“100 Foot Wave”: Why so many entrepreneurs are like surfers
I stumbled upon this documentary on HBO about big wave surfers. Mainly about this surfer called Garrett McNamara who ends up surfing massive 100 foot waves at the now legendary Nazare in Portugal.
He was a Hawaiian surfer who spent every cent to try to find good surf. He would show up at the beach with literally no money. After living the surf bum life till 35, now married with 3 kids he felt he had to settle down. He opened a surf shop that did well. But after 2 years he became depressed with this so-called adult life. He decided to give professional surfing another go. This time he tried the newly emerged extreme wave surfing.
He was focused and he had a plan to go after every big swell. He was truly committed and in his words “going to go after it.” He was relentless. His goal was to chase the biggest gnarliest wave anywhere in the world whether in Hawaii, off Northern California, Morocco, Norway, and Tahiti. He was the one who discovered and popularized the legendary Nazare which incidentally the main surfing crowd derided at first. But he had found his niche. He was a maverick doing his own thing. And because of this, stood out from every other surfer in the world. The result: he carved out an incredible career over the last 20 years.
Why do I raise the topic of surfing? There is a lot to surfing that is similar to entrepreneurship. You have to understand where and when the waves (ie. Trends) are coming in. You have to paddle like crazy to position yourself and get in front of it. Be too late, you miss the wave. Too early and you get smashed by it. You have to respect the wave because you can get hurt. You get pounded by waves. You get ground down. You also risk drowning.
But when you are able to successfully ride that wave, you experience an incredible high. The “Rush” they call it.
No wonder so many startup founders also surf fanatically. The process of building a business is very similar. All successful surfers are successful only by facing and conquering the natural fear they feel when they see these massive terrifying waves. No different than doing a startup.
And in the technology business, the good news is that there is always another big wave that will come in that you can ride. The problem is it’s just not usually found in widely known or popular locations. So you usually have to go off the beaten track to find it. That’s the big challenge and the fun. So surfs up folks!
The Rule of 7: Entrepreneurship and Financial Independence is Key to Survival & Freedom
There is this scene in season 5 of Billions when the main character Bobby Axelrod is looking to make some big changes at his hedge fund.
One of his employees asks him: “how much will our lives change?”
Axelrod replies: “It’s not a problem.
Well, it’s not my problem. And don’t ask another guy about your future, make your own F—ing future.”
This scene has stuck with me since I saw it so long ago. I still cannot believe that people in 2022 still believe that the safe route in life is having a job. This is after the pandemic in 2020, an ongoing barbarous Russian invasion and war in Ukraine. Continual massive shocks to our economic system and to people’s lives. Economies shattered, business destroyed and jobs lost.
Why would you count on your boss or your job for your livelihood. A livelihood that enables you to support your family. Even supposed safe companies end up failing in the end. Or taking a massive hit PR and financially. Look at former golden child Facebook, now known as META. They have been hammered.
But at least they have massive capital reserves with $47.99B at the end of 2021. Just like you need to have at least 12 months of cash in the bank in case anything goes wrong and you can weather the storm. More here: https://hardfork.substack.com/p/the-first-step-and-goal-for-everyone
Learn the art & discipline of sales. Learn online marketing and copywriting. These are skills that are in demand all over the world. And portable anywhere.
You must also have multiple sources of incomes, read customers. Maybe even multiple businesses. Diversification, so if one customer or business disappears, you have other ones to count on. The famous rule of 7. Most wealthy people have at least 7 income streams. This is a good number to aim for.
You can have a balance of regular steady monthly payments & some irregular ones. Both large and small payments. Heck, you can even have a job that gives you the base monthly income but you absolutely must build a bunch of side hustles that provide these other income streams as per the excellent BowtiedBull: https://bowtiedbull.substack.com
This is really the only way you can truly be in control of your own destiny. The changes coming in the world from technology, geopolitical and economic aspects are only going to come faster and harder.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads June 5th, 2022
“Not in doing what you like, but in liking what you do is the secret of happiness.” —J.M. Barrie
Word to the wise. Capital controls coming.
"The reality is that the past decades have been the golden years of the free flow of capital. Before that, most countries had capital controls in place. They were the norm.
In an era of de-globalization, would it be surprising to see governments trying to ensure capital does not leave their borders, especially as countries struggle with high debt levels, shortages of various sorts, and surging tax rates?"
https://mailchi.mp/bf4edf19e48c/get-ready-for-capital-controls
2. "For some bizarre reason, we are made to have unshakable confidence in today’s central bankers. No one questions their wisdom and infallibility, and it’s inconceivable that they would ever make the wrong call.
This is ludicrous. People make mistakes. Even Isaac Newton. Even modern central bankers."
3. This is a valuable discussion. Lots of historical data and stories backing up the fact that we are entering a period of deglobalization and its impact on reducing inequality and effects on the US dollar system.
"Revenge of the Old Economy & How to Invest in the Commodity Supercycle"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0FS0hI6KYU
4. "No matter how the Russian campaign unfolds from here, the “special operation” has devolved into a costly mess. Russian forces are stalled, their losses are mounting, and the economic screws are tightening. Adam Smith wisely noted that there is a great deal of ruin in a nation, so Russia will likely weather the storm of sanctions, but as the war drags on, the economic crisis will deepen and the pressure on the Putin regime will mount.
At this point, a negotiated settlement seems to be the only sensible option, but wounded authoritarians are prone to double down when facing failure. The forlorn but evidently palpablehope that Putin will cut his losses and slunk back across the border seems detached from the reality of the existential crisis facing the Russian leadership. What incentive does Putin have to deescalate? Propriety, decency, and a regard for human life? Such considerations rarely enter the minds of revanchist despots.
American leaders, military officers, strategists, and commentators have been euphoric watching the vaunted Russian war machine sink up to the axle in Ukrainian mud, but it was not that long ago that the United States was embroiled in a costly quagmire of its own. Our schadenfreude should be tempered by the realization that this has happened to us in the past and can happen again unless we correct our military math.
As we peer into the mists and squalls of the unknown future, we would be wise to heed the words of Winston Churchill. “Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.”
https://mwi.usma.edu/putins-bad-math-the-root-of-russian-miscalculation-in-ukraine
5. All the things you learn. Global Capitalism is complicated.
"Some say Putin will remain in power for years to come. I don’t believe that’s possible because of how global certificate and insurance agencies work.
The oligarch super-yachts which are being seized make for splashy news articles, but they are the tip of the iceberg.
Even if they aren’t seized, they are losing their certifications of sea-worthiness and insurance. That means they are unable to enter almost any desirable port in the world. No one buys a yacht to keep it moored in Vladivostok, Russia."
https://medium.com/@maxrottersman/putins-achilles-heel-lowly-maintenance-contracts-5cad1c8fcd3a
6. Good episode this week on NIA. The Tech & Crypto sell off.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKCWPe91mrw
7. This is a tough business model to execute if you know what you are doing. Doubly tough if you are partying on the side.
"Last fall, discussions led by the founders about raising up to $1 billion in new funding fizzled after some investors balked at Gopuff’s cash burn, according to two people familiar with the efforts. Since then, they’ve overseen two rounds of layoffs totaling hundreds of workers. Earlier this year, Gopuff instituted a temporary hiring freeze for employees and also shuttered a fledgling pharmacy delivery business, say people familiar with those efforts. And they’ve lost several executives recruited from tech companies like Facebook and Airbnb to modernize their e-commerce software and build a new advertising business.
That upheaval has raised questions among some employees about the leadership abilities of co-CEOs Yakir Gola and Rafael Ilishayev.
Underlying the aggressive expansion was the founders’ grand vision for Gopuff’s future. At employee all-hands meetings last year, Ilishayev extolled the company’s fast growth and said he wanted Gopuff to become a $1 trillion business, according to a person present at the meetings. By early this year, the company’s workforce had grown to over 15,000.
Gola and Ilishayev oversaw this rapid growth from side-by-side houses they had bought in Miami where they exhibited a lavish lifestyle. For in-person meetings hosted at the homes, employees often passed through rows of luxury sports cars lining the homes, according to people familiar with the matter. The founders also co-purchased a private jet during the pandemic, a separate person said. And Ilishayev posted photos on his private Instagram account, which some employees had followed, of him smoking hookahs with friends or the founders partying at nightclubs, according to a person who saw his account.
Meanwhile, some of Gopuff’s expansion plans were stumbling. Last April, it ended its ship-to-home service, which had sold products to consumers outside its normal delivery zones, a company spokesperson confirmed."
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/gopuff-founders-ambitions-falter-as-startup-bleeds-cash
8. "Beginners Breakdown: 1) do you think supply of money is going up or down 5-10 years across the globe; 2) do you think more or less people will use tech/crypto anything you own; 3) do you think inflation will be above or below the debt rate you have and 4) if you’re trusting a third party with crypto - you’re better off just buying stocks instead with volatility to crypto instead."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/crypto-basics-on-the-last-5-days
9. True heroes here.
"The war in Ukraine has attracted U.S. military veterans and Western legionnaires like no foreign battlefield in recent memory. But what motivates midcareer professionals – often now married, with children, and with their former military lives receding into memory – to drop everything and step into the trenches of another nation’s fight?
Some are impressed by Ukrainian pluck and resolve, by surviving 11 weeks of the Russian onslaught, when analysts predicted they would be routed in three days. Others see a historic battle between good and evil, with a high-stakes clarity between right and wrong not seen for decades."
10. "As the Ukrainians accumulate more battlefield successes, they will raise their sights. The Russian army, having suffered tens of thousands of casualties and lost much of its frontline equipment, is making what might be its final, convulsive efforts at destroying Ukrainian forces in the south and east of that country.
Like their previous efforts, these too will probably fail, and the possibility will open up of Russian routs along their 300-mile-long front line. A stalemate is also conceivable, and would create one set of plausible objectives for each side; a collapse of the Russian military is somewhat more so, and would create very different objectives.
Every war must end, and this one will as well. One set of follow-on objectives for the West is clear: helping Ukraine rebuild and put itself in a condition to defeat further Russian aggression. Similarly, it is both necessary and likely that NATO will emerge from this conflict larger, more united, and more powerful than before.
But all of this leaves the problem of Russia. It will not be reconstructed from without, as Germany and Japan were after World War II. If it is convulsed from within, it is less likely to be dominated by liberals (many of whom have fled the country) than by disgruntled nationalists.
Putin may go, but his replacements are likely to come from similar backgrounds in the secret police or, possibly, the military. And it will not be able to rejoin the international community as it was."
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/ukraine-russia-goals-win-war/629815
11. This is smart. As a road warrior I have a hard time sticking with a martial art. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu seems to be more prevalent than Boxing or Muay Thai.
"With jiu-jitsu, it just seemed like everyone was doing it and it seemed like every city in the world had it. I travel a lot for work so I thought it would be good because wherever I go for work, I could drop by someplace and get a workout.
When you’re doing Jiu-Jitsu, you really have to stay in the moment. You have to be present because someone is trying to kill you, literally. So, it’s very hard to think about the past or worry about the future when someone is trying to strangle you to death. It forces you to live in the moment in a really meditative way. The more you do it and the more you reach that meditative zone, you realize it’s such an easy way to live in the present.
The other side of it is that I think humans get dopamine from learning new things. With jiu-jitsu, there’s always something new to learn from it because the techniques are almost endless. That means you can keep adding to it and because of that, there’s so much to learn. You get dopamine every time you learn a new technique, or you see something new that looks kind of cool and it makes you want to try it."
https://www.gq.com/story/real-life-diet-ronny-chieng
12. "A recession has not begun yet, but the Fed is tightening, and risk assets are reacting. If a recession arrives, many of the consensus trades will reverse and investors should start to anticipate that scenario by diversifying exposure into some of the recent losers and taking profits on the recent winners."
https://www.thelykeion.com/time-to-be-contrarian
13. "We are ardent supporters of nuclear energy and, for that reason alone, are happy to see serious work being done to develop the thorium fuel cycle for energy purposes. We also understand the need to generate hype, err, media optimism for long-term projects to get government support. We sympathize with the attractiveness of moving a ball forward.
However, and this is a BIG however, much like coking coal, the real impediment for nuclear energy is a branding one. Work to develop thorium-based nuclear, irrespective of the outcome, is still just the thunder. The lightning comes when the problem of public perception can be solved and only then, as Twain so rightly points out, does the real work get done."
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/nuclear-thunder
14. If you are a new emerging VC fund manager this is worth watching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEqKeiAZZBc
15. An incredible eye opening discussion on the macroeconomic situation in the world.
Highly recommend if you want to understand what’s happening. Love the guys at Santiago Capital.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=IahtVXrZzsY
16. All founders need to watch this.
2022 is gonna be rough so you will need a new operating methodology here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBkzm4a7iY4
17. Even a rank amateur like me notices that this CQB is really weird.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvFOpzBOtGA
18. I love See's Candies, they are delicious!
"With ~$500m in annual revenue, See’s Candy represents less than 0.1% of Berkshire Hathaway’s holdings. Yet, Buffett has called the 100-year-old chocolate chain his “prototype of a dream business.”
He frequently brings up the company in interviews and even keeps a box of the candymaker’s peanut brittle on hand at annual shareholder meetings.
In an era that prizes flashy, fast-paced investments, the story of See’s reminds us that a company’s true value can’t always be quantified on a balance sheet."
https://thehustle.co/how-a-small-candy-company-became-warren-buffetts-dream-investment
19. "What is the difference between a guy who says I want to, and guy who says I do?
The difference is fast action.
The difference is that the guy who does things makes a quick plan and starts executing it, and fixing things up as he goes along.
On the other hand, the guy who says “I want to” all the damn time is still waiting for the perfect day, the perfect opportunity, the perfect set of circumstances to start.
Look, if you don’t want to do something – just say you don’t want to do it. Why are you trying to fool yourself?"
https://lifemathmoney.com/move-fast-perfection-is-for-losers
20. "Tech massively over-earned in 2021 – generating growth and profits at a temporarily high rate – driven by substitute demand from the pre-COVID economy. Companies with accelerated temporary growth got credit for a permanent acceleration.
But investors recently realized that underwriting growth permanence from COVID acceleration was wrong. The ensuing correction was harsh, but note that many high-growth companies are trading very close to their pre-COVID prices.
Not everything will revert to the mean. Movie theaters may never reach 2019 levels, Zoom is here to stay, and even I have been surprised by the durability of remote work. And mean-reversion does not spread at the same rate for every phenomenon: inflation will persist far longer than home fitness sales.
But many pandemic-era trends will slowly revert to their pre-2020 trendline – inflated valuations, easy money, exponential tech demand, meme investing.
Mean-reversion and inflation will be lingering symptoms of the virus for years to come."
https://luttig.substack.com/p/mean-reversion
21. "I’ve been scanning financial newspapers over the past few weeks and noticed that despite the hefty stock market declines there are no articles suggesting that retail investors should sell or consumers should pull back on their consumption.
Now why is that? Well, if retail investors would sell and consumers would pull back on a broad scale we’d most certainly already be in a deep recession. Thus everyone – central banks, corporations, media, and pundits – are all choosing their words extra carefully these days to avoid panic or what you might call a run on the economy.
But I’m an independent writer and I see clear signs that we are heading into a recession. And since the average consumer or retail investor usually is the last to know I thought I could share a few ideas within the context of fewer better things."
https://fewerbetterthings.substack.com/p/tips-for-the-looming-recession
22. Yikes. She is probably right in the long run but the question is whether ARK can survive the next year or two.
"I have been critical of ARK Invest, and their flagship ARKK “Innovation” ETF since the inception of this blog, noting last November - before inflation became an issue, before the war in Ukraine and before the market decided to take a king-sized shit - that Wood’s success seemed superficial and based on temporary trade-winds that were bound to change direction.
Since November 2021, ARK’s “Innovation” ETF has put in a performance for the ages, plunging -58.1% compared to its benchmark, the NASDAQ QQQ ETF, which has fallen only -14.93% in the same period of time."
https://quoththeraven.substack.com/p/cathie-wood-and-the-definition-of
23. "Amateurs talk tactics; professionals talk logistics. Once Russia pushed their units fast — we saw units just driving through towns, trying to get where they were going — they extended their operational reach. That is an operational risk. Such a move is not unheard of, but the Russians couldn't hold the lines to support everything they were pushing in at once. Those logistical lines are the lifeline. Once again, what wins wars, or loses them, are questions of logistics.
But the training and preparation of the conscripts was poor, and the Russian military lacks professional enlisted soldiers. They were trying to fight like a modern Western military with a Soviet-style force that even wasn't as strong as it was during the USSR. They failed, and have now been exposed as suffering from years of graft, decay and belief in a method of warfare that does not fit the strengths of their military."
24. Steve Aoki is a great example of the future of entrepreneurship. "Multi product" Portfolio entrepreneurship.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4FZvwyUqto
25. This is always a fun discussion. Nomad Capitalist & the Rebel Capitalist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wpS8TwOFmo
26. Discussion on Bitcoin and the Sovereign Individual & the rise of Decentralized world. Worth listening to whether you agree or not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCA2IUFtpd8&t=221s
27. Super interesting discussion on the US dollar dominance and whether it will continue or not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EWFyCOOQCU
28. Always a good show: entertaining and educational. All in Podcast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DQ87UHAGTk&t=1378s
29. Good!
"The Russian military has also lost thousands of weapons, and in the last few weeks has scaled back from a three-pronged attack on Ukraine to a narrower effort to take the whole of the Donbas—and retain the parts it captured in 2014. The losses could make it difficult to wage war anywhere else in the short term, defense experts and officials said.
“Russia has taken heavy losses in this campaign, which will reduce its ability to engage in conflict over the next few years,”
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2022/05/has-ukraine-broken-russian-military/367480
Having A Big Mission & Taking Action: A Moral Imperative
A man must build their own value. They do it by achievement. Hard accomplishments-wealth, fitness, position, education, winning physical and mental competitions.
I love Radigan Carter. Read his entire post below.
“What do you do every day, constantly strive to get better at, that improves not just your life, but the lives of others? What is that one thing that you are building above all else, trading your time - no, decades of your life - in exchange to will into existence that is good and beautiful in this world?
That is a mission, and everyone needs one.
I promise, once you have one, you never want to go back to living without one.
The very world itself feels different without one, like losing all the vibrant colors and being left only in a haze of grey.
Source: https://www.radigancarter.com/dispatches/you-need-a-mission-in-life
A Mission allows you to push yourself. So you can fight against comfort. As Simon Sinek says: “Start with the Why.” This allows you to not give up when you run into challenges.
To succeed you need to have some good mental frames.
You need to accelerate in your life. Focus on Momentum. As former kickboxing champion and all around baller Andrew Tate says, you gotta be “Always Attacking Life.”
Change your language in your mind and how you speak. It’s “I get to do this” NOT “I have to do this”
Face Reality, No matter what
Take total responsibility for everything in your life. Or paraphrasing Jocko Willink’s words, Total and Complete Ownership. If your life sucks, it’s your own fault. It’s also up to you to fix it.
Believe and live in a state of abundance, not scarcity.
Embrace discipline and hard work.
You also need to have a Code to live by. These are rules you operate by and that reflect your values. Values like “My Word is my Bond” or “Do What you Say, and Say What you Do”. A code is critical. I love this description below from Primer Magazine.
“Life’s already hard enough without us drawing lines in the sand, and make no mistake, that’s what having a code means. Sailing with the wind, living by society’s standards rather than your own – that’s all going to be an easier way to live, and having a strict, well-defined code, regardless of what it entails, will eventually put you at odds with the world. That’s not going to be pleasant, but it is going to be good for you. The resulting struggles (if they don’t kill you) will only make you stronger.
Character’s like a muscle that it needs to be worked out, and muscle can only be built up after being torn. The only way to strengthen your morality is to force yourself into moral crises, ethical dilemmas, and hard choices, pushing yourself to grapple with these issues. Let’s be real here, with or without a personal code life’s still going to throw those tough decisions at you – how prepared are you going to be? The hard fact of the matter is that we need to get good at being good.”
Perhaps this is why I find the American western frontier period during the 1800s so personally interesting. It was a tough place. But because it was so tough, surrounded by hostile Indians, sparse of population and with very little law enforcement, you had to rely on each other as fellow settlers and small townsmen. If someone calls you a coward or liar, you would be expected to fight or shoot him. The reason was because that was the worst thing anyone could be accused of. Your fellow cowboys, neighbors and townsmen needed to know they could rely on you. There is something to that. It’s also something I find that is missing in our modern life.
These are important for anyone in this world. You get exactly what you put into life. Push yourself and avoid too much comfort. "Nobody got anywhere in the world by simply being content." ~Louis L'Amour
Having a mission and a code is critical for every young person. It aids our human imperative of creativity, building, exploring and conquering the frontiers of the mind, body and geography.
Again, Louis L’Amour wrote: “Nations and Men are alike: they go forward or they stagnate and die.”
Parsing Out the Truth As the Truth Will Set You Free: Facing Painful Reality
In my work with startup founders, I tell them all the time they have to be like private investigators: chasing the truth and following the leads. Basically when you do customer discovery your job as a founder is to talk to as many potential customers and users as possible. You look for patterns and things that come up over and over again. Ie. things they hate and things they love. Then you coldly look at the data and feedback that comes back, even if it’s painful. Things that are very hard to face, like they hate your product. Or maybe even worse, they just don’t care. Apathy is definitely the worst thing.
I think knowing your emotional state is important here. Some of us lean towards negativity (thank you Canadian upbringing), some lean toward optimism. I, of course, prefer an optimistic leaning like many Americans. But at the same time “Hope is not a strategy.” Wanting something to be true does not make it so. Something I’m trying to deal with as I doom scroll through Twitter. Trying to fight “Confirmation bias which according to Wikipedia is defined as “the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values.”
Forcing yourself to look at the painful truth is key to success in anything. But it’s particularly hard to do now in 2022. When we have been so triggered by lots of social media, 2 years of lockdown and pandemic, we are all stuck in Fight or Flight mode as detailed out earlier: (https://hardfork.substack.com/p/why-is-everyone-so-angry-behavioral). Add now a destructive Russian invasion in Europe against Ukraine, no wonder people cannot think straight at all. Myself included. Way too much inflammatory information stimuli for our small brains to absorb and process.
Thus, we all become easily controlled by dominant narratives from political and media class.
Michael Krieger tweeted:
“The amount of emotional manipulation occurring right now feels a lot like the early days of covid. We went from virus hysteria to war hysteria.
You are being primed right now for a specific reaction later on and you don’t even realize it’s happening.”
This goes against my goal of personal responsibility and my own personal fight to learn to think for myself. Separating fact from narrative will be crucial to seeing things more clearly.
This is why you have to seek out alternative points of view to raise things that are uncomfortable or challenge your own narrative. This is why it’s so important to get out of normal media bubbles & read the stuff of people you hate or whose views you find abhorrent. More and different views. Makes it easier to find your own blind spots and flaws in thinking. Lying to others is bad, but the worst thing is to lie to yourself. I’ve written before, the sooner you accept the painful truth, the sooner you can mourn and move on and fix things.
This is relevant for business and investing. Knowing when to cut out of an investment. Or knowing there are some real critical personnel or financial issues. Or knowing the business you have helped run for a while is now finished due to an unexpected pandemic or war (gone or going through this right now). Issues that fester the longer you put off facing it. Fester is the right word. If you have major cut on your body and you don’t deal with it right away ie. treat and disinfect it, you could lose a limb, or the poison from bad blood circulates through your body and you are literally done.
It’s relevant for your entire life. Knowing when a relationship is dead. Or knowing you messed up somewhere badly. It cuts to your ego to admit it but will be even worse later if u don’t suck it up and apologize. If you don’t do that, I can assure you your life will get worse & harder to fix later. Compound interest works for and against you.
Net net: never lie to yourself. Learn to seek the truth no matter how painful. This is how you get to have a beautiful life.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads May 29th, 2022
“Don’t run away from a challenge. Instead, run toward it, the only way to escape fear is to trample it beneath your fett and the more difficult the victory; the greater the happiness in winning.”--Kemmy Nola
Always a good geopolitical discussion with Zeihan. Lots of implications for the global economy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYZGlmX6HXY
2. I don't agree with everything Doug Casey says but this is a very timely interview.
Net net: Diversify Politically as this world gets more chaotic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6LINUyA5WY
3. "All along the winding cobblestone streets nearby, outside cafés, inside parks, on laptops and iPads, this old town teems with about 200 guinea pigs in the wireless workforce of tomorrow. In the taxonomy of wanderlust, they’re called digital nomads, early explorers of Generation Zoom, liberated by technology and changing norms to work anywhere there’s Wi-Fi. As John Weedin, a long-haired 30-year-old freelance copywriter from Kansas City, Missouri, says as he rolls up his yoga mat, “I want to keep traveling, man. People are making it work.
No place is making it work quite like Madeira. While countries from Aruba to Georgia have been trying to lure nomads to boost their pandemic-ravaged economies, this tiny island off the coast of northwest Africa is leading the way. Barrett and the other visitors here are part of Digital Nomads Madeira, a unique program catering to their needs—helping them find rental homes, equipping them with a state-of-the-art coworking space in the center of town, and organizing social events, like today’s yoga session, via a private Slack channel.”
"As nomadic living spreads, the only obstacle to stop someone from joining the tribe is fear. “It’s just the status quo and the fear keeping people from a nomadic lifestyle,” he goes on."
https://www.gq.com/story/escape-to-zoom-island
4. "Instead, Putin started a war of conquest with 250,000 troops. About one-twelfth of the number he should have had.
His armies, at the start of the offensive, should have been so large that they formed a line of tanks, trucks, and armoured cars stretching back into Russia for 200 kilometres.
This is something that Stalin would have understood. He would not have blinked. You want three million? Sure. In fact, here’s another million from the reserves in the Far East.
That is why I got my calculation about the threat of war wrong. I saw that Putin did not have anywhere near the critical mass needed for a knock-out blow. And so at the time I thought to my self, idly, hey — no one would be so batspit crazy that he would launch a war with an army tid-bit so small that failure would be guaranteed!"
https://medium.com/@barry-gander/the-real-reason-russia-is-losing-is-really-basic-4abf0adffb23
5. "China is an old empire; it endured much hardship in those times when it was weak. It is also run by a Leninist political party that firmly believes power ultimately grows out of the barrel of a gun. China, that is to say, fundamentally respects strength and is contemptuous of weakness. Russia was therefore long worthy of sincere respect because, while it’s Soviet glory days were behind it and its economy backwards and puny, it retained a military uniformly judged to be among the foremost in the world.
In truth, from China’s perspective it was this, and almost this alone, that made Russia a great power worthy of standing as an equal in the councils of the world – a notion Putin himself went out of his way to encourage by staking his reputation on having remade Russia into a formidably martial state.
Far from being poised to overrun Europe, Russia’s Potemkin army proved incapable of even making it through the rag-tag volunteers of Kiev, with their consumer drones and yoga matts. Even if it “wins” and ends up with a few more bites out of Ukraine, it no longer credibly poses any serious conventional threat to NATO.
For Beijing, this necessarily changes its whole strategic map. For the more than 100 years since the October Revolution of 1917, China and the CCP has been deeply connected to and shaped by Russia. But Russia’s shameful display on the battlefield will prove the original sin that transforms China’s view of it from one of respect into one of thinly veiled contempt.
Though they won’t let the mask slip in public, leaders in Beijing will now be in a state of intense uncertainty and insecurity, paralyzed over what to do. China must somehow regain strategic momentum, but Russia’s missteps in Ukraine have pushed it down a path with no good off-ramp to either salvage its relationship with Europe or ensure a Russian triumph capable of breaking Western unity."
https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/the-world-order-reset
6. "If you look at the USA and China, it seems that we’re moving towards more authoritarianism and less freedom.
We know. Private companies and public companies have to do what is best for them. That said, we’ve reached pretty questionable levels when people can be fired for tweets and actions based on their private lives (unrelated to the company) that gets pulled up due to some weird guy with no life living in a basement somewhere.
What does this mean? It means that as inflation goes up (and likely taxes as well), people will be too *scared* to do anything and more and more rights will be taken away over the long-term.
If you want to “make it” you’re going to have to make an extreme bet over the next 3-5 years (assuming you’re not where you want to be). If you’re already one of the “chosen ones” due to COVID you can probably relax a bit.
If you’re reading this and have no real hope, you’re forced to take action and begin building in the following direction: 1) lowest tax basis country - USA no longer necessary - sad to say it, 2) least likely to adopt authoritarian ideals - evade China and the current powerhouses such as Australia and 3) make a sizable bet on what assets people flee towards."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/running-out-of-time
7. This is a good case that China is in bigger trouble than we all believe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ERsEKLdphk
8. Kyiv 2 months into the war. Enjoying JohnnyFDs videos and cannot wait to return to Kyiv. Curse Putin and his Russian army orcs for this evil.
#standwithukraine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5Jx-I9TbUY
9. Always a good episode for "Not Investing Advice". Talking about Hollywood deals & NFTs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7CBN7h6txM
10. These guys are ballers. Best deal flow in the Baltics for sure.
https://sifted.eu/articles/taavet-sten-startup-fund
11. We may one day need to be "rooftop Koreans."
"Standing on the rooftops of Koreatown shops they and their families owned, clad not in body armor or tactical gear, but instead dressed like someone’s nerdy dad, often smoking cigarettes, but always on alert, the Roof Koreans provide a stirring example of how free Americans of all races can defend their own communities without relying upon outside help."
https://ammo.com/articles/roof-koreans-civilians-defended-koreatown-racist-violence-la-riots-1992
12. These are some very solid predictions of life in America over the next decade. Worth a read.
https://mobile.twitter.com/BowTiedCaiman/status/1521142254978715651
13. This is a very interesting and cool guy with one of the best Twitter feeds around. Ukrainian Journalist covering the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
"I never intentionally worked for this. I just ended up being the most-followed Ukrainian journalist. Within several days, I went from zero to hero. I ended up being somewhat interesting to a lot of people—not only in terms of news coverage but also my opinions and experience in this world. I did not consider this purely news Twitter. I also attach a lot of things that happen in my life and in the context of war. For some reason, these things that I write ended up being interesting to people."
14. This is smart and justified.
"Away from the active battlefronts within Ukraine, though, there’s a less bloody, less prominent front in the two-month-old war, a shadow campaign that has included attacks on military and industrial targets in Russia itself.
It’s not clear how many incidents have occurred, or whether they resulted from air strikes, or missiles, or sabotage. An unofficial tally by RFE/RL, based on open-source reporting, counts at least a dozen since the war’s beginning."
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-shadow-war-russian-border-attacks/31827632.html
15. Hopeful here. We need more & better cooperation between Silicon Valley and the Defense Department. We're literally in a gray war with China and Russia already.
https://acquisitiontalk.com/2021/12/time-is-running-out-for-dod-with-silicon-valley
16. "To be bold and transparent – when we see outperformance, it *always* comes down to making investments in great companies and generating outlier multiples on each subsequent financing into these winners. Reserves, therefore, impact funds based on the returns they generate. And while reserves can occasionally boost returns, they can, and more frequently do, bring down fund multiples. They also (dare I say) sometimes create potential conflicts of interest with LPs."
https://sapphireventures.com/blog/dirty-secret-venture-reserves-are-not-always-a-good-thing
17. This is all spot on. #standwithukraine
18. Yikes.
"Behind the scenes, though, Bolt’s revenue growth fell dramatically, and questions have arisen about the veracity of its past statements about merchants that were using its services. Revenue from transactions Bolt processed grew around 10% to $28 million last year after it slashed the fees merchants pay for its services, according to an internal document viewed by The Information.
The dramatic slowdown shows Bolt is under significant competitive pressure from PayPal and Shopify, which have launched their own one-click checkout buttons for merchants. And while Bolt has touted efforts to work with more high-profile retailers, the number of merchants it works with has been hovering in the low 300s since 2020 and declined in the beginning of this year, the document showed."
19. "Howitzers are key to American combined-arms operations—ones that bring forces like infantry, artillery, and aviation to fight together. M777s have been used in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria by American forces.
For Ukraine, the artillery, in combination with counter-radar capabilities and drones, will be a “pretty significant addition to the Ukrainian capacity to fight,”
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2022/04/how-much-can-us-howitzers-help-ukraine/366093
20. "If any of of the people in this chain stop believing the hype around which their project is organized, then the hype becomes unjustified. So the con view of tech bubbles is that the entire party crashes if one person leaves early. And once the bubble starts to wobble, 10x employees will move on to the next compelling tech vision, causing the leveraged death spiral mentioned in the last section. Leveraging your company with talent increases your volatility - either you orchestrate a revolution, or you implode.
Technology, more than any other sector, seems to have this strong pattern of producing bubbles, where one hype train follows another. Perhaps this is because the smartest, most talented people go to work in tech, and just as credit produces bubbles in financial markets, talent accelerates bubbles in technology."
https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/talent-as-leverage
21. These buggy's are cool.
"Scrappy Ukrainian troops have made do with all sorts of vehicles and weapons in their struggle against Russia. In a truly David-versus-Goliath turn of events, the Ukrainians have fielded these small, inexpensive UTVs against some of the most feared armored vehicles on the planet. But it really isn't all that surprising that combining a small, highly agile, and reliable buggy with an ATGM, paired with hit-and-run tactics, could be a really effective tool against Russia's armored leviathan."
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukrainian-battle-buggies-are-out-to-kill-russian-tanks
22. "In good times, people are encouraged by past success to place larger and larger bets, thinking they're less risky than they actually are, when often it's the very existence of these large bets that drives present success and depresses perceived risk.
Investors believe the trend will continue indefinitely, and become complacent. They invest in lower quality instances of the asset, while increasing their leverage.
And then the music stops. Markdowns lead to deleveraging which lead to more markdowns; the positive feedback loop now operates in the other direction. Eventually, the asset class overshoots as investors become overly risk averse, setting the stage for the next bull market. Stability breeds instability, and vice versa."
https://pivotal.substack.com/p/minsky-moments-in-venture-capital
23. "The inflation is entrenched because a large number of jobs are now being done from home, and the wealthy computer desk jockeys working these jobs now require a different mix of goods. The global supply chain was not prepared for the wealthiest and largest consumers to ditch their one- to two-hour daily commute in favour of strolling into their home office clad in the latest Lululemon jammies.
If you’re one of these keyboard warriors, your consumption basket in and around the office is completely different from the basket of goods you enjoy inside your place of abode. That is why inflation, at least from a goods perspective, will remain sticky.
On the energy spectrum, wealthy Western citizens decided to underinvest in fossil fuels, which provide a high return relative to the energy invested in them, and invest heavily in renewable energy, which has a much lower return relative to the energy invested.
As wealthy Westerners aim to fight the good fight again carbon emissions, the success of their wind and solar buildout — and the accelerated retirement of internal combustion engine vehicles accompanying it — is predicated on developing countries polluting their local environments in order to produce nickel, copper, cobalt, and other key industrial commodities.
Unfortunately, pulling a vast amount of industrial metals out of the ground requires miners to burn fossil fuels. The demand for hydrocarbons continues to rise as CAPEX falls. This bass-ackwards energy policy does and will continue to produce high and rising fuel prices.
Whether it’s goods or energy, the price is rising on the things we need in this post-pandemic existence."
https://entrepreneurshandbook.co/the-doom-loop-161a42bbcd50
24. "My sense is that the current reality of the market is a lot worse, because deal data is a trailing indicator – financings are often announced months after they closed.
We’ve rapidly, perhaps brutally, transitioned from a hyper frothy VC environment to a world where many deals are not getting done.
As tends to be the case, the correction started happening in public markets (sometime in H2 2021), then propagated down to the private venture growth market (Q1 2022), then to the Series A/B stage (currently). Venture tends to work as an assembly line, with each investor depending on the next stage (either a next round of financing or a public company IPO exit) for their short term success.
As the next stage becomes trickier, the natural inclination is to slow down activity to avoid having more investments slam into a wall. It takes a few months for that cycle to happen, and for a bear market to trickle down from post-IPO to seed."
https://mattturck.com/vcpullback
25. This is a pretty good geopolitical view of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Kagan is one of top analysts here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwPy1T2FvQ0
26. There is so much insight here if you want to really understand what makes the best Venture capital investors tick. I really need to read the book.
But this interview is excellent as well.
"the act of entrepreneurship, which is scary and risky, is a bit de-risked by venture capital. Venture capital is a machine for manufacturing courage. That's extremely important to understanding how Silicon Valley grew up.”
https://neckar.substack.com/p/sebastian-mallaby-and-the-machine
27. This is a good discussion on why Ukraine will win over Russia. Worth watching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOPr96L0wA4
28. "Individuals, too, have turned their attention-capture skills into wealth and power. Social media has been a steroid for reality television, turning suburban teenagers into “influencers,” B-listers into millionaires, and the attention economy has turned game show hosts and comedy actors into presidents. There is real upside in the reshaping of the attention supply chain. From Substack to Spaces, thinkers and entertainers with heft and talent have established distribution channels outside the superstructure of media brands.
What Facebook did to traditional media and Netflix did to cable TV, TikTok is doing to Facebook and Netflix both. The social media/streaming hybrid has quietly become one of the most powerful WMDs in the world, with a production army of a billion users producing its content for free. This unrivaled reserve of energy is refined by an algorithm that is a supercollider of the TV Guide, TiVo, a remote control, and the brain, choosing between billions of programs (globally) in a fraction of a second. Imagine if Netflix reported that it had reduced its content budget from $17 billion to zero … yet still added new users equal to the populations of Japan and the U.K. No need to imagine, that’s TikTok.
We become what we pay attention to. So we are becoming celebrities people are addicted to … but don’t really care about."
https://www.profgalloway.com/wmds
29. "The one thing I tell my students is that when you get to a confrontation of any type, you have to remain calm. When you remain calm, you can see the board a lot clearer. You can see the person you're playing or arguing with a lot more clearly, for who and what they are. So you don't even have to entertain that shit. You understand?
I tell everybody that they should be proficient in the Bible, even if you're not religious. To me, the Bible is Basic Information Before Leaving Earth—B.I.B.L.E. If you utilize the Bible, 99% of all the things you do bad, you wouldn’t do."
https://annekadet.substack.com/p/life-advice-from-nyc-chess-hustlers
30. "A shirt would only muffle the Liver King’s message: that the modern world has made men unconscionably soft, and that the only way to fight back is by living more like our earliest, most-jacked ancestors.
The way to accomplish this, according to the Liver King, is by following his nine “ancestral tenets” (sleep, eat, move, shield, connect, cold, sun, fight, bond), doing the most brutal workouts imaginable, and, above all, eating more raw liver—the nutrient-dense meat favored by, as his website puts it, “lions, great whites, and other wild alpha organisms.
It’s a message the 45-year-old influencer, supplement-brand owner, and self-styled “CEO of the ancestral lifestyle” born Brian Johnson wants to share with the world, and one that is communicated most loudly and effectively by the Liver King’s own bulging physique. In his videos on TikTok and Instagram, he submerges himself in ice baths, drags weights down his driveway using only his teeth, and generally subjects his body to the kind of treatment prohibited under international human rights agreements.”
“Hard times make strong men, and there’s no requirement for hard times anymore,” he said, sitting back in his office chair, framed by a wall of nutritional supplements. “Look at shelter. Today, a realtor can find you shelter. There’s no requirement for effort or hard times if you want sex, or if you want a mate. There’s apps for that.”
https://www.gq.com/story/in-the-court-of-the-liver-king-brian-johnson-ancestral-supplements
31. "It might seem stupid, but legitimately one of the best ways to counter burnout is to get a hobby. You know, an activity you do during your leisure time for pleasure?
Hobbies give us a sense of control, of progress, and of enjoyment. We do them not because someone is expecting us to do it, but because we want to. And we can go at our own pace, and we are the primary ones judging our output."
32. "We have to get better at making bets. We can't, as Buffett says, "swing at every pitch."
To make better bets, we really need to do our research (this could include doing smaller experiments). But we're looking for evidence that the market it "pulling" for a particular product or solution.
It also means we have to be patient: founders shouldn't go after every opportunity (we shouldn't swing at every pitch that comes our way)."
https://justinjackson.ca/effort
33. "If Elon is the new archetype of the Silicon Valley hero, then Silicon Valley and the world of tech innovation is a far more complicated, occasionally dark and not obviously good place than perhaps we want to believe. To fully accept Elon, Silicon Valley needs to give up on its Promethean ideal.
Perhaps in a sense this new version of the Silicon Valley hero is more honest than the Promethean vision. Thomas Edison was no Prometheus. Neither was Steve Jobs. Nor is Bill Gates.
If this is where we’re going, however, it will be a rough cultural transition. Even as the narrative of the American dream has withered, I would argue that the narrative of the Silicon Valley hero’s journey of technical innovation has stayed largely intact to date. But Elon’s brand of entrepreneurship, mixed with his success and prominence, rewrites the book.
As technology has come to engulf the entire business world, victory and success are no longer about blinding insight from a lone voice. They are about leadership, business management and wrangling a crowd—or a mob.
No longer is the hero the engineer who went out on their own and proved everyone wrong. It is now the capital raiser who stakes a claim, raises unfathomable amounts of capital and delivers a new future, sometimes at a great price."
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/elon-musk-is-silicon-valleys-new-hero-for-better-or-worse
34. So many good tips and advice here re: company building at some of the top growing startups in Silicon Valley.
35. This is an alternative view of the fall of Rome.
"Rome stopped being a nation the moment its elements turned upon themselves. And this is the real lesson for America: You are not likely to perish from outside enemies, but from your own politicians spinning a story for momentary gain."
36. "In other words, if technology is shifting away from the things that the VC model is optimized for, maybe we just won’t have as much VC. Ultimately, this might be traced back to the end of Moore’s Law. Smooth, continuous improvement in the general-purpose technology that enabled all of software allowed everything to just get better and better.
New vistas of computing opened up — desktops, the internet, cloud, mobile, wired devices — and each one created new applications and new megacorporations to monetize them. But if there’s going to be a slowdown in computing itself, then perhaps the software business has simply reached the end of a long and amazing rainbow.
I do entertain the notion that crypto is actually symptomatic of this — that it’s tech’s version of the financialization that happens at the end of every productive industrial boom. Obviously it’s possible that crypto may do a lot of incredibly useful things, but it’s also possible that tech investors are pouring money into casinos because there are fewer other places for it to go."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/suddenly-startups-are-having-trouble
37. "Russia’s advantages have turned into its weaknesses. They now face a better version of themselves in the east of Ukraine. Kamikaze drones are diving out of the sky at will. Ukrainian artillery is outperforming their own.
If your men don’t want to fight in infantry combat, and you can’t win in ranged combat, what are you left with? Threatening nuclear strikes.
You don’t threaten nuclear strikes when you are winning a war.
Every day that goes by results in Ukraine getting more equipment, training, intelligence, and funding to fight off Russia. It’s only a matter of time."
https://medium.com/@seanjkernan/ukraine-is-starting-to-win-this-war-7288d7d8bbf9
38. If you believe in Bitcoin, Microstrategy is probably the best leveraged play for it. Assuming they survive the slump that is.
"As is widely known, Saylor is in the process of turning MicroStrategy into a vehicle for leveraged speculation in Bitcoin. His strategy is to borrow as much money as lenders will give the company to buy and hold Bitcoin. In December of 2020, he issued a $650 million convertible bond and followed that up with another $1.05 billion convert in February of 2021.
The second of these was issued just as MicroStrategy’s stock was experiencing a blow-off top and the conversion price of the embedded option in that bond was set at $1,432 per share. The stock trades below $300 a share today, making the value of that option nearly worthless.
In essence, by converting MicroStrategy into a leveraged bet on Bitcoin, Saylor is exposing his shareholders to a potential doom-loop price spiral. If Bitcoin crashes (as it has done many times before), MicroStrategy would become a forced seller, driving prices even lower. In that scenario, one of the few ways the company could raise money is by selling more stock but selling when everybody knows you have to can be…challenging."
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/double-down
39. This is worth watching to prepare for the slowdown coming in SV.
Tripwires Over TimeFrames: Using PreSet Rules for Preventing Loss & Pain
Timelines are great to align with goals. It helps with planning. But the world is changing so quickly these days, you need to build some flexibility into your life and plans.
I’ve long been a fan of Radigan Carter and he has a great insight that tripwires can sometimes be more important than time frames. It’s a great way to build flexibility. It also just makes sense right? As you get new data, your plan should change. Paul Samuelson, the economist said “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
This is why the poker champion Annie Duke created this idea of pre-set rule for preventing irrational behavior or tilt. This is when your brain goes into “Fight or Flight” mode, which happens when we hit challenges or things get really hairy. That is why it helps to have a rule of the situation, like figuring out the highest amount of money you are willing to lose. Once you hit that point, you have to walk away. It helps prevent you from losing even more money, especially when your brain is triggered negatively.
This is useful for determining the future of a city or even a country. Do you feel personal safety in this place? Do you see the price of food skyrocketing? Do you see empty shelves in the stores? Do you see street and property crime numbers increasing? Are you seeing well off individuals with means moving away? Do you see companies moving away? Sadly, I see all the above in San Francisco which shows that this is definitely NOT a city that is positioning itself well for future.
These rules can be useful for investing. Ie. If your investment doubles, sell enough to recoup the principal you put in, let the rest ride. Or even, don’t put in more money if you are taking losses unless you see certain metrics change. Sometimes the action is to do nothing. Especially in investing which is oriented toward the long term thinker. I love this quote shared by Pomp from Robert H. Schuller.
"Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time. Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods. Wait. Be patient. The storm will pass. The spring will come."
These rules can be useful for building your startup. For example, You cannot hire more people until you hit a key revenue milestone in the business. Or you can’t hire new sales people until certain products or packages are ready? I’ve seen way too many startup founders focusing on hitting hiring and spending plans without the corresponding revenue or user growth in the business. This is a big reason so many startups end up blowing up as their cost structure overruns the business.
These rules basically help you not over extend yourself. These are the basics of risk management. Life is all about risk management. Having triggers can be very helpful to know when to implement alternative plans. Obviously, you need to have a plan B and be prepared to act on this plan. But having a tripwire is critical for this to work.
Batten Down the Hatches: Massive Waves Coming
Lots of talk around Silicon Valley circles about the upcoming capital drought and recession. As I write this in May, it definitely feels like the wave of capital that came into the industry in 2018 is gone. This capital that crested as a massive tidal wave in 2020-2021 has left behind in its wake, massively overvalued companies, high salaries and tonnes of VC markups in their portfolios. The 4 most dangerous words in investing “This time it’s different.”
The reckoning is here as the Tigers, D1s, Coatues and Softbanks of the world pullback. Basically they thought they had the ultimate arbitrage between private and public market valuations and this bet has gone wrong as the Fed has increased interest rates.
If you want to learn more about this: this podcast is worth listening to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezOIBfZcwbQ
We are going through a downcycle not just in Silicon Valley but in the world. My view is that we are in recession now and it will get worse. Job listings have shrunk, costs of food, goods and energy are skyrocketing.
I wanted to share a couple practical tips for those founders and individuals going through this.
I’ve had the fortune or misfortune of living and barely surviving several down cycles before. Canada in the mid-90s, Asian Economic Crisis in Taiwan/HK in 97-98, Silicon Valley 2000-2001, Silicon Valley 2008-2009, and my own self-inflicted financial & pandemic lock down mess in 2020. Learned a few things coming out of these.
Hope for the best but prepare for the worst. Get on the same page as your team. From a company perspective these are your board, your investors and your cofounders. From a personal perspective: this is your family. Make sure they understand your perspective and what is coming
Cut Burn Rate: You need to manage your cost structure ahead of the slowdown. I have been speaking with a bunch of founders who have crazy cost structures and not enough revenue to justify it. You need to cut costs NOW so you can survive. At company level, these are two good threads to follow. https://twitter.com/DavidSacks/status/1528102541723979776
https://twitter.com/refsrc/status/1527238287471292417
Cut (Personal) Burn Rate: This is why I write down all my spending. You should be reviewing these at least twice a year in my opinion to make sure you are not getting ahead of yourself. And truly understanding what is essential and what is not. I just did my review of monthly costs and even I have gotten somewhat lax over the last year.
Just because you spend less does not mean you need to suffer too much in life. My friend Per wrote some good tips in this excellent write up (https://fewerbetterthings.substack.com/p/tips-for-the-looming-recession) which i recommend on preparing for & thriving during the recession:
Raise cash by selling stuff you never use. I cleaned out the surfshack last weekend and organized the “useless” in three cardboard boxes marked resell, donate, and freecycle for further action.
Eliminate unnecessary recurring bills. I canceled online subscriptions I hardly ever use, like streaming video and cloud storage (by cleaning out the storage).
Repair stuff instead of buying new. I’m repairing our wetsuits with Aquasealfrom GearAid and learning how to take apart, fix, and clean my bikes.
Design a simpler, healthier diet. I’ve switched to a Mediterranean diet to increase energy, performance, and well-being. No processed foods or takeouts.
Learn how to love what you have. By only owning what I frequently use I appreciate my fewer better things more and don’t feel that I lack anything.
Bike, walk or take public transport everywhere. I’ve parked the car for all local trips and chosen to bike or walk everywhere within 5-10 miles. I save on gas and insurance, as it’s pay-per-mile, plus I’m getting fitter.
Wait out the sales. I need a few outdoor things but I’m waiting out the upcoming summer sales to get 30-50% off my favorite brands.
Leverage what’s free online – from learning a new language to fixing stuff around the house and listening to music, watching movies, and reading books.
But my point is not to scare you. Recessions can be okay despite the pain around you. Keep a calm head. If you have the cash, there are lots of investing opportunities at bargain prices, amazing new talent to hire and even advertising becomes more affordable.
Remember your long term goals. Remember your mission. You just need to survive. Keep going. As the immortal Gordon Gekko in Wall Street the Movie said: “You win a few, You lose a few, but you keep on fighting.”
Sometimes that is enough.Then you reap all the amazing opportunities that come out of it. Exactly just like what happened in all the previous recessions we’ve been through. Going to quote my friend Per again:
“The great thing with recessions, especially if you are well prepared, is that they flush out the irrational exuberance, greed, and excess to offer perspective on what really matters in life. Plus it’s the best time to start new ventures, when no one cares, or invest in depreciated assets, when everything is deflated.
But what happens if I’m wrong and overreacting? Well, I’d just have a cleaner shack, better use of my time and attention, and cash on hand to upgrade the essentials when needed in the future. Either way, it’s a win.”
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads May 22nd, 2022
“The most challenging times bring us the most empowering lessons.”--Karen Salmansohn
"Estonia takes protecting its population of 1.3 million seriously. Its defense budget is proportionately the third highest among NATO countries, and while there are only 7,000 active–duty soldiers in its military, it bulks up its defense and deterrence capabilities with reservists and with the EDL, which is the region’s largest volunteer force.
At the start of 2022, it counted some 15,000 members, plus 10,700 in its youth organizations and Women’s Defense League, which provides support to the fighting units. That already added up to nearly 2% of the population, and since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, the organization has received roughly 2,000 new applications for membership."
https://time.com/6164840/estonia-baltics-russia-defense-putin
2. "A millionaire Ukrainian business titan said he asked Ukraine’s army to bomb his own newly built home after his security webcam showed Russian troops were using it as a base."
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ukraine-own-home-bombed_n_625e97b2e4b052d2bd66142b
3. "A core issue with “public goods” like water and electricity is the lack of a real-time pricing signal to optimize allocation. The Colorado River is an extreme example of what happens when price is suppressed and allocations are determined by politics. In essence, the fight over its water is a fight for a government handout, because the true value of that water is far higher than the price being paid for it by the recipients. Ironically, as shortages emerge, the value of that handout increases, causing demand for it to increase in kind – the exact opposite of how a free market would typically operate."
"Ultimately, energy is life, and the water that flows from the Rockies through the heart of the Southwest is the literal embodiment of stored, life-giving energy. How and where we exploit energy sources are choices, and all choices come with tradeoffs.
Alas, we live in a hyperpolitical world, and we are led by politicians with misaligned incentives, dubious ethics, and scant knowledge of physics. As is often the case in such circumstances, we are left with nothing but a menu of bad choices to paper over the problems of the past, and costly tradeoffs not borne by those who force them."
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/buy-me-a-river
4. Great write up on the social media phenom that is Mr Beast.
"Jimmy had no headstart, no connections in Hollywood, no money. This is not a story about luck. Yet this now-23-years-old guy built a multi billion-dollar global media brand from a small town in North Carolina. His story proves it: hyper-obsession and unequaled work ethic breed greatness.
Where does Jimmy’s rise end? Nobody knows. But upon doing research for this piece, we felt more and more confident in this prediction: within ten years, MrBeast will be the biggest celebrity on the planet."
https://alexandre.substack.com/p/-crazy-until-successful-the-mrbeast
5. "It wouldn’t be surprising if Musk were treated as a supervillain, too, especially since the media is already calling him a “supervillain.” Yet should he hit the trillion-dollar level in personal wealth, it won’t be because he extorted world leaders with a diabolical superweapon or became an autocrat who treated his country as his own personal piggy bank (or benefitted from an autocrat privatizing some national industry and then handing it over to him, Russian oligarch style).
Musk would almost certainly become a trillionaire by taking two valuable companies that he’s been running for nearly two decades and making them even more valuable over the next decade or so."
https://fasterplease.substack.com/p/-elon-musk-could-become-the-worlds
6. This is quite helpful for Vertical SaaS investors and founders.
"The typical Growth Equation of a Vertical SaaS company is Locations x ARPU. Locations is a more atomic metric than customers because it takes into account how many actual retail storefronts (hotels, restaurants, etc.) exist. Scaling locations can be challenging because small businesses have fewer resources and tend to be local. Having strong product-led growth, performance marketing, or an efficient salesforce (inside and local) is critical."
https://www.tidemarkcap.com/vskp-chapter/vertical-saas-truisms
7. This loser represents all the worst aspects of so called manosphere: Right wing, Incel & Pro Putin.
Rumor is he has been killed in Ukraine while shilling for Putin in the middle of a Russian invasion.
#DarwinAward
"In recent years, the manosphere has grown increasingly intertwined with far-right networks and influencers, soaking up this radical fringe’s resonant but distinct ideas about the evils of the West and adoration for Putin and his strongman politics as well. This escalating entanglement, Ribeiro and other researchers have shown, is turning the manosphere into an ever-more conspiratorial and radical environment—and a pipeline sending often young, disaffected men down deeper rabbit–holes of extremism."
8. "To succeed as an investor, you have to be able to deal in paradoxes. You have to find the right balance between conviction and flexibility, between arrogance and humility: The arrogance to believe you can have a differentiated view on a stock in such a competitive market, and the humility to recognize that you could be wrong. As a technology investor in particular, you have to balance imagination with reality. You have to find the right balance between enthusiasm and dispassion. You also have to be very knowledgeable.
What’s more, tech and consumer have kind of merged as a sector. For example, how can you look at Amazon and not study Walmart? How can you look at Airbnb and not be intimately familiar with Marriott and Hilton? All these businesses are merging in profound and important ways, and the lines between tech and consumer are blurring.
If Intel falls further behind and leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing becomes concentrated in Taiwan then Taiwan will become geopolitically important in a way that the Middle East never was. Modern semiconductor manufacturing is at least as important to the economy as oil was in the 1970s. Taiwan could become by far the most geopolitically important country in the history of the world."
9. This looks like so much fun.
10. We are led by unserious & corrupt people in Western Europe, Canada and America (Democrats & Republicans) and the laws of physics are actual laws that will come into effect eventually. Which will cause the most amount of pain & social disorder.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbhUxdZtS7w&t=1229s
11. "The next stage of the demographic transition, after a drop in mortality, is a subsequent drop in fertility (although the relationship isn’t straightforward). Family sizes fall from 5 to 6 down towards replacement level. But then they drop further — and never come back. Indeed across most of the world, outside of sub-Saharan Africa, family sizes are still shrinking, and populations ageing.
Globally, this is all going to have quite grim economic consequences in the coming decades, with Japan the first country to go into ‘secular stagnation’. Morland talks of the trilemma facing ageing nations, whereby you can have two of the three: ethnic continuity, a thriving economy or a comfortable lifestyle without the huge stress of mixing child-raising and a modern economy.
Israel has sacrificed the latter, Japan has chosen to take the economic hit, while Britain’s leaders have given up its ethnic continuity. But that, alas, was a short-term solution, since young immigrants don’t magically avoid the fate of Father Time any more than the rest of us do."
https://edwest.substack.com/p/children-of-men-is-really-happening
12. "For Drummond and others, the tank plays an important part in war. “Everybody says war in the future is going to be fought only with drones, aircraft, missiles, submarines, satellites, and so on,” he said. “But none of them can physically seize and hold ground.”
Armor is still one of the best ways to protect infantry as it moves into position to capture and hold ground. “Artillery is the queen of the battlefield and it’s such an omnipresent threat that the only way you can move is under armor,” Drummond said. “What role do tanks play? Well, tanks basically support infantry in the assault and they take out other tanks.”
13. "I have observed that the Ukranians are good at a number of things and are better at U.K. and U.S. troops in a number of key areas. One of those is understanding a drone and what drones can do. Not just strike drones, but how drones extend the reach of your senses. They also understand how to use precision fires, they take basic quadcopters and turn them into deadly weapons. There is some very ingenious stuff going on.
The Ukranians' morale is remarkably high. It was even when Kyiv was under threat. It's just this confidence that the Russians will not win that increases with the more atrocities that they come across. I've been through Iraq and Afghanistan and I was in Mogadishu before that. I have fought against the Islamic State. Obviously you hear bad things happening in war; I'm not any stranger to how depraved people can become.
But I was saying to someone the other day that I have a greater respect for the ethical behavior of the Islamic State than I do for the Russians. That is no exaggeration. I've never committed a war crime, I've always told my guys that we fight with the values we represent, we don't adopt those of our enemy. I don't think of myself as a vicious person, but currently, I'm filled with the deepest contempt and anger."
https://www.newsweek.com/im-former-us-marine-training-ukrainians-russians-worse-isis-1699415
14. "We need to view optimism as a deliberate strategy — a way of excising our malaise, not just so that we can live more fulfilling and happy lives, but so that we can make progress as a nation and a society. And while looking at the good news is surely part of that, there are a lot of other aspects to optimism besides simply saying “Buck up sailor, it’s not all bad!”.
"In the end, I suspect the most effective method will be to redirect America’s attention away from social conflict (where vigorous efforts often become a negative-sum game) and toward the problems that we can all solve together — strengthening the nation, creating abundance, and pushing technology forward. A judicious combination of passive and active optimism."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/how-to-stay-optimistic-in-these-dark
15. This is absolutely spot on. And the West has to focus on Ukrainian victory over the Russian army orcs.
"as the country’s response to recent Russian actions in Bucha shows, the Ukrainians are a difficult people to break. The more brutal the Kremlin’s tactics get, the more the Ukrainian people are willing to fight for their homeland. So long as they believe that they can win, they will sacrifice a tremendous amount on behalf of Europe.
Ukraine’s allies are morally obligated to support their efforts.
They are also strategically obligated to help; there is more in this war for the West than just creating a Ukraine whole and free. If Ukraine can win, the ultimate result will be a weakened Russia, without the military capabilities to launch further aggression against neighboring states. This is by itself an essential outcome.
Russia’s war in Ukraine is the greatest threat to the transatlantic alliance in decades, and defeating Moscow is critical to protecting global security. It is also important for protecting liberal values and ideals."
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ukraine/2022-04-22/ukraine-can-win
16. I'm mega bullish on Latin America and will be spending more time there after 2025. (Central/ Eastern Europe for me in next few years and beyond as its region near and dear to me)
"Sometimes, the best theses are the simplest ones – and the bull case for Latin America is a case in point. It comes down to two main variables: commodities and geopolitics. Large parts of Latin America are blessed with copious supplies of the former. And by virtue of its geographic position, all of Latin America is poised to benefit from the global trends shaping the latter."
https://www.thelykeion.com/the-investment-case-for-latin-america
17. "Entrepreneurs succeed by navigating an ecosystem of counterweights. Customers want the lowest price and the highest quality. Employees want you to compensate them at, or above, market rates. Investors want to dilute your stake in exchange for their capital, and the big hand of the government is calloused and slow. Finally there’s the most formal, obvious counterweight: your boss, the board of directors.
Building a company requires that you listen to, and balance, all of these counterweights. Each has (traditionally) held influence over the trajectory of your business, providing inputs that lead to course corrections. Early-stage entrepreneurs who ignore their counterweights fail. They lose access to key information and piss people off: Customers stop buying, employees quit, investors sell. Stories of people ignoring everyone around them and coloring outside the lines make for great scripted television, but they ignore the ropes and parachutes that guide the ascent.
Some entrepreneurs achieve enormous success within this system, balancing leadership and consensus. And with great success comes great power — the power to stop listening. Which often results in a fall from grace and loss of power."
https://www.profgalloway.com/power
18. "as both the Azeri-Armenia and the Ukraine-Russia wars seem to suggest, drones have now radically leveled the playing field in warfare; this is a profound development with a multitude of implications.
Does this undermine the long-held superiority of vastly expensive armament systems, thus tilting the balance in favor of much cheaper and much more widely available weapons? If so, does this mean yet another support pillar of the U.S. dollar’s reserve currency status is crumbling in front of our eyes?
After all, in a world where military might is no longer the monopoly of one or two superpowers, do we de-facto move into a multi-polar world? One in which there is no reason for trade between Indonesia and Malaysia to be settled in U.S. dollars, as it can now be settled in their own currencies? Similarly, shouldn’t trade between China and South Korea be settled in renminbi and Korean won?"
https://haymaker.substack.com/p/send-in-the-drones
19. "I’d like to take a few minutes today to talk about the similarities – and differences – between Ukraine and Finland’s fighting against Russian and Soviet invasion.
Both invasions were launched over Russian/Soviet concern over border security, and both with attempts at false flag attacks as justification. In both cases the Russian/Soviet forces were vastly overconfident in their ability to quickly defeat their opponents, and in both cases they expected to be met with significant Finnish.Ukrainian domestic support. In both cases, those assumptions were completely mistaken, and the invasions instead solidly unified the defenders instead of dividing them. In both cases the defending forces has significantly less air and armor strength that the invading forces.
In the end of the Winter War, Finland’s military managed to hold on just barely long enough to conclude an armistice – although they were days or weeks away from complete collapse on the Karelian Isthmus at the end. The treaty cost them about 10% of Finland’s sovereign territory, but they retained their independence. A similar outcome is a definite possibility in Ukraine, although Ukraine today has a few major advantages the Finns did not have."
20. "If you spend with Ukraine, you are supporting the economy. The companies are spending money building and supporting the army," Klen says. He points out that while armies win battles, economies win wars.
Adds Neskin: "We need to help our economy and turn it back on, because of course, all money that goes into Ukraine will help Ukraine."
https://www.inc.com/christine-lagorio-chafkin/ukraine-petcube-relief-campaign.html
21. "Today’s media is filled with claims of breakthrough technologies poised to revolutionize our relationship with energy. The reporting follows a predictable pattern: sophomoric barbs launched at oil and gas (now, aimed at Putin’s oil and gas, specifically) couched in breathless excitement over the latest promising solution. However, these features do a disservice in that they are almost always heavy on the possibilities and comically light on the constraints. How can constraints be addressed if we ignore them?"
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/20000-volts-under-the-sea
22. Utterly fascinating view on vibe shifts in website aesthetics.
"So what is the end game? What happens if we reach a “vibe singularity” in all forms of art, where anyone can create anything by typing a few phrases? How does status get signaled through aesthetic vibes when all the vibes are free?
I think the leading edge of aesthetics will probably always involve human skill, even if the methods we use to channel that skill will change dramatically. When it comes to relative-performance games, we should think of AI tools more like an instrument that can be played well or poorly, and less like a replacement for humans.
If all that mattered was absolute performance, then sure, the AI would be able to perform well enough to get the job done without human intervention. But when it comes to status games, relative performance is what matters. And human+AI is probably going to beat AI alone for a long time."
https://every.to/divinations/dall-e-2-and-the-origin-of-vibe-shifts
23. “I live a monk lifestyle. It’s amazing what you can get done if you remove distractions,” says Breslow, who is dressed like a confetti cannon: T-shirt printed with a purple cartoon Bolt superhero, rainbow-splattered running shorts, psychedelic Nikes with glitter soles.
Between Zoom meetings and virtual yoga sessions, Breslow, whose stake in Bolt gives him a fortune worth $2 billion, eats a vegan, locally sourced lunch in solitude and silence. He rarely eats in front of other people. He abstains from meat and gluten, caffeine and alcohol. No supplements or illicit substances, either. The strict routine is part of what he calls “working like a lion,” a philosophy of executing in brief bursts of hyperfocus and intensity, similar to how the big cat hunts.
“There’s too much work theater, where people go through the motions to appear busy,” says Breslow, who recently instituted a four-day workweek at Bolt. “I’d much rather have you focus on your health, well-being and family during your time off, so that when you’re here working, you’re all in.”
“Most people who get rich want to be a part of an elite circle. I want nothing to do with it—I’m probably one of the only billionaires who has that feeling,” Breslow says with a smirk. “I don’t want to be in their clubs, their groups, their parties.”
24. "All the above sounds depressing for Ukraine - well not if EU membership becomes a real perspective, and Western financing is forthcoming. Actually Ukraine then would have real recovery perspective. And this war could prove to be its defining moment, it’s State of Israel moment, when it finally defeated Russia, affirmed its independence and pushed on to EU membership with strong economic development then resulting.
Indeed, the way that Ukraine has conducted this war, with bravery, intellect, innovation, and real skill/honour/grace, it suggests that this nation can be truly successful - again drawing the comparison to the State of Israel how when faced with huge external threats and challenges, it has risen to the challenge as a nation and innovated to survive, because it had to."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/ukraine-has-bright-recovery-prospects
25. Venture capital is important for the economy.
https://fasterplease.substack.com/p/-venture-capital-is-one-of-americas
26. This makes me optimistic for the future from one of the top futurists in the business.
"A lot of smart people out there want to get involved -- to build the future, instead of just reading about it and hoping for it. What should they be doing now? What are the actions they should be taking?"
"At a technical level: Get involved. If you have professional skills, how do you deploy them? Do you work on optimizing ad clicks? On marketing consumer products? On fossil fuel production? Can you deploy those same professional skills to working on clean energy or climate, or computing advances that can accelerate progress, or helping craft business models or marketing plans for products that improve humanity?
On a civil level: Can you help cut through the hyper-polarization that exists? Can you reach out to people with differing opinions, learn how they think, and help persuade them to see the other side? Can you help elect leaders that move us forward instead of backwards? Can you criticize the worst ideas on your own political side. If you’re a conservative, can you stand up for democracy? If you’re a liberal, can you support free speech on campus and in the private sector? Can you help overcome NIMBY?
On a social level: Can you help cut through the heavy marketing of outrage and fear that media use to get clicks? Can you calm the discourse down? Can you help overcome “if it bleeds, it leads” in news media? And maybe most importantly, can you help spread this notion of dynamic optimism, showing people how the world is getting better in so many ways, and inspiring them to take action – whatever action they can – to continue to make it better?"
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/interview-ramez-naam-futurist-author
27. The Russian military sucks on so many levels. Only good for killing unarmed civilians.
"They made misjudgments, but also just institutionally they don’t have the capacity. What we can now see is that they simply do not have the institutional capacity to support offensive operations deep into enemy territory and aren’t able to give units supply and combat support of all kinds: artillery support, air support, air-defense support.
With an already weak logistics base, it was an enormous mistake for them to chop their main offensive into four major axes that were widely geographically dispersed. They don’t have enough trucks. They don’t really have expeditionary logistics. So they were going to need to resupply from logistics bases. They don’t have logistics bases in Ukraine—Ukraine’s a country that they’re invading.
So they had to rely on logistics bases that are in Russia and Belarus, and then transport everything forward—what they would do in World War One, they would hope to have railroads and railheads where you can just put everything on a train and send it to your forward operating area.
And they don’t have that.
They’re a poor-quality military with poor-quality leadership and poor logistics—and seemingly highly inclined to corruption."
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/is-the-russian-military-a-paper-tiger
28. I'm a big fan of Johnny FD, one of the OG Digital Nomads. He had moved to Ukraine before the war and he is now in Lviv. Great to see him and I also wish for Ukrainian victory over the Russian orcs. Ukrainian culture and way of life needs to be defended. #armukrainenow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSe3SHSR1UI
29. "I’m with a group of cryptocurrency enthusiasts, thousands of whom have moved to Puerto Rico in recent years, as they plot the contours of the new world they hope to build. From the YouTuber Logan Paul to the former film star Brock Pierce to some of the biggest early investors in ethereum, these settlers have been lured to the “Island of Enchantment” by low taxes and long beaches. If you thought the champions of Silicon Valley were utopian and self-assured, try hanging out with the next generation."
30. This is a must listen to interview. The new world from a geopolitical and economic perspective.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf0nGBA6SSs
31. This is a very good view on rising inflation and food costs. Quite insightful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOx7oYtAEns
32. Must read.
"Approach Life with an Exit Number: On Wall Street the main reason most people don’t retire with $10M+ US Token is because of the following: Lifestyle Inflation. If we were to choose one item where people lack self control it is exactly that. Lifestyle inflation. Keeping up with the Jones’s.
To be clear, we don’t think you need to disclose your exit number to the public. In fact, you are better off keeping it to yourself. Take a look around you and decide what you really need to be happy and at that point you at least have a “number” where you lose the excuses. What excuses you ask? Excuses that say “if I made XYZ or was worth XYZ i’d be happy”. This is rarely the case.
Therefore, write it down clearly and store it away: $1M US Token, $5M US Token, $10M US Token it doesn’t matter to us. Just write it down, put it away and that number represents “no more excuses related to not having enough financial resources”
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/twitter-goes-to-musk-general-successgetting
33. This is a good man.
"Over the past decade, WCK has gone from the earnest sideline of a celebrity chef to a relief juggernaut, responding to some of the biggest crises of our time—the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, the pandemic—and countless smaller ones, in the process turning Andrés into a humanitarian star. Though much smaller than behemoth relief organizations like the Red Cross, WCK has established an outsize footprint, in part because of its outsize leader, and in part because of its strategy of using local resources like restaurants, kitchens, cooks, and food trucks.
“We are very much the Airbnb or Uber of relief,” Andrés had told me this past winter."
"In the end, I would come to see the two halves of Andrés’s life as an extension of the central insight that fuels WCK: that the temperament and skill set it takes to feed people in a restaurant—entrepreneurism, pragmatism, improvisation, stamina, planning, and, yes, charisma and celebrity—are uniquely suited to feeding them in an emergency. And that both spring from the same single-minded, elemental, almost too-simple impulse: to feed."
https://www.gq.com/story/the-frontline-chef-jose-andres
34. "These crazies have monopolized public discourse and relentlessly waged cultural jihad on western civilization for several years.
And when they took control of the US federal government in 2020, the crazies truly thought that they had won.
It was from this arrogance that they felt confident enough to take off the gloves and unleash their full crazy show.
This is what we’ve been watching for the past two years— a full blown circus orgy of crazy. We know crazy when we see it, and we see it every day.
These crazies were put in charge of the economy, public health, criminal justice, education, and more. And the results have clearly been disastrous.
Now they’re coming up with lame excuses for their failures, like calling inflation the “Putin price hike”, as if voters are gullible enough to believe such obvious crazy talk.
We the People may be dumb… but we’re not stupid. And we know crazy when we see it."
https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/we-know-crazy-when-we-see-it-35207
35. Seriously, now this is the way you quit your job!! What a badass here.
https://mobile.twitter.com/michaelidov/status/1519055836928118784
36. Ironic. Guess there is such a thing as karma.
"The attacks against Russia stand in sharp contrast to recent history. Many cybercriminals and ransomware groups have links to Russia and don’t target the nation. Now, it’s being opened up. “Russia is typically considered one of those countries where cyberattacks come from and not go to,” says Stefano De Blasi, a cyber-threat intelligence analyst at security firm Digital Shadows."
https://www.wired.com/story/russia-hacked-attacks
37. Great discussions here as always. Not Investing Advice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znpbBkvdnfg
38. Every seed stage founder should read this.
https://chrisneumann.com/blog/wow-did-my-pitch-deck-suck
39. @JohnnyFDK God bless you sir & be safe!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5OtosCTC9Q
40. This is a very good interview on the journey of entrepreneurship.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz-LQUQofsM
41. Heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time. Please donate to support these volunteers feeding old people in the war zone.
#supportukraine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnhc_CHHkCQ
42. "In sum, the secret to my success is … rejection. Specifically, my willingness to endure it. Everybody knows failure, everyone will experience tragedy. You will get fired, make bad investments, and fall in love with someone who doesn’t love you back. Worst of all, someone you love, and who loves you a great deal, will get sick and die. A core competence of successful people is the ability to mourn, and move on."
"In addition, age has given me the courage to be more forthcoming with my emotions. To tell people I love them, that I admire them. Looking at important decisions through the lens of your deathbed usually yields the same answers: Go for it, and tell people you love them."
Purpose & Mission=Legacy
“Person of Interest” is one of the most prescient action tv series that came out in the last decade. It showed the extensive reach of surveillance state and rise of cyber warfare. A bit dystopian but also a great human drama.
There was a striking quote in the last episode.
“Sure. Everyone dies alone. But if you mean something to someone, if you help someone, love someone, if even a single person remembers you. Then maybe you never really die at all.”
It has stuck with me for a while and helped me think about my mission. So many of us are so caught up in the hustle and bustle of our lives that we don’t think about where we are going or what we are leaving behind. Basically our legacy in life.
I’ve had to ask myself: Why am I here? What am I doing? What is the ultimate mission that can justify my time on this planet?
So this is what I’ve come up with and have a daily reminder of this through my Vision Board.
Being the best father, husband, son, brother and friend that I can be.
Being the best business partner for my businesses that I can be.
Positively impacting at least 10,000,000 people across the world. I would do this through my online writing, investing, mentoring/advising, educating, public speaking, consulting, coaching, donations to charity as well as the building & operating of businesses.
I’ve always believed that you should leave something behind better than when you arrived. Executing on my mission every day is the way I’ll build my legacy.
But first you have to clarify your mission as this is the first important step to accomplish it & really live. As the Bible says: “Man without vision shall perish.”
Details Matter: Importance of Operations and Process in Growing Startups
Early in my career in the technology sector, I’d always been attracted to the marketing & sales strategy side of business. The front facing side and frankly the sexy side. I had held several roles in marketing until I was offered an interesting but divergent role at Yahoo! Inc. helping run Global Sales operations. The role was about bringing the best practices, technology and processes perfected in the US operations of Yahoo! to the rest of the world & adopting them to fit for each local market's needs overseas.
While sales & marketing is the front facing side of business, operations is all about the delivery. Basically “making the trains run on time.” And it is often the crucial and overlooked side of any business. I’m not a naturally detail oriented person but operations forced me to get good at this. It made me understand the trade offs between process, people & technology and how getting that mix right was key to delivering the product to customers in the most cost effective and sustainable way. I learned so much here and it made me a better salesperson and it made me a much better executive and business person.
The hardest part of operations is if you get it right, no one really notices because all the details are in the background. People only notice when it goes badly wrong. For any ambitious executive, this is a hard way to rise through the ranks as it seems like a no win situation. But this is ironically the best way to learn the nuts and bolts of a business.
I’ve been very fortunate in being a small part of multiple fast growing businesses. And the thing I’ve noticed that ends up damaging or handicapping all of them, besides crappy leadership, is due to bad operations. This is usually also tied to crappy leadership, as many founders usually dislike delving into details & processes and love working on grand strategy and vision.
Yet the details matter. As an old Japanese saying goes: “For want of a nail, the horseshoe was lost. For want of a horseshoe, the steed was lost. For want of a steed, the message was not delivered. For want of an undelivered message, the war was lost.”
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads May 15th, 2022
“Challenge yourself everyday to do better and be better. Remember, growth starts with a decision to move beyond your present circumstances.”--Robert Tew
This is a good European view on the Russian invasion of Ukraine & geopolitics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ3zKgGXURg
2. Scary new digital world. This should be troubling to anyone who cares about free speech, privacy and freedom.
"The danger and the benefits are clear. We could end up with something like the Social Credit System that has been implemented in China, if we are not careful. Except, a CBDC in a democracy is far more challenging. Autocracies are expected to control their populations. Democracies, in contrast, are expected to protect personal freedoms.
Worse still, we could end up with a CBDC system that provides no transparency of government activities but creates full transparency for those of citizens. The combination of blockchain and CBDC will cause also a revolution in public finance because it will bring radical transparency to government spending. It should be the end of buying votes, the end of lobbying, and the end of pork-barrel politics."
"Democratic governments need to understand that their efforts to exert control could kill the very golden goose of creativity and human agency that they were meant to be protecting."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/cbdc-airdrops-airtaxes-and-agency
3. Agree with this wholly. Germany does owe Ukraine.
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/germany-owes-ukraine
4. "Overall, our take is that the war has proved a mildly net positive use case for cryptos, but nothing to get overly excited about. We’re still more interested in countries like Argentina, whose citizens are exiting their government's decades of monetary missteps in droves via Bitcoin as conversion to USD is capped. Westerners can scoff all they want about us calling Bitcoin a ‘store of wealth’, but when your local currency has devalued by 50%+ for multiple years in a row, Bitcoin represents just that."
https://www.thelykeion.com/bitcoin-in-q1-outperforming-risk-on-assets
5. I love Nutella, even though its bad for you. Great overview of the Ferrero empire by the excellent Trung Phan.
https://trungtphan.com/the-36b-nutella-empire
6. "The most prosperous societies are built around free-market competition. It’s uncomfortable — harsh even — so we’ve tried to design societies based on planning and enforced economic equality. But communism leads to stagnation, repression, and economic collapse. China’s economy went from starving its people to minting self-made female billionaires after Deng Xiaoping embraced private enterprise and competitive markets. “To get rich is glorious,” he proclaimed."
"Competition depends on rules, and rules depend on umpires. We should fight to protect competition — not winners. Because winners subvert the process. In the name of competition, they demand that their anticompetitive acts go unpunished. In the name of freedom, they insist on their right to shout down the dissenter’s voice. In the U.S., winners have funded “think tanks” and politicians, bought newspapers and cable news stations, and convinced us the umpire is our enemy."
https://www.profgalloway.com/umpires-not-kings
7. An excellent view on why the world & world economy is so chaotic right now. Well worth reading for fans of macro economics.
https://kyla.substack.com/p/the-disruption-of-stability
8. "In a time of chaotic supply chains, rising food prices, inflation, and war anxiety, being able to provide for yourself has a new glow, whether it's through "homesteading" or its close cousin, "prepping,"
9. "There is something seductive and comfortable about having fewer options and being told what to do and what to think. And Fromm's observations are all the more relevant today, with algorithms and artificial intelligence threatening to turn us into zombies glued to a screen (or a headset), and China promoting a brand of open-air jail that too many people seem to find attractive (until they actually try it)."
https://www.drorpoleg.com/freedom-and-flatbread
10. "In other words, if a major great-power war breaks out, or even just a U.S.-China war, it’s likely that Chinese military spending will kick into high gear and the U.S. will find itself struggling to keep up.
Looking at all of these numbers, I definitely do not feel secure that the U.S. has overmatched our potential enemies. In fact, given China’s economic size, it’s pretty clear we have no hope of overmatching them the way we did to Germany and Japan in WW2 — at least, not anytime soon. The argument that our military dominance is so secure that we can afford to slash spending therefore doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
Should we try to find and cut waste in military spending? Yes, of course. Should we try to improve the procurement process to get more bang for our buck? Yes, of course. Should we be trying to figure out what new sorts of weapons platforms we need in order to defeat China and Russia should a confrontation come, and to deter them in the hopes of avoiding such a confrontation? Yes, of course.
But should we slash defense spending overall? I just don’t see a case for that."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/defense-spending-again
11. "While there are dozens of others productizing venture in their own way, as an industry we’ve barely begun to scratch the surface of what’s possible. Leading firms of the future will be productizing venture, and incumbents who don’t should view them the way Marc Andreessen once commented about Angel List in a New Yorker profile: “What if we’re the most evolved dinosaur, and [they’re] a bird?”
https://eriktorenberg.substack.com/p/productizing-venture
12. "Hmm, “I have all the problems I want” is an unusual answer and I’ve never heard it from anyone else. At the time, I didn’t think much of it. Yet, here I am, years later, thinking about that answer to the most common of questions.
That answer prompts several questions:
What problems do I want?
What problems don’t I want?
Do I want a life with no problems?
What’s the value of having problems?
This makes me think the entrepreneur has a strong locus of control and works to manage his life around “good” problems and attempts to eliminate most “bad” problems."
https://davidcummings.org/2022/04/16/i-have-all-the-problems-i-want
13. “These are people who are ill trained and unable really to function unless an officer is standing right behind them.” Ryan said. And that helps explain why so many higher ranking officers, even generals, have been killed in Ukraine. It’s because “the junior officers have not got the leadership qualities or experience to make sure that the tough things that are necessary to do get done. And so the senior officers are coming down to the ranks and the front lines to make sure things get done, and that exposes them.”
https://www.spytalk.co/p/russias-draftee-ticking-time-bomb
14. "The differences in the two blockchains mirror an ideological rift in the crypto world: Crypto purists (like Buterin) accuse Solana of being too centralized, too enmeshed with venture capitalists, too willing to compromise in pursuit of efficiency. When Solana went down for 17 hours in September of 2021, Gavin Wood, a founder of both Ethereum and rival blockchain Polkadot, was quick to go for the jugular: “Events of today in crypto just go to show that genuine decentralisation and well-designed security make a far more valuable proposition than some big [transaction per second] numbers coming from an exclusive and closed set of servers,” he tweeted.
The rivalry between the Ethereum and the Solana proponents has all the makings of the classic, cutthroat battles that defined the internet before Web3."
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/can-peace-last-between-cryptos-visionary-rivals
15. "With no peace talks and few new sanctions likely to be introduced the focus now is on the fighting. Ukraine cannot cope without Western support and so the key test over the coming weeks will be whether or not the flow of equipment and materiel to the front can be sustained. In reality the West dare not let Ukraine fail now. If Putin’s last big gamble, the offensive currently developing in and around the Donbas, comes off and Ukraine is pushed back then NATO will have to live with the consequences for years to come.
This is no longer about sympathy for an underdog but solidarity with a country that has stood up to bullying and brutal behaviour and may now even have a chance of pushing out the invading forces.
Another one of the past assumptions was that at some point the Americans would have no choice but to step in and arrange a negotiated conclusion to put an end to this deeply damaging conflict. The Americans, however, have had not high-levels talks with Moscow and if they did it is not clear what they could discuss.
Once it is accepted that as Ukraine is doing the fighting only Kyiv can agree terms then there is not much of a limited diplomatic role left for other would-be interlocutors. Should terms be agreed between Moscow and Kyiv then there would be lots to talk about – security guarantees and reparations, war crimes and economic sanctions. But that is for the future. For now the main role can only be a supporting one."
https://samf.substack.com/p/nato-and-ukraine
16. Inflation in the USA: yes, sadly so.
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-112-inflation-is-hurting
17. Hard to argue with this. Particularly wrongheaded energy policy by Democrats. Yes, we need clean energy but there has to be bridge to this.
https://alexepstein.substack.com/p/us-democrats-are-engaging-in-epic
18. "This was the moment his job decisions became more liberated, too. Apparently unburdened by the need to be a traditional leading man, Skarsgård took on the darker, meaner roles that have defined this latest chapter of his career. “It might be related,” he nods. “There was another factor at play. I was getting older. And the older I got, the less I cared.
I came out to Hollywood in my 20s. It was exhilarating and exciting but also demoralizing and humiliating. I was intimidated by the industry. You go into a restaurant and there are casting directors, people talking about the business, you're surrounded. Getting older, getting some physical and emotional distance from that, it was good for me. I just don't give as much of a fuck any more.”
https://www.gq.com/story/gq-hype-alexander-skarsgard
19. "Connecting with nature. Being part of a tribe. And a motto about living life as a story.
It’s often the simple things that help us reset and find our bearings."
https://andyjohns.substack.com/p/life-lessons-from-a-tombstone-at
20. Title says it all. Maximum Bullish on Latam startup scene. Will be spending more time there in 2025-2030, after Central Eastern Europe these next few years.
https://www.nfx.com/post/latam-on-the-rise
21. "In the global dollar-centered system, the boundary between inside and outside is fluid. A declining appetite for US Treasuries on the part of Japanese or European investors might well be offset by demand internal to the US financial metabolism.
The dollar system has to be understood as containing within it the currencies that it subsumes, most notably the yen and euro-based financial systems. So long as exchange rate movements are small or can be hedged cheaply they function as effectively indistinguishable from the US financial system.
That, however, depends on preserving a stable alignment of central bank policy - it does not need to be the same, but it does need to be aligned in a stable way. That stability of alignment is now being put to the test."
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-113-tension-in-the-dollar
22. Love this. Easter eggs in video games.
"That was a common reason for early Easter eggs: a desire from designers to get their names into the world and express themselves in industries that were suppressing individuality."
https://thehustle.co/the-first-easter-eggs-were-an-act-of-corporate-rebellion
23. "As you can see, the Arctic is getting very noisy. It could be that Russia’s strategy all along has been to punch the kid Ukraine, merely a proxy, in order to create a situation that effectively prohibits the US and NATO from responding to Russia’s land grabs and military build-ups in the North. This fear of a direct, or a nuclear, confrontation allows Russia to take many steps in other locations without any response.
When Russia built troops and material up around Ukraine, people thought it was a bluff. I argued that it wasn’t. Now there is a build-up around the Baltics, the Scandis and the Arctic. In my view, this is similarly not a bluff. For those who think Russia can’t afford to keep the war up, try to remember that Putin views the Arctic as a pile of cash. Commodity prices are high and the Arctic represents an almost unlimited treasure trove of commodities, especially black gold.
Now we are in a commodity war and perhaps a physical war in places we had not considered. The Russians are fighting for control over the most valuable pile of commodities on the planet and territory that has meaning for us all - those found from the Baltics to The High North."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/the-high-north
24. "These eight measures arise from a vital lesson of the ongoing war in Ukraine: Each day that a smaller defender stays in the fight, the more constrained the invader’s options become and the dimmer its prospects for success. China seeks to win without fighting, or with minimal fighting.
For Taiwan, the best path is trying to avoid the fight by ensuring that if it starts, it will last for months, be bloody, and prevent China from consolidating meaningful gains before American and allied firepower arrives. With rapidly deployable assistance, munitions, and training, Washington can help Taiwan to become a dragon-choking porcupine before it’s too late."
25. Word! An Amazing call to action.
"What many have missed when lamenting the decline of aging institutions is that building is still happening in America. The top six companies by market capitalization in the U.S. are technology companies, two of which were founded less than 20 years ago.
Twenty-five years ago, none of the top six companies were tech companies. The prevailing trend of this century is not that we’re destined for decline. It’s that technology is and will continue to improve civic functions in this country, especially in areas where the government is failing.
It is our technological prowess that still makes us the envy of the world. Every country asks itself “How can we build Silicon Valley here?” And thankfully, Silicon Valley is no longer a place in Northern California. It is an idea, one that every city and community must embrace in this country if we truly believe in building American Dynamism.
Insurmountable problems in our society—from national security and public safety to housing and education—demand solutions that aren’t just incremental changes that perpetuate the status quo. And these solutions will come from serious founders, those who are willing to build something new from nothing.
Building is a political philosophy. It is neither red nor blue, progressive nor conservative. It is averse to the political short-termism and zero-sum thinking that permeates our aging institutions that won’t protect us in this era. There is no fixed pie when it comes to building. Building is an action, a choice, a decision to create and move. It is shovels in the dirt with a motley crew of doers who get the job done because no one else will.
Building is the only certainty. The only thing we can control. When the projects we believed were Teflon strong are fraying like the history they toppled, the only thing to do is to make something new again."
https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/the-case-for-american-seriousness
26. "These expectations were upended by billionaires’ finding a (seemingly) much better way to make their money safe: move it to the West. Most of them did so and it seemed an excellent decision—all the way to about six weeks ago. The new post-Putin billionaires will probably not forget that lesson: so we may expect them to favour a weak central government, that is, a true oligarchy, and to insist on the domestic rule of law—just because they will have no longer any place where to move their wealth."
27. The coming end of Chimerica......
"The big difference between this lockdown and the one in February 2020 is that the rest of the world is open and won’t be tolerant of disruptions. Consumers won’t wait for products – especially when it comes to items that fall under discretionary spending. If products are delayed, consumers will just purchase alternative goods or nothing at all.
Eventually, all of the pent-up orders will be shipped. If the process for ramping up shipping volumes happens quickly, then American ports will likely see a replay of last year’s shipping influx and backlog.
However, if the process takes longer, it could be worse for the economy, because it would erode supply chain forecasts and product orchestration.
This will have long-lasting impacts for decades to come.
Supply chain professionals are already looking for alternatives to China, and this process will accelerate. FreightWaves is seeing a surge in site selection freight modeling requests from supply chain organizations that want to move production closer.
Cost is only one consideration in choosing a production site. Dependability is often more important.
The cynics say North American reshoring will never happen due to cost. This was true for decades. But boardrooms are now prioritizing supply chains in ways they never have before. "
28. "While it is “premature” to analyze what Moscow is doing in Ukraine now, “one can speculate that this will be remembered as the last act of the 30-years-long drama of Russia struggling with its imperial legacy,” a struggle that clearly has had the most paradoxical of results, Kortunov argues.
Over the last three decades, Russia “has been able to turn into a very active global power without becoming a regional leader.” And it is entirely possible that “the very Russian globalism of recent years can be viewed as a kind of political compensation for Moscow’s many failures in its attempts” to build more constructive and stable relations with its neighbors."
https://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/04/the-real-collapse-of-ussr-is-taking.html
29. "The argument of my book, which is about avoidable war, and avoiding such a war through managed strategic competition and a framework to identify the strategic red lines between them, to allow nonlethal competition between the U.S. and China while still carving out space for strategic cooperation in areas like climate change, I think all that’s possible.
It’s difficult given a hawkish Congress in the United States, and difficult also given the number of hawks who inhabit the halls of power in Beijing as well.
But I don’t see it in the interests of either country to proceed down a path in the absence of such a mechanism, which would run the risk of blowing each other’s heads off if you have crises, escalation, conflict or war."
https://www.grid.news/story/global/2022/04/05/why-china-stands-firmly-with-russia-for-now
30. “New Roaring ’20s” is a big Faster, Please! theme, and I will concede that the 2020s have been kind of a bummer so far. The worst pandemic in a century. A mini-depression. War in Europe.
Of course, the original Roaring ’20s, the 1920s, didn’t start out so well, either. Europe was recovering from the Great War, and the world from the Great Influenza. Economically, the 1920s began with its own thoroughly nasty mini-depression. Output fell by nearly 10 percent, stock prices were cut almost in half, and unemployment surged to about a fifth of the labor force. (In The Forgotten Depression, financial journalist James Grant points out the “bitterly sardonic” lyrics of the 1921 hit “Ain’t We Got Fun” were inspired by the decade’s depressionary start, not its later Jazz Age ebullience.)
Rapid economic growth, driven by big productivity gains, came later."
https://fasterplease.substack.com/p/-5-reasons-why-i-still-believe-in
31. This is a really good ad promoting Switzerland. Really clever.
32. This is pretty spot on and sounds right. Here we go. Can't outrun cycles.
https://twitter.com/mikekarnj/status/1516423887248150549
33. Always a great show. Must watch if you are founder trying to understand what is happening in fundraising for Silicon Valley & the public market.
Watch & learn.
Having Life Heroes: Modeling Behavior & Attitudes
Tony Robbins has trained some of the best athletes, soldiers and business people in the world. What he says is that you don’t learn or copy those who are equal to you. You model the behavior of those at the top of their game in whatever the field is. So for example, if you want to learn shooting, do exactly what the top shooters do.
The best way to do this is spend time with, get mentoring and train directly from these people.
But in this day and age of the Internet, with the plethora of books, blogs, podcasts & video interviews online, you can learn from these folks without even meeting or knowing them.
I’ve long been a follower of the media personalities Joe Rogan & Tim Ferriss, tech investors and operators: Kevin Rose, Naval Ravikant, Elad Gil, Chamath Palatpapitya and the late and great writer, tv & travel personality Anthony Bourdain. All incredibly accomplished and interesting individuals operating at the highest levels of their chosen professions.
I also believe these hero models don’t need to be real humans either but can also be characters in tv shows or movies. I’m personally inspired by & drawn to characters like the street savvy, cool and collected Han (played by Sung Kang) from “Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift”, Humphrey Bogart’s tough but sentimental character Rick Blaine in Casablanca. Who can beat the charming, clever, insightful & insouciant Patrick Jane of the “The Mentalist”. I also love the witty and seriously interesting Dos Equus “Worlds Most interesting Man.” At a practical level, who can beat the fighting skills of Jason Bourne & Bruce Wayne aka Batman, or the ruthless effectiveness of hedge fund billionaire Bobby Axelrod in “Billions”??
By mixing & modeling these various heroes (real life or not) you can come up with your own personality archetype, unique to yourself. We humans are amazing copy monkeys so why not leverage this trait & instinct to get you closer to a better future self.
It’s an important step to get closer to your own authentic life. This way you can fulfill the advice and end goal that my friend & top investor Mike Maples Jr. shared with me, “Don’t have Heroes, Be your own Hero.”
“What’s the Point of Having F-ck You Money, If you don’t say F-ck You”: The Case for Chasing Financial Independence
The line “What’s the point of Having F-ck You money if you never say F-ck You” comes from a confrontation between the billionaire and District Attorney main characters, a very famous scene in the first episode of hit TV series “Billions”. (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1WHZQR1tZA)
Of course, I loved this scene and it’s stuck with me since then. Having F-ck you money is important, especially in a money driven place like America. Money for the healthcare emergencies (especially in America which has the most disastrous healthcare systems in the developed world). Money to afford a house in a good school district for your kids. Money to invest and build assets. Money to help family and friends in emergencies. Money to support charities and political movements you believe in.
Additionally you get to spend the time doing what you want, working at places and with people you want to. Not need to tolerate bad behavior, politics and incompetence. You can literally tell them F-CK YOU!
I remember a time in Silicon Valley when FU money was $20M usd. My take is that it’s probably at least $50M usd now. Inflation I guess. Plus the crazy expensive place the San Francisco Bay Area has become despite a declining quality of life and increasing taxes.
But actually I don’t think you need that much to enjoy the principal & freedom of FU Money.
Living beneath your means by managing your cost structure and not living paycheck to paycheck would be a good start.
The concept of geo-arbitrage helps here: doing business and earning in expensive markets & currencies (USA & Eurozone), while living in lower cost countries with a still very good quality of life. Mexico, Thailand, Ukraine, Turkey, Georgia & Portugal all come to my mind here.
FU money could mean just having 12 months of cold hard cash in the bank. I make the case here: https://hardfork.substack.com/p/the-first-step-and-goal-for-everyone
My point is that the stage of FU money is obtainable: you do not need billions of dollars or even millions to get there. Trust me here. It’s within reach of anyone with self-discipline to fight the hedonistic treadmill. That and a half decent job. Even more likely if you have a high paying job in tech or Wall Street and a willingness to work hard and sacrifice for a period of time.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads May 8th, 2022
“When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change.”--Paulo Coelho
"People do argue why would Putin kill the golden goose - if he cuts gas supplies to Europe, it’s not as though he can easily divert this supply elsewhere. He either has to divert into storage which will fill quickly, flare (oil derived gas) or simply cut production. There is a financial hit to Russia - but does he care given he will assume this business is dying anyway.
And perhaps having withstood the first sanction impact, having stabilised the ruble, he thinks he is well set for another round of geopolitical battles with the West over Ukraine but played out in energy markets."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/putin-would-nt-cut-off-gas-supplies
2. Friedman is an American bull so take it with grain of salt but he has been very prescient in his writing over the last decade and half. So worth watching for geopolitical insights. He is bullish on Japan, Turkey, Poland.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHJs__xlel0
3. Scary new face of war. Cyberwar turned kinetic.
Russia getting a taste of what they have done all over the world, especially to Eastern European countries like Finland, Estonia & Ukraine of course.
https://jeffreycarr.substack.com/p/gurmo-hackers-go-kinetic-against
4. Always interesting macroeconomic view with a crypto lens.
"Given that Russia exports significant amounts of energy and food to the world, the trade disruptions that raise transportation costs and thus prices will continue with no abatement. Please read the last two truly epic Zoltan Pozar pieces about how difficult and expensive it is to re-route commodities to willing buyers in the Global South now that Europe has cancelled Russian exports.
It will leave you convinced that higher prices are here to stay, and global growth — which is a derivative of the cost of energy– must slow. Therefore, slowing growth will take global equities down with it, unless buttressed by ample liquidity from central bankers who are supposed to be fighting inflation.
Let me repeat– the crypto capital markets are the only free markets left globally. As such, they will lead equities lower as we head into the downturn, and lead equities higher as we work our way out of it. Bitcoin and Ether will bottom well before the Fed acts and U-turns its policy from tight to loose."
https://cryptohayes.medium.com/the-q-trap-f1a38312f00f
5. This is a pretty damn disturbing discussion albeit it was done March 22nd, so its 18 days later now & the situation in Ukraine has changed.
Zeihan always gives us food for thought for the longer geopolitical view.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdP01go8wdQ
6. "To me the Russia-Ukraine-US-other-countries dynamic is the most attention-grabbing part of the changing world order dynamic that is underway, but it is essentially just the first battle in what will be a long war for control of the world order. It is a very important battle because it will tell us 1) if Putin and Russia win or lose this first battle, 2) how powerful a weapon the American-led sanctions are, and 3) how other nations will align with either side or remain neutral.
The internal conflicts over wealth and values that are causing political conflicts that are so great that they threaten the domestic order of the United States and the enormous amount of debt and money creation that are reducing the value of debt and money are reshaping what money and stores of value are."
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-can-we-tell-first-battle-long-war-control-world-order-ray-dalio
7. "If we look past the nuclear weapons problem, then a prolonged conflict will favor the Ukrainians given the state of the Russian military. The repairs that Russia is implementing are turning its military into a Frankenstein Teddy bear with differently trained soldiers—even some trained for logistics being sent into combat units and vice versa—unfamiliar with each other, with low morale, and strangers to the unit commanders put together in the middle of an offensive campaign.
If I am correct in this analysis, then the Russian military is about to hit a new low in performance. This will further diminish its capabilities and would even provide a domestic political liability to Vladimir Putin. Under these circumstances, with our support, a Ukraine free and whole is a very attainable objective."
https://shaykhatiri.substack.com/p/the-russian-frankenstein-teddy-bear
8. This is a must watch for what’s happening in commodities/food & energy markets. Also highlights the grossly incompetent energy policy in the west that needs to be fixed now. All for ESG unless it enables barbarians like Putin (ie. ahem Europe)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqBorMzO78g
9. This was a good discussion on potential deflationary environments coming & also sovereign individual from crypto perspective.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgPSYgBtq1U
10. "De-Globalization is going to be one of, if not the most important thematic of the 2020s, and as such, it’s one we’ll be following closely and discussing regularly.
It’s likely to drive new investment in underutilized and often overlooked regions such as Latin America, it will impact every part of global supply chains affecting companies large and small (which in turn will affect every product you see in your immediate surroundings), it will generate new and significant amounts of economic growth for some countries/regions, at the expense of others, and it will shift domestic political policy and the geopolitical landscape for decades to come.
All of this, paired with the Weaponization of Money and Finance, will also lead major countries (mainly large Emerging Markets) to diversify their reserve holdings among a broader set of currencies, commodities, gold and maybe Bitcoin. These are all systemic changes that are happening slowly but fast and are dramatically changing the world around us, one quarter at a time.
This decade is set to be one of those rare moments in history where economics, finance, domestic politics, and geopolitics will all collide, resulting in significant changes to our basic understanding of an interconnected world. Interesting times ahead."
https://www.thelykeion.com/markets-in-q1-inflation-energy-and-de-globalization
11. "If you hit $10,000,000 USTT in net worth, do you think your “friends” will expect you to pay the bills? How about your relatives who told you that you would fail? You know the answer, so why make it public
If you have been watching the world unfold (outside Florida and Texas which are seeing prosperity), do you think it is wise to wear a $200,000 watch and post it on the Gram? You know the answer, so why increase risk of robbery
If you understand the above, why would you want to pretend to be rich and become a public figure? You know the answer, to sell you the dream. No rich guy wants you to know he is rich. The rich guys who want you to think they are rich are hoping you follow them like puppy dogs"
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/in-case-you-were-wondering-its-all
12. This is good advice for the Democrats. Too bad they probably won't follow it. Progressive morons.
Yes, I voted for Democrats not because I like them but because they are less worse than Republicans.
But they are all grifters. Just voting for the one less grifty & medieval....man the system is broken.
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/democrats-need-to-run-on-the-war
13. This seems pretty spot on. We've lost touch with the important basics in America: food, energy & water.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNIPYuEFFFY
14. This is a smart fella. So many nuggets in this long discussion.
"What I have learned, and the way we operate, is we have the solo decision-maker model. One of the general partners will sponsor an investment and we will have a vigorous discussion, which I think is important; you want to get to the truth and not to delude yourself. I believe it is very important to have individual decision-makers who are closest to the topic and know it the best, not have decisions by committee.
I think that is the number one failure mode in venture capital. I don’t know other areas of investment, but I am guessing it is also the failure mode for those areas, and a general failure mode in management. I believe the same way for recruiting. We have what we call the Ocean’s 11 model; there are the people that blow stuff up and there are the people that do the backflips. If you went and tried to find an all-around great person, you would have a different group than if you went out and said, “I want to get a specialist in each area.”
"I view the internet today as millions of subcommunities. I think NFTs are a way for subcommunities to have cultural artifacts and create little economies within them. It is a big world, so some of the popular existing ones will go awry, but my bet is that there will be many positive communities."
"I think the fortunate thing is that securities laws and the ethos of Web3 happen to align, and that they both want highly decentralized networks. We try to encourage people when they are in this space to build it in the right way — similar to Bitcoin and Ethereum — where it is truly owned and operated by the community, and not by the original creators of the system. Ideally, everybody is 100% aligned by owning tokens. Ultimately, many of these projects should not even have companies, they should just be like Linux."
15. All of this makes sense now when you look at present underperformance of Russian orc army right now. (and the out performance of Ukrainian army).
16. "To be clear, China deported much of our media over a year ago, and mostly what we’re relying on now for information in the country is social, comprised of what could be anything from misinformation to propaganda to errors in translation.
But it looks like the simple act of singing, in protest from a starving city locked indoors allegedly in the middle of a new viral outbreak, is being suppressed. “Please comply with Covid restrictions,” implores the voice of Robotic Hell Karen via drone. “Control your soul’s desire for freedom.”
This must never be America.
Powerful people aren’t interested in solving the problem of “misinformation.” Powerful people are interested in suppressing dissent. The end. Full stop. It’s this.
It will always just be this."
https://www.piratewires.com/p/freedom-is-for-nazis
17. Incredibly valuable. Andy drops lots of wisdom here for anyone living in high stress world of Startups (and high stress modern world in general). Worth a read.
"However, since I decided to take a major step back to focus on my health and not continue with the same stressful lifestyle, I am no longer earning nearly that much per year.
Yet it was worth it. Within 30 days of making several major lifestyle changes to focus on my health, my level of blood cortisol, a dominant stress hormone, dropped by 30%. And I finally had months of dedicated time to work through the childhood trauma that had been taxing my nervous system for decades.
That’s the beauty of knowing when to say “enough is enough.” Given my modest lifestyle goals and my desire to focus on my health, I was able to call it quits with the stress of running high-growth startups and give my nervous system the rest that it desperately needed. And I was able to make a complete investment in the other aspects of my life that had been neglected for years."
"There will be times when it makes sense to push very hard on career growth, so long as it aligns with the vision you have for your future and respects the boundaries of your personal range of tolerance.
The purpose of life isn’t to sacrifice our well-being. The purpose of life is to flourish."
https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-know-when-to-stop
18. "This is why I don’t think one should overestimate the fighting capability of Russian forces from seeing some crazy martial arts stunts, or guys that knock you out in one punch. Modern wars are not fought with fists. The effectiveness of a military is down to a lot of boring and mundane stuff. Do you have working logistics? Russian forces seem to have run out of both fuel and food, thus halting their progress. Trucks broke down because they were not maintained properly before the invasion.
Stuff like that was very strongly emphasized in Norway when I served over 20 years ago. We spent a huge amount of time on maintenance and inspection of equipment. It is not cool action stuff, but if you don’t get this kind of stuff right, your equipment will break down in war and you will run out of key supplies and components.
Coordination and teamwork is paramount. Some of that is cultural. I only have a small sample, but when playing online shooter games where team work is important, I always enjoy being on a team with Germans. They always seems to have a plan, communicate it effectively, and stay committed to carrying it out. Other people may be more prone to leave to be a hero doing their own thing.
This has been written about in WWII as well. A lot of German effectiveness came from good coordination between troops. Russians downplayed this with their tanks. While Germans coordinated their tanks through radio communications, this was often not the case with Russian tanks."
https://medium.com/@erik-engheim/the-russian-paper-tiger-military-f7ceb8302cba
19. This is absolutely nuts. Poor dude: 3 month quarantine in China. Bad luck and ritarded zero Covid policy in China.
https://news.yahoo.com/u-china-3-month-quarantine-115856183.html
20. "Firstly, democracy matters. The contrast between Russia and Ukraine goes back at least to the Baroque Age. Ukraine’s traditions of decentralised power and suspicion of the state are rooted in the old Cossack zeal for individual and group liberty. Ukraine never developed the traditions of a strong imperial state.
In the struggle against Russia, this has proved a great advantage: while Putin leads his army from an empty ballroom in the Kremlin, Zelensky visits the wounded in the hospitals and walks the city streets at night. The president is a servant of the people, not the other way around."
"It is this deep love of light and hatred of darkness that has turned Ukrainians into contemporary heroes for so many people from Europe to India, Africa or Japan. Glory to the heroes."
https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/ukraine-russia-war-liberty-freedom-unites-all-b994145.html
21. This is a massive deal & major blow to the Russian economy. Maersk: world’s largest shipping co leaving Russia.
https://twitter.com/mbk_center/status/1514313609463189511
22. This is a very solid episode. Learning about what's up in Crypto and gaming.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57JKkmcvOXo
23. This seems very prudent. Finland has been smart about this unlike most of Western Europe. If you want peace, prepare for war.
https://news.yahoo.com/guns-bomb-shelters-anti-radiation-061634200.html
24. Good observations on venture capital.
https://mobile.twitter.com/kwharrison13/status/1513972170682036224
25. Pakistan Startup scene is on fire. #ZaynCapital
26. This is so damn true. Low burn rate is the key to optionality and happiness in life.
https://hunterwalk.medium.com/keep-your-personal-burn-rate-low-to-maximize-your-options-452a956bf9a8
27. "Putin’s personal humiliation may be well deserved, but a humiliated Russia is a grave threat to international peace and security. A vision of a better peace in Europe is now more essential than ever before—not merely a ceasefire or an end to atrocities and occupation, but a just and therefore enduring political order.
The United States, still the indispensable nation, must lead the West in shaping that peace. That peace cannot include Vladimir Putin or the generals who committed war crimes in his name and under his orders.
However, that peace must include Russia. When the Soviet Union justly disintegrated, President George H.W. Bush envisioned “Europe whole and free and at peace.” That vision is as vital today as it was 30 years ago. Russia is a European nation, and peace in Europe must embrace Russia as vital a part of Europe."
https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2022/04/lasting-peace-europe-must-embrace-russia/364130
28. "PayPal isn't the only company to build a tech mafia. There are a number of companies that have produced a huge amount of high quality talent like Stripe (though they probably don't love getting referred to as a mafia anymore), Segment, Dropbox, Apple, and Airbnb.
Other companies like Figma will likely see their own alumni networks spread out and build more world-class companies once they have more time. A lot of the best people at Figma are still there basking in the glory of their meteoric rise. If a tech mafia is the outcome of a high concentration of talent then the input is a successful talent vortex."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/talent-vortex
29. "The plan also calls for the construction of more renewable energy projects, the burning of more coal and heavy fuel oil (although the EU’s dependence on Russia for these materials calls into question the wisdom and viability of this approach), developing of more biogas, and implementing a significant energy conservation drive. Here, the plan feels long on ambition and short on details, except for the whole “using less” part.
We close with something that is frustratingly absent from Europe’s current thinking (at least at the continent level): a nuclear energy renaissance. According to an admittedly ambitious plan from RePlanet called Switch Off Putin: Ukraine Energy Solidarity Plan, by simply arresting and reversing the nuclear phase-out underway in Germany, Sweden, and Belgium, Europe can offset 1.4 bcf/d of Russian gas (or approximately 10% of the gap)."
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/measure-twice-sizing-europes-natural
30. "One does not need psychic powers of prediction to see where this leads. Each act of willpower and bravery by one country creates a precedent for another country to do a bit more. Only an outright US veto could (perhaps) hold back Ukraine’s friends from providing larger quantities of heavier and more lethal weapons.
The result: few talk now of Ukrainian defeat. The consensus prediction is a bloody months-long stalemate. But on the ground, Russia is retreating — and the hideous cost of its occupation is becoming clear.
That creates a kind of virtuous circle. The better Ukraine is doing, the easier it is to justify taking risks on its behalf. As more barbaric behavior by Russia is revealed, the greater the urgency, and the moral case, for doing more. And the more weapons Ukraine gets, the better its armed forces fare."
https://cepa.org/the-art-of-the-possible
31. "Humor in Ukraine is now mainly of the darkest kind. At certain moments, Zelensky appeared stunned by the cruelty of it all. He tried to explain why he cannot feel—why most Ukrainians cannot feel—much sense of satisfaction in their underdog battlefield victories.
Yes, they expelled the mighty Russian army from the northern part of the country. Yes, they killed, by their count, more than 19,000 Russian soldiers. Yes, they claim to have captured, destroyed, or damaged more than 600 tanks. Yes, they say they’ve sunk the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Yes, they changed the image of their country, and their understanding of themselves. But the price has been colossal.
Too many Ukrainians, Zelensky told us, died not in battle, but “in the act of torture.” Children got frostbite hiding in cellars; women were raped; elderly people died of starvation; pedestrians were shot down in the street. “How will these people be able to enjoy the victory?” he asked. “They will not be able to do to the Russian soldiers what [the Russians] did to their children or daughters … so they do not feel this victory.” Real victory, he said, will come only when the perpetrators are tried, convicted, and sentenced."
32. This is a pretty good one. Lots to digest here: Coming world famine & recession, growing CCP world influence if they play their cards well.
The Human Law of Unintended Consequences: How the Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions
It’s interesting if you look at the major social movements or even big events in history.
Whether it’s things like Communism/Socialism, Nationalism or even Progressivism & Environmentalism in this recent age.
It almost always starts off with noble goals. Communism/Socialism is about bringing equality in society where the mass of the population who were being left behind. Environmentalism was about taking care of the long abused planet we live in where the natural ecosystem has been decimated and plundered by man. Reducing our carbon footprint would be critical for lowering global warming effects. Progressivism is about raising awareness of privilege and trying to equalize opportunity for long ignored and overlooked genders, races and backgrounds.
Who can argue with any of this?
But too much of a good thing becomes a bad thing. Too many vitamins turn into toxins.
Somewhere along the lines these movements get abused as idiots, sociopaths, status seekers and fanatics who take it to the extremes. Communism has led to crazy amounts of tragic death through violent excesses during the Soviet Union such as Stalin’s Purges, Holodomor in Ukraine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor) and CCP in China from the great famine and the purges of Cultural Revolutions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution).
Progressivism has led to Woke Cancel culture spreading like a plague in most of the Western world. Environmentalism has turned into this somewhat anti-human movement. And stupid ESG (Environmental, Social & Corporate Governance) policies have led to underinvestment in fossil fuels and over investment in presently not reliable greentech. This is leading to massive gaps of energy for growing economies, leading to both dependence on dictatorial countries that do not share our values & gaping holes in energy supplies that will directly lead to mass human deaths. (This is worth reading more on: https://doomberg.substack.com/p/why-are-cows-sacred & watching this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atCXhFiveeg)
We see this effect even directly in our own lives. Why are most rich kids useless? Well, most self made and newly rich parents hope to spare their children all the scarcity and challenges they had growing up. The irony is that by doing so, their children grow up either entitled or unable to deal with inevitable issues that come up in life. By hiding them from any possible pain, they face an even more delayed pain later.
Personally, I am in the midst of undoing some of this in my own life. I have always prioritized work and business over family because I grew up without much money. This led me to the view that financial stability and financial resources were critical to a good homelife. This by itself I believe is very honorable: That’s what you are supposed to do!
The problem is when you take it to the extreme like I have. You end up spending little time with the family you are supposed to be taking care of. I spend almost 50% of time on the road and always have since 2003. I remember when I was at Yahoo!, people would call my wife, the Yahoo! widow. I also missed so much time with my daughter in her first 10 years when she really needed me and wanted me in her life. As a tween, she does not need me as much anymore. All of this has definitely and directly led to my now very damaged home & family life.
I don’t have any real answers here as I’m working through all this myself. Recognizing something is a problem is the first step in trying to fix it.
But I sometimes wonder if this drive to extremism is just a natural state of the human condition. This is why it’s so important to question everything you hear and read, and learn to think for yourself and not get caught in the “Animal Spirits” of mass movements or societal and personal beliefs you inherit.
The Inevitable Great Reckoning: An American Story and A Personal One
As a long time student of geopolitics, it’s been distressing watching the slow decline of my adopted country the USA. As a hyper power, it strode like a colossus across the world during the 90s: dominant on the military, economic and soft power spheres. Fast forward 30 years, the USA is a very different place. Due to disastrous wars in Iraq & Afghanistan, bad central bank and regulatory policies; with a damaged reputation, tired & inward looking while we see the rise of peer competitors. Yet, this country is still either in “Cope” mode or living the dreamland of the US being the clear number 1 in the world. We are Number 1 for now but clearly declining.
We’ve had it so good for so long that we’ve gotten weak. Comfort & complacency are literally killing us. Diabetes and obesity as well as the stupid cultural wars happening are diseases of luxury and prosperity aka #Firstworldproblems. This happened in Spain in the 1600s at their peak. This happened to France during the 1700s & early 1800s. The British in the early 20th century. Heck, it happened to almost every major empire in the world.
I think a lot about my career and life prior to 2020. It was a dreamland, I had the luck and fortune to be in the tech industry during its rise to prominence and dominance. I loved what I did but frankly I was living mostly paycheck to paycheck. Yes, I had a high net worth and assets but I was Illiquid and over reliant on single source of income with a stupidly high cost structure and limited reserves. I was very over-geared.
I knew all this but due to things getting better every year for most of my career prior to 2020, I was complacent and locked in a loop. But as the saying goes, “Life is like a credit card, It’s all fun using it until you get the bill.”
Despite a wonderful start in the first 2 months of 2020, the pandemic and reality hit me hard. I highlighted some of this in previous posts such as https://hardfork.substack.com/p/going-to-monk-mode. 2020 ripped open and exposed the flaws in my thinking & the system that I had built (or lack thereof). Talk about a wake up call.
The point is that you can’t hide from reality. It always catches up to you. You literally reap what you sow. If you have bad eating habits and don’t exercise, you will pay for it with your health later. If you don’t manage your money well, you will face economic challenges eventually. You don’t invest the time in nurturing your relationships, why would anyone look to help you when you need it?
I learned all this in 2020. And as usual, it was all self-inflicted and due to my lack of imagination and courage. The situation was so bad, I literally could not hide from it anymore. Pain, whether emotional or physical, is Information.
So while 2020 sucked, it did force me to completely change my mindset, my attitudes & habits. Pretty much my entire life. I had no choice. Adapt or die. In fact, it helped me understand why so few people succeed in life.
It’s because they are unwilling to take the hard decisions they know they need to make. They are also unwilling to consistently do the hard work. All this stems from too much comfort and an unwillingness to face their reality. They don’t want to take the upfront pain needed to make the transition.
But unfortunately as per Socrates famous dictum: “An Unexamined Life is not Worth Living.” This is incredibly true in this day and age. At the National level and even in our own lives right now. And there is no way to hide. You have to take personal responsibility for fixing your own life immediately or else you face an eventual reckoning. And like the compounding interest of a credit card bill, the longer you put it off, the more painful it will be.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads May 1st, 2022
“If it doesn’t challenge you it doesn’t change you.”--Fred Devito
This seems like a very big hole to close re: Western sanctions on Russia. But expect a cut off of European Natural gas buys with more news of awful atrocities done by Russian army against Ukrainian civilians.
"There are big risks to all this government intervention. The protectionist measures enacted by the Central Bank of Russia are effectively a kind of bridge for the ruble.
If Russia manages to come to some kind of resolution over Ukraine that involves the withdrawal of sanctions and the reestablishment of trade relations with the West, then the ruble might hold its current value once the measures are withdrawn.
If the measures are withdrawn without some kind of resolution, however, the ruble could collapse, hammering the economy, jacking up inflation and causing enormous pain to the Russian people. And the measures — some of them, at least — will have to be withdrawn eventually. Russian borrowers can't keep paying interest rates of more than 20% for long, if they can even conceive of borrowing at that rate. Growth will be stifled — the Russian economy is already expected to contract by more than 8% this year — and industry will slump."
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/04/05/1090920442/how-russia-rescued-the-ruble
2. Hope he is right.
https://twitter.com/EliotACohen/status/1511817267989954562
3. "SaaS wisdom teaches us narrow lessons: start by conquering a narrow market and expand from there, add at least as much in ARR as you burn each year, and build your product either horizontally or vertically.
Rippling rejects these norms entirely. It ignores the mimetic warfare of the Gartner quadrant. Its wedge was a data asset, not a narrow product. It doesn’t let SaaS metrics dictate its strategy.
Reminiscent of the foundational computing companies, Rippling shows what ambition in modern business software looks like. In the age of software incrementalism, Rippling is an anachronism.
With ambition comes volatility, simultaneously enabling outsized success and idiosyncratic risk.
An ambitious product strategy means an expansionary surface area, like the Roman Empire. It can become vast, but is expensive to build, there is far more territory to defend against competition, and you can burn employees out along the way.
But if Rippling works, it shrinks the administrative drag on American business."
https://luttig.substack.com/p/rippling
4. "And yet, the 57-year-old Israeli-American has quietly become a player in venture capital, despite operating as a one-man shop and having a tendency toward bluntness in conversation. In 2021 alone, Zeev—whose limited partners include Peter Thiel and top university endowments—invested $683 million and backed 10 new startups across two new funds, Zeev told The Information, a pace that exceeds that of more established VC firms.
Around 80% of that money went to doubling and tripling down on earlier startup investments, according to fund documents viewed by The Information. That’s an unusual approach for a solo investor.
Zeev said he has no intention of hiring more partners for his venture operation, despite the expanding size of his funds. The spoils that come with solo investing aren’t the only reason why. Zeev believes the typical VC partnership, with its relatively small size and shared decision-making, doesn’t provide any unique advantage to entrepreneurs.
“Either you go all the way and you build an Andreessen [Horowitz] with a huge infrastructure and processes that really can help [founders]. Or you might as well gather on the other end of the spectrum,” he said. “The middle is the worst. You get the worst of both sides.”
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/solo-venture-capitalist-oren-zeev-opens-his-books
5. "The world is awash in conversations about supportive and toxic environments, to the point where the words have nearly lost all meaning. But there’s a reason why people talk about it so much: it’s important. If you need a reminder, just watch these two shows side by side. One will leave you feeling the warm and fuzzies of a wedding or baby shower, the other will make you feel like you just escaped the high-school cafeteria of your nightmares.
Human nature isn’t pure evil or good. We do not always cooperate or always defect. Both strategies are available to us, and emerge in any given situation based on a complex interplay of factors like resource scarcity, information transparency, etc. But we do have some influence over what sort of environment we create, in two ways:
1. How we play shapes how others play
2. Where we play shapes what games matter"
https://every.to/divinations/friendly-competition-and-subtle-defection
6. Not sure I agree with all of this. But an interesting view on Bitcoin from Peter Thiel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eQNb5HPzB0
7. This is good stuff for single person room clearing. Will be useful one day. Thank u Internet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuYNpTYJb7k
8. "Europe faces non-political headwinds, too. The biggest and most stubborn is its ageing workforce, which puts a cap on domestic demand. That forces the continent's exporters to seek markets outside Europe, Claus Vistesen of Pantheon Macro told us, likely limiting much economic rebalancing toward domestic consumption.
For these and other reasons, transformation in Europe has always been slow, painful, or both. But greater fiscal union, higher investment and a more balanced economy are the way for Europe to close the gap with the US, and finally reward investors for betting on the continent.The twin crises of pandemic and war have opened the door to substantial change."
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-unhedged-3-is-a-bull-market
9. “Work will always be work. Some people work doing what they love. Other people work so that they can do what they love when they’re not working. Neither is more noble.”
That last sentence shook me. Until that day, I believed figuring out what to do for work was life’s ultimate mission. I had interpreted Annie Dillard’s words—how we spend our days is, of course, how we live our lives—to mean that my chosen work would define not just what I did, but who I was.
Much as an investor benefits from diversifying their investments, we too benefit from diversifying the sources of meaning and purpose in our lives. The question is: how?
Meaning is not something that is bestowed upon us—it’s something we create. And as with any act of creation, it requires time and energy. One of the downsides of a life completely subsumed by work is that it leaves room for little else. In the words of psychologist Esther Perel, “Too many people bring the best of themselves to work and bring the leftovers home.”
When we give all of our energy to our professional lives, we deprive the other identities that exist within each of us—parent, sibling, neighbor, friend, citizen, artist, traveler—of the nutrients to grow."
https://every.to/superorganizers/against-ikigai
10. Thread on potential strategies on war in Ukraine. Ukraine will win but it's going to cost lots of civilian casualties as the barbarian Russian army becomes even more brutal and indiscriminate.
https://twitter.com/ThreshedThought/status/1512787305416769536
11. Live by hype, die by hype. It’s what happens at the top of a cycle.
"Several rank-and-file workers, whom the company referred to as "Fastronauts," told NPR they had noticed Holland pouring significant money into deals aimed at creating marketing buzz, like partnerships with sports teams. They questioned the benefits.
"With Fast," said one former employee who requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation. "It was like, 'how quickly can we set money on fire?'"
12. More on Fast. Fake it till you make works, until it doesn't.
"We waited too long and we ran out of money," said the employee, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the situation. Fast "misjudged significantly" the mood in the VC community, he added: "What was acceptable revenue and burn and prospects for growth in the summer of 2021 looks very different in April of 2022."
https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/fast-checkout-shutdown
13. This is always a good show on what’s up in the technology business. All in Podcast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th7SiVmxU2s
14. Interesting take on the failure at FAST. Always lessons to be learned.
https://twitter.com/theryanking/status/1512833718859313156
15. Bullish on Uranium stocks.
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/sitting-down-with-sprott
16. "While individual founders can't really influence overall customer demand, there are factors you can control:
-The product category they choose (most important)
-How they differentiate their product competitively
-Their skills, network, resources, experiences
-Efficiency + effectiveness of marketing
-How they control costs
-How they evolve
The most important choice you make will be which product category you decide to pursue. Is there sufficient demand in that market? Are lots of people searching for a solution? Are there new customers being born every day?
Build a product that people are already searching for, in a category where you have some built-in advantages."
https://justinjackson.ca/customer-demand
17. "It is only the sedentary populations that are creators of arts, commerce and stable legal rules. The danger however is that nomadic populations are often militarily stronger since their way of life predisposes them to be braver and better warriors. Hence a danger permanently looms over the rather fragile fruits of human civilization."
https://branko2f7.substack.com/p/ibn-khaldoun-and-nikolay-trubetskoy
18. "The harsh reality that Russia’s dazed invaders came up against - at least as far as our media allow us to glimpse it - was Ukrainian resistance backed by unexpectedly significant support by NATO.
So if the Ukraine war marks a a break, to put the emphasis on Putin may be misguided. If the honor of rekindling history, of “returning us to the 19th century” belongs to anyone, it is not to Bunga-Putin. That honor belongs to the Ukrainians.
It is the Ukrainians, to the amazement and not inconsiderable embarrassment of the West, who are enacting a drama of national resistance unto death. Under Russian attack, they are bonding together and demanding recognition of their sovereignty. There are many other peoples who are struggling for their existence and recognition today.
The difference is that the Ukrainians do so in the classic form of a nation in arms rallying around a nation state. And the Ukrainians do so efficaciously. They have turned back a Russian army. They have saved their capital city. Those are not merely symbolic achievements."
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-109-war-at-the-end-of-history
19. "We often say famously not without good. The war is a tragedy of the Ukrainian people. But we will not only survive, but also become stronger. After the end of the war, after the victory, Ukrainian fintech will become unbreakable. In fact, it is expected to integrate into Europe with the inflow of investment and increased profitability. Unfortunately, not everyone will be able to survive the war. But those startups that survive will be the most desirable targets for investment in Europe."
20. "But one thing Russia's ill-fated foray into Ukraine has shown is that with enough outside support, an extremely motivated, highly trained, and well-equipped indigenous force can fend off an invading superpower's army and make any victory a Pyrrhic one. Pentagon planners often warn against "fighting the last war" — overcorrecting for past mistakes instead of realizing all wars are different."
21. "The Ukrainian way of war is a coherent, intelligent, and well-conceived strategy to fight the Russians, one well calibrated to take advantage of specific Russian weaknesses.
It has allowed the Ukrainians to maintain mobility, helped force the Russians into static positions for long periods by fouling up their logistics, opened up the Russians to high losses from attrition, and, in the Battle of Kyiv, led to a victory that has completely recast the political endgame of the Russian invasion.
The original maximalist Russian attempt to seize all of Ukraine has been drastically scaled back to a far more limited effort aimed at seizing territory in the east and south of the country."
22. These are brave, amazing people. What a great story. Startup skills are useful in Ukraine in the war against the Russian army orcs.
https://www.inc.com/melissa-angell/zaporizhzhia-andrey-liscovich.html
23. "You can start by simply writing a journal entry as though you’re living through a future threat — whether it’s a new pandemic, a climate disaster, an incoming asteroid, or an emerging technology gone awry.
Ask yourself questions like: What will I feel in this future? What will I and others need most? How will I use my unique strengths to help others?
Questions like these spark a “learned helpfulness” process that can make you feel empowered as you look ahead."
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22995009/future-pandemic-simulations-jane-mcgonigal
24. "Prices for food commodities like grains and vegetable oils reached their highest levels ever last month largely because of Russia's war in Ukraine and the “massive supply disruptions” it is causing, threatening millions of people in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere with hunger and malnourishment, the United Nations said Friday.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said its Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in international prices for a basket of commodities, averaged 159.3 points last month, up 12.6% from February. As it is, the February index was the highest level since its inception in 1990.
FAO said the war in Ukraine was largely responsible for the 17.1% rise in the price of grains, including wheat and others like oats, barley and corn. Together, Russia and Ukraine account for around 30% and 20% of global wheat and corn exports, respectively."
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/food-prices-soar-record-levels-094243997.html
25. We need to do more to support Ukraine against the barbaric Russian invasion. These are brave men on the frontlines defending their country & democracy against an autocratic evil.
Cut off the Russian oil purchases and send more weapons to Ukraine.
"I ask what the marines think about foreign support for their country. Will NATO “close the skies” over Ukraine, they ask. Almost everyone in the country asks this question. I say I know as much as they do, that Western leaders are afraid a “no-fly zone” could lead to nuclear war. Oleg nods thoughtfully. Oleksiy sneers: “Well, we have already fought Russia for eight years without NATO, anyways.”
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/ukraine-war-marines-front-lines-1334770
26. In principle, think this is right. Don't like it but think it’s correct.
"The ending of the financially based system is being hastened by geopolitical developments. The West is desperately trying to sanction Russia into economic submission, but is only succeeding in driving up energy, commodity, and food prices against itself. Central banks will have no option but to inflate their currencies to pay for it all.
Russia is linking the rouble to commodity prices through a moving gold peg instead, and China has already demonstrated an understanding of the West’s inflationary game by having stockpiled commodities and essential grains for the last two years and allowed her currency to rise against the dollar."
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/commodity-currency-revolution-begins
27. Some interesting things happening on freight and supply chain stuff.
https://twitter.com/FreightAlley/status/1513145199802920972
28. "In other words, the perceived need for a higher salary and for higher prices to withstand future inflation leads to higher prices and higher salaries. And inflation keeps churning on.
This cycle is kind of like a game of musical chairs.
Businesses and people know inflation will end at some point, but they want to obtain the best possible outcome before it’s over. So they race around the circle faster and faster, asking for increasing wages and sending costs higher and higher.
The deeper inflationary psychology takes hold, the harder it is to shake off and the longer the cycle continues."
https://thehustle.co/why-thinking-about-inflation-leads-to-more-inflation
29. Everyone seems to believe China will overtake the USA. Maybe, but only because the USA screws it all up (which it is kind of doing right now) not because of Chinese growth. China has played their bad cards well in past, not sure anymore.
"In many ways, productivity growth is the thread that ties together the entire story of the Chinese economy since 2008. Basic economic theory says that eventually the growth benefits of capital accumulation hit a wall, and you have to improve technology and/or efficiency to keep growth going.
Some countries, like Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, have done this successfully, and are now rich; other, like Thailand, failed to do it and are now languishing at the middle income level.
For several decades, Chinese productivity growth looked like Japan’s or Korea’s did. But slightly before Xi came to power, it downshifted to look a bit more like Thailand."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/five-reasons-chinas-productivity
30. "While the West has imposed unprecedented levels of sanctions against the Russian economy, Russia’s Central Bank has jacked up interest rates to 20% and the Kremlin has imposed strict capital controls on those wishing to exchange their rubles for dollars or euros.
It’s a monetary defense Putin may not be able to sustain as long-term sanctions weigh down the Russian economy. But the ruble’s recovery could be a sign that the sanctions in their current form are not working as powerfully as Ukraine's allies counted on when it comes to pressuring Putin to pull his troops from Ukraine. It also could be a sign that Russia's efforts to artificially prop up its currency are working by leveraging its oil and gas sector.
“For Russia, everything is about their energy revenues. It’s half their federal budget. It’s the thing that props up Putin’s regime and the war,”
31. Go Ukraine! Slaiva Ukraini!
"If a single person can be credited with Ukraine’s surprising military successes so far — protecting Kyiv, the capital, and holding most other major cities amid an onslaught — it is Zaluzhnyy, a round-faced 48-year-old general who was born into a military family, and appointed as his country’s top uniformed commander by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in July 2021. Zaluzhnny and other Ukrainian commanders had been preparing for a full-on war with Russia since 2014.
Zaluzhnyy has said that the Ukrainian military is filled with young, professional soldiers and future leaders. “These are completely different people — not like us when we were lieutenants. These are new sprouts that will completely change the army in five years. Almost everyone knows a foreign language well, works well with gadgets, they are well-read,” he told ArmyInform. “New sergeants. These are not scapegoats, as in the Russian army, for example, but real helpers who will soon replace officers.”
“We have already started this movement, and there is no way back,” he added. “Even society will not allow us to return to the army in 2013.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/08/ukraines-iron-general-zaluzhnyy-00023901
32. This is why Ukraine will win: the amazing people. But we need to help them against the barbaric Russian army.
#ArmUkrainenow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Vv30JAFcx4
33. This is a great episode this week. All in Podcast.
Counting the Uncountable: Power of Intangibles
We are now in Day 65 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, of what many people thought would be a 2-3 day action.
Thankfully that has not been the case. But how did so many analysts and experts get this so wrong?
When you put it on paper it should have been over very quickly: the Russian aggressor with the 4th or 5th most powerful military in the world and population of 140M people versus Ukraine, a country with 40M people and a military ranked number 22.
But what the experts could not account for were morale, leadership at the political & military institutions, professionalism of the officer corp and how the regular people stepped up to support and help the defense of the country Ie. unity. Pretty much aspects that were all underestimated on the Ukrainian side and widely overestimated on the Russian side. Based on the performance of the Russian army so far, they have clearly been in deficit from a military leadership, organizational, and morale perspective. Russian soldiers have been seen to be only effective in robbing, raping and brutalizing Ukrainian unarmed civilians. Oh yes, and also shelling cities from afar like the orcs they are.
Military veteran and expert Mick Ryan tweets some good points worth reading here:
https://mobile.twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1518018839610466304. There is also a very insightful interview here with ex-US Military Colonel Joel Rayburn in The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/is-the-russian-military-a-paper-tiger. Net net: the Russian military is “a poor-quality military with poor-quality leadership and poor logistics—and seemingly highly inclined to corruption.”
Hence the situation we find ourselves now with Russia having lost the battle of Kyiv, lost the flagship of their Black Seas Fleet, lost 10 out of 20 generals and an estimated quarter of the military force sent into Ukraine. Russia seems to be cutting back on their larger objective of subsuming Ukraine as a sovereign country. We find Ukraine holding their own at a tactical and strategic level albeit at a horrendous price that saddens me.
It’s almost the same as when it’s a big corporation versus a startup. On paper, a big company should win with all the resources, people, brand and money. But its strength is also its weakness. The larger size leads to more process and usually bureaucracy & politics. A risk averse culture and zero focus and sense of urgency among the teams. All opposite to a good startup who has the opportunity to attack a problem with a blank piece of paper, a new orthogonal approach and lower cost structure that could upend the established business model. Also all the immeasurable soft stuff like culture, energy, mission, focus & morale.
The “Soft stuff” is the hard stuff as they say. There are so many critical things in war and in business you just cannot measure it. Like culture & leadership for example. How often have you looked at the balance sheet of a company and it looks incredibly healthy. But then you walk around the office or talk to people and you realize how incredibly broken the business or culture is? Way more times than I can count.
You cannot know how brave or capable someone is in a situation until it happens. I am personally in awe of my Ukrainian friends. With the proof of awful atrocities coming out of Bucha and Irpin against civilians by the barbaric Russian army, no Ukrainian will back down now. Neither should anyone supporting Ukraine against the Russian aggressors either.
I remind many of my Western friends, this should be no different than how any of us lucky people here would feel or do if someone came, invaded and attacked our home and family. I would hope we would stand up and fight too.
This is as close to a clear good and evil as anyone has seen in history in my view. It’s right (Ukraine) versus wrong (Russia) and anyone who says otherwise can unfriend me and F—k off.
So please continue to support Ukraine against the Rashists (Russian Fascists) army. This is not just an attack on Ukraine but an attack on the ideals of the Western liberal order, democracy, international law, sovereignty, morality and decency. The Russian army has had a long, evil tradition of raping and looting there way through Eastern Europe and Germany even back in World War 2. These modern day barbarians must be defeated.
Please support the Ukrainian Armed Forces: https://armysos.com.ua
Please support Ukrainian companies: https://spendwithukraine.com
Please support the organizations helping the estimated 5M Ukrainian refugees who have fled Ukraine for safety. These are very worthy Charities here: https://wck.org, https://help.rescue.org/donate/ukraine-acq, https://www.care.org & https://novaukraine.org.
And remember: do not discount the soft stuff like culture, morale and leadership as this is THE critical factor of success in anything you do or build. Slava Ukraini!
9 Meals to Crazy: The Real World Strikes Back
I live in the wonderful bubble of Silicon Valley where we focus on the future enabled by the technology that surrounds us. The problem is this bubble has hidden us to the real world. Yes, technology is amazing. I love the possibilities of a decentralized world through Crypto, or the new virtual World of the Metaverse. Or how amazing that Software is eating the world.
All really good stuff. But let’s use the First principles that everyone in SilIcon Valley talks about. What about the energy or electricity that enables this? If there is no power, there is no technology.
And let’s also not ignore something as basic as food? Not that crap like Soylent or crickets (okay I admit the ground up crickets actually are pretty good in cookies). But real food. The chicken, beef, bread, fruits, vegetables. People need to eat. And most groceries have less than 3 days of supply, reliant on a “Just in Time” system to get food from thousands of miles away. Do people remember the empty shelves of pasta back in March 2020 during the start of the pandemic?
In both of these key elements reliant on a cascading chain of dependencies and failure. highlighted by recent supply chain issues and freak weather occurrences. The winter storm in Texas that led to black outs in february 2021 for example. For food breakdowns, you can point to either shipping & insurance issues, bad crops from weather, rising costs of feed and fertilizer and geopolitical issues stemming from the Russian invasion of Ukraine of whom supplies food stuffs for a large portion of the world. (It is a top producer and exporter of Sunflower oil, 4th largest exporter of barley, corn and potatoes)
We, in the USA and Silicon Valley particularly, have taken both cheap food and energy for granted. It’s amazing to me that in their insularity, many technologists think that the rising inequality and increasing fuel and food prices will not affect them. Or they don’t consider this at all, which is strange to me. Especially when these folks fit the stereotype of techies being the least physically fit or capable people in a food riot, let alone societal breakdown.
This is a gross generalization of course as I know some very physically fit and well trained prepper type techies (and not so rich as they claim here) as per this New Yorker article: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich but the point still stands. And for the record for the folks who laughed at preppers back then, who is laughing now?! :)
The questions I ask people:
How are you going to order grocery delivery when you have no power?
Heck, do you think there will be any internet or telephone connection in this situation?
There will certainly not be any Doordashers or Uber Eats bringing you food.
This brings me to Jared Diamond’s book “Collapse”, where he covers how civilizations rise but over time become so specialized and overly complex. They become so fragile that when there is a big massive external change like weather or invasion or such, the society is unable to adapt and collapses. As per complexity theory, there is always a tipping point beyond the point of no recovery.
Yes, I believe in a bright, technology driven future of prosperity like that of Star Trek. But even in that timeline, Earth had to go through some awful challenges like their own version of World War 3: aka The Eugenics Wars featuring Khan Noonien Singh for those who loved “Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan”.
This is also why it’s incredibly important to have a prepper mindset. Be like the Mormons, who maintain community and store months of extra food. Canned, dry foods that keep & circulate. You save money by buying in bulk too. And in times of need, you can also help less prepared neighbors. Water stores are also quite invaluable for access to some via nature. Rain storage tanks are also good. I should add that you can survive for 7 days without food but no more than 3 without water.
This is also why I stress the importance of self defense skills and weapons. Guns in the case of the USA. If everyone else has a weapon, which sort of feels that way here having moved to America from Canada, it’s probably not a good idea to not have one. If only to defend yourself, your family and your goods. Learn how to use it properly. Training is key.
My point is we cannot ignore the real world in the long run. It has a way of biting us in the butt when we can least afford it. Building some level of slack in your system through a bit of self sufficiency will be important to weather any of the incoming and literal storms coming our way. It’s another form of insurance.