Brad's Brief - Debating Bitcoin, One-on-Ones, Cash Flows, and Creators
Hey everyone,
This issue is coming to you from Bethesda, MD. I am here evaluating the area for a new Skin Pharm location. This week I have focused a lot of time thinking about capital allocation, team building, and communication.
Before we dig in to the content, I'd like to thank all of you that signed up for the newsletter after my Tweet last week. It means a lot. 💪
Ok, now let's dig in.
Brad
What I'm reading
One on One by Ben Horowitz
Generally, people who think one-on-one meetings are a bad idea have been victims of poorly designed one-on-one meetings. The key to a good one-on-one meeting is the understanding that it is the employee’s meeting rather than the manager’s meeting. This is the free-form meeting for all the pressing issues, brilliant ideas and chronic frustrations that do not fit neatly into status reports, email and other less personal and intimate mechanisms.
This is an older article that I came across this week on the importance of one-on-one meetings. Ben Horowitz of the Venture Capital firm Andreeson Horowitz argues that one-on-one meetings are critical to ensuring that the best ideas, the biggest problems, and the most intense employee life issues make their way to the people that can deal with them. In the article, he gives 9 questions you should be asking in your one on ones. Here are my 3 favorite:
If you were me, what changes would you make?
What are we not doing that we should be doing?
Who is really kicking ass in the company? Who do you admire?
The Games People Play with Cash Flows by Cedric Chin
People with limited understanding of business think that business is all about making profits. But those who actually run businesses know that running a business is all about managing cash flows.
One of the most important decisions you make when building a company is how to finance it. You have three options: 1. You sell equity, 2. You take on debt, or 3. You use retained earnings. This article is in response to a post entitled, Startups Shouldn’t Raise Money, which argues that if you start from first principles, bootstrapping (using retained earnings) is the most rational approach. Cedric argues that first principles thinking fails when there is an unknown axiom that is not included as a first principle.
In this case, he argues that you should in fact prefer equity or debt financing over bootstrapping and he uses the story of Amazon to prove it. This is a great read and had me looking deeper into Amazon as a company here [ben evans link].
What I'm listening to
Compound Writing - Josh Spector - Lessons Learning Helping Thousands of Creators
Josh Spector is the author of the For The Interested newsletter and has also consulted for thousands of creators to help them with their online presence. I learned a lot from this discussion about creating transformational value, finding your ideal audience, and designing creative constraints. Here are the top 6 themes from the episode:
The more value you provide to other people, the more value you create for yourself.
Value is about transformation. Your content should help your audience transform into who they want to become.
Your ideal audience might be who you were two or three years ago.
Bigger isn’t always better when it comes to your audience. Think about who you’re trying to reach and work backwards from there.
If you’re struggling as a creator, you might be doing too much. Try focusing on one platform first.
Create constraints for your content to make the creative process easier.
The Grant Williams Podcast - Both Sides of the Coin: A Civilized Bitcoin Debate
As many of you know, I am a big Bitcoin and crypto bull and have been invested since 2014. Whenever there is a strong opinion against Bitcoin, I generally like to hear the argument and see if it changes my view in any way. This podcast was hyped up as just that. It's definitely worth a listen. For the record: it did not change my view on Bitcoin in any way. It actually made me more confident.
Bonus: Big Desk Energy by Tyler Denk
No matter where your desk is, the energy is here.
I don't usually pick playlists here, but Spotify lumped it into its podcast recommendations, so I am too. This playlist and its accompanying website has been on repeat the entire time I've been researching and writing this newsletter. It's great.
What I'm watching
MVMT: The Documentary
I have recently been interested in buying a new watch, so I started down the rabbit hole of "Watch YouTube." The one thing I've figured out: Watch purists hate MVMT. MVMT crushes it on social media. They have 1.1 million followers on Instagram and sold to Movado for $100M back in 2018. So why are they so hated? This is an interesting documentary by a YouTuber who goes to the MVMT headquarters to expose them.
Tweet of the Week
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