Should I shut down the newsletter? UPDATE

Good morning!

Last week I asked what I should do with the newsletter and WOW did I get a response!

Over 300 people emailed, texted, or called to offer their thoughts. I literally spent hours going through all the replies (sorry if I didn’t respond - I did read every single one).

Everyone was super positive, supportive, and appreciative. Maybe this sounds a little funny but it was almost a Christmas gift of sorts - it was incredibly invigorating and inspiring to hear from so many people. I think what I needed more than anything was a reminder that people cared about this damn thing. I needed a burst of energy.

The responses generally fell into 3 different buckets:

1) Shut it down. If you’re not feeling it, life is short, move on to something else.

2) Keep it but find a way to do “less” - the most common idea was to publish less often (e.g. every 2 weeks or 1 month a month)

3) Keep going!

After seeing all your responses the decision was easy:I’m going to keep doing the newsletter every Monday.

I do like making this. I like hearing from people. And it’s unequivocally a valuable asset to continue to grow. I just needed to remember that, and to budget the energy needed to do it.

And with that - let’s get into this week’s newsletter!

Trevor

BVP’s Investment memo in Bright Health (article)

Well written investment memos are almost universally good reads, and this one is no exception. I’d never heard of Bright Health before but their series A was in 2016 and they went public in June of this year, with a current market cap of $2.4b. Their revenue increased 4.3x in 2020, I assume thanks to Covid but that still feels really high at that level (2020 annual revenue was $1.2b)

Also was impressed by their founder, Bob Sheehy, who had previously been the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, the largest health insurance company in the US.

That’s impressive because of what a big jump it is from that to startup founder/CEO. Sure he was probably able to raise capital fairly easily and didn’t have to sweat it out too much, but being a CEO at huge companies is like being a politician: you usually have to make certain life & career concessions to survive that long, and being a startup founder usually goes against all of that.

Mormon fertility rates are dropping rapidly (tweet)

“This stat still gets me: the Mormon fertility rate is falling precipitously, now barely above replacement (!!) If even the Mormons are headed this way, what hope is there for the rest of us?”

Part of the inside story on what happened to Klout (article)

This was quite good halfway thru and then ended up leaving a lot of the interesting details you think are coming (how did the acquisition happen? Why did the acquirer want them? etc.)

But the parts about running a company that’s doing well and then struggling were worth the read alone.

It’s also semi hilarious reading about an “oversubscribed” $30m Series C, from back in 2011.

Incredible fact: Spotify’s 2 launch partners for the US market were Coke and Klout.

RUV Alliance (investment group? not sure what to call this)

From my new friend Harvey Multani, it’s run in a Discord with access to many interesting deals.

See also: Harvey’s personal meeting philosophy, which is ballsy but after meeting him I believe to be almost entirely true.

Can Sex Workers And Virgins See Eye To Eye? (youtube)

Hope this doesn’t trigger the spam filters but this was fascinating.

3 sex workers & 3 virgins answer various questions and then talk about their answers.

If you like Aella’s twitter you’ll like this.

The Coming of the Terror in the French Revolution (book)

I’ve been trying to find an inroad to understanding the French Revolution for a while and a bunch of books just weren’t doing it for me. I’m about 25% through this one and so far so good.

It makes the American revolution even more… revolutionary. The French got rid of the noble distinction as a class marker around 1790, almost 15 years after the start of the Revolutionary War.

My ultimate goal here is to better understand the context for Napoleon’s place in history. It’s fascinating that a population could execute the same king that paid to create another country’s democracy, only to gratefully support another dictator 6 years later. Will keep you posted.

From my personal quote collection:

“Fear of responsibility is a catastrophic bottleneck. Since all progress in a system can only happen at the tightest bottleneck, you’ll never be able to be more productive or successful than you DARE to be. Todo apps & lifehacks can’t save you here.” - @visakanv

And Finally…

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See you next week!

Trevor