Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads March 9th, 2025
“I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive”--Joseph Campbell
A strong case against Xi Jingping's China. We have to establish growth, deterrence and stability.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wQYf2PspkI&t=2167s
2. "The reason for this explosion is simple: the cost of starting a software company has plummeted. What once required $1–2M of funding to hire a small team can now be achieved by two founders (or even a solo founder) with little more than a laptop or two and a $20/month subscription to ChatGPT Pro.
With these tools, founders can build, test, and iterate at unprecedented speeds. The product build-iterate-test-repeat cycle is insanely short. If each iteration is a “shot on goal,” the $1–2M of the past bought you a few shots within a 12–18 month runway. Today, that $20/month can buy you a shot every few hours.
This dramatic drop in costs, coupled with exponentially faster iteration speeds, has led to a flood of startups entering the market in each category. Competition has never been fiercer. This relentless pace also means faster failures, and the startup graveyard is now overflowing."
https://allensthoughts.com/2025/01/09/ai-has-democratized-everything/
3. Always a good discussion on Silicon Valley with BG2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8chNXhA8o8
4. Learning from the best. Hedge funder who learned at the feet of two of the top guys around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCMMbBz4uRk
5. "Military support to Ukraine - actually there appears to be a commitment herein from the US to continue to supply military kit to Ukraine. I think this is far more credible/realistic in ensuring Ukraine’s defence. If Ukraine is assured supply of the full range of conventional military kit to defend itself I think it can assure its own security - the evidence is the fact that Ukrainians have held back a far better armed foe, Russia, now for close to three years.
I would call this the State of Israel assurance - giving Ukraine the same access to military tech as what Israel currently gets from the US. Russia will obvioualy aim to set limits on Ukraine’s military capability as Putin will want the option of invading again in the future. This will be a key battle in negotiations, and could ultimately determine whether Ukraine has security, and it is sustainable long term.
I would think if the talks are going to stall/fail it will be around the issue of territorial give ups, European troop deployments and also around what military capability Ukraine is assured of - Russia will look to limit the arms supplies to Ukraine as part of any deal, but without NATO membership or other security guarantees Ukraine will see limitations on its future military capability as a make or break issue for talks."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/ukraine-the-peace-plan
6. Conversation on how the US or any country can stay ahead technologically.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS8Ue2B1wm4&t=5s
7. The Future of AI from two of the top investors around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ3pNPFwAeM
8. "Bicycles, sanitation, airplanes, vaccines, and Crispr are just a few technologies that have changed the world, but their benefits were dispersed across society rather than being hoarded by a few shareholders. I increasingly believe AI will join this roster — it presents dynamics similar to most stakeholder vs. shareholder innovations:
Government-backed or university-developed (the internet, GPS, vaccines);
Open-source or public domain (Linux, Python, Wikipedia, USB); and
Too foundational to be monopolized (bicycles, sanitation, airplanes).
In sum, the winners here will be stakeholders, not shareholders. Scan your emotions after reading the last sentence. Did you reflexively grab your shareholder pearls and feel this was, maybe, a bad thing? It isn’t.
America becomes more like itself every day, and our obsession with, and idolatry of, the dollar has put the public good in the back seat. Billions of stakeholders benefiting from AI, vs. one business becoming worth more than every stock market on Earth except Japan and the US, and one man being worth more than Boeing feels less sexy … less American. (Hint: NVDA & Jensen Huang.)"
https://www.profgalloway.com/a-new-ai-world/
9. Always learning from this guy. Lots of insights on where tech is going.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wG97nnGmaKk&t=1155s
10. Lots of good discussion here on what's up in Silicon Valley news. Softbank & AI Super Bowl: short everything!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9idY0ind-H8&t=907s
11. Great power war? At least a Cold War for sure. "The Eurasian Century" is worth reading.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws8X2rbdlXs
12. "The Pitchbook numbers are accurate, but the conclusions are not.
I think the opposite will happen. Counter-intuitively, I think the number of VCs will continue to grow.
More VCs will be needed because the VC model now applies to all industries. AI will make all companies digital technology companies between 2024-2040 and hopefully accelerate their growth. Thus the surface area where VC investment applies will expand: defense, healthcare, energy, climate, space, techbio, education, government, etc. More VCs will be needed to cover all that surface area."
https://www.nfx.com/post/venture-capital-3
13. "The next time you talk to an entrepreneur, listen to his voice. Pay attention to the excitement around the idea. After the conversation, do a mental analysis of his level of passion. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs I know are also the most passionate about their mission."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/02/08/the-entrepreneurs-passion/
14. "The rouble is depreciating again, too, nearing the lows it experienced after a brief crash at the outset of the war; this means Russians won’t be able to afford as many imported goods.
The economic troubles aren’t at a crisis point yet, but they are probably causing strains in Russian society — birth rates are falling, crime is up, and elites are getting restless. It has now been three years since Russia invaded Ukraine; historically speaking, maintaining a high-intensity war effort for more than three or four years is pretty difficult. World War 1 lasted only four years, and the Korean War lasted three.
Nor does Ukraine look like it’s about to be overrun and conquered in the next year. Despite the constant drumbeat of headlines about Russian advances, on a map the amount of territory seized — about 1600 square miles in 2024 — looks pretty minor. As for the prospect that Ukraine’s military will collapse, that looks unlikely too — the country has far less manpower than Russia does, but it has enough to keep defending tenaciously and making Russia pay for every square mile of territory for a while yet.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s economy is growing, and domestic arms production is soaring. The country has built a bunch of hardened underground factories, and now claims to be able to produce 4 million drones per year. Even if Trump does decide to draw down U.S. aid to Ukraine, that will probably not cause Ukraine to collapse. The Ukrainians are not flimsy U.S. puppets; they’re dead set on defending their country against the invader by any means necessary, and they’re very good at making stuff.
So while the Russians isn’t ready to make a peace deal yet, if Trump puts increased economic and military pressure on them, there’s a decent chance they could be persuaded to accept the offer.
The next question is: What happens then?
My bet is that Ukraine’s leaders have already thought along these lines. I predict that they’re probably ready to take the plunge and sign a deal of the type Trump is proposing, even though doing so could spell the end of their political careers. And because Putin almost certainly understands this historical parallel, he’s reluctant to make that deal — he knows it means that most of Ukraine will semi-permanently escape Russia’s orbit, fulfilling the dreams that Ukrainian nationalists have cherished for over 150 years. But if it’s a choice between that and a catastrophe in Russia, I think he might take the deal anyway.
In other words, given Ukraine’s inherent military weaknesses — a lack of manpower, and a small population compared to Russia’s — Trump’s deal is probably the best they can get. So if Trump really wants to follow through on his campaign promise and end the war, his primary task is to convince Russia, by hook or by crook, that his deal is the best they can get."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/whats-going-to-happen-to-ukraine
15. I don't like MacGregor who is a Russia shill but many of the things he talks about is correct. USA is donor-run oligarchy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn8KxL6sMyI
16. "In the early dawn hours, as the sun rose in the first week of December 2024, a symphony of drones began to sound.
But this was no ordinary drone wave.
In fact, this one was the first attack of its kind: a successful, all-drone assault on Russian positions. The assault, deserving of a place in the history books, took place near Lyptsi, in the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine.
It was a test – initially expected to fail – of whether multiple units could orchestrate a mission with dozens of FPV, recon, turret-mounted, and kamikaze drones all working in tandem on the ground and in the air."
https://newsletter.counteroffensive.pro/p/the-first-ever-all-drone-assault-by-ukraine
17. I try to listen to different opinions. Detest MacGregor & his Russian propaganda & isolationism, Pascal Lottaz is a naive European. But there is much here to consider.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixu6MB3T_qE
18. Erik Prince is an American treasure. Letter of Marques & Private Military Companies coming back for sure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIeNObrmUc8
19. This was a fun interview on investing and thinking about careers & philanthropy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0v_DWE-Sio4
20. This is an Alt-geopolitics conversation. Very non-mainstream views, his observations on the power of London City financial centre are interesting, something there.
Disagree with his perspective of the Russian invasion of Ukraine & his anti-Israel views which are incredibly bizarre. Krainer is kooky.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL8daFrsVZg
21. Great profile on the long historical megacity of Chengdu.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6DR5Hh4AHM
22. Dr Pippa's writing has been very insightful. This panel talk was interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mowxwJOpgoA
23. "This is where the second theory comes in: if Trump was actually threatening tariffs to negotiate, he got outplayed by both Sheinbaum and Trudeau. Why? These seem like token gestures. There’s nothing in any of these “deals” that he couldn’t have gotten with a simple phone call. This is also a very inefficient use of force. This would be the equivalent of holding a grenade in your hand, walking up to your neighbor, and saying, “Give me a pen or I’ll blow both of us up.” Your neighbor would give you a confused look and say they would have given you the pen anyway. You didn’t need the grenade.
Round one goes to Mexico and Trudeau because for the threat level they didn’t give up much, Xi Jinping didn’t say a word, and Trump did not increase tariffs on Canada as promised after they retaliated."
https://www.globalhitman.com/p/the-trump-tariff-wars-round-1
24. Very illuminating and nuanced discussion on China under Xi. Well worth listening to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gDqOqeKARM
25. "You can optimize for many things. Money. Freedom. Fame. Sleeping well at night. Great relationships. Learning the secrets of the universe.
But here’s one of those secrets. You can only optimize for one thing at a time. So I’ve chosen to optimize for energy, because as long as I have energy, I can achieve all the other things at my own pace.
How do I optimize for energy? I get more sleep, I work out regularly, I eat well, and I spend some time having fun every day.
What do you optimize for?"
https://newsletter.sanjaysays.co/p/feeling-tired-and-run-down
26. "There are important similarities between the choices faced by ancient and modern leaders. Trump and Xi both have choices, just as Hadrian and Chosroes did. Neither may choose to step back from potential conflict, particularly from their positions on Taiwan, but the choice to do so exists. It would be helpful if the policy community could move past preoccupation with the “Thucydides Trap” and realize that a range of options exists for peaceful coexistence between the U.S. and China. Hadrian had a vast array of competing interests as Trump and Xi will. He chose the peace and stability of the Roman Empire over the previous path of conquest and expansion. He faced pushback, particularly from the Roman elites, yet held to the course that avoided war.
His descendants eventually chose otherwise, reflecting the inevitability of change in international arrangements. Yet this does not change he chose not to act based on the supposition that shifts in the balance of power made another Parthian war inevitable. He had choices, and chose peace. U.S. and Chinese leadership can and hopefully will choose to do the same."
27. "One lens through which to view companies is to ask "what companies are an index of their underlying market"?
Index companies often take a cut of every transaction in their space, or are a piece of infrastructure everyone in the market needs. For example, it is a hard to launch something into space in the West without using SpaceX. These companies may be ways to participate in the market broadly without having to worry about how wins in it."
https://blog.eladgil.com/p/index-companies
28. Identify where the world is going and get in front of it. Lots of investing wisdom here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbVSGu7CiYE
29. This is a hard discussion on the massive changes in the geopolitical world.
American power is declining. This is the harsh truth because we have alienated many countries in the world and our massive debt makes us weaker.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb86povWn00
30. "The small-car driver takes risks because he has no other choice (or so he thinks). The large-car driver takes risks selectively, because he can afford to.
This is the fundamental difference between an investor with limited capital and one with substantial wealth. When you have little, you’re forced to play an aggressive game, often at the cost of risk management. When you have more, you can afford patience, discipline, and strategy.
Of course, not everyone starts in the large car. Many successful investors began in the small one, taking risks to build their wealth. But the best understood that once they reached a certain level, their game had to change. They switched from chasing returns to preserving capital, from high-risk bets to calculated investments."
https://buildingthingsthatlast.substack.com/p/a-tale-of-two-drivers
31. "There are many opportunities – but also so many unanswered questions and challenges to overcome.
Even if rebuilding the Ukrainian economy began soon, it will likely be 10% below its pre-war level in 2027. This provides an idea for how long a process is needed before the country can get back to some kind of normal, economically and financially.
Besides, there are many voices who don't quite believe yet that a deal will be struck, or that a deal can be executed successfully.
Still, it all boils down to this: with a potentially new political set-up and plenty of financial support from the West, we could see Ukraine develop in a previously unseen fashion. It might be a 10-20-year investment theme, and it's worth spending a bit of time to dig deeper into the opportunities that sound like a fit for your particular investment needs."
32. "Not all of this is Trump’s fault, obviously. Some of Biden’s policies created underlying inflationary pressures that Trump now needs to do the hard work of cleaning up. The enormous national debt, which is now incurring skyrocketing interest costs, is only partly from Trump’s first term — most of it was built up during previous administrations. And like some of his Republican predecessors, Trump happens to be coming into office at the peak of the macroeconomic cycle.
So the deck is a bit stacked against him. But so far, Trump’s proposed policies — big tax cuts, tariffs, and yelling at the Fed to cut interest rates — look exactly what America doesn’t need in order to keep inflation down and growth high.
So Trump is in danger of piling self-inflicted wounds on top of existing bad luck. As a result, the Trump economy could end up as a severe disappointment. Already, warning signs are flashing.
So a lot of stuff Trump is doing — tax cuts, pressuring the Fed to lower interest rates, and threatening tariffs — is inflationary. Realistically, there’s no way that DOGE, or congressional spending cuts, are going to offset all that. Americans may be starting to realize this; some measures of consumer sentiment are beginning to fall again."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/trumps-economy-is-already-in-trouble
33. "So while everyone appears to be focusing on Putin and Zelensky, the game that is being played out here is more about America’s redefined role in the newly emerging world disorder. Trump wants Europe to step up its military efforts and it is a push to get NATO members to spend 5% of their GDP (where today the average struggles to even get to 2%) on defence.
This is the shining object in the room and the Europeans were given a clear message by way of Pete Hegseth. Europe is now more than ever on its own and will have to start footing the bill for the defence of not only Ukraine but itself, a point NATO Secretary-General, Mark Rutte, has been making for quite a while now.
There is a very long way to go in getting any Ukraine-Russia settlement across the line and in meantime the war continues. And a ceasefire and deal across the current frontlines secured by European troops is hardly a win for Putin give his original objectives."
https://pieterdorsman.substack.com/p/europe-alone
34. "However, there's a saying in Japanese: "the clever hawk hides its talons." Ishiba is cannily continuing his predecessor's pop cultural pushes; Japanese press revealed his gifts to the President, which included a golden golf driver and a gilt samurai helm. What might seem a traditional sort of gift is actually another pop cultural appeal; Shogun swept the Oscars, and Otani peacocked in a similar helmet on the baseball diamond.
The Japanese government has announced a plan to make cultural exchanges, in the form of tourism and cultural exports, a pillar of its economy going forward. And the New Cool Japan strategy proposes doubling the production capacity of Japanese content-production industries. This is key, and when you look at Japan not as a manufacturing powerhouse but a pop-cultural superpower, you see that the relationship between Ishiba and Trump echoes that of Japan and the world.
Japan, once a feared enemy, is now seen as a friend by pretty much everyone outside of its immediate neighbors of China and Korea. And even their citizens love Japanese anime, manga, and games. Perhaps no other nation has ever so successfully transformed from a public enemy into a factory of dreams.
As I’ve written about before, Japan’s pop-cultural products have grown even more ubiquitous and influential than its manufactured goods were in the postwar era, and one secret to their success is how Japan stays out of the headlines economically, politically, and militarily. Preserving this status quo is what Japan stands to gain from playing a dove rather than a hawk, a pussycat instead of a tiger. And it’s nothing new.
We are now witnessing Chinpokomon diplomacy firsthand. Protocol means little to the current American administration; history and treaties even less. Everything is up for grabs, for the right price. But maintaining the US-Japan security alliance is key for Japan, for the island nation is surrounded by powerful rivals. Japan has only a small self-defense force, and nowhere near the population needed to scale it up to the size it could withstand a prolonged conflict with a neighbor."
https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/chinpokomon-diplomacy
35. Lots of interesting discussion on what's up in Silicon Valley.
The War Within: Choosing the Future Over the Past
I sometimes wonder if there is too much of a good thing. Too much food. Too much money. Too much therapy even though I’ve been a big beneficiary personally of therapy.
It’s good to understand yourself, your internal and deep seated driving issues. Stuff lurking subconsciously that impair your emotions and actions in day to day life or in relationships. Suppressing them only makes these emotions and issues surface more violently later. Stuff like my anger management issues. Apparently this is common among many men. Anger management issues were the apparent cause of Jolie leaving Brad Pitt and Heidi Klum leaving superstar musician Seal.
Like most people, I know when I mess up. I feel it deeply. And accept the responsibility and try to make it right. But somewhere along the lines in therapy and western culture there is this movement to continually live in it. Something Freudian in that we have to keep soaking in this trauma. I get that. That’s why so many of us get stuck in the past with regret. You think: If only I did this, or if I said this, or did something else, everything would be better. But that’s futile and a trap.
I wonder if there is a point like Freud's contemporary psychologist Adler says, that the past traumas stop mattering and that you just need to move on. You have to let it go.
You are a different person now compared to 5 years ago. Hopefully a better one. Learn from the past. Treasure the nostalgia of the good times back then.
Enjoy the present and act. The only thing that matters is what you do now. Taking action in the present to make a better future for yourself, your family and society.
Built for War: Surviving Tough Times
It’s ugly right now, in fact still very ugly in Silicon Valley. It’s always been hard in startup land, at least the reality of it in my 25 years here. But somewhere along the lines in 2019-2021, investors and founders kind of forgot this or just chose to ignore this reality. Reality bites back hard though. I keep this in mind when I read, and came across this description of Louis XVI who was the King toppled during the French Revolution in Jay Winik’s “The Great Upheaval”.
“In times of war, rebellion, or crisis, leaders must sometimes be cruel or cold; he was neither. In times of war, rebellion, or crisis; leaders must sometimes be able to hate; he was not much of a hater either. In times of war, rebellion, or crisis, to some extent or another, most leaders must be fanatics: stubborn, steel-willed, driven, secretive yet able to inspire, fastidious, and zealous.
They must be prepared to act alone, without encouragement, relying on their own inner resolve. And they must be indifferent to approval, reputation, and even love, cherishing only their own personal sense of honor or vision, which they allow no one else to judge.”
The quote seems incredibly apt. It’s psychologically wartime and it requires another level of intensity, endurance and work ethic. You have to be decisive in executing your vision regardless of the noise.
Being an entrepreneur, especially one going down the venture capital funding route is the hardest and longest path to the top of the mountain. Its high risk, but also high gain to its extreme, with tremendous failure rates. It is also a path to immense wealth if you do it right and with a little bit of grit, luck and timing too.
It’s incredibly hard to get to product market fit. But then it’s another kind of hard to scale your company once you start to grow like crazy. You have heard of the rule 3X, when everything breaks when you triple in size and revenue, and this sometimes happens several years in a row. Its levels on top of levels on top of levels of difficulty. Thus it requires a certain type of founder.
So new startup founders out there, please make sure you understand the expectations and what going down the venture scale path entails. It’s not everyone and that’s okay. So many kinds of businesses out there to build, just make sure it’s the right one for you.
The Joy and Pain of Fatherhood: Your Legacy (And A Personal Journey)
I fly a lot, of course. And walking through airports and sitting on the plane I enjoy seeing young families traveling. Especially ones with little babies or toddlers. They are so cute. And it’s wonderful seeing how happy yet tired these new parents are. The smallest smile and giggle just grabs your heart.
It takes me back to my own experience. I did not think I would enjoy being a dad as much as I have. In my twenties I was one of those stupid guys who thought kids were a burden and a drag on life. How stupid and foolish this view is. Being a parent is one of the most fundamental experiences of being a human. It’s one of the few legacies you have. I pity anyone who misses this experience. Sorry, pet kids don’t count.
Having Amber has been the best thing that ever happened to me and my family. I was over the moon when I became a dad. It was the happiest day of my life. Watching her grow over these last 15 years has been an immense privilege. I continue to be in awe.
She is so smart and even wise. She encapsulates all the best parts of her parents, my wife’s looks, athletic ability, common sense and kindness, coupled with my strong health, ambition, drive and work ethic. I’m already so proud of her. When I see her happy, that’s more than enough for me.
Yet I admit it’s been a tough last few years since the pandemic. The trauma and dislocation from the lockdowns, being separated for almost a year due to Taiwan shutting down their borders and my inability to manage my anger has caused irreparable damage to our relationship. Running an international investment business that requires a lot of travel has not helped. I haven’t really talked with her in over a year, let alone had a meal or walk or shop together.
It doesn’t help that she is a typical American teen, who frankly are just feral compared to Taiwanese, European and Canadian teens. Something about the crazy competitiveness here in America. It’s just a rough situation overall.
But she is everything to me. Children are literally your blood legacy to the world. And you hope you can leave your kids with some good habits, good lessons and good experiences. That is why I used to try to take her on trips around Asia, America and Canada. My fondest memories are of these trips together, when the family was happy. There are so many more amazing places, foods and experiences I want to share with her and show her.
I wish I was a better dad and parent. All the things I could have done differently. All the bad decisions. The harsh words. So many regrets here.
But all you can do as a parent is your best. You owe them that. Heck, you owe yourself that. So I continue to work on myself and improve. This way I can take better care of her and support her in the way she needs. Just being patient and showing you will be there no matter what. And hopefully they let you back in their life when they are ready. I look forward to seeing her smile when that day comes so we can make up for all the lost time between us.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads March 2nd, 2025
“Wisdom Comes with Winters”--Oscar Wilde
Understanding the government debt cycle and the global macro and micro implications. This is an important discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_rvVTuGRNE
2. "And now, at the tender age of 21, Xs has already secured $17.5 million in committed capital for his first solo fund from backers like Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon, Kevin Hartz, Josh Wolfe, and Lux Capital, and anchored by fund of funds Nomads.
In the immediate term, Xs is taking an aggressive approach with his fund, aiming to write checks to 15 companies that would make up 80% of the fund’s capital. Through those positions, he’s aiming to secure 1% of a $10 billion company. He’s looking for founders that he says are “out of distribution,” which he defines as people that have endured extreme hardship, who are very neurodivergent, or people who take an “activist approach” to existential problems.
In the longer term, Xs has considerably more ambitious plans than just venture investing. He wants to grow out a number of business lines, including venture index funds, providing venture credit, and rolling up companies with a buy-and-build model."
https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/13/how-21-year-old-koko-xs-became-the-new-rising-star-solo-vc/
3. I so love Japan. Been to Kobe, Kanazawa, Fukuoka & Beppu. Will put other places on the list.
https://www.afar.com/magazine/beautiful-places-to-visit-in-japan-besides-tokyo
4. "The lessons learned are numerous, but can be summarized in two statements:
For many investors who want to have great returns over the long run, the U.S. is the only market you should invest in.
For experienced investors who understand market cycles and want outsized returns, international investing must be part of your strategy."
https://codyshirk.com/least-expensive-markets-in-the-world-2025/
5. "I doubt we go back to the heady pre-WWII days when gold made up 80-90% of reserves - money was not fiat then - but you can see the trend is very much up. It has been for 10 years now. The percentage has doubled in that time. I see no reason why it can't double again in the next ten years. 40 % of reserves held in gold seems like a reasonable number, a conservative number.
Nations are, says Nieuwenhuijs, "obviously preparing for a multipolar world in which the dollar's role as a reserve asset will be gently reduced."
You can look at all this and describe the process as natural and sensible asset allocation: diversification away from other government currencies, especially the US dollar.
Or you can proclaim that other nations are preparing to abandon the dollar and for a new gold standard. It's probably about 80% former and 20% latter. That may well change - but we are not there yet.
While nations might not be so much abandoning the dollar as they are simply increasing their gold holdings, they, are, however, reducing their holdings of US Treasuries. De-dollarisation and diversification."
https://www.theflyingfrisby.com/p/preparing-for-a-new-economic-era
6. "As we navigate this perilous moment, we should cultivate knowledge about influences of the past, while also being open to the electrifying and often terrifying realities of the present. For as the old cliché goes, history often rhymes but seldom repeats."
https://america2.news/americas-future-in-four-maps/
7. "“Global natives” isn’t yet a mainstream term, but it describes something millions of people are already living. Rather than being defined by where they come from, global natives are shaped by how they view the world and how they move through it. We're a diaspora born not of displacement, but of connection; an emerging group of people untethered from geography, finding home in the overlapping threads of cultures, ideas, and technology.
We belong everywhere and nowhere at once, weaving connections across the world while living on the internet and working across borders. We gather offline in coworking spaces, coliving hubs, and pop-up villages, shaping a world not constrained by the systems of the past, but alive with the possibilities of the present."
https://globalnatives.substack.com/p/what-is-a-global-native-anyway
8. "Indeed, we seem to be veering in the same direction as some conflict and post-conflict societies, where the economy almost always transitions away from long-term to short-term profits. The teacher of English becomes a taxi-driver or a fixer for foreign journalists, the legitimate businessman a smuggler. Notoriously, in Afghanistan farmers moved from cultivating wheat to cultivating poppy, because it was quick to grow and promised big profits, when you could not be sure whether your village would be there, or even if you would be alive, in a year’s time.
It’s not too great a stretch of the imagination to suggest that we are seeing a minor key version of that in the West today. Why, after all, invest in training and education for a job that soon may not exist, in an industry that may simply fold up? Why choose expensive medical training when everything may soon be done by machines? For that matter, why bother to become an expert musician when music will soon be produced completely by machines, and there won’t even be a need for conductors?
As I’ve suggested, the West is increasingly consuming itself, its past and its culture, as much as it is recycling everything that can be sold for a quick profit. But why is this, when it was not so even a few generations ago? If we can answer that question we will also, perhaps, begin to appreciate why it is so hard for modern western culture to understand the mentality of those who think beyond the next five minutes.
Closing factories and reducing R and D spending makes short-term economic sense to those who take the decisions, and among those who don’t take the decisions there is no coherent economic theory to explain why it’s a bad idea, since that requires understanding of the long term, and of the principle of the collective interest. But looting the assets of a company for which you won’t be working in five years’ time is in fact entirely rational behaviour if you accept certain prior assumptions.
As a consequence, western decision-makers and pundits find themselves completely unable to understand what has been going on in, say China, for the last generation, and, where they deign to notice it, they imagine that the negative consequences for the West can be avoided by short-term gimmicks such as sanctions and tariffs. Even when they talk about “rebuilding” this or that capability, usually through tricks such as tax reliefs, it is clear they have no real idea what they are talking about."
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/the-long-run
9. Geopolitics from the view of a commodities tycoon. It's gonna be a rough next decade.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOB899-_y8c&t=1s
10. "Ultimately, it benefits the entrepreneur to zoom in and focus on the use case that both fits their vision and has the potential to build the foundation of a business that matches their ambition. Entrepreneurs would do well to start unbelievably narrow, nail it, and then expand. Starting small is the way to go big."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/02/01/incredibly-narrow-to-start/
11. "Living and working abroad gave me another crucial insight: how difficult it is to build a great business in France. Through my travels and international work, I saw how different regulatory environments, market structures, and competitive dynamics influenced business success. In the U.S. and Asia, scaling up and securing capital often seemed easier. In contrast, successful French companies had to operate in a more challenging environment—making the ones that thrived even more impressive.
This reinforced my belief that great French companies often have something extra: stronger fundamentals, a more disciplined approach, and leadership that knows how to navigate complexity."
https://buildingthingsthatlast.substack.com/p/how-my-journey-shaped-my-investment
12. "What happens when a boomer small business owner wants to retire, but their kids don’t want to take it over? This is as much of a pain point for the aforementioned wealth managers, as it is to my mother, who runs her own medical practice.
For many Plan A is to shut down. So is Plan B.
We believe that over the next ten years, millions of businesses across the world will grapple with generational transfer and the silver tsunami in the coming decade."
https://99tech.alexlazarow.com/p/how-technology-will-power-generational
13. "Mountains were poor, infertile. They would constantly generate a large population surplus they could not really feed. And that population surplus had to find a way to live off the lowlanders somehow. Highlanders would travel down to sell their labor as the agricultural workers, as the builders of Gothic cathedrals, or as the mercenaries of the lowland kings. Highland countries were the mercenary countries."
https://kamilkazani.substack.com/p/on-the-origins-of-napoleon-bonaparte
14. "Just like any act of allocation; you're allocating a finite resource. And your time is a finite resource. So, as a venture investor, you have a finite amount of time and attention that you have to allocate to finding, picking, winning, or supporting. And you can say "I'm just going to be a good Finder," but if that's your approach you better (1) be at a firm with good pickers, winners, and supporters, and (2) be at a firm that is willing to let you just be a good Finder.
You likely can't be the best in the world at Finding, Picking, Winning, AND Supporting. But you won't survive if you're not at least passable at some of them, and you won't succeed in the long-run if you're not exceptional in at least 2-3 of them. That's the Funder's Dilemma."
https://investing101.substack.com/p/the-four-pillars-of-venture-investing
15. One of the best and most detailed teardown of the Deepseek saga. And implications for all the big players and AI in general.
https://www.readtrung.com/p/deepseek-links-and-memes-so-many
16. "It’s also a big part of how we interact with AI systems. The way we think, talk, and use AI today is modeled on our understanding of humans. That’s natural, and even useful, in the initial stages of adopting a new technology—but you could say we’re living in the “horseless carriage” era of AI. What comes next, the enduring applications of AI, will look different. Let’s call them “AI-native.” These capabilities can only emerge when we stop trying to replicate human intelligence, and start exploring what makes AI unique."
https://every.to/learning-curve/the-problem-with-human-like-ai
17. "If you’re serious about giving this whole freedom-of-choice lifestyle a crack, here are the 6 steps I recommend.
1. Leverage the experts. If you can’t be bothered diving deeply into investment theses yourself, subscribe to those who do it for you and learn from their insights. For me, that’s Trader Ferg. I’m also pretty content with junior mining (South America focus) and Ferg’s style of investments, even though it’s a tough market at the moment (for both of those).
2. Learn to sell options. It’s a solid plan and a skill every investor should have in their toolkit.
3. Post on social media. Take it for what it is—it’s not everything, but it does open doors.
4. Choose your base wisely. Pick a low-cost, high-quality-of-life country with attractive women (if you’re a single bloke).
5. Be selective with your network. Don’t waste time with the wrong people or those obsessed with radical ideologies.
6. Start the residency process early. It takes time, so the sooner you get the ball rolling, the better.
Here’s one thing I can’t shake: once you’ve got everything set up, the taxes you’d fork out back home could actually cover your entire cost of living in South America. That’s the real way to get ahead financially!"
https://geologotrader.substack.com/p/a-guide-to-freedom-of-choice-in-south
18. "Historically, I’ve been negative on foundation models as a business because I think when you spend $1B to train a model that is only defensible for a couple of months, that’s not a good use of capital. But I am changing my tune because of Deepseek and other innovations like test time compute. When you can train high performing models in niche areas for much lower prices, it opens up a whole new world of business opportunities.
As the cost gets down to under $1M, expect to see an explosion in foundation models for various niches.
As an investor, you should be prepared to both invest in those foundation models, and the applications that can be built on top of them. The first areas to look are areas with lots of data but lagging in compute skills and infrastructure, but where humans can benefit a lot from access to an expert model. I’m diving into law, tax, healthcare, and insurance initially."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/why-deepseek-will-drive-innovation
19. "So you might say Japan lost the first AI arms race because it wasn’t making arms at all. Japanese researchers were far more interested in “AI for social good” than they were in building weapons. Japan’s lack of a military-industrial complex (or at least one on any scale comparable to that of America or China) isn’t the only reason Japan failed to make a mark on post-ChatGPT AI (yet), but it’s a big factor.
None of this is to say Japan is out of the race for good. But hurdles remain. The country possesses a decided lack of “compute” compared to America and China. Supercomputers are needed to compile generative AI large language models. America and China have more than 150 each, many in the hands of private companies like Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI. Japan has far fewer, and they’re mainly in the hands of governmental or academic institutions."
https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/why-didnt-japan-invent-generative
20. Timely global macro view.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqA77hn1Gx8
21. "Today, I am the personification of imperfections…and I’m ok with that. I was speaking with one of my founders who was largely unaware of some of the things from my past and we opened up with each other about some of our imperfections. Reflecting upon that conversation, it’s clear that it’s our imperfections that make us who we are today. The mistakes we made and the subsequent challenges that each of us had to overcome from those, enabled us to arrive at the point we are at today. We got knocked down, but we got back up…and we keep getting up.
As I think about those that I interact with, that’s all that matters. It doesn’t matter if you are perfect (no one really is)…all that matters is that you keep getting up. The best founders always get back up."
https://newsletter.equal.vc/p/unperfect
22. "I keep on reminding myself, like Ethan Mollick says, AI is the worst it will ever be today."
https://www.sarahtavel.com/p/james-raybould-on-being-ai-forward
23. "So, by pressing relentlessly for tariffs and using the breathing room for companies created by them, McKinley rebuilt the American social contract and much for the better.
Before him, increasingly violent disagreements between labor and capital were spiraling out of control, even leading to gunfights between strikers and enforcers. His sane approach to rapprochement, however, meant that both when he was governor and when he was president, America entered a new period of prosperity in which unimaginably large fortunes were created as the country generally prospered. Meanwhile, the sort of out-of-control labor-capital battles that characterized the pre-McKinley period died down."
https://www.theamericantribune.news/p/mckinleys-tariffs-saved-america-trumps
24. "But for Canada the hard part will not be just the economic mess and uncertainty that it is now faced with. Yes, it will have to craft a strong economic response but it will also have to learn to not complain and finger point, but get to work and develop a long-term plan. It will mean a major overhaul of its economy. This will consist of first and foremost to unleash its natural resources for oil to gas to minerals. With the world’s third largest oil reserves, Canada for instance has the potential to be one of the wealthiest petro-states in the world.
At the same time it will have to finally take a stab at its archaic inner-provincial trade barriers, regulation and cut taxes across the board. Here in British Columbia mining has become next to impossible because of endless consultation processes. Canada has the natural resources, infrastructure and above all the brainpower to become an economic leader, but only if the political will is there. Yes there are environmental aspects and there will be a transition to greener economies over time, but it may take just a bit longer and in parallel Canadas has a very smart tech sector that can and will facilitate this uneasy journey. It will take time and effort though, but if Canada can unleash its real potential Americans will over time be begging to be part of it, again.
How it will all play out right now is hard to say and even smart economic minds have a hard time figuring out exactly the cost on both sides of the Canadian-US border as the relationship is so intricate. It may be part of the Trump mode to sow chaos in order to negotiate a few favourable items and then proclaim a win."
https://pieterdorsman.substack.com/p/trumps-tariffs
25. "There’s truth to the narrative that AI is the new platform & companies that embrace it are rewarded with lower costs of capital."
https://tomtunguz.com/private_valuations_2025/
26. "Tariffs are a powerful tool. They can incentivize desired behaviors and punish undesired behaviors. The mainstream narrative is full of misinformation and fear-mongering. It is always important to read source material, so you can think for yourself.
It was reported this morning that almost half of Canadian companies surveyed“plan to shift more investments and operations to the U.S. to mitigate potential tariffs and maintain market access.” As I have tried to point out in this letter, America’s tariffs will create a black hole that will suck investment dollars and business operations into the United States. If a business does not want to pay the tariffs, they can come build their products in America. If a consumer does not want to pay higher prices for tariffed goods, they can buy American made products.
Tariffs work and the United States is about to go on a big winning streak."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-tariff-era-the-truth
27. "Strategic interdiction focuses on targeting an adversary state’s war-industrial infrastructure, key domestic defense industries, supply chains, strategic transportation nodes, and related assets. Its primary objective is to disrupt the adversary’s military capabilities during deployment and pre-deployment stages, thereby reducing the aggregate war materials available to their forces.
The core logic behind such a campaign is simple: every piece of equipment and war-relevant material that never reaches the frontline is something that does not need to be destroyed there, saving critical manpower and equipment on the Ukrainian side.
To be clear, Ukraine has been pursuing a strategic interdiction campaign for approximately two years now, already achieving important results, such as reducing Russia’s oil refining capacity by an estimated 17 percent by July 2024. However, until now, Ukraine has lacked the ammunition necessary to conduct this type of strategic campaign at a larger scale. Given Ukraine’s drastic ramp-up in domestic missile and drone production and its ambitious goals, the attacks witnessed this week are an encouraging sign that Ukraine’s strategic interdiction campaign may spell more and more trouble for Russia in the months ahead."
https://missilematters.substack.com/p/ukraines-stratedic-interdiction-campaign
28. "This does not mean that missile defense is unnecessary or always a poor investment. The United States absolutely needs stronger missile defense capabilities for both theater deployment and homeland defense. However, pouring resources into strategic missile defense to counter large-scale nuclear attacks is a losing game that diverts funding from other, more pressing priorities.
For instance, in an Asia-Pacific contingency, the U.S. needs a robust missile defense system to counter Chinese cruise and ballistic missiles targeting forward-deployed bases and allies, including short-, medium-, and intermediate-range ballistic missiles. Effectively fulfilling this role requires greater investment in missile defense systems specifically optimized for this mission, including NASAMS, Patriot, Aegis, and THAAD."
https://missilematters.substack.com/p/trumps-missile-defense-plans-not
29. A masterclass on building a business for anyone and everyone. Seriously very helpful. So many insights here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFkR34AMPw8
30. A highly entertaining and insightful conversation on startups and the VC industry at the moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qq4p-Ce5bs&t=3419s
31. Anyone who has been paying attention should not be surprised. The CCP is ramping up their military and we need to treat them seriously.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDcWLm_ltIk&t=1s
32. Harsh wake up call to the realities of Geopolitics for Europe. Important discussion here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pwGRoUbUPg
33. There are so many great insights on work and life from one of the smartest guys on the internet. Seth Godin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhc1sM2NnQY
34. "Global military advantage will depend on the ability to produce military products on a large scale at a competitive price—specifically, drones. The U.S. is not currently capable of this.
Ukraine is the only country in the Western world with a defense-industrial base that can rival China in both capacity and cost structure. Historically, Ukraine has always been a center for military development and component production, MITS Capital notes."
35. Always a good wrap up and discussion on the latest business news. These guys are smart.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6CqyWeFHwM
36. The altruistic Pax Americana is over. Don't like it but here we are. A new world order and way of doing things.
"President Trump is leveraging the might of the American economy to obtain maximum leverage in trade negotiations, and it’s breaking all kinds of ideological paradigms. The president is utilizing raw geopolitical power and taking his patented approach of using publicity as a weapon. As commander in chief, he has preferred to negotiate deals in public (a move interpreted as having high integrity, which has helped shore up his base of support) or strategically deploy details to the media to create pressure or to make the deal look more favorable or urgent.
The president has continued to deploy his “The Art of the Deal” framework in negotiations over Greenland, Panama, Ukraine, and now, even Gaza, aiming to maximize his position for what he believes is the best possible outcome for the United States. He is throwing the corporate media and his political opponents in a constant state of madness, as they are seemingly unable or unwilling to explain and understand his negotiating style and strategy."
https://www.dossier.today/p/the-art-of-the-deal-trump-defies
The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: An Historical Inspiration
I was a child of the 80s and 90s and anyone growing up fell in love with the character of Indiana Jones. But outside of the movies there was an incredible tv series done by Steven Spielberg in 1992 which chronicles his adventures during his childhood and young adulthood.
This is a great description:
"The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones" takes a young version of the popular character on a journey through the early 20th century where he learns about some of the most important historical events of the era.
Young Indy meets historical figures, including Ernest Hemingway, Ho Chi Minh, Eliot Ness, Louis Armstrong, Pablo Picasso and Winston Churchill. Traveling from the game reserves of Kenya to the bohemian streets of Paris and the Great Wall of China, these are the adventures that shape Indy's future as one of cinema's greatest heroes.”
Traveling the world to some of the most exotic places in the world, even fighting in World War 1 as a soldier and spy, he meets famous historical figures that we all know about, he learns lessons in life and love. One of Indie’s quotes from “The Raiders of the Lost Ark”: “It’s not the years, honey. It’s the mileage.” We begin to understand how he becomes the character and adventurer we all know and enjoy in the movies. Indie says: “I’m not sure why, but I’ve always wanted to see what was out there over the next hill. I like exploring.”
It was an amazing snapshot of history at that time and really gave a glimpse of what the world looked like outside of my dull lower middle class Canadian suburban life. It opened my eyes to how big the world really is. And it really made history come alive to me.
Between my trip to Japan and England the show awakened in me a tremendous eagerness to travel and explore the world. Reading about the financial investing greats like Jim Rogers provided me the roadmap to do this in the late 90s. A unique time of globalization in our world.
If you have not seen the show it’s on Disney+ and it’s worth watching. There are universal life lessons in there and may awaken your sense of adventure as well. Or at least start to understand the grand sweep of history and the 20th century ended up the way it did.
Don’t Go to Davos: There is an Expiration Date for Everything
For those of us active on social media, it’s been incredible seeing the flurry of pictures and such all over social media bragging about being at Davos. Flexing. Yet it’s funny that it turns into a counter indicator. You think you are showing how connected and cool and awesome you are. All I see are a bunch of clueless & out of touch “mids”. This was very clear in 2025 with the empty rooms there. Davos used to be relevant prior to 2020 but so much has changed since then.
The WEF Davos event has gone the way of The Summit Series, SXSW, TED and Forbes 30 under 30 for tech people. Some would even argue Burning Man is one of these events that is past due. Super relevant and cool a long time ago. Now out of touch and soon to be buried in the past, taken over and inhabited by only the laggards and grifters. Or maybe just mainstream and thus not COOL or leading edge anymore.
Everything has a season. Everything has an expiration date. Countries. Companies. Even people. I saw a very relevant tweet from Dare Obasanjo:
“Startups tend to have 3 generations of employees
1. The 1st batch: A random mix of talented and mediocre people.
2. The pioneers: The nights and weekends crew who believe in the mission.
3. The settlers: The 9 to 5 crew who are attracted by the success the pioneers created.”
At the 3rd stage things start to go down fast. I saw this in Yahoo! The people who joined from 2009 onwards were pretty crap. You could argue Google started to go downhill 9 years ago and we are seeing the bloat really impact the business in 2020. Even formerly dominant VC funds prior to 2020 are now sucking wind badly.
What was a positive indicator before can quickly turn into a highly negative signal. The point of this is not to just bag on Davos and other Silicon Valley events and phenomena. The point I am making is that things change so quickly now, consumer behavior, cycles turn fast.
Jumping on trends is dangerous especially when it is at peak cool. The secret is doing something or joining something when it is not cool or known. Easier said than done. But the alpha is in doing something uncool which will become cool.
Your Gift Is Also Your Curse: The Duality of Life
I admire the creator Chris Do and had the fortune of hearing him talk at my friend Eric Siu’s awesome Leveling Up event. I also recently heard a podcast with him and Eric as they explored his career and his rise. He calls himself his Number 1 fan. That if you are not secure with yourself and truly love and comfortable with yourself, success and fame will be detrimental to you. It rings true.
I’ve written many times about my Asian immigrant childhood. It was tough but my parents really did their best and clearly loved us. My mother gave up her career and stayed at home to raise us while my father worked to support us. And he worked like a demon. And it was tough for them financially as well as having to take care of two young boys, soon joined by a third on one income in a place where we had no other family around.
My mom was especially tough on me as she had very high expectations of me as I was the eldest. I grew up being told I had to be the best, I had to work hard, I had to get good grades, I had to be well behaved. I never met expectations and thus as a young child and young adult I was continuously told by her that I “shamed the family.”
This created an absolutely insatiable work ethic, plus a deep desire to become immensely rich and successful. And also a need to explore the world and live on my own terms. Independence. This has driven a big part of my life. And allowed me to accomplish quite a lot in my career. Doing all that I do in the tech business world. I have high standards and unforgiving of mistakes, especially ones I make. I am incapable of enjoying anything unless I feel I have done the hard work and earned it.
However, on the other side of the coin, it has caused me tremendous harm. I take criticism very hard. Apologizing is excruciating which has been so damaging to personal relationships. I also tend to be overly individualistic. I literally trust almost no one. I tend to hold long term grudges and vendettas.
I admit I am emotionally stunted and lean on my incandescent rage so I don’t have to face the deep sadness inside. There are many days I realize I hate myself for this weakness because of all the stupid small traumas as a young impressionable child. Never feeling like I am enough. Constant dissatisfaction.
Thankfully, I am able to channel it to external milestones of success and it forces me to move and look forward.
Nothing is 100% good or bad. It’s how you use it.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads February 23rd, 2025
"The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision”--Helen Keller
A wake up call for all Americans. We have so much work to do as we are completely behind on many important tech sectors like EVs, Drones, robots & manufacturing due to bureaucracy & regulations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqeI7iViRmE
2. "Remember the formula for success: 10% reading 90% action. If you spent 1 hour reading, spend 9 hours applying it.
Most do the opposite – 90% reading and 10% action. Those are people who slowly become weirdos – the dad bod guys making $150k a year or less but think they’re the shit while coming up with all sots of excuses to justify their delusions (“It’s because I live in X country” in the internet age)."
https://lifemathmoney.com/how-i-know-someone-will-make-it/
3. "Ultimately, without security, everything else is meaningless. And without a strong economy, Europe cannot rebuild the strength needed to guarantee its security. The priority list, therefore, should be clear: we invest in security so that we have the luxury to focus on everything else."
https://missilematters.substack.com/p/europes-last-chance
4. "Yet edible seaweed, which is commonly red or brown algae and includes a variety of subsets, such as kelp, hasn’t quite caught on in the US.
Even with more stores stocking seaweed snacks and salads, the vast majority of seaweed is produced in Asia and imported overseas. US companies produce a mere ~.01% of the world’s seaweed, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, trailing smaller countries like North Korea and the Philippines by a wide margin.
But American startups are racing to catch up, expanding beyond traditional seaweed products into everything from supplements to seaweed-based livestock feed that studies show could reduce methane emissions from cows.
Will seaweed become a dominant new ingredient, or be permanently relegated to side dish status?"
https://thehustle.co/originals/is-seaweed-the-next-kale
5. Basically we are in big doo doo if we don't get our act together. Strong alliance of CRINK stepping up against us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYaZPEjU79s
6. "As we move into the prime twenty-twenties, aesthetic distinctions have returned and displaced brand. Once again, we are acknowledging the social meaning embedded in how we look. These aesthetic distinctions are grounded in value judgments. For boom boom that means embracing the codes of formality, hierarchy, and tradition.
Inevitably, many find this intolerably regressive."
https://www.8ball.report/p/the-globalization-aesthetic
7. "The United States was once the arsenal of democracy. Today it is the arsenal of bureaucracy, with an army of federal civilians making it difficult for American companies to sell to willing buyers. To wit, it took the State Department and the Pentagon nearly 30 months to finalize a sale of Harpoon anti-ship missiles to Taiwan. Though upgraded in recent years, the Harpoon has been in service since the 1980s. It is not a new system, and Taiwan is the nexus of our Pacific deterrence.
We have a unique opportunity for American workers and innovation to be fueled by investment from our friends, strengthening both our economy and national security. This process should be simple. It isn’t. The haft of the arrow in America’s side was feathered from our plume.
Moreover, the past three decades of obsessive consolidating and regulating and subsidizing has undercut the core element of the new Administration’s foreign policy and national security.
Trump has rightly emphasized deterrence, a concept that escaped the outgoing president and his team. Deterrence is a simple framework and does not require a mountain of PhDs to grasp. It means, in plain terms, terrifying adversaries with a combination of iron forged national will and fearsome weapons to lend that patriotic resolve credibility."
https://blog.joelonsdale.com/p/america-needs-better-defense-acquisition
8. "AIs are something new. They are highly compressed models of the information available on the network. This attribute allows them to do nearly everything search and social networking automation currently does and so much more. It’s also why AI is rapidly eating the UI for search (Perplexity, etc.) and social (TikTok is an example of a highly evolved version of this).
Most of the advanced jobs that AIs (both virtual and robotic) will fill will be jobs that currently don’t exist. The household maid or cook for a middle-class family or the personal security guard, tutor, or companion/in-home support (from children to the elderly). Not only will there be vastly more work done, but the pace of everything will also increase."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/the-social-ui
9. We have always been in an age of the great man. Wide ranging conversation on how elites drive civilization forward or make it fail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6k-eFlkIsS0
10. This is a thought provoking and wide ranging conversation. Important discussion on many technological and cultural developments right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHWnPOKh_S0&t=10080s
11. "Let’s put it all together. A dollar, yuan, and yen are interchangeable in the global financial markets. They all find their way into US big tech stocks in some shape or form. You may not like it, but it's true. I just stepped through why, at least in the very short term, the US, China, and Japan are not increasing the pace of fiat money creation and in some cases, are raising the price of money.
Inflation is still elevated and likely to go higher in the near future as the world decouples economically. This is why I expect 10-year yields to rise. What will stocks do if they are rising because of fears of inflation and a large and quickly growing pile of US debt with no marginal buyers in sight? They will dump."
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/the-ugly
12. The reality of Cyber warfare. Scary but not a knockout strike.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tifAF65rBcY
13. Japanese Ryokan is one of the best experiences one can have.
https://www.afar.com/magazine/japanese-ryokan-what-it-is-and-what-to-expect
14. A masterclass on the art of venture investing. Gurley has forgotten more than most VCs know about the business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PkWc-IDTHk
15. "$300,000 has become the new baseline for what $100,000 once represented.
Build Passive Income: Once you build one successful business, you can build other small ones. The typical millionaire has around 5-7 income streams. The mainstream loves to psyop you into believing that 90% of businesses fail. Even if true, they don’t teach you that you’ve developed valuable scalable and irreplaceable skills. Once you’ve developed a skill for earning, it’ll translate quickly if you start a new idea or if you buy a company that you *know* is run incorrectly.
In the end, life is just a game of probabilities. We try to look for the highest probability answer at all times. Notice. That does not say a “guarantee”. It says probability. If you’re making the right probability based decisions, eventually lady luck shows up and hands you the gold at the end of the rainbow."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/300000-a-year-is-the-new-100000-a
16. This is a good conversation on the situation of the Russian military versus the Ukrainian military going into 2025. Lessons from the last 3 years of the conflict.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj6oiILlJrY
17. Great teardown on Deepseek by the NIA boys.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2UKOUBIIiY
18. Really insightful conversation on Deepseek and what’s up on AI & Chips. Big implications for all tech players.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P6CUIPrrtU
19. "Satya Nadella has described a future where this business logic migrates to an AI layer, transforming the role of traditional SaaS apps. Now, AI agents serve as intelligent orchestrators, integrating multiple platforms and consolidating various workflows, decision-making and automation into a tier of AI.
Essentially, this means that SaaS applications are looking to revert to their most primal form of simple databases. At the same time, the AI layer takes the part of “intelligence”, organising and elaborating processes without being bound to a singular backend. Consequently, SaaS tools will become domain-specific enablers, losing their standalone prominence as the brain of business systems and transitioning fully to AI.
We are entering an era of integrated platforms where AI drives innovation. More and more businesses expect seamless integration across tools, as siloed solutions generate inefficiencies, fragmented data, and disconnected workflows."
20. 10 TYPES OF PEOPLE YOU SHOULD IGNORE
https://lifemathmoney.com/10-types-of-people-you-should-ignore/
21. "Logistics is what made the great captains of history great. Those early empires were possible because the great captains who led them understood how to sustain the long campaigns necessary to build and maintain them. At the operational and strategic levels of war, success is made possible by the purposeful synchronization of logistics.
That's proven true throughout history — when you address the art of war, concepts like reach and culmination are inherently tied to logistics. So, when we shortcut logistics — the resources that fuel military strategy — we handicap our ability to achieve our desired goals."
https://mickryan.substack.com/p/military-logistics-in-the-21st-century
22. "Interesting to wake up to an FT report saying that Europe is considering a return to Russian gas supply as part of a Ukraine peace deal.
God give me strength, surely Europe, and the EU particularly cannot be this stupid.
Let’s just rewind 3.5 years to mid 2021 and after years of appeasement and selling out to Russia, Europe has found itself hugely over dependent on Russian gas and energy supply and then subject to blatant blackmail by Putin’s regime turning off the gas taps, creating an energy crisis in Europe to blackmail Europe over Ukraine."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/is-europe-really-this-stupid
23. "The fate of Taiwan will basically determine the future of Chinese naval power. There is no island so well placed either to protect the vast majority of Chinese naval and air bases (to say nothing of naval production facilities), or correspondingly to represent a constant challenge to the Chinese Navy’s ability to deploy force in this vital area."
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/taiwan-is-strategic-and-its-fate
24. "The startup ecosystem purge continues. As mentioned above, I think the cleanse that started in 2024 will continue into 2025. In many ways, startup investing is like playing craps. You play for a long time, accumulate bets on the table, and either win slowly as different bets pay off at different times – or lose a lot all at once when the shooter rolls a seven.
Personally, I’ve never had more angel investments sell, cease operations, or return money than I have had in the past 12 months. There are two opposing forces in play: cash reserves and exit multiples. I think that many startups have strategically decided to sell, but don’t want to start a process in what’s clearly a buyer’s market. Look at these feeble M&A-specific exit multiples from Aventis."
https://kellblog.com/2025/01/29/kellblog-predictions-for-2025/
25. "Moving by leaving nearly everything behind may seem like a drastic step, but ultimately it was what set us free from all of the things holding us back. We learned what we needed to live and what we could live without. We are going to give it a month. We will go back slowly and take whatever we need in that month and then we will donate or discard everything else. Ultimately, this move taught us something. Sometimes the best way forward is to leave things behind. From now on, we are adding, not subtracting."
https://debliu.substack.com/p/adding-not-subtracting-what-leaving
26. "There is a moderate amount of research on athletes’ long term outcomes, and I think it’s a model we ought to be looking at more as AI progresses. For decades, the 33-year-old soccer player has had to grapple with the knowledge that the skills that were central to both his prosperity and identity no longer apply. In the years to come, the 55-year-old accountant or lawyer may be struck with the same realization.
That 33-year-old athlete has built up a set of skills and habits — fitness, discipline, fame, and connections — and (with the development of non-soccer skills) can deploy them to his advantage. Similarly, that 55-year-old accountant has a base of skills and habits that she can use to her advantage even if her ability with that one specific accounting technique is no longer a highly valued skill.
This is something we ought to talk about more and get ahead of."
https://mikegreenfield.substack.com/p/re-sorting-and-adaptability
27. "What I’m questing after, instead, is an idea with power. That new framework that helps us see a relationship we’d previously missed. The essay that says something new about our experience in this moment.
That work doesn’t come from busyness. It comes from open thought. From long walks. From space to breathe.
Now is not the time to stop pushing. But maybe I need to redefine, a little, what pushing looks like. I think it turns out that amid the acceleration we’re living through — in what may be the last days of the Before Times — the most important variable of all is thinking time.
If I’m to do my best work, I need to find more of it."
https://www.newworldsamehumans.xyz/p/thinking-time
28. "Argentina had seen this cycle before — crisis followed by recovery, only to slip back again. But today, there are real signs of change. Inflation, once out of control, is finally slowing. The stock market has surged, reflecting renewed investor interest. And while challenges remain, the country is moving in a direction that, for once, feels different.
Fifteen years ago, I left Argentina wondering if it would ever escape its economic rollercoaster. Today, I’m starting to believe that maybe — just maybe — this time, the country is on the right path."
https://www.markmobius.com/news-events/then-vs-now-argentina
29. Demographics is destiny and this has huge impacts on Chinese real estate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2AJvCPcNUE
30. "Questions were asked about how much a Ukrainian defence tech company could scale just in Ukraine. Artem pointed out that the production capacity of some defence related technologies is greater than the national budget for defence, so it is likely that in the future the government will lift the existing restriction on exports.
This would open up international markets to Ukrainian defence tech startups that have battle-proven technologies. An investor in the audience pointed out that we should not be concerned now about foreign markets, as that will develop naturally after the war."
https://www.resiliencemedia.co/p/what-we-learned-from-ukraines-brave1
31. "It’s important to note that the results of these force-on-force exercises cannot be replicated through virtual / constructive exercises such as table-top exercises and wargaming. Only by actually stressing the systems can we truly determine what will be successful.
So, as the DoD faces the opportunity to shape its future, we need to ensure that we maintain a certain amount of optionality and that we actively experiment and test innovations to see which will likely yield the greatest results."
https://buildingourfuture.substack.com/p/techno-military-optionality-ensuring
32. "Super Bowl ads are a proxy for the addiction economy, as advertisers for the food industrial complex, beer and alcohol brands, online gambling, crypto, and social media platforms offer you dopa on demand. But there’s a downside to gorging, no? Not to worry, there will also be ads from the medical-pharma industrial complex for products that manage (some of) the damage. Pundits claim we live in an “attention economy.” We don’t. Attention is just a metric for addiction. The addiction economy is broader, encompassing media, technology, alcohol, tobacco, gaming, pharma, and health care.
The Spice
The world’s most valuable resource isn’t data, compute, oil, or rare earth metals; it’s dopa, i.e., the fuel of the addiction economy, which runs the most valuable companies in history. Addiction has always been a component of capitalism — nothing rivals the power of craving to manufacture demand and support irrational margins. Sugar and rum were the dopa-delivery systems and currency of the Triangle Trade. Later, the British East India Company was the Sinaloa Cartel of the 19th century, producing and distributing a product China became addicted to: opium. At its peak in the last century, Big Tobacco acquired customers with TV ads and endorsements from doctors, but the addictive ingredient, nicotine, is how the industry extracts $86k to $195k per customer — and costs those customers $1 million to $2 million in expenditures, opportunity costs, and health-care expenses.
Historically, the most valuable companies turn dopa into consumption. Over the last 100 years, 15 of the top 30 companies by cumulative compound return have been pillars of the addiction economy. The compounders cluster in tobacco (Altria +265,528,900%), the food industrial complex (Coca-Cola +12,372,265%), pharma (Wyeth +5,702,341%), and retailers (Kroger +2,834,362%) that sell both substances and treatments. To predict which companies will be the top compounders over the next century, consider this: Eight of the world’s 10 most valuable businesses turn dopa into attention, or make picks and shovels for these dopa merchants."
https://www.profgalloway.com/addiction-economy
33. Good overview and teardown of the UAE military. Punching above its weight with hired foreign soldiers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fpuQOB0_j8
34. Great episode this week. Lots of discussion to understand what is happening with AI and autonomous driving.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RkgkOqWs0s
35. For anyone who is interested in what’s happening in Silicon Valley and the technology industry writ large.
Do You Want to Be Right or Do you Want to Win: Why Academics Suck at Business
I’ve learned a few things after being in the tech industry since 1999, as an operator in startups and big tech, a venture capitalist and since then as a business owner and a general investor. It’s 2025 and the gap between theory and practicality is wider than it has ever been.
I actually grew up in an academic household. Academia is a world where being right and having the right answer is important. With a big focus on getting the right answer. Credentials and degrees matter. Doubly important in an Asian immigrant family that lives by unspoken Confucian values of scholars and seniority being at the top. And the longer you stay in academia, the harder it is to shake these broken beliefs.
But sadly in a time of great change and practical sphere like business these are incredibly dangerous cultural traits. And it’s taken me a lifetime to unwind some of the impractical ideas and culture of an academic upbringing.
In business, the market is dynamic, good ideas can come from anywhere, experts are usually wrong and credentials are not valued. That is why the best business leaders are curious and inquisitive and understand they don’t always have the answer. They solicit feedback and at the same time are decisive and take action. This is a world where questions are more important.
When I first started doing media sales at Yahoo! It was a great wake up call. It doesn’t matter what theories or how great you think your ideas are, the question is do you close the deal and get the money. It’s pretty black and white. You hit your quarter or you don’t. The client buys your product or they don’t. The feedback loop is pretty fast and strong. And if you want to get good you listen quickly and adapt your strategy and tactics accordingly. Or else you don’t hit your number. The most important part of sales is asking questions, not talking.
I’ve learned to distrust good students. All that you have shown me if you get straight As in school or go to a top tier school is that you have a high IQ and probably also know how to follow orders. You will probably make a good lieutenant. But that’s about it.
I don’t know anything about your work ethic and whether you have common sense. Give me someone PSD: Poor Smart with Deep desire to get rich anytime and day. I’d take that over a PhD anyday. And don’t get me started about MBAs which are only useful if you want to get into corporate America, Investment Banking/PE and Consulting. They are totally useless for startups.
Universities and colleges are failing young people. They have become leftist woke madrassas that are teaching young people broken ideologies and stupid ideas instead of debate and critical thinking. Peter Thiel was far ahead of our times by his Thiel Fellowship program that paid young smart students to drop out of University and start companies. The only exceptions for academics are in Deep-tech and Biotech, you kind of need to have that strong research and literal deep knowledge of the sector (energy, quantum, biology, chemical or material sciences).
So if you want to thrive in the business world, learn to question everything and learn to ask good questions. Yes, answers are important, but asking questions is even more important when you are starting. Codie Sanchez says: “The ones who collect the most knowledge have the most unfair advantage.”
Explore The Pain: Pain Leads to the Truth
Have you ever had a situation that absolutely enrages you? A customer email or feedback? Something one of your followers on social media comments on? Something a trusted investor or family member or friend says to you?
This thought came to me after a particularly rough family therapy session. I was far more angry & sad than normal. It wrecked me for about a week. But as I tried to face it, and pondered on it, it turned out to be the breakthrough I needed. When you hear or read something that angers you, there is usually some kernel of truth in it. It’s the path to revelation and insight. Maybe even enlightenment.
We tend to be good at looking coldly at other people’s problems and situations, because we are not fully in it. But when it’s directed at us, we get so trapped in our emotions or in the hit to our ego or maybe it reflects something we hate or want to avoid.
It’s just so much easier to bury it and move on. Ignore the problem. Blame the messenger or the situation. Call them A–holes. Unfortunately this just kicks the can down the road. And is another excuse to avoid facing the truth. If you don’t face the reality you cannot take steps to deal with it. And it just gets worse and harder to fix.
This is why it’s important to have trusted advisors, friends and even community. True friends stab you in the front. You need to get called out on your own bull sh-t, arrogance or stupidity sometimes. NO one is perfect. In fact, we’re all pretty messed up and flawed in some form or other.
So next time something makes you particularly angry. Wallow and explore this feeling, be honest about what it signifies and whether they may be right. Maybe they are. And if so, you can make things right.
You Will Always Have Problems: A Hard Fact of Life
I remember when I was 22, leaving Canada, I had so much certainty about the future and that it would definitely be bright. And I had an infinite amount of opportunities. I just had to go out and get it. I will have to say I was lucky to be a kid going out to the world at the peak of globalization.
However, I think like many young people, I made the mistake of attaching happiness to “when.”
In our materialistic and goal driven world it’s easy to internalize these scripts. “When I get that job, I will be successful. When I get married I will be happy. When I make a million dollars everything will be okay.”
When you are young and even when you are old, you think that life gets easier. That by the time you are 30 or 40 or even 50 that you will have figured it out.
Well now past 50, I can report back. It never gets easier and I don’t think you ever have it figured out. Life is complicated and situations change rapidly. I spent most of my 20s and 30s with the assurance that my home and family were secure, being fully focused on my career and on making money. I took them for granted. And the irony is that once I figured out the money and career stuff, my family stuff was broken.
I lived the Navalism: “‘Money will solve your money problems” but not your other arguably more important problems. I know many other much more successful individuals who suffer the same situation. Or maybe even worse, have all the material things in the world but no health. Or no health or love in their life. Self inflicted too.
There will always be problems in your life. There will always be difficulties. Everyone has them. It's a universal trait of Human life. In this century or the last one. Whether you are rich or poor. And especially if you are trying to accomplish anything at all.
But we are wired for challenges. It’s just how we perceive them. Are they insurmountable? Do we believe it’s supposed to be easy? Is it worth trying to figure out and work out?
It’s how you attack them. Do you just whine and suffer? I do this a bit sometimes as it’s easy to get down. But then I just get back up and get going again. I consistently work on myself and do what is needed. The hard things that are good for me.
Knowing that I follow the Seinfeld Strategy, James Clear does a good job describing it here: https://jamesclear.com/stop-procrastinating-seinfeld-strategy. I have a “to do list” of things in all aspects of my life: business, family, health, learning/knowledge and tick it off on the calendar (or I use Upcoach.com which is really good) and make a chain. I do it everyday and I don’t break the chain. That’s it. I focus on the process and less on the outcome. I have faith that the situation will get better. I have to have faith, otherwise what’s the point?
The easy life is a dangerous illusion and what gets most of us people in trouble. There is no easy life and we should be grateful, as otherwise we will never grow in life.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads February 16th, 2025
“A good half of the art of living is resilience.” ― Alain de Botton
More oil and geopolitics, focused on Venezuela.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYnYZF1fnz0
2. "Just a few years ago, there were few regions of the world that seemed as dysfunctional as the Middle East. Some Middle Eastern countries had oil wealth, but overall living standards were mediocre and pretty stagnant, and there was little domestic technology or competitive industry to speak of. Authoritarianism was everywhere, and strict religious values had produced persistent social inequalities.
And most importantly, the whole region was mired in a seemingly intractable morass of wars. The conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and elsewhere claimed millions of lives, and displaced more millions. Dictators, rebels, religious zealots, and proxy militias sent by great powers and regional powers alike battled it out on the bloody sands for decades.
And yet when I look at the Middle East today, I’m strangely hopeful. I don’t know if the region is primed for global ascendance the way Europe was in the mid-1600s, but I anticipate significantly better days ahead, for a number of reasons. The most important are the decline of war and the green energy transition, while the demographic transition will also be helpful.
Half a century from now, the desert may bloom, and the region may be a powerhouse of green energy, industry, and software, rather than the playground of oil sheikhs, warlords, and hyper-religious madmen. I know it’s a bold prediction, but stranger things have happened."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-im-long-term-bullish-on-the-middle
3. "Climate tech is now mainstream. The phrase “climate tech” evolved from differentiating the 2019ish-onward wave of climate and clean energy startups from the earlier Cleantech 1.0 batch to a category that represents a global ecosystem of founders, investors, corporations, conferences, coworking spaces, and non-profits. The market forces we sought arrived.
Meanwhile AI has made quick progress. We’ve moved from LLMs to apps and robots. AI accelerated climate tech startups in weather forecasting, wildfire detection, energy efficiency, grid response, route optimization, robot manipulation, and protein discovery to name a few areas.
AI has supercharged other industries too. Legal, accounting, bookkeeping, and tax services are being fueled by or replaced by AI apps. In education, two-year-olds are learning to read, and five-year-olds are speed-running 5th grade math.
The SaaS stalwarts of productivity, fintech, marketing, and e-comm are undergoing massive shifts. Not to mention how AI makes robots highly intelligent, and sometimes scary too. AI will permeate every tech sector."
https://thebreeze.substack.com/p/the-breeze-beyond-climate-tech
4. "So Putin will not stop at a Yalta 2, but he wants total victory against the West.
What Trump does not realise is that unless any peace deal makes Ukraine secure from future attack, Putin will inevitably use that as an excuse for future military invasions. That reality, that Putin will not stop there, and the insecurity a likely bad peace will inevitably bestow on Ukraine, means that Ukraine will not see the required investment needed to ensure its successful economic development. And without successful economic development - the risk is of a repeat of the 22 years of failed economic development between 1991 and 2013 where Ukraine was stuck between East and West with no proper anchor, and hence it will be subject to social and political instability.
Ask yourself why Ukraine suffered two revolutions in 2004/05 and then again in 2014. History will surely repeat itself as millions of soldiers and migrants return to disappointment - and future social and political instability will be exploited by Putin either seeking to capture politics in Ukraine or an excuse for future invasions."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/europe-needs-a-plan-b-and-c-on-trump
5. "A dozen new funds ranging from $30M to $350M. Two that I'll call out, not just because I know them personally, but because aspects of their strategy directly articulate aspects of the Great Unbundling taking place in venture.
First? Chemistry Ventures started by Mark Goldberg of Index, Kristina Shen of a16z, and Ethan Kurzweil of Bessemer. In a blog post from October 2024, the new firm articulated their manifesto:
We will "out-hustle the legacy firms that have grown distracted by scale."
Second? Hanabi Capital started by Mike Volpi, Bryan Offutt, and Ishani Thakur from Index. In a piece from Bloomberg breaking the news about the new fund, they shared that Hanabi is "investing Volpi’s personal money as well as funds from his friends and family." I've written before about firms kicking against the pricks of managing outside money and, instead, managing their own money.
The combination of an emphasis on leanness and increasing attention paid to whose money is being managed all represent a common counterpositioning: these investors don't want to be asset managers; they want to be adventure capitalists."
https://investing101.substack.com/p/venture-capital-unbundled
6. "In other words, Xi is making the Chinese economy look a little bit more like the old Soviet one, where production was determined by plans instead of by the market. He’s using banks and industrial policy to tell Chinese companies to build a bunch of specific high-tech manufactured products, and they’re doing what he’s telling them to.
Why did this approach fail in the USSR? Ultimately, it was because Soviet manufacturers were inefficient — they made a bunch of stuff, but they produced it at a loss. That was unsustainable.
Chinese factories are a lot better than Soviet ones were. But if you tell enough different manufacturers to all produce the same stuff at the same time, they’re going to compete with each other, and their profits will mostly fall, and they’ll start taking big losses.
In fact, we can already see this starting to happen in China.
Exporting your way out of a recession is fine and good — it’s basically how Germany and South Korea shrugged off the Great Recession in the early 2010s.3 But China’s export boom is heavily subsidized, both with explicit government subsidies, and — more importantly — with ultra-cheap abundant bank loans. Subsidies are distortionary — they mean that China is making the cars that Germany and Thailand and Indonesia and other countries would be making for themselves if markets were allowed to operate freely. By subsidizing exports on such a massive scale, China is distorting the whole global economy."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-pettis-paradigm-and-the-second
7. "Here’s the brutal truth.
If you can’t carve a 60 minute block out of your day to work on a project that acts as a stepping stone toward your ideal future, where do you think your life will end up?
On the other end of the spectrum, routines free up mental space to be creative. That’s the secret of most successful people.
They create routines that:
Move the needle toward their ideal future
Reduce the cognitive load of repetitive tasks
Allow their mind enough breathing room to think outside of their survival needs (and toward their actualization needs)
But most people don’t see that creative potential because they are living in the past or future. Worried about the work or arguments they’re going to have. Since they’re in this perpetual state of stress and worry, their mind is narrow, and they numb that pain with quick pleasures."
https://thedankoe.com/letters/how-60-minutes-a-day-can-change-your-life/
8. So much wisdom here from Sahil Bloom. Really good stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC3LWGnhMyI
9. Super impressive city landscapes here by drone. Chongqing. I can't seem to get enough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNHz8SSA95o
10. Man is selling his own book of course & obviously pro-China.
China is open for business especially if you are from the Global South.
Good to get an alternative view of the Chinese market. Still wouldn't advise doing business in China if you are from the West.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjEJm8AosWc&t=404s
11. Quiet family dynasty building an arms empire over 500 years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDRkEnJi5gU
12. Some real sober and non-groupthink view on geopolitics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnDEDhYhkbM
13. "But this size discrepancy doesn’t change the importance of this huge land mass. That’s why Donald Trump is so interested in forming a tight bond with this autonomous territory of Denmark.
In addition to hosting the United State’s northern most military base (Pituffik Space Base), the United States wants Greenland for two more huge reasons: resources and location."
https://codyshirk.com/us-wants-greenlands-rare-earth/
14. An insight dense discussion with two OGs of the tech industry.
The world has changed. Thought leadership to so much change now that you have to be thought follower.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqGXFDw_JQ8
15. "TLDR: with the median SaaS company trading at 3.7x Price/Sales but growing 20%+ and profitable with an operating margin of 15% despite the massive tailwinds in Japan, I believe we can find attractive opportunities in this bucket.
Japanese software is potentially in an enviable position because of the structural barriers for foreign players that have deterred them from entering thus far. The unique differences in: needs among Japanese Corporates; GTM strategy; labor-intensive sales; lack of brand awareness have meant there’s been limited success by foreign software bizes to gain meaningful presence as a whole. (“Constellation Software? Who the hell is that?”)
The only noticeable ones IMO has been generally the majors i.e. the Public Clouds, Microsoft, SAP, SalesForce, and a handful of others. There are also uniquely Japanese pain points that Japanese SaaS companies try to solve which foreign companies simply don’t have an answer for. SanSan for example initially started with their solution to read information from a physical business card onto a company’s digital database. If this sounds odd, in Japan we don’t do LinkedIn, we generally still exchange physical business cards (surprise!).
Unique market structures in certain verticals like for CYND for instance, will also mean that there is literally 0 incentive for global companies to adapt as the market opportunity may not be large enough at their scale to make such costly adaptations. Needless to say, Japan is a HUGE market with meaningful white space left, even if some global majors do succeed, I think there will be plenty of space left for local players to shine.
As a foreign investor, you may be somewhat reluctant to look into these companies because you don’t understand the local market. To that, I say don’t be! One significant advantage you have over local investors is that you have an incredible resource/knowledge library namely all the major SaaS companies that exist in the English-speaking world. This not only applies to software but there are certain industries abroad that are simply more developed and mature versus the equivalent in Japan. Through this you can figure out: potentially relevant market risks, a better idea on long-term unit economics, product competitiveness, etc. My friend calls this the ‘time machine principle’. I would not underestimate this advantage."
https://madeinjapan.substack.com/p/why-i-think-japanese-saas-is-undervalued
16. Peter is a China bear. But systems last longer than people expect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kI5onbXSByc
17. The art and science of doing venture capital. This was a very insightful conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wjEcMsrpJ0
18. Overview of the geopolitics of Latin America. Leftists in office for many places & deep malign CCP influence. Monroe Doctrine will be coming back into the fore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWRJi3PlZ2A
19. Good background on the Trump discussions on Greenland. Very strategic for America.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF4rZqLlESY
20. "The mega trends don’t really change and the thesis here is still the same: The most dangerous place you can be is in the middle of the herd.
Playing it safe in a career definitely feels comfortable but the higher ups are already using AI tools/software to get rid of the middle as fast as possible. That’s the vast majority of white collar 6-figure paychecks.
It’s what society has conditioned you to do: “Stick to the plan. Follow the rules. You’ll be rewarded.”
Unfortunately, this no longer works in the 2020s. The boomers who told you to get a stable job for 40 years and retire didn’t adapt to the new economic reality: Equity Owners or nothing.
If everyone is doing it, there is no real upside. No different from investing in something that everyone already knows about. While investing in something like the S&P likely goes up long-term, it’s not going to result in exiting the middle.
People will congratulate you on the small promotions at work but it’s just another step towards being stuck. When everyone is doing the same thing, the returns shrink, the competition intensifies, and the risks multiply.
With globalization, automation, and cost-cutting, wages have stagnated while housing, healthcare, and education costs have skyrocketed. Playing it safe in this environment is like staying in a boat that’s slowly sinking."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/trump-initial-change-and-why-corporate
21. Net net: USA needs to reindustrialize ASAP. More industrial policy is coming to America.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxSVDZGfGIU
22. Good conversation on East Asian geopolitics. Noah Smith is always entertaining.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecD8IaRd_VU&t=2s
23. Watch this show if you want to get a sense of the craziness in Crypto and the tech space. Always topical conversations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsW9F0WXBcA
24. "Whether there is war anywhere on the planet or not doesn't mean that we don't need armed forces. So if you want to keep peace, you have to be armed and prepared.These defence technology companies, they do not become unnecessary as the war ends. Arguably the demand might go down, at least the demand from the Ukrainian procurement. But what we're seeing, talking with our international friends and counterparts, is that over these few years Ukraine has made a very big leap forward and most of this technology that's being used now is ahead of what is available in the US with the largest military budget on the planet, and there are many parties interested in this technology.
So there's definitely an opportunity for export, and the export of Ukrainian military technology, I believe it will be open this year one way or another, even if the war continues. So that would mean more revenues for these companies, bigger R&D budgets, and even more innovation.
All of that innovation basically should be seen as investment in making our Western democracies and our rules-based world order stronger. And again, if we don't do that or if we are doing that slower than the autocracies on the world map, such as Russia, Iran and, China, then we're doing a disservice to both our ancestors and to our kids, to future generations. We cannot allow that to happen."
https://www.resiliencemedia.co/p/in-conversation-with-yaroslav-azhnyuk
25. I'd call this Alternative view on geopolitics. Others might call it "tin foil hat" geopolitics. Either way, it's interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4JbscqfJjQ
26. Lots of good stuff: this is the pod to listen to understand what's happening in tech.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYzYOPkxLis
27. Chris Sacca is one of the best tech investors but is also an entertainer. Whatever you think of him, he says what he thinks because of his FU money.
And it's super fun and super insightful to watch this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIBo69EsAzw
28. "These events indicate that the year ahead will be at least as uncertain, violent and chaotic as 2024. However, besides the fighting and posturing of different actors across the globe, key trends will affect the capacity and sustainability of military forces and influence the future of war. Here are five key trends to watch in 2025."
https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/military-trends-watch-2025
29. I really enjoyed this conversation. I have my issues with these folks but this was an insightful and hopeful convo.
Covered Silicon Valley, technology, business, personal growth, politics and God. Lots of food for thought.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=eRlkcRnC9eE
30. Zeihan's take on advanced semiconductors. Lots of breakpoints on the overall global chain beyond TSMC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_PEZrDZQNU
31. "As an entrepreneur, the next time you’re hiring for a key position, consider using some or all of these questions as part of your process. Entrepreneurs are wired to move fast and get things done, but hiring is one area where it pays to slow down just a bit and get it right."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/01/25/45-pre-interview-questions-from-brad-jacobs/
32. "One of my favorite moments in Succession was when Logan Roy told his children: “You are not serious people.” He knew his kids were expectant and lacked the real-world skills and backbone to make good on their threats. We risk our allies, adversaries, and trade partners sensing that we, too … are not a serious people.
I’m not entirely sure how we got here, but I think it has something to do with the way money and business success have become so venerated in our culture. More money used to mean a better meal on a plane; now it’s a (much) better life. Just as we always find uses for additional bandwidth and energy, our consumer economy never runs out of incentives to amass more money."
https://www.profgalloway.com/america-for-sale/
33. "The common belief that Americans just aren’t good at making stuff seems contradicted by areas in which we are startlingly good at making stuff — for example, SpaceX, which is pumping out the world’s best rockets from U.S. factories in stunningly high volumes. The American South has also become a hub of high-quality auto manufacturing, with the help of Japanese and South Korean investment.
If that’s true, then reshoring has a chance. The uncompetitive dollar will remain a major problem, but Chinese competition can be blocked with tariffs and other trade barriers, and U.S. industrial policies can shift from a pro-finance to a pro-manufacturing orientation. In fact, this approach is already bearing fruit in a number of strategic industries.
At this point, whether reshoring continues is largely a matter of political will and smarts. If Donald Trump keeps attacking the solar industry, or follows through on his earlier threats to cancel the CHIPS Act, it could shift production decisively back to China. It would be ironic if a President who rose to power promising to restore American industry ends up being the person responsible for strangling our industrial revival in its crib."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/yes-reshoring-american-industry-is
34. This was a super fun discussion on many topics this week, politics, technology, business, energy. Always entertaining, more so this week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1pTCSFrkbk&t=1933s
35. Something to be said about being outside of Silicon Valley as an investor. And being grounded in the real world. Worth watching.
History Rhymes: Post World War 1 and the 2020s
There was a great history book I read in 2024 called “Lawrence in Arabia” by Anderson. He does an incredible job describing the carnage of World war 1 and what it inflicted on society.
“The effect of all this on the collective European psyche would be utterly profound. Initial euphoria would give way to shock, shock to horror, and then, as the killing dragged on with no end in sight, horror to a kind of benumbed despair.
In the process, though, the European public would come to question some of the most basic assumptions about their societies…..In turn, Europe’s imperial structure had fostered a culture of decrepit military elites–aristocrats and aging war heroes and palace sycophants–whose sheer incompetence on the battlefield, as well as callousness toward those dying for them, was matched only by that of their rivals.”
I don’t know about you but that seems to describe America and our greater Western societies.
We went from complete unipolar dominance in the 90s to being stuck in two quagmires of Afghanistan and Iraq. I know many US military vets who wonder what the heck they sacrificed for here. Exacerbated by stupid DEI policies and mandatory vaccination mandates, we lost some great warfighters through this.
It’s not that much better on the civilian side. We saw the GFC Global Financial Crisis happen and most of us took hits here, but no bankers went to jail and were actually bailed out with our tax dollars. This was when the credibility of our institutions started to go downhill. We saw the covid pandemic in 2020 and the incredibly incompetent mismanagement universally by most governments and even major institutions like the UN and WHO.
Add in the debacle in the Afghanistan withdrawal, halting and half-assed support by the West for Ukraine against Russia. Law and order in decay in many of our cities, anarcho-tyranny where criminals were let go but those who tried to prevent these were arrested (Daniel Penny being the most glaring case) and the most bizarre open immigration policy where an immense amount of randos were let in. Even criminals or worse on the watch list.
Faith and trust in all of our major institutions are at an all time low. I can honestly say I do NOT trust any of our politicians nor any of the business, academic and big institutions these days after the incredible series of debacles over the last decade and half.
We’ve seen a growing inequality in America, everything is getting more expensive through inflation, like housing, food, education and healthcare. Most American’s lives are getting tougher. All while many of our elites have turned out to be incompetent, just take a look at most of our University administrators. Or incredibly corrupt as you look at the grifters in the American congress. Or maybe too clever or weak, if you look at how many corporate leaders turned to ESG, DEI and wokeist idiocy. Thankfully much of this is being unwound as I write this but the damage has been done.
I haven’t lost complete hope in America and the West at large yet. There is incredibly rejuvenative power in this country. Most of the smartest and driven people in the world still want to come here or are living here already. And some of us still try to live by the ideals that made America great. But this turnaround will be an uphill battle.
So this is your regular reminder: Focus on fixing yourself, staying mentally and physically strong and maybe this will ripple outwards from you, from your family, to your neighbors, then to your city, then to your State. One person can make a difference. Ripples can become big waves.
Finding Your Why: The Hard Secret to Surviving
I’ll admit these last few years have been tough mentally. The beginning of 2023 was especially hard as my relationship with my teenage daughter and wife really deteriorated. I had a few days of really tough mornings getting up, which does not happen often. Frustration, deep sadness, lethargy and not a bit of rage and crazy thoughts.
I think a big part of this is my feeling of “what’s the point?” When I was a single person it was all about me and rising through the business world, making money. This is as Simon Sinek says: my “Why.” My purpose and mission.
But that mission obviously changes when you become a father and taking care of your family becomes your new purpose and mission. It’s an incredible motivator to do the things you don’t want to do because you have no choice. But also because you want to. You want to make yourself better and accumulate material things to provide an amazing life for them. You have a legacy now to nurture.
This is also why as a VC investor we try to fund mission-oriented founders because they have a “why” that motivates them to grind and push through the inevitable soul crushing stress and problems that inevitably arise.
All humans who aren’t sociopaths are motivated by serving a good cause. That’s why people become revolutionaries or join religions or cults. We want to believe in something bigger than ourselves. It’s how social movements get started. Humans need to believe in something, sometimes anything. We need to believe in a better future for ourselves and our families. Perhaps this is why so many people feel despair or lack hope because of the lack of “why”.
It’s going to get ugly out there. So take the time to figure out your “Why” and this will give you a fighting chance to get through this ugly mess. Our lives need to count for something even in our short time in this world. That we did our part and left something better after us.
Keeping Promises To Yourself: Doing Hard Things To Make Yourself More Powerful and Your Life Better
For anyone into self improvement space and personal development, you probably have heard of Andrew Huberman and David Goggins. Andrew Huberman is one of the top educators and social media influencers in the biohacking space and David Goggins is a best selling author and motivational speaker who is a former Navy SEAL, war vet and record breaking endurance athlete. How awesome was it that they came together to do a podcast episode together. Its a long one over 2 and half hours but it was really good. The title is “David Goggins: How to Build Immense Inner Strength” and can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDLb8_wgX50
There is a specific section I call attention to and it is potentially life changing. Goggins talks about doing hard things. Goggins says: “What it takes is a discipline that no one can even understand. Everyone has the ability to do it but they just don’t want to. They just want to keep asking questions and keep going to seminars. And the greatness is right in you.
Hard work looks horrible. It’s not motivating. It’s not motivating at all. It ain’t like Rocky round 14 where he gets knocked down and goes like this to Apollo Creed. Looks like a man stuck in a f–king dungeon. And there is no F–king way out. But you have the f–king key. But you refuse to use it.”
Huberman mentions the Anterior Mid-Cingulate Cortex showing neuroscience behind why Goggins and the peak performers in life get. “Most people don’t know this but there is a brain structure called the anterior mid-cingulate cortex. But what’s interesting about this brain area is that there is now a lot of data in humans, not mouse studies, showing that when people do something they don’t want to do like add 3 hours of exercise per day or per week. Or when people who are trying to diet and lose weight resist eating something. When people do anything they don’t want to do, it’s not about adding more work. It’s about adding more work that you don’t want to do. This brain area gets bigger.
Now here’s what’s especially interesting about this brain area to me. The mid-cingulate cortex is smaller in obese people. It gets bigger when they diet. It’s larger in athletes. It’s especially large or grows larger in people that see themselves as challenged and overcome some challenge.
And in people that live a very long time, this area keeps its size. In many ways, scientists are starting to think of the anterior mid-cingulate cortex not just as one of the seats of willpower but perhaps actually the seat of the will to live.
And all the data point to the fact that we can build this area up. But that as quickly as we build it up, if we don’t continue to invest in things that are hard for us, that we don’t want to do, it shrinks, it’s what feels Goggin-esque to me.”
So what is the whole point of this? The insight for me is that pain leads to growth. Challenges, tackling hard problems, doing uncomfortable things. We were kind of forced to do this growing up, going to school, trying to figure out our place in the world. Learning and growing.
But as adults so many of us go into autopilot once we meet some level of comfort. We hang out with the same people, do the same job/work, we never challenge ourselves. We avoid pain and discomfort and we don’t do the things we know that are good for us. If Huberman and Goggins are right, most people in the modern western world are just zombies going through the motions of life. It reminds me of the Benjamin Franklin quote “Some people die at 25 and aren’t buried until 75.”
I’ve kind of embraced this attitude of doing hard things subconsciously through the career path I’ve followed and incorporating travel but I’d argue it’s probably not enough. And perhaps actually useless as I enjoy travel and doing overseas business, so it does not grow my anterior mid-cingulate cortex.
I absolutely need to do more of the harder things like exercising more. I need to spend more time in nature and do hard hikes. I need to train harder in my MMA and Muay Thai and tactical shooting, things that do not come natural to me. I need to deal with my family issues at home, both being more patient and also confronting my teenage kid. I need to put myself more out there and show vulnerability as I am probably a bit too emotionless. So the point: Life is hard, it’s not supposed to be easy. Choose your hard. DO MORE HARD THINGS IN YOUR LIFE!
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads February 9th, 2025
"Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius."- Pietro Aretino
"AI is a collection of technologies, it isn’t just one thing, and that can make it confusing to discuss AI.
AI is causing major market dislocations. OpenAI could be to some new company what Myspace was to Facebook.
AI is moving away from SaaS metrics. Many investors have begun writing about this but, we are seeing more per-unit-of-work pricing, or similar models, not as much per-seat-per-month. When revenue isn’t a recurring flat fee, it does fit mental models of investing if you are comparing it to SaaS.
AI changes corporate strategy. Data is now a more important asset than ever before. Labeling data may be a workflow you need. Value chains are being re-shaped by AI.
AI companies can scale faster, with fewer employees
AI may not have the zero marginal cost we are used to in tech. With the rise of test-time compute and other inference related costs, marginal costs could be more variable and use case driven."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/the-six-mental-models-for-ai-investing
2. "First, we should expect the price of attention to continue to rise. In a world of rising noise — with far more products, services, bots, and content than humans to consume them — we should expect the price of attention to continue to rise, and only be limited by the lowest sustainable margins of those that need to purchase it.
Second, we should mark up the value of the attention we already have. It is obvious that one’s existing customers are their most valuable customers. But have you increasedthe value you ascribe to them? The data above suggests one’s cost to re-acquire them has gone up 2-3x over the past five years.
Third, we should expect the value of curation to rise. In a world of infinite options, sometimes the only way to find a good solution is to search in a limited field. Using the internet to find a good restaurant in a city is much harder than asking a trusted friend who lives there. So, too, with just about everything. Curators will increasingly direct attention."
https://phronesisfund.substack.com/p/the-price-of-attention
3. "The vibe shift we’re seeing now taps into a deeper framework that I’ve written about often; I mean the creatures and machines framework. An epic clash is coming. It’s between those, on the one hand, who want to accelerate the ongoing technology revolution, and those who want to slam on the brakes.
The accelerationist ultras want new technologies to remodel the world around us and even, in the end, we humans ourselves; according to them it is our destiny is to merge with the machines. Meanwhile, the decelerationists say we must protect ourselves against the rabid form of technological modernity we have created; one that wants to eat everything familiar about human modes of living and being.
I believe that soon enough that conflict will be at the heart of our politics. What’s happening with Musk and Trump is only the first act in a much longer play."
https://www.newworldsamehumans.xyz/p/is-this-really-happening
4. "The railroad and the internet bubble capital formation had multiple aspects. This current capital cycle also has a few specific capital formation buckets. I can define them simplistically as Compute and Networking, Power, and Data Centers. It’s funny how that echoes the past because Railroads were Railroads and Land, and the Internet was the Internet and Telecom.
In the case of AI, I think it will be power and datacenters that will be the real overbuilder. This overbuilding will worsen because there’s a significant lag between the two markets. The compute and networking cycle is much more responsive, so I think the demand lead time to supply response is a ~12-month response.
The problem is that power and data centers have a much slower reaction cycle. A datacenter takes months to years, and power takes years to add supply. The biggest opportunity is reshuffling power budgets because power will limit compute and networking this year. The datacenter and power part of the equation only really started to react to the market this past year (2024), and I think that is likely an indication that we will have some time before the capital cycle turns.
But let’s use traditional semiconductor cycle logic. In this case, datacenter power is the golden screw. This is the critical piece that prevents the entire solution from being delivered, and since it’s the bottleneck, the heaviest overordering and lead times likely happen there."
https://www.fabricatedknowledge.com/p/capital-cycles-and-ai
5. This is such a fun tour of Chongqing, China. One of the must see cities in the world (assuming you are allowed to go to China).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5PgqFybk0Y
6. The most important banker in America and arguably the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2REdbQasKX4
7. Such an impressive city here. Chongqing. Really blown away by the place & its the 7th video I've watched of this place. I will visit one day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbnSuon2nrI
8. TIP (Turkistan Islamic Party) of Uyghurs, war vets in Syria coming for China (understandably too).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DRzaZiI8_Q
9. "But as Bench’s situation got more dire the National Bank of Canada, which had taken over a considerably expanded credit facility, declined to make concessions to the company even though executives and the board were in the middle of trying to sell the company. Bench worried that the bank’s stance would mean it wouldn’t be able to make payroll. (Board members can be held personally liable if employees aren’t paid.)
On December 27, 2024, Bench told its roughly 12,000 customers, without any advance notice, that the business was shuttering, leaving them without a bookkeeper. More than 450 Bench employees lost their jobs.
That same day, Crosby took to X and LinkedIn to share his story.
Ironically, his post — or the angry posts from customers — may have helped
Bench to find a buyer. The publicity attracted a number of potential acquirers.
Bench’s board, led by Hinkfuss, pushed to get a deal done.
Finally, Employer. com agreed to take over Bench’s business, onboarding customer accounts and hiring some of the company’s employees.
Investors will never recoup anywhere close to the more than $100 million Bench raised in equity and debt in its lifetime.
According to a bankruptcy filing for 10Sheet Services Inc., Bench’s corporate entity, the company filed for bankruptcy with $550,000 cash on hand and $48 million in total liabilities.
Sources tell me Employer. com is paying just over $13 million to buy what remains of Bench."
https://www.newcomer.co/p/the-limits-of-founder-friendly-what
10. An alternative perspective on geopolitics, a bit too tin foil hat for me but good to look at contrarian views.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvLjdIwRBtI
11. "These institutions - financial, judicial, educational, religious, cultural - were designed to serve a nation whose people grew up believing in their value. The last High saw value in capitalism at all costs and controlling culture to avoid decadence and "incorrect" thought. It was racist, sexist, and classist but, in the end, it gave us the highway system, strong unions, and the Internet. Besides that, I ask you, what have the Romans ever given us?
What is happening now, then, is that the last beneficiaries of the last High - the people who have completely hijacked old media, old economics, and the old ideas of rule of law - are exposing the seismic cracks in the system. The rich have abandoned those they once sought to "serve" through charitable organizations, and the tech nerds are looking around and saying that Mars and Bitcoin would be a lot cooler right about now.
My friend Dave Troy sees all of this as a plot to destabilize Western democracies and help bring about the rise of China, Russia, and India as de facto global powers. He's probably right, but I would also argue that the Strauss-Howe theory is simply expanding its borders to the rest of the world. That said, we are absolutely seeing a group of technocrats and techno-utopianists who are taking advantage of massive unrest and uncertainty to make unfathomably large sums of money."
https://keepgoingpod.com/p/everything-is-broken-right-on-schedule
12. Chengdu. 4th largest city in China and it's very impressive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUbizFj0eFg
13. These cityscapes blow me away. SO impressive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qkdrog96gkg
14. "But let me put it this way: As the world improves, our threshold for complaining drops.
In the absence of big problems, people shift their worries to smaller ones. In the absence of small problems, they focus on petty or even imaginary ones.
Most people – and definitely society as a whole – seem to have a minimum level of stress. They will never be fully at ease because after solving every problem the gaze of their anxiety shifts to the next problem, no matter how trivial it is relative to previous ones.
Free from stressing about where their next meal will come from, worry shifts to, say, a politician being rude. Relieved of the trauma of war, stress shifts to whether someone’s language is offensive, or whether the stock market is overvalued."
https://collabfund.com/blog/minimum-levels-of-stress/
15. Very good discussion on Re-industrialization of America and politics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaF4M6mrFNE
16. Great debate on manufacturing and industrial policy between economists.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H8jweWyUb0
17. "The evolution of media, with the rise of the creator economy and concepts like Kevin Kelly’s "1,000 True Fans”, has brought to the mainstream an understanding that hyper-personalization of almost anything is possible.
Whatever interest you may have, there are almost certain to be others online with that exact same interest. Given that we’ve embraced this in so many aspects of our lives, it makes perfect sense that founders are taking advantage of this concept in how they think about community.
The best founders are no longer content with founder communities where the only thing they have in common is the city they live in.
The best founders aren’t even content to be part of generalist sub-communities within their geography (e.g. local CTO meetups).
Instead, the best founders today are actively seeking out other founders who are just like them, regardless of where in the world they might be.
They’re seeking communities of founders who are specifically building B2B infrastructure software targeting mid-market companies in regulated industries.
They’re seeking communities of founders who are specifically building PLG-driven open source projects targeting Node.js developers. And so on.
And they’re finding them."
https://chrisneumann.com/archives/where-are-the-builders
18. "That said, Eddie gives us one useful piece of advice: Make the hard work as easy as possible.
“I always think, how can I build my life around whatever challenge I’m taking on, or goal I’ve set myself. Sure, it’s a bit of commitment, but it’s a commitment to making my life easier. Whenever I take on a challenge, there are always tough moments and plenty of hard work. But I always say, make the hard work as easy as possible.”
Pick what your main goal is and build your life around it. Try to make the job as easy as possible."
https://lifemathmoney.com/make-the-hard-work-as-easy-as-possible-eddie-halls-strongest-advice/
19. "There is only one chart that is dictating financial markets right now. You can watch it exclusively and essentially tell where markets are headed for the next week or two.
Global liquidity.
It really is that simple. Stanley Druckenmiller famously said “it’s liquidity that moves the market.” He is the GOAT for a reason."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/the-most-important-data-point-for
20. Strong case for the Israeli tech startup ecosystem even now.
https://startupstechvc.beehiiv.com/p/why-now-is-the-best-time-to-invest-in-israel
21. Net net: the CCP cannot be trusted.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V4s89Eo4qg
22. "Just like in the Middle East, Ukraine and elsewhere, what we'll witness is another front in the struggle between two systems of governance. In that sense, the geopolitical conflicts around the world will likely be subordinated to the civil war shaping up in the United States, which could prove the central battle in the whole conflict. That civil war might not resemble the civil wars of the past with large armies fighting one another in fields and insurrections in cities. Instead, we'll likely see chaos, sabotage, assassinations and terrorism in the U.S. - but also in Europe and the U.K."
https://alexkrainer.substack.com/p/next-week-start-the-days-of-thunder
23. Good commentary and takes on what is going on tech and business culture now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRwx8_lcMzs
24. "But it basically all boils down to asymmetrically bad upside in hard truth telling.
Every company can either be a good reference or a bad reference, regardless of the ultimate outcome. So in an iterative game things very quickly become an exercise in long term reputation management rather than maximizing the value of a specific investment/business.
After all, the less a business is working, the less incentive you have to tell them the truth (the salvage value is going down). But the more it's working, the fewer hard truths you have to tell (and the less you want to be naysayer).
These strong disincentives for honesty are why most VCs are so profoundly useless to the companies they back."
https://99d.substack.com/p/the-hard-thing-about-hard-truths
25. Trump 2.0 with NATO.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCXm0vpMaTE
26. "Biden here, probably unknowingly, brings up an important point: this is what’s called intra-elite conflict. This where the elites of a country factionalize into elites and counter-elites. There are two competing visions for the future of a country, and there is a zero-sum outcome, so if one faction of elites win, the other faction will necessarily lose. And this is important because historically, these intra-elite conflicts precede periods of state breakdown and civil war.
I’m not predicting that a civil war will happen. It’s a distinct possibility, and the more you read about the history of these conflicts, I think the more you will see that the United States is going down the same path as some of these revolutions and civil wars. And I know it’s popular to poo poo the concept of a civil war, but anyone who can dismiss the possibility outright should read more history because the similarities are shocking."
https://grayzoneresearch.substack.com/p/biden-foreshadows-us-intra-elite
27. “The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded.” His line hits hard. Modern life shifts the emphasis from the nobility of the chivalric ideal to a much more small-souled concern with getting ahead. Dave Ramsey might be a really nice guy who has helped a lot of people (while also doing some damage, if I’m correct) but anyone who has built an empire on coin-counting is without a doubt an economist and a calculator. This is why I don’t join in the praise of him.
And Tate, despite being a delinquent or worse, captures a certain boldness that modern life aims to destroy in young men—with democratic propaganda, prescription medication, and a million other things. This boldness is dangerous, not just to the Regime but to everyone. You only look at Tate himself to see the downsides. But chivalry demands boldness, especially in deranged and confused times of crisis (like ours) when the action required by the moment might make a lot of people uncomfortable. There is no easy way out of the messes we have made."
https://thechivalryguild.substack.com/p/ramsey-and-tate
28. "But there's a simpler path to growing faster. A path most companies haven't explored nearly enough. Want to know what it is?
Most of you could be growing faster if you just got clearer:
...About what you do.
...About how it works.
...About why it's valuable.
...About what people use before / instead of you.
...About how you save customers time / money.
...About what triggers people to buy what you sell.
...And about what life is like with + without you.
90%+ of companies out there haven’t done this work."
https://hellooperator.substack.com/p/clarity-as-strategy
29. Columbus, Ohio for the win. #Reindustrialize
https://trailruncapital.substack.com/p/columbus-ohio
30. "So, American criminals, even low-level criminals like drug dealers, are adapting to the changing American environment. Namely, as anarchotyranny has empowered them, they are getting organized, as shown by the drug dealer having a signal jammer and fake badge. Further, in getting organized and using new technology, they are mimicking the South African farm attackers who have caused so much chaos and suffering within South Africa.
That increasing level of organization and preparation amongst America’s criminal underclass is critical for law-abiding Americans of all sorts to understand because it shows things have changed and that we are headed in a much more dangerous direction."
https://www.theamericantribune.news/p/the-south-african-crystal-ball-signal
31. "A better definition: Love is giving witness to someone’s life. To notice them and their lived experience. My friend Rabbi Steve Leder said something that hit hard this week. Calling people and asking if you can help (what I was doing) is the wrong thing to do. The right thing? Just help. Pick up their dogs, drop off food, send a photo of the room in your house they can stay in, wire them cash. Don’t ask, do. Are there people in LA you love? Then give witness to their life, notice what would help. Don’t ask, just give witness, notice, and love them."
https://www.profgalloway.com/after-the-fires/
32. Geopolitical recession is a good description of where we are at right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIaenz_ZQik
33. Probably good to know these next few years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JQLaf4QaOs
34. Good strong case for Crypto. Global macro at its finest. Always an interesting take. Not investing advice though.
You Never Regret Working Out at the Gym: Good Life Advice
I recall an old colleague and friend Carl telling me: “You Never Regret Working Out.” It’s damn good advice.
It’s easy going to the gym when you are in the mood, like at the beginning of the new year. New Year’s resolutions and all that. It’s when you don’t feel like it. There are always excuses. Too much work, family, bad weather or whatever.
Actually the best time to go is when you don’t feel like it. Doing something when it’s hard.
You have to do it. Even if it’s for 10 minutes. It’s a promise to yourself you should keep.
I’ve had a lot of really bad days these years but something about your psychology changes after working out and hitting the weights. You just feel clear-headed. You feel better.
So if you are in a bad mood, angry, sad, frustrated. Go hit the gym. My friend Carl is absolutely right here. It’s a very simple fix to turn around your mood and your day.
LifeSpan versus HealthSpan versus JoySpan: Great Concepts for Life Longevity
So I previously wrote about Blue zones and living longer. In other words, increasing your lifespan.
But we need to be thinking about health span. It doesn’t matter how long you live if you can’t walk around, immobile or in pain. Life would suck pretty bad.
That’s why I put so much stress on health being wealth. Healthspan=being healthy and being functional with any medication or disabilities. Can you be independent and mobile without the help of others? Do you have energy and mental capacity to still thrive? Which leads to the next concept tied into longevity: Joyspan. What is the amount of joy and happiness in your life?
Buettner said: “For me, where that most comes alive is for the panegyris, these great all night parties where people from 14 to 94 are coming together and connecting socially and having fun. They are dancing all night long. But actually, an hour of running or an hour of dancing are about equal when it comes to caloric burn.
But an hour of dancing is a blast. We’ve tended to associate exercise with suffering. If there is no pain there is no gain. But in Ikaria (blue zone), we’re learning that, actually can be joyful. They are laughing the whole time. Laughter is good for our arteries. It’s good for heart disease. The happiness is palpable. I think what Blue zones teach us is that longevity can be joyous. It doesn’t have to be a chore. And community, connection is the prescriptive to longevity.”
It totally makes sense to me. If you are happy you want to continue to have this feeling. Mix this with a good diet, active lifestyle, purpose/mission, curiosity and community no wonder you will have a higher likelihood for a longer life.
We don’t think about joyspan enough. We should be doing things we find interesting and fun, being with those we care about and enjoy being with, having wonderful experiences. Sometimes even take time off your career and slow down to focus on what matters. So it’s really worth considering what Joyspan means to you personally and how to increase more of this in your life.
I’ll let Dan Buettner finish this: “But at the end of the day, the big epiphany is that the same things that help us live a long, healthy life are the things that make life worth living.”
Sahil Bloom and Your True Wealth Score
There is a young influencer named Sahil Bloom that really came to the fore in 2021, started seeing all his posts and info all over the web. He was on the Partner track at a PE firm in California, living the life. But came to the realization that while he was doing well financially, every other aspect of his life was a mess. So made some big changes, quitting his job, moving back to Boston to be closer to his parents and starting a new career. He has the awesome and audacious goal of positively impacting a billion lives. Kind of makes my goal of doing the same for 10 million lives seem small, I really need to think bigger!
I became a fan of his work and have listened to numerous interviews with him as he has built out his social media empire and Personal Holding Company. But there was a recent interview he did that was particularly excellent which can be found here. Highly recommend it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC3LWGnhMyI
In this interview he talks about the various components of a good life. Time Wealth, Physical (Health) Wealth, Social Wealth, Mental Wealth & Financial Wealth. You have to look at your entire life from each of these measures. It’s the only way to create a truly fulfilling and valuable life. Most of us only look at Financial wealth side of things because that is the easiest thing to measure and what society seems to value. We only realize the mistake after we have lost all the other aspects, as I found out the hard way personally.
A concept similar yet different to what Tai Lopez introduced before. But for some reason it only really sunk into me recently after hearing it here. Sahil simplifies this. These concepts sometimes take a while to absorb but when it hits, it hits. So I took the free test that he offers here: https://www.wealthscorequiz.com/. No surprise, it was enlightening.
Scored pretty well on Time Wealth, Physical Wealth and Mental Health. My Financial wealth score was not super great although I suspect this is due to my own nagging financial insecurities that have plagued me my entire life. I had to go look at my finances to reassure myself and understand much of this due to the financial scarcity growing up as well as the natural human view of never having enough.
Sahil mentions talking to many very well off people, whether millionaires, multimillionaires and even billionaires. When all of them are asked what is the number where you will feel like it will be enough, the answer is almost always 2-3X the number they have now. Human greed is eternal, so bear that in mind.
But the worst score was my Social Wealth, which was pretty stark. And it makes sense as my family life is a mess. Plus I have not fully re-engaged with people in the post pandemic world. This will be a priority going into 2025. More coffees & lunches, more family time in SF, Vancouver and Taiwan. Hanging out with friends more.
So for anyone interested in Sahil Bloom’s work, he is releasing a new book today, called “The Five Types of Wealth”. I pre-ordered it myself and think it will be super helpful for everyone as they rethink their lives. Also recommend taking the https://www.wealthscorequiz.com/, it is short and useful. Good luck out there!