You might be eating Thanksgiving leftovers, but these URLs are fresh off the vine. Enjoy!
Why the New York Bodega is Here to Stay [Anna Kodé/New York Times] – GoPuff will not replace us! Doordash will not replace us! Bodegas provide community, geo specific goods and services, and a pathway for immigrants to work their way into the local economy. They are forever good. And besides, if they disappeared, where would all the Bodega Cats go?
The Production Capital Mosaic: Financing the New Industrial Deployment Age [Brett Bivens/Venture Desktop] – Brett reviews many of the emerging ways we think of providing capital to businesses and creates an important division: is the capital vehicle shaped like a company or a financing entity? Worth reading in full to really understand why he thinks this is a valuable distinction.
It’s the End of the (ARR) World and I Feel Fine [Brett Queener/Tales from the Bonfire] – Brett starts with a banger [“ARR was great for the SaaS age, but it may be as relevant as a Commodore 64 for the AI software era.”] and goes from there. He touches on impact for founders and execs; venture capitalists; and private equity models. If the AI world is about hiring, not buying, software, what else changes?
The Monks in the Casino: A brief theory of young men, “the loneliness crisis,” and life in the 21st century [Derek Thompson] – This is soooo good and starts threading together concerns Derek has about what economic degen as a way of life means for society, especially men.
This shift has moral as well as economic consequences. When a society pushes its citizens to take only financial risks, it hollows out the virtues that once made collective life possible: trust, curiosity, generosity, forgiveness. If you want two people who disagree to actually talk to each other, you build them a space to talk. If you want them to hate each other, you give them a phone.
Do Something Important, Quickly [Yoni Rechtman/99% Desirable] – “All VCs care about is the asymmetry of being right/making money without the risk of losing face.” At least he front stabs us instead of backstabs. He’s not wrong. And it’s a problem that is making our industry boring.
Why every country needs to master the Electric Tech Stack [Noah Smith/Noahpinion] – Most frameworks become overloaded as the creator tries to make everything fit their worldview. TBD whether the ‘Electric Tech Stack’ falls victim to this gravitational pull, but for now I like how it pulls together a set of industrial, economic, and technical capabilities that might define the coming decades. Batteries, Electric Motors and Power Electronics.
Enjoy some reading!