My Content List #22 | Thurs 9/10/20
Opening Rant: Picks & Shovels
My friends who work in the music industry have early career experiences that overlap minimally with mine, which make talking to them about work particularly engaging. I’ve long been intrigued by the world in which they operate — thanks in large part to my brother who’s helped shape my music taste, eye for up-and-coming artists, and broad trends in media+entertainment for as long as I can remember. (I’ll table my envy of / fantastical desire to be Ari Gold, a caricature I count among my teenage heroes…) Among the many highlights of time spent in Los Angeles — surfing, weather, relaxed vibe/ethos, I could go on— are hearing the latest in A&R gossip, which acts and genres are surging in popularity or fading into darkness, how they’re sourcing and pitching to prospective talent, and how they’re working to build the brand value of the names already on their rosters.
It became increasingly clear that this crew immersed in the music world has cultivated their own version of the investor mindset. Success in that industry (like many others) requires keen instincts, continuous information gathering and networking, and domain expertise in order to win. A little luck doesn’t hurt either, but — as many say — luck is where preparedness meets opportunity…
One friend in particular had an opportunity to start a new management company. Unlikely many which focus on solo acts, bands, or the “faces” of the music, Hallwood Media focuses on producers and songwriters. Stated differently, those at Hallwood rep the men and women behind the music. This business model instantly resonated as an embodiment of the “picks and shovels” style of investing. You know how the adage goes: in a gold rush, best to be in the business of selling the tools (picks and shovels) that enable the act of mining. That way, even if there’s no gold / if folks start to fiending for silver instead, you’ll still make money!
Think about the parallels… In the music world, building a roster of producers and songwriters insulates against dangerous “fad effect” of certain artists. No matter what kind of music is popular, there will always be a steady demand for production. In my PE experience, we acquired [link] a “turnkey” cosmetics+skincare developer and manufacturer that serves the brands that sell through Sephora and Ulta. As above — no matter what skincare brands are popular, there will always be a steady demand for formulators and manufacturing. Examples of this phenomenon abound.
This is the ethos of many investment theses: focus on companies that provide goods or services of enablement, i.e. B2B SaaS, productivity tools, outsourced service providers, platforms, preventative healthcare, human capital management, etc. Think Shopify, Finix, Transcend, Squarespace, Twitch, Github — and those are from just one realm (tech). These businesses are inherently more insulated and universally need-satisfying, no matter the market conditions.
Why does this matter beyond the investing world? I’ll tell you — I believe there are similar “picks and shovels”-style habits+mindsets that can yield strong returns, with respect to life’s pursuits and fulfillment therein. Some examples:
(1) A reverence for the power of compounding and marginality,
(2) a continuous growth- or learning-oriented mindset,
(3) an ability to cultivate balance and consistency in times of dynamic change,
(4) a focus on the journey over the destination.
Such skills and frameworks can be added to one’s personal latticework over time, bolstering one’s ability — in a general sense — to thrive in all settings, no matter the “market” conditions. Learn how to learn; focus on how to think; know what you need to create your own state of equanimity.
These businesses and skillsets often dwell in the background, never really getting the glory of the proverbial frontman/woman. This shouldn’t be a surprise — there’s inherently less “sexiness” of the picks and shovels relative to the gold, but robustness and resilience often come at the cost of sexiness. I’m mixing metaphors… but think now about a sports car: its speed unsurpassed on paved roads. But throw in a pothole or a bit of rain, and that transmission may drop right out. Placing a premium on resilience and enablement — four-wheel drive, some shock absorbers — may render you less aerodynamic, but you will win the race in the end. As my friend and fellow existentialist Alex Debayo-Doherty put it: the compounding nature of investing in your own process over a lifetime is a lot like the high-margin/recurring revenue of SaaS — kind of “ancillary” and unnoticeable at first, but truly essential, especially over time.
So would you rather be the enduring and steadily-earning producer whose beats have anointed chart-topping artists for decades, or the broke has-been rockstar who is stuck living in the glory daze of the past? In my view, the choice is obvious. The best path forward is steady, not flashy; fraught with introspection and empathy, not incessantly measuring up against others; dynamically enduring, not a “burn bright / die young” supernova.
With that, I hope you enjoy the latest (and overdue) Content List. The world has changed so much this year, and the pace of change is only accelerating… So grab your picks and shovels, and let’s dig in!
Got something to contribute? Think my reasoning is flawed?
Drop me a note; I’d love to hear from you!
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My Content List #22 | Thurs 9/10/20
Articles
How Rituals and Focus Can Turn Isolation Into a Time for Growth | WSJ
- “William James, the great philosopher and psychologist, observed that people are collections of habits but that we can rid ourselves of those that don’t serve us well. He counseled us not to “sit all day in a moping posture, sigh and reply to everything with a dismal voice.” New habits can carry us ahead in an torganized way, letting us heighten our sense of control over our days and nights and keep disabling feelings in check. We can focus more on the small moments that comprise our lives, becoming more present and endowing ordinary routine with deep emotional investment.”
The Opioid Crisis, Already Serious, Has Intensified During Coronavirus Pandemic | WSJ
- This is a huge, huge problem… I just developed a thesis around the medication-assisted treatment (MAT) space [hit me up if you’d like to discuss!]. There really is such ubiquitous need for care/treatment in the US.
Meet the Star Witness: Your Smart Speaker | Wired
- Deeply, deeply unsettling…
- ““Usually the alibi you get is, ‘I was at home.’ Nobody can confirm that,” says Orr, the criminal justice professor. “So you ask, ‘Do you have a speaker?’”
- ”“Heather Mahalik, a forensics instructor, recalls a Florida case in which a man killed his wife, then tried to impersonate her. The husband sent texts and Facebook messages from his wife’s phone in an attempt to blur the timeline of her disappearance. While the woman’s phone activity continued, her Apple Watch showed a sudden drop in heart rate activity that the husband claimed was due to a dead battery. Activity on the man’s phone synced perfectly with when he used the wife’s phone to post to Facebook. Her phone showed no activity except for when the husband picked it up to post, with timestamps matching his activity to the use of the wife’s phone.”
Cognitive Ability and Vulnerability to Fake News | Scientific American
- “This research underscores the threat that fake news poses to democratic society. The aim of using fake news as propaganda is to make people think and behave in ways they wouldn’t otherwise — for example, hold a view that is contradicted by overwhelming scientific consensus. When this nefarious aim is achieved, citizens no longer have the ability to act in their own self-interest. In the logic of democracy, this isn’t just bad for that citizen — it’s bad for society.”
How Tim Cook Made Apple His Own | WSJ
- “Though current and former employees say Mr. Cook has created a more relaxed workplace than Mr. Jobs, he has been similarly demanding and detail oriented. He once got irritated that the company mistakenly shipped 25 computers to South Korea instead of Japan, said a former colleague, adding that it seemed like a minor misstep for a company shipping nearly 200 million iPhones annually. “We’re losing our commitment to excellence,” Mr. Cook said, this person recalls.”
America’s Enduring Caste System | NYTimes
- “Caste is the granting or withholding of respect, status, honor, attention, privileges, resources, benefit of the doubt and human kindness to someone on the basis of their perceived rank or standing in the hierarchy. Caste pushes back against an African-American woman who, without humor or apology, takes a seat at the head of the table speaking Russian. It prefers an Asian-American man to put his technological expertise at the service of the company but not aspire to chief executive. Yet it sees as logical a white 16-year-old serving as store manager over employees from the subordinate caste three times his age. Caste is insidious and therefore powerful because it is not hatred; it is not necessarily personal. It is the worn grooves of comforting routines and unthinking expectations, patterns of a social order that have been in place for so long that it looks like the natural order of things.”
The Last Dance: A Three-Pointer in Leadership | Menka Sajnani
- “The Last Dance is a powerful reminder that leadership is not about developing an army of perfect individuals. It allows for mavericks and flaws, and celebrates diversity. I am extremely fortunate that in my professional life, my managers have known exactly how to get more out of me. That means knowing that I excel in an environment of freedom and out-of-box thinking. This flexibility allows me to think big and be creative in terms of achieving outcomes.”
In-N-Out Billionaire Lynsi Snyder Opens Up About Her Troubled Past And The Burger Chain’s Future | Forbes
- “An In-N-Out store outsells a typical McDonald’s nearly twice over, bringing in an estimated $4.5 million in gross annual sales versus McDonald’s $2.6 million. (In-N-Out, which is private, won’t comment on its financials.) In-N-Out’s profit margin (measured by earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) is an estimated 20%. That’s higher than In-N-Out’s East Coast rival Shake Shack (16%) and other restaurant chains that typically own their locations, like Chipotle (10.5%). Revenue should surpass $1 billion this year, roughly doubling in eight years, and the business is debt-free, according to the company. In-N-Out is conservatively worth $3 billion, and Snyder now owns virtually all of it after receiving chunks on her 25th, 30th and 35th birthdays (she got the last slice in 2017).”
Ford Should Go Private to Have a Shot at Lapping Tesla | WSJ
- “Old-line companies like Ford, though, struggle to satisfy lofty goals and fickle stockholders at the same time. Wall Street’s short-termism tends to target the old and slow, not the young and nimble. Consider how an auto company few have ever heard of — Nikola Corp. — bolted past Ford in market value this summer despite never earning a dollar of revenue. Sometimes, the answer is to take back control.”
Sweatpants Forever | NYTimes
- “If there’s one image that I will remember from the last days of the fashion industry as it has existed for the last two decades, it’s Marc Jacobs streaming live from the Mercer Hotel in New York in pearls and perfect makeup. The broadcast ran to 75 minutes in length over two different virtual events. It began on April 15, with Vogue’s Global Conversations, a series the magazine introduced to figure out how to fix the fashion industry, and continued a month later, on May 15, with Business of Fashion, the industry’s go-to news website.
- How are you going to present your spring/summer ’21 collection? “I’m not sure there will be a spring/summer ’21 collection.” “
Coronavirus Hobbled Amazon. How the Tech Giant Rebounded for Its Best Earnings Ever. | WSJ
- “Investors are confident that the consumer habits brought about by the coronavirus will endure and ultimately make Amazon more powerful. The e-commerce juggernaut has added more than $700 billion to its market value since its March lows, or about the size of Facebook Inc. Its market capitalization now exceeds $1.5 trillion, behind only Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. among public companies.”
Total Recall: The People Who Never Forget | The Guardian
- “Elizabeth Parker, a neuropsychologist, mapped Price’s ability to learn and remember, and Larry Cahill, a neurobiologist, helped to analyse the results. Over the next five years, Price was given a battery of standardised memory, IQ and learning tests, as well as a series of specially devised ones. For example, they asked Price, who is Jewish, to write down the date of every Easter from 1980 to 2003 — she got only one wrong and in that case, she was off by only two days. Price was also able to say what she had done on those days.”
How to Embrace the Effects of Psychedelics Without the Drugs | Elemental x Tessa Love
- ““When you take your analytical mind offline temporarily, the body is so innately wise. When we [accidentally] cut ourselves, for example, we don’t have to tell our bodies how to go in and heal,” says Amber Amendola, Field Trip’s psychedelic breathing facilitator and integration therapist. “So creating that space through the breath, you’re really able to hear yourself and guide yourself in what you need.””
The value of luck in the labour market for CEOs | VOXEU
- “Do CEOs always earn their pay? Using data on executive compensation along with accounting data for S&P 1500 firms,this column explores how swings in firm value that are unrelated to CEO actions (i.e. ‘luck’) affect CEOs’ opportunities in the labour market and the performance of firms that hire lucky CEOs. It finds that luck makes CEOs more likely to move to a new firm subject to low analyst coverage and in less competitive industries, where they receive a higher pay compared to industry peers. Hiring lucky CEOs harms firm performance due to a surge in operating costs and a poorer usage of corporate assets.”
Do You Know the Difference Between Being Rich and Being Wealthy? | WSJ
- “Mr. Housel urges investors to think about what money and wealth are for. He draws a critical distinction between being rich (having a high current income) and being wealthy (having the freedom to choose not to spend money). Many rich people aren’t wealthy, Mr. Housel argues, because they feel the need to spend a lot of money to show others how rich they are. He defines the optimal savings level as “the gap between your ego and your income.” Wealth consists in caring less about what others think about you and more about using your money to control how you spend your time.”
Will India’s Jio be the next tech giant? | Fortune
- Think about the sheer amount of dollars raised in that 5 month span…
- “The scramble began when Facebook inked a $5.7 billion deal with Jio in April for a 9.9% stake in the company. That ignited a cascade of investors grabbing a slice of Jio, which is controlled by Ambani’s family business, the petrochemical conglomerate Reliance Industries. In May, U.S. private equity heavyweights Silver Lake, Vista Equity Partners, General Atlantic, and KKR together plowed nearly $5 billion into Jio. In June, Jio collected more than $4 billion from other U.S. tech investors and sovereign wealth funds in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. And in July, after selling slices of Jio to U.S. chipmakers Intel and Qualcomm, Jio sealed a $4.5 billion deal with Google for 7.7% of the company. For good measure, Reliance, which funded Jio from its own balance sheet, raised nearly $7 billion more in a rights offering.”
Shopify, Suddenly Worth $117 Billion, Is One of the Biggest Pandemic Winners | WSJ
The Magic of a Good Night’s Rest and Dangers of Forsaking It | Alex Debayo-Doherty
- “Immediately after finishing this book, my sleep habits changed out of necessity. His conclusions are thorough as they are unsparing. There is no safe and healthy way to cheat yourself of the sleep you need, and the consequences of believing the contrary are dire.”
- “I was once fond of saying, ‘Sleep is the third pillar of good health, alongside diet and exercise.’ I have changed my tune. Sleep is more than a pillar; it is the foundation on which the other two health bastions sit. Take away the bedrock of sleep, or weaken it just a little, and careful eating or physical exercise become less than effective” (Why We Sleep, 164).
Blockchain, The Amazing Solution for Almost Nothing | The Correspondent
- “I can tell you upfront, it’s a bizarre journey to nowhere. I’ve never seen so much incomprehensible jargon to describe so little. I’ve never seen so much bloated bombast fall so flat on closer inspection. And I’ve never seen so many people searching so hard for a problem to go with their solution.”
Time for Thinking | Howard Marks
Meet the Woman Who Got Joe Rogan and Michelle Obama to Spotify | WSJ
- “Spotify Technology got serious about podcasts less than two years ago, but some of the biggest names in culture — Joe Rogan, Michelle Obama and Kim Kardashian West — have already signed on with the company. Getting those high-profile figures to the table was Dawn Ostroff, an executive who’s made her career tackling the next big thing in media.
- Podcasts need to become a big moneymaker if the nearly $50 billion company is to become profitable. It is Ms. Ostroff’s job as chief content officer to make Spotify less reliant on music, and the company has committed hundreds of millions of dollars to make it happen.”
Start-Ups Braced for the Worst. The Worst Never Came. | NYTimes
- “When the coronavirus pandemic first hit in March, many technology start-ups braced themselves for The End, as business dried up, venture capitalists warned of dark times ahead and restructuring experts predicted the beginning of a “great unwinding” after a decade-long boom. Five months later, those doomsday warnings have not translated into the drastic shakeout that many had expected.”
The Dunning-Kruger Effect Explains Why Society Is So Screwed-Up | The Happy Neuron
- “The Dunning-Kruger Effect is the tendency for people to misjudge their abilities. People with less than average abilities tend to overestimate their true abilities, while those with higher than average abilities tend to not realize how much better they are…”
- “On the other hand, the more educated are quiet. Those in the Valley of Despair feel like frauds. For some reason, despite ample evidence to the contrary, some of those well on their way towards mastering a subject feel like they aren’t really that educated, their recognition is due to luck, or they have tricked those around them.”
Amazon and Mall Operator Look at Turning Sears, J.C. Penney Stores Into Fulfillment Centers | WSJ
- “Simon Property Group Inc. has been exploring with Amazon the possibility of turning some of the property owner’s anchor department stores into Amazon distribution hubs, according to people familiar with the matter. Amazon typically uses these warehouses to store everything from books and sweaters to kitchenware and electronics until delivery to local customers.”
What Is MasterClass Actually Selling? | The Atlantic
- “At first, Rogier said, many people told him his idea would never work. It was unclear whether people would pay to watch high-end tutorials when they could view lower-budget ones on YouTube for free. It was also unclear whether celebrity teachers could be recruited in meaningful numbers. The best in the world will never want to teach, people told him. They’re not going to be good at teaching. People aren’t going to want to learn from them. It’s going to be too expensive. People won’t pay for production — they won’t care if it’s higher production quality. Everything’s free on the web. Why are you trying to do everything from making the classes to putting the classes out? You should just take one small slice.”
The Summer Without a Song | WSJ
- “One of the hallmark traits of a song of the summer is its ubiquity — a song that’s impossible to escape like the heat itself. A true song of the summer should rule the conventional charts — through a combo of sales, streaming, video views and radio play — but it should also inspire memes, parodies and dance crazes. It’s a song that fully takes over the cultural zeitgeist for the hottest months of the year. Last year, the summer season was dominated by TikTok meme-driven country rap via “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X. The year before gave us the viral dance-challenge bounce of Drake’s “In My Feelings,” and in 2017, it was hard to get away from the reggaeton-meets-pop pervasiveness of Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito” and its remix featuring Justin Bieber.”
What if ‘Herd Immunity’ Is Closer Than Scientists Thought? | NYTimes
- “To achieve so-called herd immunity — the point at which the virus can no longer spread widely because there are not enough vulnerable humans — scientists have suggested that perhaps 70 percent of a given population must be immune, through vaccination or because they survived the infection. Now some researchers are wrestling with a hopeful possibility. In interviews with The New York Times, more than a dozen scientists said that the threshold is likely to be much lower: just 50 percent, perhaps even less. If that’s true, then it may be possible to turn back the coronavirus more quickly than once thought.”
The Privileged Have Entered Their Escape Pods | Douglas Rushkoff x OneZero
- ““Don’t tell anyone,” one of my neighbors told me when he came over to borrow some chlorine tablets, “but we’re thinking to ride this whole thing out in Zurich, where the numbers are better.” His wife still has her European passport, and they both have jobs that can be done entirely remotely. They’d be joining scores of people I know — not millionaires, but writers and marketers and consultants and web developers — who are resettling in Canada or Europe on the logic that their kids shouldn’t be sacrificed to their progressive parents’ sense of shame about escaping.”
Speaking, The Family Business | Scott Galloway
- “One-on-one I’m an introvert, insecure even. But as the room grows … other skills kick in. In front of dozens, crisp insights find me. In front of hundreds, humor and warmth. And thousands, a rush of adrenaline and the confidence to reach beyond my grasp and be inspiring. I may be wrong, but my heart is in the right place. I can look each person in the eye and claim I believe what I’m saying to be true. I’m blessed with not having to sell anything, and have no mercy nor malice for the firms or people referenced in my 30–60‑minute diatribes.”
Data rights: consumers expect transparency and instant access to their personal information | Benjamin Brook
- Also see “The Data Privacy Feedback Loop” insights report that Transcend helped create
Sleepwalking into the Atomic Age | Slate
- “In the three weeks between Trinity and Hiroshima, few Americans in a position of power were pondering the long-term implications of the bomb, nor did they have much basis for doing so. Outside the small group of physicists working on the project, no one quite grasped just how powerful this new weapon was; the horror of radioactive fallout was still less fully absorbed. The bomb’s consequences for future matters of war and peace — “political and social problems,” as Franck and Szilard put it — took a back seat to the understandably urgent task of winning the current war before tens of thousands more American troops were sent to their doom.”
Death of a Smart City | OneZero x @Brian J Barth
- “News that Alphabet had leaped neck deep into the smart city business lit up tech media for weeks. Sidewalk Labs’ renderings for the project — autonomous carts delivering packages and hauling away waste maneuvered in underground tunnels, while barefoot kids, butterflies, and birds cavorted in a Jetsons-meets-organic-living neighborhood at street level — flashed across the internet. Local news stations covered the project dotingly, picking up the Sidewalk Labs talking point that a network of sensors and other IT infrastructure embedded in the community would enable a new era of urban efficiency. Homes and workplaces in Quayside would “study occupants’ behavior while they’re inside them to make life easier,” said a reporter on one evening broadcast after the press event. Quayside would be “the first neighborhood of its kind,” he said, and — as if one superlative wasn’t enough — it would be “a community like none other.”
Nintendo, Disney, and Cultural Determinism | Matthew Ball
- “[Nintendo’s] framing feels a lot like Disney saying films are the core of its entertainment flywheel, that OTT streaming video is the company’s new growth and investment area, and that it will continue to proliferate its IP into emergent categories. And, as with Disney in the early- to mid-2010s, there’s evidence of this transition. The company is underway with its first-ever theme park lands, its first feature film in nearly three decades, and several new interactive merchandise partnerships with the likes of Lego and more.”
Inside The Beatles’ Breakup, and Why It Matters 50 Years Later | Rolling Stone
3-D Printed Guns Are Already Here | Kim Kelly x Gen
- “Ghost guns have risen in popularity thanks in part to the 2004 expiration of the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which had prohibited U.S. residents from owning different kinds of assault weapons as well as various types of large-capacity magazines. Most modern firearms hobbyists have since taken to using parts kits, which are easily attainable through internet retailers. There are a number of varieties on offer, from Glock handguns to classic 1911 pistols to more advanced weaponry. The one thing all of these homemade firearms have in common — from the rudimentary to the cutting edge — is that they are untraceable, untrackable, and, provided one follows a few cursory rules, completely legal under U.S. federal law.”
The Batman Effect: How Having an Alter Ego Empowers You | BBC
- “Although the embodiment of a fictional persona may seem like a gimmick for pop stars, new research suggests there may be some real psychological benefits to the strategy. Adopting an alter ego is an extreme form of ‘self-distancing’, which involves taking a step back from our immediate feelings to allow us to view a situation more dispassionately.”
- “Given Tenev and Bhatt’s history in the high-frequency trading business, it’s no surprise that they cleverly built their firm around attracting the type of account that would be most desirable to their Wall Street trading-firm clients. What kind of traders make the most saleable chum for giant sharks? Those who chase volatile momentum stocks, caring little about the size of spreads, and those who speculate with options. So Robinhood’s app was designed to appeal to the video-game generation of young, inexperienced investors.”
The Contagion We Can Control | Prof Sigal Barsade
- Love this line of research from my current Professor @ Wharton
- “As research has shown, we generally have little awareness of emotional contagion and its influence on our behavior. It starts when we automatically mimic other people’s facial expressions, body language, tone of voice — which we’re hardwired to do from infancy. What happens next is also “infectious”: Through a variety of physiological and neurological processes, we actually feel the emotions we mimicked — and then act on them.”
Watch a computer clobber a human pilot in a simulated fighter jet duel | PopSci
- “The event this week was the third stage in what’s called the AlphaDogfight Trials. The first trial in the series, held last fall, was very much rookie algorithms trying to figure out aviation fundamentals, explains Col. Dan Javorsek, the manager of the event at DARPA and a former F-16 aviator and test pilot. “What you were basically watching was the AI agents learning to fly the plane,” Javorsek says. (His call sign is “Animal,” a reference to the Muppets.) “A lot of them killed themselves on accident — they would fly into the ground, or they would just forget about the bad guy altogether, and just drive off in some direction.” In other words, Maverick or Iceman would probably just laugh at them.”
Black VCs Confront Silicon Valley’s Quiet Racism | Bloomberg
- “The Black VC explained how the African-American experience differed from that of immigrants and, gradually, the partners committed to investing in startups earlier. But they’re trying to work with other venture firms to find a systematic approach to the issue, so little has changed so far. A number of VC firms have said they want to create a more inclusive industry and have taken concrete steps, like unveiling standalone funds focused on people of color. In early June, SoftBank Group Corp. created the $100 million Opportunity Growth Fund to invest in Black- and Latinx-founded companies, and Andreessen Horowitz unveiled the Talent x Opportunity Fund, which started with $2.2 million in donations from the firm’s partners. Ben Horowitz and his wife, Felicia, pledged to match as much as an additional $5 million in donations.”
- Is this enough?
Intelligent Software in the Era of Product-Led Growth | Chris Gaertner
- “As product-led growth companies become more common in the enterprise ecosystem, Intelligent Software will follow. Solutions leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to create productivity and capability gains provide the immediate ROI necessary to capture users’ attention, while the feedback loop and continuous improvement create switching costs and distribution channels that will accelerate time to scale.”
Healthcare’s Great Unlock | a16z
- “The ultimate goal for healthcare, of course, would be creating a more cost-effective healthcare delivery system without sacrificing quality. In order to do that, we need to move from a mindset of relying on intuition and human judgement, to an engineering-oriented mindset of deploying reusable components and codified learnings for a 10x level of scale and efficiency.”
Where Trump Stands on Economic Promises | Axios
- “President Trump made lots of specific economic promises to voters during his 2016 campaign, but only fulfilled some of them before the pandemic plunged America into recession.” — check out his track record here
3D Mapping The Largest Population Density Centers | Visual Capitalist
How Can We Plan for the Future in California? | The Atlantic
- “Last week, a heat wave baked the West. In Death Valley, a world record may have been set for the hottest temperature observed on Earth: 130 degrees Fahrenheit. From Phoenix, Arizona, to the Bay Area, people turned up their air-conditioning, straining California’s electricity infrastructure, because the state imports power from its neighbors. Demand outstripped supply, and the grid operator started rolling blackouts. The cause is climate change: It has made heat waves five times more likely to occur in the western United States.” …. that + fires = WAF
‘The Big Short 2.0’: How Hedge Funds Profited Off the Pain of Malls | NYTimes
- “Before making their bets, some investors who shorted the CMBX indexes engaged in labor-intensive research. Mr. Mudrick and his analysts walked all 39 malls in the CMBX 6 index, from the Northridge Fashion Center in Los Angeles to the Town Center at Cobb in Kennesaw, Ga. Wearing casual clothes, his group paced the perimeters and food courts, snapping photographs and taking notes.
- A slide deck on the Crystal Mall in Waterford, Conn., that Mudrick Capital prepared in 2017, when the firm first did the trade, contains maps of the two floors, facts and figures on competing shopping centers and a summary of the tenants classified into categories like “distressed” (Gymboree, Claire’s), “local/non-national” (Lord’s & Lady’s Hair Salons, FroyoWorld) and “notable” (Hollister, Aéropostale). A caption above one picture that prominently displays a J.C. Penney store and few shoppers in the atrium reads: “Interior physical product ok, but tired. Vendor renting ride-able stuffed animals for kids in middle of photo.”
Dear Kobe | Allen Iverson x Players’ Tribune
- “Remember when I came out to L.A. for the first time our rookie year? You picked me up at the hotel and we went out for some food, and you asked me what I was getting up to later. I said I was going to the club. I mean, we in L.A.! I’m going to the club, Kobe. Come on, man. And what did you say? “I’m going back to the gym.” You’re probably the only dude in the history of the game where the mystique wasn’t exaggerated. The Mamba was no myth, man. It didn’t even do you justice. One, two, three in the morning, we knew where you were.”
How Much Is an Album Worth in 2020: $3.49? $77? $1,000? Maybe $0 | NYTimes
- “For the most popular artists, the album itself is just one small part of a multiplatform business, and nowhere near the most profitable one. While they still do a healthy business in physical sales, and sometimes find ways to squeeze additional profits from it — Taylor Swift recently offered eight different deluxe editions of her new album, “Folklore” — generally the album is the thing that sets the table for far more ambitious revenue streams: merchandise, touring, licensing and more.”
From Michael Jordan to LeBron James, how the NBA became a powerful political organization | ESPN
- “[B]asketball has empowered its Black stars and treated them as partners in a way you still don’t see in football, where the Black faces wear masks and the Black bodies remain disposable, and the white quarterbacks are still the ones who get the best TV commercials and best broadcasting jobs. The NFL treats its employees like they’re in the army; the NBA treats its employees like they’re artists. You give your most powerful people more power, Stern knew, and everyone gets stronger, as does the partnership and the allegiance within it.”
Coronavirus has turned the humble QR code into an everyday essential | Wired
- “As lockdowns around the world started to ease, however, the QR code found itself in its element: it was the perfect touch-free medium. It allowed people to interact with the world around them, while only touching their own smartphone. “Coronavirus just gave it a big push in terms of adoption in terms of technology and also in terms of the end customers,” Engelking says. He says that Egoditor has seen a huge increase in adoption, with a 25x increase in signups from restaurants in June compared to February, and 7x increase in signups from hotels. There has also been an increase in the number of customers actually scanning the QR codes, which Engelking puts down to them being implemented for more useful functions.”
Investors Have Been Making the Same Mistake for 300 Years | The Atlantic
- “Newton’s individual failure points to a general feature of money manias. As the economic historian Anne McCants has argued, market crises are social phenomena: The emotions that humans feel and communicate to one another mold what we can convince ourselves are objectively “rational” decisions. That was true 300 years ago in the first recognizably modern financial disaster, and it remains so today. The question is whether anything can or will be done to control for the fact that none of us can expect to outthink Isaac Newton.”
TikTok’s Founder Wonders What Hit Him | WSJ
- “Mr. Zhang fired back at Mr. Trump on Monday with a lawsuit filed in federal court in California to stop the White House order. Then, he suddenly lost the high-profile lieutenant he had hired to extend TikTok’s globalization. Kevin Mayer, brought in barely three months ago from Walt Disney Co., announced Thursday he was quitting as TikTok CEO because the political circumstances had changed his role so much. Thus has the Chinese founder of an app for teens, filled with goofy dancing and lip-synching videos, been dragged into the tense U.S.-China geopolitical relationship. Mr. Zhang, a 37-year-old admirer of Silicon Valley, always wanted the company he created to be seen as global. But not this way.”
The Conscience of Silicon Valley | GQ
- “Right now, Lanier said, most of the systems on the internet are set up to exploit us, to harvest our creative ideas and our data without compensation. That the prevailing attitude in Silicon Valley is basically: “There’s no reason for you to know what your data means, how it might be used, you can’t contribute, we don’t know who you are, we don’t want to know you, you’re worthless, you’re not going to get paid, it’s only valuable once we aggregate it but you know nothing, you will know nothing, you’re in the dark, you’re useless, you’re hopeless, you’re nothing. And then a robot made of your data will replace you. The robot is something. The robot is a successor master species. The robot is God. And you’re garbage.””
Ambani, A Maverick Rockefeller | Reuters
- “A well-heeled Indian consumer can pass a day spending heavily with Reliance. Eat breakfast while catching up on the news on CNBC TV18, CNN News18, and Forbes India, via Jio apps on a JioPhone on the Jio mobile network. Connect with an aunt on Zoom-like JioMeet and buy movie tickets on Reliance-backed BookMyShow through a JioFiber broadband connection. Head to the shops, pop into Hamleys to buy a toy gift or into Trends for some fast fashion. Drop by Reliance Smart for groceries. Fill up the car at the Reliance petrol pump. Back home, place an online order for cupboard basics on JioMart and settle in for an evening of cricket, cheering on the Reliance-owned Mumbai Indians.”
- “Asana is indeed picking up speed. All evidence points to a record year, thanks in part to Covid-19 and the way workplaces are changing. (The company declined to comment on any financials because it’s in a quiet period prior to an IPO, likely to happen this fall.) Traffic to its website is up an estimated 24% since February. In August, Asana disclosed revenue of $142.6 million for fiscal 2020, up 86% year-to-year, in a regulatory filing. Revenue for its most recent quarter ended April 30 was $47.7 million, up 70%. It’s enough to put Asana at №17 on this year’s Cloud 100, our annual ranking of the world’s top private cloud-computing companies, up from №41 a year ago.”
“Ball Don’t Lie” — An Investigation of Sports Metaphors | NYBooks
- “Sports metaphors, as a rule, are silly and rarely accurate. Football is not really like war, regardless of what its legion of ex-players and commentators will tell you. Baseball does not provide a window into America — the gentle tension between laconic, quasi-agrarian pacing and the game’s values of grit and meditative cunning feels nostalgic to the point of absurdity now. There was a time when every salaried sportswriter would anthropomorphize every three-year-old filly into Joan of Arc, but those stories read like kitsch today. They may evoke some past, but no one under the age of sixty is sure if that past actually existed.”
College Is Everywhere Now | NYTimes
- ““The reason people my age are really gravitating toward doing this is we all want new experiences, but that’s been hard to come by,” said Erik Boesen, 19, a rising sophomore at Yale who is living in a house in Durango, Colo., with other Yale students. His reasons for pursuing this off-campus housing alternative are shared by many students living off-campus this semester: They’re looking to escape their families and replicate at least part of the college experience.”
Going Public Circa 2020; Door #3: The SPAC | Bill Gurley x Above the Crowd
‘A Hail Mary’: Psychedelic Therapy Draws Veterans to Jungle Retreats | NYTimes
- “The draw of psychedelics has surged amid a growing body of scientific research that builds on promising studies in the United States and Europe from the 1960s and 1970s. Much of that earlier research was shut down after psychoactive substances were outlawed during the Vietnam War era — a response to concerns over widespread drug use on college campuses. But in the last few years, the Food and Drug Administration designated psilocybin, the psychedelic component in what are commonly called magic mushrooms, and MDMA, the drug known as ecstasy, as “breakthrough therapies.” That rare designation allows scientists to fast-track larger studies that could pave the way to administering psychedelics as medicine.”
1,000,000 Stars Visualization | ChromeExperiments
From Smell-O-Vision to Astrocolor, the Film Industry’s Biggest Innovation Flops | The Conversation
12 Unbelievable Stories of Scams and Schemes | Pocket Collections
Podcasts
Online Learning and the EdTech Debate | a16z
- “We explore the complicated issue of online education from a variety of angles: Can the quality of online learning stack up to an in-person education? What improvements have we seen over the past decade, and what improvements are we likely to see this fall, compared to the COVID scramble last spring? And might this moment be the push we need for educators and technologists — sometimes at odds — to collaborate more closely?”
PPP and Fraud | a16z
- “To date, the Department of Justice has charged more than 40 cases of PPP-related schemes, from claiming non-existent employees or non-existent businesses to identity theft, kickback schemes, fake tax documents, and multi-state fraud rings. Most of those cases have alleged fraud of more than a $1 million. But what about the countless others that may be cheating taxpayers out of smaller — but not insignificant — sums? How does the government decide who should get money and who shouldn’t among millions of applications from businesses of all industries and sizes — and what role do banks play? How does the program then distribute that money quickly and accurately — or not, in many cases? And what tools are at our disposal to catch those who cheat the system?”
Michael Seibel — Lessons from Thousands of Startups | Invest Like the Best
- “ Michael is a Partner at Y Combinator, and the CEO of YC’s startup accelerator. He was the cofounder and CEO Justin.tv, which eventually became Twitch, and Socialcam. In this conversation, we discuss all Michael has learned reviewing thousands of applications to YC, interviewing countless new entrepreneurs, and watch young companies begin to grow and, occasionally, find product market fit. Listeners will also enjoy when Michael traps me big time in my thinking about AirBnb and his framework for great problems to solve.”
Michael Mauboussin — Great Migration Public to Private Equity | Invest Like the Best
- “ Michael Mauboussin, the head of consilient research at Counterpoint Global. Michael is an all-time favorite guest here on the show, and this is his fourth appearance. We discuss one of the biggest topics in the world of investing: the shift from public to private markets that has taken place over the last several decades. We explore the reasons for this shift, the biggest overall changes in capital markets, and what the future may hold. Along the way we explore other fascinating topics like the rise of intangible asset investments, employee-based compensation as a form of financing, and more.”
Katrina Lake — The Next Wave of E-Commerce | Invest Like the Best
- “Katrina Lake, the co-founder and CEO of Stitch Fix. Stitch Fix is a multi-billion-dollar public company which has brought an entirely new model to retail apparel by combining data science, technology, and personal stylists to create a unique shopping experience tailored to the individual consumer. I first met Katrina through past guest Bill Gurley and have been excited to host her since that first meeting. In our conversation, Katrina and I discuss all aspects of Stich Fix — its history, business model, innovations, and its future.”
State of Play: The Sharing Economy | Prof G Show
- “Scott discusses how Google Career Certificates could unbundle higher education. He’s excited, to say the least. Then, Arun Sundararajan, a professor of entrepreneurship and professor of technology, operations and statistics at NYU’s Stern School of Business, breaks down how the pandemic will accelerate the shift to platform-based businesses. He also explains why California’s AB5 law isn’t the right solution for Uber and Lyft drivers. Arun is the award-winning author of “The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism.””
Put Your Bias Down | Prof G Show
- “Scott discusses the Dow removing Exxon Mobil, Pfizer, and Raytheon Technologies from the index and why the Dow gives us cold comfort. He also answers listener questions about Spotify going vertical, adding a technical co-founder to your software startup, and generating customer stickiness. Then, Dr. Mehmet Oz, cardiothoracic surgeon and Emmy Award-winning host of The Dr. Oz Show, discuss COVID-19 with Scott. Dr. Oz gives us his view on where countries got it right and wrong in handling the pandemic and what to think about in terms of reopening schools. We also learn about Dr. Oz’s media career and what’s next on his agenda.”
Is Economic Growth the Wrong Goal? | Freakonomics
- “The endless pursuit of G.D.P., argues the economist Kate Raworth, shortchanges too many people and also trashes the planet. Economic theory, she says, “needs to be rewritten” — and Raworth has tried, in a book called Doughnut Economics. It has found an audience among reformers, and now the city of Amsterdam is going whole doughnut.”
Pricing tips for startups — What price is right? | B Capital Group
Fly on the Wall Ep 16 feat. Jeff Blau, Related Companies | Fifth Wall
