Adam Kuebler

Finance & strategy @MorpheusSpace. Former airline network planning & pricing at United. Chicago, airlines, transportation, industry, cities, & soccer. Dad of 2.

[Big Timi @OrevaZSN]

You’re standing on a planet with molten lava at its core. Trees are turning sunlight into air you can breathe. Your heart is beating without you asking it to. There’s a moon in the sky and bugs that glow. This whole thing is absurdly beautiful.

[Josh Barzon @JoshuaBarzon]

The 104 Regions of America

[Blake Scholl 🛫 @bscholl]

America will never be great at defense manufacturing if we aren't great at commercial manufacturing.

The best stress test of manufacturing and supply chain is capitalism. Adam Smith's invisible hand is the always-on stress test.

[Barry Butler Photography @barrybutler9]

Marathon Morning. Good luck to all the runners dashing thru the city streets this morning for the 48th Chicago Marathon.

[Adam Kuebler @adamkuebler]

@SecretCFO “It has the energy of tech people talking to other tech people about tech companies who sell to other tech companies.” - this was my original reaction too, thanks for putting it into words.

[The Secret CFO @SecretCFO]

On the a16z piece on the rise of the engineering / builder CFO.

There are some great ideas there. But some points are viewed through a stunningly narrow lens. I find that a little unambitious given the size of the opportunity in front of us.

First, two things they definitely get right:

1) AI’s ability to make sense of messy data is a HUGE inflection moment for finance. Every bit of finance transformation advice always starts with “sort out your data”. Any idea how fucking hard that is? Teams have been grinding away on transformation and data hygiene projects for years. They often move slower than the businesses they’re supposed to support. AI unlocks the potential to destroy the biggest barrier to modernization of the CFO’s office.

2) Finance engineering is real, and should be thoughts of as a new core capability any ambitious finance team needs. The days of the systems accountants being the most tech-savvy people in the finance team, are thankfully ending. Real builders at the intersection of finance and engineering are worth their weight in gold and about to get more valuable. This is exciting, especially for smart young ambitious pros.

Beyond that, much of the rest of the piece only makes sense through a software industry lens.

It has the energy of tech people talking to other tech people about tech companies who sell to other tech companies. (Note - for the record, I’ve worked with some of the a16z portfolio companies mentioned in the piece, who definitely have the capability and appetite to serve outside tech.)

For example, the piece talks about finance going from 5% of company headcount as standard, to 2%. In my last role, we had 1.5% of headcount in finance. We weren't especially efficient, it's just a function of the headcount dynamic for the industry I was in.

So, unfortunately this falls into the trap that so much commentary on finance from the software industry does. It forgets that most companies are not tech companies. And therefore, most CFOs are not tech CFOs.

Software finance is characterized by being scalable with a supersonically simple P&L structure (which goes to the finance capability you need.)

I think it was Ben Horowitz himself who said that the biggest difference with hardware is "you need a much better CFO than in software."

Yeah ... that’s because the economics of a hardware business looks more like conventional manufacturing than it does software.

Now some of this has changed lately of course, as software consumes more AI, it takes on more of AI’s economics too; token costs, compute versus human decisions, usage-based pricing. More complicated margins and planning dynamics than before.

But take a petrochemicals manufacturer, as example. They are dealing with feedstock prices, energy costs, production yields, plant utilization and selling prices moving together, by the day. And always has done.

Now imagine doing that across a few hundred or a few thousand SKUs. Think about the dimensional complexity that brings.

That makes the story much harder to find, to tell, and then ultimately to fund. Imagine what they could do with better tooling.

So when the piece says (for example) finance can look forward to a "bigger mandate”, including pricing, capital allocation and people-versus-software decisions ... I’m a bit stunned. Any half-capable CFO I know would either be in the room when decisions of that financial magnitude were made. Or beating down the door to get in.

And then there’s the framing of successive CFO eras: accounting, fundraising, FP&A / business planning, and now building. They acknowledge that the dimensions of a great CFO have endured. But the framing still jars.
These aren’t things that most businesses have had the luxury of choosing between. I worked for CFOs twenty years ago who were incredible at controls, fundraising and business planning all at the same time.

So, when I read things like that, I don’t see an evolution… it feels more like catching up?!

Now … where plenty of finance teams outside tech ARE lagging is in the software available to them.

Take that multisite petrochemicals business. Give it four different legacy ERP systems and years of workarounds holding everything together.

The finance team is still delivering what the business needs despite poor, inflexible software. Impossible implementation conditions. So it's much slower and more manual than they need and would like.

This is where AI’s ability to work with messy data gets really exciting. Helping bridge those systems and workarounds could finally let teams make progress on problems that have defeated successive generations of transformation programs.

There is a world of businesses out there hostage to the legacy ERP industrial complex. I hope the investors and builders powering the next generation of CFO Tech have those businesses front of mind.

Because the TAM is far bigger than the one on their doorstep.

[Landon @landon20s]

CHICAGO BUILDS: THIRD RAIL 🚊🚊🚊

A summit exploring the future of autonomy, freight, micromobility, and rail in Chicago

In partnership with @waymo

November 12 in Chicago

🔗 https://t.co/j5O3RtshgI

[ben 🦦 @_bengelo_]

When MLS has their deal expire with Apple, NBC/Peacock is my dream for the league.

I've never seen a bad sports production from them. MLS can have stations get their local MLS teams on NBC affiliates and have Peacock stream every game, no blackouts; that would be perfection.

[Adam Kuebler @adamkuebler]

This is unfortunate, but probably the correct analysis.

[John Arnold @johnarnold]

Candidates in the Senate debates are tying themselves up in knots on tariff policy. On one hand, they criticize tariffs for raising prices to consumers. On the other, they fear removing tariffs will expose local businesses to unfair foreign competition and cost American jobs. To square the circle, they call for better trade deals (who can disagree with that?) without offering a framework of how to get there. It's clear Congress can't legislate this.

The contradiction extends to fiscal policy. Candidates warn about the growing federal deficit but don’t explain how they would replace the revenue lost by eliminating tariffs, now around $16 billion/month more than in 2024.

Further, states have broadly different interests in tariffs. Northern border states want to normalize trade with Canada. Georgia wants tariff adjustments to protect its ports and related businesses. Farm states want lower tariffs on farm inputs but like the protections against imported ag products. The Midwest generally wants protections on steel; the rest of the country wants exemptions on intermediate goods.

These competing interests make a comprehensive tariff legislation almost impossible. Every tariff has beneficiaries who want to preserve it and opponents who want it removed. Any tariff bill would create concentrated political opposition, whether it raised or lowered duties. Concentrating tariff authority in the presidency carries the obvious risks, but Congress will be inept at the challenge.

Status quo is the strongest force in politics. My expectation is that, despite all the handwringing, the eventual tariff regime will look similar to today's. That is a 10-15% baseline tariff on most imports, higher rates on countries with blatantly unfair trade practices and/or geopolitical rivals, and industry specific adders on those deemed strategic to national security or economic interests.

Most businesses prioritize certainty so they can make investment decisions, forecast expenses, and have confidence in supply chains. That certainty is probably more important than the rates.

[Adam Kuebler @adamkuebler]

@mattstegman @MajaLeeg Prost

[clara the urbanist @SlopHq]

the sun belt's entire pitch is "we let you build a house." that's the amenity. it's 104 degrees, there's no sidewalk, and people are moving there by the hundred thousand because california wouldn't legalize a fourplex.

[𝐋𝐀𝐅𝐂 𝐃𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐞𝐥 @lafcdaniel]

A very insightful media session from John Thorrington. Kudos to those asking questions from not dancing around the issues.

JT was asked about Marc Dos Santos, LAFC's performance, the style of play, the coaching search. Here's a thread with some quotes...

[Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @AdamKinzinger]

The idea of executions being live-streamed is absolutely sick and disgusting.

You don’t hate Pete Hegseth enough

[Tony D'Orazio @TonyForLP]

“I am vehemently opposed to a public execution by firing squad” is not the same thing as “I support the mass shooter.”

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[Laura Bassett @LEBassett]

“If you don’t like public executions just don’t watch it” says the crowd trying to ban drag shows

[Conor Durkin @ConDurkin]

Today at @acitythatworks: In August, the Johnson administration announced their plan to close this year's budget gap by refinancing city bonds. We were skeptical the match checked out. Last week, they completed that refi, but the budget gap remains far from closed.

[Adam Kuebler @adamkuebler]

@MassJumbo It always surprises me, but Shannon and Porto are bigger tourist destinations than Berlin and Karkow and Belgrade are connecting hubs, which Berlin is not. United tried DC to Berlin a couple years ago but it didn’t work.

[claire de lune @ClaireMPLS]

i’ve heard more criticism for this woman trying to learn about football and being invested in her team than i’ve heard about the 49ers owner hiring a prostitute in a trailer park

[Jason Dunn @ImJasonDunn]

I ran the math on what happens when all the filed megaconstellations reach steady state. Add up everything on paper (SpaceX's million data center sats, Starlink, Blue Origin's Sunrise and TeraWave, Starcloud, Amazon Leo, and China's roughly 250,000 across Guowang, Qianfan, Honghu and the CTC filings) and you get about 1.4 million satellites. Using Starlink V3 at around 2 tons for the SpaceX, Blue and Starcloud birds and 1 ton for everyone else, with a 5 year life, you'd be replacing and deorbiting about 285,000 satellites a year.

That's roughly 520,000 tons a year, or 1,400 tons a day burning up in the upper atmosphere. The paper numbers won't all get built, so I also ran a more realistic case of about 210,000 satellites by the late 2030s. That still comes out to around 73,000 tons a year, or 200 tons a day.

This number is several times the natural meteor dust coming in every day, and it's mostly aluminum instead of rock. Recent work out of USC suggests each satellite leaves behind about 12% of its mass as aluminum oxide particles that hang in the stratosphere for decades and can help eat ozone. At 200 tons a day that's something like 8,800 tons of alumina a year, compared to maybe 17 tons from natural sources.

Nobody has modeled what that does long term, and I think it's the sleeper issue behind the whole debris conversation. Deorbiting solves the orbital problem by moving it into the atmosphere. Bringing hardware home intact is the only answer that solves both, and that was the core reason I started Outpost and designed our product the way that I did.

It is honestly crazy to me that the best answer our industry has come up for the debris is to burn the trash!

Space Debris: Is There a Market? https://t.co/tbmQMYVsMr