Globally, about 88,000 millionaires moved to a new country in 2022. A look at where they’re coming from and where they’re going, with fantastic graphs and charts.
If you’re worried about a government shutdown, know that it’s probably less cause for alarm than you might think. A look at the data on government shutdowns going back to 1990, and why the market is good at pricing risk events with a date associated.
On the World of DaaS podcast, one of the foremost minds in SaaS and venture capital breaks down what the best startups will do to survive the downturn. David Sacks is a lucid thinker with lots of concise insights. A must listen for anyone running a company right now.
We normally think of inequality as something that runs top to bottom in society, but there’s a chronological component too. Your younger self works hard for rewards you reap in old age. What if you could draw on that potential when you’re young?
Some have said high interest rates will be disastrous for tech. Chamath looks at the data: The largest and most successful tech startups of all time were founded in the 70s and 80s, during a period of soaring interest rates.
When Frances Hesselbein became CEO of the Girl Scouts at age 60, it was only her second professional job ever. She would go on to earn 23 honorary doctorates and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, despite never graduating from college.
An insightful conversation Bryan Mistele (CEO of Inrix) on what transportation will look like in the next 10 years … and he’s not afraid to make predictions.
Fun, useful, random, and min-expanding facts to start the year. I guarantee you haven’t heard every one of these, and at least one will change the way you think about something.
A conversation with one of the most counterintuitive thinkers in tech. Keith is a master operator and has amazing insight on finding talent, investing early, and creating culture, whether that’s at his companies or in building a new tech scene in Miami.
The most exhaustive look at the data from numerous wine tasting competitions and academic studies you’ll find anywhere. Scott Alexander comes to a pretty definitive answer to the question “is all this wine stuff made up?”
“There is an inverse relationship between interest rates and dishonesty.” Where and how you can expect to see the cracks appearing as the economy trends downward.
What polyamory, EA and crypto have in common: optimizing for efficacy and altruism alone will likely take us to zero. There’s been plenty written about the FTX implosion, but this is worth a read.
Almost every leader in the G7 is the exact same height— 5’ 7”.
Bonus (Watch): We Own This City on HBOThis six part miniseries from David Simon, the writer of the Wire, covers one of the wildest true stories of corruption in the last 20 years: the Baltimore Police Department’s Gun Trace Task Force.
The Ocaml advantage: How Jane Street leaned on an obscure coding language to hire better programmers and climb to the top of the prop trading food chain.
A fascinating conversation with a true optimistic thinker about the future of tech in the next five years, and the next 50 years. Packy thinks deeply about the root forces driving innovation and progress.
Decoding what looks like bad decision making and finding simplicity on the other side of complexity— or, the metrics that really matter in evaluating early-stage companies.
There’s been lots written about the decline of San Francisco and what it means for tech and the country as a whole. This is an honest, straightforward look at what went wrong driven by data (not partisan buzzwords). Essential reading for anyone who cares about American cities.
Predictions are one of the biggest drivers of “discourse.” A useful spectrum for thinking about predictions, and whose predictions are doomed to misinterpretation.
Twelve years on from its original publishing, this article on Oprah Winfrey’s success is still essential reading for everyone, especially entrepreneurs. On the value of knowing your strengths, staying in your lane, and leading with authenticity.
A wide-ranging conversation with one of my favorite thinkers. Tim Urban can talk about anything and covers nothing short of love, death, time, and artificial superintelligence in this conversation.
A bit of Shakespeare and social science. Dives into the correlation betweens status-seeking and political discontent, and two distinct psychological profiles of discontent: populists and dominance-oriented status seekers.
A deep dive into the mechanics of choosing bank branch locations and setting up branch networks. Significantly more interesting and nonobvious than it sounds.
Being a low EQ CEO isn’t totally uncommon, but it can be a severe disadvantage as a leader. As someone who’s spent years figuring out how to overcome these disadvantages, I hope this guide will help other low EQ leaders (and those who work with them).
Every month I try to share the most mind-expanding links to read/watch/listen. If you find these interesting, please do share with your friends.
Here are five links worth reading…
Understanding Jane Street by Byrne Hobart Should the smartest students continue going into prop trading instead of trying to cure cancer? Everyone’s heard of Jane Street but do you understand what they really do?
Listen: Sheila Heen: How to Navigate Difficult Conversations Difficult conversations are challenging and necessary. Life is filled with them, yet most people don’t know how to navigate them effectively. Here are tactics to get better at difficult conversations.
Status, Vulnerability, and Status Vulnerability by Erik Torenberg Cancel culture, tall poppy syndrome, and a holistic look at how our personal motivations play out on a global scale as status games. Very useful advice for how to escape the status rat race.
Listen: Terry Kawaja: The Future of AdTech The AdTech world changes every 18 months driven by new regulations and technology changes. But the current downturn may have a lasting impact on the landscape.
The Midwit Trap Why are we so dismissive of simple solutions? Sometimes the smartest people are the first to complexify a solution when the simple solution is the best answer.
Bonus Listen: Founders podcast by David Senra My new favorite podcast. Senra gives a good summary of biographies of entrepreneurs. HT: Patrick O’Shaughnessy
Graph of the Month: The best founders are both Smart and Positive. … but most smart people are negative
Books:
The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate (fiction) by Ted Chiang (must read) I don’t normally read fiction but this short-story (18-pages) by Ted Chiang is amazing. Highly recommend. HT: Tenzing Shaw
Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation by Yossi Klein Halevi
Bloodchild (fiction) by Octavia Butler HT: Mary Therese Jackson
Tweet of the Month:
the biggest privilege in life is to have at least one parent that loves you unconditionally. if you have that, then you are lucky to be massively privileged.
Every month I try to share the most mind-expanding links to read/watch/listen. If you find these interesting, please do share with your friends.
Here are five links worth reading…
Beliefs are Fashions by Erik Torenberg People don’t choose beliefs based on logical value or merits, but based on how much status they can garner in their tribes.
Little Ways the World Works by Morgan Housel If you find something that’s true in more than one field, it’s probably important. A look at the rules from statistics, philosophy & evolutionary biology and the broader truths we can learn from them.
Listen: David Epstein: Never Underestimate the Generalist In a complex world, thinking broadly is more important than ever yet society increasingly values narrow subject expertise. Explore the pitfalls of specialization and how to think about your own career.
Geographic mobility is one secret of successful immigration by Tyler Cowen Without hometown roots, immigrant families are more likely to move to areas with higher opportunity, resulting in better outcomes than their native-born economic peers.
Correlations go to One, in Good Ways and Bad by Byrne Hobart Markets, both in the economic sense and the financial one, are machines for producing valuable information about how the probabilities of different events are connected. There is no free lunch.
Bonus (Listen): Gary Marcus: The Failed Promise of Artificial Intelligence Is AGI really right around the corner? What will it take for AI to reach the next threshold of capability? Gary Marcus offers some insight and a critical perspective in a complex field.
Graph of the Month: Quality of AV systems don’t scale with wealth
Books:
The Making of the Atom Bomb by Richard Rhodes (Must Read) (this is a really long book but one of the best books i have read in the last 20 years) HT: Matt Clifford
Every month I try to share the most mind-expanding links to read/watch/listen. If you find these interesting, please do share with your friends.
Here are five links worth reading…
The Current Thing Why is everyone up in arms about something new every month? Due to mimetic desire, social psychology, and social media, the mainstream converges to an intellectual monoculture.
Listen: Liv Boeree: Developing a Probabilistic Mindset Probability seeps into every aspect of our lives, yet most people don’t apply it all to their daily activities. Liv lays out frameworks everyone should apply to life, society and science.
The Purpose of Technology Technology’s proximate purpose is to provide leverage and do more with less – effectively reducing scarcity. But its long-term purpose is to reduce mortality, the main source of scarcity.
Optimism It’s a lot easier to sound smart as a cynic than as an optimist. But the upside of optimism is unlimited, it’s like a call option on society. So why do so many people choose to be pessimistic?
Trying Too Hard Being a novice can be more valuable than being an expert. Everyone wants to be an expert, whether it’s law, medicine or investing. But often, the best answer is the simple, obvious one.
Bonus (Advice): 103 Bits of Advice I Wish I had Known Life advice from one of the greatest optimists. An invaluable list covering abstract and tactical topics that would certainly make everyone a better person.
Bonus (Listen): Antonio Garcia Martinez: A New Approach to Regulation Regulation which appears great on paper often has many unintended consequences. This is especially true when it comes to big tech and privacy regulation.
Graph of the Month: Trust your gut, but only sometimes
Books:
Range by David Epstein HT: David Epstein, Brett Sylvia
Every month I try to share the most mind-expanding links to read/watch/listen. If you find these interesting, please do share with your friends.
Here are five links worth reading…
The New Science of Alt Intelligence The perceived objective of AI has always been to mimic human behavior. But most researchers today don’t want this. Instead, they’re focused on building what’s called “alt intelligence”.
Listen: Glenn Fogel: The Greatest Acquirer in History M&A is messy and most of it fails. Fogel has somehow managed to complete several successful acquisitions while building Booking Holdings. What does he know that others don’t?
Why don’t nations buy more territories from each other? You can count all the transactions involving the sale of land from one country to another in the past century on one hand. Why don’t more countries sell off land? Tyler Cowen explores why.
Listen: Barry Nalebuff: A Radical New Way to Negotiate Most negotiations are unfavorable for all parties because more time is spent bargaining for a larger slice of the pie and not enough time is spent defining the pie. Defining the pie can unlock win-win scenarios in most negotiations.
Bonus (Listen): Introduction to Mimetic Theory Most people want what others have. Rene Girard coined the term Mimesis, the desire to imitate one another, and concluded that it was Mimesis that drove most of society’s problems.
Graph of the Month: Slack is great… until it’s not
Every month I try to share the most mind-expanding links to read/watch/listen. If you find these interesting, please do share with your friends.
Here are five links worth reading…
Did Making the Rules of War Better Make the World Worse? The rules of war have changed dramatically over the last half a century. Improvements in military technology have given us fewer civilian casualties… but prolonged wars.
Listen: David Perell: Building a Personal Monopoly It’s more important than ever to play your own game in a society where everyone is imitating one another. The secret may lie in biblical and philosophical texts.
Heresy Heresy, while medieval in origin, manifests in modern western society in inconspicuous ways. Paul Graham provides heuristics on how to navigate conflicts of heresy in today’s world.
Like America, The Sunshine State Also Rises Florida (and in particular, Miami) has been dubbed as the new home of ambition. But Florida has a long history of ambitious endeavors. The state will only become more important over time.
Bonus: Demystifying the SafeGraph Facts SafeGraph sells facts about places and our mission is to democratize access to data. Part of this mission means making it available in a self-serve way. But of course, making data accessible also has drawbacks.
Bonus (Listen): It’s Our Moral Obligation to Make Data More Accessible In case you didn’t get to read my essay last month, here’s an audio version. Most of the world’s data is sitting on a shelf. This data, if properly used, could solve the world’s biggest problems.
Graph of the Month:
Books:
The True Believer by Eric Hoffer (must read) HT: Garrett Johnson, Jack Franson, Francisco Dao
The best choices in life reduce optionality. Intentionally committing yourself to one direction with very high switching costs brings satisfaction you can never find by leaving your options open.
The Future of the European Union The EU has all the makings of a global superpower: size, population, GDP and military. But why has it been left behind over the past 2 decades? Ukraine might be the catalyst to change this.
Listen: Daniel Gross: Why Energy is the Best Predictor of Talent Spotting talent is really hard and identifying A-players can feel impossible. Daniel Gross (CEO, Pioneer) explains how to distinguish between good and great employees & what makes a 10xer.
Deep Learning is Hitting a Wall Despite all the innovation in artificial intelligence, we’re still very far from where we thought we’d be. This is largely due to inherent limitations of deep learning.
Google Search is Dying If you’ve also had a terrible experience searching on Google, you’re not alone. People are looking for authentic content and SEO is killing search. Reddit may be an alternative solution.
Bonus (Listen): Tyler Henritze: Thematic Investing to Predict the Future Tyler has worked on over $100bn of transactions at Blackstone Real Estate. He shares how Blackstone predicted the future with large concentrated bets that paid off.
Bonus (Personal Growth): Managing people Most people are terrible managers (I too am trying to improve every day). Andreas Klinger shares very tactical advice on how to be a better manager.
Graph of the Month:
Books:
Talent by Tyler Cowen and Daniel gross (must read) Great read on how to identify talent that can transform an organization
there is a high correlation between the people you want to hire and the people that work an entire plane flight. next time you fly, just drop job ads off on the seats of all the people jamming
Theses on Sleep A controversial perspective on sleep. The author suggests that it is healthy to sleep less.
Listen: Niall Ferguson: Writing History with Data Technology drives many societal transformations. Yet, very few people working in technology spend time studying the past.
Spotting talent is really hard. Identifying A-players can feel impossible. Peter Thiel has one of the best interview questions for identifying talent, “What important truth do very few people agree with you on?” But Daniel Gross disagrees. Daniel believes easygoing questions like “What movies do you like to watch?” elicit more telling responses.
Tyler is one of the very few truly committed to constantly learning. He also reads 5-10x faster than a fast reader, so his superpower is consuming large amounts of information.
We cover how the last year drove the end of the Great Stagnation, society’s newfound appreciation for big business, why Tyler thinks economists’ use of data is overrated, how to spot talent, why organizational capital would be one of the most valuable data sources, and so much more.
Above a certain amount of assets, wealth is extremely relative.
The goods that most people consume have fairly fixed prices. Some go up 1-10% per year. Some go down 1-10% per year. The prices of the goods and the basket of those goods are fairly predictable.
For most people, wealth is absolute. It is not really about keeping up with the Joneses … it is about keeping your head above water and doing everything possible for your family to have a normal life.
But once your assets cross a certain threshold, almost all your spending is relative to the Joneses. The amount of absolute wealth no longer matters — what matters is the amount of wealth relative to your peers.
Most goods that cater to the wealthy (high-end real estate, charitable giving naming rights, art, buying 10% of a YC company, etc.) are extremely relative. And most really wealthy people are trying to protect their status — their biggest worry is a new class of people getting richer than them fast.
For the super wealthy, the easiest way for them to protect their wealth is to raise taxes. The higher the taxes, the easier it is for wealthy people to maintain their status and to stop pesky outsiders from usurping them.
Companies and orgs can promote and thrive from tension
All companies have tension.
There are at least two axes where tension resides:
Long-term vs Short-term projects.
Doing things right vs doing things fast.
This tension exists within a company, between departments, within a department, and even between cofounders. This tension is very healthy and often propels companies to succeed greater than they would without the tension.
All companies have tension. Two axes: Long-term vs Short-term projects. Doing things right vs doing things fast. pic.twitter.com/mEdSW6aXbY
This is the classic tension that many companies, especially start-ups, think about. Every individual has a personality trait that has them fall somewhere along the axis.
Mark Zuckerberg’s famous line “move fast and break things” was Facebook’s motto for its first ten years (2004-2014). Moving fast and putting out new features is why Facebook was so successful. But in 2014, Facebook decided to move on the axis from “doing things fast” to “doing things right” and Zuckerberg changed the motto to the less-catchy “Move Fast With Stable Infra.” That change is representative of the tension that exists within companies … and also the evolvement of all companies.
Most venture-backed start-ups err on doing things fast verses doing things right. Moving fast is the main advantage of a small organization because all large organizations move rather slowly. So one of the best vectors to compete against more entrenched incumbents is speed.
In my piece “Pace, Tempo, Speed, and OODA loops” I lead off with the quote from Jeff Bezos: “Being wrong might hurt you a bit, but being slow will kill you.”
The best strategy for larger organizations is to pick a small number of really important things to do — and make sure those things are done right. A great example of “do things right” strategy is Apple … but even Apple also needs to care about speed.
Even within companies, there is a LOT of tension between doings things fast and doing things right. If you were 100% on one side or the other, the company would almost surely fail.
Cofounders themselves can have conflict. I’ve seen successful start-ups with two cofounders where one has a “fast” personality and the other has a “right” personality. I’ve seen successful start-ups where both cofounders have “fast” personalities. Curiously — I have never seen a successful start-up where both founders have a “right” personality — those have always failed. In the end, speed wins for start-ups.
Shreyas Hariharan wrote a great post, Investing as Entertainment. Highly encourage you to read it (go on, I’ll wait).
In the post, Hariharan makes the case that there is a big difference between “investing for retirement” and “investing for sport.”
Robinhood isn’t competing with Interactive Brokers and Charles Schwab. It is competing with Netflix and TikTok. DeFi has built an even better casino than Robinhood and Wall Street. Besides the profits and the novelty, people are attracted to DeFi because it is entertaining. DeFi is an e-sport.
Hariharan makes a super point.
Real investing is about accumulating new capital very slowly. It is about using the power of compound interest. As Charlie Munger reminds us, when he was younger his goal was to get rich SLOWLY. Real investing is very, very boring.
In fact, the best strategies for real investing start with the word “passive.” Even the best funds for retirement investing are called “passive” funds. It is about getting low fees so you can get rich … but get rich slowly.
But now-a-days, many people don’t want to be passive. They want to be part of the story.
Watching a movie, while incredibly rewarding, is very passive. And people that like watching movies or curling up with a long book are likely highly correlated with people that engage in long-term passive investing.
By contrast, playing video games is very active. You are part of the story. Sometimes, you ARE the story. And people that play video games are likely highly correlated with people that want to be more part of the story when investing.
When you are part of the story, then you are very likely betting and not investing.
Most people bet on sports because they want to be part of the story. It is really fun. Very few of us will ever get to hang out with LeBron James, but we all can bet on basketball games. We even can run a fancy parlay bet and make watching the NBA finals even more fun.
Super fans love to bet … because they are now no longer just passive spectators … betting transforms them to active participants. And that is what more people that play video games regularly want to be. Being passive is boring.
This is why people even bet on the Academy Awards or the Grammys … the primary goal is not to make money but to be part of the broader story.
Which brings us back to Hariharan’s astute point … betting on stocks is fun. It is entertaining. Yes, some people do get rich by betting on stocks but most just do it because it is fun. They get to be part of the action. They might never get to hang out with Elon Musk in person but they can buy an option in him.
There are hundreds of amazing companies that sell software and tools to data scientists and machine learning teams. In fact, many of the best companies in the last 15 years have been exactly that.
But outside of SafeGraph (where I work), there are almost no companies that specialize in selling data to data scientists.
Why?
Partially it is because it is MUCH easier to get to $10 million ARR by selling applications (traditional SaaS). Partially it is just tradition coupled with stagnation. Partially it is because venture capital firms have been wary of funding data companies. And, most convincingly, being a data-only business is less exciting to most entrepreneurs because data is a supporting role (see the last section on data and humility).
But selling data to data scientists is starting to be a big business.
Selling data (DaaS or Data-as-a-Service) historically has not been a great business. Outside of Zoominfo and a few others, there have been almost no pure-play data unicorns built in the last 20 years.
That’s because very few companies had the ability to make use of raw data in the past. 10 years ago, only the most advanced engineering teams were able to make use of external data. But that’s changing. An order of magnitude more companies buy data today than did five years ago. That’s because a good engineer with a tool like Snowflake can be as productive as a great engineer was 5-10 years ago.
This is happening across industries.
One example is hedge funds. Not that long ago, just ten funds were buying significant alternative data. Today it is still under 100. But there are 500-700 funds that are currently making the investment to ingest large amounts of data.
The number of hedge funds that buy significant alternative data is still really tiny … but growing pic.twitter.com/cAmVMVXj6b
The #1 rated session was an interview with Todd McKinnon, CEO Okta — it was excellent and I highly recommend it.
My presentation was the #2 rated session. Here is the full video:
And here is the full learnings:
(1) Avoid good opportunities
the MOST IMPORTANT advice I can give you is to avoid good opportunities.
avoid good opportunities like you work to avoid the coronavirus.
Good opportunities must be avoided at ALL costs.
this is true if you want to build a great company … but this is JUST AS true in life.
the more successful you become, the more good opportunities are going to come at you. soon you will be swimming in good opportunities.
again, that’s true for companies and true for you individually.
let’s first dive into this advice individually and then show it applies to building a business.
let’s say you are 22 years old and don’t have any money. well then you are likely going to see very few opportunities to invest and most of them will be bad. but as you gain wealth, you will see more opportunities to invest — and many of them will be good. but even the good opportunities take time and effort to review — so it is in your best interest to do everything possible to wait only for the great opportunities.
this is even more true when running a company. the possibilities of the number of things you can do to grow your business are endless. you can launch new products, be better at recruiting, speak at SaaStr, and so much more. my advice, have some sort of rubric that allows you to ID good opportunities and avoid them.
but how do I know when an opportunity is just good and not great?
my simple heuristic: if the opportunity has few obvious downsides, it is almost certainly NOT a great opportunity. all great opportunities have very big and very obvious downsides.
of course, just because it has obvious downsides doesn’t mean it is a great opportunities — it still is more likely to be a bad or good opportunity … but if you see something with no obvious downsides, it almost certainly is not great.
this is also true with people you hire. if you want to hire a 10xer, that person will almost certainly have glaring faults. anyone that you can hire without glaring faults will, at best, be good — they will certainly not be great.
summary: avoid good opportunities like you avoid COVID-19
(2) Delegate things you are good at
most people advise us to delegate things you are not good at. they advise to surround yourself with people that have different strengths and different weaknesses.
this is the conventional advice.
maybe someone on your board already gave you this advice.
most of us have heard this advice many times over the years.
but this is terrible advice. don’t listen to it. ignore it. take it outside in the backyard and bury it. stab it and kill it.
do the opposite.
instead: Delegate the things that you are good at.
I know this sounds really strange … so let me explain.
the things that are the EASIEST to delegate are the things you are already good at. you know how do those things really well. you might already be an expert in them. you can break down these things well. you can also hire for these things.
so delegating these functions will, for sure, have the highest success rate.
if you are a great engineer, who do you think you will be better at hiring — other great engineers or great salespeople?
the answer is obvious — you will likely hire super engineers and very mediocre salespeople.
so the first thing you should always delegate are the things you are best at.
I cannot stress this enough.
you even see it in all great companies – they rarely get great in things that are not traits of their founders.
for instance, Marc Benioff is the world’s best software marketers. he was an amazing software marketer ever before he started Salesforce. he’s incredible. he’s hired great marketers and delegated to them. Salesforce continues to be great at marketing.
but Marc Benioff is not a great UI/UX person. while he’s been able to acquire great UI/UX people through acquisitions over the years (Stuart Butterfield, CEO of Slack, is one of the world’s greatest), the Salesforce product still suffers from having one of the worst UI experiences.
and guess what? it hasn’t mattered.
it is better that Benioff focused on his strengths.
you should focus on your strengths too — you cannot be all things to all people. focus on being great at just a few things.
let’s look at the napkin graph (above).
on the y-axis is things you are good and things you are bad at. the x-axis is things you love to do and things you really hate doing.
when you get a chance, try to fill out these quadrants for yourself.
the easy thing is to delegate as much as possible on the things you are already good at.
build systems to make delegation easier. hire super talented people and work on up-leveling them.
now you have two other buckets left.
for the things you like to do but are not yet good at … work on investing in yourself. get a coach. read. learn. try a few different things (and know that you will fail). while it is unlikely you will ever become great at these things … you can get yourself to good. once you are good, you can better effectively delegate (and hire).
now there are things that you are bad at and you also do not like doing. my advice in this quadrant is to do everything possible to get leverage through APIs or software … or maybe you do not need to do them at all. remember, you don’t have to do everything to have a super company. there can be many functions that you either outsource or just not do.
the great thing is that the number of vendors you can choose from is growing exponentially. you have amazing choices.
the number one skill to have in the next 20 years is the ability to select and manage vendors — almost every company now has more vendors than employees.
(3) Do the opposite of “smart” people
take a look at what the smart people around you are doing … and do the opposite.
