Sunday Reads, Watches and Listens...Two Things Can Be True At Once, Watch Gomorrah

Good morning everyone…

I am excited for March. Normally living in Phoenix, I am excited for January, but we had two awful months of weather so we will likely have just one month of Spring before the heat hits and I am ready for it.

I plan to be outside a lot, hit some golf balls, do some biking with friends and prepare for our annual Social Leverage LP and founder event March 25-27 in Scottsdale. I don’t know much, but our yearly events are the best of any venture fund.

I have lot’s of links to share but I am starting with an HBO show Gomorrah, an Italian crime drama, that had me stealing away weird hours to get through the first two excellent seasons.

I am going to start the links with Warren Buffett telling everyone that Buybacks are good!

Here is grumpy grandpa Warren:

“When you are told that all repurchases are harmful to shareholders or to the country, or particularly beneficial to CEOs, you are listening to either an economic illiterate or a silver-tongued demagogue (characters that are not mutually exclusive).”

I agree with Warren that two things are not mutually exclusive…one that Warren can be a great Investor, and also that Warren can be a lying, cheap, mean, miserable prick (see his comments above).

I am not financially literate enough to battle with Warren on buybacks, but I go to dairy Queen enough to know he has run that like a slave camp and has not invested a nickel in the chain in 50 years. I imagine as usual, good for his shareholders, but as a customer and I am sure an employee, it is an atrocity.

Anyways, I don’t care much about stocks these days because of indexing, my age and how revolting most CEO’s and boards have become. I will always love talking about the ‘game’ because it is the game of capitalism, but I can enjoy the game without having all my chips in or on the table.

I am sure CNBCq and Twitterq will be awash with the buyback topic for a while.

Onward…some more of my fave links this week…

Trung Phan is one of my fave weekly reads. His links and stories are great. You can find this weeks here and should subscribe. It is free.

I had him on my ‘Panic With Friends’ podcast and we had a lot of laughs.

This week Trung linked to the 2007 Steve Jobs and Bill Gates discussion which I just watched again.

Spotify is launching a new feed focused on discovery. I look forward to trying it. Music was the magic that got TikTok going.

Meanwhile, this was a great piece on the power and now disappointment of Amazon’s Alexa and voice platforms.

A few more links…

Asian alternatives to Chinese manufacturing. Speaking of which, an emerging manager we invested in introduced me to an Alibaba of Mexico startup. Good to know hard problems and big ideas are still in play.

Apple watch working on a ‘no prick’ glucose tracking.

I would pay for this ‘spam call’ feature - gifting to friends:

Have a great Sunday.