January ‘23 Recap

The podcasts, articles, books and shows I most liked from January.

Podcasts:

1. Daryl Morey, Systems thinking in sports | Invest like the best, episode 313

   • If you’re a basketball/sports analytics fan, you’re gonna love this one. Daryl Morey talks about the data revolution in sports, how it is harder to use data to find an edge in baseball and basketball today, and also tries to re-write the rulebook of soccer.

2. Legendary Investor Bill Gurley on Investing Rules, Finding Outliers, Insights from Jeff Bezos and Howard Marks, Must-Read Books, Creating True Competitive Advantages, Open-Source Strategies, Adapting Mental Models to New Realities, and More

   • Bill Gurley talking about his career, all things macro/micro economics, VC, and a whole bunch more. Definitely worth the listen.

3. Reinventing Insurance | a16z podcast

   • An a16z podcast from 2016 talking about insurtech and the ways that the insurance industry was starting to be disrupted by tech. Interesting to compare with what has happened over the last 7 years and also how we think aboutlatam insurtech at Magma.

4. James Clear, Atomic Habits — Simple Strategies for Building (and Breaking) Habits, Questions for Personal Mastery and Growth, Tactics for Writing and Launching a Mega-Bestseller, Finding Leverage, and More

   • I first read Atomic Habits a couple of years ago, and since have followed a bunch of James Clear’s work. This pod is great and dives into how he built his own brand and the intentionality behind a release of his book. Of course, they talk about habits also.

5. Brad Feld on investing through 3 economic cycles, CEO/investor dynamics, and more | This week in startups, episode 1660

   1. Brad Feld is one of the best VC’s, and this podcast is a great view into his thought process and what he’s learned in his time in the VC and startup world. A couple quotes I really liked:

"Every single company that's been successful that I've invested in has had at least 1 near death experience" 

"Anytime someone says there's a bunch of dry powder... yeah, but instead of that money being invested in 12 months, it's going to be invested over 3-4 years"

[When digging into passion vs. obsession (good obsession) he asks founders] “Were you put on planet earth to work on this problem?"

Articles:

1. What Just Happened | Brad Feld

   1. More Brad Feld, with a quick article comparing markets today with what happened in 2000. I kind of hate the phrase “new normal,” but we’re not going back to the bubble that was the last few years.

2. Why the unicorn financing market just became dangerous…for all involved | Bill Gurley

   • This one was originally written in 2016 but shockingly relevant to markets today. It’s a good read for VC’s, founders, and employees at startups to know what’s happening in the markets, what to expect, and how it impacts you.

3. Advice for New Managers | YC

   • A lot of the advice in this article seems obvious, but still many 1st time founders, or first time managers, could benefit a ton from implementing the advice here.

Books:

1. The Power Law | Sebastian Mallaby: A must read if you want to know about the history of VC and how Silicon Valley became the hub of innovation in the world. There are a lot of interesting parallels with the early days of SV and Latam today.

Shows:

1. Andor: I’m not really a Star Wars fan, but this show was great. I binged it in 2 weekends.