Les Grossman

The first ten min carry the best message I’ve heard in a long time

If you want to go short on anything within the next decade , just short everything and anything about Australia. They are the most cooked region in the world, by a massive massive margin.

Unfortunately I think we'll see meaningful layoffs in software this year. And I want to explain why it's just air cover to call them "AI-driven layoffs", even though every company will do so. Yes, AI makes companies more efficient. Developers and marketers can do more. CSMs can have a wider span of control. You can answer 70% of your tier 1 support cases with AI. But that's not really what's going on. But two things are more elemental to the situation, and the actual driver: 1. Valuations have reset, with a totally valid and reasonable focus on free cash flow minus stock compensation. And the math simply doesn't math. 2. Many of these companies staffed up during COVID and never actually took their medicine and got fit. They thought demand would come back and it mostly hasn't. Not in the same way. Illustrative example, to pick on two companies, Atlassian and HubSpot, that I actually really admire: - Age: Atlassian is 24 years old. HubSpot is 19 years old - # of employees: Atlassian has 14k employees at $22B market cap. HubSpot has 9k employees at $15B market cap - SBC-Adjusted FCF: Basically ZERO That's right. After 20 years, the actual cash generated and available to shareholders is ZERO I do think the owners of these businesses understand that is no longer tenable. But they have two issues now: 1. The actual technical talent needs to get paid 2. Their stocks are down 60-70% from recent highs So here's the situation: They need to start making actual money, they have to pay their tech talent, their dollar grants are going to have serious dilution consequences, and their cost structures are completely bloated for their current market cap, especially compared to more nimble competitors. If they keep paying all of these people in stock, their dilution will continue and the stocks will continue to be punished. If they pay them all in cash, they will have no fcf. TL;DR Layoffs are unfortunately the only true answer. They are coming. They will be credited to AI, and that will be air cover for the real problem.

HOLLLLY They invented a NEW language

Truth has become harder to see nowadays, not because there’s less information, but because there’s too much narrative from people with their own interest. In a world of 24/7 news cycles and instant takes, stories often move faster than facts. Narratives get formed early, amplified quickly, and corrected if at all much later. For builders and leaders, this matters. We see this all the time in business. Assumptions get repeated until they’re treated as truth. For example, we’ve seen reporting we have suspended our IPO this year — despite the fact that we never planned to do an IPO this year, or even next year. That’s how easily narrative can outrun reality. Another example: I recently saw reporting that referred to “Airwallex strategy and operations head Briar Mercier” and attributed company-wide positions to her. In reality, Briar is a compliance operations analyst, at a very junior level, and far from leading strategy or operations at Airwallex. A small inaccuracy, perhaps — but one that completely changes the meaning of the story. A third example went further, suggesting that “concerns about access to customer data from China had circulated internally”. What this actually referred to was a narrow, routine operational question: whether account executives in China should retain access to their own China-based customers’ KYC data after onboarding. It had nothing to do with China accessing customer data from other regions — yet the narrative implied something far broader and more serious. I’ve also noticed that some narratives are built on information from several years ago. That context can be useful historically, but without acknowledging how much has changed, it can distort what’s actually true today. This is how narratives drift. Context gets stripped away, scope gets inflated, and nuance disappears. Good decisions don’t come from headlines or hearsay. They come from first principles, primary sources, and direct context. The discipline is simple, but hard: Separate facts from interpretation Slow down before drawing conclusions Be comfortable holding uncertainty while you verify Truth doesn’t need to be loud. It needs to be accurate. Over time, facts compound. Narratives fade.

🚨 Here is the full 42 minutes of my crew and I exposing Minnesota fraud, this might be my most important work yet. We uncovered over $110,000,000 in ONE day. Like it and share it around like wildfire! Its time to hold these corrupt politicians and fraudsters accountable We ALL work way too hard and pay too much in taxes for this to be happening, the fraud must be stopped.

it should be obvious that the days of independent crypto native cex platforms are numbered, shown by majority of founders starting to head for exits via ipos, mergers or other buyout strategies - resulting in the demand and focus of dex platforms those overly concerned with initial issues of new platforms overlook that a dedicated mascot with unlimited financial and marketing resources can quickly build a leader in the space

TSMC's 71% and growing Q2 2025 market share of global pure foundry revenues.

I really think Zuck could boost Facebook's market cap if he became personally 'cooler' - I think he should try a more fashionable haircut and update his wardrobe

been stacking dips at avg buy price of $17.68, itching to be $25 this week