1/99 Rule, Not the 20/80 Rule: Entering The Winner Take All Economy
I talk to many of my single guy friends about their dating experience. It’s really ugly out there, even if you are attractive and fit and well off. The dating market has changed dramatically in the time of globalization and Instagram and other social media. It literally is “the best of times and worst of times”. If you are what is considered a top tier man, which means, attractive, tall, fit and wealthy it’s an amazing time.
It’s even better for the most beautiful and attractive girls. Before the globalized world, they were limited to males in their town or city. Now, they get pinged by wealthy men from everywhere in the world on IG DMs. Or put this in economic terms, there is a massive supply and demand imbalance. The demand has become global and in excess of the actual limited supply of both top tier men and women, thus they have become more valuable.
However, there is a dangerous counter-effect. If you are an average guy, ie. not in very good shape and not financially secure, it’s looking pretty bad. And as the world becomes more competitive, it’s harder and harder for those men to keep up. So they just give up. Thus we see a rise in incels. We see a rise of drug use, video gaming, gambling, drinking, pornography, obesity and lack of fitness in men.
So the point of all this is not a lamentation on the state of men as tragic as it is. But as a point about the future of work and talent. The nature of the world and society, it’s become a winner take all market in almost every realm. This explains the astronomical pay packages and demand for top talent in sports, in technology or even in the music world. For example, it’s reported that Taylor Swift will surpass $1 billion dollars on her Eras tour alone. Estimated to be almost $13M a night. By the way, this does not include merchandise sales either.
That means you are either the best or nothing. The days of having an average life are over.
I don’t think you can aim for a mediocre life or do your minimum. It’s the Red Queen Effect where you have to run twice as fast to stay in the same place you are now. If you thought it was competitive before, it’s only going to get worse.
This is great for type A, somewhat broken, unbalanced and ultra competitive individuals like me. It’s not so great if you have no drive, value comfort or don’t want to do the necessary work. You have to be intensely focused on personal development all the time for a long time. As Roy Bennett wrote: “You make the world a better place by making daily improvements to become the best version of yourself.” This might be the only way you will ever stay relevant in the work world.
America Is the Frontier: The Future Is Here
Brilliant private investor Jeremy Giffon had a great tweet on America:
“Europeans live better than Americans because the spirit of the American lays in the infinite frontier. Europe is enclosed and complete, the frontiers are known. So the European must turn inward. The good life for him can be found in simply asking "what is for lunch?".
But the American exists solely in the future, in the unconquered frontier. There is no time to pause and reflect on what has been mapped as the future lays beyond him, always out on the horizon.
Toqueville observed that the American spirit relies entirely on the existence of a limitless unsettled West that he can employ his industriousness upon. Even if he himself never sets out to conquer he takes great assurance in knowing that it is there, infinite possibility awaiting him.
Without a frontier, the American has nothing. He is not equipped to stop and look around. To cultivate an appreciation for the finer things and settle in, comfortable knowing that the soil on which he rests is soaked in his ancestors blood and will so to be one day in his childrens'. He is not equipped for that self-reflection, that contentment. His ambition lays outward. He must journey. Robbed of this, he is nothing. He has nowhere to cast his gaze. He will self-destruct.”
Source: https://twitter.com/jeremygiffon/status/1655412696773189634
American society is fractious and raucous in times of peace and prosperity. But when it’s guided or directed toward a common goal or enemy it’s a fearsome place. We saw this in 1941, we saw this in 9/11. Don’t count out this country yet as we head into the new frontiers of technology and space.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads July 14th, 2024
“Life’s short. Eat dessert first, work less and vacation more” – Lea Mishell
"Since the decision makers are all old, none care or have interest in helping generations from their grave. This means the lean is going to be towards? Wealth Inequality.
Expect the decision making to benefit asset holders. Create equity. Don’t focus on your career/W-2. Just hit the performance metrics and be likable while pretending the paychecks don’t exist. If you find yourself at a sweatshop W-2 (bad luck), switch ASAP until you can get into a bloated environment where it is easy to skate by.
Set Up to Scale: You don’t really need a large team to build anything anymore. Look at something like Tether and its massive profits with practically no employees. The Industrial Age is over. Having a high head count does not mean you are growing or succeeding anymore. It just signals that you’re a bad human resource manager and you don’t have any idea how to scale with technology.
Comically, having a fast growing headcount (outside of ultra small start up) just says you’re falling behind at this point. The smart big tech companies are already cutting heads for the middle layer (rapidly!). The skill difference is shrinking between younger and older employers due to tooling improvements.
Earn Online: Beating a dead horse. Considering that governments are certainly not up to speed on tech you should assume no geographic location is safe. No need to anticipate that a particular country goes to zero tomorrow. However, you should have a plan B in a worst case scenario. If your money is tied to the internet, you can change states, countries, etc. No geographic risk. In a world of EMP attacks another 10 IQ conspiracies, the world is already a zero anyway so don’t worry about that scenario."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/president-is-a-fake-job-just-a-talking
2. "Venture distribution cycles have elongated to the point that LPs now risk a decade of negative cash-flow on many of their VC relationships.
That's not sustainable for institutions with large spend requirements, such as a university endowment. At least not if it's overallocated to venture."
https://www.axios.com/2024/06/28/venture-capital-endowment-foundation-yale-model
3. "China has long sought to harvest U.S. defense companies’ expertise. In 2019, then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper accused China of “perpetrating the greatest intellectual property theft in human histor,” while other experts have long suggested that the People’s Liberation Army Air Force’s premier J-20 fighter jet incorporates numerous stolen design secrets.
Today, however, “adversaries are operating with greater scope, scale and sophistication,” Haugh said, and the threat is not limited to intellectual property theft, but now encompasses efforts to disrupt supply chains and critical infrastructure."
https://www.airandspaceforces.com/cybercom-china-targeting-defense-industrial-base/
4. Learning from a true long term thinking VC. Original Operator & VC from 2000s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6cZK4ehQjg&t=1s
5. Good state of VC market in Q2, 2024 from Redpoint Capital.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5DetbQdBJc
6. So many great data points on what's up in SaaS.
Net net: it's ugly and will continue to be ugly for a while. There is still stress in the system.
Good founders should be aware but you keep going, keep building and keep selling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00_mp6k7zQI
7. Coatue founder. 50M to 50 billion in AUM. Also 6 kids too. Impressive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nuSOMooReY
8. National Security and Silicon Valley's role. World is changing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vroFlxZykIE
9. This movie looks so good. Tokyo Cowboy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_l11juia6E
10. "Entrepreneurs learn a number of lessons and tips along their journey. Go big from day one, 10x products win, markets are more important than ideas, small, fast-growing markets are best, and culture wins are my favorite general tips for founders. There’s no one way to do it, but these have been instrumental to me."
https://davidcummings.org/2024/06/29/5-favorite-general-tips-for-founders/
11. TLDR is an emerging media empire. Pretty good breakdown.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhPCX5GAFhM
12. "An "investment loop" in user onboarding occurs when users start using the product with a low-friction entry point (no signup form).
As they progress through the onboarding, they become more likely to continue using the product. Only once they're sufficiently invested do you ask them to sign up with email (and perhaps their credit card)."
https://justinjackson.ca/investment-loops
13. "VCs are nothing if not pattern recognizers, right? So, whether consciously or subconsciously, they start to correlate deference as indicative of lower quality. The nicer you are to a VC, the more likely you are to be a bad company.
Now, the opposite is also true. The more a company is crushing it, the less deference they need to pay VCs. The more a founder ignores you, the more likely it is that the company knows its good.
That's the reality of storytelling. The stronger a group of people believe something, and the bigger that group of people is, the more likely that thing is going to start getting reflected in reality. Just one necessarily reality of an inefficient market that is largely dictated by human emotions, whether founder or VC."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/the-groucho-marx-mandate
14. "However, despite its substantial contributions to the global AI ecosystem, Taiwan often struggles to accurately represent itself in global assessments by international organizations such as the United Nations.
The irony is stark: Despite a lack of global data on Taiwan’s AI performance, the island’s semiconductor industry, led by national champion TSMC, is the backbone of global AI infrastructure. The Economist recently reported that the island produces over 90 percent of the most advanced semiconductors for the world’s most cutting-edge AI applications and research."
https://thediplomat.com/2024/06/decoding-taiwans-true-ai-potential/
15. "There are basically two things Trump could do with regards to the threat from China. The first is to retreat, offering up Taiwan and the Philippines’ islands as a sacrifice in the hope that China will be appeased. The second is to strengthen America’s hand in the Pacific, increasing defense spending, diverting resources from Europe, and building up forces to deter a Chinese attack.
It’s not at all clear to me which of these Trump will do.
There’s also the question of how China will react to a Trump presidency. The general consensus seems to be that China hates both Biden and Trump, the former for his effective economic policies, the latter for his general attitude of antagonism. Some argue that China fears Trump more because it views him as an unpredictable loose cannon, much like the Soviet Union Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan, and that this uncertainty would deter them from launching an attack (though that might be wishful thinking).
So on the biggest and scariest question of them all, Trump remains an unknown quantity. America looks fairly likely to roll the dice on this riskiest of gambles. My general conclusion is that the era of instability and chaos of the late 2010s hasn’t ended — it’s just shifting from domestic turmoil to international chaos. Buckle up, because it isn’t over yet."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/time-to-think-about-a-second-trump
16. "It’s to remind you that the best way to latch onto the future is to think through affirmative possibilities, to remember that the world is in flux, and to keep turning over old stones.
This mindset is particularly important with AI. Some of the tasks it struggles with today are going to be child’s play by next year. Like Claude, which has improved leaps and bounds since its last model, and will likely continue in this direction.
Previous eras of creativity have mostly looked a bit like sculpting. A sculptor takes a block of material and carves it, slowly but surely, into shape. Nothing happens without her hand. Even when an assistant is involved, the sculptor pores over the project, because their human input is important at every point of the process. So too with writing, or programming, or painting.
This era of creativity is going to look more like gardening. A gardener doesn’t grow plants directly. Instead, she sets up the conditions for the garden to grow. She takes care of the soil, the water, and the sunlight—and lets the plants do their thing.
So too with AI. As more of our time is spent being model managers, we won’t be directly making as much creative work. That’s like pulling up a plant to help it grow. Instead, we’ll be creating optimal conditions and letting the models do their work."
https://every.to/chain-of-thought/when-ai-gets-more-capable-what-will-humans-do
17. "As a society, we have never had more tools at our disposal to track “activity.” 40% of workers claim that their time spent active on their computers is monitored, and 31% are subject to real-time monitoring. But activity is not synonymous with productivity, and too much activity can actually hinder productivity. We think that the solution to every problem is to simply spend more time on it, or work harder, but exhaustive effort has diminishing returns. Often, the most effective choice is simply stepping away for a bit.
Thinking is a critical part of the writing process, and if you’re just writing, and writing, and writing, with no time to think, the writing will fall flat. If you’re trying to solve a difficult client problem, the solution will likely hit you while you’re walking around town, not while you are staring at your monitor. 90 minutes of free-thinking and 30 minutes of focused work is often more potent than two hours of grinding away. Don’t underestimate the value of stepping away from time to time."
https://www.youngmoney.co/p/benefits-slowing
18. "Costner is now 69. In the past decade, he has experienced a revival of sorts, doing nuanced and charismatic character work in film after film while starring on Yellowstone, the most popular show on television. Other actors might be content with their late-career good fortune. But other actors are not Kevin Costner, who is prone to obsession, regardless of what that obsession may cost. “I’m so grateful that I’ve never seen a UFO,” Costner said. “I’m a pretty sane person, although some people would think maybe something else. But what happens once you see one? You can’t let it go.”
One of those obsessions is a Western called Horizon, which Costner—as cowriter, director, and star—has been trying to make since 1988. Over the past 36 years, the story has evolved, from a two-hander about a couple of guys to a vast, panoramic portrait of the founding of a town—called Horizon—during a particularly bloody chapter of America’s western expansion, but Costner has never fully left it alone.
But if no one in Hollywood wanted to make one, they certainly didn’t want to make four. And so Costner, a few years ago, decided to fund the film himself, with the help of two outside investors whose names he will not disclose. (More recently, Warner Bros. has also come aboard for the first two films, handling theatrical distribution.) Press reports have been wide-eyed about just how much Costner has put on the line to make the film. “I know they say I’ve got $20 million of my own money in this movie,” Costner told me. “It’s not true. I’ve got now about $38 million in the film. That’s the truth. That’s the real number.”"
https://www.gq.com/story/kevin-costner-gq-cover-story
19. "But West and others have also come to see rawdogging flights as a kind of challenge, like the Tough Mudder or No Nut November, the goal being to see how fully participants can deprive themselves of creature comforts, up to and including free snack and drinks and even bathroom visits. A true rawdogger takes no indulgences."
https://www.gq.com/story/why-men-are-rawdogging-flights
20. "It all started with a TikTok video by 27-year-old Megan Boni, known as Girl On Couch. Her April post, amassing about 49 million views, features a singsong message: “I’m looking for a man in finance. Trust fund. 6’5.” Blue eyes.”
DJs remixed Boni’s audio. Thousands of social-media users created videos with the sound or riffed on the phrase—making it a front-runner for TikTok’s song of the summer.
Boni, meanwhile, struck a deal with Universal Music Group. Versions of her “Man in Finance” song are now on Spotify, including a release with David Guetta, a top name in dance music.
Finance bros, the world seemed to declare, are back.
Boni said she made the original video as a satire of women with impossible dating standards, not because she’s particularly interested in dating a man in finance.
“I wanted to make fun of single people, including myself,” she said."
https://archive.ph/eZmVI#selection-5747.0-5763.52
21. "This is what actually scares me the most… thanks to Ai big tech is getting back in shape to run a marathon at breakneck speeds. It’s been a long time since all of them competed so intensely against each other to win, in a very public way, with events and media coverage almost daily.
Startups face significant challenges in competing with these giants. The financial muscle of Big Tech allows them to outspend startups in R&D and acquisitions. The data advantage held by these companies means that their AI models can be trained on more comprehensive and varied datasets, leading to superior performance. So most startups will need access to it via partnerships, APIs etc - hopefully go beyond being just a wrapper."
22. "One of the contradictions I’ve felt about Japan is that large-cap growth in Japan gets priced at ridiculously high multiples. It’s not uncommon to see these things trade at 40 times P/E or higher. This is presumably because the cost of capital in Japan is low and in a deflationary economy where the population is declining, growth is rare. However, when you look at these small companies in great competitive positions that are growing double digits with lots of room to grow, you can find them trading for single-digit earnings multiples!
The delta is so big that I call this the ‘chasm’. If you look at some of the large-cap growth companies, these also traded at very low multiples early on but as they continued to grow earnings per share at some point brokers start to cover it, institutions start to pile in and the stock re-rates quite significantly and that contradiction gets resolved. Some of these large caps are expensive and can de-rate as interest rates rise, but the gap is large enough that I still think it’s more likely that these small companies will re-rate than the large caps de-rating down to where these small caps are valued.
There are some good reasons for this gap, the first is that Japanese stocks are ridiculously underfollowed. I think it was something like close to 50% of the 4000 listed companies aren’t covered by any broker. Compare this to the Russel 2000 where most companies have some kind of coverage on the stock. Coverage is ultimately a function of investor demand, so if there’s no demand no broker will cover it making it illiquid.
This leads to the second reason which is that as a result, the small companies are owned by passive funds and Japanese retail investors. But here's the problem: most of the Japanese populace lost interest in allocating to stocks decades ago and with it, our ‘financial literacy’ of understanding equity capital markets has dwindled. Those same people are setting the prices of some of these assets today."
https://www.readideabrunch.com/p/idea-brunch-with-made-in-japan
23. "What is getting ignored in this current startup world is that we have so much !@#@% jammed into our limited attention spans because of a million notifications a day and a follow-up NPS survey for every single restaurant/software/service/product/travel experience and a million other things occupying our attention, there is no room left even for good stuff.
So the problem for startup founders is, you can have product-market fit, you can execute flawlessly, you can take the risk out of the buying process, you can offer a deal, and you still may fail because we live in a world where you are just… crowded out. You did everything right. You did everything your VCs said, but I just don’t have the mental bandwidth to pay attention to you.
And that’s just for low friction products. A lot of AI products are higher friction, so the situation is even worse.
Which brings me back to my original point - attention is all you need. The companies that win now are the ones that can find ways to get attention. I’d even go so far as to say attention-market fit may soon become more important than product-market fit."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/attention-is-all-you-need-but-not
24. "Over the past 40 years, Arnault has assembled the world’s largest luxury conglomerate and globalized a sector once constrained by the limited ambitions of family-owned European companies encrusted in tradition. He didn’t invent conspicuous consumption, of course. But thanks almost exclusively to him, luxury is now the universal obsession of shoppers on Shanghai’s Nanjing Road, Milan’s Via Monte Napoleone and Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills and of the tourists who flock to LVMH stores on the Champs-Élysées in Paris and Fifth Avenue in New York City.
Arnault has dressed royals and presidents, supermodels and celebrities. Perhaps more than anyone else, he’s made the clothes and accessories that signify status among the global elite—and project a bit of their insecurity, too.
For that, he’s the wealthiest person in the world. Or very close to it, depending on the day. (And on French politics, which lately has been turbulent and deleterious to LVMH share price.) As of mid-June he has a net worth of around $200 billion, as estimated by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His fortune, built on the most analog of industries, is only comparable to the digital riches of a few titans who built their affluence on expanding access to things like software, cloud computing and electric vehicles.
Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Bill Gates, often criticized for their social and sartorial tastes, have invented our future. Arnault, the embodiment of taste, yoked together the nouveau-riche brands that symbolized Europe’s postwar influence and exported them all around the world."
https://archive.ph/ZPCuU#selection-1851.0-1873.240
25. "All the old papers were already online, and they quickly followed the young guys into the chaos of clicks. As mobile grew more popular, Facebook grew more dominant, and once the world’s attention was concentrated in one place every media company in the country started going viral just enough to make them feel like they were the future. It was a mad gold rush, so obviously venture capitalists got involved, and once that happened valuations became dumber than you can possibly imagine. A few years later, Zuckerberg flipped the free traffic switch to “pay me,” and everything began to die. Unless of course you’d built up email-based subscriptions before 2017 or so.
Do you know who charted the “new” course in subscriptions?
The New York Times launched a paywall in 2011, six years before Vice’s famously deranged $5.7 billion valuation (for comparison, the Times was trading around $2.3 billion at the top of that year), and by 2014 they were featuring a wide array of newsletters. The Gray Lady wasn’t interested in farming clicks, she was laser focused on your inbox. Sharing stories across the new medium was cute, and certainly the writers were all distracted by the rush of Twitter. But leadership was focused on rebuilding their company online, which could only begin with distribution. This is not to say the old thing was the new thing all along. This is to say there was never actually a “new” thing. There were just a bunch of stupid rich kids screwing around on the internet, and a lot of dumb money (some things never change). Separate from its actual content, a news company is, and has always been, distribution + paid + ads. Just as in the physical world, you either had all three online or you didn’t, and if you didn’t you were doomed.
By the mid-2010s, the instability of social media was obvious to everyone, but for most huge players it was way too late to adapt. Once Substack democratized the bootstrapped newsletter, which guaranteed the most popular writers and publishers ownership of their readership by way of the email, a fresh media Renaissance was inevitable, and random online shitposters quickly became more influence than Vox or Vice or any of the other huge encumbants."
https://www.piratewires.com/p/we-are-the-media-now
26. "Frederic Court of Felix Capital discussed the necessity for VCs to think about their funds, not just as investment strategies, but unique products for LPs that stand out in a crowded market. Generic fund strategies are predicted to be much harder to raise given the competition in the market. Jason Gray amplified this sentiment: “SuperReturns underscored the importance of VCs distinguishing their funds in a crowded market. To remain competitive, unique value propositions have become essential.
In conclusion, the Super Venture conference highlighted a cautious yet optimistic outlook for the venture capital and fintech ecosystems. The industry is adapting to new realities with a focus on specialization, capital efficiency, and strategic differentiation."
https://99tech.alexlazarow.com/p/the-money-behind-the-money-lp-trends
27. "By day, Yass, who has a personal fortune of $47 billion, oversees Susquehanna International Group LLP, a trading firm burrowed deep in the machinery of modern finance. It’s a giant force in options, stocks, energy, bonds and foreign exchange—and also in more esoteric stuff. It runs a Bermudan subsidiary that sells niche insurance for lottery payouts and natural disasters, a Bahamian cryptocurrency operation and an Irish sports-betting group. It backs startups around the world, including in China and Israel. And it arrived relatively early to Bitcoin—Yass purchased some from a US marshals auction following their seizure from the illegal marketplace Silk Road, according to a person familiar with the matter.
A registered Libertarian since 1996, Yass has in the past decade spent tens of millions of dollars funding politicians focused on limiting government intervention in every area that matters to him, notably taxes, trading, education and gaming. He personally champions a controversial overhaul of public schools favored by Betsy DeVos, Trump’s former secretary of education. But more recently he’s found himself at the center of attention for another reason: his roughly $15 billion stake in ByteDance Ltd., the corporate parent of TikTok."
https://archive.ph/BKZuw#selection-1853.0-1857.228
28. "I’ve been that guy. Even now, I am that guy sometimes. I’ve done regrettable things, and I’ve hurt people with my behaviour. But getting treated for bipolar disorder, diving into psychedelic therapy, and experiencing internal family systems therapy have made me a better human.
I still wander into douchebag territory at times, but I don’t get lost there anymore.
We’ve all done things we’d undo if we could. We’ve all been horrible at some point in our lives. But there’s a solution.
Forgive yourself.
Be a little less horrible."
https://www.sanjaysays.co/p/10-regrets-from-a-58-year-old-douchebag
29. "Hilger, a medical device salesman, ran a company in Minnesota called JBJ Industries and, in 1986, had cooked up an idea with a few of his friends.
There wasn’t anywhere good to change a diaper. What if they put change stations in public washrooms? They created a fold-out station that could be mounted to a wall, and patented the invention.
The problem was, Hilger needed to get the dads — who weren’t changing diapers from their perches in the boardroom — on his side.
Once he did, the money started rolling in. So did the market share: Koala Kare’s share of the US market is now an estimated 85%.
But no monopoly is created equal. Some, like Koala Kare, grow organically, riding a cultural tide to decades of success. Others, like Google and Apple, face lawsuits from the FTC for monopolistic practices.So why are some monopolies able to flourish while others are scrutinized?"
https://thehustle.co/originals/the-worlds-cutest-monopoly
30. "Make money, there’s nothing wrong with that, but remember that real wealth comes from being a person rich in imagination and character.
Nobody can take that away from you."
https://www.sanjaysays.co/p/4-great-reasons-to-be-rich
31. "For venture capitalists, this part of the investing process – the time between discovering a desirable, competitive deal and making the investment is the arena. It’s the province of sharp elbows, late-night phone calls, speed reading data rooms, and dueling term sheets.
If handled well, this can be the making of the firm. With a small number of intelligent, farseeing decisions, you may find yourself the equity holder of a legendary business and the partner to a historic entrepreneur. But if managed poorly, you may find yourself sitting on an overheated pile of buzzy logos, not real businesses.
Based on the strategies of the exceptional investors we’ve interviewed, and our own research, we’ve devised a five step playbook to help you run a tight process, make shrewd decisions, and win allocation."
https://thegeneralist.substack.com/p/how-to-win-a-competitive-deal
Austin: The Silicon Valley for Creative & Literary Entrepreneurs
Austin Texas is a very cool place. SXSW and an amazing live music scene. The HQ of Whole Foods and a major center of post secondary schools like UT Austin. It gets talked about as a rising tech center which it sort of is. But what is not talked about is that it’s really the center for Conversion Rate Optimization in Digital marketing and in the last decade, Content Creation Entrepreneurs.
In Austin, it started off as a center for E-commerce and CRO. My friends & Conversion Rate Optimization experts like Peep Laja & Ryan Deiss but also giants like Brian Massey and the Eisenberg brothers.
But starting in the 2010s onwards, we saw some impressive literary and content creation entrepreneurs show up there. Best selling book authors like Austin Kleon, Ryan Holiday and Tucker Max being most prominent. Others of note: Taylor Pearson, Srinivas Rao, The arrival of podcaster superstars Chase Jarvis, John Lee Dumas, Tim Ferriss and Joe Rogan really put Austin on the map here. This concentration of creative and literary entrepreneurial talent was also what has drawn the up and coming podcasting superstars like Chris Williamson.
So just like how the San Francisco Bay Area is the place to be if you are in the Software, SaaS or Developer Tools space. Or New York for fintech, media or finance or even fashion.
If you want to get good you have to go to the center of the network. Great people want to be around other great people. Specifically in their industry and craft.
You literally are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. The collisions, the random meetings and serendipity that happens when these people are in the same place over a good period of time. This is the cluster effect that Anna Lee Saxenian ascribed to the rise of Silicon Valley as a technological center of technology.
So if you want to figure out the future and see what the next emerging ecosystems will be, just track where the best and brightest of that sector are moving to. And go there. As I’ve said many times, place matters.
Generalists Win: Building Your Polymath Stack
Dan Koe is one of the best rising and risen educators about the digital economy and how entrepreneurs can thrive in this new world. He tweeted an interesting thought:
“Become a nobody.
Become everything.
Become a designer, writer, marketer, socializer, runner, bodybuilder, philosopher, scientist, psychologist, and polymath who knows how to sustain your obsessive curiosity.
The universe rewards those who don't impose their own limits.”
Source: https://twitter.com/thedankoe/status/1694728525344104955
I’ve railed about the common but awful career advice about specializing. I think in an unpredictable future, your best strategy is learning as many different skills. Chase your curiosity. You never know where they will lead you. And because it’s innate, you’re more willing to do it over a longer period of time.
As Steve Jobs said: “you connect the dots looking backwards”.
I think about my career path and what I do now. I’m living my ideal work life but this was built on the foundations of skills, experience and network I built up over the previous 20+ years of work.
I learned about startups and online marketing at Alibris. I learned to managing people, building sales teams, public speaking, scaling and international expansion during my time at Yahoo!. I learned fundraising and venture investing at 500 Startups.
This has all come together in my new work life. I travel the world investing and doing public speaking at conferences. I spend time reading and thinking about the future. I invest in dozens of early stage startups as well as some LP checks into other VC funds a year from my venture fund & Holding Company.
I also sit on several Investment Committees of different international VC funds and help them fine tune their investment processes. I do some free as well as paid mentoring (via government programs) with various accelerator programs
And all of this stacks on each other. My previous experience helps inform my investing, advising and mentoring. But doing the mentoring sessions as well as spending time with my portfolio companies helps keep me up to date on the latest tools, tactics and techniques of the startup world. Speaking at conferences and writing helps me clarify, hone and codify much of these learnings. This all turns into a virtuous cycle.
All of these activities provide me with a great and unique data sample set that helps me understand what’s happening in the tech world. This is my work stack and I believe this is what gives me my edge. This is also my path to staying relevant in the tech and business world if I continue to build on this.
Failure is a Message from the Universe
I’m actually a graduate from University of British Columbia in Vancouver and it was a major bit of pride for my family as it is ranked one of the top schools in Canada (although looking back it was pretty useless to my life and career overall). But I didn’t get in the first time. I was a lackluster student in high school and only did well in classes that interested me or where I liked the teachers.
Plus I skipped a lot of school because I didn’t enjoy it. Period. I read my own books and educated myself. I learned hacks and shortcuts. I ended up with like a 3.1 GPA which was below the curve, so I didn’t get in for the first year of University. It was highly disappointing and my parents were far from happy. It was a huge shock to me personally, when I had gotten away with so much previously. I ended up doing classes at local Kwantlen college with my other slacker friends.
But this was a crucible moment. As Tony Robbins said: “When people succeed, they party. When people fail, they ponder.”
It was a wake up call and forced me to get my act together. I learned what I did before was not good enough. I took school more seriously and led to a ferocious work ethic. Frightening, almost. No surprise it was easy to get into UBC in the next round. This moment set me on my path and approach to life. The use of overwhelming force.
I’d always try to learn and over prepare. Whenever I met an obstacle I’d grind through it and overcome it with intense effort and work. Doing this sets you ahead of most people who just quit when it gets hard.
I never quit. It doesn’t mean you don’t try to find smart ways to sort an issue. I might rest and prepare. But in the long run, I’ll never quit for important and strategic things in my life and business. It’s served me well so far. I’ve seen this trait also in all the most successful people I know.
So the lesson here is when something doesn’t go your way. When you fail and you will fail, what lesson do you take out of it? Do you adjust your approach? And do you get back up? Do you keep going? That is all that matters if you want to succeed in the end.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads July 7th, 2024
One must maintain a little bit of summer, even in the middle of winter--Henry David Thoreau
"For Mubadala’s next act, Ajami is seeking to milk his tech connections to put more money directly into startups. At the same time, Mubadala is increasingly using its clout to encourage Western companies and investors to deepen their ties to the UAE’s tech ecosystem, part of the country’s broader push to diversify its economy away from oil.
For Ajami, 49, the goal is for Mubadala—a term that means “exchange” in Arabic—to one day be mentioned in the same breath as Sand Hill Road’s most vaunted investment firms. “The way founders speak about Sequoia—why not, 20 years from now, won’t they speak that way about Mubadala?” asked Ajami.
Ajami has a ways to go before he gets Mubadala there. Mubadala has stumbled badly in Europe as it has tried to employ a strategy similar to the one it used to break into the U.S. The companies it has backed in Europe have performed so poorly that Mubadala has put Jonno Elliott—who joined the firm in 2022 after leading VC investments at Virgin Management Ltd.—in charge of salvaging its portfolio of companies from the region, according to a person who spoke to Elliott. Among some European investors and founders, it has developed a reputation for aggressive tactics that could impact its ability to invest in top European companies in the future.
And while plenty of tech investors speak highly of Mubadala, many of them are eager to curry favor with the deep-pocketed firm so it continues to invest in their funds, especially in the current dismal fundraising environment for VC firms. Privately, after singing the praises of Mubadala as a limited partner, many venture capitalists have also said its direct investments in startups don’t carry the weight of other investors’ bets. Sovereign wealth funds just don’t have the track record of picking winners that VC firms do, those critics say.
Still, Mubadala has had some notable successes. Ajami and his lieutenants have helped it buy shares in buzzy companies like SpaceX, Waymo, Klarna, Brex, Chime, pharmaceuticals company Recursion and AI infrastructure company Crusoe Energy Systems, among others. Mubadala Capital, the VC and private equity arm of the sovereign wealth fund, oversees a $24 billion pool of capital with 180 employees spread across several offices, including in London, New York and San Francisco, which hosts a tech team they first established in 2017.
Mubadala is also continuing to plow money into other VC funds. Its portfolio includes Altimeter Capital Management, Greenoaks Capital, Iconiq Capital, Dragoneer Investment Group, 8VC, Marcelo Claure’s Bicycle Capital, DCVC, Haun Ventures, Arch Venture Partners, Clocktower Group, Radical Ventures and a handful of emerging managers, like a new $30 million seed fund called Nebular, according to several people familiar with these funds."
2. This is a story of the 2nd gen of Huy Fong, getting greedy and trying to screw their supplier of peppers Underwood Ranches (who actually won in lawsuit).
Huy Fong are getting what's coming to them.
BTW: buy Underwood Ranches Hot sauce instead.
https://www.axios.com/2024/05/09/huy-fong-sriracha-shortage-2024
3. "We begin with the rather obvious observation that the wanton destruction of facilities integral to the daily lives of non-combatant civilians is almost certainly a war crime.
Supporters of the Russian side will point to the refinery attacks as justification, but the response thus far has been wildly disproportionate to the provocation. They might also call attention to how the US carried out similar raids against mostly civilian targets in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, and Kosovo. While these accusations certainly carry some merit, such whataboutisms are only likely to harden the position of both sides, diminishing the prospects of a diplomatic settlement to the war.
The months ahead look set to deliver incredible hardships to millions of innocent civilians. With the warring sides farther apart than ever, those in the West will eventually be forced to choose between two highly unpalatable options: sit idly by while much of the population of Ukraine is devastated, or become a direct participant in a kinetic war with a nuclear superpower.
One way or the other, the calendar will soon demand clarity of intent."
https://newsletter.doomberg.com/p/doom-loop
4. "Going from an angel to a fund manager is a huge jump—as is going from a junior person at a fund to the main person at your own fund. It could take a long time to convince people you can make that leap, but you want to stay in motion as much as possible during that time—remaining in market, keeping your network warm."
5. One of the best conversations in Silicon Valley these days on AI. With guest Elad Gil.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psBIQdSAKjE
6. No surprise here. This is a super impressive new VC fund. Kevin is an OG of Silicon Valley.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/21/kevin-hartzs-a-raises-its-second-oversubscribed-fund-in-two-years/
7. "Regardless, Series As haven’t grown to nearly the extent of Seeds. During the last 14 years, the ratio of Seeds to Series As has grown from about 1.1 to 1, to 5 to 1. Meanwhile, the ratio of Bs to As is relatively constant : between 3 & 4 to 1.
With excess seed supply & in an era where forward public software multiples have reverted to the mean from their stratospheric levels, Series A rounds are harder to raise. AI startups, the darlings of the current era, are a notable exception. In this category, the heady multiples of 2021 & 2022 still apply.
But for classic SaaS companies, the Series A Crunch is real. In 18 months, the Series B will again become the hardest round to raise."
https://tomtunguz.com/seedpocalypse-2024/
8. Always learn something from Tim Ferriss. Look for patterns of anomalies. This was an old interview but super insightful tips on how to improve your life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nos3AXfdFnY
9. "The line between AI opportunity and AI washing is neither clear nor fixed. Sure, it’s obvious for the outliers — Nvidia will continue to register upside powering AI, and shady brokers who claim to use AI to pick stocks will not. But for most firms, clarity will only come with hindsight. Ironically, a year ago the big story was how to detect if someone was using AI (news stories, student papers, lawyers). Today, we’re attempting to discern if a firm is not using AI."
https://www.profgalloway.com/ai-laundromat/
10. This is a "must listen to" discussion from one of the best early stage B2B VCs. It's an insight rich conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0pab-qwSoo&t=3428s
11. "For entrepreneurs, my recommendation is to say “we” when referring to the work being done by your startup and avoid using “I.” “We” recognizes that it’s a team effort and shares credit where credit is due. Entrepreneurs would do well to remember this in their communication."
https://davidcummings.org/2024/06/22/i-vs-we-when-speaking-as-a-founder/
12. The best new show on tech and investing. BG2 at the Coatue Conference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xuurlc-V2Jg
13. An alarming view of the geopolitical future. China is making some smart moves in the Global South. US is in decline mainly due to incompetence and arrogance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSJ8NPi_xTA
14. Not sure I agree with this take on the Trump trials. I agree with what this looks like from the outside.
"The remedial mechanism of Society has been desecrated for political gain. There is no recourse or compromise to be had. “The System is rigged, why bother?”
In time people will begin to disregard the law. Laws from on high will be disregarded at the lower levels. They will take the law into their own hands. Hoping to tip the scales of Fate to their favour…
People no longer trust each other. Hell, they don’t even know their neighbours. America and Western Society is collapsing. A jury of your peers? What peers, if there’s no community; they probably don’t even speak your language.
America and the West have become more tribal and factionalized. Fractured by their differences and multiplicities. Cascading down till it reaches the local level. The end of our age of Atomization."
https://mercurial.substack.com/p/out-of-the-shadows
15. "Nations go to war for fear, honor, or interest. The PRC pushes the world to the brink of war on at least three different fronts from the Himalayas to Pacific because it has an interest in aggression, it may miscalculate when war will happen or it may misjudge another’s will to go to war, but its aggression drives conflict.
Seizing territory, building islands and fortifications, ramming Filipino ships and cutting off people’s appendages, or shoving an Indian commander off a cliff is not an “accident.” This behavior is not something that can be managed as if it were a civil marriage dispute. When one party is the abuser in a relationship, you don’t treat them as equally at fault (at least you shouldn’t, in the 21st century).
Because that’s all the Chinese Communist Party is: the abusive husband who has a lot of guns and ammo, is deeply paranoid, thinks the world owes him everything, and takes a swing at every neighbor he thinks he can bully.
Any war that breaks out over Taiwan, the South China Sea, or elsewhere isn’t happening as if we tripped and fell into war in the dark. The PRC is to blame, and we should be doing everything we can to ensure they know what happens if they keep pushing."
https://www.breakingbeijing.com/p/there-is-no-accidental-war
16. "I’m really worried AI is going to make all of this worse. I hear all the same things about AI that I heard at the beginning of other waves of tech about how it will make things better. Yet, I don’t hear any acknowledgement that we made mistakes that time around and now have ideas how to improve with the next wave of innovation."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/lessons-from-filterworld-and-a-warning
17. "The idea of America as the Arsenal of Democracy in World War II—innovative, productive, and hard-working—is now firmly a part of the story we tell about ourselves. It is a source of pride, patriotism, and inspiration. And it’s a true story.
But that was then, and this is now.
Today, Americans are waking up to the reality that we can’t make things in sufficient quantities to keep us safe, while our principal adversary is flooding the world with its manufactures. Many of our allies are in even worse shape.
Rebuilding and rearming before it’s too late are the urgent tasks before us. Thankfully, industrial decline is a solvable problem—anda choice. We can make better choices, create better incentives, and use the strengths we still have to our advantage.
Not only is mass production a solvable problem. It’s already being solved. Half of our business at Palantir Technologies, where I work as chief technology officer, is with commercial clients. We work every day to create software that helps the free world’s most important industrial concerns supercharge production, see into their supply chains, and empower their workers, from the C-suite to the assembly line.
I’ve seen the results, and I believe this model—what’s sometimes called software-defined production—is key to rebuilding the American industrial base."
18. "So it is not that hard to see a link between missiles devastating Israel’s north, Biden’s plans, global tensions and how the most odious forces are escalating this conflict into America’s main street. It will require rare political talent and guts to turn events around on both the frontlines in Lebanon and the streets of LA. So far we have seen little of it but events may now force Biden’s hand to act decisively."
https://pieterdorsman.substack.com/p/silence-before-the-storm
19. "While there are still many companies sub-$200m in revenue who go public, the late-stage private markets enable those who would wait to achieve much higher scale."
https://tomtunguz.com/ipo-size-2024/
20. "When hegemony is broken, conflict returns. At worst, the strong take what they can and the weak suffer what they must. At best, innovation returns. When there is no dominant power to ensure peace, there is also no bureaucracy to ensure stagnation. No global hall monitor. The same environment that produced Sparta and Athens––one of iteration and competition––is allowed to flourish.
Hegemony brings peace, competition brings innovation.
If America slips from total hegemon to standard first power, we’ll see a much more dynamic global environment. Ideally, the US will rise to the challenge and become more competitive as well. Decentralized currency means small network states can operate with a globally valid currency––no confederate dollars. Startup founders are now using LLMs to run companies with 2 people instead of 20. The same may be true of countries.
Athens held total hegemony for 67 years. The United States has enjoyed the same for 79 years. Now a challenge to American hegemony paired with advances in tech set the stage for the rise of smaller, agile nation states and organizations to compete."
https://americanreformer.org/2024/06/rise-of-the-dutch-republics/
21. "To Run the World helps explain why Russia’s grasping for great-power status often looks so irrational. The Kremlin repeatedly punches above its weight, and strikes militarily before it is ready economically or strategically. Its outsize ambitions, inherited from the Russian empire and often challenged by the West – which learned in the 20th century to treat Russia as both culturally and ideologically alien – are often responsible for such behaviour.
With no sign that Russia’s ambitions are waning, the book offers a silver lining of sorts. Russia’s policies can change. After failing to gain legitimacy as an adversary, it tends to pursue the same goal as a partner. Its war on Ukraine has failed to give it legitimacy in the West and has positioned Russia as a weak junior partner of China in the east. Russia will have to change its strategy in future. For that to happen the West needs to show resolve, as Truman did in the 1950s, Kennedy in the 1960s, and Reagan in the 1980s."
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/book-of-the-day/2024/06/russias-great-power-complex
22. "The first thing to understand about this war is that it would have been entirely avoidable if the US had utilized historical American pragmatism and first principles when building its post-Cold War national security strategy. It did not. Instead, it allowed its decision-making to fall victim to greed, trendy theories, and tribalism. These flaws led to a policy that:
--Treated Russia as an enemy, even though they were democratizing
--Embraced China as a partner, even though its totalitarian government was still in control
--Allowed a networked swarm that demonized Putin for Trump’s election in 2016 to drive its policy response to the invasion of Ukraine.
Now, the US is rapidly moving to contain China by bolstering its regional alliances and building a strategic “thorn” that perpetually threatens them (in Russia’s case, Ukraine, in China’s, Taiwan). Unfortunately, as it is prone to do, the US has decided to embark on this strategy without seriously considering its consequences or minimizing its vulnerability to an escalation in hostilities."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/permawar
23. "So in other words, by reaching the future a little ahead of the West, Japan, and its content creators, began creating things that met the needs of its children and adults – increasingly indoors, isolated, and in need of stimulation and comfort and escape – just as the children and adults of other nations were approaching these same sorts of societal milestones. This wasn’t canny – it was lucky. Effectively Japan is surfing waves of societal trends that radiate outward from itself to post-industrial nations around the world.
But a bigger part is because successive generations of American tastemakers have grown up on Japanese fantasies themselves – which, bringing things full circle, is how an all-American sports celebrity like Noah Lyles can make Japanese tastes a big part of his public persona, and nobody bats an eye."
https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/the-united-states-of-japan
24. "But if Canadians are so ambitious, why do we buy into the narrative of a “bronze medal mentality”?
Because to do otherwise would require us to accept an inconvenient truth: that the problem isn’t the founders, it’s the ecosystem.
It would require us to accept a fact that many Canadian founders have come to terms with over the years: in many cases, the best path to fulfill their ambitions involves leaving Canada."
https://chrisneumann.com/archives/canadas-problem-isnt-ambition
25. Happen to be in Detroit and wish I had more time to check out this city. But it's really undergoing a renaissance. 2025!
https://www.michigan.org/article/trip-idea/perfect-detroit-travel-guide-first-time-visitor
26. This is a sign of one of the most important trends: Hardware as a Service.
Will be a key piece of VCs coming into manufacturing. #Reindustrialize
https://www.svb.com/trends-insights/reports/state-of-haas-report/
27. "Lübeck’s and Hamburg’s access to salt supplies had given them unique advantages in the herring fishing industries of the North Sea and Baltic. Dutch salt-upon-salt, however, was just about as good as any other refined white salt for preserving fish, while also being much cheaper and more easily scaled. France, Spain and Portugal, with plenty of coast and infinite sunshine, could easily expand the production of bay salt to serve as the basic feedstock, while Dutch peat to fuel its refining was, as we’ve seen, for all intents and purposes inexhaustible. By contrast the traditional sources of the Baltic’s white salt, like the Lüneburg salt springs, were constrained by the supply of wood fuel for boiling the brine.
To expand in the same way would have required the creation and maintenance of many more forests up-river into Germany, on land that was already spoken for, and thus expensive to convert. There was simply no contest: thanks to their uniquely expandable supply of white salt, the northern Dutch could catch and preserve far more herring to a high quality.
Yet despite this game of New World whack-a-mole, the Dutch still just about managed to keep their commerce afloat. It was widely acknowledged that whereas the Spanish empire drew vast quantities of gold and silver from the New World, the Dutch seemed to have as great a “gold mine” of their own in the humble salted herrings of the North Sea."
https://www.ageofinvention.xyz/p/age-of-invention-the-dutch-salten
28. This is a great convo on the state of VC and AI in Silicon Valley. It's very educational.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhBAgSQnhVs
29. "But as I’ve been arguing for a while now, there’s one region of the world that’s well-positioned to grow and industrialize in the new era of geopolitical fragmentation. This is the region I call SASEA — an acronym for South Asia and Southeast Asia. South Asia includes India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and some smaller countries nearby. Southeast Asia includes the big island countries of Indonesia and the Philippines, the medium-sized mainland countries of Vietnam, Thailand, and Myanmar, the small rich countries of Singapore and Malaysia, and a few others.
I coined this term — I pronounce it like “SAZ-ee-uh” — because no one else seemed like they were going to do it. The Economist briefly talked about “Altasia”, but the term never caught on, and it also included developed countries like Japan and Korea. SASEA is a much more cohesive bloc because it’s geographically contiguous, and most of it is still in the early stages of industrialization.
I don’t think people realize just how important SASEA is. It may not look big on a Mercator projection, but its population size is absolutely enormous; India alone is bigger than China now, and the region as a whole contains a full third of humanity. SASEA has far more people than Africa, East Asia (excluding Southeast Asia), or the entire Western hemisphere.
SASEA really is globalization’s next frontier. The age of export-led industrialization is not finished — geopolitical tensions will not return us to a world of local supply chains, nor will China become the world’s single factory floor. Yes, it’s a time of tensions, competition, and fragmentation. But so was the first Cold War. And just as Japan, Korea, and Taiwan reaped the benefits of Cold War 1 when access to Western markets drove their industrialization, the billions of people living in South Asia and Southeast Asia are well-positioned to benefit from the new age of geopolitical rivalries."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-age-of-sasea
30. "A weak manufacturing base also means fewer opportunities for knowledge spillovers—the transfer of knowledge between different industries or problems—and clustering effects—the benefits that accrue when an industry is concentrated in a specific region. America’s most globally competitive industries are all undergirded by these characteristics: there is a reason Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and Hollywood are all physical locations. By bringing people together, you get benefits greater than the sum of their parts.
Finally, rebuilding domestic manufacturing is just plain cool, and that is an underrated fact. It seems to me that America needs a renewed sense of national pride and more positive visions for the future. The right offers nationalism, but it is a kind of wounded nationalism—scared more than proud. The left offers a poststructuralist attack on the concept of America itself. Neither offers voters much to be excited about, and as a result, we are a cynical country.
Fortunately, there is good news. The tools required to push the frontiers of manufacturing forward play to many traditional American strengths: software, artificial intelligence, automation.
I believe that we can use our strengths in software, cloud computing, and AI to fundamentally change the capabilities and cost structures of manufacturers. International competitors, predicated on higher manufacturing employment than the US, could even struggle to compete. There is a path—perhaps a narrow one, but a path nonetheless."
https://www.hyperdimensional.co/p/america-the-serious
31. Wisdom from everyone's favorite new Tiger Dad. Jensen Huang of Nvidia.
"To wrap up, I think Jensen summed up his life and work principles well in a recent commencement speech at Caltech. In his words:
--Believe in something unconventional and unexplored but let it be informed and let it be reasoned. Dedicate yourself to making it happen.
--See setbacks as new opportunities. Your pain and suffering are your ultimate superpowers. Of all the things that I value, intelligence is not at the top of that list. My ability to endure pain and suffering, to work on something for a very, very long period of time, to handle setbacks, and to see the opportunity just around the corner I consider to be my superpowers, and I hope they're yours.
--Find a craft. It's not important to decide on day one, and it's not even important to decide any time soon, but I hope you do find a craft that you want to dedicate your lifetime to perfecting and be your life's work.
--Prioritize your life. There are so many things going on and so many things to do, but prioritize your life, and you will have plenty of time to do the important things."
https://creatoreconomy.so/p/15-life-and-work-principles-from-jensen
32. What an enlightening and excellent conversation. So many good frameworks for thriving in modern day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZDzpFk7u8I
33. Manufacturing on my mind. Vietnam, Indonesia, America & Argentina well positioned for the future assuming the investments are made now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlr-SmmBC_A
34. One of my favorite weekly conversations in Silicon Valley. Good to watch if you want to know what's up here in tech land.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrodU2nqLCQ
35. "AI adoption is slower than expected in many spaces. Some of the reasons are straightforward, but others are more subtle.
Most leaders wants to inject AI into their business to develop a competitive advantage. There are four challenges."
https://tomtunguz.com/why-ai-adoption-slower/
36. "His climb underscores how interwoven those ties can become: OpenAI, for example, is an important customer of Scale, which supplies AI companies with contract workers to fine-tune their data. Last fall, Altman and Wang actually discussed the prospect of OpenAI buying Scale, according to a person informed about the talks, though the deal never reached a formal stage.
Instead, Wang kept Scale independent and raised $1 billion over the course of several months, with Scale at a $13.8 billion valuation. Thanks partly to Scale’s deals with OpenAI, revenue is booming, and Scale has forecast more than $1 billion in sales this year, catapulting it to the top ranks of generative AI companies by sales.
For the most part, those sales come from what amounts to AI grunt work: Scale employs a vast but relatively low-paid workforce to label and train the data that underpin the AI systems developed by Scale’s customers, including OpenAI, Meta Platforms and Alphabet. They rely on Scale contractors to push their AI products toward creating more human-like responses; the contractors teach the AI by writing their own responses to questions submitted to chatbots.
Over the past eight years, Wang has successfully steered Scale in whatever direction AI was leaning. In the process, he has proven himself a crafty opportunist, shifting Scale toward fresh pools of revenue when old ones dried up. His nimbleness comes from considerable careful study.
“I don’t think he figured out where the world is going by sitting in his bedroom and thinking about it. He spends time with the right people. He gathers a lot of data on where the world is going and can reorient the business around it,” one Scale investor told me.
Part of his polarizing reputation also comes from the fact that Wang holds grudges. Unhappy with high staff turnover amid intense industrywide competition for AI workers, he has prevented ex-employees from selling shares in an upcoming secondary offering—forcing them to continue waiting to sell their illiquid stock.
When I discussed Wang and his relentless scramble to the top of Silicon Valley with a fellow founder who knows him well, the founder described Wang as someone who “needed success like he needed oxygen.”
37. "The reason Zuck and the other Axis powers haven’t built age verification into their platforms is it will reduce their profits (because they will serve fewer ads to kids), which will suppress their stock prices, and the job of a public company CEO is to increase the stock price. Period, full stop, end of strategic plan. So long as the negative impact to the stock price caused by the bad PR of teen suicide and depression is less than the positive impact of the incremental ad revenue obtained through unrestricted algorithmic manipulation of those teens, the rational, shareholder-driven thing to do is fight age-verification requirements.
If we want the platforms to make their products safe for children, we need to change the incentives — force them to bear the cost of their damage. Internalize the externalities, in economist-speak. There are three forces powerful enough to do this: the market, plaintiff lawyers, and the government.
The market solution would be to let consumers decide if they want to be exploited and manipulated. And by consumers, I mean “teenagers.” One big shortcoming of this approach is that teenagers are idiots. I have proof here, as I’m raising two and used to be one. My job as their dad is to be their prefrontal cortex until it shows up."
Mass Versus Class: Customer Segments Matter
Outside of reading, I spend most of my time meeting and talking with founders either in my now very large portfolio or with new founders. One of the biggest challenges facing founders is understanding the market and actual customers. A common mistake is that they target too large & wide of a customer base initially.
In early days, the more specific a niche is, the easier it is to learn about them and target them. This is where positioning comes in.
Positioning is defined in Wikipedia as “the place that a brand occupies in the minds of the customers and how it is distinguished from the products of the competitors and different from the concept of brand awareness.”
I highly recommend the excellent business book Position by Trout & Ries. It’s a must read. Basically, what they posit is that your customer is busy, distracted and has very little brain space for new products.
If you are not in the top 3 of the category or in a specialized niche then you will be nowhere in their minds. This is one of the reasons for the failure of many new products despite the astounding amounts of advertising put behind their launches. Being stuck in the middle and thus usually not standing for anything or too general.
Assuming you’ve done a good job identifying your initial customer segment, your go to market is just much more straightforward. And this is where the idea of “mass versus class” comes in.
Ultimately you either go premium/luxury or you go mass market. It’s the difference between Erewon versus Safeway, Neiman Marcus versus Kmart, Roam or Bare Burger (my fave burger places) versus Mcdonalds, Bentley versus Ford/GM. I think you get the picture.
There is money to be made going in either direction which makes sense. In almost every category of product and business you have 3 big players who have 80 percent of the market share and usually are mass market focussed.
But on the other side you have very small but focused super niches that can charge very high premiums because they are specialists in their sector. This usually makes up the rest of the market share.
Unfortunately every player in the middle gets crushed in between them because they don’t have the scale of the big 3 and thus pricing power over suppliers. Nor are they specialized enough to charge the premiums that lead to big margins.
Focus on where the money is. As the excellent BowtiedBull writes about on the consumer side:
“You know the baby boomers have the money and the assets. You know their kids will have the money and the assets when they move onto the after life.
At this point we know which trends matter: boomers and their children. This made it pretty easy to predict the growth of pets and plants. Now? The boomer generation is getting older and the millennial generation is starting to barely taste that sweet sweet inheritance (top end of range of millennials).”
For B2B startups, this would be fortune 500 companies for B2B focussed founders versus targeting SMB customers. All things being equal, I think too many founders overlook the premium side of customers. In other words, go after class, not mass. Or start with class, then migrate down to mass. It usually doesn’t work the other way brand wise. It’s a different story when it comes to software products but this is a whole different discussion and write up.
Net net: go mass or go class.
Throwing Stones: We’re All Flawed
For people in Silicon Valley, Chamath Palihapitiya has long been a controversial personality. A rags to riches story, & fellow Canuck come to Silicon Valley. Having made his first fortune at Facebook as the guy who led growth there, he parlayed that billion into several billion via ownership of Golden State Warriors and investing in many public and private investments via his Social Capital vehicle. Known for being outspoken, you either loved him or hated him. I admired him for his intelligence and for calling out the many hypocrisy and unspoken truths in Silicon Valley.
But perhaps what has tarnished his reputation is his flogging of SPACs during 2020 and 2021 which many saw as a pump and dump scheme.
Eric Newcomer wrote about this:
“He lent his reputation to a slew of companies going public via his special purpose acquisition companies. He was the ruinous SPAC king.
Now, almost a year after calling two SPACs quits, he’s still in denial that he was the pied piper who enticed retailed investors into betting on speculative, money-losing companies. He has said he made roughly $750 million by throwing his reputation behind the stocks, taking them public via SPACs that he helmed, and then selling shares on the public markets. He hyped the stocks, he sold his shares, and he made a profit while the retail investors who trusted him lost money.”
He has gotten much criticism of this online and offline. Some of it was very much justified.
I’ve drawn several lessons from this. One: the higher, richer and more prominent you are, the more of a higher standard you have to live and act by. Or at least pretend to follow. Either that or go “Anon” or “stealth wealth.” If you choose being well known, you better watch value your reputation over the short term money or else you will get taken down. Or at minimum attacked.
The second lesson is that most of us should look in the mirror before you cast stones. It’s so easy to attack someone online behind a keyboard. It's one of the worst things to come out of the internet.
If we are honest, everyone has made mistakes and bad calls. There are many things I regret doing myself due to bad judgment, desperation or stupidity and ignorance coming up. The point is not to make the bad calls on the big important decisions like where you live, who you marry and who you do business with and how you do it.
Why? There really is karma in the world. If you treat people badly, word gets around fast. What you put out in the world comes back to you. This is both as an individual or organization. There is direct correlation on how a company is rated on Glassdoor and how they do in the long run. There is always a reckoning.
I don’t know about you but I want to sleep well at night. I do not want to be looking over my shoulders all the time just for ill gotten gains. Most people eventually get what they deserve in the end.
Be Grateful: Simple Things in Life that Make You Happy
I’ve spent the last few years doing gratitude practice. Thinking about the things I am happy for. I didn’t really think it worked or impacted me until recently. It took a trip back home to my hometown Vancouver to appreciate all the simple things that we all take for granted.
My mother recently got hip surgery and due to complications had a longer than expected recovery time. The impact was that she had a hard time moving around. She couldn’t go down the stairs without help, let alone leave the house. Even taking a shower, she would need help from my dad. Thankfully she is recovering quickly.
It also reminded me of a good friend who had a freak bike accident. He broke both his arms. So you think so what? Well, you can’t put food in your own mouth as you can’t use your hands. You can’t type anything in a computer or phone so you can’t do anything with work. You can’t clean yourself in the bath or go to the toilet by yourself.
Think about that. How helpless you are in either of these situations. No mobility or no capacity for handling anything. No freedom and total dependence on others, which is especially painful and glaring for an adult.
So next time you think your life sucks, remember to appreciate what you have now. Having no injuries. Being able to take care of yourself. You have your health, your independence and mobility. Don’t take these for granted. Simple basic things make a difference. Be grateful and be happy.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads June 30th, 2024
"We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us." – Joseph Campbell
"These are what I call “The Three C’s.” Communication means that you’re transparent, you telegraph change, you get on the phone quickly to walk through scenarios that might not be easy to address, you can meet conflict head-on, with depth, reason, and calm. Coachable means that you’re humble in conflict, you can take feedback, you have a backbone but you also listen deeply, and think about how to integrate new ideas. Cadence refers to your pace of problem solving. It’s not running around chasing shiny objects, to reinvoke the metaphor of the “Rocking Horse” founder who is always in motion but never progressing.
In contrast, high cadence refers to a founder who can prioritize rigorously, not waste effort or motion, and laser in on the most important pieces of the puzzle, knocking down outcomes quickly. When things don’t go as planned, they’re quick to reasses, cut losses, change direction decisively. A high cadence founder solves something in hours, not days, and not weeks. They need not always be right, but they’re directionally accurate, and iterating at a high pace.
This is perhaps a controversial opinion, but start with “Why Now.” Ask yourself where you can most authentically attack an explosive market with high communication, coachability, and cadence. What’s more important than even size of market is the rate of change in that market. Then once you’ve identified these table stakes, then begin thinking about the “What.” What you build certainly becomes hugely important, but don’t get stonewalled by early Product VCs that over analyze what you’re building. Focus on People and Velocity VCs who recognize your talents, and help you find those markets with explosive rates of change, where you need not be excellent to win."
https://ideas.scotthartley.com/p/product-founder-and-velocity-vcs
2. "Real social consumer products (and I am not talking entertainment à la Tiktok or what Instagram has become over the years…) often start with a single feature that capture the attention of the audience, express a strong sentiment that people want to repeat. Until they get bored and move on because those applications don’t serve as a home to nurture real connections on the long term.
It’s like you renting a place and organising parties versus owning a place and welcoming friends and family. Like AMO is doing. Social consumer is very much alive and its next generation is already hidden in plain sight :-)"
https://2lr.substack.com/p/bereal-voodoo
3. Important discussion on how to build talent driven organizations and societies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfLUxVHbXSA
4. "If the regime can make the people around you partake in absurdities, you are less likely to challenge it. You will be more likely to obey it. Of course, this doesn’t mean regimes are not interested in indoctrination. They would prefer if people really did hold pro-regime attitudes and values.
But the purpose of propaganda is not limited just to instilling desired beliefs. Often, demonstrating the regime’s strength, capacity, and resources to intimidate people is a more important goal."
https://www.robkhenderson.com/p/the-true-purpose-of-propaganda
5. Lots of nuggets for one of the most successful solopreneurs around: Justin Welsh.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93xvBq-88K0
6. "Since taking office, Milei, 53, has frozen public-works projects, devalued the peso by more than 50%, and announced plans to lay off more than 70,000 government workers. So far, he sees signs that his economic “shock therapy” is working. Inflation has slowed for four months in a row. The International Monetary Fund has hailed Argentina’s “impressive” progress.
Two days before we sat down on April 25 for an hour-long interview, he had given an address to the nation celebrating the “economic miracle” of the country’s first quarterly budget surplus since 2008. Milei thinks he is pioneering an approach that will become a global blueprint. “Argentina will become a model for how to transform a country into a prosperous nation,” he tells me. “I have no doubt.”
Others do. While Milei vowed the “political caste” would bear the brunt, his austerity measures have pummeled ordinary Argentines. The annual inflation rate is still nearly 300%, among the highest in the world. Many Argentines have been forced to carry bags of cash for even small transactions; some stores have given up on price stickers entirely. Milei’s moves—cutting federal aid, transport and energy subsidies, and getting rid of price controls—have caused living costs to spike.
More than 55% of Argentines are mired in poverty, up from 45% in December. Milei may be running out of time before his popular support crumbles. “Everybody knew the cost would be huge,” says Argentina’s Foreign Minister Diana Mondino, a close adviser. “What we’re experiencing, nobody likes it. But there’s no other way.”
Argentina’s economy has been bad enough for long enough that polls show a majority of the nation’s 46 million people remain willing to give Milei a chance."
https://time.com/6980600/javier-milei-argentina-interview/
7. A very solid conversation on tech this week. Really worth listening to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP4dEDMAPR0
8. This was an instructive interview on micro-PE from one of the best in the business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKKf7S0oSmM
9. “Apple Intelligence” is more than a great brand move; it encapsulates the company’s strategy. Take something invented elsewhere; make it more consumer friendly, easier to use, and more reliable; mix in world-class industrial design; and print billions. Artificial intelligence is for tech bros and data scientists. Apple Intelligence is AI for the rest of us. Shrewd.
The tech press has spent the past 18 months telling us Apple is behind on AI. While in the next breath reporting on the AI gaffes produced by its rivals. And that’s the point. Apple is always behind. Apple is a distinctly inventive company — its $30 billion R&D budget generates 2,000+ patents per year. But it’s mainly improving vs. inventing: ways to more precisely cut white cardboard boxes to deliver its new devices; new glues to bond layers of glass and plastic together in its phones. For the big stuff, like the mouse, digital music, and multitouch screens, it lets someone else traverse the Sierra Nevadas first."
https://www.profgalloway.com/second-mouse-ai/
10. "Autonomy starts with Industry. And Europe’s industrial base has been declining for some time. Perhaps more important than that, Europe is amidst an energy crisis at the moment. Can the Continent be autonomous without cheap abundant energy?
In our opinion, no.
No one can be the master of their own destiny if they do not have an economic engine or reliable security that is underpinned by energy stability. Cheap reliable energy is a cornerstone of both. Europe has neither at the moment. They have sacrificed their Industrial Capacity and by extension Autonomy, for imagery.
Europe is trying to play both sides against each other, but with Trump on the horizon; and Economic volatility; Europe will once again be forced like many countries to choose sides.
It is clear that the people of Europe are unhappy with their current situation, but will their efforts to alter their destiny be in vain?
Only History knows."
https://mercurial.substack.com/p/the-battle-for-the-soul-of-europe
11. "The Rule of 50 score of 50 is a solid target representing a variety of businesses like high growth with lots of losses, medium growth with modest profitability, or something with low growth and tremendous profitability. Most of the 2020 and 2021 heavily funded startups should aim for medium growth plus limited burn in the near term to achieve a level of viability. From there, the belief is that as spending on software and investment in tools increases, they will be in a good position to accelerate their growth rate.
The Rule of 50 and a score at or better than that number is a good target for entrepreneurs who want a sustainable, healthy business. However, a score of 50 is not high enough to raise venture capital. Entrepreneurs should think through their goals and aspirations and target their Rule of 50 score accordingly."
https://davidcummings.org/2024/06/15/rule-of-50-and-venture-funding/
12. Lots of good insights into how cities are run. Why they work and don't work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG8kVEDk3Yc
13. Very inspiring discussion on Tech trends from one of the best thinkers here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezv9jmrjRco
14. "As I mentioned in the piece on war and deterrence in the Indo-Pacific—war is not usually won by what you bring at the start. They are mostly won by what you can build or acquire while they are fought. This is certainly going to be the case with the Russian Invasion of Ukraine. Both sides have already chewed through most of the equipment that they had on February 24, 2022—and both are desperately building what they can, while they are also scouring the world to acquire all the weapons of war possible.
The Russians have been successful at this, particularly in continuing their trade with countries outside by circumventing existing sanctions. For instance, much of Western trade to Russia has simply been re-routed to Russia through other states—often in Central Asia. Here are just some examples (and I’m not doing this to dump on Germany—other Western states are doing exactly the same thing)."
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/the-economic-war-escalates
15. "Finding ways to protect yourself from an impending crisis is not an easy task as there are so many variables to consider, and each one might require a different action. That said, it’s fair to say that the 60/40 traditional stock/bond portfolio is no longer valid.
Owning bonds is a guaranteed losing proposition in an inflationary environment. Stock picking will be a lot trickier than the passive ETF investing strategy many are accustomed to. I would rotate out of overpriced tech stocks and move into more defensive stocks. Your portfolio should be heavily skewed to hard assets, including commodities such as metals, energy and food which have traditionally done well in inflationary times.
Geography is important as well. U.S. stocks are extremely overvalued as compared to emerging markets. It’s also perfectly legal to have bank accounts in other jurisdictions denominated in other currencies. This might provide protection in the event of capital controls."
16. "This is why one belief I have is that the future of application software in a world of AI agents probably looks a whole lot more like database software…These worlds are merging (database and applications). At the end of the day, most software today is just a UI on top of a database. We need the UI for human consumption. But we don’t need it for AI agent consumption.
I’ve long STRONGLY believed that data and data infra are one of the core beneficiaries of AI. Most of my venture career has been spent investing in data businesses. One of which, Tabular, was just acquired by Databricks for >$1b. Others, like dbt Labs, Clickhouse, Airbyte, Prisma, etc are seeing really strong growth. The value of differentiated, high quality data infra has never been higher.
But let’s take this one step further. Both Databricks and Snowflake have heavily foreshadowed (or released products) that enable applications to be built on top of them. I think this is clearly the future. Applications built more for AI agent consumption, built on top of leading data platforms. The data platform companies will BECOME the application providers themselves. I’m excited for this future!"
https://cloudedjudgement.substack.com/p/clouded-judgement-61424-is-seat-based
17. "Instead of saying, "I wish I'd put $1,000 in Amazon's IPO when I was 7," you should focus instead on "what story would I have believed if I was investing in 1997 that would have led me to put money in Amazon's IPO? And what is the comparable story I should believe today?" And sometimes you'll be wrong, and sometimes you'll be right. But most of the time, the most important things in life are determined by the decisions you get right. Not by the decisions you get wrong. You can often get 99 decisions wrong, as long as you get one right.
In general, I think the mindset of focusing on the present, and the lessons to be learned, and the stories to be believed; that is the most important takeaway. To paraphrase Mark Twain: "we should be careful to get out of a regret only the wisdom that is in it—and stop there."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/regret-porn
18. "Taiwan faces a similar dilemma. With a population of just 24 million compared to China's 1.4 billion, and vastly less resources and manufacturing capacity, Taiwan probably can't prevail in a straight-up naval battle with Chinese naval, air and missile forces, not even with the help of allies Japan and the US.
But it doesn't have to win. It can succeed by showing China that a battle for Taiwan is simply too bloody and fraught with risk. Taiwan would need to sink or damage enough transport vessels that near the island to make a beach landing or blockade untenable. With insufficient troops, heavy weapons and supplies ashore, the beachhead would be vulnerable to being swept into the sea by a Taiwanese counterattack.
Similarly, enough kamikaze drones could force China's large fleet farther off-shore in hopes of creating openings for air drops of supplies from Taiwan's allies."
19. What a fun interview. Justin Waller is a good man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plT6XO8dN3E
20. "Anyway, I think the reports of China’s scientific dominance shouldn’t be causing policymakers in the West to panic. But it’s becoming pretty undeniable that China has now taken a commanding lead in applied physical science research, and Western leaders need to ask themselves whether they can really afford to cede leadership in those fields."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/is-the-west-falling-behind-in-science
21. "Lamont’s long-term approach to such relationships, which can span decades, paid off again when she backed Park’s later venture, Devoted Health. With Devoted Health now valued at $12.9 billion, her initial $20 million investment in 2017 into the Medicare Advantage insurance plan provider is now worth about $1 billion to Lamont and her backers at Oak HC/FT, the investment firm she cofounded in 2014.
Those investments, and others in the healthcare and fintech space such as early bets on primary care provider VillageMD and prepaid debit card provider NetSpend land Lamont back on the Midas List, Forbes’ annual ranking of the world’s top tech investors. It’s her fifth appearance but the first since 2015, a reflection of the long game approach that Lamont takes to startup investing.
“These are friends, these are comrades,” she said. “We're in battle and we're there not just for the length of 10 years for one company, but 20 to 30 years for three or four companies.”
For Lamont, 67, the $5.3 billion-in-assets Oak HC/FT is the latest chapter in a career that spans multiple firms and four decades, with lifetime investments in at least 80 companies. She’s returned an estimated $1.5 billion to investors over the last decade, according to a source familiar with the firm’s finances. Lamont’s a prominent figure outside of venture, too: the spouse of Connecticut governor Ned Lamont, she’s served as First Lady of Connecticut since 2019.
The secret to Lamont’s sustained success, she says: an ability to spot and embrace new tech cycles, even if they force her to turn her attention away from a currently lucrative path. With the advent of the internet, she switched her focus from life sciences to digital health. And as online payments became ubiquitous in the years since PayPal’s dotcom rise, it called for a more recent, increased focus on fintech startups, too.
“It is not about being a one hit wonder in venture. It is about reinventing yourself across different cycles,” Lamont said."
https://archive.ph/IYHyr#selection-575.0-597.123
22. I am a fan of Justin Waller. Build yourself and be secure in yourself. Lots to learn here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzFpulW5m4c
23. A very sober discussion on the state of the world and geopolitics in 2024.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4t_4S1h4Zg
24. "In the end, I’m not sure that it’s possible to avoid the ~60 hours/week we all spend on emails/meetings/etc., and the most productive people on the planet aren’t working that much more than that. Perhaps someone like Elon can breathe/sleep his work and increase it +50% more, but not 3x or 5x. It’s just not possible. To achieve more, it’s more about how you fill the time you have.
By its nature, the opportunities for 10x work are not really something you can optimize. Sometimes it’s a random work idea, or a random meeting, or a off-hand tweet (like my “growth hacker is the new vp marketing” tweet from 10 years ago) that creates a lucky break. Combine this with skills built up with years at the technology frontier, and skill and serendipity can come together. As comedian Steve Martin says, “Be so good they can't ignore you.”
Reject the core loop, the checklists, and all the email. Embrace serendipity!"
https://andrewchen.substack.com/p/10x-work-versus-1x-work
25. What a wacky story.
https://thehustle.co/originals/the-first-fugitive-caught-by-the-internet
26. "Even if there is only a 5% chance that he might do it, we must do everything in our power to make sure this doesn’t happen. Invasion of Taiwan would result in a disastrous war that would cause a global depression, and countless losses for the Taiwanese, for our allies, and for us if we get involved.
Even if the risk is small, we have to make sure that we drive it down to zero as much as possible. That needs to be the overarching focus of American foreign policy."
https://www.chinatalk.media/p/cold-war-ii-grand-strategy
27. "Founders need to shift their thinking to an assumption of understanding—that investors who see thousands of pitches per year probably do understand what a founder is doing the vast majority of the time, and have simply decided that the risk/reward for investing in their company simply isn’t as good of a deal as others they’re currently looking at."
https://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/blog/2024/6/5/is-my-startup-fundable-venture-capital
28. This is a masterclass from VC investing from one of the best in the business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI301hP2gVA
29. What a freaking scary new world of war.
30. Some hopeful news coming from Ukraine soon?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwDomFk2o84
31. "The two years of full-scale war has seen Ukrainians from across the country come together in the face of the Russian threat, and the country’s Vietnamese community is no exception. At least one Ukrainian soldier of Vietnamese origin has already been killed in the war, and Nguyen said the community rallied in solidarity when he was wounded.
“Before the start of full-scale war, I didn’t know many Vietnamese people, but now they support me a lot. Lots of Vietnamese people wrote me messages of support, people brought food to the hospital,” Nguyen said."
32. "Huang’s moves reflect his paranoia as a founder who has survived multiple moments of near doom during the company’s history, including after it went public in 1999. The Christmastime meetings last year, for instance, could merely be part of the formula that has carried the company to great heights—turning its GPUs into the lifeblood of OpenAI, biotech and pharmaceutical firms, quant trading firms and scores of other AI developers.
“There’s no complacency at Nvidia,” said Jeff Herbst, a venture capitalist who spent two decades at Nvidia leading business development and acquisitions until 2021. “You wouldn’t really know whether times are good or times are bad from the tone or the tenor of the meetings.”
33. "Because the one secret to living a great life… is to be in the present moment.
The present moment is about your life as it is right now. It’s about the hill you’re already standing on. It’s about the thrill of breathing and the sound of your heart pumping.
It’s about your children, your parents, your friends, and all the people who love you and whom you love back. It’s about the grace of God and the Universe and the 14 billion years of cosmic history that have brought you to… this precise moment.
Live in it."
https://www.sanjaysays.co/p/the-one-secret-to-living-a-great-life
34. "I couldn't help myself. I have purchased in my retirement account large amounts of Sibanye Stillwater (SBSW), Impala Platinum Group (IMPUY), and Sasol, LTD. I have discussed all of these names individually and Sibanye especially has been excruciatingly difficult to own for a while (my first entry was around $6). Gut feeling, the next five years in South Africa are going to look very different than the past five."
https://calvinfroedge.com/south-africa-its-time/
35. "Hit making is the strategy of cultural influence. In the post-mono culture, media, and retail, brands are pushed to operate like a portfolio of products and categories that target different niche audiences. Mass is achieved through aggregation of niches. By targeting its different audience segments, a brand creates many doors in and increases it hold on the market.
The first step in the process of implementing hit-making is to figure out the cultural moment and mood, and those setting it. This mood is going to turbocharge a brand’s cultural influence and be a fertile ground for its cultural products, increasing their chance of becoming hits. Hit making is the strategy of cultural influence that defines which cultural products should brands produce to tell their story, who is this story likely to influence most and in which context, what is the most opportune cultural moment, and what are the expected financial returns."
https://andjelicaaa.substack.com/p/hitmakers
36. "Powell is a superhero around here nowadays. In the past three years, he’s carved himself out as one of the few leading actors who can reliably juice up the box office. Forgetting Top Gun: Maverick, in which he played the cocky antagonist Hangman, his value in the eyes of Hollywood decision-makers is higher than ever thanks to a movie that virtually no one predicted would become so big: Anyone But You, the Shakespeare-inspired romcom in which he starred alongside Sydney Sweeney, which has pulled in a staggering $218 million since its release.
Powell has just co-written and starred in Hit Man, directed by Richard Linklater, which was so warmly received on the festival circuit last year that Netflix coughed up $20 million for it in September. This summer he’s the lead in Twisters, a throwback sequel to the 1990s action film Twister, which looks set to revive another worn-out genre: the climate-panic blockbuster.
It’s a sharp reminder of how far he’s come. In his mid-20s, when Powell was working as a script reader for legendary producer Lynda Obst, he would sit outside the cafeteria on the Sony lot reading, waiting for someone to notice him – believing he was just one accidental run-in away from glory. Now, when he walks around one of these lots, there’s every chance the head of the studio will drop what they’re doing and make a beeline for him."
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/glen-powell-interview-2024
37. "Investors do not like risk. Media companies want to please investors. So there’s huge economic pressure on the executives of media companies to turn volatile hit-driven business models into stable predictable business models with recurring revenue. And the way you do that is to stick with existing properties — sequels, remakes, and adaptations of already-popular source material. Franchise continuation gives you someidea of who your audience will be and how your movie or series might perform. Thus, it partially de-risks the entertainment industry.
So the rule here should be: Evolve, don’t subvert. When you catch lightning in a bottle, don’t let it go and assume that you can catch it again just because your bottle has the same label on it.
Ultimately, both filling in lore and subverting themes are shortcuts — ways to continue a franchise without figuring out how to write a compelling new story in an existing fictional universe. But although franchise continuation makes storytelling less financially risky, it doesn’t actually make it easier. Just because an IP comes with a built-in audience doesn’t mean that audience is going to be easy to please.
An age of adaptations, sequels, and remakes might sound boring and stale, but it really doesn’t have to be."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-some-franchises-go-downhill-while
38. Investing in AI. How Benchmark thinks about this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2wDuxmbXLg&t=1s
39. "Yes, other people might judge you based on your past – but so what? All of that is just part of the video game starting situation. You just work with it and deal with things and people as they come.
You start TODAY. Today is day 0. Everything before was just backstory.
God created you and the world this very moment and put your past as memories in your head.
What are you going to do with the situation and resources you have been given?
My advice? Do not ponder too much upon past negative events and faults because it gives you nothing of benefit and only weakens your confidence and spirit. Leave the past behind.
What counts is TODAY.
Spend your TODAY in a way that it brings you closer to your desired future life."
https://lifemathmoney.com/you-are-not-your-past-you-are-not-your-mistakes-you-are-not-your-failures
40. A good conversation on the state of AI & tech between two smart VCs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJpWKAZmGsQ
41. Excellent conversation from a very experienced VC. I agree with most of his views.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgiwcus79I8
42. "Just as many began to wonder where the next jolt of dollar liquidity would come from, the Japanese banking system dropped Origami cranes composed of crisply folded dolla bills upon the laps of crypto investors. This is just another pillar of the crypto bull market. The supply of dollars must increase to maintain the current Pax Americana dollar-based filthy financial system."
Finding Your Scenius: The Power of Place and Time
I recently discovered the city of Edinburgh in Scotland last year. As I dug into the history of the place, I found out it was the scene of the Scottish Enlightenment that occurred during the 18th to 19th century. It was a place of great learning and progress in the arts and science.
According to Wikipedia: “In Scotland, the Enlightenment was characterized by a thoroughgoing empiricism and practicality where the chief values were improvement, virtue, and practical benefit for the individual and society as a whole.
Among the fields that rapidly advanced were philosophy, political economy, engineering, architecture, medicine, geology, archaeology, botany and zoology, law, agriculture, chemistry and sociology. Among the Scottish thinkers and scientists of the period were Joseph Black, Robert Burns, William Cullen, Adam Ferguson, David Hume, Francis Hutcheson, James Hutton, John Playfair, Thomas Reid, Adam Smith, and Dugald Stewart.
The Scottish Enlightenment had effects far beyond Scotland, not only because of the esteem in which Scottish achievements were held outside Scotland, but also because its ideas and attitudes were carried all over Great Britain and across the Western world as part of the Scottish diaspora, and by foreign students who studied in Scotland.”
And this has happened many times throughout the history of human civilization. Almost always centered around cities that were rich, in the middle of trade flows or the center of an empire.
Places like ancient Athens, republican and Imperial Rome, Abbasid Baghdad, Umayyad Córdoba in Spain, Florence during the Italian Renaissance. Amsterdam from 1585 to 1672, London during Victorian times. Or more recently, Chicago, Paris, New York and Berlin in the 1920s. Places that were the center of action and where things were happening.
Another way to describe this is a term called Scenius. Defined by the brilliant Kevin Kelley as the following:
“Scenius is like genius, only embedded in a scene rather than in genes. Brian Eno suggested the word to convey the extreme creativity that groups, places or “scenes” can occasionally generate. His actual definition is: “Scenius stands for the intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene. It is the communal form of the concept of the genius.”
Individuals immersed in a productive scenius will blossom and produce their best work. When buoyed by scenius, you act like a genius. Your like-minded peers, and the entire environment inspire you.
The geography of scenius is nurtured by several factors:
• Mutual appreciation — Risky moves are applauded by the group, subtlety is appreciated, and friendly competition goads the shy. Scenius can be thought of as the best of peer pressure.
• Rapid exchange of tools and techniques — As soon as something is invented, it is flaunted and then shared. Ideas flow quickly because they are flowing inside a common language and sensibility.
• Network effects of success — When a record is broken, a hit happens, or breakthrough erupts, the success is claimed by the entire scene. This empowers the scene to further success.
• Local tolerance for the novelties — The local “outside” does not push back too hard against the transgressions of the scene. The renegades and mavericks are protected by this buffer zone.
Scenius can erupt almost anywhere, and at different scales: in a corner of a company, in a neighborhood, or in an entire region.”
I realized how lucky I am to be in San Francisco in the late 90s. This is where the great technology boom and renaissance was and still is happening. A place where the smartest, most ambitious and talented young people want to go, live and build. I genuinely believe that most of my relative success can be attributed to being in this place the last 2 and half decades. I’ve said many times, you have to go to the center of the network. For better or worse, it is Silicon Valley in this day and age.
And so my point here is, place and time really matters. If your life is not in a good place or where you want it, the easiest way to fix this is to move somewhere else. Preferably somewhere that is a “scenius” that will enable your success and ambitions. A place that will put a trajectory back into your life.
As Naval once wrote, that well describes the importance of Scenius: "The three big decisions - what you do, where you live, and who you’re with."
The Strong Case for Web 3 & Crypto: Declining State Capacity & Increasing State Malice
I’ve been having many conversations with old friends and business colleagues over the last year as we’ve left the pandemic behind us. We pretty much left it in 2022. But I’ve only started reconnecting with them in 2024. One commonality was anger and sadness. 2020 broke so many of us. It wasn’t just the pandemic but the lockdowns, the forced shutdowns of so many commercial businesses & schools. The amount of mental health issues and psychological damage done to us, to our kids will be studied in decades from now. The repercussions of this won’t be felt for years. All that is left is simmering anger in the populace.
We had governments, through either incompetence or malice enforcing quarantines, shutting down discussions via cancellation from big online platforms. Big media turned into propaganda mouthpieces. In Canada, they even shut down access to bank accounts of the truckers protesting vaccine mandates. And of course, 2-3 years later on, it turned out the protestors were right.
In fact, so many so-called conspiracy theories have turned out to be somewhat correct but we weren’t able to discuss them. The lock downs, Covid vaccines & vaccine mandates, infiltration of woke agenda in corporates and government. Government incompetence in Afghanistan withdrawal, Iraq War disaster, Maui Fire disaster and the lackluster support for Ukraine. Why do I say lackluster? The USA sent in weapons & ammo too late, and drip-dropped them over a long period of time, prolonging the war at the expense of Ukrainian lives. And no one in government was punished or fired for any of this.
The sense is that we are undergoing one big Psy-Op aka Psychological Operation.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was reported to have said in reference to the Soviet Union: “We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying.”
Well this pretty describes what’s happening in most of the Western world these days.
Yes, I believe that overall the USA and the Western world is a force for good. But all the data points to fast declining state capacity and ability. I would not bet against America in the long run and believe in the regenerative ability of the country. BUT this will take some time, like probably the rest of the 2020s, and I doubt things will be better until 2028 at the earliest.
And this is why despite the crypto and web 3 disaster over the last few years, decentralized technologies make even more sense. If crypto and decentralized technologies work as we hope but I do see there are still many smart people building in this space now.
Losing my access to Linkedin and Twitter for small time periods in 2023 were wake up calls to me on the reliance and dependence I have on them. It forced me to build out my newsletter email list and look at other channels. I use multiple different messenger channels as well.
But can you imagine being locked out of your bank accounts like the Canadian truckers and people who donated to their GoFundme? How devastating that would be?
If we are moving into more of a digital world, don’t we need digital currency? This is why Decentralized & digital money also makes sense. I’m talking about Bitcoin, not CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies) which will turn into dangerous instruments of government control. And if we are going into an AI agent driven world, it probably also makes sense to have digital currency for our AutoGPTs & AI Agents to transact in. Thus, I’m watching this space very carefully.
Being reliant on one country, one currency, on one income stream and one main social media or communication channel is just not a good idea. In fact, it’s very dangerous. I’m not saying you need to go full on libertarian. But you do need to diversify everything to increase the odds of thriving in the new world disorder.
“Perfect Days”: A Mundane but Happy Life
This was a movie that was recommended to me by many friends. Taking place in Tokyo and directed by a German director Wim Wenders. “Hirayama cleans public toilets in Tokyo, lives his life in simplicity and daily tranquility. Some encounters also lead him to reflect on himself.“ Reviewers have described it as “life affirming.” I also recommend it as I found it to be meditative.
The main character and bachelor Hirayama lives a solitary life in the analogue world. He finds pleasure and joy in small things. Waking up to a neighbor sweeping the streets. Looking at the sky. Taking old film pictures. Watering his plants. Listening to old cassette tapes of 60s & 70s music. Buying and reading classical old books. Going to his local old style Japanese baths. Eating at his favorite local restaurants. Bicycling across the city. Looking at the Skytree building as he drives by. Following his regular routine as he embarks on his job as a toilet cleaner in Tokyo.
The Guardian in a review by Wendy Ide says it even better:
“Hirayama’s ascetic existence is stripped back to basics: music, played on cassette tapes collected, we assume, in his long-ago youth; secondhand books bought from the budget section of the local bookstore; a point-and-shoot film camera with which he captures the things that please him; the interplay between the sky and the trees. Trees, it seems, have a particular significance for Hirayama, something that he pays back by carefully rescuing fragile Japanese maple seedlings in order to nurture them in his apartment.”
His life and routine is disrupted slightly when his niece shows up at his house. The bulk of the movies’ dialogue happens here. He tells his niece about how he and his sister live different lives.
“The world is made up of many worlds. Some are connected and some are not. My world and your mom’s are very different.”
We get glimpses of his previous life when he meets his sister. It is clear that they are from an affluent and wealthy family. And that he is estranged from his father who disapproves of his life. But he seems to be living this life because he wants his freedom. The director actually says:
“Hirayama is the master of his life. Everything he does, he does it because he wants to do it.”
The big lesson from this movie is that joy can be found in the simple things. Living in the present like the main character of this movie: “Next time is next time. Now is now.”
What i love is that he seems genuinely happy and the movie ends appropriately with an old song called “Feeling Good” by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse:
“It’s a new dawn. It’s a new day. It’s a new life for me. And I’m feeling good.”
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads June 23rd, 2024
“Learn to relax. Your body is precious, as it houses your mind and spirit. Inner peace begins with a relaxed body” –Norman Vincent Peale
"My recommendation is to use the naming convention Rule of 40 when discussing the traditional growth plus profitability score, and use the naming convention Rule of 50 when discussing growth plus profitability where growth is doubled to represent its greater weighting. Startups should use the Rule of 50, representing growth rate multiplied by two plus free cash flow margins when assessing their performance. Growth is more valuable than profitability."
https://davidcummings.org/2024/06/08/rule-of-50-weighted-2x-for-growth/
2. "I can't tell you what precious metals are going to do next week. I can't tell you what they are going to do next month. But twenty years ago, gold was $200/ounce and we had a fraction of the debt we do today. I would bet my last chip that in another 20 years, there are going to be far more US dollars chasing fewer goods and services and roughly the same ounces of gold. AI is not going to save us. We are a society of humans, and the social obligations to those humans - i.e. unfunded liabilities - reach numbers beyond reckoning. Even if we can build robots to nurse all the old people, the amount of raw materials required to do so are going to strain all industrial supply chains.
In the case of silver and platinum group metals - not only does all the above apply - but the supply demand fundamentals are excellent as well, as I have written about on several occasions. We use more silver in industrial (primarily electronic) applications than we pull out of the ground every year. If it weren't for melting grandma's silverware, we wouldn't be able to make all the solar panels and batteries that mainstream politicians across the world are demanding.
My advice is this - keep accumulating any long term, durable assets on weakness. The trajectory the economic ship is on isn't changing. We're headed straight for the rocks, and our life rafts are made of printed money. The promises we have made to society - i.e. all of the social obligations our budgets go towards - cannot be met through taxation or increased productivity.
All of those teachers and veterans and policemen who were told they could rely on the system in their old age will only realize with time that they were sold a lie - and when it truly hits them, they're going to be very pissed off. The long term trend that began in the 1970s and only briefly reversed will continue for as long as our current monetary trajectory does - that is, until it collapses."
https://calvinfroedge.com/reminder/?ref=calvins-thoughts-newsletter
3. "I hit my “number” almost a decade ago. I purposefully paused and spent a great deal of time and consciousness on erecting scaffolding to update/temper my instinct to acquire more wealth. I decided I would spend a great deal of money on experiences with my family or services that gave me more time to spend with them and my friends. I likely only have a third of my (chronological) life left, but I’m intent on living 4/3 of my life in that remaining time. Meaning, I want to have a series of experiences that make me feel closer to family and friends and squeeze as much juice from this 7 continent ellipsoid as possible.
After molesting the Earth for 30 years for business, it became obvious that staying in the most beautiful places, in the most iconic cities meant nothing when I was there alone. The previous sentence could also describe my thirties. It’s as if that decade never happened, as I was mostly alone.
Another observation I’ve made roaming Terra is that the U.S. is the best place to make money and Europe the best place to spend it — one of the reasons we moved to London. In addition, I have a self-imposed tax of 100%. Each year, I add up my spending and give that same amount, or more, away. The surprise, for me, around giving is how masculine it makes me feel. I feel my strength and skills are protecting and providing."
https://www.profgalloway.com/hoarders/
4. The title says it all. "The West is Under Constant Attack, it’s time to wake up"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wwi5PYN4KJY
5. "When we zoom out, this is how much of SaaS looks like today: a Malthusian bloodbath. At the beginning of the SaaS cycle, most markets were green-field opportunities, but today almost every SaaS category is saturated, every account requires a rip & replace, leading to longer and more competitive sales cycles, lower customer loyalties, leading to lower NRR, higher churn, and high vendor fatigue. These are the tell-tale signs of the tail end of an OPEX cycle — a cycle that doesn’t speak “I win because my innovation is better than yours”, but rather “I win because my $s are bigger than yours”.
Over the last 60 years, a lot of R&D has gone to bring the cost of compute down to near zero. This led to a personal device in every hand. We also have had the cost of distributing this compute down to near zero as well. That brought the marginal cost of software down to zero, which is basically the reason the internet exists. The next 30 years is going to bring the cost of intelligence down to zero. What would the world of software look like if everything ran on “insights” instead of “compute”? If you are a founder building in SaaS, this is what you should be gearing up for."
6. "She said the same mistake was made in 1938 when tensions in Abyssinia, Japan and Germany were treated as isolated events. The proximate causes of the current conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, the South China Sea and even Armenia might be different, but the bigger picture showed an interconnected battlefield in which post-cold war certainties had given way to “great-power competition” in which authoritarian leaders were testing the boundaries of their empires. The lesson – and necessity – was to resist and rearm. “The lesson from 1938 and 1939 is that if aggression pays off somewhere, it serves as an invitation to use it elsewhere,” Kallas said.
Snyder drove home his lesson from history: “If Ukrainians give up, or if we give up on Ukraine, then it’s different. It’s Russia making war in the future. It’s Russia making war with Ukrainian technology, Ukrainian soldiers from a different geographical position. At that point, we’re in 1939. We’re in 1938 now. In effect, what Ukrainians are letting us do is extend 1938.”
7. A great teardown of Boeing and the implications of its decline for America and the flying industry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1pmCK6CrK4
8. Balaji is always illuminating. Bit grim but agree that America is in a bad spot and run by idiot elites. Worth listening to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7NBi6yLcJY&t=1s
9. "So in a world where ambition can be powerful, and we want to seek truth, and build the future, what can we say about a huge swath of the world that doesn't feel that same ambition? That same drive to accelerate? Because, whether you like it or not, you can't accelerate a society despite itself. Society crumbles or ascends based on its collective ability to believe in something.
The American Dream isn't a policy, or the result of a political party. It is a collective fever dream of people believing something hard enough to make it happen. But without that belief in a better life as the result of hard work, we can build all the rockets, robots, and AI we want. But society won't be lifted in spite of itself.
As we all seek to do work that is meaningful. To build companies that are meaningful. To hire people to build meaningful things. Whether we like it, or not, it will always come back to an individual equation. Each person is responsible for articulating how they will judge their own life. What will matter to them when all is said and done.And as long as we continue to cede that responsibility to other forces we will remain unfulfilled. But as soon as we reclaim that responsibility, even if we fail, we will know what satisfaction truly is."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/the-hardening-of-the-great-softening
10. People pleasing is a curse.
https://lifemathmoney.com/stop-trying-to-be-liked-by-everyone/
11. This is an instructive conversation on investing in consumer startups.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFWlrIb81Sw
12. "Handling a problem is hard. Avoiding it makes you feel like a coward. Accepting it feels like giving up. Fixing it feels like the world rests on your shoulders, making you resentful that everyone else is relaxing. But — you must allow yourself to park a problem and maybe revisit it later."
https://medium.com/thinking-about-startups/dont-grind-your-teeth-388fb90903eb
13. "To sum up, in the world today, we find on one side a rather liberal Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific family, whose backbone remains the alliance of English-speaking maritime powers; and on the other, a rather authoritarian Eurasian family, dominated by the Sino-Russian axis of continental powers.
It bears underlining that these distinctions remain approximate. Just like during the Cold War, a country can be strategically in the Western camp and politically in the authoritarian one. In this sense, U.S. President Joe Biden’s “autocracies versus democracies” narrative is simplistic at best, as illustrated by the fact that among the countries invited to Biden’s Summit for Democracy were states not exactly known as paragons of democratic virtues—such as Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Iraq—even as Hungary and Turkey, both treaty allies, were snubbed.
Nevertheless, between these two families, a politico-military showdown is taking shape, a hybrid strategic conflict that will borrow from the nationalisms of the first part of the 20th century and the Cold War of the second. This war will sometimes be hot on the neo-empires’ marches, as it is today in the Western part of the Eurasian landmass; and sometimes cold, as it remains for the time being in East Asia. In short, it will be a “lukewarm war” peppered with regional crises and limited conflicts, but one that will probably remain contained, if only by the ultimate lifeline of nuclear deterrence.
This confrontation between two worlds could last several decades, punctuated by strategic shocks and realignments. In the search for analogies, the confrontation between Sparta and Athens might be as apt as the East-West conflict of the Cold War. If we are lucky, we will avoid that of the confrontation between Rome and Persia, which lasted several centuries."
14. This is as always a great discussion on what’s happening in the tech industry. So valuable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrDudJtKpiE&t=5s
15. "The number of micro-funds that have been established in the United States has increased fourfold over the past decade, and this is a positive thing for startups and society as a whole. They offer advantages that traditional VC don’t, and are also strategically positioned to help startups grow and scale.
They are transforming early-stage venture capital, and attracting a new breed of LPs that are ready to cater to this new sector of VC. Hopefully, as more micro VC funds are created, we will see more diversity in the ideas and founders getting funded."
16. I love Jim Rogers who has been a model for me as a global investor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGsvwK9Q2sc
17. "It’s important to remember how much bigger China is than the U.S. It has four times the population and twice the manufacturing capacity by value-added. Any protracted conflict between the two countries would see the U.S. badly outmatched, despite its modest remaining advantages in some areas of technology. In other words, U.S. national security relies crucially on alliances — in order to be able to stand up to a much bigger opponent, you need a gang.
While the U.S. is pretty good at military alliances, it’s not as good at economicalliances. To be fair, no one really is — economic relationships are much more multifaceted than defense cooperation, so there’s no standard template for exactly how they’re supposed to work. But there are a few areas where the U.S. could cooperate more closely with allies in the quest to build a multinational economy capable of matching China’s.
The most obvious area is export controls. The U.S. needs countries like the Netherlands, Japan, Germany, South Korea, and Taiwan to cooperate if it’s to have any chance of keeping cutting-edge chipmaking technology out of China’s hands. So far, the Biden administration has done a pretty good job of this.
Second, the U.S. should immediately pursue defense manufacturing collaborationamong all its allies. The U.S.’ withered defense-industrial base and lack of a commercial shipbuilding industry means will take time to fix; in the meantime, America should be relying heavily on partners like Japan and South Korea to make the military materiel needed to deter China."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/three-holes-in-the-us-economic-strategy
18. "Despite the Ministry's dominant legal status, the central bank held a huge advantage: control over a secret monetary mechanism—a wartime legacy. The US Occupation had placed central bank insiders in their positions, but these insiders misused their power to form a small elite within the bank.
This elite held significant control over companies, entire industries, and the economy, and had no qualms about wielding this power. They selected and trained their successors, known as 'Princes.' Operating behind the facade of traditional interest rate policies, these five Princes ruled post-war Japan unaccountably, with no oversight from the prime minister, the Ministry of Finance, or even their own governor."
https://dollarendgame.substack.com/p/the-shoguns
19. Fun conversation on building a massive media business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhutjoWcywQ
20. This is such a great conversation on how to live a better life. Well worth listening to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ5K4iReUnE
21. "As we face a new era of geopolitical tensions and technological advancements, the lessons from the 1930s and 1940s are more relevant than ever. The parallels between the challenges of that era and those we face today underscore the need for a robust and resilient defense industrial base. By embracing government-industry collaboration, modern mass production techniques, significant infrastructure investments, skilled workforce development, technological innovation, efficient resource management, supply chain coordination, and flexibility and adaptability, we can ensure our national security and economic prosperity.
The resurgence of isolationism, nationalism, and the formation of a modern “Axis of Autocracy” pose significant threats to liberal democracies worldwide. Just as the United States mobilized its industrial might to overcome the Axis powers in World War II, we must now leverage our technological capabilities and innovative spirit to meet these contemporary challenges."
https://andrewglenn.substack.com/p/rebuilding-americas-defense
22. The CCP is serious, we in the West are not.
https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/chinas-expanding-base-in-hainan
23. "If you understand how this whole game is played at this point you know the solution is pretty simple:
1) put all of your effort into building equity in something since you cannot fight inflation with wages,
2) build your future on the internet since that is where everyone will “hang out” in the future. In fact, many of you (including us) probably spend more time online than in the real world interacting with people.
3) learn to invest in a way that is going to grow *faster* than the general economy over the next 5-10 years,
4) have a 10-20 year view where population is actually lower in the western world - outside of immigration additions and
5) be ready for a populist movement - a real one - if tech can’t lower the cost of basic items fast enough.
This is more of a guessing game. If robots/AI etc can provide entertainment while people are not working, we’d bet that 60%+ of the population honestly wouldn’t mind. (#5 is more of a wait and see)."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/inflation-steal-from-you-give-to
24. "The lessons from Ukraine is driving the need for new forms of successfully executing attacks - at all levels of military endeavour"
https://mickryan.substack.com/p/the-quest-for-a-new-offensive-doctrine
25. Incredible interview here with the founder of one of the most unique PE firms. Lots of personal development stuff in here that was very helpful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h19TEWB2lNg&t=1757s
26. This is gold for SaaS founders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDlOq1iDNe4
27. Geopolitics and AI tech, this is an important discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQmwOX7rUZ8
28. Fascinating discussion if you are interested in the sovereign individual concept and how to move your money around the world. That and how to think about commodities investing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd-vvrPW9YI
29. "So let’s take a closer look at the Russian threat which is still not to be underestimated, on the contrary. A win or even a stalemate with Russian dominance in Ukraine will embolden Putin and allow him to make his next move. That will mean a direct conflict with NATO which is what former CIA chief David Petraeus argued in an interview earlier this week. Quite prescient.
And support for Ukraine has not been up to the level that is required to ensure Putin is boxed in and so he effectively has the upper hand. I really enjoyed this short video from William Alberque, a former NATO security expert who explains how Putin has been winning and the West has been struggling to confront the threat. Now if you factor in how the EU election has created more divisions than unity, you will get the picture.
Both Petraeus and Alberque make the clear point that things do not look all that good if you are not committed to see the war in Ukraine through in a really decisive matter. The shifting political landscape is not helping in finding a unified voice to address the multiple threats that western democracies now face."
https://pieterdorsman.substack.com/p/europe-trembles
30. This is a very smart guy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNbEr9F0wiE&t=2s
31. This is an interview everyone should watch. I needed this myself. Highly recommend it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv4DlMnlQn4&t=2679s
32. This is a fun show. Worth watching to understand what’s happening globally.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAWlqIWn0Lg
33. "Of course, this being a Taiwan-focused blog we have to bring in a Taiwan angle. Are there any predictions of the chance of Chinese invasion of Taiwan out there? Yes, it is a question that is being continually tracked on the crowdsourced prediction site Metaculus.
According to the wisdom of the Metaculus crowd, the chances of an invasion by 2025 is just 1%, the chances of an invasion by 2030 is 21% and increases up to 31% by 2035. If you think differently, you can add your opinion to the mix.
In a way, those numbers are comforting. Compared to the breathless prediction of invasion, a third to a fifth chance sounds manageable."
https://taipology.substack.com/p/how-to-predict-the-future
34. "Compared to Snowflake, Databricks is growing nearly twice as quickly. Without additional data, it’s difficult to comment on the relative sales efficiency or profitability.
Databricks’ growth rate is yet another example of the rapid demand for AI infrastructure & the systems needed to power it."
Tulsa King: Everybody Has Problems
I started watching Taylor Sheridan’s new television series “Tulsa King” starring Sylvester Stallone (who incidentally has aged really well, shows that fitness and working out helps a lot). It’s a show about a gangster who served 25 years in prison for killing someone for his mob family and boss. Expecting to get rewarded for his sacrifices and loyalty he ends up being exiled to Tulsa, Oklahoma to expand his mob family's business. That’s when the adventure begins.
It’s a great series but like most shows and movies I watch I tend to draw lessons from many of them.
From the outside, he is the dominant alpha male, growing the business, making cash and living the life while staying at the best hotel in town. He is chipper and happy from appearances. But inside he is in tremendous pain, having been divorced by his wife, estranged from his beloved daughter. He loved “the life” he chose only to find out “the life” did not love him back. Abandoned by his gang. Now he’s trying to live by a code in a world that has changed around him during his 25 years in prison. Living a life full of regret.
I certainly know the feeling. Like everybody, I have good days and bad days. And most of the time, I feel blessed. But there is this thing called the “Instagram Effect.” Widespread social media shows us the best, the most glamorous & filtered parts of everyone’s life. You start to think everyone is doing better than you. And this is probably why you start to feel bad about your life even though you know you are doing well. I’m aware of this effect and I still fall into his trap myself all the time.
I struggle with this all the time as it’s a two edged sword for me. This dissatisfaction is fuel for my drive and work ethic. But it also leads to occasional despair and feelings of “what’s the point” of it all. Which causes me not to enjoy everything I’ve done so far.
So I always do my gratitude exercise every night: running through the things I’m happy to have, my wealth, my family even through the rough patches, my books, my career that I only dreamed about as a kid.
I also meditate everyday. Doing 20-30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes at night. It helps calm me.
Exercise is great for this. Having a gym regime and personal trainer keeps you accountable. It’s probably also why I felt the need to restart fight training this year. There is no better exercise in staying present. Your mind drifts and you end up getting punched in the face.
I do my daily review of my vision board and my annual and 3 year plans which helps me direct my angst and energy towards something good.
Like Stallone’s gangster character Dwight in the show, you can only go forward. And don’t judge people’s lives from the outside, it’s like judging a book by its cover. I can tell you from experience, you may not like what you find inside.
Venture Capital is Hard: The End of an Era
I’ve been practicing venture now for almost 11 years and been in the tech industry for over 26 years now. It’s fascinating how it seems that everyone looks at venture capital as this glamorous industry. And like everything it looks more sexy from the outside than it really is in reality.
And seems so simple and fun. You meet interesting, smart and ambitious founders all the time, look at business models and give them money in return for a piece of the business. You get to be their trusted advisor and help with issues big and small. Encapsulated in a simple formula: finding, picking and helping startup founders.
But the reality is that it is really hard to be great at this. Every single step of this process of finding, picking and helping is damn hard. Few VCs are good at all three of these steps. And in light of the thousands of new VC funds and investors out there, it’s gotten ferociously competitive. There are very few differentiated venture investors these days. And we are seeing a barbell effect of many small new emerging funds on one side and the big brands like Lightspeed, Sequoia, A16Z, NEA on the other side getting bigger. The middle is getting squeezed out.
And the asset class itself is cyclical and very illiquid so unlike stocks you can’t easily sell it until the business goes public or gets acquired. In most cases they just die. Startups are hard and reliant on a confluence of team, market, timing, technology & demographic trends and business model for great success. That and a tremendous amount of luck.
Every year there are only about 25-35 companies that drive all the returns that year. It’s the ultimate outlier business. It’s not even Pareto’s law where 20% of companies drive 80% or returns. Think 1% of companies drive 80% of returns for VC funds. Crazy right?
It’s so hard because there is the pure challenge of building a high growth business, the ability of the founders and team to adapt and grow.
And on top of this it takes on average in the US seed VC fund 12-14 years before big returns show up. It takes a long frigging time for success and returns. It’s highly illiquid despite an emerging secondaries market and big exits happen usually only after 10 years due to the IPO cycle.
This is the ultimate “long term greedy” business. The majority of exits also depend on acquisitions by big companies and unfortunately unlike the last previous cycles, this has been very challenged due to the very anti-business sentiment of regulators in the USA, UK and European Union (of course the EU).
And if you have a relatively small or medium sized fund, you don't have enough management fees to have a good salary, cover all admin and legal costs or live a lavish lifestyle. VCs are poorer than you think.
This is why so many venture capitalists have been leaving the industry for the last 3 years. The ZIRP era of cheap money is over, fund performances are cratered by mark downs and fundraising from LPs across have gotten incredibly difficult due to the ugly returns so far of the asset class.
I can attest to how hard fundraising has been both as an LP investing in funds and a VC raising a small fund. I’ve gotten my face ripped off and ghosted by way more LPs and folks in this last year than ever before. This seems consistent with what I hear from VC friends who are in the market.
Consequently, the estimates are that 35-40% of VC funds were inactive in 2023 and Sapphire LP fund of Funds expects 15% of VC funds are not going to raise another fund. I believe this number will be way higher, at least 2x of that number.
This business is so hard, takes so much time, energy and effort and the market has changed so much it’s just easier to quit. So I expect a winnowing out of the venture market this year and next.
It brings to mind the term “Missionaries over Mercenaries” which for both VCs & startup founders become even more relevant these days. Only those who have the fire in the stomach and sparkle in the eyes will still be in the business 5 years from now. You gotta love the business. So for any new and old VCs out there, buckle up. It’s gonna get worse before it gets better. So just focus on staying in the game, the next big cycle is just starting.
Elon Musk and F—k You Money: Separating the Messenger FROM the Message
I’m not a huge fan of Elon even though I admire what he has done and for his incredible prowess and intelligence. What I don’t like are his pro-China and Russia views as well as his long time callousness to people. He is what most folks would charitably call an a—hole. But then when you grow up in a brutal place like South Africa and raised by what can be called an abusive sociopath like his father, a lot of his ruthlessness and coldness makes sense.
But he said something in public that really seemed spot on. And illuminated what many people think but could never say out loud.
“What I care about is the reality of goodness, not the perception of it. What I see all over the place is people who care about looking good, while doing evil. F—k them.”
(Source: https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1730013516034101638)
This definitely is a description of many of the elites in the West whether in media, academia, government or business.
Elon can say this publicly because he is a billionaire with FU money. And quoting “Billions” again, “What is the point of having F-U money if you never say FU!” But the observation is that it’s hard to speak truth to power if one has no power or platform or personal brand.
Everyone else is so scared of offending someone or getting canceled. It’s led us to a dearth of any critical thinking and debate in the West.
I work at listening and paying attention to everyone. Even people I really dislike like Elon Musk, David Sacks and Mike Cernovich. David Sacks had incredibly observant views on startups and operating as well as very valid critiques of the Democratic Party and stupid progressive left. I disagree with his views on UKraine of course. Cernovich is a brilliant writer and teaches great mindset stuff but I disagree with his right wing views.
Try to separate the message from the messenger. This is key to critical thinking and something missing in schools and business. An unwillingness to hear the other side leads to major blind spots and faulty thinking. So do remember a broken clock is right twice in the day.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads June 16th, 2024
“Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop”--Ovid
Lemkin knows his stuff. All SaaS & B2B Founders should listen to this. The world has changed in GTM.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFrSh3qVNwI
2. Drug Cartels will be big issue for Mexico and USA in the future. It already is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttWlOwaBOaQ&t=1015s
3. "For tech entrepreneurs who don’t have an idea but want to build software, my recommendation is to start a consulting company, build software for clients, and listen to feedback and market trends. Look for opportunities. One of the best ways to become a software entrepreneur is to start as a software consulting entrepreneur."
https://davidcummings.org/2024/06/01/software-consulting-to-software-product/
4. "The Russians have pushed forward that entire time about 1-2 kilometers. And it’s hard to argue that the town is any closer to falling than it was then. Note—people were saying a few months ago that Putin wanted to take Chasiv Yar by 9 May for his latest coronation. That seems to have been dropped.
Of course another supposedly strategic benefit of the campaign for Russia was that it would limit Ukrainian attacks into Russia. If that was an intended benefit, this was probably the most disastrous own-goal, strategic calculation so far since the failure of the original invasion.
What Russia has done with the Kharkiv offensive has opened up Russia to attack by US system in a way that would have been inconceivable before. Indeed the offensive was so flagrantly planned to take advantage of US fears, and the Russians compounded that through their terror attacks on Kharkiv, that they caused a boomerang reaction, and the Biden Administration did its volte-face this week and okayed Ukrainian attacks into Russia with US weapons.
This will make the Kharkiv offensive an even greater burden.
Also, it's worth noting that the US has also given the Ukrainians the ability to disrupt any upcoming Sumy offensive—this time before the Russians cross the border. Another Russian offensive in this area has been discussed regularly—now such an operation will be much harder for the Russians. One of the main reasons for the Russian early, modest successes at Kharkiv was because the Ukrainians could not do such disruption with US systems. Now they can—another Russian own-goal."
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/weekend-update-83-the-kharkiv-offensive
5. "That means we now have two popular independent and centrist candidates against both Biden and Trump. Kennedy and Manchin want to return to a bipartisan world. Manchin tweeted, “Let’s work together to fix America. Don’t hate the other side. There’s only one side - the American side - and we have to work together to save our country. That’s why I changed my party registration to no party affiliation.” This is very similar to the language Kennedy uses to describe his “We The People Party”.
I question whether Kennedy and Manchin will align or fight each other for the middle ground. Could it be that both the left and the right have become so preoccupied with their troubles that they have already missed the electorate’s desire to return to a more collaborative and centrist approach to politics? Yes. Have they understood that the country’s voters want any option other than mendacity and/or senility (terms many Americans apply to both Biden and Trump, depending on which side they are on)? Yes.
Trump will appeal his 34 convictions, of course, but these convictions strongly raise the possibility that President Biden won’t be facing Trump. He’ll be facing Robert F Kennedy and Joe Manchin. On a larger scale, these events mean that the parties are playing for the ends of the playing field, the far left and the far right, while the centrists are now taking the previously ignored and unoccupied middle of the playing field. Middle America seems to want America’s focus back on the middle.
To many, it seems unimaginable that President Trump has been convicted of felony charges.
To others, it is unimaginable that he would not be convicted of felony charges.
To others, it seems unimaginable that President Biden (even if only via his son Hunter) has not been convicted of felony charges.
To others, it is unimportant if his son is convicted of felony charges.
What matters is that we are not witnessing politics anymore. We are witnessing the unraveling of the American social contract. The social contract in many nations is clear. You are either in power or in prison. Political life consists of bouncing back and forth between the two extremes. The US seems to be well on its way to this outcome now."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/the-four-way-race-for-the-american
6. Latest updates in Ukraine and massive implications as Western weapons now finally allowed to hit targets in Russia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va6Tcd7NJ14
7. The latest state of SaaS with Jason Lemkin. It’s really good. Net net: it’s gonna be rough this year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IM-yO1gZOE
8. A grand vision for the future. Vinod has been right more than wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti6Gft5xO1s
9. "But every attempt to create a marketplace in Private Markets has failed. Including the three times I’ve tried. And it is simply because Liquidity and Price Discovery are Bugs, Not Features, in our industry."
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-private-secondary-marketplace-never-work-henry-ward-4ysoc/
10. Jason is a friend and I've always respected him. I respect him even more after listening to this. So much wisdom and honesty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7QN9RGZJ5o
11. "Some of the older software companies are slowing - a natural part of the lifecycle. But it would be a mistake to extrapolate that to the entire market. The private markets hide the fastest growing companies."
https://tomtunguz.com/weakness-in-software/
12. "At this point you should be close/near financial independence. After you are financially set you begin playing a completely different game vs. everyone else.
You’re getting in on private deals, you are able to buy assets at discounts (long vesting periods) and you can entertain various ultra high risk positions.
While we’re primarily focused on highly liquid investments since we absolutely loathe trusting people with money, there are always illiquid options out there.
Growth Industries: As of this writing (June 3, 2024), it would be the following markets: 1) tech, 2) crypto, 3) fitness/diet, 4) skin care, 5) mental health, 6) pets, 7) mental health and 8) vanity/anti-aging as older childless men/women pay millions to try and stop the hands of time. If you’re involved in those markets they will be stable to growing over the foreseeable future (if something changes you’ll hear it here first as always)"
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/basic-asset-protection-low-seven
13. "We take up the subject of how Silicon Valley startups seek to secure new defense contracts for an age of “great-power competition” with China. Many of these defense startups are funded by venture capitalists who promote themselves as the facilitators of global peace.
They promise that their technocratic knowledge and investments in artificial intelligence will deter Chinese aggression and reduce casualties on all sides in the event of a great-power war. If we are to save the world, they argue, the U.S. must have not just a technological advantage, but technological predominance over China and other U.S. rivals.
Indeed, the CEO of Palantir (one of the largest defense startups), Alex Karp, recently declared at the AI Expo for National Competitiveness that “[t]he peace activists are war activists. “We are the peace activists.” Karp and like-minded venture capitalists are on a mission to make money while saving the world from China and Russia; they sell themselves as the “new Oppenheimers.”
https://michaelbrenes.substack.com/p/better-defense-through-technology
14. "First of all, seeing other countries is not the same as understanding them, even though these are both valuable activities. If you go to Japan and see that they have an amazing train system, it can motivate you to think “Why don’t we have a great train system in the U.S.?”, or even “How can the U.S. get better trains?”.
But it will not tell you whyJapan has such great trains. It will not tell you how Japan’s train system was built, or why. It will not tell you how much it cost or how easy it is to maintain. It will not tell you about any political problems Japan’s government had to overcome in order to get the trains built, and so on.
It’s good to know that other countries can do things differently, but that’s only the first step in learning about those differences."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/how-much-can-you-really-learn-about
15. "This dynamic has changed now that social networking makes it possible to fight wars in the moral realm online, using events in the physical realm to advance the conflict.
Now, the center of gravity for wars in the moral realm is online. It’s where the news of events arrives first, where the narratives built upon it are fought over, and how it is distributed to most people (TV news is dying).
Unlike pre-network wars, these wars don’t focus solely on the cohesion of the combatants' domestic populations. They are waged across the entire network of people, firms, and governments connected to the combatants.
Also, unlike these earlier wars, these conflicts progress to their conclusion in months rather than years and decades."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/gazas-end-game
16. "The benefit of using alternatives is the potential for higher returns that are less correlated with traditional financial assets. While each of the asset classes listed above will have a different correlation with stocks, bonds, and cash, the hope is that these alternative asset classes will provide a diversification benefit that you cannot get anywhere else. As a result, investing in alternatives should improve your returns while also lowering your portfolio’s overall volatility.
However, these benefits don’t come without costs. One of these costs is less liquidity. Unlike publicly traded stocks and bonds, alternatives can be difficult to sell quickly or at a reasonable price. As a result, your capital can be locked into an alternative investment for much longer."
https://ofdollarsanddata.com/do-you-need-alternatives-to-get-rich/
17. "This combination of strategic government policies, investment in infrastructure, and innovative production techniques transformed the U.S. industrial base from a state of near obsolescence in the 1930s to the most productive manufacturing capability in the world by the end of World War II."
https://andrewglenn.substack.com/p/from-obsolescence-to-overdrive-the
18. "Anytime you part ways in any kind of relationship, unless the other person is begging you to stay, it’s a bit of a failure. Even if the parting is amicable, like starting something new after working for something else, at some level, they’re ok with letting you go.
That doesn’t mean you’re a failure as a person or you didn’t create lots of value—but we’re far too dismissive about what we’re missing out on in these periods of transition. The same holds for personal relationships, too. Even if you realize you’re not a great match for someone, it’s worth taking stock of how you could have been a better partner.
A move to something better doesn’t mean you don’t still have lots to learn and improve over your last effort."
https://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/blog/2024/6/3/lessons-on-leaving
19. How to kill a franchise......over-saturation.......Hollywood is renowned for this.
https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-6-laws-of-dying-hollywood-franchises
20. This is an excellent and instructive interview to learn the art and science of angel investing and venture capital. Well worth watching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g22kJinehPA
21. Solid & thoughtful discussion on investing in AI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fxL0jjy1tI
22. This is a masterclass in venture capital from 25+ years running a top firm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdHyk5DZJDM
23. This is always an enlightening conversation on geopolitics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xt4581iZn1g
24. Everyone in sales should watch this. It's not FOMO that drives buyer decisions, it's FOMU, Fear of Messing Up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUzEgRetmC4&t=1s
25. "The TL;DR:
Burn is normal, and even healthy, in the early stages as long as you have the cash to support it.
There’s almost always a trade-off between growth and profitability.
The relative importance between the two metrics will vary over time. A balanced approach is usually best for valuations.
When growth slows below 50% year-on-year, expect to craft a path toward breakeven or profitability."
https://www.growthunhinged.com/p/growth-or-profitability
26. "It’s really that simple.
Business = Having something to sell + a source of leads
It’s nothing complex like how people seem to think."
https://lifemathmoney.com/the-2-parts-of-any-business-and-what-holds-you-back/
27. "But I think consumer is actually a great place to be building and investing. Whenever something is out of favor, that’s a sign it’s probably a good place to spend time: this is an industry built on being contrarian, not built on following the herd. We’re entering a compelling few years for consumer entrepreneurship.
Big consumer wins compare favorably to big enterprise wins—relative to Snowflake’s market cap, Uber is ~3x in size, Airbnb is ~2x in size, and DoorDash is roughly equal. (Snowflake is the biggest enterprise IPO of the last decade.) The last few years produced a windfall of consumer outcomes, yet investors today almost write off the category."
https://www.digitalnative.tech/p/the-consumer-renaissance
28. "Modern western writing tends to assume a progressive linear development of societies, and that the kind of behaviour described above is just a bizarre anachronism. But older historians from different cultures were well aware that societies rose and fell. Ibn Khaldûn thought that no regime could last for more than three generations before it became decadent and declined.
If he’s right, then we are entering the third generation of unfettered Liberalism now, and neo-tribalism may be the pattern of the future, as society disintegrates into smaller and smaller groups, both elective and ascriptive, looking for security among the few they believe they can count on. Not a happy prospect."
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/the-coming-of-neo-tribalism
29. Fun discussion on NIA today with an old Yahoo! colleague Erika Ayers Badan. She is so good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPVRtbM3pfI
30. Elad Gil is one of the best operators and investors in Silicon Valley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcvIGJ3_H_k&t=3087s
31. "In sum, there is a scenario in which Taiwan could face an economic blockade by China, but such a blockade would only make strategic sense if China had already mobilized its military for a full-scale invasion in anticipation of the need to escalate or at least have the blockade buttressed by the threat of force. In either case, Taiwan arrives at practically the same place: staring down the full military might of the People’s Republic of China.
China could, of course, miscalculate and launch a blockade without the backup of a threat of invasion — although it’s puzzling why it hasn’t done so yet if it truly believed it was likely to result in a victory without a fight — but doing so would very likely result in a strategic defeat.
Even if an economic blockade is theoretically on the table, it is not the most likely or the direst outcome that Taiwan currently faces. That ultimate risk belongs to the threat of military invasion — a threat that, unfortunately, Taiwan still has a long way to go to prepare for. If Taiwan proceeds to believe that a blockade is more likely than a military assault, or that a blockade would be the end of the matter, it is making a dangerous miscalculation."
https://warontherocks.com/2024/06/a-chinese-economic-blockade-of-taiwan-would-fail-or-launch-a-war/
32. Taiwan needs to wake up, so does the West.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIYVceK-e_c
33. Masterclass in building niche media businesses from one of the best.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QKnbKzZLLI&t=1988s
34. HUR Special forces heroes and bad asses from Ukraine.
"After our successful offensive operations, everybody started to relax and think, ‘Oh, the Russians can’t do anything.’ Every country has its propaganda, but even our government started to think that everything is fine,” Den says over a breakfast in Kyiv just before the second anniversary of the invasion.
“In 2023, we saw the consequences of our wrong decisions at the end of 2022, when everybody thought that everything is fine. But it’s stupid when you’re fighting against a country with a three-times-larger population, a real big country with everything, including nuclear weapons.”
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-the-fearless-ukraine-soldiers-front-lines/
35. This is an excellent discussion on media businesses.
Increasing Your Surface of Luck: It’s Almost Always A Numbers Game
It’s always interesting talking to people from all walks of life and learning about how they live. Their perspectives. And it’s always really clear who is successful or not.
It’s their mindset and taking action. The more sales calls you make, the more investors you reach and talk with, the more articles you write, the more likely there will be success. The more girls you approach, the more likely you will end up dating someone. Consistent and regular action. Obviously these need to be relevant and targeted to the right people. Ie. Do your homework. But the point still stands. It literally is a numbers game.
As Noah Kagan tweeted:
“When starting out, dedicate yourself to The Law of 100.
Put out 100 videos.
Write 100 newsletters.
Reach out to 100 investors.
Do 100 reps of anything and you WILL get results.”
The more relevant action you take, increases your chances of doing well. For me, doing startup investing deals brings me more deal flow. Speaking at conferences brings me more speaking opportunities. Consulting and mentoring bring me more consulting and mentoring opportunities. Meeting more people, listening to more podcasts and reading more books, you get more insights. It’s compounding at its best.
Passivity is not a formula for success in anything.
You have to hustle and have a mentality of eating what you kill. Have total ownership.
I know if I don’t do anything, nothing will happen. Yes, something could happen even if you don’t do anything. But that’s a dangerous and precarious way to live. Living in hope and praying for luck, you are NGMI. God helps those who help themselves.