Kaizen

From student loan debt to $1.26M net worth in 9 years. Sharing how I got there.

Founder | Engineer | BSME, MSAE | Student Pilot | Building in tech.

[Kaizen @kaiznalpha]

Nine years ago, I had student loan debt and no special financial advantage. Today, my net worth is $1.2M.

I’m starting Kaizen Alpha to share how I got there, and where things go from here—all the decisions, investments, habits, and mistakes.

[Kaizen @kaiznalpha]

@MorningBrew Tim cooked.

[Kaizen @kaiznalpha]

The most critical takeaway from the episode is what the 30-year yield is signaling. COVID-era emergency spending never reset–it was simply baked into our permanent baseline. As Friedberg highlighted, nominal economic growth has expanded federal revenues so much that if we simply spent at 2019 levels, we’d be running an annual budget surplus and paying down the national debt today. Instead, subsidized demand continues to bid up costs across inelastic sectors while the bond market demands higher yields to fund the gap.

@FRIEREN_PR:

"And so inflation is persistent because what we thought were temporary emergency stimulus measures during COVID very quickly got normalized and became persistent spending cycles. You know, if we went back to 2019, we would actually have a budget surplus right now as a country. Our economy has grown so much since 2019 that if we had the same spending levels as we had in 2019, our federal government would be making a profit paying down the debt. And the reality is we've taken this emergency spending and made it a permanent spending. We did the same thing, by the way, after the global financial crisis in 2008... there were some crazy stimulus things that happened and we persisted that spending."

On who's responsibility it is to cut spending, he said earlier:

"So my theory and my argument on this is there is no action that Bessent can take that's actually going to have a meaningful effect on the long end of the curve. We have a fundamental fiscal spending problem with the federal government right now. And I think that the note that Druck wrote–whether AI wrote it or he wrote it, it doesn't matter... the point of the note is correct. And the note is meant to provide cover to Bessent. He is saying it is not Bessent's fault or Bessent's responsibility to solve the yield curve problem. It is Congress's responsibility. It is the President's responsibility. It is the responsibility of the holders of the budget and the accounts that should stand up and say, 'We are going to cut spending,' because if we don't cut spending, there is going to be a spiral which we are now going to face over the next 12 months as we have to refinance $10 trillion of debt."

https://t.co/Fi1dXs8tMl

[Kaizen @kaiznalpha]

David Sacks—@DavidSacks—on the partnership between Salesforce and Anthropic, and what it means for the user:

“I talked to him [Benioff] this morning actually, and a point he brought up with me that I think is underestimated is that he says there's a lot of trapped value in Salesforce. Meaning we know it's got this incredibly broad, rich platform with tons of functionality. The average user is never going to find all those things, but the agent will. So think about all the cases where now the agent is going to go to the user and say, 'Hey, I just saw that there are these actions you could take in Salesforce that seem to line up with what you're telling me to do. Do you want me to do this?' And the user is going to say, 'Yes, modify Salesforce as the system of record.' Because now think about the agent as a power user of Salesforce that knows how to use Salesforce perfectly. You don't necessarily need to hire this like team of highly priced consultants to figure out Salesforce. The agent knows how to do it. So it can unlock the full value of Salesforce and all these actions. And then after you develop trust in your agent, you the user are just going to click the always allow button, and now the agent can basically tap the full capabilities of Salesforce."

This undermines the belief that SaaS is dead and that AI will inevitably displace established platforms. It creates more value for companies like Salesforce. We've seen a parallel of this in the knowledge-work workforce, where AI has largely augmented existing roles rather than triggering the mass displacement that was widely feared.

[Kaizen @kaiznalpha]

Friedberg—@friedberg—clarified that the “SaaS-pocalypse” is better described as “Vertical SaaS-pocalypse.” While the general narrative in tech was doom and gloom for software companies, the real disruption is specifically happening to vertical software—solutions designed for a single industry or specific workflow—and not the broader, horizontal, monolithic software platforms.

“… No one is going to go rebuild excel [or slack, etc]. The real value is in the software that is unique for your vertical. That is where AI plays a role in building custom workflows and custom software. And so I think that’s how I view the real SaaS-pocalypse—it’s more of a vertical SaaS-pocalypse, which is software that is designed for just one vertical, and that’s where I think things get blown up…”

This is a comment following Salesforce’s earnings report and subsequent stock rally, with revenue up 11% and EPS of $5.90, beating consensus estimates of $3.27. $CRM is up 35.90% in the last month.

It turns out, no one went and rebuilt Slack from their dorm using AI.

https://t.co/QSIn22oWxV

[Kaizen @kaiznalpha]

@chamath on the phases of AI, and what comes next:

- Phase 1: models (the brain)
- Phase 2: harnesses/agents. Or simply, the body.
- Phase 3 (next phase): contextualization.

"But we're starting this next phase soon. At least I see it in the enterprises that I work with, which is that that's still insufficient. And what you now need to do is make that autonomous agent much more informed and give it context and allow it to do a job much more intelligently. So meaning you take a brain, you give it arms and legs and limbs and eyes and etc. But then you have to train it to be a lawyer or be a customer service rep or be a sales agent or what have you. And to do that next step, you need a ton of contextual information."

https://t.co/QSIn22oWxV

[Kaizen @kaiznalpha]

@jukan05 Hostiles.

[Kaizen @kaiznalpha]

Winners and Losers in Tech Today:

Winners:
- $AMZN +3.97%. Price target raised by Evercore toto $355, citing Amazon's growing opportunity in agentic AI shopping. Alexa AI is increasingly driving product discovery and purchases.
- $GOOGL +1.74%. Rotation from semiconductor to hyperscalers, perhaps.
- $AAPL +1.63%. Similar deal.

Losers:
- $PYPL -12.7%. Stripe and Advent (reportedly) walked away from their takeover pursuit. The acquisition premium disappeared fast.
- $MRVL -10.3%. Beat earnings and raised guidance, but apparently that wasn't enough. Expectations for AI infrastructure stocks remain insanely high.

[Kaizen @kaiznalpha]

Winners and Losers in Tech Today:

Winners:
- $NVDA +8.74%. Great earnings and a strong outlook.
- $PLTR +4.75%. Outperform rating was reiterated as Palantir’s MSS closes in on a $1B annual revenue run rate.
- $AVGO +4.49%. Thanks to Nvidia’s results. Earnings call positively affected the broader AI semiconductor and networking ecosystem.
- $TSLA +2.60%. Again, thanks to Nvidia’s earnings, which provided another bullish case for Tesla’s AI goals. Tesla relies heavily on Nvidia GPUs for FSD training. On top of that, robotaxi is launching soon.

Losers:
- Michael Burry. His AI short thesis is having a rough day once again. $NVDA, $PLTR, and $AVGO are all moving in the opposite direction.
- $HPQ 2.92%. Beat Q3 earnings and raised full-year guidance, but shares fell due to a 16% drop in PC unit shipments and cost of memory is eating their margins.

[Kaizen @kaiznalpha]

@ArthurMacwaters Don’t forget Ben Affleck. His contribution shaped what models are today.

[Kaizen @kaiznalpha]

@Kalshi_Finance

[Kaizen @kaiznalpha]

@litcapital Poverty in the US blows my mind. They have iPhones, access to food–to the point where obesity is common–electricity, clean water, and a bunch of other things that are luxuries elsewhere.

[Kaizen @kaiznalpha]

@venturetwins Ben Affleck and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as well btw.

[Kaizen @kaiznalpha]

@TIME Yup, AI owes what it is today to figures such as Bernie Sanders, Paris Hilton, Ben Affleck, Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Where would AI be without them?

[Kaizen @kaiznalpha]

$NIKE pulling an Allbirds and transition into an AI compute infrastructure company. We call it SmarKE.

[Barchart @Barchart]

BREAKING 🚨: Nike

$NKE falls to its lowest price in more than 12 years 📉 📉

[Kaizen @kaiznalpha]

Even at this price anyone buying $NKE is currently paying $18 for every $1 of annual earnings the company generates. The stock is still expensive.

[Barchart @Barchart]

BREAKING 🚨: Nike

$NKE falls to its lowest price in more than 12 years 📉 📉

[Kaizen @kaiznalpha]

@Barchart Even at this price anyone buying $NKE is currently paying $18 for every $1 of annual earnings the company generates. The stock is still expensive.

[Kaizen @kaiznalpha]

@jukan05 I’ve lived in the Bay for 6 years, and everywhere else I go feels behind. And this weather, man… you can’t beat it

[Kaizen @kaiznalpha]

@Kalshi_Finance

[Kaizen @kaiznalpha]

@jimcramer Stop it.

[Kaizen @kaiznalpha]

@NoahKingJr Quantum computers.