I've been interested in crowdfunded assets for a long time. This was something I assumed crypto would help with because of permissionless capital formation. But I've come to be quite bearish on crowdfunding approaches, because the demand-side assumption is "people will buy this hard-to-get, hard-to-understand, illiquid asset if only there were an easier way to get their hands on it." Categories that have been attempted include SFR (single family rental), commercial equity, commercial debt, renewables... I never bought that assumption because most of those assets are idiosyncratic, hard to understand, and hard to diligence. "Buy what you understand" is one of the most famous Buffetisms, and people generally invest in things they (think) they understand. And on the supply side, why would someone pursue capital on a brand new unproven platform and raise money from faceless masses rather than trusted partners? Unless, of course, they suck at raising money, which means crowdfunding is an AMAZING adverse selector. The least-informed investors will meet the least-capable issuers, and we'll try to take a vig on introducing these hapless fools! So what's the pro-case? 1) if the issuers / sellers pretty much ALL suck at raising capital because of some market structure failure 2) you as the platform can solve that market structure failure; and 3) the asset is actually pretty easy to understand, so you as the platform don't have to do a bunch of education about how the asset works Crypto should *waves hands* be a pretty powerful weapon for solving #2. So what are the assets that meet criteria (1) and (3)?

If a meeting generates another meeting it's a failed meeting.

My favorite YouTube video of all time is "The Battle of Midway from the Japanese perspective." You can make all the right decisions and still be ruined. Make the best decision you can with the best information you have at your disposal. Leave the rest to God.

Make a product so good your users will label data for free.

I've done an easy 45-minute spin on the bike every day for the last 4 days and I regret to inform you the rise in my energy levels far exceeds the time invested.

It used to be we could distract ourselves from purpose by pushing buttons. No longer. Now you have to focus fairly singularly on your "why." Before machine intelligence, most economic output was just mindless button-pushing. Most jobs are telephone switchboard jobs: "Operator. City and number, please?" You collect a little context and then you start pushing buttons and flipping switches, moving that context from point A to point B. Think about your little job for a second. How much of it is higher order objective-setting or even the divergence of raw creativity vs. mindless button-pushing execution? How much of advancing in your job is getting better and more productive at button-pushing versus thinking really hard about why you're pushing those buttons? I spent years making Excels and Powerpoints, and a large chunk of my early-career rewards (5, 10 years or more for a banker or consultant) came from simply getting very very good at pushing buttons. It was actually a status signifier: "Lol you use a mouse? Don't you use shortcuts and macros?" That era is over. All the many years we as humans invested in honing our button-pushing skills have been rendered irrelevant. Instead we must now confront a daily existential prompt: What do you want? Because soon you can have anything. So now we are forced to confront the abject terror of whittling "anything" into "something." And very few people will digest that transition effectively because the vast majority of people have comforted themselves over the years by microscopically improving their button pushing skills. All of that was a distraction from purpose, and now we actually have to face the void. Our entire button-pushing identities are dead, replaced by blinking cursors that ask: "Why?"

TIL the technology used to convert heat to steam in locomotives is exactly the same used to convert heat to steam in nuclear reactors. The fundamental insight hasn't changed in 180 years.

Regular reminder that @maggielove_ runs an organization that onboards 10,000+ real human women to crypto, by hand, every year and growing. It's called @shefiorg.

the most attractive people have absolutely no neediness they are giving away energy, radiating adventure they don't need you to go with them, but they're pretty sure if you did you'd have a good time

Every great engineer is also an artist.