Robert Graham

VP of Finance @ Purple Group & Easy Equities.

"The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now." - Chinese proverb

[Robert Graham @Rob_Graham_878]

Solid hiring advice

[Erik Torenberg @eriktorenberg]

Early-stage hiring can be a lot like venture investing:

It's power-law driven: a few people contribute most of the value. So it’s far more important to hire the best people than it is to avoid making bad hires. Which means you’re not making mistakes, you’re likely not taking enough swings.

It's also people-focused rather than process-focused or role-focused. When you’re looking for venture investments, you’re not pre-defining everything at the outset. You're not saying something like “okay, I have 15 companies I'm going to invest in, 5 will look like this, 5 will look like that, etc. They should have this kind of product, have these kinds of metrics, have these sorts of strengths."

Instead, you meet a lot of companies, and occasionally you meet one where you’re like, “Wow, these founders are GOOD. We need to invest in them, because they are generally putting it all together in some unique and differentiated way, that we never could have pre-defined a priori, but when you see it, you absolutely know. Once you identify that company, then you do whatever it takes to get them; doesn’t matter whether there is a “slot in the portfolio” for that kind of company, you just do it and you regret nothing.

The best hires do not come from pre-defining “Mission, Outcomes, Competencies” and then searching for people who fit those requirements. The best hires are much more likely to come from a process where, everyone at the company gets together and says, “Okay, who are the two dozen absolute best people we know, and how do we hire those people, for some role.” You identify those people, you spend a lot of time with them, and then the minute they become available on the hiring market, you are ready to make them an offer immediately; and you just figure out a job for them.

The parallels to VC don’t end there, the toughest part about hiring a superstar is not the diligence process, but the winning. The best candidates are in extreme demand. The close process must similarly be tailored to that person. Make the process fit the candidate vs the other way around.

To be sure, this analogy is most relevant when it is in a value-creation role at a hot company that can attract elite talent, not a value-preservation role or for non-elite talent.

What distinguishes these rare and exceptional people is that, in addition to doing a great job at what they’re known for, they will also reach into all of these corners of your company and tie off every loose end and fix every broken pipe and tune up the whole machine way beyond what any job description could ever have anticipated, or any hiring manager could assess for.

Great people like this are just absolute risk-killers inside your company; just like great founders are. They will just sit at their desk for hours and crank through fix after fix after fix for the pure love of the game and for the good of the team, and after the fact you’ll look back on the work they did and think, “wow, the impact they’ve had is so beyond anything we could’ve articulated.”

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

Elon Musk avait dit un truc qui m'avait marqué sur l'allocation de ressources. En substance : passé un certain niveau de richesse, l'argent n'est plus de la consommation, c'est de l'allocation de capital.

Cette phrase change tout.

L'économie, dans le fond, c'est juste un problème d'allocation. Tu as des ressources finies et des usages infinis. Qui décide où va quoi ?

Imagine une cour de récré. 100 enfants, des paquets de cartes Pokémon distribués au hasard. Tu laisses faire. Très vite, un ordre émerge. Les bons joueurs accumulent les cartes rares, les collectionneurs trient, les négociateurs trouvent des deals. Personne n'a planifié. Et pourtant chaque carte finit dans les mains de celui qui en tire le plus de valeur. Le système maximise le bonheur total de la cour. C'est ça, la main invisible.

Maintenant fais entrer la maîtresse. Elle trouve ça injuste. Léo a 50 cartes, Tom en a 3. Elle confisque, redistribue, impose l'égalité. Trois effets immédiats. Les bons joueurs arrêtent de jouer, à quoi bon. Les mauvais n'ont plus de raison de progresser, ils auront leur part. Les échanges s'effondrent. La cour est égale, et morte. Elle a maximisé l'égalité, elle a détruit le bonheur.

Le problème de la maîtresse, c'est qu'elle ne peut pas avoir l'information que la cour avait collectivement. C'est le problème du calcul économique de Mises, formulé en 1920. L'URSS a essayé de le résoudre pendant 70 ans avec le Gosplan. Résultat : pénuries, queues, effondrement. Pas parce que les Soviétiques étaient bêtes, parce que le problème est mathématiquement insoluble en mode centralisé.

Quand Musk a 200 milliards, il ne les consomme pas, il les alloue. SpaceX, Starlink, Neuralink, xAI. Chaque dollar est un pari sur le futur. Et lui a un track record. PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX. Il a démontré qu'il sait identifier des problèmes immenses et y allouer des ressources avec un rendement spectaculaire.

L'État aussi a un track record. Hôpitaux qui s'effondrent, éducation qui décline, dette qui explose, services publics qui se dégradent malgré des budgets en hausse constante. Le marché identifie les bons allocateurs, la politique identifie les bons communicants.

Le profit n'est pas une finalité, c'est un signal. Il dit : tu as alloué des ressources rares vers un usage que les gens valorisent suffisamment pour payer. Plus le profit est gros, plus la création de valeur est grande. Quand Starlink est rentable, ça veut dire que des millions de gens dans des zones rurales ont enfin internet. Quand un ministère est en déficit, ça veut dire qu'il consomme plus qu'il ne produit. L'un crée, l'autre détruit, et on appelle ça redistribution.

Dans nos sociétés il y a deux catégories d'acteurs. Les entrepreneurs et les bureaucrates. L'entrepreneur prend un risque personnel pour identifier un problème, mobiliser des ressources, créer une solution. S'il se trompe il perd. S'il a raison, ses clients gagnent, ses employés gagnent, ses fournisseurs gagnent, l'État collecte des impôts. Il est la cellule de base du progrès humain.

Le bureaucrate ne prend aucun risque personnel. Son salaire est garanti. Au mieux il maintient une rente existante. Au pire il la détruit par excès de réglementation, mauvaise allocation forcée, incitations perverses qui découragent ceux qui produisent. Mais dans aucun cas il ne crée.

Regarde les 50 dernières années. iPhone, internet civil, SpaceX, Tesla, Google, Amazon, Stripe, mRNA, ChatGPT. Toutes des inventions privées, portées par des entrepreneurs, financées par du capital risque. Pas un seul ministère n'a inventé quoi que ce soit qui ait changé ta vie au quotidien.

La France est devenue le laboratoire mondial de la dérive bureaucratique. 57% du PIB en dépenses publiques, record absolu. Une administration tentaculaire, une fiscalité qui pénalise la création de richesse. Résultat : décrochage face aux États-Unis, à l'Allemagne, à la Suisse. Fuite des cerveaux. Désindustrialisation. Dette qui explose.

Et le pire c'est que la mauvaise allocation s'auto-renforce. Plus l'État prélève, moins les entrepreneurs créent. Moins ils créent, moins il y a de base fiscale. Plus l'État s'endette et taxe. Boucle de rétroaction négative parfaite. La maîtresse pense qu'elle aide, et chaque année la cour produit moins.

Dans nos sociétés, ce sont les entrepreneurs, toujours, qui font avancer la civilisation. Les bureaucrates au mieux maintiennent une rente, au pire la détruisent. Aucune société n'a jamais progressé en taxant ses créateurs pour subventionner ses gestionnaires.

La question n'est jamais qui a combien. C'est qui alloue le mieux la prochaine unité de ressource pour maximiser le futur de l'humanité. La réponse depuis 200 ans n'a jamais changé. Ce ne sont pas les fonctionnaires.

[jack @jack]

https://t.co/jgZkBvYOPt

[Robert Graham @Rob_Graham_878]

@sukh_saroy AI

[Charles H Savage @CharlesHSavage]

R2 Billion. In 26 Days.
Today, for the first time in our history, @EasyEquities has surpassed R2 billion in deposits in a single month.

And we did it in just 26 days.
With two days still to go in February.

I’m not writing this as a CEO announcement.
I’m writing this as someone who remembers the first year.

In our first year of Easy, we raised R100 million in client assets.

I remember celebrating that number.
It felt enormous.
It felt impossible.
It felt like proof that maybe… just maybe… this idea — that everyone deserves access to investing — might actually work.

This month alone, in less than four weeks, clients have deposited 20 times that amount.

What took us an entire year to achieve in 2014 now happens in a single day.

When I saw the dashboard tick past R2bn, I didn’t think about growth rates.
I didn’t think about projections.
I didn’t think about valuation.
I thought about the early days.
The doubt.
The funding stress.
The sceptics.
The nights wondering if we were naïve to believe South Africans would invest if only given the chance.

And I thought about trust.

Because that’s what R2 billion really is.
It’s not cash.
It’s not inflows.
It’s not a metric.

It’s millions of individual decisions —
people choosing to build rather than consume,
to own rather than rent,
to invest rather than simply hope.

There are tears in moments like this. Quiet ones.
Not because of the number —
but because of what it represents.
Belief compounds.
Trust compounds.
Opportunity compounds.

And when that compounding starts to accelerate, you realise something bigger is happening.

This isn’t just company growth.
It’s a movement.

One day, perhaps 100 years from now, someone will ask:

“How did South Africans become so wealthy?”
And the answer will be:

“Because @EasyEquities made it their mission and purpose to be so — a very long time ago.”

Today felt like one of those chapters.
Thank you to every client who trusted us.
Thank you to every team member who built through uncertainty.
Thank you to every partner who believed.
We’re only just getting started.
We’re still so early.
Charles

[Michael Jordaan @MichaelJordaan]

This is the beginning of something huge. A Rand stablecoin backed by top institutions. Next step is to build use cases and add more partners.

[Prince Fynn @Prince_Fynnd]

This is Thomas Seyfried.

He’s a professor of biology, who’s studied cancer for 30+ years.

His message? Cancer isn’t bad genes or bad luck—it’s damaged mitochondria.

This flips everything you’ve been told about how to treat & prevent cancer:

Check Thread 👇

[Department of Government Efficiency @DOGE]

Last week, Treasury went live with its first automated payment verification system. In total, $334 million in improper payment requests were identified and rejected due to:
-Missing budget codes
-Invalid budget codes (i.e. the payment was not linked to the budget)
-Budget codes with no authorization (i.e. the budget had already been fully spent)

[Gaurab Chakrabarti @Gaurab]

One photo shocked the entire aerospace industry:

SpaceX's new Raptor engine looked too simple to work.

Their biggest competitor thought it was fake - now they're scrambling to catch up.

Here's how Elon's Algorithm changed manufacturing forever:

[Robert Graham @Rob_Graham_878]

@rex__leonum @RenaldoGouws The Income Tax Act says that a contractor needs to have at least 5 customers to not be considered an employee. So a contractor that only has 1 customer still has to have PAYE withheld from their income and effectively brings them back onto payroll. This loophole is closed.

[JSE_SENS @JSE_SENS]

PPE Trading statement for the six months ended 28 February 2025 https://t.co/MctW7UxNCO

[Charles H Savage @CharlesHSavage]

Looking forward to sharing these with you all on the 9th April. In short these are very good results, built on the shoulders of a wonderful team and incredible clients who I have the privilege to serve. @PurpleGroupPPE @EasyEquities

[Geiger Capital @Geiger_Capital]

Holy. Shit.

Antonio Gracias has been helping DOGE at Social Security and found that millions of the illegal immigrants let in by the Biden administration are on taxpayer-funded benefits programs.

They were set up to collect MAX payouts.
He also found that many voted in 2024.

[Robert Graham @Rob_Graham_878]

@JNechituni @PhumlaniMMajozi These companies are all public companies and anyone can buy shares on the JSE. If you want to also be an owner, you can buy shares through EasyEquities.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Who is writing the words that the puppets speak? That’s the real question.

[Charles H Savage @CharlesHSavage]

The records keep falling. @EasyEquities extends its month on month deposit record to 13 months in a row and posted an all time monthly record in Feb of R1.393bn surpassing the previous record, set in Aug 2024 by over R100m. Congrats team and thank you EasyCommunity for trusting in us. @PurpleGroupPPE

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

💯

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

This is a real picture

[DOGE Subcommittee @DOGECommittee]

👉 OPENING STATEMENT 👈

Today, we gaveled in to our first @DOGECommittee hearing to launch the WAR ON WASTE!

⬇️ WATCH BELOW ⬇️