February ‘23 Recap

My top podcasts and articles (plus a little Kings) from February

Podcasts:

1. Inside the VC Playbook — After a tech bubble collapse | Onward

   • I use Fundrise and just came across their podcast. They are building out a VC arm, and their CEO does a good job of explaining what the markets look like today for founders and funds. The public often doesn’t realize the “dirty term sheets” behind the public raising announcements. This pod does a good job at simplifying what liquidation preference means and why founders take their medicine now and take down rounds vs. dirty term sheets.

2. Alejandro Matamala, Runway | Crossing Borders with Nathan Lustig

   • Runway is doing some amazing stuff. Check out this video to get a taste of all the AI tools they have.

3. Annie Duke — Wanna bet? | Invest like the best, Episode 125

   • Rules vs. goals, overvaluing outcomes and undervaluing process, and much more.

4. Why interest rates on savings accounts are still so low | Odd Lots

   • Interest rates are going up, but normal people haven’t seen the interest rates in their bank savings account go up anywhere near the same amount. This is a good episode on what goes into bank deposit rates.

5. Angel: Upfront’s Mark Suster on the power of alignment, setting reality, and raising capital | This Week in Startups

   1. Really good stuff from Upfront’s Mark Suster on alignment of interests between founders and VCs, the 3 things you need to be good at VC, SaaS multiples in public markets today vs. 1.5 yrs ago, and why the best founders and VCs are “shock absorbers.”

6. E117: Did Stripe miss its window? Plus: VC market update, AI comes for SaaS | All-In Podcast

   • The first hour of this podcast is great on Stripe vs Adyen, markets, and AI. Worth a listen.

Articles:

1. From Bing to Sydney | Ben Thompson, Stratechery

   • An article that is somewhere between funny and terrifying with what’s happening with Bing’s AI chat and the several personas you can begin interacting with. These are clearly very bad personal assistants, but they are quite interesting. My overarching thought is that we’re rushing to anthropomorphize because of what we expect AI to become (and also what AI expects us to expect it to become). This is a great photo that sums up LLM today.

2. Ecosistema de Venture Capital y Growth Equity en Latam 2022 | Endeavor

   • Good data on FY2022 Latam VC and Growth Equity.

Other:

1. Learn Prompting: Quick and easy course to get you better at Prompt Engineering, AKA how to get the most out of AI.

2. The Kings had 2 All-Stars in the 2023 All Star game in Utah this year. The last time the Kings had 2 All Stars was in 2004.

Best thing I saw:

1. The Kings beat the Clippers 176-175 in 2OT on Feb 25 in the 2nd highest scoring game in NBA history