The Pitfalls of Hero Worship & Human Models: There is Always a Price
I think growing up, and even as adults, we all have heroes we worship. Whose lives we aspire to and want to live. For me, in the last decade and half it was Tim Ferriss, GaryVee and Elon Musk of course. Which tech person does not want to be Elon Musk, the real life Tony Stark and Iron man. Billionaire Tech industrialist, social media genius with millions of followers who literally is trying to save human civilization. Whose literal tweet can shape the world that few politicians in the world can.
But like many heroes, you have to scratch much deeper. You can’t just have one part of that life, you have to take the whole thing. As much as I would love the billions of dollars, the incredible impact and influence, there is a trade off like everything in life. No more anonymity. No more just going to the grocery store or mall or local restaurant without being mobbed by paparazzi or fans. Let’s also not talk about how your entire romantic life is now under scrutiny + the 3 divorces because your waking hours are consumed by your multitude of business interests.
That’s what it takes. We only see the tip of the iceberg. Or better put, we only see the culmination of their success and not the whole journey. We see the last year of their 20 year journey.
I think about my own life on social media. I get to travel around the world for my business interests and to speak at conferences. I get to invest and work with awesome people and companies. I get to see amazingly beautiful places in the world. How lucky am I?
But I should add this life came at a cost. It took at least 16 years of working 80 to 100 hour work weeks. It took lots of time away from family and home, missing critical years and events in my daughter’s life that I can never get back. It’s led to fractured and challenging home life which is maybe why I continue to travel so much (we’re all cowards sometimes).
Yet I’m very grateful for this life that I have, I have to take personal responsibility for this. No one put a gun to my head to do this. And overall, I’m where I am and who I am, because of these choices. But for anyone reading this, especially if you are young, “Hero Worship” and modeling can be a useful tool.
Yet you also have to make sure you recognize its limitations too. Understand the price you will have to pay to reach their heights. You will pay a price for whatever you want. Make sure you do it knowingly and intentionally.
The Best Things in Life are Surprises: Overturning Mental Paradigms
2013 was a magical year, it was the second year of my sabbatical post Yahoo! & i was spending the time angel investing, mentoring at various startups and speaking at a bunch of conferences around the world. As travel is a big part of my life, I did spend a large portion of the time on the road. And this was the year I ended up visiting Tehran, Iran; Tbilisi, Georgia and Minsk, Belarus for the first time in my life. These places blew my mind and overturned everything I thought they were.
It’s so easy to have misconceptions about a place and people in your mind. You have personal bias but also a lot of media-driven biases on what a place is like. This is thanks to the overall big media and Hollywood using stereotypes that get seared into our brains. How many people remember that the bad guys at least through the 90s and 2000s were Arabs or Iranians. Or all the stereotypes propagated about the ex-Soviet Union countries, that the cities were bland, the people were boring and or oppressed. Or worse, that they are all criminals, terrorists or scam artists who hate the West. It takes travel to these places & meeting people there to quickly overturn these outdated and frankly jingoistic views.
I found myself in a similar situation in 2022. I went to Saudi Arabia twice after a lot of cajoling by my friend and business partner Fares and it was amazing. You have those views that the place is austere, colorless, oppressive and strict. It was so far away from this. Saudi Arabia has a very young and well educated population, women wearing regular clothes ie. no abaya. Plus there is a forward thinking government that banned the religious police and the austere book of Wahhabi. Such an amazing & rich culture, as well as friendly and welcoming hospitality that reminds me much of Asian culture. The business culture was changing fast and the opportunity there was massive. I was so impressed and eager to get back. This was far from the place and outdated view that most of America or the world pictures hold in their mind.
I also had the chance to visit Tirana, Albania after a 9 year hiatus. I was first there in 2013 and I will have to admit it was pretty drab and blah, to the point I felt no need to return. But fast forward to 2022, I had a chance to return to Tirana after being invited to speak at the Tirana Digital Nomad Festival (thank u Grant!). And WOW.
The Tirana of today is literally like day and night compared to the city of yesteryears. It is a thriving youth-driven city, full of modern art, cool architecture, great weather, lots of great restaurants and cafes full of young beautiful people eager and optimistic about the future. What a change and one driven by a young technocratic government and many returnee Albanians from abroad. This is going to be a major thriving place for the future. And I have definitely fallen in love with this city.
The point of all this is not to brag about my world travels, as much fun as they are. But about the importance of getting out of your bubble and trying to challenge your beliefs. The best deals I’ve done and business opportunities were ones that were unexpected. The best relationships I’ve had came out of nowhere. All my favorite places in the world came about as surprises. But they all changed my life in wonderful ways.
The reason for these wonderful surprises may be because my expectations were so low or that I had no expectations at all. Life is better when you are surprised. And it’s easier to be surprised when you have zero to no expectations. Seems to be a life lesson here somewhere.
Net net: Get out of your bubble and travel. Learn to think for yourself and be wary of media and stereotypes. Stay present and have no expectations. In fact, just be very open to the unexpected and life will take care of the rest!
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Feb 12th, 2023
“The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated.” —William James
"Coming from the grow-at-all-costs for several years to the current grow-reasonably-efficient times, making the leap to EBITDA multiples isn’t as dramatic, but it’s still problematic with so many software companies burning cash."
https://davidcummings.org/2023/02/04/thinking-ebitda-multiples-for-saas-at-scale
2. "My base case is Russia launches a new offensive this month, and Ukraine exploits that to its advantage - trying to split Russian forces, perhaps a thrust South thru Zaporizhiya to cut the land corridor to Crimea for Russia.
I do think we are reaching a decisive moment in this conflict though. I think the next couple of months will be critical in defining this war. This latter outcome could still have global market impact though as markets fret about a descent into a scenario where the West and NATO are increasingly brought into this conflict by Russia’s continuous aggression."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/decisive-battles-are-looming-in-ukraine
3. "One flaw in Zeihan’s worldview is that he ignores culture, technology, and institutions. Zeihan has no model for AI or crypto or biotech or any fundamentally altering technology. Similarly, when Zeihan talks about demographics he only talks about quantity, he doesn’t talk about quality.
This doesn’t factor into account drug addiction, homelessness, fatherlessness, and other illnesses that can plague a population. In the same way a 12 person team like Instagram can outcompete a thousand-person company like Kodak, it doesn’t make sense to evaluate populations merely on a quantitative basis.
Similarly, geographic determinism alone can’t explain a country’s success: Japan is on rocks, Singapore has no natural resources, Israel is in a desert, and still they all kick ass relative to countries with lots of “young people” and “natural resources”. If Zeihan were right that natural resources and birth rates were all that mattered, Venezuela and Iraq and Brazil would be major world powers. And yet they aren’t.
Similarly, America’s geography is not only luck, it’s because of the Monroe Doctrine and many other efforts to keep Latin America a backwater. Or in other words, the product of culture, technology, and institutions."
https://eriktorenberg.substack.com/p/our-deglobalized-future
4. "The tools that Yohei is building for himself are a prime early example of this dynamic in action. He told me that, as a venture capitalist, “Time is the number one blocker. If you can unlock time, you’re instantly better at your job.”
That’s exactly what AI is enabling him to do. What might not have been possible for a small VC firm a few years ago might be eminently possible in a year or two if these tools continue to develop.
To be sure, the bots he’s building are early prototypes. They require more work and polish to function perfectly. But they’re already allowing him to spend less time on tasks that he doesn’t want to do—and more on the ones that he’s uniquely good at: sourcing deals and deciding on investments."
https://every.to/chain-of-thought/this-vc-is-slowly-automating-their-job
5. "You have a duty to the blood. To not go silently into the night. To live the American Warrior Ethos. The ethos that won’t let itself be tread upon by tyrants, even if they are our own. It ain’t so much that we dislike kings — we dislike tyrants. We get behind the right type of man who honored what’s in the blood. Washington would have been made king if he had wanted it.
Take this to heart. If you don’t own a weapon, change that. If you aren’t strong and fit, change that. The Greek hoplite spent the amount it takes to buy a car to provision himself with armor and weapons.
What should the modern hoplite equip himself with? Guns, armor, and night vision seem to be the top three. Don’t forget also to have friends who will fight at your side.
It’s important to train. To master your craft as a warrior. This world we live in sets you up for failure."
https://resavager.substack.com/p/sons-of-the-frontier
6. An excellent set of predictions for Silicon Valley & tech in 2023. Worth a read.
"Silicon Valley thrives again in 2024. While I believe 2023 will be a tough, character-building year for startups, we must remember that this is simply another cycle of creation and destruction in Silicon Valley. The bad news is that companies will be increasingly faced with difficult, sometimes existential, decisions.
The good news for me (at least) is that demand for gray hair seems to go up when the markets go down. The good news for everyone is that this is simply a cycle, one from which we shall emerge, and when we do so, the world we emerge into will be more rational and fundamentals-focused."
https://kellblog.com/2023/02/02/kellblog-predictions-for-2023
7. China and the CCP is the enemy of the west. No way around that fact.
"So Cold War 2 is a reality, and we’re all living in it right now. If history is any guide, expect at least the next three decades to be defined by mutual U.S.-China distrust and tensions rather than re-engagement or cooperation against shared challenges.
China’s leaders may wish they could take a mulligan and reset things to the trajectory of 2015 or 2017, but eventually they will realize that they can’t, and their tone will likely turn frosty again.
Meanwhile, Americans will likely continue to see events like the Spy Balloon in a more negative, threatening light than they would have in earlier decades."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/you-are-now-living-through-cold-war
8. Brave men here doing important work.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/04/ukraine-special-forces-russia-border
9. Listening to this interview is an excellent school on seed VC investing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OFiYCqrzfw
10. "Look, I think investing is really simple. Buy cheap assets that are inflecting positively. That’s all you need to know. Everything else is superfluous, an own-goal; often designed to further the marketing efforts of your fund or convince yourself that you can out-think the market.
Far too often, investors dive into the minutiae around them and lose sight of their overriding goal; buy cheap assets that are inflecting positively.
I wish that more investors could be honest about how best to run a portfolio. In my opinion, you hoard liquidity, wait until it’s obvious and then pounce. Everyone knows this is how it works, everyone worships Buffett for having done it, yet few investors seem capable of following such a simple script.
Then again, if this game were easy, there wouldn’t be opportunities. When today’s buyers get pressed against the wall, that’s when I want to buy. Until then, I’m waiting until it’s obvious.
In summary, there’s nothing wrong with saying, “I just don’t know.”
https://adventuresincapitalism.com/2023/02/01/i-just-dont-know
11. This is a must watch. A Masterclass in tech investing with VC legend Bill Gurley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSVFZ2Qbv3I
12. And the AI race is on. Well it’s been on for a while but these are the visible signs things are happening now.
https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/google-invests-300m-in-chatgpt-rival-6154898
13. "However, as we have seen from the first day of this invasion, Putin wanting battlefield victories and Putin getting battlefield victories are two very different things. The courage, resilience and ingenuity of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (supported with western weapons and munitions) has seen to that.
Despite the influx of tens of thousands of mobilised troops, it is highly likely that there will again be a gap between Putin’s expectations for the 2023 offensive operations of the Russian military in Ukraine, and their capacity to actually deliver their results."
https://mickryan.substack.com/p/divining-russias-main-effort-in-2023
14. "If you believe you are subject to a Psy-Op one of the best thing you can do is relax. Take a break from the stress of the world enjoy your favourite hobby, a good book, exercise and take in nature. If someone or something is trying to put stress on your mind do the opposite.
Recharge constructively so you are not dependent on anything or anyone. Take care of yourself for doing so is in of itself an act of rebellion. Remedy the stress if possible, preferably at the root cause."
https://medium.com/@Kairon/defending-yourself-against-psychological-operations-dcc116c6cf0b
15. Lots of knowledge bombs here. It is a good discussion to understand the world we are in. Many folks really are stuck in the matrix.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B-qQ96ytqs
16. "The story of the seemingly innocuous balloons is also taking place against the backdrop of substantial military positioning in the Pacific between the US and China. I flew over the Pacific twice this week from LA to Hawaii, Hawaii to San Fran and San Fran to Seoul. It seems to calm and peaceful, but the reality is that there is a massive build-up of military power underway by China and by the US.
This is The Invisible War that we occasionally get brief glimpses of. China’s Sky Lanterns illuminated this fact."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/sky-lanterns-fu-go-wind-ships-drones
17. Web 3 could be the way forward for Japan.
"Japan has been struggling with how to regain the tech primacy it enjoyed in the later decades of the 20th century, when it was widely seen as the world’s most high-tech society. As the world copes with a new wave of digital technologies, Kishida sees a fresh opening for Japan to reassert itself."
18. Words have power. This is well worth reading. For startups and for life.
https://deepgreencrystals.com/2021/12/09/9-everyday-words-that-fck-up-your-life/
19. Lots of breaking points in de-globalization process. This is an in-depth presentation from Zeihan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXtScb_IZdg
20. Interesting conspiracy theory: just because we can does not mean we did. Guess we will never know.
https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream
21. "People love any technology that enables laziness. I remember when Starbucks went public I called a friend of mine who was an investment banker and asked if I should buy it.
He said, "They're selling a legal addictive drug that you pay like 20 times what it costs to make at home because it's convenient..."
Though you can make coffee at home that is cheaper, people can pick it up via drive-thru and are literally addicted to it.
It's the same with Amazon, PayPal, or Docusign. Any company which enables people to be lazy can potentially be a phenomenal business."
22. An excellent episode on the edge of the internet. NIA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrmbvzXobBY&t=2477s
23. History does seem to repeat itself.
Amateurs Versus Professionals: You Need Both on Your Investing Team
You can tell the difference between amateur and professional when it comes to investing. It’s in the attitude & energy levels.
An amateur brings enthusiasm and energy as they are learning. They come with new ideas because they don’t know what works as they have no experience. But because of this they are unpredictable and honestly erratic. Hard to count on them. But the right & good amateur sheds a new light on problems. And usually brings energy to make up for their lack of experience. Hopefully also a good attitude and openness to learning. Without this, they are NGMI (Not Going to Make It)! They definitely will not last long enough to make the transition to a professional in the business.
A professional has a “been there and done that’ mentality and wide body of knowledge and patterns to tap into. They know the textbook because they wrote the textbook (or at least copied the textbook). But the danger is the world changes very fast and these textbooks can get outdated very fast, especially when it comes to technology. Also their experience can easily turn into arrogance or “know it all-ism.” This is incredibly dangerous. There are many previously massively successful investors & founders in Silicon Valley, now widely seen to be very irrelevant these days. Their previous success blinds them to the new trends and startups that are fast emerging. You have to be hustling and working on this all the time. You have to love the game.
I started off as an awful amateur angel investor back in the 2012-ish timeframe and transitioned into a so-called professional investor as a Partner at 500 Startups. But honestly, I was still a rank amateur and I threw myself into learning the venture investing business. It took doing a lot of crappy deals, a lot of reading, a lot of podcast listening and lots of mentoring from REAL VCs to get remotely decent.
But somewhere along the line, I fell in love with this business. I’ve said it before, it’s a hard business to get really good at. But it’s the ultimate “Human Potential” business, you get to meet and invest in some of the brightest young and old talent across the globe. And if you do this well, everyone makes money. What is better than that?
Self knowledge and knowing where you sit on the amateur to professional continuum is really important. So be humble, be self aware and be prepared to work your butt off. But if you do it well, the rewards in both financial, emotional and psychic impact are so worth it. I feel so grateful and lucky to be doing this as a vocation.
The Dangerous Power of Myths & Narratives: Don’t Overestimate Your Competition
I track the heinous Russian invasion of Ukraine very closely. And from day one, we have for the most part seen the Russian armed forces getting crushed. Underperforming in leadership, in logistics and in combined arms tactics. All the things we would expect in a well run modern military.
Yet before the invasion, everyone in the world was convinced the Russian army was an unstoppable horde that was going to overrun Ukraine in a matter of days. Of course Russia, being a top 3 military, was going to crush the Ukrainian military, considered by many experts to be 2nd rate and substantially weaker.
All the experts were thankfully wrong, as they underestimated the growing professionalism and morale of the Ukrainian armed forces. And these same experts, dramatically overestimated that of the Russians. But this bias has affected our policy of support and driven a lot of fear across the Western capitals and by media pundits. All this came from dangerous myths around the invincibility of Russian armed forces.
Reminds me of a story of old Russian tsar Ivan the Terrible & his Oprichniki personal guard.
Well armed, with the best technology and weapons, they terrorized the Russian nobles and peasants who despite outnumbering them by magnitudes. These masses never fought back because of the myths of superiority and fears propagated by the orthodoxy. Basically, they bought into the Oprichniki belief of superiority and toughness.
But when the Oprichniki faced the Mongol Crimean Golden Horde in war, they were absolutely destroyed, despite outgunning the tartars, who were only armed with bows and arrows.
“Kinetically speaking they had overwhelming superiority. Guns, cannons, much heavier armor or weaponry. Their defense and firepower was very much stronger. But they were routed in one day simply by arrows. Because they were used to fight people whose myth prohibited to resist them.
Within the Muscovite mythology Oprichniks were invincible untouchable demigods, as hands of Orthodox Tsar, who's kinda living God. But when facing foreign enemy they left this mythological space. And entered a new space where they are just people and can get arrow in the face.
They were not used to getting arrows in the face. The very realisation they are not demigods but mortals shocked them. They ran away dropping their armor, guns and cannons. Moscow was burnt to the ground despite having total "kinetic" and technological superiority”
(Source: https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1498076089842761731)
It was because the warriors of the Golden Horde did not know the myths of the black guard and just fought with the ferocity they normally fought with. They had high morale and were not cowed, so they won.
It’s the same way of the new kid coming to a new school, who ends up beating up the bully who has never been challenged before by the previous kids. Everyone previously was so cowed by his reputation they never fought back. But once the mystique was broken, the bully loses all his power.
Check out what happened to Mike Tyson. Considered by many to be the “Baddest man on the planet” and dominant in the 1980s. But as his personal life dissolved, he stopped training and rested on laurels. Then he met Buster Douglas in 1990 where he was beaten in an upset. My recollection back then was that he never fully recovered from this.
The lesson for all of us is that overestimating our competitors and opponents can just be as dangerous as underestimating them.
I think about the common but awful question that investors ask startup founders: “What happens if Google/Facebook/Microsoft/Amazon/Apple comes into this space?”
The reality is that these are big massive companies that are bureaucratic, risk averse and unable to act quickly or even stick with things long enough to make it really work when it gets hard. The project which is small in the bigger scheme of things of their organization and thus not a priority in most cases.
So it can be much easier than you think to overtake them with your own focus, hardwork and commitment. Basically, don’t be intimidated too much and definitely don’t buy into their myth of invincibility. Have respect for your competitors but trust in your own abilities and be decisive. Do this and you will overcome and win!
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Feb 5th, 2023
“No matter how hard the past is, you can always begin again.” – Buddha
Pretty insightful discussion on VC investing over 25 years. Lots of learnings from investing through cycles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7cYktHhp0E
2. "In the 1990s, the sociologist Andre Gorz argued that most people live in what he called “wage-based societies.” What determined membership in such a society was participation in formal work. Put more simply, to be a good person, thou shall be employed. This was undoubtedly a hidden force that held the ideas in Ferriss’s book from reaching mass adoption.
But for the first time, the conventional thinking that it is taboo to question these 20th-century scripts is starting to evaporate.
Once I realized I was trying to escape work, I leaned in a different direction. I embraced a principle I now call “design for liking work.” The reality is that most people want to be useful, and that means some form of work in people’s lives.
With patience and a willingness to feel lost and take it slow, over the last few years, I started to find a better relationship with work. Inspired by ideas from internet writers, poets, books on spirituality and religion, my own writing, self-experiments, and those conversations with internet friends from around the world, I’ve been able to build a life I am excited to keep living."
https://every.to/p/the-great-contemplation
3. "Investors’ sentiment has now shifted towards looking for a faster path to profitability as sustainability is now the name of the game (don’t die)."
https://iterativeventure.substack.com/p/how-to-do-it-fundraising-in-2023
4. "We aren’t going to shrink our way out of climate change, income inequality, or any crisis. The solution is more. Specifically, more people who generate ideas that make the world more productive — ideas that let us do more with less. Stanford economist Charles Jones has shown that what generates prosperity is, ultimately, ideas — and ideas are the product of brains. More brains, more ideas.
However, we’re in danger of running out of ideas because, well … we’re running out of people."
https://www.profgalloway.com/more-babies
5. "So, is U.S. hegemony eternal? Of course not. But, if U.S. hegemony is required for the existence of globalization, what happens when U.S. hegemonic power begins to fade? It means we’re witnessing the death throes of globalization.
Here's the thing: the end of American hegemony doesn't mean the end of American preeminence. The international system is in the process of transitioning from a hegemonic, imperial structure to a multipolar system where the U.S. remains the Principate, that is the first among equals. America may face challenges from up-and-coming power such as China, but its position on the North American continent provides incomparable opportunities.
The domestic cultural, economic, and political dynamics of the U.S. have international consequences. Rising social discord, both present and future, will hamstring America's ability to project power abroad. For this reason alone, the era of hegemony is coming to an end."
https://shatterpointgeopolitics.substack.com/p/hegemony-is-globalizations-lifeblood
6. "But there is a deep irony to America's schizophrenic foreign policy: America has been so successful in achieving its core geopolitical objectives that it can afford to act like a drunken sailor on the world stage.
Think about that. American power is so overwhelming that it can suffer foreign-policy blunders without significant consequences to its status as the world's sole superpower. That's not to say these setbacks don't add up over time. Certainly, America's relative power compared to the rest the world is diminishing at an alarming rate.
Nevertheless, despite the missteps of the past few decades, America remains humanity's preeminent power."
https://shatterpointgeopolitics.substack.com/p/american-foreign-policy-interests
7. Good geopolitical overview and a case for a bright future for Brazil.
https://www.thelykeion.com/geopolitical-campaigns-and-why-we-still-like-brazil
8. Still, it’s about time we start to see some VC money here. Defense is true ESG as Ukraine has shown us.
"Even if VCs are getting more comfortable backing dual-use companies, the traditional 10-year VC fund cycle is often too short a timeframe for a defence startup to successfully commercialise its tech and exit."
https://sifted.eu/articles/vc-investments-in-defence-startups
9. The USA is behind the curve here. We need to ramp up our defense industrial base ASAP as we are already in a Gray war with China. Peace through strength.
"The U.S. defense-industrial base is not ready for a battle over Taiwan, as it would run out of key long-range, precision-guided munitions in less than one week, according to a new report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies."
10. "Given all these challenges, what are the odds for the world to achieve the rapid, massive and unprecedented increase in the production of copper that is required to make current plans feasible?
You be the judge.
The most likely outcome seems to be that we will see a mixture of these potential scenarios. We are unlikely to see the kind of copper shortage that predictions based on current demand estimates and current technologies foresee, nor will we see a quick, smooth path towards new technologies and commodities replacing copper. The chips usually fall somewhere in the middle between such extremes.
There'll probably be enough of a shortfall to exert upward
pressure on copper prices for at least a good number of years.
In which case, copper-related assets are an investment you should look at."
https://www.undervalued-shares.com/weekly-dispatches/copper-a-looming-shortage
11. When do financial sanctions work or not? An important tool of geopolitics highly relevant to today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqJOQT1P-7I
12. "So in conclusion, I think those in the West calling for restraint in arming Ukraine with the armaments to win this war because of concern how defeat would go down in Russia, and what this could all mean for stability in Russia, are either plain wrong or just agents of Russian influence.
We should not change our actions from what is in our interest, because of worries about hypothetical outcomes in Russia - which in the end have as good a chance of being positive as negative.
We should focus on what is in our best interests, and defending Ukraine, and the West through our support for Ukraine is now absolutely in our best interest. And if Ukraine defeats Russia, as I think it will, and Putin falls from power as one of the consequences of his actions, I think that is a positive for the West."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/dont-worry-about-a-russian-defeat
13. These folks are the best. Random but I admire skill in whatever people do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBTYRrsUWgA
14. "Yes, Japan faces a tremendous re-allocation challenge. The gap between high-performers and low-performers will probably rise. Japan will give up a little bit of the “good” outlined in the previous post to my Davos-bound friend to correct the “bad” outlined to my concerned technocrat friend in this one.
I remain a Japan optimist because I trust entrepreneurs and next-generation business leaders will work hard to correct the bad while the technocrats will keep working overtime to preserve the good."
https://japanoptimist.substack.com/p/japan-reality-check-3-what-is-japans
15. "Well, you say, who would want to listen to my kitchen conversation? Well, I say, if you are an accountant, a lawyer, a banker, an investment banker, or a fund manager, you probably have exactly the sort of information about the deals that matter most.
Or, let’s say you work for a security firm, and someone wants to know the movements of who or what you are guarding. Or, perhaps, you work in a mining company, and someone wants to know about your geologist’s reports.
The list is endless. If a state wants to outbid competitors for a port in Africa for an agribusiness in Latin America, the people with the greatest insight are the target. That’s not the government officials. That’s the people working on the deal.
The bottom line is this. It’s not just Google and Apple, and Facebook who want your data so they can make a fortune from it. The fridge has become the place where state intelligence apparatus, organized crime, and hackers converge on you. Welcome to the new Cold War. It’s in your fridge. Oh, and now the following electronics, among many others, also track, record, film, and reveal what’s going on in your life:
--Rubbish bins
--Lights
--Home Connectivity
--TV Screens"
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/the-new-cold-war-its-in-your-fridge
16. This is a cogent discussion on how to invest in an emerging multipolar world and stupid ideology driven economics ie. ESG.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkMqNa8uK1c
17. Poland is becoming a major player in the defense industry. Also a major player geopolitically in Europe. Period.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-covert-polish-repair-shop-patching-up-ukrainian-arms-11674920742
18. Always lots of nuggets of insight from Luke Belmar. He is a very smart dude. Learn to level up all aspects of your life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpVWOkX0ltg
19. Semiconductors are the new spice. This is a signal of the changing nature of the global economy and deglobalization.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFCJoq9iaik&list=RDCMUCsy9I56PY3IngCf_VGjunMQ&start_radio=1
20. "But now in 2023, there’s lower opportunity costs to leaving/starting something new when your public company RSUs or growth stage options are blown up. Conversely, your prospects are much worse in the event that you can’t raise or the company doesn’t work out after you do.
This means that right now, the opportunity cost for pursuing a good idea is very low and the consequences of failing with a bad one are very high.
So it’s an amazing time to be a founder for the right business with the right characteristics. It’s a terrible time to start speculative businesses, bank shots/double back flips, or anything that needs capital as a differentiator. But for things that score well on capital efficiency, path to revenue, value proposition, etc., it’s an incredible moment to bet the farm and start a company.
The trick is telling them apart.
That requires extra work upfront to gather signals and data. Make this investment like any other: through rigor and due diligence. Take more time and do more work to determine if you have a winner (remember, the signal will be harder to come by but more meaningful if you do) and then hunt it down.
When bullets are more expensive, make sure you’ve got an elk and not a squirrel before you fire one. Seek out folks who can help you spot the difference."
https://subscriptions.theinformation.com/newsletters/slow-snail-mail/archive/the-best-time-to-build
21. Impressive vc fund here. So many great investors here in SV.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/25/kearny-jackson-sriram-krishnan-sunil-chhaya
22. "Every day we see signs in the press of ancient empires springing back to life."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/the-empire-strikes-back
23. Talk about patience here. Guess they know about historical cycles and human tendencies.
"OIP built up a huge private arsenal, banking on there one day being demand for the weapons again"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/31/ukraine-europe-tanks-belgian-buyer-oip
24. China's CCP ham handedness is buying the West time. Let's not squander it.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/asia/china-indo-pacific-folly
25. "Simply disbelieving the lies of our overlords is insufficient. To be useful in the rebellion, the smart dissident must take care of your own health and well-being. Rid yourself of self-destructive habits like porn, overeating, overindulgence of alcohol/drugs, or excessive social-media consumption.
Discipline yourself to eat clean, and commit to daily bodyweight calisthenics - push-ups and squats are inexpensive ways to harden your body, and a man who pushes himself to his limit every day will over time accumulate a massive advantage over our soy-swilling, internet-addicted, porn guzzling foes.
Learn to be cunning and hide your power level, while quietly identifying other allies in your neighborhood. Online friendly partisans are fine - but true friendships come from building real relationships with capable dissident men who live within your neighborhoods and willing to defend each others’ homes in emergencies.
Level yourself up for what is to come."
https://kaichang.substack.com/p/the-dissidents-handbook
26. Badasses from history.
"These men lived different lives, were born in different times and fought under different banners. But they all had one thing in common. When the time finally came, they all knew how to die with dignity. Decades of war experience prepared them for that moment."
https://aristocraticfury.substack.com/p/veteran-warriors-who-died-fighting
27. "You are betting on Google failing. If you think that isn’t a great decision on day one, then feel free to read on for why we think this is the case.
Open AI: We agree with a lot of the proof points from BowTiedSystems, if you can use it to improve sales letters and solve other complex problems it certainly has a use case. The problem to us is really this “who owns the best data”. There are really only a few companies that own the most data: 1) China, 2) Google, 3) Apple and 4) perhaps - Microsoft/Amazon
OpenAI Is effectively trying to create a new massive search system. We really doubt that Google is simply going to sit back and give up all of its market share. Google spends ungodly amounts of money making sure it is #1 in search and they do their best to expand the definition of search to newspapers and other old delivery systems to try and claim they are not a monopoly (they are pretty much a monopoly on internet search in our opinion)"
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/chatgpt-potential-issues-you-are
28. Wow, this movie looks good. But also makes me angry and sad for all the Afghans the USA abandoned to the F--ing Taliban......
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02PPMPArNEQ
29. Learning from fellow dotcom bust survivors. 2001 just sucked beyond anything I've ever experienced.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oukr4t4h8mo
30. Controversial to say the least. But a good macro view.
He has a big media following and has leveraged this to clean up investment-wise in last decade from SPACs (at the expense of the sheeple who followed him).
Lesson to learn here: watch what people do, not what they say. Caveat emptor as always.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJXRg8xbEqo
31. More Zeihan geopolitical discussions. Jordan Harbinger is a great interviewer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS4Vw6cuW4M
32. Excellent episode. I agree with them that it's gonna get even more ugly in Silicon Valley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ymo6Yzjv_KY
33. Important thread & explanation on the upcoming blood bath in Silicon Valley (it’s already ugly right now)
Better to invest in Yourself First: You are the Best Returning Asset
I learned so much from Alex Hormozi. Like many insights, this is stuff I wish I learned WAY earlier in my career and life.
I want to share some of his great tweets:
https://mobile.twitter.com/AlexHormozi/status/1486192337638150144
https://mobile.twitter.com/AlexHormozi/status/1535609572869607424
https://mobile.twitter.com/AlexHormozi/status/1524419122745864193
The idea is for the first 5 or so years, you should prioritize investing in your ability to increase cash flow and earning capacity. You invest in yourself first. You are your business and hopefully it starts to generate massive cash flow. Only then do you invest in other assets such as real estate, startups, stocks etc.
You do this by paying for classes, masterminds, conferences and access. Basically for as much learning and access to amazing people and networks as possible.
If you do this, you have way more money to invest in these other assets. I can attest because I did this exactly the opposite and wrong way.
What’s the point of putting in a few hundred or thousand bucks into the stock market? Or what I did, which was sell a bunch of my Yahoo! options and put it into illiquid real estate. The issue is that when I had the inevitable tenant and vacancy issues, it came back to wreck my cash flow. Cashflow which was severely constrained by a stupidly extravagant lifestyle at that time & one I’ve since fixed. And then on top of that being a very illiquid asset as well.
It’s about scale and leverage. More money in, the higher the level of money you get back if you get returns. Less money in, lower level of possible returns. It’s that simple. Yes, I know that whole thing about compound interest over time. But over a small amount, it actually does not matter nor is it impactful.
So net net: invest in yourself, build massive cash flow. And only then, invest that cash flow into financial assets. This is the framework for financial independence and wealth. Simple but not easy.
Good Times Create Weak People: The Reckoning in Silicon Valley
Investors, Startup Founders, Tech employees. It’s been a big party for the last 13 years, and particularly from 2019 to 2022, with the exception of the strange covid global lockdown driven lull in Q2, 2020. Otherwise it was a massive, crazy party for a long time.
Arrogance, Complacency, Entitlement. Plenty of bad behavior. That was in abundance at the peak of the bubble. But then 2022 happened, the stock market dropped, Crypto busted, and all that Hedge Fund & Tourist investor money disappeared. Valuations have dropped anywhere from 30-80%, Growth is now gone. And henceforth the layoffs across the FAANGs & startups of all shapes and sizes. Just track Layoffsfyi: https://layoffs.fyi. The bust is here.
And how are founders and investors reacting to this? Some are like ostriches sticking their heads in the sand and in complete denial. They are using 2020 as a signal that this is just a short lull and good times will be back soon. Others are in panic or fear driven paralysis. Both are leading to inaction. Inaction is the worst thing they can do and sadly leads to doom.
The best founders are trying to be proactive in managing their cost structures, re-thinking their milestones, trying to line up emergency funding sources & communicating regularly with their investors.
But one thing I see a lot of: founders & tech employees in “woe is me” mode, complaining of how tough and unfair this is. Well, sorry, life is unfair.
I have limited sympathy or tolerance these days for this. This is the game you signed up for. You got the upcycle and all the benefits, now is the downcycle with the consequent challenges. And if you think this is tough in Silicon Valley, there is at least a community of fellow founders and experienced investors here who can help you figure stuff out. Not having guaranteed VC money is a feature not a bug. It can be far worse.
I talk to Ukrainian startup founders who experience Russian missile attacks in the middle of a zoom call, where they have to cut off the call to head to bomb shelter. Founders who experience sporadic electricity & internet connections. I’ve talked to a few founders in various places in the MENA region who had to hide in their office for a week or more, when regular gun battles happened in the street & they did not know who was who doing the shooting.
The point: Shake the feeling off. Be grateful, it can be way worse. Re-orient yourself. Scrape everything you think you learned about startups in 2020-2021 out of your brain ie. Unlearn your bad habits. Go to talk to founders & investors who built companies in the early to mid 2010s. Lean on this amazing community we have here!
Be thoughtful, use the constraints and this lull to rethink your product, your business, your business model, your cost structure and your leadership team & your milestones. Take decisive action. Magic happens in times like this. This will be an amazing time for mission-oriented builders to excel.
Times of massive stress and change is when really interesting things happen. It’s when you really learn about who you are. I’ve been there myself in 1998, 2001 and in 2020. Don’t get me wrong, it sucked but I came out better and smarter out of these experiences.
And if you find that you aren’t prepared to stick out and figure it out. It’s okay, just quit and don’t waste anyone’s time here. But you will just be just like the wave of dotcommers who left the SF Bay Area in 2001 or the techies who left in 2008-2010 and missed the most amazing growth run that happened soon after in tech.
Remember this is a long term greedy game. Anything worth doing or of consequence takes at least 10 years. I am maximum bullish on tech and Silicon Valley. And I am putting my money & time where my mouth is.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Jan 29th, 2023
“Everything you can imagine is real.”―Pablo Picasso
"There is no sudden turn-around or change. This is still the same Xi, and the policy is one of hypothesis “readjustment” or “rectification”.
In order to make the economy “harmoniously” grow in the long term, they have to accept short-term slow-downs and policy changes. To simple observers, they look like zig-zags; to the perceptive eye, they look like a straight line."
https://branko2f7.substack.com/p/not-a-new-xi
2. I've always loved Bulgaria. Even more so now. Good people overcoming the toxic Russian influence there.
https://www.politico.eu/article/bulgaria-volodymyr-zelenskyy-kiril-petkov-poorest-country-eu-ukraine
3. Hayes Valley is a great hood.
"Cerebral Valley is ultimately a term coined by the founders and hackers behind the newest trends in generative tech—but it might just result in a rebranding moment and lifestyle shift for the tech world, an industry that once prided itself on its cushy work-life balance.
And the growing popularity of a more residential, neighborhoody work-life model might have broader ramifications on San Francisco, a city that has historically struggled with tech-centered gentrification and currently has millions of square feet of office space sitting empty in Downtown SF.
Nonetheless, the rise of these hacker homes feels, in many ways, like a return to tech’s Wild West era, when scrappy startups sought to change the world from the garage of a Palo Alto home—or in this case, an Alamo Square Victorian."
https://sfstandard.com/technology/what-is-cerebral-valley-san-franciscos-nerdiest-new-neighborhood
4. This is an incredible interview with a former CIA operative. A wide ranging and great discussion: on geopolitics, the media, his time in the service, politics in America. Worth a watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGaht_p8QeY
5. This is an inspiring story. Smart kid here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BggZbyYkPos
6. This is an excellent discussion on geopolitics and America's place here & how power drives everything. Lessons from history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSTzXQvLah8
7. This is really inspiring. Angels do exist on earth it seems.
https://news.yahoo.com/farmer-died-town-learned-secretly-181429538.html
8. "These days, it’s a rare thing to see Nims face defeat. Over the past four years, the former Nepalese special forces soldier has electrified the climbing world and the wider culture beyond. He became mega-famous in 2019 by scaling all 14 of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks in just six months and six days.
After that inventive feat, his notoriety was multiplied by the releases of his book, Beyond Possible, and Netflix movie, 14 Peaks, both of which helped confer a level of power on Nims that climbers seldom achieve.
Now he’s deciding how to wield that influence, both for himself and his Sherpa compatriots. He’s aimed at nothing less than remaking the Himalayan guiding industry in his image—and along the way is raising questions about what it means to be a mountaineer in the age of the influencer.
It’s a lot. Nims is a lot. But his hustle and bravado are precisely the things that have allowed him to break into the mainstream from Nepal’s deep bench of climbing talent. I’ve covered mountaineering and Sherpa culture on and off for more than a decade, and while there have always been insanely strong climbers with roots in Nepal, nobody has ever amassed the mind share, as the marketers say, that Nims has.
In the process he’s gathered a legion of devotees and plenty of critics, all of them hoping to cement his reputation as either a generational talent among high-altitude mountaineers or else an egotistical self-promoter flying perilously close to the sun."
https://www.gq.com/story/nims-purja-profile
9. This was fun and yes, Davos is a complete grift. F--k the WEF & Klaus Schwab.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7E22zdUDpk
10. "Peak AI indicators abound. VC thought pieces and tweetstorms have reached all-time highs. Fair-weather fans from the crypto boom have migrated. MBAs may soon outnumber nerds."
https://luttig.substack.com/p/is-ai-the-new-crypto
11. A great model for young (and old) men.
"A bias for action and a thoughtful mind need not be incompatible.
Here are thirteen men who became war heroes, super spies, and more - while also achieving literary greatness."
https://oldbooksguy.substack.com/p/13-writers-who-lived-like-action
12. Fascinating international business man here: Adolf Lundin.
https://twitter.com/Fritz844/status/1616653527484628993
13. "As we’ve written about before, power is a psychological intoxicant. Any system that guarantees individuals power based on their bloodline is bound to fail — because eventually, you’re going to get a bad king/queen/prince/actress. We’re witnessing this in real time. Monarchies passed their expiration date a century ago.
The grace of Queen Elizabeth was royalty’s (formidable) last line of defense. What Marx said about capitalism, that a system based on self-interest would collapse under its weight, is playing out in the Houses of Windsor and Soho.
Distraction
Last week’s news about the monarchy reminds us how irrelevant they’ve become. France realized this centuries ago and separated its monarchs from their head(s), while the U.K. (more elegantly) subordinated the monarchy into a PR function. As the weapon of mass distraction that is H&M captures our gaze, more meaningful things are happening in Britain. Specifically, a government led by the democratically elected son of Indian immigrants has made an important decision."
https://www.profgalloway.com/porn-and-tanks
14. "While US and other Western officials don’t always have perfect insight into exactly how Ukraine’s custom-made systems work – in large part because they are not on the ground – both officials and open-source analysts say Ukraine has become a veritable battle lab for cheap but effective solutions.
“Their innovation is just incredibly impressive,” said Seth Jones, director of the international security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies."
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/15/politics/ukraine-russia-war-weapons-lab/index.html
15. "Of course, while it is ultimately Russians who will shape their country’s post-Putin fate, the West will also play a role. In the 1990s, an historic opportunity to create a true partnership and encourage genuine democracy in Russia was squandered, not least by short-termism, supporting Boris Yeltsin when he essentially stole the 1996 elections, as well as when he shelled his own parliament into submission in 1993, because his Communist and nationalist opponents were so unpleasant.
What was understandable in the short-term was disastrous in the long-term, furthering cynicism about a still-emerging democracy and creating conditions propitious for the rise of a revanchist nationalist and statist like Putin. It may be that the Ukrainian disaster will be a second chance for both Russia and the West."
https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/is-there-hope-for-russia-after-putin
16. An amazing business book list here. All very good.
https://bowtiedtetra.substack.com/p/recommended-business-books
17. I'm very bullish on Japan.
"All said, Japan has remained very rich, is now creating high-quality full-time jobs, and has an inspiring track record of distributing wealth equitably."
https://japanoptimist.substack.com/p/japan-reality-check-2-what-is-japans
18. "At present, an estimated 22 million people move to Africa’s cities each year. By 2050, the urban population in Africa will be over 1.3 billion, or nearly as much as the entire population of the continent today.
As they did in Asia over the past 50 or so years, these trends offer enormous opportunities for businesses and investors. At African Lions Fund, our goal is to benefit from some of them.
In spite of a number of short-term challenges, such as high inflation, debt distress, and foreign exchange shortages that are afflicting some of the countries in our frontier Africa investment universe,these long-term demographic trends have not changed.
Moreover 2022 proved that a carefully selected portfolio of the best companies in frontier markets in sub-Sahara Africa can offer investors a rare safeharbour of non-correlation with the rest of the current global financial markets storm."
https://globalvaluehunter.com/why-now-might-be-the-right-time-to-invest-or-invest-more-in-africa
19. "There are a number of super talented product founders right now that are either going after Twitter (betting on its decay) or Google (betting on their political inability to integrate ChatGPT-like results into search).
Both may be an opportunity, but trying to displace an incumbent with an atomic unit that smells too similar seems tough.
The gravitational pull of both products’ existing network effect is just too strong. Neither TikTok nor ChatGPT look like Google, but both are keeping Google up at night. I’d wonder how to innovate on the core atomic unit."
20. "So what do we tell our students, our children, ourselves about our current progress in the Long Singularity? That flexibility is key. That everyone should be experimenting with these new tools to understand what they mean for us.
That we should be prepared for a possible future that is very different than the past, in ways that are unknowable right now. People are flexible, and technological change usually gives more than it takes, but we need to be ready for a much stranger world."
https://oneusefulthing.substack.com/p/becoming-strange-in-the-long-singularity
21. "It’s the same story of Rome’s elite plundering the empire all over again, just a few thousand years later.
No matter the country, the result is always the same. Governments are responsible for creating laws that allow the elite to pay less than their fair share, then punish normal citizens and small business owners when they need to recover the funds needed to keep a nation functioning. The modern taxation system is designed to eat up the limited financial resources of the poor, while allowing the richest to keep everything they earn."
https://abundantia.substack.com/p/eat-the-poor
22. "Long before he became a Hollywood superhero, Momoa says, he was a climbing bum. It all started when his mother, Coni, took him to the Needles, in South Dakota, when he was about 13. There a guide introduced him to bouldering. “I just became obsessed—my body felt beautiful,” he says. “I suck at walking and running, but when he put me on a wall, I could move.”
https://www.outsideonline.com/culture/books-media/jason-momoa-the-climb-chris-sharma
23. Important discussion on geopolitical risk in 2023: China's re-opening and the barbarian Russian invasion of Ukraine. Worth a read.
https://www.thelykeion.com/max-geopolitical-macro-uncertainty-in-q1-2
24. This is a good discussion: for founders or investors who have not been through a downturn.
Brad has been through 3 of them in his 30 years of investing in the tech sector.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1M6S2zdPf8
25. This guy is fearless. Really important discussion that is worth listening to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jToRiehoX4E
26. Maximum bullish on Japan (yes I am biased but love the place).
"Perhaps, though, there actually might be a little bit at stake here. As Japan becomes a more open, globalized country, Western ideas and opinions have the potential to change Japan for the better. Outside perspectives could help Japan to solve the very real problems of the 2020s — corporate ossification, technological slowness, etc.
But if Westerners essentialize Japan — if they think of it as a country and culture frozen in amber — they won’t have much to offer the country in the here and now. Japan is, in fact, a very dynamic and changeable place."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/actually-japan-has-changed-a-lot
27. Pretty disturbing conversation on the drug cartel insurgency in Mexico & China's influence there (and fueled by America's addiction to drugs).
Hybrid warfare.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHxM8cX_OdA&t=5883s
28. Very valuable conversation with NIA boys on the edge of the internet. Good stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHtjGYZcsh8
29. "My point here is that AI research efforts have this kind of hedge fund quality to them, in that are different groups competing with each other in secret so that nobody has a birds-eye view of the whole space and can therefore say with any confidence when something really big is about to unfold in it.
In this respect, the AGI chatter is the Valley version of Wall Street rumors about a big trade that some whale is stuck in that’s supposedly going sideways, or about some other major move deep in the plumbing of the financial system."
https://www.jonstokes.com/p/agi-is-silicon-valleys-first-native
30. "The recent announcements of more aid to Ukraine, including Western main battle tanks, demonstrates only greater Western commitment to Ukraine’s cause. It also indicates that not only do Europe and America want Ukraine to defend itself. They wish to see Russia defeated.
Therefore, Putin’s view of being able to outwait the west may be another of his poor strategic assumptions. And, if Putin loses this war, it may just be the start of a cascading series of catastrophic events for Putin and Russia."
https://mickryan.substack.com/p/thinking-about-putin-and-russian
31. Disturbing but also possible thread. Conclusion is clear: it’s going to be messy in the world of the near future.
https://twitter.com/0xAlaric/status/1617623235222437891
32. Nothing wrong with biohacking if you can afford it.
"A middle-age software developer worth nine figures says he spends around $2 million each year to bio-hack his body into regaining its youth.
His goal is to eventually have all of his major organs — including his brain, liver, kidneys, teeth, skin, hair, penis and rectum — functioning as they were in his late teens, Johnson said.
The initiative, known as Project Blueprint, requires Johnson to abide by a strict vegan diet amounting to 1,977 calories per day, a daily exercise regimen that lasts an hour, high-intensity exercise three times a week, and going to bed every night at the same time.
“What I do may sound extreme, but I’m trying to prove that self-harm and decay are not inevitable,” Johnson told the outlet."
https://nypost.com/2023/01/25/bryan-johnson-45-spends-2m-to-get-18-year-old-body/amp/
33. This is a good discussion of geopolitics and lessons from the Cold War.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr3GdJDMzA8
34. This was a fun interview on Unicorn Bakery. Check it out.
35. This is pretty stark information on demographics in the orthodox world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuhgLlxJMkU
36. Interesting observation.....
https://twitter.com/wander_investor/status/1618568161179357184
37. Not a fan of Davos or the crowd there but it’s where the elites meet and is a signal for where things are at on technology, economic and geopolitics fronts.
“Chips on Shoulders, Leads to Chips in Pockets”: The Rage to Compete
I love that Josh Wolfe quote. No one exemplifies this more than Michael Jordan. Just watch this Michael Jordan acceptance speech at the Hall of Fame Enshrinement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLzBMGXfK4c
He calls out the player who made it over him in high school basketball. He calls out Coach Leroy who picked someone over him. He had so many people who rejected or put him down which turned into that competitive will to win. I see that rage and fire was what drove him.
Not sure if we should admire this or feel bad for him. But he said “He Just wanted to Win” and did he ever! This is why he is one of the greats. Leading the Chicago Bulls to multiple championships and now as billionaire businessman worth $1.7B as of 2022.
I’ve also noticed that all of my best founders and everyone I know who are super successful in what they do, whether in investing, academia, arts, business and sports all share this trait. A massive chip on their shoulder and lots to prove which translate into a crazy good work ethic and competitive drive.
I’ve spoken about the things that drive me. My rage when I see stupid things or unfair things. Or probably mainly about proving myself versus the folks who talked down to me when I was growing up. And even frankly when I was starting my career here in Silicon Valley. Anger at perceived disrespect. I still feel this way after 22+ years here, 450+ investments, hopefully a decent track record as an operator and investor. Somewhat known in the industry. Yet I still feel like an outsider with much to prove.
Not sure this is a good thing. Speaking with my therapist, I admit it’s been great for my career & business in general as I’ve done alright. But in family life and for my own personal internal peace, this is a terrible thing.
It’s like you have a tool or tactic that has worked so well for you in the past but due to different circumstances it is no longer useful. Yet you have a hard time letting go or dropping it. I find myself in this situation now. I know it no longer serves me, yet I am still trapped in this loop.
I think we all have found ourselves in this situation. I’m learning to channel this rage and chip on my shoulder into my health. I’m learning to let go. I’m learning to forgive myself and others. I probably saw more into the situation than they did or had meant. Ultimately I’m learning how to step back and on trying (stress on “try”) not take everything so personally.
I just need to be grateful and to focus on the bigger picture. That and executing against my big priorities with the big goals of a strong family, building out my portfolio businesses and having a positive impact in the world. The rest will take care of itself.
Typecasting vs Transformation: Career Lessons from Hollywood
I like Chris Evans as an actor and it’s been fun watching him transform from the noble characters he normally plays in past movies, especially the high profile Captain America in the Marvel universe. I have enjoyed watching him play the bad guy in “Gray man”. As Lloyd Hansen, the character has no moral ethics, low impulse control and actively enjoys and engages in illegal torture. A character that is the exact opposite of hero Captain America and pretty much all his other previous roles. Other actors who exemplify this are Ed Norton, Daniel Radcliffe, Christian Bale who display an extremely wide range of movies, genres and characters.
This is what I call the Transformation approach: or maybe better known as the generalist or polymath approach. Being good at a bunch of different things. Showing a wide range.
The other approach is to play the exact same role in every movie and show. Otherwise known as typecasting. Defined: 1: to cast (an actor or actress) in a part calling for the same characteristics as those possessed by the performer. 2: to cast (an actor or actress) repeatedly in the same type of role.
Look at Robert Deniro, he plays the hardened tough gangster or just a general tough guy. Or Bruce Willis or Dwayne Johnson. I love these guys as they are hardworking and generally great people. But they literally play the same character in every single movie they are in. Also usually action/adventure movies. And don’t get me wrong, you can make an amazing living doing this.
Both paths work if you want Longevity. But personally I think the more interesting route is the transformation route. You have to push yourself on your range and experiences. Also it’s probably also just less boring and you probably do need to be challenging yourself all the time if you want to grow.
With how quickly the world is changing, I think the typecast route aka specialization can still work. But it will be harder to stay relevant without developing a wider range of skills and experiences.
I think about all the different iterations of my own career. I learned so much from every phase & iteration. And the knowledge and experience has become relevant and useful in some unexpected ways. To each their own path but I do think the future belongs to the generalist here. Frankly, life is just much more interesting with variety.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Jan 22nd, 2023
“If people are doubting how far you can go, go so far that you can’t hear them anymore.” —Michele Ruiz
This is a great geopolitical discussion with lessons from history and the Cold War. Very insightful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXq8RTN6tOw
2. "As of Q3 2022, $223.6B was invested in venture funds¹, but despite the record numbers of new funds being launched, the majority of this capital was invested in well-established, brand-name funds with long track records and collectively, billions of assets under management.
Yet, emerging managers and smaller funds deliver outsized returns. Cambridge Associates found that new and developing firms are consistently among the top 10 performers in the venture capital asset class, accounting for 72% of the top returning firms between 2004–2016.²
Similarly, Greenspring Associates found that across 180 partnerships, their investments in emerging managers “outperformed relative to their established counterparts”, delivering net IRR 0.87% above established managers.³ Investing in emerging funds, many of which are led by diverse fund managers, also unlocks additional alpha as diverse fund managers outperformed the median performer in 11 of the 14 years studied.⁴"
https://medium.com/@cakeventures/introducing-cake-ventures-fund-i-aka-reasonable-doubt-67bb8ab37b36
3. "It is capital D DUMB to focus only on one thing ever and not diversify your earnings.
Money as a tool is a superpower. Money as a mission is a disease."
https://ckarchive.com/b/wvu2hgh53n283
4. Fascinating: long complex supply chains have been with us since pre-modern times ie. 3000 years ago.
"Evidence of an ancient tin pipeline stretching more than 3,000 kilometers from mining sites in present-day Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to merchant ships carrying processed tin in the eastern Mediterranean is particularly striking, says anthropologist Michael Frachetti of Washington University in St. Louis.
“That complex tin network was an early version of modern-day supply chains for commodities such as gas and oil,” Frachetti says."
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/supply-chains-3000-years-bronze-age-shipwreck
5. "The big question for this product has always been whether NFT buyers would purchase digital collectibles on a centralized web2 platform.
The early answer is yes, users will buy digital collectibles on Instagram. In fact, the first collections have all sold out.
But with the NFT marketplace, Instagram has early signs of product market fit.
We also have a very quiet NFT rally. And in an industry where hype often exceeds reality, quiet is a good thing."
https://chapterone.substack.com/p/a-very-quiet-nft-rally
6. This is one of the most discussed topics in America: how do we rebuild our industrial base & making sure they are secure. Josh Steinman is really sharp.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W1q1mRkwt8
7. Yikes is all I have to say.
"Now according to Forbes, the same publication that picked Javice to join its prestigious list of overachievers, JPMorgan is suing Javice for inventing 93% of its client roster.
In reality, nearly 4.27 million names complete with addresses, dates of birth, and other personal information were allegedly invented out of thin air to pass the bank’s due diligence process. At the time the deal was struck, Frank had in fact fewer than 300,000 customers, JPMorgan claims."
https://fortune.com/2023/01/12/fintech-jp-morgan-chase-frank-charlie-javice-lawsuit
8. "Lesson: There is no advantage in being the first or ML-first; you win with a value-driving product and distribution that potentially can lead to a flywheel.
Some ML-powered companies will win, but less so because of models alone and more so because of their engineering and algorithmic savviness, e.g., by stitching multiple AI systems together"
https://vietle.substack.com/p/defensible-machine-learning
9. This is an investor to watch!
"Woodard, a veteran of startups and VC for two decades, was more interested in new businesses driving demographic change in a handful of very specific areas three complementary “layers” of a cake: our aging and longevity-minded population; the increased earning power of women in society; and the shift to “majority-minority,” as Woodard put it, a “new majority” of early tech adopters coming from Asian, Black and Latino backgrounds."
“I’ve said before that raising a fund is doing venture capital on hard mode. And raising a fund as a woman is like crawling through glass, and raising a fund as a Black woman is like crawling through glass with no clothes on, and then they pour fire ants all over you,” she said. “So it was always going to be hard.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2023/01/12/monique-woodard-new-fund-cake-ventures
10. Rise of the rest in America. Centralization versus decentralization in innovation. We can learn a lot from history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NOTih60pHI
11. Lots of good insights here on AI and whats happening with Open AI & Microsoft.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiMTRQXBol0
12. Lots of important things happening in Defense-tech space: being led by Anduril. Good overview here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOuF8vdKfbk
13. Damn, this is a very important discussion. A must listen for all founders and investors who want to know what is happening right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7DDHY_NONw
14. Paul Ehrlich and the De-growth movement has caused incredible damage to the world and human civilization.
Sadly it seems WEF crowd still seems to espouse this in their proposed policies.
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/why-paul-ehrlich-got-everything-wrong
15. The ultimate niche: a "twins" focused business.
https://thehustle.co/how-two-sisters-monopolized-the-identical-twins-business
16. "Change brings risk to incumbents, who are incentivized to suppress it. Thus, a key role of government is to ensure efforts to suppress competition are blocked. Unfortunately, lawmakers have become addicted to expensive sleeping pills supplied by incumbents presenting a compelling offer:
Here’s a shit-ton of money, and all you have to do is … nothing. Our regulators at the FTC and DOJ are stirring, but still not awake from a four-decade slumber."
https://www.profgalloway.com/compete
17. "We’re just starting to learn how to use ChatGPT. By now you’ve seen countless threads explaining how to use it for XYZ. But I think Marketing stand the most to gain from ChatGPT. It’s ability to analyze information is unmatched.
You can use it to:
-Break down sales letters
-Generating product angle ideas
-Have it create content around buying personas
-Re-word old articles
-Generate ideas for SEO articles"
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/the-upside-case-on-chatgpt-with-bowtiedsystems
18. A worthy discussion on how to thrive in the solo entrepreneur and creator economy. All about winning the psychological game in self employment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khV8fK6zg5E
19. This is an excellent discussion on how to thrive as a business of one and in the creative sphere.
So many learnings from one of the best, Jack Butcher.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A50di7VxI0I
20. This is a great idea. Candlemaxxing.
https://twitter.com/byPeterParadise/status/1614328327367708672
21. "China wants the technology to produce chips. That's why the US, a source of much of the tech, is cutting Beijing off.
The two countries are clearly engaged in an arms race in the Asia Pacific, says Chris Miller, author of Chip Wars and associate professor at Tufts University.
But, he adds, there's more to the race: "[It] takes place both in traditional spheres, like numbers of ships, or missiles produced but increasingly, it's taking place in terms of the quality of Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms that can be employed in military systems."
For now, the US is winning - but the chip war it has declared on China is reshaping the global economy."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-64143602
22. "If we want to understand the economy of tomorrow, we should consider what people are wearing today. Why? Because if art sends telling signals about the economy, then fashion sends especially strong signals about sentiment. After all, this is the art that humans wear.
People are cocooning. It looks like everything is a meaningless chaotic jumble hidden under cozy clothes that message, “I don’t live by the old rules anymore.” What will emerge from all this? I suspect a fresh new wave of creative thinking, entrepreneurial energy, and redefined norms. The old normcore was just a clothing style. The new normcore is societal. When this many people break that many fashion rules, something really cool is going on."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/fashion-signals-schlumpy-goblins
23. This is a good geopolitical overview of what's happening in the world. Jacob Shapiro of Lykeion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB_FUvV0syc
24. This war is still going on. Please continue to support Ukraine against the barbarian Russian armed forces #SlavaUkraini
"Staying alive in a Ukrainian trench requires a daunting combination of stamina, vigilance, and luck. The daily misery induces a mental fatigue that dulls alertness and subverts morale.
But even the most disciplined soldier, with the most elaborate foxhole, can fall victim to a well-aimed munition, and the menace of sudden death plagues every Ukrainian infantryman charged with the imperative, terrible job of holding the line.
Similarly, whereas Doc’s tours in Iraq and Afghanistan had scheduled end dates, Legion members must decide for themselves when to stop fighting. The fact that Ukrainians like Rambo and Grek lack such agency makes quitting all the more fraught.
Doc agreed with President Zelensky’s assertion that the war was about much more than just Ukraine—that no less than the future of democracy might be governed by its outcome. “And this is the problem,” he told me. “Because how am I different from these Ukrainian soldiers, then, if I believe that?
More than any other foreign volunteer I met, Doc seemed to be genuinely motivated by a conviction that the conflict was “a clear case of right and wrong.” I sometimes wondered to what extent his desire to participate in such an unambiguously just war was connected to his previous military career. The cause for which he is fighting in Ukraine is righteous because it consists of one country resisting occupation by another."
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/01/02/trapped-in-the-trenches-in-ukraine
25. “Living the Dream”
This is a tongue in cheek expression on Wall Street. This is because it’s a way of outwardly admitting you didn’t expect to be in this position.
No, you’re not struggling. No, you’re not well “respected” either.
In fact, no one really cares that you’re worth a million bucks and are in your mid 30s. You will find that this is quite common amongst a wide array of high paying positions.
The problem is this. How do you expect to catch up to the top 1% wealth when they make more than $400,000 on dividends/interest alone (top 1% wealth is $10M earning 4-5% in bonds/dividends = $400,000-$500,000.
Now that you’ve seen the math you can decide if this is glamorous or not. Life is a lot more expensive than most think especially if you plan on living in major cities."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/lifestyle-inflation-and-high-cost
26. "In summary, the case for allocating frozen Russian assets to Ukraine is compelling in my mind. The need is now, delay would increase the chances that Russia succeeds in its illegal war in Ukraine. Western Treasuries need to stop their opposition and foot dragging, and just get this done.
Putin has openly declared war the West, our governments need to wake up to this fact, and take the gloves off to ensure Ukraine is succesful in defeating Russia as our own best first line of defence.
Ukraine cannot be successful in defence and then recovery unless it is guaranteed the funds to succeed. Unless Western taxpayers are going to write big cheques, the only alternative source of funding is the $400bn in frozen Russian assets."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/allocate-frozen-russian-assets-to
27. "In reality, the logistical, planning, and organizational failures that stalled Russia’s advance and allowed Ukraine to recapture territory are likely to keep occurring. As long as its NATO partners keep increasing their support, Ukraine is well positioned to win the war."
28. "Russia has been losing far more than Ukraine, and having difficulty replacing their losses. As such, the Ukrainians are steadily closing the gap. The one exception to this is in soldiers, where the Russian figure jumps up significantly recently—this is from the forced drafting of soldiers which started in September—though this figure is deceptive as a large number of the Russian soldiers in this leap are basically untrained.
Also, what this slide doesn’t show, which others do, is the increase in effectiveness of Ukrainian equipment as it replaces Soviet legacy systems with NATO standard. Basically not only is the numerical gap between the two sides narrowing, the quality gap is growing wider—for Ukraine."
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/weekend-update-11
29. "Many high-value knowledge-industry workers are now getting to decide where they want to live. Some might move to farms or sleepy exurbs. Others might choose the dirt-cheap real estate of a Rust Belt city. But I think many will want to live around other educated knowledge workers in a setting that’s a little quieter, safer, and more picturesque than New York City.
Where better to live than a college town? It has the peace and space of a suburb, but also has a dense concentration of smart people to befriend, to date, or to collaborate with in a less remote fashion. If you’re leaving New York City with your laptop in hand, why not go to Ann Arbor, or Madison, or College Station?
College towns should be doing their best to attract remote knowledge workers. This will require building cheap and plentiful housing, while investing in thriving downtown areas — two of the most important things a town can do to improve local quality of life. That will require overcoming local NIMBYs who want to freeze the town in a permanent stasis field. But then again, that’s a challenge that every American city is facing right now.
To sum up, I think that even though the near future of demand for undergrad education is looking grim, college towns are well-positioned to thrive and even extend the economic and social advantages they enjoyed in prior decades. Concentrating on academic research activity, and quality of life for remote workers, seems like the smartest path."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/how-college-towns-can-survive-and
30. "I’ve found it is far more useful to think of markets instead like a river with a current. As a founder (the ship’s captain), your job is to find the current, and then build the best ship (product) and team to ride it.
A strong current makes the actual job of being the captain a heck of a lot easier. You could have a plank of wood to start in a strong current, and you’ll still move a lot faster than a slick boat in stagnant waters."
https://sarahtavel.medium.com/find-a-fast-current-not-a-large-body-of-water-b477f855dfa
31. "Sometimes when I say that people respond with “Oh Admiral, you’re right, you know it’s a war of ideas.” No, it’s not a war of ideas – it is a marketplace of ideas.
Our ideas can compete in that marketplace, but we need to communicate them clearly, coherently, and boldly, without a shred of arrogance or self-righteousness, but with confidence as well."
https://time.com/6245243/america-division-optimism
32. Things seem to be changing in Germany. New Defense minister coming in soon who hopefully does not suck like the last one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGkzPGBkGhw
33. This is an eye-opening conversation. Scary stuff, USA & west is stuck in woke BS & ESG.
This is while China is wrecking us quietly through sending us fentanyl, propaganda, corrupting our politicians & controlling key areas like solar energy panels & Cobalt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66phzM0k7Lk
34. "In Merritt’s definition, “quality” is defined in terms of a company’s revenue model, not the company itself. This distinction is important, since the vast majority of high-growth startups do not become profitable until many years in. True innovation takes time and money, which is why venture capital exists in the first place.
Thus, a “flight to quality” in venture capital does not (and should not) be interpreted as a flight to profitable or near-profitable companies only.
Unfortunately, in countries outside of the US, that’s often the case."
https://chrisneumann.com/blog/canada-cant-afford-a-flight-to-fear
35. Fascinating & different view from Mainstream media. I don't agree with some of these points (ie. NATO being threat to Russia).
BUT we are fragmenting into a multipolar world & USA needs to get smarter & ramp up to compete with China & her allies. Important to get other sources & perspectives even if u don't agree with them.
https://mobile.twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1613924570725244928?s=19
36. Industrial espionage has been going on forever by every country. It’s also a key part of China's tool kit.
Wonder when the USA will finally wake up to this and take this threat seriously.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-64206950
37. Bullish on America and its rebuilding of the manufacturing industry here.
More on The Titanium Economy=America Re-Industrialization.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBIGBgYdyS4&t=3s
38. "While Marin’s musings about a win for Ukraine are morally compelling and just, we will be signing up for a conflict that will not only ask us to keep arms and financial support going at full speed, it will also draw the West deeper into an intensely bloody and unpredictable conflict.
If we accept that scenario it is clear that there is no way out of this, barring negotiations which both parties are still light years away from.
The imagery of the mindless attacks on civilians in the Ukraine underline the necessity to act, they also highlight that there is no bottom to the depravity that Putin is willing to unleash on Ukraine."
https://pieterdorsman.substack.com/p/no-way-out
39. "This is our argument for why $4 million is the new $1 million from years ago. It is also our argument for why $1,000,000 won’t be all that much money in 2053. People forget that the cost of items go up over 30 year time frames.
No, we’re not saying to buy a house (in fact we expect prices to go down this year) but over the long-term it’ll go up. Emphasis: we would not buy any real estate especially in SE USA at this point in our cartoon opinion.
What Should You Do Instead? You should be joining the jungle and spinning up a WiFi business. All you need is a SINGLE one time event of $500,000. Not $1M. Not some crazy $10M VC exit. Just $500,000.
If you create a WiFi business that makes $166,000 per year, you could sell that for 3x earnings on Empire Flippers in many cases."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/4m-is-the-new-1m-and-why-retirement
40. Not surprised, it’s sad but inevitable. Google was so bloated.
https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/alphabet-to-lay-off-12000-employees-5109321
The Power of New Beginnings: Lessons from Past Great Adventurers and the Great Gatsby
Recently started a book called the “King’s Shadow” by Edmund Richardson, described as the
“extraordinary untold and wild journey of Charles Masson - think Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid meets Indiana Jones - and his search for the Lost City of Alexandria in the "Wild East" during the age of empires, kings, and spies.”
What an amazing story it is. He found that in the crazy quilt landscape of different people you could become whoever you want to be.
“Masson learned something important. When you walk into a room full of strangers, there’s a precious moment where you can become whoever you want to be: a prince or a beggar, a pilgrim or a scholar, a strong man or a weak one. If you tell your story well enough, you will be believed.”
You can literally recreate who you are, regardless of who or what you did before. It’s like the Silicon Valley “fake it till you make it” strategy before the term existed. This is why it’s important to move and live in new places. You have no anchors to the past of who you were so you can restart. This was why I moved to Asia from Canada after University, and then to the United States several years later.
America is still the place. A place where you immigrated and can start over and be who you can be. First from Europe to the eastern seaboard. Then as America became more civilized, many of their people moved toward the West for new opportunities and settled as pioneers. A brand new start.
As exemplified by the character of Jay Gatsby in the “Great Gatsby”, military vet turned bootlegger and multimillionaire “richer than god”, who recreates himself through pure will and lots of very good storytelling. Yes, he gets found out in the end but this is such an exemplary novel illustrating what is so unique about American culture. We don’t care where you come from, as long as you are willing to work hard, and have big ambitions, that’s all that matters.
This seems to slowly be eroding but I still see embers of this all across the USA which gives me hope. It’s much harder to do the completely brand new start now, as the world has gotten smaller. Networks are tighter and global. Plus, you have this thing called the internet, which makes it very hard to leave no footprints in the world.
But the world is still an immensely big place, full of wonderful opportunities and adventure. So don’t be afraid of new beginnings. If you are not happy where you are in life, in a relationship, in a job/career or even city. Change it all up. Restart. As Herman Hesse said “There is a miracle in every new beginning.”
Overcoming Setbacks: the Mental Challenge for ALL Entrepreneurs
One of the hardest things as a startup founder is that the highs are very high and the lows are incredibly low. And sometimes they all happen on the same day.
You win a big customer account but then your best engineer quits.
You have plenty of customers and revenue but they refuse to pay or are delaying paying the account receivables leading to a cash crunch.
You get a term sheet but the investor drags on the due diligence far beyond the 30 days standard while you are slowly running into insolvency
You sign the top notch executive hire you’ve been chasing for a year but then your lead investor decides to pull their term sheet.
Note: Yes, the last two points do happen often sadly, although usually not Silicon Valley VC funds who know this kills their reputation. Usually east coast hedge fund or PE firm players which is why i hate them.
I hate the stories being bandied around in the media of how successful entrepreneurs just had this unending series of successes or even the idea of overnight success from nowhere. Almost every successful founder I know who has done well, and I mean “hundreds of millions or billion dollars” well, had so many “we’re out of money'' near death moments in the course of their startup. Everyone of them has had to manage their psychology so they can work their way through these times.
Frankly as our society and life has gotten more tumultuous, being more resilient and stoic in the face of setbacks is critical.
You get that bill that you weren’t expecting. An unexpected expense or cost in the business that comes up. Accounts receivables or investment that just doesn’t seem to show up in time.
For someone like myself, who is a planner, who likes structure, hates change and has deep emotional issues with money (or lack thereof), I’ve really struggled with dealing with these types of small setbacks in a constructive and calm way. Leon Castillo said “the more you despair, the less you’ll achieve.”
I only learned this the hard way in 2020 and developed some tactics to cope better with this:
I’ve had to flip my psychology to welcoming these challenges and obstacles as learning opportunities ie. you screwed up or miscalculated somewhere, so go fix it.
Also that it’s a privilege to be in this position, as Louis Hays wrote “a bill is an acknowledgement of our ability to pay.”
I’ve had to build time and money buffers into my plans as I tend to manage things far too tightly.
Getting lots of sun, going for walks to the beach (I am in California after all :) and talking through these issues with good friends helps a lot too. Not just mindlessly trying to grind my way through it or bang my head against the wall. It helps to step away from the situation and normal environments to get a new perspective & new ideas.
Basically, I had to really learn the mindset from my successful founder friends on how to manage my psychology better, thus being in a better place to overcome these situations faster and more efficiently and in a slightly less painful manner too.
If you like stability in life, this is a hard way to live. But the entire world is becoming more unstable as we’ve been seeing since 2020. So this entrepreneurial mode is going to be the default way that most of us will be forced to live. Even if we are dragged into it kicking and screaming. This entrepreneur thing is very hard and that is why all founders need to be applauded & encouraged in what they do.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Jan 15th, 2023
“Don’t limit yourself. Many people limit themselves to what they think they can do. You can go as far as your mind lets you. What you believe, remember, you can achieve.” —Mary Kay Ash
Valuable discussion with Keith Rabois on the startup world in the beginning of 2023: lots to learn from this conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD5yIUcFWdo
2. Lots of knowledge bombs from Luke Belmar. Sharp dude and we can all learn here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuk8j0DJoiM
3. This is a good demographic overview for Europe. It's a bit grim.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGkELtG8IMw
4. Ehrlich and his de-growth movement have done nothing but hurt society and the environment ironically. This movement btw is deeply entrenched and propagated by the Schaub and the WEF.
"Ehrlich represents that segment of the environmental movement that wants fewer humans to live less well on this planet. For this group, the nuclear power renaissance seemingly happening all over the world, as well as the recent nuclear fusion breakthrough, is hardly good news.
Not only do they see abundant, cheap, reliable power as energizing more consumption, but it might eventually remove climate change as a reason for humans to have a lighter environmental footprint. The threat of a chaotic climate has served such worriers well after their 1970s predictions of impending starvation and resource depletion didn’t pan out."
https://fasterplease.substack.com/p/paul-ehrlich-interview-on-60-minutes
5. This is how critical microchips are to the world. Important to understand.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWLVVBOX0zs
6. Still a believer in the Creator economy, it was never as great as folks said before, and it's not as bad as this article reports.
It will come back and believe this is the future of distribution of Consumer goods.
"After years of hype, the Creator Economy is slamming into reality. Influencer programs are shuttering. Investment is drying up. And worsening economic conditions are threatening to crush creators and the tech infrastructure behind them."
https://www.bigtechnology.com/p/the-creator-economy-was-way-overblown
7. New supply chains are being set now. A new world of ally-shoring and redundancy: which means higher prices and inflation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FYLe_Ci8EY
8. "Tiger Global’s plan to invest $1 billion of its leaders’ personal money in early-stage venture funds backfired when its limited partners balked at the strategy. The pushback showed how even the most prolific venture fundraisers have come under more pressure from their LPs.
Tiger’s change of heart damaged its reputation with some of the startup investors, which could make it harder for the firm to win startup deals in the future."
9. Love this show: this week is really damn good. Good setup for 2023.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3UjMit3xGY&t=765s
10. Love this: be disciplined and be patient. Know the fundamentals and don't be a victim to volatility. Key to investing in everything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMIkvWQzHgs
11. Some good macro economic predictions for 2023. Interesting data points for the discerning investor.
https://haymaker.substack.com/p/2023-whats-trending-whats-ending
12. An amazing overview of the microchip landscape and its effect on geopolitics. It’s so important to understand.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7mBPyJHkrs
13. "Plotted on a map, such a coalition would bear an uncanny resemblance to the federation proposed by Józef Piłsudski in the years immediately following the First World War.
This Intermarium (from the Latin for “between the seas), Marshal Piłsudski believed, would protect the smaller countries of Eastern Europe, not only from the threats posed by either Germany or Russia, but also from the nightmare scenario of an alliance between Germany and Russia."
https://tacticalnotebook.substack.com/p/intermarium-20
14. Very big fan of Lux Capital and Anduril and Defense-tech in general. Mr Wolfe is super smart dude. Defense-tech matters as Ukraine has shown us.
"Across the Valley, that sentiment seems to be winning converts. Amid increasing tensions with China, a renewed Cold War with Russia and a flood of support for embattled Ukraine, Wolfe and other investors believe the tech world is coming around to their way of thinking.
“Silicon Valley for the last 10 years—maybe up until 2021—was very hostile to defense as a whole, and that’s definitely changing,” said Lucas Bagno, an investor who has backed defense tech startups for the generalist firm Village Global. After years of unpopular wars, Bagno sees within venture ranks a newfound appreciation for the U.S. military and an eagerness to aid in its modernization.
Isaac Hasson, an investor at Vine Ventures, has seen VCs who previously would never have touched a defense company suddenly throwing their hat in the ring. “Before the decade is closed, I think that you will have very few top-tier funds with no exposure to defense,” he said. The numbers back up that prediction: According to PitchBook, the past two years have shattered records for venture investment in aerospace and defense tech companies, with an average of $6.7 billion invested per year, triple the number for 2019.
For proof that working with the government can be good business for startups, VCs look no further than Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which has scored $1.2 billion in contracts for national security since 2020.
If you ask Wolfe, the new groundswell of support couldn’t have come soon enough.
“There’s a reawakening to the reality of the world: It isn’t just Kim Kardashian and Kanye [West] and popping bottles and crypto bubbles. There are bad actors and there are bad people,” he said. “If you go to Anduril and talk to the employees, they really feel a sense of purpose in a way that the employees at Facebook don’t. There’s much more meaning in truly saving human lives.”
15. The most important but relatively unknown company in the world that helps drive the growth of the microchip revolution: ASML. This is a great documentary on them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSVHp6CAyQ8
16. The problems with Venture capital go all the way to LPs, not just with the funds. The more things change, the more they say the same.....not in a good way.
"If ever there was a moment for the institutions that fund VCs to use their leverage and push back — on how fast funds are raised, or the industry’s lack of diversity, or the hurdles that must be reached before profits can be divided — now would seemingly be the time.
Yet in numerous conversations with LPs this week, the message to this editor was the same. LPs aren’t interested in rocking the boat and putting their allocation in so-called top tier funds at risk after years of solid returns."
17. This is funny but yet it’s also a serious issue. This is everyday for me in Silicon Valley.
Surrounded by so many successful and younger investors and founders than me, you feel like a loser all the time.
https://junglegym.substack.com/p/how-to-cope-when-you-meet-someone
18. Good way to think about the future. A threat on the emerging markets and how to position yourself personally and business wise.
https://mobile.twitter.com/BowTiedRobin/status/1612132592236597248
19. This is a good discussion on the future of work. Millerd has written THE book on careers, being self employed and how to thrive in this new environment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-Bx_EYQV6o
20. "Instead, if you’re at all worried about modern-day Fuggers shaping our world to benefit themselves, and gradually removing your ability to access equal business opportunity, you’ll have to take radical control of your own personal situation.
In other words, there’s never been a better time to make yourself as immune as possible from the machinations of the über-powerful.
Make 2023 the year you finally decide to detach yourself from living within the bounds of just a single nation, and take steps to acquire a second (or maybe third) citizenship or residency in a country that’s more open and free. Because while Europe and the West may be going down an obvious path of big government and increased regulation, the rest of the world isn’t so quickly following this trend.
Or spend this year focusing on increasing your independent income, or making smart investments that will grow your own personal wealth to safeguard your quality of life for the future. Or take steps to reorganise your business by offshoring it in a nation like Georgia, to lower your tax liability while increasing freedom of business opportunity.
Maybe it’s time to do what I do at the start of any new year: write two or three high-level goals that will increase my level of overall life freedom."
https://abundantia.substack.com/p/those-sneaky-fuggers
21. This is a solid discussion on the importance of understanding geopolitics in the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNruT_lV53Q
22. Defense-tech is here. Peace through strength. Good convo with Trae Stephens of Founders Fund & Anduril.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9SdKN3FBL4
23. "No Man’s land. At this point you’re likely a millionaire particularly if you include home equity.
The problem is that your ability to move the net worth range is collapsing. While you may be making $400K instead of $200K (a few years ago), when you factor in some lifestyle inflation, higher taxes and likely more responsibilities (unless single), it’s tough to save more than $100-150K *post tax*. This would be a 5.0-7.5% move to your net worth if you have $2,000,000. Only 10-20 more years of grind!
Upper Class. If you pierce the upper class, the math is clear as day. If you return 10% on $10,000,000 that is *more* money than an upper middle class person can earn in *two years*. This also assumes you have *no* income. Highly unlikely situation.
The Real 4% Rule: Now you can see why people get stuck in No-Mans land. If you want a phrase for this… it is HENRY (High Earning Not Rich Yet).
When you work for an entire year and struggle to *save* a 5% move to your net-worth… de-motivation sets in."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/going-through-levels-of-wealth
24. This is sad to me. I hope Barry and DCG are able to get through this.
They are in a tough spot like many big players in Crypto these days.
https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/anatomy-of-the-dcg-dumpster-fire
25. Fascinating discussion on why Japanese software has been terrible up until recently: Keiretsu structure and bad incentives. But it's changing fast.
"As we talk here together at the start of 2023, what does the future look like for Japanese software?
Japan has had a lot of catching up to do over the past fifteen years. After basically sitting out the global PC and dot-com revolutions, Japanese software developers have been making up for lost time and in the startup space. Japan is developing a competitive software market in some areas, but on average, there is still a long way to go.
Japan’s once dominant Systems Integrators will continue to see their power decline. Their customer lock-in is fading fast, and B2B software startups are letting Japanese enterprises leapfrog to modern IT systems for less than costs to maintain their SI-run legacy systems.
The SIs won’t disappear, of course. There will always be a need for good systems integrators, and the more forward thinking ones are already trying to reinvent themselves. However, the days when the days when SIs dictated their clients’ IT strategy are coming to a close.
That is a very good thing for Japanese software, Japanese startups, and Japanese competitiveness as a whole."
https://www.disruptingjapan.com/the-forgotten-mistake-that-killed-japans-software-industry
26. "Globally, there are 320 million crypto users which isn’t exactly web3, but that’s 4.2% of the global popular, so we have ways to go. (1)
A largest number of the most influential web2 companies and brands recently released or will soon launch web3 initiatives and already have distribution.
The products are easy to use and the web3 features are abstracted to feel like web2 product experiences. The UX/UI is pretty simple, so we no longer have that excuse.
In 2023, we have the opportunity to onboard the next billion users to web3 and that alone should make us optimistic. Building real utility is what matters most now.
There are enough smart engineers, designers, and product missionaries still building in this bear market, and expectations are remarkably low - which is always the best time to experiment."
https://chapterone.substack.com/p/optimism-in-web3
27. Seems like a good move from China's perspective. First step in warming off relations with the US and EU?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHs8wqj3WQY&list=RDCMUCsy9I56PY3IngCf_VGjunMQ&start_radio=1
28. Rise of regions. We've always been regions. Globalization as a myth.
Good discussion of the future structures of the world economy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZyJ-GrxY-k
29. "A big piece of growing up and maturing financially, is your attitude towards money, how it works, and what it is good for/can do for you.
Whether you’re dropping $10,000 on a new Rolex, $2,000+ a year for a premium gym membership, or throwing $50,000 at a new real estate investment, one thing you absolutely cannot do when it comes to money is have a scarcity mentality.
That is, you clench onto money and view it as finite."
https://arbitrageandy.substack.com/p/the-simple-blueprint-for-getting
30. Excellent advice for founders and investors. Be Macro aware but Micro obsessed.
"No one can control the macro. It’s a complex adaptive system based on so many different variables that it makes heads spin. What can be controlled is the micro. The inputs to the business that better position the company for the long term utilizing the context of the macro to inform decision making. Hence, why we still need to be macro aware, but only obsess over the micro."
https://shomik.substack.com/p/be-macro-aware-micro-obsessed
31. The power of social media and influencers. They are not all bad.
This is a heartwarming story. Love to see more like this.
32. There is much wisdom in this thread. A new definition of rich.
https://twitter.com/thedankoe/status/1612783833228738561
33. Politics, VC & all the loss of trust in society & institutions. Important discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pkFKHtmgOY
34. "There are wars that matter to the world economy, which are not very easy to see. In 2022 I talked about the importance of Hot Wars in Cold Places (space, the high seas, the Arctic) and Cold Wars in Hot Places (superpowers contesting spaces in Africa and the Pacific for strategic footholds and hard assets like food, energy, and minerals). But, there are other materially important wars that we need to understand if we are going to navigate the future better. These wars are invisible.
For example, the war among the superpowers is increasingly invisible. It’s about silent and invisible tech. The British Intelligence Service apparently dismantle their official cars “surgically down to the last nut and bolt” and yet recently discovered that the Chinese Government had “at least one SIM card capable of transmitting location data was discovered in a sweep of government and diplomatic vehicles which uncovered ‘disturbing things,’ a serving security source confirmed.” This “hybrid warfare” has been around for a long time, but it’s intensifying.
For example, it’s not about confronting the opposing military. It’s about invisibly attacking the opponent’s civilians through the use of “digital Fentanyl” called Tik Tok and other methods that influence social coherence and cohesion. Special Forces are increasingly invisible too. They are present and yet not present. They are using a new way of warfighting known as “by, with, and through,” which involves teaching and supporting local partners rather than fighting themselves."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/invisible-wars
35. Good winter weather in Europe. Lots of economic and geopolitical implications.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o49oovm1fRs
36. Some disturbing macro forecasts. Rise of gold, silver and commodity and commodity driven currencies which will lead to rise of multipolar world and decline of USD global currency.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNR851IFhWQ
37. Life as a super creator & entrepreneur. You have to be obsessed, managing your psychology but also resting and playing the long game. Solid interview with Mr Beast.
To be Great, you have to Risk Looking Stupid: Big Swings Lead to Big Wins and Losses
Listening to the excellent “All in Podcast”, Chamath makes a great comment about Masayoshi Son over at Softbank.
“People don’t seem to understand that if you are going to attempt to be great there are going to be moments when you look the exact opposite of great. You know The guy who takes the final shot is the guy who can miss the final shot. And here is the guy over his 50 year career has had some huge ups and downs. This is also the same guy who found a way to rip in 25-30 Million dollars and turn it into 125 Billion off of Alibaba.
It takes enormous amounts of courage. It’s hard to put lots of money to work. The same person who can make 125 billion, is the same guy who can lose 30 billion.”
And I think this reflects the greats in every single field of life. You have to take big risks and take big swings. This is the case in Hollywood, this is the case as an investor in almost any field and is the whole game of Startups & entrepreneurship: the ultimate big swing and bet on yourself.
I learned this in Venture Capital. If your portfolio looks safe, you are probably not taking big enough risks. You are not betting on the right industries, companies and founders. It’s pretty safe and easy to just invest on traction or the 2nd or 3rd time successful founder. This is unsurprisingly the strategy for many established VC funds and angel investors. And this is also why many of them don’t drive good returns on their investments. As investor extraordinaire Naval Ravikant states “The larger the herd, the lower the returns.”
Safety is risky. All my returns have come from betting on founders, geographies and sectors that were at that time seen as unusual, too risky and controversial. Looking back they were just misunderstood. This is what makes being great in VC so hard. Outlier startups drive all the returns. And you need a massive level of conviction. Plus have the courage and willingness to put money and action behind your conviction. Learn not to care too much what other people think. In fact, consensus can be very dangerous.
We should follow and do what the best capital allocators do here. As the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos wisely said: “We are willing to think long-term. We start with the customer and work backwards. And, very importantly, we are willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time.”
Ronin Versus Samurai: Career Lessons from Medieval Japan
I have long been very open about my deep interest and love for all things Japanese. History, art, architecture. And the Food! The culture of craftsmanship, honor, discipline and self sacrifice.
All exemplified by the samurai. Samurai which means warrior or knight whose sole purpose is to serve.
“They were the well-paid retainers of the daimyo (the great feudal landholders). They had high prestige and special privileges such as wearing two swords. They cultivated the bushido codes of martial virtues, indifference to pain, and unflinching loyalty, engaging in many local battles. Though they had predecessors in earlier military and administrative officers, the samurai truly emerged during the Kamakura shogunate, ruling from c.1185–1333. They became the ruling political class, with significant power but also significant responsibility.
During the 13th century, the samurai proved themselves as adept warriors against the invading Mongols. During the peaceful Edo era (1603 to 1868), they became the stewards and chamberlains of the daimyo estates, gaining managerial experience and education. (Source: Wikipedia)
Ronin were masterless Samurai. Actually in Japanese, it means Wave Man. It’s incredibly apt. A man left to surf the waves of change. According to Wikipedia: “It is an idiomatic expression for "vagrant" or "wandering man", someone who finds the way without belonging to one place. The term originated in the Nara and Heian periods, when it referred to a serf who had fled or deserted his master's land. In medieval times, the Ronin were depicted as the shadows of samurai, master-less and less honorable. It then came to be used for a samurai who had no master (hence the term "wave man" illustrating one who is socially adrift).”
Fascinating stuff. But the thing that was interesting for me was the implications for the modern working world. Samurai thrived during times of stability, but it’s my guess that it’s the Ronin that thrived in the tumultuous chaotic times because they were more used to literally rolling with the waves of change to survive. Samurai were all about loyalty. A ronin was about survival because you served yourself. A samurai being a 9-5-er, corporate/government salaryman. A Ronin being a freelancer, startupper or entrepreneur.
In stable economic times, it’s probably better financially and emotionally as an employee at a government institution or corporate. Be a samurai, you serve a lord and life in general is good and stable. The bigger the organization, the more you are hidden away from reality and market forces.
But in times of massive change, I’d argue it’s better being an entrepreneur like a Ronin. By nature you are closer to the change and market, and hence get better data and info on what’s really going on, so you can adapt better. If you happen to be a salaryman at a big company such as IBM in the 1950s-1970s, where times were relatively calm, this was a great place to be.
During the massive changes of the 1980s, after being hidden away for so long in the walls of Big Blue (nickname for IBM), workers there had no idea about the massive wave coming to wreck the business of your corporate master. A wave that would also inevitably wreck them financially as they were let go into a completely wild new working environment that they were totally unprepared for. Not sure if this analogy holds well. But it’s something I do think about.
Perhaps it’s why the career advice parents give their kids tends to be so wrong most of the time. It is well-intentioned and probably appropriate for when they grew up. But the world your children will grow up in has probably changed and this advice has become obsolete at best, dangerous at worst. It’s something I keep in mind for my kid. But if I am correct about the next half decade being incredibly tumultuous and volatile, you will be WAY better off thinking like a ronin than a samurai. Be a “wave man” and ride the waves of massive change coming.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Jan 8th, 2023
“All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.” —Walt Disney
Very bullish on Japan. Some of these predictions do seem very feasible.
https://japanoptimist.substack.com/p/japan-surprises-2023
2. "Remember when Carmack complained about Meta? He said the company was working at “half the effectiveness” and had “a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we constantly self-sabotage and squander effort.” You could use those words to describe any other big company right now. Carmack wasn’t complaining about the resources or the talent.
He was complaining about the ineffectiveness of management by committee and the fearful attitudes of business experts who entered the boom towns of the 2010s and turned them into boring Victorian villages full of business majors sniping each other to climb the greasy pole of modern success.
I saw this happen once before. In the early 2000s, during the dot-com boom, I saw lots of business majors streaming to the Valley to turn companies like Palm and Cisco into behemoths. Like the aforementioned wasps, they feasted on the energy of those companies and turned them into also-rans and then, when they had made enough cash, the became VCs themselves.
Therefore the rich dudes who sank Yahoo and turned eBay into a den of scams are now the rich dudes who are sinking Twitter, Facebook, and crypto. Fear not, however: more rich assholes will pop out of the corpses of those companies to fund the company that will finally convince us to connect PCs to our brains via a hole drilled between our eyes."
https://startupstrats.substack.com/p/the-musk-method
3. Old profile but we can learn a lot from Mr Beckham.
"It’s a little odd, if you think about it: Three years into retirement, at that moment when most athletes begin their slow fade into paunchy irrelevance, David Beckham seems somehow bigger, more handsome and fit in an interesting way, and more ubiquitous as a cultural phenomenon than when he played. How is this even possible? He was recently dubbed People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive, in part because he represents a different ideal of manhood...... With endorsement deals and fashion launches of his own, he made more money in his first year of retirement—$75 million—than he did in any of his playing years."
https://www.gq.com/story/david-beckham-cover-protecting-kids-brooklyn
4. "Any kid under Grandma’s quilt knows they are in a world someone has lovingly created for them. Maybe that helps explain why many people are walking away from their jobs. They seem to be committing to doing a different kind of work. If you happen to be unhappy in your work, maybe the answer is to love yourself.
Walk away. There’s a labor shortage out there. Dream up a new world that will inspire your creativity and actually pay you for it. Tomorrow’s economy may be richer for the self-investment that seems to be underway today. But don’t think every cosmopoiesis succeeds. Few do.
Technology is turbocharging the race for an economy that is ever-more efficient at producing an ever-higher standard of living. But our psychology needs to change if tomorrow’s world is to arrive at all.
What is enough? Do you have enough work and efficiency in your life? Do you have enough love, awe, art, magic, beauty, joy, and laughter? The economy needs both the efficient and the seemingly inefficient if it is going to generate and even survive the arrival of abundance."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/wishes-love-and-cosmopoiesis
5. What a surprise: a fast growing and poorly managed startup. In this case African darling Flutterwave in Nigeria.
This is the norm everywhere btw. Most founders are new to managing people & managing growth.
https://restofworld.org/2022/inside-the-scandal-at-flutterwave-nigerias-fintech-champion/
6. "Your plan for 2023 should be to increase your effective output.
This isn’t hours worked that I’m talking about. This is product shipped.
Whether that’s blog posts, videos, Tweets, or other exposure methods for your brand, you have to create way more output than you’re currently doing."
https://bowtiedopossum.substack.com/p/your-lack-of-output
7. I miss Anthony Bourdain, not sure if people knew he was really into Brazilian Jiujitsu & quite good.
Also he is an incredible writer as seen here: a very unique style.
https://www.bosshunting.com.au/sport/anthony-bourdain-brazilian-jiu-jitsu
8. This is a masterclass of venture investing & macro investing too. Power Law & Super cycles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfb00_wXqnI
9. This is an important discussion on the most critical sector of the economy and geopolitics: Microchips.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgUBktTdygQ
10. "The Swedes were neither the first nor the last European army to suffer the ravages of “General Winter” on Russia’s frontiers. Exacerbated by the vast expanse of the Eurasian landmass, winter fighting there has often proved to be the downfall of great armies. For centuries, this phenomenon has often worked to Russia’s advantage, as a succession of powerful militaries have succumbed to inadequate equipment, deficient supply lines, and poor preparation.
But as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine enters the harshest months of the year, there are many indications that this time it may be Russia, rather than its adversary, that suffers the worst consequences.
As both sides enter a far more challenging season of fighting, the outcome will largely depend on morale and determination. While Russian troops curse their shortages and lack of hot food, Ukrainian troops are now benefiting from supplies of insulated camouflage suits, tents with stoves, and sleeping bags provided by Canada and the Nordic nations. Putin seems to be in denial about the state of his army and the way that General Winter will favor his opponents."
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/russias-new-winter-war
11. "Yet Ukraine, as viewed from Europe and North America, and trumping other strategic and humanitarian crises, has monopolised political and media attention, aid and assistance efforts, and the popular imagination to an unprecedented degree. Knock-on cost of living increases ensured the war hit home in the west.
All the same, other international crises, actual or looming, will demand increased attention and resources in 2023. Three geopolitical battlegrounds in particular may be harder to ignore: China’s domineering behaviour in east Asia, the Middle East quagmire, and US-Europe tensions."
12. Japan is arming up fast, understandable as China under CCP takes an increasingly aggressive stance across Asia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9MQRg-c9aU
13. "A chip war for global AI supremacy between China and the US, new kinds of chips proliferating, the consolidation of MLOps companies into a LAMP stack for AI, a coming burst of dedicated training and inference powerhouses, and the rise of AI driven businesses and foundation models as a services, FMaaS all mean one thing:
The dawn of the age of industrialized AI.
That's where we start to see the rapid acceleration of AI chips, software, ideas and uses as companies around the world pour money, people and time into the pursuit of ever smarter software and machines.
The spark is already lit. AI busted out of the walls of Big Tech R&D labs. Now regular people and traditional coders and business people are getting their hands on super powerful models and taking them in bold new directions. Synthetic medial images. Image to 3D. Mega music creators. Powerful virtual assistants. Self-driving tractors and trucks. AI driven businesses will sprout like mushrooms after a long rain."
https://danieljeffries.substack.com/p/the-age-of-industrialized-ai
14. It’s important to learn from the greats in VC investing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOa7GJyafoM
15. This is an excellent fireside chat with the controversial Chamath. But there is a lot of good insight in investing.
How do you build heat? Have something interesting to say.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q09N5tE7G24
16. 2023 is gonna be rough as globalization unwinds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oARuhc4TwYY&t=320s
17. This is a great discussion on geopolitics in the Middle East.
American foreign policy is just so thoughtless and short term.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhX-YAdCIds
18. This looks interesting: takes place in John Wick universe.
https://manofmany.com/entertainment/john-wick-spin-off-ballerina-gabriel-byrne
19. Investing is not a team sport. Interesting view. Rings somewhat true to me and contrary to tropes everywhere.
Good interview here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcWbyS_ovaI
20. Good convo on climate tech investing. Sacca and LowerCarbon capital.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-jLpICAGOc
21. "What goes on inside Beijing’s forbidden city is, as ever, inscrutable. But one thing China’s leadership knows or should know is this: the economics of a move against Taiwan is not good. An invasion or blockade would cost China’s already beleaguered economy dearly.
Economics, of course, can never tell the whole story, and often takes a back seat to geopolitics and national pride. But to the extent that anyone in Beijing is listening, the economics makes a strong case for the moderation."
22. "Finding the key to prolonging life would benefit us all, but money to fund the search is hard to come by. Healthcare investors typically want to see short-term returns — unlikely, in metformin’s case, since its patent has long expired. Governments, meanwhile, prioritise research into diseases.
Into this gap have stepped tech billionaires including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Israeli entrepreneur Yuri Milner, and through Alphabet, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who are funding new models that aim to combine the best of business and academia without the pressure for short-term returns. Barzilai hopes to pitch to some of this class of investors at an upcoming longevity conference.
The billions being made available to longevity researchers could be a gift to a humanity too distracted by today’s problems to fund a long-term revolution in healthcare. Their interest could be a “win-win”: billionaires tempted by the idea of living ever longer fund a longevity field that would not thrive without them."
https://www.ft.com/content/649b0446-698c-4363-82ad-0be5b5faa68f
23. "The lesson, as always: big companies suck.
Don’t get me wrong—they didn’t always suck. At some point they were just like you. A startup fighting for product market fit or creating predictability in go-to-market or expanding geographically or something else that actually matters.
They were focused. Focused on hiring trajectory-changing people and giving them more responsibility than they knew what to do with. They were working their a**es off to create something out of nothing. They had desperation-induced focus.
But now they are different. Most big companies aren’t focused on creating things out of nothing. Someone else made the magic money-making machine, and they assume that it will just keep working. With the one thing that actually matters taken care of, they care about luxuries like making sure as high a percentage of the company as possible feels included in the planning process.
Or creating performance review frameworks with an ever-increasing number of boxes and categories. Or something else that matters even less than that. This lack of focus is a luxury and a disease."
https://rkg.blog/desperation-induced-focus.php
24. "This is a crucible moment: My friend sent me a note at one of Instacart’s crucible moments. It ended with “You have a chance to become anti-fragile. How lucky you are.” I would echo those sentiments here. This is a painful time. It is also an amazing opportunity. Go get it."
https://rkg.blog/anti-fragile.php
25. Doing VC school today. Listened to this great interview with Singerman at Founders Fund.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo29D0Q0TJw
26. This is a very good discussion on venture. Worth watching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_52rbKrMFHQ
27. "The reasoning is simple: Risk Management and Building
Smart people do two things: 1) build their income at all costs and 2) *only* reinvest when they can’t figure out anything else!
Think that through quickly. If you’re hoping to get rich buying $3K worth of stuff per month, it isn’t going to happen. If your plan is to build income over a decade and go from investing $3K a month to $30K a month then to $50K a month? That will work.
Eventually some of those investments you make will go vertical and you’ll blow past your expectations. You’ll also be wise enough to sell some of it back to something safer given how hard it was to earn.
Conclusion: The only people who should be here need to agree on the same old proof point:
1) get career in tech/Wall St/Sales - or any other industry with similar pay as this,
2) spin up wifi biz,
3) work on wifi biz until it makes 2x more than your career and
4) after that you quit and look into investing heavily."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/the-quick-fixes-simple-opinion-on
28. So many nuggets of wisdom here from the very smart & sharp Luke Belmar. I've become a fan, always learning new things from him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuqzo6ygX5Y
29. The bull case for the US dollar & why it will be the global currency for a while.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiR54FPQiCs
30. "For those of you older than 40, it sort of felt like 2000.
If you are younger than 40, a massive tech bubble just burst. I expect you know that. For the past six months, many VCs have been podcasting, tweeting, publicly writing, … and generally prognosticating about what you should do and what’s going to happen next.
I think the best VCs didn’t prognosticate. They knew what was going to happen next. Instead, they worked with each company to help them deal with reality as it unfolded. Each company is different, and the dynamics of the bubble bursting were not generic."
https://feld.com/archives/2023/01/what-just-happened
31. Not surprised but glad it’s happening. Would be great to see even more as there is no better deserving place than Russia (outside of China). #slavaukraini
https://jackmurphywrites.com/169/the-cias-sabotage-campaign-inside-russia
32. This is fascinating. Logistics really does matter in war. And it’s really hard to do well.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Valen10Francois/status/1609946194939154433
33. Micro and Nano VC funds are a big part of the future because that is where the alpha will be.
34. This is a good discussion on Energy for 2023. Europe is in big trouble due to their own idiot policies. USA too.
Lots of concern on a secret war on energy infrastructure all around the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIFH1cK68-A
35. Watch this region carefully in 2023. Part of the hybrid war we are in with Russia-China.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-63636181
36. #Geopolitics
"The war in Ukraine has offered two remarkable alternatives to hegemonic war.
First, the Russian answer: if hegemonic wars are impossible by virtue of the arrival of nuclear weapons, that does not mean that nuclear weapons cannot be used. They will be used not to win a hegemonic war but to threaten a less risk-prone adversary with destruction and thus bring about a compromise by which the global system may be fundamentally modified to reflect a balance of power that is in fact a balance of destruction.
Second, the American answer: if hegemonic wars have become impossible, that does mean they cannot be won. But they must be won not by direct conflict with an opponent but by shaping the war environment in such a way that such an opponent can be defeated before a direct clash becomes necessary. One could say that in this case an artificial environment or metaverse decides the outcome."
https://brunomacaes.substack.com/p/general-dynamics-of-the-ukraine-war
37. This is a must listen to. So many energy myths busted. We need more nuclear power.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbuQ_fyxP7M&t=1s
38. Learning from one of the intellectual giants in investing. Investing in process & proper thinking and DCF vs optionality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR6T5lEzflo
39. "So add it up together, you can see why those who believe that the Eastern Front was the dominant front and the USSR was the dominant power in the defeat of Germany would later overrate the Russian army today and misunderstand the war we are seeing.
In short, they overrate the ability of dictatorships to create good armies, overrate the primitive variables such as infantry casualties, and underrate the importance of truly modern forces to undertake complex operations."
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/misunderstanding-soviet-power-in-761
40. "That run of projects obscures the fact that it would’ve been easy for someone with Bautista’s biceps and resumé to settle into a string of mindless but lucrative action flicks.
Instead, he’s spent the last decade carving out the weirdest, most artful filmography of any WWE alumnus, working with a murderer’s row of Letterboxd-approved directors: Denis Villeneuve, Rian Johnson, Sam Mendes, James Gunn. “I never wanted to be the next Rock,” he puts it plainly. “I just want to be a good fucking actor. A respected actor.”
He is that now—not just not the next Rock, but a wholly new sort of action star. He’s gotten there against incalculable odds—brawling through financial ruin, familial woes, prejudices against his former career, skepticism about his abilities, and, of course, his own self-doubt. And he's done it by taking off his cap and sunglasses and staring straight into the spotlight. Not that that's gotten any easier.
“I’m afraid of things,” Bautista says. “I’m nervous about things. But I can force myself to do things that make me uncomfortable, because I know I’m not gonna get anywhere if I don’t. I may cringe after the fact, but I’m not going to let that fear hold me back.”
https://www.gq.com/story/gq-hype-dave-bautista
41. The Indiana Jones of Investing: Jim Rogers. Always learn from this guy.
Easing into the Year: It’s a Marathon, not a Sprint
I suspect that many of us in the first week of 2023 are still feeling groggy from too much food and sleep over the Christmas and new years break, just like a bear coming out from hibernation after the winter.
I used to feel really guilty for taking a break and not working during the holidays. And I used to really feel guilty and behind, especially for not jumping right back into things on January 2nd. I was always terrified of being behind and needing to get a lead over everyone else.
I actually think this paranoia and work ethic is important especially in your younger years as you are trying to get established. Let’s be honest, in your younger years, you have no idea what you are doing, so you have to over compensate with plain hard work and brute force while you try everything and learn what does not work.
But with time, age, experience and hopefully some track record of success and the reputation and personal brand that comes along with that you can afford to chill a little bit. To Step back and observe. Be more strategic and smarter.
Yet I still catch myself, worried that I am not doing enough. That I am falling behind. I worry about the things that kill the effectiveness of venture investors: age, complacency and overconfidence, maybe even arrogance. I’m terrified about losing my edge and that drives my paranoia and my uneasiness when I am inactive.
But I remind myself about the Abraham Lincoln quote (or at least ascribed to him): “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
And it makes sense, you have to mentally and physically prepare yourself as you jump back into the fray. As Louis Pasteur said: “Chance favors only the prepared mind.”
I anticipate that the rest of this year will be crazy busy, manic even. I have lots of investments to make, some fundraising to do, plenty of startup mentoring to do and a bunch of tech conferences to speak at. This is on top of writing and all the various personal projects I’m always involved in.
So better to take the time in January to ease into the year. I need to take my time while I have a relatively empty calendar. Precious time to get myself physically fit & healthy, get my family life sorted as well as it can be and get myself mentally prepared for action. I suggest that you all do the same. I suspect it is going to be a wild and nutty 2023 so we will need as much edge as we can possibly get. LFG: Let’s F-cking Go!
Survival and World Domination: Mindset & Attitudes Matter
Looking back over the years, I get the sense that prior to 2020 many of us were sleepwalking through life. Following the scripts stuck in our heads. Doing what we thought were things that mattered but in the end was just bad programming put into our heads by society, mainstream media and well meaning but clueless family and friends.
Now in early 2023, I’ve come to the realization of how wrong I was on so many fronts. Career, money, government, health & society. Almost everything.
And also just how much bad programming I had in my head, how little critical thinking I really did. And how I chased a life of avoiding problems and looking for ease, just like all the other losers out there. I foolishly trusted in the system and was punished accordingly.
It took a global pandemic, grossly incompetent reaction from governments everywhere, major financial stress from a near personal bankruptcy & cash crunch, marriage & family problems to wake me up. That plus a heinous & barbaric Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, where I have many close friends and business interests, so it’s pretty personal. Ukraine is a place I’ve come to love deeply as much as I do Georgia (the country), Portugal, Japan and Taiwan, outside of my homes in Canada and the USA.
I’ve come out of these experiences with more trust in myself and less reliance on others. I’ve changed my mental attitude. When bad things happened before I used to get angry and lose my cool. Thinking loser thoughts like “life is unfair” or “why is this happening to me??”
But for a new better you, your old self must die. You use hardship to remove the impurities in your thinking just like using fire to remove impurities in metal.
Now after reprogramming myself, I don’t panic or get angry (as much). I tell myself “Things don’t happen to me, I HAPPEN to things!!!” I don’t blame anyone or anything. I own it and take full responsibility for everything. I don’t think the world is unfair, nor do I try to hide from problems.
I think that living a “Baller Life” requires that you have to deal with big problems, thanks to Justin Waller Ie. “you judge the size of man on the size of his problems.” Or maybe a better quote is “smooth seas do not make strong sailors.” It helps you realize that these situations are just what happens when you are trying to do big things.
Plus there is just something confidence inspiring about someone who has gone through hardship and comes out stronger for it. As the old Latin saying goes “Dulcius Ex Asperis” which means “Sweeter after Difficulty”.
I’m working on myself all the time: mentally, physically, financially. And I am always trying to be ready for whatever may come my way, whether opportunities or challenges. Sometimes these two things are intertwined.
I’ve learned that personal responsibility is everything. You own the results of your life and cannot rely on anything or anyone. (Maybe except your parents, like in my case). No one else. That’s just the truth. And while it’s a harsher world through this lens, I have no illusions anymore. Illusions are dangerous and blind you.
I grow sick and tired of people complaining about how their lives suck and it’s everyone’s fault but their own. About how It’s society’s fault. Or it’s their parents or their spouses fault etc etc. It’s brain damaging and psychologically sickening. And this is the reason also why most of these people will be NGMI (Not Going to Make It). With no one to blame at the end but themselves.
That Sh-tty attitude will not get them through the massive financial and sociopolitical chaos and pain coming over the next few years. If you thought the last few years were bad, just wait and see what 2023 and beyond will hold. We will be seeing great economic dislocation and the breakdown of globalization. Don’t say you were not warned.
But as I’ve said before, there is a new age coming, with paradise on the other side of this. We’ll all have earned this when we get there.