Perry explains, referring back to the box office numbers for “Diary.” “It blew their mind because [Hollywood] didn’t know how to penetrate into the community.”
“When Perry sent the email to his fans about the production of “Madea’s Class Reunion,” there were about 170,000 names on the mailing list. That number has since grown to 800,000."
https://variety.com/2020/film/features/tyler-perrys-plays-email-mailing-list-1234811309/
4. This is thought provoking.
"Learning: Where you die, and who is around you at the end is a strong signal of your success or failure in life. I believe it doesn't matter how nice your home is; if at your exit you’re surrounded by strangers under bright lights, it's a disappointment. Granted this isn’t an option for many people, but if you die at home, surrounded by people who love you, you are a success. It’s a sign that you forged meaningful relationships and that you were generous with people."
https://www.profgalloway.com/life-death
5. What an interesting and important guy. The founder of Signal, defending privacy in our new surveillance economy.
"Whenever I asked Marlinspike what he had been up to, the answer was the same: “Work, work, work.” Wang, describing Marlinspike’s “masochistic anarchist workaholism,” told me, “I think the anarchy world rewards self-motivation, initiative, and experimentation. You oddly acquire a lot of skills that are useful, whether it’s graphic design or programming. There’s a strong work ethic, and a weird kind of anti-capitalist entrepreneurialism.” Reinhard said, of Marlinspike, “He is an incredibly efficient time manager, and he approaches his leisure in exactly the same way. Almost all of his adventures require, like, six months of planning—and he has the patience for it.”
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/10/26/taking-back-our-privacy
6. "Specifically, the difference between the best performing and average performing firms are incredibly wide. Venture is a hits business and if you think about a typical venture fund of almost any size having somewhere between 25 – 40 investments, the chances of any one of those investments being a true outlier and returning a multiple of the fund are quite small. In order to have a successful fund, it’s almost a requirement that you have an outlier return for at least one of your investments."
"my conclusion was that venture firms should place more bets and have more exposure across a larger set of businesses. Obviously, those inside the industry argue that managers who are good at picking businesses would do better to own more of fewer businesses if they can show that they have the aptitude to invest in those that become true outliers. But given how rare they are, I wonder if that is arguably the optimal strategy. As David Cohen replied once years ago when I asked him what the key to being a successful venture capitalist was: “Luck”.
https://www.sethlevine.com/archives/2020/10/vc-fund-returns-are-more-skewed-than-you-think.html
7. Excellent career advice and worth reading the whole thing.
"A majority of career success is to be aligned with trends and industries that are rising and even mediocre players can succeed in an unstoppable tide. Aligning with a trend and particularly aligning early is critical because not only will the force be with you, but your skills will be in demand as the area grows and if you have joined early you will be experienced and become well known in the field."
"do not make job or career decisions with three to five-month horizons but three to five-year horizons. Do not switch jobs just because of money unless you are under extreme financial stress. Try to give each company or assignment or adventure at least three years and if it is an industry or company at least five. Your decision making will be better, your skills will mature, and you will take daily and weekly gyrations in perspective."
https://rishad.substack.com/p/12-career-lessons
8. "The media’s status quo is accelerating towards disruption. We’re seeing the development of new media brands (micro-labels) on platforms and services, the prioritization of talent as a core business pillar by media companies and the shifting business models moving from content direct to creator direct.
As each component of creation evolves, there is another evolution happening with the most critical part of the media business’ formula: the consumers. In the media business, business models drive product strategy. And while that’s the driving force behind the product, it’s contingent on consumer interest, participation and loyalty. That means that as the economy shifts, so needs the consumer value. This is an opportunity to build a new business that puts the creator and consumer relationship front and center and introduces the element of ownership. This is the business of fandom and subcultures."
9. "Karp, far from being a public menace, was the chief executive of an American company whose software has been deployed on behalf of public safety in France. The company, Palantir Technologies, is named after the seeing stones in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings.” Its two primary software programs, Gotham and Foundry, gather and process vast quantities of data in order to identify connections, patterns and trends that might elude human analysts. The stated goal of all this “data integration” is to help organizations make better decisions, and many of Palantir’s customers consider its technology to be transformative.
Karp claims a loftier ambition, however. “We built our company to support the West,” he says. To that end, Palantir says it does not do business in countries that it considers adversarial to the U.S. and its allies, namely China and Russia. In the company’s early days, Palantir employees, invoking Tolkien, described their mission as “saving the shire.”
What Palantir does is complicated and mysterious. As with the magical stones for which it is named, people seem to see in it what they want to see. I thought Karp put it pretty nicely. “Palantir,” he said, “is the convergence of software and difficult positions.”
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/21/magazine/palantir-alex-karp.html
10. One of the better guides I've seen to getting into VC.
"It’s about having a clear answer to these questions:
Why is my capital not a commodity?
Why will I see deals or get into deals that others won’t?
What’s my one sentence value prop that is easily understood in the market?
What’s my asset or structural advantage that allows me to add value beyond just my time?
In summary: People use track record to determine the “good investors.” Why does this matter? “Good investors” get better deal flow. To build a track record, write checks early into good companies and add value to the founder such that they will recommend you to others. To write checks, join a firm that lets you do so, angel invest, or become a scout.
Of course, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach, and, as with anything else, there’s a ton of luck involved."
https://eriktorenberg.substack.com/p/how-to-break-into-startup-investing
11. This was a master discussion of the art of VC from one of the best.
12. "Generally, you can divide problems into good problems to have and bad problems to have. In life good problems tend to be the result of great success and bad problems tend to be the result of no success. There are so many things a founder cannot control, but founders can choose which problems they want to solve, even in the earliest stages of your company."
https://foundermusings.substack.com/p/good-problems
13. Disagree with alot of what he says (especially re: Covid not being serious and his ultra libertarianism). But the key point at the end I am totally with.
"Financial and economic risks can be solved by investing properly and by going out and producing wealth and saving it. Economic and financial problems are things that you have some control over. No matter what the environment, you can make your life better.
People appear to want leaders—to be told what to do. They’ve been programmed to be irresponsible and to believe that somebody else—the State—is going to take care of them.
The average citizen of every country has become much less responsible as the State has grown much, much larger over the last century.
With that being the case, when there are problems, people are going to look for a strong leader—and they’re going to get strong leaders. It’s true all over the world. We already see this with Narendra Modi in India, Vladimir Putin in Russia, Xi Jinping in China, Erdogan in Turkey, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Fernandez in Argentina, and more.
It’s shaping up like the ’30s with Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Roosevelt, and the rest of them."
14. Old does not mean wise. This is why American politics is such a mess: Gerontocracy.
"Yet as much as people still like to crack wise about Soviet gerontocrats, it is a little-recognised fact that most of those seemingly ancient communists were actually younger than America’s political leadership is now. Brezhnev was in his late 50s when he became leader and 75 when he died; Andropov was 69 when he died, and Chernenko was 73 when he shuffled off this mortal coil. At 74, Trump has already outlived them all bar Brezhnev, while Biden, who will turn 78 in November, is almost a decade older than Andropov was when he breathed his last.
And that’s just the presidential candidates."
"As for America’s political elites, with Congress’ approval rating sitting at a lowly 17% the consensus appears to be that this council of elders is not only not wise, they’re not even all that competent."
https://unherd.com/2020/10/older-leaders-are-not-always-wiser
15. "You must act and replace the failed CEO with whomever is the best option in that moment and work with the new CEO to address the challenges facing the company, many a result of the failed CEO’s poor leadership.
Waiting is never the right answer. Failing to act is never the right answer. You must remove a failing CEO."https://avc.com/2020/10/removing-the-ceo/
16. I am coming around to this view very quickly.
"It’s strange how people will enjoy the digital nomad lifestyle, living in luxury and comfort in Mexico City, Bali, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, or Bogota for years on end, and think there’s any reason to go back.
Why would you?
Emerging markets are no longer the Wild West they were 25-30 years ago. There’s been a grand convergence in living standards.
It’s difficult to innovate and pioneer new technology, but it’s rather easy to look over your classmate’s homework and copy what they are doing.
This is why the West has stagnated while “The Rest” are set to match them within our lifetimes.
So, I fail to see much benefit from staying in the developed world."
But now that hundreds of other countries are becoming relevant on the world stage, a single country won’t be able to have a monopoly on a given aspect of life. There isn’t going to be “the next big thing” but there are going to be many “next big things.”
The world has never been as large and accessible as it is now. It’s wholly unlikely that you just so happened to be born in the best country in the world in absolutely everything."
https://nomadcapitalist.com/2020/05/15/living-in-the-third-world/
17. Combinatorial Innovation.
“we are entering … a new period of combinatorial innovation.” This happens, he says, when “there is a great availability of different component parts that can be combined or recombined to create new inventions.”
https://fs.blog/2014/10/google-and-combinatorial-innovation
18. Talk about the American "Gray Eminence" (historians will understand this term).
"The trouble is, like most everything else about Cohen-Watnick, it’s all but impossible to verify, or to reconcile with other versions. Perhaps it’s because he’s emerged so swiftly from the murky world of intelligence. Or maybe it’s because he sits on the fault line of a fractured administration."
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/ezra-cohen-watnick/534615/
19. "Software is eating the markets. Flush with cash and empowered by new tech platforms that blur the lines between investment, experience, entertainment, and digital assets, a segment of consumer investors are shifting money from consumption to investment. Consumer investors expect different things from their investments than professionals do and value assets differently as a result. New technologies, regulations, social trends, and asset classes mean that this shift is here to stay, and could continue to gain momentum after COVID is gone. This time, maybe it really is different."
"It’s hard to measure the impact of “fun” on asset prices, but across almost every consumer category, a more fun product with a better user experience will attract more dollars than a more boring one with a worse user experience. The same applies to investing."
https://notboring.substack.com/p/software-is-eating-the-markets
20. Synthetic Bio is the future. No question.
"Looking back on the decade, the many research landmarks and new directions for synthetic biology are indeed very impressive, but as synthetic biology researchers it’s the advances in enabling technologies that excite us the most as these unlock what can come next. However, if we’re to look for the single biggest achievement of the decade that justifies the hype of the field back in 2010, then we can look no further than the proliferation and valuations of the hundreds of synthetic biology companies around the world.A multibillion dollar industry now exists that makes chemicals, drugs, proteins, probiotics, sensors, fertilisers, textiles, food and many other things from engineered cells."
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19092-2
21. "This is the real risk of maxing out your traditional 401(k). Contributing up to the employer match is a no brainer that every investor should participate in (if they can). However, beyond that and you have to start considering the tradeoffs much more seriously.
Regardless of whether you have a Roth 401(k) or a traditional 401(k), the benefits of contributing beyond the employer match are much smaller than you might have initially imagined. The issue is that so many personal finance experts have sung the praises of “maxing out your 401(k)” without providing any data to back up their claims."
https://ofdollarsanddata.com/should-i-max-out-my-401k/
22. "As wi-fi and social media have become more ubiquitous, “digital nomad-ing” has become far more common.
And, as we navigate a global pandemic, the term is in vogue again as offices are closed, people are working from home, and many are rethinking their work-life balance. After all, you’re able to work remotely, why not travel or set up base in a cheaper, more exotic part of the world while you work online?"
https://news.airbnb.com/nomadic-matt-how-to/
23. This is a really neat company. I also kind of want some pizza right now.
https://www.protocol.com/slice-ceo-ilir-sela-interview
24. "It’s a new season to lift our heads up a little and look around. The world, yes, is filled with problems — terrible, horrible, and stultifying problems that can at times feel all but insurmountable. But human ingenuity has always found a way, and we have never had such an extensive toolbox to confront all of them simultaneously. If the 2010s were all about humans learning technology, the 2020s is all about technology learning about humans."
https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/27/lets-move-beyond-2020-and-start-thinking-about-the-2020s/
25. This is unbelievable insight and value on pricing in SaaS. Must read.
https://www.lennyrachitsky.com/p/saas-pricing-strategy
26.Wow. Impressive. Gaming is really coming to the forefront.
27. This is a worthwhile interview. Blindingly obvious but The future is Biotech and Technology. Fun too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6lx5DP9r10&ab_channel=Bullish
28. Plenty of lessons here for anyone engaging a development agency. Worth reading the comments area too.
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-i-lost-10k-developing-a-no-code-app-d1959b56ae
29. For any emerging VC's this is very good news.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/30/you-can-start-a-venture-fund-if-youre-not-rich-heres-how/
30. "For entrepreneurs with proven metrics, the calculus on raising money is different now. Before, frankly, the spreadsheet math didn’t make sense to raise money. We were growing fast enough to be relevant and were on a path to build a business enough large enough to matter. Now, with valuations so much higher, markets so much bigger, and investors happy to provide secondary to founders, entrepreneurs can get cash for their business, grow at even faster rates, and put money aside personally to diversify."
https://davidcummings.org/2020/10/31/startup-financing-in-the-age-of-capital-abundance/