My Content List #24 | Friday 11/13/20
Opening Rant: On Validation (Part II)
Last time, I wrote about the ubiquity of validation-seeking. That piece only scratched the surface of how pervasive the phenomenon is.
I asked:
When’s the last time you caught yourself seeking validation, in some sense? Your skills, your knowledge, your worth? From whom are you seeking validation? A coworker, a superior, a peer, teammate, a friend, a romantic partner? … Yourself?
Now, I ask: How many of your thoughts and opinions are based on your own primary evaluations? Your experience, your digging through the data, your observations? How frequently do you externally delegate the brunt of verification?
I’ve realized that appraisal is often proxied. Too frequently we tend to rely on others’ assessments rather than our own to determine what is legitimate, praiseworthy, or otherwise worthy of that nebulous thing called validation.
A minute example: say you find yourself in a new city, apart from the familiar. What are you to do? My guess is you’ll seek some sort of recommendation, from a local stranger or (more likely) a friend who grew up nearby. Restaurants, bars… In fact, your connection has another friend that you just have to meet. Can’t you just hear that conversation? “You’ll get along great!” Maybe there are some romantic undertones and you’re friend is trying to play matchmaker — “they’d be perfect for you!”
You’re in the process of being spellcasted (“hoodwinked! bamboozled!…”): you now, tacitly or not, confer some sense of validation towards what your friend recommended. This sentiment has arisen seemingly out of the ether. You experienced nothing firsthand, have no primary evidence. Yet in the back of your mind will always be “well, my friend said I should meet ’em… I might as well.”
A proverbial shadow cast by X has nudged your perspective towards Y, without you experiencing any part of Y for yourself. Validation has been bootstrapped by a proxy for it.
Seem like nothing, you might be thinking. This happens so infinitesimally that it’s often undetectable, but with enough compounding such validation delegation becomes a real force.
The question then, on a large enough scale, becomes: who sets the real standards if this echo-chamber of indirect validation is left unbridled?
OK, I hear you. In the example above, worst case scenario is you go on a bad date. You live and learn. A small sunk cost. But — think instead about the professional realm. How many decisions are made, in the business or investing worlds, based on this indirect validation?
A job interview: Candidate A is chosen over Candidate B not because they are a better candidate, but because of some personal connection, shared interest, or other affinity with the interviewer. Indirect-validation-through-mutual-…something.
Or maybe Candidate A was picked because he worked at firm with a reputable name, or went to a reputable college? Is the person truly worthy of that conferred reputational advantage? Yet the interviewer feels more at ease (knowingly or unknowingly), taking solace because someone/something else did the hard work of primary validation.
There was a line about this very subject in the “Social Dilemma.” Something like, “Who decided that a group of 30-year-old, likely-white, likely-male coders from the Valley get to build the algorithm that decides what content spreads and what dies?” Their decisions — to an extent — dictate what music becomes popular, who sets the standards of beauty and the ideal human form, what jokes are funny, what content is insensitive… what is right, and what is wrong. Who put them in charge?
It’s certainly more efficient to rely on others’ assessments. There’s a reason why this is so omnipresent — because people, places and things have reputations earnt over time. Accumulated goodwill. Reputational influence can be conferred, and indirect validation rendered.
Say you’re a VC flipping through a pitch. You’re feeling neutral about the idea, the value prop, etc. You flip the page again, then staring back at you are a smattering of faces beneath a page title that reads “Advisors”. Wow, you think, this is an impressive list. This CEO? That successful founder? An illustrious boardmember? Maybe that page is enough to validate the pitch, the company, the entrepreneur — enough to move the deck into the right pile.
Another investor asks a founder, at the end of their meeting, “are you talking to anyone else?” That investor may phone their VC friends, trying to figure out who else is investing, because if esteemed Firm A is participating too that’s a huge vote of confidence for the startup. And it’d be great to get listed on the deal announcement alongside Firm A, to signal to our LPs that we have our shit together, to… ride on the coattails of someone else’s earned goodwill.
The burden of validation should be shared more evenly across each evaluator. Primary assessments are, in most contexts (e.g. opinion formation, thesis building, interpersonal judgments…), imperative. Humans should come with a similar disclaimer as investments: past performance is no guarantee of future results.
We must remain vigilant towards this house of cards, this asset bubble of proxied validation. Independent thought should be tempered by groupthink and preceding reputations, not led by them
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 #24 | [d] m/d/20
Articles
Venture Capital Needs a Complete Reset | Marker x Gabe Kleinman
- So many great quotes from this piece…
- “We should now, if we weren’t already, be looking at step-change transformations. Instead of simply treating diabetes and other chronic conditions, we should be funding solutions that reverse these conditions entirely. Instead of process improvements around the edges of drug discovery, we should be leveraging technology advancements that rapidly accelerate the development of new drugs with totally novel approaches.”
- “The proliferation of “value-add” firms might suggest this operator-first approach has created an overly insular industry, plagued by an army of operators-cum-investors who often fund look-alike businesses while repeating growth hacking playbooks of how to build them — Uber-For-X, Facebook-For-X, Airbnb-For-X — rather than entirely new endeavors.”
Are We Trading Our Happiness for Modern Comforts? | The Atlantic
- “We don’t get happier as our society gets richer, because we chase the wrong things. Consumerocracy, bureaucracy, and technocracy promise us greater satisfaction, but don’t deliver. Consumer purchases promise to make us more attractive and entertained; the government promises protection from life’s vicissitudes; social media promises to keep us connected; but none of these provide the love and purpose that bring deep and enduring satisfaction to life. This is not an indictment of capitalism, government, or technology. They never satisfy — not because they are malevolent, but rather because they cannot. This poses a real dilemma, not just for society, but for each of us as individuals. But properly informed, we are far from defenseless.”
When Technology Takes Revenge | Farnam Street
- “We seem to worry more than our ancestors, surrounded though they were by exploding steamboat boilers, raging epidemics, crashing trains, panicked crowds, and flaming theaters. Perhaps this is because the safer life imposes an ever increasing burden of attention. Not just in the dilemmas of medicine but in the management of natural hazards, in the control of organisms, in the running of offices, and even in the playing of games there are, not necessarily more severe, but more subtle and intractable problems to deal with.”
Geothermal energy is poised for a big breakout | Vox
Curators are the New Creators | Gaby Goldberg
- “With more creators, more content, and more choice than ever before, consumers are now being consumed by a state of analysis paralysis. The real scarcity isn’t content anymore. It’s attention. When it’s impossible to absorb everything from the flood of information, the best we can do is pick and choose what matters to us most — or, better yet, find the people who can do the curating for us.”
6 Lessons From Stoic Philosophy That Can Make Your Life Better Today | Ryan Holiday x Forge
- ““The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own …” — Epictetus
- “It never ceases to amaze me: We all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.” — Marcus Aurelius
Amazon Wants to ‘Win at Games.’ So Why Hasn’t It? | Wired
- “But developing an engine and a game at the same time would be like repairing an airliner in mid-flight. It would mean planning out features that the engine might not be able to implement for weeks, months, or years to come. “What’s missing is the sanity check of someone with experience in the games industry,” the source added. In a way, Amazon was, as usual, following its unique logic. Across the company, employees are required to use in-house software for most tasks, partly for security reasons and partly because it’s the culture. There is no Gmail, no Trello, and, until recently, no Slack — only Amazon’s custom-coded alternatives. Lumberyard was no exception. Amazon had made its own versions of all those tools, so why not a game engine?”
The Inside Story of MacKenzie Scott, the Mysterious 60-Billion-Dollar Woman | Marker x Stephanie Clifford
- “Scott gave 116 grants [totaling $1.7 billion], all at once, with very few strings attached, to mostly small organizations. They didn’t have to hit metrics she named; they didn’t have to create programs she favored. She even refused thank you notes when nonprofits asked how they could show their gratitude. And she specifically chose organizations led by people with “lived experience,” as Scott put it: women leading women’s groups, people of color leading racial equity groups.”
Mapping The Gaming and Esports VC Landscape | White Star Capital
- “Increasing investor interest in gaming stems from continued growth in the global gaming industry that surpassed $150bn+ in size last year, at 10%+ expansion YoY. For the first time, the gaming market grew to be larger than music and video combined¹, becoming the most lucrative form of leisurely entertainment.”
Inside Operation Warp Speed’s $18 Billion Sprint for a Vaccine | Bloomberg
Uber Founder Turns Real-Estate Mogul for Ghost Kitchen Startup | WSJ
- “The acquisitions are a big bet on the fast-growing food-delivery business. Delivery-only kitchens have been around for years and have raised hundreds of millions of dollars from venture investors hoping to replicate the success of the co-working industry, which built a multibillion-dollar business by essentially subleasing real estate. The pandemic gave a big boost to ghost kitchens in cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York, where many restaurants temporarily closed or went out of business.”
A novelist’s vision of the virtual world has inspired an industry | Economist
- “Today it is Mr Stephenson’s vision — a social, persistent, virtual-reality 3d space accessible to anyone and which will one day be a successor to today’s internet — that many tech companies are seeking to build. One of the biggest supporters of Mr Stephenson’s idea of a Metaverse is Tim Sweeney, boss of Epic Games and creator of Unreal, the game engine that powers “Fortnite” and many other popular games. Mr Sweeney’s stated ambition is to turn such games into some version of the persistent virtual world described in “Snow Crash”. “One thing I got wrong…was assuming a television model for the development of this medium,” says Mr Stephenson. “What grew instead was games.” Still, he reckons that what makes science fiction useful to people in the real tech world is plasticity — leaving some room for interpretation, so that people who try to implement it can incorporate their own ideas and point of view.”
Do We Live in a Simulation? Chances Are about 50–50 | Scientific American
- “In 2003 Bostrom imagined a technologically adept civilization that possesses immense computing power and needs a fraction of that power to simulate new realities with conscious beings in them. Given this scenario, his simulation argument showed that at least one proposition in the following trilemma must be true: First, humans almost always go extinct before reaching the simulation-savvy stage. Second, even if humans make it to that stage, they are unlikely to be interested in simulating their own ancestral past. And third, the probability that we are living in a simulation is close to one.”
How Startups Lose Money With Subscription Pricing | Joe Procopio
- “One of the reasons Teaching Startup works as a subscription model is that it doesn’t matter if you use the product immediately or not. This is why subscription models have always worked for content. If the customer glances at the cover of an issue and it’s something they want to consume right now, it makes them happy. If not, they put the issue in their pile to read later, which makes them happy later.”
- “A free trial is a great way to get customers to understand and conform to the subscription model. It could be a free estimate, a free evaluation, or just free limited use of the product or service. Here’s the killer. Getting customers to convert from free to paid is actually harder than getting them to convert from nothing to paid.”
How to Win in Venture Capital: Focus on the Fat Tails | The Quantified VC
- “Many prominent entrepreneurs and venture capitalists assert that VC returns are distributed according to a power law. As Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz points out, each year, of the 4,000 technology startups seeking VC funding, only 200 (or 5%) are seriously fundable, with “15 of those generating 95% of all economic returns…even the top VCs write off half their deals.” Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel concurs, “[W]e don’t live in a normal world; we live under a power law. … [I]n venture capital, where investors try to profit from exponential growth in early-stage companies, a few companies attain exponentially greater value than all others. … Bad VCs tend to think the dashed line is flat, i.e. that all companies are created equal, and some just fail, spin wheels, or grow. In reality you get a power law distribution.””
The Digital Divide Starts With a Laptop Shortage | NYTimes
- “When the Guilford County Schools in North Carolina spent more than $27 million to buy 66,000 computers and tablets for students over the summer, the district ran into a problem: There was a shortage of cheap laptops, and the devices wouldn’t arrive until late October or November. More than 4,000 students in the district had to start the school year without the computers they needed for remote learning.”
End Our National Crisis: The Case Against Donald Trump | NYTimes Editorial Board
- “He campaigned as a champion of ordinary workers, but he has governed on behalf of the wealthy. He promised an increase in the federal minimum wage and fresh investment in infrastructure; he delivered a round of tax cuts that mostly benefited rich people. He has indiscriminately erased regulations, and answered the prayers of corporations by suspending enforcement of rules he could not easily erase. Under his leadership, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has stopped trying to protect consumers and the Environmental Protection Agency has stopped trying to protect the environment.”
- This all may be true, but I just wish we saw as much vehement SUPPORT FOR a candidate rather than DISGUST WITH… Doesn’t seem like anyone is taking this big of a stand for Biden to the same degree that this (and many like it) despise Trump
For Long-Term Investors, Small Things Like Presidential Elections Don’t Matter | NYTimes
- “Presidents are powerful, but they don’t control the market. Was Barack Obama responsible for the fabulous 16 percent annualized market returns during his eight years in office? Was Donald Trump responsible for the 14.5 percent annualized returns for his presidency through January (according to Bloomberg data) — or for the 33 percent downturn in February and March, or for the subsequent bull market run? You can argue this any way you like. I think the most intelligent answer is: yes, to some extent, but certainly not entirely. With all the factors affecting the staggeringly complex markets and the overall economy, presidencies don’t matter as much as it may seem in campaign season.”
How Yeti Survived a Pandemic — and Private Equity | Cheryl Wischhover x Marker
- “Nothing about what Yeti sells should have poised it well for a pandemic-induced recession: Its signature product is a $300 luxury cooler, and its most profitable one is a portable insulated cup often used by commuters on the way to the office. The company’s most recent expensive bet was on in-person experiential retail. And it’s been backed by private equity, an arrangement typically saddled with debt that has plummeted brands like J.Crew and Neiman Marcus into bankruptcy or insolvency during this crisis.”
In Schools, Are We Measuring What Matters? | Angela Duckworth x EduTopia
- “Call it soft skills, call it social and emotional skills, call it healthy habits, call it character — whatever you want to call it — I think any educator and certainly any parent would say that we have to broaden our view of kids’ capabilities. That’s partly because students have a rainbow of capabilities, but it’s also because I don’t want to send a signal to young people that cognitive ability is the only thing that matters. It’s not. If teamwork matters, if loyalty matters, if honesty matters, if grit matters, if creativity matters, then we have to start assessing these things, because as it’s often said, what gets measured is what gets treasured.”
First, It Was Weed — Now, Voters Have a Chance for Legal Psychedelics | Rolling Stone
How Where You’re Born Influences the Person You Become | The Conversation
- “Perhaps the most well-known of these broad cultural values are individualism and collectivism. In some societies, such as the U.S. and Netherlands, people are largely driven by pursuits that benefit themselves. They’re expected to seek personal recognition and boost their own social or financial status. In more collectivist societies, such as South Korea and Chile, high value is placed on the well-being of the larger group — typically their family, but also their workplace or country. We found that the way parents discipline their children is strongly influenced by these social values, and likely serves to perpetuate these values from one generation to the next.”
Inside the Fall of the CDC | ProPublica
- “Once seen as an apolitical bulwark, the CDC endured meddling on multiple fronts by officials with little or no public health experience, from Trump’s daughter Ivanka to Stephen Miller, the architect of the president’s immigration crackdown. A shifting and mysterious cast of political aides and private contractors — what one scientist described as young protégés of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, “wearing blue suits with red ties and beards” — crowded into important meetings about key policy decisions.”
Google Employees Are Free to Speak Up, Except on Antitrust | NYTimes
- “The caution is not limited to employees. After Google interviewed a candidate for an executive job last year, that person sent a follow-up email to Sundar Pichai, the company’s chief executive. In the email, the candidate asked about the antitrust implications of a potential merger, according to two people familiar with the incident. An antitrust question to Mr. Pichai was seen as inappropriate, raising questions about the candidate’s judgment, the people said. While it did not disqualify the candidate, it was seen as a negative for the person’s job prospects.”
Elon Musk’s Totally Awful, Batshit-Crazy, Completely Bonkers, Most Excellent Year | VanityFair
- “Many people I’ve spoken to who have worked with Musk in the past or are close to him have pointed out that, from a financial and corporate perspective, Musk’s mission to block his detractors and to not care what others think of him — to be himself, jerk or otherwise — is working better than he, or anyone around him, could have imagined. This past year, Musk successfully launched two astronauts into orbit from the United States (the first in almost a decade), Tesla became the most valuable car company on the planet in July, and Musk is working toward implanting chips into people’s brains. Tesla also seemed poised to be inducted into the S&P 500, but a variety of factors, including Musk’s stock options, may have impeded it from making the cut. When I started reporting this story earlier this summer, Musk was worth half of what he is today, and while he’s disliked by the left, he is still idolized among the technorati.”
Audio’s Opportunity and Who Will Capture It | Matthew Ball
Companies Are Rushing to Use AI, But Few See a Payoff | Wired
- “One key takeaway: continued experimenting with AI, even if an initial project doesn’t yield a big payoff. The authors say the most successful companies learn from early uses of AI and adapt their business practices based on the results. Among those that did this most effectively, 73 percent say they see returns on their investments. Companies where employees work closely with AI algorithms — learning from them but also helping to improve them — also fared better, the report found.”
Inside Ant, the Company Behind the World’s Biggest IPO | WSJ
After the Pandemic, a Revolution in Education and Work Awaits | Tom Friedman x NYTimes
- “The reason the post-pandemic era will be so destructive and creative is that never have more people had access to so many cheap tools of innovation, never have more people had access to high-powered, inexpensive computing, never have more people had access to such cheap credit — virtually free money — to invent new products and services, all as so many big health, social, environmental and economic problems need solving.”
What Sharks can Teach Us About Survivorship Bias | FarnamStreet
- “The point is rather to consider how well you make decisions when you only factor in the stories of the survivors. For instance, if you were to try to reduce instances of shark attacks or try to limit their severity, you will not likely get the results you are after if you only pay attention to the survivor stories. You need to ask who didn’t make it and try to figure out their stories as well. If you try to implement measures aimed only at great whites near beaches, your measures might not be effective against other predatory sharks. And if you conclude that swimmers are better off in the open ocean because sharks seem to only attack near beaches, you’d be completely wrong.”
How Mark Zuckerberg Learned Politics | WSJ
- “Mr. Zuckerberg’s new political moves are part of an effort to protect his company from pressures that range from antitrust scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic to criticism of its privacy practices and of its role in disseminating misinformation and conspiracy theories. Facebook is also facing new competitive threats from the likes of ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok. Forging relationships with political leaders, media personalities and activists is now critical to Facebook’s continued primacy in social media.”
The Police Can Probably Break Into Your Phone | NYTimes
- “That is because at least 2,000 law enforcement agencies in all 50 states now have tools to get into locked, encrypted phones and extract their data, according to years of public records collected in a report by Upturn, a Washington nonprofit that investigates how the police use technology. At least 49 of the 50 largest U.S. police departments have the tools, according to the records, as do the police and sheriffs in small towns and counties across the country, including Buckeye, Ariz.; Shaker Heights, Ohio; and Walla Walla, Wash. And local law enforcement agencies that don’t have such tools can often send a locked phone to a state or federal crime lab that does.
Venture Has a Sexiness Problem | A Berg’s Eye View
- “Doing venture the right way means optimizing for long-term incentive alignment between investors and entrepreneurs. It means focusing on maintaining relationships versus nickel and diming your way to a deal structure that optimizes for middling outcomes. Developing true conviction around the entrepreneurs you invest in and not simply throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. Venture done right is about paying it forward because you know that your associate or the VP at one of your portfolio companies could be a founder or co-investor in the future. It means getting in the trenches alongside founders and supporting them however is most helpful instead of touting the benefits of a promising-sounding, but inevitably spurious “platform” model. Venture done right is about evaluating people on the basis of their ideas, drive, and accomplishments and not because they pattern match to what a successful entrepreneur or investor looks like. It means being able to have tough conversations and maintaining respect for the entrepreneurial journey. It means not assuming you know all the answers and avoiding becoming cynical after the 10th time you’ve heard a similar pitch because that just might be the time it finally works out.”
The Science of Nerdiness | Scientific American
- “Dopamine production is essential for growth. But there are so many misconceptions about the role of dopamine in cognition and behavior. Dopamine is often labeled the “feel-good molecule,” but this is a gross mischaracterization of this neurotransmitter. As personality neuroscientist Colin DeYoung (a close colleague of mine) notes, dopamine is actually the “neuromodulator of exploration.” Dopamine’s primary role is to make us want things, not necessarily like things. We get the biggest rush of dopamine coursing through our brains at the possibility of reward, but this rush is no guarantee that we’ll actually like or even enjoy the thing once we get it. Dopamine is a huge energizing force in our lives, driving our motivation to explore and facilitating the cognitive and behavioral processes that allow us to extract the most delights from the unknown.”
When Does Predictive Technology Become Unethical? | HBR
- “In the U.S., the story of Target predicting who’s pregnant is probably the most famous example of an algorithm making sensitive inferences about people. In 2012, a New York Times story about how companies can leverage their data included an anecdote about a father learning that his teenage daughter was pregnant due to Target sending her coupons for baby items in an apparent act of premonition. Although the story about the teenager may be apocryphal — even if it did happen, it would most likely have been coincidence, not predictive analytics that was responsible for the coupons, according to Target’s process detailed by The New York Times story — there is a real risk to privacy in light of this predictive project. After all, if a company’s marketing department predicts who’s pregnant, they’ve ascertained medically sensitive, unvolunteered data that only healthcare staff are normally trained to appropriately handle and safeguard.”
Podcasts
Is New York City Over? | Freakonomics
- “The pandemic has hit America’s biggest city particularly hard. Amidst a deep fiscal hole, rising homicides, and a flight to the suburbs, some people think the city is heading back to the bad old 1970s. We look at the history — and the data — to see why that’s probably not the case.”
Many Businesses Thought They Were Insured for a Pandemic. They Weren’t. | Freakonomics
- “A fine reading of most policies for “business interruption” reveals that viral outbreaks aren’t covered. Some legislators are demanding that insurance firms pay up anyway. Is it time to rethink insurance entirely?”
Is Hedonism Better than Self-Control? | No Stupid Questions w/ Angela Duckworth and Stephen Dubner
Is It Wrong to Crave Praise? | No Stupid Questions w/ Angela Duckworth and Stephen Dubner
Warped Reality | NPR’s TED Radio Hour
- “False information on the internet makes it harder and harder to know what’s true, and the consequences have been devastating. This hour, TED speakers explore ideas around technology and deception. Guests include law professor Danielle Citron, journalist Andrew Marantz, and computer scientist Joy Buolamwini.”
Designing for, Marketing to, and Partnering With Gen Z | a16z
- “Gen Z — those born between 1995 and 2010 — now makes up 35 percent of the population and represent $143 billion dollars in spending power. This episode is all about how brands can better understand, collaborate with, and resonate with this hugely influential segment of consumers. Our guest, Tiffany Zhong, is the 24-year-old CEO of Zebra IQ, a company that helps brands interpret the wants of Gen Z consumers and helps Gen Z creators turn their content into businesses.”
Brad Gerstner and Rich Barton — Thriving in Changing Markets | Invest Like the Best
- “Brad is the founder of Altimeter Capital and is one of my favorite active investors. Brad and Altimeter were one of the largest investors in Snowflake in its earlier days and continue to invest in iconic modern businesses with an extreme focus. Rich has one of the most impressive resumes in the business world. He founded Expedia, Glassdoor, and Zillow; He’s a longtime Netflix board member, since before they went public; he’s a venture partner at Benchmark Capital; and he give back through the Barton family foundation. Our conversation covers Rich’s “power to the people,” strategy, Brad and Rich’s perspectives on taking companies public through SPACs vs. IPOs, and their perspectives on how to build a great company. This one is so fun, we even discuss how to come up with company names, talk about the importance Wizard of Oz, and explore the importance of big hairy audacious goals.”
Jason Citron — Building the Third Place | Founder’s Field Guide
- “Jason Citron, founder and CEO of Discord. Discord is one of the largest and fastest growing social networks in the world. It started as a place for gamers to congregate online, but thanks to how easy it makes it to create a community of any type and its offering of text, audio, and video as means of communication, it has expanded far beyond gaming. It has the potential to become the default digital “third place” that we go to find belonging in a variety of online communities. With over 100 million users, it’s also one of the most interesting communication services since the original social networks rose to power.”
Cold War II: China Tech vs. US Tech | Prof G Show
- “Niall Ferguson, a historian, author, and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, joins Scott to discuss the state of play around the tech war between the U.S. and China. Niall talks about each of the country’s strengths and weaknesses, and why he thinks we’re moving toward Cold War II. Niall also shares his thoughts on the fintech space as it relates to Ant Group’s suspended IPO.”
