Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads May 21st, 2023
"If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."--Wayne Dyer
"Although the coming Ukrainian offensive will do much to set expectations for the future trajectory of this war, the real challenge is thinking through what comes after. The offensive has consumed planning, but a sober-minded approach would recognize that supporting Ukraine will be a long-term effort.
It is time, then, for the West to start planning more actively for the future, beyond the coming offensive. History shows that wars are difficult to end and often go on well beyond the decisive phases of fighting, including as negotiations continue. For Ukraine and its Western backers, a working theory of victory must be premised on endurance, addressing Ukraine’s long-term force quality, capability, and sustainment needs.
The United States and Europe must make the necessary investments to support the war effort well beyond 2023, develop plans for successive operations —and avoid pinning their hopes on any single offensive effort."
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/russia-war-beyond-ukraines-offensive
2. I got a lot out of this interview. Understanding talent and making good decisions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsMvGZmW9MI
3. I'm gonna watch this. Arnold!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2AEI26LBpA
4. I agree, it’s a bad time to invest in real estate in Western Europe.
https://mailchi.mp/9cfa77a51b64/do-not-invest-in-real-estate-in-this-city?e=123a1c25c4
5. Hmm.....Seems like this will be a long war. But some possible scenarios.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbiAyWBI0fE
6. Painful truths to listen to but this guy is one of the best Global Macro investors on the planet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMAm2S1M_IU
7. So happy to see this. Well done UK. #SlavaUkraini
"Overall, the Storm Shadow should give Ukraine a powerful new ability to hit key targets, including command nodes, supply dumps and bridges, deep behind the front lines.
As such, if Ukraine demonstrates the value of the Storm Shadow, and the precedent for supplying advanced long-range weapons is already set by it, more of the weapons from other operators, such as Italy, or even the very similar SCALP missile, as used by the French Armed Forces, could follow. This could also open the floodgates to other donations by other countries, especially those by the U.S., which sits on a massive stockpile of advanced standoff weapons.
It will be interesting to see not only how effective an advanced cruise missile might be in Ukrainian hands, but also whether it will now open the door to other long-range strike weapons also being approved for transfer to Ukraine. Regardless, which ever way it plays out, it is very bad news for Russia."
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraines-storm-shadow-missiles-are-a-big-problem-for-russia
8. "But for now, my view is that SaaS companies have a good chance to survive the shift to AI and come out of it even stronger — delivering more value to customers and doing it with a lower cost base by leveraging AI to increase productivity — IF they go all-in on AI now. That is a big IF, though.
When an asteroid hits, only the species most responsive to change will survive. Generative AI is an asteroid impact event for B2B software, but unlike most on-premise software companies in the 2000s, the SaaS leaders of today aren’t doomed. It all depends on how fast they can adapt."
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/generative-ai-asteroid-impact-event-b2bsoftware-christoph-janz
9. "China is essentially willing to patiently invest DECADES of painstaking effort to achieve its intelligence objectives. And that’s pretty normal for the Chinese; their leadership tends to establish clear goals and long-term strategic visions that often look 30+ years into the future. A single decade is nothing for them.
Now, China’s authoritarian government obviously has a mountain of reprehensible flaws, and they have no intention of changing for the better. But one thing’s for sure: they know how to play the long game… and use it to their advantage.
Contrast this with the US government, which at present cannot even plan beyond the next few weeks.
Quite simply they’re unwilling and/or unable to play the long game. And the country is worse off for it. The whole world is worse off for it.
This is why it makes so much sense to have a Plan B– something which requires long-term thinking."
https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/these-people-are-incapable-of-playing-the-long-game-147382/
10. "Not flying the aircraft first means not making operational changes that you normally would because you are fundraising, or believe you soon will be. It means running your business differently because you are trying to raise money.
As one VC said to me, “We don’t invest in perfect companies. We invest in companies where the upside is greater than the downside. I have invested in companies where the CRO, CTO, and CFO were all recently or in the midst of transition. The important thing is that we talk about the changes and understand them. We’re going to be investors for the next 5-10 years.”
What does that mean to me? If you, as CEO, think something needs to be done, then do it. Always fly the aircraft first."
11. "The main theories we have all seem to be largely in-line. A few things certainly messed it up a bit: 1) banks failing - delaying layoffs a tad, 2) changing of mortgage standards to prolong the inevitable, 3) slow impact of regulation change, 4) elongated decline as it relates to tech layoffs - usually faster and 5) the slow adjustments to tax payments on properties - taking longer than expected to roll through.
Other than those small time frame changes the message is the same: banks are going to be forced to consolidate. If you look at what the Fed is doing, there is no way to avoid more consolidation. The average person has no idea what it means to “insure deposits”. We have a grand total of two smartphone companies and no one cares.
They certainly won’t notice when we get to 3,000 banks instead of 4,5000 (rough numbers)."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/cpi-acceleration-phase-cycles-and
12. "But the greatest success of Ukraine’s frontal resistance has occurred behind the front, with the gradual build-up of an increasing large, well-trained, and well-armed operational reserve of combat units that could be held back from combat because the frontal forces proved sufficiently strong to stop Russian advances without need of large reinforcements.
It means that, for the first time since the start of the war, Ukraine’s war leaders can now take the initiative, instead of just repelling one Russian attack after another in different sectors of the very long front."
https://unherd.com/2023/05/ukraines-path-to-victory/
13. Solid profile on the impressive Netflix executive leading the charge of expansion across the globe.
She is affecting tastes and interests everywhere. Also shows the power of media in culture.
14. "But optimism pays more - both in money and life. We owe it to ourselves and others to be mindful of reality - when things are good, when things are bad, and to plan how to maintain and improve all of that. It’s something I have to work on too. But there are a lot of little things that can make our world beautiful."
https://kyla.substack.com/p/the-art-of-the-doomer
15. "So basically, whether LLMs are economically good or bad depends on what kind of information they figure out. If they find stuff that humans were never going to find, because the patterns were just too complex and subtle, then that’s good. But if they find stuff humans were going to find anyway, just a little bit faster, then that’s a waste. Again, we won’t really know til we try (and maybe not even then!)."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/generative-ai-and-the-finance-industry
16. I look forward to visiting Kharkiv one day in a victorious Ukraine. #SlavaUkraini
https://www.vox.com/c/world-politics/2023/5/10/23630754/russia-ukraine-war-kharkiv-city-transformed
17. I think people just hate flashy rich tech people in general. #HFGK
"Guo has a penchant for extremes. The centimillionaire (on paper) rose to Silicon Valley fame after co-founding Scale AI, a San Francisco–based startup valued in 2021 at $7.3 billion. She left the company back in 2018 “due to differences in product vision and road map,” she told Forbes. Since then, she has traveled the world, launched her own firm, Backend Capital, and in 2022 founded Passes.
Along the way, she’s gained fans and critics alike for her over-the-top antics—like the time she hosted an entire music festival for her birthday, complete with fire dancers and brand sponsors. Or when she tweeted a letter from her homeowners’ association scolding her for letting a rented lemur and snake slink around her luxury apartment during a Miami Hack Week party.
Her freewheeling lifestyle makes her one of tech’s most captivating figures, and a magnet for online vitriol—the kind most often reserved for female founders. As Guo put it in a tweet: “I go out once a week and am a party animal. Other male founders are constantly doing lines of cocaine, clubbing at 2 am, abusing adderall at work, but it’s fine, they’re brilliant!”
18. Scary new world here.
"Nearly all media can be faked, but now, with the help of AI, it can be manufactured easily. That distinction is essential. Until this year, we used to evaluate the integrity of media partly based on its complexity using the following formula:
--The more complex the media, the harder it was to manipulate (time, money, and skill),
--which meant that the more complex the media and obscure the topic, the less likely it was to be fake — from conversational videos to scientific papers.
--This complexity heuristic (a simple rule of thumb used in fast decision-making) doesn’t work anymore. In an AI-fueled world, everything digital can be faked."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/deepmedia
19. "Putin initially connected Ukraine to a dream of posthumous glory. But now he has no choice but to connect Ukraine to earthly politics, since he cares about retaining power to the end. To keep power, Putin must control all Russian armed forces, which is not the same thing as keeping them in Ukraine.
Those two things might well contradict: the recent spectacle of disunity around Bakhmut shows how. The better Ukraine does on the battlefield, the more they will contradict. More broadly, keeping power is not the same thing as pushing for victory in Ukraine. If Ukraine seems likely to win, Putin will seek another story of power. His propagandists are good at changing the subject."
https://snyder.substack.com/p/war-and-politics
20. "After bagging the role of a supposedly perfect human being, you could forgive another young actor for stunting on social – gym brags, red carpet flexes, on-set pranks, Comic Con selfies – but that’s not Poulter’s style. Instead his feeds are a regular stream of activism: standing up against bullying, sounding out economic insecurity and championing racial equality.
Although conscious of sounding “worthy”, he likes to be something of a human billboard for good causes, naming individuals like Alex Holmes, of the charity Anti-Bullying Pro, or Lavinya Stennett, of The Black Curriculum, as people “who are actually doing the real work and affecting change in society.”
Over a handful of conversations, at the game and afterwards, Poulter opened up about his next chapter."
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/will-poulter-interview-2023
21. "My Twitter timeline is full of people preaching the profitability of “unsexy” businesses.
It makes sense — there’s a ton of profit in bringing modern strategy and operations to legacy services, and the target demographics are always clearly defined.
But I think there’s something to taking the exact opposite approach: creating products that feel novelty, fun, simple, and unnecessary.
People don’t need these products — but people feel like they need to share them with other people.
These products live outside of the latest AI, AR, and no-code crazes. They’re not hyper-optimized for profitability. They are often marketing “drops”. They don’t sell themselves — the ideas behind them are awesome enough to create conversations, both online and in-person, and that’s enough to drive conversions.
And most importantly, in an internet-enabled world, they spread like wildfire."
https://latecheckout.substack.com/p/making-products-that-spread-like
22. So much good life advice in this conversation. Kevin Kelly should be on the list of candidates for the most interesting man in the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ3Y_rjKvIE
23. "AI assistants are the ultimate helicopter parent, bulldozing obstacles and the risk inherent in establishing new relationships. We are breeding a generation of asocial people who don’t know what it means to be rejected, forget a name, miss a flight, and find unexpected joy. AI, and mobile technology, have strip-mined a key component of what it means to be human, what it means to be a mammal.
Happiness is a function of your willingness to take an uncomfortable risk and have something wonderful … really wonderful … happen in person. Technology offers productivity and prosperity. However, joy is in the agency of others. The most important skills are forged, not taught."
https://www.profgalloway.com/ailone/
24. Important discussion on global macro. The USA is going off the cliff due to really bad policies in USD, weaponizing the dollar and awful overspending.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRPMHinrFKQ
25. "The economics of nightclubs and national banking systems have a lot in common.
Patronising a nightclub is a lot of fun. You get to listen to good music, hang out with your friends, and for some, find a mate. However, after all the fun is had, there is always a bill to pay — and sometimes it can be quite substantial. Absent an agreed upon set of rules on how the cost should be allocated, the conversation as to who pays and how much can get quite heated."
https://medium.com/@cryptohayes/the-denominator-536a8de34bf0
26. "It’s great to see more innovation in the non-dilutive SaaS financing space. Entrepreneurs would do well to consider all their financing options, and not just venture capital, when looking for ways to grow faster. Hopefully customer value financing catches on and becomes more popular."
https://davidcummings.org/2023/05/13/customer-value-saas-financing/
27. "Despite the uncertainty about the true meaning of these Ukrainian attacks around Bakhmut, I think one thing is certain. The attacks at Bakhmut show the Ukrainians are ready for a fight. And if they show the same creativity, determination, leadership and purpose they have throughout this war, the Russians are in a huge amount of trouble."
https://mickryan.substack.com/p/the-battle-of-bakhmut-9d8
28. Fascinating.
"The film’s remarkable success showed Blum the path forward: make a lot of low-budget horror films and hope a few break out. For this model, the goal is to produce 10 or more films a year with a budget in the $5m-range (cheap by Hollywood standards). Compare that to a major film studio, which puts $200m behind a few blockbusters every year.
Blum’s approach is similar to that of an angel investor who is trying to find the next startup unicorn. Instead of giving a single $500,000 check to one company, he cuts $10,000 checks and hands them out to dozens of intriguing founders.
But why horror? It is the best genre for fictional low-budget films. You don’t need special effects, because gritty and raw is actually scarier. You don’t need superstar talent, because an A-list actor can actually detract from the scariness (if you’re watching Tom Cruise, you’re thinking “wow, that’s Tom Cruise” and not “dude, get out of the house!”).
With a $200 million superhero or summer action film, you need to have CGI and A-list stars as table stakes.
One common theme was the importance of being stubborn in one’s taste and seeing it through to the final product. By setting clear financial constraints and offering big upside, Blumhouse gives its directors an opportunity to actually see their tastes through."
https://trungphan.substack.com/p/blumhouse-the-hollywood-horror-hit
29. Wow, what a story. This is a must read.
"When we make the effort of getting to know people at their core, we reduce the possibility of cheap mimetic interactions. Knowing someone at their core requires sharing and listening to a particular kind of experience: stories of deeply fulfilling action. Knowing and relating to these stories produces empathy and a greater understanding of human behavior.
A negative mimetic cycle is disrupted when two people, through empathy, stop seeing each other as rivals. Dave changed my way of thinking and my reactionary impulses by modeling something different—a core desire that is common to every person, but which often goes unfulfilled: to know and be known by others."
https://read.lukeburgis.com/p/my-life-saving-lesson-from-a-hitman
30. "In 2023 with few exceptions acquihires are dead as we knew them. The majority of typical acquirers (large and small) don’t have incremental headcount budget. Those who do, often believe they can hire from the open market without the hassle of an acquisition. Cash is at a premium so it’s not going to cap tables (preferred or common walk away from the deals with no dinero).
In fact, sometimes acquirers are asking for the remaining cash on hand from the startup in order to ‘zero out’ the salary burden they’re taking on [HW note: 99.9% of the time my answer is no fucking way]. And when they’re giving stock to existing shareholders instead of cash it’s at high 2021 valuations, buried below a preference stack."
31. "Now Italy’s newest billionaire is pursuing his passions, tinkering with plans to—as he puts it, “revolutionize”—businesses across a range of industries. Eighteen months after the sale, Iervolino has spent at least $200 million on everything from a soccer team and a cybersecurity firm to real estate and a media company that owns one of the country’s most storied magazines. He says he wants to focus on tech, with investments in several startups and venture capital funds.
Still, the vast majority of his wealth is liquid: Forbes estimates Iervolino is worth $1 billion, with more than two thirds of it held in cash and stocks.
"I really see the world split in two. There's positive people, who have passion and fury in their blood, those who make it. And then there are the pessimists, the techno-skeptics,” he says. “I'm always on the side of the optimists. I see a rosy future for young people and especially for Italy.”
32. We need to be watching this trend and it should not stop the US from managing the deficit and USD better (its been pretty shambolic as we have seen). But the USD is still the reserve currency for lack of anything better (at the moment).
"The numbers are still showing that the dollar is still the dominant currency,” Subacchi said.
Beijing will keep trying, and keep failing. The yuan’s not convertible, the government controls capital flows, and even its value is manipulated by Beijing. You can’t do business with IOUs, but you can always do business with a bushel of greenbacks.
“I think there will be incremental moves to make greater use of the yuan to denominate China’s trade with commodity-exporting countries,” Setser said. “And then I think China will discover that it is difficult to fully go much further and to really radically change the structure of how it settles its trade, because it still wants to sell to the U.S., still wants to sell to Europe. Its economy doesn’t balance without significant exports.”
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/05/12/dollar-dominance-global-trade-china-yuan-brics-currency/
33. "Every creator will distill their expertise and attract a school of students that resonate with their teaching style.
Creators will evolve and their following will evolve with them.
This eliminates saturation in the creator economy because life isn’t saturated – and we are all making the transition into the digital society."
https://thedankoe.com/generalists-are-taking-over-the-world-in-the-digital-golden-ages/
34. I like this concept of skill stacking.
https://thedankoe.com/the-1-million-dollar-skill-stack-learn-in-this-order/
35. "In a career spanning more than 50 years, Dalí produced a vast number of paintings, etchings, lithographs, and sculptures. But fake reproductions of his art constitute a larger market.
In the 1980s, during an art investment bubble, experts believe hundreds of thousands to millions of fake Dalís began to circulate, leading to $625m to $1B in sales of fake Dalí art in the US. Worldwide, fraudulent sales may have reached $3B.
The fraud led to prison sentences for unscrupulous art dealers and gallery owners, sunk the value of many authentic Dalí works, and continues to confound hobbyist art collectors — like Ewell’s client in Alabama — who often find out their family’s prized art is worthless."
https://thehustle.co/why-salvador-dali-is-the-most-faked-artist-in-the-world/
36. I'm bullish on Japan as they rise in the geopolitical landscape. Japan will be an important force for good in my opinion because of their high awareness of their troubled history.
"Kishida is preoccupied by more earthly issues. In Japan, he has launched a “new model of capitalism” to grow the middle class through redistributive policies. Overseas, he has set about revolutionizing the East Asian nation’s foreign relations: soothing historical grievances with South Korea, strengthening security alliances with the U.S. and others, and boosting defense spending by over 50%.
Buoyed by a White House eager for influential partners to check China’s growing clout, Kishida has set about turning the world’s No. 3 economy back into a global power with a military presence to match."
https://time.com/6278122/fumio-kishida-japan-prime-minister-interview-g7/
37. Excellent discussion here on the latest in culture wars and what’s happening in tech.
Don’t Be A Jerk to Service People: Being Kind Pays
I fly a lot. And in my travels, especially with flights, many inconveniences happen. You miss a connecting flight, they lose your luggage or you get bumped from a flight because they oversold it.
It’s irritating but it happens. Especially when you need your business clothes for an important meeting.
This happened to me when I was catching a connector to Tashkent last year when I was transiting through Istanbul. When I was about to board, one of the Turkish airline workers pulled me aside and said I was getting bumped because they oversold the flight. He was tired and looked nervous as he was dealing with 20 other pissed off passengers in my same situation.
He was shocked when I smiled and calmly told him it was totally fine. And that I totally understood the situation. All that mattered was they got me there the next day & sorted out my hotel. He said with relief: “In my 6 weeks at this station, I have never had any customer respond this way.”
What a sad state of humanity. And I tell this story not to virtue signal how nice or understanding I am (I am usually NOT in almost all other aspects of my life) but to make a point.
It almost never makes sense to get angry at a front desk worker.
Reason Number 1: it’s not their fault as they didn’t cause it.
Reason Number 2: they deserve your respect for the hard thankless job they do
Reason Number 3: they can potentially help you fix the situation, so why antagonize them?
And to conclude my little travel story: because I was nice to the guys, they not only got me on the flight but they also upgraded me to business class. Unlike the other passengers who yelled at them, and ultimately did not make the flight.
I’ve never trusted or liked people who were rude to service workers like waiters, receptionists, PAs or airline check-in people. It shows a complete lack of character when you act like an arrogant prick around so called lesser status people. Like they are masters lording it over servants back in the olden times. Just plain awful behavior.
The moral of the story: Be nice to frontline service people. It does not pay to be an As-hole to them. It’s bad karma and they can make things worse for you.
Your Enemies Keep You Young: Embracing Your Competitors and Challenges
I get told often that I look young for someone my age. My response is that it’s my intense rage that keeps me young. It’s actually not that far from the truth.
I’m a very black and white guy. You are either on my side or you are the enemy. There is no neutrality in my world view. If you are neutral then you will also be considered the enemy. I admit the last half decade of my life has definitely hardened me in many ways.
It’s not the healthiest attitude to live by but it is what it is. And I’ve been able to harness this to improve and drive myself forward to great personal benefit.
Your enemies, or in the more civilized world, competitors, are the whetstone to sharpen your blade on. So you should welcome this, despite the pain & challenges you face when you are battling against them. Pray for enemies, as that shows you might actually be fighting for something of worth. Having no enemies literally means you are fighting for nothing.
As the plains Native Americans saying goes:
“Make my enemy brave and strong, so that if defeated I will not be ashamed.”
Maybe even more importantly as this very excellent TheManMaker tweeted here https://twitter.com/TheManMakerx/status/1592196701120794624:
“Show me a man with no enemies,
And I'll show you a man who is not growing in his life.”
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads May 14th, 2023
"The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure very much."--William Hazlitt
“After the Kharkiv offensive, Russia kind of realized that defeat was possible - they could lose territory. I think that was a realization that Ukraine can do offensive operations,” he said. The fortifications are “an acknowledgement of the risk that Ukraine could make another breakthrough”.
https://www.reuters.com/graphics/UKRAINE-CRISIS/COUNTEROFFENSIVE/mopakddwbpa/index.html
2. Useful guide to LPs for any new VC manager.
https://govclab.com/2023/04/27/lp-archetypes/
3. "The only reason the dollar was the reserve currency is because the USA dominated everything in the world. Today, the world is far more connected and integrated – regardless of fragmentations caused by pandemics and wars – and this means that a single country’s fiat currency is no longer the model. It may have been last century but, this century, we need a new model.
We need a model of money that is not dependent upon a single nation. A model of money that combines nations into a global currency. A model that creates a world of money. A model that embraces cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies. A world that brings CBDCs together with NFTs. A world that is both decentralised and centralised."
https://thefinanser.com/2023/05/is-the-dollar-disappearing
4. This guy is a badass. Ukraine's spymaster. I wish him great success in his mission of liberating Ukraine from Russia.
"Budanov was appointed to what became a crucial wartime intelligence role in August 2020 after having served a brief stint as deputy director of one of the departments of Ukraine’s foreign intelligence service. Before that, he was a HUR Spetsnaz or special forces commando dispatched behind enemy lines: Even now, he occasionally appears in selfies from the front, kitted out in full tactical gear, in what one senior HUR official said are no mere photo ops: “Budanov still takes part in special operations.”
5. This is completely true.
"Bragging about headcount was 1 of the most corrosive trends in startup land over the last many years"
https://twitter.com/asanwal/status/1654892559276154886
6. For anyone who wants to make their life better and happier. This is a great conversation with Derek Sivers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BaDQCjqUHU
7. "Of course, this is applicable to most things in startupland (and life).
Whether it’s selling a piece of software, earning a mentor, or signing that strategic partner, it’s a process, not a single event. Figure out the process, understand what’s needed for the next step, and work towards it.
Entrepreneurs would do well to sell hard on the next step, not the final sale."
https://davidcummings.org/2023/05/06/sell-hard-on-the-next-step-not-the-final-sale/
8. "In the end? You’ll probably see a few more of these smaller sized banks go under giving more and more power to the top 5-10 banks.
Specific issues you’ll now face: Harder to get any sort of debt. You’re looking at double digit interest rates for anything of size (think private equity and tons of corporate debt *not* named “Apple or Google”). Also. Anyone hoping that the government will issue “stimmies” again is a pipe dream.
If we go through another round of “printing” it’ll likely look like other developing countries where it is some sort of coupon specifically for food/energy/rent that is difficult to move into the consumer economy (huge difference vs. handing out $1,200 checks for people to buy Gucci or random meme coins).
Short Conclusion
More banks will go under as long as the Fed does not cut rates. We do not see them cutting rates in June. While there is a good chance they “pause” a rate cut is simply not in the cards without lower inflation readings. Expect rates to be flat at minimum and we’ll look at inflation numbers in April to confirm/deny that.
On that note, the US dollar is not going to die soon. If you look at Japan their debt to GDP is much worse than the USA and they are still surviving in the weird ponzi-nomics set up. The USA is only at 123% debt/gdp and as reference Singapore is 128% and Japan at 266%. The message? These things take time to play out, it isn’t a meme coin."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/president-powell-bank-failures-and
9. I really appreciate this excellent content here. Luke Belmar is the positive model most young males need.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59NlyJm9nxw
10. "I know for many families, the appeal of bootstrapping is the promise of a better life: more freedom, money, time, and flexibility. But there is a cost (especially when your kids are young).
There's no guarantee that your bet will pay off, and you can't get that time with your kids back.
So consider this decision carefully, and make sure you and your partner are aligned."
https://justinjackson.ca/bootstrapping-with-kids
11. "To be clear, even an emerging manager on his or her first fund with no full-time employees will spend time on management tasks beyond investing. Other than investing one’s own capital as an angel investor, I don’t believe there’s a way to be a VC without management taking up some portion of your time."
https://chudson.substack.com/p/do-you-want-to-manage-or-do-you-want
12. "The moral corruption bred by indolence, luxury, and a long peace is an old theme in history. The concerns of Vegetius are shared by us today; like him, we look upon the state of military preparedness, and the contemporary social scene, with ever-increasing alarm.
Physical fitness levels in the youth have plummeted; social agendas have been preference to readiness and performance; and political leaders seem unconcerned that military recruitment levels have fallen to dangerously low levels.
The question is whether reforms can be instituted before the arrival of disaster, or whether, as human nature is ill-suited to the recognition of unarrived dangers, a cataclysm must take place before a people recovers its senses. It is a question that will be of the utmost significance for the United States in the coming years."
https://qcurtius.com/2023/05/06/vegetius-discusses-the-importance-of-the-martial-virtues/
13. "The private coaching industry is booming. Top college football players hire quarterback trainers who charge anywhere from $50-$250/hour for their services. Even adult recreational athletes — weekend warriors — have enlisted coaches to improve their times in the triathlon and marathon. Matthews, who declined to tell us his rates, works with an especially elite group.
But since starting his business in 2016, he has landed many of the world’s best basketball players, such as Domantas Sabonis, Skylar Diggins-Smith, and Anthony Davis, as well as numerous figures outside professional sports, from the cast of the Peacock TV show “Bel-Air”’ to musicians like Travis Barker and Drake.
Last year, Jordan Brand designed a player-exclusive shoe for Matthews, an indication of his top-tier status as a trainer.
His skills are more valuable than ever. NBA, WNBA, and NCAA teams have doubled down on long-range shooting, one of the most efficient ways to win, leading dozens of professional athletes to seek out Matthews as a coach."
https://thehustle.co/the-basketball-journeyman-who-became-a-shooting-coach-to-the-stars/
14. "If 2021 was the year of the hungry-hungry Unicorn, then going forward the lesson that founders could take away is that less is more. AI is already writing whole functions of code, debugging processes, and outlining hosting infrastructure. As the AI overlords and capital barons at the top duke it out, the technological advances trickle down and decrease the cost of doing anything: code, content, creativity, and everything in-between.
But the fear is that founders and funders alike will fail to appreciate the new paradigm. For a lot of ambitious people, they look at the big dogs playing a very different game, and believe they're playing the same game. So you get SaaS companies that can be great business and even good venture-backed businesses.
But they, instead, focus on raising billions at 100x ARR, chasing multi-billion dollar outcomes, only to find that those outcomes are out of reach, and their funding approach has made it unlikely that most people will benefit from what they've built."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/blaspheming-against-the-hype
15. This is incredibly instructive on how to spot talent and what to look for in startup founders. Worth watching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sad3owRmB74&t=7s
16. "Now, it is up to the world to realize that China’s wars will not be fought by PLA soldiers. Their soldiers are already existing in our nations, towns, and societies, fighting for China at a minuscule cost of a real war. It is an invisible war that the world ignores as inconsequential."
https://chanakyaforum.com/chinas-invisible-war-with-india-and-the-world/
17. "The data is now clear: VC investing in emerging markets is no longer a fringe activity practiced only by ‘true believer’ investors willing to withstand decades of losses before exits occur. The exits are now here and valuations are surging. Smaller hubs in Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus are now catching up quickly with those in the U.S. on a variety of key metrics."
https://www.catapultvc.com/2022-is-the-year-emerging-markets-vc-comes-of-age-heres-why/
18. "First of all, China (and Russia) started Cold War 2. China’s own industrial policy, including attempts to dominate the semiconductor industry and other industries, long predates the U.S.’ milder versions. Chinese technological espionage, coordinated and assisted by the central government and the intelligence services, has been ongoing for over a decade.
China’s increasing threats to conquer Taiwan and to seize pieces of the territories of India, Japan, the Philippines, and Vietnam are what prompted the U.S. to step up efforts to help those countries defend themselves. Russia invaded Ukraine with either tacit or clandestine Chinese approval. Economically and militarily, China and Russia have chosen escalation and aggression on a number of fronts.
They didn’t have to do this. They could have chosen to live with the economic relationships and territorial status quo of the 2000s, in which both countries were growing at a rapid clip and Europe and Asia were almost entirely free of armed conflict. But instead, they chose to make a bid to disrupt the existing order on all fronts.
So now the U.S. and its allies are confronted with the choice of whether to accept Chinese/Russian revision of the international order or to resist it."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-the-us-should-fight-cold-war
19. "China’s often harshly enforced claim to sovereignty over most of the South China Sea has alienated neighbours, provoking numerous confrontations over freedom of navigation, disputed islands and energy resources.
Beijing’s unceasing intimidation of Taiwan, huge military buildup, unhelpful response to the pandemic and backing for Russia’s war in Ukraine fit a broader pattern of off-putting arrogance and domineering behaviour."
20. "The hostile & — especially in Startup & Venture capital world — globally known and feared bureaucratic environment is getting improved by the current administration in Germany. And while lots of details are still yet to be defined, it is a win that there is finally some movement.
It gives hope that there is new thinking that in a rapidly evolving world and with the acceptance of the fact that technology is the fundamental driver of growth in an industrialized world, we can not give the most important resource — talent — only into the hands of incumbents and slowly moving behemoths as BMW and co. but we have to enable world-class educated individuals to translate their knowledge & passion into the future via ventures and innovation in Germany — no matter their place of birth.
Top Talent is hypermobile and Germany needs smart, ambitious people more than they need Germany and yet they want to start here, so we should do our very best to not only educate but to support, enable and reduce barriers as long as we are still high up on their preference stack rank."
https://medium.com/@philipp.herkelmann/entrepreneurial-potential-in-germany-2e8f6e96efab
21. Fan of Randall Park, representing Asian-American actors.
"His career has been defined by a kind of chummy adaptability, whether he plays a dictator (he made Kim Jong Un seem like a fun hang in “The Interview,” from 2014) or raps, as he did as a slacker in the 2019 romantic comedy “Always Be My Maybe,” or adopts an immigrant’s accent, as in his breakthrough role, on the ABC sitcom “Fresh Off the Boat,” adapted from the chef Eddie Huang’s memoir.
The series débuted in 2015 and was the first network show in nearly two decades to feature a predominantly Asian cast. For six seasons, Park played Louis Huang, the series’ wholesome, occasionally overwhelmed father. His onscreen presence makes him seem approachable, if people notice him at all. “One of the great advantages of being Asian, and borderline well known, is that people tend to think you look like just another Asian,” he told me."
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/02/27/randall-park-profile-shortcomings
22. Justin Waller is a smart man. Living a big life and I really learn alot from him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv1bFSTRDyU
23. "Stop focusing on how to get back to your prior valuations. Accepting down rounds needs to be normalized because a lot of companies are going to just quietly go out of business over the next year. At least with a down round you have a chance to keep fighting.
I didn’t talk about “dirty” term sheets in this post…but TLDR…keep it clean and don’t do stupid things so it appears like you didn’t take a down round.
Investors want high-growth AND efficiency so build a plan based on reality. High spending often comes from seeing success rather than causing success.
Lastly, don’t lie to yourself when building a financial plan. Sure, if you slightly tweak a few assumptions then your company might IPO in 5 years….But when reality hits a lot differently and you have a lot more costs without the associated revenue then it might be too late to change course.
You have 99+ problems running a company, don’t let your pride of not wanting a down round be something that kills your company."
https://www.onlycfo.io/p/down-rounds-wont-kill-you
24. I can attest to this.
"Bad Asian? No, I prefer to be called a Badass Asian because I’m defining myself on my own terms. And that’s a freedom worth protecting and fighting for whether or not you disappoint anyone else."
https://medium.com/stopasianhate/the-joy-of-being-a-bad-asian-241609fe6e69
25. Good discussion on how to look at talent: energy, humor and optimism versus pessimism. Asking good & easy going questions. This is really valuable & thought provoking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uy8LH2WK94M
26. This is a sad ending to the Yellowstone saga. Ego is the enemy as always.
"For that matter, what of the Yellowstone mythos itself? Yellowstone seemed to be, and arguably was, a show born of Sheridan’s fierce Texan independence, unbeholden to the messy games of America’s elite coasts. But this infighting has all the trappings of classic Hollywood idols fighting over petty Hollywood status symbols. Would the mighty house that Sheridan built be able to stand on prima donna legs?"
27. There is a lot here. He describes well the self-inflicted economic poly-crisis that the USA and the west is facing. Eye-opening.
I hate that he points to a challenging time for the US dollar but he may be right. Makes sense to prep for this. Recommend watching this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVSHIAAeZxI
28. This looks amazing. I'll be there November 3rd. Dune Part 2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Way9Dexny3w
29. "Now what does that mean? Well, it doesn’t mean VCs have no money to invest … today. They are indeed still sitting on funds they raised last year and the year before at record levels, per the chart above.
But it does mean almost every VC fund is going to be even more cautious. The issue isn’t just exit multiples, or growth rates. It’s also now that they are having a much tougher time raising funds themselves to give to startups.
If that doesn’t last more than a quarter or two, startups won’t really notice. But if this trend continues (and there’s no reason right now to believe otherwise) … it likely will make million+ checks even harder to get in the coming quarters. When VCs aren’t sure they’re going to have nearly as much money to invest themselves going forward."
https://www.saastr.com/fundraising-by-vc-firms-themselves-is-at-a-10-year-low-what-that-means/
30. Wide ranging conversation on technology and human evolution. We will become a widely varying and divergent human species.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5VA1jc_X8U&t=9s
31. De-dollarization seems to be a longer term trend. Inevitable result of weaponization of the US dollar. Part of a larger deglobalization trend.
"But in the last year, a drive to insulate China’s economy from dollar-based sanctions has emerged as possibly the most important incentive for decoupling from the dollar, as China looks to prepare for the possibility of conflict with Taiwan."
32. Praying for success for the Ukrainian counter offensive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MThrhf-YXjU&list=RDCMUCsy9I56PY3IngCf_VGjunMQ&start_radio=1
33. This absolutely makes sense and these are the guys to do it. The Mint from BTV: A Fintech-focused accelerator.
34. "Police departments around the U.S. are donating tactical gear to Ukraine, whose annual defense budget is smaller than the NYPD’s."
https://www.vice.com/en/article/dypkjx/us-police-donates-tactical-gear-ukraine
35. "Star athletes are aiming to set up what many would call a “family office” type environment.
They want to have their own:
-Agency
-Venture fund
-Advisory board
-Charitable foundation
-Media/Production arm
Only a few have been able to successfully do this so far…
But it’s extremely powerful and will create generational wealth for those that have the ability to pull it off."
https://www.petcashpost.com/p/the-athlete-family-office-and-its
Trapped Between Ego & the Environment: The Challenges of Personal Change Management
It’s surprising where and when you stumble on deep insights on life and the world. I found myself in Romania last year during a short weekend break between Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan.
I started reading a sci-fi action book called “Harrowmaster” that takes place during the grim dark futuristic world of Warhammer 40k where there is nothing but war. A story about one of the renegade space marine legions fallen to betray humanity. Yet they are clever, practical and interesting characters locked in a 10,000 year “long war” with the Imperium of man. They are immensely adaptable, which is what makes them so effective.
There is a great quote from the book by the main character Solomon Akurra:
“Ego was rigid and rigid tools tend to break under pressure.”
Ego is identity. Ego drives you to accomplish things. Knowing who you are is important. Yet circumstances change. Adapting is winning. I know all this but as some that astrology calls a “fixed sign”, this is a challenge for me personally. I find I only change when I meet maximum pain or cannot hide from reality any longer.
Solomon goes on to say:
“We always seek to influence outcomes to our advantage. However some outcomes cannot be meaningfully changed without changing ourselves. Sometimes that is necessary and desirable….and sometimes, doing so would render any victory won by such methods essentially meaningless.”
The question then is how far do you adapt? What traits and values do you keep and which ones do you drop?
This is why it’s really important to know yourself and know what your deepest values are. It requires deep and sometimes uncomfortable introspection. It’s also important that you keep both accomplished AND “good” people around you. They act as touchstones to help guide your way.
Basically, be so ruthlessly adaptable to win but know yourself and your values deeply so that you don’t lose your way.
Select Yourself: Truth from Darwinism & “Billions”
I think there is always something to learn from “Billions”, the archetypal show about Wall Street hedge funds and competition. Yes, it’s dramatized but there are kernels of truth to be found throughout. There is an episode in season 5 where the main character and hedge fund king, Axe goes to bail out his son who crashed the power grid of the private school he was attending. In a speech to the entire school to exonerate him, he goes on a tirade:
“I’m here to give you a little bit about what the school has been holding back from you. The goddamn truth about Darwin, scarcity, and the world you actually live in. It’s not the warm swaddled place your headmaster and parents have told you about. It’s populated by people like me, who will tear you apart.
Nature didn’t select me. I selected myself by harnessing my nature.”
He is being asked to go against his DNA, which is telling each of you to be greedy. Yes, be hungry, subjugate and conquer, because that’s who we are.”
You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWjIL_Thmuk&t=10s
Pretty wild stuff & reminds me of the Wall Street movie Gordon Gekko “Greed is Good” speech. But as I said earlier, there are some deep truths here because there are literally people who do think and act like this. I admit I’m probably one of them. I was harshly schooled in Silicon Valley for over 23+ years, and it is not the sedate place that people try to portray. And that is why it’s a vicious world out there, filled with viciously, competitive people.
I’ve stopped hiding from reality. Reality does bite. It’s good to be idealistic, and it’s always good to treat people fairly and honestly. I always try to find the Win-win. But if the other side does not work the same way, I quickly disengage and avoid them.
But when you are stuck with these vicious people, don’t turn the other cheek, you must fight back. And you fight back hard. If they keep on coming at me or my interests, I will do everything I can to wreck them. You have to be a relentless enemy. This is the only way to operate in this kind of world. In Game theory it’s called the “Tit for Tat” strategy, you start off by trying to cooperate and treat your opponent fairly. If they betray you, you retaliate and hit them back. And it works as shown in most scenarios.
So go out in the world and keep your eyes open. But most importantly know the environment you are competing in, harness your nature and do the hard work to select yourself.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads May 7th, 2023
"We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from life."--William Osler
Tokyo is back and I'm massively bullish (although biased because I love Japan).
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2023/04/26/commentary/japan-commentary/tokyo-financial-hub/
2. I'm a fan of Justin Waller. The Blue Collar Baller.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcu3HXCrcF0
3. "Venture capital firms are complex webs of cultural politics, power struggles, and short-term measurements of long-term activities. In some ways, VCs can be the dumbest people you'll talk to. Not because they're normal dumb, but because they move so fast, and do so much while operating on so little information that their decision making paradigms can defy most forms of logic.
They say you can only make a first impression once, but with VCs that first impression can sometimes last a lifetime.
Now, take that strange fast-moving poorly-informed decision making paradigm, and then stick a dozen or so of them in a room. That's a venture capital firm."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/eat-what-you-kill
4. This seems crazy. Crazy like a fox?
This is a fast growing company but the valuation seems high but this is a lottery ticket.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/28/openai-funding-valuation-chatgpt/
5. Strong case for America's continual pre-eminence. Geography, Population and resources.
https://twitter.com/girdley/status/1652285351107641344
6. This is a sad story. Naive people. Sadly, evil does exist in this world.
"In 2017, two Americans set off on a round-the-world bike trip. They believed people all over the world are inherently good at heart. They never made it home."
https://www.outsideonline.com/2405861/tajikistan-bike-murders-jay-austin-lauren-geoghegan/
7. "The microstate (comprising just 208 hectares) is a world-famous example of how very small jurisdictions can grow faster, get richer, and be more successful overall than bigger countries. They often also score higher on aspects such as crime, unemployment, and public services.
Places like Singapore and Liechtenstein are other famous examples, but not the only ones.
Nowadays, the swathe of successful microstates that are dotted around the globe gets complemented by efforts to establish private cities with quasi-sovereign rights and even new countries. For some of these projects, fundraising among real estate investors and venture capitalists is carried out right now.
Is this going to form a new investment theme or asset class? How could this look like, and what might be its biggest attraction to investors?"
8. Kotkin is one of my favorite historians. He has a great perspective on Russia and geopolitics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTXEmz6nJGk
9. The CCP threat is real.
"Another provision makes it easier for the military to draft people in case of an emergency. This allows the government to adjust the conditions and method of conscription, depending on the types of personnel required, and enables the supply transportation corps to prioritize the transport of military forces for swift deployments.
The changes reflect Beijing's concerns about a possible conflict over Taiwan. A total land, sea and air war could require China to mobilize retired military personnel, as well as active-duty soldiers. Among others, experienced crew who can operate weapons and sonars on warships and fighter pilots are particularly valuable, as training new, highly skilled people takes time.
The revised law aims to bring in science and engineering students trained in high tech, such as artificial intelligence and robotics. Warfare using space satellites, cyber and drones are particular areas of concern. The Chinese military is also focusing on research into "intelligence warfare" that makes use of AI and other technology."
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/China-revises-conscription-law-eyeing-Taiwan-conflict
10. Learning about programming yourself. Luke Belmar is dropping knowledge bombs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcXWgCxjcGM
11. One of the most strategic places in the world right now. Bashi straits between Taiwan and the Philippines.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRK2NuzVtH8
12. US allies in Asia are critical if China attacks Taiwan. Reality though is Japan and Australia are the only ones the USA can count on.
https://www.axios.com/2023/05/02/taiwan-war-us-philippines-japan-korea-australia
13. "Technology has already made the world pretty efficient. The idea that you’re going to get a giant internet or mobile-sized economic opportunity across the board by going better, faster, cheaper on human-based models seems a little tough to swallow—especially when you take into consideration the hype cycle, which is greater now than it’s ever been.
Other than the very first checks, no one paid a remotely reasonable risk-adjusted price for shares of OpenAI unless it winds up being a FAANG sized outcome—and the same is true for a lot of AI companies these days.
Don’t get me wrong, there will definitely be great outcomes for companies that integrate AI into their offerings, and we might be watching today’s sitcoms 30 years from now marveling at how all this took place before AI changed everything, but I’m not quite sure the dollars are going to be there from the venture return side."
https://ceonyc.substack.com/p/why-ai-wont-be-the-investment-opportunity
14. "But I am a realist. And personally, I think the US has a 10% chance of defaulting in months, 70% chance in years, a 19% chance in decades, and a 1% chance of making it to centuries, whether that default be explicit (via something like the debt ceiling) or more likely implicit (via money printing).
I don’t think default is the “end of the world” (not even the world wars were!) but I do think it’s going to be a disruptive period that merits careful preparation, as opposed to either passivity or panic.
Nevertheless, I’m still optimistic on individual Americans, on America at at the state and local level, and on technological progress globally."
15. Hackers for good. More of this please.
16. "However well or poorly China’s military might perform, the geostrategic implications would not constitute a big win for anyone.
In the unlikely event that China’s military performs spectacularly well and swiftly achieves operational success, this victory would stun the region and prompt a major geopolitical realignment, but not necessarily in ways that would all favor Beijing. If the People’s Liberation Army were to stumble seriously or fail spectacularly in a military operation against Taiwan, Xi would be unlikely to throw in the towel.
A major setback would almost certainly generate a protracted war in the center of the Indo-Pacific that would seriously disrupt regional shipping lanes, commercial air travel, and supply chains. As a result, prolonged conflict over Taiwan would be far more disruptive than the ongoing war in Ukraine, both regionally and globally."
https://warontherocks.com/2023/05/xi-jinpings-worst-nightmare-a-potemkin-peoples-liberation-army/
17. "Integrating computing design principles into the military acquisitions process might sound like a reversion — after all, the Pentagon was instrumental in Silicon Valley’s founding, not vice versa — but computing’s pervasiveness demands an immediate strategy adjustment.
Our willingness to adapt matters. What today is considered asymmetric — drones over dreadnoughts — will become the norm. In fact, it’s a dynamic that plays out frequently in the tech industry when startups with new technology and fewer institutional constraints out execute deep-pocketed incumbents. We need to recalibrate our military procurement and design processes to account for that reality.
Rewiring the Pentagon as an ambidextrous organization capable of rapidly fielding innovative tech and still delivering on established programs can help us get there."
https://a16z.com/2023/04/28/how-the-u-s-can-rewire-the-pentagon-for-a-new-era/
18. This is a good discussion on AI & the growth of dual threat CEOs: founders who are good running startups and investing on the side.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5CXqp5nnLM
19. "Biden’s people believe that the same set of policies that will build up American strength vis-a-vis China will also work against domestic inequality and help restore the American middle class. That doesn’t mean they see China as the root of America’s economic ills, as Trump did — instead, it means they think they can kill two birds with one stone. Three birds, if you count climate change.
What are the chances that the same policies that would strengthen the U.S. in the international arena would also boost the middle class at home? In fact, I do think there’s a good precedent for this: World War 2. The massive military manufacturing boom unleashed to fight that war, as well as the advent of science and technology policy, ended up boosting the power of labor, accelerating growth, and creating the preconditions for a robust middle class in the postwar years. It was a double win, and it’s one the Biden administration would like to repeat.
So those are the first two main points to understand about the new industrial policy:
It’s intended to strengthen the U.S.’ hand against China, and
It’s an attempt to at least partially reverse the rise in inequality that happened in the 80s, 90s, and 00s.
Already, there are worries that tensions might emerge between these two objectives — and the objective of stopping climate change."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-new-industrial-policy-explained
20. Elad is one of the best operators and investors in Silicon Valley. So much to learn here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mW8r0iwGzM
21. "The assignment was simple: write a profile of Sadhguru, the yogi, New York Times bestselling author, and spiritual adviser to Hollywood celebrities and the ultra-rich. At 65 years old, the Indian holy man has become an unlikely influencer on TikTok and Instagram, where more than nine million of his disciples avidly soak up the guru’s advice on how to attain enlightenment – or, at least, a little calm – in our increasingly fucked-up modern world."
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/lifestyle/article/inside-the-temple-of-sadhguru
22. Long overdue actions here. We are so behind here.
“Whatever we do to deter the war has to happen before the war,” Gallagher told Defense News. “We need to jump-start industry now if we want to actually stockpile munitions that give us a chance of preserving the peace, which means in my opinion that you need multiyear appropriations for critical munitions like the long-range anti-ship missile.”
“We need about 1,000 to 1,200 [long-range anti-ship missiles] if you believe the unclassified wargames,” he added. “Our inventory is less than 250, and we’re just not producing them at a rapid rate. I believe we can get up to above 200 a year.”
23. "I focus on the US because it has taken security and defense seriously when Europe has not. The US is the only party with the actual capability to profoundly change the military balance on the battlefield. Additionally, the US is leading the “pack” of willing (and not so willing) Western countries.
Europe has failed to invest in security and defence, making itself fully dependent on the US. It has no strategic autonomy within security and defence and is, consequentially, unable to provide the military support needed for Ukraine to defeat Russia."
"I am, however, rather convinced that the deliberations – or strategic thinking – will be influenced by a mix of flawed institutional thinking, ignorance of both Russia and Ukraine, Russian disinformation, and Russian-induced fear, as well as concerns over public support and strategic considerations beyond Ukraine.
This is also the main reason why the West is reluctant to set up Ukraine for victory. A series of institutionalized flaws and a lack of strategic thinking."
https://euromaidanpress.com/2023/04/29/why-is-the-west-reluctant-to-equip-ukraine-to-win-the-war/
24. "Burgis distinguishes between two types of desire: thin and thick. Thin desires are ephemeral and easily influenced by external factors, while thick desires are rooted in our core beliefs and values. In order to take control of our desires and avoid being pushed and pulled in directions that aren’t true to ourselves, we must identify the difference between the two."
https://bigthink.com/the-well/mimetic-desire-want/
25. This is eye opening and scary. But it's really worth watching. Learning from a spy and the importance of geopolitics in the USA. We need to wake up!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14eG8uoQ6cQ&t=1617s
26. "We Have No Moat
And neither does OpenAI
We’ve done a lot of looking over our shoulders at OpenAI. Who will cross the next milestone? What will the next move be?
But the uncomfortable truth is, we aren’t positioned to win this arms race and neither is OpenAI. While we’ve been squabbling, a third faction has been quietly eating our lunch.
I’m talking, of course, about open source. Plainly put, they are lapping us. Things we consider “major open problems” are solved and in people’s hands today."
https://www.semianalysis.com/p/google-we-have-no-moat-and-neither
27. Interesting discussion on Signal Intelligence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjeGLc9kmeg&list=RDCMUCsy9I56PY3IngCf_VGjunMQ&start_radio=1
28. Never count out Sequoia Capital.
"Tellingly, even in the face of Twitter’s stumbles, FTX’s failure, public equities in freefall and looming doubts regarding ByteDance, Sequoia isn’t facing an exodus of LPs or anything resembling an internal revolt. This, perhaps, is why Sequoia tapped a partner like Botha to lead the firm in the first place. The institution has built a reputation over the last half-century for being both far-looking and indefatigable; its leader must be made of the same stuff.
“He’s the right steward for the moment,” said Antonio Gracias, founder of Valor Equity Partners and a fellow investor in Musk’s Twitter. “This is the time when you want someone who can separate emotion from logic and fact.”
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/sequoia-capitals-mighty-struggle
29. "The arc of evolution bends toward good storytellers. Communities with larger proportions of skilled storytellers experience greater levels of cooperation, and … procreation. Their evolutionary fitness is buttressed, as storytelling translates to more efficient transmission of survival-relevant information.
Storytellers themselves are more likely to receive acts of service from their peers — and among men, being skilled in storytelling increases attractiveness and perceived status to potential long-term mates. My dad used to tell me that men get turned on with their eyes, women with their ears. It turns out his theory is backed by science."
https://www.profgalloway.com/storytelling/
30. Worth listening to if you are a SaaS founder.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyo1rF4iEZ4
31. This is a fascinating view on history and geopolitics.
https://twitter.com/Valen10Francois/status/1652630776976924673
32. China dominating the auto manufacturing industry is dangerous for the west. This is a dual use capability & easily converted to military use.
https://twitter.com/_MadeInThe_USA/status/1652804222050549768
The Price of Rebellion and Supporting a BIG Cause: There is Always a Major Price to Pay
I think the Andor tv series is one of the most underrated Star Wars series i’ve watched. One of the most striking speeches I’ve read was by character Luthen Rael who helped start the rebellion against the Empire.
“Calm. Kindness, kinship. Love. I’ve given up all chance at inner peace, I’ve made my mind a sunless space. I share my dreams with ghosts. I wake up every day to an equation I wrote 15 years ago from which there’s only one conclusion: I’m damned for what I do.
My anger, my ego, my unwillingness to yield, my eagerness to fight, they’ve set me on a path from which there is no escape. I yearned to be a savior against injustice without contemplating the cost, and by the time I looked down, there was no longer any ground beneath my feet.
What is... what is my sacrifice? I’m condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them. I burn my decency for someone else’s future. I burn my life, to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see. No, the ego that started this fight will never have a mirror, or an audience, or the light of gratitude. So what do I sacrifice?
Everything.”
You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3RCme2zZRY
It’s chilling. It’s heroic and tragic at the same time. And while most of us aren’t starting rebellions against a dictatorial empire (yet), this comment is still highly relevant to the startup & entrepreneurial world. Or really any major movement. It absolutely rings true.
Doing great things requires great sacrifices. There is no free lunch. There is no dabbling. Great things also require deep commitment. Commitment of your body and your soul. You have to “want it” more than the other guy. You have to do tremendous amounts of work. You have to push yourself to your limits. This is the cost of great achievement in human life.
It means taking Risk in business and investing parlance. No Risk, No Gain.
And yet many people are still looking for the free lunch or the easy way. And sadly, that is why most people are NGMI (Not Going to Make It).
Chaos is a Ladder: Your Mindset to Thriving in Massive Change
One of the more insightful lines to come out of Game of Thrones. One of top schemers in the show, Littlefinger in response to his rival Varys about chaos being a gaping pit enveloping the realm says:
“Chaos isn’t a pit. Chaos is a ladder. Many who try to climb it fail and never get to try again. The fall breaks them. And some, are given a chance to climb. They refuse, they cling to the realm or the gods or love. Illusions. Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there is.”
I’ve mentioned this quote several times in podcast interviews I did in 2020. At the height of the pandemic and all the changes happening all around us then. Fast forward to 2023, this seems more true than ever. Huge economic changes & even bigger geopolitical ones, mass layoffs in techland & banking, major bank failures, global recession and fear everywhere. It’s so easy to feel down on the world and life in general.
Yet I keep going back to the quote. Think back to all the major changes in human civilization. The change from Agricultural age to Industrial Age, now to the Knowledge Age. The change from Reformation to Renaissance, The change from French dominated Europe to German dominated one, The change from British Global system to an American one. Globalization to the Deglobalization we see in front of us. Every major change had clear winners and losers.
Change is hard and we are wired to focus so much on what we are losing that we ignore all the bright opportunities in front of us. So it’s important to change our mindset.
Yes, we should definitely mourn & rage about the good old days. Nothing like unleashing your anger on a punching bag or a deep cry. Believe me, it’s immensely cathartic. It’s all part of the process to move on. But make sure you don’t dwell on it for too long. Mark my words, there are big new opportunities to go after. Chaos is a ladder, so start climbing.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads April 30th, 2023
"Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant." -Robert Louis Stevenson
"People ≠ Economic output
Economists still have this stupid idea and it’s also ingrained in politics that labour force size is equivalent to population. This is false.
Technology amplifies human output. It increases the leverage of a single person exponentially. Computers, telecommunications both decrease costs and increase output. The average company needs less employees and by their metrics creates more Revenue, Profit, GDP and every other metric etc per person.
We know this, and yet we somehow haven’t transferred this business knowledge to the realm of politics and society. Yes, automation reduces the number of people in the factory and that’s bad for jobs, but if you’re in a declining population it’s just fine.
We don’t need to be doomed if birthrates are lowering if can leverage the people we have. Telemedicine can decrease medical costs if it’s implemented well. Japan is applying ChatGPT to make their Civil Service more effective already. We don’t need more people or longer hours, what we need is to leverage the tools we have and create new ones."
https://mercurial.substack.com/p/population-problems
2. I highly recommend this interview with Dan Martell. This was personally enlightening. Can't wait to read the book.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FE8Nk0mVbH8
3. "In a protracted conflict with China, the U.S. military may not be able to continue riding its wave of successful precision-strike campaigns in limited and regional conflicts. Rather than looking backwards toward a historic comparative advantage that no longer exists — raw industrial capacity — the United States should embrace the comparative advantage that it still enjoys in the present — high technology.
The Department of Defense can start by procuring increased quantities of the advanced weapons it currently fields and augmenting the capabilities of existing precision munitions with modular add-ons and upgraded payloads. These initial steps toward modular weapons can pave the way for the widespread adoption of digital engineering and “mix-and-match” weapons in coming years.
Of course, innovative technologies and concepts may not be enough to win a prolonged war of attrition. Quantity remains a quality of its own, particularly with expendable weaponry. But relying on outdated assumptions and refusing to utilize America’s enduring technological advantage to its fullest potential risks defeat in future military operations where the demands for precision weapons will inevitably exceed supplies."
https://warontherocks.com/2023/04/money-isnt-enough-getting-serious-about-precision-munitions/
4. What a very sad story. What happens when you surround yourself with "yes men & women" & drugs. The fall of a brilliant tech tycoon.
5. "Theories of deglobalization do not hold water. Trade as a percent of GDP is far closer to a peak than a trough. There are few signs that this will retreat anytime soon as manufacturers like Apple focus on moving production to India rather than reshoring. When manufacturing returns to the US, it will likely be part of a wave of automation and additive manufacturing that skips labor in the same manner that agriculture no longer involves meaningful labor content."
https://michaelwgreen.substack.com/p/what-really-happened-in-1971
6. "The solution to this paradox lies in the different ways that the two armies use their artillery. While Russia has stuck mainly to Soviet doctrine of massed area fires, Ukraine uses artillery fire as a long-range sniper weapon to pick off individual targets. This has been made possible with the widespread use of two innovations: small drones for artillery spotting, coupled with cheap tablet computers running software like Nettle system to direct fire.
It currently looks as though big data may be more powerful than big guns, and future conflicts may be determined more by the available drone fleet and its supporting software than the number of artillery barrels. But the current conflict may still have much more to teach us."
7. This is a good thing. Japan's growing military assertiveness.
"China’s expanding military footprint across the South and East China Seas has been a major driver of Japan’s growing defense ties with Southeast Asia. In more recent years, however, Taiwan has also emerged as a strategic priority for Tokyo. A few months before his assassination in mid-2022, Abe called for the U.S. to abandon its longstanding policy of strategic ambiguity over Taiwan, arguing that “showing it may intervene … keeps China in check.” During a high-profile speech in Taiwan, he declared that “a Taiwan emergency is a Japanese emergency,” suggesting the high likelihood that Japan would react militarily to a Chinese attack on Taiwan.
Amid major reforms of its defense and security policy, Japan is now in an unprecedented position to play a decisive role in shaping peace and security outcomes in the Indo-Pacific region, especially along so-called First Island Chain that contains the South and East China Sea as well as Taiwan. While the government will likely run into obstacles in its bid to revise Japan’s pacifist constitution as a step toward codifying those reforms, the steps Tokyo is taking to achieve strategic autonomy and assert itself as a major power mean that it is poised to play a key role as the linchpin of Washington’s “integrated strategy” against China."
8. These guys are living the life. Big fan of Mike Thurston and Iman Gadzhi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04TPNtV9coA
9. This was so good. What an excellent interview with a brilliant young business man. The CEO of Gymshark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfKwidYQW6M
10. "Don’t promise to add value. There’s endless discussion about how VCs must provide value and how most don’t.
The reality is simple: If you adhere to the rule of investing in founders that are smarter than you tackling crazy problems with huge markets, there’s no value add you can provide that will meaningfully change the trajectory or outcome of the company.
The most honest VC pitch promises no value add to founders. Be helpful if you can. Encourage founders think big. Believe in them, especially when times are hard. That’s the best value most VCs can add aside from money."
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/everything-i-know-venture-500-words-douglas-clinton/
11. Good guide to starting your commerce business. It’s pretty useful for anyone.
https://bowtiedopossum.substack.com/p/broseidon-from-zero-to-something
12. "This has nothing to do with politics. If you’re left winged or right winged that’s fine. This has to do with scale and opportunities.
Scale: Prior to mass adoption of the internet, going on CNBC/FOX/CNN was a status symbol in many cases. It meant you were a “somebody”. Today? That signal has turned into noise particularly as you see a large chunk of “30 under 30” winners charged with fraud (much more than a single case!).
Why has it all changed? Scale changed everything. Now that people spend more time in front of their computers you get easier direct access to people you like. You get information directly from the source. And. You don’t even need to watch the news since a video of the event is loaded faster on the internet anyway.
Prediction time. Both Lemon and Tucker likely make more money. The only issue we see here is *speed*. If they don’t do anything for a year or two? Interest dies. Life does not reward slackers."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/tuckerlemon-and-get-ready-mainstreet
13. "General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, "There's a really an underreported arms race going on in the western Pacific right now. These countries are arming themselves up, and they very much, with very few exceptions, want the United States there”. The US is also arming itself, of course. The Commander of the Indo-Pacific Fleet, Admiral John Aquilino, pleaded for his colleagues to stop guessing when this next war would begin.
Instead, he tried to remind everybody that deterrence is all about preventing war and that’s where the focus should remain. Yes, you have to be ready to fight and win (whatever that means in a nuclear world) but the main this is to make it hard or impossible for the other side to commence a war."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/pippa-passes-earth-day-the-galapagos
14. "This debate underlines the temptation in Washington, D.C., both in think tanks and high-level policy circles, to believe that deterring or defeating China will be difficult, dangerous, and probably deadly, but not extraordinarily so. I believe such assessments are a profound mistake.
In turn, the U.S. must make harder choices about what resources it can expend in Ukraine, and America must demand the European Union to do more for Ukraine, including by providing the country with weapons stocks from European field armies.
That does not mean abandoning Ukraine. But it does mean more difficult choices, especially when it comes to man-portable anti-air and anti-armor weapons systems."
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/a-critical-debate-on-the-ukraine-taiwan-weapons-trade-off
15. "In short, even if most people aren’t addicted to reality cosplay, almost everyone (many billions) will be using AI-fueled AR (augmented reality) to modify and enhance what they see and hear. Adoption will be fast; smartphones went from zero in 2007 to 5 billion users in 2022). It will be an experience that is so addictive that almost nobody will want to go without it."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/who-will-control-reality
16. "So where is the chessboard? It seems to be on a checkered landscape of backroom deals being done under organized crime threats. Will moving nuclear weapons around fix this? No. I hear people in the military world talking of tactics that won’t make any difference.
You can place naval assets in the Baltic and soldiers in the Baltic states, but you may wake up to find that the opponent already owns everybody hundreds of miles beyond your position. You think you control the territory because you have tanks.
But they control the territory because they have terrorized the locals into accepting cash to save themselves. You are already surrounded by “merchant adventurers” who work for the other side, and all their victims are bound to them, perhaps even exhibiting signs of Stockholm Syndrome."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/pippa-passes-the-case-of-the-missing
17. Taiwan needs to get its defense together fast in the face of China's military threats. Time is running out. The sooner it becomes a spikey well armed porcupine the bigger deterrent it will be.
18. "Hopefully, this explains my modest proposal: unless you’re the CEO or CFO and it’s the finance section of the meeting, you should never talk about ending ARR. Talk about what drives it, instead."
https://kellblog.com/2023/04/23/dont-say-ending-arr/
19. "At the same time, it feels like an indictment of the collective creativity of the tech industry that my median group chat feels livelier and more relevant than any so-called social product on the market.
Some critics say that feeling reflects a societal change in how people want to use apps — that the era of public social networks was a detour on the road back to smaller private spaces — but I think they’re giving up a little too easily.
Whatever you think, assuming there is a big new social product to build, I can’t imagine that there has been a better time to do it in the past 10 years than right now. At the same time, the opportunity requires a level of ingenuity and product-level execution that no one in the space has yet been able to muster.
Here’s hoping that all of these companies have more tricks up their sleeves. In the meantime, I am sad to report, it is no longer ⚠️Time to BeReal.⚠️
It is time, instead, to go faster."
https://www.platformer.news/p/how-bereal-missed-its-moment
20. "I’m not saying BRICS has to top NATO and Japan to become economic power houses but if they want that multipolar world they talk about. They at least need to be able to constantly patrol all of their trade routes. For that you would need a big blue water navy and lots of foreign bases and friendly ports, these guys are lacking.
In this article I didn’t even get into the India and China border fights and China’s past untrustworthiness on the global stage. Things and behaviors that could potentially undermine their BRICS relationships. I also didn’t even get into culture exports.
If BRICS want to actually create their own system they need years and years of work. It’s not just about having meetings and running your mouth. You need to put your economies into overdrive, competent modern militaries, innovation, relationships built on trust and more.
These things take decades and these guys are jumping the gun.
When I see BRICS all I see is a school kid (China) standing next to a bunch of degenerate friends his mom told him not to hang out with."
https://bowtiedhitman.substack.com/p/the-truth-about-brics
21. Masterclass on micro-Private Equity. Fascinating stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmpbMjTBew8
22. This looks like a great mastermind to join.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJyjf0eKHxU
23. Amazing learning experience here for business people from my buddies Pomp and Nick! Highly recommend listening to this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clursScJ8is
24. This is a good perspective on US-China relations. I do think Dalio is bit biased due to his ties and extensive business interests in China but this is cogent and important discussion to both sides getting off the brink.
War would be very bad for everyone.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-i-think-going-1-china-us-relations-2-other-countries-ray-dalio/
25. "There is a certain part of that statement that was obvious to me then and is still obvious now. Your fund size, for the most part, dictates your check size, ownership targets, and portfolio construction. A fund of a given size only has a few levers to pull to get to top-tier returns. The larger your fund, the fewer levers you generally have to tinker with to generate great returns.
There is a second part of this that I didn’t really appreciate until about three or four years ago. The size of your fund also dictates the scale of outcomes that can actually move the needle for your fund, and that shapes the lens through which you evaluate the terminal scale of startups that come across your desk. The larger your fund, the larger absolute scale of outcomes you need and the more of those outcomes you need to acheive to make your math work."
https://chudson.substack.com/p/fund-size-is-still-strategy-the-growing
26. "The most vulnerable firms are the newcomers, or emerging fund managers, and solo venture capitalists. The latter path became extremely popular during the latest boom both with investors looking to strike out on their own and with LPs, who thought betting on stars with strong networks could deliver strong returns.
Now that LPs are favoring more established players with several funds’ worth of returns to prove their strength, emerging and solo VCs are at risk.
They may still be able to raise capital, but their funds could end up too small for them to meaningfully compete for the best deals. One way around that is to combine forces with a competitor."
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-looming-layoffs-for-venture-capitalists
27. This is a calm, sober view on the macro global view of the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDuXvOs0d_k
28. Vigorous discussion especially on lab grown meats and Big tech. Worth a listen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3slYsEzJZoY
29. "Lastly, these data points signal a small, but growing, interest in bitcoin-only companies. If the trend persists, more capital will pour into these historically underfunded companies. The big test will come in the next bull market — will investors push further out on the risk curve or will they stay true to their apparent interest in bitcoin-native companies today?"
https://pomp.substack.com/p/venture-capital-investments-in-bitcoin
30. "As is widely known, the Russian economy is dependent on revenue generated from its exports of energy and related commodities like foodstuffs, fertilizers, and mined goods. The Biden administration’s plan to attack Putin’s revenue by restricting these goods from reaching the global markets was conceived under the dubious assumptions that (1) they could so restrict trade to a meaningful extent, and (2) the price action arising from inevitable commodity shortages wouldn’t undo their efforts.
Predictably, they were wrong on both counts.
We say predictably with bold confidence because we were among a small number of voices who did just that. The price elasticity of demand for commodities all but guaranteed Putin would more than recoup any volume losses by way of the foreseeable increase in prices that would follow."
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/the-peter-principle
31. "These green vegetable products are better than nice-to-have solutions. There’s clearly nutritional value and we should consume them. Only, they aren’t the main course. They aren’t what gets people excited when sitting down to dinner. People buy enough of them to build a business, but the share of wallet and willingness to spend isn’t great enough to build a big business."
https://davidcummings.org/2023/04/29/green-vegetables-of-startupland/
32. "This is world-shaking not just because of the sheer numbers of people involved, but because of the prospects that those 1.4 billion will become key contributors to the global economy and key actors on the stage of global politics, as China’s have.
India has always been there. The difference is that the world can no longer choose to ignore it.
India’s economic rise will give it greater military power and geopolitical clout on the world stage. It’s not yet one of the “poles” of the emerging multipolar world order, but if it can keep economic growth humming for another decade or two, it will be. A huge amount has been written about that, so I won’t recap it here. Instead I’ll point out another way that India will become more important to global life: culture and the internet."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/herecomesindia
33. Rick Rule is one of the best resource investors & speculators in the world. Difference between Inevitable and Imminent.
Learning to Say NO: YES is the Fast Track to Chaos
After a relatively well managed year in 2022, Q4 has been a literal storm. A massive storm of projects and commitments, conference speaking engagements, travel, fundraising, mentoring, advising and deals that all have to get done by the end of November. My calendar is an overbooked mess. It is very overwhelming. And with a packed schedule, you have little time to breathe, let alone think. For an obsessive compulsive like me, or aspiring professional, I literally cannot relax until I get all my work done.
The worst of it is that it was all self inflicted. AGAIN. When you don’t track your time, when you just automatically say YES to everything that comes your way, this is what happens. I want to be helpful to people. But when you get to this state, you become mentally tired, distracted and frankly, do substandard work. And I don’t want to do substandard work. This is most people in the professional world and you don’t want to be like them.
We all have friends or colleagues who do this. They commit to and take on way too much. Then the inevitable projects and initiatives slip through the cracks. They are the last ones to respond to requests, they deliver things late (or sometimes not at all). This continues for some time and they quickly develop a reputation for unreliability. They aren’t bad people but they are ineffective. And in the long run no one wants to work with these people.
I do believe in saying YES to everything when you are young and starting out in your career, that’s how you learn. But as you gain experience and reputation, you need to be much more selective. You have to guard your time, energy and brain space very carefully, which in my enthusiasm, seem to have forgotten.
I swear as I write this, despite being a champagne problem of too much demand and business, I will say NO a lot more. Yes, I want to be helpful, but I will not be effective. So better to manage their expectations or even better, just say NO. Doing low quality work really serves no one well. All at the same time making your own life less productive, less impactful and less enjoyable which goes against the whole point of being on this earth.
In the meantime while in the middle of this, all you can do is try to step away for a moment to breathe, meditate for a few minutes or even better, take a short walk to the beach. Then jump back into the fray and grind it out. And making sure you keep this seared in your brain to not get yourself back in this situation again!
Get Your Sh-t Together: Reliability is King
I was quite lucky to catch my friend Paul Bragiel in Japan at the end of last year. A fellow traveler and wandering global investor, it’s always good to trade notes and this time in person in one of our favorite places in the world.
I always tell people it’s important who you have in your tribe. You rise to their standards or you fall to all the default lower ones around you.
One of the big things that we both value is reliability. That you “do what you say and say what you do”. Just by doing this consistently puts you in the top 10% of effective human beings. The bar is literally that low.
We both do business all over the world and partner with people everywhere. I speak at countless conferences. The thing that distinguishes the best people and best conferences is tight planning and organization.
It’s nice to show up in a place having all your logistics sorted already. Nothing worse than showing up in a new place, without knowing your schedule and or/ having to sort out your way to the hotel or wherever. This chaos and uncertainty drains your energy. It makes it harder to think, focus on important things or even plan your own schedule as there are always other things happening in parallel. It adds additional friction that detracts from your ability to perform and make your business partner look good at the meetings.
I’m not saying you have to be ultra German or Japanese rigid & overly structured. Although I should note, this might be why I work so well with Japanese and German people. I know stuff goes wrong and schedules change all the time. That’s okay and should be expected. But some modicum of organization is critical for any well functioning business or for a relatively smooth living.
So for everyone out there, Get Your Sh-t together, learn the basics of Project Management and get better organized. It will put you in good stead. Be a reliable partner. Life is complicated and messy enough already, without you making it worse.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads April 23rd, 2023
“Whoever is happy will make others happy too.” -Anne Frank
"Nation-states are killing machines, the alpha predators of governance. Over the last five hundred years, they have slain all other competitors through an iron grip on a combination of muscle (bureaucracy, from military to academic/scientific), energy (capitalism and industrialism), and killing intent (nationalism and ideology) and have warred among themselves for dominance until only one remained (the US).
That victory late in the last century created a problem. Nation-states, particularly their most significant, need conflict to legitimize and animate their existence. Without it, they and the society they rule decompensate — the functional deterioration of a structure or system that had been previously working."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/america-needs-enemies
2. "Net net, the chance of this cohort of VCs making substantial profit is low yet personal debt is high. VC is a tough job to get, and right now, quite a few VCs are thinking about their current careers. Vintage 2020 and 2021 venture funds are likely to perform poorly save for the occasional power law winners.
Venture is still an important part of our economy that has an outsized impact, and should be supported and encouraged, even if a couple years prove difficult."
https://davidcummings.org/2023/04/15/vcs-challenged-by-the-downturn/
3. "All the sizzle serves a simple service: Building a brand around a commodity product. Rane was inspired by a case study he read during a short course at Harvard Business School about Frank Perdue’s successful effort in the 1970s to brand chickens (tagline: “It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken”). If possible, Rane had an even harder job than Perdue: forging a recognizable brand in one of the world’s most commodified industries, lumber treating—the process of applying preservatives to pre-cut, raw lumber to ensure it lasts a “lifetime,” as Great Southern’s YellaWood proudly proclaims.
Rane took over what became Great Southern in 1970, when the owners—his first wife’s parents—died in a car crash. It wasn’t much: a near-bankrupt backyard lumber treating plant with just $163,000 in sales (adjusted for inflation). But 53 years later, largely thanks to Rane’s marketing genius, Great Southern is a $2 billion (2022 revenue) company with some 1,900 employees and 15 treating facilities in 12 states. Forbes calculates that he’s worth $1.2 billion—all but $200 million of it attributable to his 100% stake in Great Southern—making him Alabama’s only living billionaire."
4. "Thus far, the Russians have demonstrated the ability to learn and to adapt at the tactical level. This adaptation has been uneven, not evident across the breadth of Russian military operations, and many of the ideas are hardly new ones. But, it is undeniable that some learning and evolution has taken place. It is a military capability that will be central to Russia’s ongoing ability to conduct operations in Ukraine, and one that should be studied for weaknesses that might be exploited by the Ukrainian forces as well as Western intelligence agencies.
Notwithstanding the Russian ability to learn and adapt in this war, it is also clear that the Ukrainians have also been quick studies in modern war. Indeed, since the beginning of the Russian invasion, they have demonstrated the ability to learn on the battlefield and adapt. They have also shown a knack for the rapid assimilation of new equipment such as HIMARS and western armoured vehicles, and then applying these systems with great tactical competence."
https://mickryan.substack.com/p/the-russians-keep-evolving
5. "If you live your life acting in the same manner as someone: 1) better looking, 2) born into $10M+ and 3) genetically gifted anomalies… You’re doomed to fail. This goes against all of mainstream beliefs since we glorify the “prodigy’s”.
Instead you should look for people who are not as attractive, grew up with less and don’t have any particular trait that is *not replicable*. Now you’re looking in the right places because there is no “logical” reason why the person should be as successful as they are.
If you are an extreme person, people will always say “I DON’T AGREE WITH YOUR OPINION IT ISN’T TRUE”. This is the best possible complement you can get.
If people view your extreme stance as an opinion but you *know* it works, you’re far far far ahead of the game.
Being extreme is the only way to move the needle. How do you expect extreme results without doing something extreme?
It doesn’t make any sense at all. Does not compute. Never will.
How to Become More Extreme? Pretty simple. Take more risk. Risk is just another phrase for extreme and people will call you crazy or weird. Whatever they want to say. It doesn’t matter."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/how-to-get-ahead-in-life
6. Very interesting perspective on impact of AI for white collar work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXwF0UxUqNw
7. This was a fun interview with my friend Mukund. Hope you like it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkvDO39hW2Y
8. "The unsettling reality is that America in the not-too-distant future is going to have a lot in common with partial-collapse societies of Eastern Europe and Latin America where gangs have more power and influence than the government; where politicians pass the laws but gangs enforce the rules.
This is the Gray Zone America you should be preparing for — not quite collapsed, but not quite standing."
https://grayzoneresearch.substack.com/p/the-disturbing-reality-of-americas
9. "It has been a rough year for white collar workers and that is effectively the topic of this post. If you’re studying something that can be turned into a single line of code, things are not going to look great in the future. If you don’t have a creative bone in your body, now is the time to up the dosage on those Super Mario sized mushrooms (joke but you get the idea).
How to Prepare
Okay probably a bit worried. That is all good and fine. We have some pretty clear guidelines on how to approach this:
1) you can get a government position,
2) you can work in sales/healthcare,
3) you can become a creative/creator since being unique is not replicable by definition and
4) you want to avoid anything that can be automated
Think of this as a bit of a gradient. The worst position? You would be highly paid with no performance contribution."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/ai-comes-for-the-overpaid-human-processors
10. I support Japan's defense force ramp up. It's a good overview on why this makes sense. Japan is a critical ally to the West.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mx5CckLSjLM
11. One of the best investors in the Valley. Lots of solid insights on investing and helping startup founders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSCeRpHPm6o
12. Be more like Genghis Khan.
https://twitter.com/KnowledgeArchiv/status/1649842731697700864
13. Excellent discussion overall. This week’s All in Podcast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvTTDxMuAis&t=206s
14. "This phenomenon of when value is created makes startups especially hard. Tremendous amounts of work in the early years, and not knowing if or when things will take off, is a hard risk/reward equation for most people. When it works out, it’s an incredible accomplishment. Entrepreneurs would do well to know that most startup value accrues in the later years."
https://davidcummings.org/2023/04/22/startup-value-accrues-in-the-later-years/
15. "Most open-source-based startups today are focused on a single product. These companies generate higher rake by adopting an open core model: making some of the codebase proprietary but source-available. Many companies have started with a similar updates and services model, but the open source companies that have shown exponential growth ultimately went public with an open core model.
The Red Hat model won’t be repeated. In reality, open core is the most economically viable model for commercializing open source software. It’s poised to replace proprietary software as the default and is the path for open source projects to develop into sustainable businesses."
https://opencoreventures.com/blog/2023-04-red-hat-model-only-worked-red-hat/
16. "Since 1971, investing in dollar assets has become such a no-brainer trade that many investors have forgotten how to actually do financial analysis. Moving forward, gold and crypto will be in focus. They are not tied to a particular country. They cannot be debased at will by a central bank desperate to prop up their financial system with printed fiat money.
And finally, as countries start looking out for their own best interests rather than serving as slaves to the Western financial system, central banks of the global South will diversify how they save their international trade income. The first choice will be to increase gold allocations, which is already underway. And as Bitcoin continues to prove it is the hardest money ever created, I expect that more and more countries will at least start to consider whether it is a suitable savings vehicle alongside gold.
Do not let the financial media present this as an either/or decision between the dollar and the yuan. Do not let the lap dogs of the empire convince you that due to certain “deficiencies” in the Chinese economy, there is no currency ready to dethrone the mighty dollar.
They are playing at misdirection — in the coming years, the world will conduct trade in a multitude of currencies, and then save when needed in gold, and maybe sometime in the near future, Bitcoin."
https://medium.com/@cryptohayes/exit-liquidity-3052309e6bfa
17. I'm down with this trend. Pop up bakeries.
"Though some reports have suggested that pastry chefs are going extinct at NYC restaurants, in truth they are just evolving. Fandom has outlasted the onset of the pandemic, she says: “Pastry places are becoming the destination, not the afterthought, or just end of the meal.” Moultrie says that for Back Alley, the secret to its success was staying nimble, and not just pigeonholing its goodies into one niche — selling angel donuts, Frito pie, and Jamaican patties all under the same roof."
https://ny.eater.com/2023/4/14/23658605/bakery-lines-trend-from-lucie-lappartement-4f
18. "Lawmakers also learned that long range missiles will be critical to any conflict. The United States quickly ran out of long-range stealth anti-ship cruise missiles during the simulation, weapons that were integral to sinking CCP warships.
America also moved to sanction China following an invasion, but many allies were hesitant to join the effort. Global supply chains broke down as a result of the turmoil, highlighting the need for companies to prepare for such a scenario.
Resupplying Taiwan once war breaks out also "is not an option," according to the source briefed on the game. The United States will have to ensure that Taiwan is fully stocked prior to any invasion."
19. Turkey playing the Great Geopolitical game surprisingly well.
“Erdogan and Putin are enemies, but they’re enemies who deal with each other and are happier and more comfortable dealing with each other than with anyone else,” James F. Jeffrey, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey, told Yahoo News.
Turkey’s effort to maintain diplomatic, commercial and military ties to Russia while doing the same with Ukraine, a country at war with Russia for almost a decade, has been one of the most precarious balancing acts of statecraft in recent memory. More surprisingly, it has been largely successful.
Alone among world leaders, Erdogan arms Putin’s adversary with impunity while managing to offer himself as a seemingly neutral interlocutor between Kyiv and Moscow, orchestrating prisoner swaps, grain deals and preliminary — albeit quixotic — proposals to end the war."
https://news.yahoo.com/turkey-supports-ukraine-without-alienating-russia-100046689.html
If It Doesn’t Make Dollars, It Doesn’t Make Sense
Maybe I’m getting old and traditional. Maybe it’s the scar tissue from barely surviving the Dotcom boom in the late 90s and the consequent bust in 2000 and 2001 where the entire tech startup ecosystem almost disappeared. It was brutal and the metaphor commonly used during that time was nuclear winter. I don’t care how bad things get now, I don’t think it will ever be that bad in the tech industry again.
So many smarter, talented and more experienced people than me left in 2001 and 2002 and missed the consequent massive boom in tech that happened over the proceeding two decades. Like all Gold Rush towns, we have new eager people coming in without the scar tissue but also without the collective memory. Silicon Valley thrives by drinking the blood of the new, young and naive. This is innovation, new blood brings in a new perspective, a new view and a lot of energy.
But with the new influx of people something gets lost along the way: hard lessons gained from massive pain. I’ve never understood businesses that don’t have working business models. I’ve never understood why companies scaled bad unit economics or bad retention numbers. It’s okay to lose money in the beginning. I’m not an investment banker or an east coast or European VC where their conservatism requires growth metrics and traction that make no sense for early stage startup investing. Any idiot can invest in traction.
But the business model ultimately needs to work and scale. That plus It has to solve a real problem that people are willing to pay for. That is why I’ve been such a huge skeptic on most food delivery like Gorillas and micro-mobility businesses like Bird and other such garbage.
And in 2022 and 2023, everyone, whether Limited Partners in VC funds, VC Investors and startup founders are learning this lesson the hard way. Money covers up a lot of issues but cycles always turn eventually. Reality really does bite sometimes.
At the end of the day, as my old friend Scott once told me: “If it doesn’t make money, it doesn’t make sense.” Think about that. There are plenty of lessons to learn from business history.
Japan is the Best: A Code and The Search for Perfection
I loved the “Last Samurai” movie starring Tom Cruise as an ex-American soldier & mercenary captured in 1876 by a famous Samurai in rebellion against the Japanese government. It’s a fictional story with many historical inaccuracies but it’s a great story. While the American soldier is held in captivity at the samurai village, he makes an observation of the Japanese.
“They are an intriguing people. From the moment they wake, they devote themselves to the perfection of whatever they pursue. I have never seen such discipline.”
I know this comment may be a bit too much of a cultural stereotype. But stereotypes do exist for a reason. They have a deep sense of their cultural identity and history. The quote above is why Japan is so damn good at crafts, why their food is so good, why they are a manufacturing powerhouse. Their discipline, their sense of duty and devotion to mission whether it’s a company or national mission is unparalleled in the world. The search for perfection.
This mindset may also be why their startup ecosystem is so behind the USA. My observation is that in Japan, the mindset of launching something imperfect goes against a lot of internal cultural instincts. One that keeps to super high standards and hates high risk. Although I should note this is changing fast among the younger population now. Could you imagine doing the lean startup methodology and launching a Minimal Viable Product aka MVP? How hard is that when customer expectations and your own expectations are so high. This is in contrast to America where we focus on getting stuff done but at a good enough level. And let’s be frank, a much sloppier and slapdash way of doing things.
There is a scene where Cruise’s character is learning sword fighting but he keeps getting beat. He is given advice by one of the samurai.
“Too Many Mind. Mind sword. Mind people watching, mind enemy. Too many mind. No Mind.”
It’s about being present & not overthinking. It’s about focus and just letting your actions flow. It’s like in the martial arts, you train like mad but when it comes to the fight you trust your training and let things flow. This is a good approach to take in life.
We can learn to be more samurai. “What does it mean to be samurai? To devote yourself utterly to a set of moral principles. To seek a stillness of your mind. And to master the way of the sword. Life in every breath.”
A code of honor and a way of life. So much wisdom to be gained. That is why I so deeply love the place and culture. This is also why I hope that Japan and America will continue to be closely tied at the hip economically & geopolitically. We have so much to learn from each other. I look forward to spending as much time as I can in Japan in the future.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads April 16th, 2023
“If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.” -Eleanor Roosevelt
"Overall, the bottom-up SaaS approach is a powerful strategy for gaining widespread adoption within organizations. It relies on delivering a high-quality product that meets the needs of individual users and teams, and then leveraging their advocacy to drive broader adoption across the organization."
https://sacks.substack.com/p/what-is-bottom-up-saas
2. I really like this guy Justin Waller. A very positive model for many young men.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Z9W7fsSf0&t=529s
3. "In software, we like to talk about must-have products vs nice-to-have products. Of course, it’s a continuum and not binary, but the most successful startups are in the must-have category and the vast majority of failed startups are in the nice-to-have category.
Only, when times are good, it’s often hard to know just how much a must-have or nice-to-have a product is as budgets are loose and grow-at-all-costs is the mantra. The easy spending can make products look more must-have than they really are. Then, when budgets contract, the truth comes out."
https://davidcummings.org/2023/04/08/budget-pressures-highlight-mission-critical-software-or-not/
4. This is an instructive discussion on how to leverage audiences and technology to build massive businesses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C3n1vqG5VY&t=28s
5. I don't like to see this but it seems to be happening directionally.
"Central banks can see the writing on the wall when it comes to the end of the USD’s prominence. As a result, they’ve been taking rapid action to stuff their coffers with a stable asset that isn’t on the decline.
Since late 2019, and increasing at a rapid rate since then, central banks around the world have been buying up gold like mad. 2022 saw the largest stockpiling of gold by central banks ever on record, with a total of 1,136 tons being purchased by nations like China, India, Turkey, and Singapore. This frenzied buying hasn’t slowed this year either, with January 2023’s purchases up by 192% when compared with December.
In other words, everyone is losing faith in the US dollar. The final nails are being hammered into its coffin as we speak.
Over the next few years, we’re going to see a gradual-yet-rapid decline in the purchasing power of the dollar, and in turn, the economic power of the United States. This is more than likely going to signal a shift in global supremacy along with it, and create even more economic turmoil than we’ve seen these past few years (as if we haven’t already had enough of that).
So, what am I doing to make sure I’m as protected as I can be during this time? I’m sure you’ve already guessed: I’m buying more gold."
https://abundantia.substack.com/p/the-men-who-eat-gold
6. "So, the Ukrainians have worked out what seems like a coherent strategy to fight for the town. As long as the Russians are throwing increasing force into the battle, and advancing by blocks a day, the Ukrainians will continue to defend the city.
As they will the other Russian targets in the Second Battle of the Donbas. The Ukrainians will do that because they want the Russians to keep attacking, to keep them from building up fresh reserves and to keep them from building up deep defensive lines. When the counteroffensive comes, the Ukrainians want to face as small number of fresh, rested Russian troops as possible."
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/weekend-update-23-reflections-from
7. I love the Substack product. But lots of questions on the business.
"Substack’s main issue is the absence of a lock-in effect and, consequently, limited pricing power. Ironically, that’s also the reason I like Substack as a user. The platform is built on email, allowing users to leave and take all their subscribers with them. In contrast, leaving Twitter results in losing most if not all of your audience.
From the user side, the reliance on email is a feature; from the business side, it’s a bug. If Substack were to increase its fee to 30% (the fee Apple takes in the Appstore), everyone would simply leave.
This means that even if Substack keeps growing its users, it can never charge them much money. Good for the users; bad for the business."
https://unfashionable.substack.com/p/substack
8. "What I think happened in the last two years is that the fragile remnants of the industrial work scripts lost their hold over our collective imagination. You might still buy into the belief that designing your life around continuous employment throughout adulthood is a good decision and that’s great if the story works for you, but it is no longer a collective story that everyone believes.
This is leading to weird feelings. People working remotely have found their life got a lot better but experienced a subtle emptiness that they couldn’t explain. I sense it was just the awareness of a collective lostness, being in a time in which most people don’t really share a narrative about what we should be doing with our time.
We’ve entered a choose-your-own-adventure labor economy that clearly and explicitly puts all the pressure on the individual to figure things out and everyone knows it."
https://boundless.substack.com/p/the-industrial-work-script-is-dead
9. Good perspective on Macron's visit to China. And Xi's China's issues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leyoYtunqPQ&list=RDCMUCsy9I56PY3IngCf_VGjunMQ&index=5
10. "It is very early in the tragic conflict over Ukraine and much remains unclear. But whatever happens, our response must be realistic and strategic, serving our interests in Europe while ensuring the prioritization of Asia. It is both right and in our strategic interests to help Ukraine and our European allies defend themselves and make sure Russia does not gain from this loathsome aggression.
But we cannot rest our strategy on a fiction—that we can fight two major wars against China and Russia at anything like the same time. We need to have a strategy that accounts for that fact, not one that ignores it or wishes it away. Fortunately, there is one, and we should pursue it."
https://time.com/6152096/us-support-ukraine-china-priority
11. "However, with the information the Chinese have collected on Western decision-making about Ukraine, recent intelligence leaks, and previous US responses to constant Chinese aggressive behaviour, the Chinese Communist Party probably believes it is able to cleverly calibrate its actions to remain just beneath the threshold of American military or economic retaliation.
The real issue then is what happens if the Chinese leadership miscalculates this strategy, or America's strategic calculus in the Western Pacific changes and it becomes less accommodating of coercive Chinese behaviour?"
12. "In Europe, NATO’s interior lines are built on a backbone of posture left from the Cold War. Permanently stationed forces, stockpiles, and logistics networks that include bases, airports, and seaports are already in place and prepared to support massive military operations.
In the Indo-Pacific, however, the U.S. military lacks the interior lines it needs to fight and win.
Its forces and equipment are concentrated in Korea and Japan, and the United States is perennially challenged to secure pre-conflict agreements for posture elsewhere in Asia. To oppose a PLA force with the advantages of magazine depth and its own interior lines, the U.S. military must adopt creative, practical approaches to develop the interior lines it lacks, from Southeast Asia to Australia through the first and second island chains.
No one knows just what it would take to win a future war in the Indo-Pacific, but one fact is clear. PLA capabilities and CCP ambitions do not afford the United States the liberty of a World War II repeat: ceding the Pacific, then spending years of blood and treasure to fight back in. Asia is a joint theater with problems that require joint solutions. Working together is the only way to win, and it begins with interior lines."
13. "I’ve seen the same patterns in friends and clients. They feel like outsiders in comparison to tech’s “anointed ones,” and end up chasing external validation as a way to try to feel like they belong.
Instead of focusing on craftsmanship or doing work that matters, their life becomes about trying to get funded by Sequoia, go viral on Twitter, or give a TED Talk. External recognition becomes an end unto itself, often at the expense of their own values and vision.
This is what I call the “status spiral.” When we compare ourselves with those we perceive as higher status, we feel insecure and doubt our self-worth. This in turn leads us to chase status as a way to try to feel better about ourselves."
https://every.to/no-small-plans/the-status-trap
14. This is a great framework for figuring out B2B Sales for founders.
https://www.formatone.io/blog/enterprise-sales-b2b-startups
15. I'm legit curious about this new Netflix show now. We all have rage inside it seems. Product Zeitgeist fit as we are in the Age of Anger.
16. Every young man should listen to this discussion.
Net net: Everyone has challenges, so do the work and deal with it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3nS5u_BtvY
17. Hope he is right. But the West needs to ramp up our preparations for Taiwan’s defense asap.
"One day, China may invade Taiwan, triggering a war with global implications. But that day isn’t soon. When and if it does, the timing will be determined by China’s leader, not as the result of any diplomatic provocation, but by his own calculation of benefit and cost. For now, it’s still possible to hope that cooler heads can one day find a diplomatic solution to avert a war that would have disastrous implications far beyond Asia."
https://time.com/6270599/china-invade-taiwan/
18. No surprise here and glad it’s happening. That is why they are "special forces."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65245065
19. Another example that we are in the Age of Grifters. I feel for the victims.
https://restofworld.org/2023/generacion-zoe-leonardo-cositorto/
20. This is an information & insight rich interview. One that you will listen to many times to understand the mindset of true success.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuNOFW-oVn8&t=1870s
21. "My takeaway is that precious metals and other hedges are a defensive solution at best. It’s one part of a hyperinflation survival strategy, but only as a store of value that can be traded for a more stable currency in the future. My major problem with precious metals is that they don’t generate income.
What I learned from Stinnes is that the ability to generate income during periods of inflation and hyperinflation is based on your ability to produce things of value and connect them with buyers."
https://grayzoneresearch.substack.com/p/gray-zone-research-001-dying-of-money
22. "In sum, Europe appears to be turning its back on the technologies of the future, viewing them either as threats to be regulated away, or as consumption goods to be imported from China. If you want to be a superpower, this is not the kind of thing you do. Mastery of cutting-edge technology leads to both economic and military power; the EU will not be able to substitute regulatory power or moral power in their place.
Europe seems in danger of making that sort of mistake in the modern day. It risks becoming a backward but tranquil society, smug in its relatively high quality of life, refusing to engage with what Macron calls “crises that are not ours”.
That strategy might work for a while, as France and Germany buy off the Russian barbarians and make a quick buck selling a century of accumulated technological leadership to the Chinese at bargain-basement prices.
But in the long run, a decline into weakness, irrelevance, and backwardness will not work out for Europe any better in the 21st century than it did for China in the 19th."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/europe-is-not-ready-to-be-a-third
23. "China today is very different from what it was in the pre-Xi Jinping era. Practically every private company has now been forced to establish Communist Party Committees, which interfere in management decisions.
So while entrepreneurs might appear rich on paper, they remain servants of their masters in the Chinese Communist Party."
https://www.asiancenturystocks.com/p/playing-red-roulette
24. A very solid episode of NIA: talking about culture & business on the internet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4W27JeMCLAw
25. This was a good discussion on the rise of AI. Really enjoyed this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1gMhEUXeNk&t=1666s
26. This is an extreme case of Libertarianism & frankly stupidity. And probably likely outcome: Jail time.
"It’s not the smartest course of action to decide to completely opt out of society in a place where technically, you could still be called out for non-compliance. That kind of stuff ends with you in jail, as we’ve seen above."
https://bowtiedmara.substack.com/p/sovereign-individuals-in-argentina
Lessons from TinTin: An Unquenchable Thirst for Adventure
Growing up in Vancouver, I was a nerdy bookworm with a love for comics and anime. One of the many comic series I read was TinTin, a Belgian comic series about the adventures of a journalist and his white dog Snowy.
He travels all around the world, solving historical mysteries, experiencing adventure in some of the world’s most exotic places. I’d almost forgotten how obsessed I was as a kid with TinTin until I chanced upon the recent animated movie on a flight.
It’s interesting about the little things that affect you when growing up. How the ideas and glamor of a comic book could change the trajectory of your life. I think about all the fun and exotic places I’ve traveled to around the world and all the future places I’m scheduled to be going to soon. All of this started from the kernel of an idea and my own imagination as an impressionable young child.
The little acorn of an idea that has turned into a big oak tree funded by experiences and resources I never thought I’d have when I was growing up. Now I travel the world, exploring new tech ecosystems, meeting extraordinary people, speaking at big conferences and investing in tech startups all around the world. Places I’ve thought exotic once before now seem commonplace and normal.
This also explains my deep fascination with international business and the emerging markets. It’s why I find people like Jim Rogers, John Templeton, Mark Möbius, Doug Casey, Swen Lorenz & Tim Staermose so interesting. They are the investors, speculators, wanderers and modern day adventurers. Actually I’d say modern day explorers: chasing the best deals by going where no other investors and business people dare to go. They are the models for my business life.
For anyone looking to mix business and global adventure, you don’t have to look very far for people to follow. And many of these inspirations come from the most unexpected places at unexpected times.
So go explore and pursue all your interests, and encourage your kids to do the same. You never know where you all will end up. Hopefully somewhere personally amazing and magical.
Turning Red: Growing Up in the West in an Asian Immigrant Family
I admit I hesitated watching Disney’s “Turning Red.” An animated story of a 13 year old Chinese (or Taiwanese) girl growing up in Toronto, trapped between two cultures of the individual west and the collective east. Driven by high expectations of an intense, strict, controlling mother. She wants to please her family but is also learning to find herself too. Kind of hit a bit too close to home.
I found myself entranced as I reflected on my own upbringing. As I’ve written before, I grew up under what is now widely known as the Tiger Mom method. The constant comparison to others in the community and to my closest siblings and cousins. Especially, as the eldest sibling of my family and the eldest of all kids on my fathers side. Pressure, pressure, pressure. Never feeling like you are adequate or good enough.
The lack of affection, at least until my teens, and probably the lack of positive feedback in general is pretty damaging. In fact, affection was conditional, based on conforming to their expectations. The stress on good grades, hard work and being a good kid who would bring honor, or at least not bring shame to the family.
Too bad, I was a relatively mediocre student, very poorly behaved, always in trouble at school (note: my parents got called to the school so often they were on a first name basis with the vice principals at all the schools I went to, true story here). Add on a ferocious temper that still causes me trouble to this day. I’m not what you call a model child and was pretty much an embarrassment to the family. I never met their high standards at least until I got to University, when I sort of grew up. And definitely was able to turn things around when I left Canada in 1996. Consequently, I’m also very hard on myself and drive myself intensely even when I don’t need to be.
I still have very deep lingering resentment against my mom, even though I know she was doing her best. She only ever had good intentions and wanted what was good for me. I know this now as a parent, this Sh-t is HARD especially with your first kid.
The irony of all this, is that my life, on most measures, turned out pretty good. I’ve surpassed everyone I grew up with. I’ve crushed them all. And I would love to shove what I’ve done in front of all the teachers who put me down—-worthless sub middle class fu-kers. Yes, I still feel the intense anger here at how I was treated by them. Albeit, I think this was in good part due to the environment and opportunities I found in the USA. I had a clean slate, Backed up with an intense work ethic, pure rage plus a total fear of both failure and poverty.
Yet I find myself repeating some of the things I hated being inflicted on me, towards my daughter. I even do this to my startup founders. I’m harsh, I have high expectations, I very rarely, if ever compliment or give positive feedback. I’ve become everything I resent in my mom.
And this is why a fairly good portion of my founders hate me. I would estimate this to be 10-15% of my founder pool which is a pretty big number. But this is a conscious decision for me. If you want to truly help, then tell them the truth even if it hurts. F—k them and their weakness. If they want vapid useless advice, go to other VCs who claim to be “founder friendly.” I make no apologies here.
Having said that, it has made me rethink my parenting style. It’s one thing being cold and harsh to a supposed adult that startup founders are. And I stress supposed adults, as some of them are complete man-children. But it’s a different thing to do this to your child, who is still developing and learning. I’m trying to figure out the right balance of high standards and expectations but still showing affection & care. Or at least not making the affection conditional on success and meeting high standards like it was for me. Thankfully my kid is very competitive and very self motivated, so it’s not like I have to push her.
And I see it as a second chance to help myself. I’m working on seeing my Tiger Mom upbringing as a blessing & gift, not a curse. I would not be where I am without it and without my parents. Any success I have in life is a tribute to them and them only. Yes, I’m still dealing with the small emotional traumas that come with it but at least I was able to channel it into some level of societal success. That’s NOT nothing.
There is a great quote in the movie: “people have all kinds of sides to them. And some sides are messy. The point is not to push the bad stuff away, it’s to make room for it. Live with it.”
So some advice for all of us:
“Honor your parents but don’t forget to honor yourself.”
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads April 9th, 2023
“Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.” -John Lennon
"The US dollar for all its problems is still the World’s Reserve Currency. The United States still owns SWIFT. And most of global trade is still denominated in USD. However, this does signal the beginnings of detrimental ambitions and actions.
While American Nationalists will say these are only small trades, or insignificant quantities; while true, they signal a shifting in the winds.
It is akin to the philosophical/economic idea known as the problem of pennies: A penny is in of itself worthless and useless by itself; but with enough of them they become a kings ransom.
These actions may seem small and trifle. But with enough of them they add up to something much larger. With so many of these deals being done so rapidly, it is clear the World believes that America is not only unstable, but can be challenged openly.
In fact America and the West keep tripping over their own feet when it comes to innovation and new technologies, a prime example being Crypto."
https://mercurial.substack.com/p/financial-fight
2. This is a good global macro take on what’s happening these days. USD is still fine as Global reserve currency unlike the nutty takes out there this week. BRICS are over-rated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzsvdXbSqpA
3. "The more entrepreneurs spend time with other entrepreneurs, the greater the chance they find a match for a future startup. Entrepreneurs combining on new startups is a strong signal this works and an integral part of startup communities."
https://davidcummings.org/2023/04/01/entrepreneurs-combining-on-new-startups
4. This is gold. And something many growth stage startups are learning the hard way now.
"Either a high-velocity, low-ACV or high-ACV, low-velocity sales motion can work as long as all the pieces – including the type of customer, lead gen strategies, and sales processes – are aligned. Go-to-market strategies that take a long time to close small deals are prohibitive.
If you’re in the losing quadrant, you must determine whether tactical improvements (getting better at sales, changing pricing, or improving efficiency) can solve your problem or if your situation requires a pivot.
If things are trending in the right direction, keep going. If you’re in the losing quadrant and don’t see progress, it’s time for a deeper discussion about your product-market fit."
https://sacks.substack.com/p/the-difficulty-ratio
5. What a brave and honorable man. We need more people like this in the world these days. It was a different time back then It seems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEIOv8mVeHQ
6. "Balaji’s specific bet might be more reasonable if the U.S. were an emerging market (EM) like Argentina. But because U.S. is a global reserve currency, it can get away with a lot of challenges that an EM cannot.
Central to Balaji’s view is that the U.S. will lose global reserve currency status and thus act like any other country facing a currency crisis. He believes that the money fleeing banks will go to BTC or RMB instead of staying within the country. He concedes that if you don’t believe this is possible, his case for massive inflation won’t make as much sense.
So the real question is how much longer can the U.S. be the global reserve currency (GRC), and what needs to be true for America to lose our GRC status. After all, dollars were one 40% of global GDP, now they’re closer to ~15-20%, so dropping even further is not crazy.
It’s possible everything depends on that. Because that’s what Balaji’s best predictive skill is — realizing when an assumption we took for granted has now changed, and extrapolating second-order effects out from that change. Let’s hope, as he does, that he isn’t right this time."
https://eriktorenberg.substack.com/p/examining-balajis-bet
7. "Picking the right company has always been critical, but it's more important now than ever before. Unlike in 2021 when the entire tech sector was thriving, the 2023 job market is split between companies that will never meet their inflated valuations and promising companies with discounted stock prices."
https://junglegym.substack.com/p/navigate-your-next-negotiation-carefully
8. What a cool story.
“I have a really wide variety of interests; it’s so odd,” she said with a laugh. “I love to learn. I’ve gotten into so many fun things in my life.”
Today, Schroeder sees the remnants of her patents everywhere. Department stores and toy shops selling brands like RoseArt and Crayola are lined with glow-in-the dark drawing tools and toys inspired by Schroeder’s original phosphorescent invention.
And to her, that’s all right. Natural, even, for the life cycle of inventions.
“It doesn’t have my name on it now,” Schroeder said. “It’s not about me. It’s about what’s out there now for people and knowing I’ve touched them.”
https://blog.hubspot.com/the-hustle/youngest-female-inventor
9. Important discussion on the future of war and lessons from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSKhQBcfGF0
10. This is a very complacent view in my opinion. Taiwan and USA needs to ramp up defenses ASAP.
"Milley said Taiwan needs air defense, anti-ship cruise missiles, and anti-ship mines. But he said the island itself, its population of 23 million—including 170,000 active duty military and 1-to-2 million reserves,—and China’s lack of experience make a takeover unlikely. “It favors the defense. It would be a very difficult island to capture,” he said.
“For the Chinese to conduct an amphibious and airborne operation to seize that island—to actually seize it?—That's a really difficult operation. But Xi put the challenge out there, and we'll see where it goes.”
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2023/03/lower-rhetoric-china-says-milley/384693/
11. Interesting concept. New Fertile Crescent. It's a bit more of a mercenary view than I like but for the adventurer investor this seems promising.
https://mailchi.mp/be29f68a4286/investing-in-the-new-fertile-crescent?e=123a1c25c4
12. This is one situation where the USA is drastically under-reacting (versus over-reacting). The true threat of China, very scary stuff.
Worth watching: I learned alot and am even more worried now. Hope people pay attention here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5wpzKvPc3U
13. Libertarian stance by these folks which I dislike. But I do agree commodities & gold will be good investments.
The elites of West have screwed up due to complacency, arrogance, greed and incompetence allowed BRICS to rise & through bad moves in global monetary war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHPNgl1tXKE
14. Lots of good nuggets here on the geopolitical scene from Zeihan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiStIGhLJm8
15. Some good personal finance advice I wish I heeded earlier. Worth reading the whole thing twice.
"The second major conclusion is that lifestyle inflation is an absolute killer. You will be poor forever if you spend your annual raise on “new stuff” since your savings from the prior year will mean nothing.
Put some math behind it. If you’re earning $100,000 and saving $20,000. That’s 20% and you’re doing just fine.
You go and get a raise to $150,000. And. You continue to save $20,000. That is 13.3% and now you’re saving *LESS* than you were last year on a percentage basis.
In short, you got a raise but you’ve made it harder to keep up with your lifestyle to the tune of ~8 years"
"You can either start building an income now to offset your living expenses or play the 1/100 odds you move up quickly in the corporate game to a 1% income for 10+ years."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/personal-finance-planning-and-avoiding
16. "This significant uplift in mobility and survivability support to the Ukrainian army tells us that not only have battlefield conditions changed since the beginning of the war, but that the coming offensives by the Ukrainians will look different to those that have been conducted north of Kyiv, in Kharkiv and in Kherson in 2022.
While these previous Ukrainian offensives may offer some insights into the fight ahead, there are many reasons to expect that the coming months may see an evolved approach by the Ukrainians.
The Ukrainian Offensive Will Be Different
The first reason for this is that the Ukrainians are facing a different Russian Army now than compared to 2022. Not only does it have a different commander in General Gerasimov, but there is a different balance of professional and mobilised troops.
While much ink has been spilled about how mobilised troops are better at defensive than offensive operations, the reality is that the coordination of a scheme of defence over several hundred kilometres of front line is still a complex and fraught undertaking. It is certainly a more substantial undertaking than just plopping troops in trenches with anti tank weapons!"
https://mickryan.substack.com/p/the-coming-fight-will-be-different
17. "The answer is that AI is going to spawn future professions and skillsets specifically related to the field of “prompt engineering”. In many ways, prompt engineering will become the only profession as AI proliferates.
Think of prompt engineering as the ability to understand real world problems and then properly frame and convey the problems to an AI to help solve (ex: using ChatGPT to research and then draft an essay on a topic for a target audience or Copilot to help write lines of code for an app your building).
In the near future (I’m talking very near), your ability to understand how to use AI tools and apply that knowledge specifically to your job/industry will add significant value your employer or client.
Prompt engineering will be a clear value driving differentiator between those that have the skill and those that do not."
https://www.thesovereignindividualweekly.com/p/job-future
18. "Make no mistake: these are historically unprecedented quit-rates from Japan’s best & brightest. And, in my view, when the next generation elite begin to move, something very fundamental is changing.
Unfortunately it is, to my knowledge, not possible to ascertain where the quitters go due to personal privacy protection rules. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that a fair number do not move on to large prestigious companies but actually join start-ups."
https://japanoptimist.substack.com/p/japan-reality-check-6-elite-on-the
19. Good news: Russia has coalesced most of Europe against them. Deservedly so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEe6yySL6ps
20. Mimetic desire drives everything. This is a great discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpA5k1c4Ey4
21. I enjoy these little geopolitical snapshots from Zeihan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leyoYtunqPQ
22. Good advice for aspiring VCs.
"To be clear, venture is one of the best jobs in the world, and it’s an extremely privileged opportunity that I’m grateful for each day. But you require both luck and a very long-term mindset to do it well. Most other financial services businesses (hedge funds, traditional private equity, etc.) are far more lucrative if money is your sole goal.
If you want to build something special, expect to do it for over 20 years"
https://writing.erictarczynski.com/p/five-lessons-building-venture-fund
23. "This financial crisis will end the short-term boom-bust cycle and, more importantly, end the long-term boom-bust cycle with catastrophic consequences. This is the event you should be preparing for.
Here’s why I think this.
First, right now, banks can park their cash at the Federal Reserve risk-free at nearly a 5% yield, which reduces the incentive for them to approve loans heading into a period of financial uncertainty.
The net result is that we’re likely to see credit rationing as banks improve their reserve ratios by pulling back on loans. This will decrease economic activity.
Second, this is accelerating the end of the short-term boom-bust cycle as credit availability dries up and commercial banks are less willing to provide loans.
Credit and loan deterioration are early warning indicators of a recession."
https://grayzoneresearch.substack.com/p/tremors-before-an-earthquake-on-the
24. "Every meeting that I had with a VC informed not only my perspective of that individual, but of the firm they worked for. It informed the likelihood that I re-engaged with their firm for subsequent rounds. It informed what I told other founders when they asked about my experiences fundraising.
A decade later, those experiences — both good and bad — informed how I chose to enter the world of venture capital.
Most significantly, they informed the way that I try to show up for the founders each and every day."
https://chrisneumann.com/blog/founders-never-forget
25. "But important context herein is that key Western IMF shareholders see the absolute strategic necessity for Ukraine to be financed through this war and the early part of reconstruction assuming a base case of the war petering out in the first half of 2024. So with that context the IMF team were tasked with coming up with numbers which seemed coherent under a certain set of assumptions. They have.
The macro forecasts are fingers in the air but that’s fine as those same key Western shareholders have provided the IMF with sufficient financing assurances that they will continue to write cheques for Ukraine to enable it to win this war almost whatever the macro outturn ends up as being."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/ukraine-gets-a-new-imf-programme
26. I love these discussions on global macro economics and the VC side. It’s really good this week.
Everything has an expiration Date: Overstaying your Welcome
I had an interesting conversation a few days over breakfast with a very sharp & capable Egyptian entrepreneur. He has built an incredible business but only after trying and failing badly a few times before he found this new business. Now they are a literal rocket ship with crazy good margins, unit economics and a massive new Series B to boot, impressive in this fundraising environment.
One of the big things we talked about was scaling and how this was the second major trigger point of failure in the tech startup world. You find yourself in the strange position of product market fit but yet you can’t keep up with the demand due to scaling issues. And everything you did before that worked so well doesn’t work anymore.
And this is usually the result of having people who were great last year but now just don’t have the skill set or experience to help you get to the next stage. This is pretty common and something pretty well understood in Silicon Valley. I discussed these different stages here: https://hardfork.substack.com/p/the-jungle-the-dirt-road-and-the
It’s actually quite important for anyone in the startup operating and investing world to understand. We all have an expiration date in the roles, companies and actual locations and places. Heck we have that in romantic relationships and marriage. Everything has an expiration date. You basically have to know when to quit.
I’ve said many times, in my career, I’ve always overstayed at most places by at least a year or two. My last year at Yahoo! & 500 Startups were awful experiences for me and pretty sure also for those I worked with. Needless political battles, and a lot of petty little things which I do take majority of responsibility for. Frankly, I was burned out, disillusioned and had stopped caring. Thus it’s easy to become unmotivated and not a little bit bitter.
Yet my deep fear of the unknown, the comfort of knowing the place and total lack of courage and laziness kept me there. “Better the devil you know than the one you don’t” as the old saying goes. This is what keeps people working in bad situations or places for decades. This is what keeps people in bad relationships for a long time, even a lifetime. Taking sh-t and indignities that no self respecting person ever should.
So how do you know when you are hitting your expiration date? A couple very obvious signs:
You stop learning. Where before you were learning a tremendous amount, you have stopped learning. Basically your learning curve has flattened. If you feel like you are the smartest person in the room, that’s a bad thing.
You stop caring and your quality of work goes down. Where before you worked a tremendous amount of hours and couldn’t wait to get to the office. Now you have a feeling of dread every Sunday night. You can’t wait for the weekend. The excitement and romance is gone!
You dislike, hate and don’t respect all the new senior people coming into the organization (they probably hated me too :). And you do everything to avoid interacting with them.
You stop believing in the mission. Or maybe you still believe but don’t think the organization is doing the right things to execute the mission. You literally stop caring.
If you are feeling all of these things, you need to get the F-ck out as soon as possible. You are wasting your energy, and maybe most importantly, your ultra precious time. Time, which is the only non-renewable resource we humans have. Time to learn new things and work on amazing new opportunities. Time with people you love and respect. Time to really LIVE.
Trust yourself and your abilities and make the move before it’s too late. Better to plan and initiate the change yourself than to have it inflicted on you.