Hello, World!

Intro

As someone addicted to current events and emerging tech, Building Mental Capital is a way for me to accomplish three things:

1. Organize links I find interesting for easy referencing.
2. Better synthesize what I read.
3. Start a dialogue with others who share similar interests.

Sections below are organized by topic and will likely change from post to post depending on what I’m reading. Expect opinions to be scattered throughout. If you have thoughts to share, feel free to leave a comment! 🙂

AR/VR/MR

• Magic Leap, now valued at $8B, locks down another round of funding with no new public news around product release date. Replacing the existing mobile ecosystem with a mixed reality interface is a bold ambition and many see this shift as inevitable. The question is timing. A few other questions I’m asking myself as the consumer side of the AR industry develops:
  • 1) Who will be first to market and will consumers adopt the v1 product? At a base level, v1 products will need to have the same functionality as our phones and must be aesthetically pleasing. No one will wear a pair of AR glasses if they look ugly.
  • 2) Does the full-stack solution win or will there be segmentation across the hardware and OS layers?
  • 3) Who will develop the killer app that will accelerate the adoption curve?
• Andreessen Horowitz backed Improbable Worlds picks up a huge funding round of $502M led by SoftBank.
  • “AI gets all the press, [but] this idea of recreating reality is going to become something in the public consciousness that’s as important, as significant, as artificial intelligence.” – Improbable CEO Herman Narula to Wired
  • On a slight tangent here, Softbank is finalizing the close of its Vision Fund at $95 billion.
• Google acquires Owlchemy Labs, the VR game studio behind Job Simulator. After playing Job Simulator on the Vive last year, I felt that it excelled at showcasing the level of immersion an experience in VR is supposed to provide and see why it caught Google’s eye. I hope to see Google take a hands-off approach in managing Owlchemy Labs giving the team bandwidth to pursue passion projects while simply providing the resources and talent necessary to produce good games.

Cyptocurrency

• Bitcoin and Ethereum have been on a tear. After losing a decent chunk of money in the 2014 Mt. Gox bankruptcy, I stepped away from cryptocurrency trading until earlier this year when I decided to jump back into the pool. (Or rather, “mining pool”?) I’ve made a few investments in coins built on the Ethereum blockchain and am excited for the upcoming Tezos initial coin offering. Instituting regulatory oversight of the private cryptocurrency market has been a talking point for some time now which I would be willing to bet will speed along thanks to Bitcoin’s involvement in the recent WannaCry attack.
  • More on the WannaCry attack. Also, soon to be on a tear is literally every cyber-security company you’ve ever heard of.
• Percentage share of total cryptocurrency market cap since 2013:
  

   

AI

• Jürgen Schmidhuber on the robot future​: “Our best protection [from powerful AI] will be their lack of interest in us, because most species’ biggest enemy is their own kind. They will pay about as much attention to us as we do to ants.”
• Andreesen Horowitz provides businesses with an AI playbook. Also noteworthy is their recent podcast on quantum computing.
• Wars will be waged over data centers and AI superiority- not oil. 

Self-Improvement

• An insightful batch of mental models from Farnam Street. I share with the folks at Farnam Street a fascination with Mungerism and would also recommend their recent article featuring nuggets of wisdom from Charlie Munger. On the side, I’m currently reading “Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger” by Peter Bevelin and would suggest giving the book a chance if you admire Charlie Munger’s and Warren Buffett’s approach to logic and reasoning.

Government and World News

• The overarching theme of transparency in government information we’ve seen lately has come as refreshing. It would be great to see big data sources like USAspending.gov and usafacts.org directly impact decision making and resource allocation in Washington.
• US/China trade relationships are improving. Additionally, the US will be attending the upcoming Silk Road summit. Leaders from ~30 countries are in China for the Silk Road summit designed to bolster infrastructure spending across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. China has pledged $124B. Looking at the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank as a case study, Silk Road initiatives should strengthen China’s position abroad if Xi Jinping can ensure that banks and SOEs don’t drop the ball.
• On US/Russia relations- “Efforts to portray a thaw in relations hide divisions on Syria, Ukraine and Afghanistan.”
  • I was at dinner last week with a colleague who works in Microsoft’s Russia subsidiary. While we could joke around and share personal stories as colleagues and friends, when I asked about Russia’s view on the US, I learned that the recent round of US sanctions have put serious stress on Russia’s perceived relationship and that internal opinion has become increasingly negative. Our business partner from Czech Republic was familiar with the air of unease between the two countries but also seemed somewhat taken aback when he heard that the Russian perspective was so negative.
• 5 takeaways from Macron’s victory in France.
• 2016 Government spending in one chart:

Products

• Opera’s new browser revolves around messaging app integration. I haven’t tried it out yet but am adding it to my to-do list. I’d be interested in hearing initial opinions if you have been experimenting.
• Lyrebird claims it can recreate any voice using just one minute of sample audio.
• As Microsoft+Harmon publicize Invoke to the public which allows for integrated Skype calls, Amazon unveils Show which builds off of Echo by adding calling/messaging functionality and a 7-inch display. Speculators call out Amazon for basically copying the product of a company it had invested in. Regardless, this is an impressive growth hack on behalf of Amazon and a worrisome indicator for startups that find their products/services in the sights of big tech. New and lesser known players in the home speaker market will have a difficult time making much traction with Amazon Echo and Google Home already controlling ~70% and ~24% of the market respectively.

Transportation

• The EU’s top court believes Uber should be treated as a transportation company vs. a society service in the eyes of the law. In the wake of Uber’s court battle with Waymo and all of the recent negative press around Travis Kalanik along with Uber’s sexist culture, this news comes as the cherry on top of Uber’s metaphorical Sunday. The bigger question here is how the law should regulate and tax platforms like Uber and Netflix that are fundamentally disrupting industries.
• Think tank ReThinkX makes the bold claim that 95% of all miles driven by 2030, will be from self-driving electric vehicles. This coincides with oil development hitting a 70 year low.
• Israeli startup StoreDot announces electric car EV battery that can reach full charge in five minutes. Compare that to Tesla’s Supercharger that requires approximately two hours to charge.
  • “Fast Charging is the critical missing link needed to make electric vehicles ubiquitous.” – StoreDot CEO Dr. Doron Myersdorf

Stocks and Startups

• Sprint and T-Mobile may be merging. Telecoms must consolidate to stay competitive and customers like you and I benefit from improved quality of service and (hopefully) better prices. Fingers crossed this eventually leads to unlimited data plans without throttling and hidden fees.
• Snap misses earnings on weak user growth and refusal to aknowledge the Facebook threat.
  • Spiegel said, “At this point we’re famous for not giving guidance on our product roadmap. We love surprising our community and it should be a fun year.” I’m not sure that’s the right way to message a bad first quarter to Wall St. but can’t say that I’m surprised. In Snap’s defense, Facebook and Twitter both witnessed fairly drastic drop-offs after their IPOs as well.
  • A list of hedge funds tied up in Snap stock.
  • Content and distribution is being redefined and it’s fair to argue that we have Snap, in part, to thank for that. Video and live-streaming are dominant themes. Traditional TV is what newspaper was. Organizations dependent on cable, like Disney’s ESPN, which has announced a layoff for 100+ people along with a 13% reduction in subscribers over the last six years, have some catching up to do or risk getting left behind.
• On that note, Facebook will be launching TV programming in June featuring 24 shows of varying length. Facebook is looking to secure the content on its platform, as the vast majority of content consumed on Facebook is from 3rd parties. Content is king and Facebook will need to prove that it’s capable of high-level productions on the same level as Amazon’s Man in the High Castle and HBO’s Game of Thrones. This may be a challenge as shorter video length means limited opportunity to build a robust story-line and bring to life believable characters.
• Brains of the buy side share their thoughts and stock picks at the recent Sohn Conference.
• 500 Startups Batch 20 Demo Day Startups
• Winners of Trump’s 15% business tax rate:

• 10 companies responsible for ~50% of the S&P rally YTD:

• How 5 tech giants make their billions:

Science

• Scientists Just Surgically Removed HIV DNA From Live Animals

Video Games

• Smash Bros. Melee: Mango is back on top!
• Zelda is coming to the phone.

In Conclusion…

As this is my first blog post, if you have any feedback or recommendations moving forward, please lend me your wisdom!

Thanks for reading,
John L. Connell