Misc

Miscellaneous is often where the gems are.

Misc

The Rise of Chinese Biotech

  • China is making immense progress in many fields. Biotechnology is no exception.
  • “A 2024 IQVIA report shows that the share of clinical trials launched by Chinese-headquartered biopharmaceutical companies rose from 3 percent in 2013 to 28 percent in 2023, suggesting a growing involvement of Chinese companies in early-phase drug development.“
  • More interesting charts on the topic here.
Misc

Compliance

  • “Since 2000, the number of professionals working in the field has tripled, with finance companies paying six figures or those at the top of their game. Manicurists, human resources managers, event planners and massage therapists have all proliferated more quickly (according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics) but compliance officers are not far behind.“
  • Source.
Misc

Flying is Getting Safer

  • A New MIT study recently found that things keep getting better.
  • “The risk of a fatality from commercial air travel was 1 per every 13.7 million passenger boardings globally in the 2018-2022 period — a significant improvement from 1 per 7.9 million boardings in 2008-2017 and a far cry from the 1 per every 350,000 boardings that occurred in 1968-1977, the study finds.“
  • This improvement curve has been called “aerial version of Moore’s Law“.
Misc

Bad Fintech Ideas

  • Finance is perhaps unique of all the industries that venture capital has set its sights on in one way – it has been around a very long time and therefore seen its fair share of disruption attempts.
  • Here is a list of fintech business models that the author thinks are bound to fail – some interesting lessons there.
Misc

Changing Market Structures – WallStreetBets

  • Market structures are changing all the time and even staunch fundamental investors need to pay attention.
  • The list is long right now – passive, pod shops, short volatility, options trading boom.
  • This is a good read on the rise of WallStreetBets (founded in 2011) and the culture of the millions of retail traders that have joined the market during and after the pandemic.
Misc

Private Credit

  • Interesting paper on the rise of the now $1.5 trillion private credit market.
  • “In equity, the two great trends have been the shift from public markets to private ownership and the consolidation of American companies’ stock in the hands of powerful investment funds. In debt, by contrast, the great trends have been a shift from private loans to quasi-public markets, democratization and dispersed ownership. In this Article, we chronicle the recent and dramatic reversal of these trends in the debt markets. Private investment funds executing a “private credit” strategy have become increasingly important corporate lenders, bringing into corporate debt the same forces of de-democratization and consolidation that have been reshaping the equity markets.“
Misc

Start-up Failures

  • Are rising sharply according to Carta (just one data source).
  • This is hurting VC funds of certain vintages “Only 9 per cent of venture funds raised in 2021 have returned any capital to their ultimate investors, according to Carta. By comparison, a quarter of 2017 funds had returned capital by the same stage.“
Misc

Slack

  • This blog post argues that tech monopolies are good, short lived, and ultimately “fund” the next disruptor.
  • Within it is an interesting concept of Slack – “Some group of people must exist who are educated, aware, motivated, and at the bleeding edge of a field…who nonetheless have some spare hours in the workweek to spend innovating on something instead of slavishly executing a task.“
  • “It’s necessary to be slightly underemployed if you are to do something significant.“
  • This is called slack.
  • A monopoly is a way to create this slack.

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