Jackson Gates

For millions of American families, rent is an unavoidable predatory and systemic tax on the unestablished or on those whose parents can't gift them a large downpayment. Opendoor’s job is simple: end this tax.

It's so much worse than you all realize. There's $1.8 Trillion in outstanding student loan debt. It just keeps going up. It is completely irresponsible for the federal government to be subsidizing these loans. We're knowingly sending people to financial ruin. Some examples:

does it not seem like personal agents are a huge threat to UberEats / Doordash where things are marked up 30% over a restaurants own site?

The case for bi-merge is incredibly strong @pulte. Right now, everyone is forced to pay three out of three major companies that provide credit reports. That means these companies have no incentive to lower prices. They could (and do!) raise prices a lot and there is no consequence to them. It is a massive tax on the American homeowner. If you allow mortgages with credit reports from 2 out of 3 major players, you force them to at least think before they jack up their prices and increase their profits at great cost to the American homeowner.

There’s a belief amongst that cohort that there’s only 2-3 years left to “grab your bag” or become part of the “permanent underclass.” And that leads to a weird sense of desperation at a time when there’s more VC capital available than ever on better than ever terms. Weird times.

In our Series B pitch a major VC asked how we would earn a tech multiple instead of a forwarder multiple. I immediately pulled up Google Finance to show that Expeditors had a higher multiple on Facebook that day. They passed.

"I don't believe there was debanking. I think it's a crock of shit. An absolute crock of shit." — @Lead_Bank CEO @jackiereses "There's 5,000 banks in the United States. We have a lot of red states. Are you telling me that in lots of red states, including where my company is headquartered, Kansas City, Missouri—those banks were not willing to bank, for example, conservative companies?" "What debanking actually means is that banks transitioned out of offering crypto products or risky products like adult entertainment or something like that." "That's legit. That happened to lots of companies. But that is not systematically debanking. That's choosing not to invest in the industry." "There might be cases where a bank decides to not include executives in a particular industry, or they choose they don't want the risk associated with something. That is their prerogative, and banks can make decisions based on their own reputational risk." "Thankfully, you have 50 states and 5,000 banks, and there are plenty of people who would take a pro and con of each side of those judgments, and be able to offer services to many of those people who say they were excluded from the banking system."

Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman Ajit Jain: "Insurance, much like investing, is a game that requires patience. It is very difficult to get people to sit back and do nothing." "The real test of being successful is the ability to say no."

🚨 NEW: Meta finally pulls the plug on “The Metaverse”

Growth slowed? Get the co-founders together in a room. Lock the door. Now you'll see the only team available to fix things. No one else is coming to help you. It's up to you. How badly do you want to get back to growth? Only founders can care enough to really do it. It's just you. Looking at each other. Deciding how badly you really want it. How much even harder you are willing to work. And how much pain you are willing to endure.

The payments market is going to massively expand over the next decade because: 1. ANYONE can now build anything digital — AI code creation means exponentially more digital SKUs that can be created and, of course, paid for. We are in the very early innings here. The gating item is just human creativity. Combined with: 2. Almost anything that was “payroll” (paying PEOPLE) can now be “payments” (paying for THINGS). For example: “Hiring an assistant” or “hiring a paralegal” (both payroll) -> paying for a SKU. We don’t think of ADP or Paychex as payments companies because they aren’t; they are payroll companies. Paying people != paying things. But more tasks/outputs that were once only available through “paying for people” now become available for purchase on a credit or debit card. This is already starting to happen and accelerate. And of course, this is not zero sum! Much of this is “everything to the right” of the supply-demand equilibrium point, where there’s conceptually high quantity demanded at a very low price where there’s heretofore no (human) labor supplied. Lots of people will want to purchase a SKU who were unable to hire a person historically.

Estate of Paul G. Allen Begins Sale Process for Seattle Seahawks

Most venture valuations aren’t real — per se They are bets They are bets you will be worth a lot, lot, lot more. Not tomorrow. But fairly quickly.

IMHO , you are missing what made the costs so high. It starts with the insurance plan. These are the costs providers take risk on and shouldn’t : 1. The credit risk of the deductible 2. The float for Pre Auth denials/delays 3. The doctor/admin cost to appeal PA 4. The underpayments by carriers of contracted rates. 5. The admin costs of processing, that changes ever year. 6. All the consultants they pay re the above 7. (Excluding networks that are so dominant they see the rules ) In response the hospitals try to compensate for the above by : 1. Inventing Facilities Fees 2. Overcharging patients they will negotiate 3. 340b abuses 4. Site neutrality arbitrages 5. Underpaying doctors and nurses The question is what would happen for hospitals that didn’t have the above issues with carriers ? Could they be profitable at hospital (as opposed to Indy physician rates ) I think the answer is yes. Multiple hospitals make money on Medicare and Medicaid rates. But they make sure their expenses fall in line with expected revenue. Curious what everyone here thinks

The labor issue at Starbucks isn't a union problem, it's a Physics problem. They are fighting two fundamental economic laws simultaneously, Baumol’s Cost Disease and the Jevons Paradox. In manufacturing (e.g., making cars), technology doubles output per worker every decade. In services (in this case), the output per human hour is physically capped. You still have to raise barista wages to compete with the rest of the labor market (who are getting productivity raises). The result is your costs rise exponentially, increase in wages, while your output remains linear, 1 minute = 1 latte. This inevitably compresses margins until the $7 latte becomes the break-even price, not the profit price. The Mobile App was sold to investors as efficiency, but it created a Complexity Spiral. By removing the friction of face-to-face ordering, the App reduced the Social Cost of being annoying. When you are in the store, you may feel shame asking a human for 12 modifications. But when you are using a app, we feel zero shame clicking checkboxes. The App didn't save labor, it induced demand for complexity. It turned a standard production line into a Custom Job Shop where every unit is unique. This destroys Cycle Time efficiency. They are effectively a high-friction vending machine that insists on saying Hello.