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

鑒於 2020 年無處不在的厄運和陰霾，我花時間客觀地反思了事情的現狀以及世界的發展方向。 我對眾多行業和技術的深入研究讓我受到啟發，並被我們面臨的機會所震撼。 我們將解決我們這個時代的兩個基本問題：氣候變化和社會不公正/機會不平等。

反過來，我介紹：

• 我們不斷受到厄運和陰霾的轟炸
• 在過去的 200 年裡，我們看到人類狀況取得了很大進步
• 在社會不公正和機會不平等方面仍然存在許多問題，其後果滲透到每個部門：教育、醫療保健、生活成本、房地產、收入差距、流動性下降、獲得資本的機會等。
• 氣候變化正在成為一種生存威脅
• 政治制度無法處理這些問題，這導致了民粹主義者的崛起
• 技術和企業家可以而且必須解決這些問題
• 在氣候變化方面，太陽能成本的不斷下降和儲能的改進將幫助我們比大多數人意識到的更早地過渡到無碳能源排放，即使我們沒有實現核聚變（我們也可能會看到核聚變的突破）
• 我們看到了交通電氣化以及製造業和食品生產的激進創新的明顯趨勢，這將使經濟在2100年之前實現無碳化，最早可能在2050年實現無碳化
• 碳去除技術也在興起
• 一旦我們進入一個自由邊際能源成本的世界，就會發生許多其他奇妙的事情
• 初創公司，尤其是市場，正在興起，以解決許多社會弊病，將糟糕的用戶體驗、歧視和高成本視為機會
• 令人驚歎的公司正在湧現，以實現住房、金融和教育的民主化
• 黑暗廚房、機器人化、自主性和密度的結合將徹底改變食品訂購和配送，為所有人提供高品質、低成本的食物，使其比自己製作更便宜
• 醫療保健和公共服務終於以更好的用戶體驗轉向在線
• 我們仍處於技術革命的起步階段，在納米衛星、機器人、3D列印、增強現實、讀心術、自動駕駛、無人機等各個方面都取得了長足的進步
• 我們將應對我們時代的挑戰，建設一個更美好的明天世界，一個機會均等、富足、道德意識和可持續的世界

供您參考，我包括我在劇集中使用的幻燈片。

如果您願意，可以在嵌入式播客播放機中收聽該劇集。

除了上面的Youtube視頻和嵌入式播客播放機外，您還可以在以下位置收聽播客：

• 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