need 1 team for a highly competitive fantasy NBA league. Message me or share with anyone who really knows NBA...
Jason Fiedler retweeted
$BX Jon Gray: the winners AI cannot touch are scarce assets like an Indian cricket team, a coffee chain, beachfront property, and the Rome airport
"So, there are also other winners in this world who are not technology related. Scarce assets, we'll call them. These are all companies, assets we're invested in."
"A cricket team in India. Why do we like that? Well, there are 1.4 billion people in India. Cricket is their favorite sport. There are just 10 teams, and AI is not taking this away."
"We have a great coffee chain, 7 Brew. That's their Blondie, their signature drink. People are gonna still need this, still love these products."
"Beachfront property. This could be one of the best areas to go. Nobody loves real estate, multiples are low, and yet these experiences aren't going away. These assets are irreplaceable."
"Or something like the Rome airport, where that infrastructure is essential. These are things that are interesting to invest in."
_______
For Jon Gray's full set of takeaways and slides: firesidealpha.substack.com/p…
Jon Gray explains how a cheap 2021 data-center buy fanned out into land, steel, cooling, contractors, LLMs, and Blackstone's biggest theme
"So the data centers, which have become our biggest theme today, came about, we bought a data center business, we privatized it in 2021."
"At the time we did it because we thought it was inexpensive, we thought cloud migration was happening, and yet we noticed the big hyperscalers were starting to come for very large orders."
"This was the early days of training, and we were like, huh."
"And we're like, well, what if we went out and bought some land and ordered some steel and got ahead of this?"
"And what if we started doing it in other geographies in Europe? Same sort of thing."
"And then you say to yourself, interesting, well, what's inside the data center? And what about if we bought some cooling? And what if we bought electrical equipment? And what if we bought contractors?"
"And by the way, maybe the large language models that are doing all this, maybe we should invest in those too."
"And you begin to fan out against this neighborhood, because you say there's a bunch of things in here."
"And sometimes the things that are one or two derivatives off may be less expensive."
"Had you invested in memory chip companies 12, 18 months ago, it would have been one of the greatest investments of all time."
"you can't vibe code a monster energy"
Vertically integrated consumer products businesses built on AI are the unassailable businesses of the future
Everyones talking about the "HALO" trade - heavy assets low obsolescence
The public SaaS sector sell off feels a bit overbaked at this point - but its not random. The tools that anthropic is putting out are mind boggling.
But reality is you can't vibe code a monster energy ($MNST +10% YTD). In many ways you can't vibe code legacy SaaS either, but AI is a tailwind for consumer brands and a headwind to SaaS.
Consumer products brands are heavily incentivized to adopt AI because they are very low operating leverage businesses, and those dollars in OpEx matter ALOT. They'll race to save 50% on a hire by deploying AI
In the short term, theyre motivated by saving money - but in the long term should be motivated by actually building Ai-native machines that conduct business in some of the biggest markets in the global economy
If you can build a consumer product business on top of AI and owned manufacturing, you can become completely unassailable. I believe this is the most defensible business model in today's economy.
Optimize your supply chain with AI, reduce headcount and pass savings onto customers, create more effective marketing with AI.
Better products for cheaper that are making MORE profit that are MORE scalable in these massive markets.
Physical world atoms have always been a constraint of scaling these businesses - AI has the potential to unlock that
All Revenue is Not Created Equal abovethecrowd.com/2011/05/24…
1990s: NBA All Stars missed ~10.6 games per season on average.
2020s: NBA All Stars miss ~23.9 games per season on average.
Game is being played at a faster pace but much softer. Anyone have an answer as to why this is?
Jason Fiedler retweeted
BREAKING: Ryan Serhant (@RyanSerhant) joins Sourcery to share the full SERHANT.
With more than $20 billion in real estate sales, $45 million in seed funding for S.MPLE (a superintelligent AI), an integrated media arm w/ Studios, the rapid success of SELL IT (sales-training program), & starring roles on Owning Manhattan (Netflix) & multiple Bravo TV series..
Ryan Serhant is nothing short of impressive.
..& building quite the empire in New York City.
"Brand. Expand. Sell."
In this interview we go deep into:
- The Future of NYC
- Media as a Business Model (Brokerage 3.0)
- S.MPLE’s $45M Seed Round & AI-Driven Sales
- Authenticity, Community, & Brand Building
- Netflix Flywheel: Media → Distribution → Sales
Highlights
(00:00) The Full Serhant.
(01:32) NYC politics & real-estate resilience
(07:00) Running a city like a CEO
(08:14) Building the SERHANT. empire
(09:14) From Bravo to media entrepreneur
(12:29) A media + tech company that sells real estate
(15:00) Authenticity vs virality in building community
(17:00) $308M deal born from brand awareness
(19:45) Owning Manhattan & the Netflix effect
(22:33) Casting talent & shaping culture
(25:00) Season 2 preview & evolution of real-estate TV
(30:15) Inside S.MPLE — AI as agent co-pilot
(36:00) How AI transformed every department
(42:00) Recruiting the next-gen, mobile-first agent
(43:30) Raising $45M & scaling SERHANT nationally
It’s been almost a decade since I first wrote about pet food. Yet the most exciting time for the category is still ahead of us… linkedin.com/posts/fiedlerja…
When rules are upheld that make no sense and discourage basic modernization, institutions lose credibility. @MagnusCarlsen is free to style with #freestyle chess.
The World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen got kicked out of a Chess tournament for wearing JEANS
“Fine. I'm Out, Fuck You.”
xitter.cf/utsav__45/status/18727…
Jason Fiedler retweeted
How do you build a $2B+ AUM VC fund in 5 years?
@jfeedler shares the growth story of @leftlanecap
Left Lane Capital Stats:
- 80 Portfolio Companies
- $5-50M Checks
- Targeting Series A Stage
- 12-14 Board Positions per Partner
- 37 Team Members
- Young Team: <35 Years Old
- 600-800 Deals Sourced / Month
- 70% of Deals Sourced From Junior Team
Jason Fiedler retweeted
New Pod! Investing in America's New Consumer: CPG, Sports, Four-Wall Businesses
$2B+ AUM in 5 Years | Jason Fiedler @leftlanecap
- “Anti-AI” Strategy (yes, I’m being dramatic.)
- Soda’s Cigarette Moment + Olipop’s $1B Valuation?
- How many bananas are in Olipop!?
- Reaching $2B+ AUM in ~5 years
- Conviction in Sports Investing
- Jason’s Sims City Vision
- Utilizing ‘NPS Delta’ Analysis to Pick Winners
- Insight’s Metrics-Driven Software Approach Applied to Consumer Investing
- “Pearls & Strings” Framework
PS If you can find the correct bananas timestamp you get a free Sourcery hat
(@jfeedler)
'Olympics is going to elevate all of us:' Why women's volleyball could take off usatoday.com/story/sports/ol… via @usatoday
Great reporting by @Ali_Lev
NEW on Frank/JP Morgan:
Frank founder Charlie Javice was arrested last night in New Jersey.
Javice faces fraud charges from the SEC and Justice Department, where a criminal investigation is underway through the Southern District of New York: forbes.com/sites/alexandrale…
“Bad companies are destroyed by crisis. Good companies survive them. Great companies are improved by them.” – at Manhattan, NY
What @larryellison is doing on lana’i is one of the most interesting & special social phenomenon of our time… he’s basically playing The Sims in real life – at Lanai City, HI
Jason Fiedler retweeted
From working at startups in China, to founding a new pet franchise in the US -
Shaina Denny is modernizing the dog daycare model via a new "pay-as-you-go" model with Dogdrop.
