Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads June 27th, 2021
“The successful among us delay gratification. The successful among us bargain with the future.” — Jordan Peterson
- I don’t agree with his conclusion. This dude is an overly pessimistic grim dark guy who I don’t usually post anymore. But he has a point of view that I do think may come true if we don’t get our act together.
“The decades of catastrophe we face now — climate change in the 30s, mass extinction in the 40s, and the final collapse of our ecologies in the 50s — are going to cause inequality to grow even wider.
Covid’s a dry run for the future of catastrophe. The good news is this: there are things we should learn, about how fast and hard collapse happens, how fragile our societies are, economically, socially, politically, culturally. A few months of a pandemic — and they snapped like twigs. And if you think things are “normal” now, go ahead, again, and tell me why you’re paying 30% more for the same stuff…”
https://eand.co/the-future-of-the-economy-is-even-more-dystopian-than-you-think-14342f2f7fe4
2. This is a solid view on what’s happening in the VC world now.
https://mobile.twitter.com/semil/status/1406132999708577792
3. I am a fan of Ryan Reynolds. Great actor but really sharp businessman.
“From distribution and budget control to marketing and brand collaborations, Reynolds has poured himself a whole new résumé of skills as owner and creative director of the liquor brand. So if, like us, you’re wondering just what it takes for a high-flying A-lister to reinvent themselves as a boardroom big shot, wet your whistle with Ryan Reynolds’ five indispensable, unpredictable — and regularly rambling rules of business.”
4. “Calm promises to give the anxious, the depressed, and the isolated — as well as those looking to be a bit more present with their family, or a bit less distracted at work, or a bit more consistent in their personal habits — access to a huge variety of zen content for $15 a month, $70 a year, or $400 for a lifetime. For that, its investors have valued the company at $2 billion — roughly as much as23andMe, Allbirds, and Oatly — making it one of just 700 private start-ups to hit the 10-digit mark.
Now flush with venture capital, Calm is in the midst of becoming a full-fledged wellness empire: It is producing books, films, and streaming series, as well as $10 puzzles, $80 meditation cushions, and $272 weighted blankets. It is expanding its corporate partnerships, offering meditations on American Airlines flights and in UK Uber rides, in Novotel hotel rooms and at XpresSpas, and for employees of GE, 3M, and a number of other companies. It even has ambitions to move into hospitality, offering real-world oases to match its smartphone ones.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/06/do-meditation-apps-work/619046/
5. “Bitcoin, like the Protestant Reformation before it, disintermediates a powerful, central institution: Government monopoly of money
Your property rights are your rights to the extent you can defend them.
Government exists as a monopoly of violence in a given territory. A lack of a monopoly on violence exists in parts of Mexico and Iraq to name recent examples.
Bitcoin is individual sovereignty not because a government, court, or power enforces your “rights”.
https://bowtiedbarbary.substack.com/p/monetary-reformation-bitcoin
6. This is quite the thread on the Sovereign Individual and the decentralized future we are entering.
https://twitter.com/BowTiedBarbary/status/1406480720818757662
7. “If you’re only hearing positive things within a company, something is obviously wrong because something is always wrong, no matter the company. And as nice as it is to celebrate wins, it’s also just easier than talking about hard truths and times. But the latter are so much more valuable in the long run, especially as ways to accelerate learning across a team.”
https://mgs.blog/making-bad-news-travel-fast-a35ee7764e8f
8. “Emerging markets are better if you value convenience. Buying stocks in China or a condo in Malaysia is much easier than figuring out places like Myanmar.
Meanwhile, frontier markets are best if you want low correlation with other investments, potential for outsized returns, and don’t mind some additional work.
A big reason why frontier markets boast immense opportunities is because few people put forth the effort needed to discover them.
But that’s only a positive thing if you’re among the willing.
Large money managers spend billions on trading algorithms and well-paid staff. They’ll find any truly undervalued asset before you’re even aware it exists. As such, there aren’t many deals left on major stock exchanges.
Goldman Sachs isn’t looking at stocks in Vietnam or land in Manila though. It leaves a chance for the rest of us.”
https://www.investasian.com/2018/09/29/emerging-frontier-markets/
9. “So decades of unequally shared progress, rampant NIMBYism, elites telling Americans that some of them don’t have what it takes to use computers, and fears of automation taking jobs. No wonder Americans aren’t as excited about The Future as they used to be!
But as reasonable as that caginess toward The Future might be, I still think America could benefit from a lot more artists crafting positive, optimistic visions.”
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/losing-sight-of-the-future
10. This is why you do not negotiate with terrorists. In this case “Woke” ones.
“Hopefully, Basecamp will learn from this incident that woke employees cannot be satisfied, and they will do everything to find a molehill they can make into a mountain. If it wasn’t a dumb list of funny customer names, it would have been something else. This is the true lesson every CEO should learn — that you cannot please these employees, no matter how much you try. The answer must be “no, do not bring politics to work, whether I agree with you or not.”
Anything less than that will invite chaos to your company, will destroy team psychological safety, kill team collaboration, and have a direct impact on your bottom line.
We should all be striving to create happy, fulfilling workplaces where all employees have access to opportunities to advance their careers and do good work. But sometimes, you have to serve your team by giving them what they need, rather than what they might want.”
https://karlyn.medium.com/the-real-story-behind-basecamps-woke-revolt-bd9b56b3d11d
11. “While China is losing market share in bitcoin mining, the United States is gaining market share. It won’t necessarily be one-for-one because some Chinese miners will not come to the US, but it is hard to argue any country is going to benefit more from this than the United States.”
“As we have discussed over and over again, open systems beat closed systems. The Chinese approach of banning an open monetary network in pursuit of a tightly controlled monetary system is unlikely to be seen as an advantageous strategic move for their citizens. But just like North Korea, this decision will be helpful in continuing to consolidate power and ensure the longevity of the dictatorship.”
https://pomp.substack.com/p/china-just-made-a-significant-geopolitical
12. For young folks starting off their careers!
“Steps to gaming the system: 1) focus on relevant experience and make sure your grades are good enough 3.5 GPA, 2) to make sure it is roughly there, 3) get the position and play politics to get ahead, 4) at your mid-year review if you’re in the top group, you’ve done enough, 4) being #1 just means you’re doing too much and are being abused, 5) start ramping up your side income, 6) if you do make it to a revenue generating role where you’re heavily incentivized the game gets trickier… Ideally that doesn’t happen to you.”
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/getting-your-first-career-we-all
13. So basic but hard to execute and get right. Sometime the best startups focus on seemingly simple & obvious problems.
14. This will be fun to watch. E-commerce roll up plays around the world.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/22/berlin-brands-group-enter-china-roll-up-amazon-ecommerce/
15. “Well, the essential point, it seems to me, is that Washington still lacks a strategy. I am not talking about the erratic policy of the Trump years. The problem has persisted and it was there before Trump.
Would you be able to say what the US wants from its China policy? To be tough, it seems. But tough with what purpose?
The truth is that no one knows, not even the people crafting the policy. They look to the past, disagree with the previous approach and have embarked on a different course. But the future remains a dark abyss.”
https://brunomacaes.substack.com/p/what-exactly-is-the-american-strategy
16. This is a crazy diffuse and insight dense interview. Must listen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHQi1HnCZGY
17. Big congrats to Victor Folmann, Rasmus Holmgaard & the Gamerzclass team!
18. This is a valuable framework for figuring out financial independence. You can make your money go further & get a better quality of life with geo-arbitrage. (versus spending your time in expensive countries like USA & most of western Europe)
https://ofdollarsanddata.com/how-much-do-you-need-to-be-financially-independent/
19. “In the workplace, the biggest change has been the move of technology from a supporting role to a central role. It isn’t just that messaging became more important or that video meetings began to work, but that people quickly realized these can actually be superior. The next step is to take these tactical lessons and apply them more broadly to how a company is structured and operates.
In the coming months, many will claim to offer the best solution to managing the tension between returning to the old normal and adopting some new approaches to appease those wanting more. Some corporations will work hard to snap back to the pre-pandemic world as quickly as they can. Some will stridently try to find a compromise approach, the hybrid work environment or dual headquarters and so on.
In great numbers, startups and newer companies have all been adopting far more aggressive approaches to the future, with fully distributed teams. These are not solutions but tactics. One does not recover from a significant trauma by making one change or one compromise.”
https://medium.learningbyshipping.com/creating-the-future-of-work-449c66707e35
20. This is a very interesting take on EU’s strategy for China. We can learn something here.
“With the notion of systemic rivalry, the European Union hoped to separate political differences and economic links. In strategic rivalry, conflict leads. In systemic rivalry, conflict is limited to the political sphere. It is part of the EU’s political tradition to believe that politics and the economy can be insulated from each other. Even inside the bloc, political differences with Poland and Hungary are not allowed to interfere with the single market.
Performing the same trick with China is far more difficult, but the Commission has been busy putting the plan in practice. Over the past two years, it approved a barrage of new regulations limiting the Chinese state’s ability to interfere with the framework of economic links between the two blocs. These include investment screening, trade defense instruments, a package against state subsidies and a public procurement tool.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-china-strategy-geopolitics/
21. Net net: own assets.
“Coca Cola has clearly become a LESS valuable company over the past decade. And yet its stock price has soared to record highs.
Coca Cola’s record stock price has nothing to do with the company’s success; it has everything to do with the tidal wave of cash that the Federal Reserve has printed. Much of that money has made its way into the stock market, pushing up share prices– even when the companies are in decline.
This is asset price inflation.”
22. “Why in the world do we need a centralized exchange to trade stock certificates? We do not. If you put all of these certificates onto the internet it is actually a lot easier. You can see buy and sell orders from every single person with an internet connection. The only reason this doesn’t work right now is due to regulations.
If you think about crypto, there is absolutely no need for a Centralized Exchange (such as Coinbase) over the long-term. Decentralized exchanges such as Uniswap, 0x, Sushiswap, etc. already do more volume than Coinbase! So. The future is a decentralized exchange environment.
As a note to keep ourselves honest here, centralized exchanges will still exist. Large funds with tons of regulation involved will be around for a long time. The big picture is that the decentralized side will gain more mass adoption over the long-term.”
https://defieducation.substack.com/p/decentralized-finance-the-high-level
23. Kaboom! Batch 14 represent. Go Olivier Pailhes, Jonathan Anguelov & the Aircall team!
https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/23/aircall-raises-120-million-for-its-cloud-based-phone-system/
24. “Now for the fun big picture: governments need to compete for citizens. There was a book on this topic called “The Sovereign Individual”. We’d go as far as to say that this is required reading for anyone at this point. This era relates to the novel 1984, the millennial and zoomer generation will relate more to the Sovereign individual.
This means that *you* (everyone reading this) will become your own bank. This means you will be allowed to lend out your assets. You can borrow from anyone in the world and on top of this you can transact 24/7/365. If you’ve made a wire transfer before you know that there are windows to send money even if it is a small sum. The future is 24/7/365 with no intermediary.
Crypto currency is the biggest invention we’ve seen since the Internet. Sadly, we’re getting old here and many people don’t remember life before the internet. We used to put quarters into payphone machines to make domestic and international calls. Back then people argued that the internet would be less impactful than the fax machine… These arguments all proved to be incorrect.”
25. “Investors invest in deals. They don’t invest in dreams. Sure they’ll lie to TechCrunch and say they love investing in untested ideas by made geniuses, but that’s a lie. They want to make money, and if your deck doesn’t have dollar signs pinging off of it in with cartoonish AWOOOGA noises you’re probably not going to get a check.
So what should you do instead? Approach investors for advice. Tell them about your product, ask them what they think, and just listen. They’ll tell you important stuff and maybe be able to help you with devs, management, and logistics. Maybe they’ll even like you enough to put in money.”
https://startupstrats.substack.com/p/dont-be-a-jerk
26. This is really damn funny. This is a parody BTW…….I think……
https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/23/an-interview-with-a-leading-venture-capitalist/
27. This is a fun podcast to learn about what’s happening at the edge of the internet…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdv7VmpESKo
28. “This unholy trinity — the quasi-religion of wokeness, corporate ingestion of the corrosive social-media machinery and a deluded view of working life — is what bedevils the newest generation of American companies.
Once you let the mob accrue influence internally, short of taking a hard stand managerially as Coinbase did, you have no option but concede to their demands and offer the mob the object of their desire (or rage) on a plate. Every company who goes down this path will be limping from crisis to crisis forever (as Google is).”
https://www.thepullrequest.com/p/bad-apple
29. “While there may still be space for cryptocurrency in China, it seems the CCP authorities have finally concluded they have little to gain from nurturing anti-authoritarian technology. On the whole, their loss could be the world’s gain but there are still likely turbulent waters ahead.”
https://www.coindesk.com/watch-traders-not-miners-china-crackdown
30. I’ve been wanting to take the Trans-Siberian railway for a long time. One day in the post covid world.
31. “In other words, Pakistan is eating its proverbial seed corn instead of planting it in the ground. Bangladesh and India, in contrast, are planting their seed corn — foregoing current consumption in order to build productive capital and be richer tomorrow.
Why would Pakistan consume today instead of investing for the future? I’m not sure, but my guess is that it has to do with the country’s political system. The country alternates back and forth between civilian and military rule:”
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/why-would-pakistan-grow
32. Propublica just seems shrill. Maybe more of us regular folks can learn from this & use Roths better.
“Yet, from the start, a small number of entrepreneurs, like Thiel, made an end run around the rules: Open a Roth with $2,000 or less. Get a sweetheart deal to buy a stake in a startup that has a good chance of one day exploding in value. Pay just fractions of a penny per share, a price low enough to buy huge numbers of shares. Watch as all the gains on that stock — no matter how giant — are shielded from taxes forever, as long as the IRA remains untouched until age 59 and a half. Then use the proceeds, still inside the Roth, to make other investments.”
33. Lots of good inside notes on what’s going on in Venture capital.
https://www.newcomer.co/p/looking-back-on-the-week
34. So many nuggets of wisdom from the Wall Street Playboys.
“★ Fame is harassment from regular people. Regular people have nothing better to do with their lives than live vicariously through someone else. This is why celebrities go nuts. They are harassed every single day as people charge after their cars just to touch their shirt or skin. Lunatics.
★ If you are never able to sell and never able to scale… you can become “well off” but you will NEVER be rich. You need to make money in your sleep to generate real wealth.
★ A successful man does everything in life with a purpose.
35. Worth pondering. Building a great digital Virtual reality or Building a Great Reality.
“Should we be confident that the further internet-ization of Western life can go hand in hand with other technological leaps forward? Or alternatively, is our progress into realms of virtuality and simulation actually intimately connected to the dearth of building in the real world?”
https://douthat.substack.com/p/decadence-and-andreessens-dilemma
36. Finally! Good news for Taiwan. Suck it CCP.
