Hi everyone,

Thanks for joining me today. It's been more than 6 months since I sent the last newsletter, and I must admit that the decision to no longer send this fortnightly is something I do not regret at all. It has allowed me to be more intentional with what I share, and hopefully, improved what you read in your inbox as well.

Something I Wrote Recently

One Championship: Bringing The Fight to Media - How do sporting leagues make money? And how do you grow a new sports league from scratch? These are some of the questions I answer as I break down ONE's story as its founder turns what he calls "Asia's greatest cultural treasure" into an increasingly popular sports media company. It's one of the biggest unicorns to come out of SEA yet its business is relatively unknown.

I haven't written anything for awhile now, and this is the reason why. While writing this, I've researched many sources, started writing, stopped, and then started (multiple times). It's something that I'm proud of, and I hope you'll like it as well.

Interesting Reads

The index mindset - "This pro-index tendency pervades the private tech markets, startups, and even our culture through what I call the index mindset: a focus on preservation over creation, optionality over decisiveness, general over specific. Public companies are an obvious thing to index, but the index mindset manifests in many domains. [...]

The index mindset is comfortable – avoiding decisions requires the least amount of effort. But if you index across every domain, you lose your differentiating features, becoming an average of everyone else."

Something I absolutely agree with. But it's much easier to philosophise over than put in practice.

How To Get New Ideas - "The way to get new ideas is to notice anomalies: what seems strange, or missing, or broken? You can see anomalies in everyday life (much of standup comedy is based on this), but the best place to look for them is at the frontiers of knowledge."

Short, sweet, and profound. Classic Paul Graham.

Report cards - "Solving for a good report card is very different from surrendering to a nerdy impulse. When you get nerdsniped by an idea, you double down on things that come naturally to you and ignore everything else. When you solve for a good report card, you strive to do well even on things that don’t come naturally to you, and learn to resist the temptation to spend all your time on things you get nerdy pleasure from. This is an important life skill I regret never acquiring."

This is perhaps more for myself than anyone here. As I get older, I'm seeing that there are a lot of things you need to be good at - and should want to be good at - rather than just getting by. Something to think about.

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As usual, let me know what you think.

Talk soon,

Louis