Winter Doldrums: A Season to Hibernate and Rest
It’s been a brutal 2023 in startup land. I don’t know about you but I’m feeling beaten up. Exhausted. It probably does not help that I have been traveling almost nonstop since august. And mainly to dark cold Northern Europe, Canada and Central Asia most of the time. It’s cold and dark over there and weather is a big driving factor of our moods. Plus there are just so many things to do in the business and with portfolio companies as well as all the various projects and initiatives I’m involved with. #champagneproblems for sure.
It’s even more brutal for startup founders. As Matt Turck tweeted:
“There's a whole generation of companies for which the startup journey has gone from a marathon to an ultra-marathon. Many people are tired and the next year or two is going to take Goggins-level amounts of resolve.”
So it’s mid-December. I’m feeling lethargic but like many people in our world, making the final push of travel to get as much stuff done before the Christmas break when most of the world disappears for winter break. I’m very much looking forward to the 1-2 week interlude to rest and recover.
The old me would have been busy during the holidays, trying to steal a march on everyone else by setting up meetings, planning, and a packed schedule during the break. I think I had to do that in the first part of my career because I felt behind and had no idea what I’m doing.
But now as I am older and hopefully wiser, I understand that it's a marathon and not a sprint. And as I’ve told some of my founders, resting ethic is just as important as work ethic. So I’m planning on doing nothing during the Christmas break with a wide open calendar, reading and chilling. And plenty of good food with my family and friends in Vancouver. That’s it.
Like many, I’m expecting a busy and exciting new year. There will be challenges but also inevitably big opportunities showing up. So better to be fully rested so you can jump on it in the new year. Hibernate like a bear, gather your strength and get mentally prepared. This way you will be ready to conquer when the new year starts.
It Was the Best of Times and the Worst of Times: The Simultaneous Rising and Fall of Standards in America
America is Extremistan. And sadly the world is becoming more like America it seems. Rising inequality where some people have very amazing lives and most people have a pretty crap one.
We’re seeing the rapid destruction of the middle class in America. Inflation has been ripping through the country over the last 3 years. Food & energy costs are increasing. We’re seeing household credit card debt increase as families are trying to maintain their lifestyles.
Yet at the same time, it is easier than ever to cross socio-economic groups. Both falling out of one or rising into a new higher class albeit for most people, usually falling out of one.
However, Crisis and change equal massive opportunities. Especially for those willing to take ownership for their life and do the hard work that it takes.
There are literally a billion new business opportunities and new markets out there because there are so many problems for smart entrepreneurs to solve.
We have new distribution tools like the various social media platforms, or cloud services like AWS & MSFT Azure. Add in dozens of low code and no code tools and a growing plethora of AI tools like ChatGPT, Midjourney, Scenario among others, it’s easier and cheaper than ever to build something and get started.
We are also in a time where there are so many more sources of knowledge and information available than ever before. Things like Youtube, Twitter, excellent online classes like David Perells “Write of Passage” or the multitude of books it’s heaven for self starters and self learners. Additionally there are so many talented people you can model yourself on and learn from.
The bar is so low to stand out. Have basic people skills (ie. EQ). Do what you say you are going to do. Work out and get fit. Dress well. Read books regularly and enjoy learning. Travel. Have a point of view. Start a business & make money. Treat your work like a craft. Be an optimist. Help others.
If you do all of this, you will inevitably succeed in life.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads December 17th, 2023
“Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.” —Robert Louis Stevenson
"You have to get used to saying sorry to yourself for owning some underperforming asset class. And, trust me, there will always be some underperforming asset class. It’s unavoidable. Right now those underperforming asset classes are emerging market stocks, long duration U.S. bonds, and REITs, but, one day, the underperformers will be the S&P 500 and technology stocks. It’s happened before and it will happen again.
The good news is that most of the downsides of diversification are in your head. There’s almost no chance that you will ever go broke while being diversified. However, you will question whether to be diversified in the first place. If you can overcome that, then you’ll be just fine."
https://ofdollarsanddata.com/the-downsides-of-diversification/
2. "China's propaganda, cybersecurity tactics, and its political efforts to lure nations away from Taiwan will increase strains in the Indo-Pacific region and make cyber sovereignty a major priority in maintaining security in the region.
China has made it very clear that it is actively seeking to create a “Chinese Century”[15], where China will geoeconomically and geopolitically dominate world affairs. The forefront of this effort will be in the cyber domain."
https://www.breakingbeijing.com/p/cause-and-cyber-effects
3. "Now 47 years old, Sanderson has already published 21 Cosmere books, and he plans on publishing at least 19 more. “But I do have to finish all this by the time I’m 70,” he says. I get the feeling he doesn’t want to wind up like a certain someone in New Mexico who’s already 74. Still, even now, Sanderson is easily one of the most successful and prolific fantasy writers of the century so far.
Sanderson has been extremely popular among fantasy readers for more than a decade, but last year, he made international headlines for raising $41 million on Kickstarter (doubling the previous fundraising record) to self-publish four secret books and deliver them directly to 185,341 fans. No publisher, no Amazon, no bookstores.
“I think some of the things [traditional publishing companies] do in New York are wrong-headed,” he says. “Somebody has to step up and say, ‘Here’s another way.’”
“We’ll see if our philosophy holds out, but the idea is that you invest in your people and the company will be successful, rather than investing in your company first,” says Sanderson’s wife, Emily.
Back when they first founded the company, Emily quickly became Sanderson’s business manager, “helping with fan mail and doing all the paperwork.” But as her responsibilities grew, she hired more and more people to help. Now, she acts as the COO for a one-of-a-kind business: part independent press, part merchandise manufacturer, part streaming content producer, part editorial and artistic support system for the Cosmere.
“Brandon’s the big vision person and I’m the detail person. I probably wouldn’t dare do some of this on my own,” she says.
“And I’m a little overambitious,” Sanderson adds.
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a43438119/brandon-sanderson-profile/
4. “Victory is now much more than a word in Ukraine. It’s a conviction, an aim to be willed into existence. Even the bitter fighters, even the most dejected know it’s victory or death. But what it’s costing to get there transcends any quantifiable figure or metric. Numbers lose their meaning quickly, at any rate. Personal stories are the only measures that don’t fade.
And measures in wartime are whole lives.”
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a45805515/ukraine-russian-invasion/
5. "It is imperative that the Milei administration focuses on the most important thing first: the economy.
All the rest, except perhaps for security, is secondary and will divert the attention from the main goal, which is that Argentina gets its ducks in a row from an economic perspective.
If Milei is not able to fix it, Peronism/Kirchnerism will come back with a vengeance to “clean up Milei’s neoliberal mess”. The fact that they originally created that mess means nothing, since voter memories are short lived in Argentina.
This could well be the playbook laid out all along by appointing Massa as the main presidential candidate for the Peronist block."
https://www.bowtiedmara.io/p/the-milei-starter-pack
6. "By knowing how our current system works, we can reverse-engineer what is needed to make a new monetary system function properly. In his groundbreaking book, Layered Money, Nik Bhatia lays out this new framework in monetary science; the existence of different levels of monetary networks to service disparate users with vastly different needs.
He explains that money as we know it does not exist, and should not exist, as a singular network upon which all transactions are completed. Various conflicting interests and user needs mean that any system built to service everyone will have to make severe compromises in all respects, and end up being sub-optimal for the vast majority of users.
In reality, the modern financial system does not operate as a single layer, upon which all transactions, no matter the size, must be executed. Instead, it operates at multiple layers- each of which has scaling solutions and key differences in security, transparency, and operability."
https://dollarendgame.substack.com/p/layered-money
7. Always good conversation and perspective on Silicon Valley. This time the gang opines on the Open AI drama.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPwpiTN94iQ
8. "My recommendation is for every entrepreneur to visit the Mochary Method Curriculum, bookmark it, and revisit it on a weekly or monthly basis as new challenges and opportunities arise in their business. It truly is one of the most remarkable curriculums for entrepreneurs."
https://davidcummings.org/2023/11/25/mochary-method-curriculum-for-founders/
9. "a lot of you have had or will have a rough year. Even a Year of Hell (more on that here). We all have at least one. I sure did.
And for most of us, there’s one natural reaction: Hide. At least a bit. Put your head down, and grind it out. Try and get that one more customer in the door. Push harder. Analyze that data more. Cut everything quietly. Lay low and just “focus” until you can get growth back on track. Stare at that monitor, until you figure it out.
It’s natural, but please, don’t do that.
We’ve all been there. I hid a few times.
But I tried at least to always still Get Out There. Win that Award (even if it was kind of a stupid award). Get on that TV show (even if no one would really see it but my team). And close that Important Logo that the team loved (e.g., Google, Facebook, Twitter) … even if the revenue itself wasn’t that material.
Be Present. Bridge the gap between one great year and the next year at least in part by getting out there. Even if today, you have to do that somehow from inside the house."
https://www.saastr.com/rough-year-dont-hide/
10. "Every empire in written history has rolled out the same playbook during its sunset years.
Inside the Empire, runaway debt forces the governing body to rapidly expand the money supply.
The devaluation of currency inflates asset prices and widens the wealth gap between the haves and the have-nots. Populism explodes, as civil unrest erupts in response to seemingly any cultural divide.
Outside of the Empire, competitive powers start rising. Rarely is it just one rising counter-power; it is typically a syndicate of smaller nations who can pause their ideological differences to align against the lone superpower."
https://jaymartin.substack.com/p/this-may-be-the-most-dangerous-time
11. "Maybe now it’s easier to understand why Sam Altman and Open AI’s skill sets are both extremely valuable and extremely feared by both sides. It’s not just a matter of whose side he is on. The question is, will his work bust us from one temporal dimension to another? Will it burst the American mythology and allow that to be replaced by a new Chinese mythology? In a world where the average person doesn’t know anything about science and doesn’t really care about facts, mythologies can become more effective military tools than any gun, tank, or aircraft carrier.
Remember that the US did not succeed in building an Anti-Ballistic Missile system but the mythology that the US had this capability helped bankrupt the Soviet Union. The Gurkha’s and the New Zealand All Blacks are equally feared on different battlefields. Are they really more ruthless or imbued with superhuman powers? Some will say yes but they are also really brilliant at mythmaking. Geopolitics has always depended on mythmaking skill which is closely tied to propaganda skill. It still does today.
You can’t take this element lightly. It wins wars."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/q-tigris-eq-4d-the-power-of-a-haka
12. "One of those factors is geography. As the last two U.S. National Defense Strategies made clear and the latest congressional strategic posture commission confirmed, today’s U.S. military is not designed to fight wars against two major rivals simultaneously. In the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan, the United States would be hard-pressed to rebuff the attack while keeping up the flow of support to Ukraine and Israel.
This isn’t because the United States is in decline. It’s because unlike the United States, which needs to be strong in all three of these places, each of its adversaries—China, Russia, and Iran—only has to be strong in its own home region to achieve its objectives.
The worst-case scenario is an escalating war in at least three far-flung theaters, fought by a thinly stretched U.S. military alongside ill-equipped allies that are mostly unable to defend themselves against large industrial powers with the resolve, resources, and ruthlessness to sustain a long conflict. Waging this fight would require a scale of national unity, resource mobilization, and willingness to sacrifice that Americans and their allies have not seen in generations.
The immediate priority for the United States has to be to ensure that Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan have the weapons they need to defend themselves. These are the players with the most skin in the game at present. The best hope for avoiding a general conflict is that these frontier states will be so plucky and prickly that aggression is stopped or deterred before it can spread.
That won’t be possible unless the United States gets its defense-industrial base in order. Since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, total U.S. defense production has increased by a mere 10 percent—even as the war demonstrates the staggeringly high consumption of military ammunition in a major conflict between industrial powers compared to the limited counterinsurgency operations of the recent past."
13. "You can understand why the OpenAI Board might have become uneasy when they realised that Altman was racing around the Middle East and Asia trying to raise billions for this vision. But, as Bloombergwrote, “these are not “side ventures”, they are “core ventures”. This is about redefining the cutting-edge of chip design, data collection and storage, computational power, and the interface between AI and physical robotics.
This new supply chain would not only challenge America’s IT infrastructure; it could be facilitating the diminishment of US power. It implies innovation is shifting outside of the US and acquiring data that is beyond the reach of regulators.
The truth is Altman does not believe in borders. He has one goal: to build the best AI possible. He has a vision that probably worried his board and unnerved Washington. Given that the US is trying to slow down technological innovation in other parts of the world by restricting the sale of the best chips and computers, it is hugely challenging when he says: “We’ll build our own stuff — in fact we’ll build our own supply chain and ecosystem.” So much for ITAR, the US system for banning the export of critical tech.
There was a time when an American would have been arrested for selling such protected high-tech innovations abroad. Today, can you stop a smart American from innovating outside the US? Can you tell entrepreneurs not to take foreign money and not to partner with foreign firms? Can you demand that they stop challenging existing firms like Nvidia? No. Not when others are offering so much money."
14. "I like the phrase "finding the right home." I like it not only in the sense of physical location, or entity ownership, but spiritual finality. Some companies are not meant to survive, and that's okay. Failure, death, defeat—the possible threat of all of those are things that make the lived experience more poignant and meaningful. Consolidation is simply one path towards "finding the right home" for people, ideas, and technology.
But one thing that the consolidation and shutdowns of 2023 reminds me is that we're not out of the woods by any stretch. Each company is bearing the burden of having to prove that it deserves to exist. Because increasingly, we're losing the veils that have hid a multitude of sins. And each of us has to stand and defend the existence of the things we are trying to build."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/revisiting-the-age-of-acquisition
15. "Few content creators realize that most businesses are the same nowadays.
They acquire customers online with a brand, content, product, and promotions.
Meaning:
If you learn the skills that make your creator business a success, you can use those skills to offer other businesses in the form of a freelance service or digital product.
Every single skill it takes to build a creator business is a high-value skill that everyone is talking about.
Learn graphic design as you build your profile picture, banner, website images, thumbnails, etc.
Learn copywriting and content writing as you build your landing pages, website, social media content, and newsletters.
Learn social media (yes, it’s a skill) to build your following, network, and authority.
Learn marketing and sales as you build your product or service.
Learn advertising and promotions as you promote your products or services to get buyers."
https://thedankoe.com/letters/how-smart-creators-make-money-the-build-teach-earn-method/
16. Valuable conversation on sales leadership in these tough times for startups.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1EZ3kKhFWI
17. "To some observers at the Reducetarian Summit, though, it was clear that the entire model of venture capital-backed food startups has serious issues. David Meyer, CEO of meat reduction nonprofit Food System Innovations, says that VC-backed alt-protein companies faced a lot of pressure to hype their products, and to make rosy projections about how long it would take consumers to start buying them en masse. The reality of building food businesses to that scale, though, was always going to be much more difficult, a reality on full display now as the prospects of early leaders slump.
A lot of that difficulty has to do with the costs of scaling: the so-called “valley of death” between small-scale pilot-production facilities and the truly monstrous installations businesses need to reach global scale and achieve economies of scale. Meanwhile, getting around some of the more fundamental issues holding back alternative meat—that so far, no one has created something actually indistinguishable from the real thing—may take more basic research, perhaps at university labs."
https://time.com/6339050/plant-based-meat-movement-harsh-reality/
18. This is a must for B2B founders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjiQCB8Ugao
19. Worthy pad for a media mogul.
https://manofmany.com/living/dave-portnoy-home-nantucket
20. Always lots to learn from Tai Lopez.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arGpXqi0SvM
21. "It is strange that so many Westerners expect Russia to win in the long run. In the 1970s, the FNL defeated the mighty US in Vietnam. In the 1960s, Algeria defeated France in the long Algerian war. In 1967, still poor Israel defeated a broad coalition of Arab countries. In the Finnish Winter War of 1939-40, tiny Finland held off Joseph Stalin’s Soviet onslaught, etc.
Size has not turned out to be decisive in many wars. Large but poorly motivated countries usually lose wars against smaller and more motivated countries, especially if the aggressor’s objective is colonial. It would be strange if the authoritarian kleptocracy Russia were therefore to win in Ukraine. Precedence suggests that Ukraine is more likely to win this war than Russia."
https://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/24660
22. "Generally speaking, we’re keeping leaner inventories to be safe. For those that have been following along, Oil prices really haven’t moved and after the spike from the Gaza Event, they are down pretty significantly. When it comes to investing, never really makes a ton of sense to invest in mature industries.
Inventory: More importantly on the E-com side… This means you don’t have to worry too much about a sudden spike in freight costs. Previously we warned every holiday season to plan ahead due to terrible supply chains. This year is the reverse. Demand has slowed a ton and on top of that? Freight costs won’t be spiking due to a broken supply chain.
Add this all up. No significant risk to running slightly lower inventory levels than usual.
AI and Imaging Becomes More Advanced (Source): On the digital side, we’d bet extremely heavily on loneliness. More and more people are sending money to digital/fake models. It is already bad enough. Tons of only fans women/men are legitimately 4/10 on the standard 1-10 looks scale but with filters, angles and perfect lighting they look like 10s. Recently, we’ve had the (unfortunate) chance to be in meetings with a few Tier 1/A-list content creators. To say they were hideous would be an understatement.
There is good news in all of this. You can remove the need for human models to advertise your products. Anyone who has worked online for more than a week knows that having attractive women on your roster is a *must* have. Not a nice to have. A *must* have. Women prefer talking to attractive women. Men prefer talking to attractive women. Now? You don’t even need to hire them, just use digital photos of attractive chat women."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/on-the-state-of-digital-marketing
23. "This is a completely new game, and I think it’s going to challenge current leaders’ mental models of power and authority. People used to get legitimacy and authority from their title and role and some of that will remain. But increasingly, leaders will have to understand that authority will also need to come from a diverse network of support, possibly including people outside of the organization.
Companies will inevitably develop sophisticated mechanisms to squash these swarms and/or prevent them from ever happening, which means increased monitoring, surveillance, and immediate firing of people who try to organize.
Robb shares his own thoughts on what these trends mean for corporate governance and organizations:
“Networked swarms are a significant danger to corporate-run governance. These unthinking swarms, leveraging open-source organizational dynamics, can form quickly to coerce governments and corporations into alignment with their goals. In so doing, they actively negate the “voting” preferences people make through purchasing and employment behavior (the swarm-coerced advertising boycott of Twitter was an attempt to negate consumer choice).
Worse, the autocratic absolutism of these swarms, in combination with the inherent amorality of corporate bureaucracies (no intrinsic ability to resist moral coercion from swarms), will result in increasingly draconian action by corporations against a global population unprotected by rights that protect their freedoms.”
While this is grim there is also the positive side of things.
Returns to good leadership and coalition building should increase. While companies will increasingly screen incoming employees and be fearful of their ability to organize, happily replacing the middle ranks of the company with effective AI bots and automation, the best companies will be able to soak up great talent through their reactions to the inevitable crises they will face."
https://newsletter.pathlesspath.com/p/organizations-and-the-network-swarms
24. "Across the board the West has been too slow, too timid in its approach to Putin’s war on Ukraine, whether that is in the supply of arms to sanctions, utilising frozen Russian assets, to creating the right institutional setting around recovery and reconstruction.
It’s always been last minute, drip feed support for Ukraine and a failure to see the big strategic picture - what happens if Putin wins in Ukraine? Think through that and what that would mean for Western security."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/support-for-ukraine
25. "At no point did the Icelandic authorities learn the identity of this mysterious client, the backer of the Minden expedition. They couldn’t have known that the German ship was one of dozens he’s pursued over the years. Media reports about wrecks this man has found or recovered have described him variously as an anonymous London financier, “the unknown salvor” and “the Originator.”
He’s marshaled a high-tech operation to recover the lost treasures of history, spanning centuries and entire civilizations and covering most of the blue portion of the planet. And he’s managed to keep this remarkable enterprise secret—until now.
Right now, the only ones with the resources to join in are corporate interests and wealthy individuals whose goals may or may not be aligned with the rest of humanity. The Originator is the most prolific of them all—the most successful shipwreck hunter in modern times, perhaps in all of history. His name is Anthony Clake, and he’s a 43-year-old hedge fund executive who rarely leaves dry land."
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-deep-sea-treasure-hunter-hedge-funds/
26. "As we argued when we ran the following post last year, these trends have tragic historical echoes: the price of doing business with those who traffic in hate is not measured in dollars, but in lives. What this post is ultimately about is the difference between opinions and principles. Opinions are easy to hold and cheap to change, and their value is commensurate. Principles, on the other hand, are things for which you are willing to sacrifice. Willing to draw a line."
https://www.profgalloway.com/the-line-2/
27. "For those that don’t have a financial background, it is still pretty easy to understand. Tech guys should get it immediately as well.
If you have a return of say 6% and the risk free rate is 5.5% it means your real return was only 0.5%. Now take that and divide it by the amount of volatility you assumed.
Using the same example, if you squeaked out a 0.5% return (above risk free) but the standard deviation was 50% this would get you a whopping 0.01. For a frame of reference, a ratio of 1.0 is considered good.
Using the Bitcoin Comparison: Despite being seen as a highly volatile asset, not only has BTC gone up significantly over the past 10 years but its volatility *justifies* the risk. That is something that is still true today despite the massive decline from $69K to $16K back to $37K."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/probability-based-investing-and-cz
28. "So when she ended up getting laid off six months later, Sacks decided to channel her digital content creation prowess, previously reserved for comedy videos on Vine and Facebook, into Instagram, and Mrs. Dow Jones (a nod to one of the better-known stock market indexes) was born.
Now, Sacks has more than 820,000 Instagram followers and another 286,000 on TikTok. She tries to be as up front as possible with her followers about her own financial situation — she’s a millionaire, but she doesn’t share specific numbers. “A lot of my money is tied up in my business,” she explains, which consists of her online presence, as well as speaking engagements, advisory roles at early-stage companies, and hopefully soon, a book. She knows her situation is thanks in part to coming from financial privilege. She doesn’t have student loans, for instance, nor has she struggled with things like emotional spending. The details of her portfolio aren’t surprising, she says, but aren’t really the purpose of her work.
“The American dream has really changed,” Sacks acknowledges. But that doesn’t mean we should just give up. “I’m a millionaire who rents, you know what I mean?” Instead of resenting our current financial situation, Sacks prefers her followers take advantage of it.
We should be switching jobs frequently in order to maximize salary increases and setting up our own side hustles. “In many cities, it makes a lot more sense to invest the money in the S&P 500 versus buying property,” she says. “At the end of the day, your returns are going to be greater if you’re in the stock market.”
https://www.bustle.com/life/mrs-dow-jones-haley-sacks-profile
29. I know it’s not fashionable to be optimistic about Egypt — and my cab driver certainly wasn’t — but I believe they can do this. They’ve proven themselves to be one of the most stable and peaceful countries in the Middle East, they’ve achieved a middling level of income without significant natural resources, and they’ve shown they’re willing to spend a lot on infrastructure.
The pieces aren’t all in place yet for a successful industrialization story, but some of them are, and the government knows that growth is the only thing that will keep its people happy. Egypt has plenty of problems, sure, but it just doesn’t look like a hopeless basket case to me.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/feeling-strangely-optimistic-about
30. "The Kissinger operation was vintage Wylie: tempting an author away from a competitor and then leveraging that client’s reputation to mutually beneficial ends. “He’s playing a multiyear game in which he is constantly trying to consolidate the board,” Scott Moyers, the publisher of Penguin Press and a former director of the Wylie Agency, told me. In the 1980s and 90s, so the legend goes, Wylie used his commercial cunning to disrupt the chummy norms that reigned in the publishing industry, replacing them with what one tabloid newspaper referred to as a “greed storm”.
When he met Wylie in the late 1980s, the author Hanif Kureishi later wrote, he was reminded of “the bullying, loud-mouthed suburban wide-boys I’d grown up with, selling socks and watches from suitcases on a pub floor”. Since the mid-90s, Wylie has been known as The Jackal, and many other agents and small publishers still see him as a predator who seizes literary talents nurtured by others. His agency’s approach is “very adversarial”, Valerie Merians, the cofounder of the independent publisher Melville House, told me. The head of rights at a London literary agency put it more bluntly: “He uses Colonel Kurtz methods.”
But there is more to Wylie’s success and his character than mere rapacity. Better than anyone else, Wylie and his agency have figured out how to globalise and monetise literary prestige.
The Wylie Agency hunts for undervalued literary talent the way a private equity firm might trawl for underperforming companies that it can turn into major profit centres after firing the current management. When he started out in the early 80s, Wylie saw more clearly than anyone else that literary reputations are commercial assets, and that if you control those assets, you ought to wring as much value from them as possible. Never mind if you have to use tactics that others consider unethical or underhanded."
31. "Over the few days when OpenAI looked like it might collapse, I do think that there was a temporary sense of opportunity among founders and VCs. But now that Altman is back, that seems like a mirage. (In the long term, this chaos does create room for open-source alternatives to flourish as people seek the power to opt out of OpenAI’s monopoly. But, as I argued last week, I think this only starts to happen as the S curve of model performance begins to level out.)
The more interesting and concerning user base is OpenAI’s enterprise customers. Startup people don’t mind palace coups and Silicon Valley intrigue if you ship good product. If you’re a mid-level insurance executive in Connecticut with a seven-figure Microsoft/OpenAI contract, you’re likely reading the headlines and wondering whether you should invoke force majeure.
I have heard that even before this disruption, some enterprise customers were disgruntled at the rate that OpenAI models were changed or replaced with newer versions, thereby negatively impacting reliability. Adding corporate chaos on top cannot be good for trust—and a loss of trust is hard to undo.
Realistically, though, startups are chaotic and hard. They are even more so when you’re playing with high stakes at the highest levels. No CEO is blameless, but you can make up for chaos and bad decisions if you build something incredible enough. What Altman has created at OpenAI should certainly lend him the benefit of the doubt, in my view.
But, as the saying goes, you only get one coup. If something like this happens again, I’ll question whether I can trust you to actually deliver on your enterprise contracts, much less safely birth a digital god into the world. Serious companies don’t go through this more than once."
https://every.to/chain-of-thought/the-king-is-back-in-the-castle
32. "Finding the next Amazon or Tesla, a small company which grows to an astonishing scale, dominates mainstream investment thinking, but throughout history, it’s been buying good companies and even better valuations that has made both men like Jim Rogers and Warren Buffet exceedingly wealthy."
https://calvinfroedge.substack.com/p/finding-value-in-an-overvalued-world
33. This is a pretty illuminating discussion. Ideas on how to Focus on Health, wealth & happiness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj7S4T6o6Fc
34. Oh wow....sad news. Death of an investing legend and brilliant thinker. RIP Charlie Munger.
35. I always learn stuff here. Worth watching to see how writing can help you with your life and business.
Traveling the World While Young: The Pathless Path and Career Limiting Move?
I’ve become a fan of Jon Raines' newsletter called Young Money. Lots of great tips and thoughts here, specifically for young people. But one that caught my eye was his recent one: “The Case for Traveling More” (Source: https://www.youngmoney.co/p/case-traveling)
It took me back to my days after graduating from University, then attending Medieval studies at Cambridge University Summer school. I ended up spending half a year backpacking through Europe. It was an eye opening experience and extremely fun. Met so many different people and had so many adventures. It was my first experience really living by my wits and by myself.
I ended up moving to Taiwan next year and taught English with the grand plan of saving up money and traveling the world for a few years. I ended up meeting a girl and well, joined the corporate world. Then I moved to Silicon Valley in 1999 and focused on my career.
I remember showing up in the USA with a messed up resume and regret for not focusing on my career earlier. Especially when I met all these hard chargers my age who had done the conventional route and not done the travel & goofing around. I felt so behind, which led me to work my ass off trying to catch up. But I did end up with an internationally focused tech career; traveling the world, selling ads, doing deals and investing in startups.
Fast forward 24+ years, I really had no regrets. I have fine memories from those 3 years of goofing around and traveling before my career. I’ve caught up and actually surpassed pretty everyone from those early days just by grinding it out and staying in the game. Plus a touch of luck as normal. In fact, looking back, those days of traveling gave my career a boost by giving me a new perspective on business as well as cultural insights that were extremely useful down the road. The crazy adventures also make you a much more interesting person compared to the normal working stiff or corporate drone.
So for all those young folks trying to decide what to do right after college. Career or Travel? Take a travel adventure. And if you are older, take some time out from work to see the world, bring your kids. As the excellent Jack Raines says:
“Taking a few months to see the world won't hinder your career, but never taking time to explore will starve your soul.
In an era where travel is both cheap and convenient, a refusal to venture beyond your geographic boundaries is a declaration that you believe what you are currently doing is more valuable and enriching than engaging with the experiences and perspectives of ~8 billion other people.”
Jack goes on to say:
“Quality ideas are generated by a breadth and depth of quality inputs, and few inputs are better than experiences. The simple acts of visiting places that you wouldn't normally visit, meeting people you wouldn't normally meet, doing things you wouldn't normally do, and seeing things that you wouldn't normally see serve as great source material.
Where you go, who you meet, what you do, and what you see are less important than simply going, meeting, doing, and seeing.”
So young people (and old), go forth into the world. Explore. Have fun. You won’t regret it.
Time is Luck: Being Present in Life
I end up rewatching many old movies from the 90s and 2000s. One of them was Michael Mann’s “Miami Vice”. What a master at the shoot out scenes. It signals the peak to American influence and confidence in the world.
But one of the phrases that stuck with me was mentioned by Isabelle, who gets romantically entangled with undercover cop Crockett. “Time is Luck” describing their situation. A magical and wonderful but ephemeral experience that does not last too long.
Time is luck. Your time with your children. Your time with your parents and siblings. Your time with your friends. Your time on this earth. You should treasure it.
But so many of us are either trapped by our memories in the past. Either nostalgia for a time that probably was not really that good. Or times that were so awful that we are stuck there and it traps us from moving forward.
My problem is I tend to think too far into the future. The next trip. The next deal. The next conference. The next book. I guess this is the problem of working in tech, studying future trends, investing in early stage startups and living in the future.
I’m so fixated on the future that I end up overlooking or missing the magical things that happen in my everyday moments and life. Moments like Waking up my kid, taking her to school, having a wonderful meal together with my family. Having a great conversation with friends and my business partners.
I think I’ve gotten better at it. Trying to eat more slowly and savor the meal. Meditating more in the morning, afternoon and evening. But I still have a lot of work to do here.
We all live in the moment. It’s all we have. This is a reminder to be more mindful about this fact. Breath. Slow down and take it all in. It may also help you live a more enjoyable life.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads December 10th, 2023
“Courage is found in unlikely places.” —J.R.R. Tolkien
"Founding a business that achieves any level of success requires ambition, talent, an irrational belief that “this” makes sense, and most important the ability to attract a flock of investors who consent to engage in your hallucination. The best founders are Zealots.
Zealots are high-talent, high-energy people — but they also tend to be narcissistic and divisive assholes. If you’re thinking “Takes one to know one,” trust your instincts. Zealots make good founders, but as companies mature, the ratio of their passion relative to the cost incurred by their difficult personalities erodes. Maturity calls for sober leaders who are better at managing risk and serving the market’s desire for predictable, if not remarkable, growth: Pragmatists.
Some (i.e., few) founders can make the transition, tempering the quicksilver aspects of their personality without losing their drive or vision.
For most of business history, having assets was good, and having more was even better. However, one of technology’s tectonic unlocks has been elevating information (bits) over objects (atoms). In the information age, owning assets is one business, while operating them is another, and each demands distinct capital structures, management approaches, and operational skills.
Businesses offering the greatest return on invested capital don’t have much capital (assets) and can scale up faster, as they don’t bind themselves to cars, apartments, or even inventory. (Think: Amazon Marketplace.) Using other people’s assets makes firms more resilient, because they can scale down as inexpensively, during bad times, as they scaled up."
https://www.profgalloway.com/webur/
2. Strangest news of the day in tech. Altman out at OpenAI. Very bizarre.
https://www.bigtechnology.com/p/the-panel-reacts-openai-fires-ceo
3. "In the years that followed the meeting between the two men, Figma ate InVision’s lunch. InVision unsuccessfully tried to sell itself, a fact that hasn’t been previously reported, and is now a husk of what it once was. Its story underscores the plight startups face in an era when borrowing costs are rising, cash piles are diminishing and venture capitalists are less likely to write checks to give companies second or third chances.
InVision, which peaked at a $2 billion valuation and raised $350 million from blue-chip investors including Goldman Sachs and Spark Capital, spiraled as Figma grew and snatched away its customers. Last year, InVision’s revenue plunged by half to $50 million, two people familiar with the company’s finances said, and it was projected to sink to between $36 million and $38 million for 2023.
As Figma cut into InVision’s main design business by building a product that was more seamless to use, InVision shifted its focus to an online whiteboard product to help remote workers collaborate. In late 2021, InVision started working with investment bankers to try to sell itself, two people familiar with the matter said, a process that was on and off. They couldn’t find a buyer willing to take on the shrinking company."
4. A masterclass in making money online as a creator from some of the best.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZGbQvX9AXY&t=619s
5. Empires are built by blood, sweat and violence. Lots of wisdom from Tai Lopez.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUJXaGnxsBQ
6. I love Stonestown Galleria (as it’s very close to my home) and it’s thriving.
"Despite having the same issues that every mall in America faces, Stonestown Galleria has cunningly persevered, mostly by focusing on shops and services that cater to the young people of the area, including — perhaps critically — the students of San Francisco State which is just next door, and the suburban kids coming over from Daly City and South San Francisco. Big draws like Regal and Target fulfill all your college needs, while classy grown-ups get their shop on at mainstay Trader Joe’s.
It’s mostly with hot new Asian eateries, like Uncle Tetsu serving Japanese cheesecakes, and Café Maiko, the first dedicated matcha café in SF, earning the mall its reputation as “the new Japantown.”
With interest in Asian pop culture at an all-time high, it’s no surprise to see young people going to popular Japanese shops Daiso and Misimo, and hanging around places serving Korean barbeque, and Taiwanese street snacks. These shops have breathed new life into the mall, following renovations made while Stonestown was closed for a year during the pandemic. The mall is now doing better business than it was in 2019."
7. "These three explanations—coincidence, multipolarity, Russia’s war in Ukraine—are not mutually exclusive. If anything, they are interrelated, as wars are complex events; the decline of U.S. hegemony contributes to growing multipolarity; and great-power competition has surely fed Russia’s aggression and the West’s response.
The consequence is that others are caught in the great-power cross fire or will seek to start fires of their own. Even if none of these wars rise to the level of a third world war, they will be devastating all the same. We do not need to be in a world war to be in a world at war.
Wars were already a persistent feature of the international system. But they were not widespread. War was always happening somewhere, in other words, but war was not happening everywhere. The above dynamics could change that tendency. The prevalence of war, not just its persistence, could now be our future."
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/11/conflicts-around-the-world-peak/676029/
8. "Every market is different, and every opportunity has to be evaluated on its own. One recommendation is to go to the individual job function and think through the AI Iron Man suit functionality to make that person ten times more productive or to enable the employer to fulfill the mission of that role in a way that is more scalable, more distributed, or more economical. Build software to Iron Man the power of a job function."
https://davidcummings.org/2023/11/18/software-to-iron-man-a-job-function/
9. "There are several sources that are laying out the details of the story. The TLDR? Sam and Greg were the driving force behind OpenAI’s ambitions. Raising more and more capital, establishing plans to build their own chips to compete with Nvidia, building an AI-native phone with Jony Ive.
Ilya’s perspective was focused on the need to create AI “that truly deeply loves humanity.” The progress of OpenAI was racing far ahead of the research capabilities to pursue Ilya’s parameters for love, not just performance. What’s more, his role was increasingly getting reduced at the company.
Increasingly, it’s clear that this is a fundamental debate between effective altruism and effective accelerationism.
What’s more, there is such a contrast today. On the one hand, we have EA exploding the most important company in technology in decades. On the other hand, we have e/acc powering a literal rocket, exploding towards the sky, space, and all the progress that entails."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/the-fall-of-the-hero-founder
10. This is such an incredible interview. Everyone should watch this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7dgxCykg-Q
11. "The “Roaring 20s” idea wasn’t just about a strong economy; it was fundamentally about a technology boom. And although it’s hard to identify the impacts of technologies on the economy, I think there are signs that some of the things we were excited about three years ago are now having an effect.
Another technology driving rapid corporate investment is AI. AI is rapidly taking overthe world of venture finance, with more than a quarter of VC money now flowing into the space. That’s partly a result of more traditional startup categories going bust, but mostly it’s about the boom in generative AI following the release of ChatGPT and various AI art apps. Goldman Sachs predicts that AI investment could be 4% of the economy in just two years. Boardroom chaos at OpenAI seems unlikely to slow the trend much, since the basic technology of LLMs is now pretty widely diffused.
And that’s just today. It’s crucial to note that all of these technologies — new wonder vaccines, solar and batteries, and AI — will almost certainly have a much bigger impact once they’re widely adopted. Generative AI will juice productivity in ways we can’t even imagine right now. Cheap solar and batteries will push down electricity and transportation costs. Using vaccines to treat cancer will reduce disease burden. And further business-model innovations will hopefully allow companies to use work-from-home to greater advantage.
In other words, the Roaring 20s are just getting started.
Much of the country is still mired in the atmosphere of pessimism and malaise that followed the Great Recession, the chaotic Trump years, the pandemic, and the post-pandemic inflation. And of course dire events like the Israel-Gaza war continue to dominate headlines. But already I feel like I can sense the green shoots of excitement about the future, from the online “e/acc” mini-movement to nascent optimism about the economy."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-roaring-20s-are-back-on-track
12. Travel and diversify. Go visit other countries and invest outside of the USA. Be an uncommon commodity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdKA5l7HNgk
13. Good summary of an interesting conversation. Doug Casey is an accomplished international investor and author. He is a libertarian kook but he has been right more than wrong.
14. "A few weeks into a world tour to promote his latest album House on a Hill, Nam is feeling that connection more than ever—especially since he’s also an entrepreneur on top of being a pop star. He counts a podcast and media company, DIVE Studios, and a mental health app, Mindset, in his business portfolio.
Nam developed the self-care app he co-founded which features celebrities like Summer Walker, Tori Kelly, and members of Seventeen talking about mental heath, is especially dear to Nam. “It’s always weird for me to be like, ‘I’m a mental health advocate,’” he says. “it was more of a gradual, very organic thing more than it was like ‘We need to be advocates.’”
At 34, the eternally boyish Eric Nam has already lived a few lives. An Atlanta native who was supposed to become a business analyst at Deloitte, he left finance to enter a talent competition in South Korea and become a star. Nam now deftly toggles between the worlds of entertainment and business."
https://www.gq.com/story/real-life-diet-eric-nam
15. "Targeting Prosumers offers unique advantages. Unlike B2B transactions (where there can be many decision makers), it's often easier for a Prosumer to make a purchasing decision. If it's something they're passionate about doing, they'll take out their credit card.
Furthermore, the Total Addressable Market (TAM) for Prosumers is growing. It encompasses creators (TikTokers, podcasters, YouTubers), career-oriented individuals (software developers, digital nomads, freelancers), and hobbyists (photographers, DJs, musicians, artists, classic car enthusiasts).
My larger point: if you see an opportunity with growing demand, and it’s a good fit for you, don’t ignore it just because “it’s not B2B.”
Your business doesn’t have to fit the dominant narrative to be successful; indie B2Prosumer products can be incredibly profitable.
There are great opportunities to build awesome $1M-$5M/year businesses with Prosumer customers."
https://justinjackson.ca/prosumers
16. "When you see the faces of the people around you unconsciously bent toward their devices, the vast majority are tumbling down a unique path, becoming surrounded by more content that affirms their convictions, biases and fears.
People settle for being out of shape. They settle for careers they don’t love. And when they open their phones, they settle for the cultural and political beliefs that are served to them.
They have no agency. No sovereignty.
This is why it is so important to plan, strategize and execute a process.
Most people want to be wealthier than they are. Most want to be fitter than they are.
Far fewer people want to do the things that make you wealthy and fit.
So focusing on the goal, although fun - and important, is not as important as focusing on the process."
https://jaymartin.substack.com/p/is-the-goal-to-get-rich-or-stay-rich
17. "For years, Ohlrogge says SPAC proponents dismissed the poor track record of SPACs, insisting it would be different with better sponsors and better target companies.
“And it’s never been true,” Ohlrogge says. “So they just keep continuing to perform badly, and I think it’s because they have these enormous structural flaws that still very few people understand.”
https://thehustle.co/the-spectacular-failure-of-spacs/
18. "That’s the beauty and the horror of social consumer apps. The only way to know is to build fast and launch too early.
I am biased, obviously, but Antoine is one of the rare, if not the only founder in that category who is truly intentional about what he’s building with a deep product perspective and behavioral understanding. Many successful founders who have built social consumer apps have just hit a giant gold mine while digging and taking turns quite randomly and then built the narrative around and tried not to make too many mistakes along the way."
https://2lr.substack.com/p/ti-amo
19. "Aside from the obviously preposterous nature of how this process played out, the question is, why? Why would they do this now? And why so quickly?
One theory is that Sustkever believed that Altman was getting involved in too many other ventures: reportedly a NVIDIA competitor to make AI chips and a hardware company devoted to building AI phones. He might have worried that Altman’s control over other parts of the value chain would give him power beyond the strictures of OpenAI’s founding charter.
Another theory is that OpenAI made a research breakthrough that truly scared Sutskever—but that Altman wanted to proceed with commercializing it too quickly.
It’s important to reserve judgment until more of the facts come out. But for now, whatever Sutskever’s goals, he probably did not advance them particularly well, because supporters of AI safety now look foolish. AI is, as far as I know, the only field in which startups have been built with safety research at their core from the beginning.
That’s why OpenAI is structured as a non-profit and Altman has no equity position in the company. But, barring some revelations, its focus on safety and resulting corporate structure created a ridiculously bad and chaotic situation. In the long run, it’s likely to make the cause of safety harder to justify, rather than easier."
https://every.to/everything/thinksgiving-is-upon-us
20. This will be fascinating to watch. Libertarian Milei wins in Argentina.
"Javier Milei believes that a free people should not have to deal with an overbearing central government, promising to remove massive chunks of the state’s bureaucracy, making him a friend to capitalism but an adversary to the administrative state.
He is against bad fiat money but bullish on bitcoin. He is an entrepreneur’s best friend, and a very worthy foe to the parasites who feast on the money printer."
https://www.dossier.today/p/javier-milei-who-has-all-of-the-right
21. The cause of most people's financial issues. Lifestyle Inflation.
https://lifemathmoney.com/money-advice-avoid-lifestyle-inflation/
22. "So maybe the direction of Argentina is the embracing of US dollars AND bitcoin. Not dollars exclusively and not bitcoin exclusively. You need both of them at the moment. And that is what Javier Milei ultimately represents.
A new way of thinking about economics that appears to be built for the 21st century. The change may be bumpy along the way, but it is becoming increasingly obvious that the change is needed.
This is something to keep in mind as we head into the 2024 Presidential election here in America. Multiple candidates have already come out in strong support of bitcoin, which could lead to a similar situation where US dollar dominance is continued and bitcoin is embraced as a digital gold."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/the-people-of-argentina-have-spoken
23. "As for startups, disruptions in the status quo are often advantageous. OpenAI’s dominant place in the developer ecosystem is suddenly at risk & presents an opportunity for smaller companies to fill a new void.
Sudden disturbances in rapidly moving objects like rockets tend to create catastrophic outcomes."
https://tomtunguz.com/disturbing-rockets-in-flight/
24. "I’m emerging from a two-month long set of back-to-back trips, from Texas to Nairobi to Dubai, to Riyadh, to New York and to Montreal, with the final stop today in Vegas for Money 2020.
Each has their own growing startup ecosystems budding. And they each offer unique lessons for us.
Here are five I reflect on."
https://99tech.alexlazarow.com/p/5-startup-lessons-from-5-ecosystems
25. Interesting theory. I guess we will see.
"What did President Xi get in exchange for all this? He got quite a lot. First, remember that Governor Newsom, Biden’s heir apparent, was recently treated as an equal by Xi. In the highly unusual and surprise meeting between a US Governor and China’s Head of State, Newsom specifically said, “divorce (between the US and China) is not an option” and “I expressed my support for the One-China policy ... as well as our desire not to see independence," Clear enough. This statement alone gave Xi what he needed to begin a negotiation with Taipei’s leaders about a slow but secure re-entry of Taiwan into China.
Suddenly, the opposition parties in Taiwan have agreed to cooperate. This will potentially bring to power a group of people who are more inclined to deal with China and ensure a peaceful resolution of the sovereignty issues. The elections are in January. Xi scored.
Xi also “gets” Russia’s Far East. Moscow has never been easily able to control the Far East due to its size and distance. The Ukraine conflict has financially bled Russia. The Wilson Center says, “By 2023, the government intends to spend $160 billion on military needs, or 40% of its budget.” “….this figure may surpass 10% of GDP in 2023.” Siberia has also been a strong recruiting ground for the Russian Army, raising opposition to Moscow everywhere in the East. The indigenous people of Siberia have even created a new “Siberian Battalion” to serve the Ukrainian side. This lack of cash and rising internal opposition have made it much easier for China to reach into this massive mecca of resources.
Instead, China now needs access to the US market. The US needs inflation to fall, and more cheap imports from China will help. China needs access to all industrialized nations because they can pay for stuff and raise China’s income. Emerging markets can’t. This means he needs a deal not only with the US but also with Europe.
This is all “kiss and makeup” on a grand scale. A peace dividend and a fall in inflation is unfolding. If war is inflationary, ending it is disinflationary. The US and China may even agree on a deal on space and the moon. It looks like we’ll see the next US President in a nice tight hug with Xi. No doubt the US and China will remain profoundly competitive. But, on the surface, the world will see Panda hugs and peace."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/deal-the-siberian-tiger-and-the-panda
26. "This trend is particularly observable in infrastructure software, where cloud marketplaces are an increasingly important purchasing vehicle and where the take rate is largely countered by the lower cost of sales for these transactions.
Snowflake were pulled to the marketplaces by their enterprise customers and is listed on both Azure and AWS’ marketplaces.
In October, Crowdstrike announced that it was the first cybersecurity ISV to exceed $1 billion in AWS Marketplace sales since listing on the AWS Marketplace in 2017, where it also enjoys ACVs that are 140% larger than other GTM channels."
https://akashbajwa.substack.com/p/cloud-gtm-and-alliances
27. "Many deep tech industries are huge, and there’s a lot of room for new players: batteries ($100b market), pharma ($1.5T), defense R&D ($150b in the US), industrial and warehouse automation ($200b total), and so on.
To take defense as a concrete example, this site lists awarded defense contracts. The DoD awards multiple 8-9 figure contracts daily. Any startup that captures just a few contracts of this size is basically a $1b+ company.
To summarize the data above:
-There are lots of $1b+ deep tech exits.
-While the absolute number of strong exits is smaller than for traditional sectors like B2B SaaS, the rate of good exits is approximately 2x higher.
-Good exits for deep tech companies, on average, come 6-24 months sooner than good exits for traditional tech companies.
-Deep tech companies, on average, have similar capital intensity to traditional tech companies. Across all exits above $250m, the average amount of capital raised is about 11-15% of the sale price regardless of sector."
https://www.codingvc.com/p/betting-on-deep-tech
28. "You can always push yourself more than you think you can. And I think that’s true. In every environment, you can go to the gym and lift more than you think. You can push yourself more in this environment while walking, or in a start-up, you can work 100 plus hours a week for years on end. If you really have to, like if push comes to shove, you’re always able to push yourself more.
Now, not everyone is made of that same stuff. And in fact, the objective of this of the study was to find out who actually makes it who doesn’t, i.e., can you tell ahead of time based on their physiology, blood tests, etc, and their DNA and their personal mental profile?
Clearly, there’s one thing I think founders have in common is that we’re more tolerant to risk than most. I’m not saying we’re risk seeking, right, like it’s always on a risk adjusted basis. And in fact, I don’t think we take that many risks as start-up founders. But I think by taking a bit more risk than most people, we are highly rewarded.
It’s hard to imagine, with all of this, that we’re gonna have a soft landing. That said, my personal analysis of this remains – this is the very best time to invest in early stage start-ups. Right now, all the posers, the people that were getting rich, quick, are no longer building start-ups. So the bankers, the consultants, lawyers, the doctors, etc. Right now you have the true believers.
They’re building companies, yes, they’re raising money, it’s hard to raise capital, you raise a lower valuation, you probably exit at a lower valuation. But you’re careful with your cash, with burn, with unit economics, and you’re building a much more sustainable company. You’re facing way less competition. In 2021, if you had a good idea, you were facing 7-20 other people doing the exact same thing with a lot of money. Now you have one or two. When you win, you’re gonna win the entire category. And even though the extra votes will be lower, you’re going to do amazingly well.
And so if I think in the last decade, the very best time to invest was in 2008, 2009, 2010, you know, companies like Instagram, WhatsApp, Uber, Airbnb all came in the 2000s.
Actually, when was the best time the best actually? Oh, 2001, 2002, 2004. And so I am willing to bet that the very best time to invest in startups for the 2020s will have been 2022, 2023 and 2024. And you’re obviously gonna know at the end of the decade in the early 2030s, or at the end of the 2020s. But now, it’s an amazing time. Early stage and late stage have not repriced and you’re seeing a lot of structure. So, seed A, even B, is an amazing time to be investing."
https://fabricegrinda.com/super-fun-interview-by-robin-haak/
29. Love this: Building a mini-Berkshire Hathaway. Learned a lot in this conversation.
Big fan of Enduring Ventures! Go Sieva Kosinsky.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkPAnye_FZ0&list=RDCMUCPjNBjflYl0-HQtUvOx0Ibw&start_radio=1
30. Lots of myths being busted here. Interesting for biohackers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1UY8DTWpYk
31. "Part of building a startup is finding a secret that no one else knows. In crypto, I’ve seen that for founders who are new to crypto, it usually takes at least 1–2 years to “find that secret”.
Why does it take so long? Well, I suspect it’s because crypto is so counter-intuitive and so different from Web2 or TradFi, where most founders come from. Way too often, founders give up on crypto in less than 1–2 years, right before that critical juncture.
Adding insult to injury, the bear market is arguably the best time to find that secret. There’s far less froth and distraction. Founders can think more clearly. They are more likely to find users who are also here for a long time to come."
https://medium.com/alliancedao/hard-pivot-from-crypto-7c4a3988720a
32. This is thought provoking. Bitcoin as a war fighting technology in cyberspace.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spDS7q6uRkY
33. "D’Angelo, a high school friend of Mark Zuckerberg who parlayed an early engineering job building ad systems at Facebook into tremendous wealth, appears to be the fulcrum of finding a resolution. In recent days, D’Angelo has been “occupying the most oxygen” among board members in talks between Altman and the board, a person close to the talks said.
D’Angelo, who has been a board member at OpenAI for five years, is now the tech insider with perhaps the most to lose or gain reputationally in the stalemate over Sam Altman’s firing from the startup. Out of the three remaining board members at the company, he is the only person who many in the tech world, including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, know well. He sits firmly in an inner circle of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who invest in each other’s companies, recommend software engineering talent to each other and pontificate about the future of technology.
D’Angelo has seen some parallels on a smaller scale at Quora, which he founded and has run for 14 years. He sometimes fired executives abruptly without considering the impact on employees, three former employees said. One firing a few years ago rankled staff so much that a few dozen refused to show up to work the day after the dismissal, they said. D’Angelo sometimes frustrated employees by not explaining why he had fired executives."
34. Interview was a year old but still very relevant.
Global macro discussion & geopolitics. Food supply chain is a mess & a possible food crisis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXQZq0fAO-M
35. Hmmmm......
"When Sam Altman lost his job running OpenAI, the startup valued at over $50 billion, there were many sins that struck me as particularly grievous. The first was that he was looking to raise billions to start his own chip company that could sell to OpenAI (e.g., profiting from the supply), and the second was that he was separately raising billions to build a hardware device that OpenAI models would be housed on (e.g., profiting off the platform).
To further muddy the waters, OpenAI’s main partner, Microsoft, buys power from a company in which Altman is a major shareholder. OpenAI’s in-house VC fund has led a Series A round in a company in which Altman is also a major shareholder. Altman owns shares in some of the buzziest tech companies in the world, including Stripe, Instacart, and Humane. Many, if not all, of those companies are using the tech that OpenAI is selling.
This is enough conflicts of interest to make a corporate lawyer's brain smush in on itself like a dying sun. It is a ludicrous amount of mis-aligned incentives.
I am in the camp that Altman is likely innocent, and it was a dumb board gone rogue.But there are legitimate questions to be had about Altman’s behavior. Attempting to achieve AGI is a momentous enough task that it likely requires a unique governance structure. But it also requires a CEO who is focused, honest, and committed. Altman’s investing has not left that impression with me, and perhaps the board felt the same."
https://every.to/napkin-math/the-case-against-sam-altman
36. "Despite Altman’s apparent sense of ease, tensions had been simmering at his company over the enigmatic CEO’s laissez-faire approach to safety, interest in commercializing OpenAI’s software, and tangled web of personal investments in other AI companies. Even as they built one of the world’s most valuable startups, OpenAI remained beholden to a nonprofit board of directors that had the power to pump the brakes if it felt the organization was straying from its mission to “ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.”
Unbeknownst to anyone outside OpenAI’s top ranks, members of that six-person board were growing worried that the CEO was clipping the safety guardrails as he barreled toward global dominance in AI. As far as some on the board were concerned, Altman was himself teetering on the edge of an abyss.
Just a few hours after the APEC panel, Altman received a text from Ilya Sutskever, a chief researcher, co-founder and board member at OpenAI who was responsible for limiting societal harms from its AI. Sutskever invited him to a video meeting with the board the following afternoon. The coup had begun.
What followed was a dizzying spiral of power plays and shifting alliances that seemed more appropriate for the set of “Game of Thrones'' than for the sleek, plant-filled offices of an AI startup. Altman’s surprise firing set off a chain of events—including the shock resignation of OpenAI’s president, the installation of two interim CEOs, a staffwide mutiny, backroom deals, threats of litigation, counter-offensives and counter-counter-offensives—that culminated with a late Tuesday night deal to reinstate Altman as CEO and revamp the company’s board of directors."
37. "Quite simply, radicals on both sides of the political spectrum no longer view the system as something they can work within. And while this is always true to a degree, the cause for concern at the policy level is the recruitment and radicalization of those who would otherwise not be involved with political violence, driven both by circumstance and disinformation. While disinformation can come from anywhere, the intersection of foreign influence and domestic politics should be most concerning.
This is a very fancy way of saying that what happens over there really matters over here when individuals so far from the battlefield can find cause with an enemy because their domestic politics align more with a foreign power’s propaganda or cause than with American democracy. The collective hyperpartisan rhetoric has inadvertently created sleeper cells of radicals waiting for their chosen cause’s turn to make headlines.
I’ve written extensively in the past on the threat that hyperpartisanship, disinformation, and the degradation of democratic norms can have on national security. Disinformation-driven political violence is a key plot point of my novel EX SUPRA, and something that worries me when I think about our American future just as much as the threat from the Chinese Communist Party. Jack Murphy once wrote about America’s forthcoming “Years of Lead” and I’m starting to think that time has arrived."
https://www.breakingbeijing.com/p/the-new-wave
38. "Before diving into the strategies, I encourage you to read Ed’s post in full. But for those looking for the cliff notes, here is the TLDR on the incentives at play:
1) In the absence of exits (which typically take 7+ years to manifest), VCs use markups as a means of demonstrating progress
2) Hot companies in hot sectors get marked up the quickest
3) Hot companies are easier to sell internally to other partners in the fund and 4) Hot companies help a VC raise their next fund from LPs.
In contrast, non consensus companies can seem weird, are often doubted by other investors (thus limiting access to follow-on capital) until the progress speaks for itself, and can take a long time to blossom. Nevertheless, the axiom remains that being non consensus and right maximizes returns.
This got me thinking about how investors can actually make non consensus investments, without just paying lip service to the idea. I dove into the 1984 Ventures portfolio to find examples where we’ve been non consensus (and will hopefully be proven right in due course!).
I found that there are repeatable strategies to be non consensus when picking founders, markets and business models/ideas. It's also worth noting that there is a subtle, but important difference between being contrarian (”everyone is wrong and I am right”) and non consensus (investing in people or spaces that others are ignorant or naive about)"
https://samit-kalra.com/blog/non-consensus-and-right
39. “Up until a few years ago, defense was definitely not seen as Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG)," he said. “My opinion is that you should actually add a D to ESG and that's defense ... If you don't have security, you can't have ESG.
The internet was created by the military but the tech firms that sprung from it have overtaken armies as "the drivers of innovation,” said Warren Low, an official of NATO’s Allied Command Transformation. "It’s now flipped around where the industries are innovating.”
The war in Ukraine means “there's an appetite now” to invest in the world of defensive security, said David van Weel, NATO’s assistant secretary-general for Emerging Security Challenges.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/internet-of-tanks-nato-court-tech-scene/
Overcoming Scarcity Mindset: Dropping Cheapskate Asian Immigrant Habits
I’ve learned a lot about myself the last 3-4 years. I’ve grown a lot I think. Shaken off a lot of bad habits & harmful mindsets holding me back. But one that I just can’t shake is my frugalness and over-optimization, stemming from a scarcity mindset.
I’ll spend an hour trying to find a hotel room $20 dollars cheaper. I’d walk to another ATM to save myself a $5 usd fee. I’d drive around an extra 30 minutes to save on parking. Doing an extra 8 hour layover to save $250 usd on airfare.
It’s good to be frugal. It’s good to hate wastefulness. These are great habits to have. But it’s dumb when it gets in the way of bigger deals and opportunities. Or when you waste time.
All those behaviors are left over from the time when I had NOTHING. When I was coming up in the world and only had enough money to choose lunch or dinner. Try living on a $25k usd annual salary in San Francisco. Before taxes btw and as it is W2 income, no tax breaks either. Granted this was 24 years ago but it was not easy back then either.
But times have changed. And when I ask myself the question that my therapist asks me: “How does this serve you now?”
I’d say NOT very well. Now I don’t want to be the guy who looks at everything through the frame of money and optimizes for it. But it’s a good filter to use an ideal per hour rate to judge whether you should spend time on something. Mine is a minimum $1000 USD an hour.
My rule is I either make that rate or I outsource that to someone else. Otherwise, I’m spending time either getting paid my rate or else I am doing something I enjoy. Things like reading, watching some interesting documentaries or listening to podcast shows or family time with my kid.
Some exceptions: I do my own laundry and wash the dishes because I actually enjoy the meditative aspects of it. I’ll do paid public presentations/workshops, government startup program mentoring for below that rate because I find these fun and educational. I also really enjoy talking to and trying to help startup founders.
Now I’m not telling you to go big and spend like a billionaire or multimillionaire, buying the mansion, private jet and sports cars, the bespoke expensive clothing. Do it if you can afford it and really love these things.
As I’ve written before, I just really love international travel, good food and lots of books. That and supporting some awesome charities like World Central Kitchen, Feeding America, International Rescue Committee and Room to Read among many others. If you are lucky to have done well, it’s an absolute MUST to be generous with my friends and family. I’ll always pick up the tab.
I also love investing in startups, emerging fund managers and other interesting business international opportunities. That’s the juice for me. And of course, the goal of all this, making sure I have the financial wherewithal to work with whoever, whenever and wherever I want.
So make sure you are willing to spend the money on the awesome conferences or mastermind groups. It’s an investment. I’ve gotten tremendous value at relatively expensive events like Capital Camp or Leveling up Masterminds (LA & Miami) meetings and learning from like-minded people. It’s ultimately an investment in your personal growth as a businessperson and tax deductible as a business owner to boot.
Because of this, I’m learning to spend the money more freely with an investor’s mindset, when it saves me time or prevents complexity and trouble. Time I can better use doing something else either profitable or more fun. Also this is with the understanding that money is recoverable but time is probably the world’s most perishable asset.
Pain Equals Future Success: Wisdom from Grim Hustle
I’ve gone through most of my life subconsciously avoiding pain and suffering. Basically trying to avoid being inconvenienced and chasing comfort. Because that was what I thought I was supposed to do. But all my biggest leaps of knowledge, understanding and wealth came when I tackled and embraced challenges directly. Or usually indirectly as my curiosity and naivety took me in that direction.
And when I think of the great men and women I admire, both alive or historically, they faced their challenges and took the pain. I only came to this conclusion, and dare I say, enlightenment, in the last year or two. And I finally and fully understand this now, especially after listening to Justin Waller and his much repeated aphorism: “You judge the size of man by the size of the problems they have.”
In fact, there is no better illustration than this video from Grim Hustle called
“Pain Equals Feature Success”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaEkmvEuki4
“Does Your Life Suck? Are you suffering? Are you pain? Good! You are on a good path. Suffering is the only way to the top. Pain is the only way to change. Obstacles are the only way to success.
American tv commercials made us believe everything in this life should be smooth and easy.
Teachers and counselors taught us we should not have aggressions and conflicts in life. You have been lied to. Go your way. And let it be an honorable way. A way to make your ancestors proud.
You will face pain on this way. Suffering, frustration, humiliation. Accept the pain, smile at the pain, embrace the pain. Pain is the gatekeeper of destiny. Pain is there to ask you one simple question: Do you really want to achieve your goals? Or are you just a talker?
Tell your pain wherever you want to go. Pain will build the stairway to the top.”
I couldn’t say this any better myself. So in the vein of ex-Navy SEAL, influencer and extreme sports champ, David Goggins: embrace the pain & suffering. Challenge and push yourself. If you are comfortable that means you are falling behind. Or worse, rotting. Your competition is not resting, nor should you.
Requoting Tim Ferriss: "The more voluntary suffering you build into your life, the less involuntary suffering will affect your life." Suffering leads to endurance and enlightenment. It’s the path to a well earned better life.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads December 3rd, 2023
“When you give joy to other people, you get more joy in return. You should give a good thought to happiness that you can give out.”— Eleanor Roosevelt
1. "To sum it all up, I believe there is a possibility threshold of intelligence beyond which you must optimize for some components of intelligence (or maybe for specific types of knowledge) because you can no longer optimize for generalized overall intelligence and push all the major dimensions of it forward.
What will this mean for investing?
It means if this begins to happen, investors, entrepreneurs, and executives, will need to understand the tradeoff boundaries. In other words, where is it best to make tradeoffs, to what end, and how? How do the fundamental limits that drive these tradeoffs map to use cases, technologies, data, and other aspects of the intelligence supply chain?
If this is true, it means building a superintelligence may not be a winner-take-all game."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/how-the-fundamental-limits-of-intelligence
2. "To its owner, a sports team is more than just a plaything. If you happen to have the billions it takes to acquire one, you presumably have a near-infinite number of ways to spend your money. By buying a team, an owner can reveal their inner winner — or make people forget how they made all that money in the first place.
If everything had gone according to plan, Steven A. Cohen might have been parading down the Canyon of Heroes this month. When he purchased the New York Mets in 2020 for a record-setting price of $2.4 billion, Cohen promised to restore his favorite team from childhood to glory, saying he would be disappointed if he did not bring it another World Series within “three to five years.” He then assembled the highest-paid roster in baseball history.
The ecstatic Mets nation treated the richest man in baseball like he was a free-spending folk hero. At 67, Cohen, a Stamford-based hedge-fund manager, has $14 billion according to Bloomberg, or maybe $19 billion if you believe Forbes, but at any rate, a whole lot of money — seemingly more than enough to procure a championship."
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/steve-cohen-mets-citi-field-queens-casino-bid.html
3. "DX (Developer Experience) will emerge as a key source of competitive advantage over the next decade and more.
UX emerged as a key competitive battleground in a world of many user interfaces (UIs) competing for the scarce resource of user attention.
DX is emerging as the next big battleground in a world of many application programming interfaces (APIs) competing for the scarce resource of developer commitment."
https://platforms.substack.com/p/dx-is-the-new-ux
4. Important discussion on good management in companies from one of the best.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dofw-YiBfZI
5. This is a deeply insightful conversation. Importance of Defensetech & Anduril. Thank goodness for Palmer Luckey.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kONhhKQi0pU
6. "So as an aside, how did Singapore get so rich? In fact, its development model is pretty similar to Ireland’s: a very small English-speaking country, a great education system, tons of high-skilled immigration, and an industrial policy that focuses relentlessly on attracting foreign direct investment. Singapore’s main investor is the U.S., for whose businesses Singapore acts as the “gateway” to Asia in much the same way Ireland is the “gateway” to Europe.
It’s not a model that can easily be copied by larger countries, of course, since the FDI has to come from somewhere. But Singapore has executed this small-country gameplan with amazing skill — even better, in many ways, than Ireland. (The fact that it has done this while also surviving in a rough geographic neighborhood, upholding racial diversity, and maintaining extremely low crime is even more impressive, but that’s a story for another day.)"
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/singapore-urbanism
7. "But the path to end this war does not only lead through the battlefield. We need to start thinking not just about helping Ukraine, but about defeating Russia—or, if you prefer different language, persuading Russia to leave by any means possible. If Russia is already fighting America and America’s allies on multiple fronts, through political funding, influence campaigns, and its links to other autocracies and terrorist organizations, then the U.S. and Europe need to fight back on multiple fronts too.
We should outcompete Russia for the scarce commodities needed to build weapons, block the software updates that they need to run their defense factories, look for ways to sabotage their production facilities. Russia used fewer weapons and less ammunition this year than it did last year. Our task should be to ensure that next year is worse.
But some of our money is needed too. Spending it now will produce savings down the line, and not just because we can prevent a catastrophe in Ukraine. By learning how to fight Russia, a sophisticated autocracy with global ambitions, we will be better prepared for later, larger conflicts, if there is ever a broader struggle with China or Iran. More important, by defeating Russia we might be able to stop those larger conflicts before they begin. The goal in Ukraine should be to end Russia’s brutish invasion—and to deter others from launching another one somewhere else."
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/11/us-ukraine-support-putin-defeat/675953/
8. Good articulation of the counter to Zeihan's view on China.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XupM5_zHDbM
9. A breakdown of Jack Butcher's business empire.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH_h6TaxquI
10. This is a great framework. ACP: Audience, Community, Product. Ryan Holiday using this for his media empire.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLzrBb66C9M
11. This is a good thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJfDKlnWYuA
12. "America’s regional posture does have weaknesses. Washington’s lack of an ambitious trade agenda is a handicap. Its relationship with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and some of its members also has underperformed.
And yet, for all its imperfections and the myriad global challenges it confronts, the United States still finds itself in a strong position. It is still where people from around the world turn when crises erupt. It is where many people from around the world still seek to emigrate. America still maintains the world’s largest economy and strongest military, and by a sizeable margin.
None of this is meant to suggest that Taiwan’s relationship with America is risk-free, especially when a US administration acts recklessly. But there is a risk for Taiwan in not aligning with a United States that is resilient and knows what it is doing externally."
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2023/11/13/2003809077
13. "The common thread in all these stories is that digital technologies that create order in autocracies are simultaneously creating chaos in democracies. Of course, it’s still far too early to tell if this pattern will persist — the effects of the printing press in 1980 were very different from its effects in 1580. But I’m very uneasy about the direction in which things are trending. A world where only totalitarian governments can lever technology to their advantage is not one I would enjoy living in."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-super-scary-theory-of-the-21st-a3a
14. "In essence, the establishment of international charter cities in Ukraine could herald a new paradigm in geopolitical dynamics, where economic interdependence fosters stability and peace. These cities, with their innovative approaches to governance, investment, and cultural integration, could become pivotal in reshaping Ukraine's role on the global stage.
As they grow and thrive, they will not only bolster Ukraine's economy but also contribute to a more interconnected and harmonious world order. This vision of Ukraine, transformed into a mosaic of thriving international hubs, offers a glimpse into a future where cooperation and progress triumph over conflict and division, setting a precedent for generations to come."
https://www.greetingsfromthefuture.org/p/game-changer-for-ukraine
15. Good teardown on a budding media empire.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mVnQ4wn0_c
16. "We’re well aware that there is a cohort of people online hoping to “return to the past”.This is no different than praying for a time machine. It doesn’t exist and never will. Ignore every single person who tells you to “stop selling products that promote the problem”. This is a loser mentality since you are fighting reality. If you want to make it financially, spotting trends and investing your time and energy into them is the way to do it!
Once you accept that as reality, you’ll be well positioned to re-orient your headspace for the future. You’re not going to see kids playing sports outside for 6 hours a day (like you did in the 80s).
You’re going to see kids plugged into their computers 24/7/365.
Don’t Fight Reality!
We realize a lot of these trends are not exciting. People spending more money on pets than baby clothing is a weird trend. That said, there is nothing you can do to stop it.
Remember that the trend is not what you should do, it is something that you should accept as the future and reality. You don’t need to participate in any of the trends, however, you will be in the minority. The vast majority will fall into the categories listed above. There is a reason why OnlyFans is constantly growing."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/future-of-social-life-in-the-2020s
17. “Listen, I don’t care if she’s there or not,” says Chuck. “No puffery, no hyperbole: That is one badass woman. She is smart, sharp. Dude, nothing but admiration for her. She works her ass off. Have you spent the day with her? Her schedule is ridiculous. It’s like two people. You know what’s the coolest thing, though? It’s a sneaky smart. Because what we do together is so 180 degrees from the public persona thing you see in the photographs and stuff. I wish more people could see through the glam.”
https://www.gq.com/story/kim-kardashian-men-of-the-year-cover-2023
18. "Seed has seen an influx of multi-stage and late-stage investors moving earlier. When late-stage is unattractive, Seed becomes more compelling by comparison. First, venture investors need to spend their time doing something.
And late-stage isn’t really an option right now. But Seed also offers upside with limited downside: if things work, multi-stage firms can lead future rounds and buy up more ownership. If things don’t work, firms don’t lose that much capital.
For a smaller fund like mine, this becomes a point of differentiation with founders: a $1M check doesn’t matter much to a $3B fund, but it matters a lot to me.
This manifests in the amount of work a Seed firm will do for a founder compared to a multi-stage firm. All multi-stage firms aren’t the same, of course; many treat Seed with conviction and roll up their sleeves. But this is the broader trend, and many firms do treat Seed this way. Seed is the most “artisanal” of any investment round, yet is being treated by many like financial option value.
While Seed valuations and round sizes haven’t corrected, the number of deals has slumped. We’re at a 12-quarter low in terms of deal activity."
https://www.digitalnative.tech/p/seed-investing-the-state-of-the-union
19. "True influence/authority are not products of speed, but of making each communication significant. They are also key elements for businesses, bloggers and marketers in a world drowning in information.
Here’s why: each day, in every niche, there is fierce, cutthroat competition for attention. While there are increasing numbers sharing greater volumes of ideas in various channels and platforms competing for fleeting attention spans — now armed with AI — many view the landscape with the philosophy that more is better. If you think like that, you’re wrong.
The coming backlash is against the noise. Any shiny new tools are fun, and people subscribe to new streams and users in a carefree manner as they join new networks, connect with people and see excitement surrounding them. Yet attention is finite, and slowly every user realizes it is not about getting every new thing right now to scarf down information like Kirby, it is about finding and connecting with what is meaningful."
https://www.hottakes.space/p/prepare-for-the-coming-content-backlash
20. "Even in the earliest days of a startup, if you’re building something of genuine value, there are likely customers who are ready (and eager) to buy. Learning how to identify buying signals and simplifying your buying process in order to make it easy for those customers to pay you is essential to capturing as much early value as you can."
https://chrisneumann.com/blog/make-it-easy-for-customers-to-pay-you
21. "Don’t: Argue that war machines somehow make war humane or that restricting WAI keeps war “human.” Don’t romanticize this. War is hell, and history is littered with well-intentioned inventors trying to make war more humane through deadly inventions. Nor, however, does handing a robot a machine gun somehow make the apocalypse.
As a society, we’ve been reliant on AI narratives driven by hysteria and science fiction for decades with little real-world data to push back on it. That is going to change very soon, and I think you’ll see that while warbot can be a force multiplier, it’s not going to be a silver bullet for combat especially as the technology proliferates around the world.
In fact, the most destructive employment of AI on the battlefield would be if we held ourselves to an arms control treaty that our rivals did not. The PRC in particular has a long track record of signing agreements and then blowing them off as soon as they get what they want. When the missiles start flying, I don’t want to be the only guy without a warbot fighting by his side."
https://www.breakingbeijing.com/p/dont-ban-the-war-bots
22. Learning from one of the top VCs: Thrive Capital.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3UCFuSghdc&t=46s
23. "Hollywood has saturated the market with look-alike movies. Their pipeline of films is now exploding like the Nord Stream, but with this difference—studios are still sitting on a huge pile of future bombs.
And what does a studio do with a bomb on its hands?
They have four options—and they are four kinds of ugly
You delay the film, hoping for a better market environment in the future.
You send it back for rewriting and more filming
You cancel it entirely, and write off the investment
You release it—sinking another $50 million, more or less, into marketing—and then watch it collapse at the box office.
Walt Disney may have built his company on creativity, but his successors have replaced it with an empire based entirely on brand extensions. These are now crumbling."
https://www.honest-broker.com/p/how-to-kill-a-superhero
24. Justin Waller is the man!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i654fxtQW4U
25. Love Justin Waller, so much to learn from him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaNEHakXpUE
26. Wow, Patrick Bet David. An amazing interview. So many insights here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMPLCie1G_I
27. "I do sense that good investors that survive and thrive in venture are coming to their senses and the best part of the venture markets will continue to be reasonably priced (not Y Combinator) seed stage investing.
For great returns, the best seed investors will not just put money to work right now, but will focus on the right founders and sectors and deploy at the prices that create optionality for exits."
https://www.howardlindzon.com/p/no-wall-worry-climb-venture-marketsand-customer-limited-partner
28. Great conversation as always. SMBs will be the beneficiary of AI tools in the long run.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFyZnUT_BEc
29. "With 50-plus countries (the number is growing all the time – the Czech Republic is one of the latest) enticing digital nomads with a visa typically lasting a year or longer, the ability to work from anywhere has become a more appetising proposition – especially with the cost of living crisis hitting pockets hard in the UK. It has really taken off after the coronavirus pandemic.
As the UK heads into winter, a fair few people will be mulling over the idea of setting up shop in another part of the world for a spell."
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/nov/04/digital-nomads-work-remotely-tech-visas
30. Didn't know Dean Philipps before this but this was really enlightening. I was impressed with him as a Presidential candidate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hh8lcoJ1NA
31. Lots of learning here from Garry. He is not just a great investor but a great creator as well. He is also a good man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5qAKbFLDw8
32. Good view on what’s happening in the seed stage & Series A.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uht9zOeEkFM
33. Another great summary of the Open AI saga from last weekend.
Building in Public and Showing Your Receipts: Differentiation in the Age of Grifters
Social media has been a boon and curse. We get a glimpse of worlds we never would have had access to in prior decades. So many new awesome people to learn from but also lots of frauds. I’d even include the influencers selling classes online but whose only business accomplishments are taking Instagram or videos of their fake luxurious lifestyles via rented villas, jets and expensive watches.
I can’t tell you how many tech startup founders in the last decade I know who show up on big tech conference stages, on podcast interviews or who even have their own youtube channels bragging about being multiple exit founders. I would never rat them out but “MOFO, I was on your cap table a few times and those exits were non-existent or negative.” I’m all for “fake it till you make it” but there is a very thin line between exaggeration and lying.
The alternative. Build in public. Whatever you think of Iman Gadzhi, he has been at this for the last 10 years, hustling & building businesses. The crazy thing is he has also documented all of this on his various social media channels as well. He started his Youtube channel in 2015. He built an advertising agency business in his teens, then expanded to edtech, crypto and other software businesses as well as investing. He is credible because it’s all been documented online.
@Kp who was known for coining the term: “Building in Public” is a great success story. His definition: “the practice of creating content & sharing stories with openness and transparency in order to attract like-minded people and nurture those relationships.”
It helps you define your niche and act as a lighthouse for your tribe.
More importantly, not only are you documenting your journey, you have to show the results. As Justin Waller says, “show your receipts”. Actual proof. Both success but just as important are your failures too. No one trusts someone too perfect. It’s okay to show your warts and all. Humans are imperfect and we are naturally attracted to this.
This is how you build a real brand and trust. Through authenticity. That and doing the hard work and backing up your claims. This will eventually distinguish you from all the fakers and noise out there.
Parallels in History: America in 2023=Late Roman Republic
I love history and I love reading history books. I recall being 9 years old and finding a history book at school in the back of the class. It was all about Greek and Roman history, I was entranced and could not put that book down.
This led to my love affair with reading and history and what almost turned into an academic career pursuing this. I took a history degree at University and did summer school at the excellent Cambridge University. The primus inter pares (first among equals) among colleges for studying history.
Surprisingly my history studies have been incredibly helpful and lucrative in my business career. It’s helped me understand the backgrounds and cultures of the places I visit and invest in. It helps an investor understand cycles: both up and down. As Mark Twain famously wrote: “History doesn’t repeat itself but it certainly rhymes”.
Which leads me to my observation about America and the world in 2023. I recommend reading “The Storm before the Storm” by Duncan & “Rubicon” by Holland, which are excellent narratives on the fall of the Roman Republic. The similarities to present day America are shocking.
Picture a place that was once rich, powerful, energized, ambitious; astride a massive trading empire, backed by the most powerful army and navy in the world having vanquished any of their closest competitors. Yet due to their great dominance and riches, the people become complacent, comfortable and pursue frivolous pursuits. Wealth inequality grows. The political elites stop thinking of the greater good and challenge each other in ever more vicious & unscrupulous methods.
Sound familiar? This describes Rome but it can easily also describe the present day USA. The big difference is we have a peer competitor in China & their now lackey Russia actively undermining us. We are so distracted internally, with a populace’s morale & trust sapped by Forever Wars in the Middle East, culture wars raging and run by an aging, venal and or incompetent political class. The American people are tired, distracted and apathetic. The only thing that will wake everyone up is pain or a massive military defeat. Here is hoping that this does not get to that.
I used to rage at this and even feel some despair. But my realization was that I can’t do much about any of this. I’ve learned to be stoic and focus on what I can control. All I can do is get physically fit, financially fit, diversify assets and locations. Take care of my family. Build close ties to people around me in my network, my neighborhood and be in a position to help them. Vote with my dollars into companies and businesses that support my values and that support & protect America. And then leave the rest to God.
Besides, I’d never bet against an American turn around even though it seems grim now, as many of the Roman Republic’s enemies found out the hard way.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads November 26th, 2023
“Creativity takes courage.” —Henri Matisse
"Bansko's growing digital nomad population is at its most visible during the festival, but that's only half the story. According to online resource Nomad List, the town is the world's "most-consistently growing remote work hub" of the last five years. Since 2018, it has grown by 231%, more than Warsaw, Madrid and tech media darling Tallinn.
This seems somewhat anomalous: surveys suggest digital nomads generally favour coastal cities (Lisbon, Barcelona), islands and beach destinations (Madeira, the Canaries, Bali). So, why are more and more people heading for a small inland mountain resort in Bulgaria?"
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20231003-bansko-bulgarias-unlikely-new-digital-nomad-hub
2. Ohio is well positioned for the future. Manufacturing is back in America. More work to be done though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yr0VQxfjAQI
3. Hmmm.....
"Adam Neumann is rich thanks to WeWork. Now, he has a chance to buy something on the cheap that he once held dear.
Neumann reportedly made about $770 million when the office space company went public via a special purpose acquisition vehicle in October 2021. And he sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stock before that. (It’s worth remembering that he made a fortune while many employees and shareholders saw their positions decimated as WeWork’s value fell.)
Now that WeWork has filed for bankruptcy protection, will the company’s wealthy and infamous founder tap some of that fortune to rescue the brand that he willed into being by sheer force of personality?
Today, one former WeWork executive texted me that he thought Neumann would try to reclaim the company he founded in 2010."
https://www.newcomer.co/p/will-adam-neumann-rescue-wework
4. "There is no one doing more interesting work, more quickly than OpenAI right now. The company’s rate of progress is staggering, and it doesn’t look to be slowing down any time soon. At this conference, the word on the street was that OpenAI is a talent juggernaut, and that it feels very much like Stripe in its prime. (In fact, I’ve heard that OpenAI has hired a lot of people who used to work at Stripe.)
The energy in the room was palpable. I don’t think there’s a bigger or more interesting story in technology. The coming months and years are going to be wild."
https://every.to/chain-of-thought/what-i-saw-at-openai-s-developer-day
5. Founder-operator led fund for Southern Europe. It's much needed.
6. This is an excellent discussion this week on the OpenAI developments and big changes in the VC industry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2Oph1zAELo
7. This is an excellent discussion. Pomp is a friend and is building a media empire in an incredibly smart way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oGXQab1oJQ
8. An excellent episode with lots of interesting perspectives on AI and the various key players. Also SBF.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6n1PSW9do0
9. "The EUR 925m acquisition required Allegro to issue new stock and take on some debt, but in return it got access to another 32m consumers across five countries, 4.7m of whom were already active users of the various sites.
Suddenly, Allegro was the number #1 or #2 e-commerce player in not one but four countries of the region, and it got a less established but growing position in a further two countries. These new markets also came with a bigger catch-up potential than Allegro's home market: below 8% e-commerce market penetration, compared to 11% in Poland. Eventually, Central and Eastern European consumers will give in to the convenience and price advantages of online shopping to the same degree as consumers elsewhere (in the UK, 25% of all retail sales are done online).
Plus, there is the ongoing overall economic growth aspect. As readers of my recent feature about Hungary will know, Central and Eastern European countries are generally growing at a faster rate than their counterparts in the Western half of the European Union.
In summary, Allegro has the chance to grow its markets to two to three times the current size, and backed by faster underlying organic growth.
After taking a look at it from a 33,000-foot perspective, it appears like the combination of structural growth and a strong market position makes Allegro worth doing a bit more homework (which you should always do before deciding on an investment!)."
10. "Our gurl Yellen publicly supports her boss, but in private she is scrambling to ensure the empire can issue debt at an affordable price to keep the children fed. Who are the children? Baby boomers who are getting old, sick, and need an ever-increasing amount of healthcare goods and other entitlements. The military-industrial complex needs to be fed an ever-expanding defence budget to produce more bullets and bombs. Interest to rich savers needs to be paid so that promises are kept to hodlers of debt.
Yellen might be a bad bitch, but the market ain’t buying what she is selling. Yields on long-end treasury debt (maturities >10-years) are rising faster than short-end yields (maturities <2-years). This presents a deadly problem to the financial system called the “bear steepener”.
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/bad-gurl
11. Brad Gerstner is one of the best tech investors in the world period.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyHRj_WxJx4
12. An incredible conversation here on Venture capital from some of the best in the business. Benchmark Capital.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsGJr_NKEOM&t=1s
13. "Meanwhile, under this onslaught of Russian and Chinese messaging, the U.S. government stands serenely aloof from the fray. Administration officials will give speeches and pen the occasional op-ed in Foreign Affairs, government officials make anodyne tweets, and the Voice of America is still putting out articles that no one reads, but the kind of coordinated forceful official advocacy of liberal values that we saw under FDR is considered propaganda to be avoided at all cost.
It should be obvious that this is a recipe for liberalism’s utter defeat. Imagine if a country being invaded by a conquering army declared that government shouldn’t get involved in violence, and outsourced the defense of the nation to private citizens with homemade guns? That is effectively what the U.S. government is doing by ceding the information sphere to foreign governments and private citizens. We are so afraid of being propagandists that we are refusing to counter the efforts of powers who have no such fear.
The U.S. government needs to get back into the information warfare game.
But simply sitting back and trusting in the Marketplace of Ideas to reach an optimal equilibrium is no longer a viable option for a liberal society. Totalitarian powers are on the march, and social media gives them the opportunity to reach American hearts and minds more directly than ever before.
One of our government’s essential functions is to guard us against such powers. If we force it to abnegate that function, mainlining totalitarian propaganda out of fear of creating our own, we’re all a bunch of suckers."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/liberalism-is-losing-the-information
14. "With 37 million people, Saudi Arabia is the 40th most populous country, trailing Ethiopia, Myanmar, and Morocco. The ocean of accessible oil beneath its desert makes it arguably the greatest swing vote in the world. Venezuela has greater reserves, and Iran and Canada are in the same class, but the Saudis’ wealth carries more weight. They understand they sit at the pivot point — able to swing east or west.
The most visible facet of their strategy is the normalization of relations with Iran in the face of proxy wars in Syria and Yemen while edging closer to diplomatic relations with Israel. The Iran connection was facilitated by China, with whom the Saudis are forging closer ties. (China is the largest importer of Saudi oil.) All the while, the Kingdom is still maintaining its tight relationship with the United States.
The measured, steady liberalization of Saudi Arabia, which MBS is undertaking at some riskto his power within the ruling family, is, I believe, a deft foreign policy maneuver. MBS didn’t spend $250 billion to win the 2034 World Cup, but to become the world’s soccer mom. The Kingdom is gaining influence, and the U.S. would be well served to counter China’s rapidly improving ties with Saudi — just as the Kingdom’s best post-Gaza move would be to normalize relations with Israel. That this is even feasible (it was in the works pre-October 7) is a function of MBS’s pivot from Islamism to capitalism. Like him or not, MBS might be one of the best things to happen to the West in a decade.
The Kingdom is not alone. Turkey has emerged as Europe’s swing player in recent years, extracting concessions on its priorities to accept Finland and Sweden into NATO, even as it buys Russian military equipment. Turkey’s stance in the pivot comes naturally; it is the geographic and cultural bridge between Europe and the Middle East. Istanbul also boasts a great Soho House. But I digress."
https://www.profgalloway.com/swingers/
15. A good talk with Jared Kushner, I am definitely becoming a fan of his. Very rational and insightful conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EFk40AbO94
16. "In summary, 2024 will see a ramp up of AI, powering tech and business market transitions at a speed we’d never seen before. This will result in many winners and losers, ranging from countries and economies to corporations and startups. I am optimistic that we are going to bypass a recession, inflation will come back under control, and companies will start to invest in growth again – despite interest rates remaining higher for longer than desired.
So, I think 2024 will be a better year than most expect but I caveat this with concern for the current geopolitical climate, as this is the real wildcard here, maybe more than any other time in recent history."
https://theinnovator.news/john-chambers-2024-predictions/
17. "In a challenging market where new customers are a challenge, how does a company grow? Increase price & cross-sell."
https://tomtunguz.com/vendr-q3-report/
18. "Thorp beat the casinos at Blackjack and Roulette, set up the first market neutral hedge fund, Princeton Newport Partners, and pioneered strategies like convertible arbitrage.1 Before he shut down PNP, he was basically turning it into the first multi-strategy hedge fund (and later invested in the most prominent one, Citadel). If I had to summarize his story, it would be ‘genius2 becomes obsessed with games, repeatedly finds edge, survives, wins, and leaves to enjoy life.’"
https://alchemy.substack.com/p/ed-thorp-survival-of-the-fittest
19. "Walt Whitman wrote, “America…counts…for her justification and success…almost entirely on the future. . . For our New World I consider far less important for what it has done, or what it is, than for results to come.”
San Francisco, too, counts for its justification entirely on the future. It is a synecdoche for America. The future is what is important. This is its sin and its charm, its peril and its undeniable promise.
In San Francisco, the future, too, is hot and cold. When the next round closes, the sun is on your face. When the acquihire falls through, the shade is cold as ice. On Monday, AGI and universal prosperity are at hand. On Tuesday, apocalyptic doom looms, or worse, stagnation—progress’s dreaded asymptote. Feast or famine. Fever is the nature of the future."
https://every.to/chain-of-thought/a-day-at-the-center-of-the-ai-boom
20. "I have provided you with sufficient data to show you that people need our help, so we must rise to the challenge—isn’t that the whole point of Fintech?
There is ample business opportunity in providing value to customers of financial products. But if benevolence does not compel you enough, consider the massive economic opportunity that exists.
Not long ago both public and private markets understood how massive that opportunity was…and then the reckoning came. It appears that the pendulum has swung probably too far in the other direction. Remember, be greedy when others are fearful."
https://www.chaos-engineering.dev/p/our-money-in-data
21. "Today, I see similar forces driving American politics into similarly shocking outcomes. Americans are abandoning politics and the political parties. Politicians are now attacking the party system from the inside. As a result, the United States may be about to elect a President who is independent of the existing two parties while simultaneously bringing the party system itself to an end."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/independents-day-and-the-7th-party
22. Lots of insights here on living well and how to deal with money and the future. Really worth listening to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InQb76J9-HY
23. This seems to be a naive and complacent view. Hope they are right.
"For all these reasons, the consensus I heard was that China will not make any military moves on Taiwan anytime soon. It’s just too messy, too noisy, and too likely to cause disorder and chaos — all of which the PRC disdains.
While many in Taipei conceded that Taiwan’s situation parallels that of Ukraine’s in some ways, they did not feel the situation was entirely analogous. Even as Putin amassed troops and materiel along Ukraine’s border in early 2022, the consensus in Kyiv was that Russia would not invade, and that the moves amounted to an empty threat.
By contrast, those in Taipei point to the fact that any serious effort to mount a military takeover of Taiwan would require preparation up to at least a year in advance. While China has increased its provocations in the South China Sea, they seem primarily intended to project a sense of strength and looming menace, amounting to inexpensive information warfare operations. But there is no sign that a major military operation is forthcoming anytime soon. However, there was at least some sense that if Ukraine did succumb to Putin’s invasion, Xi and the CCP may accelerate efforts to absorb Taiwan."
https://washingtonspectator.org/reality-in-taiwan-differs-from-perception-in-dc/
24. "Lessons Learned
— If you’re in regulated market, often the game is rigged by incumbents
Understand Rent Seeking and Regulatory Capture
You need a lobbying/government relations strategy from day one
— Choose VCs who understand how to play the game not those who hope it stays away
— The CEO needs to get out of the building to understand the regulatory ecosystem
CEO and board need to be in sync about the learning and strategy
— Hire initial lobbyists (but learn from them, not just outsource to them)
As the company gets larger staff an internal public affairs group to manage the lobbying effort
— If you figure out the regulatory game, it can be your defensible moat"
25. "Note: You can have the perfect plan and all the skill in the world and still fail. Sometimes, life is just bullshit. You have to be able to take that data, recalibrate and attack again. Don’t overextend yourself so that the inevitable hits that you do take are not catastrophic."
https://www.bowtiedhitman.com/p/on-planning
26. "Once entrepreneurs achieve product-market fit and have the start of a repeatable business model, they should undertake the 10X exercise. Thinking through what the business would look like at 10 times the scale, 10 times the revenue, and 10 times the customers is crucial. Going through this exercise will help foresee some of the challenges, start conversations on potentially challenging elements of the business, and overall help the entrepreneur orient more towards a long-term horizon."
https://davidcummings.org/2023/11/11/the-10x-exercise-for-entrepreneurs/
27. "So much of the world has become short-sighted, focused on profit margins and earnings in the next quarter, maybe two (what are you, Warren Buffett?) Personally, we're centered around immediate satisfaction, status, and dopamine. We've built our stories, our values, our heroes, and our ambitions to be centered around things that, very often, will not last.
Original thinking comes from casting off the myopic mythologies that are institutions have increasingly become built on and, instead, ideating new institutions that should get built up. What are the organizations that you want organizing the people, places, and things around us? And then do what you can with what time, talents, and energy you have, to bring those institutions to bear.
We need new stories that will drive us, and that will outlast us."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/the-bubble-brains-of-venture-capital
28. "While western democracies were involved in these long duration but low intensity conflicts, emerging competitors such as China and Russia became richer developed new modes of competing with the West. These new approaches broadened the conception of national security and embraced all elements of national power in strategic competition.
Their new strategies were designed to play out over longer periods of time than Western nations and governments might otherwise prefer. They developed forms of competition that exploited western predilections for short war, through political warfare, lawfare and unrestricted warfare.
Western nations had begun the slow process of strategic adaptation required to address these Russian and Chinese strategies in the wake of Iraq and Afghanistan when the war in Ukraine forced a reappraisal of modern war. It saw the return of high intensity and large-scale war, as well as long duration conflicts. This was a strategic surprise for Western politicians whose approach to strategic risk management over the previous decades had assumed away the need for the capacity for large scale mobilization of people and industrial capacity.
Countries like China and Russia were now exploiting time – especially Western impatience - in the development of their strategic concepts for competing against the United States and other democracies."
https://mickryan.substack.com/p/the-clock-is-always-ticking
29. "I see so many entrepreneurs falling into the trap of hyper complacency, from investors telling them what their ego wants to hear, promising the world to them, and making them shiny introductions that are just too soon or, down the line, worthless.
Search for tough love from your investors, not blindless passion. Expect from them brutal honesty with rational compassion, not blindless support. Ask for real perspective, not ordinary thinking. Look for what’s in-depth, not just at the surface."
https://2lr.substack.com/p/hyper-complacent
30. This seems like a nightmare. Newsom is awful. So is Xi btw.
"In advance of Xi’s visit, Newsom just held up a hand and rolled up SF’s seemingly permanent homeless encampments. He spent the political capital to do this, overriding all the Democrats paid by the city to feed drugs to addicts. Of course, Newsom could have done this at any time2 to the homeless industrial complex, but why now? Because their local business model is temporarily less important than his global power model: the question of how to hold onto power for his Party when his country is in decline.
If Newsom pulls it off, we may soon see rapprochement between the farthest culturally left party in the world (the ultra-woke American Democrats) and the farthest culturally right party in the world (the ultra-nationalist Chinese Communists). That is, after the last few years of kicking and screaming, the declining Democrats may actually settle for a power-sharing agreement with the Communists to become their allies — and perhaps eventually their clients. At least, that’s certainly what Chinese state-run media seems to think of Newsom’s visit!"
https://balajis.com/p/only-newsom-can-go-to-china
31. "The Dollar is the world reserve currency. This meant it would be used in international trade, as central bank forex reserves, to settle financial transactions, and to borrow and lend dollar loans offshore (Eurodollar). However, the rest of the world lacked a crucial factor- the ability to generate dollars.
The current consensus among macroeconomists is the TINA doctrine- There Is No Alternative. Russia is a commodity exporter (current account surplus), which would need to be switched into deficits to be a reserve currency. China has a closed capital account. India does not have a deep enough bond market. South Africa is politically unstable. None of the above have good enough rule of law.
As Brent Johnson points out, the U.S. has deep and liquid bond markets, rule of law, a sophisticated financial and monetary system, and a gargantuan military to enforce the dollar system- basically everything one could want. This is the system we are stuck in."
https://dollarendgame.substack.com/p/bitcoin-solves-triffins-dilemma
32. "Eiseman is the person to ask. She’s directed the institute since 1985. She’s been called the international guru of color. Her colleagues have called her “Ms. Color in America.”
Slight and bespectacled, with a bob that rivals Anna Wintour’s, Eiseman says picking a favorite color is like picking a favorite child: She can’t.
But she does have to choose. Once a year, she’s tasked with summing up the entire world, and all its complexities, in a single color.
Every year, she oversees the brand’s wildly successful Color of the Year campaign, unveiled in early December. She turns one color into a celebrity, and watches as consumers around the world pull out their wallets for the results.
Back in 1994, trend forecaster and writer James Woudhuysen took a big swing. “Whoever controls color, controls the world,” he wrote in Marketing magazine. That was before the era of internet dominance, but you get the idea."
https://thehustle.co/who-chooses-the-worlds-color-of-the-year/
33. The story of cultish and ultra-expensive cool grocery store Erewhon. Worth visiting.
https://www.thecut.com/article/erewhon-smoothie-boston-los-angeles-history.html
Wear Your Scars with Pride: Experience is Everything
It’s weird to be a relatively old guy in Silicon Valley. A place that is driven by youthful ideas and youthful ambition and energy. A place driven by fast and tremendous change. And it’s definitely age-ist.
But there are benefits of being the older dude who has been through the cycles. The crazy booms and the painful busts. And having survived them too. History is a great tool to understand, cope and dare I say it, even thrive.
I admit there are days I wish I was 25 years old again. To have the energy and bright years ahead of me. And to have the time to compete against all the young brilliant smart kids I meet here. A sense of envy and regret from not knowing what I know now earlier and not taking action earlier.
But I’m eventually able to shake it off. I realize we all have our own paths to take. Entrepreneurship was just not a career path when I was growing up. I grew up in an academic household and was just not aware, nor did I have the right mental frame to do this when I started off. Which is why I am glad I left Canada. It got me into the right circles to find my tribe and path.
I’ve done all the crap I was supposed to do coming the way up. I’ve worked with awful people and learned to tolerate the indignity. I’ve done the stupid projects for money. But most importantly, I’ve learned tremendous lessons all along the way. Net net: I grew & still strive to grow even more.
Now because of my convoluted career and journey, I feel like I’ve earned my way to where I am. A life that I’ve wanted for a long time. Travel, books, building, investing and advising & working with interesting, ambitious and Intelligent people I respect. And to be a role model worthy of learning from in a life of generosity and service to others.
Jason Momoa said it best recently in an interview in Men’s Health magazine a few months back.
“I’m doing everything that I want to do, everything that I’m designed to do. And you’ve got to do that. I want my children to know that and do that. I worked for a very long time when they were young doing shit I didn’t want to do to put food on the table.
And now? You should only work with the people you wanna work with. You should create with the people you wanna create with. And if you’re not, then you got one shot in this life—you gotta get the fuck out. Whatever situation you’re in, you gotta find your path, you know?”
I’ve lived a great adventure all around the world. Finding my fortune and enjoying the ride along the way (most of the time :)) I pinch myself everyday. I wish this for you all as well.
Be an Askhole: Curiosity is King
For someone who prides himself on being intelligent, I tend to be dumb and talk too much. I think I’m smart and interesting but that’s probably my arrogance and ego talking.
They say you have two ears and one mouth. Use them in the same ratio. I try to remember and remind myself of this all the time.
Ideas happen when you keep your door open. Talking too much is keeping your door closed.
Yes, of course, do travel, read a lot and explore new ideas. But the way to fine tune these ideas is just to talk to everyone and anyone. Some of my best conversations were not intentional and very accidental. And they help you sharpen your thoughts as you get reactions and feedback to what you say. In fact writing online and Twitter are great ways to do this. If someone disagrees you hear very quickly.
So a good rule in life: Shut your mouth and ask good questions. This is how you learn & properly fulfill your curiosity. And as Dale Carnegie once said: “If you want to be interesting, be interested”
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads November 19th, 2023
“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” —Winston Churchill
"We all hear it. All the time. “Make onboarding simpler! Get people into your product as fast as possible! Make it free! You'll figure out how to monetize later!”. It makes sense. And it obviously works for some. It just didn’t work for us.
We believe that making people invest time, commit to a trial, and put skin in the game will help you build a more engaged user base. This friction weeds out the people who aren’t serious and creates a sense of urgency. It also forces you to focus on the customers and users that really matter."
https://wraptext.equals.com/the-fallacy-of-freemium-in-saas/
2. "You may have heard Noam Wasserman’s “Rich or King” choice: Company founders are either in it for the money (“Rich”) or in it to build a lifestyle and personal identity (“King”). FogCreek and 37signals are built to be “King;” all venture-funded companies are built to be “Rich.”
Noam says that successful founders make the “Rich or King” decision up front, and that though it doesn’t matter which path you take, you must be consistent in your actions. You can’t mix “be king” tactics with “get rich” end goals.
In short, although the goal was “Rich,” I achieved it by behaving like the goal was “King.” I don’t know why people find this contradictory; after all, acting like “King” means building a long-term, sustainable business, and that’s exactly the kind of business that gets acquired."
https://longform.asmartbear.com/rich-vs-king-sold-company
3. "In other words, there are basically four Global Souths. I think I’ll give them names:
The mostly-developed countries: Industrialized countries that are on the cusp of developed status, and are only thought of as “developing” for historical or political reasons. These include Turkey, Malaysia, and arguably China, Thailand and Mexico.
The industrializing countries: Rapidly industrializing countries that are still poor or middle-income but are growing fast. There include India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, and potentially the Philippines and Indonesia.
The resource exporters: Upper-middle-income countries that specialize in resource extraction. These include Brazil, Colombia, South Africa, Iran, Botswana, Namibia, Kazakhstan, and so on.
The poor countries: These countries mostly export natural resources but either don’t have enough of them to afford decent standards of living, or are plagued by war and/or poor governance. These include countries like Nigeria, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan, Sudan, and so on.
Every time a country moves from the “industrializing” category to the “mostly-developed” category, the old dividing lines between Global South and Global North become a bit less relevant."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/does-the-notion-of-a-global-south
4. "Carta, an otherwise boring company solving a mundane-if-important problem, managed to get itself in the news this past week for all the wrong reasons. The fiasco was the result of CEO Henry Ward writing a post on recent negative pressthat was presumably intended to inoculate his audience, but instead backfired spectacularly. "
https://kellblog.com/2023/10/28/four-lessons-from-the-carta-communications-train-wreck/
5. “It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy,” she says. “It has a cumulative, rich-get-richer effect, if you’ve managed it successfully.” Sales come and go, but a NYT bestseller bio line is forever."
https://thehustle.co/the-murky-math-of-the-new-york-times-bestsellers-list/
6. Long been a fan of global investor Jim Rogers.
Make sure you have different options in the world, especially now as we move from a unipolar world to a multipolar world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iZz1sSs92k
7. "It’s funny: five years ago, I had an interesting-sounding job that paid very well, a brand new charcoal gray Jeep Grand Cherokee Trailhawk, and an abundance of predictability. There was nothing that resembled any kind of tangible crisis, no looming personal apocalypse. Money certainly wasn’t an issue.
I also had no control over my existence. No influence over the direction of my life. No ability to actualize what I really wanted. I spent much of that period thinking about how to kill myself.
Today, all I have is fear, uncertainty, and the threat of insolvency. This has objectively been one of the most challenging experiences of my life. But in many ways my existence has felt easier, or at least more optimistic, than five years ago. How could that be?
The answer is that I’m living a life that is mine.
My operating philosophy over the past few years has been that agency and self-sovereignty are the most important qualities we can cultivate in ourselves. My belief has been that when we develop a deep, genuine understanding of who we are and what we want and then learn to give ourselves permission to pursue that path, we show up as the best version of ourselves in the world and can fully engage with it. This imbues our relationships, our work, and our existence with a fundamental depth and meaning because we are acting from a place of authenticity.
But it’s easy to justify a belief system when things are going well. I wrote a lot about the transformative power of these ideas when the business was growing and life was relatively easy. Now that I’m confronted with a crisis, it’s a perfect time to ask: does my belief system hold up?
Well, I’m staring down the barrel of bankruptcy with no idea what comes next, and I have a better quality of life than I did when my bank account and 401(k) had big numbers with lots of zeros after them. So I’d say that’s a yes.
Living on my own terms has fundamentally transformed the texture of my existence. The fact that these are problems I’ve chosen, that they are part of what comes with the path I’ve consciously created, makes them worth the cost a hundred times over. It gives them an entirely different flavor.
Instead of being forced to deal with the challenges of circumstances that were decided for me, I’m grappling with adversity in an arena I’ve built. That’s the kind of life worth living: one in which I control the terms of my engagement with the world, regardless of what happens."
https://newsletter.pathlesspath.com/p/fixing-in-public-guest-post-by-alex
8. This is sad. Despite all the glamor and riches, we usually don't know what other people are dealing with in their life.
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-67253920
9. "Even though we have a pervasive tendency to hold self-serving views about ourselves, we believe our social lives are more impoverished than others.
Most of us think our “social CV” is worse than average.
Why is this?
Our standards are biased by extremely visible and prominent people. Even among our social circle, the people we pay most attention to are the popular ones. They set a benchmark in our minds for what other people are up to.
But the paper also found that people do in fact desire a richer social life. They wished they attended more parties, had more friends, dined out more frequently, had a larger social network, and communicated more often with their families.
Furthermore, when people believed that their social lives were more impoverished than others, they reported lower levels of life satisfaction.
Having a more realistic view of the lives of others can alleviate negative feelings brought on by comparing ourselves to the most extraverted and visible people we know."
https://www.robkhenderson.com/p/the-friendship-paradox-and-the-illusion
10. "Creators and advertisers are constantly in need of image content, and supply has grown to meet that demand; the volume of image content has steadily climbed for more than a decade. The number of photos shared over social media has tripled since 2013, with 14.1 billion images shared per day across WhatsApp, Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram as of October 2023. Even on video-first platforms like YouTube and TikTok, creators and advertisers rely on thumbnail images to get users to click on the video.
Not everyone can take breathtaking photos or draw photorealistic art, but anyone can type an idea for an image that AI can then generate. In its early days, this ability quickly attracted the interest of social media users; for example, Hank Green’“cat”thread on Twitter attracted over 100K likes. Outside of social media, “AI art generator” received an average of 864K searches per month globally from August 2022 to August 2023, while “stock photo” only achieved an average of 94K searches per month globally in the same period. Generative image AI is already being used to quickly produce concept art, make movie trailers, and even win art competitions.
Midjourney describes itself as an “independent research lab” known for producing a generative AI program that creates images based on text prompts. As the demand for online imagery continues to increase, Midjourney could offer a cheaper and more customized alternative to stock photography and reduce time spent on the brainstorming phase for contractors, game designers, and other artists alike."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/oops-i-did-it-again
11. "Israel now has been forced to look beyond deterrence. It has now concluded that it is dealing with an entity that has never truly been deterred and can’t be deterred in the future. Wilder elements in Israel may fantasise about pushing all the Gazans out of the territory but that is not a serious option. This where the other flaw in Israel’s past deterrence strategy becomes painfully evident. It has not been accompanied by a more positive political strategy.
The only long-term vision Israel offers is a Gaza without Hamas. The chaos and instability that would result if Gaza was turned into an ungovernable space without anyone in charge would serve nobody’s interests. A way will have to be found to fill the space.
The way that Israel has defined its objectives, success for Hamas simply requires surviving in a commanding position in Gaza. Even if is forced to evacuate its positions, Hamas will not disappear. It represents a strong political tradition in the Arab world and whatever happens to it over the coming weeks it will have the capacity to regenerate, and return to power if there is no alternative government in place."
https://samf.substack.com/p/israel-beyond-deterrence
12. "At the G20 Summit, President Biden, along with the leaders of India and Middle East and European nations, unveiled the India-Middle East-Europe Corridor: a project to link Europe and South Asia more closely together via the Middle East. As currently envisaged, IMEC would compromise of two corridors: an eastern one that connects India to the Gulf through sea lanes and northern one that connects Saudi Arabia to Europe through Jordan and Israel.
Once finished, IMEC would establish an efficient transit network that supplements existing transport routes for trade among participating states
Age-old overland and maritime routes around the Eurasian rimland have been and will continue to be reconceptualized. West Asia—the convergence of the Middle East and South Asia—is now being rebuilt as a critical geopolitical and geoeconomics space between Europe and the Indo-Pacific.
America is using its still-dominant global position to steer and influence the process of economic and geopolitical integration among the littoral states of the Eurasian supercontinent, in line with America’s interests. Equally important, it is a shared interest of the IMEC nations to build an integrated economic ecosystem around the Eurasian rimland that, by virtue of its existence, could contest China’s economic dominance in Eurasia.
For domestic social and political reasons, however, the United States can no longer afford to give concessions that many political leaders and voters believe hurt its heartland and middle class as part of its statecraft. In any case, America’s markets are already relatively open to many of its trade partners. IMEC aligns with the Biden administration's "Foreign Policy for the Middle Class," with Washington as a key driver, without resorting to market access as a bargaining chip for geopolitical and geoeconomic alignment."
https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/beyond-market-access
13. Excellent framework for looking at and building AI companies.
"As a vertical, point solution, you’ve now delivered successful unbundling.
Most 'disruption' of the status quo happens through unbundling. But most venture returns are realized through rebundling.
Fintechs specializing in one activity unbundle banks, Healthtech firms specializing in one aspect unbundle healthcare providers, and specialized energy startups unbundle utilities.
Yet, there is no sustainable value capture in unbundling. Unbundling unseats incumbents but doesn't create scalable and defensible value pools.
That is achieved through rebundling. Rebundling involves bundling multiple unbundled capabilities into a cohesive customer-centric offering.
Most important, the successful ‘rebundlers’ establish a hub position and gain primacy of user relationship.
Venture capital chases unbundling because unbundlers hold the promise of rebundling and capturing value. Yet, most venture money is lost because a tiny handful rebundle.
Square, Plaid, Stripe are a few of the unbundling fintechs that successfully rebundled and dominated one or more horizontal layers in the value chain. Most others fell by the wayside.
The winners in Gen AI will likewise need a path to successful rebundling."
https://platforms.substack.com/p/how-to-win-at-generative-ai
14. One of the best global macro discussions I've listened to for a while.
I don't agree with Arthur Hayes on many things but there are lots of interesting observations here.
Must listen to prepare for the big changes coming in the world geopolitically and economically.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-de-ZIA5ouo
15. Hmmm......this is a bit frightening yet it's happening. There is a matrix it seems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcfEZnG2zYo
16. "Data businesses are fiercely competitive, both with other data aggregators, but also with the other players in the value chain (such as the data sources), so moats are foundational to building a large data business. In fact, many of the best data businesses employ multiple of these moats and have several layers of defensibility.
In the decade ahead, there will be dozens more $1+ billion data businesses created, and thousands more created that won’t hit that level of success. The ones that succeed won’t just be the companies with the most comprehensive data or the most curation, but they’ll also require thoughtful strategies designed around strong network effects."
https://medium.com/@travismay/the-six-moats-of-data-businesses-01a69638c8f8
17. Solid interview on B2B enterprise sales for startups.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plH9quZ1Jug&t=2791s
18. "In sum, Asia wants and needs the U.S. to protect it. It needs U.S. military power and economic engagement, not to crush China, but to preserve the status quo that has worked so well. Developed Asian countries want to keep being rich and free, and developing Asian countries want to keep getting rich on their own, and to do this they need the U.S. to deter Xi Jinping from trying to upend the modern world’s greatest success story.
The Middle East is in basically the exact opposite situation.
The U.S. should therefore continue to maintain as light a presence in the Middle East as possible. This doesn’t mean we should withdraw completely. There are extreme cases where judicious, targeted applications of American power can prevent some of the catastrophes that regularly plague the region — protecting the Syrian Kurds from genocide, restraining Israel’s brutality toward the Palestinians, or helping Israel protect itself from wholesale destruction by Iran and its proxies.
But these should always be done with a minimum of force and money and attention, and always with an eye toward withdrawing again.
In Asia, meanwhile, the U.S. should be beefing up both our defensive power and our engagement with other countries. We need to accelerate the supply of defensive weapons to Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, India, and the Philippines, and to keep building and strengthening and expanding multilateral organizations like the Quad.
We need to re-engage economically by re-joining the modified TPP, and by creating a dense network of other economic agreements in Asia. And in general, we just need to pay a lot of attention to the region, making sure our allies and quasi-allies and potential allies know we’re there for the long haul, and won’t suddenly withdraw to go plunge into some foolish conflict in the Middle East."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/asia-is-much-more-important-to-us
19. "I’ve done a lot of cost cutting over the course of my career so I thought I’d share one key rule that sometimes gets overlooked when you’re in the thick of this process. Here’s the rule: no matter what you do, no matter how deep the cuts have to be, keep the company a great place to work for those who still work there (aka, the survivors)."
https://kellblog.com/2023/11/02/cut-costs-the-smart-way/
20. "Napkin-math suggests quotas should increase about 20%."
https://tomtunguz.com/how-much-should-quotas-increase-next-year/
21. "And what have Iran, Russia and Hamas in common? And come to think of it, China and North Korea? Look at Armita Geravand. Consider the Russian atrocities committed in Ukraine. And yes, look at how members of Israel’s parliament felt after a private showing of the Hamas GoPro-captured pogrom.
All these nations are united in a total and utter disregard for humanity, even their own people are routinely thrown under the bus. It is a level of institutionalized violence and abuse the likes of which we thought we would never see again. That is the key commonality and that is what we are up against."
https://pieterdorsman.substack.com/p/connecting-the-dots
22. "A founder who has a handful of venture-backed friends—successful ones who have raised multiple rounds of capital and who have grown their companies through different stages—has a huge advantage over one that doesn’t. This group of close connections can not only introduce them to capital but can give strong referrals based on years of shared history. It also provides a built-in set of advisors that can be called upon along the way.
You can tell when a founder has a goto set of people in their network to ask all the dumb, remedial questions about hiring, fundraising, deal doing, PR, etc."
https://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/blog/2023/11/1/the-advantage-of-having-venture-backed-friends
23. "The CCP has control over the most powerful, yet elegant, weapon in the history of propaganda, and the default position is they (i.e., the CCP) are not using it? I have stated this view before. China cannot beat us kinetically or economically, but it can beat us by tearing us apart from the inside. TikTok, in my view, has the potential effect of several carrier strike forces.
A 21st century Trojan Horse that also generates $100 billion in annual revenue. I was at the White House this week for an AI Summit. Government officials are not allowed to be on TikTok for security reasons. This comes at a cost, as I believe they’d be more alarmed at the skew of information."
https://www.profgalloway.com/short-form-war/
24. "There are no adults in the room
This can be applied to any industry but especially in VC. There is no set formula to be successful in VC, and no matter how much it may seem a partner can predict the next big winner in your portfolio, know that they have made hundreds if not thousands of judgement calls just like that which have not paid off. Everyone is human and putting people on pedestals because of their previous experience will only make learning from them harder."
https://sturgeoncapital.substack.com/p/life-as-a-sturgeon-intern-part-i
25. "There is no substitute — none — for solving real customer problems. No smoke and mirrors, no massive round, no PR and no hype will save you if you’re not solving a top-of-mind problem for your customers. It could be 10 customers or 10,000. But if you ask your customers if you solve their #1 or #2 problem, their answer needs to be “Yes”."
26. This was a super fun interview I did while in Prague at the Engaged Investments Conference.
27. "With Israel and Palestine we’re now facing a new Current Thing — a situation where people have to take sides — but this time it’s much more complicated. Unlike previous moral movements, it’s unclear what the right Current Thing is.
Arnold Kling’s theory of politics helps explain what’s happening here: Liberals care about supporting the oppressed vs the oppressor, whereas conservatives care about supporting civilization vs barbarism.
So the left automatically supports what they see as the oppressed class (in this case, mostly Palestine), and the right automatically supports what they see as the more civilized group (in this case, mostly Israel).
And so the fact that the right supports it for bad reasons could drive people on the left to not support it. The same way Trump advocating for coming out of COVID lockdown caused the left to go bananas for endless lockdowns and masks etc."
https://eriktorenberg.substack.com/p/a-schism-in-the-current-thing
28. "While the Americans and the Europeans have taken the initial steps to increase production, it is unlikely that Western defence production, and Ukraine’s indigenous production, will fully meet the needs of any 2024 offensives by Ukraine. Ukraine needs around 1.5 million rounds of ammunition annually. Europe can produce around 300,000 rounds per year and the Americans are building towards a total production of 1.2 million rounds per year.
But at least some of this will be required to backfill stocks that have already been sent to Ukraine. And as the concurrent wars in Israel and Ukraine demonstrate, the US defence industrial base – and that of its allies – are not adequately prepared to support these wars and build up stocks to deter a war with China.
At the same time, Russia increased its defence budget and spent the past year increasing defence production. It is also sourcing defence materiel from the huge stocks of the North Koreans. While Ukrainian munition stocks may last for several more months, the combination of insufficient Western production, dwindling on-hand stocks in the militaries of Europe and the United States, and the increased supply to Russia means that Russia may have an advantage in munitions by the middle of 2024.
None of these headwinds portends disaster ahead for Ukraine, however. It is a nation that has demonstrated widespread individual heroism, societal resilience and a broad spirit of innovation. The political, strategic, and industrial challenges are solvable. But they will demand more attention from Ukrainian strategists – and more assistance from the West – to ensure that in 2024 they do not collectively and with other surprises in war overwhelm a nation that is fighting for its very existence."
https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/ukraine-2024-headwinds
29. "It’s best to start with the subjective experience, because there is no doubt when you have it. (If you’re not sure whether you have Product/Market Fit, you don’t.)
It is a momentum change from “push” to “pull”—a change from fighting for each customer, one at a time, to a flood of signups that you can’t even explain. It’s a change from “how do we get more customers” to “how do we handle the influx of demand?”
It’s working. Something clicked, like a final puzzle piece snapping into place, a “fit,” and suddenly the floodgates are open."
https://longform.asmartbear.com/product-market-fit
30. "Anyway, I don’t want to claim that “demography is destiny” here, and it’s all too easy to look at individual countries and tell just-so stories about how aging and fertility might have affected their conflicts. And even if an older population and fewer children do make war less likely, there are still a handful of war-torn countries — Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Palestine, and Syria — that are still young and still have fairly robust fertility.
But it’s hard not to look at these graphs and feel that something big is changing. The old Middle East, with massive crowds of angry young people thronging the streets, ready to explode into nationalist or sectarian or revolutionary violence, is steadily disappearing, being replaced by a more sedate, aging society. Given the horrific outcomes of the last few decades, it’s hard not to see that as a good thing."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-middle-east-is-getting-older
31. This looks really good. Reminds me that I need to go back to Japan soon!
Man I LOVE that place.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAN5uspO_hk
32. Lots to learn from the legendary Sequoia Capital.
Last couple years have not been great but they are playing the long game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv4cwqO87eI&t=160s
33. "They learned that nothing governed by natural laws stays the same - but every spring, the cycle would repeat. The leaves always returned after the winter. They watched the rivers. They learned that the salmon would arrive, depart, and come back again.
They learned that our world is governed by cycles.
We say that the most undervalued asset on Wall Street is a history book. I think that same principle extends to government and culture."
https://jaymartin.substack.com/p/merry-go-round-and-round
34. Long overdue. Taiwan needs to arm up and train up fast.
"The $80m is not a loan. It comes from American taxpayers. For the first time in more than 40 years, America is using its own money to send weapons to a place it officially doesn't recognise. This is happening under a programme called foreign military finance (FMF).
Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year, FMF has been used to send around $4bn of military aid to Kyiv.
It has been used to send billions more to Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel and Egypt and so on. But until now it has only ever been given to countries or organisations recognised by the United Nations. Taiwan is not."
It’s A Great Time to Be Alive: Opportunity is Everywhere
It’s so easy to be gloomy about the state of the world these days. War in Europe and the Middle East, economic recession, deglobalization, job loss, a breakdown of law and order. It’s a scary time.
But there I saw this amazingly illustrative series of tweets by @leadspacer:
“There have never been more opportunities to live the life you want if you are clever enough.
Most of the things we are told we should be concerned about don’t affect us.
With all of the fragmentation taking place in the world right now, it's an opportunity for adventurous risk takers to make huge strides.”
“In great chaos lies enormous opportunity.”
This is all spot on. With everything changing, there will be massive new problems and consequently big opportunities to fix and solve this. It’s an amazing time to be a builder. You can leverage all the amazing technologies and marketing tools that are coming out. Just look at the software tools or ChatGPT or even AutoGPT.
Additionally, there is so much knowledge and expertise that you can access through online classes, podcasts or even just on Youtube alone. You can learn from the best and have it all at your fingertips via your PC or mobile phone.
So don’t be too worried by the scaremongering media headlines. It is scary and bad things are happening. But also remember that you have agency and control of your mindset. You have an opportunity to make things better around you, by providing the services and products that are needed.
If you provide true value to others in the world and approach life as being in service to others, you will be rewarded monetarily and spiritually. That is one thing that has not changed and will never change in the world.
Maximum Bullish: Travels to Ukraine
After a long hiatus due to the barbarian Russian invasion in 2022, I finally made it back in September 2023 for the excellent Lviv IT Arena tech conference. The event for tech startups in all of UKraine. It was excellent and full of positive energy and optimism.
I’ve been coming to UKraine since 2007 and I’ve witnessed an amazing transformation of the country over the last almost 20 years. And I can tell you I’m even more bullish on this country and the people than I ever have been. I love this country.
The number and high quality of excellent tech people has been a badly kept secret for the last decade in tech circles, providing the tech back end for great companies like Ring, now part of Amazon, Grammarly. Also, talk about home grown giants like Genesis, Readdle and McPaw of CleanmyMac fame, this was a tech startup center in the making. The trajectory was incredible especially since 2015 when I came back after Maidan in 2013.
Unfortunately the war has massively disrupted this and caused mayhem. But like the resilient people that they are, Ukrainians are using their intelligence and creativity to keep building. Founders in Silicon Valley have no idea of the challenges these founders face and overcome every day.
Random missile attacks against civilian targets, having to work underground in bomb shelters, having team members called up or volunteering for military service on the front line to defend their country against a vicious enemy. An enemy determined to stamp out their way of life and culture. Yet they keep going without complaint.
I admire them so much and I feel so guilty that I can’t do more than I do now. That I did not sign up for the Ukrainian Foreign Legion to kill Russian invaders or do something beyond donations and charity.
Remember, Russia invaded Ukraine. This is the most black and white, good versus evil situation since world war 2. There is no gray here.
And my guilt also bleeds into massive hate for pro Putin supporters or those who try to undermine support for Ukraine. The hard right GOP, Vivek Ramaswamey, David Sacks, Scott Ritter, Douglas Macgregor, Tucker Carlson are absolutely traitors to America & the West as well as being useful Idiots to Russia. You are either part of the solution or you are part of the problem. History will judge them all very severely. May these people burn in hell.
But I say this now, when this war is over, I cannot wait to move over and help grow this tech ecosystem and rebuild this country to something amazing. The actual trajectory and destination that it was on before Putin engaged in this awful war. The amount of brilliant people who left the country will come back with their networks and knowledge. The middle class professionals who volunteered and fought off the barbarian Russians will not tolerate going back to a corrupt oligarchic system. And the world will be admiring and supportive as they rebuild Ukrainian infrastructure and integrate them into the EU.
I’m obviously biased and apologize that this has turned into a personal rant but I am massively and maximum bullish on this country. My radar tends to be pretty good on this stuff, especially emerging companies and emerging countries. So support and watch Ukraine. Slava Ukraini!
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads November 12th, 2023
"It is not the strength of the body that counts, but the strength of the spirit." ― J.R.R. Tolkien
"Everyone thinks they are being discriminated against and that the world is “unfair” to them.
Instead of wasting your time complaining about reality, just recognize reality and play accordingly.
At the end of the day, the buyer determines the value, not the seller.
If you are selling a house, you cannot complain that “people should not care about the broken walls and leaky roof”. The buyer decides what he cares about in the house he buys.
In life, you are selling yourself and you have to go work on what the buyers consider valuable. It’s that simple."
https://lifemathmoney.com/men-are-success-objects-and-women-are-sex-objects/
2. "Instead of underwriting to the idea that some other investor will understand these companies and mark them up, we find ourselves underwriting increasingly to at least one of two other things: (1) breakeven and/or (2) our own convictions. Either a company has a path to get to sustainable growth on its own or it has the ability to achieve milestones such that we ourselves will be able to continue to support them in their growth path — with or without other investors.
Unlike Sam, however, we are not completely convinced that the venture factory is completely shut down. We do continue to occasionally find a company where we think the next step is likely a traditional Series A. It’s just that we increasingly find ourselves backing companies that are building optionality around other pathways to success.
I want to be crystal clear: we remain convinced that now is the best time in recent memory to build a large multi-billion dollar business from the seed stage. That is why we are here — and we continue to see companies that meet that bar. What has changed is not the scale of potential outcomes. What has changed is the way the pathway from seed to huge exit might look. The whole entrepreneurial journey will be far more artisanal and less factory-like."
https://medium.com/angularventures/the-end-of-entrepreneurship-by-autopilot-de4a068b5d0f
3. "Understanding the average net worth by age and how it changes is more than just a financial exercise—it’s also a way to gauge your financial health in the context of your peer group. While the average net worth figures shown above can be skewed by outliers, looking at the distribution of outcomes—and particularly the median—can offer a more relatable snapshot.
Regardless of whether you are at the 25th percentile or the 90th percentile of the wealth spectrum, it’s crucial to remember that these are just benchmarks. Your financial journey is yours alone and will be influenced by a variety of factors such as career choice, inheritance, and luck."
https://ofdollarsanddata.com/average-net-worth-by-age/
4. Xi has squandered China's potential. Well, kind of like the political class in USA but much worse.
"In less than five years, the Party has hobbled industries that once supplied tax revenue, jobs, inspiration, and global stature. For a generation, the Party found ways to put practicality ahead of ideology. “It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white,” Deng said, “as long as it catches mice.” In the Xi era, that principle has become, in effect: It doesn’t matter if the cat catches mice, as long as it’s red.
For all of China’s ambitions to greatness, it faces a consuming struggle to restore the trust and vigor of its own people. The stagnation could pass, as it did for America in the nineteen-eighties, or it could deepen, as it did for the Soviet Union during the same years."
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/30/chinas-age-of-malaise
5. "There is no chance of a rate cut any time soon. As long as unemployment is below 5% or so, there is absolutely no shot of rates being cut. Also. If you look at the commentary he says “over the coming quarters” this suggests the fed is planning to keep rates elevated or even raise them if they don’t get the results they want.
All year we’ve basically said the same for the majority: 1) short term t-bills for your future down-payment and 2) crypto on the other side BTC/ETH ($25Kish and $1,600ish as proxies)."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/end-of-the-long-cycle-print-or-dont
6. I don't agree with this guys views on Ukraine or his generally anti-Pax Americana view. BUT he has a very good view on global macro.
"And the end game, when yields get too high, is for the Fed to end all pretence that the US Treasury market is a free market. Rather, it will become what it truly is: a Potemkin village where the Fed fixes the level of interest at politically expedient levels. Once everyone realises the game we are playing, the Bitcoin and crypto bull market will be in full swing.
This is the trigger, and it’s time to start rotating out of short-term US Treasury bills and into crypto. The first stop is always Bitcoin, then Ether, and finally my beloved shitcoins. I’ll start small in case I’m wrong, but you can’t sit on the sidelines forever waiting for the perfect setup. The perfect setup is usually staring you right in the face, and you are just too preoccupied with the past to notice."
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/the-periphery
7. "We won the first Cold War. And 2022 was a good year for the U.S. and its allies — we set Russia on the back foot in Ukraine, while China’s economy was weakened by Xi Jinping’s mistakes and by the contradictions in its system. But the authoritarian powers — or the continental powers, or the New Axis, or whatever you want to call them — are not out of the fight.
The expansion of proxy conflict to the Middle East, a region where the U.S. lacks strong dedicated allies and moral authority, is bad news, because it threatens to bog American resources and attention down in a conflict far away from the all-important theater of Taiwan and East Asia.
So I think the framework of Cold War 2 isn’t just a useful way to make sense of the blizzard of news right now — it’s a reason for alarm, and for getting serious about addressing the external threats. This is not a situation in which our usual political divides and ideological differences should take precedence."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/a-lot-of-what-you-see-in-the-news
8. "If you haven’t fundraised before or your last fundraising experience was in the Good Times™ of 2020-2021, expect to have a very different experience than what you’ve read about or previously experienced. VCs are still looking to cut checks, but they’re slower moving and more cautious than during times of heightened activity.
Be prepared and stick to the basics. It might take extra work to overcome their inertia, but if you come correct you’ll get the result you’re looking for."
https://chrisneumann.com/blog/the-adrenaline-of-vc-deal-flow
9. "Part of the premise for the rise of seed VC funds in the late 2000s was that cloud computing, other technical innovations, and lean startup thinking meant that startups could get to validation points earlier. Many articles were written about how we would see a generation of capital-efficient startups that would do more with less as a result. This capital-efficient ethos never really took root as it happened to coincide with an unprecedented explosion in the venture ecosystem's access to capital and historically low interest rates. There was no need to be capital-efficient in an era of capital abundance.
With the era of capital abundance coming to an end, the stage might finally be set for the era of the capital-efficient seed stage company. Seed-stage startups are likely to confront a world in which raising Series A rounds of investment remains difficult for quite some time. There will be a premium on execution and doing more with less capital. The necessary pieces might finally be in place to push companies back toward the hoped-for levels of capital efficiency.
There will be money for our very best companies. However, This change opens space for us to look at companies where a seed and pre-seed round will give the company the money it needs to become a high-growth company with minimal go-forward external capital needs. This is not about finding small, break-even companies that don’t build to scale. This is really about making sure we find companies where we are aligned with the founders on the long-term capital needs of the business. Those who have joined me on pitch calls of late have probably heard me ask this question of the founders who pitch us."
https://chudson.substack.com/p/the-big-reset-in-seed-to-series-a
10. "Being long-term bullish on crypto is a bet on the following: gambling, degeneracy, greed and desperation. Seems like a pretty easy yes from us. The most important part is staying in the game for a long time and rotating into more risk when you see an opportunity. That is the core working thesis."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/history-of-crypto-cycles-etfs-and
11. Eric is a friend and this was an excellent interview. So many nuggets of insight. Recommend his books.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mAL_aQqWMQ&t=1939s
12. Masterclass from one of the best tech investors on the planet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnDrFBzRfgc
13. Impressive young man. Makes you question your own momentum and ambition level.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46903vxfn-c
14. "Russia is often portrayed as the invincible military power. And yet, this reputation is based on two wars - Napoleonic and WWII. In both cases Russia won only thanks to the alliance allied with *the* leading economic powerhouse of that era.
Napoleonic Wars were won because of the Russian alliance with the UK. WWII - because of the alliance with the US. In both cases the leading economic, industrial and technological power of the age supported Russia, giving it almost unlimited credit and supply line."
https://kamilkazani.substack.com/p/why-russia-cant-win-against-the-west
15. "Eventually what I decided to do was try and show just how a supply based campaign would be the most effective thing for Ukraine, by talking about the issue of ammunition supply for Russian artillery—which has received a great deal of coverage lately. Long story short, if Ukraine could damage/destroy even a relatively small percentage of the ammunition heading to Russian guns, it would make an outsize difference in the war in 2024.
This is because Russia is not actually a great economic power and is generating relatively little new force (this is also true for tanks and other armored fighting vehicles and artillery pieces). Basically Russia is using and losing far more equipment than in can replace on an annual basis."
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/what-is-the-way-forward-in-a-war-777
16. "While most Christians would say the devil is the best liar in the world, I think the best is the person in the mirror. Self-delusion is perhaps the most challenging aspect of attempting the fuller lifestyle. Avoiding work because you're being negligent and avoiding work because you are achieving balance look identical from the outside.
Getting this right means you have to be able to confront the full breadth of your weaknesses to ensure you aren’t being controlled by them. The hard part of living fuller, not bigger, is being honest with yourself. That there is no answer is the answer. You have to believe that you have the intelligence and grit to figure it out yourself."
https://every.to/napkin-math/live-fuller-not-bigger
17. "While Musk may not be in the business of convincing people he’s less capable, he is hurtling dangerously toward the classic failing of all great hustlers — playing outside of the odds that made him rich in the first place.
Musk’s successes — SolarCity, Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink (which has only recently hit profitability) — come from buying into or building companies that sell something, juicing their revenues and valuations by extolling bright futures of eternal growth, the kind that the market adores.
Anything that Musk talks about is automatically covered by the media, which is something that inherently boosts any company that actually sells something, because there’s a call-to-action at the end of whatever churlish statement he chooses to make. When motivated by greed, Musk can be incredibly effective, because there’s something (theoretically) valuable at the end — Elon Musk has endorsed this product, the product does this, and you should either buy the product or the associated stock.
Every product decision he’s made feels like every time I’ve seen a desperate man lose thousands at a craps table “trying to make his money back,” mumbling that he “has a system” as the dice seem to work against him with every roll. Musk’s playbook has always been to sell the sizzle - that you’re buying into the future of something, even if that future is murky and the something kind of sucks - but it hinges heavily on there being something tangible and “cool” to own.
Musk has ultimately made the biggest mistake one can in gambling or hustling — letting emotion take the wheel. Acquiring Twitter was never about making money."
https://wheresyoured.at/p/junk-bond-trader
18. "At hyperscale, the companies with the deepest AI exposure are enjoying faster growth rates as enterprise demand for these products accelerates."
https://tomtunguz.com/ai_reacceleration/
19. "Mining and processing graphite is an especially dirty business, and China doesn’t mind getting dirty when it can accumulate geopolitical advantages in the process.
The global production share chart for graphite is indistinguishable from countless others we have encountered over the decades. If a commodity is deemed critical and producing it is environmentally taxing, China inevitably comes to dominate it."
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/geopollutical-warfare
20. Always enjoy these conversations. Why do founders stay in their company even after F-- You money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBE0eDh8CNk
21. "RAADfest’s opening keynote speaker—and a big reason why I am here—is Bryan Johnson, a wealthy tech entrepreneur who has lately become an object of media fixation, owing to his colorful Twitter presence, absorbing diet and fitness regimen, and the fact that he spends most of his time and money on his attempt to live forever. To do so, he has created “Blueprint,” an algorithm using data about Johnson’s various organs that recommends protocols for his health, diet, and fitness.
Johnson is a big deal for the immortalist community. He is a lot younger and richer than most of the other RAADfest presenters, and due to a series of recent articles in The New York Post, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Time Magazine, he is kind of famous. He gets recognized in public a lot. People say things like, “Yo, vampire bro! Can I get some of that blood?” Johnson loves this."
https://www.gq.com/story/raadfest-live-forever-or-die-trying
22. "But in recent years, it was his intense familiarity with those daily rhythms of his in New York City that made him realise it might be time for a major pivot. “After one too many days of doing the same thing, I just got this overwhelming sense that I was still playing the same hand of cards I’d had for a long time – but that I had a better hand to play,” he said. “I was living in this rental place that didn’t feel like home. I was getting the same bacon, egg, and cheese at the same deli. Resisting any lifestyle change.”
All the while, his circumstances had changed. He had grown older. The films were bigger. His profile was immeasurably larger. But he was holding onto something. Why? He had seen it up close in Hollywood. The man-child. The people who so loved playing characters that they played characters in their real lives, too, without actually transforming themselves into more mature human beings. He knew the cliché about celebrities staying developmentally the age that they were when they became famous.
But how is a beloved movie star meant to change the right way? How is he supposed to grow up? How does he meaningfully evolve his life and art without killing his core? This was the most important thing there was for Timothée Chalamet. It might be worthwhile to chart the course. “All I knew,” he said, “was it was time to level up.
It’s difficult to underscore how polar opposite the two ways Timothée Chalamet experiences time are. There are the long stretches during a movie production, during a press cycle, during a fashion campaign, when every minute is scheduled for days or weeks or months at a time. But there are other long stretches, in between the making of films and promoting them, that are seemingly devoid of time as we experience it, with infinite opportunities for developing a film character or developing himself.”
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/timothee-chalamet-cover-interview-2023
23. This is a good state of the seed vc investing market, I like the concept of inception investing rounds. Some very useful frameworks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIx1vnNYj2c
24. "Where does that leave the magical 250m population figure in reality? For many business models, especially those which are common in more developed markets, the real addressable market is perhaps only 10.6m if we include all of Groups 3, 4, and 5. While still a $43bn opportunity, if we factor in the propensity and ability of different ages within those groups to adopt technology, the number may be only half of that.
To build a scalable consumer-focused business in a market like Pakistan requires novel business models and go to market strategies that must be highly localised to succeed."
https://sturgeoncapital.substack.com/p/how-big-really-is-250m-people
25. "Given another few years at this pace of innovation, it’s not unreasonable to expect blockchains to be cost-competitive to classical databases.
More than that, they offer different types of promises to developers for data sovereignty, mathematical proofs, resiliency, & resistance to attack.
It’s the gas gas revolution. As the gas costs fall, more applications will be built on blockchains."
https://tomtunguz.com/aws-eth-cost-reductions/
26. "The starting point is WiFi Money (Online Business).
Once you’re making money from the internet, you can quit and most of the other things in the “good life” list come pretty much automatically.
WiFi Money is the starting point to freedom.
All I can say is, I’ve worked for others and I’ve worked for myself, and I like working for myself far more."
https://lifemathmoney.com/how-do-people-live-like-this/
27. "But, failure to recognize that we are already in a worldwide war and that we can resolve it with innovation and generosity of spirit are equally serious problems. All this is a reminder of Winston Churchill’s book While England Slept and John F Kennedy’s take on the same period called Why England Slept. Amazon ought to get both up on Kindle asap! Both leaders warned us.
But, we sleepwalked into WWI and WWII and further conflicts from the 1960s. Are we sleepwalking into another such situation? Are we asleep when we should be awakened to technological possibilities (something Marc Andreessen calls “Techno-Optimism”)? We exited WWII through technology. The atomic bomb unleashed destructive power so great it ended war. Could we release a constructive power so great that it begins a new era that would be post-geopolitics? I want everyone not just to wake up, but to start dreaming about what the future could and should look like before it is too late. The task is hard."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/wwiii-winning-the-peace
28. "A year ago, Netflix was losing 1 million subscribers per quarter and had shed 75% of its market cap. It was the worst performing stock in the S&P 500. Fast-forward one circumnavigation of the Sun, and Wall Street is “gushing” over its “beautiful” results while the rest of the industry flounders."
https://www.profgalloway.com/the-netflix-effect/
29. "The sweet spot is to find a strategy that works, which suits your temperament, and which interests you because…
Good investing is mostly ‘boring’ working with brief moments of excitement. I say ‘boring’ because the research process is boring to most people, but not to everyone. It is an endless loop of keeping up with the world and trying to understand things — a company, an industry, a trend, a technology, an event — by reading, crunching data, and talking to people.
Every once in a while, things get exciting. Like when you find a great idea or when the market punches you in the face. And in exactly those moments, you have to resist and remain calm. It’s the inverse of how most people go through life: they run from the grind of mundane work and throw themselves into thrills.
If the process of learning about companies and markets feels like keeping up with your favorite sport or celebrities, you’re ahead of the game."
https://alchemy.substack.com/p/11-things-i-learned-about-investing
30. "One thing should be clear: allowing price fixing to occur through shared software rather than an explicit agreement is not just a technological change — it’s a legal change. Indeed, judges are simply rewriting the law to legalize price-fixing.
When it’s extremely hard to bring a complaint because the burden is just too high for plaintiffs - as is happening in the Rainmaker case and potentially the RealPage litigation - judges have created a liability shield for corporations to collude. “Nobody thought you could win” is a devastating and avoidable sentiment in the face of clear and pervasive harm."
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-banality-of-price-fixing
31. "Every founder tells themselves a story about why they’re heading to the gold rush, but the executive coach I would eventually hire says there are really only two. Do you want to be rich, generating wealth in service of some further end? Or do you want to be king, with money a mere byproduct of trying to make the world the way you feel it should be?
At the time, I told myself I wanted the freedom of being rich. I thought I’d be able to recognize a winning hand fast or fold. Now, several years later, I’m still waiting for the river card that determines my fate. You could call me a middle-class founder: proprietor of a business you may or may not have heard of, tenuously wealthy on paper, by no means a failure but not yet a success, chugging along in the twilight of an era that minted more giants and more waste than any other in history, with no exit in sight.
Today, the market has turned for everyone. We’re growing slower than I want, but other start-ups, even the hot companies that dominated fundraising in past years, are showing far more signs of strain. Some have already flamed out spectacularly, and for those that survive, the gobs of money raised from megafunds come with a catch: It needs to be paid back first, which means that employees and early investors who expected millions won’t make any money unless they deliver on their tall tales.
The culprit is technically rising interest rates, but you could argue it began when founders and investors started to see the downside of swinging for the power law. The first venture funds formed as a way for savvy investors to help innovators create fundamental technologies like transistors, which required huge outlays of time and treasure before they could produce value. But in the past few years, causality inverted: Start-ups and entire markets were manufactured from whole cloth to meet the demand of overcapitalized venture funds searching for a home run.
At work, there’s some sense that we’ve missed the windfall, the easy IPO, the fairy godmother of acquisition that taps some lucky people and makes them rich. You’d think that would suck for morale. But from what I can tell, our team seems happy. What venture capitalists are now telling startups to do — forget “growth at all costs”, be profitable — is what we, partly by accident, have been doing all along. With the exception of the new wave of AI companies, the skies are full of Icaruses crashing to earth, but we’ve been here the whole time."
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/venture-capital-backed-startup-founder-confessions.html
32. "Taking all these factors together, one must wonder about the efficiency gains for a software company. Will it be 20% cheaper or even 50% less costly to run a software company? This will undoubtedly impact the costs, scalability, and efficiency of running a business. Will it lead to the creation of more software companies or result in more mergers and acquisitions? Will the market competition offset these efficiency gains?
The exciting aspect of technology and considering the future is that these advancements are inevitable. From the perspective of software companies, using AI to enhance business operations, not just the products they offer, will be an intriguing area of innovation over the next decade."
https://davidcummings.org/2023/10/28/ais-efficiency-role-in-running-software-companies/
33. This is such an important discussion. The West is our own worst enemy due to our luxury beliefs/bad thinking and being afraid of exercising power.
It's worth listening to. (skip the part on language and transgender/gender stuff, which was incoherent). Rest is excellent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H10fH6Zy-ew&t=1594s
34. Learning from Founder Led Funds. Always stuff to learn.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTaOfh1_N8s&t=2027s
35. "Venture capital is an existentially flawed, yet powerful, economic system that could kill the thing most VCs purport to love: startups. Just like the person who doesn't want to take a life on the boat — you're staring at a deadly thing. The deadly outcome isn't something you want. But the failure of that outcome threatens your own life. The dissolution or rapid revolution of the venture capital industry threatens to kill a generation of tried-and-true VCs. So what's to be done?
That's the key to survival. Adapt. Venture capital is dying because it has adapted to focus on returns. The model has crafted an engine that generates returns, not necessarily enduring, generational companies. The same is true of things like the oil industry. Eventually, companies will be forced to bear the brunt of their own externalities. Venture capital is no different."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/surviving-the-death-of-venture-capital
36. "Expect this consolidation to continue, especially where platforms are emerging, and complementary products integrate well. Over time, we’re going to see more consolidation, but not as much as some might think.
The nature of SaaS, with its predictable cash flow, recurring revenue, and great gross margins, means that companies can remain in a “zombie state”—not growing rapidly but not dying off either. They don’t have to transact, and they don’t have to be acquired. So, the majority will not consolidate, but for those that align well with a larger platform, look for more M&A activity, especially over the next two to three years, as larger, well-funded platforms look to expand their total addressable markets more aggressively."
https://davidcummings.org/2023/11/04/saas-unicorns-expanding-their-tam-through-acquisition/
37. "You aren’t successful because you say you want to help others, but you won’t learn the skills that allow you to help others.
You aren’t successful because you focus too much on art, and then blame the market when they don’t see the value in what you have to offer (because you couldn’t articulate it with marketing and sales).
You aren’t successful because you “focus on your craft” rather than getting your craft in front of potential customers. Your websites, designs, writing, and other projects do not count until other people see them. You are delaying the time to feedback. Without feedback, you can’t make it valuable. Your first iteration will not be valuable.
You aren’t successful because you have an incomplete perspective on what business is. It is how you participate in the advancement of humanity by creating a product that raises the collective consciousness.
You aren’t successful because you took these points as personal attacks, closed your mind to your potential, and allowed your conditioning to rule you.
You aren’t successful because you don’t create something valuable that the market wants to pay for. People don’t want what your ego wants, they want what Mother Nature wants, and who are you to act like you know what that should be?"
https://thedankoe.com/letters/making-money-is-spiritual-if-you-learn-these-unethical-skills/
Kazakhstan & Central Asia is Hot: The Re-Emerging Silk Road
When you hear about Kazakhstan everyone’s thoughts go to Borat, the fictional character who completely mischaracterized this country and region. But the joke is on all of us. Kazakhstan is one of the most interesting and important places in the world. Centered between the voracious giants of Russia and China it plays an important role in the world.
For anyone who studies history, or has any curiosity about geopolitics, Kazakhstan is one of the countries at the center of Eurasia along with Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan & Tajikistan. The old Silk Road connecting Asia with Europe.
It’s not a big country by population with only 19 million people but it is large by mass, just like Canada. And like Canada it has a tremendous amount of valuable natural resources like oil, natural gas and minerals like chromium, lead, zinc, manganese, copper, gold, iron and coal. Maybe more importantly they provide 22% of the world supply of uranium. Which is absolutely critical in the age of nuclear energy.
But what is probably more interesting is the growing tech scene that has been encouraged by the technocratic government that has been investing in infrastructure, education and policy. As the theme of a recent Strategeast conference there said: “knowledge as a new energy.”
I have not been back to Kazakhstan since 2018 and after an almost 6 year hiatus, it’s been really interesting watching the growth of the startup ecosystem. You have the giants of Kaspi and Freedom Securities dominating the Fintech world. These are the serial acquirers and possible exit strategy of many local startups. And we see an emerging venture and startup community.
There is also a generation's strong experience in aerospace and space. Remember that most of the space launches outside the USA are done in Kazakhstan by international private companies and even other countries like Russia.
It has a growing young population just like in their larger neighbor Uzbekistan, but many more resources to educate and invest in their populace.
Thanks to a decades-long program established in 1993 called the Bolashaq program, promising young graduates have their education in top western universities paid for by the government in return for 3-5 years of service in government agencies or ministries. There have been almost 15,000 young Kazakhs who have gone through the program and it’s a cadre of trained and smart people who end up in the private sector after.
Kazakhstan is an exciting place and unique in the world. I heard a great saying while there. Kazakhstan is WARM. Western oriented, Asia centered & Asian-looking, Russian speaking but Multicultural, Multi-ethnic and Multi religious. Having been there I would say it’s not just warm, but it’s HOT. (If you include the even more populous neighbor Uzbekistan at 35 million people, this region is becoming even more interesting.)
It’s fast becoming a critical geopolitical player as it balances its own interests with those of its big closest neighbors of China, Russia and its far neighbor of the USA. Watch this ecosystem and country. I look forward to returning soon.
Prague Flashback: Reliving The Past
I had a chance to visit Prague this year, after getting invited to do the keynote speech at the Engaged Investments Conference, a new event specific for Venture Capitalists in Central & Eastern Europe. Of course. I jumped at the opportunity to visit one of my most favorite places. A place of fond memories and of my personal growth.
Back in 1996, I had just graduated from university in Canada and could not wait to leave. I had gotten into a summer studies program 8! Medieval Warfare actually at Cambridge University and the original plan was to come back to Canada and look for work or start studies again. Or at least that was the plan or what my parents expected.
I decided to buy a one way ticket to Prague after Cambridge. And my life was never the same again. Yes, I've done travels to the USA, the UK, Taiwan and Japan. But they were either with family, school or orchestra.
So this was the first trip at that time in my life where I was truly alone and independent. Bear in mind, I had never cooked or cleaned or done laundry at that time because my job was just work and school. The trip was a crash course in life. Finding a place to live, managing money as I had very little of it and finding my way around.
When I landed in Prague it was like a fairytale. Beautiful architecture as it had never been affected by war for 500 years at least. It was so physically beautiful to me that I literally could not speak for a day. I was in literal awe. The place was magical, and even now I feel the same way. I spent almost 2 months here, exploring Prague and taking day trips by train all around the country like Cesky Krumlov, Karlovy Vary, Kutna Hora, Telc, Marianske Lazny & Ceske Budejovice among many other beautiful places.
I learned about my personal finance. I was able to stretch my 1 month budget to 6 months, although I admit I had to call home in early December to ask for money so I could eventually get back home. My mom was mad. But it was worth it. My bubble of naive suburban Canadian innocence was bursted quite violently. I ran into racist a—holes, almost pick pocketed by gypsies and was even attacked a few times by neo nazi skinheads. Interestingly, looking back, this rough and tumble crash course mentally prepared me well for my life in America.
Most importantly, I met so many interesting & nice people as well who showed me immense kindness. Business people of all types, retirees, students, fellow backpackers and travelers from everywhere in the world. I really grew up fast.
I’d been back to Prague over the years but always under a tight schedule for work or business. This was the first time in 27 years that I had time to wonder and explore. And it brought back wonderful memories. In the end that’s all we have. It’s also a great reminder of how far I’ve come and how much my life has changed. Overall for the better I think. It’s so easy to forget sometimes when you are so caught up in everyday life.
So here is to travel, to personal growth and to having great memories. And also to Prague. I really need to spend more time here in the future as it holds such a special place in my heart just like Japan does.