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Nov 27 2019

“The last person I felt this with was Jack Ma.”

#103:
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The Softbank Vision Fund has a quirky connection to India. Turns out New Delhi is where Masa and Adam Neumann first met!
You thought you heard enough about WeWork, but today's subject line is from another amazing story:
How the doomed Masa Son-Adam Neumann relationship set WeWork on the road to disaster

Adam Neumann's talk includes this little foreboding nugget:
“For such a spiritual country, I’m surprised [by] the amount of talk I heard about valuation and raising money and bubbles and building big companies. The goal is finding something that you truly love."
Hmm, maybe he truly loved bubbles after all.
ज्ञान
Jagged concrete protrusions span for miles along the Swiss Alps. They have been cheerily dubbed “Toblerone Lines” after the famous Swiss chocolate maker, but they have other names, too. More ominous monikers like “dragon teeth” may better fit their original function: to repel invading tanks and other vehicles in wartime. These lines represent some of the most visible elements of defensive infrastructure in a nation known for its perpetual neutrality — a position reinforced by the fact that the country is well-prepared for attacks. 
When Vijay Mhatre needed cash to make up a shortfall for his son’s engineering school tuition, he pledged his wife’s necklace and bangles. Instead of going to the nearest pawnbroker or bank, the 55-year-old called Rupeek Fintech Pvt Ltd., summoning a representative of the online gold lender to his 650-square-foot Mumbai apartment and sidestepping the ignominy of being seen pawning the family jewelry.
Starlink, SpaceX’s plan to serve internet via tens of thousands of satellites, is a staple in the space press, with articles appearing every week on the latest developments. The broad schema is clear and, thanks to filings with the FCC, a sufficiently well motivated individual (such as your humble servant) can deduce a great deal of detail. Despite this, there is still an unusually high degree of confusion around this new technology, even among expert commentators.
In late November 2018, Asher Burke gathered his employees in their San Diego office and laid out a vision for how Ads Inc. was going to become an e-commerce powerhouse. The tanned and muscular 27-year-old CEO detailed plans to merge the company he founded in 2015 with another e-commerce company, and hire 20 or so new employees with expertise in developing products, such as electric toothbrushes and hair extensions, to be sold online.
We need a theory of jerks. We need such a theory because, first, it can help us achieve a calm, clinical understanding when confronting such a creature in the wild. Imagine the nature documentary voice-over: “Here we see the jerk in his natural environment. Notice how he subtly adjusts his dominance display to the Italian-restaurant situation . . .” And second—well, I don’t want to say what the second reason is quite yet. 
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Elsewhere
Quotable
"Only those who do nothing make no mistakes”
- Joseph Conrad

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