Sunday Reads and Listens...Most Venture Capitalists Overpay, The World of Leisure and The Degenerate Economy

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Happy Sunday everyone.

I got my first ride of the summer in on Coronado yesterday. I have been riding the ‘Strand ‘consistently for 14 years now. It is a 19 mile out and back stretch of road/paved path on Coronado….

While it is flat and easy, the wind coming home can be tough. Last summer there was a dramatic increase in electric bicycles on the strand and this year looks to be another spike. The prices keep coming down and the tech keeps getting better. It has been fun to see some of the changes down in Imperial Beach over the years and now I am an investor in Trident Coffee on the ride path which is a place I started stopping at a few years back. I have been known to stop in for a ‘Swagyu’ burger as well at the halfway point.

Today I have a beach run with Ellen, a bike ride and a round of golf planned.

Onward to this weeks links…

Twitter had one of its best weeks of stupidity and misinformation disguised as ‘open’ discussion.

The Russia ‘coup’ or whatever you call it peaked with this Jim Cramer (drunk foreign policy expert) tweet:

People lie to themselves thinking Twitter is the ‘best’ place for real time news. It is definitely the best place to waste time while ‘news’ is supposedly happening.

The best thing I read on Twitter this week was from my friend Frank Rotman of QED. He explains his ‘unpopular opinion’ that most venture capitalists overpay for their early stage investments. I can’t stress this enough. Mike Maples a great investor had this to say in the same thread…

Learn it, know it, live it!!!

The Oceangate submarine disaster played out on Twitter as well which I had to mute. Yesterday I did find this link from Seattle resident Tren Griffin who said that if you were an angel investor in Seattle you had been pitched over the years or knew people who were passengers in the coastal waters. The article provides some background on the company and origin story.

Onward to some more fun links…Riley is starting to write a leisure linkfest and I like it.

The team at Grass Clippings (Social Leverage is an investor) teased some golf course photos(here is the aerial view of the course today) and their latest video introducing the 2024 tournament…

Next up….

I aspire to have a work/life balance as leisurely as Brunello Cucinelli. You go Bruno!

If you want to live a life of leisure it might pay to learn how investing in the leisure space works. I liked this podcast on ski, golf and vacation investing by Ted Seides and Eric Resnick. Ted has a great weekly podcast and I have had him on my ‘Panic’ podcast.

This podcast on the ‘Intellectual mood in China ' was excellent and I Iearned a lot.

Elad Gil has been a fantastic technology investor so this interview is worth a listen. He is so right that 99 percent of the time, the best products start working right away.

Finally, I visited my friends at Chart Report in downtown San Diego Friday where I plan on going a day or two a week to work (it is a fantastic studio) and taped this ‘Trendlines over Headlines’ diving deep into my themes of ‘The Degenerate and LVMH economy’:

Have a great Sunday.