What you need to know about Nigeria’s Petroleum Industry Bill.

Crude oil dominates Nigeria’s economy, accounting for around 90% of export earnings. #NigeriaNeedsPIB

Yesterday we announced the launch of The Doomsday Clock, an original 18th Airborne Corps podcast series telling the incredible story of the Corps' Cold War history.

Today we're going to tell you more about some of the guests who will appear on the program.

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Of course, we'll have John Lewis Gaddis, the dean of Cold War historians about the start and end of American confrontation with the Soviets (Episode 16: April 27).

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We'll also have the great H.W. Brands to talk about the Korean War and the stare down between Truman and MacArthur (Episode 7: February 23).

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Podcast king Dan Carlin joins us for a deep, dark journey into the philosophy of the Soviet Union (Episode 9: March 9).

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You know Sir Max Hastings as the great historian, but long before that he was a war reporter. That's him on the right in Vietnam in 1968.

He joins us to talk about American escalation in the Vietnam War (Episode 10: March 16).

My friend @itsafronomics wanted to know the breakdown of student debt by income, so I pulled data from the SCF.

Student debt is more concentrated amongst high earners, but disproportionately amongst Black borrowers. The plot below plots the average within Income Quartiles.
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But those are the averages. What's the share that's above 10k? (This is the Biden current cutoff for debt forgiveness, so a useful benchmark).

For comparison, 20% of white Americans have student debt, and 31% of Black Americans.

Let's contrast that with say, above 20k. I was surprised at how high the share remains.

When we get to 50k of student debt, or more, we see it's only about 5% of the US, and around 8% of Black Americans. Strikingly, it's a huge share of high income Black Americans (this is a known fact in the education literature, I believe).

So what does this look like put together? Overall, we see a higher share of Americans with debt above 10k, and 20k. We would cover a decent amount with 10k, but miss Black Americans especially.

Last month, Texas resident Royce Peirce paid $387.70 to heat his two-story house. This month, he owes $8,162.73 — and counting.

Amid freezing temperatures and another looming winter storm, Texans are facing a second crisis: astronomical power

Why are these energy bills so high? You can thank Texas’s power grid for that.

The U.S. is divided into three grids: one covers the eastern states, another the western states, and then there’s the Texas grid, ERCOT, which covers nearly the entire state.

Now you might be wondering: Why does Texas have its own power grid?

If you’re familiar with the state’s history and public policy, you probably already know the answer. In short, Texas has its own grid to avoid dealing with the federal

What we’re witnessing now is a collapse of the state’s power grid.

Amid freezing temperatures, the imbalance between Texas’s staggering electricity demand and its limited supply caused prices to skyrocket from $20 per megawatt hour to $9,000 per megawatt hour — a 450% increase.

One wholesale power supplier, Griddy, made a surprising decision.

CEO Michael Fallquist told Griddy’s 29,000 customers to abandon his service and switch providers: “We want what’s right by our consumers, so we are encouraging them to

1/ Unit economic for founders thread.

Despite being a founder and a student of the subject, I missed out on a key point growing up.

Length of relationship with your customers, order frequency, product usage and utility matter.

They didn't teach me this in business school.

2/ Structured right, products used daily vs weekly vs monthly vs yearly lead to different profitability and scalability paths.

Quiz. Which business would you pick?

a) Enterprise software - US$ 250k one time license
b) Enterprise software - US$ 30k/month recurring subscription

3/ Sound's obvious? Which one did you pick?

Twice in my life I picked A. They were both great businesses, but they didn't compare to B. Especially in the long run.

Looking back, with hindsight, I know I should have picked B.

Why?

4/ Bringing in customers is hard.

When those customers leave after a few orders, your investment in that relationship is written off.

But it is not just about the relationship or investment. It is also about scale.

What are the easiest ways to scale a business?

5/ Think about it?

a) Get more customers - acquire
b) Get existing customers to order again - retain
c) Increase order size - up sell
d) Increase order frequency - cross sell / new use case
e) Get existing customers to get you new customers - referral

(b) to (e) are free.