Paul Bassat
@PaulBassat
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Founder and Investor. @SquarePegCap All views personal
Melbourne
Joined February 2009
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I’m incredibly excited (and very nervous!) about the launch of AMPLIFY.
I have always felt enormous gratitude to have been born in Australia but, like many of you, I felt that we weren’t going in the right direction as a country.
I started turning my mind to what we might do
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Australia is like a company that has enjoyed amazing success over a long period and doesn’t know or doesn’t want to know about the disruptive threats it faces. Our moon shot should be to be the most innovative nation in the world by 2040.
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Israel had up to 10,000 new cases per day (pop 9m) earlier this year & they then vaccinated the country in 3 months. Yesterday they had ZERO local cases. The answer here is pretty simple; everyone should be lining up to get the vaccine & we should be doing 500k vaccines per day
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Australian states having different rules for entry of overseas arrivals is peak Australian Covid response. When are we going to start behaving as a country instead of a group of petulant states.
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Imagine a world 25 years from now where we have bushfires every year that are 10x worse than this year’s fires. The question all of us will be asking ourselves is why didn’t we do something about climate change when we still could.
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There is a big risk we are fighting the new war (Delta) with the old war tactics of getting to zero & maintaining it at zero.
“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?”
It is almost certain that NSW will never get to zero cases and the same is likely for Victoria
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@mcannonbrookes
And the leverage of Putin and other unsavoury folks disappears as we move away from a world of fossil fuels. A massive win win!
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We are witnessing a quiet revolution in Australia that has profound implications. So many of our best & brightest people in their 20’s are joining startups or founding their own company. It is such a significant change that has massive implications. I couldn’t be more excited.
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Our economy is dramatically transforming ; Afterpay is our biggest ever takeover, Atlassian market cap exceeds $US80b & Canva reportedly raising at $US30b. Throw in emerging group of Airwallex, Deputy, Rokt, CultureAmp etc plus thousands more startups with big dreams. So exciting
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The median house price in Australian capital cities is over $1m and median apartment price is $600k. Gen Z and Millenials are being screwed. The answer from policy makers is always demand side solutions that just exacerbate the problem. Time to fix the supply side.
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Aussie tech ecosystem needs more doing & less talking. Most of the focus should be on entrepreneurs; not VC's, Govt, Accelerators etc.
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No signs yet of vaccine rollout getting meaningful traction. Over past 7 days, Uruguay going 8x faster than us, US 7x, UK 5x, Canada and France 3x. Singapore which also did a great job containing Covid (like us) is going 4x faster. Complacency or lack of a coherent plan or both?
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There are a lot of differences between the Marriage Equality plebiscite and the Voice referendum, but also some key similarities.
The main similarity is Australians are being asked to support a group of their fellow Australian’s, without anything being taken away from the rest
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Given number of local cases in NSW & Vic, there is zero logic in keeping number of overseas arrivals & departures to & from those states so low. Lots of people really suffering coz they can’t see family. Would be massive for lots of people & essentially zero cost to the community
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It’s time for us to move beyond fear; fear of Covid, fear of transforming our economy away from fossil fuels, fear of technology disruption and a general fear of change. We have so much to be excited about if we can be bold and overcome our fear!
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An iconic Sydney pub Oaks Hotel is for sale for $175m. It generates $23m in revenue and I am guessing it is growing at 5% pa. That’s a 7.5x sales multiple! Lots of highly defensible tech companies growing at 30-40% are trading at less than 7.5x sales! Maybe a pub bubble …. 😉
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Are we making those people who are returning from NSW isolate for 14 days to prevent them from infecting us or are we protecting them from the rest of us 😂
Case incidence in Vic is over 3x NSW!
We have got to get rid of dumb policies that have severe impacts for lots of people
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Well done
@JoshFrydenberg
for your work in calling out the dramatic rise of an ancient hate in Australia. It is the first time in my life that I have been conscious that people are making judgments based on my religion and that of other members of our community. It is incumbent
Antisemitism has moved from the ugly fringe to the public square & people must know that Australia’s values are under daily attack.
It may start with the targeting of Jews, but it never ends with Jews. This is Australia’s fight. My oped in
@SkyNewsAust
⬇️
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The presumption of innocence should apply to everyone, including politicians. Very sad outcome and something is broken with the system.
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We have one of the highest level of dividends in the world and one of the lowest levels of R&D in the OECD.
We need policy changes and mindset changes to drive more investment in the future prosperity of our company’s and our country.
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It is incredibly frustrating and upsetting for Jews to be told by people who engage in hateful behaviour towards them that their behaviour isn’t anti-semitic. Jews are the only minority group that doesn’t seem to be allowed to have a say in what constitutes hateful behaviour
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We are getting a good sense of the jobs that really matter. It’s the healthcare professionals who are treating us, it’s the teachers educating our kids, it’s the farmers feeding us, it’s the drivers & people in the supply chain getting stuff to us ...........
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If you consistently do 3 things you are 90% on the way to having a fantastic career:
1 Do what you say you are going to do
2 Put yourself in the shoes of your customer/boss/partner/colleague & understand what success looks like for them
3 Act with integrity
The rest is detail
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On days like today, it is a good opportunity to be grateful for random events like our country of birth. We are so lucky to be born in Australia.
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Is anyone else finding our anaemic speed of vaccine rollout frustrating? Seems low level of interest by public in it going faster. Surely we want to avoid risk of further deaths & lockdowns & move to post covid world. Slow and steady is absurd and we should be doing 250k per day
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What a mess. Turnbull runs from a conflict & makes his problems worse, Abbott a sad figure who only knows how to destroy, Dutton scheming but unelectable & won’t win his seat & Shorten not the answer. Meanwhile our country stagnates when we should be moving forward & prospering
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In 2021 the media stories for startups were gushing & in 2022 it’s doom & gloom. It wasn’t that good last year & it’s definitely not that bad this year.
There has never been a better time to build a startup. Just be laser focused on the problem you are solving & ignore the noise
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We are now vaccinating 0.5% of the population per day. That number has remained steady for the last few weeks. Some countries have got over 2% per day & lots have exceeded 1%. Time to get our skates on & get it done in next 90 days. If supplies are in place it is very achievable.
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I started my career in March 1991, during our last recession. It was a deep recession and Victoria was regarded as the basket case of Australia. It was a long climb back but has been an amazing 28 years. It is going to be super difficult this time but we are a resilient community
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We don’t have a talent issue in Oz. We have bucket loads of talented people. We just need more folks focused on solving the biggest problems in the world. If u want to learn on steroids, join a startup.
If you know the answer to a big problem, go and start a company and solve it
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Let’s do it guys. Should be a piece of cake. Google only spends $US20b a year on R&D!!!
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So sad that out of 91 people in Victoria who are in hospital with Covid, 67 are unvaccinated despite being eligible. (1 out of 91 in hospital is fully vaccinated). It is so simple; get yourself vaccinated so you don’t kill yourself or your loved ones. These vaccines are a miracle
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If you increase someone’s pay as a result of a job offer, that means you weren’t paying them fairly in the first place. Good to ask the question: what would I do if person X got offered another job? If answer is “I would pay them more” then right thing to do is pay them more now.
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We are going to see massive shortages of workers in many industries/countries but this is especially true in Oz with borders closed. Aussies are starting to leave again and no one is arriving. The Govt needs to introduce policies to really drive increased supply of labour.
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The latest outbreak in Melbourne is the perfect reminder why we should all be getting vaccinated. It protects us, it protects our family and it protects society.
It isn’t that complicated.
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If we didn’t know it pre covid we know it now,
@CSL
is an extraordinary national asset. As a country, we need to be doing everything possible to encourage the creation of more companies that aspire to be the best in the world at what they do.
It is a critical national imperative
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Yesterday there were over 1700 Covid cases in Australia and 1 in hotel quarantine. Why are we still keeping caps on overseas arrivals & departures so low. It’s time to let people come and go more freely and introduce home quarantine for the fully vaxxed (at least in NSW and Vic)
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Awesome news from NSW Govt about not more caps and no more quarantine for fully vaccinated overseas arrivals. Time to move into a “living with Covid world” and away from our fortress mindset. Meanwhile, on the other side of the border, Vic is still declaring Sydney a red zone 🤦🏻♂️
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Team Australia has been replaced by every person for themselves. Pandemics don’t care about where you live or your politics. It’s bad enough that we have been cut off from the rest of the world for 18 mnths. We are now becoming the Hermit Federation. Time to look after each other
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Most of the coverage of Afterpay is about their share price (mostly negative but some glowing). It completely misses the point. It is a 5 year old rocket ship that is transforming consumer behaviour & retail. Oz needs to produce a new Canva or Atlasian or Afterpay every year.
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We are seeing the dying gasps of the reactionaries, who are mainly angry, older men. Holding on to power is their primary ideology.
Out of the rubble hopefully emerges a pro free markets, classically liberal party that embraces 21st century challenges like climate change.
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When you hire you have to decide if you want to optimise for experience, raw ability or mindset. Very rare you will get all 3. Answer for me depends on the role but frequently it’s
1 Mindset
2 Raw ability
3 Experience.
As general rule I think experience is overrated
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What Aussie company will be the next Atlassian/Afterpay/Canva?
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In a world of 1.5% 10 year Aussie govt bond yields, the obsession with surpluses is plain dumb. We should be investing in our future in areas like education & infrastructure. Recurrent expenditure should be kept in check but we should be building our productive capacity.
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You should build a startup if you have the wisdom to have identified the solution to an important problem, the resilience to overcome huge obstacles, the mindset & capability to surround yourself with world class talent & the preparedness to accept failure as a potential outcome.
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Narrative of last 10 years in the west: shares, property prices & other asset prices continually go up. Wages remain stagnant. There is fundamental lack of fairness as well as damage to social cohesion. Something has to change & society needs to be creative about path forward.
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Here’s hoping
@JulieBishopMP
runs and wins the leadership contest. The Abbott/Dutton wing have hijacked the Liberal Party. Their politics are Maoist and their policies are 1900’s, nasty and divisive conservatism. Winning combo you clowns.
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There is only one western country in the world where a conservative party is outpolling their more progressive opponents among millennials; Canada.
The reason is pretty simple; they have prioritised building homes and housing affordability as a key priority.
Governments of all
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If the ASX20 was a footy team, CSL would win the award for most underrated player. $100b Aussie success story but it doesn’t get anywhere near the attention it deserves. If we had 10 CSL’s, Australia would be a fundamentally different country.
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Why can’t the national Cabinet set out specific dates & targets for completing the vaccine rollout and then have a clearly articulated post covid policy. People are desperate for clarity, accountability and an exit plan. It’s time!
The costs of uncertainty are incalculable.
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Our education system is in urgent need of reform. It is purpose built for the 20th century & isn’t evolving to meets the needs of a more dynamic world. Focus should be on critical thinking not teaching facts. We should emphasise soft skills like leadership, resilience & curiosity
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The last 10 years hasn’t been super exciting in terms of innovation but we will see an extraordinary burst of innovation post this crisis. All sorts of new ideas being tried out of necessity, people having time to think and reflect and new behaviours being formed at warp speed.
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1 Our country is so enriched by migrants. Why are we putting on the brakes when so many amazing people want to come here.
2 If we are worried about Syd/Melb being too big, let’s be creative about attracting people to other places.
3 eg Darwin should be a special economic zone
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95% of startups are pursuing an opportunity that others are also pursuing without any real differentiation in either their tech or their model. 5% are doing something really novel. Every big business that emerges comes from the 5%. Ask yourself honestly if u are in the 5% or not.
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Leaders lead. An enormous thanks to the community leaders who have stood up and said no to anti semitism and other forms of hate.
One powerful statement is only one step but it is an important step. It is an important statement of support for the Jews of Australia and an
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Almost certain sign of a company that will go backwards in the next 10 years: head of tech reporting to CFO and not CEO. All too common in Australia.
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Awesome to see NSW trialing 7 days home isolation for fully vaxxed people arriving from overseas. Feels like a no brainer and hopefully sets a precedent for the rest of Australia, especially Victoria. Fully vaxxed overseas arrivals bring very little incremental risk to NSW & Vic
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Awesome leadership. It doesn’t matter if u are a country, company or individual. When massive disruption is occurring, the winners are the people embracing change & the losers are the ones at the back of the pack. That is us right now and great to see momentum for change building
There is an economic arms race underway to grab the next generation of jobs, investment, resource projects, exports and innovation. I want Australia to be at the front of the pack to grab these opportunities and set ourselves up for a more prosperous future.
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I have downloaded the COVIDSafe app. Simple process and the more of us who do it the safer we will be!
#COVID19
#coronavirusaustralia
#stayhomesavelives
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Great visit to
@joinstationf
in Paris.
I have a dream of building a tech hub in Melbourne. The lack of a geographic hub is a massive gap in our ecosystem.
I was so inspired by visiting Station F and I would love to make it happen in Melbourne
@DanielAndrewsMP
@MartinPakulaMP
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Housing prices are a major inter-generational fault line. Prices have grown at faster than incomes for more than a generation making housing affordability incredibly difficult for millennials. A ~10% fall after more than 25 years of unsustainable increases is hardly a disaster.
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Our 3 largest exports are iron ore, coal & education
All 3 have a single point of failure:
Iron ore: fall in price of iron ore
Coal: fall in price of coal (coking & thermal)
Education: Chinese Govt discouraging students from coming here
We need to urgently diversify our economy
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The big problems are being solved globally not locally & are frequently being solved by software. For Australia to succeed we need businesses that lead globally not just locally. We need to invest. The key elements are Mindset, Education, R&D.
We have a burning platform.
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All of the big challenges in the world (eg financial crises, climate change, pandemics etc) are global by definition and do not respect national boundaries. We need a new architecture to solve global challenges. Current architecture of G20, UN, conferences etc doesn’t cut it.
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There are so many passionate & amazingly talented people in tech in Australia who want to build incredible businesses and a small number of dodgy get rich quick folks who want to profit at the expense of unsophisticated investors. I hope the minority doesn’t hurt the ecosystem
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Interesting perspective from a serious publication like The Atlantic on our approach to Covid.
We are clearly an outlier, and increasingly so. History will be the best judge.
Is Pandemic Australia Still a Liberal Democracy? - The Atlantic
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We are back!!! Melbourne people have done it so tough the last 18 months and have been so resilient. So exciting to be on the cusp of reopening.
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I reckon the world would be a happier place and Twitter would be a much better platform if every single user had to have a blue tick. No more anonymity, less bullying, less trolling.
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20th anniversary of SEEK. Amazing company and very special day. A lot of fun celebrating with so many great friends. Well done Andrew & team on doing such a brilliant job.
@seekjobs
@MattRockman1
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We will always have people in our society with racist views and we can’t prevent that. What we can do is have a broad consensus to marginalise those people. When a former PM launches Pauline Hanson’s book, it is a bad day for Australia and a bad day in the fight against racism.
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This is beyond comprehension and it is important for all of us to be aware of who these people are. It doesn’t matter if you are Jewish, Muslim, Christian or an atheist and it doesn’t matter if you are progressive or conservative. People need to decide if they are on the side of
“The Israeli soldiers discovered babies with heads cut off”
Hamas beheaded babies.
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We need more of this to occur in Australia if we are to become a more innovative economy. Less law & finance & more startups.
In a few places, a high propn of the best & brightest choose startups as their chosen career path. Bay Area & Israel 2 most notable examples
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Here’s a random idea. How about a bunch of Aussie tech companies put together a package of incentives for anyone who gets vaccinated eg first month free subscription or rebate on purchase? Love to get feedback.
@SquarePegCap
@blackbirdvc
@airtreevc
@mcannonbrookes
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Our economy has largely been built on the back of national winners (eg banks, retailers) & amazing small biz. So many problems are now being solved globally not locally & you need to be the best in the world at what you do. We need to innovate more & produce more global winners
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According to
@TheEconomist
Australia is doing great but most of us think we are doing terribly. Why are we constantly so down on ourselves? Lots of challenges to overcome in Australia but so much to celebrate. Time for a bit of perspective.
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The GameStop fiasco is going to have all sorts of bad consequences but it is hard to feel any sympathy for the shorts. They sell stock short and then use public forums to talk the stock down. Maybe they are going to have to keep quiet now; hype is a two way street!
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Bemused by people saying there is too much money being invested in Aussie tech:
-Aussie VC is about 1/3 or 1/4 of level of many of our peers
-ASX is 3% tech weighting compared to 18% for MSCI.
Good to see increased investment but we have a looooong way to go to catch our peers.
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I had never heard of Corrie ten Boom before doing my
@calm
this morning but she was a Dutch watchmaker who saved Jews during the Holocaust. Extraordinary woman and this quote is special:
Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength.
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Progress for early stage company's is never linear. Need to be humble & paranoid when things going well & resilient when things going badly
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40% of US adults received at least 1 dose of vaccine. Number is about 5% in Australia. Just because we have been one of the best at protecting people from covid doesn’t mean we have to be very poor at vaccination. Lots of people badly impacted and time to get to post covid world.
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Interesting to hear of so many VC’s (including some of the most respected globally) giving unhelpful one size fits all advice to founders. Two things are clear right now; the world has changed for startups AND the right answer for each startup is going to be entirely situational.
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1 Brilliant news that case numbers are down. 🙏
2 Govt is confident that contract tracing has improved immeasurably
3 People are really, really hurting after a prolonged shutdown.
It is time to bring Victoria’s restrictions in line with the rest of Australia.
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Memo to prospective founders about the upcoming period:
1 There will be a huge number of important problems that will need solving.
2 The receptivess of individuals & companies to doing things differently is at a record high
3 Availability of amazing talent will never be greater
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Terrible situation for strawberry growers. Easy to slice strawberries & remove any risk. What does it say about how we are wired that we worry about trivial risks like this but take excessive risks every day with diet, smoking, lack of exercise etc. Insight into the human psyche
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We are over 12 months into Covid and we don’t have a plan. Saying borders may be shut indefinitely is not a plan.
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Super excited for
@SquarePegCap
to announce our newest fund & our fourth generation of funds since 2012. Incredibly grateful for our investors who have backed us and our amazing founders who have trusted us to support them on their remarkable journeys.
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6 weeks ago we would have been elated if things had panned out the way they have with virtually zero cases & gradual reopening. Our leaders have been superb.
Time to be a little bit more bold with reopening as risks of inaction now appear to outweigh risks of action.
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@TimWilsonMP
@ajamesbragg
Hi Tim. Housing affordability is a national scandal. As a society we are screwing our kids. All of us are complicit, esp policymakers at a local, state & federal level. Voters are also complicit. Demand side solutions are a con. The answer lies in the supply side.
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It is worth reflecting on the fact that the biggest takeover in Australian history is of a 7 year old company with a co-founder who was 23 at the time. Remarkable story. Ant and Nick have achieved something quite extraordinary. Congrats.
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2 years ago,
@mcannonbrookes
& I bet about price of BTC in 2 years time. It was $US15k then & today it is $US7k. I bet it would be below $US2k so there is a clear winner. Well done MCB. Don't get too many wrong mate. I owe $US10k to your favourite charity. Time for me to pay up!
@mcannonbrookes
That is very clever. On current trends not only will I lose bet but it will cost me $1b. 😂 🤓
I’m an old fashioned boy. 😉 Cash only. Even money bet for $US10k. Deal?
#craptrackrecordwithbets
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Managing risk is one of the most misunderstood concepts in the world. Risk averse people constantly make decisions that they think minimise risk without fully assimilating the risks they have assumed. Bias for inaction is the most frequent bias that often increases risk.
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One way to think about the most important jobs in our society is to look at who needs to work on public holidays to keep our society running. It isn’t highly paid professionals but nurses, cleaners, garbage collectors & police. It was the same during Covid lockdowns.
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I think a much better question is why can’t Australia be like the rest of the world and get back to our normal lives, and stop obsessing about Covid!!
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We have plenty of challenges in Oz & things we can do better but this feedback is consistent with what I hear from 99% of visitors.
We are a special country; we should aspire to be better in many areas but we really need to stop our constant angry criticism of ourselves.
Australia is so high functioning it’s ridiculous.
Everyone is nice, people are happy, there is no crime, it’s clean, taxes are reasonable, the environment is stunning, people are brilliant and hard working... food is exceptional & everyone seem to have a joyful life.
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