I read a lot of stuff and here’s a few worth passing along to you!

China’s Age of Malaise [Evan Osnos/New Yorker] – A loooong read but essential stuff if you are interested in China from an sort of view (cultural, economic, geopolitical, startup).

When I return to China these days, the feeling of ineluctable ascent has waned. The streets of Beijing still show progress; armadas of electric cars glide by like props in a sci-fi film, and the smoke that used to impose a perpetual twilight is gone. But, in the alleys, most of the improvised cafés and galleries that used to enliven the city have been cleared away, in the name of order; overhead, the race to build new skyscrapers, which attracted designers from around the world, has stalled. This summer, I had a drink with an intellectual I’ve known for years. He recalled a time when he took inspiration from the dissidents of the Eastern Bloc: “Fifteen years ago, we were talking about Havel.” These days, he told me with a wince, “people don’t want to say anything.” By the time we stood to leave, he had drained four Martinis.

Incentives and the Cobra Effect [Andrew ‘Boz’ Bozworth/Facebook] – So I don’t know if the story Boz references here is fully accurate or has taken on some metaphorical expansion, but it’s worth sharing. A quick post about the power of incentives – and how they can sometimes backfire. The title is explained in the opening paragraph:

When Delhi was under colonial rule it suffered from an excess of venomous cobras. To curb the population the government paid a bounty for dead cobras. This triggered entrepreneurs to start breeding cobras to collect the bounty. When the government figured out what was happening, they discontinued the bounty which meant all the cobras being bred were worthless and were thus set free, increasing the cobra population significantly.

It’s Never Been More Important to Understand Your Capital Provider’s Business Model [Charles Hudson/Precursor] – Charles is just a wonderful human and his posts about venture capital are essential for anyone who considers themselves part of the startup community. Similar to Boz’s essay earlier, this one too is about incentives. And how mismatched (or unspoken) ones in venture capital can cause stress.

 If you are a founder and you are experiencing new or renewed tension in your conversations with your VC investors, it’s worth re-examining whether you all have a shared view of the likely outcome of your company and whether you’re both as excited about what that outcome means. In many cases, I’ve seen situations where there are founder-acceptable outcomes that are below-the-line outcomes for VCs, and that conversation goes unsaid or unexamined. This creates a lot of unspoken and unexamined tension in the founder and VC relationship.

Don’t Talk To Your Competitors’ Investors [Chris Neumann/Panache Ventures] – I generally agree with what Chris writes here although if he has experienced that most VCs share information received with a company directly with a competitive company in their portfolio that makes me sad. We try upfront to disclose any conflicts and if we, during a pitch process, find out that the presenting company is competitive with an existing investment would never forward materials.

One disconnect between founders and investors is sometimes the definition of ‘competitive’ and founders will push back to actually suggest they’re not competitive with an existing investment. I get it, they want to keep as many doors open as possible for funding. The reality is though, that especially at seed we tend to give our existing founders a very wide berth, even if it’s just adjacent. Why do we do this even at the cost of passing on an interesting company? Well we all know that early stage companies do a lot of exploration in their problem space before settling on the exact product. Even more importantly we want to be able to bring just one of the startups to their next investors as representing ‘our investment in [market x].’ I find that our conviction will strengthen the interest of Series A VC, versus us having a set of similar looking companies.

Five Traps for Real Estate Tech Entrepreneurs [Brad Hargreaves/Thesis Driven ($)] – Brad’s a multiple time proptech founder/investor and his newsletter is well worth the subscription price if you’re at all interested in real estate investing – both the technology and property holding company side. Google presents a snippet of the five mistakes so I don’t feel like I’m violating his paywall by sharing here 🙂

Hope you enjoy these as much as I did!