Pointillism
w.262 | PE Stocks, Interest Rates, Reading Declines, Revenue Round Tripping, & Apple
Dear Friends,
There was so much socialization this week around SXSW. Hosting everyone here in Austin was nice.
We here at Declarative Statements are not market timers, so we won’t comment on the movement of the voting/weighting machine this week except to say I did talk about diversification into international equities in the edition on December 1st.
Today's Contents:
Sensible Investing
Song of the Week: Pointillism
Sensible Investing
If the Robots Are Coming, Why Aren't Interest Rates Higher? Transformative AI, Existential Risk, and Real Interest Rates. Economists comment on the findings of recent published academic papers.
Beliefs about AGI affect both the supply and demand of AI roles. On the supply side, if you believe AGI is coming, you may want to save less, work less, and enjoy more leisure. On the demand side, you may desperately want more AI labor. At least if you think that the first to AGI will gain supersized rewards.
Decline in Publicly Traded Private Equity / Credit Stocks since Inauguration. PEs still look high to me today, even with the correction: KKR: 33; APO: 22; ARES: 68; BX: 38.
Redpoint Market Update March 2025. Lots of good charts in here!
Discussion on Revenue Round Tripping. PLTR does this a lot, too. From Bill Gurley: This policy is rampant in the AI space. Investments that round trip to revenue. I’m frankly surprised the auditors are cool with it. It also distorts the market.
Have Humans Passed Peak Brain Power? Data across countries and ages reveal a growing struggle to concentrate, as well as declining verbal and numerical reasoning. In the FT.
We’ve talked about this megatrend for a while, and it’s also one of the reasons I write this newsletter; preparing this weekly missive means I cannot read passively, and this also helps me to stay sharp as a writer and to communicate with an audience that I feel committed to.
How to Have Good Taste. Great article on how taste is knowledge. You have to read and consume knowledge broadly.
The better we know a piece of art, the more we can see it for it is, and not have our judgement clouded by our pre-existing feelings. The more we have read, the better we know where a new book fits. The more ignorant we are, the more likely it is that we will be dazzled by mediocrity. Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul, as Samuel Johnson said. Good taste is accumulated through wide knowledge.
Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino. There is talk in tech-land that Apple has lost the plot. From a prominent blogger John Gruber:
The fiasco here is not that Apple is late on AI. It’s also not that they had to announce an embarrassing delay on promised features last week. Those are problems, not fiascos, and problems happen. They’re inevitable. Leaders prove their mettle and create their legacies not by how they deal with successes but by how they deal with — how they acknowledge, understand, adapt, and solve — problems. The fiasco is that Apple pitched a story that wasn’t true, one that some people within the company surely understood wasn’t true, and they set a course based on that.
How to Spot Massive Early-Stage Startup Trends with Katelyn Donnelly of Avalanche. I talked with Jason Kirby from Thunder VC. From this conversation, Jason sourced me a competitive deal that I closed this week! So that’s a win.
Song of the Week: Pointillism
Here on YouTube.
Pointillism is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image. This is that in song form.
Insistent, repetitive, and minimalist bass clarinet and driving piano build with whimsical clarinet, determined cello, and lush strings.
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. It sounds motivated, but unhurried.
2. It sounds busy, but uncomplicated.
3. It sounds small, but expansive.
“Pointillism“ by Laurent Dury
InstrumentalSelfie of the Week
My friend Jay Graber was the keynote speaker at SXSW 2025, discussing Bluesky, the decentralized social network. The auditorium was overflowing as people lined up to see her.
She wore a shirt that read Mundus sine Caesaribus ("A world without Caesars" in Latin). It used the same design as the one Zuckerberg wore at Meta Connect 2024, a now infamous shirt that read Aut Zuck aut nihil ("Zuck or nothing").
Sadly, the shirt sold out in thirty minutes on Thursday; otherwise, you can get yours here. I’m sure it will be back.
Other highlights this week included a dinner with Frontier Tech builders of Austin. Notable startups included Terrafirma (two ex-SpaceX engineers building robotic dirt-moving vehicles), SkyFi (earth observation tech), and Neurable (EEG built into headphones). This kept the momentum up from the Austin for America conference last week. The conference was organized after SXSW organization removed all defense tech startups from their event.
My new friend Jenny says I look good wearing her Meta Ray-Ban glasses. The truth is it’s a classic design, and everyone looks good in them. :)
Thanks for reading, friends. Please always be in touch.
As always,
Katelyn