Juan Orbea

Big, life-altering decisions matter so much more than the decisions we make every day, and they're also the most difficult: where to live, whom to marry, what to believe, whether to start a company, how to end a war. There's no one-size-fits-all approach for addressing these kinds of conundrums.

In 2018, venture capital funds directed +$35B of investment to software, while directing $1.9B to synthetic biology. Why is this happening? Only 5% of people in Forbes 400 have formal scientific training, and it makes sense that people don't invest in things they don't understand. So this is a big problem.

What’s fascinating is that this is because of math. Nodes that are “ahead” get picked more often by the other nodes because they are ahead and thus offer the nodes choosing them less friction and more benefit. When this gets repeated many times, it systematically directs more resources to the nodes that already have relatively more.

The same can be said of markets. Understanding how big a market really is can be difficult. But the act of attempted futurism can have a clarifying effect on your perspective.

If you’re taking a short-term look at career growth, then optimizing for your current organization’s pathologies in evaluating impact is the optimal path: go forth and preen gloriously. However, if you’re thinking about developing yourself to succeed as your current role grows in complexity or across multiple organizations, then it’s far more... See more

Many investors saw the "death blow" to Amazon coming when the big established retailers started selling online. So while Amazon was born out of an initial appreciation for the growth of the internet, they stayed on top with execution. The ability to execute in an internet-native model vs. the transition big-box retailers were trying (and failing)... See more

Team BTC (meaning, both actual Bitcoin maximalists and US rightists in general) has some positive values, but their outright hostility to collective action and order means that they are incapable of building anything. 

Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs): In MSRs, molten salt (e.g., fluoride, chloride) contains the nuclear fuel (i.e., uranium). The molten salt also acts as the coolant, and graphite rods act as the moderator. Replacing water as the coolant removes the possibility of steam explosions and the generation of flammable hydrogen gas. The nuclear reactions in... See more