"If you create it for yourself, it’s art.

If you create it for others, it’s business."

@naval

Good news everyone, Jay Hoag gave us the simple 5 point playbook for finding Magical Companies in consumer technology.

1. product offers combo of value, convenience, selection
2. there's tremendous engagement
3. a virtuous cycle
4. tremendous execution
5. kinda crazy leader

Obviously Jay Hoag on ILTB is as self recommending as it gets

QBI deduction optimization is a great end of year planning technique For high income SMB owners.

When used correctly, optimizing has saved my clients tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.

If you are already on it then good for you.

If not - thread incoming👇🏻

The QBI or Qualified Business Income deduction was a part of the TCJA from 2017.

When congress lowered the corp tax rate to 21% they decided to throw a bone to small businesses by offering a 20% deduction on qualified income.

These include Schedule C and pass through entities.

This allows anyone conducting trade or business out of a pass through entity to take a 20% deduction on their income. Great right?

However there are a few limitations including a phase out for high income earners.

The phase begins at 326k for married and 163k for single/HOH.

If your taxable income is above that threshold you are allowed to deduct the lesser of:

1. 20% of QBI
Or
2a. 1/2 W-2 wages (or)
2b. 1/4 W-2 wages + 2.5% unadjusted property basis (RE pros look here).

This means there is a wage limitation to your QBI deduction.

Simple example. Married S-Corp owner makes 300k after he pays employees - what is his deduction? 60k

Ex2. Married S-Corp owner makes 500k after he pays employees 100k total wages - what is his deduction? 50k.

The owner cannot take the 20%, but is limited to 1/2 of wages paid.

Since I have received many questions and crazy accusations, on this last day of 2020 let me give you a random collection of thoughts to close out this year. 1/n

1. I miss Asia. It's awesome. Most countries have a sense that things are getting better and that opportunities exist. From people starting businesses to sending their kids to better schools, there is a vibrancy and optimism that is infectious 2/n

2. Americans are a whiny narcistic self absorbed lot that rather then get down to a task and make things happen are content to complain ad nauseum. The world don't owe you $#!+. Get down to it and get on with it 3/n

3. I was wrong about some key things about corona but also right about some key things. Compared to public health experts I'm probably about even. 4/n

4. I don't really identify with either party. I am pro-immigration and anti-death penalty. I am a foreign policy hawk. I am pro-market but believe anti-trust regulation needs more focus. Socially liberal but think wokeness is idiotic. My issue views do not align with either 5/n

1/ Thank you to everyone who expressed support for our immi launch and we're so grateful for all of you. As I think back to the past 18 months of this journey, I want to share one of the hardest parts of being a founder that I struggle with daily. 👇

2/ Most founders start because we believe that we have high standards for what an innovative product can do for customers. But most of the time, sacrifices have to be made to get a first version of a product to market. These sacrifices slowly eat away at our mental health.

3/ @kchanthasiri and I grew up eating all types of instant ramen and we believe that we have the "taste" for what great ramen should be. We knew creating a healthier option meant a different taste & texture profile, but we didn't realize how different our v1.0 would end up.

4/ Food industry manufacturers (a.k.a. co-mans) have heavy capital expenditures in commercial equipment, and they produce product for multiple customers. It's not easy for them to alter their production processes for each eager startup founder.

5/ They need to consistently run their production lines and produce product in order to make profit for themselves. Every second innovating with a new brand and adjusting their standard processes negatively affects their bottom line.

Time for #PapersThatMakeYouGoHmmm! A weekly summary of new ML papers from arXiv that make me think one or more of:

1. That looks useful!
2. That's an interesting approach!
3. A business could be built around this!
4. How did they do that?!

How can I choose an explainer? An Application-grounded Evaluation of Post-hoc

Validating Label Consistency in NER Data

A two-stage data association approach for 3D Multi-object

Neural Networks, Artificial Intelligence and the Computational

- They passed NAFTA over all our objections, bipartisan
- They were caught in corruption, including foreign influence peddling. No one was prosecuted
- They sold out manufacturing and retail sales to China, devastating our middle-class
- 9/11, Patriot Act, Iraq, Afghanistan

How can the wine industry shift its message and approach to reach Millennials, given shifting generational values?

If you want to reach a diverse audience, you have to hire a team that looks like it. "The good part of this is you have a consumer that wants your product. If you don't have people who are of that community, you're not going to sell to them." @SVBWine

When a person of color comes into your TR, they want to know they're going to be treated with respect. "Its Civility 101. It's not really very complicated." Devin Joshua @DJVino

Younger consumers are making the most effort to reduce alcohol consumption.

From Nielsen, top reasons for cutting back on wine center on health. "How do we [address] that in the wine business? We're still talking about long days and cool nights on back labels." Need to take this head on and address calories, e.g. Calories matter to consumers. @SVBWine

Will be a v ugly week, but impt to remember, short of the House flipping red by Friday, there's no remaining power mechanism in the U.S. capable of preventing Biden taking the presidency on Jan 20.

Everything else is just show. A shitshow, to be sure, but a show nonetheless.

Let's walk through the various shitshows that might happen, to various levels of insanity, and why they all still end up with Biden as POTUS on Jan 20.

First it's now certain you'll get objections at the EC with senators + reps. But it needs a majority in both H & S to sustain the objection, and the House is blue, so no dice.

Can they fillibuster the EC to force it to never decide? No, but for complicated reasons.

ECA gives a max two hours of debate per objection, and that caps out at 5 days (ugh).

A suitably devious R senator might go for broke and try to use a Senate rule to bypass that cap, passed by majority vote in the Senate, with the sole purpose of filibustering the EC itself. Which won't happen, and isn't close.

But it did? Guess what, Biden is *still* president.

Statement by KASUPDA on the demolition of Asher Lounge

On Thursday, 31st December 2020, the Kaduna State Urban Development and Planning Authority (KASUPDA) took action to remove the building housing Asher Lounge.

Since this enforcement action, much of the commentary on the matter has centred on the inaccurate statement from KASUPDA’s Twitter account.

While regretting the inaccuracy of the handler of our social media account, there is no reservation about the steps taken pursuant to enforce the laws and regulations of Kaduna State on a property that was in violation of its provisions.

Since 26th March 2020, the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Partial Lockdown Order, 2020 have been in force in Kaduna State.

Although some of the regulations were significantly relaxed in June 2020, they were tightened again in December 2020 in response to a second wave of Covid-19 infections.

Tarik Bateh, a senior director with JLL Capital Markets, is giving a presentation about his thoughts on Lot J. He said there are 4 major and fundamental red flags about the project, but they can all be fixed with "basic and standard" business and governance practices.

First red flag: Due diligence. He said the developers need to provide more information about the project.
"You could not get a mortgage on your house with the information that has been provided about Lot J," he said.

2. He said the developers need to invest their money into the project before the city does, as this is standard practice in the real estate industry.
"This ensures skin in the game," he said.

Bateh said the developers are fully capable of getting a construction loan from a bank, not the city.

Bateh's third point is that no city money should go towards the project until it's completed. City should instead provide a lump sum payment at the completion of the project that the developers do not need to pay.

"Making money is bad, unless I do it and then it's fine" -The beating heart of left-wing populism

The real lesson that should be learned early on in life:

No one actually cares about "big money", "big tech", "corporations", or "Wall Street".

They want YOU to be dumb enough to, so they can take YOUR money.

Populism is holding a treat in front of a dog as you give it a shot while it's enamored.

Look at the "populists"

Ted Cruz: Harvard Law grad
Briahna Joy Gray: Harvard Law grad
Chapo Trap House: makes >$120,000 a year
Josh Hawley: owns two homes in different states, Yale grad
Bernie Sanders: owns 3 homes
Tucker Carlson: trust fund TV dinner fortune heir

Walker Bragman: lives in a mansion in The Hamptons, parents are rich
Meagan Day: heiress to multimillion dollar fortune, lives in a mansion, parents are rich
Donald Trump: archetypal rich obnoxious New Yorker

🧵While we in Fintech are Hoping for Challenger/Neo Banking Licences from RBI. Let's understand more about Small Finance Bank and from their success, try to see if a balance between Profitability (for business) and Financial Inclusion (for RBI) can be made for future usecase?👇

Since Independence, Financial Inclusion has been a top policy agenda for the central govt and hence for the RBI also, Post 90s, the accent was more on demand-led private initiatives through self-help groups, followed by the Grameen Bank model of microfinance in India.

Then, in 2015, the RBI granted licenses to two differentiated banks (SFB and Payments Banks) for pushing the financial inclusion. PB had been a mystery category, with no clear business model to operate. SFB was to cater to the diverse needs of the low-income group.

The two KEY expectation was:
1. Priority Sector Lending (75% of their total lending) and 2. Branches for Unbanked (SFB were required to have 25% of their branches in rural unbanked centres (population shall be less than 10,000)

Most (8/10) of the SFBs were previously microfinance institutions (MFIs) with a few notable exceptions, such as the Capital Small Finance Bank which was a local area bank. So, achieving the above TWO pointers was not a thought ask for them.

1/ #Anghami HQ relocating to Abu Dhabi
Thread time >

8 years ago when @EddyMaroun and me launched @anghami , we wanted to build a business that would hopefully get some traction & show that 🇱🇧 can build a tech startup in a competitive field such as music.

2/ Why? Because it just didn't exist in this part of the world! We needed music 🎶 and so did plenty of arabs who had to pirate for the lack of a legal service.

3/ Building music service is no simple feat, especially when it has to be available on every device, be local, contain a 57 Million songs legal library , be fast, be different ⚡️.

4/ It becomes even harder when you have to build a payment network from 36 telcos across the region - and amass over 80 million users.
What's the hardest part in building all this?

5/ The talent!
The people who spend endless hours working to build the vision and constantly churn fix after fix to make it sparkle.
That talent came mostly from Lebanon, 90% of the team hailed from my country 🇱🇧. And made us absolutely proud!

Dear online vendors,

I personally would like to address certain concerns as regards how you do business, your customer relations and interactions as I would also want to assume that many of you reading this have little to no business experience/ training whatsoever.

Frist, even the Bible in Luke 14:28 says

"New International Version"

"Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won't you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?

It is only sane that anyone venturing into business, first would

Sit and count its cost. Which includes capital, consumers needs, services needed, location e.t.c when it comes to offline businesses. However, I have noticed that a lot of people venture into online businesses (Buying and selling to be clear) without proper mentoring nor prior

Knowledge as to what it really entails; as time and time again I have had to address concerns which in most cases are amateur business concerns that shouldn't even be apart of the discussion to start with. Concerns like "Availablity" which is what I will focus this lecture on.

Yes! This is a lecture and you're my student. If you are offended feel free to leave the class now. It's free so I'm allowed to do shakara.

I would like to note that in business, 1 year - 2 year old businesses cannot be termed as "successful" until they exceed the 3year mark.

Are you on this list and backing @SMcPartland and @Royston_Smith's amendment to the Fire Safety Bill? Please support our campaign so leaseholders do not have to pay for historic defects. You are ruining lives:
@RobertJenrick @mhclg @ChrisPincher

#EndOurCladdingScandal

@AaronBell4NUL
@AdamAfriyie
@AlanMakMP
@AlbertoCostaMP
@AlecShelbrooke
@alexburghart
@AlexChalkChelt
@Alex_Stafford
@aliciakearns
@AlokSharma_RDG
@AlunCairns
@amandamilling
@ASollowayUK
@andreajenkyns
@andrealeadsom
@AndrewBowie_MP
@ABridgen
@griffitha
@AJonesMP
@ALewerMBE

Delighted to be asked by @uklandestates to delve into their archive for their 30th anniversary. They now have a portfolio of 28 estates across the region, but the Team Valley was not just their first, it’s actually the oldest industrial estate in Europe

Team Valley was born because the North East didn’t rebound from worldwide recession like the South did. Although firms like Armstrongs dabbled with car-manufacture in the early 20s, the NE stuck all its eggs in the heavy industry basket: coal, ships and guns.

But demand for coal and armaments had cratered. In 1936, men even marched from Jarrow to London to highlight their desperation at mass unemployment. In Jarrow, it reached 80 per cent. In nearby Gateshead it was 57 per cent.

Such was the state of the region’s economy that in 1934 the National Government decided to site Europe’s first industrial estate in the Team Valley to create “facilities required by industrialists engaged in starting fresh enterprises” (of the type that were booming in the South)

The excellent @Englands_NE tells us that the River Team begins as a collection of streams near Tanfield in NW Durham – a name which originally meant ‘Team Field’. Team is an ancient name, meaning ‘dark river’ with the same root as the name of the Thames.