Good Friday - August 23, 2024

It’s Friday, so you know what time it is - an email from yours truly.

I got over 150+ questions from readers this week, so I’m here to give you what you want - answers.

Break out your morning iced latte (if you’re on the west coast) and your early afternoon bag of quest protein chips (#notsponsored), if you’re on the east coast.

Alright, let’s boogie.

Q: Uncle Shaan!

I’ve gobbled up a ton of MFM YouTube videos and you always talk about having a bias for action. But when I tried googling “how to take action” I couldn’t find anything, other than the National Council of Mathematics Teachers selling me a course (no joke).

So tell me, big dawg, how can I develop a bias for action? What’s the secret?

-Naeem from Dubai

It’s an interesting question - can becoming a high-action-bias person be taught?

I think so. Here’s what I would do:

1. First, you have to believe it’s a skill. If you don’t believe it’s a skill, then it’s just a trait you’re born with (or without).

In sports, they say a player has a ‘motor’ when he just keeps moving, and taking action. I think the concept of having a ‘motor’ applies to all areas of life, not just sports.

2. Like any skill, it takes reps. The good news is, you can start in small, safe areas of your life first.

You don’t want “quit my job to start the company” to be the first bold action you’ve ever done. Start by doing it around the house. When you have an idea to improve your home-office, grab the keys and drive to home depot, buy the parts, watch on youtube, and hammer it out in one night.

3. When you do it, pause to notice. Awareness is a superpower.

Every time you take action (instead of procrastinating, you pickup the phone and call. Instead of being tired at night, you lace up the shoes and go for a walk, etc)… take note of it.

But doing it isn’t enough. You have to take notice, to reinforce your brain:

4. Lastly – change your factory settings. Think of your brain like chatgpt. You put in a prompt, and it spits out an answer.

Instead of trying to make the AI smarter - it’s much easier to try just changing the prompt first.

I do this with my brain. My ‘default’ questions in a situation are “what should I do?” or “will this work?”...these are weak questions.

Better questions are:

• “how can I take massive action on this idea?”

• and “how can I move with speed on this?”

Just by adding those simple words like “massive action” and “move with speed”, the brain will come up with a completely different answer.

Q: Yooo Shaan, what’s up with you calling yourself “Uncle Shaan” - did your brother just have a kid or something?

I gotta know what the deal is.

-Dave (just became an uncle myself) from LA

Quick story time!

A few months ago, I was sitting around and said to myself: “I need a cooler nickname…” (yes, these are my thoughts when I’m alone).

I mean c'mon, names matter.

You’re telling me that Whoopie Goldberg would be as successful if she stuck with her real name, Caryn Johnson (ew)? No chance. 

So I started brainstorming… Shaan The Don…Shanny J….LL Cool Shaan….then boom, it came to me… Shaan P!

You know, like Gary V.

I thought it’d stick… so I started tossing it around casually, like when I was 14 at summer camp and got friend-zoned by a cute girl named Jessica and joked: “wouldn’t it be funny if we kissed”...laughing, while secretly wishing she’d say yes.

Anyways. Shaan P flopped. Nobody used it.

But then one day - my buddy George said I should create a YouTube channel where people can call in and ask questions to ‘Uncle Shaan’. Then my other friends started saying it. And now it’s kinda becoming a thing.

I dig it. I do have Big Uncle Energy. If I can be the internet’s fun rich uncle, that’d be grand.

Btw, there’s no lesson here besides: “don’t try to give yourself a nickname, that’s not how it works”

Q: In basketball, everyone discovered that shooting more 3 pointers than the other team is one of the best things you can do to win more games (which seems obvious in retrospect).

What’s the equivalent strategy that you think is underutilized in investing?

-Steve from Michigan

I love finding these edges. But they are hard to come by.

Last night I saw a TikTok of how baseball teams found an edge in their base running strategy (it’s cool to see people find an edge in a game that’s 100 yrs+ old).

As far as investing goes - if I knew, I’d be doing it, making stupid money, and sitting on my yacht instead of answering your email Steve.

But not knowing has never stopped me from giving an opinion - so here’s a half baked answer for you: FLIPPING. 

In real estate, you have both buy-and-hold investors, and flippers (buy, and sell quickly). 

But in tech investing, we only have buy-and-hold. Why? 

As an angel investor, I make a bunch of bets, then sit around for 10 years hoping 1-2 end up as multi-billion dollar winners.

But is there a flipping strategy for early stage investing? 

I’d have to run the numbers, but my estimate is that > 50% of my seed bets end up raising another round. With an average valuation increase of ~2.5-3X. 

So why don’t angel investors just “flip” their investments and sell at the next round? 

• Let’s say you start with 10 investments, $100k each

•  60% raise a new round at a 3X increase, and you sell all those winners

• You’d have turned $1M into $1.8M (80%) usually in under 2 years (~34% IRR, which outperforms 95% of venture funds, and with way more liquidity). 

• And as a bonus, for the founder, you’re taking less net dilution, because the investor in the seed round would swell his stake to the new investor (less dilution)

The reason people don’t do it is perception.

As an angel investor you’re supposed to be a true believer. You’re supposed to hold till exit/IPO. But those are just cultural norms, not rules.

As far as tech investing goes, this is the one strategy I’d love to see someone try.

Q: Yo! Whenever I see a celebrity that’s lost 50+ pounds, I just immediately assume they used Ozempic.

Seriously, look at this guy:

Who knows if he’s actually taking Ozempic or not to lose weight, but that’s besides the point.

To me if you’re taking Ozempic to lose weight, it’s the same as Sammy Sosa taking steroids to hit more home runs. You’re probably hitting more long balls, but you ain’t getting voted into the Hall of Fame.

Am I alone in thinking that these PEDs for normal people are cheating?

-Justin from Chicago (also salty Sammy Sosa isn’t in the Hall of Fame)

Let’s try to answer this without getting canceled…

“Hey! Easily offended people! Look over there! Someone on the internet is saying something stupid!”

(ok, I think they’re gone)

I am 100% Team “Ozempic-To-Lose-Weight-Is-Cheating”.

People are free to take it, but the respect that comes from someone working hard, disciplining their mind and body to change their habits and lose weight – I can’t give that same level of respect to someone taking an ozempy every 2 weeks.

Also, in a world where losing weight becomes easier, what becomes the new status symbol?

Back in the Victorian era, everyone was skinny (no food), so being fat was the status symbol. Will we go back to that?

Personally, I have fingers crossed that we go back to the Roman era when having a huge nose was considered being very masculine and attractive.

If that ever happens again, it’s my time baby!!

Q: Uncle Shaan!

I’ve heard you talk about how you sold your first company to Amazon - pretty insane to convince Bezos to buy your company. Hats off to you.

What’d you take from being on the inside of Amazon that you use in your companies today? What should I be using for my company?

-Drew from Bahston (Boston)

If I’m Uncle Shaan, then you’re family. And I can’t lie to my family.

We sold to Twitch (owned by Amazon), not Amazon directly. And I was only there for 2 years.

So it’s like I spent a summer in Bezos’ pool house, not the main house.

But there’s 2 things I took away:

1. I always assumed my broke-ass startups were doing things the dumb way, and big tech companies must be so sophisticated on the inside. Err. Wrong. Sure there were some impressive things, but it was mostly a zoo of mediocrity.

2. The best habit I took away was their writing culture. Writing memos forces a clarity of thought - and is the best way to communicate inside companies. Learning how to write the amazon 6-page memo has been something I’ve continued to use.

I wish I learned how to get as swole as Bezos, but we move.

Q: Shaan! (I don’t think I’m ready to call you Uncle Shaan yet)

My wife keeps telling me she’s scared of AGI…but lemme be honest, I have no clue what AGI actually means. (i thought it was a new athletic greens supplement at first)

Can you explain it to me like I’m 5? And should I be more scared of AGI or gaining 25 pounds from eating too many bags of Costco trail mix?

-Stephen from Nashville

You should for sure be more scared of gaining 25 lbs than AGI.

(In fact, an investor friend of mine who used to work with Peter Thiel texted me saying “GLP > GPT”. As in, Ozempic was a bigger deal than ChatGPT)

OK - so let’s try to answer your real question. What is AGI?

The definition that most genius types use is: “when computers are as smart as the smartest humans at a wide range of cognitive tasks”

This means, when computers are expert level at pretty much everything humans can do.

But the definition keeps changing, and nobody seems to agree.

We used to say we have AGI when we can pass the Turing test (basically, a human can’t tell if it’s chatting with a human or AI). The Turing test seemed like a big, unreachable milestone…but now AI has passed the test and nobody is freaking out.

I have my own definition: 

Because at that point, it’s over. The AI will get exponentially better, instantaneously. It will make rapid progress, without our involvement.

And that’s when things become murky. Will it just be a tool for humans? Or have an agenda on its own. And once it’s that powerful, what’s to stop a human from using it for evil? Weird times ahead.

That’s a wrap for today’s Good Friday.

Now do me a favor… tell me what you think!

I wrote it. You read it. How was it?

P.S. - if you wanna go read this on a dope website (seriously) or send to a friend, here’s the link: check it out!