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Bourdain was still dunking french fries at age 44 before he wrote kitchen confidential

Best of life is not behind you. 40’s are the back nine of your prime. You have the most knowledge and experience and still have energy and ability.

Be careful of the stories you tell yourself because they will eventually become true.

Friend works for real estate group that provides consulting services for companies looking to move into a new area.

Friend can drag a box around any area down to the block and see how many people visit that area, what part of the city they came from to get there, where they went to next, average income, etc etc etc

We all know we are being tracked but seeing him use his software was still shocking. Apparently all data is from 3rd party apps and they charge $30k++ for their real estate analysis service. Who knows how much they pay for the actual data or how many times over it’s sold. It’s all anonymous but adding just a small bit of information about an individual and pretty easy to figure out and track them even off this anonymized 3rd party data.

Scary hours

The book - Fabric of Civilization takes an informative dive on what happened as cotton/wool fabric technology evolved and different bottle necks in the process changed, along with who was compensated more and who lost their jobs in the process.

Know a few “pot lawyers” and retail operators. The real money is in gaining a license for a dispensary. Growing is a race to the bottom. From humboldt era $5k lbs to $800 lbs

Money is but a reflection of what we value.

Money is not evil, but the abstraction of “value” in modern life does cause the problems he blames money for.

Perhaps the jungle/forest tribes way of life is the best and simple way we can be happy. Yet tent communes like Johnston’s seem to be setup in the middle of a town square or within close proximity of a city, and not in nature somewhere actually sustaining themselves.

In the end if we blew it all up we would arrive back to same evolution of living we find ourselves in today.

Judd made Marfa and died before it ever became what it was today. Secretive group of artists and the like came later and in the end, all good towns need an industry and Marfa’s real industry is tourism of people coming to see the art and related art that has sprung up.

Even terralingua has a restaurant with a two hour wait now. Tourism is the only real driver of a small town booming imo.

Marfa also does not have a lot of services that are needed for anyone older than 50, like a hospital.

The flower market in downtown LA is one of the best in the world. Very neat experience to get there at 5am, semi-akin to Tsukiji back in the day.

Package up a gimmick in a decent looking kiosk and pitch the “where won’t this work!?” dream. You’ll capture enough imagination in pitch meetings to raise a few mil. You’ll put together a team and manufacture your first batch, spending all of your first raise in the process. A few big name clients will pop-up and show interest, enough to go back to your investors for a just a bit more money to keep going. Big name clients do some one off deals, everyone is interested but if it could just do X or Y, you’ll chase custom requests and eventually arrive at the crossroads of becoming an event based marketing agency or riding a slowly fading business into the ground as the kiosks age and no new clients sign up after the hype is over.

Whether it’s touch screen mirrors, digital art club screens, cell phone charging kiosks, photo booths, sports training kiosks, screens on water faucets, it’s inevitably the same story arch.

The only ones I’ve seen that make money are those that pivot into high-ticket custom events which then you’re not a scalable startup anymore but an agency, or you barely get your investors bailed out by selling some backend tech you developed for stock in another company.

Much like Europe already

Easy - hold a plank

Worked in commercial real estate before the last crash and have a few friends working at big mall companies. Have seen some really cool plans to turn a whole mall into residential with the interior being common areas and parks etc. Some really neat concepts.

Need AoE!!

I was raising money and met this zen style investor for lunch to talk about some issues we were having, basically complaining and blaming and things like that, he interrupted me and said -

“Be careful the stories you tell yourself because they will eventually become true”

It hit me that I really was telling these stories of how the company was or where the business was going in a negative light and things were simply becoming more and more negative because of me. So be careful!

It’s a bit of a paradox when you try something audacious like a startup.

I raised money, had 6 full-time employees and went hard and a year in realized it wasn’t going to work. It sucked, the stress, the grind, the failure.

That experience has left me in the same state where you realize If you can get a startup off the ground that you can actually do anything you really want to go after.

But the flip side is you also now how have a taste for how bad it can go (if it failed) and now I find I can’t take a step towards anything without that fear.

Should add that his insurance company covered everything both times and provided rental car but after second time they won’t cover the vehicle anymore being parked in that neighborhood on the street.

Friend of mine has a Prius and lives in Echo Park in LA. His cat was cut out of his car twice in two weeks. Seemed like every person in the chain benefited from the theft, scrap metal guys, tow truck towing his car to mechanic, mechanic replacing it and also trying to sell him on a cage.

It was almost like the theives were alerted by the mechanic that he had replaced the cat.

Theives only make a couple hundred from the cat, insurance pays the mechanic a couple g’s for a new one plus labor.

A person I know routinely flies with ~1 lbs of marijuana in his checked luggage as well as edibles and vape products, all just for personal use. He flies internationally to and from the States and no one ever says anything to him. Even flying into other countries where there’s no rec marijuana. It’s insane.

The pollution is the tough part there. Despite the great weather normally.

Have you found anywhere else comparable that isn’t insane expensive?

Where are the numbers on revenue here or what point of scale shows profit. They show a spreadsheet with 10 users costing $2,800/mo to maintain and $24k upfront. How could that ever be profitable at a competitive price point?

Am I missing a link here or something?