Entering A Global and Decentralized World: Why You Need to Both Localize and Internationalize NOW!
One of my favorite Geopolitical writers, Peter Zeihan, describes the phenomena of the End of the US Global Era. He describes this in his book “Disunited Nations.” This was a world order that was established after World War 2. The United States with the biggest economy and navy in the world, basically bribed the non-Soviet Union World to join them. In return for their help against the USSR, they got access to the US Market, free trade and cheap energy & shipping lanes guaranteed by the US Navy. This allowed many parts of the world to industrialize and join the global market. After the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991, this policy was left on cruise control and has slowly been collapsing due to growing American indifference (or maybe arrogance and complacency).
This Disinterested America of which Obama and Trump in recent Presidencies exemplified a domestic agenda & a pull back from many engagements and partnerships overseas. We see a reshoring of manufacturing and splitting apart from a now more hostile China. We also see a disengagement from the Middle East due to American energy independence.
Internally, we see the USA falling apart. Short term. Our apathy and growing ineffectiveness is due to two reasons. We are 1) Gerontocracy, defined by Wikipedia as
“A gerontocracy is a form of oligarchical rule in which an entity is ruled by leaders who are significantly older than most of the adult population. In many political structures, power within the ruling class accumulates with age, making the oldest the holders of the most power.”
Derek Thompson writes in the Atlantic that “The average age in Congress has hovered near its all-time high for the past decade. The Democrats’ House speaker and House majority leader are over 80. The Senate majority leader and minority leader are over 70. The fears and anxieties that dominate politics represent older Americans’ fears and fixations.”
This is what is leading us to become 2) An Ineptocracy. This is defined as:
“a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.”
The US Fed and most Central Banks around the world are printing money like crazy and anyone going to the local grocery store certainly does see inflation. In fact, the last time we had a 6.81% inflation rate was back in 1982. Personally I think this number is understated. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. Inflation is war on the middle class and poor people: your hard earned money goes less further. And this is the environment we are entering. With all this bad news, we can sit and complain. Or knowing all of this, we have to take action. We are entering a new era where Personal Responsibility is key. This will mean the difference between thriving and just barely surviving. You get the gains but you also have to deal with the risks.
This is something my new favorite financial philosopher, Radigan Carter exemplifies and preaches. You have to take ownership for your life and future. You cannot rely on the government, the company you work at or anyone else.
Get to Know your neighbors. Make friends with policemen, Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs), firemen & soldiers, they are cool and interesting people. Also these are people worth knowing in the case of natural disasters, or unnatural disasters like riots or breakdown of law and order.
Keep bulk stocks of non-perishable foods, canned foods, water and medical supplies in storage. Prepping is prudent. Also considering inflation and supply chain issues, this is a wise move.
Have multiple passports. Learn martial arts and weapons & tactics. Be as fit and healthy as you can.
You have to make money, create a business(es) and have multiple income streams. All remotely if possible. Have Cash and investments. Build equity. Diversify your assets and holdings all over the world. Like it or not, money does make the world go around and buys influence. It’s insurance.
Quoting the original “Toxic Masculine” man Andrew Tate, “Things are going to get harder and harder and you need money to protect yourself. I’m insulated from clownworld because there is a huge pile of money in the way. It’s hard to get to me. But you people, you don’t have the insulation.” A bit crass but not untrue. And something that is a good kick in the butt (all of ours I think). Let’s get to work!
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Feb 6th, 2022
“There is nothing permanent except change”–Heraclitus
This is important geopolitically. But also personally I have deep affinity for the Ukrainian and Russian people. Alas, politics gets in the way.
The West needs to take a much harder line against any Russian incursion & also should arm up the Ukrainian army more. Good fences make good neighbors. Relevant in any arena. The present wishy washy approach right now is weak and problematic to say the least.
https://mercurial.substack.com/p/special-briefing-the-russia-ukrainian
2. This is a good thing btw.
"The takeaway is not "fund = bad, being alone = good." It's a shifting of the focus towards the person. The influence they have as a renegade. Harry realized he could do more leaning into his own brand than trying to force himself into a monolith.
No one would argue these renegades are going to overwhelm the entire established venture community. The "kingdoms" of Sequoia, a16z, etc. are still powerhouses that aren’t going anywhere. But renegades exist in the ecosystem with them. They're not after-thoughts like regular angels that VCs might entice into a round to add flavor. They're frenemies that can contend for deals.
VC renegades have emerged from different backgrounds, whether from traditional celebrity (Serena Williams, Ashton Kutcher), new media (Harry Stebbings, Packy McCormick), operating roles (Elad Gil, Josh Buckley, Lachy Groom) or spin-offs from traditional funds (Lee Fixel, Katie Haun, Dave Yuan). And I think this is just the beginning of these kinds of investors."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/the-unbundling-of-venture-capital
3. "Since those early days, Air-Glaciers has become famous in Switzerland for its rapid deployments in Alpine disasters. They've extracted the injured from deep crevasses and carried them down from towering ledges on high mountain walls.
The skills to respond to such a wide variety of high-mountain disasters are honed by the Air-Glaciers rescuers through intensive training that begins with a three-year Swiss-mandated course in alpine guiding. That's followed by months of specialized practice and a yearlong paramedic course. Every 12 months, just before ski season, each of Air-Glaciers' rescue guides and pilots must also complete a weeklong proficiency course designed to refine their skills in everything from post-avalanche searches to high-altitude extractions."
https://www.gq.com/story/rescue-heroes-swiss-alps
4. "Given all these events, perhaps it is worth considering the possibility that the potential for conflict is not exclusively in Ukraine. Perhaps there is a chance that the Baltics and the Suwalki Gap are also “in play”.
The difference is immense. Another invasion in Ukraine will capture the world’s headlines but probably not move the world’s markets. Action in the Baltics and across the Suwalki Gap will."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/warwhere-the-suwalki-gap-part-2
5. "The old warfare was about damaging an opponent’s hardware before it could do any damage. The new warfare is about denial of use. It’s about damaging access to the digital operating space by disrupting access to WIFI, GPS and Sat Nav. But, that has untold consequences for civilian life we should all be thinking about.
Further complicating matters, the Superpowers seem to have spent the last decade pushing militaries themselves off-balance sheet. The debt problem has led to the privatization of militaries. We may have more mercenaries funded by governments today than at any time in history. The Russians have done the same, perhaps for other reasons. Plausible deniability is valuable in a world where conflict is remote and subthreshold.
Private American and Russian mercenaries and Chinese "contracters” seem to be all over Africa, the Middle East and Asia these days. It has become nearly impossible to disentangle the role of the state and private military organizations in this new era of competition, confrontation and sub-threshold conflict."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/wwiii-has-already-started
6. Important facet of any future war. Cyber aspect of it.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/beginners-guide-cyber-war-terrorism-espionage-tony-martin-vegue
7. Man, I really miss Warsaw and Poland overall. Hope to make it back in the summer.
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/lifestyle/article/warsaw-travel-guide
8. I am very partial to Ukraine. An interesting diagnosis on the country. Bullish on the place assuming it does not get invaded.
"Ukraine has one huge advantage: It has a very important reason to grow. Becoming a rich country like Poland is Ukraine’s best chance for standing up to a domineering neighbor three times its size. External military threat has been a catalyst for development for countries throughout the ages, most notably Japan and South Korea. Hopefully it will do the same for Ukraine now."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/why-is-ukraine-such-an-economic-failure
9. Good analysis on the crisis in Ukraine. I hope peace prevails here.
https://www.fpri.org/article/2022/01/moscows-compellence-strategy
10. This is hilarious and eye-opening.
"In recent years, research has suggested that a certain fraction of consumers are particularly skilled at picking out products that are destined to fail, or get discontinued.
They’re called harbingers of failure, or harbinger customers."
https://thehustle.co/the-customers-who-repeatedly-buy-doomed-products
11. What a surprise: high employee turnover at high growth startups run by people who have never managed people before. This is frankly endemic in startup world.
But it's possible to turnaround assuming founders get professional coaches or lean on new experienced execs. Most founders will not though sadly. #Hubris
https://sifted.eu/articles/n26-employee-exodus
12. Whatever you think, Putin has been masterful. I personally do not like it at all but you have to give him credit where its due, he has been playing chess while the west plays checkers (badly).
"All this activity is the culmination of years of painstaking Russian planning and effort that long predated active Russian preparations to threaten an invasion of Ukraine. It is another example of Putin’s ability to conceive and pursue coherent strategies over a long period of time, not just to seize opportunities. And Putin has always meant it to threaten NATO as well as Ukraine."
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/591008-nato-must-reinforce-its-eastern-flank-right-now
13. "So for now, we have to make do with the next best thing: A network of overlapping, mutually reinforcing alliances and partnerships that serve to thicken and reinforce the barriers to aggression. The Quad is part of that; AUKUS helps; the Japan-Australia defense cooperation act signed recently is a good sign. It's great when six or seven nations get together in military exercises, as happened in the Philippine Sea in October, or when the U.S. and Japan subtly advertise (mostly through media leaks) their plans to cooperate militarily in the defense of Taiwan.
Perhaps one day we'll get to a more formal, multilateral organization for collective defense in the region, but for now we need a lot of little things that add up to the threat of a very big, multilateral response if China uses force.
The good news is that, even together, Russia and China can't overmatch the U.S. and its allies. Even a distracted U.S. plus NATO is still capable of competing with Russia; the U.S. plus its allies and partners in Asia has significantly more geopolitical heft than China. I don't want to make this sound easier than it is. But the balance of power still favors the democracies."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/interview-hal-brands-international
14. "The risk of being exposed to the liquidity trade (long bonds, tech, private equity, ESG, most of crypto) given peak profit margins and hawkish environment is now significantly higher, and we might want to hedge our exposure or take some profits where we can.
Real Assets continue to be our preferred theme: from commodities to real estate (selectively, and hopefully near a surfable beach) and some buckets of equities (significant preference for value over growth simply because it allows us to sleep at night, and we really like to sleep). This is a multi-year theme that will continue to play out.
You know our view on Bitcoin, and broadly think that we should (1) only allocate money that, if we lose it, it won’t change our life (2) only think about taking profits when Tom Brady retires, or Tim stops trying to be a surfer.
After the beating last year, Emerging Markets might bring some positive upside, especially if the US Dollar softens – but we need to know what we’re investing in, and that also includes an awareness of the local rule of law and of the “in between the lines” shenanigans of politics."
https://www.thelykeion.com/higher-rates-peak-margins-and-how-to-allocate
15. A skeptic’s view of Bitcoin.
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/dollars-ex-machina
16. Good summary of key drivers of the crazy market we are in.
"We look at things purely through the money lens of the economy sometimes. But the economy and markets are much more than just stock and flow - it’s human behavior. And when we think about coming out the other side of a pandemic (maybe?), there was a psychological human cost to that. There’s a human cost to ALL OF THIS.
Markets are mechanisms that price change - reflections of ourselves. They tell us what we want to see, what we want to believe. When things get rough, it’s super easy to get pessimistic - in fact, it’s human nature to do so. Reflexivity begets reflexivity.
Everything is a game until it is not. We sometimes get caught in the game, which I think happened to many in the most recent crypto/stock cycle - the game becomes us, we are defined by the money we make, by the gains - money becomes a religion. And when the losses come - well, so does the loss of faith.
However, the game is changing - the possibility to enact change with some elements of crypto/web3, the need for alternative energy sources, demographic shifts - it’s a constant evolution, a constant shift of the economic game."
https://kyla.substack.com/p/on-market-movement
17. Definitely good perspective here on the Ukraine-Russia issue.
https://puck.news/inside-the-biden-putin-chess-match
18. This is an incredible situation that the EU has gotten themselves in & entirely preventable.
"The #1 lesson of Europe’s natural gas dependence is this: European governments have wildly overestimated the ability of solar and wind to provide the energy they need and wildly underestimated the need for fossil fuels and nuclear to provide the energy they need.
If Europe’s level of dependence on Russia for natural gas scares you, know this: America is even more dependent on China for many of the key components of solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries than Europe is on Russia for natural gas."
https://alexepstein.substack.com/p/europes-extreme-vulnerability-to
19. I agree with this. Africa is a super interesting frontier investment opportunity.
https://mailchi.mp/1a4a49e014a5/one-of-my-favourite-long-term-investments?e=123a1c25c4
20. This is really smart & differentiated. So glad I am not in the accelerator game anymore. Pear, ODX & Hyper are the ones to watch.
"The short version is: distribution. It’s hard to argue with the overall assumption that the Hyper team is working under — capital is majorly commoditized. Frankly, sometimes that’s all you want from an investor whose value add is more of a thorn in your side than anything. But, especially at the early stage there are a few funds and firms that offer a strong value outside of writing checks in the form of, say, hiring, sales introductions or board members that have relevant operational experience.
Where Hyper differs, says Buckley, is that they see distribution as the biggest value add for a nascent startup at the stages where the firm hopes to invest. Product Hunt is one opportunity that he points to as an example. It’s an established launch pad to an audience of extreme early adopters that can provide a seed of a real user base — Hyper itself is launching via a post on the platform."
21. The Russian military is no joke. They mean serious business.
https://news.yahoo.com/russias-military-once-creaky-modern-124721425.html
22. I seriously hope these guys are right. War in Ukraine is bad for everyone.
https://sofrep.com/news/we-remain-skeptical-that-russia-will-invade-ukraine
23. Jim Rogers is an international investing legend and inspiration for me personally.
https://www.codiesanchez.com/blog/2017/8/14/jim-rogers-investing-legend-original-nomad
24. Write up on Jim Rogers. Pay attention to this guy.
https://ckarchive.com/b/v8u3hrh6gq37
25. One of my favorite thinkers. Balaji S Srinivasan. Worth listening if you want to understand the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4RTXF1JX0E
26. Part 2 of this amazing interview. Info dense discussion with Balaji.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDvTrw7QW6E
27. "But a new wave of aging pros competing and winning at the highest level is showing how you can age not just gracefully but masterfully. I'm thinking of Tom Brady (44), LeBron James (37), Chris Paul (36), Serena Williams (40), Sue Bird (41), Cristiano Ronaldo (36), Lionel Messi (34), Phil Mickelson (51), and Roger Federer (40). And I could go on: It's not just one sport, or a few outliers, or veterans transitioning into supporting roles. It's a sports-wide revolution.
And you may have heard about the out-there things they're doing to maintain their bodies: Brady has so optimized his nutrition that he tries to avoid coffee and even tomatoes. LeBron reportedly spends more than a million dollars on his body annually, on everything from cryotherapy to pedicures.
But beyond the expensive equipment and the sometimes dubious cutting-edge science, something bigger is happening: The greatest athletes are realizing that you can't play your way into shape; performance is a no-days-off, year-round lifestyle. It's the commitment to fundamental, practical routines that amateurs like you and me can learn from. The moves pros are using to delay their twilight by just a few years can help the rest of us feel and live well for decades."
https://www.gq.com/story/lessons-from-ageless-super-athletes
28. This is too bad. But also shows how challenging and early we are in growing IoT space.
29. Tech growth stocks, especially in B2B side may be oversold. I like them for the long run.
"Buying growth stocks on the cheap will remain a good strategy for long-term capital growth.
Timing is difficult, though, and no one will ever manage to catch stocks exactly at the bottom.
However, what you do have full control over is to pick companies that are not at risk of going out of business if the market takes longer to turn around. Also, you can (and should) focus on businesses that have a track record of growing even during periods when financial markets and the broader economy are weak.
That's why I have long been a proponent of companies that run subscription-based business models. Such companies don't start at zero every year. Instead, they can tell you in advance how much baseline revenue they are likely to generate from existing subscribers. The steady cash flow doesn't just enable such companies to weather the storm, but they may also be able to invest in growth during times when others struggle to raise funding. Last but not least, some of them can increase their margins by "upselling" their customers to additional services."
30. "There are countless examples over the last few years that should shake VCs awake and help them realize there are a lot of founders in a lot of sectors at a lot of stages and they don't all want the same thing. Folks like Boldstart proved that founders are prioritizing people who will actually help them over big brands. Stripe proved that corporate VC's can be fast-moving value-add partners. Tiger proved that some founders just want to be left alone!
Very few firms have a clear answer to the question "what is your differentiated product?." There has never been a better time for venture firms to stop and think about what a product-led venture firm would do."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/productization
31. This is a very disturbing discussion but its important. Possible negative scenarios for the world order but better to understand prepare. Its very worthwhile.
Chaos=Disorganized violence & Decentralized & massive opportunities/Upside/failure
Order=CCP: Organized, Stable and centralized violence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlEStTMauBg
32. Very wise reminder and write up here. Especially as we've seen our investment portfolios get decimated in last few weeks.
"Focus on what matters. Be a Stoic in the face of temptation. Use Time to your advantage. Diversify your investments.
In any economic climate, how do we build economic security, foster love, and find joy? How do we get rich?
Slowly."
https://www.profgalloway.com/the-algebra-of-wealth-2
33. A very cogent discussion on the Ukraine-Russian (and EU/USA) crisis.
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-68-putins-challenge-to
34. This is a really interesting company with some impressive people at the helm.
https://a16z.com/2022/01/25/investing-in-prologue
35. For anyone who cares about democracy or self sovereignty this is worth reading. The place is worth defending.
Ukraine has its problems but it has changed alot in the last 8 years as someone who has been going there since 2007.
No one wants war, either regular Ukrainians or Russians that I know.
Macro versus Micro: the Challenges of Investing Well as a Venture Capitalist
Frameworks are critical for any investor whether in public or private assets.
Ultimately a good investor has to understand two key categories to have a chance. I classify these as Macro & Micro.
Macro are the underlying trends: economic, sociopolitical, technology, consumer behavior, generational, globalization versus deglobalization. The actual market they are targeting & whether there is a broad range of customers there.
Micro is usually the tactical level. Things like the team and & company. Their ability to execute. The actual business model. How they are positioned versus competition.
You have to get both right to have a big HIT.
This is why I find the continual VC debate of market versus team stupid and tiresome.
Having said that, if you HAVE to make a choice, Micro is what early stage startup investing is about. Basically “Pick the team”. The team can potentially grind things out and wait until a trend turns their way. Or they can pivot into a new market (whether customer segment, industry or geography). Or even change the business model. That is probably the reason why there has been so much talk recently of VCs directly investing in the individual as stated in Sam Lessin’s excellent article here: Investing Directly in People Is the Future of VC. Here’s How to Do It.
Now don’t get me wrong. Targeting the right market and having underlying trends support your business are critical. Individuals really matter here: they can overcome market deficiencies or many times their own personal deficiencies & limitations. I’ve also seen way too many examples of founders getting the market right and hitting product market fit but are unable to scale. They flub up things so badly, they both lose momentum and enter a death spiral.
This is the business world’s version of the “Great man or woman” theory. VC is ultimately about being in the “human potential business.” Can and do you recognize a founder's true potential?
This is why I specifically look for founders who have grit, are decisive & mission oriented, have faced & overcome personal challenges in the past. In the old Chinese saying: they “have tasted bitterness.” These Founders typically have played sports at competitive level, or are ex-military or immigrants or children of immigrants. These are folks who can build, position themselves in front of a market and last long enough until trends turn their way.
Easier said than done of course. But I’ve seen so many examples of these successes in the last 20+ years across the globe that I 110% believe it’s more than possible. And it’s also becoming more common over time as best practices and model examples proliferate.
What a wonderful time to be an entrepreneur and investor!
Staring Down the Abyss: the Reality of Entrepreneurship
I’ve been pondering the journey of entrepreneurship. And it’s really an amazing journey of Grit and endurance. The ultimate test. There is nothing in the world closer to alchemy. You are literally creating something from nothing.
And because of this, it’s bloody hard. It’ll push you to your mental and sometimes physical limits. Elon Musk was reported to have said “Starting a company is like eating glass and staring into the abyss.” Wondering whether a customer will pay you, whether a credit card will clear or whether you will raise that round and miraculously make payroll.
The incredible stress that occurs when you question your own decisions, especially when the odds are against you, your family and friends are openly wondering why you didn’t just take that job or quit that high paying job at Google (or some other prestigious Fortune 500 company). Every day is a roller coaster, the highs are high and the lows are low. Sometimes they happen the same day.
This is something many investors don’t understand and many are not able to empathize with. This is why most people in the world can never understand this path. But the reality is that we are moving into a world where entrepreneurship is going to be the de facto route of not just thriving but surviving. Relying on a supposedly safe job at a safe company will be a risky path as our world economy will be bracketed by massive changes: technological, economical, demographically and probably most importantly, geopolitically.
We are entering a decentralized world where the world's only Hyperpower, the United States, is declining and retreating inward. Read Peter Zeihan’s books and Radigan Carter (https://www.radigancarter.com) if you want to understand this point more. The result is that the globalized world order we have gotten used to over the last 70 years is coming to an end. The supply chain issues we are facing are just a symptom of this. And many companies are facing massive changes they are not able to cope with. The end result will always be massive layoffs from technology adoption and offshoring or reshoring.
This is a world where you have to take complete ownership of your future and decisions. A path that is not dependent on others and is not taught in school. Especially not in most Business schools, which are oriented toward creating corporate drones. We will be responsible for our own path whether we like it or not. The sooner we understand this the better off we will be.
This is why I focus so much on pushing the cult of entrepreneurship. Even if you have a good job, make sure you keep a low cost structure and invest your time in one or two or even three side hustles. Obviously not all at the same time but over time. This redundancy of income streams is critical. Additionally treat yourself like a business: learn to invest your time and extra money into things that provide an ROI. Build assets. Learn new skills like the latest in online marketing or copywriting. Take classes which will give you a framework and ideas to start. I strongly recommend David Perells “Write of Passage” (https://writeofpassage.school) and Jose Rosado & Alejandro Corte’s “Wifi Money Machine” (https://alexanderjacortes.gumroad.com/l/wifimoneymachine).
All these things will help you bear the storm that is coming for us over the next decade. And if I am wrong and there is no storm, you will be far ahead of anyone else anyways.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Jan 30th, 2022
“New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings”--Lao Tzu
"Starbucks crushed many mom-and-pop coffee shops. Walmart did the same to small department and grocery stores alike. Local hardware stores have been largely replaced by Lowe’s and Home Depot. The response to the pandemic destroyed countless small businesses, much to the advantage of giants like Amazon. One wonders why so much attention is being selectively paid to the plight of the small rancher.
The senator most responsible for pushing this issue is Max Baucus of Montana, Biden’s longtime Democratic colleague and ally in the Senate. It wouldn’t surprise us if Baucus sold Biden’s team on the usefulness of this issue as a political deflection point for the inflation challenges facing the administration.
Naturally, Baucus’ family runs the famous Sieben Ranch in Helena, Montana. Plus c'est la même chose."
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/political-hamburglars
2. This is a damn good show. Can't believe I just discovered it now. I need to get out of my bubble.
3. "Yes, the Fed is likely to hike. Yes, the Fed is likely to try and start tightening the balance sheet again. Yes, other G10 central banks ought to try and be hawkish… What happens when you tighten into a massive slowdown in the rate of change of credit, is that you flatten the curve materially... And I am even tempted to say that you should both buy the USD and duration (in most currencies) with an arm and a leg already now.. And equities overall.."
https://themacrocompass.substack.com/p/vikings
4. I expect there are alot more tech biz people living in nice rural areas than we think. Good for you Wesley.
"I never want to bag on San Francisco; it’s been very generous to me over the last 20 years. But it’s also a place where, when things go crazy, it’s not a fun or comfortable place to be. I was in San Francisco when the shutdown occurred and I was watching these crazy long lines around supermarkets. So I got in my car and visited like 10 national parks.
When I got to Wyoming, where Grand Teton National Park is and Yellowstone, I fell in love with it. It was the most beautiful place on the planet. I’ve always dreamt of owning a mountain home. Everyone was on remote Zooms; I predicted this thing would last two-plus years. So I just bought a house. I said, “Why not?” and I’ve been here ever since."
5. Great concept: Longitudinal Hiring.
"the increasing usage of Longitudinal hiring. What this means is that companies are not looking at the location of the employee anymore but rather at the timezone he/she is present in.
So for example, a company that is headquartered in New York shares the same timezone as Venezuela, Bahamas, Toronto, etc and even Argentina is just 1 hour ahead. The amount of talent that companies would have access to if they start hiring based on timezones is monumental. So long companies have restricted themselves to a small subset of people who would be willing to relocate, but with longitudinal arbitrage, they have unlocked a whole lot more talent."
https://vadithya.com/what-is-longitudinal-arbitrage
6. This mess is also because of the EU's badly thought out anti-Nuclear Energy policy. "Policy by Platitude".
"The project in question is Nord Stream 2, an $11 billion Russian-owned pipeline that has Washington in a difficult position with some of its European allies, divided other European countries among themselves, and weakened Ukraine.
And Russia, in case you haven’t figured out, wants all of those things — a geopolitical tool to get leverage over Europe, a vulnerable Ukraine, and a payout from the pipeline."
https://www.vox.com/22881709/nord-stream-2-russia-ukraine-germany-united-states-cruz
7. The future of war. It's coming, like it or not.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/one-person-fly-drone-swarm
8. I'll definitely be picking up this book. "Davos Man"
https://time.com/charter/6139479/davos-man-peter-goodman
9. This is a pretty damn good rubric.
https://davidcummings.org/2022/01/15/friedbergs-rubric-for-business-value-creation
10. Sounds about right.
"In short, while at larger companies positioning is indeed suffering, at seed-stage companies, positioning is the quick search for simple clarity."
https://kellblog.com/2022/01/07/seed-stage-positioning-lock-and-load
11. Older book but one I'll have to check out. India seems to be becoming the new center of the world balancing out China and the USA.
https://branko2f7.substack.com/p/capital-the-explosion-of-delhi
12. "Somewhere in the years leading up to the layoffs, I had been exposed to the idea that a business and a company are not one and the same. We tend, in startup-land, to use the terms interchangeably. But they are not the same.
A business is comprised of a product or service sold to customers in exchange for money, attention, or some other form of payment.
A company is a collection of humans brought together around a shared effort or mission.
We speak a lot in startups about how to build a business: how to learn from customers, how to build a great product, how to test various acquisition strategies, how to raise capital, etc. But we speak very little about how to build a company."
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/build-company-just-business-matt-munson
13. "Cartels are effective precisely because they do not look like evil monopolies at all. The coastal homeowner campaigning against new development looks like your mother, and very well might actually be your mother. Doctors and schoolteachers are the healers and educators of society, not the enemy. None of them believe that they are advocating for policies that take from the poor and give to the rich; they are certain that the true problem with housing must lie with developers and investors, or that the true problem with health care must lie with administrators and CEOs.
This is what makes cartels more dangerous. The tech sector is actually quite small compared to housing and health care; none of the major tech companies have revenue much greater than $200 billion globally, while housing and health care reach into the multiple trillions of dollars per year in the U.S. alone."
https://philo.substack.com/p/cartels
14. This seems ominous.
"The metaverse represents the most recent battle between human freedom and the constraints of reality. It could also become a battle to define reality itself."
https://www.city-journal.org/enter-the-metaverse
15. "As people wake up to inflation being 7%+, it means that they losenearly a month of their entire working year. Keeping it simple, even if you think that inflation is only 8.33% it means that you lost one full month of production, so *your after tax* income needed to rise by more than 8.33% to live the exact same life in 2022 as you did last year. Insanity."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/understanding-the-dangers-of-centralization
16. "The good news about Web3 is that it cannot give rise to the type of tyrannies we saw in Web 2.0. People often say "OpenSea will be the Facebook of Web3" or "Coinbase will be the Amazon of Web3". But they're missing an important point: In a world where users can pick up their things and leave, tyrants will behave completely differently. And tyrannies like the ones we've seen in the past could simply not survive.
The bad news about Web3 is that new types of tyrannies can emerge. In this case, the role of the US is played by the largest blockchains, particularly Ethereum. Ethereum currently enables users to move freely between apps and platforms and move money and assets across digital and physical borders. That's wonderful and it enhances individual freedom and keeps all participants in check."
https://www.drorpoleg.com/stalin-in-the-metaverse
17. Some good news in America.
"So densifying America is going to be a brutal, long, uphill slog, no matter what. But it’s a task to which smart young activists, thinkers, and organizers have increasingly set their minds. Our history shows that rarely do such campaigns fail without changing the country in some tangible way. YIMBYism addresses a real and pressing economic problem, but it also touches a deep need in the human spirit — the need to live close to other human beings. The pandemic isolated us all from each other, and urbanism is one way of reaching to reclaim the physical contact we’ve lost."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-yimbys-are-starting-to-win-a
18. This is a bad way to start off the year. This is bad for everyone.
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/warwords-part-one
19. This is a big deal. 69B big. MSFT buys Blizzard. Gaming is happening.
https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/microsoft-to-buy-activision-for-69b-5694026
20. "“Fighting insurgencies,” we haven’t been so good at, from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, where U.S. efforts were undermined by their tethers to corrupt, inefficient regimes and officials. Supporting insurgencies, we’ve been better at.
That’s a message Washington wants Moscow to hear in the Kabuki shadow war over Ukraine. And it’s understood that some in Washington are indeed serious about setting fires in Kazakhstan and elsewhere—not just Ukraine—should Russian troops and tanks cross the Dnieper in the coming days."
https://www.spytalk.co/p/us-signaling-putin-that-ukraine-will
21. This is a cool dude. Daniel Dae Kim.
22. "What is interesting about the relation between state conflict and technology is that just as new technologies slowly raised the destructive potential of direct conflict, a new avenue was opened: states can now fight each other not by winning in a direct battle but by setting the rules under which other states must operate. Call it a form of indirect government: perhaps your opponent will even assume the rules are natural or given, but in reality you have moved one level up in the great game.
Your opponent is playing a video game. You are coding it. I would reserve the term superpower for those states engaged in a battle to shape the rules. Everyone else is competing under the rules."
https://brunomacaes.substack.com/p/technology-wars-the-singularity-is
23. Always worth listening to Balaji. Rise of Indian & Chinese state capacity. Decline of US state capacity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4M85Vctnj90
24. This is a lot of $$ and VC investor super power. As with these specific situations & hyped companies, this will be either a crazy massive hit or massive dud, MUCH more so than usual in VC. Many times these turn into the Silicon Valley version of Matrix 2 the movie due to the hype.
25. This is going to be good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM_4-XFeRyA
26. Audience first is the rule. So many business opportunities come from this.
"Ultimately, the successful Boy Brands are the ones that come from musicians who are as savvy at communicating with their fans about things and taste as they are about making resonant music. “These businesses are not for everyone,” says Beckman, “and that’s why the community—the tribe—that these artists bring along with them is really critical.” If an artist can cultivate a fandom in that way—which is increasingly the way traditional luxury brands are trying to operate—“then it could become a sustainable, real business.”
https://www.gq.com/story/boy-brands-frank-ocean-tyler-the-creator-harry-styles
27. This is just one of the best scenes in any movie. The Heat cafe scene with Pacino and Deniro. Masterclass based on a true life occurrence.
https://www.zavvi.com/blog/features/heat-at-25-how-that-incredible-diner-scene-came-to-be
28. Big fan of Lithuania. Down with the CCP. The new geopolitical bullies.
"It is too soon to tell whether Lithuania is the lone nut and Slovenia the first follower that triggers a foot-stomping dance party on the CCP’s credibility, but the coming days and weeks will be telling."
“The Lost City of Z”: Adventures on the Frontier
The Royal Geographic Society (RGS) in turn of the century British Empire was a major driver for exploration. Centered in London, at the height of the Empire, it was responsible for funding mapping expeditions across the world. This was the height of the age of exploration.
This movie, based on a true story, takes place in the early 1900s when a young British officer named Fawcett is charged by RGS to map the undiscovered wilds jungles and Amazon river of Bolivia in order to prevent War between Brazil and Peru. Facing challenging terrain, disease and hostile Indian tribes along the whole route. Along the way he finds signs of an ancient city and civilization. This becomes his life mission of discovery.
A dangerous but grand adventure. Chasing & mapping the uncharted frontier.
Frontiers are important. These need to exist. For the most young and ambitious, for those who want to craft their own future or even have a chance to start all over again.
We all need a challenge to overcome. A great quest. A mission. A new place to seek and conquer.
America used to be this place during the 1700 and 1800s. As America developed during the 1900s & 2000s, it was the West Coast where the action was. The Technology industry has grown madly.
Now as the technology industry is now mainstream, America seems to be closing in on itself. Ambition levels in general among the populace seem to have dropped. We’ve had so much prosperity for so long that we have gotten arrogant and complacent as a society. As stated in the movie: “But there is no safe passage in life.”
We need new frontiers to explore and conquer even if it’s just in our minds. Space, the Ocean, Clean Energy, Artificial Intelligence, Crypto & Decentralized Technology, Biotech & the Human body. Pushing forward in new territory is humbling yet critical for human progress. This is why I’m so bullish on the ever growing entrepreneurial revolution around the world. One that will illuminate the world if we do it right.
As long as there are brilliant young people willing to push and pursue the frontiers of these sectors, I will continue to remain optimistic about the future.
Quality over Quantity: Tracking Smart People to Find the Future
Super smart Investor and founder Chris Dixon once wrote “What the smartest people do on the weekends is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years.”
This has been one of the deepest insights that I’ve used to understand what the future looks like. I remember it used to be called “Cool Hunting” back in the 90s. It’s incredibly relevant for figuring which companies to join or leave, which industries are going to be hitting critical mass; which cities or countries are on the rise and conversely which ones are on the downward slope. Basically you see if there are magnets of opportunity or the reverse where very few opportunities & growth for young smart people and thus they leave. And I should add it’s almost always the youngest, most ambitious, best and brightest who have the option to leave.
I have stated many times how I overstayed at all the places I worked at. For example, at Yahoo! was a hot house of talent from 2003-2008. But frankly most of the best engineers, sales people, product people and executives started leaving in 2007 and this brain drain accelerated from that point onwards to a bunch of rising companies like Facebook for example. Looking back in retrospect, the writing was clearly on the wall for Yahoo! back in 2008. Paraphrasing Tencent’s founder Pony Ma, the corpse was still warm.
The movement of the youngest and most exceptional talent is hard to track but it’s incredibly helpful as a leading indicator on which companies or industries to go deeper on as an investor, employee or founder. So for example, from 2020, what I see from an industry perspective is that the best people are moving and trying to get into Web3 aka Crypto or Climate-tech. On the company front, it seems all the best folks are trying to join Stripe, Carta or OnDeck as the next major big mega-startup.
This is reflective of the movement of super smart people back in the 1980s for Wall Street, or the early 90s for Management Consulting, and the early 2000s for Technology & Hedge Funds. Where there is growth and opportunity, the most exceptional and ambitious people go.
This also works incredibly well for Countries. I track whether the best and brightest young people leave or stay in their country. So for example, I see a net inflow of talent into Israel or Canada. The United States up until recently was a mass attractor of great young talent. Dubai & Singapore are net importers of talent. People don’t just stay in this place, people elsewhere choose to go there. Poland used to be a net exporter but I’ve seen in the last few years, many expat Poles returning home and many young choosing to stay and build their careers at home. These are good signals for these places.
On the reverse side, we see many of the best and brightest leaving places like Russia or the various Balkan countries. The exodus of young talent does not bode well for these countries despite being nice places to live.
When it comes to cities, New York has always been a center for talent: being the center for finance, advertising, fashion, and art. Despite a challenging 2020 and what seemed like an exodus of people, it seems to have recovered fairly well unlike in San Francisco or Los Angeles. And How can I not raise the examples of Miami? The Miami example is most instructive to show how a few quality people can really change the trajectory of an ecosystem and city. Mayor Saurez is a brilliant & PR savvy mayor and through his charm offensive was able to get key Silicon Valley & New York tech individuals to come visit and even stay in Miami. Very prominent tech players like Keith Rabois, Anthony Pompliano, Harry Hurst, Bobby Goodlatte, David Blumberg, Jack Abraham and many others. This was the critical mass that has attracted even more tech folks both as new residents and regular visitors.
The point is that people really matter. There is a quote I love by Bryant McGill “One person really can make a difference. Each person is the revolution.” A critical mass of great people can literally change the direction of a country or company.
To really understand the future and the health of a company, industry, city & country, track where the best and brightest are going. This is one of the best leading indicators one can use to understand the emerging new world.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Jan 23rd, 2022
“The beginning is the most important part of the work”--Plato
Very interesting perspective and parallels.
"Looking back, it is easy to see the results of moving my body to America and brain to Ethereum. Both offer a frontier. America has always been the catalyst of liberal democracy, decentralised governance, and hyper-competitive capitalism. Ethereum is becoming a credibly neutral digital substrate that lives above countries’ jurisdictions on the Internet.
What has become much clearer to me over the years is that The American Dream and The Etherean Dream are very much the same."
https://ricburton.substack.com/p/-the-etherean-and-american-dream
2. Ironically two of the most important countries to me personally: Taiwan and Ukraine.
"The parallel between Ukraine and Taiwan suffers from three main pitfalls. First, Taiwan is becoming a far more important geopolitical asset to the United States in the Indo-Pacific. Second, Russia and China’s motivations for initiating conflict differ more than many believe, which will impact how both states are likely to act. Third, Taiwan is more deeply integrated into key supply chains and trade networks than Ukraine is. In other words, the Ukraine-Taiwan analogy obscures as much as it illuminates."
3. What a crazy story. Just started reading the book.
"So began a craze akin to the dot-com bubble: Investors who knew basically nothing about the inner workings of South American countries went on a buying spree, inflating the value of the bonds and creating an intense resale market."
https://thehustle.co/the-con-artist-who-sold-rich-investors-a-fake-country
4. "Filmmaker, influencer, content creator, chef – Rea has an abundance of titles, but he also fits within a new and growing breed of influencer-entrepreneurs. “Influpreneurs”, if you will, are online stars who build their own businesses that disrupt the establishment in their field. They launch products that sell out in hours, produce media for millions of loyal fans and collaborate with high-profile companies.
They offer their platform to new talent by hiring hosts and create media empires by launching numerous shows. Legacy media respect influpreneurs for their expertise, whether the star in question is a chef, fitness guru or engineer"
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/meet-the-influpreneurs-youtube
5. "Officially, Gymshark produces “conditioning” clothing. The brand is most often compared to transatlantic fitness labels such as Lululemon or Under Armour, despite being younger than both by more than a decade. What powers Gymshark is its astonishing digital reach. On its official channels alone there are more than 32m views on YouTube, 5.4m followers on Instagram and 3.3m on TikTok, to say nothing of the influencers with whom it partners. Gymshark creates workout gear designed to look good on TikTok."
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/fitness/article/ben-francis-interview-2021
6. Doomberg interview. Lots of good discussion on the energy business and policy and the emerging gig economy for brains.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZSd9ZEbfHg
7. "Crypto and web3 promise to increase my freedom to switch between the platforms I rely on and my likelihood to survive a hostile action by one of them. This promise is only partly fulfilled at this point, and it might never materialize in full.
Unlike some, I do not believe that web3 will be more just or equitable or even more free by default. But I do believe it offers the possibility of increasing our freedom and agency. And, in light of general and personal history, this possibility is enough to pique my curiosity and garner my support.
To most users, the freedom to pack up and move your digital assets and identity does not matter. But it might matter one day, and when it does, it will matter a lot."
https://www.drorpoleg.com/unpacking-the-web3-sausage
8. These are some solid gaming industry predictions. Always worth reading.
https://venturebeat.com/2021/12/31/the-deanbeat-predictions-for-gaming-2022
9. This is good. I think the best investors, board members and leaders do this.
"Most people think of demanding and supportive as opposite ends of a spectrum. You can either be tough or you can be nice. But the best leaders don’t choose. They are both highly demanding and highly supportive. They push you to new heights and they also have your back."
https://rkg.blog/demanding.php
10. Fascinated by this evolution of warfare: drones and motorcycles.
https://twitter.com/byPeterParadise/status/1480268764964872194
11. Good list. I'd go to Serbia, Armenia, Mexico & Colombia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEcxP4pSDJU
12. Late to this as it’s 1 year old but this is an awesome interview. Still super relevant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=GCmrmeqcbi8
13. I'm on a Doomberg kick. You need to understand the physical economy & what's going on. Remember energy is life and L1. Tech is really L3 so we all better wake up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=DH9eTmukarQ
14. This is a big deal. Consolidation happening fast in gaming industry.
15. "Define how you want your life to be different, and then start heading in that direction. You'll make progress as you gradually build up your relationships, connections, skills, resources, and portfolio."
https://justinjackson.ca/work-harder
16. A very worthwhile interview here.
"Tyler is a highly eclectic thinker, drawing his ideas from a vast array of inspirations and stubbornly refusing to allow any particular ideology or school of thought to limit the scope of his theses. This is how I’ve also tried to be, though I think he still does it better. And of course, he manages his role as a public intellectual while maintaining a career in academia and the nonprofit world, and even a foray into venture capital. “Impressive” is an understatement!"
Great observation:
"The complacent are ever more complacent. The entrepreneurial and independent-minded are all the more so. We even saw this in the pandemic. Many people retreated in fear, or had mental health problems, or simply shut down. Others responded with great efforts and energy, for instance the people and companies behind the vaccines.
Do we really have a general "spirit of the age" right now. I am skeptical. A major impact of the internet seems to be to increase variance. Arguably the same is true for racism, sexism, and many others isms, both good and bad. The variance is going up. The good get better, the bad get worse."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/interview-tyler-cowen-economist-and
17. "Basically, we play games all the time. We are speculative creatures, like to make bets, search for social cohesion and community. We also like cheat codes - and in a life where the world feels increasingly tilted towards “rich get richer”, you have to find other cheat codes in order to make the game work. And those cheat codes right now are $FAST MONEY$.
One of the reasons that the Stonks and Crypto Go Brrr narrative has stuck around for all this time (I think) is because people felt like they were playing a massive RPG. Gather your battalions, plan a bank run, maybe become millionaires, even billionaires. What the RPG fails to teach you is that there is no alpha in copy-paste, BUT you do get a little glimmer of hope."
https://kyla.substack.com/p/narratives-reflexivity-and-market
18. I guess we will find out soon enough whether Microstrategy BTC strategy works. Whether Saylor is crazy or crazy like the fox.
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/a-drunken-saylor
19. We are run by unserious, corrupt, ignorant idiots in the western world.
"American-made amino acids being sent at the lowest profitable cost possible to feed the swine, beef, and poultry industries of Mexico, Canada, and Brazil, all of whom are much friendlier to China with regard to finished meat exports than the United States is. It’s a canny strategic maneuver, and as is unfortunately typical of our political leadership, the short-term promise of profits, fundraising, and (perhaps) future jobs is a leash with which Chinese companies manipulate their American running dogs.
Here, then, is the new Chinese modus operandi: externalize their energy consumption into the US and exploit more readily-available raw materials for China’s benefit. Such a model drives the local prices of energy up long-term, another indirect subsidy paid by North Dakota’s taxpayers, while ensuring that China’s foreign partners have access to exported feed ingredients at the expense of the United States’ meat producers.
Even more, the location of Fufeng’s intended site is at best an extremely worrisome coincidence, given many viable alternatives that make more sense from a supply chain standpoint. Taken together, this absolutely follows the playbook of China’s ongoing expansions of the Belt and Road Initiative, and perhaps for the first time, represents a stealth implementation of the project on the United States’ own soil."
https://fortisanalysis.substack.com/p/belt-and-road-comes-to-the-heartland
20. Big fan of the OG global macro investor Jim Rogers. He inspired my global career.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU5duCoSuzg
21. "Take an honest look at all the problems we face in society today. Racial disputes, increased mental illness, poverty, growing income inequality, infighting, the list goes on and on.
These are complex issues with many reasons, yet all of these problems are fundamentally rooted in, and exacerbated by, the rotting economic system.
This is in no way a grand conspiracy, and there is no Illuminati. These policies were made by people like you and me, and people who generally do care about improving their country. However, they got lost along the way. They traded ivy league educations for thinking that they could control a complex, chaotic system.
If you look at any complex system, the weather, for example. We can make as many models as we want. Use all the supercomputers in the world and still will not accurately predict the weather even a few days in the future. It’s the same with the economy.
The value of honor and truth are losing their hold. Ye, that doesn’t mean you have to sink down. Find other people to build long-term relationships with. Protect yourself from short-sighted people. Be aggressive and cut out the toxicity from your life. Be a lighthouse in the dark sea that the world is devolving into. Your light will save the few who choose to listen and help themselves. Your light will allow you to find other lighthouses. "
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/free-looks-token-and-the-greatest
22. Josh Wolfe and his team are some of the best Deeptech VCs on the planet.
"After all, the Covid-19 pandemic has put a torrent of cash in the wallets of investors and has pushed scientific breakthroughs to the forefront of their brains, leading to an incredible run at Lux, a relatively small player in the world of venture capital. In the past two years, its assets have doubled to $4 billion, with 25 of its portfolio companies creating almost $30 billion in value through mergers, acquisitions, or IPOs — including deals with 11 special-purpose acquisition companies."
https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1w8vbl5c7byww/The-Renaissance-Man-of-Venture-Capital
23. "Fed Coin would provide a fresh and transformative influx of dovishness at a time when the Fed is experiencing diminished returns on quantitative easing, tepid bank lending inhibits the velocity of money, and Congress is still a major barrier to full implementation of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).
In essence, Fed Coin creates money from nothing (as opposed to bank reserves) and directs it to where it is “most needed” in the economy. The recipients can be induced to spend it or save it at the whim of the issuer. It circumvents the banks and even Congress itself. In short, it is the forest of free money trees progressives have dreamed about planting for decades. Gammon believes (and I tend to agree) that it will lead to massive inflation in short order, and not the transitory type."
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/dystopia-coin
24. "However, there was one factor unnoticed that had a global impact but affected the Middle East the most.
Food Prices, more specifically the rising price of grain
Food, of course, is never the sole driver of instability or uprising. Corruption, a lack of democracy, ethnic tension are all known factors that may be critical, but food is often the difference between an unhappy but quiet population and one in revolt."
https://medium.com/something-about-everything/food-riots-and-the-arab-spring-4886e4c3604
25. I've come around to this view.
"ESG poses as a moral and financially savvy movement. In reality it is an immoral and financially ruinous movement that is destroying the free world's ability to produce low-cost, reliable energy. This prevents poor countries from developing and threatens America's security."
https://alexepstein.substack.com/p/the-esg-movement-is-anti-energy-anti
26. "But this is a new era of Warriors basketball. As of now, Curry and the Warriors have the best record in the NBA, and they've made it look both easy and fun. A youthful energy has been infused into the core of reliable stars.
The team's location in the Bay has provided some opportunities for Curry to build a life away from basketball. He's used his company SC30 Inc. to invest in tech startups like the travel platform Snaptravel. This entry into tech, he says, was first orchestrated by Andre Iguodala, during his first run with the Warriors.
Now Curry has his own media company, Unanimous, which, among other things, is responsible for producing the miniature-golf show Holey Moley. “There's so much opportunity [in Hollywood] because doors are open,” he says. “There's so much talent that can step into those rooms and deserve to be there, stay there, and have successful careers. And you can't really quantify it right now, but you can obviously have those checkpoints like, ‘Are we making a true impact?’ And, ‘How is that going to weave into everything that I do?’”
https://www.gq.com/story/stephen-curry-february-cover-profile
27. This is the reason so many people hate the rich in America, rules for thee but not for me. This is also how revolutions begin.
"In a country with true equal protection under the law, Kaplan would have been fired from his job and his activity referred to the authorities for further investigation. Instead, he was allowed to resign while defiantly claiming no wrongdoing. In accepting Kaplan’s resignation, Fed Chair Jerome Powell heaped praised on him, thereby tipping future investigations in Kaplan’s favor.
There are approximately 1.8 million people sitting in prison in America – don’t hold your breath waiting for Kaplan to join them. Prison is for the peasants, and Kaplan is no peasant.
Nor will they be joined by Nancy Pelosi, whose husband routinely speculates in companies that are impacted by her legislative decisions.
Not satisfied with mere good fortune, America’s elite are indulging in an orgy of staggering self-enrichment, the scale of which would make even Bacchus blush. As the embers of disgust take hold, one wonders how long until a full-on fire rages from below to spoil the party."
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/let-them-eat-pizza
28. Lots of great nuggets here. Future of work and the Sovereign individual.
"Parents will adapt and relocate. And a byproduct of this type of jurisdictional arbitrage is that the housing market will stay hot.
But more broadly speaking – 2022 will mark a new wave of personal development. More alternative types of personal development with an emphasis on less standardization and more specialization.
People understand that they need to take personal responsibility for educating themselves to take advantage of changing times. The “guru” industry will have a renewed wave of products, courses, and information based products along the long tail of niche ideas, topics, and lifestyles. Expect a wave of solo entrepreneurs to emerge to fill this market need.
The bottom line is that people will pick and choose new skills to learn and incorporate into their lives in order to adapt and thrive in the digital age.
This will mark an educational renaissance."
https://dougantin.com/2022-predictions-what-comes-next
29. This book is worth reading. The Fourth Turning. But if you are lazy, listen to this interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_YOyuz23go
30. Good reminder for tech & young people that there is a very physical part of technology you can't escape from.
https://www.wired.com/story/kazakhstan-cryptocurrency-mining-unrest-energy
31. "Animoca has been on an impressive tear since. Operating as both a publisher and, increasingly, a buyer of blockchain assets and tokens, its ballooning portfolio includes Sky Mavis, the developer of global sensation “Axie Infinity,” which closed on roughly $150 million in funding back in October at a $3 billion valuation, and the popular metaverse startup The Sandbox, a game where players can create and monetize in-game assets and that closed on $93 million in Series B funding back in November led by SoftBank."
https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/12/a-peek-into-web3-power-player-animoca-brands
Work Life Choices, Not Work Life Balance
I get asked a lot about how I balance my business and family life all the time. This happens on podcasts, in various interviews & various 1 on 1 discussions. I’m always surprised. I don’t feel successful at all and certainly don’t feel like I’ve made it. I probably never will.
Yet, I do think I’ve had a pretty interesting & fun career. But it definitely came at a high price. I’m on the road much of the year. Maybe not the 3/4 of the year when I was an executive at Yahoo! but now at least 40-50% of the time. This was the price for where I am and I paid it willingly. My answer when people ask is that I feel I am the worst person to ask about work life balance. It’s just mainly work for me. Driven by my obsessive need to win and an unending drive for social and material tangible success. Don’t get me wrong, I really LOVE what I do but it can be all consuming.
Even when I’m at home, I’m not always present mentally for my family. My head is almost always around work and business. For all intents and purposes my daughter was raised by a single parent much to my shame and regret. I’ve missed really key moments of my daughter's life. I’ve lost out on many of the important, irreplaceable intangible things.
I’ve beaten myself up a lot for this but I’ve realized all I can do is take care of the present and future. Regret does not help but it certainly does inform. This is why I am now such a proponent of lifestyle design. Which is basically all about being more thoughtful on how I spend my time daily and weekly. These details do add up. It’s about small improvements, “Kaizen” in Japanese, famously put as “aggregation of marginal gains.”
I now focus all my time on really impactful, fun projects and initiatives. I optimize for Working with really good people & friends. I also ensure that I spend real quality time with family and friends. If the pandemic taught us anything, it’s how precious our health, time and relationships really are. So it’s about time all of us really pay attention to these important areas of life.
“Hard Water”: The Magic of Learning & Mixing Across Sports & Other Disciplines
Just saw this documentary on the evolution of Big wave surfing. It traces the lineage via Nathan Fletcher who grew up in the surf centers of Southern California and Hawaii.
He was influenced by Jay Adams & Chris Hosoi; skateboarders who brought a “big air” style to surfing and flying, tactics from the ground to the water. There was clearly an interplay between surfing, skateboarding and snowboarding. Each influenced and borrowed from each other. Developing new conventions and standards. This is why Big Wave surfing is so impressive and such a high-skilled sport these days.
I think a lot about the growing diversity and ecosystems of the startup world. Silicon Valley has long been the center of the tech world since the 70s. Yet there was always an interplay between the San Francisco Bay Area and the other tech centers.
We saw many ecosystems growing in the 2010s across the globe like London, Paris, Portugal, Singapore, Jakarta, Dubai, Lagos, Mexico City & Toronto among many places.
The 2020 pandemic literally blew up Silicon Valley, expanding the mindset everywhere. The main vehicle of this was through the talent that was once so concentrated in the SF Bay Area, now spreading out all across America and the world. They brought the energy, best practices and money with them. The top founders now also do not feel the need to come to Silicon Valley to build their companies as Remote work becomes more prevalent and common.
I anticipate that as many of these other ecosystems take off they will create many new & different forms of amazing startups. This will also lead to more best practices that will in turn influence new growth tactics and drive changes in various industries. We are already seeing that the most interesting Fintech companies are now coming from places like Mexico City, India and all over Africa.
I’m continually struck by how much there is to learn from the ever evolving world of big wave surfing & it continues to be a powerful metaphor for business. Like the surf world, the rising diversity and interplay of various ecosystems & industries can only be a good thing that will push the technology industry onto new highs.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Jan 16th, 2022
“And suddenly you just know it’s time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings”--Meister Eckhart
Zero Covid as policy seems like insanity in 2022 unless you are an island. Even then it seems anti-data & stupid.
2. Spot on analysis here. Must read if you don't want to get burned.
https://twitter.com/radigancarter/status/1478878287137021959
3. Same principle applies to Taiwan too. Arm them & Ukraine to teeth. The porcupine strategy works.
"Ukraine is a civilized European nation comprising people of talent and good will who wish to, and deserve to, become part of the free world. They are also a people that the United States has pledged its solemn word to protect."
"This can only be accomplished by arming Ukraine to the teeth. Russian forces won’t be in position to invade for several more weeks. We can and must take advantage of this time to ship the Ukrainians massive caches of weapons, especially the anti-aircraft missiles that will be so critical in neutralizing Russia’s air superiority. Unless Russia’s aerial advantage can be offset, the Ukrainians will stand no chance of holding their own on the ground. So Ukraine needs these weapons, and it needs them now, not after the Ukrainian army is destroyed by Russian air attacks. Once the invasion begins it will be too late. Ukraine is a country of 44 million people; if properly armed, it could repel an invasion by the 175,000-man expeditionary force Putin has assembled. Overcoming a well-armed Ukraine would cost far more resource-wise than Putin is currently willing to spend. By arming the Ukrainians, we can prevent a war.
Good fences make good neighbors; deterrence is much better than war."
https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/01/biden-slouches-towards-catastrophe-in-ukraine
4. This is a man I admire. He makes hard decisions and shares the learnings from his growth. Worth a read.
"Going forward, if I don’t have a “whole body yes” then it’s a “simple no” until I can decide for myself. No questions asked.
Finally, I came to the conclusion that sometimes we just need to burn everything down to the ground and start over. Fuck sunk costs. Fuck what people think. Clear it all out. Start with a blank slate. As Tom Cruise says in Risky Business, “Sometimes you gotta say, ‘What the fuck?’ Make your move.” I embraced that elegant notion."
https://www.schlaf.co/nothighoutput
5. "Ultimately, given how crypto ties belief systems, product dedication, and financial investment together, disputes about it will inevitably get more heated than in other ages of the internet. Dorsey taking on Andreessen Horowitz is just the highest-profile dust-up we’ve seen to date. The meme wars among tech’s most respected names won’t stop here."
https://bigtechnology.substack.com/p/why-jack-dorsey-went-to-war-with
6. "One of the most destructive mental constructs to the health of your financial portfolio is measuring yearly arithmetic returns. The goal, as always, is to maintain or increase the purchasing power of your assets relative to the cost of energy. Human civilisation essentially converts the potential energy of the Sun and Earth into kinetic energy that supports our bodily functions and modern lifestyle.
Making money is not the goal, because money is just an energy abstraction. The correct — and admittedly difficult to track — means of measuring your financial success is determining how many barrels of oil your lifestyle costs now and how many it will cost in the future. Then you must ensure the value of your financial savings increases faster than your expected energy consumption."
https://cryptohayes.medium.com/maelstrom-ee6021e9d0c2
7. "We now reside in a world in which we value things at what they could become, not what they are. A belief system centered on exponential outcomes, both good and bad, dictates the future. The alternative is an apocalypse of hyperinflation, pandemics, high rates and wars."
https://wrongalot.substack.com/p/crypto-and-the-apocalypse
8. Not sure this accusation is fair. Norway is actually pretty far ahead of the curve when it comes to ESG stuff & pushing ethical investing.
https://branko2f7.substack.com/p/is-norway-the-new-east-india-company
9. Love this.
"Founders and artists should be aware of where the technology is today. If you can help it, don’t play yesterday’s game. Let your intellectual curiosity guide you toward your joy and also the new edge of the fractal. Not looking backward.
Having a network effects product and community is now even more critical. Founders need to think of their startup as a network, to think of their goal as “bonding” the nodes to their network: employees, investors, customers, and partners. This will look and feel a lot like community building, and network bonding theory brings in the math, giving you the tools to bond high-value nodes to your network.
NFTs, tokens, in-game purchases, tiered access, and many other new forms of value are now revealing themselves. These are occurring just as network formation tools are also blossoming – DAOs, Discord, Twitter, Reddit, Telegram, etc."
https://www.nfx.com/post/economics-of-creativity
10. Good discussion on unlocks.
"A cornerstone of sustained prosperity is the unlock: unleashing a leap forward with a new approach. Thinking different, if you will. An external shock compels us to leverage existing resources in fresh ways. In these moments, it’s less about new or more than it is about rearranging the materials we have at hand.
Unlocks are often inspired by new technology."
https://www.profgalloway.com/unlocks
11. Good primer on Hydrogen power. The future?
"I do pay attention, though, when the Japanese are onto something. Few remember it nowadays, but the Japanese played a pivotal role in creating the Liquid Natural Gas industry in the 1970s. When Japan focusses its national attention on a task that it considers a national priority, it's worth keeping an eye on. Japan has the know-how and the capital to make things happen on a large scale.
The subsequent outcomes will probably sit somewhere in between the opposing predictions. Maybe Volkswagen boss Herbert Diess was right when he said: "Green hydrogen should not end up in cars. It is needed for steel, chemical, aero." This could still leave room for hydrogen to grow into a significant new industry, because of the sheer amount of energy required in these sectors."
https://www.undervalued-shares.com/weekly-dispatches/hydrogen-why-investors-should-pay-attention
12. "Dedicated crypto platforms like Coinbase or even Paypal, Venmo and Stripe, which recently added abilities to use crypto for payments, could evolve into the U.S. versions of super apps, assuming crypto issuers can work with regulators to find a middle ground between protecting the consumer and creating new financial and investment opportunities. If consumers see crypto as secure and legitimate — and easy to use — it could become the base of super apps.
Expanding these crypto and payment apps to integrate with other apps and services would make many diverse tasks more convenient. The bottom line is that people are thinking about finance not just when they go to the bank — if they even have access to a bank — but when they shop, vacation or pay for a medical visit, and such apps would help deliver the financial services they need in a personalized manner.
Integrating crypto payments into other tasks would also go a long way in democratizing the world of finance and money, giving underserved communities and those with no credit histories who struggle to open credit cards or get loans more access to financial services."
https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/07/regulating-crypto-could-create-american-super-apps
13. All young founders who have not been through a down cycle need to watch this episode. The depth of solid business and investing experience really shines through.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL8uXZDz_o0
14. "We shouldn’t compare the asset ownership percentages today as a snapshot in time. We should instead look at how the trend is evolving. The legacy Web2 companies are becoming more and more concentrated in ownership. Bitcoin has shown to become more decentralized in ownership over time. Web3 tokens are still up in the air. Will they become more centralized or more decentralized over time? No one knows yet, but that is going to be the most important question when it comes to answering “who owns Web3?”
https://pomp.substack.com/p/who-owns-web3
15. A super interesting and insightful perspective on Web 3. Worth a read especially in light of all the hype.
https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html
16. Worth listening to Zeihan re: geopolitical landscape. De-Globalization, A baby bust and populism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD-pj6i4b8A
17. What a nutty time and many people are learning the hard way about the importance of cheap energy on everything in our globalized world.
https://capitalistexploits.at/back-to-the-dark-ages-owtw
18. More evidence that much of the western developed world is run by incompetent, arrogant, complacent people. It's gonna be a rough ride.
"Europe has been doing its level best to hammer its domestic power producers and erode its industrial base for years. What stops foreign adversaries from helping them along by bidding up the price of these carbon credits to create economic advantage for themselves? How much money would it really take to double or triple the price of carbon in the EU from here? Whatever happens, this is one of the most fascinating stories we’ve come across in quite some time."
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/a-banana-worth-squeezing
19. San Francisco is a disaster zone and much of this is due to the progressive idiot politicians in charge and many of us tech people's disinterest. But things are changing fast. You can only take a blind eye to malicious incompetence for so long. Thank goodness for people like Garry, David Sacks and many others.
20. "But the thing is, whatever the pros and cons, we are already on an inexorable march toward the metaverse. We are increasingly living virtual lives. What web3 enables is a richer experience in that virtual existence. One that will hopefully feel a little less hollow, a little more human.
I look forward to a future where NFTs, along with all the other promises of web3, help us create a virtual reality where human interaction is, once again, fun."
https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/06/5-nft-trends-that-will-bring-social-media-audiences-into-web3
21. This thread on why building wealth is important. It's not shallow, it's a matter of both survival & freedom.
https://twitter.com/ZubyMusic/status/1479890317306470404
22. This is a good set of 2022 tech biz predictions.
https://johnbattelle.medium.com/predictions-2022-crypto-climate-twitter-and-trump-sorry-1ad7fc866cc6
23. Kazakhstan is a very important geopolitical player & the recent events show how important the country is to Russia, China and the USA.
I'm personally a fan of the wonderful people there and hope it all ends peacefully although with some reforms that make their lives better.
https://www.vox.com/2022/1/8/22872642/kazakhstan-protests-russia-troops-putin
24. The Chinese are playing a way better geopolitical and supply chain game than America. And we let them because of our arrogance and complacency. We better wake the F--k up soon.
"Through its vast network of trade deals, subsidiaries and suppliers COFCO has assembled a supply chain for every foodstuff available. They are fully responsible for China’s food supply. Yet the magnitude of this company cannot be understated. They are the modern East India Trading Company.
This is all part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
A new Silk Road. A Chinese Global order from countries belittled, forgotten, or shunned by the American Empire. One of those places was South America.
Post Cold War South America and Africa were tossed aside like the used toys they were. Pawns in a Global war against the USSR. Now broken and downtrodden, they seek aid from China the only Global Power willing to given them any; but their pawn status has only transferred players.
China is extracting them for as much raw materials as their boats can carry."
https://mercurial.substack.com/p/the-secret-chinese-company-eating
25. "Today’s weapons are tools and objects that blend in today with everyday life. It is the intent of the user that matters more, for every device is now capable. The DJI drone used to make movies, is one for surveillance. The AirTags for finding your keys, are a tracking device to the amateur sleuth. The Computer is perhaps the paramount tableau of this; capable of doing only what the user inputs. Cat videos, million dollar businesses, TPS reports, or turning off the Nation’s power.
This fact is further compounded by the production of weapons. Nuclear weapons the pinnacle of 3GW weaponry can easily be monitored by the facilities that produce them. Specialized facilities with only two purposes. A semiconductor fabrication plant can producing the brains for televisions and within weeks be outfitted for missiles.
Thus the move of banning DJI hinders China, and the DJI Corporation; it also affects the Terrorist, the Rebel and the everyday consumer. For it is a tool, just as much as it is a weapon.
DJI is the latest pawn and target in an ongoing Unrestricted Warfare of today."
https://mercurial.substack.com/p/dji-and-the-unseen-war
26. "With few exceptions, Covid policy was never about reason. Covid policy was a demonstration of power. It was the North Korean military parade of public health, an elaborate performance that existed chiefly to sooth the concerns of a scared nation with the illusion of competent governance. To challenge the logic of authority was to challenge the existence of authority, which is never a popular thing among authoritarians, and especially not in a time of chaos.
But with Virginia exit polls festering in the frightened minds of the Lockdown Forever Squad in Washington, and good news surrounding Omicron too impossible to ignore, it’s starting to seem, to the panicked dismay of neurotics across the country, that pandemic theater is finally close to curtains."
https://www.piratewires.com/p/neurotic
27. Totally random but for anyone who likes a good Viking movie, this short is pretty good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7_bvyqLlH8
28. Good overview thread on what's happening in Kazakhstan. This is a big deal geopolitically.
https://twitter.com/ClintEhrlich/status/1479517789450911747
29. Good list. Vietnam and Singapore totally make sense.
"You might have noticed that the countries on this list share a few similarities. Generally, all the best countries to invest in 2022 have strong demographic trends. A growing population and rising middle class helps each of their long-term economic prospects."
https://www.investasian.com/property-investment/best-countries-invest-2022
“YellowStone”: The TV series that Captures the American Paradox
The 4 season tv series centers around the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch, the biggest private cattle ranch in the United States. Held by 6th generation Dutton cattle ranching family, the patriarch John Dutton played by Kevin Costner, has to contend with scrupulous & powerful enemies trying to take their land; developers, fellow ranchers, rightwing militiamen, public corporations, bandits, government officials, and Indian tribes trying to reclaim their land. This is coupled with the complicated family drama of the next generation trying to seek the approval of the patriarch. It’s a great story about a man fighting his damndest to hold on to a fast disappearing way of life in the face of progress, moneyed interests and the outside world. A continual, intense, external pressure being brought to bear on their land and world.
As Adrian Horton points out in the Guardian:
“Yellowstone is the show of what historian Patrick Wyman has called the American Gentry – the class of land and business-owning local elites in smaller markets across the country, whose politics tend to skew conservative and whose influence tends to go under-covered in comparison to flashy oligarchs, billionaires and those whose wealth isn’t tied to a specific place.”
It signifies the way of life in America that is disappearing, one where loyalty, honor and your word matters. “Riding for the Brand” means you live “ride or die”, you will do anything for your crew or tribe. This show also signifies the eternal American battle to conquer nature; empire building and the very violent nature of America and American society. America has been at war internally and externally pretty much since its establishment in 1776. I am late to this show in 2022 but I also see it as an analogy for how an empire is held. Something that gerontocratic America is trying to do now (poorly i might add) all across the world in the face of rising powers in China, Turkey, Russia & Iran. It’s done ruthlessly, violently and with both legal means through the stock market and M&A and extra-legal means through kidnapping, blackmail and straight up killing & execution.
Coming from Canada, it’s also been my first hand experience of the intensely ruthless nature of the business & working world in America.
There is a great quote from Season 3 from the Dutton's big corporate enemy, Market Equities CEO Willa Hayes & her business partner Roarke at hedge fund Metro Capital:
Willa: “They are playing a zero sum game. They are doing it with my F–ing career.
Roarke: “Don’t feel much like a land deal in Montana, does it?”
Willa: “No, it feels like an oil deal in Yemen. And from now on that’s how we treat it.”
Things get pretty brutal pretty fast. It’s such an American approach to things. More is the solution: when you are up against someone powerful or rich, you have to become even more powerful or richer. Overwhelm them with firepower.
Yet, what is so strange to me is that this show is not more popular everywhere in America and this is reflective of the divide in our country, both in technology access and our cultural interests. There have been on average 11M viewers of each episode, numbers not seen since the 2010s GOTR & The Walking Dead. At the same time, this show is almost unknown on the liberal east and west coasts. One big reason is the technology divide, this show is mainly on cable only, which serves most of the midwest and south. Ie. red states, while most of the coasts use some streaming service like Netflix, HBO or Disney+.
I love Yellowstone as the themes it exemplifies are powerful. “Progression,evolution and pragmatism versus tradition, nostalgia & romanticism.” (Source: Looper). The forces that drive many societies but ones that seem behind the big divide in American culture right now. This show is worth watching to understand the American psyche, the American culture and mentality. The incredible level of unrelenting competition that can come from anywhere & everywhere. The ruthlessness needed to win. The highly individualistic nature of people here. The importance of family and legacy. The fact that you grow or you die.
If you want to understand the cultural zeitgeist right now in the USA, this is the show to watch. America is a strange but very interesting place to be right now, that’s for sure.
Notes from “Roadrunner”: Awesome life lessons from the legendary Anthony Bourdain
Finally saw the documentary about the late and lamented chef, author & travel show adventurer. I've been a longtime fan.
His energy, his humor, kindness, graciousness and eccentricity showed through the entire movie. He never hid his personality & he clearly loved food, the nuances of foreign cultures and the wonder of travel. He exuded Incredible humanity. I think this was why we all fell in love with him. The ultimate cool dude. He literally was the “World’s most interesting man.”
He overcame an early heroin addiction and became a chef at some of the best restaurants in New York like Les Halles. He wrote the best selling and illuminating “Kitchen Confidential” which rocketed him to fame. This opened up his television career in the early 2000s doing “A Cooks Tour” which led to all the wonderful international food and travel shows we know & love now such as “Parts Unknown”, “No Reservations” & “The Layover.”
He was a shy, introverted man who only traveled in his adulthood. His first trip was a 6 week trip to Japan and Vietnam, he came alive as the reality started to match the imagination of international travel from books and movies. His quote rings so true in my personal experience:
“Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.”
As a recovering addict, he fully embraced his new life and in almost everything he did.
He was an incredible learner, first as chef, then author and then learning the television business on the fly. It was great watching him come to life and experience such growth. And what was also wonderful to see was all the friendships he built along the way with master chefs like Eric Ripert & David Chang as well as the artist David Choe. He was also the master of change and rebirth to becoming a full on television star. As he said “the least I can do is see the world with open eyes.”
I think so many of us admired his ability to be so real and just be himself. I saw him speak live once at one of the big Yahoo! Sales conferences as a keynote speaker. He was so unabashedly Tony. Isn’t that what we all want? To be able to be our true selves, to not hide anything and have the world accept us for who we are. He was an original. Tony inspired and positively impacted so many people directly and indirectly.
That was the great tragedy of his suicide and something that took so many of us by surprise. Seeing a man we admired so much take his own life is just plain shocking. We see the glamor and outside life of people but we never know the pain, the personal battles and challenges they are fighting on the inside.
So what did I take from “Road Runner” & Tony’s life?. Be more kind to yourself and others. And really try to embrace and show more of your authentic self. F-ck what other people think. It’s your life. As the man himself said: “The essence of cool is not giving a F-ck!”
It’s deeply informed my adoption of Kanye’s motto: “I have a dope life and I do dope sh-t!” Thank you and RIP Anthony Bourdain.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Jan 9th, 2022
“You can learn new things at any time in your life if you’re willing to be a beginner. If you actually learn to like being a beginner, the whole world opens up to you”--Barbara Sher
I'm 110% down with this.
"Controlling your time and the ability to wake up and say, “I can do whatever I want today”
https://thehustle.co/12302021-morgan-housel-wealth
2. This is pretty damn fascinating for history buffs. A meeting of the military worlds in old times.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Varangian_Tagma/status/1476554924339175430
3. It's like America continually shoots itself in the foot. No wonder no one takes this country seriously anymore. America is like a blind, arrogant and mentally handicapped giant.
"If New England’s refusal to use natural gas from right next door is ironic, how it sources liquefied natural gas (LNG) is downright perverse, albeit for reasons mostly beyond its control. We’ve written before about how the US has become a substantial player in the LNG market, and how the energy crisis in Europe spread to Asia, causing a bidding war for LNG supply.
As luck would have it, New England is a now victim of that bidding war and is facing the prospect of dramatically less LNG supply this winter."
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/new-england-is-an-energy-crisis-waiting
4. "If there’s one phrase that characterizes our age, it’s ‘elite failure’. Nobody is really in charge anymore; there is no secret room with all the competent people making the pivotal decisions.
From the US government to The Times, the world is now run by a Zoom screen of hollow, indecisive people—absolutely scared shitless of Twitter and Slack threads—wincing from hard realities and public stands in favor of performative posturing and backroom deals; all the while, our elites shamble feebly around the institutions that a greater generation once built … including and especially the management of Apple."
https://www.thepullrequest.com/p/annus-horribilis-annus-mirabilis
5. What a strange time.
"The view may be nihilistic, but in the current scenario, it isn’t entirely wrong. So much of the economy feels like a scam — the gig economy, student loans, the hope of retirement, a 9-to-5 job. Consumers are always being tricked and squeezed by corporations.
The promise of the middle class is fading fast, so for a lot of people, it just feels like you might as well lean into whatever financial chaos is available to try to hit it big. If housing prices are so high you’re never going to be able to own a home, why not try your hand at real estate in whatever the metaverse is?
If you buy into the idea that a lot of this investing is pretty divorced from reality, then the question is how long this lasts. For now, the music’s still playing, so people are dancing. How long the song keeps going depends on how long the people holding onto the assets can keep singing."
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22832438/nft-gamestop-amc-crypto-bubble
6. The Nancy Martin effect. Interesting.
"You are probably familiar with the Nancy Meyers Effect. Meyers, of course, is the director who specializes in films about well-off types who seem chill and cool despite their status. Meyers is a master at writing rich characters, in both senses of the word: people who have stuff from The Row, but describe it as “this old thing”; people who own expensive cookware, but aren’t afraid to use it.
The Nancy Meyers Effect, then, is the thing that happens when you watch her movies: even if you’re a proud Jacobin subscriber, you’re glad to spend two hours in a world where owning a wine cellar is a thing to be proud of."
https://www.gq.com/story/steve-martin-fotb-30
7. Africa is crucial for the clean energy economy.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59722297
8. History certainly rhymes. Hope we learn from history here. (we probably won't though).
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/coup-jan6-fdr-new-deal-business-plot-1276709
9. I like this. Short, simple and sweet. Pick an execution methodology and stick to it.
https://davidcummings.org/2022/01/01/pick-an-execution-methodology-for-the-new-year
10. Very good description of China & what's happening in the tech industry there. Well worth a read.
"There’s a little joke that the ideal company is led by a Beijinger, who would provide the vision, leadership, and government-relations savvy; its finances would be led by someone from Shanghai, and its operations managed by someone from Shenzhen (who would hire people from Sichuan and Anhui to do the actual work).
Entrepreneurial friends say that doing business is most straightforward in Shenzhen: people there get together over dinner, discuss how to allocate the workload, and then do things the next day. Dinner in Beijing features lots of drinking, bluffs about one’s connections in high places, and then little follow up."
"The Chinese leadership looks more longingly at Germany, with its high level of manufacturing backed by industry-leading Mittelstand firms. Thus Beijing prefers that the best talent in the country work in manufacturing sectors rather than consumer internet and finance. Personally, I think it has been a tragedy for the US that so many physics PhDs have gone to work in hedge funds and Silicon Valley. The problem is not that these opportunities pay so well, rather it is because manufacturing has offered dismal career prospects.
"If Beijing were only brutal or unpredictable, then people wouldn’t be so on edge. But it is both. No one is sure how far the state will prosecute its values-based agenda."
https://danwang.co/2021-letter
11. Seems like a contrarian investment. Oil!
https://www.undervalued-shares.com/weekly-dispatches/petrobras-time-to-love-oil-stocks-again
12. "No matter how brilliant, none of what we do lasts. But what does matter in avoiding misery is living and working by your own standards. It’s when you operate using only an inner scorecard that you will gain independence of mind.
And it’s the independence of mind that allows you to sit on your ass when you’ve got something good while allowing you to not be swayed by stagnant or destructive herding behavior. Recognition and rewards must be the extra. And as the next section argues, there’s good reason to think that the deserved rewards will come on their own.
Many things in life follow a compounding trajectory if little improvements are present every day. Things such as relationships, knowledge, and fitness. But notice that the compounding halts as soon as you change these things around too much rather than sitting on what works for you.
When you’ve got something good, it’s working, and you’ve spent a lot of energy getting there, it’s probably best to sit on your ass and enjoy the ride."
https://junto.investments/sit-on-your-ass
13. "In his early career, Bertolini was unapologetically competitive, aggressive, and at times, ruthless. He was so well known for his bare-knuckled, iron-fist leadership that his employees had given him the moniker, "Darth Vader."
"I was tough," he says. "People used to hum the Darth Vader tune when I walked around the office. It was like, ‘Here he comes.'”
By all measures, he had made it. He was making tons of money, living in a mansion, and earning respect in his field. But it came at a cost. He was spending more and more time away from his family, and inadvertently creating a work culture that didn't necessarily reflect his values.
Then came his first wake-up call."
https://theprofile.substack.com/p/mark-bertolini
14. Lessons from world class chair makers & marketers.
"We don’t write about the Eameses to compare ourselves to them, but rather to learn from them. With Doomberg, we aspire to create a great brand and to market it to the best of our abilities. Many writers recoil at the thought of having to proactively promote their content – they feel producing great writing should be enough, and that engaging in purposeful marketing somehow cheapens their work. On the contrary, we believe failing to do so merely condemns it to the crowded bin of great writing rarely read."
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/these-chairs-arent-going-to-sell
15. "Consilience Ventures is creating the world’s biggest tokenized sweat equity ecosystem. We have the startups, the investors, the experts and the tech to underpin it. No one has pushed the model as far as we have from a technical or legal standpoint.
We’re creating a world where startups grow, experts get paid and investors make returns. We’re creating automated systems that allow startups to earn as they achieve preset milestones.
Entrepreneurs get access to a highly-curated network of experts who can provide the hands-on support they need to grow, but they can do it without money. Because experts have skin in the game through the value of the tokens they earn, they will give their startups their full attention and go the extra mile to help.
Tokenizing sweat equity is not a guarantee of success, but it makes success much more likely, along with a higher valuation when you get there. In addition, it helps reduce the impact of luck, so if you win, it’s because you found customers, not because you found investment."
16. "So the last thing I am suggesting for Your SaaS New Year’s Resolution is to get distracted, or take your eye off the ball. But I am suggesting, as founders and execs, you think about doing (x) one new thing that (y) builds on your core, doesn’t fundamentally change what you’re doing but (z) could inflect the curve 10% and not be terribly distracting.
Find a way to add a relatively low-stress, low-dilution layer to what you are doing now. It won’t materially change your MRR at first. But it will have a magical effect by year-end."
https://www.saastr.com/your-belated-saas-new-years-resolution-add-a-layer
17. The case against Crypto. I always read everything and anything. I read cases for and against. Still haven't fully made my mind up yet.
But my sense is that it seems inevitable as technology decentralizes. I guess we will see in 10-20 years.
https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/against-crypto.html
18. "In general, the studio structure is really smart in a world where there's a lot of capital coming into the market downstream,"
https://www.axios.com/venture-capital-incubating-startups-862dc1e2-2705-4554-8534-0cf2ba24a22e.html
19. Good thread on the gaming industry.
https://twitter.com/sbergel/status/1476222572199129093
20. "Cryptocurrency has become both a libertarian paradise and the most vulgar capitalist society you’ve ever seen. Every single action is a financial transaction and said transactions can be made faster by spending more money. Access within this so-called egalitarian system is entirely based on how many resources you have and how quickly you can mobilize them, which is alarmingly similar to the systems that crypto zealots claim to despise.
And the more popular a system is, the more money that’s required to spend to make things happen on it. It’s also important to remember that the only way into these systems is either through farming coins using computers that cost money, or paying money to acquire tokens to use within the system.
The consistent pro-crypto argument is that big companies control the platforms we use every day, and decentralization is the only way for us to be truly “free.” The problem is that there is no real difference between a web3 company that has transferrable ‘votes’ and a regular company - those with the money still have the power, except they have the ability to directly monetize each vote.
Democracy is quite literally for sale by the company (and regularly sold to wealthy investors before anyone else!), and those buying votes under the auspices of ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ are really just participating in an even more corrupt and punishing system than we have in the real world."
https://ez.substack.com/p/libertarianism-for-me-but-not-for
21. "In fact, there is a HIGH chance that the company you work for today will be disrupted by small numbers of individuals. People like Joe Rogan have crushed the media space. People like Daniel and Vitalik Buterin and SBF have individually caused significant pain to the financial services industry and NFTs which can be made from thin air are going after the entire Art industry (historically a niche/fringe market for the majority of the population).
Even if you’re not in tech you can do this by simply putting your “life online”. If you notice a common thread amongst people with large followers on social media it is that they continuously *try* to live life.
Instead of selling like your boss is reading, sell like you’re trying to get a close friend to understand what you do. After that we can all but guarantee you will grow *if* you are skilled in an industry (no you don’t need to be the best at everything, you simply need to be *good* as most people won’t even try)."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/when-individuals-eat-companies
22. "This past year shows that government can have a large role in shaping how remote work plays out. Expanding broadband access to ensure that the ability to do remote work is equitably distributed, liberalizing zoning laws, investing in amenities to attract knowledge economy workers, and ensuring that the gains from growth do not solely accumulate to the most well-off — that’s all in policymakers’ hands."
https://www.vox.com/22839563/remote-work-climate-change-house-prices-cities
23. For those who want to understand why we have a supply chain mess in the world.
"Consumers are just buying more stuff than ever and our infrastructure, frankly, isn't ready for it. It's getting held back by dilapidated port infrastructure, by congestion, non-automated ports, and bad rail connections to the ports. We're just recognizing the pain of 20 years of not investing in our infrastructure. And we're feeling all that pain in one year right now.
It’s increasingly difficult for truckers to pick up or drop off containers at ports and warehouses, leading to today’s congested ports, lots, and railyards. So boats can’t get in, we don’t have enough containers, a lot of the empty containers are stuck on the chassis, we don’t have enough chassis because we don’t have enough warehouse space, and we don’t have any space in the warehouses because we can’t move the goods out fast enough.
Until we can focus on what actually clears the ports, rail yards and warehouses, and goods can begin to move at a pace that aligns more closely with the growth in consumer demand, there’s nowhere for the containers to go, and the number of ships waiting to unload will continue to grow."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/interview-ryan-petersen-ceo-of-flexport
24. "Journalism used to be about fanatically pursuing the truth. It didn’t matter where the truth took you, the journalists job was to find it. There was no agenda. There was no adherence to a dogmatic view of the world. Find the truth and share it.
While it may seem crazy, Joe Rogan has filled that void for the digital native generation. He would never claim to be a journalist, but rather positions himself as a regular guy who likes to workout, go hunting, eat healthy, and learn about the world. That vulnerability and transparency is attractive to people who feel like they are being lied to or manipulated by the mainstream media. Joe Rogan is the most dangerous man in the intellectual arena right now because he is the most genuine pursuer of truth."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/trust-has-fallen-and-joe-rogan-is
25. Good tweet thread on state LP land for VCs in 2022.
https://twitter.com/Beezer232/status/1478434884418871296
26. This is a very helpful guide for prepping for your Series A.
https://trueventures.com/blog/preparing-for-series-a-fundraising
27. Long overdue move. We need to bring back manufacturing to the USA & allied countries.
https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/a-new-push-to-bring-back-us-factories-4623657
Trauma with a small T: Therapy & How to Learn ABout What Drives you
I’ve been taking therapy for almost a year now and it’s been immensely helpful. This is one of the big reasons I’ve become much more honed and focused than ever. Talking to a professional therapist is a great way to understand what makes you do what you do and why you do this. And how you react to certain situations in life. Or in some cases, react badly or overreact to things.
I’ve been so fortunate that I was raised by incredibly kind, generous and kind parents. I certainly was not abused or treated poorly in any fashion, unlike so many others. But as young children, whether through family life or school life, we encounter experiences or situations that cut or hurt us severely. This could be being ignored by our parents, or having a series of biting criticisms from someone we care about. In most cases, this is unintentional but the reality is we’ve all suffered some small trauma in life.
And it’s this trauma that massively influences your personality, your drive and how you become the person who you are as an adult.
As many people who know me well, I am an intensely competitive individual. I have a very unhealthy drive to succeed & win, coupled with an intense fear of poverty & insecurity around money. This is a great combination for business but it is not necessarily a good combo for being a father, husband and in many cases, as a work colleague. Note: I definitely hope I have gotten better as I have gotten older.
With the help of my therapist, I’ve been able to trace much of this to a few key episodes in my childhood and young adult life. I grew up in a relatively financially challenged household in the early days, when my immigrant parents were trying to establish themselves in Canada (Another note: I have incredible admiration for what my parents did for me and my 2 siblings, I owe my parents everything). We were a single income family as my mom stayed home with us for the first 12 years of my life, focussing all her time and attention on raising us kids.
Now I will admit, I was far from a model child growing up. I ended up rebelling and got in trouble all the time at school. I fought. I goofed around and cut class all the time. I was a substandard student in topics that I hated like French, math and all the sciences. But did well in subjects I loved like English, History, & Law.
My mom was tough on us in what is now widely known as the “Tiger Mom'' method. This method is basically the traditional Chinese way of criticizing, shaming and comparing each sibling with each other. Maybe even more impactful, was comparing us with many of our peer friends in the very large local Canadian Taiwanese community. I internalized comments like “Why can’t you be as good in math as Ann”, or “Lucas gets straight A’s, what is wrong with you? “Edith’s mom said she is doing great in school and won several scholarships, it would be nice to have a kid who did the same”. Or “hey, you got 98% on the test, what happened to the remaining 2%.” Some of this was that blatant, some of it was more subtle but that pressure was there.
You felt like you were never good enough and this methodology really works. Look at how many Chinese immigrant kids do well academically in school, end up in top tier Universities and climb the ranks of the various high status professions like Investment Banking, Medicine, Law and such. This is one of the reasons I tend to have unhealthy high standards which really help in the workplace. I also tend to be pretty intolerant of people who don’t work hard to meet these standards.
Another motivator in my life was feeling disrespected or not taken seriously. Written off without the benefit of the doubt. It happened all the time at home and at school, rightfully so because I was kind of stupid punk kid. A big episode in my life was when I was in University. I ended up studying History, while most of my friends were in the elite Engineering or elite Commerce (aka business school) departments. There was one time when my Commerce friends were talking about something they learned in their classes. When I asked about it, they were incredibly dismissive. They said in a somewhat demeaning way, “You won’t understand, you are a history major.”
I was so angered by this. And in my quest to prove them wrong, I went to the library and read every single copy of “Business Week”, “Fortune”, “Forbes” magazine and at least 30 best selling books in business that year. This incidentally was what sent me down the path in the business world. I fell in love with the stories, the excitement and potential impact that a well run business has on people and society. Plus the money helped and its ability to allow you to keep score. Hard to argue with having lots of money in the bank.
I was able to channel this feeling of being disrespected into something that was overall very positive. In fact, that has fed my own personal growth for the last 30 years at least. And with some pride, arrogance and satisfaction, looking through Linkedin recently, qualitatively and quantitatively, I have completely crushed all of those folks back in University and the peer group I grew up with from a business career perspective. These traumas are incredibly powerful if they can be harnessed well.
But I should note, if these traumas are not managed or controlled, it leaves a very unhappy soul. Even when you do hit all those external and internal targets. In fact, the minute you hit these targets, you are on to the next target and a brand new, higher level peer group. This is not necessarily a bad thing. But for me, I find it impossible to stop as there is always a new higher level to hit. It’s a switch that is very hard to turn off, as it’s so deep inside you. And it can be personally destructive if you don’t recognize and work on it. What’s the point of having some success if you can’t enjoy it?
Understanding and conquering these traumas are the key to personal happiness. This is something I’m still working on. So my recommendation? Start the introspection early, get professional help if you can afford it and begin the hard work of working on yourself. It’s really important to identify those small traumas in your past and to learn to live and deal with them. The sooner you do so, the sooner you will be more effective and happy in most aspects of your life.
Why is Everyone So Angry?: Behavioral Psychology in the time of Pandemics and Lockdowns
We’re almost 2 years into an ongoing global pandemic. Have you noticed the level of anger and incivility in both the online and offline spheres? We see this on Twitter, in the media, in our day to day life walking to the grocery store. “Karen” behavior abounds everywhere (for those who don’t know what a Karen is: it is a “pejorative term for a white woman perceived as entitled or demanding beyond the scope of what is normal”. In some cases, this has sparked off into violence or close to it. Think about the sudden sources of scarcity in toilet paper, or canned foods or pasta in the beginning of the pandemic Q1/Q2 of 2020. And the crazy overreaction many of us have had to otherwise small petty little things.
What is going on? I was talking with a VC friend and he had a good observation that it is certainly due to the strange circumstances we are experiencing globally. Many of us fortunate folks have been used to this world of abundance and freedom of going anywhere and anytime. With the shutting down of travel, mass lockdowns, the lack of social contact, supply chain issues leading to a reduction of products in stores and the economic uncertainties we’ve undergone, we've been put in a constant state of “Fight or Flight” mode. Fight or Flight “is an active defense response where you fight or flee. Your heart rate gets faster, which increases oxygen flow to your major muscles. Your pain perception drops, and your hearing sharpens. These changes help you act appropriately and rapidly.”(Source: Healthline, 2021)
This is an important function on how we deal with stress and danger. But the problem is we are not supposed to be in this mode for a sustained period of time. It wears on the body and mind very heavily. We have now literally been in a constant state of “Fight or Flight” for almost 2 full years now. No wonder so many of us have been strained to the limit despite comparatively comfortable material lives (especially to those who have gone through war, or famine or massive economic downturns.) Everyone is like a rubber band pulled to the limit and about to snap.
And the scary part of this is the pandemic and the consequent government reactions are not done yet. Many parts of Central Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand shut down again in the winter of 2021. So we are not out of the woods yet as they say.
Why do I write about this? I do this to help us understand what’s happening around us and how this could be affecting us personally. This is so we do not overreact to what could be a very small things in the bigger scope of life. Things like the rude jerk in the grocery check out line. Or the Driver cutting you off on the road. Or the rude post office clerk serving you. This is something I have certainly noticed that trigger me & sets off my fearsome temper. Meditation, measured breathing and exercise have been personally very helpful to me for managing myself for these situations.
We need to be more patient, civil and kind to each other and understand that we are all going through this together. For the first time in a long time, we literally are all in it together. It’s also the only way we will get out of this mess too.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Jan 2nd, 2022
“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step”--Martin Luther King, Jr.
"this is an actor who built a Hollywood career playing as gritty and heavy as you can get: a copper-coiffed and upsettingly horny Bond villain (Skyfall), a tormented priest experiencing a dark night of the soul (To the Wonder), a quadriplegic fighting for his right to assisted suicide (The Sea Inside), a terminally ill street hustler rushing to settle his affairs for his young children before he dies (Biutiful), the murderous drug lord Pablo Escobar (Loving Pablo). What happens when a celebrated actor known for exploring the bleakest corners of the human psyche and its most base passions decides to start belting out musical numbers?
Bardem’s face, one of the most distinct in cinema, is made for gritty and heavy. Hooded eyes complement a Picasso-angled nose, fortuitously broken in a bar fight when he was 19."
https://www.gq.com/story/gq-hype-javier-bardem
2. Lock downs and Zero-Covid is an intensely stupid policy 2 years into the pandemic. Fundamentally does not work.
"Though economic knock-on effects are concerning for China and the world, a bigger issue might be the isolation of China. “If the rest of the world learned to live with Covid, is China going to be the only country that locks itself out of conferences, international travel, and students going there? They are going to pay a high price for going this path,” Dollar said."
https://www.vox.com/22850441/covid-omicron-china-lockdown-olympics-travel-ban
3. "In other words, trumpeting American freedom as a way to lure scientists permanently away from China will both reinforce the U.S.’ moral image in the world, and gather needed tech talent in a way that doesn’t encourage the sending of ideas overseas. Of course, that effort would have to be paired with vigorous efforts to present the U.S. as a place where Chinese people can feel safe and free from racial discrimination. That will require cracking down further on anti-Asian hate crime, as well as stepping up rhetorical efforts to make Asian immigrants feel like America cares about them and can be their family’s permanent home.
But it’s worth it. America needs talent to innovate and grow, and China has a lot of it. We can get that talent and burnish our moral credentials as defender of the Free World at the same time."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/can-we-actually-brain-drain-china
4. "Here we clearly see that talk of China’s massive navy is rather out of proportion. It should be noted that China’s fleet relies disproportionately on smaller classes of ships, like the frigate and corvette, which are widely considered not to be major surface combatants. Even still, the bulk of its numbers advantage comes from its coastal patrol ships which, while not insignificant, have limited capacity to project power beyond China’s near seas. Further, the United States maintains a massive carrier advantage.
While the United States does remain the primary guarantor of security for states such as Japan and South Korea, they are by no means helpless. Indeed, the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force maintains one of the largest surface fleetsin the world, containing 51 major surface combatants. Likewise, South Korea’s naval forces total 23 major warships, with eyes on major expansions. Nonetheless, the role of allied fleets goes largely unmentioned in U.S. national security discourse."
5. "Omicron probably is less severe than previous strains of Covid.
So although Omicron is burning through the U.S. population like a wildfire, there are plenty of reasons for optimism this Christmas season. A less severe form of the disease, combined with effective vaccines and treatments, means that we may be closer to the end of mass Covid death than it looked a month ago. Knock on wood. Fingers crossed.
As a coda, however, Covid’s economic impact will still reverberate around the world for a while. This is especially true because China is sticking doggedly to a “zero Covid” policy that almost all other countries have abandoned in the face of hyper-contagious new variants. That requires locking down whole cities whenever there’s so much as a whiff of Covid.
And because the world depends so much on China to sustain its manufacturing supply chains, that means more disruptions in the works, potentially adding to the inflation problem. According to reports, Xi Jinping’s advisors are begging him to drop the “zero Covid” policy, but the supreme leader remains unmoved."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/christmas-omicron-update
6. Still bullish on the USA but you need to diversify to other regions period.
"while the future of the USA and of the Western World is dark and will continue to get darker, the future for the world is actually very bright. While people in the West will be angrily complaining about how horrible everything is getting, most people in other countries outside of the West will be experiencing huge and dramatic increases in technology, lifestyle, standard of living, and income.
I’m not betting on the West, but I am betting on the world outside the West, and in a very strong way."
https://calebjones.com/betting-on-international
7. This is a pretty good framework to evaluate your business. Dude is weird but this framework is quite good.
https://calebjones.com/top-5-things-you-must-do-to-be-successful-in-any-business
8. "Many of these common questions stem from the belief that tech debt should be as low as possible and close to zero. But, companies and products never win by having as little as possible tech debt. Speed to delivery, being first to market, and constantly adding value to the product are things that lead to winning. And, most tech debt can make sense to accumulate as a tradeoff in order to get more of the things that lead to winning.
Just like with debt in real life, if you take on debt right now, you can get something of higher value today and pay it off over time. This means you should view tech debt as a strategic lever for your organization's success over time."
https://www.reforge.com/blog/managing-tech-debt
9. "The pattern of mainstream culture neglecting the people who started the trend or fad isn’t that surprising when you consider that gatekeepers, tastemakers, and critics have tended to skew white and male. But social media and the internet have been leveling the playing field by giving people — young people, people of color, women, LGBTQ people — a place to gather and be heard.
The internet makes the line that separates fads and mainstream culture incredibly thin. Even niche corners of the pop culture landscape feel five seconds away from becoming swept up by the masses. A fad is so quickly adopted that it’s almost futile to fight it; by the time a hater has heard of it, chances are so have many millions of fans.
Something odd is happening: People you may have thought were chic and hip are falling into fads, drinking the popular drink that’s all over Instagram, reading the novel a celebrity promoted in their book club, or wearing that overpriced shoe everyone has — and people you thought were dorky may now be trendsetters, pioneering viral recipes from their mom’s kitchens on TikTok. It’s all strange in this moment, and even I, who might scoff if one of my friends ordered an espresso martini, understand it.
It’s indicative of how the pandemic may have changed all of us. It’s made people a little more earnest about what they do like and won them a bit more slack. Given the litany of bummers over the past year and a half, we’re entitled to a little bit of that.
Over the pandemic, as I watched friends turning into plant dads, knitters, bread bakers, and cat moms, I began to realize that these fads and trends were bridges to human connection, allowing us to build communities that we might not have otherwise. Granted, some of these hobbies are much more permanent and carry more commitment than others (say, making the photogenic Dalgona coffee is a lot less investment than getting a pet), but the end result is the same. There’s a second level of enjoyment unlocked by joining and participating in a community."
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22822997/fads-pandemic-dalgona-coffee-disco-peloton
10. This is such a great interview with one of the smartest and original thinkers on the planet. Balaji S. A Must listen to if you want to understand the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF1qrAzAquw
11. This is a good description of the lack of vitality and mess that America is in right now.
"Why does it matter that young people have a voice in tech and culture? Because young people are our most dependable source of new ideas in culture and science. They have the least to lose from cultural change and the most to gain from overthrowing legacies and incumbents.
The philosopher Thomas Kuhn famously pointed out that paradigm shifts in science and technology have often come from young people who revolutionized various subjects precisely because they were not so deeply indoctrinated in their established theories. One of the revolutionaries he mentioned, the physicist Max Planck, quipped that science proceeds “one funeral at a time” because new scientific truths thrive only when their opponents die and a new generation grows up with them."
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/12/america-innovation-film-science-business/620858
12. This is a boss level framework for creators. Who doesn't want to become a mogul?
https://trapital.co/2021/12/20/the-overlooked-levels-of-the-creator-economy
13. "Finally, in February 2021, the NFT market roused from hibernation—and went crazy. In July, OpenSea processed $350 million in NFT trades. That same month, in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz, it raised $100 million in venture capital at a $1.5 billion valuation. In August, as NFT hype (and FOMO) reached a fever pitch, volume spiked tenfold to $3.4 billion—an $85 million commission windfall for OpenSea in a month when it likely burned less than $5 million on expenses.
Although transactions have since retreated to around $2 billion a month, the platform now has 1.8 million active users and a dominant share of the market. It’s up to 70 employees and is scouting for dozens more, including much-needed customer service reps."
14. "Fundamentally, the growth of DAOs has been driven by many of the same tailwinds that Web2 communities are experiencing. Amid rising loneliness, people are increasingly searching for connection within digital communities — a trend that was only accelerated by pandemic lockdowns. On top of this, people are dramatically rethinking their relationship with work and consumer adoption of crypto is accelerating — all of which is driving more people into DAOs.
DAOs are not just another use case of Ethereum — they are organizations that give users a home to explore the entire Web3 ecosystem. Packy McCormick wrote in The Dao of DAOs: “If blockchains, NFTs, smart contracts, DeFi protocols, and DApps are the what, DAOs are the how."
https://lisamxu.medium.com/daos-communities-of-the-future-ca083eb88cb2
15. This is a great thread. India on the rise.
https://twitter.com/_shuvamJ/status/1475973667783790595
16. Wow, this is an eye opening interview. He is rightfully negative on USA, bit too optimistic on the state capacity of China. But lots of food for thought.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-852BsgNck
17. No surprise here. 2 years in: Zero Covid policy makes no sense.
Sadly this is still being hewed to across Asia & in Australia and New Zealand.
What a stupid destructive policy. Learn from Hong Kong & China who are wrecking themselves.
"With China exercising ever-tighter control over Hong Kong, the city is hewing to the country's strict "zero covid" policy extolled by Beijing as evidence of a superior political system. Yet the approach has largely cut off Hong Kong from both China and the world - a severe blow for a place that built its success on global connections. Even more than recent political changes, the authorities' refusal to adapt to living with the virus is eroding Hong Kong's viability as an international city......"
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/hong-kong-clinging-zero-covid-132702302.html
18. If you are interested in Life Longevity, this is worth listening to. All 2 hours.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9IxomBusuw
19. "Governments are not thrilled in these scenarios to take responsibility due to previous monetary or fiscal decisions. Instead, they historically blame corporations for price gouging, implement price controls, and even institute capital controls in the most extreme examples. The higher the inflation gets, the more severe the government’s response tends to be.
The United States is experiencing nearly 7% inflation and we see our politicians calling out various industries, from beef producers to grocery stores, in regards to alleged price gouging. If history serves as a guide, it is unlikely that the corporations are actually price gouging. It is much more likely that their labor and material costs have drastically increased, so they need to raise their prices in order to still have any profit."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/price-gouging-price-controls-and
20. This is a bit dark but I definitely have come around to this view. And my awakening also happened on the same timeline as my friend Tucker.
I definitely am a Doomer Optimist myself. Worth a read here, especially if you live in the USA.
https://www.tuckermax.com/doomer-optimism-what-i-see-coming-how-im-preparing
21. Super interesting idea. Useful for all startup investors. Hope someone is working on this. MirrorTable versus the traditional Cap Table.
"As motivation, angel investing is through the roof. With the physical decentralization of technology away from Silicon Valley, the simultaneous acceleration of many tech trends, and the money released by a slew of liquidity events, there are more high net worth individuals writing more checks into more tech startups in more countries than ever before."
https://balajis.com/mirrortable
22. Very excellent tech industry predictions here for 2022. Some of the best I've read. Recommend.
https://kellblog.com/2021/12/27/kellblog-predictions-for-2022
23. Learned something new. Always found Shen Yun to be kind of creepy (although I like their anti-CCP stance, the enemy of my enemy is my not-enemy?).
"While their ultimate goals are certainly very different, both Falun Gong and VCs are betting that if they invest in customer acquisition now, there will be a long-term payoff. For VCs, that payoff is either that a) the acquired customers’ LTVs grow to the point that the businesses’ economics make sense or b) their investment exits before unsustainable economics bring down the company. For Falun Gong, that payoff is a growing number of adherents and a global understanding and appreciation of their worldviews.
Ideas are only as strong as the economic models supporting them.
Falun Gong and Shen Yun have the world’s most patient LPs - volunteers and adherents who are committed to changing the world. While Silicon Valley trumpets the same mission, VC LPs are not philanthropists, and they will only subsidize the products and services we consume for as long as they can reasonably expect a positive financial outcome."
https://www.packym.com/blog/shen-yun-startup
24. Drake is crushing it these days. Music artist, businessman and investor. We can all learn something from this guy.
https://twitter.com/TorontoStar/status/1476227545553059844
25. Word. Go where you are treated best.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2STCacvs3s
26. Hopeful news on the Covid Endemic front. Hope he is right.
https://twitter.com/Bob_Wachter/status/1476314067660722176
27. This is a great summary of business predictions for 2022.
Things Fall Apart: The First Step to Rebirth & Rebuilding in the New Year
This is a timely post as it’s January 1st, 2022. 2 years into the pandemic and everything has changed. We are in the midst of another Covid Omicron variant surge across the world: this pandemic has basically become endemic. All the trends that were set in motion almost 2 years ago are now mostly permanent and long lasting. Whether that is remote work, the movement of people to different states and to small towns, food delivery, growing digital life over offline life, Raging inflation and supply chain issues. A full breakdown of the geopolitical world order and the truly adult realization that no one is coming to save you. Not the media, definitely not the government. You can only count on yourself. Well, maybe also some of your family & some friends. Henrik Ibsen said: “The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone.”
Boy, did I feel alone. 2020 was pretty much the worst year of my life. The stress, the fear, the financial challenges, the isolation and personal family issues. Those 8 months almost broke me. But I did get through it. I fought through it and rebuilt myself as written in a previous post: https://hardfork.substack.com/p/going-to-monk-mode. Developed some new good habits like a regular exercise regime, better investing mindset, gratitude exercises and having an actual plan for life. From the great Dick Tracy: “A Man without a plan is not a man.”
Still, I think many of us were happy to put 2020 behind us. And also very hopeful of a return to normal and to the life we had before. But we have to face the reality. Everything, including ourselves, has changed dramatically and forever. This was a major wake up call for me.
And in retrospect, this hardship was a crucible that made me stronger, smarter, healthier, better and wiser in almost every way. 2021 was a great personal turnaround. Hard lessons are only learned through massive personal pain. Everybody wants a new beginning and rebirth. But they forget about the collapse & destruction that needs to happen before.
Basically, 2020 destroyed many of my old beliefs, ideals and views of what the world was like. More importantly it destroyed my ego which is usually the biggest barrier in the way of personal change and development. It was a necessary step for my progress.
This reminds of the famous Zen Koan:
“There was a Japanese Zen master named Nan-in who lived during the Meiji era (1868-1912). During his days as a teacher, he was visited by a university professor curious about Zen.
Being polite, Nan-in served the professor a cup of tea.
As he poured, the professor’s cup became full, but Nan-in kept on pouring. As the professor watched the cup overflow, he could no longer contain himself and said, “It is overfull. No more will go in!”
Nan-in turned to the professor and said, “Like the cup, you are too full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”
(Source: https://www.gloveworx.com/blog/simple-cup-of-tea-story)
This is no different than the beliefs and ideas you have in your brain. And this is also why so many old people have a hard time changing. They have so many hard earned lessons and when the world changes around them, they just can’t adapt. Or more likely do not want to adapt. I see this all around me. This inability to let go. It’s not a physical or monetary thing. This is the mental blocker that prevents them from moving forward.
So as we enter 2022 and the new year, If you really want to make a positive change and have a personal rebirth, take some hard action. Build good habits, read good books and learn some skills. Make sure you are willing to destroy some bad habits & beliefs, let go of negative people and your previous ideas that are holding you back. It’s like taking a wrecking ball to a damaged building and leveling it. This way you can rebuild it back better and stronger. You owe it to yourself. Now is the perfect time.
As Pablo Picasso stated, “Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.”
“Our Brand is Crisis”: Valuable Lessons from a Fictional Political Campaign
Sandra Bullock stars in this movie as “Calamity” Jane Bodine, a washed up American political campaign strategist who goes to Bolivia to help turn around the campaign of an unpopular ex-President. She ends up running up against her arch nemesis and machiavellian Pat Candy who is working for the leading candidate. And to quote the movie description “it becomes a down-and-dirty, all-out battle between political consultants, where nothing is sacred and winning is all that matters.”
This is easily one of my favorite movies to come out in the last decade. Something I rewatch everytime I take a flight as it’s often in movie catalogs. It did not do very well in the box office with less than $10M taken in, which is a shame because it’s an incredibly insightful view into modern day Democratic political campaigns. So many deep and cutting views into human psychology & behavior, social psychology. Also shows the power and ability of the media and the elites to manipulate and shape public perceptions for both good and bad. Usually bad I would say considering how many crooked and rich politicians we have in office these days across the globe.
But there is so much to be learned from this as a business person. A couple of things stand out.
The use of Opposition research for other candidates and your own candidate.
Wikipedia states: “In politics, opposition research (also called oppo research) is the practice of collecting information on a political opponent or other adversary that can be used to discredit or otherwise weaken them.”
This is very smart and is basically competitive analysis to figure out competitors weaknesses. This can be done on your own candidate to see where you have issues or potential problems. In business it’s called “Red teaming.” In fact, this is valuable to do for yourself & you need to be very honest here. Blindspots kill you.
2. “You don’t change the man to fit the narrative, you change the narrative to fit the man.”
There is a scene when the other political consultants want to make their Bolivian candidate be seen as nice and cushy, by apologizing for striking a man who smashes an egg on his head at a rally. Bodine, the main character, tells them to stop. The idea is to tap into his unlikeability, his seriousness and experience. The only way for him to win is to be more authentic and be himself. She states that "A man's strengths flow from the same well as his weaknesses."
I think we spend too much time pretending to be something that we are not. Customers and clients are smart and can see through this. Better to be yourself. (Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to fix glaring personal issues though).
3. There is a quote by her opponent Pat Candy: “You know, when Adlai Stevenson was running for president A woman came into him at a rally one night and said, "Every thinking person will be voting for you." Stevenson said "Ma'am, that's not enough. I need a majority."
The point is people are not rational. They do not always make the best decisions for themselves. They are affected by advertising, by the media, by other people and by their emotions. In fact, most major decisions are made emotionally and then they use their rational side of the brain to justify the decision.
That’s our job as business people, understanding people better, so you can figure out what they need, and hopefully help them while making money from them.
4. In rallying cry to her team and political staff Bodine yells at them. “Wake up, this is war. There’s only one wrong in this, only one, and that is losing”
The lesson: the side that takes the competition more seriously, usually does win. If the stakes are high, treat it like war. Life or death. Thankfully most of business and life is not like this and can be quite cooperative. But the point still stands. Like it or not, whoever wants it most and is prepared to do what it takes, will usually win.
There are so many great nuggets in this movie and I learn something new every time I watch it. The acting is also quite solid and the story is entertaining as everyone loves an underdog and turnaround. And it takes place in an interesting country that is unfortunately overlooked in the world. The movie may also give you a different view into the importance and messiness of the democratic political system. This movie is worth watching for these valuable reasons alone. I do recommend it.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Dec 26th, 2021
“I love the winning, I can take the losing, but most of all I Love to play.”--Boris Becker
"Everyone focuses on startup growth. What about this sales and marketing strategy? What about a freemium model? Should we invest more in this? While that deservedly gets attention, when startup growth is working, even more attention needs to be paid to personal growth.
So, how do you grow faster than the startup?
Invest in yourself.
Invest in a peer group.
Invest in learning. Find entrepreneurs you admire and read their books. Find authors that write about topics you care about and read their blogs. Find conferences and programs where you can immerse yourself.
Invest in a coach. Find a business coach that you meet with regularly. Commit to a program and process. Let someone else help you maximize your potential.
Invest in yourself in a systematic way. Carve out the time. Put in on your schedule. Make the commitment."
https://davidcummings.org/2021/12/18/personal-growth-startup-growth
2. "In SaaS 1.0 companies made all their revenue from subscriptions
In SaaS 2.0, companies embedded online payments and started monetizing the transaction volume flowing through their platform directly.
In SaaS 3.0 is an extension of that model to provide even more (typically financial) services to the customers on the platform.
The goal of the SaaS 3.0 model, especially for vertical SaaS type companies that serve a well-defined customer base (e.g., restaurants, eCommerce platforms, breweries, barbers, etc.), is to try to become the one-stop shop for their customer segment, including being the go-to for their lending, spending, protecting and operating needs."
https://tanay.substack.com/p/the-evolution-of-saas-companies
3. "To me, an "effective" homepage should be consistently producing signups.
People should be coming from google searches, word-of-mouth recommendations, review sites. When they land on your site, it should quickly let them know that they're in the right place. And then, they should be signing up for a trial.
Your visitor-to-trial conversion should be around:
0.75% - 1% (credit card upfront)
5%+ (no credit card)
I don't believe vague headlines, value-props, and sentiment-based "benefit-driven" work, but don't take my word for it; test your own assumptions!"
https://justinjackson.ca/vague
4. "We were talking about my approach to inversion when he mentioned Peter Attia’s “Centenarian Challenge” mental model of thinking about longevity. His idea is that people should start with the ambitious goal of being a healthy 100-year-old. From there, he lists a number of physical feats that this centenarian would be able to perform.
For example:
Get up off the floor with his support.
Pull himself out of a pool.
Pick up a child that’s running at him.
Walk up and down three flights of stairs with 10 lbs. of groceries in each hand.
Lift a 30 lb. suitcase and put it in the overhead bin
From there, you work backward and determine what that means you’d need to do at 90, 80, 70, 60, 50, and so on… to be on track to reach that goal."
https://boundless.substack.com/p/the-octogenarian-challenge-165
5. Agreed. Everyone needs to live abroad at least once.
"And ultimately, that’s the most important reason to live abroad — to reexamine your relationship to your own country. You’ll see both the good and the bad in your own country that previously you only thought of as neutral and normal.
Some people live overseas and decide that their home country was overrated all along, and decide never to come back. Others realize they love all kinds of things about their country that they took for granted before, and move back and feel happier at home than they would have if they had never seen the alternative."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/love-it-and-leave-it
6. "Let me save you a trip to the library and summarize them here in three simple sentences:
Your mental state controls your performance.
You can learn to control your mental state.
Ergo, you can learn to control your performance and can thus program success.
Learn the simple tricks to control your mindset and you stack the deck of life in your favor. It is a compelling and unfalsifiable logic flow that has stuck with me for decades. It was my ticket out of poverty and it cost me nothing.
We all have days where everything goes our way. We are in the flow. I call them green light days, because every traffic light seems to turn green as you approach. We tend to get a lot of useful work done on such days. All too often, we have the opposite experience in life. Nothing works, everything frustrates, and all lights are red. Not much gets done on red light days.
The key difference between those two experiences is usually an artifact of your pre-existing mental state. If you attack each day with positivity, hope, and good cheer, you usually end up with positive, hopeful and cheery experiences. If you slump out of bed annoyed, grumpy, and jaded, the world will give you a dark experience in return."
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/the-work-of-my-life-july-2021-report
7. "We are on the cusp of a significant mass starvation event of our own making. Soon, tens of millions of the world’s most impoverished people will die from an inability to feed themselves, while many of those comfortably getting by now – especially in the Western World – are in for a shock.
The leaders who put us in this position are doubling down on their misguided energy policies and will continue to do so until they are overthrown. I doubt they will go peacefully. Between now and then, they will use all manner of surveillance tools to spread Orwellian propaganda, misdirect blame, and crush dissent. Leading technology companies will greedily facilitate this modern incarnation of the Great Leap Forward, imaginary utopian ends justifying all manner of grotesque means."
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/starvation-diet
8. Another Africa focussed fund. Lots of activity happening there.
9. Don't know these folks but have been watching the amazing progress of South Park Commons for a while. Bullish on their and Ondeck's model. The New Guild.
"The connections lead to more than friendship and fresh ideas, seemingly. According to Agarwal, upwards of 50% of the organization’s members find their cofounders or founding employees within the community, which underscores another way that South Park Commons sees itself as distinctive.
Unlike a Y Combinator, which meets with nascent teams, or VCs who keep tabs on operational execs at big companies, SPC says it’s focused on capturing people who are plainly talented and probably much in demand but who, though they’ve left their last gig, aren’t immediately sure of their next move and mostly just want a little time to figure it out.
It’s looking to capture people whose next move is simply to freely explore ideas, squishy though it might sound. “We’re really like a learning community that helps people in the ‘negative one to zero phase’ get to the point of being able to start a company,” says Agarwal, “and if startups come out of that process, the fund invests.”
10. "I think of my house as a factory. The products of my factory are the health, well-being, and comfort of my loved ones. For most home factories, the four main inputs are goods and services, water, electricity, and natural gas. The two main waste outputs are garbage and sewage. My personal preparedness plan involves modeling my response to losing any of these inputs or outputs for various lengths of time. In the most extreme scenario, I believe I could guide my family through losing all six for at least 30 days, however uncomfortably. I figure if things get that bad, 30 days is about as long as I’d like to stick around anyway.
Under the category of goods and services falls food, medicines, hygiene supplies, and all manner of maintenance and repair work needed to keep a home functioning properly. What if Amazon stopped delivering? What if your pharmacy closed indefinitely? The plumber didn’t answer the phone?
Most people think prepping just involves storing hundreds of pounds of dried goods in mylar bags. I have nothing against that, but there are more practical approaches. The simplest is to just double the working capital of your pantry, medicine cabinet, and other consumables versus what you normally carry today. That alone will bridge you through most emergencies."
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/one-flew-over-the-preppers-nest
11. Reading this is infuriating. We are run by unserious idiots in the West, losing all our geopolitical advantages.
"Energy is life. Those projects will get developed. The geopolitical power vacuum we are creating will get filled. We might not be serious, but our enemies are ruthlessly so. They raise a toast to our self-inflicted demise."
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/putins-fools-rush-in
12. "As the opening quote of this piece captures so well, we live in a time where few understand how things get made. It is fine to not know where stuff comes from, but it isn’t fine to not know where stuff comes from while dictating to the rest of us how the economy should be run. In some small way, maybe this piece will educate a few influential minds to participate in a better-informed debate.
We are experiencing the early phases of runaway inflation. On what seems like a daily basis, we observe critical inputs into our economy going vertical in price. If you crimp the supply of critical inputs with no workable plan to replace them, inflation is the unavoidable outcome. Energy is stuff. Energy is life. What’s the price elasticity of demand for life, and who can afford to pay it?
Nobody could have seen this coming, they’ll say. We did."
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/where-stuff-comes-from
13. Don't read this if you don't want to get angry. It’s a long one.
So many issues and so many people responsible for the mess we are in right now. It's also why there is so little trust in almost all of our institutions in the west.
https://www.epsilontheory.com/first-the-people
14. The first Metaverse in history as a way to deal with a crappy reality?
https://www.apollo-magazine.com/emperor-maximilian-i-brand-arts
15. "Every year, just after Thanksgiving, it emerges en masse at nurseries, big-box retailers, fundraisers, and holiday parties.
It’s one of the most popular plants in the world, with annual sales of ~90m unitsand a global retail impact of nearly $1B.
But behind the beautiful, blood-red bracts of the poinsettia, there’s a story rife with geopolitics, patent wars, a dethroned monopoly, and complex supply chains.
How did this Mexican shrub become America’s best-selling holiday plant?"
https://thehustle.co/how-the-poinsettia-took-over-christmas
16. Pretty excited to check this book series out.
https://www.vox.com/22840424/daevabad-trilogy-fantasy-book-chakraborty
17. A very great perspective here. Looking into the new world of work and investing in 2022.
"Most importantly, do whatever it takes to begin earning location-independent income. 2022 will be the year that people start to separate from late industrial age practices and reap the benefits of the digital age. By earning remote income, you’ll be well on your way to taking advantage of many of these benefits.
Finally, think for yourself. You are responsible for the trajectory of your life. Embrace a Sovereign Individual mindset and pursue as many digital age opportunities as you can. 2022 will reward those that are willing to adapt to frontier concepts."
https://dougantin.com/2022-predictions-what-comes-next
18. "If you’re going to live for the next 60 years (most of you are), it is wise to go ahead and give up on the old belief system. Going to school and slaving at a 9-5 is on the decline. Trusting major corporations/governments to save you is also on the decline. Save yourself first, go through the binge degenerate phase and move on to helping the people who are worth saving (Note: you will learn that 97% of people don’t even want to get ahead in life, they prefer netflix and sugar)
On that note. Toss away your new years resolution list and realize there is no such thing as a resolution, only effort to improve yourself since it’s just a single player video game."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/winning-mentality-and-what-you-actually
19. I really really hope this does not happen. It's not good for anyone. Not for Ukraine, Russia or really any country if Russia invades Ukraine.
https://www.spytalk.co/p/russian-invasion-of-ukraine-is-almost
20. This is an interesting plan for being diversified and anti-fragile.
https://nomadcapitalist.com/global-citizen/five-flags-im-planting-in-the-next-year
21. This is pretty scary stuff. The Cyberwar going around us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8bbOUxYDqc
22. We have much to learn from Russia re: Counter Insurgency & Hybrid war.
"Today, Russian expeditionary counter-irregular packages draw from professional volunteer brigades and battalions, including force multipliers such as special operations forces, drone forces, military police, and private military contractors. When integrated with air power, these force packages allow Moscow to conduct sustained operations abroad with a relatively small and scalable footprint on the ground.
This ability to tailor force composition to create expeditionary counter-irregular task forces is new in the Russian experience, and represents a watershed in expeditionary mobility and command organization. The Russian kill chain is now shorter, its forces are more specialized and capable, and it retains the ability to rapidly scale Moscow’s investment abroad in a way new to Russia’s historical experience as a continental power."
https://warontherocks.com/2021/12/the-changing-face-of-russian-counter-irregular-warfare
23. "The reason that remote work is so threatening to a lot of corporate thinkers is that it largely devalues the middle management layer that corporate society is built on. When you’re in person, a middle manager can walk the floors, “keep an eye on people” and, in meetings, “speak for the group.” While this can happen over Zoom and Slack, it becomes significantly more apparent who actually did the work, because you can digitally evaluate where the work is coming from.
Remote work ultimately disproves the notion that anyone can be a manager. Management is tough, managing people is tough, motivating people is tough. It is really difficult to get the best out of someone, to find what they’re good at within an organization and then give them the means and motivation to thrive.
It is also equally tough to deal with how some people within an organization have a ceiling - they will never be better than they are, and giving them a managerial title (because they’re not worth more money) is an actively abusive thing to do."
https://ez.substack.com/p/the-work-from-home-future-is-destroying
24. "Aron’s behavior is the exception that proves the rule. No serious CEO with real prospects for profit would flail about on social media, stitching himself to whatever nonsense is currently trending online. They are too busy doing the serious work of capturing profits. Instead, Aron and his team have been busy dumping stock, selling more than $80 million worth and counting so far this year. Apparently, insiders at AMC aren’t so confident that a short squeeze is imminent.
In a Greater Fool’s trade, a speculator takes a position in a questionable security in the hopes that a more foolish investor will bail them out at a higher price. This happens regularly, especially in market booms like the one we’ve experienced in the past 18 months, and the ending is never different. Eventually, the supply of new foolish money dries up, momentum behind the movement fizzles, and the price of the security reverts to fair value.
The underlying business at AMC is in terminal decline, the capital table is wrecked, the stock has been diluted so extensively it would make a penny stock promoter blush, and we believe the fair value of AMC is zero. Could it double or triple from here before reality is confronted? Absolutely, which is why we have no position and have no intention to take one."
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/no-planet-for-the-apes
25. "Seriously, name me some wealthy guys who day-traded their way to billions—everyone on the billionaire list created an amazing company, invested in an amazing company, or financially engineered a mediocre company. Seriously, no one day-traded their way there. It takes a holiday, when I’m focused on hiking around calderas to realize how petty the day-to-day trading is. We all fixate on it and worry what the most recent quote signifies, but zero value is gained."
https://adventuresincapitalism.com/2021/12/23/azores-part-1
26. Really interesting and some "way out there" forecasts. Alt investments become mainstream & it’s about time.
https://altgoesmainstream.substack.com/p/7a0ed369-2818-4ba3-bf42-415e557c0c57
27. I'm a fan of Radigan Carter. This is a very interesting interview and I recommend listening to this if you want to learn how to be an independent investor.