4 ms·

I really like this writer's style. This Dickens reference is hilarious: Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result mis

by sjcsjc 7y ago

I really like this writer's style. This Dickens reference is hilarious: Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure three hundred million pounds, result unicorn.

nlh 7y ago
He's hilarious and has a column in the same style every day! Subscribe and enjoy life a little more every morning: http://link.mail.bloombergbusiness.com/join/4wm/moneystuff-signup&hash=54223001ca3ffcf40f2629c25acea67a http://link.mail.bloombergbusiness.com/join/4wm/moneystuff-s... (no affiliation, just a Matt Levine fan)
- Bartweiss 7y ago
  Levine's article "Arbitrage Discovered" might be my all-time favorite econ essay. It's about an investment product that let you trade on past stock prices in the present. Levine is usually pretty calm and wonkish, but this arrangement was so breathtakingly self-destructive that he spends the piece writing things like "It's not actually an arbitrage. EXCEPT NO HOLY GOD IT IS THIS IS AMAZING." https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-02-27/arbitrage-discovered https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-02-27/arbitr...
  - santoshalper 7y ago
    Great article. Thank you!
  - StavrosK 7y ago
    That is quite entertaining and borderline incredible, thank you.
  - IgorPartola 7y ago
    Did this ever get resolved? Does George own the company already?
    - kwelstr 7y ago
      According to the Wikipedia entry he won in court but they are still in court to collect money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max-Herv%C3%A9_George https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max-Herv%C3%A9_George >>By 2015, up to 50 court decisions had been rendered against Aviva France. In September 2014, the French Supreme court, the Cour de Cassation, ruled in favor of the George family, determining that the life insurance contracts, as drafted with the "known price" clause, are legally binding under French law.[18] Nevertheless, George is still in court against Aviva, having won on the principle of the legality of the contracts, he now needs to have his prejudice recognized and valued in a second ongoing battle.<<
    - zifnab06 7y ago
      It appears he won the court case stating the contract is legal under French last, and now has to fight another one to make them honor it. Courts aren't fast.
- mbesto 7y ago
  Hear hear! If you're a techie and want to understand the financial world (particularly big VC and public equities), I highly recommend reading him daily. He breaks super complex things and makes them very easy to read...and SUPER entertaining.
  - Bartweiss 7y ago
    Levine is fantastic. It feels like finance writing is usually split between content for the general public (understandable, but often vitriolic and devoid of context) and writing for finance types (jargon-filled and usually devoid of ethical considerations). Levine straddles the line beautifully; he uses lay terms to explain the realities of financial instruments, not just silly metaphors, and looks at what should exist in the context of modern finance rather than gut instinct.
PhasmaFelis 7y ago
It seems like 90% of startups have the business plan "step 1: get as many users as possible at any cost, step 3: profit." Hardly anyone talks about it or seems to think it's weird. I don't get it.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  But it's often effective. Big companies like Facebook will pay cash or valuable equity to take those engaged users off your hands in an acquisition.
  - Bartweiss 7y ago
    It's definitely worth remembering that what sounds idiotic in specific cases is often either gambling or a principal-agent problem on a systemic level. Growth potential and demand elasticity are both hard to predict, so VCs are betting on high growth and trusting that one high-demand win can pay off 100 or 1,000 losses. (The people chasing proven revenue with unknown growth potential are banks, investing in things like expanding existing stores.) Did MoviePass show a <1% chance of succeeding? Probably. <0.1%? I'm not so sure. As for founders... Often, they're gamblers or extremely self-confident. Less generously, the field attracts a lot of people who are happy to burn someone else's money on a ridiculous narrative, while their actual focus is on getting acquired or elevating their personal reputation. (And heck, there are VCs doing this too. Consistently returning 25% on your fund is nice, but funding Snapchat will get you a job at a fancy Sandhill office, and funding Facebook will get you treated as a rainmaker and even a political player.)
- Bartweiss 7y ago
  My favorite summary of this entire pattern is that VCs would happily fund a company which sold dollar bills for $0.90, figuring they could get users now and raise prices later. (After all, they already raised the price from $0.70 and nobody complained!)
  - kccqzy 7y ago
    The VCs are banking on that startup playing obnoxious and privacy-invading ads to customers while they purchase their dollar bill with $0.90.
hammock 7y ago
Clever and it takes the format of an old quote: "If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem."
- sjcsjc 7y ago
  Or perhaps a slightly older quote ;-) https://dickensroundtheclock.wordpress.com/2015/03/11/in-short-mr-wilkins-micawber/ https://dickensroundtheclock.wordpress.com/2015/03/11/in-sho...
slothtrop 7y ago
I knew it was going to be Levine just from this comment
mruts 7y ago
You can't get better than Matt Levine. He probably has the best blog/newsletter on the internet, finance related or not.
cbanek 7y ago
Matt Levine and Kevin Muir (of https://www.themacrotourist.com/ https://www.themacrotourist.com/ fame) are two of my favorites. Also, shout to to https://heisenbergreport.com https://heisenbergreport.com who isn't nearly as well known, but still has the gonzo financial reporting style.
PopePompus 7y ago
The Dickens reference is nice, but I think the MoviePass story would be better told by Lewis Carroll.

by sjcsjc 7y ago

nlh 7y ago

He's hilarious and has a column in the same style every day! Subscribe and enjoy life a little more every morning: http://link.mail.bloombergbusiness.com/join/4wm/moneystuff-signup&hash=54223001ca3ffcf40f2629c25acea67a http://link.mail.bloombergbusiness.com/join/4wm/moneystuff-s... (no affiliation, just a Matt Levine fan)

Bartweiss 7y ago
Levine's article "Arbitrage Discovered" might be my all-time favorite econ essay. It's about an investment product that let you trade on past stock prices in the present. Levine is usually pretty calm and wonkish, but this arrangement was so breathtakingly self-destructive that he spends the piece writing things like "It's not actually an arbitrage. EXCEPT NO HOLY GOD IT IS THIS IS AMAZING." https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-02-27/arbitrage-discovered https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-02-27/arbitr...
- santoshalper 7y ago
  Great article. Thank you!
- StavrosK 7y ago
  That is quite entertaining and borderline incredible, thank you.
- IgorPartola 7y ago
  Did this ever get resolved? Does George own the company already?
  - kwelstr 7y ago
    According to the Wikipedia entry he won in court but they are still in court to collect money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max-Herv%C3%A9_George https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max-Herv%C3%A9_George >>By 2015, up to 50 court decisions had been rendered against Aviva France. In September 2014, the French Supreme court, the Cour de Cassation, ruled in favor of the George family, determining that the life insurance contracts, as drafted with the "known price" clause, are legally binding under French law.[18] Nevertheless, George is still in court against Aviva, having won on the principle of the legality of the contracts, he now needs to have his prejudice recognized and valued in a second ongoing battle.<<
  - zifnab06 7y ago
    It appears he won the court case stating the contract is legal under French last, and now has to fight another one to make them honor it. Courts aren't fast.
mbesto 7y ago
Hear hear! If you're a techie and want to understand the financial world (particularly big VC and public equities), I highly recommend reading him daily. He breaks super complex things and makes them very easy to read...and SUPER entertaining.
- Bartweiss 7y ago
  Levine is fantastic. It feels like finance writing is usually split between content for the general public (understandable, but often vitriolic and devoid of context) and writing for finance types (jargon-filled and usually devoid of ethical considerations). Levine straddles the line beautifully; he uses lay terms to explain the realities of financial instruments, not just silly metaphors, and looks at what should exist in the context of modern finance rather than gut instinct.

PhasmaFelis 7y ago

It seems like 90% of startups have the business plan "step 1: get as many users as possible at any cost, step 3: profit." Hardly anyone talks about it or seems to think it's weird. I don't get it.

chrisseaton 7y ago
But it's often effective. Big companies like Facebook will pay cash or valuable equity to take those engaged users off your hands in an acquisition.
- Bartweiss 7y ago
  It's definitely worth remembering that what sounds idiotic in specific cases is often either gambling or a principal-agent problem on a systemic level. Growth potential and demand elasticity are both hard to predict, so VCs are betting on high growth and trusting that one high-demand win can pay off 100 or 1,000 losses. (The people chasing proven revenue with unknown growth potential are banks, investing in things like expanding existing stores.) Did MoviePass show a <1% chance of succeeding? Probably. <0.1%? I'm not so sure. As for founders... Often, they're gamblers or extremely self-confident. Less generously, the field attracts a lot of people who are happy to burn someone else's money on a ridiculous narrative, while their actual focus is on getting acquired or elevating their personal reputation. (And heck, there are VCs doing this too. Consistently returning 25% on your fund is nice, but funding Snapchat will get you a job at a fancy Sandhill office, and funding Facebook will get you treated as a rainmaker and even a political player.)
Bartweiss 7y ago
My favorite summary of this entire pattern is that VCs would happily fund a company which sold dollar bills for $0.90, figuring they could get users now and raise prices later. (After all, they already raised the price from $0.70 and nobody complained!)
- kccqzy 7y ago
  The VCs are banking on that startup playing obnoxious and privacy-invading ads to customers while they purchase their dollar bill with $0.90.

hammock 7y ago

Clever and it takes the format of an old quote: "If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem."

sjcsjc 7y ago
Or perhaps a slightly older quote ;-) https://dickensroundtheclock.wordpress.com/2015/03/11/in-short-mr-wilkins-micawber/ https://dickensroundtheclock.wordpress.com/2015/03/11/in-sho...

slothtrop 7y ago

I knew it was going to be Levine just from this comment

mruts 7y ago

You can't get better than Matt Levine. He probably has the best blog/newsletter on the internet, finance related or not.

cbanek 7y ago

Matt Levine and Kevin Muir (of https://www.themacrotourist.com/ https://www.themacrotourist.com/ fame) are two of my favorites. Also, shout to to https://heisenbergreport.com https://heisenbergreport.com who isn't nearly as well known, but still has the gonzo financial reporting style.

PopePompus 7y ago

The Dickens reference is nice, but I think the MoviePass story would be better told by Lewis Carroll.