I really like Tucker and his message today but this is wrong. You are ready for a family when you decide to be a man. Everyone acts like they need to wait until they mature to settle down. Like there’s a magical age when that happens. It’s just an excuse to continue being a boy. Meanwhile, you and your future wife accumulate baggage that you’ll both have to deal with in marriage. “Oh but I want to have fun in my 20s.” Thats boy thinking. I know. I have four little boys. That’s how they think: I want to have fun. They don’t understand deep satisfaction. Fulfillment. Thats because they’re boys. Marry your high school sweetheart. Or your college one. Settle down. Have kids. Start now. Marriage is a commitment. It requires you to commit. Recognize what it is. It’s not about you. It’s not about your happiness. It’s about giving yourself up for someone else. And counterintuitively, that will lead to your sustained happiness. You don’t have to look for the next party because you are fulfilled in a much more meaningful way. And you will realize quickly those parties never actually made you happy. You probably know that now. If you read that and think, “sounds awful” - you are a boy. Thats what my 5 yo thinks: I don’t want to give, I want to get. But I will spend his first 18 years- his time in my house - showing him that giving is actually where he will find the most sustained fulfillment, “happiness”. And that’s a decision- not some magical maturity you get at 30 or 35 or whatever. Look stuff happens, people have stories- I get it. But believing there is some magical age in adulthood when you are mature enough to commit is a psyop. The truth is marriage is hard regardless of when you start. Same with kids. Anything in life worth doing is hard. That’s why it’s fulfilling. Go for it now. We will all be better off for it and you will not regret it. You will only wish you’d started earlier.

You should get to know people from X irl. Always fun. I’ve hired three people I met here- all studs. Have seen several deals. Have invested in deals personally backing people I met here. Just met a guy this week- maybe we do some business together. Unreal alpha.

Have been thinking about him a lot after the recent @FoundersPodcast episode. He acquired businesses and let them operate independently. Then when the deal environment turned against him (prices high) he pivoted to integration. Everyone today rushes to integrate. Maybe that’s not the best path. Maybe learning, letting it breathe a bit ensures a more solid foundation. Curious if others have bought and held, then integrated later?

When I was 30, I sold a business and was thinking about my next gig. I was focused on buying a company. My brother had worked for this PE backed business in town that was totally dysfunctional, but had great bones. So I approached the firm about buying the business. Obviously PE firms usually sell through an investment banking process so chances were slim. But this firm had offered me a job, so I knew them fairly well. Thought it couldn’t hurt to ask. I reached out and they were willing to talk. I soon realized what they really wanted was to understand why I thought I could be a better owner. What they didn’t realize was that the CEO was an absolute narcissist. Anyway, I told them I wanted to buy it and run it the rest of my life, so my time horizon was better suited to this particular asset. That’s meeting one. Meeting two - I should’ve known - would be different. They sent a VP. This was literally the guy who got the position I had turned down a few years earlier. Not sure if he knew that, but we had lunch at a bbq place. He was UVA MBA which he let me know pretty quickly. We talked, I told him why I was excited about the business and that I was a serious buyer who could close. After a few minutes, the 28 yo told me “I just don’t see you as a CEO.” I actually laughed out loud. At the time I had been CFO for a business that just sold for nearly a billion. I mean, maybe he was right but just the brazen insult to my face made me chuckle. I told him thanks for the feedback. Maybe he was right, but if I could buy the business, that would be my problem. Anyway, as you would expect, it didn’t work out for me. For them, it did. They fired the CEO a couple months later and the business started to take off. I had fun kicking the tires and I got the added benefit of some young nerd adding to the chip on my shoulder.

I highly recommend you buy a copy of Ian’s new book. His book “Intelligent Fanatics” is one of my all time favorites. Ian was gracious enough to send me an advance copy which I devoured. Favorite line: “The difference between what you modeled in a spreadsheet and the outcome you get is management.” (Cc @sidecarcap on that concept) Anyway, Ian’s book is about more than picking stocks. It’s about life, the psychology of being human, how to get started, talking to management, and of course, evaluating businesses. The book isn’t a “how to” or instruction manual; it’s more like a story where Ian illuminates what he’s learned along the way. Whether you are an investor or an operator, you will get a lot out of it.

A young upstart has a bologna sandwich lunch with Warren Buffett and decides to become a value investor. Then he becomes a billionaire. I later worked for that billionaire investor- Bill Oberndorf. I was 25 at one of his few private company investments. I didn’t know what to make of a billionaire in a Mickey Mouse watch. But Bill showed me the same generosity Buffett had shown him. He was extremely generous to me as a young, hungry, idiotic 25 yo. And like Bill’s experience with Buffett, it was seminal for me. This interview posted by @kevg1412 is great. Subscribe to his newsletter!

Private equity taking over college sports would obviously be bad. I agree with the man in this video. It’s not a typical business, it’s more than that. It sounds crazy, but it’s friendships and fun and memories and family and legacy and identity and pride and escape and opportunity and hope. And there are tons of kids who play college sports who never play pro, but are given opportunities they would have otherwise never had. Not to mention many college sports are intertwined with taxpayer funding. It’s not just about maximizing profits. Sure, there could be improvements. But at some point we have to recognize that if we treat everything like it’s purely a money making endeavor, we will lose our soul. Ps I know it’s coach cal… I’m a uk fan 😉

Is it possible these AI leaders screaming about safety just want to CYA? To tell us, if something does happen: “well, you asked for it.” Maybe they want to regulate away competition, or maybe they just want to be absolved from any malicious use?

🚨📚Book Rec: The Compounders “The compounders offer a permanent home for entrepreneurs, allowing their businesses to continue operating independently and flourish while benefiting from the resources and support of a larger parent company” Sounds easy, is actually very hard.

The people who fear it the most appear to be the ones closest to it and furthest from it. The early adopter masses are fully embracing. It feels inevitable that open source will become a larger piece and that there will be a few winners, but it may not just be Anthropic or OpenAI. Meta coming out of nowhere with Muse is a good example. Grok got a late start but is now a leader. Google, Apple, and Microsoft all feel very far behind but could easily make AI a focus. Point is, we should encourage the innovation and trust the market to bring new players. If margins really are 90%, that will attract competition. The only way to ensure there are only a few winners is to heavily regulate it now.

I am an expert on this and it’s Connery then Craig. My personal choice is Brosnan for 3rd. The top 5 bond movies are 3 Connery, 2 for Craig. Lazenby is in the 6th best. He was excellent. Brosnan has two appearances in the top 10. Moore is the funniest but he generally has the worst movies. Also, Austin Powers got absolutely everything right.