Trevor McKendrick - Things you're allowed to do

Good morning!

I’m looking for new music to get inspired or work to - would love some suggestions 🙏

Trevor

Things You’re Allowed to Do (article)

“This is a list of things you’re allowed to do that you thought you couldn’t, or didn’t even know you could.”

I find that much of experiencing life to the fullest is discovering things that you can do.

Some would use the phrase “asking for permission” to describe this, but I think it’s actually much bigger.

It’s more like recognizing the full agency you have across all the dimensions of your life, and then using your creativity & imagination to fully wield the power of your ability to create, act, and do.

(When people say “you’re the average of the 5 people you hang out with”, IMO one of the biggest reason’s why is the above - your peers set the menu of default life options.)

Tweet asking the worst part about being a founder

So many of these answers resonated:

“Acting amidst uncertainty”

“Dearth of performance feedback.”

“Accounting/taxes”

The US sentenced a crypto expert to 5 years in prison after he gave a blockchain presentation in North Korea (article)

The guy was a PhD grad from Caltech. Fascinating because in America being punished for speech is rare & (somewhat decreasingly) taboo.

I get this is very different from “free speech” rules in the US, but to me it’s still wild to be physically locked in a jail cell for sharing information that is publicly available.

Does anyone know the behind the scenes of the Sequoia/Finix/Stripe story from 2 years ago?

tldr: Sequoia invested $21m in Finix. Stripe (apparently?) complained that it was too competitive as Sequoia is one of their largest shareholders. Sequoia divested of their Finix shares but let Finix keep the $21 million.

Super fascinating story that happened right as the pandemic was beginning, have always been curious what actually went down.

And Finally…

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Have a great week!

Trevor