4/ @rabois on whether a student should go to college or work for a startup
1) See @paulg's advice in Students Guide to Startups 2) Shares that at PayPal, they urged students to drop out 3) Some of the best entrepreneurs have dropped out
1) Peter's uncanny ability to assess the ability of people 2) Peter and Max personally interviewed all final candidates until IPO 3) Peter and Max avoided MBAs like the plague (except @roelofbotha)
11/ @yishan on the one of the best pranks he ever pulled.
This one was on YouTube cofounder Jawed Karim while they were at PayPal
PayPal wasn't *all* intense competition – they had fun too
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1/ On April 3, 2024, Sapient Capital's Tom Morgan gave a presentation at the Sohn Conference titled "The Most Offensively Taboo Idea in Western Civilization" where he distilled 10 years of curiosity research into a 5 minute talk.
I found this presentation to be one of the tightest, information-dense, and thought provoking talks I've listened to. I wanted to be able to refer back to it easily, so I transcribed the talk and screengrabbed the slides.
I shared the transcript in A Letter a Day (link in bio), but people enjoyed when I shared my transcript of Bill Gurley's "2,851 Miles" presentation on X, so I thought I would share this one here too.
⬇️ Full Transcript with Slides below ⬇️
2/ So I'm not going to talk about a stock today. Instead, I'm going to talk about the most offensively taboo idea in western civilization.
3/ This is Dr. Ian McGilchrist. He wrote, probably the most interesting book I've ever read, The Matter with Things. His focus of his very long career has been the two hemispheres of the brain. Now, you're probably thinking this brain hemispheres stuff has been debunked. It hasn't. It's just nuanced.
1/ On Sept 12, 2023, Benchmark’s Bill Gurley gave a presentation at the All-In Summit titled “2,851 Miles” where he discussed the past, present, and future of regulatory capture in Silicon Valley.
He received a standing ovation and his presentation was dubbed “an instant classic.”
Former PayPal COO David Sacks immediately called it “the best talk in the history of All-In” and said “we need to get it out there immediately so it can start going viral. And I think it will go very viral.”
First Round’s Chris Fralic thought it was “So good. A Perfect TEDTalk” and “it’s gold.”
Shopify Founder and CEO Tobi Lutke commented that everyone should “definitely watch [Bill’s] incredible talk… once it comes out.”
One audience member liked it so much he yelled at Bill to run for President as the applause died down.
I found the talk full of interesting anecdotes and wanted to be able to refer back to it easily, so I transcribed the talk and screengrabbed the slides.
Thought I might try something new and share it here.
⬇️ Full Transcript with Slides below ⬇️
2/ I'm Bill Gurley. I got to Silicon Valley in about 1997. And was fortunate enough to become a venture capitalist in 98. And the entire first year of my career, I had zero interest in interacting with any form of government. It didn't seem necessary for what I was trying to do. I was working with founders and software and technology. I didn't see what it would bring me.
3/ Until one day where I ran into an issue, which I'll tell you about later, that required me to understand what was going on in Washington. So I checked in with a few advisors, they introduced me to this lawyer in DC. Turns out, DC lawyers do a lot of things that aren't lawyering. And he listened to what I had [to say], he said, I'll call you back. He calls me back. He says, Bill, I got exactly what you need. I found a congressman on the committee that matters to what you're talking about. And I can set up a meeting. I go Great, I'll fly out. He goes, No, no, no, don't fly out. He's coming to you. He's coming to me? That's pretty nice. He goes, Do you have a conference room? I said, I'm a venture capitalist. We have lots of conference rooms. So he said, I need you to get some people together. And here's the catch. They need to bring $5,000 each.
1/ With a flurry of successful U.S. tech firms absent from China, would you have been above being the one to bring them there?
Wang Xing wasn’t – creating businesses “inspired” by not just Groupon, but Facebook and Twitter too, coming to epitomize the term "Chinese copy-cat".
2/ His clones were so precise that you almost sensed pride when he added “a Mark Zuckerberg Creation” at the bottom of his Facebook clone.
But ironically, it’s actually for his innovative prowess and creating something the world has never seen before, that we know him.
3/ In 2010, after middling success with his other clones, Wang Xing set out to copy Groupon, but what resulted was one of the world’s most innovative apps.
1/ Coupang $CPNG reported 4Q21 and the market seems to be a bit disappointed (-2.5%) as they had a small miss.
But we think the market is focusing on the wrong things. An overview of earnings and their new disclosures below.
2/ Topline slightly missed at $5.1bn vs cons at $5.2bn. This represents +34% y/y growth and a 1,400bps deceleration from last Q’s +48% y/y. However, in constant currency they grew +39% y/y in 4Q vs 44% last Q.
2a/ Adjusting for currency fluctuations shows their growth deceleration isn’t so stark, but at their size they will continue to slow.
2/ 3Q21 revenues were +10% y/y, which is a 1900bp sequential deceleration from 2Q, and missed consensus by ~1.5%. Adj. EBITDA of RMB 51.3bn missed consensus by ~0.5% and is down ~25% y/y.
There are many pieces to this and we will start to unroll it with their China Commerce.
3/ To the positive, in China BABA added 20mn new users to reach 882mn and they noted on the call that annual active customers (AACs) who spend >10,000 RMB on the platform increased y/y.
1/ What could you do with 4 square meters of retail space?
Try creating over $100 billion dollars of market value with one of the worlds largest retailers.
The path would not be easy though, and at times you would have to risk it all.
2/ With just a 4 sqm stall in an offbeat Chinese market, after 5 grueling years of battling against purveyors of cheap, faked goods, Richard Liu was able to build a chain of 12 electronics stores.
3/ His niche?
a) Never sell inauthentic goods and provide receipts to signal legitimacy.
b) Put price labels on everything so customers know they are getting the same prices as everyone else vs other sellers who endlessly haggled with customers to get their last penny.