X Pro Tip: Use lists. It's really the best way to curate the feed to your exact liking. It's like being able to switch the algo at any time. You can have a tech list, finance list, politics list, games list, anime list, memes list, etc. It takes upfront work to curate but it will be the actual content you want to see. It also sorts chronologically so you can see the most recently posted content first. Subtip: Be judicious in the lists. Think of each list as an elite team. If you start overcrowding the lists you lose signal. Be discerning for your best experience. Until the algo is fixed this is your best bet to curating your experience to your taste.

"I heard stories that last year, end of 2022, when the auditors were getting involved, they were telling GPs to talk to each other to try to figure out how to value things." (source: Beezer Clarkson of Sapphire Partners) 2022 was the year that pissed-off LPs put a spotlight on poor valuation practices, with different VCs holding the same company at radically different marks. This is not a simple issue, and nor is it just a question of correctly setting marks or entry price. The failure of venture capital to properly address valuation has cascaded into a number of other problems. The majority of "venture capital wisdom" today was hastily assembled during the SaaS bull run from 2011 to 2021 and is designed to cram money into high growth companies. In this transition, the concept of "valuation" was slowly squeezed out by "pricing". Few managers can now really claim to understand the former. Instead of looking to understand the intrinsic value of an idea, investors began to simply follow the market. Were others investing in similar companies? How were they priced? In this environment, multiples (mostly multiples on ARR) seemed like a practical tool. Historically, multiples were a tool for price comparison after a valuation had been completed: "We often pursue this kind of rationalization as a spot check, generally after going through the valuation process. When the multiple is implied, investors will then compare it to others seen in the public and private markets to get more comfortable. Think of it like a gut check, a way to determine if the valuation feels 'reasonable'." (source: "When Entry Multiples Don’t Matter" - @a16z) In the rush to accelerate capital velocity in the low interest rate environment, multiples became the defacto approach for quickly pricing rounds. Four major problems stem from this: 1. The fundamentally procyclical nature of comparative pricing has weakened returns and concentrated risk for venture capital. 2. The herding of capital into SaaS means it is now far less likely that exits will appear on a scale to produce the required returns in this sector. 3. Founders build in sectors where VCs more easily understand value. The habitual use of multiples has shifted activity to SaaS, away from (e.g.) deep tech. 4. Focusing solely on revenue has incentivised founders to sacrifice financial health, often resorting to cheap accounting tricks or fraud in some cases. The focus on revenue multiples has incentivised capital intensive business models that spend every dollar on creating more revenue growth, to drive up value and raise more capital to fuel more growth. The outcome is companies that have poor unit economics, little in the way of a competitive moat, and weak financial health. These are not attractive targets for IPO or acquisition, which is why venture capital has a huge liquidity problem today. It has turned venture capital into an engine that burns a lot of cash to produce huge excess heat and relatively little kinetic energy. "There are two ways to come up with a value for a financial asset. The first is to calculate an intrinsic value by discounting future cash flows. If the stock market is efficient, price and value will be the same. The second is to compare investments that are similar and buy the relatively undervalued one and sell the overvalued one. If a sufficient number of investors are doing this, few will outperform the market" (source: "Everything Is a DCF Model" - @MorganStanley) Fundamentally, using multiples to price a company is a delegation of responsibility to the market. In public markets, where there is more price tension and shares are more liquid, this can make sense. This is why it's so difficult to outperform index funds. In private markets, this is very different. The whole ballgame for venture capital firms is finding outlier companies and novel concepts. The idea that they could be appropriately priced by the market is obviously silly, although it probably explains recent underperformance. In conclusion, after a decade of sneering at "excel jockeys" and financial engineering, venture capital needs a rennaisance of financial literacy. Investors don't need to start building detailed DCFs for each investment they make, but they should at least understand the main drivers of value and how to measure them in the context of a unique scenario. It means learning how to read and understand financial forecasts, and build logical connections with business models, strategies and markets. It means looking for sustainable competitive advantage, not just rapid scalability. Mostly, it means questioning all of the dogma that has appeared in venture since 2011.

When a company is knowingly harming our children to make a little extra money, we have to stand up and do what is right. As a concerned father and citizen, I am working with a serious lawyer for a serious issue. Today, I filed an activist letter with Alex Spiro against @KelloggsUS to demand they stop their unethical behavior of selling inferior, more harmful versions of their products to American children.

👋Announcing $102M across our new @WonderVentures IV pre-seed fund & 1st-ever Opportunity Fund to invest in LA's best founders earlier than anyone else! Thanks to the founders who allow us to be part of their journeys & the LPs who believe in our mission. techcrunch.com/2024/02/05/pr…

The last time a Harvard President was forced to resign, I was the editorial co-chair at @thecrimson, and that president was @LHSummers. I stayed up all night and penned the staff editorial that ran the next morning. We titled it "Harvard's Loss," and in it we praised Summers' "willingness to press for change at an institution by nature resistant to it," and specifically lauded Summers when he "unforgivingly, and often publicly, made known his prioritization of certain academic initiatives over others." We continued, "It is the prerogative of and, more, the duty of a university president to shift a university’s focus when the demands of the era require it." I bring this all up because, to me, Summers' resignation was the opening bookend to the insanity that culminated in Claudine Gay's resignation today. Much can be learned from understanding this episode, which ushered out the era of the public intellectual University President and replaced it with the university's Bureaucrat-in-Chief. We ended the editorial with a call to the Corporation, which I'd like to re-issue today, "We hope that the Corporation will appoint an able successor with the overflowing ambition that defined Summers’ brief presidency." I hope to offer more insights from my time covering it in the coming days and weeks, and hope the lessons of the past help us bookend Harvard's Loss in 2006 with Havard's Gain in 2024. You can read the full original editorial here: thecrimson.com/article/2006/… cc: @BillAckman @SecPritzker @JacobMeirMiller @lessin

This is the best sermon you’ll hear this Sunday. Enjoy some @padraig_h wisdom.

(1/3) I sent this to as many @pgatour members as I had contacts for, including player directors 9 days ago. Open letter to the membership of the PGA Tour, From 1999-2014 I was lucky enough to be in your shoes. It was an incredible time to be on Tour. Tiger Woods put the golf world on his shoulders, and everyone involved in the game rode the wave. During that time, the PGA Tour established itself as a tour with no equals. We played in the largest economy in the world; 90% of the tournaments were located within three time zones, perfect courses, a rabid fan base, and the world's most famous athlete (not named Michael Jordan) played on the PGA Tour. It wasn't a fair fight. Most of those conditions remain today. The US is the largest economy in the world, the PGA Tour plays 90% of its tournaments within three time zones, the courses are the best conditioned globally, the fans are incredible, and instead of one giant needle mover (Tiger), we have the youngest, deepest collection of stars in the history of the PGA Tour. Just as important, in the age of streaming, sports became the only product you have to watch live. The value of sports on TV and digital rights exploded just when the PGA Tour's previous TV contract (which was awful) expired. The new TV deal started in 2022, the same year Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) put $2B into professional golf and created LIV Golf. Tiger Woods created a financial wave for my generation. The lalapalooza effect of new competition coupled with skyrocketing values of sports rights has created a financial tsunami for yours. And this tsunami is why the opportunity to invest in your Tour has generated so much interest. Whether it's the Saudi PIF framework agreement or other private equity proposals, they all share something in common. The PGA Tour will be split into two entities: a new for-profit, PGA Tour Enterprises, and a not-for-profit entity, the existing PGA Tour, Inc. The current PGA Tour is organized as a 501(c)6, and as a tax-exempt entity, by law there can be no owners. Each one of you is a member of a sports league that exists to promote professional golf, financially support the staging of its tournaments, invest in the PGA Tour organization and all the ancillary products therein (Shotlink, PGATOUR.com, the TPC Network, THE PLAYERS, President's Cup, etc.). It's confusing, but we are the sole members of a not-for-profit entity, that owns a collection of assets worth billions of dollars. How could a 501c6 be worth billions? Let’s take the old Honda Classic as an illustration of potential asset value. If this tournament were franchised (like in the NFL, MLB and the NBA), allowing someone to "own" the only PGA Tour event held in the Palm Beaches, the franchise value would be north of $100MM without breaking a sweat. Now think about the worth of THE PLAYERS or President’s Cup, it is not a stretch to value each in excess of $1.5B. More than sports-washing, this unique circumstance is why the Saudi PIF and many outside investors are excited to invest in your Tour. The Saudi PIF and the other outside investors predominantly operate in the arena of "Private Equity," often referred to as PE. These are large, well-capitalized companies employing many brilliant, ambitious people. PEs invest intending to earn outsized returns for their investors, which will lead to enormous pay packages for themselves at exit (the Saudi PIF has other reasons, but despite the rhetoric you hear about unlimited money, they demand a return on their capital).