An exposed startup accelerator, SF's newest neighborhood: Cerebral Valley, and John Wall unpacks his journey and The Hoop State
Stretch Four Volume 49
Happy Sunday,
I am back after a hiatus this week but thank you all for the feedback on the collaboration piece I did with Whitney on our first 10 months of parenting. This is volume 49 of my newsletter which I consider a good omen as the 49ers take on the Cowboys this afternoon at Levi’s Stadium.
Let’s dive in!
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Quote of the Week:
Nobody likes banks! — Bill Browder, Freezing Order
This week I was reading through reading Bill Browder’s follow-up book to his bestseller Red Notice called Freezing Order. Browder documents his goal of exposing the Russian government as being corrupt and killing many of the people that were attempting to expose the lies. From his perspective, the banks were at the core of allowing corruption, money laundering, and other financial crimes to happen without punishment.
Chart of the Week:
What an infographic to make you feel inferior. As we move into a recession, it is good to know there are nearly 350,000 and 275,000 millionaires in New York and San Francisco. This infographic makes one thing clear — the wealthy have done very well in the past three years.
Tweet of the Week:
As the technology ecosystem in SF has transitioned from the hype around crypto to AI, the Gen-Z hacker house communities could not wait to rename a neighborhood. As cheesy as this sounds, it’s one of the advantages of San Francisco as far as establishing itself as ground zero for technology and startup building. At a dinner a few weeks ago a friend said “these communities” are what make SF what it is today and this time it is no different than when it happened in the 2000s and the early 2010s.
Health & Performance
By the time you hit your mid-thirties, diet and sleep start can start to feel like this elusive pipe dream. Bryan Johnson, most widely known for selling his company for $800 million to PayPal, open-sourced his full health and wellness plan on his website this week and it was pretty fascinating.
The entire rich life of health goes beyond the bank account and has to reach your areas beyond the outward-facing elements. I appreciate a systems-driven approach and I am going to dive deeper into building out my own blueprint over the next few months and share my learnings here.
Founder Tips
This tweet thread linked below exposed the New Chip Accelerator. This stood out to me as I was receiving inbound spam emails from this organization up until December 22nd. In a nutshell, The nutshell is they were charging startups $8,000 to “learn how to pitch” for a “potential” $250,000 investment. Beyond this New Chip tries to charge companies an ongoing $300 per month for coaching and training after, in most cases, they “pass on” or “delay” investing.
My take
These types of things are likely happening more than anyone wants to admit. Browder, ironically the son of Bill Browder the author mentioned above, has built a company and a brand around exposing consumer finance scams and fees that institutions charge consumers. While location can be relative, I have to admit many of these types of operations are based in second and third-tier markets when it comes to venture to fund. It is easier to pray on desperate founders, create a community, and events around the idea of founders raising venture capital in places where those activities are not the norm — for instance, I cannot walk to get coffee without seeing someone decked out in gear from Y-Combinator, a first tier venture capital firm, or a unicorn startup.
Personally, I think there are currently two accelerators founders should consider — if choosing the accelerator route. I plan to publish a piece here on my research and interviews with various founders who have had success with accelerators and post it here.
Excerpts
Quantitative easing is like kudzu for market operators, it grows and grows and it may be impossible to trim off once it takes root. - Richard Fisher - Lords of Easy Money
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Faith, Family, and Fatherhood
10 Things We Learned in 10 Months of Parenthood
I have been getting feedback all week on the post I collaborated on with my wife about our ten learnings in our first 10 months of parenthood. I thank everyone for reading and I hope it was helpful. I know many have kids and understand the grind and others do not but it was good to hear from folks on both sides of the coin. Child care is not cheap but it’s worth it!
Sports stories with business impact
John Wall opens up about his time in D.C, the trade from the Wizards, Mental Health | Run Your Race
I thoroughly enjoyed this interview this week as someone who grew up in the Carolinas playing basketball. John Wall — is one of the top three basketball players to hail from North Carolina in the past 20 years along with Chris Paul and Steph Curry. This interview covered his story from middle school to right now and it was quite fascinating to see him speak so candidly about his various experiences. It is always interesting to see what inspires people to become who they become, Wall clearly takes names and remembers everything about anyone who doubted him along the way.
Final Thoughts
I am speaking on my first panel of the year here in SF at the Finix Headquarters on February 10th at 7 pm. The talk will be related to some of the insights I share in this newsletter. If you would like an invite to shoot me an email. I’ll be sharing my thoughts on how we can help one another rise during the current tech space environment.
Go Niners!
Back to the trenches.
Best, Matt