This is really encouraging! The picture is always the 25-year-old in a hoodie. The actual data across 2.7 million founders: > The average age of the founder of a high-growth startups is 45. > And 50-year-olds are nearly twice as likely to succeed as a 30-year-olds. It’s almost as if experiments valuable? There’s still time!

This is why so many rich kids become obsessed with unusually hard hobbies (HYROX, Ironmans, ultramarathons, survival expeditions, extreme sports, Everest, etc.) They’re not necessarily masochists. They need a result where observers, and more importantly themselves, can’t immediately say “yh but your dad…” Money contaminates most conventional achievement because it can buy you the introductions, runway, education, safety net, first customers and endless second chances. Physical suffering is different. Your dad can hire the trainer, buy the bike and fly you business class to the race, but he still can’t run the last 30km of an ultra for you. And then you get this funny achievement inflation. Once normal difficulty becomes accessible, you need increasingly absurd difficulty to produce the same clean proof of competence: A 10k stops feeling exceptional → marathon → Ironman → 100km ultra → Marathon des Sables / UTMB → whatever is sufficiently painful and scarce to still mean something. Same for mountains: Everest with oxygen → without oxygen → harder mountain → unsupported → faster, etc. It’s especially funny because their normal life has usually been optimised to remove exactly the things they then seek recreationally: cold, danger, physical exhaustion, uncertainty, getting lost, carrying your own stuff, sleeping badly, not knowing whether you’ll make it. Generations of family wealth go into eliminating friction, then the descendants spend their weekends putting it back in. And of course an entire luxury industry now exists to package the hardship nicely. Black Tomato sells a “Get Lost” experience starting around £20k per person where they privately transfer you somewhere remote, give you equipment and training, then make you navigate back to civilisation while an expedition team invisibly tracks you as a safety net. Basically the final stage of wealth is paying a lot of money to recreate problems your grandparents spent their lives making sure you’d never have.

I'm 50. I'll be divesting myself of everything I own when I'm 75 - it all gets offloaded and managed by my sons at that point. I have seven big reasons for this: 1) I'm watching my nearly 80 yr old father fall for every possible scam because the digital world has become far too sophisticated for him. His phone is his kryptonite. I assume the world will be crazier. My sons will have a better shot at navigating that world. 2) I will be done with my most productive decades and will be downshifting into advisory. I won't 'retire' but the nature of the work will change. 3) Pushing assets down the line increases maximum impact for rising generations. They need the resources for grandchildren: education, tuitions, seed money for start-ups, first homes, we want wives staying home to raise babies. 4) I expect a clean room and meals at one of their homes. I'm more than happy to keep the property spic and span, and add value and drive people as long as they'll let me have keys. The windows will be washed and the flowerbeds will stay mulched. 5) I want to be as integrated into their world as they want me to be, but I will endeavor to not be a nuisance as long as possible. I know we don't control the end game - and everyone is bed-ridden at the very end. 6) Blessings and inheritances are meant to be bestowed at the end of the life, not read by some sod in a suit in a downtown law office. 7) I want my sons to be trained and capable and aware of this arrangement starting now, so we run a plan and don't just stumble our way into the 4th quarter. --- Whatever happens at the end, it will be better than watching what I'm watching with this fading generation. My gosh. What buffoonery, waste, and clueless disregard for their generational lines. It's astounding. Draining. Every. Last. Drop. And no, they didn't NEED THE SECOND SAUNA, it's just nice to have, rather than walk all the way back up to the main house. Makes sense.

You could literally just fly to Zurich, grab a Kaffee und Gipfeli with a 63 year old Heizungsbauer in Winterthur, close your first acquisition over Kalbsfilet at the Kronenhalle, roll up 40 certified HVAC operators across DACH, ride the EU boiler phase-out like a regulatory escalator, build a recurring maintenance book worth 10x, sell to Brookfield at 14x EBITDA tax-free, park the HoldCo in Zug at 11.9%, and spend your summers in Ascona with a blonde who reads Hesse and Jünger. - but you will not.

Ultra High Net Worth Individuals (UHNWI) do own yachts for tax reasons, but not because they are a modern replacement for palaces. Most of the world runs residency-based taxation. As in, if you stay over 183 days somewhere you become a taxable base. The US is the outlier, as it taxes you regardless of where you live, based on citizenship. That difference produces two entirely distinct wealth architectures. European UHNWI have a structural incentive to stay mobile. Not being in one place too long is itself a tax strategy. Yachts happen to serve that lifestyle perfectly - flag-registered in favourable jurisdictions, moving between anchorages, never accumulating residency days (and benefiting from things like Cypriot 2 month stay non-dom status). The tax regime does not cause yacht ownership, but it makes yachts a remarkably efficient asset class for people whose wealth depends on being nowhere in particular. This is why European UHNWI do a yearly circuit - Wimbledon one week, Cannes another, the WEF, the Biennale. The social calendar is not separate from the tax strategy. They are the same thing. This also mirrors the itinerant courts of the past, where the aristocracy would move around from one part of the kingdom to another throughout the year, according to king's mood. American UHNWI face the opposite constraint. Citizenship-based taxation means mobility cannot solve the problem. So they optimise differently - dynasty trusts, LLCs, state domicile arbitrage. They are not less sophisticated. The same economic incentive just produces a completely different behavioural output when the underlying regime changes.

Here's a hot take that I 100% believe: Equity is overrated. You know how many times my "life changing" amount of equity in XYZ assets turned to $0? Nothing is final until the cash is in your personal checking account. Nowadays i optimize for my favorite 3 words in the English language: Free. Cash. Flow. And then equity is the cherry on top. Over the long run equity may make you more rich and move the net worth needle more, but the psychological effect of piles of free cash flow cant be beat.

Welcome to the most asymmetric trade in modern financial history. The thread below lays out why. The opportunity exists because capital has chased the AI trade while ignoring the physical assets AI requires to run — assets that have quietly become the best-performing asset class of the decade. Since October 2020 when we first called for the commodity super cycle: QCI Total Return +217%, GSCI Total Return +205%, Gold +140%. NASDAQ trails at +130%. S&P 500 at +85%. The top three are all commodities. Yet oil cannot get out of its own way while copper and the broader atom complex prints fresh highs . That is the dislocation. That is the trade. Get long. Buckle in. Hang on for the ride. Forgive the longer posts in this thread — attempting to mimic my old 10-bullet commodity takes. On to it.

8-year-old VC funds have returned 27 cents on the dollar. 27 cents. After 8 years. These are the people telling you how to build.

Someone is selling their mountain in Andalucía (Spain). 280 hectares. For €1.5M. That's 692 acres of private wilderness: deer, Ibex, wild boar, partridge - with a 6-bed cortijo built to a high spec 12 years ago. Wine cellar accessed through a hatch in the floor, outdoor kitchen, pool, solar panels, the lot. ~30 minutes from Granada city. Near the Embalse de Colomera. Now here's what makes this interesting beyond the estate itself. There's a constant debate on here about what happens post-AGI. When AI does most of the work, what do people actually do with their time? I think places like this become the answer. A private estate where you can hunt, hike, grow food, entertain, build things, raise animals..basically live a full and physical life. What do you guys think.. is this the best post-AGI investment?

this RFS is crazy, don't build AI Tools - build AI companies to replace Dinosaurs

First time founder vs Second time founder: first time founder: guards idea like state secret second time founder: shares idea freely, knows execution is everything first time founder: hires fast to look like a real company second time founder: stays skeleton crew until absolutely necessary first time founder: gets office space to feel legitimate second time founder: works from apartment until bursting at seams first time founder: chases TechCrunch coverage second time founder: chases revenue and user growth first time founder: panics when competitor raises money second time founder: sees competition as market validation first time founder: romantic about original vision second time founder: pivots on weak signals first time founder: raises maximum possible at highest valuation second time founder: raises what’s needed with clean terms first time founder: hides problems from investors second time founder: radically transparent in updates first time founder: takes every meeting request second time founder: ruthlessly protects calendar first time founder: tracks vanity metrics second time founder: obsesses over 2-3 metrics that actually matter first time founder: messy cap table with advisors getting equity second time founder: clean cap table, minimal parties first time founder: optimizes for highest valuation second time founder: optimizes for control and favorable terms first time founder: waits for perfect product second time founder: ships broken and iterates first time founder: recruits on vision and potential second time founder: recruits on traction and momentum first time founder: overengineers for scale second time founder: duct tapes until product-market fit first time founder: tries to boil the ocean second time founder: dominates tiny niche first first time founder: seeks consensus on decisions second time founder: decides and moves fast first time founder: takes all advice equally second time founder: filters advice through own framework first time founder: splits equity equally with cofounders second time founder: splits by contribution with vesting cliffs first time founder: comfortable until 3 months runway left second time founder: raises next round at 12 months runway

🌎 Over a decade ago now, around 2014, digital nomadism exploded with Nomad List hitting this weird little cultural moment where the technology was suddenly good enough to allow people to fly to the other side of the world, bring their laptop and work almost anywhere remotely Over the next few years then millions of people packed up their home lives and became digital nomads, roaming around the world but most after awhile just settling down in new places for long (like me too) A lot of startups came out of that digital nomad boom, but a decade later, it looks like graveyard. And it's interesting to analyze this because it kinda represents a full socio-cultural and business life cycle, especially for me because I was in the middle of it DEAD: ☠️ Selina - A coliving for digital nomads. The idea was that location independent people would roam the world and use coliving spaces to live. They raised over $400M on that idea and went public in 2021. Then it lost 100% of its value, went bankrupt, now worth $0.00010 with a total market cap of $54,000, a company called Collective Hospitality acquired it and what's so funny is where Selina tried to turn party hostels into coliving hotels (and failed), they're just turning the coliving hotels back into party hostels! ☠️ Remote Year - Group travel for digital nomads. Acquired in 2020 by Selina, which then went bankrupt (see above), Collective Hospitality is not continuing it so it's now dead 🥴 WeWork, coworking for remote workers - Lost 100% of its value, bankrupt in 2023, then bought by Anant Yardi who makes property management software and seems to be exiting coworking and entering commercial office rent "it leased 304,000 square feet in Manhattan to Amazon". Again similar to above: where WeWork tried to turn commercial office rent into coworking desks (and failed), it's now trying to turn the coworking desks back into commercial office rent. ☠️ WeLive, coliving for remote workers - By WeWork, bankrupt and dead PIVOTED: ♻️ WorkFrom A directory of coworking spaces. Pivoted smartly to virtual coworking sessions online where people work together ALIVE: 🏡 Outsite (by @manuthan) - Network of coliving spaces. Raised $325 million 2 years ago to buy more coliving spaces and seems to be doing great 🏥 SafetyWing (by @SRasch) - Health insurance for digital nomads and remote workers, still seems to be doing well too raising $35 a few years ago 🎒 Hacker Paradise (by @alexeymk + @CaseyRosengren) - One of the first digital nomad travel groups (like Remote Year) but self-funded and didn't raise money, and they seem to be alive and kicking 💻 Coworker .com - Directory of coworking spaces. Acquired by Regus in 2022 and was dead for awhile but their API started working again recently so seems alive again 🌎 Nomads .com - My site (formerly Nomad List) started 2014, still 100% owned and bootstrapped with an active community of almost 40,000 paid members 👩‍💻 Remote OK - Also mine and also 100% owned, started in 2015, now has 2 million remote workers on it So what is my analysis on this: Most of the companies in the digital nomad boom that did not raise money and kept 100% control are still alive now. Most of the companies that did are dead now. With a few exceptions: SafetyWing and Outsite Logically the bigger the bet financially the more financial engineering there is when it goes wrong and the higher odds you end up with the entire thing just disappearing into a black hole after a decade Which is sad because it's cooler to see companies (and projects) still alive after 10 years! There is also the understandable thing of how long is your breath to keep a project running? Personally I think because projects like Nomad List and Remote OK kept making money for so long and still do, it's been a good incentive to keep the site alive. Even when life got difficult, or I wasn't happy and got bored with the projects sometimes, there was tens of thousands of dollars coming into my bank account every month, so I wanted to keep it going. Then later I'd start enjoy the projects again intrinsically. It's really cool to see a market get born and explode and hype in 2014 and then large parts of it just disappear and die by 2025. Cool as in, to be able to observe that full "business life cycle" that I learnt about in business school When a market starts and there's so much hype you wouldn't be able to tell people "10 years later most of this is gone and few people care about it anymore", people wouldn't believe it. I'm most interested now to see where the digital nomad and remote work market is going next. I believe in cycles and I feel we're in some down cycle now. Many companies aren't fully remote anymore, most of it is hybrid now, and there's a strong anti-remote work pro-in-office sentiment Also, the rootless traveling of digital nomads was VERY cool a decade ago (because everyone was so sick of corporate 9-to-5 and normie life). It represented freedom, openness, accepting people for who they were, diversity, global migration etc. After 2016 we started seeing the extremes of that with the SJW wave etc. And then culture flipped in 2023 against that. So in a way digital nomads are culturally now a bit anti-zeitgeist. There's a cultural zeitgeist now I'd say of more traditional values, commitment, roots and definitely anti-immigration (not that I agree with those I just observe). So everything works together like a big spiderweb. Technical possibilities (suddenly we could work remotely and travel with our laptop). Businesses springing up to make these things easier/possible. Cultural zeitgeist that makes it "cool" to do these things. And then after a decade the whole thing flips reverse. But the cycle doesn't stop here. If 2007 was the first digital nomad wave with @tferriss, and 2014 was the second one with Nomad List, then 2021 was the third one with COVID making remote work popular, and then possibly the next wave is 2028. How that will look I honestly have no idea, it was much more clear in 2014. I will try figure it out and steer my businesses towards that so I can hopefully be early But whatever happens, I'm grateful to have been able to be part of this wave and being one of the few that still has their business alive and kicking It's 2025 now and the wave is obviously AI, and now that you're in it you might think this will just go on forever and AGI will come and it will be huge, and it might, but in a decade from now most of the companies you know will be gone in a startup graveyard as the bets didn't work out Which is of course exactly the idea of startups, these high growth rampant bets that you're surfing onto a wave towards billion dollar markets, but for most, of course, that doesn't work out!