Hey, Friends –
Welcome to The Saturday Slack, a list on what what I’m pondering and exploring with a short summary for those too busy to dive in.
Writing in public is exposing your brain’s API and making your knowledge extendable and I welcome the 17 new subscribers who have made a “call” on my API since last Saturday! Join 3,420 smart, curious folks by subscribing here:
Quotes I’m Pondering
“Bezos preached urgency: the company that got the lead now would likely keep it, and it could then use that lead to build a superior customer voice for other customers” – Brad Stone in The Everything Store (highly recommend)
“Now that your worry has proved such an un-lucrative business / Why not find a better job?” ― Hafiz
“The idea of caring that someone is making money faster than you are is one of the deadly sins. Envy is a really stupid sin because it’s the only one you could never possibly have any fun at. There’s a lot of pain and no fun. Why would you want to get on that trolley?” – Charlie Munger
“A dollar invested in the S&P 500 in 1968 would be worth $59 today, while a dollar invested in Berkshire stock over the same time period would be worth a cool $6,540.” – Ashvin B. Chhabra
Articles
Excel Never Dies: The future of B2B SaaS is sitting in an Excel spreadsheet somewhere.
Time Billionaire: People don’t really understand the difference between billionaires and millionaires. A million seconds is like 11 days. A billion seconds is 31 years…Let that sink in. If you are young, then you are incredibly rich in the most value resource, time. Make good use of it because most folks in their 70s+ would trade a billion dollars for a billion seconds.
Hip to Be Square: The next decade will look more different than similar to the past one. To better understand the changing dynamics, it can be useful to take a deep dive into some of the companies that are at the forefront of changing them, one of those companies is Square. Although most know them for their small white card reader (which they never patented), they are building one of the more interesting double-sided ecosystems that could not only upend payments, but the entire financial intermediary sector.
- For a deeper dive into Square, and how Jack Dorsey is applying lessons learned at Twitter, check out Not Borings Jack of Two Trades
Letter to a friend who just made a lot of money (Article | 10 mins): Graham Duncan, the Co-Founder of East Rock Capital, outlines some advice to a buddy who just made a pile of cash. While I did not just make a pile of cash, there are deep truths in this piece that can apply to any trying to make big life decisions.
Books
Aspirational Investor: Dr. Chhabra (CIO of Merrill from 2013 – 2015) posits his theory that instead of tying your financial goals to “beating the market,” we should tie them to your most important life goals and allocate your portfolio appropriately. Investing should not be about “beating the market” but rather about achieving your goals with a reasonable degree of certainty.
More Money than God: A very intelligent and deeply thought provoking deep dive on the origins, rise, fall, and subsequent rise of the Hedge Fund industry. There are few industries that have had a large impact on the well-being (or misfortune) of so many people. Says Keynes, “the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent,” something we should all be thinking about in today’s climate.
Podcasts
David Sacks: Legendary Startup Product Expert: The two key pieces of starting and building a valuable technology business are (1) a product hook and (2) a distribution trick. Add tremendous value to the consumer at their first interaction and then find an unorthodox way to distribute the product to end users.
The Potential of Blockchain Technology: Great overview of the business opportunities (outside of crypto currency) underlying the blockchain technology with the head of Andreessen Horowitz’s $1B crypto fund.