Hello World & The End of Stupid
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Hello and welcome to the first edition ever of Gray Matters, a weekly (we hope) newsletter written by Mario and Joan, two friends living in Madrid and San Francisco respectively. The idea of starting this newsletter came from thinking: "Wouldn't it be cool to share our nerdy links, articles, and discussions with more people than just us two?" So here we are. Please let us know what you think!
We will aim to treat a wide array of subjects: mainly productivity, self-improvement, tech, and business with a dash of philosophy, bitcoin (not blockchain), and other nerdy subjects.
Each week we will discuss some subject at length which will probably come from one of our articles that we've published elsewhere and which we will try to be as useful and current as possible.
Secondly, every edition of the newsletter will have a selection of the weekly links that we've found relevant with a small commentary.
Welcome and thanks for subscribing!
— Joan & Mario
The Beginning of the End of Stupid
#tech #newNormal #WFH #WFA
If you, like me, have been paying attention to the fall of WeWork, the valuations of Uber, Lyft and Airbnb, and the recent hiring freezes and layoffs in the tech industry, I think you'll agree when I say we are at the beginning of the end of Stupid Startup valuations. This is not to say that all the asset or valuation bubbles have popped yet, but I think we are on the way down and past the climax.
I have been accused of being "too pessimistic" at times, so take this with a grain of salt, but I believe gone are the days of Stupid in the tech industry, and we "Techies" are in for a reckoning. We've been spoiled with stupid salaries, stupid perks and stupid equity packages for almost 10 years. Like I wrote not so long ago:
We are at a peak in the tech industry: we are paid more than ever before, most of us get equity while valuations are at an all-time-high (unless you work at Uber or Lyft) — and many get ridiculous perks. This is not normal. This was not the case some years ago, but we have a very limited memory and get used to the good stuff quickly. This is specially true for newcomers to the industry who just got their first job and think it has always been like this.
Well, all that might be coming to a (slow) end, so we better take stock of how lucky we are and do our best to adapt to the New Normal. If you feel like reading more about the subject with a touch of stoic philosophy you can read my previous article on the subject: Don’t Get Used to The Good Times in Tech, They Might Not Last
The upside of the end of Stupid might be the acceleration of the "remotization" (does this word exist yet?) of work — something I expect to be talking about a lot in this newsletter —, which might help not only techies but any knowledge worker work remotely if they wish. Not only that'd be pretty cool for semi-introverts like myself if it really ends up happening but would make location-arbitrage that much easier and in my opinion, yes, even after taking a pay cut it might be worth it to move to be closer to your family or for tax/geopolitical reasons.
It actually seems to already be happening, at least if my anecdotal evidence from friends and connections in the tech industry is any guide—I hear many people are already working from “home” (wherever that might be: Chicago, Brazil, or Singapore). And, actually, Bay Area rent prices for 1 bedroom apartments just fell by 10-15% compared to the previous year, which might be reflecting that trend, at least partially.
Looking forward to knowing what else these turbulent yet interesting times have in store for us.
— Joan
Mario's links
What's next for journalists?: Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie shares his vision on the future for journalists. The transition is going to be very hard, especially for old-minded journalists, but a lot of opportunities will also arise.
This is one of the key reasons we started Substack. We’re attempting to build an alternative media economy that gives journalists autonomy. If you don’t rely on ads for your revenue, you don’t have to be a pawn in the attention economy – which means you don’t have to compete with Facebook and Google. If you’re not playing the ads game, you can stop chasing clicks and instead focus on quality. If you control the relationship with your audience, you don’t have to rely on outside parties to favor you with traffic. And if you own a mailing list, no-one can cut you off from your readers.
Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage: Ranjan Roy from Margins newsletter explains how broken is (sometimes) the startup world. Totally recommendable read.
If someone could pay Doordash $16 a pizza, and Doordash would pay his restaurant $24 a pizza, then he should clearly just order pizzas himself via Doordash, all day long. You'd net a clean $8 profit per pizza [insert nerdy economics joke about there is such a thing as a free lunch].
Building a Business From a Bedroom, $98,130 and 11-Months In: I love the stories of how people are building a one-person business from scratch with outstanding results. In this case, the author explains his 11-months journey to build a very profitable machine learning education business.
These Nudes Do Not Exist and I Don't Know Why This Startup Does Either: I also love these radically disruptive and apparently absurd ideas. TheseNudesDoNotExist sells fake machine learning generated nudes for $1. Who would buy that? I don't know, but I can see a future where any photo-realistic avatar can be created in no-time to transmit any kind of message in any kind of circumstance (i.e. a permanent assistant that reads and presents you all your RSS news and all your social network activity). And also, the rise deep fakes, of course.
My ordinary life: Improvements since the 1990s: Gwern is one of the most prolific and complete writers you will find online and I am sure we will share a lot of his writing here. In this case, he makes a quick review of some improvements that we take for granted now but used to be very different only some years ago.
Joan's links
68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice: In case you have been living under a rock and still didn't read the outstanding compilation of 68 capsules of wisdom by Kevin Kelly (of Wired and Whole Earth Catalog fame), do it right now. The post has a very high noise/signal ratio and includes pearls like:
To make mistakes is human. To own your mistakes is divine. Nothing elevates a person higher than quickly admitting and taking personal responsibility for the mistakes you make and then fixing them fairly. If you mess up, fess up. It’s astounding how powerful this ownership is.
and
Be prepared: When you are 90% done any large project (a house, a film, an event, an app) the rest of the myriad details will take a second 90% to complete.
If you are into photography you might enjoy my pictures of San Francisco under lockdown that I took a couple of months ago before the looters vandalized the area a few days ago. If you like those pictures (or the one in the header!) you can follow me on Instagram @jgamell
Have a great week ahead! It's almost hump day!