NevBlog - Neville's Digital Surrogate Brain

NevBlog

Neville's Digital Surrogate Brain

The Backbone of the Internet

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Here’s an interesting thought:

“The Internet” still runs on servers and cables, and the companies that run the most bare metal on the internet are:

– Amazon: 32%
– Microsoft: 20%
– Google: 9%
– Alibaba: 6%
– IBM: 5%
– SalesForce: 3%
– Tencent: 2%
– Oracle: 2%

That means as you’re reading this on your phone/tablet/desktop, some bits and bytes travelled either by air or physical cable to a metal server likely controlled by one (or several) of the companies listed above.

You might be reading my words originating from a cluster of servers just like this!

Dinner with Peter Thiel

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I once had dinner with Peter Thiel…

….and whenever someone asked his opinion on something, he’d give a “spectrum of possibilities” for every answer.

Example: If I asked his thoughts on the future of the Dollar, he would respond:

“Ok, here’s 3 scenarios…”

Then he would give 3 different “scenarios” ranging from:
– Normal and boring scenario.
– Good and Bad mixed scenario.
– Crazy worst case scenario.

Then he’d backup each scenario with data or comparable past events.

He rarely thought something was black and white, but that everything was a spectrum of possibilities.

It was super cool to see his thinking in action!

Building New Products Pyramid

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This is a super simplistic framework for thinking about building a new product.

Many people come up with business ideas without enough demand, this framework ensures you’re going after an audience with a problem + demand + money:

Credit: @sgblank @nivi

Qualities to sell a company for a very high multiple

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If you ever want to sell a company for a very high multiple, here’s some qualities of that company:
– It owns a niche.
– It has recurring revenue.
– It has tech at its core.
– It is international.
– It has defensive IP.

My First Million Podcast, Scott Galloway interview note dump

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There was a fantastic episode with Scott Galloway on the My First Million Podcast about building wealth in your 20’s, 30’s, 40’s so you can relax later in life:

Here’s a raw dump of my notes (sorry for poor spelling/grammar all taken on my phone):

————MY NOTES————

The sexier the business the lower return unless you’re top .001%. Find your talent and become good at that in a fields with a 90% employment rate.

Less sexy the business the higher the return. Where can you be great?

Why some people can sell for high multiples: -They own a niche -They have recurring revenue -Tech is at their core -They are international -They have defensive IP

Consulting: “pay me $250,000/yr and I’ll answer all your questions.”

He spent $17m to build scraping tools. Was focused on exit right away.

Started L2. Sold for $160m. Started it at ~44 years old.

Build a small business by high retention of good employees. If a person has a friend at work they’re less likely to leave. I don’t try to be their friend, I try to be their dad.

Sometimes in the world of media the whole world just stops advertising.

Was in his early 40s and flailing and his takeover the New York Times went very poorly and lost a lot of peoples money and people were not advertising anymore and he was just figuring out a way to be able to afford living in New York.

Sold Prohet for $33m 2010 started L2. Sold for $160m.

Be humble when you have wins bc a lot of times it isn’t you.

You can’t control what happens in your life but you can control how you respond to it.

You’re never more prone to making a big mistake than right after big win.

Need to be more aggressive and have your sails up so when the winds kick up you catch it.

Some people get stuck, they can’t forgive themselves and they lose their mojo, and 7 years later their confidence and skills start atrophying. Put a statute of limitations on it and move forward. Might be time to mourn and move on. Be around people who want more.

“I surround myself with smart younger people because they have a different take on life.”

Opportunity is a function of density. Be in something that has a high density of success. Who becomes wealthy: Be in a big city like San Fran or New York.

Find people you want to be like. You rise or fall to the level of your peer group.

“My 40’s I grinded my ass off, but I delegate a lot.”

America is best country in the world to make money, Europe is best place to spend it.

1% is $750,000/yr. You generally won’t have total balance if you get to 1%. Expect to go all in on your career or scale back expectations. You can control how hard you work when you work. Don’t work so hard you sacrifice your health but enough it takes a toll. Then you can have more balance later in life.

1 source of divorce is money. When a man loses status as a provider he’s more likely to get divorce. Sometimes it’s get out of the way and help other partner.

The more money generally the happier in terms of lower income to middle class to upper class.

If you have lots of money you can relax and exhale.

We’ll all be dead soon, it’ll go by very fast, you should try to have fun and a good time. “I’m going to a country music festival and wear boots and take an edible and just have fun.”

Wealth is about how much you spend. If you consume less than you make you are good. Develop a “savings muscle.”

Take advantage of time by saving and investing and let compounding do its thing. Every 21 years your investments go up 8x.

Yes you can maybe sell a company or something but maybe not, so show some discipline and maturity by slowly getting rich.

Book: The Algebra of Wealth

Wealth = Focus + Stoicism x Time x Diversification

Focus: If you have a side hustle you need to have a better main hustle. The way you get wealthy is by getting really great at one thing. Find it in an industry that’s not very sexy. If you’re top 10% of installing HVAC, you can make a really good living.

Your passion is not your hobby. It’s what you’re really great at.

When wealthy spending time time with kids and parents and people you care about.

Make more than you spend is step 1.

Went from vc to consulting, found out consulting was too hard as he got older and moved to teaching. Had to revamp his life and career and skills several times.

Lost everything twice; in 2000 and 2008. Started diversifying to prevent this.

Started saving a lot of money in his 40’s.

“I deployed an army of Capital in my 40s for my family to go kill and grow while I was asleep.”

Viewed his stack of capital like an army: Here’s a tank, I’ll sacrifice the awesome apartment to grow the army

————MY NOTES————

Explaining company pivots

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Here’s a super cool informative graphic from Lenny about how company pivots happened:

  • What their original idea was.
  • Why they pivoted.
  • How they found their new idea

Super cool to read through and see how companies pivoted and eventually found the right successful idea!

Age versus how much time you spend with __________

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Here’s a cool set of charts showing your age versus how much time you spend with:
– Family
– Friends
– Partner
– Children
– Coworkers
– Yourself Alone

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⬇

 

Here’s all of them together. Some of these charts are sobering, and a reminder to enjoy life while it lasts 😬

Charts Sources: American Time Use Survey (2009-2019)
Charts Credit: @tjpower

“Our Designer Quit” 

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I saw another “Our Designer Quit” style ad out in the wild!

This variation is “Our Designer Is On Vacation” but it’s still the same hilarious concept 😂

One way to get attention is by going the exact opposite of everyone else, so instead of a nice ad you have a crappy add.

Here’s some more fun examples that make heads turn:

Watching a hypnotist live was….insane

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One of the craziest things I’ve seen in person was a crowd of people getting hypnotized. I knew 100+ people in the crowd so I was more convinced it wasn’t staged.

I was in New Zealand, and it was a ~300 person crowd inside of a college classroom.

If you wanted to participate, the hypnotist did a 5 minute “meditation” for the entire audience. It was like “you are very relaaaaxed, you are letting everything gooooooo…”
Nothing crazy, felt like a wind down in a yoga class.

Then he asked if people wanted to come on stage to see if they were under hypnosis. He took 20 people on stage at a time, they all sat in chairs. He did another meditation for them with their eyes closed, maybe 1 or 2 minutes.

Then he told all of them to go to sleep. Everyone “acted” asleep, but some people looked ACTUALLY asleep.

He’d quickly go down the row of seated “asleep” people and pull on their arm really hard.
Some of them stayed in their chairs because they weren’t really asleep and their body caught them, others COMPLETELY FELL OUT OF THEIR CHAIRS IN A HEAP!

It was so weird because these people were falling in all sorts of contorted ways…..these mf’ers were OUT! People were genuinely concerned like “ummm are they ok?!?”

The people that fell to the floor were his new subjects. Literally EVERYTHING he told them to do, they did without question.

I knew people in this crowd. I knew the people getting hypnotized, so this wasn’t some pre-staged thing.

I saw a timid shy girl act like a rockstar whenever he played the song “Teenage Dirtbag.” Later we asked her, she didn’t remember anything…like not ONE thing about this whole event.

Another guy the hypnotist made him forget the number 8. Later we asked him about it and he genuinely had no idea what we were talking about. We showed him videos of him on stage, and he actually got really upset and rejected the idea this ever happened.

I couldn’t believe how effective it was.

I understand that hypnosis is probably just the person being susceptible to suggestion in that state, but the degree to which is worked was unreal. I had seen this before on TV but always assumed it was partially staged.

The hypnotist made people do all sorts of insane things I doubt they would do in a normal setting.

He claimed they truly wouldn’t do anything they didn’t want to do….but I dunno, these people were doing some pretty crazy things.

People were crying. People were confused. People were acting like chickens. People were speaking in Tongue. People thought they were flying.

When the show ended he took all 8 subjects he was toying with and “woke them up.” None of them remembered anything.

He said it would take up to an hour for this to completely wear off, and he was right.

Some of the people I knew were acting supppeer strange after it was done, and getting pissed off that people were saying they acted like a chicken or a rockstar….because in their mind this truly didn’t happen. But on our phones we had video proof, and it would just confuse the hell out of them when we showed them videos.

We genuinely were concerned about 2 friends that were acting really strange, to where we found the hypnotist after the show and asked if everything was ok. Like he said, within 30 minutes or an hour they went back to normal.

 

I tell this story because it just seems so….un-believable. This is stuff I always thought was partially staged, but seeing it in person was amazing.

It almost felt like magic was real or something.

Copyright © 2024 Neville Medhora