Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Dec 5th, 2021
“Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.”--Vince Lombardi
Crazy, crazy story.
"For nearly 30 years, Kearns waged an impossible legal battle against one of America’s most powerful companies. In the end, he won millions of dollars — but it cost him his sanity, his marriage, and the remaining years of his life.
Kearns’ story is remembered as one of history’s great David vs. Goliath lawsuits. But it’s also a reminder of the shortcomings of the US patent system for independent inventors."
https://thehustle.co/windshield-wiper-inventor-robert-kearns
2. "I’ve seen annualized retention rates in PLG businesses range considerably from 50% to upwards of 90%. When retention falls on the lower end of that range, it puts tremendous pressure on a company’s ability to keep accelerating new logo acquisition and to squeeze as much as possible out of the customers who stay.
It’s easy to dismiss churn as a Customer Success problem that just requires additional bodies. Here’s the thing: much of the churn happens within a user’s first 3-6 months (below is a real life example), which means SaaS companies need to get their customers to see value extremely quickly. It can be extremely tough to win a customer over if they stumbled out of the gate."
https://kylepoyar.substack.com/p/how-to-stop-churn
3. "From today’s perspective, it’s hard to imagine that the trade of a lifetime, buying more Amazon stock in the middle of the dot-com bust, was controversial and difficult. Miller admitted “we were clearly wrong in buying when we did,” and averaged down.
He eventually shifted from Amazon stock to the convertible bonds (which also allowed him to realize a tax loss). He remained steadfast in his belief in the company’s future. “Most people try to maximize the number of times they’re right,” he said. “The real question is how much you make when you’re right.”
https://neckar.substack.com/p/bill-miller-an-investors-evolution
4. "His story contains a warning against overconfidence and becoming too concentrated in a bold thematic bet, especially if it has significant downside risk.
His journey is a cautionary tale to never let down your guard, to never believe you’ve figured out the game. The moment of our greatest success can lead us straight into the abyss of defeat.
“I’m much more sensitive to risk and being wrong than I was before,” Miller said “It’s an admission that I didn’t think I could be as catastrophically wrong as I was.”
It’s easy to point out that he drew the wrong historical analogy. But it’s hard to withstand the temptation to find meaning in patterns from the past. It’s always different this time, but we don’t know in which way. And we intuitively look to history for guidance (see also comparisons of 1987 to 1929; and see Paul Tudor Jones and the Japanese bubble for a trader’s perspective on working with analogies).
Miller’s journey shows us the need to become resilient. Structural weaknesses silently compound and become exposed in times of stress.
Miller faced redemptions due to the mutual fund’s daily liquidity provision. He also dealt with divorce, a hostile market, margin debt in his personal account, and public humiliation. I can’t imagine the amount of stress that weighed on him. If the ability to make good decisions and take risk is impaired by poor health, a lack of sleep, anxiety, and depression, how does one make the bets necessary to emerge from the depth of crisis?
In the end, Miller’s journey shows us that comebacks are possible. That there is a life after failure and humiliation."
https://neckar.substack.com/p/bill-millers-journey-part-ii-lessons
5. Cogent discussion on the emerging Covid Omicron variant crisis.
"Basically, the age when we could expect to stop the virus with non-pharmaceutical interventions — lockdowns, social distancing, masks, test-and-trace — is long, long over. Not only has popular appetite for this strategy waned to almost nothing, but new variants are so contagious that these strategies just aren’t sufficient to stamp out the virus.
Every country except China is transitioning to a “live with Covid” strategy (and China is hurting itself by trying to maintain its “zero Covid” policy). So while you should still wear a mask, and while some cities may do some limited business closures, we should assume that distancing measures will not be our first line of defense against Omicron.
Vaccines will be our first line of defense."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-omicron-situation
6. Some good growth ideas here for founders.
https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/turbo-boosts
7. This is a bit dark but forewarned is forearmed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mepBMJNwFqc
8. Always love listening to these shows. Kevin and Tim are always on the cutting edge of tech and biohacking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OF7XqmNXGLo
9. I'm not an Anti-vaxxer and Covid denier. Covid is dangerous. BUT I don't like the grossly heavy handed and frankly authoritarian steps being taken by most governments across the globe.
Much of this write up rings true & we are seeing civil rights being infringed on everywhere.
https://dossier.substack.com/p/dont-take-the-new-strain-omicron
10. "Neo Medievalism is a modern adaptation of medievalism where non-state organizations or sovereign authorities compete for authority over a group of people. These organizations can implement rules and establish processes on the group that follows them. Sometimes, these rules come into conflict with one another because they come from overlapping authorities.
Overlapping political hierarchy was common in medieval times when the regional feudal nobility, the church, and national level sovereigns were forced to coexist. Each organization had rules and authority over their constituencies. Sometimes the church was in conflict with the nobility or a sovereign over the control of the people. In some cases, this conflict of authority led to the fragmentation of power.
This concept of overlapping authority and struggle for power is common in the digital age.
Simply put, governments will start competing with each other to win over the loyalties of these new groups of people. They’ll target policies that cater to these new buckets of motivations. And through this fragmentation process, The Sovereign Individual will emerge as the primary beneficiary.
Digital jobs typically earn more than enough to service basic, lower order needs. Ie: if you earn money online, the chances you’ll go hungry are minimal. Because of this, a digital worker’s focus shifts to higher order motivations.
And digital incomes are on the rise everywhere. Especially within traditional communities filled with location-dependent workers surviving paycheck-to-paycheck. When you rely on community dependent income streams, lower order needs aren’t always a guarantee.
A location independent social class that is willing to exploit the location and policy based arbitrage opportunities that present themselves in a dislocated and competitive environment. This is jurisdictional arbitrage."
https://dougantin.com/neo-medievalism-and-the-sovereign-individual-age/
11. This is a great newbie guide to crypto. Worth a read or bookmark at least.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/crypto-nft-twitter-discord-guide.html
12. Lots to absorb here. Some good insights for the future: relocation of the professional classes & how this affects major cities in the USA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX5qi_dqvQc
13. The End of Dogma. Worthwhile talk regardless of how you feel about Peter Thiel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggp-e6qBxSM
14. This move actually kind of makes alot of sense. Focus is always good.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/03/pinduoduo-puts-profit-into-agriculture/
15. I need to watch this.
16. "There are no certainties. All you can do is set yourself up for positive expected value outcomes - make good bets over a long period of time. Make calculated risks, minimize variance, use the best information you have, and understand all the potential outcomes."
https://kyla.substack.com/p/the-federal-reserves-wager
17. Actually hate them both: ad agencies and management consultants suck.
The question is which one is more useless faster in the long run. (ad agencies in my view).
https://sparrowone.substack.com/p/why-management-consultancies-are
18. This is a pretty awful but important historical figure. Tamerlane, literally the "lord of destruction" responsible for killing 5% of the world’s population in the 14th century.
https://historyofyesterday.com/tamerlane-388241acc894
19. Good thesis for a VC fund. Focus on Canadian diaspora startup founders.
20. Good overview of latest VC news. Also some crazy numbers on the extreme expansion of seed stage market.
https://thatwastheweek.com/2021/12/04/seed-the-best-of-times-the-worst-of-times
21. Great discussion on the pros and cons of Angellist VC Rolling Funds. I've been doing this for the last 3 month at Diaspora.vc & its been pretty good so far!
The Biggest Loser: Wasted Time & Wasted Potential
I’ve been to Canada a few times already this year. As a requirement to return to the USA, you have to go get a covid test. I have used the same service for the last 3 times now and always get the same nurse every time. She seems so unhappy and embittered to be there. I understand it when people hate their jobs. But to be so open about it. I have never understood this.
Maybe it’s also my perspective that everyone should be more like the Japanese. In whatever you do, you do your best. Whatever the work is, no matter how small or low status it is, it is always treated with honor and with a focus on doing it well.
You are a highly skilled individual, in an industry where your role is in high demand. If you hate the place or occupation so much, go do something different. No one is putting a gun to your head. Yet they keep showing up and spending a big part of their life here at work. And it’s probably all due to the time honored “devil they know, then the one they don’t” aspect of people. Without knowing all the circumstances here it just seems like incredible laziness. I don’t mean for this to sound as judgemental as it is: but what a waste.
Growing up in Canada in the early days, it was tough. While we never starved, we didn’t always have resources, so we just got by. We always watched the budget and never threw away food unless it was really bad. As things got better as my parents' careers and economic lives improved, the scarcity disappeared thankfully. But these habits became so ingrained that they still have not really left me. And in some cases have penetrated even further in my attitudes, especially in regards to money, time and energy.
I viscerally hate waste. This was very helpful when it came to my business career in operations. Operations is the fine-tuning and optimization of everything. My personality naturally orients to this. Excess costs & people sitting around doing nothing is offensive to me. Yes, you need to have some excess capacity or else you will run your team and business into the ground. But the best businesses are able to keep a close balance of some redundancy with effectiveness.
I think about this in relation to people all around us. People like that sad & somewhat angry nurse. All that time is spent unhappy. Time you cannot get back. You lose money, you can usually find a way to make it up. You literally can never get your time back. But more important, all that wasted potential. To do something that excites you, that challenges you and inspires you. Especially in your work life which equates to so much of your life. A life that literally is too short to waste.
I wish I had the courage to strike out on my own earlier, so I truly do understand the fear and lack of confidence here. So learn from my mistakes and not your own. I believe that the sooner you can start your path to finding the right thing that sparks you, the better off you and the world will be.
Amateurs talk strategy, Professionals talk logistics: the Critical Importance of Supply Chains
Watching all the issues happening with the Los Angeles and Long Beach port gridlock, I got a good tip from logistics expert https://twitter.com/man_integrated, aka Huntsman. Wanting to learn more, I watched some videos (check out this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25rt3SvOBMw) and went down the rabbit hole. One of these rabbit holes was the book “Ninety Percent of Everything” by George. Wow, it really gives a great perspective on how critical yet hidden this industry is to our everyday modern lives. 90% of the world’s goods are brought to you via shipping on the sea. Oil from the Middle East, low end manufactured products like Toys from China, clothing from Bangladesh or Vietnam, advanced semiconductor chips from Taiwan, raw iron ore from Australia or Brazil.
Globalization of our economy shows how interconnected we are. Whatever happens in China or Vietnam or Saudi Arabia directly affects things in America. Built as Just-in-Time Systems. When things operate smoothly it’s like a symphony. This is why your local grocery store or retail shop only needs to stock a few days of product on the shelves. When it runs out, there is a new order triggered and it’s filled “Just in time” like a conveyor belt with its long lines running all the way around the world: between farms or manufacturing plants, trucked or trained to ports, shipped or flown to the end market. These are then sent on trucks or via railways to a regional warehouse storage/ distribution depot and then trucked to the local store. It’s a very long, complicated and complex chain.
But like all chains, it’s brittle as it’s only as good as its weakest link. When things break, they break badly with all the knockdown effects along the rest of the chain. War. Covid pandemic. Natural disasters like a hurricane hitting Texas gulf lands. Energy shortages in China.
All these cause Supply chain issues.
We’re seeing too much demand as we slowly come out of the pandemic but accompanied by lowered supply. After oil prices dropped to below costs in 2020, energy prices in 2021 are going way up. Actually the price of almost everything is going up. For example, look at the shortages of automobiles in the world, which is due to there not being enough advanced semiconductor chips.
We have seen in 2020 that many countries started focusing on redundancy & self-sufficiency not efficiency. I expect this trend only to further accelerate. With the growing US-China Trade war, reshoring of key manufacturing back to US or Close to US like Latam and Canada. It’s already happening with the Japanese and South Korean heavy & electronics industry.
At a macro level things we probably can’t do too much about except for understanding them better. This is why I am so excited about the technology aspects to improve the micro effects and shocks. That is why I’m such a fan of the work Dynamo Ventures (https://www.dynamo.vc), Up Partners (https://up.partners) and Bryan Laung Aoaeh at Refashiond (https://angel.co/v/back/refashiond-seed) are doing with their focus on investing in logistics and supply chain startups.
At a personal level, I expect we will continue to have these supply shocks over the next few years. Some of these shocks might even affect our day to day stocks of food. This is why it’s not a bad idea to pick up some of the Prepper or Mormon habits of keeping a few months of non-perishable foods in storage. Or even better, learn how to grow some vegetables and fruits and chickens. All these can help reduce the shocks and your dependence on supply chains.
Globalization is being rolled back and in a growing decentralized world, we should be focussing more on local markets and supply. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s a forcing function. Better to be prepared and not need it, than being unprepared if things start to go badly. Sadly as we know, most people only learn after and from trauma.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Nov 28th, 2021
“You may encounter defeats, but you must not be defeated”--Maya Angelou
Observant.
"Today we move more bits than atoms. Robots are building our products and artificial intelligence is taking care of the machinery. We order everything we need online which will soon be delivered to our doorsteps with self-driving trucks. And Starbucks, with the help from Amazon, is opening up cashierless coffee shops in New York City.
By letting software do all the hard, repetitive, and boring work we should be able do enjoy more leisure time, right. But that is not what seems to be happening. Everyone is just getting busier, more stressed out, and unhappy in their work as per research. Now why is that? Isn’t the idea with technological innovation to make everything easier and free up time, money, and attention for the really fun stuff in life?
I think part of the problem is that while digital technologies have revolutionized the world over the past 25 years we human beings are still thinking in atoms and not bits. We are getting more addicted to the mindless distractions of the digital world and less engaged in the real opportunities this new brave world offers.
Instead of slowing down to understand the new paradigm shift we are accelerating and becoming busier and busier. But when we move too fast we get tunnel vision and our ability for a 360-view of the world disappears. We are running faster in a hamster wheel that is broken and that will eventually lead nowhere. But we have to change as we are on the cusp of a large-scale human revolution in lifestyle and being."
https://fewerbetterthings.substack.com/p/slow-down-you-move-too-fast
2. This was a crazy educational interview. Don't agree with some of his views/points but I do for most of this. Balaji back on the Tim Ferriss Show. Very thought provoking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRao8xS_nyM&t=3329s
3. What a great time to be alive.
"With the Internet, you can choose your parents, your friends and your belief system through a series of smart decisions. While it seems extreme to suggest your “parents” can be replaced, you can replace the word with coaches (assumes you have a good relationship with them). This was *impossible* 40 years ago. You’d be stuck learning from the same people… living in the same place… working the same jobs, year after year after year.
It gets better! As economies move online (as you can see that’s our plan!), you can move your business/work online as well. You can have your own proposals, your own budgets and your own sub-culture that filters out the bad actors over time.
In short, the future is high-tech. Decentralized Wi-Fi money economies. This means your future is not dependent (at all) on what a 75-80 year old guy does or says. As long as you have internet access you can find a way out of any situation you are in (if you care to do so)."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/some-politics-and-general-life-rules
4. Lots of good stuff here. The man is one big massive brain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AyeAy9ljHY
5. "A lot of early majority users are afraid to adopt crypto because the user experience is a radically different experience from traditional finance. An investment opportunity exists in building a digital wallet with UX designed for later adopters, not early adopters. Users that care less about self custody and more about the investment and international use cases. The point is that not all features that appeal to early adopters will be appealing to the early majority. New opportunities will form by adapting early tech to help onboard new users with altered needs."
https://dougantin.com/bridging-the-chasm-by-minding-the-gap
6. So many great nuggets on the bleeding edge of the internet and business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEzgAKa9RRs&t=914s
7. This is actually a very smart play. Focus on Japanese crafts businesses.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/24/forest-bags-8m-seed-round-to-acquire-japanese-e-commerce-brands/
8. "Which leads me to my third point: making users happy isn't just a sign that you're on the right track. Making users happy will also give you the strength to fight the headwind of conventional opinion. And you're going to need help, because that headwind is strong. You can't be in denial about that.
What it should feel like in an early stage startup is that you're having a little party with your users, and it doesn't matter what the rest of the world thinks, because you're having such a great time. Except of course that that party has to be growing. It can be small, but it should be growing.
When you can find something that everyone else thinks is dumb but that a growing number of actual users love, this doesn’t just give you the strength to carry on, but is a sign that you could be onto something really big. That's my fourth point: the bigger the difference between conventional opinion of your idea and users' opinion of it, the more potential it probably has."
https://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/think-different-think-users
9. "If you’re a founder who’s trying to decide whether to pursue venture capital or nontraditional investors, ask yourself these questions: What do you need at your stage of development? Have you punched through all the possible failure modes? What risks remain in the business? Given that perspective, how much money should you raise and at what valuation?
If you’re a founder and you are completely confident you know everything needed to build a durable company, and all you need from investors is money, then taking money from an asset manager may be the right path for you.
But if you understand there are risks that happen in the lifetime of a company — things that can go wrong that money alone won’t solve — then pairing up with a venture investor who knows your business might be the best approach. A pure asset play can buy you a little bit more time, but fundamentally you need to have talent in the management team, and a VC firm can help you there."
https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/17/not-all-money-is-created-equal-a-vcs-advice-for-founders
10. Love these business teardowns.
"Why are tickets so pricey? It’s the nature of live entertainment.
The shows are expensive to produce — and unlike movies, they can’t be scaled globally. Instead, they are performed 1-2x per day in theaters ranging in capacity from ~500 to ~1.7k, creating unusual supply and demand issues that affect both megahits and run-of-the-mill shows."
https://thehustle.co/the-economics-of-broadway-shows
11. "Be competitor aware of their latest positioning, messaging, strategy, etc. but don’t obsess over it. Find the balance where the minimal amount of attention is allocated to stay aware of what’s going on with them but no more. As a simple exercise, whenever you find yourself obsessing over a competitor’s press release, immediately email three of your customers to find a time to check-in and see how things are going. The more you obsess over competitors, remind yourself to transfer that energy to obsessing over customers."
https://davidcummings.org/2021/11/20/customer-obsessed-and-competitor-aware
12. "I have heard a lot of Angel investors say “I never do bridge rounds” or “I’ll just take the markup and save my capital for more shots on goal.” Another view is “Double down on your winners.” Which strategy is superior? In a market where power laws apply and the “winners” deliver the vast majority of the returns at all stages, it is important to have a framework to decide (at every stage) “is this one a winner?”.
In my investment career, I evolved from an “early only” to a “double down on your winners” investor. If you are an “early only” investor today, I encourage you to read on. You may think differently about follow on investing. Or not, this is my model, you need to figure out your own."
https://incisive.vc/2021/07/19/how-i-think-about-follow-on-investments
13. "In the age of the individual creator, creator tech’s responsibility to the creators themselves is as much an ethical position as it is one of self-preservation. (No creator tech without a full thriving ecosystem of smaller creators, to err on the side of the obvious.) The superstar economy is ceding ground to independent creators with dedicated followings scattered across platforms and mediums.
If the creator economy is to thrive, the creators must thrive first. Patrons must come from unexpected places and the bottom up. Audiences must be easier to access. Creator tech can’t take the lion’s share and leave pennies for the creators. In other words, creator tech’s success is inextricable from creator success."
https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/23/small-creators-are-big-business
14. "You can only bet on unknown unknowns near the frontiers of human tenacity and creativity. Towards the tail distributions on both traits, unexpected tail events start to happen that dominate everything else. The problem with JC Penney isn’t that the department store business is a bad business (you could argue that the online bookstore business for Amazon was also a bad business). The problem is that JC Penney doesn’t have a high density of people who are either deeply tenacious or deeply creative. The unknown unknowns at JC Penney are 1,000 times less likely than at Amazon, so you likely shouldn’t be betting on them.
When you have groups of people who are especially tenacious and especially creative, magic happens. Amazonians had to be far more tenacious than competitors, otherwise they would die. Amazon’s tenacity has perpetuated into Amazon being one perhaps the most innovative company in the world, continuing to invent and enter new markets at a breakneck pace. At its core, the reason to bet on Amazon is their corporate tenacity, and therefore inventiveness.
A bold vision can sometimes be confused with arrogance or hubris, and sure enough, sometimes that’s how it ends up looking. Betting on unknown unknowns still requires a deep ability to execute."
https://alexw.substack.com/p/betting-on-unknown-unknowns
15. For those who want to learn more about this DAO thing.
https://future.a16z.com/dao-canon/
16. I like this pay/stay framework for evaluating developer tools.
"Investing in pre-product companies in this noisy environment is particularly challenging as you have to squint to see the potential value that a tool can create once it’s built. This is also true when evaluating startups planning to build a tool tied to an open source project with traction.² The project may point to an unaddressed pain point but that doesn’t always mean there’s a venture-scale opportunity where hundreds of millions of ARR can be generated.
In order to assess the market potential for developer tool startups, we created a framework that we’d like to share with founders. We call it the “pay/stay framework” and break it down below."
https://medium.com/cowboy-ventures/breaking-through-the-devtool-noise-dac92ec3cdab
17. Rise of the Solo Capitalists.
“The value proposition is clearly resonating and solo capitalists are proving they’re useful to founders and valuable to LPs,” said Altman, founder of Lattice. “I think they can manage a lot more capital than people historically imagined, and deploy it effectively.”
https://www.angellist.com/blog/solo-capitalists-vs-vc-firms
18. Good interview with one of nicest & hardest working guys in Hollywood. Keanu Reeves.
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a38241136/keanu-reeves-interview-2021
19. “Whenever obstacles present themselves, I’ve had to find the solution,” says Hart. “Once I find the solution, I find happiness. That cycle repeats. Work to find the solution, find happiness. Let it all go. There’s nothing else you can do.”
https://www.mensjournal.com/entertainment/kevin-hart-2021-cover-story
20. "While the timeline is still unclear, it’s likely we’re headed toward a future where we could all be using some yet-to-be-determined version of the metaverse to go online. And Facebook is determined to play a major role in building and shaping this new realm, meaning that even if Facebook doesn’t single-handedly own the metaverse (as it has insisted it won’t), it’s still striving to wield control over it. That means Facebook may one day have even more influence over our daily lives.
Today, Facebook still has to operate under the parameters set by Apple and Google, which make and control the world’s dominant smartphone operating systems. But in this new world that will likely rely on VR/AR headsets and digital sensors, Facebook is striving to create its own rules and operating platform.
The metaverse presents a potential future where Facebook won’t have these constraints anymore. If Facebook succeeds at being a pioneering founder of the metaverse, then it would be the company building and selling virtual reality headsets used to access that metaverse, and it could control a major app store distributing metaverse apps. This would all give Facebook a level of control and influence over the future internet that it doesn’t have today on the mobile web."
https://www.vox.com/recode/22799665/facebook-metaverse-meta-zuckerberg-oculus-vr-ar
21. This is literal gold for SaaS Founders and investors. Amazingly useful data points here for reference.
https://www.bvp.com/atlas/scaling-to-100-million
22. Impressive group of people and investors. Long Journey Ventures.
"One of the secrets to my success is that I have a lot of secret weapons and I’m infinitely curious. A few people across my career really stick out, but two in particular I can now call my partners. If you want to spend time with your friends, the best way is to collaborate and if you are worried they might leave you in the dust eventually, well, the next natural step is to join them."
https://medium.com/@cb_36019/my-not-so-secret-anymore-arsenal-f8e539a4e410
23. I agree with this. Tote bag as a flex.
"The tote bag is to the 21st century what the button badge on the lapel was to the 20th. It is a declaration of values for an age when principles come with merch. This is citizenship as consumerism. You either pay for a branded tote bag, or you are given it because you bought something else.
A bookstore tote tells the world not only that you read books, but also that you have excellent taste in retail establishments. A museum bag is a memento of a cultural expedition – but more specifically, the time you spent in the gift shop."
24. Precursor to the future. Cyberwar effects civilians in Iran and Israel. Expect to see the same across the globe sadly.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/27/world/middleeast/iran-israel-cyber-hack.html
Pity the Loud, Rude and Belligerent: External Behavior as the Ultimate Tell
I’m not the most political person but I’ve long been an observer of politics and geopolitics particularly. As a history enthusiast and long time international investor, you have to be aware of what’s happening at the global macro level of economics, demographics, sociographics & military changes. What I found disturbing is the recent growing belligerence of China that has happened under Xi-Jinping. The crackdown on corruption & also the wealthy, the breakup of big tech giants, aggressive “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy that has emerged in most countries by the Chinese diplomatic corp. We also see the increasing PLA military flexing across the straits of Taiwan, the Spratly Islands with Vietnam & Philippines and more antagonism with India on their border. The “peaceful rise” of China is definitely over with many so-called geopolitical experts and media luminaries commenting that this is due to Chinese ever growing power.
Yet looking at the data, we see some really deep problems underneath. The Chinese population is shrinking (at least 20% in next decade), the economy is slowing with major real estate industry collapse & growing percentage of Non-Performing-Loans in all their banks. China has also faced major electricity shortages that have left millions in the literal dark (September 2021) and intractable environmental issues such as bad air and water quality. To understand the real situation, this growing aggression and belligerence stems from weakness, not strength.
These aggressive internal and external projections are ones of attempting control, redirecting internal populace’s attention to outside issues and hiding their own problems. No different than when an animal postures by standing on its hind legs to look bigger and taller than their opponent.
The point of this is not to call out China specifically but as a point relevant to people, companies and countries as a whole as well. When you run into someone who is rude or aggressive, it’s not because they are happy or their life is going well. It’s because they feel insecure or are threatened. A wounded animal strikes out against those around it.
Happy confident people don’t feel the need to react, they tend to let things slide.
I think back to my own life. When things are going well in general, you tend to be pretty tolerant of things. When things are not going well, you tend to operate on a hair trigger. For me personally, I’d get easily tilted. Little small things cause me to lose my temper.
It’s the same for those who feel the need to flex or brag or even worse dunk on other people. These are sad, massively insecure people. We are all insecure to some extent and many of us got to where we are in life by using this as an internal driver. An internal driver that is used to accomplish things and prove others wrong. This is an incredible tool but you also have to learn to reign it in. And knowing, recognizing and celebrating your accomplishments are important to build this confidence.
So going back to the title. When you are faced with a braggart, loudmouth or someone incredibly rude. Be patient, show them pity and tolerance or just ignore them. They are fighting a battle internally that they don’t understand and their behavior is the bad outcome of this. Also be careful in business of taking someone’s bragging too seriously. Quoting Tywin Lannister from Game of Thrones, “Any man who must say, 'I am the king,' is no true king.”
Everybody Wants to be a Gangster, Till its Time to Do Gangster SH-T
Seeing this awesome t-shirt made me chuckle. Also made me think. We live in a social media & media saturated world full of posers. So much talk and so little doing. How many so-called entrepreneurs who are seen to be driving around in Lambos, living in a crazy big mansion actually own these. How many business gurus actually built something and were actually successful before they started selling courses?
One of the biggest challenges for founders, LPs, and investors is sorting the signal from the noise. And it is really damn noisy out there. Much of this is made by LPs, Venture Capitalists, angels and founders who have figured out how to tell a good story and dominate the news cycle and social media. So many are amazing writers or great on social media or the PR front. This is also why we see so many of the best VC funds turning into Media companies. A16Z has 70 people who work on the media aspects and frankly think they do an amazing job. Lots of other funds are in the midst of attempting the same thing, albeit doing it very poorly.
I think this is a challenge for founders especially. Which investors will really help you when the chips are down? Which ones are willing to roll up their sleeves and pitch in to do the hard work? Reality in my experience is very few (ie sub 10% for sure).
It goes the other way too. So many founders are following the concept of “Building in Public.” They have become incredible at social media and the hype machine. This clearly helps them when it comes to fundraising, hiring and even potential partnership conversations. But how many of them are able to execute and deliver on their promise? Also pretty rare. And in the most extreme cases “Fake it till you make It” ends up turning into fraud. There is a balance to be struck here. How do you balance promoting & selling with actually delivering? Worst thing you can do is overhype and raise expectations to a level you can’t deliver on (think Matrix 2 or the awful Star Wars movie prequels). It only leads to disappointment and sometimes anger. In the consumer world, this is death for companies.
Unfortunately, we are in the time where flash truly has become trash as we see deal cycles speed up and where due diligence is sparse. This probably is not going to change for a while and it’s the game we have right now. All I can say for both investors and founders: take the time to make sure you are partnering with the right people.
And follow the basics:
Always manage expectations
Do exactly what you say you will do, and when you promise you will do it.
If you do these two things, you will be a true gangster. And more importantly, you will be far ahead of 95% of people out there!
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Nov 21st, 2021
“Patience, Persistence, and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success”--Napoleon Hill
Good explanation for why we have the snarl in our ports. Monopolies.
"But what is going unsaid is that these bottlenecks are actually excellent news for two sets of players: the highly consolidated container shipping firms, with names like Maersk, MSC, COSCO, Evergreen, and One. There are eight dominant firms, all foreign-owned, and this year they are on pace to hit $100 billion in profit.
It is also good for terminal operators, which are the firms that lease space from ports and run the warehouses, cranes, and docks. Terminal operators are often owned by ocean carriers, who then can use their vertical integrated power to exclude competitive shipping lines, or they are owned by private equity giants like Brookfield Asset Management or Oaktree Capital’s Ports America.
Both carriers and terminal operators are bottlenecks in the system, and they profit not just by charging normal prices, but also by imposing a variety of surcharges on anyone who needs their service. This is similar to how airlines will offer a price for a ticket, but then also charge baggage fees, ticket change fees, or administrative fees on top of that.
In 2009, for instance, roughly 50% of total freight charged came from surcharges. The ability to extract extra revenue, especially when demand is high, means that we’re not in an all-hands on deck situation, but a situation which is working quite well for some, and terribly for much of the industry and the public."
https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/too-big-to-sail-how-a-legal-revolution
2. I am fascinated by DeFi movement. This is a good framework for portfolio management here. I'm still newbie but this is pretty interesting and will have to be re-read a few times as I evaluate the space a bit more. (I don't invest in anything I don't understand which is very obvious that I don't get this space as old guy).
https://defieducation.substack.com/p/overview-of-portfolio-construction
3. "With the pandemic, geography suddenly no longer matters quite so much to either entrepreneurs or early-stage investors. Entrepreneurs can now easily access the investors who are the best fit for their venture in terms of specific expertise and value-add — and similarly, investors can now easily access entrepreneurs all around the world."
https://bussgang.medium.com/the-world-is-flatter-than-ever-59a61a663000
4. "Everything that we do during our awaken 16 hours a day are just habits. From when we get up in the morning to how we take our coffee, how we dress, how we get to work, how we do our work, where we go for lunch, who we hangout with et cetera. These habits then define our identity. Example: If I write every day I’m a writer.
The secret to creating positive habits is to make them obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying (read James Clear’s excellent book Atomic Habits)."
https://fewerbetterthings.substack.com/p/great-habits-are-the-new-superfoods
5. Absolutely LOVE this. Thank u Polina Marinova Pompliano.
Always bet on yourself: something I deeply regret and wish I had the guts to do much earlier in my life.
"I share these three stories just to remind you that yes, sometimes, you'll put it all on the line and it will spectacularly blow up in your face. And other times, it might result in the greatest success of your life.
Following the rules seems easier than inventing them, but the latter is certainly more rewarding. As Beyoncé once said, “I don’t like to gamble, but if there is one thing I’m willing to bet on, it’s myself.”
https://theprofile.substack.com/p/the-profile-the-men-who-carry-out
6. "A final piece of advice: only take money from individuals you get along with. As they say, it’s like a marriage.
You should lean on your investors as much as you can — not to do the work for you, but to provide differing perspectives, lived experience and strong opinions. And if you’re going to be leaning on them, they had better be people you get along with and look forward to speaking to.
While the typical investment banker-turned-VC tended to drill us on numbers (which, frankly, at the pre-seed and seed stage don’t mean all that much) and personal connections (“[insert portfolio company] got around [insert challenge] because they knew [impressive person]”), ex-operators focused more on our personalities, how we approached problems and our track record of execution."
https://sifted.eu/articles/good-bad-seed-investors/
7. "So I’m actually quite worried about how we’re going to navigate to a hybrid environment. It’s going to get a lot more complicated. This situation where everyone has got one screen, in a sense, it’s been a great leveler. Everyone’s got a screen, everyone’s on the same playing field. Going to a world where there are three people in the room, two people on a call. It’s going to be pretty difficult trying to find that right balance. And I think it’s going to take a lot of experimentation as to what are the best communication methods.
What are the sort of clear three or four rules that you’ll have to adopt to make sure that everyone is an equal participant in the conversation? And I don’t know the answer to that yet. We’ve got a bunch of ideas. One is like one screen, one person. You know, even if you’re in the room, you have your own screen.
But I’m anxious about it because I think it’s going to be in some ways more challenging than the move to 100% remote where everyone was in the same situation."
https://time.com/6117090/tim-cadogan-gofundme-ceo-interview/
8. Damn, this is so nutty & exemplifies the short term extremes of supply and demand capitalism in a bad way.
https://thehustle.co/why-thieves-love-to-steal-catalytic-converters/
9. This is frigging brilliant: investing in human potential. (and I know Marina Mogilko :) This could be the future of VC.
"And as the creator economy began to evolve into a real industry in recent years, he saw his chance to put his idea into motion. Earlier this year, his venture firm, Slow Ventures, set aside $20 million to invest in creators themselves.
Now the firm has gone and done it, joining a few individual investors in spending $1.7 million in the future of Marina Mogilko, a 31-year-old YouTube personality with multiple popular channels that touch on topics like life in Silicon Valley and learning new languages. (Slow Ventures is also investing in “serial entrepreneurs” like the Liberman siblings, at least two of which are coincidentally individual investors in Mogilko.)
The decision to invest directly in humans brings about a host of legal, ethical, and moral questions that Lessin will surely need to confront head-on. The idea that someone might sign a 30-year employment contract and that society should explicitly value a human brings up questions of indentured servitude and worse—claims which Lessin sees as entirely ill-founded. (“it's def not indentured servitude,” he recently wrote in response to someone who said the legal issues seemed “daunting.”)
He believes that he is setting society on a path where we are free to invest in our favorite humans through multiple venture rounds, providing young, brilliant people with the money to fund a path to success that doesn’t exist today."
10. A16Z has been on forefront of Crypto so I always pay attention to what they say.
"I think it’s really important with NFTs not to judge the current state of innovation by the end state of innovation. I completely understand what you’re saying. I’ve seen it myself. Yet I also see [parallels], in terms of status symbols, in the physical world, where many Americans are struggling, [while] others can afford luxury vehicles and Rolexes, so I think the digital world is no different.
And like there are luxury physical goods, there are also basic goods that people want to own in the real world that aren’t ostentatious, [and] I think you’ll start to see more of those [more basic goods] developed digitally."
https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/14/vc-katie-haun-nfts/
11. Another example of the CCP bullying and the NBA selling out to China (as well as many in US Media, politics and business). Benching Kanter. Shameful to say the least.
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4345934
12. Not sure how I feel about this. It's not an untrue story as there are literal crap ton of foreign grifters in Crypto coming to Ukraine. The foreigners profiled here are cringeworthy.
But they don't talk about the impressive growth of local grown tech ecosystem as well as many legit foreign entrepreneurs who have made the place home too. Guess it did not fit the narrative.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/14/business/crypto-ukraine.html
13. Can't wait to watch this. "Longevity Hackers"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT2KJTf3wNQ
14. The man knows what he is talking about.
"So, in a world where we are seeing more and more $100mm valued seed rounds, one has to ask the question what are the investors expecting? A $100 billion outcome? Doubtful. Less dilution, maybe. A different power-law distribution? Don’t count on it.
I think they are being delusional, comforted by the likelihood that someone will come along and pay a higher price in the next round. But it seems that person may also be delusional. Because when you model things out, the numbers just don’t add up."
https://avc.com/2021/11/seed-rounds-at-100mm-post-money/
15. "The US dollar will continue to be a fantastic medium of exchange. It is highly liquid, accepted by millions of businesses and individuals globally, and comes with the full faith and credit of the United States. But the dollar may not be the best store of value asset to denominate your portfolio at this time, especially when you consider approximately 40% of all dollars in circulation have been created in the last 18 months.
My point in writing this is not to convince you to go put all of your assets in bitcoin, but rather to get you to switch your frame of reference. The assets you allocate towards have to keep up with, and ideally outperform, bitcoin. This is no easy task. The digital store of value has grown at a compound annual growth rate of 180% for the last decade."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/your-portfolio-gains-arent-what-you
16. "The world is changing and you cannot afford to sit on the sidelines. The most valuable and asymmetric opportunities will present themselves as distortions in society’s time preferences.
Most people intuitively understand where the world is heading, but they don’t know how to align their goals with a shifting time value of money. Your ability to establish clear lifestyle goals and build a financial strategy around these goals will provide you with a competitive advantage in the digital age. With clearly defined goals and a system of time-based financial strategies, you will be well positioned to jump on opportunities.
But most importantly, this lifestyle design investment strategy will empower you to live the life you want to live.
Your peers will stick to conventional wisdom, you must use shifting time preferences as your edge."
https://dougantin.com/a-lifestyle-design-investment-strategy-for-the-digital-age/
17. This is important. Rule of Law has definitely degraded in America so there is work to be done. But thankfully we are not at the point of no return yet.
"Rule of Law is incredible important; throughout history, societies with a strong rule of law flourished.
When laws are fair, predictable, and evenly applied, businesses can plan and prosper. People can confidently invest in the future. Economies grow and everyone wins.
Where the Rule of Law is weak and corrupt, the opposite happens. Businesses can’t plan anything because the rules are constantly changing. No one wants to invest because they feel like everything is going to be taken from them.
This is the sort of thing we’re seeing now in the Land of the Free."
https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/without-rule-of-law-youre-just-a-banana-republic-33965
18. "In 2022, it will become clear to more people what many in the web3 world already know: the best way to rein in big tech companies is through competition, not regulation. Already, there are policymakers in Washington who appreciate that web3 is about much more than cryptocurrency or speculation. In the coming year more leaders, in America and in other democracies, will realise the need for sensible regulation that encourages responsible innovation while also allowing entrepreneurs to build the next generation of the internet."
https://archive.md/F1cjK#selection-781.0-783.1
19. This is a great teardown of Tiger Global who is shaking up the world of VC. Worth a read. I'm so glad I'm not a growth stage investor right now.
"Bobby Fischer once said, "Blitz chess kills your ideas." For Fischer, the rapidity of the game handicapped one's ability to generate sophisticated, novel stratagems.
It's tempting to think of today's venture market and Tiger's role in it, along the same lines. This is a spray-and-pray business now, this line of thinking goes, and Tiger's got the biggest hose.
While it's true that Tiger might not have the most conceptually adventurous of investment theses, there is plenty of thought in its approach. By adjusting its mandate, shifting its resource allocation, and mapping the ecosystem, it has developed a fund capable of executing around the world, around the clock, ceaselessly and sleeplessly.
For now, at least, it is the closest thing venture capital has to a winning machine."
https://www.readthegeneralist.com/briefing/tiger-global
20. I fully subscribe to this view.
"There are people who can see the truth in spite of prevailing wisdom and make their own investment decisions outside of the influence of others. Through the history of financial markets, some of the world's best traders have been the independent ones, the loners, and the ones willing to discount others' opinions."
"The more insane a period of groupthink, the bigger the reward for those who have the guts, the perseverance and the analytical prowess needed for going against the established narrative. Once the current bout of silliness has sucked all oxygen out of the system, there will be a bigger reckoning than ever before. The opportunity to benefit financially from it is what I view as the biggest upshoot of the strange era we currently live in."
https://www.undervalued-shares.com/weekly-dispatches/the-value-of-going-against-groupthink
21. Net net: read the Lame-stream media but learn to think for yourself.
"We have several clear examples: 1) inflation is good, 2) fantasy relationships that assume the person is the top 1%, 3) sitcoms suggesting the perfect life is seeing the same people everyday for coffee and 4) making it seem like rich people are evil though cinema.
As you can see, the same theme persists. Anything to make you believe it is “okay” to be mediocre."
"Historical Context: Back 100 years ago, if you didn’t fit into a “tribe” you could be ostracized and die. This is something that is evolutionary and fortunately we’re now entering into the *opposite* era. You can now become more powerful than an entire village by yourself through the use of technology.
Future Context: The new era: If you “fit in” you are now replaceable. Read that short sentence at least 15-20 times if you have to. The future is sovereign individuals who are not replicable. If the current “value addition” is simply being a middle man or copying others, you will go to zero suddenly similar to the life of a Turkey. It works for a while until it doesn’t.
By getting you to fit in, you are much weaker. Once again, if media convinces you to fit in, you end up floating along and living an “average” life just like everyone else. You don’t want to know what that looks like over 80 years because it ain’t pretty."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/mainstream-culture-is-designed-to
22. This is spot on. #Portfolioentrepreneur
Errors of Omission, or Errors of Commission: Some Lessons from Hundreds of Startup Investments
I always learn new things when I listen to Patrick OShaughnessy’s podcast. Carl Kawaja is an incredible investor at Capital Group which does a lot of public stock investing. Made me reflect on my own investing career now with 8 years of data. So I spent some time this last year or so, dissecting my investments and thought process behind them.
I always ask myself when doing a deal: How am I so lucky to get this deal? What did I miss?
Having Anxiety, Ambiguity and Uncertainty is a very good thing to have as an investor. It forces you to do your homework & approach every investment with more rigor in due diligence. It also forces you to re-look at your investments with fresh eyes and question your assumptions where possible.
Managing Ego: is probably the biggest challenge for an investor. Paraphrasing Chris Sacca: “When you do well, you think you are smart and awesome. When you don’t do well, you are unlucky. You need to invert that. When you are doing well, you should be thinking you are lucky. When you don’t do well, you should realize you are an idiot and make sure you hustle to learn quickly and get better at it. FAST.”
Investing in Slopes and Curves: Understand that markets are much bigger than you think. I make the mistake of misreading the market size all too often. I’m either really wrong on just how big the market is or discover over time that there is a more limited market than expected. This second point is usually tied to my next big omission.
This mistake is in not understanding the timing of a startup, which is usually tied into one trend but multiple trends coming together. That acts like a massive wave that drives a startup forward. I was right on the 3D printing market long term and the teams as well, but I was totally off on the timing. The aphorism of “Being too early is the same as being wrong.”
The biggest and hardest part is really understanding and reading the people piece. In the early stage, founders are everything. And you really don’t know how a founder will react in times of crisis or when the chips are down. You can ask lots of questions, ask them to do special personality tests & do all the reference checks you want. You will miss something and get this wrong. Thankfully I do have a very large sample set of founders. I always compare the founders I talk with against my top 10% of founders in my portfolio. If they compare well (obviously assuming I like the business and market), I usually do the investment. Every time I break this rule I usually end up with deep regret in doing the investment.
The key point is that investing is a constant battle to get better by learning about your own psychology and blind spots or else you will fall by the wayside of irrelevance. I never understand investors who are arrogant and think they know everything. (They usually don’t and the arrogance is to hide their massive insecurities). Any new investor who says or thinks investing is easy usually does not last long in this business. As they say, there are two types of investors in Silicon Valley: “Those who are humble and those who will be humbled.”
Freedom is Never Free: Earning an Exit and Building a Global Lifestyle
Freedom is this esoteric term that is used a lot in the United States, yet so many people here don’t really understand what it really is. It’s a state of mind of being free.
It’s defined by Wikipedia as:
Freedom, generally, is having the ability to act or change without constraint. Something is "free" if it can change easily and is not constrained in its present state. ... A person has the freedom to do things that will not, in theory or in practice, be prevented by other forces.
Whether this is financial freedom, freedom of speech, freedom to worship or not, Sexual freedom, freedom to travel. This has only truly been around in human history for a relatively short period of time (Ie. 200-250 or so years).
Freedom has to be fought for and earned. And it is not cheap.
Yet, I see people in the former Soviet Bloc countries (Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Czech & Slovak Republics, Romania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Croatia, Hungary, Serbia) having far more freedom than we do in the Woke West. And the people in all these former Communist countries have a far deeper appreciation of this freedom than we do. It’s because they understand what it’s like to not have it and gain it.
We in the West (USA, Canada & most of Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand) have it but most people here take it for granted. And now we seem to be on a slippery slope to losing it. Just look at the growing illiberalism & government (Fed, State/Provincial & Municipal levels) overreach in Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc. Or at cultural level, we see the extreme leftist Woke PC thugs or nutty Right wing in the US that is crowding out any rational discussion. So many of us end up self censoring ourselves for risk of “offending” someone. (Usually someone weak minded I should add: F—ing brain washed snowflakes).
On one side, the government is getting bigger and more heavy handed. Yet at the same time they are more ineffective and dumb. This is not a good combination. So along with this growing illiberal State, there is also a massive Corporate Autocracy (FAANGs & Medical/Media/Pharma monopolies anyone?) that is leading to a decline in overall quality of life and much higher costs.
The world is a big place and “Exit” is a very logical strategy. We are seeing pockets of effective well run government and overall good places to live. No surprise many of these places are small and somewhat City-State-like. Modern Entrepots like I detailed in a previous post: https://hardfork.substack.com/p/back-to-the-future-modern-entrepots.
Doug Antin has a very articulate and intelligent way to figure out which jurisdictions make sense for you. (https://dougantin.com/lifes-tradeoffs-impact-where-you-live-why). You can find a place with a good quality of life that fits you. It’s not easy but nothing worthwhile is supposed to be easy.
This is a wake up call and a call to action. If you are not thinking of an exit strategy and global approach to living and investing, you are doing yourself a disservice.
Better to be prepared than not. As per a previous write up, (here: https://hardfork.substack.com/p/self-sovereignty-versus-growing-government), create some options for you and your family. You don’t want to be like any Jews still left in Germany in 1936 when the borders closed. Or Chinese Indonesians in May 1998 when Suharto fell and the Bumi populace rioted and viciously attacked them.
As the Roman saying said: “If you want peace, prepare for war”. Or in this case, If you want peace, Prepare for exit and emigration. You never know when this might actually be necessary.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Nov 14th, 2021
“Energy and persistence conquers all things”--Benjamin Franklin
"My real dream was never about acquiring a lot of things or about financial success but about location independence, personal freedom, and creative thinking. I wanted to explore, learn, and grow to become a mindful creator rather than a mindless consumer.
I began to redesign the system, change the parameters, and write the new code for a happy and meaningful life in the 21st century. I digitized, dematerialized and became a digital nomad, which I still am today despite having relocated to a small surf town."
https://fewerbetterthings.substack.com/p/on-lifestyle-systems-design
2. This is super valuable for anyone starting off their career (or evolving their career).
"Fulfilling careers are built around infinite games. Whether it’s the pursuit of wealth or the drive to solve intractable problems, we all need goals to motivate our choices. But the satisfaction of achievement is fleeting. Ultimately, a career well-spent is one that provides meaning throughout the journey.
Unfortunately, no one tells us which games we can choose from. So, instead of making an informed choice about how to allocate our working hours, we stumble into a profession that sounds interesting.
Fortunately, no matter how you’ve spent your career thus far, you can still make better choices about how to spend your remaining hours at work.
Below are nine examples of infinite games that can guide your career choices. Each offers its own measure of success."
https://junglegym.substack.com/p/nine-infinite-games-to-play-with
3. I guess its true. Everyone's a VC these days. I'm Glad Jay-Z is one though.
4. Completely & fully agree. For information workers, work based on time and hours makes no sense.
"Whether it’s the grueling approach of Musk or the leaner approach of Iceland, hours and structure are how we typically measure work, even though the relationship of time to success makes little sense.
“Everybody is aware that time is a poor substitute, but we’ve taken up the assumption that our output is proportional to hours,” John Pencavel, a Stanford economist, told The Hustle.
The pandemic has accelerated conversations about remote work, hybrid scheduling, and 4-day workweeks (an idea that has been trotted out since at least the 1970s and never stuck). But some scholars propose a more radical alternative to time-based work: destroying the clock altogether and just getting stuff done.
That means working when we’re at our best, and around our family and health priorities, instead of from 9 to 5, or 8 to 6, or longer to try to impress our boss."
https://thehustle.co/to-reinvent-work-we-have-to-destroy-the-clock/
5. "By failing to offer realistic alternatives to Russian-centric economic and security mechanisms, the West has left another region to the tender mercies of a predatory power and helped create another zone of instability. The West must step up its diplomatic game before the region slips further beneath the waves of Russia’s illiberal hegemony."
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/russia-west-caucasus/620581/
6. These are pretty glaring red flags in men. Worth a read.
https://edlatimore.com/red-flags-in-men/
7. "First named by the writer Nilanjana Roy in a 2016 column in the Financial Times, time millionaires measure their worth not in terms of financial capital, but according to the seconds, minutes and hours they claw back from employment for leisure and recreation. “Wealth can bring comfort and security in its wake,” says Roy.
“But I wish we were taught to place as high a value on our time as we do on our bank accounts – because how you spend your hours and your days is how you spend your life.”
And the pandemic has created a new cohort of time millionaires. The UK and the US are currently in the grip of a workforce crisis."
8. "In simple terms, if you see the cost of food, rent, housing, utilities, gas etc. rising by 20-30% (please don’t tell us it is 5%, our honest number is 30% for total inflation by year-end)… it means you have to beat 20-30%.
The sentence above is significant even if it reads like a run on sentence. If inflation is 20% you must find assets that appreciate 20%+.
You are not gonna get that by buying Macy’s/Restaurant stocks. Instead you have to look to higher volatility. This means tech, biotech, some medical and of course good ole’ computer tokens."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/how-early-are-we-we-is-real-early
9. "But in many ways, standing still can be the worst option because their is a stickiness to the decision. This is because the people that make the right choices in the exponential age will develop accumulated advantage. When good decisions compound at an accelerating rate, they leave the competition behind. This means that if your peers are taking action and winning, you’re now much less likely to catch up to them because they are riding exponential growth trends.
So the moral of the story, develop your instinct and use it to take quick decisive action. Measure results and course correct quickly. Because there are consequences to indecision. And those consequences are increasing at an exponential rate."
https://dougantin.com/combat-future-shock-by-trusting-your-instinct/
10. There is alot of good stuff here.
"I’d argue the best way to think about the history of the internet is in distinct epochs. The modern internet that we experience today started at scale around 2012.
The basic philosophy is to aim for balance and focus on the macro over the micro. By the way, I think it makes sense to apply a similar philosophy to one’s mental life. So for example, my ideal morning schedule (although I usually don’t have time for this) would be 1) one hour of exercise in a meditative / flow state 2) one hour of creative activities/arts (reading a novel, writing), 3) one hour of math/science/programming.
I also try to pay close attention to my media diet. I find it’s much easier to control the inputs vs how you process those inputs. I studiously avoid corporate media and other secondary sources and get almost all my news from primary sources: one-on-one conversations, Twitter and Substack, video interviews, financial reports, technical papers, primary data sources, and so forth."
https://sotonye.substack.com/p/words-with-web-3s-king-an-interview
11. Well said!
"Time is precious. Spend it wisely. Focus is a superpower. Enjoy your family. And just do the shit that makes you happy."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/focusing-on-what-is-most-important
12. A good case for Poland as major technology center. I am bullish myself and will spend more time there in 2022.
13. I'd be down for a sequel.
https://www.insider.com/love-hard-jimmy-o-yang-sequel-idea-netflix-interview-2021-11
14. I don't know how to feel about this. Most companies fall down badly on execution side.
"I wonder if it’s the right metric long term. Unlike the forward ARR valuation method, this technique doesn’t normalize for forward growth which means there’s information lost in the figure.
Regardless, the 100x ARR multiple seems to be a benchmark in the industry today. It has some foundation in the public markets, but assumes quite a bit of forward execution."
https://tomtunguz.com/100x-arr/
15. This guy is a crypto non-believer, which is his axe. But this is a thought provoking read.
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/inflation-is-up-but-the-inflation
16. Best thing I've seen all week. The Icelandverse: parody of the recent FaceBook aka Meta announcement.
17. Good thread on how to do effective investor updates.
https://mobile.twitter.com/zealoustiger/status/1458871700938903614
18. I enjoy his musings on independent freelancer life. Great newsletter.
"Self-employment exposed a clear tradeoff between money and time. When I see a car, I see the equivalent time I could spend not working. When I hear about a home someone has bought I think about the life experiences it could buy me instead.
There are a lot of Teslas in Taiwan. When I see someone driving it on a commute from the office, all I can think about is the two or three years traveling the world that money would fund instead."
https://boundless.substack.com/p/valuing-life-and-work-options-161
19. Rise of the Super Apps.
"Over the next several years, I predict that the biggest social media companies around the world will become super apps, acting as gatekeepers to a wider array of things people do online. While they started as ways to mainly keep in contact with friends and family or be entertained, these social networks — Facebook, Snap, and TikTok, for example — will become increasingly important ways people shop, bank, and entertain themselves.
Some of these firms that started in the US, such as Snapchat, are already starting to resemble super apps, even though they’re still primarily thought of as social networks.
In a crowded landscape of apps, becoming a super app is mainly about becoming more integrated into people’s lives and maintaining a grip on their attention, whether it be an endless feed of short videos or an easy way to find clothes to buy."
https://www.theverge.com/22738395/social-media-super-app-facebook-wechat-shopping
20. Very observant. Media First Investors.
"First, as Sean O'Neill wrote, the “ability to propagate a viewpoint at scale is a new function in financial markets, and it is a big deal.” Firms like a16z are building media platforms. Individual VCs are present on Twitter, podcasts, and YouTube. Their ability to shape and amplify the narrative around portfolio companies can affect hiring, availability and cost of capital, and even the exit. Some creators with large audiences in technology and finance will be able to leverage their position to join the industry (as Packy just did).
Secondly, in the world of venture capital having an audience and network of collaborators can be core to the investment process."
https://neckar.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-media-first-investors-6b0
21. One of the most interesting and unique individuals in Silicon Valley.
"She doesn’t name drop.
She doesn’t brag about her returns.
She doesn’t even bring up her portfolio companies without prompting.
She could be forgiven if she did. Her storied track record includes angel investments in SpaceX, Uber, Thumbtack, Postmates, Opendoor, Affirm, Carta, and Niantic.
Along with her husband and long-time business partner, Scott Banister, she boasts more than 170 portfolio companies. The pair was recognized by TechCrunch as the 2016 Angels of the Year and they topped the Crunchbase Angel Leaderboard for 2010-2020.
In 2016, she joined Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund as its first female investing partner. Today, she leads Long Journey ventures alongside Lee Jacobs.
She is one of the valley’s pre-eminent angels. But she’s more comfortable talking about her hero Bill Murray (“when you seek to become enlightened, enlightened people just appear to you”) or about her fascination with Japanese sex clubs than she is about her success.
Banister lives life on her own terms. "
No Pain, No Gain: The Hard Truth of Life
Nothing worth doing is easy. This is the case in marriage, business, startups, investing, becoming good at anything.
Yet everyone is looking for the easy hack. This is why we are seeing the prevalence of “everyone gets a trophy” or the “participation award” BS. No real apparent outside enemies or threats so we turn against each other internally, hence the insane PC (Politically Correct) cultural wars going on right now.
Too much comfort and ease. Everyone wants an easy life without earning it. Hence, the proliferation of the term Growth Hack or Biohack or Lifehack.
We are watching a slow death in the western World & North Asia (Japan, Taiwan, S. Korea). We know it’s not getting any better but we don’t do anything about it. Apathy reigns. Reality is people prefer the devil they know than the one they don’t.
Yet this cannot last forever. We all know that unearned rewards are easily lost. How many lottery ticket winners end up losing all their money? How many hedge fund or day traders get beginner’s luck in their first few trades but then hit a very long losing streak? They never return to the game.
Look at the case with most of the ex-Soviet Bloc countries which saw their system end quite suddenly. Followed by almost a decade (or more) of chaos. Same in Lebanon, Argentina & Venezuela. Many of the people there are still suffering from the catastrophic collapses there.
That is why I am skeptical of the growing ESG (Environmental Social Governance) movement. I love the end goals of this. But I also understand human behavior and psychology. Add the crazy media hype around it which makes me extremely wary. People want a climate friendly social good world but are not willing to give up their creature comforts or make major changes for it. If the weird weather, regular forest fires and flooding were not enough to wake us all up. Yet nothing much has truly changed policy or consumer habit wise.
No one wants to sacrifice their lifestyle. Or at least they won’t until some really bad things happen that force them to do so. Reality is there will be a lot of pain before this change happens. Pain is a signal from your environment that something big has changed and you need to adapt. Otherwise you just keep ignoring it. It seems most of the world is still numb from all the weirdness in 2020.
So what’s the point of all this? Besides, wake the F—k up! From a personal perspective it’s important to be aware of what’s happening around you. The world has a way of testing us to see if we have the grit and determination to push through.
Watch the signals that are around you. Manage your cost structure tightly. Embrace the small discomforts to help you prepare for the big ones that are coming for us. This is why I think we are seeing the trend of cold showers, fasting & extreme sports rise among the self improvement set.
The West is in for some pain this next decade. Let’s hope we can turn this around before it’s too late.
The Perpetual Outsider: The Big Benefits of Not Belonging
Growing up, I never felt like I fit in. Born in the USA, moved to Canada when I was 1 year old. Vancouver at that time was a backwater and we were clearly the minority. Bear in mind this was before the wave of wealthy Asian immigrants from Hong Kong, Taiwan & China that came after 1986. I got used to being called Mr Kung Fu man. I also did not belong to the clique of well off Asian kids.
I was popular in high school though but I think this came from suppressing my true personality, interests, opinions and views. The best way to be liked is to just agree with everyone. I think this is the main reason I found and still find Canada so stifling for me. Probably Also why I left as soon as I graduated university. (UBC: The University of British Columbia aka University of a Billion Chinese :)
I traveled through Europe and then lived in Taiwan for a few years after where despite being of Taiwanese heritage, I was seen as a banana: yellow on outside, white on the inside. Then my move to San Francisco in 1999. Definitely an outsider without the Stanford or Berkeley or Ivy League background & relevant business background.
Frankly even now, I still don’t feel like I belong.
I recall a conversation with my friend Itai in Hong Kong where he said “you’ll never belong in Silicon Valley because you are way too international” which he meant as a compliment.
But in my older age, I’ve come to embrace it. There is a power to not “belonging”.
There is a term called “Third Culture Individual”: According to Wikipedia, people who were raised in a culture other than their parents' or the culture of their country of nationality, and also live in a different environment during a significant part of their child development years.
There is this great scene in “Billions” where Axe is trying to hire the young transgender genius Taylor Mason. He says to her “Sometimes you catch yourself watching all people like they are some other species. So you retreat behind your aquarium walls watching. But you don’t realize. That glass is not a barrier. It’s a lens. It’s an Asset. It’s what makes you good. You see things differently: That’s an edge.”
This really stuck with me. Social cues are overwhelming but most of the time the crowd is wrong or usually late. I now actively resist the pull of hype and crowds. As a VC I saw how many investors, myself included, invested in some bad deals (or crowded trades as they call it on Wall Street) due to the need to follow a trend and not get left out.
If I look back, this resistance has served me well in my career and in my investments. Some of my best career moves were completely unconventional or questioned. Ie. Joining a startup in 1999, running Sales Operations for International in 2003, joining the Emerging Markets group in 2007. Also Investing in startups overseas, especially in Europe and Africa before it was cool to do so, as it seems to be now. Most of my best performing investments were derided or misunderstood. When I suppressed this resistance or gut feeling, it came back to haunt me.
So my point is that in our now vanilla monoculture world, embracing your own difference and outsider-ness may be what actually helps you win.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Nov 7th, 2021
“The best way out is always through.”--Robert Frost
1. This is a very good thread detailing the energy crisis in China.
https://mobile.twitter.com/SahilBloom/status/1444702393892024321
2. "At the core, the tenets of successful open source practices hold true for any strategy you undertake: solving a hard problem that people are aware of; providing a solution that people agree is helpful; establishing your company as the problem-solver; making usage and adoption of your product easy; and, of course, crafting a successful go-to-market strategy that is scalable.
However, bear in mind that while open source is a popular, logical, and often successful strategy for many reasons, adapting it to the cloud-only era comes with an extra set of challenges.
Startups using open source strategies during the cloud transition era provided critical products and services (which allowed them to compete with the Big 3), but the same tactics may not necessarily have the same impact on in the cloud-only era."
https://greylock.com/greymatter/open-source-vs-cloud-castles/
3. The Americans (Big VC funds that is) are coming! (to Europe). Well, they actually have been for the last 5 years but more so now. This is great for the tech scene there.
4. I like this manifesto. Fight the FOMO and play your own game (whether you are founder or VC). We need more of this in VC.
https://medium.com/angularventures/back-to-basics-a-venture-manifesto-258f2562cf57
5. Sounds about right.
"There’s a common misconception among creators and creator platforms that getting a fan to pay for content is basically just a stronger version of hitting the “follow” button. But following a person on Twitter or YouTube and paying for the privilege are two very different things that require very different marketing and acquisition mechanisms. More attention must be paid to the sales funnel — and platforms need to build out the features for creators to effectively make the sell."
https://future.a16z.com/creator-platforms-neglect-the-sell/
6. More on the Multiverse.
https://mobile.twitter.com/agarwal__gaurav/status/1444275198832775180
7. The man knows the SaaS space so pay attention.
"I’m not opposed to Playing at the Bottom of the Market. Just two learnings from my experience. First, don’t confuse initial traction at the bottom with disruption. Know what you are, at least at a given point in time. And if you’re Playing at the Bottom — be scrappy. Don’t overfund yourself. Because there’s gold there too, just most likely rather less of it."
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dont-confuse-room-bottom-disruption-jason-m-lemkin/
8. "For more than twenty years, Brown, a Ph.D. in social work, has combined her research results—about shame, vulnerability, and other pillars of emotional life—with stories that illustrate them, delivered with a potent blend of empathy and Texan bravado (“Curiosity is a shit-starter”). Her work comes in many forms: five Times No. 1 best-selling books, two Spotify podcasts, a Netflix special. At the University of Houston, she’s a research professor of social work; at McCombs, a visiting professor of management.
She’s also a business in her own right, with programs that train people and organizations to contend with vulnerability and courage. In all realms, her conclusions tend to surprise, then resonate, like a Zen koan: “When perfectionism is driving us, shame is always riding shotgun.”
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/01/brene-browns-empire-of-emotion
9. So fascinating. The Pumpkin business.
"Americans are expected to spend a record $10B+ on Halloween items in 2021, up from $8B last year — and pumpkins are a big player: Among the 65% of Americans celebrating Halloween this year, 44% (~94m people) plan to carve one.
While pumpkins can readily be found at most grocery stores, many folks turn to a patch to procure their autumnal canvas.
What are the economics of these orange orbs? And how do pumpkin patches — a largely seasonal enterprise — make money year-round?
To find out, we talked to pumpkin farmers, experts, and patch owners around the country."
https://thehustle.co/the-economics-of-pumpkin-patches/
10. "Our shitposting Gods of Silicon Valley have only recently begun to sense they can tell their own stories, and it doesn’t really matter what a professionally-mad Brooklyn-based vegan thinks about rockets or bitcoin or virtual reality. That’s amazing — really, I love this evolution for us.
But on the other side of the incredible, growing influence of sovereign influencers is duty. A concentration of influence and resources is likewise a concentration of power. Ryan Petersen tapped into this power when he addressed the port crisis. Someone with the influence of Elon Musk is likely capable of much more."
https://www.piratewires.com/p/the-shitposting-gods-of-silicon-valley
11. Many people are going to learn this at great cost to themselves.
"If you don’t take control of your destiny, other people will do it for you, and they won’t have your best interests at heart. That’s not a risk I’m willing to take."
https://nomadcapitalist.com/finance/offshore/how-to-avoid-risk/
12. "What I mean is that most successful creators live off many small income streams that they bootstrap together. By creating many small wins, they form a robust lifestyle business. It’s usually not one major project that sustains them, but many small individual income streams that add up to a stable income. Each creator that builds a business this way is in a sense like the tree I came across this morning.
Perhaps I saw this metaphor because it’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. Ie; that the majority of creators would be better off focusing on putting together multiple small wins rather than chasing one big win. Because there is often more resilience to a multi-income business model."
https://dougantin.com/sustainable-creator-business-models/
13. "The World is Rapidly Changing: We’re not here to tell you that you can’t catch up. In fact we think you’re still quite early if you’re smart enough to “skate to where the puck is going to be” (Wayne Gretzky - NHL player quote). In general, if you can figure out where the mega trends are and where the big picture is heading you’re going to be fine in life.
What is Changing? Well last year the fiat system decided to print Trillions of US Tokens. Trillions. This means that prices of all assets/goods are going up in price. While most said it was “not going to happen” this was delayed because the economy was shut all of 2020. In 2021? You’re simply lying to yourself if you don’t see it in food/gas/rent costs."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/some-general-cartoon-life-advice
14. Interesting.
"For the avoidance of doubt, Argentina remains a country with above-average risk. Politics, macro-economics and the state of the construction industry are all exposed to the particular kind of chaos that the country has become infamous for.
That said, housing and infrastructure remain among any country's basic needs, and Loma Negra is the dominant provider of the key material needed for any construction."
15. Always a good show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIK319OVAyM
16. This is illuminating.
"This story does have a moral, and it's that politics and war touch everyone, even the extremely wealthy and powerful. Never assume that you can be personally insulated from these forces."
https://mobile.twitter.com/Ardescamus/status/1456338890252562443
17. "His 2010 book, “The Vertical Farm,” has also proven a foundational text for many. Last year, he marked the book’s 10th anniversary with a new edition that offers an afterword reflecting on much of what has transpired in the intervening decade. “In 2010, when this book was first published, there were no vertical farms,” Despommier writes in a new chapter. “As of this writing, there are so many vertical farms, I don’t know exactly how many exist.”
https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/04/a-chat-with-the-author-of-the-vertical-farm/
18. This is incredibly innovative and the future of VC.
"I want to share two different examples of how we at Slow Ventures have answered this question, which I think can help serve as a template for the future—one investment in a family of entrepreneurs, and another in an individual creator. We’re aiming to do a lot more deals along the lines of these two models because we truly believe that in the long term, allowing people to do equity-based financing is critical to the future health of our society.
Why? Because young people have all the equity value in the form of their future sweat and ingenuity, but without the ability to unlock it, we’re stuck in a world where old people rule the roost. When individuals can only access debt, old people with large balance sheets control everything. But when we can all properly leverage our personal equity, the balance of power shifts back toward young and productive people who have decades of potential ahead of them.
Or put another way: Allowing individuals to leverage their personal equity early in their careers is key to getting us out from under the thumb of the baby boomers."
19. Idris Elba, one of coolest dudes around.
"It is hard to resist the notion that Elba’s recent brush with mortality might inspire a reframing of his life principles. He’s not so sure. “I’ve lived a proper full life,” he says. “That’s always been my mantra: ‘If I was to go tomorrow, at least I had a full life.’ And if I had succumbed to Covid, I could go with hand on heart saying, ‘Look, I had a good innings.’ But I don’t have the time to mess around. My ambition is bigger than my head, but I still think I’ve got stuff to offer the world. A contribution,” he mumbles, almost to himself as much as to me. “Still got a contribution.”
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a37873959/idris-elba-interview-2021/
20. "The simple, empirical truth is this: Dwayne Johnson is the most successful movie star in the world, and has been for some time. For each of the last five years, he was, according to Forbes’s annual list, either the highest or second-highest paid actor. (In that period, he is estimated to have earned a total of $430.4 million.)
“It sits me down,” says Johnson, mulling this circumstance. “It sits me down. That was never the goal. The goal was just: I didn’t want to be broke. And I didn’t want my family to be broke anymore.” In person—for our first meeting we’re sitting in a Los Angeles hotel room, and he’s idly nursing a different glass of tequila—his affect is far more reflective and soft-spoken than it usually is in the movies that have made him all this money. “And it’s a blessing, man. Are you kidding me? It’s a blessing. It’s a blessing. It’s a blessing.
Johnson’s movie career has been only one aspect of what he does. Aside from various TV projects, his many other pursuits include his Project Rock Collection sportswear brand with Under Armour; his own sports drink, Zoa; co-owning the XFL football league; as well as the aforementioned tequila, Teremana. Johnson summarizes it like this: “I consider myself an industrialist and an entrepreneur and a businessman as well. And I’m in the relationship business. I’m in the customer service business. I’m in the consumer product business. And I’m certainly in the movie business.”
Johnson’s excitement when he talks about these other parts of his life seems entirely unforced. “I love building,” he says. “And I love creating products and brands that have a certain quality to them to deliver to people. But I think the stripped-away answer here is: I love it. I love what I do. Honestly, I love building from scratch with these two old dinosaur hands.”
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/10/dwayne-johnson-speaks-his-truth
21. "What does this have to do with the scale of an entrepreneur’s success? Markets. Markets drive everything. No matter how talented the entrepreneur and team, without a great market, the level of success will be stunted. There’s an old saying in the startup world from Andy Rachleff, founder of Benchmark Capital, “When a great team meets a lousy market, markets win.” Ideally, an entrepreneur will pick a great market initially, or pivot into a great one fairly quickly, but without that, the chance of major success drops dramatically."
https://davidcummings.org/2021/11/06/scale-of-success-markets-markets-markets/
22. "In fact, I think there are multiple signs that Xi has actually weakened the capabilities of the Chinese juggernaut. So far, China’s power and general effectiveness are so great that these signs seem to have gone largely unnoticed, but I think they’re there. The three big ones are: Slowing growth, an international backlash against China, and missteps related to the Covid pandemic.
It’s time to consider the possibility that for all his self-aggrandizement, Xi Jinping is just not that competent of a leader."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/what-if-xi-jinping-just-isnt-that
23. Lessons from Sequoia Capital.
https://mobile.twitter.com/sajithpai/status/1456968651651764231
24. One of my favorite cities in the world: Tokyo. Good article on what makes the place so special as a metropolis.
Local Maximum Versus Global Maximum: Lessons for non-US Startups
No question on whether I am a fan of international founders, international markets and international startups. Some of my best investments are with foreign founders. My entire career has been spent globally and I continue to travel all around the world trying to help and find international startups.
Yet there are some major challenges that these local startups face. These are some general observations:
They are too focused on local maximum and think that starting in the local market is the right bridge to get to a bigger market. Usually this is not the case. The lessons they learn are not just not applicable elsewhere. And if the market is small (ie. sub 10M people, you are capped out and can’t get critical mass).
They don’t do their homework to learn about equivalent business models in other markets. This is important to learn lessons from other companies, whether successful or not. There is no excuse for this as there is a wonderful tool called Google.
Because of this, many founders face the “Hometown hero” or “High School Hero” syndrome. They are legitimately one of the top founders in their market. But they have no idea what the global standard and level is. Thus like the High school hero, they end up missing the mark of what is required at the top competitive level. It’s like the local high school basketball team competing against an NBA league team.
As a VC investor, we want to invest in a business and founder that can compete globally. And in a big competitive market like the United States. The best founders regardless of the country they are from, understand the risks and are willing to do the hard work. But it’s challenging to do this when you have no idea what the actual competitive level is.
Out of my 400+ portfolio, a third of them are from outside of the USA. The reality is only a third of them from my sample set were able to really rise to truly compete. Most end up being demoralized by the competition, demoralized by how really hard it is and of how behind they are compared to the best of the best. Whatever my criticisms of Silicon Valley are, there are thousands of amazingly experienced and strong founders out to conquer (metaphorically speaking of course).
As Naval says, "If you want to be successful, surround yourself with people who are more successful than you are, but if you want to be happy, surround yourself with people who are less successful than you are."
The best founders find the competition invigorating and really step up. They do the hard work, they build a community and network of fellow awesome founders and this raises their game. And I can point to innumerable international examples from my portfolio like Shippo, RapidApi, ManyChat, Printify, Aircall, Bigfinite, Monkeylearn, Cube.js among others that have surpassed anyone’s expectations. So for all non-US Founders wanting to come and build a big global business from Silicon Valley or the other centers of tech in the United States. If you are willing to do the work, you absolutely, no question are capable of doing it! Just depends on how much you want it.
WAGMI & GMI over NGMI: Building the World You Want to Live In
You see these terms frequently on Twitter or various social media. NGMI=Not Gonna Make It. GMI=Gonna Make It. WAGMI=We’re All Gonna Make It. Stock and Crypto traders use these terms to refer to people who are doing good trades or get it (GMI) and those who will not (NGMI).
Technology shifts, Climate change, ongoing raging pandemic, money printing, Political instability & growing illiberalism everywhere. Just look at Australia of all places as a recent scary case. And what is happening everywhere: Growing gap between the wealthy and everyone else.
I am VERY optimistic for humanity in the long run. But boy is it gonna be ugly over the next 7-8 years. I know some people will say I’m an alarmist but my counter is “Civilization” is a precarious thing: we are always 9 meals away from riots in the street. The social contract is frayed around the world and the result is the growing rage in the populace. It’s going to be a while before a new social contract comes together.
Yet looking at the situation coldly, as per my favorite Game of Thrones quote: “Chaos is a ladder!” Opportunities to grow and thrive also come out from these times. Just look at the crazy huge fortunes that came out of the breakup of the Soviet Union. Although I should note that this came with extreme pain and suffering for most people. No one wants this but it’s the other side of the coin we need to get through.
So being pragmatic here. There are some things you need to do to prepare & thrive:
Take care of your mental and physical health. This is job one.
Learn how World works & where it’s going (read “The Sovereign Individual”, any book by Péter Zeihan, “The Creature of Jekyll Island”by Griffin, “The Ascent of Money” & “The Square and Tower” by Ferguson, “Collusion” by Prins, “The Psychology of Money” by Housel, “End of Jobs” by Pearson, “The Price of Tomorrow” by Booth, “The Fourth Economy” by Davison, “The Rise of America” by Katusa, “Debt” by Graeber, “Emergency” by Strauss. Also lots of people to follow on Twitter & newsletters like Bowtied Bull, Balaji Srinivasan, Radigan Carter)
Be a Prepper: Have a few months of food, water in storage. Prudent if you are in an earthquake zone like me. Also have weapons to protect yourself and your family. (Make sure you train and know how to use them as per point 7).
Look at alternative countries that are stable, well run and you will enjoy spending time in. For me it’s Taiwan, Portugal, Japan, Georgia, Ukraine, Mexico.
Be prepared to move
Have Resources ie. good finances, whether Crypto, cash, Gold and bullets.
Build a portfolio of useful skills: Biz Skills (copywriting, investing, writing) & Self Defense (boxing, Muay Thai, wrestling, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Krav Maga) + Learn how to shoot pistols and rifles ie. Tactical Shooting.
You need to GMI first. Ie. put your mask on yourself first.
As they say, charity starts at home. Make sure you can take care of yourself so you can take care of others. If you don’t fix yourself, it’s like building a skyscraper on a bad foundation. Or put another way, you can’t help a drowning person if you can’t swim yourself.
Once you GMI, your important next steps are:
—Building a community of like minded people. Create your scene of people whom you can count on and who can count on you
—Focus on bringing up as many people with you. This is why I try to do as much startup investing, mentoring, and public speaking at many conferences. Also a big reason why I do so much writing online (besides the therapeutic aspects of it).
As the African proverb goes, “He who travels fastest, travels alone. He who travels furthest, travels together.” WAGMI.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Oct 31st, 2021
“Scars are not signs of weakness, they are signs of survival and endurance.”
― Rodney A. Winters
Happy Halloween Everyone! :)
"People who left their city apartments for houses in the suburbs aren’t just living in the suburbs, they’re working there now, too. In turn, the people and services these workers may have relied on in city centers are moving to the suburbs as well. All of this will affect which businesses thrive and what real estate develops in the suburbs. It could also change traffic patterns, exacerbate urban sprawl, and heighten inequality.
New suburban businesses and improved real estate trends could lead to revitalized communities, less travel, and better quality of living for some. But not everyone will benefit. Sprawl is bad for the environment and can make life worse for the poorest Americans."
https://www.vox.com/recode/22714777/remote-work-from-home-city-suburbs-housing-traffic
2. Riches in niches it seems.
"Rothfield isn’t a doctor, a c-suite exec, or a member of some prototypically busy professional class.
She’s one of a growing number of entrepreneurs offering marketing, brand strategy, and financial consulting services to OnlyFans models.
In the past 18 months, OnlyFans, the 5-year-old platform where (mostly) sex workers get paid for posting photos and videos, has grown to 150m+ registered users and 1.5m+ creators.
For these creators, OnlyFans has been a boon: The platform, which takes a 20% cut of the subscription payments workers receive, now collectively pays out ~$5B to models per year.
But competition is cutthroat — and sex workers are increasingly turning to marketers like Rothfield to stand out and grow their followings."
https://thehustle.co/the-burgeoning-business-of-onlyfans-consulting/
3. The future of war? Interesting short story straight out of Ready Player One.
https://terrorhousemag.com/generation-z-warfare/
4. 110% agree here. Future is international.
"I believe we are at the beginning of a significant reorganization in entrepreneurship and its backers. While the last decade has seen giants emerge from many less mature economies — think Kaspi in Kazakhstan, Nubank in Brazil, or GoTo in Indonesia — capital remains highly concentrated in North America.
Of last year’s $260 billion in venture capital allocated, more than 51% went to American and Canadian startups, according to data compiled by Statista. That was followed by 34% into Asian businesses, 13% into European companies, and 2% into a group classified as “Other.”
What is “other?”
“Other” is Africa, with its 1.2 billion people, 54 countries, and more than 200 languages.
“Other” is Latin America, a region that includes major economies like Mexico and Brazil.
“Other” is Oceania, home to one of the world’s most valuable private companies in Canva.
“Other” is the Middle East, which has produced unicorns like Careem and Souq.
“Other” is, at the very least, 2.2 billion people and, depending on how this data was parsed, perhaps many more.
What looks like a rounding error from an investment perspective now is the future."
https://www.readthegeneralist.com/briefing/frontier-giants
5. This makes sense to me. From seed to public and a forever fund.
https://mobile.twitter.com/sequoia/status/1452999422988718084
6. Worth a watch here. Love these guys: The Poor Man's All In Podcast"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y171x-WHOYk
7. This is why we should be bullish on tech!
https://twitter.com/zachcoelius/status/1452676891379265536
8. "Seed-stage funding to startups has exploded in the past decade and become an asset class of its own. If that wasn’t obvious already, consider that in just the past few months, three of Silicon Valley’s largest and best-known venture firms—Andreessen Horowitz, Greylockand Khosla Ventures—all announced large new dedicated seed funds."
https://news.crunchbase.com/news/seed-funding-startups-top-vc-firms-a16z-nea-khosla/
9. It’s a crazy time in VC land.
"Regardless of their level of optimism about the future of technology, most people I spoke with expressed concern for the amount of funding some startups have received. Because of the economics of the venture model, that funding can place intense pressure on them to grow beyond what might be reasonable. One former venture capitalist told me about a “pre-revenue startup” raising money at a $500 million valuation. “If they don't absolutely crush it over the next 12 months, the company's dead,” the venture capitalist added.
“There’s a massive, massive bubble,” said Lindzon. “We know that there's something bad that's gonna happen. But it's different than the last time, so we don't know when."
https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgmxeb/the-great-competition-to-give-away-money-venture-capital
10. "Once again, the covid-19 backdrop has made for a unique holiday season, make no mistake. One can no longer make the argument that eCommerce is not an essential service. The numbers being put up month after month, even in pullbacks as pockets around the world open and close again, are undeniable."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/e-comm-update-part-1-of-2-and-crypto
11. Many founders are going to learn this lesson the hard way when times get tough. (Times eventually do get tough in all startups lives despite what you read online).
"In an era of transactional investing, relationships are both scarce and proprietary. They are “different.” As an investor, relationships provide access to entrepreneurs who are looking for a combination of support, insight, brainstorming and assistance in building teams that have real chemistry. Those relationships are critical for pitching A+ executives to join these nascent startups as well.
Today, many entrepreneurs are taking easy capital without developing relationships, which I believe may come back to bite them when times get tough. They may have already felt it when they can’t find recruiting help or a fund to pitch in when the model is not exactly right. Relationships are also proprietary. If you invest time, energy, your network and wisdom with the right people, they will want to keep working with you even when a faster and better transaction comes along.
As we saw back in the early 2000s, founders should also beware who they get into business with because, at some point, markets turn. When that happens, you really want someone in your corner who treats the investment as a relationship, and not as a transaction."
https://medium.com/aleph-vc/invest-in-relationships-not-transactions-f4d6cf9f363b
12. Loved the anime, can't wait to see the live action version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIfiju-4_V4
13. "When MasterClass launched, in 2015, it offered three courses: Dustin Hoffman on acting, James Patterson on writing, and Serena Williams on tennis. Today, there are a hundred and thirty, in categories from business to wellness. During the pandemic lockdown, demand was up as much as tenfold from the previous year; last fall, when the site had a back-to-school promotion, selling an annual subscription for a dollar instead of a hundred and eighty dollars, two hundred thousand college students signed up in a day.
MasterClass will double in size this year, to six hundred employees, as it launches in the U.K., France, Germany, and Spain. It’s a Silicon Valley investor’s dream, a rolling juggernaut of flywheels and network effects dedicated to helping you, as the instructor Garry Kasparov puts it, “upgrade your software.”
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/10/25/can-masterclass-teach-you-everything
14. "Betting On Yourself
At this point you should recognize that no one is going to save you. If we couldn’t figure out how to make a paper vaccine card fit in a standard wallet card slot, we’re unlikely going to solve rampant inflation, poor incentives and wealth inequality any time soon.
Instead, the highest ROI is going to be the same *bet on yourself*. Right now there are too many opportunities to count in tech from crypto to e-commerce to becoming an expert in a niche field.
Creating good habits now will create massive wealth over the next 10 years. Without betting on yourself you’ll create bad habits (chasing the next shiny object 100x hail mary vs. creating something sustainable that you can control)."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/unrealized-gain-taxes-inflation-and
15. This is cool. Good for globetrotters & world travelers.
https://mobile.twitter.com/sriramk/status/1453840080745865216
16. This is why Sequoia Capital is top dog for so long in Silicon Valley. Innovating on the VC model.
https://www.protocol.com/newsletters/pipeline/sequoia-evergreen
17. The best business show & discussion right now. Bar none.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctLbqX3R0kI
18. Lots of good thinking on the supply chain issues by Flexport CEO.
"The bottleneck right now is not the cranes: It’s yard space at the container terminals and it’s empty chassis to clear those containers out.
In operations when a bottleneck appears somewhere that you didn’t design for it to appear, you must OVERWHELM THE BOTTLENECK!
We must OVERWHELM THE BOTTLENECK and get these ports working again. I can’t stress enough how bad it is for the world economy if the ports don’t work. Every company selling physical goods bought or sold internationally will fail."
https://bigthink.com/the-present/supply-chain-backlog-clogging-ports/
19. This is pretty awesome if you ask me.
"The 19-year-old has made a name for herself as founder and CEO of Special Name, a website designed to provide Chinese parents with culturally appropriate English names for their babies.
Jessup was inspired to start the business in 2015, when she was just 15. Six months later, she had made more than $60,000 naming 200,000 babies. Since then, she has named a total of 677,900 (and counting) and racked up estimated revenues of over $400,000."
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/21/beau-jessup-teen-pays-college-fees-by-naming-chinese-babies.html
20. "For decades, we’ve justified the development of fragile and fragmented global supply chains in the name of economic growth and financial efficiency. This may have provided short-term benefits, but it has created our current supply chain crisis."
21. Lots of people like Serbia. So do I. (I will note I am concerned with Russian FSB & Chinese CCP infiltration there but I really like Belgrade alot). I am planning on spending more time there in 2022.
"Taxes are low, personal safety is very high, life is cheap, it's fun, English is widely spoken, and the people are proud and outgoing. Also, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is booming.
I see Serbia as a great option for:
- People who want to live in Europe but don't want to deal with EU complexity with regards to immigration, but also want to live in a big city as opposed to living in tranquil Montenegro.
- Business people who are attracted by Serbia's booming Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) levels due to its unique position between East & West, and its ability to attract Russian, Chinese, Arab, and Western investment.
- Westerners escaping wokeness and who want to live in a more traditional environment.
- Young people who want to live in a very fun city - Belgrade."
https://mailchi.mp/1cfbbfca58c2/between-east-and-west-how-to-obtain-residency-in-serbia?e=123a1c25c4
22. VERY interesting observation of the crazy world we are in.
"So when you look at the dog coins, notably DOGE and SHIB, it sort of makes sense. They are driven as much by collective belief in a meme as the U.S. dollar is driven by collective belief in the full faith and credit of the U.S. government.
Memes are great. They get people invested. They allow for a certain element of growth and inflow because they are:
-Funny
-Trade FOMO fundamentals
-Create investable narratives
-Are real, because memefication manifests an element of reality
So despite all the memecoin run ups, the stock market going absolutely bonkers, public accounting being a bit ~loose~, and the Metaverse likely being our future - we have to remember that even though a lot of it doesn’t *feel* real, it is.
SHIB is real. It’s a meme. The U.S. Dollar is real. It’s a meme of the collective belief in the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. Accounting is a meme. It makes companies go up even when they shouldn’t.
Everything is a meme! (except the supply chain)"
https://kyla.substack.com/p/why-money-isnt-real
23. This is a very important report and discussion on the "Independent Creator" economy. So excited for this future although there is much work to do.
https://newcreatormanifesto.com
24. This is a good discussion on geopolitics and economics: how it intersects with the importance of water.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s-22o1-qz8
25. This is a good take on the FB pivot to Meta.
"While many people made fun of Zuckerberg, I saw some shrewd moves. Lots of people have mocked the metaverse, the universe of virtual worlds that are all interconnected. But I’ve been thinking about it ever since reading novels such as Snow Crash and Ready Player One. It has been decades in the making, and while it’s here in some small forms like Second Life and Grand Theft Auto Online, and Roblox, it isn’t really here yet. As futurist Matthew Ball said, the metaverse is something that you should feel you’re inside of.
And as Zuckerberg said, you should feel a sense of presence, or that feeling you have been transported somewhere else.
If I were to bring up my favorite adage again — follow the money — I would conclude that so much money is going into the metaverse that it is going to happen. You don’t orchestrate something so huge, something on the scale of the Manhattan Project, and then come out of it on the other side without an atomic bomb.
The metaverse will happen because capital is betting that it will happen, and I’ll grant that Zuckerberg has some wisdom in seeing this."
https://venturebeat.com/2021/10/29/the-deanbeat-facebooks-ambitions-to-be-the-metaverse/
26. I will admit it, I do love Mexico City.
https://enroute.aircanada.com/en/travel-inspiration/mexico-travel-guide/
27. Jim Roger's first book "Adventure Capitalist" inspired me for embarking on my globally focused business career. Such a fun interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwaVCZOU4EQ
28. I’ll be speaking about the “Path to Self Sovereignty” at the Freedom Business Summit next week (November 6-7th). Come check it out.
GLOBAL SUMMIT FOR THOSE LOOKING FOR WAYS TO TAKE THEIR FREEDOM BACK, MITIGATE GEOPOLITICAL RISKS, PROTECT THEIR WEALTH AND BUILD A LOCATION INDEPENDENT LIFESTYLE.
Freedom Business Summit - is not just a regular summit, it is a philosophy of location independent lifestyle that is organized in official partnership with e-Residency Estonia and citizenship agency Migronis. Our key partners are Insured Nomads and Binance.
Dates: 6-7 November 2021
Format: Worldwide | Online
2 Days
30+ Speakers
2000+ Participants
28+ Countries
This year we decided to bring together 2000+ the world’s best entrepreneurs to learn best strategies from experts about - self sovereignty, prepper mentality, jurisdictional arbitrage, bitcoin through macro lenses, e-residency.
https://freedomsummit.net/?utm_source=speaker&utm_medium=marvin_liao
Keep it Simple Stupid: Focussing on the Basics
I obviously speak to many startup founders on a regular basis. One of the most common occurrences is we talk about scaling their business. Nothing wrong with this but it is weird to discuss this when they don’t even know who their ideal customers are or even have a working product.
It reminds me of when I went to take shooting classes with ex-Special forces folks. I incorrectly expected to be doing the whiz bang John Wick style of shooting. What we ended up practicing was a lot of basic shooting drills. Single shot, Double taps, Box Drills: 2 Double taps & 2 head shots. Over and over and over again. Thousands of times, slowly. “Slow is Smooth, Smooth is fast.” It’s about doing these right and well, to be seared into muscle memory. This is the foundation for the more complicated and advanced things.
I argue for early stage startups, it’s about doing boring basics really well. It’s not about Hacks. But founders, like most smart people in the world, tend to put Cart Before Horse. Because the basics are not sexy. It’s also very easy to get Shiny Object Syndrome in the startup world, hearing about what some other in the present spotlight founder is talking about. Or worse, some Venture Capitalist’s random idea of the moment. Also a problem with very smart people, you want to make things complicated because that is what you think you are supposed to do. But the acme of business & communications is about simplifying.
I’ve said it before in a previous post, you earn the right to grow your startup (https://hardfork.substack.com/p/you-earn-the-right-to-grow-commitment).
This requires incredible focus and discipline. And I should add again, it’s a GRIND. It can get boring. Customer development to get to the critical Product-Market-Fit is hard. You literally have to do hundreds of customer interviews, you will spend hours going through quantitative data and user funnels. All this is the foundation for growing and getting to Product Market Fit.
Once you figure the basics like customer segmentation, the AARRR (Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue & Referral) user funnel, Core atomic units of valuel & Unit Economics, A working product with good UX. Then you might be ready to grow.
As the excellent & underrated startup book title states: “Nail It, Then Scale It.”
To do this, it is better to focus on Input goals prior to PMF not Output Goals. Input goals are things like the number of sales calls, customer interviews or product pushes. An output goal is Revenue or user numbers (ie. 100,000 users or $20k MRR). In early stage startups, in most cases, you are better off with input goals. You then develop the Output goal over time with more data, feedback and information. You will get to a point where you will have both input and output goals. This is where you discover what the key drivers are of your business. So for example, you may discover that for every 100 sales calls you make, you close 1 customer. Most scale up or big companies use Output goals because in theory, the business model, sales process & product is fully baked and working already.
Of course, you should have a vision of where you are going and what you want to build. But BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) don’t make sense as they are random and you literally do not know anything. You don’t know who your customers are or could be, you have no product. All you have is a process to get the data & information. So the input goals help you fall in love with the process which should get you closer to realizing your vision. The right goals and process are the fundamentals.
As Michael Jordan said “The minute you get away from fundamentals – whether its proper technique, work ethic or mental preparation – the bottom can fall out of your game, your schoolwork, your job, whatever you’re doing.” This is also very relevant for startups.
The Biggest Little Farm: Lessons for Life from Nature
The documentary tracks the 8 year journey of the Chesters, a couple from the city who decide to create an ethical sustainable farm named Apricot Lane using only traditional methods. Multiple crops of fruits and vegetables, using the natural fertilizer of their free range animals (chickens, ducks, pigs, cows). Circular farming at its best. All this with the understanding that the process would lead to better tasting and healthier food and being more in sync with nature.
Contrast this to corporate factory farms that dominate farming these days: one crop monoculture driven by chemical fertilizer and drugs for the imprisoned animals. No wonder food in America requires preservatives and tastes so bad, also unhealthy to boot.
The added benefit of a natural grown farm was the diversity of plant life. One of the biggest issues with present day farms is that pestilences come in and ravage the crops. Being a single crop you could end up being wiped out. But for more multi crop farms like Apricot Lane which had several dozen this risk is lessened. Diversity really matters.
The additional benefit of diverse plant life showed up when the region was hit by rain storms. All the other farms had their rich growing topsoil swept away to the ocean, killing productivity of the farm. This was not an issue for Apricot Lane, whose various plant life was able to absorb the water, clean it and send it to the important aquifer under the land.
The Chester family face constant challenges of climate, weather, pests, wild predators and escalating costs. It seemed like it was always two steps forward, one step back. But they are relentless, tackling each and every challenge stoically.
Illustrates the challenging life of farming. Lots to learn from farmers like grit, patience, hard working and resilience. Following dreams is hard but you learn so much along the way.
As per quote from John Chester:
“Here's the thing: We live in a state of fear right now; there's so much to be afraid of. And the natural response in the midst of fear is to turn away. The thing I've found is that anything we're facing on the farm, the antidote to it is curiosity.”
Whenever some problem came up, they learned not to brute force it. Farmers learn very quickly not to force nature. There is no way to win. Instead they learned to step back.
John Chester, continues “Observation followed by Creativity is becoming our greatest ally.” He basically followed the highly effective military methodology of the OODA Loop. Observe, Orient, Decide and Act.
In our world today, we are in reaction mode all the time. Many of us have a bias to action in a fast changing world like ours. But in some situations, it’s better to stop first to better understand the situation. In many cases, you probably don’t need to do anything as the situation usually sorts itself out. In others, thoughtful action is important. Snap judgements and actions tend to make your problems worse. In most cases, it’s important that you take the time. We can all learn to be a bit more patient and sometimes let nature take its course. We should always trust in our ability to handle things in the rare situation that gets out of control.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Oct 24th, 2021
“What cannot be altered must be borne, not blamed.”― Thomas Fuller
We forget how critical energy is to our society and our economy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB1eGDpEeQY
2. This is #futureofwork. Worth a read for the future Solopreneur.
"The indie ecosystem makes people uncomfortable because of how different it is from what we have come to see as work - labor in exchange for a steady salary. Because income from doing this kind of work is often unpredictable and lumpy, attempts to think about it in the frame of traditional work are unhelpful. For example, I have been writing online for four or five years. I’ve made no more than $5,000 from writing. However, I realized a couple of years ago that since I like writing, if I could commit to it for several more years, I would likely discover huge potential from making money from my writing but likely in ways I couldn’t predict.
This is what makes thinking about investing in the broader ecosystem from a political, large business, or government standpoint impossible. They rely on stable systems that can be predictable and grow in a linear fashion. The investor world, especially the VC world, is likely best suited to think about this. However the downside there is that sometimes they forget to model the non-economic possibilities that people value in their lives."
https://boundless.substack.com/p/metcalfe-and-indie-possibilities
3. Great perspective here on the wacky VC market right now.
"Here’s the key insight I’ve come to: Later-stage venture capital which was previously all about fundamentals and deep analysis, has morphed into being largely about momentum (will the next round happen? Yes!), indexing (given that the next round always happens, let’s do everything!), and speed (since we’re going to do everything, what are we waiting for?).
This makes the risk to late-stage VC (or early-stage VCs that are indexing) much more systemic (beta!) and the risk to early-stage VC much more idiosyncratic (alpha!)."
https://medium.com/angularventures/alpha-beta-and-an-inverted-venture-risk-curve-fd0ed5a6a81a
4. Word to the wise. Must read.
"Perfect transition here, if Digital is the new way to get ahead it means that you will be left with a few avenues: 1) you are already rich and you are a capital allocator, 2) you become a top 1% creator - famous individual like Logan Paul or 3) you create a niche business online that allows you to outpace the growth of inflation - e-commerce. As you can imagine, since the number of options are thinning it means the pareto distribution will likely get worse before it gets better. The top 10% will eventually dwindle down to the top 5%."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/a-quick-look-into-more-deficits-and
5. "Most people would be wise to think about Paul Graham’s essay. To seek out communities in the physical world that are more frontier minded when pursuing personal sovereignty. Places removed from conventional society. From conventional thought and influences.
These frontier communities may not perfectly align with the concept of the Sovereign Individual. But frontier communities of oddballs and DIYers are ideal for building something new. Especially a new sense of self.
Whether it be a company or a lifestyle. A frontier in the physical world is a place where you can redefine yourself with less fear of external influences. Where you’ll be embraced for your oddball characteristics. And in this setting, you’ll feel empowered to perform the lifestyle design iterations you need to develop your personal sovereignty.
And so, if you want to reinvent yourself and pursue personal sovereignty in the digital age, get to the frontier. Wherever that may be for you."
https://dougantin.com/personal-sovereignty-is-built-on-the-frontier-of-society/
6. Wow this is very impressive for a new fund manager. Also clearly very differentiated.
"The second piece of the diagnosis is that the rules of the game are different for a small solo fund like Not Boring Capital. We are structurally set up to be able to invest in a lot of the most credible companies. We don’t lead deals. We don’t sit on boards. The newsletter generates strong dealflow. If we invest a little bit in companies that can break out, I can often pull the “Deep Dive” arrow out of the quiver to write bigger checks in later rounds. We can often get $250k allocation but rarely $1 million. Time isn’t a constraint, but allocation often is.
At the same time, the biggest funds are getting bigger, which has been well-covered. What’s less appreciated is that, counterintuitively, the bigger and better the big funds get, the better it is for small funds like Not Boring Capital."
https://www.notboring.co/p/playing-solo-games
7. This is absolutely invaluable for SaaS Investors and founders. Bookmark this.
https://sacks.substack.com/p/the-saas-metrics-that-matter
8. For anyone who wants to understand Crypto from a man who is both a historian and investor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saKDoudHgSQ
9. More about the Supply Chain shortages hitting the global economy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pw51DqC-cQE
10. More continuing stupidity from the woke mob.
"The average tech employee isn’t really interested in roleplaying the 1960s between their morning gourmet coffee break and their afternoon massage. Most of them actually like their jobs, and want to do them. It’s also worth remembering that for every Netflix employee furious with the company’s decision to produce relevant content, there are hundreds — probably thousands — who want to work for Netflix.
The minority of cultural authoritarians working in tech don’t actually have much leverage, so why do we keep entertaining their authoritarian demands? The attempted takeover is opt-in. You can truly just opt-out. The Verge won’t like you. This will continue to not matter."
https://www.piratewires.com/p/lock-the-doors
11. "Until now, “no-code” and “enterprise grade” have been squarely at odds. In my previous experience running growth functions, I used a number of no-code page builders. They were great for tinkering, but typically shunned by engineering leaders as not production-grade. Yet it is the larger businesses who need this flexibility and performance most."
https://greylock.com/portfolio-news/headless-no-code-commerce/
12. Exciting news and congrats Ankur Nagpal. Like this thesis. Founders do want other founders investing in their company.
13. Good discussion on global supply chains, something we should all be paying attention to.
"The thing is, a supply chain is mostly an emergent entity rather than a designed one, and its most salient features often have very little to do with its nominal function of getting stuff from Point A to Point B. That’s just the supply chain’s job, not what it is. What it is is a homeostatic equilibrium created by billions of sourcing decisions made over time, by millions of individuals at businesses around the world making buying and selling decisions over time.
So just as it is a mistake to think of supply chains primarily in engineering terms, it is also a mistake to think of them primarily in social science terms.
Supply chains are a new class of engineered-emergent artifact, one that includes a few other globe-spanning things like the internet, the air travel system, and low earth orbit, that exist at a level of Gaian phenomenology, terraforming, and planet-scale husbandry. We only ever catch local glimpses of these things. The wholes are too big to fit in a single human mind, and the physical embodiments are too vast to capture even on a single map, let alone in a single photograph."
https://studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/remystifying-supply-chains
14. I cannot wait to see this movie. I hope it does the amazing book justice. Reviews seem to say it does.
https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/dune-denis-villeneuve
15. This is worth watching for those interested in crypto and stuff on the edge of the internet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE4-XjeVTv0&t=2453s
16. This is a smart move and OnDeck will be the next YC (whatever that means). But this will be a hothouse of the next generation of rising talent.
"Back in the 90's and early 2000's, capital and credentials were bottlenecks to starting a technology company. Anyone can start up... so long as you can get an MBA and $10M from Sand Hill Road.
In the mid 2000s, that all changed. With the rise of AWS & open source software, the cost to spin up new software products plummeted. Now, anyone can start up... so long as you can code. Engineering skills became the new scarcity.
Today, it's never been easier to get started. Knowledge & content are ubiquitous. No-code tools and dev infrastructure are powerful. Sprawling social networks help you discover and serve niche audiences. Anyone can start a tech co, anywhere in the world.
But the scarcity has shifted, again.
Today, what’s hardest is cutting through the noise—to find the right co-founder, get your product in the hands of early users, hiring the right early team. The #1 enemy of any aspiring founder is obscurity. Community is the new scarcity.
The highest-leverage thing you can do as a founder is surround yourself with a community of people who will be early collaborators, possible customers, and care enough to give you raw, real feedback."
https://eriktorenberg.substack.com/p/announcing-odx
17. This is a really eye opening write up on why the stock market is operating as it is. Lots of implications for all stockholders.
"Passive flows are having an impact on how the market is structured, and shifting market dynamics to an element of *stonks always go up*. It’s important to understand the underlying mechanics, and how that ultimately impacts the entire functioning of the market.
It has increased access sure, but it also has changed the ecosystem of the market functionality."
https://kyla.substack.com/p/volmaggedon-and-the-rise-of-passive
18. Bullish on Mexico. Strong case here for it
https://mobile.twitter.com/Divine_Gains/status/1451636992404512772
Food Porn: What We Can Learn from Japan
Ramen Heads, Jiros Dreams of Sushi, Tampopo, Food Luck, Le Chocolat De H.
All amazing movies showcasing expert chefs celebrating their craft in making food whether it’s Ramen, sushi, chocolate or Yakiniku (Japanese bbq beef).
These can be seen as food porn. But what these movies also reflect is the perfectionism, the hard work and dedication that makes Japan at the best the traditional arts and crafts.
It shows how dedication and love makes the food so delicious. It also shows the obsession necessary to be the BEST at something. The ramen chef in Ramen Kings goes to visit other ramen shops on his day off, despite winning multiple awards & top rankings. Jiro has literally been making sushi for over 60 years and hates taking days off work. That is an obsession. Yet it works, it’s the most highly ranked sushi place in the world.
I’ve long been in love with Japan and Japanese culture. The incredible manners, service and complete immersion in pursuing perfection. I’ve seen janitors, subway conductors and bus drivers do their work with incredible passion and pride. Something that is clearly missing in almost everywhere else in the world.
There is this term I learned called Shokunin: a craftsman or artisan in pursuit of perfection. The official definition is “mastery of a profession”. Whatever it is that you do, go all out. Hold nothing back. And work at your craft with dedication, no matter how menial or useless others think it is. Actually who cares what other people think. Really. They don’t pay your bills and it’s YOUR Life. We need more Shokunin in the world.