And again, and again, and again, the market proves to be more flexible and adaptable than the engineers, extrapolating, with their calculators expect. When prices change, behaviour changes. Believe in substitution, in elasticity, in human ingenuity, that is, in the market, and you will get a closer approximation than all doom-mongers. For this of course, a market must exist (e.g., does not apply to the fertility collapse).
Listening to some old episodes(nba one being from sep 2020) and even @djrosent and @gilbert thought @KingJames would have retired by now for sure 😂
What a player and longevity!
The amount of self-hate Americans have towards their own history is truly unreal.
They defeated slavery by fighting against their own family.
They shut Europe out of the western hemisphere so that nations wouldn't live under colonization forever.
They had the ability to stay out of world war 1 but they went and died to help Europeans.
They had the ultimate power in the nuclear bomb. They also had access to all of Europe's colonies that were in shambles. But instead they promoted freedom. They rebuilt Japan and Germany after defeating them in war. They stood down the Soviet Union, even as the world jeered them.
They sent soldiers to places like Vietnam and Afghanistan that died TRYING to create a better world (even if you disagree with those wars, the intentions were fairly good)
And they sent more missionaries to the world than maybe any other country in history. Translated more Bibles into indigenous languages than any other country in history. Ran bigger charities than any other country in history. Created more Christian resources than any other country in history.
Whether it was stopping the Dutch from reconquering Indonesia to the Berlin Airlift to giving Cuba its freedom in the Spanish-American war to saving China from the Japanese America has at least ATTEMPTED to do good with its power.
Yes yes, America has problems. People are imperfect. But goodness gracious does the world have a lot to be grateful for in America. And when we could have taken SO much from the world we have often chosen not to. Rome, Britain, Mongols, Assyrians, Soviets, Chinese, no other group has ever shown the restraint America has consistently shown with such vast power at its fingertips.
We didn't even get into the GIGANTIC technological advances, consumer advances, convenient lifestyle changes America has pioneered. From electricity to space to the light bulb to the smart phone to many cures in medicine and agriculture to the airplane the world has been enormously blessed by America.
US fertility reached 1.57 last year, the lowest ever recorded, and the WSJ explanation is "uncertainty about finances, relationship stability, and the political climate"
my great grandma had eleven children during the second world war, in a country being bombed, in a house with no running water, on rations.
poor people have always had kids. the poorest people on earth right now still have kids and the financial excuse is a story we tell ourselves because it makes us feel good and the real one is unbearable
the real mechanism is that we got rich enough to redefine children as an expense instead of the point. somewhere in the last fifty years the cultural goal inverted and a child stopped being what life is for and became a line item competing with the lifestyle. once you frame it that way the math never works, because the math isnt supposed to work. that's the point
we are living in the richest moment in human history and we decided to use the surplus to buy ourselves out of the future. the most prosperous civilization that has ever existed is committing demographic suicide at the altar of personal optimization and comfort, and the official line is that we cant afford it
the birthrate is a lagging indicator of a civilization that forgot why it was alive
https://t.co/yaBFkMQYuV
"Atlanta-based Corpay will partner with Voltempo, which is building the UK’s largest depot charging network for electric lorries, to create a system that will link charging infrastructure, fleet payments and electricity supply to make it more economically viable for businesses to switch from diesel to electric"
Also realised that @CorpayInc has 10x'd since their IPO in late 2010. 🤯
The loudest story about AI is a lonely one. One person with an army of chatbots. Other humans are friction.
That gets the future wrong. The best things aren’t built alone.
In a moment of change, we want to remind the world (and ourselves) what Notion stands for:
— Think Together
Mitchell Green is the co-founder and managing partner of Lead Edge Capital, a $9B growth equity firm he founded in 2011.
For 15 years, he and his partners have built one of the most disciplined investment machines in the business, designed to deliver consistent returns by hitting doubles and triples rather than chasing power law outcomes. He obsesses over avoiding zeros and is constantly underwriting investments to know exactly when to sell.
He has built a unique culture at Lead Edge, sending handwritten thank you notes to nearly everyone he meets and sitting down one on one with every person at the firm once a year.
He is, by his own admission, one of the most persistent and competitive people you will meet. After the episode, he told me he believes the most important thing in life is to be memorable. You will find, listening to this conversation, that he very much is.
We discuss:
- Why it’s the best time to buy public software companies
- Lessons from 10,000 cold calls
- His unique LP base
- Why consistency of returns matters more than home runs
- The art of knowing when to sell
- How culture is built from the top + the importance of follow-through
- What skiing taught him about risk and competition
Enjoy!
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
1:00 The Hierarchy of BS
2:20 Lessons From 10,000 Cold Calls
9:05 Base Hits vs. Grand Slams
15:24 The 8 Buying Criteria
17:24 Pricing and the AI Exit Multiple Trap
19:24 Software as a Game of Distribution
23:20 Creative Deal Structuring
26:27 The Framework for Focus
29:01 The Art of the Investigative Cold Call
34:24 Culture of Hustle
35:34 The Annual One-on-One Process
37:59 Playing to Strengths
39:43 The Mount Rushmore of Investment Machines
42:05 Fears and Excitement Around AI
48:54 Ski Racing
52:29 Advice for Starting a Firm
54:35 The Kindest Thing
Some of you still seem to think oil is only used for gasoline for light duty vehicles, because that’s the only time you’ve physically encountered it.
Expensive and scarce oil is an omnicrisis for the global economy. It cannot be replaced by electrons from solar panels.
@FoundersPodcast@FoundersPodcast - Have you or would you release those bonus podcasts? I have been listening to all your episodes this year and currently on the ones in 2017 and I hear you talking about this bonus episodes that were released only to paid members. So curious on how to access? :)
It’s been three or so years since @williamhockey was last on a podcast so it was a pleasant surprise seeing him on @InvestLikeBest with @patrick_oshag . One hears about national security from economists/defense folks but interesting on how he explained it in the context of US banking system in this episode
The # of timestamps explains how wide ranging this interview was. There is going to be a day where I listen to @pmarca and realise that it is getting repetitive given how many interviews he does. Ridiculous that after 10 years of following him, it still hasn't. I truly miss the pre-2016 "stalk Marc's likes" phase of my life because every night i'd go to bed smarter having done so!
My conversation with Marc Andreessen (@pmarca), co-founder of @a16z and Netscape.
0:00 Caffeine Heart Scare
0:56 Zero Introspection Mindset
3:24 Psychedelics and Founders
4:54 Motivation Beyond Happiness
7:18 Tech as Progress Engine
10:27 Founders Versus Managers
20:01 HP Intel Founder Legacy
21:32 Why Start the Firm
24:14 Venture Barbell Theory
28:57 JP Morgan Boutique Banking
30:02 Religion Split Wall Street
30:41 Barbell of Banking
31:42 Allen & Company Model
33:16 Planning the VC Firm
33:45 CAA Playbook Lessons
36:49 First Principles vs. Status Quo
39:03 Scaling Venture Capital
40:37 Private Equity and Mad Men
42:52 Valley Shifts to Full Stack
45:59 Meeting Jim Clark
48:53 Founder vs. Manager at SGI
54:20 Recruiting Dinner Story
56:58 Starting the Next Company
57:57 Nintendo Online Gamble
58:33 Building Mosaic Browser
59:45 NSFnet Commercial Ban
1:01:28 Eternal September Shift
1:03:11 Spam and Web Controversy
1:04:49 Mosaic Tech Support Flood
1:07:49 Netscape Business Model
1:09:05 Early Internet Skepticism
1:11:15 Moral Panic Pattern
1:13:08 Bicycle Face Story
1:14:48 Music Panic Examples
1:18:12 Lessons from Jim Clark
1:19:36 Clark Versus Barksdale
1:21:22 Tesla Versus Edison
1:23:00 Edison Digression Setup
1:23:13 AI Forecasting Myths
1:23:43 Edison Phonograph Lesson
1:25:11 Netscape Two Jims
1:29:11 Bottling Innovation
1:31:44 Elon Management Code
1:32:24 IBM Big Gray Cloud
1:37:12 Engineer First Truth
1:38:28 Bottlenecks and Speed
1:42:46 Milli Elon Metric
1:47:20 Starlink Side Project
1:49:10 Closing
Includes paid partnerships.
Just finished @ssankar interview with @patrick_oshag on @InvestLikeBest. Very few times in life where you hear someone and appreciate how articulate they are.
Loved the story on Hyman Rickover and the creation of the nuclear submarine