I read Timeless books. Podcast about them on Rational Founder 🔜 @ https://nitter.cf/t.co/YmDD3jsaJG. Invest @ https://nitter.cf/t.co/mNaTPTDk1N. prev https://nitter.cf/t.co/48ntdpG7xQ (top25 pod). British-Persian in Alps
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Joined July 2008
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some personal news: ~6 months ago i joined tesla as a senior software engineer. as the quoted tweet below says, am doing a bit of everything, & not a trad swe role, rather "full-stack operator" building a lot of 0-to-1 really cool internal stuff i can't really talk about.
i'm going to share in this 1 tweet some of my thoughts around careers.
ppl are surprised that i'd go back to a corporate role, well. this reminds me of when @antoniogm joined apple after yrs of independence (except he got paid wayyy more & i haven't had a slack crusade attack me).
i believe if u take a role it should only be to challenge urself & learn/grow. not decay like most jobs.
let me just tell u that this is not a trad corporate. the hype is real. the ppl are insanely talented & obsessed. it operates at mega startup speed. the ppl are next level. i will aim to do really great work here, & whenever i'm done, i'll be done with big companies forever (or employment for that matter). this was an exception given how it functions (like a literal rocket ship).
as munger stated taking this multidisciplinary path is not easy & he doesn't recommend it. it's very humbling to be around so many 100x coders or other technical ppl. u really need to have a lot of humility. i've had many "high status" non-technical operating role offers on the plate last few yrs that i've turned down (all had v nice pay). instead decided to double-down on my later-acquired technical skills. seems i have some disease where i seek endless discomfort & learning/improvement.
as @kevinyien says: "Your career is not a ladder, it's a game. Those who treat it like ladder will make linear progress at best and let their fear hold them back. Those who treat it like a game will collect the resources, find the people, and build the skills that compound — and have fun doing it!"
my immigrant mum says i jump around career paths too much - she doesn't quite understand <3
my limited free time is still spent on @rationalvc - that's the eventual life's work. but it was always important to me to not be another charlatan vc investor/podcaster/writer, rather one who has a multitude of ("rare & valuable" skills, h/t cal newport) & operating xp, & has worked w the best ppl for each skill. when u want to learn smthing u do it around the best.
skill-stacking, at intersection of a few things (h/t @naval). thinking in decades, not months. just placing asymmetric bets & optimising for high-leverage skills that when combined will be a variance amplifier (h/t @jposhaughnessy)
i remember @stephsmithio made a cool tweet once about the various jobs she's held. if i do decide to go all-in on something (say a startup) it will be worth it (i hope) given the combination of skills i've developed. since my teens the various roles i've held or skills i've developed:
- software & product engineer
- design / uxui
- product
- biz dev / sales
- vc investing
- podcasting / writing / videos
- video & audio editing
- interviewing
- 4 yrs @ svb - part of founding team for svb uk/eu (did corp-fin, lev-fin, venture debt etc. basically a finance bro, expanded like achaemenid empire while managing $200million portfolio in my early-20s)
- investment banking
- sold real estate
- built digital marketing agency
- built & sold a boutique co-living company
- worked in aggressive call centres (sales) - cold-calling, 80% of workforce regularly got cut, i was youngest out of ~200 salesppl & regularly in top 5% performers - did this full-time while studying a full-time degree
- door to door sales
- built london's largest teen events company in my teens (profitable)
- ebay store / ecommerce stuff starting age 13
- & list goes on...
----
"learn to build, learn to sell. if you can do both, you will be unstoppable." - @naval
Onwards.
this weekend read the Timeless published 50+ yrs ago
& read the timely published in last ~24 hrs (& nothing in between). elite timely reads:
- @Dominic2306 on AI and Power - dominiccummings.substack.com…
- @WillManidis on capital, sovereignty, and the coming reordering of economic power - THE COMMANDING HEIGHTS Commanding-Heights.com
- @Jack_Raines on Prestige Traps and Technological Shifts - youngmoney.co/p/prestige-tra…
I don't listen to many podcasts nowadays, but when I do...
a phenomenal episode to learn from two gents with immense knowledge & passion in books/publishing.
👍
Writing, Publishing & Marketing a Book in the AI Era
Tren Griffin (@trengriffin) is the author of Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor and the 25iq blog, and is writing his eighth book.
Tren joins us to discuss why writing a book is rarely about money, why every author is really starting a business, how to build a book in public, and why deep knowledge makes for better AI prompts. He also reveals the Charlie Munger lesson that changed his life during the dot-com boom.
Out now on Infinite Loops, with @jposhaughnessy.
TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Intro
0:51 Why Jim Started a Publishing Company
1:23 How Book Deals Are Changing
1:53 Why Write a Book If It Won't Make Money
2:57 How a Book Put Jim on the Map
3:33 Books That Reach Decision Makers
5:28 Every Author Is Starting a Business
6:34 Inside Infinite Books: AI Fact-Checking and Marketing
10:06 Paying It Forward and a 70/30 Author Split
13:14 Write for Yourself, Then Tell Stories
14:09 The Morgan Housel Hire That Got Away
15:50 Why Infinite Books A/B Tests Its Covers
18:26 Finding a Book's Readers With Data
19:52 Give Before You Ask
20:30 Word of Mouth and Customer Acquisition Cost
21:58 Free AI vs. Frontier AI
25:14 AI Indexing and Text Blindness
28:34 Nobody Has Perspective on Themselves
29:02 Why Writing for Money Backfires
33:13 What Authors Hate About Publishing
35:10 Bill Gurley's Runnin' Down a Dream
36:50 The Grocery Store Theory of Life
38:51 Charlie Munger: You Only Have to Get Rich Once
41:08 Simplifying the Kelly Criterion
43:31 The Curse of Knowledge
44:57 How Tren Profiles Great Investors
46:52 What Bad Reviews Teach
50:29 Why AI Feels Like the 1993 Internet
50:45 AI Is Dual Use, Like Fire
56:26 AI Lets Authors Own the Whole Stack
58:00 Why Books Follow a Power Law
59:55 How to Build a Book in Public
1:02:51 Marketing When Distribution Costs Almost Nothing
1:04:32 Why Writing Needs Uninterrupted Time
1:06:04 Why Jim and Tren Stopped Using Google
1:07:38 Knowing More Makes You a Better Prompter
1:08:24 Is Serious Reading Dying?
1:15:08 Using AI to Read Hard Books
1:18:53 How to Become More Curious
1:21:50 Try Everything, Collect Stories
1:23:14 The Great-Story Test
1:25:13 Growing Up Curious in Seattle
1:29:16 Tren's Next Book
1:30:42 Happiness Is a Byproduct
1:31:48 Don't Take the Turd
1:34:36 Reciprocity, Manipulation and Social Media
1:38:52 No W-2 Doesn't Mean Retired
1:40:18 Never Retire: Jim's Grandfather's Advice
1:42:03 Two Ideas for the World
self-awareness is even rarer now that most have outsourced entire tinking & decisions to AI. How do I feel? I don't fkin know, hey claude bruv how do i feel?
also reminds me of Munger's circle of competence. I for one would rather die than work "996" for someone else. but for maself? oh yea.
We all have a circle of competence (& tolerance) – an area in which we have a lot of earned knowledge or tolerance for said thing. The size of that circle is not important. What is important is knowing when you are approaching the perimeter.
I am concerned a lot of people are going to learn the wrong lesson from extraordinary individuals like Nik.
Is he amazing? YES.
Has he built a spectacular business? YES.
Do I have tremendous respect for him? YES.
Should *you* mimic him? For 90% of people, the answer is NO.
Would *you* burn out if you even remotely attempted to replicate his work? For 90% of people, the answer is YES.
You need significant self-awareness to understand where you stand, what you truly want out of life, what risks are you willing to take, what pain are you ready to endure and for how long.
And self-awareness is surprisingly rare.
It's not easy.
It's like when people tell me "Steve Jobs did this and that".
OK buddy, but you ain't Steve Jobs.
hiring is just sales
getting a job is entirely different skill set from doing the job
Rational School hiring accelerator has a near 100% placement rate, & u don't pay most of fee unless u're placed (we have skin in the game)
next available spots = January
rational [.] school
Cyrus Yari retweeted
This is genuinely superb.
Has Britain's Obsession with House Prices Made Us Poorer? penwardenreview.com/2026/10/…
brilliant by @Dominic2306 - give it a listen.
discusses the current shit show, and provides the solutions.
will they listen to him? probably not.
If anyone knows anything about cancer, specifically neuroendocrine carcinoma, please watch and contact Ben to help with medicine or introductions, or consider donating.
@BenWilsonTweets is a phenomenal human being (& podcaster!)
And God bless @davidsenra for using his platform.
Ben Wilson (@BenWilsonTweets) has stage 4 cancer and 4 kids under the age of 5.
I want to help him as much as possible, so I invited him on the podcast to talk about his work studying history’s greatest leaders and what it’s like getting told he’s going to die at 38.
He’s a good guy, a close friend, and one of my favorite podcasters.
His work has benefited millions of people all across the world.
Please watch this episode and see if you can help with medicine, introductions, or donations.
0:00 What Ben has learned from making How to Take Over the World and studying history’s greatest leaders.
55:51 Living like you're dying. Ben on facing cancer.
Cyrus Yari retweeted
22 yr old emailed me, asking for advice. i receive many of these now for last 6+ yrs.
he did the degree, big corpo internships & can now do the corpo thing, but he wants to forgo that and build physical cleaning business in Europe. his parents worried.
my quick reply to him:
22 yr old emailed me, asking for advice. i receive many of these now for last 6+ yrs.
he did the degree, big corpo internships & can now do the corpo thing, but he wants to forgo that and build physical cleaning business in Europe. his parents worried.
my quick reply to him:
I’ve read and listened to a lot of @rorysutherland over the years.
He has a way with words, and this outstanding piece in @spectator perfectly captures what millennials think about the property market and life in the UK today. Wish he were in No 10. 😢
Back in 1990, when my wife and I were buying our first flat in London, I was writing advertising copy for a little-known American software company. The people seemed remarkably impressive and I considered buying shares in them.
A banker friend advised caution, however, arguing that overseas stock exposed you to exchange rate fluctuations.
The company was called Microsoft. Had I put the £68,000 I used to buy that flat into Microsoft stock, it would now be worth £54 million.
Naturally, every time I meet my friend, I thank him for his helpful advice. But in truth my jibe is unfair.
✍️ Rory Sutherland
Article | spectator.com/article/the-pr… | @rorysutherland
Cyrus Yari retweeted
as uncertainty in the world increases, more important than ever to have optionality.
optionality -> freedom. freedom is the biggest asset. you don't want to remove serendipity and opportunities for asymmetry.
- i.e. not locking yourself into illiquid "ASSets" like real estate (unless you're buying your forever home in cash, even then you're betting on that jurisdiction & its rulers for 50+ years. don't be fooled by randomness: keep in mind the risk that your home may become totally unsellable one day as we are seeing with London leasehold properties rn). ignore the illiquid.
- never take mortgages or any form of loans/debt. you're not a private equity boss bro. debt removes optionality, creating a prison for yourself, especially long-term debt as you're at the mercy of imbecilic policymakers. retail debt is extremely expensive & dangerous.
- living within your means & not indulging in excess consumerism & physical belongings that tie you down or may force you to sell for scrap or take up mental bandwidth.
- not locking yourself into a job that requires in-office presence and prevents location freedom.
- learning and earning outside of your day job to stack extra skills/incomes to be more resistant to employment shocks given rise in AI replacement theory etc.
- using the "job" as non-dilutive financing to fund your asymmetric bets (working on high-leverage projects online)
& many more.
as uncertainty in the world increases, more important than ever to have optionality.
optionality -> freedom. freedom is the biggest asset. you don't want to remove serendipity and opportunities for asymmetry.
- i.e. not locking yourself into illiquid "ASSets" like real estate (unless you're buying your forever home in cash, even then you're betting on that jurisdiction & its rulers for 50+ years. don't be fooled by randomness: keep in mind the risk that your home may become totally unsellable one day as we are seeing with London leasehold properties rn). ignore the illiquid.
- never take mortgages or any form of loans/debt. you're not a private equity boss bro. debt removes optionality, creating a prison for yourself, especially long-term debt as you're at the mercy of imbecilic policymakers. retail debt is extremely expensive & dangerous.
- living within your means & not indulging in excess consumerism & physical belongings that tie you down or may force you to sell for scrap or take up mental bandwidth.
- not locking yourself into a job that requires in-office presence and prevents location freedom.
- learning and earning outside of your day job to stack extra skills/incomes to be more resistant to employment shocks given rise in AI replacement theory etc.
- using the "job" as non-dilutive financing to fund your asymmetric bets (working on high-leverage projects online)
& many more.
wish i functioned like these bruddas but i don't unf:
nitter.cf/CyrusYari/status/21023…
i observe this particularly when i walk around München or Bavarian towns.
many of the natives here are so happy, zero fucks given.
have job, go to job 32-35hrs per week. outside of job spend every waking second on enjoyable things: beer gardens, espressos in the sun, hiking in the alps, play sports, dinner parties, lounge around with friends, spend time with loved ones, etc etc.
most don't read, let alone have awareness of AI, "future of work", "capital allocation", earning "high leverage income" or "asymmetric bets", and they couldn't give a flying fuck. could be on a different planet to me entirely.
and frankly i'm envious of them. no matter how hard i try i can't function like them, that's not who i am. but the older i get the more i wish i did. i know most are happier, calmer, and have more peaceful lives. as i get older my life gets more complex with added responsibilities, and theirs is always "just the same".
it's like the trite mexican fisherman story and i'm the fat american banker in the story. they have the basics covered and enjoy life, and i'm like "more more more more more"
i've been VC investing since 2022. I've invested with "TiEr-OnEs", "eMErGiNg gPs", & more.
I've had offers to join VC firms or even take a lot of their money & launch something. But I'm not a charlatan, it's a side quest for me. I mostly invest to have fun @ rational [.] fund
this is bang on.
as someone with 15 yrs experience in YOOKAY property (incl. RE biz in the past) with wins, mistakes and learnings along the way, I've exited anyting YOOKAY in last couple years and just 1 more thing to offload now.
And there's no point sharing your view about YOOKAY property on here, cos you always get a bunch of morons who've never been in property (or just bought one) trying to apply general real estate lens to YOOKAY real estate, which is entirely different beast. fuck off.
You X morons are like the academics NNT quotes: "For real people, if something works in theory, but not in practice, it doesn't work. For academics, if something works in practice, but not in theory, it doesn't exist."
10-15% drops yes, with London leasehold already seeing even more. I'm currently trying to sell London flat at 25% discount on purchase price. And I couldn't give a flying fuck, I'll go lower if I have to. Trying to catch the last lifeboat off the titanic flex. You don't decide what your property is worth, the market does. And boomers all have ego and think their property is worth "X" hence so many unsold in current market. Greed now will lead to major regrets for these people later.
Remember that OG Anton Kreil video where he talks about being indifferent to money (it doesn't think anything of you). Useful lesson in such cases. Fuck your emotions and biases. The crash of YOOKAY property (especially leasehold for more reasons) is like a cancer that's spreading, and you need to cut it off before it becomes terminal.
I used to have a "skin in the game we must save the UK" mindset. But it's beyond that. You can't fight imbeciles with logic. And per SITG, rationality = survival. It must start with yourself first, before local then wider nation, etc.
Unless you are "pOsT-eCoNoMiC" in the YOOKAY and don't mind watching everything around you crash and burn, or you will put up with it cos you prefer to be around loved ones who can't move. In any other case doesn't make sense. I'm generally an optimist, but the future is bleak for the island. Anyone with a modicum of talent, ambition, or anxiety about future has left or is already considering it.
Chatting to an old friend this evening who is (further along than me) also about to move to the US… it follows on from my short missive on mortgages being a bad return on capital in the YOOKAY now; given it is highly exposed to what is coming… AND my article on Mark in Arnold.
So I thought I’d share some noodling with you all that I shared with him… in case it’s of use? Welcome all comments 👍🏼
———/—-—————————————
“Basically, I think the AI revolution is a once-in-a-millennium shot at generational wealth. If you don't own a slice of it, you'll be on the wrong side of it.
I think owning property is dumb. It's unproductive, illiquid, and about to be repriced lower, because what drove it up (zero rates, QE, cheap credit) doesn't exist any more. The one thing that stops this is financial repression, so don't rule it out*. More on that later. I reckon we see 10-15% off nominal prices fairly soon.
Bigger picture, I think AI puts us into an Engels' pause. Look it up: 1830s Britain, output and profits went through the roof while wages flatlined for about 40 years. Rules-based white-collar jobs get wiped out. The K splits with capital owners going up and wage earners going down, and state spending goes up to plug the gap, which means the middle gets taxed to death.
Then add the boomers. They rode QE all the way up, and now they're watching real prices get hammered. The equity they planned to release is worth less than they thought, and they need more of it for inflation and, above all, for care. That's Baumol's cost disease: you can't automate the people wiping your arse at 85, so care costs rise faster than everything else and eat their savings. Less inheritance for their kids, who earn less anyway if they still have jobs. Fewer buyers, more forced sellers.
So over 30 years I think housing falls 30-50% in real terms. Gradually, so nobody notices until it's too late. Boiling frog.
This is the bit people miss. Higher inflation probably means higher rates, but with repression they stay below inflation. On paper that's great for borrowers because the debt gets inflated away. In practice your monthly payment jumps now and your salary catches up years later, if it does. You can be right about inflation and still be forced to sell before it pays off.
It might turn deflationary eventually, and that's even worse if you still have a mortgage. Prices and wages fall, the debt doesn't, and its real weight goes up. I don't see that in the timeframe that matters to us, but maybe I'm wrong.
So for most people, the question in the meantime is whether you can hang on*. Can you service the debt? What's your plan if you can't? Eat the loss? Will you still have a job? Will it pay what it does now? Will it keep up with inflation?
That's the calculus.”
those displaced by the iranian revolution are the biggest assets wherever they go.
the result of having Achaemenid blood:
Get on the Plane isn’t just a slogan, it’s ethos and operating system. It has made all the difference in the world for this son of a taxi driver and a maid. Work ethic and showing up matters.
In the last 8 years since moving to Miami and building Sofreh the metrics are below:
1,071,793 million miles flown
2,223 hours in the air (or 93 days)
470 flights
425 days in transit
43x around the earth
4.5 times around the moon
Flight every 6.7 days
21,650 meetings
6.78 meetings per day, 7 days a week
47.8 meetings per week
206 meetings per month
One meeting every 3.5 hours, day and night, for 8+ years straight
I did a similar analysis during my time at Menlo when I closed deals like Uber and came up with the Get on the Plane Mantra. When Travis said can you meet me in Dublin I got on the next plane out of Africa to close the deal.
Back then between June 2011 when. Started at Menlo Ventures and Jan 2013, I did 10,000 meetings or about 10 meetings per day 7 days a week.
There is signal you can’t close on Zoom, there are bonds and deals that can only be closed in person.
Get on Plane! Get in the Room!
bUt pEtEr tHiEl iS aN aSsHoLe
this is not about thiel.
this is about germany vs. USA growth you morons. focus on what matters and fix your country.
"bUt iN UsA yOu GeT sHoT"
(typical responses i get in deutschland)
AGAIN. this is not about guns you morons.
stfu and fix it:
