Dear Friends,
I knew it’d be a rough week when I spotted a raccoon (my spirit animal) lying dead on the side of the street on my way to grab a Monday morning coffee. Bad omen.
Covid found me this week. There was a brief moment when I wondered, ‘is this what dying feels like?’ But after 48 hours on a diet of Tylenol and bed rest, I’m mostly okay. I write long-form better with a little fever dream, and the isolation helps. (Tested negative this evening, too, so life will resume soon).
Markets were spooky this week (particularly if you are long Meta and Amazon), but I’m not bothered by it. I don’t think there is much new information. The same goes for Twitter.
Today's Contents:
Good Reads: Sensible Investing
Weekly Song: I Wanna Get Better
Good Reads: Sensible Investing
The End of the System of the World: A critical point has been reached; decoupling is for real now. This is another de-globalization piece in the same genre as Peter Zeihan.
The Crypto Story: Where it came from, what it all means, and why it all matters. A 40,000-word guide by Matt Levine. I haven’t finished yet, but everything Matt Levine writes is worth reading. He explains complex concepts with simplicity and ease. He explains why he does what he does best:
In my day job, I write about finance. I like finance. It’s fun to write about. It’s a peculiar way of looking at the world, a series of puzzles, a set of structures that people have imposed on economic reality. Often those structures are arcane and off-putting, and it’s satisfying to understand what they’re up to. Everything in finance is accreted on top of a lot of other things in finance. Everything is weird and counterintuitive, and you often have to have a sense of financial history and market practice to understand why anyone is doing any of the things they’re doing.
Conversely, I didn’t sit down and write 40,000 words to tell you that crypto is dumb and worthless and will now vanish without a trace. That would be an odd use of time. My goal here is not to convince you that crypto is building the future and that if you don’t get on board you’ll stay poor. My goal is to convince you that crypto is interesting, that it has found some new things to say about some old problems, and that even when those things are wrong, they’re wrong in illuminating ways.
FinTech and the Pursuit of the Prize: Who Stands to Win Over the Next Decade? From Coatue. Here are five takeaways:
Tale of Two Business Models and Introducing the “Rule of 200.” The Rule of 200 posits that fintechs should be targeting net retention rate, revenue growth, gross margin, and operating margin above 200%.
Balance Sheets Are Necessary Evils
B2B Fundamentally “Easier” Than B2C Today
Emerging Markets Present Unprecedented Greenfield
Crypto Will Augment the Current Payments Landscape
TL/DR from Howard Lindzon: ‘we overpaid on hype and low margin businesses because we had the fever chasing other growth VC’s and now we did some research and so here it is … own a bank and crypto has potential’
Little Rules About Big Things. This a blog of a bunch of insightful snippets from Morgan Housel. A few examples:
People learn when they’re surprised. Not when they read the right answer, or are told they’re doing it wrong, but when they experience a gap between expectations and reality.
Housing is often a liability masquerading as a safe asset.
Good ideas are easy to write, bad ideas are hard. Difficulty is a quality signal, and writer’s block usually indicates more about your ideas than your writing.
How Spotter is Quietly Fueling the Creator Economy: There’s a growing space where startups are investing in creators before they take off.
TL/DR: This fund has distributed over $600 million since the company was founded in early 2020 and hopes to be at over $1B by the end of Q1 2023. My thought: maybe Income Share Agreements are a better tool for the creator economy than for the more amorphous higher education financing.
Selfie and Song of the Week: I Wanna Get Better
Music video here.
I Wanna Bet Getter should be the anthem of this week. Jack Antonoff is the singer and songwriter behind Bleachers. He is also one of the most prolific creators behind slew of modern pop music, including several Taylor Swift albums (he co-produced last week’s Anti-Hero.)
I also recommend Bleachers on NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert. I love the rendition of Don’t Take The Money (which is one of the domain names that I own) which feels more spoken word than produced. Here is the music video for that original release that Lena Dunham (his girlfriend at the time) directed. It’s perfect. I can’t decide which version I like more.
Don’t Take The Money has been described as "an epic uplifting pop-rock anthem ultimately about how when love is real, it’s worth everything that comes along with it."
You steal the air out of my lungs, you make me feel it
I pray for everything we lost, buy back the secrets
Your hand forever's all I want
Don't take the money
Don't take the money
It’s the best. Jack is a genius.
Anyway, I’ll take the money. And no selfie this week, I just want to get better. We’ll return to that programming in the next edition.
“I Wanna Get Better” by Bleachers
Woke up this morning early before my family
From this dream where she was trying to show me
How a life can move from the darkness
She said to get better
So I put a bullet where I shoulda put a helmet
And I crash my car 'cause I wanna get carried away
[Chorus]
I didn’t know I was lonely 'til I saw your face
I wanna get better, better, better, better
I wanna get better
I didn't know I was broken 'til I wanted to change
I wanna get better, better, better, better
I wanna get better
Thanks for reading, friends. Please always be in touch.
As always,
Katelyn