Anyone who has spent time in SF recently is shocked to see thousands of addicts strewn across the streets slowly rotting.

Every day two more die and we pick up the bodies off the concrete.

My friends who visit always ask how it go this way.

An attempted explanation TLDR: The boomers who vote and run the west coast incompetently instituted their drug legalization fantasy at the same moment a new class of 10x more powerful synthetic drugs hit the market.

Unmitigated disaster has unfolded.

The best short of the AI trend are all these private equity owned software companies.

Obviously hard to short private companies but they are going to get slaughtered.

Couple a disincentivized product & eng team with underinvestment in r&d and they are struggling to keep up AI is clearly a platform shift that dramatically improves the customer outcomes, but that requires a lot more product iteration and development than these companies are prepared to fund as they are operated like cash cows.

As I have traveled around the world over the last year a lot of folks from other countries have been asking me what the hell went wrong in San Francisco.

The city so many called their favorite city in the US has become obviously broken.

Here is what I have been telling them: SF & California is a case study in the danger of a single political party in control.

The loudest voices at the extremes invariably win arguments as their supporters are the most motivated, insane policies are enacted without push back.

Those policies have broken SF.

7 years ago I syndicated my first deal on @AngelList. Since then there have been 90 more syndicates, $30m deployed into 55 companies, 4k LPs, 50% IRR, 10 exits, ~$15m distributed and over $100m in current positions in awesome high growth companies. What a ride.

Some lessons. By far the most powerful part of @AngelList is the LP community. My 4,000 backers are founders, vc's, execs at every major company, finance pros, doctors, lawyers, engineers and every other role you can imagine. Together they are a superpower. I have 4000 people on my team

A thread on the spooky similarities (and differences) between the Dotcom bubble and Crypto ("web3"). They both started with a big true idea. If we connect computers in a network it will be super duper powerful. If we make money digital and programable it will be awesome. Both true and huge.

There is a huge amount of chatter about the insanity of the venture market. Lots of folks throwing around words like "froth" and "bubble". It is full crazy. It is also working. Amongst my companies we just crossed $500m in revenues. A thread on why its working... TLDR: We have moved from the early adopter stage to the mainstream in b2b software. Investors are recognizing this and shit is getting crazy.

The Zoomification of fundraising is a game changer. Lessons from raising my newest early stage fund in 30 days, in August, entirely over Zoom. <Thread> In the bad old days LPs insisted on in person meetings. Given their global distribution that meant a ton of time on airplanes, prioritization of big and high probability check writers and a super duper slow process. Zoom changes this.

I have become convinced the cypto market is a highly leveraged, correlated, manipulated, speculative bubble that has systemic risk. A quick thread:

cnbc.com/2021/04/06/cry… I first looked at bitcoin when it cost less then a single dollar and didn't think it would work at the time. At this point everyone is convinced I am 50,000x wrong. Therefore there is a very strong chance I am operating out of a huge confirmation bias here. But yolo...

There is a giant fight going on right now between the bulls and the bears in venture capital around the right price for the seed and series A rounds. Rounds are happening at prices that would have seemed completely insane even a year ago...

A thread 🔻 One counterintuitive concept is early stage valuations have virtually nothing to do with revenue, profits, or any traditional valuation metrics. This often drives outsiders totally crazy "A one year old startup raised at a billion with no revenue? INSANE!"

Yesterday I posted this tweet and some commenters were confused as to how investing in early stage startups could be an inflation hedge. Here is a brief thread 👇

https://twitter.com/zachcoelius/status/1349114840309063680

Inflation is both fiendishly complicated and sort of simple. A simple explanation is it driven by the amount of currency created and the speed that money moves through the economy. This year a ton of currency was created, but people are not spending.
thestreet.com/mishtalk/econo…

The crazy simple secret to massive success in Silicon Valley is actually incredibly easy: Help People... That's it. If you do it, huge amounts of success (and wealth) will flow your way. But, it is a little tricky... Here are some secrets (a thread) The reason this strategy works is technology outcomes are unbounded and non-linear. A tiny investment of time or money at the early stages can become a fortune. Advisor equity in FB became worth $100m. $5k in the Uber seed became $25m

brandondonnelly.com/2019/05/10/559…

The interplay between beta, alpha, access, capital and brand in the venture investing game makes this easily one of the most fascinating asset classes ever. (a thread) If you are an insider, the beta in venture is just insane. As a result of a multi-decade technology trend, we are all printing money. I have had 30+% IRR every year for six years now and I am just not that good. Any idiot with a checkbook in this business looks like a genius