I read something interesting yesterday that stuck with me. It was a different way of thinking about wealth. It went something like this:

Someone with a lot of wealth can be assumed to have provided a lot of value to others in the past, which resulted in their wealth accumulation.

This author was speaking from a historical perspective, meaning they were looking at wealth accumulation over thousands of years, not just the last few decades.

I like this way of thinking about wealth, and I’m curious how many people think about it in these terms, given the monetary conditions of the last few decades. Not many, I suspect, but I want to test to confirm my intuition during the holidays with friends and family. I’m genuinely interested in hearing people’s thoughts on this.

With the year ending soon, today I spent some time reflecting on the last twelve months. If I had to sum up 2023, I’d characterize it as a year of learning.

At the beginning of the year, I knew I wanted to learn a complex, difficult topic as rapidly as possible, so I spent time fine-tuning my approach to learning. I then used those newly refreshed learning skills to learn as much as possible about my target topic from people who’ve mastered it. I reflected on their wisdom and looked for insights they and others weren’t aware of. Knowing something and applying it are two different things. I tend to know I’ve mastered something when I can apply it successfully. I applied what I learned from the masters, slightly modifying things based on my insights, in an iterative testing approach. Most tests were successful and showed I understood the concept well. Some failed, and I learned even more from them.

I feel good about what I learned this year. It may have a material impact on the rest of my life. I’m excited about 2024. I can’t wait to apply what I learned in 2023 and start the learning process again with a new topic!

This is my one-hundred-ninety-fifth weekly reflection. Here are my takeaways from this week:

• Project – This week I began collaborating on a project I’ve been considering for a few months. We’ve started some testing with ChatGPT and had some interesting results. It’s been fun and a great learning experience so far. I’m excited about the possibilities if we’re successful.  
• Christmas – I’m looking forward to spending quality time with family and friends . . . and eating some amazing Louisiana cooking!
• Countdown – There’s one calendar week left in 2023. Looking to make the most of it on the personal front.

Week one hundred ninety-five was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

I’ve been helping a founder with a fundraising round. It’s been a few months, and the round was moving toward the finish line. With investors lined up and lawyers finalizing documents, everything looked good for the transaction to close on time. Then one of the investors pulled out unexpectedly, putting the entire transaction in jeopardy. Luckily this founder had never stopped pitching other potential investors and had built a good working relationship with the lead investor. He has a solid list of potential investors to replace the one who dropped out. He was able to have a constructive conversation with the lead investor and agree on a strategy to close the transaction. It took an extra day—not bad given the eleventh-hour dynamics—but the transaction closed and the funds cleared the company bank account.

Fundraising is tough, full of all kinds of twists and turns. A transaction isn’t done until the money’s in the bank. Before then, anything could happen—and something often does happen at the last minute. Don’t get comfortable. Continue working on open items until the transaction is officially closed and the wire clears your bank account. When the wire clears, then you can relax a little and celebrate.

Last month I challenged myself to read an 800-page book over the Thanksgiving holiday. Yesterday, I shared my takeaways from that challenge.

Today I’ve decided what I want to read to meet my Christmas reading goal. I’ve purchased two books on a new topic I’m interested in understanding—one roughly 500 pages, the other about 200. So, 700 pages total. My goal is to finish both books over the Christmas holiday and go into the new year with a better understanding of the topic.

Looking forward to this challenge. Wish me luck!

Last month, I set a Thanksgiving reading goal. I’d been putting off reading an 800-page book for months. I didn’t want it to sit around any longer, making me feel guilty, so I challenged myself to read it during the Thanksgiving holiday. The goal ended up being a stretch goal. It was more aggressive than I realized. I didn’t factor in enough time for holiday activities, so I didn’t finish the entire book by my November 26 deadline. But I got close and did so shortly after Thanksgiving.

Overall, the challenge was a success, and I learned a lot from it. It ended up being a great motivator. I was excited to absorb the wisdom in the book but, even more so, motivated to accomplish my goal. This ended up being a great combination to prompt me to read a book I otherwise might not have gotten around to reading and to do it relatively quickly. The challenge also let me scratch the itch of accomplishing something difficult—something I enjoy but don’t normally experience during a holiday. Last, it forced me to be more intentional about using some of the reading techniques I learned about this year.

The holiday reading challenge was a success and something I want to do more consistently. I’ll start thinking about what I want to read during the Christmas holiday. If my experience then is as positive as it was at Thanksgiving, I’ll consider making this a habit.

In September 2022, I shared that Adobe announced it was acquiring Figma for $20 billion. Adobe is publicly traded and has a market capitalization (i.e., valuation) of around $270 billion as of this writing. It’s an established company offering software, including Photoshop, to creatives. Figma was founded around 2011 and offers web-based tools that allow creatives to design and prototype user interfaces and user experiences collaboratively and easily.

Today it was reported that the merger has been called off because Adobe couldn’t get regulatory approval. Adobe will reportedly pay Figma a $1 billion termination fee for walking away from the deal.

Figma’s CEO confirmed the news via a blog post in which he also noted that the company has been executing since the deal was announced. It even hired 500 new people.

This news is bound to be a letdown for Figma team members and investors, who expected a large liquidity event this year. However, this might not be all bad for Figma. For one thing, market conditions have changed materially since this deal was announced. The NASDAQ Composite Index was at about ~11,000 then (on September 22, 2022). The index's 2022 bottom was ~10,200. As of this writing, it’s at ~14,900, or ~35% higher since the announcement of the merger. Another consideration is that if the 500 new hires are an indication of revenue growth, the company could be doing well financially. Last, Figma gets $1 billion for the headache of the last fifteen months, which isn’t bad considering it was valued at $10 billion in its last fundraising round in 2021.

This isn’t the outcome Figma hoped for, but it probably isn’t that bad for them. It could even turn out to be a good outcome. Time will tell. I’m curious to see what 2024 has in store for Figma.

Yesterday I shared my thoughts on Jeff Bezos embracing wandering. In the video I referred to, Bezos talked about something else that I’ve been thinking about: cost reduction.

To Bezos, cost reduction means inventing a better way of doing existing work. When you invest in a better way, you make doing that work less expensive, which makes the world richer. He used the example of the plow. The invention of plowing made farming less expensive and more efficient, which made the world richer (by making food more plentiful and less expensive).

Space flight, Bezos said, is a solved problem, and he’s focused on dramatically reducing its cost.

It’s interesting that Bezos arguably has built a trillion-dollar company (Amazon.com) by focusing on cost reduction and could build another massive company with Blue Origin by turning the same focus onto a different industry.

If you want to check out this section of the interview, look here.

This weekend, I listened to an interview that Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com and Blue Origin, recently gave. I haven’t found many long-form Bezos interviews, so I was interested in hearing what he had to say in this one, which lasted over two hours.

Bezos discussed many topics, but one thing he mentioned multiple times stuck out to me. Bezos is a big fan of wandering.

His thinking is that solving a problem by inventing a new solution means you don’t know where you’re going. New solutions are different than incremental improvement, and there is no linear path to new solutions like there is to incremental improvements. The solution isn’t clear, and you’re working to find it through all sorts of unexpected twists and turns. The process is often seems inefficient, but that’s how new solutions are invented.  

Bezos went on to say that he likes messy meetings accompanied by a crisp document outlining the problem to solve because messy meetings allow for the wandering that results in the invention of new solutions.

Bezos also shared a fun fact: when he wakes up in the morning, he isn’t as productive as people think. He first wanders a bit by drinking coffee, talking with others, reading the news, etc.

The interview with Bezos was interesting, and I had a few great takeaways. If you’d like to watch the full interview, go here. For his thoughts on wandering, go here, here, and here.

This is my one-hundred-ninety-fourth weekly reflection. Here are my takeaways from this week:

• Shopify – Chatting with the Shopify CEO this week was amazing. His focus on helping people achieve independence through entrepreneurship stuck with me. Entrepreneurship is a force for economic mobility, and there’s a big opportunity to build products that help other entrepreneurs succeed.
• Events – I met some impressive people at events in Atlanta this week. I want to be more thoughtful in 2024 about attending interesting non-tech events.
• Countdown – There are two calendar weeks left in 2023. With essentially one business week left, everyone’s making a mad dash to get anything still open wrapped up.

Week one hundred ninety-four was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!