there is no moat

Correct. Using Starlink, a civilian commercial service, for offensive drone strikes to kill people has never been allowed, nor should it be. Starshield, a different system, is controlled by the US government. What they decide to do is up to them. Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week. Starlink remains critical to the defense of Ukraine, as it is the only system that cannot be jammed or blown up, at least for now. Were Starlink to be turned off, the Ukrainian front line would collapse immediately. This is NOT a threat, it is simply a statement of fact. Starlink was also crucial to preventing Russia from overrunning Ukraine in the early days of the war, as all other means of communication were destroyed or jammed by Russia. SpaceX has done more to defend Ukraine than any private company on Earth BY FAR. That said, I have nothing but UTTER CONTEMPT for the virtue-signaling evil warmongers who push for endless slaughter and offer no realistic solution to the conflict. May you burn in hell. End of story.

If they want to live by the sword, that is how they will die too

Lots of VCs kindof sound like this: "Your basketball team doesn't have a moat, any healthy human can throw the ball into the basket thingy. " People who have not run companies before don't understand how much the team matters more than some imagined structural moat.

I call it Jan Brady's revenge. Midcaps are having their moment, even in the face of seasonal volatility and rising rates. I speak with @mcmonaghan on how to find opportunities outside of large caps, my approach to stock selection, and some tough lessons learned after 25 years on Wall St. youtu.be/nfk7lOeinRU?si=Jy-a…

If you are into decentralized beef there’s some great ranchers in this thread.

I've finally invested in enough unicorns (at seed) that I have confidence in the traits unicorn founders have in common. If you fail to hone these traits, you will fail to build a $1B+ company in my experience. / 1. Velocity consists of speed Matt Loszak from Aalo showed me this the most: The best founders are viscerally uncomfortable with slow progress. They feel it as a physical irritant, not an abstract concern. They obsessively refactor how they’re pursuing goals to identify clever shortcuts and rethink their roadmap from first principles. Speed leads to high momentum and a compounding returns on knowledge and product. It’s necessary to maintain your headstart in a market, otherwise the faster competitor will beat you within a couple years. / 2. Velocity consists of direction The best founders regularly surface from heads-down execution to ask whether their path is still the right one — whether a better route to the destination has opened up, or whether the destination itself has shifted. Pathfinding prevents the common failure mode of executing brilliantly in the wrong direction. It requires intellectual honesty and the willingness to kill plans that no longer make sense. The best founders set a recurring quarterly calendar event to re-assess all their goals. / 3. Mission alignment The journey to building a unicorn is long. Without a mission that goes beyond financial outcome, most founders lose steam and start phoning it in. Then they get surpassed by competitors who are hungrier. The mission doesn't have to be world-saving — but it has to be genuine to you. / 4. Asking for advice and integrating it The best founders ask smart people for advice and implement the good advice immediately. The moment they’re shown a better way, they update their processes. They don’t assume they’ll stumble into better ways organically; they set aside time each week to learn from others and shortcut their development. They assemble a counsel of advisors who are the best in the world at what they do and they sell them on the mission. / 5. Brick-by-brick hiring Adam Guild of Owner showed me this the most. Unicorn founders treat each early hire as weight-bearing. They run a deliberate process to find the best person in the world for each role — not whoever is closest at hand ("hiring within arm's reach") from their existing networks. (Unless they are the best). The foundation built in the first ten hires sets the ceiling for everything that follows. A single mis-hire in a key seat early on compounds. Getting this right means the team itself becomes a competitive moat.

Thanks for da memories, Coach 💙