Today is the 50th anniversary of Apple Computer Company.

In recognition, Sequoia published their investment memo written by the firm’s founder Don Valentine:

Note the following from the memo:

• “$600k buys 10%...very rich deal.”

• “Market: >$500M” (~2.7B adjusted for inflation)

• “Business: Home — Hobby Computers”

Quaint startups and building for hobbyists

While the valuation sensitivity is amusing when you consider how valuation-insensitive many VCs have become, I find the second and third bullet points far more interesting: smart people in Silicon Valley didn’t realize just how big personal computers would become.

3.5 years ago I wrote about how quaint ideas and tiny markets can turn into the biggest businesses.

Here’s an excerpt from that post on Apple:

Quaint startups can succeed by saturating a small market before moving into larger adjacent ones. If the transition to a bigger market works out, it can cause a quaint startup to turn into one of the most important companies in the world.

Consider Apple’s first computer. It was not a device for the uninitiated. It barely looked like what we’d think of a computer in modern terms. It was just a circuit board—no elegant case to enclose it or screen or keyboard included.

According to Steve Wozniak, he and Steve Jobs had planned to sell a bare circuit board with no components included. He thought they might be able to sell 50 of them to the hardware hobbyists they knew in Menlo Park—but it would not be easy. Instead of selling a bare circuit board that would require work for the purchaser to assemble, a personal computer retailer named Paul Terrell convinced the duo that customers wanted a prebuilt computer. Terrell offered to buy 50 immediately if they made them.

His experience selling the first Apple computer caused Steve Jobs to realize how a much larger group of people would be interested in a personal computer if it were ready to be used immediately upon purchase. That insight led to the Apple II, which included a sleek case that housed the internal hardware. It was a massive success and sold nearly five million units.

At first, [the computer] was a hobbyist tool. The Apple II was successful because we saw that for every hardware hobbyist that wanted to put a hardware kit together, thousands of software hobbyists didn’t know how to do that and didn’t have soldering irons but wanted to mess with software. So we sold the first ready-to-go personal computer.

- Steve Jobs, interview with Walt Mossberg (2003)

Few quaint startups discover a larger adjacent market and win it as Apple did with the Apple II. But that wasn’t the last time Apple accomplished the feat—nor the most impressive. Their most significant move to a larger adjacent market would come two decades later with the launch of the iPod in 2001. Their new music player and the iTunes store would cause the company to become one of the most important in the world—moving beyond dominating personal computers and into the broader technology and media industries.

In search of the quaint (that becomes the big)

It’s very easy for founders to become focused on the hot thing or the big thing.

It’s easier to get validation (and valuation) from investors and everyone thinks you are very cool and smart for going after something that is understood (consensus) as a good opportunity.

Make no mistake, there is money to be made doing that, and I enjoy working with founders who catch the wave right on time (exhilarating). But many of the great opportunities won’t seem widely obvious early on. Their markets might seem small, unimportant, or the customers simply not worth the hassle.

I look forward to working with more “quaint startups” in the future. If you’re a solo founder, be sure to reach out.

They were all invited specifically because Eno thought they were entirely musically incompatible:

"We got them together merely because I wanted to see what happens when you combine different identities like that and allow them to compete.

The situation is organized with the knowledge that there might be accidents, accidents which will be more interesting than what I had intended"

I believe in things that are developed through hard work. I always like people who have developed long and hard, especially through introspection and a lot of dedication. I think what they arrive at is usually a much deeper and more beautiful thing than the person who seems to have that ability and fluidity from the beginning.

I say this because it’s a good message to give to young talents who feel as I used to. You hear musicians playing with great fluidity and complete conception early on and you don’t have that ability. I didn’t. I had to know what I was doing. And yes, ultimately it turned out that these people weren’t able to carry their thing very far. I found myself being more attracted to artists who have developed through the years and become better and deeper musicians.

Miles Davis is an example of somebody that I think was a late arriver, even though he was recorded when he first came on the scene. You can hear how consciously he was soloing and how his knowledge was a very aware thing. He just constantly kept working and contributing to his own craft of writing and playing. And then at one point it all came together and he emerged with maturity, and he became a total artist and influence, making a kind of beauty that has never been heard before or since.

—Bill Evans, excerpted from Contemporary Keyboard, January 1981 for the back of The Paris Concert: Edition One

Some will tell you to make something people want. That’s true if you’re trying to build a business. But that’s not the only thing worth making. The more important work is making something (of yourself).

“Of yourself” is in parentheses for a reason. Let’s start with just “make something.”

There are three types of actions in this world:

1. Destroying: deriding, dismissing, insulting, tearing down.

2. Doing nothing: sometimes healthy, other times its own form of self-destruction. Putting off what you know you should do.

3. Making something: the act of revealing something new to yourself and the world.

It doesn’t have to be entirely original. It might be a variation on something that’s existed before. But the version you make is yours alone. That might not matter to others, but it should matter to you. Making something proves you’re capable of more than destruction or avoidance.

Even if it falls short of your own standards, it’s still valuable. You’ve transformed an idea in your mind into something you can hold in your hands. That transformation is a little like magic.

When you make something of yourself, it’s more than producing an object or a project. It’s embedding a part of you in the thing you’ve made — an externalization of your soul. That happens best when you’re not chasing others’ approval or shaping your work around their opinions, but simply following what feels right in the moment.

In the other sense of the phrase, to make something of yourself is to not settle for the status quo of who you are. That doesn’t happen on day one, or even day twenty. But maybe on day two hundred, you’ll look back and realize: making something was how you made something of yourself.

If you’re a solo founder apply for the Solo Founders Program. Exploring what’s next? Apply for ODF.

If you enjoyed this, check out the “Letterpress edition” on X and give it some love.

The romanticization of being a startup founder is kind of insane to me:

– You’re statistically unlikely to succeed

– You’ll have no life and be totally consumed

- Incredible lows

– You’re locking yourself in for 10+ years

This is insanely hard and NOT for everyone.

Either the investor is baiting us, or they don’t realize how much this echoes Ernest Shackleton’s supposed1 recruitment ad for the Endurance expedition:

Men wanted for hazardous journey.

Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness.

Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.

Nobody starts a company because it’s easy.

Anyone who takes their craft seriously — and endures rejection or, worse, indifference — knows it isn’t a clear route to stability or security.

This is about making something (of yourself).

Applications are currently open for…

• Solo Founders Program — make remarkable progress with other solo founders

• ODF’s 26th cohort — explore ideas and find collaborators

First public reply below — enjoy!

Subscribe now

What's the biggest moat for individuals?

It's a really interesting question. The best way to find your personal moat is to identify what you do well and what you enjoy doing. This connection isn't random — we usually like to do the things that we do well, and we usually are good at the things that we like to do.

If you struggle to know what you're good at or what you like doing, ask other people—they're usually far better judges than you are.

Ideally, you should find three things you're really good at. The unique combination of these strengths is what makes you special.

You should also figure out how to apply AI to all of this — AI is a huge lever in pretty much any field you enter. When you master AI and combine it with three distinct things you are good at, you have a really strong advantage compared to everyone else out there.

Watch the video reply on X or YouTube:

"Cringe" became the weapon of choice. Many wanted to do great things but feared showing genuine enthusiasm. Heaven forbid you take yourself too seriously.

Now the dam has burst. Greatness is rushing back into the culture.

You can't hold back human nature. The desire to achieve, to inspire and be inspired simply overwhelmed the barriers.

As intelligence becomes too cheap to meter, we embrace other human qualities: ambition and a desire to do our best.

You don't have to strive for greatness. But for the first time in a decade, society will celebrate you if you do.

The micro essay above was first published on X.

It partly inspired by Timothée Chalamet’s acceptance speech (watch on X or YouTube) at Screen Actors Guild awards.

Every other Friday I share a wide range of things I enjoyed in the last two weeks ranging from podcasts to articles, books, film, and music.

Curious to see what you think. If you enjoy any of the ideas in particular please let me know.

David Lynch

“We’re all capable of doing many types of things.”

“I just wanna fall in love with ideas.”

WATCH 🎥

For many years I didn’t really “get” David Lynch. I saw a few of his most celebrated films but they didn’t resonate much. That was until I saw The Straight Story — his most “conventional” movie and the only time he teamed up with Disney (see the music section for more on Disney). It became one of my favorite movies ever. I won’t go into plot details because if you’ve seen it you already know and if you haven’t you deserve to go in cold. It’s not only one of the most beautiful and poignant films ever made, it is also one of the best representations of what makes America and Americans wonderful.

After seeing The Straight Story, the absurd “Lynchian” movies began to resonate for me. I think I needed to see Lynch at his most plain and heartfelt to understand him at his most sincere but outrageous.

Lynch seemed to possess an incredible heart. I’ve compiled some ideas and quotes that I’ve seen shared over the last 24 hours that I found particularly wonderful. If you never “got” David Lynch perhaps The Straight Story and the ideas below might help you connect with him. If you already loved him and his work, my condolences for your loss.

Inside, we are ageless...and when we talk to ourselves, it's the same age of the person we were talking to when we were little. It's the body that is changing around that ageless center.

Lynch seemed to feel there was nothing worse than forgetting a good idea:

If a person forgets an idea that they love. It’s a horror. And it can lead to a real yearning to commit suicide.

(it’s funny and slightly disturbing how many times he said some version of this)

On the unpolished and imperfect:

"I hate slick and pretty things. I prefer mistakes and accidents. Which is why I like things like cuts and bruises - they're like little flowers. I've always said that if you have a name for something, like 'cut' or 'bruise,' people will automatically be disturbed by it. But when you see the same thing in nature, and you don't know what it is, it can be very beautiful."

(This reminds me of “Honor your mistake as a hidden intention” from Brian Eno)

On artists and suffering:

People might bring up Vincent van Gogh as an example of a painter who did great work in spite of—or because of—his suffering. I like to think that van Gogh would have been even more prolific and even greater if he wasn’t so restricted by the things tormenting him. I don’t think it was pain that made him so great—I think his painting brought him whatever happiness he had.

On Los Angeles:

I came to Los Angeles from Philadelphia, where I had lived for five years, attending art school. Philadelphia is known as the City of Brotherly Love, but when I was there, it was a hellhole. There wasn’t a lot of love in that city.

I arrived in L.A. at night, so it wasn’t until the next morning, when I stepped out of a small apartment on San Vicente Boulevard, that I saw this light. And it thrilled my soul. I feel lucky to live with that light.

I love Los Angeles. I know a lot of people go there and they see just a huge sprawl of sameness. But when you’re there for a while, you realize that each section has its own mood. The golden age of cinema is still alive there, in the smell of jasmine at night and the beautiful weather. And the light is inspiring and energizing. Even with smog, there’s something about that light that’s not harsh, but bright and smooth. It fills me with the feeling that all possibilities are available. I don’t know why. It’s different from the light in other places. The light in Philadelphia, even in the summer, is not nearly as bright. It was the light that brought everybody to L.A. to make films in the early days. It’s still a beautiful place.

He spoke about the Jasmine trees in Los Angeles to many people over the years:

Those are jasmine trees. At night, only at night, they open up and make this smell. Have you ever smelled the smell? It's the most incredible thing.

When I first came here I would go up into the hills at night and smell that smell.

And I'd think, John Wayne smelled this smell. Marilyn Monroe smelled this smell. And now I'm smelling this smell.

You know what that smell is? It's the smell of Hollywood. You should go in the Hills tonight and smell the smell. That's what you should do.

Next time I go to Los Angeles I’ll be sure to smell the Jasmine. Thank you, David, for everything.

Ideas, Etc

Invest yourself in everything you do. There’s fun in being serious.

- John Coltrane

The best way out is always through.

- Robert Frost

I just felt sometimes like I had to go run a mile at 10:30 at night. Why? I had no idea. BUT I KNEW if I did run a mile right now, it would be important that I did later on when opportunity came up. So I'd run a mile. I needed to be FAST. The reason I had such a successful career is cause all these other guys I was doing movies with in the 80s, who now can't draw anyone to the box office like I can, is cause I was running a mile while they were out drinkin' and partyin'.

- Tom Cruise

Incompetence in the limit is indistinguishable from sabotage

- Elon Musk

When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune.

- Albert Camus

Q: What product do founders want to buy from investors? A: “Improved odds”

- Bryce Roberts

Precociousness has an expiration date.

- Tamara Winter

Inspiration is perishable - act on it immediately.

- Naval Ravikant

Something I've been trying recently: wake up and go directly to work. Do not check anything - no messages, no emails, no news, no nothing. There's something destructive / distracting about checking the outside world that I don't fully understand. It loads my RAM with a ton of distractors and my attention can't focus properly and fully on the highest priority work item. After a few hours, get lunch and optionally gather world state.

- Andrej Karpathy

Multitudes - The Show

I kicked off “the show” version of Multitudes where I highlight ideas and people worth exploring future — you can get it on YouTube, Spotify and Apple.

86% of Food Contained Plastic: Inside PlasticList's Groundbreaking Study with Yaroslav Shipilov

Show Notes | Listen on Spotify and Apple

PlasticList released a groundbreaking report showing that 86% of tested foods in the Bay Area contain plastic chemicals. I sat down with Yaroslav Shipilov, one of the four people behind this ambitious project, to discuss not just the concerning findings, but also what it takes to pursue an unusual and impactful project like this.

Solving Chronic Pain and Long COVID: The Mind-Body Connection with Dr. Michael Donnino

Show Notes | Listen on Apple and Spotify

Last week, I sat down with Dr. Michael Donnino, a Harvard Medical School Professor and physician who's published over 280 medical research papers, to explore a provocative idea: that understanding the mind-body connection might be key to treating chronic pain, a condition affecting 8% of Americans and costing over $300 billion annually.

Music

Sofo Session by Gustav Lundgren Trio

YouTube | Spotify | Tidal

Gustav is an extraordinary jazz guitarist from Sweden. I particularly love the trio’s take on Giant Steps and The Time They Are A-Changin’.

Feed the Birds

One of Walt Disney's favorite songs. From co-writer Robert Sherman (he wrote the song with his brother, Richard):

On Fridays, after work, Walt Disney would often invite us into his office and we'd talk about things that were going on at the Studio. After a while, he'd wander to the north window, look out into the distance and just say, "Play it." And Dick would wander over to the piano and play "Feed the Birds" for him. One time just as Dick was almost finished, under his breath, I heard Walt say, "Yep. That's what it's all about.

Songs have been written about a myriad of subjects. 'Feed the Birds' is the first song written about the merits of giving charity.

Watch/Listen:

John Coltrane sketches and notes for A Love Supreme (“Buy reeds in SF”)

Images

The original iPhone display at Macworld 2007 showed off Zoolander:

That’s it for this installment of Multitudes. Have a wonderful weekend.

And I said, “You’re going to think I'm crazy, but this is what happened and I want to study it. I think this is huge. This could be a paradigm shift for medicine.”

Listen/Watch: YouTube | Apple | Spotify

Welcome to my new show Multitudes, where I highlight ideas and people worth exploring further. I don’t charge money for the show but you can support by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, or Spotify and, if you feel inclined, leaving a review, comment and/or thumbs up.

Subscribe now

Last week, I sat down with Dr. Michael Donnino, a Harvard Medical School Professor and physician who's published over 280 medical research papers, to explore a provocative idea: that understanding the mind-body connection might be key to treating chronic pain, a condition affecting 8% of Americans and costing over $300 billion annually.

My interest in this topic stems from personal experience. About two years ago, I found myself among the millions of people struggling with chronic back pain. Despite numerous medical tests and consultations, doctors couldn't identify the source of my pain. It was a frustrating and anxiety-inducing experience.

When a friend recommended "Healing Back Pain" by Dr. John Sarno, I was skeptical. How could a book succeed where extensive medical interventions had failed?

Remarkably, reading the book's central premise - that real physical pain can originate from mental processes rather than structural problems - led to my pain disappearing almost instantly.

When I recently shared this experience on X, the post reached nearly half a million views, with dozens of people reporting similar healing stories (see some examples at the bottom of this page).

Among those who responded was Dr. Donnino, whose journey paralleled my own: while working as a physician, he developed debilitating back pain. Sarno's approach not only helped him recover but inspired him to found the Mind Body Research Group, bringing scientific rigor to these healing techniques.

The Mind Body Research Group’s findings are transformative: they've demonstrated that mental processes alone can create and resolve very real physical symptoms — from chronic pain to shortness of breath.

Dr. Donnino emphasizes a crucial point: these symptoms aren't imaginary or "all in your head" — the pain and physical sensations are completely real. What's different is our understanding of their origin and treatment. For many people suffering from chronic pain, Long COVID, and other persistent conditions, the path to healing might not require new medications, but rather a deeper understanding of how our minds and bodies interact.

I’m interested to hear about your experiences with chronic pain and your reaction to this episode of Multitudes. Please comment below (or send me an email if you wish to keep things confidential). I’m hoping this episode helps people with their chronic pain — please share it with a friend, love one or colleague who might benefit.

Links

• Full episode transcript

• Mind Body Research Group’s website

• Dr. Michael Donnino and Julian on X

Are you exploring starting a company?

I started ODF to help people find the missing pieces — who they might build with, what they might build, etc. We’re over 5 years in and have helped over 1,000 startups launch — check out our top companies list. We’re launching our 24th ODF cohort in SF in late February. Learn more and apply.

Are you looking for funding for an ambitious project?

Merge is the place for microgrants online. We have a microgrant guide featuring video reviews, examples of successful applications, and more. It has already helped people raise >$100k in non-dilutive capital for their projects.

Miss the first episode of Multitudes?

Last week I published my conversation with Yaroslav Shipilov, one of the four people behind ambitious project PlasticList which released a groundbreaking report showing that 86% of tested foods in the Bay Area contain plastic chemicals. Listen/Watch on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify.

Bonus — below are some curated replies to my post from people who eliminated their chronic pain by reading the book Healing Back Pain by Dr. John Sarno:

I healed some severe pain in my arm that I had been experiencing for nearly 2 years by following the principles in this book. It isn’t *only* for backs, but for many types of pain (that aren’t caused by obvious and/or structural issues).

Literally a life changing book

This book changed my life a few years back. It’s hard to believe how effective this has been.

Literally the most important book I've read

This book literally changed my life! Read it over ten years ago. Have given out dozens of copies to friends.

Mine was in the shoulder and arm, very intense (from a cervical herniation according to MRI). Started melting away reading the intro to the book. Every time it flaired up, I read a bit and it went away. After about 2 weeks, gone.

Haha, we spoke about this book at a meetup and someone’s wrist pain went away. Just by listening to us talk about this book. True story.

It’s worth noting that not everyone reported success like those above. You can view all replies to my post here.

P.S. Hit reply if you enjoyed this or have thoughts for future episodes

Listen/Watch: YouTube | Apple | Spotify

Subscribe now

And I said, “You’re going to think I'm crazy, but this is what happened and I want to study it. I think this is huge. This could be a paradigm shift for medicine.”

Welcome to my new show Multitudes, where I highlight ideas and people worth exploring further. I don’t charge money for the show but you can support by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, or Spotify and, if you feel inclined, leaving a review, comment and/or thumbs up.

Last week, I sat down with Dr. Michael Donnino, a Harvard Medical School Professor and physician who's published over 280 medical research papers, to explore a provocative idea: that understanding the mind-body connection might be key to treating chronic pain, a condition affecting 8% of Americans and costing over $300 billion annually.

My interest in this topic stems from personal experience. About two years ago, I found myself among the millions of people struggling with chronic back pain. Despite numerous medical tests and consultations, doctors couldn't identify the source of my pain. It was a frustrating and anxiety-inducing experience.

When a friend recommended "Healing Back Pain" by Dr. John Sarno, I was skeptical. How could a book succeed where extensive medical interventions had failed?

Remarkably, reading the book's central premise - that real physical pain can originate from mental processes rather than structural problems - led to my pain disappearing almost instantly.

When I recently shared this experience on X, the post reached nearly half a million views, with dozens of people reporting similar healing stories (see some examples at the bottom of this page).

Among those who responded was Dr. Donnino, whose journey paralleled my own: while working as a physician, he developed debilitating back pain. Sarno's approach not only helped him recover but inspired him to found the Mind Body Research Group, bringing scientific rigor to these healing techniques.

The Mind Body Research Group’s findings are transformative: they've demonstrated that mental processes alone can create and resolve very real physical symptoms — from chronic pain to shortness of breath.

Dr. Donnino emphasizes a crucial point: these symptoms aren't imaginary or "all in your head" — the pain and physical sensations are completely real. What's different is our understanding of their origin and treatment. For many people suffering from chronic pain, Long COVID, and other persistent conditions, the path to healing might not require new medications, but rather a deeper understanding of how our minds and bodies interact.

I’m interested to hear about your experiences with chronic pain and your reaction to this episode of Multitudes. Please comment below (or send me an email if you wish to keep things confidential). I’m hoping this episode helps people with their chronic pain — please share it with a friend, love one or colleague who might benefit.

Links

• Full episode transcript

• Mind Body Research Group’s website

• Dr. Michael Donnino and Julian on X

Are you exploring starting a company?

I started ODF to help people find the missing pieces — who they might build with, what they might build, etc. We’re over 5 years in and have helped over 1,000 startups launch — check out our top companies list. We’re launching our 24th ODF cohort in SF in late February. Learn more and apply.

Are you looking for funding for an ambitious project?

Merge is the place for microgrants online. We have a microgrant guide featuring video reviews, examples of successful applications, and more. It has already helped people raise >$100k in non-dilutive capital for their projects.

Miss the first episode of Multitudes?

Last week I published my conversation with Yaroslav Shipilov, one of the four people behind ambitious project PlasticList which released a groundbreaking report showing that 86% of tested foods in the Bay Area contain plastic chemicals. Listen/Watch on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify.

Bonus — below are some curated replies to my post from people who eliminated their chronic pain by reading the book Healing Back Pain by Dr. John Sarno:

I healed some severe pain in my arm that I had been experiencing for nearly 2 years by following the principles in this book. It isn’t *only* for backs, but for many types of pain (that aren’t caused by obvious and/or structural issues).

Literally a life changing book

This book changed my life a few years back. It’s hard to believe how effective this has been.

Literally the most important book I've read

This book literally changed my life! Read it over ten years ago. Have given out dozens of copies to friends.

Mine was in the shoulder and arm, very intense (from a cervical herniation according to MRI). Started melting away reading the intro to the book. Every time it flaired up, I read a bit and it went away. After about 2 weeks, gone.

Haha, we spoke about this book at a meetup and someone’s wrist pain went away. Just by listening to us talk about this book. True story.

It’s worth noting that not everyone reported success like those above. You can view all replies to my post here.

P.S. Hit reply if you enjoyed this or have thoughts for future episodes

"You can just do things. That's the biggest truth that I think the world runs on. You can just follow your curiosity."

This episode kicks off my new show Multitudes, where I highlight ideas and people worth exploring further. I don’t charge money for the show but you can support by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, or Spotify and, if you feel inclined, leave a review or thumbs up.

Last week, PlasticList released a groundbreaking report showing that 86% of tested foods in the Bay Area contain plastic chemicals. I sat down with Yaroslav Shipilov, one of the four people behind this ambitious project, to discuss not just the concerning findings, but also what it takes to pursue an unusual and impactful project like this.

The origin story of PlasticList exemplifies how great projects can start: Yaroslav saw Nat Friedman's tweet about wanting to test Bay Area foods for plastic chemicals and, instead of just expressing interest, he built a prototype website in an afternoon. He kept iterating on it for a week without any response. Then, 20 minutes after launching an improved version with voting features, he got a DM from Nat: "Yo, what are you doing? You want to work on this?"

What was supposed to be a few weeks of work turned into a six-month journey involving:

• Reaching out to over 100 labs before finding the right one

• Shopping for hundreds of food samples across the Bay Area

• Testing everything from modern snacks to 80-year-old Ghirardelli chocolate

• Making surprising discoveries about which foods contained plastic chemicals

Some of the most fascinating findings weren't just about current foods - they also tested historical samples from as far back as the 1940s. While older foods also contained plastic chemicals, the types were different: older samples had more traditional phthalates, while newer foods showed higher levels of phthalate substitutes.

The conversation covers both the technical aspects of the project and the human elements of building something ambitious. As Yaroslav puts it: "You can just do things. That's the biggest truth that I think the world runs on. You can just follow your curiosity."

What stands out most to me about PlasticList is how it demonstrates that important work doesn't always require traditional institutions or massive resources - sometimes it just takes curiosity and the courage to start building.

Links

• Full episode transcript

• PlasticList’s report

• Yaroslav and Julian on X

Are you exploring starting a company?

I started ODF to help people find the missing pieces — who they might build with, what they might build, etc. We’re over 5 years in and have helped over 1,000 startups launch — check out our top companies list. We’re launching our 24th ODF cohort in SF in late February. Learn more and apply.

Are you looking for funding for an ambitious project like PlasticList?

Merge is the place for microgrants online. We built a community for people work on ambitious projects and a microgrant guide featuring video reviews, examples of successful applications, and more, that has already helped people raise >$100k in non-dilutive capital for their projects.

P.S. Hit reply if you enjoyed this or have thoughts for future episodes.

Every other Friday I share a wide range of things I enjoyed in the last two weeks ranging from podcasts to articles, books, and music.

Curious to see what you think. If you enjoy any of the ideas in particular please let me know.

I recently did a gig in Denmark, and Bob Dylan wanted to talk to me about touring. So I met him where all the buses are parked, at this big festival, and we eyeballed each other and smiled in the darkness. It was pissing with rain, two hooded creatures in a blacked-out car park, and I said to him: “Hey, man, you never stop!”

He looked at me, smiled and said: “What’s to stop for?”

- Robert Plant

Sometimes someone confesses a sin in order to take credit for it.

- John von Neumann

Startups, if they are going to make it, have a set of things they need to do that don’t need “more time” but instead mainly need courage.

- Garry Tan

Quick Links and Ideas

• Absolutely loved reading this sentiment from one of Dhruv Bindra’s mentors who he met via cold email:

  We should always encourage those who inherit the mess we made.

• Putting a cheap air filter in a classroom leads to roughly the same increase in student test outcomes as the best charter schools in the country ($18k/y)

• How Employer.com acquired Bench Accounting in under 48 Hours

  “What used to take five years or six years and tens of millions of dollars in VC can be done in six months and very limited amount of money now with a very good team with all the open APIs and products you can plug into. There's a bit of a buy-versus-build inflection point in the last two years where tech valuations were very much inverted off of historical norms.”

• A reminder that you can significantly reduce the plasticizers in your body by donating blood or plasma!

• There are a lot of similarities between the Internet and the electric industry. They are both thin, horizontal enabling layers that go across lots of different industries — check out Jeff Bezos’ recent interview

  These horizontal layers like electricity and compute and now artificial intelligence, they go everywhere. There is not a single application that you can think of that is not going to be made better by AI

• Tyler Tringas of Calm Fund wrote a public post about pausing on new investments:

  I’m switching my primary focus to building my own products, operating businesses, and compounding cashflow.” We’ll see more of this in the months and years ahead.

  The scope of what problems can be truly tackled by one founder or a very small team has expanded so much that it includes virtually all SaaS businesses.

• Peter Thiel on Tetragrammaton

  There's an argument I've made that maybe at some point the network effects can shift from being positive to negative. So you have positive network effects where you have the wisdom of crowds and you're connected with all these people and you have these positive externalities and you communicate and you get ideas.

  And then maybe there's a point where network effects become negative and the wisdom of crowds becomes the madness of crowds and it's dominated by group think or political correctness.

• I’ve recently been thinking and reading a lot about public goods. I found this excerpt from The Art of Doing Science and Engineering interesting:

  As a regulated monopoly, cautious of a Federal Trade Commission which had not yet been declawed, Bell Labs imposed upon itself an unusual responsibility—its workers saw themselves as bound to operate in the public interest. And what fruits that restriction yielded.

• Collection of insane and fun facts about SQLite.

  SQLite does not have a Code of Conduct (CoC), rather Code of Ethics derived from "instruments of good works" from chapter 4 of The Rule of St. Benedict

PlasticList

Finding out how many plastic chemicals all of us really eat seemed like a good point to start, because (1) we could test that with precision and (2) if it turned out we don’t eat plastic chemicals, then maybe we shouldn’t care about their alleged health harms. So we got to work.

PlasticList launched a week ago and announced they had detected plastic chemicals in 86% of the foods tested. I sat down with 1/4 of the team — Yaroslav Shipilov — for a wide-ranging conversation about the project (we pull up lots of results and studies on screen) and the meta idea of pursuing interesting and ambitious projects.

The episode is coming next week and marks the launch of Weisser’s Multitudes show where I’ll be hosting conversations with builders, scientists, and artists you should know.

That’s it for this installment of Multitudes. Have a wonderful weekend.

Jimmy Carter’s White House Jazz Festival

This event in 1978 featured an unparalleled lineup of jazz legends.

Remarkably, a full recording exists from an old radio broadcast. Enjoy not only the performances but also the audience noise and the dialogue between tracks:

You’ll be glad to know that the White House food menu for the festival was jambalaya, salad, and pecan pie.

Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?

The second time I visited New Orleans was when David Bowie passed away. I was traveling around the country playing music and had spent the night before searching around in the dark on an island off of Pensacola looking for free camping.

I woke up the next morning to learn that Preservation Hall Jazz Band was leading a second line for Bowie later that day. I jumped into the car and headed west on Highway 10 to the French Quarter.

I caught up with the band (and, randomly, Arcade Fire) and felt myself lifted off the ground the by the crush of humanity as we made our way around the quarter mourning in the joyous way only New Orleanians seem to have perfected.

The recent act or terrorism in the French Quarter is only the latest in an unnecessary, unjustifiable, and seemingly unending tragedies afflicting the city. Regardless, the strength and soul of New Orleans will never die.

Enjoy this wonderful song about New Orleans from Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday.

That’s it for this installment of Multitudes. Have a wonderful weekend.

The new owner, Jesse Tinsley, just shared how they pulled that off… here are my key takeaways:

What Happened

The deal came together over the course of a weekend. Jesse initially reached out via LinkedIn on a Saturday, got connected with Bench’s team, and was in near-continuous talks for 24–48 hours to hammer out a “binding agreement.”

Speed was critical—both in structuring the deal quickly and in standing Bench back up to avoid losing thousands of customers and hundreds of employees. Employer.com’s existing “shared services” model (covering engineering, finance, corporate development, and operations) allows them to handle the acquisition like Bench at a pace that traditional private equity firms would have found challenging if not downright impossible.

Once they reached an agreement, the focus shifted to re-hiring Bench employees who had effectively lost their jobs when Bench shut down, restoring customer access, and reassuring everyone that Employer.com is profitable and therefore not reliant on securing additional external venture funding. They plan to honor all prepaid subscriptions and invest in regaining customer trust.

What can founders learn + what’s coming

Speed

“Speed wins deals and the ability to execute on them. If it’s your first time buying a company, there’s no way. We’ve made quite a few offers in the last few years, closed on 10 now. It's not our first rodeo. Even then, it’s stressing the bounds of sanity to get something done in 24 hours and, more importantly, take care of hundreds of employees and thousands of customers.”

Why acquire Bench

“It fits our product roadmap. It was super serendipitous…I saw that news. I was like, ‘This is perfect.’ It checks a lot of boxes for us. It was just a really good synergistic opportunity, so we went for it.”

Maintaining Customer Trust

“If you haven't heard, we're honoring all prepaid Bench services even though we will not have the revenue from that directly ourselves.”

“Number one is making sure that the existing customers are taken care of…there’s a ton of panic across the ecosystem, and understandably so.”

Profitability and Stability for Customers

“We're profitable. We're not reliant on raising additional capital. We never have been, so it's just a very different calculus for us. There's not going to be some sudden shut-off again. So that's just something to be very clear about.”

Buy-versus-Build

“What used to take five years or six years and tens of millions of dollars in VC can be done in six months and very limited amount of money now with a very good team with all the open APIs and products you can plug into. There's a bit of a buy-versus-build inflection point in the last two years where tech valuations were very much inverted off of historical norms. So we could buy businesses (this isn't specific to Bench — just to be clear — this a thesis) at two to three times ARR, which I think is a very good fundamental decision, especially if it fits a larger product strategy and especially when the market turns.

That's been something we've been executing on pretty extensively. And I think if you looked at our full suite of products, we have product parity in less than 12 months with companies that spent hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital and are not profitable within six or seven years.”

“Post-close we’ll be under 500 employees, and we are projected to hit 100 million ARR in early 2025. You’ll see a lot more businesses have huge amounts of ARR in the future with very small teams.”

Shared Services and Integration

“We have a shared resource team across all of our different products and companies. They're able to dive in and run with these M&A integrations a lot quicker than your average acquisition.”

“Our CTO and COO will be jumping in to be full-time on Bench for the foreseeable future. I will be a pseudo-interim CEO and making decisions there that need to be done, but it definitely won’t be me in three to six months.”

(Please forgive any potential errors in my transcription — striving for accuracy of intended message)

Employer.com is actively rolling up and integrating multiple acquisitions (they have closed around 10 prior deals and have two more in progress) as part of a broader plan to build a comprehensive workforce and accounting product suite.

Thank you to Jesse for sharing in public after a crazy ~48 hours and @CoFoundersNik for hosting the call.

- Julian

Tolkien’s Father Christmas Letters (1925)

For over twenty years, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote Christmas letters to his children. Each letter came from Father Christmas himself, telling stories of life at the North Pole.

The letters described Father Christmas's adventures with his clumsy friend the North Polar Bear. They included detailed illustrations and writing that made them feel magical and real.

The Tolkien family published these letters as The Father Christmas Letters. Here's one from 1925, along with Tolkien's original artwork. Pay special attention to his handwritten notes in the margins — they’re worth they effort to read.

I am dreadfully busy this year - it makes my hand more shaky than ever when I think of it - and not very rich. In fact, awful things have been happening, and some of the presents have got spoilt and I haven't got the North Polar Bear to help me and I have had to move house just before Christmas, so you can imagine what a state everything is in, and you will see why I have a new address. It all happened like this: one very windy day last November my hood blew off and went and stuck on the top of the North Pole. I told him not to, but the North Polar Bear climbed up to the thin top to get it down - and he did. The pole broke in the middle and fell on the roof of my house, and the North Polar Bear fell through the hole it made into the dining room with my hood over his nose, and all the snow fell off the roof into the house and melted and put out all the fires and ran down into the cellars where I was collecting this year's presents, and the North Polar Bear's leg got broken. He is well again now, but I was so cross with him that he says he won't try to help me again. I expect his temper is hurt, and will be mended by next Christmas. I send you a picture of the accident, and of my new house on the cliffs above the North Pole (with beautiful cellars in the cliffs). If John can't read my old shaky writing (1925 years old) he must get his father to. When is Michael going to learn to read, and write his own letters to me? Lots of love to you both and Christopher, whose name is rather like mine.

Musical prodigy Brenda Lee recording "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" at age 13

Earlier this week, I learned that this song was recorded by a 13-year-old. It’s a remarkable performance as Brenda Lee sounds like someone at least twice that age. Play it in the background as you read the rest (YouTube / Spotify).

It’s interesting to contrast how talent was discovered and developed in the 1950s compared to now. Lee grew up she sharing a bed with her brother and sister in houses without running water. She began singing solos every Sunday at church:

Though her family did not have indoor plumbing until after her father's death, they had a battery-powered table radio that fascinated Brenda as a baby. At age five, she won first place at her school's talent show contest, where she sang "Take Me Out to the Ball Game". Her performance received positive reviews, leading her to make regular appearances on local radio and television shows.

I was inspired by the the story of Brenda (and presumably her mother — she was just 10 at the time) making a serious short-term monetary sacrifice to pursue something bigger. At the time Brenda was the primary breadwinner for the family:

Lee's breakthrough came in February 1955, when she turned down $30 ($334 in 2022 value) to appear on a Swainsboro radio station in order to see Red Foley and a touring promotional unit of his ABC-TV program Ozark Jubilee in Augusta. An Augusta disc jockey persuaded Foley to hear her sing before the show. Foley did and agreed to let her perform "Jambalaya" on stage that night, unrehearsed. Foley later recounted the moments following her introduction:

“I still get cold chills thinking about the first time I heard that voice. One foot started patting rhythm as though she was stomping out a prairie fire but not another muscle in that little body even as much as twitched. And when she did that trick of breaking her voice, it jarred me out of my trance enough to realize I'd forgotten to get off the stage. There I stood, after 26 years of supposedly learning how to conduct myself in front of an audience, with my mouth open two miles wide and a glassy stare in my eyes.”

3 years later, Lee would record Rockin’ in the middle of a hot Nashville summer.

“Rockin’” was written by Johnny Marks, a Jewish songwriter who also penned “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “A Holly Jolly Christmas.” According to Lee, who struck up a lifelong friendship with Marks, after he wrote the song he told a publisher friend, “I want Brenda Lee to do this song.” Looking back, Lee isn’t quite sure what led Marks to seek her out: “I was only 12, and I had not had a lot of success in records, but for some reason he heard me and wanted me to do it. And I did.”

The song didn't catch on at first. It only became a hit when it was re-released after Lee became famous - just like The Wizard of Oz, which became a classic only after Judy Garland became a star through her role in the Christmas film Meet Me in St. Louis (highly recommended)

Churchill’s Christmas Message (1941)

In December 1941, just weeks after Pearl Harbor, Churchill gave a remarkable Christmas Eve speech from the White House rather than his home in Britain. What stands out is how he does two things at once: he highlights everything Britain and America share in common, while making the case that even in the darkest days of war, celebrating Christmas matters more than ever.

December 24, 1941 | Washington, D.C.
I spend this anniversary and festival far from my country, far from my family, yet I cannot truthfully say that I feel far from home. Whether it be the ties of blood on my mother’s side, or the friendships I have developed here over many years of active life, or the commanding sentiment of comradeship in the common cause of great peoples who speak the same language, who kneel at the same altars and, to a very large extent, pursue the same ideals, I cannot feel myself a stranger here in the centre and at the summit of the United States. I feel a sense of unity and fraternal association which, added to the kindliness of your welcome, convinces me that I have a right to sit at your fireside and share your Christmas joys.

This is a strange Christmas Eve. Almost the whole world is locked in deadly struggle, and, with the most terrible weapons which science can devise, the nations advance upon each other. Ill would it be for us this Christmastide if we were not sure that no greed for the land or wealth of any other people, no vulgar ambition, no morbid lust for material gain at the expense of others, had led us to the field. Here, in the midst of war, raging and roaring over all the lands and seas, creeping nearer to our hearts and homes, here, amid all the tumult, we have tonight the peace of the spirit in each cottage home and in every generous heart. Therefore we may cast aside for this night at least the cares and dangers which beset us, and make for the children an evening of happiness in a world of storm. Here, then, for one night only, each home throughout the English-speaking world should be a brightly-lighted island of happiness and peace.

Let the children have their night of fun and laughter. Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play. Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us, resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world.

And so, in God’s mercy, a happy Christmas to you all.

Every other Friday I share a wide range of things I enjoyed in the last two weeks ranging from podcasts to articles, books, and music.

Curious to see what you think. If you enjoy any of the ideas in particular please let me know.

“Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.”

- Richard Feynman

Seems like your creative well has dried up? Here’s advice Elton John gave Chappell Roan:

“The advice he gave me was that the songs will come,” said Roan, adding that John spoke of the period after his first album. “He thought that he wouldn’t have the ideas, but they were absolutely there. He just had to let them come to him. So that’s a good reminder.” (source)

Stanley Kubrick on the role of directors:

A director is a kind of idea and taste machine; a movie is a series of creative and technical decisions, and it's the director's job to make the right decisions as frequently as possible. Shooting a movie is the worst milieu for creative work ever devised by man. It is a noisy, physical apparatus; it is difficult to concentrate -- and you have to do it from eight-thirty to six-thirty, five days a week. It's not an environment an artist would ever choose to work in. The only advantage is has is that you must do it, and you can't procrastinate. (source)

Anthony Bourdain on enjoying the work:

I suggested once to a maniacal barbecue professional that cooking well was not a profession, it was a calling. He laughed and went further: 'It’s an illness.' I knew just what he meant. You must like cooking for other people, even if you neither know nor like them. You must enjoy the fact that you are nourishing them, pleasing them, giving the best you’ve got." (source)

Joan Didion developing as a writer through editing:

At the time, Talmey was more than 20 years into her writing career. Sensing Didion's eagerness to learn, Talmey would regularly give Didion practice exercises. Among others, Talmey would assign her to write a 300-word story, and when Didion submitted her 300 words, Talmey would tell her to pare it down to 50 words. “We wrote long and published short,” Talmey said, “and by doing that Joan learned to write.” Didion would recall Talmey telling her, “Run it through again, sweetie, it’s not quite there.” “Prune it out, clean it up, make the point.”

(source with even more interesting ideas)

“Health and salvation can be found only in motion.”

Søren Kierkegaard’s 1847 letter to his sister-in-law who was often bedridden and suffering from depression:

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. Even if one were to walk for one's health and it were constantly one station ahead—I would still say: Walk! Besides, it is also apparent that in walking one constantly gets as close to well-being as possible, even if one does not quite reach it—but by sitting still, and the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Health and salvation can be found only in motion. If anyone denies that motion exists, I do as Diogenes did, I walk. If anyone denies that health resides in motion, then I walk away from all morbid objections. Thus, if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right."

Peter Thiel on maintaining close friendships

Shortly before graduating, I gave Peter a call for some advice about, among other things, relationships

‘How’d you manage to stay so close with so many college friends as you all got older and busier?’ I asked

‘Find a way to do business together’

(From Anjney)

Links and Ideas

• We launched the Merge Microgrant Guide — the v0 prototype has already helped people get >$100k in funding and this version is 10x better in every way.

• Big changes to H1-B from Homeland Security going into effect in January — deep dive into what it all means.

• My conversation with Cal.com CEO/Founder Bailey Pumfleet (YouTube / Apple / Spotify) — one of the fastest growing infrastructure companies in recent years.

  People are very willing to pay for things that they don’t want to tackle themselves.

  The thing which you’ll notice is whenever I pitch cal.com to customers is I almost always never say open source.

  

• The Cold Email Handbook — extensive and invaluable advice

• Fascinating AMA by a McDonalds franchisee

• Engineer by Day, Venture Capitalist by Night by Casey Caruso who just announced her new fund, Topology.

  I don’t think about my jobs as work. I think of them as structured ways to explore my interests.

• New essay by Michael Nielsen: "How to be a wise optimist about science and technology?"

• Tyler Cowen on how to read a book using o1

  The core intuition is simply that you should be asking more questions.

• Palmer Luckey’s revenge file folder

  

• I was just on a podcast talking about ODF, Merge, and more. YouTube / Apple / Spotify

  Our belief is that if you're super smart and ambitious and you are curious about the world, that no kid should be held back from being able to make progress because they have a thousand dollar barrier. (check out Merge for microgrants)

  We want to constantly be eliminating all of the barriers that are keeping people from making progress on great ideas.

  Focus in on the thing that aligns with whatever you want to do versus what other people think you should be doing.

Karpathy’s advice for undergrads he wished someone had told him when I was one:

Undergrads tend to have tunnel vision about their classes. They want to get good grades, etc. The crucial fact to realize is that noone will care about your grades, unless they are bad. For example, I always used to say that the smartest student will get 85% in all of his courses. This way, you end up with somewhere around 4.0 score, but you did not over-study, and you did not under-study.

Your time is a precious, limited resource. Get to a point where you don't screw up on a test and then switch your attention to much more important endeavors. What are they?

Getting actual, real-world experience, working on real code base, projects or problems outside of silly course exercises is extremely imporant. Professors/People who know you and can write you a good reference letter saying that you have initiative, passion and drive are extremely important. Are you thinking of applying to jobs? Get a summer internship. Are you thinking of pursuing graduate school? Get research experience! Sign up for whatever programs your school offers. Or reach out to a professor/graduate student asking to get involved on a research project you like. This might work if they think you're driven and motivated enough. Do not underestimate the importance of this: A well-known professor who writes in their recommendation letter that you are driven, motivated and independent thinker completely dwarfs anything else, especially petty things like grades. It also helps a lot if you squeeze in at least one paper before you apply. Also, you should be aware that the biggest pet peeve from their side are over-excited undergrad students who sign up for a project, meet a few times, ask many questions, and then suddenly give up and disappear after all that time investment from the graduate student's or professor's side. Do not be this person (it damages your reputation) and do not give any indication that you might be.

Other than research projects, get involved with some group of people on side projects or better, start your own from scratch. Contribute to Open Source, make/improve a library. Get out there and create (or help create) something cool. Document it well. Blog about it. These are the things people will care about a few years down the road. Your grades? They are an annoyance you have to deal with along the way. Use your time well and good luck. (source)

Bonus — Karpathy’s book list: of ~200 books I've read, the few that stayed with me over time and I find myself often thinking back to or referring to, in ~random order (view list)

My Old School by Steely Dan (Spotify)

That’s it for this installment of Multitudes. Have a wonderful weekend.

Every other Friday I share a wide range of things I enjoyed in the last two weeks ranging from podcasts to articles, books, and and music.

Curious to see what you think. If you enjoy any of the ideas in particular please let me know.

Happy Belated (12/5) birthday to Walt Disney who was born this week in 1901.

Here’s Walt’s first business card from when he was still in Missouri:

• Walt had little patience with those whose thinking was earthbound.

• He was adamant about not selling, about not surrendering control, no matter how badly he needed revenue. Why? Because he didn't want to just be another animation producer.

• “If we lose the detail, we lose it all.”

(10 more ideas/quotes on Walt Disney at the bottom of this issue)

Links and Ideas

• Sam Altman in 2020:

  Let yourself occasionally get a little screwed in exchange for not having to live with your guard up all the time. It’s worth it.

• It all began with a picture… by C.S. Lewis

  All my seven Narnian books, and my three science-fiction books, began with seeing pictures in my head. At first they were not a story, just pictures. The Lion all began with a picture of a Faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself: ‘Let’s try to make a story about it.’

• Newly discovered footprints provide physical evidence for the co-existence of multiple hominid lineages in Kenya 1.5M years ago—something that has only been inferred previously from overlapping dates for scattered fossils.

• Emerson on individuals and institutions:

  A man Caesar is born, and for ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius, that he is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man; as, Monachism, of the Hermit Antony; the Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called "the height of Rome"; and all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons.

• The Religion of Ramp is the first Extendable Article by Every which includes an AI chat with access to all of the sources they used to write the piece — including hours of original interviews and research.

• Why anesthesiologists frequently charging patients an out-of-network rate at an in-network facility appears to be intentional.

• Words I'm leaving behind in 2024 by Kevin Espiritu who started the massively successful Epic Gardening YouTube channel (~3.5M subscribers) and adjacent businesses.

• Download the complete collection of +200 essays from Paul Graham’s website and export them in EPUB, and Markdown.

• Norm MacDonald on his improvisational technique applied to standup comedy:

  I have a fantastic punchline [predetermined] and then I just wander around. I used to do it by rote. On Letterman you had to do 5 minutes and you had to do it word-for-word. But I'm not a good enough comic actor to pretend it's my first time saying it. So instead I just start yapping and think of little jokes knowing the giant joke is coming. I'm just circling it like the moon is circling this whirling cinder we call earth.

• You can apparently make scrambled eggs with an espresso machine (using the steam wand). It’s supposedly incredible — anyone in SF have a machine we can try this with? :)

• Useful prompt to generate a versatile meal plan with ChatGPT/Claude including menu, shopping list, and prep schedule.

• Nathan Baschez has been building Lex — the best word processor ever — and shared some lessons on growth after launching their paid plan 12 months ago:

  “[Growth is] like a pyramid where you can't skip the base even though it's not as obvious that it drives sales But all the growth has been because of continual improvements to the below”:

  

New (and old) music:

• Sahib Shihab and the Danish Radio Jazz Group (1965) and Sahib’s Jazz Party (1964) — I discovered Sahib when Noémie got me a reissue of Danish Radio from a boutique jazz label in Paris (the median sales price for an original copy is $4,210.52). This is truly wonderful music that works well at all times of the day, for close listening, or as a background soundtrack to thoughtful work, or a party.

  Sahib takes flight on saxophone and flute. The Danish Radio album features a huge big band sort of sound but not at all stuffy like you might imagine when you hear the term “big band”. Jazz Party is more of a standard jazz band lineup and was reissued last week on Record Store Day and includes an additional 30 minutes of bonus material from the same concert at Jazzhus Monmartre.

• Beethoven Blues (2024) by Jon Batiste — I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a pianist play such virtuosic yet seemingly effortless manner. This new record combines Beethoven with the gumbo of influences that make Batiste one of the most compelling artists to come out of New Orleans in decades.

More about Walt Disney for his Birthday Week

• Walt was interested in improving product as a matter of personal pride and psychological need.

• When I say Universal Pictures or 20th Century Fox, you don't have anything special in your mind. If I say Disney, you have something special in your mind.

• Disney built an environment where excellence was expected. Part of Walt’s secret was that in insisting on quality from individuals of whom it had never been required, he inspired commitment.

• He often griped that when he hired veteran animators, he had to put up with their goddamn poor working habits from doing cheap pictures. It was easier, he believed, to start from scratch with young art students and indoctrinate them in the Disney system.

• He would hire for enthusiasm and youthful enthusiasm over experience. He decided he wanted to grow his own talent and winded up starting his own training school.

• “The thing I resent most is people try to keep me in well worn grooves. We have to keep blazing new trails.”

• His matra to remind himself of the constant need for reinvention was “You can't top pigs with pigs.” — he even pasted it inside his hat.

• Detractors on Disneyland: “All the proven moneymakers are conspicuously missing. There's no roller coasters. There's no Ferris wheel. There's no carny games. Things like the castle and the pirate ship are cute, but they aren't rides, so there's no economic reason to build them. There's too many things here that do not produce revenue. Walt's screwy ideas about cleanliness and great landscape maintenance were economic suicide.”

• All of the things had never been done before. Walt had gathered up all these people who had never designed a theme park.

• Often he squatted down and commented, “can you see little kids looking up at this?” Most of his planners had never once considered looking at the theme park from the vantage point of a child.

That’s it for this installment of Multitudes. Have a wonderful weekend.

Curious to see what you think. If you enjoy any of the ideas or links in particular please let me know.

Quick Links

• If you read one thing this weekend may it be this from Nick Cave on cynicism and hopefulness.

  • Excerpt: "Cynicism is not a neutral position—and although it asks almost nothing of us, it is highly infectious and unbelievably destructive. In my view, it is the most common and easy of evils."

• Kids can develop perfect pitch if you expose them to enough sufficiently complex music before the age of 5.

• OpenAI Email Archives (from Musk v. Altman)

• Thread on Doug Burgum — the current Governor of North Dakota and possible incoming Secretary of the Interior.

• A novel written autonomously by 10 teams of 10 AI agents (GitHub repo)

• Someone managed to digitize and “reprint” a scent.

• “The most ambitious 16 year old builder in energy tech” Merge Club interview

Benchmark GP Bill Gurley on why “TAM conservatism” often hurts investors

These ideas from Gurley remind me of my essay Quaint startups become the next big thing. Source (with video): Startup Archive

I’ve found that TAM conservatism hurts you more than it helps you as an investor. If you feel like something is super disruptive and it’s unlocking things, your optionality to build on top of that is going to be pretty spectacular.”

Bill recalls NYU professor Aswath Damodaran’s conclusion that Uber was worth only $5.9 billion given the size of the taxi market.

There are multiple reasons why this is a flawed assumption. When you materially improve an offering, and create new features, functions, experiences, price points, and even enable new use cases, you can materially expand the market in the process. The past can be a poor guide for the future if the future offering is materially different than the past.”

Sizing the market for a disruptor based on an incumbent’s market is like sizing the car industry off how many horses there were in 1910.”

Mentava makes software to help pre-schoolers get to a 2nd grade reading level.

They also recently released a physical book: Alphabet Sounds. It went to #1 on the new Children’s Reading books and #15 overall best-selling children’s vocabulary book on Amazon. They sell the book at cost and it’s a great gift for friends with young kids. More about the book and their work on this X post by founder Niels.

Legendary documentary filmmaker Errol Morris on hope, investigation, and technological innovation.

Morris won an Oscar for Best Documentary Picture and pioneered a technique for documentary film called Interrotron which enables the subject to “look” directly at the interviewer/camera.

This is the technique used by every modern documentary where it feels like the subject is looking right into your eyes as they speak. There’s an fascinating page talking more about the technique that is no longer on the internet but here’s the backup on the Internet Archive.

Two ideas on filmmaking from a talk he gave earlier this evening:

When I go into making a film, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm an investigator at heart. I'm trying to figure it out.

It would be stupid to be confident that just because you make a movie, that it's going to make a difference. One makes these things, one reports on these things, out of a kind of hopefulness, insane hopefulness. But I'm always reminded of this conversation between Max Brod and Franz Kafka. Max said to Franz, “Surely you believe in hope?” and Franz said, “Yes, of course. Just not for us.”

Taj Mahal on the roots of the blues

I recently attended a film screening of Sounder (Tubi | Amazon) at the 4 Star Theater. You likely haven’t heard of this movie — I hadn’t — but it was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar in 1972. Unfortunately for Sounder’s cast and crew The Godfather also came out that year.

Taj Mahal put together the musical score and also played a small role in the film. If you’ve never heard Taj Mahal, he might be the finest living blues musician though describing him as such under-emphasizes the scope of his mastery of musical styles. I had the pleasure of sitting two seats down from him at the screening where he played a set to kick off the evening:

6 hour podcast on the history of Facebook/Meta

Excellent listen. I’ve transcribed a few of my favorite ideas below.

Acquired hosts on Zuckerberg dropping out of Harvard:

Do you know what else Mark does on the same evening that they launch Columbia University [Weisser: Columbia was the 2nd school launched after Harvard]?

He goes to hear Bill Gates speak on campus. That was the same night. During the speech Bill mentions that he actually felt comfortable dropping out of Harvard because he discovered that Harvard had this really generous leave policy that you could take an infinite leave of absence and pursue something else and come back anytime you want. Mark would actually say later that Bill saying that at the event was part of what got him comfortable doing the same thing.

Sheryl Sandberg on going all-in on mobile

We just stopped caring about the right side ads on desktop. We took every engineering resource we could off of that and we put it on mobile and we knew we were going to miss the current quarter but this was us trading the present for the future and all we cared about was our future.

She was sitting there with Mark late at night when they arrived at this plan of foregoing a lot of desktop revenue to basically bet it all on figuring out mobile revenue.

She said:

Well Mark, nobody can fire you and only you can fire me. So if you're in, I'm in.

Later, after the facebook.com blew up, Mark told the Harvard Crimson in an interview:

I don’t really know what the next big thing is because I don’t spend my time making big things. I spend time making small things. And then when the time comes, I put them together.

Acquired hosts on Zuckerberg’s pathfinding:

It’s a very specific way of carrying yourself through the world where you don’t hold too tightly to the path you’re on. Obviously, Mark is incredibly driven to the goal of connecting all the people in the world and doing that through Meta, but he’s very, very open and flexible to the exact path that it’s going to take to get there.

That’s it for this installment. Hope the variety lives up to the Multitudes title.

Curious to see what you think. If you enjoy any of the ideas or links in particular please let me know.

Tyler Cowen interviewed by Rick Rubin (Podcast on Apple or Spotify)

I enjoyed hearing someone with an arts background interviewing Tyler — he’s usually interviewed by academics or startup-adjacent people. Tyler is at his best when he’s pulling from a wide range of ideas and subjects and Rick does a good job of encouraging it.

Below are some excerpts about “creative/innovative scenes,” the definition of success, why weirdos drive progress, and learning from your source’s sources:

Rick Rubin: What's the recipe for places that have revolutionary changes for the Renaissance? Silicon Valley, Paris in the 20s? What are the seeds?

Tyler Cowen: A certain degree of competition, a cluster of talented people who are rivals but who also help each other. Effective social networks. Typically, there are new technologies coming along.

[…]

So there's a whole new medium that people like Leonardo can experiment with, just like the electric guitar. A lot of the earliest people did the most with it because over time, these things become repetitive.

So having this magic collection of different facts about the world come together the small groups, the networking, the growth in wealth, the new technologies, and most importantly, the sense of believing you're doing something really important, which you see, say, in 1960s music, it might be in some rap today, but for the most part, I don't see it in very contemporary music. But it's so strong. Earlier on in popular music, this stuff really mattered. The Beatles sing all you need is love and the world is shaken.

Rick: What do you view as success?

Tyler: Learning more, staying in good health, being around people I care about, and I take care of them, they take care of me. All of those things. I think one needs all of them.

Tyler: Increasingly, top businesses in the United States are led by weirdos rather than conformists. And that was not the case decades ago. And in many countries, say Denmark, like their four biggest companies, date from the 1920s or earlier. They're fine companies, but are they truly all going to be led by weirdos?

Rick: Do you think the weirdo factor currently in the US is based on creators?

Tyler: People who are starting companies, they start as hackers or programmers, but then they realize the idea they have is so good, it can be a company. And then at some point they realize it can be a world shattering company like Facebook or Stripe or the other tech companies whose names we all know. And it just takes off. But they were Tinkerers in the sense that a lot of the early great musicians were Tinkerers.

People in the Industrial Revolution were tinkerers. Religious leaders may have been a kind of tinkerers with ideas, and then they realize they're on to some larger enlightenment, but they start by playing with ideas. I think that might have been the case in the past as it related to tech, because usually it would be an engineer who was interested in making something that would run those businesses, at least at first.

Rick: If someone that you're interested in references something, will you always go back to the source?

Tyler: Yeah, I'll try and try again. I don't like it when people dismiss things. It's fine to disagree, or there's things in music that maybe I don't listen to as much or don't understand. Like there's still a lot in country and western I feel I don't understand. Maybe I don't have the cultural codes or don't know enough, but I don't dismiss it, even though if I listen more, maybe I never would love it like I love some other things.

JD Vance’s February 2024 talk at a startup event presented by YC and Bloomberg Beta (Full video and transcript)

I previously shared this 3 months ago when Vance was picked as the VP running mate but it’s especially relevant now.

Miles In France 1963 & 1964 - Miles Davis Quintet (Spotify | Tidal)

Nearly 6 hours of sublime performances It took me a long time — many years! — to get into jazz but I made the effort because so many writers, musicians, filmmakers, etc, love it. The struggle was worth the reward and this release feels like a genuine grand prize.

Lulu Meservey on “Going Direct” with company narratives (Podcast on Apple or Spotify)

Lulu has burst onto the tech scene with her communications firm Rostra and works with many of the top companies on how they tell their story or deal with crisis scenarios.

Lulu Meservey: You have to figure out a way to speak to people directly with your voice, your passion, your vision, and not have it trickle down too far because you lose the thing that's special. There can be too many middlemen such that by the time your message reaches people, it's been watered down beyond recognition and it's not special anymore.

Lulu: Communication is a vector, not a scalar. It only matters if there's a direction attached to it. And if you know that your direction is, we have to get more customers or we're going to go raise a round at the end of this year, or we need to get this thing done with regulators. Whatever the big goals are, all the comms should be pointed in that direction.

Lulu: So number one is the founder knows what they're about, and they're willing to take on the responsibility of being the keeper of the vision and the message. Two is the company has to have clear goals that they're working toward. Three, related to two, is you have to know the audience. And know your audience is actually a cliche at this point.

It's become so much of a truism that it's faded into the ambient background and people don't think about it enough. Maybe we should rebrand it or something so it becomes fresh and salient again. But know your audience is important, because if you're talking to the wrong people, it's worse than talking to nobody. Partly because of the expended time, and partly because you might be making new enemies or making unwanted friends that then tie you down in unpredicted ways. So I think of the audiences as here are the people who actually have a say in the future of the company.

Lulu: I wouldn't make it a core part of your strategy to convert people who hate you. If you're going to engage with them at all, you might consider letting them attack you until they overstep in order for you to round up your true allies. That's a good use as foil. And then there's the swing voters. It's the people who actually could be your people, but they just don't know it yet.

Just like in an election, the swing voters are deserving of a disproportionate amount of attention.

Lulu: Everything and every person is a thousand things. You could describe yourself in a thousand ways if you were forced to. There's enough material there. Every product or company can be described in a thousand different ways. The taste and discretion and creativity in describing it in the single best way and choosing the number one best.

One out of the thousand is where a lot of that skill lies. This founder Mode essay, PG's essay that went viral over the weekend, I think more than half of that was a great name. It was simple, it was familiar. People understood it, but it was also new. Derek Thompson at the Atlantic has written a whole book about what makes things go viral, and he talks about blending the novel with the familiar and that being a magic formula, finding a way to describe what you're doing that is simple, crisp, and familiar.

Lulu: Don't listen to your lawyers and never apologize if you didn't do something wrong, and if you don't mean it because you'll regret it later if you talk to founders who apologize for something at the time, the woman who was kicked out of the wing, for example, she went back later and said she wished she hadn't done that whole routine. They always regret it because you compromise yourself and you do compromise yourself for nothing. Because an apology doesn't appease people, especially if you didn't do anything wrong.

And it's insincere. One, they can tell if you don't mean it, but two, if you didn't do anything wrong, then by definition there's nothing to apologize for. So apologizing isn't going to change the situation. So do not apologize for something you didn't do wrong. If you did something wrong, apologize wholeheartedly.

This is the Ben Horowitz if you're going to eat shit, don't nibble. I subscribe to that. It starts with the ground truth of did you mess up? If you did, apologize, and if you didn't, don't apologize. It's so simple and people get it so wrong, they'll start apologizing or not apologizing based on all sorts of other garbage factors.

Lulu: Prospect theory tells us people fear downside more than they want upside. It's a lot easier to tell them this current state that we're all living in is unacceptable. And now we're so close to something a lot better.

That's easier to tell them. And you can say truthfully than to say, things are fine now, but they could be even better

Lulu: What gives you a right to exist and to take up space on this earth and to take up any of our time? The most important thing is what is missing in the world today that only you can fill. And a lot of companies are never able to answer that question, and it makes it hard to invest in that company. If I'm going to bet my career on you, I'm going to go leave Google to bet everything on you.

Your equity will be the financial security for my kids and my grandkids. And you're telling me that you can't name something that would go missing in the world if you were to vanish tomorrow? It's dereliction. That question has to be answered for you to not only have a manifesto, but to have a company.

Paul Simon and Edie Brickell’s Bad Dream (Spotify | Tidal)

It’s pretty simple: if Paul Simon releases something new I’m excited to hear it. This is, I believe, the first recording he’s ever made with his wife. They’re joined by the legendary drummer Steve Gadd who he’s worked with since the 70s and a few other top shelf players.

Freaks (stream the film for free on Internet Archive)

This is a 1932 film about a circus sideshow (“freak show”). It starred actual circus performers with significant physical disabilities (conjoined twins, people born without limbs, etc) who travelled around in real life exhibiting themselves.

Given the era, I expected exploitation but found something else entirely: a moving story about outsiders building a community, finding acceptance, and dealing with external threats.

The film proved too controversial for its time. Censors banned it across multiple states and countries - not for exploitation, but because they felt "normal people" shouldn't see those who looked so different. It's hard to believe this came from Tod Browning, who'd just directed the iconic "Dracula" the year before. "Freaks" effectively ended his career.

It isn’t an easy watch but I can't recommend it enough.

That’s it for this week. Decent variety? I don’t call this Multitudes for nothing.

This was recorded live during ODF22 and there’s a great Q&A at the end with our community. You can watch below or listen on Apple or Spotify. I’ve also shared a list of insights (with timestamps) on X.

On a personal note, this was my first time recording a live conversation like this and it was a perfect way to kick things off. Eoghan is an excellent storyteller. He is particularly good at changing altitude: sometimes he’ll tell a very personal story or give highly specific tactical advice. Other times, he’ll sound like a (helpful) guru giving hollistic advice to help you see above the fog of founding.

Grateful to the Intercom team — particularly Alan Mc Glinchey and Eoghan — for being such great partners to ODF and hosting ODF22 at their office.

Are you exploring starting a company in the next few months? Join ODF23 kicking off November 8th in SF. Check out the announcement video for more details.

Be their booster! You can say positive things about people that would be awkward for them to say.

At social gatherings, promote them and their work to others. Explain why they’re remarkable.

Only say what you believe, but say it enthusiastically. The sincerity will shine through.

Bragging about someone has additional benefits beyond supporting them.

You improve at pitching and storytelling, both valuable skills.

You also become known as a person who lifts others up. That’s unique in a world where the loudest voices are often skeptics and cynics.

Did this resonate? Reshare the screenshot essay or forward this onwards.