389: The Trade Desk Q4, Vitec, Constellation Software, Apple's Vig, Stripe, Meta & Google, Tencent, and Tetris Movie

"Cold war nostalgia (wait! are we nostalgic for that?)"

The music isn't in the piano. –Alan Kay

🍱👧🏻🧒🏻🎶🙏 This is a two-part anecdote/life advice:

If you have young kids and know other people who also have young kids, either family or close friends, a really neat thing to do is a ‘24-hour kid exchange’.

We have done it a couple of times with my sister-in-law — we had their two girls over for a day with a sleepover, and it’s great because I get to spend time with my nieces and get to know them in a different context than just a normal visit with their parents.

And then a different weekend, they take our two boys, and my wife and I get a break from the parent life.

This weekend was one such weekend, so we decided to go to our favorite sushi restaurant. The last time we had been there was before the pandemic… 🕰️

We got a three-story platter full of sushi selected by the chef, and it was de-li-cious! 🤤

While we were eating, a musician set up near our table and started singing with acoustic guitar accompaniment. I thought he was quite good — and here comes the second piece of advice — at the end of our meal, I waited for him to be in between two songs and I walked over and told him that I really liked what he was doing, that his song selection was great, his performance was really good, etc.

Some years ago, I decided to take the time whenever possible to tell people when I think they’re doing a good job. Many others may *think* it, but in my experience, few people *explicitly say it*.

Whether it’s the furnace repairman or someone I interact with at a store or restaurant or whatever, I think it makes a big difference to go above and beyond the polite “thank you very much” and to say something like “I think you’re really good at what you do, thank you for helping me with this, I really appreciate it” and add whatever details fit.

Making it specific moves it from polite social norms to something that the person will remember — maybe it’ll make their whole day. How would you feel if someone did this for you? I may think about it for hours and tell my wife…

If I can do that for someone with little effort, and I’m telling the truth, why wouldn’t I?

🤔 🔁 How quickly fortunes can change…!

OpenAI and Microsoft's clear lack of understanding of how their own model works, and lack of control of it, are making Google look much better for its reluctance to rush into things.

✋🛑 Speaking of New Bing.

I recently got off the waiting list and started playing with it, but they’ve clearly locked it down a lot recently because after just 5 follow-up questions in a chat, it now says “That's the most I can say about that. Click ‘New topic’ and we can keep chatting!” and I have to re-start a new chat from scratch.

They’ve also limited it to 50 total questions per day!

That sucks.

I now have a chatbot that I can’t chat with ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This clearly is the best way that they’ve found to put a quick bandaid over the problems that they’re currently having. Shorter conversations have fewer chances of going off the rails…

🛀💭📉📉📉📉📉 As time passes, most investors will no doubt forget the pain of 2022.

However, it’s beneficial for investors to remember the bad times.

It keeps them on their toes and prevents all kinds of mistakes.

So I’m consciously trying to hold onto what 2022 FELT (you can’t get there just by looking at a chart — just like you can’t do that for 2008-2009).

Over time it’ll fade, but it’s probably better to actively try to imprint on it and cement it deeply into one’s mind than to try to move on and not look back.

🏁 Never underestimate the importance of good role models to kickstart an entire field. Ben Thompson is a great example.

There’s the icebreaker ship that goes first and has a much rougher time, but if they succeed, they open up a passage in the ice for other boats to follow… 🚢

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🏦 💰 Liberty Capital 💳 💴

🕵️‍♂️ The Trade Desk Q4 🔍

Here are my thoughts and highlights for the quarterly results that made the stock jump by over 30% (it fell back down a bit since):