August ‘23 Recap
Articles:
Meaningful exits for founders | Bryce Roberts
A good article showing the math for how much money founders will make upon exit as a function of how much money they raise.
The Option Pool Shuffle | Venture Hacks
A good reminder that the option pool lowers your effective valuation, and the need to build a hiring strategy for your ESOP (aka, how you’ll use it!)
With the option pool included in the pre-money valuation, your effective valuation (and price per share) will be lower.
Magma Partners Q2 2023 Investor Letter
A public version of our investor letter with really good insights to what’s happening in early stage tech in Latin America.
Argentina has their presidential elections on October 22 of this year, and the primary from August is a key indicator for what will happen in the election. Argentina’s primaries are unique in that they are not limited to specific parties, but rather is open to anyone eligible to vote, and it is considered mandatory.
Milei is a former TV personality who has shot up in popularity as the country is massively struggling with inflation, as one of his key policies is to dollarize the economy.
For an English summary, check out Javier Milei: Trump admirer leads race for Argentina presidency | BBC News
Dólar hoy: el blue salta $120 en dos días y supera la barrera de los $700 | La nación
As a result of the primary results, the rate of the Dólar blue, the unofficial conversion rate for pesos argentinos to USD, has shot up above 700:1. For context, when I was in Argentina in April of this year, the rate was 350:1.
The Argentina Central bank devalued the peso 18% and increased benchmark interest rates to 118% as a result of the primary election results.
The spread between the official rate and the dolar blue rate is an indicator of uncertainty in the country.
Argentina’s annual inflation over the years
Podcasts:
Frank Slootman: doing less, doing better | The Knowledge Project
I really liked this podcast, and published an article on Latamlist with key takeaways from the article: Tips for building a performance culture at your startup
Paul Graham on ambition, art, and evaluating talent | Conversations with Tyler
This conversation is all over the place, but in an interesting way. Tyler’s interview style is unpredictable, and makes this one a fun listen.
Good overview of markets with Bill Gurley, who is a must listen for me whenever he’s on a podcast.
Other:
The Power Law at play in VC: twitter thread by David Clark, Investment Director at VenCap, showing how much of a Power Law business VC really is. Look at this image from the tread:
Language Learning:
This month, I started taking Portuguese lessons. My goal is to get to around a B2 level, with a focus on speaking, by around February next year.
I’m only doing 1 hour of tutoring per week, and am trying to be as efficient as possible in learning Portuguese. Learning it through Spanish makes it a lot easier (I can already understand most of what is said in smaller 1:1 conversations); the hardest part is avoiding speaking “portuñol,” and having a good accent. I spent about 1 month during the pandemic studying Portuguese, so I’m not starting completely from 0… but almost.
Although I don’t have a trip planned yet, I want to visit Brasil next year, and am using that as the motivation.
I wrote some more detail in to my plans here: https://mattmuldavin.com/blog-1/learning-portuguese
