Rob Wurth

@MartinSkold2 You seem to have good views. Also seem to be the type that has a lot of opinions on things but has never done the things.

Black Hawk Down situation. On the one hand, “Dead bodies attract dead bodies.” And on the other hand: No one gets left behind, even amid what is being reported as a serious firefight. Robert Heinlein, in Starship Troopers, quotes Matthew on this point: “How think ye? If a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray?…How much then is a man better than a sheep?” We may screw up, and we may pay for it - but I’m glad we don’t break faith. But we’re going to have to be more careful.

@LookingGlas1989 fair, though i have some "tangential" experience with some of what he's discussing. if someone prompted this then they have at least been within reasonable proximity to some of these things.

@robwurth Read the comments. Some guy posted an AI analysis that said it was 100% AI 🤷‍♂️

spent the last few hours answering questions from strangers on the internet while sitting on a plane and the thing that keeps striking me is how similar every question sounds once you strip away the context the BB analyst making $200K wants to know if his life has meaning. the 20-year-old in a frat wants to know if he is on the right path. the guy running a $15M environmental services company cannot sleep because his leverage ratio scares him even though his covenants are fine. the first-year law student wants someone to tell him the career pivot will work out. the immigrant who got laid off wants to know he is not falling behind permanently the details are different. the feeling underneath is identical. am I going to be okay we pretend that money and status and titles fix this. they do not. I sit in rooms with people who control nine-figure portfolios and they are nervous about the same things as everyone else. they just have more expensive language for it. the fund manager calls it "risk management." the analyst calls it "career strategy." the 20-year-old calls it "figuring out my path." same anxiety wearing different suits I watched a grown man worth more than most people will earn in ten lifetimes throw a tantrum in a conference room because someone questioned his assumption in a model. not his competence. not his track record. an assumption in a spreadsheet. a cell in Excel. he turned red and raised his voice because for 15 seconds he felt like he might be wrong about something and his entire identity could not absorb that possibility that is not a professional disagreement. that is a kid on a playground who got told he is not the fastest runner Schopenhauer wrote that humans are not rational beings who occasionally feel emotions. we are emotional beings who occasionally think rationally. the rationality is the exception. the feeling is the baseline. every framework we build in finance and in business and in life is an attempt to impose order on a brain that is fundamentally running on fear and desire and the need to be seen as competent by other people who are also running on fear and desire the most dangerous version of this is the person who thinks they have outgrown it. the one who believes that enough success or enough money or enough status has made them rational. that person is not more rational. they are less accountable. nobody around them pushes back anymore so the irrational impulses go unchecked and get rebranded as conviction and vision and leadership the best operators I know are the ones who understand that they are still unreasonable kids underneath everything. they lose their temper over small things. they take criticism personally even when it is constructive. they make emotional decisions and reverse-engineer a logical justification after the fact. the difference is they know they do this. they have systems to catch it. they hire people who are allowed to tell them when they are being stupid. they build in a 24-hour delay before any decision made while angry the worst operators are the ones who think they have evolved past it. they confuse pattern recognition with wisdom. they confuse wealth with emotional maturity. they confuse the silence of the people around them with agreement when it is actually just fear Nietzsche said that the most common form of human stupidity is forgetting what one is trying to do. I think the more common form is forgetting what one is. which is a complicated animal that learned to use spreadsheets but never stopped being afraid of the dark none of us outgrow being unreasonable. the question is whether we build a life that accounts for it or one that pretends it does not exist thanks for the questions today. you are all going to be fine. even the ones who do not feel like it right now

@LookingGlas1989 felt ai-powered, but maybe not pure ai?

@robwurth It’s AI

@jliemandt @shaneparrish Please please please figure out a way to expand top of funnel / reduce or eliminate switching costs. From someone rooting for you with kids 8/6/5 in Michigan.

We waste 90% of kids' time in school. @shaneparrish asked the hard questions: Why do $50K/yr private school students show up years behind? Why did two-thirds of our high schoolers beg to skip summer vacation? What happens when you finally give kids their time back.👇

@rodriscoll Do you think it will work?

When Jeff Bezos was 25 he saw the transformative power of the internet. As a good hedge fund alum, he would have known there were three ways to win: 1. Build software and sell it to retailers so they can move online. (That's Shopify for a 150 billion outcome) 2. Buy Walmart and make it an internet company. If he had 50 billion at the time, he could have made 20 times his money (I was surprised that it was as much as 20x) 3. Build a full stack retailer yourself (That's Amazon, the $2 trillion opportunity from effectively nothing) When you're 25 with incredible drive and no money, you do Amazon. Today Jeff Bezos sees the transformative power of AI, but now he’s a billionaire living in Indian Creek, and he doesn’t have 25 years of working out of a desk left in him, so he’s going to make the Walmart play this time. With Project Prometheus, he’s going to raise a hundred billion, buy a bunch of companies, and inject AI into them. It's what you do when you have too much money to need to do it the hard way.

@ChrisSeltzer @eastdakota Non union companies do exist, and do this. Eg Resolute.

@eastdakota Also not allowed to be prefabricated, or installed quickly. Unions block all innovation in the space.

Fact the U.S. doesn’t allow direct drive elevators (where they’re powered by two motors connected to the cab, as opposed to a cable or hydraulic system) is completely stupid. They’re faster, as safe, take less space, and a lot cheaper. Allowed everywhere else in the world.

@SugarbushCreek Former Toledoan. Ordered!

Maple syrup made right on our family's farm in Geauga County, Ohio! All the sap is collected from our trees on 66 acres and boiled using firewood selectively harvested amongst the maple woods!

@rustbeltkid1 awesome

@robwurth It's a tourist attraction now - but they are bringing it back online as a working ski jump

Copper Peak, the world's largest artificial ski jump, in Bessemer Michigan is getting a reno this summer - and will now be reinforced with @gatorbar_mi Pure Michigan

@rustbeltkid1 who uses it?

@patefortworth @balajis I have a small software company, my family has a small industrial company, and we're in the early stages of standing up a VERY small FO. The playing field has never felt more equal and I've never felt more empowered.

@balajis Small companies have always been at a systems/software disadvantage vs larger competitors. Maybe that era is just over?

AI is amazing for small-TAM custom software. Indeed, the smaller the market, the more amazing it is. Because small markets typically don’t support the costs of software development.

@Kyle_Wade2 Doral.

@robwurth Looking for good deals, then tenants. What geographies are you targeting for your acquisition?

Took the leap. Left my role as Leasing Director at an industrial private equity group. Time to build something of my own. The education received from my Mentors + Colleagues , and the experiences over the last 6 years is very difficult explain the endless value of. Grateful for the foundation and to have watched some of the industries finest Real Estate minds at work. Today: -50,000 SF owned operated across 4 buildings. All acquired within last 6 months. -Every building acquired vacant - Every building Now 100% leased - LPs forecasted to receive full return of capital within 6–9 months after refi. Future: -We are Focused on acquiring industiral, small bay, and flex industrial properties under 50K SF. Vacant, partially vacant, or properties with unique circumstances are the sweet spot. Preference is in the South East. Just getting started. The Road to 1M sf begins.

@pmje73 I am extremely interested in this with children in a local high quality Catholic school. Please DM me if you're working on / thinking about this and interested in discussing.

If all of the elite Catholic schools in the US took what they do better than anyone else and added elements of Alpha School, they would easily become the preferred schools even for non Catholics. What we know about the efficiency of AI to teach and the capacity of the brain to be saturated at one time means kids should have a lot more free time. Some of that time should be spent outdoors in unstructured play, some learning interesting life long skills and some learning about discernment, purpose, service and meaning. What if AI is simply a productivity tool designed to give children more time to spend on what really matters?

@MikeSlagh If I'm understanding you correctly Alpha school works best (only) in person bc it gives you the "time back" aka you only have school for 2 hours? Keenly interested in this as I've spent a lot of time studying Alpha and appear to be in a similar situation as you.

We’re part of the Alpha Anywhere beta (home school offering) But can’t home school right now, so trying it out as a supplement Which totally defeats the indomitable “time back” Golden Rule NO amount of money, aggressive deal making, nor outright eye-opening levels of bribery defeats Time Back It is a (newly discovered for me) universal law of physics and child psychology But the boys’ MAP scores shot way up with just minimal engagement (it was a daily dogfight) Trying to decide whether to stick with it, just offering a perspective

Lindy is not going to work as-is. Just like Teamflow didn't work. Copy CoFounder as quickly as possible and you'll be on to something; your infra is way better. I don't want my Lindy AI Chief of Staff to send me an email that tells me to click through to get back into the Lindy app (which btw doesn't work on mobile). I want Lindy to work, but this ain't it from a last mile perspective.

One critical social technology that I feel we're still missing: there is no socially acceptable way to tell someone, in a debate: "respectfully, I think you're victim of the Dunning Kruger effect / ignorant of your own ignorance. I am more informed than you on this topic, am happy to prove it if you disagree, and would like you to approach this debate with more epistemological humility than you currently are, the way you would if you were to argue about rocket science with an engineer from SpaceX"

@tjparker That seems odd. I actually love my cove. Long time listener, first time caller - great one of one doc btw. Wonderful story, and well done. DV in a few weeks - wanna hard charge some front side stuff on Mantras?

The cool thing about being rich is you can have two dishwashers that are constantly broken instead of just one

@signulll "Non-trivial odds" is a nice way to say "I don't know." Every generation gets its Cassandra. The difference is the real one was actually right. The world has absorbed every technological shift for 200 years without collapsing. Operators adapt. Commentators dramatize.

this is going to sound dramatic as hell but the world you knew is pretty much over. very recently i think we crossed a one way bridge as a species & most people on earth haven’t realized that fact yet. imho there are now non trivial odds the economy gets drastically disrupted in the next 24 - 36 months via a giant supply shock followed by a demand shock.

@drgurner @kofinas It's only an idea? Don't you make your business (which I subscribe to btw) out of turning ideas into reality? It would seem naive to dismiss 'ideas', if so.

@kofinas I don't know why people are even talking about UBI. It's only an idea right now. No one has any plans, has created any plans or has done even basic implementation for it to be a reality.

This is all the evidence you need that UBI won't work. People will just spend the money jerking off and getting high or eventually kill themselves out of boredom. We need to build an economy that produces better people who can live better lives, not put everyone on food stamps.

@nntaleb Men for others.

Today I flew to New York City for a Catholic funeral, a very sad day (more, later, when I can muster the strength). At the wake I could not manage to get joyful. Then I had a conversation with the priest, a Jesuit. Jesuits are formidable intellects. There is hope.