Weekly Recap, March 28th-April 3rd 2022

Hello hello hello! Anything blow your mind this week?

Ok, you know the drill for the newsletter: it's all my LinkedIn posts for the week...plus some bonus material because why the hell not.

Ready? Because here it comes!

Macron telling VCs he's been accepted to Y Combinator and that his pre-money has doubled. ??

"While fund of funds isn’t a new strategy, it’s one that is gaining significant steam in a softening late-stage market and a rush to back the best pre-seed companies out there." ??

Not wrong. ??

OnlyFans SPACing would arguably define this era. Just need to somehow involve an NFT to make it a lock. ??

This video from the UK's?Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS)?is...I mean...good lord...anyways...I'm curious how much this cost the British taxpayer. ?? ??

Fast: 500 employees, a $584M valuation, burning through $10M a month...on $600k in annual revenues. ??

"Despite the world leading research produced here in the UK, deeptech is still hugely underfunded at the scaleup stage". Amen to that! ??

Caught up with the head of a VERY large LP today. While discussing various macro trends on investing, he mentioned that Europe's tech ecosystem has been a big beneficiary of tense US-China relations. ???? ???? ????

“The only predictors for best-performing direct VC investments at universities were prior performance and proximity to venture ecosystems including the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, the Boston and Cambridge area, New York City, and London.” ??

"Why would [US firms without semiconductor-manufacturing capabilities] choose to manufacture their chips not in South Korea, Taiwan or the United States but in Europe?" ????♂?

"Being the 'Regulatory Leader' is NOT A REAL THING. Imagine it is the early 20th century and imagine that cars were invented and that the USA and China were producing a lot of cars. The EU of today would say 'Building cars looks hard, but we will be the leader in STOP SIGNs'". ??

"Universities need to see that 5% of a successful spinout is worth more than 30% of one that isn't." Truth! ????

A single EV battery weighs about 1,000 pounds and requires extracting and processing some 500,000 pounds of materials. Given predicted battery and related green energy demand, over the next thirty years more mineral ores will need to be mined than humanity has ever extracted. The 21st century will be the century of mining. This will have serious environmental and geopolitical implications. ?

"Austria is a 'veritable aircraft carrier' of covert Russian activity. Its BVT intelligence agency is regarded as being so compromised that for a time it was cut out of much European intelligence sharing activity, according to one Vienna-based European diplomat. The country’s defence ministry is 'practically a department of the GRU'". FFS Austria! ????♂? ????

Here comes some bonus material!

For the live music this week, it's not actually from this week, but from a couple of years ago. In recent years I've been telling anyone that will listen about just how good and of the moment the UK's jazz scene is. I was asked this week for a place to start. This video is a nice primer ?? ??:

Harvard Business Review stupidly thinking McKinsey can do comedy is one of the most HBS things ever ??:

Could we really build giant robots? ??:

Private Eye nails it ??:

Map of Europe's Fertility Transition Dates (France has a fascinating demographic history) ????:

The CEO of Restoration Hardware talking about the state of the economy is a hell of a ramble ??:

Keyboard activity throughout the day ??:

A majority of Japanese support restarting Japan's nuclear reactors ??:

Multiples on Rock vs Pop vs Hip Hop vs R&B ??:

International funds are reducing their Chinese exposure ??:

Mariupol before it was destroyed by the Russian army ???? ?? ??:

Tradle, like Wordle but for global trade. ??

And there it was!

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Have an amazing week!

MJ.