Happy Sunday…
My view this morning from a perfect cafe about 300 steps up the hill in Lake Como…
Yesterday afternoon we took a scenic boat ride along Como which really helped me appreciate the area…
The lake is 45 km long which is much bigger than I thought…
Today will be the first ride of our trip around Lake Como. Here is our group – Ali, Mike and Mark (missing Michael who spent the day in Milan at the Formula 1 race)…
Yesterday, I posted our ride itinerary and at least 70 percent of the people that chimed in said I have NO chance of completing the rides! I am definitely a bit concerned, but I will take it day by day.
On the flight over I watched the Nolan Ryan documentary and Brian Wilson (Beach Boys) documentary and they were both excellent.
I am catching up on a ton of reading as I use this cycling retreat as a way to think through some trends in early stage investing I am excited about.
One trend I continue to focus on is capital efficiency. As everyone around me has more money and less patience (a 12 year boom will do that to the world), I want to think smaller and more patiently. I am excited about trends I am amidst and can visualize as a customer. That means startups/businesses that cater to the 10-20 percent of people who are price insensitive.
I was sitting with Fred Wilson last week in New York catching up on life and family and he told me about a nuclear investment he made. I have no chance of sourcing or evaluating energy, chemical and deep tech so I am excited to hear the best thinkers and venture capitalists are allocating to important new areas of potential growth. The world needs money to flow to these edges and frontiers. I can only invest with confidence as an incrementalist.
Speaking of incrementalism, I continue to dive deeper into NFT ideas focused 100 percent on utility and the pickings are slim. Everyone is ‘talking’ a big game around utility but are pricing for perfection and therefore will fall prey to non utility distractions.
Nike, the most frontier of large consumer good brands in the NFT space has only done $180 million in sales from NFT’s. A big number for sure, but tiny in the scope of the hype, promise and dollars allocated to date.
I liked this Michael Dempsey piece on crypto/tokns/NFT’s titled ‘What Goes Down Must Go Up?‘
In the ‘tangible’ world, Apple just keeps on taking markets and market share away from everyone else as they expand services and squeeze the life out of the rest of the Nasdaq. I love Apple and it is still my largest single position, but I can’t imagine it is not healthy on a whole to have them eat the world. Here is Ben’s explanation of their services monstrosity.
Have a great Sunday.
