Solitude or Loneliness: Humans in a Modern World
I’m a regular movie watcher on many flights. I love American, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Hong Kongese and even the odd European Indian and Chinese movie.
I’ve noticed recently a regular theme of loneliness. I think it’s always been there but for some odd reason I have only really noticed it now.
Young and old people, by themselves living in a city or living by themselves. Going about their day, working, surviving, surrounded by people but alone. Searching and hungering for something more.
I was listening to a great podcast episode with Chris Williamson and Sadia Khan about how humans are wired for connection. Apparently we even sleep better when we are sleeping in a group together. Goes back to caveman Neanderthal days. Tribal instincts and safety in numbers.
I’m used to traveling and living by myself. For extended periods of time. Eating by myself at a restaurant, going to a movie by myself. Most of the time I do enjoy it. I can do and go wherever I want. Stay up late and do whatever. It also certainly helps to be an introvert.
But I do miss my family. I miss the connection.
However, I have my books, my internet connection and friends all over the world in almost every city. That’s not nothing. And I suspect this is a new adoption or maybe even mal-adoption to our new modern world.
As the quote goes: “friends are the family you choose.”
Cold War 2: Rise of the New Axis versus the West
Villeneuve’s Dune 2 is a masterpiece just like Dune 1. Amazing story and a feast for the eyes. An epic story based on the rise of Mohammed and Islam.
There is a specific scene when Paul Atreides is talking with his mentor & Weapons master, Gurney Halleck.
“No need to be a prophet to see what’s ahead. Your path leads to war. You know that. So war is coming. What will you do when you feel it’s breath on your neck?”
This is how I feel. As I read the news, as I travel the world, as I talk with people around the world. Not everyone but those in the know. Past and present soldiers, Dept of Defense folks, people who run Family offices, even PE guys and bankers.
The Thucydides trap, when a rising power or powers face a declining one, war is the inevitable outcome. Now we have the Axis of China, Russia, Iran & North Korea unified in taking the faltering hegemon of the United States and its Allies in the West.
People will say we are not at war yet. I would disagree. It’s not a direct hot war but more of a hybrid war. One of ideas: Democratic versus autocratic rule.
One of trade, economics and on the monetary side: China is doing trade deals across the Global South via their Belt & Road Initiative and the US via the World Bank and IMF. All with their own flavor of Economic Hitman strategy: one where you lend out debt that a country can never repay and you end up owning their natural resources.
One of proxy wars: just look at what’s happening Ukraine, in the Red Sea, Israel & the South China Seas.
One of espionage, cyber warfare and straight up sabotage. The incredible amount of IP theft from the West. The fentanyl being smuggled into the US, killing 100,000s of Americans a year, all based on Chinese base chemicals and chemists. Mysterious train de-railings, food or ammo factory fires, energy infrastructure and bridges failings.
One of disinformation, propaganda and media, where troll farms are active on all the social media platforms spreading fake news. We do, our enemies do it and I would argue our enemies do it better due to our own division and lack of control of the media unlike in the new Axis countries.
This is why we need to be raising tariffs (albeit in a more structured and less chaotic way) and rebuilding our industrial base. This is why we need to have a strategy like we did in Cold War 1. This is why we need to prepare the populace at large to be mentally ready for deprivation. More importantly this is why we need to gain unity as the wolves are at the door. Barbarians are at the gates. Unity within America but also unity with our allies in Canada, Australia, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Philippines and Taiwan, something the Trump admin has done a poor job of.
We had an incredible run of prosperity but the world has changed. We are facing one of the biggest threats to our way of life in this new Axis and this time without great leadership, the resources, wealth and power we had before. So getting out of this mess and winning will require hard work, intelligence, discipline and sacrifice. Something most people in the West have not had to do for a while. Let’s hope and pray we are all up to this.
There are No Atheists in Foxholes: Finding My Religion
I grew up in a strongly rational, science-driven household. One that was frankly, deeply anti-religious. Add all my history background reading about all the awful things that happened in history driven by religion, The Inquisition, the religious wars all over Europe (30 Years War), the Crusades, the Spanish conquest of Latin America and such. All were really horrific things done in the name of God. No wonder I turned strongly against religion, thinking that religious people were deluded.
However, I think we humans are spiritual people. We all need something to believe in. For the bulk of my life, this belief was in capitalism and the West. Securing the bag as they say. It still is in some ways. But as I got older, this started to feel hollow and empty. What do you do when you have almost everything you thought you wanted as a kid?
And then 2020 happened with the pandemic & the lockdowns, 2022 with the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine. This last half decade has been really rough for many of us. Turning 50 for the most part alone. The consequent breakdown of my family life and business challenges led me to dark thoughts and places these last few years.
One of the places that helped was going to my local Catholic Church more frequently. The place that my 20, 30 or 40 year old self would never have gone to. Yet I find the place peaceful and calming. The words of Mass inspiring and thought provoking. The kindness and smile of local parishioners was welcoming. Praying as meditation. It’s been a balm.
Additionally, since I started doing more business in the MENA region and SaudiArabia, I’ve explored Islam as well. A very robust and masculine religion that I also find appealing. Something about listening to the Koran is just soothing to me. There is something about having a strong moral code.
As the title says, most people usually discover religion in times of trouble and tribulation. Especially as we get older. We neglect our spiritual side in our modern world to our own detriment and that is a shame. But thankfully God in whatever form is always there waiting. I find deep comfort in this thought. This is one aspect of my life I intend to explore much more deeply.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads June 29th, 2025
“The tans will fade but the memories will last forever.” – Unknown
Building focused and talent dense teams. Learning from Zuck at Stripe Sessions 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gF12Xn3C-0c
2. "The world is a complex system with many feedback loops at many levels. Very small changes, the kind that are hard to measure, will have huge long term impacts in many areas.
This difficulty won’t necessarily stop companies are governments from trying to use AI for places it fails. After all, the world hates uncertainty."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/ai-snake-oil
3. "Your communication quality is a small key that opens—or locks—big doors. As one slide in my deck says, “Your email response time is a trust builder, a reputation maker, and a success predictor.”
https://startupistanbul.substack.com/p/van-halens-secret-investor-test
4. One of the best interviews I've heard in a long time. The joy of design by Jony Ives.
We need more of this taste and craftsmanship back in Silicon Valley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLb9g_8r-mE&t=89s
5. "Lifton remembers telling others in the rare earths industry this would be a mistake. But the consensus was that the Chinese would essentially be suppliers to Molycorp, giving the company more product at a lower cost, while never developing their own processing facilities, much less permanent magnet companies.
That’s not what happened.
The Chinese businessmen “went and sold those blueprints all over China,” Lifton says. “And by the end of the decade, there were a hundred of these plants of all sizes throughout China.”
“I'm not blaming Molycorp,” he added. “They were trying to be good capitalists. They were trying to get the cost down. It just backfired.”
In 1988, according to media accounts at the time, Chinese companies, which could undercut Molycorp prices because of cheap labor, fewer environmental restrictions, and a greenlight to maximize output, overtook Molycorp as the world leader in refining rare earths. By the mid-1990s, China also produced more rare earth oxides than Molycorp and the US.
The power had shifted enough for Chinese Premiere Deng Xiaoping to boast, in 1992, “There is oil in the Middle East; there is rare earth in China.
There wasn’t any mystery about why this happened: Once China developed and scaled its rare earths capabilities, the US rare earths industry couldn’t keep up. US electronic and car companies, not to mention defense contractors, preferred China’s lower prices.”
https://thehustle.co/originals/what-the-hell-are-rare-earth-elements
6. "So this is me, saying it now. Loud and clear.
If you’re a founder, you don’t get to overlook these things.
You don’t get to ignore the warning signs.
You don’t get to say I’m not a finance person. You become one. Fast.
You don’t get to say I’ll fix it later. Later might not come.
You don’t get to tolerate the wrong people. They will kill your momentum.
You don’t get to overspend and call it growth. That’s not growth. It’s delusion.
You are building a high-performance machine with no safety net.
Mistakes are expensive. Time is limited. Nobody’s coming to save you.
So please. Get serious. About people. About data. About money."
https://2lr.substack.com/p/financial-immaturity
7. This conversation scared the crap out of me. Securing critical infrastructure & lots of foreign spies in Silicon Valley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLzrQweAICM
8. Inside Substack and how it is reinventing media. I'm a fan and user.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFbL5G0CT-Y
9. "That kind of attitude is pervasive in America. The model used to be that of Henry Ford, mass production and ruthless efficiency to create high quality cheap cars with low profit margins, underpinned by machine tooling. You’d get rich by deploying a lot of capital, selling a lot of units, and being ruthless about productive efficiency.
Today, the model is to do something that doesn’t require a lot of investment, so software or advertising or finance, essentially leveraging someone else’s capital. To do something like make screws for a low margin, you can just go to China, which seeks lower returns on capital. Indeed, we’ve been leveraging China’s capital for a long time.
There are many downsides to our model, but one of them is that high profit margins without discipline ends up causing bloat. Procurement consultant Rich Ham described the dynamic in corporate America, which is wildly inefficient, masked by excessive and persistent profit margins.
All of these dynamics are a result of law. I’ve gone over this dynamic many times, the basic idea is that a lot of the policies we implement, like strong patent rights, financial deregulation, and low corporate tax rates, are designed to ensure very high profits on any dollar of invested capital. Just having skilled labor and machine tooling around doesn’t fit in that model; a shop like that of Charles Williams’ shop could not exist today, at least not in America."
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-china-is-not-why
10. "No matter where we look in history, if there were eyes to bear witness, we would always find inspiring stories of adventure and heroism, proof that those who have a spirit strong enough can always find their way.
The lesson: Golden Ages do not simply descend upon us through the works of others. They are actively shaped by our own choices and actions.
The only difference between a Golden Age and a Dark Age but the vision and actions of those who inhabit it. Borrowing from Mann’s own metaphor, even in the darkest times, there have been those who have found their ship full of gold."
https://www.businessofpower.com/p/lessons-from-simon-mann
11. "Being a professional is an apex trait that is completing dying out in 2025.
Professionalism is a lifestyle.
It’s the close sibling of competence.
It transcends language, race, religion.
Anyone can spot a professional from a mile away.
Why?
Because he is intentional. He isn’t sloppy. He is punctual.
Each of us have this person in our lives. They are ultra reliable.
You name a time & place, they are there without fail."
https://www.lethalgentleman.com/p/how-to-be-a-professional
12. "Those two meals fifty hours apart capture a contrast between the US and Europe I’ve seen in years traveling both, with the US undeniably wealthier in easily quantified material terms, but lagging in harder to measure, more subjective qualities, such as aesthetics, fulfillment, and contentment.
While the US and Europe share a broad commitment to classical Liberalism, and Democracy, we have very different definitions of the Public Good, which means different views of what we want out of life, and what we consider fulfilling. In broad and simplistic terms, the US emphasizes material wealth, opportunity, and individual liberty while Europe values community health, a shared common good, and a sense of place.
From the European perspective the US has a cult of the individual, and that's why it has too many guns, obscenely large cars, can't build a public transportation system, and has dysfunctional public spaces. From the US perspective Europeans are unmotivated unproductive slackers who would rather sip coffee all day than work, and their idea of a shared common good means stealing from the successful to give to the losers."
https://walkingtheworld.substack.com/p/is-it-euro-poor-or-ameri-poor
13. This is a sobering calculus: impacts on agricultural industry from the trade war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_jtHIezOqU
14. "Illusions don’t last. Rome’s bread and circuses couldn’t halt the barbarians. The Soviet Union’s grand plans masked a rotting core until it buckled. When the chasm between the fantasy and the facts grows too wide, it breaks.
We’re nearing that edge. The trillions propping up this delusion are a debt reality can’t repay. When the public wakes up—when the AI doesn’t think, when the rockets don’t land—trust will vanish. Riots, bankruptcies, or worse will follow as the powerful flail unable to redirect the wrath of the people. Unable to buy off the might of fighters who will take what they believe to be theirs."
https://emburlingame.substack.com/p/the-great-deception-572
15. "The great deception of manufactured scarcity is a timeless tool of despotism, used to control populations through fear, dependence, and division. By understanding the forms of despotism and the mechanisms that sustain them—violence, ignorance, and critical resource control—we can better recognize these tactics in both historical and modern contexts. Constant self-education, reviews of broad spectrum information, and seeking self-sufficiency in all things are essential to dismantling these systems.
Only by exposing the lie of scarcity can societies break free from the cycle of despotism and control to build thriving families and communities based on truth and independence, not deception."
https://emburlingame.substack.com/p/the-great-deception-0d5
16. "One thing is clear: Facebook doesn’t really care about countries other than America. Though Wynn-Williams chalks this up to plain old provincial chauvinism (which FB’s top eschelon possess in copious quantities), there’s something else at work. The USA is the only country in the world that a) is rich, b) is populous, and c) has no meaningful privacy protections. If you make money selling access to dossiers on rich people to advertisers, America is the most important market in the world.
But then Facebook conquers America. Not only does FB saturate the US market, it uses its free cash-flow and high share price to acquire potential rivals, like Whatsapp and Instagram, ensuring that American users who leave Facebook (the service) remain trapped by Facebook (the company).
At this point, Facebook — Zuckerberg — turns towards the rest of the world.
Suddenly, acquiring non-US users becomes a matter of urgency, and overnight Wynn-Williams is transformed from the sole weirdo talking about global markets to the key asset in pursuit of the company’s top priority."
https://medium.com/@doctorow/sarah-wynn-williamss-careless-people-45a7e06b8578
17. "And without a doubt, different peer groups are getting out in the world in totally different ways.
For Gen Xers (born between 1965 and 1980), you might have noticed your Boomer parents (born between 1946 and 1964) regularly turning to travel advisors to book their cruise vacations while your kids or nieces and nephews in Gen Z (born between 1997 and 2012) often get their itinerary advice from TikTok.
“While the desire to explore remains universal, we see clear differences in how each generation approaches travel planning, values experiences, and defines luxury,” says Melissa Krueger, CEO of luxury travel company Classic Vacations."
https://www.afar.com/magazine/the-unique-travel-styles-of-each-generation
18. "Today, we are witnessing another military revolution, driven not by muskets but by machines. First-person view drones are changing the calculus of battle, placing surveillance and precision strikes in the hands of infantry squads. Like the arquebus, they are tactically fragile but strategically revolutionary, and when integrated into modern formations, they are reshaping warfare. The tercio’s genius was not just its weapons but its integration with existing infantry formations. The Spanish tercio taught us that victory belonged to those who mastered the system, not just the weapon. Today, first-person view drones demand the same rethink. Whoever masters this integration first on a massive scale will hold a significant advantage on the battlefield.
Some may argue that first-person view drones are merely the new tactical artillery, offering a cheaper, faster means to deliver a strike. However, this analogy overlooks the scale of the shift. Artillery operates in a linear, pre-planned manner, pounding coordinates. In contrast, drones hunt. They chase heat signatures through windows, dive into trenches, and strike from angles no mortar ever could. This isn’t just a new delivery system — it is a new predator on the battlefield, enabling dynamic and networked lethality. First-person view drones do more than simply deliver effects — they are actively reshaping how combatants see, move, and survive on the battlefield.
From 2025 on, ground forces without drones are extremely vulnerable. They’ll be hunted from the sky, tagged by sensors, and carved up by fearless machines. The old tercio was forged in iron, flesh, and gunpowder. The new tercio is built by pairing humans with drones — melding intuition with machine precision. And just like before, those who fail to adapt will be the first to fall."
19. List of American Brands that in big doo doo. Live by Chinese manufacturing, die by Chinese manufacturing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2fV_bBYMPs
20. "Of course, there will also be passive reading, it will be largely aggregated by AI & very few people’s voices are both consistently insightful & unique enough to warrant a direct line in a particular voice on a daily topic to abroad audience.
Time to prepare for that future."
https://tomtunguz.com/nobody-wants-to-read-your-stuff/
21. "Today, these groups are illicit networks, backed and controlled by Western intelligence, forming what I call the "Devil's Legions"—a global network generating over $1.5 trillion annually, which is laundered through the "Spider's Web" of offshore financial centers. All while being the self-funding, unaccountable, non-state, intelligence and military for the Financialists. Used against any and all state or state actors who might stand against them. This article delves into this history, evolution, and financial underpinnings."
https://emburlingame.substack.com/p/the-devils-legions
22. Inside baseball on venture capital. My weekly fix.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxSwlAa30lY
23. What a fun discussion this week for Silicon Valley news.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQUhLaylKq0
24. "Every election cycle, candidates tell Americans their healthcare system is expensive and broken. Yes, Americans know this. Incomprehensible insurance bills, medical and dental debt haunting 40% of U.S. households, and trips to Canada or Mexico for cheaper prescription drugs have turned our healthcare system into one of our biggest sources of emotional distress. U.S. healthcare is a $4.9t corrupt cop. In a report that looked at costs and outcomes across 10 industrialized nations, researchers at the Commonwealth Fund wrote, “The U.S. continues to be in a class by itself in the underperformance of its healthcare sector.” For those in the back of the class, that’s the wrong kind of exceptionalism.
According to the most recent data, the U.S. spends $13,432 per capita on healthcare — more than twice what the average comparable nation spends. We pay 8x what Germany and Switzerland pay for Ozempic and 7x what they pay for Humira. Insulin, which has been in mass production since the 1930s, costs 8x more in the U.S. than it does in Greece. The median cost of a coronary bypass in the U.S. is $89,000, approximately 8x and 5x what the procedure costs in Spain and Australia, respectively. In the U.S. a childbirth with a C-section costs 4x what it does in South Africa. An appendectomy in the U.S. costs 3x what it does in the U.K. For what we spend, we should be the healthiest nation among our peers. We aren’t; we pay significantly more for dramatically poorer outcomes."
https://www.profgalloway.com/the-fix/
25. "The question of course is ... how? Drones are a well-understood technology now that's been dominated from the very beginning by Chinese companies. If SiFly's figures hold up and this company truly puts 4-10X multiples on these key performance stats, it's sitting on some revolutionary technology advances in energy storage, propulsion, aerodynamics and/or materials – areas that are already highly optimized after more than a decade of commercial and industrial drone development."
https://newatlas.com/drones/sifly-q12-american-drone/
26. A must listen to if you want to understand where the world is going. Geoeconomics & the Fourth Turning and how this will affect savers and investors around the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50VsgBTZYsk&t=1s
27. "My recommendation was to align the next round of funding with the business’s current potential and evaluate whether a smaller amount of capital could maintain optionality. Too often, entrepreneurs raise as much money as the market allows, which isn’t always best for the business.
Here, raising capital requires careful consideration, especially since the entrepreneur aims to build a larger business than the current market supports. He’ll need to either expand the product line, adding complexity, or temper his ambitions and consider building another company in the future."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/05/17/matching-funding-with-entrepreneur-ambitions/
28. Breaking myths of the US economy and manufacturing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjDgEHDaX4U
29. One of the few original thinkers as investor in Silicon Valley. Money plowers vs artiste investors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_aHzJGrBN0
30. "To survive the "Eternal War" and to thrive in the "Infinite Game"—metaphors for the ceaseless, evolving nature of competition at every scale—we need master generalists: individuals with deep, proven knowledge and experience within each element and the ability to navigate their intersections. This following explores why our current regime’s hubris demands nemesis and why a shift toward highly capable generalism is absolutely essential.
The infinite game of global competition favors those who see the whole board. By cultivating master generalists—humble, adaptable, and integrative—we can temper hubris and avert nemesis. In a world of complexity, survival hinges not on the depth of one skill, but on the breadth of many, wielded with wisdom. One note, takes a very long stretch of years of careful and deliberate study and hands on experience to become a true generalist. And even then, to maintain the status of a master generalist, one must spend hours a day in study, conversation and thought.
Do you have what it takes to be a generalist or master generalist in your local area, in your community? We need high quality generalists or our hubris will most certainly ensure the nemesis may well finally end our civilization."
https://emburlingame.substack.com/p/hubris-nemesis-and-the-need-for-master
31. "As a Cold Civil War simmers in the United States, with ripples in all the lands of the former British Empire, the lesson of the 400-year Great Cycle is clear: conflict, though painful, is the furnace in which liberty is reforged. The English-speaking world’s greatest strength lies not in avoiding crises, but in emerging from them with systems more resilient than before."
https://emburlingame.substack.com/p/the-cycle-of-power
32. “It’s a sector where there are no rules, no authority. This freedom now comes at a price: isolation and fear,” explained FRANCE 24 business correspondent Mounia Ben Aissa Kacem. “When you hold several million, or even billions, in a single digital wallet, you are totally vulnerable. Unlike a bank account, you can't stop payments on a crypto wallet. If you give up your security key, that's it. The funds disappear in just a few clicks – for good,” she added.
“That's precisely what exposes crypto bosses. Cryptocurrency is a fascinating sector that inspires many fantasies, not least the possibility of making a fortune very quickly,” noted Ben Aissa Kacem."
33. "Today I want to write about something that is more investing related than AI related. You have probably read that it is a difficult time to raise a venture fund because LPs don’t have much liquidity from previous funds. With the IPO market stagnant and M&A opportunities lukewarm, companies that you expect to be positioned for an exit are just slow growing stable small tech businesses. They aren’t selling. But to make the startup market works, money needs to flow through the ecosystem. When it doesn’t there is a problem.
There are some solutions out there. One is the rise in secondary funds that buy private stock positions from LPs, GPs, founders, etc. These are ok but, as someone who has bought and sold on these markets I can tell you the discounts are steep and the process is bespoke for all but the largest private companies.
I propose a different solution to this problem. I think it should be normal for the earliest investors to get their money back when the company starts generating decent levels of revenue or raises more capital. There are many ways this could work, so let me explain."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/improving-early-stage-dpi-with-a
34. "To summarise all of the above, things are very likely to go financially bad sometime in the immediate future.
Not just for the United States.
For all of us.
We’re almost certainly entering a time of chaos. These are the prosperous financial days before the devastating economic end times.
I don’t say this to make you fearful. Quite the opposite: I say it so you can take action to prepare for this possible upcoming storm.
If I had a shortlist of things I would do to get ready for such an event, it would be as follows:
Buy gold and silver. You’ve heard me talk about this ad nauseam, so I won’t reiterate on this point any further.
Prioritise paying off debt. Especially any high-interest debt you may have.
Ensure you have at least one other residency permit (or even better, citizenship/passport). This is an insurance policy in case things get really bad in your home country (unaffordability, massive unemployment, etc.) and you need a backup plan to go somewhere where things are better.
Increase your earning ability. Get more clients, grow your business, and do whatever it takes to have more in reserve to protect yourself from a company recession, crisis, or crash. One of the best ways to do this is to reduce what you pay in taxes—try our membership Untaxable here at no cost to learn how to do this.
Become more employable. If you're not self-employed (which would be preferable), ensure you up-level your skills to become more employable. In times of recession, as unemployment rises, only those with the most skills will be guaranteed a job.
If I were preparing for a global recession today, these are the key areas I would focus on first.
Beyond all of that, I believe it’s always important to focus on becoming as untouchable in times of crisis as possible, regardless of how near or far one may be.
Become more independent.
Become less reliant on an employer or your government.
Become as self-sufficient as you possibly can."
https://abundantia.substack.com/p/end-times
35. High Agency beats High IQ. So good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oKPARKxZdM&t=760s
36. "Millionaires once had a rarefied mystique, inspiring curiosity and causing envy among everyday Americans who dreamed of financial independence.
Just over 25 years ago, in 1999, “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” topped the primetime TV ratings over “Friends,” “ER,” and “Monday Night Football.” Magazines profiled “internet millionaires” during the dotcom boom, and rappers like Juvenile and Lil’ Wayne ushered in hip-hop’s bling era as part of a supergroup called the Cash Money Millionaires.
These days, though, millionaires aren’t what they used to be. They’re literally average.
The net worth of the mean American household is $1.06m, according to data from the Federal Reserve released last year, marking the first time average net worth has topped $1m.
Altogether, according to an estimate by UBS Wealth Management, the United States is home to ~22m millionaire households — roughly one of every six households.
Millionaires are defined by owning at least $1m in total assets (stocks, retirement accounts, housing, etc.), minus debts. Some calculations of net worth exclude assets like primary residences, which brings the number of millionaire households down to ~15m, still a large number.
How did America get so many millionaires?"
https://thehustle.co/originals/the-insane-growth-of-americas-millionaire-class
37. “All models are wrong. Some are useful.” — George Box
It’s one of those quotes that, if you get it, you get it. (And then you fall in love with it.) Today, I’m hoping to bring more people into the enlightened fold by discussing Box’s quote as it pertains to three everyday go-to-market (GTM) models.
First, it’s why we don’t want models to be too precise and/or too complex. They’re not supposed to be exact. They’re not supposed to model everything, they’re supposed to be simplified. They’re just models. They’re supposed to be more useful than exact."
https://kellblog.com/2025/05/18/all-models-are-wrong-some-are-useful/
Don’t Tell Me What You Think, Show Me Your Book: Personal Finance Rules
One of the benefits of the internet and modern age is the plethora of data, podcasts, books and blogs on investing. There is so much out there on trends, tactics and ideas of investing. The problem is how to filter all of this and who to believe. There are so many credible investors & gurus out there, it’s so easy to get confused. We call in “Mentor Whiplash” in the startup world.
So one of the first rules I use is as the title of this goes: “Don’t Tell Me What You Think, Show Me Your Book.” Basically tell me how you are personally invested ie. your book as they say on Wall Street.
So my positions:
–On equity side I’m buying & adding to equity stocks TSMC, NVIDIA & SMH (Semiconductors index) on dips (I already own a bunch)
–Equity/stocks in energy but especially Oil, Natural Gas and Uranium, especially dividend generating ones like XOM,PBR,EC. I also really like general commodities like Glencore, SBSW, BHP, VALE
–BTC/ETH aka Crypto as my digital gold
–On the private and very Illiquid side, I am way overweight on portfolio-wise. The plan for 2025 is just doing some more small investments in emerging VC funds and startups focused in Robotics, Manufacturing-tech and Defensetech. Of course, I will be opportunistic on my old bread butter startup sectors of Fintech, SaaS/Enterprise software and developer tools although these will be shrinking part of my portfolio if I can help it. .
Considering the environment out there & how profligate I’ve been on the spending side last year or so, I need to rebuild my buffer of cash for the rest of this year and next. As Radigan Carter says: Chaos=cash. You should have cash to survive and invest during times of chaos which we are truly in. Some real gold is probably not a bad idea either.
My investments are based on some major global trends, some of which I’ve mentioned in previous posts.
Demographic changes, there will be less people in the world, not more. Especially in the developed world.
De-Globalization as the world splits between the Global West, The Global East and the Global South. It will be a new Middle ages, a world with multiple powers unlike the Unipolar world we have been in the last 50-75 years depending on who you ask.
3. Growing technological growth and consequently energy requirements. More AI, more compute power, more data and tech=equals more energy needed. Good case made here: https://situational-awareness.ai/racing-to-the-trillion-dollar-cluster/
“The most extraordinary techno-capital acceleration has been set in motion. As AI revenue grows rapidly, many trillions of dollars will go into GPU, datacenter, and power buildout before the end of the decade. The industrial mobilization, including growing US electricity production by 10s of percent, will be intense.”
4. Put this together with Re-industrialization in the USA in the short video below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ktBjYtjs1E. Went to the Reindustrialize Summit last year and was bullish on the race to rebuild the US industrial-base. There is a great video on this event here: https://x.com/MikeSlagh/status/1809362222382035017. Net net: The US will need to grow its industrial base at least 2X over the rest of this decade. It also makes sense here because we have access to relatively inexpensive oil.
I’m showing you my book and how I’m positioning myself for the future, financially. Hope it works out. :)
One Step Back, Two Steps Forward: Remember that R&R means Rest & Recuperation
Writing this with the full perspective of the full year of 2024 done. Wow, that was a rough year.
Lots of good stuff happened but plenty of bad stuff. Being in Silicon Valley, we definitely saw a boom in AI but a massive trainwreck in almost every other sector. A tale of two cities literally.
My overall business life was good, despite some LP issues, fundraising issues, cash flow issues. That was in addition to the mess of my home life I’ve alluded to many times before. Perhaps this is what drove me to overcommit to doing more & more things: speaking & attending conferences, more board seats, more consulting projects. More mentoring time both paid but mainly free/volunteering. By the summer, I admit I was kind of a mess physically and emotionally, despite having a pretty good gym & exercise regime.
So while my family went back to Taiwan, I went to Vancouver to spend the bulk of the summer with my parents. Vancouver, weatherwise, is perfect during the summer months. It’s incredibly pleasant, sunny. Not too hot and not too cool.
It’s funny that despite how old you are, your parents still treat you like a kid. They leave me Canadian dollars for going out, they take care of meals, groceries and laundry. You end up regressing back to your childhood, locked up in your room, doing work but otherwise just reading, watching Youtube videos, listening to podcasts, writing and just chilling as it was relatively quiet that summer on the business side.
I got to sleep in and catch up on some reading. Did my gym workouts outdoors & sun. But most importantly, to mentally prepare for the storm of travel and business challenges I knew I had to deal with when everyone came back in September. This summer time was valuable, not just the time spent with older parents but for strengthening oneself.
The US Military calls it R&R, rest and recuperation. Sometimes you really have to retreat before you can advance, especially in tough times. Resting is the equivalent in the civilian world. As Banksy was reported to have said: “If you get tired, learn to rest, not to quit.”
If You Are So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?
I used to hear this question all the time? In fact I used to believe in it. It’s something almost every young hot blooded male wonders because that is their goal. Reading that Ayn Rand libertarian garbage and then believing you are the exception. Thinking that money and wealth is everything because that’s all you really understand. It’s easy to measure.
Then you grow up and you realize it’s easily the dumbest question and worst view around. Don’t get me wrong, money is damn important, especially in our capitalist world. It gives you influence, leverage, freedom and power to help and impact others. I’d rather have it than not.
But the reality is health, family relationships and friendships are far more important. Stuff most of us learn the hard way after losing some of these.
Also the question itself is stupid. Most of the smartest people are the poorest ones. Look at academics or doctors, who are far off the charts IQ wise. But most of them are far from rich.
In fact what drives a lot of wealth is choosing the right industry & place, having a good attitude, being willing to grind and work hard for long periods of time. That and a little bit of luck. I can tell you this from a 26+ year business career interacting with hundreds of self-made multimillionaires and centimillionaires, even a few billionaires.
Business is common sense. That and a willingness to take risks, and the courage to bet on themselves. And focus on learning, the more you learn, the more you earn. That’s pretty much it.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads June 22nd, 2025
“Rise above the storm and you will find the sunshine”--Mario Fernandez
"While we acknowledge that low-margin business models and limited scope for technological innovation make commodity markets incredibly difficult to disrupt, we believe the knee-jerk tendency to dismiss them entirely is misguided.
Macro trends like global trade rebalancing and national resilience imperatives are creating a strategic need to reshore production of critical resources, alleviating the pressure of competing with low-cost foreign suppliers. For ambitious founders undeterred by the complexity of these industries, we think there is a generational opportunity to build venture-scale businesses in markets that have not seen meaningful transformation for decades."
https://balachandrasekaran.substack.com/p/the-case-for-commodity-markets
2. "Ark recently raised to scale operations and expand across Europe. Their goal is not just to sell software and hardware, but to push governments to rethink how they approach defense autonomy. Takanawa is blunt about the stakes: “If the West doesn’t move fast, it will be outpaced. You can have 1,000 drones in a warehouse, but without the systems and doctrine to operate them, they’re just dead weight.”
The threat isn’t theoretical. Russia is reportedly manufacturing tens of thousands of drones per month. Without scalable command and control, even a well-armed country will struggle to respond effectively to mass drone strikes—particularly those targeting infrastructure deep in the rear.
Ark’s warning is clear: the war of the future won’t be won by matching drone-for-drone. It will be won by building systems that can manage mass with intelligence and control. Collaborative autonomy, they argue, is the only way forward."
https://www.resiliencemedia.co/p/ark-robotics-and-the-future-of-scalable
3. Moving from a world of idealism to realism. Grand Geopolitical strategy. Globalization fracturing & rising mercantilism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odQ53D8Z4yk
4. Part 2. Michael Every of RaboBank describing the emerging world order.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7EwfjK0FP0
5. What is your GDP for? Economic Statecraft in the rise of geopolitics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X43ghHJYY5o
6. "While the motivations of the martial men of the Crusades and the Princes and Kings who backed them, at great expense to the Venetian banks, were motivated by the desire to push back against Islam’s aggressions. The Crusades were not merely a noble quest for the Holy Land but a sophisticated power play by Venetian bankers and the Roman Catholic Church. Using Europe’s princes and kings and their martial forces, unwittingly, Venice amassed wealth through war and trade, while the Church enriched itself and systematically attacked the Orthodox Church to assert its supremacy.
The historical record—most starkly in the sack of Constantinople—reveals a campaign driven by greed and ambition, with religion as a convenient mask. The legacy of this venture is a fractured Christian world, shaped not by faith but by the pursuit of money and power. A world for more than a thousand years following the very same Financialist Kill Chain model, bound up in centuries of religious warfare with and against the Roman Catholic Church."
https://emburlingame.substack.com/p/the-crusades
7. Great rundown of Silicon Valley news and events this week. Always a good discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyKWveWh3y8
8. "An Urgent Buyer is, in essence, a customer with an existential need that existing solutions cannot satisfy. These buyers emerge during periods of crisis and strategic realignment when the status quo fails and incremental progress is insufficient. They are willing to pay premium prices, accept technical risk, and commit to large-scale deployment of new technologies.
For Fairchild, Cold War imperatives created a new pool of Urgent Buyer demand. Today, we are witnessing an Urgent Buyer moment of a similar historic scale. Decades of underinvestment in critical industrial capacity have led to systemic failures in energy infrastructure, critical mineral supply chains, and defense readiness. To make up for lost time, Western governments have mobilized a dramatic fiscal and policy response.
For capital allocators, the fundamental realignment creating Urgent Buyers across energy, minerals, and defense represents more than a series of discrete market opportunities. If past cycles, like the Cold War, are any indication, we can expect entirely new asset classes, pioneered by entrepreneurial financiers, to emerge quickly."
https://venturedesktop.substack.com/p/the-urgent-buyer-era
9. "What it means is that in all likelihood Trump will ink some key weapons and security deals in the Saudi capital next week after which he will visit the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. It also means that Nethanyahu and Israel have lost out on a rare and unique opportunity to establish closer relations with Saudi Arabia.
The Saudis, under crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (‘MBS’) have now given second thoughts to cozying up to Israel at the very moment that the latter has announced to ramp up the war in and occupation of Gaza (for which Trump admittedly had given the green light earlier)."
https://pieterdorsman.substack.com/p/trump-goes-saudi
10. "My advice to anyone who’s thinking about taking the leap and starting a company is to just start.
Take a beat if you have to.
Build financial reserves or side hustle before you’re comfortable with nothaving a full-time job.
Listen to podcasts and do your research (about everything: marketplace health insurance, for one).
Join community discussions and meetups.
Bootstrap if you don’t understand fundraising or don’t feel the need to raise money, which introduces a whole slew of complexity.
But at some point, the mixing and mingling and absorbing of knowledge needs to be expressed in action and execution."
https://shindy.substack.com/p/entrepreneur
11. "The greatest power of regimes lies not in their control of nature, but in their ability to make societies believe in that control. To dismantle the illusion, populations must recognize the diversion of wealth and language away from substance and toward myth.
History shows that regimes thrive on manufactured inevitability—but they falter when the curtain is pulled back, revealing the emptiness behind the spectacle. The path to genuine empowerment begins not in overthrowing gods or technocrats, but in reclaiming the narrative. In getting back to nature and base reality."
https://emburlingame.substack.com/p/the-great-deception
12. "If you truly want to stop giving a f-ck, you gotta think like a dying man… because you are a dying man. You gotta think “will I care about this in 10 years”, and let it go if you will not.
This is how you become mentally and emotionally free to pursue what YOU want (not what society wants of you) without letting anything get in the way."
13. Good takes here on Hill & Valley Conference + Josh Wolfe's discussion on Geopolitics: watch the Sahel + Monroe Doctrine 2.0.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1W5EpYtakw
14. "So now, in an unstable, multipolar world where will bright, ambitious people turn next? Now that Facebook and Google are uncool, interest rates are high, software competition is going infinite, and institutions feel unreliable, what is the next high status path that will dictate our economy?
They’re going all in on cashflow and independence because they’ve learned that institutions won’t take care of them and can’t monopolize opportunity.
Free cash flow and independence (two sides of the same coin) are hedges against uncertainty, institutional decrepitude, and burnout.
Becoming a creator, buying SMBs/ETA, investing in real estate, drop shipping, building microsaas, forming personal holding companies, etc. are all trendy because they’re opportunities for ambitious (young) people to work for themselves and generate FCF as owners and operators instead of employees.
The next great migration is coming and talent will start flowing out of tech if it isn’t already. It might be harder to recruit for tech but there will be new companies to build for the new epoch.
Today, a sole proprietorship or very small business can scale and succeed in ways previously unthinkable. And for small employers, these tools in the aggregate are a game-changer, bringing sophistication that normally only comes with size and consolidation."
https://99d.substack.com/p/my-thesis-driven-guest-post
15. "Here's the secret: No first draft is good. Not Stephen King's. Not yours.
The ones who make it are the ones who keep going despite the gap.
So next time you create something and that voice in your head says "this sucks" - remember the janitor from Maine who almost threw away Carrie."
https://shaan.beehiiv.com/p/one-minute-blog-the-taste-gap
16. "By tackling the biggest-uncertainty type work first, you buy yourself the luxury of having plenty of time to adapt if the uncertainty turns out to contain nasty surprises – or if the uncertainty turns out to contain an even better idea than you started with."
https://triggerstrategy.substack.com/p/how-to-bend-the-curve-of-luck
17. "America’s innovation supremacy wasn’t an accident or birthright — it was earned through deliberate investment and intense collaboration among the world’s most exceptional minds. Now we risk throwing it all away. We’ve spent 80 years building a nearly unassailable lead, only to suddenly decide the race is optional. Our universities still dominate global rankings and our tech firms command unprecedented market power, but we’re actively dismantling the foundation that made it all possible.
I believe America is being run by a mob family. That’s bad. What’s worse is that Michael Corleone is running the grift, and Fredo is running the government. America has become the textbook definition of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. I was in Hamburg last week presenting at the OMR Festival (Online Marketing Rockstars), and the general vibe is bewilderment: How could a superpower be this stupid?"
https://www.profgalloway.com/brain-drain/
18. I always learn stuff from Josh Wolfe. This was a great deep dive conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHT57nhzgUI
19. “The character of war is changing fast. So how do you keep up or even get ahead?” Johnson said. “You have to be able to quickly go, ‘Hey, that sensor, it might be working today in a certain [area of responsibility] under certain conditions.’ But if the threat changes, you need to make sure that either you can make the changes within that sensor, or put a different sensor on there without the system being down for a year and costing X millions of dollars.”
SOCOM is also more and more in favor of tech built from components not made in China, said David Breede, SOCOM’s program manager for special reconnaissance systems. He urged industry to “make sure that your own infrastructure is also cyber secure, not only what you're delivering to us but then the supply chain, too, the security, right? We've seen several things over the past year. So that will tell you that supply chain is pretty important. You want to know where your pagers are getting built,” he said, to knowing laughter."
20. Overall, good episode this week. All Silicon Valley and tech news, not bad takes on politics. Why most of us were watching this show in the beginning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6HSFCQQ6O0
21. Doomberg & Michael Every discussing the end of the Liberal World Order. Question on what the West is for?
It will be a chaotic transition to a harsher and more competitive multipolar world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4650S8nkWk0
22. One of the best operators in Silicon Valley on how AI is reinventing software business models.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlQB_0Nzoog
23. "The World Wars ultimately dethroned Britain as the global naval superpower, setting it on a path to becoming the geopolitical also-ran it is today. The hegemonic baton was passed to its former colonial possession, the United States, whose Big Blue Fleet proved decisive in the Pacific Theater of World War II and served as the foundation of American power projection in the decades that followed.
The US appears to have learned little from Britain’s fall, continuing the tradition of escalatory meddling in infrastructure projects that threaten to redirect critical commodities away from American control. As the signs of an impending conflict with Iran grow increasingly apparent, examining this historical pattern provides valuable insight into predicting the modern flashpoints that could trigger a full-scale war."
https://newsletter.doomberg.com/p/limes-disease
24. If you are a startup trying to sell to the US Military this is pretty informative & helpful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVgfuNgEfe0
25. Learning from history of tech for web 3 & web 4.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=xLX9PNmKfL4
26. Great explanation for why the American Liberal or Rules based Order is ending (or ended).
Another take on Peter Zeihan's thesis of the end of globalization due to the American retreat & declining military power. Worth watching. Idealism moving to realism as the system moves to chaos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rf_HU5P_nHI
27. "History isn’t a clean ledger of facts—it’s a story, reshaped by those who want to look like its authors. Powerful players don’t just crave wealth or titles; they want us to believe they’ve always been the invisible force steering humanity. They rewrite events and relationships, planting tales of their influence where none existed. With the help of trusted figures, these lies don’t take centuries to stick—sometimes they’re accepted overnight, all because of who’s telling them.
This isn’t just old news—it’s power today, yesterday and throughout all of humanity's shared history. If we swallow these lies, we crown the liars. They define our past, our relationships, our reality. But once you see how they use credible voices to sell it, how they invest vast sums in spinning illusion, you can fight back.
Question the cop, the professor, the spy, the very information and your want for it to be true. Demand the receipts, from many different sources with competing articulations. The real power’s yours—if you don’t let them steal it. They've no power but that which we give them with our imaginations, the very same imaginations they spend vast fortunes tricking."
https://emburlingame.substack.com/p/the-great-deception-601
28. "These connectors are extraordinarily talented at building relationships and are critical for pollinating new opportunities through introductions. Entrepreneurs would benefit greatly from identifying the community super connector in their city or region. A simple way to find them is to ask a friend, “Who’s the most connected person in the startup community?” Because of their natural inclination to engage, super connectors are eager to meet new people.
Every startup community has a super connector, and their role is vital in sparking new relationships that drive innovation and growth."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/05/10/find-the-community-super-connector/
29. "Even if India and Pakistan manage to climb down from the brink and avoid a protracted conflict, we should all still be unsettled. Russia and Israel are fighting non-nuclear enemies, which suggests that nuclear weapons can stabilize regions. But the fact that India and Pakistan, which are both armed with nukes, can fight each other to the degree they have — instead of climbing down like they did in 2019 — should worry us deeply.
This episode only reinforces what has been apparent for several years now — war is returning to our world. We’re slowly exiting a world of guerrillas and gangs and petty border skirmishes, and returning to the days when great powers clashed with each other regularly.
Ultimately, the reason for this is the end of Pax Americana. The power vacuum created by the decline of the global hegemon is prompting a scramble for power.
For countries not embroiled in domestic conflicts over race and identity, high-skilled immigrants will become a highly sought-after group; I expect companies to compete more for the best and the brightest, especially now that America is essentially ceding the field.
Regarding global public goods like freedom of the seas, here I’m not super optimistic. China’s leaders show little inclination to embrace the role of oceanic protector. Attacks like those of the Houthis will probably become more widespread, with the tacit support of national governments — basically, the modern equivalent of the 18th-century privateers that we now remember as “pirates”. As for global cooperation on climate, pandemics, and so on, this will sadly be less likely, given the coordination problems and the suspicions involved.
The global financial system will also see significant disruptions from multipolarity. The dollar’s dominance is already looking shaky, but it’s not clear what an alternative reserve currency would be. China could do it, but it would require them to open their capital account, which would reduce the government’s control over the macroeconomy — something they’ve so far showed no inclination to do.
In any case, even under the best-case scenarios, a multipolar world is a world of much higher uncertainty. We’re stumbling into the crisis of the 21st century, and there’s no map to navigate by. Nor do we have the same caliber of leadership going into this crisis that we had a century ago. Ultimately that last fact is probably what worries me the most."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-crisis-of-the-21st-century-is
30. A new reality: Energy, geopolitics and statecraft. Back to a zero sum world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuRs0YzDkp4&t=264s
31. The future of defense tech investing with Jackson Moses of Silent Ventures, one of the top VCs in defense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ivt8_177JA
32. "You can’t change the past. However, you can position yourself to benefit from what is coming on the horizon. The good times are going to roll again. We may party like it is 2021 again.
Just make sure you apply whatever lessons you learned last time, so you don’t make any mistake twice. That is what learning is about. That is why most of us are drawn to the intellectual challenge of investing. And we should thank the market gods for giving us another chance at such an attractive setup."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/the-good-times-are-coming-again
33. "AI becomes the ultimate influencer, more than a social media magnate, or an engineering luminary, or a starry open-source repo - an outsourced procurement team acting on behalf of the coder.
This example makes clear how developer tools will be selected by AI. But in a future where sales development reps are assembling data pipelines with data enrichment or email providers or website builders for account-based marketing, passive AI procurement will move up the stack.
Product-led growth companies have a new & important channel to master : AI as the Chief Procurement Officer."
https://tomtunguz.com/a-new-distribution-channel/
34. "Fourth, the air-to-air engagement casts Chinese aerospace technology in a favorable light. The Chinese-origin air-to-air missile, along with the platforms used to deliver it, appear to have performed effectively. This adds to the growing body of evidence that Chinese weapon systems must be taken seriously. While Russian technology has consistently underperformed in recent conflicts, there is no compelling reason to assume Chinese systems would fare similarly in a Taiwan contingency."
https://missilematters.substack.com/p/operation-sindoor-indian-air-strikes
35. Bannon is Trump's brain, so it's important to understand what he is thinking and his views. I don't like the guy but he is pretty smart & well read.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElSybTYvXGs
36. Lots of crazy stuff here. The history of US Black Ops in Europe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Bo04u9c5Js
37. This is a not so good person, sociopath even: Alexander Soros.
"When Soros insiders try to explain the family dynamic, they draw on the standard texts of empire and heredity. “Roman is Alex,” says a former OSF senior official, referring to Roman Roy, the sardonic failson in Succession.“Smart but fucking impossible and not particularly interested in the details.” Another Soros insider cites not HBO but the Gospel of Luke, casting Alex in the role of the Prodigal Son, who is rewarded with his father’s love despite his wayward years.
Anxiety around Alex’s selection is tied to his aptitude for leadership. Locked inside his thoughts, he comes off as a kind of Hamlet. One former Soros official says George’s decision was a “cruel kind of love to impose on Alex.” He imagined an easier future for Alex in which he had instead followed his passion for sports or philosophy. Others argue that Alex’s temperament worked in his favor. “George would say that Alex shares his willingness to take big bets, his willingness to fail,” says a different ex-OSF figure.
When I ask Alex to explain the ways he is making the foundation his own, he resists, painting the transition as a continuum. “When he would introduce me, he would say, ‘I’m the failed philosopher, and Alex is the successful one,’” he says. “I don’t think that my father would have been comfortable in any way if he didn’t see similarities, right? We’re both not the most patient people. We both don’t do very well with boredom. We’re both result-driven — we like to win.”
The 3Cs of Venture Capital
Ed Sims of Boldstart VC, based out of NYC, has a great track record. I had the chance to listen to a recent podcast interview with him on “the Peel.”
Known for working with startup founders at the Inception phase aka pre-seed/ seed stage.
He mentioned how he works with startup founders. Yes, we know about the 3 key parts of finding, picking and helping. This framework is on the helping side and I found it to be really good. He calls it the 3Cs:
Cheer: when they are down & things aren’t working
Challenge: when they feel invincible
Chill: know when to leave them alone
I love it. As a trusted advisor and investor, it’s your job to be as helpful to your founders as possible. But not in the asinine “founder friendly” practice that developed in the last decade of pandering to whatever a founder wants & just being a “YES” man.
In theory, you as an investor should have other experience and pattern matching that would be helpful for the founder.
If you disagree with the direction of the startup, you owe it to the founder to speak up. Your role is to help the founders get to the best decision possible by asking the hard questions and helping them look around corners.
At minimum, it’s to do no harm and only speak on things you have experience or expertise in. If you don’t know, say so and don’t waste a founder’s valuable time.
Early in my career, I was too much on the “challenge” side, maybe a bit more brutal than challenging. But as I learned, you need different tools for different situations & different founders. This 3Cs is an excellent guide to know when and how to help as an investor.
Life Reminder: Don’t Forget That Everybody Has Problems
“Notting Hill” is one of my regular “go to” movies when I fly. It’s a classical 90s Rom Com movie starring Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant in the now incredibly popular Notting Hill neighborhood in London. How a hapless British bookstore owner runs into America’s leading lady and their budding romance. Funny, touching, sweet and reflective of a happier and more optimistic time in the world.
One of my favorite scenes is when the famous actress Anna Scott is invited over to the bookseller’s sister's birthday party where she meets his close friend and family: they have a lovely dinner. I wrote of this scene before in October 2024. But it’s so good and illustrative of my point..
At the end of dinner, they play a game where they describe in typically British irony of who has the worst life. Ranging from being divorced, to lack of success in work, to being disabled and unable to have kids. The friends are surprised when the actress also wants to play the game. In their minds, how bad could the life of a famous, beautiful multimillionaire actress be?
Well what she says is eye-opening:
“I’ve been on a diet everyday since I was 19, which basically means I’ve been hungry for a decade. I’ve had a series of not nice boyfriends, one of whom hit me. And every time I get my heart broken, the newspapers splash it about as it’s entertainment.
And it’s taken two rather painful operations to get me looking like this. And one day not long from now, my looks will go, they will discover I can’t act and I will become some sad middle aged woman who looked like someone famous for a while.”
Everyone around the table is taken aback and quiet. It’s so illuminating. Everyone has problems, even the richest, smartest and most successful around us. Heck, if you read Marcus Aurelius’ classic stoic book, it’s very clear. He was a Roman Emperor and arguably the most powerful man in the world and he still has many similar issues that we all face in our day to day lives.
Yet we forget this. And in this day and age where we have widespread social media and plenty of examples of great success, it seems everyone is crushing it. I feel this way all the time.
I also know from experience just like in the movie the surface is deceptive. Even in my own life, I live this seemingly glamorous life jet setting around the world, investing and conference going. Yet my home life is a mess and I regularly get hit with these dark and depressing moods.
Since my late forties, I often feel greatly disappointed in where I am in life. Despite all the money I make, I keep having massive liquidity issues every few years. I keep thinking what the heck is wrong with me that I haven’t figured everything out yet. Or how I completely messed up my family.
Then I remind myself of that scene in the movie. The life we see online and on TV is a facade. We are in the age of narrative and grifters. The reality is everyone has problems. Everyone is facing deep and dark challenges in their lives. Everyone is hustling. Anyone who says otherwise is lying.
So this is a reminder for you to ignore all the noise. Keep hustling and believe in yourself. Believe that God has a plan. And if you don’t believe in God, then believe there is such a thing as manifest destiny. Great things are accomplished and appreciated only through great struggle. So keep going.
Ichi Go Ichi E: Being Present
I had a chance to watch an interesting Japanese movie called “One Second Ahead, One Second Behind” told through the perspective of a 30 year old man and a young lady. It’s hard to describe the movie as it’s not a classical Rom-Com or Drama. But basically it’s a movie about time and our relationship to it.
The young man Sumeragai is always in a hurry, trying to beat the clock and rushing to get to the next thing. The young lady Reika is always late and takes her time. One too fast, one too slow. Both seem out of sync with the world. And really out of sync with their peers and life in general.
These modes are where many of us get stuck. We get stuck in the past and ponder situations and relationships that never worked out. We also end up spending much of our time thinking about the future. Anticipating. These are both important modes, we have to learn from the past. We also need to look forward to future events. But what matters is the present. This is where the calm and joy is. Yet I keep rushing forward and miss so much in my life. And sadly I only recognize this looking back.
It reminds me of that Japanese saying “Ichi Go Ichi E”: In this moment in time, an unrepeatable moment, once in a lifetime. There is something to this. So this is a kind reminder to breathe. To step back and be present. And more importantly, to try and enjoy the present.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads June 15th, 2025
"In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order."--Carl Jung
"When you next hear a panelist describe the “death of venture capital,” or the “exit window being shut,” think to yourself about time dislocations in venture capital, and how indexing into this set of cohorts affords the best discounts for future wins. For those investing today with a heavy illiquidity discount, all the better for tomorrow. For those considering building a company, today is the best possible time to create the future you want to exist in 5-7 years, and venture capitalists will agree.
The definitions of venture capital have not changed, but the parade of wannabes has expanded, and the death of returns greatly exaggerated. Exits still exist for those investors boldly backing zero-to-one, risk taking companies, and if the market is tight today, that only means the illiquidity discount gives you an advantage for tomorrow."
https://ideas.everywhere.vc/p/scott-hartley-time-dislocations-in-venture-capital
2. I always learn something from listening to the legendary Silicon Valley investor and founder. VK.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=noY7hulblrM
3. The case for mega funds. Market and outcomes are so very much bigger. I guess we will see.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkdU58cfUI0
4. "Most entrepreneurs have a viable product to sell to the defense market but are unaware of the problems their products could solve. A common mistake entrepreneurs make when entering the defense market is focusing on the product without identifying the problem it solves or the value it creates: “You should buy our product because it is the best. It is the best because it outperforms products currently being used by the government and is better than the competition.”
But decision makers and buyers in the DoD don’t buy technology just because it’s innovative–-they buy solutions that help them achieve mission priorities. So, the first “quest” is to find out which priorities and/or problems align to your product.
Reading strategic guidance like the National Security Strategy, National Defense Strategy, Science and Technology Guidance (Army, Navy, and Air Force) will give you broad insight into what the department cares about – for instance, “prioritizing the challenges posed by China in the Indo-Pacific region and Russia in Europe.” Broad insights are foundational for two reasons. First, it tells you what the DoD cares about and helps you begin to identify the specific organizations and people that are potential customers.
Although guidance is too vague to inform a product pitch it is a starting point for discovering who might be responsible for achieving these priorities and are potential customers you should begin having conversations with."
https://stanfordh4d.substack.com/p/selling-to-defense-levels-of-the
5. "For many quarters the dominant theme at crypto events has been “when application?” When will the first killer applications on Web3 be built? If venture capital behavior is a credible predictor of the future, they are already here.
They may not all be trumpeting the fact that a Web3 database is powering them under the hood. But that’s the point. The underlying technology is an enabler to a superior end user experience. No asterisk needed."
https://tomtunguz.com/web3-post-investment-election/
6. "Larry Summers’ quip that Europe was a museum and Japan was a nursing home was conventional wisdom just a few months back. But between accelerating European defense and infrastructure spending and Japanese corporate governance reform, these two markets are finally generating strong returns on investment and attracting capital as a result.
Diversifying equity allocations outside of the United States seems like a prudent move in this macroeconomic environment, and, given valuations, international outperformance is a trend that could continue for years to come.
But in a highly volatile environment where macroeconomic uncertainty and the risk of stagflation might challenge a reliance on equity beta alone, we also believe there are opportunities outside of equity markets."
https://mailchi.mp/verdadcap/got-diversification-1352646?e=7d2d38e1b3
7. Some simple but easy steps. Build a personal brand, get paid for things that you would do anyways, get 1000 loyal customers. (1000 raving fans).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gGFFqFFeEo
8. "As a founder, you’re paid to make decisions under uncertainty. Mastering the explore/exploit tradeoff isn’t just a clever mental model — it’s a survival skill. Know what you're optimizing for, follow the recipe below to explore intelligently, and then commit with confidence.
Here’s a concise guide on navigating this balance:
Decide on the metrics you’re optimizing for.
Allocate some amount of time to explore your options. If a decision is more important, less reversible, or involves wildly different options, commit to spending more time exploring.
Prioritize options and explore — in parallel if possible — until time runs out or you’re happy with the best option.
Double down on the best option."
https://www.codingvc.com/p/explore-exploit
9. "The big lesson here, I think, is that our intuition from previous decades is still correct: Tech people simply aren’t that good at politics. Their expertise lies in managing cold hard symbols rather than the passions of the masses, and they’re used to relating to genius engineers instead of working-class voters. They live in a world where functionality, rather than popularity, wins the day. And that world isn’t Washington, D.C.
It’s too early to tell, of course, but my sense is that the Tech Right gambit isn’t looking like a great idea. The attitude of political quietism that tech businesses adopted in the past — and which many still adopt — was probably a better strategy overall."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-tech-right-is-not-succeeding
10. Important conversation on Designing for the DoD.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7ZAn9SHqLQ
11. America: the biggest self own in history. Chaos & regulatory uncertainty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaiILtkgFqA
12. This man might know what he is talking about. Ken Griffin, one of the most important men on Wall Street.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuF14oKon8A
13. Mapping the future driven by AI. This is a must listen to conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkhrEnuZi20
14. "In turbulent and troubling times, people instinctively grasp for some sort of future to believe in — some positive vision to hold on to. The U.S. and Europe right now don’t have much of a futuristic vision to offer; America continues to inflict wound after wound on itself due to its intractable cultural and partisan divides, while Europe is mired in economic stagnation and is struggling to defend itself against a much smaller, poorer Russia. Sinofuturism might not have been Western intellectuals’ first choice for an alternative, but if it’s a choice between Sinofuturism and bleak nihilism/pessimism, some will choose the former.
But what will this Chinese future actually look like, two decades or four decades from now? Here, I think there’s less than meets the eye.
This, ultimately, is what Sinofuturism is lacking — the promise of ennoblement. People now make fun of the American suburbs of the 1950s, or use them as an object of misplaced nostalgia. But if you were to look at that lifestyle — the house, the car, the TV, the telephone — you could see the seed of a way of life so appealing and so free that it would eventually become the global standard. Right now, China is a beautiful place to visit, but the Sinofuturists who gush about its neon cities and its magnificent technology demonstrate a notable reluctance to move there."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/thoughts-on-sinofuturism
15. Modernizing Warfare and Beyond from the A16Z Summit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdxGI__WRjE
16. "The Kill Chain." Still worth reading the book. Relevant in 2025.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWgtPdmlZ4o
17. Lessons from the OG of SaaS in the emerging world of AI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwQzpwZDhjQ
18. One of the most important founders in the startup world right now. Palmer Luckey of Anduril. Wide ranging conversation on the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21I_3VEs0iI
19. Grand Geopolitics. Important framework to understand where the global economy is going.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrVQT6YSiTM
20. "As the world transitions once again into a multipolar landscape, the English-speaking peoples must draw upon their shared history and civilization to craft a geostrategic plan rooted in the historic Imperial Rings. This strategic approach is essential to securing a long and prosperous future for the English civilization.
By leveraging their common heritage—anchored in a shared language, culture, and historical ties—these nations can align their geopolitical, economic, and military efforts with the concentric framework of their imperial past. Though now with the United States as the core and lead of the English-Speaking Peoples. Such unity and coordination will empower us all to navigate the challenges of a fragmented global order, maintain our collective influence, and ensure enduring prosperity in a world of the restored global powers of Russia and China."
https://emburlingame.substack.com/p/imperial-ring-theory
21. "The Financialists, from their Venetian origins to their Wall Street apex, have thrived by embedding the Financialist Kill Chain into empires, always moving to a new host when resistance or collapse loomed. Now, with China and Russia barring their path and no new empire in sight, they’ve turned to the Spider's Web and non-state actors to sustain their power.
Their preparation for a global Step #7 signals a structured and intended, destructive finale. Awareness of this trajectory—rooted in centuries of financial predation—is the first step to resisting their endgame and reclaiming sovereignty from a malevolent elite with nowhere left to run."
https://emburlingame.substack.com/p/the-endgame-of-the-financialist-kill
22. An Alt-Geopolitics forecast. Who knows.
https://emburlingame.substack.com/p/prediction
23. I was tired today so needed something so bizarre to wake me up. Some Alt-Geopolitics for inflame my brain. Some food for thought as always.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whaMYQeMHh0
24. Minerals for weapons. Blueprint for the future and goes beyond Ukraine. Not a value judgement, just a clear eyed view in a future where hard assets really matter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qwHHubGEKY
25. As always a coldly sober view of geopolitics right now. Fragmentation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQd6JBbqWiA
26. Solid NIA episode this week, was pretty educational. Learned a new term too "glazed."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xytiMpZ0Gho&t=7s
27. "Illicit financial networks are like a hidden web, woven into the fabric of everyday life increasingly over the past five hundred years. Not by criminal organizations but the banks, financial institutions and governments which have devised immensely complex and sophisticated Markovian ways to launder vast sums of illicit money.
By understanding concepts like Markov Processes, Blankets, Chains, and Kernels, we can start to see how these networks operate and why they’re so hard to detect. It’s a complex problem, but with better tools, cooperation, and knowledge, we can begin to unravel the mystery and fight back against the corruption finance has become."
https://emburlingame.substack.com/p/unraveling-hidden-financial-networks
28. My favorite new Global Macro guy, Michael Every. He describes a possible new world as globalization changes. "Grand Macro Strategy"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na8cGLxK3FM
29. "These are the two factors that make services terrible: captive users, and no constraints. If your users can’t leave, and if you face no consequences for making them miserable (not solely their departure to a competitor, but also fines, criminal charges, worker revolts, and guerrilla warfare with interoperators), then you have the means, motive and opportunity to turn your service into a giant pile of shit.
That’s why we got Jack Welch and his acolytes when we did. There were always evil fuckers just like them hanging around, but they didn’t get to run GM until Ronald Reagan took away the constraints that would have punished them for turning GE into a giant pile of shit. Every economy is forever a-crawl with parasites and monsters like these, but they don’t get to burrowinto the system and colonize it until policymakers create rips they can pass through.
In other words, the profit motive itself is not sufficient to cause enshittification — not even when a for-profit firm has to answer to VCs who would shut down the company or fire its leadership in the face of unsatisfactory returns."
30. "The personalization of the model within an application & workflow will be the ultimate moat. OpenAI’s recent leadership hire makes plain how large the opportunity is."
https://tomtunguz.com/era-of-ai-lockin/
31. "Suddenly, the cost curve has shifted dramatically down. Over time as stablecoins are the norm, I imagine some of these intermediary steps will disappear entirely. To make the market even more prepared for stablecoins, many small transactions usually have flat fees, plus a percentage fee, so if you try to sell things for low prices online, you end up losing large parts of your margin.
Consumers benefit too—increased margin makes room to drive down prices. And for users in economies with currency subject to wild valuation fluctuations, being able to access digital dollars is enormously valuable.
Because Stripe is taking on all of the compliance complexity, there is an opportunity for founders to build newly profitable companies and startups have a chance to go international faster than ever before. Tens of billions of dollars are on the table, just waiting for entrepreneurs to grab them."
https://www.gettheleverage.com/p/what-happens-when-money-becomes-technology
32. "Many assume AI’s economic upside will be captured by a handful of tech giants.
But if you’ve worked inside a place like Google, you know how innovation gets buried—under legacy code, bloated org charts, and teams too far from the frontier.
As Tom said: “AI will be the Chief Procurement Officer.”
Software won’t be sold over drinks. It’ll be selected, evaluated, and integrated by agents.
Most incumbents won’t adapt fast enough.
That’s the opportunity for founders and investors who see what’s coming.
If you’ve got product instincts, this is the most exciting moment in startup history to build."
https://www.newinternet.tech/p/when-software-buys-software
33. Inside baseball of Venture capital. Lots of great insights on the art & science of winning in VC in 2025.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDEaCwWRal8&t=588s
34. So doing these hikes when I go to Japan.
https://www.afar.com/magazine/5-breathtaking-places-to-hike-in-japan
35. "Matt and Alex’s experience buying, operating, and growing Burger King restaurants established the playbook for everything to come. To date, GSP has raised $1.9 billion across four funds and bought 27 companies. The firm has sold nine businesses at a weighted average Net IRR of nearly 40% and is now recognized as a premier investor in the franchise and consumer services world.
They have built GSP into a sizable firm, in not only assets and businesses, but also people. They have 25 investment professionals alongside a bench of 12 operating partners, but the investment committee is small. It’s Matt and Alex. Any decision must be unanimous, whether they’re doing a deal, hiring, or traveling. They don’t do anything unless they’re both in agreement.
“Our partnership is really special. We value it as much as anything in the world, and it’s become part of our firm’s culture. We fight all the time but we always end up on the same page, and we always have fun. Even in the hard days, at least we’re going through it together,” Alex said. Jordan Garay, their first hire, explained the impact of their relationship on the firm’s culture.
“It’s very GSP for everyone to have an opposite view. We discuss, debate, then commit. Everyone commits. That comes from Matt and Alex. You’re never going to one person and asking their opinion. The fact there’s two of them creates a natural discussion, which leads to better outcomes."
“They combine two skills rarely found together in private equity. They are great fun to be around. They draw people in by being affable, engaging, and curious; we can call that great salesmanship in the field. And they have superb finance IQ—I mean, top quality. Usually, you find one or the other. Rarely do you find them together.”
Hope Versus Hopelessness: Fighting Through Depression
I am continually surprised when I hear or see that someone, usually young and successful, ends their life. This seems chronic in Hollywood, and I am seeing much more of this in sports and the business world as well. Not sure if this was the case before but we did not have social media and the Internet. Or if it was always around, we just never noticed. It strikes me as a new epidemic.
And these cases seem extra tragic because from the outside it seems like they have everything. But I guess we never truly know the pain people suffer inside. To feel so much pain in your life that it seems easier and better to just end it. What a tragedy.
“The Japanese say you have three faces. The first face, you show to the world. The second face, you show to your close friends and your family. The third face, you never show anyone. It is the truest reflection of who you are!” (Source: https://x.com/hvgoenka/status/1551101818545254400?lang=en#)
This is my situation. I show a face of optimism and energy. I highlight at conferences & do keynotes. But I’m a deeply private and introverted person, filled with rage and deep sadness like many type A individuals.
I think we are so trained by society to think that once we reach our goals and dreams, once we hit that target, that everything will be okay. That you will be happy. But like many people, I’ve learned that this is just not true.
And maybe even worse, that all the crushing sacrifices in time, family relationships and health you made to get there was not worth it.
This has been my 2020-2024. All exacerbated by deep isolation I felt due to pandemic lock downs and just losing touch with so many people.
I tried the escapism of travel and conferences. I tried deep immersion into my businesses, pushing them to levels of risk and redlines of cash flow limits. I tried materialism in buying books. I went down the therapy route as well as exercise route by getting personal trainers and joining fight training camps. I tried going to church more often. These all helped to keep the dark thoughts at bay but they kept returning.
In the darkest moments of night, when I think of the mess that my life had become I fantasize of jumping in front of traffic or taking sleeping pills and not waking up.
But then I think of my amazing daughter and the hope that we can reconcile. Watching her grow and be happy. I think of the many books I want to read. And of the ideas to explore to indulge my curiosity. I think about my beloved Japan, Taiwan and Ukraine. I think of the places in the world I’ve never been to yet like Mongolia, Bhutan, Vietnam, Nepal, Colombia, Zanzibar or Peru.
On the darker side, I tap into my deep hate and anger for my enemies. They win if I go away. One way or the other, I will see them get Rekt. There is a Chinese saying: “Wait by the river long enough and you will see the corpses of your enemies floating by.”
I think of the people reliant on me in my family and businesses. I think about this blog, my writing and the lessons I want to share. And I think of my mission and the impact I can still have on people and in the world at large. That quitting life is the worst thing you can do.
I think about hope. There is always hope. And that taking hard action can make things better. That you can eventually and always fix things if you put in the time and effort. I think about how lucky I am to have what I have: my health, my resources and family and friends all over the world. How grateful I should be. And thus, how I need to stop moping and get back to work & get back to real living. Moving forward.
If you are feeling these dark thoughts. Talk to someone. Think about happy moments in your life. Visualize a better tomorrow. Don’t give in.
As Aragorn from the Lord of the Rings says: “There is always hope.”
Insomniacs After School: Living is Impact
I watched a lovely Japanese movie based on a comic book about two teenage insomniacs Isaki & Nakami whose illness brings them together. It was fun and surprisingly life affirming.
They start an astronomy club at their high school on a lark but end up really committing to it with gusto. Setting up a night watching event and even going to the mountains to take special pictures of the night sky.
On one of their adventures, they meet an older man who tells them:
“Human existence doesn’t disappear that easily. Proof that they were here doesn’t disappear. That’s what I believe.
For instance, You say something and you forget. Even if you forget, the other person remembers. It happens to me all the time.
Every time it does, I realize I exist everywhere. In the earth. In the scenery. In the night sky. We’re etched in their memory.”
What I get from this is that everything we do matters. Every person we meet. Every little thing we do. How we live. And how to live with inspiration.
A word of advice given to the aspiring photographer was “Press the shutter when your heart flutters.” It’s not the simple, trite advice of following your passion but it’s doing things that speak to you. Chase your curiosity. Do more things that spark you and give you joy. Live life to your fullest because life is fleeting. We should all remember this.
The Lord of the Rings: A Timely Reminder and Tale of War
I think we all have watched the movie series or even read the books by Tolkien. It’s a story of men, dwarves, elves & hobbits standing against rising immense evil in the world. It’s a story about sacrifice, honor, adventure and friendship. It’s about ordinary people doing heroic things despite their fears. I still rewatch this series. It's so evocative of the times we live in.
“There is no time. War is upon us.” I can’t help but feel this is true right now in the world. Wars run across the world, the enemies of the West are united against us. Yet our governing elites and most people have no clue about the threat we face and how unprepared we are.
But I still have hope. That if we wake up in time we can face this threat.
There is a scene when one of the characters Faramir is sent on a suicide mission by his lord and father. The townspeople throw flowers on the ground in front of them as the soldiers grimly ride out of the gates. knowing none of them will be coming back. His friend implores him. “your fathers will has turned to madness. Do not throw away your life so rashly.”
Faramir answers: “where does my allegiance lie if not here.” It’s such a powerful scene. Loyalty, honor even if it means your death.
There is another scene when the mounted warriors of Rohan ride to fight orcs who are coming to attack their women and children. They fight them off at great cost. On their return, the king’s niece says: “So few. So few of you have returned.”
The king responds: “Our people are safe. We have paid for it with many lives.”
I think this is why I admire soldiers and warriors so much. They put themselves in harm's way to protect us. Sadly we seem to be coming to this time soon. Maybe Lord of the Rings holds some lessons for us that evil wins in the world when we do nothing.
Which is why so much of my focus now is on geopolitics, investing in Defensetech, helping ramp up our industrial and manufacturing base, personally learning fighting and tactical skills. Anything to help America and our allies in Asia and Europe build deterrence & protect our way of life. We have to protect the shire. “If you want peace, prepare for war.”
I leave this with a quote from King Theoden: “If this is to be our end, then I will have them make such an end to be worthy of remembrance.”
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads June 8th, 2025
"Chaos is the law of nature; order is the dream of man"--Henry Adams
"I was personally hands-on with a half-dozen founders in my portfolio who were fundraising in Q1 and many more through mentorship programs like Creative Destruction Lab. Almost all of these companies successfully closed their funding rounds — and they should have, because they all had strong, high-potential businesses.
But not all of them got the valuation they wanted.
The biggest difference? Whether or not the founders ran a tight fundraising process.
In my experience, there’s a direct correlation between how easy it was for a founder to raise their initial round of capital (whether it be friends-and-family, angel or Pre-Seed) and an over-confidence going into their Seed or Series A round. Founders who raised their first round quickly and with minimal effort often underestimate the effort required to raise true institutional capital."
2. I hope everyone hears about the Imaguru story in Belarus. These are good people and hope we can help them.
3. The Manufacturing renaissance in America (despite the Tariff wars).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgo0jTdN8Eg
4. "What happened in the 1970s that seemed to rob the future from the Boomer generation? Energy. With the end of cheap oil in 1973, and the failure of nuclear power to get cheaper as volumes scaled up, the dreams of the sci-fi authors of the mid-20th century failed to materialize. Those dreams had partially been based on fantasy physics (faster-than-light travel, gravity control, time travel), but partly they were based on the expectation that energy would keep getting more plentiful and engines would keep getting more powerful and compact. But in the 1970s, humanity suddenly stopped being able to harness more and more energy per person.
Limited by energy scarcity, humanity’s innovative efforts switched from atoms to bits; “
technology” in 1970-2010 was defined by computers, software, and the internet. In 2011, Paul Krugman and Tyler Cowen were writing that the appliances in their kitchen hadn’t changed since they were children.
Science fiction writers anticipated this shift quite early on. The “cyberpunk” writers of the 1980s and 1990s — William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Masamune Shirow, Bruce Sterling, Mike Pondsmith, Kojima Hideo, Konaka Chiaki, Vernor Vinge, and many others — didn’t envision a future entirely devoid of hardware innovations, but most of what they envisioned for the 21st century centered around advances in the internet, AI, robotics, and biotech.
That was the future I grew up expecting — a neon-drenched, mostly earthbound world where humans would mingle with robots, escape into digital fantasies, and modify their bodies. Instead of bold space explorers firing ray guns at alien conquerors, the heroic figures of my fantasies were hackers and street samurai, battling the nefarious plots of shadowy corporations, insane billionaires, and dystopian surveillance states."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/welcome-to-the-future
5. This was insightful, educational and just plain fun as a conversation on the state of VC and startups. Worth listening to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ncnpYtJCNQ&t=391s
6. Winning the war for the future. Wide ranging and interesting conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMgPTMM2Gzs&t=1850s
7. The what's up in Silicon Valley this week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkEI3csOHGQ
8. "Eleven months into the pandemic, Warren Buffett wrote in his annual shareholder letter, “Despite some severe interruptions, our country’s economic progress has been breathtaking. Our unwavering conclusion: Never bet against America.” This statement was based on a set of assumptions that our checks and balances protected the U.S. engines of growth (risk aggressiveness, rule of law, IP, university research, attracting premier human capital). Over the past 100 days it appears we’ve taken these things for granted, and I now believe it makes sense to bet on other regions.
Over the long run, I’m bullish on America, as there’s no better platform for unleashing human potential. The question isn’t whether to bet against America, however, but at what valuation? BTW, if a human was engineered to be the polar opposite of Warren Buffett, they’d look strikingly similar to Peter Navarro.
The Great Rotation isn’t as much a bet against U.S. equities, but simply the recognition that U.S. equities are overvalued relative to those of Europe and China.
As Brand America shifts from prosperity and rights to oligarchy and corruption, I distract myself with a great American pastime: wondering how I make money here. The greatest own-goal since Brexit/Iraq/Vietnam is underway, and, as in any disruption, there is an explosion in Alpha. It’s fun and (again) helps distract me from watching the pillars that provided me with a life my immigrant parents couldn’t imagine crumble. It helps. Sort of."
https://www.profgalloway.com/the-great-rotation
9. This was a crazy yet also fun conversation. Net net: drones on the battlefield are scary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRe_8k9Lah8
10. This should keep most Americans up at night.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtLsyH-2xg0
11. This is a must watch for VCs and LPs. Definitely a master class in how venture capital works and what's happening now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VCSi7F1j0o
12. Actually this really makes sense. Buying a farm as a city entrepreneur.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x54ojJ9ttxI
13. As a history guy, this was a great run down on the growth of Silicon Valley, changes in Venture capital and A16Z themselves. The rise of a monster sized VC & the insights they had in building the firm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpBDB2NjaWY
14. "Sales has always been a critical role for entrepreneurs. Nothing happens until someone, somewhere, is sold. However, we’ve all encountered a founder who failed to convince us of a product’s value or worth. They couldn’t transfer their belief.
As an entrepreneur, I recommend reframing the concept of selling as transferring belief in your solution and vision. Belief comes from a deeper, more meaningful place, carrying greater conviction. A sale can feel superficial or transactional. Moving forward, focus on transferring belief rather than just closing a deal."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/05/03/the-power-of-transferring-belief/
15. Your regular tinfoil hat Alt-geopolitics review. Don't agree with most of this but it's important to listen to non mainstream narratives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcPuq3iiyiM
16. This is depressing but facts are facts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW6k9z8OCEQ&t=3s
17. "This gets to the part that really interested me: how financial and technological leverage determine which wars break out in the coming decades. In a multipolar world, wars occur at the seams between larger blocs. Yet so far in the 21st century, it is comparatively rare that the two sides in a war are supported by opposing geopolitical blocs—wars such as Ukraine, and to a lesser extent Syria, are the exception, not the rule. More common are wars like Libya or Nagorno-Karabakh, which did not directly touch on core US interests and where both sides are friendly to America; or Iraq, where a US-aligned coalition attacked a diplomatically-isolated country.
Even if the world remains fundamentally unipolar, then, supply-chain diplomacy may create smaller de facto blocs. Access to weaponry remains one of the fundamental prerequisites for a state’s war-making capability, and increasingly complex weapons supply chains will continue to stretch across multiple countries. It is obvious how this creates potential chokepoints for the end user; less obvious is how those chokepoints incentivize broad alignments—such as Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Israel in the Nagorno-Karabakh War—that have both the industrial capacity to fight a war and the collective diplomatic clout to prevent outside interference. And, given the outsized advantage that a secure supply of outside weaponry can generate, a world with more chokepoints may paradoxically incentivize more wars."
https://dispatch.bazaarofwar.com/p/book-discussion-on-chokepoints-american
18. Lessons from history from Sarah Paine, one of the best historians around. Lots of implications for geopolitics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcVSgYz5SJ8
19. "Unfortunately, the US has focused its global efforts on actively managing, militarily and through economic sanctions, its version of the ‘global order.’ It has been at the expense of growing its trade relationships. This global order is falling apart as US interests diverge from the standards it developed during the Cold War, leading to expensive military adventures and dismantling the international organizations it painstakingly built to manage this sprawling network.
The other nations that are involved in this multipolar conflict;
All are self-interested. Since this war isn’t a systemic conflict primarily focused on network influence, coercion of these nations will be resisted.
China’s focus on ‘trading with all’ in contrast to America’s ‘we are in charge’ has levelled the playing field regarding influence.
Some, like the EU, see themselves as contestants on par with the US and China despite their dependence on US security and Chinese-manufactured goods."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/framing-a-conflict-with-china
20. I like Mike Thurston, creator extraordinaire. He discusses living in Dubai, it's NOT my favorite place but lots of people seem to like it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ftv9Td2TSKA
21. "The U.S. isn’t just helping Ukraine. It’s creating a blueprint.
I would not be surprised if every country that benefits from the US military, especially resource-rich nations, will see a version of this deal coming their way.
Aid, in exchange for access. Weapons, in exchange for minerals.
Let’s not pretend. The United States has the biggest military and economy in the world. But real power—the kind that lasts—comes from controlling resources.
Right now, China holds a very strong hand. With 90% of the global rare earth supply, they have leverage over the entire world. If the U.S. wants to break that grip, it needs alternative sources.
That means locking down friendly governments with untapped mineral wealth, like Ukraine.
Because under the surface, it’s never been about politics or speeches. It’s never really been about democracy or peace.
It’s always been about control.
Resources are the game board. Everything else is just the packaging."
https://jaymartin.substack.com/p/ill-give-you-the-sticks-you-give
22. "The irony of it all is that Japanese entertainment represents one of the few things a fractured America can agree on. “The primary uniting force in this country is anime,” posted the pop star Grimes, Elon Musk’s ex, in February. “It's the only media through line that I can reliably observe regardless of political alignment.”
In other words, Japanese fantasies are helping to hold American society together at the moment. Those fantasies naturally encode different values, different ways of looking at the world. They’re much-needed escapes, but also quiet beacons for diverse ways of thinking. Their continued popularity amidst the chaos of it all gives me hope that years from now, when America gets through this crazy time, we’ll be talking less about the manosphere that divided us than the Japanosphere that united us."
https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/boys-vs-girls-japan-vs-america
23. "By limiting cash, government significantly increase the control they can exert on people by forcing us to live within the digital ecosystem of banks they control. And by being forced to transact in this system only, governments can also wield the power to cut us off from our only way to exchanging money in the modern world.
It’s a power they are increasingly using to de-bank people who are critical of our rulers.
But without cash or when its use is restricted like what’s happening now in Europe, removing someone from the banking system or freezing their assets in this manner would be simply devastating.
In other words, it’s the perfect threat to ensure we comply. It’s a device of ultimate control. Because if we’re forced to live in a society where our use of cash is trampled upon, the government controls our very ability to survive in the modern world."
https://anticitizen.com/p/are-you-paying-attention
24. "In the end, Europe’s key problem in rearming is that, while its demographic, economic, and industrial outlook is clearly better than Russia’s over the medium to long term, the short-term prospects currently favor Russia. And if Europe fails to act, it is the short term that may ultimately matter."
https://missilematters.substack.com/p/forward-presence-or-forward-defense
25. "As with many early stage tech bets, perhaps we are wrong. But what if we are right? What if, 6 months after its invention, everyone everywhere has access to superintelligence and the ASI itself is not an advantage? Where do you want to be invested, and what assets to do you want to have?
That is the main question we have been asking ourselves."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/our-most-controversial-thesis-open
26. "McCarthy’s partnership with Sheridan has made Paramount+ a real competitor to streaming services from larger companies such as Amazon, Apple, Disney and Comcast—of course, it doesn’t hurt that the service carries CBS’s livestream of the NFL. Paramount+ has been the fastest-growing streamer in the US for the past couple of years, and over the last six months it’s had more top 10 streaming shows than any service but Netflix and Amazon. (Sheridan is responsible for them all.) Which is why it’s a weird moment for McCarthy’s time at Paramount to possibly be coming to an end. Barring a Trumpian twist, Ellison will take control of Paramount before the end of the year. While he plans to keep McCarthy’s co-CEO and friend, George Cheeks, McCarthy and fellow co-CEO Brian Robbins are expected to depart.
Sheridan, who says McCarthy’s handling of the franchise was “extremely shrewd,” tells Bloomberg Businessweek, “I sure hope that if this merger takes place, they have the foresight to keep him. I don’t know of another executive that I could do this with.”
McCarthy, though, says he hasn’t given his future much thought. “I’m tired of reading about us,” he says, referring to 18 months of merger speculation. Later, he adds, “Weirdly, I’m the most comfortable with uncertainty.”
McCarthy is an unlikely architect of one of the biggest franchises in Hollywood."
https://archive.ph/2dfza#selection-1605.0-1643.80
27. So much to love about Japan. I'm doing the Nakasendo hike either later this year or in spring 2026. Business and work is great but sometimes you need to get out to nature to reset.
https://www.afar.com/magazine/visit-japans-post-towns-on-the-nakasendo-trail
28. Learning from Sequoia Capital. 50 years of success.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oYXDK9xhb4&t=121s
29. Geographic Alpha.
"And while we have come down from the 2021 ZIRP infused madness, to today’s more sober reality, our focus remains the same. We back simple businesses, offering products real customers value and pay for, and who do not blitzscale. Yes, “camel startups.”
https://99tech.alexlazarow.com/p/introducing-fluent-ventures-and-geographic
30. "Mr. Buffett's parting gift to a conflicted and over-extended investment industry could be the gift of simplicity. As we enter what my friend Grant Willams calls the 100-year pivot, perhaps we might consider returning to the plain-old investing that Mr. Buffett has practiced for sixty years.
Perhaps the image of a solitary Warren Buffett, turning pages in a book of thousands of public equities to find a few qualifying investments, will remind us that the key attributes of successful investing are patience, wisdom and ethics, not the size of your team or your access to influential members of the Chinese Communist Party.
A return to plain-old investing alongside partnership with our closest ally could cure what ails many of our most elite institutions. What a boon this would be from a great American."
https://japanoptimist.substack.com/p/warren-buffett-and-japan-turning
31. Not a fan of this guy Cyrus who is CCP shill but he is definitely spot on re: what a mess this Tariff war has caused in US & around the world. The trust and brand of America has been severely tarnished.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxOBXW1ghqI
32. "Between 1927 and 1938 over one-hundred German military officers assisted the Chinese Kuomintang under five different directors. The last of these, Alexander von Falkenhausen, had trained alongside Kurt as a cadet and became his supporter.
Their mission was to professionalize the Chinese military, establishing military schools modeled after the Kriegsakademie, and Kurt, an expert in military engineering and munitions, was assigned to Nanking after arriving in Shanghai with his family.
Kurt’s plan, if you can call it that, wasn’t unique. Some of the other officers sent to China were what the Germans classified as "Mischlinge"—individuals of mixed Jewish heritage—making the mission an escape route for Jewish military members fleeing an increasingly Nazified Germany."
https://walkingtheworld.substack.com/p/a-german-officer-and-jew-in-1930s
33. "AI won’t transform defense unless we bridge the gap between capability and application. These Seven Patterns offer a blueprint—for commanders, acquisition leads, and technologists—to map real operational needs to proven AI strategies."
https://buildingourfuture.substack.com/p/the-dod-doesnt-know-how-to-apply
34. Pretty instructive discussion on what is going on in a hyper competitive VC market and how to adopt as a VC.
The Age of Austerity: Getting Lean & Mean
I read a very interesting article by Eric Newcomer on Silicon Valley bad boy Chamath Palihapitiya.
“Forbes doesn’t seem to have called him a billionaire since the SPAC frenzy in 2021. It seems highly unlikely that he is one. (To be sure, Palihapitiya is almost still certainly very wealthy by any normal standard. And his challenges may mostly amount to liquidity problems given that much of his wealth is tied up in private investments.)
Palihapitiya has openly discussed his belt-tightening on the All-In Podcast.
In January 2023, he talked about looking at his household spending. “I haven’t really looked at my household budget in 2 or 3 years — didn’t even bother. Then when I looked at it, I was like wow this is really inflated to a level I didn’t even expect. It makes a lot of sense to live in a more heads down, austere way.”
In June, he said on the podcast that he “flew public” by taking Southwest Airlines.
I’ve learned that last year Palihapitiya quietly sold his expensive private jet.
His public letter to investors last year called this an “age of austerity.” (Source: https://www.newcomer.co/p/the-dictator-chamath-palihapitiyas)
Why?
In his latest investor letter published this week, Palihapitiya wrote, “While 2023 was full of challenges, we are near the end of the hard reset from zero interest rates. After a decade of low rates and rising valuations, many of the tailwinds that benefited us as technologists are now gone. Instead, disruptive change via advancements in AI and reshoring of critical industries are reshaping how companies are built.”
The net net: the world has completely changed. In technology, geopolitically, economically. ZIRP is over and cheap money is gone for a while at least.
But we all got fat and lazy during the decade of 2012-2022. What a nutty time. Maybe not as nutty in tech as the dotcom bubble in the 90s, but nutty in every sector to the point that historians will call it the “everything bubble.” Add in the chaos from the Liberation Day tariffs implementations, it’s hard to predict where the world or economy is going. Now it’s payback time for regular folks like you and me, the billionaire class, cities, states and even countries who got used to fat tax income and big budgets.
We are entering an age of austerity. We need to be cutting back budgets and reprioritizing everything we are doing. At all levels of the government, at companies and businesses and in our own lives.
I’ve done this myself. Starting to classify what is critical and what is a luxury and thus unnecessary. Cutting back on unnecessary travel in 2025, like to Europe for example, cutting out conferences that I normally would have gone to. I’m using the hard filter of ROI, if it’s not paid or fully covered, nor in a strategic mission that is core to my business, it's out. If it’s not part of my personal goals and contributes to my health or wellness, it’s eliminated from my schedule. Only travel kept is for Canada, Taiwan and Japan because these are strategic or deeply personal due to family stuff. Otherwise, I am completely focused on the core. Anything Non-essential is gone.
I fully expect that we will be entering tough times financially, physically and mentally, so these actions will be a big part in shepherding my resources to weather the storm. And so I can come out the other side stronger. Kind of like a UFC fighter going into quarantine, training hard for an important fight that is coming up soon. Word to the wise.
Being Off Your Game: Coping & Recovery
You ever have a feeling that you are out of synch and feeling slightly off. I believe the term is discombobulated. I’ve felt this repeatedly since 2020. But especially from June 2023 through to most of 2024. A feeling of going through the motions but barely awake. A fugue state. Basically I was operating like all the zombies I see around me.
Why? I think the setbacks in my family life compounded with frustrations in my business led me to do what I criticize others of doing. Hiding. Not behind drugs or alcohol but keeping super busy with conference speakers' life, random consulting projects and such. Activities that look like you are doing stuff but things that make zero difference to fix the core business or your family. Confusing activity with achieving results. It’s a dangerous form of escapism so you don’t have to face the truth.
That as smart as I hoped I was, I still ended up making many decisions that were suboptimal and taking actions that were just 5-10% off. This adds up overtime. I’ve realized I’ve lost a lot of momentum in all aspects of my life.
But life kicks you hard and wakes you up eventually. It’s like a cold painful blast of the Baltic ocean after a hot sauna to jar you to reality. It was not until I faced up to reality that I was able to start taking small actions to fix things. Bit by bit.
So I finally cut most of my non essential trips and conferences outside of one's I previously committed to. Limited to the top events and just a few a year for 2025.
I focused on the small 20% of things that matter in my life and business. Really doing more exercising and training. More reading and writing. Trying to spend more time with the family. Taking care of my portfolio companies as well as my present and future fund & hold co investors/LPs. Anything not additive to these activities, I cut out of my life. Essentialism. Back to basics. Focusing on the core. Focusing on what is important.
This was how I got my life back on track. Or at least in the right direction it seems. That’s a good start at least.
The New Chivalry: Being a Modern Knight
I think every young male is entranced by medieval knights and chivalry: the western version of Bushido. I grew up reading about medieval knights and their adventures. Who did not enjoy the stories of King Arthur and the knights of the round table. Riding around saving damsels in distress or tilting after imaginary dragons.
The reality is that knights were brutal, killers who traveled, fought and feuded with their fellow knights. They lived and died brutally. Usually young too. Remember this was in a day where medicine, nutrition and cleanliness was not well known. But with time, like with everything, we end up glamorizing their lives.
No one did a better job of this than Geoffrey de Charny who codified chivalry in a book called The Book of Chivalry.
He was one of the few who lived the ideals. The was the knight of knights. One who every noble looked up to. And no surprise, not only was he a true gentleman, honorable, cultured & educated, he was an incredible warrior.
Charny was a literal one man wrecking & killing machine. I wonder if the word “charnel” did not come from him, that is how good he was. He was eventually killed in the battle of Poitiers holding up the flag of the French King. But it took 20+ top English knights, men at arms and squires to take him down. And he ended up injuring and killing many of them as he fell. Honestly, what a way to go. A true warrior's death.
De Charny wrote: “He who does the most is worth the most.” I love this. He/She who contributes the most and adds the most value should get the most value back. This is why capitalism works.
Yet somewhere along the way in modern life and organizations this has been lost. Yes we should protect the weak and less advantaged but we shouldn’t venerate them. It’s like when people misunderstand the biblical saying that “the meek shall inherit the earth.” Meek does not mean weak. Meek means someone who is strong but chooses to hold back and control themselves.
Chivalry Guild writes about this: https://twitter.com/ChivalryGuild/status/1789733767747092919
“Good manners are good and fine. They're an important aspect of the larger vision, and I'm all for them. But you can’t take the aspirational parts out of a code and then expect it to still speak to hearts of spirited men. Holding doors open is easy. Becoming a man of serious vigor is not. Chivalry is a code for men willing to fight, willing to risk themselves for a worthy cause. This is the vision that moves a young man. A knight who can't or won't fight is not much of a knight, no matter how refined his manners. “
We need to bring chivalry back. Where there is a code of honor. Where martial skills are venerated. Where effort and action is rewarded and the lazy and weak are disdained. Where leaders actually lead from the front and stand for something. What a world that would be. And in a world that is breaking down fast, this may be needed soon.
I’ll let Chivalry Guild finish:
“What was true of Charny's country in the 14th century is just as true of our country in the 21st. Flabby men are unequal to the challenges ahead. We’ve slowly forgotten that a man’s purpose begins with his ability to confront the dangers of life, to protect his own, and to fight for what matters—and that the failure to cultivate this ability invites all sorts of troubles.
So a revival of chivalry, it starts with rediscovering prowess. Those who would be chivalrous must commit themselves to becoming physical specimens, like the heroes whose muscle protected Christendom in times of great danger and gave Christian civilization a chance to flourish.”
Amen to this.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads June 1st, 2025
“There is no sin except stupidity”--Oscar Wilde
What an interesting idea. A Militarized REIT.
"The problem for our dying towns and cities, therefore, isn’t that recovery is impossible. Rather, it’s that they often can't afford the investment levels and police presence necessary for a Greek Town-style rebuilding, and because of that have trouble attracting new residents that would spark a revival of sorts by providing the resources necessary for it. It only works in a sliver of Detroit because a few wealthy company owners bought up real estate and demanded employees move back to town, which generally isn't replicable.
That gets to the militarized REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust, or a company focused on developing and running a specific sort of real estate) idea: what if you had an East India Company-style, well-capitalized company that provides security and government services in the Western manner, in exchange for rents and limited liability for its owners.
Such a company could take advantage of situations like that in Baltimore, where the city government is willing to sell abandoned homes for a nominal fee if buyers will move in. Right now, buyers won't, because of the danger; if you could provide safety for the purchased area, and subsidize the cost of living in such a situation, people could move back. So, the problem is not finding opportunity, but how to provide security, and make it desirable and profitable?
Providing that opportunity and security is what a militarized REIT could do."
https://www.theamericantribune.news/p/what-about-a-militarized-reit-that
2. "In other words, neither investors nor manufacturers themselves believes in the long-term reindustrialized future that Oren simply assumes will come about. Instead, it appears that tariffs are dramatically accelerating America’s deindustrialization.
And if that’s true, Cass’ other arguments all go up in smoke. Who cares if people like working factory jobs when there are fewer factory jobs to work in? And so on. Every defense of the tariffs is based on this assumption of reindustrialization; if, as looks very likely, that turns out to be a fantasy, the whole edifice collapses.
Oren Cass and other tariff-defending pundits have thus hitched their wagons to a stagecoach that is driving straight off a cliff. They have managed to remain inside the favored circle of the MAGA movement, but this required them to make a terrible sacrifice — they lost their freedom to look out the window and see the calamity unfolding."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-pundits-dilemma
3. "The new normal is a market environment where every unit of inventory carries an opportunity cost. The winners will be those who can squeeze even just one more dollar from their inventory. The operators who can maximize the value of inventory to accrue as much cash as possible are best positioned to weather the storm."
https://newsletter.equal.vc/p/inventory-apocalypse-20
4. "When it comes to worshipping mammon (money), I suspect that investors will stay true to their religion. They will buy yield. US Treasuries may temporarily sell off while all this restructuring of cash flows, assets, and liabilities, and overall rules of the game are going on.
But America is a master of restructuring a deal that has gone wrong. Americans are masters at reinventing themselves and launching new businesses. Everywhere I go, I hear of new ventures being launched as people seek to take control of their future in the US. Notice what The WSJ points out: Trump is a disaster in the headlines everywhere, but not in the data.
The moral of the story is to know your schisms, be surer of your chosen catechisms, and hold onto some gold."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/schisms-and-gold
5. "Ignorance of the macro is not a virtue." Macro helps your micro. Bridging the gap between science fiction and science fact.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us58WjbknsI&t=2031s
6. Billionaire Defense Builders. Don't say Dual Use. The story of Anduril. It's a really insightful convo here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPOjD0RxX_k
7. "The next time Trump presses the tariff button – which he will do, to ensure nations respect his authority – he will be able to ask for additional concessions, and Bitcoin won’t get crushed alongside certain equities. Bitcoin knows that the deflationary policies cannot be sustained for long, given the insane levels of current and future debt the filthy financial system requires to operate.
The ski cut of Mt. Sharpe World, produced a category 2 financial markets’ avalanche that could have quickly escalated to category 5, the highest level. But team Trump reacted, changed course, and put the Empire on a different aspect. The slope’s base was solidified upon using the driest dankest pow pow made of crystalline dollar bills provided by treasury buybacks. It’s time to transition from the slog up the mountain carrying a backpack filled with uncertainty, to jumping off powdery pillows, yelping with delight at how high Bitcoin shall levitate.
As you can tell, I’m very bullish. At Maelstrom, we have maxed out our crypto exposure. Now it’s all about buying and selling different cryptos to stack sats. The coin purchased in the largest quantity was Bitcoin during the dip from $110,000 to $74,500. Bitcoin will continue to lead the way as it is the direct beneficiary of more fiat dollars sloshing about due to future monetary liquidity injections provided to soften the impact of a Chi-Merica divorce. Now that the global community believes Trump is a madman crudely and savagely wielding the tariff weapon, any investor with US stocks and bonds is looking for something whose value is anti-establishment. Physically, that’s gold. Digitally, that’s Bitcoin.
Gold never held the narrative as a high-beta version of US tech stocks; therefore, as the general market collapsed, it performed well as the longest-standing anti-establishment financial hedge. Bitcoin will shed its association with said tech stocks and will rejoin gold in the ‘Up Only’ cuddle puddle."
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/ski-cut
8. "Japan’s corporate governance reforms, which began with Abenomics about a decade ago, have made notable strides. But the TSE’s recent directive signals a meaningful shift—from procedural compliance to outcomes-driven accountability—and the momentum is clearly taking hold. The durability of this corporate renaissance now hinges on whether more companies are willing to break from outdated norms and adopt a capital allocation mindset aligned with shareholder value.
Ultimately, the TSE’s initiative isn’t about valuation multiples for their own sake. It’s about prompting a reckoning in Japanese boardrooms—about what it truly means to be a public company, the responsibilities that come with access to investor capital, and the role listed firms play in the broader allocation of financial resources across the economy. The P/B ratio may be a blunt instrument, but it remains a telling one. And the market has made clear: it stands ready to reward those who rise to the challenge."
https://mailchi.mp/verdadcap/diverging-destinies-in-corporate-japan
9. "I suspect that Trump’s ultimate agenda could be aimed at returning the United States to Alexander Hamilton’s American System of political economy and away from the British free trade system. The difference is that the American System allocates credit for industrialization and productive ends while the British free trade system credits nonproductive uses aimed at inflating, then bursting asset bubbles. Abraham Lincoln's chief economic advisor Henry C. Carey contrasted the two systems in his 1851 work, "The Harmony of Interests"
https://alexkrainer.substack.com/p/is-trump-actually-taking-on-the-bankers
10. How Great powers self destruct.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT3hoxOwtgQ
11. "It is right and proper to revere and venerate our ancestors — not because they were wiser than us, or because they ruled over great empires, but because they struggled up out of the animal muck into which they were born. They put their shoulder to the wheel and kept going, day after day, through all the sorrow and hardship, and they never quit.
Our ancestors were not wise kings and majestic emperors. They were filthy apes who dared to look up at the stars. That struggle is your blood and your heritage, and it is greater than any empire that has ever existed.
The proper way to honor that legacy is to emulate it — to build more, to keep struggling upward in the present day. To believe that we live in a fallen world is to disgrace every one of our forebears who worked to give us a better future. Instead, we should stay on the path they set out for us, looking forward instead of back.
Squabbling over whose people “built America”, and trying to keep out anyone who doesn’t spring from that stock, is a fool’s errand; instead, we should be welcoming and encouraging the people who will keep building America tomorrow, no matter what part of the globe they hail from. Fighting over whose ancestors were greater is useless; instead, we should resolve to create a great line of descendants. Rather than restoring our societies to the (real or imagined) glories of the past, we should expect to build our societies to peaks never imagined.
That task is what we should take pride in. That is what we owe to the future, and to those who came before."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/you-are-the-heir-to-something-greater
12. "The database that records your financial transactions might seem like an invisible technical detail, but as assets move to blockchain databases, the implications for investors, startups, & the entire financial system will be profound & hugely positive."
https://tomtunguz.com/tokenization-ipo/
13. Lessons from building Mischief VC, a true founder driven VC fund.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5Ym_n9fhSk
14. George Friedman has been right more than wrong on geopolitics. Worth watching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmmyLzlELz0
15. "The autocrats have a simple plan: tear everything down and give them control. Let them use technology and artificial intelligence to optimize our lives, realizing efficiencies through the consolidation of power. They decide who's a terrorist and who goes to globally centralized prisons and concentration camps. Indeed, are we not already here?
While it is possible that we may, through some combination of luck and leadership, throw off the convergence infection for a short time, we are unlikely to vanquish it permanently. The only solution is to outflank it with a new vision for global democracy. This is so far outside the Overton window as to be unthinkable crazy talk — for now. But will that still be true in a month, a year, a decade?
Convergence starts slow, and then gains speed as the poles begin to meet. Things are moving so rapidly now, it's likely we will face a series of destabilizing events such that won't know what has happened until after it's occurred.
Consider this a warning, and a call to action: we must start thinking about what comes after the United States in its current configuration — indeed, we must start to design America 2.0, and be ready to counter authoritarians with a truly better vision of a democratic global future."
https://america2.news/convergence-is-here-and-were-not-prepared/
16. A wide ranging conversation on the state of venture capital and startups. It's rough out there. Environment really matters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgcrazZ3YmU
17. Grim view of the stalled Re-industrialization process in America. Trump Admin has fallen down here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3UxkOG-wzQ
18. A very sober conversation on tariffs & free trade. USA is shooting itself in its foot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPfE5SS7fc0&t=8s
19. Trump trade deals. What trade deals? What a mess.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v25aMhjKqQ
20. Ian Bremmer: Decline of rule of law, Chaos and uncertainty under Trump. Not good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLtb9HVNY0I
21. Fascinating conversation. How to understand how people and the world works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3cdPis--kU&t=11s
22. Be the mountain, not the storm. The what's up in Silicon Valley news.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYoEmqM24b4
23. Surviving the DoD Meat Grinder for defense focused Investors and startup founders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tlGWpzOxbU&t=1s
24. Always direct and sometimes controversial but always smart takes on venture and startup land.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXDrl_yyWJo
25. A very educational conversation on how CCP won China and implications for today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l3Sa8ImGFQ
26. Always sober conversation on geopolitics from one of the best historians of our generation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yot-L8X8XC8
27. "Similar to a mob boss, the president has created an incentive system to keep everyone in line. Donating $1 million to his inauguration fund, nodding politely, publishing a (bullshit) press release about a “massive” investment in domestic manufacturing, and staying quiet is the way to go … if you know what’s best for you and your economic interests. I’ve heard firsthand that CEOs at the biggest companies agree — in private — that Trump’s policies are dangerous and stupid. In public, they cower. They keep their heads down and their knees bent, fearing retribution or hoping to profit.
The fastest-growing, and possibly most dangerous, class in America is what I’d label the Transnational Oligarchs (“Togarchs”). The Togarch has no use for the government once Uncle Sam’s check has been cashed. The charging stations are built, and the government-sponsored technology is already stitched into their offering. The rule of law, regulation, tax system, and public infrastructure that paved the way for their billions is now a liability for their “genius” — an obstacle to paying no taxes or worrying about the damage their product(s) levy on others.
They have little vested interest in the things the government does or why it requires their tax dollars. Their wealth, comparable to that of a nation state, yields its own sub-infrastructure: private schools, health care, security, and rights. Overturning Roe v. Wade or rounding people up poses no threat to them. If shit gets real, and someone in their life becomes pregnant or people show up with pitchforks, no bother. The Togarch will always have access to mifepristone or residency in Dubai, London, or Milan. In sum, they’re no longer Americans. The Togarch class is growing and slowly co-opting Fortune 500 CEOs to join their ranks."
https://www.profgalloway.com/breaking-the-silence/
28. "Everything compounds—from money to relationships to knowledge and beyond. The key is to start investing time and energy now. Build a process through consistent inputs and habits, and after many years, you’ll reap the rewards. The best time to start is today."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/04/26/everything-compounds/
29. Sarah Paine is one of the most erudite historians from the Naval War College. This was a very informative conversation. Learning how to operate geopolitically from history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbkO84MsmyM&t=3800s
30. Solid overview on what it takes to be at the top.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zBa_qEZZe0
31. "Our numbers look about right. If you’re getting punched in the face right now, so is everyone else. We’ve got a rough estimate of 15% for the average decline in demand. There is always some crazy trend (Pistachio chocolate for example) but the general rule is about 15% plus or minus 5%. This means if you’re down about 10% you’re probably gaining market share. If you’re down 5% you’re *definitely* gaining market share.
Vast majority of people are not built to sustain pain and get greedy (as we’ve seen time and time again). This is great news for you as the female buying patterns have already shifted. We already mentioned press on nails, mainstream finally caught up to mushrooms (source) and you already know the step by step on how to test demand.
As usual, people give up at the first sign of weakness. Similar to how they get greedy when things are going up. Do the opposite.
Right now if you can find a product in any of the following that makes money, we’re near certain you’ll be a deca-millionaire. While crypto/tech all have bright futures, thinking that a meaningless $200K in any of those assets will make you rich is comical (at best). Using $25-50K to build into one of these niches could net 8-figures."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/selling-to-gen-z-women-wtaf
32. "Most prefer to doom post. They won’t even bother trying anything. 90% of businesses fail blah blah. Reality is that $1M is attainable by simply putting in effort. Anyone who disagrees, just do yourself a favor and delete their contact info.
You don’t even need good timing.
People *choose* to be millionaires. Or they choose not to. It’s lack of priorities that set them back. Go into Tech sales, Tech or worst case scenario Wall St (secular decline). Immediately (not later) start a boring side biz that can be a product or consulting. The second you get your first $1 we promise you will already see it.
At this stage, you are no longer shipping all your money back into the business. We’d wager majority end up making $150-200K online. This has been the rough average in the jungle from our glance in the background.
Everyone has a different belief system but the same concept is this, ship into appreciating assets: 1) other e-com/biz flips, 2) Real estate, 3) SaaS or 4) the aforementioned secular trends.
Create that Money Making Machine = Put in $1 get more than $1 back. Keep spending until it is no longer green."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/how-the-rich-avoid-massive-taxes
33. Short but important discussion. Why we need to utilize AI in our defense industry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooMXEwl7N8Y
34. Mercenaries, the world's oldest profession. Expect a major resurgence of their use now.