Good morning 👋
And happy hump day.
I’ve been out of it all week, but reading more has helped.
Given the time of the year, a lot of this reading has been end-of-year updates and recaps.
This was by far the best of those, and that’s what we’re breaking down in today’s piece.
Today’s highlights
One of the best annual letters you'll read
Meta drops content moderation
Seven charts to think about going into 2025
TOP
Permanent Equity’s annual letter 📨
Every so often, there are things you read that make you stop and think.
This annual letter by Brent Beshore of Permanent Equity was one of those things.
Here are some of my notes:
Everyone knows what they want out of life until they get there and realize they didn’t want any of it.
The lie is that money will make you someone else. The truth is that money only makes you more of what you already are.
Large boards under traditional incentives can become a multiplicative system of dysfunction.
Like the idea of having a website, or taking orders through it, many on Main Street will ignore AI for a long while, and do fine without it for a while too.
In a noisy future of unlimited information, relationships become even more important in the purchase decision.
Everybody you know is dealing with some type of demon; only some of them show it.
Our biggest problems always start small. We realize that we’re not okay, but we like the results and believe we can make it work. Our desires overpower our conscience.
The problem is that we all hide out of fear. We tell each other we’re fine when we’re not. This goes back to the Garden of Eden. When sin entered the world, our response was to hide and blame. We’ve been doing so ever since.
Sin is the carbon monoxide of life.
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LINKS
🪝 How to “Hook” in Exactly 3 Seconds: Marketing Ideas shares how to hook your customers in the first 3 seconds of your ad
👍 When Does Good Enough Become Good Enough?: Founder Diaries shares that perfectionism is a clever liar
🥳 7 Charts to Ring in 2025: CBInsights shares that AI startups are grabbing 1 in 3 VC dollars; AI is taking over the unicorn club; and AI startups are getting to that mark faster with less headcount
✅ Startup Software: Founder Playlists offers 121 various software to help your company scale, market, manage,, and more
📶 Confluence.VC 2024 Year in Review: 3,500 words on what all we learned in 2024 + our masterplan going into 2025
TWEET
HEADLINES
13 Companies That Could Go Public In 2025 If The IPO Market Gains Steam (Crunchbase)
From No-Code To Auto Payments, Critical Infrastructure Shifts Will Drive Enterprise AI In 2025 (Crunchbase)
Meta drops fact-checking, loosens its content moderation rules (TechCrunch)
Getty Images and Shutterstock to merge to form $3.7B stock photo giant (TechCrunch)
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POLL
Do you write annual updates?
Thanks for reading this far and giving us a little bit of your attention this week.
Feel free to unsubscribe whenever this stops becoming valuable to you.
- Clay
RESULTS
Here are the results from our poll question in yesterday’s piece:
Have you seen redemption rights used in a term sheet in the past 2-3 years?
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes, unfortunately
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ No - I haven't thankfully
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 What's a redemption right again?
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