I dunno, Softbank’s funds are still such a total question mark in tems of long term impact - the entire us early stage equity capital world was working with like, 130bn last year? So Softbank is aiming at being a sole manager of about as much, but spread internationally. If I were a cynic, I’d say that you get that much money spread across that many industries in that short of a time, you’re going to wind up being isomorphic with the market, rather than really insightfully developing a single strategy, like what you have to do when you only have, you know, a billion dollars committed to your fund.
I was just looking over their current portfolio, and it’s …everything?
so I’m not seeing green/clean, education, or defense as specific areas of interest, but yeah, they’re all over so many broad sectors that unless they have some genius strategy that magically cuts across verticals ($100bn may effectively be a magical element), I don’t see what the play is besides just megascale and see what happens.
between this and the asinine and endless unicorn hunt, it’s not a surprise that capital is drying up for actual early stage ventures with real and defined utility. I see the dockless scooter gold rush as a kind of tulip mania, a sign that a lot of people on the funding side are talking too much and too exclusively to each other about what the world is like.
So basically your driveway is all shitted up with electroscooters because the global direction of captial is all goofed up.
“The romantic 650b look is really at this point an American phenomena, and is totally absent in Europe as far as I can tell. As Ludovic clarified, the French throw the 650b wheels in the trash.”
I didn’t want to just throw it away though, so I lugged it all across France and back. Actually, I just ate one of the bars while typing this…
This part reminded me of that time I did the Oregon Outback and carried an unopened jar of peanut butter across the entire state.
For some reason peanut butter seemed extremely unappealing when you are really thirsty but need to ration water.
47 hours of moving time, plus 23ish hours of sleeping, eating, and paperwork. In my shoes I’d take more moving time, but just not stop for anything but sleeping, bathroom breaks, whatever control crap needs to be done, and trainspotting (which would, of course, mean that I’d time out before I got more than about 100 miles away from Paris.)
You and someone else mentioned trainspotting the other day and I ended up on the wikipedia page because of some term yall had used. I found myself wondering how someone gets so interested in that and where it comes from. I moved on and like 2 hours later I realized that I’m subscribed to /r/aviation and every time I’m at the airport at sit at the window watching the planes land for hours if I can.
I got my mind blown by this article. 44 hour finish, from 1966, with Rene and Lyli Herse running support. Google translate did a good job on it for me.
Unlike most pbp accounts I’ve read he doesn’t spend a lot of time talking about being trashed because I guess he was just ultra fit and dgaf.
My good friend and Swedish Viking Hero™ had a humble sub60 if his body/mind felt good starting in the sub80 group. Rode mostly solo to a 59h21min hour finish, pretty rad.
“03:38 last morning I finished the 1200 km Paris—Brest—Paris in 59 hrs 21 min. Started in the sub 80 hr group w/ a humble ambition going sub 60 hrs. Slept 15 min. the first 800 km. Snapped a spoke and rode 90 km solo in the night with a wobbly front wheel, plus shitloads of other tech/equipment problems. Still had such a great time. Met tons of nice people. PBP is an adventure in its own category. Now — recovery.”
