NevBlog

Neville's Digital Surrogate Brain

October 2024 Goals

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These are my goals for October 2024:

Last month was a whole bunch of wedding stuff, and the main wedding is over (and went insanely great), and now there’s more wedding reception stuff this month.

It’s been fun doing all the wedding stuff, and I’m glad I kept up with work at the same time by front-loading everything.

The Backbone of the Internet

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Here’s an interesting thought:

“The Internet” still runs on servers and cables, and the companies that run the most bare metal on the internet are:

– Amazon: 32%
– Microsoft: 20%
– Google: 9%
– Alibaba: 6%
– IBM: 5%
– SalesForce: 3%
– Tencent: 2%
– Oracle: 2%

That means as you’re reading this on your phone/tablet/desktop, some bits and bytes travelled either by air or physical cable to a metal server likely controlled by one (or several) of the companies listed above.

You might be reading my words originating from a cluster of servers just like this!

Dinner with Peter Thiel

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I once had dinner with Peter Thiel…

….and whenever someone asked his opinion on something, he’d give a “spectrum of possibilities” for every answer.

Example: If I asked his thoughts on the future of the Dollar, he would respond:

“Ok, here’s 3 scenarios…”

Then he would give 3 different “scenarios” ranging from:
– Normal and boring scenario.
– Good and Bad mixed scenario.
– Crazy worst case scenario.

Then he’d backup each scenario with data or comparable past events.

He rarely thought something was black and white, but that everything was a spectrum of possibilities.

It was super cool to see his thinking in action!

Building New Products Pyramid

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This is a super simplistic framework for thinking about building a new product.

Many people come up with business ideas without enough demand, this framework ensures you’re going after an audience with a problem + demand + money:

Credit: @sgblank @nivi

Qualities to sell a company for a very high multiple

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If you ever want to sell a company for a very high multiple, here’s some qualities of that company:
– It owns a niche.
– It has recurring revenue.
– It has tech at its core.
– It is international.
– It has defensive IP.