It raised a $60 million Series A round from Benchmark in 2019 at a $1.3 billion valuation and, less than a year later, was assigned a valuation of $3 billion when Vulcan Capital led a subsequent $120 million round. Larzarte said the company had really made “like, no progress” in between rounds, but that because Benchmark had funded the company, “everyone” subsequently wanted to invest in the company. (He said that, in retrospect, taking on too much money at too high a valuation so quickly was a “mistake.”)

https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/01/benchmark-the-storied-venture-firm-sees-traps-in-todays-ai-funding-frenzy-dont-be-microsoft/

"사람은 마음이 고요에 가까울수록, 더 강해집니다"
- 마르쿠스 아우렐리우스

Temu의 MAU하락 & 리텐션 그래프는 처음 접했다. 리텐션이 30% 언저리에서 수렴하는군

https://blog.naver.com/mynameisdj/223282915472

<이건희 회장의 생각법>
1. (앞으론 모든 것이) 디지털로 갈 것이니 (미리) 대비하라.
2. 미래를 보는 눈을 키워라. (좀 더 구체적으로 말하면) 미래를 이야기할 때 막연하게 이야기하는 것이 아니라, 진짜 10년, 20년 후에 이 세상이 어떻게 변할 것인지를 스스로 엄청나게 연구하고 공부하라.
3. 상대의 심리를 파악하는 눈을 키워라. (특히 사업을 한다면) 소비자의 마음을 읽기 위해 공부하고 노력하라. 비즈니스의 알파이자 오메가는 소비자의 심리를 파악하는 것이다.
4. (소비자와 직접 대면하는 경우는) 친절과 환대를 예술적으로 하라. 대부분의 기업인은 경제적 손익에만 관심을 갖고 있지만, 고객은 경험을 중요하게 여긴다. 그러니 예술을 창작하듯, 친절에 혼을 불어넣어라.
5. 좋은 콘텐츠는 여러 번 봐라. 처음에 볼 때는 스토리만 들어오지만, 반복해서 보다 보면 (다른) 많은 것이 눈에 들어온다. (그렇게) 반복해서 보다 보면 더 생각하게 되고, 해석하게 되면서 시야가 넓고 깊어진다.
6. 사물의 본질을 보고, 근본을 이해하라. 특히 경영자라면, 사물을 보는 눈과 생각이 어느 좁은 한 곳이 아니라 전체를 보아야 하며, 이를 주변에게 나누고 공유해야 한다.
7. 상하좌우 상황을 함께 생각하는 습성을 가져라. 그래야 매사 남을 생각할 줄 알고, 사랑을 베풀 줄 아는 인간미 넘치는 사람이 될 수 있다.

Throughout history of tech some of biggest companies in world started off highly capital efficient

1970s: MSFT bootstrapped until pre-IPO
1980s: Dell bootstrapped until pre-IPO
1990s: eBay and Y! raised minimal $
2010s: Instagram and Whatsapp stayed lean
2020s: Midjourney

Capital efficiency is sign of
1. Capital. People are willing to pay up for your valuable, differentiated product

2. Efficiency. You run a tight ship, do not overhire, and bootstrap from customers

During COVID/ZIRP many people forgot about capital efficiency

When to raise money? Either
1. You are prototyping and need the cash
2. You are doing hard tech or something that takes time
3. Your product is working and you need to scale
4. You need external valuation for M&A or other

When not to raise money?
1. You can grow perfectly fine off cash flow
2. You have a cash vs equity business
3. You will never hit venture scale

https://x.com/eladgil/status/1731803644197326870?s=46&t=h5Byg6Wosg8MJb4pbPSDow

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt explains how he uses 5-year plans to predict if a startup can become a $100B+ company

“If you went to business school, you would’ve been taught: build a great product, organize a sales force, charge a fair price, make the customer happy.”

But Eric explains that strategy is insufficiently scalable in the Internet era.

“It’ll produce a reasonable business, but it’s not going to produce a huge business. It’s just too hard to hire all of those salespeople, work with every customer, and so forth. You have to have a more clever strategy.”

He continues:

“All of the really big companies have invented a new way to access information or a new way to do something that didn’t require [a large salesforce].”

Eric argues that lots of the startup ideas he hears are good, but not good enough. He tells these founders to create a 5-year plan and map their growth rate. Then try to figure out what a more scalable strategy might be.

For example, if you’re building an app that you want to charge $10 for, Eric asks:

“Why can’t you give the app away for free and then upsell the users?"

This is similar to the advice of Peter Thiel who famously asks founders: “How can you achieve your 10 year plan in the next 6 months?”

Thinking big and optimizing for scalability is one key factor that separates the ultra successful companies from the rest.

Another way to use a five-year plan to determine if your company can be a $100B+ company is to ask yourself what the big platforms will be five years from now and make sure your company is aligned with those platforms.

In this interview from 2016 and he predicted that Android, iOS, and machine learning would be the dominant platforms of the next five years.

How can you achieve your 10 year plan in the next 6 months?”

Life is unpredictable. There are many unexpected problems that will pop up, and I’ve found that two things help me sail choppy water during the day.

Both are done in the morning: A) read a few pages of Stoicism, like Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, and B) control at least a few things you can control.

First, for A, here is one Marcus Aurelius quote on my refrigerator that often does the trick:

“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own—not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me.”

Now, B) control what you can control. No matter how shitty your day is, no matter how catastrophic it might become, you can make your bed.

And that gives you the feeling, at least it gives me the feeling, even in a disastrous day, that I’ve held on to the cliff ledge by a fingernail and I haven’t fallen.

https://x.com/tferriss/status/1731809474267025647?s=46&t=h5Byg6Wosg8MJb4pbPSDow

From @anduriltech’s @PalmerLuckey:

What is the #1 job most kids want today?

“It’s social media influencer, next is professional gamer, next is YouTuber… the problem is, you can’t tell kids to follow their dreams when their dreams suck.”

What was the #1 dream for kids in 1971?
To be an astronaut 👨‍🚀 🌕

“We had just gone to the moon… These guys were fighter pilots, PhD mathematician super men, who were also really good looking and well spoken… the ultimate American hero ideal. For a kid to see that and say ‘that’s what I want to be,’ okay tell the kids to follow their dreams.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGCOPxje3_c

https://speakerdeck.com/inureyes/deep-learning-and-llm-landscape-in-2023?

역대 수주 잔고 쌓은 韓전력기기..사상 최대 실적 잇는다
https://n.news.naver.com/mnews/article/018/0005632532?sid=101

요즘 시장의 관심이 온디바이스, HBM 등 기술주들에 쏠려있지만, 실적주들의 주가는 고점 대비 다소 빠져있는 상황. 주가의 향방은 알 수 없지만, 한국 주식시장에서 몇 안 되는, '지금' 제대로 된 숫자가 나오고 있는 섹터인 만큼, 지속 팔로업이 필요할 것으로 보임.

- 북미의 중동 시장 수주를 중심으로 전력기기 제조사들의 실적이 사상 최대를 기록할 것이 전망됨.

- 1) 북미서는 신재생에너지 발전량 증가 및 노후 변압기 교체 수요 증가, 2) 중동서는 네옴시티 프로젝트 등으로 인한 고압 차단기 수요가 증가 중.

- 23년 3분기 말 기준 전력기기 3사의 수주잔고는 약 11조. Q뿐 아니라, 수요 대비 공급이 부족하면서 수주 단가(P)도 꾸준히 상승 중인 것이 원인.

- 최근 변압기 제조사들의 호실적은 북미에서 22년도부터 변압기 시장 성장의 사이클이 본격화됐는데 쇼티지 해소를 위해선 증설, 숙련 인력 확보 등 시간이 필요하기 때문에 발생한 문제.

📸 Look at this post on Facebook https://bbycroft.net/llm?fbclid=IwAR1RIjUR6m0JgTrevURAukP-W4Y0r7CImMhbkL-VOQG4MEzTp4NjueX5Ozo_aem_AQoBPkLroRxNqh_JCIWDpHMJqmets5HA1yZaw0_9q8hYksV7ZrvcFWmZ0-XzdeY4WQA

미국에서 지내면서 들었던 여러가지 생각들을 적어봤습니다. 두서없는 기록들이지만 나중에 돌이켜 봤을 때에 이 때의 저를 기억할 수 있는 수단일 것 같아 기록했고 혹시 누군가에게 도움이 될 수 있을까 해서 공개합니다.

왜 미국에 왔는지 와서 어떤 것을 보고 느끼고 있는지, AI에 대해서는 어떤 생각을 가지고 있는지, 미국에서 해볼만한 사업의 기회에 대해서, 미국에서 다시 신용을 쌓아가는 상황, 좋은 인생을 살기 위해 노력하는 것들, 찰리 멍거가 남긴 Legacy, 재밌게 읽었던 글에 대해서 메모해봤습니다.

https://www.notion.so/matthewcontinuouslearning/23-Oct-Nov-9fdc28312ac54dd0b975c495ee4bfff9?pvs=4

단백질 프로그래밍 플랫폼 구축하는 Cradle, $24M 규모의 Series A 자금 조달
- 단백질의 아미노산 서열이 ‘외계의 프로그래밍 언어와 비슷하다’는 통찰을 바탕으로 AI 모델에 분자 구조 학습