thanedar

Alex Pretti is a particularly perfect plaintiff to wake up Trump's base to the rising threat of 1st and 2nd amendment violations.

Like I wrote in the post, it would only take ~12 million activists to mobilize a true People's movement.

I think we just found out what would it take to get 12 million Americans in the streets in 2026.

I will keep arguing that canvassing for a political movement is the highest potential thing most Americans could be doing now. I'm not talking about running for office yourself. You don't have to do it full-time. But try it. Focus on one issue and one bill. You could solve a key problem in weeks. See how this changes your life!

Solve your two problems first! I do think this resonates with a lot of especially YC founders who have broken through 1 and 2 but are missing the most important 3.

Made some edits last night. But I think the post still stood up 95%+.

The middle is full of stories of how I failed for years.

I think I can help you, here's how I failed, then succeeded, you can too!

And my book is truly the next step.

If you liked these ~2,000 words, there's 20x more in Positive Politics!

I specifically believe Positive Politics can best utilize the ambitious optimism of e.g. YC founders to solve the world's biggest problems!

Politics can be so much more than elections!

Focus on one issue and one bill, like you would with a startup MVP.

You can solve some of these problems in weeks!

Raising my family and building lasting things for the world are my positive sources of energy too!

I'm just saying that after 15 years founding three startups, I've found my building instinct works incredibly well in politics!

Work ≠ capitalism! It's about making your work the most meaningful thing possible! If that's a very pro-social politics, might be exactly what you want!

For sure! I've written a lot about depression too! But I do think a lot of what people otherwise blame on burnout or depression is really this existential hunger to make more positive impact. Finding that highest purpose can change lives!

You get off the hedonic treadmill by getting into something deeper like politics.

I do feel like I'm an example of someone who's juggled marriage, kids, startups, etc. where how I finally got a clean source of sustainable energy was having a part of my life to truly chase my highest potential. And to me that's politics, and specifically anticorruption and Positive Politics.

Glad that the "go into politics" ideas piqued your interest!

Your greatness is still all here! And it can be earned precisely by fighting to fix bad things.

I found that working in politics, against corruption and for Positive Politics, is how I make the most positive impact and gain the most energy!

This. Focusing on your highest potential is energizing and the rest is what we call burnout. Having kids is what caused me to think so hard about these questions, both for myself and them. I have to justify every minute I'm not with them, and now my life fully represents my values.

Love the idea that your kids are your life and the two hours when they're in bed is also your life! I'm very much in that same place too.

Many of my posts and most of my book were written in either the first two hours after they go to school or the first two hours after they sleep.

I got a rare Sunday afternoon off, which is why we got this post now!

Totally agree that work only to pay for a household is a tough life. I'm trying to connect more people with work that can give more meaning now and maybe more money long-term. People chasing their highest potential tend to create greater projects!

Zen about kids and warrior about work!

And work = highest purpose!

Love how you highlighted your morning excitement now! That's what I was going for in this post!

What are you trying now that you actually want to do? Cheering for you!

(And please let me know what you would've liked to see in the second half! Blog posts are easy to edit!)

For sure. That's why I focused on the Monday morning meaning problem.

Dreading work is very different than overwork.

I'm arguing we replace the "what's the point?" question with a "what's my highest purpose? exploration.

In that second answer is the solution to what many are calling burnout.

What were you looking to read about in that spot?

Work shouldn't be treated as a "necessary evil".

Reconciling the work vs. meaning split is hugely important.

Even if it means making less money short term, aligning work and purpose through work like politics and writing can make us way happier long-term.

Kids and work definitely increase the degree of difficulty! I'm juggling three young kids while going full-time in politics and publishing my first book this year. What I've found is stretching to launch Positive Politics now is absolutely more work and I could be relaxing instead of writing on a Sunday but this truly gives me more energy. One big unlock was finding a job in politics doing investigative journalism fighting corruption truly lights me up. It's less money and a nonprofit, but this work plus my book truly have me chasing me my highest purpose and Positive Politics grow to be huge on its own too.

Blogging has always required aggressive titles. My best posts for years all used this "you" or "we" focused framing too. Trying to solve people's biggest problems!

I'm married with three kids! And that's great! But like I say in the post, I still know I'm capable of making a bigger positive impact on the world, so that's how I focus my political work!

Thanks! And congrats on giving notice! Excited to hear what you do next! Cheering for you!

This is a sequel to my post "It's 1994 Again" about Biotech 1.0.

The biotech revolution has consistently been ~25 years behind the internet revolution.

Both revolutions started with major government projects (ARPANET in 1966 and the Human Genome Project in 1990).

This led to decades of cost and performance improvements, initially mostly by large companies.

But we needed new platforms and funds to go from Web 1.0 to Web. 2.0.

We need breakthroughs like this in biotech now to get to Biotech 2.0!

It's been 24 years since Web 2.0 was created. It's now time for Biotech 2.0!

Right now, the SEC is considering raising the accredited investor definition from $1M+ net worth to $10M+.

As is, just 10% of Americans qualify as accredited. This increase would make startup investing the exclusive domain of the 1%.

We should be going in the other direction, ending accredited investor restrictions so 100% of Americans are allowed to invest in startups!

This doesn't mean that 100% of Americans can or should invest their money in startups. But at least it will be legal for them to do so.

Using income or wealth to restrict accreditation causes biases in the funding market. Less than 1% of 18-34 year olds are accredited. Only 1.3% of African Americans are accredited. These biases affect which founders get funded.

Open access to startup funding enables truly open crowdfunding. This will lead to more startups being created, and more types of founders getting funded. This is all a huge positive gain for society, and can build wealth for Americans who never had access to this asset class.

If we really believe in the power of founding and investing in startups, we should let everyone do it!

Hi Trevor. Thanks for this reply. I agree that we need different politicians, not just more of them.

My hypothesis is "altruists can win elections", and I'll test it by helping many of them get elected. (Inspired by YC's hypothesis [1] "young hackers can start viable companies.")

YC creates more startups in a specific way - by empowering hackers to keep control of their startups. Similarly, I want to empower altruists to be effective politicians while maintaining their independence.

The network effect concern is real, as is the lack of financial incentives for backers. I haven't solved these issues yet and am open to ideas here.

Politics can be a force for good, and while not everyone shares this value, I will work with altruists that do. I believe this shared mission can bring altruists together across parties.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/sfp.html

Hey Denny! Thanks, I'll check them out!

My idea here is to get more founders from zero to Mittelstand faster.

From there, they will have many exit options, including corporates, PE, and even IPO.

I don't believe there's anything in the Mittelstand definition that prohibits exits.

Banks are a great option $1-10M+ revenue. PE works $10M+ revenue.

I'd target this Y Combinator for Mittelstands accelerator at the $0 to $1M stage for pre-Mittelstands.

These $10M-$1B revenue businesses are great buyout targets for corporate and private equity firms, and these companies are increasingly going public at the higher range. (About 1/3 of PE exits last year were via IPO).

I dig into the data here: https://neilthanedar.com/we-need-a-middle-class-for-startups...

Mittelstands are allowed to partially or fully exit.

PEs do invest in Mittelstands at $10M+ revenue. But there's not a great market yet for pre-Mittelstands, which is where I'm focusing here.

I'm intentionally not talking about $0-10M "lifestyle businesses" here.

I want to split SMB in American terminology into two categories - small businesses ($0-10M) and Mittelstands ($10M-$1B). My focus is the latter.

SpaceX is $2B+ in revenue in 2019, so they're a little out of this range, but many of their suppliers are definitely Mittelstands.

Yes, this is a reaction to "unicorns" for sure. I'm arguing that there's great value for founders and investors in Mittelstands.

If I were starting a Mittelstand today, yes one great option would be to take YC's funding, take little to no additional capital, and exit as a Mittelstand with most of your equity.

But having gone through YC in W15, they're definitely not built for Mittelstands. YC pushes you to keep iterating and changing your pitch and product until you're targeting a multi-billion dollar market.

I do believe there's room for a YC for Mittelstands:

Be like Paul Graham circa 2005 – find people who others didn’t think could be founders and coach them from the very beginning to control their companies.

I mentioned this in another comment - pre-Mittelstand investing is also driven by power-law 100x+ returns.

If you invest $100K at <$1M valuation pre-revenue in 100 pre-Mittelstands, 1-5% of those companies are going to get to $100M+, 10-30% will get to $10M+, and 50%+ will get a positive exit.

There is a robust buyout market between PEs and corporates for these companies.

Yes, this is a form of venture capital. But most VCs today would not consider pre-Mittelstands VC-backable startups.

This post and my last one We Need a Middle Class for Startups (https://neilthanedar.com/we-need-a-middle-class-for-startups...) make the argument to VCs that they can get big exits and returns investing in Mittelstands.

Pre-Mittelstand investing is also driven by power-law 100x+ returns.

Let's say the deal is $100K for 10-20% of pre-revenue/pre-product pre-Mittelstands.

You will get 100+ out of 200 businesses that are >1X+, 20+ that are 10X+, and 2+ that are 100x+.

So I'd do diligence like YC - wide open applications, largely focused on the team, one or two interviews max, global focus.