Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads March 17th, 2024
"No matter how much falls on us, we keep plowing ahead. That's the only way to keep the roads clear." – Greg Kincaid
"An entire generation of executives and entrepreneurs that came of age in recent years was essentially robbed of an opportunity to form actual views about the world—both descriptive, what it is, and normative, what it should be—leaving us with a managerial class whose principal purpose often seems to be little more than ensuring its own survival and re-creation.
The result is that many of those in power have become so fearful of offending anyone that one would be forgiven for assuming based on their public statements that their interior lives and most intimate thoughts had recoiled into something small and shallow. The perverse and unintended result is that corporations selling consumer goods feel the need to develop and indeed broadcast their views on issues affecting our moral or interior lives, while software companies with the capacity and, perhaps, duty to shape our geopolitics remain conspicuously silent."
“Google should not be in the business of war,” the employees wrote, insisting that the company agree never to “build warfare technology.”
The problem is not a principled commitment to pacifism or nonviolence. It is a more fundamental abandonment of belief in anything. The employees who resisted leveraging the machinery of Google in service of building software for the U.S. military know what they oppose but not what they are for. The company, at its core, builds elaborate and extraordinarily lucrative mechanisms to monetize the placement of advertising for consumer goods and services that accompany search results.
The service is vital and has remade the world. But the business, and a significant subset of its employees, stop short of engaging with more fundamental and essential questions of national purpose and identity—with an affirmative vision of what we want to and should be building as part of a national project, not simply an articulation of the lines that one will not cross.
They remain content to monetize our search histories but decline to defend our collective security. The entire company, however, along with any number of Silicon Valley’s largest technology enterprises, owe their existence in significant part to the educational culture, as well as the legal protections and capital markets, of the U.S."
https://time.com/6692111/silicon-valley-palantir-alexander-karp/
2. UK in the Post American world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjmBAhTDRXY
3. "“Made in Japan” was a joke in the immediate postwar era, and then something akin to a threat in the Eighties. Today it is a badge of authenticity, deployed anywhere status needs to be conferred to a quotidian item: Japanese denim, Japanese whiskey, Japanese cleaning magic, Japanese Breakfast (okay, so that last one’s an indie-pop band.)
Japan may not confer any cool factor in the AI sphere, but it possesses undeniable cool factor in the real world. It’s also safe, in all senses of the word. It’s seen as free from crime and societal strife. It isn’t percieved as a threat, or even involved in touchy geopolitical issues. The things many foreigners associate with Japan, from anime to Zen, spark joy. And all of this combines to make Japan one of the, if not THE, most-wanted-to-visit destination in the world. In a world full of entrenched divisiveness and conflict, Japan is the one thing everyone can agree on: humanity’s shared safe space.
So. OpenAI has a problem. They have a technology with the power to transform (there’s that word again) and the power to terrify. They need to reach as many people as possible in as reassuring a way as possible. Enter Japan, with its built-in fun-factor from fluffy cherry blossoms to high-tech Shibuya street scenes, to soften the impact.
https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/ai-and-japan-as-a-safe-space
4. The best discussion on creative & cultural businesses and internet memes as a biz.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxMiypNkU_o&t=557s
5. Lessons from one of the top VCs in the game. Upside maximization.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5Z0-d5w18M&t=7s
6. Talk about heroes.
https://time.com/6694858/ukrainian-helicopter-missions-mariupol-siege/
7. "Most military analysts believe that, in the coming year, even if U.S. aid finally comes through, Russia has the advantage. Russia has used continued revenues from the sale of oil and gas to pay for weapons manufacturing: it’s producing munitions, missiles, and tanks at rates double and triple what they were before the war. Though Ukrainian forces have driven drone innovation on the battlefield, Russia, over the past year, has produced more drones. And the state has managed, by hook and by crook, to continue recruiting men into the armed forces. “Let’s be honest,” Zaluzhny told The Economist, “it’s a feudal state where the cheapest resource is human life.”
Ukraine has some advantages. Western-supplied long-range missile systems possess precision and evasion capabilities that Russian missiles cannot match. These have allowed Ukraine to strike Russian airfields, barracks, and weapons depots well behind the front lines, including in Crimea; they have also helped Ukraine break the blockade of its Black Sea shipping lanes.
Ukrainian soldiers have a better sense of what they’re fighting for, and the Army is the most respected institution in the country. Though Zaluzhny has been replaced, there is reason to believe that the reforms he’s been advocating, including a substantial increase in troop mobilization, will be carried out without him.
Oliker, whose job at the International Crisis Group is to seek ways to end conflicts, does not see how this one can end just yet. She admitted that, in the aftermath of the failed counter-offensive, in the midst of a long cold winter, and with Western support in doubt, Ukraine is facing a very difficult moment. “But it was not a good moment for Russia in spring and summer of 2022,” Oliker said. “That’s war. If it is, in fact, a long war, prepare for a few more back-and-forths.”
https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/can-ukraine-still-win
8. "That little trip down memory lane—or rather Market Street—was the happiest I’d seen him all morning. We’d spent much of our time together talking about the more recent past, and none of it was much fun to revisit. A few days earlier, he and Brex co-founder Henrique Dubugras had announced that they were laying off 20% of the company and that two top executives, Chief Operating Officer Michael Tannenbaum and Chief Technology Officer Cosmin Nicolaescu, had decided to leave the company.
“It was extremely painful,” Franceschi said. “Frustrating, unpleasant, sad, disappointing—you have relationships with these folks.” As Dubugras later added: “Look, people come to work for you—you sell them a dream, and they come to work for you. And this was no one’s expectation when they joined, and it sucks. If I was in their position, I’d be pissed. I get it.”
It’s a sharp reversal in fortune for Franceschi, 27, and Dubugras, 28, whose startup became especially dependent on other startups’ growth during the unicorn era. Now the pair’s predicament presents a picture in miniature of bigger forces at play in Silicon Valley, offering a singular gauge of the rest of the tech industry’s health.
The Brex cuts were an acknowledgment that the fintech, which had bragged publicly about downing giant rivals like American Express, had simply grown too big in recent years; that it hadn’t worked hard to manage its dreams with great prudence; and that it would very much need to do so going forward or risk crumbling under the pressure and expectations attached to its most recent valuation: a $12.3 billion price tag from 2022 that had made the founders billionaires, at least on paper.
During the last several years, “it was faster to hire people than it was to increase efficiency and productivity,” Dubugras acknowledged. “And then the market turned, and efficiency matters a lot more.”
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-brex-boys-uncomfortable-reckoning
9. Every startup founder should listen to this conversation. It will help raise your game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0XO88lZEaE&t=598s
10. "All in all, the still-high rates of violence, alcoholism, and divorce, together with the low rates of church-going and child-rearing, do not paint a picture of a close-knit traditional society that compensates for material poverty with supportive community ties.
I think that an increasing number of people on the American Right subscribe to a sort of romantic Russophilia, in which they conceive of Russia as the antithesis of everything they don’t like about the modern U.S.
Ultimately, though, Russia’s continued dysfunction isn’t a reason for Americans like me to gloat or laugh or give each other high fives. Instead, I think it serves as an important warning: National greatness doesn’t make a country a good place to live.
Putin has certainly done things to improve life for regular Russians, but his most important actions have all been about the revival of Russian power on the international stage. He has engaged in a series of wars, culminating in the current invasion of Ukraine. At the same time, he has built the entire Russian media into a nonstop engine of propaganda about what a great and powerful country Russia is — sort of a 2003 Fox News on steroids. To the Americans who entertain Russophile fantasies, Russia’s most important selling point is that it’s an empire that can — at least in their minds — kick other countries’ asses.
I worry that the U.S. also fell into a trap like this, in the 20th century and the early 21st. Our country was big and powerful and had a dozen aircraft carriers, but our transit systems were decaying, our families were breaking down, we weren’t building enough new housing, our service industries were becoming severely overpriced, drug addiction became rampant, and our cities suffered levels of violence that, even after a huge decrease, would still be intolerable in the rest of the developed world. Like the Russians, we consumed a lot of national greatness, and not enough national effectiveness."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/russia-is-not-actually-a-very-nice
11. More or Less, great debate on what’s happening in tech this week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVvxAIBowVs
12. Important discussion on why Pharma industry is kind of mess despite the critical factor they play in our healthcare.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1u70kAohCc
13. "The global economic convulsion that would follow an interruption of Taiwanese chips could well exceed those caused by the global financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. The hedge fund manager Ken Griffin has estimated that losing access to Taiwanese semiconductors would shave five to ten percent off U.S. GDP. “It’s an immediate Great Depression,” he assessed in 2022.
Taiwan is in a sense the West Berlin of the new cold war unfolding between Beijing and the free world. It is an outpost of liberty, prosperity, and democracy living in the shadow of an authoritarian superpower. Just as Stalin tested the free world 76 years ago by blockading Berlin, Xi is now testing it with rising pressure on Taiwan."
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/taiwan-catastrophe
14. Don't know him personally but Steve Jang has a great rep in the business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut0SrT2tfrs
15. "Space was once something of a career killer for a military officer like Rogers, a place for nerds and science fiction fans — not folks headed to major command positions.
That’s because, over most of the past 20 years, America’s enemies have generally been earthbound. The likes of the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and ISIS did not have any assets in orbit. A post-Cold War Russia could no longer challenge the US on the ground, let alone in space, while China lacked the technology and cash to do so.
But space still mattered because America’s unquestioned military superiority depended on its equally superior technology in space. More than any other country, the US relies on fleets of orbital spacecraft to communicate with its far-flung military forces, to guide precision weaponry against enemy targets, and to discover those targets through high-altitude surveillance using cameras, radar, and sensors that can intercept radio and other forms of communication. And just as the US military seemed untouchable on Earth, the same seemed true for its orbital assets.
Now, American generals have realized that rivals like China are no longer merely focused on being able to attack US space assets; they are building the tools they need in space to fight the same way the US does — to “find, fix, track targets and attack our joint terrestrial forces,” as Gen. Moore puts it. And that calls for a different set of tactics for an organization that once seemed to fly above the fray."
16. "Build the process, follow the process, and the end result is an active pipeline of great candidates with an understanding of where they are on their own timing schedule and the potential to bring them on the team.
Entrepreneurs would do well to think through the role timing in recruiting talent and always remember the old adage: The best time to start recruiting for that great person was years ago, and the second-best time to start is now."
https://davidcummings.org/2024/02/17/the-role-of-timing-in-recruiting-talent/
17. "In perusing the Global South’s exploitation of the West’s obsession with climate change, one can’t help but feel for the citizens of Germany. Having watched their leaders sacrifice so much of their country’s prosperity, they must now confront the reality of what was gained in return. “Nothing” will be a bitter, utterly predictable pill to swallow."
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/dirty-secret
18. "This three day structure has given me some useful constraints. It’s forced me to prioritize what matters even more and also to be a lot quicker with how I make decisions. Also, since our daughter naps three hours a day and crashes at 7:30 there’s actually still a lot more wiggle room to tinker away at things like this newsletter if I run out of time. We don’t “go to work” and are usually at home most days so theres a lot of flexibility with our approach.
If I’m sitting at my desk and my daughter is laughing in the other room, I usually can’t help myself. But it’s been nice to have space to prioritize “me” after putting Angie and our daughter first for most of the past year. Before doing the three blocked days, I felt guilty doing anything for myself. Before she was born, I sort of just did stuff whenever and it worked. I had enough time for myself and did the work that mattered to me. But after adding a kid to the mix, go-with-the-flow was no longer viable."
https://newsletter.pathlesspath.com/p/why-im-working-three-day-a-week-257
19. "Young men are especially susceptible to gambling addiction. Games of chance hold more initial appeal for them, because men are wired to be more risk-seeking than women and less averse to potential losses. (Note: There are upsides to this — men are more likely to take heroic risks in battle or start a company.)
However, once they play, young men are less able to resist the addictive cycle, because their prefrontal cortex develops more slowly. Think of the prefrontal cortex as the adult in the room, someone with common sense who can see beyond the next dopamine hit. When boys reach adolescence, they experience greater muscle growth than girls do, but behind the eyes, girls are making more important gains: Their prefrontal cortexes mature sooner, giving them greater ability to overcome the reward circuits with rational thought. Every study I’ve read on adolescent development can best be summarized as: While boys are physically stronger, girls are emotionally and mentally stronger.
Sports betting and stock trading are tailor-made to exploit these systems, and they’re particularly attractive to young men, as they don’t present as games of pure chance but tests of skill."
https://www.profgalloway.com/dopa-bowl/
20. "But in venture? You're not just in a relationship business. You're in a relationship business with targets that have constantly fluctuating value. Pass on a seed today? It might be the hottest Series A next year. Annoy a Stripe operator on Twitter? They might be the next "hot" founder. Mistreat a CTO in one company? They might leave and never want to take your money when they start their own company.
As a result? Most VCs became spineless, submissive, love-hungry puppies that will do anything for anyone's validation. This leads to several unfortunate realities about most VCs:
(1) they're skeptical of anyone who likes them,
(2) they're rarely honest about when they might be wrong, and, most importantly,
(3) they're usually incapable of providing valuable feedback"
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/the-trough-of-feedback
21. Africa is the future? Good case for African stocks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQBp6wCOPD0
22. Masterclass on living an awesome and impactful life with Luke Belmar.
Be impatient about the inputs, not the outputs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h6_QQQ1PCE
23. You can never listen to too much Luke Belmar. One of the wisest people on the internet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI-2y7Q-xpk
24. The OG of the internet. Tai Lopez.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA1xxTI3X_k&t=457s
25. Really useful conversation on the LP mindset and how GPs should be thinking about liquidity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boNJ5mSx5u0&t=2510s
26. "Something very predictable happened in our quarter century roadtrip on the way to Tomorrowland; we realized instead we wound up on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride instead.
I would like the record to show here in 2QFY24 that this exact problem was discussed in detail back when I was a JO in the mid-1990. This is not shocking to anyone who is wearing the uniform of a GOFO. They lived the same history I did.
We knew we were living a lie that we could sustain a big fight at sea. An entire generation of Flag Officers led this lie in the open and ordered everyone else to smile through it. Ignore your professional instincts, and trust The Smartest People in the Room™."
https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/the-wages-of-taking-your-mba-to-war
27. "The expectation that if you have a startup doing well, you’ll raise more money to grow faster and capture more market share doesn’t always materialize. For entrepreneurs, the best strategy is to figure out how to control your own destiny by creating a business, funding strategy, and growth strategy that not only generates tremendous value but also allows for some control and influence over it.
Just because investors say they reserve follow-on funds for their portfolio companies doesn’t mean you’ll be able to tap into those reserves, even if your company is performing well. Ask your investors regularly where they stand for future funding."
https://davidcummings.org/2024/02/10/investor-reserves-didnt-go-to-the-expected-companies/
28. "It never ceases to amaze me when I hear people talk about the defense budget as if there were a certain number of dollars that would provide an optimal level of national defense. In this fantasy world, incredibly smart analysts crunch numbers, the Department of Defense creates a bill for the Office of Management and Budget, and this bill is then presented to the Congress—who pays it unflinchingly because of the obvious wisdom of the thinking that went into it, not to mention the unquestioned non-parochialism of the legislators involved.
This is not how things are done. The inefficiency, the pork, the parochialism, the horse trading, the compromise—these are not bugs. This is the system. And it is this system that drives defense spending. Because there are no “point solutions”, there will always be inefficiency. That inefficiency gets papered over by additional resources. Lather, rinse, repeat.
What often tends to be attributed to the military-industrial complex as undue influence is more often than not, an imperfect method of Congress allocating resources among contending claimants. After mucking around in this world for a while, I have come to conclude that the closer we come to a perfect system of resource allocation, the farther away from representative democracy we will be. It is not pretty, but it is the military-industrial (Congressional) complex, and it works."
https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/in-praise-of-the-military-industrial
29. "Several critical developments are now coming together to accelerate the progress of biotechnology exponentially, shifting us to a future where reliable predictive models enable us to engineer complex biological systems quickly and easily instead of relying on today’s brute force strategy of expensive wet lab experimentation.
Three fundamental shifts are enabling this: First, advances in AI are making truly predictive models for biology possible; second, the rapidly decreasing cost of running biological experiments to generate data for those models, driven by innovations in lab automation and robotics; and third, our ability to quickly engineer animal and plant cells through technologies like CRISPR."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/were-entering-a-golden-age-of-engineering
30. Fascinating discussion on Korean culture and the Kpop wave across the globe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhFLuoSqpOU&t=553s
31. SF is back!
"During the pandemic, scores of Silicon Valley investors and executives such as Rabois decamped to sunnier American cities, criticizing San Francisco’s dysfunctional governance and high cost of living. Tech-firm founders touted their success at raising money outside the Bay Area and encouraged their employees to embrace remote work.
Four years later, that bet hasn’t really worked out. San Francisco is once again experiencing a tech revival. Entrepreneurs and investors are flocking back to the city, which is undergoing a boom in artificial intelligence. Silicon Valley leaders are getting involved in local politics, flooding city ballot measures and campaigns with tech money to make the city safer for families and businesses. Investors are also pushing startups to return to the Bay Area and bring their employees back into the office.
San Francisco has largely weathered the broader crunch in startup funding. Investment in Bay Area startups dropped 12% to $63.4 billion last year. By contrast, funding volumes for Austin, Texas, and Los Angeles, two smaller tech hubs, dropped 27% and 42%, respectively. In Miami, venture investment plunged 70% to just $2 billion last year."
https://archive.ph/mT6qm#selection-5967.0-5971.159
32. A valuable and instructive conversation on venture capital & LPs from one of the best performers in VC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNJn_xIm2Dk
33. This is pretty cool.
34. Great discussion on AI Investing. Worth listening to if you are a VC nerd like me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=socH3hAUx3w
35. Always nuggets of insight on the VC biz.