Josh Wolfe Profile picture
Aug 16, 2019 3 tweets 2 min read Read on X
I mean—you KNOW the system is BROKEN when 99% of people are stuck in the audience while less than 0.1% gets to be on stage.

Coachella is the worst—just disgusting inequality.

Same with sports. 99% stuck in stands while the 1%-ers are on the field or court.

amirite @zavaindar
Also RIDICULOUS that we allow MONOPOLIES of sneakers— less than 1% of shoe companies — basically 2 establishment brands (Nike + Adidas)

CONTROL like 90% of the shoes everyday people wear.

#powertothepeople #makeourownshoes #freeyourfeet
I will not rest in fight against inequality until EVERYONE is on one stage or one field together.

Remove the arbitrary boundaries.
Remove the oppressive security guards.
#onestage with..like um..everyone on it.

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More from @wolfejosh

Mar 27
1/ We lost a brilliant, accomplished, self-effacing, humble, kind, compassionate, truth-seeking HUMAN certain only of uncertainty, child like wonder cataloging our fallabilities

I last had dinner with Danny some weeks back (we talked about...
washingtonpost.com/obituaries/202…
2/ We ate🍽 at brilliant friend+ 🎬artist (Moneyball, Capote, Foxcatcher) Bennett Miller's apt + talked ketamine & psychedelics (Danny had done), the pain of conflict in the mideast**, how both free will + consciousness were in Danny's POV total illusions even if useful ones Image
3/ At dinner a friend asked Danny (Israeli) how he was + he answered

The friend thought he said "I'm partly I'll at ease"
And asked "why partly?"
Danny said "huh?"
Friend repeated: "you said you were partly ill at ease"
Danny smiled: "No. I said part of me is in the Middle East"
Read 11 tweets
Feb 21
1/ new Q4 2023 Lux LP quarterly letter—2pgs per post 📖

•Has VC learned lesson?
•cost of capital 📈
•reigning in far-flung fanciful +fraudulent ideas
•when more are racing🏎️ to fund far FUTURE like fusion/ quantum/space elevators🙄

👇Lux funding the neglected: MAINTENANCE…

…Over the next decade, we don’t need FUSION, we need more FISSION. We don’t need quantum computers, we need more chip production. We don’t need snake oil salesmen peddling longevity schemes, we need secure reliable production of medicines in scant supply. We don’t need to build space elevators, we need to rebuild our arsenal of democracy to better equip ourselves and our allies to deter our adversaries.

The breakthroughs of the future cannot—and will not—lie on the breakdowns of the present and a break up with the past.Image
2/
•the merit + marvel of MAINTENANCE
• recall capex has 2 parts: growth + MAINTENANCE, often in competition with each other…

•…meanwhile contrary to expectations––a HARD LANDING hardly seems improbable

consider:
-the concentration of capital in the 10 largest stocks of the S&P is the highest it’s been since the 1970s Nifty Fifty.

-across all public companies, earnings fell more than sales growth, with margins compressing and record bond issuances increasing corporate indebtedness. A rising focus on margins has led to layoffs at over 1,000 tech companies totaling more than 250,000 workers last year

-such concentration within the S&P’s components means that a handful of companies doing well can mask the weakness in hundreds of other stocks. Investor expectations have soared around AI, and this year will show whether the fundamentals follow and the tech giants cement their dominant positions or lose hundreds of billions as investors flee. Should the market caps of the ‘Magnificent Seven’ fall, we expect it will deepen pressure for cutting-edge AI/ML research groups to spin out voluntarily to maintain their momentum as independent ventures or else depart involuntarily due to internal fiscal discipline or external activist pressure.

-The consensus as recently as Q2 2023 was an economic hard landing following a period of heightened inflation, rising rates, collapsing banks and high volatility. That pessimism has since transitioned to widespread belief in a soft landing alongside robust employment figures and expectations of the Fed cutting rates to maintain economic prosperity. Prediction markets have Trump leading Biden, and some investors believe the market has been rallying in anticipation of pro-business policies should Trump win or in response to Yellen offering an abundance of liquidity. Yet, a soft landing is hardly assured. Many surveys suggest people—despite having empirically higher incomes and net worths—feel worse emotionally due in part to sticker shock from the higher prices of everyday goods. Real estate, a key part of people’s net worths, saw sales drop to the lowest level in nearly 30 years, with 7% mortgages all but unaffordable for new homebuyers, increasing pressure on the rental market. A recent analysis by the New York Fed found credit delinquencies rising, particularly for auto loans. With elevated interest rates, consumers may struggle to maintain their mortgages, auto loans and credit card debts, leading to a cutback on essential purchases and triggering a recession. Nationally, an inverted yield curve (3-month and 10-year) continues to send a warning signal, and globally, debt is now at a record high of over $300 trillion. In just the past three years, there have been nearly 20 sovereign defaults across 10 countries, more than all defaults in the last two decades. The risk of distressed debt rippling chaos out of emerging countries is high.

A hard landing hardly seems improbable.Image
3/
•FUTURE venture returns are premised on PRESENT malaise produced from PAST excess
•12,000 startups in 2010––50,000 in 2023
•$300 billion of VC in 2021 📉to ~$170 billion in 2023
•death rate of startups AND funds📈
•“powder, pace, pullback”
•kintsugi…

.. With capital allocators directing both assets and attention elsewhere, we maintain our prior prediction of the powder, the pace and the pullback. First, we expect a lot of dry-powder to prove wet (capital that will be used to shore up weak companies in underwater portfolios rather than invested into new ventures). Second, we expect that pace of industry-wide investment will continue grinding slower (one large growth fund that did nearly 200 deals in 2021 executed just 20 investments last year; another once-active giant fund conducted just seven; many other funds have run into fundraising speedbumps). Third, the pullback: there will be many more dispiriting exits in venture, with soft landings for talent but hard landings for investors.

We remain conditionally optimistic even as venture broadly contracts for two reasons. First, the loosening of talent across the tech industry allows for the maintenance and cross-pollination of scientific progress. We spend a lot of time recruiting top talent to our companies––in recent months, recruiting dozens of employees from Apple, Spotify, Scale AI, Google, Stripe, Intel, Meta, and Adobe into our portfolio. Second, three key Lux investment areas we summarize as GPT-4, the G7, and GLP1 (which is to say artificial intelligence, defense for global allies and biotech/health) are poised to continue taking advantage of the need for maintenance in creating momentum and magnetism. We will walk through each of these sectors in turn….

…Software is how we maintain most of today’s complex systems, cobbling together code into the combinatorics of capabilities that power our applications. Software engineers constantly maintain their code to address security vulnerabilities, fix bugs, prevent data loss, improve performance, and ensure compatibility with new hardware and software releases. Future functions are merely the present code evolved from past engineering efforts. As much as 80% of financial transactions use FORTRAN or COBOL––60-year-old programming languages. Nearly half the banking system uses COBOL, and it runs 95% of the time you swipe your ATM card….

…Lux has devoted exceptional attention to funding robust and open software platforms, particularly in artificial intelligence, where Lux family companies Hugging Face, MosaicML (acquired by Databricks), Runway, Osmo, Together AI and Evolutionary Scale have all used open and maintainable approaches to build world-class technology businesses….Image
Read 7 tweets
Jan 19
1/ THE TURNAROUND
Something changed recently, making many abuzz with confidence + optimism for the FUTURE of San Francisco—

—What changed? @DanielLurie will be Mayor.

Having spent time with Daniel I am 💯convinced…

1 he truly ❤️ LOVES SF 🌉

2 he will make SF safe again👮👮‍♂️ Image
3. That means *refunding* police👮—while being compassionate for those w/mental health problems—yet tough on crime to stop it + make everyday working families feel safe & secure

4. Just how Mike Bloomberg saved NYC
Daniel’s wealth means a very important thing—HE CAN’T BE BOUGHT
5.
He has already shown (founding + running the widely praised charity Tipping Point)…

…that he can persuade rich people to be selfless and got them to give over $500M to help house, employ, and educate hundreds of thousands of Bay Area families.

Meanwhile…
Read 6 tweets
Dec 26, 2023
1/ INDIA. 🇮🇳

"Hey I'm walking here!!!!" Image
2/ 🇮🇳 Image
3/ 🇮🇳


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Read 79 tweets
Nov 29, 2023
1/ New Lux Capital letter to LPs — Q3 2023

theme: “ REALISM ”

let’s get real… Image
2/
-The history of science is the evolution of INSTRUMENTS––our invention of them, our inquiry of the natural world using them

-The human discovery of REALITY––science––is darkness dazzled by the excesses of light

-…watching an algorithmic feed that highlights the most heinous activities humanity has ever undertaken even as it suppresses stories of the pervasive goodness radiating from our multitude of multitudes.
Image
3/ We at Lux are more constructively POSITIVE and conditionally OPTIMISTIC than we’ve ever been. HOW?

Because we are at a nadir of negativity, where observably EVERYONE we speak to is overwhelmingly and abundantly PESSIMISTIC

This isn’t INSENSITIVE indifference about the state of the word but a difference in SENSIBILITIES. This is not the calloussness of Baron Rothschild nor the calm of Warren Buffett.

The odds of incrementally NEGATIVE surprise appear to us LOWER today than the possibility of substantial POSITIVE surprise––especially from the science that creates compounding progress in the form of new ventures that we find and fund.
Image
Read 5 tweets
Nov 7, 2023
My morning reading––replica editions

with editorial layout of ton of national + local papers

Why? Because the most important stories are often the ones the editor says are less important (hidden on like page C22) but i find higher signal/more important than front page
Image
2/ I use Pressreader (on ipad + desktop)

Here is one EXAMPLE
Not front page news––but a small article on pg.13 of The Guardian

To me reading between the lines i see higher probability than people expect of major disruptive UNION/LABOR STRIKES in UK leading up to Christmas...
Image
3/ And this from NYT page C2 which sent me to both read the Stanislaw Lem sci-fi story The Invincible and download the new PS5 video game
Image
Read 7 tweets

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