3.5X founder. Board Member. Bootstrapper. Love God, family, dogs, running, and art.
Sacramento
Joined September 2010
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I finally figured out how bond discounts work. Do you know someone who works in this space? I'd appreciate a connection.
Hard disagree. I think that's how old I was when I started my first company. That experience can't be found elsewhere. Even if the business fails (likely), you'll come out a better employee.
I mean, he did solve his housing problem...
Fraud, theft, and trespassing laws already exist everywhere. Ask yourself why they aren't being enforced.
A Florida squatter was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Olandis Hobbs filed fraudulent paperwork in late 2022 to transfer a $700,000 condo to himself.
Hobbs’ victim was an 85-year-old woman and her children.
Hobbs has committed similar acts in like New York, but was only sued—not arrested.
Hobbs' sentence includes 25 years for fraudulent use of personal identification information and 15 years for grand theft over $100,000.
Two days in a row I've received "notice of data breach" letters. Maybe private companies whose interests are not necessarily the safety and security of their customers should not be storing such info?
Or is that crazy?
I keep going back to this post. It convicted and convinced me. Trump is awful. Vance shows promise.
It’s amazing how many “legacy” conservatives—writers and old-school bloggers who came to prominence 20 years ago, during the Bush II era—simply don’t get it still. You could see it in their reactions to JD Vance getting selected as running mate, ranging from muted to disappointed to exasperated.
These are guys who support Trump and the New Right movement only incidentally and reluctantly, as the least bad option currently available to them. They’re not enthusiastic about having to do so, and they’re still hoping—yearning, even—for a return to the Republican Party of old, governed by Reagan’s tripartite coalition of Chamber of Commerce business conservatives, national security hawks, and Falwell-era Christian conservatives.
These people still—after nearly a decade!—view Trump and his associated movement as a fad. An unruly teenage period that will one day pass, after which the adults in the party can lead the GOP back to its respectable roots, and modern-day conservatives will learn proper reverence for the ideology of Ronald Reagan (born 1911) and William F. Buckley (born 1925).
Here’s what they either don’t get or refuse to come to terms with: That conservative movement is dead. It died because it simply didn’t work, and it’s a death well-deserved.
It died when George W. Bush, the spiritual—and biological—heir of the movement launched an unnecessary war that left thousands of Americans, most of them from working-class backgrounds, dead or maimed on the streets of Iraq.
It died when conservatives offered no solutions for the economic malaise affecting middle-class families aside from the standard tactic of cutting taxes, largely for those in the top 0.1% of households.
It died when the GOP didn’t do anything meaningful to address the crisis at the southern border or the crisis from the opioid epidemic.
It died when the GOP happily supported an agenda of offshoring and deindustrialization, to free up capital to return to the likes of Charles Koch, Mitt Romney, and private equity investors.
It died for countless reasons like these, and it is never coming back. Ever.
Despite this reality, evident to all but the most oblivious DC think-tank staffers, there remains a faction of the conservative movement that still blithely believes the future lies with the likes of Nikki Haley, Marco Rubio, or Ted Cruz. Intellectual descendants of the Bush clan, who still get their stale ideas from the yellowed pages of old print copies of the National Review. Establishment figures more than happy to return to a platform of foreign entanglement and domestic stagnation.
JD Vance, a working-class 39-year-old Iraq veteran, represents the long-term entrenchment of the New Right within the Republican Party, and he heralds the final demise of the legacy Reaganite movement.
With JD as Vice President and heir to the GOP throne, a conservative agenda authentically focused on strengthening working-class families, middle-class communities, and an American economy that works for all stakeholders, not just we capital providers, becomes permanently enshrined. What the establishment hopes is a passing fad becomes a decades-long agenda.
Because of JD’s youth, his eloquence, and his disregard for their failed ideology, this establishment may view him as an ever larger threat than they view Trump. I don’t think he minds their disdain.
I welcome JD Vance’s ascendance. And hopefully the rest of the movement soon does as well.
Rent control raises rents. It reduces mobility. 5% isn't even inflation so repairs can't be maintained. A better headline would read: Biden slices plan for nationwide slums.
This isn't even an issue for debate. There's consensus among economists and has been for decades. This episode of Freakonomics explains the issue very well:
freakonomics.com/podcast/why…
It seems like people are less communal than ever. Lower birth rate is a symptom. It's not just the expense: kids have always been expensive. What gives?
Restaurant economics doesn't make sense to me. Almost all restaurants fail in year 1. That's running tight: manager, chef, line cooks, dishwashers, wait staff. How do you make it work by adding corporate overhead? Economies of scale have limits. Has to be upscale to pencil out.
Hoka is popular. Brooks is my running shoe of choice.
Nike's range of products are all over $100. It's hard to determine the value as a customer. Is it entry level, pro, specialty, collectable, or...?
Regardless, they're over-priced.
And the brand isn't cool anymore.
Randall McCarley retweeted
So venture capital turns out to be a pretty tough business. Imagine a $150m seed VC fund that buys 15% stakes in each startup. They write some follow-on checks, but ultimately, typically get diluted to about 10% ownership.
Then one start-up in the fund is sold for $500m!
An epic amount! How much does that return for the VC fund? $50m. A lot. But ... but ... it's only 33% of the $150m fund.
And the job of the fund is to do at least about 4x "gross", or to turn that $150m into $600m. So that $50m doesn't even get you 10% of the way there. And note while VCs are often well paid, they don't make profits or "carry" unless the full fund is first returned. Until that $150m is paid back.
So you can see here, even a $500m "exit" isn't a fund returner for a $150m fund. It's not even close. It's not enough. You need a bunch -- in every fund.
OK so you can see why VCs are obsessed with Fund Returners. Those rare investments that return enough money to the VC fund to pay off at least 1x the total fund size.
And you can see VCs are often pretty careful to make sure structurally, any given investment can do it. A 1% stake? Maybe it can happen with a Stripe or Databricks or SpaceX, but otherwise, small equity stakes are tough to turn into Fund Returners. Investing in the #3 or #4 in a space? Yes, you can make money. But can it be a fund returner? It's much harder.
So going into an investment, most VCs have to believe you can truly be a Fund Returner.
But here's the non-obvious part ... that calculation changes over time.
As the years go by, some investments don't make it. Hopefully at least 1 per fund breaks out over time and becomes a "Fund Returner". Some get acquired. And some keep going ... but likely won't ever be a fund returner. At some point, it's just clear that they are a good startup, but aren't going to have that $1B, $5B, $10B+ exit it might take to be a Fund Returner.
And when that time comes, as long as you don't need much more money from that VC ... the VC tends to get a bit zen. They just want you to get the best outcome you can. And in some cases, anything where they make even a 2x return is great, when it's not clear there will be even a 1x return. It's not what anyone hoped when they invested. But VCs do get zen when they have a sense over time of the outcome -- and more capital isn't required.
So I know on social media it can seem like there are many horror stories of VCs pushing founders to raise too much, or spend too much, and that does happen. But it mostly happens with the ones that are, or look like they can truly be, Fund Returners. The rest kind of, at least a few years in, sort of get left alone if they don't need more money.
When the other guy is a criminal and this happens anyway. I wonder what the Founding Fathers would think of this election.
"Maybe ole George ain't so bad after all..."
@HomeDepot I understand that theft has caused you to lock up products. What's caused you to not have any staff to unlock them? Multiple calls for help. Other people also waiting. I don't think you really want to sell this stuff.
If you're in Detroit: run.
It sucks. It's not fair. And you need to take care of yourself.
Pack tonight. Just go!
