Harry Tsao

Entrepreneur. Sports & tech investor. @warriors @lafc @vivoaquatics @aXiomaticGaming @EpicGames

[Harry Tsao @harrytsao]

Had to ask Fable this:

I'm not too familiar with soccer, so I don't really understand the quality of players on the USMNT. Using player data, can you identify the most likely parallel if they were basketball players? Would they be in the NBA? If so, who are they most similar to?

Here's the answer:

The big-picture answer first: Yes, essentially everyone on this roster would be "in the NBA." Playing for clubs like AC Milan, Juventus, and Monaco is the equivalent of being a legitimate NBA rotation player or better. What the US doesn't have is an MVP-tier superstar. Think of the USMNT as a team like the Indiana Pacers or Houston Rockets: young, deep, well-coached, several All-Star-caliber guys — but no Jokić, no Giannis. France has Mbappé and Argentina had Messi; those are the LeBron/Jokić class, and the US has never produced one.

That's the gap.

Here's the player-by-player mapping:
Christian Pulisic → Devin Booker. The face of the franchise, a genuine star at a glamour club (AC Milan), perennial "All-Star" but not a top-5-in-the-world player. Carries enormous national expectations, mostly delivers.

Weston McKennie → Draymond Green (with more scoring). Given your Warriors stake, this one should land. He was arguably the best US player of the tournament, played the most minutes of anyone, and offers a lot on both ends. Not the most skilled guy on the roster, but the connective tissue — versatile, relentless, does the dirty work that makes everyone else better. FOX Sports

Tyler Adams → Jrue Holiday. Defensive specialist, tone-setter, the guy coaches trust in the biggest moments. Limited offensively, but every contender wants one.

Folarin Balogun → Zach LaVine. Pure bucket-getter. He became just the third USMNT player ever to score three goals in a single World Cup. Elite finisher who needs teammates to create for him, but when the ball arrives, it goes in. U.S. Soccer

Malik Tillman → Franz Wagner. Smooth, skilled, ascending fast, made his name in the Bundesliga. He offers something different from McKennie and Adams and delivers constant quality on the ball — the shot-creator the midfield lacked. FOX Sports

Antonee Robinson → Derrick White. Arguably the best in the entire Premier League at his position (left back), yet casual fans barely know him. All-Defense caliber, zero ego, massive value.

Chris Richards → Evan Mobley. The 6'2" athletic anchor of the defense — a kid who shares a frame with point guards and wide receivers and is the team's best defender. Rim protector energy. NPR

Tim Ream → Al Horford. The 38-year-old captain still starting World Cup knockout games purely on brains and positioning.

Gio Reyna → Michael Porter Jr. Lottery-pick talent, injury and situation issues, came off the bench. The "what if" guy.

Alex Freeman → a Rookie of the Year candidate. At 21, he joined Landon Donovan as the only USMNT players under 22 to start two World Cup knockout matches — a first-round pick who forced his way into a playoff starting lineup. U.S. Soccer

So the honest scouting report: this is a roster of NBA-quality players — maybe two All-Stars, four or five quality starters, solid depth — that just took a nice playoff run and lost in the second round to a more talented team. The question for 2030 is whether Tillman, Freeman, or someone not yet on the radar develops into the franchise superstar the program has never had.

[Harry Tsao @harrytsao]

This is indeed one of the more interesting ways Taiwan collects sales tax.

A little-known fact that will blow people's minds in the west. In Taiwan, if a person owns a company and takes it public and sells an equivalent of $1 billion dollars, he/she would pay exactly $3 million in "securities transactions tax" - which is 0.3% of whatever they sell- and owe ZERO income tax.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Taiwan solved tax evasion in 1951 with a trick so cheap it should embarrass every tax authority on the planet.

The problem was an all-cash economy full of small shops. A merchant pockets the cash, skips the receipt, and the sale never existed. Auditors can't catch what was never recorded, and hiring enough of them to watch every noodle stand costs more than the missing tax.

So finance chief Ren Xianqun flipped the incentive. Print a lottery number on every receipt. Draw winners every two months on live TV. Top prize today: NT$10 million, about $310K.

Suddenly the customer and the shopkeeper want opposite things. The merchant wants the sale off the books. The customer wants the ticket. And there are millions more customers than merchants. Every transaction now carries a built-in witness demanding the paper trail.

Year one, reported tax revenue jumped 75%, from NT$29 million to NT$51 million. Seventy-five years later, roughly 70% of Taiwanese still play. Convenience stores redeem the smallest NT$200 prizes at the register, so even a coffee receipt feels like a scratch card.

The elegant part is what the audit force costs. The prize pool runs about NT$7 billion a year, roughly $20 million. In exchange, the government gets 23 million unpaid auditors working every checkout line in the country, forever. No inspector general on earth delivers that coverage at that price.

Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Slovakia all copied it. The most effective compliance tool ever built looks like a game, and that's exactly why it works.

[Harry Tsao @harrytsao]

100% on point

[Xiaoyin Qu @quxiaoyin]

https://t.co/zYQ14xxxBg

[Harry Tsao @harrytsao]

@gregisenberg The crazy idea doesn't need permission. That's the whole point. Every founder I know who waited for validation is still waiting. The ones who shipped ugly versions of something nobody asked for are the ones writing the posts about year one.

[Harry Tsao @harrytsao]

@letsrolepod @petergyang @xingsthatmatter So somehow the air population doesn’t exist in China, and they just blow over here….ok

[Harry Tsao @harrytsao]

Opensource models are the way to go for businesses. https://t.co/0kVphvQxX9 is built on Openclaw, forked and enhanced with better protection, recovery, and best of all, access to all the opensource models. GLM 5.2, Deepseek V4 pro, etc. Forward this to anyone running a business. Give it a spin.

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

here is the entirety of Palantir CEO Alex Karp's televised nervous breakdown this morning on CNBC

[Harry Tsao @harrytsao]

There is close to zero chance that Anthropic will be able to maintain its revenue. The open-source models are 1-5% inferior across various benchmarks, yet Claude is 5-20x more expensive, depending on which open-source model you use.

I use multiple models. Today, I gave Opus 4.8 twenty minutes, and it couldn't complete a task. That same task took GLM 5.2 ninety seconds.

[Harry Tsao @harrytsao]

@petergyang @xingsthatmatter Compare the air….

[Harry Tsao @harrytsao]

@DavidSacks What happens when the open source models achieve the same kind of intelligence?

[Harry Tsao @harrytsao]

@ZeroSumTruths @XH_Lee23 Actually, they’ll sell at 100% tariff. The reason no Chinese companies are selling here is because no one trust the US government. If they invest and sell well, what’s to stop the US government from going to 200%, 300%?

[Harry Tsao @harrytsao]

@BiznatchX @XH_Lee23 It honestly doesn’t drive like a bmw. It’s way better.

[Harry Tsao @harrytsao]

@canitouchyouthr @ritzardxiii @GP_Presss @grok @grok why don’t you check against x users from within Israel?

[Harry Tsao @harrytsao]

@georgesttock Veo

[Harry Tsao @harrytsao]

@VadimStrizheus @VugolaAI Do the skills ever trip over one another? Meaning, does it clog things up?

[Harry Tsao @harrytsao]

@georgesttock V2

[TCN @TCNetwork]

Tucker on the capture of Nicolas Maduro:

“I think we're fully in the empire stage of civilizational development.”

[Harry Tsao @harrytsao]

@alexgroberman Done

[Harry Tsao @harrytsao]

@thecyrusjanssen Marketing is the west’s strength. Hypocrisy is the core.