Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads June 12th, 2022
“Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can’t build on it; it’s only good for wallowing.” —Katherine Mansfield
Whatever you think of Elon, this is a great discussion and interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnxzrX9tNoc
2. "Therefore if we think about your first $50,000 saved you really have three options: 1) asymmetric upside, 2) steady 7% long-term returns in something like stocks or your primary residence or 3) starting your own biz. Unless you’re already wealthy, this means you’re going to look at option 1 and option 3 - asymmetric risk.
Asymmetric risk means 1) a high risk venture investment that can go to zero or 10x+ or 2) starting your own business which can go to zero with unlimited upside 1,000x+.
Now before people say “90%” of businesses fail. You have to remember that 90% of venture investments fail as well! Therefore the question becomes… which one has the better risk-adjusted return: obvious answer is a side business.
In the second option, if you go to zero on a business, you can deduct expenses and you actually learn something. This seems to be ignored time and time again. If you buy $50,000 of anything, you don’t learn anything. All you get is a -$50,000 and a “thanks for playing” on the screen - eg. what happened with LUNA."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/good-and-bad-risk-understand-the
3. "Build. Build. Build. Build.
There is no other option. The government isn’t coming to save you. The government isn’t coming to solve your problems. We need every builder, every problem-solver, and every entrepreneur to go to work right now. If we don’t get that scenario, we are going to be in big trouble.
Don’t be surprised if you see more public comments from Bezos, Musk, and their crowd of successful entrepreneurs. Instead of balking at their perspectives, we should probably be trying to learn from them. They know a thing or two about building."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/builders-are-about-to-be-a-lot-more
4. Totally random. This is an interesting take on an old franchise. Predator versus Comanche Indians who were the toughest badass American Indians ever.
https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/the-predator-first-teaser-hulu-prey
5. This place is really cool. Visited in 2021. Derinkuyu, an ancient underground city in Turkey.
https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/derinkuyu-underground-city
6. For folks interested in macro investing. The Commodities Supercycle & Energy is here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPbN8iMFODU
7. Discussion on the 10 elements of power that countries can use to rise up & compete.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQQeVv1A8Po
8. RIP. This guy is a hero.
“Wars aren’t being won by surrendering. You have to fight. If you don’t fight, you won’t be supported by anyone. Because it’s your own freedom, and you have to fight for it.”
https://coffeeordie.com/denys-antipov-ukrainian-soldier
9. This guy is a badass. Social media influencer and soldier.
https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/the-story-behind-the-viral-viking-soldier
10. Whoops.....
"The man was mistakenly sent 46.3m yen ($357,400; £287,000) in April which was supposed to be shared among 463 people in a town in western Japan.
"I feel very sorry that I used it up," the man said according to his lawyer.
When authorities finally contacted him, he said he no longer had the money."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-61490436
11. A great discussion on booms and busts in Crypto and lots of other good biz nuggets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8AZftypHwI
12. "And now we’re holding our collective breath, waiting to see where they land, waiting for the next fresh hell to arrive tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that, and tensing our collective body to prepare ourselves for each new thing: all the new horribleness and uncertainty that will define our existence until we land at a new normal—a new pleasant, calm, sturdiness where we can unclench and exhale.
But I suspect that next-step normalcy is just an appealing mirage.
I don’t think we return to a version of what came before. I think we have to find fresh footing in whatever this is, and whatever it settles into when those pieces finally land; we have to make something of what’s here rather than longing for what was and where we expected to go, next.
I do think it’s important to grieve, though.
To consider, appreciate, and show some small respect to the lives lost—those of people we know and those we don't—to the dreams dissolved, to the paths dug up and paved over, to all the things we’ll need to rethink and begin weaving into our shared stories as we undertake the generational labor of writing new ones."
https://www.getrevue.co/profile/colinwright/issues/grief-1182675
13. Really good advice for startup founders these days. What should you do to prepare for the downturn? It depends.
https://www.vccafe.com/2022/05/18/advice-for-startups-in-a-downturn-may-2022-edition
14. "The conventional wisdom at this time is that most of the world has moved on from the pandemic (except for China); therefore, supply chains will return to “normal.” Unfortunately, this is not the case. The world has permanently changed and supply chains are going to face continuing challenges for decades to come."
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/supply-chains-are-never-returning-to-normal
15. Always worthwhile discussion on the emerging macro economic situation. It's gonna be bad. But buy commodities! :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1egvkuOjC8
16. "When cryptocurrencies go down in value, as they mostly have lately, people lose interest in trading them. That compresses profits for the exchanges, and marketing budgets along with them. Even in good times, Marszalek was preparing for a bear market. “We went through the crypto winter of 2018 and 2019,” he said in April. “We kept our heads down, and we continued building a strong product. That’s one of the reasons why we grew so quickly in 2021.”
Marszalek wants Crypto.com to be more than an exchange—he wants it to be an “ecosystem.” Crypto.com got its start marketing prepaid crypto-linked debit cards, which it still distributes, and it also runs its own cryptocurrency called Cronos, which it invites users to “stake” (i.e., lock money into) in exchange for various rewards. Marszalek likes to keep things flexible and, last March, introduced a marketplace for NFTs.
“Right now, 90 percent of the revenue in this industry is coming from trading, right?” he said. “If three years down the road that’s still the case, then this is a complete industry failure.”
https://www.gq.com/story/crypto-dot-com-explained
17. "#1 How do your decisions change if you can’t retire?
This is something that Ferriss doesn’t really explore explicitly: the fact that even when people “escape” work they still end up working. Tim is a good example. He likely could have stopped working but he kept getting involved in a wide range of projects: books, investing, podcasting, and mental health.
Why? My take is that most people want to be useful. It’s just that for many it is incredibly painful when you start compromising too much of your time doing work that you see as pointless, meaningless or too easy."
https://boundless.substack.com/p/in-praise-of-4-hour-workweek-182
18. Private chefs in SV.
"Private-chef jobs have been in increasingly high demand, thanks to the explosion of people working from homeand indoor dining bans that put many high-end chefs out of work. Even with tech stocks tanking ahead of fears of an economic recession, work-from-home is here to stay — as are Silicon Valley's many millionaires and billionaires.
Of course, working in the homes of busy, health-conscious, secretive millionaires and billionaires can have its downsides. Nondisclosure agreements are par for the course, as are special diets. The travel can be burdensome and not always to gorgeous getaways like Hawaii."
https://www.businessinsider.com/inside-the-job-of-a-private-chef-in-silicon-valley-2022-4
19. "Everyone should have always known all this was coming, obviously. But it’s easier said than done. Even the best VCs are forced to “play the game on the field” in some regard. The most problematic thing about timing here is that it’s basically impossible to time markets. And so you can either do nothing and wait, or yell about fundamentals into the wind, or yes, go with the flow.
But again, it feels like this go around (also undoubtedly not unique), there were many who were quick to say that this time would be different. But it’s sort of like the plot of those Final Destination movies: you can cheat death for a time, perhaps even a long time, but in the end it will find you.
On the flip side, as will also be touted ad nauseam once again, the best time to start something is at the trough of a downturn when relatively little money will keep you alive for a long while as the big money starts to swirl again. You won’t have to worry about those cash cannons being pointed at your competitors. You can just focus on building something great.
And if it gets you into the position where you can raise a ton of capital when it’s slushing about in the next inevitable cycle, congrats, you nailed the timing."
https://medium.com/five-hundred-words/the-new-old-normal-b74c116321e0
20. Good discussion on the global macro trends for investors. It's going to be rough sailing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qD4kqAarec
21. Discussion on why Taiwan is a different situation than Ukraine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2LiMTtGrAY
22. I really hope he is wrong but there is alot here on a grim note of the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZHfnDrEZNA
23. I miss Japan and I miss Cherry Blossom season.
"All is change in the world, as the Buddha said, and to experience hanami is to appreciate that beauty is inseparable from impermanence. But what comforts the ache of witnessing the blossoms is the promise that they will return again and again. Should that be lost, then all we will have left is loss."
https://www.vox.com/23103387/hanami-japan-cherry-blossom-viewing
24. "So how does this market meltdown that we are now in end?
First, we need to see the economy slow down and inflation slow down. We need to see stocks bottom out and hang out there for a while. And we need to be patient. None of this is going to happen fast.
I would be planning to ride this thing out for at least eighteen months or more."
https://avc.com/2022/05/how-this-ends-2
25. This is well argued. Mearsheimers Realism is fine as theory but sadly being misused by those corrupt ideologues who want to ditch Ukraine. #SupportUkraine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOA2DJB8Jbg
26. This is a solid discussion: USA is still an investors refuge in times of challenges for now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSICpii3ZUI
27. “There are so many different types of fighters,” he told me, “including Brits and Greeks and Jews and Georgians, and they are definitely not Nazis. This is just a slander.”
But it is a necessary one. Azov has proved to be Russia’s most formidable opponents. They held up the entire advance into south Ukraine. They came to embody everything Russia claimed it was fighting against. Now they are in its hands. How they are treated will provide a signpost to what comes next. If they appear at show trials — after obvious torture — then we will know that Putin is doubling down on his madness. If talks of a prisoner exchange materialise, it will signal that broader compromise is possible."
https://unherd.com/2022/05/why-russia-fears-the-azov-battalion
28. Awesome initiative here.
29. I think Antonio did a great job here. Yes, he is pro Ukraine but this is a good discussion. I do admit I really dislike Greenwald in general.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuuhQsAM6AM
30. Cool new VC fund. Much needed.
31. So many good nuggets of insight here from some smart people. Love this show.