The Battle For New York: Abundance or Decline
Saving the soul of the city, coaches vs players in hoops and business
The city is at a crossroads. Our options are despair and decline on one hand, and optimism and prosperity on the other.
We have a housing crisis, an ailing transit system, a spate of violent crimes, and an absentee mayor too preoccupied with his own corruption and criminal defense to do anything about it.
Despite a Democratic supermajority in the city and state, we have been unable to undertake bold visions or follow through on plans to make change. The more we bury our heads insisting that everything is fine, the less time we have to fix things and the more we discredit ourselves nationally. New York can be a beacon or a cautionary tale.
Yes, the problems facing NY are as dire as ever but our ability and resolve to meet and solve them has never been stronger.
We have a groundswell of activism and engagement across the city. We have upcoming mayor and city council elections with exciting candidates across the board. We have federally secured funding for crucial infrastructure projects throughout the city.
New York can, over the next few years, kick off a renaissance and plant a flag as a beacon of what pragmatic progressivism can accomplish. That requires not just energy and good intentions but a commitment to excellence and accountability.
That’s why I’m so excited about working with organizations like Abundance New York to make New York work for every New Yorker. I'd love to bring more of my people into the fold to help save the soul of the city.
If you’re interested in learning more and getting involved, raise a hand/give a holler. There’s some good opportunities coming up real soon.
I Wrote
Coaching isn’t playing and investing isn’t building. There’s a Brian Chesky quote getting meme’d that “I've had a court side seat at all of the Warriors championship games. But just because I had a front row seat at championships, doesn't mean that I could coach an NBA team. And that's true of venture capitalists.” But the best coaches weren’t players - definitely not great ones - because coaching is as different from playing and investing is from building. Both are disciplines that require time, effort, and intention to develop.
I Read
Coming to a Tiny Airport Near You: New Airlines - New York Times. Smaller, regional airlines are so obviously good for consumers and market competition.
Venture Goes Multi-Product - Andrew Ziperski. Zip (if I can be so bold) is a sharper writer/thinker on capital markets. He doesn’t quite use this language but he’s basically describing the divergence between venture capital (true early stage risk capital) and Venture Capital™ (anything vaguely-private-tech-oriented that you can charge 2 and 20 for). He goes into some nice detail on everything that can mean (for now) beyond straight pref equity. I expect that list to grow over the next few years.
The spoilt stray dogs of Delhi - BBC. I saw a ton of strays around India and was curious about the culture of dogs and dog ownership. Found this article from 2016 though I imagine this is not representative.
How the NYC crime data misleads - Charles Rubenfeld. The basic thesis is that density renders per capita crime statistics (really any per capita statistics) fairly meaningless. What really matters validates the feeling of rising crime is the proximity. Even if the per person rate is low, the per area rate is high (very high in some places).