Ross Zeiger

Pull the Goalie

Ross Zeiger — Thu, 05 Sep 2024 13:31:31 +0000

There’s a saying I heard last night that I’ve thought a lot about: Pull the Goalie.

It comes from hockey and refers to a move coaches sometimes make in the final minutes of the game to pull their goalie out of the game and put another offensive player in.

This move is usually made when the team pulling the goalie is losing by one or two points. The odds of that team giving up a goal increases but so too does their chance of scoring a goal to tie the game in the final seconds. If they give up a goal, well, they were losing anyway. But if they score, the risk was justified.

This idea resonated with me because there are so many parallels with starting and running a business.

Pulling the goalie is the taking of a small risk at something that’s not going your way in order to give yourself a better chance at getting ahead. Like quitting a safe but unfulfilling job to go all-in on your business. Or abandoning an underperforming product or service to focus on your main product. Or not paying yourself for a period of time to invest in the business.

Here’s the kicker: there is detailed statistical analysis (according to the person who explained this concept to me) that pulling the goalie is the statistically correct move yet coaches very rarely actually do it. They aren’t aggressive enough or are afraid of how it’ll make them look. So, they lose those games where they could have tried it.

Same thing in business. People are too afraid to take risks that would take them to the next level in business. For example, in the case of the abandoning an underperforming product or service, sometimes cutting it and focusing on more marketing and development efforts on the winning product is the right move.

Where are you being too cautious? Where are you putting too much effort on defense? Pull the goalie.

Expect the Unexpected

Ross Zeiger — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 13:39:59 +0000

I’ve been creating videos online for a couple years now and there is a phenomenon that all video creators have experienced which is that the videos you expect to perform well, don’t. And the videos you think will flop end up being your best performers.

Expect the unexpected when it comes to the public reception of your ideas.

I’ve also heard authors, public speakers, artists, and creatives from all fields express the same sentiment.

The lesson? Keep honing the craft. Don‘t expect or rely on external validation. If it comes, great. If not, keep creating because you feel the pull to create.

The Art of Impossible - Book Notes

Ross Zeiger — Tue, 27 Aug 2024 14:15:22 +0000

How much I recommend this book: 6/10

Read: August 2024

Three type of goals:

Massively Transformative Purpose (MTP): This is your most important, lifelong, almost-impossible goal. Think Elon’s “get to Mars”
High-Hard Goals (HHG): Goals that get you out of your comfort zone and push you closer to your MTP
Clear Goals: Short-term actionable goals that focus you and provide direction. Should be specific, measurable, and achievable within a short time frame, building toward accomplishing your HHG.

Why reading is the best form of learning:

- When writing a book, authors condense years, sometimes decades of knowledge, into something that takes 8 to 10 hours to consume. It’s the most knowledge dense form of learning, bar none.

How to get started learning something with Five Books on the topic:

Develop a baseline understanding in the field with a structured progression of reading
Begin your deep dive into mastery by picking the following five books on that topic:

Most Popular, Best-selling Book on the topic
1. Begin with the most popular book in that field. By nature of it’s popularity, it’s going to be more surface level but the most entertaining. This will get you interested and excited in the field.
2. Goal is FUN and to pique your interest in that subject while beginning to understand the basic concepts and learning the terminology and context for your topic.
The popular but more technical book
1. Closely related to or more technical book on the subject
2. Goal is to fire up your imagination and keep you interested but not all-the-way in the geeky details yet
The semi-technical book
1. Next, something readable and interesting but maybe not a page turner
2. More precise language and detail
3. Should provide a wider view/macro view on the subject
Hard, technical book
1. Detailed, technical, discusses the problems in the field
2. Where does contemporary thinking on the field begin and end
Future of the topic
1. Something that discusses the cutting edge of the field and where it’s headed and when it’s headed there

Four Pillars of Peak Performance:

Motivation: you must have passion, purpose, autonomy, and mastery in your given pursuit
Learning: you must be continuously learning and acquiring skills and knowledge in your field
Creativity: to do something previously thought “impossible” requires innovation in your field. something must be done differently than how it’s been done up to now.
Flow: the state of optimal performance where you’re full immersed in a given activity

It's Not About the Eiffel Tower

Ross Zeiger — Tue, 27 Aug 2024 13:41:49 +0000

A few weeks ago, I met a hero of mine, Derek Sivers: https://youtu.be/ao6iLiFXqxQ

He said something that has stuck with me. He said that when he travels, he doesn’t care at all about the tourist attractions or even the food or most of the things people care about. He travels to “inhabit philosophies.” And he does that by meeting people everywhere he goes.

That little phrase concisely captures why I have always loved traveling but could never quite put it into words myself.

When I was in Nepal, the Himalayas are amazing but what I remember most vividly is the hostel conversation with the Nepalese hostel owner explaining the difference between the Eastern mindset and the Western mindset.

In Cambodia, Angkor Wat is amazing but it pales compared to the family I lived with in Phnom Penh and got to peak into their lifestyle for a month.

In Korea, the food and culture is incredible but the all-night conversations on a Seoul rooftop with the woman who became my wife are what I’ll remember most.

And so it is with every place I’ve been.

It’s not about the amazing ______ (insert Eiffel Tower, Coliseum, Grand Canyon, Burj Khalifa, Pyramids, etc). It’s the people. It’s the conversations. It’s the philosophy you inhabit.

Your Museum

Ross Zeiger — Tue, 27 Aug 2024 13:19:17 +0000

At an event, they passed around cards with conversation starter questions on them. My group received one that asked, “if there was a museum about your life, what would be displayed in it?”

There were two responses I loved.

One woman said she would have every book she’s ever read displayed chronologically along with explanations of where she was at in her life at that time and how the book shaped her intellectually.

One guy said he would have flags from every country he’s visited and lived in to show how each place has shaped who he became.

I think a hybrid of these two responses would make for a beautiful museum display. Books and international travel have certainly been the largest shaping forces in my life.

I'm Playing Video Games Again

Ross Zeiger — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 04:22:42 +0000

I used to love video games.

Thinking back on it, much of my social life in my teenage years revolved around playing Halo or Call of Duty or some other game at my friends’ houses.

Then, in college, I got it in my head that video games were a complete waste of time. I got rid of my Xbox and haven’t gamed much since.

I had convinced myself that the only thing I should be doing with my time was activities that make me smarter or move me toward making more money. In other words, “useful” things only. So gaming felt like a waste of time.

But, I had a realization that there is tremendous value in doing things you enjoy for their own sake.

So, this weekend, I downloaded Steam and started playing a few games I haven’t played in years. It was an absolute blast.

I was reminded that there is a lot to learn from video games. Video games teach us persistence, they teach us focus, and they teach us a growth mindset.

Going forward, I’m going to start playing more video games.

From Idea to Launch - The Flexibilty of Being a Solopreneur

Ross Zeiger — Fri, 23 Aug 2024 02:37:33 +0000

This morning, I woke up with an idea for turning an old lead magnet into a paid product.

I made some updates to the product, set up a landing page, added a checkout button, recorded a VSL, and no more than four hours after getting the idea, I had the new product for sale. Shortly before writing this article, I had my first sale.

That’s the beauty of being a solopreneur. There is zero friction from idea to execution. I don’t have to get anything approved. I don’t have to wait for anyone else. I just do it. Maybe it flops. But maybe it’s a wild success.

No matter what, it’s more data and I become a better entrepreneur for having tried.

The Hardest Part of a Startup is Patience

Ross Zeiger — Thu, 22 Aug 2024 04:15:36 +0000

I used to think that the hardest part of a startup was the sheer amount of effort it took to create something from nothing.

Now, I think the hardest part is being patient.

There are days where it feels like my business is a rocket ship and everything is happening at once.

But then there are days like today where nothing much happens at all. And it makes me panic and think I need to shift strategy or add new products or start running ads.

The reality is, it’s all a cycle.

Tomorrow, I’ll probably be busy again. And the day after that, I’ll question whether I need to completely pivot.

That’s why, sometimes, the hardest part about a startup is simply remaining patient and letting funnels work.

Inspiration Can Be Deceiving

Ross Zeiger — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 18:43:46 +0000

Listening to Lex Fridman’s interview with Pieter Levels right now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFtjKbXKqbg

Pieter is awesome, I’ve followed his work for several months now. And every time I go down the rabbit hole on his story, I can’t help but feel inspired. It makes me want to try 12 startups in 12 months or drop everything and start building indie apps like he does. He makes it sound so romantic. Travel the world, have complete freedom, make tons of money. And it’s true, he has built a lifestyle where he’s achieved that.

But then I remember I don’t love coding. It wouldn’t be sustainable for me to build software all day every day like he does. You have to genuinely love doing that.

There’s other things I love like teaching and making videos. So I’ve built my own version of what Pieter does around those pursuits.

Getting inspired by what others are doing is deceiving because it may be an awesome lifestyle for them but misery for you.

As Naval says, you must find “what looks like work to others but feels like play to you.”

Whiteboarding

Ross Zeiger — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 04:24:30 +0000

Whenever I feel lost or like I don’t know what my next steps are in life or business or anything else, I whiteboard.

I lock myself in my office with my whiteboard, dry erase markers, and some music. For two hours I pace around and I think.

I think in the form of graphs, doodles, lists, diagrams, and numbers. I dream in the form of dry erase.

Nothing is permanent. I fill the board completely, take a photo of it, erase it, and start over. Multiple times.

I emerge from these sessions with clarity. I know what I need to do and I know what I need to not do anymore.

Some people like meditation and yoga. Others like ayahuasca and plant medicines. I like whiteboards.

A Miserable Bus Ride

Ross Zeiger — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 04:16:02 +0000

Normally, I enjoy taking public transportation.

There is something about it that feels good. It’s economical, it’s efficient, it feels safe and relaxing. I don’t have to worry about parking or fueling up or crashing.

Most of the time…

Yesterday, I had a miserable time on a bus.

I had the misfortunate timing of evening rush hour to try to get to an event. When the bus pulled up to my stop and opened it’s doors, passengers almost spilled out. A few people got off and the mass of people inside managed to inch a bit deeper into the bus to clear space for me and a dozen others to get on. I had to contort my body to fit into a small space between people. There must’ve been 150 people on this bus.

At each stop, a dozen or so people pushed desperately to get out the back while another dozen or more stepped on to replace them. Each time, I got shoved a little further back. Each minute, it got hotter and sweatier and people’s patience getting thinner and thinner. At one stop, two guys got into a tussle on their way out and once on the street starting fist fighting. I watched them throwing haymakers at each other as the bus pulled away.

And I continued in this way for the next 45 minutes.

By the time I got off, I was drenched in sweat and my back hurt from the weird angles I had to hold my body in.

I learned a lot from the experience:
1: I’m incredibly fortunate to be able to live “off-peak.” Most of the times when I ride the bus, it’s in the middle of the day and I practically have the bus or metro to myself. I can kick back and read a book or write.
2: The value of being fit. I’m relatively fit and strong so holding on to a handrail and keeping my balance, while annoying, wasn’t a physical strain compared to so many others who I saw getting thrown around with each start and stop of the bus and who were out of breath just standing there.
3: Something normally pleasant can be unpleasant under different circumstances. Despite that, there is tremendous value in doing it anyway (see points 1 & 2).

What if coffee is the new smoking?

Ross Zeiger — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 14:06:40 +0000

I love coffee but… what if it’s the new smoking?

I know you’re sharpening your pitchfork and preparing the tar but hear me out.

50 years ago and beyond, nearly everyone smoked and doctors even went as far as endorsing certain brands of cigarettes. It was blasphemy to suggest that smoking might be killing people. Until more research came out and public opinion (and behavior) started to shift. I’m old enough to have caught the very final years of smoking at restaurants being allowed and that seems totally crazy now, just a few short years later.

What if coffee today is what cigarettes were 50-100 years ago?

Coffee in 2024 is almost universally regarded as harmless. I’ve heard people cite studies that coffee actually prevents certain diseases and that coffee drinkers live longer than non-coffee drinkers. Every work place has a coffee nook to caffeinate their employees. And almost everyone I know starts their day with at least one cup of coffee.

But, we’re starting to learn more and more how important sleep is to our brains and bodies. And we know caffeine is bad for sleep. It’s entirely possible that in a few short years, people start to understand more and more that coffee is wrecking their sleep which in turn is wreaking havoc on their immune systems and ability to learn and focus and even affect their moods. There are reports that there is an anxiety epidemic. But coffee also increases anxiety so what if we’re really just having a coffee epidemic?

Again, I love coffee. I drink 2 or 3 cups per day and I’m healthy and happy. BUT, what if? It’s worth considering with an open mind.

(I made a Youtube video about quitting coffee for a couple weeks: https://youtu.be/x7-45jWuuwU)

Explore Like a Tourist

Ross Zeiger — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 13:46:50 +0000

I’ve lived in dozens of cities in my life. Whenever I arrive in a new place, I start exploring it. I try as many restaurants as I can, I go to all the parks, I see the major sights. But what inevitably happens after a few months is I stop exploring. I settle into a routine and don’t leave certain boundaries. I settle into a comfort zone, physically and mentally.

Yesterday, I spent the day trying new places in a neighborhood on the opposite side of the city where I live. I discovered a new café that is now my favorite in the city, I tried a new dish at a Chinese restaurant, but most importantly, I got a reminder to keep exploring.

Set aside a day every now and then to do something new. Leave the house, take a course you don’t expect to enjoy, or even take a different route then you normally do while going about your daily errands. It keeps life interesting.

Business Biographies & Histories

Ross Zeiger — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 13:34:31 +0000

I’m currently reading Shoe Dog, the memoirs of Phil Knight, the founder of Nike. I can’t put it down.

Business biographies and business histories are my favorite genre.

Every single successful business I’ve studied has a fascinating story behind it. I’ve never read a single one where the path is predictable or linear. There is almost never a moment in the first decade or two where the success of the business or entrepreneur is secured.

Shoe Dog starts from the very beginning of Nike in 1962 and each chapter is one year in Nike’s early history. I’m currently up to 1976 and STILL, in every chapter, there is an existential threat to Nike around every corner. Right when you think things will calm down and there will be smooth sailing for the company, a bank pulls a credit line, a sponsored athlete dies or switches loyalty to another brand, a lawsuit emerges, a manufacturer betrays them, or some other fire crops up.

It’s never boring. And Nike is the norm among companies and founders that have pushed through the early trials of building something from nothing. There is always a delicate balance of securing credit whiling developing a new product and convincing the market to buy from you. Along the way, almost everyone will doubt the little guy including the family and friends of the founder. It’s a brutal road and requires exceptional conviction and persistence.

There is also extraordinary luck involved. Phil Knight had as his co-founder perhaps the greatest track coach in American history. They started Nike right as running was becoming popular among everyday people. The early employees were incredibly loyal. A key lawsuit went their way. The first Nike athletes were perfect fits for the Nike brand. There are so many things that went perfectly right at the right time and right place that allowed Nike to become what it is.

So, if you want a self improvement book, an action book, a suspense book, a philosophy book, a history book, and a strategy book all in one, pick up a business biography or business history. Shoe Dog is an excellent one to start with.

Independence

Ross Zeiger — Fri, 16 Aug 2024 02:44:21 +0000

There is a commonality with the people I admire the most: they are independent.

They aren’t consultants or bankers or government contractors or soldiers. They aren’t people with ‘normal’ careers.

They are entrepreneurs.

They don’t live (for the most part) anywhere close to where they grew up.

They get out of their home country.

They don’t do the traditionally ‘safe’ thing in any aspect of life.

They do what they want and follow what interests them.

They don’t stay inside of a comfort zone.

They are constantly challenging themselves and stretching themselves.

Be independent.

Accommodating my Sick dog

Ross Zeiger — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 03:05:55 +0000

A few days ago, my dog Elvis had his spleen removed.

As a result, he isn’t supposed to be active and he definitely cannot jump or else it’ll tear his stitches. Because of this, we blocked the couch that he normally lays on and put the huge futon cushion on the ground.

When we got home from the hospital, he immediately walked to the cushion and laid on it. He’s barely left it in the days since.

In fact, I write this while laying next to him on the cushion.

He’s recovering nicely but until he’s able to jump again, we’re going to enjoy these simple moments together.

Your Best Work Isn’t Your Best Work

Ross Zeiger — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 01:49:37 +0000

Today, I published a video that I think may be my best one ever. Not only was it fun to make, it’s objectively the highest production quality video I’ve made (using a nice camera and mics). I’m also proud of the story and pacing and how I took over an hour of raw video and compressed it into just 8 minutes.

But, viewers don’t agree.

Youtube gave it tons of impressions but it’s currently getting the lowest click-through rate of any recent video I’ve posted. And worse, those who click aren’t watching for long.

Now, I’ve been on Youtube long enough to know that day one isn’t everything. Who knows, maybe I swap out the thumbnail and suddenly it goes viral. Maybe I do nothing and six months from now that topic is in the news and it rides a wave. Things like that happen.

But it’s still discouraging when after so many thousands of hours of making videos, studying thumbnails, and making something I thought people would enjoy, it flops.

The lesson that I’ve learned repeatedly from years on social media is that the thing you think is going to do great, won’t. In other words, the thing I think is my best work, isn’t my best work according to the market. Conversely, the thing I’m almost too embarrassed to publish is the one that gets attention.

The takeaway is to hit publish without expectation of an external outcome. Make work you’re proud of and keep shipping and improving.

Evenutally, the market will notice.

The Formula for an Interesting Life

Ross Zeiger — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 17:36:17 +0000

Formula for an interesting life:
Do interesting stuff > Document > Storytell > Ideate and Iterate > Repeat

Do Interesting Stuff

Interesting here means interesting to you.

How to find what interests you:

What pulls your attention?
What do you obsess about?
What makes you think, “I wonder if X is possible?”

Then, complete a challenge related to what interests you.

Document

Capture yourself doing said interesting stuff via your favorite media i.e. video or writing.

Storytell

Whittle down what you’ve documented into a coherent story.

A story, very simply defined, is a scenario where you start as person A then an event happens and as a result you become person B. Story is the process of change in some way large or small.

The storytelling phase is about cutting out the fluff and tangents to make what you’ve documented interesting.

Ideate and Iterate

Based on the public reaction to the story, come up with ideas on what to do next and how to improve on the storytelling aspect.

Repeat

Today My Dog Came Home

Ross Zeiger — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 04:31:28 +0000

Three days ago, my dog had a medical emergency and we thought we were going to lose him.

Friday night, as we rushed to the vet hospital and I held him in the back of an Uber, I was prepared for that to be the last time I ever saw him alive. Many tears were shed and it was one of the longest nights of my life.

Today, we got him home (minus his spleen).

It is an immense joy to have him back. There is a new found appreciation in every moment. The normal tasks of dog ownership like walking him and feeding him feel like special events now. I’m sure this novelty will wear off as we settle back into a routine but for now I’m savoring every second.

Embrace the Dip (By Zooming Out)

Ross Zeiger — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 02:51:59 +0000

Over the course of the past year, I’ve uploaded over 250 videos to my business’ Youtube channel and grown a small audience.

Almost every day there is a trickle of new subscribers and comments.

But yesterday, I net lost a subscriber and had no new comments. Ouch.

This isn’t the first time that’s happened either. But every time it does, it’s hard not to feel discouraged. Like all my efforts are wasted. Like the YouTube algorithm gods don’t like me. Like I’m doing something wrong with my content.

And when I get multiple days of negative growth in a day, it makes me wonder if my business will even work (the majority of my clients find me first on Youtube).

But then I zoom out. For every day that I’ve lost subscribers, there are probably 10 where I gain at least one. And when I zoom all the way out to the first video uploaded about 13 months ago, I see that the subscriber and watch time graphs look like a ramp rising steadily up and to the right.

And so it is with other things in life.

Stocks: they might have a bad day, a bad week, or a bad quarter. But zoom out far enough and healthy businesses rise over time.
Fitness: if you’re consistent with training, you’ll be getting stronger over time but there will be days where you seem to have lost strength. But zoom out, and you’ll see that you’re significantly stronger than when you began training.
Skills: if you‘re working on developing a skill like playing an instrument or learning a language, and you’re consistent about practicing that skill, there’ll be days where you feel like you’re back tracking. But zoom out, and you’ll see how far you’ve come.

Embrace the dip. It’s part of the process.

Zoom out and see how far you’ve come to inspire yourself to keep going.

My Best Friend Almost Died Today

Ross Zeiger — Sun, 11 Aug 2024 01:03:42 +0000

Last night, my best friend almost died.

I had to rush my 12 year old Husky to the emergency room where they found his spleen had ruptured and he needed surgery.

Thankfully, he made it through the night but needs a couple more days at the hospital while he recovers.

But, let me back up to a few hours before the emergency situation.

Yesterday, I listened to an outstanding TED Talk that got me inspired to start writing. I wrote a story I had been procrastinating on. You can read that story for yourself here: https://qr.ae/p2GUoK

I finished writing that little story around 8 pm last night. Within minutes of publishing it, my wife expressed concern that our dog, Elvis, seemed weak and was falling a lot. She checked his gums and found them pale.

Terrible sign.

She said, “He’s dying. We have to get him to the vet right now.”

I grabbed my wallet and we ran out into the rainy Mexico City night, me carrying Elvis, my wife booking an Uber. 10 minutes away.

With each minute, Elvis was getting weaker and weaker in my arms. My wife and I getting more and more scared. Finally, the Uber showed up.

But, there was a problem.

The driver refused to let us in with the dog so he cancelled and drove off.

Frantic, we stopped a neighbor from our apartment building at the gate and begged her to drive us to the vet. She did. Meanwhile, Elvis was sinking deeper into my chest with each passing minute, his movements becoming smaller and smaller, his breathing shallower and shallower. Traffic was heavy but we made it there in about 12 minutes.

The staff immediately took Elvis back. After what felt like an eternity, they called us into the office and said it was very serious. Something was really wrong and they’d need to do tests. So, we waited another hour for x-rays and blood tests. It was at this point that the tears started to flow. The reality that this may have been my last day with my constant companion of the last 8 years hit me hard. Finally, they called us back and informed us that the x-ray revealed that his spleen had masses on it and had ruptured. They needed to do surgery which would start after midnight. They told us to head home and they’d call with updates.

Around 2 in the morning we got the call that the surgery had been successful. Huge relief.

Finally able to relax a bit, we managed to sleep for a few hours.

Today, we went and visited Elvis. He was still drugged up and couldn’t even lift his head. His abdomen was shaved and a huge incision with stitches stretched across his belly. There was a huge amount of relief along with the worry.

While it appears Elvis will pull through this incident, this sadly marks the beginning of the last chapter of his life. Dogs who’ve had their spleen removed like this might only live a few more weeks or months.

The next few months are going to be some of the hardest of my life but I’m going to write about it and savor every single moment I get with Elvis.

I'm Going to Start Writing Daily

Ross Zeiger — Sun, 11 Aug 2024 01:02:22 +0000

Yesterday, I listened to an outstanding TED Talk that has me feeling inspired to start writing daily.

It’s this one by Mathew Dicks, a professional storyteller: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7p329Z8MD0

Go watch it.

In it, he tells how spending 5 minutes each night writing down one story from the day has changed his life.

First, his life feels more important because each day he forces himself to reflect on the seemingly mundane events of the day and pull an interesting lesson from it.

Second, he remembers things better.

Third, he never runs out of stories.

I thought that was so cool. And also timely because I’d been procrastinating on a story that I ended up writing yesterday because I thought it too was mundane. Inspired by the talk, I wrote it and published it. (Here’s that story: https://blog.rosszeiger.com/53614/fix-the-toilet)

Starting yesterday, I’m going to write one story every day, as Matthew suggested in his talk.

Seriously, go watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7p329Z8MD0

Fix The Toilet

Ross Zeiger — Sat, 10 Aug 2024 22:50:17 +0000

For the last two months, a toilet in my house has had a problem.

After flushing, the water continued to run. It’s small enough that I didn’t call a plumber but big enough to be annoying. I gave a few half hearted attempts to fix it myself but eventually I’d give up and decide it was fine for now. There was a temporary fix where I could remove the back of the toilet, reach my hand into the water tank, and press down on the rubber seal on the bottom to stop the constant running. So I did that. A lot. Maybe a few times a day.

Finally, today, I decided I’d do whatever it took to fix this thing. So, I swapped the seal out with a new one only to find out it wasn’t compatible with the existing chain. It was missing the right connecting piece. So, I jury rigged a twist tie to connect the seal to the chain and it worked! The leak is gone and I feel relieved. Fixing it only took about ten minutes of my time but it eliminated a minor nuisance that I’ve been living with for the past month.

Where are the leaks in your life? The conversation that needs to happen. The subscription that needs to be cancelled. The thing that needs to be replaced.

Just fix the toilet.

Nocturnal Animals - Movie Review

Ross Zeiger — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 03:20:49 +0000

How much I enjoyed it: 6/10

A woman receives a package containing a manuscript for a book written by her ex-husband. Her current husband leaves on a trip to NYC and she starts reading the manuscript.

As she reads, the movie’s storyline becomes that of the manuscript which opens with a couple and their daughter taking a roadtrip through the desert of West Texas. They’re driving through the night and they get stuck behind two cars driving slowly side by side. One of the cars drops back and the three young men inside starts harassing the family, ending with them pulling over. The scene ends with two of the guys leaving in their car with the daughter and wife while the third young man takes the father.

The father gets driven into the desert and dropped off. The next morning he stumbles into the nearest town, reports to the police station what happened, and gets a motel room. No sign of his wife and daughter.

The next day, a detective takes the father to investigate the scene of the crime and they find the bodies of his wife and daughter, bloodied and raped.

The rest of the movie is finding the guys who did it and ends with one getting killed by the cop and one getting killed by the father.

Throughout that storyline, it cuts to the original woman, whose living in Los Angeles, and it’s revealed that she left her ex-husband because she didn’t believe in his ability to make it as a writer. The story keeps bringing up painful memories of their time together. And the father in the story is the same actor as the ex (played by Jake Gyllenhaal).

In the final scene of the movie, she is supposed to meet up with her ex for dinner but he never shows up.

Profit First - Book Notes

Ross Zeiger — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 03:41:08 +0000

How much I recommend it: 10/10

I first read this book in 2020/2021 when I was running a small business. After six months of running that business, I hadn’t paid myself yet because I was “reinvesting it all back in the business.” That changed the moment I read this book. Without changing anything else, I started to pay myself and take Profit First. From that moment on, the business was sustainable and I had a lot less stress running it.

The traditional accounting principle is that [ revenue - expense = profit ].

This book flips that so that [ revenue - profits = expenses ].

The way you do this is by setting up the following separate bank accounts:

Operations Expenses
Taxes
Owner’s Compensation
Profit

You have all revenue accumulate in a fifth account. On the 10th and 25th of each month you make distributions from the revenue account into the other accounts. The exact percentages will vary depending on the size of your business and your expenses but some suggestions are made in the book and on the author’s website.

The tax withholding will always be 15%.
Profit will start at 1% when first starting this system then each quarter bump it up by a percent until you reach 10%.
Owner’s compensation and OpEx will make up the rest and vary depending on the size of the business

But the magic of this formula is that you pay yourself, as the owner, every single distribution period. And the profit is a reward that you pull out at the end of every quarter to spend on something fun.

On the other hand, you don’t make any purchases unless you have the cash to pay for it in your OpEx. If you don’t, you make do with what you have or make more money until you can afford it. This forces your business to grow at a sustainable level. No more taking on debt or plowing everything back into the business to supercharge growth and eventually crash and burn.

So, I love this method and I love this book. I recommend the audiobook because it’s read by the author and he’s a funny guy. There’s a lot of jokes that I don’t think would land as well if you can’t hear the author tell it himself.

The Entrepreneur Rollercoaster - Book Review

Ross Zeiger — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 03:18:52 +0000

How strongly I recommend it: 6/10

Most of the advice in this book feels pretty generic but there was a few things that stuck out and made it worth reading.

1) Sales are your main priority in business. Everything else is a distraction. Sales, sales, sales. Without sales, there is no business. And you’re not just selling your product. You have to sell yourself, your vision, be able to recruit star employees, etc.
2) Pick an hourly rate for yourself. This is the value you can/should provide to the company. Now pick the 3 main things that you should be working on. Focus on only those and delegate everything else.
3) The author wrote about an experiment he did where he wore a stopwatch around his neck at work. All day, he would start the timer whenever he was doing his most vital tasks, the real work. And he’d stop it when he wasn’t. At the end of the day, he looked at how much ‘actual’ work he had done and was shocked to find it was only 20 minutes of real work out of an 8 hour day. Get crystal clear on what is your most important task and ruthlessly prioritize your time and focus.

Quotes:

“If no one is ridiculing or laughing at you, you either don’t have a revolutionary, change-making idea yet, or maybe you’ve been afraid to finally share it with the world.”

“We all get knocked down. How quickly we get up is what separates us.”

“Want to sell more? Stop selling. Help instead.”

“The key to success is massive failure. Go fail!”

The Ministry for the Future - book review

Ross Zeiger — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 13:04:07 +0000

How Much I recommend it: 7/10

Wow. The opening of this novel is vivid and horrible (in a disturbing way, not the quality of writing). The type of scene I’ll never forget. Set in the near future (maybe 2040?), an entire town in India gets killed in a horrific heat wave. Across the country, 20 million die. That scene sets the stage for the urgency and gravity of what’s to come.

The book is cleverly written in a way I haven’t seen before. Each chapter is written from a different perspective and there are dozens of stories unfolding at once. Some of the main storylines include an aid worker from the US who was present in a town hit particularly hard by the Indian heat wave. One story is that of an Irish woman who is the head of The Ministry for the Future. One is a group of scientists working to slow the melt of glaciers. And other chapters include refugees, climate terrorists, and even one from the Sun’s perspective among dozens of others.

The basic premise is that climate change get’s so bad that people from all over the world in all different professions take things into their own hands. Some resort to violence by taking down commercial aircraft with drones, some assassinate oil executives and politicians who are deemed responsible, others deal with the effects of drought in their cities or, on the other hand, extreme flooding.

Overall, a decent read that exposed me to some new ideas and challenged my thinking.

Some of my highlights:

Easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism: the old saying had grown teeth and was taking on a literal, vicious accuracy.
Humans are burning about 40 gigatons (a gigaton is a billion tons) of fossil carbon per year. Scientists have calculated that we can burn about 500 more gigatons of fossil carbon before we push the average global temperature over 2 degrees Celsius higher than it was when the industrial revolution began; this is as high as we can push it, they calculate, before really dangerous effects will follow for most of Earth’s bioregions, meaning also food production for people.
Ideology, n. An imaginary relationship to a real situation. In common usage, what the other person has, especially when systematically distorting the facts.
We are always more confident of our reasoning than we should be. Indeed overconfidence, not just expert overconfidence but general overconfidence, is one of the most common illusions we experience.
Jevons Paradox proposes that increases in efficiency in the use of a resource lead to an overall increase in the use of that resource, not a decrease.
The paradox is visible in the history of technological improvements of all kinds. Better car miles per gallon, more miles driven. Faster computer times, more time spent on computers. And so on ad infinitum.
the world could still be divided into roughly three groups of wealth and consumption, measured by their transport methods. A third of the world traveled by car and jet, a third by train and bicycle; the final third was still on foot.
“The rentier class.” Keynes meant by this the people who made money simply by owning something that others needed, and charging for the use of it: this is rent in its economic meaning. Rent goes to people who are not creators of value, but predators on the creation and exchange of value.

Master a One-to-Many Skill

Ross Zeiger — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 12:52:25 +0000

My best career advice is to get obsessed with and master “one-to-many” skills - writing, speaking, and video. In that order.

Writing is the foundation. Writing pulls ideas out of your brain and brings them into the physical world. From there, it requires you to revise your message until it’s as clear, simple, and short as possible. The writing process itself sharpens your thinking and reveals new ideas.

Writing requires the least production of the one-to-many skills. It’s as simple as typing words into a blogging platform and hitting publish. The hardest part is sitting down and actually doing it.

Writing transmits well through time. Even though their bodies are long gone, the writings of Homer, Marcus Aurelius, Shakespeare, and the other great authors will endure forever.

Speaking is the process of turning your ideas into sounds.

Video is the visual and audio medium for communicating your ideas. It’s the most complicated in that it requires equipment: a camera, a microphone, and some editing software.

All three skills are forms of telepathy. You are transferring ideas from your head into someone else’s. You want to do it as simply, clearly, and in as few words as possible. And you want to be persuasive.

How to Win the Game of Youtube - Video Notes

Ross Zeiger — Fri, 05 Jul 2024 23:42:06 +0000

Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KNtxkKzb8Y

My notes from watching How to Win the Game of Youtube by MagnatesMedia

Youtube is like a video game; you need to level up in different skills: storytelling, camera work, editing, etc
there are strategies that can help you win
Everyone starts at 0 skills, 0 subs, 0 strategy
There are level unlocks like becoming a YT partner
Most people post without any strategy
Like losing weight (eat fewer calories and exercise), growing on Youtube is simple (make better videos that people want to watch) but hard
"You have to learn the rules of the game then play better than anyone else." - Albert Einstein
How to grow on YT in one sentence: "Get people to click on your video, then watch your video, then come back for more of your videos."
Replace the word 'algorithm' with 'audience'
Every Youtube video can be scored on 10 areas:
- Video topic and concept
  - If you want a viral video, it needs to be a broadly interesting topic
- Title
  - Advertise your video in the most interesting way possible
  - Shorter titles do better
  - Optimize for PEOPLE not search results
- Thumbnail
  - Use thumbsup.tv to test out how your thumbnail looks
  - Make multiple thumbnails for each video and test what works best
- Video hook
  - The opening needs to keep the audience interested in watching the whole thing
  - Don't play long intros or ask for subscription or ramble
  - A good hook gets straight into the value or entertainment or gives a preview of what's to come
  - Fast pacing, lots of cuts, and text on screen helps
- Script/plot
  - How well you can tell a story
  - Cut out unnecessary parts
- Presentation and Assets Used
  - If it's you, you have to present wel
  - If not you, your b-roll is crucial
  - Music is massively overlooked by creators - pick the right music
- Editing
  - Not only quality of editing but how it aids to the story
  - Pro tip: hire an editor
- Production Quality
  - How good is your microphone, camera, background, etc
  - Pro tip: if you don't have the budget for tons of equipment, focus on good audio equipment
- Optimization
  - This is optimizing the description, playlists, and end screens
  - End Screen Rabbit hole: don't say anything that indicates the video is ending. Say "now you know about this, next you need to learn about this"
- Community & Connection
  - This is having in-jokes, names for people
  - Only give one CTA - don't try to say it all "like, subscribe, buy, etc..." Just pick one
  - Give the ask after a particularly interesting part of the video
Every one of the above points can be scored out of 10 for a max score of 100.
What's the right balance between quality and quantity?
- Most people suck at Youtube because their videos are mediocre with a score of 40-60
- Most people would be better off posting one banger (>70) then 3 average videos
- It's easier to make one video that gets 10M views than 100 videos that get 10,000 views
- Purple Cow from Seth Godin: a purple cow would spike your attention amongst a field of regular cows
Passive income: real but means upfront work for perpetual income
Build an evergreen library - topics that people will watch over time
Ways to monetize:
- Youtube ad revenue
- Fan funding
- Merch
- Affiliate links
- Brand deals
- Digital products
- Selling Services
- Physical products
New metric: baseline revenue - how much your channel makes just from old videos
To start working with freelancers, start by hiring someone to make thumbnails - sometimes this can be just $5
No one is 10/10 at every category so hire specialists

- Make a post in the community tab looking for freelancers from your own audience

5 Common-sense security measures

Ross Zeiger — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 15:53:19 +0000

1: Get a Credit Freeze.

If you’re a US citizen or resident with a social security number, this is the lowest hanging fruit for you.

A credit freeze - according to the FTC - restricts access to your credit report, which means you — or others — won’t be able to open a new credit account while the freeze is in place. You can temporarily lift the credit freeze if you need to apply for new credit. When the freeze is in place, you will still be able to do things like apply for a job, rent an apartment, or buy insurance without lifting or removing it.

In other words, your credit, in the United States, is default open but you can go to each of the three major credit bureau’s websites, open an account, and freeze your credit. And this is free to do. Until a few years ago you had to pay something but that changed around 2018 and it’s completly free now. It adds a little bit of complexity because each time you need to run a credit check, you’ll have to go to that bureau and unfreeze your credit before it can be ran.

I’m always shocked when someone doesn’t have a credit freeze in place, I’ve had one for a decade and this is something you can set up before I even finish this podcast.

2: Get a password manager

You should not know any of your passwords.

Becuase Every password should be randomly generated and as long as is allowed by that particular service.

Every single online account you have should be unique meaning you don’t know use the same password twice.

And the easiest way to do this is with a password manager that can keep track of everything for you and generate those passwords.

There’s a great free and open-source one called BitWarden. You can get the app on your phone or in your browser as an extension.

3: Encrypt any sensitive information you put on the cloud

If you store anything like medical information or financial information on the cloud, be sure to put it in an encrpyted container before uploading it.

If you don’t, you should assume that Google or Microsoft or whoever your host is, is training their next AI models on your data and that whatever you put there is accessible by their employees and the employees of every intelligence agency.

Use somethign like Veracrypt - which is another free and open source tool - to encrypt your data before storing it or sending it anywhere.

4: Change the default password on your wifi router

Manufacturers are getting better about not shipping wifi routers with default passwords in favor of randomly generated ones but just in case, you should never use the manufacturer’s password. Whenever you get a new router, go into the router’s settings and update it to something custom and ideally randomly generated.

5: Use 2FA whenever possible and not text verification.

For all of your bank accounts and imoprtant online accounts, set up a two factor authentication using a third party authentication app - ideally a free and open source one. These apps generate random codes every 60 seconds that you have to input in order to access your account. Have one or two backups of this app on other devices in case you lost your primary device.

Where possible, do not use text message as a form of 2FA because sim cards can easily be spoofed and, if you ever lose or change your number, you’ll be in trouble.

4 Ways to Avoid Ads Online

Ross Zeiger — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 15:51:40 +0000

1: Use Brave Browser - Brave is a Chromium-based browser meaning it’s based on the same foundation as Google’s Chrome, which is currenlty the most used brwoser in the world and which means it’s highly compatible with modern websites. Brave has built in ad blockers so you won’t see ads on search engines, Youtube, social media sites, or anywhere else. And Brave is free to download on all devices, you can find it any app store.

2: On all of your browsers, possibly Brave from the previous step, install an extension called uBlock Origin. uBlcok Origin is a another layer of ad blocker and it’s also a tracker blocker. So it’ll stop third-party trackers like Google Analytics and Meta’s Pixel and other trackers that people put on their sites. Always, always, always get ublcok origin as soon as you start using a new browser.

3: And this is key, pay for things! I’ve been a Youtube premium subscriber for years and it’s the best $25 a month you ca nspend. Pay the $3 extra per month or whatever it is for the ad free Netflix. Get the premium version of your favorite podcasts. Get the paid version of all the apps you use and your life will be so much better for it. Oh, and pay for email! Get off of gmail or outlook or yahoo or these other advertising services disguised as email providers.

4: Ruthlessly unsubscribe from newsletters and marketing emails. Newsletters are essentially ads so I only subscribe to one at a time. And anytime I get marketing emails, I unsubscribe. My inbox only has messages from people I want to hear from.

7 Steps to Internationalize Yourself

Ross Zeiger — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 15:50:27 +0000

Step #1: Get a passport. If you don’t have that, well, you’re stuck in whatever country you’re from and your options are super limited. Even if you don’t plan to travel or move internationally, it’s wise to have a passport in case you have to get out for any reason - whether that’s for business or possibly a natural disaster strikes your home country or a political revolution makes it no longer fun to live there, then it’s good to have the option to leave.

Step #2: Get visas for wherever you want to travel or move. Or, at least know what countries you can travel to visa-free with whatever passport you have.

Step #3: Travel to the country or countries that interest you. Before moving there, test the waters. Spend a week or a month there and see if you even like it. You’ll know. You’ll get a feeling that you’re in the right place. Or not.

Step #4: Open a bank account in that country. Every country is different when it comes to this. Some allow you to open a bank account without stepping foot in the country and everything can be done online in a few minutes. Others are bureaucratic and will have you running all over town in person to different notaries and fingerprinting stations and bribing politicians and sacrificing goats just for the privilege to bank with them.

Step #5: Get a residency in that country. Usually this involves getting a job in that country or making an investment into the country. Sometimes it’s just transferring a certain amount of currency into a bank in that country. Other times it’s proving a certain level of income or net worth.

Step #6: Invest in that country. Invest in a business or buy treasuries or bonds in that country.

Step #7: Get a citizenship in that country. Usually this involves marrying a citizen of that country, living there as a resident for a certain amount of time, being exceptional at something like being a famous musician or artist or scientist, or there are still many golden passport opportunities where you can invest a certain amount into that country and get a citizenship.

Coming Age of Biotech

Ross Zeiger — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 15:33:55 +0000

From the beginning of human history until about 1800, the way humans traveled didn’t change all that much. And nothing was much faster than a person could run. Whether you were on a boat, on foot, on a horse, or in a wagon, you were moving at maybe 12 miles per hour or less. Anything faster wasn’t sustainable over long distances.

From 1800 to about 1970, the modes of transportation developed rapidly. Anyone born in that period had faster modes of transportation than their parents had. First there were steam ships then trains. By the end of the 1800s there were personal automobiles with internal combustion engines. In the first decade of the 20th century there were primitive airplanes and within 3 decades of that, there were airplanes crossing the oceans with passengers. By 1969, there was a man on the moon and super sonic passenger jets. Transportation speed went from 10 to 12 miles per hour to over 1,300 miles per hour.

Interestingly, the science fiction from this era was also focused on transportation. Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke and Robert Heinlein and the other sci Fi writers from that time, all wrote about space travel and traveling in tubes and flying cars. Improved transportation was always a central component of their sci fi worlds.

So what I’m suggesting is that transportation experienced something like Moore’s law from about 1800 to about 1970, which coincidentally is about when Gordon Moore made the prediction now known as Moore’s Law.

But then it plateaued. The speed with which you can cross the world today whether by plane or by car in 2024, isn’t much faster than it was in 1970. In fact, it’s slower because we don’t have the Concorde anymore and we have strict speed limits on roads.

Moore’s law states that the number of transistors on a chip doubles every two years. Gordon Moore made that prediction in 1965 and it’s held steady since then. Now, of course, Moore’s law isn’t a law of nature. He made it based off the trend he spotted from 1955 to 1965 that transistors were shrinking in size about every two years and that the trend would continue until 1975 even though it’s held true through the present moment in 2024.

1800 to about 1970 was the age of transportation. We are now in the age of the microprocessor but I think we are coming to the end of it. We’ll have computer chips with 2nm transistors being produced by 2025, 1nm chips by 2027, and beyond that, we start hitting the atomic limits of how many transistors you can fit on a chip. And I should stop here and say, I have no idea what that means. I’m regurgitating things I’ve read online, I’ve never looked at a microchip under a microscope or been to a chip factory, I have no idea what I’m talking about. But that’s two or three more doublings of transistors before we may see a plateauing of how small our devices can get. And the sci Fi of our era is obsessed with the miniaturizing of things. The famous example here is in Minority Report, which was filmed pre-smart phones, they showed cell phones as just tinier versions of flip phones.

Which leads us to the question, what’s next?

The next age is the age of biotech.

Let’s call it 2030 and beyond. Just as transportation speed didn’t change from the beginning of history until about 1800, and computation didn’t really change from the beginning of history until 1970, human lifespan hasn’t really changed from the beginning of history until now. We still live about 78.5 plus or minus about 10 depending on what country you’re from, what lifestyle you lead, etc. I think that’s going to change. The age of biotech will be marked by:

1) the lengthening of human life

and 2) by the merging of the digital and the biological.

First, human lifespan. Again, I’m just regurgitating what I’ve read online, I feel like that’s an important disclaimer when talking about anything. I know nothing. But what I’ve read is that scientists now understand aging and are on the way to slowing aging. I’ve heard it said that the youngest among us will live into their 150’s.

Secondly, I think we are going to merge more and more with the digital. Neuralink has successfully implanted chips into people’s brains and they are able to control computers with their thoughts. Everyday there are more and more wearables in watches, rings, even clothing now. There was a breakthrough a few days ago where scientists were able to generate images from someone’s dreams which is a step toward computers being able to read our thoughts. And we are all spending more and more time online sharing more and more about our lives. The ultimate conclusion of that is that we will have a device implanted in our brains where we can stream every thought to the collective consciousness of everyone. And our every biomarker will be tracked at all times and contributing to the collective intelligence of mankind. From there, AI will be developing drugs and technologies at a rate we can’t even imagine. Decades of progress will happen in a single year. 2030 will look more different from 2024 than 2024 compared to 1970.

And the new sci fi is already focused on biotech. I read Theft of Fire recently which was published last year. In it, the main character has one of his eyes replaced with a smart eye that is essentially his built-in AI assistant. And there’s another character whose a genetwist, basically a designer human. Her DNA was programmed so she’d have no diseases and a particular height and hair color and things like that.

These are the things I like to think about. We’re so lucky to be here at this transition point in history and I can’t wait to see what’s next.

17 Years of Marketing Advice in 46 Mins by Sabri Suby

Ross Zeiger — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 16:20:34 +0000

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hASHO5ap1Sw

Sabri: has made $7.8b for thousands of clients in hundreds of country over the past 17 years.

Marketing is the most important skill in anyone's career - whether an entrepreneur or an employee
Product vs Market: is it all about having a great product? Or great marketing? It's not all or one, it's both. You need both
The best businesses have great product and great marketing.
Launch your business with an MVP, no more. Only expand once you've proven that there is demand.
Market selection is the most important foundation for any business.
Organic vs paid: Both have cost. Organic costs time, paid costs money. Organic has huge potential but you cannot rely purely on it, it should feed the paid engine. Organic is good for testing hooks and messages to then boost with paid advertising. One feeds the other.
Storytelling: The most highly leveraged skill you can have. Start by being a good writer. Learn to tell compelling and clear stories. Use hemingway.app to clarify your writing.
All the best writers/speakers use a 6th grade level of communication.
One good hook is worth more than 1000 of the best body copy
What you say is infinitely more important than HOW you say it
Words should strike like lightning
The very first sale you make is the sale for someone's attention, you must grasp that
Getting attention is the first key skill
You must increase consumption throughout your entire funnel
create so much desire for your product that people will line up for your offer
If people aren't willing handing over money, you aren't good enough. Your marketing isn't good enough or you're not doing enough of it.
Price is what you pay, value is what you get.
Chef vs Entrepreneur: The chef starts a restaurant because he loves cooking. But, he ends up hating it because he has to do all the business admin. You need a different set of skills as a business builder: hiring, training, managing, etc.
Focus on the activities in your business that are revenue-producing
Take big swings - at first, you'll get success through lots of small swings. Later, take bigger and bigger swings for outsized outcomes.
Master one channel
In any market 3% are looking to buy, 17% are gathering information, 20% is problem aware but not doing anything, and the last 60% aren't problem aware at all
- If you figure out how to capture people in the last 60%, that's how you take your business to the next level
Be patient, make long-term decisions
Focus on acquiring skills with the longest half-life. What skills will compound throughout your career? Becoming the best at something like FB ads will have a very short half-life because the technical details of those skills will be completely different in three years. Focus on things like writing, leadership, and communication.
Spend 80% of your time on how to increase the lifetime value of a customer. 20% on how to acquire new ones.
The antidote to buyer skepticism is value
Make a godfather offer: an amazing offer is the most important thing. Take as much risk off the table for the customer as possible.
All business owners are in the business of gathering attention and converting it to business
If your offer doesn't keep you up at night, it's not strong enough.
Showmanship & Service: showmanship is the lost art in business. Service, delight, and surprise your customers. There is a hotel that gives each employee $2000 to spend however they want to surprise and delight customers.
The most showmanship you inject into your business, the better customers respond
AI & the future of marketing: isn't this going to kill marketing? A lot of manual tasks that we do will eventually and inevitably become automated. But, marketing is always about the ideas and that's not going to change. Your ability to come up with big ideas and apply it to the market will be what wins. Solitude is the state necessary for creativity. You have to let quiet happen to come up with ideas. Unplug from the phone, go for a walk in nature, etc

Set Up a Private Server

Ross Zeiger — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 15:32:47 +0000

If you want to set up a private server, I highly recommend this tutorial by Derek Sivers: https://sive.rs/ti

All-In - Show Notes - June 15, 2024

Ross Zeiger — Sat, 15 Jun 2024 16:16:01 +0000

Show opened with Tim, the gambler

Trump Fundraiser Recap
Sacks: Organized the presidential fundraiser for Trump. A whole different level of planning coordinating with Security Service and team. There were no anti-Trump protestors and tons of Trump supporters out on the streets in SF. A huge number of first-time Trump donors came out. Trump is extremely charming and entertaining, has an ability to instantly connect with people. Very sharp, very funny, very high-energy.
Chamath: There is a huge gap between how the media portrays Trump and how he actually is. He's sharp, funny, and kind in a disarming way. Chamath feels he has misjudged him for years. Trump is low-regulation, low-tax, and pro-progress.
Jason: Trump has flipped his position on EVs, crypto, and more.
Friedberg: 548 shows Biden winning at 51% and Trump at 48%
Jason: Predicts a swap by the Democrats, that they'll run Kamala or Gavin Newsom
Chamath: This is actually Trump vs Kamala Harris.

Elon's Comp Package Approved - he's to be $56 billion and moving the company from Delaware to Texas. TSLA up 6% on the news.
Chamath: It's crazy that we're even here. The supermajority of shareholders approved it and the judge denied anyway. Elon deserves this, hopefully the judge makes the right decision on this one.
Sacks: The winning margin is 73%, the same amount as in 2018. Elon delivered what he promised, now the shareholders owe him. This weakens the reputation of Delaware as a business-friendly state. Companies are going to flee.
Friedberg: This is a good example for capitalism. Incentives like this are a great idea and other companies should pay attention. We'd see a lot more risk and innovation if we moved toward this type of model more broadly. As is it, too many CEOs get paid a fixed amount without needing to perform or take risk.
Sacks: This whole thing was a heist. Lawyers were trying to get a multi-billion payout from Elon. Hopefully they get nothing out of this. Delaware will be done as a business state.

Apple released Apple intelligence and a partnership with OpenAI.
Jason: Apple really impressed everyone with their AI capabilities and everyone agreed, the stock is up 10%. It's got Grammarly-like features, smart replies, and OpenAi will be built into Siri. Apple now has a lead on the AI consumer market.
Chamath: What's striking about this is that they've shifted from major hardware releases to software releases a few months down the road. He's not impressed.
Friedberg: What apple has shown is a glimpse into the future of software where the hardware and software are more of tighter coupling than before. Hardware developers are going to move toward software creators. Google, Nvidia, Microsoft, are doing this. This is an interesting shift.
Sacks: The market thinks that Apple is doing the right think and they are doing exactly what Sacks said they should. However, the partnership with OpenAI might be a mistake. Apple has always controlled the entire chain from the device to the App Store so this is a giant change and maybe a mistake. Opening themselves to OpenAI could be a giant privacy and security mistake.

OpenAI has hit a run rate of $3.4B dollars, roughly doubling their business is the last 6 months or so.
Sacks: Everyone acknowledges that OpenAI makes great products despite the soap opera that is the company leadership. The B2C and B2B businesses are very different, we need to separate them out. ChatGPT is the only model worth paying $20/mn for. But, the other LLMs are catching up. B2B is a much better business - lower churn, higher ticket, expanding. If OpenAI is mostly B2C, that's much less valuable than if it's B2B.
Chamath: AI has not created experiences that justify the expenses. We are still in a hype phase. It's amazing how quickly this company has created this large of a business.
Friedberg: OpenAI might be AOL. It's big now but will get crushed later by OpenAI. Why pay for ChatGPT when you could be using LLAMA? The future is companies building their own LLMs based off their own data. Friedberg uses ChatGPT to do work that would have cost thousands of dollars in analysts and consultants. What it can't do yet is use internal data and analyze it.
Jason: This is going to drive work efficiency through the roof. Productivity is going up and fast.

Inflation is down, market is ripping, productivity is up, employment at record low, wages are rising, but consumer and national debt is also going up.
Friedberg: 3 Numbers that matter: inflation rate, GDP growth rate, and cost to borrow. Economy is only growing by 1.3% and inflation is 3% which means we're all getting poorer slower. At some point, we cannot make our payments. We are in stagflation despite the good numbers Jason read off.
Chamath: GDP is 70% spending by consumers. We have finally burned through the totality of individuals savings at the same time that companies are shrinking. Unemployment is rising. Cash is running out and an economic slowdown is coming.
Sacks: Inflation is still sticky. Powell isn't forecasting any rate cuts this year. The markets are mixed despite a few being up. The rate cut hype cycle is over. AI stocks are holding up the entire market.
Friedberg: What is Powell's motivation?
Chamath: Powell over promised, under delivered. Now he is doing the opposite.
Sacks: His main incentive now is his legacy, to be remembered like Volger, who crushed inflation. Not concerned with re-appointment. His incentive now is to make sure he's not wrong about inflation being sticky and keeping rates higher longer.

Mastery by Robert Greene

Ross Zeiger — Mon, 20 May 2024 13:43:28 +0000

How much I recommend it: 9/10

Mastery by Robert Greene was exactly the book I needed at this time in my life.

Mastery is finding your “life’s task”, doing an apprenticeship in that thing, then continuing to practice that thing until after years of focused effort and practice, achieving Mastery.

Very few people ever achieve Mastery yet every human is capable of it. Most people are too scattered to achieve Mastery.

You can only be mastering one thing at a time.

For some of the great Masters of history, they didn’t realize they were in the process of Mastery. They were merely following their natural curiosities deeper and deeper until years later they looked back to discover they had become the best in their fields.

Greene profiles the following people and their path to Mastery:

Temple Grandin: Bovine expert who invented better ways of handling cattle; autistic, had to overcome challenges related to autism to thrive in her field
Leonardo da Vinci: Artist, scientist
Benjamin Franklin: Scientist, politician, writer
Charles Darwin: Biologist, scientist
Mozart: Musician
Faraday: Scientist
Albert Einstein: Inventor, scientist
Henry Ford: businessman
Goethe: author, philosopher
and dozens of others

Mastery is about developing the mental and emotional capacity to be an individual. To go your own direction and follow your own curiosity even when the world thinks you’re crazy.

Masters are knowledgeable not only in their direct area of expertise but everything around it - like Erwin Rommel who studied the mechanics of his army’s tanks, the psychology of his men and of the opposing generals, and other fields adjacent to military strategy that made him so effective.

Mastery comes with 10,000-20,000 hours of experience.

Once the mind has mastered a skill, it can perform it with very little effort thus freeing it up to focus on creative and original tasks using that skill.

All In - Show Notes - May 17, 2024

Ross Zeiger — Sat, 18 May 2024 01:56:48 +0000

ChatGPT 4o is here. It’s a massive upgrade on speed, reliability, UI, cost, efficiency, and more. So many amazing examples coming out like live translating, math tutoring, note taking in Zoom calls, and much more.

Friedberg: It’s become apparent that there is an evolution underway on the model architecture where each version isn’t a big, bulky overhaul but rather continuous tuning and slight upgrades like apps. This OpenAIs first step toward that future. ChatGPT 4o is close to Claude Opus on performance.
Chamath: Consumer growth has stalled on AI adoption. Everyone is running around with their heads cut off to release features faster but we’re within two years of the real, stable businesses being created. The “Facebook of AI” has yet to be created.
Sacks: The subscription business model for AI is not the right move. These will probably move toward B2B over time which is a better model than consumer. Three big innovations: 1) Omni channel 2) understand tone and sentiment 3) they claim 2x faster but it feels 10x faster. Speed makes all the difference and now it feels magical. There are a bunch of startups that were creating customer service tools that are now obsolete.

Sacks talks about Glue, the Slack killer.
Sacks: We’re going to use the most powerful AI tools available. No more channels, people are sick of them. People just want threads. Glue allows that. You can ask inside of a chat thread for AI answers to things. Sacks showed a sample of him asking the AI what country he mentions most in all of the podcasts.
Jason: people get way into Slack and start thinking that Slack is the job. It’s too distracting and disjointed. Glue fixes that.

Friedberg has news about Ohalo! Ohalo has been developing a new technology in agriculture called Boosted Breeding. Currently, plants only pass on 50% of their genes to the offspring. They had a hypothesis that they could figure out how to get the plant to pass on 100% of its genetics. They were able to do this and now the plants can pass on 100% of the genetics from both parents and the results are incredible. They are getting 50-100% increase in plant yield and the plants are bigger and healthier. This will increase yield to almost all crops across the board. It requires less water, less energy, less time to grow, and less land. This will drive down the cost of food. This will help solve world food shortages.

Stanley Druckenmiller is investing in Argentina and taking a big bet on Javier Milei.

Jason has made a new investment in a company called Athena. It’s the fastest growing company that he’s ever seen, bigger than Uber and Robin Hood.

Chamath: the way companies will work in 5 years, none of us can predict. It’s going to be completely different.

Friedberg: With AI, you can build tools in a few minutes that will save you hours every day in perpetuity.

Jason: AI is massively deflationary. It’s making it way cheaper to launch and run companies.

Did Google just kill Perplexity with its new search summarizer?
Chamath: He’s changed his mind on Google. He thought Google was stagnating and dying but now they’re firing on all cylinders with this new tech. This is huge.
Jason: This is going to make search better with more personalized ads going forward.

All In - Show Notes - May 10, 2024

Ross Zeiger — Sat, 11 May 2024 01:12:20 +0000

Sam Altman is a guest on the episode today.

Sam Altman is the former president of Y Combinator and CEO of OpenAI.

When is GPT5 coming out?
Sam: We take our time, it won't come out until it's ready. GPT 4 has gotten better even since it was released. These models continually get better and this is the future, a constant improvement. You may just continue to keep training models.

GPT4 currently only available to paid users but the goal is to balance a certain amount of tools available for free so everyone can use them.

Chamath: We are seeing really impressive tools like Devin roll only to see, a few weeks later, comparable tools roll out in Open source.

Sam: We are still very, very early in the development of these tools and understanding how intelligence works.

There is a place for open source and closed source. We've open sourced some things and closed source other things. Sam wants an open source model that runs well on his phone.

What about LLama 3 on a phone?
It's good but not good enough for what he's thinking about.

How do you stay ahead of open source tools?
We can't.

The AI industry is rate limited by Nvidia's hardware. How are working to overcome that?
Sam: We are improving the efficiency of the algorithms at the same time that the hardware is improving. When there is this much value to unlock, the world and market will figure out how to make it.

The iPhone is the greatest piece of technology mankind has come up with.

If you could make a cheaper device than a phone, that wouldn't be enough to replace the phone. There needs to be some new interaction paradigm that we haven't invented yet. Voice interactions for ChatGPT seems like it may be the next big thing.

What apps would be possible if AI was on phones?
Always-on, low friction assistant to help with everything, working to make us better and more efficient.

There are two schools of thought with what we hope the future of AI will be:
1: I want something that is like an extension of me, it thinks like me, it knows me, it is me
2: A senior employee. A separate entity that is smart, capable, proactive, etc.

What does it mean to regulate AI?
I'm concerned about California's new regulations. There is a wide spectrum of what people mean when they say that AI needs to be regulated. There will come a time when AI systems could cause harm to people so it may be beneficial to set up some sort of international body to oversee AI. We should be worried about regulatory overreach.

Friedberg: It seems like politicians are acting out of fear and have no idea what is going on. Anything written now will be totally out of date and look silly in 12 months.

Post-interview Recap:
Chamath: OpenAI is going to be one of the 4 major companies in AI. The model itself will be closed source but lots of open source projects will be built on top of it. Everyone is distracted by LLMs but ignoring all the other interesting happening in AI.

News:
Jason booked Elon Musk and Mark Cuban for the All In Summit.

What is going on with college protests?
Sacks: They aren't threatening anyone or hurting anyone. They have a right to assemble, they weren't hurting anyone or vandalizing anything so it shouldn't have been shut down. This is the woke Right, shutting down speech that is against their beliefs.

New Apple iPad ad. What do you think?
Friedberg: It made me sad.
Sacks: There's nothing left but to make the devices thinner. This ad seemed very off-brand for them. Why would they destroy all these creator tools?
Chamath: Warren Buffett sold Apple shares recently. Apple doesn't have a track record of big M&A and they are running out of innovative products to produce. They should have followed through on the car. It would awesome to have an Apple car.
Friedberg: Where Apple has really created value is in creating new categories. They can't enter an existing category like a video game console or car and hope to compete.
Chamath: Apple's car could succeed because of the reputation and political capital they have. They are the one company with the ability to persuade the population to adopt self driving cars.

What's up with Alpha Fold 3?
It was demonstrated today by Google and it's groundbreaking for health, science, and humanity. Until now, the only way we tell the effects that a drug would have on humans is through years of testing. Now, the software will be able to predict exactly how drugs will effect the human body and it's side effects.

All In - Show Notes - May 3, 2024

Ross Zeiger — Sat, 04 May 2024 02:21:09 +0000

https://youtu.be/OxbtNsenZJY?si=VZP6rvBDtP9jIrss

Sheryl Sandberg is on as a guest. She talked about the sexual violence that occurred on October 7, 2023 by Hamas in Israel. She has been interviewing survivors of the sexual assaults that took place but many people in the media are denying it happened. Sexual violence in war is unacceptable. Throughout history, it has happened with every war but for the last few decades it’s become something unacceptable. There is no black and white here, the world can’t tolerate this. Sheryl is disheartened that feminists around the world are denying the realities of the sexual violence in the war.
Her film is called “Screams Before Silence.” Available free online and Youtube.

https://www.screamsbeforesilence.com/

Most of the female victims of the sexual violence were killed.
Sheryl: We need peace, we need two states, but no innocent lives should be killed. Sexual violence is unacceptable. And the path to peace cannot happen when the media denies these things happening.

Post Sheryl Sandberg Interview
A new open source gene editing technology has emerged.

Friedberg: You shouldn’t be able to patent stuff that happens in nature.
There’s been a search for the past decade for new proteins. Profluent used an AI model to find an entirely new set of casproteins. They released a casprotein open source called OpenCRISPR-1. This is really great for humanity.

Video is my art

Ross Zeiger — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 14:15:43 +0000

I’ve never enjoyed art. I don’t appreciate or feel pulled toward music or drawing or painting or anything else. And I felt a bit of jealousy toward people who had a creative outlet like those.

But, it recently occurred to me: video is my art.

Since taking video production classes in high school 15+ years ago, there is something I enjoy about planning, filming, and editing a video. But I never considered it “art.”

Benjamin Franklin, Leonardo Da Vinci, and tons of other greats throughout history had some form of art as a hobby. But until recently, it couldn’t have been video. Video is relatively new. And the ability to create a video at home with a digital camera is even newer. Perhaps because it’s ‘new’ I didn’t feel like it was art.

Art is a form of communication through time. Shakespeare wrote plays that have lasted hundreds of years. Michelangelo created paintings and sculptures that have lasted hundreds of years. And composers like Beethoven have created music that has lasted hundreds of years.

Video is the way I will spread my ideas over time, long after my body has died. It won’t be a beautiful sculpture in a museum hundreds of year from now but maybe it’ll be on Youtube admired by someone in the year 2300.

Even more than ideas, storytelling is what survives. Something like Mona Lisa, the most famous painting in the world, is so famous because of the story behind it. The time and effort that went into creating it. Each stroke was intentional and masterful.

And we - you and I - are way luckier than any artist who has ever lived.

DaVinci, Picasso, Michelangelo, these guys may or may not have gotten extremely wealthy from their art in their lifetime, I don’t know. They certainly got posthumous fame and influence - which is completely worthless. But now, perhaps for the first time, there is space for millions of people to become wealthy, or at least make a good living, from their art i.e. in the form of video or podcasts or writing on the internet.

But, I don’t like to describe myself as an artist or an influencer or a creative.

Those sound pretentious.

I like to describe myself as a teacher.

I learn things, then I teach them.

At scale.

Video is my medium.

Video is my art.

The Next Era

Ross Zeiger — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 16:16:40 +0000

We might be entering an era where aging becomes a thing of the past, obesity gone, where even paralysis is temporary.

I recently finished the book How Innovation Works by Matt Ridley and there's an idea that I can't stop thinking about. I'm obsessed with the intersection of history, science, and business and that book hit that mark for me.

The idea I can't stop thinking about is that there are eras to innovation and that during these eras everyone from the politicians to science fiction authors to Hollywood to the average citizen is obsessed with the possibility of the thing that is advancing most rapidly in that era.

In the 19th and 20th century, the obsession was transportation. Developing engines, planes, road systems, the focus was on transportation. And it was consequently when the biggest leaps happened. Humanity went from horses to 747s crossing the sky, But after about 1950/1960, the advances in transportation have been minimal for the last 60 years. I can't hop on a plane and get to London faster than my grandpa could in 1950. In fact, in the time of the Concorde, it was possible to travel faster then it is even now and that was 40 years ago!

So, there were these insane, unimaginable leaps from the 19th century speculations that if the human body accelerated above 8mph, the brain would be pushed back in the skull killing them instantly. To the grandsons of those writers who were flying in planes at 200+ miles per hour, crossing oceans.

Once the era ends, the progress levels off to almost no progress and population tends to not really care as much.

After the transportation age came the information age. And what the author hypothesized that I can't stop thinking about is that we are at the end of the informaiton age. Basically Moore's law is approaching the point where the transistor is reaching its atomic limits. So the increase in computation will taper off but it's happening right as it's getting good enough to power the artificial intelligence

The age we are likely to enter next is the biological age. Ozempic, adderall, cancer cures, Bryan Johnson.

I'm reading a sci fi book right now (called Theft of Fire by Devon Eriksen) that was published in 2023 and that's a huge focus in this book is the biological. The wealthy are able to modify their genes or take drugs or get surgery such that they are all perfectly fit, tall, not an imperfection on thier body.

Elon Musk's company Neuralink implanted a chip in a guy's brain and he is able to think and control his computer. So the merging of the biological and the manmade is coming too. The last step in increasing levels of communication is that we all have a chip in our brain where our thoughts are shared constantly with the internet and instantly. So within a few years, there might recreational versions of this tech available.

We are probably in the final decade of the Information Age and the dawning of the Biological Age. SCoh9fqhxiCxX8w84iMMoViDBDgwJa

Theft Of Fire - book review

Ross Zeiger — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 16:09:52 +0000

How much I recommend it: 5/10

By Devon Eriksen

I heard about this book from a post on X, someone was asking for the best science fiction books and this title came up in several responses. It was published last year, 2023, which is what caught my attention. I’ve read lots of sci fi books from the likes of Isaac Asimov and other 20th century sci fi writers but wanted to expand to more contemporary books to what types of futures are being imagined now.

Theft of Fire takes place mostly in space when humanity has became a multi-planetary species. A wealthy young woman essentially hijacks the spaceship of a space pirate and forces him to help her complete a mission to retrieve a valuable alien artifact from a distant planet. The woman is from an aristocratic Mars family and is heavily genetically modified to be physically perfect. It’s implied that she may be a descendant of Elon Musk or some other space-faring billionaire. The guy, the space pirate, on the other hand is a gruff, rugged, blue-collar man from Venus (if I remember correctly).

Perhaps the thing I least liked about this book is that these two characters are constantly fighting. This is a long book and probably 60% of it is dialogue between them in argument. Not a fan of that, I skipped ahead through quite a bit of this book for that reason. That fighting morphs into a love story throughout the book.

There is some interesting ideas in here such as an artificial intelligence that is trained off of a human being. A girl wears an implant from childhood into her teenage years and then when the implant is removed, it/she becomes stand along artificial intelligence machine with all the memories, feeling, and awareness of being human. It takes it/her most of the book to become comfortable with the fact she is no longer a biological person with a family and a human future.

Bitcoin is mentioned several times and is the currency of the worlds. That term is used a lot ‘worlds’ because there are multiple planets inhabited by humans.

Despite being a tech nerd I’ve never been super interested in space so for that reason this book didn’t have the appeal to me of earth-bound stories. But if you enjoy space stuff, this is a fun read!

Fallout - Amazon Prime Series Review

Ross Zeiger — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 15:53:14 +0000

How much I recommend it: 8/10

Over a decade ago, as a high schooler, I played the game Fallout on Xbox 360. It’s set in an apocalyptic world with radioactive creatures, underground vaults to explore, and a mid 20th century aesthetic.

Fast forward to 2024, that video game franchise has been turned into an Amazon Prime series and a very good one at that. While I enjoyed the game when I was young, I didn’t expect to like the series as much I did. The characters are great, the scenery is stunning, the story is compelling, and it’s really funny along the way.

The premise of the story is that the last remnants of humanity survived a nuclear blast by escaping underground in the 1950s or so. For over 200 years, they’ve survived underground waiting until the surface radiation levels drop to a safe level to return to the surface. What the vault dwellers don’t know is that humanity has in fact continued but it’s been a struggle for survival. The surface is bleak and riddled with crime and danger.

In Fallout, there are several stories happening at once:

One follows a famous Hollywood actor who, at the beginning of the series, witnesses a nuclear bomb explode over Los Angeles. He survives but becomes a ‘ghoul,’ a creature who is only half-alive but can live forever.
Another story is that of a vault dweller. An innocent, naive young woman who ends up on the surface and exposed to the harsh realities of life outside the vault. She spends the series on the search for her kidnapped father.
Another story is that of a member of the Brotherhood, an order of knights who wear mechanized suits and keep peace in the Wasteland. We see him ascend from being a recruit, to a knight’s squire, to forcibly becoming a knight.

The series has some incredibly creative action scenes and while dark, had me laughing out loud at moments.

Fallout is well worth the watch!

All In - Show Notes - April 19, 2024

Ross Zeiger — Sat, 20 Apr 2024 04:51:21 +0000

Google fired 28 protestors who were protesting the war in Israel/Palestine. Google is involved in a $1.2b Israeli government contract.
Friedberg: On the one hand, it’s good that Google took a stand but on the other, it’s reflective of a company culture that has been too tolerant of social activism to the point where these employees thought they could get away with it without consequence.
Chamath: The Golden Gate Bridge protest and the Google protest are different issues. In a democracy, being able to protest is critical. However, when a protest impedes on people’s ability to go about their lives, you cannot tolerate that. Google situation is about left-leaning employees complaining that their left-leaning companies aren’t left-leaning enough. Google is a for-profit org that is responsible to its shareholders, it did the right thing.
Sacks: Google had no choice but to fire these employees and you can’t blame them for this. These protestors weren’t unlike the Vietnam war and in the fullness of time we may look back and see that their actions were justified. It depends how we will view this war in a few years, this could become Israel’s Vietnam war. In some ways, Israel has already lost this war and they cannot stop Hamas, it’s like whack-a-mole.
Jason: These protestors may have been in the right, they are acting on their conscience. However, there are other ways to do this. This was immature and you cannot tolerate this in the workplace.
Sacks: The Google workers were just trying to get attention and it worked, after all, we’re talking about it now.

NPR Culture Wars: Katherine Maher was named CEO of NPR in January 2024. Former NPR employees came out with exposés about how NPR became far left.
Sacks: There’s nothing surprising here. NPR has always been liberal, there’s no news here. The government should not be funding this organization.
Chamath: This story only matters to journalists, the public doesn’t care.

Marques Brownlee’s review of Humane is causing a lot of waves in the tech world after he called it the worst product he’s ever reviewed. Some people say this is unethical, some say it’s honest. Almost everything about the device sucks.
Friedberg: Hardware is really hard. This company raised a quarter billion dollars but still couldn’t pull off a good product. Some founders can do this, like Elon. But this company fell flat. They don’t have the infrastructure for testing the product and getting consumer feedback.
Chamath: Motivated, dedicated entrepreneurs are not even following this. They’re building. No great entrepreneur cares.
Sacks: Again, no story here. NPR is going to NPR, Google is going to Google, and reviewers are going to review.
Chamath: If you’re concerned about this, you’re not working on something important enough. Anyone doing their job well doesn’t have time to care about this.
Jason: Everyone should read the Anxious Generation by Jonathon Haidt immediately. It’s that important.
Sacks: The opportunity is not replacing the phone, it’s layering interfaces onto the world.
Chamath: Ultimately, we will end up with some sort of brain implant that we will interact with the world through.
Sacks: Recommends the sci Fi Nexus by Ramey Naam

Silicon Valley startups are facing an R&D tax issue. Due to the tax cuts of 2017, there was a deferment and companies have to pay taxes on money made over the last 5 years.
Friedberg: Tons of startups are struggling to pay this tax burden. Businesses are borrowing money just to pay a huge tax bill on profits they didn’t even have. Software developers are being considered R&D. This is going to hurt a lot of small businesses. We’re disincentivizing innovation. We’re starting to see how hungry the US government is for taxes. This is going to get worse as the debt and spending grows.
Jason: This and the difficulty of selling businesses are creating massive headwinds for innovation.

Sports betting has gone mainstream and many states have legalized sports betting. An NBA player got suspended because he engaged in some fixed gambling.
Chamath: When he joined the NBA as an owner, he had to fill out a background about whether he had gambled before. This ban has to be a lifetime ban. Everything is being gamified at the same time that the government is giving away more and more money through stimulus checks and student loan forgiveness. Gambling apps are ruining peoples’ lives. This is going to be a big problem.
Sacks: This is analogous to cannabis. It’s new and untested but some people will abuse it and ruin their lives, others won’t care, and others will be able to use it responsibly.

All In - Episode 174 - Show Notes

Ross Zeiger — Sat, 13 Apr 2024 21:38:51 +0000

Jason’s out - hurt his tooth eating ribs

Fridberg: Announcing All-In Summit 2024 in Los Angeles - September 8-10, 2024

Chamath went to an AI conference with Jonathan Ross, founder of Groq AI.
Chamath: Groq could have 50% of the world’s inference compute by the end of next year. Nvidia is following the Intel playbook by defining a metric that defines the market. Intel picked clock speed, which isn’t actually super important to the end user.
“All major cities are crumbling”…lots of petty crime, drugs, etc. Paris is failing - it’s become lawless and dangerous, knife robberies are high.
Sacks: All the biggest US cities are blue and they have done liberal experiments that are failing horrifically.
Friedberg: Went to Google NEXT conference in Vegas. 30,000 people in attendance at the Mandalay Bay. Tons of companies there that have build products on GCP. There is a race to the bottom on commoditizing things like data storage. The cloud is a wide-open, competitive market right now.

March CPI numbers came in higher than expected at 3.5%. People thought they’d be coming down by now but they’ve stayed high causing things to get more expensive. How does this effect the election?
Sacks: Bad news for Biden. The country was expecting rate cuts and they aren’t looking likely now. Rate cuts could be delayed until July or August now. New narrative is that rates are going to be higher longer and might even increase.
Friedberg: Larry Summers predicted that this would not be a quick rebound and he nailed it.
Sacks: Biden would be in a better place if he’d heeded Larry Summers advice about inflation being sticky. The cost of borrowing is going to higher for longer, housing prices will come down, car payments will be higher, and consumers will feel like they’re worse off. People should be feeling better off because GDP has been growing but they aren’t because prices are higher. If we see a rate hike before the election, Biden is toast.

How influenced is the federal reserve by the election?
Chamath: One of the fed governors plagiarized the work that got her the job. The fed has become increasingly politicized even though it’s supposed to be a neutral body. But if citizens are displeased with the economy, they will vote out the sitting president. Is this random or a systemic set of decisions? Turns out it’s decisions. There is a structural disillusionment in this administration.
Friedberg: The administration is probably going to announce a series of loans forgiveness, subsidies, and stimulus to boost the economy before the election which will lead to worse inflation down the road.
Sacks: Commercial real estate is in a bad place after having borrowed at high rates. A building in St Louis sold for $3.5m that in 2006 sold for $205m. CRE is in a bad place. $1T in debt is getting added to the national debt every 100 days. We may be at the end of a 40 year trend of interest rates dropping that started in 1983.
Chamath: why the disconnect in the market? Markets still hitting ATHs despite the inflation report. Commodities are up 30% since beginning of the year. Other countries are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the US and the dollar.

AI is going to increase productivity in the long run and may be the only hope for sustaining GDP growth over time. Adam Schiff proposed a bill to regulate content generated by generative AI models. The bill makes anyone developing these models to submit lists of training data sources to the government.
Sacks: This is too soon for this legislation. We need more legislation to define Fair Use before we get too far into regulating content for AI. Entrepreneurs are working on solving this issue. Why did Adam Schiff introduce this? He’s a prodigious fund raiser representing Los Angeles and he’s doing this to appeal to Hollywood.
Chamath: Google didn’t sue OpenAI for using 1b hours of content from Youtube for training so why should smaller players care?
Friedberg: The models learn from the data they’re trained on, just like humans learn from all the input we receive. Just like musicians learn from other songs and musicians then adapt it, so will these models. Find a better process for determining uniqueness.
Chamath: Should you not have the right to protect your creations? If you put together some words in a particular order that has meaning to you, shouldn’t you be able to protect that from being claimed by someone else?

Small Drones have been attacking targets in the Suez Canal and in the Ukraine theater. What do you think about this, how does this impact warfare?
Sacks: drone are ubiquitous on the battlefield. You can’t leave cover or loitering drones will hit targets. The Russians have spun up jammers to stop the drones. The US has been using $2m missiles to shoot down $2,000 drones.
Friedberg: Carriers don’t make sense anymore. We need to go smaller and get smaller air defenses.
Chamath: Invested in a company that makes sail drones to collect data. Already being bought by the US Navy and has ADM Mike Mullen on the board. investors have an obligation to invest in future war tech that will make the military safer, cheaper, smaller, and better.
Friedberg: The DoD is increasingly interested in partnering with Silicon Valley companies to build warfare tech. Is this a good thing or bad? Some companies think it’s bad and unethical. Others are winning bad by taking military contracts. Investors who include defense companies in their portfolio will outperform those who don’t.
Sacks: The military spends a lot on R&D with very little to show for it. We aren’t getting good value for our dollars, we need a disruption in the defense industry to speed up the development happening there. The battlefield of the future will be more automated and less human.
Friedberg: 79% of lithium battery production comes out of China, only 6.3% from the US. EMP may be used to fight drones and take out electronic systems.
Chamath: The military doesn’t have a choice but to automate. Enlistment is at an all-time low and has dropped drastically since the 1980s. We need to move to a military of unmanned autonomous vehicles.
Sacks: If the US starts using EMPs, the enemy will hardened their drones against EMP. It’s a temporary measure. Planes and vehicles will need anti-EMP tech.

Stranger in a Strange Land

Ross Zeiger — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 13:52:38 +0000

I write this from the Atlanta airport on April 4, 2024. This is my first time stepping foot in the United States since December 2022. I feel like a stranger in a strange land. In that spirit, the following is my observations of the customs of this place and its humans.

The very first thing I noticed was upon taking my phone off airplane mode. The cellular data is blazing fast! My WhatsApp messages were sending immediately and webpages loading instantly versus taking 3 or 4 or 5 seconds. The 5G is lacking in Mexico so this was a welcome situation.

The next step was getting off the plane and heading to the Global Entry kiosks. I stepped up to it, pressed a big green button, it scanned my face in about half a second, and that was all I had to do. No one even looked at my passport. The customs guy asked if I brought anything in, I had brought a bottle of Mezcal, but he shrugged and waved me through. Insanely efficient.

The next thing I noticed was how friendly people are. I had to go through security again to get on my connecting flight and the TSA agent was saying Welcome to Canada to everyone that came up to him and laughing like he had just told the greatest joke ever written. I feel lucky to be among the first 20,000 people that this comedian practiced his new material on. I’m eagerly awaiting the Netflix special.

And it wasn’t just him. Everyone I approached gave an enthusiastic how’s it going? How’s your day? These are a loud and boisterous people.

The other notable thing is that about half of them are shockingly rotund. The size of two or three Mexicans in some cases. But it’s not just the girth of their bellies, they are tall too! I’d gotten used to being about average height but felt tiny again here.

Next, I sat down at an airport restaurant. I took a look at the menu. Burgers, wings, fries, vegan options for everything. Most things about $12 to $15. With no good options available, I ordered a turkey wrap and wings. The waitress asked if I wanted blue cheese with the wings. I said sí. She looked confused. So I said yes, a word that hasn’t left my mouth over the past many months.

I watched people waddling by. I watched people devouring mountains of fried potatoes.

I wasn’t trying to snoop but people talk really loud here. It’s like they want you to listen to their conversations. Most conversations I overheard were complaints about minor inconveniences like a flight being delayed by 20 minutes or how the wine someone usually ordered wasn’t as good as usual.

Throughout my meal, the waitress came up and asked things like “are you still working on that?” Which I thought was an odd question. I had eaten it, yes, but I’m in a different line of work.

When I was ready to pay for the meal, I forgot how to ask for the bill. Do I go to the cashier? Is there a bell to ring? Do I ask for la cuenta? When another waitress came up and asked if she could help with anything, I said I’d like to pay. That seemed to do the trick. She asked for my card which I thought was very odd. In Mexico, they always bring the card terminal to the table so when she started to walk away with my credit card, I thought I was being robbed. But I decided to let this play out. Sure enough, she returned with a slip of paper that had the amount I’d be charged but on the bottom there were a couple confusing things. While my meal had been $29, they tacked on another $3 or so in tax. That’s pretty shady. So the tax got added to the price on the menu. But it didn’t stop there. There was a section below that that said suggested gratuity. In that section there were three lines one said 18%, 20%, and 25%.

After I paid, I said a heartfelt ‘gracias’ to the waitress and left.

[That concludes what I wrote in the Atlanta airport]

On the ground in North Carolina, the strangeness continued.

In the airport bathroom, the toilets flushed automatically as you stepped away, the sink turned on automatically as you put your hand under it, and the paper towels dispensed automatically if you waved at it. Even the trash cans sometimes seemed to come to life and compact the trash every few minutes. Everything was automated, sometimes to the point of stupidity.

As the automatic airport doors opened I was greeted by vehicles that must have been built for giants. Instead of Volkswagens, Fiats, and little Nissans, I saw SUVs, mini-vans, mega vans, and giant trucks. In fact, about half of the vehicles were trucks. And these weren’t the little utility vehicles you see occasionally in Mexico that are always carrying a ladder, some tools, some mattresses strapped to the roof, and a cab full of three or four or eight workers. These trucks were twice as tall and twice as long. They were shiny, free of scratches, had leather seats, and looked like not so much as bag of groceries had ever been hauled in their giant truck bed. Piloting these monstrosities was usually just one person. One person mounted on a 4 ton luxury wheelchair.

To accommodate these monstrous vehicles, the lanes of the road were extra wide. And the parking lots in front of stores stretched on as far the eye could see with extra wide parking spots to accommodate the working vehicles that this population has. My best guess is that these people are all employed in the trades and need all that transportation capacity for their pipes and their lumber and their concrete. But again, I never saw a single truck bed that had so much as a lawn mower in it. So it’s all very confusing.

There’s a certain uniformity to this place. There are carbon copies of buildings all through the towns with names like McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Chevron which make it hard to distinguish one town from another. This isn’t good or bad, just not as interesting as places where every street and neighborhood has a distinct personality and character.

This concludes my observations from this strange land.

All In Show notes - Episode 172

Ross Zeiger — Sat, 30 Mar 2024 01:57:59 +0000

SBF Sentenced to 25 years in prison

FTX customers lost 8 billion due to FTX fraud; no possibility of parole

Sacks: SBF turned out to be an actually good investor - he put money in Anthropic (now worth $884M) and Solana. Unlike the Madoff situation, SBF actually made some money but his messiah complex caused him to do shady things.

Friedberg: 100% of the investors and account holders will be made whole according to the FTX trustee.

Jason: They were hopped up on speed and that lead to some of the mania.

Chamath: He talked to SBF on a Zoom call and asked for a model and got sent a five line excel sheet.

Sacks: He saw SBF at a tech conference and met with him. He asked about SBF about a ballot iniative, why was he funding a ballot initiative to raise taxes in California. SBF got very animated and upset defending the initiative.

Trump made $5B with the IPO of DJT, his social media company

Jason: DJT is worth about the same as Reddit ($8.5 billion). DJT is valued about 2000x revenue, Reddit about 10x.

Chamath: This reminds him of 1997 when David Bowie released a Bowie Bond. This might have been the first instance of people monetizing themself. DJT represents a trading card on Donald Trump, an investment in him as a person. We might see the Kardashians do this, Mr. Beast, etc. Buyers will buy this and stock’s like it as a bet on Donald Trump as a brand.

Friedberg: Chamath is right and it’s probably also a vote against traditional Media. This is a way for people to say that they want this new way.

Sacks: This is a reaction against the law fare being waged on Trump. Trump’s enemies are angry and his supporters might buy the stock as a protest vote.

Chamath: We’ve shifted from rational fundamental-based stock investing to speculative activity. These markets are becoming more gamified and less based on actual business performance and principles.

Jason: There is key man risk here too if you’re buying the Trump brand. What happens when he dies? Gets arrested, etc?

Chamath: Branson has created over 20 businesses over $1B each under the Virgin umbrella.

RFK Picks Nicole Shanahan as his running mate

Nicole is 38 and a Bay Area lawyer with experience in the tech sector

Sacks: He likes RFK a lot but isn’t thrilled about the pick for VP. It’s nice to have someone young running but she is so different than RFK on important issues. Concerned that she wants criminal justice reform when it’s already ruining SF and parts of California. Tulsi Gabbard would’ve been an amazing running mate instead of Nicole.

Chamath: Many positive thoughts about RFK but agrees with Sacks that this isn’t the right pick. He is calculating that he could take more votes from the Democratic/liberal audience versus a conservative running mate.

Sacks: We might see Biden fight RFK to prevent him from taking votes from the DNC.

US National Debt rises by $1T every 100 days. Current Biden budget calls for $7.3T to be spent next year.

Friedberg: This is the biggest issue of our time and the ONLY thing that matters. It’s not a Dem or Rep problem, it’s the rampant misuse of funds and that voters keep voting more and more spending into office from both sides.

Chamath: There a few places where the US could save $200-500B per year but it won’t be easy.

Sacks: The best years for tax surplus were during good economic years with relatively low tax rates.

Freidberg: 3 million people directly employed by the US government. Between 12-20% of people pay more than half of their paycheck to the government. So much of our economy is working for the government (heavily taxed citizens) or funded by the government (social security recipients, direct employees of the government, etc)

Sacks: Federal Receipts as percent of GDP has hovered between 15-20% since WWII Regardless of tax rates.

Friedberg: The government is too deeply involved in every aspect of the US economy.

Sacks: Federal spending doesn’t create value. Every category where the federal government has regulated or subsidized has gotten way more expensive.

Cocoa price has skyrocketed this year; 80% is grown in Ghana and other parts of Africa, because of El Niño, a fungus spread in the plants that caused bad yields

Friedberg: Chocolate makers are going to shrink their products, raise prices, etc

All In 171 - Show Notes

Ross Zeiger — Sat, 23 Mar 2024 04:47:11 +0000

DOJ sues Apple for anti-competitive behavior in five categories.

Sacks: Both Apple and the government have good points but the government has no smoking gun in this case.
Friedberg: Apple makes great products and consumers are free to switch to Android or Windows or alternatives.
Jason: The fact that the App Store can tax every app by 30% is outrageous. They should allow consumers to choose whether they want to get apps off the App Store.
Friedberg: Government needs to stay out of this situation.
Sacks: Government goes after companies when they get too big and in this case they have a valid reason but it seems unlikely they will win.

Apple in talks with Google for Google to be the default the LLM on their devices.

Chamath: Inexcusable that Apple is backing down from this giant moment in tech. As such a huge company, they should be leaning into innovation and building their own LLM.

Friedberg: Apple is surely making their own models.

Sacks: How could Apple possibly be considering this after how disastrous Gemini was?

Chamath: Apple spent $30B on R&D last year. Where did it go?

A $418M settlement was reached by the National Association of Realtors. The NAR conspired to artificially inflate agent commissions. Broker commissions represent about $100B in the US and these changes are expected to lead to a 50% reduction in Realtors Nationwide.

Friedberg: with so much of the paperwork and documentation involved in the real estate transaction process becoming taking over by AI, the fee reduction will continue to drop. Predicts that in the future, the transaction fees will be a fixed fee. Massive disruption is happening in this industry and the consumer will benefit over time. There are 1.4m realtors and probably 10% of them make 50% of the income. The bottom performers will not be able to make a sustainable living as a realtor.

Sacks: Buyers won’t want to pay buyer’s fees. It’s game over for buyer’s agents. Skeptical that this policy will continue as planned due to how massive of a shakeup this is. The fee system is broken, it should be Based on performance.

Microsoft has acqui-hired AI employees and is spinning up a new company called Microsoft AI.

Sacks: Possibly this was to avoid anti-trust attention but more likely this was a bailout. The company (Inflection) wasn’t going anywhere so Microsoft bailed them out to get the talent.

Saudi Arabia plans a $40B AI fund to invest into AI companies. This would be the second biggest fund ever raised. How would you deploy it?

Sacks: He’d take his time, not rush to deploy all the capital. It’s hard to know who in the tech stack will capture the most value: chip makers, applications, infrastructure, etc.

Jason: He’d pick robotics to invest in.

Friedberg: the applications are where you can find interesting traditional business models.

Chamath: Most fund managers get wrong: not having enough reserves for winners. His biggest missed chances were not having enough extra to deploy to winners.

Reddit went public today at an $8B valuation and popped 50% on the first day of trading.

Chamath: Meme stocks are back and there’s a lot of speculation happening. also looks like we will get more rate cuts this year. This is the beginning of the beginning of exuberance.

Sacks: Inflation still hasn’t dropped enough so don’t factor in the rate cuts yet. Biden is polling negatively despite how well the economy is doing. Of the $35.8B of CRE loans last year, only a quarter were paid off. If rates don’t come down, there will be a problem.

Science corner: The universe is expanding for inexplicable reasons.

Friedberg: It’s long been known that the universe is expanding. It’s like there are raisins in a cake and as the cake bakes, the raisins are moving further away from each other. The rate of expansion is different at different parts of the universe. There is so little we understand about the structure of the universe.

A kidney was taken from the pig, some genes were edited out using CRISPR, and implanted into a man successfully. So far, it’s working well. This could be the beginning of a nearly infinite source of organs.

Elon had a huge week: Successful Starship launch, Neuralink human implant success, and more.

Write Your Story

Ross Zeiger — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 12:54:42 +0000

A beautiful thing about life is none of us know where this thing is going to end up.

And if you're reading these words, you still have a chance to write your story.

The thing is, in this story, you get to be both author and main character.

You may not get to choose the obstacles or even the supporting characters.

But you get to craft your own character and story around them.

You can write it in an unintentional and uninspired way. Most do.

Or you can be strong, resilient, kind, honest, focused, and interesting.

You are writing your story. Take it seriously.

All In - Episode 170 Show Notes

Ross Zeiger — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 16:50:13 +0000

Most Based CEO

Jason: CEOs seem to be getting more candid and saying what they think rather than filtering everything through a PR team. Played Jensen Huang clip saying “I hope you suffer” and Palantir CEO talking about Wall Street traders doing coke.
Friedberg: It seems like the cancel culture mentality is fading away - clearly a positive trend.
Sacks: These CEOs aren’t saying anything dangerous. They still aren’t attacking any sacred cows. There wasn’t necessarily any political courage in the example clips.
Chamath: There was a few year period where people couldn’t speak their minds and now CEOs are spending their political capital.

OpenAI’s Sora Training Data: Youtube?

OpenAI’s CTO made a statement that implies the model for Sora may have come from Youtube.

Chamath: On ChatGPT, if you open the voice prompt and say nothing, it will respond “Thank you for watching.” Possibly implying that it uses Youtube training data.

Friedberg: This isn’t controversial. Youtube is open data, it’s all publicly available.

Vertical AI Companies Flourishing

A new startup has emerged called Devin that is like a software engineer.

Chamath: This is incredible. The progress being made each week is amazing.

Sacks: This is the obvious use case for AI, being able to generate code with plain English and this is a great start. Coders are going to get much more efficient, this is a multiplier.

Friedberg: We are moving toward AGI but for now, in this era, we are seeing specific AIs replace specific humans i.e. lawyers, coders, doctors. You will still need humans with creativity to oversee the AI Agents.

Chamath: We’re going to see millions, or even billions, of new companies because anyone can create an app or service with AI.

Sacks: It‘s never been easier to get started as a solo developer.

House Passes Bill to Ban TikTok

Biden has said he will sign the bill but Senate has said there is a lack of interest. Trump and Vivek both oppose the bill and received campaign donations from ta ByteDance investor.

Sacks: There is a little of potential for abuse here from intelligence agencies. The bill is too vague and would allow a lot of control over other apps by the government. The definitions in the bill are too vague.

Chamath: There should be reciprocity. If US social apps aren’t allowed there, we shouldn’t allow theirs.

Friedberg: Reciprocity for reciprocity’s sake isn’t a good approach. The US is different than China. If we truly value free speech and free press, we cannot arbitrarily ban an app. that said, if it’s proven that the app is being used to spy on US citizens, then yes, we should ban it. But, if TikTok is banned it’s going to benefit Meta, Twitter, etc.

Jason: TikTok is attempting to program American youth through the algorithm.

Chamath: the algorithm in China is different than the one in the US. In China, it shows science and education content, in the US it’s pranks and dancing And political propaganda.

Sacks: It must be proven that the app is doing something nefarious otherwise we are going down a dangerous path to ban it.

Chamath: In this case, we are seeing a near unanimous support for this through the house. We wouldn’t see this kind of support if they didn’t all see something dangerous with this app.

Florida considering Banning Lab Grown Meat

Friedberg: Bill now on DeSantis’ desk for signing. This is a deterrence for the innovation and technology that is lab-grown meat. This is happening because Florida ranchers have risen against it to protect their businesses. This is a really bad idea. It denies innovation to industry. If Florida does this, Texas might follow suit and other big ranching states.

Chamath: Agrees with Friedberg, this is anti-competitive.

Sacks: It’s terrible when a legacy industry gets together and blocks a new technology.

Reptile - Movie Review

Ross Zeiger — Sun, 10 Mar 2024 14:28:38 +0000

How much I recommend it: 6/10

The movie was decent but way too long.

The movie starts with a woman getting murdered and her body discovered by her boyfriend. The rest of the film is an unraveling of whodunit.

The boyfriend, who initially seems innocent, is revealed to be part of a mastermind family behind a corrupt police department and real estate company. The police department was planting drugs in houses, raiding them, capturing the drugs and properties, then selling the properties to the real estate company.

All In - Episode 169 - Show notes

Ross Zeiger — Sat, 09 Mar 2024 04:25:47 +0000

Elon is suing OpenAI for starting as a nonprofit and turning into a for-profit.

Sacks: Elon feels like he was swindled after having donated to OpenAI as a nonprofit. The meme battle is excellent.
Chamath: They used Elon’s name to raise more money early on. But, the personal matter is less important than the legal precedent. If non-profits are allowed to become for-profits, that’s a dangerous loophole to have.
Friedberg: OpenAI released a set of documents with Elon himself saying the org should be for-profit.
Jason: The IRS is going to have a field day with OpenAI
Sacks: When companies try to innovate on legal, not product, it always backfires. This company was supposed to be open-source and non-profit. Now, it’s closed-source and for-profit.

OpenAI’s focus on AGI

Sacks: OpenAIs mission is explicitly to develop AGI.
Friedberg: The capability of one-person with powerful AI will unlock opportunities we can’t even imagine right now.
Jason: ”My definition of AGI is when AI is smarter than the smartest person who ever lived”

Sunny Madfa joined the call to talk about Definitive AI.

Sunny: Definitive merged with Groq this week. All the besties are now investors in Groq.

Apple fined $2 billion by EU regulators

Sacks: this is super heavy handed and limited free speech.
Chamath: This is the beginning of the end of Apple. This is peak Apple. He thinks Buffett is disengaging from Apple. He only mentioned Apple once in the shareholder letter.
Jason: The stalling of Apple is the stalling of the iPhone.

House bill proposes ByteDance must divest of TikTok or face being banned outright.

Sacks: If true that the CCP is spying on Americans through these apps, then yes, they should be banned.
Chamath: An ex-Google engineer has been accused of stealing data and sharing it with the CCP. We should assume that all entities are infiltrated and sharing data with other countries. Palmer Lucky says we should enforce reciprocity, Chamath agrees.
Friedberg: It is so crazy that opinions can be swayed by an ad.
Sacks: Everyone says they aren’t influenced by ads but acknowledge that everyone is.

Bitcoin hit an all-time high. Up 70% in 2024. The halving is happening in the next couple weeks.

Chamath: Lots of experts are saying we’re on the way up to $100k. Billions are pouring into ETFs.
Friedberg: As long as the value stays high, the incentives for mining remaining.

Microplastics

Friedberg: Patients had plaque removed from their arteries examined for plastics. Microplastics are accumulating in blood. The patients with high levels of plastic had 4x higher chance of adverse health effects. They may driving inflammation, cardiovascular diseases, and more. It’s a real problem because the cost of glass and metal is so much higher that The transition away from plastic won’t be easy.

Name It

Ross Zeiger — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 11:35:44 +0000

Words pull ideas out of the abstract.

That’s a fancy way to say that by being able to describe something, you can bring it into existence or at least into your awareness.

I’ve noticed this many times in my life. I’ll stumble upon an idea with a name - often these are things that end in ‘law’ (eg. Parkinson’s Law), ‘principle’ (Pareto Principle), or ‘effect’ (Dunning-Kruger Effect) - and by being able to name it, an idea that’s always been there enters my awareness.

Some people have a talent for this. They name their own beliefs and philosophies.

And words also have varying levels of precision.

I’m married to a native Korean speaker and she’ll sometimes express frustration about how limited English is to say the particular type of hunger she has in the moment (you know, “the hunger you get in the winter when it’s raining and you really need hot soup!”) or even a specific shade of purple.

Another famous example that gets thrown around is that eskimos have 50 different words for snow. Imagine how that would shape your understanding of what it means to be snowing - is it light snow? Heavy snow? Snow with wind? And 47 more ways that I can’t possibly think of right now.

By being able to name something and describe something with precision, you can now act on or make decisions around that thing.

To use an example I gave previously, when I first learned about Parkinson’s Law (the idea that a resource expands to fill the space given to it - whether time, money, food, anything), I realized it’s existence in my own psychology and others’. Of course, it had always been there, but by giving it a nice little package (that is, a name), I now have language to think about it, anticipate it, and harness it for a positive or negative outcome.

So, for all these reasons, it’s a valuable exercise to name things and ideas descriptively, uniquely, and precisely.

Warren Buffett's (Berkshire Hathaway) Shareholder Letter 2023 - Notes & Takeaways

Ross Zeiger — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 00:04:15 +0000

Link to the letter: https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/2023ar/2023ar.pdf

Opens with a tribute to the recently deceased Charlie Munger

Charlie, in 1965, promptly advised me: “Warren, forget about ever buying another company like Berkshire. But now that you control Berkshire, add to it wonderful businesses purchased at fair prices and give up buying fair businesses at wonderful prices.
Charlie was the “architect” of the present Berkshire, and I acted as the “general contractor” to carry out the day-by-day construction of his vision
Charlie never sought to take credit for his role as creator but instead let me take the bows and receive the accolades. In a way his relationship with me was part older brother, part loving father. Even when he knew he was right, he gave me the reins, and when I blundered he never – never –reminded me of my mistake.

2023 Letter

Over the years, Berkshire has attracted an unusual number of such “lifetime” shareholders and their heirs. We cherish their presence and believe they are entitled to hear every year both the good and bad news, delivered directly from their CEO and not from an investor-relations officer or communications consultant forever serving up optimism and syrupy mush.
In visualizing the owners that Berkshire seeks, I am lucky to have the perfect mental model, my sister, Bertie
Bertie, like most of you, understands many accounting terms, but she is not ready for a CPA exam. She follows business news – reading four newspapers daily – but doesn’t consider herself an economic expert. She is sensible – very sensible – instinctively knowing that pundits should always be ignored. After all, if she could reliably predict tomorrow’s winners, would she freely share her valuable insights and thereby increase competitive buying? That would be like finding gold and then handing a map to the neighbors showing its location.
[on why net income isn’t the most important figure] We, however, are left uncomfortable. At Berkshire, our view is that “earnings” should be a sensible concept that Bertie will find somewhat useful – but only as a starting point – in evaluating a business. Accordingly, Berkshire also reports to Bertie and you what we call “operating earnings.” Here is the story they tell: $27.6 billion for 2021; $30.9 billion for 2022 and $37.4 billion for 2023.
I can’t remember a period since March 11, 1942 – the date of my first stock purchase – that I have not had a majority of my net worth in equities, U.S.-based equities. And so far, so good. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell below 100 on that fateful day in 1942 when I “pulled the trigger.” I was down about $5 by the time school was out. Soon, things turned around and now that index hovers around 38,000. America has been a terrific country for investors. All they have needed to do is sit quietly, listening to no one.
Our goal at Berkshire is simple: We want to own either all or a portion of businesses that enjoy good economics that are fundamental and enduring. Within capitalism, some businesses will flourish for a very long time while others will prove to be sinkholes. It’s harder than you would think to predict which will be the winners and losers. And those who tell you they know the answer are usually either self-delusional or snake-oil salesmen.
[on growing so large that there are only a small handful of US companies that could be meaningful to moving the stock price of Berkshire] Outside the U.S., there are essentially no candidates that are meaningful options for capital deployment at Berkshire. All in all, we have no possibility of eye-popping performance.
Outside the U.S., there are essentially no candidates that are meaningful options for capital deployment at Berkshire. All in all, we have no possibility of eye-popping performance.
Companies Berkshire plans to hold indefinitely: Coca Cola, American Express, and Occidental Petroleum.
the US was dependent on foreign oil until 2011 and now produces 13 BOEPD
BNSF is the largest of six major rail systems that blanket North America. Our railroad carries its 23,759 miles of main track, 99 tunnels, 13,495 bridges, 7,521 locomotives and assorted other fixed assets at $70 billion on its balance sheet. But my guess is that it would cost at least $500 billion to replicate those assets and decades to complete the job.
Engineers must deal with the fact that among an American population of 335 million, some forlorn or mentally-disturbed Americans are going to elect suicide by lying in front of a 100-car, extraordinarily heavy train that can’t be stopped in less than a mile or more. Would you like to be the helpless engineer? This trauma happens about once a day in North America; it is far more common in Europe and will always be with us.
At this years Berkshire gathering (May 4, 2024), Warren, Greg Abel, and Amit Jain will be on stage this year. Charlie Will be missing

2023 performance:

Berkshire up 15.8%
S & P 500 up 26.3%
Berkshire performance since 1965: up 4,384,748%
S & P 500 since 1965: up 31,223%

P/C Insurance

P/C has been the main engine fueling Berkshire’s growth since 1967, the year they bought National Indemnity
Float, the amount of money insurers hold between receiving a premium and paying out claims later, is what has allowed Berkshire to have so much capital to invest in Other businesses
In 2023, berkshire’s float is over $169 billion

End notes from Warren, 10-k Begins

Infinity Pool - Movie Review

Ross Zeiger — Sun, 25 Feb 2024 04:15:50 +0000

How much I recommend it: 7/10

This one is trippy, dark, and thought-provoking.

A couple, James and Em, are vacationing on a fictional remote island. The resort they are staying at is isolated from the rest of the island as the tiny country is desperately poor and known to be dangerous for tourists.

They befriend another couple, Gabi and Alban, staying at the resort and get invited to leave the resort to go to a beach. They rent a car from a resort employee and head out for a day of drinking and hanging out in the sun.

When it’s time to leave, James volunteers to drive back as the others are drunk and sleepy. While driving down a dark road, the car’s headlights start to flicker on and off. While he is distracted trying to fix the headlights, a man crosses the road in front of the car and James plows into him, killing him.

James and Em are panicking and wanting to call the police but Gabi and Alban, say no, terrible idea. If you call the police here they’ll do terrible things to you. So they flee the scene and head back to the hotel.

The next morning, James is awoken to pounding on the door. It’s the police. They arrest him and take him and Em to the station. There, a detective informs him that the penalty for killing someone, regardless of if it was intentional or accidental, is death at the hands of the oldest son of the victim. Or, if there is no son, the police will do it. But, there is an exception for foreigners. Foreigners can pay for a ‘double’ to be killed in their place. The double is a clone of the murderer with all of their memories and an identical body. James agrees to this, signs some papers, withdraws some cash, and undergoes the procedure to double himself.

He wakes up in a hospital bed and after coming to his senses is taken to a room to watch the execution of his double. The 12 year old son of the murder victim approaches the double with a knife and stabs him over and over in abdomen until he dies. James and Em are both watching. Em is traumatized but James has a slight smile on his face as he watches the double scream in pain and die.

Back at the resort, James has an urn with the ashes of the double. James is invited to Gabi and Alban’s room where they are having a party. He’s informed that everyone there has had a similar experience, that they are all ‘zombies’ and how they can see he is a changed man. They invite him to come raid a house of a wealthy resort owner which he agrees to. They break in, steal a valuable from him, and hold him hostage until one of his staff comes out with a gun and starts shooting at the trespassers causing them to leave.

In the next scene, they are all in the same holding cell that James was after his murder. They all pay for doubles and are seen watching the execution of those doubles together like it’s a sport.

James’ wife hates who he is becoming and leaves him to go to the airport while he stays behind because his passport is lost. That night, he takes a drug sacred to the locals of the island and has an orgy with the crew he broke into the house with the night before.

They play a trick on him and he ends up beating up someone with a pillow sheet over his head that he believes is the detective. When they pull the sheet off, it’s revealed that it is another double of James.

In a moment of clarity, James tries to flee the resort. He pulls his passport (not actually lost) out from a hiding place under the sink and boards the hotel shuttle. En route, the bus is stopped by the group from the resort. They have guns and forcing James to get off the bus. They make him walk back to the hotel while they drive slowly behind him, taunting him and telling him that everything was a setup.

James escapes by running into the woods but is shot as he flees. He wanders until finding a farm, where he collapses and is taken in by the family. When he awakes, no one is around. He stumbles outside and the group from the resort is waiting for him. They have his double on a leash and are calling it “the dog” and tell him that he has to kill the dog. He does.

The next day, they are all seen on the bus heading to the airport. The other couples from the group are chatting casually about domestic things while James sit in the back of the bus shell shocked. One by one the couples board the planes and depart back to their homes while James is the last to leave.

In the final scene of the movie, he is seen sitting on the back chairs back at the resort in a torrential downpour. He never left.

Super trippy movie but I enjoyed it a lot. Lots of moral conundrums and unanswered questions.

All In - Ep. 167 Notes

Ross Zeiger — Sat, 24 Feb 2024 02:44:13 +0000

Nvidia had record earnings in Q4 2023 with $22B of revenue. Massive growth over the last few years. Stock popped and the market cap gained $270B in one day.

Chamath: When companies are too profitable, the margins eventually get competed away. This is going to spur other companies to jump into the fray.
Friedberg: Chamath is right so the question is: how long is Nvidia’s lead going to last? We‘ve seen this type of monopoly before with companies like Cisco and Oracle but eventually competitors came in wiped out their margins.
Sacks: Nvidia is different then Cisco because chips are so much more complex and difficult to manufactured.
Chamath: the revenue scale will continue for 2-3 years for Nvidia then the other players will catch up
Chamath: Nvidia is an enabler of a new ‘economy’ like Intel was for computing and Microsoft was for software. Nvidia will remain a big player but it will enable something far bigger with lots of new players.
Sacks: in 1999, you couldn’t even upload a profile photo to an online account because the bandwidth was so low. By 2003, the underlying infrastructure enabled it and social media followed soon thereafter. The evolution of better chips are going to continue to open doors in terms of computing capabilities.

This was a big week for Groq.

Chamath: Invested in Groq since 2016. You got to just keep grinding through the lows. Research came out that Groq outperforms other LLMs and thousands of new customers are flocking to it.
Friedberg: This is an overnight success that took 8 years. “Deep tech” is like that. They are very difficult businesses where you need to execute everything right for a very long to have A viable product. when they work out, (like Tesla, OpenAI, SpaceX, etc) they unlock massive value in the market with a deep moat
Chamath: you have to keep going even when things are looking bad. The current AI apps are too expensive and not good enough to really be value creators but Groq changes that
Chamath: prefers investments that are technical challenges, not physical challenges like fusion

Gemini went off the rails this week and refused to generate images of white people.

Sacks: It’s a joke
Friedberg: It’s ironic that Google went from being slow to launch to prematurely launching this product and falling flat on it’s face
Chamath: the base order principle for AI should be that it is accurate and right.
Sacks: Gemini reflects the biases of the people who created it
Friedberg: Google is going to have a hard time going from a data retrieval company to being a data interpretation service. rather than just showing you data created by other people, AI models need to interpret that data and communicate it in some way to the end user
Chamath: an element of making the model good is reinforcement training which means that Gemini was trained by people who taught it not to tell the truth
Sacks: there is an objective truth on things like ‘was George Washington white’ and AI needs to get it right
Friedberg: think about search in 1996 vs 2000 vs now. We are in the 1996 phase of AI. It’s going to get significantly better.

Updates on the war:

sacks: Russia just took a city in Ukraine. Russia is in the process of annexing a part of Moldova. The war could expand if The West interprets it as an escalation of the war.

It's Objectively Simple

Ross Zeiger — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 03:16:56 +0000

What stands between me right now and the best possible version of myself is objectively simple.

Not easy.

In fact, it's really hard.

But it's simple.

What I mean is that everyone knows objectively what to do to get better at anything in life whether it's running faster, losing fat, saving more money, or getting better at another language.

In any of those cases, it's simple. Here are the answers, respectively:

Run more and harder. Eat healthier foods and fewer calories. Spend less than you earn and invest the rest. Deliberately practice that foreign language.

Objectively simple. Difficult in practice.

The point is, I don't need more information. I don't need more motivation. I don't more gear.

What I need is to get after it. I need to stop making excuses. And I need to put in the time and focus.

It's that simple. If I really want to be better, I'll make it happen.

All In Episode 166 - Show Notes

Ross Zeiger — Sat, 17 Feb 2024 16:54:08 +0000

Show notes:

Are we underestimating or overhyping AI?
Friedberg: we have to see productivity gains in the application layer then meet the demand with enough computing power. Arm’s valuation has doubled in the last few weeks. The Vision Fund bought 90% of Arm - giant win for Masa.
Chamath: people who don’t understand the market or the tech will critique good investors but time reveals who’s right. Massive credit to Masa for tuning out the crowd and sticking to his convictions.
Sacks: Masa is a gambler. He needed a big win to make up for his losses and this was it.
What do you think about Sora?
Sacks: Incredible. But, the model doesn’t recognize things as objects would means we will need some integration between something like Unreal engine. Currently, it’s simply recreating videos it’s been trained on without understanding 3D objects.
Friedberg: We will eventually all make our own videos and video games locally rather than having a producer or studio do it. The 3D compute required to train a model to accurately make video isn’t there yet.
GPT4-Turbo has 128k tokens. Gemini 1.5 has a 1 million token context window. Google has done something architecturally different.
Context window = the amount of data you can feed into an LLM.
Chamath: Gemini is interesting marketing but the results aren’t showing that it’s that much better Than other models. Context window does not correlate to quality of output. Meta rolled out a functional unit test AI for testing software. Something like this could have prevented things like the 737 Max failures. There’s another service called Magic.dev that learns from your style of coding and can replicate it. This is going to allow companies to operate way more efficiently with way fewer people.
Friedberg: Predicts Apple will roll out a Local LLM on the next iPhone chip. Regulating AI is futile and governments should get out of the way of what they don’t understand.
Chamath: this is going to revolutionize pornography first. No more exploitation of people, under age people, etc. OnlyFans will be a casualty first.
Jason: MGIE is Apple’s LLM - it’s significantly behind OpenAI and others
Sacks: This is revolutionary for independent film by bringing cost down to almost zero
Friedberg: Your entertainment will be generated on the fly for you
Sacks: People will always want curation and human creativity
Jason: You’ll be able to go in and watch a story from any perspective you want for example, watch Star Wars from Obi-wans perspective or Darth Vader
There’s going to be a whole new paradigm of what it means to be a creator just like Instagram and TikTok gave rise to a new type of creator
Stock Option Loans - Should companies be using them?
The company loans you the money to pay down the exercise price then you pay the company back at some point in the future. It’s cashless for the company. What started happening is when the company didn’t work out, the employee is on the hook for the loan. These were really common 20 years ago but it’s disastrous for many companies so has fallen out of favor. Looks like a win-win on the surface but it’s actually not In practice. The whole thing creates a lot of tax burden. Plus, it’s complicated.
Biden’s Age - Majority think he’s too old
Biden 81 years old. Trump 77 years old.
Biden neglected a cognitive test in his annual physical.
The most number of presidents have been in the 50-54 age group
Presidents not disclosing certain things is fine but not disclosing mental health is unacceptable. This is not what stability looks like for the person who Controls the decision for a country to go to war and use nuclear weapons.
59% in a poll say both Biden and Trump are too old to be president.
Biden didn’t even do a Super Bowl interview, possibly because his aids are afraid he’ll mess up
Biden confused Egypt and Mexico
Should a cognitive test be required for president? Friedberg says no, democracy itself is the system that should weed out candidates that aren’t equipped to lead. In this case, voters will not put in office someone unfit.
Who runs the country in a second Biden term? The staff. It’ll be a regent presidency.
Will Biden drop out? Sacks: no way. If Democratic Party wanted to make a change, they should have done it a year ago. Chamath: The three people on theballot in 2024 will be Biden, Trump, and RFK
Tucker-Putin Interview
Tucker asked 43 questions, mostly softballs
Jason: Nothing really profound came out of the interview, Putin is a master evader
Chamath: Eye opening how rooted in history Putin’s views are. Also eye opening that Clinton told Putin he couldn’t join NATO

Every Company is a Media Company

Ross Zeiger — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 14:00:21 +0000

In this new era, every company is a media company.

Whether you are a solopreneur or a small business, and whether you’ve accepted it or not, you are a media company.

You have to be if you want to be successful.

In the past, you could run a newspaper ad or radio ads or even put up a sign and you’d be able to generate some awareness for your product or service. With some exceptions, those don’t work as well anymore. Consumers are inundated with advertising and it’s harder to get noticed.

Now, people are searching for you. More specifically, they are searching for your solution and when they find you, you need to have created a library of content related to how you can solve their problem.

Once they find your video or blog, and your solution solves their problem, you will have built a level of trust and authority that keeps them coming back to you. And eventually, when they have a problem not solved by your free content, they will pay you.

And once you’ve built that backlog of content, it’s there forever, at no cost to you, getting impressions from Youtube or Instagram or wherever you’ve placed that content.

Media also has a compounding effect. As you create more of it, the better you get at making it. The better you get at making it, the more valuable it is to an audience. The more valuable it is to an audience, the more it gets shared and distributed. Eventually, your content is drawing a steady stream of inbound leads.

This also means you have to set up a simple and clear funnel from your free content to your paid content. Perhaps the most popular method here is having a lead magnet to get customers to sign up for an email list. By giving away something like a PDF with valuable information in exchange for an email address, savvy entrepreneurs can maintain an email list to communicate their offerings, provide discounts and incentives, and generally stay top-of-mind for potential customers.

In almost every industry, I have seen small businesses create content around their work and generate outsized audiences simply by showing what they do.

My unsolicited advice to all entrepreneurs is to reframe your thinking on marketing. If you aren’t already, think of content as a key part of your marketing efforts. Take a portion of your advertising budget and put it into getting a camera, a set of microphones, or learning some basics of editing a video or podcast. It doesn’t need to be perfect (and it won’t be at first) but at least you’re putting your brand out there and starting to show people what you do.

It all about getting out in more touch points. Give people more places where they can find your solution.

Here’s one quick and powerful way to get ideas of what people are looking for in your niche. Go to Youtube and type into the search bar some keywords related to what you do. What pops up in the suggested searches? Make content based on those phrases and questions. Youtube is giving you a peek into the most common searches.

Then, go a step further. Check out the results for those searches. Critique the content. How could you do it better? What makes you different than those already making content in that niche? What do the comments say? Now you’re getting ideas for how to make your content.

How long will this take? Won’t it take years before customers find me? It’ll take longer than you’d like but with consistency you will see results astonishingly fast. I’ve seen multiple times, in almost any niche, you can become a subject matter expert within six months by posting new and relevant content consistently (on Youtube, Twitter, or other social media). Starting is the hardest part. You’ll feel like an imposter. You won’t get many views or impressions. You’ll wonder if you’re wasting your time. But slowly, you will build an audience as your confidence and quality grows.

I had a client buy a $5,000 consulting package with me after watching just a few minutes of a video. In that particular case, it was a video that had been published months earlier and not been seen more than about 60 times. So you never know what will be discovered, when, and who it will speak to. I’ve got dozens of these videos out there, sitting there as surface area for future clients to find me and the solution I can bring to their problems. Over time, these compound. Imagine having thousands of videos like that from the course of years or decades. And, imagine that a handful of those have outsized results i.e. they go viral and are seen by hundreds of thousands or millions of people. One of those could change your business forever. It could be the difference between obscurity and more business than you can handle.

Whether I’ve convinced you to lean into content or not, your competitors are doing it. Every day, more and more businesses are recognizing the value of inbound, permission-less, free content to build trust, to get discovered, and to convert an audience into paying customers. The trend is undeniably that content creators are outperforming non-creators.

The Two Triangles of Life

Ross Zeiger — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 11:50:18 +0000

For life satisfaction, there are three fundamental questions to address:

Who am I doing life with? (partner/friends)
Where am I living? (Physical location)
What am I doing with my time? (Profession/hobbies)

Then, at any given time, there are three things to strive for:

Health
Wealth
Time

The Lobster - Movie Review

Ross Zeiger — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 11:19:39 +0000

How much I recommend it: 2/10

This is one of the weirdest movies I have ever seen.

Couples are the most important thing in society. And single people get sent to a hotel. The hotel is a 45 day holding area where if they don’t meet someone to partner with, they get turned into an animal.

Yup. It’s super weird.

Every few days, the single people go hunting with tranquilizer guns for other single people who have escaped the system and are living in the woods. For each one they catch, they earn one extra day in the hotel.

The main character escapes the hotel and joins the people living in the woods. That group too has bizarre rules that are never really explained. One of which is that you aren’t allowed to partner with anyone. If you are found kissing, you both have your tongues cut out. If you found having sex, genitals cut out.

Throughout the movie, the most important factor for a relationship is that the pair has a similar defect. For example, they must both have a limp, they must both get nose bleeds, or they both must both have a vision problem.

The main character falls in love with a woman from the group and they escape to the city to join society as a proper couple. The main character must blind himself to be a convincing partner for the woman, who became blinded by the leader of the forest group. The movie ends with him in the bathroom of a diner holding a knife to his eye.

Super, super bizarre movie.

Even reading back the plot above leaves me more confused than before.

If you like artsy and mysterious and weird movies, give this one a shot.

How to Run an LLM (AI Chatbot) Locally on Your Computer

Ross Zeiger — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 03:02:21 +0000

Here's a simple and quick tutorial to install and run an open-source LLM AI Chatbot on your computer's hard drive.

Note: these instructions are for MacOS and Linux (no Windows option at the time of writing)

First-time instructions:

Go to https://ollama.com/
Click Download
Open the Ollama .zip file
Open the Ollama app and follow the instructions to setup
Copy the Terminal prompt at the end of the dialogue
Paste the prompt into your computer's terminal
Allow it to install
Once done, you officially have an LLM on your computer's hard drive and you can start typing anything you want into your terminal to communicate with the LLM

To install other LLMs after completing the above steps:

Go to https://ollama.com/library and pick your next LLM
Copy the prompt on the LLM page
Paste the prompt into Terminal to install

To run your LLM:

Open Terminal
Enter ollama run llama2
1. Or, if running a model beside llama2, enter that name instead
Hit enter and start your chat conversation with the LLM

What are the benefits of doing this compared to using an LLM on my browser?

It doesn't need an internet connection since it's on your computer's hard drive
Given point 1, it's faster
Given point 1, it's more private
Given point 1, you have more control over your data
No limits on number of prompts
More flexibility and more customizable

Here are all the open-source LLMs available to use with Ollama along with their terminal prompts:

Model	Parameters	Size
Llama 2	7B	3.8GB
Mistral	7B	4.1GB
Dolphin Phi	2.7B	1.6GB
Phi-2	2.7B	1.7GB
Neural Chat	7B	4.1GB
Starling	7B	4.1GB
Code Llama	7B	3.8GB
Llama 2 Uncensored	7B	3.8GB
Llama 2 13B	13B	7.3GB
Llama 2 70B	70B	39GB
Orca Mini	3B	1.9GB
Vicuna	7B	3.8GB
LLaVA	7B	4.5GB

That's it. It's super easy and only takes few minutes to get up and running with a local LLM.

Cheers!

Three things I believe right now

Ross Zeiger — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 13:16:09 +0000

Key phrase is “right now.”

I’m a big believer in pivoting my beliefs and philosophies in light of new and better information. I try not to be dogmatic about anything. In my head, the best ideas must win.

I’m also sharing this because these three things pretty much cover the topics I write about on this blog.

My three things right now are:

Technology - Software is eating the world (credit to Marc Andreessen for that line)
Self-mastery - The degree to which we get what we want in life or not boils down to the extent to which we can master our own psychology
Wisdom - I have a duty to educate myself and pursue wisdom

Technology

I sometimes hear people say, “I was born in the wrong time.” Usually because they have a romanticized vision of being a cowboy on the American frontier or nostalgia for some other bygone era.

I’ve never felt that.

Every day I get up and check what’s new in the world, I’m like a kid on Christmas morning. Whether it’s the latest device, piece of software, or some scientific breakthrough, I feel so grateful to be alive here and now. This is the greatest time in human history (so far!) and if I’m lucky, I’ll get to experience the next 50-65 years of technological progress.

Further, it is my belief that technology as a category is the thing with the biggest net benefit to mankind - more than politics, more than education, more than business.

Tech makes our economies more productive, our energy and food more abundant, and in short, it makes our lives longer and better in just about every way.

Therefore, it’s become increasingly obvious to me that I need to pivot my career and energy toward efforts in the tech space. Recently, I left the world of small business acquisitions to focus on my software education company.

If there is one pattern repeated throughout history, it’s that humans are really bad at seeing the future. Really bad.

Then, we look back at history and wonder how our predecessors could have possibly missed it when it’s practically slapping them in the face. Anyone who denies that AI and unforeseen new technologies are about to upend life as we know it are ignoring reality. Drastic change never happens in one day or even one year. And yet our life and livelihoods are about to change dramatically in the near future and it’s imperative that we position ourselves to ride that wave, not be taken under by it and not try to fight it.

Self-Mastery

While self-discipline has always been key to getting what you want in life, it’s especially important as a modern human.

While I’m incredibly optimistic about technology, I don’t deny that there is a downside to the abundance of calories, information, options, and free-time humanity now finds itself in possession of.

In the past, you had the highest chance of dying from one of three things: war, plague, or famine.

Now, as a human in 2024, you are most likely to die from obesity (heart disease and obesity-related problems), cancer, or respiratory disease. Even suicide and overdosing are quickly on the rise as causes of death.

And the careers of modern humans are increasingly things that schools can’t prepare us for. The school system is too large to adapt quick enough and, with some exceptions, has never been good at preparing people for the real world.

Lastly, the nature of infinite options and distractions makes it paramount that you figure out how to focus on what’s important to you to make progress on anything - skills, career, health, habits, relationships.

In the modern world, everything is weaponized against you. Highly palatable but unhealthy food. No need to be physically active. Infinite media to swallow up your time and focus.

So for all these reasons, you and I must figure out for ourselves how to master ourselves to be healthy, focused, happy, valuable members of society.

It’s really difficult but it’s the work of our lives.

Wisdom

We have a moral duty to seek wisdom.

My definition of wisdom is understanding what actions are beneficial in the long-term.

To expand further, what’s beneficial in the long-term is acting with integrity, with discipline, with delayed-gratification, with honesty, with effort, with generosity, with courage, with kindness, and with curiosity.

If we can live by these principles, we can live our best life which allows us to set the best possible example which allows us to be useful to society.

Summary

Technology, self-mastery, and wisdom. Those are my pillars right now.

There is only one battle

Ross Zeiger — Sun, 11 Feb 2024 13:51:50 +0000

There is only one battle in life.

It’s not me versus my enemies.

It’s not me versus my friends or family.

It’s not me versus the world, economy, or government.

It’s not even me versus intangibles like time, energy, or intelligence.

It’s not me versus my competition - in business, in sports, in school, in anything. They don’t matter.

There is only one battle.

It is me versus me.

This is the only battle.

Everything else is an excuse.

And that’s liberating.

In any area of life, I know if I’m the best version of myself possible.

In any action, I know if I did right not based on someone else’s arbitrary rules but on my own moral compass.

In any effort whatsoever, I know if I did my best even if the outcome was not an external victory.

Sometimes my thinking slips into worrying about what someone else might be thinking about me or what the scoreboard says.

That’s human. That’s the default way society has conditioned me to think. But it’s incorrect.

Giving my agency to society is a guaranteed path to misery and mediocrity.

Taking responsibility for myself is a guaranteed path to self-control and mastery.

All-In Podcast Episode 156 - Show Notes

Ross Zeiger — Sat, 10 Feb 2024 03:02:41 +0000

Show notes:

Besties discuss the Apple Vision Pro. Friedberg mentions the huge potential he sees for training and on-the-job augmentation. Chamath expresses concern for the younger generation who is suffering massively from depression and health issues that now they might be spending even more time in virtual worlds. Sacks: we’ve been on the verge of VR ‘happening’ for 30 years but we’re still not there yet - form factor still needs to shrink down and get more natural.
Is the Vision Pro like buying a computer, cellphone, or something else? It’s something new entirely. It may replace computers to an extent but it will also replace phones.
Friedberg says the Vision Pro will be a $100 million product for Apple over the coming years.
Meta vs Snap: Meta is up, snap down. The way Snap is structured, it’s not worth owning and they don’t respond to shareholder feedback. Operating expenses are rising steeply while revenue is not keeping up. They are cutting expenses too little too late. Employees compensated $1.3b on $35m of FCF; they paid employees 40x beyond what they made. Meta has way more products, more infrastructure, and more users.
A SaaS ‘bounce’ is happening. After bottoming in Q3 2023, many companies beat expectations in Q4 and we’re seeing growth again. After 6-7 quarters of negative growth, we’re seeing quarter over quarter growth again.
More and more companies are building software internally which is cutting into the moats and profitability of many SaaS companies.
Chamath says open-source AI models will crush proprietary, closed models. Sacks argues that consumers want whatever is best and right now that’s ChatGPT, if they maintain that they can continue being the leaders.
As the training parameters of a model converge, the quality of outputs converge. We are already reaching levels of diminishing returns on these models and all the major competitors are converging in terms of quality of outputs. People will then choose to go with whichever model is cheapest.
Friedberg: The biggest source of data he can identify right now is Youtube. Over 500 hours of content uploaded pre minute, >2 petabytes of data per day! Youtube might be 300x larger than Quantum Crawl. If data is the most valuable asset in AI, Google has the world’s largest asset to leverage.
Total US commercial real estate: $20 trillion asset class. $6T is debt, about half owned by banks and thrifts. Equity holders in CRE have lost up to 60% of their value, which is going to hurt retirees and pension holders.
Residential real estate is also in trouble because of the high cost of borrowing now.

Anthology of Balaji - Book notes

Ross Zeiger — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 07:56:20 +0000

How much I recommend it: 10/10

Author: Eric Jorgensen; Balaji Srinivasan

My all-time most read book is Eric Jorgensen’s other book called The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. This book is similar in many, many ways which I why I enjoyed it so much.

Both books are compilations of essays, tweets, and transcripts from influential Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors - Balaji Srinivasan (in the case of Anthology of Balaji) and Naval Ravikant (in the case of The Almanack of Naval). Both books start with an autobiography from the subject and it was immediately obvious how similar the two are. Both are children of Indian immigrants. Both grew up poor in New York. Both were obsessed with reading from an early. Both got obsessed with technology and science, went to good universities, and ended up founding companies and becoming investors. And, both are incredible writers who can distill complex ideas into concise, simple sentences.

The Anthology largely talks about technology and the future but it also touches on startups, Bitcoin, health, philosophy, and politics.

As with The Almanack of Naval, I ended up highlighting almost the entire book because every line is packed with wisdom or insight.

Here’s some of my favorite sections, all copied straight from the book:

“Some principles:
Every citizen is a citizen journalist.
Every company is a media company.
Media scales.”

“Good: Helping others without concern for yourself
Smart: Helping others while helping yourself
Evil: Harming others while helping yourself
Stupid: Harming others while harming yourself”

“We have bad metrics as a society. Rather than GDP, GDP-per-capita, or the stock market, perhaps we should have dashboards of life expectancy (health) and net worth (wealth). A good leader is one who improves these metrics for individuals and society as a whole.”

“Money seems to be locally zero-sum (after a trade happens, Person A has –$1, Person B has +$1), but actually money is globally positive-sum. In a voluntary exchange, A and B both gain in wealth because they both get non-monetary benefit from making the trade”

“Wealth creation is the technological creation of order. It is the difference between a bunch of bricks lying on the ground and a house; the difference between a bunch of pieces of wood lying on the ground and a chair. You can see those differences in physical space”

“Here is my ranking of types of leaders: socialist < nationalist < capitalist < technologist.
Why does socialism keep arising over and over again? One way of answering that question: it is the easiest way to become a leader.
In any functional society, you can just start yelling that 51 percent is oppressed by 49 percent. That will always work to get attention and arouse passion. You can find some unjust axis and start agitating that issue. Conflict gets attention, and attention is currency. If you’re shameless, you level up. Socialism is the lowest-skill way to put yourself at the head of a mob. This and variants on it, like demagoguery, will work in almost every country. You’re pitting some faction against another.”

“The hard way to gain status is to build something, to accomplish something, to add value. The easy way to gain status is to accuse someone else of being a bad person. It’s a status-acquisition hack, a quick way to gain relative status. Your critique of the existing system may be correct. But you need a product, not just a critique.
Don’t argue about regulation. Build Uber. Don’t argue about monetary policy. Build Bitcoin. Don’t argue about anything; just build an alternative. Don’t argue with words. Build products based on truths many people can’t grasp. If it works, they’ll buy it. Their incomprehension is your moat.”

“Doing more than one thing is very hard. You can do one big thing, and you can attach lots of subroutines to that. But if you’re trying to do more than one big thing, you have to decide every single moment of the day, am I spending time on A or B?”

“You have 168 hours per week, ~112 awake. Substitute capital for time, technology for both. Avoid travel. Cancel meetings. Focus on doing.
You can work sustainable seventy-hour weeks if you work when you want, sleep when you want, wake up when you want, work out when you want, and never travel.
I want to maximize the total number of hours I can work, including weekdays and weekends. I might want to work for sixteen hours one day, then rest the next day. I do meetings only one day a week. The rest of the week, I am totally free to work spontaneously. That’s my single biggest productivity hack: stack all meetings on (for example) Monday and Thursday. Then you are always no more than three days from a meeting, yet you get five focus days per week”

“You can’t invent planes without test pilots. We have to have early adopters.
We allow people to go bungee jumping and skydiving. We allow people to sign up for the military to fight and die overseas. There should also be room for people to take risks to advance technology.”

“Today, we don’t have the same level of risk tolerance. People want an extremely high level of safety, but they don’t realize we can be too conservative. Being too conservative on safety actually leads to systemic risk. Systemic risk happens when you stop taking risks and get stuck with a system that no longer improves.”

“Democrats need to learn experts aren’t always right.
Republicans need to learn experts aren’t always wrong.
Libertarians need to learn that a state can succeed.
Progressives need to learn that a state can fail.”

“Transhumanism is human self-improvement with technology. This is a very wide set of things. Transhumanism encompasses self-measurement, external devices (like phones, watches, glasses, earbuds, contacts), body modifications, super-soldier serums (check out myostatin null), brain-machine interfaces (like neuralink), nootropics and other cognition-enhancing drugs (like in the movie Limitless), genetic modifications with CRISPR for genetic diseases, and AI-augmented human capabilities (bionics, telepresence). It’s basically a suite of technologies to power up humans.”

“You’re pursuing truth, health, and wealth, in that order.”

“Guns destabilized the feudal hierarchy; a strong right arm was suddenly worth less than a strong left brain, because the technology and supply chain to produce muskets was suddenly critical. The gun helped catalyze the transition from feudal hierarchy to nationalist republic and enabled the “republican” ideals of the American and French Revolutions to thrive.”

That last paragraph blew me away. I would probably take two pages to explain what he did in two sentences.

So that’s the Anthology of Balaji. It’s well worth the read!

It takes discipline to be a modern human

Ross Zeiger — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 07:29:49 +0000

I have no nostalgia for the past - this is objectively the greatest time to be alive.

The last few decades are the first time in known history where the leading cause of death isn’t famine, disease, or war.

Instead, the modern human is more likely to die from obesity, addiction, or suicide.

Mankind’s basic needs are largely met and now our struggles are ones of abundance.

For that reason, I believe, it takes a special discipline to be a modern human.

In the majority of countries around the world, it is a more valuable skill that you have conquered your own psychology enough to resist the sugar and processed foods that tempt you on every aisle of the supermarket than it is that you be able to hunt or grow your own food.

Marketers do everything they can to convince you into buying things you don’t need. Chemists do everything they can to make their products more enjoyable. And society at large has created a vortex of anxiety through meaningless professions and increasing ambiguity.

So again, it takes discipline.

And discipline means mastering your own human psychology.

We all know objectively what we should do: eat real foods, be active, and pursue what’s meaningful to us.

But we all struggle to do that.

So, mastering your psychology means to first figure out when and why you stray from good decisions into bad decisions.

Once you know that, then set up habits and routines to avoid the bad.

Easy to say, difficult to execute.

Value of a Dollar

Ross Zeiger — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 15:22:46 +0000

Not all dollars are the same.

They aren’t the same in how they’re earned nor in how they’re spent.

Earning a Dollar

Consider a dollar earned through legitimate means versus one earned illegally or immorally.

In the case of the legitimately earned dollar, the Earner can sleep well knowing that according to the laws of the country in which it was earned, it belongs to them. And according to the customer or employer who gave it to them, it is the Earners’ as a reward for providing something of value. Everyone agrees that this dollar belongs to the Earner and thus that dollar is worth a dollar.

In the case of the illegally or immorally obtained dollar, the Obtainer will have no peace. The law enforcement of the government in which he resides will eventually take it from him. The victims who he took the dollar from will forever be trying to get it back. And everyone who knows how that dollar was obtained will argue that the dollar should be returned to the victims or to society. Given that others have claim to it, the illegally obtained dollar does not belong to the Obtainer and thus its value is something less than a dollar. In other words, there is a hidden tax and constraint on the illegally or immorally obtained dollar.

Other earning considerations:

A dollar earned privately versus one that depends on fame
A dollar earned in freedom (of location, schedule, choice of peers, etc) versus one earned with constraints (strict schedule, specific location, unfavorable peers, etc)
A dollar earned as a paycheck versus business income versus royalties versus capital gains, etc
A dollar earned joyfully versus a dollar earned while hating what you do

Spending a Dollar

The second consideration is spending a dollar.

If you live in rural Kansas and pay $500 per month for a studio apartment, a dollar is worth 1/500 of your rent.

But if you live in Manhattan and pay $2,500 for the exact same apartment as our friend in Kansas, a dollar is worth 1/2,500 of your rent.

A dollar for rent is worth 5x more in Kansas then in Manhattan in this example.

Of course there is a lot of nuance skipped here but the point is valid. Where and how you spend the dollar matters in determining it’s value.

Flatliners - Movie Review

Ross Zeiger — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 15:11:43 +0000

How much I’d recommend it: 8/10

Plot w/ spoiler:
A medical student persuades her friends to perform an experiment on her which involves stopping her heart for a minute to allow her enter the afterlife, then resuscitate her.

She has a very trippy, dream-like experience in the afterlife but toward the end, things start to go dark and turn into a bit of a nightmare.

The next day, in class, she is a superstar. She remembers everything she has ever read and is able to diagnose patients quickly and precisely. She even remembers skills like playing the piano which she hasn’t done in 12 years. Envious of her new-found academic prowess, one-by-one her classmates undergo the flatlining experience. They all experience a new joie de vivre and are seen out partying and having fun while crushing it academically by day.

But, something dark starts happening. None of them are talking about the side effects of the procedure but each of them are seeing things from their pasts, the nightmares at the end of the afterlife experience. They start as hallucinations but become increasingly real to the point where the hallucinations are causing them physical pain and suffering like stabbing one of the characters in the hand. One student is even pushed off the balcony by her demon and she dies from the impact.

The survivors finally open up about their demons and realize it’s a haunting from their deepest, darkest secret. Murder in one case, abandoning a child in another, and ruining someone’s life by sending nude photos in high school in another. They realize they need to take responsibility for their sins in order to get past this. So they do, they all make amends with the victims of their wrongdoings. By doing so, they are able to end the visits from their demons.

Thoughts:
I liked the metaphor of the conscience of the characters. We humans act badly sometimes. None of us are perfect. And I like the message of taking responsibility, apologize where necessary, and learn to be better going forward. That’s life.

The movie was well-made (though I’m sure took many scientific liberties) and was thoroughly captivating. It had a few jump scares which I don’t love but there were so many scenes I was on the edge of my seat to see if the characters would survive (during the flatlining experiments).

I like movies that make me think and this did that.

Run - Movie review

Ross Zeiger — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 15:11:20 +0000

How much I’d recommend it: 7/10

Complete plot w/ spoiler:
This is a really creepy movie. Set in small-town Pasco, Washington, a mother and her 17-year old homeschooled daughter (Chloe) are living together, preparing Chloe for college. She has her sights set on attending the University of Washington in Seattle. Every day, she eagerly checks the mail for a decision letter but her mom always beat her to the mailman and tells her she’ll let her know if anything comes. Chloe, by the way, is paralyzed from the waist down so is confined to a wheelchair and has a host of other medical issues including diabetes so she is on a cocktail of drugs.

As the movie goes on, we see more and more signs of how controlling the mother is. The mail situation and homeschooling situation being the first signs of her attempts to isolate Chloe from the world. One day, Chloe finds a new drug in her mom’s grocery bag but it’s prescribed to her, not Chloe. She asks some questions and the mom gets dodgy. She tries to do some research but the house internet has been disconnected. She goes so far as to go to the town pharmacy and ask the pharmacist about it. She finds out it is a medication for dogs that numbs their legs. For some reason, Chloe’s mom has been giving her this medication.

Things get progressively stranger. Chloe finds herself locked in her room from which she manages to escape. The mailman sees her in her wheelchair on the road and stops to help. Soon, her mom pulls up and injects the mailman with something that causes him to pass out. Later, we see her dragging his body through the house, presumably to dispose of it. She now locks Chloe in the basement. Chloe finds a bunch of strange articles and photos including one of herself at age 5, standing! She had thought she was paralyzed since birth. She also finds a death certificate with her name on it saying she only lived 2 hours. And finally, spoiler alert if I haven’t already spoiled too much, she finds a newspaper article detailing a young couple who’s newborn baby was abducted from the hospital on the same day as Chloe’s death certificate.

After discovering this, Chloe’s mom soon comes down to the basement and pleads with her that she can forget about all this and go back to how things were. Chloe’s not having it and manages to escape into a closet where she finds shelves full of unknown drugs and chemicals that her mom has been feeding her for years. Right as her mom breaks the door to the closet, Chloe ingests a poison and passes out. She wakes up in the hospital. She is being treated as a suicide attempt so mom isn’t able to talk with her until a psychiatrist has evaluated her. The mom sneaks off and suddenly a patient dies in another room triggering a code blue and causing all the staff so run out. The mom then is seen rushing Chloe through the UW Medicine hospital to get her out of there. She is stopped by security at the top of escalator where she pulls a gun and is shot, causing her to tumble down the escalator.

In the last scene of the movie, it’s 7 years later and we see an older, now married Chloe visiting a high-security prison. She goes in to visit her mom on a hospital bed. She is emaciated and appears to be dying. In the very final scene, Chloe removes a small baggie with the same pills we saw earlier, the dog numbing ones, and says something like “time for your medication, mom.” And the movie ends.

Thoughts:
Really enjoyed this film. Sarah Paulson plays the mom and nails the role. She is the perfect creepy, sneaky character having played Nurse Ratchet and various characters in American Horror Story. As a UW alum myself, it was fun to see Chloe’s obsession with going to UW throughout the movie and finally ending up in the UW hospital. The twists and turns of the movie were captivating and well worth the watch.

It was a lesson

Ross Zeiger — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 13:54:09 +0000

Remember these four words: It was a lesson.

For any regret, any missed opportunity, any pain from the past whatsoever: It was a lesson.

But it’s only a lesson if something was learned.

Most of my regrets come from times I was selfish, dishonest, timid, or cowardly.

The right lesson to learn from these are to be more generous, more honest, bolder, and more courageous.

The wrong lesson would be to assume that those mistakes define me forever and I cannot fix them in the future.

The past is unchangeable.

Few things in life are undeniably true but that is one of them.

No one has gone back in time and changed a decision or done something differently.

Many of us wish we could go back and share with our younger selves what we know now.

But no one can.

Instead, our younger selves were trying things and making the best decision they could, with what they knew at the time in order to teach us things we needed to know.

I have learned that each misstep was a lesson.

It was a little dose of pain to guide me toward better future decisions.

It was a teacher pointing out my mistake.

It was a compass urging me to correct course.

Remember these four words: It was a lesson.

On Being a Mid-Wit (🫵 You Are) and What To Do About It

Ross Zeiger — Mon, 29 Jan 2024 11:31:16 +0000

There’s a meme I love called the mid-wit meme.

In this meme, there is a bell curve of intelligence from 55 IQ up to 145 IQ.

On the left side of the curve, there are the low-wits. The low-wit is depicted as a caveman-looking character with a big forehead and blank stare on his face.

In the middle, there are the average intelligence people, the mid-wits. The mid-wit is depicted as a frustrated, crying guy.

And on the right, there are the high-wits. The high-wit is depicted as a Jedi.

This meme gets applied to every area of life such as personal finance, health, investing, and happiness.

While it’s humorous, the meme is profound (at least to my low-wit brain) and worth thinking about on a deeper level.

We as humans respect intelligence. We admire people on the right side of the bell curve like Einstein. And if we’re being honest, we’d all like to have brains that remembered things a little better and processed information a little quicker.

But by definition, the high intelligence side of the bell curve is reserved for those in the top 5-10% of intelligence levels in any particular domain. Which means that the remaining 80-90% of us are somewhere in the middle. That’s right, we’re mid-wits.

Note: there might be a handful of low-wits and high-wits reading this but I’m only addressing the 90% of you mid-wits.

There are a few ways you can react to this horrifying revelation:

You can accept that you’re a mid-wit. Nothing wrong with that.
You can be offended that I called you a mid-wit. If you let yourself be offended, you will let that ruin your day. You will then deny it. And you will do nothing to change your reality.
You can try to become a high-wit. But know that you can probably only become a high-wit, an expert, in one or two areas and you’re going to have to dedicate your life to that pursuit. You can do it, anyone can, but it isn’t easy or probable.
Or, my favorite solution of all, is strive to be the low-wit in all areas of life.

Key Lesson of the Wits

The key lesson of the mid-wit meme is that the mid-wit overcomplicates everything.

The low wit and high wit, meanwhile, arrive at the same conclusion or same approach. And their conclusion is usually the simplest.

Here are some of the low-wit and high-wit conclusions on different topics:

Personal Finance - spend less than you make

Health - Eat healthy and stay active

Investing - buy and hold index funds

Happiness - I spend my time doing what I love

I argue that your position on the mid-wit curve is domain-specific and that you should always strive to be the low wit.

If you’re already a low-wit, well, chances are you aren’t reading this because you’re already doing something you enjoy more than reading some random internet blog.

If you’re a high-wit, and have some humility, you recognize that despite how intelligent you are there are tons of people as smart or smarter than you and so you’re better off striving to be like the low-wit.

It you’re a high-wit, and you don’t have some humility, you probably aren’t reading this anyway. You saw the title of the article and didn’t click on it.

And if you’re the mid-wit, you can spend your life struggling and striving to be the high-wit which is more likely to result in you being even more of a mid-wit i.e. complicating your every endeavor unnecessarily.

The Solution

The solution then, in every domain of knowledge and skill, is to strive to be the low-wit.

How?

Have humility.
Seek simplicity.
Don’t overthink
Don’t overanalyze.
Take action.

Over-do and over-measure, then don't

Ross Zeiger — Mon, 29 Jan 2024 04:03:36 +0000

In college, a friend of mine entered a body building contest.

He went from having an average body to Greek god in six months.

It was remarkable to watch him prepare.

He started with a bulk where he ate a huge surplus of calories every day and worked out daily, sometimes multiple times per day.

Then, as the contest approached, he entered a cut where he had a calorie deficit.

Throughout it all, he meticulously counted every calorie and every rep of every weight lifted.

Now, over a decade later, he maintains a six-pack but hasn’t counted a single calorie since.

How?

A pattern I’ve noticed over and over with many people who have achieved mastery of something or developed a healthy habit is that at the beginning of their journey they overdid and over-measured the thing for a short period of time and later were able to back off into a more sustainable habit.

But - and here is the key - that early phase of overdoing it gives you above average results for the rest of your life.

And the over-measuring gives you an intuitive sense of what you should be doing. In my friend’s case, how much he should be eating and how much he should be lifting.

I’m going to call this the over-do and over-measure principle. The Double O Principle for short.

Another example is from my own life. From the time I was about 15 to 25, I meticulously budgeted and tracked every penny I earned and spent.

I spent hours every single month tracking where every dollar went and how I could optimize my cashflow.

As my income rose, I realized how silly it was to be this particular. I started rounding things to the nearest dollar, then the nearest ten dollars, then the nearest hundred dollars.

And now, I could not do this exercise at all and I’d be fine. From doing this exercise for years, I have developed an intuitive sense for my budget, income, and savings. Now, I spend less than 30 minutes a month thinking about money.

By overmeasuring and overdoing it in the early part of my career, I was able to build this valuable habit and skill.

I’ve also seen this principle applied to language learning, coding, running, flying airplanes, and other skills/habits that I can’t think of right now.

The basic pattern of the Double O Principle is this:

Pick a habit or skill to master or goal to achieve
Train for it in an unsustainably obsessive way for a short period of time (~3-6 months, more or less depending on the skill in question)
Track your progressive meticulously
Once you’ve achieved your initial goal or reached a point of competence in the skill, back the training and tracking routine off to something sustainable that takes minimal time and effort to continue

So what do you want to get good at or what habit do you want to build?

Overdo it, over-measure, then don’t.

How to Invest by Net Worth

Ross Zeiger — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 20:40:19 +0000

This is the blueprint I would give to 18 year old me to become a billionaire within a few decades.

It's a framework I wrote in a Notion doc about a year ago and is by no means a prescription for anyone else.

It's not necessarily based off of any mainstream financial planning principles.

This is solely based off my own risk profile, my circle of competence, the type of investments I like, and the type of responsibility I want to deal with (for example, investing in public markets takes none of my time or effort on an ongoing basis while investing in real estate does).

The giant limitation here is I don't know what it's like to be a billionaire. I don't have any idea about the kinds of tax considerations they have or how their risk profile changes once their and their family's needs are taken care of for generations.

How to invest each marginal dollar after achieving certain levels of net worth:

Net Worth	Education	Start Business	Buy Business	Stocks	Real Estate	Speculation
0-$50,000	90%	9%	0	0	0	1%
$50,000-$100,000	78%	20%	0	0	0	2%
$100,000-$250,000	50%	35%	0	12%	0	3%
$250,000-$500k	10%	60%	10%	16%	0	4%
$500k-$1M	5%	35%	35%	20%	0%	5%
$1M-$2.5M	1%	25%	45%	20%	4%	5%
$2.5M-$5M	1%	0%	64%	22%	8%	5%
$5M-25M	1%	0%	59%	23%	12%	5%
$25M-$250M	1%	0%		24%	16%	5%
$250M-$1B	1%	0%		25%	20%	5%

Broadly speaking, here is how I would focus capital throughout the stages of wealth accumulation:

$0-$250,000: Majority of investment dollars into your own education - yes, that's an investment. The highest ROI one possible, especially when starting out. This could be certifications, coaches, books, courses, maybe even university.
$250,000-$2,500,000: Start a business(es). This is the best way to continue your education (through real world experience) while also giving you a chance to make an outsized return in a short period of time. Don't touch real estate until net worth is over $1M.
$2,500,000-$5,000,000: Buying Small businesses in part or whole. You've built the skills, experience, and capital to be successful in business. Now apply it to already existing businesses. This mostly means stable, brick and mortar businesses but it could include some internet companies. Focus on cashflow through value creation.
$5,000,000+: Above $5M, start tapering off the small business buying in favor of increasing amounts of real estate and public stocks. Not really any giant step changes beyond $5M, just seek compounding in excellent assets.

Here is how I would focus my time and energy by level:

<$50k: If your net worth is less than $50k, you're probably at the beginning of your career. You are in learning mode. Your jobs should be earning you money to get education. Your free time should be spent educating and upskilling yourself. If you start a business - which I recommend - it should be something with minimal capital required like washing cars or mowing lawns. If you want to throw 1% of your money into something speculative, like maybe the next Bitcoin, go for it! Just don't get carried away, don't exceed 1%.
<$100k: You're still spending most of your time and money on education but presumably you're a year or two or three into your career at this point. You've built some skills but your business is still in the early stage and you have a lot to learn. There are tons of courses and coaches worth putting your money into to shortcut your learning.
<$250k: Still educating yourself aggressively but starting to put some money into public stocks - ideally S&P500 index funds as early as possible that you will never touch. You should spend as little time as possible on stock news and updates. You're putting an increasing amount of money into your business which should be throwing off more and more cashflow for you.
<$500k: By now, you've gotten the confidence and skills to start and run a business. Your business is probably paying you >$100k per year and you could sell it for $300k+ if you wanted. Thus, most of your net worth is tied up in the business. It's time to start thinking bigger. You should start looking for businesses to roll-up that will complement your existing business. Education should be financial in nature and getting smart on specific industries that have investment potential.
<$1M: At this point, you should be investing an equal amount of time and money into the business you founded and the businesses you buy. You're still giving yourself a generous budget for your education and a slightly higher amount is going to speculative investments. For those, invest in whatever crazy thing you think might take off, just never a penny more than 5% of your marginal investment dollars.
<$2.5M: Now we finally dip our toes into real estate. Not too much though. Maybe in the form of REITs or some type of fund - do not waste your time being a landlord or even dealing with a property manager. Part of the advantage here is tax benefits but also diversification. This is the final phase where you will put money into starting your own business. From here on out, it's all about becoming an investor and buying equity in existing businesses.
<$5M: Your focus now is on small business acquisition. You've acquired the skills to be an operator, now you're shifting to being an investor. Buy within your circle of competence and with operators you trust.
<$25M: You're squarely in the field of investor now. You need to get ruthless about prioritizing your time on high leverage opportunities and delegating everything else. As you get better at managing your investments and various businesses, you need to move up the value chain to bigger and bigger opportunities.
<$250M: You're a seasoned investor now. Now, your main opportunities will come from time (compounding of your existing businesses) and relationships. Amazing deals will come to you by nature of your track record. This also means you'll have to turn away a huge number of deals that just aren't quite right. Your biggest focus here is on getting around other people playing at the same level as you and/or one step ahead.
<$1B: It's just more of the same beyond this point. Your biggest risks now are reputational damage (always act with integrity is sound advice at all stages but failure to act with integrity is amplified now), overconfidence, and lack of privacy. People will know you're wealthy now and try to get a piece of it. People will be irrationally interested in your every move. And you must never stop being a student. Your own success can make you feel invincible but you're still capable of bad investments that can unravel everything you've done so far.
$1B+: Will update once I'm there.

Leave the World Behind - A Movie Review

Ross Zeiger — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 03:43:42 +0000

How much I recommend it: 7/10

Leave the World Behind is a Netflix film in the which cyberattackers take down the grid.

Throughout the film, we are only shown one little town in rural New York but presumably the attack is nationwide or even global.

Once the grid is down, cell networks fail. GPS doesn’t work. Electricity goes out in NYC. Oil tankers start washing up on shores. And planes are falling from the sky.

I really enjoy these type of dystopian stories and I’ve read a great number of them. One of which, One Second After, felt very similar to this one.

Essentially, in the first few days of the disaster, everything is chaos and confusion. Slowly, people start to piece together what is going on and how to cope with their new reality.

And in every dystopian story, there is one commonality. The biggest problem is not starvation, lack of medication, or even lack of shelter, it’s fellow man. When people are desperate, confused, or hungry, normally nice people turn into monsters. There is one scene where we see this happen. One of the main characters goes to the house of an acquaintance for medication and the acquaintance almost ends up shooting them.

I especially like seeing the unique interpretation that different authors put onto their version of dystopia. For example, there is a scene where the main family pulls up to the highway and there are white cars stopped as far as the eye can see. On closer examination, they are all Tesla’s straight from the dealership. Right as this is being realized, more Teslas come speeding up the road and crash into the caravan of cars. The hackers had taken control of Tesla’s self-driving functionality and used that as a weapon.

Overall, good film. There were a lot of fancy camera tricks and visually stunning moments throughout. A very enjoyable watch.

Old - Movie Review

Ross Zeiger — Sun, 21 Jan 2024 17:39:20 +0000

How Much I recommend it: 3/10

Life is too short to watch bad movies.

The idea behind Old is interesting but this movie was very poorly made and I skipped forward through over half of it.

The premise is that a family of four arrives for a vacation at a luxury resort on an unnamed tropical island, probably in the Caribbean.

The owner of the resort they are staying at arranges to have them taken to a secret beach that no one else can access. They go, along with some other guests, and get dropped off at the mouth of a canyon that leads into the beach.

Once on the beach, weird things start happening starting with the body of a dead woman washing onto the shore. Then, the elderly mother of one of the guests dies. The two kids who were about 8 and 10 on arrival are aging rapidly, going through their teens and into their twenties in a matter of a few hours.

The party realizes that they are aging at a rate of about 1 year every thirty minutes. One by one they start dying in various ways.

The last two survivors find a clue that allows them to escape the beach.

Back at the resort, we find out that the whole thing is an experiment. That they take people with pre existing medical conditions, give them experimental medications when they arrive at the resort, then take them to the beach to see how the drug affects them over the course of years.

The twist at the end is what made the whole thing interesting and not a 1/10 in my view. But, I didn’t like the film for several reasons.

One, it’s way too long. It’s an almost two hour movie. The moment I realized how slow it was, I skipped forward a full 25 minutes and missed nothing in the plot. I skipped ahead another 3 or 4 times and still missed nothing. This would have been better as a 20 minute short film.

Two, the dialogue and acting is unnatural.

Three, it’s poorly made. The aged characters don’t look that much older even when they’re supposed to be 30+ years older than when they arrived.

So that’s it, I won’t waste anymore time reflecting on this one. I think this would probably be an amazing book but I cannot recommend the movie.

Naval Ravikant Quotes

Ross Zeiger — Sat, 20 Jan 2024 05:23:48 +0000

The following are all quotes from The Almanack Of Naval Ravikant, my favorite book. I re-read it annually, sometimes several times.

All credit to Naval:

Everybody wants to get rich immediately, but the world is an efficient place; immediate doesn’t work. You do have to put in the time. You do have to put in the hours, and so I think you have to put yourself in the position with the specific knowledge, with accountability, with leverage, with the authentic skill set you have, to be the best in the world at what you do.

You have to enjoy it and keep doing it, keep doing it, and keep doing it. Don’t keep track, and don’t keep count because if you do, you will run out of time.

You don’t get rich by spending your time to save money. You get rich by saving your time to make money.

It’s actually really important to have empty space. If you don’t have a day or two every week in your calendar where you’re not always in meetings, and you’re not always busy, then you’re not going to be able to think. You’re not going to be able to have good ideas for your business. You’re not going to be able to make good judgments. I also encourage taking at least one day a week (preferably two, because if you budget two, you’ll end up with one) where you just have time to think. It’s only after you’re bored you have the great ideas. It’s never going to be when you’re stressed, or busy, running around or rushed. Make the time.

Charisma is the ability to project confidence and love at the same time.

Reading science, math, and philosophy one hour per day will likely put you at the upper echelon of human success within seven years.

Read the greats in math, science, and philosophy. Ignore your contemporaries and news. Avoid tribal identification. Put truth above social approval.

Study logic and math, because once you’ve mastered them, you won’t fear any book.

Whenever the word “should” creeps up in your mind, it’s guilt or social programming. Doing something because you “should” basically means you don’t actually want to do it. It’s just making you miserable, so I’m trying to eliminate as many “shoulds” from my life as possible.

When working, surround yourself with people more successful than you. When playing, surround yourself with people happier than you.

A personal metric: how much of the day is spent doing things out of obligation rather than out of interest?

You’re going to die one day, and none of this is going to matter. So enjoy yourself. Do something positive. Project some love. Make someone happy. Laugh a little bit. Appreciate the moment. And do your work.

Doctors won’t make you healthy.
Nutritionists won’t make you slim.
Teachers won’t make you smart.
Gurus won’t make you calm.
Mentors won’t make you rich.
Trainers won’t make you fit. Ultimately, you have to take responsibility. Save yourself.

Your goal in life is to find the people, business, project, or art that needs you the most.

To make an original contribution, you have to be irrationally obsessed with something.

My number one priority in life, above my happiness, above my family, above my work, is my own health. It starts with my physical health. Second, it’s my mental health. Third, it’s my spiritual health. Then, it’s my family’s health. Then, it’s my family’s wellbeing. After that, I can go out and do whatever I need to do with the rest of the world.

One of the things Krishnamurti talks about is being in an internal state of revolution. You should always be internally ready for a complete change. Whenever we say we’re going to try to do something or try to form a habit, we’re wimping out.

If there’s something you want to do later, do it now. There is no “later.”

Everyone’s motivated at something. It just depends on the thing. Even the people that we say are unmotivated are suddenly really motivated when they’re playing video games. I think motivation is relative, so you just have to find the thing you’re into.

Related to the skill of reading are the skills of mathematics and persuasion. Both skills help you to navigate through the real world. Having the skill of persuasion is important because if you can influence your fellow human beings, you can get a lot done. I think persuasion is an actual skill. So you can learn it, and it’s not that hard to do so. Mathematics helps with all the complex and difficult things in life. If you want to make money, if you want to do science, if you want to understand game theory or politics or economics or investments or computers, all of these things have mathematics at the core. It’s a foundational language of nature.

Value your time. It is all you have. It’s more important than your money. It’s more important than your friends. It is more important than anything. Your time is all you have. Do not waste your time.

As long as you’re doing what you want, it’s not a waste of your time. But if you’re not spending your time doing what you want, and you’re not earning, and you’re not learning—what the heck are you doing?

Don’t spend your time making other people happy. Other people being happy is their problem. It’s not your problem. If you are happy, it makes other people happy. If you’re happy, other people will ask you how you became happy and they might learn from it, but you are not responsible for making other people happy.

Reading (learning) is the ultimate meta-skill and can be traded for anything else.

Earn with your mind, not your time.

All greatness comes from suffering.

Zero Basing

Ross Zeiger — Sat, 20 Jan 2024 05:07:25 +0000

Zero basing means starting from zero.

The concept comes from accounting.

In business and other organizations, budgets tend to continually grow or at least get neglected. That budget for the [insert irrelevant thing here] is still in the budget even though no one has used one for 20 years.

Each year, at year’s end, I like to zero base my life.

How I zero base:

Unsubscribe from podcasts
Unsubscribe from newsletters
Unfollow people on social media
Delete all the apps off my devices
Unsubscribe from SaaS subscriptions
Get rid of clothes I don’t wear anymore
Get rid of books I’ll never read or read again

Then, I only add back the things I really want or that move me in the direction of who I’m trying to become.

Lucy - Movie Review

Ross Zeiger — Sat, 20 Jan 2024 04:58:29 +0000

How much I recommend it: 8/10

Lucy is a sci-fi thriller in which the main character (played by Scarlett Johansson) overdoses on a drug which causes her brain to work at max capacity and gives her all sorts of incredible abilities. In that sense, it had some similarities to the movie Limitless.

The bad guy is a Korean guy named Mr. Jang who has developed a synthetic version of CPH4 (I have no idea if there is any real science to this movie but that is the name of the molecule). He is using Lucy and some others as involuntary drug mules to get them into other countries with bags of the drug sewn into their abdomens.

The bag that Lucy is carrying breaks and the drug spills into her bloodstream causing her to gain unusual cognitive abilities - like learning to read and speak Chinese within the course of a single cab ride.

Concurrently, there is another story playing out. A university professor, played by Morgan Freeman, is teaching a class on the history of humanity. He is talking about the intelligence of different species and how one of the things that sets humans apart is that we’re able to use 10% of our brain capacity while other creatures use far less.

As the movie progresses, there are moments where a big percentage flashes on the screen indicating how much of Lucy’s brain capacity is unlocked. As she passes 30% - as more the drug gets into her system - crazy things start happening like she remembers everything that has ever happened to her, every feeling, everything she has ever learned. Then she starts seeing energy like cell phone signals and the energy flowing through roots of trees.

Eventually, she takes a heroic dose of all the remaining CPH4 and morphs into a supercomputer of sorts, sacrificing herself in the process. In her final moment, she hands Morgan Freeman a USB drive and then she disintegrates.

The movie ends there but it leaves you wondering, what could have been on that drive?

Reflections

While it was an over-the-top film - which I normally don’t enjoy - I liked this one a lot.

And I liked it for the same reason I liked Limitless when I saw it probably a decade ago.

I like thinking about the possibility of the human brain.

What if it’s true that we are only using a small percentage of our brain?

If all the tech and systems and things we’ve collectively invented have come from our limited brains, what would happen if we somehow ‘unlocked’ it?

Are there ways to unlock just a small portion more of our cognitive capabilities? And if so, what would that look like?

On Journaling

Ross Zeiger — Fri, 19 Jan 2024 03:51:12 +0000

I’ve long believed that all problems - both internal and external - can be solved by the mind.

After all, nearly everything you and I use on a daily basis has come from the human mind including the airplane, wifi, and running water. As for internal problems like anxiety and depression those are all created by the mind and they can only be solved by the mind that created them.

There is one tool that works better than any other I’ve found for channeling the mind and bringing its solutions into the world: journaling. You are reading my personal journal right now.

You need to give the mind time and space to figure out a problem. And in some cases, you need to give it a pen and paper to put it’s thoughts out into the world. Journaling provides that to the mind.

Review of Durante La Tormenta

Ross Zeiger — Tue, 16 Jan 2024 03:53:08 +0000

How much I recommend it: 7/10

Spanish movie (that I watched in Spanish with English subtitles)

This movie has some Back to The Future vibes but is a psychological thriller rather than a comedy.

A massive storm in 1989 allows a young kid to communicate through his television with a woman 25 years in the future.

It opens with a kid who witnesses some sort of fight going on at his neighbor’s house. He goes over to investigate and finds the neighbor lady dead on the ground with her husband walking down the stairs with a bloody knife in his hand. The kid darts out the house and across the street. As he’s crossing the street, a car hits him and kills him.

Then, it shows us the future. A young family has just moved into the same house as the deceased kid and a historic storm is rolling into town on the same date as the previous one, 25 years later.

The protagonist, a nurse, finds an old TV and camera in her closet. When the storm hits, the TV tunes into a news report from the events of that day and suddenly switches to a kid playing his guitar in the same room she’s sitting in. She recognizes the kid as Nico, the boy that died on that day 25 years earlier and also realizes she is able to talk to him. She warns him not to go outside, that if he does he will die tonight.

And that is where I will the leave story so as not to spoil it.

The movie is full of twists and turns and nothing is what you expect.

The essence of the plot is that by warning young Nico, the protagonist changes the course of her own life’s past. So as she unravels the alternate timeline she came from, she needs to decide whether to return to that one or embrace her new reality.

This movie definitely made me think and I really enjoyed it. The acting is great and the writing is fascinating. It’s well worth the watch.

There are no hacks. There are no shortcuts.

Ross Zeiger — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 10:08:56 +0000

Everyone wants easy.

“Get Rich From Your Couch!”

Everyone wants fast.

“10 Minute Abs!”

Everyone wants simple.

“This One Trick Will Make You Happy Forever!”

But, there are no hacks and there are no shortcuts.

For anything worth doing, the hard way is the easy way.

For anything worth doing, the slow way is the fast way.

For anything worth doing, the complex way is the simple way.

Do Less, Better

Ross Zeiger — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 15:33:45 +0000

“Do less, better.” - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

I’m a systems and routines guy.

I like to set daily habits to move to me toward a goal.

But, I tend to take on too much.

A pattern that has played out over and over in my life is that I layer on more and more commitments.

More and more projects, goals, and habits.

My calendar gets cluttered and soon I’m not sticking to any of the systems I established.

So I scale back.

It’s only when I keep my focus to 1 to 3 things at a time that I make meaningful progress on my goals.

But it takes discipline to do less.

To stay focused.

I refer back to Marcus Aurelius’ line in Meditations: do less, better.

Those words were written 2,000 years ago but are more important now than ever before.

The modern world is full of options. Careers, beliefs, partners, hobbies, information to consume.

The one iron truth in life is that we have limited time.

This biological experience will come to an end for all of us.

It is not possible to do more than a few things with our time.

So must ruthlessly prioritize.

Say no to almost everything.

And focus relentlessly on just a few things.

Conquer the Desire

Ross Zeiger — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 14:57:47 +0000

This thought won’t apply to everyone. Just people who want to be happy.

And the thought is to overcome the desire to be #1 at anything.

I am not encouraging mediocrity or even discouraging competition.

But there are some people for whom the demon of being #1 stalks their every move. For them, there is no peace. There is no satisfaction.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad these people exist. You know them. You work with some of them. You went to school with some of them. And some of them are famous like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Micheal Jordan.

These people redefine what is possible in their fields. They inspire us. They move us forward.

The problem is, being #1 in any field is, by definition, reserved for just 1 person.

Which means that everyone else in that field cannot be #1. That might be millions or even billions of people.

If you hang your self-worth on being #1, and you’re not, you will never have peace.

A better path is to be your best. Forge your own path. Develop your own style.

And do that by comparing yourself to yourself.

Not in some new-age love-yourself-no-matter-what way.

But in a try-your-hardest way then have peace knowing you did your best way.

Notes on Cal Newport's video Learn Any Hard Skill in 2024 - How to Eliminate Distraction and Master Productivity

Ross Zeiger — Sun, 07 Jan 2024 16:38:49 +0000

Video link: https://youtu.be/dDV1bDiJSWE?si=-Kpq-8vQ37Ok4iE1

These are my notes on Cal Newport’s video: Learn Any Hard Skill in 2024 - How to Eliminate Distraction and Master Productivity

Anyone can learn almost anything. However, you cannot learn everything. So you must prioritize your efforts. Also, people will vary in how fast they can learn.

There is an element of nature vs nurture in learning. He gave the example of Arnold Schwarzenegger whose dad made him do pushups and squats to get dinner. He was stronger than most by the time he was a teenager. He is a case of nurture. So it is with learning. Some people start reading and reading voraciously at a young age and have higher learning capabilities for life.

Learning takes time and time is finite. There are only so many things you can learn.

The way you progress in learning is like going up a set of stairs. Your brain can only progress by going up one stair at a time. And the way to go to the next stair is deliberate progress.

Deliberate progress involves stretching yourself. It’s not fun and it’s a bit past what you currently know.

Anyone who has mastered a skill has done the stair steps to mastery.

If you want to cultivate Master Knowledge in your life, you have to figure out what the next step is.

It requires patience and expert help.

Expert help: coaches, courses, books.

Our brains are what distinguish us from animals. We can think abstractly and deliberately and creatively.

Advice for young people to aim for:

something in your professional life that you do well and better than anyone else - something complicated and valuable
something in your personal life that you’re really good with - like deeply understanding movies, wine, etc

It is deeply satisfying to deeply understand complicated things. It’s human.

We should all be trying to master hard things. It’ll take years but it’s worth it.

Where are you going to find the time to work on these things? Stop spending time on your phone.

Cal is working on mastering movies in his personal life. He wants to contribute really deep, thoughtful, good reviews.

What is note taking? Recording information on a durable, written medium.

Three types of note-taking:

Working memory extender - expands the amount of information you can temporarily remember in your working memory
Obligation tracker - system to maintain obligations like a calendar or to-do list
Ideas, brainstorms, journaling, plans, saved articles, etc

Build a system for each of the above.

Cal uses .txt files for working memory extender, Trello for obligation tracker, and Remarkable 2 digital notebook for everything else.

Don’t use YouTube to learn how to be a better student. The incentive structure isn’t conducive to being a better student.

If you want to be a better student, read a book about it. The incentive structure is more closely aligned to getting a result.

Podcasting has a better incentive structure for learning than Youtube. I.e. word of mouth. If your content is good, people will share it.

Figuring out what to get good at next is a really hard question. People don’t spend enough time figuring this out. Spend a lot of time figuring this out. Deconstruct your field. Look at people you admire and figure out how they got there. Make a good and educated bet on which skills will be valuable. Some people wander, some people deliberately pick a path. It’s a hard question to answer precisely because it’s so important.

Each step of skill building requires one deliberate step up the ladder at a time. To get better, slow down the rate at which you progress. In the short term, you will progress slower. You will feel like you’re going too slow but in the long term, one or two years, you’ll be far ahead of everyone. It must be sustainable.

Think about the one step you can take each day to move toward mastery.

Sustainability over time will get you to a better place than fast, unsustainable progress.

How do you build a career you love? Build a skill that is rare and valuable. Cultivate concentration to become good at something.

So Good They Can’t Ignore You was the culmination of his learnings in his 20s. A World Without Email is the culmination of his learnings in his 30s. Slow Productivity is his next project.

Society of the Snow

Ross Zeiger — Sun, 07 Jan 2024 02:00:37 +0000

Watched: January 6, 2024

How Strongly I Recommend It: 5/10

Spanish language movie on Netflix

Story of an Uruguayan rugby team who got into a plane crash en route to Chile in October 1972.

Of 40 passengers and 5 crew, 33 survive the crash. For the next 72 days, they are struggling to survive in the Andes in freezing cold, avalanches, starvation, and hopelessness. Many die along the way but 16 survived to make it off the mountain.

The survivors were completely unprepared. They were only wearing what they had stepped onto the plane with. They had almost no food. And the only shelter they had was the destroyed fuselage of the plane.

Within days of crashing, they resorted to cannibalism - eating the bodies of their deceased friends.

The story is amazing. Humans are capable of incredible feats of survival and this story is well worth studying. However, I rated the movie low because I found it to be really slow and too long. A better use of time would to read the Wikipedia page about the event and watch a documentary with real footage like this one: https://youtu.be/1Pg__L5Ijr0?si=fHJSOTPml6VVdcGw

Book of Eli

Ross Zeiger — Sun, 07 Jan 2024 02:00:22 +0000

Watched: January 4, 2024

How Strongly I Recommend It: 7/10

[intentionally vague to not spoil]

Denzel Washington is Eli, the main character. He is a survivor in a post-apocalyptic world. The film is extremely dark and gray and there is very little color throughout.

Eli has a backpack with some basic survival equipment and a large book. And that’s it. He is walking by himself down a desolate road. Occasionally he encounters highway bandits who try to rob him of his belongings but he’s a badass and always manages to defend himself.

Eli’s book is extremely important. There is a powerful man who is trying to steal the book from Eli. He tries all sorts of maneuvers to get it from him and eventually succeeds but Eli gets away and continues his journey without the book.

Eli finally reaches his destination which is a group of survivors living on an island. To them, he is able to recite the contents of the book from memory so that it can be transcribed and rewritten.

Meanwhile, there is a plot twist which makes the book stolen from Eli completely unreadable to the antagonist.

Inputs, not Outcomes

Ross Zeiger — Sat, 06 Jan 2024 21:34:47 +0000

New Year's Resolutions - and goals in general - should be based on inputs, not outcomes.

Outcome-Based Goals vs. Inputs

For most my life I've set outcome-based goals, for example:

"Run a 17 minute 5k."

"Lose 10 pounds."

"Make $100k."

I didn't always accomplish my outcome-based goals but the act of setting them helped focus my decisions and motivate me.

In that sense, they worked.

But, life is random. Injuries happen. Businesses fail. Jobs end.

This makes outcome-based goals risky and beyond my control.

For that reason, I've pivoted toward a system that has given me better results.

And that system is simply to focus on inputs.

To use my examples above, here is what they might look like as inputs:

"I will run 5k three times per week."

"I will cut out drinking sugary beverages."

"I will study for one hour per day in a lucrative new skill."

Why It Works For Me

With this system, I know exactly what I need to do each day or each week to know that I'm making progress in the direction I want to go.

With this system, I don't have to achieve a certain outcome by a certain time.

With this system, I focus on the only thing I can control: me and my behaviors. Not external circumstances.

My 2024 Inputs

This year, rather than setting outcome-based goals, here are the inputs I'm going to use.

Physical Fitness:

Pushups: 100,000 throughout the year (~274/day)

Double Unders (jump rope): 100,000 throughout the year (~274/day)

Pullups: 20,000 throughout the year (~55/day)

Mastery:

Spanish: 600 hours of input (~1.65 hrs/day)

Impact:

Write: 365,000 words on this blog (1,000 words/day)

Rationale

My categories of physical fitness, mastery, and impact are based on what's most important to me right now. Those aren't categories that would have been most relevant to me in the past, but it's where I've chosen to focus this year. It's best to not get too carried away and keep my categories to 1-3 things for the highest chance of sticking to them.

Speaking of sticking to them, it's crucial that the smallest unit of input is slightly challenging but not unachievable or will take up too much time. In other words, it must be sustainable. My pushup, pullup, and jump rope routine takes less than 20 minutes to get through and is a nice warm up for my training sessions. Oh, and I can't hate doing it either or else I won't do it.

But here's the thing, the daily number isn't a requirement. It's a benchmark to keep me on track for the yearly number. Somedays I might do 0 pushups but I won't let that bother me. I'll simply make up for it on subsequent days. The important thing is hitting the yearly number.

Mastering the Psychology

We are all slaves to our own psychology.

We all need to find the systems, habits, environments, and routines that make us the best version of ourselves.

Maybe the traditional outcome-based system works for you.

But maybe, like me, you need something simple and clear.

If so, focus on the inputs and the outcomes will follow.

All-In Podcast 2024 Predictions

Ross Zeiger — Sat, 06 Jan 2024 17:02:11 +0000

Each year the besties make predictions on where the world is heading politically and economically.

Here are my notes on their predictions:

All-in Prediction Pod:

Biggest Political Winner of 2024:

Sacks: Putin
Chamath, Jason, & Friedberg: Third-party candidates - a non-democrat or non-repúblican will rise to be the major contender or candidate (possibly RFK)

Biggest Political Loser of 2024:

Sacks: Ukraine - they’ve lost over 500K soldiers and a huge amount of the population has fled. But also, he predicts the collective West will lose this year along with the loss in Ukraine and pending loss in Israel. The elections in the US and Europe are going to lead to tremendous disruption.
Chamath: Koch brothers - they are usually wrong. Find where old school Republicans are putting their money and short it.
Friedberg: Ukraine - attention is shifting to Middle East. The Ukraine war is becoming more unpopular. US won’t have resources to continue support and Ukraine won’t join NATO.
Jason: Netanyahu - he’s losing favor in Israel, they want him out.

Biggest Business Winner:

Jason: Training data owners: NYT, Reddit, Facebook, Google, etc
Sacks: Anduril - because of it’s Roadrunner product
Chamath: Bootstrapped startups and/or profitable startups - we are underestimating how cheap it’ll be to copy existing businesses in 2024
Friedberg: Commodities businesses - under investment recently in commodities, lots of commodities businesses are going to boom to build back up.

Biggest Business Loser:

Jason: Smartphones - manufacturers are facing a major slowdown as more people upgrade less frequently
Sacks: German economy - loss of cheap Russian gas has killed the industrial output; car industry is massive impacted by cheap cars from China
Friedberg: Vertical SaaS companies - tools to write code, no-code tools, etc are going to destroy vertical SaaS companies
Chamath: Professional Sports - 2024 will be the peak valuation of pro sports

Biggest Business Deal:

Jason: TikTok goes public - but will be under pressure to get CCP off their board
Chamath: Starlink - will go public as a spinoff from SpaceX
Sacks: Whatever the fed does to replace the BTFP (program that saved regional banks)
Friedberg: Rights holder deals for generative AI such as Disney selling licenses to their characters for recreation in AI models

Most Contrarian Belief:

Jason: Apple will make huge gains in generative AI, become a major player in AI
Sacks: Soft landing gets bumpy - market starts to skid but not quite a recession
Chamath: Enterprise value of OpenAI drops
Friedberg: Increased probability of a nuclear weapon used in warfare

Best Performing Asset:

Jason: Consumer comfort services - small luxuries like DoorDash, Uber, AirBnb
Friedberg: Uranium ETF - URA (index on businesses dealing with nuclear power)
Chamath: Public Tech cycle
Sacks: Energy stocks/ETFs - due to the risk of escalation in wars

Worst Performing Asset:

Jason: LLM Startups - they are massively overvalued, too many players
Chamath: Traditional SaaS companies - the cost of engineering has dropped 2-4x with AI making competition easier
Friedberg: Vertical SaaS companies
Sacks: Magnificent 7 - the other 493 companies will catchup this year

Most Anticipated Trend:

Jason: Efficiency in the form of improved AI and outsourcing
Sacks: AI - the exponential pace of AI will continue and we’ll see widestream adoption and mainstream consumer usecases
Chamath: Bitcoin - this the most important year of BTC, ETFs will be approved and ‘cross the chasm’ toward mainstream adoption
Friedberg: Predictive models from AI of pharma, chemical engineering, medical coming out of generative models; reduces costs and spurs innovation

Most Anticipated Media:

Jason: Uranus by Yung Spielberg; Gladiator 2; 3 Body Problem
Chamath: Mr. Beast
Sacks: Gladiator 2; House of the Dragon; The Founders by Jimmy Soni
Friedberg: AI generated news

2024 in One Word:

Sacks: Turbulent
Jason: Exhilarating; optimistic; creative
Chamath: Cautious; pensive
Friedberg: Excited (personally); Cautious (globally)

To listen to or watch the whole thing yourself, you can download the podcast on any podcast app or watch on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID8T71m7Ics

If you’re not familiar with the hosts of All-In, they are Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, David Friedberg, and Chamath Palihapitiya.

All four are Silicon Valley investors and they get together to chat about markets, geopolitics, US politics, and more. The banter among them is top-notch. It’s one of my very favorite podcasts right now.

Do you agree with any of their predictions? What are your predictions?

Nothing Lasts

Ross Zeiger — Fri, 05 Jan 2024 14:02:33 +0000

Very little of what people create lasts through time and space.

When we die, we are - with a few exceptions - forgotten within three generations.

Your assets get distributed to your heirs or maybe dropped off unceremoniously at Goodwill.

Your business will eventually go under or get bought by a bigger business.

The place you worked replaces you with a younger employee.

You get a brief moment in time to make your impact.

Within days of your funeral, the world moves on.

And this is exactly how it should be.

Learn what you need to learn.

Say what you need to say.

Do what you need to do.

Then you move on.

Nothing lasts.