Joe

William got margin called and pledged over $1B of his own stock to fund Column. He explains why extreme personal risk is what makes great founders, and why we see less of it today: "I think that the good founders bet on themselves and take an extreme amount of risk to do that. The extreme amount of risk part is something that we no longer have. But when there's literally only one door in front of you. You don't have a choice, and that fear and innate desire creates another part of you. It creates creativity, it creates inspiration. It's extremely valuable part of the founder journey. And in many ways, Silicon Valley we've actually removed that. I don't know why we don't talk about it more. If you go back to pre 2008, you're on the edge of the knife. We don't create environments where a founder has to bet themselves. I think starting companies are just too f**king safe. It's caused a lot of companies to be super safe companies like, we're gonna pivot to AI...that's not bold, that's not ambitious. It's because we are attracting founders that actually want to be employees. They don't think if I don't pull this off, I'm going to become bankrupt. My life is over and I think that's pretty healthy. That's when you bring out the rawness of humanity and I don't see that very much anymore. The weird thing is an early stage employee takes way more risk than an early stage founder. And I don't think we should actually de-risk the early stage employee. I just think we need to increase the risk for founders. I think we need to make failure much more expensive."

Value of $10,000 invested 15 years ago: Nvidia: $4,043,000 Tesla: $2,490,000 Netflix: $310,900 Eli Lilly: $265,300 Amazon: $256,300 Alphabet: $216,800 Apple: $211,200 Mastercard: $203,200 Visa: $167,600 Microsoft: $157,000 Costco: $138,700 Home Depot: $90,800 Starbucks: $52,900

Iran has been after Trump since January of 2020 after he ordered the targeted killing of the terrorist Qasem Soleimani. This isn’t a new threat. The secret service consistently failing to secure Trump is new. We need to figure out exactly why these failures keep happening.

Fastest way to go broke?

🚨 “REALTORS ARE SCAM ARTISTS” — VIRAL VIDEO TORCHING THE INDUSTRY IS GOING NUCLEAR A skit exploding across social media is ripping into the real estate industry, and it’s hitting a nerve. In the video, a homebuyer slowly realizes something about the process that makes it look suspicious. Every time she tries to make an offer, the real estate agent suddenly claims there’s “another bid.” But when the buyer asks basic questions like who the bidder is, what they offered, or if they’re even real, the response is always the same: “I can’t say.” Then the realization hits. If the price goes up… the agent’s commission goes up too. Seconds later the house is “sold” and the real estate agent walks away with a $50,000 commission. Now the internet is arguing. Some say agents protect buyers through complex deals. Others say it’s just the most expensive middleman job in America. Be honest: are realtors worth it… or is the whole system a scam?