Patisserie Coin De Rue: Tragedy & Triumph in the Pursuit of Perfection
I saw this lovely Japanese movie, a drama about a cute bakery in Tokyo, that specializes in affordable but top end patisseries.
This one falls into “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” but for cakes. I love Japan and I love cakes. I was originally pulled in by the beautiful shots of how pastries are being made. But the human drama was excellent.
The big lessons from the movie was that of persistence, obsession and keeping high standards in the pursuit of excellence. The hard work, the early mornings, all the mistakes to get to a high level.
That and the high personal price one pays for pursuing excellence. In the movie, one of the main characters loses his young daughter to a tragic accident, due to being late in picking her up because of his obsession at work. As a father, that scene was devastating to me personally. I still shudder when I think of it, it’s so heartbreaking.
But there were so many wonderful scenes of how a simple cake made with love could bring so much joy and happiness to people. How it can be a solace to someone.
As quoted in the movie, “when you are doing what you love, it shows.” I guess that is the ultimate lesson. If you can make or do something that brings joy to someone you should do it. And if you are lucky enough to be able to do this, then you have found your craft and place in this world.
The Legend and the Butterfly: Power Corrupts
In lieu of visiting Japan, I have been on a Japanese movie kick. I watched documentaries, comedies and was excited to watch a samurai drama tracing the rise of warlord Oda Nobunaga and his marriage to Lady Nohime. For anyone who knows Japanese history, Oda was considered one of the first unifiers of warring states of Japan in the mid-1500s.
We learn that his marriage to Lady No, who was a brilliant samurai noblewoman, was key to his rise to power. Giving him wise counsel and encouraging him when he was down. She helps channel his ambition. He embarks on his conquest to reunify Japan against the other warlords.
Yet Oda pays an incredible price. He fights many battles with lots of killing. He becomes ruthless in the accumulation of power, crushing everyone and everything in his way. “At this time, I have no heart. I haven’t been a decent man in a long time. I am not a man. I am King of the Sixth Heaven Demons.”
We see how this affects him, as the weight of it all drained the joy out of his previously carefree and joyful life. He ages tremendously, becoming demon-like and this is reflected in how scary his face becomes to everyone around him.
“Look at his face. Can you see how exhausted and miserable he is??”
He eventually realizes how much he has sacrificed on the altar of power.
“I killed an enemy that challenged me. I built a castle like no other at Azuichi. I achieved so much that even the Emperor admires me.
What for? What was it for?”
This is the question so many of us ponder or discover the hard way at the end. The quest for power, wealth and fame. Success. It’s so alluring and attractive to us when we are young. But what a price we pay. Such a heavy price.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads March 16th, 2025
"April prepares her green traffic light, and the world thinks: Go." —Christopher Morley
Topical discussions on what is happening in Silicon Valley. The wise Naval is the guest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI5qI6ej-yM
2. Lots of great insights on where the world of technology & business is going. Useful for investors and workers to understand where the puck is moving to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt7ckZDTtis&t=1903s
3. "Round-two entrepreneurs are some of my favorite types of entrepreneurs to work with. After years of effort that didn’t result in success, they still want to pursue the entrepreneurial journey again. That resilience separates casual entrepreneurs from those who are truly committed.
Failure is normal and often the most common outcome. But just because you’ve been knocked down doesn’t mean you can’t get back up. Round-two entrepreneurs step back into the arena with a newfound perspective—and a little extra spring in their step."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/02/15/round-two-entrepreneurs/
4. "If these accusations get anywhere is anyone’s guess —if Argentina’s past is any indicator, my bet would be that this won’t having any implications for Milei’s presidency locally, just like with so many politicians before him—, but they will be an unnecessary additional distraction next to more crucial topics like Argentina’s economy and Milei’s political success in the October elections.
The more important damage is that to Milei’s image abroad, since most people outside of Argentina were probably not aware of his previous endorsement or simply forgot about it because the chainsaw was roaring with such great success. The fact that nobody on the Milei team thought about the potential consequences of his actions or simply didn’t care, is worrying to say the least.
His political team will have to think long and hard on how to avoid these things from happening in the future, and Milei would do well to focus solely on the matters at hand, which is the October elections and the Argentine economy."
https://www.bowtiedmara.io/p/libra-imbalanced-confidence
5. "To end on a positive note, there was one silver lining that I saw: Europe seems to be waking up - albeit very slowly. J.D. Vance’s speech, for all its flaws, may have served a purpose: It forced Europeans to confront an uncomfortable reality.
If the U.S. isn’t coming to the rescue, Europe has no choice but to take responsibility for itself.
The question is: Will there be enough time before the storm arrives?"
https://stationzero.substack.com/p/a-storm-is-coming-what-i-saw-at-the
6. "To be clear, I don’t quite agree with the idea that the elites have totally abandoned ‘shaping the world’ in exchange for merely maintaining the status quo—at least not directly and intentionally. Rather the process transitioned toward this emergently due to the elites’ inability to harness the unpredictable fluxes they had unleashed with their monetary and social engineering leviathans, particularly of the ‘Nixon shock’ era and Bretton Woods annulment.
The distinction is this Potemkin existence is essentially a de facto rather than de jure system. It’s a tail that wags the dog because the system’s main imposed characteristics are designed more to reactively stave off collapse, rather than proactively re-engineer society into an altruist’s vision of the future. Again, the distinction comes from the inherent urgency of the demands for this change: the elites have no way of stopping their system’s slow-mo demise, and instead resort to perception control to buy time."
https://darkfutura.substack.com/p/hypernormalization
7. "In contrast, the standout new dynamics - and reason for my MAGAnomics worries - is a significant drop in Japanese exports to the Global South. This is were head-to-head competition against Made-in-China has intensified, were Japan has been loosing ground, and is poised to loose further market share and profitability if Trump’s policies raise further the costs for China to do business in (or with) America.
China’s manufacturing capability and capacity have grown and evolved consistently. China is now a perfectly viable global competitor to Made-in-Japan. Famously, China surpassed Japan as the world’s number one car exporter; and the breadth of head-to-head competition against China is growing rapidly: first, it was textiles and toys; then the Shinkansen bullet train and electronics; last year, cars; and next up — machinery and capital goods: already China’s exports of industrial robots have more than doubled in the last five years while Japan’s are down 12%. A similar story in construction and mining machinery, up almost 3-fold for China, down over 10% for Japan (same five years).
Clear-speak: Trump’s America is frightening, yes it needs to scare the world to survive at home; but it thereby empowers global leaders. After decades of “Japan should play a greater part in the U.S.-Japan alliance” Trump’s America puts an end to diplomatic niceties and leaves Japan’s elite with no choice. They now will become more independent, more self-sufficient, more aggressive, assertive, and more focused on self-centered material results. The “free ride” is over — which fuels both the local corporate- and political metabolism."
https://japanoptimist.substack.com/p/maga-worries
8. "TDL;DR: The next generation of AI is imminent, and companies are working feverishly to be at the forefront of it.
The practical result of all this is that an individual will continue to become more capable than ever before. You can use AI to generate fully-coded apps, bring projects to life that once required entire teams, or even push forward on cutting-edge research. The question is which problems we aim all this energy at—and whose vision guides us."
https://every.to/context-window/just-add-vision
9. "But more importantly, I think that from Europe’s vantage point, it mostly doesn’t matter which interpretation of America’s recent words and actions is more accurate.
Whether America really wants to focus on deterring China in Asia, or whether it just wants to retreat from the global stage and focus on bullying Canada, Panama, and its own minorities, that doesn’t change the cold hard fact that America is retreating from its role as the guarantor of European security. And whether or not Trump’s people actually think Russia is a threat to Europe, that doesn’t change the fact that Russia is a threat to Europe. And whether Trump’s people truly care about free speech, that doesn’t change the fact that Europe’s people are angry about recent immigration waves, and if that anger isn’t accommodated through the democratic process, Europe’s stability could be in danger.
In other words, both the challenges that Europe faces, and the fact that the U.S. is not going to help with those challenges, are clear and obvious. Europe must either stand on its own against the threats that face it, or capitulate to those threats.
Fortunately, some of the Europeans may finally be realizing this.
Nor is it fanciful to think that Europe might unite to fight Russia. Even if the U.S. formally withdraws from NATO, or simply refuses to come to its allies’ aid, NATO command can serve as a unified military command for any and all European efforts against Russia. Crucially, NATO also includes Turkey and the UK, who aren’t in the EU, but both of which are rivals of Russia. In fact, without a Trump-led U.S. weighing the alliance down, it could be free to become the pan-European military force that the region needs.
The other danger is that each European country will look after its own narrow interests, throwing the other countries to the wolves. There’s a tendency of each country to view the nations to the east of it as buffer states — a defense-in-depth to hold off the Russians. This is a dangerous fantasy. The more Russia conquers, the more powerful it growth, since it basically enslaves each conquered group into its army to conquer the next group. When the USSR attacked Poland in 1919, it did so with many Ukrainian troops; when it menaced West Europe during the Cold War, it did so with Polish troops. And so on. Europe has to make a stand and put up a hard wall, instead of letting Russia continue to absorb and enslave its people bit by bit.
If the U.S. abandons Ukraine to Russia entirely, as now looks fairly likely, it might make sense for Europe to actively intervene in the war, helping the Ukrainians stop Russia from grabbing any more territory."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/its-time-for-europe-to-stand-up
10. An incredible interview with Palmer Luckey of Oculus Drift and Anduril. I'm glad he is on our side.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwSycrvcwAs&t=11319s
11. Sober and yet still optimistic view from the Munich Security Conference. Ukraine will be a military industrial giant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHZT4uk9Cjk
12. "Taiwan has learnt the central tech lesson from the war in Ukraine: the next global conflicts will heavily feature cheap, small drones – and in large numbers.
So as an electronics and hardware component giant – especially relative to its size and diplomatic status – it is trying not only to develop a domestic industry, but also become an arsenal for the free world, building drones and devices for allied militaries worldwide.
The Taiwanese government estimates that the domestic drone industry will produce USD $150 million in drones this year, with goals to increase that eightfold by 2030. Thousands of drones have been ordered by the Ministry of National Defense to boost the domestic supply chain, and millions of dollars in funding have been dedicated to R&D.
And not all of the drones will be aerial. Given the island nation’s deep connections to the ocean, they are pushing to develop technologies in this realm as well.
Another marine science center, located on the southern tip of the Taiwanese main island, is currently being used for the testing of underwater drones."
13. "Imagine American factories no longer crippled by semiconductor shortages. Picture grocery store shelves stocked with affordable food, and fuel prices that don’t drain wallets. That’s the future a negotiated end to the Ukraine war can deliver — and it’s a future where America stands stronger.
The time for endless proxy wars is over. It’s time for a bold, pragmatic strategy that secures American supply chains, strengthens our economy, and restores our global dominance. Ending the war in Ukraine isn’t just good policy; it’s essential for America and the EU’s future."
14. For all SaaS leaders. Pipegen.
https://kellblog.com/2025/02/16/you-cant-eat-pipegen/
15. "Europe has become a third-rate power economically, politically, and militarily, and the price for this slowly building predicament is now due all at once.
I don't summarize the sad state of Europe out of spite or ill will or from a lack of standing. I don't want Europe to become American. But I want Europe to be strong, confident, and successful. Right now it's anything but."
https://world.hey.com/dhh/europe-s-impotent-rage-7edae302
16. "The same principles apply to basically all aspects of life: investing, health, relationships etc. You are playing a game of probabilities. Can’t complain about having bad dating options if you were hitting up E-thots every day and going to house parties with the 50 year old narco.
While you might be the exception to the rule, power lifting and playing football at age 40, the chances are slim that it works out long-term. The data is already out there to steer yourself to flexibility, lower overall weight to avoid injury and a clean diet.
You have to come up with a system for your investing and biz ventures. We could care less about price action for 1-2 years let alone 1-2 months. There are graveyards full of people who sold all their META stock at $40 or all their BTC at $2,000. *Our* strategy is to build stuff that can work for 5-10+ years. If for some reason you have a gift for options trading then honestly go for it, just know you’ll never convince us to go down that route. It isn’t a core competency and would probably cost too much time to learn."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/general-life-themes-for-the-sentient
17. So many great lessons and ideas for making your life better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JfRPXYFQHE&t=949s
18. Snapshot of geopolitics from some ex-CIA officers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxnug2u7VKg
19. "You can take the shot without being afraid to fail… because in the long run we’re all failures, since none of us are immortal. We are not gods.
Like a girl? Go talk to her.
Hate your boss? Start an online business.
Stressed too much about your work? Care less, build a side hustle.
Health problems? Exercise, eat clean, and do what you can to fix it.
Do what you can do to fix the problem instead of being sad and depressed about it.
If you fail, so what? Try again."
https://lifemathmoney.com/1-year-from-the-death-of-jon-anthony-from-masculine-development-takeaways/
20. It's all about political will here. Europe waking up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JogpD0ZtI-E
21. "Imagine the US as a colossal investment management firm (America Capital Partners) operating in—and controlling access to—the world's most successful business ecosystem. This ecosystem is so dynamic that it constantly runs hot: American consumers and businesses, empowered by innovation and high productivity, generate demand that constantly exceeds domestic supply, creating persistent trade deficits.
These deficits aren't a bug but a feature: they reflect the ecosystem's dynamism and purchasing power, which in turn makes it so attractive to foreign investors. And it’s this very vibrancy that enables America Capital Partners to attract such a large volume of Assets Under Management (AUM).
The mechanics are elegant: when Americans buy more than they sell abroad, they export dollars. Those foreign sellers, enriched by American consumption, then face a crucial choice about what to do with these dollars. Given America's unmatched investment opportunities, sophisticated financial markets, and strong property rights, they typically choose to reinvest right back into the American ecosystem."
https://www.driftsignal.com/p/will-trump-and-musk-break-the-greatest
22. "Europe simply can't have it both ways. Be weak militarily, utterly dependent on an American security guarantee, and also expect a seat at the big-cat table. These positions are incompatible. You either get your peace dividend -- and the freedom to squander it on net-zero nonsense -- or you get to have a say in how the world around you is organized.
Which brings us back to Trump doing Europe a favor. For all his bluster and bullying, America is still a benign force in its relation to Europe. We're being punked by someone from our own alliance. That's a cheap way of learning the lesson that weakness, impotence, and peace-dividend thinking is a short-term strategy. Russia could teach Europe a far more costly lesson. So too China.
All that to say is that Europe must heed the rude awakening from our cowboy friends across the Atlantic. They may be crude, they may be curt, but by golly, they do have a point.
Get jacked, Europe, and you'll no longer get punked. Stay feeble, Europe, and the indignities won't stop with being snubbed in Saudi Arabia."
https://world.hey.com/dhh/europe-must-become-dangerous-again-13413d78
23. "So yes, Americans are buckling up for not so much a World War or an Empire, but rather a new world order where managed conflicts are the order of the day. It is, given that we are dealing with Trump, driven by fast transactions often with huge monetary incentives, but underneath all these pieces is a defensive strategy for an increasingly fractured and de-globalized world. And the latter came into being long before Trump. Let’s see how this wake up call is digested in capitals around the world."
https://pieterdorsman.substack.com/p/broad-strokes
24. Good teardown on Fake news by DJT re: Ukraine. All Facts here.
Or maybe there is a master plan here. God I hope so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_etB3c3qOLI
25. An educational and sober conversation on war & the geopolitical scene with Erik Prince.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPMgzm_9K50&t=358s
26. "Firestorm Labs is 3D printing drones in spaces tighter than the average Washington, D.C., apartment.
Why it matters: Additive manufacturing is incredibly attractive at a time when capacity — so often held hostage by specialty parts, single producers and backorders — is king.
The bottom line: "We believe that decentralized manufacturing is how we're going to win," Magy said."
https://www.axios.com/2025/02/12/firestorm-3d-printing-drones-california
27. A more optimistic take on what's happening in Europe right now. The Post American era. Hope he is right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upBMCjRXBDM&t=192s
28. One of the keenest observers of Russia here and the effect of a lack of European security strategy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLDTHTIkhFg
29. "The key bottleneck is though now not finance but military equipment and supplies and unfortunately, despite three years of war, Europe has failed to put its military industrial complete into gear. Europe still remains heavily dependent on the U.S. for military supplies, a situation which will be slow to improve. But financing can perhaps help therein and again freeing immobilised Russian assets - the full $330 billion - could be used to fund the biggest ever European arms procurement deal from the USA. Europe should announce a huge $500 billion to $1 trillion arms procurement programme, significantly funded from immobilised Russian assets, and commit to buy much of the weaponary from the U.S.
Therein if Europe came to Trump with the largest arms procurement deal in history, say $50-100 billion a year for the next decade, securing in the process hundreds of thousands of US jobs, I doubt that even Trump could say no to that. Call it the Trump Defence of Democracy Programme, or whatever to glitter in his eye enough to get his agreement. The defence of Europe is now a needs must, we must do whatever we need to do."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/the-answer-to-the-uk-and-ukraines
30. Demographics are destiny. Implications for Europe, Russia and China.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Nn5PnUobDA
31. Always a fun and critical conversation on the latest Silicon Valley news.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0iREcK5JzU
32. "Most Americans don’t like it when their leaders sell them out to their enemies.
If Trump starts cozying up to China as well as to Russia, as I predict he’ll do fairly soon, the American people will get even more negative about his regime — especially because economic factors are likely to become headwinds at the same time. Eventually, if disapproval gets very high, the Democrats will be able to rally the American public around something other than bland messaging about health care or the identity politics that failed them in previous years.
There’s another big problem with the Metternich-Lindbergh idea, which is that China also gets a vote. Russia is probably happy to take a breather and get the U.S. off its back, but China might not be satisfied with dominion over a third of the world. It’s unlikely to see an introverted, inscrutable, autocratic U.S. as a true ally. And China’s leaders will worry that another change of U.S. leadership could bring American power back to challenge it in Asia.
For this reason, if the U.S. appeases China, they’ll keep trying to weaken American power, even in the Western Hemisphere. They’ll step in as Canada’s patron and protector, as well as the countries of Latin America; the U.S. won’t be able to dominate South America as it did in Lindbergh’s time, and South America has plenty of resources that China would like to monopolize for itself. Shorn of the assistance of Japan, South Korea, and India, the U.S. would not be very capable of resisting Chinese encroachment in its own back yard."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/america-is-being-sold-out-by-its
33. "Why are the Europeans and the West as a whole so worried? One is security, especially for eastern European countries. If Russia takes over Ukraine, there’s a fear that they will move on to conquering other countries. Two is ideology. In the Cold War, the U.S. fought all over the globe, including Korea and Vietnam, to stop the spread of communism.
After decades of fighting and intense competition, the Soviet Union collapsed and Democracy won. This war is also seen as a battle of ideologies, democratic countries teamed together to help Ukraine win against a larger autocratic regime. Countries all over Africa have fallen to autocrats over the past few years. Will democracy win this one, or is it the era of autocracy?
https://www.globalhitman.com/p/swimming-in-strange-water
34. Fun episode today on All in Podcast. Lots of interesting stuff happening in tech.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxP55dZjqZs
35. Trying to make sense of the confusing geopolitics of recent weeks. George Friedman opines. An Un-Anchored world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-okIcAADYE&t=86s
36. "According to data from Dealroom.co, the share of European defence tech investments has risen to 1.7% of venture capital funding in 2024 from just 0.4% in 2022, reaching nearly $1 billion.
Much of the money flows to western Europe but the number of funding rounds has tripled in central and eastern Europe since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Dealroom.co data showed."
Hard Reality of Life: There Will Always Be Problems
Not sure why I thought this. But I always thought there would be a point in my life that things got easier. That there would not be any major problems. Boy was I wrong. I think many of us have these thoughts growing up and it is shocking, yet comforting at the same time.
There was this great passage written by Sam Harris I found on Twitter (Thank you Brett Berson) that I found reassuring. And I hope you will find it helpful.
"Were you really expecting to have no more problems at some point in your life? You're just going to wake up one morning and none of this would be happening? There would be nothing on your to-do list. Do you actually want nothing on your to-do list? Life is mostly about solving problems, and you can solve these."
So my problem, more than anything else, was that I was treating problems themselves as anomalies. I was tacitly assuming that I should be able to get rid of all my problems and avoid any new ones. Even though this sounds ridiculous, that was implicit to me thinking and to my emotional life, to the way I was meeting each new problem.
But of course, I can never get to a place where problems stop appearing, and neither can you. Life is an unending series of complications, so it doesn't make any sense to be surprised by the arrival of the next one. The magnitude of the problem might surprise you, but the fact that new complications in your life are arising hour by hour is absolutely to be expected.
Very soon, some machine that you are relying on to do work or to keep you comfortable is going to break. This is guaranteed to happen. You're also going to catch a cold in the not-too-distant future, and your plane will be late, or your luggage will get lost. At some point, you'll injure your knee and need to see a doctor for it. It can't be any other way. Really, it can't be any other way.
And the expectation that it can or should be some other way is a great source of unnecessary suffering. Suffering that actually makes it harder to solve the problems we should be faced with. Ironically, this is a problem that you can solve, and you can do that by expecting more problems to arise every day of your life. It's like you're playing a video game. Did you expect that there would be some incredibly boring level of this video game without problems? This is the game we call existence. Problems continually arise, so enjoy them.”
(Source: https://twitter.com/brettberson/status/1757887022650536264/photo/1)
So welcome problems that come your way. Embrace them. Believe you can handle them. It means you are alive and part of the human race. And hopefully living well.
Sliding Down Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs: The Coming Years of Civil Rage
For anyone who does not know Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, according to Simply Psychology:
“There are five levels in Maslow’s pyramid. From the bottom of the hierarchy upwards, the needs are: physiological (food and clothing), safety (job security), love and belonging needs (friendship), esteem, and self-actualization.
Maslow asserted that so long as basic needs necessary for survival were met (e.g., food, water, shelter), higher-level needs (e.g., social needs) would begin to motivate behavior.” (Source: https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html)
We spend our lives trying to move up this pyramid. But what goes up must come down. That is the cycle. The West is clearly declining in the biggest “self-own” in history as stupid monetary and social policies are implemented and we continue to make badly thought out geopolitical moves in the wake of growing peer powers in China & Russia that hate us, and powers like Indian and Turkey who have their own interests and alignments.
At a macro level, it’s hard not to notice the startling decline of the West in every major city I go to in Europe, Canada and the USA. Crappy infrastructure especially the airports, a sense of gloom in the populace outside of places like New York and Silicon Valley (and these places have their own issues).
In most Western European capital cities I can’t help but see a lot of poor and somewhat aggressive young migrants from Africa and the Middle East who clearly have not assimilated at all. I’m in general pro immigration but what I am seeing in Europe and USA show there is too much of a good thing. No point bringing people in if you can’t support or afford them. It only leads to disappointment, then disillusionment and then anger from both residents and immigrants.
This is a signal of the cluelessness and self-destructive policies implemented by our incompetent politicians. Or worse, politicians who know these policies do not actually affect them as they are insulated in their secure estates and gated communities unlike the rest of the populace.
Growing inequality everywhere as the costs of living go up for most people, while the wealthy stack more assets. Extremistan is here. For those not numbed by alcohol, drugs, video games and Netflix, many people will notice they are sliding down the socio-economic ladder. Life will get tougher for most people. They will literally be sliding down Maslow’s Hierarchy into survival mode for food, water and shelter. Safety will definitely be gone as crime skyrockets from desperate people.
And there will be massive amounts of rage by the populace against the elites and institutions. This will only be counteracted by violent police and military suppression in some countries.
This is my forecast. I hope it does not happen but I’m seeing signs of this direction everywhere in the West. The natives are literally restless. It’s hard to read this. It was hard to write this.
So what is the point besides scaring you? Well it should be scary. And you should mentally prepared for this. It fits much of what I write and exhort people to do. So consider this a regular reminder of the basics.
Get healthy and physically fit. Learn to fight.
Get financially fit. Make WiFi money and have skills that are useful like online marketing, project management or knowing how to invest.
Have assets that are light and are considered hard like gold, BTC & ETH. Couple thousand dollars in USD wouldn’t hurt. Have assets in many different places, countries and jurisdictions like Singapore, Dubai or Switzerland.
If you live in the city, make sure you know your neighbors well and it’s good to have firearms that you know how to use. Couple thousand in ammo rounds are good. Make friends with military, local law enforcement, fire and safety people.
Probably not a bad idea to have a farm and some farmland that you can access
It is also helpful to have other citizenships in relatively stable, resource filled and secure places like New Zealand or Chile or Portugal.
Having a plan B and prepping can’t hurt. A wise person should always consider the possible scenarios and prepare for them. Don’t trust our elites or the authorities to get us out of the mess they put us in. Look at how they handled Covid as an example.
You have no control of what’s happening but you can control how you react to them. And most importantly you can control yourself. Take ownership of your future.
Luxury Beliefs Are a Signal of the Peak
It’s hard for me to see otherwise smart but naive people follow stupid ideas. DEI, Wokeism, socialism and insane environmental/ ESG ideas and also try to inflict them in the world and others with zeal.
Examples of stupidity abound. The idiot environmentalists stopping traffic or vandalizing famous museum artworks. The protests for the “oppressed people” of the week. Defund the police or most insidious spread of pro-socialist/ almost communist views when there have been so many examples that this is just the road to societal hell as we have seen in the Soviet Union, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Argentina multiple times and most recently Venezuela.
Pacifism is another example of a luxury belief. In the bad old days like hundreds if not thousands of years ago, we had to do what we had to do to survive. Life was widely dangerous and unstable. If you did not fight or kill you would die and your genes would not get passed on.
How fortunate are we that this is not the case anymore and that there is some level of prosperity and stability in our world that we can afford more diversity of thought and ideas. That we have plenty for now that we can afford to help others.
There are studies that show that when people or organisms grow in an area of scarcity, these individuals just become tougher. When resources & stuff is scarce it literally is “I win, you lose and starve”. It requires ruthlessness and drive to survive in these environments.
If you grow in an area of plenty, you tend not to be as sharp. Access to plenty eventually leads to softness, ease and lethargy. Our modern world of abundance and comfort has wrecked humans. We are maladapted. Look at the high level of obesity and mental illness in our societies today. All signs of unfitness and brokenness.
This reminds me of when well intentioned & pampered Western kids join NGOs and go to third world hell holes. They quickly find their comfortable views upended by the harsh realities on the ground. They are usually disabused of their ideals very quickly. Sometimes violently.
Sadly this is where the Western world is going. People who have been hidden from the reality and harshness of the world now face this new world disorder for the first time. A unipolar world to a multipolar world. This was inevitable but has been sped up due to complacency and weakness of the West in mind, body and spirit.
Radigan Carter writes on this:
“Most in the west don’t understand fanaticism because their entire life is devoted to avoiding pain. From Fed preventing losses in their investments, to wanting a pill to solve an illness instead of enduring the discipline at exercising, to not missing a meal, to being able to go without air conditioning or hot water.
People who spend their entire life avoiding normal everyday volatility will never understand the expense and dedication required to win against those who live long volatility as a lifestyle. And that is what fanaticism is at its heart, it is taking upfront pain for a potential reward in the future. It is the very definition of long vol.
Which is why most in the modern west don’t understand it. They can’t even stand a 20% drop in their vanguard account.
So since we aren’t really going to commit to the level required to win, no point in doing it at all I think. But I may as well be speaking a foreign language talking about this to some. They want to watch military montages to AC/DC and feel good while not taking any personal pain, so ok.”
Within our societies, things are only going to become more competitive, rougher and tougher.
This is going to be a shocking wake up call for many people. It will be a Darwinian test of survival for many people and countries over the next decade. Similar to what happened to the Roman Republic with luxury and comfort leading to incredible rot and weakness as well as viciousness. So better be prepared for this now.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads March 9th, 2025
“I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive”--Joseph Campbell
A strong case against Xi Jingping's China. We have to establish growth, deterrence and stability.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wQYf2PspkI&t=2167s
2. "The reason for this explosion is simple: the cost of starting a software company has plummeted. What once required $1–2M of funding to hire a small team can now be achieved by two founders (or even a solo founder) with little more than a laptop or two and a $20/month subscription to ChatGPT Pro.
With these tools, founders can build, test, and iterate at unprecedented speeds. The product build-iterate-test-repeat cycle is insanely short. If each iteration is a “shot on goal,” the $1–2M of the past bought you a few shots within a 12–18 month runway. Today, that $20/month can buy you a shot every few hours.
This dramatic drop in costs, coupled with exponentially faster iteration speeds, has led to a flood of startups entering the market in each category. Competition has never been fiercer. This relentless pace also means faster failures, and the startup graveyard is now overflowing."
https://allensthoughts.com/2025/01/09/ai-has-democratized-everything/
3. Always a good discussion on Silicon Valley with BG2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8chNXhA8o8
4. Learning from the best. Hedge funder who learned at the feet of two of the top guys around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCMMbBz4uRk
5. "Military support to Ukraine - actually there appears to be a commitment herein from the US to continue to supply military kit to Ukraine. I think this is far more credible/realistic in ensuring Ukraine’s defence. If Ukraine is assured supply of the full range of conventional military kit to defend itself I think it can assure its own security - the evidence is the fact that Ukrainians have held back a far better armed foe, Russia, now for close to three years.
I would call this the State of Israel assurance - giving Ukraine the same access to military tech as what Israel currently gets from the US. Russia will obvioualy aim to set limits on Ukraine’s military capability as Putin will want the option of invading again in the future. This will be a key battle in negotiations, and could ultimately determine whether Ukraine has security, and it is sustainable long term.
I would think if the talks are going to stall/fail it will be around the issue of territorial give ups, European troop deployments and also around what military capability Ukraine is assured of - Russia will look to limit the arms supplies to Ukraine as part of any deal, but without NATO membership or other security guarantees Ukraine will see limitations on its future military capability as a make or break issue for talks."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/ukraine-the-peace-plan
6. Conversation on how the US or any country can stay ahead technologically.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS8Ue2B1wm4&t=5s
7. The Future of AI from two of the top investors around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ3pNPFwAeM
8. "Bicycles, sanitation, airplanes, vaccines, and Crispr are just a few technologies that have changed the world, but their benefits were dispersed across society rather than being hoarded by a few shareholders. I increasingly believe AI will join this roster — it presents dynamics similar to most stakeholder vs. shareholder innovations:
Government-backed or university-developed (the internet, GPS, vaccines);
Open-source or public domain (Linux, Python, Wikipedia, USB); and
Too foundational to be monopolized (bicycles, sanitation, airplanes).
In sum, the winners here will be stakeholders, not shareholders. Scan your emotions after reading the last sentence. Did you reflexively grab your shareholder pearls and feel this was, maybe, a bad thing? It isn’t.
America becomes more like itself every day, and our obsession with, and idolatry of, the dollar has put the public good in the back seat. Billions of stakeholders benefiting from AI, vs. one business becoming worth more than every stock market on Earth except Japan and the US, and one man being worth more than Boeing feels less sexy … less American. (Hint: NVDA & Jensen Huang.)"
https://www.profgalloway.com/a-new-ai-world/
9. Always learning from this guy. Lots of insights on where tech is going.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wG97nnGmaKk&t=1155s
10. Lots of good discussion here on what's up in Silicon Valley news. Softbank & AI Super Bowl: short everything!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9idY0ind-H8&t=907s
11. Great power war? At least a Cold War for sure. "The Eurasian Century" is worth reading.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws8X2rbdlXs
12. "The Pitchbook numbers are accurate, but the conclusions are not.
I think the opposite will happen. Counter-intuitively, I think the number of VCs will continue to grow.
More VCs will be needed because the VC model now applies to all industries. AI will make all companies digital technology companies between 2024-2040 and hopefully accelerate their growth. Thus the surface area where VC investment applies will expand: defense, healthcare, energy, climate, space, techbio, education, government, etc. More VCs will be needed to cover all that surface area."
https://www.nfx.com/post/venture-capital-3
13. "The next time you talk to an entrepreneur, listen to his voice. Pay attention to the excitement around the idea. After the conversation, do a mental analysis of his level of passion. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs I know are also the most passionate about their mission."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/02/08/the-entrepreneurs-passion/
14. "The rouble is depreciating again, too, nearing the lows it experienced after a brief crash at the outset of the war; this means Russians won’t be able to afford as many imported goods.
The economic troubles aren’t at a crisis point yet, but they are probably causing strains in Russian society — birth rates are falling, crime is up, and elites are getting restless. It has now been three years since Russia invaded Ukraine; historically speaking, maintaining a high-intensity war effort for more than three or four years is pretty difficult. World War 1 lasted only four years, and the Korean War lasted three.
Nor does Ukraine look like it’s about to be overrun and conquered in the next year. Despite the constant drumbeat of headlines about Russian advances, on a map the amount of territory seized — about 1600 square miles in 2024 — looks pretty minor. As for the prospect that Ukraine’s military will collapse, that looks unlikely too — the country has far less manpower than Russia does, but it has enough to keep defending tenaciously and making Russia pay for every square mile of territory for a while yet.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s economy is growing, and domestic arms production is soaring. The country has built a bunch of hardened underground factories, and now claims to be able to produce 4 million drones per year. Even if Trump does decide to draw down U.S. aid to Ukraine, that will probably not cause Ukraine to collapse. The Ukrainians are not flimsy U.S. puppets; they’re dead set on defending their country against the invader by any means necessary, and they’re very good at making stuff.
So while the Russians isn’t ready to make a peace deal yet, if Trump puts increased economic and military pressure on them, there’s a decent chance they could be persuaded to accept the offer.
The next question is: What happens then?
My bet is that Ukraine’s leaders have already thought along these lines. I predict that they’re probably ready to take the plunge and sign a deal of the type Trump is proposing, even though doing so could spell the end of their political careers. And because Putin almost certainly understands this historical parallel, he’s reluctant to make that deal — he knows it means that most of Ukraine will semi-permanently escape Russia’s orbit, fulfilling the dreams that Ukrainian nationalists have cherished for over 150 years. But if it’s a choice between that and a catastrophe in Russia, I think he might take the deal anyway.
In other words, given Ukraine’s inherent military weaknesses — a lack of manpower, and a small population compared to Russia’s — Trump’s deal is probably the best they can get. So if Trump really wants to follow through on his campaign promise and end the war, his primary task is to convince Russia, by hook or by crook, that his deal is the best they can get."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/whats-going-to-happen-to-ukraine
15. I don't like MacGregor who is a Russia shill but many of the things he talks about is correct. USA is donor-run oligarchy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn8KxL6sMyI
16. "In the early dawn hours, as the sun rose in the first week of December 2024, a symphony of drones began to sound.
But this was no ordinary drone wave.
In fact, this one was the first attack of its kind: a successful, all-drone assault on Russian positions. The assault, deserving of a place in the history books, took place near Lyptsi, in the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine.
It was a test – initially expected to fail – of whether multiple units could orchestrate a mission with dozens of FPV, recon, turret-mounted, and kamikaze drones all working in tandem on the ground and in the air."
https://newsletter.counteroffensive.pro/p/the-first-ever-all-drone-assault-by-ukraine
17. I try to listen to different opinions. Detest MacGregor & his Russian propaganda & isolationism, Pascal Lottaz is a naive European. But there is much here to consider.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixu6MB3T_qE
18. Erik Prince is an American treasure. Letter of Marques & Private Military Companies coming back for sure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIeNObrmUc8
19. This was a fun interview on investing and thinking about careers & philanthropy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0v_DWE-Sio4
20. This is an Alt-geopolitics conversation. Very non-mainstream views, his observations on the power of London City financial centre are interesting, something there.
Disagree with his perspective of the Russian invasion of Ukraine & his anti-Israel views which are incredibly bizarre. Krainer is kooky.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL8daFrsVZg
21. Great profile on the long historical megacity of Chengdu.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6DR5Hh4AHM
22. Dr Pippa's writing has been very insightful. This panel talk was interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mowxwJOpgoA
23. "This is where the second theory comes in: if Trump was actually threatening tariffs to negotiate, he got outplayed by both Sheinbaum and Trudeau. Why? These seem like token gestures. There’s nothing in any of these “deals” that he couldn’t have gotten with a simple phone call. This is also a very inefficient use of force. This would be the equivalent of holding a grenade in your hand, walking up to your neighbor, and saying, “Give me a pen or I’ll blow both of us up.” Your neighbor would give you a confused look and say they would have given you the pen anyway. You didn’t need the grenade.
Round one goes to Mexico and Trudeau because for the threat level they didn’t give up much, Xi Jinping didn’t say a word, and Trump did not increase tariffs on Canada as promised after they retaliated."
https://www.globalhitman.com/p/the-trump-tariff-wars-round-1
24. Very illuminating and nuanced discussion on China under Xi. Well worth listening to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gDqOqeKARM
25. "You can optimize for many things. Money. Freedom. Fame. Sleeping well at night. Great relationships. Learning the secrets of the universe.
But here’s one of those secrets. You can only optimize for one thing at a time. So I’ve chosen to optimize for energy, because as long as I have energy, I can achieve all the other things at my own pace.
How do I optimize for energy? I get more sleep, I work out regularly, I eat well, and I spend some time having fun every day.
What do you optimize for?"
https://newsletter.sanjaysays.co/p/feeling-tired-and-run-down
26. "There are important similarities between the choices faced by ancient and modern leaders. Trump and Xi both have choices, just as Hadrian and Chosroes did. Neither may choose to step back from potential conflict, particularly from their positions on Taiwan, but the choice to do so exists. It would be helpful if the policy community could move past preoccupation with the “Thucydides Trap” and realize that a range of options exists for peaceful coexistence between the U.S. and China. Hadrian had a vast array of competing interests as Trump and Xi will. He chose the peace and stability of the Roman Empire over the previous path of conquest and expansion. He faced pushback, particularly from the Roman elites, yet held to the course that avoided war.
His descendants eventually chose otherwise, reflecting the inevitability of change in international arrangements. Yet this does not change he chose not to act based on the supposition that shifts in the balance of power made another Parthian war inevitable. He had choices, and chose peace. U.S. and Chinese leadership can and hopefully will choose to do the same."
27. "One lens through which to view companies is to ask "what companies are an index of their underlying market"?
Index companies often take a cut of every transaction in their space, or are a piece of infrastructure everyone in the market needs. For example, it is a hard to launch something into space in the West without using SpaceX. These companies may be ways to participate in the market broadly without having to worry about how wins in it."
https://blog.eladgil.com/p/index-companies
28. Identify where the world is going and get in front of it. Lots of investing wisdom here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbVSGu7CiYE
29. This is a hard discussion on the massive changes in the geopolitical world.
American power is declining. This is the harsh truth because we have alienated many countries in the world and our massive debt makes us weaker.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb86povWn00
30. "The small-car driver takes risks because he has no other choice (or so he thinks). The large-car driver takes risks selectively, because he can afford to.
This is the fundamental difference between an investor with limited capital and one with substantial wealth. When you have little, you’re forced to play an aggressive game, often at the cost of risk management. When you have more, you can afford patience, discipline, and strategy.
Of course, not everyone starts in the large car. Many successful investors began in the small one, taking risks to build their wealth. But the best understood that once they reached a certain level, their game had to change. They switched from chasing returns to preserving capital, from high-risk bets to calculated investments."
https://buildingthingsthatlast.substack.com/p/a-tale-of-two-drivers
31. "There are many opportunities – but also so many unanswered questions and challenges to overcome.
Even if rebuilding the Ukrainian economy began soon, it will likely be 10% below its pre-war level in 2027. This provides an idea for how long a process is needed before the country can get back to some kind of normal, economically and financially.
Besides, there are many voices who don't quite believe yet that a deal will be struck, or that a deal can be executed successfully.
Still, it all boils down to this: with a potentially new political set-up and plenty of financial support from the West, we could see Ukraine develop in a previously unseen fashion. It might be a 10-20-year investment theme, and it's worth spending a bit of time to dig deeper into the opportunities that sound like a fit for your particular investment needs."
32. "Not all of this is Trump’s fault, obviously. Some of Biden’s policies created underlying inflationary pressures that Trump now needs to do the hard work of cleaning up. The enormous national debt, which is now incurring skyrocketing interest costs, is only partly from Trump’s first term — most of it was built up during previous administrations. And like some of his Republican predecessors, Trump happens to be coming into office at the peak of the macroeconomic cycle.
So the deck is a bit stacked against him. But so far, Trump’s proposed policies — big tax cuts, tariffs, and yelling at the Fed to cut interest rates — look exactly what America doesn’t need in order to keep inflation down and growth high.
So Trump is in danger of piling self-inflicted wounds on top of existing bad luck. As a result, the Trump economy could end up as a severe disappointment. Already, warning signs are flashing.
So a lot of stuff Trump is doing — tax cuts, pressuring the Fed to lower interest rates, and threatening tariffs — is inflationary. Realistically, there’s no way that DOGE, or congressional spending cuts, are going to offset all that. Americans may be starting to realize this; some measures of consumer sentiment are beginning to fall again."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/trumps-economy-is-already-in-trouble
33. "So while everyone appears to be focusing on Putin and Zelensky, the game that is being played out here is more about America’s redefined role in the newly emerging world disorder. Trump wants Europe to step up its military efforts and it is a push to get NATO members to spend 5% of their GDP (where today the average struggles to even get to 2%) on defence.
This is the shining object in the room and the Europeans were given a clear message by way of Pete Hegseth. Europe is now more than ever on its own and will have to start footing the bill for the defence of not only Ukraine but itself, a point NATO Secretary-General, Mark Rutte, has been making for quite a while now.
There is a very long way to go in getting any Ukraine-Russia settlement across the line and in meantime the war continues. And a ceasefire and deal across the current frontlines secured by European troops is hardly a win for Putin give his original objectives."
https://pieterdorsman.substack.com/p/europe-alone
34. "However, there's a saying in Japanese: "the clever hawk hides its talons." Ishiba is cannily continuing his predecessor's pop cultural pushes; Japanese press revealed his gifts to the President, which included a golden golf driver and a gilt samurai helm. What might seem a traditional sort of gift is actually another pop cultural appeal; Shogun swept the Oscars, and Otani peacocked in a similar helmet on the baseball diamond.
The Japanese government has announced a plan to make cultural exchanges, in the form of tourism and cultural exports, a pillar of its economy going forward. And the New Cool Japan strategy proposes doubling the production capacity of Japanese content-production industries. This is key, and when you look at Japan not as a manufacturing powerhouse but a pop-cultural superpower, you see that the relationship between Ishiba and Trump echoes that of Japan and the world.
Japan, once a feared enemy, is now seen as a friend by pretty much everyone outside of its immediate neighbors of China and Korea. And even their citizens love Japanese anime, manga, and games. Perhaps no other nation has ever so successfully transformed from a public enemy into a factory of dreams.
As I’ve written about before, Japan’s pop-cultural products have grown even more ubiquitous and influential than its manufactured goods were in the postwar era, and one secret to their success is how Japan stays out of the headlines economically, politically, and militarily. Preserving this status quo is what Japan stands to gain from playing a dove rather than a hawk, a pussycat instead of a tiger. And it’s nothing new.
We are now witnessing Chinpokomon diplomacy firsthand. Protocol means little to the current American administration; history and treaties even less. Everything is up for grabs, for the right price. But maintaining the US-Japan security alliance is key for Japan, for the island nation is surrounded by powerful rivals. Japan has only a small self-defense force, and nowhere near the population needed to scale it up to the size it could withstand a prolonged conflict with a neighbor."
https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/chinpokomon-diplomacy
35. Lots of interesting discussion on what's up in Silicon Valley.
The War Within: Choosing the Future Over the Past
I sometimes wonder if there is too much of a good thing. Too much food. Too much money. Too much therapy even though I’ve been a big beneficiary personally of therapy.
It’s good to understand yourself, your internal and deep seated driving issues. Stuff lurking subconsciously that impair your emotions and actions in day to day life or in relationships. Suppressing them only makes these emotions and issues surface more violently later. Stuff like my anger management issues. Apparently this is common among many men. Anger management issues were the apparent cause of Jolie leaving Brad Pitt and Heidi Klum leaving superstar musician Seal.
Like most people, I know when I mess up. I feel it deeply. And accept the responsibility and try to make it right. But somewhere along the lines in therapy and western culture there is this movement to continually live in it. Something Freudian in that we have to keep soaking in this trauma. I get that. That’s why so many of us get stuck in the past with regret. You think: If only I did this, or if I said this, or did something else, everything would be better. But that’s futile and a trap.
I wonder if there is a point like Freud's contemporary psychologist Adler says, that the past traumas stop mattering and that you just need to move on. You have to let it go.
You are a different person now compared to 5 years ago. Hopefully a better one. Learn from the past. Treasure the nostalgia of the good times back then.
Enjoy the present and act. The only thing that matters is what you do now. Taking action in the present to make a better future for yourself, your family and society.
Built for War: Surviving Tough Times
It’s ugly right now, in fact still very ugly in Silicon Valley. It’s always been hard in startup land, at least the reality of it in my 25 years here. But somewhere along the lines in 2019-2021, investors and founders kind of forgot this or just chose to ignore this reality. Reality bites back hard though. I keep this in mind when I read, and came across this description of Louis XVI who was the King toppled during the French Revolution in Jay Winik’s “The Great Upheaval”.
“In times of war, rebellion, or crisis, leaders must sometimes be cruel or cold; he was neither. In times of war, rebellion, or crisis; leaders must sometimes be able to hate; he was not much of a hater either. In times of war, rebellion, or crisis, to some extent or another, most leaders must be fanatics: stubborn, steel-willed, driven, secretive yet able to inspire, fastidious, and zealous.
They must be prepared to act alone, without encouragement, relying on their own inner resolve. And they must be indifferent to approval, reputation, and even love, cherishing only their own personal sense of honor or vision, which they allow no one else to judge.”
The quote seems incredibly apt. It’s psychologically wartime and it requires another level of intensity, endurance and work ethic. You have to be decisive in executing your vision regardless of the noise.
Being an entrepreneur, especially one going down the venture capital funding route is the hardest and longest path to the top of the mountain. Its high risk, but also high gain to its extreme, with tremendous failure rates. It is also a path to immense wealth if you do it right and with a little bit of grit, luck and timing too.
It’s incredibly hard to get to product market fit. But then it’s another kind of hard to scale your company once you start to grow like crazy. You have heard of the rule 3X, when everything breaks when you triple in size and revenue, and this sometimes happens several years in a row. Its levels on top of levels on top of levels of difficulty. Thus it requires a certain type of founder.
So new startup founders out there, please make sure you understand the expectations and what going down the venture scale path entails. It’s not everyone and that’s okay. So many kinds of businesses out there to build, just make sure it’s the right one for you.
The Joy and Pain of Fatherhood: Your Legacy (And A Personal Journey)
I fly a lot, of course. And walking through airports and sitting on the plane I enjoy seeing young families traveling. Especially ones with little babies or toddlers. They are so cute. And it’s wonderful seeing how happy yet tired these new parents are. The smallest smile and giggle just grabs your heart.
It takes me back to my own experience. I did not think I would enjoy being a dad as much as I have. In my twenties I was one of those stupid guys who thought kids were a burden and a drag on life. How stupid and foolish this view is. Being a parent is one of the most fundamental experiences of being a human. It’s one of the few legacies you have. I pity anyone who misses this experience. Sorry, pet kids don’t count.
Having Amber has been the best thing that ever happened to me and my family. I was over the moon when I became a dad. It was the happiest day of my life. Watching her grow over these last 15 years has been an immense privilege. I continue to be in awe.
She is so smart and even wise. She encapsulates all the best parts of her parents, my wife’s looks, athletic ability, common sense and kindness, coupled with my strong health, ambition, drive and work ethic. I’m already so proud of her. When I see her happy, that’s more than enough for me.
Yet I admit it’s been a tough last few years since the pandemic. The trauma and dislocation from the lockdowns, being separated for almost a year due to Taiwan shutting down their borders and my inability to manage my anger has caused irreparable damage to our relationship. Running an international investment business that requires a lot of travel has not helped. I haven’t really talked with her in over a year, let alone had a meal or walk or shop together.
It doesn’t help that she is a typical American teen, who frankly are just feral compared to Taiwanese, European and Canadian teens. Something about the crazy competitiveness here in America. It’s just a rough situation overall.
But she is everything to me. Children are literally your blood legacy to the world. And you hope you can leave your kids with some good habits, good lessons and good experiences. That is why I used to try to take her on trips around Asia, America and Canada. My fondest memories are of these trips together, when the family was happy. There are so many more amazing places, foods and experiences I want to share with her and show her.
I wish I was a better dad and parent. All the things I could have done differently. All the bad decisions. The harsh words. So many regrets here.
But all you can do as a parent is your best. You owe them that. Heck, you owe yourself that. So I continue to work on myself and improve. This way I can take better care of her and support her in the way she needs. Just being patient and showing you will be there no matter what. And hopefully they let you back in their life when they are ready. I look forward to seeing her smile when that day comes so we can make up for all the lost time between us.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads March 2nd, 2025
“Wisdom Comes with Winters”--Oscar Wilde
Understanding the government debt cycle and the global macro and micro implications. This is an important discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_rvVTuGRNE
2. "And now, at the tender age of 21, Xs has already secured $17.5 million in committed capital for his first solo fund from backers like Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon, Kevin Hartz, Josh Wolfe, and Lux Capital, and anchored by fund of funds Nomads.
In the immediate term, Xs is taking an aggressive approach with his fund, aiming to write checks to 15 companies that would make up 80% of the fund’s capital. Through those positions, he’s aiming to secure 1% of a $10 billion company. He’s looking for founders that he says are “out of distribution,” which he defines as people that have endured extreme hardship, who are very neurodivergent, or people who take an “activist approach” to existential problems.
In the longer term, Xs has considerably more ambitious plans than just venture investing. He wants to grow out a number of business lines, including venture index funds, providing venture credit, and rolling up companies with a buy-and-build model."
https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/13/how-21-year-old-koko-xs-became-the-new-rising-star-solo-vc/
3. I so love Japan. Been to Kobe, Kanazawa, Fukuoka & Beppu. Will put other places on the list.
https://www.afar.com/magazine/beautiful-places-to-visit-in-japan-besides-tokyo
4. "The lessons learned are numerous, but can be summarized in two statements:
For many investors who want to have great returns over the long run, the U.S. is the only market you should invest in.
For experienced investors who understand market cycles and want outsized returns, international investing must be part of your strategy."
https://codyshirk.com/least-expensive-markets-in-the-world-2025/
5. "I doubt we go back to the heady pre-WWII days when gold made up 80-90% of reserves - money was not fiat then - but you can see the trend is very much up. It has been for 10 years now. The percentage has doubled in that time. I see no reason why it can't double again in the next ten years. 40 % of reserves held in gold seems like a reasonable number, a conservative number.
Nations are, says Nieuwenhuijs, "obviously preparing for a multipolar world in which the dollar's role as a reserve asset will be gently reduced."
You can look at all this and describe the process as natural and sensible asset allocation: diversification away from other government currencies, especially the US dollar.
Or you can proclaim that other nations are preparing to abandon the dollar and for a new gold standard. It's probably about 80% former and 20% latter. That may well change - but we are not there yet.
While nations might not be so much abandoning the dollar as they are simply increasing their gold holdings, they, are, however, reducing their holdings of US Treasuries. De-dollarisation and diversification."
https://www.theflyingfrisby.com/p/preparing-for-a-new-economic-era
6. "As we navigate this perilous moment, we should cultivate knowledge about influences of the past, while also being open to the electrifying and often terrifying realities of the present. For as the old cliché goes, history often rhymes but seldom repeats."
https://america2.news/americas-future-in-four-maps/
7. "“Global natives” isn’t yet a mainstream term, but it describes something millions of people are already living. Rather than being defined by where they come from, global natives are shaped by how they view the world and how they move through it. We're a diaspora born not of displacement, but of connection; an emerging group of people untethered from geography, finding home in the overlapping threads of cultures, ideas, and technology.
We belong everywhere and nowhere at once, weaving connections across the world while living on the internet and working across borders. We gather offline in coworking spaces, coliving hubs, and pop-up villages, shaping a world not constrained by the systems of the past, but alive with the possibilities of the present."
https://globalnatives.substack.com/p/what-is-a-global-native-anyway
8. "Indeed, we seem to be veering in the same direction as some conflict and post-conflict societies, where the economy almost always transitions away from long-term to short-term profits. The teacher of English becomes a taxi-driver or a fixer for foreign journalists, the legitimate businessman a smuggler. Notoriously, in Afghanistan farmers moved from cultivating wheat to cultivating poppy, because it was quick to grow and promised big profits, when you could not be sure whether your village would be there, or even if you would be alive, in a year’s time.
It’s not too great a stretch of the imagination to suggest that we are seeing a minor key version of that in the West today. Why, after all, invest in training and education for a job that soon may not exist, in an industry that may simply fold up? Why choose expensive medical training when everything may soon be done by machines? For that matter, why bother to become an expert musician when music will soon be produced completely by machines, and there won’t even be a need for conductors?
As I’ve suggested, the West is increasingly consuming itself, its past and its culture, as much as it is recycling everything that can be sold for a quick profit. But why is this, when it was not so even a few generations ago? If we can answer that question we will also, perhaps, begin to appreciate why it is so hard for modern western culture to understand the mentality of those who think beyond the next five minutes.
Closing factories and reducing R and D spending makes short-term economic sense to those who take the decisions, and among those who don’t take the decisions there is no coherent economic theory to explain why it’s a bad idea, since that requires understanding of the long term, and of the principle of the collective interest. But looting the assets of a company for which you won’t be working in five years’ time is in fact entirely rational behaviour if you accept certain prior assumptions.
As a consequence, western decision-makers and pundits find themselves completely unable to understand what has been going on in, say China, for the last generation, and, where they deign to notice it, they imagine that the negative consequences for the West can be avoided by short-term gimmicks such as sanctions and tariffs. Even when they talk about “rebuilding” this or that capability, usually through tricks such as tax reliefs, it is clear they have no real idea what they are talking about."
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/the-long-run
9. Geopolitics from the view of a commodities tycoon. It's gonna be a rough next decade.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOB899-_y8c&t=1s
10. "Ultimately, it benefits the entrepreneur to zoom in and focus on the use case that both fits their vision and has the potential to build the foundation of a business that matches their ambition. Entrepreneurs would do well to start unbelievably narrow, nail it, and then expand. Starting small is the way to go big."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/02/01/incredibly-narrow-to-start/
11. "Living and working abroad gave me another crucial insight: how difficult it is to build a great business in France. Through my travels and international work, I saw how different regulatory environments, market structures, and competitive dynamics influenced business success. In the U.S. and Asia, scaling up and securing capital often seemed easier. In contrast, successful French companies had to operate in a more challenging environment—making the ones that thrived even more impressive.
This reinforced my belief that great French companies often have something extra: stronger fundamentals, a more disciplined approach, and leadership that knows how to navigate complexity."
https://buildingthingsthatlast.substack.com/p/how-my-journey-shaped-my-investment
12. "What happens when a boomer small business owner wants to retire, but their kids don’t want to take it over? This is as much of a pain point for the aforementioned wealth managers, as it is to my mother, who runs her own medical practice.
For many Plan A is to shut down. So is Plan B.
We believe that over the next ten years, millions of businesses across the world will grapple with generational transfer and the silver tsunami in the coming decade."
https://99tech.alexlazarow.com/p/how-technology-will-power-generational
13. "Mountains were poor, infertile. They would constantly generate a large population surplus they could not really feed. And that population surplus had to find a way to live off the lowlanders somehow. Highlanders would travel down to sell their labor as the agricultural workers, as the builders of Gothic cathedrals, or as the mercenaries of the lowland kings. Highland countries were the mercenary countries."
https://kamilkazani.substack.com/p/on-the-origins-of-napoleon-bonaparte
14. "Just like any act of allocation; you're allocating a finite resource. And your time is a finite resource. So, as a venture investor, you have a finite amount of time and attention that you have to allocate to finding, picking, winning, or supporting. And you can say "I'm just going to be a good Finder," but if that's your approach you better (1) be at a firm with good pickers, winners, and supporters, and (2) be at a firm that is willing to let you just be a good Finder.
You likely can't be the best in the world at Finding, Picking, Winning, AND Supporting. But you won't survive if you're not at least passable at some of them, and you won't succeed in the long-run if you're not exceptional in at least 2-3 of them. That's the Funder's Dilemma."
https://investing101.substack.com/p/the-four-pillars-of-venture-investing
15. One of the best and most detailed teardown of the Deepseek saga. And implications for all the big players and AI in general.
https://www.readtrung.com/p/deepseek-links-and-memes-so-many
16. "It’s also a big part of how we interact with AI systems. The way we think, talk, and use AI today is modeled on our understanding of humans. That’s natural, and even useful, in the initial stages of adopting a new technology—but you could say we’re living in the “horseless carriage” era of AI. What comes next, the enduring applications of AI, will look different. Let’s call them “AI-native.” These capabilities can only emerge when we stop trying to replicate human intelligence, and start exploring what makes AI unique."
https://every.to/learning-curve/the-problem-with-human-like-ai
17. "If you’re serious about giving this whole freedom-of-choice lifestyle a crack, here are the 6 steps I recommend.
1. Leverage the experts. If you can’t be bothered diving deeply into investment theses yourself, subscribe to those who do it for you and learn from their insights. For me, that’s Trader Ferg. I’m also pretty content with junior mining (South America focus) and Ferg’s style of investments, even though it’s a tough market at the moment (for both of those).
2. Learn to sell options. It’s a solid plan and a skill every investor should have in their toolkit.
3. Post on social media. Take it for what it is—it’s not everything, but it does open doors.
4. Choose your base wisely. Pick a low-cost, high-quality-of-life country with attractive women (if you’re a single bloke).
5. Be selective with your network. Don’t waste time with the wrong people or those obsessed with radical ideologies.
6. Start the residency process early. It takes time, so the sooner you get the ball rolling, the better.
Here’s one thing I can’t shake: once you’ve got everything set up, the taxes you’d fork out back home could actually cover your entire cost of living in South America. That’s the real way to get ahead financially!"
https://geologotrader.substack.com/p/a-guide-to-freedom-of-choice-in-south
18. "Historically, I’ve been negative on foundation models as a business because I think when you spend $1B to train a model that is only defensible for a couple of months, that’s not a good use of capital. But I am changing my tune because of Deepseek and other innovations like test time compute. When you can train high performing models in niche areas for much lower prices, it opens up a whole new world of business opportunities.
As the cost gets down to under $1M, expect to see an explosion in foundation models for various niches.
As an investor, you should be prepared to both invest in those foundation models, and the applications that can be built on top of them. The first areas to look are areas with lots of data but lagging in compute skills and infrastructure, but where humans can benefit a lot from access to an expert model. I’m diving into law, tax, healthcare, and insurance initially."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/why-deepseek-will-drive-innovation
19. "So you might say Japan lost the first AI arms race because it wasn’t making arms at all. Japanese researchers were far more interested in “AI for social good” than they were in building weapons. Japan’s lack of a military-industrial complex (or at least one on any scale comparable to that of America or China) isn’t the only reason Japan failed to make a mark on post-ChatGPT AI (yet), but it’s a big factor.
None of this is to say Japan is out of the race for good. But hurdles remain. The country possesses a decided lack of “compute” compared to America and China. Supercomputers are needed to compile generative AI large language models. America and China have more than 150 each, many in the hands of private companies like Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI. Japan has far fewer, and they’re mainly in the hands of governmental or academic institutions."
https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/why-didnt-japan-invent-generative
20. Timely global macro view.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqA77hn1Gx8
21. "Today, I am the personification of imperfections…and I’m ok with that. I was speaking with one of my founders who was largely unaware of some of the things from my past and we opened up with each other about some of our imperfections. Reflecting upon that conversation, it’s clear that it’s our imperfections that make us who we are today. The mistakes we made and the subsequent challenges that each of us had to overcome from those, enabled us to arrive at the point we are at today. We got knocked down, but we got back up…and we keep getting up.
As I think about those that I interact with, that’s all that matters. It doesn’t matter if you are perfect (no one really is)…all that matters is that you keep getting up. The best founders always get back up."
https://newsletter.equal.vc/p/unperfect
22. "I keep on reminding myself, like Ethan Mollick says, AI is the worst it will ever be today."
https://www.sarahtavel.com/p/james-raybould-on-being-ai-forward
23. "So, by pressing relentlessly for tariffs and using the breathing room for companies created by them, McKinley rebuilt the American social contract and much for the better.
Before him, increasingly violent disagreements between labor and capital were spiraling out of control, even leading to gunfights between strikers and enforcers. His sane approach to rapprochement, however, meant that both when he was governor and when he was president, America entered a new period of prosperity in which unimaginably large fortunes were created as the country generally prospered. Meanwhile, the sort of out-of-control labor-capital battles that characterized the pre-McKinley period died down."
https://www.theamericantribune.news/p/mckinleys-tariffs-saved-america-trumps
24. "But for Canada the hard part will not be just the economic mess and uncertainty that it is now faced with. Yes, it will have to craft a strong economic response but it will also have to learn to not complain and finger point, but get to work and develop a long-term plan. It will mean a major overhaul of its economy. This will consist of first and foremost to unleash its natural resources for oil to gas to minerals. With the world’s third largest oil reserves, Canada for instance has the potential to be one of the wealthiest petro-states in the world.
At the same time it will have to finally take a stab at its archaic inner-provincial trade barriers, regulation and cut taxes across the board. Here in British Columbia mining has become next to impossible because of endless consultation processes. Canada has the natural resources, infrastructure and above all the brainpower to become an economic leader, but only if the political will is there. Yes there are environmental aspects and there will be a transition to greener economies over time, but it may take just a bit longer and in parallel Canadas has a very smart tech sector that can and will facilitate this uneasy journey. It will take time and effort though, but if Canada can unleash its real potential Americans will over time be begging to be part of it, again.
How it will all play out right now is hard to say and even smart economic minds have a hard time figuring out exactly the cost on both sides of the Canadian-US border as the relationship is so intricate. It may be part of the Trump mode to sow chaos in order to negotiate a few favourable items and then proclaim a win."
https://pieterdorsman.substack.com/p/trumps-tariffs
25. "There’s truth to the narrative that AI is the new platform & companies that embrace it are rewarded with lower costs of capital."
https://tomtunguz.com/private_valuations_2025/
26. "Tariffs are a powerful tool. They can incentivize desired behaviors and punish undesired behaviors. The mainstream narrative is full of misinformation and fear-mongering. It is always important to read source material, so you can think for yourself.
It was reported this morning that almost half of Canadian companies surveyed“plan to shift more investments and operations to the U.S. to mitigate potential tariffs and maintain market access.” As I have tried to point out in this letter, America’s tariffs will create a black hole that will suck investment dollars and business operations into the United States. If a business does not want to pay the tariffs, they can come build their products in America. If a consumer does not want to pay higher prices for tariffed goods, they can buy American made products.
Tariffs work and the United States is about to go on a big winning streak."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-tariff-era-the-truth
27. "Strategic interdiction focuses on targeting an adversary state’s war-industrial infrastructure, key domestic defense industries, supply chains, strategic transportation nodes, and related assets. Its primary objective is to disrupt the adversary’s military capabilities during deployment and pre-deployment stages, thereby reducing the aggregate war materials available to their forces.
The core logic behind such a campaign is simple: every piece of equipment and war-relevant material that never reaches the frontline is something that does not need to be destroyed there, saving critical manpower and equipment on the Ukrainian side.
To be clear, Ukraine has been pursuing a strategic interdiction campaign for approximately two years now, already achieving important results, such as reducing Russia’s oil refining capacity by an estimated 17 percent by July 2024. However, until now, Ukraine has lacked the ammunition necessary to conduct this type of strategic campaign at a larger scale. Given Ukraine’s drastic ramp-up in domestic missile and drone production and its ambitious goals, the attacks witnessed this week are an encouraging sign that Ukraine’s strategic interdiction campaign may spell more and more trouble for Russia in the months ahead."
https://missilematters.substack.com/p/ukraines-stratedic-interdiction-campaign
28. "This does not mean that missile defense is unnecessary or always a poor investment. The United States absolutely needs stronger missile defense capabilities for both theater deployment and homeland defense. However, pouring resources into strategic missile defense to counter large-scale nuclear attacks is a losing game that diverts funding from other, more pressing priorities.
For instance, in an Asia-Pacific contingency, the U.S. needs a robust missile defense system to counter Chinese cruise and ballistic missiles targeting forward-deployed bases and allies, including short-, medium-, and intermediate-range ballistic missiles. Effectively fulfilling this role requires greater investment in missile defense systems specifically optimized for this mission, including NASAMS, Patriot, Aegis, and THAAD."
https://missilematters.substack.com/p/trumps-missile-defense-plans-not
29. A masterclass on building a business for anyone and everyone. Seriously very helpful. So many insights here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFkR34AMPw8
30. A highly entertaining and insightful conversation on startups and the VC industry at the moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qq4p-Ce5bs&t=3419s
31. Anyone who has been paying attention should not be surprised. The CCP is ramping up their military and we need to treat them seriously.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDcWLm_ltIk&t=1s
32. Harsh wake up call to the realities of Geopolitics for Europe. Important discussion here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pwGRoUbUPg
33. There are so many great insights on work and life from one of the smartest guys on the internet. Seth Godin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhc1sM2NnQY
34. "Global military advantage will depend on the ability to produce military products on a large scale at a competitive price—specifically, drones. The U.S. is not currently capable of this.
Ukraine is the only country in the Western world with a defense-industrial base that can rival China in both capacity and cost structure. Historically, Ukraine has always been a center for military development and component production, MITS Capital notes."
35. Always a good wrap up and discussion on the latest business news. These guys are smart.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6CqyWeFHwM
36. The altruistic Pax Americana is over. Don't like it but here we are. A new world order and way of doing things.
"President Trump is leveraging the might of the American economy to obtain maximum leverage in trade negotiations, and it’s breaking all kinds of ideological paradigms. The president is utilizing raw geopolitical power and taking his patented approach of using publicity as a weapon. As commander in chief, he has preferred to negotiate deals in public (a move interpreted as having high integrity, which has helped shore up his base of support) or strategically deploy details to the media to create pressure or to make the deal look more favorable or urgent.
The president has continued to deploy his “The Art of the Deal” framework in negotiations over Greenland, Panama, Ukraine, and now, even Gaza, aiming to maximize his position for what he believes is the best possible outcome for the United States. He is throwing the corporate media and his political opponents in a constant state of madness, as they are seemingly unable or unwilling to explain and understand his negotiating style and strategy."
https://www.dossier.today/p/the-art-of-the-deal-trump-defies
The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: An Historical Inspiration
I was a child of the 80s and 90s and anyone growing up fell in love with the character of Indiana Jones. But outside of the movies there was an incredible tv series done by Steven Spielberg in 1992 which chronicles his adventures during his childhood and young adulthood.
This is a great description:
"The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones" takes a young version of the popular character on a journey through the early 20th century where he learns about some of the most important historical events of the era.
Young Indy meets historical figures, including Ernest Hemingway, Ho Chi Minh, Eliot Ness, Louis Armstrong, Pablo Picasso and Winston Churchill. Traveling from the game reserves of Kenya to the bohemian streets of Paris and the Great Wall of China, these are the adventures that shape Indy's future as one of cinema's greatest heroes.”
Traveling the world to some of the most exotic places in the world, even fighting in World War 1 as a soldier and spy, he meets famous historical figures that we all know about, he learns lessons in life and love. One of Indie’s quotes from “The Raiders of the Lost Ark”: “It’s not the years, honey. It’s the mileage.” We begin to understand how he becomes the character and adventurer we all know and enjoy in the movies. Indie says: “I’m not sure why, but I’ve always wanted to see what was out there over the next hill. I like exploring.”
It was an amazing snapshot of history at that time and really gave a glimpse of what the world looked like outside of my dull lower middle class Canadian suburban life. It opened my eyes to how big the world really is. And it really made history come alive to me.
Between my trip to Japan and England the show awakened in me a tremendous eagerness to travel and explore the world. Reading about the financial investing greats like Jim Rogers provided me the roadmap to do this in the late 90s. A unique time of globalization in our world.
If you have not seen the show it’s on Disney+ and it’s worth watching. There are universal life lessons in there and may awaken your sense of adventure as well. Or at least start to understand the grand sweep of history and the 20th century ended up the way it did.
Don’t Go to Davos: There is an Expiration Date for Everything
For those of us active on social media, it’s been incredible seeing the flurry of pictures and such all over social media bragging about being at Davos. Flexing. Yet it’s funny that it turns into a counter indicator. You think you are showing how connected and cool and awesome you are. All I see are a bunch of clueless & out of touch “mids”. This was very clear in 2025 with the empty rooms there. Davos used to be relevant prior to 2020 but so much has changed since then.
The WEF Davos event has gone the way of The Summit Series, SXSW, TED and Forbes 30 under 30 for tech people. Some would even argue Burning Man is one of these events that is past due. Super relevant and cool a long time ago. Now out of touch and soon to be buried in the past, taken over and inhabited by only the laggards and grifters. Or maybe just mainstream and thus not COOL or leading edge anymore.
Everything has a season. Everything has an expiration date. Countries. Companies. Even people. I saw a very relevant tweet from Dare Obasanjo:
“Startups tend to have 3 generations of employees
1. The 1st batch: A random mix of talented and mediocre people.
2. The pioneers: The nights and weekends crew who believe in the mission.
3. The settlers: The 9 to 5 crew who are attracted by the success the pioneers created.”
At the 3rd stage things start to go down fast. I saw this in Yahoo! The people who joined from 2009 onwards were pretty crap. You could argue Google started to go downhill 9 years ago and we are seeing the bloat really impact the business in 2020. Even formerly dominant VC funds prior to 2020 are now sucking wind badly.
What was a positive indicator before can quickly turn into a highly negative signal. The point of this is not to just bag on Davos and other Silicon Valley events and phenomena. The point I am making is that things change so quickly now, consumer behavior, cycles turn fast.
Jumping on trends is dangerous especially when it is at peak cool. The secret is doing something or joining something when it is not cool or known. Easier said than done. But the alpha is in doing something uncool which will become cool.
Your Gift Is Also Your Curse: The Duality of Life
I admire the creator Chris Do and had the fortune of hearing him talk at my friend Eric Siu’s awesome Leveling Up event. I also recently heard a podcast with him and Eric as they explored his career and his rise. He calls himself his Number 1 fan. That if you are not secure with yourself and truly love and comfortable with yourself, success and fame will be detrimental to you. It rings true.
I’ve written many times about my Asian immigrant childhood. It was tough but my parents really did their best and clearly loved us. My mother gave up her career and stayed at home to raise us while my father worked to support us. And he worked like a demon. And it was tough for them financially as well as having to take care of two young boys, soon joined by a third on one income in a place where we had no other family around.
My mom was especially tough on me as she had very high expectations of me as I was the eldest. I grew up being told I had to be the best, I had to work hard, I had to get good grades, I had to be well behaved. I never met expectations and thus as a young child and young adult I was continuously told by her that I “shamed the family.”
This created an absolutely insatiable work ethic, plus a deep desire to become immensely rich and successful. And also a need to explore the world and live on my own terms. Independence. This has driven a big part of my life. And allowed me to accomplish quite a lot in my career. Doing all that I do in the tech business world. I have high standards and unforgiving of mistakes, especially ones I make. I am incapable of enjoying anything unless I feel I have done the hard work and earned it.
However, on the other side of the coin, it has caused me tremendous harm. I take criticism very hard. Apologizing is excruciating which has been so damaging to personal relationships. I also tend to be overly individualistic. I literally trust almost no one. I tend to hold long term grudges and vendettas.
I admit I am emotionally stunted and lean on my incandescent rage so I don’t have to face the deep sadness inside. There are many days I realize I hate myself for this weakness because of all the stupid small traumas as a young impressionable child. Never feeling like I am enough. Constant dissatisfaction.
Thankfully, I am able to channel it to external milestones of success and it forces me to move and look forward.
Nothing is 100% good or bad. It’s how you use it.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads February 23rd, 2025
"The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision”--Helen Keller
A wake up call for all Americans. We have so much work to do as we are completely behind on many important tech sectors like EVs, Drones, robots & manufacturing due to bureaucracy & regulations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqeI7iViRmE
2. "Remember the formula for success: 10% reading 90% action. If you spent 1 hour reading, spend 9 hours applying it.
Most do the opposite – 90% reading and 10% action. Those are people who slowly become weirdos – the dad bod guys making $150k a year or less but think they’re the shit while coming up with all sots of excuses to justify their delusions (“It’s because I live in X country” in the internet age)."
https://lifemathmoney.com/how-i-know-someone-will-make-it/
3. "Ultimately, without security, everything else is meaningless. And without a strong economy, Europe cannot rebuild the strength needed to guarantee its security. The priority list, therefore, should be clear: we invest in security so that we have the luxury to focus on everything else."
https://missilematters.substack.com/p/europes-last-chance
4. "Yet edible seaweed, which is commonly red or brown algae and includes a variety of subsets, such as kelp, hasn’t quite caught on in the US.
Even with more stores stocking seaweed snacks and salads, the vast majority of seaweed is produced in Asia and imported overseas. US companies produce a mere ~.01% of the world’s seaweed, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, trailing smaller countries like North Korea and the Philippines by a wide margin.
But American startups are racing to catch up, expanding beyond traditional seaweed products into everything from supplements to seaweed-based livestock feed that studies show could reduce methane emissions from cows.
Will seaweed become a dominant new ingredient, or be permanently relegated to side dish status?"
https://thehustle.co/originals/is-seaweed-the-next-kale
5. Basically we are in big doo doo if we don't get our act together. Strong alliance of CRINK stepping up against us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYaZPEjU79s
6. "As we move into the prime twenty-twenties, aesthetic distinctions have returned and displaced brand. Once again, we are acknowledging the social meaning embedded in how we look. These aesthetic distinctions are grounded in value judgments. For boom boom that means embracing the codes of formality, hierarchy, and tradition.
Inevitably, many find this intolerably regressive."
https://www.8ball.report/p/the-globalization-aesthetic
7. "The United States was once the arsenal of democracy. Today it is the arsenal of bureaucracy, with an army of federal civilians making it difficult for American companies to sell to willing buyers. To wit, it took the State Department and the Pentagon nearly 30 months to finalize a sale of Harpoon anti-ship missiles to Taiwan. Though upgraded in recent years, the Harpoon has been in service since the 1980s. It is not a new system, and Taiwan is the nexus of our Pacific deterrence.
We have a unique opportunity for American workers and innovation to be fueled by investment from our friends, strengthening both our economy and national security. This process should be simple. It isn’t. The haft of the arrow in America’s side was feathered from our plume.
Moreover, the past three decades of obsessive consolidating and regulating and subsidizing has undercut the core element of the new Administration’s foreign policy and national security.
Trump has rightly emphasized deterrence, a concept that escaped the outgoing president and his team. Deterrence is a simple framework and does not require a mountain of PhDs to grasp. It means, in plain terms, terrifying adversaries with a combination of iron forged national will and fearsome weapons to lend that patriotic resolve credibility."
https://blog.joelonsdale.com/p/america-needs-better-defense-acquisition
8. "AIs are something new. They are highly compressed models of the information available on the network. This attribute allows them to do nearly everything search and social networking automation currently does and so much more. It’s also why AI is rapidly eating the UI for search (Perplexity, etc.) and social (TikTok is an example of a highly evolved version of this).
Most of the advanced jobs that AIs (both virtual and robotic) will fill will be jobs that currently don’t exist. The household maid or cook for a middle-class family or the personal security guard, tutor, or companion/in-home support (from children to the elderly). Not only will there be vastly more work done, but the pace of everything will also increase."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/the-social-ui
9. We have always been in an age of the great man. Wide ranging conversation on how elites drive civilization forward or make it fail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6k-eFlkIsS0
10. This is a thought provoking and wide ranging conversation. Important discussion on many technological and cultural developments right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHWnPOKh_S0&t=10080s
11. "Let’s put it all together. A dollar, yuan, and yen are interchangeable in the global financial markets. They all find their way into US big tech stocks in some shape or form. You may not like it, but it's true. I just stepped through why, at least in the very short term, the US, China, and Japan are not increasing the pace of fiat money creation and in some cases, are raising the price of money.
Inflation is still elevated and likely to go higher in the near future as the world decouples economically. This is why I expect 10-year yields to rise. What will stocks do if they are rising because of fears of inflation and a large and quickly growing pile of US debt with no marginal buyers in sight? They will dump."
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/the-ugly
12. The reality of Cyber warfare. Scary but not a knockout strike.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tifAF65rBcY
13. Japanese Ryokan is one of the best experiences one can have.
https://www.afar.com/magazine/japanese-ryokan-what-it-is-and-what-to-expect
14. A masterclass on the art of venture investing. Gurley has forgotten more than most VCs know about the business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PkWc-IDTHk
15. "$300,000 has become the new baseline for what $100,000 once represented.
Build Passive Income: Once you build one successful business, you can build other small ones. The typical millionaire has around 5-7 income streams. The mainstream loves to psyop you into believing that 90% of businesses fail. Even if true, they don’t teach you that you’ve developed valuable scalable and irreplaceable skills. Once you’ve developed a skill for earning, it’ll translate quickly if you start a new idea or if you buy a company that you *know* is run incorrectly.
In the end, life is just a game of probabilities. We try to look for the highest probability answer at all times. Notice. That does not say a “guarantee”. It says probability. If you’re making the right probability based decisions, eventually lady luck shows up and hands you the gold at the end of the rainbow."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/300000-a-year-is-the-new-100000-a
16. This is a good conversation on the situation of the Russian military versus the Ukrainian military going into 2025. Lessons from the last 3 years of the conflict.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj6oiILlJrY
17. Great teardown on Deepseek by the NIA boys.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2UKOUBIIiY
18. Really insightful conversation on Deepseek and what’s up on AI & Chips. Big implications for all tech players.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P6CUIPrrtU
19. "Satya Nadella has described a future where this business logic migrates to an AI layer, transforming the role of traditional SaaS apps. Now, AI agents serve as intelligent orchestrators, integrating multiple platforms and consolidating various workflows, decision-making and automation into a tier of AI.
Essentially, this means that SaaS applications are looking to revert to their most primal form of simple databases. At the same time, the AI layer takes the part of “intelligence”, organising and elaborating processes without being bound to a singular backend. Consequently, SaaS tools will become domain-specific enablers, losing their standalone prominence as the brain of business systems and transitioning fully to AI.
We are entering an era of integrated platforms where AI drives innovation. More and more businesses expect seamless integration across tools, as siloed solutions generate inefficiencies, fragmented data, and disconnected workflows."
20. 10 TYPES OF PEOPLE YOU SHOULD IGNORE
https://lifemathmoney.com/10-types-of-people-you-should-ignore/
21. "Logistics is what made the great captains of history great. Those early empires were possible because the great captains who led them understood how to sustain the long campaigns necessary to build and maintain them. At the operational and strategic levels of war, success is made possible by the purposeful synchronization of logistics.
That's proven true throughout history — when you address the art of war, concepts like reach and culmination are inherently tied to logistics. So, when we shortcut logistics — the resources that fuel military strategy — we handicap our ability to achieve our desired goals."
https://mickryan.substack.com/p/military-logistics-in-the-21st-century
22. "Interesting to wake up to an FT report saying that Europe is considering a return to Russian gas supply as part of a Ukraine peace deal.
God give me strength, surely Europe, and the EU particularly cannot be this stupid.
Let’s just rewind 3.5 years to mid 2021 and after years of appeasement and selling out to Russia, Europe has found itself hugely over dependent on Russian gas and energy supply and then subject to blatant blackmail by Putin’s regime turning off the gas taps, creating an energy crisis in Europe to blackmail Europe over Ukraine."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/is-europe-really-this-stupid
23. "The fate of Taiwan will basically determine the future of Chinese naval power. There is no island so well placed either to protect the vast majority of Chinese naval and air bases (to say nothing of naval production facilities), or correspondingly to represent a constant challenge to the Chinese Navy’s ability to deploy force in this vital area."
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/taiwan-is-strategic-and-its-fate
24. "The startup ecosystem purge continues. As mentioned above, I think the cleanse that started in 2024 will continue into 2025. In many ways, startup investing is like playing craps. You play for a long time, accumulate bets on the table, and either win slowly as different bets pay off at different times – or lose a lot all at once when the shooter rolls a seven.
Personally, I’ve never had more angel investments sell, cease operations, or return money than I have had in the past 12 months. There are two opposing forces in play: cash reserves and exit multiples. I think that many startups have strategically decided to sell, but don’t want to start a process in what’s clearly a buyer’s market. Look at these feeble M&A-specific exit multiples from Aventis."
https://kellblog.com/2025/01/29/kellblog-predictions-for-2025/
25. "Moving by leaving nearly everything behind may seem like a drastic step, but ultimately it was what set us free from all of the things holding us back. We learned what we needed to live and what we could live without. We are going to give it a month. We will go back slowly and take whatever we need in that month and then we will donate or discard everything else. Ultimately, this move taught us something. Sometimes the best way forward is to leave things behind. From now on, we are adding, not subtracting."
https://debliu.substack.com/p/adding-not-subtracting-what-leaving
26. "There is a moderate amount of research on athletes’ long term outcomes, and I think it’s a model we ought to be looking at more as AI progresses. For decades, the 33-year-old soccer player has had to grapple with the knowledge that the skills that were central to both his prosperity and identity no longer apply. In the years to come, the 55-year-old accountant or lawyer may be struck with the same realization.
That 33-year-old athlete has built up a set of skills and habits — fitness, discipline, fame, and connections — and (with the development of non-soccer skills) can deploy them to his advantage. Similarly, that 55-year-old accountant has a base of skills and habits that she can use to her advantage even if her ability with that one specific accounting technique is no longer a highly valued skill.
This is something we ought to talk about more and get ahead of."
https://mikegreenfield.substack.com/p/re-sorting-and-adaptability
27. "What I’m questing after, instead, is an idea with power. That new framework that helps us see a relationship we’d previously missed. The essay that says something new about our experience in this moment.
That work doesn’t come from busyness. It comes from open thought. From long walks. From space to breathe.
Now is not the time to stop pushing. But maybe I need to redefine, a little, what pushing looks like. I think it turns out that amid the acceleration we’re living through — in what may be the last days of the Before Times — the most important variable of all is thinking time.
If I’m to do my best work, I need to find more of it."
https://www.newworldsamehumans.xyz/p/thinking-time
28. "Argentina had seen this cycle before — crisis followed by recovery, only to slip back again. But today, there are real signs of change. Inflation, once out of control, is finally slowing. The stock market has surged, reflecting renewed investor interest. And while challenges remain, the country is moving in a direction that, for once, feels different.
Fifteen years ago, I left Argentina wondering if it would ever escape its economic rollercoaster. Today, I’m starting to believe that maybe — just maybe — this time, the country is on the right path."
https://www.markmobius.com/news-events/then-vs-now-argentina
29. Demographics is destiny and this has huge impacts on Chinese real estate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2AJvCPcNUE
30. "Questions were asked about how much a Ukrainian defence tech company could scale just in Ukraine. Artem pointed out that the production capacity of some defence related technologies is greater than the national budget for defence, so it is likely that in the future the government will lift the existing restriction on exports.
This would open up international markets to Ukrainian defence tech startups that have battle-proven technologies. An investor in the audience pointed out that we should not be concerned now about foreign markets, as that will develop naturally after the war."
https://www.resiliencemedia.co/p/what-we-learned-from-ukraines-brave1
31. "It’s important to note that the results of these force-on-force exercises cannot be replicated through virtual / constructive exercises such as table-top exercises and wargaming. Only by actually stressing the systems can we truly determine what will be successful.
So, as the DoD faces the opportunity to shape its future, we need to ensure that we maintain a certain amount of optionality and that we actively experiment and test innovations to see which will likely yield the greatest results."
https://buildingourfuture.substack.com/p/techno-military-optionality-ensuring
32. "Super Bowl ads are a proxy for the addiction economy, as advertisers for the food industrial complex, beer and alcohol brands, online gambling, crypto, and social media platforms offer you dopa on demand. But there’s a downside to gorging, no? Not to worry, there will also be ads from the medical-pharma industrial complex for products that manage (some of) the damage. Pundits claim we live in an “attention economy.” We don’t. Attention is just a metric for addiction. The addiction economy is broader, encompassing media, technology, alcohol, tobacco, gaming, pharma, and health care.
The Spice
The world’s most valuable resource isn’t data, compute, oil, or rare earth metals; it’s dopa, i.e., the fuel of the addiction economy, which runs the most valuable companies in history. Addiction has always been a component of capitalism — nothing rivals the power of craving to manufacture demand and support irrational margins. Sugar and rum were the dopa-delivery systems and currency of the Triangle Trade. Later, the British East India Company was the Sinaloa Cartel of the 19th century, producing and distributing a product China became addicted to: opium. At its peak in the last century, Big Tobacco acquired customers with TV ads and endorsements from doctors, but the addictive ingredient, nicotine, is how the industry extracts $86k to $195k per customer — and costs those customers $1 million to $2 million in expenditures, opportunity costs, and health-care expenses.
Historically, the most valuable companies turn dopa into consumption. Over the last 100 years, 15 of the top 30 companies by cumulative compound return have been pillars of the addiction economy. The compounders cluster in tobacco (Altria +265,528,900%), the food industrial complex (Coca-Cola +12,372,265%), pharma (Wyeth +5,702,341%), and retailers (Kroger +2,834,362%) that sell both substances and treatments. To predict which companies will be the top compounders over the next century, consider this: Eight of the world’s 10 most valuable businesses turn dopa into attention, or make picks and shovels for these dopa merchants."
https://www.profgalloway.com/addiction-economy
33. Good overview and teardown of the UAE military. Punching above its weight with hired foreign soldiers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fpuQOB0_j8
34. Great episode this week. Lots of discussion to understand what is happening with AI and autonomous driving.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RkgkOqWs0s
35. For anyone who is interested in what’s happening in Silicon Valley and the technology industry writ large.
Do You Want to Be Right or Do you Want to Win: Why Academics Suck at Business
I’ve learned a few things after being in the tech industry since 1999, as an operator in startups and big tech, a venture capitalist and since then as a business owner and a general investor. It’s 2025 and the gap between theory and practicality is wider than it has ever been.
I actually grew up in an academic household. Academia is a world where being right and having the right answer is important. With a big focus on getting the right answer. Credentials and degrees matter. Doubly important in an Asian immigrant family that lives by unspoken Confucian values of scholars and seniority being at the top. And the longer you stay in academia, the harder it is to shake these broken beliefs.
But sadly in a time of great change and practical sphere like business these are incredibly dangerous cultural traits. And it’s taken me a lifetime to unwind some of the impractical ideas and culture of an academic upbringing.
In business, the market is dynamic, good ideas can come from anywhere, experts are usually wrong and credentials are not valued. That is why the best business leaders are curious and inquisitive and understand they don’t always have the answer. They solicit feedback and at the same time are decisive and take action. This is a world where questions are more important.
When I first started doing media sales at Yahoo! It was a great wake up call. It doesn’t matter what theories or how great you think your ideas are, the question is do you close the deal and get the money. It’s pretty black and white. You hit your quarter or you don’t. The client buys your product or they don’t. The feedback loop is pretty fast and strong. And if you want to get good you listen quickly and adapt your strategy and tactics accordingly. Or else you don’t hit your number. The most important part of sales is asking questions, not talking.
I’ve learned to distrust good students. All that you have shown me if you get straight As in school or go to a top tier school is that you have a high IQ and probably also know how to follow orders. You will probably make a good lieutenant. But that’s about it.
I don’t know anything about your work ethic and whether you have common sense. Give me someone PSD: Poor Smart with Deep desire to get rich anytime and day. I’d take that over a PhD anyday. And don’t get me started about MBAs which are only useful if you want to get into corporate America, Investment Banking/PE and Consulting. They are totally useless for startups.
Universities and colleges are failing young people. They have become leftist woke madrassas that are teaching young people broken ideologies and stupid ideas instead of debate and critical thinking. Peter Thiel was far ahead of our times by his Thiel Fellowship program that paid young smart students to drop out of University and start companies. The only exceptions for academics are in Deep-tech and Biotech, you kind of need to have that strong research and literal deep knowledge of the sector (energy, quantum, biology, chemical or material sciences).
So if you want to thrive in the business world, learn to question everything and learn to ask good questions. Yes, answers are important, but asking questions is even more important when you are starting. Codie Sanchez says: “The ones who collect the most knowledge have the most unfair advantage.”
Explore The Pain: Pain Leads to the Truth
Have you ever had a situation that absolutely enrages you? A customer email or feedback? Something one of your followers on social media comments on? Something a trusted investor or family member or friend says to you?
This thought came to me after a particularly rough family therapy session. I was far more angry & sad than normal. It wrecked me for about a week. But as I tried to face it, and pondered on it, it turned out to be the breakthrough I needed. When you hear or read something that angers you, there is usually some kernel of truth in it. It’s the path to revelation and insight. Maybe even enlightenment.
We tend to be good at looking coldly at other people’s problems and situations, because we are not fully in it. But when it’s directed at us, we get so trapped in our emotions or in the hit to our ego or maybe it reflects something we hate or want to avoid.
It’s just so much easier to bury it and move on. Ignore the problem. Blame the messenger or the situation. Call them A–holes. Unfortunately this just kicks the can down the road. And is another excuse to avoid facing the truth. If you don’t face the reality you cannot take steps to deal with it. And it just gets worse and harder to fix.
This is why it’s important to have trusted advisors, friends and even community. True friends stab you in the front. You need to get called out on your own bull sh-t, arrogance or stupidity sometimes. NO one is perfect. In fact, we’re all pretty messed up and flawed in some form or other.
So next time something makes you particularly angry. Wallow and explore this feeling, be honest about what it signifies and whether they may be right. Maybe they are. And if so, you can make things right.
You Will Always Have Problems: A Hard Fact of Life
I remember when I was 22, leaving Canada, I had so much certainty about the future and that it would definitely be bright. And I had an infinite amount of opportunities. I just had to go out and get it. I will have to say I was lucky to be a kid going out to the world at the peak of globalization.
However, I think like many young people, I made the mistake of attaching happiness to “when.”
In our materialistic and goal driven world it’s easy to internalize these scripts. “When I get that job, I will be successful. When I get married I will be happy. When I make a million dollars everything will be okay.”
When you are young and even when you are old, you think that life gets easier. That by the time you are 30 or 40 or even 50 that you will have figured it out.
Well now past 50, I can report back. It never gets easier and I don’t think you ever have it figured out. Life is complicated and situations change rapidly. I spent most of my 20s and 30s with the assurance that my home and family were secure, being fully focused on my career and on making money. I took them for granted. And the irony is that once I figured out the money and career stuff, my family stuff was broken.
I lived the Navalism: “‘Money will solve your money problems” but not your other arguably more important problems. I know many other much more successful individuals who suffer the same situation. Or maybe even worse, have all the material things in the world but no health. Or no health or love in their life. Self inflicted too.
There will always be problems in your life. There will always be difficulties. Everyone has them. It's a universal trait of Human life. In this century or the last one. Whether you are rich or poor. And especially if you are trying to accomplish anything at all.
But we are wired for challenges. It’s just how we perceive them. Are they insurmountable? Do we believe it’s supposed to be easy? Is it worth trying to figure out and work out?
It’s how you attack them. Do you just whine and suffer? I do this a bit sometimes as it’s easy to get down. But then I just get back up and get going again. I consistently work on myself and do what is needed. The hard things that are good for me.
Knowing that I follow the Seinfeld Strategy, James Clear does a good job describing it here: https://jamesclear.com/stop-procrastinating-seinfeld-strategy. I have a “to do list” of things in all aspects of my life: business, family, health, learning/knowledge and tick it off on the calendar (or I use Upcoach.com which is really good) and make a chain. I do it everyday and I don’t break the chain. That’s it. I focus on the process and less on the outcome. I have faith that the situation will get better. I have to have faith, otherwise what’s the point?
The easy life is a dangerous illusion and what gets most of us people in trouble. There is no easy life and we should be grateful, as otherwise we will never grow in life.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads February 16th, 2025
“A good half of the art of living is resilience.” ― Alain de Botton
More oil and geopolitics, focused on Venezuela.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYnYZF1fnz0
2. "Just a few years ago, there were few regions of the world that seemed as dysfunctional as the Middle East. Some Middle Eastern countries had oil wealth, but overall living standards were mediocre and pretty stagnant, and there was little domestic technology or competitive industry to speak of. Authoritarianism was everywhere, and strict religious values had produced persistent social inequalities.
And most importantly, the whole region was mired in a seemingly intractable morass of wars. The conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and elsewhere claimed millions of lives, and displaced more millions. Dictators, rebels, religious zealots, and proxy militias sent by great powers and regional powers alike battled it out on the bloody sands for decades.
And yet when I look at the Middle East today, I’m strangely hopeful. I don’t know if the region is primed for global ascendance the way Europe was in the mid-1600s, but I anticipate significantly better days ahead, for a number of reasons. The most important are the decline of war and the green energy transition, while the demographic transition will also be helpful.
Half a century from now, the desert may bloom, and the region may be a powerhouse of green energy, industry, and software, rather than the playground of oil sheikhs, warlords, and hyper-religious madmen. I know it’s a bold prediction, but stranger things have happened."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-im-long-term-bullish-on-the-middle
3. "Climate tech is now mainstream. The phrase “climate tech” evolved from differentiating the 2019ish-onward wave of climate and clean energy startups from the earlier Cleantech 1.0 batch to a category that represents a global ecosystem of founders, investors, corporations, conferences, coworking spaces, and non-profits. The market forces we sought arrived.
Meanwhile AI has made quick progress. We’ve moved from LLMs to apps and robots. AI accelerated climate tech startups in weather forecasting, wildfire detection, energy efficiency, grid response, route optimization, robot manipulation, and protein discovery to name a few areas.
AI has supercharged other industries too. Legal, accounting, bookkeeping, and tax services are being fueled by or replaced by AI apps. In education, two-year-olds are learning to read, and five-year-olds are speed-running 5th grade math.
The SaaS stalwarts of productivity, fintech, marketing, and e-comm are undergoing massive shifts. Not to mention how AI makes robots highly intelligent, and sometimes scary too. AI will permeate every tech sector."
https://thebreeze.substack.com/p/the-breeze-beyond-climate-tech
4. "So Putin will not stop at a Yalta 2, but he wants total victory against the West.
What Trump does not realise is that unless any peace deal makes Ukraine secure from future attack, Putin will inevitably use that as an excuse for future military invasions. That reality, that Putin will not stop there, and the insecurity a likely bad peace will inevitably bestow on Ukraine, means that Ukraine will not see the required investment needed to ensure its successful economic development. And without successful economic development - the risk is of a repeat of the 22 years of failed economic development between 1991 and 2013 where Ukraine was stuck between East and West with no proper anchor, and hence it will be subject to social and political instability.
Ask yourself why Ukraine suffered two revolutions in 2004/05 and then again in 2014. History will surely repeat itself as millions of soldiers and migrants return to disappointment - and future social and political instability will be exploited by Putin either seeking to capture politics in Ukraine or an excuse for future invasions."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/europe-needs-a-plan-b-and-c-on-trump
5. "A dozen new funds ranging from $30M to $350M. Two that I'll call out, not just because I know them personally, but because aspects of their strategy directly articulate aspects of the Great Unbundling taking place in venture.
First? Chemistry Ventures started by Mark Goldberg of Index, Kristina Shen of a16z, and Ethan Kurzweil of Bessemer. In a blog post from October 2024, the new firm articulated their manifesto:
We will "out-hustle the legacy firms that have grown distracted by scale."
Second? Hanabi Capital started by Mike Volpi, Bryan Offutt, and Ishani Thakur from Index. In a piece from Bloomberg breaking the news about the new fund, they shared that Hanabi is "investing Volpi’s personal money as well as funds from his friends and family." I've written before about firms kicking against the pricks of managing outside money and, instead, managing their own money.
The combination of an emphasis on leanness and increasing attention paid to whose money is being managed all represent a common counterpositioning: these investors don't want to be asset managers; they want to be adventure capitalists."
https://investing101.substack.com/p/venture-capital-unbundled
6. "In other words, Xi is making the Chinese economy look a little bit more like the old Soviet one, where production was determined by plans instead of by the market. He’s using banks and industrial policy to tell Chinese companies to build a bunch of specific high-tech manufactured products, and they’re doing what he’s telling them to.
Why did this approach fail in the USSR? Ultimately, it was because Soviet manufacturers were inefficient — they made a bunch of stuff, but they produced it at a loss. That was unsustainable.
Chinese factories are a lot better than Soviet ones were. But if you tell enough different manufacturers to all produce the same stuff at the same time, they’re going to compete with each other, and their profits will mostly fall, and they’ll start taking big losses.
In fact, we can already see this starting to happen in China.
Exporting your way out of a recession is fine and good — it’s basically how Germany and South Korea shrugged off the Great Recession in the early 2010s.3 But China’s export boom is heavily subsidized, both with explicit government subsidies, and — more importantly — with ultra-cheap abundant bank loans. Subsidies are distortionary — they mean that China is making the cars that Germany and Thailand and Indonesia and other countries would be making for themselves if markets were allowed to operate freely. By subsidizing exports on such a massive scale, China is distorting the whole global economy."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-pettis-paradigm-and-the-second
7. "Here’s the brutal truth.
If you can’t carve a 60 minute block out of your day to work on a project that acts as a stepping stone toward your ideal future, where do you think your life will end up?
On the other end of the spectrum, routines free up mental space to be creative. That’s the secret of most successful people.
They create routines that:
Move the needle toward their ideal future
Reduce the cognitive load of repetitive tasks
Allow their mind enough breathing room to think outside of their survival needs (and toward their actualization needs)
But most people don’t see that creative potential because they are living in the past or future. Worried about the work or arguments they’re going to have. Since they’re in this perpetual state of stress and worry, their mind is narrow, and they numb that pain with quick pleasures."
https://thedankoe.com/letters/how-60-minutes-a-day-can-change-your-life/
8. So much wisdom here from Sahil Bloom. Really good stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC3LWGnhMyI
9. Super impressive city landscapes here by drone. Chongqing. I can't seem to get enough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNHz8SSA95o
10. Man is selling his own book of course & obviously pro-China.
China is open for business especially if you are from the Global South.
Good to get an alternative view of the Chinese market. Still wouldn't advise doing business in China if you are from the West.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjEJm8AosWc&t=404s
11. Quiet family dynasty building an arms empire over 500 years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDRkEnJi5gU
12. Some real sober and non-groupthink view on geopolitics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnDEDhYhkbM
13. "But this size discrepancy doesn’t change the importance of this huge land mass. That’s why Donald Trump is so interested in forming a tight bond with this autonomous territory of Denmark.
In addition to hosting the United State’s northern most military base (Pituffik Space Base), the United States wants Greenland for two more huge reasons: resources and location."
https://codyshirk.com/us-wants-greenlands-rare-earth/
14. An insight dense discussion with two OGs of the tech industry.
The world has changed. Thought leadership to so much change now that you have to be thought follower.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqGXFDw_JQ8
15. "TLDR: with the median SaaS company trading at 3.7x Price/Sales but growing 20%+ and profitable with an operating margin of 15% despite the massive tailwinds in Japan, I believe we can find attractive opportunities in this bucket.
Japanese software is potentially in an enviable position because of the structural barriers for foreign players that have deterred them from entering thus far. The unique differences in: needs among Japanese Corporates; GTM strategy; labor-intensive sales; lack of brand awareness have meant there’s been limited success by foreign software bizes to gain meaningful presence as a whole. (“Constellation Software? Who the hell is that?”)
The only noticeable ones IMO has been generally the majors i.e. the Public Clouds, Microsoft, SAP, SalesForce, and a handful of others. There are also uniquely Japanese pain points that Japanese SaaS companies try to solve which foreign companies simply don’t have an answer for. SanSan for example initially started with their solution to read information from a physical business card onto a company’s digital database. If this sounds odd, in Japan we don’t do LinkedIn, we generally still exchange physical business cards (surprise!).
Unique market structures in certain verticals like for CYND for instance, will also mean that there is literally 0 incentive for global companies to adapt as the market opportunity may not be large enough at their scale to make such costly adaptations. Needless to say, Japan is a HUGE market with meaningful white space left, even if some global majors do succeed, I think there will be plenty of space left for local players to shine.
As a foreign investor, you may be somewhat reluctant to look into these companies because you don’t understand the local market. To that, I say don’t be! One significant advantage you have over local investors is that you have an incredible resource/knowledge library namely all the major SaaS companies that exist in the English-speaking world. This not only applies to software but there are certain industries abroad that are simply more developed and mature versus the equivalent in Japan. Through this you can figure out: potentially relevant market risks, a better idea on long-term unit economics, product competitiveness, etc. My friend calls this the ‘time machine principle’. I would not underestimate this advantage."
https://madeinjapan.substack.com/p/why-i-think-japanese-saas-is-undervalued
16. Peter is a China bear. But systems last longer than people expect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kI5onbXSByc
17. The art and science of doing venture capital. This was a very insightful conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wjEcMsrpJ0
18. Overview of the geopolitics of Latin America. Leftists in office for many places & deep malign CCP influence. Monroe Doctrine will be coming back into the fore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWRJi3PlZ2A
19. Good background on the Trump discussions on Greenland. Very strategic for America.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF4rZqLlESY
20. "The mega trends don’t really change and the thesis here is still the same: The most dangerous place you can be is in the middle of the herd.
Playing it safe in a career definitely feels comfortable but the higher ups are already using AI tools/software to get rid of the middle as fast as possible. That’s the vast majority of white collar 6-figure paychecks.
It’s what society has conditioned you to do: “Stick to the plan. Follow the rules. You’ll be rewarded.”
Unfortunately, this no longer works in the 2020s. The boomers who told you to get a stable job for 40 years and retire didn’t adapt to the new economic reality: Equity Owners or nothing.
If everyone is doing it, there is no real upside. No different from investing in something that everyone already knows about. While investing in something like the S&P likely goes up long-term, it’s not going to result in exiting the middle.
People will congratulate you on the small promotions at work but it’s just another step towards being stuck. When everyone is doing the same thing, the returns shrink, the competition intensifies, and the risks multiply.
With globalization, automation, and cost-cutting, wages have stagnated while housing, healthcare, and education costs have skyrocketed. Playing it safe in this environment is like staying in a boat that’s slowly sinking."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/trump-initial-change-and-why-corporate
21. Net net: USA needs to reindustrialize ASAP. More industrial policy is coming to America.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxSVDZGfGIU
22. Good conversation on East Asian geopolitics. Noah Smith is always entertaining.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecD8IaRd_VU&t=2s
23. Watch this show if you want to get a sense of the craziness in Crypto and the tech space. Always topical conversations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsW9F0WXBcA
24. "Whether there is war anywhere on the planet or not doesn't mean that we don't need armed forces. So if you want to keep peace, you have to be armed and prepared.These defence technology companies, they do not become unnecessary as the war ends. Arguably the demand might go down, at least the demand from the Ukrainian procurement. But what we're seeing, talking with our international friends and counterparts, is that over these few years Ukraine has made a very big leap forward and most of this technology that's being used now is ahead of what is available in the US with the largest military budget on the planet, and there are many parties interested in this technology.
So there's definitely an opportunity for export, and the export of Ukrainian military technology, I believe it will be open this year one way or another, even if the war continues. So that would mean more revenues for these companies, bigger R&D budgets, and even more innovation.
All of that innovation basically should be seen as investment in making our Western democracies and our rules-based world order stronger. And again, if we don't do that or if we are doing that slower than the autocracies on the world map, such as Russia, Iran and, China, then we're doing a disservice to both our ancestors and to our kids, to future generations. We cannot allow that to happen."
https://www.resiliencemedia.co/p/in-conversation-with-yaroslav-azhnyuk
25. I'd call this Alternative view on geopolitics. Others might call it "tin foil hat" geopolitics. Either way, it's interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4JbscqfJjQ
26. Lots of good stuff: this is the pod to listen to understand what's happening in tech.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYzYOPkxLis
27. Chris Sacca is one of the best tech investors but is also an entertainer. Whatever you think of him, he says what he thinks because of his FU money.
And it's super fun and super insightful to watch this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIBo69EsAzw
28. "These events indicate that the year ahead will be at least as uncertain, violent and chaotic as 2024. However, besides the fighting and posturing of different actors across the globe, key trends will affect the capacity and sustainability of military forces and influence the future of war. Here are five key trends to watch in 2025."
https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/military-trends-watch-2025
29. I really enjoyed this conversation. I have my issues with these folks but this was an insightful and hopeful convo.
Covered Silicon Valley, technology, business, personal growth, politics and God. Lots of food for thought.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=eRlkcRnC9eE
30. Zeihan's take on advanced semiconductors. Lots of breakpoints on the overall global chain beyond TSMC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_PEZrDZQNU
31. "As an entrepreneur, the next time you’re hiring for a key position, consider using some or all of these questions as part of your process. Entrepreneurs are wired to move fast and get things done, but hiring is one area where it pays to slow down just a bit and get it right."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/01/25/45-pre-interview-questions-from-brad-jacobs/
32. "One of my favorite moments in Succession was when Logan Roy told his children: “You are not serious people.” He knew his kids were expectant and lacked the real-world skills and backbone to make good on their threats. We risk our allies, adversaries, and trade partners sensing that we, too … are not a serious people.
I’m not entirely sure how we got here, but I think it has something to do with the way money and business success have become so venerated in our culture. More money used to mean a better meal on a plane; now it’s a (much) better life. Just as we always find uses for additional bandwidth and energy, our consumer economy never runs out of incentives to amass more money."
https://www.profgalloway.com/america-for-sale/
33. "The common belief that Americans just aren’t good at making stuff seems contradicted by areas in which we are startlingly good at making stuff — for example, SpaceX, which is pumping out the world’s best rockets from U.S. factories in stunningly high volumes. The American South has also become a hub of high-quality auto manufacturing, with the help of Japanese and South Korean investment.
If that’s true, then reshoring has a chance. The uncompetitive dollar will remain a major problem, but Chinese competition can be blocked with tariffs and other trade barriers, and U.S. industrial policies can shift from a pro-finance to a pro-manufacturing orientation. In fact, this approach is already bearing fruit in a number of strategic industries.
At this point, whether reshoring continues is largely a matter of political will and smarts. If Donald Trump keeps attacking the solar industry, or follows through on his earlier threats to cancel the CHIPS Act, it could shift production decisively back to China. It would be ironic if a President who rose to power promising to restore American industry ends up being the person responsible for strangling our industrial revival in its crib."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/yes-reshoring-american-industry-is
34. This was a super fun discussion on many topics this week, politics, technology, business, energy. Always entertaining, more so this week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1pTCSFrkbk&t=1933s
35. Something to be said about being outside of Silicon Valley as an investor. And being grounded in the real world. Worth watching.
History Rhymes: Post World War 1 and the 2020s
There was a great history book I read in 2024 called “Lawrence in Arabia” by Anderson. He does an incredible job describing the carnage of World war 1 and what it inflicted on society.
“The effect of all this on the collective European psyche would be utterly profound. Initial euphoria would give way to shock, shock to horror, and then, as the killing dragged on with no end in sight, horror to a kind of benumbed despair.
In the process, though, the European public would come to question some of the most basic assumptions about their societies…..In turn, Europe’s imperial structure had fostered a culture of decrepit military elites–aristocrats and aging war heroes and palace sycophants–whose sheer incompetence on the battlefield, as well as callousness toward those dying for them, was matched only by that of their rivals.”
I don’t know about you but that seems to describe America and our greater Western societies.
We went from complete unipolar dominance in the 90s to being stuck in two quagmires of Afghanistan and Iraq. I know many US military vets who wonder what the heck they sacrificed for here. Exacerbated by stupid DEI policies and mandatory vaccination mandates, we lost some great warfighters through this.
It’s not that much better on the civilian side. We saw the GFC Global Financial Crisis happen and most of us took hits here, but no bankers went to jail and were actually bailed out with our tax dollars. This was when the credibility of our institutions started to go downhill. We saw the covid pandemic in 2020 and the incredibly incompetent mismanagement universally by most governments and even major institutions like the UN and WHO.
Add in the debacle in the Afghanistan withdrawal, halting and half-assed support by the West for Ukraine against Russia. Law and order in decay in many of our cities, anarcho-tyranny where criminals were let go but those who tried to prevent these were arrested (Daniel Penny being the most glaring case) and the most bizarre open immigration policy where an immense amount of randos were let in. Even criminals or worse on the watch list.
Faith and trust in all of our major institutions are at an all time low. I can honestly say I do NOT trust any of our politicians nor any of the business, academic and big institutions these days after the incredible series of debacles over the last decade and half.
We’ve seen a growing inequality in America, everything is getting more expensive through inflation, like housing, food, education and healthcare. Most American’s lives are getting tougher. All while many of our elites have turned out to be incompetent, just take a look at most of our University administrators. Or incredibly corrupt as you look at the grifters in the American congress. Or maybe too clever or weak, if you look at how many corporate leaders turned to ESG, DEI and wokeist idiocy. Thankfully much of this is being unwound as I write this but the damage has been done.
I haven’t lost complete hope in America and the West at large yet. There is incredibly rejuvenative power in this country. Most of the smartest and driven people in the world still want to come here or are living here already. And some of us still try to live by the ideals that made America great. But this turnaround will be an uphill battle.
So this is your regular reminder: Focus on fixing yourself, staying mentally and physically strong and maybe this will ripple outwards from you, from your family, to your neighbors, then to your city, then to your State. One person can make a difference. Ripples can become big waves.