todays bird
Jules of Nature
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Today's Document
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
Cosimo Galluzzi
we're not kids anymore.
cherry valley forever
Product Placement
pixel skylines
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
RMH
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
roma★
One Nice Bug Per Day
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
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@troyjjensen
"Virtuous motives, trammeled by inertia and timidity, are no match for armed and resolute wickedness. A sincere love of peace is no excuse for muddling hundreds of millions of humble folk into total war. The cheers of the weak, well-meaning assemblies soon cease to count. Doom marches on." - Sir Winston Churchill
Imperial War Museum, London, United Kingdom
I can accept anthing, except what seems to be the easiest for most people: the half-way, the almost, the just-about, the in-between. - Ayn Rand
You know this jackass was sitting in traffic for too long revving it up over and over not even considering the exhaust system heat building up to extremes...funny video, but sad to see her fate at the end!! ;)
In 2005, I wrote a Predictive Analysis Essay focused on what I simply termed The Digital Privacy Wars, a series of conflicts and serious engagements between the public and both private business sector as well as the Federal Government in particular. To this day it is one of the best papers I've ever written. It was long, extremely rich in detail, and backed by incredible research and long discussions with some of the best minds in Digital Media and Technology. It was written in a narrative storyline format to make it interesting while staying factual. It received rave reviews. I got very busy in 2005-2006 preparing to exit a partnership and launch a venture capital backed startup, so I didn't even take the offers from two publishers about a book deal stemming from my 70-page essay, nor did I really get to discuss it much in the media. Thank GOD. It was entirely wrong - by far and away the worst predictive research results I've ever concluded on. Everything was off. I say this because as I read this article, I still don't know how I was so far off. The amount of private information collected now with smartphones is overwhelming; I know our databases at our Direct Sales and Marketing Subsidiary is so enormous, we have a cloud-based supercomputer crunching up Big Data every day of the week. It's incredible what any advertiser, government agency or any business or individual can find out now. Big Data is Huge Money and the public truly doesn't seem to truly care at all even when informed in detail about it. So, I have ten years later my own firm's Research & Analysis Group working on a study on why I was so off. What fundamentally changed an issue that before ironically it was really a serious issue, would elicit strong emotional debates and opinions on the subject. Here we are ten years later with far more data being collected than I could have known would be in 2005 and no one gives a damn. Personally I was never fearful of it and, being in the Digital Media Industry segment then, was encouraging the industry as a whole to address the issue early before it broke out into my predicted Digital Privacy Wars. This has nothing to do with me personally issuing a rallying cry on the subject. Rather, I think something in American Society has fundamentally shifted and the issue is no longer that big a deal. I want to know why. Thoughts???
I wouldn't worry...this baby will likely never see the light of day. The downside risk from just the business point-of-view is so enormous I'm very curious who let the concept get this far. First off, this is just a ridiculous app. Do people really have the time for this crap?? But the total idiocy of this app concept aside, I need to look more into this. Are they funded? If so, who? What insurance company actually wrote their liability policies...this app should be called DISASTER WAITING TO HAPPEN. I mean, with all this cyber bully in the media and courts really cracking down, a public that is very negative towards the issue...how long until the first guy/girl gets too many one star personality ratings and hangs themselves? How MANY in the first six months? I mean I smell a totally undercollateralized reinsurance firm in the Bahamas writing this liability policy - and dumbass VCs funding without thinking the future of this concepts five moves ahead. Of course there will be lawsuits of the families of those that literally take their own lives over this...how about just hurt and pissed off civil suits? I just mentioned this app concept to my attorney in LA, and he about fell over himself with glee (I call him Darth Vader, he is darkness but he's also successfully handled every legal matter I've ever had - undefeated evil is a great lawyer to have, haha). I'm just very curious who is behind a number of issues that are so obvious to me...so I avoid them! The answers given by their spokesperson in this article are either extraordinarily naive or purposefully made to be so ambiguous that they may have well just pled the Fifth...the sketchiness of this is astounding. Even better, they are taking the time to remove negative comments from their FB site!!! Haha I mean come on even my hypocrisy has bounds. I am human and I think this is just terrible. But I'm a realist, and I already have my team looking into everyone involved...not to "out them" them, but rather to find out more names for my Completely Retarded database so I avoid these idiots in the future. A final prediction - this will never get close to enough traction. I can see Apple removing this app for 15 different reasons they can legitimately point to. I can see hackers going after these guys like Troy after a Bone-In NY Strip Steak. I can see attorneys already lining up, and an actual tactic we and most everyone in our segment use in civil court is Civil Suit Carpet Bombing - simply filing 12 separate Civil Lawsuits in three different jurisdictions against an enemy who doesn't have the capital reserves to piss in the tall weed with the big dogs may succeed in getting 9 of the 12 thrown out - but that's why you pay your attorneys $950 an hour, the civil suits will have enough merit to warrant hearings, perhaps an appeal, or the chance if thrown out for a specific technical reason to refile. Well, your targeted competitor can't afford to defend himself against your limitless legal war chest, and a big part of the strategy is to ENSURE every suit filed gets overwhelming awareness via the media, bloggers, social media...all the big boys that engage in these tactics have Marketing & Communications Firms that are experts in getting this done. Now your opponent can't afford the costs of his legal representation AND its on everyone's lips. Trust me, I'm not proud of it but we've used this tactic and not one of my adversaries lasted 72 hours. Now I'm not suggested someone pay to go Civil Suit Carpet Bombing. It's EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE. But if you've got 250 civil suits filed all across the US, each building on the publicity of the last... This app will not see the light of day in this form. Easy prediction. Again who the hell backed this??
My Insanely Overambitious Dreams to Insanely Innovate the FinTech News & Information Segment
I came across this ridiculous story on Bloomberg tonight and it kicked off a long-overdue post here!:
http://bloom.bg/1hWlvP6
I’m no fan of Elon Musk - nothing personal, I just think his companies are completely full of shit and his “Cult-of-Personality” valuations are so overblown they remind me of Enron at its height.
But all that said, this story is ridiculous. This city signed an agreement, a contractual obligation, with SpaceX. They had legal representation. And with just a ten minute precursory look at that agreement, it’s quite obvious to me that Musk and SpaceX aren’t at all operating outside the contract’s perimeters in any way.
In other words, this city signed up for this. Tough shit if you didn’t read the fine print. Frankly the downside is way overstated here to begin with; the economic upside and all that goes with it is barely mentioned. My guess is the author got his hands on a small group of disgruntled residents and put together an incredibly slanted story.
It’s not like there’s a launch three times a day (though in all honesty how good would that be for this city and SpaceX??!! Jobs, new development, enormous increases in local tax revenues for new schools, hospitals, parks - you name it…). And unlike the analogy one resident makes to SpaceX “being like Nazi Germany” - let’s get real. SpaceX didn’t roll in with a several battalions of troops and armored tank divisions and annex the damn city. They actually were competing with two other municipalities to be chosen by SpaceX! They offered incentives - State and Municipal Government - to win that competition.
My Firm is going through something slightly similar in a large real estate development in the southwest (I can’t name names; lawsuits will be flying any minute now and of course I don’t want to exacerbate an already delicate situation). We’ve brought together a deal that will change this particular city forever. And a small but extremely vocal group of longtime residents are giving us hell once the deal was approved (overwhelming by the mayor, city manager and an 11-0 City Council vote). And then this group somehow formed and they gained some media attention.
I mention this only because I guarantee you that’s what is happening here. This article focuses so much on the downside portions of the deal you’d think Musk was Darth Vader himself…and of course it doesn’t even mention any of the hard numbers that are from my quick read of the deal make up the enormous upside for this city.
Full disclosure: Bloomberg is a close partner of both my firm, Atlantic Lighthouse Management Ltd, and a Financial Technology Company we spun off and still have a substantial equity position in, Mercator Technology Group, Inc. (formerly an internal division of our firm). And to be frank I cannot say enough incredibly positive things about Bloomberg and all its business divisions. But the News Division has been relying more and more on some crap freelance reporters that are pushing out garbage articles like this one, and that’s sad to see from the by far and away premier global source of Financial News & Information. I understand the Digital Media segment extremely well, it’s what I did for over a decade. As a stand alone property Bloomberg News wouldn’t even exist - although the financial news sub-segment of Digital Media is in fact one of the “easier” sub-segments to monetize it’s by no means easy…and it’s extremely competitive. Add in Bloomberg TV and this company just hemorrhage cash.
Of course, Bloomberg L.P. the company as a whole is extremely profitable and one of the very best partners in the Financial Services Industry we’ve ever encountered. Their business model is genius, and their “Bloomberg Terminals” as we still call them on Wall Street (they used to provide those big full Bloomberg video terminals and of course for anyone who’s ever used one the infamous Bloomberg keyboards, which indeed are still used by many today), which is simply their Enterprise Financial News & Information offering (their very robust platform offers a lot more than just that; indeed while we have our own proprietary trading platform our Proprietary Trading Group utilizes, their trading platform is outstanding and I highly recommend it) sits on nearly every desk in Financial Services Companies around the world. We alone have 200 enterprise subscriptions for Atlantic Lighthouse Management and its subsidiaries; we have an exclusive partnership agreement with Bloomberg and while I of course can’t tell you what we pay…it isn’t cheap.
So to state it in a very simplistic manner, they have an Enterprise Subscription Services business model that is extremely profitable and subsidizes the Bloomberg News division.
And considering how incredibly vital they have been as a close partner of our Firm for over six years now, and my own extraordinarily positive personal opinion of their services, I’m the last person that would sit here at 9:30 PM EST with a million other far more pressing things to do than to bitch about some short-form article that criticizes, ironically enough, a company and a man I criticize every chance I get!
But these are the type of articles that shouldn’t even be considered by a Bloomberg editor to be pushed live. This belongs on Motley Fool at best, maybe Business Insider even. But not Bloomberg…they are way above this.
And to end this rant of a post in summary…I’m seeing more and more of this garbage on the Top Tier financial news sites and it’s concerning. I’ve got freelance bloggers (or journalists if you prefer - they are in today’s news world, again I understand the space extremely well) writing up posts that I know one day soon will hit a Business Insider or God forbid a Bloomberg News…“Small Wall Street Firm Killing Rare Endangered Desert Animals” or “Citizens Unite To Stop The Paving Of The Last Piece of Desert Waterfront Paradise” etc etc.
It will not stop our development, it’s as done a deal as one can get. But it will absolutely slow down its progress, it will add millions and millions of dollars in legal, public relations, and other ultimately “Sunk Costs” that will force changes to what is a truly beautiful business model, one where everyone wins and wins big. And it’s a project that I have a large personal stake in, something I rarely let occur…so the development’s Risk Exposure is ultimately much higher than any other project in our Real Assets Group’s investment portfolio.
In the end, I would just like to see the top tier financial news sources like Bloomberg, or CNBC, Financial Times, the Economist etc etc rely less on these types of stories with headlines that guarantee a ton of unique views (any title involving “Elon Musk” goes vertical fast and spreads virally like crazy; even better if the headline alludes to a small city that HATES Musk…doesn’t really matter what the hell the actual content is at that point, does it?), and maintain the editorial standards as best they can in a Digital Media competitive environment that is frankly f**king incredibly brutal, fast moving and skewed towards these kinds of articles that really if you read it closely don’t communicate a goddamn molecular piece of information worth reading about.
This is a post I know is written ultimately in vain. The reality is, this is an environment where even the most esteemed, highest-quality news and information sources we turn to have to push rubbish like this article live and push it live quickly simply to survive. It’s why both my company, its subsidiaries, and even myself personally, pay literally millions of dollars annually in subscription and retainer fees to the very best news and the globally elite intelligence & information firms to feed our risk, research and analysis platforms the very best information we can possibly procure. It’s also a niche - but I believe extraordinarily lucrative - sub-segment where someone who develops the right proprietary technology and business model could absolutely KILL it. Trust me, we are spending frankly too much working on it, and searching the globe for companies that are getting pieces of the model right.
I could repeat a thousand cliches that refer to information as the most valuable commodity one could procure. In the end, they’re pretty much all true. Especially of course in the Financial Services Sector - but really it’s the most powerful and valuable commodity in every business segment. The FinTech space (Financial Technology) is one which my Firm, Atlantic Lighthouse Management, is so focused on it could easily be called an obsession. And the the news, intelligence and information sub-segment of FinTech is one area I don’t think anyone has yet to really create something insanely innovative, something that changes the entire game.
I hope Atlantic Lighthouse Management, or Mercator Technology Group (of which we still hold a substantive equity stake in, along with several other companies, each of whom are among quite literally the largest and most innovative companies in Technology and Finance in the world), is somehow in the forefront of the inception of the insanely innovative Killer Application I constantly have been thinking about for years and years. That’s a big part of why I’m still in the game, working endless hours and traveling the globe as I build yet another Startup Company from inception.
It’s why I still am the Serial Entrepreneur I was when I launched my first startup, Rent-A-Kid, when I was just 12-years old. It’s no longer about the money anymore (and I am truly eternally grateful for that - another topic for another day, TRUE benefits of Financial Freedom that comes with monetizing your proprietary IP, and converting paper wealth into hundreds of millions of dollars, safely burying a large percentage of that hard currency into the safest, most secret and most easily accessed places one could find - I just got the concept for my next post on “Inside The Mind Of A Serial Entrepreneur,” my far too often neglected blog on Tumblr, www.troyjjensen.tumblr.com). It’s about truly creating something so insanely innovative it changes quite literally the world in some substantial way, small or large, forevermore.
I'm still sticking to my prediction that the Fed will not touch rates yet in September. To do so would be the height of folly...we are nowhere near inflation numbers of any significance, and the Fed must know as we all do the unemployment rate is a farce. Add to that anemic GDP growth rates and a rate increase of any kind makes zero logical sense...
First, I think anyone holding Tesla long term may as well go ahead and just burn that investment capital in their fireplaces - outside of an acquisition, this company simply won't make it to 2020 as an ongoing enterprise. Now that said, because this is a "Cult of Personality" driven stock, why in the world aren't they raising $2 billion? At a minimum a billion? Yes, I have heard all the standard arguments from my own staff. But when you really evaluate it, $500 million is not going to be enough. And if the company continues to whiff every quarterly earnings and metrics expectations and guidance...well 12 months from now raising capital will be a hell of a lot more expensive for Tesla. I'm trying to wrap my head around this strategy. It's trading at what, $240? And the float is not so small that raising $1-$2 billion would send the share price tumbling. Based on my analysis Tesla needs $2 billion to just have a chance at making a go of the overtly ambitious plans. What am I missing here? Thoughts?
It's been 70 damn years, enough with the calls for a bloody apology from Japan. They paid a wicked price, and as the strongest U.S ally in the region - you know, the same U.S. that fought a bloody war with Japan as well - America should stand up and say ENOUGH. It's not about 70 year old war atrocities...this is China stirting up nationalism to take their citizens minds off the fact the economy is coming in for one hard and fast landing...we have no greater ally than Japan in East Asia. It's time the US starts treating Japan as we do the U.K. - "Special Relationship" status.
Well, I love to beat my chest when im right. But I will call my sh*t out when im wrong - and I was way wrong on oil prices at this point in 2015. Trust me, no one needs to rub my face in it, I've got 12 screens in front of me with red all ovrr the place! Haha, gotta laugh...I'm gonna be refinancing the refinancing we did for several small shale oil & gas producers just 7-8 months ago. Debt structure is gonna have to backloaded. "Extend & Pretend" as we say...ugly!
It's so bloody early in the election cycle, this is a moot point. Trump will self-destruct. If he goes third party then the GOP has to bury this guy alive...
Quite frankly, most have not the slightest clue how brutal a Startup can be on a Founder. Who even knows if her suicide had anything to do with her Startup...but I was interested to see BI including a few select statistics highlighting higher rates of depression etc in Startup Founders. I've never personally suffered clinical depression but many around me did. It's something we discuss with all founders we work with - this life decision will change everything, we talk about support from spouse and family, and a lot more. It's not charity, it's due dilligence for us...because our Startup Venture Group is comprised of former startup founders, we know intimately how incredibly difficult and chaotic a ride a Startup brings. I've been around Startups my entire life, having launched my first business at 12 years old. For me...it's been worth all the turbulence and drama, the relationships left behind and the battle scars I wear with a certain kind of pride. But this ride isn't for everyone...and it's sure as hell not as easy as it looks. And perhaps this Startup founder got negative news at this corporate event...sorry, we've pulled the term sheet on the A-Series Funding...the economic climate is just too vague for us to sign the advertising deal...or a simple discussion of the merits of the woman's concept was scorched by some dickhead who works as a reporter for some bullshit site, and it was the final straw. It truly can be almost ridiculously brutal and for anyone sensitive, get a co-founder who lacks any care of what another human being thinks (I would be in that evil category...I actually am uncomfortable when I don't hear my Haters nor my Doubters, I've lost my edge, something's wrong if I'm not hearing it), or hire an experienced CEO to take the brunt of what awaits. The fundraising pitches dismissed 15 minutes in by four guys who only briefly look up from their smartphones to see if your still speaking (I've been on both sides of the table during fundraising pitches...I have snapped a few times once I got more experienced "Look, am I wasting my time? If I am have the fucking courtesy to let me know you're doing Joe Smith a favor and granting us 20 minutes in your audience chamber of broken dreams. I've got three more pitches today and I would never conceive of wasting your time, so don't fucking waste mine." Interestingly, and so very true again to the roller pasted of highs and lows that come at you fast and furious, we had a signed term sheet an hour later and I'm extremely close with that VC Firm to this day. But I've made powerful industry enemies with that same temper burst. I will say I'd eviscerate my team if they ever acted like that during a pitch. Silicon Valley VCs are learning now that their hurting, it's bloody fun to watch them scramble honestly...) Someone who has a giant contract for advertising across your startup ad network in front of an extremely high-profile brand's SVP Marketing, and if it's not signed that night LITERALLY the lights will be killed tomorrow (I got that SOB signed, made the last flight from LA to SF, and blew into the offices at midnight to be greeted by 18 people who still had jobs...). We factored that deal the next day and it launched an incredible end-of-year run. I was the hero.... Someone who can live with making very large fateful decisions that several months later blow out your Startup - like say passing up $22 million in funding from one of the major broadcast networks venture fund subsidiary because we were cash flow positive, and this CEO believed that his macroeconomic predictions were spot on, that he was The Rainmaker everyone had been calling him for months, and even if 2008 gets worse we are going to be fine, my clients have always stuck with me (and after we turned down the funding...the next week Bear Sterns founders, the Fed backs a fire sale to JP Morgan, and funding, credit and advertising markets begin to deteriorate rapidly. Then Lehman Weekend From Hell comes along, and your tired of throwing Hail Mary's, you know it's over. You begin what is a Founders nightmare Exit Strategy - the Wind Down. That proprietary IP is bought for pennies on the dollar to avoid a full BK...if you're a Serial Entrepreneur like me, I took one week off and dove headfirst into my next concept. A Serial Entrepreneur knows that SHIT HAPPENS...we have very thick skin, we learn lessons in defeat and then we move forward - always.) Finally...if you don't have the total, absolute, enthusiastic support of your significant other and children if they exist (if they don't exist, avoid manifesting their existence until the Startup is no longer a Startup!)...it's gonna be rough. Really rough for most, brutal for a substantial number, and absolutely devastating for a small but still statistically significant other. I've witnessed ugly endings to many marriages that simply couldn't bear the strain. And hence...why I'm divorced and happily single for over a decade now. ;) ALL THIS SAID...is simply a very honest discussion of the Downside Risks. The Upside, for certain people, personality types, and family/relationship situations, worth the personal downside risks I've touched on tonight. It's been the ride of a lifetime for me personally.
In the twenty-first-century world of drone warfare, one question with two aspects reigns supreme: Who counts? In Washington, the answers are the same: We don’t count and they don’t count. The Obama administration has adamantly refused to count. Not a body. In fact, for a long time, American officials associated with Washington’s drone assassination campaigns and “signature strikes” in the backlands of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Yemen claimed that there were no bodies to count, that the CIA’s drones were so carefully handled and so “precise” that they never produced an unmeant corpse — not a child, not a parent, not a wedding party. Nada.
Obama’s apology for the death of an American aid worker lays bare his callous indifference toward Muslim life
Thank you to my little sis Heather - showing me my Dolphins Sun Life Stadium! Excited to be moving down to Florida....
Launching Monday, May 11th - The Promitto Group® Ltd
Written by Amy Chapman, Cheif of Staff to the CEO at The Promitto Group. Friday, May 8, 2015 | New York, NY: So the rumors are true...we've officially begun the 4-6 month long process of winding down Müller Jensen Capital Partners. It's a historical oddity to say the least - very few Alternative Asset Investment Management Firms decide to wind down entirely after the truly incomparable return and asset accumulation performance we've experienced over the past 5 years. In fact...the more I had our Research & Analytics Group looking for anything comparable, not a single instance worldwide in history could be found (outside of fraud - we see premature wind downs and investor redemptions when it was time for the leader of the fraud to take his show on the run). I have to admit - with Troy Jensen, our Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, making what seem to be a certain times nearly suicidal decisions...you have to learn total loyalty and trust. We are CONFIDENT as can be! Looking forward to next week...
