Content I Consumed: Mud Wizards in Germany and Chess Compensation
And more Forbes 30 Under 30 founder fraud
Happy Wednesday!
Climate
Greta Thunberg and a 'mud wizard' faced off against German cops to protest a coal deal with the country's largest energy company. I dove deeper into the Lützerath protest when I saw the funny mud wizard video on Reddit. Lützerath is being demolished to expand a coal mine. 15k protesters showed up and were met with violence. It’s interesting to me how much additional coverage this protest received because of the mud wizard video.
2022 saw a historic decline in VC funding. Not so for climate tech. Defying gravity, 2022 Climate Tech VC funding totals $70.1B, up 89% on 2021. Climate tech is a big umbrella for many different climate solutions. This article breaks down where VC dollars are going across geographies and solutions in a handful of easy-to-read charts.
Tech
Another day in tech, another day in founder fraud. With JP Morgan Suing a Startup Founder, Will 2023 Be the Year of Accountability? A Forbes 30 Under 30 founder sold her company, Frank, to JP Morgan because Frank had millions of valuable college-aged customers. JP Morgan alleges the founder bought email lists and egregiously inflated these numbers. This post discusses investor due diligence in bull markets and how it is changing.
Will AI take everyone’s jobs? Is it a feature or a full company? Will people still code? So many (too many) people asking what the future will be. Here is a piece asking Is the Business of AI More Like Steel or VBA? I learned more about why the steel industry performs so poorly and the potential bear case for AI.
Building an audience is valuable because you can market products and ideas directly to a consumer. Podcasts are specifically valuable because they have a high-intent audience. One podcast that has been a hit in VC-world is the All-In podcast. It reaches millions of people directly. The Slate piece Elon Musk’s Inner Circle Is Telling Us Exactly What It Thinks gives a good balanced take on the phenomenon.
Podcast
In a new The Search for Growth podcast, Alfie interviews G, a founder that bootstrapped Lempire to millions of dollars of ARR. Impressive. G goes into building his first business with his father, turning down millions of dollars in venture capital, and what it is like to bootstrap a business in France.
Misc.
I like chess and will periodically watch live-streamed chess championships. The Biggest Chess Prizewinners In 2022 (And How Much They Made) dives into how much players actually make in prize winnings. The ranking isn’t surprising. Magnus tops the list and will likely overtake Anand as the player with the highest career total this year. Prizewinnings don’t paint the entire picture. These lists don’t account for sponsorship deals or twitch streaming revenue which can be lucrative for people like Magnus and Nakamura.
A PhD student studying criminology and criminal justice is suspected of killing four University of Idaho students. What’s the latest information on the University of Idaho killings? Here’s everything we know. A lot of people want to know why. Another interesting thread is How Police Actually Cracked the Idaho Killings Case. The article goes into how investigators used cell phone data, video footage, and forensic genealogy to arrest Bryan Kohberger.