Tremendous

An angel investor's take on life and business

  • New Jersey’s Jelly Donut Heaven

    I just had a jelly donut. And it changed everything.

    You guys are going to start thinking I work for them. I don’t. But I could be persuaded for enough free donuts.

    Francesca’s Bakery has locations in Clifton and Pequannock and also pops up at farmer’s markets across New York City. It was at a farmer’s market in midtown that I first encountered their scrumptious baked goods.

    As you bite into their jelly donut, your mouth enters a cloud of cinnamon sugar. The outside is crisp and sweet. The inside: pillowy, soft and moist.

    When you reach the jelly, you’ll find an intense flavor of fresh strawberries. And don’t worry, they don’t skimp on the jelly.

    Other fine offerings from Francesca’s

    With Hanukkah coming up, I can’t think of a better place to get the traditional jelly donut. I may be a gentile, but something tells me I’ll be scarfing a few anyway.

    Have a great weekend everyone!

    More on food:

    NJ’s Best Apple Cider Donut

    The Best Mexican Food Is In…New Jersey?

    The Best Bakery in NYC (It’s Not Levain)

    If you found this post interesting, please share it on Twitter/Reddit/etc. using the buttons at the bottom of the page. This helps more people find the blog! 

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Amazon Business American Express Card

    You already shop on Amazon. Why not save $100?

    If you’re approved for this card, you get a $100 Amazon gift card. You also get up to 5% back on Amazon and Whole Foods purchases, 2% on restaurants/gas stations/cell phone bills, and 1% everywhere else.

    Best of all: No fee!

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 and returns have been good so far. More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get your management fees waived for 90 days. With their 1% management fee, this could save you $250 on a $100,000 account.

    iHerb

    The only place I buy vitamins and supplements. I recently placed an order and received it in less than 48 hours with free shipping! I compared the prices and they were lower than Amazon. I also love how they test a lot of the vitamins so that you know you’re getting what the label says. This isn’t always the case with supplements.

    Use this link to save 5%! 

    Misfits Market

    My wife and I have gotten organic produce shipped to our house by Misfits for over a year. It’s never once disappointed me. Every fruit and vegetable is super fresh and packed with flavor. I thought radishes were cold, tasteless little lumps at salad bars until I tried theirs! They’re peppery, colorful and crunchy! I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $10 on your first order. 

  • What if Everyone on Earth Had Super Fast Internet for $1?

    Only about half the world has internet access. Even rural America lags behind in broadband penetration.

    But what if everyone on earth had incredibly fast internet for $1 a month?

    A fascinating company called Akash Systems just might pull that off. It is delivering internet 100 times more cheaply than its competitors.

    Given that Starlink is charging $99/month for its high speed satellite internet, Akash may one day be able to do it for as little as a dollar.

    “This is sort of where the internet was in, I would say, ’98, ’99.”

    Felix Ejeckam

    The key is a new type of transistor called Gallium Nitride (GaN)-on-Diamond. The founder of Akash, Felix Ejeckam, invented it.

    The hottest part of a transistor is put within nanometers of a synthetic diamond. Synthetic diamonds conduct heat better than any other material.

    This means that the transistor produces way less heat. Anyone who’s had a laptop on their lap knows it can get hot.

    Electronics getting hot cause all sorts of problems, especially in space.

    Excess heat means problems with wireless communication. It also requires large heat sinks to dissipate the heat.

    This makes the satellite bulkier and more expensive.

    Today, Akash focuses on building transmitters for other satellite makers. In the future, they plan to launch their own satellites and internet service.

    I can’t wait to sign up and cut my bill down to nothing!

    In an interview with the Ejeckam, I was fascinated to hear that he dreamed up this idea 17 years ago. It shows the persistence needed to make a dream real.

    “The limits of your imagination today define the limits of space tomorrow.”

    Felix Ejeckam

    More on tech:

    Robot Hands, Vertical Farms, and the Future of Food

    How Solana Could Wipe Out Visa and MasterCard

    Inside a Startup Accelerator Demo Day

    Photo: “Antares Rocket Launch” by NASA Goddard Photo and Video is licensed under CC BY 2.0

    If you found this post interesting, please share it on Twitter/Reddit/etc. using the buttons at the bottom of the page. This helps more people find the blog! 

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Amazon Business American Express Card

    You already shop on Amazon. Why not save $100?

    If you’re approved for this card, you get a $100 Amazon gift card. You also get up to 5% back on Amazon and Whole Foods purchases, 2% on restaurants/gas stations/cell phone bills, and 1% everywhere else.

    Best of all: No fee!

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 and returns have been good so far. More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get your management fees waived for 90 days. With their 1% management fee, this could save you $250 on a $100,000 account.

    iHerb

    The only place I buy vitamins and supplements. I recently placed an order and received it in less than 48 hours with free shipping! I compared the prices and they were lower than Amazon. I also love how they test a lot of the vitamins so that you know you’re getting what the label says. This isn’t always the case with supplements.

    Use this link to save 5%! 

    Misfits Market

    My wife and I have gotten organic produce shipped to our house by Misfits for over a year. It’s never once disappointed me. Every fruit and vegetable is super fresh and packed with flavor. I thought radishes were cold, tasteless little lumps at salad bars until I tried theirs! They’re peppery, colorful and crunchy! I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $10 on your first order. 

  • What a Hedge Fund King Fears Most


    Stephen Mandel, Jr., founder of hedge fund Lone Pine Capital, ranks #752 on Forbes’ list of billionaires.

    His net worth: $3.9 billion. His fund’s performance is among the greatest in history.

    So you might be surprised to hear what he fears most:


    In late January, when retail traders swarmed into short targets of hedge funds like Melvin Capital and D1 Capital, commentators and industry experts called the moves unprecedented, but Mandel sees the parallels between the dot-com bubble excitement and today’s Reddit-directed investors.


    “The day I feared the most, every year, was the day after Thanksgiving because it was the day when a lot of people were at home, echoes of what’s going on now — retail traders sitting at their desks,” he said.


    He said that the firm’s ethos on long positions — investing in change, whether technological, regulatory, or otherwise — is the same, but shorting has become so expensive thanks to the additional competition in the markets that it’s impossible to make the same alpha in that part of the portfolio.


    “There was no problem borrowing Pets.com and eToys and Onsale and all these crazy things. Today, when things like that appear in the markets, the borrow cost shoots up to ridiculous levels immediately, the access to borrow is very limited,” he said about the shares funds that bet against a stock have to borrow from shareholders to hold a short position.


    He has a reason to be afraid. Other hedge funds like D1 Capital and Melvin Capital lost 20-50% of their fund trying to fight retail holders of stocks like AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. and GameStop Corp.

    The cost to borrow and sell short shares of AMC and GameStop is not particularly high at the moment. However, in any new rally, that interest rate could easily shoot up, as GameStop’s did in January. This would make holding or adding to short positions very costly for hedge funds.

    And all the while, they’d be losing money as the stock moves against them.

    I find it fascinating that the most threatening thing for a billionaire hedge fund manager is a guy sitting on his couch.

    Thing is though, there are a lot of them.


    More on AMC and hedge funds:

    AMC in Top 4% of Stocks for Fails to Deliver

    AMC Fails to Deliver Up 1088% in Latest Data

    Hedge Funds Get Special Treatment During Margin Calls

    Photo: “I’m scared too, but we’ll make it.” by qousqous is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

    If you found this post interesting, please share it on Twitter/Reddit/etc. using the buttons at the bottom of the page. This helps more people find the blog! 

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Amazon Business American Express Card

    You already shop on Amazon. Why not save $100?

    If you’re approved for this card, you get a $100 Amazon gift card. You also get up to 5% back on Amazon and Whole Foods purchases, 2% on restaurants/gas stations/cell phone bills, and 1% everywhere else.

    Best of all: No fee!

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 and returns have been good so far. More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get your management fees waived for 90 days. With their 1% management fee, this could save you $250 on a $100,000 account.

    iHerb

    The only place I buy vitamins and supplements. I recently placed an order and received it in less than 48 hours with free shipping! I compared the prices and they were lower than Amazon. I also love how they test a lot of the vitamins so that you know you’re getting what the label says. This isn’t always the case with supplements.

    Use this link to save 5%! 

    Misfits Market

    My wife and I have gotten organic produce shipped to our house by Misfits for over a year. It’s never once disappointed me. Every fruit and vegetable is super fresh and packed with flavor. I thought radishes were cold, tasteless little lumps at salad bars until I tried theirs! They’re peppery, colorful and crunchy! I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $10 on your first order. 

  • AMC in Top 4% of Stocks for Fails to Deliver

    There is a lot of strange activity in stock of AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. Fails to deliver have been huge and persistent.

    In such cases, a common culprit is an illegal practice known as naked short selling. This involves selling shares you don’t actually own without ever borrowing them first.

    The trade is never completed (or “fails to deliver”) because the shares never existed in the first place. This tactic is a powerful way to drive down a stock’s price.

    I’ve written about this issue often (see here and here). But a thought occurred to me: what if I’m just cherry picking data, even unconsciously?

    So I decided to run a little experiment.

    The latest SEC data for the first half of August includes the following dates, since there is no data on weekends:

    August 2-6
    August 9-13

    I picked a random date within this period using this tool:

    August 5th it is!

    Then, I took all the SEC data from August 5th and dumped it into a Google Sheet. After a little spreadsheet magic to get it in the right format, I sorted by which stocks had the most fails to deliver.

    AMC is in the top 4% of all stocks for fails to deliver on this randomly chosen day. Thousands of stocks are below it. Many are much larger, such as Apple and Facebook.

    The pattern of huge numbers of failed trades in AMC has gone on for so long the stock has repeatedly been listed on the NYSE’s Threshold List. This lists problem securities targeted for a cleanup in their failed trades.

    AMC has been heavily shorted for most of the year. I suspect hedge funds are doing illegal naked short sales in this stock to drive the price down.

    When will the SEC look at its own data and act?

    More on AMC:

    AMC Fails to Deliver Up 1088% in Latest Data

    AMC Has 35,000 Times the Fails-to-Deliver of Amazon

    Squeezes in AMC and Others are Killing Off Short Sellers

    Note: AMC came in at 229th place out of 5647 stocks in the list, hence the 4% figure (229/5647).

    If you found this post interesting, please share it on Twitter/Reddit/etc. using the buttons at the bottom of the page. This helps more people find the blog! 

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Amazon Business American Express Card

    You already shop on Amazon. Why not save $100?

    If you’re approved for this card, you get a $100 Amazon gift card. You also get up to 5% back on Amazon and Whole Foods purchases, 2% on restaurants/gas stations/cell phone bills, and 1% everywhere else.

    Best of all: No fee!

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 and returns have been good so far. More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get your management fees waived for 90 days. With their 1% management fee, this could save you $250 on a $100,000 account.

    iHerb

    The only place I buy vitamins and supplements. I recently placed an order and received it in less than 48 hours with free shipping! I compared the prices and they were lower than Amazon. I also love how they test a lot of the vitamins so that you know you’re getting what the label says. This isn’t always the case with supplements.

    Use this link to save 5%! 

    Misfits Market

    My wife and I have gotten organic produce shipped to our house by Misfits for over a year. It’s never once disappointed me. Every fruit and vegetable is super fresh and packed with flavor. I thought radishes were cold, tasteless little lumps at salad bars until I tried theirs! They’re peppery, colorful and crunchy! I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $10 on your first order. 

  • How Solana Could Wipe Out Visa and MasterCard

    Solana is all the rage in cryptocurrency markets these days. Its price is doing this:

    Looking at that chart, it would be easy to think that this new cryptocurrency is all hype and speculation. But I spent the afternoon digging into its capabilities as a platform, and they are incredible:

    Let’s assume you’re a merchant with $1 million in transactions to process. You can do it on Solana for virtually nothing. Or you can do it a little more slowly with Visa or MasterCard for $15,000 to $25,000. Which do you prefer?

    Granted, most merchants won’t have the slightest clue how to use Solana. But it’s not hard to imagine a new startup doing what Square or Stripe did: quickly going from unknown to ubiquitous processors of payments.

    If a new company handled your transaction using a stablecoin like USDC on the Solana platform, it could offer incredible speed and dramatically lower fees than the incumbents, while still keeping a nice margin for itself.

    Visa’s market cap is $496 billion. Mastercard’s is $340 billion. What happens to those companies when a competitor shows up doing what they do for a tiny fraction of what they charge?

    I don’t own Solana, though perhaps I should. And if someone builds a company that makes payment processing on Solana easy for merchants, I just might have to wet my beak.

    More on tech:

    Robot Hands, Vertical Farms, and the Future of Food

    China’s Real Goal in Tech Crackdown: A Regimented, Obedient Society

    How Do You Know If a Startup Is Getting Traction?

    Photo: “R.I.P. Rest In Peace” by Beauteous Babe is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

    If you found this post interesting, please share it on Twitter/Reddit/etc. using the buttons at the bottom of the page. This helps more people find the blog! 

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Amazon Business American Express Card

    You already shop on Amazon. Why not save $100?

    If you’re approved for this card, you get a $100 Amazon gift card. You also get up to 5% back on Amazon and Whole Foods purchases, 2% on restaurants/gas stations/cell phone bills, and 1% everywhere else.

    Best of all: No fee!

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 and returns have been good so far. More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get your management fees waived for 90 days. With their 1% management fee, this could save you $250 on a $100,000 account.

    iHerb

    The only place I buy vitamins and supplements. I recently placed an order and received it in less than 48 hours with free shipping! I compared the prices and they were lower than Amazon. I also love how they test a lot of the vitamins so that you know you’re getting what the label says. This isn’t always the case with supplements.

    Use this link to save 5%! 

    Misfits Market

    My wife and I have gotten organic produce shipped to our house by Misfits for over a year. It’s never once disappointed me. Every fruit and vegetable is super fresh and packed with flavor. I thought radishes were cold, tasteless little lumps at salad bars until I tried theirs! They’re peppery, colorful and crunchy! I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $10 on your first order. 

  • NYC’s Best Chinese Noodles

    A wiry young man takes a small baton of dough from a tub. He flattens it and gives it a little stretch. Then, he quickly yanks it out to a length of several feet and dramatically slaps it back down. Whack, whack!

    This is Very Fresh Noodles in New York City. Found inside the cavernous Chelsea Market, it’s served chewy, hand pulled noodles to drooling patrons since 2016.

    I visited last Friday with my wife. I pretended to pore over the menu, but I knew what my stomach really needed: La Mei Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup.

    The bowl was soon in front of me, steaming and filled to the brim. Just picking up the noodles with your chopsticks will whet your appetite. They’re thick, luscious, and glistening from the broth.

    I greedily shoveled them into my mouth. The texture and flavor were perfect. The soup was aromatic and spicy, tasting of star anise. The beef is rich, incredibly tender, and falls apart in your mouth. At first I looked for extra chili oil, but soon realized I didn’t need it. These spices have a delayed reaction!

    Very Fresh Noodles also has a scorching Dan Dan Mian and numerous vegetarian dishes, including the toothsome mock duck my wife ordered. There is counter seating inside and lots more comfortable seats along the sidewalk, some covered.

    I’ve never had better Chinese noodles. If you’re in the area, give it a try!

    Have a great Labor Day weekend everyone!

    More on food:

    The Best Bakery in NYC (It’s Not Levain)

    The Best Mexican Food Is In…New Jersey?

    NJ’s Best Apple Cider Donut

    If you found this post interesting, please share it on Twitter/Reddit/etc. using the buttons at the bottom of the page. This helps more people find the blog! 

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Amazon Business American Express Card

    You already shop on Amazon. Why not save $100?

    If you’re approved for this card, you get a $100 Amazon gift card. You also get up to 5% back on Amazon and Whole Foods purchases, 2% on restaurants/gas stations/cell phone bills, and 1% everywhere else.

    Best of all: No fee!

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 and returns have been good so far. More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get your management fees waived for 90 days. With their 1% management fee, this could save you $250 on a $100,000 account.

    iHerb

    The only place I buy vitamins and supplements. I recently placed an order and received it in less than 48 hours with free shipping! I compared the prices and they were lower than Amazon. I also love how they test a lot of the vitamins so that you know you’re getting what the label says. This isn’t always the case with supplements.

    Use this link to save 5%! 

    Misfits Market

    My wife and I have gotten organic produce shipped to our house by Misfits for over a year. It’s never once disappointed me. Every fruit and vegetable is super fresh and packed with flavor. I thought radishes were cold, tasteless little lumps at salad bars until I tried theirs! They’re peppery, colorful and crunchy! I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $10 on your first order. 

  • AMC Fails to Deliver Up 1088% in Latest Data

    Major new data just came out today from the SEC. It shows fails to deliver in AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. up 1088% in the first half of August:

    These fails to deliver sometimes happen for benign reasons. But when massive fails to deliver occur in a stock over a sustained period, it’s often a sign of naked short selling.

    Naked short selling is the illegal practice of intentionally selling shares short (betting against them) without ever borrowing the shares as required. This is a powerful tool to distort markets. Since you never have to actually obtain any shares, you can sell as much as you want, pushing down the price.

    The fails to deliver in AMC are truly enormous. And after falling significantly last month, they’re back with a vengeance. As of August 13, the last day in the series, AMC’s fails to deliver were 157 times larger than Apple’s. Apple is the largest stock in the market, at 113 times AMC’s market cap.

    How could there be so much questionable activity in such a small stock? I strongly suspect illegal trading, likely on the part of hedge funds.

    Maybe they’re trying to make back some of their losses.

    More on AMC:

    AMC #3 on Robinhood for September, Behind Only Apple & Tesla

    For Retail Traders, AMC Has Become the Only Meme Stock

    Short Sellers Lost $1 Billion Yesterday in AMC and GameStop

    If you found this post interesting, please share it on Twitter/Reddit/etc. using the buttons at the bottom of the page. This helps more people find the blog! 

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Amazon Business American Express Card

    You already shop on Amazon. Why not save $100?

    If you’re approved for this card, you get a $100 Amazon gift card. You also get up to 5% back on Amazon and Whole Foods purchases, 2% on restaurants/gas stations/cell phone bills, and 1% everywhere else.

    Best of all: No fee!

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 and returns have been good so far. More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get your management fees waived for 90 days. With their 1% management fee, this could save you $250 on a $100,000 account.

    iHerb

    The only place I buy vitamins and supplements. I recently placed an order and received it in less than 48 hours with free shipping! I compared the prices and they were lower than Amazon. I also love how they test a lot of the vitamins so that you know you’re getting what the label says. This isn’t always the case with supplements.

    Use this link to save 5%! 

    Misfits Market

    My wife and I have gotten organic produce shipped to our house by Misfits for over a year. It’s never once disappointed me. Every fruit and vegetable is super fresh and packed with flavor. I thought radishes were cold, tasteless little lumps at salad bars until I tried theirs! They’re peppery, colorful and crunchy! I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $10 on your first order. 

  • AMC #3 on Robinhood for September, Behind Only Apple & Tesla

    The seasons are changing but one thing is not: the incredible popularity of AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. among retail investors.

    Robinhood lists AMC at #3 on its leaderboard for September, behind only Apple and Tesla:

    Apple is the largest stock in the entire market, with a market cap of $2.6 trillion. That’s 113 times larger than AMC. Tesla is 32 times larger.

    AMC is more popular than massive companies like Amazon, Microsoft, or Walt Disney. It’s also significantly hotter than Robinhood Markets itself, at #12.

    Even more incredible is that AMC has held the #3 position for six months straight. AMC also holds the #3 spot on Fidelity.

    My understanding is that the Robinhood leaderboard reflects how many users own a particular stock, not the total amount held. So the amount of money in Apple, Tesla, or Amazon held by Robinhood accounts could be much greater than the amount in AMC, given those companies’ massive size.

    Nonetheless, when a $23 billion business is more widely held than some of the most powerful companies on earth, I stand up and take notice.

    More on AMC:

    Charting The Huge Drop in AMC Fails to Deliver

    For Retail Traders, AMC Has Become the Only Meme Stock

    Short Sellers Lost $1 Billion Yesterday in AMC and GameStop

    If you found this post interesting, please share it on Twitter/Reddit/etc. using the buttons at the bottom of the page. This helps more people find the blog! 

    Photo: “Robin Hood sai à noite” by freddie boy is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Amazon Business American Express Card

    You already shop on Amazon. Why not save $100?

    If you’re approved for this card, you get a $100 Amazon gift card. You also get up to 5% back on Amazon and Whole Foods purchases, 2% on restaurants/gas stations/cell phone bills, and 1% everywhere else.

    Best of all: No fee!

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 and returns have been good so far. More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get your management fees waived for 90 days. With their 1% management fee, this could save you $250 on a $100,000 account.

    iHerb

    The only place I buy vitamins and supplements. I recently placed an order and received it in less than 48 hours with free shipping! I compared the prices and they were lower than Amazon. I also love how they test a lot of the vitamins so that you know you’re getting what the label says. This isn’t always the case with supplements.

    Use this link to save 5%! 

    Misfits Market

    My wife and I have gotten organic produce shipped to our house by Misfits for over a year. It’s never once disappointed me. Every fruit and vegetable is super fresh and packed with flavor. I thought radishes were cold, tasteless little lumps at salad bars until I tried theirs! They’re peppery, colorful and crunchy! I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $10 on your first order. 

  • China’s Real Goal in Tech Crackdown: A Regimented, Obedient Society

    China’s government has just launched the latest salvo against its own technology industry:

    China on Monday issued strict new measures aimed at curbing what authorities describe as youth videogame addiction, which they blame for a host of societal ills, including distracting young people from school and family responsibilities.

    The new regulation, unveiled by the National Press and Publication Administration, will ban minors, defined as those under 18 years of age, from playing online videogames entirely between Monday and Thursday. On the other three days of the week, and on public holidays, they will be only permitted to play between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m.

    This is likely to have a substantial effect on major Chinese tech companies like Tencent and NetEase, leaders in videogames. The new regulation is the latest development in a crackdown on companies in ride sharing, food delivery, educational tech, and more.

    I see two major issues with this crackdown:

    Economy

    If you can have your business regulated out of existence at any time, you might not start one. And if you do, it will be a lot harder to attract investors.

    Tech companies rely on venture capital to grow. That funding is already beginning to dry up. No wonder the number of Chinese companies reaching $1 billion valuation (“unicorns”) is falling off a cliff:

    I invest in American startups regularly. There is zero possibility I’d invest in a Chinese one. The odds of the government one day deciding your industry is bad for “social stability” are just too high.

    Without capital, Chinese tech companies will wither.

    Society

    Imagine the U.S. government telling you, “Sorry Timmy, you can only play video games from 8 to 9pm on weekends. Oh, 7 is better for you? Well too bad.”

    In the context of a free society, this is unthinkable. In China, the government is taking on the role of a parent. It’s another step to totalitarianism, where the government controls all aspects of life.

    And China’s crackdown goes way beyond tech:

    Zhao Wei, one of China’s most prominent actresses, saw her presence mostly scrubbed from the country’s internet overnight. Her fan page on Weibo, China’s heavily censored version of Twitter, was shut down. Movies and television shows she starred in — some going as far back as two decades ago — were taken off streaming platforms, with her name also removed from the cast lists.

    On Chinese social media, some comments said the crackdown was reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution, a decade of political and social turmoil between 1966 and 1976 during which arts and culture were restricted to promoting party propaganda.

    It was not immediately clear why Zhao was targeted.

    The message from Xi Jinping is clear: he wants the people quiet and obedient. Anyone who stands out for any reason, be it an actress or a tech tycoon like Jack Ma, will be dealt with.

    If you’re in China now, I urge you to emigrate. This will not end well.

    More on China and tech:

    China’s Tech Crackdown Means Economic Decline

    China Is Crushing One of Its Most Innovative Companies

    How China’s Tech Industry Dies

    If you found this post interesting, please share it on Twitter/Reddit/etc. using the buttons at the bottom of the page. This helps more people find the blog! 

    Photo: “Chinese Soldiers in The Forbidden City – Beijing, China” by Patrick Rodwell is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Amazon Business American Express Card

    You already shop on Amazon. Why not save $100?

    If you’re approved for this card, you get a $100 Amazon gift card. You also get up to 5% back on Amazon and Whole Foods purchases, 2% on restaurants/gas stations/cell phone bills, and 1% everywhere else.

    Best of all: No fee!

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 and returns have been good so far. More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get your management fees waived for 90 days. With their 1% management fee, this could save you $250 on a $100,000 account.

    iHerb

    The only place I buy vitamins and supplements. I recently placed an order and received it in less than 48 hours with free shipping! I compared the prices and they were lower than Amazon. I also love how they test a lot of the vitamins so that you know you’re getting what the label says. This isn’t always the case with supplements.

    Use this link to save 5%! 

    Misfits Market

    My wife and I have gotten organic produce shipped to our house by Misfits for over a year. It’s never once disappointed me. Every fruit and vegetable is super fresh and packed with flavor. I thought radishes were cold, tasteless little lumps at salad bars until I tried theirs! They’re peppery, colorful and crunchy! I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $10 on your first order. 

  • Robot Hands, Vertical Farms, and the Future of Food

    On Saturday, I stood in the produce section of a nearby Whole Foods. My eyes were drawn to tiny packages of delicate microgreens. The producer: Aero Farms.

    Agriculture faces a difficult environment. Climate change is making weather more extreme and unpredictable. Workers are harder and harder to find. But a new model of farming is emerging, and it looks like nothing else we’ve ever seen.

    Aero Farms grows greens in vertical stacks in what was once an abandoned steel mill. The farm is in gritty Newark, NJ, just a few miles from the Whole Foods where I encountered their product. They use 95% less water and 99% less land than a traditional farm. And unlike other farms, they can grow year round.

    Technology is also revolutionizing how produce is picked. A company called Root AI makes soft, robotic hands that can pick anything from a hearty cucumber to a fragile strawberry. Alongside the robotic hands is a camera enabled with AI, which can identify the ripe produce and leave the rest to grow.  

    Seeing it in action feels like seeing the future:

    These robots are now being put to use in giant warehouse farms that you could easily mistake for an Amazon Fulfillment Center. These are a project of AppHarvest, which claims they use 90% less water and are 30 times more productive per acre than a traditional farm.

    Is that an Amazon Fulfillment Center in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

    Even if the company’s projections are a bit optimistic, there’s strong evidence from numerous producers that indoor farming uses dramatically less water and space. And with the farm just a few miles from its customers in major cities, transportation costs and emissions are cut to the bone.

    Putting robotics and indoor farming together, I think we are headed to a future that produces more output (food) with far fewer inputs (labor, water, land). And unlike human labor, electronics tend to rapidly decrease in price. That will only speed their adoption and lower food prices further. 

    To quote Lincoln Steffens:

    “I have seen the future and it works.”

    More on tech:

    CHINA’S TECH CRACKDOWN MEANS ECONOMIC DECLINE

    HOW TO GET INTERNET TO CUBA

    INSIDE A STARTUP ACCELERATOR DEMO DAY

    If you found this post interesting, please share it on Twitter/Reddit/etc. using the buttons at the bottom of the page. This helps more people find the blog! 

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Amazon Business American Express Card

    You already shop on Amazon. Why not save $100?

    If you’re approved for this card, you get a $100 Amazon gift card. You also get up to 5% back on Amazon and Whole Foods purchases, 2% on restaurants/gas stations/cell phone bills, and 1% everywhere else.

    Best of all: No fee!

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 and returns have been good so far. More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get your management fees waived for 90 days. With their 1% management fee, this could save you $250 on a $100,000 account.

    iHerb

    The only place I buy vitamins and supplements. I recently placed an order and received it in less than 48 hours with free shipping! I compared the prices and they were lower than Amazon. I also love how they test a lot of the vitamins so that you know you’re getting what the label says. This isn’t always the case with supplements.

    Use this link to save 5%! 

    Misfits Market

    My wife and I have gotten organic produce shipped to our house by Misfits for over a year. It’s never once disappointed me. Every fruit and vegetable is super fresh and packed with flavor. I thought radishes were cold, tasteless little lumps at salad bars until I tried theirs! They’re peppery, colorful and crunchy! I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $10 on your first order.