Hell is Other People: An Introvert in an Extrovert World
Yes, I definitely started with a strange title. People are heaven and hell at the same time. But for introverts like me, in most cases, interacting with people is incredibly draining. So we’d rather be by ourselves, reading, watching YouTube or surfing the Internet. Alone time with our own thoughts. This is how we gain energy.
This is the exact opposite case with extroverts who get their energy from being around and interacting with other people. There is definitely a spectrum on the range of introvert to extrovert.
But if you are to have any kind of career or growth you need to be around people. Talking with them, selling to them, teaching or learning. There is literally no way around interacting with people if you want to get anything done.
And especially in my line of work of venture capital, investing and international business it’s absolutely critical, if not just plain table stakes of the game. Now don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy interacting with people, talking with smart friends, awesome founders and fellow investors is a joy, dream and privilege!
But the role requires an excess amount of time that can be personally taxing for my introvert leanings at times. I do so many meetings & calls and plenty of public speaking, where I am literally surrounded with countless people, hour after hour, day after day. Sometimes for weeks on end.
So you have to figure out how to cope. You learn to take small breaks and walks. You learn to be great at extricating yourself from conversations politely. Or in the absolute worst case, just plain “French Goodbye-ing” them. Otherwise known in modern parlance, “ghosting” them. It’s an important survival mechanism for an introvert to maintain their sanity and health.
So for anyone who finds I’ve disappeared all of a sudden, don’t take it personally. I just need to step away to recharge my energy so I can back to you to engage again at full capacity!
Runner Runner: Lessons in Ambition, Fear & Greed
There was an obscure Hollywood movie called “Runner Runner” that came out in 2013 that starred Justin Timberlake as a naive Princeton mathematical genius named Richie and Ben Affleck as an online gambling tycoon hiding away from the USA with his massive fortune. Having lost his tuition money gambling, he confronts Ivan Block (played by Affleck) and gets recruited to his massive gambling operations in Costa Rica.
And the adventure begins as the FBI and local politicians and criminals get involved. It was good fun as you can see from this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFPqyNvNzvU. But there were so many great quotes from the movie especially by Ben Affleck who does such a great job as the bad guy, intensely clever, witty and charming. Think of his character in “Boiler Room” and his motivational speeches times 10. So very good.
One of his lines: “This is your job. You want a clear conscience, go start a charity.”
If you want your own island and your boss says you gotta go out there and take a beating, you go out there, take it and come back to work and say, "do you need me to do it again?".
Or this:“That's the problem with your generation. You guys sat around with your vintage T-shirts and your participation medal, and you never did anything.”
Or even this one: “You know at the casino when they give you chips at the casino and say ‘Good luck sir’? What they don’t tell you is that ‘sir’ means dummy and ‘good luck’ means ‘F–k you!”
So many great bangers here. Loved Affleck in the movie. But the one quote that really stuck with me.
“That little voice in the back of your head right now, it's not your conscience, it's fear.”
It really hits. I think back on all the lost opportunities in my last decades. Personal, professional, money and relationships.
Fear and self limiting beliefs held me back. It holds all of us back. Whenever good things happened in my life, I overcame the fear or more often the case, acted in spite of the fear. So all I can say is: next time, you want to start a new job or business, move to a new place, or want to ask that girl out. Ignore your fear and JUST DO IT. Better to have the regret of trying and failing than the regret of not trying, and never knowing. Always wondering what could have been.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads July 13th, 2025
"Summer means happy times and good sunshine. It means going to the beach, going to Disneyland, having fun." - Brian Wilson
"Finance, as a religion, has mastered the alchemy of words, turning human labor into gold for the elite while leaving the masses in a state of perpetual servitude. The high priests—bankers, financiers, and economists—wield the secret spells of financial jargon, ensuring that the wealth generated by humanity’s efforts flows upward. But as I’ve revealed through my threads and articles, this system is built on a foundation of lies, from the myth of scarcity to the false promise of financial salvation.
By recognizing finance for what it is—a belief system, not an inevitability, not reality—we can begin to dismantle its power, reclaiming our labor and our humanity from the altar of Wealth. The magic of words may have built this religion, but it’s through new words—words of reality, community, and humanity—that we can tear down this religion has so enslaved us across the last four hundred years."
https://emburlingame.substack.com/p/the-religion-of-finance
2. "Security guarantees by Europe or the US, meanwhile, need to be backed up with real force to be credible, and they need to be a believably long-term commitment to make a difference.
Mujtaba Rahman, the managing director for Europe at the analysts Eurasia Group, said: “The key question for Ukraine is this: will there be a credible security guarantee which will enable private capital to flow back into the country?"
3. The most fun and educational show you watch. Two smart guys sharing health tips this episode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eql0VFUc4Dc
4. "Like the show’s audience, the guests are attracted to “TBPN” as a safe refuge from the mainstream media, one that projects an unabashed, unapologetic enthusiasm for tech. “We genuinely love the private markets, the venture capital industry—the startup industrial complex,” Hays said.
Since “TBPN” debuted last October, Hays and Coogan have warmly welcomed investors from pretty much every major venture firm in existence, a marker of the podcast’s widening appeal. (Sequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners—I could go on.)
A week or so ago, they dispatched one of their four producers to Las Vegas to set up a ministudio at Andreessen Horowitz’s annual investor day summit, where the firm’s executives could chat about tech, the news and, putatively, what they were presenting to their investors—a level of access no one in the regular media would ever get. The headliner, naturally, was billionaire Marc Andreessen, who stopped by “TBPN” for a 26-minute conversation about AI, open-source software and the parallels between the AI boom and the browser wars of the 1990s.
Together, Coogan and Hays, who met through a mutual friend, saw an opportunity for a tech-focused podcast that could analyze industry news with a light irreverance and wasn’t tied to a single company or venture firm. Last fall, they had enough free time on their hands to record a couple test episodes. When they attended Peter Thiel’s Hereticon at the Faena Hotel in Miami, they sought out feedback from David Senra, host of the popular “Founders” podcast, who had previously advised Coogan on his YouTube channel. He thought the two shared a natural chemistry and encouraged them to go all-in on the concept."
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/technology-brothers-seized-silicon-valley
5. This is all Netanyahu's fault.
"Despite growing isolation at the state level and ongoing losses across social networks, it’s unlikely that Israel will relent. Ending the war quickly would likely result in a flood of empathy triggers that *might"* generate a spontaneous swarm of outrage targeting Israel and its supporters worldwide. If they continue with the pacification effort, the push by states to sanction, ban, and isolate Israel will accelerate as horror stories leak out."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/meltdown
6. "Ukraine understands completely what Putin’s ambitions are with respect to Ukraine - its total capitulation. And Ukrainians understand what a Russian victory means - the end of Ukraine as a sovereign state, and likely mass genocide against Ukrainians. They hence understand that they have no choice but to fight and hold out either for a victory in the war or a peace which leaves the country standing as an independent and sovereign nation able to defend itself against the inevitable future Russian aggression.
The nightmare for Europe is that the U.S. pulls military support for Ukraine and then Russia quickly wins the war against Ukraine, capturing its now substantial military industrial complex which the leaves an enfeebled Europe facing the two largest military industrial complexes in Europe - Russia plus Ukraine. That’s an extinction style event for Europe, the EU, European values, et al.
So whatever Trump does, Europe has no choice but to still support Ukraine, and keep sanctions in place as long as possible to keep the Russian economy weak and unable to regenerate its conventional military capability which will inevitably be used in the future against Europe if it is not beaten. Europe is hence desperate to keep Ukraine in the war, as a front line defence for Europe, and if any peace is concluded it needs to ensure Ukraine is sustainable, and remains as that front line defence for Europe."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/ukraine-what-everyone-wants
7. "The difference between the guys who get results (success OR failure) and the guys who are perpetually “trying” is MINDSET.
Mindset is the most important thing. More important than any other resource or ability."
https://lifemathmoney.com/the-mindset-you-need-to-succeed/
8. "Did you see Jony Ive is teaming up with OpenAI to create new consumer hardware and go after Apple?
Those guys love the game. They’re competitive athletes.
They’re wondering if they still have the skills to win in this new AI world. And they can’t know without building things. So they’re trying.
The coolest part about this moment is that one great product idea can make you relevant again."
https://www.newinternet.tech/p/the-scoreboard-just-reset
9. "So, for this YouTube course, the creator builds it out with their own mind, model, and methods.
Then, when they turn each of the bullet points above into a prompt (like idea generation, outline, scripting, etc), something magical happens.
Not only do you have education, you have execution!
Do you realize how insane that is?
A YouTube course is no longer a course. It's a piece of the creators mind that can act on its own.
You, as an individual, can purchase this piece of their mind, study the "operating manual," give it your own context, and then it does the work for you.
It gives you ideas, you choose one, it guides you through the outline, you edit it, it spits out a script according to your own voice, and hell, at some point it AI will be able to create the entire video while sounding like you and looking like your style.
It's still you creating the video, you're just doing less work.
This isn't AI slop because it has context."
https://thedankoe.substack.com/p/how-smart-creators-will-make-money
10. "The defense sector itself has been incredibly slow to adjust to this new world. Some one-third of all defense contracts and nearly three-quarters of major weapons systems come from the five major defense contractors. This concentration has reduced innovation and entrenched inefficient cost-plus manufacturing models. There is a golden opportunity for nimble AI startups to begin making inroads.
But startups developing cutting-edge AI applications face prohibitive compliance costs and Byzantine government procurement processes. Many simply avoid defense applications entirely, focusing on commercial markets despite potential national security benefits.
The result is delayed adoption of breakthrough technologies and inflated costs. Upgrading defense requires both a simplified buying system and a mindset shift among tech firms. Companies that align with this transformation—whether startups or reinvented incumbents—will gain significant value while also making the nation safer.
Another sector that needs national resilience is healthcare. Administrators are constantly trading off speed, quality, cost and innovation. In the U.S., over a quarter of federal budget outlays go toward healthcare, and nearly 1% of tax expenditures are paid for dialysis alone. These commitments to healthcare spending are incredibly limiting to the government’s agility to respond to crises and rapidly evolving trends, as we see in each successive budget battle among Washington legislators.
In the private sector, we have witnessed unique models where health systems have begun investing in health tech companies themselves and being part of building solutions from the ground up. The health systems also should transition fees to a value-based care model, aligning incentives to be rewarded for outcomes, not procedures.
As the largest purchaser of healthcare services, the government needs to enforce stricter transparency on pricing and reimbursements. It should reward patients and healthcare providers for taking steps to catch diseases early, such as screening and preventative measures in the early stages of diabetes."
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/blueprint-strengthen-u-s-resilience-amid-new-world-order
11. The drone wars have just started. Dronesec is a super interesting DB to understand what is happening in the emerging drone world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2utl1hG9Fc
12. Trying to make sense of chaos (aka narrative collapse) we seem to be living in right now with one of the best thinkers & political economists around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcax5aGMC48
13. “Drones are now considered an important protective measure for soldiers,” Wilk said. “When combined, they allow to create complex aerial systems.”
In the fighting between Ukraine against Russian invaders, sections of the front line have almost become devoid of human soldiers, with drones patrolling large swathes of land, ready to pounce on anything that moves."
14. What will the new global order look like. Political and economic statecraft will come to the fore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLIacfhNvRA
15. A global macro masterclass. Net net: gold and bitcoin should be in everyone’s portfolio.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX08wP9c5GY&t=9s
16. This was a great deep dive in how Anduril wins deals from the DoD and scales production.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huy6il-n8KI
17. Sauna is a must for aiding your health. Some great data points on the benefits.
https://blueprint.bryanjohnson.com/blogs/news/is-sauna-worth-the-hype
18. Go GenX.
"But here we are, at the ass-end of our 40s and 50s, scars like roadmaps, livers like punching bags. The world’s on fire—our communities invaded, so the banks can get their rents, suits in boardrooms carving up what’s left. Human demons and freaks carving up kids, malevolent judges ruling against sanity, selling us all out. And somehow, it’s on us to fix it.
Us, the ones who’d rather burn the house down than clean it. Lady Liberty’s looking rough, her torch flickering, her eyes tired as ours. She’s been through too many bad dates, too many betrayals. But she’s ours. Always was. We’re her last champions, not because we want to be, but because nobody else showed up."
https://emburlingame.substack.com/p/burning-gen-x-at-the-stake-by-em
19. Tinfoil hat geopolitics. Ignore some of the numbers (like Russia-Ukraine kill ratios are exaggerated) but the direction of what he describes seems correct. Unlike what you hear from the mainstream media.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNEw3qq0Sok
20. "NATO’s best course of action is to arm Ukraine now to defeat Russia on home turf, rather than prepare for a broader Russian invasion. The EU’s €850 billion, four-year Readiness 2030 program may be too late.
Europe needs a plan – then the intestinal fortitude to execute it. In the words of Morgan Freeman’s character, Ellis Boyd ‘Red’ Redding, in “The Shawshank Redemption,” Europe needs to “Get busy living, or get busy dying.”
https://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/53283
21. Thought-provoking conversation with Alex Carp of Palantir.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvLxM6kQK7Y
22. "Contrast this to Japanese media platforms, manga in particular. The major magazines are run by giant corporations, and use survey to drive decisions… And yet still manage to discover new talents, to create new franchises. The magazines fiercely cull anything that fails to find an audience. But when one does, the manga artist — tellingly called a “sensei,” in a show of respect for those who create — is given free rein to fly their freak flag. And that freedom results in unexpected new things.
They’re data-driven, but the info comes from readers and is “crunched” by editors, who are given wide latitude to use the data or downplay it. It is an algorithm of a sort, but a human-centric one. And it creates human-centric art. (There’s a much bigger article in this — stay tuned.)
This is why Japanese creators, and manga creators in particular, putting themselves first has worked so well for Japan from a pop-cultural standpoint. Even the stuff that isn’t particularly visionary feels like it has a vision. In other words, the “economists and psychologists” aren’t driving, the creators are.
Consuming products from Japan, whether manga or games or whatever, feels more like a conversation, whereas consuming content in the States, particularly online, feels like being trapped in some psychology lab’s Skinner box. And that’s the reason why you won’t see articles with titles like “Is this the Worst-Ever Era for Japanese Pop Culture?” anytime soon."
https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/japan-doesnt-give-a-about-you
23. "Many say that all this is just a grift. I’d rather know where the money is coming from and who is providing it than what the Deep State did before under previous Presidents, which was to create wars on manufactured events, which allowed for huge amounts of money to be invisibly laundered back to domestic American bank accounts. Julian Assange always said that the purpose of the various wars was never to win but to provide cover for the business of laundering funds out of the government.
This is why there will be an audit of the American largess that was meant for Ukraine but might have ended up elsewhere. Notice that Assange, too was at the Pope’s funeral. That’s no accident. The President is going even further. He is giving the UAE and Saudi effective permission to develop new technologies in the region, namely AI, crypto-related, medical, and more. Elon Musk’s Neuralink is being made available for the first clinical trials at the UAE-based Cleveland Clinic. The US will let this region take the lead on innovation because it moves control over these technologies away from the Deep State.
The Middle East was the source of the world’s most advanced mathematics, philosophy, astronomy, and science from the 9th to the 15th centuries, well before the West began the Enlightenment and the Renaissance. A Jesuit priest called Athanasius Kircher translated Islamic texts and gave Westerners access to great pre-Dark Age Greek thinkers like Plato and Pythagoras. Today, something parallel is underway. The US is blessing the Middle East to restore itself as a center of innovation and innovative ideas, especially in mathematics (AI/AGI and crypto/Bitcoin/tokenization).
If the wars subside, the question will be: Can innovation be locally generated? The answer is yes. Trump said that in his speech. The region is self-made. They don’t need Deep State experts in Washington telling them what to do. This will lift not just the Middle East but also Africa, India, and Central Asia. Cheap oil helps. But now, the Middle East is transitioning into data, the new black gold, and the cornerstone of modern diplomacy. The key is understanding that Trump is swapping America’s allegiances. The old Warlords of the Middle East are now peaceniks - savvy and stability-oriented. Like the Tech Bros in Washington, they want peace enough to make money.
The disruptive and problematic Warlords are no longer in the Middle East. They are in Washington, DC. They now face a President who is surrounded by Holy figures and the Warlords of the Middle East, who are now committed to peace. The knife fight is no longer in the Middle East. It’s in the US."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/warlord-swap-and-the-peace-dividend
24. "AI-native startups are running on a new operating system for scale.
In 2020, reaching $30M ARR meant building a 250-person company. In 2025, AI-native businesses are hitting the same milestone with just 3 operators. This isn't just about doing more with less—it's about a fundamental shift in how companies scale.
This transformation isn't just possible—it's becoming necessary for survival.
As competitors leverage AI to reduce operational costs and increase speed, traditional organizational structures are turning into liabilities. The companies winning in 2025 aren't just adding AI tools to old processes. They're building entirely new operating systems that turn every team member into a force multiplier, capable of managing entire departments through strategic orchestration of AI agents.
The pattern becomes clear when you look at the companies leading this shift. Bolt and Lovable went from zero to $15M ARR in 2 months with just 15 employees. Cursor AI hit $100M ARR faster than Figma, Zoom, or Wiz—all while maintaining a team under 50 people. These aren't outliers, they're pioneers of a new operating system where scale comes from intelligence, not headcount.
We call them “autonomous businesses”.
https://www.neweconomies.co/p/the-new-operating-system
25. "Venture capital today isn't a single, neatly defined asset class—and it shouldn't be viewed through the narrow lens that's dominated for the last 50–60 years: high-risk, early-stage investing aimed at generating outlier returns. That model still exists, but it's only part of the picture. The modern venture landscape looks more like a barbell.
On one end, smaller, early-stage managers are playing the classic power-law game. Conversely, multi-billion-dollar platforms operate more like private equity firms. Both live under the "VC" moniker but are dissimilar in almost every critical way.
This isn't a bug. It's a feature of a maturing asset class. But if LPs don't recalibrate —and how they benchmark and allocate, they risk being misaligned on both ends of the barbell."
https://ventureunlocked.substack.com/p/the-time-to-is-now-to-retire-the
26. "The bad company problem likely originates in VC math. Too many founders are trained to look at market size or profit margin first. They see an opportunity that is large, or a company that could be highly profitable, and think “good enough.” This is because the early stages of any endeavor are risky. There has to be a large return to invest in something that early. It should create a 100x exit scenario. But that math isn’t the same as founder math. Founders, in my experience, tend to mistake “investing in” for “worth doing.”
Being outcome-oriented is a mental disease. A plague. A pestilence. It strips the minute, daily beauties from around us and forces us to postpone happiness for “some day.” “I’ll enjoy the company once I fix growth.” “I’ll enjoy work once I’m post-money.” Maybe, just maybe, this is deeply unhealthy. I think part of the reason so many founders burn out, go through divorce, and have health problems is that there is a soul-deep misalignment between their tasks and their desires.
The answer is so simple—the way to enjoy work is to do work you enjoy. The way to like your company is to make one you desperately want to exist. I don’t know why it has to be more complicated than that."
https://www.gettheleverage.com/p/in-defense-of-starting-a-bad-business
27. It's good to listen to folks who are knee deep and active investing and building in Silicon Valley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9jj3fyEi2w
28. The latest trend: the Methaphone to fight phone addiction.
29. A maniac on a mission. Greatness requires obsession.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak7oLVMlhfM
30. "But here’s the catch: China can continue rolling out the BRI without the U.S. — they don’t need America’s permission or participation.
The U.S., however, cannot continue making advanced weapons without China’s rare earth processing capacity.
This is a critical and underappreciated point. More than 78 percent of the U.S. military’s weapons rely on Chinese materials. A bit of a pickle.
You may not have heard of minerals like samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium, and yttrium - but the simple math is this: each F-35 Jet requires 900 pounds of these rare earth minerals. A navy warship like the Destroyer requires 5,200 pounds, and a Virginia-class submarine requires 9,200 pounds.
No minerals, no military.
So, if America wants to compete, it needs a shortcut.
And this, is what I was watching when the American President made his trip to Saudi Arabia for the US-Saudi Investment Summit last week.
Saudi Arabia has three things the U.S. desperately needs in this race:
1. Political will (no elections, no shifting public sentiment, no “NIMBYism” to slow projects down)
2. Capital (deep pockets to fund big, ambitious projects)
3. And, increasingly, resource control — Saudi Arabia is pushing hard to develop its own mining and rare earth production industries as part of its Vision 2030 plan to diversify beyond oil.
And conveniently, Saudi Arabia wants American weapons."
https://jaymartin.substack.com/p/lend-me-a-royal-hand-americas-secret
31. "As we can see from the diagram above — the typical life cycle has four stages.
Early Stage
Growth Stage
Maturity
Decline
Each stage can be described by a general set of characteristics — let’s look at them."
https://www.philoinvestor.com/p/life-cycles-are-life
32. I don't agree with this view for the record but it's an interesting framework to understand the world
"The Financialist Kill Chain reveals a grim truth: the downfall of nations is a calculated act of plunder, not a twist of fate. Step #7, Collapse and Abandonment, is the culmination of this ruthless strategy, triggered when citizens, stripped of hope, turn to violence—allowing the orchestrators to profit from war and later claim the wreckage for next to nothing. Russia’s fate, unfolding over 80 years from the Bolshevik takeover to the 1990s collapse, stands as a haunting example.
But the Financialists were robbed of their capacity to passive-aggressively take all and abandon Russia, because strong men, testosterone laden, stood up once more and said no, and have proven willing to kill and die in great numbers to prevent just such. As we survey the world today, seeing we're next upon the Step #7 block, recognizing these patterns and the only way in which they can be defeated, is our only chance against becoming the next hollowed out victim in this predatory cycle."
https://emburlingame.substack.com/p/orchestrating-collapse-and-profiting
33. "The truth is that the world will always exist not as a finished sculpture but as perpetual work in progress, shaped by our decisions. Great artists keep working until they die, often leaving unfinished works behind. This isn't tragedy but testament to their strength. Their refusal to be "completed" becomes their power to leave a legacy others must continue. That is the example we should follow."
https://www.businessofpower.com/p/renewal-in-an-age-of-managed-decline
34. "Since the beginning of WWI , the role that the state has played in our lives has not stopped growing. This has been especially so in the case of Glasgow. The state has spent more and more, provided more and more services, more subsidy, more education, more health care, more infrastructure, more accommodation, more benefits, more regulations, more laws, more protection. The more it has provided, the worse Glasgow has fared. Is this correlation a coincidence? I don’t think so.
The story of the rise and fall of Glasgow is a distilled version of the story of the rise and fall of industrial Britain – indeed the entire industrial West. In the next chapter I’m going to show you a simple mistake that goes on being made; a dynamic by which the state, whose very aim was to help Glasgow, has actually been its ‘pathway to breakdown’ . . ."
Analog: A Japanese Love Story
Analog was another beautiful movie I discovered on a Swiss Air flight home.
“Satoru Mizushima meets a mysterious woman, Miyuki, at a coffee shop. They promise to meet every Thursday at the cafe, but one day she doesn’t show up.”
With a description like that, I had to check it out. It started off as a typical Japanese movie but it was wonderful. Also lots of sliding door moments. About loneliness and human connection. How two odd people meet each other yet they cannot keep in touch except for meeting at the cafe every thursday. Both people who pay very close attention to the details around them. A very Japanese trait. Every scene is soaked in the craft mentality.
Satoro: “Time. It may seem like a wasted effort. Cooking and design. But I think people appreciate the time and thought that goes into things.”
Miyuki: “And that time and thought give them the “human touch”
The whole movie was whimsical. Satoro is an architect & designer who uses paper models and pencil drawings to make his beautiful designs. Miyuki is a traditionalist who doesn’t have a mobile phone and walks around discovering new places. No wonder they get along so well.
Miyuki is a violinist. “When I hold a violin, it becomes a part of me. We become one. I draw the bow, and the moment a sound is created feels like a miracle. The tone changes depending on the place, the weather, my mood.”
They are both artists in their own way. And it is a joy watching the two of them develop their relationship as they explore Tokyo together and all its myriad places like the beach, the forest, making soba or listening to an orchestra.
“If you open your eyes, you’ll see the world is a kind place, I realized that recently.” Especially in times of sorrow and tragedy. This movie makes you understand how thin the threads of life are, so you better enjoy it.
If you love Japan and appreciate a good movie, I do recommend watching this one. A beautiful and touching story.
Sliding Door Moments in Life
I remember a night back in 1996 when I was backpacking in Europe on a Train to Krakow from Prague. I ended up standing near a window in the hallway of the train enjoying the air.
I ended up meeting and talking with this beautiful young Australian girl who was also doing the trip to Krakow. We spent hours just talking until the conductor came by and asked to check the ticket. He told me I was in a first class not 2nd class train, so we agreed that we would meet in Krakow at the train station stop.
Well, next morning I waited at the train station stop and she wasn’t there. Found out that the 2nd class train cabins were disconnected and then taken by another train. I never saw her again as this was in the 90s before cell phones and social media. What could have been.
Definitely what you call a sliding door moment. A small turn left or right. 5 minutes too early or too late and your life is never the same. Random events that you never could have foreseen. Life is strange and exciting this way.
Well, I had a major sliding door moment when I lived in Taiwan in 1997. The newspaper job I wanted to get didn’t happen so I ended up going to teach English. I saw a job ad in the newspaper and went over to apply. I found out the job had been filled but also that there was an opening at the head office. They sent me to ELSI 1. That is where I met my wife who was a fellow teacher there. My beautiful daughter is the result.
As the author of the excellent book “Fluke” Brian Paul Klaas wrote and says: “You can’t control anything but you can influence them.”
That means you need to actively take action and get out there. Take way more risks in life. Smart risks. You never know when you will have these sliding door moments that completely change your life.
Repositioning for the Future: Reindustrialize aka Back to the Future for America
It’s 2025 and the world has changed a lot. No Sh-t you would say. We have been bracketed by historical levels of change on the political level, technology level, economic level and social level. We’re deglobalizing as we split into regional blocks and geopolitics have heated up into a new Cold War between the Global West and the Global East.
I’ve been in Silicon Valley for over 26 years and I’ve had to reinvent myself at least 4 times. Startup guy, big tech executive, Venture Capitalist, Holding Co Operator, then back to VC & Investing.
I realized in 2024, it’s time to rethink everything and reinvent myself again. In the midst of personal & family issues, as well as just plain dissatisfaction with startup investing. I was just plain tired & worn out.
I wasn’t as excited about venture investing in the next SaaS, Developer tool, marketplace or whatever startup as I used to. I love my portfolio cos and am proud of what they are trying to do. The world has changed and you have to change with it. But sometimes you also just want to take a break. This is exactly what we did for the 2nd half of 2024 and basically stopped investing for almost a year.
I spent more time exercising, fight training and spent more time with my aging parents. I went into austerity mode as well, cutting my personal budget in preparation for future opportunities and challenges.
I also took the time to retool like I did in 2012-2013 by reading & writing a lot. Deep learning mode. I also attended conferences like IMTS (International Manufacturing Technology Summit) & Re-industrialize and Deeptech Weeks in various cities. I took random classes like how to get good at Twitter aka X. All in the search for something that piqued my curiosity.
What I discovered during this time and in the prior years terrified me. Our reliance on enemies like China for so much of our supply chain. Our wrecked and hollowed out Industrial base. That our previous “Freedom’s Forge” of industrial power that saved civilization in World War 2 doesn’t exist anymore. We outsourced most of this to China and Asia in general.
China for example has 240X the shipbuilding capacity than we do. China has become the automotive manufacturing king in the world. Why is this an issue: automotive manufacturing is dual use, if you can make a car or truck, you can easily retool to make a plane, gun or tank.
As we found, the EU & USA can’t even produce enough artillery shells for Ukraine. In fact, South Korea produces over 20% of the shells being supplied. Russia & North Korea are outproducing the West just in artillery shells. China has 97% of market share in drones, what is widely acknowledged is critical in the new face of war.
But we have finally woken up to the threat of the CCP in China and Russia (as well as the rest of the axis of North Korea and Iran). And the costs of potential failure and weakness in the West are incredibly high. It should be frightening to everyone and a threat to our way of life. These are not nice people.
In this lies America’s biggest opportunity to rejuvenate itself. We’re still the world’s biggest consumer market, with plenty of land, lots of food and cheap energy supplies + lots of talented people. Friend-shoring industry to places like Japan, South Korea or Vietnam is one key step as key production is leaving China.
But frankly, we need to at least 2x our industrial base in America over the next decade. We have cheap natural gas that will enable cheap production. Taking a blank slate approach, tapping the manufacturing expertise that still exists in the various clusters and combining this with growing AI/ Robotics capabilities, we can spin up more new factories and bring back good jobs as well. The American Midwest aka Rust Belt, Texas and South are well positioned for the future.
This is what I am going to focus my energy and money on for the rest of the decade of the roaring 2020s. Investing in Defensetech (Defense is ESG), Aerospace, Manufacturing tech, Robotics, Supply Chain-tech and anything related to re-industrializing America and our allies. And doing this not just through the mechanisms of venture capital but also through private equity and credit/debt facilities aka Production Capital. Consequently, I will be spending less time in Europe (outside of Ukraine & Italy/Albania personally), and more in America and Asia.
This re-industrialization of America is mission critical for the West (which includes Europe, Canada, AUSNZ, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan) and it’s become mission critical for me. Let the new chapter begin.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads July 6th, 2025
"Summer means happy times and good sunshine"--Brian Wilson
"Something very interesting is happening at the edge of the startup world.
Founders are shipping faster, skipping steps, and building companies without ever pitching a VC. What used to take teams of ten and six-figure burn rates now gets done by one or two people with ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, a Stripe account, and a weekend.
They’re not building like we used to.
This time, the shift isn’t just in the tools — it’s in the tempo. Founders are starting to build with a rhythm that feels more like freestyling than planning. They’re coding with intuition. Iterating without meetings. Launching without pitch decks.
It’s fast.
It’s fluid.
And it’s what I’d call:
vibe startup building"
https://medium.com/@clarencewooten/introducing-the-vibe-startup-41e12e4d0dd5
2. "Despite FPV drones’ clear importance on the modern battlefield, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is not on track to procure and field FPV or other drones at scale, and our current industrial policy shows no intention of changing that. The DoD has yet to fully recognize drones as strategic combat assets, failing to align budget priorities, industrial base planning, and Concepts of Operations (CONOPS) with their growing importance on the modern battlefield.
The challenges outlined in this piece are symptoms of this strategic oversight, an approach starkly contrasted by Ukraine and Russia, which have both rapidly adapted to integrate drones at every level of warfare, each procuring millions of drones a year. China, the world’s largest producer of low-cost drones, undoubtedly recognizes the strategic importance of attritable systems as well.
While progress has been made to field more FPV drones within the DoD, it is clear that much more needs to be done in order to prepare for future conflicts and ensure credible deterrence. Fundamentally, the DoD still treats FPV drones like aircraft when they should be treated more like ammunition.
With Russia’s recent combat experience and China’s drone manufacturing prowess, our adversaries have the upper hand in producing and deploying drones at scale. The U.S. military will be at a severe disadvantage if forced to fight against mass quantities of low-cost drones, just as the Navy has been at a disadvantage in defending its ships against low-cost Houthi drones. Now, the United States must translate those battlefield lessons into institutional reform, before the next fight arrives."
https://maggiegray.us/p/field-or-fail-building-the-attritable
3. Solid conversation on defense tech and what is happening geopolitically.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr6VgyMF7nc
4. "But playing hormonal games isn’t just for actors and athletes any more. Executives do it, too.
What’s interesting about these characters is that they aren’t just staying physically youthful. They’re also maintaining a young person’s monomaniacal zest for world domination.
Bezos, Musk, and Brin don’t just look young. They act young.
I suspect that it’s because, hormonally, they are young. They may have the same level of rambunctious combativeness they did when they were quitting jobs and risking it all in their twenties because, in physiological terms, they’re still in their twenties.
The power of artificial hormonal supplementation is creating a new generation of corporate leaders who will remain Young Men In A Hurry well into their seventies. We should expect more bold ventures, more oceans of tactically spilled red ink, epic financial feuds, and, of course, a staggering rise in inequality."
https://letter.palladiummag.com/p/competitive-hormone-supplementation
5. "In twenty years, TSMC went from one of 26, to one of two. It was the perfect combination of growing pie and TSMC’s slice getting bigger.
To summarize TSMC’s journey:
They introduced the foundry business model to the industry.
That unlocked a wave of fabless chip companies.
Three tailwinds led to TSMC’s meteoric rise: a growing semiconductor industry, increasing importance of fabless chip companies, and increasing market share of TSMC."
https://www.generativevalue.com/p/tsmc-the-index-on-technology
6. "If each nation’s current trajectory holds, China will likely end up completely dominating high-end manufacturing, from cars and chips to M.R.I. machines and commercial jets. The battle for A.I. supremacy will be fought not between the United States and China but between high-tech Chinese cities like Shenzhen and Hangzhou. Chinese factories around the world will reconfigure supply chains with China at the center, as the world’s pre-eminent technological and economic superpower.
America, by contrast, may end up as a profoundly diminished nation. Sheltered behind tariff walls, its companies will sell almost exclusively to domestic consumers. The loss of international sales will degrade corporate earnings, leaving companies with less money to invest in their businesses.
American consumers will be stuck with U.S.-made goods that are of middling quality but more expensive than global products, owing to higher U.S. manufacturing costs. Working families will face rising inflation and stagnant incomes. Traditional high-value industries such as car manufacturing and pharmaceuticals are already being lost to China; the important industries of the future will follow. Imagine Detroit or Cleveland on a national scale.
Whether this century will be Chinese or American is up to us. But the time to change course is quickly running out."
7. "Based on evidence from 51 major innovations from 1825 to 2000, the authors argue that bubbles are a necessary component of innovation because they provide a window for innovators to raise cheap equity capital, enabling them to commercialize their products and drive growth for their firms. Of course, the cheap equity capital doesn’t always earn high returns, often funding duds and also-rans in addition to innovative firms, but we believe no true progress happens without trial and error."
https://mailchi.mp/verdadcap/innovation-and-stock-market-bubbles
8. "Mega funds aren’t betting that companies will IPO at $1B. They’re betting that a new class of private giants will emerge—and that those giants will need massive amounts of capital.
The best venture firms of the next decade, regardless of model, will do three things better than venture has ever done them before:
Follow their winners
Believe in, and bet on, bigger outcomes
Innovate how they deploy capital
Mega funds aren’t broken. They’re built for this new frontier.
What looks bloated from the outside might actually be a scaled-up machine, built to ride the next generation of power laws."
https://mondaymorning.substack.com/p/what-if-the-mega-funds-are-right
9. "What Borislav demonstrates so clearly is that becoming AI-native isn't about layering AI features onto existing processes. It requires a fundamental restructuring of how we think about work, capability, and organizational design. This is the "metamorphosis" he references.
1. The democratization of technical capability is real and imminent. When everyone can code, the traditional bottlenecks between technical and non-technical teams dissolve. Rekki transformed from an engineering backlog to hundreds of automation workflows built by the people who understand the problems best."
https://www.sarahtavel.com/p/an-ai-metamorphosis-transforming
10. "China also dominates the manufacturing of batteries, drones, and electric motors.
So while America is remaining competitive (for now) in software, and still has a lead in the old combustion technologies of the 20th century, China is absolutely trouncing us in the race for the new electrical technologies that will define physical power this century.
Given this dire situation, you’d think America would be racing to catch up. Instead, we’re intentionally forfeiting the race, destroying our nascent electrical capabilities as fast as we can.
This is intentionally forfeiting the technological future to China. The auto industry is lucrative and important, but even that pales in comparison to the importance of drones. If you can’t build batteries and electric motors in the U.S., you can’t build drones here, either. And if you can’t build drones, you can’t win a modern war.
You simply cannot will a technological shift out of existence, or make the world go back to the way it used to be, no matter how big and powerful your country is. In 1793, a British mission to China (which was then ruled by the Qing dynasty) offered the emperor various technological marvels from the West. The emperor was unimpressed, and expressed utter disinterest in the wonders he was being shown, uttering the famous line: “As your Ambassador can see for himself, we possess all things. I set no value on objects strange or ingenious, and have no use for your country’s manufactures.”
Fast forward a couple of centuries, and the shoe is on the other foot. It’s America — the leading civilization of the West — that is turning up its nose at new inventions that are remaking the map of global power. We really are becoming a technophobic civilization, looking inward to our petty domestic conflicts and looking backward to our great historical achievements, even as a rival civilization embraces the future. My Ming dynasty analogy was more appropriate than I realized at the time."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/is-the-us-in-a-high-level-equilibrium
11. "We look for businesses in the “Goldilocks Zone” – neither too cold (not growing fast enough to be interesting) nor too hot (growing so fast they consume substantive capital or introduce other existential risk into their business model).
When we find “just right” companies, we work closely with their founders to help them stay in this temperate zone as long as possible. In doing so, we believe that these businesses have the greatest potential to create value for stakeholders – compounding for long periods without the risks associated with extreme growth or the dilution that comes from raising many rounds of equity capital.
If the herd suddenly becomes enamored with the category that one of our companies happens to be in, then we are well-positioned to accept capital at advantageous valuations and terms. But we do not need to do so and are just as happy – often happier – for the herd to be off chasing whatever it is chasing."
https://deciens.com/press-and-insights/epistula-11-unpopular-and-unspoken-truths
12. Disturbing forecast if the simmering India vs Pakistan conflict escalates.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F88o0y9n-LQ
13. "Launched ahead of the Future Artillery conference in London, Sceptre is the company’s answer to modern battlefield demands for low-cost, long-range precision fires that can survive in contested environments. The system reportedly achieves speeds of Mach 3.5, altitudes over 65,000 feet, and a strike radius within 5 metres—even in GPS-denied conditions.
With a range up to 150km depending on payload, Sceptre dramatically outpaces traditional artillery, offering a potential 10x improvement in cost-effectiveness and precision."
https://www.resiliencemedia.co/p/tiberius-aerospace-unveils-sceptre
14. What startups need to survive and thrive in the accelerating AI world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHjxEzoUFxM
15. Grand geoeconomics and short break in the economic war between China and America.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGFK0j_RAQg
16. "And yet, for all the power of innovation, it’s never enough. Themistocles wasn’t a shipwright. Urban didn’t storm the walls. Shaka didn’t forge every spear. In each case, the decisive edge came not from solo genius, but from the ability to turn innovation into doctrine, and doctrine into collective action.
Today’s battlefield is no different. A brilliant engineer can design the perfect drone, the ideal sensor, the next-generation networked weapon, but if there’s no shared concept of how it’s used, if there’s no buy-in from commanders, trainers, logisticians, and warfighters, it’s just another prototype gathering dust.
We cannot beat the enemy solo. Not as inventors. Not as units. Not as nations. We need to build consensus, not just around resources, but around doctrine. We need shared playbooks, not just better hardware. Winning doesn’t come from building the best tool, it comes from adapting the way we fight around what that tool makes possible.
Innovation is potential. Doctrine is power. Integration is victory.
Victory demands more than invention, it demands integration. And that takes all of us."
https://www.resiliencemedia.co/p/from-triremes-to-drones-why-innovation
17. "Special operations are also becoming more of a model for the way the Pentagon can acquire technology: buying things, trying them out, and then deploying them—all in a fraction of the time it takes the Army or Navy to create a program of record.
Like the services, U.S. Special Operations Command has purchasing authority under Title 10 of federal law. But it generally buys items in relatively small quantities. “With these smaller efforts, the statutory and regulatory requirements are considerably less, allowing greater flexibility and speed of execution,” former SOCOM acquisition executive James Geurts said in 2016.
They buy things off-the-shelf, “to hasten delivery and mitigate risk” Geurts wrote. As GAO reported in February 2023, other services are struggling to use the same authorities to purchase what are often called “mature” and “proven” technologies. Proven technologies also pass more easily through the hurdles of foreign military sales, as SOCOM plays a role in outfitting other, partner SOF forces as well.
SOF also makes much broader use of alternative contract vehicles like OTAs, thanks largely to the smaller number of units they purchase.
Sometimes SOCOM simply modifies existing gear, like transforming C-130 airlifters into close-air-support gunships.
But the real strength of SOF acquisition is that it relies on a small, close team of program office executives who work together much more closely than do the services’ offices, said Melissa Johnson, SOCOM’s acquisition executive.
In his SOF Week address, Hegseth said SOCOM’s approach is better suited to today’s era of rapidly evolving weaponry."
18. This seems apt, Top VCs investing in ownership of the SF 49ers Football team.
https://www.49erswebzone.com/articles/191284-officially-announce-new-ownership-partners/
19. Every investor needs to watch this. Imagining unimaginable outcomes. And preparing & positioning for those scenarios. Chaos and massive change (not necessarily in a good way).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lbPdZfGayc
20. I LOVE Fruitist Blueberries. So good.
"To sell more berries of higher consistent quality, the company grows its fruit in microclimates, with its own farms in Oregon, Morocco, Egypt and Mexico. It also uses machine learning models to predict the best time to pick the fruit. Fruitist invested heavily in infrastructure, like on-site cold storage to keep the berries fresh before they ship.
The company’s vertically integrated supply chain means that its berries should last longer than the competition.
“I’ve intentionally let them sit in my refrigerator for three weeks, and they’re still great after three weeks,” Magami said.
Larger berries, like the company’s non-genetically modified jumbo blueberries that are two to three times the size of a regular blueberry, also have a longer shelf life."
21. "This magnitude of this deployment age is captured by BlackRock’s estimate of the impending $68 trillion global infrastructure investment boom, unfolding in an era increasingly defined by what Russell Napier calls “National Capitalism”, where state priorities reshape capital allocation toward energy security, industrial capacity, and technological sovereignty.
With that (still broad) framing in place, I thought it would be helpful to sketch out a mosaic of the types of firms and companies I’ve seen focused on this. The use of the term “mosaic” is intentional. This isn’t a comprehensive market map or a clean framing of the so-called “capital stack”.
The Production Capital Mosaic I've sketched here represents the early architecture of models being built up to deploy trillions in capital toward industrial transformation. Whether structured as investment firms or operating companies, they share a common thread of deploying critical technologies at scale. As the multi-decade hardware and infra supercycle unfolds, we'll see further refinement (and more convergence) of these approaches, with a handful breaking through to become the Morgans, Transdigms, Drexels, Constellations, Danahers, and Berkshires of the new industrial deployment age."
https://venturedesktop.substack.com/p/the-production-capital-mosaic
22. JP Morgan opens up a Geopolitical arm. Geopolitics/ Geonomics are critical factors for all businesses and investors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMkPcNNkS3Q
23. This was a fun conversation on recent business news. As an old guy, this helps me understand what is happening with young generation biz.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2D8_wwOcA7w&t=1892s
24. "The playbook today is simple: slap a UI on GPT, call it specialized, and hope the user doesn’t look behind the curtain. But that’s not infrastructure. That’s camouflage.
The real builders? They’re not just enabling users — they’re making themselves impossible to leave. They’re not chasing the wave. They’re laying rails under it.
Would anyone rebuild your product if it disappeared? Would anything break if it went away? Does anyone depend on it, or is it just riding the moment?
If the answer is no, you’re not infrastructure. You’re noise.
The gold rush always ends.
The wrappers always fall.
The story shifts.
But the pattern never does.
The survivors are the ones the system can’t delete."
https://medium.com/@skooloflife/99-of-ai-startups-will-be-dead-by-2026-heres-why-bfc974edd968
25. Detailed conversation about Anduril and our very challenged defense industry. Must watch if you care about the West.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKK0ArqGLF0
26. "Overall U.S. counter-drone technologies span a spectrum of defense modalities – detection, electronic/RF defeat, directed energy, and kinetic interceptors – each with unique principles and leading industry players. Companies like Epirus and Anduril have risen to prominence by innovating in their respective domains (HPM “counter-swarm” and autonomous interceptors) and emphasizing open, AI-enabled architectures that allow their systems to integrate and scale.
Epirus’s solid-state microwave arrays and Anduril’s agile interceptor drones exemplify how a modular design and software-centric approach can rapidly adapt to emerging threats (like swarms or higher-end UAVs). The field performance of these systems – from Epirus frying drone swarms in Army tests to Anduril’s Roadrunners proving effective in real-world combat evaluations – is directly influencing how the Pentagon allocates resources for C-UAS. Military procurement is visibly shifting toward these next-generation solutions that offer speed, scalability, and multi-target engagement at lower cost.
As the drone threat continues to evolve, the U.S. strategy is clearly to deploy a layered defense that uses every modality in concert: find the drones, jam or hack them if possible, zap them with microwaves or lasers when advantageous, and blast or capture them if necessary."
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dynamics-drone-defense-andrew-c%C3%B4t%C3%A9-3mzaf/
27. Gold is a critical part of everyone and every country’s portfolio. It will help buffer us to the massive changes coming to the present system of trade & globalization. The future is buying more gold and making more factories.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxWZO0FEQ1g
28. A bit of tough love for B2B founders. Jason knows what he is talking about. Get faster, reskill and get tougher, as it's ugly out there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IV9luOb-Xs
29. “You have a European company investing a lot in America…and we're looking to potentially invest more,” Michael Brasseur, Saab’s vice president and chief strategy officer for its U.S. business, said in an interview.
Saab and other European companies are navigating sudden turmoil in their countries’ relationships with the United States, which has imposed higher tariffs and cast doubt on its fidelity to its NATO allies. Vice President JD Vance’s scolding of European governments at February’s Munich Security Council rattled many—but not Brasseur.
“We're actually investing a lot more in the U.S., not as a result of Munich, but just the way we do business. And so, I think we have a really interesting niche that we fit in based on our long heritage of building really good hardware and then this pivot that leverages the amazing, emerging, disruptive technologies out there. The power is in the convergence of these capabilities,” he said.
But Saab isn’t the only European company eyeing more U.S. defense business."
30. The most fun you will have learning about how VC investing works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH_oInuNlk8
31. The Hedge Fund king Steve Cohen. Trust your investing process & challenge yourself to take it to the next level.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6WeRpuYiyA
32. "One way to think of it: your first customers are your first hires as marketers. You want them to be as good at their job as possible.
Imagine all your customers as you did before (in terms of how valuable they’ll find you, and how easy they’ll be to attract). Then, consider that some of them have influence on others. You’ll find pockets where one kind of customer influences another, and some customer classes who are widely influential, or influential to several important adjacent customer classes."
https://also.roybahat.com/picking-your-first-customers-the-gradient-of-influence-47858b90adfd
33. Mission matters and building talent density to go big.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIMKUkazx_Y
34. I love BG2, economically/technology savvy but they seem geopolitically naive.
But this is one of the best shows to understand what is happening with big trends and developments in Silicon Valley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2cpSUpdIOs
35. This was pretty disturbing but the truth hurts. America needs to re-industrialize asap.
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.”