Mtn Bike Ride with my Dad
My dad has been an active participant in multiple extreme sports for my entire life. For him it’s easily 5 decades. Skiing, mountain biking, windsurfing, snowboarding, cycling (extreme sport if you consider drivers in the Northeast) and ski touring. He’s had multiple knee surgeries including a recent partial replacement.
In fact, we celebrated his 3 months post-op on Saturday with a mountain biked ride at Crescent Lake in central Connecticut. Check out the stats on Strava. (Might require sign-in).
I included some video of me chickening out on a massive stone spike. I’ll conquer that beast next time I ride at Crescent. But this time, nature takes the win.
Elon Musk one payroll cycle from bankruptcy
Founders podcast by David Senra is a newfound enlightenment for me. The gist is Senra reads biography or book about a specific founder then gives a detailed (and refreshingly well-researched) analysis of the founder in podcast format.
Senra’s very first ever episode, back in 2016 was an analysis of Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance. Senra details the account when Elon had merely a couple hundred thousand dollars left in the week payroll was due at Space-X, not enough to cover the wage expense. He needed cash or all his fortunes from the sale of Paypal were gone. While negotiating with a VC fund, he bluffed and said if they wouldn’t come up with the $40M loan, he’d just loan Space-X the money from Tesla (which wasn’t possible, hence the bluff). They took the bait and gave him the money and that’s one of the main reasons Elon Musk is the wealthiest man on record today.
I enjoyed this a lot – very entrepreneurial-focused without any political hoopla. (Remember: Elon wasn’t really in the political spotlight until shortly before his acquisition of Twitter.) I recommend this episode and have a feeling I will be recommending more from Senra.
Show and Tell
Are you smarter than a kindergartner? My son is in Pre-K and has to take a toy to school each week and show it to the class. Each toy must fit into a gallon-sized bag, and before revealing it, he gives three clues to the class to try and guess what it is.
- It’s thin.
- It’s extremely lightweight.
- It’s bright and colorful.
Look for the answer in next week’s email!
Last week’s answer: Clownfish
Russian Spy Defected
Disclaimer: this isn’t recent news, so you may already be privy of the living legend, Jack Barsky. His name recently came on my radar so I listend to a few podcast interviews with him, well, two actually (Jordan Harbinger Part 1, Part 2 and Lex Fridman). And man, what an interesting life he’s lived.
When he finally got caught by the FBI, he didn’t freak out; he asked the agent, “What took you so long?” Legend.
Born in East Germany under the German Democratic Republic (aka DDR, aka Commies), Barsky first set his sights on academia as a gifted scholar. Recent heartbreak and probably a couple other factors led to him saying yes to the Stasi recruiter for who showed up at his university student apartment. He claims to never have done the “bad spy stuff” and eventually parted ways with the KGB, defecting to the US, and preserving his life in the process. And he did it all for love.
Read more about his life at EricKnaus.com. (Click the sub-points to complete the article.)