“Weaknesses are just strengths in the wrong environment.”— Marianne Cantwell
This was a deeply interesting conversation on the future of business.Audience and personal brand matters.Also some good tips on biohacking.
Great episode of NIA: lots of food for thought.
Great overview of a very exciting startup.Compound: The Digital Family Office.
https://www.thespl.it/p/compound-digital-family-office
Thanks for reading The Hard Fork by Marvin Liao! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Subscribe “So German industry is wrapped in a cocoon of regional and national capital, insurance and export guarantees, facilities, and grants along with an arcane and complex tax and legal system impenetrable to outsiders but designed to allow the appearance of upholding workers’ rights and keeping the capitalists in their place but internally creating plenty of room for manoeuvre.
Expect to see these activated and expanded on steroids by the current government whose only response to anything is pile on the debt to shield the citizenry from the consequences of its own intransigent stupidity.
Additionally, there is a current concerted appeal to the old wartime solidarity in which the German people came together in the aftermath of the last World War to share pots and pans and provide each other with camaraderie in the midst of suffering, hunger, and hardship.
It is hard to believe that the modern day aging German population, with its sense of entitlement, reliance on a generous welfare system, and sense of superiority, not to mention their hypochondria on full display during the past two and half years, will stand for much discomfort to stand strong with the poor Ukrainians.But you never know.”
https://www.thelykeion.com/middlestanding-together
“With few allies in industry and even fewer among the major oil-producing countries, Biden has successfully alienated the very people he needs most.The SPR was created to take leverage away from OPEC, and, in draining it, the US is giving it right back.Expect the members to press their advantage.”
Doomberg Past the Salt “Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” – Sun Tzu Up on Spindletop Hill, just south of Beaumont, Texas, at the beginning of a new year in the beginning of a new century, the world was changed forever.
On January 10, 1901, at a drilled depth of 1,139 feet, an enormous geyser of oil exploded into the sky, much to the awe of the workers who made it happen.
The well gushed at a powerful rate of 100,000 barrels a day, far more than any oil-producing well in the country, initiating a historic economic boom that gave birth to the modern petrochemical era… Read more a month ago · 564 likes · 135 comments · Doomberg “At this point we’re seeing incentives in action.All the easy money is gone so people are going to start optimizing for self preservation.This means all your co-workers will stab you in the back if it means saving their jobs.It means any handshake agreement is going to go backward and anything in writing is the only thing of value (lawyers will love this as they collect fees for all the back-outs that go to court).
More and more hacks and scams will occur.This will be across the board in crypto.People will learn that many hacks/scams were also “inside jobs” where the fund raiser was the one who stole the funds.Generally speaking, you’d think this would be a bad thing.
Unfortunately, everyone gets to watch up close as the people who get scammed *double down* on the scammers! We now have Grant Cardone and Dave Ramsey as good examples of people doing just this “home prices only go up” while simultaneously selling their homes.In the end, it’s one thing to go down when the price of your stock goes down.
It’s a completely different thing to sell everything and tell everyone else to buy (or worse raise money from them and sell it to them!) ← which is exactly what happened in many cases.
Anyway.
Just assume that when you trust other people with your money and when you don’t have something in writing you will lose it all.That simple.”
BowTied Bull More Rate Hikes and Cash Balance Value (Finally).Focus on Incentives Welcome Avatar! At this point we’re seeing incentives in action.All the easy money is gone so people are going to start optimizing for self preservation.This means all your co-workers will stab you in the back if it means saving their jobs.It means any handshake agreement is going to go backward and anything in writing is the only thing of value (law… Read more a month ago · 193 likes · 37 comments · BowTied Bull There is a lesson here for everyone.
“The idea that you can “deescalate” in each and every situation is delusional.From time to time you must stand up and fight and there is no way around it.You may choose whether you will take a fight in more favourable or less favourable situation – that’s it.”
Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani At October 2, 1552 Kazan fall to Ivan the Terrible.
The city was destroyed, its population massacred.Although guerrilla lasted for decades, systematic devastation of the country eventually broke the armed resistance.I believe the story of Kazan fall to be quite instructive
4:22 PM ∙ Oct 12, 2022 3,723 Likes 764 Retweets WOW: China’s semiconductor industry is in big trouble to say the least.
Jordan Schneider @jordanschnyc THREAD: The US government’s new export controls are wreaking havoc on China’s chip industry.New rules around “US persons” are driving an “industry-wide decapitation.” 11:52 AM ∙ Oct 14, 2022 35,189 Likes 11,392 Retweets Always a great conversation.
Learning lots here.
“After eight months of operations (and eight years since Russia started this war), Ukraine has several senior commanders who are seasoned strategists and operational artists.They clearly know their enemy well and know how to balance strategic risk and opportunity.
These commanders, including Generals Zaluzhnyi, Syrskiy and Kovalchuk, are skilled in providing intent and guiding their staffs and subordinate commanders through the planning and execution of large-scale military operations.This is a rare skill that few military institutions master.
Finally, the north-eastern and southern Ukrainian campaigns have highlighted a significant asymmetry in command philosophies between Ukraine and Russia.Russia centrally controls operations; Ukraine allows its subordinate leaders more freedom to exploit opportunities through mission command.
In rapidly moving military activities, military leaders who do not have to constantly refer to higher headquarters can set and dominate operational tempo, ultimately seizing the initiative.The Ukrainians have done this, and the Russians have not.
So far, the Russian Army does not appear to have an answer to what the Ukrainians have achieved in the past three months.The recent missile strikes across Ukraine in the wake of the Kerch bridge attack will have almost no impact on the military campaign.The Ukrainians have answered the questions of earlier this year about whether they could conduct offensives as well as they could defend.
They have done so in the most resounding of ways.Ukraine is smashing the Russian Army and has developed a mastery of modern war that many will seek to emulate.”
https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/a-tale-of-two-generals-how-the-ukrainian-military-turned-the-tide
This is a big deal.The silent war that has been happening in last 10 years between China and US is now more formal.This split is coming fast and hard.
Sizhao Yang @zaoyang 1/ This is the biggest geo political news probably this year maybe 2nd to Russia Ukraine Jordan Schneider @jordanschnyc THREAD: The US government’s new export controls are wreaking havoc on China’s chip industry.New rules around “US persons” are driving an “industry-wide decapitation.” 4:32 PM ∙ Oct 15, 2022 53 Likes 10 Retweets Worth a read here for newbie and old investors.
“Because of 1 and 2 combined — easy access and lots of LP interest — there are *tons* of these deals on the platform.It’s probably 60%+.If you look closely, you’ll see that ~80%+ of the deals on AngelList that involve a tier 1 lead VC are bridge rounds.
It’s rare to see a deal led by a tier 1 VC, where it’s the lead’s first time investing.
Here’s the thing: these investments, as a whole, heavily underperform.
Why? All of venture investing follows a power law distribution, and it’s no different for the tier 1 VCs.Sequoia has a better distribution than others, but the pattern is the same: 1–3 investments per fund drive almost all of their returns, and 30–50% of their investments are losers.If you were to buy a fund that is the bottom 50% of Sequoia’s investments — you would almost certainly have negative returns.
If you want to mirror Sequoia, it’s extremely important that you get into their best investments.
Their best investments don’t do bridge rounds.So the very act of buying up all of Sequoia’s (or A16Z’s, Founders Fund’s, etc.) bridge rounds is an exercise in adverse selection.As a whole, you’re going to buy an index of their money-losing investments.”
https://medium.com/unpopular-vc/a-word-of-caution-to-angellist-lps-d1ad41574bc5
This is a pretty geopolitical & historical act when we will look back at this.
“Becoming an Anticitizen is to refuse to be tied to one location, one system of rules, or one nation.To become someone who knows the world is laden with more opportunities than their birthplace can solely provide.Someone with the spirit of rebellion boiling in their blood—someone who won’t blindly obey.
Is that you? I hope so.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: whatever you do, just don’t leave it until it’s too late to create your own backup plan, or to start taking the steps to become an Anticitizen yourself.
And take action now.
Whether it’s tracing your ancestry to uncover whether you have claim to a second citizenship, setting up a business to become less financially dependent on someone else for your income, offshoring or diversifying your investments across multiple nations, or moving abroad to begin living a higher quality of life.Do something.Anything.And do it today.”
Abundantia Anti-citizen.In the year 711 AD, the forces of the Muslim Umayyad Caliphate invaded the kingdom of the Visigoths, which lay at the far western reaches of its empire.Within four years, the Visigoths had been compl… Read more 25 days ago · 72 likes · 13 comments · Abundantia “For crypto-enthusiasts, the blockchain’s potential to create a bank-free utopia is best observed in countries whose economy is, in some way or another, compromised.
Despite the cultish grift that has come to define crypto in the United States, a use-case like Afghanistan acts as a sort of paragon of its initial objective: decentralized global finance.But while it’s true crypto use in Afghanistan continues to scale, so too do the concerns around it.”
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/09/afghanistans-crypto-lifeline.html
It’s About time.
“The actions are being described as an “economic war”, and the phrase is not hyperbole.The primary purpose of these export controls is not to protect U.S.industry or to stop the leakage of intellectual property to economic competitors.
Their purpose is to kneecap China’s semiconductor industry — to slow down the country’s push for technological self-sufficiency.
That push has a lot to do with why the Biden administration went ahead and did this now instead of waiting.
Computer chips power everything these days, including everything military, so in the event of a war that cut off China’s supply of chips, the country’s vaunted manufacturing complex would be in trouble.Specialized chips, like AI chips and the processors used in supercomputers, are especially important to the areas of innovation where China is trying to push past the U.S.”
Noahpinion Biden declares economic war on the Chinese semiconductor industry “You come at the king, you best not miss.” — Omar Little In a post back in August, I offered some thoughts on whether and how the U.S.could sanction China in the event of a conflict over Taiwan.My conclusion was this: Because financial sanctions would have huge costs for the U.S.
and its allies and a relatively muted long-term impact on China…I expect u… Read more a month ago · 209 likes · 167 comments · Noah Smith I always learn new things from these stories.
Nuns versus a Big Co monopoly selling communion wafers.
https://thehustle.co/how-nuns-got-squeezed-out-of-the-communion-wafer-business
“You should never try to replace a product-led motion with sales-led one (or vice versa).The goal is always to layer.Product-led sales allows you to evolve your GTM by introducing new growth motions while leveraging existing expertise.Avoiding starting from scratch increases your chances of success and helps prevent you from making incorrect assumptions.”
https://www.endgame.io/blog/elena-verna-ready-for-pls
The Technological rise of China is over.
An interesting take which I don’t agree with.Hong Kong used to be an amazing place.Sadly the CCP has wrecked the potential there.
“Just imagine what will happen when we decide to break free from our one-sided addiction of having pretty much everything we consume produced in China.This will mean a huge homeshoring or friendshoring boom, capital investment on a massive scale into the reindustrialisation of our own economies.
Well, maybe not so much in Switzerland, but a lot of production could move back to Europe, to Mexico, to the US, even to the UK.We have not had a capex boom since 1994, when China devalued its currency.
Sooner or later, Switzerland will have to bring back some forms of capital controls.That will be a feature worldwide.We have gotten used to sitting in Zurich or London and investing money in the US, in China, in Malaysia or Mexico.There are some emerging markets that are attractive today, as they have low levels of debt.But in a world where large parts of the global economy are in a system of financial repression, there will be all sorts of capital controls.
That means that as an investor, you best invest in jurisdictions where you plan to spend your retirement.To me, that means I don’t want to be invested in China at all, for example.The risks of getting stuck there are way too high, as the example of Russia has shown.
Many investors today still pretend that we’re in the system that we had from 1980 to 2020.We’re not.We’re going through fundamental, lasting changes on many levels.”
https://themarket.ch/interview/russell-napier-the-world-will-experience-a-capex-boom-ld.7606
“What point am I making here? There are 26 letters in the alphabet, and that’s very easy to feed to an AI and have it do whatever it wants with that dataset.There are a finite amount of colors that can be created through the hex code system, which gives AI the data it needs to create any sort of art it desires to.
But as a society, I think we have completely butchered the concept of talent identification and and have focused on almost all the wrong data points and questions to be asking, which renders AI in this industry completely useless.
By introducing AI into human evaluation processes, we are allowing it to run with the flawed system that humans have stitched together, which does a complete disservice to the potential of the world.”
Words You’re Only As Good As Your Data Well, it seems like we’ve moved on from the age of web3 to the age of AI.I can’t log onto Twitter without seeing a founder or VC tweet about a new product built on top of OpenAI or coming across applications that will put humans out of business.Unlike the last 30 years, i’d agree that based on current market dynamics and the technical evolution of com… Read more 25 days ago · 2 likes · Mat Sherman “Our beliefs about ourselves can improve our lives.And when we believe in others we can improve theirs too.
Believe in the people you’re close to.
Please take some time to reconsider and update your expectations about yourself and those around you.It can make a big difference.
(And if you don’t, I’m going to have a dag tsog demon decrease your willpower, shorten your lifespan, make you obese, and cause you to become unhappy.)”
https://bakadesuyo.com/2022/10/expectations
This is what so many China bulls are missing.And why their rise is probably over.
“By reorganizing the CCP as an extension of his person, Xi puts all that in jeopardy.
Rewarding loyalty over competence degrades the quality of top personnel.Eliminating competing factions robs decisions of needed criticism and consensus.And centralizing power in the hands of one man mean that that man’s mistakes become national failures.”
Noahpinion Xi Jinping, forever I am not a China expert, nor would I ever pretend to be one.
But last year I do think I managed to catch something important that a lot of people seem to have missed: Xi Jinping is not as competent of a helmsman as he’s made out to be.
The reason I think a lot of people missed this is that Xi has proven incredibly adept at… Read more 25 days ago · 201 likes · 62 comments · Noah Smith “An ever-growing middle class has been emblematic of China’s ascent ever since Deng Xiaoping kicked off the country’s economic transformation in the 1980s.That progress now risks being reversed as millions of people in China face rising living costs, fierce professional competition, a real estate bubble and sluggish growth.”
A little bit gossipy but an interesting profile about the former CEO of Google.People need to give the guy credit, Google would not be the dominant company it is without him.
https://airmail.news/issues/2021-6-26/the-adulterer-in-the-room
“By 2100, India will be an economic powerhouse, with a third of world economic output.That’s double the current share of the US and China, the current co-leaders.
With that steady productivity catch-up, India’s massive population edge — almost 50 percent larger than China and almost four times the US — becomes decisive.But again, this assumes steady productivity catch-up.And the sooner the better, of course.
Were today’s Chinese workers already as productive as American workers, according to the paper, China’s GDP would exceed US GDP by a factor of four.Now India in 2100 will still be just 35 percent as productive as the US.Although a huge leap from today’s seven percent level, that’s “still miles away from the US, China, and WEU.
And it indicates India’s potential to become an even larger economic force through time.”
Faster, Please! ⚡ Why the 21st Century might be the Indian Century (but could still be another American Century) In This Issue The Essay: Why the 21st Century might be the Indian Century (but could still be another American Century) 5QQ: 5 Quick Questions for … economist Giovanni Peri on the economics of immigration Micro Reads: AI art and jobs; the benefits of pandemic prep; zoning reform… Read more 24 days ago · 9 likes · 5 comments “Quality of Life is Better if You Work: That’s right.Rewind to when you were a kid and had summer vacations.Unless you were from a rich family you got quite bored as there was nothing to do except play sports all day (These days? Video games if you are not a good athlete).
Most people in their 60s who are rich and well off do some work.They just enjoy what they are doing and typically clock in around 15-25 hours a week (this is our observation).You don’t want to be working 40-80 hour weeks and you certainly don’t want to hang out with Karen from HR every quarter for your “review”.
This is what “everyone else is doing” and is “normal”.Going back in time, it would be smart to actually master a few things: 1) a sport that will last until you’re 70+ such as tennis (pickle-ball when extremely old), golf, lifting weights and biking/hiking, 2) starting an internet business the *first* month after starting a career/job and 3) setting up one internet business for an exit in your 30s as you may change priorities – kids, supporting your parents etc.
By Getting the Bag Early You Will Prevent the Steep Decline in Functional Capabilities.”
BowTied Bull Mainstream Advice Guarantees a Life Not Worth Living Welcome Avatar! If you’ve stumbled onto this side of the internet, you’re well aware that most of the education system doesn’t teach you anything meaningful.You go through classes all the way up to advanced calculus and yet there are zero classes on how to: 1) lower your taxes, 2) invest at various wealth stages and 3) how the credit/debt system works… Read more 24 days ago · 96 likes · 8 comments · BowTied Bull Thanks for reading The Hard Fork by Marvin Liao! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
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