FT: “There is plenty of reason to believe that games can motivate us to push ourselves in ways we would otherwise resist. One survey of the experimental evidence concludes that physical activity can be boosted by gamifications such as “points, levels, rewards, leader boards, narratives and teams”, a finding that will be familiar to anyone who has been drawn in by step trackers and fitness watches. The irony is that gamification is a brittle imitation of an actual game.”
SaaStr: “3x net [for VC funds] isn’t aspirational. It’s table stakes for survival. Let’s translate this into the language LPs actually speak: IRR (Internal Rate of Return). A 3x net return over a typical 10-year fund life translates to roughly a 12%-15% annualized IRR depending on deployment pace. That might not sound impressive on its face—but remember, this is net of fees and carry. Top quartile VC funds typically achieve annual returns ranging from 15% to 27% according to Cambridge Associates research. That’s the performance bar you need to clear to stay in the game.”
Martin Wolf: “[Daren] Acemoglu’s most recent book is timely and thought-provoking. It is also an important call to arms. It is so for good reasons: hard-won and precious freedoms are now at stake. What Happened to Liberal Democracy? is also no mere polemic. It is factual. Above all, the book addresses fundamental questions. What is liberalism? Why is it so precious? Why is it internally conflicted? What has made it endangered? Above all, how are we to save it? His analysis of these questions starts from a fundamental point. Unlike many free-market liberals, he insists that “Democracy . . . is neither at odds with liberal ideas nor an add-on but an integral part of liberalism’s values.” What, after all, is the value of freedom of thought and expression if they can have no political effect? Freedom, he insists, is at least as much about democratic politics as it is about markets.”
WSJ: “There are several potential explanations for why the stock market has disconnected from GDP. One is that it’s a bubble. Another is that it tells us something about the future, namely that growth is going to accelerate. In a bubble, stock prices typically go up faster than earnings, inflating valuations (i.e. the price-earnings multiple). But in the last year, earnings have risen faster than prices. Exclude Amazon.com and Alphabet, whose results were inflated by investment gains, and earnings were up a stunning 32% in the second quarter so far, according to FactSet. The multiple has thus declined. Much of this, of course, is because of AI, which is driving demand for cloud storage and computer chips. AI itself may well be in a bubble. But the boom isn’t just a tech or AI story. The median earnings growth of S&P 500 companies has accelerated to 13% from 8% two years ago, according to Bank of America.”
