The Generalist: ” We are taught to take our rejections with dignity, to view them as permanent and inflexible. But how often do we stop trying just before our luck is about to turn? What if one final, ferocious push is all that’s needed to convince that venture investor, land that promotion, recruit that game-changing hire, or seal that sales deal?…A founder’s job is really a dozen jobs, stacked head to foot under a trenchcoat. One that can be easy to neglect is selling. As a founder, you must sell your business non-stop: to VCs, customers, employees, potential hires, and the media. Doing so can elevate your standing and accelerate your progress.”
The Hill: “Political liberalism ensures our freedom to participate in self-governance. Economic liberalism promotes the freedom to innovate, produce and exchange goods and services for our mutual benefit. Epistemic liberalism encourages freedom of thought and expression, as well as respectful exchange of conflicting ideas. And cultural liberalism encourages us to respect the choices of others so long as they don’t violate anyone else’s rights. It’s a messy process, but this system moved the U.S. from a predominantly agrarian economy to a technologically advanced economy. It transformed a society where self-governance was only available to the privileged to one where all adults are frequently encouraged to participate in our democratic republic. We can practice different faiths and religions, and expressive freedom is not only a right but part of the cultural ethos. Clearly, ideas do have consequences. To defend these corners of liberalism is to defend progress.”
Bloomberg has a comparison between the business models of Nvidia and solar panel makers: “Nvidia’s competitive edge is in designing chips, and it outsources the capital-intensive business of actually making them to foundries such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. The solar companies are all physical producers, and as a result they’re exposed to a never-ending rollercoaster ride of depreciation and obsolescence. That shows up in Nvidia’s 56% return on assets, compared to less than 10% at the panel-makers. There’s also the issue of monopolistic power. While photovoltaic manufacturers are fairly interchangeable and competition is cutthroat, Nvidia’s lead in making AI-appropriate processors means it has about 90% of the relevant market — a license to print money, or at least extract it from cash-rich Silicon Valley tech companies.”
strategy+business: “In a perfect world, your company would be a well-oiled machine. In reality, most companies have sludge in the engine that’s keeping them from moving as quickly as they want. Call it sludge, friction, or transaction costs, getting things done at work—whether that’s small tasks, such as sending emails, or bigger initiatives, such as developing a generative AI approach—often takes longer than anyone would like. What if that could change? In PwC’s 27th Annual Global CEO Survey, CEOs said 40% of time spent on activities including emails, meetings, and administrative processes is inefficient in their organizations. That’s a significant drain on money, morale, and time that could be better spent on transformation, business model reinvention, or just about anything else.”
FT: “Falling fertility rates are one of the biggest challenges facing our world…[The] global shift towards very low fertility, with the exception (so far) of sub-Saharan Africa, is among the most important events in our world. One implication is that the population of Africa is forecast to be larger than that of all today’s high-income countries, plus China by 2060. Another is that familiar population pyramids, with the largest numbers at the youngest ages, are inverting. In South Korea, for example, males aged 50-54 are 4.3 per cent of the population, while those aged 0-4 are a mere 1.5 per cent of it. Similar inversions are occurring elsewhere, notably including China and even, albeit more slowly, in India.”
