Mikho

This will be a success. There is no need to sell an amount comparable to the Tesla Model S. It's Ferrari's first entry into the premium 5-seat EV sedan market. There are enough people who would pay any money to have an electric Ferrari. The fact that it's a rather everyday car—and not a supercar—makes it a very attractive option for rich people who need to show off. Design is also pretty good for the task. It doesn't compete with existing premium EV sedans but really stands out. It's unique, and that is its value prop. Should it look like a regular Ferrari but electric, it would compete with Ferrari's combustion engine supercars and would inevitably lose. It also shouldn't compete with the Porsche Taycan—a very nicely designed EV. The general public is not the target audience for this car to offer a generic design. So, Ferrari's unconventional design is the exact right choice.

P.S. It’s kind of like when Porsche entered the SUV market with the Cayenne, which didn’t have a conventional SUV look but still crashed the market.

Ferrari Luce is the nicest KIA design ever.

That kind of M&A shenanigan without actual M&A to not attract scrutinization is pretty popular this year. E.g., Meta's "acquisition" of ScaleAI for $14.8 billion and Alphabet's "reverse acquihire" of key talent from Windsurf in July 2025 for $2.4 billion for non-exclusive technology licensing rights and the hiring of top executives. Apparently, in all deals employees lost while founders gained personally but didn't explicitly try to make good for people who actually took a risk by trusting them.

That really diminishes attractiveness of working in a startup where all your efforts could be swooped out by a big player via just buying IP and acquihiring founders for a price cheaper than buying the whole company and without the hustle of regulatory scrutiny. Big tech literally kills competition and innovation guaranteeing its monopoly.

The author should really rethink the relations with clients and "freedom" they get in the process.

Back when I did websites for clients, often after carefully thinking a project through and getting to some final idea on how everything should look, feel, and operate, I presented this optimal concept to clients. Some would start recommending changes and adding their own ideas—which I most often already iterated through earlier during ideation and designing.

It rarely builds a good rapport with clients if you start explaining why their ideas on "improvements" are really not that good. Anyway, I would listen to them, nod, and do nothing as to their ideas. I would just stick to mine concept without wasting time for random client's "improvements"—leaving them to the last moment if a client would insist on them at the very end.

Funny thing is that clients usually, after more consideration and time would come on their own to the result I came to and presented to them—they just needed time to understand that their "improvements" aren't relevant.

Nevertheless, if they insisted on implementing their "improvements" (which almost never happened) I'd do it for additional price—most often for them to just see that it wasn't good idea to start with and get back to what I already did before.

So, sometimes, ignoring client's ideas really saves a lot of time.

I start thinking that Trump and Elon are Russian assets whose task is to destroy the US from the inside. Both were heavily involved with Russians before, travelled to Russia as private citizens, and they both could be compromised long ago. If Russia and China tried to think about ways to ruin the US, they couldn't come up with a better plan than what Trump and Musk do to the US as to both home and foreign policies.

If the main reason for blogging is to get an audience and/or become popular, I'd say it's not blogging. It should be a serious descision to do it as a job, not "blogging". If blogging is a personal project then it could help with following:

1. Blogging is a very good way to help sorting out own ideas and shape thoughts on a particular topic. Unless you write it down and try to express your idea coherently, thoughts are just bouncing inside your head without proper actionable output. I notices from my own experience that ideas form and progress much better when I write them down.

2. Blogging is helpful as a form of journalling about particular topic—to return to later. Sometimes I read my old posts to refresh my memory and often get surprised that it was written by me—after some time I forget what was the logic that led me to a particular idea or descision and old posts look like written by somebody else.

3. Blogging helps to discipline oneself. Writing and editing takes time and effort. Only regular stable blogging attracts any audience at all. Not that it's important, but it's good feeling when somebody finds what you wrote helpful. Many just want to get audience without understanding what it really takes. It's not that easy. So, as a byproduct of the first two points, one learns what it takes to produce good content with a regular cadence.

It takes effort to carefully write, edit, and rewrite. But it really helps with our own thought process, improve ability to shape ideas, helps save sorted out ideas for later, and disciplines ourselves.

So, I'd say blogging is a pure self-improvement exercise—fitness for the mind.

What really annoys is web-sites that force dark mode without an option to switch to light mode. There MUST be an obvious switch option when a web-site forces or offers dark mode—what matters is for a user to be able to change the mode. It's simple common sense and respectful to users.

Why iPhone? Why not another Android—not Google's one? For me, it looks like you wanted to switch to iOS and looked for an excuse to blame something else for your decision. You blamed Google, not Android. In this case the rational decision is to switch to another Android brand—not switch to iOS. So, you seem a bit dishonest here. Maybe even dishonest with your own self.

One should consider that Gemini will have a paid version "Gemini Advanced" [1] for phones and whenever one has a phone with free Gemini version, it will constantly be annoyingly reminding about and pushing to the paid Gemini usage. For some reason big tech decided that people want their AI assistants and force them on everybody including requesting to pay for their decision to invest in AI hardware. I really prefer not having AI, not having an AI chip in any of my devices, and not be bothered with AI intrusion into my life.

Very soon not having an AI integrated into a phone will be a very good positive differentiation for a phone or PC brand.

1. https://gemini.google/advanced/

Jason just wasn't into it and invented a random reason to say no... and brag about it—after all, his day-to-day job is constantly tweeting, bragging, and pretending about giving advice to become visible for startups and get the deal flow at the same time showing those SaaStr conference goers to keep participating and paying. If numbers in the deck were impressive for the economics work for him personally, he would be begging founder to take his money despite any date or any other imperfections in the deck. But the numbers weren't. And Jason used it as a reason to remind about himself one more time to the public.

Now it's MAAMA (Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Meta, Alphabeth)

Here is a novel idea: why doesn't humanity instead of projecting a laser on a hand somehow create a small screen with high enough resolution and even bright colors that could be attached to a hand and every time one raises a hand it turns on to display information? Oh. Wait...

Those who think that A16Z—and many other VCs per se—started their own media arms or at least blogs to "help industry" probably lived under a rock. There are just 3 reasons for a VC to invest in its media arm:

1. Help to create a deal-flow by writing about a current thing or their specialization in tech;

2. Promote its portfolio and pump it in every possible way for it to increase in value;

3. Promote its agendas and narratives like regulation/untiregulation.

So, yes. A16Z's media channels are a marketing tool.

This a classic self-righteous text from a person who doesn't want to take ANY risk but wants to be a technical co-founder in the notion of "pay me the full market salary and give a lot of shares for me to even consider being a co-founder". The whole post gives the impression that being a co-founder means to this person not starting his own business but getting a paid side gig. This person, apparently, considers that an MVP is the only value that is created by a startup team.

The truth is everybody on the team risks—tech or non-tech founders: both types invest their own time and expertise regardless of a task to be done. The fact that non-technical founder doesn't code MVP doesn't mean that there is no time/expertise invested that moves the needle. So, both invest and should better "date" for some time to test getting along.

The funny part is that it's people like the author who got easily tricked by a good salesman and smooth talkers into working for free. A good salesperson clearly sees what motivates such people and promises a lot of it to only deliver nothing later.

The real problem with the Apple Tax — it ruins value-chain and makes it uneconomical

For every value created a customer receives there is value captured by a company paid by this customer. Let's say a company creates a service valued as 1X by the customer and the customer pays 1X for that. This balance guarantees accessibility and interest among many customers.

Apple tax demands for a customer to pay 1.43X for the same value of 1X (0.43 = 30% of 1.43). It means that the balance is ruined and customers do not get enough value for what they pay. In value, they still get 1X despite paying for 1.43X.

There is a price elasticity curve that measures how many clients a company loses after each step of the price increase. In other words, a company gets significantly fewer customers due to the increased price at the same time, it’s unable to benefit from an additional 0.43X customers paid. A drop in the revenue is significant. At the same time, the company needs to increase its marketing budget effectively decreasing its margin even more. That makes business unsustainable.

Imagine what a decrease in purchases a product gets if its price is increased by 43%. This ruins all economic assumptions of a business.

Not to mention that if it has any network effect, significantly fewer users result in a degraded experience for all users.

I'm considering using PWA for the next mobile app and not investing in native iOS development. Even 50% fewer users due to PWA installation is better than being a lifetime slave to Apple which extorts 43% of what a company gets after Apple TAX from a user.

The real problems of the Apple Tax — it ruins value-chain.

For every value created a customer receives there is value captured by a company paid by this customer. Let say a company creates a service valued as 1X by customer and customer pays 1X for that. This balance guarantees accessibility and interest among many customers.

Apple tax demands for a customer to pay 1.43X for the same value of 1X (0.43 = 30% of 1.43). It means that the balance is ruined, and customers do not get enough value for what they pay. In value they still get 1X despite paying for 1.43X. Hence, a company gets significantly less customers and at the same time it’s unable to benefit from additional 0.43X customers paid. Drop in the revenue is significant. That makes business unsustainable.

So, what a company could do? It could provide more value by letting go own margin in favor of only Apple benefitting from the service or it could increase marketing expenses to attract more users. But then again that additional marketing budget eats into a company’s margin. And again, makes it uneconomical.

Maybe it used to be acceptable to pay the Apple Tax in 2008 when it was enough to just create a simple non-cloud app like calculator, submit to AppStore, and forget about it. In those days there were no expenses to actually run the service. Now the core of mobile services happen outside Apple ecosystem and an iPhone is a mere access point and interface to them. Nothing more. It’s a mere mobile browser for 3rd party services.

Wonder how many great businesses weren’t realized due to Apple making them uneconomical.

For those who want to crunch numbers here is the Excel file I created for the comparison with all the scenarios and valuations:

https://link.babich.me/ycdeal

In general, any decision in the early days has a long tail and consequences. Hire the wrong person—and start-up wastes not only a semi-annual or an annual salary (more than $30K) but also a lot of valuable time. Sometimes wrong hire could kill a start-up just by wasting all the money early.

It's good to optimize in the early days but it's also important to not be penny wise and pound-foolish. In general, today there are a lot of standard deals, documents, and lawyers who specialize in start-up deals. Properly speaking, for a law firm it is usually worth making its services inexpensive and accessible for fresh start-ups since it's the firm's investment in keeping these start-ups as clients should they grow and become big. It's not worth it for a lawyer to rip off a start-up for pennies and lose this start-up as a client when it becomes big. Not to mention losing reputation among other startups. So, for a start-up, it's worth finding the right lawyer who works mostly with start-ups and not rely on "general practices" pushed by a VC or VC's own loyal lawyer that surprisingly serves only this VC's pocket.

Taking money at the early stage is a tough game. When founders take an investor's money, the investor's business model becomes the business model of their start-up: only outlier growth and outsized returns. The longer start-ups bootstrap the better it is for founders and for business. Preferably, to bootstrap till the product-market/fit and take money only as a fuel for growth. This way a start-up has a lot of leverage in fundraising since it doesn't need money to survive—just to have more fuel to make the fire bigger.

Calculations in my post make it obvious that any pre-seed round (including Y Combinator's deal) results in founders losing a very big chunk (30%+) of their start-up by the time they close the next Seed round or priced round in YC'S deal case.

Nevertheless, if there are no other options and the only one is to take money early, then so be it. It's better like this than nothing at all.

Thanks. Good read. I'd say legal fees don't influence the cap table and, hence, founders' share unless founders pay them with equity. So, it's a matter of the way the investments are spent, not the cap table structure. But definitely spending relatively big chunk of money on legal at an early stage leaves less money to use for the primary purpose and later dilutes founders' share with inevitable new financing.

The 4% participation right in the priced round—if YC decides to exercise it—doesn't change anything since it will be a normal equity investment along with a new investor. It means that this new investor gets 96% share of the round and YC gets the remaining 4% of the round. This doesn't influence the founders' ownership in any way—the main number the scenarios compare. In other words, if the priced round results in a 10% share of a start-up given to new investors and YC exercises the 4% participation right, YC gets additional 0,4% and new investor gets 9,6% of this start-up. It doesn't matter for the founders' share what the split of the 10% be.

I'll update the option pool numbers. Thanks.

I crunched some numbers to model different scenarios and different start-up valuations to compare whether the YC deal is any good and what the other options are. In general, thinking about the 7% of the Safe and whether it's worth it is the wrong mental model to start with. It’s like announcing winners and losers in a race immediately after the start and before anybody even runs half a distance. The thing is 7% Safe is just Step 1 in a priced round when YC’s shares convert — and there are 3 steps that depend on the priced round valuation and share a new VC gets. Anyway, I modeled 3 scenarios with 7 different start-up valuations of the priced round for each to compare founders' shares as a result.

I recently did some napkin math of a YC startup cap table to see what ownership % is given up for what money after YC and what valuation should be targeted at the demo day to keep YC ownership at not more than 10% for $125K+375K with prerequisite that the demo day VC also gets 10%, triggers $125K+375K SAFEs, and requires an additional 10% to be set aside for the option pool:

If we consider that YC's $125K investment is Pre-seed and the demo day YC's $375K + VC money investments are Seed:

_____

PRE-SEED (Accepted to YC)

YC 1 ($ 125K) ---- 0% (SAFE didn't convert yet)

Founders ---------- 100%

Total Investments: $ 125k

Valuation: Isn't set yet (or $ 1 785 714 / Post money based on the non-converted yet safe)

_____

SEED (Demo Day)

YC 1 --------------- 5.6% ($ 125K SAFE converts)

YC 2 ($ 375K) ---- 4.29% ($ 375K SAFE converts)

VC ($ 700K) ------ 10%

Option pool ------- 10%

Founders ---------- 70.11%

Total Investments: $ 1 200 000

Valuation: $ 7 000 000 / Post money

_____

To sum it up, to keep around ~70% of the startup after YC, one needs to target ~$7M post money valuation at the demo day with $700K investment from a VC for another 10% and option pool of 10%. If a startup needs more VC money and doesn't want to lose a bigger share it's worth targeting at valuation higher than $7M and starting at least at $10M post money to get $1M investment.

Please, correct me if I missed something.

Calculations are done based on Safe Conversion Financing section in the The Y Combinator Deal [1]:

Step 1: Price for the round is set and the two SAFEs are converted;

Step 2: A stock option pool is created;

Step 3: New money is invested in the company.

It was a pleasant surprise to find out in the text that the priced round itself, and the creation or increase of the stock option pool, will dilute YC’s ownership. It means that 7% for the $125K SAFE at step 1 due to the dilution become 5.6% (considering that new VC gets 10% and the option pool is 10%). As also $375K percentage after step 1 is also decreased due to dilution.

[1] https://www.ycombinator.com/deal/

Wonder why YC wouldn't split into themed programs with less startups in each like some other accelerators. More focused themed groups could probably be more helpful for startups. Only very broad generic recommendations kind of work for everyone.

This huge blue Bing icon in the toolbar near the address bar is really abusive. It's too big and really provides no real value except offering users to sign up for a waiting list. There is a hack to remove it. The simplest option is to:

Step 1: Add in the properties of the shortcut icon that launches the Edge browser additional flag:

--disable-features=msEdgeSidebarV2

So, it would look something like this:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application\msedge.exe" --profile-directory=Default --disable-features=msEdgeSidebarV2

Step 2: Disable in the browser's Settings in the "System and performance" section "Startup boost" for it to not launch the browser in advance without the flag.

Step 3: Restart the browser.

P.S. I used to love the Edge and switched everything to it from Chrome. But OMG! Microsoft with every update ruins the experience even more and tries to shovel an even more irrelevant introduction to other services that have nothing to do with a browser. Microsoft abuses users' trust. I already think about abandoning Edge. I've read recently that next it will try to integrate a crypto wallet into the Edge.

In reality, scooter sharing should be rather a loss leader for a bigger business to retain customers but it's not viable for it to be an independent business. When the Bird scooter sharing service just emerged, I wrote an article where I calculated and described unit economics of scooter rides based on charging cycles [1]. The business is just not sustainable unless scooters are made like tanks and can sustain heavy damage. They are usually not. Chana's big piles of thrown away rental bikes should have taught us something.

1. https://medium.com/13-notes/unit-economics-of-the-bird-scoot...

For people who are themselves boring and forgot how to be curious or passionate to feel life, everyone and everything around is boring. Such people got used to being entertained by outside signals like TV, games, social etc. They often can't even be on their own in silence without any outside noise that would distract them from looking deeper inside themselves and be on their own with their own thoughts. Such "human vegetables" often blame others for their own inability to have a spark in life. They basically blame others for their own life choices while forgetting that nobody owes them anything and their life is a direct result of their own behavior.

For those who enjoyed the trilogy, there is a fourth book "The Redemption of Time: A Three-Body Problem Novel" written by Baoshu [1]. Originally one of the first fanfics by the Chinese sci fi author. Later approved by Liu Cixin himself for publishing and translated into English by the same sci fi author Ken Liu who also translated the original trilogy. The book envisions the aftermath of the conflict between humanity and the extraterrestrial Trisolarans.

1. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42646354-the-redemption-...

It should be noted that Lex listens books in audio format as he mentioned many times in his videos. So, the analysis is interesting but doesn't take into account audio vs text format as also listening speed. Like I mostly listen fiction books at x1.5 or x1.75. E.g. in 2022 I read/listened 71 books. About 50 of them were fiction. So, I listened and the rest non-fiction that's more useful to read and make notes.

Again??? Was there a pause?

We should think about colonizing Mars but not right away. It's like skipping 10 steps and trying to land on the 11th one without progressing naturally through all required evolutionary steps in the space tech development. It's like putting all your eggs in one basket in hopes that everything goes right from the first attempt. Iterations this way are way too expensive.

Instead, Mars colonization should be though as an option at the point when humanity already could sustain life in space close to Earth — like in a space habitat city of 1000s of people with an option for fast logistics to Earth.

But first, it should be a Moon colony (the mission Artemis) that could be made sustainable via many safe iterations close to Earth. Then we need to build a space habitat on Earth orbit and use the Moon base for the construction support. Not to mention learning how to build factories in Space to process asteroid mined ore.

And only at this point it's worth start thinking about Mars colonization. That's like in a couple of hundreds of years at best. Before that all conversation about Mars are just pure science fiction.

Only then when the habitat of 1000s of people could sustain life and travel in space independent from Earth it could be sent to Mars to ignite terraforming process and building a small base. The good thing is by this time we already could solve sustaining life without Earth in Space with no regards to Mars in general. In reality, by the time we start colonizing Mars there already could exist many Space habitats and human colonies beyond Earth.

The thing is Mars is a really hostile and hard place to be. There is no reason for people to be there unless it has at least some livable condition. It's very cold (43% of Sun light), it has radiation, its dust kills all equipment. There shouldn't be humans based on Mars without an option for a fast escape or access to supplies should anything happen — that's what Mars orbiting space habitat would be there for.

So, there is no reason to even talk about Mars colonization without achieving more reasonable progress closer to our home planet.