May 2024 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To
What I Am Reading:
“Everything That Moves Will Become Robotic”
Horsepower. Raw horsepower. After watching NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote speech at NVIDIA’s GTC conference, I couldn’t help but think about it.
While all of the GTC conferences have centered around artificial intelligence since 2015, this year stood out. It’s all about power this week — computing power… and having the “horses” to accelerate even faster.
Three things to remember in times like these
The key takeaway for me is that the economy is too good to expect a rapid cooling off anytime soon. The faster disinflationary fall we’d been enjoying since the middle of 2023 has now trampolined on us and the data is coming in warmer and warmer. When people are working, people are spending. Almost everyone is working. That’s it. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.
Ed Thorp: Survival of the Fittest Mind
Are you incentivized to chase deals and put money to work, or is there time to follow curiosity and investigate thoroughly? What are you optimizing for: short-term returns or making good decisions?
The Market Size Mistake
Market size is the output of all the players marketing, selling, building. Their efforts alter, distort, & juice the supply/demand curves of macroeconomics. It’s not a given - not an output or a steady-state CAGR.
Often it’s the startups that engender the demand, change the market dynamics, & make markets massive by taking risks with products. When done right, these founders create category-defining businesses like Shopify (now worth $90b)!
What I am Watching:
Shōgun (2024 miniseries)
Shōgun is an American historical drama television miniseries created by Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks. It is based on the 1975 novel by James Clavell, which was previously adapted into a 1980 miniseries.
What I am Listening To:
Orlando: The Inspirational Story of Tennis Phenom Turned VC Leader Gregg Hill
With the holidays upon us, Sean McCrory delivers and an extended session with Gregg Hill, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Parkway Venture Capital. Hill details his rise from a small North Carolina town to become legendary tennis coach Nick Bollettieri's favorite for his work ethic. His tennis career was tragically cut short, so Hill turned to business, and duplicated his success off the court.