Wednesday, March 23, 2022

News: March 23





What Can Leaders Learn from Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy? . Zelenskyy is emerging as a masterful communicator and charismatic leader whose management style is reminiscent of some of the greatest statesmen in history ....... two of Zelenskyy’s consistent management strengths: his on-point messaging and his unwavering dedication to the cause. ....... is rising to meet this moment in history. ...... “I think his words are so powerful, his purpose so unequivocal that he is going to indeed move the world,” Useem said. “These are going to be the days that shook the world, and Zelenskyy is at the center of all of the above.” .

Tunisian activist Amira Yahyaoui’s next fight: financial empowerment for Gen Z. . .

The early pitch decks of 29 startups before they became billion-dollar companies

Dealing with Difficult Customers? How Gig Workers Push Back

Another Covid Surge May Be Coming. Are We Ready for It? “We’ve been wearing rose-colored glasses instead of correcting our vision,” one scientist said. ........ scientists are warning that the United States isn’t doing enough to prevent a new surge from endangering vulnerable Americans and potentially upending life again. ...... Though less than one-third of the population has the booster shots needed for high levels of protection, the daily vaccination rate has fallen to a low. ....... In a number of countries, including Britain, France and Germany, case numbers are climbing as an even more contagious subvariant of Omicron, known as BA.2, takes hold. ....... Case numbers are still dropping nationally, but BA.2 accounts for a growing proportion of those infections, rising to almost one-quarter of new cases last week. The subvariant is estimated to be 30 to 50 percent more contagious than the previous version of Omicron, BA.1. ....... In Connecticut, scientists estimate that the frequency of BA.2 infections is doubling every seven or eight days — half the rate of Omicron’s growth this winter, but also considerably faster than the Delta variant’s 11-day doubling time before that. ......... immunity tends to weaken over time following vaccinations or earlier infections. ....... To bolster protection, Britain plans to start administering fourth doses to older people later this month. ....... Pfizer and BioNTech have asked American regulators to authorize fourth doses in older people, and Moderna is seeking clearance for the additional shots for all adults. ...... nearly 1,200 Americans on average are dying each day from Covid ......... As time passes, two doses become less effective at preventing Omicron-related hospitalizations, British estimates suggest, whereas a booster dose restores protection to considerably higher levels. .

Under Fire, Out of Fuel, No Air Support: What Intercepted Russian Radio Chatter Reveals

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Tuesday, March 22, 2022

Katie Haun Has A New Swan Flying



Introducing Haun Ventures . My road to crypto and then to venture was

unconventional

. ........ Like any tool, they could be used for good or for bad, but we had just started to scratch the surface of the good. ....... Brian Armstrong, who recruited me to the Coinbase board in 2017. ........ my friend and former partner Chris Dixon, with whom I launched and scaled one of the earliest and largest dedicated crypto venture franchises in the world ........ Haun Ventures, a firm built to uniquely serve the teams building the third generation of the internet, or web3. ....... non-sovereign stores of value ....... Ethereum, a blockchain for deploying and running decentralized applications. This, in turn, ultimately made way for globally accessible financial use cases and the “DeFi Summer” of 2020. ....... Now, crypto has expanded far beyond financial use cases, touching gaming, art, media, and content. The web3 projects that emerge over the next decade will be even more expansive, applying the breakthrough mechanisms of the last decade to every industry from transportation and commerce, to fashion, sports, music, and more. ......... there will be a shift in individuals’ expectations for greater control of their personal data and a new generation of creators will demand and enjoy better economics. We think open platforms will win through loyalty, transparency, and trust by delivering better incentives than the walled gardens that came before. ......... We’re energized by the opportunity to invest in every layer of the web3 tech stack, and will back projects in their early stages as well as when they are ready to accelerate growth. .......

the next generation of the internet will naturally produce a new generation of investors

......... Beyond providing capital, we will contribute to web3 in two specific ways to start and plan to layer in other capabilities as we learn and grow. ....... brilliant technologists to build but also experienced operators who can responsibly shape public opinion, policy, and the broader systems that power our society ....... We will partner with our portfolio to lead a global campaign for web3 that combats misperceptions, engages policymakers, highlights positive use cases, and wins the hearts and minds of leaders across all sectors. We believe this approach will help lay the foundation for the web3 projects we support

to reach a billion+ people worldwide

. ....... delegate governance rights and tokens to civil society groups, universities, and non-profit organizations .......

Haun Ventures will continue to broaden the array of voices involved in this ecosystem.

........ My path to this moment certainly wasn’t a traditional one. In many ways, I didn’t fit the mold. ...... step outside my comfort zone and turn not fitting the mold into an asset. ...... we’ll need more voices and perspectives of those who break the mold. ...... This is an exciting first step, but the real work begins now. We’ll have more to share as we continue to build our team and make investments. .



Kathryn Haun: Maverick VC



The Size Of The Problem



Keeping It Simple . I didn’t even understand parts of the white paper. But what I did get was that it described a way of making permissionless money. ........ I understand how important permissionless servers and applications (web 1.0) turned out to be and so I understood how important permissionless money was going to be. ........ aha moments come around every so often and you just need to let them grab you and take you to a foundational investment. You don’t need to do much due diligence on these. I did none on Twitter, Coinbase, or Dapper. What I did do is use the products, get in the game, feel the power, and get conviction. ........ When you read them you will notice that

they are basically an articulation of a big idea, what could happen

, and in these cases, what did happen. That’s all. No technical diligence (had we done any on Twitter, we would have passed on it), no financial models, no talking to industry experts. Just an aha moment and an idea of what could happen. .







https://www.haun.co

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Monday, March 21, 2022

News: March 21



Keeping It Simple . Investing is humbling. At 60, with 35 years of venture investing experience, I still get most things wrong. ........ how I bumped into Rikki Tahta walking through the garment district in NYC in the spring of 2011 and Rikki told me he was working on a Bitcoin startup. I replied, “a what coin startup?”. And Rikki told me to read the Bitcoin White Paper. I did and I was hooked. ........ I didn’t even understand parts of the white paper. ....... I understand how important permissionless servers and applications (web 1.0) turned out to be and so I understood how important permissionless money was going to be. ......... I bought Bitcoin and went about finding a Bitcoin investment to make.

That was Coinbase.

........ I met Mena Trott at a Nick Denton party in NYC in 2003 and she explained blogging to me. I was struck by the idea that anyone could be a publisher. ........ That led me to Twitter a few years later when I saw that most people would prefer to write a text message to the world over a long-form blog post. ........... aha moments come around every so often and you just need to let them grab you and take you a foundational investment. You don’t need to do much due diligence on these. I did none on Twitter, Coinbase, or Dapper. What I did do is use the products, get in the game, feel the power, and get conviction. .



How to Think about the "Current Thing" Deciding in which direction you want people to be sheep ........ Let’s say you’re an intelligent person who in late February knew nothing about Russia, Ukraine, or American foreign policy. Which websites should you read to become informed? You notice that many sources seem to always take the “current thing” perspective, while others have the opposite bias. There are only so many hours in a day, and the judgment calls one must make in researching an issue are too numerous to list. Are those whose first instinct is to trust and promulgate the dominant narrative the most or least reliable sources of information? Given enough familiarity with an issue, an individual should be able to calibrate his views on it, but priors have a role in telling him where to start, and can determine which conclusions he reaches in situations where there isn’t enough time to thoroughly study a topic. .......

The current current thing is of course the war in Ukraine.

........ COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine are pretty important. But terrorism, white supremacy, and police shootings of black men are such tiny problems in modern America that if we were a logical society we would all but ignore them. Something like the process of aging, a major tragedy every human is experiencing every moment of their life, isn’t even considered a problem that policy should try to solve. ........ Parents who never thought twice about the flu but are worried about their healthy toddlers dropping dead of COVID are now able to find one another, along with credentialed influencers who appeal to their worst fears. Politicians, journalists, and others that are part of the discourse are radicalized by and responsive to such influences.

Those that never thought about Yemen want to start a nuclear war over Ukraine.

Emotions are getting more extreme, and the more an issue happens to engage a disproportionate share of the attention of neurotics the less we are able to approach it in a rational way. .......... If your model of the world says that modern society has a strong tendency to overreact to the issue of the day, you might prefer your leaders to have purely reactive instincts if such figures are the only alternative to the side associated with the establishment that decides what the current thing is in the first place through what is clearly an extremely flawed process. I’m not saying this is the high-IQ case for Trumpism, but it does point in the direction of what it might look like. .

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The Blockchain Challenges Assumptions

The Blockchain is nothing but the Internet gone deeper. The user interface looks no different to the end user and should get even easier. It is early innings. It is being built. Heck, the Internet is still being built. When we went mobile, it was still the Internet. Now it was mobile. The Internet is an added intelligence layer. The air around you now has intelligence. It always did. But now it is physical. It is in the four dimensions you are aware of. It is limited. It is spotty. But it is there.

The Internet challenged assumptions. The Blockchain is challenging deeper assumptions. It is challenging money. Money is pretty basic. It is said money might be the most mentioned word in the Gospels. Money seems to be fundamental to how human societies get organized. Money used to be conch shells. Money has been digital for a while now. But we still have had to think paper money, or gold. It seems money is just trust. It can be conjured out of think air. If we can just learn to trust each other more, we can have more money. The Blockchain is the vehicle we are building to load up on that trust.

If we could add intelligence to paper money, say if every bit of cash were connected somehow to the Internet Of Things, we might not even need to get rid of it. With purely digital money, bookkeeping is baked in, it moves at the speed of light. It is here, suddenly it is on the other side of the earth where it is night time. It is teleportation, not of us, but of money. We have no need for teleportation, but money does. There are too many poor people on the other side of the world.

The promise is that fundmental problems will be solved. I grew up in the Third World. The fundamental problem is that of identity. Vicious political battles are fought in countries that primarily export people as to who is and who is not a citizen. The truth is, everyone is. It is a fundamental human right to be a citizen. Every single person has a right to be a citizen of some country. I ask, why not every country? The Blockchain could add 10 trillion dollars to the global GDP overnight by simply making every single human being a citizen of every country and it could do that. Without asking for permission.

After identity, there is the problem of the bank account. Banks shush shush most people. With the Blockchain, your bank account is automatic.

And then credit and pay. In a knowledge economy we are now in, it makes sense to simply pay every single person a basic living wage, and then build a robust economy on top of that. Not having to worry about your next meal does not make you lazy, or 99% of the people, over 99, in the rich countries would be lazy.

And theft. Poor countries are poor primarily because the local corrupt loot and move their money to rich countries, and rich countries are hand over fist. The Blockchain could make all that transparent. And then regulations could kick in. As in, maybe you belong in jail not in the Swiss Alps.

Cisco was one of the companies that built the Internet. And it made money. Everybody who buys a portion of a Bitcoin is helping pay to buid the Blockchain, and is investing in it to reap rewards. The Blockchain went IPO a long time ago.

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