George Mack regularly pumps out home runs. I consider this one of them, and it has drastically reframed how I manage my day. Examples this week include: writing email templates in Briskine, setting up one-button email automations in Airtable.
On creating spaces as leverage for networking. Highly recommend the entire thread. Would love to implement this with weekly/monthly homecooked meals in San Francisco.
I stumbled across this piece a few days later, which is exactly about a man who built his entire reputation around his ‘yacht’ - in this case, a conference for family offices, that attracted royal families, Steve Wozniak, Janet Yellen, etc. Proof of effectiveness, though not to be used as moral direction.
Inside Wealth-Conference Con Man Anthony Ritossa's Wild Web of Lies
A VF investigation reveals that a self-styled knight and purported Nobel Prize nominee is actually a Wall Street washout, a deadbeat dad, and a con artist, repeatedly jailed by European authorities. It was a warm June evening in Monaco. Outside, yachts were plying the azure sea. Inside, flashbulbs were popping.
www.vanityfair.com
As with the S&P500, indexing may be the easiest and most certain path to great returns in startup investments. Why don’t more funds try that strategy? Because they need to justify management fees (less likely) and because of ego (more likely).
Ideas for Angel Investors #1: Indexing
Hi folks, Patrick Ryan here from Odin. We make it easy to invest together in startups and funds, with SPV's Apply to access syndicates In early stage investing, outlier deals are all that matters. As I mentioned a few weeks back, even amongst Y Combinator's 70+ unicorns, the top 10 have produced well over 2/3 of the value.
blog.joinodin.com
Strategy is overrated. Execution is pretty much everything. (Ignore the click-bait-y title, imo this channel is actually quite high value).
The North Star for every idea→company should be 10 paying customers, and everything that doesn’t push towards that goal is pretty much useless.
Which reminds me of this piece by Daniel Gross, which I have sent countless times to people at the earliest stages of startup-ing.
10X: Metrics for Early Stage Startups
TL;DR: I have an idea; not sure what to do next; guide on metrics to set in order to achieve a seed round or Series A.] Say you're working on a project somewhere. It might not even be a company. Nobody cares about what you're doing.
dcgross.com
Especially for B2B sales, don’t sell a vision of success. Rather, sell the promise of avoiding failure. Most people are deeply motivated by a desire to be invisible and not be targeted when they are hidden/comfortable in the crowd. Regardless of your opinion of Peterson, quite insightful throughout.
The macro is actually impossible to really predict, although it is (and has always been) tempting to try and foretell. Buffett and Munger have a similar approach - ignore the macro, focus on good business, and you will get ahead of your competition because they can’t help but spend time and energy on it. (Long piece, skimming will get you 80% there). Inspired #3 of How Smart People Waste Time.
The Illusion of Knowledge
I've been expressing my disregard for forecasts for almost as long as I've been writing my memos, starting with The Value of Predictions, or Where'd All This Rain Come From in February 1993.
www.oaktreecapital.com