1/ Why do cost overruns and delays happen? Because incentives are broken. The contractors don't see lower costs and on-time or early delivery as beneficial. They believe they will make less profit just as traditional space contractors did before SpaceX. breakingdefense.com/2021/08/adm-gi…
2/ "If you look at the way things are going right now, we're basically moving to a defense force that's more and more special forces. That's more and more rapid deployment. That's more and more machine learning fighting machine learning." joincolossus.com/episodes/51296…
3/ "I’ve been in the top 5% of my age cohort almost all my adult life in understanding the power of incentives, and yet I’ve always underestimated that power. Never a year passes but I get some surprise that pushes a little further my appreciation of incentive superpower.” Munger
4/ Elon Musk: "As soon as you don’t have any competition, the sense of urgency goes away. And as soon as you make something a cost-plus contract, you’re incenting the contractor to maximize the cost of the program, because they get a percentage.” google.com/amp/s/arstechn…
5/ "They never want that gravy train to end,” Musk explained. “They become cost maximizers. And then you have good people engaged in cost maximization, because you just gave them an incentive to do that and told them they’ll get punished if they don’t." washingtonpost.com/technology/202…
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The unit economics of dense cellular deployments is something I've been working on since I was on the board of directors of a base station startup in 1998.
2/ The company we invested in was RadioFrame, which developed pico and femtocell products. The business was sold to Motorola.
The biggest challenge is to make deployments profitable for the operator. There are other ways to serve customers at lower radio frequencies.
142 GHz!
3/ Another business assuming line of sight and no rain or fog problems was Terabeam. I saw the first demo of the service in the 1990s. George Gilder proclaimed "The Terabeam Era" had arrived.
"South Korea’s Hanwha an 8.8 per cent stake in OneWeb for $300m. Hanwha’s investment suggests a valuation of about $3.4bn for OneWeb." news.google.com/articles/CAIiE…
"Hanwha Systems, which makes Multi-Functional-Radar (MFR) technology, is looking to gain a foothold in the Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) antenna market by supporting Kymeta’s metamaterial-based antenna tech." satellitetoday.com/business/2020/…
Proctologist's too. They really get to the bottom of things during due diligence.nytimes.com/2021/08/09/tec…
2/ FOMO on IPO's isn't as high today as it was in 1999. FOMO about Angel investing was common then too.
During the Internet bubble I would often eat breakfast at the Madison Park Starbucks and would watch Angels passing checks to founders. Yes, paper checks were common then.
3/ Twenty investors invested ~$ 1M in the Amazon seed round in return for 20% of the company. Some of them did so in a Starbucks.
Some people who were asked and declined have never been the same. They remain compulsive Angel investors since they fear missing another AMZN.
2/ FYI, I am currently on a Sweetgreen style food consumption regime and I don't have the necessary interest or patience to discuss ESG issues and ask that replies be limited to unit economics and ROIC at this time (ie, I'm cranky about food issues right now). Thanks in advance.
3/ I have many fond memories of being the lunchtime entertainment at a Monday Benchmark partners meeting. The food was extremely healthy and tasty. The conversation was amazing too. If I ate like that at every meal I would not be on a Sweetgreen style dietary regime right now.
1/ What business is this? As you know, this is my favorite S-1 chart.
2/ "Liquidity and Capital Resources:
Since its inception, the Company has funded its activities almost entirely from funds generated from operations. The Company’s cash and short-term investments balance at December 31, 1985 was $38.2 million."