"Summer means happy times and good sunshine"--Brian Wilson
"Something very interesting is happening at the edge of the startup world.
Founders are shipping faster, skipping steps, and building companies without ever pitching a VC. What used to take teams of ten and six-figure burn rates now gets done by one or two people with ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, a Stripe account, and a weekend.
They’re not building like we used to.
This time, the shift isn’t just in the tools — it’s in the tempo. Founders are starting to build with a rhythm that feels more like freestyling than planning. They’re coding with intuition. Iterating without meetings. Launching without pitch decks.
It’s fast.
It’s fluid.
And it’s what I’d call:
vibe startup building"
https://medium.com/@clarencewooten/introducing-the-vibe-startup-41e12e4d0dd5
"Despite FPV drones’ clear importance on the modern battlefield, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is not on track to procure and field FPV or other drones at scale, and our current industrial policy shows no intention of changing that. The DoD has yet to fully recognize drones as strategic combat assets, failing to align budget priorities, industrial base planning, and Concepts of Operations (CONOPS) with their growing importance on the modern battlefield.
The challenges outlined in this piece are symptoms of this strategic oversight, an approach starkly contrasted by Ukraine and Russia, which have both rapidly adapted to integrate drones at every level of warfare, each procuring millions of drones a year. China, the world’s largest producer of low-cost drones, undoubtedly recognizes the strategic importance of attritable systems as well.
While progress has been made to field more FPV drones within the DoD, it is clear that much more needs to be done in order to prepare for future conflicts and ensure credible deterrence. Fundamentally, the DoD still treats FPV drones like aircraft when they should be treated more like ammunition.
With Russia’s recent combat experience and China’s drone manufacturing prowess, our adversaries have the upper hand in producing and deploying drones at scale. The U.S. military will be at a severe disadvantage if forced to fight against mass quantities of low-cost drones, just as the Navy has been at a disadvantage in defending its ships against low-cost Houthi drones. Now, the United States must translate those battlefield lessons into institutional reform, before the next fight arrives."
https://maggiegray.us/p/field-or-fail-building-the-attritable
Solid conversation on defense tech and what is happening geopolitically.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr6VgyMF7nc
"But playing hormonal games isn’t just for actors and athletes any more. Executives do it, too.
What’s interesting about these characters is that they aren’t just staying physically youthful. They’re also maintaining a young person’s monomaniacal zest for world domination.
Bezos, Musk, and Brin don’t just look young. They act young.
I suspect that it’s because, hormonally, they are young. They may have the same level of rambunctious combativeness they did when they were quitting jobs and risking it all in their twenties because, in physiological terms, they’re still in their twenties.
The power of artificial hormonal supplementation is creating a new generation of corporate leaders who will remain Young Men In A Hurry well into their seventies. We should expect more bold ventures, more oceans of tactically spilled red ink, epic financial feuds, and, of course, a staggering rise in inequality."
https://letter.palladiummag.com/p/competitive-hormone-supplementation
"In twenty years, TSMC went from one of 26, to one of two. It was the perfect combination of growing pie and TSMC’s slice getting bigger.
To summarize TSMC’s journey:
They introduced the foundry business model to the industry.
That unlocked a wave of fabless chip companies.
Three tailwinds led to TSMC’s meteoric rise: a growing semiconductor industry, increasing importance of fabless chip companies, and increasing market share of TSMC."
https://www.generativevalue.com/p/tsmc-the-index-on-technology
"If each nation’s current trajectory holds, China will likely end up completely dominating high-end manufacturing, from cars and chips to M.R.I. machines and commercial jets. The battle for A.I. supremacy will be fought not between the United States and China but between high-tech Chinese cities like Shenzhen and Hangzhou. Chinese factories around the world will reconfigure supply chains with China at the center, as the world’s pre-eminent technological and economic superpower.
America, by contrast, may end up as a profoundly diminished nation. Sheltered behind tariff walls, its companies will sell almost exclusively to domestic consumers. The loss of international sales will degrade corporate earnings, leaving companies with less money to invest in their businesses.
American consumers will be stuck with U.S.-made goods that are of middling quality but more expensive than global products, owing to higher U.S. manufacturing costs. Working families will face rising inflation and stagnant incomes. Traditional high-value industries such as car manufacturing and pharmaceuticals are already being lost to China; the important industries of the future will follow. Imagine Detroit or Cleveland on a national scale.
Whether this century will be Chinese or American is up to us. But the time to change course is quickly running out."
"Based on evidence from 51 major innovations from 1825 to 2000, the authors argue that bubbles are a necessary component of innovation because they provide a window for innovators to raise cheap equity capital, enabling them to commercialize their products and drive growth for their firms. Of course, the cheap equity capital doesn’t always earn high returns, often funding duds and also-rans in addition to innovative firms, but we believe no true progress happens without trial and error."
https://mailchi.mp/verdadcap/innovation-and-stock-market-bubbles
"Mega funds aren’t betting that companies will IPO at $1B. They’re betting that a new class of private giants will emerge—and that those giants will need massive amounts of capital.
The best venture firms of the next decade, regardless of model, will do three things better than venture has ever done them before:
Follow their winners
Believe in, and bet on, bigger outcomes
Innovate how they deploy capital
Mega funds aren’t broken. They’re built for this new frontier.
What looks bloated from the outside might actually be a scaled-up machine, built to ride the next generation of power laws."
https://mondaymorning.substack.com/p/what-if-the-mega-funds-are-right
"What Borislav demonstrates so clearly is that becoming AI-native isn't about layering AI features onto existing processes. It requires a fundamental restructuring of how we think about work, capability, and organizational design. This is the "metamorphosis" he references.
1. The democratization of technical capability is real and imminent. When everyone can code, the traditional bottlenecks between technical and non-technical teams dissolve. Rekki transformed from an engineering backlog to hundreds of automation workflows built by the people who understand the problems best."
https://www.sarahtavel.com/p/an-ai-metamorphosis-transforming
"China also dominates the manufacturing of batteries, drones, and electric motors.
So while America is remaining competitive (for now) in software, and still has a lead in the old combustion technologies of the 20th century, China is absolutely trouncing us in the race for the new electrical technologies that will define physical power this century.
Given this dire situation, you’d think America would be racing to catch up. Instead, we’re intentionally forfeiting the race, destroying our nascent electrical capabilities as fast as we can.
This is intentionally forfeiting the technological future to China. The auto industry is lucrative and important, but even that pales in comparison to the importance of drones. If you can’t build batteries and electric motors in the U.S., you can’t build drones here, either. And if you can’t build drones, you can’t win a modern war.
You simply cannot will a technological shift out of existence, or make the world go back to the way it used to be, no matter how big and powerful your country is. In 1793, a British mission to China (which was then ruled by the Qing dynasty) offered the emperor various technological marvels from the West. The emperor was unimpressed, and expressed utter disinterest in the wonders he was being shown, uttering the famous line: “As your Ambassador can see for himself, we possess all things. I set no value on objects strange or ingenious, and have no use for your country’s manufactures.”
Fast forward a couple of centuries, and the shoe is on the other foot. It’s America — the leading civilization of the West — that is turning up its nose at new inventions that are remaking the map of global power. We really are becoming a technophobic civilization, looking inward to our petty domestic conflicts and looking backward to our great historical achievements, even as a rival civilization embraces the future. My Ming dynasty analogy was more appropriate than I realized at the time."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/is-the-us-in-a-high-level-equilibrium
"We look for businesses in the “Goldilocks Zone” – neither too cold (not growing fast enough to be interesting) nor too hot (growing so fast they consume substantive capital or introduce other existential risk into their business model).
When we find “just right” companies, we work closely with their founders to help them stay in this temperate zone as long as possible. In doing so, we believe that these businesses have the greatest potential to create value for stakeholders – compounding for long periods without the risks associated with extreme growth or the dilution that comes from raising many rounds of equity capital.
If the herd suddenly becomes enamored with the category that one of our companies happens to be in, then we are well-positioned to accept capital at advantageous valuations and terms. But we do not need to do so and are just as happy – often happier – for the herd to be off chasing whatever it is chasing."
https://deciens.com/press-and-insights/epistula-11-unpopular-and-unspoken-truths
Disturbing forecast if the simmering India vs Pakistan conflict escalates.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F88o0y9n-LQ
"Launched ahead of the Future Artillery conference in London, Sceptre is the company’s answer to modern battlefield demands for low-cost, long-range precision fires that can survive in contested environments. The system reportedly achieves speeds of Mach 3.5, altitudes over 65,000 feet, and a strike radius within 5 metres—even in GPS-denied conditions.
With a range up to 150km depending on payload, Sceptre dramatically outpaces traditional artillery, offering a potential 10x improvement in cost-effectiveness and precision."
https://www.resiliencemedia.co/p/tiberius-aerospace-unveils-sceptre
What startups need to survive and thrive in the accelerating AI world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHjxEzoUFxM
Grand geoeconomics and short break in the economic war between China and America.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGFK0j_RAQg
"And yet, for all the power of innovation, it’s never enough. Themistocles wasn’t a shipwright. Urban didn’t storm the walls. Shaka didn’t forge every spear. In each case, the decisive edge came not from solo genius, but from the ability to turn innovation into doctrine, and doctrine into collective action.
Today’s battlefield is no different. A brilliant engineer can design the perfect drone, the ideal sensor, the next-generation networked weapon, but if there’s no shared concept of how it’s used, if there’s no buy-in from commanders, trainers, logisticians, and warfighters, it’s just another prototype gathering dust.
We cannot beat the enemy solo. Not as inventors. Not as units. Not as nations. We need to build consensus, not just around resources, but around doctrine. We need shared playbooks, not just better hardware. Winning doesn’t come from building the best tool, it comes from adapting the way we fight around what that tool makes possible.
Innovation is potential. Doctrine is power. Integration is victory.
Victory demands more than invention, it demands integration. And that takes all of us."
https://www.resiliencemedia.co/p/from-triremes-to-drones-why-innovation
"Special operations are also becoming more of a model for the way the Pentagon can acquire technology: buying things, trying them out, and then deploying them—all in a fraction of the time it takes the Army or Navy to create a program of record.
Like the services, U.S. Special Operations Command has purchasing authority under Title 10 of federal law. But it generally buys items in relatively small quantities. “With these smaller efforts, the statutory and regulatory requirements are considerably less, allowing greater flexibility and speed of execution,” former SOCOM acquisition executive James Geurts said in 2016.
They buy things off-the-shelf, “to hasten delivery and mitigate risk” Geurts wrote. As GAO reported in February 2023, other services are struggling to use the same authorities to purchase what are often called “mature” and “proven” technologies. Proven technologies also pass more easily through the hurdles of foreign military sales, as SOCOM plays a role in outfitting other, partner SOF forces as well.
SOF also makes much broader use of alternative contract vehicles like OTAs, thanks largely to the smaller number of units they purchase.
Sometimes SOCOM simply modifies existing gear, like transforming C-130 airlifters into close-air-support gunships.
But the real strength of SOF acquisition is that it relies on a small, close team of program office executives who work together much more closely than do the services’ offices, said Melissa Johnson, SOCOM’s acquisition executive.
In his SOF Week address, Hegseth said SOCOM’s approach is better suited to today’s era of rapidly evolving weaponry."
This seems apt, Top VCs investing in ownership of the SF 49ers Football team.
https://www.49erswebzone.com/articles/191284-officially-announce-new-ownership-partners/
Every investor needs to watch this. Imagining unimaginable outcomes. And preparing & positioning for those scenarios. Chaos and massive change (not necessarily in a good way).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lbPdZfGayc
I LOVE Fruitist Blueberries. So good.
"To sell more berries of higher consistent quality, the company grows its fruit in microclimates, with its own farms in Oregon, Morocco, Egypt and Mexico. It also uses machine learning models to predict the best time to pick the fruit. Fruitist invested heavily in infrastructure, like on-site cold storage to keep the berries fresh before they ship.
The company’s vertically integrated supply chain means that its berries should last longer than the competition.
“I’ve intentionally let them sit in my refrigerator for three weeks, and they’re still great after three weeks,” Magami said.
Larger berries, like the company’s non-genetically modified jumbo blueberries that are two to three times the size of a regular blueberry, also have a longer shelf life."
"This magnitude of this deployment age is captured by BlackRock’s estimate of the impending $68 trillion global infrastructure investment boom, unfolding in an era increasingly defined by what Russell Napier calls “National Capitalism”, where state priorities reshape capital allocation toward energy security, industrial capacity, and technological sovereignty.
With that (still broad) framing in place, I thought it would be helpful to sketch out a mosaic of the types of firms and companies I’ve seen focused on this. The use of the term “mosaic” is intentional. This isn’t a comprehensive market map or a clean framing of the so-called “capital stack”.
The Production Capital Mosaic I've sketched here represents the early architecture of models being built up to deploy trillions in capital toward industrial transformation. Whether structured as investment firms or operating companies, they share a common thread of deploying critical technologies at scale. As the multi-decade hardware and infra supercycle unfolds, we'll see further refinement (and more convergence) of these approaches, with a handful breaking through to become the Morgans, Transdigms, Drexels, Constellations, Danahers, and Berkshires of the new industrial deployment age."
https://venturedesktop.substack.com/p/the-production-capital-mosaic
JP Morgan opens up a Geopolitical arm. Geopolitics/ Geonomics are critical factors for all businesses and investors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMkPcNNkS3Q
This was a fun conversation on recent business news. As an old guy, this helps me understand what is happening with young generation biz.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2D8_wwOcA7w&t=1892s
"The playbook today is simple: slap a UI on GPT, call it specialized, and hope the user doesn’t look behind the curtain. But that’s not infrastructure. That’s camouflage.
The real builders? They’re not just enabling users — they’re making themselves impossible to leave. They’re not chasing the wave. They’re laying rails under it.
Would anyone rebuild your product if it disappeared? Would anything break if it went away? Does anyone depend on it, or is it just riding the moment?
If the answer is no, you’re not infrastructure. You’re noise.
The gold rush always ends.
The wrappers always fall.
The story shifts.
But the pattern never does.
The survivors are the ones the system can’t delete."
https://medium.com/@skooloflife/99-of-ai-startups-will-be-dead-by-2026-heres-why-bfc974edd968
Detailed conversation about Anduril and our very challenged defense industry. Must watch if you care about the West.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKK0ArqGLF0
"Overall U.S. counter-drone technologies span a spectrum of defense modalities – detection, electronic/RF defeat, directed energy, and kinetic interceptors – each with unique principles and leading industry players. Companies like Epirus and Anduril have risen to prominence by innovating in their respective domains (HPM “counter-swarm” and autonomous interceptors) and emphasizing open, AI-enabled architectures that allow their systems to integrate and scale.
Epirus’s solid-state microwave arrays and Anduril’s agile interceptor drones exemplify how a modular design and software-centric approach can rapidly adapt to emerging threats (like swarms or higher-end UAVs). The field performance of these systems – from Epirus frying drone swarms in Army tests to Anduril’s Roadrunners proving effective in real-world combat evaluations – is directly influencing how the Pentagon allocates resources for C-UAS. Military procurement is visibly shifting toward these next-generation solutions that offer speed, scalability, and multi-target engagement at lower cost.
As the drone threat continues to evolve, the U.S. strategy is clearly to deploy a layered defense that uses every modality in concert: find the drones, jam or hack them if possible, zap them with microwaves or lasers when advantageous, and blast or capture them if necessary."
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dynamics-drone-defense-andrew-c%C3%B4t%C3%A9-3mzaf/
Gold is a critical part of everyone and every country’s portfolio. It will help buffer us to the massive changes coming to the present system of trade & globalization. The future is buying more gold and making more factories.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxWZO0FEQ1g
A bit of tough love for B2B founders. Jason knows what he is talking about. Get faster, reskill and get tougher, as it's ugly out there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IV9luOb-Xs
“You have a European company investing a lot in America…and we're looking to potentially invest more,” Michael Brasseur, Saab’s vice president and chief strategy officer for its U.S. business, said in an interview.
Saab and other European companies are navigating sudden turmoil in their countries’ relationships with the United States, which has imposed higher tariffs and cast doubt on its fidelity to its NATO allies. Vice President JD Vance’s scolding of European governments at February’s Munich Security Council rattled many—but not Brasseur.
“We're actually investing a lot more in the U.S., not as a result of Munich, but just the way we do business. And so, I think we have a really interesting niche that we fit in based on our long heritage of building really good hardware and then this pivot that leverages the amazing, emerging, disruptive technologies out there. The power is in the convergence of these capabilities,” he said.
But Saab isn’t the only European company eyeing more U.S. defense business."
The most fun you will have learning about how VC investing works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH_oInuNlk8
The Hedge Fund king Steve Cohen. Trust your investing process & challenge yourself to take it to the next level.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6WeRpuYiyA
"One way to think of it: your first customers are your first hires as marketers. You want them to be as good at their job as possible.
Imagine all your customers as you did before (in terms of how valuable they’ll find you, and how easy they’ll be to attract). Then, consider that some of them have influence on others. You’ll find pockets where one kind of customer influences another, and some customer classes who are widely influential, or influential to several important adjacent customer classes."
https://also.roybahat.com/picking-your-first-customers-the-gradient-of-influence-47858b90adfd
Mission matters and building talent density to go big.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIMKUkazx_Y
I love BG2, economically/technology savvy but they seem geopolitically naive.
But this is one of the best shows to understand what is happening with big trends and developments in Silicon Valley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2cpSUpdIOs
This was pretty disturbing but the truth hurts. America needs to re-industrialize asap.