Not Boring

Capital markets run on a patchwork of systems built on top of COBOL over which $3 trillion flows daily. It's a ticking time bomb. So Clear Street is fixing it. The 5-year-old company is worth $2.2 billion, did $260 million in 2023 revenue, and did so profitably. I got to spend time with Uriel Cohen and the Clear Street team to understand why in the world the system still runs on 70-year-old systems, how hard it is to fix from the inside, how to fix it from the outside, and the stakes for getting it right. In the process, I learned more about my favorite topic: what it takes to build really hard startups that replace old infrastructure with modern rails. https://lnkd.in/e3-m9_CH

There's something special happening over on Farcaster. On Friday, Farcaster released Frames. Think of them as mini-apps right in the feed. I think these very small apps are a very big deal. Frames are three ideas I've been writing about brought to life: 1. Small Apps, Growing Protocols 2. Experimentation and Infrastructure 3. Why Blockchain Networks Win Frames isn’t about “onboarding the next billion users to crypto.” It’s about using blockchain networks to do things that billions of people want to do, better. https://lnkd.in/eUZy8n4X

We're standing at the foot of a Techno-Industrial Revolution. I've become obsessed with a certain type of company recently that I'm calling Techno-Industrials. When people talk about deep tech / hard tech / etc... I think they're talking about the ability to compete in huge markets at lower cost and better margins. Techno-Industrials use technology to build atoms-based products with structurally superior unit economics with the ultimate goal of winning on cost in large existing markets, or expanding or creating new markets where there is pent-up demand. Examples include Anduril Industries, Solugen, and Monumental Labs. The opportunity is huge markets at higher margins. The challenges are daunting. I suspect we'll see trillion-dollar Techno-Industrials.