Warren Weiss: “Its very important to have two years cash runway to give early stage companies the time to build a great product and get paying customers. We hear a lot about product lead growth however this usually takes longer than most startups plan for. There is historical precedence that you can build some of the best companies during a market recession. As a venture investor I have learned you can’t time the market so if you continue to invest in the very best companies in a down market there is a good chance you will have good outcomes for your investors. Customers only buy in a recession when it’s one of their top priorities to either cut cost or drive revenue which is one of the main reasons only the strong companies survive.”
Watched: Perfect Strangers (Italian movie with English subtitles). More on the movie from The Economist.
Matt Levine: “One imperfect but useful way to think about crypto is that it allowed for the creation of a toy financial system. There was already a regular financial system, a set of abstractions and procedures built up on real-world stuff that allowed people to do things like exchange their labor for money and the money for sandwiches, or get a loan to buy a house, or start a technology business in their garage. That system grew up over time, in path-dependent ways; it was fragmented and complicated and embedded in society and history. Different bits of it had different cultures and practices and were regulated differently; the regulation had also accreted haphazardly over time, and it could feel arbitrary and constraining.And then crypto came along with a new set of stuff to do finance to…This game was played by young people who came from the world of traditional finance, from banks and hedge funds and quantitative proprietary trading firms, people who already liked finance and wanted to play with a toy version of it they could shape however they wanted. And—because it’s the game they knew—they ended up replicating much of the world that they came from, only with crypto as the subject matter.”
Vance Ginn: “What set America apart was a vision for commoners to determine their own future, and we continue to rank as the most entrepreneurial country in the world. American’s earliest ideals demanded liberty and responsibility, rejecting directives from a distant King. As a result, the roles of the federal and state governments were carefully managed by a system of federalism, with checks and balances to restrain overreach and protect liberty. According to [Samuel] Gregg, this ongoing experiment is why immigrants are continually inspired to leave their homes and venture to the United States. These core tenants of America have become less defined over the past century. America has increasingly chosen big government over individual liberties, thereby reducing the benefits of free-market capitalism.”
Ridham Desai: “By 2031 we expect India’s GDP to more than double to over $7.5 trillion, the stock market to compound annually at 11% to around $10 trillion, a discretionary consumption boom led by a rise in per capita income from $2,000 to over $5,000 and a quintupling of households earning in excess of $35,000/year to over 25 million, a rise in credit to GDP from 57% to 100%, causing a 17% annual compounding of credit growth, and a doubling of India’s share in global exports. We believe India is set to become the world’s third largest economy and stock market by the end of this decade. As a consequence, India is gaining power in the world economy and, in our opinion, these idiosyncratic changes imply a once-in-a-generation shift and an opportunity for investors and companies. We estimate this New India will drive a fifth of global growth through 2031, led by a combination of offshoring, unique digital infrastructure and energy transition. Of course, many things could go wrong, including a prolonged global recession or sluggish growth, adverse outcomes in geopolitics and/or domestic politics, policy errors, shortage of skilled labour and steep rises in energy and commodity prices. That said, we believe the pieces are in place to make this India’s decade.”
