Going to Monk Mode
In line with “Work like a Lion, Not like a Cow”, I have found myself working in sprints and more sporadically now that I have actual control over my schedule. Something that i believe many former white collar office workers have experienced since the start of the pandemic where offices are still shut down 10 months later. As remote work becomes more prevalent, learning how to manage your time, energy and effectiveness will be even more important.
However, there are some times when you have to make a major push due to some crisis or deadline. This is what they call “Monk Mode.” That means literally working in isolation and going to take extreme measures in living without distraction from other people around you. This happened for me after I sent my family to Taiwan on July 19th in 2020. I was facing a personal financial crisis, so once my wife and daughter were away, I could go to deep focus and literally live like a monk. I turned off the heater, took cold showers or showered every two days, ate sparingly. This enabled me to cut dramatic amounts of costs from the monthly budget. Then I spent almost every waking hour outside of my exercise regime working on the eBay business for cash, taking paid consulting projects, working on selling one of my properties. Basically fighting my way out which I finally did in October.
One of my favorite authors wrote:
“(Monk mode) means shutting out the world for a time,” McKeown says. “It is a relatively extreme approach to take, but (my wife and I) decided I would write from 5 a.m. to 1 p.m. every day. I did that for five days a week for about 9 months. I worked from a small office–tiny really–but in it I found space. And in that space I found creative freedom.”
I did this for 3 full months until I was out of the crisis and able to get back on more stable footing. Brutal but it works. My realization was that having my family around is an amazing and pleasant life. Something to look forward to and treasure. I love being around them but they can also be a distraction, albeit a pleasant distraction. And the priority for them is comfort. But that comfort is the enemy of progress in all its forms. Nothing ever started from being comfortable. It prevents you from getting stuff done, especially in a crisis.
This is when you have to go to war, and war with yourself in some cases. It’s going to war WITH yourself, FOR yourself! You literally have to go to the mattresses as they say in the classic movie “The Godfather”. One of my life heroes, Bobby Axelrod from Billions (yes, I know he is a fictional TV character) said this best.
“Do you know why they call it going to the mattresses. Because you had to move out of your home and hole up some place where no one can find you with all your men. But you had to do it quick, so you’d get a jump on the rival family before they get a jump on you. So you had places stashed around the city with the mattresses on the floor. That is where you make your stand until you nailed the boss of the rival family. And once you got him and all his soldiers fell into line, that’s when you go home to your comfy bed and your wife and kids.”
Not always fun but sometimes you have to do it.
“As a blacksmith uses heat to temper steel, so should a trial by fire strengthen one's mettle.”--Jeffrey Fry
Every single person will face this in their life and it can be one of the most productive if not brutal times that shape you. Monk Mode is a great tool, used sparingly, to get a lot of Sh-T done.
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
Fundraising is Supposed to be Hard!
A big part of running an accelerator or a Venture Capital fund is fundraising. Whether it’s fundraising for your fund or more importantly, helping and working with your portfolio companies on their own fundraising process. I would say particularly being in Silicon Valley this is what I and other investors spend a disproportionate amount of time on. (I could argue maybe a bit too much).
So many of my founders or founders in general complain about fundraising. “Fundraising sucks!,” “I hate fundraising” or “I can’t wait to get back to working on the business.” But my response to them is, “I get it but it’s actually an important part of working on your business. It’s not supposed to be fun.”
I really do get it. The crazy amount of time it takes, the passive- aggressive blank responsives from investors, in some cases blinding arrogance, or the ghosting. So much ghosting.
And I say this as someone who has fundraised for a venture fund. If you think raising money from angel investors or venture capitalists is hard, try raising money from Limited Partners like big corporates, family offices, or Fund of Funds. Way longer sales cycles, even more arrogance and also way more flakiness. I could tell you about this A--hole High Net Worth Individual I met at LP conference in New York. I don’t recall ever having such a demeaning conversation.
BUT, this is the nature of the beast. This is the game. And I took this in stride as part of the process. I had no choice. Fundraising is an important step in your startup (or venture fund). It’s a forcing function to clarify your vision and get your story right. It helps you fine-tune your messaging and strategy. It makes you step away from the day to day and take a top down view of the business, its metrics and overall direction ie. it forces you to set milestones and plan. One additional benefit from the fundraising process is you get some valuable feedback on what you are doing right and wrong. This is both in the presentation but also on your business and your approach to the market from people who see a lot of startups.
The key pieces of a successful fundraise is about the homework you do, going after the right profile of the investor, running a tight timeline with a compact process. Exactly the same as an enterprise sales process. And understand that this is a numbers game. For a seed raise, you can expect to talk to at least 100-120 angels and VCs. Not everyone will say YES. In fact, most (90%) will not be interested. You only need a few investors to come aboard before the momentum shifts your way.
Yet, even if you do everything above right, it really starts with having the right attitude. If you need to do fundraising, at least try to enjoy it. Think of it as an opportunity to share your vision and startup with the world. Founders who are able to have this mindset are able to increase the odds of their success here. Or at minimum, it will make a painful process much less painful.
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads April 11th, 2021
“Do not judge me by my success, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.”― Nelson Mandela
"Regardless of what you think bitcoin is worth, it is obvious that millions of people around the world are buying bitcoin and planning to hold them for the long haul. This may be the most bullish data point available to anyone."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/bitcoin-is-leaving-exchanges-and
2. "The third great conveyance of the modern economy (the first two being globalization and digitization) is in full swing: Dispersion, the process of value leapfrogging traditional points of distribution. Three sectors stand to register the greatest reallocation of stakeholder value (i.e., shit-kicking): healthcare, commercial real estate, and education as consumers leapfrog hospitals, HQ, and campuses.
Dispersion is enabled by both globalization and digitization. High-bandwidth communications link billions of people, and robust mobile devices render that network continuous. Now, blockchain technology is enabling the network to store value (bitcoin) and act on it (etherium). This will bring further disruption to industries low on IQ and heavy on EQ, such as insurance/asset management/central banking."
"Most companies aren’t going 100 percent remote. But when we return to the office, we will want less space that is more flexible, and more appealing to the premier asset of any firm: its ability to attract skilled, young human capital."
https://www.profgalloway.com/we-might-work/
3. "In 2016 I sold my possessions and moved from the United States to Colombia, looking for a better life. Four years later, it’s safe to say that I’ve found that better life.
The irony isn’t lost on me: Centuries ago, my ancestors moved to America for a better life. And in the twenty-first century, I moved to the “third world” for a better life.
Think about this for yourself. What do you want out of your life? Are there ways you can have those things, if you’re only willing to sacrifice other things? If you can settle for “good enough” in some places, and even take risks in other places, you can ultimately build a “better life”, not by “first-world” or “third-world” standards, but by the only standards that really matter — your standards."
https://kadavy.net/blog/posts/third-world-better-life/
4. This is actually quite a helpful video to understand what vaccine efficacy rates really mean. Worth watching.
https://www.vox.com/22362894/which-covid-vaccine-is-better-moderna-vs-pfizer-video
5. "When the buffet of life presents you with all these opportunities, it's hard to say no.
The problem with overeating at the buffet is you can't fit anything else in. When you've squeezed your schedule, finances, energy, and family to the limit, there's no margin.
Inevitably, a crisis will emerge, and then all those plates you've been spinning will come crashing down."
https://justinjackson.ca/the-principle-that-changed-my-life
6. Not sure what to think of this one. But like the name "Anti-Fund."
7. Some wise words and lessons for leaders from the Ramayana.
"When you single-mindedly pursue pleasure, anything you are responsible for – be it a kingdom, a family, or a business – it all collapses. Focus on what is important. Pleasure cannot be your #1 priority if you want greatness. You are not a commoner.
Taking advice from people who do not know what your vision and objectives are is like taking medicines without knowing what the problem is. It might cause you more harm than good.
Failure to start projects that have been decided leads to stagnation and also causes a decline in the trust and faith people have in their leader. You do not want to be thought of as ineffective and incapable."
https://lifemathmoney.com/management-lessons-from-the-ramayana-teachings-for-kings/
8. This is quite good and something all young people should watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Hdu4DlnLIk
9. This is a very long but excellent & insightful discussion on what's happening in Venture Capital with one of the keenest observers of the space. Sar & Semil really capture the zeitgeist of VC in Silicon Valley.
https://sarharibhakti.substack.com/p/a-chat-with-semi-shah-founding-general
10. Easy come, easy go?
"As best we could trace, every major Angolan investment held by Dos Santos stemmed either from taking a chunk of a company that wanted to do business in the country or from a stroke of the president's pen that cut her into the action. Her story was a rare window into the tragic kleptocratic narrative that grips resource-rich countries around the world."
11. "This time around I am looking to buy blood and tears.
I want to buy from all the people who sold at rock bottom prices. That means I’m waiting to run the 2.0 version of this strategy when there’s blood in the water and the market has totally burst. When nobody is talking about cryto anymore and it’s not in the news, that’s when you’re looking to buy. I will wait 1 year to 15 months after the market dies off and then flatlines before buying again.
Go look at every chart from 2018 to the beginning of 2020. Notice how you have a massive decline and then a huge flat period. You are looking for the flat period."
12. What a difference a year and a new Presidency makes. But lesson is stay humble and don't gloat about other countries incompetence & your own supposed excellence (ahem.... EU & Canada in 2020 re: idiocy in USA). Things can change very very quickly. BTW: Lockdowns still don't work........
"After a horrible year for the U.S., it appears those north of the 49th parallel have a feeling of jealousy about their southern neighbours for the first time during the pandemic."
13. This is THE Riches to Rags story. $8B lost in a few days.
https://twitter.com/TrungTPhan/status/1378750061731926018
14. Bidenomics is here. Let's hope it works.
"Thus it was clear that the Reagan policy program of tax cuts, deregulation, and welfare cuts wasn’t working. So we needed to come up with a new paradigm. We should have come up with one in the Great Recession, but we didn’t. Instead, it took COVID and the insanity of the Trump administration to push us over the edge and make us realize big changes were needed.
Well, we finally woke up, and here we are. The big changes are Bidenomics.
....... with its dual focus on research/investment/immigration and care jobs + cash benefits, is an attempt to boost both sectors of the economy at once — to make the export sector more productive while making the domestic sector better at spreading the wealth around. If there’s one unified characterization of the vision Bidenomics is creating for our future, I think that’s it."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/bidenomics-explained
15. These folks are nuts but it's fun to watch.
"With first-place prizes in the most prestigious challenges hovering around the $1,000 mark, it’s a wonder why he or any of the thousands of YouTubers, TikTokers, Instagrammers and Facebookers regularly upload challenge videos to the internet for fellow pepperheads and friends.
While competitive chilli eating has existed for years in the US, Canada, the UK and Australia among predominantly white men between the ages of 20 and 45, it’s become more mainstream and organized through social media and events like New York’s massive Hot Sauce Expo, Albuquerque’s Fiery Foods Show and Smokin’ Ed’s Pepper Eating Challenge in Fort Mill, South Carolina.
The pandemic has driven everyone online, where people like Roger Trier, host of the Hot Dang Show, and Johnny Scoville (who is named after the Scoville heat unit, the way spice levels are measured in peppers and products) have built impressive followings for their hot sauce reviews and daring feats of strength."
16. Never heard of Emma Chamberlain but then I am patently not cool. Impressive creator career here.
"There’s a theme here folks and it’s ownership and control. We saw it with Addison Rae (cc: the unstoppable Addison Rae) launching her music career without a label, we saw it with Charli D’Amelio investing in Step and we’re seeing it with Emma and Chamberlain Coffee and Bad Habit.
Our TL;DR? Sleep on Gen Z *women* creators at your peril. They’re making $$$ moves, pioneering new editing styles, reaching millions of followers and quietly building their own multi-million dollar empires – no LP required."
https://hightea.substack.com/p/emma-chamberlain-and-the-business
17. I love a comeback story: in this case Will & Jada Pinkett Smith.
"Will Smith's social media impact is a signal of the power shift from institutions to individuals. A similar shift happened in Silicon Valley. Amazon Web Services cut the cost for startups to get off the ground, which made it easier for founders to operate without the same reliance on venture capital. VC firms like Andreessen Horowitz leaned into this by elevating founders and getting them the best terms possible. The firm's strategy was inspired by CAA founder Michael Ovitz, whose talent agency led Hollywood's power shift from film studios to actors. Today's social media influence, for both actors and founders, is a natural evolution of that dynamic."
18. "While Occupy Wall Street’s early revolutionaries struggled to get past Goldman Sachs’ security guards, they’ve more recently found tech-enabled unlocks via platforms ranging from Reddit to the aptly named investing platform, Robinhood. While commentators ranging from the Chairman of the SEC to your local Starbucks barista are only now taking note, the writing was already on the wall — or, in this case, on wallstreetbets."
19. Love this. Paradoxes of modern life.
https://twitter.com/david_perell/status/1378943649845678082
20. "When I later spoke to Goldberg, asking if this can be true, if Rogen can really be so serenely content, and suggest there must be another side, he told me, no, really, there isn’t.
“He just wants to be on the couch, with his wife and his dog and his weed, watching reality television. I guess it’s a weird thing for a famous person. But that’s his ultimate goal in life. It’s the boring answer. But it’s true.”
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/seth-rogen-interview-2021
21. My post Pandemic Bucket List is getting very long.
https://time.com/5918335/a-post-pandemic-bucket-list-and-what-to-do-in-the-meantime/
22. "By that February morning in Austin, Bumble was a dating app, a business-networking bazaar and a friend-finding tool that has engineered 8.6 billion connections among tens of millions of users in 237 countries since 2014. It employs more than 420 “brand ambassadors” across more than 100 college campuses and is planning to open Bumble-themed coffee shops after the pandemic.
A month after the IPO, it’s valued at more than $14 billion, and last year it hauled in $582 million in revenue with a 26% profit margin. Wolfe Herd once told me she wanted Bumble to be “Facebook, but for people who don’t know each other yet.”
https://time.com/5947727/whitney-wolfe-herd-bumble/
23. "Maybe you don't need to be reachable either.
Most things are a distraction, especially in the startup and tech world.
If you get to the core of building companies it's about creating a great product that gets customers that pay for it.
If you get to the core of life it's living an existence you're proud of with people you love doing the things you like while minimizing suffering."
24. "The Beeple Instagram account had nearly two million followers, which gave Winkelmann the idea that he could make a fortune with N.F.T.s. “I’m more popular than all of these people, and if they’re making this much then I would probably make a fucking shitload of money,” Winkelmann told me he thought at the time. “Oh, sweet baby Jesus, this is ridiculous.”
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/how-beeple-crashed-the-art-world
25. I feel its going to be stupid crazy this summer (stress on stupid) in Startup & VC land.
"Now another change is underfoot. As millions of Americans get vaccinated and states lift restrictions around gathering, people are preparing for a Great Reopening by summertime. Comparisons to the 1920s abound. And that has led venture capitalists to make new prophecies. Sequoia, for example, sent out a new memo to all of its founders in recent weeks. The message? “Now is the time to start stepping on the gas.”
https://www.wired.com/story/silicon-valley-revs-up-for-hot-startup-summer/
26. Tiger Global is crushing it these days. They are playing at a very different level.
"To win deals in top-performing privately held companies—including enterprise software firm Databricks and virtual conferencing firm Hopin—the firm has drawn on a rising stockpile of VC money. Its newest $6.7 billion fund is nearly double the amount it initially targeted, as well as the second-largest U.S. VC fund ever, according to PitchBook. Overall, Tiger has $65 billion in assets under management, far more than most Silicon Valley-based VC firms. Tiger says that collectively, its own employees are the firm’s largest investor.
In an already scorching-hot market that has pushed valuations to levels not seen since the dot-com boom, Tiger's speed has left fewer opportunities for traditional VC firms, according to interviews with two dozen startup founders, venture capitalists and others with close ties to the firm.
In the first three months of this year, the 100-person New York firm funded more than 60 companies worldwide, according to research firm PitchBook, averaging more than four deals per week."
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/inside-tiger-globals-deal-machine
27. "When governments raise taxes, the free market responds. Raise the taxes too high and people will leave to find a more tax advantaged geography. Lower your taxes and people or companies will be attracted to come to your geography. Incentives run the world and taxes are some of the greatest incentive mechanisms that governments possess.
This is what a digital world looks like. The idea of citizenship is going to change. The idea of a country or state is going to change. There will be more global competition. People no longer need to live near an office. They can live wherever they want. Companies no longer feel stuck in a single country. They can move around as they see fit. They can move their revenue to other jurisdictions if a specific government creates a bad or overreaching policy."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/global-competition-is-important
28. Holy Moly.....Coinbase is a monster. $1.8B in revenue in Q1 alone. That is insanely impressive.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/06/coinbases-monster-q1-in-context/
29. As normal this is a damn interesting interview with one of smartest people in the world. Balaji S. Srinivasan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVENfzgyj6Y
30. This is funny yet may also be prescient.
"The first rule of 2021 is to never sell a single crypto asset. For example, all of the food tokens represent actual food in 2035..... If you’re reading this we recommend you keep a few units for sustenance in 2035 as you will need energy to compete with the growing enemy: the Clowns.
The second course of action is to invest in two major defense mechanisms: 1) a double barrel shotgun and 2) an air tight 20×20 living space with facial recognition entry system.
The third course of action is to live with near zero expenses. If you have a one bedroom apartment you need to ditch it for an Efficiency studio and live with a roommate in said studio. Every satoshi and gwei will be worth more than your entire annual salary if you could only afford a one bedroom apartment. Also. You should stockpile food in bulk from costco and save every cent for more precious crypto coins."
https://wallstreetplayboys.com/it-is-the-year-2035-questions-welcome/
31. I really hope he is right! The New Roaring 20s!
https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/economic-boom-could-last-into-2023-4371417/
32. I love these routines & habits!
"I’m a big believer that reading not only helps you be more knowledgeable at work but also makes you a better conversationalist and a more interesting person to be around.
A lot of investing is about forming a view on where the world is going, and reading constantly is key to that."
33. Whoops!
34. Hard to argue against this.
"If I were forced to make a conjecture about the most important driver of unrest, my guess would be that it was the result of a general realization that bad people are running the world.
The general feeling that bad hegemons are in charge of the planet could fester in the backs of people’s minds, causing them to strike out at authorities closer to home in the name of democracy, freedom, equality, and so on. And awareness of hegemonic illiberalism is coupled with an awareness of rising authoritarianism closer to home, as many countries embrace their own versions of Trump/Xi/Modi/Putin. The result, according to Freedom House, is that the people of the world are engaged in a “leaderless struggle for democracy” — a struggle that’s both local and global at the same time. "
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-great-protest-wave
35. Good profile & routine of a very interesting guy.
https://www.theproofwellness.com/chris-burkard-on-finding-stillness-exploring-the-wild
36. "Everyone focuses on distribution because that’s the easiest thing to see. Distribution only gets them to the front door; the quality makes them stick around. The key is to write great content consistently."
"Newsletters aren’t the highway for the Pompliano family. Rather, the highway is a combination of quality and consistency served through Twitter. Anthony, Polina, and Joe are in the business of connecting with like-minded people. They are not in the content business. They are in the “building companies and investing in companies” business. The way to build companies today is to build audiences first."
https://2pml.com/2021/04/04/scale/
37. Investing in farmland is a smart long term play. Interesting perspective on the long term plan here.
"Well over the past 10 years+ Bill’s money manager has been accumulating acres of farmland across 19 states. As billionaire’s go with their money, Bill’s pretty secretive. No one from his Holding Co (Cascade) will speak to the media (I get it) and he hasn’t publicly stated why he owns the land. Regardless, it’s estimated through his multitude of holding companies that Bill owns about 242,000 acres of farmland and another 27,000 of other land.
THIS is why money is power. You get to play the long game. Why mess with lobbyists and regulators when you can just acquire all the assets and change the regulations yourself."
https://contrarianthinking.substack.com/p/invest-like-bill-gates-farmland-never
38. Great news for Portugese startup ecosystem. Congrats to the team at Shilling Founders Fund.
39. "Could a sufficiently robust cloud country with, say, 1-10M committed digital citizens, provable cryptocurrency reserves, and physical holdings all over the earth similarly achieve societal recognition from the United Nations?
A cloud country with a population of this size would actually fit right in the middle of the pack globally, as out of the 193 UN-recognized sovereign states approximately 20% of existing countries have a population of less than 1M and ~55% have a population of less than 10M.
This includes many countries people typically think of as "real", like Luxembourg (615k), Cyprus (1.18M), Estonia (1.3M), New Zealand (4.7M), Ireland (4.8M), Singapore (5.8M), and so on."
https://1729.com/how-to-start-a-new-country/
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
Cooks Versus Chefs
Chefs make something completely different. A great example is Elon Musk. From a startup perspective this is the act of Category Creation. A Cook on the other hand follows a recipe. Most of us are Cooks. From a startup perspective, this is competing in an established industry.
BUT you can start as a cook, mastering the basics. Over time, you mix, re-mix and add in new things and end up as a Chef. Thinking about Chinese Internet ecosystem, most of the big players like Alibaba, Tencent, Netease, Baidu all started as Chinese copies of similar US internet giants. But they all morphed into completely different and arguably more dominant internet giants in their market.
For example, Alibaba was a B2B Marketplace, which turned into an online classifieds business, Alipay (Paypal), Taobao (Amazon) & fast growing cloud business like AWS.
Tencent started as a messaging product QQ, morphed into a massive gaming giant (globally i might add), Weibo (Twitter), Wechat the world’s first super App which is a mix of Whatsapp, Instagram, Microblogging, & business sites. All underpinned by Wepay, the immensely popular mobile payments service.
Same with some of the Japanese internet giants like Rakuten (Amazon) or Yahoo! Japan (Yahoo! started as a portal but ended up adding a dominant consumer auctions business like eBay, Broadband & Mobile phone business). Or even GRAB in Southeast Asia, which started as a clone of Uber but ended up as a major player in the payments space.
This reminds me of my friend Hiten Shah’s framework. You can start business as an Explorer or Pirate. Explorer wants to explore the frontier and build something no one else has seen before. A pirate literally takes an idea that is out there already and will try to do it better. A company example he uses is Drift, who in the first couple years basically cloned Intercom. But over time, they completely changed their product and business where it became something totally different to Intercom. And a very successful business just like Intercom.
As per the examples from the Chinese, Japanese & Southeast Asian markets, you can start as a Pirate but end up being an Explorer. This is similar to many of our careers, it’s good to have mentors, heroes and roadmaps to model ourselves on but over time as you get your own experience and learn more about ourselves, you can start to find your own path.
As I’ve said many times, it’s not where you start, it’s where you end up that is important.
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
The Theory of Constraints for Startups: A Prioritization Mechanism
“The Goal” by Eli Goldratt is a classic business fiction book that came out in the mid-80s. The hero of the story, Alex Rogo has 90 days to turn around a manufacturing plant before corporate HQ closes it down. He learns from his professor the Theory of Constraints.
“The theory of constraints (TOC) is a management paradigm that views any manageable system as being limited in achieving more of its goals by a very small number of constraints. There is always at least one constraint, and TOC uses a focusing process to identify the constraint and restructure the rest of the organization around it. TOC adopts the common idiom "a chain is no stronger than its weakest link". This means that processes, organizations, etc., are vulnerable because the weakest person or part can always damage or break them or at least adversely affect the outcome. (Source: Wikipedia)
The idea is you need to have some source of metrics and measurement in place. Once you have that, you can use this to identify what your constraint is and fix it.
In Startup parlance, it’s about figuring out the one metric that matters. I still like using the very simple AARRR Metrics framework which can help you figure out what the biggest issue is. A=Acquisition, A=Activation (Onboarding), R=Retention, R=Revenue, R=Referral in case you don’t know it. It’s a very valuable framework to diagnose what your immediate problem is. It’s a way for a startup founder to focus all their time and energy to fixing this.
To go back to Constraints, here is the definition from the book.
“A constraint is anything that prevents the system from achieving its goal. There are many ways that constraints can show up, but a core principle within TOC is that there are not tens or hundreds of constraints. There is at least one, but at most only a few in any given system. Constraints can be internal or external to the system.”
It is very relevant for Startups to help them focus on the area that is holding them back from growing. What is the biggest constraint in growing the business. Ie. what is the choke point? In some cases, it could be a Product issue. If so, do you need to hire more engineers & then build. Or maybe you are getting a ton of leads but you can’t close any of them. Then the issue is a sales team quantity or quality issue. Or perhaps business is coming in and you cannot keep up with demand. The constraint could be a money issue to hire people, so fundraising may be key. Or maybe you have the money and then it’s an actually hiring issue. And by the way, the constraint will change all the time. It’s like whack a mole but that is the game of startups.
I found this framework to be a really helpful one whenever I talk with startup founders who have a hard time prioritizing. Once you use this lens it does help clarify what they should be focusing on. This focus is what will allow you to win.
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads April 4th, 2021
“The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived.”
― Robert Jordan, The Fires of Heaven
1. This is so good. So many insights per minute here. I'm trying to get smarter and I recommend listening to this if you want to know where the world is going. Rise of Decentralized world. Declining (the West) versus Rising World (Asia). Another great Interview with Balaji S. Srinivasan.
The Realignment Ep. 98: Balaji Srinivasan, the Coming Decentralization of Everything
2. "Negative press is an attack on your social network.
Your bank account is your stored wealth, your real name is your stored reputation. Only you can debit your bank account, but anyone can debit your reputation."
http://www.marknagelberg.com/notes-on-the-pseudonymous-economy-balaji-srinivasan/
3. "Remember, you are choosing the VC as much as they are choosing you. You might be “married” to this partner for the next ten years -- so you need to choose wisely. No need to waste your time with VCs that are not going to be good fits. This is especially true in today’s more frothy market where you don’t need to collect term sheets just to optimize valuation."
https://www.safegraph.com/blog/10-non-obvious-rules-to-raising-a-series-b
4. "The purpose of telling this story is to turn the heads of those in the global tech community towards this remarkable project that is being built in India so that we can collectively build upon the lessons learnt from India Stack, similar to how the virtues of M-PESA are still extolled in business schools and case studies around the world today.
Although the implementation of India Stack has undeniably helped to transform the fortunes of the world’s fifth largest economy and its second most populous country, this work has largely gone unnoticed. This needs to change."
https://tigerfeathers.substack.com/p/the-internet-country
5. An old book that I seem to have missed. Will have to fix this. Lessons from Vanderbilt.
"Vanderbilt rode this wave like no other. He was rich. Filthy rich. At the peak of his wealth he owned the equivalent of one in every nine dollars in the United States.
Vanderbilt’s legacy provides timeless and universal lessons in business success. He thrived in an era of enormous technological change as railways revolutionised the American economy. Yet his approach to business is evident in many of the successful businesses we see today; tapping new markets through lower prices, respecting shareholders, sharing scale advantages and sacrificing short term profits for long term gains."
http://mastersinvest.com/newblog/2019/8/2/learning-from-cornelius-vanderbilt
6. Wow, just wow. It's a long one but I strongly recommend listening to this. It is dark but I think he is one of most prescient & sharpest humans on the planet.
https://tim.blog/2021/03/24/balaji-srinivasan/
7. "Virtually all investing mistakes are rooted in people looking at long-term market returns and saying, “That’s nice, but can I have it all faster?”
https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/too-much-too-soon-too-fast/
8. "Most good investing is just sticking around for the longest time possible, through thick and thin. Quash the need to own whatever is going up the most and you reduce the urge to abandon whatever eventually goes down. Someone will always be getting richer than you. It’s OK."
https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/five-investing-powers/
9. "While money is immensely important, the reason why you have it is to keep your health! By being rich you’re able to eat healthy, get some sun, live without stress and help people who have helped you in the past. The point of getting money is not to buy a Tesla (you can if you’d like) it is to eliminate every negative aspect of your life."
https://wallstreetplayboys.com/1-million-10-years-zero-excuses/
10. The brilliant content marketing of Cathie Wood & ARK.
"While other firms go out of their way to hide their investments, ARK is an open book. This is also uniquely tailored to our current market environment. It’s effectively pushing a press release to the entire world every day. The financial media eats it up, while it dominates social media. They remain in the conversation every single day.
That simple push of numerical information catalyzes an army of investors, all looking for guidance, affirmation, and just something to think about, to think about yourstocks. Every day you manage to live, as the saying goes, rent-free in all of our heads.
It's become pretty clear in the past decade there's a correlation between power and the space you occupy in our collective consciousness."
https://themargins.substack.com/p/cathie-wood-and-content-strategy
11. "But now it's time for risk-takers to shine: entrepreneurs, creators, influencers, chefs...
Embrace optionality:
Risk isn't a bad thing per se, and we need to help people assess and take more risk.
Risk can never be totally eliminated, and doing nothing is probably a bigger risk than making the wrong decisions.
Only diversification can mitigate risk. No asset manager puts all of their money into gold, no matter how safe gold is considered to be.
As a (young) individual, don't park your money in products earning 0.5% interest, don't choose your education because it's safe, don't go work for large corporates with 40-year career plans. These were strategies for a society that thrived on large companies, cheap real estate, and heavy leverage."
https://thefamily.substack.com/p/were-in-a-high-variance-world
12. "I’ve started nine businesses. The best predictive signal for their success has turned out to be the phase of the economic cycle in which they were started. Put simply, the best time to start a business is on the heels of a recession. And while pandemic economics haven’t resulted in a garden-variety recession — in either its duration (short) or its recovery (K-shaped) — there are factors that make this the best time to start a business in over a decade. Specifically:
--Unprecedented stimulus and savings resulting in a Nazaré-like wave of consumer spending.
--A gestalt among consumers and enterprises to question the status quo, and be open to new products and services.
--The emergence of new fields and the capital to disrupt traditional industries as immunities kick in and monopoles are broken up."
https://www.profgalloway.com/the-sonic-entrepreneurship-boom/
13. "What we have here is a frothy mix of startups and large companies racing to provide a comprehensive spectrum of workflow automation tools to empower companies to spin up workflows quickly and move work involving both human and machine labor through an organization."
https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/26/no-code-workflow-and-rpa-line-up-for-their-automation-moment/
14. "The first rigged game is certainly money and there is one big trap here. The trap? The personality destruction that comes with it. You’ll find that “most” rich people are boring as rocks. They are extremely conservative and simply worked hard all day long slaving away to make money. They are so conservative they don’t even think the 4% rule works and likely live at 35% of annual passive income “just in case”. These are the same people that exhibit large amounts of passive aggressive behavior, live with quiet desperation and just don’t see money as a tool (instead they view it as their actual worth)."
"Fortunately, just like money there is a basic formula to being happy which is as follows: Don’t bother comparing yourself to anyone else and put all your effort into each day. That is really all there is."
https://wallstreetplayboys.com/the-five-rigged-games-in-life/
15. "The best deals used to be reserved for the best investors. But as more liquidity entered private markets, and finding money was no longer the primary issue, founders now have other factors to consider. One of the biggest factors is getting their product or services in front of users. Traditional venture capitalists are no longer the only game in town."
https://theirrelevantinvestor.com/2021/03/26/everyone-is-an-investor/
16. Never was a fan of Russell Brand, but it definitely looks like he has grown up, which is a good thing.
“You go through little deaths,” he continues. “The little deaths of the phases of your life. And perhaps our progression as individuals is contingent upon if we are able to accept that.”
https://www.menshealth.com/health/a35885497/russell-brand-revelation-interview/
17. "Every civilization rests on a core stack of social technology that coordinates and sustains its vital institutions. Social technologies—intentionally designed ways for the people in a society to operate—form the basis of the varied systems of material production and material technology that we see in every society. These social technology cores decay with time as they obsolete their own foundations, and as errors and parasitism build up. This decay can be circumvented, and the decaying core social technologies can be swapped for new ones, but this is a process of immense historical difficulty.
What, then, is the core engine of our own civilization, and in what way might it decay? While we lack an incontrovertible answer, the Industrial Revolution appears to be a leading candidate."
https://palladiummag.com/2021/03/24/the-end-of-industrial-society/
18. Man, I love Strand books. Pandemic has wrecked alot of stuff.
"The Strand, with its four retail floors and its claimed “18 miles of books,” is a collector’s paradise. A nerd’s sanctuary. A place where staff take pride in knowing their stuff and imparting that wisdom to shoppers. The past year, though, has laid bare just how perilous a job you like, or even love, can be when you’re working without the most basic of safety nets.
This fragility is something that Strand employees have always known — they work in retail, after all. Before, though, the job had just enough perks, just enough meaning, to make it worth the struggle. In that way, working at the Strand was like a microcosm of living in New York, a city that absolutely does not need you. Without all the good, the bad takes on new weight."
https://www.vulture.com/article/the-strand-bookstore-union-protest.html
19. The Sharper Image. I remember that store that was in almost every major mall in the 80s and 90s. Its rise and fall.
https://thehustle.co/how-one-man-built-the-sharper-image-into-the-worlds-wackiest-gadget-store/
20. One of the best threads I've read on Future of Work. This is must read on where the working world is going. Seriously.
https://twitter.com/chris_herd/status/1375429865281875976
21. "Discord gives Microsoft access to a growing list of more than 140 million monthly active users that includes thousands of top YouTubers, creators, and gamers. Microsoft wants its own community.
The community and creator aspects for Microsoft’s potential Discord acquisition are clear, but the company is also driven by its desire to have big public services running on Azure."
https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/26/22352028/microsoft-discord-acquisition-analysis-report
22. Good profile & write up on the story of Clubhouse. It's very early days but this has been fun to watch.
https://www.wired.com/story/inside-clubhouse-audio-app-paul-davison-rohan-seth/
23. "But what we have is this collision between a public that is in repudiation mode and these elites who have lost control to the degree that they can’t hoist these utopian promises upon us anymore because no one believes it, but they’re still acting like zombie elites in zombie institutions. They still have power. They can still take us to war. They can still throw the police out there, and the police could shoot us, but they have no authority or legitimacy. They’re stumbling around like zombies.
Our politicians and institutions are going to have to adjust to the new world in which the public can’t be walled off or controlled. Leaders can’t stand at the top of pyramids anymore and talk down to people. The digital revolution flattened everything. We’ve got to accept that."
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22301496/martin-gurri-the-revolt-of-the-public-global-democracy
24. "And as remote workers realize they can reprioritize their personal needs, they will leverage this ability to conduct a tech-enabled exit. Through this “vote with your feet” practice of “tech enabled exit”, governments will begin to adapt their policy offerings to attract this class of people or be forced to adapt to their absence. In the end, the Sovereign Individual class will gain previously unavailable qualities of life.
This change will not be a smooth transition. It will be full of conflict, populism, and will change what people value. There will be bitterness, resentment, and attempts to publicly shame and extract value from this new group of people. Most importantly, in this transition, freedom of movement will become a luxury good."
https://dougantin.com/remote-work-the-tech-enabled-exit/
25. The lockdowns don't work & if they do, u have to go all out like in China.
"the lockdowns destroyed industries, schools, churches, liberties and lives, demoralizing the population and robbing people of essential rights. All in the name of safety from a virus that did its work in any case.
What’s striking about all the above predictions of infections and deaths is not just that they were all wrong. It’s the arrogance and confidence behind each of them. After a full year and directly observing the inability of “nonpharmaceutical interventions” to manage the pathogen, the experts are still wedded to their beloved lockdowns, unable or unwilling to look at the data and learn anything from them.
The concept of lockdowns stemmed from a faulty premise: that you can separate humans, like rats in cages, and therefore control and even eradicate the virus. After a year, we unequivocally know this not to be true, something that the best and wisest epidemiologists knew all along."
https://www.aier.org/article/why-is-everyone-in-texas-not-dying/
26. "The talent game has become more complex for the 2020s. Businesses continue to seek out human capital in inventive ways and with little regard for national borders. Now, though, countries have joined the race — which means more freedom and opportunity than ever before for in-demand workers."
27. The Lesson: The Noble Lie is usually not. Also learn to think for yourself.
"Which brings me to the reason experts should be more reluctant to lie to the public: They aren’t experts on the topic of when to lie.
Just because you know about biology or public health doesn’t mean you know whether publicly admitting that masks work will make people hoard them. And just because you know about economics doesn’t mean you understand politics and public opinion formation. When experts make guesses about whether the public can handle the truth, they aren’t acting as experts; they’re acting as amateurs. They’re winging it.
Experts who take it upon themselves to decide what truths the public can and can’t handle might be making the same mistake so many smart people make — that because they’re smart about one thing, they’re smart about everything."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/yes-experts-will-lie-to-you-sometimes
28. What an implosion.
"He was a hot-shot disciple of the hedge-fund legend Julian Robertson — one of the stars to strike out on his own from the vaunted Tiger empire. Now Bill Hwang is at the center of an extraordinary spree of giant stock trades that’s reverberated through financial markets and set Wall Street abuzz."
29. "For every negative thought, there is a positive counter thought. If you don’t like the Celtics, maybe you like the Knicks. If you don’t like Trump, maybe you like Biden. If you don’t like Bitcoin, maybe you like Ethereum. It is a pretty simple move, and also a very powerful move, to focus on what you like versus what you don’t like."
https://avc.com/2021/03/staying-positive/
30. “It’s clear that Americans feel comfortable relying on their local pharmacies for the vaccine,” said one senior Biden health official. “The retail pharmacy program will keep growing and I think you will begin to see more people going down the block to CVS to get the shot than driving maybe an hour to the federal sites to get it.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/29/covid-vaccine-sites-478233
31. "The future of finance is crypto currencies and the world is changing at rates we’ve never seen before (we lived through the birth of the internet – unfortunately getting old). The reason we have to do this product and people need to pay attention is because of Darwinism “Adapt or Die”. If we didn’t focus our attention in this area you would know that we fell behind in terms of advances in technology. If we figured out VPNs, Aff. Marketing, Hypervisors etc… It would make sense that we were following this space as well.
Will there be blow ups? Yes. Will there be 100x returns in certain projects? Yes. Do you want to have absolutely zero exposure to this type of market? No. The writing is already on the wall as high tech rarely goes to zero.
If you look at history, the internet was a massive bubble but it ended up being life changing technology. The car was laughed at and was a bubble with 1,000s of car companies but that was also life changing technology. We can go on and on. If you see a massive bubble in anything that pops and comes back to life… You’ve found a real technology."
https://wallstreetplayboys.com/book-intro-crypto-starting-for-the-beginners/
32. Crypto, Precious metals, Farmland and Uncorrelated Foreign Investments.
"These are the four stores of value that I think any portfolio should consider. There’s not one golden ticket. My perspective, as a pragmatic entrepreneur, is to get involved in all of them. I don’t go all-in on anything. I like to have a little bit of everything.
You’re better able to protect yourself and your assets by having several options.
The added benefit is that in buying land or real estate or by investing in foreign businesses or governments you might get a residence or citizenship out of it. Especially for Westerners, this residual benefit will provide big value going forward that you never thought you needed 10 years ago."
https://nomadcapitalist.com/2021/03/17/stores-of-value-asset-protection-diversification/
33. "The Suez accident, which is holding up an estimated $9.6bn of goods a day according to Lloyd’s List, has drawn attention to the inherent fragility of tightly stretched global supply chains at the very moment when they are already being buffeted by a pandemic and in an era when the philosophical underpinnings of global trade are being challenged."
https://archive.is/dmRU4#selection-1701.0-1713.22
34. A very good summary & history of money here.
https://lifemathmoney.com/the-history-and-evolution-of-money/
35. "The goal is to earn across all time zones in a 24 hour period. A kind of temporal income strategy.
24 hour time zone earning maximizes freedom by earning in many environments. It’s a hedge against localized risks like war, natural disaster, and changing economic environments. If you’re trying to cultivate resilience and freedom, then you want to incorporate a time zone strategy into your income portfolio."
"Leverage proof of work by creating an information capital asset and gifting it to the person whose attention you want to attract. By gifting real value, they will have a better understanding of your worth and you will rise above your peers."
https://dougantin.com/6-ideas-worth-exploring/
36. "So, in short: too much debt and money printing leads to a declining value of the US dollar, and potentially stagflation.
As a result, the government is likely to drastically raise taxes and chase business and capital away from the United States, leading to capital controls and prohibitions on alternative investments.
This is not some wild conspiracy theory or crazy conjecture. This is one of the wealthiest, most successful fund managers in human history bluntly calling the end of the US-dollar debt supercycle.
His top recommendation, for example, is “a well-diversified portfolio of non-debt and non-dollar assets.”
And in Dalio’s view, diversification means “currency diversification, country diversification, as well as asset class diversification.”
In other words, don’t keep all of your eggs in one basket, one country, or one currency."
37. Babylon Berlin is a great show. Bit dark but still good.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/opinion/babylon-berlin-weimar-america.html
38. "Long term thinkers have the upper hand. It takes emotional intelligence and control, but if you can keep your focus on the select few things that move the needle for your goals, you have a fighting chance. And ultimately, a fighting chance is all that any of us can ask for."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/a-fighting-chance-is-all-you-can
39. "The big ad-based platforms will become more commerce-focused over time, and emergent platforms will likely start with subscription, microtransactions, or virtual currencies—or stitch together all three. In this future, platforms will capture more of the value that they create, creators will more easily earn a living, and consumers will have a better experience online."
https://digitalnative.substack.com/p/how-to-monetize-culture
40. "99.99% of people in this world, the Common Man, have much more in common with each other than the media/political/banking/corporate class that is actively trying to pit them against each other by taking extremely nuanced topics and forcing people to view them as "black and white", pick a side, and aggressively attack the "other" for not demonstrating "same think".
Don't give into their games. They are pure evil and they will lead society to ruin.
Turn off the boob tube. Talk to your neighbors. Have open and honest conversations. Don't let them divide. And most importantly, SPEAK UP against their dividing tactics."
https://tftc.io/martys-bent/issue-961-gradually-then-suddenly-authoritarianism/
41. "This is not to say there cannot be changes in how we deal with China. Europe and the United States are developing new forms of economic competition with China, but this is better regarded as the final triumph of neoliberalism, not its collapse: Western democracies now behave like firms in the market, jostling for share and control over advanced technology."
https://brunomacaes.substack.com/p/what-is-happening-with-china-a-new
42. This is a smart move. Nano Funds do perform well.
"We then looked at performance across our fund managers, and it turns out that of funds with $50 million in capital — our better-performing funds — have more ownership than 7.5%. They have more like 10% to 12%. Now, when you look at these tiny funds, if you’re a $15 million fund, 15% of that [should equate to] 2.2% ownership, but we are seeing that these tiny funds are actually getting more like 4% to 5% ownership. They’re punching above their weight because of who is involved."
43. Ukraine is pretty awesome and I do love Kyiv!
https://mailchi.mp/fa916e7d1bc6/how-to-obtain-residency-in-ukraine?e=123a1c25c4
44. WOW. This is a big fund. But based on their past track record, no surprise that LPs would throw money at them.
45. "Assuming that we can go back to feel safe around each other and the vaccines can manage our safety effectively, I think it’s fair to assume that urban amenities will come back pretty much at the same level that existed before, so [the] labor supply of well-educated workers will keep flowing to these places."
https://www.vox.com/22352360/remote-work-cities-housing-prices-work-from-home
46. Importance of Frontier & mindset which has served America well.
"In Tocqueville's view, the existence of a frontier seemed to divert a lot of political energy into commerce. In a country like France at the time that was fully settled, a lot of the way that people got ahead was through politics-redistribution of existing wealth rather than the creation of new wealth.
When you have a huge frontier that includes some of the best farmland & access to natural resources on the planet, it’s actually easier to advance by going out and settling the frontier - effectively discovering "new" wealth."
"One wonders to what extent America’s philosophy of pragmatism was born of the frontier. There is less to be gained by getting all political, just focus on getting things done & you'll do just fine.
There’s a lot of deservedly negative things that can be said about America, both present & past, but one thing I find nearly everyone agrees with is that it’s still probably the best place in the world to be an entrepreneur. It seems plausible to me that part of this is attributable to the frontier that existed for a long time. If you were an entrepreneur that wanted to get new things done, a country with a vast frontier is a good place to do it."
47. "Once you make an honest accounting of the sources of stress in your life, you'll know to balance all of that strain with rest. This is important! It's easy to see how only doing strenuous workouts without any time off is not a good way to get stronger, right? You'll just be exhausted. But this pattern happens too often in our daily lives, in a society that pushes us to be constantly productive. Too many of us are consistently in a state of low-level aggravation and threat response. This takes a toll on the body. It makes us sick; it shortens our lives. Thinking about your life in cycles of stress and rest—welcoming the hard parts but committing to real recovery—is a way to break out of this pattern.
In this way, embracing stress is not about living a life of discomfort. It's about balance. Be sure you're bouncing back. But also know that you can never rest your body to greatness: Whether we want to admit it or not, all growth starts with stress."
https://www.gq.com/story/embracing-stress-is-key-to-living-well
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
“Growth Investing” Versus “Value Investing” Style in Venture Capital
Growth investing is defined in the stock market as investing in an asset that has the potential to outperform the overall market.
Growth investing in regards to Venture: Usually a proven & reputable Founder (ie. who has had an exit 100M usd+), from a renowned company alumni like Stripe, Uber, AirbnB (or Facebook or Google back in the day). Super sexy space, competitive round.
This is an access game. This is where branded investors like Sequoia, Accel or A16Z really shine. Their firms brands, reputation capital and network are crucial to selling and getting a founder to let them into the round. I stress the point “let them in.” Deals are being oversubscribed literally within 24 hours. Or for some lucky or fortunate companies even getting pre-emptive term sheets. I have seen this happen for at least 3 of my companies for series A stage in the last month or so. I should note that these firms are also not afraid of batting aside others through offering higher valuations or better terms. Or in some cases even squeezing earlier investors out of their pro rata.
Value Investing is defined in the stock market as investing in companies that are trading below what their real worth is. In Venture capital, it is going after under appreciated sectors/stages/founders/geographies. I note that Founders Fund and Khosla seem to be great examples of this.
Also we see the rise of Studios who farm and cultivate founders for this, 8VC is a great VC fund but they do an excellent job incubating companies too. Vertical focused VC Funds are also better able to practice value investing style as they can cultivate and even help ideate with founders in their specific sector before the founders even start a company.
You can make money with either strategy. In fact, the best investors try to do both but all investors tend to predominately follow style over the other. In my time, with the volume of deals I did with my team, we had to pursue both strategies. But most of my best returns came from the value approach. This was one of looking for founders, sectors & companies that were not as obvious and usually overlooked by most investors in Silicon Valley. Ie. Unsexy investments. It requires a lot of homework, digging around, public speaking, networking & travel aka #AirplaneArbitrage. These tendencies explain why I spent so much time exploring new geographies full of awesome but under-appreciated founders served by inexperienced and lacklustre investors. Regions like Central/Eastern Europe, New Zealand and Canada to call out some specific geographies.
Personality wise, I also lean more toward the Value investing method. I hate being rushed and actively fight against FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). I like to get to know founders over time when possible, just as I think it’s important for founders to get to know me first.
As always, there is no one best way. It’s what is the best fit for you as an investor. This style preference is also something founders need to understand when looking for investors.
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
The Fools Theory
I am a collector of mental models and frameworks. I learned a new one recently from Ukrainian investment banker friend. It’s the “Fools Theory.” In this framework, it posits that the world is split between 4 types of people. Wise Guys/Gals, Simpletons/ Martyrs, Bandits and Fools.
The Wise Guys/Gals: make decisions based on what is good for themselves and other parties.
Self explanatory but these are the Win-Win folks straight from Steven Covey. Long term thinkers and this path tends to be more sustainable.
The Simpletons/ Martyrs: make decisions that are good for others but not themselves.
These are amazing human beings who end up being burned out or resentful because they end up giving so much of themselves and are taken advantage of by others (sadly).
The Bandits: make decisions that are only good for themselves, but not for others.
We all know people like this. Not necessarily bad either as you know they are out for themselves. So they are pretty predictable and you know what to expect from them.
The Fools: make decisions that are bad for themselves and for others.
Basically these folks have no clue what they are doing. Also arguably the most dangerous people among us as they end up hurting everyone around them.
I found this to be a super helpful framework as I get to know people. Once you see this, you literally cannot unsee it around us. Understanding what drives people is critical.
Using this framework & seeing where people fit, you get a better sense of whether you want to do business or hang out with them. And assuming you have no choice in spending time with them, it’s a guideline on how you handle them. We’re all in the people business at the end of day.
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads March 28th, 2021
“Creativity Is Intelligence Having Fun.” – Albert Einstein
"So as we are watching this all play out, investors are fearful of inflation. They aren’t going to wait for inflation to occur before they act. They’ll front run the inflation. They will move capital into inflation-hedge assets. And those inflation hedge assets will continue to rise."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/investors-will-always-try-to-front
2. This looks like a cool place. Will have to check it out.
https://www.amazingarchitecture.com/bar/rabbit-habit-bar-in-kyiv-ukraine-by-yod-design-lab
3. "Instead of focusing so heavily on content expansion, creators and publishers need to be thinking about building features they can provide their most loyal customers — the subscriber. The goal should be to have subscribers identify directly with the creator and feel invested in their work. They should feel value in the environment the creator is building outside of the content itself, through community, collaboration and participation. These features and tools should enable that, which makes loyalty and retention as a functioning utility vs. a sentiment."
4. "The best way to scale these technologies up quickly will be to directly speed-up large-scale adoption. That means massive government investment in solar and storage. Carbon taxes will be much less effective, since their effect is diffused through all sectors of the economy rather than focused on the key areas, and since carbon taxes are partially a degrowth policy in addition to an adoption incentive. Similarly, policies to intentionally limit economic growth will be actively counterproductive.
Green growth — intentional rapid mass adoption of renewables — is America’s best shot at saving the planet from catastrophic climate change, because it’s our best shot at actually getting China and other countries to decarbonize. It’s also fair, because it minimizes the sacrifices that developing countries will have to make. And it’s likely to be far more politically acceptable to the American people than high carbon taxes or degrowth policies."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/decarbonization-think-globally-act
5. "In an industry roll-up, you acquire and merge multiple smaller companies into a large company. If you have chosen the right industry and the right acquisition targets, a roll-up allows you to:
--Cut costs by pooling resources.
--Become more competitive.
--Benefit from so-called "multiple arbitrage". Smaller firms tend to be offered for a cheaper valuation, whereas the stock market values larger, growing firms at higher multiples. In theory, with each acquisition, the valuation of a publicly-listed consolidator should leap forward.
It's a neat strategy if you can find the right industry to apply it to. Most industries already have a significant degree of concentration, and there are simply not enough smaller targets to acquire."
6. Tanzania is a growth star in Africa.
"There is a huge domestic market with a population of nearly 60 million, two-thirds of whom are under 20. Population growth is over 3% a year. Dar es Salaam, the commercial capital and major port city, is projected to be among the largest urban areas by population anywhere in the world, during our lifetimes.
There is great potential and much to be positive about, but, as ever, the execution risk is massive. “This is Africa,” as they say.
As I have often said, the perception of risk is often much higher than the actual risks of investing in Africa, which has much to offer."
https://globalvaluehunter.com/straight-facts-on-tanzania-for-investors/
7. Routines are critical for nomad capitalists. Always interesting to learn about other folks.
https://nomadcapitalist.com/2018/01/01/routines-habits-successful-nomad-capitalists
8. This is quite a good discussion on what's happening in Venture Capital these days. It’s cray cray competitive which is great for founders and death for most of the traditional undifferentiated VCs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEVLyPwJAZQ
9. Alexander Tamas is the secret weapon behind DST's success. Incredible investor.
"Cross-border foresight can also be very important, as the history of technology is playing out in different geographies at different speeds."
https://mediciglobal.substack.com/p/2021-2-decoding-alexander-tamas
10. This is a smart kid. Alot of the knowledge, opportunities & tools available now did not exist 20 years ago.
"Your goal should be to reframe how you approach traditional investment returns. Effectively split your investments into 2 buckets. One, the traditional path designed as retirement savings. The other, your angel portfolio that you’ll use over the next 5 to 10 year period to reinvest profits in yourself."
https://dougantin.com/how-to-angel-invest-in-yourself/
11. "Bitcoiners are conducting an information insurgency.
They are quite literally controlling the public narrative through an overwhelming amount of content that has no reliance on traditional distribution methods. Up until recently, the only time that journalists or television shows wanted to speak with bitcoiners was to ridicule, mock, and attack them.
The bitcoin community ignored those short term challenges and instead built a direct relationship with the mass population. Twitter. Reddit. Telegram. Podcasts. Instagram. Facebook. Email. You can’t exist on the internet for 24 hours without coming in contact with content that is created by this community."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/bitcoins-information-insurgency
12. "Looking back at history, we see that general-purpose technologies often take a long time to start lifting productivity by measurable amounts. The reason is that when new technologies appear, you can’t always just swap them out for existing ones — you often have to entirely reorganize your systems of production around the new technology, and that’s a difficult and expensive process."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/distributed-service-sector-productivity
13. Rally (and all the others listed) is an AMAZING business and I wish I had discovered them earlier so I could have invested in them. This is the future.
"Rally is a platform that allows people like you and me to invest in partial shares of high-value stuff. Rally started as a place where investors could purchase shares of rare cars, before moving into art and watches. Now, it’s ramping up its sneaker offerings with these Kobe 2s, along with more: a pair of Air Jordan 6s game-worn and signed by Michael Jordan himself; shoes Zion Williamson wore in action; and a 1972 prototype of Nike’s Moon Shoes.
What all these investment vehicles—Otis, Rally, WatchFund, Robinhood, cryptocurrencies and NFTs more generally—have in common is a stated desire by their founders to level the economic playing field. For decades, only the wealthiest people have been able to play the stock market, buy a rare watch worth tens of thousands knowing its value would only rise, or treat a collectible item like a painting (or a sneaker!) like an investment opportunity."
14. This seems like a very interesting way to buy farmland. Acretrader, Tillable, FarmTogether & Harvest Returns are taking different angles to this.
15. "So while China’s government is popular within China, it is extremely unpopular among most of its neighbors, developed and developing alike. The Russians are a big exception, of course (and maybe Pakistan too, though I can’t find a poll). But if China is going to supplant the U.S. at the center of the global order, or even just the regional order in Asia, it’s going to need the approval of countries like India, Japan, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Currently, it just doesn’t have it."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/china-just-isnt-very-popular
16. The things people do for free sushi!
17. Beyonce's content strategy: very good stuff.
"Every content creator should have a funnel. It's a living document that changes over time. In today's content landscape, there are plenty of tools to segment your audience to do the same. For many folks starting, social media is their best opportunity to reach the masses."
https://theprofile.substack.com/p/beyonce-streaming
18. "It is through the transitive property of trust that companies and employees can share audience members. Once an employee builds a trusted relationship with an audience, their followers are more inclined to trust the individual’s employer. After all, the choice of where to work is not a decision most people take lightly. When an impressive person shows their dedication to a company, it signals to audience members that the employer must be impressive as well.
As the brand gains prestige through its public-facing employees, it can distribute the status back to its employees in the form of a virtuous cycle. This is the magic of a strong platform brand."
"Rather than building skill-based career moats, workers of the future may be using their audiences to secure permanent employment.
If this turns out to be the dominant strategy, many younger workers will start looking for opportunities that enable them to grow their following.
While some individuals will still want to build audiences on their own, many will opt to gain legitimacy and investment by partnering with an employer who can help them grow their reach and status."
https://junglegym.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-platform-brands
19. Nobody likes change. But Goldman Sachs always seems to end up on top.
"In many ways, it should all be sunny at Goldman Sachs: Its Wall Street businesses are booming, the stock is on a tear and the bank finally put to rest the 1MDB scandal that dogged it for six years. Instead, the firm is riveted by palace intrigue over executive defections, bristling over the use of company jets for personal trips and debating how flexible the workplace will be after Covid subsides."
20. For those who don't know what a SPAC this is a good discussion.
"Prominent companies like DraftKings, Virgin Galactic, and OpenDoor have all used SPACs to go public.
But SPACs — which are generally subject to less regulation than IPOs — have also drawn controversy for the risks they pose to public investors: earlier this week, the investment bank UBS banned its financial advisors from recommending SPAC stocks to clients.
What exactly is a SPAC? Why are so many companies choosing to go public via SPACs in lieu of a standard IPO? And how beneficial are they to businesses and investors?"
https://thehustle.co/what-the-hell-is-a-blank-check-company-spac/
21. "Clean air is now the ultimate luxury, and the business proposition rests on turning a commodity we’ve never had to pay for into a premium -product. But hovering over Molekule and the rest of the purifier industry are questions coming from university labs and consumer–product testers: Do these things actually work? And how much should clean air cost? Molekule and other manufacturers would put the question back to you more urgently: Just how much is your next breath worth?"
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/03/molekule-air-purifiers-business.html
22. "A scene is essentially a collection of purpose that everybody has agreed to and that's why they're there. And that's why they help you get into those mindsets. That's why scenes actually accomplish all these interesting, creative things.
These human behaviours about how scenes work and how this jockeying for status and competition and half working together, but also half being wary of each other is a generally reproducible rule about how people behave in general in situations where people's status and worth and presence and value is expanding rapidly, but also very indeterminately.
The startup scene is almost indistinguishable from a music scene. It is virtually the same thing. Bands are like startups, record labels are like VCs. You have the press and the whole mechanics of telling people about things is virtually indistinguishable from the Techcrunches and the Twitter presences of the world.
But ultimately what matters is that it's a hits business. Nothing matters until you get a hit, even if it’s a small hit. And then once you do, your life changes and everything revolves around this idea of figuring out how to preempt who is getting these hits and why, and that's how everything organizes. And so the elements that contribute to these scenes, which are the terroir for hits happening, like the floor plan of CBGBs. This is where art comes from. This is where creativity comes from. This is where new comes from."
https://danco.substack.com/p/how-scenes-work-with-jim-oshaughnessy
23. It happens......
"Never before had Puritan, founded a century ago in the tiny town of Guilford, been more important. And never before had it been so dysfunctional. A yearslong feud between the two owners, Templet and his cousin John Cartwright, had left the business in a management crisis."
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-03-18/covid-test-swab-company-puritan-faces-family-feud
24. I really like these! Building your personal competitive advantage.
https://sahilbloom.substack.com/p/on-competitive-advantage
25. “There is a playbook for success as an influencer and I believe it is a skill that can be taught,” Venz Box says. “Let me say ‘skills’ plural, that can be taught. To succeed you have to be a polymath— you need marketing skills, business skills, performance skills and creative skills.”
RewardStyle isn’t as difficult to get into as Harvard, but it is close—according to its spokesperson, hundreds of thousands apply every year but they only have approximately 100,000 registered influencers, among them Molly Sims, The Home Edit, Studio McGee, Aimee Song, Louise Roe, Nastia Lukin, Kristen Taekman and Tayshia Adams. The application involves a review of a potential influencer’s social media feeds—examining their audience engagement, their aesthetic, how often they post, what kind of an audience they reach and whether their content is “shoppable.”
26. Not sure why this is a big surprise as I think most billionaires do this. You want your people in power.
But this also shows the eternal nexus between money and power that has existed throughout human history.
"The donations are the latest display of how Thiel is cultivating a network of young, populist, Ivy League-educated proteges and encouraging them to run for Senate all around the country."
https://www.vox.com/recode/22332045/peter-thiel-jd-vance-ohio-senate-donation
27. “Just look at the kind of coin and you know how much it’s worth because everyone else agrees to accept that coin too. It changed the world and the way we run our civilizations.
But the time of analog money is passing and passing fast.
Digital technology is infinitely more flexible and it will let us take money in a thousand new directions we’re only beginning to imagine now.
Tomorrow’s money is smart money.
Just as digital cameras have replaced their analog counterparts, so too will digital, programmable money replace plain old paper money."
https://medium.com/@dan.jeffries/why-people-still-dont-get-cryptocurrency-2c0607857c63
28. "It’s a textbook example of a rational action in response to monetary inflation. Can we agree that the money supply is expanding in an unprecedented fashion the past 12 months everywhere in the world? If you’re going to make a rational investment decision today, whether you’re a real estate investor, a stock investor, a bond investor, or just a wage earner or you’re a treasurer, you have to estimate the rate of monetary expansion for the next eight years. We know there’s a commitment to run deficits, and we know this commitment to stimulus.
So now the issue is, What’s a rational behavior? I’ve got to find a store of value."
https://time.com/5947722/microstrategy-ceo-bitcoin/
29. This is a very deep discussion. I had to listen to this half speed to understand it (not sure I have either). So much here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42uhsP4vvCE
30. Thanks to the ever continuous & badly thought thru long downs. The almost 1 year lockdown in California (and other Democratic ruins states) will be considered a crime against humanity many years from now. (and FYI: I voted and am actually a Democratic but maybe not for long if things continue)
"More than a year into the pandemic, people have become accustomed to the lives they’ve built and the routines they’ve created in isolation at home in their “Covid caves.”
"The pandemic has already taken a mental toll on Americans. As of June 2020, nearly 41% of adults in the U.S. had reported they were struggling with mental health or substance use, with 31% reporting symptoms of anxiety or depression and 26% reporting trauma or a stressor-related disorder related to the pandemic, according to a survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report."
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/20/why-some-are-averse-to-return-to-normal-post-covid.html
31. This is SUPER smart. VC fund with influencers as their LPs and supporters. As good as a win-win for all parties & major value add for their consumer portfolio cos.
https://www.tubefilter.com/2021/03/19/night-media-20-million-venture-fund-mrbeast/
32. Geopolitical Anarchy is here.
"By dismantling physical and informational barriers across the globe, the basic capacity of states to provide security for their citizens has become weakened, perhaps fatally. By eroding the lines between home and abroad, postmodernity has globalised conflicts, and eroded even the very distinction between war and peace. Instead of perpetual peace, it has ushered in an age of perpetual anarchy that states are finding themselves powerless to contain.
Drone, camera and social media sharer thus become a single, integrated weapon system, a hybrid semi-autonomous proxy as useful and as cheap to operate as the expendable proxies fighting on the ground."
https://unherd.com/2021/03/anarchy-is-coming/
33. "As we transition from the industrial age to the information age, and now the digital age, the lifestyle operating systems of happy people are changing. And as we move deeper into the digital age, we will see a fragmentation of society along an infinite number of cultures.
But governments will continue to experience a slow stagnation as their constituents fragment along a growing number of lifestyle preferences. This will force governments to adapt policies to support the growing number of lifestyle preferences in their communities.
This adaptation reinforces the rise of the Sovereign Individual. As governments fail to adapt to changing preferences, individuals will move to locations that better suit their ideals. Supported by remote work and the tech-enabled exit, we will see a large scale reshuffling of people moving to communities that support their belief systems. The change will be slow at first but then will advance rapidly. And we are already seeing an example of this reshuffle of communities take place referred to as the “purpling of America”.
https://dougantin.com/lifestyle-culture-are-human-operating-systems
34. "If you knock it out of the park on day one, you should just quit. It is clear that you’re an anomaly. If you’re in the second camp and it takes you 5-8 years to really figure things out, you should take a calmer approach to your decisions. If it took you 5-10 years to figure it out, there is no reason to leave your career if you haven’t taken your foot off the gas. If you’re a middle of the pack employee you’re actually important to a company. Anyone who is generating operating profits for the firm is an asset. You just want to find a way to improve your operating margins while reducing your time."
"The only reason you should quit entirely is if you’ve knocked it out of the park or your career is hindering your side income. This is quite rare. If you’ve successfully built something over 5-10 years, is much more likely that dedicating 2-3 more hours will lead to more income. So you’re already increasing your exposure to your side income without giving up the steady pay check."
https://wallstreetplayboys.com/reminder-post-rig-the-system-in-your-favor/
35. I find it very hard to be sympathetic here.
This is what Investment banking is notoriously known for ever since the 80s & am surprised they are surprised. (well not surprised because most people don't do their homework). This is what you signed up for to make what you make!?? This upcoming generation is so WEAK!
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/18/investing/goldman-sachs-analyst-workplace/index.html
36. "In recent years, sneakers have become an asset class like stocks, bonds and cryptocurrency, becoming a multibillion-dollar market worldwide. They trade on a variety of reseller platforms; the best known include StockX, GOAT, Flight Club and Stadium Goods.
The marketplaces like to promote their extensive authentication processes so that buyers know that the items they end up with are the real deal.
But such efforts don’t get at how the sellers acquired the shoes, and that’s what is stirring up sneaker fans who don’t think they’re getting a fair shot at buying newly released products."
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-03-22/nike-sneaker-reseller-scandal
37. I will have to say, it does work. Cold showers are powerful.
https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/managing-stress-like-jack-dorsey-4366425/
38. Incredibly insightful presentation by THE Balaji S. Srinivasan.....The rise of the Network State. So much to take in here but the future looks bright (for some tech savvy folks at least).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5UAtAOV66c
39. About bloody time. America has been asleep at the wheel and forgotten about the critical piece of supply chains (not just for semiconductors). This review is only the start of what needs to be done.
"Biden’s review won’t just look at the US supply of semiconductors. Over the next two months, the administration will also look at America’s manufacturing abilities for pharmaceuticals, high-capacity batteries, and rare-earth elements that are found in everything from lasers to electric vehicles. There’s also a broader, year-long review of sectors ranging from food and energy to transportation. The ultimate goal, the president said in February, is “making sure the United States can meet every challenge we face in the new era.”
https://www.vox.com/recode/22336388/gm-chip-shortage-ford-semiconductors-biden
40. Portugal represent! Big round for Feedzai.
41. "Investing is directly linked to money and also to status. So it’s no surprise that every generation creates its own investing platform in response to its unique relationship with status. In a purely offline world, a game of golf with your Merrill Lynch broker cuts it, but that doesn’t work in an online world where followers count.
In this framing, ETrade was simply the stepping stone between Merrill Lynch and eToro. It provided the means for users to accumulate wealth but it didn’t vertically integrate that into status. ETrade’s marketing tagline in its 2000 heyday was “It’s your money.” Contrast that with eToro’s: “Trade like Steve.” One’s solitary; the other is social."
https://netinterest.substack.com/p/party-like-its-1999-from-etrade-to
42. This is smart. Leveraging their brand for ownership.
"Creative Juice initially will focus on valuing and buying minority stakes in YouTube channels and supporting creators with mentorship. It’s part of a growing trend toward platforms aimed at meeting the financing needs of the creator economy by offering investors the chance to buy into creators’ future earnings in various forms.
Equity-based investment models for individuals are gaining momentum. A variety of companies oriented toward income-sharing agreements, particularly in the education arena, have emerged in the last several years. Meanwhile, companies such as Pando Pooling offering income-pooling products, which allow young baseball players and MBA students to pool together for a share of their future earnings, are gaining acceptance as financial products."
43. "One misconception about creators is that they’re just seeking fame and fortune. The same survey of today’s youth showed that “Creativity” is the top-rated reason for wanting to work as a creator, outpacing celebrity and money. Being a creator is a form of self-expression."
"The creator economy is broader than entertainment and it’s broader than consumer—it’s about people being able to use technology to build in new ways, and then being able to use the internet as distribution to share and monetize those creations."
"The internet levels the playing field, and anyone can use their hustle and savvy to amass a following and monetize that following. In a time when American capitalism is broken and when the rich get richer, the internet actually resembles something like a meritocracy.
We’re just at the beginning of this shift—work will continue to disaggregate and the next generation of entrepreneurs will be “solopreneurs”.
https://digitalnative.substack.com/p/what-people-misunderstand-about-the
44. Whoops......
Titanic Taiwanese ship could be stuck in Suez Canal until mid-April
45. "Aella herself ranks in the top 0.8% on OnlyFans, and in her best-performing month last year made $103,000. Others on the site may make very little, despite posting lots of content. This extreme asymmetry in who benefits from a platform eviscerates everything except the very top of the curve. I think of this dynamic as Aella’s Law – and over the past year, largely thanks to Covid control measures, it has made rapid incursions into real life."
https://unherd.com/2021/03/were-living-in-a-pornstars-world/
46. This is too bad. I really like Medium and hope they can turn it around. Also shows how VC probably is not the right fuel for most media startups.
"Medium entered the year with more than 700,000 paid subscriptions, putting it on track for more than $35 million in revenue, according to two people familiar with the matter. That’s a healthy sum for a media company. But it represents a weak outcome for Williams, who previously sold Blogger to Google and co-founded Twitter, which eventually went public and today has a market capitalization of more than $50 billion.
Medium has raised $132 million in venture capital, but its last funding came in 2016. Williams has been funding the company out of his own pocket since then, sources said."
https://www.platformer.news/p/-the-mess-at-medium
47. "The market is undeniably hot, but that doesn't mean a majority of rounds get done overnight—far from it. “Dry powder”, the capital that investors have at their disposal, is always less than the number of startups looking for funding. So when established players say they’ve never seen such a busy market, they’re right—but there have also never been so many great startups to fund."
"The truth is that the scene of early-stage funding has shifted, and very few funds want to invest in rounds ~1M€. So you’ll likely get quite a bit of enthusiasm right away, because they do invest those amounts in pitch decks, but only with people they can “trust” because of their existing relationship, track record or someone else’s trust. So a few weeks later, you’re likely to be sitting with a lot more No’s than your first impressions suggested."
https://thefamily.substack.com/p/dont-believe-the-hype
48. On Deck is the future of education. Super bullish and love what they are doing.
"On Deck is building a modern, digitally native education platform at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional higher and continuing education.
Over the past year, On Deck has done something insanely hard: scaled community and education, online, profitably, while growing revenue 10x and building out a platform on top of which it can launch new products and integrate acquired ones such that each is a desirable standalone offering that connects to and strengthens at least one other part of the ecosystem. If that’s a lot in one sentence, that’s because On Deck has done a lot."
https://www.notboring.co/p/whats-on-deck-for-on-deck
49. "This is the future. The technologists are in charge. They are innovating at a pace that the nation states can’t keep up. We have digitized financial markets, which shifts the power dynamic. The regulators and former owners of the system are now rendered less effective. This is a net positive. It moves us closer to a free market. Free markets lead to more innovation. What a time to be alive."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/the-technologists-are-leading-the
50. I'm such a big fan of Argentineans & the country (the continually destructive government there, less so).
"Since mid-2020, major agricultural price indices have surged by over 40%. Prices are now at their highest level since 2013, and some predict there is more to come.
One of the biggest beneficiaries? Argentina, the country that makes 70% of its export income from agricultural products.
Is now the time to pile into Argentinean assets at vastly discounted prices?
The surge in global food prices can be a powerful catalyst for Argentina, if the trend continues – as many believe it will."
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
You Either Win or You Learn
I continue to say that I have been incredibly fortunate in life. Lucky to be in San Francisco for the last 2 decades during the start of the massive ongoing technology boom. Lucky in the friends I have and to be surrounded by so many smart, successful and good people around me and around the world.
Consequently I’ve learned much just from being in their proximity. Remember, you become “average of the 5 people you spend the most time with?” Being around them you see barriers broken and their thought process that got them to where they are at.
Many of them started with nothing. Some being immigrant kids or even straight fresh off the boat new immigrants. Yet they were able to build big businesses or very successful careers in investing and creating. Not discounting luck & timing as a small part of this. There was also a clear correlation to crazy hard work ethic. But besides thinking long term, I believe a big part of this was due to their attitude and Mindset. A willingness to take the initiative, to risk and try new things all the time. This is the core idea of “Either Win or Learn.”
The point is that you benefit either way, whatever you do. Take a swing and you can potentially create an amazing business or whatever it is you are trying to accomplish. As hockey superstar Wayne Gretzsky’s said?
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."
If it does not work out, which is most of the time btw, at minimum you learn something new.
The point is that if you keep swinging, you will be moving forward over time. And you build muscle memory to keep pushing forward.
This is not what we learned growing up or in school aka “child industrial indoctrination camps”. In school and most of the working world, we are trained to get straight ‘A’s which means following the rules and not taking any risks. (I’m not talking foolish jump off the bridge risk btw). We were taught that making mistakes is a bad thing. That it is better and safer waiting for other people to tell you what to do. Taking the initiative is not worth it.
I should note this is on purpose because our present school system in most of the “developed” world is a legacy of industrial age. This is where people were trained and prepared for factory work or joining the military. Places where everything is top down hierarchical and you take orders.
Maybe this made sense for people to thrive in that old world. But everything has changed. We are entering the “Knowledge Age” and the old school system is pushing an obsolete mindset (as well as a crazy & intolerant woke religion in most western world schools). One that has not served the people well, based on growing income and life inequality we see across the globe these days. I think Peter Thiel had something right with his Thiel Fellowship where he gave money to university students to drop out and start a business.
I remember that old joke “A students work for B students, who run companies started by C students.” In my extensive experience, this definitely seems to be true. Your mindset really matters.
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
Watch the Next Big Frontier: Africa
It is one of the worlds biggest and fastest growing populations and a massive free trade zone.
Add to that a young population with an average age of 19 and in the world where youth drive innovation this is critically important. They will also make more money as they enter the workforce. Sixty percent of Africa’s 1.25 B people are under the age of 25. That is a massive 750 million people.
(Source:Charts of the Week: Africa's changing demographics)
This young population is going to be the biggest workforce in the world in a few decades. And it’s growing fast.
“More than half of global population growth between now and 2050 is expected to occur in Africa. Africa has the highest rate of population growth among major areas. The population of sub-Saharan Africa is projected to double by 2050. A rapid population increase in Africa is anticipated even if there is a substantial reduction of fertility levels in the near future.”
(Source: https://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/population/)
With the growing trend here in massive urbanization, deep familiarization with smartphones and mobile payments as they have had Mpesa for over 13 years now, they have skipped legacy systems like landlines. So Mobile first is the default with Mpesa on payments and the now emerging Chipper Cash. (full disclosure this is a portfolio company). I expect that due to lack of infrastructure they will continue to skip technology queues. There is a real opportunity for technology leapfrogging effect here. Similar to what occurred in China with the rise of advanced consumer applications like Wechat/Wepay and the corresponding ecosystem that grew around it.
One other interesting factor is the various countries' experience with inflation and currency mismanagement. The most gross example being Zimbabwe. In regimes of massive inflation, locals quickly get the importance of Cryptocurrencies for example. Similar to how Argentineans, Greeks, Cypriots or Venezuelans were the first to fully understand the use case of Bitcoin because of their own painful experiences at home. They were the first to fully adopt it and use versus people in the so-called Developing markets where our financial systems work well enough (for now).
All of these factors from a macro trend level, add up to one of the most interesting business opportunities ahead of us. I’ll be paying very close attention to the growing tech ecosystem. And personally, there is a good chance I’ll be focusing much of my own attention in ten years' time after Central-Eastern Europe (2021-2025) and Latin America (2025-2030). Stay tuned here.
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads March 21st, 2021
“Do What You Can With All You Have, Wherever You Are.” – Theodore Roosevelt
Bytedance making big moves in the gaming sector.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/12/bytedance-gaming
2. Steve Yeun is such a great actor (and cool dude). Can't wait to see "Minari".
"These days Yeun finds himself very much in a hazy in-between space of his own, on the precipice, it seems, of something bigger, something special. It's not the first time, either. He became famous, basically overnight, as a beloved character on a popular TV show in which a virus ripped through Earth's population and forced everyone into a gloomy existence in which they wear the same clothes every day. It's like one day there was no Steven Yeun in the culture, and then out of thin air: There's Steven Yeun, the Asian guy from The Walking Dead, skinny-dipping at Wi Spa with Conan O'Brien."
https://www.gq.com/story/steven-yeun-april-cover-profile
3. Always a good entertaining & educational listen. The All in Podcast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrx8d_TIrz0
4. "In school, we’re told to do assignments where you have to write 1,000 words. Volume of words is a primary driver of the output. More words is conferred as more value. In business, it’s easy to fall into that trap.
In lieu of more words, the focus needs to be more clarity. More thought over more verbosity. More crispness over more jargony."
https://davidcummings.org/2021/03/13/complexity-of-startup-messaging/
5. Go Taiwan. I can't wait to go back in May!
"This island of 24 million, which has seen just 10 Covid-19 deaths and fewer than 1,000 cases, has used its success to sell something in short supply: living without fear of the coronavirus. The relatively few people who are allowed to enter Taiwan have been coming in droves, and they’ve helped to fuel an economic boom.
The influx of people helped make Taiwan one of last year’s fastest-growing economies — indeed, one of the few to expand at all. There was a brief slowdown at the start of the pandemic, but the economy grew more than 5 percent in the fourth quarter compared with the same period in 2019. The government expects 4.6 percent growth in 2021, which would be the fastest pace in seven years."
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/13/world/asia/taiwan-covid.html
6. Absolutely true. Learn to think for yourself.
"It's hard to know what to believe anymore, but one thing is for sure.
Scepticism towards anything and everything coming from politicians, the mainstream media, large corporations, government-related think tanks, and other members of the establishment will continue to grow. This issue could even become one of the defining developments of the 2020s.
Choose your media diet accordingly.
You need to keep yourself informed about these developments, to ensure you make the right decisions for your savings and financial future."
7. Super excited for the next decade in tech: Digital Decolonization!
"Worldwide, there will be two to three billion incremental users joining the digital economy across emerging markets. For all the reasons stated above, more of them will utilise the services of companies that are not part of the FAANG group. The trend of domestically-grown tech champions emerging in Latin America, South East Asia, South Asia and Africa has only just started.
Any new such trend takes a decade to take hold, but the potential is vast. Multi-billion tech firms are likely to emerge in Egypt, Brazil, Argentina, Kenya, South Africa, Turkey, Mexico, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Nigeria – to name just some of the countries that have a sizeable economy or population. There could also be regional players, just like MercadoLibre managed to expand across a range of smaller Latin American countries which gives the group critical mass despite the relatively small size of some of these nations."
8. Everything is becoming gaming......super thought provoking thread.
https://twitter.com/Tocelot/status/1370771791891861515
9. The latest from Peter Zeihan. Lots of interesting takes on US politics and geopolitics here. Ramifications for all of us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kch4Z1GpNOQ
10. "I believe we may be in the midst of one of the most tumultuous periods of our day and age in the US (and perhaps globally). That during our lifetimes we will see the internet age run headfirst into the nation-state. They will battle, one will reign supreme, and the world will look much different following."
https://contrarianthinking.substack.com/p/a-money-conspiracy-that-scares-me
11. Sounds about right! Not much to learn from most VCs websites or public statements.
"Our.... primary conclusions:
--Public theses are often inconsistent with how firms actually deploy capital.
--VC theses are often so vague that they’re meaningless.
--Investment theses are just hypotheses; the portfolio shows how accurate the hypothesis was."
https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/11/does-your-vc-have-an-investment-thesis-or-a-hypothesis/
12. Not sure what to make of these allegations. We all have a dark side. This piece strikes me as a hit piece as I don't think they spoke with Armie at all.
"When Armie Hammer broke through in Hollywood, with 2010’s The Social Network, the sordid lore of his family backstory was a footnote, whether forgotten or purposely ignored.
To the world Armie Hammer was simply a cartoon-prince-handsome scion. It’s easy to discount a beautiful person, especially a beautiful person with a famous last name, as being one-dimensional. But Armie spent many interviews over his decade-long career telegraphing his own texture."
13. Fascinating interview with Investor David Halpert. More on the Digital Decolonization trend. I'm a believer here too.
"Eventually, we will see USD 20bn to 50bn of DigDec market cap in the Philippines.
There will be USD 20bn to 50bn of DigDec market cap in Vietnam.
There will be USD 20bn to 50bn of DigDec market cap in Thailand.
There will be USD 5bn to 10bn of DigDec market cap in Bangladesh.
For Pakistan, it will be USD 5bn to 10bn.
In Sri Lanka, make it USD 3bn to 5bn.
Ethiopia will take a while, but it will be USD 5bn to 10bn in DigDec market cap.
In Nigeria, there will be USD 5bn to 10bn – maybe even USD 20bn.
Egypt has such a deep ecosystem that, eventually, there will be USD 20bn to 30bn in DigDec market cap.
Turkey could have USD 20bn to 30bn, but it will take a while because Turkey's financial market is underdeveloped."
14. This makes me very optimistic about our green future (clean energy and money). We can do this!
"The issue was that it was just too damn expensive to start stuff back when they were investing. CapEx and OpEx were bonk. And so much of the stuff they wanted to build required handouts from lawmakers because the pricing just didn’t make sense...
But so much is different now. Huge, shared computing clusters have allowed nuclear fusion to be an impending reality. Bio and agricultural advancements are coming out of shared lab space that startups could’ve never afforded. Manufacturing is orders of magnitude easier and cheaper. Electrochemistry and stuff like CRISPR have all come so far that today’s founders can piggyback off of the hard work of those who took stabs at this shit before. Add to this that we now have a generation of hardcore scientists who went to school knowing that they wanted to start a climate tech company. Those folks used to dig into this super geeky biophysics hoping one day they would be a tenured professor with some steady health insurance."
15. "The story of what happened at Gimlet Media is not unique: In many ways, it’s a classic story about start-up culture. Gimlet, which was purchased by Spotify in February 2019, has been billed as one of podcasting’s biggest success stories, yet its meteoric rise papered over the managerial problems within the company. Soon, one of the industry’s most-coveted companies would erupt in spectacular controversy."
https://www.vulture.com/article/gimlet-reply-all-controversy-spotify-test-kitchen.html
16. "This emerging category is about the democratisation of software development, unlocking the potential that digitisation brings to anyone that has access to a computer or a phone & the internet.
Let’s be clear: no-code and low-code tools are not about eliminating code or engineers. They are about making life easier for coders, while opening access to everyone, making everyone a ‘citizen developer’. They are about abstracting away the complexity of code to focus on design and logic. It means no longer having to do boring, mundane, and off-project tasks."
17. Tourism industry got slammed in 2020: no surprise sadly.
https://www.gzeromedia.com/the-graphic-truth-tourism-reliant-economies-take-a-hit
18. 2 Buck Chuck!
"Priced at a mere $1.99 to $3.79 per bottle, this magical ether is cheaper than most bottled water. It’s been knighted as the “darling of the discount wine world” by critics, and boasts a cult following among price-minded consumers.
For Trader Joe’s, the wine is also a gold mine.
The grocery chain has sold 1B+ bottles of Two Buck Chuck since debuting the beverage in 2002. Today, some locations sell as many as 6k bottles/day — or ~16%of the average store’s daily sales.
How is a supposedly decent wine sold at such a low price point? Where does it come from? And how did it rise to prominence?
This is the tale of one wine brand, two vintners, and the unlikely democratization of a historically snobby industry."
https://thehustle.co/how-two-buck-chuck-changed-the-wine-industry
19. Good to know!
https://nomadcapitalist.com/2013/10/27/top-5-emerging-markets-for-offshore-banking/
20. Pipe is the precursor to a very exciting future for alternatives & complements to Venture Capital.
"Pipe starts with a simple idea: shrink the black box. If you have real revenue and real cash flow coming in, and you want to grow your business by pulling that revenue forward, don’t sell debt, or a WBS; don’t sell a claim on the black box of your entire business. Sell the smallest unit possible. Sell the thing itself: your revenue. And the purest way to represent that - the atomic, tradable unit of the subscription economy - is the revenue contract.
This is the first step of the Pipe thesis: the revenue contract is the atomic unit. It’s the closest thing there is to revenue itself, and the smallest possible black box you can trade.
They can work together. Pipe isn’t competitive with Venture Capital! They both strengthen each other. Being able to trade revenue with investors and platforms means you can raise less equity, and take less dilution down the road. And having a strong equity base means you can access that lower-cost capital, and add a bit of leverage by trading revenue, with focus and confidence."
https://danco.substack.com/p/pipe-it-platforms-funding-and-the
21. Also bullish on the emerging startup ecosystem in Latin America. Part of the Digital Decolonization trend. Just ordered the book "Viva the Entrepreneur"
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/time-different-viva-entrepreneur-latin-america-schroeder/
22. Chinese SciFi is optimistic and this is why China seems to have a much more utopian and pro-technology culture than the western world.
"But in the past few years—a period that has seen China’s sci-fi authors elevated to the status of New Age prophets—Chen’s own career has become an object in the fun-house mirror. After The Waste Tide garnered widespread attention at home and abroad, reviewers began praising Chen as the “William Gibson of China,” and the tech industry has embraced him as a kind of oracle. An institute run by AI expert and venture capitalist Kai-Fu Lee’s company has even developed an algorithm capable of writing fiction in the author’s voice.
In hindsight, the ascendancy of sci-fi in Chinese literature seems almost inevitable. After all, walking the streets of Beijing today can feel like inhabiting a cyberpunk fiction: Bright yellow shared bikes line the streets, facial recognition cameras hang on street lamps, robot servers deliver hot-pot dinners to your table. Liu Cixin has compared present-day China to the US after World War II, “when science and technology filled the future with wonder.”
https://www.wired.com/story/science-fiction-writer-china-chen-qiufan/
23. This is really an impressive yield. Ukrainian real estate property.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a9cj9cgiwE
24. Fascinated by these globetrotting adventure capitalists. Going to & investing where most business people are wary of.
"In many cases, there is a wide discrepancy between what one can read in Western media and the realities on the ground. Western media is afflicted by groupthink from a class of similarly educated people.
I have absolutely no issue doing deals and investing in “risky” markets such as Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Nicaragua, and African countries emerging from civil war. I firmly believe that with good legal support risk is actually quite minimal."
https://investorstory.co/how-i-invest-in-real-estate-in-emerging-markets/
25. Low profile is the only way to go.
"In the new world, you do not need the approval of large numbers of people. You only need a few close friends/family members and they don’t need to know your net worth. No one does. In fact, there is always going to be a “richer” person in the world so you’re effectively playing a losing game.
Take a step back and ask yourself “Why do I want people to know I am rich?”. If you ask this enough you will come to the no-BS conclusion, which is that you’re insecure.
If you’re a public figure, you also inherit the following: death threats to your family. Death threats to you. Potential for serious violence particularly after the COVID-19 global recession. Potential for additional security attacks (people will find all your personal information and go straight into attack mode). So on and so forth."
https://wallstreetplayboys.com/the-status-disease/
26. "Love it or hate it, self-care has ballooned into a billion-dollar industry. At one end of the spectrum, exercise, meditation, and journaling help proponents find balance. Meanwhile, at the other extreme, astrology, tarot cards, and healing crystals help disciples find meaning.
Similarly, the HPL (High-Performance Lifestyle) is tapping into meaning. Filling a void left by the collapse of traditional institutions and the changing definition of masculinity, self-mastery has become the holy grail. In HPL circles, those pursuits include stoicism, Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, big-game hunting, archery, kettlebells, surfing, contrast therapy, intermittent fasting, and psychedelics."
https://insider.fitt.co/high-performance-lifestyle/
27. WOWZA! 95 Billion dollars! I would love to get my hands on some secondary in Stripe. Super exciting company.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/14/stripe-closes-600m-round-at-a-95b-valuation/
28. The Global South aka Emerging Markets is where all the future growth is going to be & SE Asia is leading the charge with Latam & South Asia & Africa coming soon after.
"In other words, something interesting is happening in Southeast Asia. Figuring out what it is will take some digging. But given the vast diversity in characteristics and outcomes among these countries, it seems unlikely that the answer will lie in some strategic industrial policy or change in resource prices. Instead, something appears to be lifting up the economy of the entire region to grow. That could be China, but my guess is that it’s going to be bigger than China.
My guess is that it’s an agglomeration effect — a function of the general clustering of supply chains and product demand in Asia. That would also explain why Bangladesh, which is located very close by, also got invited to the party."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/checking-in-on-the-global-south
29. Clubhouse stepping up their platform game.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/14/22330281/clubhouse-accelerator-creators-davison-app
30. "Despite its enormous population and geographic size, California’s government is highly decentralized–and the exact same thing could be said about the United States in general. That dynamic, according to the Guardian, favors pandemics over people because it ensures that protocols, policies and messaging will be inconsistent from region to region and city to city. That regional inconsistency sowed confusion, misinformation and resentment in California and the country, which intensified the already roiling distrust and tension between pro- and anti-lockdown forces."
https://www.gobankingrates.com/money/economy/california-taught-tension-between-covid-safety-economy/
31. "As we continue to discuss in this letter, long term holders have a significant advantage over the weak handed short term traders. Humans are emotional. We succumb to fear and greed. But if you have deep conviction in a thesis and refuse to allow the short term price movements to affect your decision making, you will do fairly well over the long term."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/bitcoin-was-the-safe-haven-asset
32. "We have leapt over the fence marking society of the past and are racing with increasing speed towards our inevitable future. What we can expect from looking ahead is near constant change. Lifestyles of adaptability and willingness to try new things will do well in this environment. And despite the rapid breakdown of traditional institutions that is inevitable from such rapid change, the future and what it means for society looks bright."
https://dougantin.com/the-digital-age-paradigm-shift/
33. "Some people are natural maniacs, and you can’t ask for the maniac parts you like without realizing there are maniac parts that might backfire."
https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/natural-maniacs/
34. I have to admit I did enjoy the original Justice League movie......(don't cancel me!)
But look forward to checking out the new recut version.
https://www.vox.com/22325749/snyder-cut-review-justice-league-hbo-max
35. I've been fascinated by Biotech for a very long time since my friend Ryan Bethencourt eased me into it.
This is a good guide for those interested in what I consider one of the most important sectors in the next few decades (outside of energy).
"There’s something unique happening in biotech right now. Some once in a generation moment where low cost of capital, a century of maturing discoveries, and a global pandemic collide."
https://minutes.substack.com/p/biotech-for-the-biocurious
36. "But it was the rise of the consumer Internet in the 1990s, and especially the popularization of the social web starting around 2007, that allowed scenes to break free of the limits of local geography and time zones. No longer did interest groups have to find enough members willing to drive to a specific place at a specific time. They could self-organize online and become massive networks with incredible buying power, socializing power, and even political power.
Online scenes now attract most of our discretionary attention and social energy. They stream into our living rooms from unknown locations in cyberspace to every Internet-connected device.
We are likewise now discovering that it is easier to find and hang out with people who have similar interests, tastes, and goals online than in the physical world. It is no accident that, in the COVID era, many people are reversing the trend of urbanization and moving to larger dwellings far from cities. We can now access everything and everyone we need online."
https://fortelabs.co/blog/welcome-to-renaissance-2/
37. Another example of being penny wise, pound foolish. The EU does not look good here. 2021 shaping up to be another lost year for the region.
“The price difference is macroeconomically irrelevant,” Wolfgang Münchau, head of the London-based Eurointelligence think tank and a frequent critic of Brussels initiatives, wrote over the weekend. The potential impact of the pursuit of low prices isn’t. If the EU suffers longer lockdowns because other buyers are willing to move faster and pay more, the “indirect effect of that short-sighted policy will be massive.
The EU’s slower, more deliberative and cooperative effort may have cost precious time, and precious lives.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-coronavirus-vaccine-struggle-pfizer-biontech-astrazeneca/
38. I do like Squarespace and am a proud customer.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/16/squarespace-raises-300m-at-staggering-10b-valuation/
39. "The more that I spoke to this investor, the more it became obvious that much of his success was driven by doing things differently. He didn’t want to speak with inferior investors for fear of ruining his advantage. He also didn’t want to simply be an inbound-based investor either. The second comment that stuck out to me was that the best investments of his career were all the product of a hunting expedition.
The investor would sit down and look at an industry or vertical. They would map out who the best company in the space was and then reach out to the founders. The goal was not to invest in a specific person or company, but simply invest in the market opportunity. The best way to invest in that market opportunity was to find the best company pursuing it."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/differentiated-investing-is-an-advantage
40. This is a sad part of America. For the record, this also exists in UK and Canada too. I will admit I've had way more racist comments in Canada against me versus in America. But thanks to Trump and the cursed CCP this is coming to fore again in USA.
"The attacks Asian Americans are facing across the country are bringing the dialogue about longstanding prejudices to the fore. And as Americans are having more frank conversations about race and institutional biases, they aren’t as easy to ignore as they have been in the past."
https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/4/21/21221007/anti-asian-racism-coronavirus-xenophobia
41. "People are reacting to a broken system and they’re turning to grassroots communities to do so. The 2020s will be shaped by these cultural forces—the search for belonging and the reclaiming of agency—and where they intersect to take down centralized power and build a new architecture for American capitalism."
https://digitalnative.substack.com/p/the-memeification-of-american-capitalism
42. "Have different jurisdictions where you can arbitrage risk. This means you should go where you’re treated best so that you have the assurance of knowing that even if the ATMs are shut off in the US, even if they want to bail out the banks in Cyprus, you have different homes, you have different bank accounts, you have different citizenships that welcome you in different places and access to good hospitals and medical care around the world."
https://nomadcapitalist.com/2020/10/28/apocalypse-insurance-prepare-crisis/
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
“The Perfect Day” Exercise
This was one of the most impactful things I’ve done in my life. I learned about it when I was speaking at the Freedom Business Summit back in september 2019 (https://freedomsummit.net/#about). There were 10 other speakers, all of them highly successful entrepreneurs who had made their fortunes in wide ranging areas from Podcasting, Dropshipping, Instagram Influencer talent management & marketing, Amazon FBA to restaurants. So of course, I stuck around after my keynote to hear what these folks had to say.
Something that came up several times in many of their talks was how crucial doing the “Perfect Day” exercise was for them in altering their lives. So what is the Perfect Day exercise?
You take a blank piece of paper and literally write out what your perfect day looks like. Break it down to 30 minute increments, what you are doing, how do you feel, who are you with. For me, it was a day full of time to read, listen to podcasts and think, while having meals or coffee meetings where i could have good & intelligent conversations with family and friends.
It’s a very simple exercise but it’s incredibly powerful. After I did this initial exercise, I compared it to my calendar and saw the massive delta between what my normal day looked like versus my perfect day. I was literally on the phone or in meetings from 8 am through till late in evening. Fire fighting, fixing things, being pulled from one direction to another without having time to think or rest. It had gotten particularly bad for me in 2018 and 2019.
It explained why I was feeling so drained, unhappy and worn out. It was a wake up call that forced me to rethink my career and make some changes to my lifestyle in general. Many of these changes have finally come to pass thankfully, some through my own deliberate action and others inflicted or pushed on me by the world and events. Yet, I can genuinely say I am much happier based on the mood journal I’ve been keeping over this last year.
While I am still far away from this Perfect Day exercise, it’s something I do revisit and review. It’s a very powerful tool that helps you connect and think about all the key aspects of your life like relationships, money, health, family and work/business. It’s also an invaluable tool for planning your future. And it’s an exercise I have recommended to many others. I promise you it will change your life for the better.
If you are interested in learning more: here are some other articles to learn more on the Perfect Day exercise and will act as good guides to put your own together:
The Life Transforming Magic of the Perfect Day Exercise
How the "average perfect day" exercise can help you set goals
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
Optimism versus Cynicism
Growing up in Canada, was overall a great experience. One that I am very grateful and thankful for. But the pull of Asia and then the United States was always there, which was why I left home the minute I graduated from university. First adventuring across Europe, then living in Taiwan for 2 years before finally landing in San Francisco.
I literally joke about being the luckiest man on earth on arriving in Silicon Valley during the near start of a 20+ year boom cycle. How often does a guy land in the nexus of where the world was going from a business and cultural perspective. One of the main reasons for this boom in the SF Bay Area was the high concentration of ambitious and optimistic people in one place. Growing up in Canada, ambition was something that was frowned on so you kept quiet and if you had success, it was begrudged by folks around you.
My view is that it is a leftover remnant from the now schlerotic British colonial culture. And you see something similar in Australia, New Zealand and other former British colonies. Ie. Tall Poppy Syndrome, if you stick out too much, you get your head cut off. It’s especially virulent in the United Kingdom. There are also versions of this in Japan, Germany, France, Ukraine or Russia. An intense skepticism, even cynicism steeped in conservatism. This is also one of the reasons I suspect those startup ecosystems have taken so long to get to critical mass. It takes a strong willed individual to build something when everyone around you is questioning and criticizing you. I have so much respect for founders in those countries.
Techcrunch journalist Danny Crichton wrote:
"Nothing got built by cynicism. “You can’t do it!” has never created a company, except perhaps to trigger a founder to start something in revolt at the fusillade of negativity.
It takes time though to build. It takes time to take an early product and grow it. It takes time to build a startup ecosystem and expand it into something self-sustaining. Perhaps most importantly, it takes extraordinary effort and hard work, and not just from singular individuals but a whole team and community of people to succeed. The future is malleable — and bets do pay off. So we all need to stop asking what’s the problem and pointing out flaws, and perhaps ask, what future are we building toward? What’s the bet I’m willing to back?"
(Source: https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/29/startup-cynicism)
I’ve written before on the importance of culture in a country, in an organization and in an ecosystem. I’m not saying this cynicism does not exist in the United States or in Silicon Valley but it exists in much smaller pockets. Because of my relatively long experience and large data sample from looking at so many deals, it’s very easy to become jaded. I’ve worked hard at having a more balanced view. You need to look at what could go wrong but also imagine what would happen if things go right. Ie. understanding both the downside and upside.
I’ve had to unlearn many negative thoughts that come to mind when I hear a startup idea or meet startup founders. Or even in how I interpret life situations. There is little downside to being more optimistic in life albeit I should note, this should NOT be a blind & naive optimism that ignores reality and data.
Having said that, a more positive attitude has served me well and I believe it does for most people. We can all do with more doses of optimism & positivity in our lives. You should give people energy, not take it away. You have a choice, so choose Optimism!
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads March 14th, 2021
“Whether You Think You Can Or Think You Can’t, You’re Right.” –Henry Ford
1. "NFTs have caught the attention of tech investors (Mark Cuban), the high-brow art world (Christie’s auction house), and major corporations (Nike) alike. And everyone from Lindsey Lohan to the rock band Kings of Leon is flooding the market with high-priced virtual creations of their own.
But what exactly is an NFT? What makes them so valuable? And what might the future hold for these digital assets?"
https://thehustle.co/why-nfts-are-suddenly-selling-for-millions-of-dollars/
2. "I think [I’m] in a fortunate enough position — I’m probably the youngest public company CEO — to be able to have a time horizon and a vision more on the order of 50 years than five years. As we see this through, I don’t plan on, frankly, doing anything different. Now the scope of what Luminar will do, we will expand over time, but we have the time.
And I mean, certainly if there’s any industry that’s ripe for disruption, has the ability to enable this as a trillion-dollar space, and is evolving, it is autonomy, and that’s where absolutely we’re going to be continuing to drive towards."
https://www.theverge.com/22298001/luminar-austin-russel-ceo-interview-self-driving-cars
3. Taiwanese pineapples are actually amazingly delicious so this is great news! Also, F--k the genocidal CCP!
4. "If you want to become a Sovereign Individual, your goal should be to build multiple streams of location-independent income and accumulate distributed assets. In doing so, you cultivate freedom, security, and independence. All of which are essential components of the Sovereign Individual’s lifestyle.
Secondary income also provides an element of security. Whether an unexpected expense arises, a pay cut, or loss of the primary job. Accumulating multiple streams of income provides a safety net for the unexpected life events that are probable.
As everyone can attest to, life frequently throws us curveballs. By building a portfolio of incomes, you are better positioned to handle the unexpected challenges of life."
https://dougantin.com/sovereign-individuals-need-a-multiple-income-portfolio/
5. "And as remote workers realize they can reprioritize their personal needs, they will leverage this ability to conduct a tech-enabled exit. Through this “vote with your feet” practice of “tech enabled exit”, governments will begin to adapt their policy offerings to attract this class of people or be forced to adapt to their absence. In the end, the Sovereign Individual class will gain previously unavailable qualities of life.
This change will not be a smooth transition. It will be full of conflict, populism, and will change what people value. There will be bitterness, resentment, and attempts to publicly shame and extract value from this new group of people. Most importantly, in this transition, freedom of movement will become a luxury good."
https://dougantin.com/remote-work-the-tech-enabled-exit/
6. "Retail’s recent performance and the risks required to achieve as much also suggests smaller investors are trying to do one thing in the market — get rich quick.
We could go on and on about Top Shot and crypto and SPACs, but the actual evidence for why individuals are motivated to speculate is right there in the polling on stimulus checks. The kinds of behavior we’re seeing in the market enabled by services fighting for every ounce of consumer attention is being argued as preying on ignorance when the data suggests the fuel is actually desperation."
https://mylesudland.substack.com/p/financial-literacy
7. A very wide ranging interview here with the brilliant Patrick Collison. Hard not to be optimistic about the future. Biotech, Batteries & the Internet & so much more.
"In terms of what the world needs, improvements in medical technology are probably still #1. Climate change mitigation technology (cleaner energy generation and CO2 sequestration and so on) is also quite high up. More broadly, we need to make all of the things that you and I enjoy every day cheap and efficient enough for billions more people to afford (with safety/security high on that list). But "need" is a tough framing.
There's obviously so much stuff that would be fabulously valuable and it's hard to predict the magnitude of the impact upfront. Besides the obvious diseases, better cures for depression and mental illness and other psychiatric conditions would be hugely beneficial. $100 robotic surgeries. A machine for cheaply manufacturing arbitrary food -- a 3D printer for nourishment into which you just insert elemental "ink cartridges".
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/interview-patrick-collison-co-founder
8. "Printing more money will not solve this problem. It will actually exacerbate it. The mainstream media won’t call it out because they have become mouthpieces for the state. The Wall Street hedge fund managers won’t call it out because they get rich off this nonsense. Instead, the responsibility falls on the independent thinkers.
There are no contrarians left on Wall Street. There are no contrarians left in finance. They’re all sheep. They take the information that is force-fed to them by the propaganda machine and repeat it religiously. Showering money. Cutting poverty. No inflation. Government good. Bitcoin bad.
Each of you has the power to educate yourself and do what you think is best. Don’t wait around for anyone to save you. They’re not coming. You must do your own research. Think for yourself. And ensure that you aren’t exclusively exposed to any one way of thinking. Diversify your inputs to diversify your conclusions."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/the-stimulus-package-wont-cut-poverty
9. I really like these. We should all be striving to become Sovereign Individuals.
https://dougantin.com/10-elements-of-a-sovereign-individual/
10. Zapier is crushing it and doing it their own way, not the overhyped Silicon Valley way. Love it.
"But just because Zapier hasn’t played the game — raising just $1.3 million in funding, going fully remote long before the pandemic made it commonplace, and targeting a customer set left overlooked by many software companies — doesn’t mean it hasn’t built a big business. Last summer, Zapier reached $100 million in annualized recurring revenue; it’s passed $140 million by now. And in January, investors found a way into the business, just not through Foster. Sequoia and Steadfast Financial bought shares at a $5 billion valuation from some of Zapier’s original investors."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2021/03/08/zapier-bootstraps-to-5-billion-valuation/
11. Preply crushing it. Congrats to Kirill Bigai & the Preply team. I regret missing this deal. Ukraine represent!
12. Wow but this makes sense. Love what Pipe is doing. NASDAQ for Revenue!
13. I'm a sucker for a good samurai movie. Rurouni Kenshin is classic anime turned live action film.
RUROUNI KENSHIN: THE FINAL/THE BEGINNING (2021) Full Trailer - eng sub | Takeru Satoh
14. This is right on.
"At the end of the day, it comes down to:
Is it worth it to live like the average person?
Is it worth it to pursue vanity, enjoyment, and immediate pleasure and gratification, at the cost of your wider goals, dreams, aspirations, and potential?"
https://lifemathmoney.com/are-all-the-sacrifices-worth-it/
15. This is a pretty neat & timely startup.
"Capsule‘s plan to launch a super simple decentralized social media platform which is safe from censorship by Big Tech has advanced another stage: The nascent startup has closed a seed round of funding ($1.5M) led by Beacon Fund, a dedicated crypto fund by Polychain Capital — which is itself focused on startups building on Dfinity’s decentralized network for next-gen ‘open’ apps (aka, the Internet Computer)."
16. This is incredibly catty and clever writing. Bravo. I am not a fan of either the Monarchy or Hollywood but....this is really good.
"Having a monarchy next door is a little like having a neighbour who’s really into clowns and has daubed their house with clown murals, displays clown dolls in each window and has an insatiable desire to hear about and discuss clown-related news stories. More specifically, for the Irish, it’s like having a neighbour who’s really into clowns and, also, your grandfather was murdered by a clown.
Harry and Meghan are ultimately going to win. Despite the tabloid frenzy, this was never the story of an ungrateful pauper being elevated by the monarchy. This was about the potential union of two great houses, the Windsors and Californian Celebrity. Only one of those things has a future, and it’s the one with the Netflix deal."
17. Yes, the culture wars in the USA are getting pretty stupid even by 2020 standards. This is a good recap.
As Naval famously said, "The Left has won the culture wars, now they are just driving around shooting the survivors"
https://www.piratewires.com/p/green-eggs-and-stfu
18. Big fan of Sahil Bloom, he is a must follow on Twitter.
https://www.theproofwellness.com/sahil-bloom-on-leverage-and-living-online
19. Twitter is starting to innovate again. Glad to see as its such an influential platform.
"One of the things that [Twitter CEO] Jack [Dorsey] really emphasized when he came back to the company, was morphing our product development process to respect the “jobs to be done” framework a lot more. I don’t know how much you’ve heard about “jobs to be done,” but fundamentally, it just comes down to imbuing customer understanding into the product development process.
And so for us, all of the work we do starts from the standpoint of: what are our customers trying to hire us for? What are they firing us for? And how do we build product solutions that have those dimensions in mind?"
https://www.theverge.com/22319527/twitter-kayvon-beykpour-interview-consumer-product-decoder
20. This seems promising.
"If MobileCoin becomes a de facto way to transact over Signal — Goldbard and Marlinspike told Wired they envisioned it first as an integration in chat apps like Signal or WhatsApp — its reach could potentially be massive."
21. Bullish on Roblox.
"In short, Roblox isn’t a game at all: it is world in which one of the things you can do is play games, with a persistent identity, persistent set of friends, persistent money, all disconnected from the device that you use to access the world. That is the transformational change.
Roblox, though, isn’t simply the same game everywhere, it’s the same persistent world everywhere, from PC to console (Xbox, not PlayStation) to smartphone, in which games happen to exist. It’s a metaverse…kind of."
https://stratechery.com/2021/the-roblox-microverse/
22. 3Lau is one of the most forward thinking & business savvy musicians around. I'd say most EDM DJs are pretty omnivorous and business savvy though.
"Young artists will realize that if they have traction, they'll be able to raise money from their early fans. This applies to visual artists too: Beeple only started issuing NFTs three months ago. The first pieces that sold for dollars are going for tens of thousands now.
The future is fans investing in artists and being able to share in their success. It’s a technological renaissance where artists have the power. It’s the first time it’s happened in centuries. It will enable artists to recapture all of the emotional value that has been stolen by social media platforms and advertised upon."
https://www.morningbrew.com/emerging-tech/stories/2021/03/01/conversation-3lau
23. It is definitely a brand new exciting world for artists. Now I know who Beeple is.
"Beeple has 1.8 million Instagram followers. His work has been shown at two Super Bowl halftime shows and at least one Justin Bieber concert, but he has no gallery representation or foothold in the traditional art world.
And yet in December the first extensive auction of his art grossed $3.5 million in a single weekend."
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a35500985/who-is-beeple-mike-winkelmann-nft-interview/
24. This is a funny story. Something lighthearted for once in the media it feels like. Last of the lost tourists.
https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/lost-tourist-who-thought-Bangor-was-San-Francisco-15940512.php
25. It really pays to have friends who start companies in Silicon Valley.
"More than three decades later that idea has made Baszucki extremely rich — his Roblox stake is worth $4.6 billion after the company’s stock market debut on Wednesday. Rimer’s investment firm, Index Ventures, is benefiting handsomely too. Its shares are valued at $3.7 billion.
Baszucki and Rimer are two of the biggest winners in Roblox’s direct listing, the latest tech company to go public at a massive valuation and generate hefty paper returns for its founders and venture backers."
26. This is really awesome, especially considering how corrupt and broken the healthcare system is in USA. Many friends who use this & rave about them. Will have to sign up too. Forward Health!
27. The only positive thing to come out of pandemic. Here comes the "Great Acceleration!"
"Many psychological obstacles to technological development are crumbling at the same time. I group them in two areas, both related to our state of emergency. First, we have realised that time is actually scarce. Moving fast is the responsible choice, now that we understand deadly threats can arrive suddenly and catch us unprepared. Second, societies have a collective responsibility to address common problems, and consent cannot become a veto power by each individual on our ability to act.
Peter Thiel, a card-carrying member of the Great Stagnation society, sees an epochal change, telling Forbes magazine: ‘I keep thinking the other side of it is that one should think of Covid and the crisis of this year as this giant watershed moment, where this is the first year of the 21st century. This is the year in which the new economy is actually replacing the old economy."
https://brunomacaes.substack.com/p/the-great-acceleration
28. This is a pretty useful framework for life.
https://sahilbloom.substack.com/p/the-bezos-regret-minimization-framework
29. This is a funny show. I need to check it out again.
".....the world of Kim’s Convenience was Canada’s dream of its better self. Which is a different dream than America’s. And sometimes when your own dream has been shattered, at least temporarily, it’s nice to be able to live in someone else’s, and to believe that it might still be alive and intact."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/kims-convenience-the-end-of-the-dream
30. Learn something new all the time. "Regenerative Agriculture" is very interesting.
31. This is so awesome for EU tech scene. Taavet and Sten are great founders and investors (and good guys to boot). Operator-Investor movement coming to Europe.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/11/fund-with-no-name/
32. This sounds about right.....rough time in most of the locked down world. But there is light at end of the tunnel.
"Why might rudeness, meanness, and pettiness be guiding our actions right now? According to therapist Ashley McHan, the answer is simple: we’re tired, and as Kosoff wrote, we’re tired because of forces outside our control. “Over time we get fatigued,” McHan told VICE. “If there hasn't been change happening around us or there hasn't been improvement of situations, our ability to tolerate them is going to decrease… Our ability to cope might eventually piddle out.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5b7nj/heres-why-everyone-is-acting-like-an-asshole-lately
33. This is a promising edtech startup focusing on massive corporate executive education market. Prof Galloway is not so good investor but solid entrepreneur with a large audience. So this totally makes sense to me.
34. Finally some Decency in the White House after an awful 2016-2020.
"The president’s speech echoes the message of an executive action he took in January, when he denounced anti-Asian racism, called for better data collection of these incidents, and urged federal agencies to remove any racist language still being used in government documents.
His remarks send a powerful message, directly counter to the one sent by former President Donald Trump, who disregarded World Health Organization guidelines and used racist terms for the coronavirus. By strongly opposing anti-Asian actions in his remarks, Biden made it clear that such racism is unacceptable and won’t be amplified by this White House."
https://www.vox.com/2021/3/11/22326462/joe-biden-anti-asian-racism
35. Not sure I agree with China or Hong Kong being on this list anymore
(at least for foreigners). The rest of list I think is right. Go Taiwan, Georgia, Macedonia, Lithuania & Armenia!
https://nomadcapitalist.com/2016/08/24/strongest-free-market-economies/
36. "Which wouldn’t be the first time someone in a boring business has spent a lot of money to sidle up to an entertainment business. In fact, that dynamic is a core feature for Hollywood.
And while $300 million is a lot to you, a normal person, it is not much for Square: The company has $3 billion in cash on hand and likely paid for most of the deal with its stock, which, like many tech stocks, has been on a crazy tear and currently values the company at more than $100 billion.
So the real Square argument will be: Why not? If associating ourselves with Jay-Z, who we’ve also put on our board of directors, helps us convince people to buy and sell stuff on Square and talk about creating new paradigms for art and ownership, then great. And if not, it still sounds pretty cool."
https://www.vox.com/recode/22313268/tidal-square-jay-z-jack-dorsey-nft-explainer
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
Proximity is Power & Other Nuggets of Insight from Shaan Puri
I think everyone needs to watch this interview between Jack Butcher & Shaan Puri. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaqu_YrfXuQ
I’ve known Shaan for a few years and I always learn things from him. He is one of the sharpest thinkers around in Silicon Valley. He is a startup founder and operator. He used to run Monkey Inferno, the venture studio of Michael Birch of Bebo fame. He sold a company to Twitch and runs product, mobile gaming and emerging markets there. He is also the founder & co-host of “My First Million” a top 10 business podcast & is an investor through his Rolling Fund (over 2M usd a year to invest). A pretty accomplished guy.
Some key ideas that came out from this interview.
1. “Proximity is Power” quotation from Tony Robbins as HT to Shaan Puri.
Another way to say who you hang out with matters. If you hang out with super successful people, you will become more successful. Being around them you almost absorb things through osmosis. You Learn how they got there, what they learned along the way. Usually real talk not revisionist stories. Become good examples & help break mental barriers.
2. The How takes care of itself. Get the Why & What right.
ABZ framework. A is the first step, B is the next step and Z is the end goal. You don’t need to know every single one of the steps, you will figure things out along the way. Keep taking action and don’t fall into “Analysis paralysis”
3. How to Find your Edge: Has to feel like Play to you, but feel like Work for others.
This is the only way for you to figure out your special niche. If you enjoy doing this, you should become really good at it. It also makes it harder for your competition, hard to be good at something if you don’t enjoy it.
4. The importance of controlling time. Not trading time for money.
Shaan shares how he scrapped a newsletter business that made him $50,000 usd a month because it got in the way of his lifestyle and took up far more time that it was worth.
5. Building an Audience and then building leverage.
The Influencer business model has changed. Early models like Tim Ferriss and GaryVee did well. But now you see a new generation like Shaan, Pomp and heck MrBeast take this to a new level & via leverage. Making & selling courses instead of writing a book. Raising a rolling fund from others to invest, instead of just investing your own money.
6. Importance of choosing the right project.
It’s the most critical decision. You are going to spend a lot of time working on it. So make sure it’s the right one.
7. Lessons from UFC superstar Conor Macgregor
Always being in a top state of mind. 2015 “Every year is going to be my year!” Your Mindset becomes your reality.
“You gotta feel some way. Why not feel good, why not feel confident, Why not feel unstoppable?” you get to choose how you feel. Why not choose these phenomenal states? Basically control your emotions and state of mind. Training your brain. Train yourself how to think. These small things are the big things in life.
8. Personal Ownership
Biggest thing is taking ownership of your decisions and your life. In my opinion, the philosophy of “Radical Self Reliance” that he preaches will become more prevalent in the post covid world. This is the only way forward if you want to build a fulfilling, accomplished and happy life.
Net net: watch the video and hope you learned as much as i did from this. Shaan is a superstar so please do follow him on Twitter @shaanVP and listen to his podcast. https://thehustle.co/my-first-million-podcast/
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
Are you on a Bridge or A Pier?
There is that inevitable time in every startup’s life when what you are doing is just not working. Either customers are not buying, or churning out quickly. Users aren’t staying. Or it is one of the countless indications that you are going nowhere fast. So you pivot the business either by taking your product and targeting a new customer/market. Or you continue to focus on the present customer base but you rebuild your product and offering?
But then the question is where are you going and where does this path lead to? Are building a Pier or Bridge.
A Pier goes straight into the ocean, in other words a dead end.
A Bridge connects two pieces of land. It is a clear path you use to go to a new destination. The analogy is apt for startups trying to get to their next milestone or stage of development.
Much of this is as my friend Mike Maples Jr. says, tied into the “Insight” they had which kicked off the idea of the business. Does the insight still hold or has the market changed. Or maybe you were right on the insight but the customer development process was flawed or the execution either on product or Go To Market was poor.
This is an important discussion and something all founders need to be honest with themselves, their team and their investors & advisors about. It will help them clarify the new hypothesis of the business and whether there is even a market for it. Markets & the competitive landscape change very quickly these days. Constantly.
These conversations give you some certainty on whether the business has legs and how to move forward. Otherwise you are just wasting your precious time. Ultimately time is the most valuable and non renewable resource in all of our lives. So in this light, make sure you do your homework, have the hard conversations to make sure you are working on something that is worthy of your time. Or at least gives you more than 50% certainty that this is the case.
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads March 7th, 2021
“The Best Way To Get Started Is To Quit Talking And Begin Doing.” – Walt Disney
"It was, according to many industry analysts, one of the most successful promotions in the history of American cuisine.
But the deal wasn’t so hot for Subway’s franchisees.
Eager to grow at all costs, Subway refused to let the promotion die. As inflation drove up the cost of doing business, the $5 footlong became financially unsustainable for many of the independent entrepreneurs who owned the company’s eateries.
This is the story of a promotion gone very right, and then very wrong. But it’s also a parable about the oft-conflicting goals of small business owners and large corporations."
https://thehustle.co/the-rise-and-demise-of-subways-5-footlong-promotion/
2. "There was a lot that he got right: Armstrong had been running fraud prevention at Airbnb. “This is someone who was entrusted with this billion-dollar marketplace,” Tan remembers. On top of that, Tan had tried to buy Bitcoin from Dwolla and Mt. Gox and concluded that “it was not legit.” Tan had also worked on software for Peter Thiel’s hedge fund as an early Palantir employee. During that time, Tan was told to read the book The Dollar Crisis. So, he understood how the dollar’s decoupling from the gold standard had changed the world. And, of course, by then he’d bought into Marc Andreessen’s assertion that software was eating the world.
And Tan was convinced that Bitcoin would be an amazing medium of exchange — not a store of value. “I didn’t want to believe in store of value back then because I was worried about investing in something that was digital gold,” he said.
“But I was wrong,” he says. Most of the value from Bitcoin today is as an investment or as a hedge against the financial system."
https://www.newcomer.co/p/what-i-got-wrong-about-coinbase
3. "He tells The Verge that Spotify will incorporate a hybrid business model with three distinct parts. One will involve the typical user subscription revenue, another is advertising dollars through its podcast ad marketplace and music streaming ads, and the third is a la carte options, like helping musicians and podcasters sell merch, tour tickets, or even subscriptions to their own content.
“I think you’re going to see platforms making a distinction of not a one-size-fits-all, not just in terms of the creators or how they think about their audience, but really about how you can grow your audience, engage with them, turn them into fans, and then create new and important ways to monetize that fan base,” he says."
https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/23/22295315/spotify-ceo-interview-podcast-daniel-ek-music-stream-on
4. Anyone who cares about your career: this is an important video worth watching.
How to Build a Personal Monopoly with Jack Butcher
5. This is a damn good Netflix series if u like Japanese samurai military history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RYcKCtbFpE
6. “Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, has an alter ego,” O’Keefe wrote: “Farmer Bill, the guy who owns more farmland than anyone else in America.”
https://nypost.com/2021/02/27/why-bill-gates-is-now-the-us-biggest-farmland-owner/
7. "The federal debt of the United States is increasing by over $1 trillion per year, and any amount of this new debt that isn't purchased by foreign and private investors would need to be monetized by the Federal Reserve, meaning a greater supply of dollars.
This of course is an argument for hard assets. Bitcoin, Gold, etc—these commodities are products that derive their value from not changing."
https://eriktorenberg.substack.com/p/the-devaluing-of-the-us-dollar
8. Great basics on fundraising.
https://foundermusings.substack.com/p/part-1-fundraising-without-yc-the
9. "And though Asia’s growth boom is still going strong, it can’t last forever, and Africa’s day as the workshop of the world may come soon.
But economists, leaders, policymakers, businesspeople, and international organizations need to be focusing on this challenge more than they are. The fate of humanity in the 21st century and beyond hinges on whether African countries can figure out the riddle of industrialization."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/all-futurism-is-afrofuturism
10. Turkey turning into a Gaming center.
11. "it’s important to realize that not all acquisitions are created equal. When the opportunity to sell your company comes along, you will be eager to move forward; but make sure to take a beat, think twice and assess the situation. To help do that, remember that there are at least four types of acquisitions."
https://thefamily.substack.com/p/not-all-acquisitions-are-created
12. "One way to think about Lambda is like fintech: You have all these transactions that are moving all over the place, but what makes it all work is a clearinghouse that moves all the money to where it needs to go. I think of Lambda as kind of an economic clearinghouse: Here's all of the untapped human potential, here's all the would-be labor, and over here’s all the jobs that need to be done. There's nothing connecting the two right now other than sheer happenstance and going to university, or maybe you hear that there's a good job over here somewhere."
https://www.thepullrequest.com/p/the-american-dream-as-a-service
13. "We need to be great at managing risk — at identifying it, articulating it, allocating it appropriately, and discharging it systematically and efficiently. Because if you’re great at managing risk, you can take bigger ones. And if you take bigger risks you can accomplish greater feats. So, am I saying that risk management needs to be our core competency as an industry, as if we were actuaries at an insurance company? Damn right — that’s exactly what I’m saying."
https://lifescivc.com/2014/03/the-awesome-power-of-risk/
14. "Whether it was Russia and Venezuela explicitly talking about getting off the US dollar standard or Argentina settling an export deal with Paraguay in Bitcoin, countries have been looking for a new solution for awhile.
We aren’t going to see this occur overnight, but we are definitely starting to see early signs of potential. Bitcoin is widely viewed as a financial asset that investors can hold, but Bitcoin is also a payment network that has proven to be superior to every other payment network in the world. That technology story is rarely covered in the mainstream media, yet it remains one of the most interesting aspects of the Bitcoin network."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/the-currency-of-choice-for-international
15. I'm down with Portugal and Mexico!
https://nomadcapitalist.com/2021/02/24/easiest-countries-to-move-to-from-usa/
16. Sadly anti-Asian violence is increasing in USA/Canada & Europe. Ignorant morons as many of these us are very anti-CCP/China.
"So my theory of anti-Asian violence is that misplaced anger over COVID kicked it off (perhaps aided by Trumpian rhetoric), but it became a self-sustaining meme. Violent people looking for someone to attack — whether because of pandemic stress, natural aggression, a desire to rob someone, a yearning to find someone to hate and exclude, or whatever — zeroed in on Asians as potential victims instead of looking elsewhere."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/is-conflict-with-china-fueling-anti
17. Not surprised. These folks are investing in some super interesting stuff and their close ties to Thiel help too.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/03/presight-fund-two/
18. This is a real shame. There is a real need for funding mechanism like this. Too bad many of traditional LPs either don't understand it or just too conservative.
Congrats to Bryce Roberts for trying this even if it did not continue. Amazing initiative for sure.
19. "While we have a very long path to the final stage, it is inevitable in my mind that bitcoin will become the global reserve currency. Any human with an internet connection will be able to plug into the decentralized, open protocol and send or receive value instantaneously and nearly for free. This is going to fundamentally change the way that resources are organized and used.
As this occurs, entrepreneurs and technologists are going to see the power of decentralized, open protocols. They will start to apply them to various aspects of the legacy system. They will decentralize individual products like collateralized lending or exchanges, but they will also decentralize more complex aspects of society like insurance, corporate governance, and ultimately the law itself.
This innovation and progress is going to take decades."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/a-new-era-is-upon-us
20. This movie looks really good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtGjZp3MWrI
21. "The internet accelerated the shareability of memes, but the creation of memes remained full of friction. It took a fair amount of work to make a meme and, as a result, few people were meme creators. But the internet is becoming more participatory—with new tools democratizing creation and unlocking creativity—and meme culture will be no different. The building blocks for this future will be “cultural legos” and “software legos”
Culture and memes are now indistinguishable: memes reflect culture, magnify culture, and create culture. And the future of memes is, like much of the consumer internet, about creation—more people remixing and sharing."
https://digitalnative.substack.com/p/memes-and-the-atomic-units-of-culture
22. This is a must read for anyone who is thinking about their career and their future.
"The Future of YOU
#1 Audience = Future Currency.
Cash may not be king in the future, your audience will be.
#2 Audience is an Annuity.
It is a cash-flowing asset. It continues to pay and unlike an annuity, as they only have one revenue stream, your audience has numerous.
#3 You-Corps.
The next wave of companies is and will be creators. We increasingly do not trust institutions so we increasingly may move towards trusting individuals. With the tech onslaught why can’t the next group of Unicorns all be You-Corps. Aka You!"
https://contrarianthinking.substack.com/p/i-messed-up-the-you-corp-nfts-and
23. "Gamers are already spending over $100 billion a year on virtual currencies and assets, which amounts to five times the size of the global music industry. And now with blockchain, gamers can actually own items in the games they’re playing. Investors see the value in this, and are striking while the iron is hot."
24. "Deep science investor Lindy Fishburne cofounded the seed- and early-stage venture firm Breakout Ventures several years ago, after cofounding Breakout Labs within the Thiel Foundation back in 2011, and she has amassed a wide array of stakes in the process. Among her firm’s portfolio companies is Cortexyme, a company that aims to treat Alzheimer’s disease; the sustainable materials maker Modern Meadow; and Strateos, a company whose robotic cloud platform is remaking how lab work gets done."
25. Long overdue in Europe. There needs to be other financing options available to startups than VCs.
https://sifted.eu/articles/funding-alternatives-startups-europe/
26. These are some very cool gaming studios. Shout out & congrats to my friend Emily at Double Loop Games!
27. Long one but worth the read. Lots of great insights in general.
"Various memes and trends pass around on networks like Instagram and Twitter. But there, you still have to create your own version of a meme from scratch, even if, on Twitter, it's as simple as copying and pasting.
But TikTok has a strong form of this type of network effect. They explicitly lower the barrier to the literal remixing of everyone else's content. In their app, they have a wealth of features that make it dead simple to grab any element from another TikTok and incorporate it into a new TikTok.
The barrier to entry in editing video is really high as anyone who has used a non-linear editor like Premiere or compositing software like After Effects can attest. TikTok abstracted a lot of formerly complex video editing processes into effects and filters that even an amateur can use."
https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2021/2/15/american-idle
28. Good to know.
"Despite the recent focus on efficacy rates without context, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is not an inferior shot. Its authorization in the US is an exciting development that will help us get to our two goals of Covid-19 control: reducing hospitalizations to an acceptable level and achieving herd immunity. The most important thing is that everyone takes whatever vaccine they can get—both for their own safety, as well as the safety of those around them."
https://www.wired.com/story/covid-19-vaccines-equally-worthy-of-your-arm/
29. Like it or not, China's CCP is the main enemy to the west.
"Democracies are, of course, far from perfect. They suffer from inequality and injustice. But Xi’s vision for “a community with a shared future,” as he calls it, is like a neighborhood where a man beats his wife every night, but anyone who tries to help her is “intervening in his internal affairs.” In order to show you are not “prejudiced,” you invite the guy over for pool parties, and smile as if nothing’s wrong. Maybe he’ll bring you a few beers. That’s how Xi defines “mutual respect.”
I don’t want to live in that neighborhood. For the West to full-on decouple from China is impractical. But we do have to think hard about how we choose to engage with Beijing. Fueling Xi’s rise by sharing our best technology is not a good idea. Imposing costs on China for its human rights abuses, in the form of sanctions, is a must.
Pro-Beijing advocates will say that we in the West are being hypocritical and that our real agenda is to “keep China down.” Still, we’re under no obligation to share our technology and capital with a regime that is increasingly contemptuous of what we hold dear."
https://www.politico.eu/article/xi-jinping-turned-me-into-a-china-hawk/
30. This is a worthwhile read.
"We see the influence of this survivalist mindset in our economic systems, ranging from Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” or Hobbes tying “self-preservation” to “self-interest.” In turn, scarcity reinforces zero-sum thinking, the destructive “I win, you lose” that masquerades as meritocratic competition."
https://radreads.co/how-to-overcome-the-scarcity-mindset/
31. "It’s important to recognize that board members are not there to sit in judgment of you but rather to collaboratively problem-solve with you. If you’re not able to discuss the company’s biggest problems with them, you’re much less likely to make meaningful progress. You should choose your board members accordingly. "
https://sacks.substack.com/p/the-saas-board-meeting
32. "The creator economy served as a catalyst to disrupt legacy structures by introducing platforms & products that enable individuals to build a business around themselves. There are many reasons why individuals want to go independent which I explain in detail here (Media Companies as Record Labels) and here (Rise of the Renaissance Creator), which introduce a variety of opportunities for both the talent and existing media institutions.
The rapid development of platforms and services that empower individuals to build a business around themselves is a major one. Top talent wants more control and ownership over their work, having options to transcend their reputation and financial success from a parent brand."
https://medium.com/digital-diplomacy/a-new-media-structure-the-ownership-economy-517131568ced
33. "NFT creators in the future will have two paths: independent or collective. As an independent, creators can realize the full upside of their NFT creations, and earn their built-in royalties. But the collective model is an entirely new way to build distribution. By fractionalizing the royalties of an NFT, creators gain more distribution. These fractional royalties can be represented in the form of tokens, which are inherently programmable like NFTs. Creators will strategically distribute these tokens to users who can help them sell the NFT, potentially at a higher price than if they were to do it alone."
https://jammsession.mirror.xyz/-xYcfFRlhDdLDSUgRMTYJAaRJBs2VG4LP34DnOV84mI
34. "This is what I’m calling the age of the Renaissance Creator — the hybridization of the individual as both a creator and an entrepreneur. This development and definition of ‘creativity’ is one of the more interesting things happening today because it is contrary to the supposed logic for a creator to go independent. We like to say independence (see: passion economy) is valuable because it lets a creator focus on what they do best; create. But actually it’s the opposite.
By going independent, the creator is aspiring to not only create, but willingly assume the management and business of their entire self. This acceptance of responsibility as a formula for success will dictate a creator’s desire to go independent and develop a micro-label or decide to limit duties and create within a larger media organization.
I want to be a creator. I want to be a business. I want to be a brand."
https://jarroddicker.medium.com/media-2020-rise-of-the-renaissance-creator-459daec4bc6b
35. Salesforce VC is one of the few CVCs that are doing it right & effective. The numbers are impressive.
"In a boom time for large tech IPOs and software consolidation, Salesforce’s name is showing up everywhere. CEO Marc Benioff has proven that he’s not only a mega-dealmaker when it comes to buying high-priced cloud companies like Slack and Tableau, but has also turned Salesforce, with its hefty balance sheet, into a major force in Silicon Valley venture capital."
36. "The sneaker boom has created opportunities for a new generation of speculator. Hebert and other young resellers are the first to treat footwear as a bona fide asset class, products as worthy of informed valuation and investment as any other commodity. The sneaker market, for them, is a lot like playing the market. In the hours after siphoning up stock from retailers, they essentially sell short-term futures based on street sentiment."
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2021-sneaker-investment/
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
Safe is Unsafe, Unsafe is Safe: Managing Risk
One of my favorite episodes of Star Trek Next Generation was Season 6: Tapestry of Life.
When Captain Picard's artificial heart fails, he is offered the rare opportunity to go back in time and fix the mistake that led to his demise. Yet by changing this, it completely altered his life and career in a direction that he did not expect. He became a low level functionary with little responsibility instead of captain of a starship. So what is the point here besides sharing that I am a Star Trek Fan (For the record, I also like Star Wars and most Science Fiction in general). I think there is a great lesson for many of us.
As stated in the episode:
“Because he never came face to face with his own mortality. It never taught him that life was too precious to squander by playing it safe. His life never came into focus, he drifted with no plan and no agenda. Never seizing the opportunity that presented themselves…..He learned to play it safe & he never, ever got noticed by anyone.“
I speak a lot about differentiation and standing out. Taking risks is important, in fact crucial to move forward. I don’t mean senseless & stupid risk: which are ones that endanger yours or someone else’s life (ie. jumping out of an airplane without a parachute or riding a motorcycle without a helmet, or driving drunk). But you should take calculated risks. The worst thing you can do in life is playing it safe and following what society and what others around you are doing. Then you end up just like everyone else.
More often according to noted psychologists Daniel Kahneman the reality is we tend to overestimate the size of the risks and underestimate our own ability to handle and overcome it. We also miss the cost of not taking action. How many guys regret not asking out the girl or trying for that promotion? To sum it up: No Risk, means No Reward.
This is relevant to investing, to career moves, dating/marriage and life at large. Better to try and have it not work out. At least then, you won’t be wondering what life would have been like if you did not take action.
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
The 5 Phases of Countries & Companies
This came from Ray Dalio. (#Hattip to Chamath for surfacing this.)
Poor Countries Acting Poor
A Poor Country Who Becomes Rich but Acting Poor
Rich Country Acting Rich
A Rich Country that has become poor but does not realize it & still acting rich
A Rich Country Becomes Poor again
Using this matrix, you can easily slot countries into each phase. So many things to mention here. Hunger/ dissatisfaction versus complacency. Saving versus spending. Frugal versus extravagance. Humility versus arrogance (ahem, USA & UK).
This is also incredibly relevant to people & our lives. Also quite relevant to companies as well. It’s the “Rags to Riches to Rags” cycle. Assuming you have some level of self awareness and honesty, you can use this to plot where you are in your life stage and mentality. The key is build good habits and keep the right attitude to prevent complacency and arrogance.
And hopefully use it to slow down any fall coming.
As my Ukrainian friends say, “The best wolf is always a little bit hungry.”
Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/