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The whole team at Gallant MacDonald hopes each of you has had an incredible holiday season so far!
It has been a volatile year filled where every event seemed to have the word “unprecedented” as a shockingly accurate descriptor. We hope that you have been able to take some time to relax, recharge, and catch-up with those that are most important to you.
Our chart this month is a reminder that no matter how chaotic the world has appeared historically, faith in human ingenuity and progress has always been the right bet. We intend to maintain that wager in 2021.
Happy New Year!
Another excellent (and short) piece from Sam Altman. This quote sums it up well:
The most impressive people I know care a lot about what people think, even people whose opinions they really shouldn’t value. But what makes them unusual is that they generally care about other people’s opinions on a very long time horizon — as long as the history books get it right, they take some pride in letting the newspapers get it wrong.
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A longer form read from the New Yorker describing how a flood of cash can hide innumerable issues in both strategy and execution. The example given is everyone’s favorite company to pick on, WeWork.
When you get involved in the startup world, you meet all these amazing entrepreneurs with fantastic ideas, and, over time, you watch them get pushed by V.C.s to take too much money, and make bad choices, and grow as fast as possible. And then they blow up. And, eventually, you start to realize: no matter what happens, the V.C.s still end up rich
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A great summary of the current state and potential future of Shopify. The progress they have made over the course of the pandemic, and the decade prior, really is astounding. For those looking for some more good Canadian (and German) content, this is an incredible interview with founder Tobi Lütke.
“Amazon is trying to build an empire, and Shopify is trying to arm the rebels.”
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An uplifting piece describing something we place great value on, earnestness. This essay also gives great credit to nerds so it was probably a foregone conclusion we would like it!
When you call someone earnest, you're making a statement about their motives. It means both that they're doing something for the right reasons, and that they're trying as hard as they can. If we imagine motives as vectors, it means both the direction and the magnitude are right.
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