Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads December 8th, 202
It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.–Confucius
This was an insightful conversation on the podcast election in 2024 and Vercel: personalized software enabler.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zTjlcr1wdw
2. "All the moons have lined up, and podcasting is on an upward spiral. But as with most everything digital, podcasting is a winner-take-most/all proposition, because everyone has access to … everyone. A scant handful of pods, those with the biggest listenerships, capture nearly all the ad revenue. By some estimates, of the 600k podcasts that produce content each week, the top 10 get half the revenue. Put another way, to build a business in podcasting that pays people well and keeps the attention of a host with high opportunity cost(s), you likely need to be in the top 0.1% by listenership.
The political power of podcasting is only beginning to be felt. This election was supposed to be a referendum on bodily autonomy: It wasn’t. Historically, the candidate who raises the most money wins: She didn’t. In each election the victor is likely to be whoever best weaponizes an emerging medium: He did. By far the most potent media weapon this time was podcasting."
https://www.profgalloway.com/the-podcast-election/
3. "Assuming that we have the mania and one last hurrah in 2025 like every 4 year cycle, it means a trigger is needed to end the mania. The pop is going to be one of two things: 1) enormous rise in interest rates similar to what happened in the 1970s - inflationary bust or 2) a massive wealth redistribution and deleveraging event that causes large deflation - deflationary bust.
This means you can safely de-risk by going into: 1) real estate, 2) utilities and 3) other consumer staples.
Real Estate: In either situation, buying up a bunch of low-end or high-end real estate will set you up for decades. If rates are cut to zero and we’re in a deflationary scenario, you can simply rent it out and borrow money at low interest rates. Waiting out the storm. If it’s a 1970s type inflation, you’ll keep pace with inflation. Don’t lever up here because they would raise rates to a point that it’s well above inflation.
Utilities: Really doubt we do this but in a SHTF scenario we’d buy some time by holding them. In either situation (inflation/deflation), it’s just going to putter around and hold pace. It’s essentially the same as owning every commodity (excluding natural disaster risk). Not even the doomers who somehow didn’t get rich in the easiest 15 year period in history believe electricity and water will be shut off.
Consumer Staples: Boring stuff like Costco and Walmart. All the scaled up wholesale/grocery brands would work. Even Amazon probably falls in this basket considering their insane scale. Similar concept here, people won’t be skipping on food and essentials in any scenario."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/post-election-playbook-12-months
4. "To conclude, we are amist a massive redrawing of the map. Public facing wars can be seen on the ground in Ukraine and Gaza, and when Chinese ships surround Taiwan. They may be subsiding. The markets and the world economy will rejoice in the peace dividend. But a new, domestic war amongst various factions is replacing it. There won’t be front-page photos of this new warzone.
Instead, we’ll get glimpses of the battle through prosecutions, unexpected resignations, and announcements that government jobs will require moving remote locations far from Washington, DC. We are shifting from tanks as the primary weapon of global wars to transparency (or targetting if you are on the receiving end) as the main weapon of domestic uncivil wars. We don’t have a map that reliably shows us where anything really is right now.
How is America handling the election? For some, the prisoners from the asylum have broken into the government, and an apocalypse is underway. For others, the people in power have turned the government into a madhouse and will now be carted off to asylum/prison, thus ending the apocalypse. Here’s what we can all agree on: The political information complex needs to sort itself out. We need new, more accurate maps of reality."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/mapping-reality-trump-reigns-but
5. "And long before Trump, Beijing had been trying to convince the US and everyone else that the US and China were entering into “a new type of great power relations” where the two nations stood as comparable geopolitical forces if not outright peers.
Yet the reality is quite different. The US dominates nearly every lever of real power: the world’s largest market, the world’s financial hub, the world’s reserve currency, the world’s most powerful military, and control over many of the most technologically advanced sectors of the global economy, to name just a few. In facing off with the US, China ironically finds itself in the position that many other countries have occupied in dealing with a much more powerful and obstinate China.
The actual experience of US-China competition since the start of the trade war has made this fundamental power imbalance strikingly apparent. In trying to retaliate against each new round of Trump tariffs, China could only muster a fraction of the economic response due its far greater dependency on the US market versus the other way around."
https://www.high-capacity.com/p/beijing-braces-for-impact-what-trump
6. "If you’re bearish on today, but bullish on tomorrow, you might want to shift some of your capital out into this future set of opportunities or outcomes. You might also want to consider the cost of holding onto your capital today, and the purchasing power erosion you might experience if your money is not growing with the economy. In other words, you might want to allocate into venture capital, because this is a bet on the future, and a time shift of smaller returns today for bigger returns tomorrow.
What’s not an exaggeration is the blunting of the term venture capital to be far too inclusive of non-risk taking activities. In Spanish venture capital is synonymous with “risk capital,” and is known as “capital de riesgo.” In English somehow we’ve lost that notion, with a parade of sheep all claiming to do venture capital, but only seeking software as a service businesses, typically with “$1-2 million in ARR.” Venture capital is by definition the few percentage points of frontier capital that finances opportunities that cannot be supported elsewhere in the economy. Venture capital as mainstream is, I believe, an oxymoron."
https://ideas.scotthartley.com/p/time-dislocations-in-venture-capital
7. "Trump boasted on the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast that the U.S. government used to be fully funded by tariffs. This is true, before income taxes, the government was largely funded through tariffs. But that was in the 19th century, when the U.S. government was still very small. Unfortunately, in 2024, the U.S. government is large and in charge. The U.S. is a global empire, plus there's healthcare, Social Security, and other social services.
A tariff is a tax that a government charges on goods coming into their country from other countries. In 2023, U.S. goods imports from around the world totaled $3.8 trillion. Let's say, theoretically, Trump puts a 10% tariff on all imports and we ignore all consequences; that's only $380 billion in revenue. When annual government spending is almost $7 trillion and the national debt is nearly $36 trillion, that's not even a dent. The U.S. government collected $4.92 trillion in taxes in 2024, meaning you could put 100% tariffs on imports, and it still wouldn't replace regular tax revenue.
Another thing about across-the-board tariffs: they don't make sense for the U.S. or Trump. If you want to bring all levels of manufacturing back to the U.S., you're going to need more people to work in those factories. Trump supports mass deportation, closed borders, and his base is anti-immigrant. Unemployment in the U.S. is currently at 4.1% there aren't enough workers. You can't be for all-around tariffs and against mass immigration; it doesn't make sense."
https://www.globalhitman.com/p/how-to-survive-the-trump-presidency
8. Another really good discussion between two key individuals at the center of the renaissance at Silicon Valley. We are entering an age of abundance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXCBz_8hM9w
9. Incredible amount of insights here for the entrepreneur. So much to learn here from Luke Belmar. Distribution and attention.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XN4upb7AnZE&t=4058s
10. "We could keep iterating through the list. But if a founder wanted a list of jobs to automate, the BLS’ white collar jobs boards is a wonderful place to start. AI will change these workflows & capture a meaningful fraction of the labor spend.
It’s a roadmap for the White Collar Revolution."
https://tomtunguz.com/the-white-collar-revolution/
11. "But the chips are now valuable for longer than they were (again from AWS). “We made the change in 2024 to extend the useful life of our servers. This added about 200 basis points of margin year-over-year.”
The most important metric for these businesses will be profit dollars per GPU dollar cost."
https://tomtunguz.com/cloud-earnings-q3-24/
12. "Nature and nature’s God select for those who take to the frontier. Who choose not to remain stagnate. Those who want to win, to find a way against all odds. It’s why man has gone from being a simple caveman to deploying nuclear warheads. The frontier is energy, vitalism, and the man who can harness more energy than his enemies will win.
The frontier is the dividing line between what you are and what you can become. It’s where you enter the contest to prove what you are before God. Men are the R&D arm of mankind and the frontier is where they test their unique idea against God’s law, nature.
When our ancestors gained a foothold in the New World, they were changed by the land. Made distinct from their European cousins. The land always leaves its mark upon man. And the moment they gained a foothold and understood the lesson taught to them by God, they spread like an unquenchable fire across the country. Nothing could stop them but the Pacific Ocean."
https://resavager.com/p/take-to-the-frontier
13. "The media landscape is post-scarcity, and we need to retire the Big Bang Launch as the strategy. Always Be Launching, and launch a little each week. Go directly to your customers, your investors, and your supporters. Build over time, not in one go. And learn to tell the truth."
https://andrewchen.substack.com/p/always-be-launching
14. Guide for all young and old men.
"You need brains & brawn.
The sad reality is, a majority of fighters live pay check to pay check. Conor McGregor’s stardom is 1 of 1, the rest struggle to make ends meet. If you are objectively broke, this by definition does not make your capable. If you can’t feed your family, if you’re couch surfing & if you don’t have skills to make money in modern society, throwing a nasty 1-2 means very little.
On the other hand, being a multimillionaire who is balding, overweight & works 100 hours a week & does not have time for their family or experiences, is also not a flex.
The ideal sits somewhere in between these two extremes.
But it’s the rarest breed of man. The one that can do it all.
Imagine having the communication skills to disarm a potentially violent situation, but simultaneously know you could maul anyone in the same room as you if necessary?
It’s the ultimate juxtaposition. The definition of a Lethal Gentleman. It’s the reason Bruce Wayne & James Bond are such revered & idiolised figures by young men.
It’s incredibly rare, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible."
https://www.krucial.co/p/the-lethal-gentleman-manifesto
15. A Silicon Valley legend, OG investor and operator: Elad Gil. Well worth a listen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XYqFu0fKn0
16. This man is a hero. I'm a big fan & supporter of Stronghold: which provides humanitarian help in war zones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=audzAD0f3JI
17. "The 20th century was one of careful symmetry. The 21st century is fundamentally asymmetric. And we have failed to see it.
I teach a lot of courses about whatever we want to call Russian hybrid warfare, and in it I use these 8 words to try to get my students to understand how Russians understand power. Asymmetry. Chaos. Informality. Deniability. Risk. Cynicism. Capture. Guerrilla (the use of irregular forces).
These are Russian strengths because of Russian weakness. They have to do these things. And these are areas where democracies are extremely uncomfortable operating.
For 30 years we’ve gotten Russia wrong. And during this time, they have sculpted our threat perception of them. They have sculpted how we viewed this region and how we viewed its possibilities — and thankfully the Baltic states ignored all the advice to wait and be patient and instead to push for first NATO and then EU membership, otherwise they too would still be waiting in a line. Russia has sculpted Ukraine’s perception of itself, and how we see Ukraine, too.
We are still trapped in this narrative box. And now it affects how we see ourselves."
https://www.greatpower.us/p/why-do-democracies-pretend-to-be
18. "A couple of decades later, technology has made this task—and many others—not only fully automated but also simpler and more insightful. My first introduction to spreadsheets was through printouts at an oil change business, and now, I sit here appreciating the power we have at our fingertips. I’m a techno-optimist and believe we have an exciting future ahead. Sometimes, it’s worthwhile to pause and reflect on what has been, what is, and what will be."
https://davidcummings.org/2024/11/09/in-appreciation-of-technological-progress/
19. So much wisdom from Tai Lopez. Lots of good stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=VMNdWHoJcVk
20. Overview of Luke Belmar's Capital Club, looks like a top tier event.
Masterminds and expensive conferences are really important to level up your game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e21jdQZuoHU
21. "Looking back at the returns of solid investing, everyone feels like they want to replicate them. But only a small percentage of those willing replicators actually do the required work.
Formulas for success seldom exist but if I had to provide one it would be this:
GOOD INVESTOR = good business analyst + independent thinker + high pain tolerance + discipline + patience."
https://www.philoinvestor.com/p/so-you-wanna-be-an-investor
22. "The nuanced messy middle is that you can like Hillbilly Elegy and Demon Copperhead. You can believe that hard work can get people out of even the most hopeless situations. But you can also believe that it won't always work. You can believe in individual accountability AND the need for institution support of those whose individual capabilities won't be enough.
All of us could get more comfortable in that messy middle of nuance because, in my opinion, that's where the majority of truth resides."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/embrace-the-nuance
23. "No matter your views on the outcome of this election, I hope you can appreciate some of the messaging lessons that can be learned from it."
https://kellblog.com/2024/11/09/messaging-lessons-from-the-2024-election/
24. "A network effect is the effect by which the value a user receives from said good or service is dependent on the number of users in the network at the time. The more the users, the higher the value and vice versa. But what happens when critical mass has not yet been achieved?
Many projects get stuck in the early stage and fail, it’s a catch 22. In the early stages, network utility is at its lowest so there is not much incentive for a user to migrate to the network."
https://www.philoinvestor.com/p/jumpstarting-network-effects
25. Disagree with much of what this guy says on geopolitics, this guy teaches neutrality studies which is not realistic.
But good to listen to other folks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGGcr87oU8k&t=943s
26. A masterclass on making money online by a master: Luke Belmar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL2G3fEs-g0&t=166s
27. I dislike Cyrus Janssen as he is a CCP paid shill but he raises lots of good points.
America through arrogance has squandered our lead, alienated potential allies and screwed up by overusing sanctions.
Worth listening to and hopefully we wake up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPH-3-8Zf08
28. Audio quality is not so good but this was an instructive discussion on building massive businesses. Hiring great talent and what Product market fit looks like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIr95huOdrE
29. "The irony is that if we abandon the journey too soon, we’ll never know what could have awaited us. In life, staying on the train—staying disciplined—holds the promise of unseen rewards, richer than the fleeting temptations of the early stops. Only by staying the course do we get to experience everything the journey truly has to offer.
Get back on the train."
https://jaymartin.substack.com/p/be-careful-when-you-look-out-the
30. "The book, which is called Genesis, starts by talking at some length about polymaths. Many of the people who we study when we're in high school were the polymaths of the time, such as Leonardo da Vinci. They are unique and very rare, and they move science, art, culture, society, forward. There are polymaths in every society, in every religion. What happens when you have a polymath of that level in your pocket, available to you as an individual? This is a major change in human experience. It really changes the definition of what it is to be human.
It's good in the sense that it enables humans to operate at their highest level. If you use Google, you get more information, and you're smarter than if you didn't have Google. But then let's assume that you and I are negotiating against each other, and you're very good and I'm very good, but each of us has our own data sources.
Now imagine that there are AI systems that know how to do optimal game theory, and they have infinite information. Is there a scenario in which the system, recognizing that you are a powerful opponent with a similar system, will decide that the only solution to the problem is to attack you? How then do you do your strategy when every single person, in theory, can have that agent with them?"
https://samf.substack.com/p/war-in-the-ai-age
31. "BONUS: Tribes that pass the marshmallow test will wipe out tribes that don't."
https://oldbooksguy.substack.com/p/10-laws-of-social-behavior
32. "So although Biden did beat inflation, crime did go down, and Biden did eventually crack down on the border, I can understand why the traumas that working-class Americans had to suffer in 2020-2022 couldn’t be expunged just by some encouraging charts. And the fact that educated professionals were much more insulated from the disruptions of the pandemic and from Biden’s missteps in 2021 mean that they didn’t necessarily even see the need to acknowledge how hard these had been on everyone else.
This disconnect probably ended up alienating people without college degrees. Not only did it cause many progressives to support deeply unpopular things like “defund the police” on social media, but Democratic politicians who became used to talking to their educated progressive base probably got a distorted idea of what was troubling the rest of America.
America, fundamentally, is an incredibly rich country with a sick society. We have higher consumption by far than people in any other country on the planet, and yet by and large, except for the few people who were lucky enough to receive the blessings of community and health from our one remaining functional institution, we’re a bunch of unhealthy socially isolated drug addicts."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-educated-professional-class-is
33. "As universities roll out AI programs for associate, undergraduate, and graduate degrees, including the first Ivy League AI degree this fall, none of them are attacking the supply-demand gap for AI workers like the University of Texas.
Its AI master’s degree is completely online, open to as many students as the university believes are qualified, and costs $10k, a fraction of the price for in-person master’s computer science degrees at comparable universities. Adam Klivans, a computer science and AI professor who helped develop the AI master’s program, calls it “the best deal in higher ed.”
https://thehustle.co/originals/the-university-trying-to-bring-ai-to-every-industry
34. "Skip the Vacation Home: This keeps coming up in the comments but please don’t bother. If you were planning on buying a second vacation home we would say *please for the love of everything do not do it*. The only “exception to the rule” is if you can buy in a low tax state and claim 183 days to move your tax rate down. Then the math works. Reasoning…
Second homes require: 1) insurance, 2) tax, 3) maintenance and 4) management fees to rent it out for break even purposes
Second headache with this, maybe you and your family don’t want to go to the same location for a decade. A lot can change in a decade. Perhaps going to France, Japan, New Zealand will be more appealing for next winter/summer season
You’ll have the overhead costs locked in and once you pay all the fees to sell it, breaking even will be significantly harder
Instead? We’d do the following: 1) upgrade your cars if you need one kicking off the deferred maintenance, 2) add an ADU to your house, 3) buy a small wifi biz - you did build skills the past 4 years didn’t you anon? and 4) hire a good divorce attorney."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/the-golden-bull-of-2025-and-other
35. This is a good discussion ranging from politics, media and business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r3zt2HY2vk
36. Good discussion to decipher the political system and what it might look like under Trump 2.
The Line I thought I’d Never Write: What I learned From Tai Lopez
I try to learn from everyone! Tai Lopez has a reputation of being a big online scammer and his scammy ads. But I don’t know if that’s actually the case anymore. I’ve listened to several podcasts recently and he is really smart.
This show is worth listening to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qn07rX79pU. He is clearly well read and full of interesting facts. And he has clearly done well in business.
I’ve learned a bunch of concepts from him.There are 5 big Habits to get health, wealth and happiness: Reading, Building, Networking, Breathing, Fasting.
Reading: Have 5 mentors: 2-3 from reading & virtual and 2-3 live.
Invest in yourself: take some seminars or conferences on online marketing. As Tai said: “You are one person away from a million bucks!”
Buy books and courses. Learn how you learn: by audio, by reading or by doing and apprenticeships through mentors. Educate yourself. Learn how to sell. “Sales will make you money. Sales will make you rich.”
2. Building Wealth. Be willing to trade time for money in the beginning and once you have money, put it into the 5 Assets.
The 5 Assets are: Software (Tech), Land (Real estate which could be farmland, commercial or residential), Brand (Personal brand or even branded companies like LVMH or other luxury brand businesses), Cash (Cash is King & liquid) & Crypto (Basically weird stuff: crypto, gold, bullets & guns).
Most of this is self explanatory. You need to have rural farmland that is a minimum of a solid hour away from the city. And you need guns and ammo to protect your family and gold.
3. Networking: Understand people and human psychology. Figure out how you can be helpful to people and build win-win friendships. True friends make money together.
4. Breathing: which i liken to exercise and physical fitness
5. Fasting: eating clean and well and also equates to having discipline in your life. I fast 13 hours every day and a long
24-48 hour one every other month. It cleans out your system which is good for your body.
I also learned the concept of “Thick” and “Thin” Markets from him. Let’s use dating as an example. If you like Latina’s then the American midwest and Europe probably are not so great for you as there are probably not very many Latina’s living or working there. And hence hard to meet anyone you find attractive. It’s a “thin” market. You are probably better off in Southern California or Florida or any place in Latin America which are “thick” markets full of Latina’s.
From a startup perspective, if you are looking for tech angels and VCs, Silicon Valley is hard to beat and would be considered a “thick” market. Kansas City would probably not be so great, so it’s a “thin” market. I think you get the point. If you are looking for tech companies as customers either go to Silicon Valley or go to tech specific conferences. This is where they congregate. If you are targeting doctors, go to a doctor’s convention. Go fish where the fish are.
The most interesting framework he shared when looking at the world is that of Princes, Kings and Warlords. Princes are young up and comers on the rise, rich but not wealthy. Maybe $5M in net worth. Every type A individual aims to be Kings, rich, powerful and top of the game. But he wisely notes that you want to be a king who people think are princes. If you are a king, everyone wants to take you down. Other kings and those below. Then there is another level of wealth and power which are Warlords. Almost always billionaires who play another game: one that is tough and even more brutal. There are always levels to levels.
Tai is an interesting character and has lots of insight on people and how to thrive in a capitalistic society. I recommend watching some of his interviews.
Passport Bro Wisdom: Traveling for a Better Lifestyle
New York is an amazing city. What a grand city, full of life, beautiful people, entertainment, shopping and energy. I love it. Always enjoy coming to the city for business and pleasure. But boy does that place drain your wallet. It is the epitome of America, you can have whatever you want but you gotta pay for it. Even for a guy who lives in San Francisco, New York feels damn expensive. For the well heeled individual it’s very easy to feel poor here.
It reminds me of something Tai Lopez said in an interview. That happiness in your life is determined by where you live. You don’t always need to have billions. If you are a billionaire, even a place like New York can make you feel poor, because you are surrounded by deca-billionaires and everything is excessively expensive. In fact, you might be better off being a multimillionaire in a small town. It’s all personal preference and knowing yourself.
But location really does drive lifestyle. In fact, someone making $30,000 a month could live like a kind in Thailand, Taiwan, Albania, Georgia, Brazil, Bali or the Philippines for example. The lower cost structure allows you to live a way better lifestyle than you would back home in a place like SF or New York. Geo-arbitrage.
Which leads me to “Passport bros” which are a derogatory term for the young males who end up going to live in other, usually poorer countries to meet women. Not my favorite type of people but I think the passport bros might be onto something in their search for a better and more cost effective lifestyle.
Every time I come to New York, I get a reminder of this. I think why not both? Be able to afford to live in the expensive & awesome cities of San Francisco & New York but offset this with time in my favorite places that happen to also have lower costs like Italy, Taiwan, Japan, Albania, Georgia & Ukraine. That sounds like a great life plan to me.
Media as A Signal Two: Reflections on America in the 2020s
It’s always interesting watching films, I think a movie or movies reflect the sentiment of a country. Reflect and sometimes lead too. I wrote before about the aggressive and more bellicose nature of Chinese movies in the last decade. The depressing and grim nature of Japanese movies during the early 2000s.
There was a recent insight raised by the brilliant crypto entrepreneur and investor Balaji Srinavasan about popular blockbuster American movies in recent years, Oppenheimer, Barbie, Top Gun 2. They reflect nostalgia. A time when America was great, powerful and when the future was bright. When America was the bright shining city on the hill, prosperity was wide and we had immense economic and military power.
The disillusionment that started in 2000s with the Iraq War 2, the GFC aka Global Financial Crisis of 2008, the quagmire of Iraq & Afghanistan, the hollowing out of our industrial base and middle class, the 2020 pandemic and brutal lockdowns, the chaotic retreat from Afghanistan, inflation and the Russian Invasion of Ukraine showed how ineffective our elites have turned out to be. Disgusting, corrupt, grifting, incompetent elites who have led us to this. No wonder most Americans pine for a perceived better time.
But I think we are on the cusp of a big turnaround. Manufacturing is slowly but steadily coming back to America, thanks to the CHIPs Act and IRA under Biden. I expect this to accelerate under Trump.. We still have the US Dollar as the reservoir currency, we have tremendous amounts of natural resources, energy and food. America continues to suck in young smart talent from around the world.
More importantly, morale among many of the top young people is back. The AI boom is real and this will transform the economy. People are Inspired by Elon Musk and SpaceX’s recent accomplishments of reusable rockets. Anduril’s success in challenging the defense primes and beating them. We see an outgrowth of young smart entrepreneurs turning their back on SaaS and focusing on deeptech and hardtech all over America. But particularly in Southern California mainly El Segundo, Costa Mesa, Torrance, San Diego, Los Angeles, Long Beach, Hawthorne, among other places.
I love watching this new breed of founder. Mission driven workaholics. Patriotic, athletic, many religious, representing a more muscular Christian, outspoken and Based. Working on startups ranging from Nuclear power, space satellites, robots, weather control, drones, hydrogen airships.
And with a new Worlds Fair coming on America’s 250th anniversary I expect many of these breakthrough technologies will be shown here. It’s hard not to be optimistic about the future. What was science fiction is now becoming science fact as Lux Capital founder Josh Wolfe often says.
What an amazing time to be alive. America is back!!
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads December 1st, 2024
"I never dreamt of success. I worked for it." —Estée Lauder
Good overview on global geopolitics and economics from Zeihan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksbEkjAXgNc&t=2753s
2. A must listen conversation on geopolitics, America and the rotting of American primacy due to our own stupidity & lack of courage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHoxK2CPzDs
3. Climate change, Zeihan does a great job talking about its implications for various countries and cities.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOLqXxe8Cfs
4. "Eva Longoria stepped in at the last minute with a $6 million investment that saved "John Wick."
Since then, she's invested in two soccer clubs, a tequila, and a food brand, and she has her own production company.
"I want to be making money while I'm sleeping," Longoria said of her investment philosophy.
But something that I've learned, looking back, I love investing in people. You can tell me you're opening a chicken farm, but if you're fucking passionate about it and you've done the work and know the market, I mean, Chad and David did their work. They put in their 10,000 hours as stunt guys and second-unit directors; they had seen all the bad movies and knew how to make a good one. It was that. They were undeniably passionate, and I knew they were going to make an undeniable product.
They have that hunger and scrappiness that I have. I'm very scrappy in my life. I'm like, "Why can't we just do this like this?"
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/funding-john-wick-kick-started-120801144.html
5. "The phrase “temporary hardship” has quickly become notorious. It bears similarity to Xi Jinping’s admonishment to the Chinese people to “eat bitterness”. Americans are not used to their leaders promising economic pain.
But is Musk’s austerity proposal a good one? And would it in fact cause the kind of pain he’s forecasting? Here there’s quite a bit of uncertainty.
But the general contours are probably right — big cuts in corporate and personal income tax, tariff hikes, and deep cuts in government spending on health care would absolutely have this general effect. And unlike the macroeconomic pain, this distributional impact would likely be long-term, rather than temporary.
So on one hand, I think it’s refreshing that Musk is talking about fiscal austerity, and about the hardships that will be necessary to get the government’s finances back on a sustainable footing. On the other hand, I don’t like the way he plans to go about it — giving massive awards to himself and his own lofty social stratum, while inflicting pain on the masses. There are better ways to do austerity."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/thinking-about-temporary-hardship
6. "Throughout the second half of the 20th century, higher education was the key that allowed remarkably unremarkable kids (e.g., me) to unlock America’s promise of upward mobility. Today higher ed is a bouncer at the entrance to an exclusive club, where wealthy kids and a cadre of freakishly remarkable 18-year-olds build lasting relationships and lucrative networks with elite peers, while obtaining certification that gives them access to the greatest wealth-generating vehicles in history: S&P 500 companies."
https://www.profgalloway.com/high-anxiety
7. "From a supply chain point of view, commanders will have to consider the number of UAVs they have on hand and how long it will take to be resupplied. The more advanced the weapon, the fewer are stockpiled—the era of precision-guided munitions raises the real possibility of running out of ammo in the opening phases of a conflict. This will force commanders to reserve drones for deliberate offensives, where they can achieve combined effects in conjunction with other forces. The old rules of warfare will still prevail, in other words.
Finally, there are major tactical vulnerabilities in the current crop of drones. Most of their recent success has come from their ability to loiter as they seek out targets or wait to be fed targeting data. The skies will not always be uncontested, however, and the longer that drones loiter the more easily they can be targeted by ground fires or counter-drone swarms.
In 1513, awed by the cannons which had recently brought down castle walls across Italy, Machiavelli argued that fortresses were obsolete. Just seven years later, in The Art of War, he detailed the kind of fortifications a prince should build—fortress design had caught up to the offensive power of cannons. So it always is in war: new weapons do indeed alter the battlefield, but the change is far more gradual than early encounters suggest.
Drone maximalists tend to imagine buzzing drones filling the sky and vaporizing any ground forces, but don’t think through what that would entail. Just as artillery in the First World War and bombers in the Second failed to simply wipe out the enemy from afar, UAVs will take their place in modern armies as one piece of a complex, slowly-evolving system."
https://dispatch.bazaarofwar.com/p/a-look-back-at-the-nagorno-karabakh
8. This was a fun conversation on the business of venture capital and the unconventional path.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRvFnYBP7_I
9. The writer really hates the West but this is an important perspective to understand.
"It has been an extraordinary experience to follow throughout the year how Russian diplomacy managed to successfully bring together delegations from 36 nations – 22 of them represented by heads of state – plus six international organizations, including the United Nations, for the summit in Kazan.
These delegations came from nations representing nearly half of the global GDP. The implication is that a tsunami of thousands of sanctions imposed since 2022, plus relentless yelling about Russia’s “isolation,” simply disappeared in the vortex of irrelevance. That contributed to the immense irritation displayed by the collective west over this remarkable gathering. Key subtext: there was not a single official presence of the Five Eyes set-up in Kazan.
The various devils, of course, remain in the various details: how BRICS – and the BRICS Outreach mechanism, housing 13 new partners – will move from the extremely polite and quite detailed Kazan Declaration – with more than 130 operational paragraphs – and several other white papers to implement a Global Majority-oriented platform ranging from collective security to widespread connectivity, non-weaponized trade settlements, and geopolitical primacy. It will be a long, winding, and thorny road.
The collective west’s incomprehension of what transpired in three historic days in Kazan only highlighted their astonishing arrogance, stupidity, and brutality. That’s precisely the reason why the BRICS matrix is working so hard to come up with the lineaments of a new, fair international order, and despite an array of challenges, will continue to flourish."
https://thecradle.co/articles/brics-post-kazan-a-laboratory-of-the-future
10. "BRICS is not seeking to overturn the world financial order, nor replace it with another one. Their objectives are more modest: to provide alternatives for those who wish to escape, in whole or in part, from the current US and western-dominated financial system, and to progressively modify the way the system works from within, by organised cooperation. The Partner Country system is likely to mean less the formation of a new BRICS-based “bloc” in the Cold War sense, and more an increasing ability for countries in and around the BRICS area to play the West and BRICS off against each other.
To this extent, BRICS is not an alternative to the current international system, but rather the creation of a powerful bloc of countries who have a common interest in substantially changing the way it works. This is hard for westerners to understand and accept, since we are brought up to think in Manichaean terms, and of unbridgeable differences between groups and ideologies. But BRICS and its partner system represent a different model: it is hardly “new” since it is how most of the world has always worked. It relies on “sufficient” commonality of interest for nations to cooperate with each other in particular areas.
It recognises that on other issues the countries may have different views, or even be totally at odds with each other. It acknowledges that international politics is a massive series of Venn diagrams, not an assembly of strictly regulated geometric shapes separate from each other. BRICS is an example of an institution that flows naturally from such an recognition, and may well inspire others. For that reason, together with the suppleness of the concept itself, BRICS is likely to survive and develop, and to continue to be a puzzle to western pundits."
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/unlike-for-like
11. "From population growth to college students to recent developments and a major airport, Atlanta has everything needed for startups to thrive. Startup investors should invest both their time and money in Atlanta."
https://davidcummings.org/2024/11/02/why-atlanta-for-startup-investing/
12. "The elite and expert class comprises a uniquely integral caste system within the Western hegemonic model of civilization. This protected upper echelon is molded then harbored by an intricate network of institutions whose sole purpose is to maintain the unassailable cachet of honors they manufacture: various awards, certificates, degrees, scholarships, fellowships, chairs, residencies, et cetera. These institutions act as a credibility shield to perpetually encase the ‘system’ in a tempered glass dome of unquestionability.
But due to how intrinsically oppressive the system has had to become in order to root out free-thinking opposition, it has dealt itself a mortal wound by perpetuating a positive feedback loop which only drives it into further and further ideological isolation, such that the system begins to appear as a corrupt tower of Babel ready to topple to anyone watching from the outside.
The uselessness of our leaders plays into it because the system requires good, public-facing PR people to act merely as the shepherds or crowd-control maestros in keeping the public woozy, and from asking too many inconvenient questions. In our globalized, increasingly centralized world the CEO is now hired less for his innate leadership or talent to inspire, and more for the connections to foreign governments, banks, regulators, or other beneficial special interests they bring along.
It all comes back down to basic human nature and systems theory. We are programmed by these structures to believe that we rely on them for survival; that the structures are essential to our civilization and progression.
The blob grows and grows, and it knows only how to feed, like a runaway malignant cell.
The feedback loop requires the state to continue increasing in size in order to constantly expand the fat tissue buffer between the ruled citizenry and the elite caste."
https://darkfutura.substack.com/p/belfries
13. "Here’s what to watch for;
If the election is close and Trump is ahead in a drawn-out and contested counting effort, the potential for a swarm developing is high.
As we have seen in previous swarms, there aren’t any protections against a swarm rapidly mobilizing. Once it is mobilized, it will quickly seek to shut down all dissent at every level (including extrajudicial means to suppress X).
Additionally, decentralized elements of the swarm (devoid of any worry over long-term damage to the country’s stability, the rule of law, or cohesion) will simultaneously seek to overwhelm the opposition to overturn the election.
If this does happen, networked totalitarianism and a long night of AI-fueled controlled speech and behavior won’t be far behind. Let’s hope it doesn’t."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/an-american-swarm
14. History is fascinating.
"But who were the Zanj and how did they manage to resist the powerful Abbasids for over a decade?
After the Arab conquest of Mesopotamia, a military camp was established in the marshlands of southern Iraq. This camp soon grew into the wealthy port city of Basra, the link between Baghdad & the rich lands that lay on the Arabian Sea & beyond.
Southern Iraq was once a fertile region, the cradle of the first cities & Sumerian civilization, but flooding & poor upkeep reverted the land to marshes. The wealthy residents of Basra were given ownership of these marshlands on the condition they brought them under cultivation.
For this task, many thousands of Bantu-speaking slaves were imported from the Swahili Coast, the Zanj. Clearing the marshes & working the salt flats was a miserable existence, compounded by the cruelty of the overseers. These unimaginable conditions made the slaves restive."
https://varangianchronicler.substack.com/p/revenge-of-the-zanj
15. “The way that liberal Western democracies prevail over a centrally commanded nation is by doubling down on what made our countries strong, which is the free flow of talent and capital,” he said. “And so we don’t win by the civil-military fusion, by forcing companies to do things, but rather by investing, supporting and allowing free enterprise to succeed.”
It sounds good in theory, but in practice the idea has hit hurdles in both the U.S. and in Europe — in part because the private sector moves quickly and takes big risks, while the military is a lumbering bureaucracy that makes it challenging for all but the biggest defense contractors to break through.
“You have this great pipeline and most of it falls on the floor,” said Steve Blank, co-founder of the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation at Stanford University. “While we have all these legacy acquisition processes, our adversaries don’t.”
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/digital-future-daily/2024/10/31/tk-daniella-top-00186582
16. Fearsome and impressive weapon system from Anduril. Barracuda-M series of Cruise missiles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw7kF4vomA4
17. An educational discussion with one of the best operators and investors in Silicon Valley: Elad Gil.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzjIfkNAp8U
18. This is always a fun conversation. Not sure I agree with everything here but it's a good centrist view.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSyxm_AQfeE
19. "Victory in modern war is about winning the peace as well as winning the war. The initial American military successes in Iraq in 1991 and 2003, and in Afghanistan in 2001, followed by subsequent long-term instability, testify that military successes do not always ensure a favourable and enduring political solution. Russian interventions in Afghanistan and its first war in Chechnya are further examples.
The concept of victory, or the word itself, is one Western politicians and academics like to avoid. In 2009, US President Barack Obama said he was “always worried about using the word ‘victory,’ because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur.” As Heuser has written: “for most Western liberals in the early 21st century, victory seems of little value as a thing in itself, as the price at which it might come seems disproportionate to the gains.”
https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/victory-21st-century-conflict-0
20. Always lots of nuggets of insights for what's happening in SaaS. Must listen for founders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0L_l4pc4rU&t=1081s
21. The man at the center of Silicon Valley and AI. Plenty to take in here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peg-aX1oii4
22. Well a somewhat grim assessment. Well, America, run by empty suits which leads to brainless foreign policy. Check.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdGXMaYKRik
23. Interesting new future alliance: Saudi, Turkey and Israel?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiBWgUdGaIo
24. The Podcast election and Betting markets. Fascinating time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOOvOQbzw1M
25. Global norms eroding and we are entering a more anarchic world order, where the strong act with impunity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyS_euuncKk
26. Masterclass on building a long lasting venture firm. The guys responsible for the turnaround of the legendary Kleiner Perkins.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BekWZv3CCA
27. "We should pay Trump the compliment of believing what he says when he speaks about NATO and Ukraine—and indeed what those who worked closely with him say about that. There is a very good chance that the North Atlantic Alliance, which has dominated much of the globe since 1949, will become dysfunctional in fewer than 3 months.
Trump doesn’t have to withdraw from the alliance to do that—all he has to do is remove the US from the military command (which is what De Gaulle did with French forces in 1966). As commander in chief, US forces will only fight if Trump orders them to do so—NATO cannot order US forces into action if the President doesnt want that. So, no US forces will fight to protect Europe if Trump doesnt want them to.
Btw—this also needs to be faced by the USA’s allies in the Indo-Pacific, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and even Australia, who can no longer look for the USA to be a reliable partner in defense."
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/the-usa-is-trumps-now-europe-must
28. "All of this inevitably produces bad faith and terminal embarrassment. It is an unchallengeable article of belief in Liberalism that the world is advancing steadily and ineluctably towards a morally better future. Never, it appears, have we known such tolerance, diversity and inclusion. Unfortunately, though, nothing works, and the political, media, business and intellectual elites of our society are more incapable, and more morally dubious, than they have ever been. At some deep level, everybody knows this, no matter how firmly they are convinced that we live in a shining present and are moving to a shininger future.
0ur elites are thus conscious that they cannot match their predecessors, either practically or morally, and that makes them embarrassed, which in turn makes them angry. So the result is logical enough: if the past offends us, let us destroy it. If we cannot measure up to great figures of the past, let us undermine them and bring them down to our level, so we never need to feel inferior again. Having no heroes today, we must destroy the heroes our predecessors had.
But, surrounded by sleaze, incompetence and corruption, it’s increasing hard for us to look back on the past with an attitude of moral superiority.
Except, of course, that we do actually need heroes. All societies do. And so the most fervent anti-militarists seek out, as they have always done, surrogates from abroad to admire and respect: what George Orwell famously called the “patriotism of the deracinated.” From the Viet Cong to the Afghan Mujahideen, to today’s examples of Hezbollah and the Houthis, we admire and find heroism in people outside our own societies, because we are too embarrassed to seek it within them."
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/no-more-heroes
29. "The reality is on much of foreign policy the U.S. has been leaderless - and the West because of the US under Biden was AWOL."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/history-will-likely-judge-biden-poorly
30. Geography as destiny and how it affects geopolitics. Fascinating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgEopGPkL_M&t=567s
31. "All this may be part of an even larger story: the fight in the US Presidential race is not between the left and the right. It is between the Establishment and the Anti-Establishment. Or, more accurately, between the Old Establishment and the New Anti-Establishment. This helps explain the Cheney-Harris alignment. This is the Old Establishment, which likes the way things have been done. They like a world where the government knows best and external commentary is not welcome. Putting it bluntly, they believe in the old adage, “after the war begins, to reason is to treason”. This side says any commentary that opposes the government’s position is misinformation, disinformation and its ok to use the state apparatus and the media to maintain the government as it exists.
The Old Establishment is not opposed to reform, but the basic apparatus and core narratives must be kept intact. They might hire Tech Bros to make government more efficient but have not grasped that the Tech Bros can already anticipate their every move because they already have a clear picture of everyone in the Old Establishment because their digital twin gives away their actual position. The Old Estabishment group wants to know everybody else digital twin secrets but does not want the government’s digital twin available to external parties, including voters. But, its too late.
The New Establishment is comprised of Tech Bros who have more insight than any existing government apparatus. They increasingly align with each other because they see that the government (whether left or right) is failing to meet the needs of the public. The nation’s finances are blowing out.
The bigger possibility is that this becomes the moment that the New Anti-Establishment reveals that it already controls public opinion more than the Old Establishment. While the two parties argue and fight, the New Establishment may commence what might be called a “reverse coup” in the future. I’m watching for Thiel, Zuckerberg, Elon, and various others who are usually fighting amongst themselves for turf to start to align and offer public stability. They will also turn on their Tech Bro opponents."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/and-the-winner-is-kennedy
32. "While we know what candidate Trump and those around him have said about Ukraine, it remains to be seen exactly what President Trump 2.0 will do about the conflict. In his victory speech, Trump states that “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars but this is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom.”
https://mickryan.substack.com/p/president-trump-20-and-ukraine
33. Incredible discussion on global macro investing with one of the best in the business. Stan Druckenmiller.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5Weeox0Xus
34. An instructive discussion on vertical Saas investing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEsuJPMDFok
35. "This follows a campaign of arson and sabotage across Europe that intelligence officials say demonstrates an increasing recklessness on the part of the Kremlin. As the head of Britain’s foreign intelligence service MI6 put it, “Russian intelligence services have gone a bit feral, frankly.”
In recent months, Russian agents have been accused of plotting sabotage attacks against US and German military targets, arson attacks in the UK and Lithuania, and the attempted assassination of a major German defense contractor, among other plots."
https://www.vox.com/world-politics/383330/russia-georgia-bomb-threats-gray-zone
36. A varied discussion on our geopolitical & deglobalizing future. Lots of work to do as we reindustrialize America.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBtPd9a5TwE
37. This is a great conversation re: going down the PE exit track versus the VC one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQv1-ZFv-5s
38. I always learn from Tai Lopez. Always be Networking and Masterminds are awesome.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlzbbW4hrSw
39. "But either way, don’t get lazy and say “business outcomes” because you don’t want to enumerate them or, worse yet, because you don’t know them. Check yourself each time you write the words. Ask yourself: Can I climb the stack higher? Can I enumerate actual benefits? Am I truly in a situation where “business outcomes” is the best I can do?
If yes, say it. And then start thinking about the next piece you need to write so you can change the rules."
https://kellblog.com/2024/11/07/should-marketers-say-business-outcomes/
40. New guy to learn from. Interesting story and rise to the top.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh33mpINrxc
41. "So the more you think about it, it was the First, not the Second, World War that is at the origin of most of the world’s problems today. By destroying high-level supranational and multi-ethnic structures overnight, it created massive problems.
By selecting “self-determination” as the solution, without really thinking through what it meant, it ensured that those problems would be insoluble without brute force, and perhaps not even then. In fact, if you consider where crises and political instability have arisen in the last thirty years, from the Balkans through the Levant to Libya, Algeria and Tunisia, these are all territories of Arab/Ottoman conquest: even Yemen was added to the Empire in 1517.
This is not because the Empire of the Ottomans was especially bad—though there is a tendency to romanticise it— but because of its organisation of the population into religious groups, and the speed and nature of its collapse and the vacuum left behind.
In a very real sense, we are still dealing with the consequences of the fall of three Empires in 1918."
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/people-states-and-borders
42. "Trump might not realise it but he goes into potential talks with Putin from a position of overwhelming strength. Trump needs a Ukraine peace deal much less than Putin. If Trump fails to agree any such deal, so what? What are the consequences for the US? Not much. Ukraine has shown it is willing to fight, and even if the US pulls financing Europe has to continue writing the cheques as the best way of defending itself against inevitable future Russian aggression.
And if the cash is short Europe can dip into the $330 billion in immobilised Russian assets to continue to fund Ukraine. Ukraine and Europe will inevitably continue to put big orders for US defence equipement - in almost any scenario, and which US President is going to say no to defence orders for literally hundreds of billions of dollars from Europe. That represents millions of US jobs for Trump to secure. Putin literally has no leverage now over Trump, and Trump should play very hardball.
I would argue that Trump is being presented with the mother of all opportunities for the greatest peace deal ever. Why he would not use all his leverage to extract maximum concessions from Putin.
Does Trump really have the Art of the Deal or is he just Putin’s tool and full of crap? We will now soon find out. Putin is weak, Trump has all the cards. Let’s see if he can actually play a great hand to clean up the table. If not - what a loser Trump would be in that he was gifted a scenario of a deal of the century in Ukraine and bottled it. That would be sad for Ukraine as selling them out now would see the likely collapse of Ukraine and devastating consequences then for Europe as an emboldened Russia would be better armed with the addition of Ukraine’s huge and tech impressive military industrial complex, and seeing a green light from Trump for further conquest in Europe by Russia."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/putin-no-longer-has-the-trump-card
43. "I actually suspect that there are other reasons why inflation bothers voters even more than unemployment. Inflation is something that’s obviously beyond an individual’s control — if the price of eggs goes up, you can choose not to buy eggs, but otherwise there’s not much you can do. But unemployment is something that individuals do exercise some degree of control over — if you work a bunch of extra hours during a recession and establish a good relationship with your boss, maybe you can avoid getting laid off.
In general, I think people are less worried about risks they have some control over, even if the overall level of danger is higher. Look at how people are more afraid to fly than to take long road trips, despite road trips being much deadlier per mile. The leading theory is that in a car you have some control over your safety, while in a plane you have basically zero control. Similarly, I suspect that inflation makes people feel powerless, like being stuck in a crashing airplane."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/americans-hate-inflation-more-than
‘Past Lives’: What Could Have Been
There was a recent movie that came out about how two close childhood friends Hae Sung & Na Young aka Nora in Seoul, are reunited after 20+ years in North America. Nora’s family emigrated to Canada when she was young and ended up in New York City as a young adult, while the boy Hae Sung grew up in Korea.
They end up reconnecting on Facebook 8 years later as adults, corresponding virtually for years. They end up fighting and get disconnected. But after another 12 years they finally reconnect and then arrange a meeting in New York. Now as true adults.
The wrinkle this time is Nora is now married to a nice American man, yet she still has deep feelings for Hae Sung. And the conundrum she faces as Hae represents her first love and past. But the joy and tenderness when they meet again at that park is remarkable. It’s a really beautiful scene.
It’s a reminder of the weird twists and turns in our lives. The random meetings with people that turn into lifelong friendships or romantic relationships. Or the ones that you missed.
I still remember this beautiful Australian girl I met on the train to Krakow in 1996. We were supposed to meet up at the end of the train ride after I got upgraded to first class. Little did we know that 2nd class train cabins would be disconnected and arrive hours later. Never did meet her again.
Or the gorgeous Ukrainian American girl I met in New York, who gave me her number. But I ended up losing it because my phone ran out of power. What could have been.
But then I would not have moved to Taiwan, met a girl there and ended up with a beloved and beautiful little daughter Amber. Fate.
The movie is also a reminder to me of all that is sacrificed by people who immigrate and leave everything they know in their home. Some people are running away from something. Some are running towards something. Just like my parents did when they left Taiwan. For me, I realize now clearly that I was running away. First to Asia and then to America.
Maybe this is the curse of us immigrants and immigrant kids. We belong nowhere and multiple places at the same time. Torn between two cultures or more. We get confused. We’re all still hurt or scared little children inside even as adults.
But it reminds me of a scene in the movie.
When Nora’s mom is asked by Hae Sung’s mom, why leave all this behind when immigrating. She responds: “If you leave something behind, you gain something too.”
I’ve lost a lot. But for that price I’ve gained a lot too. I’ve crafted a life for myself through it all. One that I’ve dreamed about when I was a child. And as Sinatra said “I did it my way”, since the story does take place in New York.
There is a scene during his visit when Hae Sung tells Nora: “it’s a good thing that you emigrated. Korea is too small of a country for you. It’s not enough to satisfy your ambition.” I feel the same way about Canada.
But as in the end of the movie as the two childhood friends say goodbye, there is a feeling of acceptance of who they are now. The lives they have now. And they finally have some closure of the past & what could have been. I feel like after many decades I finally have that now too.
The New Entrepreneurship: Personal Holding Companies & Multipreneurship
I have a good friend who has been a very successful entrepreneur. He started and sold a few companies in his past but in the last decade or so changed his mode of operations. He would start companies but then turn them over to sharp, hungry 20-30 somethings to run.
He would become a minority shareholder, act as coach, and leverage his experience in the background, while the younger entrepreneur would manage the day to day. While some of these are software businesses, most tend to be service agency type businesses focusing on specific niches, leveraging overseas talent while servicing 1st world country clients but drive massive cash flow. He has accumulated an estimated 9-10 of these kinds of businesses. And built a crazy good lifestyle to boot.
I’ve noticed a phenomenon of a new style of entrepreneurship. Andrew Wilkinson, Nick Huber, Sahil Bloom, Greg Isenberg. It’s actually Greg Isenberg who coined the phrase “Personal Holding Co” aka PHC which is a thesis-driven holding company not necessarily designed to sell businesses but to cash flow them. Or in his own words: “A PHC is basically one registered entity, building multiple products, multiple revenue streams, multiple investments versus the classic 1 startup = 1 product.”
You basically productize yourself and make a bunch of bets against a thesis you are interested in, some will be minority shareholdings, some will be a majority shareholder. And you can leverage the cash flows from this to invest into new businesses. I’d also add that Nick, Sahil and Greg really leveraged their personal brands and built huge online distribution power on social media and X aka Twitter.
You can build or buy companies under this PHC. Sahil Bloom builds, he thinks of problems like Amazon Web Services. How do you change a cost structure to a profit center? He realized he needed good video creation service as well as good animated graphics. Other creators soon reached out to him and he partnered with an experienced agency friend to build out businesses around these.
Nick Huber actually talks about this in an interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g6ErC0O9g0&t=819s. He says:
“The same way I will be buying businesses is how I will start them. Looking at my cost centers, my profit and loss statement and where I am spending money. The interesting part is if you look at the 10 businesses I started, 8 of them were businesses I was spending money on at Bolt storage. Property and casualty insurance, Debt brokerage, Cost Segs, SEO link building, performance marketing, website development, recruiting. All these things were things I needed as a business owner.
And it turns out that a lot of other business owners who follow me on Twitter for the management advice and trust me because they listen to my words, they read my newsletter, they listen to my podcast, whatever it might be, they will need the same things I would need.”
It’s really smart because you get different streams of income and diversification, while getting economies of scale and turning costs into profits via a new business.
It will be more prevalent in the creator economy and these PCH will be made up of service agencies, niche software to DTC (Direct to Consumer)/ ecommerce businesses & media content businesses like YouTube or Newsletters. All usually built around a personal brand or niche audience. It just makes sense and empires will be built this way.
I really think an important vehicle of entrepreneurship will be these Personal Holding Companies. It’s a good structure to unify and run different lines of business.
Damocles Sword: The Psychic Costs of Wealth and Power
I think most people know the term “Damocles Sword” but don’t know the origin story. There used to be a king named Dionysius in ancient times, who built a massive empire in Sicily.
In his court he sat under a golden throne, surrounded by beautiful women and art, served delicious foods and fruits, living the apex of a luxurious lifestyle.
He had a servant/courtier named Damocles who joined him recently and was enamored by this incredible life. Damocles told king Dionysius how fortunate and lucky he was. Dionysius offered to switch places with him for one day and Damocles readily accepted.
Quoting Wikipedia: “But Dionysius, who had made many enemies during his reign, arranged that a sword should hang above the throne, held at the pommel only by a single hair of a horse's tail to evoke the sense of what it is like to be king: though having much fortune, always having to watch in fear and anxiety against dangers that might try to overtake him.
Damocles finally begged the king to be allowed to depart because he no longer wanted to be so fortunate, realizing that while he had everything he could ever want at his feet, it could not affect what was above his crown.”
It’s a parable. “Heavy lies the crown” as the old saying goes. The higher you are, the harder the fall. You have more to lose. Think about the constant fear someone with power and wealth has. Everyone wants to take down the King. Well, not everyone, but enough people to make being a King hard.
It’s easy to see all the glamor and glory of someone who has made it. We don’t see the pain and suffering they had to get there. We also don’t see the pain and suffering needed to maintain it.
What an interesting lesson. Keep that in mind next time you meet someone who has scaled heights you have not and whom you envy. But also do appreciate and respect what they have accomplished and how they got there. It’s very rarely as easy as their PR makes it out to be.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads November 24th, 2024
"Talent is nothing without persistence." —Dean Crawford
We could be seeing nuclear weapons proliferation in Europe soon (and probably Japan & South Korea too).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=577hMdf-740
2. "Roll-ups consolidate the players of an industry into one bigger player. The idea is that the resulting company will achieve greater efficiency through economies of scale, synergies, or the implementation of better management.
For a company to deserve being called a roll-up, there has to be sufficient acquisition activity. Buying one or the other competitor doesn't count. To qualify as a roll-up, a company should get > 50% of its EBITDA growth inorganically through acquisitions in a similar vertical (= industry). The acquired companies individually should be < 50% of consolidated EBITDA.
The concept is similar to that of serial acquirers, i.e. financial outsiders that try to exploit a valuation difference between acquisition targets and the stock market. While serial acquirers are closer to valuation arbitrage, the difference between rollups and serial acquirers is not always clear-cut."
3. "We each met with several dozen founders over the course of the day, then got together afterwards to compare notes. Both of us had the same observation: more than half of the founders we spoke with knew virtually nothing about their competition.
Sure, they could all list one or two big-name incumbents. Several name-dropped similar-ish startups that had recently raised well-publicized rounds. But very few actually understood the competitive dynamics at play in the markets they were targeting. It’s a worrisome trend I’ve seen increasingly as of late."
https://chrisneumann.com/archives/know-your-competition
4. "So there you have it: an update on how climate is affecting Japan, a year after my last report. On the positive side, perhaps the ongoing efforts of these holy spots are working, because the forecast predicts temperatures are set to decline, grudgingly (?), over the next few days. But I can now officially say that the answer to those who ask me what to pack for autumn visits to Japan is a resounding “I don’t know.”
https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/baby-its-hot-outside
5. "The notion of a Zero-Billion Dollar Market is that it’s something that you can see as an entrepreneur, but no one else believes. As we’ve talked about before, being consensus and correct is wonderful in many parts of life, but not in entrepreneurship. If you’re trying to create something new and valuable then it’s generally down the less traveled path, against the grain, and certainly not wildly obvious to others. Value is located when you’re both non-consensus, or contrarian, and also correct.
My friend Tommy Dyer recently alerted me to the fact that Don Quixote has been taught at Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB), with particular focus on his “Lessons for Leadership.” Among other lessons, Quixote creates his own reality through action. Though often considered mad, particularly as he begins to see the windmills around himself as monsters, it’s perhaps all only in his imagination, and as Tommy delves into in his recent writings, perhaps it’s even him living in his own “reality distortion field,” to use the Steve Jobs turn of phrase. Indeed entrepreneurs must be Quixotic, or exceedingly idealistic, even impractical or “crazy” to invent new categories. “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The Rebels...” This is the edge between vision and reality where contrarianism dwells."
https://ideas.everywhere.vc/p/scott-hartley-zero-billion-dollar-markets
6. "Some skeptics believe that the AI boom is reminiscent of hype cycles of the past, often drawing parallels with the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s. Rather than defending AI as fundamentally different from previous waves of technology, Taylor pointed to the dot-com boom as validation. That period, despite its excesses, produced companies like Amazon and Google that dominate the industry to his day.
Taylor is confident that large language models are also transforming our lives. “It’s important not to be cynical—there will be a lot of snake oil, lots of people will lose money, lots of people will make money, and that’s the game of Silicon Valley,” he said. His belief in AI’s continued progress is grounded in its reliance on three factors—algorithms, data, and compute—each benefiting from the brightest minds in tech driving them forward. The three, crucially, can be developed independent of one another, creating multiple pathways for continued progress."
https://every.to/p/inside-silicon-valley-s-most-important-conversations
7. A very insightful conversation with VC vet Mark Goldberg of new Chemistry VC. 3 VCs from various top tier funds coming together. Really interesting new fund.
8. One of the best & quietest investors in Silicon Valley. One of the folks responsible for turning around Kleiner Perkins.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51R322RSwU8
9. “We face in the 21st century a Cold War equivalent — you can call it whatever you like, a ‘great struggle’ or something else – but that’s what we have,” he said. “Until we recognize the massiveness of this problem, I think countries are going to struggle with trying to muster up the ability to communicate the danger to their populations and be able to get organized for success.” Studeman named Iran, North Korea and Russia, but focused on China, which he said is actively growing into a colonial power that wants to seize formerly held territories like Taiwan and force other nations to be more economically dependent on it."
https://www.stripes.com/theaters/asia_pacific/2024-10-25/china-taiwan-cold-war-15621497.html
10. Great episode on what's up in Silicon Valley: More or Less.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmdqEG2Shtk
11. "The most important link in this network was the waterways of Eastern Europe. The Norsemen who conquered it became known as the Rus.
The Rus were a great commercial power; linking Northern Europe’s wealth in raw materials to the luxuries & refined goods of the Byzantine Empire, Caliphate, & beyond. The scale of this trade is grossly underestimated & it was one of the busiest trade routes in the world.
The Rus controlled “The Route from the Varangians to the Greeks,” which served as the easiest route for trade between Christendom & the Orient, mainly through the Dnieper and Volga Rivers. By navigating several portages and obstacles, like the famous cataracts on the Dnieper, intrepid Norsemen could access the immensely wealthy markets of Byzantium and the Caliphate.
Adding the natural resource richness of Eastern Europe to this mix offered huge opportunities. The intrepid Norse merchant-raiders brought furs, timber, walrus ivory, metals, wax, honey, & slaves South & returned with silks, spices, jewelry, fine weapons, wine, religious artifacts, and, most importantly, silver."
https://varangianchronicler.substack.com/p/the-silver-volga
12. "For years, Solana played a supporting role in the tech world, serving as the chief marketing officer for Founders Fund, Peter Thiel’s venture-capital firm. Solana calls Thiel his mentor, and says he owes his career to him.
Solana started Pirate Wires during the pandemic and has built it into a small media company covering tech, politics, and culture. After raising money from Thiel and Founders Fund, among others, in 2023, he hired a handful of staff. The Pirate Wires free daily newsletter now has 100,000 subscribers, mostly young men, according to Solana. (He would not disclose how many readers have signed up for paid subscriptions, which provide expanded access to the site.)
It has become a must-read among Silicon Valley’s anti-woke crowd, including some of tech’s most influential figures, and a grudging should-read for journalists and some on the left trying to glimpse the thinking of the masters of the Thiel-verse."
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/10/mike-solana-pirate-wires/680355/
13. As a history guy this movie looks amazing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B_YB3caN80
14. Saas Go to Market, it's changing fast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjM4gFA2AYY&t=5s
15. "Entrepreneurs should consider the example of event attendance yields when comparing free versus paid events. Paid events, as expected, have a higher yield, which implies a greater level of commitment—even if the amount paid is minimal.
Similarly, when entrepreneurs charge for a product, the customer’s seriousness is much greater, resulting in higher-quality feedback. Feedback is the lifeblood of products, and the most valuable feedback comes from customers who are invested, even if minimally."
https://davidcummings.org/2024/10/26/event-attendance-yields-and-quality-product-feedback/
16. "That clear contrast is what struck me most about the announcements from General Catalyst and Chemistry this week. They are exactly built to pursue each of those separate strategies.
Now, I've always been quick to say that I'm not staunchly for or against any particular strategy. I'm more focused on recognizing that these types of firms are, in fact, playing different games. And the only stupid game is failing to recognize that the games are different.
The clearest indicator that someone is failing to appreciate those differences is when they immediately dismiss anyone but the large, established funds. "Nobody can compete with Sequoia, etc." In an industry defined by disruption and competitive upset, nothing could be further from the truth. And don’t point out halo effects or capital retention. I never said its easy. But the reality is that anyone is capable of defeat. Anyone. The question isn't if, but how."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/different-strokes-for-different-folks
17. "Nonetheless, it is encouraging to see that the German Minister of Defense is at least interested in acquiring these critical missile capabilities and maintaining a cruise missile manufacturing capacity in Germany. The next step will require 350 million euros in the 2025 defense budget to kick off the procurement project."
https://missilematters.substack.com/p/germany-may-get-a-new-cruise-missile
18. "What happens when the core desires of the industry move from diffusion and individual agency to concentration of power and a view of hands of god that steer the market?
Perhaps this is actually the correct approach and the failure and massive inefficiencies of many of our closed-system institutions ranging from healthcare to aerospace and defense necessitate a more heavy-handed intervention from those willing to think from first principles on how to solve problems with novel ideas and large amounts of capital at risk.
With all of this said, the questions feel urgent or at a minimum worth pondering as we watch tech position ourselves as the architects of society rather than its organic enablers. The industry that once prided itself on letting a thousand flowers bloom now seems a bit too obsessed with carefully cultivating a specific garden."
https://mhdempsey.substack.com/p/power-and-technology
19. "The question is not if one is subject to mental biases in decision making—it’s which mental biases. When I’m trying to help a new investor understand this dynamic, I ask them to remember their first love—how certain they were that it was going to be a perfect relationship that would last forever, and how wrong they have likely ended up. This failure means they are capable of having 100 percent conviction in something while also being 100 percent wrong.
Inward-facing study can bring up uncomfortable truths that should prompt us to debug ourselves, rather than dismiss them to protect our egos. If we debug well enough, we can study ourselves at a distance, like an anthropologist, and come to valuable conclusions and workarounds for our internal obstacles. After all, an oracle that’s always wrong is just as useful as an oracle that’s always right.
There is a constant cat-and-mouse game between our rational self and meta-analysis, each vying for superposition. But it’s also where the most alpha as investors comes from and is wholly unique to each individual. The expansive, information-rich canvas of exploration is not built by studying the outside world—it comes from studying yourself."
https://every.to/p/to-beat-the-market-you-have-to-outsmart-yourself
20. "Because taxation isn’t about doing the right thing for our nations and their people.
Our system isn’t designed with the people's best interests in mind. Like the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt, our modern overlords believe themselves to be untouchable gods who can keep the wealth for themselves.
History’s biggest lie is that we need taxation to fund the running of our nations. Instead, taxation is about politicians and the world’s elite hoarding the fat of the land, while stripping the value of our labour from our pockets through taxation."
https://anticitizen.com/p/history-s-biggest-lie
21. "There are no absolutes. But there haven’t been as many defendable first mover advantages as I expected, and I think I leaned into that too much in my early AI investing.
Thankfully, early stage investing is one of the few markets where you can be wrong 80% of the time and still do well if your winner go big enough.
What does this mean for my theses going forward? I’m looking much more at fast follower companies. I’m spending more time evaluating whether supposedly defensible data sets really are defensible. I’m factoring into my probabilities that new model architectures and other innovations could weaken the value of proprietary data.
It’s not about being first to do it. It’s about being the first to do it when the market is ready. It turns out AI isn’t so different than the technologies that came before it."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/my-biggest-failed-ai-investment-thesis
22. "Elon might not fly around in a robot suit and blast his rivals with energy beams, but his ability to out-manufacture and out-innovate almost all of his rivals is right out of a comic book movie trope.
How does he do it? The exact specifics are probably impossible to pin down, but the general contours are nothing mysterious. Elon isn’t hyperintelligent or hyper-creative. Most of the engineers at SpaceX or Tesla are probably better at their jobs than he could be. His superpower — according to a bunch of people I’ve talked to in the tech industry — is gathering, motivating, coordinating, and setting goals for human talent.
This is the same superpower possessed by Genghis Khan, or Henry Ford, or Vladimir Lenin, or Matsushita Kōnosuke, or any number of other people who built big organizations from scratch. Humanity is a collective organism — directed toward a common goal, we can accomplish incredible things. But our talents are not equal, our motivations are not consistent, and our goals are not naturally aligned. An organization-builder is someone who takes the purposefulness of a single individual and applies it to a group of people.
This, by the way, is why almost everyone in the tech industry — even people who disagree with him politically — hold Musk in such awe. It’s not that he has a lot of money — most tech people couldn’t care less about Warren Buffett, and they don’t even know the names of hedge fund managers. It’s that Musk is superhumanly good at the thing they’re pretty good at. He has built world-beating organizations, and moreover, he did it in the super-tough area of high-tech manufacturing — a field so difficult that most tech entrepreneurs shy away from it and stick to the safer waters of software.
A comic-book world of superheroes and supervillains isn’t necessarily the one we’d choose to live in. But in some ways, it’s the world in which we find ourselves living, and we have to deal with that."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-americas-future-could-hinge-on
23. Solid conversation with Vinod Khosla.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VfNXLvPJ8w
24. Luke Belmar is a wise man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0VPurjNKls
25. "The damage is therefore not only measured in strict military terms, but also in psychological terms and a clear message was delivered: “when we come back it will be easier for us to hit you even harder”. Tehran’s rulers were humiliated. And it cleverly stayed within, whatever one might think of them, the boundaries that the Biden administration had laid out while avoiding civilian casualties or collateral damage. Perfect and precise."
https://pieterdorsman.substack.com/p/precision-and-perfection
26. Lots of insights on building a sales machine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEKd2MP67DM
27. I’m down with this Ukrainian Viking vendetta. Hunt down these Russian war criminals.
"On Oct. 10, Russian marines from the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade overran a team of Ukrainian drone operators in Zelenyi Shlyakh, a tiny hamlet on the western edge of a Ukrainian-held salient in Kursk. The Russians stripped the Ukrainians, ordered them to lie face-down on the ground and then shot them, killing all nine.
In the days that followed, a powerful Ukrainian force began deliberately hunting down and ambushing groups of 155th Naval Infantry Brigade marines—and taking no prisoners. On Oct. 18, 95th Air Assault Brigade paratroopers cornered a clutch of 155th Naval Infantry Brigade armored personnel carriers—and dismantled it with drones, tanks, missiles and mines, reportedly destroying three APCs and killing 30 Russians. “The teleportation of the enemy to Hell took place in a complex way,” the Ukrainian air assault branch boasted."
28. Spacetech is here, thanks to SpaceX.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuL4tfc10AA
29. "Keep the windows closed so you’re not getting all the outside pollution in your house.
You’d think everyone would be using air purifiers in third world countries because of the insane pollution here but the vast majority of third world people are cheap as hell and do not care about their health.
Even if they can easily afford it, they’d rather keep an extra $150 in the bank than buy an air purifier and pay for electricity even if it means smoking an equivalent of 10+ cigarettes per day.
Of course we have a brain so we aren’t one of them. We have an air purifier for every room and hall of the house. Health is wealth and breathing in pollution just to save money is dumb as hell."
https://lifemathmoney.com/life-advice-buy-an-air-purifier/
30. "If you’re not building a WiFi business and are not invested heavily for long periods of time, there is not much you can do in terms of catching up. You’ll be eaten slowly by inflation (lately? eaten quickly).
Use 10-years: This is probably a better proxy for the real inflation numbers. It does capture the crazy printing in 2021 but it doesn’t include the 0% rate environment and mark everything at the near bottom (2009).
This would mean that Shelter costs are up 35%, Energy up 22%, Food up 45% and CPI is up about 28%.
If you’re building equity in a company, you are destroying inflation if net income goes up. Unlike a job that pays $100,000 a year, you can sell a company.
$100,000 net income goes to $200,000 and that’s all you get
$100,000 net income goes to $200,000 that you can sell for 4x earnings means that you’ve hit $800,000
Once this is drilled into your brain you’ll never take those 3-5% annual wage increases seriously ever again.
You’re beating inflation with your effort (forced equity appreciation), you’re beating inflation with your investing (largely tech/crypto and some stocks/bonds to dampen volaitlity).
Then you’re off to one large race to $4,000,000-$5,000,000 in today’s prices and a paid off house. Then. Poof. Disappear."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/are-you-beating-inflation
31. "China’s economy, like every other victim, subsequently entered into a liquidity trap or balance sheet recession. Private firms and households hunkered down, decreased economic activity, and saved money in order to repair their balance sheets. When credit demand falls amongst households and businesses, the standard-issue Keynesian economic medicine – i.e., running a modest fiscal deficit and lowering the price of money via central bank policy rate cuts – is ineffective. What is needed to forestall the dreaded deflation is a monetary and fiscal bazooka.
The time it takes to switch into panic mode depends on a country’s culture. But make no mistake – regardless of the economic “-ism” supposedly practiced, every country always comes around to injecting monetary chemotherapy.
I refer to this palliative treatment as chemotherapy because while it might cure the deflationary cancer, it ultimately kills the host. The host is the middle and lower classes, who are ravaged by asset price inflation with no discernible improvement in the real economy. And like modern oncology, this ultimately ineffective monetary chemotherapy is extremely profitable for a small cabal of financial witch doctors whose head offices are in New York, London/Paris/Frankfurt, Tokyo, and now possibly Beijing/Shanghai.
Chinese people are some of the most resourceful people on this planet. They will not allow their precious yuan savings to sit idle as Beijing encourages asset price inflation. Bitcoin is not a foreign concept to middle and high income coastal urban dwellers. While the exchanges were barred from offering a visible Bitcoin/CNY trading pair, Bitcoin and crypto still flourishes in China."
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/lets-go-bitcoin
32. Crisis in Cuba, maybe opportunity for detente with USA?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Amikw54-R4Q&t=339s
33. This is an excellent discussion on AI & life of a startup founder in the post ZIRP world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGU78Q5tJgA&t=1369s
34. A terrifying overview of the state of AI & Hardware in US and China. US leading in AI, China leading in hardware and drones. We have a lot of work to do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_ZB7O_9hlQ
35. "In other words, failed entrepreneurs in Canada risked jail time and stigmatization for decades after America had widely embraced business risk and its long-term economic benefits. And it wasn’t just Canada. Commonwealth countries around the world have similar endemic risk-aversion due to their common historical experiences (thanks Britain 🤦♂️).
Today, risk-taking founders in the United States are broadly encouraged and supported by their communities as they pursue the American Dream. In contrast, most Commonwealth cultures have some form of “tall poppy syndrome,” where successful, ambitious individuals are frequently cut down by their community instead of celebrated."
https://chrisneumann.com/archives/lets-celebrate-risk-taking
36. Eye-opening discussion on the importance of drones & AI in the new world of war. Firestorm Labs is critical to this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFv3WaN23S8
37. "Energy is one of the most valuable commodities in the world. Humans need energy to create a more abundant, prosperous future for our children. In fact, there is no high-income country that consumes a low amount of energy.
This trend is not going to reverse. As technology accelerates, so will energy consumption. Because of this relationship, a key investment theme of the future will be selling energy to the businesses willing to pay the highest price.
As a capitalist, I want to be an energy dealer.
It will be very valuable to own energy infrastructure that can service modern society. These energy infrastructure companies will sell their energy to people using GPUs for artificial intelligence, ASICs for bitcoin mining, and many other use cases. The new energy consumption use cases need a new energy infrastructure partner."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/my-plan-to-become-an-energy-dealer
38. Very informative view on what’s happening with AI infrastructure space.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-y5aDmKbEj8
39. "Today - the equation is changing. Fund sizes have ballooned significantly. There are different pools of LP capital available with a lower cost of capital (ie lower return expectations). So much so, that the 2% part of the equation is very meaningful given the size of funds! In the past, to “get rich” as in investor it was all about maximizing the 20%. Today, with fund sizes where they are, many are instead looking to optimize for the 2%. This means raising as much as possible, and deploying as much as possible (as quickly as possible). Remember, the management fee is “guaranteed.” The 20% (the carried interest) is variable. It’s economically rational to look to optimize and maximize the guaranteed portion…
It’s important to call this out because this is where the incentives start to diverge between GPs and Founders. In the past, the only path to “get rich” for GPs ALSO resulted in a “get rich” path for founders. Today there is a “get rich” path for GPs where the outcome of the founders is irrelevant. Doesn’t matter how the underlying companies in a fund perform, you collect the annual management fees regardless.
In summary - the venture ecosystem has evolved significantly in the last 5 years. For founders - ask yourself this question when deciding on who to work with. “Am I working with a 2% or a 20% venture firm?” The 2% firms are optimizing for deployment. The 20% are optimizing for large company outcomes. There’s one path where the incentives are aligned. I’m not meaning to imply big funds = bad. But there is a culture and mindset that starts to creep in the larger and larger funds get, and it’s up to founders to determine which investor falls into which bucket."
https://cloudedjudgement.substack.com/p/clouded-judgement-102524-misaligned
Greed is a Tool: Leveraging Your Own and Others
The Wall Street movie speech by Gordon Gekko is world famous. I know many young kids growing up who knew it by heart. It’s short, simple and powerful.
“The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed -- for lack of a better word -- is good.
Greed is right.
Greed works.
Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind.
And greed -- you mark my words -- will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.”
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVxYOQS6ggk
This is why capitalism works. It taps into natural human behavior. The need for more.
Any system, whether governmental like communism or a religious one like Christianity that try to control or limit this element of human nature is usually ineffective in doing so. But trying to crush and restrain it like they have tried in the Soviet Union, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba among other places leads to massive poverty and human despair.
The counter point is this is why America is a capitalist’s dream. As messed up as the place is, I love it. It’s a society that channels ambition and drive. And rewards it tremendously in many cases. That is why there is so much wealth inequality here.
It’s not for everyone. But for the ambitious, driven and those willing to do the required hard work, this is the best place for you. Environments matter. I never would have gotten where I am without being here. Surrounded by plenty of greed and plenty of fear too. It’s a tremendous platform for impact.
Greed leads to drive. Greed leads to clear interests. No relationship lasts long without clear mutual interests. The search for more and better. This is hard wired into all of us from our caveman days. And there is no point fighting it.
In fact, we should understand this evolutionary drive for more, control and channel it. Direct it to good things. Accumulating for the right things & reasons. Make more money and more resources for your freedom, for your family, for your ability to help others. To donate to charity and support causes that are society positive. Treat it like the tool that it is and channel your greed for good.
Variable Costs Versus Fixed Costs: Lessin’s Lesson
I was introduced to this concept of Variable costs versus Fixed costs in this wonderfully insightful book called Lessin’s Lessons, written by the father of iconoclastic VC Sam Lessin. His father Bob was a brilliant investment banker and Angel investor during the first dotcom boom in the 90s. Because he had several life threatening illnesses through his early years he wanted to write down lessons for his kids. It’s really great.
One of the concepts he discusses is the idea of variable costs versus fixed costs in life. It sounds very personal finance which it is but it has good relevance to how one lives their lives. So stick with me here for a bit.
Fixed costs are things you have to pay for every month. Your mortgage payment, tuition or car payments, utilities, taxes, your phone bill. It’s the bare minimum you have to cover every month no matter what.
Variable costs are those that you pay sometimes and the amount also varies. This could be a book, food, a trip somewhere or even a phone or computer.
He talks about how his son Sam treats most of his costs as variable. Instead of leasing or buying a place, he pays by the night at a friend's apartment so the costs become variable. He has a policy of having bare bones costs structure and disdain for flashy expensive things showing klout.
It’s an interesting philosophy. Think about our own lives, we start with variable costs but as we get older and have a family as well as lifestyle creep, variable costs become very high fixed costs.
I can tell you all about how expensive supporting a family is. Especially as you want them to have a good lifestyle and also due to some guilt from not being around much. But for most of us we also get trapped in the hedonistic treadmill that I wrote about before.
The trip that used to be variable now becomes normal and a need not a want. Luxury goods become expected. The $500 dollar bottle of wine eventually becomes a thousand dollar bottle of wine. Business class is always better than economy. 5 or 6 star hotels like Mandarin Oriental are hard to beat.
It’s hard to downshift or downgrade your lifestyle. But the irony is that we eventually do as we wise up and start to understand what we truly like and don’t like. When we truly understand what is a need versus what is a must. This definitely helps you get maximum ROI on your spending and not waste money on non essential or things that give you no joy. Damn I wish I learned this earlier.
There is deep relevance to the startup world here too. Think about the bloated growth stage startups who gorged themselves on cheap VC capital and spent it on buying tech that was not useful and hiring people they didn’t need. Variable costs became fixed costs and as the VC money train disappeared and the expected revenue did not show up, they are in for some major pain. Which usually means ugly layoffs and cost cutting to get to break even or profitability, scramble for a working business model if there is no product market fit or worse they just linger like zombies until the business dies.
So the lesson from Lessin, keep your cost structure low by thinking variable costs not fixed costs. And this will give you the freedom and flexibility to survive and take advantage of the opportunities that inevitably show up on the down cycle.
Be the Heel or Be the Face: Why World Wrestling is a good school for Personal Branding and Investors
I grew up watching professional wrestling aka WWF now WWE when I was a kid. I swore it was real but like most things on tv it turned out to be fake, basically it was a soap opera with fighting. But it was damn addictive.
I learned some new terms about the wrestling industry from my new favorite podcast called “More or Less” starring some top tier tech investors, operators, power couples, the Morins & Lessins, who discuss the zeitgeist of Silicon Valley. It’s entertaining, educational and fun.
Of course in an episode it got around to the conversation on Elon Musk and his ownership of X formerly known as Twitter. How he has just gotten unhinged online in the last year. But Dave Morin used the terms “Heel” and “Face”.
Elon Musk started off as a Face, a positive, the good guy and hero in the show. But as more information came up on how he treats people, as well as his more right leaning political views, he gets more engagement from being the “heel”. Otherwise known as the bad guy of the show, the person trying to elicit negative feedback from the crowds. These are actual characters being played.
We all play this character and some of these we lean into. Most VCs want to be the “face”, being founder friendly and supportive. This is a good thing. But as I’ve said before, your job as an investor and ally is to also give bad news, to push and question founders on their plans, cost structure so they can perform better.
If all you are doing is “Face” work, then you are abrogating your duty to the founders. Yes, it’s hard to be direct and question founders especially if you think they are going in the wrong direction and putting their business at risk. If you truly want what is best for your founders and for them to get better you have to be a heel sometime. This is how you earn your way to be their trusted advisor. Cheerleading when times are tough or good is fine but your job is also to help them look past corners and avoid potholes.
This is why most venture investors suck at their job and will have no place in this industry. And I mean the venture industry globally. This is endemic in Silicon Valley. But being the Heel all the time is also bad, which is what I see in most of the emerging ecosystems. You need both.
For better or worse, at least in the startup ecosystem I’ve fallen into the “Heel” role as investor. I try to be the face and act positive for my founders. But I also have to make sure I counterbalance too much unrealistic optimism and naivety when it potentially will kill or hurt the company. So venture investors, DO YOUR JOB! Be a heel and a face.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads November 17th, 2024
"Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later." —Og Mandino
"I started off this post by stating, “if you’ve ever been in sales, then you know that the deal isn’t done until the money’s in the bank.” Whatever you do, don’t take your foot off the gas during closing.
Term sheets are generally non-binding, which means that investors in most countries can legally pull out up until the moment that the shareholder agreements are signed. Absent something materially negative being discovered during diligence, this is morally reprehensible, but it does happen.
The best thing you can do to preempt “buyers remorse” with your new investors is to continue making progress and closing sales, onboarding new users or releasing new features during the 3-5 week closing process. At a minimum, send weekly updates to show them the progress you’re making and keep them excited about their new investment.
And have a backup plan. It sucks to think about, but what will you do if the investment falls through?
Remember: you’re selling up until the moment investors wire the money. Never lose sight of that."
https://chrisneumann.com/archives/what-happens-after-you-sign-a-term-sheet
2. "The internal contradiction (a fatal flaw) of tribal governance is that tribal cohesion requires hyping the threat posed by the opposing tribe.
Ever escalating threat. This dynamic dictates that to maintain cohesion (due to inevitable desensitization) or increase it; networked tribes will increasingly hype the degree of threat posed by opposing tribes and everyone connected to them. Opposed people rapidly transition from being wrong to bad and finally to (absolute, horrific) evil. Minor threats become existential or genocidal.
Swarms (see the GG Report; “How Swarms Work” for more). Networked tribes don’t have formal leadership — they are open source (anybody can grab the baton and lead if they successfully advance the war against the opposite tribe) — and trained (constant network reinforcement) to hate the opposition. This makes them prone to self-mobilize as swarms that seek to overwhelm the enemy. We’ve seen this with the cancellation of people (bans, lost jobs, etc.) and recently at the level of global war (swarms seek to maximize escalation until complete victory over the target is achieved).
Total tribal war and national suicide. A nationally dominant networked tribe, locked in by a tribal network that shuts down all opposition, will seek to remain dominant by continuously amplifying threats. Threats posed by tribally antagonistic domestic populations and countries (a pre-network variant of this was the secret sauce of 20th-century fascist governance, but it proved fatal).
Domestically, an escalating perception of existential threat will eventually justify (tribal networks and traditional tribes don’t see enemies as human beings) authoritarian suppression, internment, and (potentially) genocide. Internationally, this will set the nation on a path of war with an ever-growing number of enemies (eventually, all simultaneously). In short, it is a path to national suicide and a global proscription of the nation, the people, and the tribe’s way of thinking when it is inevitably defeated."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/the-tribal-election
3. "Karp’s lab operates on the principle of diversity—bringing together experts from different fields, backgrounds, and countries. This diversity fuels creative problem-solving and opens up new possibilities for innovation. As he explained it to me:
"My lab in some ways is like a playground where there's no specific disease focus, no specific technology focus... We populate the lab with people from different disciplines. So minimal overlap of expertise...We've had engineers, biologists, immunologists, a gastrointestinal surgeon, a cardiac surgeon, a dentist... maximizing diversity of thought, diversity of expertise, diversity of tools."
https://99tech.alexlazarow.com/p/igniting-your-startup-potential
4. "A false signal I see a lot with early stage AI-first companies is excitement around AI is misinterpreted as likelihood to buy your product.
As companies of all sizes are figuring out their AI strategy, many are signing up for new products, taking meetings with founders, and collecting as much information as possible with no intent on buying your product.
While many of these conversations can be a helpful way to learn more about the challenges companies are currently facing, founders must be especially protective of their time and know when to cut off time wasters.
BANT, an acronym for Budget, Authority, Needs, and Time is a classic framework for evaluating if someone is likely to buy your product."
https://brianne.substack.com/p/a-lesson-for-ai-first-companies-excitement
5. An excellent rundown on latest news on SpaceX, Elon, Tesla and Nvidia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdK8OFA903I
6. This is the wake up call that every B2B SaaS founder needs to have. Mr Lemkin gives very valuable guidance for how to thrive in this present environment. It is a must watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5sPLOkAZPE&t=172s
7. There is some great career advice here: never rest on your laurels, how to take risks and think long term. How to be a steward & leave things better than when you found it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQAZ3iV3gSg&t=4s
8. Another great episode of More or Less, what's up Silicon Valley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjcf7O9rerQ
9. "For entrepreneurs, I recommend incorporating a failure segment into your regular all-hands meetings. This way, employees consistently hear the message that thoughtful risk-taking is encouraged. Celebrate the fact that the more you experiment and learn, the faster you grow, both as an individual and as a business."
https://davidcummings.org/2024/10/19/highlight-an-employee-failure-at-the-town-hall/
10. "Whenever an empire is crumbles, one of its final acts is almost always the desperate attempt to cling to the remaining vestiges of its wealth.
It happened in the 1920s during the German Weimar Republic, when the government implemented controls to prevent capital from haemorrhaging out of the nation.
It occurred again at the end of the Vietnam War as Vietnam’s communist government seized assets to prevent citizens from fleeing with them.
Again, capital seizures were implemented by Iran’s Islamic government after the Shah was overthrown in 1979.
And it happened during the final days of ancient Rome, before the empire collapsed completely.
Unfortunately, this is also taking place all over the West in the present day."
https://anticitizen.com/p/it-s-theft
11. "Lesson: You can learn anything. Choose speed not credentials."
https://oldbooksguy.substack.com/p/self-taught
12. "You aren’t going to pay someone $30k to clean your house if the market rate is $10-15k. It just isn’t going to happen.
The same is true with businesses. They don’t hate you, but in the end it comes down to money.
You were hired to do a job, and if someone can do the same job for a much cheaper price – they’re going to make the switch just like you would replace the old cleaner.
This is just how the world works.
Of course, from the cleaner/employee’s perspective, this is “unfair”.
https://lifemathmoney.com/do-employers-care-about-you/
13. "Rather than relying on a bloated board or long-term advisors, focus on building a lean, agile team with short-term expert input when necessary. Keep the focus on what drives value for your company—not pleasing outsiders or chasing prestige."
https://pierregaubil.substack.com/p/cut-the-fat-why-your-startup-doesnt
14. "I want to index my beliefs and unpack a bibliography of the sources behind them so that I understand why I believe what I believe. Understanding what I believe will, truly, be arriving somewhere I’ve been before and knowing it “for the first time.”
And I think, despite the flood of information we're exposed to every day, we would be better suited if we took the time index our beliefs. Whether it's the beliefs that determine how we live our lives, the religions we subscribe to, the investments we make, the companies we build, or the relationships we prioritize. Beliefs are made better through scrutinization."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/my-cup-runneth-over
15. "If you’re in a room that never echoes back your own views to you, you’re not just in the wrong room, you’re actually on enemy territory.
How often should an echo chamber echo back your ideas to you is a technical question, and therefore a boring one, and therefore outside the scope of the current essay. The balance-worshippers will say it should be 50% agreement, 50% disagreement.
I would set up the ratio differently. But over and above the technicalities lies the fact that echo chambers are good, actually. Echo chambers make you sane and effective. Echo chambers are the birthplace of shared anthems, shared goals, and shared warcries. And where we are headed, you will need those things."
https://oldbooksguy.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-echo-chambers
16. "Lately I have had many days where I feel likeI am living through the elder millennial equivalent of the venture capital business. I am close enough to the emerging manager phase of our fund to still identify with that experience and feel very close to what those managers are going through. But I’m no longer fully in that world.
I also don't feel like our firm has graduated to being “established” as I have no idea what that means or what it takes to get there. I also have not gotten to the “get off my lawn” phased of being a really experienced VC who has seen and done it all."
https://chudson.substack.com/p/no-longer-emerging-not-yet-established
17. Future of AI and Sales in SaaS. This is an info-dense discussion. Must watch for B2B CEOs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FIQLx_Zi9E
18. "There are always multiple ways to win – In our second session, you can see the diversity of different approaches to winning. Dave Yuan from Tidemark and Adam Bain have VERY different styles to growth investing and Matt Auxier from University of Chicago has invested across the landscape of growth and early stage. This serves as a reminder that there is no single way to win and the importance of owning your own playbook, rather than following those of others."
https://newsletter.equal.vc/p/reflections-of-an-emerging-manager
19. "What has been getting worse over the past decade, and then particularly bad over the last few years during the pandemic, is that middle-income households are increasingly squeezed,” she says.
These households that could once afford a typical home in a variety of locations in their metro area now have fewer and often less desirable options. And, if nothing is done, exclusivity may spread farther."
https://thehustle.co/originals/the-rise-of-exclusive-communities-in-america
20. "Let’s talk about the elephant in the server room: Transformers — the core technology behind large language models like GPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity. Unlike older models that processed data sequentially, transformers handle massive datasets in parallel, simultaneously juggling billions (sometimes trillions) of parameters. This exponentially increases the amount of number-crunching required for training these models, demanding significantly more GPUs and specialized chips, exponentially increasing their electricity use over previous models like recurrent neural networks (which struggle with larger datasets).
The power hogging doesn’t stop at training, though; these models use power every time they are prompted — a single ChatGPT prompt can use up to 10x the power of a conventional Google search query.
We have made an incredible leap in AI technology at the cost of increased power demand. But in the larger scope of humanity, I believe the trade-off is worth it — these new AI models are already helping us diagnose cancer, find clean geothermal energy sources, and boost our overall productivity. And we’re still in the first inning — we’ve barely scratched the surface of what AI can do for our society"
https://www.benparr.com/p/ai-nuclear-power-smr-microsoft-google-amazon
21. "Whether or not the tech industry answers the “AI’s $600B question” or Nvidia stays dominant, the die has been cast and there are many more important challenges to address.
When the Telecom Bubble burst, we were left with $1 trillion of telecom equipment that set the stage for the next wave of internet, mobile and cloud computing.
After this rush of AI infrastructure spend and research, we will be left with the ability to manufacture intelligence at scale. Even if it feels a bit bubbly and overhyped right now, the ground truth is that the current wave of AI will change every aspect of society"
https://www.readtrung.com/p/jensen-huang-dario-amodei-and-manufacturing
22. "A possible alternative, deploying a non-nuclear strategic deterrent to implement a conventional countervalue posture is also challenging, but arguably much more feasible. Simply by advancing its long-range strike capabilities, Ukraine will naturally move in its direction.
The key question is how targeted the Ukrainian effort will be to employ its long-range strike arsenal as a strategic deterrent, rather than as a simple warfighting tool, and how much money Kyiv is willing to allocate to this end over other competing priorities."
https://missilematters.substack.com/p/nuclear-and-non-nuclear-deterrents
23. "If the U.S. abandons resistance to China and Russia, it will go very badly for America’s allies. Europe will probably fracture again, with some states (probably including Germany) falling all over themselves to appease the Russians. Russia will then become a sort of de facto hegemon in Europe. In Asia, China would probably conquer Taiwan, cutting off U.S. semiconductor supplies and establishing Chinese hegemony in East Asia. Japan and South Korea would then be forced to choose between either becoming nuclear powers or becoming de facto satrapies of the new Chinese empire. Essentially, America’s major allies would fall to America’s enemies.
Americans — or, at least, Trump supporters — might yawn at these developments. But if Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, and America’s other allies fall, it will dramatically weaken America’s ability to defend itself. Remember that China is four times the size of America, and manufactures well over twice as much. Without its coalition of allies, the U.S. just doesn’t have the size to stand up to China.
And even if they de facto conquered Asia and Europe, China and Russia would not simply ignore America and let it go on its merry way. The specter of a U.S. revival would haunt them. They would therefore do everything they could to weaken America. Obvious steps would include 1) economically strangling America by cutting it off from trading routes and natural resources, and 2) sowing continued internal dissent in America in the hopes of causing it to collapse into a civil war.
Bereft of its coalition of allies, America would be far less able to resist those efforts. Americans would suffer economically even as China and Russia stoked their hatreds and divisions. The worst ideologies of Trump’s first term — alt-right fascism, leftism, radical identitarianism, and so on — would all come back with a vengeance, encouraged by diligent Chinese and Russian online propagandists. Only now they’d also have a bad economy to fuel their anger."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-free-world-teeters-on-the-edge
24. Some good insights on how to invest, manage and grow a startup.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvqg4aTq1zM
25. "Just how bad is Taiwan’s energy situation and how did it put itself in such a vulnerable position? How might China exploit this situation if hostilities break out? The numbers might come as a bit of a shock. Let’s take a look.
According to data from the Statistical Review of World Energy, Taiwan relied on fossil fuels for 91% of last year’s primary energy needs, and virtually all of the oil, natural gas, and coal it consumed was imported. It has become particularly dependent on imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), averaging 2.65 billion cubic feet per day (bcf/d) in 2023, a fourfold increase since 2000. Natural gas and coal alone fuel 82% of Taiwan’s electricity production, and any prolonged disruption in supply would swiftly result in a crisis.
Recognizing this strategic weakness, China has regularly practiced military drills that simulate how it could blockade the island, signaling to the US in particular that it need not undertake a full invasion to bring Taiwan to its knees."
https://newsletter.doomberg.com/p/indefensible
26. "Entrepreneur is a synonym for salesperson, and salesperson is the pedestrian term for storyteller. Pro tip: No startup makes sense. We (entrepreneurs) are all impostors who must deploy a fiction (a story) that captures the imagination and attracts capital to pull the future forward and turn rhyme into reason. No business I have started, at the moment of inception, made any sense … until it did. Or didn’t. The only way to predict the future is to make it.
This is not the same as lying. There’s a real distinction between an entrepreneur and a liar: Entrepreneurs believe their story will come true, as they are laser-focused on making it true. A liar, well, they know they’re misleading people with false data. Usually for money (i.e., fraud). This is where Tesla turns gray."
https://www.profgalloway.com/tesla-wtf
27. "What I’m saying is that either candidate has the potential, like all of us, to rise to the occasion. But we can't lie to ourselves, neither of these candidates, in their current form, could hold a candle to a figure like Otto von Bismarck.
The Biden administration currently has the head of the CIA handling Middle East negotiations a spy chief is not typically seen as the most trustworthy figure in a government.
Trump had his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, managing Middle East matters. Trump proposed an Israel-Palestine peace plan without giving the Palestinians a say in the matter, and a few years later, we have a war between Hamas and Israel. Not the most effective approach to diplomacy.
Still, we hope for the best."
https://www.globalhitman.com/p/a-pivotal-point-in-history
28. "Whereas if you are trying to be a “creator,” or more simply an artist, people are spending a lot of energy focused on trying to turn the path into something that maps to the stories about work they grow up with (a career, stable, provides growing income, etc…)
So if you are curious about exploring this whole new creator world, I think the best strategy is to try to find a job inside one of these teams. There are a lot of these gigs if you know where to look. If this world existed in 2015, that likely would have been my path. But I just had no idea what I was doing.
Bottom line: work is definitely changing. Almost everyone I talk to in any kind of work says that things feel weird. They don’t know the best strategy for a career anymore. They have mixed feelings about remote or in-person work. And that means its going to feel weird.
But like always, we will learn and adapt."
https://newsletter.pathlesspath.com/p/laptop-man-and-new-remote-realities
29. "One of the statistics that raised eyebrows in Nvidia’s most recent quarterly earnings was its customer concentration - 46% of revenues came from just four customers.
It doesn’t take much guessing to figure out who those four companies are.
MSFT, AMZN, META and GOOGL are ramping up capex to the hundreds of billions because they’re locked in a capital arms race - the stakes are so high that investment from one hyperscaler elicits a response from the other."
https://akashbajwa.substack.com/p/concentration-in-the-ai-value-chain
30. 996. Hard core mode. This is what it takes to go big, trillion dollar big. Something many folks forgot during the ZIRP era.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaH_hz8XUoI
31. Good and alternative state of Venture capital. I lean more toward Bryce and Indie.vc's view. This is the future. The other end of factory farm industrial VC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INJPNaB_Rmk
32. "Our defense industrial base more closely resembles European sclerosis than America’s dynamic capital markets. It’s really hard to build a successful defense business, but not for any technical reasons or lack of capital. In America, 10x engineers are in the water. If you talk to any recruiter hiring for defense companies, the most challenging position to fill is the Head of Business Development.
There just aren’t that many individuals that know how to scale a business in an industry defined by regulatory capture (e.g., does your company have the right clearances, do you personally know the PEO, did you lobby the right legislators, etc.) Banning the revolving door doesn’t change this reality and would only further hamstring new entrants trying to break in.
But revolving door executives are not magic beans that companies can plant to Jack-and-the-beanstalk their growth (if only it were that easy). According to Senator Warren’s 2023 report attacking the revolving door, Boeing had more revolving door hires than any of the other Top 20 defense contractor—they clearly didn’t hire enough. And the rent-a-general taking a sinecure on a company board is an all too common meme."
https://kinetic.reviews/p/the-virtue-of-the-revolving-door
33. This is excellent and lots of good insights for living a better life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBAwmS-vkV4
34. Mr. Lemkin dropping some knowledge. Must listen to for those raising VC money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUIpqviEWBE
35. "Life advice: People who ask 10,000 questions never take any action at all. If you have any sales experience whatsoever, you know this already. The guy who wants to learn about every feature and has tons of little queries never makes the purchase. He only wastes your time."
https://lifemathmoney.com/how-to-know-if-someone-is-ngmi/
36. "In Europe, showing off like the Rockefellers, the Carnegies, or the Fords would be looked down on. Across European languages, the word for ambition has a negative conotation. As a result, ambition is not celebrated as often with public works and is not as visible or tangible.
It trickles down to all levels. American children probably spend a dangerous amount of time comparing themselves to others, trying to one-up each other. It boggles my mind, but my children’s German friends spend the same amount of time and effort to make any differences with their friends unapparent."
Talent Mobility in a Deglobalized & Multipolar World: Learning from Genghis Khan
As a history buff, I read a tremendous amount of books. Most recently finished “The Mongol Storm” by Nicholas Morton, which described the scary story and impressive impact their conquests and invasions had on most of Asia, the Middle East and even Eastern Europe in the 13th century. It was a terrifying horde from the harsh environment of the steppes, unified and led by a military genius named Chinggis Khan (Genghis Khan in western parlance) that literally changed everything in the geopolitical order at that time.
Old political dynasties were destroyed and immigration of entire peoples fled before their wrath. Their empire spanned China, most of the Middle East & Central Asia, all the way through modern day Turkey, Russia & Ukraine to even parts of Eastern Europe. It was huge and probably surpassed the old Roman Empire or at least matched the one of Alexander the Great. They had clear rules: Defiance and resistance would end in terror and death but surrender and loyalty would receive security and prosperity. It worked very well.
After the initial destruction and disruption, they were able to connect continents and unify trade routes from all over the world. The Mongol conquests reshaped the Near East and the process of Globalization really began during this time. They encouraged commerce and the sciences. Recruited talent from all across the empire. This led to a massive interchange and exchange of trade, ideas and talent between Asia & Europe, arguably, the beginning of the connected world we live in now. The conquests inevitably broadened peoples world views and opened their minds. Knowledge increased dramatically.
“In some cases these specialists might spend their entire lives plying their trade in places like the Venetian shipyards: “the Arsenal.” In most cases, however, a ruler rarely possessed the money or the need to retain an artisan’s services for more than a single project or for a few years, so the latter customarily moved from state to state, crossing cultural boundaries and plying their trade wherever it was required.
This very mobile workforce was much in evidence across the Near East in the medieval period: the Crusader States hired Armenian siege engineers; the Egyptians constructed ships according to a design created by a Sicilian shipwright; both the Mamluk sultan and the Ilkhans employed Frankish shipwrights; silk weavers from Mosul took refuge from the Mongols in the Crusader States (and, by extension, silk weavers from the Crusader States seemingly set up workshops in Paris); the Ayyubids occasionally hired Frankish knights to train their warriors;60 and an architect from Ayyubid Damascus designed the Anatolian Seljuks’ great mosque in Konya.
In short, the workforce was mobile and hireable, meaning that technologies and personnel flowed easily and quickly across religious and ethnic boundaries. This often had the effect of flattening the technological balance of power between societies because in many cases they all had access to the same artisans.”
But fast forward to 2024, as I’ve written many times, the world is fracturing again. Between the Global West (North America/ Europe/ Japan & Australia/New Zealand), the Global East (Russia/China) and Global South (Southeast Asia, Latam, Africa and the Middle East). Or as Balaji calls it Woke Capital, Communist Capital and Crypto Capital. Globalization, while not completely ended, is fracturing into these various blocs, where the bulk of the trade will be within these structures and not with each other.
In this new world, there will still be many opportunities for those willing to travel and even emigrate to new places. Possibly the Global South which is where the major growing populations are. Places like Singapore, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Panama and possibly a surprise for many people: Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City or Riyadh that are growing clusters for talent and where smart ambitious people are rewarded for their willingness to move.
In the Global West it could be cities like Tokyo, Tirana or Seoul. Where the smartest and most ambitious people go will always change. It used to be London during the 1800s. San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York & London have seen a massive decline during the pandemic but seem to be making a resurgence now. Talent, just like capital, will go where they are most welcome & see the brightest future. The flexible and the mobile will win big in this new world.
Undiscovered and Overlooked Assets: Value Investing in Life
Growing up studying history I’ve always been fascinated by history. Everyone knows about ancient Rome and Greece or the Italian Renaissance or the Napoleonic Wars. I love those periods too. But for me it was the obscure stuff.
Did you know that Hungary, Poland & the Czech Hussites during the Middle Ages were great military powers? Or Spain's army was unbeatable for several hundred years across Europe? Or about the Great Latin American war between Paraguay and, well, almost every major country in Latam. Super obscure.
I wonder sometimes why I am so driven to discover relatively unknown but amazing books, ideas and even places. Kind of like value investing but for life. It's way more fun to be emerging than to be emerged. To find the unobvious. To surface something looking back in retrospect seemed so obvious. This is my juice.
For travel, yes, I love fairly well known and popular places like Hawaii, Japan, Turkey, Thailand or Argentina. But for me the attraction was always for the overlooked but awesome places. Places like Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, Albania, Taiwan, Finland or Serbia.
And I love being relatively early before the crowds show up. Case in point I loved Lisbon and Portugal when I first went in 2015. Fast forward to 2024, I find it way too overrun with tourists. It’s lost its interest to me even though it’s still a beautiful place with amazing food.
Interesting how your curiosity and interests in life bleed into your career and how your career bleeds into your life.
It’s probably why I was drawn by the art of venture capital. Investing in overlooked geographies, founders and industrial sectors. If you do a deal and everyone thinks it’s a good deal, you probably missed something or are too late. I was early in B2B SaaS & Developer tools in 2014, relatively early in Insurance-tech back in 2015. And it is now definitely still early in the Defense/Militech space & Manufacturing-tech but boy is it exciting. (For all you peacenik critics of this, I don’t like that war and the need for a growing military industry is needed but it is now a reality in a deglobalizing and newly multi-polar world. Quoting Trotsky: “You might not be interested in war, but war is interested in you” )
Quoting my friend & legendary seed VC investor Mike Maples Jr. quoting legendary capital investor Dave Swensen: “you want your portfolio to be uncomfortably idiosyncratic.” Or put another way, you want to be misunderstood which usually equates to being very very early in the tech and consumer trend game.
This is the only way to generate real returns and alpha. It’s easier said than done as it requires conviction and courage to move against the crowd. You also need to be comfortable having haters and doubters. But if you have a clear thesis on the future and have done your homework, stick with it and give it the time until the market moves your way. Magic eventually happens.
Sun Moon: Loss, Growth, Taiwan & Travel
I always end up watching random movies on my many flights. I found this b-grade movie called “Sun Moon”, about a young American girl from a small town who gets left at the altar by her fiancé. Living in a typical small town, she is tired of the whispers and pity. With a young sister in college & an ill mother in the hospital, she decides to randomly move to Taiwan to teach English at the Taiwan Adventist Academy high school.
And her adventure begins. After a rough start with jet lag, apathetic Taiwanese teens and culture shock, she begins to adjust. She starts to bond with her students, explores the beauty of underrated Taiwan, and falls in love with her handsome Taiwanese colleague. It’s a surprisingly warm and lovely story. It also shows how kind and warm Taiwanese people are.
It reminds me also of my own story, moving to Taiwan in 1997, meeting new friends and more importantly meeting a beautiful girl. Led to us getting married, having a brilliant and amazing little girl, building a family. It used to be my main source of joy & happiness at least until the pandemic lockdowns in 2020.
I’m not particularly religious but count myself spiritual. Or at least I have become more so over the last few years. There was a great quote in the movie.
“I think God uses everything. The way you love, the way you hurt, your mistakes, your whims. I guess if you are stuck, you have to take a leap of faith.”
If things are bad, you need to make a big move. Take action. Do something, anything.
The movie reinforced my sense that if you are in a bad situation, sometimes it makes sense to leave your old home and environment. A New environment gives you new perspectives. Some time away from your old place can help you heal. Or to allow yourself to gather strength to recover and then deal with the situation better.
What I liked about this movie also was how distance can help you rediscover the important thing you are running away from. You can hide but not forever. It always catches up to you. Whether that is love, religion and family.
“There is a time for everything. To everything there is a season.”
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads November 10th, 2024
"Success isn't always about greatness. It's about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come." —Dwayne Johnson
"When you look at manpower, the Russian government has significantly increased the payouts and benefits to recruit personnel. The reason for that is straightforward. It’s clear that at this rate of loss, the Russian contract recruitment campaign is unable to keep up. This too does not mean that Russia is going to run out of manpower, but it’s clear that they’re struggling, and they are not likely to be able to sustain this pace of operations, staying on the offensive with this rate of loss.
The way I would put it is that the Russian military is actually operating under significant constraints. Given the likely decline in the relative advantage at the front line, Russia’s potential negotiating position actually isn’t all that strong. And while Russia has the resources to sustain the war in the near term, looking just a bit beyond that you see a fairly problematic picture in terms of the rate of inflation in Russia’s overheating economy, the deficit of skilled labor — because the state is pulling workers into the defense industry and contracting them to fight in the war — the steady depletion of Russia’s liquid reserves, and the fact that much of the budget is tied to the current oil price. The economic picture for Russia isn’t particularly rosy. The effort to juggle several different parts of this equation may not be sustainable. And this too must at some point weigh on the Russian leadership’s mind."
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/ukraine-war-why-russia-is-in-more-trouble-than-it-looks.html
2. This is a grim outlook for geopolitics and the economy from Simon Hunt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMxgtbmOU1E
3. "Here’s the bottom line: In this next new era, risk capital available for startups will be much less concentrated in a few Sand Hill Road firms doing old-school equity financings. It will be much more distributed, and much more diverse in the ways that financings are structured.
For entrepreneurs, I think this is a good thing. As I’ve written before, I don’t think the unicorn obsession was necessarily good for us.
2025–2035 will look a lot different than 2010–2022. And I am so here for it."
https://medium.com/@bretwaters/the-venture-capital-landscape-changing-c762f33e8c73
4. Educational conversation on the race to AGI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMQoDRTWwUg
5. What a terrifying new world of war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEXI6r08908
6. "How good of a CRM could a software company build with a $10m annual budget & with AI? It’s the equivalent bet to funding a startup with a $20-30m Series A & a big design partner.
Technology is always commoditizing itself. Perhaps bespoke software will have the same impact in sales as in customer support. That would provide Klarna a sustainable competitive advantage over time.
It’s also a forcing function to require the organization to rethink their workflows in the age of AI. More than just changing software, burning the boats & forcing a company to reimagine workflows with a blank slate can be a powerful way to drive innovation."
https://tomtunguz.com/klarna-ai/
7. This is always a good show for learning what's up in Silicon Valley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHEt2HLxRfU
8. More on what's up in Silicon Valley. Definitely right title: "The crisis in venture" with GV's MG Siegler.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMizwOPI3w8
9. Strong views whether you agree or not and this is great. Glad to see a more outspoken and authentic Silicon Valley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=CgEWwL_wwQk
10. This looks damn good. Inspiration for training.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4gz6Kwpotw
11. The global war broadens unfortunately with North Korean troops training in Russia in preparation to go to Ukraine, opens up massive implications geopolitically.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0uYxK66VLU
12. Talk about an OG Defense-tech investor. This was incredibly insightful. Strong recommendation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=idpsqCH2VTA&t=3s
13. "My recommendation is to articulate a clear vision, sell the future, and then continuously adapt, solicit feedback, and iterate. The vision is seen, but the journey to achieve it is unknown."
https://davidcummings.org/2024/10/12/the-vision-is-clear-but-the-journey-is-unknown/
14. "Yet Britain’s resolve will only truly become clear if and when a contest for polar assets — or indeed fully-fledged polar war — finally arrives. And in the event, any showdown could come sooner than we think. Long-term oil reserves are one thing. But Russia also has a profound strategic interest in the Arctic in the here-and-now. Last February, Norway’s normally reticent intelligence service publicly warned that nuclear weapons could be present on Russian vessels in the High North. No less important, Sweden and Finland’s accession to Nato also brings the possibility that Western nuclear weapons might be deployed in the Arctic too.
China, for its part, needs the Arctic as well. With sea lanes in the Red Sea threatened by the Houthis, and the Panama Canal with problems of its own, Beijing needs a reliable route from its port at Dailan to Rotterdam in Europe. The Arctic is the obvious choice here, not least when Chinese ships can now make the journey in less than 25 days, and when its economy would surely struggle without it. Britain, in short, seems unwilling or unable to exploit its polar bounty. But its future here may ultimately depend on decisions taken by others — something Keir Starmer and his admirals would both do well to remember."
https://unherd.com/2024/10/britains-coming-polar-war/
15. Mike Maples Jr is a legend. This is an insight deep conversation in startup investing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_lqGHKHi5M
16. "In this post, I’ve argued that the primary goal in organization design should not be reducing of span-of-control, but in surfacing conflicts most important to the company. I’ve also introduced a value-add rule that says no department should report into an executive who can’t add value to it. And finally, knowing that consolidation is inevitable over time as a successful company scales."
https://kellblog.com/2024/10/12/design-your-organization-for-the-conflicts-you-want-to-hear-about/
17. A masterclass in founder selling. And software sales in general, especially for enterprise sales. Learned a lot personally.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROsrlUFAVZs&t=887s
18. I had to watch this. Of course, both Mearsheimer & Sachs are anti-Ukraine which is wrong in my view. Jeffrey Sachs is very much naive in my opinion, CCP is absolutely a massive threat. CCP is pushing aggressively in South and East China seas. I agree more w/ Mearsheimer's view.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvFtyDy_Bt0&t=13s
19. Geopolitical take here on China and the fight for African resources between China, USA, France, Russia, UAE & Turkey among others.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2PJF9_9w4w&t=1s
20. "Ten to twenty years ago, none of these worrying laws or actions enacted by our governments were commonplace. Today, they’re growing at a rate that should terrify us all.
Where will we be in another decade from now?
Sure, people aren’t yet being arrested in the West for wearing a t-shirt the government doesn’t like. But we’re very close to that being the case."
https://anticitizen.com/p/heads-will-roll
21. Worth watching if you want to know where AI and compute is going. BG2 is the best show on tech biz right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z77jZkYDpIE&t=1736s
22. "Since 2020, according to published reports, the United States has been urging countries in the region to avoid using a Chinese company to repair or lay new cables at the bottom of the sea out of concern that China could intercept and monitor sensitive communications passing through the cables.
It has also been urging companies to route new cables around the perimeter of the sea, avoiding the central part of the waterway claimed by China based on historic maps showing a 10-dash line that infringes on the exclusive economic zones of several other countries.
In what may be an act of retaliation, according to a Washington Post report this month, China has been delaying — sometimes for months — its approval of permits for companies to repair or lay new cables under the sea. The delays have been particularly troublesome for countries such as Vietnam, which is anxious to replace five aging cables that have failed repeatedly, slowing internet traffic in the country.
In the past four years, the U.S. government has blocked at least three cable projects that would have linked the United States to Hong Kong because of concerns that China could spy on or sabotage communications, the Post reported."
23. A deep dive into the future of AI with the man driving much of this. Jensen of Nvidia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUrCR4jQQg8
24. "But it's also true that VCs and founders have kept chasing the ghost of pandemic-era valuation excess, thus stymieing exit efforts.
Moreover, Biden had presided over very strong public stock markets that have proven welcoming to IPOs — which is where VCs historically have made their strongest returns — but too many VCs have become so "founder-friendly" as to become lousy fiduciaries.
The bottom line: The VC market's cowardly chickens are coming home to roost."
https://www.axios.com/2024/10/11/venture-capital-deal-slow-liquidity
25. An excellent discussion on what's up with Silicon Valley VC: AI & Defense Renaissance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXHQfhQrhfs
26. Incredible & insightful discussion on the art of seed stage investing. This is worth watching a few times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njgJ4w9DAao
27. "Meanwhile, in pre-Columbus North America, native tribes were engaged in a constant state of territorial warfare. Far removed from the Disney depiction of Native life, to borrow from Hobbes, life was indeed brutal, nasty, and short. With no common language, values system, or acknowledgment of property rights, it was every clan for themselves.
The strong persevered, and the weak perished. Tribes maneuvered almost like gorillas in the wild. Outsiders were deemed a potential barbarian who must be dealt with violently in the interest of self-preservation.
Native Americans failed to truly thrive, and there is no indication it was because they were somehow less intelligent."
https://www.dossier.today/p/why-the-left-canceled-columbus-day
28. This makes me both angry and sad. Disgusted at the lack of strategy, the cowardice and weakness of the USA & Europe. We have let down Ukraine & set them up to fail but it's not too late to turn things around.
"What would a betrayed Ukraine look like? At least it would retain some 82% of its territory. A guilty West would doubtless provide aid to rebuild infrastructure. It might be given a pathway to eventual EU membership (unless that option had been bargained away at the negotiating table), but joining the Western club may have lost its appeal at that point. Ukraine’s corrupt oligarchs would re-emerge from hibernation. The old post-Soviet cynicism would replace the youthful enthusiasm of the Maidan generation. There would be antagonism towards those returning from abroad after avoiding the fight, and – of course – thousands of grieving families.
This should have been Europe’s war to manage. In spite of decades of discussion about European defence, it proved too convenient to rely on US largesse. This made Europe a prisoner of US electoral factors. It also caused Europe to shirk the difficult decisions that helping win the war entailed: the big increases in defence expenditure, the 24-hour working in ammunition factories, the hikes in food and energy costs and the political risks such as seizing frozen assets. What remains now for Europe is to secure a place at the negotiating table and to argue for NATO membership for Ukraine as part of any settlement.
Failing that, the West will have years to repent the betrayal of the courageous Ukrainians, whose only crime was their wish to join the Western democratic order."
https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/impending-betrayal-ukraine
29. This is motivating and helpful for any budding entrepreneur. We can all learn from Alex Hormozi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO5m-roVzjg
30. Good discussion on investing in AI. A good VC needs to be a historian.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsV2avKGXQM
31. "I’m not a fan of lifetime value (LTV) in startups (how can one predict a 7 year customer lifetime value if the company isn’t yet 7 years old?) But for public software companies with these sparser economics, LTV becomes an important determinant of whether & when to invest more in growth.
If paybacks are 4.5 years & LTVs are five years, that data should provoke strategic questions about the company operations."
https://tomtunguz.com/why-ltv-matters-more-in-2024/
32. "The most interesting point that was focused on was Taiwan. The conclusion of everyone I talked to or overheard talking about China was that Taiwan is a when, not an if. The universal conclusion of what happens after China takes Taiwan - slowly or quickly depending on who you ask - is that China won't face consequences for that. The sanctions mechanisms that have been used to attempt to harm smaller countries like Russia and Iran - who have continued to trade with China - wouldn't work at all on China.
The shipping companies wouldn't have anybody left to trade with. You'd likely have some companies that would only trade with western approved counter parties - but in general, any attempt by the west to prevent ships from loading in China - a country that builds more ships now than any other nation, drives half of global commodities demand, and serves as the world's factory - would be so disastrous that its implementation wouldn't even be attempted. If you believe the shipping guys, the United States has already lost its world leadership position. China is everything.
I don't think people are really willing to talk about what the end of US hegemony means - I brought up "US currency devaluation" several times and I think nobody really liked that topic. But the fact that all of these people - who have their finger directly on the pulse of global trade - see a US/China conflict, or even just China facing any consequences or resistance at all for invading Taiwan - well it tells you an awful lot about how much the world has changed over the past 30 years. China was still barely an industrial power at the end of the 1990s. Now they are the power."
https://calvinfroedge.com/insights-from-capital-link-forum-2024/
33. "And now we come close to the heart of the Art Deco movement: it was futuristic while having one eye in the back of its head. That was the secret to its genius. It embraced machines, new materials, and the future...while never forgetting the primal value of beauty."
https://oldbooksguy.substack.com/p/why-art-deco-is-making-a-comeback
34. "We know that war is inflationary. We understand that the US government must borrow money to sell bombs to Israel. We know that the Fed and the US commercial banking system will buy this debt by printing money and growing their balance sheets. Therefore, we know that Bitcoin will rise stupendously in fiat terms as the war intensifies.
What about Iran’s military expenditures? Will China/Russia help Iran’s war effort in some way? China is perfectly willing to buy Iranian hydrocarbons, and China and Russia sell Iran goods; however, none of this trading is done on credit. In a cynical sense, I believe China and Russia will act like the clean-up crew. They will publicly denounce the war but do nothing of note to attempt to prevent Iran's destruction.
Israel is not interested in nation-building. Instead, they would delight if, as a result of their attacks, the Iranian regime crumbled due to popular unrest. China, in particular, could then roll out its preferred method of diplomacy. Loan a newly formed weak Iranian government funds to rebuild their country using Chinese state-owned firms. That, in essence, is the Belt and Road program Chinese President Xi Jinping has pursued throughout his reign. Then Iran, with its massive deposits of minerals and hydrocarbons, would be fully within the Chinese orbit. China obtains another captive market in the Global South to dump its overproduced, high-quality, and low-priced manufactured goods. In return, Iran sells China cheap energy and industrial commodities.
If you want to call it that, the support from China and Russia will not expand the global fiat money supply. Therefore, it will have no discernible impact on the fiat price of Bitcoin.
An intensified Middle Eastern conflict will not destroy any critical physical infrastructure supporting crypto. Bitcoin and crypto will rise as energy prices spike higher. The hundreds of billions or trillions of newly printed dollars will re-energize the Bitcoin bull market."
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/persistent-weak-layer
35. "So what do you have to do at seed? You have to go further out on the risk curve, to something that’s weirder, different, or too early for a later-stage investor. Early, but not too early: hence the “12-36 months” phrasing. If you go too early and either the technology or market is not ready, the company may run out of money before you hit an inflection point. Finding an idea whose time has finally come with a multi-decade tailwind driving your potential is critical to building a generational venture-backed company.
A good litmus test I’ve been using recently is: “If I asked someone who works at a middle-of-the-road Series B/C fund about this company, would they react with skepticism or excitement?” If it’s the latter, I worry that the market is already defined and obvious and it’s too late for me.
If it’s the former, there might actually be something there."
https://pratyushbuddiga.substack.com/p/what-do-you-invest-in
36. Jeff does a good job on the state of the venture capital market right now: signs of consolidation. Really interesting, specifically with his view on the emerging manager sector.
The Great Societal Disconnection: The True Impact of the 2020 Pandemic
Social media is a curse because you see all the things you missed. FOMO all the time. While traveling in Europe I noticed a good friend had just gotten married and was having a huge wedding party. And the thing that got me was that I recognized many people there. People I considered friends and close former colleagues.
Prior to 2020 I definitely would have been invited and been there. But I realize now with the pandemic lockdowns, the disruptions from the barbaric Russian invasion of Ukraine, the vicious Hamas 2023 attack and atrocities against Israeli civilians and the consequent trauma that hit most of us, isolated us all and caused us to lose touch with each other. And these are, I stress, previously close friends and colleagues over the last few decades. The lockdowns and shutdown disrupted so many of our lives but the real impact is really being felt many years later on. I would add, being an introvert and having a global and traveling lifestyle only accelerates this effect.
How many of us ended up being divorced or separated from our spouses due to the unnatural amount of time stuck together during stressful times? How many of our kids were socially affected and traumatized from the lockdowns? How many of us feel completely disconnected from friends and family?
It’s in 2024 when I write this and it’s only now 4 years later that I am slowly beginning to reconnect in person with people I used to see all the time. People I respect and consider good friends. 3 frigging years where we all have changed dramatically. 3 years of being traumatized by government fear mongering and disillusioned by their grift and incompetence. We are all different people now, for better or worse.
No wonder everyone is feeling completely alone and disconnected. This is the true cost of the 2020 pandemic and I am not sure how long it will take to recover from this. Or if we ever will. But one way or the other, these next few years will be years of reconnecting back with everyone. We can absolutely still heal if we make the effort. So here is me making the effort and starting to reach out to everyone again after working on myself.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: The Limits of Generosity
I spend much time transiting through airports. One of them is Istanbul as I tend to go to places in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East these days. During a recent trip when getting my Internet access code for the airport via a kiosk, an older lady asked me for some help. So of course I helped her.
But some other older ladies saw this and asked me to help them get them as well. Well fast forward, 20-30 minutes later, as I was helping the last one, she then asked me if I could help her husband. I kind of lost it and said I had a flight to catch (which I actually did) and walked away. I wish I handled this with a bit more grace.
I admit this is definitely a very petty post. I genuinely want to try to help people but every once in a while I get so triggered when people get demanding or entitled or just ask for way too much.
I think this is why so many rich or famous people start to turn inward and avoid people. People are selfish, in many cases stupid and clueless at times. The rich and famous become targets of social demands and feel like everyone wants something from them. Which is usually the case.
Now I don’t want to become a transactional east coast MBA guy who only does something if they get something in return. I never want to be that kind of guy.
But I also don’t want to be the people pleaser that says YES to everything and everyone. Giving without end. That would not be good for my own psyche or anyone’s actually. There are also many people in the world who view kindness and generosity as a weakness and are people I try to avoid dealing with.
My rule is the “rule of 1 and half”, that I learned in Silicon Valley. You get 1-2 meetings or 1-2 intros to help for free. Anything beyond that has to be commercial. But it also lets me try and give some help to people without expectation of any return. This rule obviously is for people you don’t know, not friends or family of course. There are almost no limits in mind to family and friends. It’s sacred.
It’s also a reminder for me to go back to the principles of stoicism. You can’t control other people but you can control your feelings toward them.
Just like Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius said:
“Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil.
But for my part I have long perceived the nature of good and its nobility, the nature of evil and its meanness, and also the nature of the culprit himself, who is my brother (not in the physical sense, but as a fellow creature similarly endowed with reason and a share of the divine); therefore none of those things can injure me, for nobody can implicate me in what is degrading.”
I find this helps condition me and prepare for the day. The “rule of 1 & half” is the second part that prevents you from getting taken advantage of while also allowing you to help people. This will help you manage your important and inevitable social obligations.
Holiday Hell: Why Holidays Are Hard for Most People
Have you noticed that many people tend to be particularly tense or in a bad mood during the major holidays. Especially during Thanksgiving or Christmas/New Years in America. As someone who has lived away from my home in Vancouver, Canada since 1996, I always religiously head home to see my folks during Christmas time. I think I missed a year because of a missed flight in 2001 and then in 2020 due to the BS covid lockdowns. But otherwise I would fly home, always with a mixture of joy and anxiety.
Why? We should be so fortunate to have our parents and siblings still around. Many people don’t have that luxury. And especially as an adult with a child, it’s great to just be able to chill out while all the meals, babysitting and laundry and chores are done for you. You regress back to your childhood. And my folks even give me Canadian dollars to spend while there, which is so weird. And they never take my refusal at all.
But at the same time, you hear bizarre commentary on politics and societal events. Or the criticism from elders, and the inevitable judgment and conflict that comes up at meal time. Annoying as you are now an adult used to living and doing whatever you want. Especially for someone so independent minded like me. It’s not like I have a curfew but then you end up having all the weird arguments with them.
The excellent financial writer Frederik Gieschen wrote something quite insightful a week or so back:
"What strange magic happens once we’re around family? We’re confronted with our past, we get a glimpse of our future, we dive into our deepest wells of conflicting emotions. Love, gratitude, and the desire to be seen, heard, and appreciated all co-exist with frustration, anger, sadness, shame. We start shifting between new and old identities, we slip back into roles and behaviors we thought we’d long abandoned. The ghosts of childhood wounds haunt the dinner table.
I think we trigger each by our very nature, not on purpose (ok, sometimes on purpose). Just like an insult only touches us if we spot a kernel of truth in it, family drama is intense because we see aspects of ourselves reflected in the other. Family ‘rubs your nose’ in the struggles of your life by showing you its iterations. If my mother struggles to let go of things, I see in this my own challenges, my own stacks of books, my own clutching and clasping.
Family is a mirror. Family throws a spotlight on what we’d rather avoid.
But here’s the kicker. If you do it right, family drama is a portal.
Fear, death, love, desire, envy, healthy and unhealthy romance, addiction, generational trauma — it’s often all there, in some shape or form. And for the holidays, it all comes together."
(Source: https://alchemy.substack.com/p/in-the-land-of-triggers-merry-christmas)
And for me it’s the long simmering anger I have toward my mother who always questioned and shamed me for not being the model kid when growing up. We’re all hurt little children no matter how old we are. And for most part, I’ve been able to use this rage to drive my career and life forward. But it’s always been there and you can only suppress it for so long. It has started to negatively impact my own family life in the last few years, despite entreaties by my therapist and other family members to finally address it over the last 2 years. Something I kept putting off the hard conversations.
So Frederik’s post came at the perfect time. He wrote:“Holidays offer an opportunity to learn about ourselves and our family and rediscover quirks and imperfections. There’s no guarantee that we leave with the gift of love, growth, and understanding.
If we face our triggers, if we muster the courage to share, if we listen with patience, if we draw on our compassion, well, there’s a chance we can turn the drama and pain into something precious. It’s a chance worth taking.”
He was right. It was not a fun or easy conversation but things have gotten slightly better since. And I’m less angry. That’s something. So my point is that hard conversations are better to have sooner, rather than later. Your parents or loved ones will not always be there.
Better to take the uncomfortable step to engage them and you will come out of this feeling much better. And the albeit petty sub-lesson for me: hold grudges for your enemies, not your family. :)