Writing the name of your ishta 108 times every day with red ink is so underrated yet a very effective way to connect with him/her. Our grandparents used to do these simple things to stay connected .
#Sanatan

1/ Thread: "A Silicon Valley Ponzi Scheme"

Thanks to @chamath for laying this out in Social Capital's 2018 annual letter.

I've always appreciated his outspokenness.

2/ The hardest thing for most startups today is the path to market: first finding product-market fit & a way to reach customers, then building a ruthless machine to acquire, monetize & retain them.

3/ Because of this, when the VC industry invests capital into fast growing startups today, the plurality (if not majority) of invested capital will go into user acquisition and ad spending, for better or worse— usually worse.

4/ Todays massive venture-backed advertising, sales, and user acquisition playbook has morphed into one that champions growth at any cost.

This is creating a big bill that will soon come due...

5/ Ad impressions and click-throughs are bid up to outrageous prices by startups flush with venture money, and prospective users demand more and more subsidized products to gain their initial attention.

1/ So here is a thread on how I turned $32,000 into $1.2m and back to pretty much zero (once taxes are paid).

Just note, I am not bitter or salty in any way at all, the last 2 years have been an amazing ride - travelled the world, been wealthy, been poor.

2/ Dec '16, my advertising agency folded, I had a little bit of money left and I put $32k into Bitcoin and Ether. As it started to go up I diversified into everything, Monero, Dash, this that, any crap - even Ripplecoin. Everything just kept going up.

3/ By March I think I had around $300k and $500k by the summer. I used to take 25% out but towards the end of the summer I got greedy and put it all back in and by December it was $1.2m.

4/ Thinking I was an absolute genius I decided to start a bunch of businesses. As silly as it sounds I had this goal of making $5m as I wanted to buy Bedford Town Football Club and get them in the league, and as Crypto was going up forever I needed 6 months.

5/ So:
- Trading (income 1)
- Podcast (income 2)
- Mining (income 3)
- Mining pool (income 4)
- Consulting (income 5)

Yes - all of the above as a one-man army :)

1) Core attributes of a promising founder worth following:
- Progress/trajectory over time
- How well they lead a team &
- Make the vision happen
- Most impressed when someone is way ahead of where you thought they would be when you check up/see them a few months later.

2) Indie Makers have such a benefit of being small, fast, nimble workers in comparison to big companies.

We can easily pivot and vastly change a project of ours. We can change as we learn more about our users.

Big companies can take months/years for even the smallest of pivots.

3) Before you find a product market you can pivot your project as many times as necessary until you find something that works.

Then you only have one thing to do: scale, scale, scale.

4) Be obsessed with the little details.
- listen to every single person who uses your product
- reply to every single person who emails you about your product
- ask them what they like and do not like
- iterate your product, make changes, pivot if necessary

5) Paul Graham's (@paulg) name came up with a feeling of great admiration! Naturally! It was Paul who said:

In the early stages of a company just;
- write code
- talk/sell to customers to stress test your idea

Nothing else.

This is Kuinini ‘Nini’ Manumua, the woman who was ultimately displaced by inclusion of Laurel Hubbard.

She’s 21, and it would have been her first Olympics.

"How the Avengers would respond to the Capitol riot" (a thread)

CAPTAIN AMERICA - tells Falcon, "I fought Nazis once before. They're extremely dangerous." They then see the guy scaling the Capitol wall fall into the shrubs. Falcon: "You sure these are the same Nazis?"

IRON MAN - lands by the guy carrying the podium. Says, "Mind if I borrow this?" then tosses it to Hulk, who swings it like a bat at the mob. Guy: "Hey, that's MY podium!" Iron Man: "Actually it's the Speaker's. And technically, it's a lectern." Then punches him through a wall.

BLACK WIDOW - enters hotel room where Jack Dorsey is tied up. Rips duct tape off his mouth. Jack: "I'll do anything you want!" BW: "Disable POTUS's Twitter. NOW!" Jack fumbles with his phone. "Done. Anything else?" BW: "Yeah. Trim your beard for God's sake." *tosses him clippers*

HULK - grabs a selfie stick from one of the guys and beats him over the head with it. Deeming it too small, he grabs another guy's Confederate flag and takes out a whole swath of rioters. He then tosses the flag to Cap, who uses it as a javelin to impale a fleeing Ted Cruz.

HAWKEYE - hears Iron Man in his earpiece say, "Looks like Orange Julius is tweeting from another account." Hawkeye: "On it." He locks in on Trump through the White House window and fires an arrow, knocking the phone out of Trump's hands. Hawkeye: "Damn that felt good."