A Pep Talk from Gordon Gekko: Use It When You Are Down
We all have good days and we all have bad days. When I look back at my life, the highs are really high and the lows are really low. Just like startups. 2024 was shaping up to be a pretty crap year. Family issues, a massive tax bill, business issues and thus cash flow issues. And then to add insult to injury also got scammed by ID harvesters (and believe you me when I find them, there WILL be payback).
And all within a few weeks. It felt like blow after blow after blow. Plus it’s spring break/Ramadan so no one is around and you can’t do anything yet. You feel like the whole world is against you.
So what do I do? Besides going to the gym to work out my rage and frustration? I go listen to Gordon Gekko in “Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps”. In a famous scene where he makes his comeback, he gives advice to a friend/colleague:
“Hey hey, stay positive, pal. Most people they lose, they whine and they quit. But you gotta be there for the turns. Everybody’s got good luck, everybody’s got bad luck. Don’t run, when you lose. Don’t whine when it hurts. It’s like the first grade Jerry, nobody likes a crybaby.” (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO3Rd6U4CjE)
After listening to this, I remember that it’s a long game. I remember all the crap I went through to get here. I remember 2001 and 2020 and how I got through those hellish years and came through. I go to church and I also meditate to calm my mind. I do my gratitude exercise and thank God for my health, my books and all the experience I’ve had over the past decades.
I take responsibility, accept reality and adapt. Then I come up with a game plan and do what I do best: Take massive action, attack and conquer. If you are in this situation in life, I suggest you do the same. It bloody works.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads May 11th, 2025
“Busyness chokes deep thinking.”― Todd Stocker
"Many founders focus too narrowly on their current revenue or product features. However, talent, revenue, or product acquisitions are actually some of the less valuable M&A outcomes. The highest value comes from positioning the acquisition as a strategic threat or a defensive move."
https://1984.vc/docs/founders-handbook/mergers-and-acquisitions/how-to-sell/
2. "That instinct for spotting talent is central to Paradigm, which began in 2018 when Coinbase Co-founder, Fred Ehrsam, approached Huang at Sequoia Capital with a vision for a different kind of investment company. They started as equal partners, but Ehrsam has since stepped back to split his time between crypto and his new brain-computer interface startup, recognizing that Huang was, in his words, “born and bred to run Paradigm.”
The son of one of the world’s most accomplished financial theorists and a pioneering computer science professor, Huang grew up at the nexus of math, economics, and technology. In six years, his firm has grown from managing $400 million to over $12 billion by making early, concentrated bets on foundational crypto projects, while also building significant parts of crypto’s core infrastructure. Paradigm’s researchers—who double as investors—develop foundational innovations, then open-source them for the entire industry to use. It’s an unusual approach for a financial firm, but Paradigm isn’t a typical investment company. It’s more like a research lab crossed with an engineering outfit, wrapped in the sophistication of a West Coast Wall Street.
This combination of technical excellence and quiet integrity has helped establish Paradigm as one of crypto’s most important institutions. In an industry that’s grown from zero to $3 trillion through waves of speculation and collapse, the firm’s open-source tools now power 90% of smart contract development. Its innovations help hundreds of billions in digital dollars move more efficiently. And its investments have earned the trust of the world’s most sophisticated investors, including Harvard, Stanford, Sequoia and Yale."
https://joincolossus.com/article/paradigm-shifts-matt-huang/
3. "By 27 Mehta’s seen enough, and he’s left D.E. Shaw to start a firm with his friend Benny. On a whim he calls it Greenoaks, after the street in Atherton, California where he grew up. In the first deck for Greenoaks there’s a slide called ‘Finding Value in Unusual Places’, which at the time meant the internet. The idea was that these internet companies, these unbelievably cheap businesses, were going to replace a large percentage of the S&P 500. In 2012, he bets 40% of his first fund on Coupang, an ecommerce retailer in South Korea, led by a founder, Bom Kim, whom Mehta’s fallen head-over-heels in love with. Greenoaks soon owns upwards of 15% of the company, and eventually returns about $8 billion from that one investment.
Today Mehta is 40, and over its first 13 years, Greenoaks has played a legendary part in the rise of Coupang, Figma, Wiz, Carvana, Stripe, Discord, Rippling, Toast, Robinhood, and other unicorns led by N of 1 founders, generating over $13 billion in gross profits, a 33% total net internal rate of return, and only about a point of principal impairment. The firm is unusually small and concentrated: five funds of 55 core companies across nearly $15 billion of assets managed by nine investment professionals—with Mehta himself as one of the largest LPs in each fund. Henry Kravis, one of the first LPs, told me that at the top of the market between 2020–2022, Greenoaks probably returned more money to investors than anyone else. “Neil’s extremely disciplined, he’s gone against the tide many times, and he’s had exceptional timing,” Kravis said. “He’s the real deal.”
The firm has now achieved icon status among founders and investors—but casual observers more familiar with names like Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz might have come across Greenoaks for the first time only recently.
“Nobody else wanted to do it, we were the only ones,” said Mehta. “All of our alpha comes from ignoring the memetic vibes of Silicon Valley and New York and focusing on the fundamentals of a business and the founder. That’s it.”"
https://joincolossus.com/article/the-visions-of-neil-mehta-greenoaks/
4. "As modern warfare becomes increasingly reliant on space-based networks, Russia and China are stepping up efforts to counter the dominance of commercial satellite constellations, particularly SpaceX’s Starlink. The Secure World Foundation (SWF), a nonpartisan policy think tank, detailed these developments in its latest annual report which assesses global counterspace capabilities."
https://spacenews.com/russia-china-target-spacexs-starlink-in-escalating-space-electronic-warfare/
5. Title says it all. Killer robots and drones in Ukraine. Pioneering the scary new world of war by necessity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NLfLuqeA0Y
6. Important discussion that is topical: building defense startups that last.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOIrMNFGHLM
7. "Play symmetric games for fun, not fortune. Don’t get addicted. You can’t win.
But asymmetric games? That’s where it gets interesting. That’s where you can win.
In a good asymmetric game, the upside is vastly greater than the downside. Asking someone out. Investing in a business. Moving to a new city. If it works, your life changes. If it doesn’t, you move on to the next bet.
The trick to winning asymmetric games is information. Not just more of it, but having ways to get better, earlier, and cheaper access to information."
https://newsletter.sanjaysays.co/p/win-at-life-by-understanding-asymmetric-risk-49265da43723cb69
8. "When you are thinking about market ending moves, be creative! You can brainstorm literally any scenario. Can you convince a large public company to spin out a key subsidiary to merge with you? Can you put aside ego with your main competitor to combine forces and stop competing for everything? Think broadly. Even if doesn’t happen, this often sparks key thinking on M&A, partnerships, and key hires that you may not have considered otherwise."
https://blog.eladgil.com/p/market-ending-moves
9. "This brings me to something I have noticed — the closer someone is to the finance industry, the more they are against the tariffs. The closer someone is to the industrial or manufacturing industry, the more they are supportive of the tariffs. Fascinating to watch.
Lastly, one aspect of these tariff deals that seems to be undiscussed is the likelihood that foreign countries will commit to making direct investments in the US. These countries will also look to buy products made in America too. As I wrote yesterday, Taiwan committed to buying industrial products, agricultural products, energy, and weaponry from us. I would expect many of the deals to include these concessions and commitments.
There is plenty of volatility left in these markets. Stocks are down. Bitcoin is down. Crypto is down. And no one knows where the bottom is. The undisciplined, over-levered, and short-term oriented panic, while the patient, un-levered, and long-term oriented feel nothing.
Make sure you are on the right side of that equation."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/tariffs-are-controversial-depending
10. The two critical years that we need to worry about from a National Secretary perspective. 2027 and 2049.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWP-6DcHN9Q
11. "Those who invest in Emerging Markets are familiar with the concept of Fiscal Dominance. Developed Market investors will soon learn this term as well. This is when the Central Bank loses control of its core mandate to tinker with inflation and employment. Instead, the Central Bank is forced to focus on the government’s fiscal needs—either through monetizing debt or stabilizing the bond market. This then starts a vicious feedback loop that is difficult to escape from. At some point, investors wake up and decide they’re not going to throw good money after bad.
Applying this thought progression to equities. When I look at equity valuations in Brazil, and then look at valuations here in America, I realize that the gap between the two is quite wide. In a higher interest rate regime, equities are often priced at single digit earnings multiples, as opposed to the crazy multiples that we’ve taken for granted in America. Now, I’m not calling for a crash. It took Brazil over a decade to deflate to where it is today. Then again, Brazil didn’t have anywhere near the level of financialization that we do—nor did it rely as highly on foreign flows to finance itself."
https://pracap.com/watch-bonds/
12. "The end of Bretton Woods was probably inescapable, but it’s worth pointing out that the Nixon Shock was an economic disaster: the country endured a decade of drastic inflation that was only cured with sky-high interest rates and a massive recession (the architect of that cure, Paul Volcker, was a part of the team that instituted the Nixon Shock in the first place; Volcker came to regret it). In other words, the reaction of the market and the press was totally wrong.
The question is if what happened this last week ought to be compared to the Nixon Shock, or contrasted? Certainly the reaction is a contrast: everyone hates the “Liberation Day” tariffs, including the market. Moreover, the Trump administration’s rollout has been the very opposite of a PR masterpiece: no one in the administration can seem to agree about what exactly the goal is, or what success looks like. I’m certainly not going to attempt to speak for an administration that can’t speak for itself, particularly given Trump’s on-again-off-again approach to tariffs over the last few months.
What I do come back to, however, is what I opened with: there is a scenario within the realm of possibilities that is far more painful than anything Trump proposed; is it better to try and force into place a new economic system that, at least in theory, reduces dependency on China and resuscitates U.S. manufacturing now, instead of waiting for the current system to collapse by literal force?
This does seem to be the administration’s goal: simply tariffing China is deadweight loss, leading to rerouting and the fundamental problem of the dollar as reserve currency unaddressed; blanket tariffs, on the other hand, are a valid, if extremely blunt and inefficient, way to meaningfully restructure incentives.
Make no mistake, the structural problems facing U.S. manufacturing in particular are very real, and the China-Taiwan systemic risk is only going to increase. Instead of changing the system to ameliorate the risk, however you could simply address the risk directly; I think the best way to do that is to undo the chip controls and tie China even more tightly into the current system generally, and to Taiwan specifically. Yes, this is kicking the can down the road, but path dependency is a far more powerful force than we often realize."
https://stratechery.com/2025/trade-tariffs-and-tech/
13. Topical conversation on tariffs. Jury is still out from my side as this is one man's view of the Tariffs and economy. Always interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmDt_zAlL8E&t=24s
14. "Tobi’s point was that working long, hard hours can itself be fun, if you enjoy the work and the people you’re working with.
But no matter how passionate about the work you are, and no matter how caring and brilliant the people you’re surrounded by are, it can still be exhausting. Which is where genuine fun comes in. The thing is, you don’t need to come up with grand plans to have fun. You just need to be open to taking things a bit less seriously. And the impact can be huge (both on you and on your team)."
https://chrisneumann.com/archives/life-is-short-have-fun
15. Always interesting views on geopolitics with Zeihan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e0IZv31820
16. Great discussion on NIA episode on Liberation Day Tariffs Day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W6ZszzoWc0&t=1815s
17. "Broadly speaking, economic warfare is causing substantial uncertainty. How can businesses plan when they don’t know how input costs will change? How can countries plan when they’re questioning who their friends are?
This creates substantial volatility in asset prices, which turns those using too much leverage into forced sellers at any price. And this creates reflexivity in the market: selling begets selling. Time is compressing."
https://phronesisfund.substack.com/p/volatility
18. "One consequence of this maturation is that our industry has become very prescriptive regarding what works. Limited partners have developed relatively fixed views of portfolio constructions and investment strategies that will generate returns and primarily back VC firms that conform to those models. Increasingly, venture capitalists focus on algorithmic approaches for founder selection, emphasizing folks with low employee badge numbers at well-known companies, people in their social or professional networks, or people who have otherwise achieved some level of fame or notoriety online.
Maybe it’s just me, but it feels like our industry is trending in a direction where everything feels the same - firms feel the same, the founders we back feel the same, and certain parts of the business feel like they’ve devolved into a cookie-cutter approach to finding and funding businesses. This is not a good direction for an industry focused on finding and backing outlier businesses."
https://chudson.substack.com/p/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-venture
19. "Unfortunately this is the state of growth marketing. A lot of channels are not working, or are slow, expensive, or one-time only. This is the natural end state for things, and maybe we’re in a bit of a lull due to the technology super cycle as we’re 15+ years into the mobile wave, we’ve had various kinds of paid ads for 20+ years, and so on. All of these aforementioned marketing channels are now fully mature."
https://andrewchen.substack.com/p/every-marketing-channel-sucks-right
20. "Clearly, the Scott Bessent + Elon Musk faction in the White House—which pitched the president on an approach involving rational and strategic statecraft—won over the “burn it all down” left-wing coalition led by protectionist ideologue Peter Navarro.
Before Wednesday, Mr. Musk and like-minded, powerful allies outside of the White House deployed significant political capital to convince the president of the merits of a more focused trade strategy, including lowering tariff barriers and providing much-needed relief to businesses of all sizes. These forces won the day over the “Wall Street is not Main Street” faction, which sought to advance class warfare and sow division between Americans."
https://www.dossier.today/p/trump-aligns-with-rational-white
21. The art and science of building a venture firm in this crazy competitive market.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUrgLyEioZ4
22. So much wisdom and a fun conversation with Tai Lopez. Stop being so fearful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHUXruWi6Es
23. This discussions shows that there are levels to levels in everything that you do. Also why Sequoia Capital is one of the best in the venture business for so long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jcx3pKnvT8I
24. The Drone arms race.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9acvfAAQEA
25. Lasers in future wars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7P5js8B32I
26. Maximum bullish on Ukraine.
"Researching investments in situ is always interesting, and my trip to Kyiv ranks among the most unique ones I've ever done.
Reality on the ground can be ever so different from the perception elsewhere."
https://www.undervalued-shares.com/weekly-dispatches/ukraine-research-excursion-what-did-i-find/
27. Important discussion on drone warfare and how America can position for the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZL-0yzCaSQ
28. "The US had been heading towards becoming the next Argentina. The tariff shock therapy firmly demonstrates that the bond market vigilantes are not just back. They are now in charge of policy. As The Secretary of the Treasury said, “I could have kept issuing bonds,” but it would have ended in a catastrophe. The snafu happened because of the religious zealots on trade. Peter Navarro and, to a lesser extent, Howard Lutnik hijacked the narrative from the calmer and more measured Secretary of The Treasury. This kind of interdepartmental mixed messaging is typical of new administrations.
What matters is that Bessent has reasserted control. Bessent understands that the markets are full of people whose whole professional life has been dominated by Alan Greenspan’s “Forward Guidance.” For decades, policymakers took risks out of the market and subdued volatility in order to remain popular and powerful. They spoon-fed the markets. They kept Greenspan’s put in place.
Bessent may take a gentler approach than Lutnick and Navarros, but make no mistake; he is also signaling that this is the end of the molly-coddling. If you want to get paid in markets, there must be risk, and you must take risk. He is restoring risk into the markets. There will be fewer warnings. No more bailouts. No more spoon-feeding. The investor’s job is to pay attention and get paid for managing the volatility.
Returns will go up for those who have the skill to ride both the Bull and the Bear. For the young who have no memory of the pre-Greenspan era, buckle up, take a deep breath, and enjoy the ride. This is when you learn. You don’t learn anything when markets smoothly and predictably rise. By the way, this kind of volatility used to be normal when I started working on a trading floor in 1991. You’ll get the hang of it.
It is easy to think about all this as a fight between the US and China. That’s the way it’s being framed. But, the tariff strategy also reflects a domestic fight between two distinct camps: The Corporatists and the Techno/Oligarchs. The latter is now in charge and signaling a serious change in the way capital will be allocated going forward. They want to disintermediate Wall Street and the handful of private equity firms that have decided who does and does not get capital. It was a small club. They only invested in potential unicorns. This left most of the entrepreneurs out in the cold.
With these announcements, the TechnoOligarchs aim to shift more money into the hands of small and medium-sized businesses that may not be unicorns but which are reliable workhorses. Banks and community lending institutions will be encouraged to lend. IPOs of unicorns led by investment banks are no longer the only game in town. The legalization of tokenization/crypto/Bitcoin/ & the creation of a US Sovereign Wealth Fund will open up new pathways for capital to bypass intermediaries and reach risk-takers more directly."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/tariffs-the-american-mittelstand
29. "Outside of its dishonorable trade practices, the Chinese Communist Party is the world’s most malevolent force, and it threatens America’s founding principles and global sovereignty. Sure, the United States often finds itself trading with some unsavory partners, but China combines tyranny with bad faith, and it’s simply a bridge too far.
Wall Street may not like it, but America's complete decoupling from Chinese trade is both morally and economically sound in the long term. It will greatly benefit the United States to completely detach from China so that we can have reliable, good faith, and morally sound trade partners."
https://www.dossier.today/p/decoupling-from-china-is-worth-the
30. Satellites and drones: the future of war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5rNOg3ZmmY
31. "Professional life gives you ready-made answers to the existential question: How do I matter? Your contributions are measured, evaluated, compensated, and—at least occasionally—recognized. Even when the system is flawed, it offers clear feedback. You know where you stand.
If you're anything like me, your entire world—dating back to elementary school—was shaped by external measures of success. First came grades, academic accolades, internships, job offers, promotions, and funding rounds. One milestone after another. Then suddenly… it’s gone. There’s no longer anyone around to tell you how valuable you are. And if you haven’t built a strong internal sense of worth, that silence can be deafening. You might look for comfort in friends, family, or a partner. But not everyone has those support systems in place—or can lean on them.
When those external scorecards disappear, you're left with the deeper, more difficult task: defining your worth on your terms. This isn’t a minor adjustment—it’s an existential unraveling. You begin to see how much of your identity was built around performance. Achievement-based cultures tend to reward what’s visible: outcomes, titles, impact metrics, and social proof. But the most meaningful human contributions—presence, wisdom, care, creativity— defy measurement.
This recalibration can stir up deep discomfort. You begin to notice the subtle ways you’ve internalized capitalism—the belief that your value is directly tied to your productivity. Even if you reject that idea intellectually, you might still feel the urge to produce, achieve, and prove your usefulness through output. Releasing that pattern takes time, practice, and a lot of self-compassion."
https://cluesdotlife.substack.com/p/what-happens-when-you-leave-your
32. "As I’ve written about in the past, it’s not entirely fair to say that the US does not manufacture things anymore. In fact, the US manufacturers more today than it ever did in the pre-globalization era. However, it is true that many fewer Americans today actually work in manufacturing, making it a much less visible industry to the average American. Further, manufacturing is a much smaller share of the US’s GDP today than in the past, and while the US is still the second largest manufacturer in the world, the US controls a much smaller share of overall manufacturing than it used to.
Regardless, there is no doubt that US supply chains are overly reliant on nations like the PRC. Many parts of the DIB rely on supply chains with key vulnerabilities in the PRC, posing a threat to US national security. A Govini report highlights that many US military systems rely on microelectronics from the PRC, and another report reveals, “China is the single or sole supplier for a number of specialty chemicals used in munitions and missiles. In many cases, there is no other source or drop-in replacement material and even in cases where that option exists, the time and cost to test and qualify the new material can be prohibitive – especially for larger systems (hundreds of millions of dollars each).”
Other startups looking to build hardware for DoD customers need to take the time to understand the supply chain constraints and system hardening required by their customers as early as possible. Of course, startups don’t need to meet all of the DoD’s stringent requirements when building initial prototypes, but they need to understand how the DoD’s unique supply chain and system hardening requirements will impact the cost, performance, and manufacturability of their systems, work those constraints into early product designs, and start the process of hardening systems and supply chains early on.
Additionally, it is critical that startups test their systems as often and as realistically as possible to ensure that the systems actually meet the needs of warfighters.
Building American-made defense hardware is hard, but it’s not impossible. As the US looks to reassert its manufacturing strength and reduce reliance on adversarial supply chains, companies like Neros show what’s possible with the right focus, urgency, and willingness to rethink old assumptions. There’s still a long road ahead, but the blueprint is finally starting to take shape."
https://maggiegray.us/p/manufacturing-for-the-mission-what
33. Global Fallout is right. Making sense of the Trump chaos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jr-nqA6hfco&t=9s
34. "If you’re under 45 or so you should be celebrating the declines. There is no way you are down a significant amount of money relative to your annual income. The only people who should be upset are retired because they rely on the market to live. Far too many people were sitting back hoping for double digit returns while they build no valuable skills at all (no biz, no nothing just ticker price go up).
Wealth Is Relative: This comment always makes people mad but wealth is relative. If you own $100K of a stock and it goes up 10% but all the rich people own $10M of it, you’re not gaining ground on the elite (not even close).
You’re actually better off if that stock goes down 50% (you have $50K, they have $5M each) and you can buy $50K more of it. Now as a ratio you own more on a weighted basis.
Why This Matters? This is important because its actually how the USA continues to retain global dominance. If US markets go down 10% but all other markets go down 30% who is the winner? The USA is. Don’t leave us any messages saying you’re going to invest in the Mexican Stock Market or the European Stock Market. We know you’re lying.
After all is said and done, the US market will be the best performer. Down less than everyone. Or up more than everyone. Been this way for a century now and be careful when someone says “the US is done”. What they are really saying? They are personally done.
They couldn’t even make it in the USA. The easiest place in the world to get rich."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/downturn-recovers-faster-than-you
35. "I think there will be a small handful of AI-enabled law firms or accountants or architects with the best technology that will service 80% of the market in each jurisdiction at a very low cost. There will be a few holdouts providing "handcrafted legal advice", but I think they will be the minority share of the market. We've seen this pattern in technology over and over again. The benefits accrue to a small handful of dominant companies which have an advantage in product or technology or distribution.
I don't know for sure whether these dominant players will be incumbents or newcomers in each industry. My guess is mostly newcomers. The ability to iterate quickly is overwhelmingly the most important factor in growing a successful business today, and big companies are too burdened down with thousands of people.
In the short and medium-term, I think it's very likely we see an explosion of indie hackers making $1m/year from side projects, with perhaps less need to raise VC funding.
I think the real winners in the immediate future will be those high-agency people who are good at noticing problems that people or companies have and then obsessively building solutions using the latest tools. One of YC's mantras is "Make something people want." Figuring out what people want will be a much more valuable skill once the "making" bit is freely available to all."
https://tomblomfield.com/post/1743528547367/the-age-of-abundance
Rules for Life: Want Money, Ask for Advice; Want Advice, Ask for Money
Almost every founder has heard of that saying in the title. But it bears repeating. If you want money ask for advice, if you want advice, ask for money. This is not just a comment to slash on the weirdness and wishy-washiness of venture capitalists. It is. But the more I’ve thought about it, the more it is just a good rule for life.
For me when I’ve tried to optimize for money, it almost never works out. Maybe you come off desperate and needy. Maybe I self-sabotage because of a weird relationship I have with money.
But when I’ve chased curiosity and followed the rabbit hole of my interests, the money or opportunities just kind of showed up. It sounds a little bit esoteric. Yet it has worked for me.
My hypothesis is that when chasing knowledge & interest, you work at a very different frequency. You get into a zone or flow. Time passes quickly in a good way. You fall in love with the process. And as you share everything you learn publicly through conversations, through writing and on social media, the opportunities just inevitably appear. It’s almost like magic.
Earlier in my career this happened through going to many meetups, attending conferences, going to a lot of parties and having lots of coffees. Now when you add the magic of the Internet, newsletters, podcasts, blogs and social media you end up with what David Perell calls a “serendipity machine”.
So for anyone starting their career, I challenge you to pursue your interests and share what you learn. You never know what exciting place you will end up in your life. Net net: be in a learning mindset, not an earning one.
To the Extreme: Living a Precarious Life On Purpose
I did a panel talk with my friend Philipp at an investors event back in 2024, where we were explaining how we thought about investing. The conclusion was don’t do what we do. We both have most of our net worth in super risky and super illiquid assets like startups and LP investing in Venture capital funds.
Yes, venture capital and startups are sexy. But as I said before, they are super illiquid and the likelihood or returns are 12-14 years out. That means our cash is stuck for a long time. The big problem with this portfolio allocation is that there will always be cash flow issues no matter how well you budget or what your cash reserves are. I have different income streams but payments are almost always delayed for whatever reason. Or you get unexpected issues like a bigger than planned tax bill, rental properties repairs or larger expenses than normal, common if you have a family. Thus, it can be a precarious living and you are always worrying about money, when in theory you shouldn’t really at all at my stage of career and life.
I’m sure this will work out in the long run but there are many days I wonder why the heck I structured my life this way. I think this is partially due to bad planning, lack of creativity or plain ignorance/ arrogance on my side.
But from a more positive perspective maybe I did this subconsciously. Due to an internal realization that I will become lazy, if I don’t need to worry about money. That I will become inactive and thus irrelevant. That I’ll stop pushing myself and will stop learning. I’ve seen this with many of my peers in VC as well as others who have done very well. They just literally check out and mentally rot. They stop growing.
This isn’t very different from many of the startups that I see who raise way too much money at whatever stage they are at. They start to get complacent and at the same time, feel compelled to spend money on people and new initiatives. Everything slows down, the clock speed decreases and the complexity and bloat sets in.
It takes me to Vincent Hanna, played by Al Pacino in classic movie “Heat” where he says you gotta hold onto angst, fear & pain so you can stay “sharp, on the edge, where I gotta be.” This seems to be clearer and clearer to me every day. The edge is where all the growth happens.
Implications of the Change from Nation States to Network States: Why You Need a Private Military Company on Call
You have to be blind not to see the slow grinding and painful collapse of competence in almost every Nation-State around us. China, Russia, USA, Canada and pretty much most of the Western world looks like a complete mess. It’s almost inevitable as it has been over 200 years of this concept.
The only places that seem to be thriving or stable are small nationstates, almost city states like UAE, Singapore, Uruguay, even El Salvador. Every other place just seems like a growing disaster zone.
Hence we see people looking for new sanctuaries as the world goes from a centralized one to a more decentralized one. From unipolar to more multipolar world.
For those unfamiliar with the term Network State, this comes straight out of the book by Balaji Srinavasan.
“A network state is a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states.
When we think of a nation state, we immediately think of the lands, but when we think of a network state, we should instantly think of the minds. That is, if the nation state system starts with the map of the globe and assigns each patch of land to a single state, the network state system starts with the 7+ billion humans of the world and attracts each mind to one or more networks.
A network state is a social network with a moral innovation, a sense of national consciousness, a recognized founder, a capacity for collective action, an in-person level of civility, an integrated cryptocurrency, a consensual government limited by a social smart contract, an archipelago of crowdfunded physical territories, a virtual capital, and an on-chain census that proves a large enough population, income, and real-estate footprint to attain a measure of diplomatic recognition.”
We are kind of living in this Network State right now. I live in San Francisco, run a small VC fund investing in immigrant and European founders targeting the American market. I also have a Holding Co based in the MENA region with my Saudi business partner and invest all over the world. My business interests are global.
I have much of my family in Taiwan, other parts of the USA and Canada. My extended friendships and tech family is also very global as well. We are starting to see more people live a Digital Slow-mad, where we live in different cities or countries during the year for extended periods of time. Starlink/Broadband, smartphones and the nature of advanced white collar work have made the world even more flat.
Whatever happens though, in this new decentralized world, there will be a continuing need for self defense & projecting force and violence, something Nation-states used to hold monopoly over. Enforcing law and order, something we take for granted in most of the West growing up but now seems to be decaying dramatically over the last half decade. Reasons range from stupid Leftist decriminalization policies and Defund the police garbage, to rampant uncontrolled immigration at the borders. And as we learned throughout human history, things can get ugly on the streets very quickly.
The brilliant Radigan Carter wrote about this during a stint in Haiti:
“This is what a lot of Americans don't get about Wagner: Talking with a waitress after the firefight subsided this morning, she's telling us how she lives in the suburbs and a year ago gangs came into her son's school looking for someone's kid to kidnap.
Gangs ran rampant, people that stayed in their houses slept on the floor to minimize being hit by stray rounds, a lot of people left the nicer neighborhoods since that is where the gangs came to loot and steal and moved away. The government and their politicians did nothing to protect them.
She then says how some of the wealthy in the community finally had enough, and they pooled together $3 million USD and hired a six-man team from Wagner to secure the neighborhood. She is now talking with relief and gratitude in her voice as she tells us how in four weeks her neighborhood went from totally unsafe to completely safe.
That these six white men, with ski masks rolled down who didn't speak any english and wagner patches on started "cleaning up the neighborhood" She said it was obvious they when they started, saying where gang members would empty mags terrorizing people, the first day Wagner started cleaning up, you would hear rapid fire from a gang member, followed by 1-2 shots.
She laughs in relief, saying it went like this for four weeks. Only on the first day did anyone in the neighborhood see the result of the clean up, with fifteen gang members piled in the back of a hilux with bullet holes in all their heads. You live by the sword and terrorize people, no one cares when you die by the sword, they just want to live someplace that is safe.
After the first day, she said no one in the neighborhood saw the result of the clean up, she laughs and says they all went to the train station (A Yellowstone reference, it turns out her father, a retired colonel loves Yellowstone)
She says the first week, you could hear Wagner working day and night, the second week, it was less, the third week even less, and the fourth week only a few shots, and then after that, the neighborhood was safe.
In total these six men cleaned up between 1,500-2,000 gang members in a month, paid for by the wealthy in the neighborhood.
Reminded me of Noblesse Oblige, or nobility obliges, the unwritten obligation of people from a noble ancestry (substitute people of means today) to act honorably and generously towards others. Nobility extends beyond mere entitlement, requiring people who hold such status to fulfill social responsibilities.
How do you think this mother, who now doesn't worry about her son being shot by gangs entering his school feels about those Wagner mercenaries? People who live in the land of wolves don't care about US bureaucracy, sanctions, aid, NGOs, or whatever the fuck our elite thinks they are doing to improve the world.
They care about their son not getting shot at school and talk almost in reverence about the six Wagner fighters with masked faces who cleaned up their neighborhood in a month.”
Source: https://twitter.com/radigancarter/status/1761013582022545593
The whole point of this story is that as we move into a new decentralized world, we cannot take law and order for granted. Of course, you absolutely should have financial resources, food & water supplies in general. But to protect this, you need to be in good shape, well armed and trained and be part of a larger community. In a world of growing Nation-state decay and movement to a new Network State world, it’s probably a VERY good idea to have a private security and private military company on speed dial as it’s gonna get ugly before it gets better.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads May 4th, 2025
“Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.”― Angela Duckworth
"Everyone intends to do what they say they’ll do. But as you progress towards your goals, you hit friction — you get tired, you get distracted, you re-prioritize — and then the whole thing unravels. The key to success is what you do after you realize it might not happen.
And here’s the rule I’ve learned:
There are two ways to do what you say you’re going to do:
1. Do it, or
2. Don’t say it."
https://newsletter.sanjaysays.co/p/you-dont-have-to-be-amazing
2. "As in private equity, we should start to expect secondaries to become a permanent and significant part of venture capital liquidity for both employees of companies and also investors.
With the target ARR required to achieve an IPO growing from $80m in 2008 to approximately $250m today, secondaries will become a permanent fixture in venture capital markets.
It’s not just a temporary anomaly, but a structural evolution in how venture capital will function and ultimately evolve to look a bit more like private equity."
https://tomtunguz.com/the-exit-path-of-2024/
3. "Today, the stakes are also critical. The global security environment is undergoing seismic shifts, with threats evolving at a speed and scale unseen since the Cold War. Yet, unlike the industrial mobilization of the past, the modern battlefield is defined not only by hardware but also by the ability to leverage software–systems capable of adapting at speed and precision, processing vast amounts of data and enabling real-time decision-making."
4. "The future of Haiti is bleak. The Haitian police and the roughly 1,000 Kenyan policemen assisting them don’t seem to have the numbers or equipment to make a huge difference. For anything to change, Haiti and the international community are going to have to start looking at this as a military problem, not a police problem.
Nowhere in Haiti is safe; the citizens live in perpetual terror. The police and Kenyans have not established any sort of fortified perimeter in the capital where citizens can feel safe. They seem to be interested only in conducting limited operations with varying levels of success and acting mostly as a reactive force. This conflict is not going to end anytime soon if something major doesn’t change."
https://www.globalhitman.com/p/haitis-cartel-and-american-fueled
5. "With billionaires biohacking themselves amid an insurgent wellness boom, growing interest around exercises for longevity proves more and more of us are paying attention to our health than ever before.
You may not be motivated entirely by a desire to improve your lifespan, but there’s no denying that exercise is the key to remaining mobile, disease free, and independent for longer."
https://www.gq.com/story/exercises-for-longevity
6. "One of the biggest unlocks in my life has been recognizing that being a man means adding surplus value: creating more tax revenue than I absorb, listening to more complaints than I make, noticing people’s lives, providing more (net) care and love. I have run firms my whole life, and I’ve always aimed to provide the minimum compensation required such that employees won’t leave. No more.
BTW, this is how nearly all companies work, optimizing for profits. This is a result of the incentive system in a capitalist society, as it increases the enterprise value (profits) of the firm — and the likelihood the business survives. Our entire society now prays at the altar of shareholder value, prioritizing them over every other stakeholder … dramatically. If you are blessed with a company that’s doing well, why wouldn’t you pay more than you need to? Do you love your kids, community, and country just enough that they don’t abandon you?
One of the most rewarding things about running a firm is it mimics some of the m/paternal feelings of reward you get from protecting and providing for your offspring. I’ve worked hard, I’m talented, and I made the genius decision to be born in America. The result is I’ve got a firm that’s exceptionally profitable. One of the (many) rewards of that is I get to pay people more than I need to. It feels great."
https://www.profgalloway.com/project-2028-wages/
7. "Affleck first became widely known with 1997’s Good Will Hunting, which he wrote and starred in alongside his friend Matt Damon. He is nearing his 30th uninterrupted year in the spotlight, which has given him a career and two Academy Awards, and also a level of tabloid scrutiny that in its consistency and vehemence is almost unmatched. “Some people like to follow the soap opera,” Affleck says. “And that soap opera is actually independent of a movie you might make or be in. They’re interested in just the general soap opera and you became a character in that soap opera. You don’t write it, you don’t direct it, you don’t even know you’re in it, but you are.”
To this day, he still meets people who assume he is his dim, rock-breaking character from Good Will Hunting, a movie that cast Damon in the genius role (“Matt’s math skills, I am pretty sure, are very far from genius level”), or the attention-plagued playboy that was his public role in the first decade of this century.
In reality, Affleck is 52, a twice-divorced father of three who commutes to an office most days. “I’m a middle-aged guy,” he says, not unhappily. Despite the comeback narrative that journalists still reference, week to week and year to year, he has long been ensconced in the very top levels of Hollywood as a leading man (in the lobby of Artists Equity there is, among other things, Affleck’s old Batman suit) and, more recently, an executive. Affleck founded Artists Equity, which he runs with Damon and Gerry Cardinale, a little over two years ago, with the idea of wresting some control back from the notoriously opaque and complex studio financing system."
https://www.gq.com/story/inside-ben-afflecks-plan-to-remake-hollywood
8. Inspiring and fun interview with Palmer Luckey.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-iUvZ-8Q3k
9. Fun discussion on sales. Lots of interesting thoughts on sales.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNfbomeXVtU&t=101s
10. Ian Bremmer is always direct & clear when discussing geopolitics. Important conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjquBYqYbcc
11. "Clausewitz’ exhortation to focus on the enemy’s destruction is therefore only half the formula for victory; the other is to exploit that destruction to prevent force regeneration. This cannot usually be done in a single battle as at Austerlitz, and there are rarely any shortcuts—more often, it entails the capture of political centers, occupation of territory, destruction of armaments, etc.
In Saladin’s case, it would have entailed reducing every port through which reinforcements arrived. The difference between attrition and other forms of warfare does not lie in total quantity of destruction, after all, but in the exploitation of those brief windows of opportunity."
https://dispatch.bazaarofwar.com/p/notes-on-annihilation
12. "The lesson of the Bellum Sociale is that successful peoples, companies, or individuals can reach a point where they transcend their original condition and become larger than themselves—at which point they must reinvent themselves to reach greater horizons or risk fading into irrelevance or persihing.
Since president Trump won his second term and talk of tariffs and the need for U.S. allies to take more responsibility for their own security began to get serious, the themes of the Bellum Sociale resonate with the present.
America now plays the role of Rome, exuding a sense of superiority, while its allies, while its vassals respond with contempt. Europeans and Canadians gesture and beat their chests, threatening to assert their sovereignty, while at the same time lamenting any barrier to access to the American market or any downgrading of protection under the American security umbrella.
In the end, the only durable solution was an unequal yet organic and mutually recognized hierarchy. Perhaps, someday, something similar will emerge between America and the rest of the West."
https://www.businessofpower.com/p/the-war-of-the-allies
13. Important life lessons for men. So very obvious. The world is cruel to poor, emotional and weak men + Location of where you live in your life matters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0WhCAK-y90
14. Some snapshots of business insight from billionaires. Curiosity and Philosophy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ-MuaD4txA
15. "Herein lies the crux of my argument.
It’s difficult to sell the idea to your people that they should become poorer and give up more of their autonomy and freedoms to create an army that has no purpose.
However, it’s much easier to get them to accept the creation of said army, if you make them live in fear of a threat you know will never come.
Frightened subjects are compliant subjects."
https://anticitizen.com/p/threats-lies-disinformation
16. Very clearly the USA does NOT have a strategy. The CCP definitely does and that is why they have an edge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4COv3rcvJg
17. “Taiwan’s proximity to China gives the PRC the ability to apply serious mass in terms of firepower from both ballistic and cruise missiles, in addition to the cheaper drone systems that [can] be used to strike or saturate air defenses,” he wrote to Tectonic.
“Some war games the Marines ran showed beach defenders taking 30% casualties if swarming munitions were used against them,” he added.
To Phillips-Levine, this makes it pretty clear where the US should invest its budget in the next few years: in cheap, attritable drones and c-UAS systems that can take out their Chinese counterparts. It’s expensive—and also silly—to shoot down a drone with a multi-million dollar cruise missile, he said."
https://www.tectonicdefense.com/how-scary-is-chinas-military-really/
18. Lots of tips on building a personal brand and doing sales.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wllHVnBSG8M&t=1463s
19. "We cannot take for granted that America has the biggest economy, the strongest currency, the most robust alliances, and the best military in the world and will always be that way. It would be unwise to believe these achievements are now permanent or owed to us in perpetuity because we are the United States of America, and because of that, we deserve the best circumstances.
Our leaders cannot become complacent or reckless in the face of our many challenges in 2025.
Our alliances across continents are getting more complicated due to various factors. And yet, they must be maintained, because an America that goes at it alone cannot win in this world. After all, it’s better to have difficult friends than to have no friends at all. Our adversaries are relentlessly challenging our commitment to our allies, and they are constantly trying to position themselves as welcoming arms in the face of a scenario in which America employs retreat and isolationism.
Our country maintains itself as a unique economic power, one where innovation continues to thrive, but that competitive advantage can slip away if our leaders pursue destructive, hubris-fueled policies. Europe is witnessing a devastating brain drain because its leaders have pursued overregulation, restrictive economic policies, and plenty of additional catastrophic social policies. America needs to remain the country where anyone and everyone can carve out a successful life and business without the government making it impossible for citizens to thrive."
https://www.dossier.today/p/american-hegemony-if-you-can-keep
20. "Trump believes that by bringing these manufacturing jobs back to America, he can give good jobs to the roughly 65% of the population who have no University degree, become militarily stronger because weapons and such will be produced in the quantities needed to face off against a peer or near-peer rival, and grow the economy above trend, e.g. at 3% real GDP growth.
There are some apparent issues with this plan. Prices will fall if China and others do not have dollars to prop up the treasury and stock market. Scott Bessent, US Treasury Secretary, needs buyers for the gargantuan amount of debt that must be rolled over and for the persistent federal deficits out into the future. His plan is to lower the deficit to 3% from roughly 7% by 2028. The second issue is that capital gains taxes from a rising stock market are the marginal revenue driver for the government. When rich folks aren’t making money slinging stonks, the deficit grows.
Trump didn’t campaign on a platform to cease military spending or cut entitlement benefits like healthcare and social security. He campaigned on a platform of growth and elimination of fraudulent spending. Therefore, he needs capital gains tax revenue, even though it's rich people who own all the stocks, and on average, they didn’t vote for him in 2024.
Even if US stocks continue falling in reaction to tariffs, a collapse in earnings expectations, and or foreigner demand waning, I am confident that the odds favor Bitcoin continuing to climb higher.
Cognizant of the good and bad, Maelstrom is deploying capital cautiously. We use no leverage, and we buy in small clips relative to the size of our total portfolio. When the market goes up, I want to wish my size was bigger, but I'm thankful it's not when the market trades lower. We have been buying Bitcoin and shitcoins at all levels between $90,000 to $76,500. The pace of capital deployment will quicken or slacken depending on the accuracy of my predictions.
I still believe Bitcoin can hit $250,000 by year-end because now that the BBC has put Powell in his place, the Fed will flood the market with dollars. That allows Xi Jinping to instruct the PBOC to stop tightening monetary conditions onshore to defend the dollar-yuan exchange rate, which increases the net quantity of yuan. And finally, Germany decided to build an army again paid for with printed euros and every other European nation must respond by building their own army with printed euros because they are afraid of a 1939 Remix to Ignition."
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/the-bbc
21. "Job = exchange time for money with $/hour pay out. Career = performance based. Business = makes money in your sleep.
Now the majority here probably enter into a career. Based on the above you can see clearly that the best role is now Sales. Second best is Tech. Distant third is Wall St.
The only reason to choose Tech over Sales or Wall St over Sales is *if* you are certain you will be 100x better at that task. In that case you have to go to your talent/skillset.
Sales is Best: Sales is measurable. You will not have Robo calls for buying $100,000 items. No sales team in India is going to call up the CEO of F500 companies. Not happening. Not today, not any time soon in the future.
Also. Sales requires *less* hours. If you’re a handsome man or beautiful woman, sales will come easier and you’ll work 1/2 the hours of a banker. For the same pay and more time to build your own business (hilariously, you will need to learn online sales anyway so your job already partially prepares you for escaping the cube)"
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/ai-proofing-your-present-and-future
22. Fascinating conversation on China and its technological and economic rise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnjnXPnbmkE&t=1423s
23. Live like a King in Ubud. Ubud was a magical experience for me back in 2019, look forward to going back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsac3eaUXhc&t=3s
24. "America can no longer afford to fake resilience. Infrastructure not designed to operate during conflict is ultimately a threat to our national security. The hour is late—but it’s not too late to transform America's vulnerabilities into genuine resilience, safeguarding our prosperity, security, and freedom."
https://steinman.substack.com/p/americas-industrial-systems-are-sitting
25. "We are living through a dangerous return of the asshole strongman.
Across the globe, disenfranchised people—failed by democratic systems that didn’t deliver care or opportunity—are handing power to egomaniacs and fakers.
And it’s not just governments.
We’re doing it in the private sector too.
Too many investors are back to chasing the high-ego, low-empathy founder.
We’re throwing around phrases like founder-mode.
I keep hearing leaders wrestle with this false choice:
“Lead with heart” or “be in founder mode.”
Some in Silicon Valley are once gain glamorizing high-ego micromanagement as if it’s real founder work.
It’s not."
https://www.mattmunson.me/founder-mode/
26. The Philosopher king of Silicon Valley. Lots of thought provoking ideas and thoughts here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyfUysrNaco&t=5547s
27. The business of defense. This was an insight dense conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_NMYEvR6jI
28. BG2: Best show in tech. This week was great: Liberation Day, Tariffs, US v China Open Source, OpenAI, $CRWV, TikTok
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0DO0tP06eQ&t=1385s
29. "While new tariffs primarily threaten startup revenue through market uncertainty rather than direct costs, the drive for efficiency in response may accelerate AI adoption, aligning with optimistic long-term growth forecasts for the tech sector."
https://tomtunguz.com/tariffs-startups/
30. "Like it or not, Americans largely hold the current administration responsible for current economic conditions, and the economy is often the single most important item on the priorities list for Americans. This carries its own set of less-than-ideal incentives, given that it limits the demand to fix long-term problems. Nonetheless, it’s the political reality we face.
Given that Congress seems determined to have a limited impact on policy, the midterms will reflect almost solely on the Trump Administration."
https://www.dossier.today/p/the-tariff-debate-will-be-decided
31. The latest on what's up in Silicon Valley. Tesla, AI & the Deel spy games.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmuRI7Uhtmk
32. "My recommendation for entrepreneurs is to sign at least 10—if not more—unaffiliated customers and spend a tremendous amount of time with them, either in person or over a Zoom call. Talk to the customers and learn every minute detail possible about why they bought the product, how they use it, and what value they derive from it. Choosing a market, a vertical, or even criteria for the ideal customer is a critical step in an entrepreneur’s journey and should not be taken lightly."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/04/05/market-a-or-b-for-a-startup/
33. I detest Tucker Carlson but this is a great interview with Treasury Secretary Bessent.
Bessent is pretty smart & diplomatic. Good to understand his perspective & plans for the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLnX1SQfgJI&t=1897s
34. This is good fun and informative: David Senra. Great founders are in it forever and in the details. Hardcore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ypkGwQbTho
35. "Drones have made the air littorals too lethal to ignore and the mission to gain and maintain air littoral superiority demands localized command and decentralized control that is intrinsically linked to the ground commander and their fielded forces.
The Army has work to do because the adversary gets a vote, and technology nor time stands still—especially below that coordination altitude."
SOS: Slower, Older, Smarter
I saw a very funny story being shared around social media. Here it goes:
“An Airbus 380 is on its way across the Atlantic. It flies consistently at 800 km/h at 30,000 feet, when suddenly a Eurofighter with a Tempo Mach 2 appears.
The pilot of the fighter jet slows down, flies alongside the Airbus and greets the pilot of the passenger plane by radio: "Airbus, boring flight isn’t it? Now have a look here!"
He rolls his jet on its back, accelerates, breaks through the sound barrier, rises rapidly to a dizzying height, and then swoops down almost to sea level in a breathtaking dive. He loops back next to the Airbus and asks: "Well, how was that?"
The Airbus pilot answers: "Very impressive, but watch this!"
The jet pilot watches the Airbus, but nothing happens. It continues to fly straight, at the same speed. After 15 minutes, the Airbus pilot radios, "Well, how was that?
Confused, the jet pilot asks, "What did you do?"
The AirBus pilot laughs and says: "I got up, stretched my legs, walked to the back of the aircraft to use the washroom, then got a cup of coffee and a chocolate fudge pastry."
The moral of the story is: When you’re young, speed and adrenaline seems to be great. But as you get older and wiser, you learn that comfort and peace are more important.
This is called S.O.S.: Slower, Older and Smarter”
It’s both a funny and instructive story. However, my take is why not both? Comfort is death. Having a big goal and some adventure in life is important, even at an older age. Pushing yourself is what keeps you young. And if you can balance this with wisdom and perspective, maybe you will also have some peace of mind as well.
Chase Your Dreams: Mastering the Game to Leave the Game
I heard a story recently of a guy who was at the top of his game in the Finance & investing world. But he ended up leaving the industry after making his number. He ended up moving to Japan to learn baking and study the art of Matcha tea for 3 years. He returned to Taiwan, importing the best matcha tea from Japan and opening a top rated Matcha Cafe in Taipei. Living his dreams. I love these kinds of stories.
How many of us are living zombie lives? Going through the motions, chasing the buck and burying our dreams. It’s so easy to say following your dreams is impractical. I get it.
I don’t think it’s a bad idea to take a bad job, service job, corporate job or finance job when you start off. In fact, all of those experiences are SUPER helpful. You can learn a lot of how the world works. You learn what you like and don’t like. And there is nothing wrong with earning money either. And if you happen to end up being great at it or fall in love with the work, that’s awesome. It’s really hard especially when you excel in an industry to then leave it behind. However, this will not be the experience for the majority of people. For most of them, like myself, this is just step one.
What you need to do is make sure you have a longer vision on where you want to go in life. I assume for most people it’s financial freedom, more time and having control of your life. And for this to happen, you must fight the hedonic treadmill and manage your cost structure carefully. Don’t let it get out of control like it did for me and pretty much 99.99% of people out there. Learn to differentiate between a need versus a want. Live with discipline or you will pay for it literally and figuratively. So you must learn to live a lean yet fulfilling life at least for a few years until your income streams and savings ramp up substantially. This is your margin of error.
Otherwise, this escalating cost structure becomes the number one trap keeping you from doing what you want to do. It forces you to stick with that crap job and crap boss you can’t stand but have to tolerate. Because you need the paycheck to survive. What a sad situation that’s really of your own making.
As the legendary Silicon Valley investor and philosopher Naval Ravikant has said: “The reason to win the game is so that you can leave the game.”
The Dog Who Catches the Car: The Cosmic Joke of Life
We have all seen this in life wherever we are. Driving down the street and we see a bunch of dogs chasing the cars down the road. We laugh. But then the question is what happens if the dog ends up catching the car. What would they do?
This is almost a parable of life. I spent so much of my life chasing money, career and reputation because that was what I thought you were supposed to do. Especially when you are raised in a poor but driven Taiwanese immigrant and tiger mom who has HUGE expectations of you. And I think I delivered albeit not at the levels I personally thought I would be. But what an incredible price that I paid for this. I put my career ahead of everything. My family, my hobbies, my health, my mental health. All made worse during the pandemic lockdowns.
Yet I came out financially strong at the end of 2020, despite everything. I literally am the dog that caught the car. And what happened at that point? Did I go and at least try to fix all of the issues?
NOPE. I hid from the problems and double downed on what I was good at and was comfortable with. I drove forward with my business. Investing, public speaking and plenty of business travel. Consequently, my family life unravelled in 2023, and 2024 turned into a massive train wreck. This was all raised during family therapy where my pride, anger and ego just made things worse. My life just felt like a massive sized joke. Empty. This is everything that I worked and sacrificed for?
I used to scoff at those who committed suicide and believe that’s a cowards way out. But I now understand the amount of pain and anguish these poor people feel. When things feel so awful that you just want it to end. You start to feel the world and your family will be better off without you. Especially late at night. These are dark places.
This is where you need to just go to sleep. Or call a friend. Or find some small pleasure or joy to look forward to. For me it was my books. And I keep the hope that I can reconcile and watch my kid grow up to become the amazing human being that she is.
For anyone going through this hell. You aren’t alone. Call a friend. Or Call 988 (in America). Hang in there. This will pass. Things will get better. Don’t deprive the world of your talent, impact and spark.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads April 27th, 2025
"And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years." —Abraham Lincoln
This is such a fun & wide discussion with marketing and ads genius Rory Sutherland.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaYTvwe0Wo0
2. "Microsoft’s Security Business generates $20b per year in revenue, so the market is large. A similarly sized business for Google, which trades at about 6x forward would create $120b in market cap.
According to press, Wiz is between $500-1b in ARR. Assume revenue is 2/3 of ARR & it’s growing about 70%, which would imply about $850m in forward revenues.
A premium 30x forward revenue multiple would suggest an acquisition price of about $25.5b.1 Google is paying a 25% premium for an extremely fast growing business in a core strategic cloud segment."
https://tomtunguz.com/wiz-acquisition/
3. Important discussion: how are the big countries repositioning in the new era.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtxH5-jI5dQ
4. "Awareness of technical trade winds. This is a new one for me, but I think the fact that we are now in the early innings of the AI era demands it. Just as with previous seismic shifts (client-server, the internet era, the SaaS era, the cloud-native era), it’s absolutely essential that founders have a thesis on how the prevailing technical trade winds will impact them.
“Not having a thesis on AI” in 2025 is as insane as “not having a thesis on the internet” in 2005.
Even more so — customers appear to be demanding this in an unprecedented way. Founders who are not deep in the details, leveraging all the modern tools, building with a modern stack, and aware of the technical zeitgeist will find themselves adrift."
https://medium.com/angularventures/seven-signals-ce8454b23661
5. Incredible lecture and then Q&A. To understand why Japan lost War War 2. Lots of interesting cultural insights too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Znk5QINe01A
6. Equal Ventures is one of the few firms that are thinking about venture in a differentiated approach. This was an instructive conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGqJCGEL_Es
7. "Actually the risks therein are not just moral but business related. In deciding to go back to business as usual with Russia these Western investors will have to make a call as to whether the direction of travel in terms of Russia - Western relations are improving, or not. If they decide to invest but we see an unravelling of the Trump peace effort, are they then risking again a situation where their assets in Russia will be stranded and subject to freezes and confiscation?
Are these Western investors good at predicting the state of geopolitical relations and risks? I would argue not given the number of Western businesses who continued investing in Russia right up to full scale invasion. Even more remarkable therein is that many of these same investors remained invested or continued to invest in Russia through 2021 and early 2022 when their own governments were warning of an imminent invasion and the threat of aggressive sanctions being rolled out.
Why would these same investors be better now at qualifying the risks of investing in Russia when frankly they completely cocked up with their decision in 2021-2022, and indeed long before then? Imagine the egg (blood actually) on their faces if they rush to put money back to work in Russia, against a long track record of bad behaviour by Russia, and end up on the wrong side of the trade again. Titans of finance and industry - not."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/russia-blood-money
8. This is a super fun AMA episode. Good fun business and creator stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeoQ06FEkSc&list=PLIBc05HkMJHFpVxxZTD-_MbTAYtwAOEg_
9. This video explains the reason for the bizarre support of the MAGA wing for Russia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRyXhfu_ZUE
10. Not a fan of JD Vance (who is geopolitical naif) but I can get behind what he says here for America.
"So, deindustrialization poses risks both to our national security and our workforce. It’s important because it affects both. And the net result is dispossession, for many in this country, of any part of the productive process. And when our factories disappear and the jobs in those factories go overseas, American workers are faced not only with financial insecurity, they’re also faced with a profound loss of personal and communal identity.
And that’s what I really want to talk about today: why innovation is key to winning the worldwide manufacturing competition, to giving our workers a fair deal, and to reclaiming our heritage via America’s great industrial comeback. And I believe that’s what we’re on the cusp of, a great American industrial comeback. Because innovation is what increases wages. It’s what protects our homeland. It’s what saves troops’ lives on the battlefield."
https://commonplace.org/2025/03/20/our-great-american-industrial-comeback/
11. Really important interview and discussion on AI from one of the investing and operating maestros of Silicon Valley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBxCrH_DCDA
12. Incredible and timely discussion this week. SO much good stuff.
"NVDA GTC, M&A Wiz / Goog $32 B Deal, April 2 Tariff Uncertainty; Huawei Belt & Road; ChatGPT"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymEtsnDif5M
13. Josh Wolfe at the Upfront Summit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATz-qVlmaj8
14. Very interesting & timely company. Albedo satellites.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX_VhcmAWGU
15. Solid discussion from OG of Seed Investing. Chad Byers of Susa Ventures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xRpVl7t3s0&t=25s
16. Turkey is a key player in the Mediterranean region and the future at large. Helpful conversation to understand their role.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw8Gn1HIGKE
17. Top notch show for commentary on Silicon Valley news. Good episode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dPNKZOyke4
18. "It’s also the hottest trend in software development. Vibe coding : dictating what you want to code with speech into an AI.
If even the most technical of us prefer voice, the next step is obvious : a laptop without a keyboard.
Soon that collection of QWERTY squares will look as archaic as Hemingway’s Underwood typewriter - a relic of a bygone era."
https://tomtunguz.com/no-keyboard-ui/
19. Quite a wide ranging conversation on politics, global macro and Silicon Valley ie. Wiz-Alphabet Deal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1MAA8y4CgU
20. "Humans came off the savanna hard-wired for addiction. The dopamine rush a hunter felt when taking down a mammoth is neurologically the same feeling a gambler gets when betting. Our instinct to gorge whenever we see food was honed during millenia of scarcity, and it’s that same instinct the food industrial complex leverages to keep people eating long past the point of being satiated.
Ours is an addiction economy: The most valuable companies arbitrage the disparity between our instincts and industrial production."
https://www.profgalloway.com/porn/
21. "The same is true for the Ukraine war. Each side wants to pay the lowest political price for anything more than it won. Russia wanted to regain Ukraine as a buffer against the West. The U.S. didn’t want Russia to border NATO. The war has been fought, and it looks as though Russia gained a buffer in east Ukraine, albeit a smaller one than it wanted. The U.S. wants to end the war and has to be satisfied with the outcome. Ukraine is now in the same position during the negotiations with Russia as the South Vietnamese were in the Vietnam War.
The end of the war is inevitable, and articles are now appearing in the media about the postwar reality. Some observers talk about how hedge funds are eager to invest in Russia. Others say Russia will have a high price to pay as it moves away from a wartime economy. Others still speculate about the geopolitical effect of the war on Europe and China."
https://geopoliticalfutures.com/engineering-an-end-to-the-ukraine-war/
22. "Entrepreneurs should always provide regular updates. The alternative—not doing any updates—is strongly discouraged. Rather, the big idea is that updates are one of the best ways to connect with all constituents, from employees to partners to mentors to investors. For some entrepreneurs, this can be a calling card that helps differentiate them from others in the market."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/03/22/entrepreneur-updates-as-leading-indicator-of-success/
23. Trying to understand who the players are in this new administration. Also want to hear from people first before you judge them. This was very interesting. The head of Commerce.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=182ckTL2KBA&t=1839s
24. Bessent is really sharp. Listening to our Head of Treasury to understand where America is going and the impact for the economy in America and globally (and our own personal investing)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSma9suyp24&t=10s
25. There is so much gold here. I appreciate every interview with Tai Lopez. So many insights & framework for making money. Worth listening to a few times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8LE9en8k6c
26. Interesting take from Taiwanese military expert. Hope he is right that CCP will not be able to take Taiwan but much of this is cope. No good can come out of underestimating an adversary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBpNbgXNcYE
27. I always learn from Tai Lopez. Wise beyond his years. How to be a Renaissance man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUwYQxjCNfs
28. "One group will say that the world was designed around humans and thus if we can build humanoid robots, they are easier to deploy in the world. Then we don’t have to adapt factories or homes or other systems to the limitations of robots. Humanoids can climb stairs and play the piano and hold coffee mugs and all the things humans can do.
But there are problems. Battery life is limited. AI processing at the edge is still nascent.
The other group of roboticist I know will say that humanoid robots will be the worst at everything and lose the advantages of robotic specialization. Specialized robots will always be stronger, faster, and more economically efficient for a given task than a humanoid robot.
The truth is probably somewhere in between. My guess is there are markets for both, depending on the economics of the deployment opportunity."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/investment-opportunities-humanoid
29. "Oil is a key driver of Arctic interests. Trump reversed President Biden’s ban on Arctic drilling with an Executive Order in January. Both the we and Saudi are now squeezing Russia. Russia has oil, but it can’t get it to market as cheaply as the US and Saudi countries can. They understand that Trump meant it when he pledged during the campaign to lower consumers’ energy costs by 50% within a year. Secretary of Energy Wright recently said that this “is still doable.” That is music to those Americans who are concerned about costs, but it is a real threat to Russia, especially now that Saudi has confirmed its intention to invest more than $600b in the US during Trump’s time in office. Arctic oil is expensive to bring to market. If Russia wants to survive the pressure from falling oil prices, it needs to play more nicely with the US and Saudi alike. So, some of the “that’s mine” approach to the Arctic is about divvying up territory.
The whole world map is in play, often in remote places that we are usually not thinking about. But the locals are thinking about it. Sweden is preparing for war and recruiting for its Arctic brigades. Finland and the Baltics are also preparing. But, in a welcome turn of events, the Europeans are now exploring what role they’ll play in Ukraine if the deal between the superpowers succeeds and peace breaks out. As the WSJ reports, “Britain, France, Sweden, Denmark and Australia have said they are considering putting boots on the ground” in the event of war continuing in Ukraine. The question is how many boots will be needed if there is peace. Europe will face having a North Korea in its midst, and there’s no plan for that."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/valkyries-vallhala-and-vectoring
30. I recommend listening to Tai Lopez. So many useful tips and ideas for making your life richer, healthier and happier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjU6ppsfpIo
31. "Ukraine’s independent long-range strike capability: Ukraine’s ability to strike Russian targets at operational and strategic depth gives it the capacity to impose significant costs on Russia for as long as the war continues. This capability operates outside the constraints of frontline dynamics and largely independently of its allies.
As we know, U.S. support either appears to be gone or, at best, highly uncertain for the coming years. Europe is attempting to step up, but cannot do so quickly enough—especially while also scrambling to rebuild its own defense posture. Meanwhile, Ukraine seems to have largely lost its positions in the Kursk region, even as it tries to hold ground there and push into other areas.
This suggests that Ukraine’s only remaining source of significant coercive leverage—one it maintains regardless of shifts among its allies or developments on the ground—is its ability to impose sustained costs on Russia for as long as the war continues."
https://missilematters.substack.com/p/drones-missiles-and-leverage-why
32. Tai Lopez wisdom. SO very good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMNdWHoJcVk&t=151s
33. Super insightful episode today, lots of good stuff on personal growth & parenting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTX8JajsBxc
34. Tai Lopez is a wise man. Worth listening to this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS4ZcZo2bwo
35. The world belongs to the risk takers. Tai Lopez.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEJdcXai_7w
36. "In fact, I’ve found myself using ideology as my explanation for much of what the Trump administration has done in the two months since it came to power. I explained Trump’s tariffs as an ideologically driven attempt to isolate America from foreign dependency and ape the country’s “glory days” of the pre-WW2 period. And I explained Elon Musk’s DOGE as an attempt to purge “woke” progressivism from the U.S. government and other institutions.
These aren’t all quite the same ideology. Vance, Trump, and Musk have worldviews that differ in important and consequential ways. Yet they’re all recognizably affiliated — subsets of one category that we might broadly call the New Right.
Understanding the New Right is sort of a gestalt exercise — you’re basically acting like an LLM. Listen to leaders like Vance, and mainstream media figures like Joe Rogan who have drifted to the right in recent years. Then read a bunch of people on the right and pattern-match to figure out which thought leaders folks like Vance and Rogan sound like. You’ll probably end up with influencers like Charlie Kirk and Jack Posobiecand Tucker Carlson and Auron MacIntyre, and blogs like Aporia and The Upheaval. Then try to isolate some common themes and big ideas, and see if you can use those to parsimoniously explain the attitudes and actions of leaders like Vance.
Once this basic understanding is in place, I think a lot of the Trump administration’s seemingly boneheaded, overly risky, or counterproductive actions become less mysterious. That doesn’t mean the Trump administration isn’t incompetent, or that everything is proceeding according to some grand plan. But I think it helps clarify some of the goals the MAGA folks are trying to accomplish with things like tariffs, abandoning Europe, embracing Russia, purging the government, amassing executive power, kicking out immigrants, and so on."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/understanding-americas-new-right
Nurture Over Nature: Increasing Clock Speed to Win
We all know the traffic advertising “Speed kills”. But in startups “Slowness kills.” Speed is key. Speed in making mistakes, speed in launching your product, speed to market.
Investor & podcaster Sriram Krishnan wrote about Clock Speed:
“The biggest determinant for success in a technology company is the speed at which it operates and learns – the “clock speed” to use a CPU analogy. The easiest external measure for this is how fast you ship product. However, I’ve come to realize that is often hard to measure or hard to accomplish. You can’t ship hardware every week or make research breakthroughs every day.”
Environment and culture matters. If people around you move slower, you will naturally regress to that pace. Or from a positive perspective, if you are in a faster environment you will increase your speed and operating tempo.
Watch and record (discreetly) the speed of how fast a barista in New York City or Tokyo makes a coffee versus say San Francisco (slower) versus anywhere in Canada or Europe (much much slower). There is a significant difference.
Add the crazy crazy-quilt regulatory framework in Europe, plus the anti-business and innovation mentality. This adds much friction to the already difficult business of building startups and driving performance, whether from a personal and organizations perspective. This is peer pressure at an environmental level and it’s pernicious. Yet smart people know how to make this effect work for you.
This is why I believe there will be great entrepreneurs from Europe and Canada but most will not stay there. Most will eventually migrate to the most competitive & presently biggest market in the world: the USA. They need to if they want to scale up dramatically. Even despite the crazy in America right now.
Steel sharpens steel and the best founders want to be around other great founders. This is where Tai Lopez’s 33% rule comes into play. If you really want to get good at something, you have to spend at least 33% around people better than you. He uses the example of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. You don’t get good fighting other white belts, you get good fighting practice with blue belts.
Regional clusters have crazy strong network effects. This is why dystopian, badly run hellholes like New York, Los Angeles San Francisco at large will continue to have staying and drawing power. A place that will continue to be centers for the best and most ambitious founders around the world.
Places that have high clock speed and provide an environment for the best people to compete and thrive.
Letters from the Past: Sacrifice and Appreciating What You Have
Another international flight and then another movie. I enjoy the opportunity to watch non mainstream and foreign films on the plane. I was missing Japan so much and found this movie called “Till We Meet Again on Lily Hill”, a sad and historical fantasy drama that takes place in both modern day and 1945 Japan.
Yuri is an angry, moody 18 year old girl who feels down because her impoverished and hard working single mother is raising her after her father loses his life when he heroically saves a child. Yuri, feeling sad, angry and abandoned, hides in an old bunker and ends up in 1945 during the last days of World War 2. She ends up working in an army bistro & meets a group of young men called the “hungry bunch”, training to be special kamikaze pilots about to leave on their final mission to fly into enemy ships. A suicide mission.
She gets to know the pilots, especially Akira who is around her own age. And as a modern person, she does not understand war, honor or the sacrifice these men are embarking on. The pilots, knowing it’s their last days, enjoy every moment of their time. Each meal they have. Eating sweet ice dessert. Or playing baseball together at the base. Sharing their dreams with each other. Sitting in a field full of lilies. Drinking sake and singing together on their last night.
Yet they are eager to do what they think is their duty even if it’s their end. “To acquire a new life of eternal righteousness.” The immense waste and tragedy of it all especially when we know the outcome of the war (for non-history people, Japan loses very badly).
Even when they talk about their colleagues, using euphemisms like there is “room for more new soldiers”, meaning pilots who have left on their kamikaze missions.. How the pilots talk about “protecting my wife and child with my own life.” Yuri is horrified and cannot fathom why they would do this when she hears this.
The veneration of the villagers toward the special pilots is touching though. The kindness they show to the pilots. Especially as they believe they will become spirits. And the immense loss of family members of every person from the war. The horror of American firebombing attacks on the village.
That deep sadness of knowing it is a few days till the pilots set off on their last mission, especially as Yuri knows the war is almost over. Saying goodbye forever on their last dinner at the bistro before their mission the next morning. That was a solemn and heart wrenching scene.
There was also one where the Japanese civilian crowds were sending them off waving flags at the airfield as the pilots flew off. (Something sadly my Israeli, American and Ukrainian friends are still experiencing).
But this experience wakes her up to how horribly she treated her mom, she also discovers how sacrifice is heroism, finally appreciating what her father did. And she learns to be happy with what she has. Living in the present, finding joy and appreciation in small things. We can all learn from this hopefully without experiencing war. To go live a good life and make the most of your time. “All I want is your happiness. Live your life with all your heart. That is my only wish.”
Tulsa King: A Gangster in a MidWest Paradise
Sly Stallone plays an old school Brooklyn gangster, Dwight Manfredi aka The General. He is exiled to Tulsa, Oklahoma by his family after serving 25 years in prison for his mob family. He quickly builds a crew and starts earning but makes enemies of the local law and local biker gang the MacAdams.
In the run up to the big battle with the biker gang, he rallies his troops and gives them advice.
“I always thought that life was this one way street. And you head down it as you do and it sort of disappears behind you. So you can only go one direction. Forward. And you look way down there and you see a city on fire. And it’s red hot. And as I said before, You can only go forward.
So you only got 2 choices. One you get scared, you give up and then you burn up. The second one, you say F— it, F—-k it, F—k fear. And you barrel through it. And when you come out on the other side, I guarantee you, you will be stronger than you ever thought possible.”
Seems like good life advice. You can only go forward. Acknowledge mistakes and learn from them. Make amends if you can.
Know what you stand for. Know what red lines are for you, that if someone crosses it you have to act. Take care of business. Take care of your family and take care of your people. This is why people respect you.
A simple clear code. Even if you are an aging gangster. What a fun series to watch.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads April 20th, 2025
“Whether we know it or not, our lives are acts of imagination and the world is continually re-imagined through us.” — Michael Meade
Lessons for the Defense Industrial base from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MqmUJ-eYVg
2. Alt-Geopolitics. I don't agree nor do I like these people. But you can learn from anyone. It helps to question popular narratives out there in media
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDQxzULLTgg
3. Justin Mares is crushing it by building businesses in the MAHA movement. Very interesting discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84DwJGdsuQ8
4. This was an instructive discussion on the art and science of venture capital. Yes, they are focused on B2B software but it's still very useful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdbMuq1SS8c
5. "I’m a believer in the ‘ software eats the world’ thesis, although I often change it to ‘software enables the world,’ which is not nearly as evocative but also not as consumptive. One byproduct of this movement, especially during the blitzscaling era, were new startups in areas such as finance, healthcare, housing, education, using venture capital to acquire customers at accelerated rates. And when these startups failed, the customers might find themselves confronting situations where a product they relied upon ceased to exist with very little notice.
For the investors it’s of course a disappointing outcome, but the failure is built into their model and they knew going in that ‘taking a zero’ was a potential ending — that’s why they’re ‘ accredited investors.’ For the human being who is your using your service, quite often they don’t have the same visibility or understanding of the risks — there’s no such hurdle to make sure someone is an ‘accredited consumer.’"
6. This guy Warwick Powell is in the school of "America Bad" which shows up in his perspective. Very clear he is pro-China. But it is good to understand our enemies' view.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wELAe9yTOL0
7. Anduril & Founder Fund's Trae Stephens. Valuable discussion on defense and good quests in life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNMVl3hXvTQ
8. Shawn Puri is the man. What a fun and insight-dense conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMfvLnui-aU
9. When it comes to war, the military and geopolitics Erik Prince knows what he is talking about. This is an important presentation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsKtfLRSo2c&t=272s
10. Important topic: the American military is behind and not set up well for the future of mass war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0biBnbsAPE
11. Reindustrialization & the MidWest for the win.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07qpzLeVGKc
12. "Vice is also a malleable concept. What we consider as “vices” are purely socially constructed, meaning that they can morph and shift alongside changing social norms. Throughout history, activities once condemned as morally reprehensible — from gambling to alcohol consumption to certain forms of entertainment — have been reframed as acceptable, even celebrated. Meanwhile, behaviors that were once mundane, like smoking in offices or excessive social media use, can become widely frowned upon.
Lately, shifts in consumer sentiment, regulatory pressures, and advancements in technology — particularly artificial intelligence — are reshaping the vice economy. The age-old struggle of personal freedom versus societal acceptance is playing out in new ways, as younger generations redefine what constitutes indulgence and personal responsibility.
Specifically, the legalization of sports betting, once hailed as a major economic driver, is now facing backlash due to its financial and social consequences. Meanwhile, a cultural shift among younger generations has led to a decline in alcohol consumption, forcing the beverage industry to reconsider its strategies. Moreover, the continued deployment of AI is seeping through the vice economy, unlocking new opportunities while raising ethical concerns. Together, these trends indicate that the boundaries of vice are evolving, prompting stakeholders to adapt to an uncertain future."
https://medium.com/ipg-media-lab/the-shifting-norms-of-the-vice-economy-1baa5f544f23
13. Lots of good nuggets & learnings for B2B Sales leaders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n32QNJWNrlE&t=2s
14. "Each of these magical winter refuges has its own particular flavor. The shy celebs go for the fortresslike log homes of Montana’s Yellowstone Club, which is in the midst of a major expansion. The Westchester moms point their upfit Mercedes-Benz Sprinter vans and Cybertrucks toward the Hermitage Club of Vermont, which was taken private by the mountain’s homeowners during the pandemic. And the LA and San Francisco tech crowd can have one of Powder Haven’s Rivian courtesy cars meet them at the Ogden FBO.
To join these clubs often costs millions of dollars in real estate, plus initiation fees, plus tens of thousands in annual dues—not to mention, sometimes, multigenerational personality vetting. In this way, skiing in America is becoming more like America’s most elite golf and racquet clubs, as well as the private social clubs proliferating across New York City, and less like skiing in Europe, where lift-ticket costs at public mountains remain so reasonable that they’re drawing cost-conscious American skiers.
But private ski resorts are a peephole into another strata entirely—one that’s not only flush but teeming. There are enough ultra-high-net-worth people in America to fill Aspen, Telluride, Deer Valley, and Jackson Hole, among a dozen tony mountain towns. Baby boomers are holding between $84 trillion and $146 trillion in assets, much of which will be inherited by millennials in what economists refer to as the Great Wealth Transfer. Add to that the spoils of the tech boom, American energy independence, the AI trade, crypto, and a fire hose of pandemic-era government spending, and you can start to see how millions of Americans may soon need a fancier place to ski."
https://www.gq.com/story/inside-the-new-private-mountain-clubs-where-billionaires-ski
15. "Canada and the European NATO nations, together or separately, face challenges in replacing or even replicating much of the sophisticated intelligence support the United States provides. While European countries are enhancing their defense efforts, they lack the comprehensive and massive intelligence infrastructure the U.S. possesses.
While NATO nations have all agreed to a substantial increase in defense spending, the development and integration of advanced intelligence systems within Europe are still in progress and will not compensate for the immediate loss of U.S. intelligence. This is one reason why alliances are so important: The combined force is always greater than the sum of the individual members.
The ramifications of Trump’s decision extend beyond the battlefield. Given Putin’s well-documented war crimes and Russia’s continued attacks on civilians, restricting Ukraine’s access to intelligence raises serious ethical concerns about American complicity. In limiting Ukraine’s access to intelligence, the United States risks not just strategic miscalculation but moral failure—becoming an enabler of the very war crimes it once sought to prevent."
16. This was so good and came at right time. So many things to learn here on building businesses, building wealth and a great life. Only things that matter will be personal brand or AI-based businesses.
Learned the 60/30/10 rule and real world numbers/formulas for marketing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ERpvvaEUZY
17. "The experience of an entrepreneur selling to the U.S. military is not unlike that of a video game player. The Defense Department and its acquisition system exist in their own universe, with its own language, characters, unforeseen obstacles and progressively complicated levels that players must surmount. (In fact, “The Pentagon” itself sounds like a game world.)
Entrepreneurs new to the universe may find themselves lost, confused, or facing setbacks as they navigate the Pentagon’s acquisition bureaucracy. They must contend with a daunting number of people, an unfamiliar social ranking system and a new language – from acronyms like SBIR, JCIDS, and OTA to military phrases like “force multiplier” and “situational awareness.” They must find their way through over 4,000 pages of acquisitions guidance, develop a network of allies who can help them get to the next level, the Technology Readiness Level to be exact, where higher levels unlock additional contracts and new customers."
https://stanfordh4d.substack.com/p/the-quest-for-defense
18. "The same is true when working with the DoD. Understanding the landscape and having knowledge of milestones to be completed and people to know is necessary to move forward in the defense sales process. As entrepreneurs advance, they will have epiphanies about the problem their products solves, the value it adds, and for whom that cannot be precomputed. Entrepreneurs will then be awarded contracts by learning and applying all of this knowledge to delivering value to multiple stakeholders in the bureaucracy.
Let’s start with the first task: learning the universe. The Pentagon is unlike any other market most entrepreneurs have encountered. Entering this labyrinth means working with seasoned bureaucrats with years of contracting experience, learning a bevy of new terms and timelines, and competing with other players, like prime defense contractors, who have more knowledge, resources, and connections than an entrepreneurial newcomer."
https://stanfordh4d.substack.com/p/selling-to-defense-the-quest-for
19. Always enlightening view on geopolitics with Peter Zeihan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e0IZv31820
20. "Our entire Pentagon acquisition system is not oriented to buy from, learn from, or deal with this new class of external vendors. We built a great system to work with existing prime contractors: The top 10 or 20 get about 80% of all the defense contracts. It’s not that [people in the primes] are dumb, it’s not that they’re bad, it’s just that they can’t hire the best and the brightest because startups are paying baseball star salaries to AI engineers and drone folks. And [the primes] business model is not designed to do iterative and incremental innovation. It’s designed for change orders, long lead times, and waterfall engineering.
We can benchmark our progress against our potential adversaries. Look at the speed that China puts destroyers on the water, the innovation in drones that happens literally on a weekly basis, or the battlefield in Ukraine. There is no prime that is keeping up with that quantity.
Private capital, however, is pretty good at that. We just haven’t built a DoD acquisition system at scale that allows us to leverage its speed and energy.
So far, the DoD has been a terrible customer. Its acquisition cycles don’t match the cash flow needs of startups. And who’s going to be an acquisition partner for these guys? Lockheed? They don’t pay 10x or 50x revenue. You might get bought for, like, revenue."
https://www.tectonicdefense.com/the-godfather-of-defense-innovation-a-qa-with-steve-blank/
21. "Despite these negative remarks, any observer of geopolitics knows that innovative defense technology is not an abstraction—it is an essential pillar of global stability. The modern international order, in which human rights and democratic governance can flourish, did not emerge by accident. It was won on the battlefield, secured by superior military capabilities, and is maintained through vigilant deterrence.
Critics of defense technology fail to engage with the realities of the world we live in. Europe, long complacent about its security, is now rearming at a pace unseen since the Cold War in response to Russian aggression. China’s military ambitions continue to grow, with an expanding nuclear arsenal and aggressive posturing over Taiwan. These are not problems that can be solved with wishful thinking or moral posturing. They require technological superiority to deter escalation."
https://stanfordreview-org.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/stanfordreview.org/in-defense-of-defense-tech
22. Alt-Geopolitics and Geonomics. I disagree with these perspectives, these a--holes are definitely pro-Russia and pro-China, hiding in the West.
But trying to understand the opposing view here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPYoT24B2uc&t=2s
23. "One of the most elite Ukrainian units accepting foreign volunteers received “a massive spike” of applications, according to an international serviceman involved in recruiting. The source, who spoke anonymously due to his unit’s regulations, said that a few thousand applications came in after the Oval Office meeting, with “a significant amount of guys expressing outrage and shock over what has been happening with the shift in American policy.”
24. "After the Soviets found out about all this, they created a Doomsday Machine of their own. So, now we have two, each with vastly more than double the firepower. That’s what’s being revved up today – to back Ukraine. Or, is the goal something more mundane? Like ass-covering or generation of cash flows to hungry corporates? Ego? We must study this desire for a wargasm before the world is screwed.
To be clear, I am not saying President Putin is right or should be let off scot-free. Nor am I saying that the US Military Industrial Complex should either. But, diplomacy, as distasteful as it may be, can address these aggressions better than a nuclear conflict."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/kumbh-mela-ominicide-and-wargasm
25. "The message is simple: If adversity is an opportunity for growth, how lucky are we to grow into something harder and badder today?
The next time you're facing something hard, welcome it. These moments forge us if we let them.
Work through the process.
Learn the lessons.
Reap the FULL BENEFIT."
https://jaymartin.substack.com/p/bring-me-goliath
26. "We already know our leaders can’t be trusted.
Not with the management of our tax revenue, not to do what’s best for the people, and sure as hell to not abuse their positions of power for personal gain.
We can’t trust them with the economic prosperity of our nations. Despite this, these same people will soon wield the powers of financial gods, allowing them to manipulate and abuse our monetary system at will.
Powers that will allow them to punish you if you step out of line.
These are powers that even Kublai Khan, in his position as overlord of one of the largest empires in history, couldn’t have begun to imagine.
I’ve been talking about CBDCs in one way or another since 2020—nearly five years now. And all that time, it’s been one of those things that’s always been at arms length, never close enough for us to get too worried about its impact on our lives.
Well, not anymore.
For Europeans, it’s here this year.
For everyone else? Likely, very soon.
It’s time to ensure all your assets, income, or earning ability isn’t tied to just a single nation. To have access to some payment options outside the fiat system, like gold, silver, or Bitcoin. And ideally, to have at least one additional residency permit or citizenship outside your country of nationality.
In other words, to have a solid backup plan."
https://anticitizen.com/p/obey-or-perish
27. This was a surprisingly fascinating & wide ranging conversation. Lots of interesting takes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvpw4_O25eU
28. How Shawn Ryan built his media empire. Very instructive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MogxOvTa9Bg
29. One of the best conversations on the state of VC right now. Lots of zombie Unicorns right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wHzNOqRbDQ
30. Venture capital in the world of AI. Exciting times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEE5sfroDcw
31. Good view on the state of China and US relations right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzncmG-Tgj8
32. Solid overview of what is happening in Ukraine right now & where US support is critical.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtjDh4uI1jw
33. If anyone believes China's rise will be benign or good for America and the West, this interview should make it very clear this is not the case.
The CCP is looking to make a Chinese-run world order, they write and talk about this publicly. Read "The Long Game."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5VXqruTt5M
34. "This hypothetical Chagas scenario was presented to me by Jake Adler, the 20-year-old founder of Pilgrim, a company working to leverage nanotechnology, bioelectronics, autonomous sensors, and AI systems to usher in a new era of supersoldiers and anti-threat biosurveillance. The company recently raised a $3.25 million round led by Thiel Capital, Cantos, and Refactor to pursue this vision.
Pilgrim aims to navigate the minefield of government absurdity, leveraging its quirks and failures in order to rapidly deploy usable biotech that will act as a force multiplier on our troops and revamp systems that are meant to protect us against biological warfare. In other words? Pilgrim wants to make supersoldiers, produce futuristic dual-use medical technology, and catch the next pandemic before it even begins.
Jake, a previous recipient of the Thiel Fellowship, has been experimenting with biotech since his early teens. He originally founded a sleep-tech company called Neusleep, iterating on a sleep mask that was designed to “shock you to sleep,” out of his grandmother’s old folks home, raising $275k from various sources in the process. Starting a biotech company at a place where, by his recollection, there was a sign explicitly prohibiting the presence of adult diapers in the pool, is a wonderful brand of irony. He has since graduated to the resourceful oddities of purchasing “tummy tuck” skin for the ex vivo testing of rapid wound-repair solutions, sneaking into (and getting kicked out of) defense conferences, and (subsequently) pitching government officials on bioweapons protections from a makeshift booth of upside-down trash bins behind said conference center.
All of this to say, Pilgrim will do more than pay lip service to the archetypal “where there’s a will, there’s a way” methodology of getting things done as an undersized, roguelike startup."
https://www.piratewires.com/p/creating-supersoldiers-and-curbing-biothreats
35. These guys are in the "America Bad" camp but they are cold realists. This helps me think through the mainstream narratives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n9w5S9LZkY
36. The great VC AI debate. I'm in the Lessin school of AI, only folks who benefit are the big incumbents and super small startups. The middle will be sub-scale and not deliver VC returns.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcObLyRM15U
37. Fascinating conversation on VC and state of the venture market. It's pretty Bubbly at the later stage (ie. beyond Series C).
Synchs with what I am seeing too.
There Is Always an Exit Tax: The Price of Freedom and the Future
I am a big fan of Codie Sanchez who I had the privilege to meet once at my friend Eric Siu’s Leveling up Mastermind. An accomplished investor, business woman, one person media company, she is also a great teacher. She buys and manages an empire of small unsexy offline and online businesses like laundromats, car washes and other traditional service businesses.
Well known for sharing her knowledge online and teaching people how to get financial independence via buying profitable small businesses to build mini-Berkshire Hathaway's (for those who don’t know, Berkshire Hathaway is Warren Buffet's immensely massive and successful holding company of big businesses).
But she is also an amazingly wise lady about life. In a podcast she talks about her divorce from her previous husband and the key lesson from her father. Her words here:
“Two words my dad said to me which was “Exit Tax”. When I left it was expensive. Both physically and emotionally. And I told my dad about it, he said there is always an exit tax to freedom. And it stuck with me, this is just a toll. A Payment. Once it gets paid, what’s on the other side? That word freedom.”
It made me think. A LOT. Everything that we do comes to an end. Our life is full of relationships, work, business, personal and family. But we sometimes stay in them longer than is healthy for us because we are scared or weak. Or too proud or care too much about what people around us think.
Or more likely we suffer from sunk costs fallacy: where we are worried that everything we have put in before will be lost or wasted, whether these are emotional or monetary investments.
But we have to get past it mentally. Being sentimental and stuck in the past does not serve us well. We have to treat these as lost forever and take the hard lesson. It’s like taking a loss in stock investing, so you can deploy what’s left to a better, more profitable investment in the future.
That is the exit tax we need to pay so we can move on and hopefully get to a better place. Life is too short to stay in unhappy jobs, unhappy relationships or bad businesses & situations.
Equalizer 3: An Assassin’s Italian Holiday
I was a fan of the original tv series The Equalizer during the 80s. About an elite gentleman CIA assassin who tries to atone for all the terrible things he did in the service, by helping people get out of trouble. He uses his skills and experience serving justice to those in need, especially the poor and helpless. A literal equalizer for those who cannot get help from normal means. A new age Robin Hood or even more violent Batman. Something we all wish existed in real life.
Antoine Fuqua and Denzel Washington have a modern remake that is updated and way more violent. True revenge flicks. The first movie was about the Russian Mafia, the 2nd one he takes down some of his former CIA colleagues turned renegade. But the 3rd edition is him taking on the Camora, one of the most vicious mafia groups in Italy.
He ends up injured from a mission and winds up in a small town Altamonte in Sicily. While healing there, he befriends many of the locals and becomes one of the community. He eventually becomes their protector from the powerful mafia lord terrorizing the town.
What I loved about it was the beautiful landscapes of this historical town. The Mediterranean seascapes, the old churches, the plazas full of people, the winding hillside staircases, the reflection of the closed but kind local community. Italian living really is attractive. Lots of sun, delicious food, even better coffee and plenty of warm, kind people. Oh and again, the amazing food. (As an aside Italian cuisine is in my pantheon of top food, up there with Japanese and Chinese food).
A welcoming environment that is slow paced and sometimes disorganized. But it’s such a lovely way of living. No wonder people from all over the world are drawn to the country. And if it can domesticate a busy former CIA assassin, it can do the same for you.
We can all do with more Italy in our lives. I realized this in 2023 when I went to Puglia for my friend Stefan’s wedding. It was such a great respite from my normal modern busy life. Or those of us who are lucky enough to jet set across the world for a career. A slower pace of life and the simple joys provide the reset we can all sometimes use.
Shortcomings: What you Hate Shows You Who You Are
I found an interesting new Asian-American romantic comedy, Shortcomings, which was based on a popular graphic novel. It was pretty damn funny as it acts as critique and observation of American and Asian-American culture that takes place in Northern California. It was also a bit dark and maybe hit too close to home but I saw it at the right time in my life.
I really disliked the main character Ben, who is this snarky, negative, arrogant, elitist & judgemental Asian-American guy who just pisses on everything and everyone. He is a snob and thinks he is better than everyone. Yet he is just a low level manager at a local movie theater. He cannot be happy for his loved ones and can only see the bad side of things.
There is this insightful comment when his long term girlfriend breaks up with him:
“you want to know what is f—ing embarrassing, trying to hold on to something just because you are pathologically afraid of change. That’s what you do and it felt like death to me. I also think you have problems with anger, depression, your weird self-hatred issues and just the relentless negativity. Your resistance to grow, to change….”
Then I realized that damn it, that’s actually a pretty good description of me. All of it. All spot on. I’m so negative (thank you Canada), angry and just awful sometimes. This is what gets me into fights with my family. Every single one of them. It is also probably why I hate doing anything with Asian-American culture (god, I detest that obnoxious Gold House and that group of people. A bunch of arrogant hosers).
But what I did enjoy was how Asian culture has become more mainstream. Showed a shift in the culture that reflects. An Asian American guy with a white girl on screen, which I have never seen until the last 3 years. Talking about the Korean wave hitting as well. But it’s also how people try to find themselves now and who can start to identify with people on screen. In the popular culture that doesn’t fit old stereotypes. When to be yourself and when to pretend to fit in. But also how people self-sabotage.
There is this scene when Ben’s new girlfriend breaks up with him and he is of course a total dick, she says to him: “I know you are going to want to blame society, or my sexuality or on your race or whatever. But one day you are going to understand that this really is just about you.”
So many of us don’t take responsibility for our failures. Or recognize our own flaws. The sooner you do that, the sooner you can fix it. But we usually do that only after we hit rock bottom. Sometimes you have to hear the hard painful truth from someone you love (or used to love you). Guess there is a big lesson there. That’s when you actually grow.
This should also be freeing: we are truly the architect of our own fate for better or worse. Let’s make it for the better.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads April 13th, 2025
“Technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master.'' -- Christian Lous Lange
"Essentially, the history of warfare can be divided into two distinct epochs. The first epoch, which lasted from the Battle of Kadesh to the Siege of Vicksburg (3,137 years), was an epoch of armies that stood up straight in formation. The second epoch, our current epoch, is the epoch of the empty battlefield in which soldiers spend most of their time trying to conceal themselves from the enemy.
The war in Ukraine has demonstrated that the era of the empty battlefield is intensifying. The most powerful coefficient on the battlefield today is the nexus of modern ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance) and precision strike systems. This power is brought to bear through drones of all types – spotter drones surveilling the battlefield and strike drones which include First Person View (FPV) units. The ability of both Ukrainian and Russian forces to survey and strike the battlefield is so precise that they can find and hit enemy vehicles and positions at particular points of vulnerability: footage of FPV drones flying through doorways and windows of enemy strongpoints is now everywhere.
On modern battlefields, hiding is now a critical skill. Anything (or anyone) that can be seen can be hit and destroyed. Blanketing electronic warfare, which can deny airspace to enemy drones, remains far away, and until it arrives, the ability to win decisive victories has become very difficult. Armies are forced to disperse and conceal themselves to avoid enemy surveillance and strike systems and, therefore, find it difficult to gain momentum.
This reality was witnessed early in the war through Ukraine’s successes in using American rocket systems to strike Russian ammunition dumps – in response, Russia dispersed and concealed its supply depots. Dispersion has also now taken place with manpower and vehicles – despite the large numbers of personnel mobilized on both sides, assault actions are regularly conducted by relatively small groups (often company-sized or smaller) as these are the only forces that can be safely organized to attack."
https://im1776.com/lessons-from-ukraine/
2. "Zelensky is in a vise. Washington is no longer reliable – or even predictable – Europe is scrambling but under-gunned, and Putin’s dream of parading through Kyiv’s Maidan (Independence Square) is costing both Russia and Ukraine a generation of men.
Kyiv Post’s sources say Zelensky’s team is “regrouping,” but the vibe on the ground is grim. Ukraine’s leader can wait for Europe’s rhetoric to become reality, roll the dice on a settlement that stinks of surrender, or fight on with whatever’s left in the tank. None of it’s pretty, and none of it’s guaranteed. But if I’ve learned anything from war, it’s this: when the chips are down, you don’t fold – you bluff, you brawl, or you bleed. Zelensky’s still standing. For now."
https://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/48156
3. "Entrepreneurs would do well to think through the “magic moment” in their products—what wows people, what makes someone excitedly share their experience with a friend, and how they can reduce the time and effort it takes for a new user to encounter that magic moment. Magic moments, just as they sound, are incredible experiences. Even to this day, I vividly remember the magic moment from decades ago when I believed a driver could control the stereo in his car with his voice."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/03/08/unforgettable-tech-magic-moments/
4. "Now, imagine you — yes, you — created this entire universe for yourself. Like entering a maze in an amusement park, you’ve imposed these constraints for the fun of it, to create a challenge, an adventure. Why else would you do it?
Now, let’s take it further. Imagine a brilliant sun — your higher self — shining above a layer of clouds. The sun is always there, always radiating, but you can’t see it because of the cloud cover. The trick is learning how to poke holes in the clouds, letting more light through, until one day the clouds dissolve entirely and you merge with that higher self.
This is a profound shift — where you step through the illusion and start playing life instead of suffering through it."
https://newsletter.sanjaysays.co/p/feeling-tired-and-run-down-9179ee5c5ef9d381
5. Net net: it's just going to be more volatile in Ukraine and the world in general with Trump.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDf8YBuRIvU
6. Pragmatism matters. Europe's naivety has been deadly to their populace and their own interests.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh1zmDi0qN0
7. These guys are a--holes but I try to understand the opposing narratives in the Russia-Ukraine war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuxMZmMOt3M
8. You have to break out of your own narrative bubble. Factually though China is kicking our a-s. I wouldn't invest in China personally but it seems to be an undervalued market.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwHnJn0ubYs
9. Understanding the economic revolution in China right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbpMPzCJetU
10. Understanding Thrive Capital, one of the top multi stage VC firms around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIIQR_FlKnw&t=45s
11. "As an investor, there is a play here - be open to things that violate the tenets of the hardware lottery. If we fund new ideas, even if they take a bit longer to generate economics, we could create the really breakthrough technologies that will get us to AGI. Of course, given the current assumption by many that AGI is just around the corner, maybe that is a difficult bet to take."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/the-hardware-lottery-and-the-future
12. "The most successful AI M&A strategies combine small, mid-sized, and large-scale acquisitions to create a diversified approach to AI adoption.
✅ Small acquisitions ($5M-$50M) provide technical talent and niche AI capabilitiesat a relatively low cost.
✅ Mid-sized acquisitions ($50M-$500M) offer fully developed AI solutions that can be integrated into existing operations.
✅ Large-scale acquisitions ($500M+) allow companies to establish themselves as market leaders in AI-driven transformation.
The AI race is already underway, and the winners will be those that make decisive moves now. Companies that integrate AI early—whether through acquisition, strategic investment, or partnerships—will be best positioned to lead in an increasingly AI-driven economy."
https://startupstechvc.beehiiv.com/p/buy-now-build-later-the-smartest-ai-play-for-fortune-500s
13. "Claude Code re-anchors what I expect to pay for software and the delivery time of that software, perhaps unrealistically. If it’s just a few minutes to build an Android app, how long could a fully functioning software product take to build? It might not be accurate to linearly extrapolate simple apps, build time to complex enterprise apps. But it makes me wonder.
Imagine applying this strategy across half to three quarters of a white-collar workforce & using another AI to label each action an employee takes with AI and aggregating that across an organization."
https://tomtunguz.com/cost-of-this/
14. Super fun episode this week with the boys at NIA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxWZiyLU_G4
15. "Increased demand caused by the prospect of European rearmament has sent shares in German defence companies surging as they ramp up production.
Against this backdrop, some car factories in Germany are being repurposed to make weapons as European manufacturers battle a market that has failed to recover to its pre-Covid levels."
https://www.yahoo.com/news/volkswagen-open-building-military-equipment-160011493.html
16. "Current estimates put the entire force necessary to replace the US contingent in Europe at 330,000 troops or 55 brigades. That will be a stretch. At present Germany can barely muster a single combat-ready division. But getting to a place in which large European states are able to competently defend themselves does not require unleashing the demons of World War II. It requires returning to something more like the normality of Europe in the age of NATO deterrence in the 1970s and 1980s."
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-360-war-economies-disentangling
17. "However, Moore and Pasarell couldn’t stomach seeing their event move to a different location, so they brought the deal to an unlikely source: Oracle founder Larry Ellison.
Ellison started playing tennis in the early 2000s after pickup basketball became too hard on his body. The billionaire received private lessons at his residence five days a week, and his instructor just so happened to be a mutual friend of Raymond Moore.
This is how Larry Ellison ended up buying the Indian Wells tournament for $100 million. He obviously has a lot of money and could afford it, but this wasn’t just a passion project. Ellison had been attending the tournament for several years and wanted to run it like a legitimate business, reinvesting profits back into the fan and player experience to build something truly special — and that’s precisely what he did."
https://huddleup.substack.com/p/how-a-billionaire-built-the-worlds
18. "Canada faces an urgent choice: continue relying on unpredictable partners and risk strategic irrelevance, or build genuine capability for autonomous action. The path forward demands recalibration of Canadian security thinking and expansion of capabilities in three domains: special operations forces, offensive cyber operations, and intelligence collection.
We must undertake a generational project to build these capabilities—not to repudiate alliances but as insurance against their uncertainty. For a middle power with limited resources, the most efficient path to strategic autonomy lies in asymmetric capabilities that provide disproportionate strategic effects relative to their cost. Special forces, cyber operations, and intelligence align with Canada's comparative advantages: a highly educated population, advanced technological base, diverse society, and reputation as a constructive international actor."
https://suthakamal.substack.com/p/canadas-moment-building-strategic
19. "All the pushups in the world haven’t prevented the vaunted Russian military from turning in a decidedly lackluster performance in Ukraine. But to the American right, perceptions and posturing and vibes are often more important than numbers and statistics. Russia gives off strength, so it must be strong.
And to the American right, strength is everything in international affairs. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, and concepts like the rules-based international order or international law are laughable. If Russia and Europe are to fight, Trump and company want to bet on the side with the shirtless pushups.
Of all the reasons why Trump has abandoned Europe, this is the only one that the region can do anything about. Europeans are not going to give up their fundamental values, and they won’t be able to disabuse Trump of his dreams of partnering with Russia and pretending it’s the 19th century. But what Europe can do is to look strong. It can beef up its defenses by a huge amount, implement universal military training, build up its nuclear arsenal, and boost heavy industry and defense manufacturing. Poland is already doing all of this, and the UK, France, and Germany are already moving in the direction of rearmament. That’s good.
Europe can’t make Trump or his party embrace their values. But what they can do is to become strong enough where Trump respects them instinctively. That strength will push Trump toward a posture of neutrality, instead of friendliness toward Russia. And maybe, after the weird rightist minority that has taken over the country no longer holds power, America and Europe can reestablish their storied alliance — on a more equal footing this time."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-america-betrayed-europe
20. "Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has attacked the United States and Europe on a near-daily basis using what are often referred to as “hybrid” operations, meant to hide the hand of the Russian government and to remain below the threshold of war so as not to trigger a response."
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-courts-putin-russians-trying-kill-americans-gray-zone-hybrid-war
21. A truly unique and interesting person. Cyan Banister.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1eoWu8QVIU
22. "Putin wants a weak, failed Ukrainian state. Obviously Ukraine wants the opposite.
And this war, and negatiation now is not about NATO enlargement or Ukraine’s NATO membership. It never was. Simply put it is about Ukraine’s sovereignty, independent of Russia, or not.
Ukraine will not accept any deal that undermines/fails to secure its fundamental sovereignty. For Ukriane it is about the survival of the state, and it’s people. For Putin it is about the opposite. So while Trump might see this simply as a case of war or peace, for the two main protagonists in this war and negotiations is is about something different, and war has been the result of the underlining problem/dispute about Ukrainian sovereignty.
Not sure Trump et al get all this."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/a-game-of-chicken-kyiv-or-kiev
23. Always strong sober analysis by George Friedman. Founder of Geopolitical Futures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6XttbqpM_M
24. This was a fun interview.
https://agoldfisher.medium.com/ai-robotics-the-future-of-work-328baca898fc
25. I think both of these people are CCP shills. But I try to listen to everyone to try to understand the situation on the ground. China is a major threat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFV7kHgctJ8
26. Lots of good nuggets on geopolitics measurements right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLhhVDo4xGo
27. One of the more interesting characters in Silicon Valley. Alex Karp of Palantir.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUK-VYCh5go
28. Lots of fun stuff this week in Silicon Valley news.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6myq5J5PjI
29. One of the more original and interesting investors: Sam Lessin. A Fun conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDjDzWCdlx0
30. "Achieving peace, security, and stability will require tough decisions and sacrifices. The kind of sacrifices that win wars. Is the EU willing to make them? As Trump advances with his America First agenda, it’s easy for proponents of liberty and democracy to despair. But there’s nothing like the threat of a brutal autocrat in Russia and an unpredictable president in the White House to bring unity to the continent. The bad news is the EU can no longer count on the U.S. The good news: They may not need us."
https://www.profgalloway.com/europe-becomes-a-union/
31. "For startups, working with the Department of Defense (DoD) can feel like stepping into a fortress of bureaucracy — procurement is slow, compliance is daunting, and knowing who actually makes buying decisions is like navigating a maze in the dark. Yet, for those who learn to successfully navigate these hurdles, the rewards can be enormous.
The DoD is one of the world’s largest and most stable customers, spending hundreds of billions on modern defense systems and technology annually. Unlike volatile consumer markets, defense contracts offer not just funding, but also long-term sustainment. Small wins can lead to multi-million-dollar deals, resulting in high-margin, predictable revenue streams. And beyond financial incentives, building technology that strengthens national security carries undeniable appeal in supporting our country and our interests as Americans.
But this market is not for the impatient. Sales cycles take years, compliance is non-negotiable, and understanding who buys what, and through which funding mechanisms, is as important as having a strong product. Startups must approach the DoD with a strategic, long-term mindset — because while the opportunities are vast, so are the barriers to entry.
While we hope for DoD procurement reform, the following is a high-level primer intended to arm you with a rough framework of how to approach selling to the DoD today."
https://a16z.com/dod-contracting-for-startups-101/
32. I don't agree with this perspective but it is Alt-Geopolitics with Alex Krainer. Always an interesting take.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjSuUOa9TYI
33. Damn, this was a deep and valuable interview with Silicon Valley VC legend: Doug Leone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCWz0OxE16s
34. "While innovation and new production often steal the headlines, the future of U.S. manufacturing hinges on an often-overlooked component: maintenance and overhaul — what’s commonly known as the “aftermarket.” This vast ecosystem of maintenance, repair, logistics, and related jobs is essential to ensure these innovations operate seamlessly over time. Without addressing the aging infrastructure that underpins the country’s economic engine, even the most advanced progress in hardware and technology will fall short of its full potential.
Until we inspire a new generation of young people to enter these critical sectors, the momentum behind reshoring and revitalizing manufacturing may fall short. In the meantime, the key lies in leveraging technology to bridge the labor gap while simultaneously encouraging the next generation to see the potential and excitement in these massive, essential industries."
Departures: Passings & Comfort in Ceremony
Another flight and another set of movies. I’ve been wanting to watch this Japanese movie called “Departures” for a long time but never got around to it. It’s a movie that covers the depressing topic of death but it also turned out to be about life too. Life affirming actually. Seeing death makes you appreciate life and the art of living well. Beautiful natural scenery, the Onsen hot spring, lovely music and delicious food.
Daigo is a professional cellist in Tokyo who returns to his home town Yamagata after his orchestra is shut down. He takes a job as an assistant to a local undertaker who performs the passing ceremony for families of the dead.
After a rough start, Daigo starts to learn the way and begins to understand the comfort their ceremony provides for the family of the dead and the living. It’s a grim but important job. He starts to find meaning in this work. His wife and friends slowly come around to the immense value of his work.
There is a scene during a ceremony where they are met with an angry father whose wife had passed. But the caretaker lovingly and meticulously as only the Japanese do, restores the dead wife’s look, touching the mourning family deeply.
Daigo says:
“One grown cold, restored to beauty for eternity. This was done calmly and precisely….with a gentler affection than anything else. At the final parting to send them on their way. Everything is done peacefully and beautifully.”
This is also a restart for him, finding a new path to fulfillment. There is a scene of him watching the salmon swim upstream. He says: “Sad, coming all this way to die. it doesn’t seem worth it.” He is told by a wiser old man: “They want to go home, back to where they were born.”
I truly believe people go somewhere after death. Humans are energy and as the laws of physics show energy doesn’t just disappear. It just takes a new form.
There is a quote from the movie that stayed with me: “I’ve often thought that maybe death is like a gateway. Dying doesn’t mean the end. You go through it and onto the next thing. It’s a gate.”
Japanese death ceremonies are a beautiful way to send this new form on its way. And more importantly are a form of solace and closure for the living.
Weakness Invites Aggression: Peace is Achieved Through Strength
I know I write a lot about geopolitics. These things are important to understand. What’s going on? Who are our allies and who are our enemies. It affects where we do business and how. Which industries, sectors, companies and countries to invest or work in. Which countries or regions to live in.
I used to be Libertarian in the way of the “Sovereign Individual” book, which is a classic book worth reading and one ahead of its time in detailing important technology trends. It discusses the concept of escaping high tax and unfree places to lower tax and business friendlier climates.
However the great flaw in this is what happens when the places that are totally free are crime ridden anarchic hellholes like Somalia or dystopian sci-fi dictatorships like China under the CCP who have exported their surveillance state to their allies.
As @noahpinion writes libertarians eventually understand the importance of having a strong military and defense to enforce their borders against enemies coming over the hills and raping, killing and pillaging their populace as per the “Tamerlane effect” like Russia invading UKraine in 2022. Or the Hamas terror attacks in Israel on October 7th. The list goes on.
Unfortunately it seems the West and its complacent & brain dead populace has still not woken up to this. All these governments talk about doing stuff, but the only countries who seem to have stepped up is Poland who have increased their defense spending to a whopping 4-5% of GDP. Japan has truly doubled their defense spending and some of the countries like Finland, Sweden have always punched above their weight. The Baltics and many Eastern European countries who directly face the Russian threat are ramping up.
For most countries in the West, it is “performative theater as foreign policy” as American geopolitical strategist Eldridge Colby calls it. Weakly-led countries like Canada, Germany, the UK and most of the EU talk a big game but at the same time have let their militaries shrink and their industrial bases get run down. It took 3 years of war in Ukraine and Trump & his admin openly talking about leaving NATO has caused the UK, France and Germany to finally do something.
Truly unserious people there although this is also the case in America where our so-called leadership from Bush Jr to Obama to Trump and Biden have squandered all of our advantages coming out of the Cold War.
Unfortunately, we are not in a posturing world anymore but the real world now. I don’t like this at all but reality is a hard teacher. Bullies and criminals only attack the weak. This has always been the case throughout human history in every society. I hope we wake up soon and prepare our countries as the old and much repeated axiom goes: “If you want peace, prepare for war.”
In the end, countries get whatever they deserve based on the good or bad choices they made decades ago. While the West is behind, maybe the new sense of urgency and action will help us catch up and get strong. You can’t be sovereign if you are not strong. This is the hard truth of human history, now reasserting itself harshly after the unwinding of the Unipolar world of Pax Americana.