My Content List #18 | Friday 5/22/20

Opening Rant: Question Everything

In 10th grade Latin, we were instructed to find a saying/maxim that we felt represented ourselves. After much thought, I decided on the following:

De Omnibus Dubitantdum = “Everything Should Be Questioned”

While I may have chosen it partly because I didn’t want to memorize lengthy foreign prose, that sentiment still resonates with me — more so now than ever. (Hey, at least it wasn’t facetious like my classmate who picked “semper ubi sub ubi”…)

Inquisitiveness is so unbelievably important, at both a micro and macro level. Asking questions is the way to grasp challenging concepts in the classroom, to optimize one’s work product so it exceeds expectations for your bosses/clients/customers, to know what problems to address as an entrepreneur, to be a better partner/friend/parent and so on. If everyone just accepts the status quo, what will drive change… progress…innovation? How can one fully understand anything without asking “why”? I also remember thinking: If I don’t question things, who will?!

[Aside: I soon found out that my quote had been oft-attributed to Karl Marx, which made folks nervous, and you know how fast rumors spread in high school … so I then had to spend the better part of the next few weeks asserting my reverence for / belief in capitalism.]

So, in the spirit of *de omnibus dubitandum*… Here are a few (disconnected) topics I’ve been noodling on in no particular order, influenced by my reading/listening/conversations over the past few weeks. These are quick(ish)-hit kernels of future, more fulsome Opening Rants…

Education, Disruption Of

• There are several articles below that talk about coronavirus as a catalyst for the uptake of remote learning — from elementary school onward, but especially for higher ed institutions
• Equality in AND access to education are major contributors to the causal mechanisms of income inequality. In many ways, the system as we know it has failed to bring benefit to all Americans
• It really feels like this can be an inflection point; I wonder whether my generation will be the last to experience college as its typically conceived (i.e. expensive, four years, in-person, not necessarily vocational). That is not to say I was dissatisfied with my experience — in fact, quite the opposite. But this “new normal” world can and should facilitate more experimentation with new models of education delivery+dissemination and/or fundamental re-vamping
• One last point here: there is SO MUCH content online built for self-learning, and plenty from established institutions (e.g. MIT OpenCourseware, HarvardX). This whole issue feels more rooted in delivery/consumption than content, because the content is definitely out there. Skills ought to be valued in the hiring market more so than credentials/degrees, and that transition is well underway…

Uncertainty & Our Future Selves

• I don’t have a stat to back this up, but I’d posit that collective uncertainty is highest now than it’s been in any living person’s lifetime. It’s an unsettling time, isn’t it?
• A few questions to think about: What are the best ways to cope with uncertainty? Can resilience be trained? What determines whether a person slinks into themselves and cowers “until it’s over”, vs. one whose nature is to spring into action to face the new challenges/uncertainties head on? What media/news source can be trusted as (unbiased) fact, so that we can use that fact strategize the best ways to move forward?
• I was also reminded of a study conducted by psychologist Dan Gilbert about “why we make decisions that our future selves often regret” and our “fundamental misconception about the passage of time.” He and his co-authors asked respondents (1) “How much do you anticipate your values/oersonality will change over the next 10 years?” and (2) “How much did your values/personality change over the last 10 years?” The results: At every age, from 18–68, people vastly underestimate how much they will change over the next 10 years.
• Gilbert’s results underscore the so-called “End of History” effect. Just something to nibble on- how we think we’re fixed but we’re in fact quite fluid. The same effect held when folks were asked the same question schema about their preferences, likes/dislikes, hobbies, taste in music, closest friends, etc.

Gratitude, The Power of

• Thanks to my girlfriend’s suggestion, I’ve started keeping a daily Gratitude Journal. That means just listing 3–5 things I’m grateful for, reveling in the feelings of each as I list it, then going about my day.
• This is so simple, yet so powerful. Takes maybe 90 seconds to do, but over the few weeks I’ve been doing this I’ve just felt more…grounded. More gracious. More even-keeled. More lucid. (See “A Surprising Way to Reduce Stress” article below).
• I’ve also been participating in the Deepak Chopra’s 21 Day Meditation Challenge, and I recommend it very highly. Thank you to my friend Jimmy who is guiding me through these daily sessions.

American Exceptionalism

• On Friday January 31st — what feels like a lifetime ago — my friend Kabir and I took a nice stroll around a then-crowded Fifth Avenue in midtown. He had just been forced to leave his study abroad program in China because of the virus, so we talked about our plans and ambitions for the near-future. This was the early days of the COVID outbreak, i.e. before global life had changed. There wasn’t really a sense that we’d be affected in America by the coronavirus; we thought we’d be spared any life disruption the same way we were amidst SARS, ebola, etc.
• He and I connected again today, and we realized our mindset was emblematic of “American exceptionalism” — that we’d been conditioned to believe that all would be well, because there was some “trickle-down” effect of that exceptionalist sentiment (Kabir’s words quoted to preserve their shrewdness).
• Sure, we were in some ways being not-atypical supercilious Americans, but at that point there really wasn’t much of a reason to suspect the MOST DISRUPTIVE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE PAST 100 YEARS were about to happen. In fact, we had been assuaged that America would be fine…
• We’ll look back on this as some of the most badly-botched national leadership in all of time. That “trickle-down American exceptionalism” is a sentiment that should be eradicated.

Hazards of the Moral Variety

• “Moral Hazards” are phenomena behavioral economists love to discuss; defined as “lack of incentive to guard against risk where one is protected from its consequences”
• The classic example of a moral hazard is insurance: a driver with accident insurance may actually drive *more* aggressively than someone without it. It’s a weird psychological phenomenon; having a safety net makes us behave in a manner in which we’d otherwise end up splattered.
• I say this in relation to the Fed’s actions. Matt Taibbi sums this up better than I can (see full excerpt in Content List below) but they’ve in effect created a “no-lose” environment for Wall Street. That type of mentality will, inadvertently, incentivize exactly the risky behavior it seeks to mitigate.
• Net/net, the swift and decisive actions of the Fed were probably necessary, but we’ve already seen what a house of cards Wall Street can become when risky behavior goes unchecked (let alone tacitly encouraged).

OK, that’s quite the Opening Rant. Hopefully I made up for last time. Content List below, now with an excerpt/key section for *every* *single* *item* to save you time. Enjoy the long weekend!

Got something to contribute? Think my reasoning is flawed?

Drop me a note; I’d love to hear from you!

Follow me @James R. Shecter. Or don’t.

My Content List #18 | Friday 5/22/20

Articles

The secrets behind the runaway success of Apple’s AirPods | WIRED

• “If you started a business in an ultra-competitive space in consumer tech, and within three years it was earning more revenue than AMD, Spotify, Twitter, Snap or Shopify, you’d justifiably be pleased with yourself.”

The World of Sports Betting in a World Without Sports | SportsIllustrated

• “The shutdown happened at the worst possible time for sports gamblers and the various entities that take their money. Most estimates, like those from the American Gaming Association, place the amount wagered on the NCAA tournament in the neighborhood of $8.5 billion, accounting for a larger handle than the Super Bowl. And: Since sports betting was legalized in more states this year, with added books in casinos and apps where consumers could wager on sports like college basketball, many believed the industry could have collected its highest-ever windfall, with states taking in a record in corresponding tax revenue.”

Higher Ed Needs a Long-Term Plan for Virtual Learning | HBR

• “Evolution in the higher education ecosystem happens through “punctuated equilibrium”: long periods of relatively slow change interspersed with occasional moments of rapid adaptation. The current pandemic is a punctuation moment. Educators, faced with unprecedented urgency, are working hard to restore teaching and learning using technology, innovation, and collaboration.”

Good Riddance to the Handshake | The Atlantic

• “This moment, then, may well bring with it the end of handshakes. If so: Good riddance. It is high time for them to go — and not only because their new risks far outweigh their old rewards. The gestures, like the image of cheerful “space people” emerging from their saucers to say hi with humanoid hands, have been their own versions of wishful thinking. But handshakes were never as egalitarian as people wanted them to be.”

Six Theories on Why Fast-Growing Startups Seem to Be Disappearing | WSJ

• One includes: “Entrepreneurs are motivated more by the lifestyle than by viable business ideas”…think there’s some truth in that

The Hot New Thing in Clubby Silicon Valley? An App Called Clubhouse | NYTimes

• “The rush to invest in Clubhouse reflects the way Silicon Valley works. While cutting-edge technology and a change-the-world mission are paramount, much of the big money in recent decades has ultimately been made from addictive social media apps. So when it comes to building new things, Silicon Valley often turns to what it knows — and that is more social networks.”

What I Love — and Hate — Most About Being an Entrepreneur | WSJ

• Reid Hoffman’s take: “A social network is not very useful to the early adopters. It’s like having a telephone when none of your friends has one — who are you going to call? We knew we had to get LinkedIn to a critical mass of somewhere around one million users before it would be useful. We had to run numerous experiments in parallel. It was a very busy, anxious time.”

The Virus Is Winning | Nicholas Kristof x NYTimes

• “It makes sense to experiment with reopening in areas with fewer infections (perhaps using randomized controlled trials to gain a better understanding of what is safe), and epidemiologists note that there’s a particularly good case to be made for reopening parks and beaches if social distancing is practiced. But we still don’t have the testing and contact-tracing to be confident that we can get the easing right or to clamp down quickly when we get it wrong.”

Chills and Thrills: Why Some People Love Music — and Others Don’t | The Conversation

• “During the peak, when we experience chills and other signs that our body’s autonomic nervous system — responsible for regulating involuntary body functions — is being aroused, dopamine is released in the nearby ventral striatum. So what’s going on in the brains of music anhedonics?”

Get Ready for a Vaccine Information War | NYTimes

• “It occurred to me that all the misinformation we’ve seen so far — the false rumors that 5G cellphone towers fuel the coronavirus, that drinking bleach or injecting UV rays can cure it, that Dr. Anthony Fauci is part of an anti-Trump conspiracy — may be just the warm-up act for a much bigger information war when an effective vaccine becomes available to the public. This war could pit public health officials and politicians against an anti-vaccination movement that floods social media with misinformation, conspiracy theories and propaganda aimed at convincing people that the vaccine is a menace rather than a lifesaving, economy-rescuing miracle.”
• For an alternate take, see: New York Times Is Getting A Jump Start On Spreading COVID-19 “Anti-Vaxx” Hysteria | ZeroHedge

How the COVID-19 Bailout Gave Wall Street a No-Lose Casino | Matt Taibbi x Rolling Stone

• “The $2.3 trillion CARES Act, the Donald Trump-led rescue package signed into law on March 27th, is a radical rethink of American capitalism. It retains all the cruelties of the free market for those who live and work in the real world, but turns the paper economy into a state protectorate, surrounded by a kind of Trumpian Money Wall that is designed to keep the investor class safe from fear of loss.
• This financial economy is a fantasy casino, where the winnings are real but free chips cover the losses. For a rarefied segment of society, failure is being written out of the capitalist bargain.”

Reopening the Economy | Goldman Sachs

• Features University of Pennsylvania’s Dr. Zeke Emanuel, Duke University’s Dr. Mark McClellan and Harvard University’s Dr. Barry Bloom
• “The evidence suggests that this may be a demand side [economic] problem, not a supply side one, which won’t be solved by just opening up a restaurant or a salon.”

A Surprising Way to Reduce Stress | WSJ

• “Research shows that gratitude is a huge psychological booster. Studies show that people who practice being grateful report significantly higher levels of happiness and psychological well-being than those who do not. They are less depressed — with fewer, and shorter, episodes — and have lower levels of stress hormones and reduced cellular aging. They sleep better. They have more success at work. And they have better relationships.”

The VC Barbarians Are Coming | Fred Destin x Marker

• “Value is created by backing exceptional companies that return your fund, not by wordsmithing aggressive legal agreements. In the last decade, we’ve seen cleaner and simpler terms become the norm, which has been great for everyone involved and has overall created more alignment between entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.”

Retail’s Reckoning: How to Preserve 1 in 4 American Jobs | Brendan Wallace

“Cooperation is needed from the largest institutional retail landlords to work with the federal government to form a liquidity package to support large- and mid-sized retailers that:
1. Establishes standardized rent forbearance programs for retailers, which the rest of the industry can emulate;

2. Combines rent forbearance programs with short-term cash infusions from a federal government stimulus package to maximize solvency for viable retailers;
3. Actively works with the government and retailers in search of concessions (e.g., payroll and sales tax reductions); and
4. Actively coordinates with mortgage lenders and retailer lenders to maximize leniency.”

Why Big Investors Aren’t Betting It All on a Coronavirus Cure | WSJ

Good Leadership Is About Communicating “Why” | HBR

• “Let’s put it this way: If your boss comes to you and says, “I need you take on this additional project on top of your current work load,” what is your first question going to be? It probably has nothing to do with setting your alarm, re-arranging your schedule, or any other version of how you’re going to get the extra work done. When someone asks you to alter a current behavior, your first question is usually why? Because you’re not going to try something new or hard unless you’re motivated to do so.”

The Future is Happening Now: Accelerating into a New World of Edtech, Part I and Part II | Mercedes Bent

• “Covid accelerated trends that were already shaping the future. The future of K12 is a world of personalized learning. A world where each student is challenged with materials that are customized to their strengths, needs and interests in a manner that maximizes their potential. This vision requires the digitization of K12 (unless we are to move to a world with a 1:1 teacher to student ratio!). To be clear, edtech works best to supplement teachers not replace them.”

Unexpected Opportunities for Innovators in the Post COVID World | Jess Li

• “We have heard the words “remote work” countless times and even “telehealth, entertainment, online learning, delivery, and at home fitness” have become overused terms. Certainly these are all trends likely to result from COVID-19, but what are second or third order trends and unexpected opportunities for founders to innovate in necessary but relatively overlooked and less saturated spaces?”

The Coming Disruption | NYMag

• Love me some Scott Galloway predictions; if you haven’t seen his blog, I HIGHLY recommend!!
• “But the ultimate vehicle for a luxury item is to massively and almost artificially constrain supply. Birkin bags are $12,000 because they create the illusion of scarcity. I’ll have 170 kids in my brand-strategy class in the fall. We charge them $7,000 per student. That’s $1.2 million that we get for 12 nights of me in a classroom. $100,000 a night. The gross margins on that offering are somewhere between 92 and 96 points. There is no other product in the world that’s been able to sustain 90-plus points of margin for this long at this high of a price point. Ferrari can’t do it. Hermès can’t do it. Apple can’t do it. Apple’s gross margins are 38 points. Hermès and luxury goods are somewhere between 50 and 60 points. There has never been a luxury item that’s been able to garner the type of gross margins as university education.”

LongTermTrends.Net

• Cool site to track market valuation and price metrics over time, for example…

‘He was beloved by everybody’: How Scottie Pippen lifted Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls | ESPN

• “Jordan’s intimidation tactics were meant to steel teammates for the postseason. Even teammates who did not enjoy the withering glares and verbal jabs concede Jordan’s methods had some effect. They also wonder how the team might have functioned if its second-best player weren’t wired the way Pippen was. What if Pippen had been as merciless as Jordan? Would teammates have quaked under a two-man dictatorship? Would that version of Pippen have chafed at №2 status?”

The 10 Most In-Demand Career and Business Skills for 2020 | Ayodeji Awosika

• “If you want to build an audience, start a movement, gain loyal customers, or even attract the right people into your life, you’re better off gaining a following as a natural byproduct of the quality of your work plus the authentic personality needed to properly display the work.”

The lockdown live-streaming numbers are out, and they’re huge | Verge

• “While there were gains across the board, they weren’t distributed evenly. Twitch — the biggest live-streaming platform — saw the most growth in terms of sheer hours, with its hours watched jumping 50 percent between March and April and a full 101 percent year over year. It’s now up to 1.645 billion hours watched per month.”

The Great Refactoring: How Crisis Unlocks Productivity | Scott Belsky

• “Despite how excited we get about new tech (Slack, Airtable, Notion, your favorite new SaaS tool), “agile” development, and modern ways of doing business, there is a long lag between implementing new practices and harvesting the full benefits of the resulting productivity gains. Sure, you may feel a personal productivity bump, but there are always people and parts of the organization that hold us back. These obstacles come in the form of Holdouts — people resistant to change/adopting new tech (and antiquated processes that prevent widespread adoption!) — and Organizational Debt — the forever “pending” decisions and the excess time and resources spent that could otherwise be optimized. Any of these sound familiar?”

Profiting During a Crisis Is Okay. Profiting From a Crisis Is Not. | Roy Bahat x Marker

• “That said, if what you’re doing is a way to make money from the crisis exclusively, then stop and think about whether the profit you’d take from that is fair or worth it. Did you start this business as a way of making money from the crisis? Are you serving your current customers or new ones? If they’re new customers, or if you have unnaturally high demand because of the crisis and are thinking about raising prices to capitalize on it, pause to ask yourself if you’re being an opportunist.”

How Cognitive Bias Fuels Coronavirus Fake News | Russell Weigandt

• “There are countless examples that range from the more dubious (created as a bioweapon) to the highly misleading (coronavirus is under control), the medically dangerous (miracle cures, ingestion of disinfectants), the outlandish (5G conspiracy theories), the irresponsible (there are no PPE shortages) and much, much more. The impact has been as wide ranging as the misinformation. Panic and hysteria. Unnecessary individual exposure and bogus treatments. Monumental burden on healthcare providers. Prison riots and armed protests. Xenophobia, racism and hate crimes. Increases in depression, stress and stress. Strain on relationships.”

Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage | Ranjan Roy

• “If capitalism is driven by a search for profit, the food delivery business confuses the hell out of me. Every platform loses money. Restaurants feel like they’re getting screwed. Delivery drivers are poster children for gig economy problems. Customers get annoyed about delivery fees. Isn’t business supposed to solve problems?”

Knowledge of the Future | Howard Marks

• “There’s an old saying — variously attributed — to the effect that “capitalism without bankruptcy is like Catholicism without hell.” It appeals to me strongly. Markets work best when participants have a healthy fear of loss. It shouldn’t be the role of the Fed or government to eradicate it.”

Spotify Strikes Podcast Deal With Joe Rogan Worth More Than $100 Million | WSJ

• I suppose this exclusivity-type of arrangement is one (rather blunt) way that Podcasters can monetize… If Ninja can net >$30MM/year streaming only on Mixer, then kudos to Rogan for doing something similar

Democrats Employ Character Defense Of Biden After Attempted Assassination Of Kavanaugh’s | The Federalist

• The heavily-filtered/polarized nature of news media is one thing; double-standards like this are another. Many will tend to agree with Tara Reade but vote for Biden anyway, motivated more by negative sentiments towards Trump than Biden’s magnetism. All that said, this double-standard is a serious problem; shouldn’t Biden be subject to the same damning / widely publicized character assaults / senate hearing that Kavanaugh faced, just for the sake of balance?
• Also in the realm of frustrating double-standards: Enough With The Cuomo Brothers Yucking It Up On CNN. We Want Answers | The Federalist

The Burn Multiple | David Sacks

• I sometimes feel that there is an inflation in subscription business + SaaS KPIs, but this “Burn Multiple” ( = Net Cash Burn / Net New ARR) is sensible.
• “For example, Q1 just ended and it’s time for a board meeting. The startup reports that it burned $2M in the quarter while adding $1M to its ARR. That’s a 2x Burn Multiple — reasonable for an early-stage startup. On the other hand, if the company burned $5M in Q1 to add $1M of net new ARR, that’s a terrible Burn Multiple (5x). It should probably cut costs immediately. That company is spending like a later-stage company without delivering later-stage growth.”

Inside Facebook and Private Equity’s $8.8 Billion Bet on India’s Richest Man | WSJ

• If you peruse the daily onslaught of deal trackers (e.g. Pro Rata, TermSheet, etc.), it seems like there’s been new funding for India’s Jio Platforms every day… and the funding is BIG dollars from BIG names
• “Facebook’s April announcement that it would invest $5.7 billion for a stake in Mumbai-based Jio was quickly followed by $750 million from Silver Lake and $1.5 billion from Vista Equity Partners. On Sunday, Jio said it was raising $870 million from another private-equity powerhouse, General Atlantic.”

Solar’s Future is Insanely Cheap | Ramez Naam

Podcasts

Henry Cornell on Merchant Banking | Bloomberg’s Masters in Business

• On breaking away from a large institution (Goldman Sachs), the power of cumulative network cultivation, thematic investing, and building a private equity firm

Tobias Lutke (Shopify CEO) on Building a Modern Business | Invest like the Best

• Discusses, among other things “business focus, why video games help you learn the power of attention, what design means for products and organizations”

Power+Business with Hamilton Helmer | Invest like the Best

Joe Rogan w/ Andrew Yang

• Yang’s stance on the “freedom dividend”/UBI sound a lot more reasonable especially given today’s climate…

Solving Credit Access for Immigrants with Nicky Goulimis, COO & Co-Founder of Nova Credit | Wharton FinTech Podcast

• A problem I (naively) didn’t know existed

Jason Calacanis on Intelligent Risk | The Knowledge Project

• “Jason has invested in some of the fastest growing companies that came out of Silicon Valley including Uber, Wealthfront, Calm, and many more.”
• “Jason covers what it’s like to play high stakes poker, and how knowing your risk and knowing your odds transfers to angel investing. He discusses the traits that he looks for in founders prior to making an investment, and why the people you’re investing in are every bit as important as the product.”

Joe Rogan w/ Elon Musk

• Every bit as interesting as their first interview (minus the pot smoking) — on AI, human evolution, proper living, and how to pronounce his kid’s name

Josh Kopelman Interviewed by Mark Suster | Upfront Summit 2020

• 2 of my favorite VCs chatting… what a dream.
• “Founder and Managing Partner of First Round Capital Josh Kopelman talks with Upfront Managing Partner Mark Suster about scaling a VC with early stage as a focus. Topics include: What’s changed in the early stage ecosystem, Why Josh believes 70% of VC is picking the right founder, His advice for new funds and for LPs considering new venture investments, How and why they’ve invested in platform as a value-add service”

68 Ways to Be Better at Life | Freakonomics

• “The accidental futurist Kevin Kelly on why enthusiasm beats intelligence, how to really listen, and why the solution to bad technology is more technology.”

Musique

Sweet Addiction | Yuksek

Music Sounds Better with You | Neil Frances

Who Is He (And What Is He to You) | Bill Withers

• Also worth checking out the Claptone remix