SPACs have been one of the hot topics of 2020. Jeff Weinstein, who co-heads investing at FJ Labs, and our resident venture capital nerd, joins to talk about all things SPAC.

He covers:

• What are SPACs?
• How do they operate?
• Why are they hot in 2020?
• What’s in it for sponsors, institutional investors, the companies merging into them and retail investors?

Interestingly he concludes that while we are in a bubble, SPACs are here to stay and will become a legitimate way to go public once the dust settles after the upcoming, inevitable crash.

For your reference I am including the slides Jeff used during the episode.

If you prefer, you can listen to the episode in the embedded podcast player.

In addition to the above Youtube video and embedded podcast player, you can also listen to the podcast on:

• iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/whats-the-deal-with-spacs/id1532336635?i=1000502850990
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0OkZTZkb9MzsGt8RJ3dVD3

鉴于 2020 年的厄运和阴霾无处不在，我花了些时间客观地反思了当前的形势和世界的走向。 对众多行业和技术的深入研究让我深受启发，并对我们所面临的机遇感到敬畏。 我们将解决当今时代的两大基本问题：气候变化和社会不公正/机会不平等。

反过来，我也会报道：

• 我们不断受到厄运和阴霾的轰炸
• 在过去的 200 年中，我们看到了人类的进步
• 在社会不公正和机会不平等方面仍然存在许多问题，其后果渗透到各个领域：教育、医疗保健、生活成本、房地产、收入差距、流动性下降、资金获取等。
• 气候变化正在成为生存威胁
• 政治体制无力解决这些问题，导致民粹主义者崛起
• 技术和企业家可以而且必须解决这些问题
• 关于气候变化，太阳能成本的不断降低和储存技术的改进将帮助我们比大多数人意识到的更快地过渡到无碳能源排放，即使我们无法获得核聚变（我们也可能看到核聚变方面的突破）。
• 我们看到一个明显的趋势，即交通电气化以及制造业和食品生产领域的彻底创新，将使经济在 2100 年前实现无碳排放，或许最早在 2050 年就能实现
• 除碳技术也在不断涌现
• 一旦我们进入一个边际能源成本免费的世界，就会发生许多其他美妙的事情
• 初创企业，尤其是市场平台，正在崛起，以解决许多社会弊病，将糟糕的用户体验、歧视和高成本视为机遇
• 为实现住房、金融和教育民主化而不断涌现的神奇公司
• 黑暗厨房、机器人化、自主化和密度的结合将彻底改变食品订购和配送，为所有人提供高质量、低成本的食品，比自己制作更便宜。
• 医疗保健和公共服务终将走向网络，带来更好的用户体验
• 我们仍处于技术革命的初期，在纳米卫星、机器人、3D 打印、增强现实、读心术、自动驾驶、无人机等各个方面都取得了长足进步。
• 我们将应对时代的挑战，建设一个更加美好的明天，一个机会均等、富足、有道德意识和可持续发展的世界。

以下是我在节目中使用的幻灯片，供大家参考。

如果您愿意，可以通过嵌入式播客播放器收听本期节目。

除了上述 Youtube 视频和嵌入式播客播放器外，您还可以在以下网站收听播客：

• iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-surprising-case-for-optimism-in-2020/id1532336635?i=1000502468097
• Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/episode/7mZMCxgugDo5cMpbCcYIYK

I had the privilege of running into the same social and intellectual circles as Safi Bahcall for the past 20 years. When I heard he wrote a book on how large organizations could continue innovating despite their scale, I was intrigued and decided to check it out.

In general, I do not read “business books” as I find them simplistic. Loonshots is the exception to that rule. It blew me away. It mixes compelling personal narratives of entrepreneurs like Edwin Land (Polaroid) and Juan Trippe (Pan Am) with observations from physics and history to weave a very compelling narrative.

To date Playing With Unicorns taught something specific every week. However, I thought a conversation with Safi would be fun and wide ranging, so I invited him to be my first ever “traditional” live stream / podcast guest. It was great and through many non-sequiturs discussed:

• His transition from academia to running a private biotech company
• The transition from being a private company to a public company CEO
• Thinking through what you really want to do in life versus what society expects of you and how pursuing his curiosity led him to Loonshots
• What the core learnings from Loonshots are
• Why he is currently fascinated by “Why Markets Crash” and “How organizations can pick the right strategy” (e.g., why, and how did Amazon beat Google in the Cloud market so far)
• Much more!

If you prefer, you can listen to the episode in the embedded podcast player.

In addition to the above Youtube video and embedded podcast player, you can also listen to the podcast on:

• iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/loonshots-with-safi-bahcall/id1532336635?i=1000501674364
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0DIQqEfsYpiKJe0ca8Xk1y