Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads February 2nd, 2025
"Winter is nature's sleep" by H. S. Jacobs
"Japanese CEOs begin to step out of their comfort zone and start to buy start-ups for future growth rather than just reply on inhouse R&D teams. One reason for US corporate dynamism is the aggressive use of `outside` innovation to supplement or improve or disrupt `inside` businesses – 90% of US start-up exists are acquisitions (while 90% of Japan start-up exits are IPOs).
Mark my words: Japan’s new generation of CEOs are taking risks, are ready to challenge the complacent business-as-usual mentality of their inside executive teams by looking outside. Japan’s next-Gen business leaders are keen to create a positive legacy, are not afraid to try and make 1+1 = 3 or 4."
https://japanoptimist.substack.com/p/japan-surprises-2025
2. This movie looks good. Done by ex-Royal Marine Commandos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvPf33bS0g8
3. Incredible write up on the amazing city and scene that is Austin, Texas.
"People don’t really move to Texas for glitz and glamor.
As Justin Murphy once said to me, people historically moved to California in search of a fortune. This goes all the way back to the gold rush. But people moved to Texas for freedom. They wanted land and a free-living, don’t-tread-on-me lifestyle. These patterns persist today. People don’t come to Austin if accumulating wealth is their top priority. The people I know in San Francisco want money, the people I know in Los Angeles want fame, and the people I know in Texas want liberty and self-reliance (maybe that’s why so many dudes here are hardcore preppers who take jiu-jitsu lessons).
The anti-government bent may also be why there are fewer cops here. Growing up in San Francisco, we were always worried about parking tickets, speed traps, and red light cameras. But it seems like there aren’t as many police officers in Austin, and therefore, not as much law enforcement on the roads.
Locals embody the mindset of a Texas rancher. When you work on a farm, you’re constrained by the limits of nature, such as the biology of your cattle and the physics of agriculture. Against the stereotype, Ranchers are some of the most curious people I’ve met down here. Eager to improve their yields, they balance a belief in progress with a hearty respect for proven methods. Like Austinites, they’re eager to experiment with new tactics, but ground their thinking in the wisdom of previous generations.
Austin’s laptop class is different from San Francisco’s too. For starters, it’s cool to be ambitious in Austin but uncool to be too ambitious. The grindset is frowned upon. Some of the coffee shops don’t allow computers on Sundays, and people will scoff at you for skipping weekend social events to work. Austin entrepreneurs also care more about profit than growth. The people I know aren’t in a rush to build their company. They have a life to live and an income-to-effort ratio to maintain. Slow, steady, and sustainable is the name of the game (which makes it a tough place to be a venture capitalist).
The most successful people I know are understated because it’s not cool to flaunt your wealth here. That said, a trusted friend insists that almost 100 billionaires will move here in the next decade, and these days, I’m seeing more and more private jets at the airport. Though they’ll call Austin their home base, they’ll leave town for the summers, just as snowbirds on the East Coast migrate to Florida in the winter.
Being in Austin lowers my ambitions. The city doesn’t inspire me to be great like San Francisco or New York. But what I lose in ambition, I gain in focus. The city’s relative slowness makes it easy to focus.
With all the big shakers coming to town, the level of ambition is going to rise, though it won’t reach the levels of San Francisco and New York."
https://perell.com/essay/whats-up-with-austin/
4. The end of global shipping? Will be watching this closely but signs point to the decline of shipping and the rise of de-globalization.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfI1BQo0ZzE
5. "If you explore his filmography, it’s hard to necessarily pin down a cohesive through line. In a tight five-year window, McAvoy followed up his performance in The Last King of Scotland (2006) with Atonement (2007), Gnomeo & Juliet (2011), and X-Men: First-Class (2011). The first film has been lauded as one of the best of his career. Gnomeo & Juliet was a smashing success in offering Shakespeare to children through a comedic lens (as evidenced by its $200-million worldwide profit on a $36-million budget). And X-Men: First-Class helped pave the way for a superhero genre in desperate need of emotional weight.
Perhaps the only commonality between the three films is that they offered McAvoy what he sought out when he signed on for Speak No Evil: a decisive pivot from what audiences had come to expect from him. It’s not that he was strategically avoiding being typecast. Rather, he simply gravitated towards whichever project allowed him to unearth new elements as an actor. The result has been an eclectic body of work that reflects his own meandering curiosity."
https://sharpmagazine.com/2024/10/02/james-mcavoy-interview-speak-no-evil-2024/
6. "Did I change my mind from my last essay? Kinda. Maybe the Trump dump occurred from mid-Dec until the 2024 year-end instead of mid-Jan 2025. Does that mean I’m sometimes a shitty prognosticator of the future? Yep, but at least I ingest new information and opinions and change them before they result in significant losses or missed opportunities.
That is why this game of investing is intellectually engaging. Imagine you made a hole-in-one every time you hit a golf ball, sunk every three-point shot taken in basketball or off the break, and always pocketed every ball playing billiards. Life would be excruciatingly dull."
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/sasa
7. Sober conversation on reality and realignment of maritime shipping from an expert here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nBqm_iXDdA
8. "As I step into 2025, I feel the weight of 2024 behind me, less like a burden and more like the imprint of a journey that’s changed me. The year wasn’t kind, but it was honest, relentless in its demands, and strangely generous in its lessons. If 2024 were a storm, it wasn’t just the kind that passes, it was the kind that reshapes the landscape, leaving behind a different terrain, unfamiliar but somehow right.
There’s something about facing a year like that. It strips away illusions. You can’t outrun your own accountability. Whatever happened, every stumble, every triumph, it carries your signature. Blame, I’ve learned, is just procrastination in disguise. And procrastination is a thief, stealing the clarity that comes from admitting, This was mine to carry. This is mine to fix."
https://2lr.substack.com/p/hello-2025-nice-to-meet-you
9. Valuable conversation on global macro and where the world is going. Important. Buy Gold. #geopolitics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPG9qxXdwlY
10. Good to understand as we start 2025. Massive impacts for economies and politics around the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U509hHthip8
11. It's gonna be a rough next 4 years around the world. Geopolitical survey.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYSqV105B2U
12. Why is Greenland strategically important. Chokepoint to the arctic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtGh1kFqIoc
13. Sober assessment of what is happening with the Russo-Ukrainian war and possible settlement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcuGEX9yatk
14. "A stable Ukrainian deterrence posture is meaningless if it fails to achieve its primary purpose: deterring future Russian aggression.
Stability cannot, therefore, be seen as an end in itself. This does not mean Ukraine should be pushed into recklessness, but the right solution clearly lies somewhere in between. Proposed deterrence strategies that argue explicitly for stability at the expense of other factors are conceptually too one-dimensional to meet this demand and are likely unhelpful. As Thomas Schelling famously and correctly argued, there is stability in instability."
https://missilematters.substack.com/p/how-to-enable-and-effective-future
15. "This is the next crisis in Europe, already, the next Eurozone crisis.
And if, as Kagan argues, that a Ukrainian collapse would be a catastrophic defeat for Trump, how would he respond? Therein I have no doubt that he would in fact send US troops to occupy Greenland and/or the Panama Canal, using gunboat diplomacy to detract from his own, obvious and enormous failings.
One obvious solution for Europe is to boost cooperation with the other great European military power - Türkiye. Türkiye has the largest military in NATO, after the U.S., and a now substantial and rapidly improving military industrial complex.
In drone technology, thru Baykar, et al, Türkiye has the technological lead in Europe - with its prowess demonstrated in recent conflicts in Nagorny Karabakh, Ukraine and Syria. The UK, and Europe need to wake up and boost cooperation with Türkiye, and within Europe, or face defeat by Moscow. The situation is that serious and stark now."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/europe-should-be-scared
16. "I used to advise founders that the safest path was to raise money from a fund where the person sponsoring your deal was either the firm's founder or the most senior person actively making new investments, as those folks were the most likely to be there for the long term. In this environment, I’m not sure that advice is as useful as it once was."
https://chudson.substack.com/p/four-reasons-people-leave-venture
17. "These startups raised over-inflated Pre-Seed rounds — typically $3 - 5M or more — in buzzy areas that are now out-of-vogue. To the founders’ credit, many of them drastically cut burn when interest rates shifted, allowing them to ensure 36 months of runway or more. Sounds ideal, right? But what we’re seeing with many of these companies is something quite different.
As time passed, the early enthusiasm of many of these companies was replaced with listlessness. Their early employees moved on, their investors disengaged and, without any pressing existential threat, motivation or external oversight, they simply continue to exist (many with effectively infinite runway). Almost every VC that was active in 2021-22 has multiple such companies in their portfolio.
The outliers will continue to make progress and a few may ultimately see success. Some of the founders will eventually decide to shutter their company and potentially return some amount of capital to investors in order to move on. But the rest of these companies — with no real product, limited forward progress and no staff to be “aqui-hired” — will be a new species of startup walking dead."
https://chrisneumann.com/archives/things-i-think-i-think-q4-2024
18. A more optimistic assessment of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Hope he is right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3XK5a5ZV9g
19. How American imperialism works, very different than European ones. A geographical perspective.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=At74k92vS10
20. Always a great episode. What's up in Silicon Valley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZjrFiLgCCc&t=860s
21. "Because when you relinquish all visibility, responsibility, and accountability of your own or your family's finances to someone else, whether it’s your partner, spouse, attorney, or accountant, you are placing a heck of a lot of trust elsewhere that your personal wealth and legacy are being managed accordingly.
So, please, please, man or woman, I encourage you to communicate, question, ask, and discuss everything: trusts (revocable/irrevocable), wills, titles, deeds, lease agreements, retirement accounts, businesses, business holdings, and checking and savings accounts."
https://shindy.substack.com/p/trappings-wealth
22. "While the aesthetics of the era were superb, so were the opportunities for adventure for those who couldn’t or wouldn’t spend their days on horseback. In an era without the instant communication of the telegraph or phone, sail-power rather than steam-power, and Western military equipment being without par, adventurers could travel the globe and reap great fortunes.
Courtney Selous and Cecil Rhodes tromped across southern Africa and settled it, building communities in Rhodesia and South Africa that lasted until Cold War America, Britain, and the communist bloc destroyed them. Sir James Brooke, tired of country house life, traveled to Borneo and conquered the local pirates, becoming a local ruler known as the “White Rajah” and ruling for decades. In America, similarly, Tennesseean gentleman William Walker grew tired of city life and conquered Nicaragua. A few years later, South Carolina gentleman Wade Hampton III was able to, out of his landed revenue and the wealth of similar magnates, raise the Hampton Legion to fight in the War Between the States.
It was, in short, an era with great men and without much bureaucracy. The countryside was dotted with beautiful homes and governed by ancient traditions. The towns and villages were built up and invested in by local magnates, not local committees and bureaucratic petty tyrants, as is now the case, and those with a sense of adventure could go abroad and attempt to do as they pleased without worrying about the finger-wagging of an HR harridan chasing them around the world."
https://www.theamericantribune.news/p/the-death-of-the-gentleman-and-the
23. African century is turning into one of chaos and war. Sad and all due to weakness in the West.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdwlfo_wfEI
24. Geopolitical risks for 2025, areas to watch in the rest of year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmg__GDkFTc&t=464s
25. Japan is rapidly re-arming and rightfully as they face threats from China, North Korea & Russia.
Peace is great but pacifists there have not realized how dangerous the world has become in the last few years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZknEU38CDtE&t=15s
26. Lots of young people from China moving to Thailand. It's the super wealthy who move to Singapore, Australia, Canada. So it’s the Chinese in Thailand that are the gauge of what is really happening.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIDsvIQ0UvM
27. "It is notable that Japan’s home-grown semiconductor leaders have fared far better than Kioxia over the past decade or so. Whether at Rapidus, the TSMC plant in Kyushu or at Renesas, the “home team”‘has shown that Japanese engineering talent coupled with sustained capital investment and foreign engineering (as opposed to financial) talent can succeed in the critical task of rebuilding our collective techno-industrial base. As Germany's failures have shown, this is not a simple task.
Japan can only hope that the incoming Trump administration takes time to read Secretary of State nominee Marco Rubio's latest book, Decades of Decadence. If Mr. Trump is serious about reinvigorating America's industrial base, strengthening its alliances with like-minded partners, and supporting middle-class jobs rather than those of financial elites whose vested interests are often aligned with our adversaries, then he will reverse the Biden decision at Nippon Steel and limit the damage that financial engineers can inflict on our common prosperity."
https://japanoptimist.substack.com/p/guest-contribution-barbarians-at
28. Very impressive megacity: Chongqing in China. Spectacular place.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p49QRxO_n2c
29. The best takes on technology and Silicon Valley from two of the best investors in the business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPD1qEbeyac
30. More on Chongqing, 36M population mega city in China. I do have a problem with this guy's complete & decided blindness to politics (and probably getting paid by CCP to film in Xinjiang).
Still fascinating city overview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNR9QjmhH00
31. Fascinated by this city.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=celhrcTI938
32. "Well, sorry guys, but VCs don’t owe you a goddamn thing—and especially not after they’ve already met with you. That was the time they had for you. They offered a meeting—no more and no less.
The fact that you didn’t spend the last few minutes of the meeting asking for specific feedback and posing the question of whether or not the VC was going to move this forward as a champion of the deal or at least whether they wanted to schedule a next call is your failure. When you’ve got any kind of a lead—be it for selling your product or selling your equity—and you let them go with no scheduled next step, you risk never speaking to them again.
That’s your problem, not theirs."
https://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/blog/2025/1/13/vcs-dont-owe-you-a-response-or-a-follow-up
33. A great 3 day guide to Chongqing. One day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTvuPv2SiBI
34. Incredible interview. I found myself stopping this frequently to think about some of the suggestions or ideas that came up. All about personal development.