Every Little bit Helps: The Game of Inches
I recently started volunteering at the SF-Marin Food Bank to help with packing. It’s full of volunteers who show up for a few hours to pack bags of food to give to those who need it. A wonderful community effort that has become one of the highlights of my week when I am in San Francisco. One of the things I’ve noticed is the difference in the wide range of volunteers, old people, young people, middle aged people, all working together to get something done. When there are many volunteers we get it done pretty fast. With less, it’s a longer process and exemplifies the saying “Many Hands make short work.”
The point is that every little bit of effort and help matters. This is why I love startup life, because in an early stage startup every little dollar helps. Every little bit of energy and effort really matters. There is no room for prima donnas and talk without action. Frauds who talk a big game but don’t deliver get found out quickly. This is all in comparison to large corporations where you can hide in the large size of the budgets and organization and also in the complexity and opacity.
In life this is the same thing. As long as you move forward even in small ways, it’s all that matters. The process of “Aggregation of Marginal Gains” I’ve quoted many times.
There is a famous scene from the football movie “Any Given Sunday”, where the coach Al Pacino is trying to rally his team at halftime seen right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1yWSePMqsk
“You find out life’s this game of inches. So is football. Because in either game, life or football, the margin for error is so small -- I mean one-half a step too late, or too early, and you don’t quite make it. One-half second too slow, too fast, you don’t quite catch it.
The inches we need are everywhere around us.
They’re in every break of the game, every minute, every second.
On this team, we fight for that inch. On this team, we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch, because we know when we add up all those inches that’s gonna make the fuckin' difference between winning and losing! Between living and dying'!
I’ll tell you this: In any fight, it’s the guy who’s willing to die who’s gonna win that inch. And I know if I’m gonna have any life anymore, it’s because I’m still willing to fight and die for that inch. Because that’s what living is! The six inches in front of your face!!”
This scene was shown at a big Yahoo! Annual Sales Conference event over twelve years ago and it still gives me the chills. I watch this whenever I face inevitable setbacks or the hard times that come up in life. So what’s the point besides it being an inspiring and amazing piece of drama?
I think it relates to so many aspects of business and our life. Yes, we should want to make big moves and have lots of massive progress. But sometimes, or most of the time, it’s just about moving a few little inches forward. Every little bit you do actually matters, even if it does not feel like it at the moment. If you sustain this over a long period of time, you may be pleasantly surprised about where you end up.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads July 24th, 2022
“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” ― Robert F. Kennedy
The answer is arrogance and naivety. But also not convinced Putin or Xi are winning either.
"It was the pandemic era of 2020-22 that broke the spell of a manageable and fixable world. When everyone started to lockdown, China completed its takeover of Hong Kong and when we came out of it Russian tanks were rolling into Ukraine. Western democracies are all deeply pre-occupied with Covid, inflation, energy conversion, populism and no longer have the spirit and capacity to fully engage with and shape a world that has now changed beyond recognition.
Democracy is no longer the winning doctrine, there’s real merit and currency in brutally ignoring all the rules and push your agenda forward while enriching yourself in the process.
In July 2022 Xi and Putin are winning. It is impossible to get the future right, but it is fair to ask today: how could we have got it so wrong?"
https://pieterdorsman.substack.com/p/how-did-we-get-it-so-wrong-
2. Fascinating discussion on the state of the Venture Capital industry.
"Similarly, there’s no reason why a shift from home runs to doubles and triples should be bad for the VC industry. What matters is the return of a portfolio, not the return of any single investment. (I’ll do a future post about how VC portfolio returns themselves have evolved over time.)
But this kind of shift might mean that VCs need to adjust their strategies and their expectations. If returns are getting less positively skewed all across the distribution, it means that you’re going to need a larger number of successes than before. It might take 4 or 5 moderately big successes to compensate for the inevitable large number of failures, rather than 1 or 2 mega-successes.
Also, there’s the possibility that the establishment of a standardized, routinized VC ecosystem is actually discouraging talented entrepreneurs from doing truly adventurous, blue-sky exploration.
Why stake your fortune on a ???% chance of creating a totally new industry and being a $100-billionaire, when you could enter a fairly established space and have a 4% chance of being a $1-billionaire? If the difference between adventurers and gamblers is purely a matter of temperament, then this is no problem, but if America as a whole is moving toward incremental innovation, it might be a problem."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/will-vc-produce-fewer-home-runs-in
3. This guy is a right wing hack, Putin apologist and a--hole. I hate most of his biased writing, especially on the barbaric Russian invasion of Ukraine (at least West is right on fighting that).
But in this case, broken clock is right twice in the day. I must agree with his view on our worthless, immoral, unserious politicians in the west who are only very slightly better than the evil CCP & Putin.
"And after two years of our prized “free world” autocrats unleashing relentless COVID-excused tyranny upon their own populations, the rules seem to be continuously changing and reoriented at a moment’s notice.
When Russia invades Ukraine, they are violating the rules-based order. However, when Western powers invade the Middle East and Africa, or subjugate their own citizens in the name of a virus, they are not violating the rules, because their hubris-fueled moral supremacy allows these powers to determine who is and is not in good standing with the “rules-based world order.”
https://dossier.substack.com/p/build-back-better-20-global-elites
4. "The warrior religion must steel itself against corruption from the inside. It’s purpose is to help it’s people survive and thrive against regime persecution, not to overthrow the government.
It exists to build outstanding men. To come to each other’s aid against a hostile regime and laws. To be an in group. Any actions carried out would be in the shadows, without risk to the religion itself, and only against existential threats. The goal is to become a people that aren’t to be fucked with, not continue to be the people relentlessly fucked with as we are today. The warrior religion exists to give men the purpose the regime wants to withhold from them, to forge a new, more resilient culture.
The warrior religion isn’t concerned with the country. It’s concerned only with the well being of its people. The country abandoned our people sometime ago."
https://resavager.substack.com/p/survival-in-the-warrior-religion-51d
5. Very interested in commodities. It’s an important part of your portfolio. Rick Rule is a legend in the space.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj_ff56VXvw
6. The West needs to wake up & get it's Sh-t together. Our enemies in China & Russia are not resting.
"These are all just questions. But, it seems obvious that these faraway places and pursuits seem quite irrelevant to daily life in the political capitals of London and Washington DC. Most won’t connect the dots between Sunak, Svalbard, and those US Dollar Smackers let alone Digital Gold from CAR. Meanwhile, a few days ago Moscow’s Foreign Minister Lavrov said “As far as an iron curtain is concerned, it’s practically already coming into place.”
Might the new Iron Curtain be a Gold-based digital curtain rather than a physical fence with people on one side using USD Smackers and those on the other using Russian Crypto? Who would suspect given that hardly any policymakers in the West really understand crypto?
Plus, crypto has crashed! What is there to be concerned about especially given that Donald Trump and Boris Johnson (thanks to Cassidy Hutchinson and Mr. Sunak standing up for trust in government) are taking up all the bandwidth for thinking about the world? For Moscow, there may be no better time and no better way to surprise the West with a smack in the eye when they are not looking."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/sunak-svalbard-and-smackers
7. WORD! Everyone in tech, government and defense industry needs to read this.
"Whereas hard tech is a function of both innovation (zero to one) and scale (one to 100), hard power that comes from hard tech is primarily a function of scale. Thus, we must accrue additional hard power by investing in and building hard tech that scales in light of our adversaries’ increasing strength. The goal is not just to support hard tech companies that can go from zero to one, but also companies that can go from one to 100. Only through this can we create a new industrial base and renew our military might: two of the necessary backbones for continued progress and prosperity in America."
https://countdown.substack.com/p/hard-tech-and-hard-power
8. "Perhaps most important, and a lesson that the Finns have learned, is that volunteers enhance deterrence. While Ukraine was unable to deter Russia’s invasion, the impact of these volunteers in the current war may serve as a deterrent to future wars. The Baltic states have embraced this strategy. And this also has implications for deterring a Chinese invasion of Taiwan; China is much less likely to invade if it believes the entire population will take up arms against it and this force can actually be effective.
The defense of Kyiv demonstrated that volunteers can play an important role in maneuver and guerrilla warfare, although the latter was only minimally observed in the defense of Kyiv. Yet the impact of volunteers is likely more muted in the attrition warfare currently being waged in Ukraine’s east. With more static positions and shorter supply lines, it offers the volunteers fewer opportunities to leverage their strengths. Expect to see them organized into more traditional battalions as they were in 2014.
The war is far from over, but Ukrainian volunteers have left an indelible mark on how smaller nations fight."
https://www.militarytimes.com/opinion/commentary/2022/07/05/how-volunteers-can-defeat-great-powers
9. This is always a fun & educational discussion. Not Investing Advice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBiAoChaB9Y&t=2243s
10. This is a must read for all founders. And for newbie VCs trying to learn the basics of evaluating a business.
https://chrisneumann.com/blog/is-your-revenue-real
11. Super excited too see this new VC fund from my old friend Bogdan.
Go Underline Ventures!
Also bullish on the Romanian tech scene too.
12. Recent online to offline movement. So bizarre but fascinating.
The Gentleminions phenomenon.
https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/gentleminions-tiktok-meme-ban-at-movie-theaters
13. "Russia is not the military superpower the Old West has assumed it to be and may not be able to sustain a war of attrition and occupation in Ukraine.
Russia should no longer be genuflected to; it is now revealed as a pariah state that cannot be bargained with and has far less strength in depth — economic, demographic, military, social — than previously assumed.
Russian threats to NATO have been hollow and Putin does not want to provoke the West.
It is in the West’s strategic interests that Russia is humbled in Ukraine and emerges unable to realistically threaten its neighbours.
Ukraine has the wherewithal to defeat Russia’s invasion if it can rely on the West to be the engine of recuperation and force-development that gives it a winning position in the war of attrition.
Mixed messaging from the West is likely to encourage Russia to persist, and third-party powers to continue to hedge.
Therefore:
The West should arrange itself deliberately as the supporter of Ukrainian military capacity.
If it does, then Ukraine should be able to defeat Putin’s intent for his invasion and negotiate terms for ending the conflict that are acceptable to Ukraine and leave Russia militarily and economically exhausted.
If this happens global order is enhanced and the West can concentrate on addressing the main threats of climate change and Chinese authoritarianism.
If the opposite happens, then we waste future resource for decades in defending against a Russian threat we did not need to see recover. China learns the right tactical lessons from Ukraine and the wrong strategic one. And we have little left in the locker to deal with climate change, food shortages and energy security."
https://policyexchange.org.uk/staying-power-how-ukraine-can-prevail-tactically-and-strategically
14. Looks like Coatue is doing pretty well with its big cash position.
"Laffont warned that bear markets are regularly marked by abrupt upward swings, only to get erased by a further downturn.
As a result, his firm has been cautious and holds a large cash position.
Stock moves have been highly correlated so trying to pick outliers has meant getting dragged down by the broader market.
Still, there are signs that Coatue will start placing bets — not just command premium management fees for holding onto their investors’ cash. Coatue has started to stake out — at least intellectually — bullish positions on Tesla, DoorDash, Nvidia, Snap, and others."
https://www.newcomer.co/p/folk-songs-and-stock-charts-coatue
15. For those wondering WTF is #Gentleminions?
https://www.gq.com/story/minions-rise-of-gru-gentleminions-tiktok-trend-suits-yeat
16. "Magness has become not just a successful running coach but an expert on human performance, working with everyone from NASA to Nike, and co-authoring the 2017 book Peak Performance with Brad Stulberg. What makes his new book unique—and especially useful—is that it threads the needle between the outdated outlook of “no pain, no gain” and the more contemporary model of self-care, which can easily tip into lazy self-indulgence.
He’s exploring a different, more productive way to navigate our pain that neither advocates ramming straight through it nor tries to escape it entirely. That might be the discomfort of trying to run your fastest mile, or will yourself through another hour of work, or simply use your phone less.
Whatever pain you’re trying to endure, here Magness lays out the lessons he’s learned on persevering in a more productive manner."
https://www.gq.com/story/steve-magness-do-hard-things-interview
17. Probably something to learn here. Brute forcing creative brain work is not always the best thing to do.
https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/math-genius-i-work-3-hours-a-day-5374412
18. For the history buff. The Dutch Military Revolution which led them to becoming a great empire.
https://twitter.com/LandsknechtPike/status/1544868388392124417
19. It is about time. We need to bring our industrial base back to North America & away from China.
https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/manufacturings-made-in-america-boom-5370300
20. "Despite his many moral offenses against what the progressive would call “good,” Herakles seeks to repent for each wrong doing he does. He never ran from responsibility. At one point, he makes himself a slave for three years to makeup for a wrongful death.
Morality changes with the times and people, but nature is eternal. Nature has laid down the laws that guide peoples and species to the top of the food chain. It’s there, you just have to look for it. Progressives falsely believe they can progress themselves out of nature and in the process, have diluted the blood of heroes. You must turn from the progressive path if you see the value of the warrior religion. The warrior religion will be founded in nature, in reality, not some naive dream about how the world should be."
https://resavager.substack.com/p/on-the-diluting-of-heros-blood
21. This is a big problem that Hollywood has sold out to China & CCP.
"The movies have become a proxy for the broader rivalry forming between the US and China. I think it ultimately becomes a story of values, and what values are shipped around the world. For a hundred years, Hollywood’s movies have been considered the default global entertainment; someone once said that the movies helped turn America into “an empire by invitation,” a gravitational pull toward the country and its way of life. I think China, which sees its turn at dominating a century, wants to copy that playbook.
So there will be major implications beyond the cinema, when it comes to which heroes are elevated, what stories are told, what stories aren’t told, and ultimately how moviegoers around the world see themselves and see the people in charge."
https://www.vox.com/23196838/china-hollywood-red-carpet-schwartzel
22. My friend Hiten was talking about this back in 2018 and he was right as usual.
"With that in mind, I recently happened upon this excellent talk by Rippling founder Parker Conrad on the virtues of building “Compound Startups” (a.k.a. companies with a multi-product portfolio rather than a point solution). In the talk, Conrad explains why the “focused” approach to building a software business may be outdated, and makes a case for the strategic advantages to building a compound startup like Rippling."
23. Always a good perspective here. Net net: its ugly in growth stage phase now with the inevitable hangover from the crazy party last few years.
"- Private markets take cues from the public markets, moving from late-stage to early stage. In 2020-2021, the multiples for publicly traded companies exploded as investors valued “growth at all costs” over profitability or unit economics. Similarly, private market investors poured capital into high-growth mature companies at multiples believed to be the "new normal" of how companies would be received in the public markets.
Today, the pendulum has swung entirely back to historic averages on multiples in the public markets, and the private markets have taken the same cue on newly priced deals. A recent example is the buy-now-pay-later start-up Klarna which is reportedly preparing to raise capital at a $6.5B valuation ($1.6B in reported annual revenues) –, a more than 85% discount to the last valuation of $45B."
https://ventureunlocked.substack.com/p/whats-happening-in-growth-stage-vc
24. "That means, in part, acting thoughtfully but with the utmost effort, understanding that war is more bar fight than chess game. Or, to put it in the simpler words of Jim Malone, Eliot Ness’s counselor in The Untouchables, “You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way! And that’s how you get Capone.”
Al Capone is an apt analogy for what the West confronts in Russia: a particularly noxious mix of Mafia mentality, hypernationalist ideology, and totalitarian technique. Elegance is not the Russian way, and it cannot be our way. This is the light in which one should measure the accomplishments of NATO’s recent gathering in Madrid."
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/07/madrid-nato-summit-2022-russia-ukraine/661494
25. "The bottom line is that emerging fund managers have indeed an edge compared to established VCs in terms of fund performance. On the other hand, as with most investment opportunities, greater upside also means a greater risk. Therefore any investor looking to back successful new firms ultimately needs to be able to assess whether the managers of such VC funds have the ecosystem connections and unique insights to deliver on their investment thesis."
26. "That said, founders also need to lower their expectations—about the amount of money they can raise, the price at which they can do it and the amount of time they’ll need to complete a round. Rounds are going to occur further apart, and fundraising processes are going to take longer to complete until the market changes again. And make no mistake, the market will change again, because that’s how cycles work. They go down, they go up.
Despite the doom and gloom, there’s money available for good startups who tell good stories to good investors. That’s harder to do now than it was, but it may also lead to bigger and better things. Fundraising has never been a sure thing. It just felt that way based on the press coverage and the stories you probably heard from other founders. The current market is just reminding us of that."
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-big-contradiction-at-the-heart-of-the-tech-downturn
27. One aspect of the ongoing gray war between China and the USA. We need to learn faster here.
https://mobile.twitter.com/JoshuaSteinman/status/1544810885117399040
28. This was a monstrously insightful interview with the far-seeing Balaji Srinavasan. If u want to understand what the future might look like, this is worth checking out. It’s a MUST watch/listen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FV5SqIm5e90
29. A great rebuttal to realist theorist Mearsheimer who is completely wrong & clueless on Ukraine. He describes a reality that does not exist & has deluded isolationist Americans.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlB-pRqdyBg
30. Always fun and I learned alot as always. All in Podcast is on fire today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8-rydueTzg
31. We should ban TikTok as its a tool for dumbing us down. China and CCP are the enemy & we need to realize we are at war already, a quiet gray war.
"The tip of China’s propaganda spear is TikTok, which has a direct connection to the midbrain of a billion people, including nearly every U.S. teenager and half their parents. Facebook is the most powerful espionage vehicle ever created, and now China commands the most powerful propaganda tool. Putin and the GRU can manipulate an amoral Facebook from the outside, it just takes money. It has been easy, to date, to exploit management that’s indifferent to teen depression, much less national security. But it will likely get increasingly difficult. Xi Jinping can simply pick up the phone. When he does (if he hasn’t already) the shift in TikTok’s messaging will be subtle, invisible in the details, hiding in plain sight.
What would China’s propaganda look like? It would look like us. Subtle manipulations to TikTok’s algorithm will promote the negative messages, elide the context. As with art and merchandising, propaganda isn’t about what’s in the message, but what isn’t. Specifically, nuance and who is promoting certain types of content over others."
https://www.profgalloway.com/tiktok-trojan-stallion
32. Latest interview with Peter Zeihan. Net net: next 5 years globally will be rough. It's a very good interview here if you want to know what’s happening in the geopolitical world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzipwDQBUyc
33. This sounds about right. Having done both.
https://www.chrismccann.com/essays/startup-people-vs-big-company-people
34. "But as the RUSI report makes clear, a strategic victory in this war ultimately depends on the will and determination of Western leaders. Fuelled by victories in the Donbas, a Russian narrative will develop that Moscow’s final victory is certain, and support for Ukraine is a doomed and pointless effort. This is not the case. A Russian victory in Ukraine is not inevitable, but preventing this outcome will require a pan-Western effort not far short of full wartime mobilisation, an effort which is so far not taking place.
The relentless optimism of Ukraine’s online supporters, though understandable, does not accurately reflect the strategic picture, and may instead be hindering a popular understanding of the grave challenges that lie ahead. Ukrainians are doing everything in their power to win this war, and suffering terribly in the process: but unless their sacrifice and solidarity is matched in Western capitals, it may still not be enough."
https://unherd.com/2022/07/is-russia-winning-the-war/
35. "But after a long career interacting with intelligence officers, I’ve noticed a dichotomy between senior policy makers who come up with grand visions and the “ground truth” of what is involved in the implementation to achieve said vision.
If America fails to support Ukraine all the way to victory, then other nations are unlikely to believe that they can rely on our assurances. And if they do not believe that we are reliable allies, then they are likely to chart their own courses. Which may be counter to our own interests. They could decide that they would be better off making accommodations with Moscow or Beijing. Or they could decide that the only true guarantee of sovereignty is nuclear proliferation.
Plans are important. But the ground facts will determine what can and cannot be implemented."
https://www.thebulwark.com/the-ground-truths-in-ukraine
36. Slava Ukraini!
"The arrival of HIMARS, even in such small quantities, has been much of a game-changer.
“Ukrainian forces are increasingly targeting Russian military infrastructure with indirect fire and U.S.-provided HIMARS systems deep in occupied territory,” said the Institute of the Study of War (ISW), a U.S.-based defense think tank, on July 4.
“The increased ability of Ukrainian forces to target critical Russian military facilities with Western-provided HIMARS demonstrates how Western military aid provides Ukraine with new and necessary military capabilities.”
Moreover, on July 7, Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council secretary Oleksiy Danilov said Ukraine currently already had a total of nine HIMARS and “similar systems,” but that Ukraine would need dozens more."
Don’t Be Sorry, Be Better
This was a quote that showed up over and over again in John Gwynne’s fantasy Bloodsworn series that features a fictional world full of viking warrior bands and angry Norse gods & creatures. Life in this world is short, brutal, violent and unforgiving of any mistakes. So whenever one of the characters screws up, their compatriots would say: “Don’t be Sorry, Be Better.”
Thankfully in our normal everyday life right now, there are not many situations that are literally life and death except for maybe in the military or in a warzone. But our monkey cave person brains still act like everything is.
For the type A individual like myself, I mentally beat myself up whenever I screw something up. Even when it’s a stupid and small trite thing. To get past this, I remind myself that every mistake is a learning & is a way for me to get smarter. In fact, if I am not making mistakes, I am probably taking the easy, comfortable route. Or not pushing myself to what I am capable of. There are big differences between honest mistakes and truly stupid avoidable mistakes. Don’t be Sorry, Be Better.”
Or when I screw up something with the various social interactions in work, business or home life. I say “Sorry” but then keep on making the same mistake or doing the same stupid thing that irritates or annoys or hurts someone’s feelings. “Sorry” actually becomes a platitude. An excuse to move on without confronting or fixing it. Now I remind myself: “Don’t be Sorry, Be Better.” And actively work on not doing it again.
I found this to be a very helpful mantra and reminder. One that has already helped improve my life recently. Hope it helps you as well.
Tolerance versus Intolerance: Setting Rules for Life
Tolerance is defined as “the ability or willingness to tolerate something, in particular the existence of opinions or behavior that one does not necessarily agree with.”
Tolerance is a very modern thing. It was not that long ago that people were killing other people over religion or skin color. Sadly this still happens in many parts of the world but in our modern society this is thankfully seen as a barbaric relic of an old age. And something that we work against happening.
You should be tolerant of other people’s religion, skin color and beliefs. In general, it’s okay to believe whatever you want as long as it does not physically hurt others. Although I should say hurting feelings don’t count here. Toughen up a bit you snowflakes. You should be tolerant of other ways of doing things. You should be tolerant of honest mistakes on your part or someone else's.
But on the other side, there are things that you cannot ever tolerate. Things like dishonesty, bad behavior like treating service workers badly, violence against your family, friends or loved ones. You have to be intolerant of immoral acts like armed robbery, rape and theft among other things.
This is why it’s important to know self defense and be armed. I believe in turning the other cheek in some situations but not here. You need to stand up to bullies. If you don’t, they are usually back again and will probably be more vicious in the next round. As the Ukrainian Prosecutor general was reported to have said about the inhuman Russian army: “To stop barbarians, we need weapons—the only language they understand.” Barbarians, and that is what many criminals are, need to be eliminated from society. The punishment should meet the severity of the crime.
I’d even add that you have to be even more intolerant of your own weaknesses. Intolerant of wasting time. Intolerant of an unhealthy and unfit body. Intolerant of a slothful and mission-less, meaningless life without impact. Intolerant of dependence on other people. Intolerant of encroachments from government and corporations on your own freedom and privacy.
It’s important to have a code and pre-set rules for your own behavior. A pre-wiring for how to react to others around you. This is the key to crafting your own beautiful life.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads July 17th, 2022
“You never change your life until you step out of your comfort zone; change begins at the end of your comfort zone.” ― Roy T. Bennett
This is useful for fundraising founders.
https://twitter.com/jamoses92/status/1542635532877832193
2. "I think we’re seeing the limitations of Russian power already. Clearly, Ukraine is a priority for him. Now, there will probably be a period of consolidation if he is successful in Ukraine. I was in Ukraine last week, and one thing that people were discussing is that, perhaps in the future, Putin will use Ukraine as a tool for further adventures. If he conscripts Ukrainians forcefully to the Russian army, if he uses Ukrainian industrial and military bases. It seems to be the strategy to use forces from other minorities in Russia (Chechens, South Ossetians, etc).
This has happened in the past in Russian and Soviet military history. We in Europe have lost contact with such practices that seem barbaric to us, but they are as old as Mankind; the Romans did the same. If he follows that path, it will take a while, it won’t be immediate. After a period of consolidation of two or three years, Russia could then become stronger, because it would certainly be a much larger country, including large parts of Ukraine."
https://georgiatoday.ge/bruno-macaes-on-putins-empire-ambitions-and-georgia-losing-its-way
3. This is the playbook that China & cursed CCP used to crush democracy in HK. Being used all over the world now too. Be aware.
https://mobile.twitter.com/suelinwong/status/1542634038619521026
4. "On one hand, industry giant and once prolific investor Coinbase has been tapping the brakes. Its venture arm, Coinbase Ventures, invested in just eight companies in June—including decentralized crypto custodian Entropy and crypto-focused asset manager Valkyrie —compared to 28 in March and 11 in the same period last June, dragging its second-quarter deal count lower, according to data from PitchBook. Non-fungible token marketplace OpenSea, which launched OpenSea Ventures in February, has yet to announce an investment, a spokesperson told The Information.
Others are going full steam ahead, looking to capitalize on potential winners when other competitors slow down investments. Binance Labs, for example, announced its first fund worth $500 million in late May. Since launching the fund, Binance Labs has announced one investment, an undisclosed seed round for decentralized exchange ApolloX."
5. Four decades later, the firm he and his friends founded, Susquehanna International Group, is a sprawling global company that makes billions of dollars. Yass and his team used their numerical expertise to make rapid-fire computer-driven trades in options and other securities, eventually becoming a giant middleman in the markets for stocks and other securities.
Today, Yass, 63, is one of the richest and most powerful financiers in the country.
But one crucial aspect of his ascent to stratospheric wealth has transpired out of public view. Using the same prowess that he’s applied to race tracks and options markets, Yass has taken aim at another target: his tax bill.
There, too, the winnings have been immense: at least $1 billion in tax savings over six recent years, according to ProPublica’s analysis of a trove of IRS data. During that time, Yass paid an average federal income tax rate of just 19%, far below that of comparable Wall Street traders.
Yass has devised trading strategies that reduce his tax burden but push legal boundaries. He has repeatedly drawn IRS audits, yet has continued to test the limits. Susquehanna has often gone to court to fight the government, with one multiyear audit battle ending in a costly defeat.
Yass’ low rate is particularly notable because Susquehanna, by its own description, specializes in short-term trading. Money made from such rapid trades is typically taxed at rates around 40%.
In recent years, however, Yass’ annual income has, with uncanny consistency, been made up almost entirely of income taxed at the roughly 20% rate reserved for longer-term investments.
The tax savings have contributed to an explosion in wealth for Yass, who has increasingly poured that fortune into candidates and causes on the political right. He has spent more than $100 million on election campaigns in recent years. The money has gone to everything from anti-tax advocacy and charter schools to campaigns against so-called critical race theory and for candidates who falsely say the 2020 election was stolen and seek to ban abortion."
https://www.propublica.org/article/jeff-yass-susquehanna-tiktok-tax-avoidance
6. "The collapse of 3AC in and of itself is unremarkable. A hedge fund that was previously successful executing boring but stable yielding arbitrage strategies decided to strap on leverage to accelerate returns, and paid the price. The use of borrowed funds to play the TerraUSD carry trade sealed their death sentence.
But what made the 3AC default so impactful is that it blew a whale shark-sized hole in many of the largest centralised crypto lending businesses. Due to losses on 3AC loans, many of these lending businesses have gated customer funds and become functionally insolvent. The withdrawal of credit from the crypto ecosystem has caused a generalised market crash of Bitcoin, Ether, and the whole pantheon of shitcoins. No coin has been spared.
But what’s conveniently going unmentioned by much of the media is that both centralised and decentralised lending companies / platforms had exposure to 3AC — and only the players in one of these two markets went belly up. The centralised lenders failed en masse, while their decentralised counterparts liquidated collateral and operated with no hiccups. Using the story of 3AC as the canvas, let me paint you a picture that illustrates why Lord Satoshi and Archangel Vitalik’s creations stood the test of time, and what this means for the future of crypto."
https://entrepreneurshandbook.co/number-three-511f334d8fae
7. I find these videos very educational and inspirational. Building & Maintaining multiple income streams while doing it location independent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAIpGwaU9CU
8. "I also don’t get people who go to Phish concerts or collect Pokémon cards, both of which have thriving communities around them. The culture surrounding many higher-profile NFT projects, whether it be Bored Apes or Doodles or whatever else, is hyper-monetized fandom. Web3 in many circumstances may be a cynical cash grab from those at the top, but at the bottom of a pyramid are a lot of people who are at least, in part, true believers.
It makes it hard not to root for the underdog, even if the underdog is banking on a future that very well may not pan out."
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/23186695/nft-nyc-bored-apes-doodles-web3-crypto-crash
9. "It’s encouraging to see how the universe of savvy, experienced people investing in startups is increasing — and that includes creators. But as I sift through the 100th press release talking about a footballer becoming an angel investor in a startup, it’s easy to wonder how those creators and celebrities actually analyse the risks involved in the startups they back.
In that sense, a fund like Creator Ventures — with a track record and dedicated team — can be an important conduit. And it’s also just generally fun to see people with different backgrounds getting into investing — it should translate to more companies that might not have caught the eye of traditional investors getting a chance at backing."
https://sifted.eu/articles/creator-ventures-raise
10. "Reads the presentation, “We expect the market downturn to impact consumer behavior, labor markets, supply chains and more. It will be a longer recovery and while we can’t predict how long, we can advise you on ways to prepare and get through to the other side.”
In one key slide, the firm notes what startups have already been told by a wide variety of other VCs and the broader market itself, which is that investors’ focus is shifting to companies with profitability.
Writes the firm: “With the cost of capital (both debt and equity) rising, the market is signaling a strong preference for companies who can generate cash today.”
https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/24/sequoia-capital-plays-nostradamus-again
11. "Public market multiples directly impact private company valuations. Other than a brief period of time recently, it’s been this way forever. As entrepreneurs, we should understand this relationship and take it into consideration as part of our fundraising plans."
12. Great discussions here on generalist versus specialist for those in the business of creativity. Another good episode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TZ50I--0NQ&t=970s
13. "When you lend your coins you have to trust that the service evaluated counterparty risk properly, which includes: financials of borrower, collateral requirements, custody, etc.
Your keys, your coins.
Is the return that lending services provide worth it? This is subjective and up to each person to decide."
https://www.theheldreport.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-blockfi
14. These small profiles of up and coming VCs are always fun. Li Jin of Variant Fund.
15. "Chen cited a particular Kimmel-hosted dinner where her co-founder found herself sitting with one of The Chainsmokers. “I don’t know how she does it,” said Chen, “but she’s able to have a conversation with anyone.”
And these conversations have been happening fast. In the three years since founding her early-stage fund, Kimmel has become a particularly glamorous symbol of venture’s movement toward solo general partners. Worklife Ventures, backed by limited partners including Marc Andreessen, Alexis Ohanian and Garry Tan, has claimed a seven times return over the last three years, with investments in seven unicorns, including Webflow, Tonal and Hopin.
In a few weeks, Kimmel will put her “magical” mingling power to an even higher test. She is set to open Worklife Studios, a speaking salon and creative clubhouse in Los Angeles’ Silver Lake neighborhood, on July 11. Taking over Depop’s old building, Worklife Studios will become a bricks-and-mortar manifestation of Kimmel’s own connector persona, a place where Los Angeles creatives can gather for workshops on non-fungible tokens, poetry readings or dinner parties."
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/once-upon-a-time-in-brianne-kimmels-hollywood
16. A very good interview with the sober David Sacks. One of the best operators and angel investors in Silicon Valley. PayPal mafia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7zxA5oUZDw
17. This man is a true hero. Such a fan of him and World Central Kitchen.
"He’s a force of nature, with a slew of successful restaurants. There’s Minibar, a 10-seat fine-dining counter with two Michelin stars in Washington, D.C., but also Beefsteak, his vegetable-forward fast-casual chain. At various hotels, you can find his freewheeling Bazaars, with their potato espuma and “Say When” caviar service. In New York, there’s the sprawling Mercado Little Spain, a love letter to his home country. And in the next year alone, ThinkFoodGroup, Andrés’s company, is opening a New York outpost of his D.C. hot spot Zaytinya, as well as three restaurants—San Laurel, Agua Viva, and a branch of his (very good) steakhouse, Bazaar Meat— in Los Angeles.
Even so, I’ve never seen Andrés as he’s depicted in the new documentary We Feed People, directed by Ron Howard and available now on Disney+. For the last 12 years, since he founded World Central Kitchen, he has traveled the world, hopscotching from hurricane to tornado to flood to war zone, helping to make and deliver more than 70 million meals. And for the last two years, Howard’s crew has followed him.
The film shows the organization being at once extemporaneous and carefully thought out. By mobilizing existing kitchens, avoiding bureaucratic red tape, and recruiting local volunteers, WCK has been able to deliver lifesaving aid where larger institutions cannot. It takes chutzpah and an outlaw’s gumption, and the man at the center of it all—advocating, yelling, hugging, crying, and, of course, cooking and feeding—is Andrés."
https://www.hemispheresmag.com/people/hemi-q-and-a/jose-andres-central-kitchen-ukraine
18. Halfway through this documentary. Highly recommend it.
It’s about the amazing Chef Jose Andres, his story and also the story of one of my favorite charities: World Central Kitchen.
Incredibly inspiring.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eYaSwwmGl4
19. "What this investor could not have imagined is that the geeky tech analyst would one day run one of the world’s largest private-investment firms and that he would also become both a central player in a frenzied years-long global tech bubble — one driven by “unicorn” companies trading at absurd valuations — and its bursting over the past six months. The guy who started as a shy analyst would put up impressive gains for years, then suffer mind-boggling losses: $25 billion (and counting) as of June, a record figure even in the lofty world of hedge funds.
The meltdown at Coleman’s firm, named Tiger Global in a nod to his mentor, is one for the ages. “Their losses look to be the biggest in the history of hedge funds,” says one hedge-fund manager, ticking off other notable contenders for that unfortunate title. Tiger Global’s drubbing far surpasses that of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, which lost $12 billion in 2020, or Melvin Capital Management, the now-infamous target of the Redditor-led short squeeze of GameStop shares in 2021, which cost it $6.8 billion. Long Term Capital Management, the most notorious hedge-fund blowup of all time, shed a mere $4.6 billion when it almost collapsed in 1998.
Looking back, Rasmussen, the former Bain Capital analyst and current hedge-fund manager, believes that it’s easy to see how Tiger Global got into its current predicament. “They’ve just been winning, and winning, and winning,” he says. “I think one thing that happens to people who win, win, win, win, is they get overconfident, and they can’t imagine a scenario where they’re not winning.”
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/06/tiger-global-poster-child-of-the-tech-meltdown.html
20. "Both sides therefore must adapt, but, admittedly oversimplifying, the Russians are adapting into becoming more of a 20th Century army while the Ukrainians are becoming more of a 21st Century army. The Ukrainian adaption process will therefore taking longer but the prospect at the end is of a much more capable force.
Over the next few weeks we should start to get some sense of whether Ukraine can start to take the initiative and impose its own priorities on Russia rather than the other way round, and how well the Russians are able to respond to the steady improvement of Ukrainian capabilities. Should Ukrainian forces be able to create any momentum, however, then the situation could move in their favour very quickly. Can the Ukrainians win? Yes. Will the Ukrainians win? Not yet clear, but the possibility should not be dismissed."
https://samf.substack.com/p/can-ukraine-win
21. Magical Tenerife. Cannot wait to visit in the future.
https://www.hemispheresmag.com/europe/spain/tenerife/three-perfect-days-tenerife
22. This was a very interesting profile on Mark Manson, self help guru and writer and how to recover from burnout.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/mark-manson-subtle-art-of-not-giving-a-fuck.html
23. "As an acutely disillusioned conservative who lives in a Trumpy county in a blue state (Maryland), I’m used to treading water in crosscurrents. And you know what? It’s fine. It’s doable. In fact, we’ve been doing it for 246 years, we just didn’t have as many professional windbags convincing us that we’re doomed. And by the way, we are doomed if we think we are. Which is why we have to stop thinking we are.
America is not perfect, and never was during whatever imaginary period you’re romanticizing from a past that never existed. What we’ve always had going for us is that unlike plenty of other countries, we can work through that, and have. Which is not to say it’s easy work. But too many now seem to think we’re entitled to a work stoppage, which, sorry, is deeply un-American."
https://mattlabash.substack.com/p/happy-fourth-of-july
24. "This brings us to the most fundamental level of what this is about: sheer power. If the United States allowed China to seize control of Taiwan, America’s position in Asia, and hence as a global power, would tumble overnight. Its alliance structure in the East would collapse, and China would become the regional hegemon, despite its many protestations to the contrary.
If, by the same token, China were to prevail in a conflict over Taiwan, it would not just be able to cow neighbors such as Japan and South Korea (among others)—with the world’s largest navy already, it would soon control the entire western Pacific. The Chinese government, of course, doesn’t talk openly about the stakes in these terms for fear of frightening others.
But for a democracy like the United States, and indeed for its most deeply implicated allies, this is unacceptable. Smart people may differ about the wisdom of eroding strategic ambiguity around Taiwan, but with stakes this high, the public deserves a clear and open discussion of the high risks and cost and benefits of defending the island."
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/06/24/taiwan-china-us-war-democracy-great-powers-biden
25. I dream of Italy, especially Southern Italy in this case.
https://www.hemispheresmag.com/europe/italy/amalfi-coast/three-perfect-days-amalfi-coast
26. "The role of a venture capitalist is a lot like that of a founder. You spend your days pitching, meeting with potential investors in the fund, and going over financials & term sheets. But the best part of being a career venture capitalist is meeting with founders and backing the next generation of entrepreneurs.
Some assume that VCs sit around tweeting all day and refreshing TechCrunch. However, being an investor is a full-time job. In fact, being a first-time fund manager is MORE than a full-time job.
Yeah, you read that right. Emerging fund managers have to be scrappy too. Our team is all distributed, we use no-code tools like Airtable & Notion, and automate where necessary. To get Overlooked Ventures off the ground, I had to put in my own money to get started. And so far, we haven’t paid ourselves all that much in the last year. Why? We’ve prioritized deploying capital to founders."
27. Stoicism is a powerful tool in ancient and modern times.
"To me, the proof of the philosophy and its universality is that back to back, its two most influential thinkers are someone of extreme privilege and someone of extreme powerlessness. I think it works for both in that the central tenet of the philosophy is: Focus on what you control, focus on the response to the things that are outside of your control. Do the best you can in the world within which you exist."
"How do you just wake up and deal with a world filled with difficult people? And how do you stay true to what you believe, to what you think, to your duties and obligations, when people can feel like obstructions or disincentives to what you should be doing?
And I just love that the Stoics were not just practical in terms of how do we get stuff done, but they’re like, how do you go through the world and not be bitter and angry?"
28. "The U.S. retains a remarkable array of fundamental strengths — a large and well-educated populace, a huge amount of land and natural resources, favorable geographic location, a civic culture that is far more robust than people give it credit for, a multiracial and multicultural population that is very cohesive at the local level, a welfare state that’s far more robust than people realize, top scientific and technical institutions, world-class industries, and so on.
But despite these strengths, the U.S. is in trouble, because of politics. It would be foolish not to acknowledge this. The recent string of Supreme Court decisions that is upending the political-economic status quo is not (yet) a major cause of the dysfunction, but it is a bellwether of instability, and it has served as a wake-up call for many of those who thought the political conflicts of the last 8 years were just social media hype."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/a-time-of-troubles
29. "Oil and commodity prices will not stay high forever. The West will find alternatives to Russian supply, and Russia will likely struggle to quickly divert supply elsewhere - lots of talk of energy sales to Asia, but Russia lacks the pipelines to divert gas from Europe to Asia. And it will take years for these pipelines to be built.
Sure, sanctions have not stoppped the Russian economy in its tracks. But it was never meant to - or the West always had to weigh cost to Russia against the costs to Western economies. But the sheer scale of sanctions and self sanctioning will inevitably weigh on Russia growth over the longer term, its ability to finance investment, and likely the economy will stagnate. This means higher unemployment, lower living standards, capital flight and a brain drain.
Meanwhile, the experience over the past decade or more, is of more, not less malign actions by Russia, and now with the setting of a Russia - NATO arms race, there will be more pressure in the West to crimp Russian economic capability to restrain its military rebuild. And sanctions are still one of the limited options it has at its disposal. The reality is therefore more, not less, sanctions causing ever greater harm to the Russian economy."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/sanctions-on-russia
30. "New details have emerged about Belarusians fighting for Ukraine against Russia's invasion as part of a broader struggle to free their own country from Russian domination and the rule of Moscow-backed autocrat Alexander Lukashenko.
Speaking exclusively to VOA in a Tuesday phone interview, the deputy commander of the largest pro-Ukraine Belarusian fighting force said its numbers have almost reached the size of an average Ukrainian battalion, which he said has about 450-500 troops."
31. I'm neutral on this view as many in the media are left-wing tech biz hating individuals.
But I also see alot of arrogance in tech biz leadership where founders who are great builders usually are not great people managers.
"This management style is confrontational and public-facing, and it relies on “thought leadership” expressed through tweets. The Musk School is as much about cultivating the individual executive’s brand as it is about running an actual company. Its practitioners see themselves as visionaries, and they can often point to the early success of their companies as evidence. But they also believe that the skills they perceive as having in one area are applicable elsewhere—in particular, the messy art of managing people.
This is a poor and ineffective management style that is usually only thinly disguised by the executive’s cult of personality. Still, it’s now a quite popular tactic among celebrated tech leaders of a certain type."
32. "Conclusion: If a firm like Voyager, BlockFi, Celsius etc is offering a high return of say 10%, there is no way they can sustainably meet that return *if* deposits go up. Talk about a terrible business. The more customers they attract, the harder it is to make money if the yields remain high.
Now if you’re looking at the yields today, many have fallen to 3% or so. There is just no point. You’re better off buying iBonds at 9.6% with $10,000 worth of value and if you have a decent amount of crypto, say 10BTC+, it isn’t worth risking 100% loss for a 3% return."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/blockfi-rescue-what-is-a-bailout
33. "Romans believed the “soul” was their will. They called it the ANIMUS. It was an animal-like spirit that drove them forward. Many words we have today descend from Latin counterparts. Virtue comes from the Roman Virtus, which was how the Romans described manliness. You can see that modernity has degraded the meaning of the word, but Virtus isn’t the only word effected by modernity. Inertia is another word that’s changed meaning since the time of the old Republic.
Inertia to us means to not be moving. To not change. For the Romans, to be inert is to be a coward. They believed you had to undergo labor, to do great things you had to move. You had to impose your will on the world. The coward sat on his couch all day. You — as a disciple of the warrior religion — must avoid inertia at all costs.
Being surrounded on all sides by enemies, the Romans had to become warlike people. They had to outwork and outfight their opponents. They had to be on a different level."
https://resavager.substack.com/p/the-metaphysical-understanding-of
34. "Empires have varying origin stories and while the Barbarian Principle may not fit all empires, it’s happened often enough to be mentioned in the historical record. The Ancient Greeks were savages compared to the more civilized Persians.
The Romans were founded by a gang who raided the nearby villages of their women in order to continue their civilization. Rome itself was later overran by barbarians after years of decadence and decay. The Barbarian Principle is almost a law of nature and something every people should think about, but don’t.
The barbarian is closer to nature than the civilized man. He understands what the civilized man never did: nature is brutal. There’s no fairness in nature. Nature only cares about who wins. And it is wolves who win wars.
The most important thing you should take away from the Barbarian Principle is this. Don’t let your fate rest in the hands of the elite. Anyway you can find a way to break the chain. Create your own small tribe and train with your friends. Live on your own terms so when and if the fall happens, you’ll be amongst the barbarian caste."
Be Like a Light Bulb: The Importance of Resting Ethic
“Most people in life are dim lights, they're on but they are not bright. Because they are trying to conserve energy. You should make a choice, you are either on or off. There is either GO time or there is relaxing time. Try to be more binary. You have more energy when it’s Go time” -Andrew “Cobra” Tate.
I love this concept. A period of Inactivity, followed by a burst of Activity. This totally in line with one of my previous posts: Work like a Lion, not a Cow: https://hardfork.substack.com/p/work-like-a-lion-not-like-a-cow
Once you see this, you cannot unsee this. This stuck with me when I heard Jackie Chan talk about how he was so influenced by Fred Astaire: frenzied dancing followed by a stillness. He followed the same principle in the many martial arts action movies he filmed. Seriously, go rewatch his movies, this becomes very clear.
In the past my calendar would be jam packed with meetings and calls and to dos. It was what I thought you were supposed to do. I used to feel guilty when I had a short or an easy and quiet day for work or for my business. I’d wonder what I am doing wrong or start to think I am not doing enough to move things forward.
But you move the business forward by brain work. When am I not thinking about the business either consciously or subconsciously? I’ve come to realize that the ultimate flex is an empty calendar as both Warren Buffett & my friend Shaan Puri point out: https://twitter.com/ShaanVP/status/1489680121015377921
Using my mood journal and reviewing my calendar schedules, any day where I had a full calendar, I’d feel massive anxiety, and was just plain worn out. With no time to do the hard thinking and problem solving that drove the major results. Or have enough open time to troubleshoot the inevitable issues that come up. I got caught in the trap of mistaking activity for results.
Naval famously said: “Productivity is the Enemy of Creativity”
Rest is absolutely critical for high performance. Without it, it’s like revving your engine until it breaks or blows up. We’re in a new world now where our brains power everything. As the Doomberg crew calls it: “The Gig Economy for Brains.”
Naval again says: "Some of the most creative and productive people I have ever met work in multi-week bursts and then have weeks where they just idle with little done. It’s the nature of the human animal."
All-in and fully energized OR quiet and at rest. There is no in between. This is a key habit for effective work in the modern day. Don’t be a dim light.
The Moral Imperative of Every Man: Be Hard to Kill
The situation in Ukraine haunts me. Seeing a place and people I care about being invaded and attacked viciously makes me both angry and sad. The atrocities coming out of Bucha, Irpin and Mauripol (and many other places) as well the ever increasing cases of looting, torture, violence and rape by Russian soldiers against unarmed Ukrainian civilians is sickening. Yet many in Europe and USA still refuse to give up their comforts or speak up or turn a blind eye. They ask that we stop sending Ukraine weapons to give peace a chance. Naive, ignorant & “Useful Idiots.”
Yet the reason Ukrainians are fighting so hard is because they know what will happen if they lose. Russians & their pet Kadyorite Chechnyans will show up at the door with a list and they will get taken away to camps or shot in the back of the head. Their women to be treated in unspeakable horrendous ways by the Russian soldiers and security services. Yes, this is awful but this is what they do. They will bombard and destroy wholesale cities. They open up so-called Humanitarian corridors but then shell them when it’s full of people. They did this in Chechnya and they did this in Syria.
We have not experienced the horrors of a major war of aggression at our doorstep, especially in America in 70+ years, outside of 9/11 terrorist attacks. Same in Western Europe outside of some Islamic terrorist attacks. This has inured us to the horror and shock of World War 2 style war of aggression that has caused us to be in so much disbelief & shock.
What the barbarian Russian-caused horrors coming out from Ukraine should be a warning to every single one of us. That the “Tamerlane Principle” exists, Tamerlane was a medieval conqueror reported to have killed 5% of the global population at that time.
Noah Smith describes this very well:
“Tamerlane is always over the horizon, waiting to strike. There will always be conquerors waiting for the chance to conquer and pillage the soft civilized nations of the world. If you think Tamerlane is ancient history, just look up Pol Pot, Joseph Kony, Hitler, etc. This is a recurrent phenomenon. The only thing that can protect people against the Tamerlanes of the world is a strong, economically prosperous, well-organized nation state.”
There is an excellent Richard Grenier quote that should remind all of us fortunate people not on the frontlines that "People Sleep Peacefully in Their Beds at Night Only Because Rough Men Stand Ready to Do Violence on Their Behalf"
This is why it’s important to support Ukraine by sending them as many weapons as possible so they can defend themselves and eject the Russian army out of their territory. Force is only language Putin and his cronies understand. Let’s be frank, force & power is what everyone understands. This is something we have forgotten due to our dulled senses from too much comfort and prosperity. Ukraine literally is the bulwark of democracy and the free world. They are buying the West time with their blood, so all of us have to get tougher and prepare.
Or even better said in the excellent Batman Begins movie: "Like you I was forced to learn there are those who are without decency, who must be fought without hesitation, without pity."
This is also why at the personal level it’s even more critical to be “Physically Fit & Financially Lit.” You need to be healthy and in good physical shape Ie. be able to run without being out of breath. You need to train in some useful martial art like boxing or Muay Thai Kickboxing or Mixed Martial Art. Definitely learn how to shoot a gun and have some basic tactical shooting. Knife fighting skills probably will not hurt either.
You definitely need to have the money and resources to protect and help your family, friends and neighbors. You need to be ready to fight back & defend your loved ones and beliefs. Maybe it will be the Russians, maybe the CCP Chinese, or just the ever growing number of desperate violent criminals in America. Maybe it’s a nutty extremist on the Right or the Left. Either way the world has become a much more dangerous place. Just look at the crazy murder rates in America over the last 2 years starting in 2020. I don’t like it but it’s the new reality.
As much as we want to believe that someone will come save you, why take that chance? In what is turning out to be a tumultuous “Raging Twenties”, better to be safe than sorry. You have to be prepared and become your own “First Responder” for your family. You need to become “A Rough Man (or Woman) ready to Do Violence on those who will try to harm you & your loved ones.”
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads July 10th, 2022
“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”
― Paulo Coelho
"The American Dream used to stand for a job with a loyal employer, homeownership (often accompanied by a white picket fence), and your own set of wheels. The pandemic has given Americans the Great Resignation, a housing market that won’t stop appreciating and a used-car and gas price crisis amid 40-year-high inflation.
Maybe the villas of Portugal or beaches of Greece would be more appealing—or at least warmer. If you're one of the ultra-wealthy, leaving your pool and hot tub behind for such a life seems to increasingly beckon.
As life in America becomes more stressful and expensive, U.S. citizens have been investing in a “Golden Visa,” a program in which purchasing a second home in a different country entitles buyers to a second passport or a pathway to citizenship."
2. This is important to understand. Zeihan has been right more than wrong. Global economy and Geopolitics in time of deGlobalization & Depopulation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI4mDQeo9eE
3. "The character is a familiar type for Pitt—likable, flawed, a little eccentric—and he plays the part with an easy charm and self-effacing humor that evokes some of his other recent roles, like Cliff Booth in Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. To Quentin Tarantino, who directed Pitt in that role, as well as in Inglourious Basterds, Pitt’s shape-shifting as an actor is evidence of a kind of screen presence we just don’t see much anymore.
“He suggests an older-style movie star,” Tarantino tells me over the phone. “He’s really good-looking. He’s also really masculine and he’s also really hip; he gets the joke.… But the thing that only the directors that work with Brad and the actors that act opposite him really know, what he’s so incredibly talented at, is his ability to really understand the scene. He might not be able to articulate it, but he has an instinctive understanding about it.”
What Pitt exudes, Tarantino says, is a rare timelessness. “He’s one of the last remaining big-screen movie stars,” the director tells me, equating his star quality with that of Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and Steve McQueen. “It’s just a different breed of man. And frankly, I don’t think you can describe exactly what that is because it’s like describing starshine."
https://www.gq.com/story/brad-pitt-august-cover-profile
4. This thread is a good one on the future of the geopolitical world. I also agree Dalio is wrong on China's rise and USA's fall (despite an incompetent political class & elite).
https://twitter.com/wolf_vukovic/status/1540378141612421121
5. Thread on energy being life. Civilized life. Worthy reminder.
https://mobile.twitter.com/DoombergT/status/1540663889804857344
6. This here is one of the best actors around. Cillian is masterful in the final season of "Peaky Blinders." Very good interview.
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/cillian-murphy-interview-2022
7. “I’ve always felt like an outsider,” Isaac says. He is talking about the characters he feels drawn to as an actor—how they, too, are often outsiders, people grappling with their place in their world. “Literally, and then emotionally, psychologically. I always felt like I was observing life and not actually experiencing it. There was a lot of guilt with that sometimes—feeling like I was a vulture of my own life.”
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a39520165/oscar-isaac-interview-moon-knight-star-wars
8. "While the details of Parallel’s financial struggles are unique to the company, in many ways its plight is emblematic of the broader cannabis industry. Even as the weed market continues to boom as legalization spreads rapidly across the country — sales are projected to hit $32 billion this year, more than doubling since 2019, according to New Frontier Data — most companies continue to hemorrhage money and stock prices have collapsed over the last year. The continued federal illegality of marijuana means that companies face sky-high taxes, steep barriers to access capital and stiff competition from the entrenched illicit market.
“The challenge with cannabis is that it’s a very capital intensive industry … especially [building a] vertically integrated [and multi-state company] like Parallel,” said Neil Kaufman, a corporate cannabis attorney based in New York. "[Parallel] had that classic challenge of needing a lot of money and taking longer than they had planned to get to cash flow positive.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/06/12/weed-wrigley-lawsuit-00036864
9. This seems pretty BS but if you are a big Corp this does actually make sense.
"As the CEO of Lemonade learned, companies that are granted color trademarks often go to great lengths to enforce them in court — and competitors often challenge their right to monopolize certain hues."
https://thehustle.co/can-a-corporation-trademark-a-color
10. "I heard one I hadn’t heard before: the founder acts as a shock absorber for the startup.
The more I think about this, the more I like it. A shock absorber is defined as “something that serves to reduce or mitigate the worst effects of an unwelcome occurrence or experience.” In startupland, high highs and low lows are a regular occurrence. While thoughtful transparency of the good and bad is often the right approach, it does need to be modulated and presented with the appropriate commentary."
https://davidcummings.org/2022/06/25/founder-as-shock-absorber-for-the-startup
11."Once you've identified the thing you want (e.g. "participating in this thing called the internet") then you create a list of risks that you'll want to minimize. The best example of this came recently in a conversation I had with someone who was choosing between two different jobs with the long-term intention of becoming a founder. He could either work at a seed-stage startup or a later-stage company.
If he lets short-term time frames determine his definition of success then he would solve for things like comfort and compensation. But the natural selection of time is always long-term. In the long-term how will time impact the outcome of your decisions?
When you prioritize the long-term outcome of success as a startup founder you start to identify key risks that you can allow your short-term decisions to help de-risk your experience in the future. The most common risks to a new startup founder? Product-market fit. Co-founder risk. Hiring risk. The ability to sell. The ability to fundraise.
So what can you do with your decision today to de-risk your outcome tomorrow?"
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/the-natural-selection-of-time
12. "Unlike arrangements made behind closed doors, decentralized decision-making allows for community members to partake in the governance of an organization by creating and voting on policy proposals that lead to outcomes desired by the people. With the right catalysts, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations — DAOs — have proven that strangers across the globe can coordinate in a trust-less, democratic way to align on the strategic steps that best fit the needs and goals of many organizations. While decentralization itself remains an experiment, it is gaining traction as the fairest approach to organizational decision-making today.
The need for decentralized versus centralized structures exists on an ever-swinging pendulum dependent on the conditions and variables of certain time periods. In our history, centralized decision-making has led to some of the greatest feats of mankind, however, today’s conditions press us to turn back to decentralization as the model that fosters the restructuring needed to build back a better world and a more sustainable future."
13. "The global balance of power is underwritten by U.S. military supremacy, which is in turn based on maintaining a very large and technologically advanced military that can, among other things, field overwhelming airpower. The advanced weapons systems that U.S. military might depends on in turn depend on wide-ranging and complex global supply chains. The high domestic political cost of losing U.S. soldiers abroad further reinforces the U.S. strategy of technological supremacy overwhelming opponents with minimum U.S. casualties.
Whether or not the U.S. is able to ramp up production and supply during a crisis is thus a key factor that determines its ability to maintain the global balance of power. The U.S. military is not designed to fight wars without missiles, planes, and computers.
Intervention in conflicts like the one in Ukraine, or in future conflicts in Taiwan, the Korean peninsula, or Iran, will require vast increases in production of both basic goods such as prepackaged food and ammunition, as well as much more complex and advanced systems like missiles and smart munitions."
14. "Just like on the Schuylkill, there are floaters lurking just below the surface of the capital markets. These are companies or hedge funds that seem to be getting along fine, until some calamitous volatility event fatally compromises their ability to remain a going concern. To the untrained eye, these zombies might have appeared to be alive and well– but they got deaded a long time ago by unsustainable business models and trading strategies. This past week witnessed the lightspeed bankruptcy / insolvency of a few high profile business and hedge funds that previously were thought to be masters of the metaverse.
Unlike the human dead, the living dead of capital markets carry their possessions with them into the river Styx, bobbing just out of sight underneath opaque waters. It is only once their souls finally succumb to their macabre reality, and market conditions force their carcasses to the surface, that these companies’ worldly possessions are unearthed — and ultimately auctioned off in a fire sale. For those intrepid living capital markets explorers who possess the resources to harvest the fruits of the dead, the capital markets zombie apocalypse is welcomed.
During the fire sale of the dead, pristine assets with solid fundamentals suddenly become inexpensive. But beware, not all assets are made equal. Many of the zombies’ possessions deserve to travel with their hosts down to the underworld. It requires the utmost discipline to separate what is irrationally cheap from what fundamentally deserves to perish. The key determining factor is always cash flow."
https://entrepreneurshandbook.co/floaters-1085be6d6ffd
15. This was a fun documentary of a trip through Canada, USA and Mexico. Lots of beautiful cinematography of lovely landscapes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNpFaqupAYM
16. "So on a two to three years outlook Russia faces a collapse in export receipts, with almost no access to international financing because of sanctions and default. Meanwhile, with much of Putin’s military having been destroyed in Ukraine, he will struggle to finance military rebuild which he will be desperate to achieve given his desire to retain some kind of parity with NATO.
That means that the Putin regime will have to divert all resources away from consumption to military investment. It will all have a feel of decay circa late 70s, early 80s Soviet Union. And decay and decline is the outlook here for Putin’s Russia and a large part of that is because of today’s default."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/russia-in-default-so-what
17. Tim Kennedy is awesome. We need more of this in America.
Great documentary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDxvDQHfrGE
18. Cannot agree with this more.
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/make-russia-pay-now
19. All the journalists, analysts and amateur tacticians should listen to the expert, losing ground is not losing the war. Ex-Major General Ryan knows what he is talking about.
"George Washington lost many of his battles, and gave up territory, but kept his Continental Army alive to eventually win the war (with the help of his French allies).
So too must the Ukrainians cede ground at times to win this war. Despite their enormous courage, the Ukrainians must not be drawn into an attritional fight with a Russian Army that prefers to fight this way.
This week's events have shown again that losing territory is bad for a country at war, but losing your army is fatal.
The Ukrainians have had a terrible week. But it is not the same as them losing the war."
20. Ian Bremmer is a smart guy and one of the best geopolitical observers around. This was very educational.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO1Mojss--s
21."Just ask yourself the following: Why can't you vote on: 1) money printing, 2) interest rates, 3) taxes, 4) school curriculum for your kids and 5) war spending? Financial literacy isn’t taught in school for a reason would be our guess.
Save yourself because no one else will. Hopefully we can all agree on that!"
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/media-manipulating-your-focus-current
22. Brave men, nonetheless. Foreign volunteers helping defend Ukraine from the Russian barbarian orcs. #SlavaUkraini
"The diversity of fighting forces underscored the spectrum of motivations and personalities converging—the makeshift armies were variously composed of danger junkies and sinister right-wing nationalists, shameless opportunists and good people seeking a good war. There were men like Watson with roots in Ukraine, and others, like Casey, driven by a deep humanitarian impulse.
Then there were those like Michael Young, moved by a tangle of motives that he had struggled to understand: moral outrage, a thirst for adventure, a yearning for redemption. Young’s lifelong restlessness and search for fulfillment had taken him, step by step, to the edge of a catastrophic conflict in a land far from home, and would, over the next weeks, draw him in even deeper."
https://www.gq.com/story/ukraines-last-chance-brigade
23. This is really awesome for Europe. And much needed. Plural VC: 250M Euro Founder led Fund.
https://www.ft.com/content/9e3eaca6-5949-4791-931f-7c703f796843
24. Kissinger has sold out so many small countries in his Realpolitik. Anthony Bourdain was right.
“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking.
Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević.”
25. "Given Indonesia’s remarkable history, I am optimistic that this program can succeed. Indonesia has already partially industrialized, democratized, and then maintained steady growth despite substantial deindustrialization. And the overall growth of Southeast Asia, especially with the increasing exodus from China, has created very favorable conditions for manufacturing in the region. If any country is versatile and flexible enough to come back from deindustrialization, it’s Indonesia."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/indonesia-the-most-amazing-development
26. Congrats to my friends at Ascend Vietnam Ventures!
https://www.techinasia.com/axie-infinity-backers-fund-exceeds-50m-target
27. Overall good & interesting interview on Asian stocks. I've long been a fan of the Wandering Investor.
But his apolitical & libertarian "I don't care about politics because its not my business" is stupid (and weak) in this day and age.
You will lose money this way and you will need to take a stand eventually.
https://mailchi.mp/789ef55acce0/investing-in-asian-value-stocks
28. Turkey is so well positioned for the future except for the horrendous economic policy in place now.
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/turkey-where-is-the-market-love
29. "As is Turkey markets are calm this morning - not rallying but at least not collapsing which likely would have been the case if Erdogan had upheld his veto.
Sense here that US Treasury officials’ visit to Turkey last week played some role also - F16 financing, Halkbank likely topics.
Erdogan remains in the game for the 23’ elections. This is not a game changer for him therein but at least it’s not a killer blow as a balance of payments crisis surely would have been.
And the big loser here is Putin. Many Turks told me that Turkey could not choose between Russia and the West, actually many said Erdogan would choose Putin. Well Erdogan did not which just shows that in the end Turkey is anchored into the West. When push comes to shove, Turks look West."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/nato-decision-a-win-for-swinn
30. Kaboom! Batch 14 represent! Congrats to Olivier Pailhes, Jonathan Anguelov & the Aircall Team.
https://medium.com/@Olivierpailhes/the-aircall-story-by-founders-da8a07d32321
31. Very much needed in Europe to say the least.
“Plural” is a new €250 million early-stage venture fund started by Ian Hogarth (formerly Songkick), Tamkivi, Hinrikus and Khaled Helioui (a former tech CEO). The fund founders say other tech founder/partners will be unveiled in due course and that they have ambitions to lead early-stage funding rounds from the earliest stages all the way up to €10 million. The band will also focus on four to five deals a year per investor, so that they can be “hands-on.”
As the Plural founders point out, less than 10% of investors in Europe are former operators, in contrast to more than half of tech investors in the U.S. This means founders miss out on the experience of other founders-turned-investors, and it’s a valid criticism."
32. I was a fan of Richard Branson, even more so now. #SlavaUkraini
"I was given the opportunity to say a few words, and wanted to convey what I think many of us in the West feel: every day, Ukrainians are fighting and dying for the entire free world. The least the rest of the world can do is to give our unwavering and unconditional support until the last Russian soldier leaves Ukrainian territory. Anything else would be defeat – not just defeat to Ukraine’s right to freely choose its own destiny, but also to the rule of law and the sovereignty of nations."
https://www.virgin.com/branson-family/richard-branson-blog/visiting-ukraine
33. Blade Runner and its sequel are great films but not so great at the economic forecast side of things. But that’s also why they call it Dystopian.
"It’s my guess that our appreciation of Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049 will only increase in the years and decades ahead. But that increased appreciation will more likely be driven by what the films say about human interaction with AI than about the flaws of capitalism."
https://fasterplease.substack.com/p/-40-years-later-blade-runners-dystopian
34. Super impressed by what the EF team has done. Big fan and we need more of what they are doing across the world.
35. Always learn new things. I may not agree with everything said here but it's an important perspective & discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lrOjNsPzww
36. Easy to snipe but it’s still too early to judge right now. At same time VCs are experts at private markets not public. Crossover funds are challenging as its hard to be good at both.
"Two of Sequoia Capital’s largest bets have been cratering on the public markets — yet the firm still holds the vast majority of its original ownership positions.
If Unity and DoorDash’s share prices don’t rebound significantly, Sequoia may have missed out on more than $7 billion in returns."
Brutality Works: The “Whiplash” School of Education & Training
The movie is amazing & probably upsetting to some people. From Our Culture Magazine:
“Whiplash finds its setting in the fictional New York Shaffer Conservatory, where Terence Fletcher (J K Simmons) mentors an up-and-coming jazz band with an iron fist. He’s verbally and physically abusive, but he believes that this is necessary in order to breed greatness. In his view, mediocrity is the enemy, and it is his duty to mentor the next great jazz musician.
Andrew Neyman (Miles Teller) is accepted into Fletcher’s band as a drummer, where he is subjected to extensive abuse. At first, he seems wimpy, not driven, and forgettable. Fletcher’s methods seem to spark something inside him and Andrew endures his abuse in seething anger. Obsessed with becoming someone to be remembered, Andrew pushes himself beyond his limits.
Source: https://ourculturemag.com/2021/04/06/12-best-quotes-from-whiplash-2014
It’s quite brutal and probably shocking to people raised in the “everybody gets a trophy” environment we are in. I hate seeing this in my daughters school as it does not reflect the real world. As a quote from the movie says: “There are no two words in the English language more harmful than "good job".’
In fact this is the Chinese and Taiwanese immigrant Tiger Mom way of raising kids (https://hardfork.substack.com/p/trauma-with-a-small-t-therapy-and). It’s all negative reinforcement and shame. Some of it had definitely rubbed off on me.
My method Is to be direct. And not always in a positive way. You sometimes need to deliver the message in a hard way to get through to a founder. A startup founder by nature is overly optimistic but this can be dangerous sometimes.
It has led to Negative feedback on me in VCGuide. On one hand I get it. On the other hand, “Fcuk you, you thin skinned mental weaklings! If you can’t handle this, how are you going to handle annoyed customers, employees or the true brutality of the market?” And frankly from what I’ve seen is they usually don’t make it.
Most investor’s feedback in Silicon Valley is vapid, nonsensical & plainly not helpful. Ie. passive aggressive to the point of uselessness. Or worse they just ghost the founder instead of properly saying “NO”. It’s cowardly because they want to keep the door open in case the deal gets hot or just because they don’t want to ruffle any feathers.
But if the goal is to be of service to founders & be a true partner in their endeavor, it Does not mean always being nice or positive.
Top tier investors like Vinod Khosla, Chamath Palitpapatiya & Keith Rabois are known, respected and hated equally for saying what they think. The common theme: It certainly helps to be independently wealthy so they aren’t reliant on anyone. But their “honesty” & strong opinions are also why they are considered rare authentic individuals (whatever you think of them) in a sea of bland personality-less investors. Not saying you have to be an A—hole either. Sometimes it’s also how you deliver the message too, so there is a middle ground.
Ultimately it’s a choice. In my book, better a harsh truth than a kind lie.
Pain is Information: A Tool for Self Development & Better Self Management
I’ve been on this earth for over 48 years now and I have very few regrets. But one of my biggest regrets is not handling or managing my rage and temper better. I’ve learned at a very young age growing up in Taiwanese immigrant household to suppress my emotions. Usually negative ones.
The problem with this is when you suppress it so much, that it all erupts ferociously when you get triggered by a difficult situation. This trigger could be some rude behavior, financial challenge, broken plans or some general frustration that comes with life.
I faced a combination of all these things in 2020 and this temper erupted not once but twice during that time. The problem was that I was not by myself. I was locked in quarantine with my family for 5 months. Losing control with an adult temper is awful to see. I never hit or threatened my family & would never do that. But to my everlasting shame I did display very violent behavior around them by smashing boxes and the wall from my anger.
And the effect of this was to terrify my family to the point that my daughter has a fear of loud noises to this day. I’ve apologized a thousand times and helped her through this but nothing causes me more pain than knowing that I did this to her. And I will never allow this to happen again.
An adult and a real man manages his emotions. And I’ve grown up a lot over the last 2 years. I’ve developed tools & techniques to better manage my emotions and anger. Getting good sleep and meditation help. But a big part is not suppressing bad feelings. When I meet a challenging situation or uncomfortable feeling, I actively acknowledge it verbally. I also write it down in a journal and tell myself “I am feeling angry or sad or humiliated.”
And surprisingly it really works. Acknowledging it helps you consciously absorb and process it instead of ignoring it. Or worse suppressing it. As I’ve learned the hard way, the more you suppress your painful feelings the worse it comes out later. Better to identify and kill it in its early stages. Don’t let it build up. It’s like a debt, the longer you ignore it, the harder it is to resolve later.
Pain is information. It tells you something is wrong and that you need to fix it. So make sure when it happens, you identify it and you face it no matter how much it hurts. If you don’t, I guarantee it will hurt WAY more later.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads July 3rd, 2022
“Be like a duck, paddling and working very hard inside the water, but what everyone sees is a smiling and calm face.” –Manoj Arora
"This was a theme of our conversations, that if McGregor has entered a new phase in midlife – new show, new success, new marriage, new child – it’s not by grand design. He can be erratic, he says. He works by feeling. He can be accused of doing too much. I point out that for work he is constantly in front of cameras; and when he’s not acting, he and his best friend disappear for months to ride bikes and be vulnerable in front of yet more cameras.
He returns to the idea of being on a journey, regardless of the destination. In our first conversation, he told me that he and Boorman had trouble initially selling their motorcycle show to networks because they wanted it to be about an epic quest – and that was it. “We couldn’t believe the sort of ideas that people wanted to slap on top of it. To make it a TV show to them, it had to be something else. And we were adamant that the journey is enough.”
https://www.gq.com/story/ewan-mcgregor-the-jedi-returns
2. "Most people don’t think about diversification past the platitudes. I’ve had thousands of conversations on risk management in the past few years, and haven’t heard any real original thinking on the topic in that time.
If the topic is raised to an efficient market disciple, they’ll quote Markowitz “diversification is the only free lunch”, if the manager goes to Omaha each year they’ll quote Buffet “diversification is a protection against ignorance”. If the manager has really gone out of their way to read about diversification, they will bring up Ray Dalio’s famous chart on the number of securities held vs. the reduction in volatility."
https://kellysalpha.substack.com/p/youre-diversifying-wrong
3. So many truths here on why money matters. And how to get it. Tate's mindset is worth learning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nvcZaD8vQk
4. Definitely checking out this book: "Immortal King Rao."
"In Vauhini Vara’s The Immortal King Rao, the East India Company provides the historical antecedent for a system of government performed by a corporate entity known only as the Board, a tech megacorporation turned dystopian state. When the Board takes control of the world, “historians later noted that there had been plenty of historical precedent,” Vara writes. “You could go at least as far back, they said, as the British East India Company.”
https://www.vox.com/culture/23171264/immortal-king-rao-review-vauhini-vara
5. Peloton as a platform.
"Love, a former dancer, was already working with both the Nets and Adidas when she joined Peloton as a cycling instructor in 2016, but since then, her opportunities have grown significantly. She has partnered with Nissan, NARS, and massage-device maker Therabody. She’s also built her own brand, and fans can purchase $25 socks or $78 sweatpants with the Love Squad logo on her website.
She recently spent time in London hosting an upcoming Netflix dance competition. “I’ve opted into the slash generation,” she says, referring to the phenomenon of millennials with multiple income streams. “I can get a little impatient if I’m doing the exact same thing every day.
These instructors may film eight Peloton classes a week and spend hours planning workouts, creating playlists, and writing scripts for future sessions. But these days, that’s just the baseline. Having built considerable followings on social media, they’ve also become influencers, able to drive fans who admire their lifestyle to buy the items they’re hawking. They’re so sought-after, in fact, that some now have their own agents and earn a sizable portion of their income through endorsement deals and partnerships, appearing in traditional advertising and posting sponsored content.
And they hold sway over a particularly affluent audience. Peloton charges nearly $2,000 for its newest bike—and that’s before the cost of cycling shoes, weights, and a monthly subscription for classes. The Peloton bike (or lightly fictionalized versions of it) has featured prominently on shows like Emily in Paris and Curb Your Enthusiasm as a signal of wealth and privilege. Instructors benefit from that cultural cachet.”
https://time.com/6187968/peloton-instructors-money-famous
6. "The Russian onslaught consumes ammunition at rates that massively exceed US forecasts & ammunition production. For US to act as arsenal in defence of Ukraine, there must be a major look at the manner/scale at which US organises its industrial base"
https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/return-industrial-warfare
7. "The next time an entrepreneur asks what it takes to be successful, consider the idea, “be single-minded long enough to get lucky.”
https://davidcummings.org/2022/06/18/be-single-minded-long-enough-to-get-lucky
8. "In fact, if you’d diversified equally across all the aforementioned assets, you’d overall be considerably up, not down. And at a time when the whole world is freaking out about an economic crisis, you would be sitting back calmly wondering what all the fuss was about.
It’s all about perspective.
In reality, it’s only people who are all-in on stocks, cash, or crypto who are feeling like it’s armageddon right now. So of course, that’s what the narrative is focusing on.
But if you’ve been paying attention, you should know not to trust the mainstream narrative by now.
So start thinking about how you can use the current economic climate to your own benefit, at a time when almost everyone else is only seeing a smouldering wreck.
If anything though, this should be another sign that if you’re not yet heavily diversified, now may be the best time to get that part of your financial house in order. Because the numbers don’t lie, and with each passing crisis it becomes increasingly obvious that it’s those who put their faith in only a few asset classes that suffer the most."
https://abundantia.substack.com/p/our-money-is-burning
9. This is one of the best discussions on how to get through the upcoming tech downturn and macroeconomic downturn.
https://mobile.twitter.com/bgurley/status/1537156295362351104
10. "The fact that a technology attracts manic boom/bust capital is no reflection on the technology itself. It is a reflection on the market’s tendency towards irrationality.
This was the case with bicycles and the Internet. And it will most likely be the case with crypto.
There will be plenty of crypto businesses, and many tokens themselves, that will (and should) go bust.
But there are still plenty of great projects and great ideas out there– most notably, the fundamental idea of having a decentralized financial system.
Our traditional financial system, dominated by clueless politicians and out of touch central bankers, has been a total disaster. It is responsible for the record-high debt and record-high inflation which are disrupting the lives of literally billions of people.
Given these conditions, the decentralized financial system that cryptocurrency represents makes more sense than ever. And the fact that Bitcoin is going through another ‘down phase’ in the market cycle bears absolutely no relevance to its value whatsoever.
History is almost invariably on the side of innovation. And there’s still an abundance of innovation in crypto."
https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/history-is-not-on-the-side-of-the-cryptos-grave-dancers-35604
11. "This is a foundational concept across all of finance and business. Time value of money calculations are nearly always involved when a business owner has to value a project or decide on a project to choose. Similarly, the present value of cashflows is the entire concept behind the “discounted cash flow” (DCF) method used in valuing a stock. This underpins concepts like payback period, internal rate of return, and value of business.
Time value of money is also a concept poorly understood and underutilized in the personal finance space. The decision on college should be based largely around tradeoffs using time value of money, similar to how a business decides if it is worth the cost to invest in a project."
https://effsigive.substack.com/p/time-value-of-money
12. The title says it all. This is why I don't trust any government in the world at all (granted some are worse than others). They are both evil and incompetent.
"There are no votes/voting system for interest rates or for money printing. Despite this fact republicans and democrats all fight each other online and in public. Crime begins to rise and layoffs begin. Again. The entire history written is largely due to decision you were not allowed to vote on. Please read that again. These decisions were primarily made without any of your input."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/total-incompetence-or-extreme-evil
13. This is the dumbest thing I've seen in a long time. Ad agency trying to be cool but showing they can never be so. So embarrassing.
https://www.adweek.com/agencies/publicis-chief-metaverse-officer-is-a-lion-named-leon
14. "This theme is as old as human civilization itself, and we can see many of the same extravagances and follies from the Mughal Empire in our world today.
This time is not different, and it’s why diversifying internationally makes so much sense… why having a Plan B makes so much sense."
15. For founders targeting the SMB space this is worth reading.
https://mobile.twitter.com/gokulr/status/1538702838922039296
16. "Ukraine needs a large volume of Western weapons, especially more of our advanced long-range artillery and missile systems to outgun the Russians and offset their numerical superiority. And it needs to receive those systems now."
https://www.19fortyfive.com/2022/06/ukraine-needs-more-western-weapons-now
17. Another reason that Putin and his cronies are war criminals. The massive and avoidable famine coming in much of the developing world due to his illegal war and blockade.
#SlavaUkraini
https://www.vox.com/23171151/ukraine-grain-wheat-russia-black-sea-odesa-food-crisis
18. Russia: a menace to global society.
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/russia-to-neighbours-are-worried
19. Lots to learn from Argentineans and their horrifically incompetent government. USA is going that direction.
Yet I'm a huge fan of Buenos Aires and I will be spending more time there in 2023!
"Buenos Aires is a great city if you have a WiFi income stream of about 2-5k a month, and quality of life in that case is very high. Private healthcare is great and affordable, and food & travel in the country is awesome."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/how-to-survive-in-a-world-of-hyperinflation
20. I'd normally be against government solution but these are so critical that it might be the only situation I'd agree with. (assuming it’s done intelligently which is not a foregone conclusion).
"Ultimately the energy and food markets are not true free markets that result in competition, but actually function as cartels that collude to fix prices in an effort to achieve geopolitical goals. That requires intervention from government.
Regulators should be aware of the bigger picture and be prepared to deal with other parts of this framework from an information and kinetic warfare perspective. We’re not dealing with “economics as usual” and we should be prepared to imaginatively deploy every available tool to disrupt these hybrid warfare strategies."
21. This is an excellent AMA done by the NIA crew. Lots of good stuff i've learned here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnLJ5MXrkWI
22. "His best hope, in pressing on with his current strategy, is that at some point, preferably quite soon, Ukraine’s Western supporters will tire of the war and its economic costs and urge Kyiv to accept some territorial compromise. Here his problem is that there is also paralysis of a different sort on the Western side. The economic costs are high, but they have already been incurred.
The commitment to Ukraine, and to ensuring that Russia does not win its war of conquest, has been made. So long as Ukraine continues to fight, and suffer the costs, then even leaders who think a compromise might at some point be necessary are holding their tongues.
The West is settling in for the long haul, looking for ways to keep Ukraine supplied with the weapons and ammunition it needs, while adjusting foreign policies to be able to concentrate on the war. The fight can be presented as a conflict between democracy and autocracy. But at its core it is also now about the future of the European security order, and if that means improving relations with autocracies, whether in urging the Saudis to pump more oil or keeping relations with China calm, then so be it."
https://samf.substack.com/p/paralysis-in-moscow
23. This is a good interview. The Wandering Investor! Contrarian investing.
https://mailchi.mp/b93f3026d62a/uranium-coal-cold-war-cannabis-investing-in-the-2020s?e=123a1c25c4
24. "The most iconic companies of the last decade were created during the Great Recession of 2008-2009: Uber, Airbnb, Whatsapp, Instagram and countless others. We expect that many of the most important companies of the coming decade will be created in the years to come.
Considering the environment, the founders will build more sound companies raising the right amount of capital at reasonable valuations, taking care of their burn, and focusing on their unit economics. Because they will face less competition, they will benefit from lower customer acquisition costs and will be more likely to dominate their category."
https://fabricegrinda.com/the-benefits-of-flexibility-and-reading-the-macro-tea-leaves-in-venture
25. Super good stuff. International founders coming to SF Bay Area, read this please.
https://chrisneumann.com/blog/youre-not-from-around-these-parts
26. "Ukraine needs more than symbols, and more than weapons. Not losing is not winning, and it will take a long and deep commitment by the western world to help Ukraine both win and then heal."
https://time.com/6176748/ukraine-war-economy
27. This is a very damn good conversation.
We need to support the US military and defense industry.
But I also like the fact that they actually talked through this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK0NfL2M5L4
28. "Kasparov’s overall thesis on Russia is of course not new, he has been out there giving warnings for the last twenty years. It was good however to hear him succinctly outline in person how Putin’s agenda has always been very clear. Dictators argued Kasparov don’t ask “Why”?” but ask “Why not?” and the continuous expansion of Russia’s military adventures in former Soviet territory are the exact evidence of this approach.
The West has absolutely no other option than to ensure that Ukraine wins. Any other outcome would be devastating and unleash further conquests and instability orchestrated by the Kremlin. This week’s turbulence over Kaliningrad and Lithuania is a good example of that. Any discussion over Putin’s health are sideshows, quite likely deliberate disinformation, and irrelevant according to Kasparov. Keep our eyes on the war, arm Ukraine and ensures it wins was the conclusion: there is no other way about it."
https://pieterdorsman.substack.com/p/war-and-tech-merge
29. This is a good one. Mentally preparing for the recession.
https://ckarchive.com/b/75u7h8hkkwpq9
30. "Don Valentine, founder of Sequoia, went to a Silicon Valley bar every Wednesday and Friday to chat with engineers about the next big thing. In the world of startups, investors are the specialists in connecting people with each other.
The more interesting people we meet, the better we’ll be at our job!"
https://tremendous.blog/2022/06/23/the-power-law-part-one
31. Fascinating fellow.
"In America, which takes its uneasy and often forgetful relationship to its own empire as a mark of virtue, Luttwak’s fate was otherwise. Unlike, say, Henry Kissinger, whose chilly Germanic brain made him an influential courtier in six or eight administrations, not to mention incredibly rich—Luttwak would remain a gadfly in the corridors of power.
Where Kissinger was cold, Luttwak was hot. Where Kissinger flattered, Luttwak was abrasive, and delighted in puncturing authority. Where Kissinger was cerebral, and talked about systems, Luttwak was hot-blooded, and wanted to touch and feel the stuff that the world is made of. He was too unruly and unflattering and independent-minded to be given any real responsibility for anything. No one wants a bona fide monster as secretary of defense.
On the other hand, Luttwak was too smart, with his big 16-cylinder brain, and too energetic, and too often right, to be banished to some provincial university to teach Byzantine military history to the children of accountants and dentists. Better to keep him in Chevy Chase, and give him contracts to chase after narco-terrorists or to study Chinese expansionism to his heart’s content until he suffered a heart attack."
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/three-blind-kings-edward-luttwak
32. "One thing that the collapse of the global supply chain has taught is that the world cannot run on SAAS and software alone. It’s time to get real. That means a world where capital and talent get on their bikes and start making hard stuff."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/time-to-get-real
33. "In a recent analysis, the economics team at Goldman Sachs takes a similar view: “We are not particularly concerned about [a financial crisis] or more broadly about major financial imbalances that would need to slowly unwind in a recession because private sector balance sheets remain robust.”
Nor is GS worried that inflation and inflation expectations will stay stubbornly persistent amid rising unemployment, thus delaying monetary easing. GS: “In short, our best guess is that a recession caused by moderate overtightening would be shallow, though we could imagine it dragging on for a little longer than it would with more policy support” such as a large fiscal stimulus, which GS sees as unlikely given the probability of divided government after the upcoming midterm elections."
https://fasterplease.substack.com/p/-heres-what-the-likely-upcoming-us
34. "The Ukrainians have definitely bought us some time to think about all this. If Kyiv had really fallen at the end of February of this year, this would have been a very dark spring for democracies. If an extreme right-wing regime in Russia managed to destroy democracy in Ukraine that would have had effects for everyone.
Conversely, if Ukraine, despite people’s expectations, manages to hold this off, that will be a great boon to democracy. Because I think it either goes one way or the other. I don’t think there’s such a thing as stasis. So the Ukrainians have given us a chance to think. We need to realize that what the Ukrainians are doing is a very compressed example of the kind of courage that you actually need to keep a democracy going."
https://www.vox.com/2022/6/21/23165718/vox-conversations-ukraine-russia-timothy-snyder-democracy
35. I really enjoy this podcast. Glad it's back.
I disagree with much of their assessment on Ukraine. But they are right that EU/USA have been incompetent in managing their energy & pushing the sanctions & helping Ukraine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh6-PXMdmPk
36. Even though we are in Crypto winter, this is a great & relevant discussion covering parallels of Crypto Renaissance to the old Renaissance.
Excellent analogy and still bullish on the future of Crypto as the grifters, mercenaries and crooks are washed away in this downturn.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=karddOiv4ZA
37. Slava Ukraini!
"Here’s what gives me hope — of the rational, constructive kind. Ukraine has reached the tipping point of having enough well-qualified and extremely motivated people: from President’s Office, to the Military, to Diplomatic Corps, to academics, to common citizens. These are the people of skill, the kind who tilt the odds of history’s poker in favor of Ukraine."
38. "Podcasting is also a more convenient medium than any visual format. It doesn’t require our full attention, so more of our day is available to podcasters. It’s not as easy to organize or sift through as print, but it’s far easier to access than video. We may be in a golden age of television, but the average household spends more than 7 minutes a day deciding what to watch on their streaming platforms.
If someone recommends a TV show, we must find out what platform it’s on, locate the app, track down the password, and then have an uninterrupted hour of screen time. In contrast, a podcast is always a few clicks away. Ease of discovery enables the proliferation of new voices."
https://www.profgalloway.com/all-ears
39. "But the concept of a beacon is not limited to purely physical signaling points. There are beacons on the web – they are people, companies, networks, blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels; anything that can direct attention to something of importance.
You must become a beacon or you are essentially at the whim of others who point attention at their discretion, perhaps shining the light on you for fleeting moments…if you’re lucky. Far better to become an arbiter of attention in your industry or niche rather than forfeit this advantage to others."
https://adamsinger.substack.com/p/become-a-beacon-or-risk-being-lost
40. Network effects go both ways. The rise and decline of Axie Infinity. Still early days for the Play to Earn pioneer though and they do have alot of cash still.
https://restofworld.org/2022/axie-infinity-hack
41. Fascinating.
"There’s no mention of it in the guide books, but the farms we passed play a central role in the global financial system. They are the source of a massive pool of savings that gets deployed right around the world. Japanese real estate, US subprime, private equity buyouts – all markets that have been financed from this pool. And sitting on top of it, commanding those flows, is a single financial institution: Norinchukin Bank."
The Self Destructive Nature of Humans: Why Smart People Do Stupid Things
This is a story you see or hear often. A super successful person in whatever field (academia, sports, politics, business, media) who seems to have it all. Wealth, fame, family or whatever is societally valued. But then suddenly out of the blue, they do something incredibly self-destructive that their reputation or career or life in general is ruined. This could be a massive business gamble, an affair, doing something borderline or even grossly illegal. Or some major socially reprehensible act.
I should also note this tends to happen in very wealthy & modern societies where we have had multiple decades of prosperity. In countries that are closer to trouble, surrounded by enemies (Israel) or recently just emerged from economic challenges or war, I am not sure you see this occur as much. Self destructive acts are luxury acts when you are far from subsistence or survival situations. Maybe when you have had too much success you feel the need to get closer to chaos so you can feel pain and feel alive.
Now at the ripe age of 48 I have even seen these self destructive situations happen to people I know, multiple times. I’ve always wondered about this. What would cause someone on the rise to do something so stupid. Why do I do this myself?
Is it arrogance? Thinking you can do no wrong. Or more likely hubris: which is defined as pride that makes the gods plot your downfall.
I can think back to my own career of the multiple times that I’ve acted out or just done/ said something plain stupid that led to my own career set backs. Easy to arrive at when you have some success and money. Very easy when you are a high flying executive at a rising tech company. Or a venture capitalist. I cringe when I think back to these moments. Teachable moments as they call it.
Maybe it’s an internal thing where you do not feel you deserve your success, so you self sabotage. Or perhaps you are genuinely unhappy despite the outside social perception of you being “successful”. The consequent self destructive act is one of subconscious self sabotage.
This happened to me multiple times, in the last year at Yahoo! where I ended up picking pointless political fights with other regional executives. Or as a VC acting out or going against my Partners or other colleagues views, requests or directives. This was definitely my situation in 2019.
What have I learned since then? The antidote to all of this is gratitude, humility and mission.
Gratitude: just being happy and present. Something I learned during the pandemic. A regular daily gratitude exercise where you recount all your blessings whether health, wealth, family and friendships is usually enough to ground you.
Humility: understand you are a work in progress and that mistakes are part of the learning process. Be okay with not knowing everything and be open to learning opportunities. Basically know that you don’t know anything. But as long as you make some small progress every day that’s all that matters. Ie. Kaizen=small incremental improvements over time.
Mission: the key goals that drive you in all aspects of your life. The vision board exercise is invaluable. And it helps to focus you on what matters. It clarifies. If the action or time does not get close to fulfilling your mission, then don’t do it.
Maybe on top of all this, the most important thing is bringing some form of active discomfort into your life like taking cold showers, martial arts training, preparing for marathons and Iron Mans or fasting. I’ve posted this quote from Tim Ferris’ before but it’s so apt.
“The more you schedule and practice discomfort deliberately, the less unplanned discomfort will throw off your life and control your life.”
This keeps you from being too comfortable and maybe will help you get closer to your base survival instincts so you don’t get complacent and do stupid things. Perhaps this is the secret hack and could be the most important act that will keep you out of trouble.
Strategic Depth & Personal Finances: Part Political Rant & Part Financial Freedom
Geography is the curse and the trap of history that few countries can escape.
If you look at the history of Russia, they have been invaded by almost everyone at least 51 times in history: endless hordes of nomad warriors like the Khazars & Pechenegs, the Vikings, the Mongols, Teutonic Knights, Swedes, Poles, Turks, France, the Germans twice, and it was done through the very flat plains of Eastern Europe which leads directly to Moscow. Basically there are no geographic barriers like mountains, forests or deep oceans to block opposing armies from marching to their major population centers. And because of this the rulers of Russia were always forced to look at “Strategic Depth” to protect themselves.
“Strategic depth” as defined on Wikipedia is a term in military literature that broadly refers to the distances between the front lines or battle sectors and the combatants' industrial core areas, capital cities, heartlands, and other key centers of population or military production.
This term is deeply ingrained in every Russian ruler and led to the expansion of the Russian empire from the 1600 to the 1900s and also to the establishment of the Soviet Union in 1917 and it’s extension to incorporate East Germany, Ukraine, the Baltic countries, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Georgia, Czech & Slovak republics & the Central Asian “Stans” where they could buffer the Russian heartlands as much territory and distance as possible. And hence Putler’s present insane obsession with Ukraine & Baltics.
For the record, this absolutely does NOT in any way remotely justify the horrific & barbaric Russian invasion of Ukraine and the outright takeover of Belarus. This is putting aside the senselessness of war & the gross repudiation of international law in an unjust invasion of another sovereign country. It’s obscene, immoral & awful because we are now in the 21st century where we have supposedly advanced as a civilization and society.
There are so many ways to take over countries instead of the violence of war. You buy your way in through bribes/investments/trade deals, you use proxies, or do media/ “Black” ie. negative PR or fund opposition political parties. You don’t send in soldiers and fire bombs and missiles. It’s pure 20th century barbarism. I truly hope Ukraine continues to kick the Russian army’s ass. But having said that, we do need to understand that strategic depth drives the thinking and imperative of every Russian ruler since the beginning of their state.
You can also see the concept of “Strategic Depth” in Pakistan’s interest in Afghanistan. Their not so secret support of Taliban since the late 1990s. They view the influence and control of Afghanistan through these proxies as Strategic Depth against their arch enemy India. Probably more of a 21st century way of doing this. (not a value judgment here just an observation)
It’s an important concept to understand in relation to your own personal finance. Strategic depth can be seen from having a low cost structure and inexpensive tastes. This should be job one so you can allow your money to go further. It can also come from having capital reserves, like having enough cash on hand to cover 6-12 months of monthly expenses. This just gives you so much more leeway and freedom. At a basic level, it actually just gives you a good margin of safety in your life.
Having strategic depth in your personal financial life is important although you can take this way too far. 12 months of cash seems smart. 36 months of cash seems very extreme & probably not productive, due to the government printing machine. You are losing money due to inflation which the government reports at over 5-7%, which means it’s probably much much higher. You are better off using this money and investing in stocks, crypto, real estate or startups, assuming your timeline is far over 5 years and that prices have been knocked down so much in the last half year. Don’t think you can go too wrong here.
But assuming you just want to keep the cash and plan on buying assets during some major economic dip, this would be a damn smart move too. Hard to do timing wise though as it requires lots of discipline to leave the money sitting there without spending it on stupid stuff. Or maybe this is just my personal issue :)
The net net: keep some strategic depth in your personal finances. It’s your downside protection which is always useful in tumultuous times like the raging 2020s.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads June 26th, 2022
“To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.” —Bertrand Russell
"What’s most important to stress, however, in my opinion, is that when there is no Central Bank to backstop the market, the “bust” part of cycles always ends up happening, and as we’ve said, for a good reason. Additionally, in markets like crypto, we have daily prices for venture capital like projects, which is why cycles tend to be so brutal, both on the upside as well as the downside (can you imagine if start-ups were quoted in the stock market? How wild would their share price movements be? Well, that’s basically crypto)."
https://www.thelykeion.com/capitalism-at-work
2. "There’s a clear divide among the VC mindsets in different geographic regions. The book calls out the difference between the west coast and east coast VCs as the divide between believing in visions versus in the numbers. I’ve seen this myself as a general attitude for European VCs. If I could be so bold as to rank the willingness to believe in visions, it would look something like the following:
US VCs > European VCs
If I were to place Chinese VC on this spectrum, it would be between the two:
US VCs > Chinese VCs > European VCs"
https://lillianli.substack.com/p/the-power-law
3. I can't wait until this book comes out. This interview is a good preview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqtf-3sRTzI
4. "This preoccupation with ownership—with users building their own experience, owning their own data and I.P.—is the defining feature of the discourse surrounding NFTs and Web3. Not long ago, I asked Finn Brunton, a technology historian and scholar of all things crypto, to explain why anyone would care about this stuff, what the phenomenon represented. “It is actually rather rare and special to feel that you own something digital these days,” he replied. “You may own your computer or phone, but it is rare to own anything on it: Your music and movies are streamed, and come and go; your digital life and social life and much of the content we consume and produce is all on other people’s platforms and making money for someone else.”
Everything we do online is already financialized, in other words, but the benefits accrue to other people—large tech companies, generally. Proponents envision a transition from this renter’s economy to an ownership economy, in which our data belongs to us, a primary resource that we’re finally free to control. “There is something weird and melancholy,” Brunton said, “about how little there is to NFTs beyond the act of ownership itself.”
The Yacht Club and its owners hoped to take the idea one step further, bringing their data to life and putting it to work."
https://www.gq.com/story/bored-ape-profile
5. More on the upcoming De-globalization and the ramifications of this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-cQwRil1H0
6. Everythings a business in America it seems.
"With virtually no fee caps, experts are paid what the market demands for their services — and the market for their services is very robust.
In a high-profile case with millions of dollars at stake, it’s not uncommon to have 6-10+ expert witnesses between opposing sides.
The Depp-Heard trial featured nearly a dozen expert witnesses — psychologists, surgeons, entertainment and intellectual property lawyers, forensic accountants — that Lewis estimates collectively charged $1m+."
https://thehustle.co/the-lucrative-economics-of-expert-witnesses
7. Not a fan of Schwab, WEF or the Davos crowd. Corrupt arrogant scumbags.
"Do I believe the WEF is the cover for some grand Illuminati-like conspiracy, where the attendees are convening in secret to take over the world? No.
But at the same time, do I believe the Forum is also good for the state of our planet, or acting to benefit the average person? No, I don’t.
In my opinion, the WEF is an accelerator that will achieve not much more other than to help big business gain more control over global economic activities, eventually leading to an increased concentration of wealth and power. An assembly of elites promoting some frankly terrifying ideas of increased financial controls, including the implementation of a global digital identification system, as well as programmable Central Bank Digital Currencies.
It’s a club for the powerful, making decisions for the powerful, that will benefit the powerful. And it’s happening out in the open, right in front of our very eyes."
https://abundantia.substack.com/p/the-illuminated-ones
8. "The company, dual-headquartered in San Francisco and Dublin, processed $640 billion in payments last year across 50 countries. Its gross revenue, still mostly the 2% to 3% it collects on such volume, reached nearly $12 billion in 2021, according to sources with knowledge of its financials, up about 60% year over year.
Net revenue, which excludes the cut Stripe passes along to partners like Visa and Chase, reached nearly $2.5 billion. And, unusually for a unicorn that’s still growing fast, Stripe finished the year with hundreds of millions in profit on an Ebitda basis, two sources add.
“We’re not a glamorous business, just an infrastructure company that hopefully we’ll be able to compound for a long time,” says Patrick, his short cropped red hair sun-bleached after his rare week off. “The scope of the job doesn’t change that.”
9. "The most likely scenario I now foresee is that Ukraine will smartly retreat from the Donbas. They will walk, not run and force Russia to suffer extremely high costs for every inch of soil. They will counterattack from Kharkiv, and they will eventually cut the supply lines from Belgorod to the front. They will continue to degrade Russia’s offensive capabilities, and eventually, Russia’s offensive will stall, if not collapse.
Russia’s greatest weapon might be a world food crisis and inflation, but NATO is far from helpless to improve that situation. It can always give Ukraine the means to end Russia’s naval blockade of Ukraine’s remaining ports, like Odessa. The recent decision to transfer HIMARS to Ukraine suggests that NATO would trust Ukraine with long-range anti-ship systems.
There are no winners in this war (unless welcoming Finland and Sweden can count as a win for NATO) — everyone is suffering for it — but it seems increasingly likely that there will be a clear loser."
10. Very solid advice here for fundraising from VCs.
https://www.saastr.com/what-to-know-about-fundraising
11. The investing legend Druckenmiller.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtMNls7O3FY
12. "Despite our best efforts to express authentically held views in a civil manner and to back those views with data, we suspect it won’t be long. The creeping incrementalism of the do-gooders who have empowered themselves to adjudicate what information is suitable for public consumption will mean ever-more topics are considered off-limits.
Soon, critiquing society’s response to climate change will be labeled another form of climate denialism, and efforts to de-platform those expressing such views will accelerate. The intoxicating power to nullify people instead of hypotheses is irresistible, and Sagan’s dark predictions will prove true.
Bad dreams, indeed."
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/wide-awake
13. Lots here.
"effectively you can look at the five asset classes to decide what you should be buying: 1) real estate - from market cap it’s effectively the lowest risk if you’re buying a primary residence (forced to live somewhere), 2) bonds - unlikely applies to any of our readers as it slowly loses to inflation as these assets are handed down to the younger generation they likely buy stocks/crypto, 3) stocks - betting on long-term growth of the world economy which is rarely a bad bet, 4) Gold - unlikely becomes more popular but we’ll play along and say it maintains its market cap and 5) the highest risk with crypto where you’re betting money flows to the industry as it becomes more popular.
Flow of Funds: Before walking through these items, remember that increasing the money supply just sends the market cap up for all of these assets. If people keep the same amount of money involved in each asset class it means real estate goes up by the same *percentage* points relative to the other asset classes. The only way to get ahead in life is by finding the assets that take share - more flow of funds."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/asset-class-overview-internet-headwind
14. About time too. Nuclear power long overdue for comeback.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/07/why-nuclear-energy-is-on-the-verge-of-a-renaissance.html
15. These Wagner Group folks are bad, dangerous people.
https://www.npr.org/2022/06/06/1102603897/wagner-group-mercenary-russia-ukraine-war
16. "Russian President Vladimir Putin is therefore trying to turn his invasion of Ukraine into a brutal contest of wills. He’s betting his army on breaking Ukrainians’ collective will to fight on in their country. His own won’t likely break.
Fortunately, Ukraine doesn’t need it to. If Ukrainians can weather the current Russian storm and then counterattack the exhausted Russian forces they still have every chance to free their people and all their land."
https://time.com/6184437/ukraine-russian-offensive
17. This is pretty valuable for SaaS founders. Agree with much of this. This guy has been around.
https://kellblog.com/2022/06/07/saastr-europa-slides-the-top-5-mistakes-in-scale-up
18. Woohoo Batch 24. Ham Serunjogi & Chipper Cash team crushing it.
19. Unstoppable networks. A very good breakdown and discussion of various businesses like Apple.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDObsgo2amc
20. "You're never tired when you are winning." This is a smart man: lots to learn here (don’t agree with his pro-Trump view though).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgk1WU38pTc
21. "Maybe we should think more about the why. We work for economic security and relevance — meaning, even. Just as we have incorrectly conflated masculinity and toxicity, work has errantly been positioned as the enemy. Something that depletes us, a necessary evil whose taskmasters (i.e., bosses) are inherently compromised people. Yes, sometimes.
However, for most young people, I believe there are few things that can solve more problems (loneliness, stress, depression) than work. Good work. And the path to good work usually involves shitty work."
https://www.profgalloway.com/notes-on-work
22. "The public markets are struggling, and the impact of that stock market slowdown has begun to trickle into the private sector, as well. That doesn’t bode well for pre-seed biotech startups like those at the Alliance’s showcase, who now must navigate a tepid market without necessarily having clinical data—biotech’s main proof of concept."
https://dot.la/biotech-funding-2657479400/phoenix-motorcars-raises-just-10-of-planned-150m-ipo
23. Must read for emerging VC fund managers starting off or in the middle of the fundraising process.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1534182362098987011.html
24. "ESG is the new watch word for Western business. Doing the right thing, or showing you are doing the right thing is a marketing tool that business now flaunts. What bigger/better ESG story than helping Ukraine’s recovery from genocide and helping Western liberal market democracy succeed with economic development in Ukraine?
Important herein to recognise that Putin has already, thru his attack on Ukraine and various other malign actions against the West, shown he wants to attack and undermine our very system of government, and the rule of law upon which Western business has prospered."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/ukraine-how-to-pay-for-the-war
25. "We have though learned from the period before February 24 that appeasement of Putin does not work. And experience after February 24 suggests that the only thing Putin actually respects is hard power. In the conduct of this war Ukraine and it’s allies have continuously crossed Putin’s red lines - in the supply of armaments, SWIFT sanctions, CBR asset freezes, NATO enlargement to Finland and Sweden, use of WMD - and Putin has always blinked.
He has proven to be a poor poker player and even worse tactician/strategist. He now has a losing hand and let’s just he realises sooner rather than later and folds."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/time-for-a-mea-culpa-from-mearsheimer
26. "Right now, the greatest obstacle to the West providing all-out military and economic support to Ukraine is our inability to imagine a new power configuration in Eastern Europe — one that would rest on the NATO’s Baltic-to-Black Sea intermarium corridor of countries closely aligned with the U.S. And as Finland and Sweden gear up to enter NATO, Europe is on the cusp of a potentially transformative geopolitical reconfiguration, much like at the end of World War I.
The defense of Ukraine is not only about national sovereignty and territorial integrity — historically, the two foundational principles of democratic governance — but ultimately about pushing Russia out of Europe, thereby ending three centuries of its imperial drive. The independence of Ukraine, and by extension of Belarus — for, once Ukraine has defended its sovereignty and territorial integrity, Minsk wouldn’t remain in Moscow’s orbit for long — would end Russia’s claim to being a key “Eurasian power in Europe.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-could-be-an-inflection-point-eu-us-west-war-russia
27. A sobering conversation. 2022 & 2023 is gonna be rough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y33G8hVxJq4
28. Still early days but it's a challenging time for Axie Infinity.
"That Axie was widely viewed primarily as a way to make money has proven a major problem for its virtual economy. The game is designed to offer ways to both earn and spend SLP within the game. Any tokens spent within the game just disappear. But play-to-earners instead cash out all SLP by selling them on crypto markets, meaning the total number of tokens increases over time. The additional supply depresses prices, in a crypto version of hyperinflation. Players are constantly hounding Sky Mavis to tweak how the game works in ways that would reduce the amount of SLP in circulation.
Even before the broader collapse of crypto, Sky Mavis struggled to address the issues with Axie’s internal economy. A financial system consisting of people all hoping to put in $1 and take out $2 can last only as long as someone else shows up believing others will come in after them with more fistfuls of cash. Once Axie began looking less profitable, its ability to draw new players decreased, making it even less profitable and setting off a vicious cycle. “Axie has just been this fascinating tale of people learning hard lessons of economics and monetary policy in microcosm,” says Doucet."
29. Druckenmiller is an investing legend. So much to learn here from the best macro global investor in the last few decades.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7sWLIybWnQ
30. This is an interesting macro outlook described here to understand what’s happening.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5q1l3aJ-_s
31. "Is there a kind of money that is both programmable and outside money? If we were to consolidate all balance sheets in order to treat the economy as a single aggregate entity, all forms of credit would appear as both assets and liabilities, and hence would cancel. Is there a form of outside money — money that exists outside the matrix of economic relationships — while being programmable?
Once you frame the question in this way, the answer is obvious. Only crypto is money because crypto is both an asset that is not a liability and a programmable construct. Programmable gold."
https://brunomacaes.substack.com/p/only-crypto-is-money-the-new-monetary
32. Lessons from Hedge Fund King Dalio.
"[If I were] to pick countries [for foreign investments], there are three questions I’d ask:
Is the country earning more than it’s spending?
Does it have internal order where people are working well with each other to be productive?
Is it at risk of being drawn into an international war?
"It made me ask myself, “How do you know you’re right?” And I developed a principle: Pain + Reflection = Progress."
https://thehustle.co/a-chat-with-ray-dalio
33. I am a fan of Serbia, Slovenia and Croatia!
"The tiny Swiss town of Zug is the perhaps unlikely home to Europe’s “crypto valley”: almost 1,000 crypto startups are based in Switzerland, and half of them are in Zug.
But it might now have a contender for the crypto crown.
Crypto startups in Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia are attracting investment from some of the world’s most sophisticated investors, like Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger and Accel."
https://sifted.eu/articles/crypto-startups-europe-balkans
34. This is a great intro to Zeihan's new book. It's grim but important reading on the future economy and geopolitics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRliA6bfhLg
35. I think the opprobrium that many people hold Saudi Arabia in is off. The place is changing for the better from what I've seen being there.
"These are the games that Biden is playing. They are the same ones that every president before him since 1945 has played. No matter what he says about the Saudi regime now, it’s clear whose interests will always come out on top. At least the Biden administration is finally abandoning the pretense that things will be any different. This is a time of crisis and we need the Saudi oil. The only question is what we will pay for it."
https://www.discourseblog.com/p/the-kingdom-always-wins
36. This is really damn good. All founders should read this.
https://chrisneumann.com/blog/you-keep-using-that-word
37. This is an important but disturbing discussion on the future of geopolitics. De-globalization.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aK5kQ3mZddg
38. "Well, first of all, don’t assume that the price of some asset class going down means that money is “flowing” somewhere else in the economy. That just isn’t how it works.
And sometimes people will assure you that drops in asset markets don’t mean anything because no actual wealth was destroyed. But paper wealth is as “real” as wealth gets, and people whose assets get market down may cut back on spending, which affects the real economy.
Second, take wealth numbers with a grain of salt. Yes, the rich people are all actually rich, but the net worth numbers you read in the Forbes 400 or on Wikipedia are more like indicators than exact measures of how much stuff someone could buy."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/where-does-the-wealth-go-when-asset
39. For military history buffs. The Great Captain.
https://mobile.twitter.com/LandsknechtPike/status/1538098976691572738
40. "Still, San Francisco is a place that has a knack for rebuilding, whether after literal earthquakes or in the wake of the busts that followed gold rushes going back to the 19th century. It has an extraordinary capacity to attract fortune seekers and visionaries from afar.
That’s the case with the growing cohort of frisky Gen Z startup founders who are showing up now in San Francisco, Cotopaxi backpacks and business plans in tow. For them, San Francisco’s brand as the center of the tech universe remains intact. They are more than happy to link arms with the members of San Francisco’s old guard who still believe in it, and together prove that the city can still mint tech blockbusters."
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/san-francisco-is-back-sort-of-maybe
41. "The old broken business models in the financial markets are giving way to new ones just like the EP-3 improved into a P-8. This matters from a security perspective which is why the defense establishment is going to be getting even more involved in the tech sector. Why?
Because strong tech and strong economies are the keys to military superiority these days. The two go together. They always have. So, every time we have an incident in the skies you can be sure there will be more direct or indirect support for the tech sector on the ground. This recovery will be like the last - a terrifying nosedive followed by a newfound understanding of what is possible."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/nosedives-and-recoveries
42. This dude is F--ing hero!
43. "What if we could have all the great taste of cooperation without the calories of trust? That’s the promise of crypto. Whatever you need validated, you put it on the immutable blockchain, and you have ground truth.
But beware of tech bros preaching decentralization. Technology has been promising to eliminate the middleman for decades, only to present new middlemen — in this case, new actors asking you to transfer trust and wealth from one institution to theirs. Crypto enthusiasts spent 14 years and tens of billions of venture capital dollars trying to create a trustless financial system with no middlemen. Status? See above: Celsius."
It’s Okay to Be Different & Weird: But You Better Be Strong Too
There is a classic action movie called “The Accountant”, starring Ben Affleck, a story about an autistic but brilliant boy who is raised by his special forces father. Brutally trained, there is a scene when he is bullied in the new school in France. His father lectures him.
“Life is a series of choices, none of which are new. The oldest is choosing to be a victim. Or not to.
You’re different. Sooner or later “different” scares people. Victim or not, make a decision.”
It’s a pretty interesting comment. Humans are wired social creatures. Naturally oriented to protect our blood, our tribe or our race. When we meet someone different than us, we naturally distrust them or fear them. More so if you come from a homogenous society. But even in racially & culturally diverse countries like Canada, the UK and the USA among other countries this still happens. You would think being around people different than you makes you understand them better and be more tolerant. It certainly does for some people. But based on all the race-related violence that still exists in society these days it’s not a foregone conclusion.
I’ve come to the view that If you are going to be different Ie. Think or act differently, you better build a tough skin as you will be criticized, shunned , even attacked verbally or physically. As the “model minority” in my guess, you are told to just take and accept it as is.
The problem though is that if you don’t stand up for yourself, they will just keep pushing you. If you don’t fight back against bullies, you get bullied more. This is the case as an individual, an organization and a country.
This is the same with cancel culture. You don’t apologize. If you do, they just dog pile on you more. The more different, read “weird” you are, the more important it is that you have an ability to defend yourself. To be able to fight back. Actually you just need to be able to fight, period. “The best defense is a good offense.”
We’re entering a multipolar, chaotic world where the strong will try to push around the weak. We see this with China and Taiwan. We saw this in the barbaric Russian invasion of Ukraine. Because Ukrainians fought back like lions, I don’t think anyone will try to push them around in the future. But I also think it happened because Putin rightfully saw the liberal West as weak, without resolve & declining. That war would not have happened if the West was seen as strong & willing to fight.
A smart country will try to get stronger. In fact, I expect an arms race and a growing defense industry everywhere as countries begin to arm themselves to make sure they can become spikey porcupines to protect themselves from bigger neighbors.
This is why at the individual level, you need to build strength & health. You need to develop fighting skills like Mixed Martial Arts, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, American boxing or kickboxing or some martial arts. In fact, add in good tactical shooting and knife fighting skills. The absolute confidence this builds in you is immense. Of course, this needs to be coupled with financial means and monetary independence.
I can tell you, the way I’m preparing my kid, no one will ever mess with her. This is the only way she will be able to be free to live the way she wants, whatever it is. However weird it is perceived to be by anyone else. To chart her own path just like I am trying to now.
We Have All the Time in the World: Living in the Present
I really enjoyed “No Time to Die”, a worthy end of the Daniel Craig James Bond era. He went down hard, saving his family and the world. Which is pretty much the best any hero can do.
I loved the testament from Jack London that the MI6 team gave him at the end.
“The function of man is to live not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”
The question then: are you spending time on things that really matter? Things that are worthy of the time you have here on earth. Things that are grand and society positive. Or even small things like making a stranger smile or helping alleviate some persons anguish or pain.
It’s a good reminder for me personally. Surviving and existing is not enough. We owe ourselves and our families to do more. To Live. Truly Live. Doing things of high impact.
And It’s not always just about personal happiness or pleasure, but about mission and doing hard things that make us proud. Accomplishing things. Even the attempt itself is worthy.
If you are not doing what you want, what’s stopping you? Don’t waste your precious time and get started!
As the saying in another great movie “Shawshank Redemption” goes, “Get busy Living or get Busy Dying!”
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads June 19th, 2022
“If your ship doesn’t come in, swim out to it! “—Jonathan Winters
This is super interesting. I've long been fascinated by Uzbekistan and can't wait to visit later this year.
2. I love Monk Mode (every once in a while). Kudos to my friend Jarie Bolander
https://www.thedailymba.com/2022/05/28/entrepreneur-monk-mode
3. Another great episode of Not Investing Advice. Ad biz implosion & Snap stock destruction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVXdGycNv7M
4. This is a grim listen but deglobalization is here. How to prepare for the new world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWyhKobyM68
5. This looks like a great documentary. "Expedition Happiness."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNpFaqupAYM
6. Sounds familiar right? Happening in the USA now.
"Rampant greed and power-mongering were commonplace, tearing great rends throughout the economic and moral fibre of society. And corruption was so rife, that it had almost become expected of the political ruling class of society as a tool of governance.
The common people of Athens didn’t fare well during this time. The population was kept in line mostly through fear, with regular executions being the favoured tool of guaranteeing compliance—a punishment that was sometimes dished out for offences as trifling as cabbage theft.
Throughout history, whenever a society was experiencing such a rampant level of rot, it often led to an economic chasm between the rich and the poor. And for Athens, this fact definitely held true."
The answer:
"If inflation continues to rise—which I and many others expect it to do in the near future—it could be worth your time to consider other vessels in which to store and grow your wealth. The most obvious beneficiaries so far have been real estate, as well as food and energy commodities like oil, natural gas, wheat, and coffee."
https://abundantia.substack.com/p/money-printer-goes-brrrrrrr
7. Good overview of what’s happening in the east of Ukraine. Cautiously optimistic that Russia is losing steam.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZioTavNy3c
8. Commodities super cycle is here. Metals and Mining.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e99XvuY2rBY
9. "All of this has led some crypto investors to wonder if the bottom is really in; with so much "fluff" in the air, maybe there is more left to fall to Earth. In any case, it's clear that nobody has learned anything."
https://www.vice.com/en/article/88gw55/nobody-learned-anything-from-the-crypto-crash
10. "Simply way to zoom out is to just ask where the world is heading. It’s up to *you* to decide these things. That said, some easy ones we don’t see coming back any time soon include:
1) massive commutes to cities - over the next 5-10 years the companies that offer remote solutions will take the talents,
2) don’t see a world with less automation,
3) don’t see a world where people speak to robots instead of physical sales people and nurses/doctors,
4) don’t see a world where manufacturing *isn’t* dominated by tech/robots etc and
5) see a world where valuable individuals gain more and more value as low-mid skilled work can be automated away.
These are just broad strokes. We separate them based on how humans operate. Unlikely a human wants to have a robot caring after him in a hospital. On the flip side. Really doubt humans care if their coca-cola was fork lifted by a person or a robot (no human contact = easier to automate)."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/basic-finance-101-value-of-the-company
11. This is pretty good stuff. Peer group is important.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP2eZuxshpU
12. This is a good discussion. I'm on Brent's side. We underestimate USA's strength as messed up as the country is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFuiVIvByqQ
13. Congrats Jessica Peltz-Zatulove! Awesome new VC fund.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/31/hannah-grey-debut-fund
14. Go JohnnyFD, worth watching. Minimalist living.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r2SQiqmOMo
15. This is a pretty interesting new fund.
“I didn’t want this to be a fund that was too big, or greater than 20 million, because I can participate in many rounds. I can also invest in the very, very early stages, so I’m not trying to compete necessarily for a certain percentage of ownership. I can write relatively small checks and still be a meaningful part of the startup journey very early on,” Iyer said."
16. "There is going to be a big bull market in real stuff!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Keja23R2N7g
17. "Life in an armed compound, surrounded by your starving and desperate neighbors banging on the gates, is no happy retirement — not for anyone with a smidgen of empathy, anyway. The only worse fate is being on other side of the wall, clawing at the fence.
Retirement is a social problem, not an individual one. It is one of those parts of our world where our destines are inextricably bound together, like, say, public health. And as with public health, the attempt at converting a social, collective issue into an individual, market-based one has been an abject failure."
https://doctorow.medium.com/against-cozy-catastrophies-7ac0a62f0922
18. "Without a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, a major U.S. and Western military objective should be to provide sufficient military assistance to help Ukraine retake territory in the east and south. If the United States and the West want to shift the balance of power in Ukraine’s favor, they will need to provide Ukraine with more weapons and platforms that allow the Ukrainian military to conduct offensive operations and more effective counterattacks against dug-in Russian forces over a sustained period.
Most of these systems will require additional training and a steady supply of munitions and spare parts, which should be feasible with a protracted war. More advanced weapons and platforms will be critical to overrun entrenched Russian forces. In addition, Ukraine needs to conduct a sustained guerilla campaign behind Russian lines that involves ambushes, raids, sabotage, and subversion against Russian forces and political leaders hand-picked by Moscow to replace local Ukrainian officials."
https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-ill-fated-invasion-ukraine-lessons-modern-warfare
19. "Fundraising is not a reward for the past. It’s selling a ticket to the future. You don’t earn a round. You sell it.
Therefore, traction is but one aspect of a story that you’re pitching to support how things will go—and how you fit that in is not unlike putting the legs on a stool to get it to stand up."
https://ceonyc.substack.com/p/the-legs-of-the-stool-and-why-its
20. I like this alot!
"Think of the Freedom ETF as a close relative of popular ESG funds, but instead of worrying about the environment or corporate governance, Tolle avoids investing in regimes that infringe on personal and economic freedoms."
“Freer markets have more sustainable growth. They recover faster from drawdowns and they use their capital and labor more efficiently,” Tolle says. “I always expected that they would outperform, but I didn’t expect it to play out this quickly.”
21. “That phase of the war is over,” Konaev said. “This phase is more grinding, piecemeal.” Because of the radical shift in the nature of the battlefield, the weapons on offer have to change dramatically, too."
Slava Ukraini!
22. Hubris is dangerous. Good discussion on whether the west is drawing the right conclusions from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
https://warontherocks.com/2022/05/would-we-do-better-hubris-and-validation-in-ukraine
23. "Courage is the master of the virtues, because it makes the practice of all others possible. Inadvertently, we tend to think of courage as an attribute of the successful, but this is mistaken. We call Achilles brave not because we think he will win, but because we know he is going to die. It is the process, not the success, that deserves our respect.
Courage then is best understood as a willingness to put failure on the line. To cultivate courage is to accept an absence of surety. It is meaningful mostly when you are unlikely to succeed, and try anyway. Try and fail at enough things, and it will dawn on you: Every difficult thing you try acts as a multiplier on the rest of your knowledge and experience. He who lives without folly is not as wise as he thinks.
The too-clever world breeds critics, and laughs at failure. If you never try, you cannot fail, and in a clever sense it is an immense advantage to have done nothing."
https://simonsarris.substack.com/p/what-the-lion-knows
24. "The new global monetary system is likely going to look like Russia, China, India, Saudi Arabia and other countries with commodity-backed, sound money on one side - and the west and our allies, with our “infinite” fiat, under the tutelage of rocket surgeon Neel Kashkari, on the other."
https://quoththeraven.substack.com/p/russia-is-returning-to-the-gold-standard
25. War for the West. Swarm versus the Horde.
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/the-war-for-the-future
26. "Virtue lies in giving things their proper place. To lack reason is to be inhuman. To rely on it solely is to be disembodied. This disembodied nature is the vice of the modern intellectual, in fact it separates them from past intellectuals just as it separates them from the physical world. Thinking only in the abstract, existing only in the abstract, the disembodied intellectual life becomes the destructive force of authoritarian modernism."
https://simonsarris.substack.com/p/in-praise-of-the-gods
27. "His swift move to found a defense startup—partnering with libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and executives drawn from Thiel’s spooky spy software maker Palantir—completed Luckey’s spiritual exit from left-leaning Silicon Valley. He departed physically, too. Anduril is headquartered in Costa Mesa, closer to San Diego’s military bases than the center of the metaverse in Menlo Park.
After losing friends who criticized him as a warmonger, Luckey is suddenly feeling vindicated. In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, where Anduril has systems on the ground (he won’t say what precisely), some people are reaching out to apologize. They now realize “it is actually really important for the U.S. to have better weapons,” he says."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2022/06/03/palmer-luckey-anduril
28. Anatomy of a trend.
https://www.8ball.report/p/anatomy-of-a-vibe-shift
29. "Professor Cippola brings texture to a common word with a cocktail: stupid decisions are actions that are bad for you and damaging to others. Just as we underestimate the number of stupid people, we underestimate the business world’s, and seemingly successful people’s, ability to make stupid decisions that damage themselves and others. Success is literally an intoxicant that makes you more risk aggressive and impairs your peripheral vision to reality and risks."
https://www.profgalloway.com/big-stupid
30. This is a fun episode of Not Investment Advice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7OANxTd6_I
31. Solid summary of what’s happening in the economy today.
https://kyla.substack.com/p/people-are-what-matters-actually
32. Hard to argue with this.
"For those of you that have been outside, a Lich is a kind of undead creature that is, to quote my good friend and D&D fanatic Phil Broughton, “an abomination that required abominable act to come into being, more to sustain itself...a corrupt form of immortality in undeath.” These creatures can be quite powerful but require immense amounts of energy to continue to exist and very much should not exist at all. Their owners always claim their existence is necessary and justify said existence in a damnable and irresponsible way.
The liches of the valley are both the founders themselves and the venture capitalists, existing in a continual rotation of unsustainable growth and absorption, sustaining companies until they can experience a liquidity event - an IPO or an acquisition. The “unholy” nature is that these companies have the appearance of an entity one can trust - as a vendor, as a customer, and as an employer, and are kept alive through unholy, undeserved capital. The longer they last in these unsustainable cycles, the more damage they are likely to cause in their inevitable contractions or death - through layoffs, dumping customers with little notice, and the overall dependence that a supposedly-respectable company grows with anyone that they interact with.
The only solution is a reconciliation with the difference between a good idea and a good business. A company that provides a service that people like in an unsustainable way is a bad company, even if you really like it and use it all the time. A new company that provides a service at an unbelievable price may be providing it at that price simply to draw in customers in the hopes that they can find a way to monetize them further in the future, but with no rigorous plan to do so."
https://ez.substack.com/p/the-liches-of-silicon-valley
33. "Since ICONIQ was founded in 2011, Makan has exploded the firm’s reach. ICONIQ is at once a family office for the ultra wealthy, a growth fund that competes with the likes of Tiger Global, a major real estate investor, and an impact investor. ICONIQ has invested in more than 120 companies, deploying $12.9 billion in capital.
Just as this epic bull run looked to be coming to a close — at the end of last year — ICONIQ’s assets under management totaled $83.5 billion, according to the private investor presentation.
What becomes of that massive wealth horde is an open question. Careers and fortunes are made at the tail end of a bull cycle. ICONIQ returned billions to its investors last year. But the firm deployed just as many billions. Will ICONIQs financial backers remember the money it returned or the expensive investments that it made in 2021?"
https://www.newcomer.co/p/inside-iconiq-capital-how-the-rich
34. This is AMAZING. Personal Freedom should be everyone’s goal.
My guess is I'm at level 2 or 3 here.
"Freedom of time and income doesn’t turn you into an asshole, but it reduces your tolerance for anyone not free or who isn’t interested in becoming free.
Level 2-3 also eliminates your tolerance for justifying anything in your life.Granted, this happens at all levels, but by the time you reach level 3, you’re so confirmed and happy with your decisions that others’ opinions don’t matter at all–this is a consequence of freedom. You really don’t care what other people think.
People either agree with your life, they shut up about your choices, or you cut them.
I find that level 2 is where this starts, and level 3 is where your freedom is so established that you just don’t waste time tolerating people. Ultimately, level 3 is where the mental and social shifts have caught up to the ones in your earning power and physical situation.
This is the level where all freedoms are unified."
https://edlatimore.com/personal-freedom
35. Insightful view on the future of work.
https://mobile.twitter.com/DougAntin/status/1538139446607958017
36. Why Taiwan is not Ukraine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2LiMTtGrAY
37. This is not good news for Crypto. What goes up, must come down.
Treating Life Choices Like Playing in a Casino: A Framework
Caught up with one of my old startup founders, Dima Zaruta and he shared with me an incredibly useful framework for figuring out where you spend your life.
He told me when he left his last company, he sat down with his co founders trying to figure out where they spent their time. He said he used the analogy of how to approach a casino. When you enter a casino there are many different kinds of games to play. Blackjack, Pai Gow, Craps, Roulette or Baccarat. So many choices. Hence this is why having a decision making criteria is helpful.
Do you love it or Will you Enjoy it?: You won’t get good at something you don’t enjoy. Time passes so slowly and it’s hard to get into flow states if you don’t like it
High enough stakes: Is the game worth playing and spending your time on. Ie. What’s the Return on Investment
Weak or strong players: Are you playing weak or strong players? Obviously, if there are weak players, you can make way more money. If there are strong players, it’s harder to make money but you will learn and get better faster. Or get knocked out. Obviously it depends on what the goal is: learning or earning.
Short feedback cycles: The shorter the feedback cycle (ie. winning or losing), the faster you will learn and in theory get better.
It’s a very useful set of criteria for anyone. You need to approach your life and career with the same framework of criteria to pick the game & then which table you sit at. It’s so simple yet so good. Hope you find this as useful as I have.
You Need a Tribe: Lone Wolves Don’t Make it
For many of us Star Wars fans, I’ve been enjoying the new “Book of Boba Fett” show. In one of the episodes, the two main characters have a discussion about their future & Boba Fett asks master assassin Fennec Shand to join his gang.
Fennec Shand says “Living with the Tuskens made you soft.”
Boba: “No, it’s made me strong. You can only get so far without a tribe.”
There is this crazy myth propagated by Hollywood or in fictional books that preppers are lone wolves and that in times of danger it’s better to be alone. But the reality is you are just not going to live very long if that is the case. In fact, if you look at the most lawless parts of the world in the mean streets of any city, or even in places like Congo and Somalia, there are always gangs. These are groups of men who work and fight together for survival’s sake. There is power in the collective, and 3 people will almost always take out 1 person, no matter how well trained they are. As Comte de Bussy-Rabutin said: “Providence is on the side of the big battalions.”
Now I do believe it’s important that you stand on your own two feet. You have flexibility and a lighter footprint. You need to build useful skills and your own value to be of use to others in a value exchange. I believe in strong individuals and solopreneurship, but even solopreneurs work with other people. That’s how you get stuff done. That’s how you can focus on what you are good at, and be complementary to one another. And always give before you take, for both practical and karmic reasons. It’s about the win-win.
So my point is for prepping, business and life, “No (wo)Man is an island.”
You need to make friends & build relationships across all aspects of society, and have a reputation for being trustworthy and helpful ie. delivering on what you promise. In fact, just by doing what you say you are going to do, it puts you in the top 20% of people already.
Being in a network of people matters. Your network literally is your net worth. The term community is definitely en vogue these days but it’s importance has only been highlighted by the pandemic. We are all interconnected and need others. It’s wired into us. This connection and unity in the larger mission is what energizes all of us (unless you are a sociopath). Also no matter how healthy, capable, rich or strong you are, there will always be moments where you need help from others, as I learned the hard way in 2020.
As the African Proverb says: “If you want to travel fast, travel alone. If you want to travel far, travel together.”
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads June 12th, 2022
“Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can’t build on it; it’s only good for wallowing.” —Katherine Mansfield
Whatever you think of Elon, this is a great discussion and interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnxzrX9tNoc
2. "Therefore if we think about your first $50,000 saved you really have three options: 1) asymmetric upside, 2) steady 7% long-term returns in something like stocks or your primary residence or 3) starting your own biz. Unless you’re already wealthy, this means you’re going to look at option 1 and option 3 - asymmetric risk.
Asymmetric risk means 1) a high risk venture investment that can go to zero or 10x+ or 2) starting your own business which can go to zero with unlimited upside 1,000x+.
Now before people say “90%” of businesses fail. You have to remember that 90% of venture investments fail as well! Therefore the question becomes… which one has the better risk-adjusted return: obvious answer is a side business.
In the second option, if you go to zero on a business, you can deduct expenses and you actually learn something. This seems to be ignored time and time again. If you buy $50,000 of anything, you don’t learn anything. All you get is a -$50,000 and a “thanks for playing” on the screen - eg. what happened with LUNA."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/good-and-bad-risk-understand-the
3. "Build. Build. Build. Build.
There is no other option. The government isn’t coming to save you. The government isn’t coming to solve your problems. We need every builder, every problem-solver, and every entrepreneur to go to work right now. If we don’t get that scenario, we are going to be in big trouble.
Don’t be surprised if you see more public comments from Bezos, Musk, and their crowd of successful entrepreneurs. Instead of balking at their perspectives, we should probably be trying to learn from them. They know a thing or two about building."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/builders-are-about-to-be-a-lot-more
4. Totally random. This is an interesting take on an old franchise. Predator versus Comanche Indians who were the toughest badass American Indians ever.
https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/the-predator-first-teaser-hulu-prey
5. This place is really cool. Visited in 2021. Derinkuyu, an ancient underground city in Turkey.
https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/derinkuyu-underground-city
6. For folks interested in macro investing. The Commodities Supercycle & Energy is here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPbN8iMFODU
7. Discussion on the 10 elements of power that countries can use to rise up & compete.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQQeVv1A8Po
8. RIP. This guy is a hero.
“Wars aren’t being won by surrendering. You have to fight. If you don’t fight, you won’t be supported by anyone. Because it’s your own freedom, and you have to fight for it.”
https://coffeeordie.com/denys-antipov-ukrainian-soldier
9. This guy is a badass. Social media influencer and soldier.
https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/the-story-behind-the-viral-viking-soldier
10. Whoops.....
"The man was mistakenly sent 46.3m yen ($357,400; £287,000) in April which was supposed to be shared among 463 people in a town in western Japan.
"I feel very sorry that I used it up," the man said according to his lawyer.
When authorities finally contacted him, he said he no longer had the money."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-61490436
11. A great discussion on booms and busts in Crypto and lots of other good biz nuggets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8AZftypHwI
12. "And now we’re holding our collective breath, waiting to see where they land, waiting for the next fresh hell to arrive tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that, and tensing our collective body to prepare ourselves for each new thing: all the new horribleness and uncertainty that will define our existence until we land at a new normal—a new pleasant, calm, sturdiness where we can unclench and exhale.
But I suspect that next-step normalcy is just an appealing mirage.
I don’t think we return to a version of what came before. I think we have to find fresh footing in whatever this is, and whatever it settles into when those pieces finally land; we have to make something of what’s here rather than longing for what was and where we expected to go, next.
I do think it’s important to grieve, though.
To consider, appreciate, and show some small respect to the lives lost—those of people we know and those we don't—to the dreams dissolved, to the paths dug up and paved over, to all the things we’ll need to rethink and begin weaving into our shared stories as we undertake the generational labor of writing new ones."
https://www.getrevue.co/profile/colinwright/issues/grief-1182675
13. Really good advice for startup founders these days. What should you do to prepare for the downturn? It depends.
https://www.vccafe.com/2022/05/18/advice-for-startups-in-a-downturn-may-2022-edition
14. "The conventional wisdom at this time is that most of the world has moved on from the pandemic (except for China); therefore, supply chains will return to “normal.” Unfortunately, this is not the case. The world has permanently changed and supply chains are going to face continuing challenges for decades to come."
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/supply-chains-are-never-returning-to-normal
15. Always worthwhile discussion on the emerging macro economic situation. It's gonna be bad. But buy commodities! :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1egvkuOjC8
16. "When cryptocurrencies go down in value, as they mostly have lately, people lose interest in trading them. That compresses profits for the exchanges, and marketing budgets along with them. Even in good times, Marszalek was preparing for a bear market. “We went through the crypto winter of 2018 and 2019,” he said in April. “We kept our heads down, and we continued building a strong product. That’s one of the reasons why we grew so quickly in 2021.”
Marszalek wants Crypto.com to be more than an exchange—he wants it to be an “ecosystem.” Crypto.com got its start marketing prepaid crypto-linked debit cards, which it still distributes, and it also runs its own cryptocurrency called Cronos, which it invites users to “stake” (i.e., lock money into) in exchange for various rewards. Marszalek likes to keep things flexible and, last March, introduced a marketplace for NFTs.
“Right now, 90 percent of the revenue in this industry is coming from trading, right?” he said. “If three years down the road that’s still the case, then this is a complete industry failure.”
https://www.gq.com/story/crypto-dot-com-explained
17. "#1 How do your decisions change if you can’t retire?
This is something that Ferriss doesn’t really explore explicitly: the fact that even when people “escape” work they still end up working. Tim is a good example. He likely could have stopped working but he kept getting involved in a wide range of projects: books, investing, podcasting, and mental health.
Why? My take is that most people want to be useful. It’s just that for many it is incredibly painful when you start compromising too much of your time doing work that you see as pointless, meaningless or too easy."
https://boundless.substack.com/p/in-praise-of-4-hour-workweek-182
18. Private chefs in SV.
"Private-chef jobs have been in increasingly high demand, thanks to the explosion of people working from homeand indoor dining bans that put many high-end chefs out of work. Even with tech stocks tanking ahead of fears of an economic recession, work-from-home is here to stay — as are Silicon Valley's many millionaires and billionaires.
Of course, working in the homes of busy, health-conscious, secretive millionaires and billionaires can have its downsides. Nondisclosure agreements are par for the course, as are special diets. The travel can be burdensome and not always to gorgeous getaways like Hawaii."
https://www.businessinsider.com/inside-the-job-of-a-private-chef-in-silicon-valley-2022-4
19. "Everyone should have always known all this was coming, obviously. But it’s easier said than done. Even the best VCs are forced to “play the game on the field” in some regard. The most problematic thing about timing here is that it’s basically impossible to time markets. And so you can either do nothing and wait, or yell about fundamentals into the wind, or yes, go with the flow.
But again, it feels like this go around (also undoubtedly not unique), there were many who were quick to say that this time would be different. But it’s sort of like the plot of those Final Destination movies: you can cheat death for a time, perhaps even a long time, but in the end it will find you.
On the flip side, as will also be touted ad nauseam once again, the best time to start something is at the trough of a downturn when relatively little money will keep you alive for a long while as the big money starts to swirl again. You won’t have to worry about those cash cannons being pointed at your competitors. You can just focus on building something great.
And if it gets you into the position where you can raise a ton of capital when it’s slushing about in the next inevitable cycle, congrats, you nailed the timing."
https://medium.com/five-hundred-words/the-new-old-normal-b74c116321e0
20. Good discussion on the global macro trends for investors. It's going to be rough sailing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qD4kqAarec
21. Discussion on why Taiwan is a different situation than Ukraine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2LiMTtGrAY
22. I really hope he is wrong but there is alot here on a grim note of the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZHfnDrEZNA
23. I miss Japan and I miss Cherry Blossom season.
"All is change in the world, as the Buddha said, and to experience hanami is to appreciate that beauty is inseparable from impermanence. But what comforts the ache of witnessing the blossoms is the promise that they will return again and again. Should that be lost, then all we will have left is loss."
https://www.vox.com/23103387/hanami-japan-cherry-blossom-viewing
24. "So how does this market meltdown that we are now in end?
First, we need to see the economy slow down and inflation slow down. We need to see stocks bottom out and hang out there for a while. And we need to be patient. None of this is going to happen fast.
I would be planning to ride this thing out for at least eighteen months or more."
https://avc.com/2022/05/how-this-ends-2
25. This is well argued. Mearsheimers Realism is fine as theory but sadly being misused by those corrupt ideologues who want to ditch Ukraine. #SupportUkraine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOA2DJB8Jbg
26. This is a solid discussion: USA is still an investors refuge in times of challenges for now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSICpii3ZUI
27. “There are so many different types of fighters,” he told me, “including Brits and Greeks and Jews and Georgians, and they are definitely not Nazis. This is just a slander.”
But it is a necessary one. Azov has proved to be Russia’s most formidable opponents. They held up the entire advance into south Ukraine. They came to embody everything Russia claimed it was fighting against. Now they are in its hands. How they are treated will provide a signpost to what comes next. If they appear at show trials — after obvious torture — then we will know that Putin is doubling down on his madness. If talks of a prisoner exchange materialise, it will signal that broader compromise is possible."
https://unherd.com/2022/05/why-russia-fears-the-azov-battalion
28. Awesome initiative here.
29. I think Antonio did a great job here. Yes, he is pro Ukraine but this is a good discussion. I do admit I really dislike Greenwald in general.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuuhQsAM6AM
30. Cool new VC fund. Much needed.
31. So many good nuggets of insight here from some smart people. Love this show.