I have read approximately 3,000 10-Ks in my life. I have read my wife’s emotional state correctly maybe 11 times. This is troubling because the skills should transfer. Both require you to look past the headline. Both require you to read the footnotes. Both require you to notice what was said last quarter that is not being said this quarter.
I can spot a goodwill impairment from 40 pages away. I cannot spot that my wife has been quietly furious since Tuesday. In a 10-K I notice when management changes the word “challenging” to “dynamic” and I correctly interpret this as a warning. In my marriage my wife changed the word “fine” to “fine.” and I did not notice the period. The period was the entire disclosure.
I missed it. I read a footnote last week in a packaging company’s annual report that disclosed a related-party transaction worth $400,000 and I caught it in 90 seconds. My wife told me three times this month that she was tired and I interpreted this as “tired” when in fact it was a Level 3 disclosure requiring immediate management response. I have a system for 10-Ks. I read the MD&A first, then the risk factors, then the cash flow statement, then the notes. I have no system for my wife. She is a company that does not file. She reports continuously and without warning and the format changes every quarter. Her risk factors are not enumerated.
Her MD&A is delivered through sighs of varying length and I have not yet developed the ear. Last week she said “do whatever you want” and I did whatever I wanted and it turns out the correct interpretation of “do whatever you want” was “do not do that specific thing” and I have no idea how I was supposed to know that, and yet, looking back, the signals were all there. The signals are always there. I have been trained to find signals. I find them in companies I will never meet. I miss them in the person I have lived with for nine years. My wife has started saying things like “you would notice this if I were a stock” and she is correct. She is correct. If she had a ticker I would have already built a 6,000-word model on her. I would know her seasonality.
I would know her capex cycle. I would know which quarters historically run hot. Instead I treat her like a private company and I am surprised every time the auditors arrive. I am going to bed now. She said good night in a tone. I do not know what the tone meant. I will find out in the morning. Or I will not. The 10-K of my marriage is filed in real time and I am, as always, three quarters behind.
Startups are lighting billions of VC dollars on fire building products that accelerate us into a hypergamblification future.
Midjourney is 100% bootstrapped.
Already has the most visually stunning image models on earth.
And now they just dropped something that could genuinely change medicine and save millions of lives.
100% bootstrapped, no VC, building whatever they want. And they chose to save lives.
@denimneverdies It just sucks bc I can enjoy trash but trash enjoyers seem to not be able to enjoy things that take braincells, there’s room for all types of content if u just stay open to stuff
@JD_DeYonker Pye-Barker wants to eat everything in the space. It makes sense..who the hell ever changes their alarm/fire service provider? Stickier than my random monthly $2.99 apple storage charge.
@LeylaKuni Same in vet space. You have a MSA between MSO & PLLC that effectively charges a management fee, license/ip fee, securities fee, etc/etc that acts as a sweep from PLLC to MSO, leaving PLLC at break even. Fee’s need to be “justifiable” in human health. In vet space, not so much.
@mindofachaser This is cool but I want to call BS only bc I got 15 minutes and 3 prompts in before getting usage locked. How’d you use Fable for 3 HOURS? Max plan? Pay for extra usage?
literally nothing more annoying on the fucking planet than when websites don’t have the US at the top of a country selection list. No, I am not going to select fucking “Afghanistan” boutique clothing brand based in Nashville. Fuck off.
One thing nobody really tells you:
Once you get enough money, your quality of life is ultimately about establishing a good, reliable set of guys
- Tax guy
- Car guy
- Lawn guy
- Hair guy
- Handyman guy
- Estate/financial guy
- Health guys
“So you bootstrapped the whole company?”
“Yeah, I turned it down. Turned down the funding.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, I turned it down just to do this, just to grind it out, build it myself.”
“So you had an opportunity to take venture money?”
“Yeah, a term sheet and everything.”
“From who?”
“Yeah, a big fund out in Menlo Park. It was a top-tier firm, though. And they offered me like 15, some shit like 10 billion or something like that, 5 billion, something like that.”
“Wait, wait, wait. A term sheet.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, but not 5 billion dollars. They offered you 5 billion dollars for your seed round?”
“Yeah.”
“For a seed round?”
“Yeah.”
“What are we doing here?”
“Like, what the y’all, like, you know what I’m saying?”
“That’s more than the GDP of a small country.”
“But I was so younger, like, I didn’t know what a cap table was.”
“Are you sure they offered you 5 billion dollars?”
“I turned it down.”
“You didn’t even have a product.”
“It was a SAFE, like, I had to give up equity for this decade.”
“But you would get $5 billion?”
“Yeah.”
“You’d be one of the most valuable companies on earth.”
“It was somewhere, it was in the billions, though.”
just a friendly reminder that you can do whatever you want
if you want to buy a skyscraper, then buy a skyscraper
there are no rules. limitations only exist in your head