Freedom, Impact and Generosity: The Only Point of Wealth
“Operation Fortune: Ruse De Guerre'' at first glance seems like a silly, action comedy movie from Hollywood. I was hesitant to start it but frankly I was bored and way too tired to read. Boy, am I glad I picked it up. Guy Ritchie is a damn good director.
The movie starring Jason Stratham and Hugh Grant is about a team of private spy’s trying to track down a stolen & secret AI weapon in the hands of a billionaire arms broker. They recruit a Hollywood star to help save the world. It’s really entertaining.
There is a great scene where the billionaire arms dealer Greg is showing the movie star Danny around his estate and he comes to this beautiful classic rare Ford Mustang in his garage. It’s a car in one of his movies.
The billionaire asks him: “How much did you want this car Damny?”
Danny answers: “Of all the cars I’ve driven on screen, this is the only car I’ve ever wanted to possess.”
Greg: “Is that right: did you crave it? Did you yearn for it? Did you dream about it?”
Danny responds: “I longed for it.”
Greg then answers: “Do you know what? It’s yours. Come on, let’s have lunch!”
The actor is flabbergasted but overjoyed.
Now this is what we describe in Mandarin Chinese as “Da Chi”, big heart, or big energy. Immense generosity. This is the opposite of “Xiao Chi” or small energy, cheapness.
I’ve long talked about the importance of wealth in enabling your freedom. Going wherever, whenever and doing it with whoever you want. This part is pretty clear. It’s also to enable initiatives and causes you care the most about whether it’s certain charities or movements or political parties. It’s all dependent on the person.
There is this scene when the actor asks the billionaire: “So tell me how did the leap from millionaire to billionaire change you?”
The billionaire says: “Right. Interesting question. And I imagine my cue to tell you money doesn’t make you any happier. But I tell you what, it f—ing does. But it does. And I’m really happy now.”
Yes, having money does make you happier!!
The other and arguably biggest reason why wealth equates to happiness is making sure your loved ones are taken care of. I’d take it a step further: doing really nice things for your friends and loved ones. I want to treat my friends & family. I want to be generous. I refuse to split the bill for meals, I will pay for it. I want to give nice gifts to people I care about. I want to take them on trips or pay for nice material things that make them happy. I want to make magic happen for them.
This is the whole point of having money. It enables “Da Chi.” I never want to be a rich person living by himself like Scrooge in the Christmas Carol for most of that tale. I want to be the generous Scrooge at the end of the tale when he spreads his wealth and takes care of the Cratchit family. Sadly, this early Scrooge is like many wealthy people I know in real life. Cheap, ungenerous individuals counting their pennies.
Which leads me to a quote in the movie that sums up my view. “We are anti-capitalist. We’re just anti-other capitalists.”
All this wealth creation is enabled by a capitalist system, but capitalism is like technology, a neutral tool. A blade. You can use it for good or for evil. I hope everyone who ends up doing well, uses their gains for good. Good for your family, your friends and society. This is a reminder for myself too. Be “Da Chi.”
Dark Nights, Dark Thoughts: Never Make Big Decisions in the Dark Hours
I remember a comment a colleague made to his team right before Yahoo!'s infamous annual Sales Conference as a warning against the drunken debauchery the event was known for. (It is a media sales organization after all). He said “Nothing good can happen to your career after midnight.” Incredible advice. But it’s more than just about your career and work life. It’s relevant to most life decisions.
I am a night owl so I naturally stay up later. I tend to get a lot of work and reading done late at night. You are alone with your thoughts which in normal times is a good thing.
But the time when this is not good is when you are facing trouble or some big setback in life. Work trouble, family trouble, health or whatever crisis. You are tired and really stressed. I find my thoughts veers to pure crazy. And usually to some extreme form of despair or anger. You have some really dangerous and dark thoughts.
This is the absolutely worst time to be making decisions. So I force myself to meditate for at least 20 minutes and try to go back to sleep. And surprisingly you just feel better in the morning. You have a clearer head as the crazy late night fugue state is gone.
Why do I write about this? It’s been a really rough time for many of us since 2020 and it’s only getting worse not better. Don’t make big decisions in the wee hours after midnight. Try to get some sleep and I guarantee the situation will look much better in the morning.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads September 15th, 2024
“Problems are guidelines, not stop signs!”--Robert H. Schuller
This is always an educational conversation. Global macro from the Rebel Capitalist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh6IuI8oMnk
2. "Ukrainian production and employment of air and maritime drones has, indeed, been revolutionary – truly path-breaking, in fact. Indeed, the US and other countries need to learn a great deal from what Ukraine has done – and likely will do – even as unmanned ground systems are introduced in larger numbers, as well!
The ability of Ukraine to throw thousands of aerial drones at Russian soldiers on the battlefield every day – and also to strike strategic targets inside Russia nightly, as well – is truly game-changing. And Ukraine’s ability to employ vast number of electronic warfare [EW] “bubbles” of various sizes all over the battlefield and around headquarters and bases and important infrastructure is also hugely impressive.
So have been the ever evolving software components and enablers of all of these technological advances, as their constant refinement and improvement, increasingly involving AI [artificial intelligence], have been the critical element that has enabled the drones to evade Russian EW and air defense systems and engage targets heavily protected by Russian assets. (All of this should suggest, by the way, that Ukraine will be a major exporter of unmanned systems when its domestic requirements are ultimately reduced…)"
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/37119
3. This is the punch in the face and wake up call that every modern guy needs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiYmRC0Mmuk
4. "This Ukrainian operation represents a very significant effort on the part of the Ukrainians to reset the status quo in the war, and change narratives about Ukraine prospects in this war.
It is the kind of strategic risk-taking that I don’t think is well understood in many Western capitals anymore. For nearly two generations now, Western nations have been able to cut military spending. None of them have faced existential threats, even though the War on Terror did require a significant response for more than a decade after 9/11.
The slow decision-making cycles in Western military and political circles, an in military procurement, is indicative of institutions that no longer understand the imperative to act quickly and decisively while taking major risks.
This is not the case for the Ukrainians. They have faced an existential threat since February 2022 (and more broadly, for the entirety of their existence as a people) and have a very different political and military decision-making calculus than those of their supporters. A nation and a people who face an existential risk from their neighbour tend to think differently from those who do not."
https://mickryan.substack.com/p/kursks-next-operational-phase
5. "Quality water is essential for brewing delicious coffee. Shifting gears to investing, water, or liquidity, is important to stacking sats. This is a recurring theme throughout my essays. But we often forget how important it is and focus on the little things we believe will impact our ability to make money.
It is very hard to lose money investing if you can recognise how, where, why, and when fiat liquidity is being created. Unless you are Su Zhu or Kyle Davies. If financial assets are priced in USD and off US Treasuries (UST), then it stands to reason that the quantity of currency and dollar debt globally are the most critical variables.
Instead of focusing on the US Federal Reserve (Fed), we must focus on the US Treasury Department. This is how we will determine the specifics of Pax Americana's addition and subtraction of fiat liquidity.
Once the US debt ceiling charade is over, liquidity will gush from the Treasury and possibly the Fed to get markets back on track. Then, the bull market will begin for realz. $1 million Bitcoin is still my base case."
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/water-water-every-where
6. Incredibly valuable discussion on vertical SaaS businesses. And good differences between USA market and other international markets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfZEotCiK8g
7. This is a master conversation with a dual threat top tier operator and investor. Elad Gil.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX19cmIIkkM&t=3s
8. "The funny thing about deterrence is that if you don’t do it properly, or worse balk at it, you create exactly the opposite conditions from what you wanted. You wind up encouraging bad actors, not only the one you targeted, but also bad actors worldwide who are deciding if the risk/reward ratio favors the bold, or signals caution."
https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/doing-just-less-then-the-minimum
9. "I’ve increasingly come to feel that the destruction of our attention – thanks, in large part, to the combination of smartphones and social media – is one of the biggest threats we face as a civilization, as it compromises our ability to make sustained progress on anything worthwhile. Most people are so immersed in it that they can’t see how bad it is; you can’t ask someone to think clearly when their core operating system is compromised."
https://nayafia.substack.com/p/protecting-our-attention
10. "Coast FIRE, which stands for “Coast Financial Independence, Retire Early,” is an innovative approach to retirement that is somewhere between traditional retirement strategies and more extreme FIRE methods. The idea is to front-load your retirement savings early in your career and then allow those investments to grow without needing additional contributions.
This concept is very similar to a post I wrote back in 2021 called Go Big, Then Stop. That post emphasized the importance of saving and investing early, but it more or less describes the core tenet of Coast FIRE.
The purpose of Coast FIRE is to save aggressively in your early working years until your portfolio reaches a point where its expected growth would meet your future retirement needs. This is called hitting your Coast FIRE number. Once you hit this number, you can then reduce or even eliminate how much you save each month. At this point, the only thing you need to worry about is covering your current expenses.
With Coast FIRE, you don’t get to leave the workforce, but you do get the freedom to:
Shift to part-time work
Pursue a lower-paying, but more fulfilling, career
Take extended breaks from work
Coast FIRE is not about completely stopping work at a young age, but, rather, achieving a level of financial security that allows for more flexibility and less stress before traditional retirement. This approach appeals to those who want more financial freedom and work-life balance without the sometimes extreme measures associated with other FIRE strategies."
https://ofdollarsanddata.com/coast-fire/
11. 50 Years is one of the best Deeptech VCs around. Love Seth & Ela are the best. "Tech is having its Bio moment!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsIxOXsX30A
12. Frightening new wave of cartels, the ultra violent CJNG seems to be first of new scary groups emerging.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F10DOXk5MOU
13. "This is very concerning, but not for the reason the BCI purports. It is incorrect to blindly equate higher margins with higher taxpayer costs. To spell it out: Companies could be selling products at high margins but lower overall cost. In fact, this is what you would expect from innovative commercial companies amortizing self-funded research and development across a large number of customers.
The best-known example is, of course, SpaceX. The company lowered launch costs and humiliated the United Launch Alliance’s technology and business model in the process. Who cares if SpaceX’s margins are higher? Perhaps the US government, but certainly not China or Russia. Those countries just see that the United States is home to the firm that launched 87 percent of all tonnage to orbit in Q1 2024.
The US government chooses to obsess about profit margins—rather than value delivered—at its own peril. This mindset is the best way to ensure repeated FASA violations, but more importantly, it will doom the United States to failure in the next war it fights."
https://behindthefront.substack.com/p/the-law-the-department-of-defense
14. This is a masterclass in building and running a Holding company. Must listen. There are so many great insights on how to build and operate one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IDoyuMIhFI
15. "But if he is perhaps the wildest misfit tech diva of his generation, with a torrid ambition and engineering prowess rivaled only by Elon Musk, Luckey is also, in a way Musk is not and cannot be, the product of something more familiar—the heir to a 100-year revolution in American society that made Southern California the techno-theological citadel of the Cold War, and a one-man bridge between the smoldering American past and an unknown future that may be arriving soon.
Which is why the magnetic poetry version of the life of Luckey that does the story justice goes more like this:
Before the recent preference cascade enabling high-profile tech moguls to violate the taboo against supporting Donald Trump, there was first the lonely figure of Palmer Luckey, the homeschooled, Jules Verne-obsessed, amateur scientist with no money, whose faith in the power of technology was so strong that he worked jobs sweeping ship yards, scrubbing decks, fixing engines, repairing phones, and training to sing as a gondolier for tourists, all in order to spend his nights in a gutted 19-foot camper trailer trying to manufacture dream worlds out of breadboards and lens equipment and accelerometers and magnetometers and a soldering iron—which he did, bringing virtual reality to the masses, burning a hole in his retina with a laser, and losing it all to Zuckerberg over a meme, only to reemerge from his defrocking by Big Tech as a vengeance-seeking icon of counterelite Americana, the aspiring rebuilder of the arsenal of democracy, the black mullet-, chin beard-, Hawaiian shirt-, cargo short-, sandal-clad possible savior of America.
In Luckey’s phrase, the mission of Anduril is to serve as the Western world’s gun store, turning America and its allies into “prickly porcupines so that no one wants to step on them.” Just imagine the political dividend of such an outcome, he told me. “What if instead of a $60 billion aid package [for Ukraine], it was a $1 billion aid package, and it was 10 times as effective? Just imagine that that were possible. If you’re building the right mass-produced, AI robot-produced, very, very cheap loitering munitions that are always able to do the job at a hundredth or a thousandth of the price of an existing system, at some point the justification [for withholding aid] goes away.”
https://www.tabletmag.com/feature/american-vulcan-palmer-luckey-anduril
16. Japan waking up to the growing threat of China and North Korea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxlodxeWZ58
17. "At the application layer, economies of scale aren’t a viable mechanism for defensibility either — because computational costs are an order of magnitude lower compared to the model layer. Your ability to pay for an OpenAI’s API or compute for your app isn’t a sustainable advantage over a future competitor. Some applications like Character.ai have attempted to avoid this problem by vertically integrating, i.e. building their own customized models. Here again, the efficacy of economies of scale is questionable for the same reasons I mentioned earlier.
This leaves network effects and switching costs as the only realistic modes of defensibility for most applications.
So how do you create real, meaningful network effects with an AI application? Based on what we’ve talked about so far, the app needs to have an AI-enabled multiplayer interaction which involves a lot more than AI-generated output created by another user. These applications use AI to enable a (higher friction) multiplayer interaction that was previously impossible."
https://medium.com/breadcrumb/ai-2-0-introducing-network-effects-to-the-ai-era-bef6c5fec3c4
18. Quite a good state of Crypto in 2024. Worth watching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhAyuAeQ2Vg
19. A fascinating jaunt about what's happening in Eastern Europe and their future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOcQGAYMdbs
20. Excellent discussion this week. Not Investment Advice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kERv6UNgF6g
21. "Innovation also leads to the last trend, autonomy. Today, FPV drone use is limited by the supply of skilled pilots and by the effects of jamming, which can sever the connection between a drone and its operator. To overcome these problems, Russia and Ukraine are experimenting with autonomous navigation and target recognition. Artificial intelligence has been available in consumer drones for years and is improving rapidly.
A degree of autonomy has existed on high-end munitions for years and on cruise missiles for decades. The novelty is that cheap microchips and software will turn the low-end munitions that are saturating the battlefield, into smart weapons. The side that can push autonomy to the edge – that is enabling each of these weapons to close the kill chain independently – will consistently out-tempo the other. Ukraine is the laboratory for this deadly competition."
https://amilburn.substack.com/p/drone-warfare-article-and-podcast
22. "I’m mostly concerned that we’ll face a similar fate that is plaguing the Japanese population as it continues to decline. We need to prime the top of funnel with more startups, which you’ll see below is still going down, and as of now unless we do something, wont increase significantly without intervention. We already have a Series A crunch which I believe will last another year or so but then after that the funnel will dry up if nothing changes and later stage growth etc will have less to choose from. Eventually in 7-10yrs we’ll see a major lull in IPOs and M&A because of the lack of investments now.
Emerging managers are the cornerstone of early stage innovation, taking huge risk on relatively unproven ideas and founders. Despite their potential for higher returns, these managers are currently struggling to secure sufficient capital due to LPs’ preference for larger, more established and “safer” funds. As I wrote in a previous newsletter, no one ever got fired for investing in a well established and brand named firm."
23. "So the more you think about it, it was the First, not the Second, World War that is at the origin of most of the world’s problems today. By destroying high-level supranational and multi-ethnic structures overnight, it created massive problems. By selecting “self-determination” as the solution, without really thinking through what it meant, it ensured that those problems would be insoluble without brute force, and perhaps not even then.
In fact, if you consider where crises and political instability have arisen in the last thirty years, from the Balkans through the Levant to Libya, Algeria and Tunisia, these are all territories of Arab/Ottoman conquest: even Yemen was added to the Empire in 1517.
This is not because the Empire of the Ottomans was especially bad—though there is a tendency to romanticise it— but because of its organisation of the population into religious groups, and the speed and nature of its collapse and the vacuum left behind. In a very real sense, we are still dealing with the consequences of the fall of three Empires in 1918."
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/people-states-and-borders
24. "Tension tells us that we need to change. I had to stop in my tracks and acknowledge that certain forces in my life had corralled me into a career which was not ‘me.’
Facing tension, and avoiding a quick fix, what can we move towards? The remedy will be particular to the root of the problem. Recurrent desires or thoughts, of work that energises you, are signs of your true interests and passions. Whenever I took holidays from work, the same old ideas and curiosities tended to arise, and I would begin to think about them, enjoying an energetic shift which would dissipate as soon as I returned to the work environment which was stultifying me.
In my work and personal life, the pattern was similar. There was no point in running away from something unless I had something to replace it. In some cases, the right thing to do was not to leave, but to work through the issues, which can require confronting deep tension."
https://newsletter.pathlesspath.com/p/living-in-tension-guest-post
25. "As the world shifts to more digital competition, one of the most powerful long-term advantages is addiction. For businesses, this means that services that can grab and hold consumers’ attention for longer will be rewarded. For consumers, it means that we will have to be ruthless in our relationship with technology. Business best practices are not equivalent to consumer best interests. Whether professionally or personally, each of us will need to understand and reconcile ourselves to this phenomenon. In the years to come, whoever responds best will be rewarded."
https://every.to/napkin-math/the-addiction-economy-7590d4c0-19c6-4eab-9653-e7a961b6aeb9
26. Building a business around C-Suite communities. I know Greg from back in the day, awesome to see him building something so needed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyadaohMXDw
27. "If you’re still unconvinced, let me remind you that everything online is fake.
Social feeds are a window to that impossibly desirable living style, exempt from worldly affairs and oblivious to the daily news: wanderlust nomads that live by not living anywhere; chefs cooking succulent meals in the middle of nowhere; and beautiful couples sharing landscapes as enchanting as from God’s dreams.
The trick is that those people spent just as much time, if not more, setting up the camera, preparing the lighting, the angles, the spot, the calculated movements, and taking a gazillion of footage to show us. They need to document everything. They need to be terminally online. They need to design and manufacture their lives for social media likes and engagement.
Ideas flourish in the unplugged places but spread through the wired currents of the internet.
It gotta be both."
https://www.thealgorithmicbridge.com/p/no-place-left-unplugged
28. Good state of pre-seed. It's still active but with fewer rounds & ones taking longer from what I see.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpOHeTWCDMM
29. “Things are turning into positional war there,” he said, meaning static lines of contact on a battlefield defined by artillery fire, similar to what obtains in Donbas. “I believe Ukraine can hold the line there for quite a long time unless Russia dedicates very serious resources to kicking us out.” One person who agrees is Russian parliamentarian Andrey Gurulev, a retired lieutenant general, who said on state-run Russian television: “We must look at this situation with sobriety. We won’t be able to push them out quickly.”
Ed Bogan, a former senior CIA operations officer who follows Ukraine closely, told New Lines that the campaign has already delivered a “heavy psychological blow to the enemy, as it clearly exposes several of Russia’s many military and political deficiencies and challenges our policy assumptions. Now would be a good time to lift the remaining restrictions and let Ukraine move towards finishing this thing on their terms.”
https://newlinesmag.com/spotlight/how-ukraine-caught-putins-forces-off-guard-in-kursk-and-why/
30. An Incredible vision of the future. And a call to action for all of us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Xi8Krhy8FQ
31. "That said, we often discuss that the brush stroke of “venture capital” is far too limited. Our mandate isn’t exclusively to invest in SaaS startups (though that’s certainly part of what we do); it’s to invest in companies that we feel can provide an incredibly compelling return for our LPs. At Equal, not a single one of our last 3 investments sells software. In each case, we diagnosed the value chain of that particular industry and determined that the most transformative impact (and highest value-creating potential) was in developing a service that utilizes technology to disrupt and/or augment the existing stakeholders in the industry.
When we look at an investment opportunity, we don’t just look at top-line revenue and ascribe revenue multiples. Rather, we diagnose the economic benchmarks of that industry segment to determine 1) is there an opportunity for an economic moat, 2) how that company may be valued at scale, and 3) whether the corresponding return to our fund would be sufficient to justify the investment."
https://medium.com/@EqualVentures/acrisure-2-0-insurance-agency-gbo-4935ae632d7d
32. This was a fun interview with two smart VCs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKsfsWo0qF8
33. Incredible episode if you want to know what’s up in the tech world. IRL versus remote work, body futurism and what the young kids are into.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8w1iB-pmYk&t=3064s
34. "The question to ask is why Zelensky did not order his troops into this direction earlier as it serves multiple and useful goals for him. First, opening a new arena of hostilities will likely force Russian troops to vacate positions it has in occupied Ukraine and move to the homefront and thereby opening up offensive opportunities for the Ukrainians. Secondly, captured territory can provide a bargaining chip for Ukraine if peace negotiations are to take place.
But the overarching rationale is that this is an incredibly humiliating swipe at Putin and therein also lies a significant risk: it may provoke Russia to ramp up the war and engage in similar and more lethal moves deeper into Ukraine which will escalate the war further. It is not a stretch to argue that Ukraine’s war cabinet’s bold move is therefore a huge gamble."
https://pieterdorsman.substack.com/p/potential-game-changer
35. This is an ambitious initiative. A brand new school. Very interesting.
https://balajis.com/p/network-school
36. "For Ukraine itself, preserving its own personnel is vital, so the more it can degrade Russian forces with indirect fire, the better. The priorities for support include artillery ammunition, strike drones, and systems for knocking down Russian reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicles that allow its forces to attack Ukrainian units while they are being resupplied.
Ukraine’s wider military position remains precarious, and the autumn looks to be politically challenging. Kyiv must strike a balance, preparing for the loss of critical supplies without burning its ability to fight on. For Europe, it is vital that Kyiv, if forced to negotiate, is given as strong a hand as possible, and that there is a concrete plan to ensure that any settlement produces a lasting peace."
37. "The significance of this moment may lie less with events in Kursk than with the change in strategy they reveal. Ukraine may be adopting some elements of guerrilla warfare, looking for weak points anywhere within the Russian forces and taking greater advantage of the element of surprise. The goal would be less to bring about a spectacular victory of the kind Ukraine still dreamed about a year ago than to weaken Russia to the point where it has no alternative but to withdraw.
Ukraine and its partners now hope to keep Russia under increasing pressure – I expect a succession of attacks – and wait for the Kremlin to conclude that the war cannot be won. The terms for a peace negotiation remain uncertain, but Ukraine is convinced that reaching a deal depends on blocking any path to a Russian victory. Kursk is the opening salvo of a psychological war on Russia."
https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/ukraine/2024/08/zelenskys-gambit-invasion-russia
Oil and Water: Painful Lessons of “BlackBerry the Movie”
It was September 2023 when I finally watched the “Blackberry” movie on a long flight home. I’m an old tech business guy who actually used Blackberry. I recall how I felt when I was first given a Blackberry phone as an executive at Yahoo!
It’s stupid looking back but at the time I felt I had made it both within the organization but in the industry. It was that much of a status symbol during the mid-2000s. It was ubiquitous in executive suites throughout the Fortune 500. It was so addictive to use that we called it the “Crackberry.” This addictiveness is something I can personally attest to. It had 30% market share in North America and 50% market share globally in 2007.
Then the IPhone from Apple came out in 2007. Boy, did Research in Motion (RIM) the master company of Blackberry really mess it up despite their overwhelming lead in the market. Another long story of incumbents getting their butts kicked because of arrogance, complacency and cutting corners.
Anyways, back to the movie, it’s the story about two techies who bring on board a hard-nosed business guy Jim Balsillie to help take RIM to the next level. It’s a dramatized version of their rise from the crappy small town of Waterloo in Canada to global domination but it’s good fun.
I should say Jim Balsillie is a completely vicious a-shole with major anger management issues albeit he is damn effective. And Mike Lazaridis and Doug Fregin are naive, frigging doofuses but brilliant technical geniuses. Such a good business drama movie, watching a freewheeling tech driven startup turn into a soulless big corporation. A “pride before the fall” story.
Jim the business man, when asking them for some random phone prototype, says: “Perfect is the enemy of good.” But Mike the techie responds: “Good enough is the enemy of humanity.”
This exchange encapsulates the eternal story of culture clash in business. Suits versus creatives. Geeks (tech) versus jocks (business). Founders versus professional managers aka “Adult supervision.”
This is just so very common in startup land. Sometimes it works out. But this culture clash is the main reason so many growth stage companies spin out of control. They bring in the wrong stage of executive and leadership. It’s like when a B2B startup hires a bunch of executives from Oracle or Salesforce. It never works out most of the time.
They are just too bureaucratic, too used to having a ton of resources and unwilling to get their hands dirty. They are also extremely skilled politicians, who are great at managing up but don’t do any real work. Or great at taking credit for others' work or removing rival executives altogether. They draw the wrong lessons from their previous experiences and act without understanding the new context.
This happened at Yahoo! when I was there with a wave of horrific executives from IBM for example. Or at Zynga with a wave of Electronic Arts managers. These people calcified the culture and I can point to these companies' decline at the point of time when these specific executives joined.
Most recently & prominently in 2023, it was the clean sweep of ex-Amazon executives from Flexport when the founder returned after seeing the bloat that happened with his replacement CEO. You want to hire someone who can help you grow through the next few stages but not too far ahead.
There is a big difference between inheritors and founders and builders. Too many times founders get entranced or deceived by the credentials, or the prestige of the brand or the impressive presenting and interviewing skills of these executives. But they soon find out these people have no clue. They inherited a working system and have no idea how to build it.
If you use my quick framework of the 3 stages of companies it’s very clear. These stages are the Commando, Infantryman and Policeman phases. Don’t hire a policeman when you need an infantryman. Make sure these folks have done the job of scaling that specific stage or at least have the humility & mindset of learning.
Plus a willingness to get their hands dirty in doing basic things needed in running the day to day business. If they refuse to help out on customer service calls, booking their own travel on occasion or even stacking chairs or cleaning up after an all hands meeting, they may not be a good fit for your startup. Especially if they see these things as beneath them.
Get rid of them fast as they will ruin your culture with arrogance and entitlement. Something we’ve seen that was endemic in startup land these last 6-7 years that thankfully is disappearing fast since mid-2022. But take the lesson here that others are now learning the hard way.
You Are the Company You Keep: Academy Companies, Alumni and Your Career Velocity
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned over the last 24 years in Silicon Valley is the importance of the people and place. But to put it together even more crisply, “you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.” It’s something I’ve written about or stated often because it’s that important.
This could be your school, this could be your city or even a mastermind group. But the more frequent occurrence is what company you work or worked at. This is where you spend a disproportionate amount of your day and time.
This is why starting your career at an amazing company is critical to your success and trajectory. A place full of brilliant, ambitious, entrepreneurial and talented individuals. Places known for all the spin outs and even greater success after.
In the past and traditional industries it used to be Goldman Sachs or McKinsey. In Silicon Valley, the most famous was Fairchild Semiconductors and the notorious PayPal Mafia. For a period of time in ecommerce during the early 2000s it was EBay. In Media, from 2002-2007, Yahoo! was the hothouse. I was so damn lucky to be there. It elevated my knowledge and gave me an understanding of what smart truly was. Some big pools of talent these days I’ve noticed, would be Coinbase in crypto and Stripe in general.
As a VC, I was also lucky to end up at 500 Startups and work there for the time I did. It was something of a clown show and looked down upon in Silicon Valley, despite Dave being ex-PayPal.
But it was pointed out to me, that unlike many other VC funds, there have been a tremendous amount of new and successful VC fund managers that have come out of it over the last 4-5 years.
The list is surprisingly long:
Sheel & Jake @Better Tomorrow Ventures (Fintech); Edith @Race Capital; Elizabeth & Eric @Hustle Fund; James & Yohei @Coral Capital in Japan; Pat, Mike, Chris @ Panache Ventures in Canada, Binh & Eddie @ Ascend Capital in Vietnam, Monique Woodward @ Cake Ventures ,Asher @ Sukna Ventures in MENA, Pankaj Jain of Saka Ventures in India, Sherif who runs the Dubai Futures Fund, or Neha @ 2048 VC, Tanya @ Southpaw Ventures & Andrea @ Mahway Ventures among others.
And I’d include myself in this illustrious group with Diaspora Ventures and my Personal Holding Company, Sukna Holdings.
This list of spin out VC managers, using a key metric of the industry, has a combined AUM (Assets Under Management) far larger than 500 Startups now 500 Global. (Although I should note that the most important metric for most VC funds is cash on cash returns, so still early days here).
This is a testament to the critical mass of talent that existed at 500 Startups before. Something we haven’t really seen at other places like YC, Techstars or other of the big VC Funds. And the point I am making again is that when it comes to picking a place and job to work at, focus on learning over earning.
And the way to do this is? Go to where the smartest but most overlooked people are. If you surround yourself with super smart people, it inevitably raises your IQ and acumen. The reverse effect will happen if you go to the wrong company. So do your homework and be super thoughtful and picky on where you work early in your career. You have no idea how much it matters and how much momentum this will give you in life.
Les Miserable: Do You Hear the People Sing? Singing The Song of Angry Men (and Women)
Les Miserable is a classic broadway show (not the Hollywood movie which sucked in my opinion). Loved the show when I saw it in London almost a decade and half ago. Although it was kind of depressing yet inspiring at the same time. The music and characters are amazing. But the song that stuck in my head was “Do You Hear The People Sing?” sung by the young Idealists & Revolutionaries during their ill fated uprising. The 1832 Paris Uprising for History buffs.
The video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q82twrdr0U
But don’t just watch it, do read the actual lyrics below.
Do you hear the people sing?
Singing the songs of angry men?
It is the music of the people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!
Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?
Then join in the fight
That will give you the right to be free!
Do you hear the people sing?
Singing the songs of angry men?
It is the music of the people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!
Will you give all you can give
So that our banner may advance
Some will fall and some will live
Will you stand up and take your chance?
The blood of the martyrs
Will water the meadows of France!
Do you hear the people sing?
Singing the songs of angry men?
It is the music of the people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes
It’s so powerful. So majestic and highlights what all of us want. Opportunity, a better and more prosperous future. Freedom.
I sang this song with my kid all the time during my 2 year sabbatical after I left Yahoo! because it epitomized my search for a new beginning and freedom from working for “the Man.”
It led to me joining 500 Startups and becoming a venture capitalist which opened up an exciting new world to me. But I still wasn’t free then. It took getting booted out (nicely I might add) and the financial and mental hell of the 2020 pandemic to wake me up to that fact.
I have so many friends and ex-colleagues stuck in the matrix. Working at companies or jobs they hate. There is a reason people call a JOB=Just Over Broke. Dealing with financial challenges or bad relationships or living in bad situations. Desperate. You feel helpless and it’s soul destroying. I know, I’ve been there.
Freedom is not free as Ukrainians have shown. Financial independence & wealth has to be earned. Anything worthwhile needs to be fought for. So whatever it is that you are trying to accomplish: be prepared for a lot of pain and a lot of work.
So for those who want to fix this and are embarking on your personal journey of discovery and business but are scared: get angry! Get angry at your situation, get angry at your own fear, weakness and laziness. It might just be enough to get you moving & doing something.
So keep the below words from the song in mind:
“Is there a world you long to see? Then join in the fight. That will give you the right to be free!
And most importantly take action! This way you might realize your own new bright future.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads September 8th, 2024
“Opportunity does not knock, it presents itself when you beat down the door.”--Kyle Chandler
"The first study in self-improvement, therefore, is understanding our own psychology: how we think, learn, form habits and break bad ones; our unique strengths and weaknesses that enable us to succeed in some situations and not others.
Only if we can close that gap do we have any hope of closing the others."
https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2024/08/06/the-three-gaps/
2. Older article but important space in this scary new world. Asia's defense industry.
https://www.asiancenturystocks.com/p/mapping-asias-defense-industry
3. Some pretty glaring issues on what the CCP has been doing to us. The China threat, they are masters of the hybrid war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7_7wmAyy4g&t=22s
4. "I fear that Taiwan has a bad case of “main character syndrome” — see in the world as a narrative of good vs evil where good will ultimately triumph in the end. Instead it should give at least equal weight to the world as a chessboard and learn to count the pieces on either side.
When you are vulnerable and live in a bad neighborhood, stupidity is a sin. Taiwan is sinning even as it bathes itself in imaginary glory. Getting together with you buddies to talk about how awful your opponent is isn’t diplomacy, it’s brunch. Diplomacy I define as sitting down with entities you don’t necessarily like to maximize the benefits to your interests."
https://taipology.substack.com/p/on-the-real-vs-imaginary-defense
5. "But if China could climb up the value chain, then so can Vietnam, Indonesia, Morocco, and Egypt. Over time, the companies in these countries that do assembly for China will learn enough of the tricks of the trade that they’re able to make more and more of the harder, more valuable stuff.
The U.S. and other tariff countries can help accelerate that process. By putting tariffs on Chinese components, but not on Chinese brands, they can incentivize Chinese companies to move more of their high-value work to poorer countries in Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. Companies like BYD will then be able to circumvent tariffs, but only if they transfer their technology to developing countries.
In other words, tariffs by the U.S., Europe, and others might help usher in the next phase of globalization. They’re a costly inefficient policy that sometimes backfires, but that might be an acceptable price to pay for smashing the unsustainable, toxic pattern of China-centric globalization that prevailed in the 2000s and 2010s."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/how-tariffs-on-china-could-help-the
6. This was a spectacular interview. Zuck has really come into his own on the image front.
He was always brilliant but now just on the front edge of cool (and lot less robotic).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02fBBoZa9l4
7. "Humans are built to seek connection, but we often forget that our body language and tone convey more than the things we say. The next time you interact with someone, reflect on what you’re communicating without words. Are your shoulders slouched? Are you turned toward them? Are you making eye contact? Do you nod along to what they’re saying? Are your arms crossed? Do you keep checking your phone? We perform so many of these small gestures every day, without even thinking, and each one sends a message.
What message are you sending?"
https://debliu.substack.com/p/the-hidden-message-youre-communicating
8. "Stripped to core components, an investor is a machine in which information goes in one end and capital allocation decisions come out the other. Venture capitalists who do not take care of their inputs place themselves at a disadvantage when it comes to their outputs.
The best investors focus on feeding themselves a regular diet of differentiated, high-quality information. Books and other sources of thoughtfully crafted writing are essential. Podcasts, YouTube, and social media posts can all hold valuable information. But there is a reason, beyond age alone, that so many of the world’s best thinkers are bibliophiles.
Listen to Reid Hoffman, Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, Peter Thiel, Vinod Khosla, Josh Wolfe, Michael Moritz, or Marc Andreessen speak, and you will hear someone extraordinarily well-read, with wide-ranging tastes spanning fiction, philosophy, economics, history, anthropology, media theory, linguistics, mathematics, zoology, and beyond."
https://thegeneralist.substack.com/p/how-to-spot-a-supertrend
9. Mike is the best. There are so many deep insights on the art of venture investing and building world changing startups. This is worth watching twice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV313WfYNdg
10. "Defense tech upstart Anduril Industries raised $1.5 billion in new venture capital funding at a $14 billion valuation, with some proceeds to be used for building autonomous weapon manufacturing facilities."
https://www.axios.com/2024/08/08/anduril-14-billion-autonomous-weapons
11. One of the best shows on the tech business and Silicon Valley. Latest episode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LYZCoDysLs
12. “If the U.S. Army found itself at war, American manufacturers would struggle to produce the large number of high-quality small drones that the service would likely need—unless the Pentagon increases its support for drone producers, and soon.
When you look at Ukraine, now, they are building insane capacities to build drones,” he said. After the Russian-Ukraine war ends, “there will be a production capacity that will in return address the European and maybe even North American market,” he said."
13. "The trend is still the same from 3 years ago. The Upper Middle class is being pushed into the middle class. This means the true “Upper Middle Class”, is going to become small business owners. The only difference between upper middle and upper class will be the successes at scaling, inheritance and some odd ball incredible investors.
Considering that the vast majority of Wealth Management clients are all small business owners, the answer is in front of you (statistically).
Fade at Your Own Risk: You have all the numbers in front of you. We don’t sell dreams of “guaranteed riches”. We only provide the highest *probability* way to make it big. That’s the best you can do: play the odds.
Besides, even if you mess up, Thailand and Poland are always there."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/upper-middle-class-collapse-optimizing
14. "In a global economy, every point of connection is an axis of attack. Hybrid warfare is a conflict cocktail that blends conventional military operations, cyber, disinformation, guerilla tactics, lawfare, diplomacy, regime change, and economic warfare. Vladimir Putin is a seventh-level hybrid warfare wizard. He has covertly poured state resources into high- and low-tech means to pit Americans and Europeans against each other. Just as Big Tech realized the greatest ROI was misinformation from likable executives — “We’re proud of the progress we’ve made” — propaganda continues to be how nations punch above their kinetic weight class.
Investments affecting national security, energy, and infrastructure also face scrutiny. It’s a dumb idea to give your adversaries the ability to control your weapons systems, turn off the power grid, or close your ports. And it’s plain stupid to let them implant a neural jack into the wet matter of our youth. (See above: TikTok.)
American universities, however, are undefended — they are open for business.
In 2019 fewer than 3% of 3,700 higher education institutions complied with a law requiring them to report foreign gifts or contracts exceeding $250,000. The following year an Education Department report concluded, “U.S. institutions are technological treasure troves where leading and internationally competitive fields, such as nanoscience, are booming.
For too long, these institutions have provided an unprecedented level of access to foreign governments and their instrumentalities in an environment lacking transparency and oversight.” A subsequent crackdown has called into question foreign money at Harvard, Yale, MIT, and other schools."
https://www.profgalloway.com/weapons-of-war-higher-ed/
15. "The drone operates on an electronic battlefield. To defend against a reconnaissance drone, the adversary must jam the radio frequency connecting the aircraft to its ground station controller, so it can no longer receive manual commands, or jam the frequency connecting the drone to GPS satellites, so it can no longer navigate. Introducing AI to the drone allows it to use computer vision to navigate like a human would by looking at a map, without the need for any satellites, and make decisions about where to fly without constant input from a human operator. “You cannot jam such a drone, because there is nothing to jam,” one Ukrainian drone pilot from the 92nd Brigade told Reuters in March.
Electronic warfare and counter-drone systems are rapidly growing more sophisticated. To achieve decisive superiority on the battlefield of the future, drones will need to be capable of operating, processing data, and making decisions independently of a human operator. Against a technologically capable adversary such as the U.S. might face in China, new capabilities such as recognizing objects and obstacles and autonomous action will very quickly become necessary. The next generation of unmanned aerial systems will not be achieved with attritable systems alone. The winner of the next great power conflict will be the one that invests in intelligence at the edge.
History can take the same lesson from the successes of Ryan Aeronautical in Vietnam, of Abraham Karem in his garage, and of the grassroots drone industry in Ukraine. Key breakthroughs in unmanned systems are made when startups are able to receive tight feedback from performance on the battlefield, rapidly iterating in conjunction with the warfighter. As the Department of Defense seeks to reshore America’s drone fleet, it should prioritize the startup companies that create war-winning innovations."
https://www.palladiummag.com/2024/08/09/the-past-and-future-of-military-drones/
16. Adopters and non-adopters. The Future of Work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps2asYuD5js
17. "There's a whole nerdy ocean of debate about Marvel vs. DC, and how they each built their respective cinematic universes. I've contributed plenty to that conversation in my life. But I'm willing to concede that even Marvel, despite a glorious run of a golden age from 2008 to 2019, fell victim to the same fallacy as DC after Endgame. The pursuit of big came at the sacrifice of good.
In the venture world I often see the same danger. People willing to sacrifice good in pursuit of the big.
Bigger funds, bigger brands, bigger teams, bigger swings, bigger outcomes, bigger capital requirements.
Does a bigger fund mean not as good of returns? Yes.
Does a bigger brand usually mean you're not as good for a specific industry or subset of founders? Probably.
Does a bigger team mean not all of them are as good of investors? Usually.
Often my sense is the people pursuing the big believe that it is mutually exclusive with the good. They're satisfied with the "good enough." But I think that's wrong. I think thats as wrong in moviemaking as it is in company building.
You can build outcomes that are just as big while also focusing on what is good. Whether thats a good movie, in terms of quality, or a good business in terms of profitability, externalities, and overall outcomes."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/the-hits-business
18. Good discussion on the present geopolitics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x7bXllrB-s
19. Lyn Alden is one of the best global macro observers in the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8JzsnZVylY
20. This is an enlightening conversation on tax laws for self employed entrepreneurs. America is set up specifically for entrepreneurs and businesses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qjx70-vqZmQ
21. "Basically, I think the end of the pandemic and the rise in interest rates were triggers for investors to wake up and realize something they should have realized a while back: the internet is a mature industry now.
But because internet companies aren’t very capital-intensive, they don’t require huge fixed costs to set up — all you need to do these days is to hire a few software engineers and pay some cloud computing bills. Even back in the day when startups had to own their own computing hardware, it wasn’t that expensive. Together with network effects, low startup costs meant that software investors could take a huge number of bets, many of which offered the chance of gigantic returns.
The new industries that the tech sector is interested in mostly don’t offer both of these features at once.
Deeptech is obviously incredibly useful — the world needs newfangled semiconductors, spiffy drones, better batteries, new cancer drugs, and so on. In many ways this is a return to form for the VC industry — before software took over, in the 1970s and early 1980s, VC was mostly about funding hardware companies. The high fixed costs of hardware are a source of increasing returns, and therefore a source of market power, which means hardware startups offer the possibility of big rewards.
The problem is that hardware, unlike software, has incredibly big startup costs. To scale up a manufacturing company, you have to build big factories, like Anduril is doing now with its “Arsenal” factory. Biotech companies have to pay the huge fixed costs of drug research, testing, and approval. This makes hardware a tougher investment in three ways.
First, it means fewer investors can participate in the market past the seed round — you just need to have a lot of cash to pay a meaningful percentage of those fixed costs. Second, it tends to put a cap on the rate of return — there are some extremely valuable hardware companies out there, like Tesla, but they generally require more investment capital than a Facebook or an Amazon. Third, and perhaps most importantly, it stops investors from diversifying, which increases risk. If you have enough money to invest in 100 software startups, but only 10 hardware startups, it means you have a better chance of catching the next Facebook than the next Tesla.
Deeptech is still great, and it’s what VCs used to do more of, but it’s going to be tougher going than internet software. One thing investors will try to do to mitigate these problems is to put their money in deeptech companies that only do design, not actual manufacturing — think of Apple and Nvidia here. But given U.S.-China decoupling and the inherent difficulty of retaining an edge in design without controlling the factories as well, there might not be so many design-only deeptech companies out there."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/some-thoughts-on-the-future-of-the
22. "The rotor-toting robots of the hand-held, camera-sporting, persuasion that play such a big role on the battlefields of Ukraine owe much to consumer electronics. Indeed, if I am not too badly mistaken, the companies that make drones get most of their components from the same companies that supply the manufacturers of computers, smart phones, and video game consoles. Likewise, I suspect that the people who make remotely piloted planes of the smaller sort, whether design engineers or assembly-line workers, learned their respective trades making iPads, iPhones, and other items of that ilk.
To put things another way, the relationship between drones and consumer electronics echoes the connection that once tied field artillery matériel to civilian steel industries."
https://tacticalnotebook.substack.com/p/who-will-make-the-drones
23. Great list of off the beaten track places in Europe.
https://sharpmagazine.com/2024/07/08/meaningful-travel-guide-klm-cyprus-estonia-austria/
24. "Therapy is not linear. Each stage is fluid and overlaps, like tides sloshing in a rock pool. But what finally broke me free of this push and pull between denial and intellectualization was simply time—time and repetition. The boring truth about therapy is that rather than a stream of profound epiphanies, it is mostly a case of revisiting the same analysis—rising from the same undesirable thoughts and patterns of behavior—over and over again. But each time, the truth of it penetrates a fraction deeper and starts to catalyze changes in how you react to things and feel about them.
For Balick, this is the power and beauty of being in it for the long haul. “Though you keep coming back to a lot of those same repetitions, you get to them quicker, you move through them faster and you take greater risks,” he says. “Your therapist knows you and what your limits are. If it's good, trust continues to grow, deeper things continue to be said. And it's a real exploration—for the therapist, too.”
People often dismiss therapy as self-indulgent, and this is somewhat true in the beginning. You go because there’s something you have to change, something making you miserable or anxious. Many people feel the immediate relief of catharsis—I’ve said it out loud! Finally!—and stop. Sticking with it over the long term, I’ve come to understand I’m not just there to invest in myself but other people, how I interact with the world. It's a space to practise saying things that used to terrify me in real life—“I am angry with you”, “I feel insecure about this”—and learn the world does not fall in as a result. The long grind of therapy has enabled me to have conversations—with my parents, with strangers, with all sorts of people in between—that would have been unthinkable before.
“Long-term therapy has the capacity to deepen and improve all your relationships in life,” says Balick. “You can hold space. You can listen better. You can understand your own defensive reactions and be less reactive to them. That’s a very different thing from feeling less anxious about giving a presentation at work, which is a totally valid reason to seek a short-term therapy. It's just a different offer.”
https://www.gq.com/story/in-defense-of-the-long-painful-grind-of-therapy
25. "If you need any evidence of where this kind of control goes, you only need to examine human history. Whenever a government has carried out mass censorship or had complete control of narratives, it’s never ended well for the people.
Or, to simplify, the simple truth is this:
At any time in human history, whenever a government tried to censor or suppress the free speech of its people, they were not the good guys.
Whenever a government in the past has alleged they have a monopoly on the truth, they were not the good guys.
If your government is doing the same thing now—exactly like what’s happening in Australia, the UK, Europe, and beyond—I can promise you they are not the good guys."
https://anticitizen.com/p/not-good-guys
26. "Companies outsource manufacturing to China, but then realize that the Chinese copy their designs (and even improve upon them) and release their own competing products. Sooner or later, they will beat the OGs in innovation as well.
When you outsource, you give up some amount of control to a third party. If the function you outsource is unimportant, you’ll be fine.
If what you are outsourcing is THE thing that makes you great and powerful, or allows the third party to learn or outclass you at the thing that makes you great and powerful – you are making a huge mistake.
The day will come when they will learn how to do it better than you, and they will already know your business and your abilities and often even your customers. You will fall due to your own folly and mistake.
This is the lesson from the Athenian allies who became a subject people because they outsourced the fighting to Athens."
https://lifemathmoney.com/how-athens-conquered-its-allies/
27. Kevin is an OG of Silicon Valley. One of the top investors and operators here.
Solid interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvvHojJrr-A
28. Good state of the startup funding world. Things are turning around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wNAJMF4NYQ&t=24s
29. "I’ve honestly been grappling with where the key vectors of competition and competitive advantage are in an AI world. I’m not there yet but, I’m leaning towards the idea that AI will level the playing field for areas like operations and innovation. I keep coming back to the things AI can’t change, and I think, counterintuitively, those may be some of the best places to invest to make money off of AI.
The fixed capacity in the modern world is attention. It seems like commanding someone’s attention is the most valuable thing to have or be. That generally cements incumbent positions, except in cases of extreme novelty. Maybe the AI people are right, and attention is all you need."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/would-you-use-an-outside-ai-program
30. "Two of our major themes this year are “The CPG Commerce Ecosystem” and “The Transactability of Wholesale” (see 2024 Equal POV on Investing in Retail) because the pain points that CPGs, especially emerging brands, encounter are distinctly unique from other retail categories, given how heavily reliant they are on traditional offline channels.
Getting into, and succeeding, in retail is a whole other ballgame, particularly given how offline and antiquated wholesale processes remain. CPGs also have to manage a more challenging supply chain that’s regulated and / or perishable, all the while managing cash flow constraints when working with procurement and payment cycles of large retailers.
We view CPG as one of the most exciting and underserved segments in the retail segment today and will be sharing more of our thoughts on the category over the next few months."
https://medium.com/@EqualVentures/the-cpg-dilemma-and-opportunity-77a942976f89
31. "The source cautions against comparing the Kursk incursion to Ukraine’s successful swift recapture of much of Kharkiv province in late 2022. The Russian army is taking the war more seriously now, he says: “The danger is we’ll fall into a trap, and Russia will grind our teeth down.” On Sunday Russia’s defence ministry claimed, albeit not for the first time, that it had “thwarted” attempts by Ukrainian forces to break deeper into Russia.
The mathematics of war have never favoured Ukraine, which must husband its limited resources, and an assault deep inside undefended Russian territory risks making the situation worse. But the operation has already improved the one crucial intangible—morale—that has allowed Ukraine to cheat the odds for nearly three years now. Whether in government offices in Kyiv, or in front-line hospitals treating the wounded, the nation believes it has uncovered a vulnerability in Vladimir Putin’s armour.
Tired, dirty and exhausted, the soldiers say they regret no part of the risky operation that has already killed scores of their comrades: They would rejoin it in a heartbeat. “For the first time in a long time we have movement,” says Angol. “I felt like a tiger.”
32. This interview with Sahil Bloom is such a great roadmap on how to build a business as a creator.
Lots of great insights and learnings here for building a personal brand.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0yIT4GENRk
33. "Conventional wisdom would say that any window for Zuckerberg to come off as cool has closed now that he’s a 40-year-old father of three. So he’s decided that if people are going to laugh at him, he’s going to laugh right along with them. “I think as I’ve gotten older, I’ve just, like—all right, whatever. It doesn’t matter,” Zuckerberg says. “Just kind of try to be myself as much as I feel comfortable being.”
It’s the latest shift in Zuckerberg’s public persona, which he periodically reboots. He’s grown out his hair, started wearing a gold chain and oversize T-shirts, been spotted wearing a barbecue-themed hat with the motto “Smoke meat every day” and, earlier this year, participated in a “jacket swap” with Nvidia Corp. CEO Jensen Huang. On the Fourth of July, Zuckerberg posted a video of himself wakesurfing in a tuxedo while holding an American flag as Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. played in the background.
If Zuckerberg just did sales at a tech company instead of run one, this might seem like a standard midlife crisis. But his personal makeover corresponds with an attempt to do the same for a $1.3 trillion social media giant attempting to adapt to what he and other tech power brokers see as a fundamental shift in the industry. Advertising revenue from Meta’s social networks drives his business today, but Zuckerberg expects artificial intelligence to overhaul that formula soon."
https://archive.ph/lK89x#selection-1673.0-1693.479
34. "I have an idea for a new type of software company. It is radically different from anything that exists today, and if you read this article closely, you might be able to make millions of dollars.
The pitch goes like this:
Software is the greatest business man has ever invented. It is God’s gift to capitalists. The margins? High. The technical difficulty? Surprisingly low. If you follow the strategy proven by hundreds of startups, you can scale a software business to tens of millions of dollars of revenue in less than five years. It’s simple, cash-efficient, and has been the bedrock of tech’s might for decades.
The entire foundation of this mountain of moolah rests on three simple things:
A back end that has a table of data,
Logic that performs a set of actions based on that data, and
A front end that lets a user interact with the results of those actions.
The three together create a virtuous cycle: The user inputs new data or takes some action with the data on the front end, which gets sent to the back end, starting it all over again.
Annnnd that’s kinda it.
The multi-trillion-dollar world of software applications is all based on those three things. The technology is so simple that the majority of value over the last two decades has come not from sci-fi innovations in technology, but from innovations in how we distribute it. But I think that is about to change with a new model of design I call ambient software.
Ambient software, whoever controls the backend controls the AI. It works best when the startup has all of the data centralized in one location. This is challenging because most software incumbents have already realized the problems that AI represents and have started doing all they can to lock up data. Getting ambient software live with a customer would require a large migration process—and a number of cultural changes. Convincing employees to allow every phone call, keystroke, and conversation to be recorded will be challenging to say the least.
Most glaringly, models aren’t yet good enough to do this at scale. The big bet of ambient software is that you are hoping the models will improve. That is far from a sure thing! LLM progress has felt relatively slow compared to the gains that came in the year between the GPT-3 and GPT-4 release.
I actually find the model problem encouraging. The differentiation doesn’t come from model strength—something most startups can’t compete on because it’s expensive—but from implementation and understanding customer problems which is where startups excel. This means that there is an actual startup to be built!"
https://every.to/napkin-math/a-million-dollar-software-idea
35. "Packy McCormick’s job is to find, articulate, and invest in the next big idea. I spent an hour with him to understand how he’s baked AI into his process.
Packy writes Not Boring, a newsletter that analyzes technology and startups for 200,000 subscribers every week. He also invests through his fund, Not Boring Capital, which backs early-stage companies that combine sci-fi ideas with viable business models. And he’s an advisor at a16z crypto."
https://every.to/chain-of-thought/how-packy-mccormick-finds-his-next-big-idea
36. "Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian defense minister who now leads the Center for Defense Strategies, a Ukraine-based think tank, described five potential motivations for the new offensive: diverting Russian forces from other fronts, particularly near Kharkiv; discouraging further Russian cross-border attacks into Ukraine by showing that Russia’s own borders are unprotected; showing the rest of the world that, despite its size, the Russian army is weaker than it appears; testing out new military tactics; and taking the initiative away from the Russian side. The larger question is how far the Ukrainians want to expand their current offensive."
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/08/ukraine-russia-kursk-invasion/679420/
37. "The CIA’s veil of secrecy often submerges individuals’ stories, over time, into a compartmented void. But within some agency circles, this operative’s feats were the stuff of hushed renown. He was a “freaking legend,” says a former colleague. A “hero,” says another. “Exceptionally ballsy and committed,” says a third.
But some within the agency questioned the tangible intelligence value of this operative’s work, and the broader efficacy of the CIA’s post-9/11 push to seed more deep-cover officers abroad, including into terrorist circles. For two powerful kingdoms within the CIA, locked in the eternal governmental battle over resources and prestige, his case became emblematic of deep disagreements about the agency’s role in the War on Terror.
His story serves as a requiem for the CIA’s War on Terror, mirroring its successes as well as institutional and moral disfigurements. And his case speaks to fundamental questions about the viability of the CIA’s human-focused spying mission in the 21st century — quandaries that, if anything, have only become more acute in the years after his death.
“What he did — at the time, we thought it was amazing,” says a former CIA official. But “time and distance” have revised this person’s assessment. “Did he just give his life for nothing? All the risk and danger, so what? What really was accomplished? What was really done?” asks the former agency official."
Health is Wealth: Healthspan Over Lifespan
I’ve been spending as much more time as I can these last 2 years in Canada with my aging parents. It’s quite alarming and shocking watching people who were so critical and important in your childhood become, well, so much older and weaker. The contrast is startling. It’s even more startling in the differences between my father and mother.
My father exercises, bikes everywhere and keeps busy in the garden and running the household. I admit I was worried for him after his retirement that he would deteriorate as he has few friends or hobbies but thankfully it’s turned out fine. He has found purpose in managing the house and garden.
I worried less about my mother before, who is an extrovert with plenty of friends, hobbies (art, volunteering and pottery) and a deep love of reading. But in recent years she has just become more negative in her attitudes on almost everything, especially as her health has taken a bad turn.
All because of a bad diet, her laziness, stubbornness in not wanting anyone telling her what to do and her dislike for exercise. She can barely walk now and refuses to do any exercise or do physiotherapy to fix it. She does spend some time in the garden and doing her pottery, but I have noticed how often she sleeps during the day. Every day and for many hours. This was not the case even 2-3 years ago. It’s not looking good and her quality of life has gone down a lot. But I am hopeful we can still turn this around as we are trying to incentivize her exercise and activity with a family trip to Taiwan later in the year, where she will need to walk more.
Hence, why it’s not just about having a long life but also a healthy active life. We share our parents genes and traits so this was a massive wake up call for me. Eating well by cutting out sugar and other bad things for you. I eat far less pastries and desserts as much as I love them. I focus on eating plenty of meat and plants. Regular exercise to build muscle mass, especially hard as you get older. Taking supplements, biohacking by sauna/cold showers, sleeping over 7-8 hours a night and doing martial arts. It’s good to be fit and in shape.
Mediation and finding solace as I explore religion has been good for my brain as I navigate some of my anguish and various challenges in life. It also helps by having a larger mission in life so you are staying mentally active as well. A family and community to take care of. Something beyond yourself. Having a greater purpose and mission
We should all be focusing on Health-span, having mobility, independence and a good quality of life. No point living longer if you don’t have this.
The Face You Show: The Reality and Filter Effect in Social Media
Due to a long career of doing business internationally, I’ve been fortunate to be able to make friends in almost every single part of the world. But because of my business and travel life I spend very little time in places and usually have a long hiatus before I go back. Thank goodness we have social media which allows us all to keep in touch and keep tabs on each other.
But I’ve discovered the downside recently. It’s happened a few times during recent trips. After a half decade or even decade you meet up with a friend and as you share all the things happening in your life. And I tend to be pretty honest on both the good and bad of life, especially the last few years. Which were particularly rough and great at the same time.
One friend actually said “wow, I had no idea how messed up your life is based on all the pictures you show online. Jet-setting around the world, big happy smile on your face. Big happy smile on your little girl's face all the time.”
He is absolutely right. And it illustrates the “Filter effect”, we only show our best face publicly while hiding all the crap. It’s our ego, of course, we show only the best parts. Additionally, the filter effect is multiplied infinitely on social media.
Two key lessons from this.
One: don’t believe everything you see online. For every awesome Instagram picture you see, they probably went through 100 to find the perfect one. You get a very warped, over optimistic and unrealistic view on someone’s life on social media. It is a singular, very curated and cleaned up facet of someone’s life you see on social media whether Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or TikTok.
I’m not saying it’s bad to aspire, strive and aim high, you 110% should do so. Get all the toys, build wealth and have an awesome lifestyle while having the resources to take care of those you care about. Just should know that it was probably a much longer, painful and harder path than the one being shown.
But the Second lesson is: there is always a price to pay for what you want. I wanted career and monetary success and it came at the cost of a stable home and family life. But I still did it. For you, based on what I know now, it’s better to be more intentional about what you want. And then do the work and pay the price. You will inevitably get it. Just make sure it’s what you actually want in the end.
You Are What You Read or Watch: Controlling Your Media Diet
I love books and reading. To encourage my kid to enjoy reading like I do, we have a rule in my house that whatever book she wants to read I will buy for her. Whatever the costs and however many books she wants. That has been good until 2021. Her friend had read a book and she really wanted to read it too.
It was called “They Both Die at the End” by Adam Silvera. I think you can guess what the book is about. It’s about two gay guys who spend their last day together. I looked at it and thought, well if her friend read it and it’s rated as teen level book so it must be okay. BIG Mistake.
Amber was 11 at that time and she went super dark, weird and even somewhat suicidal after reading this book. It made me dig in deeper into the book and I realized how badly I messed up. Not sure if Adam Silvera is doing this purely for the money or is a hard left nut pushing awful ideology. He is going to burn in hell for pushing evil and dangerous ideas on young impressionable teens who are frankly clueless and naive.
This is symptomatic of the invasion of our kid’s brains by bad mind worms from left and right wing ideologues, albeit I’m in California so it’s the hard left extremist nutcases over here. It’s so awful. But ultimately this is my fault by not managing my family's media diet better.
We do this damage to ourselves by watching the mass media garbage on Fox and CNN. Both of them are wings of the same bird. Hollywood, especially Disney, is particularly pernicious. Most of the newspapers are awful too. We also get our brains inflamed by scrolling through Instagram or X aka Twitter or worse, from the CCP controlled TikTok. This is why my kids' social media is limited to 2 hours a day and TikTok is not allowed at all.
But sadly all this awful idea-garbage has infiltrated most of the households of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Western Europe. And it’s why many young people don’t believe in our values of the West anymore. Propaganda works sadly. This is a war at many levels now, not just a kinetic one but a mental & psychological one too.
So my point is you must take control and manage your personal media diet carefully for yourself and your family. You are what you read and watch. So filter very thoughtfully here.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads September 1st, 2024
“Often the best way to relax is just to go back to work”–Steve McQueen
"One advantage of including a solo GP on your cap table is their ability to make investment decisions quickly. Unlike traditional VCs, who need to consult with their fellow partners for approval, solo GPs can typically decide within a few days.
Additionally, solo GPs often specialise in a particular stage or, more interestingly, a specific sector. Those focusing on a single sector are usually former operators with deep industry expertise and strong connections."
https://neweconomies.substack.com/p/the-solo-gp-landscape
2. This is a good state of VC panel. Lots of good perspective here on the tactics and strategy of the business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVceHUqEoF0
3. "Intel’s other recent big bet has been its foundry business — three facilities in the US and three overseas to manufacture semiconductor chips, with other facilities in Asia and Latin America for testing and assembly. But that’s gotten a bumpy start; for instance, Intel declined to invest in cost-effective extreme ultraviolet machines for its manufacturing facilities, then had to outsource 30 percent of the manufacturing to a rival company, TSMC.
“Historically, Intel has been the company that was pushing the leading edge,” Newman said. But in the lead-up to Gelsinger’s tenure, the company “missed the AI transition,” he said — and companies like Nvidia, AMD, and TSMC, which are manufacturing semiconductor chips that can be used to accelerate AI technology, filled the market."
https://www.vox.com/technology/364745/intel-nvidia-ai-silicon-valley-layoffs-stock-semiconductor
4. "When the commercial internet started to take hold in the late 1990s, it felt as meaningful of a shift to me as AI does today. Many people (including me) staked their careers on the belief that the internet would be a transformative force that would remake many parts of society. That belief was well placed, and those of us who have worked on the internet for 20+ years have seen changes that were hard to imagine 20 years ago.
That being said, AI in 2024 feels like where the commercial internet was in 1999 or 2000. You could feel things were changing. You could imagine a future where the internet was deeply woven into everything from commerce to community to communications.
The only problem is that we were collectively wildly off in how quickly those changes would occur. In some cases, the core issue was a technology limitation. In many other cases, the issue was the inability of businesses to adopt new technology and change business processes. We needed that optimism to take some big bets and try new things, but it ultimately took way longer than most of us thought to come to pass.
Maybe it's just me, but it feels like we are on the cusp of a new era where startups and investors will deeply appreciate the time scale required to rewire businesses to utilize the power and promise of AI."
https://chudson.substack.com/p/todays-era-of-ai-investing-reminds
5. Learning from the best: how to build a long lasting venture firm. Lux Capital is tops in frontier tech.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9PT97uaCKY&t=1s
6. "What matters most is not the price tag, but the cost per mission — how many missions can it be expected to fly before it is jammed or shot out of the sky? A $2,000 drone which flies one kamikaze mission effectively costs the same as a $20,000 drone which can be expected to survive 10 missions. Second is capability — can the drone support high-resolution sensor payloads? Can it deliver munitions? Does it have obstacle avoidance? As drones are deployed in a wider variety of applications, different size/cost/capability combinations own different use cases.
Eliminating CCP-sponsored drones from American skies is essential for our national security. But we will not accomplish a DJI ban by forcing American operators to use subpar systems. Pilots won’t stand for the ban until they have a viable alternative. That can only follow the development of a robust American drone manufacturing base. So how do we win? As the war in Ukraine has gruesomely illustrated, attritable systems are a key capability on the modern battlefield, and the United States should absolutely build up its own Group 1 companies. But the truth that inspired Made in China 2025 still holds — China is far better at making cheap products. We will likely not beat DJI purely on labor and component cost.
America has the advantage in advanced capabilities. The United States drone industry has succeeded in fostering a collaborative ecosystem of open-source software and hardware developers; companies like Aerodome, who builds drone-as-first responder software on top of off-the-shelf drones; and DroneDeploy, which supports reality capture. By acting as a platform and not competing with their customers, American drone companies can achieve the scale needed to drive down costs and compete with DJI. In the age of AI, a single low-cost drone with high-resolution sensors and a GPU can run a variety of software applications that can make it significantly more capable than a comparable Chinese system.
The United States must leverage its strengths in advanced software and open-source development to enhance the capabilities of affordable drones. Building a robust domestic manufacturing base — in military as well as commercial systems — is crucial for maintaining national security and technological superiority."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-america-fell-behind-in-drones
7. "I've talked to people like these and others who, after being away from their previous firm for a while, will catch up with former bosses and colleagues and have them say, "Wow! I had no idea what you were capable." Most often, that's because they were too caught up being anchored to Erik in 2019 or Grace in 2017, and didn't do a good enough job establishing a new anchor for that person.
That isn't always the case. Plenty of people have built long careers at one firm without needing to switch. My belief is that this is either because of (1) lucky circumstances of finding a mentor, specialty, and firm that coalesce around enabling that person to succeed / progress, or (2) the firm they're at has built a deliberate engine for enabling that kind of progression. Though very few firms have.
The little sister syndrome is a textbook example of an inaccurate anchor. This isn't just true of how VCs build their careers, though its particularly egregious in venture. It's true of how people judge talent across the board. The incorrect anchor on someone can ensure one thing: the person making the incorrect judgement will not be along for the ride when that person skyrockets.
That's why you hear so many stories of successful people who were terrible students, yet would go on to exceptional success. Structured learning, like grades and tests, were tied to the wrong anchor for that person. The correct anchor was something else entirely. Like the obsessive efforts to rebuild car engines or ham radios from scratch.
Judging the quality of a person is as much about finding the right anchor by which to estimate that person's capability as it is observing the person. Without understanding that nuance, you're doomed to lose your best people to the little sister syndrome."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/little-sister-syndrome
8. "In economic language, the transaction replaced the relationship—not just on Wall Street but in American business generally. And the same can be said of the elite as a whole. WASPs once made for a fairly coherent upper class: concentrated in big cities and their suburbs in the Northeast, products of the same prep schools and colleges, likely to choose from a small pool of marriage partners, guaranteed of a decent inheritance and, for men, a sinecure at a respectable firm. Social ties were stable and for the ages. That has all given way to rule by money. Now you have to pay a consultant half a mil to get your kids into U.S.C. instead of relying on your bloodline to get them into Harvard.
When George Herbert Walker Bush died, a standard feature of the memorials was to celebrate his Waspy virtues of modesty, considerateness, and public spiritedness, in sharp contrast to the bombastic fool who occupies the Oval Office today. Ross Douthat opined that we miss those things because they signified a “ruling class that was widely . . . deemed legitimate.” It’s a thought I’d had before.
Honestly, it is a little tempting to get sentimental about the old order. Next to the reigning crassness of our day, that sort of reticence has a seductive allure. But it’s distressing to find yourself agreeing with Douthat, even in passing. How valid is the sentiment? And how well can our system live with an elite as rotten as the one we have?"
https://harpers.org/archive/2019/11/to-serve-is-to-rule-wasps-doug-henwood/
9. "So, in the eyes of the EU, what better time to set up a database that logs the assets of its half-billion citizens?
We’re only one crisis, conflict, or simple law change from your government being able to take everything you’ve ever worked for. And just like in bygone ages, they'll take it by force if you refuse to hand over your wealth willingly.
You should be paying attention if you’re European or an inhabitant of anywhere else in the West.
But more importantly, you should be taking action. Like ensuring you have assets scattered in multiple locales worldwide, so they’re not at the mercy of a single government body.
The simple truth is this: What’s yours is only yours while your government allows it.
And your government is broke."
https://anticitizen.com/p/not-your-property-eu-database
10. Sometimes you may need a patent strategy.
https://kellblog.com/2024/08/04/does-your-startup-need-a-patent-strategy/
11. "It was the start of Operation Intering — a never-before-reported massive, multiyear, transcontinental effort. Along the way, the FBI and the Austrian would seed faulty tech to Moscow and its allies; drain the Soviet Bloc’s coffers; expose its intelligence officers and secret American conspirators; and reveal to American counterspies exactly what tech the Soviets were after.
Because of Intering, the Soviet Bloc would unknowingly purchase millions of dollars’ worth of sabotaged U.S. goods. Communist spies, ignorant that they were being played, would be feted with a literal parade in a Warsaw Pact capital for their success in purchasing this forbidden technology from the West. But as the operation gained momentum, it would become increasingly risky — including to the life of the Austrian himself."
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/08/04/us-spies-soviet-technology-00164126
12. Especially true in Defense-tech.
"Hardware is riskier than software."
No longer true:
Development speed: 3D prints and PCB prototypes now available in 24 hours, rivalling software iteration speeds.
Moat strength: Apple's hardware-software ecosystem is far more defensible than most pure software plays.
Massive hardware exits:
ARM: Sold to SoftBank for $32B in 2016, now worth $140B+.
CSR (Cambridge Silicon Radio): Acquired by Qualcomm for $2.5B in 2015.
Dyson: While not an exit, it's valued at over £20B as of 2023.
The Arbitrage Play:
It isn't about costs. It's about ambition.
While software talent flows freely globally, ambitious UK hardware startups can exclusively tap into a world-class, locally-bound talent pool."
https://josef.cn/blog/uk-talent
13. This is an instructive interview for sales leaders and founders. I'm going to rewatch this a few times myself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmOnNouM6fo
14. Quite a deep and valuable conversation on business and life as an entrepreneur.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dw8j7hghv1k&t=1862s
15. "Sometimes, a large social following or big brand can be accretive to a startup — especially consumer companies or ones that benefit from early buzz. However, I do want to put in a plug for the vanilla VC whose sole vocation is funding startups, helping them scale, and ultimately succeeding the same way you will.
No matter who you choose, make sure you can identify their incentives. Ask the tough questions — understand their fund dynamics, their personal ambitions, and how they spend their time. An educated consumer is the best customer :)"
https://medium.com/@foundercollective/the-many-incentives-of-vcs-80a089a947f0
16. "When faced with the choice between a long hiring process or the potential to fulfill the role with a software robot at 15-20% the cost of human labor, a hiring manager calculated risk to try AI may result in tremendous savings to the business."
https://tomtunguz.com/toil-and-labor-markets/
17. "But why is China now frantically stockpiling such an array of commodities? Is it a defensive measure as the government sees further economic weaknesses across the horizon and wants to wean itself off Western supplies - or one hinting at future aggression? Everyone probably needs to answer that question for themself.
What we know for sure is that there is evidence that China is taking further measures to distance itself from the US. While buying huge quantities of gold earlier this year, China has also been selling down its holdings of US government debt to protect it against dollar sanctions if it comes into a conflict with the West.
This move could be in reaction to sanctions placed on Russia after it invaded Ukraine, in which Western penalties quickly wiped out roughly $350 billion of Moscow’s foreign currency and was viewed as a highly controversial move by the US government as they basically weaponized the world reserve currency further."
https://commodityreport.substack.com/p/is-china-piling-up-commodities-for
18. "Knudsen is among Cold Hawaii's growing community of transplants, most of whom left skyscrapers and traffic to slow down and surf by the sea. Denmark's once sleepy north-west coast is now crawling with galleries and boutiques, organic bakeries and a co-working space – many of them opened by the newcomers from 20-some-odd countries.
Even more young South Africans, Brazilians, Australians and Germans moved here post-Covid to work remotely, some to raise their kids. There are doctors and lawyers, and a famous Danish artist who'd been living in Berlin, Jeppe Hein, who now volunteers in local schools teaching children how to paint their own breath.
"You're forced to slow down. There isn't a lot here, so if you want art, you make it yourself. If you want pancakes, you make them yourself," said Knudsen. "That part hasn't changed. It's still the mentality of the fishermen who've lived here the longest."
19. "We already wrote about people being on tilt or getting emotional in the comments. We’re going to do a short explainer here on how to tell if you’re under or overexposed.
Overexposed: You find yourself watching prices every day, you are going to suffer a lifestyle change if prices go down by 20-25% and you are using leverage. These three things will be clear tells for over-exposure.
Neutral - Good Exposure: You don’t really care about the big down days. You didn’t panic the last time we were here in July and this is a bit worse (about 10-12% worse). You’re not worried and considering adding a bit versus selling. If you’re at least considering it then you’re in good position. If you want to sell everything, its a sign of overexposure.
Underexposed: You’re buying every single day there is a -2-4% day and are rapidly buying any dip in general. This usually means you are trying to cost average down. In that case this is probably the last real chance to own major coins. Even if you lean bearish, really doubt they can survive without printing infinite money within the next few years."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/people-feeling-the-panic-mbas-your
20. "As more money flows into the fossil market, public institutions are getting increasingly boxed out, leaving the study of ancient specimens in the hands of the billionaires who can afford to buy the bones.
As the prices of fossils get higher, so do the stakes — and the possibility they’ll be lost to the public. Apex’s auction has reignited a long-roiling debate at the bedrock of fossil discovery. On one side stand commercial hunters and ranchers who extoll the virtues of property ownership and the free market, and argue scientists disdain them because they don’t have PhDs like they do. On the other are academics who say that fossil hunters are in it for the money, and when a skeleton is sold, its contribution to science turns to dust.
Fossils like Apex are caught in the middle."
https://thehustle.co/originals/who-are-fossils-for
21. This is such a good discussion on AI and Compute power. Servers, Steel and Power. The Industrial Revolution continues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAz2xL1tQfg
22. "“It is no longer the place I am familiar with; it has become a strange place. I have no choice but to get to know and adapt to it anew.
“The way of life and the social atmosphere that I once knew are already things of the past; they no longer exist.”
He said the city had lost a many of its young, Cantonese-speaking adults, “as if a whole social stratum has suddenly disappeared”.
“Yesterday’s Hong Kong is dead, and today’s Hong Kong is one of the cities in China,” he continued, questioning whether Hong Kong is still an international city.
He thinks Hong Kong will maintain to some degree its status as an international hub while losing much of what made it special over time, including the rule of law and judicial independence upon which it built that reputation.
He said: “Hong Kong will become increasingly enmeshed with mainland China, which is also a stated policy aim of increased integration with Shenzhen and the
rest of the greater Pearl Bay area.”
https://inews.co.uk/news/world/hong-kong-dead-residents-say-city-lost-identity-3181742
23. "This is now no longer a story about a horrifying triple murder and the misinformation spread about it. It’s a story about a serious failure of social cohesion, driven in large part by fears about immigration and the perceived failures of integration.
Some of these anxieties have real roots. While overall crime in the UK has steadily declined for the past two decades, knife crime—a major concern in a country in which gun homicides remain mercifully rare—has risen significantly in recent years.
Similarly, the number of refugees seeking asylum in the UK has soared in recent years and now matches a previous peak reached in 2002—something hammered home by the last Conservative government with their ceaseless calls to “Stop the Boats.” Finally, there are real problems with the integration of parts of the UK’s Muslim population, as emphasized last year in a damning report written by the government’s social cohesion tsar Dame Sara Khan."
https://www.persuasion.community/p/why-britain-is-rioting
24. "The upshot of all of this is that the Fed should probably start cutting rates now, like markets expect them to. Yes, the economic data are still fairly solid. But if the Fed keeps surprising the markets by being more hawkish than expected, it could cause continued deterioration in the labor market — and, eventually, an unnecessary recession. Yes, it was bad to be too dovish for too long in 2021, but it would also be bad to be too hawkish in 2024."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-us-economy-is-not-crashing
25. "You’ll read the above and quickly realize that boom time startups and gloom time startups really operate with different strategies. And it might be true that founders who excel at one end up being poor at the other. For folks who are building solid, foundational businesses, and want to grind hard over many years, starting a company during a recession ends up potentially working great.
Ultimately though, I hope many of you who are thinking of building a new startup are undeterred from the economic turbulence we’ve recently seen. There are huge benefits from building something new when things are a little slow. And they help create the opportunities for the next wave."
https://andrewchen.substack.com/p/boom-time-startups-vs-gloom-time
26. I always learn new stuff. Balaji is a smart guy but he can be bit cold blooded geopolitically, driven by libertarian views & anti-US Democrat (blue) views.
Yet he is right on many things, India is on the rise, USA is a poor ally, a bad exemplar of rules based order and sadly in decline due to bad policy and leadership.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW9mMcE7I7A
27. Solid discussion on how to build a business (or businesses) on content platforms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz-0OojF08Y
28. Kevin Hartz is the man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39O-_Tj6Swo
29. Another disturbing but important geopolitical discussion. Taiwan is the key.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23f971HpNcY
30. An insight-dense conversation on the concept of the Network State.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4dcTvoFHZM
31. This is a must listen to for all founders. Gold. How to use numbers and what numbers to track for your business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oePi8tg_T6U
32. "If so many VCs are willing to invest in hard tech startups, why does raising pre-seed capital still feel so hard? It starts with a simple fact: the vast majority of VCs that invest in hard tech startups aren’t actually hard tech VCs. They’re generalists. And generalist investors often come to the table with stereotypes and preconceived notions that can get in the way of making an investment."
https://chrisneumann.com/archives/how-to-pitch-hard-tech-to-a-generalist-vc
33. This is one of the best business recaps of the week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzR4GMvAz_M&t=1725s
34. This is an excellent and timely discussion for founders. It's ugly out there so this is just valuable advice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCIDROdUUSE
35. "The Airport is evolving with this new demand. For decades, airport used to resemble a train station. A few chairs and seats for people to wait until their flight. Simple and efficient.
Now the airport is a luxury mall. You can spend an entire day at the Singapore airport and feel like you are at a resort. But this is just the beginning. The airport is most likely going to evolve from a luxury mall to something else. Some say a mini-city but others say an entire Artificial Intelligence and robot enabled space station. Layovers won’t be seen as nightmares anymore but maybe as part of the vacation itself."
https://lindynewsletter.beehiiv.com/p/airport-new-third-place
36. These are both very instructive discussions on the business of investing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YXMZhsVClI&t=177s
37. "The New Battle of Kursk Continues…For Now
Time will tell whether using these Ukrainian brigades to attack into Russia rather than defending eastern Ukraine has been the most strategically effective use of their forces. At a time when Ukrainian defenders in the east are being pushed back on several axes, the use of highly capable Ukrainian combat forces in Kursk is either a brilliant countermove to shift the initiative in the war, or a strategic error which compounds the challenges in Ukraine’s eastern Ukraine defensive operations.
There is no way yet to make this assessment, however. As with all war, there is an abundance of uncertainty at the early stage of another Ukrainian offensive. Not only are we unsure about just how far deep the Ukrainians have penetrated, but we are also unsure of the strategic and political objectives of this operation.
While success or failure in this Ukrainian cross-border attack may not win or lose the war, it will have an important bearing on Ukrainian morale and western support. But ultimately, the success or otherwise of the coming offensives will be determined on the ground. Good leadership at all levels, flexible execution, determined close combat, good logistics, surprise and adapting to opportunity will all be crucial to tactical and operational success. And this must be applied with sound strategic reasons.
This all might end up being just a larger scale raid than the previous 2023 and 2024 incursions into Russia. We will know in time."
https://mickryan.substack.com/p/the-battle-of-kursk-2024
38. "Let’s focus back on Harris’ dilemma of what to do about a developing global financial crisis sparked by the unwinding of Japan Inc.'s monster yen carry trade. She could let the chips fall as they may, allow the free market to destroy overleveraged businesses, and permit wealthy baby boomer financial asset holders to experience some real pain. Or, she could instruct US Treasury Secretary Bad Gurl Yellen to fix it with printed money.
Like any politician, regardless of party affiliation or economic beliefs, Harris will instruct Yellen to use the monetary tools available to her to avert a financial crisis. Of course, that means the money printer will go brrr in some way, shape, or form. Harris will not want Yellen to wait – she’ll want Yellen to act forcefully and immediately. Therefore, if you share my view that this yen carry trade unwind could collapse the entire global financial system, you must also believe that Yellen will swing into action no later than the opening of Asian trading next Monday, August 12th."
Make Tomorrow Better: My Time at Curtin University
A little known fact, I’ve been an Entrepreneur in Residence at Curtin University in Perth since 2020. Randomly, I might add, as when I met my friend Rohan who ran the Commercialization Department there, first in Perth at West Tech Fest in 2018 and then in SF right before the pandemic lockdowns in 2020. He asked me to join the program a few months after, and I happily accepted as I was chilling career-wise at that time.
During the pandemic, I advised on their accelerator program and did some mentoring & keynote talks for their accelerator and entrepreneurs virtually. And finally, in 2023, I got to fly out to Perth to meet the teams and do these live shows, which was really great after years of Zoom calls.
I was asked by many of the founders in the program during my week there: Why are you doing this? Are you looking for startups to invest in? Is it for the money?
My answer in general is NO. My annual stipend is 10k AUD and I end up donating most of it to charity anyways. My trip here and spending a full week here actually costs me money because there are opportunity costs (and my billable hours are not cheap). I am certainly not looking for deal flow, I have far more deals than I can sift through.
But for me, coming out here is so much fun and educational. I get to come to a beautiful city and region. And it’s incredible to talk with and try to help young smart entrepreneurs, early in their journey, even if you don’t invest. It’s literally my juice and gives me so much energy.
You can disproportionately impact them and their business at this stage. Hopefully in a positive way. The basic questions that come out really help me think and understand where the ecosystem is. It also helps me figure out whether my advice and knowledge still makes sense and is relevant. And dissecting problems for whatever shape or size of the business is how I can sharpen my edge.
It’s fun but also a way to help grow new startup ecosystems. And it’s also good for the karma front as well. I truly believe in Karma. Do good things for others and it comes back to you in some other random form. But the big reason is that it fulfills the mission & motto that Curtin espouses: “Make Tomorrow Better.” This is ultimately my mission for life as well.
Summer Chilling: Enjoying the Calm Before the Storm
It’s always good to have some time off. I spent most of the Summer of 2024 resting and reading in Vancouver with my parents. Especially as they are getting older.
It was really nice as Vancouver is incredibly pleasant during the summer. Warm, sunny and perfect weather unlike the rest of the year. And way nicer than the sweltering hot summers in Europe and Asia. Unlike a lot of VCs and startup-ers who brag about working in the summer which is a sign of massive insecurity, people just need a break.
With things relatively quiet on the business front in Silicon Valley and most people on some form of holiday, this is the perfect time to step out. Especially with doting Asian immigrant parents who took care of food, cleaning and laundry. All I did was do the occasional business calls, but spent the bulk of the time reading, listening to podcasts and writing. I made sure I got plenty of rest and hard exercise in the sun.
I also spent lots of time re-tooling, re-evaluating and rethinking my investment thesis as well. It’s fun and weird sitting in my old room while doing so. This is a very good time to reflect, think and plan for the future.
Especially needed in light of the nutty year so far and what everyone believes will be an even crazier and busy autumn of 2024. Most of us who grew up in North America have this seasonality wired into us due to our school systems. Quiet relaxing summers and crazy busy autumns, falls & springs. More so, if you are a parent now where you experience this again.
I’m a firm believer in “resting ethic”. Sometimes you have to sprint but in the long run it’s a marathon. You need rest to prepare for busyness and challenges ahead of you in the year. So don’t feel guilty for taking a break. Your mind and body needs this if you want to stay competitive for the long run.
Total Personal Ownership: The Only Way for a Good Life
I really wonder what’s happening with people these days. Victimhood, blaming others or circumstances when stuff goes wrong. I was kind of like this in 2020, when the pandemic lockdown hell happened.
I got screwed out of some money by tenants, angry with some business partners who owed me money and ghosted me. I was angry, enraged. My anger erupted and it pretty much wrecked my family life. It’s easy to blame the incompetent SF government, my tenants, my business partners, but the blame rests with me.
I got myself in that position. I was not stoic or in control of my emotions. I did not prepare enough cash reserves. I trusted people who were not to be trusted. Yes, the 2020 pandemic was an extraordinary event. Still, I was absolutely not prepared and I paid for it severely.
What I learned from that situation and from listening to Jocko Willink, Justin Waller and Andrew Tate is that everything is your fault.
If you go outside in the rain and you didn’t prepare a jacket or umbrella, it's your fault for not checking the weather and being ready for anything. Bad tenants, I did not vet them enough. Bad business partners, I was not good enough of a judge of character. Bad policies (especially during the pandemic lockdowns) by the local or federal government? I was not engaged enough in politics. Plus, I was not financially strong enough to be completely independent from these impacts, to be able to fly somewhere else earlier like Ukraine, Sweden, Miami or Taiwan. There is no one to blame except for yourself. Everything becomes a lesson to get better and grow.
Life is supposed to be hard, something I remind myself of and get reminded too when I am flying too high. But life is also easier with this mindset of total ownership. You know that you are the only person responsible for your destiny. It’s freeing. I act like I am an army of one.
And the benefit of having total ownership of your life, if anything good comes out of it, this is also due to yourself (obviously with some help & luck too). That’s why I feel ZERO guilt for enjoying the fruits of my hard work from the last few years. Good or bad, everything is your own fault. This way you have control over your life. I can tell you, this is a great place to be.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads August 25th, 2024
"No one would have crossed the ocean if he could have gotten off the ship in the storm."
- Charles Kettering
"Perhaps the real fight is not between Presidential candidates at all but between Project 2025, Project Biden, and those who think that think tanks, in collaboration with big business, should not be running the country. But, as long as we have inflation, it’s hard to see how any of these people hang out together, whether at a kid's Birthday party or a soccer match or over dinner. It’s simply too expensive.
This helps us understand a new reason why inflation is so very costly for the country. The political parties can’t operate, negotiate, or manage because they can’t and won’t speak to each other. It’s ironic. The loss of parties killed the parties. The “check please” at a restaurant has led to a request for a “check please” from politicians to donors. Thank you, inflation."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/pippa-and-vp-candidate-nicole-shanahan
2. Love this concept: Mission & "magically weird" investments. What a great interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zUk4GBL2Ag
3. Interesting take here on the effect of AI on white collar industry and its limitations: GPUs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVVVySiZSFA
4. "A series of changes in government, commercial industries, and culture has shifted defense to a viable venture investment category. The first and most important event leading to change has been the proven success of the vanguard companies; Palantir, SpaceX, and Anduril did what was seemingly impossible -- getting their foot in the door and disrupting decades of defense prime regulatory capture.
All three have all shown that startups can compete to build superior products that are more affordable for the government with a compelling investor return profile. Success does a lot to change minds and shows a viable path forward, drawing much more talent into the area.
As part of forging the way, the defense vanguard helped to drive reform that is enabling the entry of smaller innovative companies to further succeed in defense innovation."
https://www.alexkolicich.com/p/q2-2024-state-of-venture-update
5. This is a fun episode. Lots of tips for making your life better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bA7Ku7AcfHs
6. "At the end of the Cold War, the US reoriented itself to meet the challenges and opportunities of a world without an existential foe.
Flush with hubris due to its victory in the Cold War, the US chose the global path, and everything began to unravel.
The choice of a global orientation wasn’t a conscious decision. The US stumbled into it bit by bit until the accumulated weight of the decisions made on orientation’s path made it impossible to think any other way.
That inability to think differently soon became a problem when, in less than a decade, it became clear that the global utopia an overextended and increasingly restive US sought was a mirage."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/what-went-wrong-with-america
7. "Let’s stop inspiring students to become venture capitalists and get back to inspiring them to become founders and builders.
Because that’s what we actually need."
https://chrisneumann.com/archives/i-never-wanted-to-be-a-vc
8. An uncomfortable discussion on geopolitics via a libertarian lens. Net net: it's gonna be chaotic. Learn to think for yourself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVl0FFrihTc
9. "Hungary and Slovakia are signatories to a mutual defense treaty that binds 30 other members to come to their aid should they find themselves under military attack. While bickering between allies is nothing new, the situation at the eastern edge of the NATO alliance is unsustainable, especially if a solution to the current impasse is not swiftly found.
Just this week, a deputy foreign minister in Poland stated that Hungary should leave NATO and the EU altogether to instead “create a union with Putin and authoritarian states.” Brussels has little use for Orbán and Fico and vice versa, and their current stance makes divorce a real possibility."
https://newsletter.doomberg.com/p/eating-their-own
10. "Their cutting-edge research, especially from the prestigious Microsoft Research Asia lab in Beijing, has become world-renowned.
But the kind of U.S.-China tech collaboration Microsoft once pioneered might be facing an end. The Biden administration has blocked China from accessing chips used to develop AI technologies, proposed restrictions on tech investments in China, and threatened bans on Chinese-owned platforms like TikTok. In Washington, Microsoft’s presence in China is increasingly viewed as a national security threat.
But a growing distrust of China by U.S. politicians is making such collaboration, as well as the jobs of Chinese engineers, precarious. Despite China’s slowing economic growth and restricted freedoms, the tech giant’s high-earning Chinese staff are content with their life at home, where they enjoy cheap food, low crime rates, and child-care support from their parents. At the same time, they fear losing their Microsoft jobs if they refuse to relocate."
https://restofworld.org/2024/microsoft-china-ai-engineer-relocation/
11."When critics in Britain used to talk about the Establishment, this was what they meant.
Most countries are like this, at least to a degree, but the tendency has become much more pronounced in recent years. Whereas until the last generation or so there were power centres outside the Establishment (trades unions, mass political parties, even parts of the media) these have now been dismantled, and in their place we have a clone army of politicians, NGOs, journalists, pundits, consultants, political operators, but also judges, government officials, development agencies and even leaders of the police, the military and the intelligence services, who have been through the same formation, studied the same subjects at the same universities, all know each other and very largely think the same way.
They have disputes and they struggle for power, but they do so among themselves, and they join forces to resist outside pressures. This is why it's unnecessary to suppose conspiracies. Development agency officials, for example, share very much the same fundamental view of the world as personnel in other parts of government, and will sympathise with and try to support, the same individuals and groups as the foreign ministry, or even the intelligence agencies.
In the end, though, ordinary people do not want to be written off, nor are they ready to be insulted into voting as the elites want. They are perfectly aware that power is now disproportionately held by a smug and self-satisfied urban Liberal elite who no longer even pretend to care about the interests of ordinary people. And if they cannot get satisfaction from conventional political parties, they will get it from elsewhere, irrespective of whether PMC journalists decide to characterise this, in hushed and ominous tones as a “move to the Right.”
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/no-left-turn
12. "The entire world instinctively recognises the fakeness of our current point in human civilisation's history. Out of the senseless destruction of WW2 came many technologies that have powered our modern civilisation. Peaceful, safe, and almost carbon-free nuclear energy generates many gigawatts of electricity. Billions of people can travel worldwide on commercial airlines. And of course, the most essential thing to come out of the war: the creation of a new form of silicon-based life, which we call thinking machines or computers.
The growth of the population and the relative wealth of humanity since the war has been astounding. But the easy stuff has been done, and now politicians, in an attempt to justify their existence, have turned to printing money to engage in all manner of activities that are a net drag on the human condition. Green energy is probably the most significant global malinvestment of this age.
Because we have cheap and plentiful capital, which is just a derivative of cheap and plentiful hydrocarbons, politicians believe they could dictate natural laws rather than the other way around. Taking a less dense form of energy, such as wind and solar, and expecting them to replace more dense forms of energy like coal, natural gas, and oil, will never happen naturally.
And by naturally, I mean without government subsidies or below-market interest rate loans.
The green energy hoax is just one example. Many of you rue the inflation that has taken place since Pax Americana eschewed the gold standard in 1971.
Forget the YOY government-manipulated inflation statistics. The price of a loaf of bread in nominal terms is higher today than yesterday. That need not be the case in an age of brilliant technology and cheap energy.
You know this regardless of how the elites gaslight you.
Your response is to speculate. Your response is to purchase magic internet money. Your response is to bid up “scarce” digital forms of culture that you understand and appreciate.
Airheads is a collection that capitalises on this inflation hoisted upon us by the elites. It does so aesthetically and technologically."
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/airhead
13. "In other words, the U.S. almost always anticipates each technological revolution, supports that technology with far-sighted government and industry action, invents many of the key technologies, innovates many of the key products, and at least attempts to commercialize the technology via American companies. This is overwhelmingly the norm.
But for batteries, the U.S. did only some of these steps. The potential of batteries doesn’t seem to have been widely anticipated decades in advance by the U.S. media or government. Battery technology received a bit of support, but not a huge amount. Some of the key invention was done in the U.S., but more was done in Japan and the UK, and the key products were innovated and successfully commercialized in Japan.
And in recent years, it has been the People’s Republic of China that has seized the lead in battery technology. China is the leader in battery manufacturing, of course, just as it is the leader in solar manufacturing. That has allowed China to electrify its economy much faster than the rest of the world.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-did-the-us-miss-the-battery-revolution
14. This is always an illuminating conversation. Not just on business but on living a great & enjoyable life. Optimize for heaven on earth. Stop being spectators.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59D993W7aLk
15. A depressing and sober assessment of how unready the US Armed forces are for possible war with China.
I do NOT want war but strength is deterrence. And the more the CCP knows how weak we are, the more dangerous the world becomes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbdbgB2VE1A
16. I always listen to Rex as he is on the forefront of the creator economy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJZrzeyKylo
17. "Over the past two years, however, Zelensky and his allies have often complained that the U.S. response to the Russian invasion has been too slow under Biden, too hesitant, and too distracted by fears of Russian escalation. A growing number of them believe that if Trump takes power and decides at some point to help Ukraine, U.S. support would become more decisive.
In trying to win over Trump and Vance, the Ukrainians are also counting on help from their allies in Europe and from the U.S. military industrial complex, which stands to earn enormous profits from the continued production of weapons for Ukraine. “They can explain to [Trump] why this benefits many people in America, especially in red states,” says the senior official. “It creates jobs. It supports the economy.”
https://time.com/7001148/ukraine-zelensky-plan-to-survive-trump/
18. Lots of life and business insights here. Tai Lopez is a legend.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJQRDG3q7_w
19. "If I had to guess, I’d say the IPO bar today for software companies is more like $400M growing at 40% than $250M growing at 25% [3]. Many, me among them, would argue that the bar is much higher than it needs to be, but there are things we can’t control and this is certainly one of them.
Once you pick the destination (in terms of size and growth rate) and the growth endurance factor (Scale picks 85%), the rest is just a math problem."
https://kellblog.com/2024/08/01/startup-growth-trajectories-and-the-saas-mendoza-line/
20. "As we stand on the cusp of The Great Diffusion (the topic of my recent Tedx talk), an era defining shift from consolidated power to a more decentralized and distributed framework, financial services find themselves at a crossroads.
The coming wave promises to reshape industries, none more so than the guardians of our capital."
https://99tech.alexlazarow.com/p/what-a-coming-wave-of-diffusion-means
21. I like Pavel Durov. We met and had dinner in Helsinki 9 years ago.
Interesting dude: This is a great conversation even though I don't like Tucker Carlson.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ut6RouSs0w&t=903s
22. "So yes, Chavez and Maduro wrecked Venezuela’s economy with bad policy. The oil price drop of 2014 certainly didn’t help, nor did America’s sanctions in 2017. But the core screw-ups were mismanagement of PDVSA, nationalizations, and price controls.
The first of these was questionably “socialist”, since it involved strike-breaking and weakening of a state-owned enterprise. But the second and third fall pretty clearly within the ambit of policies that 21st-century socialists tend to embrace. Other “socialist” countries in Latin America, such as Bolivia, have escaped Venezuela’s fate by doing less of all three of these things.
Venezuela thus serves as a warning to other countries. Electing left-wing leaders can be fine — witness Boric in Chile, Lula in Brazil, etc. But you really do have to watch out for the Chavez/Maduro types who think that “revolution” means taking a wrecking ball to every economic institution in the country. That way lies madness."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/how-maduro-and-chavez-wrecked-venezuelas
23. Listening and learning from a legend in Silicon Valley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD5bOhscU1c
24. "Americans, they need to watch South Africa and see what is happening. Because it is definitely, definitely coming to their side of the world one of these days. That said, America is still an absolute powerhouse when it comes to financial income and things like that. And they’ve still got a ton of people paying taxes, whereas in South Africa, we’ve got almost no taxpayers left,19 and we’re just staring into the abyss at this stage.
So, for the Americans, I would honestly say that if they want to ride out the storm, they have to form their own little communities now, of their own people who want to succeed and thrive in a world gone crazy. But then, you know, for them, it’ll be a case of “Oh, you’re talking about a militia,” and you get labeled a nutcase even though, no, that’s not what you’re talking about. So how they work around that will depend on their local environment and situation.
As I say, if they want to right out the storm, they need to start working together toward the common goal of self-sustainability."
https://www.theamericantribune.news/p/surviving-south-africa-a-boers-take
25. "To see what’s happening, we must look to Rhodesia and the Rhodesian experience: subversion and conquest at the hands of weak-kneed Westerners and communist terrorists. To do so, this article will first examine the history of Rhodesia and the changed social conditions in the West that led to a war on hierarchy, and will then examine how that led to the Great Betrayal of Rhodesia and why it matters to modern Americans.
But despite Rhodesia’s economic success, resistance to communism, and effective steps toward charting a course in Africa where the whites wouldn't face the fate of those left behind in Congo or Kenya and where blacks wouldn't face the same fate as in South Africa, America helped the USSR destroy the brave little land. It did so, as we have covered before, by working with the UK to embargo Rhodesia while encouraging the USSR and Red China’s efforts to aid the anti-Rhodesian rebels.
Though Rhodesians, black and white, put up a valiant fight, the combined weight of the world’s efforts to destroy them proved too much. They ran out of fuel, were starved for arms and ammunition, were close to running out of men, and, after Angola and Mozambique fell to the communists, were beset on all sides but south by enemies and infiltrators.
Mugabe quickly took power and proceeded to first genocide opposing tribes, the Ndebele and Kalanga peoples, and then nationalize the white-owned farmland, carrying out many atrocities against and heaping many indignities upon the white population in the process. Now, far from being an economic powerhouse and the breadbasket of Africa, Zimbabwe has seen hyperinflation and famine."
https://www.theamericantribune.news/p/why-rhodesia-matters
26. "As with Rhodesia, South Africa used to be one of the few functional states in Sub-Saharan Africa. There was a thriving economy, you could go outside without being robbed or murdered, flipping a light switch would turn on the power, and farmers were safe to sleep on their ancestral lands without undergoing horrors that would make Pol Pot blush.
Then came America and its “liberal world order,” ....... Now, South Africa is exactly as K9 described it. A nation already in disarray and getting worse by the day."
https://www.theamericantribune.news/p/a-boers-view-of-the-crisis-in-south
27. Focus on lift not runway. Lots of good advice for founders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSZnLUrtp58
28. "The seemingly random attacks have one thing in common: according to local officials, they are all linked to Russia. And while they might look minor in isolation, taken together these incidents amount to what security experts say is Russia’s hybrid war on the West.
“We are threatened by something which is not a full-fledged military attack, which are these hybrid threats … everything from meddling in our political processes, (undermining) the trust in our political institutions, disinformation, cyber-attacks (…) and sabotage actions against critical infrastructure,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said during an event in Canada last week.
Rod Thornton, a senior lecturer in defense studies at King’s College London, said there’s been a pattern of attacks linked back to Russia. “There has definitely been an increase over the last few months in these particular types of operations. It is something that the Russians are ramping up,” Thornton said."
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/30/europe/russia-hybrid-war-nato
29. "The Olympics do feel smaller than in the 1980s. It may be because we are consuming them now in smaller bites. Some of what made them feel important in the past — particularly the intense us vs. them nationalism of the Reagan era — is gone.
What is still there is the primal drive to compete and the hunger to feel something. In a world increasingly run by old people, it’s inspiring to watch young people pursue excellence for the sake of something bigger than themselves: one another and their countries."
https://www.profgalloway.com/olympic-moments/
30. This is important to understand. Why Tariffs matter & how China is disadvantaged here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZhSMr9T7WI
31. A perspective from the other side: China. ie. our competitive rivals.
"What’s propaganda anyway? I have witnessed two kinds of propaganda in my life, so I think I have something to say here: propaganda is really just the systemic expression of any set of belief systems (aka ideology) that claims only this ideology is better than everything else. Sometimes, even facts and truth can be sacrificed for the sake of upholding this one ideology. But isn’t telling the truth (including the whole truth) what news media’s main job is all about? Since when does conformity to the same story become more important?
In this regard, Chinese propaganda and Western propaganda really don’t have much difference. The only difference is that Western propaganda is far more effective, that far fewer people question it, and that wars and suffering and human sacrifices could be brought about by this self-referential propaganda without people involved ever realizing it and ever regretting it."
https://www.china-translated.com/p/the-end-of-wests-ideological-monotony
32. This is a gloomy discussion on the EU. Net net: it's not particularly well structured for the future & lots of major problems that are existential over time. Very educational.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CjV24QJ1BU
33. "Health damage is hard to reverse as you get older. It is much better to keep your good health until your old age than to try to regain health when you are 50 and weak."
https://lifemathmoney.com/where-will-your-health-be-at-70/
34. "Putin: A 16-10 swap in the West’s favour is not a great return for Putin. Having to surrender high level Putin critics like Kara-Murza and Yasin must have been painful for Putin. It shows that Putin wants to deal now which creates interesting momentum around a potential Ukraine deal before the U.S. elections. There are clearly channels of communication open between Russia and the West and these could be similarly used to talk peace over Ukraine.
The long war ultimately does not work for Putin - there are plenty of risks therein (Prigozhin 2, and see Wagner losses this week in Mali) and especially if Trump loses in November. Ukraine is seeing a real ramp up in military supplies now with F16s arriving in the past week and the U.S. rolling out the $61 billion support package for Ukraine before the November elections.
Add in the $50 billion G7 support for Ukraine linked to immobilised Russian assets and Ukraine is getting decent financial support now which it can use to purchase weapons to improve its military position in the months ahead."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/putin-wants-to-deal
35. "Globally, we’ve fallen behind most major economies since 2000. At the turn of the century, the economic output of the average Canadian was on par with Australia. Today, Australians are almost 10% more productive, while their economy has grown 50% per person faster than Canada’s over the quarter century. We’re further behind the United States. Canada is 30% less productive than the U.S. and closer to lower-income states like Alabama in terms of economic performance than tech-rich California or New York. The result: We’ve fallen from the 6th most productive economy in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in 1970 to the 18th as of 2022.
Pretty much every Canadian has something at stake. The productivity gap with the U.S. stands at about $20,000 per person a year, putting Canadians’ wages roughly 8% below their U.S. counterparts. The gap has been even more taxing for capital. Anyone who invested $1,000 in Canada’s main stock index in 2000 would have $4,400 today; the same investment in the U.S. S&P 500 index would be worth $6000—a more than 35% difference.
Our relatively low productivity —the amount of production and income generated per hour worked in the economy— has been held back by a shortfall in investment, especially outside real estate, construction and public services like hospitals. As a result, we’ve not been able to capitalize on the immigration boom that has added seven million people—most of them working-age and well-educated—since the turn of the century and offset the retirement wave of baby boomers.
The deindustrialization of many parts of Canada has cut into the country’s overall prosperity."
https://thoughtleadership.rbc.com/canadas-growth-challenge-why-the-economy-is-stuck-in-neutral/
36. "If you, like me, have experienced periods of fog and feeling stuck or inertia, then it’s time to break up a big or lofty goal into less daunting steps.
This way, you’ll find it easier to get started; I’ve found 2 weeks is a nice period of time to enable regular assessment and reflection, without putting too much pressure or being too hard on myself.
I also think sprints more easily facilitate attainable, realistic action and execution.
Nothing feels better than knowing that you are actually closer to a goal than yesterday, last week, and 2 weeks ago.
What matters is that you get the ball rolling in the right direction."
https://shindy.substack.com/p/rituals-2-week-sprints
37. "Now for the fun part here is our assumptions based on 2024 Living Standards
General: As a rule of thumb we’d think the majority are set in the $4-6M range by age 40. This is pretty hard to argue. It does not work in expensive cities like NYC and LA. We assume that this amount is going to work for 99% of people because they could move to a city they like and we really doubt everyone reading this “needs” to live in NYC/LA. This nets out to around $1M house and $4M invested. Tough to lose outside major cities.
Upper General: If you are a big city person and want an upper tier life in major cities it’s probably a double. This means you need to be on track to reach around $8-12M by age 40. This will give you all the wiggle room you want for a bigger place even if single to having kids/family. As usual your call. This is the rough number as $8M + $2M house is going to be extremely comfortable.
There is zero shot you stop working entirely as people who make it to this level are generally business builders anyway.
Joke/Video Game Money: Around the $20-30M range everything is largely the same. While you are not flying private all the time and don’t have a security team with you (more problems realistically), you can’t spend it all. You can simply invest this out diversified and nothing is out of of reach beyond nonsense like Yachts.
Before moving on here, you can have your own number. We know that people will ask about rough proxies so there they are. On Crypto Twitter Video Game money is “poor” but in the real world it isn’t. Similarly, people saying $10M isn’t enough to retire/be financially set is also cope. It’s only true in the most expensive cities in the world."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/being-a-better-personal-financial
38. Super insightful discussion on General Catalyst. One of the giants of Venture capital. The evolution of a firm: Investing and incubating.
https://www.joincolossus.com/episodes/18391328/taneja-engineering-global-resilience?tab=shownotes
The Art of Living Well: It Doesn’t Have to be Expensive
I frigging love “The Random Show” with Tim Ferriss and Kevin Rose. It’s really enjoyable listening to two very accomplished individuals who are also clearly very close friends sitting down and talking about life & learnings.
Both are incredible investors and builders in tech and media, with incredible track records. But more importantly they have very good eyes on consumer & lifestyle trends. You can almost call them “tastemakers” at the forefront of culture.
They really excel when it comes to talking about the products, movies/shows/books and even health treatments and supplements they are taking. Small purchases that give an excess of enjoyment compared to their costs. And most of these are very affordable & accessible to everyone. This is despite the fact that both can choose to go super luxury as they have the resources and wealth to do so.
It goes to show you what an amazing age we live in, where everyday products are small enjoyable luxuries. This could be unique coffee brands to bone broth to soap or a really nice Hinoki tree scented oil.
You can live a rich life without breaking the bank. In fact this is preferable so you can spend that money on family and great experience and also building up assets. It’s wonderful if you love and can afford the luxury cars, clothes, watches and houses/estates/mansions all around the world. This seems to be more of the American, Middle Eastern & Chinese way of wealth.
Which as a note this seems pretty stupid & suicidal in a world of growing wealth inequality, rising crime, decreasing state capacity (Ie. police) and many more poor and angry young men.
Hence there is a lot to proclaim about the benefits of “stealth wealth” which is how most of the rich in old Europe, Taiwan and Japan live. You literally cannot tell if they have any money. They are quiet, hidden and pretty much anonymous.
Which means they can live a normal life without harassment. They can go to the mall, eat at any restaurant and travel without an entourage or security. All of which sounds pretty awesome when you compare this to the weirdo and paparazzi filled lives of the well known and mega rich like Bezos, Gates, Kardashians or movie stars.
You can live a great life as long as you know what matters to you. Time, health, family and friends as well as the small luxuries you care about. Things like what books, travel and good food are to me. Simple pleasures that let you live well and increase your quality of life. You don’t need to spend a lot of money to have these.
Cooperation is the Mark of Civilization: You Can’t Do it Alone
There was an interesting scene in the excellent Chinese sci-fi movie “Wandering Earth 2”. In a speech, one of the key ministers gives to the entire United Earth Government right before the impending disaster.
He shows a picture of a healed human bone.
“What you are seeing now is a fossil from 15,000 years ago. It’s a human femur that recovered from a fracture. It marks the dawn of human civilization. 15,000 years ago, a fractured bone was often fatal as it deprived you of your ability to find food or seek shelter. All you could do was wait for a predator to eat you up.
However this particular femur healed. It means that after the injury someone took care of their wounds, someone provided water and food, Someone protected this person from the predators.
This kind of support, solidarity is how we survived to this day and made our civilization last.
Will we make the same decision our ancestors made 15,000 years ago?”
This is the grand question. Climate change, pandemic, risk of global war, the destruction of flora and fauna & our environment in pursuit of selfish gains. Humanity sometimes seems like it’s on the path of hedonistic self-destruction. Like the world is falling apart and no one is doing anything about it.
But I choose to think that our better angels will overcome our devils. When I see my daughter, I can’t help but think she embodies all the best qualities of her two parents. I’m hopeful because this upcoming generation in general seems to be better, kinder and smarter than we are.
I also know that humans have an ability to come together when faced with a crisis. We’ve proven it over the entire lifetime of our species. This will become clearer as we face ever present threats coming in our lifetime.
We are fast approaching our global broken femur moment. I hope humanity acts accordingly and steps up.
I end this with a great quote from the movie: “Remember, A civilization without people is meaningless. I believe the courage of mankind transcends time. It transcends past, present and future.”
Living Life to the Seasons: Learning From Nature
Nature has a lot to teach us. Think about what each season represents. Then followed by Spring which is when everything starts to bloom. Weather starts to turn warm and the day gets longer. Summer is when it is really warm and when we can harvest crops and food is plentiful.
But then we get the Autumn, the weather turns slightly colder, the leaves start to turn. And then we have the Winter which is cold and dark, it’s death and where nothing grows. The days are short. And I might add, this is when it’s hard to be outside at all and also when starvation used to happen often in olden times. But if we can survive, we go back into the cycle of Spring and bloom and the inevitable summer of prosperity. The cycles are valuable because you only really appreciate the spring and summer after you go through the winter. And if you are too hedonistic during the summer, winter becomes a painful lesson for you.
Do we put aside enough during spring and summer so we can survive the winter? Or do we fritter this away, or indulge without thinking of the future? With the consequence of starvation and suffering. You only learn by going through these cycles a few times.
Kind of life in general. It’s also a good reflection of how countries and empires rise and fall. It's a reflection of business and companies and our own careers. There is probably some larger lesson in this.
Good times don’t last, but neither do hard times. Life and the economy is cyclical. So don’t get too arrogant, overconfident or cocky when you are on the rise. But don’t get too depressed when you are laid low. Just grind and survive. The cycle, like the seasons, always turns eventually.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads August 18th, 2024
“In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or step back into safety.” — Abraham Maslow
"When office buildings sell at two-thirds less than replacement costs, value should be had.
Could San Francisco become a revival story indeed, or even the posterchild for a city that was beholden to woke policies but eventually broke free? Could it yet "do a Giuliani" and enter a new era altogether?
Throw in other emerging factors, such as the investment boom in AI and how that is bringing a new start-up scene back to San Francisco. The city may yet turn around – it's not like there weren't at least some promising signs.
On the other hand, the oversupply of office space in San Francisco is so stark that no landlord will regain any real pricing power anytime soon. Working from home is not going to go away. The US now has other powerful centres for venture capital and tech, such as Texas and Florida. Elon Musk has moved X (formerly Twitter) out of San Francisco, and plenty of other companies have also moved away. Then again, given how bombed-out the market is, it wouldn't take much for a first wave of speculative money to trigger an initial recovery.
During my 30+ years in markets, there haven't been many cases where you can buy real estate in a world-famous, Western city for 70% less than replacement value."
2. "In this post, we have shown how you can troubleshoot go-to-market problems by splitting the funnel in two and focusing on two questions:
Are we giving sales the change to hit the number each quarter, as measured by pipeline coverage.
Is sales converting enough of the pipeline to hit the number, as measured by pipeline conversion."
https://kellblog.com/2024/07/23/go-to-market-troubleshooting-lets-take-it-from-the-top/
3. "Sometimes the economy really does encounter a sudden break point where all the old certainties get tossed out and a new reality takes hold. The Industrial Revolution is a good example of this. Maybe the invention of Artificial General Intelligence is right around the corner, and will replace the bulk of the work that normal humans can possibly do, leaving a world in which only the most brilliant AI engineers, savviest and boldest entrepreneurs, and most well-heeled financiers can make a living.
I encounter a surprisingly large number of people in the San Francisco tech industry who believe that this is going to happen. They might be right — Daron Acemoglu agrees with them — but I suspect they’re overgeneralizing from their own experience. Everyone likes to marvel at how billion-dollar software companies have been created with just a handful of employees. If you see that kind of thing all day, you very well might start to think that labor is obsolete! But if you look at the overall economy, you’ll see that the fraction of output that gets paid to labor has fallen by only a couple of percentage points since the dawn of the information age."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/yes-we-still-have-to-work
4. "As I read the Third Plenum resolution, I couldn’t help but tick off the commonalities with Jake Sullivan’s speech on US industrial policy: strategic industries, supply chain resilience, innovation, long-term investments, infrastructure, clean energy. Analyzing American and Chinese economic policy these days feels like looking down a warped hall of mirrors. China and the US have both drawn policy inspiration from each other.
China wants to replicate the venture capital ecosystem of Silicon Valley. China’s efforts to loosen up research institutions and give individual researchers a greater share of their work’s rewards is clearly inspired by American success in the academia-to-commercialization pipeline.
The US for its part has become much more open to large-scale state intervention in critical sectors of the economy, like the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act. US efforts to leverage access to its large market to compel foreign firms to invest domestically is a classic Chinese tactic (as I’ve written about). American policymakers have a renewed interest in the “hard economy,” often drawing comparisons with Chinese manufacturing and infrastructure.
As this economic contest heats up, it’s worth appreciating the irony of how China and the US keep defying each other’s ideological beliefs and expectations. Washington is annoyed that an authoritarian single-party system like China can innovate and produce global industry leaders. Beijing is annoyed that a messy democracy like the US keeps churning out world-changing technology from the internet to AI."
https://www.high-capacity.com/p/a-warped-hall-of-mirrors-us-china
5. "In the US, every four years, the presidential election is often a hotly debated topic, with tribes on both sides often spilling quite a bit of (digital) ink in the months leading up to that November.
And you might be asking, well mouse, I don’t care about politics, why should I pay attention to their trending topics/keywords/memes?
Me either fren, but I always have a hard time walking past a table overflowing with money lit on fire when a fire extinguisher is right at hand.
The solution is not to sell to the tribe you once used to/still may identify with, but to have systems in place to sell to both tribes in the US two party system. This is easily done with a domain parked with some variation of “patriot” for one side and “hope” on the other. A simple three-page site with maybe a few mantras floating around for some light SEO, lying in wait.
Inevitably, one side will see something happen so egregious, that that faction will rush to spend money as fast as possible to perform their allegiance (whether red or blue) at school drop off the next morning"
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/ecom-the-rip-and-run
6. "Using AI in these contexts to help you refine your predictions about how different decisions will make you feel is a game changer. It can bring you an entirely new perspective on yourself—one that might pull you out of longstanding patterns or can help you see the forest through the trees of your experience.
It picks up on things you know, but couldn’t say. It expands upon what you’ve written so that you can more effectively project yourself into a possible future. It allows you to try on a decision like you would a piece of clothing.
AI can help you turn a decision that was once murky into something that’s clear as crystal. The question is: Will you listen?"
https://every.to/chain-of-thought/ai-can-help-you-make-big-life-decisions
7. "Dwarkesh is the host of the Dwarkesh Podcast, where he conducts deeply researched interviews with guests like Mark Zuckerberg, Tony Blair, and Marc Andreessen.
Before conducting each of these interviews, Dwarkesh learns as much as he can about his guest and their area of expertise—AI hardware, tense geopolitical crises, and the genetics of human origins, to name a few. He does this by researching extensively, and recently, he integrated AI into his process.
Dwarkesh is using LLMs to revolutionize how he reads, learns, and builds a coherent worldview."
https://every.to/chain-of-thought/dwarkesh-patel-s-quest-to-learn-everything
8. "The most concrete example comes from her original Substack post in which she coined the term vibecession. In her piece, she argued that the split between how consumers felt about their current situation (quite good) and how they thought the future would go (quite bad) could end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Thankfully, in America, at least, they were wrong. The bad vibes didn’t get us, and the economy bounced back. However, if enough people had believed that narrative and reduced their spending habits, they could’ve made a recession happen. Scanlon’s argument is that the economy is downstream of emotions.
Which, when said out loud, feels obvious, but it hasn’t been taken seriously. Most study of emotion in the field has been confined to behavioral economics: Economists study individual patterns of irrational behavior, such as the sunk cost fallacy or anchoring bias. But few people have studied the impact of emotions on the population.
Vibes are a field of study that deserves more attention and funding."
https://every.to/napkin-math/vibes-are-a-legitimate-economic-indicator
9. "What matters is that the international foreign policy landscape is now becoming extremely complex as China moves into far regions like the Middle East and Russia moves into the Pacific. China is playing the part of a peacemaker and power broker in the Middle East, which has just led to the formation of a future combined Palestinian government. China was able to end the war between Hamas and Fateh after decades of strife. Putin met Modi in India and restored the traditional dialogue that existed between the two countries.
Washington is having to adjust to a multipolar world where the weight of America’s voice isn’t what it used to be at a time when nobody is sure which way the US is going. Governments around the world are thinking through contingency plans in case events happen, and it becomes evident that nobody is in charge in the US. This includes the possibility of a contested or a contingent election outcome or both. It also includes the possibility that the election isn’t held on time or at all."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/missing-bullet-casings-fortune-cookies
10. Great overview of the geopolitical sphere and the rise of the new axis and Cold War 2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkW2oaT0zZ8
11. "Whether or not you think Jeff’s on the juice, his body transformation remains hugely impressive. Gone are the days when he was solely known for revolutionizing the world of e-commerce. Now he’s a beacon of inspiration for fitness enthusiasts worldwide, proving that success isn’t confined to the boardroom, it can be sculpted in the iron paradise too."
https://www.dmarge.com/jeff-bezos-workout-routine
12. Learning from a top tier VC. Benchmark is excellent. An insightful discussion on the business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfJtIibCx78
13. Dense and wide ranging discussion from one of the smartest people around. Always well reasoned. I don't agree with everything Balaji says but he always makes me think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rWIsc34N9Y
14. This is excellent. Jason gives a good rundown on what the best sales reps look like (and the reverse as well).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN4WnZnDQLs
15. Recent interview with Roelef of Sequoia Capital. Crucible moments for Sequoia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeF7GPBM8zQ
16. Always an enjoyable conversation. I am a fan of Justin Waller: the blue collar baller.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGlllvBYb04
17. Ian Bremmer is one of the top geopolitical analysts out there. Sober view on what’s up in the world. Little bit dated with political changes in recent weeks but overall interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdQDpwdNCzk
18. Tai Lopez wisdom. I have come to enjoy listening to his stories & learnings here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxzGeHrisdk
19. Peter Thiel is one of the most original thinkers and investors around. Regardless of his politics, you can always learn from him. He is always ahead of the curve.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42iVcEg5SOM
20. "U.S. national interests are best served by a peaceful world where authoritarian powers don’t try to conquer their smaller, weaker neighbors, and where global trade is conducted for mutual benefit instead of as a form of mercantilist beggar-thy-neighbor competition. That goal requires that the U.S. recognize China’s movement away from peaceful economic development and toward assertive nationalism and totalitarianism under Xi Jinping.
And it requires strong steps on the economic, diplomatic, and military fronts to dissuade China from launching a reckless war that plunges Asia into violence and chaos. I hope that whoever gets elected President this year is up to that task. Right now I’d definitely pick Harris over Trump for this reason alone, but that doesn’t mean she has my full confidence either."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-trump-or-harris-might-fail-to
21. Signs of peace coming to Ukraine soon? I hope so but only if it's on Ukraine's terms.
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/ukraine-is-peace-coming
22. "If you want to understand the limits of AI today, try to build an agent.
And I mean a real agent, one that does complex, open ended tasks in the real world, not one that fetches a few PDFs and summarizes them.
You can tell your human co-worker: "I need you to go off and put together a complete plan for outreach to our potential customers, craft a list of needed assets, setup an outreach sequence and come up with a novel way to make those interactions feel more natural rather than doing cold email outreach."
They'll figure how to do it and all the complex intermediate steps to take along the way, while asking questions or getting the help they need to get it done if they don't understand each step.
An agent will hallucinate five to twenty steps into such an open ended task and go completely off the rails.
We already have super machines and tomorrow's super machines will make today's models look like Atari games next to PS5 games running Unreal Engine 5.
Technological evolution happens slowly, step by step, building on the backs of millions of tiny breakthroughs through the collective intelligence of mankind. It goes slowly and then all the pieces are suddenly in place and we get a burst of brilliant new activity that takes us to the next level "overnight."
But there is always further to go."
https://danieljeffries.substack.com/p/why-llms-are-much-smarter-than-you
23. "It’s easier to distill someone’s life down to their career progression, especially if you barely know them. There it is right on LinkedIn! I guess social media would be the analogous view into their personal lives, but the Instagram version of people’s lives is hardly real either. It’s easy to imagine that if only you made X amount of money, or worked at Y company, you would be happy. Money can certainly alleviate a lot of problems, but there are plenty of people who work at Y making X (or much much more than X) dollars a year who are miserable.
On our deathbeds (I guess we are actually headed to the same place after all), most people aren’t thinking, if only I had made more money, or if only I had spent some time in an executive role. Comparing career success, or stalking your former classmates in their new roles on LinkedIn, is like watching cars speed past you on the highway. It’s the most obvious thing to compare yourself to, but for most people, it’s probably not the most important.
According to palliative care nurse Bronnie Ware, the top five regrets of the dying are:
I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
I wish that I had let myself be happier.
Given these top regrets, it seems downright silly that our comparative minds hone in on career success as a key gauge of life progress and happiness."
https://jeanhsu.substack.com/p/life-is-not-a-race
24. "But that concept of maintaining a higher number of funds managing smaller fund sizes certainly makes sense to me. Speaking of Fred Wilson, he's also laid out the mathon what it takes in terms of proceeds required to generate the necessary returns on the amounts of capital being managed. TLDR: It's a LOT.
But despite the logic in smaller funds being more capable of compounding capital, you can just feel the pull towards larger and larger funds. People can make more money off of fees, build larger organizations, more definitive brands, and compete for the best deals.
Obviously everyone is going to present their own case as ideal. But the reality is that in the same way ICONIQ can lose $100M because its 1% of their fund, they can also choose not to care about you as much even if things are just going fine, but not gangbusters, because you're 1% of their fund.
So from my perspective there is still plenty of value to create as a venture fund. And there are still plenty of vectors on which to compete in venture. Firms like Sequoia and Accel had been around for 40+ years when a16z came along in 2009, but they still made the incumbents dance. And I'm sure there are firms that are just getting going today that are going to do the same."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/the-siren-song-of-raising-a-venture
25. I learned a bunch here on the nicotine market and also Soylent too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYkReFrm7Wg
26. How do you right size your vc fund? Learnings from Notable VC formerly known as the legendary GGV.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSMqS8b3gfY
27. I thoroughly enjoyed this. Delian of Founders Fund & Varda on the art and science of venture investing. Strong opinions which are unfortunately rare in the tech industry these days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAScF7kEzOw
28. "Let’s consider his point: is “going direct,” as the founders and investors on All-In have done, antithetical to their work as founders and investors?
I think it’s likely too much time online negatively impacts one’s ability to focus elsewhere, but it’s silly to pretend there aren’t considerable benefits. Seibel’s old boss Paul Graham was one of the industry’s first influencers, in a way, an early, successful essayist, and a very popular voice on social media. That work has definitely contributed to, rather than detracted from, the success of YC. It has also, obviously, drawn him into mimetic conflict with Sacks. But I digress.
What’s more clear than the benefit of going direct for one’s own company is the benefit accrued to the industry. There was no alternative tech press in 2016, when Parker was witch burned, or 2019, when the mob came for Travis Kalanick. Neither of these stories would play out the same, lopsided way today."
https://www.piratewires.com/p/the-battle-of-the-billionaires
29. Pretty interesting approach to VC. Super clear and well articulated fund strategy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK2LesWN8Jk
30. This is an excellent workshop on how to implement growth in your business.
It's a live teardown and great framework for any kind of business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKT9r9hGmkI
31. This shows why the American foreign policy clique is so incompetent & why we keep making BIG mistakes in foreign interventions. Stupid ideology and a massive lack of understanding of history.
"Despite Burnham’s noticeably ideological perspective, his analysis is worth considering. That much the same ideology dominates the liberal consensus of our time is obvious. American allies in Poland, Hungary, and the Philippines are denounced by both liberal and neoconservative pundits and officials for relatively mild measures they take to protect their borders, sovereignty, and national culture.
By contrast, largesse and deference are given to brutal dictatorships in China and the Gulf States, and to corrupt, violent, and ethnocentrist regimes in much of Africa, even though these states pursue much more aggressive versions of the same policies."
https://www.palladiummag.com/2018/10/11/the-lesson-that-america-did-not-learn-from-vietnam/
32. Interesting list for expats: Mexico, Thailand and Vietnam appeal more to me.
https://www.afar.com/magazine/best-countries-for-expats-to-live-abroad
33. This is eye opening and every ambitious person should watch this. So many great learnings.
“Extreme Job”: Persistence Pays
I took a 22 hour long flight to Australia in 2023 for business. That’s a damn long flight even for me. I love Australia but it is really far away. The side benefit though is that you get lots of time to read, write and watch movies.
I watched a very funny South Korean action comedy called “Extreme Job” about a down on his luck Police captain and his misfit narcotics squad on the hunt for a major drug lord. It’s especially funny because during a stake out they end up starting and running a fried chicken restaurant that unexpectedly takes off, distracting them from their investigation.
They have continual bad breaks as they keep on screwing things up. But what I liked about them was that they just kept going. Taking humiliation and failure, over and over again without quitting. They literally would not give up.
We learn also along the way that the captain’s earned nickname in his 12 years of major crimes unit was “Zombie” as he just wouldn’t die. He would just keep on coming at you like a zombie, no matter how hurt he was. Of course they finally caught the bad guys in the end.
This is the similar trait I’ve seen in my most successful startup founders. This is the trait that I see in all of my super successful friends, especially those in my mastermind group. They are persistent, they don’t know how to quit and are just relentless in the pursuit of their goals.
The best organizations are like that too. Like Microsoft under Bill Gates. Or Amazon under Bezos, who was reported to have said “be stubborn in vision but flexible in details.” Basically, be willing to grind it out. Ernest Shackleton (h/t to David Senra) actually said it the best: “By Endurance We Conquer.”
You don’t always have to be smart to be successful in business and life but you certainly do have to be persistent.