Audience Building 101

Every company in the world is an audience company.

Whether it's a Media, VC, or DTC business, if you're not building audience Day 1, you're not prioritizing the right things.

Here's my framework for thinking about & building a killer audience 👇

Who you surround yourself with is who you become.

9 steps for optimizing your circle 🧵

Step 1: grab 2 sheets of paper and a pen/pencil/sharpie

Step 2: on first sheet, make a list of your 10-20 closest personal connections

For me, this includes:

- Mom
- Girlfriend
- @austin_rief (co-founder)
- @SahilBloom (friend)

I get to 17 connections on my list.

Introducing The 50.

Where I share the story and lessons of a top 50 largest company in the world.

Time for #1.

This company went from 0 to $200bn in 5.5 years...

Let's dive in👇

Pinduoduo is the 50th largest company in the world.

If Costco & Disneyland had a baby, you'd get Pinduoduo.

A discount online shopping experience littered with contests & coupons.

490 million MAUs.
$8.5 billion in 2020 revenue.
14% of China's e-commerce market.

What's most fascinating isn't its size. It's its speed.

Pinduoduo was founded in 2015!

It IPOd in 2018.

The company 119x'ed its revenue in just 6 years.

This is where my fascination lies.

And to understand Pinduoduo, we must understand its fascinating founder.

Meet Colin Huang.

Probably haven't heard of him, but absolutely worth knowing.

The 41-year-old internet entrepreneur is the Founder & CEO of Pinduoduo.

He's #28 on the world's richest list ($50bn).

The Hangzhou native loved math & science early, earning him a spot at a top foreign language school & an internship at Microsoft.

He attended Wisconsin for college and joined a small tech co after graduation called...Google.

Introducing The 50.

Where I share the story and lessons of a top 50 largest company in the world.

Time for #3.

What started as a failing textile business became the 6th largest company in the world.

Let's dive in 🧵

Berkshire Hathaway is a multinational conglomerate that owns 60+ well-known businesses like Geico, Duracell, Kraft Heinz, and Dairy Queen.

It's also a highly coveted stock with one Class A share priced in at $430,000.

And it all began with Warren Edward Buffett...

• The Greatest Investor of All Time

• The Oracle of Omaha

• The Dumbledore of Investing (my personal fav)

Warren Buffett is a value investing legend and is responsible for growing Berkshire Hathaway into the $655 bn behemoth that it is today.

Born during the height of the Depression, Buffett watched his parents struggle to make ends meet in their hometown of Omaha, NE.

One night, a young Warren declared that he would make $1 million by the age of 35 or throw himself off the tallest building he could find in Omaha.

Buffet had a passion for numbers from a young age.

He collected bottle caps left outside of soda machines and analyzed for which brands and flavors customers preferred most.

This soon turned into tracking and recording stock prices that he would see in his father’s newspapers.

THREAD: 15 of the most useful razors and rules I've found.

Rules of thumb that simplify decisions.

Bezos' Razors:

• If unsure what action to take, let your 80-year-old self make it.

• If unsure who to work with, pick the person that has the best chances of breaking you out of a 3rd world prison.

Skinner's Law:

• If procrastinating on an item, you only have 2 options:

1. Make the pain of not doing it greater than the pain of doing it.

2. Make the pleasure of doing it greater than the pleasure of not doing it.

Luck Razor:

• If stuck with 2 equal options, pick the one that feels like it will produce the most luck later down the line.

I used this razor to go for drinks with a stranger rather than watch Netflix.

In hindsight, it was the highest ROI decision I've ever made.

Bragging Razor:

• If someone brags about their success or happiness, assume it’s half what they claim.

• If someone downplays their success or happiness, assume it’s double what they claim.

The map is not the terrain.

Antares Vision $AV.IM is the world's leading Track & Trace (T&T) and Vision Inspection (VI) solutions provider for the life science sector.

With several catalysts ahead I've initiated a position in this insider-owned small cap 🔽

1/

Antares is the supplier to 10 of the 20 leading pharmaceutical companies in the world having installed +2000 serialisation lines at +200 production facilities in +60 countries.

2/

Antares offers - via software and hardware - the protection of products and brands through visual inspection systems for quality
control, Track & Trace solutions for anti-counterfeiting and supply chain transparency from the point of
production to the end consumer.

3/

All major governments have regulation rolling out in regards to prescription drug traceability.

Penetration, globally, is below 30% and is forecast to double by 2026.

4/

In regards to distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, IBM partnered with Antares to create a solution tracking raw materials and identify shortages. Monitor production yields across manufacturers, guarantee vaccine integrity and prevent counterfeits.

5/

As part of our commitment to keeping our customers/community protected & informed, we are releasing a blog that shines light on transition between Stage 1 and 2 of #Solorigate/#SUNBURST campaign, custom Cobalt Strike loaders, post-exploit. artifacts, IOCs: https://t.co/b0ReHMa63u

Here are some highlights:
The missing link between the Solorigate backdoor and the custom #CobaltStrike loaders observed during the #Solorigate is an Image File Execution Options (IFEO) Debugger registry value created for the legitimate process dllhost.exe (ATT&CK ID: T1546.012).

Once the registry value is created, the attackers wait for the occasional execution of dllhost.exe, which might happen naturally on a system. This execution triggers a process launch of wscript.exe configured to run the VBScript file dropped by the SolarWinds backdoor (Stage 1).

The VBScript in turn runs rundll32.exe, activating the Cobalt Strike loader DLL using a clean parent/child process tree completely disconnected from the SolarWinds process. Finally, the VBScript removes the previously created IFEO value to clean up any traces of execution.

On the custom Cobalt Strike Loaders: we identified several second-stage malware, including TEARDROP, Raindrop, and other custom loaders for the Cobalt Strike beacon. During the lateral movement phase, the custom loader DLLs are dropped mostly in existing Windows sub-directories.

#irrationalebullience If you want to understand the nature of this asset bubble and the epic capital mis-allocation at it’s heart, look no further than rates. CB’s only tool to push an uber-levered financial system that is highly interconnected through derivatives
(1/N)

away from it’s natural convergence path towards collapse is to create opposing forces to push it towards divergence. Meaning: force, through financial repression, market participants to rely on price continuation, in a way that makes it self-fulfilling.
(2/N)

The tool used is rates as it is the basis off of which all other financial assets are priced. Today any buyer of $UST across the curve up to 30Y is guaranteed a loss given reals are negative throughout. So the only hope of escaping this GUARANTEED loss
(3/N)

is to angle for capital gains, i.e a continuous move downwards in real rates to push for some capital gains in real terms. The longer the financial repression lasts, the further investors are pushed out the maturity and credit risk curves.
(4/N)

Here are examples to understand what exactly is happening. If an investors buys a 5 Y UST he is guaranteed to lose almost 2% in real terms, so making that up in capital gains is much harder given the v short duration.
(5/N)

Big congrats to @nonfungibles on releasing their 2020 Annual Non-Fungible Tokens Report! @NathalieBcht, @latelier & I thoroughly enjoyed partnering with them on it: https://t.co/uNvX18GcQV.
Some key takeaways from the report & my personal observations a/t #NFTs. A long-ish 🧵👇:

MARKET SIZE: The NFT market had a historic 2020 - tripled in value, reaching $250m (in terms of value of all #Ethereum transactions on chain, so actual market size is even bigger). This is rapid growth for a space that’s just a few years old.

Market is still volatile & prone to speculation but more sophisticated use cases are emerging based on utility, community, competitive elements. All are prerequisites for a more mature market. For all the hype around crypto, it is #NFTs that offer some of the more promising uses.

USERS: # of users transacting NFTs is up. So is interest in NFTs more broadly - using Twitter activity as a proxy, the uptick in interest is clear & rose 5x in Nov 2017- Sept 2020 (similar trajectory for #DeFi btw). BUT it's important to remember this is still a niche ecosystem.

PROFIT: Some NFT #Traders are commanding profits in the 100s of thousands. Again, this is still a niche activity. There are high barriers to entry (incl. technological) for non-crypto enthusiasts + asset prices are going up very fast. It's still hard to price and value NFTs.