Not Boring

Capital markets run on a patchwork of systems built on top of COBOL over which $3 trillion flows daily. It's a ticking time bomb. So Clear Street is fixing it. The 5-year-old company is worth $2.2 billion, did $260 million in 2023 revenue, and did so profitably. I got to spend time with Uriel Cohen and the Clear Street team to understand why in the world the system still runs on 70-year-old systems, how hard it is to fix from the inside, how to fix it from the outside, and the stakes for getting it right. In the process, I learned more about my favorite topic: what it takes to build really hard startups that replace old infrastructure with modern rails. https://lnkd.in/e3-m9_CH

There's something special happening over on Farcaster. On Friday, Farcaster released Frames. Think of them as mini-apps right in the feed. I think these very small apps are a very big deal. Frames are three ideas I've been writing about brought to life: 1. Small Apps, Growing Protocols 2. Experimentation and Infrastructure 3. Why Blockchain Networks Win Frames isn’t about “onboarding the next billion users to crypto.” It’s about using blockchain networks to do things that billions of people want to do, better. https://lnkd.in/eUZy8n4X

We're standing at the foot of a Techno-Industrial Revolution. I've become obsessed with a certain type of company recently that I'm calling Techno-Industrials. When people talk about deep tech / hard tech / etc... I think they're talking about the ability to compete in huge markets at lower cost and better margins. Techno-Industrials use technology to build atoms-based products with structurally superior unit economics with the ultimate goal of winning on cost in large existing markets, or expanding or creating new markets where there is pent-up demand. Examples include Anduril Industries, Solugen, and Monumental Labs. The opportunity is huge markets at higher margins. The challenges are daunting. I suspect we'll see trillion-dollar Techno-Industrials.

If we zoom out to the limit, cell-based therapies are likely to be the endgame of modern medicine. How can they not be? Every human starts out as a single cell. Through a profoundly complex cascade of genetically controlled cellular divisions, we ditch our microbial ancestors and grow into a mosaic of cells that are hierarchically organized into tissues and organs. Every disease stems from cellular dysfunction. By definition, if we can target—or even replace—diseased cells with other cells, it’s difficult to imagine a more effective medical paradigm. We’re talking about engineering a patient’s own immune cells to cure cancer, reprogramming cells and tissues to a younger and healthier state as we age, designing bacteria in our gut to pump out GLP-1 molecules when we eat too much, and curing diabetes with a single infusion of cells instead of countless infusions of insulin. If we continue to improve our capacity to program and produce cells, medicine will never look the same. Elliot Hershberg guest posts on Not Boring today with an absolute banger on cell-based therapy: Medicine's Endgame https://lnkd.in/epdMwn-f

Age of Miracles, S1E1: The Big Lies (and Truths) About Nuclear Power Mythbusting safety, waste, and "disasters." The actual challenges nuclear faces. A little fusion preview. https://lnkd.in/eDiuEYz8

RISKOPHILIA What if we’re thinking about risk backwards? Over the weekend, a paper in The Journal of Pediatrics titled, Decline in Independent Activity as a Cause of Decline in Children’s Mental Well-being: Summary of the Evidence swept the internet. The authors’ argue that “a primary cause of the rise in mental disorders is a decline over decades in opportunities for children and teens to play, roam, and engage in other activities independent of direct oversight and control by adults.” Right on the first page, they write (emphasis mine): "Over time, however, beginning in the 1960s and accelerating in the 1980s, the implicit understanding shifted from that of children as competent, responsible, and resilient to the opposite, as advice focused increasingly on children’s needs for supervision and protection. Rutherford noted, as have other reviewers, that in some respects—such as freedom to choose what they wear or eat—children have gained autonomy over the decades. What has declined specifically is children’s freedom to engage in activities that involve some degree of risk and personal responsibility away from adults." My thesis is that it’s not just the kids. Replace “children” with “people” and the paragraph works just as well!  Over the same time period, beginning in the 1960s and accelerating in the 1980s, the implicit understanding shifted from that of Americans as competent, responsible, and resilient to the opposite, as advice focused increasingly on Americans’ needs for supervision and protection. We can't avoid risk. We should embrace it.

Last week, I wrote about moats. This week, in Part II, I defend strategy. If moats are the what, strategy is the how. https://lnkd.in/eZcwp5xj