Health is Wealth: Healthspan Over Lifespan
I’ve been spending as much more time as I can these last 2 years in Canada with my aging parents. It’s quite alarming and shocking watching people who were so critical and important in your childhood become, well, so much older and weaker. The contrast is startling. It’s even more startling in the differences between my father and mother.
My father exercises, bikes everywhere and keeps busy in the garden and running the household. I admit I was worried for him after his retirement that he would deteriorate as he has few friends or hobbies but thankfully it’s turned out fine. He has found purpose in managing the house and garden.
I worried less about my mother before, who is an extrovert with plenty of friends, hobbies (art, volunteering and pottery) and a deep love of reading. But in recent years she has just become more negative in her attitudes on almost everything, especially as her health has taken a bad turn.
All because of a bad diet, her laziness, stubbornness in not wanting anyone telling her what to do and her dislike for exercise. She can barely walk now and refuses to do any exercise or do physiotherapy to fix it. She does spend some time in the garden and doing her pottery, but I have noticed how often she sleeps during the day. Every day and for many hours. This was not the case even 2-3 years ago. It’s not looking good and her quality of life has gone down a lot. But I am hopeful we can still turn this around as we are trying to incentivize her exercise and activity with a family trip to Taiwan later in the year, where she will need to walk more.
Hence, why it’s not just about having a long life but also a healthy active life. We share our parents genes and traits so this was a massive wake up call for me. Eating well by cutting out sugar and other bad things for you. I eat far less pastries and desserts as much as I love them. I focus on eating plenty of meat and plants. Regular exercise to build muscle mass, especially hard as you get older. Taking supplements, biohacking by sauna/cold showers, sleeping over 7-8 hours a night and doing martial arts. It’s good to be fit and in shape.
Mediation and finding solace as I explore religion has been good for my brain as I navigate some of my anguish and various challenges in life. It also helps by having a larger mission in life so you are staying mentally active as well. A family and community to take care of. Something beyond yourself. Having a greater purpose and mission
We should all be focusing on Health-span, having mobility, independence and a good quality of life. No point living longer if you don’t have this.
The Face You Show: The Reality and Filter Effect in Social Media
Due to a long career of doing business internationally, I’ve been fortunate to be able to make friends in almost every single part of the world. But because of my business and travel life I spend very little time in places and usually have a long hiatus before I go back. Thank goodness we have social media which allows us all to keep in touch and keep tabs on each other.
But I’ve discovered the downside recently. It’s happened a few times during recent trips. After a half decade or even decade you meet up with a friend and as you share all the things happening in your life. And I tend to be pretty honest on both the good and bad of life, especially the last few years. Which were particularly rough and great at the same time.
One friend actually said “wow, I had no idea how messed up your life is based on all the pictures you show online. Jet-setting around the world, big happy smile on your face. Big happy smile on your little girl's face all the time.”
He is absolutely right. And it illustrates the “Filter effect”, we only show our best face publicly while hiding all the crap. It’s our ego, of course, we show only the best parts. Additionally, the filter effect is multiplied infinitely on social media.
Two key lessons from this.
One: don’t believe everything you see online. For every awesome Instagram picture you see, they probably went through 100 to find the perfect one. You get a very warped, over optimistic and unrealistic view on someone’s life on social media. It is a singular, very curated and cleaned up facet of someone’s life you see on social media whether Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or TikTok.
I’m not saying it’s bad to aspire, strive and aim high, you 110% should do so. Get all the toys, build wealth and have an awesome lifestyle while having the resources to take care of those you care about. Just should know that it was probably a much longer, painful and harder path than the one being shown.
But the Second lesson is: there is always a price to pay for what you want. I wanted career and monetary success and it came at the cost of a stable home and family life. But I still did it. For you, based on what I know now, it’s better to be more intentional about what you want. And then do the work and pay the price. You will inevitably get it. Just make sure it’s what you actually want in the end.
You Are What You Read or Watch: Controlling Your Media Diet
I love books and reading. To encourage my kid to enjoy reading like I do, we have a rule in my house that whatever book she wants to read I will buy for her. Whatever the costs and however many books she wants. That has been good until 2021. Her friend had read a book and she really wanted to read it too.
It was called “They Both Die at the End” by Adam Silvera. I think you can guess what the book is about. It’s about two gay guys who spend their last day together. I looked at it and thought, well if her friend read it and it’s rated as teen level book so it must be okay. BIG Mistake.
Amber was 11 at that time and she went super dark, weird and even somewhat suicidal after reading this book. It made me dig in deeper into the book and I realized how badly I messed up. Not sure if Adam Silvera is doing this purely for the money or is a hard left nut pushing awful ideology. He is going to burn in hell for pushing evil and dangerous ideas on young impressionable teens who are frankly clueless and naive.
This is symptomatic of the invasion of our kid’s brains by bad mind worms from left and right wing ideologues, albeit I’m in California so it’s the hard left extremist nutcases over here. It’s so awful. But ultimately this is my fault by not managing my family's media diet better.
We do this damage to ourselves by watching the mass media garbage on Fox and CNN. Both of them are wings of the same bird. Hollywood, especially Disney, is particularly pernicious. Most of the newspapers are awful too. We also get our brains inflamed by scrolling through Instagram or X aka Twitter or worse, from the CCP controlled TikTok. This is why my kids' social media is limited to 2 hours a day and TikTok is not allowed at all.
But sadly all this awful idea-garbage has infiltrated most of the households of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Western Europe. And it’s why many young people don’t believe in our values of the West anymore. Propaganda works sadly. This is a war at many levels now, not just a kinetic one but a mental & psychological one too.
So my point is you must take control and manage your personal media diet carefully for yourself and your family. You are what you read and watch. So filter very thoughtfully here.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads September 1st, 2024
“Often the best way to relax is just to go back to work”–Steve McQueen
"One advantage of including a solo GP on your cap table is their ability to make investment decisions quickly. Unlike traditional VCs, who need to consult with their fellow partners for approval, solo GPs can typically decide within a few days.
Additionally, solo GPs often specialise in a particular stage or, more interestingly, a specific sector. Those focusing on a single sector are usually former operators with deep industry expertise and strong connections."
https://neweconomies.substack.com/p/the-solo-gp-landscape
2. This is a good state of VC panel. Lots of good perspective here on the tactics and strategy of the business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVceHUqEoF0
3. "Intel’s other recent big bet has been its foundry business — three facilities in the US and three overseas to manufacture semiconductor chips, with other facilities in Asia and Latin America for testing and assembly. But that’s gotten a bumpy start; for instance, Intel declined to invest in cost-effective extreme ultraviolet machines for its manufacturing facilities, then had to outsource 30 percent of the manufacturing to a rival company, TSMC.
“Historically, Intel has been the company that was pushing the leading edge,” Newman said. But in the lead-up to Gelsinger’s tenure, the company “missed the AI transition,” he said — and companies like Nvidia, AMD, and TSMC, which are manufacturing semiconductor chips that can be used to accelerate AI technology, filled the market."
https://www.vox.com/technology/364745/intel-nvidia-ai-silicon-valley-layoffs-stock-semiconductor
4. "When the commercial internet started to take hold in the late 1990s, it felt as meaningful of a shift to me as AI does today. Many people (including me) staked their careers on the belief that the internet would be a transformative force that would remake many parts of society. That belief was well placed, and those of us who have worked on the internet for 20+ years have seen changes that were hard to imagine 20 years ago.
That being said, AI in 2024 feels like where the commercial internet was in 1999 or 2000. You could feel things were changing. You could imagine a future where the internet was deeply woven into everything from commerce to community to communications.
The only problem is that we were collectively wildly off in how quickly those changes would occur. In some cases, the core issue was a technology limitation. In many other cases, the issue was the inability of businesses to adopt new technology and change business processes. We needed that optimism to take some big bets and try new things, but it ultimately took way longer than most of us thought to come to pass.
Maybe it's just me, but it feels like we are on the cusp of a new era where startups and investors will deeply appreciate the time scale required to rewire businesses to utilize the power and promise of AI."
https://chudson.substack.com/p/todays-era-of-ai-investing-reminds
5. Learning from the best: how to build a long lasting venture firm. Lux Capital is tops in frontier tech.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9PT97uaCKY&t=1s
6. "What matters most is not the price tag, but the cost per mission — how many missions can it be expected to fly before it is jammed or shot out of the sky? A $2,000 drone which flies one kamikaze mission effectively costs the same as a $20,000 drone which can be expected to survive 10 missions. Second is capability — can the drone support high-resolution sensor payloads? Can it deliver munitions? Does it have obstacle avoidance? As drones are deployed in a wider variety of applications, different size/cost/capability combinations own different use cases.
Eliminating CCP-sponsored drones from American skies is essential for our national security. But we will not accomplish a DJI ban by forcing American operators to use subpar systems. Pilots won’t stand for the ban until they have a viable alternative. That can only follow the development of a robust American drone manufacturing base. So how do we win? As the war in Ukraine has gruesomely illustrated, attritable systems are a key capability on the modern battlefield, and the United States should absolutely build up its own Group 1 companies. But the truth that inspired Made in China 2025 still holds — China is far better at making cheap products. We will likely not beat DJI purely on labor and component cost.
America has the advantage in advanced capabilities. The United States drone industry has succeeded in fostering a collaborative ecosystem of open-source software and hardware developers; companies like Aerodome, who builds drone-as-first responder software on top of off-the-shelf drones; and DroneDeploy, which supports reality capture. By acting as a platform and not competing with their customers, American drone companies can achieve the scale needed to drive down costs and compete with DJI. In the age of AI, a single low-cost drone with high-resolution sensors and a GPU can run a variety of software applications that can make it significantly more capable than a comparable Chinese system.
The United States must leverage its strengths in advanced software and open-source development to enhance the capabilities of affordable drones. Building a robust domestic manufacturing base — in military as well as commercial systems — is crucial for maintaining national security and technological superiority."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-america-fell-behind-in-drones
7. "I've talked to people like these and others who, after being away from their previous firm for a while, will catch up with former bosses and colleagues and have them say, "Wow! I had no idea what you were capable." Most often, that's because they were too caught up being anchored to Erik in 2019 or Grace in 2017, and didn't do a good enough job establishing a new anchor for that person.
That isn't always the case. Plenty of people have built long careers at one firm without needing to switch. My belief is that this is either because of (1) lucky circumstances of finding a mentor, specialty, and firm that coalesce around enabling that person to succeed / progress, or (2) the firm they're at has built a deliberate engine for enabling that kind of progression. Though very few firms have.
The little sister syndrome is a textbook example of an inaccurate anchor. This isn't just true of how VCs build their careers, though its particularly egregious in venture. It's true of how people judge talent across the board. The incorrect anchor on someone can ensure one thing: the person making the incorrect judgement will not be along for the ride when that person skyrockets.
That's why you hear so many stories of successful people who were terrible students, yet would go on to exceptional success. Structured learning, like grades and tests, were tied to the wrong anchor for that person. The correct anchor was something else entirely. Like the obsessive efforts to rebuild car engines or ham radios from scratch.
Judging the quality of a person is as much about finding the right anchor by which to estimate that person's capability as it is observing the person. Without understanding that nuance, you're doomed to lose your best people to the little sister syndrome."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/little-sister-syndrome
8. "In economic language, the transaction replaced the relationship—not just on Wall Street but in American business generally. And the same can be said of the elite as a whole. WASPs once made for a fairly coherent upper class: concentrated in big cities and their suburbs in the Northeast, products of the same prep schools and colleges, likely to choose from a small pool of marriage partners, guaranteed of a decent inheritance and, for men, a sinecure at a respectable firm. Social ties were stable and for the ages. That has all given way to rule by money. Now you have to pay a consultant half a mil to get your kids into U.S.C. instead of relying on your bloodline to get them into Harvard.
When George Herbert Walker Bush died, a standard feature of the memorials was to celebrate his Waspy virtues of modesty, considerateness, and public spiritedness, in sharp contrast to the bombastic fool who occupies the Oval Office today. Ross Douthat opined that we miss those things because they signified a “ruling class that was widely . . . deemed legitimate.” It’s a thought I’d had before.
Honestly, it is a little tempting to get sentimental about the old order. Next to the reigning crassness of our day, that sort of reticence has a seductive allure. But it’s distressing to find yourself agreeing with Douthat, even in passing. How valid is the sentiment? And how well can our system live with an elite as rotten as the one we have?"
https://harpers.org/archive/2019/11/to-serve-is-to-rule-wasps-doug-henwood/
9. "So, in the eyes of the EU, what better time to set up a database that logs the assets of its half-billion citizens?
We’re only one crisis, conflict, or simple law change from your government being able to take everything you’ve ever worked for. And just like in bygone ages, they'll take it by force if you refuse to hand over your wealth willingly.
You should be paying attention if you’re European or an inhabitant of anywhere else in the West.
But more importantly, you should be taking action. Like ensuring you have assets scattered in multiple locales worldwide, so they’re not at the mercy of a single government body.
The simple truth is this: What’s yours is only yours while your government allows it.
And your government is broke."
https://anticitizen.com/p/not-your-property-eu-database
10. Sometimes you may need a patent strategy.
https://kellblog.com/2024/08/04/does-your-startup-need-a-patent-strategy/
11. "It was the start of Operation Intering — a never-before-reported massive, multiyear, transcontinental effort. Along the way, the FBI and the Austrian would seed faulty tech to Moscow and its allies; drain the Soviet Bloc’s coffers; expose its intelligence officers and secret American conspirators; and reveal to American counterspies exactly what tech the Soviets were after.
Because of Intering, the Soviet Bloc would unknowingly purchase millions of dollars’ worth of sabotaged U.S. goods. Communist spies, ignorant that they were being played, would be feted with a literal parade in a Warsaw Pact capital for their success in purchasing this forbidden technology from the West. But as the operation gained momentum, it would become increasingly risky — including to the life of the Austrian himself."
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/08/04/us-spies-soviet-technology-00164126
12. Especially true in Defense-tech.
"Hardware is riskier than software."
No longer true:
Development speed: 3D prints and PCB prototypes now available in 24 hours, rivalling software iteration speeds.
Moat strength: Apple's hardware-software ecosystem is far more defensible than most pure software plays.
Massive hardware exits:
ARM: Sold to SoftBank for $32B in 2016, now worth $140B+.
CSR (Cambridge Silicon Radio): Acquired by Qualcomm for $2.5B in 2015.
Dyson: While not an exit, it's valued at over £20B as of 2023.
The Arbitrage Play:
It isn't about costs. It's about ambition.
While software talent flows freely globally, ambitious UK hardware startups can exclusively tap into a world-class, locally-bound talent pool."
https://josef.cn/blog/uk-talent
13. This is an instructive interview for sales leaders and founders. I'm going to rewatch this a few times myself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmOnNouM6fo
14. Quite a deep and valuable conversation on business and life as an entrepreneur.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dw8j7hghv1k&t=1862s
15. "Sometimes, a large social following or big brand can be accretive to a startup — especially consumer companies or ones that benefit from early buzz. However, I do want to put in a plug for the vanilla VC whose sole vocation is funding startups, helping them scale, and ultimately succeeding the same way you will.
No matter who you choose, make sure you can identify their incentives. Ask the tough questions — understand their fund dynamics, their personal ambitions, and how they spend their time. An educated consumer is the best customer :)"
https://medium.com/@foundercollective/the-many-incentives-of-vcs-80a089a947f0
16. "When faced with the choice between a long hiring process or the potential to fulfill the role with a software robot at 15-20% the cost of human labor, a hiring manager calculated risk to try AI may result in tremendous savings to the business."
https://tomtunguz.com/toil-and-labor-markets/
17. "But why is China now frantically stockpiling such an array of commodities? Is it a defensive measure as the government sees further economic weaknesses across the horizon and wants to wean itself off Western supplies - or one hinting at future aggression? Everyone probably needs to answer that question for themself.
What we know for sure is that there is evidence that China is taking further measures to distance itself from the US. While buying huge quantities of gold earlier this year, China has also been selling down its holdings of US government debt to protect it against dollar sanctions if it comes into a conflict with the West.
This move could be in reaction to sanctions placed on Russia after it invaded Ukraine, in which Western penalties quickly wiped out roughly $350 billion of Moscow’s foreign currency and was viewed as a highly controversial move by the US government as they basically weaponized the world reserve currency further."
https://commodityreport.substack.com/p/is-china-piling-up-commodities-for
18. "Knudsen is among Cold Hawaii's growing community of transplants, most of whom left skyscrapers and traffic to slow down and surf by the sea. Denmark's once sleepy north-west coast is now crawling with galleries and boutiques, organic bakeries and a co-working space – many of them opened by the newcomers from 20-some-odd countries.
Even more young South Africans, Brazilians, Australians and Germans moved here post-Covid to work remotely, some to raise their kids. There are doctors and lawyers, and a famous Danish artist who'd been living in Berlin, Jeppe Hein, who now volunteers in local schools teaching children how to paint their own breath.
"You're forced to slow down. There isn't a lot here, so if you want art, you make it yourself. If you want pancakes, you make them yourself," said Knudsen. "That part hasn't changed. It's still the mentality of the fishermen who've lived here the longest."
19. "We already wrote about people being on tilt or getting emotional in the comments. We’re going to do a short explainer here on how to tell if you’re under or overexposed.
Overexposed: You find yourself watching prices every day, you are going to suffer a lifestyle change if prices go down by 20-25% and you are using leverage. These three things will be clear tells for over-exposure.
Neutral - Good Exposure: You don’t really care about the big down days. You didn’t panic the last time we were here in July and this is a bit worse (about 10-12% worse). You’re not worried and considering adding a bit versus selling. If you’re at least considering it then you’re in good position. If you want to sell everything, its a sign of overexposure.
Underexposed: You’re buying every single day there is a -2-4% day and are rapidly buying any dip in general. This usually means you are trying to cost average down. In that case this is probably the last real chance to own major coins. Even if you lean bearish, really doubt they can survive without printing infinite money within the next few years."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/people-feeling-the-panic-mbas-your
20. "As more money flows into the fossil market, public institutions are getting increasingly boxed out, leaving the study of ancient specimens in the hands of the billionaires who can afford to buy the bones.
As the prices of fossils get higher, so do the stakes — and the possibility they’ll be lost to the public. Apex’s auction has reignited a long-roiling debate at the bedrock of fossil discovery. On one side stand commercial hunters and ranchers who extoll the virtues of property ownership and the free market, and argue scientists disdain them because they don’t have PhDs like they do. On the other are academics who say that fossil hunters are in it for the money, and when a skeleton is sold, its contribution to science turns to dust.
Fossils like Apex are caught in the middle."
https://thehustle.co/originals/who-are-fossils-for
21. This is such a good discussion on AI and Compute power. Servers, Steel and Power. The Industrial Revolution continues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAz2xL1tQfg
22. "“It is no longer the place I am familiar with; it has become a strange place. I have no choice but to get to know and adapt to it anew.
“The way of life and the social atmosphere that I once knew are already things of the past; they no longer exist.”
He said the city had lost a many of its young, Cantonese-speaking adults, “as if a whole social stratum has suddenly disappeared”.
“Yesterday’s Hong Kong is dead, and today’s Hong Kong is one of the cities in China,” he continued, questioning whether Hong Kong is still an international city.
He thinks Hong Kong will maintain to some degree its status as an international hub while losing much of what made it special over time, including the rule of law and judicial independence upon which it built that reputation.
He said: “Hong Kong will become increasingly enmeshed with mainland China, which is also a stated policy aim of increased integration with Shenzhen and the
rest of the greater Pearl Bay area.”
https://inews.co.uk/news/world/hong-kong-dead-residents-say-city-lost-identity-3181742
23. "This is now no longer a story about a horrifying triple murder and the misinformation spread about it. It’s a story about a serious failure of social cohesion, driven in large part by fears about immigration and the perceived failures of integration.
Some of these anxieties have real roots. While overall crime in the UK has steadily declined for the past two decades, knife crime—a major concern in a country in which gun homicides remain mercifully rare—has risen significantly in recent years.
Similarly, the number of refugees seeking asylum in the UK has soared in recent years and now matches a previous peak reached in 2002—something hammered home by the last Conservative government with their ceaseless calls to “Stop the Boats.” Finally, there are real problems with the integration of parts of the UK’s Muslim population, as emphasized last year in a damning report written by the government’s social cohesion tsar Dame Sara Khan."
https://www.persuasion.community/p/why-britain-is-rioting
24. "The upshot of all of this is that the Fed should probably start cutting rates now, like markets expect them to. Yes, the economic data are still fairly solid. But if the Fed keeps surprising the markets by being more hawkish than expected, it could cause continued deterioration in the labor market — and, eventually, an unnecessary recession. Yes, it was bad to be too dovish for too long in 2021, but it would also be bad to be too hawkish in 2024."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-us-economy-is-not-crashing
25. "You’ll read the above and quickly realize that boom time startups and gloom time startups really operate with different strategies. And it might be true that founders who excel at one end up being poor at the other. For folks who are building solid, foundational businesses, and want to grind hard over many years, starting a company during a recession ends up potentially working great.
Ultimately though, I hope many of you who are thinking of building a new startup are undeterred from the economic turbulence we’ve recently seen. There are huge benefits from building something new when things are a little slow. And they help create the opportunities for the next wave."
https://andrewchen.substack.com/p/boom-time-startups-vs-gloom-time
26. I always learn new stuff. Balaji is a smart guy but he can be bit cold blooded geopolitically, driven by libertarian views & anti-US Democrat (blue) views.
Yet he is right on many things, India is on the rise, USA is a poor ally, a bad exemplar of rules based order and sadly in decline due to bad policy and leadership.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW9mMcE7I7A
27. Solid discussion on how to build a business (or businesses) on content platforms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz-0OojF08Y
28. Kevin Hartz is the man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39O-_Tj6Swo
29. Another disturbing but important geopolitical discussion. Taiwan is the key.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23f971HpNcY
30. An insight-dense conversation on the concept of the Network State.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4dcTvoFHZM
31. This is a must listen to for all founders. Gold. How to use numbers and what numbers to track for your business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oePi8tg_T6U
32. "If so many VCs are willing to invest in hard tech startups, why does raising pre-seed capital still feel so hard? It starts with a simple fact: the vast majority of VCs that invest in hard tech startups aren’t actually hard tech VCs. They’re generalists. And generalist investors often come to the table with stereotypes and preconceived notions that can get in the way of making an investment."
https://chrisneumann.com/archives/how-to-pitch-hard-tech-to-a-generalist-vc
33. This is one of the best business recaps of the week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzR4GMvAz_M&t=1725s
34. This is an excellent and timely discussion for founders. It's ugly out there so this is just valuable advice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCIDROdUUSE
35. "The Airport is evolving with this new demand. For decades, airport used to resemble a train station. A few chairs and seats for people to wait until their flight. Simple and efficient.
Now the airport is a luxury mall. You can spend an entire day at the Singapore airport and feel like you are at a resort. But this is just the beginning. The airport is most likely going to evolve from a luxury mall to something else. Some say a mini-city but others say an entire Artificial Intelligence and robot enabled space station. Layovers won’t be seen as nightmares anymore but maybe as part of the vacation itself."
https://lindynewsletter.beehiiv.com/p/airport-new-third-place
36. These are both very instructive discussions on the business of investing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YXMZhsVClI&t=177s
37. "The New Battle of Kursk Continues…For Now
Time will tell whether using these Ukrainian brigades to attack into Russia rather than defending eastern Ukraine has been the most strategically effective use of their forces. At a time when Ukrainian defenders in the east are being pushed back on several axes, the use of highly capable Ukrainian combat forces in Kursk is either a brilliant countermove to shift the initiative in the war, or a strategic error which compounds the challenges in Ukraine’s eastern Ukraine defensive operations.
There is no way yet to make this assessment, however. As with all war, there is an abundance of uncertainty at the early stage of another Ukrainian offensive. Not only are we unsure about just how far deep the Ukrainians have penetrated, but we are also unsure of the strategic and political objectives of this operation.
While success or failure in this Ukrainian cross-border attack may not win or lose the war, it will have an important bearing on Ukrainian morale and western support. But ultimately, the success or otherwise of the coming offensives will be determined on the ground. Good leadership at all levels, flexible execution, determined close combat, good logistics, surprise and adapting to opportunity will all be crucial to tactical and operational success. And this must be applied with sound strategic reasons.
This all might end up being just a larger scale raid than the previous 2023 and 2024 incursions into Russia. We will know in time."
https://mickryan.substack.com/p/the-battle-of-kursk-2024
38. "Let’s focus back on Harris’ dilemma of what to do about a developing global financial crisis sparked by the unwinding of Japan Inc.'s monster yen carry trade. She could let the chips fall as they may, allow the free market to destroy overleveraged businesses, and permit wealthy baby boomer financial asset holders to experience some real pain. Or, she could instruct US Treasury Secretary Bad Gurl Yellen to fix it with printed money.
Like any politician, regardless of party affiliation or economic beliefs, Harris will instruct Yellen to use the monetary tools available to her to avert a financial crisis. Of course, that means the money printer will go brrr in some way, shape, or form. Harris will not want Yellen to wait – she’ll want Yellen to act forcefully and immediately. Therefore, if you share my view that this yen carry trade unwind could collapse the entire global financial system, you must also believe that Yellen will swing into action no later than the opening of Asian trading next Monday, August 12th."
Make Tomorrow Better: My Time at Curtin University
A little known fact, I’ve been an Entrepreneur in Residence at Curtin University in Perth since 2020. Randomly, I might add, as when I met my friend Rohan who ran the Commercialization Department there, first in Perth at West Tech Fest in 2018 and then in SF right before the pandemic lockdowns in 2020. He asked me to join the program a few months after, and I happily accepted as I was chilling career-wise at that time.
During the pandemic, I advised on their accelerator program and did some mentoring & keynote talks for their accelerator and entrepreneurs virtually. And finally, in 2023, I got to fly out to Perth to meet the teams and do these live shows, which was really great after years of Zoom calls.
I was asked by many of the founders in the program during my week there: Why are you doing this? Are you looking for startups to invest in? Is it for the money?
My answer in general is NO. My annual stipend is 10k AUD and I end up donating most of it to charity anyways. My trip here and spending a full week here actually costs me money because there are opportunity costs (and my billable hours are not cheap). I am certainly not looking for deal flow, I have far more deals than I can sift through.
But for me, coming out here is so much fun and educational. I get to come to a beautiful city and region. And it’s incredible to talk with and try to help young smart entrepreneurs, early in their journey, even if you don’t invest. It’s literally my juice and gives me so much energy.
You can disproportionately impact them and their business at this stage. Hopefully in a positive way. The basic questions that come out really help me think and understand where the ecosystem is. It also helps me figure out whether my advice and knowledge still makes sense and is relevant. And dissecting problems for whatever shape or size of the business is how I can sharpen my edge.
It’s fun but also a way to help grow new startup ecosystems. And it’s also good for the karma front as well. I truly believe in Karma. Do good things for others and it comes back to you in some other random form. But the big reason is that it fulfills the mission & motto that Curtin espouses: “Make Tomorrow Better.” This is ultimately my mission for life as well.
Summer Chilling: Enjoying the Calm Before the Storm
It’s always good to have some time off. I spent most of the Summer of 2024 resting and reading in Vancouver with my parents. Especially as they are getting older.
It was really nice as Vancouver is incredibly pleasant during the summer. Warm, sunny and perfect weather unlike the rest of the year. And way nicer than the sweltering hot summers in Europe and Asia. Unlike a lot of VCs and startup-ers who brag about working in the summer which is a sign of massive insecurity, people just need a break.
With things relatively quiet on the business front in Silicon Valley and most people on some form of holiday, this is the perfect time to step out. Especially with doting Asian immigrant parents who took care of food, cleaning and laundry. All I did was do the occasional business calls, but spent the bulk of the time reading, listening to podcasts and writing. I made sure I got plenty of rest and hard exercise in the sun.
I also spent lots of time re-tooling, re-evaluating and rethinking my investment thesis as well. It’s fun and weird sitting in my old room while doing so. This is a very good time to reflect, think and plan for the future.
Especially needed in light of the nutty year so far and what everyone believes will be an even crazier and busy autumn of 2024. Most of us who grew up in North America have this seasonality wired into us due to our school systems. Quiet relaxing summers and crazy busy autumns, falls & springs. More so, if you are a parent now where you experience this again.
I’m a firm believer in “resting ethic”. Sometimes you have to sprint but in the long run it’s a marathon. You need rest to prepare for busyness and challenges ahead of you in the year. So don’t feel guilty for taking a break. Your mind and body needs this if you want to stay competitive for the long run.
Total Personal Ownership: The Only Way for a Good Life
I really wonder what’s happening with people these days. Victimhood, blaming others or circumstances when stuff goes wrong. I was kind of like this in 2020, when the pandemic lockdown hell happened.
I got screwed out of some money by tenants, angry with some business partners who owed me money and ghosted me. I was angry, enraged. My anger erupted and it pretty much wrecked my family life. It’s easy to blame the incompetent SF government, my tenants, my business partners, but the blame rests with me.
I got myself in that position. I was not stoic or in control of my emotions. I did not prepare enough cash reserves. I trusted people who were not to be trusted. Yes, the 2020 pandemic was an extraordinary event. Still, I was absolutely not prepared and I paid for it severely.
What I learned from that situation and from listening to Jocko Willink, Justin Waller and Andrew Tate is that everything is your fault.
If you go outside in the rain and you didn’t prepare a jacket or umbrella, it's your fault for not checking the weather and being ready for anything. Bad tenants, I did not vet them enough. Bad business partners, I was not good enough of a judge of character. Bad policies (especially during the pandemic lockdowns) by the local or federal government? I was not engaged enough in politics. Plus, I was not financially strong enough to be completely independent from these impacts, to be able to fly somewhere else earlier like Ukraine, Sweden, Miami or Taiwan. There is no one to blame except for yourself. Everything becomes a lesson to get better and grow.
Life is supposed to be hard, something I remind myself of and get reminded too when I am flying too high. But life is also easier with this mindset of total ownership. You know that you are the only person responsible for your destiny. It’s freeing. I act like I am an army of one.
And the benefit of having total ownership of your life, if anything good comes out of it, this is also due to yourself (obviously with some help & luck too). That’s why I feel ZERO guilt for enjoying the fruits of my hard work from the last few years. Good or bad, everything is your own fault. This way you have control over your life. I can tell you, this is a great place to be.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads August 25th, 2024
"No one would have crossed the ocean if he could have gotten off the ship in the storm."
- Charles Kettering
"Perhaps the real fight is not between Presidential candidates at all but between Project 2025, Project Biden, and those who think that think tanks, in collaboration with big business, should not be running the country. But, as long as we have inflation, it’s hard to see how any of these people hang out together, whether at a kid's Birthday party or a soccer match or over dinner. It’s simply too expensive.
This helps us understand a new reason why inflation is so very costly for the country. The political parties can’t operate, negotiate, or manage because they can’t and won’t speak to each other. It’s ironic. The loss of parties killed the parties. The “check please” at a restaurant has led to a request for a “check please” from politicians to donors. Thank you, inflation."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/pippa-and-vp-candidate-nicole-shanahan
2. Love this concept: Mission & "magically weird" investments. What a great interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zUk4GBL2Ag
3. Interesting take here on the effect of AI on white collar industry and its limitations: GPUs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVVVySiZSFA
4. "A series of changes in government, commercial industries, and culture has shifted defense to a viable venture investment category. The first and most important event leading to change has been the proven success of the vanguard companies; Palantir, SpaceX, and Anduril did what was seemingly impossible -- getting their foot in the door and disrupting decades of defense prime regulatory capture.
All three have all shown that startups can compete to build superior products that are more affordable for the government with a compelling investor return profile. Success does a lot to change minds and shows a viable path forward, drawing much more talent into the area.
As part of forging the way, the defense vanguard helped to drive reform that is enabling the entry of smaller innovative companies to further succeed in defense innovation."
https://www.alexkolicich.com/p/q2-2024-state-of-venture-update
5. This is a fun episode. Lots of tips for making your life better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bA7Ku7AcfHs
6. "At the end of the Cold War, the US reoriented itself to meet the challenges and opportunities of a world without an existential foe.
Flush with hubris due to its victory in the Cold War, the US chose the global path, and everything began to unravel.
The choice of a global orientation wasn’t a conscious decision. The US stumbled into it bit by bit until the accumulated weight of the decisions made on orientation’s path made it impossible to think any other way.
That inability to think differently soon became a problem when, in less than a decade, it became clear that the global utopia an overextended and increasingly restive US sought was a mirage."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/what-went-wrong-with-america
7. "Let’s stop inspiring students to become venture capitalists and get back to inspiring them to become founders and builders.
Because that’s what we actually need."
https://chrisneumann.com/archives/i-never-wanted-to-be-a-vc
8. An uncomfortable discussion on geopolitics via a libertarian lens. Net net: it's gonna be chaotic. Learn to think for yourself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVl0FFrihTc
9. "Hungary and Slovakia are signatories to a mutual defense treaty that binds 30 other members to come to their aid should they find themselves under military attack. While bickering between allies is nothing new, the situation at the eastern edge of the NATO alliance is unsustainable, especially if a solution to the current impasse is not swiftly found.
Just this week, a deputy foreign minister in Poland stated that Hungary should leave NATO and the EU altogether to instead “create a union with Putin and authoritarian states.” Brussels has little use for Orbán and Fico and vice versa, and their current stance makes divorce a real possibility."
https://newsletter.doomberg.com/p/eating-their-own
10. "Their cutting-edge research, especially from the prestigious Microsoft Research Asia lab in Beijing, has become world-renowned.
But the kind of U.S.-China tech collaboration Microsoft once pioneered might be facing an end. The Biden administration has blocked China from accessing chips used to develop AI technologies, proposed restrictions on tech investments in China, and threatened bans on Chinese-owned platforms like TikTok. In Washington, Microsoft’s presence in China is increasingly viewed as a national security threat.
But a growing distrust of China by U.S. politicians is making such collaboration, as well as the jobs of Chinese engineers, precarious. Despite China’s slowing economic growth and restricted freedoms, the tech giant’s high-earning Chinese staff are content with their life at home, where they enjoy cheap food, low crime rates, and child-care support from their parents. At the same time, they fear losing their Microsoft jobs if they refuse to relocate."
https://restofworld.org/2024/microsoft-china-ai-engineer-relocation/
11."When critics in Britain used to talk about the Establishment, this was what they meant.
Most countries are like this, at least to a degree, but the tendency has become much more pronounced in recent years. Whereas until the last generation or so there were power centres outside the Establishment (trades unions, mass political parties, even parts of the media) these have now been dismantled, and in their place we have a clone army of politicians, NGOs, journalists, pundits, consultants, political operators, but also judges, government officials, development agencies and even leaders of the police, the military and the intelligence services, who have been through the same formation, studied the same subjects at the same universities, all know each other and very largely think the same way.
They have disputes and they struggle for power, but they do so among themselves, and they join forces to resist outside pressures. This is why it's unnecessary to suppose conspiracies. Development agency officials, for example, share very much the same fundamental view of the world as personnel in other parts of government, and will sympathise with and try to support, the same individuals and groups as the foreign ministry, or even the intelligence agencies.
In the end, though, ordinary people do not want to be written off, nor are they ready to be insulted into voting as the elites want. They are perfectly aware that power is now disproportionately held by a smug and self-satisfied urban Liberal elite who no longer even pretend to care about the interests of ordinary people. And if they cannot get satisfaction from conventional political parties, they will get it from elsewhere, irrespective of whether PMC journalists decide to characterise this, in hushed and ominous tones as a “move to the Right.”
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/no-left-turn
12. "The entire world instinctively recognises the fakeness of our current point in human civilisation's history. Out of the senseless destruction of WW2 came many technologies that have powered our modern civilisation. Peaceful, safe, and almost carbon-free nuclear energy generates many gigawatts of electricity. Billions of people can travel worldwide on commercial airlines. And of course, the most essential thing to come out of the war: the creation of a new form of silicon-based life, which we call thinking machines or computers.
The growth of the population and the relative wealth of humanity since the war has been astounding. But the easy stuff has been done, and now politicians, in an attempt to justify their existence, have turned to printing money to engage in all manner of activities that are a net drag on the human condition. Green energy is probably the most significant global malinvestment of this age.
Because we have cheap and plentiful capital, which is just a derivative of cheap and plentiful hydrocarbons, politicians believe they could dictate natural laws rather than the other way around. Taking a less dense form of energy, such as wind and solar, and expecting them to replace more dense forms of energy like coal, natural gas, and oil, will never happen naturally.
And by naturally, I mean without government subsidies or below-market interest rate loans.
The green energy hoax is just one example. Many of you rue the inflation that has taken place since Pax Americana eschewed the gold standard in 1971.
Forget the YOY government-manipulated inflation statistics. The price of a loaf of bread in nominal terms is higher today than yesterday. That need not be the case in an age of brilliant technology and cheap energy.
You know this regardless of how the elites gaslight you.
Your response is to speculate. Your response is to purchase magic internet money. Your response is to bid up “scarce” digital forms of culture that you understand and appreciate.
Airheads is a collection that capitalises on this inflation hoisted upon us by the elites. It does so aesthetically and technologically."
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/airhead
13. "In other words, the U.S. almost always anticipates each technological revolution, supports that technology with far-sighted government and industry action, invents many of the key technologies, innovates many of the key products, and at least attempts to commercialize the technology via American companies. This is overwhelmingly the norm.
But for batteries, the U.S. did only some of these steps. The potential of batteries doesn’t seem to have been widely anticipated decades in advance by the U.S. media or government. Battery technology received a bit of support, but not a huge amount. Some of the key invention was done in the U.S., but more was done in Japan and the UK, and the key products were innovated and successfully commercialized in Japan.
And in recent years, it has been the People’s Republic of China that has seized the lead in battery technology. China is the leader in battery manufacturing, of course, just as it is the leader in solar manufacturing. That has allowed China to electrify its economy much faster than the rest of the world.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-did-the-us-miss-the-battery-revolution
14. This is always an illuminating conversation. Not just on business but on living a great & enjoyable life. Optimize for heaven on earth. Stop being spectators.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59D993W7aLk
15. A depressing and sober assessment of how unready the US Armed forces are for possible war with China.
I do NOT want war but strength is deterrence. And the more the CCP knows how weak we are, the more dangerous the world becomes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbdbgB2VE1A
16. I always listen to Rex as he is on the forefront of the creator economy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJZrzeyKylo
17. "Over the past two years, however, Zelensky and his allies have often complained that the U.S. response to the Russian invasion has been too slow under Biden, too hesitant, and too distracted by fears of Russian escalation. A growing number of them believe that if Trump takes power and decides at some point to help Ukraine, U.S. support would become more decisive.
In trying to win over Trump and Vance, the Ukrainians are also counting on help from their allies in Europe and from the U.S. military industrial complex, which stands to earn enormous profits from the continued production of weapons for Ukraine. “They can explain to [Trump] why this benefits many people in America, especially in red states,” says the senior official. “It creates jobs. It supports the economy.”
https://time.com/7001148/ukraine-zelensky-plan-to-survive-trump/
18. Lots of life and business insights here. Tai Lopez is a legend.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJQRDG3q7_w
19. "If I had to guess, I’d say the IPO bar today for software companies is more like $400M growing at 40% than $250M growing at 25% [3]. Many, me among them, would argue that the bar is much higher than it needs to be, but there are things we can’t control and this is certainly one of them.
Once you pick the destination (in terms of size and growth rate) and the growth endurance factor (Scale picks 85%), the rest is just a math problem."
https://kellblog.com/2024/08/01/startup-growth-trajectories-and-the-saas-mendoza-line/
20. "As we stand on the cusp of The Great Diffusion (the topic of my recent Tedx talk), an era defining shift from consolidated power to a more decentralized and distributed framework, financial services find themselves at a crossroads.
The coming wave promises to reshape industries, none more so than the guardians of our capital."
https://99tech.alexlazarow.com/p/what-a-coming-wave-of-diffusion-means
21. I like Pavel Durov. We met and had dinner in Helsinki 9 years ago.
Interesting dude: This is a great conversation even though I don't like Tucker Carlson.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ut6RouSs0w&t=903s
22. "So yes, Chavez and Maduro wrecked Venezuela’s economy with bad policy. The oil price drop of 2014 certainly didn’t help, nor did America’s sanctions in 2017. But the core screw-ups were mismanagement of PDVSA, nationalizations, and price controls.
The first of these was questionably “socialist”, since it involved strike-breaking and weakening of a state-owned enterprise. But the second and third fall pretty clearly within the ambit of policies that 21st-century socialists tend to embrace. Other “socialist” countries in Latin America, such as Bolivia, have escaped Venezuela’s fate by doing less of all three of these things.
Venezuela thus serves as a warning to other countries. Electing left-wing leaders can be fine — witness Boric in Chile, Lula in Brazil, etc. But you really do have to watch out for the Chavez/Maduro types who think that “revolution” means taking a wrecking ball to every economic institution in the country. That way lies madness."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/how-maduro-and-chavez-wrecked-venezuelas
23. Listening and learning from a legend in Silicon Valley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD5bOhscU1c
24. "Americans, they need to watch South Africa and see what is happening. Because it is definitely, definitely coming to their side of the world one of these days. That said, America is still an absolute powerhouse when it comes to financial income and things like that. And they’ve still got a ton of people paying taxes, whereas in South Africa, we’ve got almost no taxpayers left,19 and we’re just staring into the abyss at this stage.
So, for the Americans, I would honestly say that if they want to ride out the storm, they have to form their own little communities now, of their own people who want to succeed and thrive in a world gone crazy. But then, you know, for them, it’ll be a case of “Oh, you’re talking about a militia,” and you get labeled a nutcase even though, no, that’s not what you’re talking about. So how they work around that will depend on their local environment and situation.
As I say, if they want to right out the storm, they need to start working together toward the common goal of self-sustainability."
https://www.theamericantribune.news/p/surviving-south-africa-a-boers-take
25. "To see what’s happening, we must look to Rhodesia and the Rhodesian experience: subversion and conquest at the hands of weak-kneed Westerners and communist terrorists. To do so, this article will first examine the history of Rhodesia and the changed social conditions in the West that led to a war on hierarchy, and will then examine how that led to the Great Betrayal of Rhodesia and why it matters to modern Americans.
But despite Rhodesia’s economic success, resistance to communism, and effective steps toward charting a course in Africa where the whites wouldn't face the fate of those left behind in Congo or Kenya and where blacks wouldn't face the same fate as in South Africa, America helped the USSR destroy the brave little land. It did so, as we have covered before, by working with the UK to embargo Rhodesia while encouraging the USSR and Red China’s efforts to aid the anti-Rhodesian rebels.
Though Rhodesians, black and white, put up a valiant fight, the combined weight of the world’s efforts to destroy them proved too much. They ran out of fuel, were starved for arms and ammunition, were close to running out of men, and, after Angola and Mozambique fell to the communists, were beset on all sides but south by enemies and infiltrators.
Mugabe quickly took power and proceeded to first genocide opposing tribes, the Ndebele and Kalanga peoples, and then nationalize the white-owned farmland, carrying out many atrocities against and heaping many indignities upon the white population in the process. Now, far from being an economic powerhouse and the breadbasket of Africa, Zimbabwe has seen hyperinflation and famine."
https://www.theamericantribune.news/p/why-rhodesia-matters
26. "As with Rhodesia, South Africa used to be one of the few functional states in Sub-Saharan Africa. There was a thriving economy, you could go outside without being robbed or murdered, flipping a light switch would turn on the power, and farmers were safe to sleep on their ancestral lands without undergoing horrors that would make Pol Pot blush.
Then came America and its “liberal world order,” ....... Now, South Africa is exactly as K9 described it. A nation already in disarray and getting worse by the day."
https://www.theamericantribune.news/p/a-boers-view-of-the-crisis-in-south
27. Focus on lift not runway. Lots of good advice for founders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSZnLUrtp58
28. "The seemingly random attacks have one thing in common: according to local officials, they are all linked to Russia. And while they might look minor in isolation, taken together these incidents amount to what security experts say is Russia’s hybrid war on the West.
“We are threatened by something which is not a full-fledged military attack, which are these hybrid threats … everything from meddling in our political processes, (undermining) the trust in our political institutions, disinformation, cyber-attacks (…) and sabotage actions against critical infrastructure,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said during an event in Canada last week.
Rod Thornton, a senior lecturer in defense studies at King’s College London, said there’s been a pattern of attacks linked back to Russia. “There has definitely been an increase over the last few months in these particular types of operations. It is something that the Russians are ramping up,” Thornton said."
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/30/europe/russia-hybrid-war-nato
29. "The Olympics do feel smaller than in the 1980s. It may be because we are consuming them now in smaller bites. Some of what made them feel important in the past — particularly the intense us vs. them nationalism of the Reagan era — is gone.
What is still there is the primal drive to compete and the hunger to feel something. In a world increasingly run by old people, it’s inspiring to watch young people pursue excellence for the sake of something bigger than themselves: one another and their countries."
https://www.profgalloway.com/olympic-moments/
30. This is important to understand. Why Tariffs matter & how China is disadvantaged here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZhSMr9T7WI
31. A perspective from the other side: China. ie. our competitive rivals.
"What’s propaganda anyway? I have witnessed two kinds of propaganda in my life, so I think I have something to say here: propaganda is really just the systemic expression of any set of belief systems (aka ideology) that claims only this ideology is better than everything else. Sometimes, even facts and truth can be sacrificed for the sake of upholding this one ideology. But isn’t telling the truth (including the whole truth) what news media’s main job is all about? Since when does conformity to the same story become more important?
In this regard, Chinese propaganda and Western propaganda really don’t have much difference. The only difference is that Western propaganda is far more effective, that far fewer people question it, and that wars and suffering and human sacrifices could be brought about by this self-referential propaganda without people involved ever realizing it and ever regretting it."
https://www.china-translated.com/p/the-end-of-wests-ideological-monotony
32. This is a gloomy discussion on the EU. Net net: it's not particularly well structured for the future & lots of major problems that are existential over time. Very educational.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CjV24QJ1BU
33. "Health damage is hard to reverse as you get older. It is much better to keep your good health until your old age than to try to regain health when you are 50 and weak."
https://lifemathmoney.com/where-will-your-health-be-at-70/
34. "Putin: A 16-10 swap in the West’s favour is not a great return for Putin. Having to surrender high level Putin critics like Kara-Murza and Yasin must have been painful for Putin. It shows that Putin wants to deal now which creates interesting momentum around a potential Ukraine deal before the U.S. elections. There are clearly channels of communication open between Russia and the West and these could be similarly used to talk peace over Ukraine.
The long war ultimately does not work for Putin - there are plenty of risks therein (Prigozhin 2, and see Wagner losses this week in Mali) and especially if Trump loses in November. Ukraine is seeing a real ramp up in military supplies now with F16s arriving in the past week and the U.S. rolling out the $61 billion support package for Ukraine before the November elections.
Add in the $50 billion G7 support for Ukraine linked to immobilised Russian assets and Ukraine is getting decent financial support now which it can use to purchase weapons to improve its military position in the months ahead."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/putin-wants-to-deal
35. "Globally, we’ve fallen behind most major economies since 2000. At the turn of the century, the economic output of the average Canadian was on par with Australia. Today, Australians are almost 10% more productive, while their economy has grown 50% per person faster than Canada’s over the quarter century. We’re further behind the United States. Canada is 30% less productive than the U.S. and closer to lower-income states like Alabama in terms of economic performance than tech-rich California or New York. The result: We’ve fallen from the 6th most productive economy in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in 1970 to the 18th as of 2022.
Pretty much every Canadian has something at stake. The productivity gap with the U.S. stands at about $20,000 per person a year, putting Canadians’ wages roughly 8% below their U.S. counterparts. The gap has been even more taxing for capital. Anyone who invested $1,000 in Canada’s main stock index in 2000 would have $4,400 today; the same investment in the U.S. S&P 500 index would be worth $6000—a more than 35% difference.
Our relatively low productivity —the amount of production and income generated per hour worked in the economy— has been held back by a shortfall in investment, especially outside real estate, construction and public services like hospitals. As a result, we’ve not been able to capitalize on the immigration boom that has added seven million people—most of them working-age and well-educated—since the turn of the century and offset the retirement wave of baby boomers.
The deindustrialization of many parts of Canada has cut into the country’s overall prosperity."
https://thoughtleadership.rbc.com/canadas-growth-challenge-why-the-economy-is-stuck-in-neutral/
36. "If you, like me, have experienced periods of fog and feeling stuck or inertia, then it’s time to break up a big or lofty goal into less daunting steps.
This way, you’ll find it easier to get started; I’ve found 2 weeks is a nice period of time to enable regular assessment and reflection, without putting too much pressure or being too hard on myself.
I also think sprints more easily facilitate attainable, realistic action and execution.
Nothing feels better than knowing that you are actually closer to a goal than yesterday, last week, and 2 weeks ago.
What matters is that you get the ball rolling in the right direction."
https://shindy.substack.com/p/rituals-2-week-sprints
37. "Now for the fun part here is our assumptions based on 2024 Living Standards
General: As a rule of thumb we’d think the majority are set in the $4-6M range by age 40. This is pretty hard to argue. It does not work in expensive cities like NYC and LA. We assume that this amount is going to work for 99% of people because they could move to a city they like and we really doubt everyone reading this “needs” to live in NYC/LA. This nets out to around $1M house and $4M invested. Tough to lose outside major cities.
Upper General: If you are a big city person and want an upper tier life in major cities it’s probably a double. This means you need to be on track to reach around $8-12M by age 40. This will give you all the wiggle room you want for a bigger place even if single to having kids/family. As usual your call. This is the rough number as $8M + $2M house is going to be extremely comfortable.
There is zero shot you stop working entirely as people who make it to this level are generally business builders anyway.
Joke/Video Game Money: Around the $20-30M range everything is largely the same. While you are not flying private all the time and don’t have a security team with you (more problems realistically), you can’t spend it all. You can simply invest this out diversified and nothing is out of of reach beyond nonsense like Yachts.
Before moving on here, you can have your own number. We know that people will ask about rough proxies so there they are. On Crypto Twitter Video Game money is “poor” but in the real world it isn’t. Similarly, people saying $10M isn’t enough to retire/be financially set is also cope. It’s only true in the most expensive cities in the world."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/being-a-better-personal-financial
38. Super insightful discussion on General Catalyst. One of the giants of Venture capital. The evolution of a firm: Investing and incubating.
https://www.joincolossus.com/episodes/18391328/taneja-engineering-global-resilience?tab=shownotes
The Art of Living Well: It Doesn’t Have to be Expensive
I frigging love “The Random Show” with Tim Ferriss and Kevin Rose. It’s really enjoyable listening to two very accomplished individuals who are also clearly very close friends sitting down and talking about life & learnings.
Both are incredible investors and builders in tech and media, with incredible track records. But more importantly they have very good eyes on consumer & lifestyle trends. You can almost call them “tastemakers” at the forefront of culture.
They really excel when it comes to talking about the products, movies/shows/books and even health treatments and supplements they are taking. Small purchases that give an excess of enjoyment compared to their costs. And most of these are very affordable & accessible to everyone. This is despite the fact that both can choose to go super luxury as they have the resources and wealth to do so.
It goes to show you what an amazing age we live in, where everyday products are small enjoyable luxuries. This could be unique coffee brands to bone broth to soap or a really nice Hinoki tree scented oil.
You can live a rich life without breaking the bank. In fact this is preferable so you can spend that money on family and great experience and also building up assets. It’s wonderful if you love and can afford the luxury cars, clothes, watches and houses/estates/mansions all around the world. This seems to be more of the American, Middle Eastern & Chinese way of wealth.
Which as a note this seems pretty stupid & suicidal in a world of growing wealth inequality, rising crime, decreasing state capacity (Ie. police) and many more poor and angry young men.
Hence there is a lot to proclaim about the benefits of “stealth wealth” which is how most of the rich in old Europe, Taiwan and Japan live. You literally cannot tell if they have any money. They are quiet, hidden and pretty much anonymous.
Which means they can live a normal life without harassment. They can go to the mall, eat at any restaurant and travel without an entourage or security. All of which sounds pretty awesome when you compare this to the weirdo and paparazzi filled lives of the well known and mega rich like Bezos, Gates, Kardashians or movie stars.
You can live a great life as long as you know what matters to you. Time, health, family and friends as well as the small luxuries you care about. Things like what books, travel and good food are to me. Simple pleasures that let you live well and increase your quality of life. You don’t need to spend a lot of money to have these.
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