In yesterday’s newsletter and post, Part 1 of the year-end extravaganza, we tackled some things personal and some things professional.
Depending on how long your flight is, maybe you broke them up… or maybe your are reading them back to back. But for the sake of beverage service, snacks and an in-flight movie, we’ve broken them up into more digestible formats.
Without further ado… the second half:
SOME THING(s) PRACTICAL
12. Living like Cleanthes: While "philosopher" isn't really a profession anymore, a number of brilliant thinkers and writers have achieved immortal status for their ideas. One whose impact remains massive but doesn't get the headlines is a guy named Cleanthes, born in Greece about 350 years before the common era. Cleanthes worked is butt off carrying water for wealthy Athenians at night. He could have easily quit a life of manual labor as his brilliance was well-known. As a Stoic, Cleanthes understood that there is honor in hard work and that even a lowly job like water-carrying. It should be celebrated as noble and virtuous. Cleanthes also lived a very frugal life, even refusing to buy paper to put his thoughts down in an organized way. I often think of Cleanthes in tough times, or even moments of personal duress or professional challenges. Because more than anything, Cleanthes used intelligent humor got him through personal and social challenges. And instead of being offended when people laughed at him, he often responded by poking fun at himself, too.
13. The Freedom to Speak Up: Earlier this year, I began serving as an advisor to a promising, new start-up tech company in the web3 space. One of the (many) reasons I believe in this company is the encouragement and willingness to ask tough questions that create an environment of analytical rigor and attention to detail. With a small, tight-knit leadership team, this is quite simple and natural. But the ability to openly challenge one another is often lost as companies scale. I hope that doesn't happen with this group, falling into preconceived expectations or carefully-planned talking points. For new companies, creating success in both the short term and long term is hard. If you try to do the bare minimum, you’ll soon find yourself hustling from short-term goal to short-term goal, trying to hit whatever metric is most important at that moment. But this pursuit of rigorous understanding can’t be a one-person job. To really reap the benefits, it has to be part of the company-wide culture. One way to ensure that other people are thinking in this way is to make sure that meetings, both formal and informal, give people the space to explain their thought processes and pay attention to details.
14. Uncle Sam Has a MetaMask: As crypto took off in a more mainstream way over the past year, some people saw significant gains in a short period of time. Whether you're still holding, or actually flipped assets for profit, tax season is fast approaching. In some ways, the laws and regulations are clear… and in others, quite unclear. As a longtime crypto investor, obvious and legally viable taxable transactions include selling crypto for fiat (USD), trading cryptocurrencies for other cryptocurrencies, purchasing goods or services with crypto, as well as any income from mining/staking/liquidity pools (like dividends or DAO drops). The things you do not have to worry about (for tax purposes) are buying and holding cryptos or NFTs, transferring cryptocurrency between wallets or receiving a cryptocurrency gift. Basically you should assume that all capital gains rules apply.
15. Front Door to an IPO: I'm not usually one to jump in on IPOs immediately out of the gate, but I've got a hot tip. Well, maybe it's not as hot anymore. And it's less a tip than a suggestion. But after a big year for digital media platforms going public, Reddit announced last week that it had confidentially filed paperwork for an eventual public offering of its stock, a significant step toward the public markets for the 16-year-old internet company. I'm bullish on Reddit because it's got a smart, savvy, investor-class community that wants to see it succeed. Just a few months ago, Reddit announced that Fidelity invested $400 million at a $10B valuation. However, in light of the recent market volatility, the company could go public at a lower valuation. For comparison, Bumble and Roblox both returned big bumps for shareholders (Roblox saw a 54% first-day jump after its offering). So look for a Q1 offering, a big jump, then a leveling-off. But if you time it right, r/wallstreetbets may be your new best friend. (FYI, Discord is also likely to IPO, and you'll want in on that one, too. But stay away from Instacart...).
16. Discord and the Return of Communities: Speaking of Discord… In the past year, I spent more time on Discord than on Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit, Twitch and even YouTube, combined. With the exception of my well-curated Twitter lists, no platform has provided a better platform for real community engagement than Discord. Which is saying a LOT, because the Discord UI/IX is as bad as any web2 or web3 layout. For gamers, for brands, for sports fans, for any type of niche passion community, the rise of Discord has been transformative. Yes, it takes some getting used to, but 2022 could be the year that you spend more time on Discord than all of those platforms, too. You might have missed it, but I did say for brands. Marketers not only have an opportunity here, but many have an obligation to be here. You know the rules of engagement, the know the objectives, you even know the KPIs. Jump in, and see you soon.
17. Do What I Do: For improved practicality, and better ways of living, I spent about 95% of my time on about 5% of my the apps on my phone this year (not counting Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu, Peacock, Amazon Prime, Paramount+, Disney+…)
Coinbase: Buying and trading a multitude of cryptocurrencies
Public: Personal retail investing app
Stash: Another personal retail investing app
Acorns: Rounding up spending into a long-term account
Lolli: To earn free cash and bitcoin back when I shop. (Code: JU89VP)
SOME THING(s) POLITICAL
18. Studying for Midterms: The 2022 is going to be bumpy. Actually, it's going to be nasty. And I'm pretty terrified for the moral fabric of our country. Sitting presidents have recently seen significant Congressional election repudiation midway through their first term, and the 50-50 split in the Senate will likely go back to the GOP (if it’s not already there thanks to DINO Manchin). The House of Representatives is very much up for grabs. With a split Congress, legislative stagnation is likely. The early half of 2022 is critical for re-thinking civil rights, voter rights, reproductive rights, environmental protections, and improved healthcare legislation. Many Senators want to end the filibuster, which will be discussed, but likely unchanged. What we should expect to see, though, are some unpredictable surprises: resignations, primary upsets, and even a scandal or two.
19. Bloc Parties: The most consistent voting bloc over the past 50 years has been African Americans and Black communities voting for Democrats. That's not changing anytime soon given the increasingly racist rhetoric and policy focus of the Republican Party. But what's becoming less and less reliably Democratic is the Hispanic community, which is really made up of a dozen or so different sub-communities. From Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in New York to Cubans in Florida and Mexican-Americans from Texas to California, there is no "Hispanic bloc." That said, it is still polled that way. And while President Biden’s approval rating has declined with just about every demographic, no racial or ethnic group has soured on the president more than Hispanics. On one hand, the Cuban population in Miami has been moving increasingly towards the GOP, while Texas’s rising Hispanic population could eventually turn the Lone Star State blue and make the Electoral College biased toward Democrats in the process. Either way, 2022 will be an incredibly impactful year to see how the demographics shift.
20. The South Will Rise Again: No, not the American South. But the cultures, ideas, and systems that are rooted in the southern hemisphere of the world will play an increasingly vital role in our "globalized ecosystem" and interdependence. Think about it: Explorers and discoverers from northern empires -- the Spanish and British, the French, Dutch, and Germans, even the Americans and Russians -- landed in southern lands and a new discipline, modern sociology, is born as a way to study new groups of "discovered" people. Although the old empires have since dissolved and colonialism has mostly come to an end, the world remains split into those who have power and those who don’t. And this imbalance is still evident in well, everything, today. Yet our world is becoming increasingly connected through modern technology, international corporations and trade agreements. All these things make geographical distances almost irrelevant, but unfortunately, our interconnectedness doesn’t mean that we’re all equal. Modernization is seen as sprawling out from the European and North American post-industrial countries into the developing nations, who embrace the progress. Not all societies want the same thing and advance in the same way. And splitting the world into North and South exposes global inequality. This is Southern theory: knowledge created in places regarded as less legitimate by the powerful Northern countries. And it's not changing fast enough.
21. Keeping Trump Away from Cleveland: Throughout the long history of the United States, only one man became President for a second time. Not a second term... a second time. And that man was New Jersey's Grover Cleveland. As both the 22nd and 24th President, Cleveland rose from political ashes to serve two nonconsecutive terms in office. Donald Trump wants to be the second, and he's brought down Abraham Lincoln's once-grand Republican Party in the process. It will take the dedication of citizens of all political beliefs to recognize that what Trumpism represents is far outside the American mainstream. Progressives will need to join with conservatives. Independents will need to join the army of decency and democracy. As we saw this past January, we are only one election from the end of the American experiment. And until we eradicate Trumpism from American life, the base and merits of our democracy remain in peril. We cannot allow this on our watch.
22. Get Vaxxed, or Get Axed: I have no problem with any public or private company that forces its employees to get vaccinated or maintain strict masking protocols. In fact, I strongly applaud them. The fact that this entire pandemic has been politicized is the worst legacy of America's worst President (and his supporters). But we're here now, and the only way to get out of it is through risk mitigation and spread prevention. Those who argue this point continue to be proven wrong at every return. We know masking works. We know the vaccine is safe and effective. Yes, vaccinated people can get COVID. But they are not getting very sick, they are not getting hospitalized, and they are not dying. It's clear now that ALL adults must get their three-course dose, or we will continue to see more variants devastate. It's clear now that children should be vaccinated, and that the results of pediatric vaccine rollout validated that it is safe for the 5-12 year-olds. We must do whatever it takes at this point, including mandates. But before we get there, I implore everyone to keep sharing the stories of those who thought they knew better and lost their lives. It's not meant to be humorous, but it can and should be a deterrent for collective stupidity. Expect more Herman Cain Award winners in 2022.
On that positive note, wishing you and yours a wonderful, healthy, safe, happy(ish) New Year, and see you in a few weeks!