Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads September 10th, 2023
“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.” – Henry Ford.
A very sober conversation with 2 very experienced top VCs. Newbie VCs and founders should be listening to this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGvb8Pwtsbg
2. Warms my heart to see this.
https://www.axios.com/2023/08/29/yahoo-apollo-renaissance-jim-lanzone
3. "The learnings: (1) Freedom is the real goal, (2) Environment is everything, (3) Insecurity is natural, (4) Always know the game you're playing, (5) Create value with no expectation, (6) Owned distribution is a cheat code, (7) Success isn't always loud, (8) No one has it all figured out, (9) Entrepreneurial loneliness is a real problem, and (10) Solve the problem by seeing it differently.
My Rule for Life: Find the room where it happens. Get in that room. Once you're in it, help others get there."
https://www.sahilbloom.com/newsletter/10-learnings-from-a-mastermind
4. "The Ukrainian side are sending a clear message that they are in this for the long haul, they have no other place to go. Notable herein I think it is counter to the view that Ukraine only has an 18 month window, until potentially Trump takes back power in February 2025, to fight, after this Western arms and financing will stop, and Russia will again inevitably win. Perhaps that is supposed to be the tenth phase for some.
The problem with the latter, and which I think is now panning out in the ninth phase I detail above is how Trump winning, withdrawing support for Ukraine, still inevitably leads to a speedy win for Russia.
Even in that scenario, I don’t see how Russia enforces a win against a country that refuses to surrender, is willing to continue the fight, still has plenty and likely even more Western military kit by then, and likely still financing from European, and non U.S. allies. Ukraine can still drag on the war for Russia a very long time after February 2025, making this a still massive drain on Russia, it’s economy and population."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/putins-war-on-ukraine
5. "The Fed, knowingly or not, is basically in charge of the global financial system. They may shout, “We raise rates in the US to fight inflation, global consequences be damned!!” - But that’s a hell of a lot more difficult to follow when large G7 countries are in the early stages of a full blown currency crisis.
The most serious implication is that the Fed is responsible for supplying dollars to everyone. When they raise rates, they trigger a margin call on the entire world. They need to bail them out by supplying them with fresh dollars to stabilize their currencies.
In other words, the Fed has to run the loosest and most accommodative monetary policy worldwide- they must keep rates as low as possible, and print as much as possible, in order to keep the global financial system running. If they don’t do that, sovereigns begin to blow up, like Japan did last week and like England did on Wednesday.
And if the world’s financial system implodes, they must bail out not only the United States, but virtually every global central bank. This is the Sword of Damocles. The money needed for this would be well in the dozens of trillions."
https://dollarendgame.substack.com/p/the-sword-of-damocles
6. Dan Koe on being the ultimate creative self. Learned a lot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3SMpmJmLEY
7. I enjoy these jaunts across the business world with NIA. I always learn something new.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8ChmKwLKY&t=276s
8. The VC startup factory is dead.....this is really insightful and true.
If you want to be relevant you have to unlearn everything we learned in VC over the last 10-15 years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=py7IPmDKjb4&t=1684s
9. "Despite the evident dangers, venture capitalists and celebrity investors have eagerly jumped into the fray. Maximus, a Los Angeles–based telemedicine platform for men launched in 2020, raised $15 million from investors including Keith Rabois at Founders Fund and Matteo Franceschetti, founder of smart-mattress company Eight Sleep.
A competitor, Hone Health, launched a few months later and closed a $7.8 million early-stage round this July. Yet another, Lifeforce, founded by motivational speaker Tony Robbins, Dugal Bain-Kim and Peter Diamandis, launched in 2021 and closed a $12 million Series A this May.
In general, TRT companies tap into a specific brand of male insecurity, one heavily inflected with Silicon Valley notions about optimization and performance. The marketing is peak biohacker bro: Gameday Men’s Health, a national chain, markets its clinic’s “man-cave environment” (think flat-screen TVs, leather chairs and snacks); T-boosting supplement brands come with names like Swolverine, Prime Male and Hunter Test.
Sellers tell customers repeatedly they’re not in it alone—“you are a tribe” with a collective goal to “unlock living younger.” It’s the kind of men’s movement that both Andrew Huberman and Jordan Peterson could get behind. Tweeted Elon Musk last December: “Testosterone rocks, ngl.”
10. Interesting AI company.
https://tomtunguz.com/context-announcement/
11. "We can learn a lot about warfare from the war in Ukraine. Most importantly, it gives us a glimpse into the future of proxy conflicts and civil wars (the most significant types of war possible without going nuclear).
Future wars of this type will feature:
-Trench warfare. Physical realm (attrition).
-Drone warfare. Physical realm (attrition).
-Online warfare. Physical, Psychological, and Moral realm (attrition, maneuver, and guerrilla warfare)."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/replicator
12. "So the next time you’re hunched over your laptop, the coffee’s gone cold, and you’re plugging away, ask yourself: "Is my product serving its current user, or is it built to also attract the next 1000?"
This is not 1+1=2; this is 1+1=11. Symbiotic Growth changes the game. A different state of mind. It's a viral loop that doesn’t rely on network effects for scale—it creates its own network effect."
https://latecheckout.substack.com/p/what-kind-of-startup-are-you-building
13. This is amazing learning from the richest man in New Zealand.
“Your career is no more or less than a set of steps up a staircase.”
- But the cumulative output of those steps, the investment decisions you make each time you step up, the opportunity costs that you incur when you make a suboptimal decision — they all combine to give you an end result at the end of your 40 year career — so it’s about realized your full potential, no more or less than that.
Now if you’re young, it’s hard to reconcile, 40 or 50 years in front of you, that’s 2000 work weeks, 120,000 hours, that’s a long time - but I’m telling you, if you just spend some time thinking as you go forward, in 40 years, you will ensure that you realized your full potential."
https://privatequityguy.beehiiv.com/p/poor-smart-deep-desire-become-rich
14. "The company managed to 10X its value in less than three years while maintaining a positive and pleasant work environment. Last year, Glassdoor ranked Nvidia as America's best workplace based on employee feedback. In a separate survey, 97% of Nvidia employees said it was a great place to work — compared to an average of 57% at typical U.S.-based companies.
Generation-defining innovations. Incredible financial success. Happy employees. How did Nvidia do it?
Not by bringing everyone back to the office.
It embraced remote and distributed work more than any other tech giant."
https://www.drorpoleg.com/nvidia-the-distributed-rocketship/
15. This is one of the most interesting and exciting startups I've heard about in a long while. Teamshares.
16. It’s sad that this is needed but here we are. Taiwanese preparing for a CCP invasion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB7F-2JAHnk
17. I frigging love this show. So many tips for better living.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=_fklX2OonR0&t=5014s
18. Good interview with creative entrepreneur Nuseir of Nas Daily.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRfi2yR3hBo&t=48s
19. "If we are genuinely interested in helping Ukraine to succeed in its basic objectives – which sometimes may seem in doubt – we need to get serious about replacing the current piecemeal system of drip-feed donations with a large-scale systematic resupply and re-equipment. And the planning needs to begin now.
The aim must be to help Ukraine create armed forces able to integrate properly with its western allies and defend itself beyond the “spring offensive”. The reward for success will be a new, invigorated and dynamic component of our polity."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/19/west-ukraine-win-war-military-support
20. "While failure is not the objective, we celebrate the courage to take risks. Failure is an inherent part of the entrepreneurial journey. By acknowledging and learning from it, we set the stage for the next round of entrepreneurs to enter the arena."
https://davidcummings.org/2023/08/26/embrace-startup-failures/
21. I'm not a fan of Vegetable Joe and the Democrats but many of the GOP seem like soulless fcuks........especially Vivek.
"That is not the kind of tech person that tech people should want as their champion, or as their representative on the national political stage. It presents an image of the tech world as a generator of pump-and-dump scams rather than engineering competence.
A techie candidate can’t be expected to know everything about everything, but he should at least be expected to know more than the average Beltway pundit. Someday there will be a candidate from a tech background who effectively embodies the meritocracy and competence that Vivek pays lip service to. But it is not Vivek."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/hey-tech-folks-vivek-ramaswamy-is
22. "For entrepreneurs who firmly believe in the value of frequent face-to-face interactions and aspire to attract talent from all over, this innovative in-office plan, allowing employees to reside anywhere, merits consideration."
https://davidcummings.org/2023/09/02/the-in-office-plan-where-you-can-live-anywhere/
23. "In terms of rules, I actually agree there are very few "rules" in real life, but there arepowerful forces. Forces that can be difficult to escape from or avoid. As powerful as gravity, but as made up as capitalism. And some of these forces shape the way that companies are made, and capital is deployed.
Choosing your investors comes with a lot of structural baggage. Your investors have expectations that you may not have. Their game has certain forces at work that require certain outcomes. And if they don't get the outcomes they hope for? It can lead to bad behavior."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/player-different-stupider-games
24. "With those caveats, though, you know what might be the biggest Big Tech side hustle?
Amazon advertising.
In Q1 2022, the e-commerce firm officially separated its ad business in company filings (for years, ads had been classified under “other revenue”). The punchline: Amazon’s ad platform is currently on an annual revenue run rate of ~$43B, which is more than the combined revenue of Bing, Snap, Twitter/X, Pinterest and TikTok."
https://www.readtrung.com/p/amazons-43b-ad-business-explained
25. "Audience building is a lifestyle.
It is the act of capturing, curating, connecting, creating, and distributing valuable information, resources, and products in a way that impacts positive behavior change.
If you don’t pursue a better life for yourself, you will fail.
A better life demands the habits of learning, building, and distributing."
https://thedankoe.com/letters/why-micro-education-businesses-are-the-future-zero-dollars-to-start/
26. "Let this be your wakeup call. Let this be a moment for you to re-evaluate your priorities and, possibly, switch gears. Because life is too short to work on things that don’t make you come alive.
After all, in the end, only the passionate survive."
https://ofdollarsanddata.com/only-the-passionate-survive/
27. Helpful supplements list from Dr. Andrew Huberman.
https://medium.com/@podclips/dr-andrew-hubermans-supplement-recommendations-7491483e778b
28. "I do, however, want to share a few words about what this show says about the world of Freshmanistan, or the world of internally-mediated rivalries that every high school in America embodies. I believe any high school is the perfect “arena” to be in if you want to understand the nature of the battles playing out in our country today.
Most of the external conflict in our world is caused by internal conflict—internal conflict that prevents us from seeing, understanding, and knowing other people clearly and deeply, including ourselves."
https://read.lukeburgis.com/p/the-beauty-of-freshmanistan
29. "The problem is that the economic and monetary conditions in the US today are markedly different from what they were in 1980. Anyone who thinks the Fed can run the same playbook and achieve the same result is going to experience something akin to my recent kitesurfing episode. In short, what worked in past idyllic conditions will not succeed in the rough, tumble, and competitive times of today."
https://medium.com/@cryptohayes/kite-or-board-64bc45d49931
30. "For the past year, this has become a regular routine for 44-year-old David Keohan who holds a kettlebell lifting world record and has lately become a star in the world of stone lifting, an ancient practice that’s experiencing a surprising resurgence. He’s traveling around Ireland uncovering the country’s lost lifting stones, and today he’s looking for the Flag of Denn."
https://www.gq.com/story/the-quest-to-pick-up-the-lost-lifting-stones-of-ireland
31. Looking at Revenue leaders’ tech stack.
https://thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/p/ai-and-the-evolution-of-the-modern
32. Can't wait to get this book. "Twilight Cities"
33. So many insights here. I always learn from David Senra (and Chris Williamson).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iBPbHgjHC0
34. "Klaviyo is a fast growing, incredibly efficient, profitable software company : an ideal specimen for one of the first software IPOs in the fall. Congratulations to the team on building a paragon of a SaaS business!"
https://tomtunguz.com/klaviyo-s1/
35. "You can just write that book. You can just produce your own documentary. You can start a podcast. You can write short stories. You can start a book club online or in your town. You can start a non-profit. You can organize a fundraiser for your community. There are so many things that you can just do now and most of these are practically free using the internet."
https://boundless.substack.com/p/there-are-no-gatekeepers-238
36. "This will take time. Decoupling is not an instantaneous process. China spent two decades becoming the workshop of the world; the rest of the developing world isn’t going to mirror that accomplishment in one or two years.
But there are reasons to think the process is just getting started. Although the Economist articles present decoupling as being driven by Biden’s policies, the truth is that the U.S. government has barely begun to push. Export controls are narrowly focused on the chip industry, and the Inflation Reduction Act isn’t really about decoupling at all.
Other than that, all Biden has done so far is a set of investment restrictions that was very weak and narrowly targeted at a couple of high-tech industries, some minuscule investments in onshoring of critical minerals, and some minor deals with allies to share the benefits of green energy tax credits. He kept Trump’s old tariffs on China in place, but didn’t strengthen them.
That means that so far, most of the decoupling that’s being done is being driven by the prudent decisions of private companies and investors — natural market forces, rather than the visible hand of government policy. There’s no reason to expect those forces to reverse themselves — even setting aside the threat of war, every nation has seen some manufacturing activity leave for cheaper countries once costs rise.
And meanwhile, the engine of U.S. government policy — and European government policy, etc. — is just revving up. Once policymakers figure out which policies actually speed decoupling without injuring the economy, you can expect them to double down on those.
This is only the very beginning of the decoupling story."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/decoupling-isnt-phoney
37. "Offering Kyiv enduring support may not be welcome news to many Western politicians, given the upcoming elections in the United States and some European countries. But over the past 18 months, the Ukrainians have demonstrated a will to fight, the capacity to absorb new weapons, and the ability to learn, adapt, and improve their military effectiveness.
The next way to help the Ukrainians continue their evolution in quality and endurance is making sure they know the West is prepared to support them in their fight to defeat Russia and to offer this support in 2024 and beyond."
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/win-long-war-strategy-counteroffensive