🌊 Macro

Jan 1, 2023

Hello! I’m Ivan from jme.vc. Join >5K entrepreneurs mastering the best of what other founders have already figured out in under 3 minutes, 2x / month.

Overview

🌊 Insight: Recession (?) — 7 resources to make your own mind.
📈 Thinking: Careeritis — by Richard Feynman and Oscar Wilde.
💰 Deals: everything you need to know about Spanish dealmaking.

🌊 Insight: Recession (?)

We’ve talked about Financial Crises before on Startup Riders, so I won’t go into much detail. Here’s an opinion by Bill Gurley that I subscribe to:

I think there are so few people who have proven that they have a valuable point of view on macro. There are just so many variables with macro. You can fool yourself. I’ve felt that ever since my MBA macro class.
— Bill Gurley (Benchmark)

Something I encourage my founder friends to do is studying the history of financial crises. In times like these, it gives you perspective + puts things into perspective.

Looking at data, I see 2 key adjustments happening in the US market:

Layoffs: getting close to Covid levels and a “great resignation” slow down.

Venture capital $$ slowing down

Wether we are or aren’t going into a recession, it is important to remember:

Nobody knows, and if they say they do, they’re likely delusional.
Financial crises are normal - Financial systems are inherently unstable, and as such the normal functioning of an economy leads to financial crises.
If we are indeed headed for a tough market - there’s also great opportunity. Remember that some of the best companies of the past decade were born during the 2008+ Great Recession for a reason. Think Instagram, Airbnb, Uber, Pinterest, Slack, WhatsApp, and the list goes on.

Finally, it’s important to make up your own opinion, and adjust accordingly.

Here’s a list of my favourite recent readings on the topic + actionable insights:

📈 Thinking: Careeritis

I’ve been thinking a lot about how broken our education system is (a topic for a future SR edition) and the pressure that most people feel around “building a career”.

2 quotes that I love, and regularly share with close friends suffering from “Careeritis”:

The first one from my favourite Twitter bot Professor Richard Feynman:

“Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent, and original manner possible.”

The second, from one of my favourite thinkers and one that has really stuck with me over the years, Stephen Fry — paraphrasing Oscar Wilde.

“Oscar Wilde said that if you know exactly what you want to be in life, then you inevitably become it - that is your punishment, but if you never know, then you can be anything.
There is a truth to that. We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing - an actor, a writer - I am a person who does things - I write, I act - and I never know what I am going to do next.
I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.“