with AI taking off, creativity matters more than ever

i'm working on a talk on why we should all be more like Rick Rubin, slides below:

13 questions that will change your life: @tferriss once said:

“If you want confusion and heartache, ask vague questions.

If you want uncommon clarity and results, ask uncommonly clear questions.

Often, all that stands between you and what you want is a better set of questions.”

Here are a few questions from my stash of ‘better questions’:

my biggest takeaways from the MFM podcast with Amjad (founder of replit): #1 - "Do What Makes The Best Story"

When you're at a fork in the road. Two paths that you can't decide between. Choose the path that makes the best story.

story from the pod: Amjad hacked his university to change his grades. Gets caught.

Confess? Or deny...

new essay: Elon's Philly Special (@elonmusk)

Remember the "Philly Special"?

It's was the Superbowl, 2018.

Philadelphia Eagles vs. Patriots

Philly is the underdog vs. Tom Brady.

With 1 minute left before half.. they pulled off what's now known as the "Philly Special": 2/ Philly had the ball. 4th & goal.

Conventional wisdom: play it safe. kick a fieldgoal. Take the points.

But Philly decides to go for it. The commentator is stunned, listen:

"This is an unbelievable call. This could decide the game... Woah baby. he's a gambler"

Whenever I hear someone wants "life balance", I know they will end up dissapointed.

Not only is life balance nearly impossible to have -- it's the wrong goal. They're shooting at the wrong target.

Here's how I think about it isntead..: First, I'll be honest:

I want ALL the things. (money, love, happiness, fun). I'm sure a wise monk would tell me to have zero desires blah blah

But I can't help it. I want my life to have all those buckets filled up. I want to be overflowing with time, money, happiness.

I want a fat house, 3 kids, and a decent set of abs.

shit, it's not just big picture stuff. I want a taco, right now.

for the past 10 years, I've kept a scratchpad of notes called "money wisdom"

anytime I read, heard, or learned something wise about wealth - I wrote it down... here they are: THE RICH AREN'T JUST "LUCKY"

Pretend we took all the money, and re-distributed it equally. Everyone got $100,000.

Within 10 years, the rich people would be rich again.

wealth building is a skill that can be learned.

For most people, they need to make 3 small shifts..

I got greedy.

For 5 years I've watched @awilkinson & @XavierHelgesen build $100M+ empires "buying businesses"

I love those guys. Invested in both.

But if you sit around a barber shop too long. You'll end up with a haircut.

Here's the story of me buying my first business.. It's Jan 1. I call @benmlevy

Ben - no more startup shit.

Huh?

No new ideas.

We're buying businesses.

And we're not tip-toeing in. We're going balls deep.

New slogan: "We put the privates in private equity"

One of the most painful parts of being a founder, is begging for intros or cold-emailing into the abyss trying to get in front of investors

Especially if you're an outsider or first time investor.

A few months ago, my buddy @julian had a great idea on how to fix that. When I was applying to college, California came out with the "common app"

One application, and you've applied to all UC schools.

What if we did that for startups?

One pitch, raise your seed round from 15 badass investors?

Enter - SeedChecks.com

I just sold my 2nd company! (@MilkRoadDaily)

super happy.

- grew from zero to 250,000 readers in less than 1 year
- self funded & profitable even w/ crypto crash
- biggest daily crypto newsletter

here's how it happened.. Me and Ben decide we want to start a crypto business.

But we're too dumb to do anything fancy.

So we stick to what we know.

Writing.

Let's make a newsletter that summarizes "what happened in crypto today?"

This year I learned that there is no"smart money"

A16z, Sequioa, Chamath, Tiger, Tribe Capital, Coatue, Softbank, Paradigm, Ark, 3AC, Alameda, FTX, etc..

all made terrible financial decisions, at huge size.

and yet - most will get richer. They play a rigged game.

chamath made bank off his shitty spacs as a promoter

& funds managing billions will make hundreds of millions in fees as a REWARD for losing their investors money

Here's the 30 second summary of the FTX drama that is blowing up in crypto.

1/ How FTX (a multi billion dollar co) almost died overnight

2/ And why this is a god tier strategic move by @cz_binance OK so it starts years ago. Binance was an early investor in FTX

Can you imagine if you were a 32 year old competing with Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

That’s @thetimellis

His company, Relativity Space, is worth $4.2 billion and launches fully 3-D printed rockets into space. His origin story is awesome:

- Interns at Blue Origin where he pitches them on fully 3-D printing rockets
- They say “nice R&D” but don’t do anything with the project / idea
- Quits to start his own company at 25 years old

I just talked to @reidhoffman about crypto.

Here's what he had to say... If you don't know who Reid Hoffman is...

1. Creator of LinkedIn (sold for $20 billion+)
2. Early investor in Facebook & AirBnB
3. Wicked good settlers of catan player

He's a legend in silicon valley.

So I wanted to know. What does he think about crypto & web3?

Side Hustle Saturday:
Create a speaker booking agency for social media stars.

(aka - how the "Washington Speaker Bureau" makes $100M+ a year) THE PROBLEM :

Events are always looking for speakers to headline their events.

Speakers = make event feel more legit + help sell tix

BUT getting in touch w/ famous people is hard.

I have a new hero and her name is Sarah Moore.

• Under 30 years old
• Had no money, no experience. Biggest asset was her car (a RAV4)
• Spent 1 year hunting through 100,000+ businesses to find ONE to buy
• Bought a $20M+ business called “Eggcartons.com”, all debt Sarah goes to Harvard.

Decides she wants to buy a business. Creates a private equity fund (PE)

But..

• her "office" was the school library.
• her "fund" was non-existent as she had no money
• her "analysts" were 50+ interns she found on Craigslist

My f*cked up management style:

1 - There is an imaginary "Trust #" above everyone's head

it goes 0 to 100.

0 = no trust
70+ = you try hard, sometimes
80+ = you try hard, but usually don't succeed
90+ = you try hard, & usually succeed
100 = I trust you with my life A winning team = a team I trust.

by default, I trust (everyone starts at 85).

you go up/down from there.

TRUST:
1/ will you act selfishly if given the chance?
2/ will you try hard?
3/ do you have the skills to pull it off?
4/ can you accurately explain"how X is going"?

Behind the scenes with Peter Levels (the guy who makes $2.7M/year, with 1 employee and 0 f*cks given)

1. He's hilarious
2. He makes ~$3M/yr with 90% profit
3. Owns almost nothing (1 bag)
4. Has 1 employee

Here's how he does it He has 4 businesses, all around the idea of working remotely

1) Job Board (RemoteOK)- $1.,600,000/yr
2) Nomad List - $900,000/yr
3) Rebase (immigration service) - $150,000/yr
4) Readmake (e-book) - $300,000/yr

Total: $2.95M revenue,. ~70-90% profit margin, 1 employee

I have made an irreversible decision. ^caught your attention didn't it?

It caught mine too.

@safwaankay used this as his subject line when he emailed me asking for a job.

(spoiler, he got the job)

Let me break down the full email and why it worked

last month I tweeted that I'd give out 1 ETH grants to web3 builders.

1000+ people applied. We picked 13 interesting builders and gave them 1 ETH (no strings attached) to build whatever they wanted.

Here's what they built #1 - @PourjafarNima, a 16yo highschooler.

Built Sol Blocks, a lego system for building smart contracts (like scratch for solidity)

sol-blocks.vercel.app

During demo day, he got a job offer, but he declined because his mom was calling him downstairs for dinner😅

2 weeks ago, I tweeted this. (and here's what happened)

https://twitter.com/ShaanVP/status/1514995408208117764?s=20&t=wg4G18Ibb5poajOzvdxJYQ

1/ we planned to give away $25K to people building in web3 from @MilkRoadDaily

Then companies like @thirdweb_ and @calm jumped in and the pool has grown to $50K+ !

Let's try an experiment. We just got a wire for $25K to sponsor @MilkRoadDaily - and I want to give it all away.

Web3 is full of speculators, not enough builders.

So let's give $25K to builders. Not an investment. Just free money. No strings attached.

here's how it works: 1/ Anyone can apply to get a grant.

2/ Let's call it "Milk Money", because, ofc

3/ Each builder gets 1 ETH to fund 1 month of building

4/ You can build anything, whatever itch you have to scratch. It can be big, small, weird. Your choice.

5/ Only rule, you must ship it.