š©³ Tesla's Short Shorts, Timing Is Everything, Pirates and More
A short issue with some interesting links
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This week Mario and I are pretty busy preparing long-form content that we will publish shortly, so the newsletter will be a tad shorter than usual.
Which brings me to the news of Elon Musk trolling the world by selling Short Shorts through Tesla to mock investors who hold short positions on $TSLA
. The joke was not only the fact that Tesla ā a car/tech company ā started selling shorts on their official website just for the lolz but the fact that they sell them for $69.420. Well, I should say āsoldā because, of course, the most expensive shorts you have ever heard of sold out within hours of being put on sale. I wouldnāt expect anything less from 2020.
But the good news doesnāt end there for Elon and my colleague Mario (who owns some $TSLA
stock). As many of you will know, the stock has been on an amazing bull run recently, reaching a recent peak of $1,400, which means that Elon just made over $50 million from the fine he paid to the SEC for the infamous āfunding securedā twit last year:
As part of the settlement [with the SEC], Musk agreed to step down from the role of Chairman of the board and both Tesla and Musk had to each pay $20 million fines.
The CEO presumably didnāt want Tesla to have to pay for his issue with the SEC and while he couldnāt directly pay for Teslaās part of the fine, he decided toĀ buy $20 million worth of shares from Tesla.
That way, he sort of indirectly ended up paying for Teslaās fine ā though he also ended up with ~71,000 additional Tesla shares in the process.
[ā¦]
At yesterdayās close, Muskās $20 million worth of Tesla shares that he bought to āunofficiallyā pay off Teslaās part of the SEC fine is now worth over $97 million (Thanks toĀ Tyler HillardĀ for pointing this out to me).
I wish everyone the same luck that Elon and Mario seem to have lately. Have a good rest of the week!
ā Joan
Mario's section
Are Zoom classes worth 50k? As you know, the majority of Universities and Business Schools have decided to freeze their on-site classes and opt for a fully online experience, at least during the first quarter/semester. You may think that no one would pay $50k for Harvard zoom classes, but nothing far from the truth. This Twitter thread summarizes why Harvard and the like can keep charging the same prize for Zoom or in-person classes.
A startup I liked: Zelf - Messenger bank. This sounds strange the first time you heard of it but, for me, it makes total sense. Zelf is a bank that lives in your preferred messenger app (Whatsapp, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, etc.) and allows you to have ānormal conversationsā as you would do with a human. We pass more and more time in messenger apps so it makes sense to not need to leave this environment to make basic banking transactions. In this Medium post, Zelf explains why messenger banks make sense.
Timing is everything. This chart by Jeff Jordan, Managing Partner at Andreessen Horowitz shows some of the startups that offered āthe sameā product than others who only some years later built empires like Facebook, eBay, Google, or Netflix.
If you are interested in Bitcoin and you think it has options to, somehow, replace fiat money, you should know that Paul Tudor, a historic billionaire hedge fund manager has decided to invest ālow single-digit percentageā in Bitcoin. For sure this should have an effect in the Bitcoin ecosystem, as a mere ālow single-digitā should mean millions (if not billions) of money inflow to Bitcoin.
Joan's section
#WFH #remote #slides #zoom
I just found out through a workmate of mmhmm, an invite-only (for now) startup with an amazing product for all of us who are working from home and have to do remote presentations. It will make more sense when you watch the video below, but basically the app promises to deliver professional-looking live video manipulation to anyone with a computer, allowing you to inject content (videos, screen share, images, etc.) into your video stream instead of using zoomās (or any other videoconference software) āshare screenā functionality. I havenāt tried it yet, but I signed up for the beta and I am looking forward to giving it a try.
#pirates #freeMarket
I recently watched this great video from CGP Grey about why being a pirate š“āā ļø in the past made economic sense. There were many interesting bits ā there were so many actually that I ended up buying the book the video is based on:
Contract for the Voyage: All men had input and all men have to agree. It set the voting methods, code of conduct, distribution of pay, etc.
Captain and Quartermaster were elected offices and the crew can replace them at almost any time.
Crewmen were paid in shares of the loot, so they had a vested interest in the success of the missions and is not being captured. Kind of like todayās equity compensation, but representing 100% of the compensation.
The compensation was almost flat across everyone aboard, even for the Captain and Quartermaster who got only paid 2x and 1.5x respectively compared to any other crew member.
Piracy was an at-will enterprise for everyone involved. They were not employees but equals. If people were not happy with the conditions the enterprise would just dissolve, but they had great incentives to keep it alive as it meant huge profits.
The crew had compensation (insurance) for lost limbs and other injuries.
Thanks for reading and, as always,Ā please share this newsletterĀ if you enjoyed it and let us know your thoughts & feedback by replying to this email orĀ leaving a comment šāāļø