Adapt or Die: My Personal Life Lessons from Downton Abbey
Besides just being an entertaining human drama, “Downton Abbey” is a television series about an English noble family held back by tradition, bracketed by change in a pre and post Great War world. This was the change of global power and dominance from the old British Empire to America after the Great War ie. World War One. It probably did not help that many of the young men across Europe were killed and the country was in repair mode. These deaths cost Europe the energy & new ideas that can only come from Youth. And then you are mainly left with the old. Unfortunately in a time of great change, the old ways just don’t work anymore. Change hurts. The cultural shock of the Jazz age. Status and Hierarchy at all levels, even within the servants class. Old versus New. Tradition versus Innovation. Rise of technology (automobiles). Servants deep interdependence with Nobility. Downton Abbey shows it all.
Downton Abbey showed how the old nobility class were reliant on inherited fortunes, were not able to support themselves & their luxurious lifestyle and cost structure despite their status & noble name. This is not dissimilar from what I see today with the east coast elite class in media (NYC), politics (DC) & on Wall Street.
The show also exemplified inheriting versus founding. Prior to this, the elder Lord Grantham’s lack of flexibility, his focus on tradition and name, cost him his daughter's life, almost cost him his marriage. He almost lost his property on numerous occasions because he could not afford it. He ran things the way they had always been from his fathers time. Things only got better when the elder Grantham finally embraced the change and by bringing in the young generation to run things.
This is why I am so grateful to be working in tech. There is definitely an age-ism problem in Silicon Valley. But frankly I also blame these older individuals for not keeping up with what’s happening. Yes, there are many older programmers or tech executives who cannot get jobs but in many cases it’s because they do not invest in learning new things. As Chamath says
“It’s about trying and learning. It’s a learning mindset. Things are changing so F--ing fast,The only thing I can do to stay safe is to learn how to learn because things will constantly be changing underfoot”
I’ve taken this to heart over the last 22 years. I have tried to keep a very open mind, I have invested extensively in my own education and will continue to invest extensively here. I continue to fight against my own inertia, habits and general dislike of change. “Downton Abbey” has only confirmed for me that this is THE only way forward if you want to stay relevant in this world.
EDM DJs: The Bleeding Edge and Early Model for Creator Economy Entrepreneurs
I’ve long been fascinated and inspired by Electronic Dance Music (EDM) DJs.
Names like Steve Aoki, Paul Oakenfold, Pete Tong, Avici, Carl Cox, Martin Garrix, David Guetta, Armin Van Buuren, Diplo, Tiesto, Skrillex, Calvin Harris, DeadMau5, 3LAU. Real drivers of culture.
EDM has been around since the 80s but it has really only become mainstream in the last 20 years (I would recommend the documentary “What We Started” if you want to learn more). Consequently it’s become a very big business. The biggest rave, Tomorrowland, had 400,000 attendees in 2019 before the pandemic hit. These star DJs make $500k to $1M usd a night at a concert. Big Clubs in Ibiza, Las Vegas and Miami pay big time DJs up to $250k usd per set to be resident DJs. Why? Because these names bring traffic, business to these clubs.
EDM DJs are the original Multi-SKU Creator (Why a Paid Newsletter Won’t Be Enough Money for Most Writers (And That’s Fine): The Multi-SKU…) or “Portfolio Entrepreneur” (https://hardfork.substack.com/p/the-portfolio-entrepreneur). They take old music and remix it, they make new music, do live DJ sets, headline & sell out big concerts. They create and sell merchandise, they act as producers for other musicians, and build a large number of fans. This leads directly to massive social media followings. They are able to leverage this into many new business lines. Look at Diplo for example.
“He’s one of today’s most in-demand music producers, crafting tunes for Beyoncé, Usher, and Madonna (whom he helped with her... 2015 album). He’s also a fashion model (for Alexander Wang), a product endorser (Axe, Diesel, BlackBerry), a technology investor (for Phhhoto, an app that takes GIFs), an Internet-radio programmer (with about 4.6 million followers on SoundCloud), and an actor (he had a tiny part in 22 Jump Street), as well as a filmmaker, author, cartoon creator, philanthropist, and restaurateur.
(Source: Why The World Is Moving To Diplo's Beat)
Diplo has built an amazing career and portfolio. And he has to.
This is a business that is cut throat, intensely competitive with new talent coming from anywhere and everywhere. This is a business where longevity is rare and popularity fades quickly. It’s the ultimate “Winner Takes All Market.” This is why it pays to watch the best DJs here as well as the moves that they are making.
EDM DJs have always been on the cutting edge of culture and business. As the greater creator economy continues to grow, all future creators & influencers can learn a lot from these folks and how they stay on top.
PS: For the record, I like almost all the EDM DJs. But the DJs that I often listen to are Charlotte De Witte, Amelie Lens, Boris Brejcha & Miss Monique.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads August 29th, 2021
"I've got a theory that if you give 100% all the time, somehow things will work out in the end." - Larry Bird
"The Taliban are fully in charge. Militarily perhaps, but not as a functioning government. After all, most of them only know how to fight.
The Taliban clearly knew how to win the war, but are struggling to figure out how to govern, especially how to pay for it all. If they can't show the Afghan people they are really in control, that'll undermine their legitimacy in the eyes of the population and at least some of the nations they want to do business with (obviously not most democracies).
To run a country, you need a plan, and Durrani says they simply don't have one: "Military men can never do public policy."
https://www.gzeromedia.com/afghan-reality-check
2. Supply chains really matter. This is why prices are going up almost everywhere. This is also why I expect we will see reshoring of more manufacturing in the West.
"If you want to understand what’s driving inflation in the U.S. economy right now, look no further than Jani the giraffe. Jani used to cost around $87. Now she’s around $116, as costs went up on every step of her journey."
https://time.com/6088033/why-inflation-is-rising/
3. "The world is going to keep changing. Technology will keep rewriting the rules. Jobs will come and go. Entire professions will disappear.
You can’t only focus on getting better at what you do since what you do may no longer be relevant 10, 15, or 20+ years from now.
For you to have lasting value, you have to change the rules of the game and be willing to stop chasing what everyone else is.
Focus on what you, and only you, can bring to the table; your unique knowledge, personal experiences, and hard-earned wisdom. Be able to communicate this and make it useful for others, and you’ll remain relevant forever."
https://newsletter.invinciblecareer.com/p/how-to-future-proof-your-career
4. "You no longer *need* to become a $100M+ revenue company to have optionality in the “Capital Markets”. We’re using quotes because it will no longer be called “Capital Markets” but rather “Crypto Markets”.
Each Sovereign Individual will be able borrow/lend/exchange based on what they own and the value they are delivering.
Therefore? It’s time to build out your individual value… Before it is too late."
https://defieducation.substack.com/p/understanding-the-long-term-defi
5. "Each of those heists, police alleged, had been the work of individuals with apparent connections to crime families, particularly a rising network of clans of Lebanese origin that have turned Berlin into one of the gangland capitals of Europe.
“They were allowed to stay, but they were not integrated into society,” says Benjamin Jendro, a spokesperson for the Berlin Police Union who has studied the families for years. “They had no access to the labor market, no official residency status. And some of them turned to crime.”
Initially, experts say, the newcomers focused on muscling in on Germany's drug trafficking, prostitution, and protection rackets, at the time dominated by the Russian Mafia. More recently a second generation, born in Germany, has nudged the clans toward more sensational criminal exploits, like robbery and murder."
https://www.gq.com/story/the-dresden-job
6. Whoa: this also seems timely: Foundation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryN-CJZSqtM
7. "The bottom line: groundbreaking technologies of the past decade have finally diffused through society and are shifting us out of the late industrial/early information age into the digital age.
And that is fundamentally changing the narrative. Creating conflict between the status quo of the past age and the advocates of change."
https://dougantin.com/shifting-to-the-digital-narrative/
8. This is why Crypto is so exciting. Entering the Web 3.0 world.
https://mobile.twitter.com/cdixon/status/1429585831899983876
9. "In 1937, the economist Ronald Coase theorized that companies exist because they minimize transaction costs, like search and information costs. And as the internet has reduced those costs, outsourcing and offshoring have risen, just as Coase would predict. The gig economy was really one more step along this path — the use of technology to expand the set of labor markets that could use temp work and day labor, which are a sort of micro-outsourcing.
But it’s possible that the gains from that sort of micro-outsourcing are simply inherently limited in a lot of markets. Driving yourself somewhere, or riding a bike, is still usually cheaper than hiring a chauffeur. Vetting porn actors to make sure they’re not trafficked or underage cuts down massively on the transaction cost of legal liability. And so on. Gig platforms definitely cut down on transaction costs somewhat, but maybe not enough to justify huge valuations and a massive investment boom in most cases."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/why-has-the-gig-economy-been-a-disappointment
10. "Since we’re in inning one of this transition we focus primarily on the main tools to help you maximize your chances of being a player in the metaverse (instead of a NPC). That strategy? 1) high paying career or work from home at minimum, 2) build a side business asap based on your niche knowledge online and 3) invest in secular growth technology stocks and a little bit of trad fi to remain sane during the volatile ride!"
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/crypto-vs-global-money-supply-and
11. "At our office, we tell founders things they’re not used to hearing: That high valuations can be the kiss of death—they inevitably lead to down rounds and less founder equity; that a strong business plan from the get-go is essential; and that if everybody’s doing it, you probably shouldn’t, etc., etc.
Some founders listen, some don’t. That’s to be expected. Every one of them is smart, but many have already been brainwashed into believing the hype that sustains both the VC world and most media outlets that cover it."
https://news.crunchbase.com/news/an-insiders-perspective-on-vc-craziness-and-the-startup-bubble/
12. "But real diversification takes a very big picture view of risks– country risk, currency risk, systemic risk.
If you’re 100% exposed to a single country, you’re not diversified. If you’re 100% exposed to a single currency, you’re not diversified. If you’re 100% exposed to a single asset class, or even asset ‘type’ (i.e. ‘paper’ assets versus physical assets), you’re not diversified.
Yes, shares in very large companies do represent some country and currency diversification since they earn money all over the world. But they’re still paper assets concentrated in a single asset class.
Proper diversification include things like foreign companies and/or stock indexes; shares of privately-held operating businesses; digital assets like cryptocurrency; high quality cash equivalents; intellectual assets like royalties; and physical assets like gold and silver."
13. "In the meme economy, the market performance of a stock or cryptocurrency is less about forecasting business revenue than it is about gauging a traded asset’s “memeability.” This user-generated, virality-based investment strategy can best be explained by René Girard’s mimetic theory of desire, which argues that “human desire is not an autonomous process, but a collective one. We want things because other people want them.” And when those things are also scarce, like stocks or NFTs, they become immensely valuable."
https://1729.com/the-meme-economy/
14. This is why they are both a menace to modern civilized society. Down with the extreme left and right.
"Progressives and right-wing Christians aren’t ideological enemies, they’re co-religionists. Seen from outside the Christian worldview, this is a purely internecine conflict. Both avowed Christians and the woke activist agree on the moral script for our world, they merely disagree on the casting."
https://www.thepullrequest.com/p/the-christ-with-a-thousand-faces
15. Lots of food for thought about the debacle in Afghanistan and how our own brain dead culture wars continue unabated. I really have to get out of America soon.
https://www.piratewires.com/p/american-taliban
16. "In the past, deals that we were looking at were getting done in two to three weeks; now the average time is probably a week to a week-and-a-half to make a final decision. I’d say the fastest we’ve moved is in five days, in a situation where we’ve known the entrepreneur for years so there was strong validation on a personal level. There was also good founder-market fit in terms of what they wanted to do.
EH: We just pull ourselves out of certain rounds that are moving [super fast] and/or valuation expectation upfront is just crazy. You see a lot of pre-seed rounds right now that are pre-product, pre-traction, pre-revenue that are done at $15 million or $20 million or $30 million post-money valuations. We’ll certainly flex for the right things, but there is just a lot of froth in the market right now."
17. I did not see this one coming.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/25/headspace-and-ginger-are-merging-to-form-headspace-health/
18. "While the funding mix will likely continue to evolve, venture capitalists will have no shortage of investment opportunities available to them. In fact, there are more gaming entrepreneurs today than ever. Talented games industry leaders with proven track records are increasingly choosing to pursue entrepreneurship over the safety of a job with an industry incumbent.
Several factors are contributing to this trend. First and foremost is the friendly environment for gaming investments, outlined above. Not only is it easier to get funded and make a living with a games studio, but the work itself has been simplified: remote work has allowed talent to collaborate from anywhere, while a variety of services have popped up to support smaller developers, assisting with everything from analytics to market research to user acquisition funding."
https://naavik.co/business-breakdowns/gamingvc
19. Grifters everywhere it seems......
https://www.spytalk.co/p/ex-trump-spy-chief-grenell-celebrates
20. This is a great idea and much needed. More and better VC funds is a good thing. Stress on the better piece.
“What I’m trying to do is help emerging VCs become better versions of themselves,” Mead said. “I can quickly identify what are areas of improvement, but I think room for improvement is on both sides.”
21. "The truth is we’re in a radically different place than we were in the first half of 2020. We need new mental models to make sense of the pandemic as it exists right now, because early-pandemic thinking is steering us in the wrong direction
But it’s now become blatantly obvious that caring only for our local community or our country is counterproductive: The more we allow the virus to spread unchecked in other parts of the world, the more chances we give it to mutate into dangerous variants like delta."
22. This guy can be a kook but I share the same fears of the growing political class (gerontocracy on top of that). West slipping into illiberalism but thankful not as bad as in China and other parts of the world.....yet.
"The financial and economic problems in the world are serious and accelerating. But as we go deeper into the Greater Depression, your biggest risks aren’t financial or economic. They’re political.
The only way to solve that problem from a practical point of view is to diversify politically the way you would diversify financially.
That means you should have a crib in a second or third country—as well as businesses and financial assets in others besides your home country. That’s the only thing that you can do at this point."
"Everybody should read Neal Stephenson’s book, The Diamond Age.
The ideas that he developed, essentially of nation-states falling apart and being replaced with phyles, was very prescient.
Humans are social animals; we like to hang out with other people.
This is especially true with people that are like us. In other words, people that believe in the same things, that have the same values, and have the same outlook on the world."
23. I love the term "Soaring Twenties"
"though I believe this current decade will be a great one, I also believe it will get worse in the short term.
Our Paris is the Internet. Our Paris is DM groups and Discord channels and Telegram chats. It is Zoom calls and podcasts, newsletters and message boards.
Perhaps as the decade progresses our Paris will be less in thrall to Silicon Valley overlords and their platforms. Perhaps the Occupation by the artless tech corporations will end, or at least wane. After all they rule by our consent. We can simply ignore them if we choose.
You have to give the vampire permission to pass the threshold.
So perhaps Web 3.0 will evolve in lockstep with the growing decentralised artistic impulse. Artists go where the freedom is, as my friend Cody Clarke likes to say. And so perhaps freedom-centred tech will also grow in the slipstream of the decentralised artistic vanguard."
https://thomasjbevan.substack.com/p/the-soaring-twenties
24. Jonah Hill looking good.
"Okay, I’ll be totally real. My neighbor here is 92. His name is Geoff. And he’s the reason I moved to the beach, because I was talking to him one day on the deck—I would have lunch with him once a week on the deck. I said, “What’s the deal, man? You’re the happiest guy I’ve ever seen in my life. Why are you so fucking happy?” And he’s like, “I don’t look around at what anybody else is doing. I just live my life, and I don’t look at what other people are doing.”
And he passed away two days ago. And the reason I bring this up is because my hero used to be Mike Nichols, but now my hero is Geoff. Literally, if you said, “Who’s your hero?” I’d say Geoff, because this guy lived happy, not giving a fuck about the stupid rat race, and then died at 92 at the beach."
https://www.gq.com/story/jonah-hill-fall-2021-gq-style-cover
25. "Allow me to say this more simply, by building an online writing presence you can compete with the best VC firms in the world."
https://every.to/napkin-math/the-rise-of-the-content-capitalist
The Practitioner Preacher Model
Ryan Deiss, Eric Siu, The guys at Tropical MBA, Dan Martell, Tim Ferriss, Shaan Puri, Mike Maples Jr. All incredibly influential people in their respective areas. One big reason I believe is because they share all the things that they learned the hard way. Ie. by actually doing and doing it over a long period of time.
I was struck by my friend Ryan Deiss’s Traffic & Conversion Conference back in 2015. The conference is literally an ongoing workshop where the very experienced Digital Marketer online marketing team shared all their lessons and tactics from the year before. I walked out with a pile of notes of tactics that I still use today, especially on the email marketing front. They literally sent out billions of marketing emails. The lessons have literally generated digital gold.
Contrast this with most academic professors writing about business. I’ve read most of their books and the majority are somewhat intellectually interesting but totally useless in the field, or out of date by the time they get published. They are the exact opposite of a Practitioner-Preacher. Just a plain “preacher” and it’s why I’ve developed an incredible disdain for these people. One exception to this would be the late Clayton Christensen. But he was an actual entrepreneur before he became an academic, which is how he teased out the very valuable concept of the “Innovator's Dilemma” ie. The reason most incumbents fail is because of fear of cannibalizing their core business.
Or why most startup mentors who come from corporate background and NOT a startup background just give at best useless advice. Or at worst, company damaging advice. While well meaning, why would the advice be good or relevant? They have NEVER worked in a startup before. The only advice they might have is for understanding how the sales or procurement process at a big corporation works, stuff on Culture, Scaling or something at a functional level like HR or Business Development etc. But otherwise their advice is pretty useless.
This is also why it’s so easy for a former operator/entrepreneur who becomes an investor or Venture Capitalist to lose touch with the market. How do you stay relevant when the market is changing so quickly? The more you focus on investing, the further away from the frontlines of operations. This is why I am a believer of side hustles for VCs or even incubating companies themselves, especially for VCs who are investing in the next generation of technology.
Basically, make sure you are building stuff or have some hobby of building stuff. Even if it’s a side hustle ecommerce store, or heck just make a website. It will help you maintain some empathy for the builders you are supposed to support. At minimum, take classes to stretch your brain. How many older investors do we all know who end up having their brains calcified because they stop learning. Or more likely, arrogantly think they have seen and know it all.
This is why I love Mike Maples Jr. so much. When we would meet prior to Covid times, he would still be actively taking notes and asking questions, with whoever he meets. And from a neophyte investor like myself too. We can all learn from him. “Be Like Mike” as the old TV advertisement said. This is how you stay relevant in the technology business.
Be Perfect: Inspiration from “Friday Night Lights”
This is a random post especially for a tech business focused blog and especially for a guy who does not really care much about football or any sports outside those of the martial arts and military kind. I’ve long been a fan of both the cult tv series and movie “Friday Night Lights”. Probably one of the showcases of Americana at the height of our cultural dominance. It’s an inspiring drama that shows the competitive and yet kind nature of Americans that now seems almost quaint.
The story focuses around a character named coach Taylor and the football team of the small Texan town of Odessa, where the game of football is literally everything & the entire town shows up to cheer them on.
I love the inspirational speeches that still help get you focused on the moment, about doing your best whatever the circumstances, having a code and being there for your team. There is one awesome speech in the movie during halftime about “Being Perfect”:
Being perfect is not about that scoreboard out there. It's not about winning. It's about you and your relationship with yourself, your family and your friends. Being perfect is about being able to look your friends in the eye and know that you didn’t let them down because you told them the truth. And that truth is that you did everything that you could.
Can you live in that moment, as best you can, with clear eyes and love in your heart? With joy in your heart? If you can do that gentlemen, then you’re perfect.
Source: Friday Night Lights (9/10) Movie CLIP - Coach Gaines on Being Perfect (2004) HD
No surprise so many American business people use sports analogies for motivation and to illustrate a key point. Another great halftime talk coach Taylor says: "Every man at some point in his life is gonna lose a battle. He's gonna fight and he's gonna lose. But what makes him a man is that in the midst of the battle, he does not lose himself. This Game is not over. This battle is not over."
Source: Coach Taylor's Half-Time Team Talk "This Game is Not Over." | Friday Night Lights
The game of football is about playing your best and taking the lessons you learn from the game into your life after. We can learn so much from this. I usually end up watching these speeches when I am especially feeling down or just need a reminder of all the good out there. It’s another great tool especially in times of uncertainty and challenges these pandemic days.
I’ve tried to live by the idiom that coach Taylor in the television series repeats to his players. “Clear Eyes, Full heart. Can’t Lose”
For me: it’s a reminder for everything that I do in life. Am I looking at the situation honestly and realistically? Am I doing my best and giving it my full effort?
If I am, then it’s all good. For all of us then, paraphrasing, if we put in the work, Win or Lose, we come out ahead and with no regret.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads August 22nd, 2021
"People who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do." - Rob Siltanen
"What’s more, newcomers in the VC market like Tiger Global as well as a number of non-VC investment funds like PE firms with much larger pools of capital than the market has seen are aggressively pursuing enormous deals in an effort to drive faster exits and returns on their investments.
With so many investors vying for their attention, many founders are taking the opportunity to raise bigger rounds and coming back for additional funding faster than ever, which is apparent in the constant drumbeat of funding news as well as the 250 unicorns and the record $288 billion invested in startups in the first half of this year."
https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/12/the-tortoise-and-the-hare-story-is-playing-out-right-now-in-vc/
2. I love this show! Friday Night Lights!
https://www.vox.com/culture/22601978/friday-night-lights-tv-series-netflix-one-good-thing
3. 110% agree.
"What do you do every day, constantly strive to get better at, that improves not just your life, but the lives of others? What is that one thing that you are building above all else, trading your time - no, decades of your life - in exchange to will into existence that is good and beautiful in this world?
That is a mission, and everyone needs one.
I promise, once you have one, you never want to go back to living without one."
The key to finding the right mission is finding something that is hard, like genuinely hard, because learning to love the struggle and the person it chisels you into is part of the magic that happens over time.
You aren’t adding to yourself, you are letting the mission chisel away all the nonessential nonsense that the modern world has coated you in which is weighing you down and completely unnecessary.
Like Michelangelo carving David, you have a mission that is inside you, your job is to discover it and get rid of the excess in life as it reveals itself."
https://www.radigancarter.com/dispatches/you-need-a-mission-in-life
4. Great perspective on how perception of mental health has changed in society. The importance of Meditation.
https://bowtiedbarbary.substack.com/p/master-your-mindset
5. "Sweden's home computer drive, and concurrent early investment in internet connectivity, help explain why its capital Stockholm has become such rich soil for startups, birthing and incubating the likes of Spotify, Skype and Klarna, even though it has some of the highest tax rates in the world.
That's the view of Siemiatkowski and several tech CEOs and venture capitalists interviewed by Reuters."
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/how-sweden-became-silicon-valley-europe-2021-08-11/
6. "It turns out that Workrise isn’t an anomaly: innovators in Texas — From Solugen in Houston reimagining chemical manufacturing to Leadr in Dallas innovating on organizational development — seem to care about real people and real problems more than the abstractions from reality that animate too much of Silicon Valley. At minimum, they tend to at least ask the question of how technology relates to our humanity — a profoundly rebellious question for tech leaders to ask today."
https://medium.com/bedrock/why-im-bullish-on-texas-81ef231c2de4
7. Lots of great tips here for new Founder CEOs of time management while building his company. Learned a bunch here.
8. "The term creator is a catch-all. Achieving success requires multiple skillsets:
-Creativity
-Audience building
-Operational excellence
Some creators possess all three. These are the lucky ones. And usually the most successful. But for every Pomp, there are countless creators who master the first two but fall short with the third.
Even with a standout voice and a great audience, a creator's business can stall out if they lack an operational skillset."
https://davenemetz.com/creator-operator/
9. More on the ongoing disaster ensuing in Afghanistan. What a sad tragedy, now ongoing for 40+ years.
https://www.spytalk.co/p/kabul-fallsto-multiple-metaphors
10. "The venture capital industry emerged to enable HP-type bets on new businesses outside giant companies and to enable giant investors to diversify into assets that are not correlated with traditional stocks and bonds.
Innovation has since become more important and more elusive, and investors are more hungry for alternative assets than they have ever been. This calls for a further evolution of the venture capital model.
Instead of investing in companies before they become big, investors need to invest in individuals before they form companies. Talent itself must become an investable asset. And it is."
https://www.drorpoleg.com/betting-the-firm-part-ii/
11. So much to love about Portugal. One of my fave places in the world.
https://internationalliving.com/the-best-towns-and-cities-to-retire-in-europe/
12. "Think of the above image almost like a wardrobe, where each wallet is a different outfit you can put on to go to a different venue. Just like you wear one set of clothes to the gym, another to a nice restaurant, and another to work, you'll reach for different wallets for different kinds of online activities."
https://www.jonstokes.com/p/pseudonymity-and-the-billion-user
13. "Of course, it’s nearly impossible to predict who will become the next Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. Mark Zuckerberg was a college drop out. So was Bill Gates. And Evan Spiegel and Steve Jobs too. The list goes on—not just of drop outs, but of founders whose successes were far from obvious.
This is why the golden rule of Silicon Valley is not just “Treat people how you’d want to be treated,” but instead, “Treat people as if they might become the next great founder” — because for all you know, they just might. If you’re good to them, they’ll remember you, let you invest, hire you, invest in your next project, etc. This is why you see 20 year olds able to quickly raise money or build their reputation in The Valley in ways you wouldn’t in other industries. In any comparable industry for talented people — Wall Street, medicine, law, Fortune 500 companies — there are few if any 25 year old billionaires. You have to “pay your dues” in other industries far more than you have to in Silicon Valley.
Silicon Valley runs on reputation: if you have a good one, everyone will want to work with you. Reputation is built on integrity and proof of work — What have you done? What have you built or funded? Who have you helped? Successful builders are more respected, but funders get plenty of respect too."
https://eriktorenberg.substack.com/p/the-magic-of-silicon-valley
14. This is pretty funny and ridiculous at the same time.
https://thehustle.co/leonard-v-pepsi-harrier-jet-lawsuit
15. Poland is pretty awesome. Most of Central Eastern Europe follows his criteria. Maximum bullish on the region & investing accordingly.
https://medium.com/@dominooch/why-i-moved-to-warsaw-poland-from-palo-alto-california-e90c92bbff33
16. "If you have any material amount of wealth, you are not able to preserve it by holding US dollars, bonds, or gold. All are producing negative real rates of return. You essentially are left with bitcoin or equities, which leads you to consider an allocation to bitcoin given the high degree of volatility that will likely serve to outperform equities over a long enough time period."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/the-gold-standard-50-years-later
17. "Is it luck if you’re smart enough to run the math on compounding and live below your means for a few years?
What is 2-3 years in the grand scheme of things anyway?
What do you really have to lose?
The answer is nothing. As Plato himself actually said “Courage is knowing what not to fear”
If you figure out how crypto is going to develop, you’ll be well positioned to benefit from the 10-15 year growth of the industry (DeFi, NFTs, Insurance, Layer 2+ scaling, video game and crypto integration etc.). During this time period as we transition into the Sovereign Individual you can flex as *much* as you want since you’ve successfully managed the transition."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/one-in-1000-year-opportunity-and
18. A cogent view on the American disaster, dishonor & incompetence in Afghanistan. So infuriating.
"Now, it’s difficult to blame the President for failing to predict the Taliban’s success; he surrounds himself with ‘experts’ who are supposed to figure these things out. And after all, we have to trust the experts, right?
But this is a pretty clear sign that, maybe just maybe, the experts are sometimes wrong.
Maybe the big policy ideas they come up with are designed for failure, right from the start.
And maybe when their ideas are proven to be failures, the ‘experts’ double down on their stupidity rather than admit they were wrong.
Afghanistan is a tragic metaphor for everything wrong with government… because we see these same mistakes over and over again."
https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/some-clear-thinking-on-afghanistan-33265/
19. An excellent perspective explaining the Afghanistan disaster. Graveyard of empires, China's turn coming soon although I can't imagine them screwing it up as badly.
"Basically, my thought is this: Military occupations are much less able to transform countries than Americans tend to think. In particular, we should never go into a war expecting the outcome to look like post-WW2 Japan."
"America is not an empire, but a nation-state — an insular, self-centered nation state, sometimes a militaristic and aggressive nation-state, but not the kind of entity that seeks to incorporate new territories and new economic satrapies.
And we would do well to remember this. Our foreign policy should be based on our fundamental character as a nation-state rather than an empire. We should be willing to help defend our friends from aggression, and from the encroachment of true empires, but we should not occupy and seek to transform other countries."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-afghanistan-occupation-and-the
20. "Coinbase Ventures has backed more than 150 companies in its three years in existence, with notable companies in its portfolio from all over the crypto ecosystem like the well-funded but regulation-challenged BlockFi, non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea, digital collectibles maker Dapper Labs, blockchain startup StarkWare and TaxBit, which recently raised funding for its crypto tax software at a $1.3 billion valuation.
Unlike some other corporate investors, Coinbase’s venture capital investments don’t come from a dedicated fund, but off its balance sheet. The company writes checks of $50,000 to $250,000 in seed rounds, and larger if necessary later on. And with its volume of deals and lack of dedicated staff, Coinbase Ventures prefers to join rounds led by other VC firms and not take board seats."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2021/08/16/inside-coinbase-ventures-approach-crypto-vc/
21. What an F--king disaster. Not contesting that we needed to leave but the way we did it. Gross incompetence.
https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/chaotic-afghanistan-pullout-stuns-globe-5112420
22. This is awesome! I'm all for this if they can get away with it & do both jobs well. Power to the People.
"A small, dedicated group of white-collar workers, in industries from tech to banking to insurance, say they have found a way to double their pay: Work two full-time remote jobs, don’t tell anyone and, for the most part, don’t do too much work, either.
Alone in their home offices, they toggle between two laptops. They play “Tetris” with their calendars, trying to dodge endless meetings. Sometimes they log on to two meetings at once. They use paid time off—in some cases, unlimited—to juggle the occasional big project or ramp up at a new gig. Many say they don’t work more than 40 hours a week for both jobs combined. They don’t apologize for taking advantage of a system they feel has taken advantage of them."
23. This is absolutely NUTS. I understand caution and risk management but this idea of Zero-ism in a raging pandemic world is INSANE. No wonder governments & politicians everywhere are losing credibility fast.
24. "It is essential for Taiwan to continue speaking out about its significance in terms of values, interests, and economics. Taiwan is a living example that democracy is not incompatible with the Chinese-speaking world, making it the Achilles’ heel of the Chinese Communist Party. Its location is central to the first island chain, a crucial check against Beijing’s expansionism. Taiwan also plays a critical role in the global high-tech supply chain, manufacturing many of the world’s most cutting-edge electronics.
Taiwan cannot afford to be silent. It cannot allow Beijing to fold cross-strait issues into its narrative of “internal affairs,” asserting that this is just another blip in the 5,000 years of Chinese history. There is just too much at stake. The Biden administration can support these efforts by ensuring Taiwan is invited to participate in its upcoming Summit for Democracy. The event promises to delve into key themes of defending against authoritarianism, fighting corruption, and advancing human rights – all issues where Taiwan is an ideal discussant."
https://thediplomat.com/2021/08/what-the-fall-of-afghanistan-means-for-taiwan/
25. No surprise, Felicis has been crushing it.
"The partners also stress the importance to the firm of maintaining a high net promoter score. They treat founders well, and founders treat them well, in turn, is the gist, including giving the firm a glowing reference in a competitive situation.
Says Senkut, “We want founders to say, ‘This person has helped me so much, I would almost do anything to take money from this person or to put them on my board,’ versus the traditional method [wherein the VC says], ‘We’re writing a $50 million check and because we invested that money, we’ll dictate who’s on the board and what to do.'”
Not last, says Peechu, who joined Felicis roughly 11 years ago, Felicis often jumps in when the water is still cold. “The fund strategy is not always to make the most amount of money,” he says. “Sometimes, we’re investing to 2% or 3% of a company because that 3% could potentially give us an incredible learning that might help us invest the next $30 million to $50 million in that category.”
26. Well written view from a war vet & investor. Worth a read on his lessons from the debacle in Afghanistan.
"Politicians are not on our side. They are on their own side. They are in the business of selling promises and hope to problems they created so they can stay in power.
If your life being better is based on needing your politician or party being in power, then you need to do some serious work on taking responsibility for improving your own life because I promise, no one is ever going to save you from your own life."
"You can’t buy a good physique, wisdom, and spending time with friends you trust your life with.
This has always been about how to build resiliency and independence into my life so I was not in the vulnerable position again of realizing I could not count on the promises of politicians.
Money is just a tool and investing a craft for accomplishing the goals of personal resiliency and independence."
https://www.radigancarter.com/dispatches/the-promises-of-politicians
27. More opportunity for us early stage investors. Definitely seeing this.
"But there’s another important trend developing in venture capital that has even more significant consequences than whether VCs are being forced to fight with bigger, deeper pockets for late-stage investment opportunities. And that is the move away from what has always defined venture capital: taking risks on the earliest-stage companies.
According to data from PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association, as a percentage of total U.S. venture capital dollars invested, angel/seed stage has reduced from 10.6% to 4.9% over the last three years, early-stage has reduced from 36.5% to 26.1% during the same time period, while late-stage has drastically increased from 52.9% to 69%, coming (as Lessin pointed out) from new players such as hedge funds and mutual funds."
https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/18/what-is-happening-to-risk-taking-in-venture-capital
28. "It is time for Taiwan to become a porcupine nation, one that doesn’t hope to take on China in a marquess of Queensbury type combat, but to deter an attack by the stronger party by making it clear we will take you down with us. Asymmetric warfare is the name of the game, or as political scientist Ian Oxnevad puts it: if you’re down pieces in a chess game and you still want to survive, find a way to put pressure on their king."
https://taipology.substack.com/p/the-lion-and-the-porcupine
29. "According to a 2019 poll that was treated as a harbinger of the apocalypse at the time, a stunning 86% of young Americans want to be influencers—but only 12% considered themselves to have made it. The term influencer may slowly be receding as the equally amorphous creator rises, but the goal remains the same: making a lot of money via your ability to harness online attention. How did Beck find his place, without really trying or wanting to, at the vanguard of the latest iteration of fame in America?"
https://www.gq.com/story/noah-beck-tiktok-fame-profile
30. This is the dream and the future. Oren Zeev epitomizes the Solo Capitalist.
"What is unusual is that behind the successful fund, which shows exceptional performance and results every year, is just one man – a real one-man show.
The fund’s website does not have predictable smiling pictures of the partners and employees or long descriptions glorifying their work.
Instead, it consists of one clean page with the words Zeev-Ventures in bold white letters at the top, alongside a long list of the start-up companies he currently invests in.
Quite a few of which are familiar companies, already valued at billions and revered as great successes.
Zeev’s fund has no investment teams, no managers or partners, no consultants or analysts. There has never been a partners’ meeting at the fund’s offices, no investment committee, nor a single memorandum.
The fund doesn’t even have an official office. Zeev makes investment decisions alone, usually from the neighborhood coffee shop, which he uses as his office instead.
The way he sees it, all of those extras are a waste of the most valuable resource of all in the venture capital industry – time. “It’s just me and my commitment to put my connections, my experience, and my drive on the table. It’s all about my willingness to do everything I can to support the remarkable journey of the entrepreneurs toward their goal – building reality-changing companies,” he declares."
Dogma is Death for the Brain: There is No One Single Way to Do Something
There is no one best way to build a startup, there is no one best way to go to market or raise money. There is no one way to get rich. There is no ONE asset class to invest in. There is no ONE best way or philosophy to live your life. Yet this is what we see & hear all the time.
Examples abound like “Lean startup is the only way to build a startup.” “You have to raise VC money as that is the only way to build a big business.” “Real estate, ecommerce/Dropshipping, Crypto investing or whatever is the only way to get rich” etc. etc.
Everyone pushes some form of this: Academics, business people, government officials, tankies (Think Tankers that populate the universities and DC). And most of the sheeple lap it up because it takes away their own need to think or do the hard work of figuring out what makes sense for them. It’s a seemingly easy path or “hack” to get ahead.
I used to hear about how one very top & competitor accelerator in Silicon Valley used to tell their startup founders, “this is the ONLY way to do this” “We know more than you do this so just follow what we say.” The absolute arrogance and dogma. Dogma being defined as “a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.”
Add on top of this the rapidly changing environment we find ourselves in, dogma is a recipe for death.
How can one be so sure of that one way when every startup literally is a unique snowflake. Each is in a different market, different situation, different competitive landscape, different skill set, different founder team composition. This is why startup advice is almost always custom. Each startup’s situation is very different and thus advice needs to be tailor fit. Beware the mentor or investor who gives the one single advice or tactic to everyone. Seriously, run far away. I do admit frameworks and principles are very valuable but they do need to be specifically adopted to a company's unique situation. I should add this is relevant to most of life in general, not just startups.
How do you fight dogma, the arrogance of experience and know-it-all-ism?
Media Diet: Reading and watching very different sources of media, whether books, videos, newspapers
Diverse group of friends: Helps you avoid groupthink (also why i have to leave the bubble of Silicon Valley regularly)
Travel: Different new environments give you a new way to look at problems.
I can’t stress this enough. You have to develop your own view and take all advice and guidance with some skepticism.
Oscar Wilde once said “A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.” This is still very true in modern times.
Deadlines, Deadlines & Big Public Deadlines: The Key to Personal Productivity
I admit to being in a bit of a funk during the summer of 2021 and not due to any bad reasons. Actually, it’s been pretty awesome overall, feeling healthy and happy in general. But without the spur of fear & poverty driving me, this has also led me to feeling very lazy and pretty unmotivated in general.
So trying to get back to some mode of personal productivity as I still have responsibilities and lots of things to do. Having a “To do list” split between quick wins and longer term projects is an important and good first step for prioritization. Scheduling and Inputting them in my calendar is also important: if it does end up there, I won’t have the time or awareness to do it. Yet this is not enough. And I think this is a very big problem for people who are freelancers, self-employed or independent business people. Even for those of us who pride themselves on self-discipline it can be hard to get out of inertia.
So I go back to what has worked for me in the past. Open, public & external deadlines. Those of us who have worked in jobs before know this well. When you say you are going to get something done by a certain day and time, you better have it done then as there are other people counting on you. You are accountable to your boss, your clients and your colleagues. Deadlines force a sense of urgency and pressure.
It’s the same as why when you want to get good at running you sign up for a marathon. When you learn Mixed Martial Arts or Boxing, it’s a good idea to sign up for a public fight a few months down the road. Or working on a presentation for a conference you promised to speak at. You better get it done or you will look like an unprepared idiot (which reminds me, incidentally i need to work on a few myself soon). This is also why I push some of my startup founders to make public declarations to customers on when they will launch their product or new feature. Without it, most engineering and tech focused founders just end up building forever.
We end up doing nothing or other random things show up to eat up our time. We can’t help it. It’s in our wiring as humans, when we get comfortable, we get lazy. It’s about preserving as much energy as possible at least until the next big emergency or some food comes by. Which leads to the funny saying “Why stand when you can sit, Why sit when you can sleep.”
This is why public deadlines are so critical. We all need these forcing functions to push ourselves forward. Social pressure is powerful and also accounts for why “Cohort Based” education and classes are now en vogue. Having peers around you certainly helps drive you forward.
This is also why I am so fascinated by the growing “Build in Public” movement I see in the startup and business world these days. I think this is best exemplified by the fine folks at FAST & MicroAcquire. The benefit of showing what you are working on as things develop and the sharing of the hard lessons along the way. People can’t help but cheer you on and jump on your side. But I think another reason why this is growing is the public deadlines you give yourself: you are forced to launch.
As Thomas Vato remarked,
“Without a deadline, your work is never over. The power of deadlines leads your work to completion. What is done poorly is better than what is 20% done perfectly assuming a person operates on a progress-driven mindset. Then you can improve to make things less bad faster.”
Public deadlines are a great tool to get stuff done, Use them wisely!
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads August 15th, 2021
"Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value." - Albert Einstein
"Social commerce will turn us all into shoppable product demos, and our lives into a catalog of stylized products. It will also introduce new revenue streams, business models, marketing strategies, and regulatory hurdles, reversing a short-sighted belief that “the Internet lets you buy, but it doesn’t let you shop.” Social currency is the fuel of the modern retail economy. Community is its killer app."
https://andjelicaaa.substack.com/p/the-ultimate-guide-to-social-commerce
2. "In all this, we can borrow freely from science-fiction. But if a handful of novels from the 1980s and 90s continue to supply the best available explanations we have of the world in the 2020s, we should worry. It would signal a devastating failure of our collective imagination.
We are in urgent need of new stories to believe in. New stories that make sense. In the years ahead, let’s write a few we can file under non-fiction."
https://nwsh.substack.com/p/your-sci-fi-future-502
3. "Well, in working for decades with entities across the climate sector, it has become clear to me that the drawbacks of each funding type can be considerably mitigated and the benefits can be enhanced by using both equity investment and non-dilutive funding in tandem to finance climate tech.
For its part, non-dilutive funding can de-risk climate tech investments, accelerate commercialization and market entry, prove product-market fit, and bridge the climate tech valleys of death. Private capital helps demonstrate (and create!) a clear and viable pathway to scale for individual climate solutions."
https://myclimatejourney.substack.com/p/supercharging-climate-tech-by-unifying
4. "To recap, in a world where supply (capital and production) is abundant, we’re going to reorient around what's actually scarce — what people care about. The stakes are high: people only have so much attention and interest and loyalty to give.
This scarcity to abundance and then back to scarcity again flywheel accelerates like this: Software takes over, customers get hooked on new capabilities and then immediately ask for more, which pushes the whole tech cycle to move faster. Entrepreneurs conquer scarcity which leads to abundance, which leads to emergent scarcity somewhere else, which leads to unbundling and rebundling, internet-native business models, and more winner-take most distributions."
https://eriktorenberg.substack.com/p/software-is-eating-the-world-revisited
5. "We are learning that the internet provides us access to a limitless variety of goods, services, and communities. This leads to a fragmentation of society along an infinite number of preferences. And we intuitively understand that this fragmentation of wants and needs creates an infinite number of opportunities to create profitable income streams.
The internet created a bountiful opportunity along the long tailed preferences of society.
The millennial and Gen Z generations grew up as digital natives. They have the principles of virality and the value proposition of long tail opportunities ingrained in their brains."
https://dougantin.com/the-mindset-change-defining-the-self-sovereign-age/
6. This is interesting. Big oil getting into bitcoin mining.
"Bitcoin mining can occur anywhere in the world with it being an energy intensive process. If all the gas that is completely wasted in being flared was used to power bitcoin mining, it would be sufficient to provide energy for the entire bitcoin network many times over."
https://www.trustnodes.com/2021/08/01/saudi-aramco-gazprom-exonmobile-move-into-bitcoin-mining
7. Lesson is leverage works both ways. The Archegos saga continues. Almost hard to fathom losing 20 billion dollars. Look forward to the movie and book coming out from this.
"For Hwang’s family office, now comes the inevitable: liquidation. Only months ago, it boasted holdings — built on borrowed money — valued at more than $120 billion. Today, everyone is lining up for the scraps."
8. I really wrestle with this all the time. My biggest regret over the last 12 years.
"Men, I leave you with this. While you’re running as fast as you can towards the title, promotion, goal, accolade, and a paycheck, all in the name of supporting your children. Make sure you don’t leave them behind. Your legacy as a man will live on far longer through your children than it ever can from accomplishments."
https://www.barbarianrhetoric.com/forging-fatherhood-to-combat-a-epidemic/
9. “Stop Caring About the Results”.
When the average person reads that, they think this means sit around and be lazy doing nothing. No. It means you should shot gun as much as possible and let the chips fall.
Notice? The guy who needs money the least tends to attract even more money. The guy who doesn’t care about getting the girl at the bar? He usually get the girl. The guy who has a smile on his face after the 50th sales call that ends with a no? He usually ends up being the head of sales later on.
The single thread that connects all of these “coincidences” is not caring about the *result*. If you care about the end-result the end-result is unlikely to be positive. You end up focusing on things that don’t matter which drain valuable amounts of time from your pool of energy.
Simply stop caring about the result. Iterate. Repeat. Iterate. Repeat. The habits you build will drive the results over the long-term.
And? Once you see something works, step on the gas."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/the-simulation-of-life-explained
10. "Maybe the value investors end up being right — the markets are insane and everything will correct back to a historical norm. Maybe the new age investors are right — the market is manipulated and this is the new normal. No one actually knows the answers.
People are taking pre-revenue, pre-product companies public via SPACs at multi-billion dollar valuations. People are buying pictures of fake rocks. And everything in between. The world is insane, but it is likely the result of an insane monetary policy environment that has been a shot in the arm for gamblers around the world."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/the-video-game-of-markets
11. "The appeal and promise of the passion economy are readily apparent: creators can reach a global audience with just an internet connection and earn a living with only 1,000 or 100 true fans. Some creators today are earning millions of dollars per year through engaging in brand deals, selling digital content, creating courses, and more.
These online micro-entrepreneurs now number over 50 million in the US. At the same time, excitement from the tech industry around the creator/passion economy is at a fever pitch: nearly every large social media platform is rolling out new funds, programs, and features to attract and retain creators. And a multitude of new startups seeks to serve creators and make it easier for them to earn a living.
But just as the gig economy mode of work brought about negative consequences, strong parallels are emerging between the gig economy and creator economy, rooted in the commoditization of work and erosion of worker leverage."
https://li.substack.com/p/the-creator-economy-is-in-crisis
12. Geoff knows his stuff. Austin is a great town. Also regardless of where you base yourself, you better be willing to travel anywhere and everywhere.
" I think there’s sort of this cultural dynamic where you have people that truly do live in these bubbles and so when you’re in the technology industry in San Francisco or quite honestly the entertainment industry in Los Angeles, I think folks just live entirely in this sort of self-referential bubble.
And you only communicate and only ever interact with people that are in the same industry as you, and I think that leads to just a very, quite honestly parochial sort of inward looking worldview. There is something about a place that is less dominated by technology."
13. "Not to go fully galaxy brain, but remote work on some level throws out the classical structure of working hours as a whole. While yes, you probably want to be available 9 through 5 (and companies regularly ask for more!), one has to wonder if there won’t be an evaluation of how many human beings actually work all of those hours, and, indeed, consider whether that person could have another job on top of it from another company.
This could mean that people basically become full-time freelancers, taking on jobs from multiple companies at full compensation (if said companies are cool with it), assuming that the work is done and their availability is balanced."
https://ez.substack.com/p/a-remote-work-future-may-make-freelancers
14. It is a nutty time in VC.
https://mobile.twitter.com/villi/status/1420893960432545794
15. "Now this week, as if to make the case, our Senate passed a $1.2 trillion dollar spending bill for “Real Infrastructure,” which is to say something like $500 billion dollars on the “modernization” of physical infrastructure that in large part already exists, and another $700 billion dollars on… I mean I’m not even sure how to characterize these items.
There are spending allocations for healthcare, childcare, and care for the elderly. There’s a lot of niche “green” programming, there’s military stuff, there’s ambiguous social justice stuff. Critics of the infrastructure bill have mostly focused on the bullshit we’re buying with our newly-minted cash, but it looks like we’re also banning cryptocurrency (destroying things is infrastructure!), and this is not even the bill’s biggest problem. The question consuming me today is how did we come all this way, spend all this money, and not build anything new?"
https://www.piratewires.com/p/trillion-dollar-paint-job
16. "Even if Russia’s hydrocarbons become worthless, Russia will still possess something which is always in demand in international relations — military might. Two decades from now, Russia will likely remain a formidable military player. Why not try and convert Russia’s military prowess as well as its pivotal geostrategic position into money? China could become the main customer, generously paying Russia to perform military missions Beijing is unwilling, or unable, to undertake on its own.
Russian private military companies’ activities in some of the world’s flashpoints may already offer a hint of what Moscow may be up to under the envisioned scenario. In a nutshell, Russia could become a giant military contractor — a twenty-first-century condottiero state, and a nuclear-armed one at that. A broke but still militarily strong and audacious country that does the bidding of a rich superpower — for remuneration. Sounds a bit medieval? Perhaps. But isn't it often said that global politics may be entering the New Middle Ages, marked by the ragtag multitude of players, brutal competition, and complex hierarchies?"
https://www.9dashline.com/article/can-russia-become-chinas-strategic-mercenary
17. "The art of travel hacking is where you take advantage of big sign-up bonuses over by banks for getting approved for their card and meeting various spending criteria over the course of a few months. When successful, you receive a reward that when used correctly, can get you thousands of dollars worth of value. This is how we travel for free on the banks’ dime."
https://bowtiedbully.substack.com/p/travel-hacking
18. Love these profiles & productivity tips.
https://www.theproofwellness.com/how-to-block-time-for-deep-thinking
19. "Wealth is, by its very nature, hidden. Morgan Housel explains this in his new book The Psychology of Money. Wealth is income not spent. Being “rich,” on the other hand, can be distinguished as a measure that relates more to one’s current income and how it is spent.
A Lamborghini, for example, is not an ostentatious display of wealth. It’s an ostentatious display of money.
“People are good at learning by imitation,” Housel notes. “But the hidden nature of wealth makes it hard to imitate others and learn from their ways.” [emphasis mine]
We can’t imitate many of the actions that lead to wealth because the most important action that leads to wealth — not spending every dollar we make — is an anti-action. Wealth comes, in part, from the things that we don’t do — the money that we don’t spend. And so it grows in secret.
Yet people try to find all sorts of silly ways to grow wealthy through imitation."
https://luke.medium.com/cargo-cult-startups-d503e7d43db8
20. "The 50-year-old industrialist is nothing if not mercurial and contradictory. He may not like the boring parts of the chief executive’s job, but make no mistake: he sure as hell wants to control his company."
https://airmail.news/issues/2021-8-7/the-techno-king-of-tesla
21. No Sh-t! This last 1.5 years have been awful for so many people.
https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/mental-health-issues-spike-census-4483929/
22. "For a lot of Americans, part of what we’re experiencing is the disorientation of a pandemic that seemed to be on the wane here in the US, then came roaring back with the arrival of delta. “Every time the epidemic curve goes up, especially when it’s variant-related, we just have a new injection of fear,” Lindsey Leininger, a public health scientist at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business who also co-writes the advice column Dear Pandemic, told Vox.
We’ve also never had a break from the trauma. Instead of having time to rest and recover from the loss, fear, and burnout, we’re just ... still in it, almost a year and a half later. Indeed, what’s unusual and worrying about the pandemic from a trauma perspective is that “it’s been going on for so long,”
https://www.vox.com/22618599/delta-variant-pandemic-summer-covid
23. We will find out how right or wrong she is in the long run, like with all investors.
"Despite Wood’s lunatic predictions, Ark’s E.T.F.’s continue to put up impressive numbers as the bull market roars on. The Ark Innovation E.T.F., with $25.5 billion under management, is up 51 percent in the last year, although it’s had a rough 2021 so far, down more than 2 percent, while the S&P 500 is up around 19 percent.
Her other E.T.F.’s have also lagged the broader markets so far in 2021. The Ark Next Generation Internet E.T.F. is up only 2 percent for the year, while her Ark Autonomous Technology & Robotics E.T.F. is up less than 5 percent for the year. That’s not where you want to be if you are any money manager, let alone one as outspoken as Wood.
None of this gives her the slightest pause. Her evangelism knows few bounds."
https://airmail.news/issues/2021-7-31/prophet-of-the-golden-bull
24. This is good news for the environment & the planet (and humanity).
"Sacca, who became well-known for his early and outsize bets on both Twitter and Uber, was somewhat famously a judge on the popular TV show “Shark Tank” for several seasons before quitting the show — and venture capital — in 2017, saying he had always intended to retire at age 40. (At the time, he was 42.)
Sacca’s growing concern regarding climate change — and his lack of faith that politicians can make a dent in reversing it — prompted him to rethink that decision. As he told Forbes in March: “We think that markets might actually hold the key to unf***ing the planet.”
25. "If you study the world's greatest investors, you will find that many of them completely ignored all advice about diversification. Going the opposite way led to immense riches, and for quite a few of them, it did so rather quickly."
"If you invest your own money, there is no corporate policy forcing you to subscribe to the latest investment craze. No boss disagreeing with your view, no investment guidelines influencing your decisions, and no compliance department slowing down your decisions.
You also have the advantage that your savings will (likely) be permanent capital. Why is that relevant and why does it put you ahead?
If you are seeking outsized returns, you will have to put up with outsized volatility. If you invest permanent capital, sitting through a period of volatility won't have to bother you. As an employed fund manager, you are likely to get fired for outsized volatility – unless your investors have given you permanent capital, as in the case of Berkshire Hathaway's shareholders. Being able to invest permanent capital is a HUGE advantage, and as a private investor investing their own money you naturally have that advantage on your side."
26. "I have a great deal of insecurity and fear that, coupled with the instincts we all have, has resulted in hunger. It can come from a lot of places. I don’t think I was born with it. Understanding where hunger comes from can illuminate the difference between success and fulfillment."
https://www.profgalloway.com/hunger-2/
27. Reading this makes me angry but it describes the brain rot happening in American public school systems (particularly in woke Left leaning States, which btw I am left leaning too but more centrist). It’s also why my kid is not going there anymore.
"With appropriate instruction, expectations, and effort, children at all levels can succeed. The success at the bottom of the distribution necessarily looks quite different than at the top, but that is not an excuse to abandon the bottom altogether. Nor should we delude ourselves into thinking we can achieve equal results that look anything like the top half.
But just such nihilism and delusion are pervasive in the system. The test scores crater? Cancel the test. The students can’t read? Tell them they don’t have to! This is no way to run a school system; it’s an abdication of duty. If our education leaders really don’t think they owe our students anything at all, then they ought to step aside for people who do. This won’t happen, obviously, because the purpose of the education monopoly is power, not service to the public."
https://www.piratewires.com/p/the-two-front-war-on-academic-standards
28. "Afghanistan is likely to become the next geopolitical quagmire after Syria. It will be interesting to follow how China will navigate this playground, as Beijing is likely to be the next great power to try and fill the void. Perhaps that is exactly why the US is pulling out now—the move could possibly become an American trap if China enters the Afghan quagmire and fails, as the USSR did between 1979 and 1989. Washington seems to have a plan to cause trouble for the newly emerging great power China."
https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/will-china-get-embroiled-in-the-graveyard-of-empires/
29. Always a good show. Learning from the edge of the internet.
The Vision Board Exercise: A Tool for Progress & Personal Growth
This is something that probably many of us heard of or did as kids but dropped due to the sad skepticism that comes with growing up, unintentional discouragement of imagination in school and society and/ or personal fear of being laughed at by friends or family.
What is a Vision Board? As defined by Oxford Languages:
“a collage of images and words representing a person's wishes or goals, intended to serve as inspiration or motivation.”
Famous startup investor Chris Sacca reportedly said that when he was young he wrote in his journal about having a goal of living beside the beach and in the mountains. As he built his very successful investing career, he moved to Truckee near Tahoe in Northern California. After he retired from investing, he moved to the Greater LA area, living on Manhattan Beach. It works.
Images & written language have power. Power that is used to craft our life and who we are. We use these subconsciously. When I look back on my life, these images have unintentionally driven a lot of my career and lifestyle decisions. Owning way too many books, lots of travel, a corporate career jet setting around the world. All the things I wanted, actually happened.
I picked it up again from a personal development mastermind led by my entrepreneur friend David Henzel in 2020. This time around I am being very far more conscious of this.
For the record, you can’t just have a vision board, sit around and hope stuff comes true. You use these images to motivate yourself, build habits and work toward these bit by bit every day.
The Vision Board helps you build intentionality into your life. It helps you be deliberate and prioritize. And it is a daily reminder for you on what you are working so hard to get to. Stress on daily reminder.
You program your brain and take action to realize this. This is the biggest part. Taking action every day to get yourself closer to these images. It takes time and it may not get you exactly where or what you have on your vision board. But you will get pretty close to it.
Sounds so much better than living the often mentioned Alice in Wonderland quote: "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there." Basically, a road to Nowhere fast.
Back to the Future: Modern Entrepots and the Rise of the City-States
I have been thinking much about the Present and Post Covid world we find ourselves in as the “Digital Nomad” movement evolves and expands. As talent starts to become less locked into one location and are actively in search of new hotbeds of like minded people. This is leading to the rise of modern entrepots. The definition of Entrepot:
“also called a trans shipment port and historically referred to as a port city, is a trading post, port, city, or warehouse where merchandise may be imported, stored, or traded before re-export, with no additional processing taking place and with no customs duties imposed.”
Places like Panama, Singapore, Dubai & Zug in Switzerland. Or Switzerland in general.
In the long history of human civilization: Alexandria, Athens, Carthage, Odessa, Cordoba, Lisbon, Amsterdam, Constantinople aka Istanbul, London, Marseille, Madripoor. Okay, that last one is a made up one from the Marvel Universe, but loosely based on Singapore. :) But you get the idea.
These were usually port cities but not always. Usually very international, with lots of immigrants and travelers going through. Also no surprise, these are places full of commercial activities and foreign traders. A neutral ground where enemies can meet and a general safe place where ideas and culture are exchanged.
In the United States: San Francisco used to be one of these places but it has become a center of intolerant cultural war. Los Angeles and New York probably still have a semblance of these central places. Miami definitely has been for Latam in the last 2 decades and we are seeing it’s continual rise in 2021 with the movement of some top Silicon Valley investors and entrepreneurs there.
I expect to see a future where there are a multitude of city states just like what happened in the Middle Ages. Contrary to popular belief, this time period was when globalization really began with the rise of trade fairs and movement of people from east to the west and vice versa. Ie. the Venetian merchant trader Marco Polo visiting China and bringing back new ideas and technologies.
Much of this view is inspired by science fiction especially from Malka Older’s “Centenal” series of books or Stephensons idea of Phylls in “The Diamond Age”. A Phyll or Centernal is a place where like-minded people get together and build something that is conducive to their lifestyle and value. As per Wikipedia:
“Society in The Diamond Age is dominated by a number of phyles, also sometimes called tribes, which are groups of people often distinguished by shared values, similar ethnic heritage, a common religion, or other cultural similarities. In the extremely globalized future depicted in the novel, these cultural divisions have largely supplanted the system of nation-states that divides the world today. Cities appear divided into sovereign enclaves affiliated or belonging to different phyles within a single metropolis. Most phyles depicted in the novel have a global scope of sovereignty, and maintain segregated enclaves in or near many cities throughout the world.”
I believe Balaji Srinavasan talks about this idea: in “The Rise of Cloud Cities” : Very much worth a read. https://1729.com/how-to-start-a-new-country. His idea is that people will meet and build together digitally but come together and then build physically. It’s already happening. Prospera in Honduras is a precursor to this idea with more details here: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/prospectus-on-prospera. I think Balaji is 2 decades too early but he is definitely right.
What an exciting new world opening for all of us! This could be a world where there’s always a place where we are welcome. A place that fits our lifestyle and culture, surrounded by others who aspire for the same things that we do. These future entrepots will reflect the wideness of human diversity and experience, enabling the full realization of the Sovereign Individual.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads August 8th, 2021
"What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"FOLLOW THE MONEY. If there is anything you should keep from this read, that is it. Instead of applying to every sales position that might take you, ensure you’re building your career in a booming industry or hyper growth org: 1) It will propel your sales career more than any other single variable (more career opportunities down the road); 2) High demand for your product/service will significantly increase your chances to crush your compensation plan; 3) You will build confidence in your selling skills faster; and 4) you will be happier overall."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/breaking-into-sales-and-clearing
2. "While U.S. politicians struggle to make up their minds about crypto, foreign workers have been taking things into their own hands and using it as a tool to avoid the exorbitant remittance fees that have plagued them for years.
Crypto and blockchain technology offers migrant workers around the world the opportunity to save money on fees by cutting out middlemen, radically accelerating the speed of their transactions, and increasing security and peace of mind when sending their hard-earned salaries across borders back to their families.
Above all, it offers the opportunity of a fairer world, powered by cellphones and the internet, where being born in Lagos, Dhaka, or Manilla, no longer means being forced to play by a set of unfair rules that keeps the door to progress barred. The technology is already in place to make this change possible. The only question now is how fast this new world can emerge."
https://1729.com/crypto-remittances/
3. Seems like a good explanation of the data.
"Generally the things we do trust each other on are normal, everyday things, while the things we don’t trust each other on are all political. We don’t trust each other to stay informed about issues, to respect the rights of people who aren’t like us, to cast informed votes, or to have civil conversations with people with different views.
That suggests that when Americans say they don’t trust each other, what they’re actually distrustful of is the opposite political tribe."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/why-dont-americans-trust-each-other
4. This is fascinating, the fracturing of the so-called creative class.
"In 2021, the creative class seems as much a victim of its own success as those excluded from it due to geography, credentials, or ideology. I’m in my mid-30s now and virtually everyone I know has a raft of legitimate complaints about housing costs, childcare costs, student debt, unrealistic work schedules, and on and on. My peers are in no sense the worst-off members of American society. They are the bobos. They are the creative class. They are the meritocrats. They are the “winners.”
https://www.8ball.report/p/the-crisis-of-creative-class
5. "That figure captures an aspect of the creator economy that’s not contextualized in most media coverage: that building a solo content business is often a slow slog. Most articles about successful creators are written after they’ve already achieved stardom, and those same articles often gloss over the years the creators spent sending out content into the void."
https://simonowens.substack.com/p/how-long-it-takes-for-a-creator-to
6. "The practice is known as “lawfare.” By using their billions-deep pockets to hire the best lawyers and firms—and knowing that lawyers, especially in places like the U.S., rarely bother to do due diligence about the source of clients’ funds—the oligarchs aim to spend journalists and their outlets into submission. This strategy appears to have spiked in recent years, on both sides of the Atlantic."
https://newrepublic.com/article/163131/russian-oligarchs-bludgeoning-western-media-wealth
7. Rise of the Solo Capitalists.
"But it's getting increasingly common to see deals like Playco's, where solo VCs invest in and even lead Series A or late-stage rounds. Their rise comes as investors of all sorts clamor to pour funds into the booming venture capital asset class, and many founders view certain solo VCs as a special talent who can give their startup a boost.
What's more, these newer entrants into the venture game are raising funds in the hundreds of millions of dollars and special-purpose funding vehicles with backing from top-tier limited partners. In some cases, this has enabled a nascent group of investors to beat out traditional venture firms for hot deals.
Among other solo investors making waves with their solo VC model are Lachy Groom, an early Stripe employee, and Elad Gil, a former Twitter executive who co-founded Color Genomics."
https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/how-solo-vcs-are-changing-the-venture-game
8. Good to Know. List includes New Zealand, Tasmania, Iceland, Ireland, UK & Canada & USA. (honestly not sure why US on there, place is a societal mess).
9. "These leaders come into office promising to lift their countries out of crisis by safeguarding human rights, building new democratic institutions, and securing the rule of law. For a while, their countries seem to make strides, and the West holds them up as models for reform. In time, however, these once-promising leaders abandon their early commitments and fall from grace as their countries slip back into crisis."
https://www.persuasion.community/p/africas-fallen-stars
10. "There is a third model, however, different from both the chess board and the jungle: the video game. In a video game it is primarily through play that we discover the rules, and rarely are the rules spelled out for us before we play. Sometimes a weapon may be used as a ladder to climb over a wall, but you could easily play many rounds of the game before discovering that possibility. This is a more accurate image of world politics, where nothing is clear before you test the ground."
https://www.newstatesman.com/international/places/2021/07/welcome-rules-based-disorder
11. So much insight packed in this. Will be re-reading this a few times.
"My high-level answer is that technology is the driving force of history. Technology favored centralization in the US from arguably 1754-1947 (join or die in the French and Indian War, unified national government post-Civil War, railroads, telegraph, radio, television, movies, mass media in general, and mass production) and is now favoring decentralization from roughly 1947 to the present day (transistor, personal computer, internet, remote work, smartphone, cryptocurrency)."
"Put another way, what’s the most powerful force on earth? In the 1800s, God. In the 1900s, the US military. And by the mid-2000s, encryption. Because as Assange put it, no amount of violence can solve certain kinds of math problems. So it doesn’t matter how many nuclear weapons you have; if property or information is secured by cryptography, the state can’t seize it without getting the solution to an equation."
https://sotonye.substack.com/p/if-einstein-had-the-internet-an-interview
12. Good for them. I don't use Superhuman but well done!
13. This is super interesting. For those who care about education. Check out Arizona State University.
"ASU hasn’t made progress without its critics, namely the claim that it’s become a moneymaking credentialing machine, handing out degrees to anyone who pays and corporatizing The Great American University. And again, because I don’t have experience with university administration, I certainly wondered, while learning about ASU, how many of their claims are marketing versus substance.
Firstly, their efforts are generating positive results. The business critique might be concerning if ASU were churning out graduates who were ill-prepared and saddled with student debt. But ASU has ranked well in terms of preparing students for life after college, and was named a Best Value College by The Princeton Review this year. As discussed in this post, they’ve significantly improved their rankings as a research university, while also increasing college access and affordability. ASU might run like a business, but they seem to actually be running well."
14. "If you are a young person working in and around the VC ecosystem, you have a big choice to make right now about how you want to spend your career.
If you want to be in private equity (and let’s be clear, those folks get paid really well), then staying at a mainline VC firm makes a ton of sense. There is every reason to believe that firms like Andreessen Horowitz will indeed turn into the next Blackstone, Fortress or KKR, if not the next Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley—and will certainly be in direct and brutal competition with the whole field. A reasonably early partner, pre–initial public offering, at these firms can anticipate a very lucrative career.
However, if you want to be a venture capitalist leading the next era, you should look for opportunities no one else is funding because they are too weird, too crazy or too small—at least today.
With the speed at which information spreads now, the cycles of real VC opportunities will come faster and last for shorter periods. Even areas like crypto, which were fringe a few years ago, have already been subsumed by mainstream finance, at least for certain types of opportunities."
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-end-of-venture-capital-as-we-know-it
15. "If states could learn to read novels as a kind of literary seismograph, Wertheimer argues, they could perhaps identify which conflicts are on the verge of exploding into violence, and intervene to save maybe millions of lives."
16. This tweet thread is right on. The Sovereign Individual is here.
https://twitter.com/DougAntin/status/1423007397702950912
17. Just got this book. Should be a good read. The MemeLord Elon is a great man but would not want to work for him.
https://www.gq.com/story/powerplay-tesla-musk-excerpt
18. "It’s the pain and discomfort that makes attaining difficult goals so damn rewarding, while simultaneously reinforcing positive habits.
True growth and learning occurs when we’re pushed outside our perceived mental and physical limits. While pushing yourself will undoubtedly lead to failure, you have to view this as a necessary part of the process. No one is saying you have to like it—quite frankly, you shouldn’t. Most people fear failure, but it can be your greatest mentor if you just learn to embrace it. Remember, we learn more from our failures than we do from success.
On the other hand, if you choose to stay in your comfort zone, you’ve accepted complacency as a way of life––and complacency kills both on the battlefield and in life."
19. About time but this move makes sense and is in Japan's best interest. China under Xi is biggest threat to everyone in Asia.
20. No brainer. Mexico and Portugal for me.
https://nomadcapitalist.com/expat-2/easiest-countries-to-move-to-from-usa/
21. No surprise. ROI of tax dollars paid, declining quality of life and eroding freedom in USA is a driver.
22. Awesome discussion as always. #AllinPodcast
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpgugh3r9s8&t=3176s
23. "Mobility restrictions produce fundamental inequalities that are difficult to justify in a world of remote work. Trade, capital, knowledge, and communication flow freely across borders – yet human beings still face restrictions.
The internet enables us to work from anywhere, but until we fix the bugs in the systems governing global movement, we'll fail to unlock the potential of that shift. Digital nomads represent a new way of seeing and navigating the world – one that lets individuals share in the fruits of globalization."
https://boundless.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-the-digital-nomad-150
24. Super cool company/fund for Biotech. The Product Board.
“I invested some of my own money with like-minded individuals and the idea was that this isn’t meant to be kind of an asset management business where we’re raising capital and earning fees on managing capital and then returning it once we’ve made our investments and sold them.
This is more about there being a persistent meaning for the rest of our lives, and an opportunity to realize new technologies that can affect positive outcomes in food and agriculture with such a broad set of opportunities."
https://agfundernews.com/the-production-board-investment-portfolio-board-revealed.html
25. Fully agree with this.
"Many of us come from backgrounds in countries such as the United States and elsewhere in the West — places which have traditionally been revered as the foundation of the “world’s best” when it comes to building a life.
Now, many of us also are questioning that: We may have had glimpses that we want something different, we don’t fit into our ‘home’ culture, or we are inspired by what might be possible if we took the leap and lived abroad."
https://nomadcapitalist.com/global-citizen/freedom/international-lifestyle-matter/
26. "The LP world is kind of very secretive, very opaque, keeping cards close to the chest," Douvos said. "And I think that's changed as well as LPs have made themselves, both as institutions and individuals, kind of eager to trumpet their position in funds that are perceived to be hot."
https://www.protocol.com/lp-disclosure
27. "For some, the false narrative that America loses all its wars might seem like it would be a deterrent to future military misadventures. No one wants to play a game they always lose, right? But in fact, I don’t think it works like that. When you have an unfavorable win-loss record, the urge is often to fight more and improve your record. When people feel their honor has been slighted, they often feel the need to get it back. Thus, a sense of recent descent from military glory probably inspires belligerence among those who feel like, in Trump’s words, “we never win anymore”. In particular, the people on the Right who think we lose wars because of wokeness will want to prove that their own cultural prerogatives lead to enhanced military effectiveness.
So the false claim that America loses all (or most) of its wars isn’t helping anything. It just encourages more wars. The right message is that war isn’t worth it, even when you rack up a W. Sometimes you have to fight, but 9 times out of 10, the only winning move is not to play."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/does-america-really-lose-all-its
28. "Satellites have tons of familiar applications, from predicting the weather to tracking delivery drivers and beaming live sports to our televisions.
Now, so-called NewSpace innovators are broadening the industry, using images of Earth to develop creative applications that solve a broad range of problems.
Orbiting eyes in the sky have been used to uncover China’s Uyghur internment camps, predict the price of copper and help indigenous communities fight deforestation. They could change the way we buy coffee or rent an apartment.
But the meteoric rise of satellites is raising red flags about surveillance and space pollution — and critics are wondering if the arm of the law can reach beyond the atmosphere to solve the problems raised by fast-evolving tech."
https://thehustle.co/how-the-explosive-growth-in-satellites-could-impact-life-on-earth/
29. "But like every speedrunner, to achieve that velocity, FTX has had to make concessions. In particular, the exchange has played fast and loose with regulation, shrugged off accusations of conflicts of interest, and largely ignored retail traders.
Those lapses may take a toll. Believers will note that the company seems to have the capital, connections, and will to resolve its most significant problems. Of course, only time will tell how effective FTX is in filling the gaps."
https://www.readthegeneralist.com/briefing/ftx-2
30. "Career success used to be a ladder-climbing game. Find a booming industry, work your way into a prestigious firm, then grind it out for a couple of decades until you reach the top. At some point, the ladders got crowded. Baby Boomers lingered in their perches, preventing younger workers from advancing. Realizing this game was no longer worth playing, many millennials and Gen-Zers have abandoned ladder-climbing in favor of building their own elevators.
Kyla Scanlon is a master elevator builder. After starting her blog at age 18, she has spent the past five years creating content. Six months ago, she left her job at an investment management firm to help run On Deck’s Investing Fellowship and pursue her goal of reshaping financial education. Meanwhile, she’s grown followings on TikTok and YouTube - and has partnered with influential business news brands like Morning Brew and Colossus."
https://junglegym.substack.com/p/memes-are-the-future-of-financial-education
Nothing is Truly Free
What do I mean? On Google or FB you can use their awesome services without paying for anything. But you actually are paying for it, just in a different way. You provide your data, they sell your data to advertisers and you get targeted with ads. Basically YOU are the product.
That highly discounted stay package to a Hawaiian hotel? Part of the deal is you have a mandatory meeting to listen to a real estate timeshare sales pitch. I might add that timeshare sales people are very good & the close rate is high, which is why these offers work. Great customer acquisition costs here.
Those meals or drinks your friend or neighbour pays for, unless you are a sociopath, you will feel obligated to them. I don’t know about you but as a fairly independent minded person, I hate owing anybody anything.
This is completely applicable to life as well. You want a healthy & fit body, you have to work out and eat healthy. You want a great marriage or family, you have to prioritize & put in the time and energy. If you want to get good at martial arts, surfing or anything, you have to put in the effort. You want to be a great investor or manager, you need time, experience & books and classes or at least that is what I did. There is always a price you have to pay. Anyone who says otherwise is either lying to you or is an inexperienced idiot (or a spoiled useless rich kid hidden away from the real world).
I truly believe that you can have and do almost anything you want. The question is are you willing to pay the price? Most people are not.
The sooner you understand this, the better your life will be. That means you can take ownership for where you are and what you have. If you don’t like it, you can fix it.
There is no free lunch in life or business.
Everyone will be a Creator, a Business and an Investor: The New Global Entrepreneurial Generation
Watch the new group of Influencers. They create & build an audience, make money from ads, sponsorships & merchandise. What venture capitalist Hunter Walk calls a multi-SKU creator. More here: Why a Paid Newsletter Won’t Be Enough Money for Most Writers (And That’s Fine): The Multi-SKU Creator
Then they either start companies on the back of their audience Like the now somewhat disgraced David Dobrik with the app Dispo for example. Or investing in startups & leveraging their audience to promote their portfolio cos like Jake Paul via the Anti-Fund or Josh Richards via his Animal Capital. Another great example is my friend Anthony Pompliano, started as an investor, then became a creator powerhouse on Twitter, Substack, then other platforms. Then he leveraged this audience to build a Rolling Fund, even going on to lead Series A rounds. He tips this off with launching the Bitcoin Pizza product (How does he find the time?! :).
Ann Lee Skates details this very well in this tweetstorm: https://twitter.com/anneleeskates/status/1395105774817267712
This is absolutely going to be a model for all of us: the everyday person in America and soon the world.
Why is this possible?
This is due to the Rise of Global Platforms. From Gig Economy platforms like Uber, Lyft, Upwork, Doordash and others. We are now turning fast into the Creator Economy. Mainstays like Youtube, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit and Snap to the new platforms like Substack, Tiktok and Clubhouse. Or Shopify and Amazon for ecommerce players. Education platforms like Maven, Kajabi and Udemy. Let’s not forget very specific creator platforms Patreon and OnlyFans.
Many of these Influencers can rent the larger platforms and then build up personal brands and large audiences. Talk about opportunities here for building audiences.
As they make money, this goes into investments if they are smart or even just want to keep with inflation.
Balaji famously stated:
“The internet turned everyone into publishers, and crypto will turn everyone into investors.
The intermediate step is hundreds of small angel funds run by individuals.
The Blogger era of investing, before the Twitter era.”
Source: https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1188014806709633025
It’s not just angel investing startups. On top of this we now have new alternative assets that will become more accessible for everyone. This is not an exhaustive list but you get an idea of the how many new awesome assets there are to invest in:
Angellist & Republic for early stage tech startups
Binance & Coinbase & many new Defi Exchanges like FTX for Crypto
Rally Road for collectibles
Masterworks in Art
EToro, Common Stock, Public and Robinhood for Public stocks (yes stocks are norm but these services do make it easier for anyone to buy & manage their portfolio)
AltoIRA for investing in alternatives thru your IRA
Acretrader & Farmtogether in farmland
Fundrise, CrowdRise, Yieldstreet, Lex Markets in fractional real estate assets
Investor Mercedes Bent remarks:
“the simultaneous surge of the creator economy & retail investing isn't a coincidence.
they both reflect consumers' desire to join the ownership economy & declare independence.”
The world is changing around us. I cannot help but feel optimistic. But it certainly feels like in the media and for most people we are so focused on the past world we lived in and not looking at the new one.
As Alexander Graham Bell said:
“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads August 1st, 2021
"Recognizing that you are not where you want to be is a starting point to begin changing your life." - Deborah Day
"The metaverse has to be persistent, synchronous, and live. Just as in the inspiring vision put forward by Neal Stephenson decades ago, it has to go on all the time, even when you are asleep or living entirely in physical reality. You jump into the metaverse. And it has to be highly concurrent: this artificial world has to be continuously updated from the inputs of its millions or potentially billions of users."
https://brunomacaes.substack.com/p/the-metaverse-is-here
2. 110% agree with all of this + Super bullish on Eastern Europe.
"Taking this idea of country categorization and the digital transformation one step further – Eastern Europe is a digital age growth powder keg.
Immense digital opportunity exists in the surging eastern European style countries. Countries that have lagged the last 30 years finally have an appetite and the skills to enter the digital workforce. What’s most important is that they can enter the global, digital workforce at a fraction of the cost of “first world” and “developed” nation workers.
Act quickly, decisively, and more frequently than your peers.
Any action you skip will increasingly be done by someone else. When your peers take action that you don’t, they compound their progress at a greater rate than you. This creates a runaway advantage for the action oriented people and harms anyone that can’t keep up momentum with societal progress."
https://dougantin.com/important-things-about-the-digital-age/
3. No surprise but sorry, the Olympics suck.
https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/olympic-ratings-hit-33-year-low-4455985/
4. "figuring out how to make games is a very different skill set than making TV shows and movies — which is why most big entertainment companies have failed whenever they’ve tried to get into games themselves (big tech companies like Amazon, Apple, and Google have all swung and missed to varying degrees, as well). So it’s entirely possible that Netflix’s move into games could flop, too.
On the other hand: As even the most hidebound Hollywood executive knows by now, games are bigger than Hollywood, and they’re not going away. If it’s going to take a long time to figure out, it’s better to get started sooner than later."
https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/7/20/22586084/netflix-gaming-strategy-earnings-explained
5. Damn......$4.75 Billion worth of BTC stolen......
https://www.bosshunting.com.au/hustle/africrypt-ameer-raees-cajee-crypto-heist/
6. "We don’t see a good argument against the future being Robotics, AI, VR and crypto. Instead, we have to *prepare* intelligently for that future.
So. Look at the big picture: 1) AI is going to displace tons of jobs - no reason to type numbers into excel if software can scrape it and put it in there with zero errors. No need to have an Uber/Taxi driver if the car is self driving. No reason to pay a middle man a fee for executing a contract if it is just a line of software code. 2) AI is already making the elite more profitable. Many of the media accounts you interact with today are already bots/not human. You just can’t tell the difference - yes, seriously. Which is an uncomfortable fact in and of itself. 3) As money is printed the price of goods will go up as supply of money is higher (M2 - latest figure at $20T)
You can tell that someone is not rich when they are attempting to prove to you that they are rich. Instead they are trying to use that to sell you something. If anyone is using status goods to sell a product, you know the product doesn’t work."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/big-picture-on-ubl-taxes-and-spotting
7. What else is new? Gen X has taken the brunt of multiple recessions and massive changes in economy throughout our lives. Speaking as a Gen X, Don't like it but it is what it is. So all we can do is adapt.
https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/gen-x-may-shoulder-jobless-crisis-5098564/
8. Totally spot on.
"No longer will the best investors have the best track records. In the future, they’ll also have the strongest signal and distribution."
https://www.joinfreehold.com/posts/great-founders-seek-investors-with-reach
9. "This is the definition of slow and steady wins the race. There is still a lot of work to do, but taking a long term view on building a decentralized network is likely to be the most sustainable and resilient. It can be hard to see the validity of this approach in the short term, because it feels like everyone is getting rich or zooming past you on a day-to-day cadence.
But as we have seen from example after example, the systems that go fast and aren’t focused on resilience, historically have run into major problems."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/last-man-standing-is-a-winning-strategy
10. "I believe that the future of retail investing will be one of mass customization. We will look back on an era when everyone owned the S&P 500 in its exact proportions as archaic and backward. The fact that a school teacher, a financial services professional, and an oil worker all could own the same set of equities seems absurd to me.
Why would these people take the same equity risks in their portfolios when their careers have very different risk profiles?"
https://ofdollarsanddata.com/we-are-all-investors-now/
11. "Power. It corrupts the best and attracts the worst. Its allure is loved and despised. It brings more pain and less happiness. And yet, men chase it like wild animals. We cannot help ourselves. But not only can we not help ourselves, we are nothing without it. Welcome to earth, where women are born with value and men are born without it. Us men need to find our value."
https://unmodernmen.com/personal-power-2/
12. This is a very interesting video. Russia is overlooked from an investing perspective. A contrarian view but this is where the alpha can be found.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SU-AlpoldG0
13. "For many years, anyone asked about investing in Russian stocks would have answered one of the following:
"Putin will steal all their money."
"Boring, old economy companies."
"Value traps."
Indeed, these views would have been spot on ten years ago. However, Russia has changed a lot over the past decade. E.g., in 2012, the Russian government started to encourage state-controlled public companies to pay out at least 25% of their profits to shareholders. In 2016, it upped the suggested payout ratio for dividends to 50%."
14. Very much look forward to this book.
"For Sergey Young, such a best-case scenario sounds preposterously pessimistic. With advances in AI-enabled diagnostics, wearables, regenerative medicine, age-reversing pills, and other longevity-focused areas of innovation, a child born today can expect to live well over 100. In the much longer term, it’s within the realm of possibility that we could be looking at living to 200 years or more, said Young."
https://news.crunchbase.com/news/when-90-is-young-what-a-moonshot-vc-thinks-about-radical-longevity/
15. "Packy is far from the only person who has parlayed online creation into an investing practice. Others have raised funds from their newsletter subscribers, Twitter audience, or former coworkers. TikTokers and other celebrities are also adding private market investing to their list of SKUs.
Private market investing is now a part of the creator economy, with the deal organizer or fund manager taking up the position of creator. It’s yet another SKU available to those looking to monetize an engaged audience. This SKU has been unlocked due to an inflection point in the private markets -- low interest rates, regulatory easing, and a renewed belief in the potential for massive technology and media outcomes.
Venture capital -- while still inaccessible to 90%+ of the US -- is more accessible than ever before. And even for those who are still excluded, the private investing boom has made it more aspirational, perhaps just out of reach. How is aspiring to be a successful VC any crazier than aspiring to be the next Charli D’Amelio?"
https://automatter.substack.com/p/the-year-that-everyone-became-a-creator
16. For anyone trying to understand the nutty venture funding space right now.
"In my eleven years in venture capital, I've never experienced a market that's moving as quickly as it is at present. And in conversations with fellow investors, it seems we all feel the same way.
Founders are going out to raise a new round, and within weeks, if not days, have multiple term sheets. So what's driving this speed? There are of course benefits to founders and investors for rounds to move faster. But what are the costs? How fast is too fast?"
https://nbt.substack.com/p/fast-fundraising
17. This is a pretty cool company. SPACE manufacturing!
18. There is a major need for this company in the USA. Massive problem and huge market.
19. I'm a big fan of Futurism. Recurrent Ventures is doing some cool stuff in media space.
20. "In DeFi, there are no regulations since it is decentralized. If a vampire attack is launched on any chain there are many potential issues: 1) the code is purposely made buggy, 2) the project manager suddenly runs off with the coins and 3) the tokenomics are unclear and have triggers built in (unknown to general public). While this is a base level explainer the point is the same: if you lose your funds no one is coming to help you."
https://defieducation.substack.com/p/vampires-early-days-of-defi-and-more
21. "The most obvious trait he exploits is the West’s constant preference to avoid confrontation. The United States and its allies almost always seek to avoid escalation and look for negotiated solutions. On issues of importance to Russia, this gives the Kremlin an immediate advantage."
https://cepa.org/how-putin-keeps-winning/
22. "Embedded Finance (i.e. distribution of banking services by non-banks) defines the revenue opportunity for Banking-as-a-Service (i.e. banks delivering services via API) and is a driver for Embedded Fintech (i.e. integration of fintech offerings by banks). It was catalyzed by Open Banking (i.e. banks sharing customer data via API)."
https://www.trackingpayments.org/p/issue-13-unpacking-fintech-themes
23. "Over the past 10 years we had the mobile smartphone revolution, it brought us on-demand services, constant digital connectivity, and social networking. Simultaneously, we were introduced to crypto assets and decentralized digital infrastructure. And quietly in the backdrop and at a small scale, we had remote work and gig style economies begin to form.
But these changes didn’t impact overall societal makeup immediately. Inertia kept life progressing as it always has. These changes seemed like fads and trends at the periphery that supported the late industrial society and did not signal the reshaping of the world.
And yet, they were quietly working in concert, under the radar, reshaping society.
That is until COVID happened."
https://dougantin.com/how-covid-broke-reality-and-delivered-the-digital-age/
24. "Product-led growth skills have quickly become among the most in-demand for SaaS companies both large and small. In fact, a recent search uncovered 950+ open positions citing “product-led growth”, up from only 200 in January.
Here’s why: companies with a growth team have demonstrably higher free-to-paid conversion rates (12% vs. 5%). They see somewhat higher website visitor to free sign-up conversion rates, too, as growth teams work cross-functionally with marketing to attract the right audience."
https://kylepoyar.substack.com/p/7-new-product-led-insights
25. Apple's IDFA changes have caused chaos in the gaming space. Some interesting lessons for adapting in the gaming space.
26. This is pretty awful.
https://thehustle.co/how-employers-steal-billions-of-dollars-from-workers-every-year/
27. I was hesitant to post this as this piece seems like typical anti-tech write up that we see in dying old media. But the Metaverse is coming and we need to be aware of its origins & how we can make sure it’s utopian and NOT dystopian.
“The metaverse is a vision that spans many companies—the whole industry,” as Zuckerberg put it. “You can think about it as the successor to the mobile internet.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7eqbb/the-metaverse-has-always-been-a-dystopia
28. Incredibly well said. We need more independent thinking and questioning in our world.
"Approaching the world with a healthy dose of skepticism is a good thing — even if it may not be popular. Next time you hear, "I am doing this because [insert X authority figure] said so," question, inquire, and verify."
https://theprofile.substack.com/p/the-profile-the-woman-who-got-reincarnated
29. It's incredibly impressive what Mayor Suarez has done. He has put Miami on the tech map.
"Suarez is a Republican and has pursued an avowedly conservative agenda: pro-business, pro-technology, lower taxes and reduced regulation, pro-police and tough on crime. Say what you want about his politics, but it’s hard not to admire the energy and enthusiasm he brings to his cause. Suarez has bounded from coast to coast and from social media platform to social media platform extolling Miami as open for business (even in the midst of a historic pandemic) and positioning it as a safer, cheaper, more business-friendly alternative to San Francisco and New York City."
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/07/miamis-mayor-is-charting-a-course-for-a-post-trump-gop
30. "Our experience limits our imagination.
People believe that great entrepreneurs develop novel ideas because they're exceptionally creative, brilliant, and visionary.
But the truth is, everything we come up with is a mixture of what we've seen, heard, and experienced.
So, if we want to develop better ideas, we need to expose ourselves to new experiences, gain new skills, make new connections, join new communities.
We need to expand our horizons."
Check Yourself Before you Wreck Yourself
I wonder about this all the time. People who seem to have it all, people at the pinnacle of success like Hollywood stars, super star musicians, powerful politicians and corporate executives, hedge fund financiers & billionaire entrepreneurs. One minute they are on top of the world. The next their lives have imploded. And most of the time this is very much self inflicted.
These are clearly NOT stupid people. But eventually the skills and attitude of what made them successful, works against them when they hit a certain stage.
One big factor in my opinion is they start to develop a massive sized ego for their rightfully hard earned position. They start to believe their own PR. They stop listening to others and/ or more likely surround themselves with “Yes People.” This is a very dangerous environment to be in as you rapidly lose touch with reality. The Greeks had a great term for this. Hubris: “Excessive pride and self confidence which leads to their destruction”.
This is endemic in big corporations with a long history. Why do you think there are always big crises hitting big companies (and big bureaucracies)? NO one wants to pass up bad news. SO the truth gets suppressed until it hits critical mass and explodes. For an illustrative example, read the latest book on the WeWork debacle called “The Cult of We” by Brown & Farrell. No one comes out of this looking good.
I also think a combination of complacency or magical thinking makes them lose their edge. As Microsoft founder Bill Gates once remarked, “Success is a lousy teacher. It makes smart people think they can't lose.”
In the startup world I see this in founders who recently raise a very large venture capital funding round or rounds. They take their feet off the gas in the business, or they jump into the conference speaking circuit.
Or what is also common, arrogance & know-it-all-ism in many venture capitalists. They are treated like B-list stars by founders and the media. They conflate this for their own personal brilliance and genius, when it’s really just about their access to money.
How to combat this?
Have a sense of humor and try not to take yourself too seriously. Ego is the enemy as they say
Try REALLY hard to have some self awareness, some humility & remember where you came from
Have mentors you respect and who keep you in check
Have a partner and friends not from your industry (this definitely works as they don’t care or understand your fame/clout whatever)
Hang out with people way more successful than you are
Work with diverse people who challenge you (nicely or not) ie. No YES PEOPLE & Sycophants. You have to weed them out.
With success that seems to hit so fast these days, it’s really easy to lose touch with reality. Make sure you build some self awareness and humility and face reality. As remarked in the bible, Proverbs 16:18: “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
Sadly, I believe many people will only learn this the hard way.
Outsiders versus Insiders Drive the Cycle of Innovation
As a History major & business practitioner over the last 2 decades, I needed to look at technology trends and innovation to better understand how things work in the world.
Outsiders innovate, they win, become incumbents and the new establishment.Then they become insiders, get fat and lazy. New hungry outsiders come in and wreck them. The insiders wake up or get scared and try to compete. They usually lose in the end. Change is just plain hard. Even if the incumbents are not fat and lazy (usually not the case), it’s very challenging to keep up in our present ultra competitive environment full of change.
You saw this in many different instances. Roman empire versus the Germanic barbarians. Spanish empire versus the Dutch, French & British. Old Europe versus the rising USA at the turn of century circa 1900 through to 1945. In the business world, Hedge Funds and PE firms versus the Fortune 500. East Coast versus West coast. Mainframe versus Microcomputer versus PC versus Mobile. Countless examples.
We’re seeing this in the Venture capital industry and ironically it’s the hedge funds like Tiger Global, Two Sigma, Coatue & D2 doing that from the top. And solo capitalists and new emerging fund managers coming in from the bottom. The only firm that seems to be staying on top is Sequoia Capital and it’s because they have fully embraced Andy Grove’s “Only the Paranoid Survive” mindset. Can’t say the same for many of the old guard in VC who have made too much money and are not willing to hustle anymore.
The exact same phenomenon is happening in the larger financial services space. Crypto versus the incumbents of the old financial world of Central Banks, big Retail banks, Visa and Mastercard. The crypto industry are the new barbarians at the old Finance gates. There is going to be a massive fight but the trends in the long run are in favor of a decentralized world. It might take 10 years, maybe even 20 but I am certain it will happen as this present young digitally savvy millennial generation comes into positions of power and influence.
This cycle is well described by one of my favorite Medium writers, Daniel Jeffries:
“Crypto will be the establishment. And then somewhere, someone much younger, who’s left out of the system will dream of bringing it all crashing down, and they’ll come up with an idea and a brand new technology that scares the hell out of us and threatens to topple everything we worked so hard to build with crypto.
We’ll be the ones trying to suppress the revolution.
The wheel of time spins forever and ever. And the eternal cycle will roll back to the beginning once more.”
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads July 25th, 2021
"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader."--John Quincy Adams
This is a must read thread. Why gaming wins versus Music. But relevant for all businesses if they want to stay relevant.
https://mobile.twitter.com/cdixon/status/1416452788498927617
2. "The economic case for a geroscience moonshot is compelling. Healthcare is among the most pressing challenges we face as a nation and, by far, the greatest fraction of healthcare expenditures comes from caring for the sick elderly population. The disease-first approach has been quite successful at keeping sick people alive longer than was possible 50 years ago, which it turns out is really expensive.
In contrast, if we keep people alive longer in good health, they can remain productive members of society. In fact, one recent study estimated the cost savings from a conservative geroscience intervention that increases healthy life expectancy by only one year would reach about $38 trillion annually. Given the proposed ARPA-H price tag of $6.5 billion, that equates to a 5846-fold return on investment."
3. "Depending on where you look, Robinhood is animated by contrasting energies, trying to convince you of the intelligence and nobility of its endeavor at the same time that it assures you of its playfulness.
This is clear even within the first few pages. One spread proclaims “Our mission is to democratize finance for all”; the next alludes to the Game Stop fiasco’s chief protagonist with a cheeky “ROAR” ticker. A similar juxtaposition plays out a moment later: right before Robinhood’s founders extoll their values — clear-minded and sober as they are — they wink again at Roaring Kitty with this paraphrase: “If you like these values, you may like the stock."
This is amusing, certainly. But it leaves the impression of a business unsure of whether it wants to be the most serious fun company or the most fun serious company. Does Robinhood want to be the Allegiance of Magicians from Arrested Development or Mean Girls’ “cool Mom”? Is this an addictive social app with an economic agenda, or a bank with a sense of humor?"
https://www.readthegeneralist.com/briefing/robinhood
4. This is a great podcast for biohackers. Lots of good ideas and protocols.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXvDEmo6uS4
5. Go Cube. Batch 18 represent. Congrats to Artyom Keydunov, Pavel Tiunov & team.
https://www.decibel.vc/content/cube-seeing-the-power-of-cloud-data
6. "Since a huge chunk of your net worth is going to be tied to your side venture it is better to start today. It is also a lot smarter to choose a path with the highest *chance* of success. This means you do not follow what you “love”. You do not go into writing. You do not go into painting. You do not go into making music. You find the most monetizable skill you have and run in that direction.
If you are a good writer you need to learn to copywrite and sell things to people (conversions = massive income). If you are good at art, you go into UX/UI design - you don’t sit on a street corner selling paintings for $20 hoping to be “seen”. If you are good at music, you go work at an advertising company at minimum (cinema etc.) instead of trying to be “seen” at random pop up events. Yes. There are exceptions to the rule (Kanye West, other rappers etc.). However. We’re playing a game of probabilities not hopes and dreams."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/probability-based-decisions-make
7. Very cool company. Congrats @Samir Kaji & team.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/22/allocate-banks-5m-to-open-up-venture-capital-fund-access
8. "But Golding possesses what you would call main character energy. Born out of TikTok, the term refers to puffing up one’s own chest as a means of self-care than a shallow ego boost. In a June 2021 essay for The New Yorker, Kyle Chayka writes that post-Covid main character energy is about trying to “reclaim control of our stories, exert ourselves upon the world,” and “take our places as protagonists once more.”
This is Golding’s narrative. He’s an actor with all the attributes of the main protagonist, but decades of systemic racism in Hollywood have kept protagonists from resembling Golding."
https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/henry-golding-is-snake-eyes
9. "As you can see, people have less wealth and more debt. The devaluation of fiat currencies has made everything more expensive around us. The promise of bitcoin is that we will usher in a new era of sound money. The currency is outside the system. No one controls it. People will once again be able to simply save their way to financial freedom. The money won’t lose value over time. In fact, the purchasing power will increase."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/fix-the-money-fix-the-world
10. This looks so awesome!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g18jFHCLXk
11. "Well, DeFi does give us hyper automation. If you take out a loan in Aave, there is no one deciding what the collateral should be, no one examining your credit history, no courts are needed to seize the collateral, no police to enforce a court decision. This, finally, is a rational world.
The Enlightenment, at long last. Loan disbursement and repayment happen automatically and collateral will be seized in the same way through the application of a smart contract embedded in the blockchain. Aave also allows certain loans to be instantly issued and settled. These loans require no upfront collateral and happen almost instantly, taking advantage of a feature of all blockchains: transactions are only finalized when a new bundle of transactions, known as a block, is accepted by the network.
So far, so good. The most problematic, but also potentially most interesting element of DeFi is that hyper automation may well be impossible. Smart contracts can be gamed."
https://brunomacaes.substack.com/p/decentralised-finance-and-the-world
12. For anyone interested in house clearing....like I am.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxolFYFCi24
13. Still the best podcast show around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAtPReTswZo&t=241s
14. "But China never really shifted out of survival mode. Yes, China’s leaders embraced economic growth, but that growth has always been toward the telos of comprehensive national power. China’s young people may be increasingly ready to cash out and have some fun, but the leadership is just not there yet. They’ve got bigger fish to fry — they have to avenge the Century of Humiliation and claim China’s rightful place in the sun and blah blah.
And so when China’s leaders look at what kind of technologies they want the country’s engineers and entrepreneurs to be spending their effort on, they probably don’t want them spending that effort on stuff that’s just for fun and convenience. They probably took a look at their consumer internet sector and decided that the link between that sector and geopolitical power had simply become too tenuous to keep throwing capital and high-skilled labor at it. And so, in classic CCP fashion, it was time to smash."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/why-is-china-smashing-its-tech-industry
15. "Today you can learn skills, showcase your expertise, build a reputation, and forge key relationships from anywhere in the world — and the tools accelerating these trends will only continue to improve.
Imagine a world where 8 billion people are connected to the internet — instantly, they join the global economy, information space, and education space, giving them the ability to learn, contribute, and communicate permissionlessly across language barriers, borders, and time zones."
https://eriktorenberg.substack.com/p/silicon-valley-in-the-cloud
16. This is a disturbing topic. Hope the CCP pursues peace (not getting my hopes up here though).
17. Invaluable tweet storm on what's happening in the tech investing space right now.
https://twitter.com/fintechjunkie/status/1417854022883713026
18. "Rappi is a Latin American Super App offering users rapid delivery of a range of items (food, medicine, clothes), a suite of financial services and a platform for booking experiences from travel to concerts and hotel stays.
Rappi initially launched as a food and grocery delivery platform but has quickly evolved into a Super App offering a broad range of complementary services to its users. Like all Super Apps, Rappi has grown its product offering as its user base has scaled."
https://reademergent.com/p/rappi-latams-super-app
19. This is an awesome story especially when you know the people. Healthy ramen!
https://mailchimp.com/courier/article/immi-ramen/
20. Big fan here.
"At 48, his life seems relentlessly full of activity, projects, causes, releases. He’s the star of an imminent summer blockbuster, The Suicide Squad. He’s a rapper who releases music online at a rate of about a track a month. He hosts a podcast. He’s just released a new line of T-shirts. Earlier in 2021, Elba signed a deal with HarperCollins to write children’s books.
He and his wife, the Canadian model Sabrina Dhowre Elba, have recently been petitioning world leaders (France’s, Belgium’s) on behalf of rural farmers in Africa. The couple have also co- designed a Louboutin sandal. When Elba sits down to chat to me over Zoom, it’s during a break between night shoots on a new movie he’s making, and I’m tempted to tell him to forget about it; shut the laptop; sleep."
21. This is the future. Embedded Fintech!
"Embedded Fintech refers to the integration of fintech products and services into traditional financial institutions' offerings. Embedded Fintech enables banks to increase the speed at which they can deliver Fintech-like services, including Embedded Finance (i.e. distribution of banking services by non-banks) and Banking-as-a-Service (i.e. banks delivering services via API). It was catalyzed by Open Banking (i.e. banks sharing customer data via API)."
https://www.trackingpayments.org/p/unpacking-fintech-themes-embedded
22. "In June, Cooper’s podcast, Call Her Daddy — now a solo venture — was licensed by Spotify for a reported $60 million for three years, which might make her its second most highly paid podcaster after Joe Rogan and definitely makes her much richer than the guys she once dated for dinners and vacations."
https://www.bustle.com/politics/alex-cooper-call-her-daddy-spotify-deal-breakup
23. Why are used cars so expensive now? The critical importance of semiconductor chips.
https://thehustle.co/why-are-used-cars-so-expensive-right-now/
24. "In terms of the soulmate, one person cannot give you what an entire community should provide. That is bound to create a crumbling of too many expectations on one unit. So do not give up your friends. A wedding is not saying goodbye to your circle or to these relationships. They're super important, and especially the men.
The men, particularly guys in straight relationships, lose massive amounts of social connections once they get married. But this is for people in all types of relationships. One person cannot give you what a whole village should provide."
https://www.gq.com/story/esther-perel-interview
25. "The most critical thing your users table does for you, though, is it gives you access to network effects, and these network effects give you some lock-in. The more users your platform has, the more value it has to any one user (cf. Metcalfe's law), and the more value it has to any one user, then A) the easier it is to attract new users, and B) the harder it is for any one user to leave (because to leave is to give up all that value).
So the entire online attention economy is built around proprietary user tables that different apps jealously guard and are constantly trying to grow.
Every web-scale software player, from small B2B IaaS products to big consumer-facing SaaS megaplatforms (Facebook, Google, Amazon), is about to get its eggs scrambled.
Here's what's coming: the public blockchain amounts to a single, massive users table for the entire Internet, and the next wave of distributed applications will be built on top of it."
Environment Matters: Location, Location, Location
Always learning new things about yourself. Been seeing a therapist for the last 8 months now and it's definitely been a great investment in myself. You get to understand what really drives you, both in good and bad ways. One of the recent things I’ve discovered is how specific locations tilt me or push me to certain behavior.
So for example, everytime i am in San Francisco, I find myself overbooking my schedule with meetings, calls and such even when I don’t need to. It’s like I find myself going back into the programming I have when I am there. Similar situation with Tbilisi, New York or Tokyo. Always busy and always overscheduled. This has personally been great for my career in the past and present. But it certainly has not always been great for my family life nor my physical and mental health.
On the other hand, I find myself being way more relaxed and chill in Kyiv (Ukraine), Vancouver (Canada), Lisbon, Mexico and Taiwan in general. I tend not to overbook or push myself too much. I always have plenty of time to read and spend time with friends and family. I am far more present. Overall a good thing but on other hand, it does detract from getting stuff done. The goal for me is to find a better balance between these two states of high frenzy versus low frenzy.
So what will I do with this information? Well, on one hand knowing this is the situation, I should be able to more consciously program myself and be aware of this tilt I get in each of these places. It will allow me to be more deliberate with how I manage my schedule when I am in a high frenzy environment versus a low frenzy one. This also gives me a new frame to look at my travel schedule as I split my time between each of these locations.
The Lesson: the environment affects all of us and the more conscious we are of this and in designing our environments, the more likely we can take control of this and manage our personal lives and moods better.
The Next Decade: Reformation and Renaissance Framework
I was struck by Vibe Capital’s thesis and really had to share this. I think this is one of the most insightful frameworks I’ve seen for viewing the future. Dave Goldblatt absolutely nails it.
To quote Dave, this will be what the next 10 years will look like:
Reformation - 2021-2025
The next 10-15 years will be marked by unprecedented volatility and change. Similar to the Reformation, traditional power structures are being challenged as technological, climatological, and demographic forces expose inadequacies of the current system.
Renaissance - 2025-2030
During any volatile period, enormous wealth will be created, and incumbents will be disrupted.
But just as the outcome of the Reformation was the Renaissance followed by the Enlightenment, the Modern Reformation also presents a chance to usher in a dramatically restructured society: one in which power structures are more equitable, beneficial, transparent and accessible.
(Source: https://vibecap.co/our-thesis-who-we-are-and-our-portfolio)
This basically means that it’s going to be continual chaos for the next 3 years. Between major macro geopolitical changes, a cold war splitting the world between China and the United States & massive money printing everywhere, there will be a massive reset. Added on top of this, with slow rollout of the vaccines across the globe, a surprisingly large anti-vaxxer movement and the virulent nature of Covid-19 itself, we will be stuck with this pandemic for longer than many of us expected with new variants showing up.
I definitely was much more hopeful in Q1 of 2021. Sadly, I believe we will see countries going in and out of lockdowns, borders closing and opening irregularly over the next 2 years at least. This is already happening in parts of the European Union as they have opened and then closed during the summer. Former countries that managed Covid well for the most part, will get slack or unlucky and Covid will break through. Just look at Taiwan in April 2021.
Forewarned is forearmed. If we thought we were going through a crazy time of change, hang on to your hats. We are just getting started. Everything is circular, what goes up, must come down. Just hang in there.
Yet as with most tumultuous times, there will be tremendous opportunity for companies and individuals to thrive. Old ways will die and hopefully new and better ways of doing things will emerge (big stress on “hopefully”). As the old Chinese curse (or blessing) goes: “May you live in Interesting times!”