What’s Luck Got to Do With It?

What’s Luck Got to Do With It?

Playing to Win in the Game of Love

At the age of thirty, I was starting over in the dating world, and looking for the total package: someone smart, pretty, easy to be around, and definitely someone with whom I would have great chemistry. That’s a tall order, even under the best circumstances. But when you’re running two companies, and have next to no free time? Practically impossible! So I decided it was time to use my aptitude for innovation on a totally new subject: myself.

A Year of Insanity

By the time I hit my early 30’s, I had been living in New York City for my entire life. The years had been full of highs and lows, both personal and in business. There was my father’s passing, when I was only a kid. My mom’s struggle with chronic health conditions and building a business to support us. The typical ups and downs of middle school and high school. Falling in love with nightlife at the very young age of 14, and staying in love with it through high school, college, and beyond. Working like crazy to get into med school, only to realize that it wasn’t for me, and dropping out to join the dot com boom (and bust). And of course, the all-consuming task of building Joonbug into a juggernaut that effectively brought the nightlife industry into the digital age.

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January 2022 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

January 2022 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

What I Am Reading

Same As It Ever Was

This is a few short stories about things that never change in a world that never stops changing.

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
“Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman delivers an entertaining, humorous, practical, and ultimately profound guide to time and time management. Rejecting the futile modern fixation on “getting everything done,” Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing finitude, showing how many of the unhelpful ways we’ve come to think about time aren’t inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we’ve made as individuals and as a society—and that we could do things differently.”

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December 2021 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

December 2021 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

What I Am Reading:

The Age of Funcertainty!
When this era draws to a close – in as ugly a manner possible I can only assume – it may well be remembered as having been more irrational than the Dot Com Bubble and zanier than the Roaring Twenties. It’s worth pointing out how long those infamous moments lasted. They didn’t feel like “moments” to those living through them. They went on for quite a while. As can this.

If history is any guide, the Age of Funcertainty may just be getting started.

How to perform well under pressure

To perform well under pressure, you need several elements in place: an ability to distance yourself from destructive thoughts and self-talk; a way to cope with overwhelming feelings; the mental flexibility to respond in the most effective way; and, finally, to know what matters to you.

Why Americans Are Always Running Out of Time
Technology only frees people from work if the boss—or the government, or the economic system—allows it.

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November 2021 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

November 2021 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

What I Am Reading

This is how your brain makes your mind

“Your mind is in fact an ongoing construction of your brain, your body, and the surrounding world.”

The New Science of Clocks Prompts Questions About the Nature of Time

“Studies of the simplest possible clocks have revealed their fundamental limitations — as well as insights into the nature of time itself.”

You'll Never Login the Same Way Again

“Wallet-based authentication will dominate in the next decade because it puts the user in control, where we want to be. The wallet replaces the username, the password, and the cookie.”

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October 2021 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

October 2021 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

What I Am Reading

Meet Altos Labs, Silicon Valley’s latest wild bet on living forever
“Altos hasn’t made an official announcement yet, but it was incorporated in Delaware this year and a securities disclosure filed in California in June indicates the company has raised at least $270 million, according to Will Gornall, a business school professor at the University of British Columbia who reviewed the document. In addition to Bezos and Milner, the company may have additional wealthy tech figures and venture capitalists as investors.”

George Eastman: The Greatest Technology Entrepreneur in U.S. History?

“Eastman was the “total entrepreneur”—marketing genius, financial wizard, great employer, both a visionary and a hands-on inventor and designer. Over the years, he became one of the most important philanthropists in American history, perhaps foreshadowing Bill Gates’s diverse interests. Above all else, George Eastman was “his own man”—a unique personality of independent mind. “

September 2021 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

September 2021 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

What I Am Reading

The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't

"I’ve learned more about how to think and reason well from Julia Galef than from almost anyone."—Dylan Matthews, senior correspondent at Vox

Keep Your Identity Small
“Most people reading this will already be fairly tolerant. But there is a step beyond thinking of yourself as x but tolerating y: not even to consider yourself an x. The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you.”

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August 2021 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

August 2021 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

What I Am Reading

The Power of the Marginal
“If you really want to score big, the place to focus is the margin of the margin: the territories only recently captured from the insiders. That's where you'll find the juiciest projects still undone, either because they seemed too risky, or simply because there were too few insiders to explore everything.”

The Tacit Knowledge Series
“Tacit knowledge is ‘knowledge that cannot be captured through words alone’.

This series explores how expertise is tacit, why the research around extracting tacit knowledge is more important than the literature on deliberate practice, and how to go about acquiring tacit knowledge in the pursuit of skill acquisition.”

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Give Your Heirs Some GRAT-titude

Give Your Heirs Some GRAT-titude

Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts, commonly referred to as GRATs, are a financial instrument that allow a property or asset owner to pass appreciating assets to their heirs with minimal, if any, estate tax consequences. Affluent taxpayers often turn to GRATs (and capitalize on the higher estate tax exemption eligible under the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act of 2017) as part of a creative, proactive strategy in planning their estates.

So how can you benefit from a GRAT? The first step is for you, the grantor, to contribute an appreciated asset(s) to an irrevocable, fixed trust. You would then be entitled to receive an annuity from the asset during the term of the trust. Keep in mind, this annuity is not the same as the income generated by the asset. The grantor of the asset is eligible for an annuity based on the fair market value of the asset at the time it was put in trust, not simply the income generated from the asset.

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July 2021 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

July 2021 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

What I Am Reading

Interview: Marc Andreessen, VC and tech pioneer
“M.A.: Don’t follow your passion. Seriously. Don’t follow your passion. Your passion is likely more dumb and useless than anything else. Your passion should be your hobby, not your work. Do it in your spare time.

Instead, at work, seek to contribute. Find the hottest, most vibrant part of the economy you can and figure out how you can contribute best and most. Make yourself of value to the people around you, to your customers and coworkers, and try to increase that value every day.

It can sometimes feel that all the exciting things have already happened, that the frontier is closed, that we’re at the end of technological history and there’s nothing left to do but maintain what already exists. This is just a failure of imagination. In fact, the opposite is true. We’re surrounding by rotting incumbents that will all need to be replaced by new technologies. Let’s get on it.”

4 Rumi Quotes That Will Boost Your Confidence

“You are searching the world for treasure, but the real treasure is Yourself.”

Zoroastrianism And Persian Mythology: The Foundation Of Belief

“Zoroastrianism was the main faith of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Attributed to the prophet Zoroaster, this Persian religion was a key influence on both Christianity and Judaism.”

What I am Watching:

The Explainer: Solving Problems by Starting with the Worst Idea Possible

Sometimes wrong thinking can lead to the right answer. 

Bionic Eye Cures Blindness
“First Bionic Arms- Now Bionic Eyes! Last week the FDA gave approval to the Argus II, a bionic eye that could potentially cure blindness in 15,000 people in the US. The Alpha IMS, a new implant in early testing, has cured blindness in eight people so far. Anthony gives us a sneak peak at this amazing new tech.”

Muppet Babies
My four year old son can’t stop watching and I’ve been strangely captivated by watching it too.  I guess it’s because I loved watching The Muppets so much growing up.  We’re now saying “Waka Waka” after every joke we tell just like Fozzy the Bear 🤣!

What I am Listening To:

ROLL ON:

CASE STUDIES IN MENTAL FORTITUDE: THE IRON COWBOY & MINNEAPOLIS MAYOR JACOB FREY

“Success in all forms demands mental fortitude—a capacity honed through consistently placing yourself beyond comfortable confines. When practiced with daily rigor, an increasingly sturdy mindset becomes a superpower—and the foundation for the purpose-driven life you aspire to inhabit.”

June 2021 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

June 2021 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

What I Am Reading

Why Start-ups Fail
Most start-ups don’t succeed: More than two-thirds of them never deliver a positive return to investors. But why do so many end disappointingly? That question hit me with full force several years ago when I realized I couldn’t answer it.

The Tail End
What I’ve been thinking about is a really important part of life that, unlike all of these examples, isn’t spread out evenly through time—something whose [already done / still to come] ratio doesn’t at all align with how far I am through life: Relationships.

Curiosity Is the Secret to a Happy Life

What exactly does it mean to be curious? “If you go by the typical dictionary definition, curiosity is simply a desire to seek out new knowledge or experiences,” Kashdan says. While this definition is a useful starting point, he says curiosity also involves a willingness to engage with complex, unfamiliar, and challenging concepts or endeavors.

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Pass the Remote Control - Car!

Pass the Remote Control - Car!

When I started middle school in sixth grade, I mostly loved Doritos, Nintendo, baseball, and playing Dungeons and Dragons all the time. But the craze of remote control cars was headed my way, and looking back, I can see how much I gained from being immersed in that world.

Serious Fun

When you hear “remote control cars” you might be thinking of the dinky, pre-built kind that you buy in a toy store: the kind that go less than a mile per hour and have a range of approximately one living room floor. They’re fun for kids, but not what my friends and I were growing obsessed with.

Instead, we were getting into hobby-grade RC cars, the kind that come disassembled with hundreds of parts and take anywhere from a week to a month to build (and not to mention, come with a pretty hefty price tag—anywhere from $100 to $200, back in the early 90’s). We got a real adrenaline rush from racing those cars, at speeds of over fifteen miles an hour, in parks, backyards, and empty parking lots.

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May 2021 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

May 2021 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

What I Am Reading


How Happy Marriages Stay Happy: 7 Signs of a Rock-Solid Relationship

“So how do happy marriages stay happy? What qualities help a marriage endure? Researchers like DeFrain have spent decades publishing studies dissecting marriages to figure out what works to keep couples happy for the long haul. Here’s what DeFrain and couples therapists say is truly essential for happy, long-term marriages.”


'Psychological Reactance’ Helps You Understand Yourself -- And Your Kids

When someone tells us what to do, our brains freak out and demand that we do something about the threat to our personal safety. We become cornered prey; we need to fight. We need to find a way out! Reactance is like an overprotective friend who is always on the lookout for danger. Our brains plan an exit strategy and our behavior becomes defiant, rude, self-sabotaging, and/or violent because we need to regain the sense of control we think we lost.

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Founders On Fleek

Founders On Fleek

What makes an investment promising, from the perspective of a venture capitalist? As any VC will tell you, it's not so much the idea being invested in; rather, it’s the team behind the idea, and most specifically, the founder.

A Smart Bet

VC investment is very much like gambling. Even having the best team and idea does not guarantee any level of success. That’s why many VCs spread their bets across a number of different companies; the way the math works out, you only need one outsized win to more than make up for all of your losses (or mediocre wins). But how do you optimize your chances of getting that outsized win? How do you know what to look for in a startup?

Well, there are many immeasurable factors that go into the success of a company, and to be honest, luck is probably one of the most important. Other factors, however, are much more concrete. And over the years, I’ve found that finding businesses with great founders significantly increases my odds of success.

April 2021 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

April 2021 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

What I Am Reading
Surprise! Earth Has a Secret Hidden Layer

A new study provides the best evidence yet for a hidden layer deep within Earth’s solid inner core. Earth’s inner core, made of solid iron and nickel, is roughly two-thirds the size of the moon. The researchers used machine learning to pinpoint the most accurate model of the strange physical processes that shape our planet's inner core.

How complaining rewires your brain for negativity
“See if you can catch yourself complaining, in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.”

Confessions of a Med School Dropout

Confessions of a Med School Dropout

When I started high school, my mind was already made up. I was going to become a doctor, and not just any doctor—a surgeon. Sure, I didn’t exactly know what kind of a surgeon I wanted to be, but that didn’t matter; I was going to be one.

Aiming High

Growing up, I thought that being a doctor was the most noble and important profession of all, superior to any other career choice. After all, doctors saved people from sickness and death. There wasn’t really any other profession that could make that kind of a claim.

This was maybe more important to me than it was to other kids my age, because my father had passed away at the age of 44, when I was only thirteen, and my mother was perpetually ill since childhood with renal disease. So I was exposed to the world of medicine from an early age, and I looked up to the doctors who had helped my parents. I wanted to help others in the same situation. And I was probably a little biased (and brainwashed), since I came from an immigrant family that believed medicine, law, and engineering were the only respectable professions to go into.

March 2021 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

March 2021 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

What I Am Reading:

The Ultimate Guide to Liars and Lying: Everyone Falls Into These 4 Types
“There are various ways of classifying lies: by their consequences, by the importance of their subject matters, by the speakers’ motives, and by the nature or context of the utterance.
Perhaps the most useful way to classify lies is by to the people who tell them. Understanding lies and liars can help us avoid getting duped as well as protect us from drifting into dishonesty ourselves.”

Corn Mazes and Mental Models
“We habitually view the world through a series of mental models that shape our understanding of our circumstances, our relationships and ourselves. [2] And while these mental models are essential tools in allowing us to navigate through life, they can easily lead us astray. Philosopher Alford Korzybski said "A map is not the territory it represents," and a mental model is not the reality it seeks to depict. [3] But we can easily mistake our mental models for reality and apply them inappropriately.”

'Smallest reptile on earth' discovered in Madagascar
Scientists believe they may have discovered the smallest reptile on earth - a chameleon subspecies that is the size of a seed.

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February 2021 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

February 2021 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

What I Am Reading

100 Tips For A Better Life
This title needs no explanation. There are a lot of great gems of advice in this list!

Why Remote Work Changes the Nature of Leadership, and the Kinds of Leaders to Recruit in Startups
Managers tasked with creating a culture of collaboration within a distributed team will find the profile of a leader changes. A recent study found that the skills and traits of successful leaders in an in-person, office-based environment differ from those needed to lead distributed, remote teams. Instead of valuing confidence and charisma, remote teams value leaders who are organised, productive and facilitate connections between colleagues.

Technological stagnation: Why I came around
“We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters,” says Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, expressing a sort of jaded disappointment with technological progress. (The fact that the 140 characters have become 280, a 100% increase, does not seem to have impressed him.)
Thiel, along with economists such as Tyler Cowen (The Great Stagnation) and Robert Gordon (The Rise and Fall of American Growth), promotes a “stagnation hypothesis”: that there has been a significant slowdown in scientific, technological, and economic progress in recent decades—say, for a round number, since about 1970, or the last ~50 years.

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Blame it on Montauk

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Blame it on Montauk

There are pivotal times in life, times when you re-examine your priorities, beliefs, and your life-trajectory. August 3rd, 2015, was one of those moments for me, because on that morning, I had a near-death biking accident, in Montauk, New York.

In 2013, I purchased a summer house in Montauk, in the Hither Hills area. We lived in New York at the time, and went to Montauk a lot during the summers, so it made sense. But in late 2014, we moved to Miami. Still, we decided we would keep the Montauk house. We loved everything about the quiet town of Montauk, from our house, to the beach, the restaurants, everything. Flying up to spend the summers there would be great.

In August 2015, after a three-hour flight and five-hour drive, we finally arrived in Montauk: myself, my wife, and my little daughter, who was then about one and a half. After quickly unpacking, we headed out to dinner, making grand plans for all the places we would go and things we would do for the rest of the month. But as the old cliche has it, “Tell God your plans, and watch Him laugh.”

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January 2021 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

January 2021 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

What I Am Reading:

Hindsight Bias: Why You Make Terrible Life Choices

In his latest article on cognitive biases, Nir Eyal teaches how hindsight bias can lead to terrible decision making and what you can do to avoid falling for this common trap.

How Bad is Tech Use for Kids, Really?

Excessive social media use may be harmful for kids and parents alike. But there's more to the studies than just the headlines.

Marc Andreessen On Productivity, Scheduling, Reading Habits, Work, and More

The title speaks for itself. If you want to get better at any of these things then check it out. I’ve already copied a few of this tips and tricks for myself.

People with creative personalities really do see the world differently

“In our research, published in the Journal of Research in Personality, we found that open people don’t just bring a different perspective to things, they genuinely see things differently to the average individual.”

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JoonBug New York City Party Nightlife and Events Photo Archive For the Years 2003 to 2009 - Part 2

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JoonBug New York City Party Nightlife and Events Photo Archive For the Years 2003 to 2009 - Part 2

In 2000 I founded JoonBug.com with the idea of bringing together the offline events world into the online digital world. In the pre Facebook, Eventbrite, and smartphone camera era, we were the first ones to go around the NYC nightlife scene taking photos every night of party goers living their best life at all the hottest venues and events. If you went out in NYC then chances are you were “bitten by the JoonBug”. From 2000-2009 before the advent of modern social media, JoonBug was the ultimate online resource for party photos and nightlife information on the web. Unfortunately many of those hundreds of thousands of photos are lost somewhere on a hard drive that I misplaced during a move. But luckily I was able to dig up a few hundred random nights of archives (about 100,000 photos) from 2004 to 2009 with the help of Pako Dominguez, one of our most prolific and long standing JoonBug photographers.

Below are many photos from the year 2004 to 2009 mostly from venues and events I have forgotten (including places like Pangaea, B’Lo, Rehab, BLVD, Flow, Bed, Duvet, Centrofly, PM, Cain, Au Bar, Home, Guest House, Guastavino’s, LQ, Pacha, Spirit and many more). If you know any info that can help me place some of these photo galleries please help out by putting notes in the comments.

Enjoy taking a very nostalgic ride through memory lane!

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