Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Dec 18th, 2022
“It’s precisely those who are busiest who most need to give themselves a break.” — Pico Iyer, The Art of Stillness
Hope he is right but CCP is more capable (and evil) than people think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1hmvF8yiY8
2. This was a great conversation today on ChatGPT and personal finance. NIA boys at work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47JIwJWH8TQ
3. "Cash is like the weighted blanket you bought off Instagram, Scrooge McDuck’s gold pit of coins, my wife’s collection of canned goods in the basement…you get it. Feeling secure is important. I cannot understate the financial and psychological damage done to people who have to sell assets or take on debt to pay their bills. They either slip into a systemic pattern of poor behavior or never trust themselves again.
The rule of thumb is to have three-to-six months of your living expenses in cash, but I recommend having six-to-nine months as your default. Yes, my trauma is showing."
https://thisisthetop.substack.com/p/babys-first-recession
4. "For anyone who has worked in marketing, this utter disregard of customers and market research is mind-blowing. How can they possibly make so many decisions that run counter to user preferences? You couldn’t run a laundromat that way, so how can it work with a multibillion dollar global corporation?
There’s only one reason why they do this.
They do it because they’re so dominant they actually believe that they own you. Even if they don’t say it, that’s what they think.
I’ve focused here on Facebook, but there’s a larger lesson here. Web platforms don’t fail because of the competition. They don’t self-destruct because they are weak. The collapse comes because they are strong. They lose the thread because of their dominance and power, which gives their leaders the mindset of authoritarian rulers.
The solution is simple: Serve the users, instead of manipulating them."
https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/how-web-platforms-collapse-the-facebook
5. "In the past, I’ve heard the entrepreneur’s three jobs presented as the following:
-Set a mission and vision
-Find and nurture the best people
-Ensure there’s enough cash in the bank
While I believe those three to still be true, a fast growing business that’s transitioned from startup to scaleup needs a strong editor and curator.
More scale results in more competing interests and complexity. More scale results in more initiatives and more opportunities. Scaleups, even with an incredibly successful core business, can easily lose their way chasing The Next Big Thing. Saying “no” becomes even more important than saying “yes.”
https://davidcummings.org/2022/12/10/entrepreneur-as-editor-and-curator-of-ideas
6. "Today, the creation of popular consumer products often proceeds in the reverse order of operations. Internet influencers build massive followings on social media — in other words, they capture attention — then they go out and create products to sell to that audience.
That’s the exact playbook that Jimmy Donaldson (aka MrBeast) is perfecting. Only 24 years old, MrBeast has built an enormous audience by creating viral content like re-building Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, amassing more than 200 million subscribers across multiple YouTube channels (as of last week, his original channel — with 112 million subs — made him the most followed person on YouTube)
And now he’s selling products to that audience."
https://trungphan.substack.com/p/mrbeasts-15b-youtube-empire
7. Any American who is still in Russia working now is a frigging moron and deserves what they will get.
8. "In short, our governments tell us they want us to prosper, and contribute to our economies. But their actions make this an impossible reality for most people at the bottom—resulting in the weakening overall economic prosperity of a nation, and the majority of economic wealth concentrating at the very top.
Something that many argue has been the plan all along.
But remember: if your nation’s ecosystem makes it impossible for you to play fairly within it, our world is structured so that you can go and do business somewhere else."
https://abundantia.substack.com/p/burning-your-future
9. Irony.
"Bankman-Fried’s loss has unquestionably been CoinDesk’s editorial gain: The site’s readership doubled to almost 17 million page views in November, according to internal company data, as its coverage has outpaced competition from traditional newsrooms like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. But CoinDesk, which has about 160 employees, now finds itself in an uncomfortable—and possibly unprecedented—position for a media company: While its reporting has vaulted the digital publication to new heights, its coverage could cripple its parent company and even force a sale of CoinDesk itself.
“Look, it’s been wild. I don’t suppose we ever expected the level of fallout from our initial scoop,” Casey admitted to me. “We knew we had something important. But we really didn’t quite realize that we had a story that would end up unraveling things so quickly. It’s been stunning to be in the middle of it.”
Just how in the middle is CoinDesk? Consider: CoinDesk is owned by Digital Currency Group, a privately held firm controlled and run by billionaire Barry Silbert. DCG also owns crypto lender Genesis Global Capital, and customers of Genesis worry that it, like many of its competitors, could face the same fate as FTX.
Two weeks after CoinDesk’s initial FTX report, Genesis suspended customer withdrawals from its lending business. It has since hired lawyers to stave off bankruptcy."
10. "That, put crudely, is Western thinking about Europe’s worst war since 1945. It is both cruel and dangerous. Cruel, because the suffering of the Ukrainian population (and the tens of thousands of battlefield casualties) are just collateral damage: something we have to accept on the road to an eventual ceasefire. Dangerous, because it ignores the real cause of the war and the only chance of lasting peace: the defeat of Russian imperialism."
https://cepa.org/article/the-only-path-to-peace
11. Must read encapsulation of the tech industry over the last 23 years. A must For ALL tech founders and investors.
https://bothsidesofthetable.com/praying-to-the-god-of-valuation-7f6758ba3b16
12. Morris Chang of TSMC always has insightful things to say. Great thread on his latest speech.
https://mobile.twitter.com/kevinsxu/status/1602018649010630657
13. "The best and most reliable way to appear interesting is to live an interesting life.
And to pursue that ends up being far more rewarding than merely making a good impression on others."
https://bakadesuyo.com/2014/01/interesting
14. There is a heck of A LOT to be optimistic about on the tech side. AI, Energy, Biotech, space. So many good things are coming. Read this and it’s not sci fi but sci fact.
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/techno-optimism-for-2023
15. Insightful take and teardown on the hated Ticketmaster’s business model.
https://thehustle.co/the-sneaky-economics-of-ticketmaster
16."If you look at every purchase you make as an investment in yourself and your future, then a few things might happen:
1. You’d realize that it’s not about having infinite choice but about making smarter and more well-informed decisions.
2. The pool of viable products would shrink to become very manageable, with just a few brands being able to satisfy your everyday essential needs.
3. You would automatically end up with fewer better things as your needs have become more known and refined.
Now, you could take this a step further and calculate your overall costs of all the things that you need every year on an everyday basis.
That would give you a very good idea of what your chosen lifestyle would cost or the potential for upgrading your lifestyle by making smarter investment decisions."
https://fewerbetterthings.substack.com/p/how-to-invest-in-yourself-and-your
17. "Successful Americans no longer feel the need to signal. So they now demonstrate their status through countersignaling. Other cultures still practice straightforward signaling.
Returning to the level of the individual, if you are trying to level up, the best approach is to borrow the strategies of those a little ahead of you—people who are still signaling. Beware of imitating those who are so far ahead that they can afford to countersignal.
If you are relatively early on your path, it is natural to seek advice from those who have achieved astounding success in your area of interest. You’d be better off, though, asking people who are on a similar trajectory as yourself, but a little further ahead. If you’re a white belt and want to level up, don’t ask the black belt (or red belt) what to do. Ask the purple belt."
https://robkhenderson.substack.com/p/the-perils-of-imitating-high-status
18. "By choosing to resist invasion in the name of freedom, Ukrainians have reminded us of this. And in doing so, they have offered us many interesting thoughts about what freedom might be. Volodymyr Zelens'kyi, for example, makes the interesting point that freedom and security tend to work together.
Throughout this war, speaking to Ukrainians, I have been struck that they define freedom as a positive project, as a way of being in the world, a richness of the future.
Freedom doesn't just mean overcoming the Russians; it means creating better and more interesting lives and a better and more interesting country."
https://snyder.substack.com/p/gratitude-to-ukraine
19. "In short: 1) continue waiting on RE, 2) if you’re wealthy look into bonds middle of Q1, 3) if there is *no* money printing, deflationary issues could show up in 2H23 and 4) if you’re in the market for a used car start looking now as it’s pretty bad. You can get a decent deal if you pay cash."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/rapid-fire-big-picture-update-macro
20. "Chris Dixon was one of the the first to coin the term ‘Single Player Mode’. Sangeet Paul Choudary calls it ‘Standalone Mode’.
'The idea is to initially attract users with a single-player tool and then, over time, get them to participate in a network. The tool helps get to initial critical mass. The network creates the long term value for users, and defensibility for the company'--Chris Dixon
It means that you create a tool which adds value to one side of the marketplace without the value proposition of connecting them to the other side of the marketplace.
Usually this product is a tool which solves a problem for the supply side.
While traditionally Single Player Mode has been defined from the user’s perspective (the customer who is using the product in standalone mode) I define it from the founder’s perspective (selling to one side of the marketplace, rather than two or more)."
https://alexfmac.substack.com/p/-marketplaces-zero-player-mode
21. This is lovely. Friends are family that you choose.
https://www.profgalloway.com/friends
22. "The key message of this article is that the adaptive capacity of an institution – its ability to adapt on the battlefield and as an institution – is critical to success in war. As Barno and Bensahel write, “preparing to adapt in the next war is just as important as preparing to fight itself.” This preparing to adapt must take place at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels of military forces.
Succeeding in the adaptation battle, founded on robust institutional learning, is a core part of war. It is the most human of endeavours.
Creativity, innovation, and a tolerance of failure are important components of a successful, adaptive military institution. It demands good leadership, experimentation and the humility to learn lessons from the mistakes and successes of others.
Keeping ahead of Russia in the adaptation battle has been an important component of Ukraine’s success so far in this war."
https://mickryan.substack.com/p/winning-the-adaptation-battle
23. Good advice for work and home life.
https://www.mattmunson.me/meeting-others-where-they-are
24. "It’s also interesting to think about what AI will do to the creative workforce. I tend to believe that it is more likely to automate out tasks, not whole jobs—that making it easier to get from zero to one in the creative process will only enable more creative experts to work on higher order, more challenging and interesting tasks.
That being said, I’d hate to be a stock photography model these days.
What this tech definitely does is that it expands the size of the creator market. In the early days of User Generated Content, the mantra was “everyone can be a creator” and we talked a lot about the long tail of artists."
https://ceonyc.substack.com/p/how-generative-ai-is-going-to-change
25. A Critical step of every fundraise that most folks overlook.
"For many founders, avoiding the elephant in the room can spell disaster for a fundraising process. Spending sufficient time before you fundraise to identify them, describe them, and effectively overcome them can dramatically increase your success rate."
https://chrisneumann.com/blog/the-elephant-in-the-room
26. "This potentially leaves quite a dilemma for the West. Will we continue to pour weapons and ammunition into Ukraine, if the war slows down? How long will we continue to support the Ukrainians so vigorously if there is no end in sight? The West is not well-adapted to gray-area conflicts fluctuating somewhere between war and peace.
We like to have war and then peace - not a little bit of both, and that confusion will unevitably spread dissent and disagreements between Western nations. I believe this is what the enigmatic Putin is currently betting on."
https://andreassteno.substack.com/p/the-great-game-5-the-bakhmut-bloodbath
27. "To generate outsized returns, you have to be comfortable with most people thinking you are an idiot. Prices on the assets you’re investing in will be lower and, if you’re right, the returns will be that much higher. It does, however, require a strong sense of confidence to employ this strategy. You have to be willing to be wrong, publicly, and perhaps for many years."
https://every.to/napkin-math/the-primary-trends-i-m-investing-in-next-year
28. This is a surprisingly optimistic view of the American economy. Hope he is right.
https://www.thelykeion.com/the-case-for-a-soft-landing-in-the-us
29. "Africa is set to remain deeply enmeshed in the modern Superpower confrontations. It is a proxy fight and inherently tied up in the confrontation between Russia and China, and the West. Russia is recruiting from Africa for the war effort in Ukraine. Is this a sign of weakness, as The Daily Beast suggests, or is it evidence that Russia is preparing to unleash more migrants on the EU?
The EU senses that trouble is brewing, and the latter may be a problem. They are launching two “Team Europe Initiatives” to deal with any possible upsurge in migration from Africa to Europe. It is hard to dispute the idea that Africa is now caught up again in a new Great Game between the major superpowers.
It is worth considering how all this will look in the rearview mirror of history when we try to understand what WWII looked like at the start. Some countries will become its new front line. Others will stay out of the fray and emerge stronger and wealthier. Now is the time to think through the possibilities and probabilities.
At the same time, African nations are making decisions that make it easier for entrepreneurs to flourish and for technological advances to occur ever faster. Now is a good time to think about what African capital markets will look like in a decade. I believe that there will be enough good stories and success to warrant time and attention today."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/africas-calling
30. This is a big deal: Japan is arming up even more! Very important in geopolitical sphere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK54VH_IE5s
31. "Historically, recycling has been seen as positive for everyone involved: VCs, their LPs and startups. The only downside typically mentioned is that recycling delays the time until investors start to receive cash distributions from the fund (“delaying DPI” in VC parlance).
Recently, a worrisome trend has emerged amongst a handful of multi-stage funds that reflects a dark side of VC recycling: funds attempting to force startups to shut down or sell so that they can recapture and redeploy their investment dollars within their recycling period."
https://chrisneumann.com/blog/the-dark-side-of-vc-recycling
32. Kaboom! My friend Zach is a great investor and founders are lucky to have him on the cap table.
https://www.axios.com/2022/12/14/coelius-capital-raised-333-million-2022
33. China is in big trouble. Important to watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0BNUF9ItmQ&t=367s
34. So many nuggets here on geopolitics. Zeihan is always informative.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHUoMmKDLUI
35. This is old news but sure....."Bleisure" travelers.
https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/bleisure-travel-begins-takeoff-5517148
36. Some good info on Patriots in Ukraine. Calculus has changed due to even more Russian atrocities and genocide in Ukraine. #russiaisterroriststate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_DyC0_K1xI
37. Excellent discussion especially on valuations of tech companies. Worth watching.
The 3 Levels of Business: The Framework for Your Career Growth
Justin Waller is a sharp dude, having come from total poverty to building a steel business that does $10M usd a year. His friends call him a “Blue Collar Baller” and it shows there are so many different career and business paths to the top. He has also become quite the online influencer sharing all his insights along his path up. He quotes his friend Tristan Tate about the framework for Business and Career growth that really stuck with me. He says there are 3 Levels to business that all successful business owners have to step through.
Level 1: You are Paid for What You Do.
You have to start at the bottom, keep your mouth shut, eyes & ears wide open and work your ass off.
Most people get stuck here because they either are too arrogant or entitled and think the work is beneath them. Or they just don’t want to do the work.
Level 2: You are Paid for What You Know.
You have accumulated enough experience and know-how that people now ask you for advice or to be involved. This was one reason I think I was asked to join 500 Startups as a Partner. Or an investor being asked to invest in some awesome startups. Or getting paid money to speak, advise or share your knowledge at big conferences/events or with various governmental or big corporate businesses.
Level 3: You are Paid for Who You Are.
This is a bigtime influencer, brand name level. You get business because of the reputation and the network you have established before. And everyone (well almost everyone) wants to do business with you or wants you involved. This is not about being famous but about being very well respected and “known” to those that matter in your business and your life.
When I think back to my career, I have been unintentionally following this path.
Level 1: What You Do: After so many fits and starts in my early twenties, when I joined the early stage startup and then Yahoo! I worked ferociously like my life depended on it. I worked on average 90-100 hours a week. I did this for a decade which also caused me to burn out and take 2 years off from my earnings. But I did accumulate enough knowledge that I could leverage for future career & business. I would say this encompassed the first 19.5 years of my time in Silicon Valley. Yes, it took a long time.
Level 2: What You Know: Which is where I think I am. You have to be a complete idiot NOT to pick up something useful after so long in the tech business. I’m fortunate to get offers all the time to participate in investment deals or join numerous Investment Committees of some other Venture Capital funds. Or get paid to speak at many events or corporate groups or advise some large organizations involved in the startup ecosystem (For the record: I refuse to take money from early stage startups but I will if they are subsidized by government funds. I just end up donating this amount (after taxes) to various charities I support anyways).
On the bright side, I have a clear view to get to Level 3: So I'm working hard on getting there :). I’m back on the conference speaking circuit. I’m writing this newsletter and I share every good thing I read on social media. Hopefully as my writing gets better (still a long ways away) and people think I’m adding value and have some interesting things to say, I may get to this new level eventually. But in the meantime, I’m enjoying the process which is probably the main goal and point anyways.
If you put this against almost every successful person it fits very well. So for all you young and old folks out there trying to find your way: this is a good framework to follow. And there is no way to skip a level and there are no shortcuts just like in life. So just “do the work” and you will level up.
Breaking Through the Matrix: Create Businesses and Learn about the Rules of Money for Financial Independence
Rob Dyrdek’s interview with Howie Mandel is really worth watching (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGXcZwU23xM). He talks about his fascinating and incredibly successful career, estimated to now have a net worth of $400M usd. Most importantly he talks about how he broke out of the Matrix. I’d define the Matrix as the societal standards, media and systems that keep most people in place, ignorant, poor and unhealthy. And very far from fulfilling their great potential that every human being has.
He said “I like to say I grew up in a fixed mindset household, went to a fixed mindset school, with fixed mindset parents, where you have one route to find a successful life. And you have to break out of it as a young child.”
He shares his lessons in personal finance and building toward financial independence.
“I was living check to check. I was not saving any money…..I was uneducated. I did not understand money. I thought i knew it all and then i just figured I would just keep starting more companies and do more things that i would eventually one of these things would blow up and make me really rich. I had made and lost millions and millions of dollars before I understood money. I don’t think I really learned money until I was 40……
You have to look through the <revenue> lens of post tax. And then your expenses. What are your goals? If you don’t have a goal with your money and what you are hoping to achieve with it, that is your own personal financial freedom, you just spend your life without a definitive end game. Most people don’t ever take the time to design.”
He was a professional skateboarder, then started several skateboarding related businesses, then a record label. None of them were big hits. He first made his big money in shoes: getting 2% commissions of all sales, making over $1.2M a year on all the shoes you designed from DC Shoes which was acquired.
He also ended up owning the entire platform of his shows “Fantasy Factory” & “Ridiculousness” on MTV, and he structured his contract so he was able to get paid for a percentage of revenue of the show. And he was able to sell sponsorships to big corporations directly instead of letting the television network do so.
The BIG Lesson: he made sure he had control and was paid first. And with this he earned his financial freedom and time to break out. Yes, you need money to break out of the Matrix. Especially in America.
“I am constantly evolving and growing. I like to think that I systematically evolve. I am growing and evolving with a clear and deep purpose. And alot of that has to do with financial growth, business growth and I think for me it’s sort of really sophisticated at curating ideas and entrepreneurs and building them and funding them to be profitable. That gives you the flexibility to be acquired or continue to reap the rewards of building this successful profitable company. Over and over.”
After a long career as professional skateboarder & entrepreneur, he built an amazing business career in television, and now as an entrepreneur and venture capitalist/ company builder called “Dyrdek Machine.”
So why all the focus on financial independence and breaking out of the Matrix? It’s so you can help your family also break out of the Matrix.
Dyrdek is a personal inspiration for me as he wisely says:
”I want to help as many people as I can in a direct and impactful way. As opposed to doing charity work. I just like impacting lives and lives that are closest to me. I just don’t want you to ever have to worry about money.
Money is never the answer but at the end of the day if money kills your mindshare and does not allow you to reflect and evolve and grow because you are constantly thinking or stressing about it. It’s going to deteriorate your health, the quality of life and ultimately your existence. And so the people closests to me, if i can alleviate that stress so they can put energy into personal fulfillment, relationship fulfillment & spend that mindshare that could have been stressing over money toward something productive to making them happy, I’d rather that happen.”
The big lesson is learn the rules of money so you can build and get the financial independence to break out of the Matrix. Then teach and help others to do the same. You have an obligation to do this for yourself, your family & friends so you can all live the amazing lives you were meant to live. Growth is a decision.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Dec 11th, 2022
“When you rest, you catch your breath and it holds you up, like water wings…” — Anne Lamott
Same situation this week. Totally crushed with projects and deal memos due by December 12th while fighting this cursed lingering cold. So shorter than normal recap. I should be back with full content programming in a week: I hope! Wish me luck!
Super interesting investment opportunity. Swedish serial acquirers.
"One thing I like about investing in serial acquirers is you get some built-in diversification. You’re getting a collection of different businesses. Slowdowns in one area may be offset by strength in another. As a group, I’d expect their financial results to be resilient.
Might there be better opportunities for serial acquirers when times are bad? All those debt-fueled private equity buyers may disappear. Maybe. But then the concern is the good companies won't sell. They'll hold out because they know what they could've sold out for before and won't accept less.
We will see. No one can predict the future, all we can do is prepare for a variety of scenarios."
https://www.woodlockhousefamilycapital.com/post/notes-from-stockholm
2. "Living in the era of the revenge of capital requires acknowledging that VCs and their LPs have memories and they remember how they were treated on the way up. All of today’s conversations about valuations, round sizes, and fund sizes are informed by the feelings that investors had about how they were treated on the way up; we are not starting from zero from those conversations.
And now that power is tilting back toward capital providers, those folks remember how they were treated and that influences the decisions they make about who to support and why.
I bring this up because if you are a founder or a fund manager who maybe pushed the envelope in terms of valuation, terms, control provisions, economics, or other negotiated terms, the people on the other side of the table likely remember how they felt when that happened. Many of the most challenging conversations I see today are ones where people who pushed the envelope or were aggressive on the way need to come back to their existing investors or LPs without considering where those folks are and what they’re dealing with in their portfolios.
Rightly or wrongly, I think many people on the capital provider side are looking for some recognition of the excesses in the past and some humility from those who are making new asks at this time."
https://www.charleshudson.net/living-through-the-revenge-of-capital
3. Word.
https://www.mattmunson.me/your-metrics-are-not-your-worth
4. "Venture capitalists, in general, are cogs in a machine to maintain status quo and incremental improvements. The allocation of capital should be an exercise in optimism. We need investors, not those that just learned to talk the talk, but investors who have read science fiction and poetry. Who are both rational, and human. Who recognize the importance of profits, but also factor in the intangible costs and benefits to humanity.
We could be so much better than we are."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/i-choose-optimism
5. "Quests tend to manifest as an objective we center our lives around. Your quest might be to reach a specific milestone: to become a senator, to publish a book, to make a million dollars. But not all quests have an end state. You might be on a quest to maximize your net worth, or to bench-press more weight than anyone else at the gym. Maybe you’re just on a quest to have the most fun possible before you die. A far cry from refrigeration or running water, but a nice life.
As you’ve probably already intuited, not all quests are created equal.
In the most simple terms possible: a good quest makes the future better than our world today, while a bad quest doesn't improve the world much at all, or even makes it worse.
Today, we are in a crisis. Silicon Valley's best — our top operators, exited founders, and most powerful investors — are almost all on bad quests. Exiting your first startup only to enter venture capital and fight your peers for allocation in a hot deal is a bad quest. Armchair philosophizing on Twitter is a bad quest. Yachting between emails in de facto retirement at age 35 is a very bad quest.
Even among the talented who choose a path of building, most take safe, incremental bets — another SaaS company, another turnkey consumer startup, another digital Beanie Baby. Such pursuits not only fail to push the world forward, but pose a cost in opportunity. There are important challenges facing humanity that no one is working on, including critical, and even existential challenges. In other words, if you are an exceptionally capable person, failure to pursue a good quest is not neutral. It constitutes a loss for humanity." https://www.piratewires.com/p/choose-good-quests
6. "So both sides seem to be suffering ammunition. If this continues, and both sides are relatively equally affected, then I would certainly rather be in Ukraine’s position with its advantage in accuracy and range. They will need less ammunition to do equivalent damage."
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/weekend-update-5
7. "You already know this. You will *practically* never get rich from a career. Read that sentence carefully. One of the main reasons why we yell “wifi biz” everyday like lunatics is because it is true. Without an online business (SaaS and E-com being the *most likely* success stories), the probability of getting rich is just too low. There are several reasons:
1) if you lose your job/career most end up eating into savings so they lose more than just a year of effort,
2) your job/career will pay you less than you are generating by definition - otherwise the firm would lose money and your boss would be fired,
3) the number of high paying positions is a “triangle” shape by design, so the probabilities get harder and harder: “being moved up” is not a guarantee. No matter what, there are significantly less Directors at a firm vs. Associates/entry level so you know attrition occurs and
4) you can’t *sell* your job/career. If you make $100K on a W-2 versus $100K on a business the business is likely worth at least $300K+!"
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/career-advice-and-some-small-announcements
8. Slava Ukraini!
"These strikes are another demonstration of Ukraine’s confidence and will. It also shows that they will leverage their momentum in defending their nation to continue hitting the Russians where it hurts over winter. Ukraine has fought hard, and suffered much, to seize the initiative in this war. Once again, they have made clear that they intend to sustain and exploit this initiative at every level at which this war is being fought."
https://mickryan.substack.com/p/russian-airfield-attacks-ukraine
9. "So that’s the America that Chimerica helped create — a country riven by widening divides of geography, education, and wealth. I can’t say that it’s a worse place than the America of the 90s, overall — after all, technology has been improving, and there have been some positive social changes too. But it feels more fractured, more precarious.
That America is still the country we live in today, but the beginnings of decoupling mean that we’re starting, ever so slowly, to move toward a different model. There’s no chance that we’ll go back to the America of the 1990s, or the 1970s. But at least the promise of something different is on the horizon, finally."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/how-the-old-system-of-the-world-shaped
10. "Which brings me back to the attacks on the Russian airfields.
Ultimately I think they are only important if they deprive Russia of the force needed to attack Ukraine (unlikely), if they divert Russian resources to now defend those airfields thus distorting the way the Russians fight in the future (maybe a small amount) or politically make a difference in how the Putin government prosecutes the war (doubtful)."
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/how-one-might-just-the-importance
11. "If I’m right, we’re headed towards Summer in AI, Solar, Nuclear, Space, Biotech, and Crypto within the next decade or so. What’s more, these technologies are reaching their potential at the same time, and could overlap and intersect in predictable and unpredictable ways.
Even the most optimistic early advocates of each of these technologies couldn’t have predicted that they’d come to fruition concurrently with a host of other potentially world-changing technologies. Despite their hyperbolic optimism, they might have underhyped the potential impact by missing those intersections.
In energy and healthcare alone, there are tens of trillions of dollars up for grabs for renewable and biotech companies. New industries like AI, Space, and Crypto will capture spend from existing industries (media & entertainment, communications, mining, and financial services are the obvious ones), and create new opportunities by expanding markets, creating new ones, increasing velocity, and reducing friction.
We’re not there yet, but after decades’ worth of Winters, we should pause to appreciate the fact that it’s a possibility, and start stocking up on sunscreen, just to be safe."
https://www.notboring.co/p/four-seasons-total-tech#§winter-a-cold-uncertain-period
12. I am so far away from this.
"Storage Zero is the optimal level of minimalism where everything is being used almost daily and at least weekly. It’s designed for a world where everything is accessible to acquire on-demand, and sustainable and easy to divest at any time, nothing stored."
https://fewerbetterthings.substack.com/p/storage-zero-the-holy-grail-of-simplicity
13. Probably not a surprise here. Sequoia is ruthless with low performance. (This is why they are the best).
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/crypto-and-ai-focused-sequoia-partner-is-leaving-the-firm
14. This is pretty interesting. Date Masamune: inspiration for Darth Vader.
https://nipponrama.com/date-masamune-samurai-darth-vader
15. This is the effect on the tech industry from rising costs of capital.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bK397YwduhQ
16. Feel like I've been in Goblin mode my whole life! :)
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/dec/05/goblin-mode-new-oxford-word-of-the-year
17. This is the future of VC: Solo GPs. Go Robin & Robin Capital!
https://tech.eu/2022/12/07/entrepreneur-investor-and-now-solo-gp-robin-haak-launches-robin-capital
18. "There is speculation Kyiv has developed a strike drone with an astonishing 1,000km range. Late last month a Ukrainian serviceman said the weapon had already been used against the Russian military.
If accurate, this means much of European Russia is now in reach. And that the asymmetric advantage Moscow has enjoyed this year – the ability to launch cruise missiles safely from deep inside Russia itself – is under threat."
19. It is the age of grifters. Can't believe anything anymore. Also shows why it sucks to be famous.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/youtube-primal-living-guru-liver-120025443.html
20. This guy is one of my investing heroes. Oren Zeev.
"“You can divide entrepreneurs by the way they create hype around their companies and by how much they are focused on operations. I’ve never gone with entrepreneurs who know how to create hype and it is no coincidence that I didn’t invest in the likes of WeWork. All of my entrepreneurs are boring. They are responsible, mature, and don’t do coke on a private jet. I don’t have entrepreneurs who know how to sell a story. I prefer the doers over the talkers.
In the market that existed over the past decade, the talkers also succeeded. When everything is built around storytelling this nurtures itself. In a normal market, this stuff doesn’t work. Nobody buys it. I’ve been investing for 28 years and I learned how to act in the last bubble. Therefore, generally speaking, my companies are successful even in a period when there is a shortage of money.”
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/hyc4yqjps
21. True heroes here. Heroic & honorable does not fully describe their decision. #slavaukraini
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/05/europe/russians-fighting-for-ukraine-intl-cmd/index.html
22. This is pretty interesting. A new dimension to Ukraine striking Russia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wga-JPEWGzA
23. Very good stuff here. NIA is always on the edge of the internet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4qZWAz_jL0
24. A worthwhile thought exercise here. Devolution of Russia: could not happen to a more deserving place.
https://mobile.twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1600551806429544452
“Happy at Any Cost”: Lessons from the Amazing Life and Tragedy of Tony Hsieh
Tony Hsieh was an icon in the entrepreneurial world. Someone who was able to build a very significant & successful business in the first dotcom boom and also in the Web2 world with Zappos. He literally wrote the book on customer service with “Delivering Happiness” sharing all the secrets that made Zappos the standard for building an amazing business on the foundation of customer care and happy employees.
One of the most thoughtful, generous and kind entrepreneurs around, he helped hundreds if not thousands of fellow entrepreneurs and helped rejuvenate the Las Vegas downtown area. That’s the great tragedy as he succumbed to substance addiction from trying to deal with his own mental illness. He focused so much on helping others and making others happy but ignored himself along the way.
So many lessons from his life and the book that I took out. Especially important to confront these as we see growing mental health issues among the populace at all age brackets and geographies. This i see as the biggest negative result from the pandemic and the poorly executed lockdowns we saw executed by incompetent or malicious government officials and health authorities. (Yes, I am still incredibly angry about this).
It seemed to me that Tony had lost purpose in life after accomplishing so much at such a young age. When you have so much money and resources, you stop having any constraints. You can do anything you want, go anywhere you want, buy whatever you wish. All the freedom and options can be debilitating. How to channel that? It’s toward a larger purpose. Having a big vision. You always have to find a new, bigger mountain to climb.
The biggest lesson for me was how important it is to learn to take care of yourself physically and mentally. Ie. be a little bit selfish. Therapy is awesome and I highly recommend it personally but using any substance seems to be a really bad idea which is what led to Tony’s tragic end.
Getting good sleep is critical. And just as important: doing a lot of regular physical exercise with weights & lots of cardio via running/biking/hiking. Even better if you do a martial art on top of this. It does wonders for your mental health.
The second biggest lesson was how critical it is to surround yourself with the right people. Tony near the end of his life was surrounded by sycophants and opportunists unwilling to stand up to him or tell him NO. The more successful you are, the higher up you go in any organization it becomes harder to understand what is really happening around you. Information gets filtered, you start getting only positive information or news. It leads to an unrealistic view of the world. You become out of touch & maybe a little bit unhinged. You have a dangerous filter bubble.
Incentives really matter. Hard for people to tell you the truth if you surround yourself with younger up & coming people who worship you and are reliant on the money you pay them. No one can or is willing to push back or say NO to you. This is exactly what happened to Tony.
That is why you need to have 3 different levels of people you regularly spend time with.
Level 1: People who are much further along than you are. Mentors or elders you respect. People who you aspire to be like but have much work to catch up. And who you can get a roadmap and lessons from. You also need someone to question and challenge you. At least for me, if someone is further along I will more likely pay attention.
Level 2: People at your own level: there is something about being on the same journey. Almost like a mastermind of equals. I think of these folks like your “gym buddy”, you egg each other on, your trade ideas and knowledge.
Level 3: People you mentor and teach. You have not mastered anything if you cannot show someone else to do it. You learn so much in the process personally as I have found. Frankly, as technology and the world changes so much, young people tend to be at the forefront, so this is a good way to stay relevant. This is also why I do lots of volunteer pro bono mentoring & speaking at various Startup programs and accelerators still. Additionally, you have an obligation to help bring others along. Sharing your knowledge and your experience to help others is a core part of the Silicon Valley ethos. Ie. Pay it Forward.
The point is as I’ve mentioned so many times. Your community matters. You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. But you need to make sure you have people and many different stages so you can get the right data environment to really know what’s happening around you. And of course at the core, you need to have a mission and work and improve yourself first. If you are comfortable being yourself and by yourself, all good things will flow from this.
Thank you Tony for everything that you did and for this great reminder and life lesson for all of us. You won’t be forgotten. RIP.
We’re All Broken Inside: If Successful, Even More So The Case
I just had my 30th year Reunion for my High School class earlier this year and it was really awesome seeing people I had not seen for decades. For me, the most interesting thing was seeing where people ended up. And most of my old classmates and friends were surprised to hear what I’ve ended up doing, and especially the life that I live now. Now so very very far from what I felt were the very low expectations of me growing up. I was an undisciplined, horribly, misbehaved troublemaker through school. Spending plenty of time in detention or on the hate list of the majority of teachers and principals in all the schools I went to.
I didn’t have an unhappy childhood but I honestly cannot say it was very happy either. My parents did their best with far less resources than I have now. We grew up poor and with very high expectations from my parents. Especially my mother who pushed us very hard and did those things you did to your kids as an immigrant parent, putting you down and comparing you negatively to your siblings & to other kids in the local Taiwanese community. Something I still deeply resent to this day.
I detailed much of this: https://hardfork.substack.com/p/trauma-with-a-small-t-therapy-and. If I am honest, looking back I grew up feeling somewhat unloved, inadequate and disrespected all the time. It was how I felt, even if it was not true. Asian immigrant parents tend to not be very emotive or believers in positive reinforcement. It was why I left Vancouver as soon as I could. To literally go forth and conquer a new world. A completely brand new start, far away from the expectations from family, friends and all you knew before.
All this made me into an intensely competitive individual which has served me well in my career and life path. I hate losing. And like all unbalanced type A individuals, I focus on winning as often as I can (2nd place is the first loser as they say). I challenge myself and fear complacency. Almost to the point of detriment. Fast forward 24 years later and one year into therapy, my therapist told me: “I notice you use the words ‘beat’, “destroy’, ‘win’ & ‘crush’ alot. You think very black and white and tend to be intolerant of those who do not meet your probably unrealistic standards.” I could only agree that it was probably true.
When I see friends of mine & classmates I grew up with, their lives seem very ordinary. Happy but ordinary. You never know what people went through but in general, if they had a pretty nice happy childhood, I never really saw them do anything big. They weren’t hungry or driven because they were satisfied. For the record, there is nothing wrong about that. God bless them.
But this is the reverse of many of the most successful people I know. They either came from hard or poor backgrounds, unhappy childhoods with divorced parents, facing racism as immigrants or some traumatic medical emergency when young. This gave them some inner drive to control their destiny. Or more likely like me to prove themself with material and societal success. Look at poster child Elon Musk, he was bullied violently in school. Most of the successful tech founders were nerds in school, which I can’t imagine was a fun experience growing up in jock driven culture of the 70s, 80s & 90s. Repeating what the brilliant investor Josh Wolfe said: “Chips on shoulders lead to chips in pockets.”
I learned many years ago that scientists ran experiments on baby mice, inflicting shock treatments on some of them, and leaving other ones alone. If you inflict pain on baby mice they tend to grow much bigger and stronger than mice that were not hurt. It’s almost like pain actually changes the body and leads it to more growth. Nature can be cruel.
It’s an interesting observation and makes sense at least to me. We are all broken inside, but if you are really broken, you either quit life or you end up developing a massive competitive drive to fill that empty hole in your soul. You can either bury the trauma or you use it to get better. Your psyche is like a muscle, when you work out, you tear the muscle so you rebuild it stronger. As Naval Ravikant said “You are strong only where you were broken.”
The question is how or when you turn this off as excess can be dangerous as there may be no end to ambition. But all things being equal, it is better to have than not.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Dec 4th, 2022
“Rest and be Thankful”--William Wordsworth
This will be a shorter than normal recap this week and possible next week. I’ve been very sick with a bad cold for the last 2 weeks :( This is on top of lots of work travel and crazy business deadlines. Back to regular programming length after December 12th.
This is an extremely cool thing to do. Worth a read.
https://www.ricemedia.co/singaporeans-abroad-120-year-old-teahouse-japan
2. "After deep examination, I’ve concluded that becoming what one is is the proper definition of becoming an adult.
Transforming from an infant to a child is the process of conforming to a set of norms given to you by the adults in the world. It’s the gradual process of becoming less of an individual and more of a part of the crowd. Becoming an adult is a reversal of that. Transforming from a child to an adult is the process of shedding societal expectations that encourage or require conformity. “Growing up” is to become the unique individual you were before the world told you who to be."
https://andyjohns.substack.com/p/the-restless-ones
3. "In a sense a16z is following its own recipe for turning startups into large companies—prioritizing growth while hoping to dodge the potentially fatal dangers that come with it. Based on the more than $35 billion the firm has raised in the past seven years, a16z is almost certainly reaping about $500 million a year on management fees alone—a sum that stands to grow even more as the firm sprawls into new markets.
“They are running a lot of experiments,” says a former Andreessen Horowitz investment partner. “It seems to me relatively obvious that some will fail. The flip side is that some of them will work out.”
There are plenty of reasons why venture—and Andreessen Horowitz specifically—might not be able to keep scaling: Larger funds and bigger bets may hinder the outperforming returns that have attracted limited partners; Andreessen Horowitz may find it’s not as well suited for the public markets as it has been for the private ones; and star partners may leave in favor of building their own brand rather than being another cog in the wheel."
https://www.newcomer.co/p/andreessen-horowitz-profile
4. "So while China’s pivot is the smart thing to do, I don’t expect it to immediately restore the equilibrium that prevailed before the country started making big policy mistakes a year and a half ago. Xi’s attachment to particular public-facing narratives, as well as his disdain for economic sectors he doesn’t consider crucial, seem likely to outweigh the effects of the short-term, halting policy reversals.
Now of course, none of this means that “China is done”, or that the country’s manufacturing prowess will evaporate, or that it will become a weak actor on the international stage, or any of the other melodramatic things that people say on social media when they see news like this.
These problems are stumbling blocks, and China will almost certainly recover after a while. But they illustrate the downsides of dictatorial decision-making in a way that should prompt observers to recalibrate their own narratives about the ascendance of autocratic systems."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/chinas-pivot-is-a-bit-of-a-mess
5. "Putin’s army are unable to solve his Ukraine problem, and their efforts to do so have only made the situation worse. Nothing can now be done to reset Russo-Ukrainian relations for the long-term in a way that would serve his interests and be at all stable.
The gap between his desired ends and available means has grown ever wider over the past nine months. The war was lost long ago. The challenge remains one of getting Putin and his circle to accept this view. If this is to happen there is no alternative to keeping up the military pressure."
https://samf.substack.com/p/is-russia-losing
6. "One reason the shut off of access to cash causes this atrophy in a crowded space is because most of them, built to chase growth, structured their strategy around unsustainable customer acquisition costs. Couple of examples? Uber vs. Lyft. Bird vs. Lime. Casper vs. Purple. Most of these companies saw drops in valuation from billions to millions. Many of them are built on an unhealthy reliance on paid marketing.
The same is true in the B2B world. When you have tons of companies getting funded that are offering similar nominal product improvements, and then pouring fuel onto a GTM fire, you're going to have a lot of outbound sales that go unanswered. So you're spending more to acquire those same customers, since all your competitors are out there with very similar messaging.
When capital is plentiful? They're all competing for the same subset of customers, driving prices down and acquisition costs up. When the cash spigot gets shut off? It exposes a multitude of sins, and they have to start to think about how else to own a category, other than just spending like a drunken sailor.
One path forward? Consolidation."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/age-of-acquisition
7. This is a good sum up of why 2023 will be tough. Worth a read.
https://fabricegrinda.com/winter-is-coming
8. This is a very good thing.
"Venture capitalists in Silicon Valley and other tech hubs are investing money in nuclear energy for the first time in history. That’s changing its trajectory and pace of innovation.
“There’s not been a resurgence of nuclear power, ever, since its heyday in the late 1970s,” Ray Rothrock, a longtime venture capitalist who has personal investments in 10 nuclear startups, told CNBC.
Now, that’s changing. “I have never seen this kind of investment before. Ever.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/02/why-silicon-valley-is-so-hot-on-nuclear-energy.html
9. "A less obvious point — but a very important one — is to remember that this period is extremely challenging for everyone no matter how outwardly successful, confident, and happy they appear. Every company I know — and probably every company on the planet — is making tough decisions right now that affect the lives of employees.
Every CEO and every manager has probably just been through a round of layoffs and is staring down the barrel of more. Every sales pipeline is getting re-evaluated, and every sales target is looking a bit too optimistic right now. No one is having any fun. No one is “killing it.”
What this means is that your situation is probably better than you think it is — on a relative basis. You have your problems and your competitors have theirs. Maybe you wish you had more cash in the bank and are considering laying off 25% of your 20-person team to extend runway. Your scary competitor with $50M in the bank might be burning $3M a month and is trying desperately to figure out how to lay off 30% of their 100-person team. He might also be dealing with pretty challenging board dynamics, or other issues you might not be aware of.
Just as the rising tide lifted all boats previously, the storm we are weathering right now is battering everyone. The frustration and exhaustion you are feeling right now are common to everyone — and it is not necessarily a sign of something specific to you and your business."
https://medium.com/angularventures/no-one-is-having-fun-right-now-fa531da50789
10. I love a good pirate story. Especially if it’s obscure.
https://mobile.twitter.com/LandsknechtPike/status/1597711454139867136
Becoming a Monster: The Path and Philosophy for Great Success and Growth
Many people seem to hate the very controversial professor and philosopher Jordan Peterson. I don’t agree with everything he says, especially recently and his bizarre uninformed views on geopolitics. But I like his view on taking “Personal Responsibility” in life. Many of his messages are especially valuable for listless young men. Stress on “young” men. The thing that was most insightful for me was when he said: “You should be a monster, an absolute monster. Then you should learn how to control it.” Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7lVTjHt5M4
In my career and pursuit of business & monetary success, I feel I’ve definitely far along the path of becoming a so-called monster (in its mostly positive connotation, hopefully). I have NOT done a good job on the second part, controlling the monster which has pretty much caused most of the family and personal issues I’ve alluded to in the past and am in the process of dealing with now. Probably worth a full separate write up.
But for most people, they haven't even started doing anything. This is really hard to do when you are surrounded by comfort and by soft people. And also brainwashed by an insane media-driven consumerist culture that dulls your senses. Fed by an unhealthy sugar & preservatives-filled diet.
This is why most people have unhealthy, mediocre lives that lack meaning. And they are usually very unhappy. Anyone who wants to grow or has accomplished or done big things faces big issues & challenges internally and externally. Think of all the great men before us: Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, the Founding Fathers of America, Napoleon, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr. Yet they were able to overcome by facing things, adapting and growing. That’s why they are great men.
Struggle makes you strong. As Justin Waller said: “You can tell the size of man by the size of his problems.” You cannot solve big problems and have a big impact if you don’t become strong. To overcome big problems you need to become a monster of some sort.
“You can become a pathetic monster or a monster with some power. Those are your options. There is no non-monster alternative.
Weak or Strong. I don’t mean strong like dominating tyrant strength. I mean strength like “functioning at a funeral” strength. And that’s a kind of monstrosity. And when you are down in chaos that is what you need to discover.
You have to be able to cope with danger…..You get to be stronger. Well, hey, that turns out to be a better bargain anyways.”
Being & Becoming. That’s the path that all of us have to take if you want to get anything worth doing. This will be required as I foresee really challenging times in the world coming where the pandemic was just the beginning. It’s going to be hairy: as the times are punctuated by a horrendous Russian invasion in Ukraine, an economic recession, political chaos across the liberal west and deglobalization as the world fractures into different blocs again. Hardship is coming.
In an observation that extends to people in general (not just white men IMHO) from the very brilliant writer of the Resavager blog:
“A Comanche chief once observed that there's no force in nature as malevolent as the white man on the war path - he leaves none alive in his wake. You can argue that this sublime and sanguinary spiritedness is no more - but you cannot claim with honesty that the white man of history is not a killer angel.” -Thomas777
Resavager goes on to say correctly:
"The Comanches noted the martial prowess of the white devil and make no mistake, you want your enemy to see you as the white devil. You want to live in their minds, a constant reminder that our people are not to be fucked with. Perhaps, in some way you must also believe in what the Comanche chief said. Embrace it. Nature is not kind and the road ahead is long and unforgiving."
If you want to GMI (Gonna Make it) in the upcoming disorder, you have to become a controlled, civilized monster. Be Dangerous and Disciplined. The world needs as many of you to survive mentally and physically to rebuild a much better society and economy in the future upcoming Renaissance.
Going Home is Hard, Staying Home is Harder
One of my favorite movies is “Hurt Locker”, starring Jeremy Renner as a EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal), Bomb Handler in Iraq on tour. Addicted to the excitement, mission and purpose in war. The last 10-15 minutes of the movie when he finally returns home is eye-opening and disturbing at the same time. After a tour on the frontlines with his life at risk, he finds himself in the mundane everyday life of an American. Cleaning out the roof drains, cutting up food for dinner. Grocery shopping where there is literally a full aisle of a multitude of cereal. He finds himself lost in the abundance. His eyes are dead.
The most telling is when he is playing with his baby boy and is talking with him.
“You love playing with that. You love playing with all your stuffed animals. You love your mom. Your daddy. Your nature pajamas. You love everything don’t you?
But You know what buddy? As you get older, some of the things that you love might not seem so special anymore, you know. As you get older, there are fewer things you really love. And by the time you get to my age, maybe it’s only one or two things. For me I think it’s one.
Next scene he is back on a helicopter landing in Iraq on another tour. He looks confident and happy. He is back where he feels he belongs.
I understand this feeling. Having spent so much of my career on the road doing business travel, I get it. You stay in hotels, you have almost everything taken care of and getting the business done. No distractions. It’s fun & exciting, you meet new people and see new things. You are busy but you also have a lot of “Me time.” You focus on yourself and it’s easy to become pretty self centered as you go through the days overseas. It’s also much easier: the metrics are clearer on the career side. How much money you bring in.
Much harder to work on the home life and family side. Can’t put a number to it. It’s intangible.
Yet you feel guilty for being away from family, missing their lives, missing being part of their everyday life. Not knowing the fun, happy things as well as their sorrows & sadness. Zoom & FB Messenger calls are just not the same and cannot make up for this. I think of the fact that I’ve missed so much of my kid’s life and this has probably scarred her in some ways as I have not managed the regular transitions in and out of her life.
I’ve never been a military vet and this is why I admire them so much. They sacrifice for us their lives and home life so we can enjoy the freedoms and abundance that we have here in North America. And why we need to celebrate them and support them after their service.
But my main point is be careful of what you wish for. Be careful of what you decide that you love. I dreamed of this life of travel, adventure, money and business growing up and I got exactly what I subconsciously and consciously wished for. I remember walking out of the Fujitsu technologies office in Taipei in an interview back in 1998. While I did not get the job I told myself this was what I was going to do for my career. Travel the world and do business at a global standard level. And boy did I ever. Millions of air miles later, elite status on multiple airlines, I’ve been lucky to have seen a good portion of the world. Yet, I’ve definitely paid the price for this in my somewhat broken home life that I’m still in the process of fixing.
You will have regrets in life, you will lament things. My reminder for those starting off, you can have it all. Just make sure you are conscious of your choices so you don’t end up regretting the wrong things like missing precious family life, messing up your health & friendships.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Nov 27th, 2022
"Real courage is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. Doing the unpopular thing because it's what you believe, and the heck with everybody."― Justin Cronin
"The more self-sufficient this brotherhood of men are, the more powerful they are. The less likely they will be manipulated by worms and snakes. The current elite seek to make men dependent on the system and not their fellows. To benefit off our helplessness. This of course works very well for those on the top until this unnatural way collapses on itself. Your main goal in this society is to be self-sufficient like your ancestors were. Only after you’ve decoupled can you regain your wild spirit.
The purest form of being a man is the warrior. The warrior — as Nietzsche says — is responsible for himself. He’s willing to under go hardship and deprivation so long as it preserves his distance from other men. The manly or virile instincts, to use Nietzsche’s words, revel in war and victory. Notice also Nietzsche never says the words I told you to stop using. In the form of the warrior, man is able to take the long and unforgiving road toward glory and fame. The last people to do this were the Americans when we settled in the New World.
The sons of those Americans went on to help America become a superpower after two World Wars. We’re still riding on the coattails of the accomplishments of those men who tamed the frontier. This won’t last forever. History never ends. Hard times are coming and it’s your duty as a man to be ready for them. To make sure your sons are ready for them."
https://resavager.substack.com/p/the-warlike-and-manly-spirit
2. Don't really agree with vote rigging comments but I agree with conclusions.
"The Struggle for Power is not going away, rather growing with each passing day. The economic and political crisis’ that stand before us will cause more chaos, violence, and turmoil.
The reality of Geopolitics now is a knife fight. The brutality will continue and escalate. Who wants it more will win in the end.
The hard choices are just beginning."
https://mercurial.substack.com/p/knife-fight
3. "I would say on the new deal front, on the pre-seed and seed side, we’re seeing timelines that were one to two weeks now [extending into] more like two to four weeks, which is really healthy because it allows for more proper diligence.
We are able to do deals in a matter of days if we have strong conviction, but we do like that the market is a bit more sane.
Another dynamic that we’re seeing is that entrepreneurs are starting to really wake up to this new world, and that wasn’t the case even six months ago.
Back then, we saw growth deals really kind of halt, but that didn’t really impact the way that first-time founders in particular thought about their valuations. Now we’re seeing them come around as well. So [collectively] we’re actually seeing a lot of really interesting deals."
4. Cool new VC fund for Europe. Unruly Capital.
https://sifted.eu/articles/stefano-bernardi-unruly-capital
5. Solid conversation here with the guys especially on Google business. All in Podcast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX7tj3giizI&t=2341s
6. An excellent talk on what’s happening with the disaster zone of Crypto, SBF, FTX and what not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs1ofMu4760
7. "Vidio is succeeding where foreign competitors like Netflix and Disney+ have stumbled in Indonesia — by developing an acute sense for what Indonesians want to watch. Despite earlier being considered an underdog, it is now the fastest-growing streaming service in a country of 270 million, and the biggest in terms of active users with about 60 million viewers per month, the company told Rest of World.
In the second quarter of this year, it snatched the number one spot for over-the-top (OTT) streaming platforms across all of Southeast Asia, according to consultancy Media Partners Asia, both in new subscriber growth and popularity of original content."
https://restofworld.org/2022/vidio-the-netflix-killer-of-indonesia
8. This is going to be an amazing movie on Netflix.
9. This is absolutely right. Watch this space. USA versus the CCP.
https://mobile.twitter.com/johncoogan/status/1593748145799712769
10. "The coming winter will feature more fighting, but at a different pace. It will see continued long range strikes from both sides and an ongoing information war. And it will demand both sides attend to the protection of their soldiers (and equipment) from the elements, in order to preserve as much of their combat power as possible to exploit opportunities during winter, and to conduct larger offensive campaigns in 2023."
https://mickryan.substack.com/p/the-winter-war-in-ukraine
11. "As biotech evolves, some of the strengths of the Bay Area are becoming even more important. With several technological revolutions—such as Sequencing, Synthesis, Scale, and Software—young scientists and engineers with direct technical experience with these new technologies have a central role to play in shaping the future of the industry.
One of the unrivaled superpowers of the Bay Area tech scene is its ability to empower ambitious young people who are on a mission to change the world. The same fluid capital networks that made the Bay such a major winner in the digital revolution are also playing an important role in the TechBio revolution."
https://centuryofbio.substack.com/p/betting-on-the-biohub
12. "The U.S. is the undisputed overall leader in the semiconductor industry, but that’s as the central node of a global supply chain in which other countries also possess highly advanced technologies and lead in critical niches. Some companies in these other countries have competencies that are a strong starting point for developing alternatives to U.S. technology.
U.S. technology is irreplaceable over the near and medium term, so the immediate consequences of this policy are essentially guaranteed to be disastrous for China. However, if China succeeds in persuading U.S. allies to assist China by developing and providing alternatives to key pieces of U.S. technology, then the long-term outcomes of this policy could be disastrous for U.S. national security and economic competitiveness."
https://time.com/6234566/how-us-win-the-tech-war-with-china
13. "And then there is Mathias Döpfner, a six-foot-seven former music journalist turned billionaire CEO of the media conglomerate founded by, and named after, Germany’s preeminent postwar press baron, Axel Springer. Springer’s widow took a shine to Döpfner — she felt he saved the company and kept it true to its mission — and gifted him controlling shares.
For the past decade, Döpfner has been transforming Springer into a digital player worldwide.
Nothing about Döpfner is small. He’s got a big ego, big appetites, big plans, big hands, and a big mouth. He speaks with supreme self-confidence, but there’s something boyish about him, energetic and a touch mischievous. “He’s a controversial person, not everyone likes him, but there’s nobody who would say he’s not an agenda setter,” says John Harris, a co-founder of Politico. “I think his arrival here at this moment is a very encouraging thing not just for Politico but for the broader profession. I really think we need these capacious figures in American media again. The profession seems somewhat adrift without them.”
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/axel-springer-mathias-dopfner-profile.html
14. No wonder the mainstream media is losing credibility fast.
"Over the past two years, Bankman-Fried cultivated the media lavishly, if not carefully. Drawing on what then seemed like an unlimited pool of cash, SBF (as we’ll call the mythologized version of the real person) dispersed investments, advertising dollars, sponsorships, and donations to key news outlets—including ProPublica, Vox, Semafor, and The Intercept—with extraordinary effectiveness.
In the space of four days, media participants that lie far outside the highly capitalized mainstream did more investigative work than the entire corporate media had done in two years."
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/sam-bankman-fried-inventing-crypto-king
15. Must read for all founders who want to survive the startup winter.
https://n49p.substack.com/p/current-conversations-with-founders
16. Poland will be the continent's dominant military power along with Turkey.
https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-military-superpower-poland-army
17. There is so much to unpack here. Chamath is a controversial figure in Silicon Valley and Wall Street. But lots to learn from him regardless. It’s an almost 3 hour conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFQUDCgMjRc
18. "One thought exercise a company planning a RIF can do is imagine a scenario with a 25-50% headcount cut. How does that really impact team output and burn? What teams would you be forced to cut and how much do those teams really truly matter? How does that align with your various financial scenarios? Even if you still only cut 10-15%, it might be an informative exercise.
The key thing to remember is that if your valuation is very far ahead in this new market environment, and your business slows due to recession or spending cuts, it may be hard to raise money in the near term.
Layoffs should either get you to default alive (aka enough money to last reasonably indefinitely) or default fundable (a strong enough situation to be able to raise more money in today’s or tomorrow’s market). Things are likely to get worse before they get better. Make every dollar count."
https://blog.eladgil.com/p/changing-times-or-why-is-every-layoff
19. Solo GPs of Europe. Look forward to seeing more here.
https://sifted.eu/articles/europe-solo-gps
20. "Although there are language and cultural barriers that require a good dose of tenacity and entrepreneurship to overcome — the scale of the opportunity and positive changes in the environment make Japan worth another look for investors and entrepreneurs alike."
21. "But this is why now more than ever, we can’t lose our faith in crypto.
Sure, it can be hard not to feel pessimistic at times like this. And it’s easy to listen to the doomsayers who are now prophesying that this is the end. But to give up now will almost certainly pave the way for the absolute dominance of government-controlled CBDCs, and the weakening of the only independent alternative that’s still owned by us.
This is why I’m still personally betting on crypto.
Remember, crypto didn’t fail us. Exchanges did. And we don’t need exchanges to hold or use these assets."
https://abundantia.substack.com/p/the-end
22. Solid discussion on American strategy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwA2rWWlCq0
23. All true.
"If you work in retail, the four weeks between US Thanksgiving and Christmas is the busiest time of the year. It’s also the sprint-to-the-finish for anyone in a B2B business trying to hit Q4 numbers.
But in the land of venture capital, it’s a uniquely slow-moving period that can best be thought of as fundraising purgatory. Put bluntly, it’s where many fundraising rounds go to die.
Why? Well for starters, anyone who was actively fundraising prior to Thanksgiving that hadn’t yet received a term sheet just had their momentum interrupted by a giant speed bump."
https://chrisneumann.com/blog/the-2022-fundraising-window-is-closed
24. The rise of the Turks in geopolitics.
"The most significant geopolitical effect of the Turkic rise might be the ascension of Turkey to true Great Power status. I would argue that they are close to such recognition with their complete dominance of the Black Sea and the South Caucasus as well as their growing economic and cultural influence around the region."
https://andreassteno.substack.com/p/the-great-game-2-rise-of-the-turks
25. This is a fascinating conversation on the business of sports.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5Q1PoEL_E0&t=2465s
26. If anyone can figure this out, it’s Japan.
"Whatever the problem is, Japan’s policymakers, academics, and corporate managers need to start viewing export weakness as a matter of urgent national importance. In the 90s, exporting was optional; now, it is not. Japan’s population is aged and shrinking, which limits domestic market opportunities, even as the country is still dependent on imported food and fuel.
If it’s going to avoid both long-term stagnation and vulnerability to currency drops like the recent one, the country must become more of an export powerhouse. Hopefully the weak yen can provide the impetus and the inspiration for Japan to get serious about this."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-weak-yen-is-an-opportunity
27. This is pretty interesting. New American way of war: Proxy wars.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j8TLGaSPOzY&feature=youtu.be
28. "That Powell leans into the exciting, scary thing helps explain why, after years of increasingly solid, steady work, Powell’s acting career might be about to enter a new stratosphere. His is a calming charm, very “emotional support animal you'd enjoy having three to four beers with:” in our age of movie franchises, he is exactly the type of guy you want in your tentpole.
It’s not just that he looks like someone who could land a plane in an emergency situation—he feels like someone who could. (He could, by the way: after his experience with Top Gun training, and a gift of flying lessons from Tom Cruise, Powell is a licensed pilot.) It’s a brand of charisma that makes him a truly good hang, both offscreen and, more importantly for his Hollywood ambitions, on it."
https://www.gq.com/story/gq-hype-glen-powell
29. Jim Rogers is always a good listen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kJ-nT_GNQ0
30. This seems like not good news for Pipe. Startling is probably the right word.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/22/pipes-founding-team-stepping-down-as-hunt-for-veteran-ceo-begins/
31. "War — and the competitive activities beneath the threshold of violence — is now a battle of industrial systems. In some respects, this is a return to previous eras where mass production for conflict, such as during the US Civil War and the World Wars, provided a decisive advantage. The post-Cold War ‘small, exquisite, periodic and expensive’ approach to weapons procurement in the West must end.
The expansion of defence industrial capacity, whether nationally or as part of a larger compact between democratic nations, is an integral part of conventional deterrence. In defending themselves, countries need potential adversaries to know they can (and will) step up production if authoritarians pick a fight. The possession of an expanding industrial base is a demonstration of capability, and importantly, telegraphs the will of peoples to actively defend against the predations and aggression of countries such as Russia and China."
https://engelsbergideas.com/notebook/the-west-needs-to-boost-its-industrial-capacity-fast
32. I can't help but be entranced by this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iZBFvaS6Ko
33. “Think of what happened in the last two or three years: whatever you did was rewarded by some investor because of the plethora of capital,” Leone said.
“You were rewarded no matter what — you made a s--t decision, a crap decision, you got money; you made a good decision, you got money — which is a lousy way for you to learn your craft. All that is gone.”
“What you’re going to learn now is the best lessons you’re ever going to learn, even in our business,” he added.
Leone said he doesn’t expect tech company valuations to recover until at least 2024."
34. "Although the decline of U.S. power has been significantly overstated in some quarters, America’s economic decline relative to the rest of the world is real. Economic strength and technological strength have become more dispersed around the globe, and over time military strength is likely to follow the same pattern. This is one reason avoiding boots-on-the-ground interventions will become ever more of an imperative.
The presumption that the U.S. needs to deploy ground forces in a fighting capacity if it wants to achieve meaningful results from interventions has been evident again and again since the 1980s. Yet the reality has often been the opposite. The more the U.S. takes over and inserts its own forces into a conflict, the more expensive and, in most cases, counterproductive the intervention becomes.
Such conflicts are also more polarizing for American society—as U.S. involvement in Vietnam, Iraq, and to a lesser extent Afghanistan demonstrate. Meanwhile, avoiding ground wars but relying on financial aid, advanced technology, intelligence, and even diplomatic coordination and outreach is something the U.S. actually can do effectively."
Player Versus Player: Life is Work & Pain
In America, we love labels and aspiration. That is why “The Great Gatsby” is a quintessential American story. A man from nowhere becoming “richer than God”, driven by his talent and ambition. But we don’t see all the hard work and suffering and pain that got him there.
This is where the lessons from the brilliant & controversial Andrew & Tristan Tate come in. I’ve written about the former kickboxing champions & self made multimillionaire brothers before (here:https://hardfork.substack.com/p/living-on-multiple-grids-towards).
They do a great series of video blogs that really teach you to think in a “Rich” way. They show you the mindset required to win in life. And to win big. And by not following the “brokie” mindset. Andrew in one of his most observant comments says: “If you are broke in the modern Western world filled with oodles of money, you are either lazy, arrogant or stupid.”
You have to take personal responsibility for everything. If something sucks in your life, it’s up to you to fix it. And the Tates provide some good rules for this.
Rule 1: Become overwhelmed & time squeezed with work, don’t think, DO. Then optimize after. Shoot first, then adjust. Too many times people who say they only want to work smart are just procrastinating. Or using it as an excuse for laziness and not doing what they need to do. Nike nailed it: “Just Do it.” There is always work to do.
Rule 2: Become familiar with pain and fear as early as possible. “If something is scary to you, that is probably what you need to do.”
Rule 3: Network is Key. You need to have a network of accomplished individuals. People who are not just outstanding but reliable. They also lift you up and help you raise your game. I’ve said it before: “You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.”
Rule 4: You can only have a “Big life” if you have big problems & big stress and are able to deal with them. “You can tell the size of a man by the size of their problems.” Stress tolerance is key, not just trying to settle and get by.
Tristan Tate goes on to say: “Happiness is alot like the castles in fairy tales we used to read as children. They are all guarded by dragons. You don’t get the castle without getting through dragons.”
Theodore Roosevelt says it even better: “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty.”
If you do this, as the great Tommy Shelby of Peaky Blinders said: “You will have no limitations.”
You have to believe that you can live a perfect life: the “High Life.” Destroy all the coping mechanisms in your mind. These are things I’m still learning as I slowly escape the mental matrix of society.
Global Maximum Versus Local Maximum: Understand What Level You Are Truly Competing At
I have the great fortune of being able to invest in amazing startup founders from everywhere in the world. And I truly believe the greatest companies can be started from anywhere and everywhere. BUT starting a company in a location is very different from growing and scaling one.
I run into founders all over Europe, Asia, Canada, Middle East or wherever, who are examples of the hometown hero. They literally brag about being ranked or acknowledged as the “top 5 startup in some random city” usually not known for technology. It’s the startup version of the “High school hero” syndrome for startups. You might be top dog in your locality but you are literally NOTHING at global level. You have NO idea what the competitive landscape really is and how high the standard really is. It’s like being the top University pick for whatever sport and then getting drafted into the professional leagues where you realize painfully despite your gifts that are average or most likely below average.
Whatever you think about the San Francisco Bay Area, yes, it’s a bubble. Yes it’s full of arrogant tech bros who are clueless to how the world works. Yes, it’s full of douchebaggery and is probably the worst run city (SF that is) in one of the worst run states of America. BUT it is also full of the brightest, most experienced and accomplished startup founders and investors in the world. STILL. And this environment is the true test. The best startups are still being built and molded here (for now). You are still surrounded by the most ambitious people who self select by coming here and competing here. This is the global standard.
Just like if you want to be the best I-banker & hedge fund guy/gal, you go to New York City. Or you want to be tops in media and Hollywood, Los Angeles is your place. Or Milan/Paris for Fashion. You go where the best are. Clusters and critical mass still matters. It matters because you are exposed to and can benchmark what is truly global excellence. In your own home territory, you literally do not know what you do not know. So keep some humility and try to get exposure to as much of the best that you can.
Delusion is dangerous. Hubris from ignorance is even worse. Hubris is defined as excessive pride or arrogance. Also tempting the gods to plot your downfall because of your excessive conceit. Open your eyes. Be self aware & acknowledge your true competition. Know where you truly stand. This is the first step and the only way you truly know what it takes to win in the end.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Nov 20th, 2022
"It is not the strength of the body that counts, but the strength of the spirit."― J.R.R. Tolkien
Bullish on commodities as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmPvHYkHkuE
2. Great news in Ukraine!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbl1v_4vqbA
3. "In other words, despite all his WW2 throwback rhetoric, Putin is not Stalin, and the army currently getting blasted to bits on the banks of the Dnipro is most definitely not the Red Army.
Meanwhile, the country is having trouble producing new weapons (thanks in part to effective Western sanctions), and is pulling increasingly decrepit equipment from old Soviet storage facilities.
Where the USSR was an inefficient but vast manufacturing powerhouse, Putin’s Russia is a corrupt petrostate dependent on imports of foreign technology.
In other words, Russian military and economic weakness is now simply a fact of our world. This makes it simply impossible for Russia to serve as a “pole” in a multipolar world order, no matter how much anyone would like it to.
The world has simply progressed beyond the need for Russian power, and the faster all the remaining fence-sitters wake up to that fact, the better. Putin’s Russia should be treated as a dangerous, nuclear-armed, dysfunctional rogue state. The goal should be to contain it, and contain the damage from the chaos it causes, rather than to appease it by offering it some facsimile of the great-power respect we showed the old USSR."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-world-has-progressed-beyond-the
4. "In sum, the way the Russians have publicly announced their withdrawal with large forces still on the west bank, and the way they seem to be retreating into Kherson, does make it seem that they will try to extract a significant cost for the city. I’m not sure they can, and they could not hold it for long with the supply issues, but its something to watch in the coming days."
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/kherson-update
5. "My general sense is that the FTX situation was caused by 3 Arrows Capital, which in turn revealed Sam Bankman-Fried and Alameda to be screwed in exactly the same way. Alameda had a $500 million loan with Voyager Digital, which caused them to lose enough money that Bankman-Fried transferred at least $4 billion of FTX funds into Alameda’s accounts, including FTT tokens and, somehow, shares in Robinhood, which SBF explained as “rotating a few FTX wallets.”
It will take a while to understand exactly how often and in what form Bankman-Fried used FTX funds as collateral, but I would be surprised if this were the only time, and I would imagine there are far more grizzly and egregious things to come out.
Bankman-Fried’s actions call into question every single cryptocurrency billionaire, every specious story about some plucky guy who “hit it big” on Bitcoin, and every muddy tale and rationalization of why someone is allegedly worth so much money now seems utterly disgraceful to believe.
https://ez.substack.com/p/sam-bankrun-fraud
6. "While I am supremely bullish on the prospects of crypto in 2023 (I know the date keeps slipping, but I reserve the right to change my mind in the face of market conditions), I believe we are about to trade to new lows as everyone wonders which crypto household name will go bankrupt next for lending money to FTX / Alameda.
Before I end this essay, let me be clear: centralized exchanges will always face these issues of mistrust on behalf of their customers. FTX was not the first high-profile exchange to fail and it won’t be the last. But throughout all this, blocks on the Bitcoin, Ethereum, and all other blockchains were still produced and verified. Decentralized money and finance have and will continue to survive and thrive in the face of the failures of centralized entities."
https://hackernoon.com/speechless
7. "Success can be our undoing when we’re promoted beyond our true capabilities. The Peter principle holds that because people get promoted on the basis of prior performance, they will inevitably rise to the level of their incompetence. Our brains make it easy for our ambition to exceed our ability: The Dunning-Kruger effectdescribes a demonstrated cognitive weakness, that the less we know about something, the more we overestimate our knowledge. That’s why stupid people, and people who make great cars and then buy media companies, are so dangerous.
The inevitable collapse of the powerful is a good thing, and I’m glad we live in a universe that embraces this as a governing principle. Absolute power and wealth concentration are incompatible with the innovation that characterizes humanity’s upward movement. The crashing to Earth can cause collateral damage, but it’s a creative destruction.
What is the lesson, what can be learned? Every day, no matter how successful we become, we need to earn our success. We need to be kind and appreciative; we need to surround ourselves with people who will push back on us and question our beliefs and actions. We need to demonstrate humility. You are never more susceptible to a huge mistake than right after a big win, when you begin to believe the falsehood that your success is all about you. Yes, you’re brilliant and hardworking, but greatness is in the agency of others, and timing (and other features of luck) is everything.
The flip side is less discussed but more important. When you’ve fucked up, when things are going poorly — a relationship ends, you have professional disappointment, or you’re in financial stress — forgive yourself. Mourn, then move on."
https://www.profgalloway.com/hubris
8. "Every founder, as a steward of capital, is responsible for where they decide to invest their investor's dollars as they build their business. I'm really hopeful that John Foley has learned his lesson from Peloton, and will, in fact, "show profitability and have a real focus on unit economics."
But VCs could do a better job about not just funding the known quantities, but identifying people most capable of allocating capital effectively. People who think differently, who have unique perspectives on building companies that people really need. The very best founders are, themselves, phenomenal capital allocators. The most valuable skill for a founder to have, as they scale their business, is the ability to best allocate dollars to the most valuable people, projects, and priorities.
In business building, capital allocation isn't just a VC's game. It IS the game."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/stewards-of-capital
9. So many useful idiots out there on the hard left and hard right. Taiwan is NOT China (thank goodness)
https://taipology.substack.com/p/taiwan-and-china-are-not-one-nation
10. "To paraphrase Buffett, the tide has gone out and a lot of nudity is being exposed. That doesn’t mean it’s a good use of time to sit on the beach and watch the spectacle.
In the game of compounding, the number one goal is stay in the game. So make sure your mind and body get proper recovery. Cultivate your resilience. Remember Soros: “When I don’t have to, I don’t work.” Integrate the lessons but absolve yourself from honest mistakes.
Because no matter how bad it could get, even Singer acknowledged that after getting something wrong the next step is to “shrug and try to make some money.”
Bring out your dead trades, your bad decisions, and set them on fire. Cleanse your palate. On we go."
https://neckar.substack.com/p/on-the-other-side-of-bubble-mountain
11. Crazy times from Crypto: always a good discussion. FTX and a good perspective on US midterm elections.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id7cNqwqt1I
12. "Put another way, the cost of rebuilding Ukraine is directly related to the speed with which Kyiv can bring about a strategic decision on the battlefield and force Moscow to negotiate terms that secure the country’s territory. Here lies the paradox of the European “Marshall Plan for Ukraine” project: Each day that military assistance to Ukraine is not provided in sufficient numbers delays the day of Russia’s defeat, thereby raising the cost of bringing Ukrainian infrastructure, its industry, and its military back to a level that attracts private investment.
The Oct. 25 conference was important in that it conveyed the right message about Europe’s commitment to help Kyiv after the war. But the principal focal point must be military assistance, for if the Ukrainians fail to defeat the Russian military and regain their illegally seized national territory, this conference, despite all its ambitions, will be remembered as yet another EU project not grounded in reality."
https://www.19fortyfive.com/2022/11/ukraine-reconstruction-starts-now
13. "While Musk has all the right to implement processes and management structure as he sees fit, I find no excuse on how he is doing all of this. He offers no compassion or respect for employees who helped build Twitter, and employees feel that he is outright hostile towards them. Just the fact that in two weeks, he managed to send a single email to employees - and that email was an ultimatum on returning to the office effective immediately - summarizes his attitude towards employees of the company he bought. Elon has broken all unwritten - and may written - rules of how tech companies operate.
Tesla and SpaceX are both companies where hardware is arguably just as important - if not more important - part of their success than software. Elon Musk turned both companies into roaring successes with a similar management style which he’s bringing to Twitter. It will be educational to see how this same management style will work at Twitter, which is a pure software company, which does not have an inspiring mission or challenging problem space that could compare with Tesla or SpaceX."
https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/cruel-changes-at-twitter
14. Good rundown on the FTX debacle. This will set the Crypto industry back a decade.
https://trungphan.substack.com/p/ftx-the-32b-implosion
15. Hard to argue against this. No wonder there is little faith or trust in our elites.
"They are travelling from all over the world to Egypt, will that not use tons of fossil fuels and emit massive amounts of C02? Yes, indeed!
In fact, they used a whopping 400 private jets to travel to the climate conference. You literally cannot make this up.
A source close to Egyptian aviation authorities told AFP that "more than 400 private jets landed in the past few days in Egypt".
Here the elite are all gathering to scheme how to reduce C02 emission by telling you that you must eat bugs and stop driving your car to save the planet, meanwhile they are all travelling on private jets. This is hypocrisy at the highest level."
https://petersweden.substack.com/p/climate-hypocrisy
16. Interesting approach here For SaaS Founders: Dolphin approach.
"Dolphins spend most of their life underwater, but they come up for air occasionally. This strategy works well for SaaS growth too.
SaaS companies can operate underwater (unprofitable) for long periods and still create substantial value. The vast majority of public SaaS businesses are unprofitable. However, there are substantial benefits to periodically coming up for air (operating profitably)."
https://www.maxio.com/blog/use-dolphin-strategy-for-saas-growth
17. More on the Dolphin Strategy for SaaS Growth.
https://davidcummings.org/2022/11/12/think-dolphin-strategy-for-more-measured-saas-growth
18. "Unfortunately, there is no greater return on investment in America today than bribing politicians and regulators. SBF and his network understand that reality. They spent the days before the collapse of FTX delivering massive resources into fixing the regulatory levers of power in D.C. to their liking.
During the crypto token bear market, Sam Bankman-Fried and his collaborators were trying to create a regulatory monopoly for their flagship FTX digital currency exchange, along with their massive venture capital empire, vacuuming up an incredible amount of equity in the digital token space.
Like most Ponzi schemes, things often great, at least from the outside looking in, while the Ponzi is operating. FTX was running Super Bowl ads, putting its name on stadiums, recruiting A list celebrities, actors, and athletes, all to prop up the operation."
https://dossier.substack.com/p/the-true-believer-how-sam-bankman
19. "Day by day, Ukrainian culture emerges, as Russian culture submerges. The sooner and more decisively Russia loses this war, the better it will be for the Russian future."
https://snyder.substack.com/p/of-sanctions-and-silencings
20. "Logistics means having a physical and mental plan for getting around in life; discipline means that you consistently put in the effort to be able to harvest the compound interest of your plans; and being open-minded means simply that you have developed the ability to accept two opposing ideas as both potentially being true."
https://fewerbetterthings.substack.com/p/travel-light-living-light-being-light
21. "Little about Caballero’s aesthetic screams world-class: The slight 83-year-old works out of a nondescript building in suburban Dallas. His office is outfitted with gray carpeting and drop ceiling tiles. He shares the building with a waste management company.
But the agent’s numbers don’t lie:
In 2020, he set a world record of 6.4k home sales, presiding as the listing agent over ~$2.46B of sales volume.
This year, he’s on pace to sell ~6k homes in Texas — a rate of ~16 sales every day.
In an industry teeming with whales, Caballero has become a near-mythical force — a real estate megalodon. And he’s done it without relying on mega-mansion sales and high-rolling clientele.
All he did was come up with an idea that made homebuilders’ lives slightly easier."
https://thehustle.co/how-americas-top-real-estate-agent-sells-16-homes-every-day
22. "If we allow this overreach when it comes to our finances, it’s only a matter of time before they begin to rationalise this kind of surveillance over other aspects of our lives. Give them an inch, they’ll take a mile.
Awareness of these matters is key. At the very least, I would encourage you to share newsletters like this, or news stories of current proposals in the Netherlands and the United States with others whenever you read them.
Financial privacy is our right. Don’t let that right be taken."
https://abundantia.substack.com/p/you-are-guilty
23. "This is why I am still long crypto. Despite its many flaws, I believe it has miraculous potential to improve our world. Self-sovereign money, smart contracts, and digital property rights are radical, revolutionary ideas that we are in the early innings of understanding and applying.
In a matter of decades, we may look back on the state’s rigid stranglehold on money as a quirky artifact, an obvious overreach.
Decentralized finance (DeFi) has its own quirks, but it has held up well, by comparison, showing that code is often less corruptible than people. We may see it bloom more fully in the coming years.
The second reason I am still long on crypto is the people. That may sound counterintuitive given the description of the casino we are currently in. Who wants to be surrounded by a swarm of gamblers?
While crypto may have plenty of them, it also has some of the most fiercely intelligent, driven, and gritty people I have met.
Though infuriated and disappointed by much of this week, I have also been reminded of these qualities. Founders, investors, and operators I speak to know their jobs have become much harder and are determined to continue, undaunted. These people believe (as I do) the movement is too important to abandon; it will emerge stronger."
https://www.generalist.com/briefing/the-casino-and-the-genie
24. "The lesson here is simple. If you buy computer coins, you do the following: 1) send immediately to cold storage and 2) if you need cash then you send it back to exchange and immediately sell. There is *some* risk here but the goal is to limit the *time* your assets sit on ANY exchange. This includes Binance, Coinbase etc.
More likely than not the contagion spreads. People who think this will be contained just to crypto are short sighted. Lots of rich people were buying homes, boats and cars because they had thousands or millions on FTX. When everything comes crashing down it will impact the broader economy."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/what-a-week-meta-exchange-scams-and
25. "In other words, I look out in the world and I don’t see a polycrisis; I see an emerging polysolution. The looming threats of climate change and authoritarian revanchism, combined with the shocks of Covid and inflation, have stirred both policymakers and businesses to action. And many of those actions will end up addressing multiple crises rather than just one.
I want to venture out on a limb here and say that this is not a coincidence. A lot of the buffer mechanisms I described above are political in nature, and they share the basic description of “human beings coming together in a crisis to address their collective problems”. During good times, human beings tend to seem irresolute and divided as pursue our individual goals and fight over the pie.
External shocks can bring the entire system crashing down, but they can also spur humans to get serious and start working together.
This is not to say that “hard times make strong men”, as the popular meme goes. It’s that we were “strong men” (and women, and nonbinary persons, etc.) all along, and we just didn’t have a reason to buckle down and get serious about solving society’s problems.
You know how in the fantasy stories, the Hero of Legend always mysteriously appears just in time to fight the Great Evil? It’s not luck, it’s selection bias. If the Hero of Legend appeared in normal times and there was no Great Evil around, they would just end up playing in a grunge band or coding a mobile app."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/against-polycrisis
26. "Now, the game is over for Bankman-Fried. Just weeks ago, he was a Democratic megadonor, one of the richest men who ever lived, the very face of what many in Washington and on Wall Street thought was the future of the economy: someone who could unlock the potential of cryptocurrencies and still walk with ease through the traditional world of money and power.
In less than a week, it was all annihilated, with questions of fraud and admissions of misappropriating his own customer’ funds exposing his empire to be a house of cards.
On Friday, FTX and his hedge fund, Alameda Research, filed for bankruptcy, and he resigned as CEO of the exchange. Government officials in the Bahamas, where his companies are based, seized what was left of their assets.
Investigators are reportedly probing his company and him, personally, to understand what happened — investigations that are likely to delve into whether or not the former wunderkind (an MIT physics major whose parents are both Stanford professors) defrauded his way into the most rarefied of positions. Sequoia, like other VCs who plowed money into the company, proactively marked down their stake to zero.
It’s not clear what’s going to happen with FTX or the people whose money is trapped on the platform. The repercussions are likely to be even deeper than the Terra blowup earlier this year, with companies he was about to rescue now likely out of luck. The company had apparently been expanding in sub-Saharan Africa, where bank access and resources that could help people get their money back are spotty.
Bankman-Fried has repeatedly apologized on Twitter. Ryne Miller, a lawyer for FTX who reportedly pushed back against its internal practices, didn’t want to talk when I reached him by phone and referred me to a press release. Bankman-Fried hasn’t really offered a convincing story of how it all collapsed so quickly, though what has emerged has been damning. Still, it’s not clear that Bankman-Fried views this as anything more than a game that was to be won or lost."
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/11/it-was-all-a-game-for-sam-bankman-fried.html
27. "Not much has changed in the 365 years since Palmstruch’s bank collapsed, except for the whole “jailing bankers” thing. As long as there have been custodians of money, maturity mismatches, and varying degrees of liquidity among asset classes, there have been confidence losses that catalyze runs.
Fraud is almost always found in the ashes of collapse (although history shows that outright fraud is usually a mid- to late-stage event). At some point in the boom-bust cycle, enterprises engaging in a little bit of chicanery to skirt through an otherwise manageable crisis find that once the culture accepts having stolen a penny, ethical incrementalism makes stealing nickels, dimes, and quarters all but inevitable.
The immunity from prison that fraudsters have thus far enjoyed in the currently bursting market bubble seems set to expire. In the past week, a fraud so brazen collapsed so spectacularly that even today’s batch of feckless regulators will be forced to act. Although the shockwaves from the rapid implosion of Alameda Research and FTX are still emanating from the Bahamas, a tsunami of consequences will barrel towards financial and political shorelines the world over in the weeks and months ahead. Investors are suddenly reacquainting themselves with the concept of counterparty risk (again!), and schemes that need a steady stream of fresh fiat to prop themselves up will soon drown in the contagion.
And while it was the traditional media that blindly paraded Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) to celebrity investor status, a combination of new citizen journalism and old-school short sellers played pivotal roles in exposing the scam. Let’s dig in."
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/poof-of-work
28. Very good news in Kherson: Crimean peninsula next! #SlavaUkraini!
Be a Live Player: How to be Exceptional in Life
I learned an interesting new term called “Live Player” from brilliant thinker Samo Burj. Its defined as “A live player is a person or well-coordinated group of people that is able to do things they have not done before.” These are people who are dynamic, adaptive, very responsive and constantly learning. This is in contrast to Dead Players: “A dead player is a person or group of people that is working off a script, incapable of doing new things.”
You can find more in this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ik5AxJSjcjI & also here: https://medium.com/@samo.burja/live-versus-dead-players-2b24f6e9eae2
What determines a Live Player?
“What are signs that a player is alive? One strong sign is a player doing things outside of their expected domain — in a new, unexpected domain — which indicates that they can figure out new things for themselves.
Another sign of a live player is exceptional individuals gravitating towards them. Such individuals tend to be good at assessing others, and will tend to seek out others who are also exceptional. If they cluster around a person or group, there is something exceptional about that person or group. Successfully reverse-engineering an attack is another, albeit weak, sign of a live player. Those who can make novel moves will also tend to be able to reverse-engineer moves, but those who can reverse-engineer moves often lack the ability to create novel ones.”
Some live examples of “Live Players” are: Tom Ford, Elon Musk, Madonna, Napoleon, Jeff Bezos & Tim Ferriss.
Individuals who are capable of great change in their lives and careers, adaptive as hell and greatly impactful in the world.
This concept is so personally fascinating to me. I think about many of the people I look up to and many of them fit this characterization of a live player. When I think of the people I detest, they all seem to fit the “Dead Player” characterization. These would include many of the bureaucrats in government, the stodgy yet corrupt politicians all over the world, Big company people and elitists in academia and across the media establishment, whose gross incompetence came to the fore during the 2020-2021 pandemic.
I find that based on my career, I’ve unintentionally pursued the “Live Player” life, albeit with much less impact & success than many of the very gifted individuals previously listed. But still, this style of living through constant learning and adapting is why I enjoy my life so much (most of the time).
So the point is: be a “Live player.” We need you! All innovation and progress relies on this. As Samo Burj states correctly: “Societies with few live players will stagnate; societies with many live players will develop and adapt.
Knowing When to Quit: Sometimes You Have to Move On
One of my favorite movies is “You’ve Got Mail” starring Meg Ryan as a small children’s bookstore shopkeeper & Tom Hanks as her big chain bookstore businessman & nemesis. It’s such a classic movie showing the glory of New York City in all its 4 seasons. It’s also a great story full of great characters.
There is this scene when the character Meg Ryan plays decides she needs to close up her store because she can’t stay in business any longer due to the bruising competition. Her older & wiser friend tells her:
“Closing the store is the brave thing to do. You are daring to imagine that you could have a different life.
Oh I know it doesn’t feel like that. You feel like a big fat failure now. But you are not. You are marching into the great unknown with nothing.”
There is something to this. A brand new start. A blank canvas to paint on. A blank piece of paper to start over.
I’ve had so many conversations with startup founders talking about when to quit and shut down the company. Startups are really really hard & most usually don’t work out. It can be challenging and difficult to know when or whether to do so. To quit. You can’t think straight and usually need an outsider to help you look at the situation coldly. To talk through it.
The reason for this is “sunk costs fallacy”: this is when you continue with the behavior or in an initiative or project as a result of previously invested resources. Source: https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/the-sunk-cost-fallacy
Sunk costs are hard to overcome especially when you have spent so much of your own time, money and life into something. This is the same with marriage and long romantic relationships too.
But there comes to a point when things aren’t getting better. Where there is limited or no progress despite your efforts. Or maybe it’s getting worse. Sometimes things just don’t work out for whatever reason. Timing. Business model doesn’t work. Trends moving against you. Or maybe you are just plain tired and exhausted.
Change is hard. But it’s better to go out on your own terms. It’s okay to quit. If you have done your best and given your all, then you should have no regret. If you are a startup founder, make sure you take care of your employees. Be as generous with severance as possible, be a good reference for them and make whatever intros you can. Transition your customers well too. Die with Honor as they say.
Sometimes there are circumstances where it’s better to move on. Take the lessons you learned, treasure the good memories and step bravely into your new future.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Nov 13th, 2022
"Courage isn't having the strength to go on – it is going on when you don't have strength."― Napoleon Bonaparte
Important video on a possible future war with China. They are the enemy, like it or not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q_GktDcqX4
2. If you are a geopolitical geek like me, this is a lively and fascinating discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mihDhlwg96w
3. "As with bankruptcy, the sell-off happened gradually, then suddenly. Last week was a turning point. Amazon, Google, Meta, and Snap all missed big on earnings. The common theme? Ads. Or lack thereof. We knew the Mad Men era had come to an end; we weren’t expecting the end of Ad Men.
But let’s be honest, advertising sucks. Cable ads provide a glimpse into what it’s like to have restless leg syndrome, and digital ads, while more relevant, are carbon — the noxious byproduct of converting attention into shareholder value via algorithms that bring out the worst in the species. I’ll say it again, advertising sucks."
https://www.profgalloway.com/elephants-in-the-room
4. "Technology adoption turns hyperbolic during a recession or any major event promoting budget cuts, layoffs, or dramatic changes in the market. Covid-19 was a good example of what this looks like.
So much of the company prospecting process can be eliminated due to automation.
They also clean their CRM data so if anyone changes jobs or changes an email/phone number it gets automatically updated in the CRM. This makes the outreach process more effective due to not wasting time on bad info.
Simple. It’s cheaper to use sales technology than it is to hire more salespeople. When you use sales technology you multiply your sales efforts and decrease management overhead. If you can manage sales reps via software instead of a sales manager why would you hire a sales manager? And if you can get the 2x more results from the current reps you have there’s no need to hire more reps.
The issue is companies don’t know how to use sales tech!"
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/the-future-of-sales-and-what-it-means
5. "Let’s accept layoffs as part and parcel of business cycles, amongst many other smart-sounding external factors and mismanagement despite best intentions. It is what it is. They happen! Life is unfair.
What grinds my gears is leadership not owning their difficult decision of laying people off. Again, I don’t consider them bad people for laying off! I do not believe they enjoy doing them.
But, let's fault them if and when they fail to own the decision and take the necessary steps to minimize the pain, confusion, and uncertainty that inevitably flow from layoffs. The most effective levers for doing so are appropriate communication and post-layoff support to the extent a company’s financial situation allows them to."
https://sarharibhakti.substack.com/p/a-rant-on-layoffs-from-someone-who
6. "Long story short: if you’re ever expecting to retire, you’ll need to make preparations to take care of this yourself. Nobody else will—especially your government, despite their promises.
So, what’s a person to do? Well, I can’t tell you how you should prepare. That’s not my place, especially considering our unique individual circumstances.
But for me, setting aside at least 10% of my monthly income (though ideally 20%) to be invested into hard appreciating assets like real estate, precious metals, or even commodities is a good start. And if the idea of setting aside up to a fifth of your income for future safekeeping seems like an impossibility, then it may be time to increase your income or earning ability in whatever way you can, as soon as you can.
Just remember: the sands of time wait for none of us."
https://abundantia.substack.com/p/fear-the-reaper
7. "So overall the acquisition of equipment has (as it always does) played a major role in determining the war so far. Russian issues in this area and Ukrainian successes have basically helped change what was a war of Russian offensive to Ukrainian counteroffensive. Both sides, however, have major vulnerabilities.
The Russians need to be able to find ways to either produce or acquire equipment to make up for their losses while the Ukrainians need to make sure that their NATO supporters continue on with their aid programs. The real canary in the coal mine here is what happens with the US mid-term elections."
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/long-form-thoughts-on-the-weekend
8. "Intuitively, it makes sense that more entrepreneurial activity in a community is a good thing. Only, it’s important to go up a level to think about why a larger, broader, and deeper startup scene helps the region, especially in the context of a long, multi-decade horizon."
https://davidcummings.org/2022/11/05/why-grow-the-startup-community
9. "Please do not lose your income as layoffs will continue through Q1. As a rule of thumb the cuts come in October/November and then February/March for most industries.
This is due to budget setting as mentioned many times here to start the year and Feb/March is another round if they don’t see enough “natural attrition”. Which means people leaving/quitting/retiring etc.
If you want an idea of what the next 12 months will look like, we suggest watching some old Rocky movies. The quiet quitting trend is over."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/ftx-and-cz-marry-the-home-guarantee
10. "To get to simplicity I have to push through distractions, complexity, and lots of hard work but I know it’s worth the effort. I have to reduce everything I’m learning down to its essence to leap forward.
Simplicity is simply mastery, the state of mind and being when you can express yourself in any medium with fluidity, clarity, and excellence, making it seem so easy that anyone can do it without any effort."
https://fewerbetterthings.substack.com/p/simplicity-is-hard-work
11. This is a worthwhile panel to listen to as a VC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REFAe7qhb74
12. Detroit & Houston are well positioned for the future. In fact, US already well positioned as we re-industrialize.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GgxbBzQfQk
13. Pretty important discussion here on energy and geopolitics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwIlWq3Isxc
14. "But when researchers expanded their definition of aggression to include verbal aggression and indirect aggression (rumor spreading, gossiping, ostracism, and friendship termination) they found that girls score higher on indirect aggression and no sex differences in verbal aggression.
The most common reasons people give for their most recent act of aggression are threats to social status and reputational concerns."
https://robkhenderson.substack.com/p/the-male-warrior-hypothesis
15. This was a masterclass on Venture investing from one of the best leading the best. So many gems of wisdom.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIL2FUm2WIM
16. "You always say yes to more responsibility and a promotion. The reasoning is quite simple. If you get promoted your manager and his manager have to “admit” it was a mistake.
This is unlikely. If you get promoted you usually have about a year or so to show results. The only way you get promoted then fired in a month is if there are major management changes in the org chart. Per usual, there are always “exceptions”. Example: never take a promotion to a non-revenue generating role. Stay in the profit centers.
90% of the time? There is no way your boss or the boss of your boss is going to walk up to Senior Management and say “Hey i made a huge mistake already! It has been 3 weeks!”."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/some-fast-career-advice-and-museums
17. "Since 1945 all nuclear powers have refrained from using nuclear weapons because none of them have been presented with an existential military threat against there existence. If Russia were to break that taboo in a war of conquest, it could have dramatic impact on nuclear non-proliferation.
If states around the world see that nuclear weapons can now be used to compel their capitulation to conquest, what would stop Taiwan and Japan, for instance, from developing their own nuclear deterrent. That would be probably the worst possible development from a Chinese perspective.
Likewise, if China believes this era represents that dawn of a new Chinese age, they cant be wild about the prospect of a nuclear weapons use leading to global instability.
So all in all, China probably represents a huge break on any Russian use of nuclear weapons, and the Chinese statement today is real confirmation of that."
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/thoughts-on-the-nuclear-issue-and
18. Hmmm......
"Musk has accidentally created a public hearing on his reputational and professional worth, where we now will see if he is a great CEO or a rich guy who kept winning until he didn’t. The public will now watch and judge him in real time as he makes the decisions that most CEOs get to make behind closed doors, in part because he can’t help but announce them personally. He cannot post less, because it will show a lack of attachment to the massive purchase he made, and if he posts more, he will be subject to the hyper-attention that made him famous."
https://ez.substack.com/p/musks-kobayashi-maru
19. "My way of achieving this goal is to scale back on consumption; only buying well made things that last and that I frequently use. This has allowed me to both work less on meaningless projects, having higher quality experiences, and enjoying a nomadic lifestyle. Your dream might be different but the process is the same.
Today we are exposed to an infinite amount of ideas, things, and people via the Internet. And as much as I love this technology, it’s important to understand how it really works and to create your own filters and boundaries for how you use it."
https://fewerbetterthings.substack.com/p/a-new-direction-back-to-the-future
20. "It’s harder and harder to break those stars today. That’s why labels offer more favorable contracts to keep those artist who are already proven. It’s also why they are eager to find the next superstars from non-English speaking markets that are less saturated. It’s all connected.
This shift is bigger than music. It’s happening in Hollywood. It’s happening in all forms of content and media. But since music is often first to get disrupted, there’s a larger disconnect between expectations and reality.
There are many artists sold on the belief that they can be the next Kendrick Lamar. The challenge today is that even if they have K.dot’s talent and adapt his playbook for today’s era, that merely gives them a chance of success. TikTok algorithms can have artists think that those millions of views on a viral post will translate to millions of concert tickets sold.
The power laws of music are stronger than they are in any other form of entertainment. The platforms, superstars, niche stars, and the companies they work with have all benefited. It’s everyone else that has to catch up."
https://trapital.co/2022/11/07/who-wins-when-there-are-too-many-songs
21. This explains the bizarre German foreign and domestic policy we see.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFAnTkKUYj0
22. "As leaders, we would do well to welcome our own humanity and at times even our own frailty. We would do well to invite the humanity of those we seek to lead.
As investors, we would do well to check in with our portfolio CEOs as humans, not simply as operators.
You are not a robot. Neither was Jobs. And that, my friend, is wonderful if inconvenient news."
https://www.mattmunson.me/self-criticism
23. "We think of war as a battleground involving tanks, troops, ships, and planes. But technology has made it possible for a new battleground involving DNA, cells, organs, and scientists in labs.
The human body is the battleground in an era of hybrid biogenetic warfare. We have a situation now where China is accusing the US of engaging in such warfare. The US is fearing that China might engage in such warfare."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/pishi-and-porcupine
24. This seems more relevant than ever.
"If you’re going through a rough situation, my advice is stay strong, stay data-driven, leverage the resources around you, and demand the best of your team. Focus on first diagnosing the problem and then on building and attaining a steady-state funnel model to get things back on track.
It may feel like you’re going through hell, but remember, as Winston Churchill famously said, “if you’re going through hell, keep going.”
https://kellblog.com/2022/11/06/how-to-fix-a-broken-go-to-market-motion-using-a-steady-state-funnel
25. This is pretty damn surprising.
Maybe not, Considering how tumultuous the crypto space has been this year.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/08/binance-signs-letter-of-intent-to-acquire-ftx
26. This is actually a very good idea from a VC fund.
"Her bet? At least 0.1% to 1% of the thousands of employees impacted by tech layoffs this year could become incredible founders."
27. I think everyone is still shocked here.
"The rapid disintegration of Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire will likely unravel further VC investors’ confidence in blockchain startups, which attracted a frenzy of investor interest last year. And Bankman-Fried was one of the most successful fundraisers."
28. "When journalists have suspicions about a business, they like to call it a “house of cards.” It’s a vivid analogy that basically means “We can’t tell you what is wrong with the business, but something is.” It honestly irks me when people throw the expression around without doing the work to explain what’s happening, but it is also important to follow one’s instincts.
And for a while now, a lot of people have had a funny feeling about crypto and specifically about FTX, one of the world’s most popular places to buy and sell cryptocurrencies.
Specifically, the thing that didn’t smell right was FTX’s relationship with crypto trading fund Alameda Research, which Bankman-Fried also controlled.
It seemed icky that one of the world’s largest brokers of crypto currency was so close to one of the world’s largest buyers of crypto currencies. Some wondered about that broker’s impartiality given their relationship. But that’s just how crypto works, people said. And who doesn’t want to bet on a young wunderkind? That was a part Bankman-Fried played so well.
No one really asked the tough questions about the relationship, apparently not even the world’s most renowned investors, including Sequoia Capital, SoftBank and Paradigm, which collectively poured hundreds of millions into FTX, valuing the three-year-old company at more than $32 billion."
29. "First, the economic and military dominance of the Western world is not nearly as overwhelming as it was one hundred years ago, or even fifty years ago.
That dominance is being eroded by the growth of other parts of the world organized according to different principles, and obviously so by China. So if the performance of the liberal capitalist model is inferior to another model, then perhaps democratic liberal capitalism is not the best way to organize the mankind everywhere?
Second, in responding to the challenges of globalization and the hollowing out of the domestic middle classes, a significant part of the Western public opinion shifts to populism, nationalism etc. all the forces that a successful liberal capitalist model should make sure remain marginal. But they are no longer so.
Third, Danny raises the issue: should not our thinking about what is the best way to organize economic and political life be influenced not only by who is doing it most successfully but also by where the majority of the world population lives? It is not simply an arithmetical point. It comes from requiring that the modes of successful life that many people experience do have a greater empirical validity than the ways of successful life experienced by smaller groups of people."
https://branko2f7.substack.com/p/reframing-the-world
30. "From a US security perspective its just a no brainer to arm the Ukrainians to take out Russia, and Iranian, military capability. The best bang for buck, quite literally, for the US, and putting zero US lives in danger."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/midterms-dont-change-the-calculus
31. "Now, following a series of missteps — that’s the best-case scenario — FTX didn’t just lose its rich valuation. According to the WSJ, FTX founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried told investors today that he needed emergency funding to cover a shortfall of up to $8 billion due to withdrawal requests received in recent days. Reportedly, he has been seeking a mixture of debt and equity.
It’s not surprising that Sequoia decided instead to write off its roughly $210 million investment. Presumably, others of FTX’s investors — including BlackRock, Tiger Global, Insight Partners, and Paradigm — are shooting out their own communications to limited partners about making the same decision.
(The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, which invested directly in FTX, has a much broader base of shareholders who may be wondering about their retirement savings, even while their pensions are guaranteed.)"
https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/09/sequoia-capital-marks-its-ftx-investment-down-to-zero-dollars
32. "Russia’s strategy is about suffering: for people, to diminish morale and the population’s support for Ukraine’s war effort; and for the economy, to crush it so that Ukraine can’t meet the needs of its people and is even more reliant on the West — a West that is also dealing with cost of living, inflation, and energy crises as winter approaches.
The strategy is cruel, but, as experts pointed out, so far it has failed to do anything more than harden attitudes against Russia. And it has not, at all, boosted Russia’s fortunes on the battlefield. “Despite that massive wave of terrorist attacks that [Putin] just recently did, he’s still losing ground,” Spencer said.
Russia retreating from the city of Kherson may also help make Ukraine’s case that its strategy of retaking Ukrainian territory and expelling Russia is the right course. As Menon said, “it’s a big morale boost,” even as Russian and Ukrainian troops face fiercer and more critical battles in the east.
It will likely also bolster Ukraine’s case to the West that it can possibly win those battles if it can just get more Western military support, including advanced weapons and air defense systems to protect against Russian barrages targeting infrastructure. “They also have a very strong card to play, which is: you’re supplying us — but we’re delivering, we’re showing we’re capable of winning,” Menon said."
https://www.vox.com/world/2022/11/9/23449707/kherson-russia-retreat-ukraine-war
33. Great Discussion about FTX from the NIA guys.
The Path to Progress, Fulfillment & Fun: Taking Risks
No risk, no reward.
This is the rule in business, in investing and in relationships. All the wonderful things that make life special.
Growing up as the eldest son in a Taiwanese immigrant family, I’m as conservative as they come. The regular path was what was drummed into me. Get good grades in school (that did not quite happen), get a good safe job at an established company or organization. Safe but boring.
But when I turned 22 I left Canada in search of adventure, summer school in England, backpacking in Europe. Then it was off to Asia for a 2 year stint, before ending up in San Francisco.
I look back at all the best things that happened to me. Backpacking in Europe and meeting some fascinating people, living in Taiwan and meeting my wife which led to my wonderful daughter Amber. A fulfilling career in a fast growing startup, an international career at Yahoo! And now a venture capital investor & sometime newsletter writer. None of which would have happened without taking some risk, a bit of luck and lots of hard work. And I should add, all off the beaten paths of my peer group and family expectations at that time.
Life is about taking chances. Not stupid jump off the Golden Gate Bridge drunk without a parachute risk. But calculated risks.
In venture capital and Angel investing it’s called Asymmetric risks. Ones with unfathomable payoffs but with the potential loss of only what you put in.
And this is not the choice of joining Goldman Sachs over McKinsey. That’s not really a risk frankly. Real risk is joining a no name underfunded technology or biotech startup that may die in a few months but has the chance to dramatically improve how we live. That’s true risk.
You never know where the random meeting, call or investment will take you. It could lead to life changing wealth, lifelong friendships, a life partner or a nugget of insight that will change how you view the world.
There is this scene in Nolan’s classic sci-fi movie “Inception”, where the Japanese industrialist says to the protagonist: “So do you want to take a leap of faith….or become an old man filled with regret… waiting to die alone.”
An interesting and fulfilling life requires taking risks. Progress in life and the world requires taking risks. It requires a leap of faith. Many of them, all the time on a regular basis. Be brave and take action. You may be surprised by where life takes you….in a good way.
Easy Come, Easy Go: Understanding the Universal Law of Money & Success
There has been so much wealth created in the last few years in tech and crypto. I’d go even further that in tech we’ve had a crazy run over the last 13-14 years. But now we are seeing the other side of this boom. The painful bust. Lots of bad habits to unlearn.
In some ways it’s like winning a lottery ticket. Many of these folks end up losing the money and end up poorer than they started with. I admit the same thing happened to me, i’ve been pretty stupid with the amount of money I’ve made and wasted.
In some ways, the same thing happens to super wealthy people. If you do very well, wealth sometimes hides you from the reality of the market. You have resources to fulfill and dull all your senses.
This is like the money law of “High School Hero” Syndrome. The people who did well in high school like being the captain of the football team & class valedictorian etc etc, usually don’t do well in University or even in life in general, because they peaked & stopped learning. We all know people like this.
It’s like a curse to have a lot of success too early in life. You end up drawing the wrong conclusions. Lesson from Carol Dweick, that you develop the wrong mindset. If you are told you are successful because you are smart, you stop taking risks as you don’t want to make mistakes that will threaten that image in your brain.
This causes you to stop growing. You stop learning. This is death as an investor, and death as an individual in our ultra competitive and rapidly changing world.
The people who are able to keep their money are ones who earned it through hardship and having gone through lots of ups and downs in life. There are folks we see as “overnight successes”, but if you dig a bit deeper you can see how long it really took. Usually 10-20 years at least. Any bigtime Hollywood star you know, did a crazy number of casting calls and suffered through a lot of rejection before hitting it big. The founder of Instacart, that was his 8 or 9th startup. Many of the Unicorns in my portfolio struggled for 7-8 years before they got there.
The big success stories we will hear about in 5 to 10 years are toiling in obscurity right now.
Good stuff takes time. There is no way around it. So be ambitious, be aggressive but also be patient. Be resilient and stay in the game. Long term thinking is the only way to win and keep it.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Nov 6th, 2022
"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear."― Nelson Mandela
I love these historical recaps.
https://twitter.com/LandsknechtPike/status/1585917457101099008
2. "With fewer loose spending venture capitalists running around, startups will face fewer competitors. That means they can spend less money fighting with each other and raise fewer dilutive funding rounds.
“The better investments will be made in the next five years or 10 years,” Khosla said.
During our conversation, Khosla was already predicting that stumbling tech giants would be a boon for startups — before Facebook and Amazon’s stocks fell this week.
“There’s another phenomenon that happens in a time like this: Google’s not hiring. Facebook’s not hiring. People are clamping down,” Khosla says. “Guess what happens to their most advanced projects? They go. And guess who are the best people in any large company? The best people are working on the most advanced projects. They are the ones who want to do visionary things. They’re the fodder entrepreneur for venture capitalists. So I think many more of the best people — not because they’re not getting paid huge raises in compensation — but because they’re working on less interesting projects — will leave to follow their vision.”
He concluded, “We will have fewer startups, but many more higher quality startups.”
https://www.newcomer.co/p/vinod-khosla-isnt-quiet-quitting
3. Great conversation. They excel when it comes to discussion on the tech industry and tech giants.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-bIpJdaCnM
4. "Performance is pretending for the masses, practice is playing for ourselves. Once I discovered this little secret, I became free to focus my own time, attention, and creative energy on things that matters to me and maybe no-one else."
https://fewerbetterthings.substack.com/p/changing-perspective-changes-everything
5. "It feels as if I’m meeting a man putting himself back together, and not quite sure how all the parts fit. He is still reeling from grief, while also embracing a new life, one that includes a surprise career change."
6. "VC investment business model is similar to the book publishing and movie industries — it is dominated by betting on “blockbusters” and the power law. A few stars in the portfolio will create the vast majority of your returns, while the rest of the portfolio loses money. This is why all of these industries focus investments on their winners and add more follow-on investments to those that show signs of becoming blockbusters, while cutting their losses on all other investments."
https://yrjo.medium.com/analogies-v-3-f0a6f607030e
7. "Yes, success could be measured as revenue, status, or scale, but that’s not what success looks like to me. Suddenly, I’d have to transform from a writer to a manager, and that’s not at all what gives me pleasure in this life.
So I urge you to ask yourself the question: What are you working so hard for right now? What does your ultimate happiness look like? If you look at your trajectory, are you just filling the time until you reach that destination — or can you find a more direct route to the destination by making it your life’s work today?
Remember, we’re all investors in this life. No, I’m not talking about money. I’m talking about time. As the quote goes: “Time is a currency you can only spend once, so be careful how you spend it.”
https://theprofile.substack.com/p/the-profile-kanye-wests-private-academy-b1b
8. "You might know these devices as Ouija boards. But Ouija is a brand, like Kleenex or Tupperware. And at one point in time, it was a multimillion-dollar business.
“Think of Coke and Pepsi. Coke is probably number one, Pepsi is number two. There is no number two for the Ouija board,” the museum’s owner, John Kozik, told The Hustle.
When Kozik points out other brands in the collection, guests often assume they won’t work as well because they’re not “official,” as though ghosts harbor a brand-name preference.
This is the story of how, thanks to the combined forces of spiritualism and capitalism, Ouija became the go-to for communing with the dead."
https://thehustle.co/the-strange-business-history-of-the-ouija-board
9. "Of all the frankly disturbing predictions of how technology might be used to limit our individual freedoms in the near future, it’s CBDCs that worry me the most. Simply because when those in power have the ability to coerce, manipulate, or force people’s actions by controlling their ability to use money—our basic means for survival in today’s world—they would gain the godlike ability to engineer the behaviour of an entire population.
Or as former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger aptly put it:
“Who controls money can control the world.”
https://abundantia.substack.com/p/control-the-world
10. For SaaS Founders and investors everywhere. Lots of solid data points.
https://kellblog.com/2022/10/30/key-takeaways-from-the-2022-keybanc-saas-metrics-survey
11. Some good frameworks and thoughts in investing here. Whatever you think of Chamath there is much to learn. (I like his perspective)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXV2Zqke5MM
12. So much wisdom from one of the greats of VC.
"The collective venture community needs to get its head around the new reality as fast as possible. The more people see what’s really going on, the quicker that will happen. In ’09, the response to the downturn was pretty swift. But you had the benefit that ’01 was only seven or eight years in the rearview mirror. While there’s still some institutional memory around the Valley, it’s been a very long time since 2009.
I try to convey that they need to get in front of this. In a couple meetings, I’ve heard an owner or founder say, “Well, you know, we just need to buckle down until things get back to where they were.” And I’m, like, “No, the fantasy was the past five years.”
What we’re in now may just be normal, right? This may be average. And that’s very hard for people. It’s especially hard for a founder.
Everybody says, “We’re getting to the bone.” Everyone says that. And I know it’s a touchy subject because people are losing their jobs. But companies—even small start-ups—are way more resilient than people realize. It’s the norm that you cut 30 percent, and everything keeps going. You don’t lose all your customers. And some people find, “Oh, wait, we’re moving a little faster.” Sometimes things get better. I mean, yes, eventually some companies go bankrupt. But I’ve never seen someone do too much. You can always hire back. I think 95 percent of the time, the failure is the other way, of not doing enough."
13. "Lastly, the fourth takeaway is that being exposed to a variety of fields, perspectives, and people can be an incredible competitive advantage. As I mentioned in the book notes for Robert Greene’s Mastery, my wife and I are constantly talking about how to expose our daughter to as many ideas as possible. It feels dumb that parents think this way for their children, but we lose sight of the importance for ourselves as we get older. We are all children at heart."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/curiosity-can-change-your-life
14. "As I look at the distance between now and my date of birth, I realize I’m closer to the end than to the beginning. The good news is we can all push the ending farther away if we try. We just need good information (check) and to do the work.
From what I hear, immortality can get a bit lonely, so keep the above in mind when preparing food for those you love — or share this post with them.
Eat right, live longer and feel better."
https://bakadesuyo.com/2022/10/nutrition
15. For those who are interested in Micro-Private Equity this is an amazing conversation. Codie is the best.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrgusUWqTTY&t=51s
16. Taiwan is awesome and special. Glad people are slowly discovering its importance.
"Culturally, Taiwan is very much not China, and this becomes apparent as soon as you leave the airport. The food — and food is Taiwan’s national pastime — is obviously Chinese-derived, but is really its own thing. It blends all the regional cuisines of China into a mishmash, because the Nationalists came from everywhere, and it adds touches from Japan, but it also has plenty of the purely original flourishes that emerge from any rich consumerist society.
Milk tea is everywhere, as you might expect, though tastes have moved beyond the classic boba formula. The urban layout of Taipei, the signage and architecture and design, are definitely not Chinese, nor are they Japanese; they’re something new and recently made. Almost two years ago I wrote that “Taiwan is a civilization”, and I stand by that formulation.
Why should a peaceful, prosperous, gentle country like Taiwan be forced to prepare for the threat of invasion and bloodshed? There is no principle of human morality or justice that says they should have to. Instead, it’s purely the law of the jungle; there are predators in this world, and they will conquer what they can until they are stopped.
China’s leaders want to conquer Taiwan not just because they want to rival the old Qing dynasty in territorial extent, but because Taiwan represents something to them that they can’t abide — an alternative blueprint for Asia. Perhaps even more than Japan or South Korea, Taiwan shows people in China and its satellite states what they’re missing — a way of life where people can just be themselves, instead of living in service to a grand empire."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/eleven-days-in-taiwan
17. "What counts at the level of Grand Strategy are two sets of fundamentals. First is Mass: population, economy, technology. Then Mass x Cohesion = power. With no cohesion, there is no strength at all, even with a lot of Mass. Second is what a country has abroad: allies, neutrals, enemies.
As for its economy, Russia, though not a rich country, is entirely self-sufficient in food and energy. This is not true of most countries. The same G-7 sanctions that could not stop Russia could stop Xi Jinping’s China, which must choose between fighting wars and eating protein. Yes, more than a year of rice reserves and some months of frozen pork can be stored, but not the immense amounts of soya beans China imports to feed animals for milk, eggs and meat.
We all saw that Russia is weak in allies, because instead of attracting neutrals to its side, it frightened them into joining Nato or at least to remain neutral. Russia is also weak in allies because, even though it has a navy, it is not a maritime power."
https://unherd.com/2022/11/vladimir-putins-failed-strategy
18. "You could argue that Elon controlling Twitter acts as off-balance sheet marketing for Tesla, SpaceX, and every other company he builds. Auto makers typically spend 2-3% of revenue on marketing. Ford, GM, Hyundai, Subaru, Kia, and Ferrari spent a combined $10 billion on advertising in 2021. Mercedes-Benz, Renault (Renault, Nissan), and Stellantis (Fiat, Chrysler, Peugeot) don't break out advertising expenses, but reported $22.8 billion in Selling, General, & Administrative (SG&A) expenses in 2021.
As a comp for SpaceX, Boeing paid $2.9 billion in SG&A expenses in 2021, or 4.7% of its revenue. For Tesla, that 2-3% of revenue would come out to $1-2 billion in marketing expenses. That's close to the estimated interest expense due annually on the debt financing the Twitter acquisition
Elon stands to benefit whether or not he can actually improve Twitter's underlying business. Owning Twitter ensures marketing benefits to Elon's other businesses. And Twitter's core product is a top of funnel for Elon to build other consumer products over time. Elon may look to China as an example, where the largest social platforms not only keep people in touch with friends and entertain them with videos, but also enable payments, food delivery, travel bookings, and hundreds of billions in ecommerce transactions.
Early product experiments are just the start. Most will probably fail. In the words of Rohit Krishnan on Twitter, "I have a feeling this is gonna be a Masterclass on speedrunning through things other folks have done and figured out for the first few weeks / months, which is both the benefit and drawback of first principles [everything]."
https://www.thespl.it/p/elons-twitter
19. "Traveling has become an accelerator where most distractions loose their pull. It’s only the basics, the everyday essentials that matters, and that’s when surviving also means thriving.
In a world where everything has become easy, the hard stuff is where the real value lies. Focus on the hard and life becomes easier and much more rewarding."
https://fewerbetterthings.substack.com/p/traveling-is-no-vacation
20. "So here we are. Increasingly advanced unmanned boats packed with explosives will be yet another threat to contend with. Everyone is watching the conflict in Ukraine very closely, especially potentially nefarious actors including China, Iran, and North Korea. Take the latter for instance. They could unleash hundreds of similar boats — even ones that need no communications and go after static targets — onto targets in South Korea at the opening of the conflict, which already features a conventional war plan that works to achieve ultimate chaos above all else.
The fact is that these are weapon systems that can relatively easily achieve considerable range and will have the command and control architecture to support them. As such, they are growing into the realm of regional capabilities."
21. This is a great interview. Lots of great thoughts on entrepreneurship.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMv3hgIE-V4
22. "Marooney, a GP at Coatue, says that firms “have to earn the right” to survive. “There was the path where you did some investments and made money. It’s like, no, you’ve got to earn the right and not everybody is going to earn that right … and I think that is healthy,” the investor said.
I’ll end with a term we’ve been dancing around all through the intro, which is “quiet quitting.” Bloomberg Beta investor Roy E. Bahat posted a thread describing how seasoned venture capitalists may be quietly going into “easy mode,” aka, becoming a less active, minimum viable player of the team. Maybe their name helps the firm close new funds with LPs, and maybe their calendar doesn’t need to be busy with a ton of introduction calls, just annual investor meetings.
If we combine quiet quitting with natural selection cycles and the difficulty of tracking just how active a venture capitalist is, we experience a confusing, fragmented landscape. No one is incentivized to say that they aren’t doing business as usual, which creates a landscape of extremes."
https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/29/venture-capital-will-soon-be-brimming-with-ghosts
23. "It’s worth noting that there is one important exception to everything I just wrote: if you raise money from a VC firm that is very narrowly focused on your industry, they likely have a more extensive (and more relevant) network of downstream investors. But for most founders — particularly at the Pre-Seed and Seed stage — that isn’t the case.
At the end of the day, fundraising takes a lot of work. And successful fundraising is built on the back of considerable planning and preparation. Identifying and researching your target investors is one of the most important parts of that and, unfortunately, it’s not something I — or any VC — can do for you."
https://chrisneumann.com/blog/do-your-own-fundraising-research
24. This is a really good idea and needed. Bringing more transparency to VC industry and shines a light on emerging fund managers.
25. "Letting events on the batlefield take their course carries its own dangers for Putin. The spectre of defeat will hang over the Kremlin. The decision-making process will malfunction and frustrations will grow among the elite. Potential successors will start jockeying for position. The military will get caught between their need to conserve forces while not abandoning strategic poisitions, between a system demanding success yet incapable of providing the necessary resources.
Faced with stark chocies Moscow might suddenly discover a serious interest in negotiations. Until then, however, there is little choice but for Kyiv, with Western support, to persevere with its efforts to liberate territory until a point is reached where a Russian defeat can no longer be denied – or, to use another Churchillian phrase, to ‘keep buggering on.’
https://samf.substack.com/p/why-putin-prefers-war-war-to-jaw
26. Yikes Is really the only thing I can say here. It's gonna be a rough ride for everyone in the next few years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTCqXcbgCH4
27. "The more new content there is, the more likely we are to consume old content. The same is true for ideas and ideologies. The rivalry between Netflix and Disney+ illustrates why.
Economies of scale aren't as valuable in a world of abundance. This is most apparent in media but has consequences for geopolitics and religion.
Consider the case of Netflix. Most analysts predicted that, given its scale advantage, Netflix would build an insurmountable advantage in streaming. That didn't happen. Why?
As Ben Thompson and Eugene Wei point out in their recent podcast: In a world of abundant choice, most content is substitutable. Instead of watching one thing, you can watch another. Very few shows are a "must-watch."
Shows and all other cultural products benefit from network effects. A show becomes more valuable if all your friends and colleagues watch it: Watching it gives you something to take about, and NOT watching it means being left out of the conversation."
https://www.drorpoleg.com/the-vader-paradox
28. "I’m just as tired as you are of this story. Politicians, pundits, podcasters—everyone is trying to get their pound of Elon flesh, hoping to drive clicks to their website.
Missing in all this chatter is a thoughtful analysis of what the problems and potential resolutions are. But this is a company worthy of serious study. Twitter is a perfect case study of the shifting power dynamics of the ad market and how to make money in this era of the internet."
https://every.to/napkin-math/how-elon-wins
29. Do I think the layoffs should have happened? YES. But this seems to be a really bad & awful way to do it.
Firing people and Lay offs always suck as someone who has been on both sides of one (many times) but this seems really thoughtless & cold (in contrast to one done at Stripe).
"After the layoffs, we asked some of the employees who had been cut what they made of the process. They told us that they had been struck by the cruelty: of ordering people to work around the clock for a week, never speaking to them, then firing them in the middle of the night, no matter what it might mean for an employee’s pregnancy or work visa or basic emotional state.
More than anything they were struck by the fact that the world’s richest man, who seems to revel in attention on the platform they had made for him, had not once deigned to speak to them."
https://www.platformer.news/p/twitter-cut-in-half
30. The guys excel when they discuss the tech industry.
The Dumbest Person in the Room: Always Slightly Behind the Curve in Silicon Valley
I think back to when I first moved to SF in 1999. My friend Chris introduced me to his eldest brother, early 30-something, Larry was in management consulting at that time. I remember being very impressed by him. His big goal was to cut his cost structure and maintain a good basic lifestyle while he invested his savings in investments. A precursor to the FIRE (Financial Independent Retire Early) movement.
He also bought a multistory apartment building, living on the top floor while his tenants paid the mortgage. This was back in 1999 btw, before 2003 when everyone rushed to get into real riches before things imploded in 2008. I should add this was when prices were reasonable and not so crazy. He did well.
Or another friend who I will anonymize for his privacy. A former American banker at Goldman who took off to Eastern Europe to do PE (Private equity) in the early 2000s. He traveled the world before he came back to San Francisco to start a niche CPG company at the start of the energy foods craze. He was an early adopter of Tim Ferriss remote work, 4 Hour work week style of business. He ended up exiting the company and then using his earnings to do micro PE fund rolling up software businesses from a remote massive sized ranch while building several side businesses for multiple revenue streams. A remote work and portfolio entrepreneur before the term was coined. This was in the mid 2010s before it was cool.
Forward thinking is the term I’d use here. People who you knew were sharp or ahead of the curve but then you realize a decade or two later just how far ahead they were. I’m surrounded by so many of these folks it’s quite exhilarating and depressing at the same time.
Alex Danco coined the term “Upside Regret” which is the missing out of something or underestimating someone that ended up being very successful. It’s like missing the chance to angel invest in Coinbase or Solana, or join PayPal or Facebook in their early days for example. I’ve definitely had a bunch of these which I highlighted previously here:
https://hardfork.substack.com/p/lessons-not-regrets-missing-life?s=w
But for me, the real “Upside Regret” is more about not realizing or understanding & internalizing key concepts or ideas earlier than I eventually did. The crazy amount of upside that I missed to my quality of life and personal finances is “oh so” high.
This is why I read so much, take as many classes or courses as I do, and go to as many interesting conferences like Founders Summit, the Leveling Up Mastermind or Capital Camp. And of course, I try to talk to and invest in as many awesome founders and VCs (I also do small select LP cheques on occasion).
This is the only way to keep up. And for the most part, it’s damn fun, so I don’t always mind being the dumbest person in the room. I’ve come to accept that I may always be slightly behind the curve. But just as the tortoise who loves the game, I will keep on going, slow and steady to win the race in the end.