Green Money, Being Alone & The Anti-VC
What I Learned at School This Week
Hello Friends,
Lately, I’ve enjoyed reading multiple types of books, simultaneously (reasoning here: The Joys Of Reading Many Books At Once, by NPR). But it feels like there’s a point of “too many” where I won’t finish, or get as much out of each of them.
How do you read? Do you have an intentional program or do you more just follow your mood? It’s something I need to think about more. Until then…
Let’s dive into a few things that caught my eye this week.
The anti-VC: Chamath
Chamath Palihapitiya was a Facebook executive (among other things) who left and spoke out against FB, and the greater online ecosystem. In this interview from 2017, he says:
“I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works. The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works.”
When he left FB in 2011, he started a venture capital firm, eventual named Social Capital. But now, after almost a decade, it seems he’s starting to turn against “the broken vc model”. He sights the oversized rounds leading to bloated valuations, the “house of cards” that is the cap table of a company, etc. I think that some of what he says is right. But a lot of it is anchoring, to get his point across. Which, maybe (unfortunately) is simply necessary to make change happen. After-all, you don’t see moderates making the news-headlines very often.
Today, Fortune published an insightful interview with Chamath. It gives a clear story for how he wants to build the Berkshire Hathaway (long-term investments) for tech stocks.
Essentialism
I’ve continued to slowly pick my way through the book, Essentialism. It’s one of those books that I’ve intentionally slowed down because I feel that each page carries so much weight that I need to think on it and don’t want to let it slip out of my mind too quickly. I’ve found myself continuously recommending it the last couple weeks.
This will give you a glimpse of the book’s message:
Learn to be Alone
Something that has stuck with me, post-quarantine, is my love of being alone. As an introvert in sales, living in San Francisco, with great (but nonstop social) friends, I don’t always get the time I want — and I’d say, need.
The concept I keep coming back to, is one that Naval talks about, as it pertains to Mindfulness/Meditation. He says, and I’m paraphrasing: “you want to sit with your thoughts quietly with no distraction, for long enough that you sift through them all and get to ‘inbox zero’ for your mind.” I love this because I constantly have “to-do’s” floating around my head, unorganized thoughts, unfound epiphanies, unfleshed out ideas, people I want to connect with, etc. Without a mechanism to organize them regularly, I wouldn’t get through it all. And on the other side is peace and quiet and focus. And that is the magical space.
But to get to that place, it requires me actively fighting for alone time. And alone-time can be hard. Austin Kleon wrote a great essay arguing why we should Learn to be Alone. It’s quick and well-worth the read.
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” - Blaise Pascal
Speaking of Austin Kleon…
Show Your Work
I’ve been re-reading Austin’s book: “Show Your Work”. It’s the follow-up to his New York Times Bestseller (and my top 5 favorite books of all-time): “Steal Like an Artist”.
The book has such a powerful and simple message. TLDR:
Amazon Pledges $2B to Mother Earth
It’s hard not to cynically question the reason for social good by corporations. Especially at the scale of Amazon.
This week, Amazon announced a $2B (yes, that’s a “B”) Climate Pledge Fund “to invest in sustainable technologies and services that will help the company reach its commitment to be net-zero carbon in its operations by 2040.”
That’s a whole lot of green ($) to put towards green (solutions). But I, for one, am happy to see large companies “doing good,” even if means their tax deduction line-item is bigger over the years. That said, I don’t know much on this topic, would be fun to dig in further sometime.
We are four days away from the half-way point of 2020. Phew. What a year it has been. Excited to see the rest of this unpredictable year unfold.
See y’all on the other side!
With hope,
Brendan J Short