I know it hasn’t been all jolly in the past few days on Twitter;
About the above WaitButWhy published an amazing post on Tuesday. If you live in the US I recommend you read it.
Now, let me share some interesting things with you to please your curiosity.
Business 💵
A quick reminder from Charlie Munger that the past can only tell you so much about the future. You need to put in work in the present in order to force a brighter future.
Munger: "We tend to judge by the past record. By and large, if the thing has a lousy past record and a bright future, we’re going to miss the opportunity."
Creative solutions + Speed = 3:
An intriguing passage from the book from one of the founders of square $SQ The Innovation stack:
Now mobile payments are mostly contactless with a card or with mobile phones but back then this was a very neat solution to a problem.
The faster you can move the better, see:
we could have a working prototype on a week.
While we talk about speed there is this amazing summary that @patrickc shared a while back about how fast they developed the fists iPod:
It took 11 MONTHS
But there are even more ambitious projects that were achieved in less time and lucky us, Patrick Collison already wrote a whole post filled with stories of ambitious projects that got completed in record time:
From the stories above, I hope you remember this:
Execution speed in its own seems like a massive advantage.
Creative problem solving is the only free lunch.
When you combine these two together you will build a combination that is bigger than the whole hence Creative solutions + Speed = 3
I imagine most are familiar with Peter Thiel. The VC that is part of the “Paypal Mafia”. Back in 2013, he had this oneliner that talks about the speed of innovation.
We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.
From his point of view big engineering projects people were hoping for in the '60s and '70s never happened.
Let us not be demoralized by Peter Thiel and instead focus our energy on building. I recommend everyone to read the “It’s time to build” post penned by Marc Andreesen (yes I know also a VC).
InvestInstead:
Financial advisors and parents aren’t taken seriously when they start with stories like “Instead of buying this Latte from Starbucks or Avocado for Brunch you should save that money and invest and in 15 years you will have saved X”
I am not sure these stories are well-loved. And judging by how Americans save well-heard.
So maybe it is time to try something better;
InvestedInstead.
A smart little website that shows the returns you would have made in the stock instead of buying the product.
There is some major survivorship bias since not all consumer companies are included. Blackberry is tho. I spend lots of money in Barnes & Noble and well the stock price now: UGLY and cheaper than a second-hand book 🤣🤣
None the less worth sharing with people that have trouble saving.
China 🐼
Infrastructure 🏗
Here is an overview of the new infrastructure initiatives that China would like to build in the next 5 years:
Sounds ambitious and very future-oriented. Again, the above is for the next 5 years.
I am in Europe and I just can’t imagine we would get anything of this magnitude done in just 5 years. There is a great example from the architect Norman Foster about speed in China and in England. Back in 2002, Norman Foster lost a bid to build terminal 2 in the London Heathrow airport but a year later they won the one for the Beijing terminal 3. In just four years they finished building the new terminal in Beijing, at the time the largest building on the planet, in time for the 2008 Olympics. Meanwhile, back in England, it took until 2014 to complete terminal 2.
Once more I think this highlights Speed is a major advantage. If you create things first you can control it and set the standards.
Xi talks Risk
For anyone interested in Strategy I recommend you read this piece “Taking Strategic Initiative to Prevent and Defuse Major Risks” an overview of President Xi risk management speeches. In all honesty, me summarizing it does not do it justice. You will need to read the whole thing for yourself. Here is an overview of the topics:
10 fundamental insights on preventing and resolving major risks.
Study and judge new trends: Facing “six major effects” in the evolution of major risks
Grasp new tactics: Clear “five tactics” for preventing and defusing major risks
A new comprehensive warfare: Five major campaigns to guard against and defuse major risks
The last point is really interesting:
Fight a good cyberwar. Focus on guarding against and defusing ideological risks on the internet. New political media on the internet must be strong, large, and loud; [build an] innovative legal and political “cyberpropaganda iron army” organizational structure, mechanism, and system; build a strong legal and political “cyberpropaganda iron army” to continuously improve the legal and political public opinion environment on the internet. Strengthen internet inspection and control measures, resolutely crack down on political rumors and damaging information on the internet. Innovate to improve public opinion leadership mechanisms; resolutely guard against “black swan” and “gray rhino” public sentiment risks.
Again I recommend anyone interested in China or politics to read the whole thing it is quite an eye-opener.
Something from Benedict Evans’s Newsletter
Actually true, Europe (nor Russia) has a viable rival to a FB, GOOGLE or AMAZON. China does with Alibaba, Tencent and Sina Corp. The fact Europe hasn’t is very telling. Also, I never heard a developer that was really excited about SAP under 35.
Apart from that Europe’s biggest IPO since 2018 is a coffee company that went public for EUR 2.25 billion. Nothing sexy in my book and quite telling about the difference between the old continent the US and China.
Things I wrote:✏
I wrote about valuing a Dataset
I wrote a huge thing without graphs about Silvergate Bank (because it was meant as a submission for valueinvesting.com)
I tweeted about it with graphs
Great 🧵's
A master 🧵 from all the @jposhaughnessy threads:
As I mentioned before creativity is an amazing advantage if you have it.
Turns out that that is also true for investing. Here is an amazing 🧵 on creativity in the investment process:
Related to the Chinese “Fighting the good cyber war”, the NYT has written a whole series on tracking. Below you can see how easy it is to isolate one person that participated in a march and follow them back to their house. This is something the enemies of America have been dealing with for a long time but now this tech is used on American citizens.
The good thing, of how the Trump administration is dealing with the protest in the past days, is that Americans finally get a taste of the “Freedom” they export to the middle east.
Here is a short Twitter 🧵 from the NYT writer for those with short attention spans. 🐠
And while we are on the topic of Tracking:
We can track how police misconduct spreads. And officers in close proximity to officers who have records of misconduct end up being 4x more likely to use force & 5x more likely to shoot someone. We can *contact trace* police violence like a virus.
Books & Reading 📖
There are 3 books I can recommend If you want to read more about creative solutions.
One+One= Three from Dave Trott
Predatory Thinking also from Dave Trott
Skunk Works from Ben Rich & Leo Janos
Here is a link to the old essays written by Marc Andreesen. It starts in 1996 it is something for the technology and SV historians amongst you. It was all compiled by a guy Kevin Gao (I believe that to be his name) and it is absolutely insane. This is the result of hours and hours of digging and organizing. His website is a real Goldmine.
Things from Youtube 📺
I mentioned Norman Foster above and actually I recommend watching the documentary. The last 15 minutes or so specifically talk about rapid urbanization.
And here is a more recent video also about Norman Foster
On 📚, a wonderful little speech about the experience of books:
Have a good rest of the week and remember:
The mere existence of millions of books on love, parenting, self-help is proof that there is NO ONE ANSWER. ~ Josh Wolfe
👋
P.S I love hearing from all of you (otherwise it can feel like sending emails into the void). Do email me at 2broketraders@gmail.com or better, tweet me at @Rabbijacob16. If you liked it Please share, If you hated it, Share it with someone you Hate✌.