This week’s highlights: Investment, Habits of Happiness, and Office Space
Issue 460
Happy Saturday!
A happy Saturday morning here. Back to back meetings all day yesterday kept me from getting the Fifteen compiled.
Original Content:
- The Centrality of Investment to the Legacy Family. Life here is in fact quite binary – either we can be busy growing or we can decline. Families would do well to be conscious of this fact.
- Societal Structure, Good Tribalism, and Individuation. Individuation and group socialization are a paradox to consider
Best,
David
Food for Tood for Thought
- Atlantic – The Seven Habits That Lead to Happiness in Old Age. Your well-being is like a retirement account: The sooner you invest, the greater your returns will be.
- PL – Wrap your 20s Strong – Excellent twitter thread here
- NP – Kelly McParland: The Liberals cheer Justin Trudeau. The world thinks he blew it. – A reflection on civil liberties and the right to protest – “Some of the world’s most respected newspapers have denounced the prime minister’s actions as a needless abuse of power”
- NL – An incomplete history of Forbes.com as a platform for scams, grift, and bad journalism. That “rapper” accused of billions in crypto fraud was also a Forbes contributor. Is it finally time to move past the contributor network?
- NewHumanist – The Logical Mystic. Ludwig Wittgenstein’s ‘Tractatus’ is as brilliant and baffling today as it was on its publication a century ago.
Business and Markets
- SPS – Deal Sourcing Playbook 2022 Following a steady uptick in closed deal volume over recent years, private equity represented the greater share of overall M&A activity in 2021 with 52.3% of total closed deal volume – outpacing Corporate buyers for the first time
- WSJ – Sorry, Bosses: Workers Are Just Not That Into You. Nationwide, however, office occupancy rates are hovering around one-third, according to an estimate by Kastle Systems, which tracks building-access-card swipes.
- Insider – Top Wall Street firms like KKR, Blackstone, and Apollo are backing a new venture by iCapital to create an ‘industry standard’ for alts data that sits on the blockchain. Some of Wall Street’s most prominent money managers are banding together to create a blockchain-type system to cut down on the cost and time it takes to invest in assets like private equity and real estate.
- Recode – Apple broke Facebook’s ad machine. Who’s going to fix it?
- WashPo – Investors bought a record share of homes in 2021. See where.Protocol – Sequoia’s invisible hand: How Roelof Botha became one of the most powerful people in venture capital. Few know the man who’s transforming one of Silicon Valley’s top VC firms. Here’s what founders and other insiders think of him and his plan to upend the traditions of VC.
- HBR – How Fast Can Your Company Afford to Grow?
- Building an Anti-Conglomerate – Joey Levin is the CEO of IAC, a holding company that builds world-class digital businesses. We cover how he approaches capital allocation, why he tries to avoid centralization between businesses, and what he has learned from working with Barry Diller.
- MIT – This Sri Lankan jewelry enterprise is a study in systems thinking – Credit GR – When it comes to systems thinking, start by stating the problem, map any connections, and look for leverage in resources.
- CapitalAllocators – Canvassing the Landscape at Accolade Partners. The 7th episode of Venture is Eating the Investment World is Joelle Kayden, the Founder and Managing Partner of Accolade Partners, a $3.6 billion venture fund of funds that invests across early stage, growth, blockchain, and empowerment strategies and one of the most respected firms in the business.
My Book:
When Anything is Possible – Wealth and the Art of Strategic Living
The book is about how we shift from focusing on the things we want to avoid, to the things we want to accomplish with our wealth. Doing so requires a person to articulate 3 key items – Wealth Structure, Wealth Identity and ultimately a Wealth Strategy. The book walks through each of these items in great depth, and guides the reader through a process to develop each.
If you are interested in learning more, visit here and download a free chapter.