Marketing @DWFLabs | prev @nansen_ai @Ronin_Network
Onchain
Joined January 2021
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Martin retweeted
This is insane. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang just said: "Just as I can be fired, the next CEO has to be hired."
He described a culture of excellence at Nvidia where no one’s position is safe, not even his.
That makes the possibility of the board ousting him very real.
"We should create the conditions by which the company continues to thrive. And we should create the conditions by which the leaders of our company continues to grow and that the next leader of the company is already at Nvidia."
"That’s my job, is to create that condition."
"And just as I can be fired, the next CEO has to be hired. And, you know, I like it that way. I like that. I like that we can’t be overly complacent about our position inside the company and that we can’t take it for granted."
"And you’re always vulnerable. You’re always earning it. You’re always striving to be better. That’s a condition that’s good."
Martin retweeted
Jensen Huang loves working with Elon.
He says that Elon loves the intersection between computing and the physical build out.
“No one knows more about energy than he does”
Martin retweeted
A year ago, Jason predicted that Apple’s strongest long-term AI position is local (on-device) language models that emphasize privacy and encryption, similar to how they handle iCloud.
"Ultimate manifestation of all this is going to be Apple will have local language models and they'll be pitching us on they're encrypted, they're private, your data is safe just like they do for iCloud. We can't get to your iCloud stuff. If the government comes and asks us to crack it open, we can't get there."
@Jason
Martin retweeted
“Elon is unconstrained by constraints.”
Ex-Tesla President Jon McNeill shares that Elon has a rare ability to shut off failure and refuses to let constraints limit his thinking.
"The way I describe his decision making is he's very rational. He's very unique in that he's unconstrained by by constraints."
He recalled sitting with Elon in 2017–2018 after SpaceX had suffered a long string of unsuccessful launches. Most people would have dwelled on the setbacks, gotten discouraged, or worried the company might run out of cash before succeeding.
“He was totally focused on the two things that had to be true for that not to happen again,” McNeill said. “So they could get a successful launch.”
“He’s just very unique in his ability to shut off the negative and focus on what has to be true and then achieve that. He’s one of the most unique people I’ve ever met. He can essentially shut off failure, and it just doesn’t impact him at all.”
“He’s uniquely wired that way. Given everything he’s been through, he typically isn’t affected by it. He just looks at things differently.”
My conversation with @jonmcneill, the former President of Tesla and the co-founder and CEO of DVx Ventures.
0:00 Introduction
0:57 How to Impress Elon Musk
4:07 What Happens When You Overstep Elon
8:49 Building Tesla’s Culture of Speed
9:46 The Power of Battlefield Promotions
10:24 Three-Sentence Emails
11:45 Sheryl Sandberg’s Weekly Meeting
16:40 Elon’s Approach to Capital Allocation
18:32 Why Tesla Ships Autopilot Updates Weekly
23:37 Cheat Sheet for Better Decision-Making
29:15 Shut Off Failure
30:44 Running a Product Meeting
39:23 The Framework Behind All Great Products
43:16 Why Steve Jobs Blew Off Elon
46:30 Building Tesla with 0 Marketing Budget
52:45 How a Toy Car Solved an Eng Problem
54:05 Neuralink Origin Story
56:36 The Algorithm
1:12:40 The “Fire Yourself” Leadership Exercise
1:16:33 Identifying World Class Talent
Enjoy!
Martin retweeted
The GME frenzy almost killed Robinhood.
In January 2021, Robinhood restricted GameStop trading to “position closing only”: customers could sell shares they owned, but couldn’t buy more.
CEO Vlad Tenev said the restrictions bought the company time to raise the capital needed to meet regulatory liquidity requirements.
As trading activity surged during the frenzy, Robinhood's capital requirements went from $100M to $3B. An amount they didn't have.
The leadership team split into three priorities: explain the restriction to customers, keep the systems running, and raise as much capital as possible.
Vlad Tenev (@vladtenev) is the co-founder and CEO of Robinhood.
In January 2021, in the middle of the meme stock frenzy, Robinhood's deposit requirement went from under $100 million to "something like $3 billion" almost overnight. The total capital the company had ever raised was about $700 million.
His first call was to @mickymalka:
"He's like, 'How much do you need?' I said, 'I don't know, 250 million, 500 million. I'm not sure.' He's like, 'I've got it.'"
Back in March 2020, the two of them had put a term sheet in place so the money could be "wired in your account same day." Once Micky was in, everyone else followed: "We probably had $10 billion of demand at the first term."
"It was a consequence of too much success, which is quite rare."
Vlad came to America from Bulgaria at 5, not knowing a word of English. His grandparents stored their wealth in copper cookware during hyperinflation. His dad told him he'd give him his SAT score in dollars to invest. He went on to study math under Terence Tao, then took a leave from his $18,000-a-year math PhD to take a shot at starting his own company.
This was an awesome conversation:
0:00 Why Ribbit passed on Robinhood's seed round
2:19 "You're going to want me on your board"
5:35 The day-long trading outage of March 2020
9:22 A term sheet for a crisis that hadn't happened yet
15:00 Crypto goes from zero to a top revenue stream
16:27 The $3 billion deposit requirement
18:35 "Vlad, you have to call work right away"
21:34 The first call: Micky Malka
24:31 "Time kills all deals"
25:33 Number one app in the App Store, ahead of Instagram and TikTok
27:01 $10 billion of demand
29:33 Hyperinflation and copper cookware in Bulgaria
35:34 "Manhattan just seemed like science fiction"
47:15 His SAT score in dollars to invest
50:53 Studying under Terence Tao
1:00:22 "You want to be businessman, huh?"
1:03:48 The best parts of math without the bullshit
1:05:56 Would I be proud of this in 50 years?
Includes paid partnerships.
Martin retweeted
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev says their crypto business went from near zero to their largest revenue stream in a matter of quarters.
They launched crypto in January 2018, right at the start of a long crypto winter, and generated almost no revenue for years.
Then in Q3 2020 it jumped roughly 10x.
By Q4 it was already in the hundreds of millions, and by Q2 2021 crypto had become one of their biggest revenue lines, generating roughly $500–600 million in a single quarter.
Vlad Tenev (@vladtenev) is the co-founder and CEO of Robinhood.
In January 2021, in the middle of the meme stock frenzy, Robinhood's deposit requirement went from under $100 million to "something like $3 billion" almost overnight. The total capital the company had ever raised was about $700 million.
His first call was to @mickymalka:
"He's like, 'How much do you need?' I said, 'I don't know, 250 million, 500 million. I'm not sure.' He's like, 'I've got it.'"
Back in March 2020, the two of them had put a term sheet in place so the money could be "wired in your account same day." Once Micky was in, everyone else followed: "We probably had $10 billion of demand at the first term."
"It was a consequence of too much success, which is quite rare."
Vlad came to America from Bulgaria at 5, not knowing a word of English. His grandparents stored their wealth in copper cookware during hyperinflation. His dad told him he'd give him his SAT score in dollars to invest. He went on to study math under Terence Tao, then took a leave from his $18,000-a-year math PhD to take a shot at starting his own company.
This was an awesome conversation:
0:00 Why Ribbit passed on Robinhood's seed round
2:19 "You're going to want me on your board"
5:35 The day-long trading outage of March 2020
9:22 A term sheet for a crisis that hadn't happened yet
15:00 Crypto goes from zero to a top revenue stream
16:27 The $3 billion deposit requirement
18:35 "Vlad, you have to call work right away"
21:34 The first call: Micky Malka
24:31 "Time kills all deals"
25:33 Number one app in the App Store, ahead of Instagram and TikTok
27:01 $10 billion of demand
29:33 Hyperinflation and copper cookware in Bulgaria
35:34 "Manhattan just seemed like science fiction"
47:15 His SAT score in dollars to invest
50:53 Studying under Terence Tao
1:00:22 "You want to be businessman, huh?"
1:03:48 The best parts of math without the bullshit
1:05:56 Would I be proud of this in 50 years?
Includes paid partnerships.
Martin retweeted
This is how @BillAckman turns brutal market crashes into generational buying opportunities:
The research starts before the crash.
Even great companies can be a bad investments at the wrong price. Pershing Square studies the businesses it wants to own long before they get cheap. When the market sells off, the team already knows where to look.
"Typically, someone identifies an interesting idea. Hey, XYZ stock, a company we've followed for years is now available at a 40% discount. Let's update the file."
"We'll dig in again, update the work. So I'll read the annual reports, the proxy, the conference call transcripts, maybe some news articles."
"The team doing the deeper dive will speak to many industry experts."
They’re trying to answer one question: Has the business changed as much as the price?
If the business still looks strong and the price is right, the selloff is their opportunity to buy and let the business compound.
BREAKING: Nvidia, $NVDA, extends losses to its lowest level since March 31st as concerns mount around Jensen Huang’s future with the company.
The stock has now lost -$400 billion since Huang’s affair with an alleged Chinese spy was reported.
Martin retweeted
The idea for Neuralink began with Elon Musk’s frustration at how slowly we type on our phones.
Ex-Tesla President Jon McNeill recalls a conversation on a trip to China. Musk asked how fast McNeill could type with his thumbs.
They realized phone typing speed was a bottleneck for getting answers and making decisions.
Elon Musk: How fast can you type with your thumbs?
Jon McNeill: I have no idea. I’ve never timed it.
Elon Musk: The average human types about 18 words a minute. How fast can you type on a keyboard?
Jon McNeill: I think 60 or 70 words a minute—at least when I was in high school. Let’s call it 60.
Elon Musk: Exactly. You’re more than three times faster on a keyboard than on your phone. This device has slowed the input into the machine.
Jon McNeill: Yeah, it has—by three times.
Elon Musk: That’s a big deal, because you can’t get speed of answers and decision-making if you’re going three times slower. What if you could think into the machine?
Jon McNeill: That would remove the constraint. We wouldn’t have keyboards and thumbs in the way. You’d be thinking in real time into the machine.
Elon Musk: Exactly. That would remove the front-end constraint on computing for humans. That’s a big deal.
True to his focus on speed, Musk immediately asked his chief of staff, Sam Teller, to find leading brain-computer interface researchers and gather their papers.
He wanted to read them on the trip and meet the researchers the following week. As McNeill recalls, he moved from idea to action quickly.
FT: @jonmcneill @shaneparrish @TKPPodcast
Martin retweeted
This framework is how Tesla and SpaceX achieve the impossible.
Former Tesla President Jon McNeill shares "The Algorithm" @elonmusk uses to build trillion dollar empires:
1. Question every requirement to see if it's actually necessary.
2. Delete steps in the process that aren't adding value to the customer.
3. Simplify or optimize the remaining process manually.
4. Apply speed to reveal failure points.
5. Automate only at the end once the process is working optimally.
"We had made mistakes like automating first, we'd made mistakes like not questioning requirements and ended up in like multiple month loops on problems that wouldn't go away."
"And so this whole framework allows you to not only solve problems but innovate because you're eliminating requirements that your competitors think exist"
FT: @jonmcneill @shaneparrish @TKPPodcast
Martin retweeted
Elon had two non-negotiables for communication at Tesla:
1. Be extremely concise
2. Deliver bad news immediately
Former Tesla President Jon McNeill reveals the system @elonmusk pushed:
Three-sentence emails.
1. Here’s the problem.
2. Here’s what I think the solution is.
3. Here’s my next step (and if I need resources or permission, ask here).
“It was really the key to communicating with him,” McNeill said, “because he likes that sort of concise, get-to-the-point style. Have you thoroughly thought about the problem? Have you really thought about the solution? And have you thought about the next steps?”
The second rule was just as strict:
“Don’t sit on bad news. Give me bad news as fast as you know about it,” Elon told people repeatedly.
“Because bad news only gets worse with time. The way you could get on his bad side was saving bad news.”
Those were the two keys: be concise, and be rapid with bad news.
FT: @jonmcneill @shaneparrish @TKPPodcast
Martin retweeted
You'd never understand the value of crypto if you live in established cities.
Binance co-founder and former CEO, @cz_binance says crypto’s utility is obvious where banking access is limited.
"Africa, Southeast Asia, you will feel that like Africa, only 11% of people have banks and you take them three days to pay a bill. So when you kind of in those kind of situations, financial access is actually really important."
"And now with crypto, one village has a one smartphone. But the entire village can now pay their bills within three seconds. And they don't have to spend three days walking to a different part of the village to do this. So this actually there's some real use cases here which are not obvious to some of the established financial centers."
He goes on to add that for established nations, a strong use case is fighting inflation.
"Too much inflation involuntarily means that you're just getting poor very quickly. People should have the tools to protect themselves from that. And blockchain crypto, cryptocurrencies is a tool. I'm not saying all cryptocurrencies are good for that, but there are certain cryptocurrencies that are."
Honored to speak at the @OxfordUnion. Freedom of speech and freedom of money, two cornerstones of a healthy society.
Two (high quality) videos:
Fireside chat:
youtu.be/2WhyikBJmZ0?si=sRt9…
Q&A:
youtu.be/t6vv9eaPR_A?si=EGoZ…
Martin retweeted
Intel -25%, Google -13%, Amazon -7%.
@BillAckman explains why today’s market punishes earnings disappointments so brutally.
"It used to be that a really high-quality business that somehow disappointed the stock might drop 3-4%. Today's stock could drop 30-40% on a miss."
"I think that's driven by the increasing kind of indexation, which is reducing float, and the increasing amount of leveraged capital, short-term capital invested in markets that is creating a lot more volatility."
"And what that has done is it's made the occasional amazing high-growth durable company available at a discounted price for a period of time based on a short-term disappointment."
"So our portfolio today is filled with businesses where we have enormous respect for the people running them. They don't need much in the way of an activist. We're happy to be a you know a quiet owner that occasionally has an idea."
Binance readily having $6.34B to cover the hole is a huge flex.
Hypothetically, at ~$10B in cash, it would rank 56th among US-listed companies by cash, excluding banks. That puts it level with Exxon and PayPal.
At $15B, it would be 35th, alongside Cisco and Visa.
Binance has begun recovering affected assets for users and continues to work with law enforcement, issuers, blockchain intelligence firms and industry partners to trace, freeze and recover additional funds.
The company has already publicly committed to cover losses through company funds in the prior announcement.
Binance has already reserved over $6.34B of company funds to cover this incident. $5B of these funds are already held in the exact token assets that were impacted. We are completing the purchase of the remaining amount by buying token assets through market channels and OTC channels. We are doing this to match the format of the remaining token assets and address any asset shortfalls. This step can take longer because some tokens may have low liquidity and OTC settlement also takes time. We will share more progress as soon as we can.
These figures do not include frozen or protected assets, which remain subject to ongoing recovery and verification. Currently, $3bn has been frozen, with thanks to our industry partners. We are working with partners and law enforcement to recover the frozen assets.We will continue to use company resources to cover confirmed shortfall and will provide further verified updates as recovery efforts progress. Ultimately, all user funds will be verified publicly through our Proof of Reserves.
We will weather this storm. Thank you for the support.
Martin retweeted
Bill Ackman on how he uses @X to make better investment decisions.
"I use X in kind of an interesting way. I try in every issue to find the most articulate, thoughtful person on one side of the issue and then the same on the other side of the issue. And I think it's very difficult to read."
"So I don't know that there's any media property where their intent is, let's just come out with the absolute truth. Usually, the owner has a political bias or agenda, which is why it's actually quite powerful to have an open playing field where you can select who you want to listen to."
"Now, most people, I think, psychologically like to hear from people who agree with them. I like to hear from people who agree with me. I also like to hear from people who disagree. So I've actually found it, from an investment perspective, it's been one of my best sources of ideas, understanding what's going on in the world."
"And then from just being a citizen of the world, understanding important issues and hearing different perspectives. So I like it, and I'm now part of the conversation."
@BillAckman @NicolaiTang1
Bill Ackman wants an opposing argument button on @x
"I've encouraged Elon on Twitter a couple times, maybe I need to push him a little more privately. I do think there should be a button on every time you read a tweet, you should be able to push a button to find the best argument"
"you know, who's the most followed person who's had the most articulate or maybe the most liked alternative argument for the same subject so that I think it's very helpful to people to hear people make the case for the other side."
@BillAckman @NicolaiTang1 @elonmusk
Martin retweeted
Why haven't AI agents gone mainstream? Sam Altman says they aren't reliable and seamless enough, yet.
"What will be true of the winning personal agent? It's like intelligence, context, tools. I think no one has yet figured out the the thing that people like. People like these, but this is not something that people are like, I cannot imagine my life without this thing."
"In a way that when people talk about coding agents or even ChatGPT, they do say. And someone soon is going to figure out what that looks like. I think this is like a small number of ideas away from a super mainstream thing."
"I think it'll look a lot like the current DOTS or user, Grokbot or whatever, but it'll just work. Like it'll just work. It'll be reliable. You'll just like give it more complex tasks and we'll do all of those things."
@collision @sama
Martin retweeted
Revolut co-founder and CEO Nik Storonsky says a lack of a banking license keeps platforms like Cash App from becoming a large business.
"It's like there are pros and cons. To build a large business, it's a must. If you want to really compete with banks, you need to get trust from customers. They need to put salaries in. They need to put a lot of their wealth in their accounts. They need to start trading stocks with you, ETFs, and so on. They need to trust you, and in their minds, they trust banks."
“To build a very large business and capture large market share, it's just unavailable. In the US, a lot of companies started like Chime, Cash App, Simple, 10 or 12 years ago. They never went for a banking license. I think it's a big mistake. They could never become a large business.”
"They can target certain niche audiences, certain cohorts of customers, I don't know, low income and so on. But they can never go to the prime audience, and they can never become a primary bank account without the banking license.”
“Early adopters, 10 to 20% of the population, will try them. Maybe they move from early adopters to their friends, family, and another 2%, so 4% of the population. But you want 40, 50, 60, 70%. For example, in Ireland we have 80% market penetration."
FT @davidsenra @NStoronsky