Cooperation is the Mark of Civilization: You Can’t Do it Alone
There was an interesting scene in the excellent Chinese sci-fi movie “Wandering Earth 2”. In a speech, one of the key ministers gives to the entire United Earth Government right before the impending disaster.
He shows a picture of a healed human bone.
“What you are seeing now is a fossil from 15,000 years ago. It’s a human femur that recovered from a fracture. It marks the dawn of human civilization. 15,000 years ago, a fractured bone was often fatal as it deprived you of your ability to find food or seek shelter. All you could do was wait for a predator to eat you up.
However this particular femur healed. It means that after the injury someone took care of their wounds, someone provided water and food, Someone protected this person from the predators.
This kind of support, solidarity is how we survived to this day and made our civilization last.
Will we make the same decision our ancestors made 15,000 years ago?”
This is the grand question. Climate change, pandemic, risk of global war, the destruction of flora and fauna & our environment in pursuit of selfish gains. Humanity sometimes seems like it’s on the path of hedonistic self-destruction. Like the world is falling apart and no one is doing anything about it.
But I choose to think that our better angels will overcome our devils. When I see my daughter, I can’t help but think she embodies all the best qualities of her two parents. I’m hopeful because this upcoming generation in general seems to be better, kinder and smarter than we are.
I also know that humans have an ability to come together when faced with a crisis. We’ve proven it over the entire lifetime of our species. This will become clearer as we face ever present threats coming in our lifetime.
We are fast approaching our global broken femur moment. I hope humanity acts accordingly and steps up.
I end this with a great quote from the movie: “Remember, A civilization without people is meaningless. I believe the courage of mankind transcends time. It transcends past, present and future.”
Living Life to the Seasons: Learning From Nature
Nature has a lot to teach us. Think about what each season represents. Then followed by Spring which is when everything starts to bloom. Weather starts to turn warm and the day gets longer. Summer is when it is really warm and when we can harvest crops and food is plentiful.
But then we get the Autumn, the weather turns slightly colder, the leaves start to turn. And then we have the Winter which is cold and dark, it’s death and where nothing grows. The days are short. And I might add, this is when it’s hard to be outside at all and also when starvation used to happen often in olden times. But if we can survive, we go back into the cycle of Spring and bloom and the inevitable summer of prosperity. The cycles are valuable because you only really appreciate the spring and summer after you go through the winter. And if you are too hedonistic during the summer, winter becomes a painful lesson for you.
Do we put aside enough during spring and summer so we can survive the winter? Or do we fritter this away, or indulge without thinking of the future? With the consequence of starvation and suffering. You only learn by going through these cycles a few times.
Kind of life in general. It’s also a good reflection of how countries and empires rise and fall. It's a reflection of business and companies and our own careers. There is probably some larger lesson in this.
Good times don’t last, but neither do hard times. Life and the economy is cyclical. So don’t get too arrogant, overconfident or cocky when you are on the rise. But don’t get too depressed when you are laid low. Just grind and survive. The cycle, like the seasons, always turns eventually.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads August 18th, 2024
“In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or step back into safety.” — Abraham Maslow
"When office buildings sell at two-thirds less than replacement costs, value should be had.
Could San Francisco become a revival story indeed, or even the posterchild for a city that was beholden to woke policies but eventually broke free? Could it yet "do a Giuliani" and enter a new era altogether?
Throw in other emerging factors, such as the investment boom in AI and how that is bringing a new start-up scene back to San Francisco. The city may yet turn around – it's not like there weren't at least some promising signs.
On the other hand, the oversupply of office space in San Francisco is so stark that no landlord will regain any real pricing power anytime soon. Working from home is not going to go away. The US now has other powerful centres for venture capital and tech, such as Texas and Florida. Elon Musk has moved X (formerly Twitter) out of San Francisco, and plenty of other companies have also moved away. Then again, given how bombed-out the market is, it wouldn't take much for a first wave of speculative money to trigger an initial recovery.
During my 30+ years in markets, there haven't been many cases where you can buy real estate in a world-famous, Western city for 70% less than replacement value."
2. "In this post, we have shown how you can troubleshoot go-to-market problems by splitting the funnel in two and focusing on two questions:
Are we giving sales the change to hit the number each quarter, as measured by pipeline coverage.
Is sales converting enough of the pipeline to hit the number, as measured by pipeline conversion."
https://kellblog.com/2024/07/23/go-to-market-troubleshooting-lets-take-it-from-the-top/
3. "Sometimes the economy really does encounter a sudden break point where all the old certainties get tossed out and a new reality takes hold. The Industrial Revolution is a good example of this. Maybe the invention of Artificial General Intelligence is right around the corner, and will replace the bulk of the work that normal humans can possibly do, leaving a world in which only the most brilliant AI engineers, savviest and boldest entrepreneurs, and most well-heeled financiers can make a living.
I encounter a surprisingly large number of people in the San Francisco tech industry who believe that this is going to happen. They might be right — Daron Acemoglu agrees with them — but I suspect they’re overgeneralizing from their own experience. Everyone likes to marvel at how billion-dollar software companies have been created with just a handful of employees. If you see that kind of thing all day, you very well might start to think that labor is obsolete! But if you look at the overall economy, you’ll see that the fraction of output that gets paid to labor has fallen by only a couple of percentage points since the dawn of the information age."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/yes-we-still-have-to-work
4. "As I read the Third Plenum resolution, I couldn’t help but tick off the commonalities with Jake Sullivan’s speech on US industrial policy: strategic industries, supply chain resilience, innovation, long-term investments, infrastructure, clean energy. Analyzing American and Chinese economic policy these days feels like looking down a warped hall of mirrors. China and the US have both drawn policy inspiration from each other.
China wants to replicate the venture capital ecosystem of Silicon Valley. China’s efforts to loosen up research institutions and give individual researchers a greater share of their work’s rewards is clearly inspired by American success in the academia-to-commercialization pipeline.
The US for its part has become much more open to large-scale state intervention in critical sectors of the economy, like the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act. US efforts to leverage access to its large market to compel foreign firms to invest domestically is a classic Chinese tactic (as I’ve written about). American policymakers have a renewed interest in the “hard economy,” often drawing comparisons with Chinese manufacturing and infrastructure.
As this economic contest heats up, it’s worth appreciating the irony of how China and the US keep defying each other’s ideological beliefs and expectations. Washington is annoyed that an authoritarian single-party system like China can innovate and produce global industry leaders. Beijing is annoyed that a messy democracy like the US keeps churning out world-changing technology from the internet to AI."
https://www.high-capacity.com/p/a-warped-hall-of-mirrors-us-china
5. "In the US, every four years, the presidential election is often a hotly debated topic, with tribes on both sides often spilling quite a bit of (digital) ink in the months leading up to that November.
And you might be asking, well mouse, I don’t care about politics, why should I pay attention to their trending topics/keywords/memes?
Me either fren, but I always have a hard time walking past a table overflowing with money lit on fire when a fire extinguisher is right at hand.
The solution is not to sell to the tribe you once used to/still may identify with, but to have systems in place to sell to both tribes in the US two party system. This is easily done with a domain parked with some variation of “patriot” for one side and “hope” on the other. A simple three-page site with maybe a few mantras floating around for some light SEO, lying in wait.
Inevitably, one side will see something happen so egregious, that that faction will rush to spend money as fast as possible to perform their allegiance (whether red or blue) at school drop off the next morning"
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/ecom-the-rip-and-run
6. "Using AI in these contexts to help you refine your predictions about how different decisions will make you feel is a game changer. It can bring you an entirely new perspective on yourself—one that might pull you out of longstanding patterns or can help you see the forest through the trees of your experience.
It picks up on things you know, but couldn’t say. It expands upon what you’ve written so that you can more effectively project yourself into a possible future. It allows you to try on a decision like you would a piece of clothing.
AI can help you turn a decision that was once murky into something that’s clear as crystal. The question is: Will you listen?"
https://every.to/chain-of-thought/ai-can-help-you-make-big-life-decisions
7. "Dwarkesh is the host of the Dwarkesh Podcast, where he conducts deeply researched interviews with guests like Mark Zuckerberg, Tony Blair, and Marc Andreessen.
Before conducting each of these interviews, Dwarkesh learns as much as he can about his guest and their area of expertise—AI hardware, tense geopolitical crises, and the genetics of human origins, to name a few. He does this by researching extensively, and recently, he integrated AI into his process.
Dwarkesh is using LLMs to revolutionize how he reads, learns, and builds a coherent worldview."
https://every.to/chain-of-thought/dwarkesh-patel-s-quest-to-learn-everything
8. "The most concrete example comes from her original Substack post in which she coined the term vibecession. In her piece, she argued that the split between how consumers felt about their current situation (quite good) and how they thought the future would go (quite bad) could end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Thankfully, in America, at least, they were wrong. The bad vibes didn’t get us, and the economy bounced back. However, if enough people had believed that narrative and reduced their spending habits, they could’ve made a recession happen. Scanlon’s argument is that the economy is downstream of emotions.
Which, when said out loud, feels obvious, but it hasn’t been taken seriously. Most study of emotion in the field has been confined to behavioral economics: Economists study individual patterns of irrational behavior, such as the sunk cost fallacy or anchoring bias. But few people have studied the impact of emotions on the population.
Vibes are a field of study that deserves more attention and funding."
https://every.to/napkin-math/vibes-are-a-legitimate-economic-indicator
9. "What matters is that the international foreign policy landscape is now becoming extremely complex as China moves into far regions like the Middle East and Russia moves into the Pacific. China is playing the part of a peacemaker and power broker in the Middle East, which has just led to the formation of a future combined Palestinian government. China was able to end the war between Hamas and Fateh after decades of strife. Putin met Modi in India and restored the traditional dialogue that existed between the two countries.
Washington is having to adjust to a multipolar world where the weight of America’s voice isn’t what it used to be at a time when nobody is sure which way the US is going. Governments around the world are thinking through contingency plans in case events happen, and it becomes evident that nobody is in charge in the US. This includes the possibility of a contested or a contingent election outcome or both. It also includes the possibility that the election isn’t held on time or at all."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/missing-bullet-casings-fortune-cookies
10. Great overview of the geopolitical sphere and the rise of the new axis and Cold War 2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkW2oaT0zZ8
11. "Whether or not you think Jeff’s on the juice, his body transformation remains hugely impressive. Gone are the days when he was solely known for revolutionizing the world of e-commerce. Now he’s a beacon of inspiration for fitness enthusiasts worldwide, proving that success isn’t confined to the boardroom, it can be sculpted in the iron paradise too."
https://www.dmarge.com/jeff-bezos-workout-routine
12. Learning from a top tier VC. Benchmark is excellent. An insightful discussion on the business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfJtIibCx78
13. Dense and wide ranging discussion from one of the smartest people around. Always well reasoned. I don't agree with everything Balaji says but he always makes me think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rWIsc34N9Y
14. This is excellent. Jason gives a good rundown on what the best sales reps look like (and the reverse as well).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN4WnZnDQLs
15. Recent interview with Roelef of Sequoia Capital. Crucible moments for Sequoia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeF7GPBM8zQ
16. Always an enjoyable conversation. I am a fan of Justin Waller: the blue collar baller.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGlllvBYb04
17. Ian Bremmer is one of the top geopolitical analysts out there. Sober view on what’s up in the world. Little bit dated with political changes in recent weeks but overall interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdQDpwdNCzk
18. Tai Lopez wisdom. I have come to enjoy listening to his stories & learnings here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxzGeHrisdk
19. Peter Thiel is one of the most original thinkers and investors around. Regardless of his politics, you can always learn from him. He is always ahead of the curve.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42iVcEg5SOM
20. "U.S. national interests are best served by a peaceful world where authoritarian powers don’t try to conquer their smaller, weaker neighbors, and where global trade is conducted for mutual benefit instead of as a form of mercantilist beggar-thy-neighbor competition. That goal requires that the U.S. recognize China’s movement away from peaceful economic development and toward assertive nationalism and totalitarianism under Xi Jinping.
And it requires strong steps on the economic, diplomatic, and military fronts to dissuade China from launching a reckless war that plunges Asia into violence and chaos. I hope that whoever gets elected President this year is up to that task. Right now I’d definitely pick Harris over Trump for this reason alone, but that doesn’t mean she has my full confidence either."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-trump-or-harris-might-fail-to
21. Signs of peace coming to Ukraine soon? I hope so but only if it's on Ukraine's terms.
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/ukraine-is-peace-coming
22. "If you want to understand the limits of AI today, try to build an agent.
And I mean a real agent, one that does complex, open ended tasks in the real world, not one that fetches a few PDFs and summarizes them.
You can tell your human co-worker: "I need you to go off and put together a complete plan for outreach to our potential customers, craft a list of needed assets, setup an outreach sequence and come up with a novel way to make those interactions feel more natural rather than doing cold email outreach."
They'll figure how to do it and all the complex intermediate steps to take along the way, while asking questions or getting the help they need to get it done if they don't understand each step.
An agent will hallucinate five to twenty steps into such an open ended task and go completely off the rails.
We already have super machines and tomorrow's super machines will make today's models look like Atari games next to PS5 games running Unreal Engine 5.
Technological evolution happens slowly, step by step, building on the backs of millions of tiny breakthroughs through the collective intelligence of mankind. It goes slowly and then all the pieces are suddenly in place and we get a burst of brilliant new activity that takes us to the next level "overnight."
But there is always further to go."
https://danieljeffries.substack.com/p/why-llms-are-much-smarter-than-you
23. "It’s easier to distill someone’s life down to their career progression, especially if you barely know them. There it is right on LinkedIn! I guess social media would be the analogous view into their personal lives, but the Instagram version of people’s lives is hardly real either. It’s easy to imagine that if only you made X amount of money, or worked at Y company, you would be happy. Money can certainly alleviate a lot of problems, but there are plenty of people who work at Y making X (or much much more than X) dollars a year who are miserable.
On our deathbeds (I guess we are actually headed to the same place after all), most people aren’t thinking, if only I had made more money, or if only I had spent some time in an executive role. Comparing career success, or stalking your former classmates in their new roles on LinkedIn, is like watching cars speed past you on the highway. It’s the most obvious thing to compare yourself to, but for most people, it’s probably not the most important.
According to palliative care nurse Bronnie Ware, the top five regrets of the dying are:
I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
I wish that I had let myself be happier.
Given these top regrets, it seems downright silly that our comparative minds hone in on career success as a key gauge of life progress and happiness."
https://jeanhsu.substack.com/p/life-is-not-a-race
24. "But that concept of maintaining a higher number of funds managing smaller fund sizes certainly makes sense to me. Speaking of Fred Wilson, he's also laid out the mathon what it takes in terms of proceeds required to generate the necessary returns on the amounts of capital being managed. TLDR: It's a LOT.
But despite the logic in smaller funds being more capable of compounding capital, you can just feel the pull towards larger and larger funds. People can make more money off of fees, build larger organizations, more definitive brands, and compete for the best deals.
Obviously everyone is going to present their own case as ideal. But the reality is that in the same way ICONIQ can lose $100M because its 1% of their fund, they can also choose not to care about you as much even if things are just going fine, but not gangbusters, because you're 1% of their fund.
So from my perspective there is still plenty of value to create as a venture fund. And there are still plenty of vectors on which to compete in venture. Firms like Sequoia and Accel had been around for 40+ years when a16z came along in 2009, but they still made the incumbents dance. And I'm sure there are firms that are just getting going today that are going to do the same."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/the-siren-song-of-raising-a-venture
25. I learned a bunch here on the nicotine market and also Soylent too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYkReFrm7Wg
26. How do you right size your vc fund? Learnings from Notable VC formerly known as the legendary GGV.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSMqS8b3gfY
27. I thoroughly enjoyed this. Delian of Founders Fund & Varda on the art and science of venture investing. Strong opinions which are unfortunately rare in the tech industry these days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAScF7kEzOw
28. "Let’s consider his point: is “going direct,” as the founders and investors on All-In have done, antithetical to their work as founders and investors?
I think it’s likely too much time online negatively impacts one’s ability to focus elsewhere, but it’s silly to pretend there aren’t considerable benefits. Seibel’s old boss Paul Graham was one of the industry’s first influencers, in a way, an early, successful essayist, and a very popular voice on social media. That work has definitely contributed to, rather than detracted from, the success of YC. It has also, obviously, drawn him into mimetic conflict with Sacks. But I digress.
What’s more clear than the benefit of going direct for one’s own company is the benefit accrued to the industry. There was no alternative tech press in 2016, when Parker was witch burned, or 2019, when the mob came for Travis Kalanick. Neither of these stories would play out the same, lopsided way today."
https://www.piratewires.com/p/the-battle-of-the-billionaires
29. Pretty interesting approach to VC. Super clear and well articulated fund strategy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK2LesWN8Jk
30. This is an excellent workshop on how to implement growth in your business.
It's a live teardown and great framework for any kind of business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKT9r9hGmkI
31. This shows why the American foreign policy clique is so incompetent & why we keep making BIG mistakes in foreign interventions. Stupid ideology and a massive lack of understanding of history.
"Despite Burnham’s noticeably ideological perspective, his analysis is worth considering. That much the same ideology dominates the liberal consensus of our time is obvious. American allies in Poland, Hungary, and the Philippines are denounced by both liberal and neoconservative pundits and officials for relatively mild measures they take to protect their borders, sovereignty, and national culture.
By contrast, largesse and deference are given to brutal dictatorships in China and the Gulf States, and to corrupt, violent, and ethnocentrist regimes in much of Africa, even though these states pursue much more aggressive versions of the same policies."
https://www.palladiummag.com/2018/10/11/the-lesson-that-america-did-not-learn-from-vietnam/
32. Interesting list for expats: Mexico, Thailand and Vietnam appeal more to me.
https://www.afar.com/magazine/best-countries-for-expats-to-live-abroad
33. This is eye opening and every ambitious person should watch this. So many great learnings.
“Extreme Job”: Persistence Pays
I took a 22 hour long flight to Australia in 2023 for business. That’s a damn long flight even for me. I love Australia but it is really far away. The side benefit though is that you get lots of time to read, write and watch movies.
I watched a very funny South Korean action comedy called “Extreme Job” about a down on his luck Police captain and his misfit narcotics squad on the hunt for a major drug lord. It’s especially funny because during a stake out they end up starting and running a fried chicken restaurant that unexpectedly takes off, distracting them from their investigation.
They have continual bad breaks as they keep on screwing things up. But what I liked about them was that they just kept going. Taking humiliation and failure, over and over again without quitting. They literally would not give up.
We learn also along the way that the captain’s earned nickname in his 12 years of major crimes unit was “Zombie” as he just wouldn’t die. He would just keep on coming at you like a zombie, no matter how hurt he was. Of course they finally caught the bad guys in the end.
This is the similar trait I’ve seen in my most successful startup founders. This is the trait that I see in all of my super successful friends, especially those in my mastermind group. They are persistent, they don’t know how to quit and are just relentless in the pursuit of their goals.
The best organizations are like that too. Like Microsoft under Bill Gates. Or Amazon under Bezos, who was reported to have said “be stubborn in vision but flexible in details.” Basically, be willing to grind it out. Ernest Shackleton (h/t to David Senra) actually said it the best: “By Endurance We Conquer.”
You don’t always have to be smart to be successful in business and life but you certainly do have to be persistent.
Beware the Man With One Book: Build Your Latticework of Knowledge (and Opinion)
We’ve all met that guy who speaks in certainty, confidence and with authority. It’s so compelling you want to believe. Really believe.
Some of these thought leaders include successful technologists like Balaji Srinivasan, Marc Andreesen, Peter Thiel. Or Geopolitical analysts like Peter Zeihan, writer Yuval Harari, hedge funder Ray Dalio, financiers like Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, Jim Rogers. So many brilliant business people, academics, generals or influencers who have written amazing books or speak at TED, write online or show up on podcasts like Tim Ferriss, Jocko Willink or Joe Rogan. A plethora of very impressive people to follow. And they all have their fanboys and “stans” as hard core fans are called. Hero worshippers.
But this is very dangerous and when you become a fan or follower, you end up outsourcing your thinking. It’s a complicated world out there with very little certainty. I’ve learned there is no truth, there is only perspective and opinion. You can’t just take one data point or view.
What I found is that every single one of them is right in one way. And just because one person is right, doesn’t mean the other is wrong.
So for example, yes, as Balaji believes, China is in general, probably better run as a country & have far more competent bureaucrats. His view is that the USA and elites are inheritors and clueless grifters who can’t do anything right. Zeihan believes USA has major advantages in demographics, energy and food independence, and crazy good geography to boot while China has to import most of its food and energy and sharp terminal demographic issues.
Both Zeihan and Balaji’s views are probably directionally correct on a time continuum, even though at first glance they seem diametrically opposed.
My point is You have to do your own homework and pay attention to what all of them say. Process this in combination with other opposing views. Only then can you come up with your own point of view.
As Charlie Munger recommends: you have to build your latticework of knowledge. Latticework is defined by Joseph Abedesi as “Think of your latticework of mental models as tools in your toolkit. The more tools you have, the more you can draw upon to solve the problem. In contrast, if you have only one or two tools, then you'll contort the situation to be solved by just those tools, and you'll arrive at a suboptimal solution.”
Net net: read and watch everything. Learn from everything and everyone. Don’t take one impressive person’s strong views as gospel.
Harsh Times Require Harsh Actions: To do Good & Right You Must Be Strong
Every book I read I always get some gem or nugget of wisdom that is directly relevant to present day life. I love the Warhammer 40k sci fi series which exists in a war torn future universe. In one book called “The Damnation of Pythos” military survivors of the Iron Hand Legion are trying to recover strength and morale after a brutal defeat. In a conversation with one of their servants, one of the main characters is enlightened by her words.
“The Iron Hands are without compromise. You do not tolerate weakness. You expunge it from yourselves and from others. This rigor means you must make hard choices and engage in harsh actions.”
“Harsh?” the legionnaire asks? She responds: “You misunderstand me. The word is a term of praise. The galaxy is a harsh place and must be answered in kind. You are that answer.”
But when I look at the world today all I see is division and weakness. Geopolitically and societally when in regards to the Greater West of America, Canada, Australia and most of Europe, all is in disarray. Our politicians and elites are selfish, corrupt, incompetent and mainly unserious people leading society astray after hollowing out our industrial complex and exporting it all to our biggest threat (aka CCP China).
When I look at the people in general, most entitled, are unhealthy & weak-minded with a total lack of mission and purpose. And all are indulging degenerate activities as distractions to solving any problems. Fighting over stupid petty things, our cultural wars like woke-ism or DEI or ESG platitudes. This is Sayre’s Law: "In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake."
No wonder our enemies in the Chinese Communist Party, Russia and Iran are pushing and testing us, encouraging our divisions, while they buy up precious commodities around the world, buying and locking up allies across key trade routes. We’re so busy infighting we don’t see the steel rings around us.
But every action has an opposite and equal reaction. We see influential people like Joe Rogan, David Goggins, Jocko Willink, Alex Homozi, Justin Waller, Jordan Peterson, Patrick Bet David who preach doing the hard things, who preach getting strong physically, mentally and financially. This gives me hope that this movement will help us turn things around in the West. If not, the consequences will be pretty severe I fear.
So be like the Iron Hands, be harsh on yourself so you can remove any weakness from your mind, body and soul. Our times, our society and our families' survival require this. This is your regular reminder.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads August 11th, 2024
"Sometimes the best solution is to rest, relax and recharge. It's hard to be your best on empty." - Sam Glenn
Especially good discussion on the edge of the Internet. Love the debate on USA versus UK/EU.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rhdumQWzf8
2. "2024 is an important election year in Pax Americana. Pax Americana is at a crossroads. Should it accept a multi-polar world order, dig in its heels, and fight the challengers economically and militarily? The next emperor will have a significant say in how America navigates this changing world order.
Given that a few thousand votes will decide the election in a handful of states, Trump and the Republican party are speaking pleasantries about crypto. I, just like Malcolm in 1964, doubt the sincerity of Trump. He cares about getting elected and will say whatever it takes to get your vote. If Biden and the Democrats were pro-crypto, Trump would be anti-crypto. It’s just good politics.
If this simple bill is enacted into law, it would have profound ramifications for how crypto is treated by various regulatory agencies. Questions on whether this or that alphabet letter agency has jurisdiction over crypto-related behavior would abound. The only way to clarify the boundaries would be through legal precedent achieved through adversarial public court cases. This is how it should be. The judges appointed to adjudicate the laws passed down by elected representatives will determine the scope of the speech freedoms afforded to crypto.
But while that is happening, Pax Americana would become the most favorable place to do “crypto.” Doing crypto could mean opening your own exchange, creating a new DeFi protocol, building decentralized infrastructure, or pooling funds to invest or trade. It means permissionless innovation.
The type of innovation that Pax Americana die-hards wax nostalgic about. Did John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, or Henry Ford beg and plead with government officials to revolutionize the oil, steel, or automobile industry? Fuck no, they just got shit done and built entire industries and industrial processes and put agrarian America on the path to becoming an empire."
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/hot-chick
3. This is a must listen to podcast on the state of union in VC and tech.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8rMn2pk5qU
4. China on the march in Asia and the USA is behind the curve here again. What a mess.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qroDHmryGoI
5. One of the best shows to know what's up in Silicon Valley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISFsNybl-Ig
6. A coldly sober and dark view of China and Taiwan. Only good news is it seems War is not inevitable. But a more intense hybrid war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOei7kZjuZU
7. "By treaty, nobody owns space, and the moon belongs to everyone. That’s a problem. Geopolitical competition, a growing private space economy, and the relative absence of rules make space the new Wild West/North/East/South.
Low Earth orbit, where Starlink is scaling its network, is congested and getting worse. Even a small object can do a lot of damage if it hits a satellite or space station. We’ve already had some near misses. A SpaceX satellite almost hit a manned Chinese space station. A Russian anti-satellite test sent debris hurtling toward the International Space Station, forcing astronauts on board to take shelter. This is the plot line of the movie Gravity, which starred Sandra Bullock and president-slayer George Clooney.
What happens when someone takes out a satellite on purpose or an adversary puts nukes in orbit? When I was a kid, this happened in the James Bond movie You Only Live Twice. The axiom of all sci-fi eventually becoming reality holds: We now have a Space Force, though it’s not a budgetary priority for the Defense Department.
The fight over space isn’t limited to geopolitics. It’s also about commerce. As business booms and resources are unlocked in new regions, private companies will enter the fight. It’s happened before. We call it colonialism. At its height, the British East India Company had its own 250,000-man army and the right to wage war. The corporation ruled India. Its competitor, the Dutch East India Company, had a charter that empowered it to raise armies, build forts, and make treaties.
Question: If someone threatens a Starlink satellite, does Elon Musk call the U.S. government to fight his battles, or does he arm his satellites with tiny projectiles that can neutralize the threat? Follow-up: If two companies claim the same spot on the moon, do they call lawyers, or does someone go all Nolan Ryan and throw a moon rock at a fragile piece of equipment and claim the resources for their shareholders? My prediction: The next battlefield for proxy wars between the West and its adversaries will be in space. The armies fighting this war will be well-paid mercenaries disguised as corporations."
https://www.profgalloway.com/the-financial-frontier/
8. "Contemplating a major business model change that involves more staffing, more technology, and more unknowns can be unnerving. For us, while it added more complexity to become a full email service provider, it was one of the best decisions we ever made. We made it through the learning curve and ultimately delivered a much better solution to customers."
https://davidcummings.org/2024/07/13/contemplating-a-major-business-change/
9. "The now-classic seat based model disrupted the perpetual license model. Perhaps usage or performance pricing will be the catalyst for a new era of upstarts displacing incumbents.
Maybe we’ll see a No-SaaS rebel replicate Marc Benioff’s playbook."
https://tomtunguz.com/ai-agent-pricing/
10. "Everything we build, from our Substack publications to our technologies, is either awakening the religious sense in us or dulling it. There is no between. And yet most of the Content Class just shrugs their shoulders and seems embarrassed to even have the kind of conversations we need to have to even know where we stand. When the Stanford “Huberman Labs” founder and podcaster Andrew Huberman admitted on a podcast that he believed in God, he looked like he wanted to crawl under the podcast table. He hedged his statement in apologetic tones even before the words left his mouth.
We can do better than that. This kind of stifling environment serves nobody. We should all be able to lay our metaphysical commitments on the table—if we even know what they are—and talk openly about them. Otherwise, we’re building things for a human nature that is an Unknowable X, with people whose own selves are Unknowable X’s, which turns the people who consume these things into Unknowable X’s to themselves, too."
The time of building for acquisition and the time of building apps for engagement are over. The time is coming to build things that elevate the human experience, not trivialize it so much that it becomes en vogue to say that you don’t know whether they are living in a simulation or not anytime something unexpected or weird happens.
The materialist view is going to die. It is already in the process of dying. The clicks and the engagement are like a chicken with its head cut off running around for a few minutes before it finally collapses."
https://read.lukeburgis.com/p/its-time-to-build-unsiloed-edition
11. "I want to stress, long term, I think it's going to hard to go wrong with a diversified portfolio invested in hard assets. Preferably, hard assets that aren't in war zones (which could be a lot of Europe and the Middle East soon). The current out performance in large cap growth I think is dumb, and I believe that with time, we'll probably marvel at this current period in market history just like we did the SPAC boom a few years ago or at strippers owning 5 houses during the GFC, or people paying 10x revenue for Cisco back in the internet bubble.
As for my portfolio and asset allocations personally, I know my banking freakout worried a lot of people, and I was sincere in my discussions of the evils of KYC. I have continued to move more of my assets out of traditional finance and to diversify across all three jurisdictions I'm in (Panama, Singapore, and the US). I have moderated compared to where I was a few months ago in terms of my sense of urgency. I allowed some legacy payment pathways for my existing customers. I feel better now that I have more like one foot in, one foot out, instead of being totally dependent on the system. Beyond the tax penalties for liquidating the stocks in my retirement account, I also felt I owed it to you guys as subscribers to stay in the game, as there is probably a special place in hell for people who don't eat their own cooking.
Anyway, onwards and upwards. I still think that the next decade probably looks more like the 1970s than any other decade in the past century (though nuclear war would certainly impact that prediction). Collectibles and commodities did well in the 1970s (so did real estate and land). Stocks did poorly - except of course the commodity heavy stocks.
I would push you to really look at asset classes outside of equities, and to look at equities that would do well in a better commodities pricing environment. I think war is inflationary, deficit spending is inflationary, and political turmoil (like the continued Suez Canal crisis) is inflationary. I think we're getting all three this decade."
https://calvinfroedge.com/sibanye-stillwater-are-they-making-money-yet/
12. "The distance between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon just keeps getting smaller. As venture capitalists continue to pour money into defense tech startups, they’re turning to a new hiring pool: veterans and ex-Department of Defense officials."
13. This is a great guide of how to move your sales motion to enterprise sales.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20LHHlWsIxE
14. "The simple truth is this:
Laws and regulations like this are always created via some narrative that they’re good for society. However, they always come with the added consequence of making most people poorer.
This isn’t an accident. It’s by design.
Each of the measures described above results in the poor becoming poorer, while benefitting the wealthy. Or at the very least, not affecting them in the same way."
https://anticitizen.com/p/keep-poor
15. "A cover, some pages, and your photograph: despite modest appearances, a good passport is one of life’s greatest assets.
“Good” being the key word here.
It’s obvious that if you were born with a passport from Japan, Germany, or the UK, you’ll have access to much more travel, opportunity, and freedom than someone who holds a Nigerian, Iranian, or Uzbek travel document.
Even if you were born with a valuable passport, however, part of the Anticitizen philosophy is having at least one more as a backup plan, or to open up more opportunities. And like the Mongolian paiza of the old empire, another passport is worth more than its weight in gold.
But just how easy is it to get another?
Probably the easiest pathway is by descent, via claiming citizenship through an ancestor. And here’s the kicker: millions of people are eligible to get another passport this way and don’t even know it."
https://anticitizen.com/p/valuable-item-earth
16. "In situations where something is, or may become, a status symbol, there may be limited chances to apply AI. AI works best when the goal is automation, or lower cost predictions, or something like that. Status symbols don’t usually benefit from either of those use cases.
It’s common to extrapolate new technology to everything. But it rarely works out that a new tech upends every area of the economy."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/the-things-that-ai-wont-change
17. "This year marks the 30-year anniversary of the grill, officially known as the George Foreman Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine. After a slow start, it became an indelible part of ‘90s consumer culture and the world’s most popular product for cooking hamburgers, hot dogs, salmon, and just about everything else (Oprah Winfrey preferred it for bacon).
But the Foreman grill isn’t just a fun relic from America’s peak infomercial era. It was also a cash cow. Dreimann says Salton sold as many as 14mgrills in a single year. In 2000, QVC claimed it sold more Foreman grills than any other small kitchen appliance.
And, surprisingly, 30 years later, the Foreman Grill remains a champion. Monthly sales figures on Amazon indicate that, at the peak of this summer’s grilling season, the standard Foreman Grill outsold offerings from rivals Ninja and Cuisinart, not to mention the most popular outdoor grills from Weber and others."
18. "Overall, I’d characterize the ecosystem as iterating. OpenAI and GitHub launched their features at roughly $20-30 per month. This initial pricing has anchored the market at least for now in that range.
Microsoft & ServiceNow have stated AI features increased productivity by approximately 50 percent. If buyers act rationally & reduce headcount by 50%1 which we know is probably not true, then to maintain the same revenue per customer, price would need to double. We can observe that in three of the companies’ pricing strategy above.
If pricing really does provide information (see the work of Mauboussin), then these companies are pricing in a 40% productivity gain.
This is for copilots."
https://tomtunguz.com/ai-copilot-premium-pricing/
19. "Right now the world is evolving - AI is a massive platform shift. And by NOT adopting / spending on it, you risk loosing market share and slowly becoming irrelevant. Because your competitors are investing in AI efforts, you also have to invest in AI efforts.
At the end of the day these investments might not immediately result in better business outcomes (ie more revenue), but they certainly lead to better end user experiences. And very well may lead to better “other” metrics like retention or churn. If you’re competitors are building better end user experiences and you’re not, then you may find yourself in trouble in the short / medium term.
IF you believe the first part of my competing truths - that the size of the AI prize will be bigger than we imagine now - then you have no choice but to invest in AI given your competitors are. Failure to do so implicitly means you’re giving up on the race and ceding ground and market share to you competitors. This is the Red Queen Effect.
I do believe, however, that those who “win the race” in their respective markets will see orders of magnitude returns on their early CapEx. Industrial revolutions don’t last a couple years. They last decades."
https://cloudedjudgement.substack.com/p/clouded-judgement-71224-the-red-queen
20. "This is their fully vertically integrated model which was implemented by the current CEO. Covering the production all the way to retail i.e. from factory to store they control the entire process.
Well… almost all of it. Kaneko is highly differentiated from its main competitors not only because of its luxury positioning but also because of its fully vertically integrated operations. As far as they know, they are the only Luxury eyewear brand from Sabae that does this - and they have seldom seen any meaningful competitors. For their recently acquired Four Nines brands production is still outsourced in the same region and is still in the process of bringing it in-house.
Why this is important is that it helps JEH optimize and gain full control over their 2 key value propositions which are Quality and Branding.
By owning the factories located in their locale of Sabae, they’re able to ensure each crafted piece is delivered at the quality customers expect and to give substance to its luxury branding.
There’s also a common overlay over the 2 factors more generally which is the notion of “Made in Japan” (Woo hoo!).
I believe this very designation is important as it is a point of differentiation against major global brands that they structurally will not be able to replicate. (in the end, there are a lot of luxury eyewear brands). This term is synonymous with high quality and perhaps in the future scarcity. Which aligns perfectly with JEH’s luxury strategy."
https://madeinjapan.substack.com/p/on-a-true-made-in-japan-company-part
21. Mike Maples Jr is the best. Lots of insights in this discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hod_-2sAbck
22. "But I would also argue, and I am being very honest here, that most of the Emerging Managers you come across as a Limited Partner, do not possess the “magic” you are looking for. If you talk with 250+ Emerging Managers a year, 1-5% of those will have the special something that will manifest itself to you within the first 5 minutes of your initial conversation."
https://embracingemergence.beehiiv.com/p/magic-emerging-managers-possess
23. "De Tocqueville also took a landscape view of America in his era. He said, “The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.” Let’s hope so! The experts missed the shooter, and now they are missing the warning shots being fired over the bow of geopolitics."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/going-ballistic-and-the-battle-box
24. "What a difference half a century makes. The U.S., which was supposed to be the guarantor of stability in Europe, is now the world’s most unstable great power. The likely return of Trump to the presidency will probably signal the end of U.S. support for Ukraine, and at least a partial disengagement from NATO and the transatlantic alliance in general.
In other words, Germany is sleepwalking into disaster — and Europe with it. With America largely out of the picture, Europe is on its own against Putin and his new Russian empire. On paper, Europe outmatches Russia economically and demographically. But without Germany taking a leading role, reality will be very different than paper.
Germans are understandably very reluctant to take on Russia, especially after the disaster of the world wars a century ago. But Russia isn’t going to give Germany a choice in the matter. Germany can stand up and fight back, or it can simply lose.
And Germans should not deceive themselves with the idea that Putin or his successors will be satisfied with conquering Ukraine. Ukraine, Poland, and the rest of East Europe are not a buffer that will keep Germany safe. Instead, they are potential fuel for Russia’s war machine.
Russia’s empire has always worked by enslaving conquered peoples and forcing them to fight in further wars of conquest. Ukrainians from the conquered territories have been rounded up en masse and sent to the front to fight against the Ukrainians who are still free. If the rest of Ukraine is conquered, a similar process will occur — the Poles, Estonians, Moldovans, and whoever else is next on Putin’s menu will find themselves fighting against “meat assaults” by enslaved Ukrainians. And if Poland and the rest of East Europe should fall, Germans will then find themselves fighting against “meat assaults” by enslaved Poles, Estonians, and Moldovans.
In other words, the more peoples Russia is allowed to conquer, the stronger it becomes. The stakes here are very high. If Germany doesn’t step up and lead, Europe will fragment, decline, and fall under the sway of Russia. Germany needs to rearm in a serious, vigorous way — it needs to spend at least 4% of its GDP on the military, not 2%, and it needs to become the biggest provider of armaments to Ukraine. This will require some economic sacrifices in the short term — higher deficits, and some cuts to welfare spending — though as Niall Ferguson and Moritz Schularick point out, a rearmament program could actually boost the German economy substantially in the long run."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/europes-fate-is-in-germanys-hands
25. "In some software categories, first mover advantage exists. In search, last mover advantage (Google) won because they benefited from the learnings of all who came before.
AI is characterized by waves of innovation & sudden change, a technological punctuated equilibrium.
Will the winners in this era be those who started early before the rapid advance or those who waited until afterwards?"
https://tomtunguz.com/where-are-we-in-ai/
26. "All the above suggests that US pressure to force an early end to the war might not result in an early end. Ukraine might opt to fight on against the odds. And events of February 2022 and since have demonstrated that Ukrainians cannot be underestimated - they have still fought valiantly to hold a supposed global superpower at bay for over two and a half years. Meanwhile, the kind of peace deal which Vance et al might be thinking of imposing on Ukraine might not prove sustainable - Russia might not, indeed is unlikely to keep to the terms.
Putin might just take whatever is given or conceded by Vance, on behalf of Ukraine, and push on later for more. The result will be a disaster for Ukraine, and ultimately for European security. With that in mind, Ukrainians might just prefer to fight on, to take their chances, and assume still that they can outlast Russia, that ultimately another Prigozhin style scenario might occur to bring the ultimate demise of Putin, and their saviour."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/ukraine-vance-brings-more-risks-than
27. Great discussion here. Graham Moore is author of the fictional "Wealth of Shadows". Must read if you want to understand economics and geopolitics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU8h0Z2yoaI
28. This is so good. Every founder needs to watch this. I 110% agree with everything Jason says here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm8qrjPmomI&t=1s
29. The legendary Luke Belmar. Wisest young man on the internet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMZDDEP8a1c
30. "Given the drop off or the “graduation” to traditional venture funds, this leaves me to believe that the majority of the syndicate leads who are still remaining (from pre-2022) are indeed some of the top syndicate leads as it relates to consistency of bringing quality deals to the table and providing a positive LP experience. While there’s much more to it (i.e. IRR, MOIC, DPI etc.), in this shorter timeframe, I do think it’s a testament to those syndicate leads who have remained constant through the rapid market changes and shifts.
A lot of people say the best (or most followed) newsletters, podcasts, and social media influencers are those who simply remain consistent without giving up. I think part of this is true for syndicate leads as well. It’s a lot of work, it’s an absolute grind trying to make each deal happen, and working with a high volume of LPs with varying personalities/thoughts all make it a very hard job.
Therefore, the syndicate leads who remain consistent over the years must be doing something right to survive and continue to put the work in to syndicate deals and successfully have LPs commit the amount necessary to invest in startups.
In many ways, this is similar to venture funds who go on to raise fund 2, 3, 4, 5 & beyond. Of course performance will vary, but if you get to fund 5, you are likely doing something right to have LPs enthusiastic to commit to fund after fund, after fund."
https://lastmoneyin.co/p/syndicate-leads-gone
31. "Political opinions are a personal choice. I am not advocating for the left or the right. Nor am I a populist or prone to buying into the conspiracy theories of some of the above-mentioned candidates or media personalities. But whether or not you agree with the diagnosis of the nonmainstream voices regarding the current situation, and especially their prescription of what’s required to address America’s myriad problems, it’s crucial to hear these voices directly, without a biased filter.
Personally, I’m fortunate to have the time to explore various news platforms online, allowing me to sift through data and verify what appears closest to the truth. Unfortunately, many Americans lack this luxury and rely on mainstream echo chambers, leaving them misinformed, angry and beholden to prevailing dogmas.
Until a media platform emerges that thoroughly sifts through all the news to present facts that more accurately represent reality, consume your daily media menu with a grain of salt."
32. "So far, the public movement of tech figures into the Trump camp is a trickle rather than a flood. But the reasons for it are structural, not random, and there are a lot of them. Democrats have been able to take the support of the tech industry for granted over the past couple of decades, but no longer. If they don’t perceive the problem and act, they could lose tech, just as they lost the support of many old-line industries in the 1970s and 1980s."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/understanding-the-new-tech-right
33. "Long-Winded Beginning: Over a 10+ year framework, you have our general belief. The world becomes more degenerate, desperate and lonely.
Governments will continue to print trillions and inflate asset prices.
People will spend more money on vice (drugs/gambling/p*rn). People will spend more of their time online since it isn’t possible for young adults to move out of the house easily (this is a personal finance issue that isn’t solved any time soon).
All of this means that the rich and poor separation gets bigger. Middle class is more hollowed out. The *unintelligent* upper middle class will likely gamble a lot to chase their old quality of life from childhood. This will cause them to come down the socioeconomic ladder.
Since crypto is both a real technology (international settlement, 24/7, ability to borrow peer to peer and decentralized) it will benefit from the online 24/7 dopamine trend.
It will also benefit from the gambling trend as it is the fastest high people can get (sports betting and crypto gamblers have significant overlap).
These are the major trends we’re intensely focused on. If they change then our entire world view has to change. At this point we see no significant trends that will stop any of them: 1) loneliness, 2) gambling, 3) rich and poor divide, 4) money printing and 5) general financial nihilism beliefs.
It’s up to you to make it to the other side and avoid blowing up!"
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/how-long-is-the-cycle-going-to-last
34. Watched this one twice now. It’s so good to understand whats happening in AI investing space.
Joy Ride: The Importance of Knowing Your Past
“Joy Ride” is a raunchy comedy movie about a group of Asian American girls adventures in China and Korea. The character Audrey was adopted by white parents and grew up in an all white town. She becomes the perfect kid excelling in school and work, aided and abetted by her tough, rebellious best friend and only fellow Chinese kid in town, Lola.
They take a trip to China with Lola’s cousin Dead Eye and meet up with Audrey’s college friend who is a tv star there. The nutty adventure begins as I swear almost every Asian American actor in Hollywood plays some character along the way. It’s pretty damn funny.
But there were some moving moments as Audrey discovers she is actually Korean, calling into question everything she thought she knew. And especially when she discovers her birth mom passed away before they were able to meet.
It’s not a great movie but it was definitely fun. And it made me think about my own life. It’s a reminder about how grateful I should be. One of the characters asks: “If you do not know where you come from, how do you know who you are?”
How lucky am I to know what my heritage is? I’m proudly Taiwanese, Canadian and American. I know who I am.
How lucky am I to have wonderful parents who sacrificed so much for me. I need to grow up and thank them properly. I now know how hard it is to be a good parent, how easy it is to traumatize your kid unintentionally.
How lucky am I to have such a wonderful daughter? I have to make everything right with her and repair our relationship before it’s too late. I have to be strong and patient and bear with the setbacks here.
Yes, I had some rough spots growing up in Canada when it was mainly white at least during the 80s that is before the “Asian Invasion” came in. I never fit in despite my best efforts. But what an asset it has turned out for me. This friction turned into fuel, a bottomless well of drive. And it’s why I’m living the dreams I had growing up.
So for me, I’m grateful for the past. It’s hard to move forward into the future if you don’t learn from the past. And especially difficult, if you don’t know where you come from.
Media as a Signal: Understanding a Society & Nation’s Direction
I watched a very interesting Chinese sci-fi movie called “Wandering Earth 2”. It was very well done and unlike most western science fiction, hopefully utopian. A better tomorrow. A better future. I’m so sick and tired of watching Hollywood movies that show only the dark side of technology: Dystopian worlds where the future is worse than the past.
The question for me is whether this is a reflection of prevailing sentiment in the populace or actually the cause of it. But it still serves as a valuable barometer of different societies.
I remember watching Japanese movies during the decade of 2000-2010 and they were just damn depressing, talking about suicide, bullying and hopelessness as it reflected a malaise in Japanese society at that time. Thankfully this has changed in the last 8-10 years as things have really turned around in Japan in reality and reflected by the movies and shows I’ve watched these last few years.
It’s interesting in general that science fiction movies, television shows and books in China tend to be more hopeful & optimistic. Yes, I recognize there is some censoring and propaganda but it’s definitely much more future oriented. Very much like Star Trek used to be before the 2000s and thankfully we have new shows like “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.”
There is a dark side too of this. There have been a rash of bombastic, militaristic movies from China over the last 10 years like “Wolf Warrior 1 & 2”, “The Eight Hundred”, “The Battle of Lake Changjin”, “Operation Red Sea” and others that show Americans and westerners are evil enemies (Japanese too, although they were pretty evil in World War 2). The Chinese are shown as brave, pure and good, sacrificing to save innocent Africans and civilians while beating the bad Westerners. It reflects an assertiveness and confidence in their society. And my guess is helping to get the people prepared for a future war footing.
We see the popularity of Marvel action shows and movies, reflecting American and Western need for heroes, when we have so few of them left. Our political and business elites have become either incompetent, cowardly bureaucrats or grifting opportunists that we cannot count on. A far cry from the hope and optimism of the 90s.
So for anyone who says watching movies and tv shows is a waste of time. I’d counter that you should watch them, especially ones from around the world. It will give you a better indication of what other societies are thinking. Are they optimistic or pessimistic about the future? What their fears are and what their political leaders want them to think. This is very important in a new highly competitive and dangerous geopolitical world.
Are You Upgrading or Downgrading: Your Decisions in Life Matter
You will make a lot of decisions in life. Some important and some less so.
What you study in University. Who you date. Who you befriend. What job do you take? Or do you start a business?
Where you move to and where you choose to live city or country wise.
Looking back I was pretty reckless in my decision making. Or maybe a better description is thoughtless. It all worked out in the end but this thoughtlessness certainly did make my path harder than it needed to be.
Thankfully I’ve learned along the way and developed a good framework of questions I ask myself when making key decisions.
Does it make you scared or uncomfortable?
Does it challenge you?
Will you learn something or build a better relationship with someone even if it fails? (This is a hat tip from Tim Ferris).
Trust your gut: Is this a hell yes? If not, it’s a Hell NO. (Hat tip from Dan Sivers via Tim Ferris).
In general, pick the harder and more challenging path. It’s compounding interest at work. Through continuous improvement and time you will grow. Kaizen. An Aggregation of Marginal Gains.
And over time, I’m convinced your life will get better.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads August 4th, 2024
“Summertime is always the best of what might be” — Charles Bowden
A masterclass on running and growing a SaaS business. It's so good. Every B2B founder should listen to this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exMSjv1bGEU
2. One of the best discussions on managing and scaling people. One of the toughest things in every org.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W19LkUYGDuM
3. "It is difficult to appreciate just how much psychological, let alone financial, damage Japan and its investors have endured since the collapse of its late 1980s ‘bubble economy’. One estimate has it that, in terms of the subsequent loss of wealth suffered by property and equity prices, the Japanese economy has been hit by the equivalent of not one but two American Great Depressions.
Given that measures like GDP growth and unemployment have held up remarkably well over the period in question, and that Japanese society never once threatened to disintegrate into lawlessness or violence, you have to wonder whether the West might aspire to the level of stoicism that the Japanese have displayed.
The central banks of the rest of the developed world have had more success to date in boosting asset prices through their own deployment of QE, but they have had just as little impact on their real economies. What QE has done is made the asset-rich richer, and the poor relatively poorer. (Both trends have been turbocharged by governments’ disastrous counter-Covid policies.) But inasmuch as social equality is a stated aim of most governments, QE has been a disaster."
https://timprice.substack.com/p/the-main-event
4. "Entrepreneurs would do well think process first, goals second. Goals are important and part of achieving great things, but a process that is within your control is more important. Continually refine the processes and ensure the outcomes are aligned with the goals."
https://davidcummings.org/2024/07/06/think-process-first-goals-second/
5. "America has built the greatest entrepreneurial spirit of any nation that has ever existed, leading to Silicon Valley and the creation of some of the most important companies in the world. But many of those companies have utilized anti-competitive practices, taken advantage of people, and (in many cases) literally exploit human slavery and child labor.
America has created the most influential cultural megaphone and magnifying lensthat has ever existed, leading to Hollywood and the creation of some of the greatest stories ever told. But Hollywood has also help up a myriad of atrocious human beings and given them untold positions of influence.
America has offered some of the most important innovations and innovators in agriculture, from the mechanical reaper to precision agriculture, not to mention Norman Borlaug, whose work is believed to have saved over a billion people worldwide from starvation. But we also have intensely monopolistic food conglomerators, like Monsanto and Cargill, that have wreaked havoc on the American food system.
America has produced some of the most important medical breakthroughs in the history of mankind, from the mass production of penicillin to insulin, polio vaccines, the MRI, genomic sequencing, and minimally invasive surgery. But we also spend more than any other developed nation on healthcare, while witnessing declining life expectancy and atrocious infant mortality rates.
I don't want to be blindly optimistic. I don't want to be blindly pessimistic. I want to be wide-eyed, staring down the wide range of issues facing every single person, and then optimistically setting about to do anything I can to help make those things better."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/america
6. Great list here for coffee lovers in Europe. What a list: Lisbon, Budapest, Tirana, Prague, Warsaw, Vienna, Belgrade & Riga.
https://www.thrillist.com/news/nation/best-european-cities-coffee-ranking
7. Excellent discussion on the art and craft of enterprise sales.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQRS5xO3KpY
8. Long one but so worthwhile. Take your time with this one whether you are religious or not. Lots of insights not just on business but on living your best moral life.
"Bad quests--there are a lot of them. Are we actually making the world a better place? Or are we just pursuing selfish ambition? Are we pursuing relentless competition? Or worse?
When celebrities slap their personal brands on makeup companies, or alcohol bottle, or fashion companies, are they making the world a better place? Or are they exploiting their own brand value to sell commodities.
Technology is not any different. Technology is--I would define as--doing new things. That seems like a fairly reasonable definition. Globalization of commodities are copying things that already work that you already know are going to work.
So I think the question that I'm always pushing people to ask is, How is what you're doing a good quest?
But, I found after--I wrote a blog post about this a couple of years ago. And my expectation was that people would read it, and then they would go back and be reflective, and they would say, Oh, man, the thing that I'm doing is not a good quest. I should quest in some other way.
But actually, what happened is that human psychology took over, and people could convince themselves that anything was a quest. My wife and I were at a dinner and somebody walked up to me and was like, Trae, I read your blog post. It was brilliant. I am on a very good quest. Let me tell you about my NFT company.
The Feels Bad Is Good category is probably the best venture category. That's where like most awesome companies are built, because there's a moat. The moat is that other people don't want to do it because it feels bad. And so it ends up being far less competitive. The kind of slightly disturbing answer to the question is that most of the ones that don't have venture returns are the Feels Good, Is Good category, because those are the ones that everyone's gonna do.
They're all going to compete with each other. There's 20 companies doing the exact same thing.
And you're like, Man, I really like this idea. It's like, yeah, you weren't the first one to come up with it. There's 10,000 other people that agree, and all the capital is going to flood into those things. All the founders are gonna flood into those things. And everyone is going to pat themselves on the back about how great it is. And no one's gonna have an exit--that matters."
https://aletteraday.substack.com/p/letter-199-trae-stephens-2024
9. Really enjoyable conversation with Andrew Wilkinson on his life and adventures. So much to learn. Can't wait to read his book.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzThQwkUps
10. You can influence everything but control nothing. This was a thought provoking discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mRc2t4V9y0
11. "The summer gatherings of the alphas are upon us. This weekend, the annual running of the bulls will commence in Pamplona, Spain. And a couple days later, the media, tech and finance moguls of the world will begin descending in their private jets on Sun Valley, Idaho, for the annual confab hosted by Allen & Co., boutique investment bank.
Still, it wouldn’t be shocking if some of the media and AI executives there end up hashing out agreements behind closed doors in between speaker sessions. After all, Sun Valley is known as a kind of Coachella for dealmaking. Disney’s acquisition of ABC, AOL’s bid for Time Warner and Jeff Bezos’ purchase of The Washington Post were all reportedly negotiated either in full or in part at the event. And if the deal doesn’t get done before then, it wouldn’t be surprising if Shari Redstone finalized her off again, on again discussions to merge Paramount with David Ellison’s Skydance Media at the conference.
All the dealmaking isn’t exactly a shock given who hosts the event: Allen & Co., a top-tier investment bank. The firm, founded over a century ago in New York, is small compared to behemoths like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs and seems to prefer staying largely invisible to the wider world (it doesn’t appear to have a public-facing website).
The Sun Valley conference, which the firm started in the early 1980s, has helped it punch way above its weight in the investment banking business, giving wannabe attendees an incentive to funnel business to the bank to better their odds of getting a ticket."
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/fear-and-longing-in-sun-valley
12. Long overdue to go visit Reykjavik in Iceland. 2025 is the plan to visit a portfolio co.
https://www.hemispheresmag.com/europe/iceland/reykjavik/three-perfect-days-reykjavik/
13. "All this is happening just as two conflicting forces in geopolitics are becoming more apparent. The world is edging toward a deal over Ukraine & toward WWIII at the same time. Zelensky is now ready for a resolution. Viktor Orban just communicated to the West that Putin is, too. The West has come up with a clever way to get around the critical question of NATO membership by telling Ukraine that it is too corrupt to be either in the EU or in NATO. That solves that problem. We are heading towards an armistice where Russia keeps what it controls, Ukraine keeps what it still has, & a demilitarized zone will keep them apart. There will be no winner & no loser.
The geopolitical consequences of all this are historic, but there is almost no comprehensive discussion of it anywhere.
To finish, Sir Niall Ferguson recently wrote a compelling piece saying We Are All Soviets Now. He says this is because we have bloated debt and are run by “senescent leaders.” He has a point, but there is something bigger at stake. We are all Soviets now because of our internal denial and willful blindness. We are stumbling into WWIII because we think Ukraine is the war and it's about to come to an end while not having any discussion about the broader geopolitical problems that range from vast space to tiny Scandinavian islands.
We are stumbling into WWIII because no one wants to cross the President’s position, which is that the war in Ukraine was totally unprovoked which maybe it wasn’t. We do not recognize our own vulnerability to our own bureaucratic system, which has created not only massive debt but also a certain way of running the country which are now about to change thanks to The Supreme Court rulings. The most popular Presidential candidate is not getting any airtime because he is a threat to the two-party system and to their financial backers.
The parties are bought, becoming increasingly dysfunctional and refusing to embrace change. That makes us a lot like the Soviets. Biden is the new Brezhnev. The apparatchiks will not acknowledge or address any uncomfortable facts, preferring to label anyone who mentions them, hence Robert Hur is a traitor for pointing out the obvious. Europe is in denial, too as it becomes Trumpian, shifting to the right.
What if trouble starts on a tiny Swedish or Norwegian island, in space, or in the aftermath of the French elections? Will hardly anyone mention it in the interest of keeping things “low-tension?” Denial is now the problem more than the problem is the problem.
Will the President step down or fall down? Either way, there is now a fragility that renders the world more vulnerable to geopolitical & strategic trouble than we think."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/the-geopolitical-avalanche
14. "None of this, of course, means that having the “look of a leader” means someone will be a good one. Nor is there any evidence that voice pitch correlates with leadership skills. Todorov has found that competent-looking CEOs are not better at their jobs, even though they’re likely to receive higher compensation packages. At West Point, even after controlling for athleticism and academic ability, dominant-looking cadets are more likely to achieve higher military ranks.
Thus, how a political candidate looks and sounds can influence their likelihood of winning an election.
All of this research helps to illuminate both Biden’s lackluster performance in the polls, despite the continuing strength of the economy, and Trump’s slight lead, despite his dubious character and legal battles. As we observed in the debate last week, Biden appears increasingly frail, whereas Trump, though not immune to the effects of aging, still exudes vigor.
Moreover, the changing geopolitical situation may be influencing voter perceptions. The ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza and the potential one in Taiwan may cause undecided voters to favor a leader who looks and sounds more dominant. Indeed, this may have been an element in Trump’s unexpected 2016 victory, when ISIS was a prominent concern."
https://www.robkhenderson.com/p/the-look-of-a-leader
15. “I wanted to build a brand that was approachable and accessible,” says Gill, “One that would work just as well at Whole Foods as it would in Walmart.”
The mass appeal of Bachan’s is one of many reasons why Gill’s sweet and savory sauce started to stick soon after he launched the brand in 2019. A beloved family recipe is another. Bachan’s, named after the Japanese American term for granny, originated from a sauce his own grandmother-made for decades. Bachan’s is now the top-selling barbecue sauce at both Amazon and Whole Foods, and the fastest-growing condiment brand in the country. With estimated annual revenue topping $70 million, Bachan’s is having the kind of moment that made Sriracha founder David Tran a billionaire.
Bachan’s is profitable, too, and Forbes estimates operating margins are as much as 20% annually. Gill declined to comment on the revenue or profitability of his private business. At a conservative 5 times multiple, Bachan’s could be worth more than $350 million, and his company could get acquired for a lot more. Spice, after all, sells. In 2020, McCormick spent $800 million buy Cholula hot sauce—in a deal valued at 10 times revenue. Other recent deals for bold-flavored condiment brands have sold for as high as 8 times.
“I bootstrapped for so long and took so much personal financial risk to be able to control my business and then become profitable,” Gill says. He has held onto the majority ownership, even after raising $17 million from investors over two rounds and making sure that all of Bachan’s employees, from the warehouse to the headquarters, own their own shares. Gill credits his control with fighting for the right terms when dealmaking, instead of going for bigger valuations. He says he has no plans to raise more in the short-term, adding that the company is “totally self-sustainable.”
https://archive.ph/4YfM2#selection-481.0-509.583
16. "In short order, “The Entertainer” was on Nichols music boxes all over the nation. And 25 years later, it has become the country’s ice cream truck song of choice.
That’s according to Bob’s son, Mark, who now runs Nichols Electronics alongside his wife, Beth. Today, Nichols Electronics no longer controls just the vast majority of the music box market; it is the market.
Mark estimates that the company, which he inherited, is responsible for up to 97% of the music boxes in circulation.
How did ice cream truck music become a thing? And how did one tiny family business secure a stranglehold on the market?"
https://thehustle.co/the-company-that-has-a-monopoly-on-ice-cream-truck-music
17. "To sum up, a day at the beach is VERY good for you, you should do it more and more often.
Better IRR
Higher MOIC
Good for health
More time to think
Happy wife and kids"
https://privatequityguy.beehiiv.com/p/ministeve-schwarzman-30-irr
18. So many insights from one of the best VCs in Silicon Valley and an excellent dude to boot. This is a must listen to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9o6gPQA6LA
19. How to build wealth from Andrew Wilkinson. Lots of good learnings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra_dC70-dXk&t=25s
20. Challenging traditional VC fund structures. Hunter/ Satya have been pioneering a new way of investing in early stage startups.
Love that they have built a new model that works for them (and founders). Playing the game in their own way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxzvDAPok_E
21. "A fractured, depressed, and suicidal nation;
--unable to make sound, pragmatic decisions,
--culturally weakened by utopian goals and
--economically dependent on the rivals it created
may continue to limp along for years.
However, that may instantly change if a war with China happens. At that moment, all the sins of the last thirty years will instantly become impossible burdens. Burdens that make it impossible to respond to the challenges it faces in any meaningful fashion. At that point, collapse may be the only possible outcome."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/the-collapse-of-complex-nations
22. Always learn new things from Zeihan. He can be bombastic at times but long term trends based on demographics & resources seem right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMJyhsZ7Ryw
23. "Since the beginning of the Ukraine-Russia war, there have been at least ten incidentsat various ammunition factories on either side of the conflict. The public reports haven't always listed the cause, but some have attributed the attacks to saboteurs and long-range strikes (drones, missiles).
As they say, the old ways are the good ways. But just as the Ukraine war has featured a mix of old tactics and new, it is likely that sabotage operations today and in the future will utilize cutting edge technology to achieve these kinds of tactical outcomes."
https://steinman.substack.com/p/the-future-of-sab0tage
24. "The traditional media business is in a spot of trouble, but that doesn’t mean it’s doomed. People still want great reporting, and there are more people than ever who can produce it. What’s broken is the business model. Now is a time for experiments. Now is a time for creative thinking. Now is a time to invert some pyramids."
https://hamish.substack.com/p/traditional-media-and-substack-can
25. Learning from the best in the business. Sequoia is still tops.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e79QcKYsHSY&t=1655s
26. "The inadequacy of the defense industrial base looms large. The problem here isn’t simply America’s present incapacity to build enough of what is needed but an incapacity to do so efficiently and on budget. Any serious agenda to restore America’s economic strength and prosperity must address this industry’s failures.
Take shipbuilding. In 2024, the U.S. Navy’s combatant surface and submarine forces are too small. And with China in mind, the problem is getting worse. As the Center for Strategic and International Studies notes, “The [People’s Liberation Army Navy] operates 23 destroyers launched in the past 10 years compared with 11 operational U.S. destroyers. … China’s productive advantage is reflected in the relative ages of active Chinese and U.S. ships. About 70% of Chinese warships were launched after 2010, while only about 25% of the U.S. Navy’s were.”
Top line: If America wants to be ready to fight and win a war with China over Taiwan, we better start acting in that pursuit. If not, we better mentally prepare ourselves to lose the most politically defining war of the 21st century."
27. Very interesting opportunity.
"TLDR: The USDA Rural loan program may be a last refuge and upward mobility token available to the masses against the backdrop of a hostile tax regime coming to a locale near you."
28. "His words offer founders a key lesson: the future holds insights for the few who spend time there first and pursue their curiosities authentically.
Traditional approaches to thinking of startup ideas often trap entrepreneurs within existing thought patterns, limiting their ability to see and exploit transformative opportunities.
To find the best insights, it’s better instead to look for opportunities to live in the future. It’s more effective to immerse yourself in cutting-edge technologies and understanding how to unlock their potential for creating radically different futures. This process enables entrepreneurs to intuitively identify missing elements that can more likely lead to non-consensus insights that lead to huge breakthroughs.
There are lots of ways to get out of the present. You can tinker with cutting-edge technologies and solve your own problems like the Mosaic team. You can solve them for customers that you spend time with who are living in the future like the co-founders of Okta. Or, like Maddie Hall at Living Carbon, you can catapult yourself into different futures.
But ultimately, the best cheat code I’ve seen for discovering insights remains the same:
Get out of the present."
https://medium.com/@m2jr/is-this-from-the-future-10128cac4ed6
29. I recommend this discussion on growth from an old 500 colleague. I listened to it twice, it was that good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apsQGQM9HDs&t=1855s
30. "Content can only briefly be king. In the long term, distribution advantages enable you to get paid for both your shitty content as well as your hits. Content-first companies are only as good as their next amazing product. Ellison does recognize this dynamic. In a podcast interview he conducted after the deal was announced, he said, “We live in a world where an A- is failing. You have to have a creative culture that believes quality is the best business plan.” This is a noble sentiment and theoretically possible, but it is much harder to produce A+ quality content for years than simply owning the distribution during that time.
The original Paramount knew this. For nearly 100 years, it rode each technological wave by capturing unique, defensible distribution.
There has never, ever, in the history of media, been a company to reach that size without some kind of distribution engine. Even if Paramount had been permitted to keep its studio system through the present day, the internet would render it moot. The attention economy is simply too ferocious."
https://every.to/napkin-math/paramount-s-dilemma-content-isn-t-king-distribution-is
31. "Achieving persistence takes mental toughness, passion for what you’re doing and sacrifice in many aspects. But during a time where most look for the easy way out, the quick fix, the short-term band aid, the reliance on being algorithmically or politically chosen, it’s an exceedingly effective play.
You probably don’t need more guides, gurus or courses, you just need to consistently ‘show up’ in a way that matters and transcends any short-term trends. Fast success and attention fade equally quickly. Instead, proceed steady and methodical."
https://www.hottakes.space/p/why-persistence-rules
32. "Our political establishments seem unable to overcome their disbelief that the good old days of globalization are a thing of the past.
Meanwhile, Russia and China have been arming at speed and scale, with Moscow fully mobilized to generate a force of 1.5 million, and Beijing already commanding a military of over 2 million. China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy is already numerically bigger than the U.S. Navy, its shipyards building new units faster than anything U.S. contractors can achieve. And the same goes for the slow rates of munitions production in the U.S., not to mention the subpar performance of Europe’s largest economies when it comes to rearmament. A case in point, this year Russia is expected to produce about three times more artillery munitions than the U.S. and Europe combined — and at much cheaper cost.
Truth is, as the axis of dictatorships continues to consolidate, both politically and militarily, the collective West — though declaring itself united— remains fractured. Democratic allies are often at cross-purposes when it comes to their economic interests, and they lack a shared threat assessment as well."
33. Explains the rise of UK and why UK is now in trouble.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e2R6XBHuQQ
34. Jason always gives a great recommendations. His data sample set in B2B is unparalleled.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYY7BErgr3k
35. "Most firms have a standardized investment process in which a certain number of partners need to meet the founders of a prospective investment, votes have to happen in a certain way, etc. If, in any given summer week, one or more partners is on vacation, that process will take longer.
Some of the practical impacts from the perspective of a founder include:
–It takes longer to schedule an initial meeting with a VC
–The time between meetings increases
–The amount time needed for a VC to complete their diligence takes longer (as analysts and others at the firm also take vacations)
–There is more inertia when it comes to building the type of excitement/momentum that leads to FOMO (see this post on the adrenaline of deal flow for more)
As a result, a process that might typically take one week stretches into two. Or two stretches into three.
Now map those delays across the majority of funds that you’re talking to."
https://chrisneumann.com/archives/why-is-summer-a-bad-time-to-fundraise
36. "The war in Ukraine provides the West with the clearest example in the modern era of a war of good versus evil. The brutal atrocities of the Russian military throughout their Ukraine campaign must act as a clarion call for countries that believe in the rights of individuals and in preserving democratic systems.
There is a strategic imperative and a moral obligation to assist Ukraine to win this war as rapidly as possible. The deliberate Russian attack, using precision missiles against the children at the Okhmatdyt hospital, provides us with more evidence for why this is so. Let’s hope that those attending the NATO summit decide that a shift in strategy for the war is necessary."
https://mickryan.substack.com/p/the-kyiv-childrens-hospital-attack
Belief Comes Before Ability: Have Faith
This quote by David Senra has stuck with me since I heard it. “Belief Comes Before Ability”. I wish I had heard this when I was younger.
The counter to this point is what most of us grow up hearing. It’s why so many of us are discouraged before we try anything. They tell us “Get training, get credentials, get a degree before you can do anything.” While this absolutely makes sense if you are in a career like medicine, engineering or architecture or other industries that don’t change that much.
It’s completely different in most businesses, particularly on the media and technology side of things. In fact this is where the innovation happens and why many times these innovations and startups come from younger people or outsiders.
Sometimes youth, inexperience and naivety is a benefit. It allows them to look at problems with a whole new angle. It makes them question how things work. And inexperience and lack of understanding how challenging something is can be a major boon. It’s like that funny meme that went around that said “We did this not because it was easy but because we thought it would be easy!”
So mindset is critical. As Henry Ford said:“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” We end up becoming our own worst enemy. This negative mindset is something people really struggle with, especially from commonwealth countries like the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand.
Have a big goal, scrap the negative self talk, screen out the naysayers around you and get to work. Everyone who has done anything interesting started from scratch. Through making the inevitable mistakes, learning from them, doing the work consistently over a long period of time, you will eventually get good. Too many people quit too early. It all comes down to how badly you want it.
If you are chasing your interests and curiosity, you are more likely to find something you want to work on. Couple this with real problems that you want to tackle, that the world needs solved and you will eventually stumble onto the work of your life.
Remember the world rewards you according to the difficulty of the problems you solve. So have some belief in yourself and get to work.
Garbage In, Garbage Out: Fix Your Media Diet
It seems like everyone these days is pessimistic about the future. The future of their country and themselves. And no wonder if all you are reading and watching is the news on tv and online. Nothing but bad news, wars, crime, climate change, natural disasters. Hard not to feel despair.
Same thing has happened on the technology side. I remember when Science fiction used to be optimistic. The Jetsons, Isaac Asimov or Gene Roddenberry of Star Trek fame. Portraying ideal and golden future worlds where technology enabled societies and living that were better than what we have now. Now almost everything written in books or shown on tv is dystopian, dark and depressing.
The side effect of these ideas permeating society and influencing young people is that these same young people inevitably feel gloomy and unenthusiastic about science and technology. They see it as a force for bad not good now.
Our brains are programmed every day. You watch stupid sitcoms or Netflix shows, you become stupid. You watch brainless action movies, you become brainless. You read angry tweets, you get angry.
Your brain is your LLM aka Language Learning Model. But like AI, it’s highly reliant on all the data inputs you get.
At the micro-level, this is why you need to carefully curate everything you read and watch as it deeply influences your thinking. This is why I carefully filter my Twitter feeds & newsletters.
I still watch garbage brainless action movies for fun and short breaks. I admit I do enjoy various Star Wars series shows and good, intelligent & stirring series like the Peaky Blinders, Billions, Taylor Sheridan’s Mayor of Kingstown, Tulsa King, Yellowstone & 1923. I counter this with plenty of documentaries and optimistic Star Trek series like Next Generation, Enterprise & Strange New Worlds.
I read educational books in history, geopolitics, business and historical biographies of great men. Also worth reading the classics like Dickens, Tolstoy, Fitzgerald, Plutarch and the Stoics. I listen to many podcasts like Patrick O’Shaughnessy’s Invest Like the Best, David Senra’s Founders, Turpentine Media Empires, The Acquired, the Tim Ferriss Show, Chris Williamson, Creator Labs, 20 Minute VC & Not Investment Advice are highly motivational and educational.
What you don’t consume is just as important.
I rarely watch the news as it’s just junk for the brain. Netflix & Disney+ is an occasional indulgence but I purposely limit my time here.
The sooner you can adjust and fix your Media diet, the better off you will be. Your brain like your body, needs good quality nutrients. So work on avoiding the sugary crap and try having more of the veggie equivalents of media & content every day. For good health, you need to fill both your mind and body with good nourishment.
Land of the Wolves: Surviving in the New World Disorder
I’ve watched the movie “Sicario” countless times and it’s always impactful. It’s not just an action drama movie about the drug wars going on at the Mexican & America border. It’s about how people cope with the violence and try to survive it.
Near the end of the movie, the anti-hero Alejandro tells the FBI agent:
“You should move to a small town where the rule of law exists. You will not survive here. This is the land of the wolves now.”
So many among us are blind the breakdown of law and order around us. I write this in San Francisco, in a place where basic law is not enforced due to stupid progressive left policies driven by zealotry and stupidity. And usually by wealthy trust funders who don’t even live in the city. This is happening not just in SF but also LA as well as other cities like Portland, Seattle, Chicago among others. The result is increasing crime and lawlessness that is open on the streets.
Unfortunately the crime, violence and disorder in Mexico shown by the Sicario movie is spreading across the USA. Add in a recession and the rising wealth inequality + racial tensions & insane lack of border control, this will be further exacerbated. America will become more like Latin America and South Africa: rising crime coupled with a big massively growing private security industry. It will get worse before it gets better.
So if you live in a city, you need to have good environmental awareness wherever you are in the USA. Never walk around with earphones, blasting music or losing yourself in your phone. Keep your eyes open and trust your gut if you feel something is off around you. Especially if you see or sense strange unusual people around you. And of course, don’t carry around too much cash.
It’s become even more important to learn self defense and even carry a weapon. I recommend having a tactical metal pen or monkey paw with you. It’s just pure self defense that you can use to hit an attacker. Mace tear gas spray and a whistle would probably be useful too.
Get to know your neighbors and look out for each other. Join a neighborhood watch.
I’d also stress having and building financial independence. Have resources. In this day and age it’s become even more critical to have money. Money for private security, and if you are extreme, even a private military company (PMC). Money for electronic alarms. Money for weapons. And money to make sure you aren’t ever put in dangerous situations or environments.
The USA is still going to be the best place for business and to make your fortune in. But as I said many times, it’s going to be a bumpy ride the rest of this decade.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads July 28th, 2024
"Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability." –Sam Keen
Insightful conversation, a warning but also an ultimately optimistic take on the future driven by technological innovations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccOQ_lxOz_4
2. "The role of Cambodia in China’s power-play within the Indo-Pacific cannot be understated. The autocratic Manet regime is a critical ally for China. The Chinese Foreign Minister was the first foreign official to congratulate, and then meet with, him following his inauguration as Prime Minister in 2023.
And there is an increasing crossover in the tactics—and adoption of certain technologies, such as mass surveillance tools including CCTV, facial recognition software, and internet “firewall” technologies—that are being used to monitor and suppress regime critics, trade unionists, and activists. Independent news outlets have been shuttered, and female journalists, in particular, have become targets of harassment and many forced into exile.
For those in Washington, who are increasingly concerned by the rise of China and the looming threats to Western democracy not just in Southeast Asia but around the world, a reset is required with countries like Cambodia. The current all carrot, no stick approach risks further democratic decline in Cambodia and the growth of Chinese influence."
https://time.com/6990154/china-cambodia-ream-naval-base-2/
3. If you love talking about the art and science of business and achievement, this is one of the best conversations around. Net net: "Believe you can win in whatever you choose to do"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P39dOoLeoSg&t=65s
4. "I think and feel we’re near the bottom which will come in early 2025 once we get through some political issues and there is some clarify on how this country and the world will be run. So based on that I’m starting to see more investors advise their early pre/seed founders who are raising bridges to prep for a Q1 2025 push. Meaning build and strategize now, give it everything you’ve got in Q4 2024 and raise in a hopefully more favorable environment then (can't really get much worse). Get ready to play offense again!"
https://startupstechvc.beehiiv.com/p/a16z-accounted-for-80-of-all-lp-funding-in-q1
5. One of the best shows talking about cultural and creative businesses on the edge of the internet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6rGAFC4O7k
6. "In short, megalomania has gone mainstream in the Valley. As a result technology is evolving rapidly into a turbocharged form of Foucaultian dominance—a 24/7 Panopticon with a trillion dollar budget."
https://www.honest-broker.com/p/how-did-silicon-valley-turn-into
7. "So this Fourth of July, I thought I’d go through the various threats to the Republic, and assess how dangerous each one is. Broadly speaking, my view is that the greatest danger from internal turmoil, civil war, and authoritarianism has passed, despite the probable election of Trump this fall. The economy is likely to be OK, but the national debt is a huge and looming problem that could hurt us a lot if it’s mismanaged. Various chronic issues will continue to hurt the country going forward, despite modest progress.
If this were the entire list of threats, I would conclude that America will muddle through, and that would be the end of that. But unfortunately it’s not. While most of the threats from within are less dire than commonly believed, external threats to the United States are grave and getting graver by the day. The U.S. faces an axis of enemies that is larger, more productive, and more technologically advanced than any we have ever faced before, and which is ideologically bent on the degradation of U.S. wealth, stability, and autonomy. Failure to respond vigorously to this New Axis could easily result in catastrophe — either from a U.S. loss in Cold War 2, or from a World War 3 that we fail to deter.
And this danger makes America’s domestic troubles much more severe than they would otherwise be, because our internal squabbling could weaken us and prevent us from dealing with the real threats out there.
As I argue, there’s a good chance that America would lose this war. The U.S.’ manufacturing sector, and especially its defense-industrial base, has atrophied while China’s now dominates the world. Any war that went longer than a couple of weeks — which most wars do — would heavily favor the country that can produce more ships, missiles, drones, and ammunition. That country is China.
Some people — especially folks I hang out with in the tech industry — try to comfort themselves by believing that the U.S. would never go to war over Taiwan. They are sticking their heads in the sand."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/assessing-the-threats-to-the-republic
8. This is a must watch: if you want to know what’s happening in SaaS sector re: Fundraising & what VCs are looking for.
Incredible insight and tracks with what I am seeing in my portfolio.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daakrQavsU4&t=1024s
9. This is a scary but important discussion on geopolitics. What a mess and all due to our own weakness & complacency. America is the new Soviet Union.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YifbCUG3gvI
10. "In the meantime, the parallels are a little worrying. Tokyo may not meme a governor into office this time around, but the kids aren’t all right. As I said, that old saying hyakki yagyo is written with characters meaning “night parade of a hundred yokai.”
We’re only seeing a few dozen tricksters and trolls in this election. But if young people continue to believe they have no place in the political system, I suspect we’ll see a lot more in the years to come. Eventually, one might actually even win. And we’ve all seen how that turned out for America."
https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/trolling-tokyo
11. "A huge amount of economic value is going to be created by AI. Company builders focused on delivering value to end users will be rewarded handsomely. We are living through what has the potential to be a generation-defining technology wave. Companies like Nvidia deserve enormous credit for the role they’ve played in enabling this transition, and are likely to play a critical role in the ecosystem for a long time to come.
Speculative frenzies are part of technology, and so they are not something to be afraid of. Those who remain level-headed through this moment have the chance to build extremely important companies. But we need to make sure not to believe in the delusion that has now spread from Silicon Valley to the rest of the country, and indeed the world. That delusion says that we’re all going to get rich quick, because AGI is coming tomorrow, and we all need to stockpile the only valuable resource, which is GPUs.
In reality, the road ahead is going to be a long one. It will have ups and downs. But almost certainly it will be worthwhile."
https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/ais-600b-question/
12. Perfect message for the 4th of July for all Americans.
"Therefore, it falls to us (you and me) to fight back, not with violence or harsh language, but with our actions.
Work hard.
Love.
Be compassionate and understanding.
Listen in earnest.
Give with the expectation of reciprocation.
Be present.
Get involved in your community."
https://ryanhanley.com/how-to-keep-america-is-the-greatest-country-on-earth/
13. Insightful conversation. Lessons from past waves of technology.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mqNaOuRdkA
14. This is a great listen. A good analysis of investing in private and public markets. & AI commoditization.
https://www.joincolossus.com/episodes/84488038/proposal-ai-commoditization-and-capital-dynamics
15. I always learn stuff from Tim Ferriss, this was an incredible discussion on how to make your life better.
https://www.joincolossus.com/episodes/11271167/ferriss-curating-curiosities
16. "The Manchurian model of forced industrialisation under single-party rule found post-war expression in China, North Korea, and South Korea during the Park Chung-hee years, directly influenced by people who had participated in the colony’s institutions. The Japanese technocratic planners who worked in Manchukuo likewise returned to serve in the highest levels of government and economic and planning bodies in Japan after the war.
They led Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, which governed uninterrupted from 1955 to the 1990s. The most prominent among these was Kishi Nobusuke, who was once Manchukuo’s economic tsar and among the most ruthlessly anti-Chinese and imperialist of its political leaders. His postwar position as America’s man in Tokyo allowed him to become prime minister from 1957-60 and retain prominence as an elder statesman until the 1980s.
Kenkoku University—the highest academic institution in Manchukuo from 1938 until 1945—was the educational center of the pan-Asianist experiment. Its students came from all over Asia under Japanese rule to learn how to modernize Asia. After the war, they maintained contact with each other while they assumed important roles in East Asia’s postwar order—some of their careers lasting until the 1990s.
The legacy of Kenkoku lived on in their political achievements. Across East Asia, alumni implemented their goals of national liberation and state-led industrialization in the region’s postwar states, and on all sides of the Cold War divide. By inculcating the region’s rising elites, Manchukuo’s rulers secured an unlikely legacy. While the Japanese empire met its end, its tradition of technocratic state-building endured as East Asia’s new leaders drew on their Japanese training to build its successor regimes."
https://letter.palladiummag.com/p/the-school-that-built-asia
17. "Investors are desperate to find the ChatGPT for robotics.
The thinking goes that if all-in-one foundation models are going to be dominated by the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic, venture capitalists need to find niche foundation model companies that can really differentiate themselves.
And there’s no area more than robotics artificial intelligence that’s got investors excited, particularly when it means investors can bet on robotics companies without taking on any of the actual risky hardware development. Investors get the innovation of robots without all the capital intensive work of building actual machines.
Of course some of these companies are building robotic arms, and even humanoid robots themselves."
https://www.newcomer.co/p/why-investors-cant-get-enough-of
18. “If you want to choose one investor, you want to choose Trae, if you want to be a defense tech company," said Gecko Robotics founder Jake Loosararian, who told me Stephens played a big role in helping his company compete for department of defense contracts.
Stephens has climbed to what is effectively the number two spot at Founders Fund, one of Silicon Valley’s most elite venture capital firms, by doing exactly what Founders Fund partners dream of doing — bucking the conventional wisdom and defying political pieties. Stephens co-founded the iconic defense tech company — Anduril — with Palmer Luckey, a pariah co-founder back when rank-and-file Google employees terrified their bosses by resisting working on America’s own defense.
Stephens really did see the rise of defense tech before most everyone else in Silicon Valley — of course he had the benefit of learning from his now boss Thiel, who co-founded Palantir, the progenitor of modern day Silicon Valley defense tech.
Andreessen Horowitz is the marketing juggernaut that can make their name synonymous with American Dynamism, but Founders Fund laid the groundwork for the defense tech back before it was cool."
https://www.newcomer.co/p/the-investor-who-called-defense-techs
19. "If unchallenged, these information warfare campaigns present a fundamental threat to the United States. These three regimes want to sideline American power as they target three of our most vital and vulnerable partners: Taiwan, Ukraine, and Israel.
Of course, the problems and divisions in the United States cannot be blamed on America’s adversaries. Unfortunately, Americans are quite adept at creating their own problems. But it would be dangerous to not recognize that Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran seek to exacerbate and magnify existing social-political fault lines to help pave the way for their wider ambitions.
The final group targeted for information warfare is populations and governments in countries that are not necessarily allied with the United States, where the three regimes seek to obtain valuable strategic resources or concessions. Their focus is on parts of Asia as well as Africa and Latin America.
If the United States and its allies cede ground in these strategic countries due to a failure to counter adversary information warfare, the results will be serious. U.S. diplomatic, economic, and military interests will suffer, while Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran cultivate corrupt leaders who prey on the local population, destroy the environment, and slowly but surely undermine the U.S.-led world order."
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/06/28/cognitive-combat/
20. "From this analytical standpoint, the structure of power is no longer a pyramid but a web with multiple spiders forging networks of varying strength. Today we live in a truly multipolar, multicivilizational and multiregional system in which no power can dominate over others — while all can freely associate with others according to their own interests.
This structural entropy is embodied in what I call the geopolitical marketplace, a distributed landscape far more complex than the conventional wisdom of a bipolar U.S.-China “new Cold War.” Many countries in the world are post-colonial nations innately suspicious of overtures that would render them subservient pawns of either the U.S. or China. This is why the notion of alliances is a hollow one for much of the world. Alliances are more like multi-alignments in which swing states, regional anchors and almost every other country actively play all sides in pursuit of their own best deal. This is not about deference to hierarchy but active positionalism: each country, large or small, places itself at the center of its own calculations.
This is a far cry from the rigid Westphalian order of sovereign states — which, due to centuries of colonialism, was always more fiction than reality. Instead, the emerging world order can best be describedas a global version of the pre-Westphalian Middle Ages. Europe at the time was a multi-layered milieu of competing authorities from the Holy Roman Empire and its papal states to autonomous city-states such as Venice and the Northern European Hanseatic League.
But Europe was also a sideshow. This was an age when China and India’s dynasties were ascendent, the Arab Caliphates pulsed with energy and the Silk Roads tied together what historians call the “Afro-Eurasian” system centered on the Indian Ocean rim. Then as now, Afro-Eurasian geography represents the central mass of the global system and the dynamics among its participants — Chinese state-owned enterprises; Indian merchants; Gulf Arab holding companies; Singaporean commodities traders; African pirates; sovereign wealth funds and private equity firms from the East and West; and navies from America, Europe and Asian powers — provide a bottom-up lens into how authority is contested and constructed."
https://www.noemamag.com/the-coming-entropy-of-our-world-order
21. This is a worthwhile interview for all those hustling out there.
It helps you think about what you are hustling for & how to create the life you want (ie. how to use money to build your perfect life & figuring out your number).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPJYBnmxNMI
22. "As a young geologist who refused to go down the Australian dream of taking on heavy debt to buy a house and Toyota Land Cruiser, I got hooked on the uranium fundamental story at the time:
--Powerhouse China is choking their cities with fossil fuels and will require a clean baseload energy source.
--Simple supply-demand fundamentals are easily mapped out per reactor - either the uranium price goes up or the lights go out on 10% of the world's power (20% in the US) - Rick Rule and Mike Alkin.
--ESG backflipping and adopting uranium as a green source of energy.
--ASX-listed stocks with assets priced so low that it was as if they were drilling aircore drill holes for gold next to guerrillas in West Africa, all while having no debt.
All this was pre-SPUT launch, Japan restarts, and the world just waking the f-ck up*"
https://geologotrader.substack.com/p/argentina-for-uranium
23. "My view on inflections aligns with Andy Grove’s but from another angle. Grove saw strategic inflections as significant threats that could overturn a company’s core business. Companies blind to these shifts or too slow to change risked their existence.
I see inflections through the lens of opportunity for the attacker — the startup.
Inflections are a startup’s secret weapon. Startups have nothing to defend. They want to upend the status quo. Inflections are the underlying force that pattern-breaking startups can exploit to change the future.
For the same reasons incumbents should be paranoid about inflections, pattern-breaking startups should vigilantly exploit inflections to change the future."
https://medium.com/@m2jr/how-inflections-let-startups-change-the-rules-a8cca5f9b948
24. Bullish case for America. We are really positioned for the future despite the political mess.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ktBjYtjs1E
25. Best convo in Silicon Valley. This weeks "More or Less"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOruH-5ebV4
26. "The most extraordinary techno-capital acceleration has been set in motion. As AI revenue grows rapidly, many trillions of dollars will go into GPU, datacenter, and power buildout before the end of the decade. The industrial mobilization, including growing US electricity production by 10s of percent, will be intense."
https://situational-awareness.ai/racing-to-the-trillion-dollar-cluster/
27. "Ukraine and Russia will already be planning their 2024 winter operations and contemplating their offensive operations for 2025. There are a range of known variables that will impact on this strategic thinking and planning. Additionally, in a rapidly evolving technological and geopolitical environment, strategic surprises may influence the trajectory of the war.
Russia will continue to implement its strategy of subjecting Ukraine and its people to a death by a thousand cuts. And Ukraine, as it has throughout this war, will continue to adapt and seek new ways to not only destroy as much of the Russian military as possible but to also develop new strategic methods to convince Putin that his Ukrainian gamble will never pay off."
https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/four-key-influences-evolution-ukraine-war-2025
28. "I look at my total net worth and investments every quarter to see if anything has changed drastically.
While I would like to say or endorse a software that aggregates or combines all of my investments together, I actually built my own Google Sheet that lays everything out.
Reviewing and updating my numbers is a cathartic quarterly exercise and helps me focus ways I could optimize, diversify, consider, and act on other opportunities.
I’m always trying to think bigger picture – on money, opportunities, my network, and businesses.
When it comes to working for yourself or working for companies, I avoid small-minded people and mentalities.
I generally try to help people ask themselves whether what they’re doing is the best or most valuable way to spend their time."
https://shindy.substack.com/p/rituals-how-to-manage-money
29. "The vertical SaaS ecosystem in Europe started a long time ago with companies such as Relex (2005) and Fenergo (2009). Two decades later, we believe we are still at the inception of value capture. On the one hand, some verticals lag behind when it comes to digital penetration relative to their GDP contribution.
New technologies like sensors, AI, or robotics should accelerate that digitization. On the other hand, vertical SaaS are becoming increasingly multi-faceted. By integrating financial services, building a marketplace, and/or adding AI, we believe that some of them will be able to capture even more value moving forward."
https://medium.com/point-nine-news/the-state-of-vertical-saas-in-europe-21900b8aefc5
30. “There’s definitely worry about that,” he admits, speaking about what the release may do to his public profile. More eyeballs. More attention. More whispers at the grocery store. “I’m trying to view the fame aspect as a challenge and navigate through it in a way that I’ll find happiness,” he says. “I really don’t think my line of profession is a recipe for happiness or contentment. Not a lot of us are happy. And the more the fame is increased, the more turbulent and scary life becomes.”
Skarsgård tries to keep those worries out of his mind when he’s picking jobs. He’s adamant that he is building his career not with some grand vision but rather role by role. Yet when you look at his filmography, it is undeniable that the stories he is drawn to are often twisted—occasionally, as he says, even “pure evil.”
“He doesn’t want to be a Hollywood heartthrob,” says Sanders. “And that’s the legacy of a long career to me—if you’re not involved in the Hollywood machine and you’re creating roles that you are emotionally connected to. It’s like buying art. You just buy what you want to see on your walls and not what you think is going to make you money. And he’s just got a weird taste in art.”
David Leitch, who directed Skarsgård in Atomic Blonde, feels he still has much more to show. “He’s an actor that I believe can do anything,” the filmmaker says. “It’ll just be a matter of time before he does something that reflects his comedic chops.”
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a60878863/bill-skarsgard-interview-2024/
31. I certainly appreciate this as a frequent flyer.
https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/united-oversharing-on-delays-6823650/
32. "Looking outward too, the stubborn strength of the US economy and the US dollar have sent other world economies scrambling. Some are already throwing the towel by cutting interest rates, while others like Japan or China have seen their currencies declining in value.
Investors would be unwise to venture outside the “quality” trade when strong currents are pushing it upstream, both across equities and fixed income. However, the accumulation of wins for this isolated portion of the market is drying out liquidity, and create desperation elsewhere. At some point it would backfire.
Pyrrus comes from Greek Pyrrhos, derived from Pyr (fire) and -ros (pertaining to). Here it looks like the victory of some is burning the ground for the rest of us."
https://benjaminrobinot.substack.com/p/pyrrhic-victories
33. Good discussion on portfolio management and how to think about downstream capital as a VC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnLRzX1L1AE
34. "Throughout the 2010s, many people — including myself — treated it as a truism that manufacturing industries have faster productivity growth than service industries. Historically that was true, and the reason wasn’t hard to grasp — machines improve faster than human beings do, so industries that depended on better machines naturally tended to advance faster than labor-intensive service industries.
But this particular piece of conventional wisdom stopped being true over a decade ago. In 2011, manufacturing productivity in the U.S. hit a ceiling, and has actually declined in the years since
Anyway, the question of why American manufacturing productivity has stagnated is a very important open question. More than just a few percentage points of economic growth hang in the balance here — defense and defense-related manufacturing will be one of the keys to victory in Cold War 2, and the U.S. has a lot of catching-up to do in that regard. So we had better get started chasing down some of these hypotheses — and any other plausible ones we can think of."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-has-us-manufacturing-productivity
35. This is one of the most important trends that we need to be focusing on in America & the West. Re-industrialization.
https://x.com/MikeSlagh/status/1809362222382035017
36. Taipei is an amazing city and well worth visiting. Highly recommend it.
https://www.hemispheresmag.com/asia/taiwan/taipei/three-perfect-days-taipei/
37. One of my absolute favorite places in the whole wide world: Tokyo.
https://www.hemispheresmag.com/asia/japan/tokyo/three-perfect-days-tokyo/
Your Dreams and Nightmares Point The Way
I had one of the most vivid dreams, a nightmare actually. I dreamed I was back working at Yahoo! surrounded by cubicles and droll salarymen & women. Weirdly working for one of the most awful human beings I’d met in my working life in the last decade (ironically not at Yahoo!). I was getting hassled by her and also by HR for not getting approval for travel. Being threatened with getting fired. It was one of those WTF experiences and I woke up in chills.
My interpretation of this signifies my biggest fear these days. Of being trapped. Of being dependent on someone. Having to work for someone else. Having an a-hole boss that I have to ask for permission to do anything, go on vacation, travel or whatever. Comply or get fired. It goes counter to what I value most these days. Freedom. The ability to do whatever I want, whenever I want, with who I want.
Your subconscious brain is a powerful tool. It helps you process your thoughts, emotions and experiences in the background. It really comes alive when you are sleeping. Your deepest desires show up. But more frequently your deepest fears.
We’ve all had the school dreams about not having your assignment done or showing up at a test unprepared. Growing up I had nightmares of being ostracized or not being accepted. In my first decade and half of work these tended to be about money or failing at work. This was usually symbolized by falling down off a skyscraper or being chased by zombies.
Interpretation of your most vivid dreams and nightmares give you an understanding of the deepest emotions driving you. Once you understand them, you can manage, deal with and conquer them.
1923: Tough Times Need Tough People
I started Taylor Sheridan’s new epic series 1923 that follows the Dutton family of Yellowstone fame through their adventures in Montana and Africa (yes, Africa). In the middle of miserable drought, locusts, a range war with sheep farmers and legal war with some ruthless businessmen; the Duttons really start to expand their cattle empire that we know so well from Yellowstone.
To survive the horrors of the 20th Century you gotta be a pretty tough cookie.
There is a telling comment during a conversation with all the cattle bosses. One of them says “If it weren’t for the easy years, I wouldn’t waste my time in the rough ones.”
The main character played by Harrison Ford, Jacob Dutton responds: “I’ve been here since 1894, I do not remember an easy year. Do you?”
I remember being a young kid and thinking that life would be easier when I got older as an adult. Boy, was I wrong. You just start to get new problems and challenges.
It’s a crazy competitive world out there. Always has been. Jacob Dutton says:
“Man will choose to take what you built, rather than try to build it for himself. Every civilization in this world, built on top of one they conquer. You go to Rome, or Jerusalem, or Paris, France, you have cities stacked on top of towns, stacked on top of villages, on top of one man’s house, on top of one man’s cave. You wish it wasn’t so but it is. Your enemies gotta be so terrified, that their fear is greater than their greed.”
Life is a massive sized competition. Life is always hard. It’s supposed to be. Life is a struggle and that’s what makes you who you are. It’s a big test to see how you rise to challenge and grow. Or for many, how they do NOT.
This is why I am such a big believer in self development. You have no idea what tomorrow or life will throw at you. But you can work on yourself all the time. The more you can prepare yourself, work out, read, evolve, learn, get smarter, the more fit you are to handle things that inevitably come up. Tough times require tough people. You don’t ever surrender.
It don’t mean a Thing: Career and Life Lessons from “Hamburger Hill”
“Hamburger Hill” was a Movie based on the true story of an American airborne unit that fought the North Vietnamese Army to take a hill in 1969 during the Vietnam War. They went up and down and up and down, losing friends to finally occupying the hill. Only to withdraw and leave it to the Vietnamese army after.
All the sacrifice and pain ultimately for nothing. No wonder so many soldiers become cynical and jaded after. And this also seems to be the situation many of our vets from the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan find themselves in. Let down by incompetent officers and betrayed by venal and cowardly politicians who sent them there to begin with. I can’t imagine the hell of this.
It’s symbolic of many of our careers albeit not anywhere close to the danger and pain these soldiers suffered. Immense sacrifice with no commensurate reward or achievement. It’s a hell of a painful realization. Maybe that our work just doesn’t matter very much.
I felt this way near the end of my years at Yahoo! or 500 Startups as the company fell into a death spiral. That ultimately, that extra revenue or investments a year I brought in for the company, just really didn’t matter. All the missed time with my family, the damage to my health and the stress of hitting and beating your business groups P&L. As the soldiers say, in the end: “It don’t mean a Thing.”
This is why you absolutely need to re-evaluate your work every year. At the minimum:
Are you learning new things?
Do you still like your colleagues?
Are you getting paid enough? Is the juice worth the squeeze?
Does the work support your larger mission and goal in life?
It helps you to understand whether the hill you picked is the right one. If not, stop climbing it and find a new hill worthy of your talents, energy & precious time.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads July 21st, 2024
"When all else fails, take a vacation." –Betty Williams
Excellent dissection of a niche media business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBv7ebE6ZrA&t=5s
2. "Given the progress of AI in the last years and the speed with which AI is transforming the way software is developed and used, any prediction comes with a high risk of not aging well, but my best guess is that the fundamental need for software persists — and AI will enhance the value and importance of software rather than diminish it."
3. "In the developed societies almost all of us manage to stay a few steps out of reach of that monster for our entire lives, and this fact is the wonder of the world. The artifice we have built to keep it at bay — vast farms blanketing whole continents and tended by fantastic machines, sprawling landscapes of ersatz caves to keep us sheltered from the elements, endless roads and rails, an empire of warehouses and supermarkets and pharmacies and just-in-time logistics — is the only meaningful thing that has ever been built within the orbit of our sun in billions of years.
It is industrial modernity — our single weapon against the elemental foe. It took centuries of blood and sweat to build, centuries of sacrifice by our sturdiest workers, our most brilliant inventors, and our most visionary leaders. And it is fantastically complex, far beyond the ability of even the most brilliant individual to understand in full; only collectively, at the level of society, do we shore up its fragile walls and keep it from collapse every day.
When smug intellectuals sneer at “economic growth” or “GDP”, they are denouncing the very walls of the fortress that has allowed them to live more than an animal existence. Safe within its sheltering bastions, they are free to indulge in the extravagance of pretending that the foe isn’t lurking right outside.
They revel in the luxury of their material security by staging mock revolutions over differences in social status and relative wealth among the elite. With their bellies full of industrially grown sugars, they wander through pleasant fantasies of an imagined past — pastel-colored worlds filled with noble savages, happy indolent peasants, and glossy 1950s advertisements. Sometimes they imagine they could move to one of those fantasy worlds.
As shallow as all that sounds, it’s precisely to allow the luxury of shallowness that humanity struggled so long and hard. Yet we can never afford for luxury to become complacency, because the foe has not been defeated."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-elemental-foe
4. "If we take too many detours chasing this kind of distracting knowledge, we risk consuming our lives with content that ultimately doesn’t nourish us and is instead an obstacle to the development of our personalities and to our becoming fully alive.
Contrary to our bodily appetite for food and drink, our intellectual appetite toknow is never fully satiated. There is always more to learn. Our desire to know is always active. So, in a way, getting our curiositas under control is even more important than our physical fitness. We are desiring to know at every moment of the day. We are not necessarily desiring to eat.
The age of social media and the 24 hour news cycle is completely dominated by curiositas, by distracting knowledge, and that’s why the virtue of studiositas is more important than ever to try to cultivate."
https://read.lukeburgis.com/p/there-are-no-more-hedgehogs
5. Masterclass in building an SDR team.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USC4q0fcApQ&t=1881s
6. “Are you sure the Chinese Communist Party isn’t behind the anti-nuclear movement in Taiwan?” That’s the question I get over and over again as I explain Taiwan’s seemingly inexplicable decision to close its last nuclear power reactors in the face of a possible energy blockade.
Unfortunately, the aversion to nuclear power is entirely home-grown with no help from the Chinese. It goes against not just our stated efforts to reach Net Zero by 2050 but threatens our very survival as a nation."
https://taipology.substack.com/p/is-taiwan-sleepwalking-into-an-energy
7. "Between the lines: Geopolitical and national security concerns are also motivators as China's prominence grows.
--Globalization didn't work, these leaders say, because the U.S. wound up giving away working class jobs — and its industrial advantage.
--"The fact that we can't make anything here has screwed our ability to stay leaders in the battery industry," for example, says Austin Bishop, co-founder of Atomic Industries and now a general partner at Tamarack Global, an early-stage investment firm.
--"Once we lost the ability to make basic batteries, then we missed the entire revolution with cellphones, and leading the lithium ion generation, and then that means we've now missed the opportunity to be the leader in [electric] cars."
What they're saying: The alliance's goal is to modernize manufacturing, not re-create the past."
https://www.axios.com/2024/07/01/us-industry-leadership-summit-detroit
8. Such a great conversation here on AI & Defense. Also great discussion on where entrepreneurial talent sits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QJR1LOxXz0
9. Always learn from Peter Thiel, one of the most controversial but orthogonal thinkers in Silicon Valley (altho he is based in LA).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3ZXrTzskw0
10. An interview with one of the men (and women) who literally runs the world (for better or worse). Larry Fink of Blackrock + Central banker & CEO of Honeywell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XYwJAH19Eo
11. "By borrowing against your assets instead of selling them, you don’t have to pay capital gains taxes. Borrowing money against your assets is not a taxable event. If you borrow $50,000 from your house, that is not a taxable event. Same concept.
Even on a thirty year span of borrowing $1,000,000 per year, you can end up saving money for your legacy (kids/family/charity whatever you like)."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/buy-borrow-die-the-basics
12. "There have historically been two types of periods: Local and Global. In a Local period, the authorities financially repressed savers to fund past and present wars. In a Global period, finance is deregulated, and global trade is promoted. A Local period is inflationary, while a Global period is deflationary. Any macro theorist you follow will have a similar taxonomy to describe the major cycles of the 20th century and beyond historical periods.
The purpose of this history lesson is to invest wisely throughout the cycles. Over a typical 80-year life expectancy, I better get more time due to the stem cells I’m injecting; you can expect to experience two major cycles on average. I boil down our investment choices into three categories:
If you believe in the system but not those governing it, you invest in stonks.
If you believe in the system and those governing it, you invest in government bonds.
If you believe in neither the system nor those governing it, you invest in gold or another asset that doesn’t require any vestiges of the state to exist, like Bitcoin. Stocks are a legal fantasy upheld by courts that can dispatch men with guns to force compliance. Therefore, stocks require a strong state to exist and hold value over time.
In a Local inflationary period, I should own gold and eschew stocks and bonds.
In a Global deflationary period, I should own stocks and eschew gold and bonds.
Government bonds generally do not preserve value over time unless I’m allowed to infinitely leverage them at low to no cost or am forced to own them by my regulator. Primarily, that is because it is too tempting for politicians to pervert the government bond market by printing money to fund their political objectives without resorting to unpopular direct taxation."
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/zoom-out
13. Title says it all. US & China: Edging toward War. Panel of 2 Chinese and 2 Americans (who actually speak Chinese fluently and spent time there).
Chinese folks seem really ultra reasonable but it's hard to believe them looking at the facts and what China has been doing since Xi took power.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il_XQhIBR7M
14. I so want to watch this movie. Tokyo Cowboy.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2024/06/13/film/tokyo-cowboys/
15. "Unless a Trump victory in November results in a drastic reduction in U.S. support for Ukraine, Russia is unlikely to be gifted another chance like the one it has had in the past six months to make progress in the war. European defence industrial capacity is increasing, and its political resolution to resist Russia is strengthening. Ukrainian defence production is increasing. But then, Russian defence production has also exceeded the expectations of most western analysts. Whether this can be continued indefinitely is another question.
Ultimately, the past six months offer another case study of a military institution that has failed to effectively change its doctrine, training, structure and equipment during wartime in a way that increases its chances of tactical, operational and strategic success. The Russian gains hardly justify the burning through men and materiel that has taken place since January 2024.
The sources of their failure to capitalise on their strategic opportunity in 2024 are many. Russia has yet to develop a new offensive doctrine for land operations in modern conditions. It has not been able to balance quantity and quality across the force, generally leaning on mass for its attacks. Its military leadership is clearly not capable enough to build and implement the right military strategy for such an intellectually demanding war.
And Russia’s style of fighting in 2024, and how poorly it treats Ukrainian civilians and soldiers, has meant that Ukrainian resolve is sustained. In due course, the Russian 2024 offensives will be added to the failed campaign for Kyiv in 2022, and the failed 2023 Ukrainian counter offensive, as examples for military analysts and scholars to study well into the future.
Russia may still have a couple of months where they can conduct more offensive activities against Ukraine before they culminate. But, given Russian losses so far, the lack of any new, wide-ranging offensive doctrine, and that Ukraine’s strategic prospects are improving with respect to manpower, air defence and munitions, Russia appears to have blown what might have been its last chance to strike a decisive blow against Ukraine in this war.
The question now is whether Ukraine, which wants to liberate more of its territory occupied by Russia, can build all the different physical, moral and intellectual elements of offensive combat power to do better than Russia has either later this year or in 2025?"
https://mickryan.substack.com/p/has-russia-blown-its-2024-opportunity
16. "The nuance in selling between GPTs compared to search & chatbots is a great example of how the market is evolving differently in different segments : lumping all AI solutions into the same category is a mistake.
Leveraging the executive sponsorship to bypass procurement processes is consistent with the AI imperative boards & executives have championed.
The AI market isn’t a single market : it’s reflective of the software market both older segments & newer segments."
https://tomtunguz.com/the-first-of-your-newsletters
17. "As you age though other costs begin to come up that can wrinkle your cash flow — this month I got a delayed bill from my accountant, an unexpected medical bill for my son, and a car tax payment for my town on the same day after apeing BTC/ETH with my free cash flow from my business. My goal is to always be comfortably saving or investing money each month — these random expenses can add a bit of pressure to that regimen and I am a bit OCD about having that cushion.
We’ve all heard BowTied Bull recount the classic conundrum of the NYC Managing Director who saves basically no money due to lifestyle inflation and absurd spending each month.Today I want to talk through areas that I have personally identified waste in — that is — areas where I am potentially vulnerable to lifestyle inflation or overspending for no good reason."
https://arbitrageandy.substack.com/p/stop-wasting-your-money-on-these
18. "This flipping of risk-free return in US Treasuries to return-free risk will be a defining development for the next decade in finance. Trillions of dollars are sitting in a global 60/40 portfolio with US Treasuries as a major component of their asset allocation. At some point, common sense must win out over doctrine. This brings me to another development that seems to be happening simultaneously — bitcoin is becoming the risk-free return for digital natives.
In the same way that US Treasuries were the “safe” asset that was backed by the US government, bitcoin is becoming the “safe” asset that is backed by the strongest computer network in the world. That may sound insane to traditional investors, but I hear and see it from digital natives every day."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/risk-free-return-vs-return-free-risk
19. Get equity in a business. This is the lesson.
"Federer becoming part of On made him much more than Nike was ever going to pay him. Per a 2022 report by Quartz, when On went public in 2021, Federer’s 3 percent ownership was worth $180 million. It’s this opportunity that’s given him a new perspective on how athletes should or shouldn’t approach deals, although he admits that not all athletes are in a space where they can accept long-term money over short-term financial success.
“Not thinking as an athlete is not easy,” the tennis icon says."
https://www.complex.com/sneakers/a/matt-welty/roger-federers-big-bet-with-on-is-paying-off
20. "But even if you don’t decrease your spending over time, there’s nothing stopping you from adjusting your spending when necessary. As I’ve shown previously, you can spend more money in retirement if you are flexible. The trick is to not withdraw as much from your portfolio when it’s in a large decline. In other words, don’t kick your investments while they’re down.
If you can embrace this idea, then you don’t need to worry as much about running out of money in retirement. This is especially true if you experience a period of high inflation. After all, the best way to fight back against higher prices is not to pay them! While this is easier said than done, a little flexibility in your spending can go a long way in retirement."
https://ofdollarsanddata.com/how-does-inflation-impact-retirement/
21. Lots of great life lessons here.
"It’s almost impossible to imagine how much your psychology around money will change once you start seeing those kinds of numbers. And no matter how much of a minimalist, smart saver and investor you think you are, you might be surprised by how quickly your attitude can change.
I imagined five, ten, twenty years in the future, and asked myself how I would feel if I never became an extremely successful crypto investor or programmer.
And the truth was, I wouldn’t care. That skillset was near meaningless to me, it was just a means to an end.
But when I imagined not being a successful author that far in the future, I realized I would be filled with regret.
This is how success can become a curse. If you get really good at the wrong thing and you’re making a bunch of money from it, people are telling you how smart and capable and accomplished you are, you might start to think that it is the thing. And then you wake up one day and realize you were duped.
Obviously you probably need to get good at something you’re less thrilled about to put food on the table and get your career started. But don’t forget that it’s merely a tool for the work you really want to do later. Deprioritize it as soon as you can."
https://blog.nateliason.com/p/losing-10-million
22. "A South Korean weapons manufacturer that traditionally specialized in older, less advanced armaments is seizing on demand for 155mm howitzers by producing them faster than the West.
Hanwha Aerospace can build its K9 self-propelled howitzer in about six months at $3.5 million apiece, Bloomberg reported, estimating the company to be two to three times as fast as its competitors.
By comparison, French supplier Nexter was estimated to take about 30 months to deliver its Caesar self-propelled howitzer. However, it was reported in early January to have reduced the wait time by half.
South Korea's defense contractors have emerged as significant industry players, making the country the world's 10th biggest arms exporter, per theStockholm International Peace Research Institute."
https://www.yahoo.com/news/south-korean-weapons-company-once-072157477.html
23. "The political divisions imposed on society by the elite have degraded the sense of community. Many videos on YouTube feature people traveling the country, speaking to those in struggling neighborhoods, and one common theme I noticed was this idea of a strange social closing up, a guardedness or even avoidance of neighbors.
Multiple slightly older to middle aged people expressed how, when they were growing up in the 80s or 90s, their communities felt more connected. Neighbors and your “block” or street was an open, hospitable space where people interacted and knew each other’s names and families, sometimes helped each other or solved problems together. Now, they say in the same neighborhoods, no one says hello or talks to each other, the sense of commonality replaced with a growing sense of enclosure, mistrust, standoffishness, a kind of paranoia and cynicism growing like weeds from the neglected sidewalks and untended yards.
Most readers can likely relate. There’s a mountingly pervasive feeling—a defense mechanism of sorts—that keeps us a little more bottled up, wary of oversharing, reluctant to ‘step out of our comfort zones’ into spaces we know may be culturally or politically hostile to our guarded alignments.
When before we may have waved at a neighbor, engaging in chitchat over weather or the ballgame, now we may simply pull our hat tighter over our eyes, give a curt nod while avoiding eye contact for fear they may be “one of them”—a hostile from the other side of the spectrum, the politico-cultural divide: maybe a pro- or anti-vaxxer, a Democrat or conservative, a pro-Choicer abortionist or transphobe, ad nauseam."
https://darkfutura.substack.com/p/the-hoi-polloi-are-sick
24. The spirit of entrepreneurship alive & well in Cuba.
https://restofworld.org/2024/cuba-dancers-social-media-restrictions/
25. "Indeed the Russian micro-advance strategy is probably making the Russian army less efficient. It’s basically working overtime simply to pace losses. It can only do that with very quick training time (if that) leading to deteriorating unit cohesion and little military learning. There are stories of whole units basically becoming combat inefficient in a few days of fighting around Vovchansk.
What the Ukrainians have to do is accelerate Russian losses by encouraging them to keep these micro-advances up. It will lead to a horrible summer of fighting, but if the Russians are willing to keep slaughtering their own forces for tiny gains, the Ukrainians have to let them—while keeping Ukrainian losses as low as possible.
And when the Ukrainians return to trying to liberate their own lands, they need to do something else entirely."
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/weekend-update-87-the-russian-micro
26. "Every team of more than a few people will have at least one employee struggling. Sometimes it’s because they were an mis-hire, and sometimes it’s that their job is changing faster than they can adapt. Sometimes it’s their fault, and sometimes it’s not.
The first step is to identify struggling employees, and here are some signs an employee is struggling:
--They take longer than their peers to complete the same tasks, or cannot complete them at all.
--They push back on simple tasks that should be easy to complete.
--They start to work fewer hours, or be less available online.
--They start complaining a lot about everything wrong with the company.
When you find a struggling employee you need to act. Maybe you need to change their role, or provide deeper training. Or maybe you need to part ways. Whatever the solution, you can’t let the situation continue and simply hope they will figure it out."
https://www.breakingpoint.tech/p/struggling-employees
27. "If you are a Limited Partner at the very beginning of the Emerging Manager journey, here is my unsolicited advice: do not take shortcuts in honing the craft of identifying the best Managers.
Accessing Emerging Managers won’t be your problem, but how to underwrite them is a challenge. The only way to master this challenge is by developing taste. The only way to develop this taste is by genuine curiosity to explore the entire landscape that is unfolding in front of you.
And every now and then, on a rare occasion, you come across a very, very, very special Emerging Manager, and the feeling of sensing the quality within seconds is priceless. It’s like tasting some french soil in your wine - it’s special."
https://embracingemergence.beehiiv.com/p/1-advice-limited-partners
28. "America is the only major “empire” in history whose entrepreneurial magnitude exceeds its government magnitude. America is the first Capitalist Empire.
That is an unbelievably important distinction. It means that America’s success or failure isn’t exclusively determined by the strength of its institutions or the people running them. As long as the Constitution remains in place and rule of law reigns supreme, individuals have more opportunity to define the trajectory of the American Empire than they’ve had in any Empire to date.
While China’s manufacturing capacity is awesome, and while its growth has been eye-popping, China does not have the same dynamic: recall just a few years ago when Xi Jinping Thanos-snapped Alibaba CEO Jack Ma to show the country that he, and not tech companies, were in control.
China, strong as it is today, is fragile to the whims of its leaders.
America, chaotic as it is, is decentralized and antifragile.
To the extent that it is an empire, America is an empire defined not by its ability to expand geographically to capture existing resources, but by its ability to expand technologically to create new ones. America, therefore, is a boundless empire.
We will see more legacy institutions fall and weaken, and it may feel chaotic. Good! That chaos, underpinned by a stable Constitution and legal code, is the lifeblood of America’s success. The greater the challenges, the bigger the opportunities, the better the solutions.
We can even build new and better institutions to replace old and sclerotic ones."
https://www.notboring.co/p/the-american-millennium
29. "There is much that should be learned, or relearned, from these modern military failures. They provide the most recent, and perhaps more relatable, examples for the current generation of military and national security professionals.
Military failure should be an essential aspect of study for aspiring military leaders and effective military institutions. It may not be the ultimate guarantor of battlefield success or victory in war, but it is certainly a better strategy than ignoring lessons from the past in order to personally learn the agony of defeat."
https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-misfortunes-of-war/
30. "The quick summary of all this if you’re planning on building something long-term that doesn’t go down in flames after a short burst of sales (see thousands of businesses in 2021) is as follows:
--Sell to Women, selling to men is a fools game
--Try to find something that causes instant results and is hard to return. You can’t return botox but you can easily return a sky blue shirt that wasn’t light enough
--Majority of people will not have any savings, this means debt based purchases have to be encouraged
--You can charge more for speed since people are impatient. Could be shipping could be digital entertainment
--Anything lottery/quick high “could change your life or go to zero” is going to sell extremely well
--If you’re looking for more stable income focus on targeting the wealthy, if you’re looking for more cash flow based items, look at bare necessities for the low-end. Don’t buy middle class suburban homes!
All of this leads to the same general direction. Staying at home, glued to screens and lower population growth due to high vice/addiction and belief that the only way to make it is via overnight success."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/understanding-the-future-of-the-consumer
31. "Any wifi money business you start is going to be a 100% remote company.
It’s just the way things are done, unless you get HUGE (then it might make sense to open up an office).
But for the businesses I talk about in this newsletter, it’s all going to be remote. By the time you get so big that you have to start looking for office space you’re probably going to want to cash out and start over anyway, because that’s how builders are wired.
So if you’re serious about building online, you’re going to have to confront a few realities about managing a team of atomized people who are scattered all over the world who you only see on Slack and the occasional Zoom call.
Hint: It’s not always awesome."
https://www.tetramarketing.io/p/pros-and-cons-of-managing-a-remote
32. One of the best tear downs of media businesses in recent American history. Great for media biz junkies like me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJBdd9D3nEg
33. "Christopher Morley said, “There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way.”
A lot of financial mistakes come from trying to copy people who are different from you.
So be careful who you seek advice from, be careful who you admire, and even be careful who you socialize with. When you do things quietly you’re less susceptible to people with different goals and personalities than you telling you you’re doing it wrong."
https://collabfund.com/blog/quiet-compounding/
34. "Everyone eventually has to sit down and produce their work, and are held to goals and quotas. But as the economy shifts to knowledge work, we should respect that what actually produces good work can at first look lazy, and (even more so) vice versa.
In investing, where there’s the potential to win by pure luck, it’s wise to judge someone by their process, rather than their outcome. Work may be the opposite. Judge people by their outcomes, not by the visibility of their process, which is often hidden inside their head."
https://collabfund.com/blog/lazy-work-good-work/
35. This was how I felt in the early days of Alibris, Yahoo! & 500 Startups. Good times & magical times career wise.
"In your career and life, you will hopefully have moments where you feel championship level success.
You might even be part of a dynasty for many winning years. When that happens, remind yourself that it won’t last forever. And celebrate with champagne.
A dynasty ended yesterday — and now a new journey begins."
https://jeffmorrisjr.substack.com/p/the-end-of-a-warriors-era
36. "Seibel likens defence tech to similar recent hype cycles: “They're like, 'Oh shit, we need to do AI; oh shit, we need to invest in WeWork or whatever.’
“I have a little bit of the feeling now that a lot of dual use VCs say, 'We have to defend Europe, blah, blah, blah,' and they just jump on the train, which means they also make bad decisions on who they invest in,” he says.
Although he expects there will still be a lot of investment in the drone space in the next few years, there will likely be a lot of consolidation: he predicts there will be three or four European winners 10 years from now."
https://sifted.eu/articles/vc-defence-tech-hype-drones-quantum-systems
God, Gold and Steel: Conquest is in the Blood of Man
As a history major, I love reading about great men who start empires. Going into the great unknown and despite experiencing major trials and tribulations and ending up on the other side victorious. A true hero's journey.
There were none more exemplary than the conquistadors of Spain, grizzled ex soldiers like Cortes and Pizzaro, who arrived in Latin America and extinguished the massive Aztec and Incan empires that spanned the continent, and established Spanish dominion for several hundred years. A massive landmass that ran from modern day Mexico all the way down to Argentina & Chile.
Before the modern, industrialized & somewhat civilized world, this is what ambitious men did to gain wealth and power. Traveling, Fighting, killing and conquering. This did not change for hundreds, if not thousands of years in human history.
This was the driving factor of all the great men in history, Alexander the Great of Macedonia, Julius Caesar, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror from Normandy, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Babur of the Mughal Empire in India, Robert Clive of the East Indian Company among others. True adventurers and conquerors.
This was the norm at least until the 20th century, where our men’s drive was channeled toward building business empires. This is true progress. Thank God that riding around and cutting off heads and taking other people's land and goods is not the norm anymore.
Now you can take your urge to conquer and use the global market forces to build a product and provide a service to solve a problem for many people at the same time. You can build big businesses and accumulate massive wealth while serving others.
But these feelings, the urge for conquest, still exist in all of us men to this day. I remember a quote from the excellent show Yellowstone.
“Man is migratory by instinct. What you are feeling is a hunger for new land. Smoldering in your DNA. It’s the reason our species survived when countless others failed. That tingling is a sensation of your destiny.”
Modern day life and comforts dull these senses but they are always there. You can’t remove it. And I believe this explains the growing number of listless and lost young men in society now. Their impulses to conquer dampened. Angry, impotent and unhappy. They know their lives should be better but they have no clear mission or direction. No clear place to channel these urges.
I think if we want to turn things around again in America or the world in general, we have to acknowledge man’s need to conquer something and then to unleash these urges and channel them into productive avenues. Whether it’s personal fitness, self improvement or learning. Become an entrepreneur, go build something.
Young men need a mission so they can become controlled monsters! So conquer your mind, your emotions, and your environment to build your own empire.