The Diff - Longreads + Open Thread

 Today's issue of The Diff is brought to you by our sponsor, Manifold Markets.

Longreads

• In Owl Posting, Abhishaike Mahajan and Eryney Marrogi make the case that progress in biology would be faster if there were more people focused on speeding up the schleps instead of developing new drugs. As the piece points out, the software world is the opposite, full of people who are Changing The Way We X, where X is some kind of necessary inconvenience in big organizations that doesn't feel world-changing—and yet, the trillions of dollars of market value the software industry has created consists of 1) solving those schleps, and 2) using other people's schlep-solving products to expedite the delivery of something else.
• The Social Network was arguably the most important movie ever because it gave so many people social permission to be a founder (this shows up in different datasets in different ways, like the number of YC applications or the popularity of majoring in computer science; there are precedents for this effect, like Top Gun, but startups have a bigger long-term impact on growth). This Zadie Smith review looks at the movie through a different lens, basically seeing it as an attempt by earlier generations to understand the millennials, who themselves are creating products that completely change what the next generation is like. And it has some good meditations on how different kinds of media affect people's self-presentation—open-ended ones let you express yourself, while more closed ones make you compress yourself instead. Last, this piece is worth reading as a time capsule from when Mark Zuckerberg was uncool and MIDI music was still common. It's always hard to predict which trendlines are mean-reverting and which are veering off towards what looks like, from the present perspective, infinity.
• Vaishnav Sunil has a great piece about liquid and illiquid careers. There are some job paths that make someone's value to a prospective employer incredibly legible (if you went to HYPS and then spent two years at MBB, employers know roughly what you can do and almost exactly what you can accomplish). And if you taught yourself TypeScript while pursuing a career in jazz performance before getting into longevity research, there's a wider range. Compressing away that career volatility is convenient, and it's a defensible choice, but one of the upsides to an illiquid career is that you get a lot more input into the rubric used to evaluate your own abilities.
• Scott Alexander has notes on the Progress Studies conference a few weeks ago. One thing he highlights is that there really has been a vibe shift—in energy, housing, autonomous vehicles, and other fields, there are visible signs of positive change and that momentum is getting people excited again. Technological advances tend to happen in discrete jumps, but social changes are a harder-to-model process that's less about getting one specific answer and more about popularizing the important questions.
• Speedwell Research has a piece that's implicitly on the same theme above: the contrast between a minimum viable product and a maximum possible product. The basic model is that if there's an existing category, it's possible to ship early and iterate, but if there's a new product, customers' first impressions of your iteration are also their first impression of the entire category. When Apple launched the iPhone, it was their one chance to show their customers what a smartphone could be. That's a vibes-based argument in two directions: obviously, consumers change their view when they try something for the first time and wonder how they could have lived without it. But the organizations developing these products also have to be animated by the belief that 1) what they're shipping will change the world, 2) these changes will be net good, and 3) that will hold true despite the fact that they won't be able to predict most of the impact that their product has.
• In Capital Gains this week, we look at locked-in funding. Not all leverage is created equal, and while it's cheaper to borrow against stocks in your portfolio than to borrow against your house, you aren't going to get a margin call because your neighbor's Zestimate ticked down a few percent. Short-term funding is rocket fuel for growth, but one mark of businesses that plan to survive is that they arrange long-term funding when they can so the money's there when they need it.
• This week on The Riff, we talked about the meaning of "venture scale," financial bubbles, and why it's hard for creators and influencers to sell equity. Listen with Spotify/Apple/YouTube.

Books

Ernst Jünger's Eumeswil is a post-apocalyptic novel whose protagonist, at the beginning, is a sort of high-class bartender for a local warlord. The protagonist is a detached observer who seems to appreciate his proximity to power in a purely intellectual sense, but who also concludes, over time, that he doesn't want to have anything to do with the business of pushing around or being pushed around.

Downfall: Prigozhin, Putin, and the new fight for the future of Russia is also a story about someone who got close to power by pouring drinks for an authoritarian ruler, in a 90s St. Petersburg that no doubt felt plenty post-apocalyptic to the people who lived there. Prigozhin decided that power suited him just fine, and that he'd enjoy a few more helpings of it. So he parlayed a minor restaurant empire (including a fast food chain called "BlinDonalds,"—blin is a Russian food, but also a Russian minced oath) into a business empire covering catering, disinformation, and mercenaries. Yet another entry in the list of weirdly diversified developing market conglomerates whose success is defined by access to capital and political influence ($, Diff).

The book is weirdly deflating in that Prigozhin seemed to be someone with a big personality and big ambitions, but the full arc of his career was more reactive: he made the big bet to align himself with Putin instead of choosing an oligarch, but most of his subsequent actions seem reactive. It's unclear if he even wanted to start a mercenary company himself, or was just the first person in Putin's circle who was asked to do it and couldn't say no. The book's model is that Russia is a modern state, except at the top where it's a medieval court, and that means that understanding it means understanding the personality quirks and squabbles of people who all have an incentive to mislead. Sometimes, this is a manageable setup that actually leads to a certain kind of stability. And sometimes, it means that a former hot dog vendor is marching on Moscow.

Open Thread

• Drop in any links or comments of interest to Diff readers.
• People with Yevgeny Prigozhin's propensity for seeking power and cutting deals exist everywhere, but clearly in most places they don't end up launching coup attempts. What paths do they select into in more stable countries?

A Word From Our Sponsors

Prediction markets are finally growing up. Manifold Markets has launched "sweepcash"—real-money rewards for accurate forecasts—while keeping their original play-money system intact. The dual-currency model is already generating fascinating divergences: their flagship 2024 presidential market shows Trump at 61%, notably higher than their mana play-money market. Wondering where those odds come from? Manifold offers markets on numerous other outcomes, so you can see what assumptions people are making about swing states, polling error, and other factors—you can either see what assumptions the market is making or spot an arbitrage opportunity.

US residents can get in on the election action here.

Diff Jobs

Companies in the Diff network are actively looking for talent. See a sampling of current open roles below:

• A well funded startup founded by two SpaceX engineers that’s building the software stack for hardware companies is looking for a staff product manager with 5+ years experience building and managing data-intensive products. (LA, Hybrid)
• Ex-Ramp founder and team are hiring a high energy, junior full-stack engineer to help build the automation layer for the US healthcare payor-provider ecosystem. (NYC)
• An AI startup building tools to help automate compliance for companies in highly regulated industries is looking for a director of information security and compliance with 5+ years of info sec related experience at a software company. Experience with HIPAA, FedRAMP a plus. (NYC)
• A well-funded startup that’s building the universal electronic cash system by taking stablecoins from edge cases to the mainstream is looking for a senior full-stack engineer. Experience with information dense front-ends is a strong plus. (NYC, London, Singapore)
• A growing pod at a multi-manager platform is looking for new quantitative researchers, no prior finance experience necessary, 250k+ (NYC)

Even if you don't see an exact match for your skills and interests right now, we're happy to talk early so we can let you know if a good opportunity comes up.

If you’re at a company that's looking for talent, we should talk! Diff Jobs works with companies across fintech, hard tech, consumer software, enterprise software, and other areas—any company where finding unusually effective people is a top priority.