- Beautiful read about Kyoto, Japan and the idea of building for the very long term.
- In 1610, a single family (Suminokura) decided to build a canal connecting the port of Fishimi to central Kyoto.
- The article talks about how powerful this decision was – the weight efficiency ratio increased 22.5x, the agricultural footprint was a fraction (no need to feed all those ponies), and there was no noise or other pollution. The list goes on.
- Building should be for the long term – for example did you know that the cobble stone streets of Copenhagen haven’t been resurfaced in 500 years.
Misc
Miscellaneous is often where the gems are.
Roelof Botha of Sequoia
- Great profile of Roelof Botha, one of three Sequoia partners who steward the firm.
- He is also the man behind the firm’s latest transformation – into effectively a permanent capital vehicle investing cross the company life-cycle whether private or public.
The Technology Bribe
- “Nearly 50 years ago, long before smartphones and social media, the social critic Lewis Mumford put a name to the way that complex technological systems offer a share in their benefits in exchange for compliance.“
- This “bribe” makes it clear that “this is not an offer of a gift but of a deal“
- “the bargain we are being asked to ratify takes the form of a magnificent bribe.”
- A fascinating theory and tool to understand the current world.
- “The danger, however, was that “once one opts for the system no further choice remains.”
Venture Value and Public Markets
- Venture Capital (VC) deals are not immune to public market wobbles.
- This has already started to happen.
Are you Smart enough to work at Google?
- 10, 9, 60, 90, 70, 66 … what is the next number in this series?
- Give it a try.
- This is a question asked during an interview at Google.
- So is this one “You are shrunk to the height of a penny and thrown into a blender. Your mass is reduced so that your density is the same as usual. The blades start moving in sixty seconds. What do you do?”
- Both of these interview questions are taken from this brilliant book which is about difficult interview questions at top companies.
- Once you tried those questions – hit this preview link for the answers.
Crypto network vs. valuation
- Metcalfe’s law – which states that the value of a network increases with the square of the number of users or nodes – works very well in comparing relative valuation differences across cryptocurrencies.
- Source: JPM.
Another 52 Things List
- In the tradition of Tom Whitwell and Snippet Finance, here is another 52 things list.
- For example:
- “The number of people born in Antarctica (11) is fewer than the number of people who have walked on the Moon (12).“
- “Humans have evolved to out-drink other mammals. “Many species have enzymes that break alcohol down and allow the body to excrete it, avoiding death by poisoning. But about 10 million years ago, a genetic mutation left our ancestors with a souped-up enzyme that increased alcohol metabolism 40-fold.”“
- “It takes about 200 hours of investment in the space of a few months to move a stranger into being a good friend.”
Corruption and Parking Tickets
- Tim Harford writes about a study by Fisman and Miguel of corruption.
- The two economists looked at the behaviour of diplomats in New York City (in the area around the UN building in midtown Manhattan, where many consulates are located).
- Remember, diplomats then had immunity so can happily ignore parking fines. So whether any were left unpaid can be reasonably hypothesised to be down to purely to cultural attitudes to rules.
- By looking at parking violations between 1997 and 2002, Fisman and Miguel found a strong and significant correlation between unpaid tickets and corruption perception.
- The worst offenders – Kuwait, Egypt, Chad, Sudan and Bulgaria. “One Kuwaiti diplomat managed to accumulate two unpaid parking fines every working day for a year.“
- The best – Denmark, Norway and Sweden and, to everyone’s collective sigh of relief, the British – who did not have a single unpaid parking ticket over the six year period.
- “The same may not be true for all British politicians. A certain Boris Johnson once worked as GQ magazine’s motoring correspondent. His editor noted that Johnson had cost GQ “£5,000 in parking tickets”, but he wouldn’t have him any other way.“
Ukraine
- The tragedy in Ukraine is why Snippet took a short pause earlier this week.
- Here are a few interesting articles on how and why we got where we are today.
- This is an excellent, well documented piece from Spiegel on the subject of NATO’s eastward expansion. Did the West cheat? As usual – it is complicated.
- This was a good talk by the brilliant Russian journalist Vladimir Pozner recorded three years ago (2018), who tried to give a point of view not well expressed in Western press. The whole thing is worth a listen.
- The five books series is always great on any topic and this one on Ukraine by Serhii Plokhy, professor at Harvard in Ukrainian History is worth a read.
- This was also an interesting read on the history of Ukraine and Bolshevism and the idea of a nation.
Crypto Future
- Digital assets, crypto, or, as it has been rebranded, Web 3.0, is absolutely worth looking into, not least because of the VC money going into it.
- The number of developers working in Web3, as seen in this chart, is exploding and doesn’t fall with falling prices (full slide deck worth a flick).
- To stay one step ahead this was a good piece from the Generalist, where Mario goes around asking those in the know what the next trends and most exciting projects are.
- Some really cool, deliberately slightly out there stuff.
Prediction Markets
- Google has been running an internal prediction market – Gleangen, and Astral Codex Ten has a great write up on the topic.
- This is the second iteration of such a market (the first was called Prophit).
- Google claims that anyone can now build a prediction market on Google Cloud.
- Prediction markets are fascinating as a tool but have struggled to get really big and more importantly to solve the three key issues (real money, easy to use, easy to create own markets).
- Metaculus is a community dedicated to making accurate predictions (they have a great resource page) as is Manifold. Neither use real money.
- Kalshi is a new startup ($30m of funding) that is trying to make events into an asset class via a real money prediction market. As is Futuur.
- Polymarket, the biggest such market in the US, was recently fined and forced to shut down in the US (it remains open elsewhere).
- There are a few others as well.
Great Stories
- As ever the Collaborative Fund blog puts out another gem collection of short stories. Each holds an interesting lesson.
- Whether it’s how starting from scratch has its advantages – like when German complete disarmament after WWI meant it had the most modern army for WWII.
- Or how Michael Lewis’ first hit book (Liar’s Poker) was followed by a decade break before his next one – the break allowed him to be patient and “start all over again, start completely fresh as if I’ve never written a book before and give myself at least the option of not writing books.“
Human Environmental Success – Ozone Layer
- “Humanity’s ability to heal the depleted ozone layer is not only our biggest environmental success, it is the most impressive example of international cooperation on any challenge in history.“
- Simply fascinating read on how the confluence of science, politics and industry led to this human triumph.
Why Should Anyone be Led by you?
- Recommended by Quintin Price, head of Alpha Strategies at Blackrock (the $1trn active arm that is making a comeback against the firm’s passive dominance) on this excellent podcast, is an intriguing essay – “Why Should Anyone be Led by you?“
- The authors, two business school professors, find that there are four qualities that make a great leader.
- First, leaders must expose vulnerabilities, revealing their approachability. This builds trust, a collaborative atmosphere, and solidarity. Never reveal a weakness that can be seen as a fatal flaw, jeopardising central aspects of one’s professional role.
- Second, good leaders must be great situation sensors. They can sense unexpressed feelings. This requires a fine balance as it needs to be validated i.e. observations must be grounded in reality and not just projections.
- Third, leaders should care, intensely, about the work employees do, something that is hard to fake. This can’t be soft but requires tough empathy – a respectful “grow or go” mentality.
- Finally, and most importantly, leaders must be different and show that difference. This takes time to discover and can’t be over done.
- Although these sound like rules to follow it is incredibly hard to fake and authenticity is key as the article concludes – ““Be yourselves—more—with skill.” There can be no advice more difficult to follow than that.“
Crypto Exchanges
- Binance dominates spot crypto trading volumes (66%) share and this continues to grow.
- The chart was taken from this excellent Digital Asset Outlook 2022 by The Block.
Probabilistic View of Private Equity
- The probability that a mature private equity fund will deliver 2x on investment fell in the 1990s and has since held steady at 30-35%.
- In other words the probability of NOT achieving 2x is 65-70%.
- For >2.5x the probability of NOT achieving is nearly 90%.
- The data uses North America and EU strategies, >$100m, across buyout, growth and turnaround. 2011 vintage year is used to eliminate non-mature funds. This filter led to 1,200 funds.
- Source.
Impact Investing
- Pretty cool historic visual review of Impact Investing from Collaborative Fund.
Ocean Temperatures
- Global oceans continue to warm (measured by OHC).
- Source: Advances in Atmospheric Science.
Science Funding
- Altos Labs has come out of stealth and announced record breaking funding ($3bn) from Bezos and Milner and poached CSO from GSK – Hal Barron.
- This was a great article from the Atlantic surveying the rise of various new science funding approaches and labs, backed by Silicon Valley $.
- The US has a long history of the wealthy backing science. (h/t The Diff)
- Web 3.0 is also getting in the game with for example VitaDAO.
CO2 Pledges
- Governments are getting serious about reducing CO2 emissions – with over 80% of global CO2 emissions “pledged” to be eliminated if we include what is currently in policy documents.
