Timeless Watches, Why the Silicon Valley Ethos Will Remain, Still Long on Tech Stocks, China Payday lending, The Power Grid In Texas, and More
Stretch Four Insights Volume 33
I have completed 200 workouts, burned 101,548 calories, and worked out for over 9,834 minutes. The app gives me one on one training, feedback, and recommendations and Sarah, my trainer, is usually the first person who reaches out to me in the morning to let me know what’s on tap at the gym. I also like that it tracks my workouts outside of the app like I played basketball this week and and it logged my 1059 calories. I am able to get the workouts in on my time and share videos, ask questions, and get feedback from my trainer. I can also set goals for myself. I am all in on losing the 10-15 pounds I have gained since becoming a dad so my workouts focus on weights and cardio.
Check out Future for 50% off for the first three months using our exclusive link and let me know what you think.
Happy Saturday,
From San Francisco where our climate has not gotten the heat wave memo. Whitney, Cain and I and are heading to the East Bay to get some heat today. This week was another slow week in July as I get older I realize how much July is a month to travel, get away from work email, and do al the leisurely things you want.
For me, it has been good to not have as much meetings, but things are picking back up.
This week I highlight some of the content I consumed across the internet this week including:
A podcast from Business Breakdowns with a Deep Dive on Rolex and It’s History
A podcast from The Investor’s Podcast Network on why Silicon Valley’s mindset continues to work
Another one from The Investor’s Podcast Network on why you should still be bullish on some technology stocks in 2022
An artcile payday lending through fintechs is emerging and taking over China
An Article on How Texas’s private grid is causing major issues
Let’s dive in.
What I listened to this week?
Business Breakdowns is an intriguing podcast series from the same folks that do Invest Like the Best. I am fascinated by the story on Rolex as an emerging watch connesoeur. The three points I got from this breakdown were:
It makes me want to buy my first Rolex
The engineering, intent and purpose of every piece of material in a Rolex
The historical review of analog watches and the unofficial estimates that Rolex produces roughly one million watches a year
This podcast dives into my favorite Silicon Valley entrepreneur Ried Hoffman. Reid built Linkedin and has been one of the more influential founders he is now pretty active as a content creator including books, podcasts, and other media. I enjoyed the hosts going deep on how the thinking and ethos of Silicon Valley continues to compound and it is a good primer on understanding at a high level why Silicon Valley has been so successful from a company building perspective.
I now have to finally read Made In America after listening to two podcast in the past week that rave about it and dedicate nearly four hours of content to the Wal-Mart story. Two interesting thing about the Wal-Mart story is there are no stores in cities like San Francisco and Seattle, but the stores are the lifeblood of most of the middle and southern parts of the United States. Wal-Mart was also somewhat of a technology company that had a retail business even in the early days. Lastly, it all started in Oklahoma for Sam Walton.
TIP465: Value Investing in the Digital Age w/ Adam Seessel
Not to overbore you with investing related content but this week was full of it for me. The Investor’s Podcast Network had another great interview with Adam Seessel. I was not familiar with his work but I plan to read his book after this podcast. He goes pretty deep on how to pick the right technology companies in today’s market, why he things GAAP is a lie as it pertains to technology companies, and why Intuit’s money printing machine TurboTax is the reason he is continually buillish on the stock.
I am working on a Long Four series focused on health and wellness and this was a timely podcast to get my mind thinking in that direction. The basics of eating real food was the core focus but there were a lot of good insights on how to upgrade things in a realistic fastion across health and wellness.
What I read this week?
‘Too easy to borrow’: debt plagues young people despite China’s scrutiny of fintech microloans
Texas’ Precarious Power Grid Exposes a Nasty Feedback Loop
How PayPal Gets Employees Invested in Innovation
Amazon is buying primary care tech provider One Medical for $3.9B
Half a trillion dollars wiped from once high-flying fintechs
What is Next?
That is also this week. I will be back this week with the next edition of the Long Four which will be a four part series on health and wellness.
As always share your feedback at matt@stretchfour.co.
Thanks again to Future for sponsoring this week’s newsletter be sure to check out the link to receive 50% off your training for the first three months.
Enjoy your weekend.
Back to the trenches.