finance, entrepreneurs and MUFC
Singapore
Joined October 2009
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Billy retweeted
I'm a design addict—and an airplane nerd.
I've studied THOUSANDS of interfaces—and @Flighty is the best-designed travel app I've ever seen.
Here's a full breakdown of 9 magical features & what you can learn from them 🧵
Billy retweeted
Man, sesame’s voice model is absolutely insane. You have to try this demo. GG @brendaniribe
sesame.com/research/crossing…
Garnacho by far our best player tonight. Ineos looking to sell him is unforgivable. Burning the furniture to heat your house. #MUFC #GarnachoIn
Billy retweeted
This is beyond insane:
Donald Trump just launched a meme coin, $TRUMP, which is now over +4,200% in 2 hours.
The market cap now stands at $7.7 BILLION in a causal meme coin launch on a Friday night.
What is happening?
"without the additional income that going deep in the CL generates, MUFC’s debt will only rise."
In short: Cash and a rising debt is what is holding MUFC’s spending back, all fixable with support from the owner. Especially this season — FFP is not a major concern.
The worse the club performs on the pitch the coming years, the tougher it of course gets to comply with FFP.
However — with that said — there are different degrees of “levers” a club can explore in emergency situations. Some are very uncontroversial and low hanging fruit — like pushing expense back. PSG would surely be prepared to loan a player like Nuno Mendes to United with an obligation to buy, meaning that United’s cost is pushed forward. PSG agree to deals like that all the times.
Ineos isn’t sponsoring a penny to United currently, they can’t sponsor United above market value — but it’s 100% uncontroversial to increase United’s revenue with 20-30m per year (problem for City is that the amounts totaled what 200m).
Etc etc etc.
My point is just this, let’s say United finish 15th in the league this season, next season and the season after that — would the club get into trouble if it signs players in January? For sure — unless it gets support from the owner. BUT — even in that nightmarish situation, three 15th overall finishes in a row, I wouldn’t rule out that WITH support from an owner, the club could come up with ways to spend without breaching FFP. At least temporarily.
So any talk about United being absolutely prevented from spending due to FFP is just close to complete nonsense, or should at least come with a fat asterisk.
At the bottom line, the financial situation of MUFC is very clear. Unless the club gets back into the CL, preferably next season, and starts going into the final 4 of that tournament several seasons in a row — the club is beyond saving without financial support from the owners. ,
Why? In very simply terms, without the additional income that going deep in the CL generates, MUFC’s debt will only rise. Net debt has doubled the last 4 years. To be able to reduce the debt being a non-CL club, United must cut spending to the levels of West Ham and co. This is not even getting into the fact that a new stadium must be built. So — it’s quite clear.
So what does this mean, the club is beyond saving without support from the owners? It’s the end of the world? You know the saying, there are only two things certain in life, death and taxes. You could add a third thing, all football clubs will lose money.
So United needs financial support from its owner? Well, this puts the club on par with almost every other club in the PL, the Championship, L1 and L2 — that to different degrees from time to time needs outside financial support. Owning a football club is an expensive hobby, not because buying the club is expensive, it is, but you often get it back and then some when you sell it — but because football clubs burns money. Always have.
And this does not just apply to English clubs. Real Madrid — who everyone praise so much today — during a period of like 5-10 years on three occasions sold training grounds, land and TV rights around the period between 2000-2015. Since it was bought by the state, these transactions were even investigated as illegal state aid.
This is why I get a bit allergic when I see a unanimous punditry core around United blame all the clubs issues on “mismanagement”. I am not defending Ed Woodward, don’t get me wrong, but United hasn’t wasted more money on bad signings than Real Madrid or Barca have the last 15-20 years.
The difference is that when those clubs was at risk of falling out of the top 4-8 of the football world — they stepped up and spent 3x as much as the rest to claw their way back up to the top. United has always done the complete opposite, spent less than required to get to the top, but still a lot. United should easily have had a cushion to make bad signings, and still get back to the top -- if it wasn't for the club being forced to spend over a billion on servicing Glazers' debt. This is the real problem.
In fact -- there is only one blueprint that is proven in football to work, and a bunch of other blueprints that have been proven to not work, time, after time, after time.
It’s very simple, the only viable financial alternative when owning a football club with aspirations is to do what Boehly did with Chelsea. Spend so much that you can’t fail, then you have a top team, you cut back on spending.
Any alternative that is based on a notion that you will be "smarter" than everyone else — has been proven to not work. During the last 30 years, I would say that there is not one example of a club that over time has been able to punch above its weight class.
History is clear that it’s possible to temporary move up a notch or two, during sort of a “golden era”, but if that isn’t backed up by financial spending, everyone without exception falls back after app. 4-5 years. And it’s also very clear that it’s extremely hard to get a golden era. Of the top 100 clubs in Europe, there are what, 3-4 that really manage to punch above its weight class for more than half a season here and there. Perhaps a Girona, Brighton, Leverkusen or Atalanta right now. Can Leverkusen and Atalanta stay at the top? Napoli was up there for what 18 months -- and has since fallen off a cliff. Liverpool did it under Klopp and stayed up, but it took them 30 years of trying after winning the league in 89’. For Arsenal it took 20 years after Wenger’s golden age, to get back to the top under Arteta. It’s not easy.
Billy retweeted
Man …. Watching this 16-17 years later and knowing so many Fortune 500 companies still would rather do traditional or traditional digital instead of social , social live shopping, credit and Influncer marketing makes my head spin .. for all you small businesses, creators, influencers … as we head into 2025 the opportunity is clear - go all in on social media creative on all platforms not just instagram ( GaryVee.com/attention) and make sure you never fall in love with yesterday - the big companies continue to fuck up and are still doing TV commercials and banner ads and other dumb shit - use that waste as your advantage to gain market share …
This is outrageous. I just don't understand why they can't just admit that they got it wrong
Notice how shocked Gallagher is that he was challenged. He goes completely mute.
“It’s not easy being a ref.”
Just admit you’re cheating and taking huge payouts from Saudi, mate.
It’s so blatantly disgusting at this point🩸#MUFC
Diamonds are going to prove to be the biggest rug pull in human history. 💎
De Beers once controlled the diamond supply so tightly that they created the illusion of scarcity.
Then came 1938. “A Diamond is Forever” became a cultural slogan—arguably the most successful marketing campaign in history, turning diamonds into a symbol of love and commitment.
But monopolies don’t last forever.
•Russia began bypassing De Beers’ supply chains, breaking their grip.
•In 2011, the Oppenheimer family sold their 40% stake to Anglo American, which eventually grew its control to 85% by 2024.
Today, the rise of synthetic diamonds—first from China, now from India—has reshaped the market. Millennials prefer affordability and ethics, and synthetics deliver both. They’re so good, so indistinguishable from natural diamonds, that the next generation might not even know we once dug diamonds out of the ground.
As we look at monopolies that are not natural or regulated, we must understand they are all fragile. No monopoly is forever.
Billy retweeted
Americans think 26% of US households make over $500K/year (it's actually 1%). Not coincidentally, young Americans now believe $500K is the benchmark for financial success. A recipe for immense anger and grievance.
This 11-year-old post still good as new:
waitbutwhy.com/2013/09/why-g…
Billy retweeted
Jimmy Kimmel put his 85 year old aunt, who knows nothing about driverless cars, into a Waymo and had it drive off. She was PISSED 😂
Aunt to Kimmel: "You little bastard"
Elite mentality. This was one of ETHs biggest blunders
Amad on limited game time after a good August: "Like I said before, everyone else had to play, we worked out. I know I was Player of the Month in August, but I have moved on. I am focused for now, for future and give my best for the shirt and get this team back on top again." [United Stand YT] #mufc
Billy retweeted
Databricks spent $1-2 BILLION dollars to acquire a ~30 person company from the creators of Apache Iceberg.
A revolution is going on in the Big Data space and its centering around Iceberg. 🧊
Why would Databricks spend this outrageous amount of money on such a small company?
Figure out here (2-minute read) 👇
The story of Iceberg is a classic disruption story. You set out to solve a relatively niche problem and the solution ends up “accidentally” solving a larger problem. 🏆
The relatively niche problem in this case was Apache Hive. 🐝
Apache Hive was a popular query engine for big data sets, and it implicitly used a simple table format.
✋ Pause. Quick primer on the terminology used here:
• 📁 file format - a format which adds additional metadata to a file to help you organize the file’s data (e.g so you can read only what you need, so you can modify and evolve the file’s contents, etc) - stuff like CSV, Parquet, ORC, Avro
• 🗃️ table format - a format which adds additional metadata to a COLLECTION of files, so that again you enhance what you can do with them - e.g only read the file you need, modify the structure and organization of the files, add ACID capabilities, etc.
This includes open table formats like Iceberg, Delta, Hudi and many implicit ones (e.g MySQL’s InnoDB, PostgreSQL, Snowflake)
Hive had done a few things quite well:
• its format was simple and easy to understand 👍
• this made it ubiquitous - Hive tables are WIDELY supported in most query engines - Hive, Spark, Presto, Flink, Pig
• the gain was that the whole ecosystem could use the same at-rest data 👌
But Hive also had a few problems, succinctly:
• non-atomic writes when writing to multiple partitions of the data, resulting in mishaps (deleted data, half-done jobs) 😨
• inefficient with relation to cloud object storage ☁️
• scale challenges
Ryan Blue and Daniel Weeks, the creators of Iceberg, figured out that the main bottleneck was the table format itself.
So, while at Netflix, they set out to create a new format that solved for these issues.
The new format - Iceberg - improved on the following:
1. all changes are atomic with serializable isolation
2. support for many concurrent writers ⚡️
3. native cloud object store support 🌤️
4. no gotchas & surprises (e.g renaming a Parquet column in Hive breaks a ton of stuff)
5. … a lot more
In classic disruption fashion, the first three improvements ended up solving a much bigger problem. 🏆
Which problem was that?
The problem of Shared Database Storage.
With an open table format like Iceberg, you can store your data in one single source of truth (e.g S3) and have many different engines access and modify the data at the same time. 🤯
This is the rise of the so-called headless data architecture, where the storage layer (data) is decoupled from the query layers (engines) that use it. 💡
It is the key enabler of the growing trend called zero copy.
Zero Copy means that you do NOT have to spend millions in expensive cloud networking costs to copy petabytes of data to have it be used by the right processing engine – you can use the same set of data in the standardized Iceberg table format. 🧊
The two layers have always been tightly coupled because the query layer relies deeply on optimizations in the storage layer which allow for data to be fetched efficiently for faster querying.
And because the table format essentially defines the storage layer, you have big dogs like Snowflake and Databricks outbidding each other for Tabular (a company founded by the Iceberg creators) and aggressively competing with each other on the table formats. 💸
Just in the last few weeks we had some major announcements:
• June 3: Snowflake’s Open Source Polaris Iceberg Catalog announced
• June 4: Databricks acquires Tabular
• June 13: Databricks’ Unity Delta Catalog open sourced
And it seems like this is just the beginning…
Interested in more concise, simple content around the table format wars and the lakehouse revolution?
1. Follow me here - ✅ @kozlovski
2. Retweet this story so your network learns too. It takes 5 seconds to do, and it takes me 5 hours to write 🙏
Billy retweeted
🇪🇺 eu/acc
A few weeks ago Mario Draghi asked my recommendations for his report that came out today about European competitiveness
I had a call with him and summarized my problems with doing business in the EU
I wrote this which is included in the report presented to the European Union today:
1. Minimum revenue cut offs for current and new regulation
Exempt small businesses with annual revenues below €10 million from complex regulations like VATMOSS, GDPR, the EU AI Act, and certain labor laws. This approach encourages innovation and growth by allowing startups to focus on product development and market validation without the heavy burden of regulatory compliance. Once these businesses surpass €10 million, they will have the resources to comply with regulations, ensuring that growth is not stifled.
2. Simplify starting a pan-EU business with an EU-wide Incorporation (Inc.) business form
Currently, starting and operating a business across the EU is complex due to 27 member states, each with its own company registration requirements. To streamline this process and make it easier for entrepreneurs to operate across Europe, there should be a single, standardized business entity that applies uniformly across all EU countries. I call this the European Inc.
3. Start an EU business fully online, no physical offices, notaries, lawyers etc
To continue, right now starting a business in most EU member states it’s complicated, very time and resource intensive, and often involves lawyers and notaries. Instead, it should be as simple as going online to a centralized EU website, where entrepreneurs can register their business and details in just a few clicks. The entire process should be streamlined and efficient, allowing businesses to start operating immediately.
The EU government taxes and bookkeeping of this business should also be fully online in an EU portal/dashboard.
4. 0% corporate tax for first 3 years of any new business
Countries like Singapore have successfully attracted new businesses from around the world by giving them a massive tax discount during the first 3 years of business. Because they know that’s the most difficult time of a business: figuring out what product it makes and if there’s a market for it. That takes pressure off startups and business founders that they can focus on creating a great product and innovating.
5. Change tax on stock options: don't tax when a stock option is exercised, but tax it when the stock is sold
The current tax policy in the EU taxes stock options at the time they are exercised, creating a significant financial burden on employees who have not yet realized any tangible financial gain. This approach stifles innovation, discourages entrepreneurship, and places the EU at a competitive disadvantage compared to other regions like the United States.
I propose a simple change: Tax stock options when the stock is sold, not when the option is exercised.
6. Don’t see tech or AI as an enemy, but as a burgeoning and essential industry
The most popular companies in tech are focused on AI right now for a reason. It’s the next frontier of computing. The European Union seems to consider AI the enemy. Any technology can be used for good or bad. By regulating it even before Europe has made much contributions (Europe has almost no tech companies leading in AI), it has stifled any potential innovation in AI from the start.
Apart from the regulation itself, the optics of it make the EU look bad on a global scale. Why would tech founders move to Europe to start a business if the EU is actively positioning itself as Anti-AI?
AI has gigantic potential to be used for good: think of the medical field for diagnosis of diseases, generally in programming (it helps programmers to create software faster/better), etc.
This goes further than AI. The same applies to tech in general. It seems the EU is on a crusade against technology while not being able to compete in it itself. It feels a case of sour grapes: if we can’t build great technology in EU, nobody is allowed to do so!
7. Teach tech/coding/AI topics in all schools and unis
It would help a lot if the EU has a focus on teaching AI and tech in schools and universities. Making the new generation competitive in this field instead. To secure the future prosperity of the European Union, we must prioritize education in technology, coding, and AI across all levels of schooling, from primary education to universities. This strategic focus is not just an educational reform—it’s a critical investment in the future competitiveness, innovation, and economic resilience of the EU.
Billy retweeted
One of the most tedious (but critical tasks) for software development teams is updating foundational software. It’s not new feature work, and it doesn’t feel like you’re moving the experience forward. As a result, this work is either dreaded or put off for more exciting work—or both.
Amazon Q, our GenAI assistant for software development, is trying to bring some light to this heaviness. We have a new code transformation capability, and here’s what we found when we integrated it into our internal systems and applied it to our needed Java upgrades:
- The average time to upgrade an application to Java 17 plummeted from what’s typically 50 developer-days to just a few hours. We estimate this has saved us the equivalent of 4,500 developer-years of work (yes, that number is crazy but, real).
- In under six months, we've been able to upgrade more than 50% of our production Java systems to modernized Java versions at a fraction of the usual time and effort. And, our developers shipped 79% of the auto-generated code reviews without any additional changes.
- The benefits go beyond how much effort we’ve saved developers. The upgrades have enhanced security and reduced infrastructure costs, providing an estimated $260M in annualized efficiency gains.
This is a great example of how large-scale enterprises can gain significant efficiencies in foundational software hygiene work by leveraging Amazon Q. It’s been a game changer for us, and not only do our Amazon teams plan to use this transformation capability more, but our Q team plans to add more transformations for developers to leverage.