Beautiful Day

It was a “beautiful day” for one member of Ireland’s most famous rock band. Until this week, the iconic Irish group was only three-fourth Irish. Guitarist David Howell Evans—better known as the Edge—was actually born in England to Welsh parents and never held an Irish citizenship even though he’s lived in Ireland since he was one. This past Monday he was formally naturalized along with 7,500 other folks. Beautiful day...

Say My Name, Say My Name...

Today is the final day for early voting ahead of Tuesday's Democratic primary election for New York City mayor. Since NYC is a heavily Democratic city, so the winner of the primary will be heavily favored to win the general mayoral election (in November). Andrew Cuomo, the former disgraced NY state governor, is the front runner. But an exciting insurgent campaign from a young, charismatic state senator, Zohran Kwame Mamdani, has shaken up the race. Mr. Mamdani,33, is an Indian American Muslim born in Uganda, who is running on a socialist platform to tackle NYC's most pressing problems: the high cost of living and gaping economic inequality. Mamdani is the son of Columbia University professor, Mahmood Mamdani, and Oscar-nominated filmmaker Mira Nair and has represented New York's 36th State Assembly district in Queens since 2021.  

In the primary debates, Mamdani took Cuomo to task a number of times, no more so when asked why he would be a better candidate that his opponent. After rattling off a multitude of important reasons why he is the better choice, he pointedly corrected Mr. Cuomo that his name is pronounced Mamdani...M-A-M-D-A-N-I. Mic drop...

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Mamdani has been a staunch defender of Palestinian rights for years and has not shied away from his position even as he seeks to be the mayor of a city with almost a million Jews. Not surprisingly he's had to defend himself against allegations of antisemitism. Here Whitney Tilson, another candidate, tries to bait him with the same. But Mamdani gives such an eloquent response that even Tilson seems persuaded. 

Go vote!! Ve a votar!!

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning

It’s been dubbed one of the most dramatic chases captured on film. A BBC crew for Plant Earth II records an iguana running from a nest killer snakes on an unspoiled beach in one of the Galápagos Islands. Incredibly tense:

The Equation of Time

If you took a photo of the sun everyday at the same time for a year and overlayed the photos you'd find that the sun makes a figure eight-like pattern in the sky (i.e. if you observed the sun at noon everyday it will appear in a slightly different position each time that over the course of a year traces a figure-8 path). The phenomenon is known as an "analemma," and is the result of the earth and the sun's relative motions. Another way to explain it is that it is the difference between the actual position of the sun in the sky and the mean solar time measured by our clocks.

Solar time is time measured by earth's rotation relative to the sun, as explained by this Brittanica entry. Apparent solar time is measured by directly observing the position of the sun--as by a sundial. Mean solar time, kept by most clocks, is the time that would be measured by observation if the sun "traveled at a uniform apparent speed throughout the year rather than, as it actually does, at a slightly varying apparent speed that depends on the seasons." The difference between mean and apparent solar time is known as the "equation of time," derived from the medieval Latin aequātiō diērum, or "difference of days." (Back then the word equation referred to reconciliation.)

Anyways, the difference between mean and apparent solar time is related to two phenomena: First, the earth’s axis is tilted 23.5° relative to the plane of orbit (which causes the sun to appear higher or lower in our sky throughout the year) and second the earth moves through its orbit at slightly different speeds in different seasons. The result is captured in the spectacularly cool video below:

Of course, earth is not the only planet to have an analemma. Other celestial bodies have their own analemmas:

1. Mercury: a single point (because a day on Mercury takes exactly two years!)
2. Venus: an ellipse
3. Mars: teardrop
4. Jupiter: ellipse
5. Saturn: teardrop with a teeny-tiny loop at the end
6. Uranus: figure 8
7. Neptune: figure 8
8. Pluto: a very large figure 8 

When Streaming Killed the TV Star

Change is the only constant...in the 1950s television replaced radio as the dominant form of entertainment. Then came cable television and HBO in the 1970s. Then it was the internet...and YouTube in 2005. Since then, broadcast television and cable have been losing ground to streaming services like YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, etc.; first slowly and then quite rapidly. The future that was long anticipated finally arrived last month. The New York Times reports that in May, "more Americans watched television on streaming than on cable and network television combined." It was the first time that happened over a full month.

Looking at the chart above, Americans were still consuming entertainment primarily through television even as late as five years ago. But streaming has made rapid strides in recent years. And ironically, it may be due to Boomers. As the NYT notes, "It’s no surprise that younger viewers were the first to jump to streaming. But another group has since made the leap as well: viewers over the age of 65." They are the fastest growing age group for streaming services, according to Nielsen. Older viewers watch a lot of television and are drawn to free platforms like Tubi, Roku, and Pluto. 

If the streaming vs television race is all but over, the winners within streaming are just as clear. Not all streamers are equal...YouTube is the undisputed king of streaming capturing 12.5% of all viewing time in May, followed by Netflix (7.5%) and Disney (5.0%).

What's next for the winners? Well, Ted Sarandos, Co-CEO of Netflix, says "What we really are focused on is the 80 percent of TV watching that is not on Netflix or YouTube today.”

The ascension of streaming as the primary form television consumption reminds us of the change seen in the music industry a few decades ago. On August 1, 1981 MTV (Music Television) went live and swiftly revolutionized the way people experienced music by playing (back then) music videos 24/7. The impact of a new technology on existing media was captured eloquently in the Buggles' icon video "Video Killed the Radio Star" (which was played heavily in the early days of MTV). And its message applies just as much to the next incumbent technology.   

Bessemer's Anti-Portfolio

Venture investing is hard: 3 out 4 start ups fail with investors losing much not if not all of their money when those 75% of firms liquidate assets. While VCs are always on the lookout for the next big thing, no one can really say whether today's startup will be tomorrow's industry behemoth that makes investors very rich. To improve their odds, VCs will invest in many businesses in a number of markets with the understanding that statistically only a few of their bets will (hopefully) generate big returns.

It's not surprising then that VCs don't like to advertise their losses. They'd much plaster their websites and marketing materials with their successes. And they certainly don't want to remind you of their great misses...companies they passed on that eventually became household names (whose success in hindsight is so blinding obvious, it might give prospective investors pause to hand you any of their money).

Bessemer Venture Partners ("BVP") is refreshingly different. BVP is one of America's oldest venture capital and private equity firms, founded in 1911. Whether because of humility, or the firm's track record, or simply because they think it's clever marketing...BVP maintains a list of (ex-post) game-changing companies they evaluated but decided not to invest in for one reason or another. As BVP quips: "Whatever the reason, we would like to honor these companies —our “anti-portfolio”—whose phenomenal success inspires us in our ongoing endeavors to build growing businesses. Or, to put it another way: if we had invested in any of these companies, we might not still be working."

And the list is (drum roll, please)...

Source: bvp.com

These 16 companies, which include four Magnificent 7 members, had a collective market capitalization of more than $8.5 trillion, as of June 6, 2025, or roughly 1/6 of the value of the entire U.S. stock market.

Thanks for keeping it real BVP.        

Perspectives: Land Inequality

The global population is estimated to be over 8 billion (and perhaps even as high as 10 billion). Regardless, there's a lot of people in the world and it already feels very, very crowded. Just look at Tokyo, Jakarta, Delhi, Shanghai, etc. Imagine how it'll be in 2050 when the global population is anticipated to be 25% higher! Where will people live? Will we run out of space?

The below chart puts some of our demographic challenges into perspective. Excluding Antartica, the sum of the land area across the U.N.'s 193 or so countries is 57.5 million square miles. Roughly half of the world's population live in 20 Asian countries with a combined land area of only 7 million square miles (highlighted in yellow). So, 50% of humanity lives across just 12% of the world's land.  

But that's not all. There is also significant land inequality within nations. Consider China and India, two of the world's most populous countries. About 94% of China's 1.4 billion people live inside 50% of the country's land area. In India, 50% of its 1.4 billion people live on 27% of the country's land in the north. Add in Bangladesh and its 175 million people sitting next to India and below China and you have about a fifth of humanity living across less than 4% of the planet's land--roughly 730 people /square mile! 

Of course, we are not suggesting (by extrapolation) that earth can support 40 billion people! The question of how many people our planet can permanently support is a complex one and hotly debated. Various studies on the subject, based on the idea of "carrying capacity," have produced enormous ranges from 2 billion (were way past that!) to one trillion! Though the majority of studies put the earth's carrying capacity at around 8 billion. But maybe if we could just move people around a little better (immigration!), we might safely be able to support a few billion more! Consider Australia and Canada, they occupy 11% of the world's land area but have just 0.8% of its population!  

Land, labor, and capital...inequality exists across each of these key economic inputs.