Die with Honor: Think Long Term & Go Down Fighting
I have a lot of portfolio companies and the reality is not all of them do well or survive. I end up counseling many founders to make the hard decision to shut down their business. They are always surprised when I am supportive of shutting down. “Don’t you want your money back?” they ask.
I always answer: “Yes, of course. But I know the odds of success are very low. And I also know how hard and challenging it is to do a startup. I lose money, but you lose time. As long as you did your best I’m okay. I get most of my wins and returns from a very small subset of companies that more than make up for my losses. That is the game.”
I remember a VC friend of mine talking with his portfolio companies. “Die with Honor.” As long as you do your best, communicate well and shut down properly by taking care of your customers and employees, you will always be a backable founder. Past investors will be more than willing to invest in your next startup or help you in whatever you need.
This is why I am such a fan in general of the OG investor mentality in Silicon Valley. We are ultimately investing in the arc of an entrepreneur's career. To re-quote Maurice Levy of Goldman Sachs: “We’re greedy but we’re long term greedy!” :)
This is why transactional people don’t do well in the long run, whether as founders or investors. The money comes and goes. The lesson ultimately is to think long term, do the right thing and value your reputation, as that is all you really have. Be long term greedy!
Infinite Pacing: Activity & Inactivity, Rest & Recover to an Interesting Life
I remember watching a Jackie Chan interview on his methods and what he learned from Fred Astaire. If you watch any of Astaire’s old dance videos and compare this to Jackie Chan’s action scenes there is a lot of similarity.
Frenetic Movement & action, followed by a pause, then more movement. I think about this as I reflect on my pause in Vancouver this recent summer while visiting with my parents.
This goes back to my post “Work Like a Lion, not like a Cow: https://hardfork.substack.com/p/work-like-a-lion-not-like-a-cow ”. I’ve been running myself ragged for this year already with travel, conferences and lots of activity from my portfolio entrepreneur life.
I think I’ve been able to keep pace because of how I normally run my life weekly. 3-4 days of lots of calls/ meetings and work, followed by 3-4 days of reading, napping and chilling with the family.
It goes contrary to the industrial age teaching of hustle culture mindset. Working & grinding 24/7 all day all week for years on end.
Don’t get me wrong, you do have to do this hard grind sometimes, especially when you are starting your career as you don’t know anything! I did that for 18.5 years of my tech career. While lucrative and educational, all it did was burn me out at the end. Net net: it’s not a sustainable way to work in the long run. Perhaps this is why there are not many folks with real longevity and thus relevance in the tech industry.
Paraphrasing Naval: Be a Lion, not a Cow! Work intensely for short periods of time followed by breaks of training & preparation, preferably long ones. Just like how a triathlete or professional athletes operate. These breaks are an opportunity not just to rest but to retool and train. A chance to get in physical and mental shape.
My new model of work I’ve discovered is not just more sustainable but also more fun. The time of resting, lots of reading, writing & thinking helps you become a more interesting person when you do actually go meet people or go to events or conferences. You have an actual informed point of view on ideas and the world.
Think of the many super successful people you have met, who are also the most boring, uninteresting and also worn out individuals ever. It’s really sad actually. It’s like that old Bob Marley quote: “Some people are so poor…All they have is money.” This is endemic in Silicon Valley and Wall Street.
Don’t be like these people! And the path to not being these people is pacing. Travel, have hobbies, do lots of cool & fun things. But also make sure you take the rest breaks so you can process and reflect on these experiences too.
Life is meant to be impactful but it should be interesting too. Many people seem to have missed this point completely.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Oct 16th, 2022
"Belief creates the actual fact."— William James
This is great news for Ukraine! Kerch bridge is DONE & hence logistics for Russia to properly support their barbarian criminal army!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I363uSKyAw
2. "But Ukraine has shown remarkable resilience in the face of a Russian attack that has deliberately targeted economic and infrastructure facilities throughout the country and not only near the front lines.
The Ipsos poll shows that the majority of employed Ukrainians in major unoccupied cities surveyed are still receiving their salaries on time and, for those that are delayed, the delays are usually less than two weeks. These data suggest that Ukrainians have managed to maintain a largely functional economic and financial system despite their pre-war challenges and the ravages of a brutal invasion.
Ukrainians have fought the Russian army and are driving it back with Western weapons and cash, but no Western soldiers. They are keeping their economy alive with Western money but their own expertise and ingenuity. Ukraine has shown in this terrible trial by fire its determination to make itself free and functional. That is an effort worth investing in."
https://time.com/6220447/ukraines-resilience-transcends-the-battlefield
3. "What I find most remarkable about these texts isn’t Elon — he comes off mostly OK in my view. It’s the people around him. It appears our idolatry of innovators has seeped into the minds of the uber-wealthy, sickening them with an uncontrollable tendency to fellate the cool kid for a chance to sit at his table in the cafeteria. “I would jump on a grenade for you.” If anyone ever tells you this, and they’re not literally in battle with you, it means they are a fan … not a friend.
The undoing of many powerful people is that they enter a hermetically sealed bubble of fake friends. Enablers, not people concerned with their well-being."
https://www.profgalloway.com/text-ure
4. "Output: surfing, deep work, writing, giving talks, advice, organize…
Input: focused discovery, research, workouts, deep conversations, reading…
You feed your mind and body in the afternoon and evening, letting your mind process everything new while asleep during the night, and then create the following morning until noon. Once you get into this positive and productive loop, the quality of what you create increase and you hunger to learn grows.
Now, reality doesn't always work on our schedule but small shifts in how we design our days can have a big impact over time. We need to shift away from the factory mentality where we show up for others at 9 am and check out at 5 pm to show up for ourselves in ways that builds long-term value on our own terms."
https://fewerbetterthings.substack.com/p/rethinking-the-daily-schedule
5. This is worth listening to. Energy is key. And the US dollar will be around longer than people think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpaLUb0abCk
6. Started reading this book "Chip Wars". It’s excellent and this interview gives you a preview on the importance of semiconductor chips and geopolitics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQHbC6KpxF8
7. Q3 was slow for Venture Capital. Q4 is picking up but we only have 6 more weeks left in year for any startup trying to fundraise.
https://tremendous.blog/2022/10/06/q3-venture-funding-slows-to-a-crawl
8. "Entrepreneurs would do well to seek new capital as an extension of the last round if the startup hasn’t made enough progress for an up round. When it hasn’t, and a down round is inevitable, it’s much more challenging, but all is not lost. Figure out the options, get capital in the business, and most importantly, get momentum back."
https://davidcummings.org/2022/10/08/the-last-round-extension-goal
9. This info should be taken as directional data in my opinion. But in general we are in downward trend and question whether Q4 will be substantially up.
"Venture funding for the third quarter of 2022 totaled $81 billion, down by $90 billion (53%) year over year and by $40 billion (33%) quarter over quarter, according to a Crunchbase News analysis. While funding for the most recent quarter will increase a little in the coming months as stealth fundings are announced, this is a huge drop in funding compared to prior quarters."
https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/global-vc-funding-pullback-q3-2022-monthly-recap
10. "Humanity now fights a two-front war. A war against an invisible virus (I know your Commander in Chief might have told you COVID is over, but viruses don’t adhere to election cycles and their economic impacts linger long after the last rapid-test clinic has shuttered); and an undeclared World War between US / NATO and Eurasia / Russia / China. The current policies of the fiscal and monetary authorities are driven by their attempts to mitigate the economic effects of these two conflicts.
Given that all politicians — elected or not — are focused on short-term myopic policies, they typically default to printing money to solve nearly all issues.There are very few problems that an infusion of cash can’t fix, which often makes printing money the easiest and quickest solution; it can be done immediately, without much discussion or deliberation.
The alternative — the long-term restructuring of our global economy — would entail immense pain for certain stakeholders, and would necessitate having an honest conversation about the true state of our civilisation. Both of those requirements are non-starters for our short-sighted political friends, so regardless of whether your government practises capitalism, communism, socialism, or fascism, they all inevitably turn to “printing money-ism” to paper over any and all problems.
America is self-sufficient in food, fuel, and people. China, Europe, Japan, and the UK are not so blessed. America can be an autarky if it pleases. As a result, the Fed has the luxury of being able to prioritise domestic political concerns regarding inflation over and above supplying the world (and most of its allies) with a constant flow of dollars.
A constant flow of dollars allows the rest of the world to print their currencies and still afford to buy energy in USD terms. It’s a relative game, and if the strongest player goes their own way, everyone else is left to suffer."
https://entrepreneurshandbook.co/contagion-cf3638417fe9
11. Understand how the system works. One Backed by the US dollar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FzgIfpZsPQ
12. Insanity. Shows how clueless the environmentalist movement is.
"In response to this unfolding ecological horror show, Greta Thunberg, Greenpeace, WWF, Extinction Rebellion, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), Sierra Club, and the Natural Resources Defense Council have mobilized millions of people to take to the streets across the Western world to demand the building, continued operation, and re-start of shuttered nuclear plants; the expedited building of liquefied natural gas (LNG) import and export terminals in Europe and North America; and expanded natural gas production in North America; and the beginning of fracking in Europe.
“The energy crisis and the climate crisis have the same solution!” shouted Thunberg to a cheering audience in Germany, many of whom had glued themselves to a nuclear plant at risk of premature closure. “We need to immediately expand the use of nuclear power and natural gas to prevent the burning of garbage, wood, and coal!”
In response, Germany and Belgium announced the continued operation of nuclear plants and the re-starting of closed ones, and President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the expedited production of natural gas and LNG.
I’m kidding, of course. No, what climate activists have actually done is the exact opposite."
https://michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/fanaticism-of-the-apocalypse
13. "The criticality of The English Project lays bare a rather self-evident truism: oil is inherently more valuable than coal. While Britain was awash in coal, it couldn’t power its airplanes with the stuff. Nor tanks, ships, or trucks. Coal has important but limited uses, whereas oil can be refined into gasoline, diesel, asphalt, greases, and all manner of useful petrochemicals. As the Roughnecks so ably demonstrated, the distinction can be the difference between victory and defeat.
The passage of time may have altered many things, but it has not disturbed that truism of inherent value. And yet, we observe today a most unusual development in relative prices across the energy markets............the energy price of coal is now higher than that of oil!
We initially pondered whether this might be evidence that the paper price of oil is being manipulated downward by the Biden administration, something many of our contacts in the industry have been saying privately for weeks."
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/a-lump-of-oil
14. Nigeria is an Interesting market to invest in.
"But, a few things were clear on my recent visit to Lagos. Demand for basic goods and services in Nigeria, such as foodstuffs, banking and payment solutions, as well as telecommunications, and building materials, are all growing gangbusters. That’s despite the country’s many macroeconomic and political challenges.
Sales at BUA Foods were up 72.8% in 2021 vs. 2020. At GT Bank they’re up 10.4% for the second quarter of 2022 vs. the corresponding quarter in 2021. MTN Communications has enjoyed five consecutive quarters of better than 20% growth, and Dangote Cement has seen six consecutive quarters of growth above 20% year on year. In four of those quarters, sales growth exceeded 30%."
https://globalvaluehunter.com/nigeria-economy-could-get-back-on-track/#jump
15. "So net net in all this, don’t panic. Cool heads in the WH. They are winning. But they are still willing to talk to Putin, and I think are sending exactly the right messages to Putin. He will use nukes if he thinks there are no escalation risks. The US just spelled out that they will escalate if Putin uses nukes. So I think this suggests less risk now of a mistake as Biden has been crystal clear with Putin as to the consequences if Putin goes down the nuke route."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/are-nuclear-risks-building
16. "While it seems a bit scattered there is a ton of stuff in here:
1) META going to shut down offices/leases - expect other firms to do the same,
2) META can’t even convert on Android/Windows despite having the data - not good for general economy,
3) real influencers will be revealed and the days of getting a $25K check for fake page views are dead,
4) the valuable brands/influencers will gain significant market share, 5) if you want to go far you need to build a real lasting group/community. Please don’t bother disagreeing since there are *ZERO* Fortune 500 companies with only one person running the firm and
6) Twitter will be the first test run of trying to change/improve social media operations."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/big-changes-to-ads-and-more-regulations
17. The fascinating story of Costco's 4.99 usd Rotisserie Chicken.
https://thehustle.co/the-economics-of-costco-rotisserie-chicken
18. This is horrifying and why it cannot be allowed to happen.
"What are the implications of a Chinese Communist Party victory for the future of American-style democracy? What would that mean for humankind?
Today it seems unthinkable, but it may be coming: totalitarianism expressed through a state-run, artificial intelligence system that knows billions of people better than they know themselves. What would that even look like? To avoid the numbness that comes with abstract, hypothetical thinking, open up your mind and make it a personal vision. Imagine you are part of the next generation. It’s you that’s being born into a future where China’s government has AI supremacy and global domination."
https://www.19fortyfive.com/2022/10/what-if-china-wins
19. 2015 called & want their business model back. Accelerator programs are irrelevant.
https://www.axios.com/2022/10/08/on-deck-startup-accelerator-slump
20. “In Europe, only 8 percent of investors have worked in a fast-growing tech company.” Hinrikus explains. “We are decades behind the US. Founders have a brain configured for what life for entrepreneurs is like. There are too many investors asking why legal costs are higher this quarter than last quarter. That [sort of thing] doesn’t make or break a company—but ex-founders can zoom in on the things that matter.”
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/investor-entrepreneur
21. Hope more Russians come to this conclusion soon.
22. "Putin has nothing to say about the future. He seems to have no idea of what Russia itself might be, as a state or a society, beyond the conflicts that his own mysticism is supposed to sanctify. His references to the past as it wasn't leave open the question of what "Russia" is or might become.
Catherine, at least, had an idea behind her imperialism: that the Russian Empire was joining general European practices and becoming a European empire, complete with a handy link to the ancient Greeks.
Putin, who presents his wars for Crimea and for Ukraine as part of a larger death struggle with the West, does not even have that. His imperialism is for its own sake, or perhaps just for his own sake. His profound mischaracterizations of the past, leading as they do to absolutely nothing, are the slippery edge of an abyss, into which contemporary Russia itself is falling."
https://snyder.substack.com/p/russias-crimea-disconnect
23. "The survival of your people in the true struggle depends on your ability to excel in war. The Ancient Greeks loathed War. They also had to endure great and terrible hardships in their lives because of the consequences of war. Despite this, they were good enough at war that we still admire them today. We have given the Spartans immortal fame for their stand at Thermopylae. The Spartans themselves believed they were descended from the demigod Herakles who himself is a hero who’s passed through the ages. And we remember them precisely because of War.
The right nature is the one that honors War as Father. Not only because it ensures the survival of our people, but it’s in our blood. We were selected for our ability to wage war. The ultimate trade for the ultimate practitioner. There is a reason mankind has become the ultimate disciples of War. His bloodied sword guides us toward some greater purpose.
Where the Ancient Greeks despised War, the Romans revered him. They did not have the kind of flash and finesse of the Greeks at the time. They were a manly and warlike people facing threats on their borders. They saw the world through War. This is the better attitude to take and the reason why the Roman Empire lasted so long."
https://resavager.substack.com/p/war-is-father
24. "Big picture is Tech and Mortgage *Brokers* went bust first. This hasn’t caused layoffs yet in the rest of the industries (payments, Wall Street, Accounting and even Law since they usually help set up firms) are all going to see cuts. Sure there will be pockets of good but the big trend is going to be downsizing, more automation and a big waiting game. Eventually the sellers of homes will be forced to blink so at this point we’re about 10% of the way into a buyers market (using that chart above it means don’t bother yet).
Bonus - Pivot and Deflation: Is there potential for deflation in a year or so. The answer is actually YES. The problem is that people are assuming this happens a lot sooner than expected. For deflation in pricing you need to have unemployment go up. The reasoning is simple. As long as people are getting paid, they will still be able to cover all their stuff: mortgage payment, expensive dinners etc. When the paycheck goes away *then* and only *then* are tough decisions made (selling that vacation home, selling that extra car etc.)."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/were-at-the-finger-pointing-stage
25. Important discussion on China peaking and the fact that they are in big trouble. This is also why we might be at risk for war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j17r6wJvzLk
26. "To simplify life, reduce what’s easy and focus on what’s hard. What’s easy everyone can do, what’s hard only a few. Make the hard look simple."
https://fewerbetterthings.substack.com/p/the-path-towards-mastery
27. "2022 What Changed? In 2022 a few things have changed. We’ve made some significant adjustments. First M&A is no longer the best option. Back in 2010 it was one of the best options since we were coming out of a recession, deal activity was okay and the hours were lower if you did some socializing and figured out how to avoid the sweatshops. At this point the rank order is: 1) Tech, 2) Sales and 3) Investment Banking M&A - ECM and DCM should still be avoided since limited skills are developed.
The second thing that changed is remote work. If you can find a single remote job (even if it only pays $50,000 a year), you can actually slaughter the 10 year plan to a million and do it in 4-7 years with a high probability of success. You simply work that remote job for 1-2 years and use that to fund your WiFi biz.
The fourth item that changed? You have to be more patient and careful right now. With debt issues blowing up and deleveraging taking off, you want to make sure you have certainty in your e-com/wifi biz launch. Better to start out slow with some sort of consulting/time for money exchange in year 1-2 because budgets are going to be under strict scrutiny.
The fifth and final item is that you should heavily assume career path money is going to dwindle. This is a major issue for many people reading right now. It’s no longer possible to move up the chain quickly in the vast majority of organizations. Since numbers are down massive, the older people will stick in their seats for as long as possible. No one wants to pay up since revenues are flat or down. This means you have to create the upside in income *yourself*. Your boss doesn’t care about you."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/starting-from-zero-be-adaptable-and
28. Russian orc army is toast. Logistics matter.
‘The Guardian’: A Story of Mentorship, Transitions and Sacrifice
It’s an old movie about the elite Coast Guard rescue divers starring Ashton Kutcher and Kevin Costner. When it came out, I did not expect to like this movie. But it’s so well done: the actual training and the great cinematography. But at heart it’s a great story. Senior Chief Randall played, by Costner, is a veteran elite diver, sent to be an instructor at training school after an accident in the field kills his crew. He is recovering and trying to get back into mental and physical shape after his traumatic experience. He runs into a cocky but very talented young trainee named Fischer played by Kutcher. After a rough start, they develop respect and Randle becomes his mentor in the way. It’s a story of struggle, overcoming challenges both mental and physical but also of friendship, service and sacrifice. It really draws you in.
I love and respect the inspiring ethos of the US Coast Guard: “So others may live.”
So many great scenes here but the one that stands out to me.
When the class finishes their final test, the head instructor tells them.
“I have high hopes for this class.”
Then he looks at his mentee & says “I have high hopes for you.”
I have been so fortunate in my life and career to run into and have good mentors. Especially ones who have done what you want to do and really do care and look for you. They are also ones who push you to be the best you can be. They see something in you that you can’t yourself.
I am grateful to all of them. And I will hope to share the wisdom they shared with me and pass it on. I also take to heart some of the advice given. While I am not saving lives like coast guard rescue divers, I try to help as many people as I can. There is so much pain and suffering and tragedy out there that it can be overwhelming. It’s so overwhelming it’s easy to feel powerless and do nothing.
Chief Randalls advice here:
“Honor Your Gift: Save the Ones You Can….The Rest You Gotta Let Go.”
You do the best that you can.
There is another scene when Fisher asks the Chief:
“When you can’t save them all, how do you choose who lives?”
Randall replies: “Probably different for everyone. Kind of simple for me. I just take the first one I come to, or the weakest one in the group. And then I swim as fast and hard as I can and as hard as I can. And the sea takes the rest.”
Remember you can’t save the children but you can save a child. Start there. Good advice for life.
I’ll end with a final quote from the movie. “What makes a legend? Is it what someone did when they were alive or how they were remembered when they were gone.”
What Does a Growth Mindset and Tokyo Drifting Have to do With each other?: Never Underestimate People
The Fast and the Furious movie franchise has been one of the most successful movie series in the last 2 decades. All about a group of street racers and their adventures. But in my book, the best one is Fast & Furious 3:Tokyo Drift which introduces a new character and takes place obviously, in Tokyo.
This movie is a classic story: Sean Boswell is the ultimate outsider, never fitting in anywhere in the USA and getting in trouble through illegal street racing until he ends up in Japan with his dad to stay out of Juvenile detention. Here he discovers the Japanese street racing scene with their unique drifting style. Of course, he ends up falling for the girl of the main villain Takashi aka Drift King & races him. Sean loses badly and smashes up the very expensive car he borrows. Complete disaster. But he is quickly taken under the wing of the ultra cool Han (Sang Kang) who mentors him in the way of drifting and life. He eventually triumphs and wins both the girl and big race in the end.
Not the best synopsis here but it’s to give context to my main point. His opponents destroyed him so badly in the first race they never took him seriously afterwards. A fixed mindset. But they never saw Sean train so rigorously in drifting. He improved so much that he won both against DKs cousin and then even DK. They underestimated him. While Sean was able to tap into his humiliation and wrecked ego to push himself & win in the end. He had a growth mindset as per Carol Dweick.
There is direct relevance here to startups, to investing in startups and people. People with growth mindsets win. People with fixed mindsets stall out in life. Frankly speaking, I find people who have had success too early in life tend to have fixed mindsets, as they don’t want things to change. It’s the one who has faced loss or humiliation that tends to want to change. Watch out for these folks.
This is why I usually don’t invest in founders whose first startup has done incredibly well ie. a big exit. Because they usually have lost the fire & hunger to win they once had. They usually tend to draw the wrong lessons from their success and more often than not, are arrogant and stop learning. This kills startups.
This is also why I prefer to get to know founders over time where possible, which is not always doable these days. But it’s important both to build a relationship as you will be entering into a long term business partnership together. It is also to see how they progress and learn & recover from setbacks. As I tell many founders, I don’t care so much about traction but the traction definitely shows me they are growing and learning along the way.
The key point is never underestimate people, especially if you are on the top. In fact, never underestimate countries, especially ones made up of hungry smart people. Never count someone out. People can always surprise you as it’s in the human condition to grow.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Oct 9th, 2022
"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."--Winston Churchill
Words of wisdom to prepare for the upcoming next few quarters of pain.
"In Short, to keep it simple. Assume that you will be down 10% or so in total after tax income. This will help you reset your budget mentally for the next 12 months. Q4 and Q1 will not be good. So. Don’t tell people you’re doing well if you survive the cuts."
"....focus on the big one-time costs and avoid penny pinching items that you need to improve your financial position over the next 5-10 years. If you fall behind on important things like software/AI you’re dead in the water when it comes to your business anyway."
Self Care: The biggest “zag” is to take care of your health. During downturns people gain weight, develop health issues and generally let stress decide their mood on a day to day basis. This isn’t healthy. Use that free time to calmly think, plan and prioritize for the future. It won’t be “down only forever”. It will be down only until everyone agrees that it’s a terrible economy. At that point, we’re at/near bottom."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/set-reasonable-expectations-during
2. "There are a few principles that if strictly adhered to will contribute the most to your sales success:
-Always Control the Frame
-Always be High Status
-Focus on their PROBLEMS not your solutions
-Always quantify their business problems
-Always find out their personal motivations
The closer you follow and implement these 5 principles, the better off you will be."
https://bowtiedsalesguy.substack.com/p/what-moves-the-needle
3. A very solid discussion on various businesses today: Sanrio & the richest man in India! "Not Investing Advice."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g0cu9QTpIU
4. Net net the Russian barbarian army is toast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqVjUOvp_04
5. This looks really good! Yellowstone season 5.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkQmKIKt1zk
6. "So, now is not the time to prepare for a Ukrainian Victory. It is time to prepare for a world where the superpowers are all experiencing de-centralization and re-localization of politics and geopolitics.
This is all short-term extremely alarming and long-term probably seriously positive for the world economy. We may now be on the brink of a wave of economic and political forces that can generate much more economic growth, much more innovation, and much more disinflation if not deflation. When the Soviet Union supposedly fell, billions of new workers came into the world economy and pushed down wages and prices. This is about to happen again but on a larger scale and with better connectivity and technologies to support it this time.
When China entered the world economy after Deng Xiaoping gave the Chinese permission to be capitalists, China and its neighbors also lifted the performance of the world economy while killing off inflationary pressures. A repeat of this labor/innovation event is exactly what the world economy needs. Bill Ackman is right when he says immigration into the US would help reduce inflation. Worker immigration into the world economy will reduce it globally. If the superpowers are diminishing and devolving, then we’ll get a new peace dividend."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/the-ukraine-effect-relocalization
7. "As I pointed out in my most recent essay “For the War”, the recent past was one of economic peace between the two major blocs (US / EU vs. Eurasia / Russia / China). But using its Western European vassals, the US political elite is determined to stymie the economic integration of the Eurasian landmass. The Russians did them a favour by invading Ukraine and not winning quickly.
Now, the political elite can use the kinetic war in Ukraine as the casus belli for intensifying the economic war that was always going to happen between a descendant Pax America and an ascendant China and her vassals. In case you missed it, at the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization jamboree in Samarkand Uzbekistan Putin gave the Chinese everything they wanted in return for Xi not diplomatically abandoning Russia. We drankin’ Maotai, not Stolichnaya.
The war is raging in cold places like cyberspace. You can’t use Instagram in China, and if some US politicians get their way, you wouldn’t be able to use TikTok in America. If your passport is Russian, your Dollars, Euros, Pounds, etc. aren’t yours anymore. And Russia now only allows purchases of hydrocarbons in RUB, Gold, or currencies of “friendly” nations.
The global financial and energy system is balkanising and it will lead to intense pockets of inflation. In this scenario, a global currency operated and owned by and for humanity has infinite value. This is when the Bitcoin technology will show its true worth and buttress the right-hand side of the value proposition laid out above."
https://medium.com/entrepreneur-s-handbook/snippets-6eebdee2b069
8. This was a great episode: All in Podcast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU6QlvruLTw&t=2782s
9. "The current situation, however, is peculiar. In some areas, such as microchips, integration is disappearing. In others it is still flourishing. Chinese exports to the United States stand at record levels. American investment banks are rushing into China. Cultural exchanges remain strong. The two economies remain highly dependent in each other and no one can see how they could safely be broken apart. Europeans actually complain that American energy companies prefer to export energy to China.
One can only make sense of the paradox by drawing a distinction between two levels of action: the geopolitical and the economic. At the geopolitical level, actors try to concentrate power and will build all kinds of barriers preventing their own leverage from flowing elsewhere. Advanced chips, for example: since they are a source of geopolitical power, the priority becomes to prevent your geopolitical rivals from having access to them. In certain circumstances, energy might also rise to the geopolitical level."
https://brunomacaes.substack.com/p/some-further-notes-on-decoupling
10. "The more Ukrainian forces can move forward the more Russian assets are in artillery range. Ukrainian units are reported to be pressing Kreminna and may soon threaten the Russian positions in Lysychansk and Severodonetsk, taken in June after a long and costly (for both sides) struggle. There are also reports of a new push by Ukrainian forces in Kherson.
All this mocks Putin’s announcement, demonstrating that he can’t hold what he has just annexed. The qustion now is how long the Russian people and, most importantly, the members of the power elite, put up with this recklessness. Polling suggests that support for the war has fallen sharply."
https://samf.substack.com/p/putins-annexation-and-lymans-encirclement
11. "Renowned as the “ideal modern banking executive,” he had reshaped the very idea of American banking as head of National City Bank and helped fuel the 1920s bull market, which was now in jeopardy.
Inside the House of Morgan, Mitchell and bankers J.P. Morgan Jr., Thomas Lamont, and Albert Wiggin decided to go on a stock-buying spree to inject confidence into investors. The momentum spread at the exchange and, miraculously, the market stabilized.
Mitchell believed the worst had passed.
“I still see nothing to worry about,” he told reporters.
But that day was Black Thursday, and the next week brought Black Monday and Black Tuesday, the defining days of the 1929 stock crash, an event that signaled the beginning of the Great Depression.
A few weeks later, when the smoke cleared enough to assess the damage, several leaders pointed at Mitchell once again. This time, his status as the ideal banker meant he represented something far grimmer.
Senator Carter Glass said later, “He, more than any 50 men, is responsible for this stock crash.”
https://thehustle.co/the-banker-who-caused-the-1929-stock-crash
12. Another great discussion with Peter Zeihan. Worth watching this if you want a good view on geopolitics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPa1NvmER84
13. "I still think this ends badly for Putin - shot to the head from some Russian patriot in his entourage. There is opposition within the Kremlin - people like Patrushchev, former "rival" Sergei Ivanov, there is a cadre of more sophisticated career siloviki who I think could move against him as this gets worse for Russia and the Russian military losses mount. I think there are plenty of people who don't want to get into a nuclear war with NATO. I think the US is talking to these people, surely it is?
I still think here that we are approaching the end game in Ukraine, and for Putin. He has lost the war in Ukraine, there is no winning strategy there for him now - only question now is is if Putin loses Russia, the rest of the near abroad, remaining allies like China, his own life, as well as Ukraine.
End game for Putin. Hopefully not for us all as well."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/putin-boots
14. This is a good framework for startup valuations.
https://alexoppenheimer.substack.com/p/directional-valuation
15. "The global travel industry have lead us to believe that there are only two travel modes: business or pleasure. But I believe that there is a third: living on our own terms. This means to travel with integrity while being opened to new experiences and learnings."
https://fewerbetterthings.substack.com/p/on-conscious-hybrid-traveling
16. "It’s hardly a secret that this country is a HUGE potential market. Nigeria is a country of nearly 220 million people. Just under 1 in 7 Africans, and 3 in 100 people in the world live in Nigeria. The commercial capital Lagos alone, where domestic migrants flock seeking opportunity, has a population of around 17 million.
The population is also young. The median age in Nigeria is just 18.6. That compares to 38.5 in the United States, 38.4 in China, and 28.7 in India.
As a result, like most of Africa, between now and mid-century, Nigeria is going to see a huge spurt in the growth of its productive, working-age population."
https://globalvaluehunter.com/nigeria-may-just-be-the-cheapest-stock-market-on-the-planet
17. "As in an eighties horror flick, America’s political divide started benign, campy even, and has become gruesome quickly. However, it’s not a demon in a hockey mask that terrorizes us. The threat is not an outside malevolent force. In fact, the call is coming from inside the house. We need programs and investments that reinforce a basic truth: Americans’ strongest allies will always be other Americans."
https://www.profgalloway.com/house-of-cards
18. "As a generalist, your value proposition to potential collaborators is often a bit murky. Since you aren’t an engineer or a salesperson, people naturally want to know how you will make their lives easier. Expert generalists are able to answer that question quickly by adding what I call “Day-One Value.”
Day-One Value means that you quickly provide enough value so that your collaborators experience “the magic moment of working with you.”
https://junglegym.substack.com/p/becoming-an-expert-generalist
19. "The quantity of people that will do favors for you, and the magnitude of those favors, dictate wealth. That is the currency. Indentured servants, in everything but name."
https://variances.substack.com/p/fake-life-true-wealth
20. "I've listed a few here that I have seen consistently across gravity-defying companies. They almost always have incredible products solving meaningful problems in a market that is unstoppable. But there are others. My key takeaway from looking back on Figma as an example wasn't to say, "here are the reasons I nailed it." It's to appreciate that the very best companies have exceptional characteristics that you have to look for.
And no, I don't believe that these kinds of exceptional outcomes are the simple result of massive waves of free money from the Fed, or whatever hand-wavey macro justification you want to try and slap on it. Every business is operating in the same economic environment. And yet, some still become exceptional."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/the-reality-of-unrealistic-outliers
21. "It will be interesting to see what the weakest sovereign borrowers turn to as a store of value over time. Western countries may have the luxury to boot up the money printer in times of economic uncertainty, but it’s developing countries that ultimately foot the bill. In our view, bitcoin provides these countries with an option to exit, or at least, reset."
https://soonaorlater.medium.com/inflationary-vs-deflationary-shocks-5f64bd4e94bb
22. Slava Ukraini!
"Thus, the ISW said, this mobilization would not affect the war's course in 2022 and "may not have a very dramatic impact on Russia's ability to sustain its current level of effort into 2023."
"The problems undermining Putin's effort to mobilize his people to fight, finally, are so deep and fundamental that he cannot likely fix them in the coming months—and possibly for years. Putin is likely coming up against the hard limits of Russia's ability to fight a large-scale war."
23. "There are a lot of hidden “traps” that founders can fall into when fundraising. There are phrases that come across differently to founders and VCs, missteps that can lose you credibility with potential investors and phrases that immediately tell an American VC that you’re “not from around these parts.”
And then, there are the things that make investors go “hmmm…”.
These are things that won’t outright kill a fundraise, but can cause enough potential investors to pause that they can meaningfully hurt your fundraising funnel. They can cause VCs to turn down introductions they might otherwise have taken, to slow down their diligence process, or to archive your intro email intending to revisit it…but never doing so."
https://chrisneumann.com/blog/things-that-make-you-go-hmmmm
24. "The half-decade since has revealed both the audacity and naivete of Son’s strategy. Debacles with WeWork, Uber, Oyo, Zume, and many others have left Softbank and its investors bloodied. In August of this year, Softbank announced a quarterly loss of $23 billion, the steepest drop in its history. That followed on the tail of a $17 billion decline the quarter before; in six months, $40 billion in value had evaporated. This week, news leaked that Softbank intended to cut 30% of its Vision Fund team.
History suggests that losses of this magnitude are often fatal. And yet, in Masayoshi Son, Softbank has someone with a rare gift for raging against the dying of the light. Time and again, he has shown an ability to recover from seemingly irredeemable circumstances. Though few would be foolish enough to bet against Son, saving his company’s venture practice looks like a bridge too far.
How Softbank found itself in such dire circumstances is a story that traces the arc of every great empire. It is a tale of grand ambition and outrageous wealth, kingdoms and kingmakers, conniving aides and flattering courtiers, dazzling conquests and humiliating retreats."
https://www.readthegeneralist.com/briefing/softbank
25. This was a fun interview & discussion on international business expansion.
https://www.globalclassbook.com/podcast/episode22-marvinliao
26. Christian Bale is an incredible actor.
"Bale resists self-reflection, but it’s not hard to see that kid in him still: drawn to extremes, transfixed by reinvention, motivated by fixing what happened to his family, and ambivalent about what he had to do and what he had to sacrifice in order to take care of the people he loved.
It’s also worth saying that he resists self-reflection in an absolutely delightful way. His accent is nominally Welsh, the voice more musical and mischievous than it tends to be onscreen, and in that voice he will ask you if you have children. He will ask you what your hopes and dreams are in life. He will seek out other things you’ve written and ask you detailed questions about them, all in the hopes of not talking about himself.
Part of it, he says, is that he thinks that if people actually know him it will ruin whatever he’s trying to do as an actor; part of it, I think, is that he’s just genuinely not all that interested in the subject. What he wants, what he’s seeking, is obsession, or oblivion—the total erasure of the self. And let me say!…I recommend talking with people who are into oblivion. They are never once boring.
He certainly was never boring. And he certainly always taught me that being boring is a sin. And so maybe it did have some connection in there, you know? But I’ve always gravitated towards, you know, the fantastic dream that someone like Werner Herzog has, and how they go through it and the way they approach it and you just dig in. That reminds me of my father a great deal. Unorthodox thinkers who are going to go do it even if everyone is screaming that they’re absolutely crazy."
https://www.gq.com/story/christian-bale-november-cover-interview
27. Love the thesis of Sturgeon Capital. Very smart strategy and VC fund.
"While frenzied activity churns some waters, Sturgeon Capital backs adventurers headed in a different direction. The $275 million investment firm has succeeded by focusing on geographies most VCs overlook, including Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Egypt. Though these countries have several attractive traits and a combined population of more than 500 million, they receive some of the lowest venture funding per capita.
Pakistan, for example, receives $1.60 per person in venture funding compared to $30 in neighboring India or $34 in Indonesia. These are exciting, emerging economies, and yet competition is minimal. While executing in developing countries brings challenges, the last decades have seen unicorns emerge from many nations with similar issues."
https://www.readthegeneralist.com/briefing/sturgeon-capital
28. "Mobilization itself starts to look like a spear pointed the wrong way: is there a point in sending thousands of unprepared and underequipped men into what they increasingly know is doom? Putin's presupposition, of course, is that mobilized soldiers will either die or win; but if they flee instead, they become a dangerous group, perhaps ready for another leader.
And so we can see a plausible scenario for how this war ends. War is a form of politics, and the Russian regime is altered by defeat. As Ukraine continues to win battles, one reversal is accompanied by another: the televisual yields to the real, and the Ukrainian campaign yields to a struggle for power in Russia. In such a struggle, it makes no sense to have armed allies far away in Ukraine who might be more usefully deployed in Russia: not necessarily in an armed conflict, although this cannot be ruled out entirely, but to deter others and protect oneself.
For all of the actors concerned, it might be bad to lose in Ukraine, but it is worse to lose in Russia.
The logic of the situation favors he who realizes this most quickly, and is able to control and redeploy. Once the cascade begins, it quickly makes no sense for anyone to have any Russian forces in Ukraine at all.
Again, from this it does not necessarily follow that there will be armed clashes in Russia: it is just that, as the instability created by the war in Ukraine comes home, Russian leaders who wish to gain from that instability, or protect themselves from it, will want their power centers close to Moscow. And this, of course, would be a very good thing, for Ukraine and for the world."
https://snyder.substack.com/p/how-does-the-russo-ukrainian-war
29. Neat story.
https://simonsarris.substack.com/p/the-king-and-the-hermit
30. Couple more weeks until I am back in JAPAN!
Some food and grocery recommendations.
https://masakijinzaburo.substack.com/p/food-and-groceries-in-japan
The Agony and Ecstasy: The Blade Cuts Both Ways
I remember this specific scene in the documentary “RoadRunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain.” He is talking with a rocker friend Josh Homme about traveling on the road, feeling guilty and missing family.
Bourdain says: “It’s weird when I’m home, I’m ridiculously happy for a week. But then I start to get crazy and feel like I should be doing something.”
Josh responds:
“I call it the Bittersweet curse. Nothing feels better than going home. Nothing feels better than leaving home.”
I know exactly that same feeling.
I’ve struggled with this personally, having the privilege of building a relatively good career doing more international business travel than the average business person. It’s been immensely rewarding financially, emotionally and psychologically. Overall it’s been such an amazing experience. But it’s come at an enormous personal cost healthwise and it has had a negative effect on my family life too. Hard to build a deep relationship when you aren’t around.
I over-invested in my career. The result is I think I’ve become a pretty damn good businessman and investor. But this at the cost of what should be the most important thing in your life. 2 decades away from my aging parents and my brothers. Precious time away from my growing and beloved daughter & wife. I used to consider my family life something of incredible personal joy. But now it’s one of great pain & sadness, due to my own choices and decisions.
It’s like you spent decades building a house but it gets burned to ash because you did not take care of it properly. Or just took it for granted.
Yet, I acknowledge that this was the personal choice that I made and now have to live with.
I have regrets but they are useless as you can’t go back in time. A functioning adult should take responsibility and fix it if he can.
So you have to focus on the present and move into the future. Re-quoting the wise and super cool Han in “Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift”, “Life is simple, you make choices and you don’t look back.” Easy to say, hard to do especially for a history major like myself.
We always want what we don’t have. We think the grass is greener on the other side. But this is false.
Everything is a double edged blade. Most things in life are neutral. Things are usually never as good nor as bad as it seems at first. Sometimes removing the emotion lets us see things more clearly so we can deal with it.
Idleness is the Devil’s Workshop: Cursed are the Idle, Blessed are the Busy
My business partner at Diaspora Ventures, Carlos and I were talking about our circles in Silicon Valley. One observation is that everyone here in general seems unhappy despite the immense wealth and opportunity. They run on their hamster wheel trying to escape their own personal demons. This is what happens to type A individuals in an environment full of other type A individuals. Think Wall Street but more passive aggressive and introverted. Keeping busy so you don’t have to face these internal issues, something i admit was my first 19 years here,
Not having time to think is bad but the reverse is also very much bad too.
Too much time for children or for adults is terrible for you. You go nuts overthinking everything as our minds want to keep busy. You literally go mental. You search for distractions.
Even worse, if you have money to go along with a lot of time. If you have time but no money, there is only so much you can do. You are limited. With a lot of money, that is a different story as these limits are gone. Money is an enabler, magnifier and enhancer. You can go down some deep dark paths. It becomes very easy to take anything or everything to excess. Excess becomes toxic.
Think on how many 2nd or 3rd generation rich kids have ended up living useless or meandering empty lives. Grossly unhappy.
This is probably what led Warren Buffet to say: “I want to give my kids enough so that they could feel that they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing.”
This is why you have to have a great mission in life. This is why you need to have values of adding value and making an impact in your life. It is why you need to teach and embed this in your kids. This is also why you have to love the game you play and the process of playing. It’s healthy and keeps you out of trouble. This is also why you need to be busy but at the same time NOT too busy you don’t think clearly and run into a wall or burnout.
As the brilliant folks at BowTiedBull wrote:
“In the end, long-term readers of this side of the internet know that retirement is a dream sold to the masses. No one successful enjoys doing nothing all day (billionaires continue to work/do something well past retirement age). Instead, we should focus on a point at which *you* don’t have to work on anything you dislike! You’re still going to work doing something.”
(Source: https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/lifestyle-inflation-and-retirement)
I’ll finish with a quote from Benjamin Franklin:
"If you want something done, ask a busy person."
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Oct 2nd, 2022
"There is nothing impossible to they who will try."— Alexander the Great
This is a must read for anyone trying to explore entrepreneurship & a good guide to getting started.
"Nothing will give you more freedom and security than running a business you fully control.
A lifestyle business isn’t about getting rich (although it could happen).
A lifestyle business is about being free."
https://newsletter.invinciblesolopreneurs.com/p/how-to-build-a-lifestyle-business#details
2. Bravery is so rare these days, unlike back in the age of aristocratic warfare. Here is an interesting list of episodes from back then. Be inspired.
https://twitter.com/CallMeColletta/status/1570791729519030274
3. For all new startup founders who came up in the world last 3-4 years. This is a wake up call backed up by data.
"When you look at how much median valuations were driven up in the past 5 years alone it’s bananas. Median valuations for early-stage companies tripled from around $20m pre-money valuations to $60m with plenty of deals being prices above $100m.
If you’re exiting into 24x EV/NTM valuation multiples you might overpay for an early-stage round, perhaps on the “greater fool theory” but if you believe that exit multiples have reached a new normal, it’s clear to me: YOU. SIMPLY. CAN’T. OVERPAY.
It’s just math.
But we’re confident that valuations will get reset. First in late-stage tech companies and then it will filter back to Growth and then A and ultimately Seed Rounds."
https://bothsidesofthetable.com/what-does-the-post-crash-vc-market-look-like-ed81cd884021
4. This is really good stuff. Building your own self defense system & may be useful particularly in the USA. Think of it as insurance that you hope you never have to use.
"I will walk you through the evolution of my thinking on self-defense, what I tried that worked and didn’t, and what my self-defense system is, plus I’ll link you to every effective resource I know of so you can develop your own system.
Ideally, this post should save you thousands of dollars and months or years of wasted effort and time–not to mention, it may even help you protect yourself or your family."
https://www.tuckermax.com/my-entire-self-defense-system
5. "Between the time a seed-stage SaaS startup ships its MVP and closes its first few paying customers is the Wilderness Period. This is when you find out that your MVP isn’t really MVP.
You try to sell your minimum viable product, encounter objections you hadn’t anticipated, race to code the new requirements (the new MVP), and repeat. The Wilderness Period can take two months, two years, or forever.
That unknown makes this one of the most unsettling periods in a startup’s life, as the pure potential and excitement of building the MVP confronts the reality of not being able to find paying customers. Or as Mike Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”
The Wilderness Period ends when the startup finally makes its first few bonafide sales. I call this crossing the Penny Gap. But selling to friends and classmates doesn’t count; only unaffiliated revenue qualifies. And the milestone isn’t satisfied just by closing the customer, you also have to implement them successfully and turn them into happy references. In other words, these deals only count if they are potentially repeatable."
https://sacks.substack.com/p/the-wilderness-period-61f009c769ac
6. "Ballpark nachos are a concession stand staple. At Rangers games alone, 600k orders were sold last year, or 1 for every 3.5 fans. For all of Major League Baseball, that statistic would translate to ~13m orders.
And for every order, there’s one key figure to thank: San Antonio businessman Frank Liberto.
Decades ago, he added a twist to a popular Mexican appetizer and originated the concept of the ballpark nacho. If you’ve purchased nachos at a sporting event or a movie theater, odds are you’ve bought chips, cheese sauce, or jalapeños from the Liberto family’s longtime business."
https://thehustle.co/the-family-that-built-a-ballpark-nachos-monopoly
7. This is always a good conversation on the edge of the internet and creative world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UPXVwHRo0A&t=1572s
8. There are oodles of actionable sales wisdom here. Wish I had then we got started oh so long ago.
https://bowtiedsalesguy.substack.com/p/how-to-be-efficient
9. "I therefore do not share the pessimism of Tooze and Ferguson regarding Ukraine’s immediate economic situation. Yes, it’s good to be properly alarmed in order to avert problems before they become insoluble. But at the same time, it doesn’t seem accurate to depict Ukraine’s economy as being on the brink of collapse.
Economic activity is stabilizing, exports are rising again, foreign aid is pouring in, food isn’t a problem, fuel is being imported in sufficient quantities, inflation is high but still manageable, the hryvnia peg is holding for now, and the military situation appears to be improving. Ukraine needs to raise taxes, but if they make that one policy change, they should probably hold on OK.
And after the Russians are fully ejected from the country, Ukraine has a bright future ahead. Its grain exports will recover, its defense industry will be supercharged by the war and will transition to peacetime manufacturing, and it appears to be joining the greater East European information technology cluster. Foreign countries will likely forgive their wartime loans and provide reconstruction aid — already, countries are lining up to promise support.
The EU will probably offer single market access for Ukraine, which helped supercharge the economies of Poland and Romania in earlier decades. And Ukraine’s oligarchs seem to be declining rapidly in power and wealth— a sign that the country won’t return to the corrupt, dysfunctional economy of the 1990s and 2000s.
In the long term, I am very bullish on Ukraine."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/cautious-optimism-about-ukraines
10. A guide for anyone stuck in a big company job & trying to get out.
Protect your time, be in the top percentile of performance (not 1% but 20%) and work on your side businesses.
"Your career is the regular season, your WiFi biz and health is the playoffs. Don’t get them mixed up."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/basic-office-politics-moves-and-how
11. Good analysis on Putler's speech on the partial mobilization.
Basically stay cool, no negotiations, send more weapons to Ukraine and crush these Russian barbarian invaders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zfx7P1PVZoU
12. "You will never regret that you didn’t spend enough time online but you will regret that you didn’t spend enough time on the things and the people you love. Technology should liberate us, not enslave but only you can decide which alternative you prefer and what lifestyle you want to live."
https://fewerbetterthings.substack.com/p/digital-minimalism-is-a-daily-practice
13. "China is also sidling up to Turkey because it has a bigger army and more effective weapons than Russia. Turkey knows who the arms buyers will be in the future – China and its allies in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Turkey is now set to be the only member of NATO to join the SCO. Even in the murky world of gun runners, Turkey’s ability to play both sides and play with both sides is quite stunning.
Xi is well aware that Russia cannot seem to run its army or successfully recruit what they need. Russia’s efforts to convince prison labor to join the Russian Army are not going well. Russia has a standing military of 280k, including contract mercenaries, some volunteers, and a formerly bloated, but now heavily assassinated officer corps. Turkey, in contrast, has double that number and can expand this quickly. China wants manpower and technological capability. One can see why they’d swap Russia for Turkey. Turkey is hot now. Russia is increasingly out in the cold."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/hot-turkey
14. "We used to refer to an information economy. But economies are defined by scarcity, not abundance (scarcity = value), and in an age of information abundance, what’s scarce? A: Attention. The scale of the world’s largest companies, the wealth of its richest people, and the power of governments are all rooted in the extraction, monetization, and custody of attention.
Commercial exploitation of attention is not new. Humans have been competing for attention since the days when nomadic leaders argued over which branch of the river to follow and turning “content” into wealth since Aeschylus produced the Oresteia.
Oil was elevated by the invention of the internal combustion engine, industrial revolutions in mechanization and plastics, and the development of a Western lifestyle dependent on the mobility of goods and humans. Now the shift from atoms to bits — digitization — has put wells into pockets, on car dashboards, and on kitchen counters, drilling night and day for … attention."
https://www.profgalloway.com/attentive
15. "Maximilian’s heroism and the valor he displayed on the battlefield raises a very interesting question. How were aristocratic young boys like him raised to be able to fight in battles so young and to endure both the physical and the mental aspect of these brutal wars?
Obviously tournaments, hunting and similar imitations of war and confrontation played a role, and Maximilian enjoyed these a lot. But education for future rulers like him had already been geared towards physical training, strengthening of character and preparation of war since their early childhood, and tutors could play an important role as well."
https://aristocraticfury.substack.com/p/15th-century-advice-on-how-to-raise
16. "All across the ragged fringes of Russia’s sphere of influence, from Eastern Europe to the Caucasus and Central Asia, former parts of Moscow’s once-vast empire are in outright rebellion or being left to fend for themselves while the Kremlin focuses on its increasingly catastrophic war.
As it loses sway among its former subjects, new conflicts are breaking out, alliances are being forged and old rifts opening up."
https://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-fall-russia-empire-ukraine-war-armenia-azerbaijan
17. This is an excellent episode of "All in Podcast" this week. Especially the great discussion on the public and private markets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcGwHworAo0&t=1s
18. This is the latest Peter Zeihan talk. As always, I get new ideas and learnings about the geopolitical environment when I watch these.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA-jOLF2T4c
19. "Accelerating the pace and prospects for a decisive Ukrainian victory would be not only smart strategy but an act of mercy—mostly for Ukrainians, who deserve it, but also for Russians who do not. One may have sympathy for the draftees from impoverished, non-Slavic regions of Russia who provide Putin’s cannon fodder, but these are also the ones committing the barbarities and war crimes that have so marked the war.
One cannot say it too often: The Biden administration holds the key to making this war shorter, less destructive, and less bloody than it already is. The war cannot end—nor a just peace begin—without a Ukrainian victory that secures all of its sovereign territory. We can see this victory just outside the window now."
https://www.thebulwark.com/what-the-ukrainians-need-to-succeed
20. "The contract between a business and a worker to do X and get paid Y. It’s project-based work that isn’t compensated at an hourly rate but based on the value of a job that needs to be done.
It’s a career model that aligns well with the trends of the creator economy model.
That career model generally looks like this:
As more people participate in social media, they grow audiences around an infinite number of niche topics. Including professional topics.
Individuals with growing audiences realize that they present an opportunity to monetize a growing network in different ways. They begin to realize that remote work is a viable work opportunity that supports many different lifestyles.
And so, they look for ways to leverage global audiences to first establish credentials via content and relationships and then leverage these credentials to earn incomes from these niche communities.
What’s The Benefit For Companies?
A partially contract-style workforce can lower the hiring costs of traditional employees. No health care, payroll tax, office space, or other HR-related expenses. (unless of course, these are part of the negotiated compensation)
It means smaller commitments and businesses can turn these relationships on or off quickly."
https://dougantin.com/recession-proof-the-quarter-time-job
21. Great thread on the future of work. Remote and its ramifications.
https://twitter.com/DougAntin/status/1573645755914407936
22. This is a crazy good rundown of the Figma deal and Porsche-VW.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXkjtN2-huY
23. "Accelerating the pace and prospects for a decisive Ukrainian victory would be not only smart strategy but an act of mercy—mostly for Ukrainians, who deserve it, but also for Russians who do not. One may have sympathy for the draftees from impoverished, non-Slavic regions of Russia who provide Putin’s cannon fodder, but these are also the ones committing the barbarities and war crimes that have so marked the war.
One cannot say it too often: The Biden administration holds the key to making this war shorter, less destructive, and less bloody than it already is. The war cannot end—nor a just peace begin—without a Ukrainian victory that secures all of its sovereign territory. We can see this victory just outside the window now."
https://www.thebulwark.com/what-the-ukrainians-need-to-succeed/
24. I've been pretty vocal for YEARS about how crap Bird and the micromobility space is. Awful unit economics and no business model. It's turned into a VC pump and dumb scheme.
"Winter is coming. Literally. The scooter business is extremely seasonal.
I wanted to take a moment to eulogize the venture scale scooter business. We’re seeing the full unraveling of the blitz scale, cash-on-fire venture model.
“It was the beginning of that pure VC ‘herd mentality’ period,” remembers someone from the on-demand world. “Almost everyone was trying to tell everyone over and over the economics didn’t make any sense, but no reason for anyone to listen."
https://www.newcomer.co/p/scooter-executives-head-for-the-exits
25. "The war is far from over — the violence will continue; Ukrainians will continue to die. And so the West’s involvement must continue, too. There can be no retreat — either for Ukraine, or for the international order we have so painstakingly built over the seven decades, since the last time a tyrant unleashed industrial war on the European continent."
26. "So, just because you create within a certain vein doesn’t matter – that’s not what we want and that’s not what the world needs more of. Audience data shows we crave personality, it’s the logical endgame of what makes for standout, memorable media. What’s legitimately fascinating and unmissable is …you. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: no one can copy that."
https://adamsinger.substack.com/p/niche-overrated-personality-underrated
27. "Brooks, who began his Atlantic column in 2020 after 10 years as the president of the American Enterprise Institute, the neoconservative think tank known for its support of free-market economics, has quickly turned himself into a leading popularizer of happiness studies. In his eyes, he’s uniquely positioned as a messenger between academia and the self-help space. “The self-improvement people can’t read the literature, and the academics can’t talk to the humans,” says Brooks. “There’s a seam running through that.”
Brooks lives on that seam. He may not have a degree in psychology, but his Ph.D. in quantitative public policy analysis—“basically, mathematical modeling and applied microeconomics,” he says—makes him particularly adept at synthesizing scientific research and common sense wisdom into erudite life advice.
Typically he reads a dozen scholarly articles a week and metabolizes them for the general public, both in his Atlantic column and on his podcast, The Art of Happiness with Arthur Brooks. His goal, he says, is to build “a grassroots movement of happiness hobbyists.
His goals are not modest. “That’s actually how you change the country,” he continues. “Everyone is talking about politics—nonsense. Politics changes because people have hope. People have hope because they’re seeking happiness. So you have to start where the story starts, which is trying to simulate a happiness movement. Then you save the country. The ambitions are big.” Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic and a close friend of Brooks’s, underscores that point. “Arthur is on a mission,” he says. “And I think being on a mission makes him happy.”
https://www.gq.com/story/arthur-brooks-secrets-happiness
28. The Brosnan boys.
"Dylan and Paris say they’ve learned a lot from their father’s example – lessons about preparation, passion, confidence, showing up on time. And humour, Dylan says: “Don’t be afraid to make fun of yourself.”
That in-on-the-joke quality comes through in the elder Brosnan’s self--deprecating responses any time the conversation veers into craft talk. It’s always been key to his appeal. He’s there when the movies need a Pierce Brosnan type to put on a tux, but he also meets our need to see a Pierce Brosnan type be made to look silly (traversing a hotel lobby in The Matadorwearing nothing but boots, a moustache, and a pair of Speedo’s). He’s been pelted with fruit by Robin Williams, transformed into a disembodied head by Martians, and once sang Abba’s “SOS” to Meryl Streep."
https://www.gq.com/story/the-brosnan-boys
29. "There is no evidence for now that weapons are being moved into position or being prepared for such strikes. US intelligence, which has been extraordinarily precise so far can be expected to pick up any details (or at least the Russian would need to assume that). No effort has been made to explain to the Russian public why such strikes might be necessary.
After all Putin still insists that this is a limited operation and has refused to put the country on a war footing.
As we have seen Russian figures talk garrulously about scenarios for nuclear use against NATO countries but not Ukraine. We can also assume that neither of Putin’s recent interlocutors - Xi and Modi - would be enthused. This is a scenario largely generated in the West trying to anticipate contingencies that have yet to be reached."
https://samf.substack.com/p/going-nuclear
30. "From this perspective, I’m not traveling anymore, just living here with a few well curated things fitting into a light-weight 35 liter backpack. And I live with two interfaces: one towards the new physical reality and one towards the same digital screens, now blending into a new whole life experience.
Thus traveling is both the physical activity of going from one place to another and the spiritual journey of self-discovery. It’s shifting context to be exposed to new ideas, learnings, and experiences for the benefit of personal growth and self-awareness."
https://fewerbetterthings.substack.com/p/traveling-without-moving-is-called
31. This is an excellent interview with the brilliant Balaji Srinivasan. So many insights on the future incoming world + a great overview of his optimal schedule for productivity. Strong recommendation here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQpZSVCTZCo&t=766s
32. Another example of the idiocy in the European governments right now. Especially in light of the energy crisis happening there.
https://www.yahoo.com/video/why-europe-won-t-exploit-230000776.html
33. A good thread on the issues with Russian logistics and why mass mobilization will not help their war effort as much as people think.
https://mobile.twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1573783459537076225
34. Lessons from one of the best hedge fund managers around. Stan Druckenmiller.
https://twitter.com/NeckarValue/status/1573685872192622598
35. "For the West, there is a risk that, given Russia’s military position on the ground, mobilisation is met with complacency. In practice, however, it means that new Ukrainian manoeuvre units must be trained and equipped to counter new Russian formations in the spring. It also means that improving Russian troop levels will force Ukraine to expend more materiel to make progress.
There is, therefore, a need to reinforce success now by continuing to expand training and equipping of Ukrainian troops. There is also a need to transition defence industry to be able to sustain production of equipment and ammunition throughout 2023. This is both to meet Ukraine’s needs and to reinforce a deterrence posture against China.
The decision point to make such preparations is now. If those decisions are not taken, Western governments – like Putin – may find that when they come to pull the lever, there is a considerable lag between when the resources are needed and when they become available. The cost for Kyiv of such complacency would be severe.
It is also possible that if new waves of Russian recruits, forcibly mobilised, fail to improve Russia’s position on the battlefield, then the political backlash in Russia may provide the best means of compelling Moscow to shift its policy."
36. "It will be a Herculean administrative task to provide uniforms and training for 300,000 troops, find qualified leaders at the officer level, provide them with effective equipment, and get them integrated with communications and logistics. It will be months before a significant number can be brought to bear in combat. Then, almost certainly, they will become yet another wave of cannon fodder launched at Ukrainian positions.
The Ukrainians, knowing they may eventually be facing a much larger force, will prepare their own responses. They will be seeking (and probably receiving from the West) systems that can negate large numbers of foot soldiers: close-air attack planes, tanks and artillery, mounted machine guns, precision mortars and long-range surface-to-surface missiles.
The Russians being pulled off the street in this mobilization will face a highly motivated, extremely well-armed and very innovative foe in the Ukrainians. The War of Putin’s Ego continues, and many of these 300,000 poor souls are likely to pay the ultimate cost for his folly."
37. "Thankfully, however, the ‘VID-demic caused many of us to rethink the way our lives are structured. And many of us have taken action to make changes.
Many people took action to acquire residency in a more free nation, or to trace their lineage to see if there was an easy way to claim a second citizenship and passport. And for some, it was the simple act of diversifying cash and assets across multiple nations, to prepare for the possible unfortunate event of an economic calamity in their home nation.
And the great news is that unlike most of prior human history, many of these actions aren’t only exclusive to the richest segments of society. Almost anyone can get another residency, citizenship, or set up a digital bank account to store assets around the globe.
However, many of us haven’t paid attention to the signs. Or at least once the stress of the ‘demic subsided, just reverted back to their old patterns as soon as life began to return to normal.
It doesn’t matter what you do to create a backup plan. Just do something."
https://abundantia.substack.com/p/time-to-flee
38. A very interesting thread on medieval naval warfare.
https://mobile.twitter.com/LandsknechtPike/status/1573838412913704964
39. “There’s been a retreat by ‘tourists,’” said Hebert, meaning those investors who normally had not invested in hard tech and typically come in at later stages."
https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/deep-tech-funding-investors-quantum-cruise
40. "Much of success in venture is knowing what (and when) to buy. If you do that well it’s very difficult to mess it up. Conversely, if you’re not a good picker, it’s difficult to overcome that, even if you had perfect timing on secondary sales. But sometimes the difference between B+ and A- (or between A and A++++) can be a well-timed decision to turn unrealized gains into partially realized."
41. "Sometimes, long-term focus is confused with the expectation of outsized outcomes. Targeting outsized outcomes is great but it is not the same as having a long-term focus. Multi-billion dollar outcomes happen because the building blocks are long-lasting and not the other way around. Simply put, large victories happen because of incredible visions and the proper execution of that long-term strategy."
https://medium.com/susa-ventures/the-future-of-software-back-to-the-basics-521544e5a25b
42. "What can we make of Adani and his fast-growing $142B fortune?
The Financial Times brings up an important question: is the concentration of wealth in India a path towards an East Asian model of development (think the Samsung family in South Korea) or the Russian model (oligarchs nabbing state assets on the cheap while creating little value for the country).
Adani clearly has close ties to Modi. Adani Group is over-reliant on coal. The business may be sitting on a systemic debt bomb. AND the value of his stocks are completely removed from business fundamentals.
But, Adani also has a track record of delivering what India needs to develop (ports, rail, infrastructure, electricity). His big bets on export-driven growth and energy also aligns with Modi’s development goals for India.
Whatever you think of him, you have to understand Adani to understand India’s future…and this is my first attempt at doing so."
https://trungphan.substack.com/p/gautam-adanis-140b-fortune-explained
43. Sounds about right.
“Lethality matters most,” he said. “When you can kill your enemy, every part of your life is better. Your food tastes better. Your marriage is stronger,” Minihan said."
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/air-force-general-mike-minihan-mobility
44. Interesting cool facts of the ultra Cool Berlin techno scene.
"A key factor of Berlin's scene: The clubs never have to close their doors. Many stay open the entire weekend, leading some ravers to arrive on Friday night and leave Sunday morning.
The roots of Berlin's no-curfew culture can be traced to the start of the Cold War, when negotiations over a bottle of whiskey led to the abolition of a postwar curfew — and set the stage for Berlin's becoming one of the world's hottest destinations for techno music."
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/23/1121435229/berlin-clubs-techno-berghain-kitkatclub
45. "If you’re in a position to run a high-velocity fundraising process, then presenting yourself as a dot (a single data point during fundraising), is likely to be the best approach for many founders.
But not every founder can do that.
There are situations where it is in your best interest as a founder to present investors with multiple data points so that they can build a line over time."
https://chrisneumann.com/blog/are-you-a-line-or-a-dot
46. Illuminating thread on the big crisis the world faces in fuel, food and fertilizer.
https://mobile.twitter.com/vtchakarova/status/1574162334813229057
47. "Putting this all together,
1) Japan is in a really messy situation and it’ll be interesting to see what they do with US token reserves and interest rates going forward,
2) public companies are in big trouble if they have international revenue and limited FX hedges,
3) there is no “quick fix” for this level of global stability as FX hedge contracts will swing wildly to reflect the volatility in the currency swings and
4) this is a major issue that likely leads to layoffs especially if not perfectly hedged (vast majority are not perfectly hedged and even major companies would unlikely hedge more than 80% or so).
"Patience is a Virtue: In a bull market, patience isn’t a virtue. Everyone is hopping from new idea to new idea over and over again. The more “value” in the terminal multiple the better!
In the current environment (runaway train inflation hikes) it’s the opposite. Every quarter or so you will see prices go down particularly for homes. This means sit back keep your career, maintain biz volumes the best you can and wait. When the math starts making sense for you (sometime 2023 at earliest) then it’s time to take a look.
Conclusion: Take a look around and see who is in a bad mood, good mood and unchanged. People who are unchanged/in a good mood are the ones you want to jot down. It means they didn’t take on too much risk. They can laugh at some of the bad decisions they made over the last five years and on top of that, they will likely do incredibly well through the bear market.
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/fx-causes-high-costs-and-eps-adjustments
The First Rule of Personal Finance & Happiness: Pay Yourself First!
In personal finance it’s the concept of Tithing: You always put aside or withhold at least 10% of your paycheck for savings and investments. You only spend what you have left over. This way you never get ahead of yourself and live beneath your means while investing in the future.
This concept is very important and you need to do the exact same thing with your time.
Yes, you are very busy and have family and work obligations. But your first hour or hours of your day are critical. You need to put this aside for yourself. Whether it’s meditation or exercise or even just mentally preparing and planning of the day.
Probably more importantly, use this time to work on your personal projects and side hustles. This is an investment in yourself. This is a crucial step towards financial and personal freedom. Pay yourself first.
I talk to so many people who complain about their life and how they want to quit a crappy job. And that they are too busy and have no time to work on a side hustle or a business idea. When I hear this, it just means it’s not a big enough priority to find the time. If you can’t find the time, it just means it’s not a big or clear enough priority for them.
The way to get past this is to pay yourself first. Just put aside one hour first thing in the morning and get to work. Do this consistently for a few weeks and you may be surprised by what you are able to accomplish.
Transform your time into money. Or just invest in your own personal development and mental health. You owe it to yourself. This is just one more thing I wish I had started doing way earlier in my life.
As Naval says: "Guard your time. Forget the money."
Ageism & The Reality of Silicon Valley: Beware of Older Tech Folks (Like Me)
As an old guy now, I definitely see the raging ageism that is rife in Silicon Valley. God help an older tech person applying for a job at Google or Facebook, let alone a series A/B startup. And I understand it, older people tend to be rigid and not want to learn new things. Or are usually just set in their ways. Even worse, they are just unable to keep up with the rapid amount of change.
There is a cult of youth here because they bring energy and new ideas.
Yet I would argue that there is a lot to learn from older people who are still in the game. We’ve seen the up cycles and down cycles. Most of all, we’re survivors. For those who have grit and grind to survive the downturns. Sometimes survival is enough in a darwinian environment like this.
It’s like the old joke of two friends walking in the woods. They see a bear charging them. One of the friends bends down & starts to tie his shoe laces. The other friend says: “what are you doing? You will never outrun a bear.” The friend with tied shoe laces responds “I don’t need to outrun the bear. I only need to outrun you.”
This brings me to a commentary that I love by Bohdi Sanders:
“Beware of An Old man in a Profession Where Men Usually Die Young”
Old warriors did not get old by accident; they got old by being wise, having the right knowledge, and being tough. Never underestimate an old man who has grown up in a rough profession or a rough environment.
These men have been around. They have done things, and experienced things, that you probably have never even thought about. They are tough, their minds are tough, and they have the knowledge, the skill, and the will to finish you off, if you force them to do so. A boy will fight you, but an older man will hurt you.”
Word to the wise young ones! :)
And for all you fellow old tech biz folks, keep on swinging and keep on grinding forward.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Sept 25th, 2022
“Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” -John D. Rockefeller
Ignoring the racist vitriol, message is pretty relevant to everyone in my opinion. We all have to toughen up for the challenges coming our way.
"The Ancient Romans spent much of their time surrounded by enemies on all sides. What did they do? They made the most warlike men in history and dominated their side of the world. You must do this. You must take back power and self-reliance from this hostile government. Work in the shadows if necessary.
The Romans at least had a city to defend. White Americans are vastly separated and isolated. They’ve surrendered almost all their strength to the government. You must take steps to retake your power and a Warrior Religion is the best vessel to bring this about. Surrendering your military might to the government instead of the race was a terrible mistake, though you can argue when it happened, it was a government of the race. This situation we find ourselves in is in between a rock and a hard place."
https://resavager.substack.com/p/the-future-of-america-and-the-warrior
2. Good message. Passive Income is a myth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUMHo1gramg
3. Love this podcast. I enjoy the discussions but in regards to Ukraine, it might be out of date considering the collapse of the Russian army and the massive advances in the South and East.
The guys are spot on though about economic issues and macro investing. And how stupid Europe has been with their energy policy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0tfoW1N3VM
4. "There is now talk of defeat on the Russian side. There was no sense of this in President Putin’s insouciant remarks at the Vladivostok economic forum, with Russia’s isolation symbolised by the lack of international presence (Myanmar, Chinese and Armenian representatives turned up).
He claimed that nothing had been lost by the war and sovereignty had been gained as if his desire to intensify autocracy and achieve autarky in the name of self-reliance has been worth the tens of thousands of Russians dead, wounded, and taken prisoner, and the years of defence production and economic modernisation up in smoke.
His forces might stabilise the situation, at least away from Kharkiv, and provide more breathing space while he hopes Europe’s economic pain leads them to abandon Ukraine. But as I argued in my last post that is unlikely to happen, and he may now have less time than he thought to find out.
Because of the opacity of Putin’s decision-making and his delusional recent utterances, presenting Russia as the keeper of some core civilisational values, there is no suggestion that he has reached the point where he can acknowledge the position into which he has led his country. Prudence therefore requires us to assume that this war will not be over soon. But nor should it blind us to the possibility that events might move far faster than we assumed – first gradually, and then suddenly."
https://samf.substack.com/p/gradually-then-suddenly
5. "We live in a world where salespeople conflate validation with positive buying signals.. but I can assure you that a prospect who is serious about investing large sums of money into new software is not going to be chummy with you.
Decisions are Clarity. They are movement.
On the other hand, Validation, while nice to receive, can be a distraction & keep you stuck if it’s prioritized over getting a Decision.
If Sales is the Life blood of every company, Decisions are the Life blood of every salesperson."
https://bowtiedsalesguy.substack.com/p/seek-decisions-not-validation
6. "Liemandt had seen the future and decided to get out in front of it. In 2006 he quietly began building an enterprise software empire where innovation and growth take a back seat to sheer profitability.
Using his closely held ESW Capital, Liemandt began buying dozens of business-software firms with values ranging from $10 million to $250 million. Ever heard of Nextance, Infopia, Kayako or Exinda? Not many have, but these are the types of firms that run things like customer service and document management, humming in the background of an untold number of businesses.
Liemandt’s team was on a quest for the regular income streams associated with sticky software maintenance contracts. To cut costs, R&D and employee benefits were to be gutted. And as a sweetener, he began assembling a patent-litigation war chest. Through one of his holdings, Liemandt has sued 20 companies, ranging from SAP to Sears and Toyota. He’s currently suing Ford for $300 million.
Liemandt’s metamorphosis has transformed him from every dorm-room coder’s hero to an ominous force in tech as his expanding global cloud-force pushes down wages and turns computer programming into factory work."
7. This is a masterclass in VC investing from one of the best in the business. I listened to this twice. It's so good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkz2a1GkjZo
8. "While the showdown between Ukraine and Russia may be the only direct, high-profile kinetic conflict currently taking place, make no mistake: there is a multifaceted economic war quietly being waged between the major flags of the world. Behind closed doors, the US / NATO (EU) alliance is squaring off against Russia / China.
My intent is to simply point out that, no matter how wealthy or powerful you may be, any asset whose ownership is conferred by legal title is fair game for wartime confiscation. Your bank account, your stock portfolio, your house, your car — your ownership of these things is predicated upon the State upholding and protecting your exclusive right to use them. If that weren’t the case, anyone who had something coveted by their neighbour would have to be perpetually ready to inflict physical harm upon strangers who had that “lean and hungry” look.
The goal is to remain financially flexible in the face of the vagaries of war. 100% of your financial capital should never be parked in just one monetary instrument, whether that be Bitcoin, domestic fiat currencies, bonds, stocks, real estate, commodities, or gold. But your opportunity to move your fiat assets into Bitcoin and other “real” assets only exists today, and may not tomorrow. Remember that."
https://medium.com/entrepreneur-s-handbook/for-the-war-fd5509d525d
9. "Mentioned here for over a decade. Your passions and interests don’t matter. If you want to be successful you want to be a winner and be the best within *any* field. Yes. We’re telling you the things you were told as a kid = total lie. The only thing that matters is your ability to be the best (or close to it). Winners care about winning and being the best. That’s your “passion”.
Wealth Disparity: This has been a hot topic for years and will only get worse. How can someone claim an individual YouTuber is overpaid if they are a one man show. They can’t. You know this, we know this, everyone knows this. Software and advanced tech will remove all the overhead and push even more income to the person generating all of the value."
"Their goal is to cut spending to bare bones, your goal should be to increase income as much as possible since there is no ceiling to earnings. You can earn $1K in a month or $1M in a month. There is no “limit”. For the frugality set up, there is always a limit so if you never move your income, you’re stuck with a “flat” savings percentage of say 50%. If you earn an absurd amount say $1M a month, it would be practically impossible to avoid saving/investing 90% of your money since you’re earning so much!"
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/importance-of-a-second-income-and
10. There is a lesson here somewhere.
"Interviews with more than 15 former Airlift employees depict a company torn in two: Inside Airlift’s corporate offices, young workers who were experiencing the highs of belonging to the most-celebrated startup in the country, rallied behind Airlift as it went all guns blazing on a path of unbridled growth; meanwhile, the company’s operations staff, responsible for executing the ambitions of Airlift’s amateur leadership, were allegedly neck-deep in chaos: inventory mismanagement, pricing inefficiencies, and fraud were rampant. Eventually, the growth-at-all-costs model became untenable, and collapsed.
“It felt like they were doing it all for valuation because there was no way that they could have ever thought of becoming profitable like this,” a former warehouse manager from Lahore, who had previously worked for a number of large Pakistani corporations, told Rest of World. “It didn’t make sense.”
https://restofworld.org/2022/inside-story-of-airlift-crash
11. Yikes, this is all I have a say when reading this.
I don't understand at all why a VC is investing in this at all.
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2022/9/11/23340917/launch-house-sexual-assault-web3-community
12. "What happens when two Hollywood actors who know nothing about soccer buy a middling pro team in Wales?"
https://www.gq.com/story/wrexham-fc-ryan-reynolds-rob-mcelhenney
13. "Japan stands out as the one economy in the world with a relatively benign inflation shock. Where in America, consumer prices are now up by more than 9% from a year ago, Japan’s CPI prints barely above two percent. This may come as a surprise, given the global nature of the inflation shock: excess money and credit, supply bottlenecks, the war in Europe, the surge in pent-up demand as the pandemic abates.
Further, the global cost-push pressures -- from rising energy, electronic components, and food prices – have been compounded by a falling Yen: in the United States, the price of oil is up approximately 60% in US dollars since the end of December. In Japan, the Yen price of oil is up almost 90%. And yes, America is a net exporter of energy - and food - while Japan is one of the worlds largest importers of energy - and food.
So how come that, despite greater and more severe exposure to global inflationary pressures, consumers in Japan are much less affected by the global inflation tsunami than they are in America?"
https://japanoptimist.substack.com/p/whos-afraid-of-inflation-not-japan
14. "Support every portfolio company, not only because it's the right thing to do, but because each one might be your fund returner. Disengaging with a portfolio company may harm your ability to double down on the breakouts, as mentioned earlier.
While social proof can be a valid signal, it’s necessary to be confident enough to invest without social proof from other investors, especially if you’re leading deals."
https://www.signatureblock.co/p/top-mistakes-first-time-fund-manag
15. "Though the war is far from over and Russia can find new ways to punish Ukraine, collapsing Russian forces have not only been pushed back; in abandoning their former headquarters in Izium, they also left behind large stores of equipment and ammunition that the Ukrainians can now use against them. Even if the Russians stabilize the line in the coming days, they will be in a far worse position than they were on September 1. Building on months of careful efforts to both prepare Ukrainian forces and waste Russian ones, Ukraine has achieved a strategic masterstroke that military scholars will study for decades to come."
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/09/ukraine-russia-putin-kharkiv-kupyansk/671407
16. "However, Brands concedes that “this is actually kind of normal for Russia—it is a great power that has never been as great as it thinks it is. So it constantly tries to punch above its weight in international affairs (by waging a Cold War against the entire Western world, for instance). That leads to failure, which leads to dramatic contractions of Russian power and influence, which leads, after a time, to a period of resurgence anew. Russia will be down for a while if things keep going in this direction—but don't count it out.
The former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, General Mark Hertling (retired), notes that some countries were able to rebound fairly quickly from the damage done by fallen leaders as Saddam Hussein, Nicolae Ceausescu, and Adolf Hitler. But, Gen. Hertling says, “Russia is different.”
Specifically, he accurately notes, Russia’s “military failed because of corruption, grift, poor equipment, failure to follow a doctrine that was disconnected from capability or training, a lack of both individual and team preparation for the demands of the modern battlefield... but most of all, extremely poor leadership at all levels. But here’s the most important lesson: you can’t fix any of that, within any period of time or with any amount of money, as long as the government the military serves is dysfunctional and corrupt.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/what-happens-to-russia-after-it-loses
17. "We are at the point in this struggle where as a people, we must exile themselves to the metaphorical desert, to face nature again, and reforge what was lost. Hell, we’re not even that far. We’re still trying to pull our own out of hell, to show the demoralized the light, to find some way to organize. How can we disconnect a people from a hostile regime? How can you steer a people back toward self-reliance?
It all comes back to you. You have to figure it out. Identify where you are on the path to self-reliance and move forward from there. The man of the ancient world was many things. He was a warrior, a farmer, a patriarch, and a priest. The best among men became warlords and kings. The legendary get remembered. The enemy has co-opted the most powerful country in the world, but it’s our people who made it the most powerful in the first place. It ain’t the technology, it’s the warrior.
Recognize the defeat for what it is. The America you were taught to love doesn’t exist anymore, but Americans still do. Your purpose, your Great Work, is to get as many of your own to the light. To embody excellence on a level to match, if not surpass, the enemy’s technological capabilities. You must find a way where there seems to be none. Our ancestors faced the New World and the frontier with hard discipline and a martial spirit. We must do the same."
https://resavager.substack.com/p/the-life-stolen-from-man
18. Slava Ukraini! I hope this also shuts up the Putin appeasers on the hard left and right in the west.
"Ukraine has turned the tide of this war in its favor," said the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a U.S.-based defense think tank, in its Sept. 12 report.
"Kyiv will likely increasingly dictate the location and nature of the major fighting, and Russia will find itself increasingly responding inadequately to growing Ukrainian physical and psychological pressure in successive military campaigns unless Moscow finds some way to regain the initiative."
Experts now believe that Ukrainian pressure in Kherson Oblast, combined with its rapid counter-offensive in Kharkiv Oblast, presents Russian forces with a terrible dilemma.”
19. Yup, Russian Agitprop is still very active. But yet so many people fall for it & lots of "Useful Idiots" here in the West.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRTKUf0nWdE
20. Will to win matters. Good summary of what’s happening in Ukraine from a US military vet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1o_J42_5o8
21. I like this framework.
"The next time you’re evaluating an investment, ask yourself if this company or product is a vitamin, painkiller, narcotic, or religion and gut check it with your heart monitor--the higher your heart rate the better. If you’re a founder, you need to take a cold hard look at your product and ask if people genuinely care."
https://robleclerc.substack.com/p/is-your-product-a-vitamin-pain-killer
22. "If I take hundred photos per week maybe I have 1-3 that are really good and worthy of posting. And that’s how I think about everything: do your work well but only share what’s really great. Create layers between yourself and the Internet for reflection, curation, quality, and depth.
Cause the truth is that most of our thoughts and work are shit or at least mediocre and should not be shared. It takes time, focus, and creative energy to make something really good and worthwhile of people’s attention and one’s own self-respect. We are doing ourselves a big disfavor by always reacting instead of slowing down to create and respond with intention and quality.
I think we need to think of ourselves as artists, in the Picasso tradition, and not of productivity rats. The artist experiments, drafts, creates, fails, discards, try’s again and the latter only runs, and runs, and runs ad infinitum."
https://fewerbetterthings.substack.com/p/youre-an-artist-not-a-productivity
23. "The trick is that the larger an entity is, the harder it is to retain human faith and confidence in the reasons for its expansion. As nations and companies get larger, they lose their ability to serve the needs of their constituents and customers. You can have a billion customers (like McDonald’s) or citizens (like China), but they won’t be able to reach anybody when there is a problem. Chatbots can’t deliver like a person on the phone.
How long can an entity sustain loyalty after the lines of communication start breaking down? Not very long. This is why it is quite possible that the superpowers – Russia, China and even the US – may break into smaller, more manageable groupings after the current leadership move on. Size matters. Nation-states and global companies have become too big to manage. Smaller is becoming better."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/size-matters
24. Holy crap. 20B! Adobe acquires Figma.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/09/15/adobe-to-acquire-design-platform-figma-for-20-billion.html
25. All new founders trying to fundraise from VCs need to read this. Really good stuff.
https://chrisneumann.com/blog/things-that-make-you-go-hmmmm
26. I find this terrifying, considering how incompetent & deluded our politicians and bureaucrats have been in the West last few years.
"Many people at the time warned that even though letting the private sector figure it out would bring healthy benefits, not every utility was made for the free market. Notably railways are hard to privatize and we are now finding out that airports most probably need far more oversight from the state, in exchange for lower profits. Quite possibly an entirely new business model.
Energy too may be best provided by a public utility rather than some offshore entity with shareholders who could not care less if some Dutch retirees will have to light a candle to make it through the winter. Governments catching up with chaos on the ground are struggling to fill the gaps that the market can apparently no longer fix."
https://pieterdorsman.substack.com/p/the-state-is-coming-back
27. This is where the guys shine: discussing and dissecting tech businesses and transactions. So much insight here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UpczzfeAFA
28. Good summary of the latest monopoly news.
"There are other reasons to be wary of the deal. Adobe is paying 50 times the revenue of Figma, which is a crazy price unless it is trying to maintain its market power. It feels sort of like Facebook buying Instagram, which seemed wildly overvalued at the time, but in retrospect was a clear way for Facebook to prevent disruption of its business as social network moved from the desktop to the smartphone.
It’s also not the first time that Adobe has bought a competitor to retain its monopoly revenue stream."
https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/should-the-government-block-the-adobe
The Ground Truth: Go to the Frontline!
Ground Truth is defined as “information that is known to be real or true, provided by direct observation and measurement (i.e. empirical evidence) as opposed to information provided by inference.” Source: Wikipedia
Why is this important?Information gets Filtered as it moves up the chain. And this is the reason that so many generals & CEOs of corporations have no idea what’s going on at frontlines. And that is why they are always unable to catch emerging problems. Or usually are caught by surprise when these problems become too big to ignore.
Sure you can have great reporting, amazing employees and a culture of honesty and transparency. But the bigger you get, the harder it is to maintain these things. Complexity begins to increase. More complexity means more points of failure. That is why it’s critical that senior executives leave their plush offices and spend time all across the hierarchy and talk to customers. Otherwise they lose touch with what’s really happening in the market and their organization.
I had heard a story that the most connected CEOs were ones that smoked. Why? It was because they had exposure to frontline employees when they went outside to have cigarettes and chat.
I think this led to the term coined by Management Guru Tom Peters called MBWA=Management By Walking Around.
So it doesn’t matter how high you rise in the organization, you need to spend time on the frontlines and get the ground reality of the market. If you do this, you may have a better chance of catching and surviving the inevitable curve balls of business issues that come your way.
Wisdom from My Violin Teacher: Relationships & Grand Memories Are the Whole Point of Life
Another long flight and another round of movies to pass the time, when I don’t feel like reading. I’ve always loved this scene from Fast Five, part of the Fast & Furious franchise when the main character Dominic is saluting his crew. “Money will come and go. We all know that. The most important thing in life will always be the people in this room. Right here, right now.”
It’s a great scene and really great comment. Life is all about people. The amazing people in your life. Your family and your friends. They are the ones who drive the special moments in your life. Ones that you would remember forever.
It also reminded me of a conversation I had with my violin teacher Lorraine Ovenell, before I went traveling in Europe after I graduated from university so many years ago. She said it was an incredibly good idea that I leave to explore the world as I would learn a lot about myself. And that I would also see new places and meet new people. But probably most important was that all the new experiences would lead to great memories. Paraphrasing her, she said “at the end of our lives, all we will have will be grand memories that we will enjoy and replay over and over.”
We hear that right before the end of life, we see the lives pass before our eyes. If that does happen, wouldn’t you want to have that filled with fond memories. Like your first win in sports, your first kiss, falling in love, seeing the birth of your child, the excitement of a new job or relationship, reliving the excitement of visiting a new place or returning to a place you love. Amazing and beautiful memories.
So my point is try to fill your life up with as much joy, adventure, achievement, friendships and wonderful memories as possible, because that’s all we will really have at the end.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Sept 18th, 2022
“The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude” -Oprah Winfrey
Net net: don't own assets in China. You will lose it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fomuXEaEAJA
2. So happy but it's not over yet. Good overview of what's up with eastern offensive in Kharkiv. Slava Ukraini!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAD684eczq8
3. 50 Cent is a brilliant businessman.
"Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson didn’t become an entertainment mogul by being diplomatic. Whether when he was emerging as a hip-hop legend during the aughts, or developing his hit Starz crime drama Power into a franchise that now spans four series, he always gets things done with a mix of talent, shrewdness, aggression, and forthrightness. And he expects everyone who’s a part of his empire to share the same drive.
As with his music career, where he elevated his visibility through personal conflict, 50 Cent has a propensity for starting digital fires to call attention to his TV shows. His music fused brilliant, melodic hooks with a rugged edge, but he was always selling himself.
That’s still the case, but now he’s a behind-the-scenes force who’s happy to step out into the open and start a war, even if he has to make one up: He’s arguably even more calculatingly contentious as a TV producer than he was as a musician. And with 25 shows sold across nine networks, and more in production, it seems to be working. 50 Cent became a mogul by creating his own genre, and he’s determined to do what he needs to keep growing his empire."
https://www.gq.com/story/50-cent-tv-empire-power-ghost-raising-kanan-force-bmf
4. Both are very good books for founders.
"The best way to create a category is to go sell some software. Early-stage startups excessively focused on category creation are trying to win the game by staring at the scoreboard.
The best way to be a category king is to be the most aggressive company during the growth phase of the market. Do that by executing what I call the market leader play, the rough equivalent of Geoffrey Moore’s “just ship” during the tornado. Second prize really is a set of steak knives."
5. "With a CBDC, your food, clothing, travel, carbon, savings, spending choices and more could all be controlled, limited, or blocked at the push of a button. Everything you need to survive could be given, or taken away at will, by your government.
The very power of life and death itself.
The early United States government believed forgery was such a dire threat that to take part in it warranted the death penalty. And modern governments believe a currency controlled by the people is so menacing, that the solution is to create something with the ability to control every single aspect of your life.
So let me ask you this: what’s the bigger threat, and to whom?
To me, it is blindingly obvious that a CBDC poses a bigger threat to our freedoms, than crypto does to our society as a whole.
But that’s certainly not how they’ll frame the story."
https://abundantia.substack.com/p/franken-money
6. "If Betr can break the mobile-sports-gambling duopoly of DraftKings and FanDuel, it wouldn’t be the first time Paul has beaten the odds to make his way in a new industry. As a teenager, Paul’s aggro class-clown antics on Vine and YouTube attracted millions of followers as he grew up in front of the camera, learning to monetize nearly every moment of his time. With his older brother, Logan, he helped set the tone for the first wave of bro-y influencers living together in what are now known as hype houses. There were commercially — if not aesthetically — successful forays into music and acting.
Logan is now suplexing wrestlers in the WWE, but Jake found a home in the boxing world, where he has been driving pay-per-view sales with his DNA-level drive for self-promotion, a knack for starting feuds, and a right hook mean enough to knock out four amateurs who didn’t really know how to block a punch. Paul’s detractors still say he is a distraction and point to the fact that he hasn’t actually faced any pro boxers.
To show he means it, Paul has gotten extremely ripped and has won each time he has stepped into the ring against pros from other sports like mixed martial arts and basketball. Whatever boxing fans think of him, the prankster has become a serious force in professional fighting, earning seven-figure purses and feuding with UFC president Dana White over providing lifelong health insurance for its fighters.
At 25, Paul hopes to pivot again, this time to a role that doesn’t involve him getting punched in the face."
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/08/jake-paul-takes-on-sports-media-with-gambling-app-betr.html
7. This is a very good point. Fragmentation of the media world means there are so many famous people but within niches & groups, not universally known anymore.
https://sotonye.substack.com/p/the-end-of-the-mega-star/comments
8. "Malone, who was raised in Connecticut and graduated from Yale with degrees in economics and engineering, traveled west and made his fortune by getting in on the ground floor of the cable TV business in the 1970s.
In its earliest years, cable was sold as a way to deliver broadcast channels in areas where normal TV antennas wouldn’t work, like the Rocky Mountains. Malone built up his Denver-based company Tele-Communications Inc. into a cable Goliath by rolling up a series of small mom-and-pop operators using debt financing. Along the way, he used his power as a distributor to extract ownership stakes in cable TV programmers like Fox News and QVC. He cashed out by selling to AT&T for $48 billion in 1999.
Since then, Malone has bought and sold and swapped companies and stakes in companies over and over, always with an eye on keeping his taxes as low as possible. He now owns a portfolio that includes meaningful ownership in everything from satellite music service SiriusXM to baseball’s Atlanta Braves to Live Nation, the ticketing and concert giant."
https://www.vox.com/2022/8/26/23322761/cnn-john-malone-david-zaslav-chris-licht-brian-stelter-fox
9. The case for remote work.
"The combination of portable computing, great communication and collaboration software, and the internet has empowered new ways of working and living to emerge. In the face of this, companies that don’t adapt will bleed talent to their competition, and companies that embrace remote work will replace companies that don’t.
Probably not today, maybe not tomorrow, but it’s a movement that won’t be undone. In the same way e-commerce has decimated many physical stores, virtual companies will crush office-based companies."
https://future.com/remote-startups-hire-top-talent
10. This is good. A list of things that make most people happy.
https://sotonye.substack.com/p/doing-things-that-make-you-happy
11. "A new friend reminded me yesterday that everything in life is fear-based except love. It’s a simple but profound insight. Only keep and use stuff that you love and that loves you back in ways that resonates with your higher being. Resist the emotional pull to heal wounds and fill voids by buying things that you don’t need or will never or rarely use. It’s a waste across so many areas, not mentioning an insult to yourself."
https://fewerbetterthings.substack.com/p/everything-is-fear-based-except-love
12. "The more the company has tried to denounce its associations to these influencers and their ideologies, the more these figures seem to endorse their product.
This phenomenon — when a brand is unwillingly co-opted by fringe groups to advance their message –—is known as hatejacking. Hatejacking has become increasingly common as extremist politics have crept into the mainstream, interfering with brands aiming to please broad audiences.
Most of the time, the fringe group picks its targets at random. There are no clear answers for why it happens and to whom. Just as confusingly, there’s no surefire strategy for silencing the fringe groups."
https://thehustle.co/what-happens-when-your-brand-is-co-opted-by-extremists
13. "Another effect of the digital medium is more indirect but may also be more profound. The moment one enters the online environment, the self begins to liquify. The lack of external or internal pressures makes it impossible to maintain a definite shape or character. On the web, you can be anyone or anything—a vertigo-inducing condition that is equivalent to being nothing.
Identity, which in traditional culture was pressed hard upon us by social forces and in modernity became problematic, now dissipates into thin air. Those of us who are of a certain age will borrow attributes from the analog world. But the young make no distinction between virtual and real. They are stuck on a question that is part narcissism and part fear of the monster in the labyrinth: What am I?"
14. "In summary, new web3 creative projects are inverting the media creation model: communities of owners are forming around nascent creations, writing their own stories into existence with skin in the game, and distributing them to communities with shared upside, then to broader audiences. Fans become creators, and their own fans become creators, too, resulting in a prismatic assemblage of creation, all powered by a native business model and new funding mechanisms. The end result, hopefully, being the democratization of storytelling and creativity for everyone."
https://li.substack.com/p/fans-are-the-new-creators
15. "Since the 15th century, the last five global empires have issued the world’s reserve currency — the one most often used by other countries — for 94 years on average. The dollar has held reserve status for more than 100 years, so its reign is already older than most.
The dollar has been bolstered by the weaknesses of its rivals. The euro has been repeatedly undermined by financial crises, while the renminbi is heavily managed by an authoritarian regime. Nonetheless, alternatives are gaining ground. Beyond the Big Four currencies — of the US, Europe, Japan and the UK — lies the category of “other currencies” that includes the Canadian and Australian dollar, the Swiss franc and the renminbi. They now account for 10 per cent of global reserves, up from 2 per cent in 2001. Their gains, which accelerated during the pandemic, have come mainly at the expense of the US dollar. The dollar share of foreign exchange reserves is currently at 59 per cent — the lowest since 1995. Digital currencies may look battered now, but they remain a long-run alternative as well.
Meanwhile, the impact of US sanctions on Russia is demonstrating how much influence the US wields over a dollar-driven world, inspiring many countries to speed up their search for options. It’s possible that the next step is not towards a single reserve currency, but to currency blocs."
https://www.ft.com/content/989b2e50-e8b5-474c-86a3-190c6881b235
16. This is grim but it sounds about right.
This is the consequence of really bad economic and energy policy in the EU. (although US/Canada is doing everything it can to shoot itself in foot too). All self-inflicted.
https://twitter.com/HKBelvedere/status/1563975832741216256
17. This guy writes beautifully despite being white supremicist Intel. But he is correct in that America has gotten soft. Conflict & disorder is coming so we need to toughen up fast to protect our way of live and values from the barbarians coming.
"We live in a world where the strength in man isn’t valued. Why be strong when there’s airplanes and drones that will bomb you to hell before you even get a shot off? Fortuna is almost gone from battlefield. It’s still a fallacy to ignore physical culture. You aren’t important enough to send a drone yet anyways. You must keep to the old ways of physical prowess because it’s the key to victory. You cannot win without a strong warlike people at your back. Never forget this.
Oswald Spengler believed that this leviathan can only be overthrown by force. You weren’t going to vote your way out of the tyranny of money and mind. You have to bring a different, a new and superior way of life to the forefront. Be capable of forging superior men who will embarrass the regime. Develop superior methods of war that will leave your enemies dumbstruck. Stop reacting to the enemy and go on the offensive.
You must cultivate the frontier spirit of Heracles and the American frontiersman again. Power and freedom are what matters. The Warrior Religion makes ritual all that grows our power and freedom. This is where true religious rites come from. The will to survive and thrive in nature, in enemy territory. Making sacrifices in pagan style don’t make sense to men in the same manner it did for the ancients. The ultimate purpose is to create religious rites that help forge a chosen, warlike people who will fight. You must do this.
It’s not sacrifice that made a man pagan. This is only Christian slander. There are many ways of sacrifice. The PAGAN, not the Christian, believes in justice. The frontiersman had a frontier code of vengeance when Indians butchered settlers, for example. Also in “pride and personal honor, will to power, patriotic readiness to meet force with force” as said by Robinson Jeffers."
https://resavager.substack.com/p/warrior-religion-ii
18. This is certainly disturbing reading.
"As you can see the policies benefit people who *already* own assets. If your goal is to get rich by working for someone else, it will be quite difficult since your wage growth will not mirror the company growth perfectly and your equity in the firm is likely minimal.
Fortunately? You’re reading this from a Computer. That computer is capable of reaching billions of people for a measly cost of around $4 a month. If you have any skill in the world where people go out of their way to tell you “hey you’re good at this” we can all but guarantee you can earn money online from it."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/lowering-your-standards-a-history
19. "the huge rise in energy prices in Europe, and demand destruction will cause massive disruptions to global supply chains. Manufacturing production which used to be competitive in Germany will no longer be at this level of energy prices, which means output will be taken off line.
This means that different parts of the supply chain (capital good, fertiliser, widgets that make things work but you never knew they came from Germany) will be disrupted - think of the supply chain disruptions during Covid but on steroids. This likely will accentuate global stagflationary pressures - the world will suffer because of this, and ultimately because of Putin's unfettered ambition and brutality.
So my advice to ME readers and listeners is be careful/cautious in how you view this crisis, and this is not a time for schadenfruede, but building your own economic defences for likely much harder economic times for all looming globally. I also think it is time the West pulls together with friendly nations in the Gulf and elsewhere to prevent rising energy prices causing a catastrophic global recession."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/energy-exporters-need-to-be-worried
20. "The only purpose of sanctions that makes any logical sense is this: Sanctions should make it harder for Russia to prosecute its invasion of Ukraine, as well as any other future invasions that Putin may decide to carry out. And the way to weaken Russia’s military machine is to weaken Russia’s defense production. And the way to weaken Russian imports, so that Russia can’t buy the parts and machinery it needs to make weapons.
But remember, reducing Russian imports was the whole point of sanctions! Russia needs to import a ton of parts and machinery in order to make tanks, missiles, air defense radars, jets, and all its other implements of destruction. Now, thanks to sanctions, it can’t do that nearly as much. In fact, exports to Russia have rebounded a bit since the initial plunge, but almost all of the rebound has been in consumer goods, rather than in machinery, materials, and other “dual-use” goods.
And that’s exactly what we should want — we’re not starving the babushkas, but we are starving Russia’s military machine.
In other words, the strong ruble is pointless, because the cause of the strong ruble is that sanctions are preventing Russia from getting the imports its military needs."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/yes-sanctions-on-russia-are-working
21. I love Jiro Dreams of Sushi and watch it every year. This is a great retrospective on how that film changed the sushi scene forever.
https://www.eater.com/23327804/sushi-omakase-united-states-nakazawa-jiro-dreams-of-sushi-history
22. Love NAFO. Down with Vatniks.
"Russian influencers have struggled to respond to the badly-drawn Shiba Inu memes, YouTube-style viral videos and the power of ordinary social media users debunking Kremlin talking points. Even answering a Twitter account whose avatar is a “doge” can make a Russian diplomat look foolish. In essence, NAFO can swim in online waters that governments would struggle to enter.
Five Western national security officials, almost all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, welcomed the rise of such pro-Ukrainian internet warriors. Unlike the usually colorless official efforts at dispelling Kremlin’s falsehoods, NAFO has tapped into wide public anger against Russia via popular culture references and laughter, they added.
“Employing humor to counter disinformation is a brilliant strategy,” said Jakub Kalenský, a senior analyst at the European Center of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, a joint initiative between NATO countries and the European Union. “One inspiration we should take is that it is possible to fight back. It is really possible to do something — so stop being lazy and trying to look for excuses.”
23. Worthwhile & helpful thread on how to categorize a country collapse. Net net: we are not there yet in the USA.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Rest_Stop_Juche/status/1564953253846355968
24. Another reason many founders find most of their VCs to be useless.
"This person agrees, however, that boards have become “broken.” For one thing, he says that most that he attends have slackened into Zoom calls that feel even more perfunctory than in pre-COVID days.
He also says that in addition to frenetic deal-making, two other factors have conspired to make formal meetings less valuable: late-stage investors who write checks to younger companies but don’t take board seats, leaving their co-investors with a disproportionate amount of responsibility, and newer VCs who’ve never served as executives at big companies — and sometimes weren’t even mentored — and so aren’t quite as useful in boardrooms."
https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/31/coming-out-of-covid-investors-lose-their-taste-for-board-meetings
25. "The men of the early Roman Republic exemplified Barbaric Vitalism. Their definition of virtue (virtus) was manliness. Virtue didn’t carry the connotations it does today. It just meant you were manly. The way to show your manliness to the Romans was through labor. Strenuous exertions and ordeals made or broke men. In Rome, you weren’t born a man. You had to become one.
Manliness to the early Romans was associated with physical power, vigor, vitality, energy, and violent action. The Romans compared to the many tribes that surrounded them weren’t that impressive. Their adversaries were often bigger, stronger, and outnumbered them. You’d think the way we’re taught about the Romans, they won most of their battles, but they actually lost most of them.
The Romans were known for their no surrender, never say die mentality. The Romans refused to admit defeat. They lost 50,000 men at Cannae at the hands of Hannibal, but still refused to throw in the towel. The Romans showed energy, vigor, VITALITY. They had the powerful desire to OVERCOME. They would rather be killed off then live the rest of their lives as slaves. This is Barbaric Vitalism.
Barbaric Vitalism is seeing nature at play and realizing all the bullshit feelings of the modern world don’t matter. It’s realizing nature doesn’t care about equality, decency, or who was where first — nature only cares about who wins."
https://resavager.substack.com/p/the-power-of-barbaric-vitalism-361
26. "Sadly for Mr. Ford and the well-intended but totally naïve young woman holding out hope that the unicorn concept of “cheaper cleaner greener” energy is actually a thing, they are both victims of insidious propaganda. As reality will soon demonstrate, if a country can’t afford to keep its citizens warm during the winter, then that country is poor, not rich. And if the proposed solution to this crisis is to double down on the same crazy policies that caused it in the first place, then we should expect the problem to get worse, not better.
In hindsight, our expectation that Western leaders would awaken to the laws of physics was terribly mistaken. Instead, they have behaved as though they have leverage over Putin, not the other way around. Despite already skyrocketing energy prices, Nord Stream 2 was canceled, adding further strain to the EU’s depleting energy options. Emboldened by the cards handed to him by his geopolitical opponents, Putin invaded Ukraine. The West’s response – attempting to sanction Putin’s energy from global markets – was quite literally the dumbest option available, akin to sawing off your own hand in the middle of a boxing match.
In the past week, the market for European electricity broke, begging the question of exactly who is being sanctioned by whom. Forward-year prices for baseload power in Germany skyrocketed to over €1,000 per MWh before crashing by more than a third a day later. The same contract was selling for €45 per MWh less than two years ago. The imminent crisis is now undeniably laid bare for all to see. How will Europe navigate the upcoming winter? Will logic, sanity, and genuine leadership take hold, or will the same fools who rushed into this mess double down on their foolishness?"
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/dead-of-winter
27. Sacks has been listening way too much to discredited Mearsheimer. But its always a good discussion on this show. All in Podcast is a great show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc-Leuq0G7o
28. Crisis investing in the emerging & frontier markets. Fascinating discussion.
https://mailchi.mp/497e654bdaeb/crisis-investing-in-frontier-and-emerging-markets?e=123a1c25c4
29. "Going forward I think these water level and shipping-related problems will occur more often than some people today expect. The last time we faced a similar problem was in the summer of 2018. I think this will become a regular problem for us in the years ahead.
My Biggest concern is because of the enduring drought in Europe, China and the US is, on the other hand, another one. I think low water levels will lead to less hydropower capacity around the globe which would be bad for our green energy transition ambitions. The other potential threat I can’t stress enough are crop yields.
As water becomes scarcer and therefore more valuable farmers will most likely use less water to water the crops and if those drought conditions intensify over the next years this will hit the crop yields in times when the world population is growing faster than ever."
https://commodityreport.substack.com/p/the-rhine-shipping-crisis
30. "Stradner said that “Russia is weaponizing information to destabilize and divide our allies. If the West wants to win the information war against Russia it must put the Kremlin on defense and counter Russian information operations globally.”
Echoing this sentiment, Cesar Villaroel, a television and communications expert in Latin America, indicated that he had seen an increase in the numbers of people tuning in to RT in Spanish to get the latest of current events. Villaroel indicated that, “Despite the fact that the war in Ukraine is a big story in the US, and in Europe, the fact is Ukraine’s message is not effectively reaching people across Central and South America.”
https://www.kyivpost.com/russias-war/the-information-war-of-ukraine-falters.html
31. The question is whether Russia can find the trained crews and infantry to protect them. Here is to Saint Javelin destroying more of these! Slava Ukraini!
"The Kremlin’s reckless and unsuccessful blitzkrieg on Kyiv resulted in the loss of over 1,000 tanks – within just a few weeks after Feb. 24.
By April, many battlefields in northern Ukraine had become tank cemeteries, with dozens of scorched machines eviscerated by Ukrainian anti-tank squads.
This is a heavy blow for Russia’s offensive component, even given its large military. Contrary to its propaganda, Russia’s infamously large stockpile of Soviet tanks is little more than a pile of scrap metal unfit to be used in battle.
However, we can not expect Russia to run critically low on tanks anytime soon.
Despite heavy losses, Russia still has enough machines to continue waging its war for years."
https://kyivindependent.com/national/how-many-tanks-does-russia-really-have
32. 110% agree.
"First, bottoms-up and top-down are no longer binary. In fact, the layering of top-down over bottoms-up is becoming the de facto playbook. I’ve lost count of the number of “product-led” companies that had stagnated, but bit the bullet, built an enterprise sales organization, and have since found their second wind.
So I’m going to call it. We’re no longer living in a world where bottoms-up growth is the only “fundable” go-to-market strategy. Let’s hope investors (and public markets) respond to these trends in kind."
https://medium.com/angularventures/its-not-all-about-bottoms-up-a87671cfd3c3
33. "Your devotion to The Gods will be shown by your commitment to way of a warrior. Your first steps should be towards self-reliance. This is a big country and while not everyone can separate yourself completely from the system, you should consider yourself a spiritual steppe nomad. Don’t depend on the state to save you, ever. Make your and your family’s safety your responsibility. You should be getting in shape. If you don’t know how to fight, pick up a martial art like boxing, general mma, or muay thai. BJJ is popular right now, but I wouldn’t recommend it as your first martial art. The last place you want to be is stuck on the ground.
No one really talks about it, but your confidence is greatly improved by humbling yourself in a martial art. Unfortunately, war isn’t all hand to hand, so you must also be armed. Make sure you have knives and tomahawks like frontiersman forefathers. Make sure you bear arms. Do not be like those guys who own like twenty different assault rifles, but lack body armor and night vision. You’re much more tactically sound if you get basic riffle and handgun with body armor and night vision vs having your own armory.
You will feel most alive when you’re testing your strength. Whether it’s lifting weights, climbing mountains, sparring in the gym, or war itself. You will never feel quite right until you’re trying to make yourself as proficient as possible in the ways of war. You must treat your training with as much reverence as a holy man does his religious rites. This is after all, a Warrior Religion. They are religious rites and The Gods will reward you for keeping to these rituals. It was a mistake to delegate war to the government. It should be the duty of every man."
https://resavager.substack.com/p/the-disciple-of-the-warrior-religion
34. This was a fun interview & discussion. Go Batch 14!
35. More of this please! Much more.
36. Great advice for founders.
https://twitter.com/mwseibel/status/1565869137192226819
37. It's about time Taiwan got serious about preparing for an invasion by China.
"Tsao, who donned body armor for his announcement, warned it would be “an intentional slaughter and vicious war crime and crime against humanity” if China were to use force against Taiwan.
The tycoon said he would put TW$600 million towards training three million “black bear warriors” in the next three years who could work alongside the military.
Another TW$400 million will be used to train 300,000 “marksmen” with shooting skills."
https://www.thedefensepost.com/2022/09/01/taiwan-tycoon-train-civilian-warriors
38. "I’m excited about deep tech. The SPAC boom doesn’t offer a sustainable model for building these kinds of companies, but the combined effects of software advances, social and political interest, and a growing talent base might be enough of a cocktail of tailwinds for era-defining companies to be built."
https://mandel.substack.com/p/four-theses-on-deep-tech
39. This is much needed in Europe. New breed of Fund of Funds for Emerging VC Fund Managers.
https://sifted.eu/articles/equation-europe-vc-fund
40. "So, what am I personally doing right now to prepare for a potentially catastrophic global financial market? Well, not investing in the stock market for a start. Furthermore, I’m doing all I can to pump excess cash into lowering my company’s real estate loans as a preventative measure, and lowering my debt liability in the case of inflation (and interest rates) getting even higher than it already is.
I’ve also just placed my biggest order for gold and silver for 2022 so far. Because to me, whenever people put too much faith (and money) into hopes and dreams of future payoffs, I prefer to put my faith in stability, as well as assets that humanity has used to store value for thousands of years. And to me, that’s why metals are always a safe bet.
Long story short, when it appears everyone has placed their bets on belief for far too long, I prefer to put my faith in those things that have stood the test of time. Things like precious metals, real estate, or following the fundamental basic tenets of good finance like making an effort to lower one’s debt.
Anything but investing money, time, or resources into a market that right now, seems to only be propped up by belief alone."
https://abundantia.substack.com/p/the-superbubble-pop
41. "I call this “sameness” trend the fast-foodification of everything.
It’s this feeling that we’re in a sea of the same. It all feels sterile. This is mediocrity at its finest.
Why fast food?
Well, fast food is something that is convenient and tastes good in the moment. But once you start driving home, you start feeling the effects. That KFC isn’t sitting well.
Fast food content. Fast food cities. The rise of standardization.
Standardization makes it easy for you to know what to do or where to go. Chances are if you walk into a Starbucks you instinctively know where the barista is standing or where to run to the bathroom. It’s extremely intuitive. People psychologically do well when they expect what they are looking for. No surprises."
https://latecheckout.substack.com/p/the-fast-foodification-of-everything
42. I'm a big fan of Julian Robertson and it’s so awesome that he started Tiger when he was 48! Find your zone of genius.
"When Fortune profiled him in 2008, they reported a return of 403% on his own capital on an estimated $1 billion fortune at the time he shut down.
Despite exiting during a drawdown, I think he made a smart choice for himself. He kept doing what he loved: he mentored great talent, traveled the world, and pulled the trigger on investing his own capital. The work of answering to investors, navigating a massive fund, and managing an extensive staff disappeared. He’d returned to what he loved: the craft of investing and spending time with his favorite people. No wonder he kept on winning."
https://neckar.substack.com/p/the-tiger-that-was-a-wolf-lessons
43. "Expensive gas threatens Europe in two basic ways. First, with winter approaching, Europeans will find it difficult to heat their homes (despite global warming, Europe still gets very cold). Second, much of European industry is dependent on cheap electricity. Aluminum output has cratered, chemical plants are closing all over the continent, lots of British manufacturers are saying they could go out of business, steel plants are starting to close, and so on.
The basic problem is that Europe uses a lot of natural gas — it’s about a quarter of the region’s total energy production and more than a fifth of electricity generation — and about 40% of that gas traditionally has come from Russia. In the long run, Europe can and will switch much of this to solar and wind power, and import more liquified natural gas from the U.S. In the short run, that’s just not going to happen.
So what will Europe do in order to sustain its economy and keep from freezing in the short term? Well, there are two basic strategies — price-based demand curbs and rationing — both of which will involve painful tradeoffs. European countries will probably choose a mixture of these. And in the end, Europe will be a little bit poorer, but it will make it through.
As a coda, although it’s too late for recriminations to be anything but a distraction in the current crisis, it’s worth remembering how Europe — and especially Germany — was forced into this unhappy tradeoff in the first place. There were two big mistakes: environmentalism without pragmatism, and a romantic attachment to the idea of peace through commerce."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/dont-panic-europe-will-deal-with
44. "In the throes of the current bear market, there is no better time for crypto-natives to be building. Join a DAO, read a crypto newsletter, write a blog post, pick up a technical skill, do a podcast, solve a practical problem.
Perhaps most importantly, build relationships. The bear market weeded out the crypto tourists, and the people remaining are the true crypto-natives. Indeed, building in the bear is a reliable way to meet like-minded folk serious in their convictions.
Put simply, when the excitement of the bull party is over, the bear market is the best time to solidify your second citizenship in the crypto world. Just as the Chinese or Jewish diaspora exists as an entity outside of whatever nationality they hold, crypto citizens hold “dual citizenship”, one “officially” in their physical nation state, and one “unofficially” in the crypto world of their choosing."
https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/the-sovereign-crypto-native
45. This is a much needed VC fund here. Congrats to Jai Malik
46. This fund will actually do well I think.
https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/kim-kardashian-starts-investment-firm-4944785
47. Too early to tell but I certainly hope so! Slava Ukraini!
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/are-russian-forces-on-brink-of-collapse
Dreams Versus Reality: You Need Both To Truly Live & Thrive
There is this great quote in the Dune movie: “Dreams make good stories. But everything important happens when we are awake. That’s when we make things happen.”
This is the paradox of our lives. Spend too much time daydreaming and you accomplish nothing. Yet It’s easy to fall into this mode as it’s really enjoyable and you feel good even though you have done nothing.
On the other hand, being busy all the time and taking action thoughtlessly just leads you nowhere. You don’t get to where you want to go.
We need belief to motivate us. We need to be inspired by our dreams, by other people.
We are humans. We live on stories. We are motivated by images & pictures. This is a tool we don’t utilize enough to make our lives and those around us so much better. It helps us get through the slumps and inevitable tough times on the journey to our destination.
Coupling this direction with hard action is the only way to achieve anything in life. And as I’ve stated many times before, you have to program your mind like a computer. Napoleon Hill famously stated: “Whatever Your Mind Can Conceive and Believe, It Can Achieve.”
Do it consciously or you will end up being programmed by someone else. Or worse programmed to pursue some else’s dreams.
As the Bible says: “Man without vision shall perish.”
Living in our Own Matrix: Reality is a Choice
I started watching the Matrix Resurrection. As a big fan of the original series I had high hopes that were dashed as usual by a crappy remake.
The story of the Matrix in which we are all trapped in this Virtual Reality fictional world while acting as living batteries for our robot overlords. But there are rebels who choose to give up the comforts of this fake world. Rebel candidates are given a choice: blue pill to return to the ease and normality of the matrix or a red pill that shows the reality of how the world works.
The red pill symbolizes truth and the choice to see all the lies around you. It’s an awakening of your mind. It allows you to literally break out of the fake world matrix surrounding you.
Unfortunately, the term “Red pill” has been co-opted by the loser manosphere movement but I think the actual concept is still relevant for us all.
We’re all trapped by the myths, stories, and family and societal expectations that we grow up with. In the authoritarian side of the world like Russia and China and it’s Ilk, the ruling class want to keep the populace even dumber and more ignorant. They blatantly lie, filter & keep information away from you. If you don’t know what’s real, how do you resist? Then it’s easier to be used as cannon fodder or cows to be milked.
In the Capitalist West, it's a bit more insidious and maybe even smarter. But the goal is the same: Control. We are trained to be consumers, not producers. To buy and value things but not people or our time. These myths and lies are propagated in the liberal West by an outdated education system, mainstream media, corrupt government and consumerist culture.
We are told stupid things like “keep up with the Jones”, that entrepreneurial endeavors are too risky, that we should get a good education and focus on getting a good job whatever that means. And an even more pernicious message is that we should trust what the government and media says because they know better and care about you.
What a crock of garbage but it’s all around us. It reminds of the story about the old fish who runs into some kid fishes and he asks them “How is the water boys?” The kid fishes respond “what’s water?”
This is exactly the situation we all find ourselves In. Most of us are so busy we don’t even question or know what we are surrounded by. Running on a continual treadmill. As the famous Matrix quote: “Billions of people just living out their lives, oblivious.”
So you sometimes feel like something in our lives is off. Wrong. But yet we don’t do anything. A character called the Analyst describes this situation well: “Quietly yearning for what you don’t have, while dreading losing what you do. For 99.9% of your race that is the definition of reality. Desire and fear.”
For many of us, it requires a traumatic episode in your life like a divorce, recovering from a serious health issue or facing economic ruin. These can act as wake up calls and a signal that something is not right. Sometimes it can be meeting and having a conversation with a new person, or reading a book that really opens your eyes. I find travel to new and exotic places also makes you question your assumptions of the world. These are the moments when the mental breakthrough happens.
It also requires an open mindedness and openness to being seen as different or weird by the wider population. It requires a willingness to question and sacrifice your certainty to see the reality and truth around us.
There is a quote in the movie:
“The paradox between free will and destiny. Are we all just algorithms doing what we are supposed to do or can we escape our programming. Is it free will or destiny.”
I think a lot about personal freedom, about the idea of Sovereign Individual. What does it mean to be truly free in this world? You can not be free if you work for someone else. You cannot be free if you do not face reality. You cannot be free if you do not see and understand how the world truly works so you can build your own better life.
So the question now is: Red pill or Blue Pill?
Do you wake up or keep sleeping walking through life like the 99.9% of sheeple out there?
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Sept 11th, 2022
“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.” -Mother Teresa
For road warriors and frequent flyers like me.
"If you’re still in the grind here are some ways to make sure you stay in shape without killing your performance on the job.
Step 1 - Prepare: If you know that you will have a long week including travel you should think about it the following way: 1) Heavy leg workout the day before you leave, 2) grab compression socks and wax matrix niacin and 3) if you’re really concerned about bloodflow you can take a baby asprin.
Why? During flights you will recognize that your feet are inflamed. Badly. If you want proof of this simply take off your shoes on the flight and try to put them back on when you land. *Note, don’t be one of those gross people walking around the plane without shoes on*
We’re simply giving you a way to prove out that it is damaging to your body. Blood clots are a real risk to flying."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/skincare-and-working-out-while-grinding
2. A great example of a Portfolio Entrepreneur. One of the best to say the least.
"Though he might wince at the comparison, one commonality Hoffman does share with the onetime hawker of Trump Steaks, Trump University and Trump Tower is a penchant for building businesses—and then writing and talking at length about them.
Hoffman’s multitude of roles, each of which would soak up the bulk of a typical executive’s time, include partner at blue-chip VC firm Greylock, board member at Microsoft, main investor in the SPACs for autonomous vehicle startup Aurora Tech and flying-taxi hopeful Joby Aviation, and founder of a software company, Inflection AI, that’s in quasi stealth mode.
What, I asked, does a typical week look like, given this diverse portfolio? “The principal way I work these days is that I have projects that have CEOs that I’m working with, and I have, as noted by your account, too many projects to be the CEO of something.” Hoffman, sporting a black T-shirt and a mop of tousled hair, was sitting in front of a bucolic printed shoji screen. He said he toggles between these various enterprises depending on where he’s most needed—something he couldn’t do if he were an actual CEO. “That’s the reason why there isn’t, per se, a typical week. Every week is its own unique species.”
Hoffman, who recently turned 55, has been carrying on like this since 2009, when he stepped down for the second time as LinkedIn’s CEO. An early investment in Facebook, coupled with Microsoft’s 2016 purchase of LinkedIn for $26 billion and his 13-year run as a partner at Greylock, have made him a multibillionaire—but clearly not an idle one."
3. "The world is going multipolar – and China is on the rise, aiming to use its newfound wealth and strength to achieve what Chinese President Xi Jinping refers to as his dream of “the great renewal of the Chinese nation”. Reacquiring Taiwan is one of the most important aspects of Xi’s dream, and from Beijing’s perspective, one of the most powerful political figures in the U.S. (dear Nancy) just spit in that dream’s face.
The result? Not World War III, despite the breathless coverage from the media, which will fade away in a few weeks’ time as it has around the still-ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. China is not powerful enough to conquer Taiwan yet, but make no mistake – China is building up its military capabilities in part so that a threat of force against the renegade island will mean more in the future.
Many U.S. companies that made their products in China are scrambling to rebuild supply chains from scratch, whilst those that remain in China face much higher costs to manufacture goods in China and pass these costs onto the consumer (i.e., you and me) – both of which are inflationary.
And that’s before accounting for what the pandemic and China’s COVID-19 lockdowns have done to disrupt manufacturing on the mainland. Instead of a reprieve in trade ties, a Fourth Taiwan Strait crisis means more trade tension and potential shipping disruptions in and around the South China Sea, which is still where the vast majority of the world’s semiconductors are produced."
https://www.thelykeion.com/a-geopolitical-primer-on-taiwan
4. Go Ukraine!
"So summarising the above into what I think happens. I think we see continued Ukrainian long range attacks on Russian troops in Ukraine, including Crimea, to devastating effect, as the West supplies more long range kit. I think Putin knows he needs a peace deal, but does continue to fuel the energy crisis in Europe over the next few months to boost his leverage in those talks.
I don’t think there will be a defining battle for Kherson, but the defining battle will be the Battle of Supply Chains - Russian military supply chains in Ukraine, and possible European supply chains disrupted as a result of Putin’s energy war in Europe. It’s ironic that both countries strategies are now based on hitting the other deep behind the front lines but with Ukraine this is in southern Ukraine, and for Russia is it in Central Europe, Germany, et al thru energy.
And eventually I think the two sides do end up at peace talks this autumn, likely November, when the first snows are falling and when Putin will be nervous about leaving his military in an enemy field during freezing temperatures.
Question will be how far Putin will be prepared to compromise, and can Zelensky accept any territorial concessions now, or is he and Ukraine willing to fight on until all Ukrainian territory is liberated. And I guess I worry if Putin is willing to play the Z-card - Zaporizhiya NPP?"
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/ukraine-prospects-for-peace
5. Good summary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine so far from a very smart, qualified guy for once. (US/Nato General). Slava Ukraini!
https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1561042285214810112
6. We can all be much more supportive of each other down our chosen paths. It really matters.
"Feiler argues that most people think of life as a smooth linear path. If you ask most 21-year-olds, including me at the time, you’d probably get them telling you this is how life will go. Yet in his extensive research into how people’s lives actually play out, he found that the reality was much different. Instead of being defined by a line, the thing that shaped people’s lives was a steady stream of “disruptors.” Most people have about three dozen disruptors in their lives, meaning on average people face things that send them in new directions every 12-18 months."
"This can be life-changing to someone. Yet so few people do it.
This is why people like Tyler Cowen are so inspiring. He has taken a weird path, reached a level of status and success, and now puts a ton of effort into supporting hundreds, if not thousands, follow bold paths through his program Emergent Ventures.
Why doesn’t everyone have a Tyler Cowen-type person in their family or community? It’s a damn shame.
The good news is that you know all this now and realize that even if someone seems confident, they probably aren’t. Even people on the default path need encouragement and supporters.
I’ve talked to countless people of all life stages, income levels, ethnic backgrounds, and life conditions and it’s pretty clear - everyone is a bit uneasy and everyone could use a little more support."
https://boundless.substack.com/p/believe-in-others-193
7. "I do not consider myself a military or geopolitical expert, so there is a good chance I’m not seeing the big picture here. But I can’t deny that a lot of what Prince says resonates with my current thinking and/or experience of the world. This especially applies to his matter-of-fact economic analysis.
Prince points to the failure of the West’s attempt to bring China into the liberal fold via a strategy of making it rich. He says this strategy is responsible for much of what ails us. He also blames the over-domination of corporate monopolies and a lack of competition for entrenching an overly bureaucratic and ineffective state system. Nor is he a fan of easy money. He has some fairly clear-cut thoughts about the politicisation (or deneutralisation as I call it ) of the dollar — as well as the role that Russian sanctions are likely to play in further undermining the global reserve currency. Can’t fault him on any of that."
So what can we learn from this? There’s a lot to be drawn out from Prince’s views on things that go beyond Afghanistan.
Other notable points in the interview include Prince’s thoughts about bitcoin, crypto and gold. His concern about the rise of a “social credit system” surveillance state, which he says he will fight tooth and nail against. His role in running an assassination bureau that operated in “soft” jurisdictions like Germany. How the Russians had invited him to basically start what would become the Wagner group, but he turned them down in a move that he says proved he wasn’t a mere profiteer.
And his experiences in Eastern Europe as a kid and how they informed his opinion of communism. And much more…
That a mercenary favours gold and bitcoin and emphasises the importance of paying good wages to soldiers, of course, shouldn’t really be that surprising. It was true in Julius Caesar’s day, and it remains true today.
But that’s kind of the key point of this interview. It emphasises the degree to which the more things change, the more they actually stay the same. The same old forces still influence everything. The mercenary field may not be the oldest profession in the world, but it’s certainly high up there. And those who have the capacity to raise private armies are politically contentious for a reason."
https://the-blindspot.com/when-high-profile-mercenaries-have-opinions-about-markets-and-more
8. Gil has been one of the more disciplined investors in the last few years of crazy (because he is experienced and knows what’s up).
"Healthy atmosphere. But the other thing that has changed is the atmosphere. For the first time in a long time, all of our conversations with founders are grounded in reality. Founders are asking for reasonable amounts of capital at reasonable terms to achieve potentially extraordinary things with manageable risk. There is time for conversation, time for questions, time to get to know one another, and time to align. There is a return of mutual appreciation and respect. We tremendously respect founders that are making reasonable asks, driving reasonable burn rates, and taking on risk — and founders, in turn, seem to have a new appreciation for the real risk that investors are taking by believing in them."
"So right now — when so many investors and over-funded companies are struggling to adapt to the new environment — now is exactly the right time for us to double down on what we do — and what we have always done."
https://medium.com/angularventures/for-early-stage-venture-its-go-time-eca7b4ecda70
9. Worth reviewing. For founders who want to know what’s happening in the fundraising market right now.
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6966490532126633984
10. I like this concept of Gorilla in tech, so much better than Unicorn.
"In nature, gorillas are impressive creatures. The same is true in business, where a Gorilla is a startup that has (1) surpassed a valuation of $1B and is (2) generating an annual net revenue run rate above $100M. Most importantly, these startups are on track to becoming enduring, generationally defining businesses.
With 1,250+ global unicorns, it’s safe to assume only a small fraction are Gorillas. Whether the name becomes vernacular or not, a stronger focus on business fundamentals seems appropriate now more than ever."
https://medium.com/susa-ventures/strive-to-be-a-gorilla-not-just-a-unicorn-d033ed341e8c
11. This is a worthwhile interview with controversial Erik Prince. Lots of very good insight here on where the world is going from a geopolitical perspective.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwK_XLFOm_I
12. "I’m not suggesting for a moment you should stash your assets in a hidden Panamanian bank account like Iceland’s former prime minister did—over the years I’ve learned that your government will almost inevitably find out if you’re doing something shady. But I am saying that if there’s a legal means for you to pay less tax to your government overlords, you should take it.
Because many of your government overlords are doing the same.
If you own a company in Sweden, why wouldn’t you move it to Hungary to cut your tax bill by more than half? Or if you’re a location-independent entrepreneur, why not consider moving your legal address to Georgia, a nation that’ll allow you to legally pay just 1% tax?
Obviously, most of the benefits of being able to cut a huge chunk out of your yearly tax bill come when you stop being a paid employee, and structure your life around your own business, company, or solo enterprise. This is why Sorelle and I believe that generating an independent income is the most important first step in becoming a more free global citizen."
https://abundantia.substack.com/p/burn-the-witch
13. This is a great initiative. We owe our veterans more.
"The two have been paired together through Hives for Heroes, a Houston-based nonprofit that helps veterans take up beekeeping by matching them with experienced mentors. The project tackles two disparate problems: the mental health risks that veterans face when they separate from service and the declining population of honeybees.
Launched in 2018 by Marine Corps veteran Steve Jimenez, a Houstonian whose rough transition back to civilian life was transformed by beekeeping, the project has expanded to every state and matched more than 1,200 veterans—“newbees,” in the group’s parlance—with beekeeping mentors.
Hives for Heroes aims to give its novice beekeepers the same benefits. The project harnesses veterans’ desire to be of service—they’re helping the environment, and some volunteer to relocate unwanted colonies from walls and trees—and can lead to a new career. (Though not all beekeepers harvest honey, some do turn the hobby into a business.)
The mentor beekeeper—sometimes a fellow veteran, often a non-veteran civilian—is a supportive presence and a connection to the larger beekeeping community. For some combat veterans, the element of danger is an attractive challenge. And all participants develop bee-yard mindfulness out of necessity. If they rush or their minds wander, they’re more likely to get stung."
https://www.texasmonthly.com/travel/veterans-finding-new-mission-in-beekeeping
14. "If you hadn't had that experience with your injury, would you have ever become this mission-driven leader?
No. It knocked the hell out of me. You know, it knocked out all the narcissism, it knocked out that I knew everything."
https://theprofile.substack.com/p/mark-bertolini-interview
15. "George Leonidas Leslie led a double life: By day, he was a distinguished architect who hobnobbed with New York City’s elite denizens; by night, he was one of history’s most prolific bank robbers.
Unlike other heisters of his time, Leslie’s approach was academic rather than brutish. He studied the anatomy of locks, drafted up blueprints of banks, and invented mechanical safe-breaking devices.
During his “career,” authorities estimated that his exploits accounted for 80% of all bank robberies in the entire US during his active years of 1869-78.
Altogether, he stole at least $7m ($200m in today’s money), much of it pilfered from the bank vaults of America’s wealthiest titans.
The final bank heist he orchestrated is still, to this day, the largest in US history — an astounding $81m haul, adjusted for inflation."
https://thehustle.co/the-architect-who-became-the-king-of-bank-robberies
16. "Pretty much everyone in that world, from the millions of small-scale crypto holders to industry employees and investors, has watched in shock and dismay as Three Arrows Capital, once perhaps the most highly regarded investment fund in a burgeoning global financial sector, collapsed in excruciating and embarrassing fashion. The firm’s implosion, a result of both recklessness and likely criminal misconduct, set off a contagion that not only forced a historic sell-off in bitcoin and its ilk but also wiped out a wide swath of the cryptocurrency industry."
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/three-arrows-capital-kyle-davies-su-zhu-crash.html
17. Japan is on the rise. A critical military ally against the CCP.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QB-fBGMJVR8
18. This could be the future: investing directly in talent! Love this.
"In Central Park, they told me that, with Maria and Anna, they’d created an entity called Libermans Co. It held all the income from their enterprises; any debts, assets, and profits they might gain; and any investments they might make or companies they might start for the next thirty years. They had gathered all these elements and sold shares in the whole, offering investors, effectively, a stake in their entire financial future—shares in their life.
So far, the Libermans have traded around three per cent of their futures, which investors have valued at four hundred million dollars, or about a hundred million dollars per Liberman. They spent a few months in conversation with the Securities and Exchange Commission to list themselves on the stock market, which they hope to do by 2023.
The Libermans’ theory is that, in terms of stuff that America’s big wealth can invest in, people are more appealing than the current catalogue of middling venture-capital funds, shipping firms, and companies selling toothbrushes by mail. Instead of putting money into a fund for startups, investors would be free to find an ingenious entrepreneur and invest in her entire career.
Rather than buying shares of Spotify, a fund could buy into a portfolio of the futures of emerging hip-hop artists, all of whom would get that cash. Most of us are more excited about our brilliant friends than about the companies they work for. And while the average age of an S. & P. 500 company is approximately twenty years—most die young—people do better. The stronger their boost off the blocks, the longer they can keep trying, increasing their odds of success."
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/01/is-selling-shares-in-yourself-the-way-of-the-future
19. "Decluttering our lives from things, thoughts, and people that doesn’t propel us forward makes us lighter, faster, and happier. Everything becomes easier as there is nothing cluttering up our time, attention, and creative energy.
Every day becomes a white space that we can fill with meaning but also leave open for surprise discoveries. Our calendars are no longer fully booked, our spaces are clean and easily manageable, and our thoughts are crisp and clear, brain fog gone."
https://fewerbetterthings.substack.com/p/towards-fewer-better-things-thoughts
20. This was a personally helpful discussion. Searching for self-actualization, gaining courage and finding your path.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q91g7IohQAE
21. "Let’s go back a century to Weimar. Most speculators knew that the government had lost control and that the only path forward was to print money. However, occasionally the politicians would try and arrest the inflation—as inflation crushes voters. Sometimes, it was an offhand quote from a government official, sometimes it was concrete action.
The market would convulse in panic, only to find that the authorities had zero tolerance for pain. Voters hate inflation, but they hate losing their jobs even worse. Politicians work for the speculators, not the voters—caught in a stall-speed between inflation and depression, politicians will almost always choose inflation. However, there were brief moments where the market believed the politicians—or at least worried that they’d lose control to the downside and things would crash.
Once again, the trick to navigating what is coming is to stay as long as possible, while not getting taken out during the inevitable pullbacks. If your timing is good, you can add size at the end of each pullback and dramatically increase your returns, especially as the amplitude of each incremental move will usually be greater—besides, as money gets debased, it is imperative to have some financial leverage."
https://adventuresincapitalism.com/2022/08/22/the-pause
22. "Spending more money on research is really the key here, because that’s what creates demand. Yes, supply of research inputs is important — we need lots of high-skilled immigrants, and we need to push more Americans to go into STEM. But unless there are jobs for those researchers, Americans will be discouraged from going into the field, and the presence of immigrants will seem like a cutthroat zero-sum competition. Spending more money ensures that anyone who has the talent can see their talent put to work.
So far, the current U.S. industrial policy revival has been a bit disappointing on this front. The CHIPS Act lobbed a bunch of money at the semiconductor industry, but this represented a vastly scaled-down bill that chopped out most of the best parts of an earlier version called the Endless Frontier Act. The Endless Frontier Act could have revitalized U.S. scientific research, far beyond the narrow confines of the chip industry, but our congressional leaders simply didn’t see the point.
Well, the point should be obvious now. When China has quantum computers a million times faster than Google’s, satellites that can talk securely with the Earth via quantum entanglement, quantum magnetometers that can (possibly) find our most secret submarines, and autonomous drone swarms that can fly through dense forests, Congress would have to be insane to worry about pinching a few pennies.
The U.S. hasn’t fallen behind in science yet. But in order to avoid falling behind, at least in many key areas, we need to take bold action now."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-war-economy-is-america-falling
23. "Above all, war is more than battles and operations. Regardless of the technology, it is, as Thucydides reminds us, the human aspects that matter most. If the public embrace the desire to fight to survive, are willing to endure and sacrifice, then systems will become less important. Even where superior and overwhelming firepower is employed, if a population refuses to submit, they will endure defeats in battle and keep fighting. Multi-domain integration determines only how to fight; it will not necessarily determine who wins wars."
https://engelsbergideas.com/notebook/human-behaviour-will-still-determine-who-wins-wars
24. Talk about mortgaging your country's future.
"Well, not really. The Erdogan administration might be able to muddle thru to elections, but at the price of the deterioration in Turkey’s balance sheet in the interim.
Russia might be allowing Turkey to pay in borrowed rubles, but they still have to be paid back, and these likely will create a liability on the next government to emerge after elections, AKP or otherwise.
Similarly, if the strategy it to continue to intervene to defend the lira, FX reserves will be spent, and the CBRT’s net international reserve position will deteriorate even further than it’s current estimated minus $60bn number.
All this does not resolve the underlying problem that Turkey is living beyond its means, too much growth now, not enough saving, and the accumulation of more external debt liabilities which need to be paid back, whether to Russia or the Gulf.
And in the case of debts to Russia, one had to ask what an absolutely malign character like Putin will demand of the new credits he has extended to Erdogan? But we know for sure that he will come knocking on Turkey’s door in the future and the payback will likely include a big wad of usury which Putin certainly believes in. Putin will extract a heavy’s price on Erdogan, and especially if this results in his re-election next year. Erdogan will owe Putin.
And what about the Gulf money? It’s hard really to imagine MBS, with all his tortuous history with Erdogan lending to keep the latter in power in Turkey unless a heavy pay back is expected - likely in lucrative Turkish assets being put up for sale to Gulf interests at some point in the future."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/erdogans-economic-plan-for-elections
25. Great profile here on Idris Elba, who is aging like a fine wine. All men should aspire to be like this man. A very cool dude.
https://www.mensjournal.com/entertainment/idris-elba-mens-journal-cover-story
26. "CBDCs enable all of those financial censorship capabilities with one click of a button. Everything being collected leaves you in a very scary position.
If you carbon footprint is too large, fines automatically removed. Financial censorship on steroids.
If you read up on CBDCs from the rest of the central banks, like the Sand Dollar and the e-CNY, you’re going to find they all have the same motivations as China and the Bahamas. Tracking and controlling you, your money, and removing any and all privacy.
During the middle of the lockdowns, Summer 2020, only 35 countries were even deciding, whether or not, to develop or launch a CBDC. Now, over 80% of all central banks are active in developing a CBDC - making up over 95% of global GDP.
The central banks all have the same talking points, and they all recite the same “initiatives” for developing a CBDC. Best to be listening and developing your multiple income streams as fast as you can."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/cbdc-update-with-bowtiedscholar
27. Congrats to Timmu and the team. Proud investor here.
https://a16z.com/2022/08/23/investing-in-ready-player-me
28. An investing legend. Father of the baby cubs: a multitude of very successful hedge funds. RIP Julian Robertson.
https://fortune.com/2022/08/23/julian-robertson-hedge-fund-billionaire-tiger-cubs-dies-at-90
29. The CCP & their enablers are the enemy of America & the western free world.
"In that sense, in contrast to the Nazis’ militaristic imperialism, the CCP has resurrected a more ancient form of imperialism in which they’ve bought and groomed foreign elites to be more loyal to them than to their own people. Since the early 19th century, no illiberal regime besides the Soviet Union has had the wherewithal to co-opt western elites to that degree, and relations with the Soviet Union were limited. But the amount of western cash running through China over the last few decades appears to have made this ancient form of imperialism viable for the CCP.
This is, by all accounts, a sad story. China is running out of money. The CCP made promises to the Chinese people that they couldn’t keep, and they’re therefore resorting to increasingly ruthless ways of obtaining cash while dragging the world into totalitarianism with them, as we saw with lockdowns. They’re simultaneously resorting to increasingly ruthless methods of robbing their own people, such as bank defaults and jailings of billionaires, while doubling down on domestic controls.
Decoupling from China need not be permanent. China is a great civilization, and I have no doubt that China can right itself and rectify its institutions within our lifetime. But we can’t risk our democracy and the lives of our young people while we wait for that to happen. We need to be on the highest level of alert with regard to the CCP and treat the war as if it’s already begun. There’s presently no legitimate reason why we should be engaging with Xi’s China any differently than Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union."
https://michaelpsenger.substack.com/p/the-china-situation-isnt-as-bad-as
30. Shameful policy by grossly incompetent or corrupt political elites in Germany.
"Half a century later, in 2020, Russia would supply more than half of Germany’s natural gas and about a third of all the oil that Germans burned to heat homes, power factories and fuel vehicles. Roughly half of Germany’s coal imports, which are essential to its steel manufacturing, came from Russia.
An arrangement that began as a peacetime opening to a former foe has turned into an instrument of aggression. Germany is now funding Russia’s war. In the first two months after the start of Russia’s assault on Ukraine, Germany is estimated to have paid nearly €8.3bn for Russian energy – money used by Moscow to prop up the rouble and buy the artillery shells firing at Ukrainian positions in Donetsk. In that time, EU countries are estimated to have paid a total of €39bn for Russian energy, more than double the sum they have given to help Ukraine defend itself.
The irony is painful. “For thirty years, Germans lectured Ukrainians about fascism,” the historian Timothy Snyder wrote recently. “When fascism actually arrived, Germans funded it, and Ukrainians died fighting it.
When Putin invaded Ukraine in February, Germany faced a particular problem. Its rejection of nuclear power and its transition away from coal meant that Germany had very few alternatives to Russian gas. Berlin has been forced to accept that it was a cataclysmic error to have made itself so dependent on Russian energy – whatever the motives behind it.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/02/germany-dependence-russian-energy-gas-oil-nord-stream
31. China is in very deep doo doo (just like many other places in the world these days).
"Whichever way you look at it, Beijing is walking a tightrope. And the scale of the risks is unprecedented not just for China but also for the wider world. Matt Klein may be right in his recent FT piece to argue that from the point of view of inflation-fighting, the deflationary effect of China’s slowdown is welcome at this current moment.
But to take the next step to argue that “China’s troubles may be just what the rest of the world needs”, is surely to push a good point too far. It may be true that “China’s healthy exports and weak imports” were previously a “drag on the global economy, depriving workers elsewhere of the incomes they would have earned selling goods and services to Chinese customers.”
But that is a counterfactual argument. A better world is, indeed, imaginable in which China’s current account since the late 1990s was more balanced. Fair enough. Meanwhile, in the actually existing world economy, there are plenty of workers and businesses around the globe who depend heavily on exports to China. None of them will be celebrating bad news from China as good news, especially in light of the pressure also being exercised by a strong dollar and Fed tightening."
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-145-china-on-the-tightrope
32. No one feels sorry for the rich tech bros & VC, nor should they.
"The biggest critics of the government are, oddly, some of its biggest beneficiaries. Tech billionaires are often the first to shitpost America, even as they continue to harvest wealth from the investments taxpayers make via the U.S. government.
A wonderful thing about our country is that the people who are most patriotic are the ones who’ve made the greatest investment: veterans. Less heartening are the individuals who’ve registered the greatest benefit, are the least grateful, and are often the most critical: VCs who relocate to Miami and, before buying sunblock, disparage (constantly) the state they built their wealth in. Also, mega-welfare queens who cash EV subsidy checks and sell carbon credits as they mock the elected leaders who passed those laws.
BTW, nobody believes you moved to Florida or Texas for better governance — you wanted the chance to recognize a capital gain at a lower tax rate than the middle-class taxpayers who funded your infrastructure."
https://www.profgalloway.com/welfare-queens
33. The west needs to get off its act together and stop the half ass support of Ukraine. Send weapons and money asap so Ukraine can finish the barbarian Russian invaders.
"The great hope of Western governments was that Western economic sanctions would have a material effect on Russia’s ability and willingness to sustain the war against Ukraine. Battlefield attrition and economic attrition would combine to force Moscow to sue for peace. This, of course, depends on actually making a serious dent on the Russian economy. Six months into the conflict, how far that has been achieved is hotly contested.
As Zelensky knows, the stakes could not be higher. If, at the six-month mark, Ukraine now faces a long war, then stability is crucial. And that stability must be secured, not just on the frontlines, but on the home front as well, which is “highly contested too”. Otherwise, when Kyiv comes to mark the 12-month anniversary and the 18th-month anniversaries in 2023, the narrative may be less up beat than it is today."
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-146-the-russia-ukraine
34. This is an immensely disturbing trend from Korea that seems to be showing up all over the modern world.
"The only think I can think of is that women’s entry into the workforce may explain most of this, childcare is a high additional cost as opposed to a social default. Whatever the answer is, the west may stave off the consequences of the population crunch for a while with its willingness to import foreign workers, but the same can’t be said of advanced Asian nations.
We’re peering into the biggest selection event humans have faced in some time. I’m not normally worried about much but I am worried about this."
https://sotonye.substack.com/p/bloomberg-south-korea-crosses-a-population
35. Good read if you are considering doing angel investing in startups.
https://mikegreenfield.substack.com/p/why-im-an-angel-investor
36. Focus on comparing yourself to global maximum not the local maximum.
https://chrisneumann.com/blog/can-you-beat-my-friends
37. "In Vietnam, Afghanistan and many other conflicts, the stronger power lost because it could not win, and the weaker power triumphed simply because it did not lose. So shall it be in Ukraine, where the same process is playing out rapidly."
https://thehill.com/opinion/international/3606352-putins-on-the-brink
38. "The war in Ukraine has shown how a well-led, motivated and well-supplied defending force can effectively disrupt or even defeat an adversary with superior size and military means. At a minimum, the strength of contemporary defensive regimes means that defenders can significantly inflict significant costs, and prolong the duration, of an aggressor’s military aggression.
Lessons in areas such as leadership, multidomain integration, signature management, closing ‘detection to destruction’ time against an adversary, massed use of crewed and uncrewed systems, information operations and industrial scale warfare are likely to be prevalent in these studies. These will all drive institutional adaptation."
https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/how-ukraine-is-winning-in-the-adaptation-battle-against-russia
39. "But the real lesson of recent days is that events are spiraling out of the Kremlin’s control. Not one element of the original plan to attack Ukraine has survived contact with reality.
Morale has not fractured. Neither has Western support. Attrition and bad leadership steadily weaken the Russian forces while Ukraine’s military is becoming stronger, with better training and more modern equipment. Whether by sabotage, or through drone and missile strikes, Ukraine is hitting targets that the Kremlin did not think it would need to defend.
Retribution indeed: these attacks undermine a crucial Kremlin narrative about the conflict’s limited geographic and military scale. Russia thought it could limit the fighting to Ukraine. But nobody asked the Ukrainians about that."
40. Investing in climate tech is hard. Important but hard for generalist VCs like me.
"I’ve sadly come to the conclusion though that in order to be successful, you need some billionaires to back you eventually. This is by no means a bad thing (yes a lot of billionaires get negative press) as I couldn’t be happier that they are focusing their efforts and resources on a HUGE problem. It’s just that in my limited knowledge and quest to find something early pre/seed I find investable, they will need to continually raise capital and there aren’t many options as they grow."
41. Ukraine will win because of people like this: James Vasquez (and due to the indomitable will of Ukrainian people). Slava Ukraini!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaESL5WeMsk
42. Go NAFO! Down with brain dead Vatniks!
Feast or Famine: Know Where you Are in the Cycle (Copy)
2022 has in some ways been one of the more debilitating years for many people. Yes, we are coming out of the pandemic. But right into an inflationary & commodities/ energy-driven world recession, exacerbated by a massive land war in Europe (May God curse Putin and his cronies). The money printing boom times of 2020-2021 are over and truly was “the best of times and the worst of times”.
It’s interesting being in the tech ecosystem these days, talking to founders and investors who are literally in shock. Especially new and young ones who have never been through a downturn.
Valuations have gone down, due diligence has gone up, rounds are smaller with a few certain exceptions like founders with massive previous exits.
The lesson is that World works in cycles. Life is in cycles. Cycles always turn. The eternal parable of ant and cricket still holds. For anyone who is wondering as per Wikipedia:
“The fable concerns a grasshopper (in the original, a cicada) that has spent the summer singing and dancing while the ant (or ants in some versions) worked to store up food for winter. When winter arrives, the grasshopper finds itself dying of hunger and begs the ant for food. However, the ant rebukes its idleness and tells it to dance the winter away now.”
The point: enjoying life during the summer is fine but winter always eventually comes, so you need to prepare.
Personally, I’ve always wondered whether it’s better to grow up in good times or grow up in bad times. And the implications of either growing up rich or growing up poor?
Growth is good as a rising tide lifts all boats, almost everyone is happy making money. But the downside is you end up learning really bad habits and your spending and cost structure goes up as you expect this to last forever. You get sloppy, fat and usually spoiled. And this is especially lethal for investors in bull markets as the much repeated comment stands: “The four most dangerous words are ‘This time it’s different.”
On the other hand, growing up in recession, you end up in survival mode which makes you scrappy & to abhor waste (ie. Become very efficient). But you end up with a mindset of scarcity that is hard to grow out of, something I’ve personally struggled with. You tend to think win lose (not win-win) because you are literally getting a scarce resource over some else.
And many times, using a poker analogy, when times turn good and you have a strong hand, you tend to play things Tight ie. more cautious and defensive which limits growth versus being more aggressive as the new situation calls for.
Everything is a double edge sword. Having been fortunate or maybe just plain old, I’ve been through about 5 downturns now. (Ie. “Be wary of an old man in a young person's game”).
So I tend to be somewhat paranoid in good times but also know for a fact that bad times don’t last. You need to try to avoid being overly exuberant/ optimistic or too depressed/ down. As long as you keep fighting and trying, you can outlast bad times which I hope everyone out there takes to heart. Cycles always turn.
The Breaking of the Modern Mind: The Curse of the Attention Economy
There are many accusations that we are getting dumber. I actually think it’s more that our attention spans are shorter and thus our ability to do deep thinking and focused work is declining. Which maybe is another way of saying maybe we are getting dumber.
The internet, the smartphone & social media have overall been a boon. We have access to unfathomable amounts of information from all over the world. But like all technology, it’s a blade that cuts both ways. We have too much information and it’s easy to get distracted. In fact during small breaks we are drawn to our phones to fight boredom. Yet boredom also allows your brain to ponder things it would otherwise not think about.
I remember in the 1999 and even early 2000s I would just spend hours reading a book. I’d finish 3-5 books in a weekend. I find it hard to do now. Maybe it’s due to old age or just being a parent. Or a busier work schedule and duties. But I don't think that's it. I find my attention span being so much shorter now that I can’t focus for more than 20-30 minutes straight.
Actually according to an old study by Microsoft back in 2015 actually, “people now generally lose concentration after eight seconds, highlighting the effects of an increasingly digitalized lifestyle on the brain.”
(Source:https://time.com/3858309/attention-spans-goldfish)
I can’t imagine how much worse it is now, 7 years later with more social media, more devices and just so much more of everything.
This is a pretty big issue if you want to thrive. Especially in a world of work that requires deep work and clear thinking. This is kind of the only work that matters now. We need more thinking, not less. In fact, I worry about this upcoming younger generation like my daughters that does not know anything different. It’s digital screen time from a young age.
In fact, French philosopher Pascal Blaise so wisely wrote in the 1600s, "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."
So how am I combating this? It’s through a few specific tactics and activities that have massive benefits in the rest of my life. It’s stuff you should be doing anyways, but it’s another good reason to do more of the following:
Exercise
Meditation
Time away from screens Ie. Read more books
More writing but through use pen and paper not typing
Time in nature
It’s just a start but I know that if I don’t try to conquer this issue now, it will be a much harder habit to build as my brain ages.